Paris Attack Was Work of 3 Teams, An 'Act of War' by Islamic State, France Says (VIDEO)

You've got huge banner headlines running at the New York Times.

It's major.

See, "Three Teams of Coordinated Attackers Carried Out Assault on Paris, Officials Say; Hollande Blames ISIS":

PARIS — Three teams of Islamic State attackers acting in unison carried out the terrorist assault in Paris on Friday night, officials said Saturday, including one assailant who may have traveled to Europe on a Syrian passport along with the flow of migrants.

“It is an act of war that was committed by a terrorist army, a jihadist army, Daesh, against France,” President François Hollande told the nation from the Élysée Palace, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State. “It is an act of war that was prepared, organized and planned from abroad, with complicity from the inside, which the investigation will help establish.”

As the death toll rose to 129 — with 352 others wounded, 99 of them critically — a basic timeline of the attacks came into view.

The Paris prosecutor, François Molins, said the attackers were all armed with heavy weaponry and suicide vests. Their assault began at 9:20 p.m. Friday, when one terrorist detonated a suicide bomb outside the gates of the soccer stadium on the northern outskirts of Paris. It ended at 12:20 a.m. Saturday when the authorities stormed a concert hall, the Bataclan. One attacker there was killed; two others detonated suicide vests. Inside the hall, 89 people, who had been listening to a rock band, had been shot to death.

The man with the Syrian passport — which Greek officials said had been registered at the Aegean island of Leros on Oct. 3 — was 25, and died at the stadium. Another assailant, who died at the concert hall, was 29 and a native of Courcouronnes, about 20 miles south of Paris. He had a criminal record and was known to be involved in extremist Islamic ideology, Mr. Molins said.

The hunt for possible accomplices of the terrorists gained steam on Saturday. Officials in Belgium announced three arrests, one of them linked to a rental car found in Paris. In Germany, the police were exploring whether a man they arrested last week with weapons in his car and his GPS navigator set for Paris was linked to the attacks. But it remained unclear how a plot of such sophistication and lethality could have escaped the notice of intelligence agencies, both in France and abroad.

Mr. Hollande declared three days of national mourning, and said that military troops would patrol the capital. France remained under a nationwide state of emergency.

Mr. Hollande vowed to “be unforgiving with the barbarians from Daesh,” adding that France would act within the law but with “all the necessary means, and on all terrains, inside and outside, in coordination with our allies, who are, themselves, targeted by this terrorist threat.”

The attacks, and the possibility that the Islamic State was to blame, promised to further traumatize France and other European countries already fearful of violent jihadists radicalized by the conflicts in Syria and elsewhere...

Keep reading.

Scale of #ParisAttacks Underscores Global Threats

The free flow of people across borders is going to be a thing of the past --- or at least it should be, if Europeans wake up.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Paris Attacks’ Scale Underscores Global Threats":

The sophistication, resources and scale of Friday’s attacks in the heart of Paris underscored to officials across the globe that the challenges of containing extremist violence have reached a new level, and that the calculus of the Western effort against terrorism had fundamentally changed.

European governments in the past few months have sought various means to guard against national security threats, with some erecting barbed-wire fences to stem the flow of migrants, while others, including France, devoted hundreds of millions of euros to strengthening electronic surveillance systems.

Friday’s attacks highlight the weakness of those strategies in a world where global extremism flows across nations. It also raises questions about transnational agreements on open-border travel that have been a bedrock of modern Europe. In his first comments to the nation after the attack, French President François Hollande announced the closing of his country’s borders.

French authorities didn't immediately name a culprit, but the nature of the attacks left little doubt they were the work of a well-organized terrorist group. A French official said Friday the attacks were “unfortunately well-prepared and coordinated.” The apparent use of explosives and the likelihood that a significant number of people were involved were particularly alarming to U.S. counterterrorism officials.

At the same time, officials in several countries have voiced strong suspicions that the recent downing of a Russian passenger plane over Egypt was the work of a terrorist bomb. If Islamic State or another terrorist group is blamed for that attack, in addition to Friday’s carnage, pressure could increase to ramp up the war on such terrorist organizations to a new level.

That could include more pressure on Western countries to step up the military intervention in Syria. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization doesn't have a formal role in strikes against Islamic State, although members of the alliance are taking part in the U.S.-led coalition...

More.

More, at Time, "ISIS Attack on Paris Suggests a Change in Strategy."

