Category: Religion

The Worst President Ever

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Ace of Spades on Monday’s presidential press conference:

A man who keeps offering the same empty answers — “allies have to step up,” “a warped ideology on the wrong side of history,” “contrary to our values,” etc. — cannot complain this petulantly about being asked the same questions. . . .
He is the apotheosis of progressivism, the avatar and godling that is the living embodiment of all their cowardices, lies, hypocrisies, self-flatteries, and stupidities.
One self-flattery they’re fond of is claiming they have “evidence-based” reasoning, not ideology-based reasoning, and that their minds are supple things that readily incorporate new information and plot new strategies accordingly.
Obama is the ultimate exemplar of this fiction. He claims that he’s always interested in “whatever works” and he’s constantly engaging in high-level cognition about the world, and yet no matter what the news, no matter how badly his strategies and ideological priors have been shown to fail, he clings to them with the devotion of a child to his woobie.

You can read the whole thing. I generally refrain from commenting about things President Obama says, because I generally cannot stand to listen to what he says. But yesterday, I had my office TV on CNN during that press conference and heard enough of it to become irritated by the way he simply asserted that his policy is the only feasible and pragmatic policy, contrasting it with straw-man alternatives. If you believe Obama (and of course, I don’t mean to insult my readers by implying that any of you are stupid enough to believe Obama) every serious military strategist on the planet approves of his policy, as opposed to the Obviously Wrong Policies favored by those Crude and Clumsy Warmongers in the Republican Party. We are expected to believe that the choices are either (a) do exactly what Obama is doing, or (b) it’s back to the Neocon Cowboy days, with a Bush-type massive invasion/occupation thing like the Iraq war. Basically, it was a campaign speech of the kind Obama might have given to an audience of college students in 2007.

What is being ignored, of course, is that the current situation with ISIS is a direct result of the 2011 “Arab Spring” uprising that the Obama administration orchestrated as surely as the Kennedy administration orchestrated the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963. Is there anyone so stupid as to believe that there could have been simultaneous rebellions against the governments of Libya, Egypt, Syria, etc., without the CIA (and Hillary Clinton’s State Department) working behind the scenes to make it happen? This is not a paranoid conspiracy theory. The Obama administration was quite open in its support of the “Arab Spring,” and all I’m saying (beyond what is already public knowledge) is that U.S. covert agencies operated in that situation the way U.S. covert agencies normally operate. The 1953 coup in Iran, the 1954 coup in Guatemala, the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion — there is a long history of such clandestine operations, and if you think Obama and Hillary wouldn’t use the CIA to overthrow governments they disliked (which is what the “Arab Spring” was really about) you are hopelessly naïve.

Once we recognize the “Arab Spring” as a U.S. policy initiative (rather than buying into the media-manufactured myth of “spontaneous” uprisings in several different countries), then we also recognize that the Obama’s avowed desire to topple the Assad regime in Syria led them to discount the danger posed by Islamic extremists in Syria, which is how ISIS became the serious menace that it now is. But this interpretation of events, as obvious as it seems to me, never gets mentioned when discussing how ISIS — a rather obscure Iraqi militant force prior to 2011 — has emerged as the world’s most dangerous Islamic terrorist group.

Obama’s Middle East policy is a catastrophic failure, and for him to defend it as if it were successful — and imply that there is no feasible alternative — is an infuriating insult. Anyway, now you see why I generally refrain from commenting on what Obama says.





 

FRANCE AT WAR: Jets Strike ISIS Stronghold; Terror Suspects Raided

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Friday’s attack in Paris has prompted French authorities to take military action against the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa:

France bombed the Syrian city of Raqqa on Sunday night, its most aggressive strike against the Islamic State group it blames for killing 129 people in a string of terrorist attacks across Paris only two days before. . . .
While France has been conducting scores of airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq, it had been bombing inside Syria only sparingly, wary of inadvertently strengthening the hand of President Bashar al-Assad by killing his enemies.
But after militants with AK-47 rifles and suicide explosives vests shattered the peaceful revelry of Paris on Friday night, killing dozens of civilians in restaurants and at a concert hall, France seemed intent on sending a clear message of its determination to curb the Islamic State and its ability to carry out attacks outside the territory it controls.

