Lee Radziwill Disses George and Amal Clooney

You gotta love it, from the younger sister of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and thus the one-time sister-in-law of JFK.

I am not interested in #GeorgeClooney's lifetime achievements- or his wife. #GoldenGlobes #AmalClooney

— Lee Radziwill (@LeeRadziwill) January 12, 2015

Peyton Manning's Future Starts to Fade

The old Peyton would have marched his team down field and pulled up tight for the win.

Today, not so much.

At the New York Times, "As Passes Miss the Mark, Peyton Manning’s Future Begins to Waver":

DENVER — Somewhere in the anxiety-ridden depths of the fourth quarter, Peyton Manning stood tall as a ship mast in the Broncos pocket and tossed once, twice, three times into the middle reaches of the field.

His team’s condition was precarious: The Broncos trailed the Indianapolis Colts in the A.F.C. divisional playoff game. Each of his passes was reasonably well tossed, although without much starch. And each time the Colts defenders, those acrobats of the secondary, went airborne and slapped or punched or knocked the ball down.

Then the oddest of sounds was heard in this most often joyous orange-tinged stadium. Low, sonorous boos washed down from the stands, accompanying Manning on his walk back to the sidelines. The fans saw, and perhaps Manning did as well, another postseason slip-sliding away.

How, Manning was asked after the game, did he play? He looked at the reporter and shook his head, with disapproval of no one but himself.

“Not well, not good enough, didn’t play well enough,” he said.

Taps rarely sound for a great athlete in a single, climactic moment. Rather, the player experiences an accumulation of small indignities, the erosions of age adding a second or two to a pass, a split second off a handoff, muting that sixth sense that allows him to pick up a 300-pound man sprinting at him, shoulders aimed at his midsection.

Michael Jordan could score 20 points a game pretty much right to the end, but the ferocious athletic fires that made him magnificent had already banked. Willie Mays still could deliver a handsome home run, but the mind’s eye more clearly recalls that aging star stumbling about, lost in the windy center field shadows at Shea Stadium.

There’s no morality play to be found here. The notion, put forward by a Boston columnist Sunday, that Manning is a “habitual loser” of big games is sportswriter shorthand for deadline silliness. Manning has gone to three Super Bowls, playing against the best in the world, and he’s won once. There is no vein of shame to be mined here.

Peyton Manning is one of the greatest ever to play the game. For many years his soaring passes seemed attracted as if by homing beacons to the hands of his receivers.

Sunday offered Round 2 this season for the Colts and the Broncos, and Manning and Andrew Luck, the silver-armed young quarterback who may one day have his own Super Bowl victory. The teams met in a season opener in the same stadium, and the atmosphere then was festive. A blonde lass rode around on her white horse and fires sounded and fans screamed and drank their brews and munched on their gummy bears.

Manning won that duel, his arm true. Although in what may now be seen as foreshadowing struggles to come, he grew weaker as the game progressed. For the season, the pattern repeated. Manning was among the most dominant quarterbacks in the game for the first half of the season, then faded noticeably in the last six games.

Sunday’s game began in high spirits, with the spitting fire and the smoke and the gladiator’s triumphant entry. Manning marched the Broncos downfield for an early touchdown and fans thumped their feet, and it was as if a dozen D trains ran beneath the press box.

Then, slowly, ineluctably, he and his team began to fade. Manning tossed long, soaring balls three, four, five times.

Each began as a beauty, you could hear the fans suck in their breath, and each landed two, three, four feet beyond the grasping hands of his receiver. “We did probably go to the well too many times,” Broncos Coach John Fox said of those long passes.

Perhaps that is so...

So sad.

There's still more, if you Peyton fans are up for it.

Anita Ekberg, Requiescat in Pace

Guaranteed NOT halal.

At Astute Bloggers, "RIP: ANITA EKBERG - MISS SWEDEN 1950, AND A NATIVE OF MALMO WHO WAS GAURANTEED NOT HALAL - CROSSES OVER."

Also at the New York Times, "Anita Ekberg, International Screen Beauty and Fellini Star, Dies at 83."

Sunday Cartoons

At Flopping Aces, "Friday Frownies."



Also at Reaganite Republican, "Reaganite's Sunday Funnies," and Theo Spark, "Cartoon Round Up..."

Cartoon Credit: Legal Insurrection, "Branco Cartoon – Front Lines."

Spectacular Photography from Unity Rally in Paris

Amazing.

At BuzzFeed, "Paris Anti-Terror Demonstration Is the Biggest March In French History."

Paris Anti-Terror March Draws Huge Crowds And World Leaders http://t.co/pUpYJskvxQ pic.twitter.com/sZXZoCHhyy

— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) January 11, 2015

One Kumbaya March Can't Stop Islamism or Cleanse Europe of Muslim Jew-Hatred

Oops!

Jonathan Tobin harshes the left's mellow, at Commentary:

The spectacle of more than a million people taking to the streets of Paris in protest against the attacks against the massacres at Charlie Hebdo and a kosher market is in and of itself a good thing. The condemnations of Islamist terror from a broad cross-section of French society and the willingness of many world leaders, including some from Arab and Muslim nations, to take part in the event is encouraging to those who have noted with dismay not only the assault on free speech but also the many attacks on Jews in Europe in recent years. This has led some to express the hope that the march will mark a turning point in the struggle against Islamist terror and anti-Semitism in which a unified European continent will somehow reject hatred. But while it would be wrong to react to what is being portrayed by the cable and broadcast networks as a transcendent kumbaya moment with pure cynicism, it is important that no one should think a march can by itself undo the wide support that is given Islamist ideology in the Arab world. Nor should we confuse bromidic statements by leaders with policies that will end the delegitimization of Israel and the Jews...

Keep reading.

Oh My! Melissa Harris-Perry Dumbstruck as Jewish Forward Editor J.J. Goldberg Goes Off MSNBC Script on French Anti-Semitism

OMG this is too delectable!

At Pajamas, "Liberal Schools MSNBC News Host on Radical Islamism":

When Melissa Harris-Perry’s producers invited J.J. Goldberg on to speak about the Jewish community in France, they were probably expecting textbook politically correct responses from the editor at large of America’s largest left-wing Jewish newspaper, the Forward. Which is why it’s so funny to watch Harris-Perry attempt not to balk at Goldberg’s frank candor on the radical Islamist roots of anti-Semitism in France. “The anti-Semitism problem in France is not primarily a problem of anti-Semitism from French Muslims,” she rushes to clarify at 2:32. “There is a problem of anti-Semitism there, but it is not primarily a problem of Muslim versus Jewish populations there, but rather a question of – sort of — French citizens in the broadest sense.”

“Um, I don’t think so,” Goldberg begins before detailing in brief France’s dance with anti-Semitism over the past century, noting that the incidents happening now are “happening from the Muslim community.” He then rattles off a series of French leaders who are Jewish and have established bonds with the Israeli Jewish community. “The integration of Jews into France and the acceptance of Jews in France is very, very thorough,” he explains. He ends his segment by noting that 70% of Jews in France today have come from Sephardic countries of origin where they have experienced “tension with their Arab neighbors”.

Harris-Perry attempts to interrupt his scholarly explanation twice before giving in and going to the commercial break...

It's just a special --- and I do mean special --- little world of denial for the dolts at MSNBC.

Watch:

World Leaders, Sans Barack Hussein, March in Paris — #CharlieHebdo

It's extremely sad that the American president is not in attendance --- although not surprising at all.

Via Twitter:

50 world leaders gather in 3 million strong Paris rally. Umm, where's Obama?!? pic.twitter.com/y25b0xSuzD
— Matt Orr (@mattorrpjtv) January 11, 2015

World leaders rally in France -- but where's Obama? http://t.co/l5CDfaZt2F pic.twitter.com/tn36P16F6d
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) January 11, 2015

Added:

50+ world leaders in France for unity march against jihad, incl. Netanyahu, Merkel, Cameron. #wheresobama pic.twitter.com/eWNocqVxqe

— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) January 11, 2015

Millions March for French 'Unity' in France

Here's the report from the opening of CBS Face the Nation:


And see also Legal Insurrection, "Paris National Unity Rally (LIVE)." And at Instapundit, "NEXT TIME, THEY SHOULD CARRY PITCHFORKS: ‘Unprecedented’ rally is largest in France’s history, officials say":

“French media estimate up to 3 million are taking part, more than the numbers who took to Paris streets when the Allies liberated the city from the Nazis in World War II.”

Paris Jihadist Amedy Coulibaly #ISIS Propaganda Video — #CharlieHebdo — UPDATED AND BUMPED!

This is full blown.

It's not in English (although there are French subtitles), but just the visuals alone prove decisively that this motherfucker was no lone wolf wannabe.

And to think, there he was, right in the mother's breast of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité. Damn, the West is losing the war on terror, and badly.

