What the Paris No-Show Says About the Obama Administration — #CharlieHebdo

At the Wall Street Journal:

The failure of the U.S. government to send a high-level representative to the historic Paris march against Islamist terror on Sunday is being roundly criticized, even by anchors at CNN. We share the sentiment, but this is no mere diplomatic snafu.

Press secretary Josh Earnest said Monday that President Obama regretted not joining more than 40 world leaders at the rally in defiance of the Charlie Hebdo killers and their al Qaeda sponsors. “I guess what I’m saying is that we agree that we should have sent someone with a higher profile,” Mr. Earnest added, which we guess passes for contrition.

Yet as recently as Sunday night officials dismissed criticism by noting the presence of Jane Hartley, the U.S. Ambassador to France nominated in June and an Obama campaign bundler. On Monday Mr. Earnest gestured at “security challenges.” Presumably the same risks attended the German Chancellor, the British and Israeli Prime Ministers, the Middle Eastern royals and African presidents.

If Mr. Obama was too much of a distraction, then surely someone else of cabinet rank was available. Secretary of State John Kerry claimed a previous commitment in India, but then why not Vice President Joe Biden or Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ? None would have to fly commercial. Attorney General Eric Holder was in Paris but still chose not to go.

A fair conclusion is that the White House didn’t think it mattered. This fits Mr. Obama’s generally dismissive attitude toward Europe. He was happy to use the symbolism of a speech before tens of thousands of adoring Berliners in 2008 to burnish his theme of restoring America’s image in the world. But as President he has treated foreign policy like a distraction from his work of, well, going to Tennessee to pitch “free” college. America’s image has worsened.

The other signal sent by his French omission is this Administration’s continuing failure to appreciate the nature and scope of the Islamist threat. The murders at Charlie Hebdo and the kosher deli were attacks on innocents and our ally France. But they also represent a political ideology that threatens Western freedom and civilization. The ostensible leader of the free world should want to show solidarity against such a profound menace that will require Western unity to defeat...

Reprehensible.

I'd thought by now my disgust with this administration had bottomed out. But no. Obama's shamelessness is a bottomless pit.

#ParisAttacks: The Search for Hayat Boumedienne

Holly Williams reports, for CBS Evening News.

Hamas-Linked CAIR Demands Fox News Drop 'Islamophobes' Who Speak Truth About Islam

From Robert Spencer, "Hamas-linked terror org CAIR demands that Fox drop those who speak the truth about the jihad threat."

Read it at the link --- and remember, it's a war of ideas in the information battlespace. Truth is the ultimate weapon. Muslims and their leftist terror-enablers cannot stand the light of decency and truth shone upon them.

'Hello, everybody! There is no global warming!'

I love this!

At Breitbart, "WEATHER CHANNEL FOUNDER: 'HELLO, EVERYBODY THERE'S NO GLOBAL WARMING!'"

Here's Who Is and Isn't Publishing the New Charlie Hebdo Cover Image

At BuzzFeed. Click through for the list.

I noted earlier that the Wall Street Journal published Charlie Hebdo images in their first editorial on the attacks. The New York Times? Not so much.



And from Glenn Reynolds, "WELL, THAT’S NOT HOW WE ROLL HERE AT INSTAPUNDIT..."

The cover reads "All is forgiven." See Twitchy, "‘Le brass balls, y’all': Charlie Hebdo not backing down with new cover art [photo]."

The Scandal of Free Speech

From Bret Stephens, at WSJ, "A year from now none but the unfeint of heart will still be with Charlie":

Last May, sex-advice columnist Dan Savage gave a talk at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics in which he used a term so infamous that it caused members of the audience to walk out “in a state of distress.” Later, a petition was put forward to demand that the institute apologize “for failing to stop” Mr. Savage from using the term, and to “assert a commitment to preventing the use of slurs and hate speech in the future.”

The word in question? To adapt the old joke: I could tell you but they’re going to kill me.