The previous reluctance to hit ISIS in Raqqa, in other words, reflected the fact that the Syrian extremists were tacitly supported by the West since 2011, when the “Arab Spring” uprisings were orchestrated to overthrow the governments of Libya, Egypt and Syria. More on the French air strikes on Raqqa:

Twelve aircraft including 10 fighter jets dropped a total of 20 bombs in the biggest air strikes since France extended its bombing campaign against the extremist group to Syria in September, a Defense Ministry statement said. The jets launched from sites in Jordan and the Persian Gulf, in coordination with U.S. forces. . . .
French foreign minister Laurent Fabius said France had the “legitimacy” to take action against ISIS after Friday’s terror attacks in Paris.
Fabius said Sunday on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Turkey that the decision to conduct airstrikes in Raqqa against Islamic State targets was a “political” one and that France had to be “present and active” following Friday’s attacks.

Ace of Spades points out that Raqqa is “a city the jihadis have kept in reasonably good shape . . . a showcase city . . . their military headquarters,” so that the previous failure to target Raqqa would seem rather inexplicable. As I say, however, ISIS was tacitly supported in the effort to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria, which was part of the Obama administration’s “Arab Spring” policy dating back to 2011. That this policy has been a catastrophic failure, in effect arming ISIS terrorists, is something the administration and its former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, have been understandably reluctant to admit. Meanwhile, in France, authorities are rounding up the usual suspects:

French police launched more than 150 raids across the country overnight as part of a manhunt in the wake of Paris’s deadly terror attacks, NBC News reported.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls confirmed the raids to RTL Radio, according to NBC News. . . .
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said that 23 people had been arrested — while 104 others remained for questioning — over a 48-hour period. He added that guns, bulletproof vests and even a rocket launcher had been seized.
“This is just the beginning,” Cazeneuve said. “The response of France will be total. Those who attack France, we will catch them and we will be unrelenting with them … Terrorists will never destroy the Republic, because the Republic will destroy them.”
Searches took place throughout the country, including in Toulouse, Grenoble, Bobigny and Lyon.

The hunt for the Paris terrorist Salah Abdeslam continues. There were reports this morning that Abdeslam had been cornered by Belgian police in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek, but officials there said the raid failed to nab him.

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TERROR MANHUNT: French Authorities Seeking Accomplices of Islamic Killers

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The perpetrators of Friday’s massacre in Paris have been identified, and the investigation exposes the worldwide menace of Islam:

Police [on Saturday] issued an international arrest warrant for one of three Belgian-born brothers believed to be at the heart of the eight-strong ISIS cell who murdered 132 people in Paris.
French police are hunting 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam, from Brussels, who is accused of renting a Volkswagen Polo used by the suicide bombers who killed 89 people at the Bataclan music venue on Friday.
His brother Ibrahim is believed to have blown himself up during the Paris siege and a third unnamed sibling has been arrested in the Belgian capital.
An official told the Washington Post another of the shooters was Bilal Hadfi, who was from Belgium and had spent time fighting with ISIS in Syria, who also died after detonating his suicide vest during a murderous rampage.
The killer gang, containing a number of Frenchman living in Belgium, two others carrying Syrian passports after sneaking into Europe disguised as migrants and a female accomplice, are believed to have travelled together from Brussels to Paris in rented cars.
Serbian media claims Ahmed Almuhamed, 25, whose Syrian passport was found on the body of a suicide bomber, allegedly blew himself up at the Bataclan concert hall, where at least 89 people were slaughtered on Friday. Two other bombers were said to be carrying fake Turkish passports, it was being reported tonight.
French police have said homegrown terrorist Omar Ismaël Mostefai , 29, from Courcouronnes, Paris, was one of the Bataclan suicide bombers but he is said to have been radicalised by a Brussels-based hate preacher who spoke regularly at his French mosque.