At Atlas Shrugs, "Watch VIDEO: Paris Jihad Amedy Coulibaly pledges allegiance to the Islamic State “retaliate against the enemies of Islam”."

UPDATE: MEMRI has the video transcribed with English language captions. Excellent.

Watch: "Paris Supermarket Gunman Amedy Coulibaly Pledges Allegiance to ISIS, Justifies His Actions."

National Front Leader Marine Le Pen Calls to Restore Death Penalty in France — #CharlieHebdo

I guess she's had enough with the left's "evolving standards of decency" bullshit.

At London's Daily Mail, "French National Front leader Marine Le Pen calls for return of death penalty as far-right party is expected to receive poll boost in wake of terror attacks."

And from Philip Gourevitch, at the New Yorker, "Le Pen's Moment":

“We’ve been predicting this for a long time,” Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the French radical-right National Front party said on Wednesday, shortly after the massacre at the Paris office of the radical-left satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. “It was to be expected. This attack is probably the beginning of the beginning. It’s an episode in the war that is being waged against us by Islamism. The blindness and deafness of our leaders, for years, is in part responsible for these kinds of attacks.”

Although Le Pen and the National Front were frequent targets of Charlie Hebdo’s savage mockery, the two were at least as frequently aligned against shared political enemies. As the French say, “the extremes touch,” and when it came to ridiculing the mainstream political parties—the center-left Socialists of President François Hollande and the center-right Gaullists of his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy—it was often difficult to distinguish the grotesque caricatures you might find in Charlie Hebdo from those in National Front rhetoric. So, too, when it came to the xenophobia and racism of their anti-immigration polemics, and their baiting of Islamophobic and anti-Semitic sentiment. (Charlie Hebdo was merciless toward Christianity, too, but there Le Pen lost his sense of humor.) Le Pen, the former fascist street fighter, relishes his role as a scourge of the establishment as much as the former Communist street fighters of Charlie Hebdo did, and he has always delighted in an opportunity to taunt his adversaries and critics. When I wrote about him in 1997, I reported that he had asked me, “What do I have to do not to be racist? Marry a black woman? With AIDS, if possible?” After the article appeared, he wrote to the magazine, complaining that, as “an Anglo-Saxon,” I had missed the Gallic subtlety of his wit: he had not said “une noire,” a black woman, but “un noir,” a black man.

The cover story of the issue of Charlie Hebdo released on the day of the massacre was about the author Michel Houellebecq and his new novel, “Submission,” a political fiction that describes the takeover of France by an Islamist party in the 2022 elections, following a tight runoff race against the National Front’s current leader, Marine Le Pen (who in reality took the party’s reins from her father four years ago). Marine, as everyone in France refers to her, has said that Houellebecq’s alarmist fantasy impressed her as entirely plausible, and the left-of-center daily newspaper Libération greeted the book with an essay damning Houellebecq as “the Le Pen of the Café de Flore,” a sort of fifth columnist for the National Front, sneaking far-right politics into the heart of Left Bank literary culture. Houellebecq, for his part, likes to protest that he is an apolitical sort of soothsayer—that he is merely imagining, not advocating, much less seeking to provoke, a radical polarization of French society, in which a soft and ineffectual center gives way to a clash of domestic and immigrant nationalisms. By the end of the week he had cancelled his book promotion and retreated to an undisclosed rustic hideout.

We know very little, as yet, about what the killers who terrorized Paris for the past three days sought to achieve, beyond the murders of Charlie Hebdo staff members; police officers; and Jewish hostages at a kosher supermarket. But nobody in France needed Houellebecq’s novel, or Jean-Marie Le Pen’s I-told-you-so, to recognize at once that the terror played directly to the National Front’s advantage. Whereas Le Pen, the father, was content for most of his career to rattle the political order as a protest candidate, Marine is hellbent on remaking that order in her own image.

“You’re looking for a place at the table,” I said when I met her four years ago, while reporting on Sarkozy’s collapsing Presidency.

“You’re right,” she said. “I’m looking especially for the Presidency of the table.” She laughed. “That’s right,” she said, and added, “It’s true today that we’re in a phase of accession to power.”

Since then, Le Pen’s popularity, and her share of votes, has only increased, and she has managed to present her agenda—anti-European Union, anti-immigrant, anti-euro—as approaching the mainstream, even as she cherishes her status as an outsider, untainted by the past twenty years of deepening French political crisis. In the immediate aftermath of the attack on Wednesday, as traffic surged on her Facebook page and she picked up thousands of new followers, she did nothing special to insert herself into the story or to exploit the fears that the Front has long fed on. She reiterated her longstanding call for France to withdraw, unilaterally and at once, from the Schengen Agreement, which allows for open borders within the extended European community, but that was hardly newsworthy. Rather, Le Pen appeared to adopt the time-tested opposition strategy of waiting for the political establishment to make a misstep that would turn attention her way—and she did not have to wait long. Within hours of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the ruling Socialists and a coalition of allied parties of the left announced plans for a massive solidarity rally on Sunday—a silent march through the heart of Paris in the cause of “national unity”—without extending an invitation to the National Front.

The exclusion of the Front was great news for Le Pen. Nobody believed that she would have wanted to go and be associated with the political mainstream, but, by failing to invite her, the Socialists had given her a cudgel. “I don’t intend to submit myself to this blackmail,” she told Le Monde. “It’s a total perversion of the concept of national union. They’ll have to accept the consequences from the voters.” She went on, “This whole thing is a way of pushing aside the only political movement that has no responsibility in the present situation, along with its millions of voters. All the other parties are deathly afraid. They’re thinking of their little elections and their little mandates. Their old reflexes that have frozen political life for twenty years and that dug the chasm between those who govern and the people. If I’m not invited, I’m not going to insist. It’s an old trap. The slightest incident and they’ll say it’s my fault.”

François Lamy, a Socialist parliamentarian, retorted in Libération, “There’s no room for a political group that, for years, has divided French people, stigmatized our fellow-citizens because of their origin or religion, and can’t get behind a group march.” Jean-Vincent Placé, a senator from an environmentalist party, piled on: “We’re democratic enough to allow” the National Front “in our elections. We’re not going to turn the other cheek any farther than that.” But one Socialist source, who chose to remain anonymous, told Libération that it was a mistake to make such an issue of Sunday’s march. “After an event like this, it’s time to strengthen the dikes. What happened on Wednesday should serve to bring voters back to the Republic, not to draw attention to Marine Le Pen and company,” the source said, and concluded that the Socialist party had “fucked itself” by stepping into the Front’s trap...

Heh.

"Fucked itself." You gotta love it.

More.

Claire Berlinski Won't Be Leaving France

Seems like she gets more pissed off by the day.

At Richochet, "An Update From Paris: This Jew is Still Here, and She is Not Leaving":

I am Jewish. I am in France. And I am not leaving–not because of a handful of terrorist swine, and not even if there’s an army of them. This family of Jews will not be driven out of Europe twice. And as far as I’m concerned, the response a Jew should have to this outrage is the one we should have had before–when up against a far more fearsome enemy. We may die, but we’ll die fighting, and you’ll be amazed how many of you we take down with us.

So let me speak personally now to anyone who thinks he’ll get me out of here: We will always have Paris. I will always have Paris. As will all the people who belong here. You, however, will die.

RTWT.

Paris Attacks Target Democracy and the West — #CharlieHebdo

At Der Spiegel, where the editors aren't afraid of publishing the Muhammad cartoons.

See, "Assaulting Democracy: The Deep Repercussions of the Charlie Hebdo Attack":

The terrorists in Wednesday's attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris had a much broader target in mind: Western values. Will the attacks bring people together in this time of crisis or will fear of Islam prevail?

*****

"Can we laugh about anything? Will we be able to laugh about anything tomorrow? These questions are worth asking. No limits to humor that is in the service of freedom of speech, because when humor stops, it is very often to make place for censorship or self censorship."

Cabu (Jan. 13, 1938 to Jan. 7, 2015), -- cartoonist at Charlie Hebdo

They knew what they were doing. The two masked men armed with Kalashnikovs ordered cartoonist Corinne Rey, who had just picked up her daughter from day care, to enter the door code. They then made their way to the second floor where, every Wednesday, the day of publication, the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo gathered at noon to commence their weekly editorial meeting and discuss what they would put in the next issue.

t was a lively session, with around 15 people, including a police officer assigned to provide protection to Stéphane Charbonnier, the satirical magazine's 47-year-old editor in chief. In the end, neither stood a chance.

"Where is Charb?" the killers called out. "Where is Charb?" They shot him as soon as they found him. "I would rather die standing than live on my knees," Charb had once been quoted as saying. At the time, al-Qaida had just placed him on its death list in its online magazine Inspire. "Charb Doesn't Like People" was the name of a regular column he wrote for Charlie Hebdo, but he was in fact a quiet, reserved man who, like everyone here, stood for humanity as he saw it. They were people who fought for the freedom of the press, freedom of expression and, yes, for the right to occasionally trangress taste or to insult. In the end, they paid for it with their lives.