Well, OK, here goes. The word is “tranny,” meaning a transgender, or transsexual, or transvestite person. So hideously offensive is this word nowadays that, when I arrived at an Institute of Politics event a few weeks later, a group called Queers United in Power—or QUIP, minus the humor—held a protest outside and handed out fliers denouncing (without spelling out) the use of the “T word.” I had to ask around to find out just what the word was; I got the answer in a whisper.

Attention all of you logicians of Hyde Park: If words are to be forbidden, must they not first be known?

I was reminded of this small episode following last week’s massacre of journalists in France, after which it has become fashionable to “be” Charlie Hebdo. Sorry, but QUIP is not Charlie Hebdo: QUIP is al Qaeda with a different list of moral objections and a milder set of criminal penalties. Otherwise, like al Qaeda, it’s the same unattractive mix of quavering personal sensitivity and totalitarian demands for ideological conformity.

To which one can only reply: tranny-tranny-tranny; Muhammad-Muhammad-Muhammad; de-da-da-da. Free speech—at least speech that is truly free—is always a scandal to someone or other. Chill out and deal with it.

But deal with it we won’t. People forget just how radical is the idea of free speech. For more that 2,000 years—between, say, the executions of Socrates and Giordano Bruno —the story of the West was the story of killing blasphemers. Enlightenment began when we started to repent the practice; modernity survives under the shield of the First Amendment and equivalent laws in the free world. But the arrows always keep coming.

I doubt the Charlie Hebdo murders will do much to shake loose the array of campus speech codes or change the incentive structures for their enforcers in sundry administrative offices and multicultural-affairs departments...

No surprise, of course, that the radical left is Islam's partner in tyranny, terror, and oppression.

But continue reading.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Get the Hell Out of France

From Paula Stern, at A Soldier's Mother:

We went into Shabbat praying for the hostages and their families in Paris. We knew very few of the details - two killed, though this was denied by the French. At least 6 held hostage.

My youngest is about to turn 15, she has several friends whose parents came from France. The cousin of one was in the store just minutes before the attack; another wasn't able to find a cousin and was afraid she might be inside. This is how we began the Sabbath. "They won't leave," my youngest said to me in sadness. "They won't leave."

As soon as the Sabbath ended, I heard the devastating news that four innocent Jews had been killed and another 15 had been rescued in the hostage situation. Among the dead, was the son of the chief Rabbi of Tunis. They were part of a killing spree that cost France a total of 17 lives during the past week. At least five of those were Jews; the policeman gunned down in cold blood was a Muslim.

I am filled with pain and anger. Some for the Jews themselves. I do not believe in blaming the victim. That is something almost instinctive when you have low opinions of the killers, you naturally think that perhaps there is something the victim could have done - it's wrong.

And yet...I want to shout at the Jewish community in France. Enough already. Get the hell out of France now. I don't care how hard it is - the reality of what France is becoming is harder.

I don't care what it costs - would you place your money above the lives of your children? You have just paid the highest price. God Almighty, what more do you need?

Pack your stinking bags, please please please. The pain tears at our hearts - that is what it is to be a Jew. To feel, to the core of your being, the agony of a Jew, no matter where. All Shabbat, we held you in our prayers, in our hearts, desperate to hear of a miracle; deeply saddened that two had been murdered; terrified that even as we were praying more would have died.

There are a thousand reasons why moving to Israel is hard - the economy, leaving behind roots that have grown over centuries, the comfort of speaking the language of your birth, even if it isn't really the language of your fathers. Grandparents, elderly parents, relatives that can't come now and may never leave. Jobs, homes, stores...a thousand reasons to stay and but one major one to leave - the time has come...

Keep reading.

It's an interesting question. Remember, Claire Berlinski would rather fight the Islamists than have have the Jews flee France for a second time.

The Death-Cult Ideology That France Prefers Not to Name

An essay from Israel's David Horovitz, via Blazing Cat Fur:

France rallied on Sunday like its life depended on it. Three and a half million people took to the streets in an unprecedented show of solidarity with the 17 victims murdered by three Islamist gunmen last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. “I am Charlie,” “I am a police officer,” “I am a Jew,” their placards asserted, identifying in turn with each category of victim — the journalists, the cops, the Jews. “We will not be divided,” “We will not be terrorized,” “We will not give up our freedom,” they declared.