We learn more about the role of “refugees” in the Paris attack:

The [Serbian] newspaper, Blic, claims [Ahmed] Almuhamed arrived with another of the bombers in Europe on the Greek island of Leros on October 3 on his way to Paris. Greek website Protothema have published ferry tickets showing the name of a second man, Mohammed Almuhamed, who could be a relation.
French police are hunting 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam, from Brussels, who is accused of renting a Volkswagen Polo used by the suicide bombers who killed 89 people at the Bataclan music venue on Friday.
His brother Ibrahim is believed to have blown himself up during the Paris siege and a third unnamed sibling has been arrested in the Belgian capital. . . .
Bilal Hadfi, who was from Belgium and had spent time fighting with ISIS in Syria, who also died after detonating his suicide vest during a murderous rampage.
One of the attackers has been named locally as homegrown terrorist Omar Ismaël Mostefai , 29, from Courcouronnes, Paris. The petty criminal was known to police as a radical and identified by the fingerprint on a severed digit found after he detonated his suicide belt. . . .
The disclosure that some may have entered Europe as migrants, which came amid claims of French intelligence failures, inevitably raises new security concerns about the safety of Europe’s borders.
Meanwhile the black Seat Leon used by the terrorists who murdered diners outside the Casa Nostra pizza restaurant and the La Belle Équipe cafe has been found abandoned 20 minutes away in Montreuil with three AK-47s with five full magazines and 11 empty ones. . . .
Ahmed Almuhamed is believed to have taken around a month to travel to France posing as a migrant. He had entered Serbia at Miratovce, having crossed the frontier from Macedonia. The newspaper reported that Almuhamed, applied for asylum in Serbia in Presevo before crossing into Croatia and Austria.
Paris prosecutors confirmed that the suspects, all wearing explosive vests, roamed across the French capital in three teams, perpetrating the ‘worst acts of violence’ in the country since the Second World War. Fingerprint records show that two of the terrorists had arrived in the EU as refugees through Greece.

UPDATE: Read what Pamela Geller wrote:

Despite all this horror, the European Union elites are bringing into Europe millions of these savages. I have warned for years about this coming jihad. For doing so, I was attacked, smeared, and marginalized. We were right about it all, and yet still my colleagues and I are blacklisted. Hundreds are dead, and the war has just begun. We did everything in our power to save lives. But the political, media, and academic elites aligned with the savages. . . .
This is a world war. I have exposed hundreds of Islamic State social postings which name names and provide addresses and photos of U.S. soldiers here in the States, urging American Muslims to slaughter our boys and girls.
Right now, nothing is being done to stop jihad recruiting in U.S. mosques, even as several hundred young Muslims from the U.S. have gone to wage jihad for the Islamic State. And now they seek to wage jihad here at home.

UPDATE II: More on the terrorists who struck Paris:

French authorities have said seven suicide attackers died in Friday’s carnage and are hunting another believed to be “directly involved” in the bloodshed. Belgian authorities have arrested seven other men in connection with the attacks. . . .
Omar Ismaïl Mostefai was the first attacker named by French authorities. The 29-year-old is of Algerian heritage and grew up in Courcouronnes, just south of Paris, where he picked up a criminal record for petty offences. . . .
French intelligence took note of Mostafei when he began spending time at a mosque with radical links in 2010, but they lost track of him in 2013, when he may have travelled to Syria, the Washington Post reported. . . .
Salah’s brother Ibrahim Abdeslam was identified by prosecutors as the man who rented a Seat vehicle used in the attacks. He carried out the suicide attack at the Comptoir Voltaire cafe. He was 31.
A third Abdeslam brother, who has not been named, is believed to have been among seven people arrested on Saturday in the Molenbeek-Saint-Jean district of Brussels, suspected of being connected to the attacks.

Also, speaking to CNN, French senator Nathalie Goulet said that the suspect on the run is most probably the bomb-maker and is one of the three brothers thought to have been involved in the attacks. “With such heavy material, they need a professional.” The New York Times reports:

The carefully coordinated attacks on Friday night, which killed at least 129 people and which are believed to be the work of the Islamic State, increasingly appear to have involved extensive planning by a network of men with sophisticated weapons who plotted their attack from outside the country. . . .
French officials initially described eight attackers, but on Saturday night said that only seven had died — six by blowing themselves up and one in a shootout with police. . . .
The Salah brothers lived in Molenbeek, an impoverished section of Brussels that is mostly populated by immigrants from the Arab world and that has been linked to violence. “We don’t have control of the situation in Molenbeek at present,” [Belgium’s Interior Minister Jan] Jambon told VRT, a television channel.