Pianist Plays 'Imagine' Outside Bataclan Theater After #ParisAttacks (VIDEO)

Political idealism was one of the leading causes of World War II. But then, leftists never learn.

As Ann Coulter tweeted last night, "HOW DID THIS HAPPEN? French people ran onto the street with signs that said, 'Je Suis Charlie'! Why didn't that stop this?"

Idealism is nice, especially during a time of enormous crisis. But folks can sing "Imagine" until the cows come home, and it's not going to solve Europe's jihad problem. Halting the wave of Islamic migration would be the first start, and then repatriating Muslims to their home countries after that. You can't keep taking Muslims without importing Islamic jihad. Until the Europeans learn that lesson, their goose will be cooked.

Bono and U2 Lay Flowers at the Bataclan Theater — #ParisAttacks

They're good guys.

Bono and the members of U2 lay flowers at the Bataclan Theatre by @JeffJMitch pic.twitter.com/7JA7u6TiER

— Bette Lynch (@BetteMLynch) November 14, 2015

Paris Attacks Deepen Debate About Migration Crisis in Europe; Critics Reassert Security Concerns

Following-up from yesterday, "Angela Merkel's Future in Doubt as She Faces Coup After Her Own Party Criticises Asylum Policies."

At WSJ, "Paris Attacks May Unsettle EU’s Debate on Migration":

BERLIN—The attacks in Paris stunned Europe and deepened one of the European Union’s greatest crises: the tide of migration from the war-torn Middle East and elsewhere sweeping in from across the Mediterranean.

In Germany, the attacks quickly galvanized opponents of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door policy, with critics saying that it had become clearer than ever that the migrants from the Middle East represented a grave security threat. In Poland, a country that had already opposed Ms. Merkel’s stance, leading politicians doubled down and warned they wouldn't honor an earlier agreement to take in refugees.

Ms. Merkel has been under intensifying fire for months for opening Germany’s doors to refugees, a posture that many critics say has helped touch off a tide of migration into Germany numbering as many as 10,000 a day.

As of Saturday afternoon, it remained unclear whether the attacks were perpetrated by homegrown terrorists or people who entered France from abroad. Nevertheless, they quickly offered fodder for critics who said that Germany and Europe couldn’t manage the influx of migration from the Middle East.

In a sign of how much the Paris attacks may unsettle the EU-wide debate on migration, politicians in Poland quickly tied the attacks to Ms. Merkel’s policies. The incoming minister in charge of European affairs, Konrad Szymanski, said the country’s new, conservative government, to be sworn in on Monday, wouldn’t honor its predecessors’ commitment earlier this fall to take in about 7,000 people as part of an EU-wide plan to redistribute migrants across the bloc.

“Decisions of the European Council that we’ve criticized regarding the resettlement of refugees and immigrants to all EU countries are still binding law of the EU,” Mr. Szymanski wrote in an article posted online. “But faced with the tragic events in Paris we don’t see political possibilities for its enforcement.”

Keep reading.

"Frank Bruni of the New York Times tut-tuts against 'The Exploitation of Paris'..."

That's all the lefties are doing, tut-tuting against the so-called "reactionary right."

See Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "FREUD CALLED IT DISPLACEMENT":

Frank Bruni of the New York Times tut-tuts against “The Exploitation of Paris,” in a piece that could easily have been written by doing a find-and-replace search of a thousand different Times articles written immediately after 9/11. (A period in which the Times was utterly obsessed with the terrorist dangers of all-male golf courses). Along the way, Bruni name-checks Roger Simon, PJM’s boss emeritus...

More.

Plus, a real heads-scratcher, at Jihad Watch, "Salon: “After Paris, let’s stop blaming Muslims and take a hard look at ourselves”."

Leftism is a mental disorder. Seriously.

William McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse

Check out Will McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State.

He's also got a piece up at Politico, "How ISIL Out-Terrorized Bin Laden":

Brutality and doomsday visions have made ISIL the world’s most feared terrorist group....

The Islamic State’s brutality and its insistence on apocalypse now and caliphate now set it apart from al-Qaeda, of which it was a part until 2014. We’re used to thinking of al-Qaeda’s leader Osama bin Laden as the baddest of the bad, but the Islamic State is worse. Bin Laden tamped down messianic fervor and sought popular Muslim support; the return of the early Islamic empire, or caliphate, was a distant dream. In contrast, the Islamic State’s members fight and govern by their own version of Machiavelli’s dictum “It is far safer to be feared than loved.” They stir messianic fervor rather than suppress it. They want God’s kingdom now rather than later. This is not Bin Laden’s jihad...