They were people like Cabu, whose real name was Jean Cabut. The 76-year-old with shaggy hair and a rough drawing style had a laugh so hearty it could literally lift him out of his chair. His most famous character was "Grande Duduche," a perpetual college student hopelessly in love with the daughter of a university dean.

Or Georges Wolinski, 80, who, like Cabu and the entire first generation at Charlie Hebdo, was a figure cast in the spiritual mold of the 1960s -- hedonistic, libertarian, anarchic and cheerful -- a man who opposed censorship, racism, the war in Algeria, de Gaulle and narrow-minded and dull Catholic France.

Or Bernard Verlhac, 57, who called himself Tignous and once caricatured Front National leader Marine Le Pen featuring a clown nose with a swastika branded on it. He once went out of his way to mock Nicolas Sarkozy as a war president and a man who is positively spastic when it came to power and hyperactive to the point of hysteria.

Or illustrator Philippe Honoré, 73, whose last cartoon was a New Year's card to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (wishing him "especially good health") that had been tweeted by the staff just minutes before the attack.

The hail of deadly bullets also struck left-wing economist Bernard Maris, 68, who wrote a regular column for the magazine, psychoanalyst and columnist Elsa Cayat, copy editor Mustapha Ourrad, police officers Franck Brinsolaro and Ahmed Merabet, a building maintenance man as well as local politician Michel Renaud, who had been paying a visit to the magazine....

Global Shock

The shock over the killings spread quickly across France as people registered that the attacks had in fact been also been aimed at France and democracy as a whole and not just some satirical magazine.

Judging from the outpouring of grief seen in France on Wednesday night, even an attack on the Louvre wouldn't have struck a deeper nerve. Jan. 7, 2015 has become for the French what 9/11 was to the United States. It was an attack on the country's proud history of Enlightenment and the French Revolution, but also one against Europe. It goes far beyond the publication itself -- at issue are fundamental questions of freedom and humanity. Accordingly, politicians, journalists and everyday people around the world sought to express their solidarity. It happened en masse on social networks, but also in public spaces. Hundreds of thousands of people attended vigils in cities spanning the globe from New York to Sydney on Wednesday, with further demonstrations planned for this weekend. Newspapers dedicated their front pages to the tragedy, although not all dared to publish the cartoons featured in Charlie Hebdo. A number of cartoonists also drew images illustrating the inequality of weapons and pens. The pope prayed for the dead.

From Pakistan to Turkey, Muslim dignitaries took pains to distance themselves, using tough words to condemn the attacks. Tunisia's Islamist al-Nahda party issued a statement condemning the "cowardly and criminal act." Egypt's spiritual leader also sent his condolences, as did Russia and China.

A Turning Point

France is no stranger to terrorism, but Wednesday's attack marked the worst it had seen since 1961. The country survived the Organization of the Secret Army (OAS), a French dissident paramilitary group that fought against Algeria's independence during the 1960s. Later, during the 1990s, Algerian Islamists planted bombs in commuter trains. But the attack that took place on Wednesday against Charlie Hebdo was a siege against the very values that France embodies.

"This is a turning point -- quantitatively but for that reason also qualitatively," says Olivier Roy, a respected scholar of Islam at the European University Institute in Florence. "It was an attack designed for the maximum effect," he says. "They did it to shock the public and, in that sense, they were also successful."

At the same time, at least for a short period, the attackers united a country that in recent years had appeared to be frightened, beat down and hopeless in a way rarely seen before in its history. The day after the attacks, President Hollande even met with his political nemesis, Nicolas Sarkozy, in Elysée Palace. "This isn't just about democracy," the former president said. "It's about civilization."

Hollande also invited right-wing populist Marine Le Pen, a woman considered to be an outsider in the French political system who normally wouldn't get invited to the presidential palace. Meanwhile, leftist Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve visited the editorial staff of the conservative daily Le Figaro on the day of the attacks. It may not sound like much, but these are meaningful gestures in today's politically polarized France...

Still a lot more, at the link.

The Next Islamist Rampage

At the Wall Street Journal, "The West has to reinforce its terror defenses, including surveillance":

France’s terror rampage ended Friday as police killed three Islamists, but not before they had paralyzed much of the country, taken more hostages, and killed at least four more innocents. Europe and the U.S. had better brace for more such attacks, while reinforcing the antiterror defenses, moral and military, that have come under political assault in recent years.

***
The biggest question raised by Paris is whether it presages a new offensive by homegrown jihadists carrying European or U.S. passports who are inspired by al Qaeda or Islamic State. Officials say one of the killers was trained by the al Qaeda offshoot in Yemen, and we can expect other such links or sympathies.

It’s tempting but probably wrong to think that France has a unique jihadist problem because of its relatively large Muslim population (about 7.5% of the country) and the immigrant ghettoes where they congregate. These certainly are breeding grounds for radicalism. Yet the United Kingdom has Birmingham, the Islamist petri dish for the London subway bombers, and the U.S. sheltered the killer Tsarnaevs in Boston and the Somali immigrants in Minnesota who’ve gone to Syria.

America may have a better historical record of assimilating diverse peoples, but that was when the U.S. had a less fragmented national culture and an elite that was more confident in Western values. The Internet, for all its benefits, also makes it possible for young men in the West to be inspired or recruited by jihadist networks around the world.

The threat is compounded by America’s abdication in the Syrian civil war, which has become a Grand Central Station for global jihad. Thousands from the Muslim diaspora have flooded into Syria as they did in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The difference is that in Iraq they were killed by the U.S.-Iraq counter-insurgency campaign.

In Syria they have had four years to develop safe havens and training camps. Hundreds of Europeans and Americans have joined the ranks of al-Nusrah, the al Qaeda branch in Syria, or Islamic State, which controls territory from Aleppo in Western Syria through the suburbs of Baghdad.

“A group of core al Qaeda terrorists in Syria is planning mass casualty attacks against the West,” said Andrew Parker, the director general of British security service MI5, in a speech Thursday. His timing was no accident. Mr. Parker said some 600 British citizens have traveled to Syria, many joining Islamic State. “We face a very serious level of threat that is complex to combat and unlikely to abate significantly for some time.”

How to respond? One necessity is to accelerate and intensify the campaign against Islamic State and its 30,000 recruits. Jihad is more attractive when it is succeeding, and Islamic State has infused militant Islam with a new charisma. All the more so after President Obama announced a campaign to destroy it, began bombing, and then—very little. The desultory offensive so far may be winning more recruits for Islamic State than it is inflicting casualties.

The West also needs to cease its political campaign against the most effective antiterror tools. This means surveillance in particular. The same left-libertarian media who have canonized Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald now claim solidarity with Charlie Hebdo. Sorry. You cannot favor antiterror disarmament and then claim shock at terror successes.

“My sharpest concern as director general of MI5 is the growing gap between the increasingly challenging threat and the decreasing availability of capabilities to address it,” Mr. Parker, the British security chief, also said this week. “The dark places from where those who wish us harm can plot and plan are increasing” and “we need to be able to access communications and obtain relevant data on those people when we have good reason.”

Surveillance by itself isn’t enough, given the many reports that French security had tracked this week’s killers. We’ll learn in the coming days if the French missed clues that the Kouachi brothers were ready to strike, but other countries have had similar oversights. The FBI was tipped off that Tamerlan Tsarnaev had visited the North Caucusus terrorist hotbed of Dagestan in 2012 but failed to act.

The West will have to consider more aggressive interventions, including arrest or exile, for citizens who visit terror regions and show signs of embracing jihad. Tracking Muslim student groups and clerics is also essential to preventing future attacks. The Associated Press campaign three years ago against the New York police for legal monitoring of Muslim groups looks more morally obtuse with each homegrown attack.

Oops. I suspect the WSJ's editors are a bit too lucid for the global leftist Islamo-coddlers.

And I just love that line on Assange and Greenwald: "Sorry. You cannot favor antiterror disarmament and then claim shock at terror successes." Indeed you cannot. And it means that the global left bears partial responsibility for the Paris attacks.

Still more at the link.

Kam Chancellor's Interception Makes It a Breeze for Seattle

A really good game, and yes, that interception was a real heap of icing on the cake.

At LAT, "Seahawks return to NFC championship after cruising past Carolina, 31-17":

It was a brief encounter when Cam met Kam, sort of a hello-and-goodbye affair.

Carolina's Cam Newton threw the pass, Seattle safety Kam Chancellor picked it out of the chilly air and ran it back for a 90-yard interception.

“Kam Chancellor,” teammate Richard Sherman said, “damages people's souls.”

And Saturday, the 232-pound sledgehammer crushed the Panthers, putting an exclamation point on Seattle's 31-17 victory in a divisional playoff game at CenturyLink Field.