We will fight Islamist terrorism with every sinew of our being, in order to ensure the protection of the freedoms that we cherish and that it seeks to destroy? That, they didn’t say...

Naturally.

Click through to RTWT, at Blazing Cat Fur.

ISIS Hacks Pentagon Social Media

They're killing us here.

At the Washington Post, "U.S. military social media accounts apparently hacked by Islamic State sympathizers."

CNN's Brianna Keiler: Terrorism Isn't Obama's 'Issue'; He's Not 'Comfortable' Standing Against Terrorism with Other World Leaders (VIDEO)

From Noah Rothman, at Hot Air, "CNN: Terrorism really isn’t Obama’s ‘issue’":

On Monday, White House Press Sec. Josh Earnest conceded that Barack Obama’s White House should have sent a figure of more stature to attend the historic march in protest of the attacks on Charlie Hebdo than America’s ambassador to France. After much prodding from the press corps, Earnest conceded that the president was at home in the White House on Sunday.

The political press has been finding it difficult to make excuses for the president’s absence from this event. Many members of the media have, in fact, confessed that they are uncomfortable with the president’s decision to largely ignore the historic march.

One intrepid CNN reporter offered her theory for why Obama declined to attend the rally in Paris when so many of heads of state around the globe did: Politics.

Brianna Keiler's a good lady. Watch:

Geert Wilders: Charlie Hebdo Attack 'An Act of War'

At Britain's Channel 4 News:



I saw Wilders speak in New York, on September 11, 2010.

New York Magazine Surveys 53 Leftist 'Historians' on Barack Obama's Legacy

The first thing to note about this totally unscientific "survey," conducted by Thomas Meaney of the Columbia University History Department, is that it employs no systematic methodology to generate even the semblance of an unbiased "sample."

Indeed, looking over the report, I see no statement or disclaimer on the methodology. Shoot, these aren't even "historians" at all. It's a hodgepodge of non-fiction writers, historians, journalists, and political scientists. Included is the notorious anti-Semitic Stephen Walt, of Harvard's JFK School of Government, and author of "The Israel Lobby" infamy.

All efforts to rank presidents using "experts" will be horribly prone to bias, but New York Magazine's attempt is even more silly than usual.

In any case, here's the write-up at Newsmax, "Historians on Obama Legacy: 'Polarizing,' Not 'Transformative'."

Then, at New York Magazine, "53 Historians Weigh In on Barack Obama’s Legacy." (At Memeorandum.)

And also the partisan reactions, from Jonathan Chait, "History Will Be Very Kind," and Christopher Caldwell, "History Will Eviscerate Him."

Obama may not be history's worst president. It's too soon to tell, in any case. Perhaps he hasn't hit bottom yet. But it's highly doubtful he'll manage ultimately to escape the ignominy of "average" to "below average" categories. If Obama somehow manages to get credit for putting a floor in the collapsing economy in 2008, despite six years of less-than-middling economic growth, then it's likely he'll be saved from the final indignity of the "failed" category. But we'll see. We'll see.

Here's the "sample" of "historians," FWIW:

Jeffrey Alexander, Yale University, co-author of Obama Power (2014)

Joyce Appleby, UCLA, author of The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism (2011)

Andrew Bacevich, Boston University, author of The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War (2005)

Edward Baptist, Cornell University, author of The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (2014)

Kai Bird, author of The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames (2014)

Robin Blackburn, author of The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation, and Human Rights (2011)

Gordon Chang, Stanford University, author of Chinese American Voices (2006)

Jonathan Darman, author of Landslide: LBJ and Reagan at the Dawn of a New America (2014)

Mike Davis, UC Riverside, author of City of Quartz (1990) and Planet of Slums (2006)

Mary Dudziak, Emory University School of Law, author of Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (2011)

Joseph Ellis, author of Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence (2013)

Crystal Feimster, Yale University, author of Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Southern Rape and Lynching (2009)

Beverly Gage, Yale University, author of The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in Its First Age of Terror (2009)