Having surrendered control of their borders, by admitting many thousands of Arab immigrants, now Belgian officials are forced to admit they “don’t have control” over parts of their own capital city. It is in these neighborhoods — “no-go zones” that are effectively off-limits to non-Muslims, including police — that this attack on France was planned and organized. But you will be denounced as a “racist” if you call attention to this danger, because liberals always think it is better for innocent citizens to be murdered by terrorists than for any Muslim immigrant to have his feelings hurt.

(Via Memeorandum.)

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PARIS ATTACK: Terrorist ‘Refugee’ Had Syrian Passport; Death Toll Now 129

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Reuters reports:

The holder of a Syrian passport found near the body of one of the gunmen who died in Friday night’s attacks in Paris passed through Greece in October, a Greek minister said.
“The holder of the passport passed through the island of Leros on Oct. 3, 2015, where he was identified according to EU rules,” Greece’s deputy minister in charge of police, Nikos Toskas, said in a statement.
Toskas did not know if the Syrian passport had been checked by other countries through which the holder might have passed on his way to France.
A Greek police source said the passport’s owner was a young man who had arrived in Leros on a small vessel from Turkey with a group of 69 refugees and had his fingerprints taken by Greek officials. . . .
Police declined to give the name of the Syrian passport holder, saying French authorities wanted to keep information about the suspect confidential.
The source said there were no official records showing the man had left Greece, but that authorities believed he may have done so through the border with Macedonia.
Greek police were also asked by French authorities to check on the holder of an Egyptian passport that was apparently found near the body of another attacker, but found no evidence so far that this second person may have also passed through Greece, the police source said.

The London Telegraph reports:

Francois Molins, the Paris prosecutor, is giving a press conference with the latest details from Franch police. He now says 129 people were killed in the Paris terror attacks and 352 people were injured.
He says 99 of the injured are in critical condition. . . .
Francois Molins, the Paris prosecutor, said a black Polo parked in front of the Bataclan concert hall just before the attacks. This is where the largest loss of life occurred, he said, with 89 people killed. Three terrorists died. One was shot by police and two detonated suicide vests.
He said three “terrorist teams” were involved in the attacks.

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ISIS Claims Credit for Paris Slaughter; Death Toll 127 in Islamic Terror Attack

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ISIS released a video overnight claiming responsibility for the violence that brought bloodshed to the streets of Paris. The death toll in Friday’s terrorist attack is now reported at 127; earlier reports had said more than 150 were killed. The New York Post reports:

Islamic State claimed responsibility on Saturday for attacks that killed 127 people in Paris, saying it sent fighters strapped with suicide bombing belts and carrying machine guns to various locations in the heart of the capital. . . .
Islamic State earlier on Saturday distributed an undated video threatening to attack France if bombings of its fighters continued.
The group’s foreign media arm, Al-Hayat Media Centre, made threats through several militants who called on French Muslims to carry out attacks.
“As long as you keep bombing you will not live in peace. You will even fear traveling to the market,” said one of the militants, identified as Abu Maryam the Frenchman. . . .
The militants, who appeared to be French citizens, sat cross-legged in a group wearing fatigues and holding weapons in what appeared to be a wooded area.
The video showed the militants burning passports.
“Indeed you have been ordered to fight the infidel wherever you find him – what are you waiting for? There are weapons and cars available and targets ready to be hit,” said Abu Maryam.
Another militant, identified as Abu Salman the Frenchman, said: “Even poison is available, so poison the water and food of at least one of the enemies of Allah.”
“Terrorize them and do not allow them to sleep due to fear and horror,” he added.

UPDATE: CNN reports:

A Syrian passport was found near the body of an attacker outside the Stade de France, according to a police source, CNN affiliate France 2 said. Multiple local media are reporting the same.
Also on Saturday, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the state of emergency in France could mean restrictions on people’s movements, among other measures. Border controls were tightened as of Friday, and the gendarmerie paramilitary police are on heightened alert, he said. . . .
[An ISIS statement] said eight militants wearing explosive belts and armed with machine guns attacked precisely selected areas in the French capital.
In addition to the people killed, 180 others were injured, according to the Paris Police Prefecture. More than half of them are in critical condition. . . .
In the chaotic aftermath of the attacks, there was no clarity on the number of casualties.
Earlier, the Interior Ministry put the death toll at 153 people Friday, but a day later, the Paris police lowered it to 128 people. . . .
Most of the deaths were inside the Bataclan concert hall, where a witness said gunmen stormed in, firing rifles and shouting, “Allah akbar.” At least 80 people died in the attack there.