The Seahawks are one step closer to becoming the first NFL team in a decade to repeat as Super Bowl champions. They will play host to the winner of Sunday's game between Dallas and Green Bay for the right to represent the NFC in the league's marquee game Feb. 1 in Glendale, Ariz.

The Seahawks played both Green Bay and Dallas at home this season, beating the Packers in the Kickoff Opener, 36-16, and losing to the Cowboys, 30-23, in Week 6.

“It's going to be one of those for the ages, you look forward to that,” Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson said. “And you definitely look forward to being at home, rather than one of those two places.”

More.

Judge Jeanine Responds to #ParisAttacks: 'We Need to Kill Them!' (VIDEO)

Stark warning from Judge Jeanine: "This political correctness will be the death of us..."

Well, it's not as though she hasn't been sounding the tocsin.

Watch:

Terrorist Sleeper Cells Activated in France (VIDEO)

Well, no surprise there.

At CNN, "Source: Terror cells activated in France."

The New Phase of Militant Islamic Terror and How to Respond (VIDEO)

I don't think she fully develops the "how to respond" part, but this is a good discussion.

Watch Judith Miller, at Fox News, "Paris is new phase in fight against Jihadists."

Stop Pretending Terrorism Has Nothing to Do With Islam

A great piece, from David Harsanyi, at the Federalist.

Anti-Torture Protesters Arrested in Front of Dick Cheney's Home

Priorities.

At the Hill:

Police arrested two anti-torture protesters in front of former Vice President Dick Cheney’s home in McLean, Va. on Saturday.

About 20 protesters from the anti-war group Code Pink, some wearing orange prison in jumpsuits, walked onto Cheney’s property to mark the 14th anniversary of the opening of the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, Reuters reported.

Police asked the group of protesters to leave and all obliged except for two members of the group, who were then arrested on trespassing charges.

Code Pink said Tighe Barry, 57, and Eve Tetaz, 83, were unfairly singled out for arrest.

Tighe Barry of @codepink arrested outside of Dick Cheneys house! Police won't say why! 83 y/o woman arrested too!! pic.twitter.com/y22QZmaCTC

— CODEPINK (@codepink) January 10, 2015

Arson Attack at Hamburg Morgenpost for Publishing #CharlieHebdo Cartoons

It begins.

At London's Daily Mail, "BREAKING NEWS: Arsonists attack office of German newspaper that printed Charlie Hebdo cartoons."

Stop Lying: Media Are Censoring Charlie Hebdo Out of Fear of Islam

"It’s time to cut the B.S."

Argues Mollie Hemingway, at the Federalist:

It’s time to stop lying about why many in the media don’t publish these cartoons. It’s not out of respect for religion, something the media could actually use a great deal more of.

It’s not about causing offense to many, or papers wouldn’t be running photos on the front page of gay couples making out or announcements of same-sex unions or what not. I don’t recall the New York Times discussing deference to pious families in Brooklyn when those began in 2002.

There’s one reason and one reason only why we’re not seeing any pictures of Muhammad (and contrary to what many in the media mindlessly tell you, depicting Muhammad is a debated issue among Muslims).

Journalists are absolutely terrified of Islamic extremists...

RTWT.

#ParisAttacks: Girlfriend Hayat Boumeddiene Likely in Syria

At the Wall Street Journal, "Partner of Paris Gunman Believed to Be in Syria: Hayat Boumeddiene Is Believed to Have Left France on Jan. 2":

PARIS—French authorities believe Hayat Boumeddiene, the girlfriend of the gunman who was killed during a police raid at a kosher store on Friday, left France Jan. 2 and has reached Syria, people familiar with the matter said Saturday.

Police have been hunting for Ms. Boumeddiene since her partner, Amedy Coulibaly, was identified as the alleged shooter of a policewoman on Thursday and stormed a Parisian kosher grocery on Friday, leaving four hostages dead.

French prosecutors have described Ms. Boumeddiene as a dangerous individual who has trained to use firearms.

Ms. Boumeddiene left France and crossed into Syria from Turkey, the people said, before the French capital was plunged into a three-day spree of violence that began with the attack on the Charlie Hebdo magazine Wednesday.

A senior Turkish official said Ms. Boumeddiene flew to Turkey with one companion on Jan. 2, landing at Istanbul’s Sabiha Gokcen airport. The official would not name her travel companion but said Turkish intelligence officials were in constant contact with their French counterparts.

The pair stayed in Istanbul until Jan. 4, when they flew to the southeastern city of Urfa, and most likely headed to Syria, the official said.

“After Urfa, we lost track of them... most likely they crossed into Syria,” the official said.

“She used no ports or no vehicles to exit turkey that we know of,” he added.

The city of Urfa is known as a way station for foreigners seeking to reach the Syrian battlefield...

More.

I Am Not Charlie Hebdo

Here's a "not Charlie Hedbo" to which I can relate.

From David Brooks, at the New York Times:

The journalists at Charlie Hebdo are now rightly being celebrated as martyrs on behalf of freedom of expression, but let’s face it: If they had tried to publish their satirical newspaper on any American university campus over the last two decades it wouldn’t have lasted 30 seconds. Student and faculty groups would have accused them of hate speech. The administration would have cut financing and shut them down.

Public reaction to the attack in Paris has revealed that there are a lot of people who are quick to lionize those who offend the views of Islamist terrorists in France but who are a lot less tolerant toward those who offend their own views at home.

Just look at all the people who have overreacted to campus micro-aggressions. The University of Illinois fired a professor who taught the Roman Catholic view on homosexuality. The University of Kansas suspended a professor for writing a harsh tweet against the N.R.A. Vanderbilt University derecognized a Christian group that insisted that it be led by Christians.

Americans may laud Charlie Hebdo for being brave enough to publish cartoons ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad, but, if Ayaan Hirsi Ali is invited to campus, there are often calls to deny her a podium...

Keep reading.

Leaked Newsroom Emails Reveal Al Jazeera Fury Over Global Support for #CharlieHebdo

Yeah, lots of Muslims around the world are showing solidarity with the terrorists.

See Blazing Cat Fur on Al Jazeera, "'I AM NOT CHARLIE'."

Plus, see the Los Angeles Times, "Muslim leaders condemn French massacre, but on the street, disagreement."

Undetected French Hostages Hid in Kosher Store's Freezer, Scared of Freezing to Death Before Police Could Kill Terrorist

Harrowing.

Something that they'll never forget, and thank God they didn't die from the cold.

At WaPo, "In a kosher grocery store in Paris, terror takes a deadly toll":

PARIS – For more than four hours, Noemi shivered through the biting chill and the abject terror of being hidden away inside the refrigerated cellar of a kosher grocery store as a murderous gunman rampaged above.

The cold-storage room had been her salvation when she dashed inside Friday afternoon, escaping the bullets that felled others. But as night fell, she huddled with fellow hostages and worried that it would become her death chamber.

“We’re very afraid, and we’re very cold,” Noemi told a friend, 29-year-old Anthony Ravaux, in a phone call just after 5 p.m. “Tell the police to hurry.”

Minutes later, right at sundown, dozens of heavily armed officers stormed the store in a furious assault of smoke, sound and fire. The hostages made a desperate run for the doors as officers shot the gunman dead, ending the standoff....

The hostage-taking began just after noon, when Amedy Coulibaly, 32, a French citizen of Senegalese descent, walked into the store and began to shoot. The attack played out hours before the start of the Jewish Sabbath on Friday night, a particularly busy time for a kosher shop.

As police quickly established a cordon around the building, residents on the outside were left to wonder what had become of friends and colleagues trapped within.

Two women who worked at the store but were off at the time of the attack sobbed as they frantically dialed the phone numbers of friends. One said she had received a call from a colleague who could only get out the words “people are shooting” before the line was cut.

“They were only targeted because they were Jewish,” the woman, who declined to give her name, said of her colleagues. “They’re just normal people trying to do their jobs.”...

There were 16 hostages, including children, Coulibaly told the station. He boasted that he had already killed four people, and police said he was threatening to shoot more if they staged a raid against his accomplices in Dammartin.

In fact, Coulibaly had significantly more hostages than he knew: the ones who had dashed into the cold-storage room had apparently escaped his detection.

But Noemi and the others huddled inside had no way of knowing that. They felt a jolt of apprehension with every sound from above, and they scoured the storage-room floor for empty boxes and other possible places to hide.

“Don’t panic,” Ravaux told Noemi, whose last name he did not want to reveal, when she reached him by phone. “The police will do their best.”

Ravaux, who had walked out of the store five minutes before Coulibaly burst in, told her to conserve her phone’s battery, and the two hung up.

Within minutes, the streets echoed with three loud booms as police tossed stun grenades and began their assault. After a pause, the earth shook with 30 seconds of sustained gunfire. Blocks away, parents shepherded screaming children into the shelter of nearby doorways.