More.

Ann Coulter: 'Donald Trump was elected president tonight...'

At the Hill, "Coulter after Paris attacks: 'Trump was elected president tonight'." (Careful the autoplay videos at the click through.)

Ann Coulter took to Twitter on Friday night to respond to the Paris terror attacks, saying that “Donald Trump was elected president tonight.”

The conservative commentator tweeted a series of reactions to the attacks that left more than 120 dead, calling for “no more Muslim immigration.” She also targeted recent U.S. college student protests, as well as American gun and immigration laws and proposals.

Coulter ended her string of Tweets with: “They can wait if they like until next November for the actual balloting, but Donald Trump was elected president tonight.”

Actually, I think the more narrow political issue will be the fight against Islamic jihad, rather than the larger border security problem, which is more a question of illegal immigration from Latin America. But if Trump plays it right, he could score significant political points.

Trendy Warm Chunky Soft Stretch Cable Knit Slouchy Beanie Skully Hat

Heh. It's a best-selling item at Amazon.

But so is the Ergodyne N-Ferno 6823 Wind-proof Hinged Balaclava, Black, which seems a bit less wistful.

And ICYMI, from Erick Stakelbeck, ISIS Exposed: Beheadings, Slavery, and the Hellish Reality of Radical Islam.

The Migrant Jihad Has Begun in Paris

From Robert Spencer, at FrontPage Magazine, "At least one jihad attacker was a 'refugee'. Will European leaders reconsider their migrant policy?":

That didn’t take long: one of the Islamic State (ISIS) jihadis who murdered at least 160 people in Paris on Friday held a Syrian passport and passed through Greece in October. In October, he was a “refugee” seeking asylum in Europe from the Syrian war zone; in November, he was murdering French civilians for the Islamic caliphate. The Migrant Jihad has begun.

French and European authorities can’t say they weren’t warned. Last February, the Islamic State boasted it would soon flood Europe with as many as 500,000 refugees. And the Lebanese Education Minister recently said that there were 20,000 jihadis among the refugees in camps in his country. Meanwhile, 80% of migrants who have recently come to Europe claiming to be fleeing the war in Syria aren’t really from Syria at all.

So why are they claiming to be Syrian and streaming into Europe? An Islamic State operative gave the answer when he boasted in September, shortly after the migrant influx began, that among the flood of refugees, 4,000 Islamic State jihadis had already entered Europe. He explained their purpose: “It’s our dream that there should be a caliphate not only in Syria but in all the world, and we will have it soon, inshallah.” These Muslims were going to Europe in the service of that caliphate: “They are going like refugees,” he said, but they were going with the plan of sowing blood and mayhem on European streets. As he told this to journalists, he smiled and said, “Just wait.”

A year before that the Islamic State issued a call for jihad murders of French civilians: “If you can kill a disbelieving American or European – especially the spiteful and filthy French – or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war, including the citizens of the countries that entered into a coalition against the Islamic State, then rely upon Allah, and kill him in any manner or way however it may be.”

Then after the attacks the Islamic State issued a statement claiming responsibility for them, and warning: “Let France and all nations following its path know that they will continue to be at the top of the target list for the Islamic State and that the scent of death will not leave their nostrils as long as they partake in the crusader campaign, as long as they dare to curse our Prophet (blessings and peace be upon him), and as long as they boast about their war against Islam in France and their strikes against Muslims in the land of the Caliphate with their jets, which were of no avail to them in the filthy streets and alleys of Paris. Indeed, this is just the beginning. It is also a warning for any who wish to take heed.”

So war was declared, and acts of war carried out – and the response has been drearily predictable. German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere was swift to try to dissociate the Paris attacks from the migrant influx into Europe: “I would like to make this urgent plea to avoid drawing such swift links to the situation surrounding refugees.” Alas for de Maiziere, there was the inconvenient fact of that Syrian “refugee” who pass through Greece on his way to jihad in Paris.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama was true to form, not mentioning Islam or Muslims in his statement on the Paris attacks, and not giving a hint that it was his precipitous and politically motivated withdrawal from Iraq that created the vacuum that allowed for the rise of the Islamic State. Indeed, the Islamic State could end up being the most significant legacy of the Obama Administration. Obviously American troops couldn’t have stayed in Iraq forever, and the Iraq project from its beginnings was based on false assumptions about Islam, ignoring its political, supremacist and violent aspects; but Obama’s hasty and ill-thought out withdrawal took into account none of the realities on the ground: the Sunni/Shi’ite divide, the Iranian influence in Baghdad, the Sunnis’ unwillingness to participate in the Baghdad government and the Shi’ites’ refusal to allow them to do so in any significant way, and more. France today is paying the price for the willful ignorance and short-sightedness of Obama and his administration...