Samuel Goldman, the George Washington University, writer for The American Conservative
Annette Gordon-Reed, Harvard Law School, author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (2008)

Aram Goudsouzian, University of Memphis, author of Down to the Crossroads: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Meredith March Against Fear (2014)

Alexander Gourevitch, Brown University, author of From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth (2014)

David Greenberg, Rutgers University, author of NixonÕs Shadow: The History of an Image (2003)

David Hollinger, UC Berkeley, author of After Cloven Tongues of Fire: Protestant Liberalism in Modern American History (2013)

Thomas Holt, University of Chicago, author of Children of Fire: A History of African Americans (2010)

Paul Kahn, Yale Law School, author of Putting Liberalism in Its Place (2004)

David Kennedy, Stanford University, author of Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (1999)

Charles Kesler, Claremont McKenna College, editor of the Claremont Review of Books, author of I Am the Change: Barack Obama and the Future of Liberalism (2012)

Stephen Kinzer, author of The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War (2013)

James Kloppenberg, Harvard University, author of Reading Obama: Dreams, Hope, and the American Political Tradition (2011)

Kevin Kruse, Princeton University, author of White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (2005)

Matthew Lassiter, University of Michigan, author of The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (2006)

Jackson Lears, Rutgers University, editor of Raritan, author of Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America 1877-1920 (2009)
Jill Lepore, Harvard University, author of The Story of America: Essays on Origins (2012)

Mark Lilla, Columbia University, author of The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West (2007)

James Livingston, Rutgers University, author of Against Thrift: Why Consumer Culture Is Good for the Economy, the Environment, and Your Soul (2011)

James Mann, author of The Obamians: The Struggle Inside the White House to Redefine American Power (2012)

Alfred McCoy, University of Wisconsin-Madison, author of Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation (2012)

Lisa McGirr, Harvard University, author of Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (2002)

John McWhorter, Columbia University, author of Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America (2000)

Samuel Moyn, Harvard Law School, author of The Lost Utopia: Human Rights in History (2010)

Khalil Gilbran Muhummad, director of the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture, author of The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern America (2011)

Nell Painter, Princeton University, author of The History of White People (2010)

Miriam Pawel, author of The Crusades of Cesar Chavez: A Biography (2014)

Kimberly Phillips-Fein, NYU, author of Invisible Hands: The BusinessmenÕs Crusade Against the New Deal (2009)

Thomas Powers, author of The Killing of Crazy Horse (2011)

Daniel Rodgers, Princeton University, author of The Age of Fracture (2011)

Jeffrey Rosen, The George Washington University Law School, author of The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America (2000)

Stephen Sestanovich, Council on Foreign Relations, author of Maximalist: America in the World From Truman to Obama (2014)

Theda Skocpol, Harvard University, co-author of The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism (2012)

Nikhil Singh, NYU, author of Black Is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy (2005)

Harry Stout, Yale University, author of Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War (2007)

Thomas Sugrue, University of Pennsylvania, author of The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (reissued 2014)

Jeffrey Tulis, University of Texas, author of The Rhetorical Presidency (1987)

Stephen Walt, Harvard University, co-author of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (2007)

Mason Williams, Williams College, author of City of Ambition: FDR, La Guardia, and the Making of Modern New York (2013)

Robert Williams, University of Arizona College of Law, author of The American Indian in Western Legal Thought (1990)

Gavin Wright, Stanford University, author of Sharing the Prize: The Economics of the Civil Rights Revolution in the American South (2013)

Queen of Hollywood: Kate Hudson Rocks a Plunging White Gown at the Weinstein and Netflix Golden Globes After-Party

She's so lovely.

At London's Daily Mail, "Kate Hudson rocks a plunging white gown as she enjoys a girls' night out with Hollywood's finest at Golden Globes afterparty."

BONUS: At Egotastic!, "Heidi Klum, Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Chastain And Other Hotties at the 2015 Golden Globe Awards Red Carpet."

So, No Air Conditioning at the Golden Globes?

A Beverly Hilton spokesperson denies it, but celebrities were dripping with sweat, with some stars even stripping off their clothing to beat the heat.