And then, silence.

More than an hour after the raid, Ravaux said he believed that his friend had survived. But he could not reach her by phone.

“I hope she’s with the police,” he said.

Officials said that the Paris raid and a nearly simultaneous shootout with the Kouachi brothers in Dammartin left all three assailants dead, allowing the surviving hostages to go free. In his speech to the nation, Hollande praised law enforcement officers for their work and said France would not be divided by racism or anti-Semitism.

But on the streets of Porte de Vincennes, residents expressed a gnawing fear that the events of the past three days had unleashed a wave of violence with no end.

“This is only the beginning for what’s awaiting France,” said Sam Cohen, a 22-year-old who wore a black hoodie atop his black kippah. “Everyone’s going to grab a weapon, and there will be more and more dead every day.”

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls Declares 'War' on Radical Islam

Well, thank goodness somebody over there's declaring war on radical jihad.

At NYT, "French Premier Declares ‘War’ on Radical Islam as Paris Girds for Rally" (via Memeorandum):

PARIS — Prime Minister Manuel Valls declared Saturday that France was at war with radical Islam after the harrowing sieges that led to the deaths of three gunmen and four hostages the day before. New details emerged about the bloody final confrontations, and security forces remained on high alert.

“It is a war against terrorism, against jihadism, against radical Islam, against everything that is aimed at breaking fraternity, freedom, solidarity,” Mr. Valls said during a speech in Évry, south of Paris.

The authorities started the day hunting for the companion of one of the killers, only to learn later that she appeared to have fled to Turkey and then probably to Syria days before the first assault in Paris on Wednesday. The police had suspected that the woman — Hayat Boumeddiene, 26, the girlfriend of Amedy Coulibaly, believed to be one of the gunmen — might have played a role in one or more of the attacks.

“We are 99 percent sure that she traveled to Syria from Urfa,” said a Turkish intelligence official, referring to a city in southern Turkey. “There is no evidence that suggests she was involved in the terrorist attacks in France this week.”

France remained on edge a day after security forces killed Mr. Coulibaly, who the police said was responsible for the deaths of four hostages at a kosher supermarket near the Porte de Vincennes in eastern Paris on Friday, and Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, the brothers who fatally shot 12 people on Wednesday in and around the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical newspaper.

The French government said it would put 500 additional troops on the streets over the weekend amid preparations for a giant unity rally in Paris on Sunday. A number of European officials said they would attend, including Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu of Turkey, the most prominent Muslim leader scheduled to be there, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.

On Saturday, hundreds of thousands of people marched in Paris, Toulouse, Nice and other cities in a show of solidarity, and rallies were held in places as far away as Madagascar and Bangui, Central African Republic.

Top ministers in the French government held an emergency session to discuss measures to prevent a repeat of the attacks, which shocked the country and raised questions about why law enforcement agencies had failed to thwart terrorism suspects well known to the police and intelligence services.

Some of the surviving hostages shared chilling accounts of their ordeals at the hands of heavily armed captors, who they said had seemed prepared to die as police forces amassed outside the kosher supermarket and a printing plant northeast of Paris that the Kouachi brothers had seized early Friday.

Mr. Coulibaly, in an interview with a French television outlet not long before he was killed, claimed to be affiliated with the Islamic State, which has its headquarters in northern Syria. Officials identified him as the gunman in the fatal shooting of a female police officer in a Paris suburb on Thursday.

The crisis and its aftermath presented a major challenge to President François Hollande and his government, which are facing deep religious and cultural rifts in a nation with a rapidly growing Muslim population while simultaneously coping with the security threats stemming from Islamic extremists. Large numbers of French citizens have been traveling to Syria and Iraq to fight with the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.

Mr. Hollande, appealing for unity, has warned against seeing Muslims as the enemy, and Mr. Valls called again on Saturday for citizens to join the rally planned for Sunday.

“There needs to be a firm message about the values of the republic and of secularism,” Mr. Valls said in Évry. “Tomorrow, France and the French can be proud. Everyone must come tomorrow.”...

I think they need to figure out how they're going to deal with Islam. It's not "radical" Islam. It's Islam. Smiting the infidels is in the Koran. Get that and they might be going somewhere.

More at the link.

French Intelligence Dropped Surveillance of Kouachi Brothers for 'Lack of Resources'

Hmm...

A "lack of resources," eh?

I'm sure a lot of Frenchmen are thinking perhaps some of Hollande's high-tax revenues should have been put to counterterrorism.

At WSJ, "Overburdened French Dropped Surveillance of Brothers: Intelligence Services Had Brothers Under Watch After Yemen Trip But Lacked Resources to Continue":

The terror attacks in Paris that have killed 17 people in three days this week represent one of the worst fears—and failures—of counterterrorist officials: a successful plot coordinated by people who had once been under surveillance but who were later dropped as a top priority.

The U.S. provided France with intelligence showing that the gunmen in the Charlie Hebdo massacre received training in Yemen in 2011, prompting French authorities to begin monitoring the two brothers, according to U.S. officials.

But that surveillance of Said and Chérif Kouachi came to an end last spring, U.S. officials said, after several years of monitoring turned up nothing suspicious.

“These guys were laying low for an extended period of time so they could pull off something,” said a U.S. official.

The brothers fell through the surveillance net because of a lack of resources, current and former French officials said.

“We have to make choices,” said Christian Prouteau, the founder and former head of the GIGN, an elite counterterrorism force that reports to the French Defense Ministry. “It’s the people coming from Syria that worried us.”

France boasts vast intelligence-gathering operations, which excel at recruiting operatives across North Africa and the Middle East. The tentacles of French intelligence also reach deep into the impoverished suburbs of French cities home to Europe’s biggest Muslim population.

But for Yemen, France relies on partner spy agencies, particularly those of the U.S., Britain, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, to collect and pass on on-the-ground intelligence.

That’s what Washington did after the Kouachis went to the Arab country notorious as an al Qaeda safe haven and as the home of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the affiliate with the best track record at launching sophisticated and aggressive terror plots against Western targets.

American spies told the French that both brothers, 34-year-old Said and 32-year-old Chérif, had traveled to Yemen in 2011 to receive weapons training from AQAP.

French officials had already been aware of Chérif’s terror connections. He had served a terrorism sentence in France in 2008, and French law enforcement had suspected him in an additional terrorist-related incident in 2011 but never charged him. It is unclear whether Said had a profile with French law enforcement before traveling to Yemen.

When the two returned to France, U.S. and French officials said, French intelligence eventually ran out of resources to keep their eye on them.

By 2013, France was struggling to monitor a flood of citizens suspected of traveling—or planning to travel—to Syria and Iraq. That number has now surpassed 1,000, officials said.

Additionally, much of the French reconnaissance drone fleet was ordered to North Africa, where French troops are helping to fight Islamist insurgencies in Mali and other countries.

Meanwhile, the Kouachis had gone quiet, raising no red flags, these officials said.

“You can’t monitor everything with the same quality and that’s why we exchange information,” said a French official. The U.S., in turn, relies heavily on France for intelligence from Francophone countries in Africa, the official said.

Western intelligence officials said the sheer number of French nationals under surveillance for possible ties with terrorist groups is making it harder for officials to determine who poses an authentic threat.

“One of the big problems with counterterrorism policy is that the haystack is getting bigger and bigger, and we still need to find that one needle,” said Benoit Gomis, a terrorism analyst with the London-based think tank Chatham House who formerly worked at the French Defense Ministry.

Part of the lessons learned in the aftermath of the attack depends on the intelligence estimate of whether AQAP inspired or more directly controlled the Paris terror attacks.

On a recruitment level, the Kouachis’ relationship with AQAP promises to bring a resurgence of acclaim among Islamic extremists for al Qaeda, which many Western terrorism analysts said has been scrambling to restore its image as the pre-eminent global jihadist organization in the midst of competition with Islamic State.

The group’s affiliation with the attacks, however, is also likely to stoke fears among Western intelligence agencies about the possibility of sleeper cells in other countries.

Jeez, let's face it. France is freakin' overwhelmed by the massive influx and outflow of Muslim jihadists. Things won't be getting better any time soon. No surprise, but Jews will be hightailing it out of France faster than you can say Kristallnacht.

Still more.

#ParisAttacks: Saïd and Chérif Kouachi 'Networked' with Amedy Coulibaly in Jihadist Group from 19th Arrondissement

From Pamela Geller, at Atlas Shrugs, "Paris Jihad: Muslims in Hebdo Slaughter and Kosher Store Killings Met in Paris."

They were born in Paris. Spoke fluent French, their native language. Trained in Yemen. Followed and were inspired and financed by American imam Anwar Awlaki.

They would meet in Buttes-Chaumont Park (photo above). They named their Muslim military group after the park.