Continue reading.

European Authorities Scramble to Identify Suspects in #ParisAttacks (VIDEO)

Authorities found a Syrian passport on the body of one of the Paris attackers.

And see the Los Angeles Times, "Authorities scramble to identify suspects in Paris terror attacks":

Authorities across Europe moved Saturday to identify possible accomplices to seven attackers who unleashed a series of shootings and bombings across Paris, with Belgian authorities announcing they had made several arrests.

A spokeswoman for Belgian Justice Minister Koen Geens told reporters that authorities had arrested "several suspects," though it was not clear what connection, if any, they had to Friday's attacks in Paris.

Geens said the arrests came after a rental car with Belgian license plates was seen close to the Bataclan theater in Paris, the scene of some of the worst violence, on Friday night, the magazine De Standaard reported.

French authorities identified one of the dead terrorists as a Frenchman, about 30 years old, who had previously been tracked by authorities in connection with his Islamic radical activities, France Info radio reported.

Meanwhile, French media reported that a Syrian passport was found near one of the dead terrorists after a bomb attack at a soccer game at the Stade de France, the national stadium just north of Paris, though it had not been established that the passport belonged to the attacker.

It appeared the passport holder had crossed into the European Union through the Greek island of Leros in October.

“We announce that the passport holder had passed from Leros on Oct. 3. where he was identified based on EU rules," Greek Citizen Protection Minister Nikos Toskas said in a statement, according to the Associated Press.

"We do not know if the passport was checked by other countries through which the holder likely passed."

Toskas added: “We will continue the painstaking and persistent effort to ensure the security of our country and Europe under difficult circumstances, insisting on complete identification of those arriving.”

More.

WATCH: Graphic Video Shows Hostages Escaping from Bataclan Concert Theater — #ParisAttacks

Le Monde's Daniel Psenny took the video, via CNN:

The World's Most Dangerous Ideology

Here's Raymond Ibrahim, for Prager University.

This clip went up last month, but it's ever so timely, considering.

Angela Merkel's Future in Doubt as She Faces Coup After Her Own Party Criticises Asylum Policies

She was on thin ice well before last night's Paris attacks.

I don't know if she can stay in office much longer.

At the Telegraph UK:

Angela Merkel’s political future is being questioned for the first time in Germany as divisions continue to grow in her government over her “open-door” refugee policy.

Guests on a popular television political talk show debated the possibility of a coup against the German chancellor from within her own party.

The discussion came as civil servants at the government refugee agency warned identity checks for Syrian asylum-seekers were ineffective and open to abuse by economic migrants and terrorists.

Wolfgang Schäuble, the finance minister, warned that Germany was facing an “avalanche” of refugees set off by a “careless skier”.

And Thomas de Maiziere, the interior minister, twice acted unilaterally to introduce stricter controls on Syrian asylum-seekers without informing Mrs Merkel...

More.

And earlier, at Der Spiegel, "The Lonely Chancellor: Merkel Under Fire as Refugee Crisis Worsens."

So Where'd the Paris Jihadists Get Their Kalashnikovs?

Well, there's a huge black-market weapons pipeline from Eastern Europe. Thousands of AKs are confiscated by authorities every year.

At the Daily Beast, "This is How AK-47s Get to Paris."

Erick Stakelbeck: ISIS Exposed

Some reading on Islamic State.

From Erick Stakelbeck, ISIS Exposed: Beheadings, Slavery, and the Hellish Reality of Radical Islam.

President Obama Tells George Stephanopoulos: Islamic State's Not 'Gaining Strength' (VIDEO)

From just this morning, on Good Morning America.

The Orwellian Obama.

Islamic State's "contained."

Inside the Bataclan Concert Hall — #ParisAttacks

At the New York Times, "‘Scene of Carnage’ Inside Sold-Out Paris Concert Hall":

PARIS — The band had been playing to the crowd at one of this city’s most popular music venues, The Bataclan, for about an hour. The 150-year-old music hall was sold out for the show by the American group Eagles of Death Metal.