At Vanity Fair, "Why Everyone at the Golden Globes Looks So Uncomfortably Sweaty."

ADDED: At E!, "Um, Did Katherine Heigl Just Call Herself Full-Figured on the Golden Globes Red Carpet?!!"

And at London's Daily Mail, "Katherine Heigl and husband Josh Kelley kiss on the red carpet at Golden Globes afterparty."

A Warning From the Paris Attacks

From David Horowitz, at the Washington Times, "Obama’s stubborn denial of the terror threat endangers Americans":

The Islamic terror attack on the magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris was carried out by Muslim criminals who were apparently trained in Yemen.

Meanwhile, national security officials are warning of an imminent threat to Europe and the United States from jihadi soldiers who are returning from the wars in Syria and Iraq. According to the head of the FBI and other first responders, there is no way to stop their re-entry because, after all, they have American passports. Nor is there any way to stop them in Syria and Iraq since President Obama has surrendered both countries to our enemies.

The Democratic mayor of New York — ground zero for the Islamic war — has even stopped the surveillance of jihadi mosques, the breeding grounds for domestic “lone wolves.” And with our southern border shredded by Mr. Obama and the Democrats, it’s not going to be difficult even for foreign jihadis to reach their infidel targets. Of course, the president doesn’t like the word “terror” to begin with, let alone “Islamic terror.” Thanks to him, the Islamic war against the United States is officially referred to as an “overseas contingency operation,” while domestic Islamic mayhem is filed under the category “workplace violence.”

Fourteen years after Sept. 11, 2001, it is tragically clear that President Bush was right about the threat we faced and the Democrats were suicidally wrong. The Sept. 11 attacks were indeed a salvo in the war Islamists have declared on us but even now, 14 years later, Democrats still want to regard such attacks as acts of individual criminality. They insist on dealing with them through the legal justice system, affording American rights to those who want to destroy American rights. Why, you may ask yourself, is the Boston Marathon bomber being tried in a criminal court of law, where he will be able to make propaganda for his cause underwritten by his victims? Because Democrats want it that way. It shows we’re superior to everybody else.

Nine days after Sept. 11, Mr. Bush addressed both houses of Congress to outline his response to the terror attacks. This is what he said about states that harbor Islamic terrorists, such as Yemen and Syria: “We will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. [Applause.] From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.”

When the president had completed his remarks, these were precisely the sentences that were singled out for attack by the political left. To progressives, Mr. Bush was a tyrant in the making and they took his warning personally: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” Unfortunately, even though Mr. Bush was not referring the left in uttering these words, he might as well have been. When Mr. Bush decided to take on the terrorist-supporting, U.N.-defying regime of Saddam Hussein, Democrats went into full war mode against him, against the “war on terror,” and against America’s mission to defeat the al Qaeda armies that had assembled in Iraq. Their sabotage of the war went on for five years, making it impossible for Mr. Bush to take on the terror-supporting regimes in Syria, Iran and elsewhere.

The Obama administration is the product of this momentous Democratic defection from America’s purposes, from a robust defense of the American homeland, and from a militant response to the war that Islamists have declared on us. Why is there still a free flow of immigration from nations like Yemen that support or tolerate the Islamist armies ranged against us? Why isn’t our southern border secure? It is because the Obama administration, with support from Democrats in Congress, regards security measures against terror supporting states to be “Islamophobic,” and regards securing our southern border to be xenophobic. Why isn’t Mr. Obama embracing President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi and his Egyptian regime that has declared the Islamists to be enemies of the Islamic world? It is because Mr. Obama is committed to the Muslim Brotherhood — the fount of al Qaeda — and against this same Egyptian regime...

Still more.

Rosie Gray in Paris

Ms. Gray, a BuzzFeed reporter, was in Paris yesterday for the unity rally.

It's amazing how uplifting La Marseillaise sounds, considering the fact that it's about, like, spilling your enemies' blood

— Rosie Gray (@RosieGray) January 11, 2015

Bosch Fawstin's Muhammad

For a while, I had reposting privileges from Mr. Fawstin, but then he started making so much money for his drawings, he had to rescind the offer.