The global jihad — nationality, borders, geography, affluence, education, sock color are irrelevant. It’s one thing and one thing only. Islam...

Enemies right in the midst.

Keep reading.

Oh, and it remains to be seen if much will change in France. Don't hold your breath. Remember, the ruling Socialist Party is intent not to, ahem, "inflame" Islamic sensibilities. Here: "French President François Hollande Says #CharlieHebdo Attacks 'Have Nothing to Do With Muslim Religion...'"

How the PC Police Threaten Free Speech

From Nick Gillespie, at the Daily Beast.

#ParisAttacks: Unedited Video Shows French Police Storming Kosher Market, Killing Terrorist Amedy Coulibaly in Hail of Gunfire

Here's the report at London's Daily Mail, "Four kosher deli hostages were killed BEFORE French police went in - as dramatic new video shows the moment SWAT team gunned down terrorist in a storm of bullets as he made his suicidal charge.

Watch the unedited video of the siege at Live Leak, "UNCENSORED Paris Police raid against islamist terrorist at Porte de Vincennes."



PREVIOUSLY: "Deadly Raids End Terror Spree in #ParisAttacks."

Deadly Raids End Terror Spree in #ParisAttacks

Don't miss this phenomenal photo roundup at London's Daily Mail, "Carnage at Paris kosher grocery: Terrified hostages - including women and children - run for their lives as 'at least four' captives die in dramatic end to siege."

Actually, reports indicate that the four hostages were killed before the police stormed the market.

See the Wall Street Journal, "Police Kill Two Suspects in Magazine Massacre; Ally Shot Dead After Four Killed at Kosher Grocery":

PARIS—France’s capital was transformed into a war zone as a three-day manhunt for militants who attacked the magazine Charlie Hebdo ended Friday when security forces in simultaneous raids killed three men suspected in the slaying of 17 people, including four hostages at a kosher grocery.

The carnage played out in a multifront battle that frayed the nerves of a nation already on edge over the state of its security and social cohesion.

By the time the smoke cleared, police had killed Said Kouachi, 34 years old, and his brother Chérif Kouachi, 32—the two gunmen suspected of Wednesday’s attack on the French magazine. Authorities had cornered the French-born brothers at a printing facility near the capital’s main airport.

On the city’s eastern edge, meanwhile, police stormed a kosher grocery where an alleged confederate of the two brothers held several people hostage at gunpoint. The man, Amedy Coulibaly, 32 years old, was killed. Officials said they believed he killed four hostages before police raided the store.

On Thursday, Mr. Coulibaly allegedly shot and killed a female police officer in a southern suburb of Paris. Authorities continued searching Friday for a woman, Hayat Boumediene, in connection with the officer’s killing.

As the violence unfolded Friday, France saw three native sons, hailing from one of Europe’s largest Muslim populations, attacking their countrymen on behalf of terrorist groups a continent away.

Political fallout from the attacks risks deepening the alienation of France’s five million-strong Muslim minority—a social and economic rift that has long made the country a powder keg for unrest.

“France isn’t finished with the threats facing it,” President François Hollande said in an address to the nation. “Unity is our best weapon.”

While under siege Friday, the gunmen conducted phone interviews with French television. Chérif Kouachi said he had trained in Yemen and had received financing by an al Qaeda faction to launch attacks in France. Mr. Coulibaly allegedly told French TV he was acting on behalf of the terror group Islamic State.

The terror crisis began in the early hours of Wednesday morning as two men wearing balaclavas, military fatigues and carrying AK-47 rifles walked into the newsroom of Charlie Hebdo and opened fire. The barrage left 11 people dead, including the publisher and some of France’s most celebrated cartoonists.

Fleeing the scene, the brothers evaded several police cars and killed one officer at point-blank range. In an abandoned getaway car, the brothers left behind Molotov cocktails, a GoPro camera and an important piece of evidence—the national identity card of Said Kouachi.

That clue led investigators to Mr. Kouachi’s brother, Chérif, who had been convicted in 2008 for belonging to a terrorist group. Prosecutors said Chérif Kouachi had also traveled to Yemen in 2011.

The slaughter at Charlie Hebdo sparked anger around the world. The magazine had for years stirred outrage and death threats with its caricatures lampooning Islam, just one of its many targets of satire.

On Thursday, a policewoman directing traffic around a car accident in the southern Parisian suburb of Montrouge was shot and killed. Police homed in on Mr. Coulibaly after recovering a balaclava that contained his DNA.

Mr. Coulibaly later claimed responsibility for the killing, saying he had “synchronized” the move with the Kouachi brothers.

Keep reading.

Lt. Col. Ralph Peters: Exterminate the Terrorists and 'Leave Behind Smoking Ruins and Crying Widows...' (VIDEO)

Too bad Colonel Peters isn't seeking the 2016 GOP nomination!

God I love this guy. Watch:

ABC's Terry Moran: The French People, Friends Around the World, 'Will Take Stock of What It Means to Deal, Right Now, with This Infection, This Virus of Radical Jihadist Terror...' (VIDEO)

Well, good thing he didn't say the French, and friends around the world, "will take stock of what it means to deal with this domestic overseas contingency workplace violence situation."

From today's Good Morning America's broadcast, "Paris Terror Attack: 4 Hostages Killed Before Police Staged Final Assault." (Hat Tip: Memeorandum.)

Obama Should Have Called Paris Market Attack What It Is: Anti-Semitism

Yeah, Obama "should have" done a lot more today. See earlier, "President Obama's 'Hilarious' Comments on #CharlieHebdo at Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville, Tennessee — UPDATE: Video Added."

And now here comes Jonathan Tobin, at Commentary:

This week’s bloody events in France have shocked the civilized world. But shock and sadness are not a sufficient response from those entrusted with the responsibility to defend us against Islamist terrorism. That’s why President Obama’s initial statement in response to today’s news was so disappointing. The conspicuous absence of any acknowledgement of the motive of the terrorists or their targets made his remarks empty platitudes rather than a meaningful call for solidarity against a common enemy. The continued refusal of the president to identify Islamist ideology as the foe is undermining efforts to combat this dangerous virus. But the fact that he also failed to label the attack at the Parisian kosher market where four hostages were slaughtered was a case of anti-Semitism sent exactly the wrong signal to a world that is looking to the U.S. for leadership in this struggle and getting precious little of it from this president...

Well, yeah.

January 20, 2017, can't get here fast enough.

RTWT.

Hayat Boumeddiene: From Bikini Babe to France's Most Wanted Woman

At London's Daily Mail, "From bikini babe to burka-clad jihadi fighter with a crossbow: 'Wife' of Kosher supermarket killer becomes France's most wanted woman after going on the run."

And at the Other McCain, "TERROR IN FRANCE: POLICE KILL MUSLIM FANATICS IN STANDOFFS; UPDATE: HUNT FOR FEMALE TERRORIST BOUMEDDIENE."

French President François Hollande Says #CharlieHebdo Attacks 'Have Nothing to Do With Muslim Religion...'

Well, I guess this is ironic, considering how I was just praising the French counterterrorism operations, but the French president is the elected (and temporary) leader of the nation. Members of the the GIGN (National Gendarmerie Intervention Group) are career professionals carrying out policies and procedures that are often decades in the making.

Hollande has been criticized as "weak and indecisive" vis-à-vis homegrown jihad, and boy, it shows. Via CNN:

“Those who committed these acts have nothing to do with the Muslim religion,” Pres. Hollande says of #ParisAttacks. http://t.co/7Bxdhozq4H
— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) January 9, 2015

'Rocket 88'

According to Wikipedia, "'Rocket 88' was credited to Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, who were actually Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm."

And why am I blogging about "Rocket 88," you might ask? Well, I was over at Legal Insurrection and I was listening to William's "Video of the Day," Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Proud Mary."

Interestingly, I was just thinking about the song the other morning while listening to the radio. John Fogerty is both lead singer and lead guitarist on "Proud Mary." While skimming around on Wikipedia, I saw the discussion of Ike and Tina Turner's cover, which then reminded me of the movie "What's Love Got to Do with It." Thinking about that reminded me of how much I loved "Rocket 88" from the film, and so I googled that, heh.

In any case, here you go. The song's generally considered the very "first rock-and-roll record":

President Obama's 'Hilarious' Comments on #CharlieHebdo at Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville, Tennessee — UPDATE: Video Added

You know, there are times when leadership requires that we not make light of grave circumstances. President Obama was horribly disrespectful of those killed in France in his remarks today from Knoxville. He joked about college, had the audience all laughing hardy har har. And as soon as his comments were completed --- not even 5 seconds after he'd finished speaking on France --- he broke into another round of jokes.

Sometimes, in some moments, the circumstances call for solemnity. Today is one of those times.