Suddenly, four men brandishing AK-47 assault rifles entered the hall. There were shouts of “Allahu akbar” just before the gunmen opened fire, and for about 20 minutes there was carnage.

Witnesses said the attackers also threw grenades into the crowd.

“When they started shooting, we just saw flashes,” a witness named Gwen told French BFM-TV. “People got down on the ground right away. It was all dark.”

In the scramble to survive, people climbed into the upper boxes of the hall, or cowered under seats. The musicians quickly fled the stage.

“It was a scene of carnage,” Julien Pearce, a radio reporter who was inside The Bataclan, told Europe 1 radio.

The music hall can seat up to 1,500 people, but it was unclear how many were inside when the attack began. Some of the spectators managed to escape out back exits, but for minutes the gunmen shot unimpeded.

Benjamin Cazenoves posted an update on Facebook from inside the theater: “Alive. Just some cuts. Carnage. Bodies everywhere.”

Mr. Pearce told CNN that he saw two of the men enter and begin to fire randomly. He said the gunmen wore black and said nothing. They simply fired indiscriminately into the crowd. Mr. Pearce said that when he walked out into the street, he saw 25 bodies on the ground.

“It lasted for 10 minutes, 10 minutes, 10 horrific minutes when everybody was on the floor covering their heads and we heard so many gunshots, and the terrorists were very calm, very determined, and they reloaded three or four times their weapons,” Mr. Pearce said.

At around 10 p.m. the gunmen began rounding up survivors, holding them as hostages as dozens of police officers massed outside. For more than two hours a tense standoff prevailed, with more and more police arriving at the scene, enlarging the tense perimeter around the music hall in the city’s 11th Arrondissement...

More.

PREVIOUSLY: "The Horror in Paris."

Jackie Johnson's Chilly Overnight Forecast

It's been cold overnight across the Southland.

Here's Jackie, via CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

The Horror in Paris

At the Wall Street Journal, "Europe’s worst attack since Madrid requires a new antiterror resolve":

Paris endured one of the worst terror assaults in history Friday night, with scores murdered in coordinated attacks at multiple sites, including a restaurant, a concert hall, a soccer stadium and the Les Halles food market. President François Hollande declared a national state of emergency and closed France’s borders. “This is horror,” he said in a televised address. It’s also our world today.

Though no group had claimed responsibility for the attacks, Islamic State (ISIS) didn’t wait long to celebrate. “O crusaders we are coming to you with bombs and rifles,” tweeted one unofficial ISIS propagandist, according to the Vocativ news site. “Wait for us.” Witnesses report hearing cries of “Allahu Akbar” along with gunfire. A woman at the Bataclan concert hall told the Journal that the attackers wore black-and-white kaffiyehs as they sprayed the crowd with gunfire. One hundred mostly young people are reported to have died in the hall.

Big cities are vulnerable targets, as the world learned with the November 2008 attacks in Mumbai. There nine Islamic terrorists murdered 164 people in two hotels, a cafe, a train station and a Jewish center. They shut down a city of 18 million people in minutes.

According to one report, a terrorist captured by French police at the concert hall claimed the attacks were in retaliation for France’s participation in attacks on ISIS targets in Syria. If so, the political calculation may be to reprise al Qaeda’s 2004 train bombings in Madrid, on the eve of a Spanish election. The attacks, which left 191 commuters dead, led to the defeat of José María Aznar’s conservative Partido Popular, which supported the war in Iraq, and the election of the antiwar Socialists.

We doubt the French will draw the same lesson when it comes to fighting ISIS in Syria or anywhere else. The jihadist war against France is decades-old. France’s domestic intelligence services have spent years attempting to keep track of an ever-expanding list of radical French Islamists, and nobody should be surprised if Friday’s attackers turn out to be names on that list. Paris would not be out of bounds to consider some combination of preventive detentions and, if necessary, renditions to foreign countries. Civil libertarians will object, but civil liberty is also a function of security, and right now Paris has neither.

These attacks are another dreadful reminder that the West’s collective failure swiftly to defeat ISIS in its Syrian and Iraqi heartland has allowed this jihadist infection to spread—into Afghanistan, Turkey, Sinai and North Africa...

That's for sure.

The battlefield's creeping west, and with alacrity.

Keep reading.