He's good:

Islam got your tongue? Or-after this devastating attack in France- r you Finally going to join the fight against it? pic.twitter.com/vuoqrhykkH

— Bosch Fawstin (@BoschFawstin) January 7, 2015

Muslims, in essence: "We will Murder you if you draw our Mass-Murdering Prophet!" Here's one of my Mohammad drawings pic.twitter.com/hmeR3LhnXN

— Bosch Fawstin (@BoschFawstin) January 7, 2015

'The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam...'

As lots of folks have been reminding us over the weekend, recall the president's infamous prophecy of doom, delivered at the United Nations, September 25, 2012:



And at Politico, "Barack Obama’s French kiss-off":

Barack Obama n’est pas Charlie — or at least, he wasn’t this weekend.

Don’t look for the president or vice president among the photos of 44 heads of state who locked arms and marched down Boulevard Voltaire in Paris. Nor did they join a companion march the French Embassy organized in Washington on Sunday afternoon.

Indeed, Obama’s public reactions to the attacks in Paris last week have been muted. His initial response Wednesday to the killing of 12 people at the Charlie Hebdo newspaper offices was delivered as he sat calmly in an armchair in the Oval Office speaking about the “cowardly” acts and defending freedom of the press. Two days later, as a gunman took hostages and went on to kill four people in a kosher grocery, Obama took a few seconds away from a community college proposal roll-out in Tennessee because he said with events unfolding, “I wanted to make sure to comment on them” — but never then or afterward specifically condemned that attack.

Obama wasn’t far from the march in D.C. on Sunday that wended silently along six blocks from the Newseum to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial. Instead, he spent the chilly afternoon a few blocks away at the White House, with no public schedule, no outings.

Joe Biden was back home in Wilmington, Delaware.
\
Neither they nor any high-level administration official attended either event.

France’s top American diplomat, diplomatically, tried to make the best of it.

“Thank you to Victoria Nuland, assistant secretary at the Department of State, who has represented the U.S. Authorities at the demonstration in DC. A friend,” Ambassador Gérard Araud tweeted Sunday evening, as criticism of the administration mounted.

And though it’s symbolism—Obama made several statements last week condemning the terror, and the government has been supporting French efforts throughout—the symbolism has caught a lot of attention.

“I wish our US President had gone to Paris to stand with our European allies,” tweeted James Stavridis, the retired Navy admiral and current dean of Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

“It’s stunning, truly stunning,” said Aaron David Miller, who among other responsibilities during his time at the State Department under both Republicans and Democrats, helped deliberate over which officials to send to which events. “It’s a poster child for tone deafness.”...

It's literally unforgivable. I'm ashamed for my country, for the American people, who are without representation at a time like this. Victoria Nuland just doesn't cut it.

Not a "profiles in courage" moment, to put it mildly.

So, Jimmy Fallon Totally Missed Nicole Kidman's, Ahem, Enticements in 2005

Big mistake.

And Ms. Kidman hasn't seen him since then. He's just now finding out about his epic douchenozzle fail.

Pretty hilarious.

Watch, from last Tuesday's Tonight Show, "Jimmy Fallon Blew a Chance to Date Nicole Kidman."

George Clooney Salutes Charlie Hebdo at Golden Globes: 'We Will Not Walk in Fear'

ICYMI, video at Mediaite. Text (and unbridled swooning) at WaPo.

Some not so insignificant folks are not pleased with the Clooneys. See previously: "Lee Radziwill Disses George and Amal Clooney."

And see Red Nation Rising, "Clooney, Clinton, Hollywood-the Anti-American Globalists."

U.S. GOES MISSING IN ACTION IN PARIS

Ouch.

At NYDN, "Obama, Biden and cabinet bigs shun Paris, send Holder, who ditches rally that drew millions in France."



Previously: "World Leaders, Sans Barack Hussein, March in Paris — #CharlieHebdo."

Agent Orange Live in the O.C.!

Amazing.

I think I saw these guys play 35 years ago. They're currently on tour and will be playing the World Famous Doll Hut in Anaheim, on January 17th.

What a trip.

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."



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