Here's the president's statement delivered today from Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville, via the Guardian UK:

Obama: "I want to take a moment out from my comedy routine up here to say something about the terrorism in France (hardy har har, lol!)."
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) January 9, 2015

“The United States stands with France,” President Barack Obama has said in a speech from Tennessee, cautioning “the French government needs to stay vigilant” as it confronts new threats.

“Events have been fast moving, I just spoke to my counterterrorism advisor, we have been in close touch with the French government. … Since the moment that this tragedy began we directed all of our enforcement and counterterrorism to providing whatever our ally needs.

“We’re hopeful that the immediate threat is now resolved [but] the French government needs to stay vigilant, the situation is fluid.”

Obama then made a broader remarks about what the attacks mean for the France and US going forward:

“France is our oldest ally. I want people of France to know that the United States stands with you today, stands with you tomorrow. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families who have been directly impacted. We grieve with you. We fight alongside you to uphold our values, the values that we share – universal values that bind us together as friends and as allies.

“In the streets of Paris, the world has seen once again what terrorists stand for. The have nothing to offer but hatred and suffering. We stand for freedom and hope and the dignity of all human beings. That is what the city of Paris represents to the world and that spirit will endure forever, long after the scourge of terrorism is banished from this world.”

UPDATE: Obama speaks after the Bidens, at about 18 minutes, and then tries out a few jokes before attempting, but failing, to be serious about the terrorist attacks in France.

Media Cowards and the Cartoon Jihad

Once again, from the incomparable Michelle Malkin:

I have never laughed so bitterly as I did while reading Thursday’s lead editorial by the great pretender-defenders of free speech at the New York Times.

Paying obligatory lip service to the 10 cartoonists and staffers of the Paris satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo who were slaughtered for offending Islam, the Times intoned: “It is absurd to suggest that the way to avoid terrorist attacks is to let the terrorists dictate standards in a democracy.”

My GPS tracker of journalistic hypocrisy immediately identified the Times editorial board’s high-altitude location—ensconced atop their own Mt. Everest of absurdity and self-unawareness.

The Fishwrap of Record priggishly refuses to print any of the Islam-provoking art that cost the brave French journalists their lives. In case you forgot (as its own editorialists have), the Times cowered in 2005-2006 when the Mohammed Cartoons conflagration first ignited. And the publication is capitulating again.

Behold this groveling bow to terrorists dictating democracy’s standards:

“Under Times standards,” a newspaper spokesman said in a statement to iMediaEthics.com this week, “we do not normally publish images or other material deliberately intended to offend religious sensibilities. After careful consideration, Times editors decided that describing the cartoons in question would give readers sufficient information to understand today’s story.”

So says the paper that blithely published a Catholic-bashing photo of the Virgin Mary covered in elephant dung and defended the taxpayer-funded “Piss Christ” exhibit thusly: “A museum is obliged to challenge the public as well as to placate it, or else the museum becomes a chamber of attractive ghosts, an institution completely disconnected from art in our time.”

While they feign free-speech fortitude, what Times editorialists really don’t want to see is their heads completely disconnected from their necks. Neither do editors at the Boston Globe, ABC News, NBC News, MSNBC, and CNBC, who won’t publish any possibly, remotely upsetting images of Mohammed, either.

But these quivering double-talkers aren’t even the most laughable of Cartoon Jihad cowards.

The Associated Press wins the pusillanimity prize after invoking the sensitivity card to explain why it refrained from publishing “deliberately provocative” Mo toons—even though the media conglomerate had been selling deliberately provocative “Piss Christ” photos on its website. After the Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney pointed out the double standards, AP tried to cover its tracks by yanking the pic.

More absurdity? The New York Daily News pixelated a Mo toon carried by Charlie Hebdo as if it were pornography. CNN did the same in 2006, when it explained it was censoring the offending images “in respect for Islam” and “because the network believes its role is to cover the events surrounding the publication of the cartoons while not unnecessarily adding fuel to the controversy itself.”
And therein lies the cartoon capitulationists’ grand self-delusion. This isn’t about cartoons.

Reminder: The First Mo Toons Wars were instigated in 2005 by demagogue imams who toured Egypt stoking hysteria with faked anti-Islam comic strips attributed to the Danish Jylland-Postens newspaper (whose actual cartoons criticizing Islam were far more innocuous). The real agenda: Islamist thugs were attempting to pressure Denmark over the International Atomic Energy Agency’s decision to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council for continuing with its nuclear research program. From Afghanistan to Egypt to Lebanon to Libya, Pakistan, Turkey and in between, hundreds died in insane riots under the pretext of protecting Mohammed from Western slight. Courageous journalists who stood up to the madness were silenced, jailed, and threatened with beheading.

Cartoons did not start militant Islam’s fire. Neither did the Bushes, Israel, the Satanic Verses, the Pope, beauty pageants, KFC restaurants in the Middle East, Mohammed teddy bears, or a YouTube video.

The Religion of Perpetual Outrage hates all infidels for all reasons for all time. The targeting of Mohammed cartoonists is a convenient excuse to feed the eternal flame of Islamists’ hatred of the West. If it isn’t cartoons, it’s always something else. The grudge is everlasting...

Still more.

France's Impressive Counterterrorist Operation

Well, the operation looked pretty impressive when I first saw the breaking news this morning at 1:00am.

And it appears more impressive still in the light of morning, with the terrorists killed and most of the hostages released unharmed. (There're reports that some hostages were killed; more on that in later updates.)

So obviously I'm on the same page as Max Boot, at Commentary:

If early reports are accurate, the GIGN (National Gendarmerie Intervention Group) pulled off a an impressive counterterrorist success in Paris today, even if it wasn’t as impressive as initially reported. Its commandos raided simultaneously two locations where a total of four jihadists–two of them the perpetrators of the horrific Charlie Hebdo massacre–were holed up with hostages. Apparently they killed three terrorists, while one female accomplice escaped. Sadly, early reports that all of the hostages were freed turned out to be premature; news soon arrived that a number of those held a kosher supermarket had been killed.

Sadly it is much harder to free hostages safely in real life than it is in the “reel life” of the movies and TV–especially when the hostage takers are fanatics seeking martyrdom. Under such circumstances the French forces did the best they could. It’s doubtful that any of the world’s other premier counterterrorist forces–notably SEAL Team Six, Delta Force, the British SAS, the German GSG-9, and the Israeli Sayeret Matkal–could have done any better. And others, notably the Russians, probably would have done much worse–their disregard for human life has become notorious.

The French certainly showed no lack of elan or aggressiveness. The French operators not only killed three terrorists but also the myth of France as a land of “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”–a cruel and crude stereotype born in 1940 when Hitler’s panzers overran the entire country in a few weeks and confirmed, in the minds of some Americans, when France refused to join the Iraq invasion in 2003. This rather ignores some salient facts, including the fact that France showed no surrender while fighting in Indochina and Algeria in the 1940s-’50s. Although France lost those wars, its warriors fought with as much heroism as any army in the world. Indeed, it is worth recalling that prior to 1940, France was a byword for military glory stretching all the way back to the days of Louis XIV and Napoleon.

More to the point, and more recently, France has emerged as a stalwart in the war on terror...

Still more at the link.

Definitely impressive, although I'm not quite as forgiving of France's collapse in 1940 (the French general staff literally just gave up after the Wehrmacht broke through the Ardennes.)

Two Staffers at Hardin County News-Enterprise Thought It'd Be 'Funny' to Write That Cops 'Have a Desire to Shoot Minorities...'

Okay, breaking away from jihad blogging, here's a brief excursion into the state of American journalism.

This really happened, via Jim Romanesko:

Two copy desk staffers [at the Hardin County News-Enterprise in Kentucky] – 23 and 32 years old – have been fired, I’m told. One wrote the “shoot minorities” line on the page proof as a joke and the second – in charge of the front page – put it in the story. One worked at the paper for about six years, the other less than a year.

Here's the newspaper's apology, from editor Ben Sheroan, "Apology: Error should not have happened" (via Memeorandum).

More proof that ideological leftists both populate America's newsrooms while simultaneously destroying the institution of journalism.

As Trauma Grips France, Government Faces Questions Over Intelligence Lapses

At the New York Times (FWIW), "As Trauma Grips France, Government Faces Questions Over Intelligence Lapses":

PARIS — With twin hostage dramas at different ends of Paris by armed jihadists who have killed at least 13 people and traumatized France, the government faced gaping questions on Friday over the failure to thwart such brazen attacks, especially on a well-known target like the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

The French intelligence services knew that striking the newspaper and its editor, for their vulgar treatment of the Prophet Muhammad, had been a stated goal of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, through its propaganda journal, Inspire. And they had the Kouachi brothers, Saïd, 34, and Chérif, 32, on their radar as previously involved in jihad-related activities, for which Chérif went to jail in 2008.

The French apparently also knew, or presumably should have known, either on their own or through close intelligence cooperation with the United States, that Saïd had traveled in 2011 to Yemen, where news reports on Friday said he had met with the American-born Anwar al-Awlaki, a member and propagandist for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, who was later killed by an American drone strike.

But Yemen has been an American, not a French priority, intelligence analysts said on Friday. And with French security concentrating on the 1,000 to 2,000 French citizens who have traveled to fight in Iraq and Syria against the Syrian regime or with the Islamic State, it was likely that the Kouachi brothers and their friends — including Amedy Coulibaly, the man said to be involved in the second hostage taking — were put lower on the priority list, the analysts said.

But such reasoning did not answer the basic questions about why the French had not monitored the Kouachi brothers more aggressively, what the brothers were doing between 2011 and now, and why Charlie Hebdo was not better protected. And it raised the question of whether there had been a spectacular failure in American-French intelligence cooperation.

“The problem we face is that even though there are not that many radicalized Muslims in France, there are enough of them to make it difficult to physically follow everyone with a suspicious background,” said Camille Grand, a former French official and director of the Foundation for Strategic Research, a Paris-based group. “It’s one thing to listen to the phone calls or watch their travel, but it’s another to put someone under permanent physical surveillance, or even follow all their phone conversations full time for so many people.”

There simply are not enough police and security officials to keep full monitoring on everyone who goes through prison, said Jean-Charles Brisard from the French Center for Analysis of Terrorism, who had spoken to French security officials. The authorities had Chérif Kouachi under surveillance “for a period of time, but then they judged that there was no threat, or the threat was lower, and they had other priorities,” he said...

Pathetic New York Times Handwringing Over 'Dangerous Moment' for Europe

So precious is the multicultural ideal that big journalistic institutions like the New York Times spew the "dangerous moment" propaganda as if it were Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

Let's get real: The danger facing Europe today is more and larger jihadist attacks like the massacre at Charlie Hedbo. The right wing parties likely to benefit politically are not "extreme." They're populist and they're anti-immigrant, for good reason. France has 751 "no-go" areas, which are radical Islamic enclaves in which sharia law has been imposed and French law completely abandoned. There is no assimilation. That's what's dangerous. The Times is pushing a paradigm of "sensitivity" and "inclusion" that reflects the politics of the second half of the 20th century. We're no longer in that time. Europe is at a crisis stage precisely because it hasn't managed the deterioration of its minorities policies. The socialist parties will kowtow to political correctness, and the result will be more bloodshed on a massive scale. Meanwhile, right wing populists will be the only force willing to stem the tide and preserve whatever is left of decent, determined Western culture on the continent.

It's a sad state of affairs.

At the Old Gray Lady, "‘Dangerous Moment’ for Europe, as Fear and Resentment Grow":

LONDON — The sophisticated, military-style strike Wednesday on a French newspaper known for satirizing Islam staggered a continent already seething with anti-immigrant sentiments in some quarters, feeding far-right nationalist parties like France’s National Front.

“This is a dangerous moment for European societies,” said Peter Neumann, director of the International Center for the Study of Radicalization at King’s College London. “With increasing radicalization among supporters of jihadist organizations and the white working class increasingly feeling disenfranchised and uncoupled from elites, things are coming to a head.”

Olivier Roy, a French scholar of Islam and radicalism, called the Paris assault — the most deadly terrorist attack on French soil since the Algerian war ended in the early 1960s — “a quantitative and therefore qualitative turning point,” noting the target and the number of victims. “This was a maximum-impact attack,” he said. “They did this to shock the public, and in that sense they succeeded.”

Anti-immigrant attitudes have been on the rise in recent years in Europe, propelled in part by a moribund economy and high unemployment, as well as increasing immigration and more porous borders. The growing resentments have lifted the fortunes of established parties like the U.K. Independence Party in Britain and the National Front, as well as lesser-known groups like Patriotic Europeans Against Islamization of the West, which assembled 18,000 marchers in Dresden, Germany, on Monday.

In Sweden, where there have been three recent attacks on mosques, the anti-immigrant, anti-Islamist Sweden Democrats Party has been getting about 15 percent support in recent public opinion polls.

Paris was traumatized by the attack, with widespread fears of another. “We feel less and less safe,” said Didier Cantat, 34, standing outside the police barriers at the scene. “If it happened today, it will happen again, maybe even worse.”

Mr. Cantat spoke for many when he said the attacks could fuel greater anti-immigrant sentiment. “We are told Islam is for God, for peace,” he said. “But when you see this other Islam, with the jihadists, I don’t see peace, I see hatred. So people can’t tell which is the real Islam.”

Keep reading.

Western Complacency and Denial to Remain Unscathed After #CharlieHebdo Attacks

From Melanie Phillips, at the Jerusalem Post, "As I See It: The Paris massacre and Western funk":

Is this a tipping point? Has the West finally been shaken out of its complacency? The horrific massacre in Paris, in which al-Qaida terrorists systematically targeted and gunned down journalists, cartoonists, and policemen at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in revenge for its mockery of Islam, has shocked Europe by its barbarism and its symbolism.

A core western value, freedom of expression, was snuffed out with contemptuous ease along with 12 innocent lives, among them some of France’s most iconic and beloved cartoonists.

The emotion behind the “Je Suis Charlie” demonstrations, as an expression of solidarity with the murdered Charlie Hebdo staff, was very understandable. But did anyone actually mean it? For what Charlie Hebdo did was what very few people have ever done. In continuing to publish its scurrilous images of Islam and Islamists, Charlie Hebdo had refused to be cowed by Islamist terrorism.

Plainly, therefore, very few people indeed mean “Je Suis Charlie,” since the media response to the massacre has been carefully to obliterate the images Charlie Hebdo published that so offended al-Qaida.

The French have also been declaring defiantly that free speech will never be surrendered. But there has been no free media expression about Islam ever since the 1989 Iranian fatwa calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie over his book, The Satanic Verses.

That was when the West sold the pass. In Britain, people supporting Rushdie’s murder were never prosecuted.

As his book was burned on British streets, establishment figures turned on the author for having offended Islam.

In 2006, riots following the publication of the Prophet Muhammad cartoons left scores dead around the world. But virtually every media outlet – except for Charlie Hebdo – refused to republish them.

In 2004, the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered on a Netherlands street for making a film criticizing Islam. In 2012, Lars Hedegaard, who founded the Danish Free Press Society after the Muhammad cartoons affair,was shot point blank on his doorstep, although he miraculously survived.

To all these outrages, the West responded by blaming the victims for provoking their attackers. After this week’s Paris massacre, commentators on CNN observed that Charlie Hebdo had been “provoking Muslims” for some time. On The Financial Times website, Tony Barber wrote that “some common sense would be useful at publications such as Charlie Hebdo... which purport to strike a blow for freedom when they provoke Muslims, but are actually just being stupid.”

(That last clause was subsequently removed).

The fact is that Islamic terrorism and intimidation against the West have been going on for decades, matched by displays of Western weakness which merely encourage an enemy it refuses properly to identify.

Over and over again, the West denies that these attacks have anything to do with Islam. First it blamed poverty and exclusion among Muslims. Then it blamed grievances around the world – Bosnia, Chechnya, Kashmir, Palestine.

Then it blamed isolated madmen whose Muslim identity was irrelevant.

In France before Christmas, attacks in which cars were used as battering rams against crowds amid shouts of “Allahu akbar” were said by French authorities to be unconnected with each other.

Yet Muslim violence in France has clearly been out of control for years. Just look at the repeated Islamic pogroms against French Jews, which have driven thousands of them to emigrate. Yet none of those attacks provoked the kind of outrage that followed this week’s atrocity. Is free speech more important than the lives of French Jews? But the West refuses to join up the dots. The Charlie Hebdo attackers shouted “Allahu akbar” and “We are avenging the Prophet Muhammad.”

Yet Obama, Cameron, and Hollande condemned the attack as merely “terrorism,” carefully omitting to say what kind of terrorism this was.

This follows their absurd statements that the Islamic State terrorist group has “nothing to do with Islam” and that “no religion” condones that kind of barbarism.

Really? What links Islamic State, al-Qaida, Hamas, and Boko Haram? It’s a religion beginning with the letter I and ending with M.

A very senior British civil servant once told me that Islamist terrorism couldn’t be about Islam, because that would “demonize” all Muslims. This absurd non-sequitur was like saying the Inquisition had nothing to do with Catholicism, in order not to demonize Catholics.

For sure, many Muslims are not only opposed to Islamist terrorism but are its principal victims. But to pretend that it is not rooted in a legitimate interpretation of the religion, backed up by the historical evidence of centuries of aggressive and violent Islamic conquest, is ridiculous.

If the West cannot even bring itself to acknowledge what it is up against, then it will surely be defeated by it...

Still more.

Playboy Plus: Mash-Up Monday — Most Liked of 2014

Video, "As we welcome the New Year, let's take a look back at the most liked models of Playboy Plus in 2014."