UPDATE II: The New York Times reports:

President François Hollande, addressing the nation from the Élysée Palace, said the attacks on Paris were an “act of war” and blamed the Islamic State.
“It is an act of war that was committed by a terrorist army, a jihadist army, Daesh, against France,” Mr. Hollande said, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.
“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,” he added.
“It is an act of absolute barbarity,” he said. The toll, he said, was “at this time 127 dead and many wounded.”
He said that he had proclaimed three days of national mourning and that all necessary measures would be taken to protect French citizens and territory. “The army and the interior security forces are mobilized at the highest level of their possibilities,” he said. . . .
“France, because it was foully, disgracefully and violently attacked, will be unforgiving with the barbarians from Daesh,” he said. France, he said, will act within the law but with “all the necessary means, and on all terrains, inside and outside, in coordination with our allies, who are they themselves targeted by this terrorist threat.”

UPDATE III: Donald Douglas at American Power:

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

There can be no doubt that an open-borders policy toward “refugees,” which Merkel and some other European leaders had advocated, will become a political liability after the Paris attacks.

UPDATE IV: Nine hours before the terrorists struck in Paris, in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America, President Obama claimed ISIS has been “contained” and denied that the Islamic group was “gaining strength.”

UPDATE V:

PARIS ATTACK: Terrorist ‘Refugee’ Had
Syrian Passport; Death Toll Now 129

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PARIS JIHAD: Major Terrorist Attack UPDATE: French President Declares Emergency, Says ‘Several Dozen Dead’

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UPDATE 9:50 p.m. ET: Islamic terrorists struck the heart of France, murdering scores of civilians Friday in a bloody night of carefully coordinated violence. More than 150 people were reported killed, most of them at the Bataclan arts center where Muslim gunmen opened fired during a rock concert, then began systematically executing young people who could not escape. By the time police stormed the hall and ended the slaughter, 112 had been killed at the concert venue, according to the French interior ministry. Elsewhere, CNN reported, at least one suicide bomber struck the Stade de France, where a soccer game between France and Germany was being played.

UPDATE:

ISIS Claims Credit for Paris Slaughter;
Death Toll 127 in Islamic Terror Attack

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(5:35 p.m. ET) There has been a major Islamic terrorist attack tonight in Paris. An explosion was reported at a Germany-France soccer game, and gunmen have taken hostages in a concert hall.

The death toll is already estimated at 35-40.

UPDATE 5:52 p.m. ET: CNN reports:

— At least 60 people have died in the attacks, CNN affiliate BFMTV reported.
— Counterterrorism officials around the United States have convened secure conference calls to try to gather information and to assess whether there is any indication of threats in the U.S, according to two U.S. counterterrorism officials. There is nothing to indicate any threat to U.S. cities so far. Immediate suspicion for the events in Paris falls to so-called returnees — people who have traveled to Syria and Iraq and have returned, the officials said.
— At least six shootings took place in Paris and three explosions took place at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis late Friday, CNN affiliate BFMTV said. Two or three gunmen entered the Bataclan concert hall while opening fire on law enforcement, BFMTV reported. A source earlier told CNN there were six to eight hostage takers, citing a person they were talking to inside the venue.
— CNN’s Jim Bittermann, who is based in Paris, reports a producer who is at the Bataclan tells him that police are firing at a rooftop position near the venue.
— President Francois Hollande was evacuated at halftime of the France-Germany soccer match.
— Hollande, Prime Minister Manuel Valls and Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve are holding a crisis meeting at the Interior Ministry to address the attacks in Paris and the explosions in Saint-Denis, according to BFMTV.
— Paris police tell CNN there were three attacks. Attackers reportedly used AK-47 automatic weapons. There were one or two explosions at the Stade de France.

UPDATE 5:59 p.m. ET: In a brief statement at the White House, President Obama said, “France is our oldest ally,” and “Paris itself represents the timeless values of human progress.” In Paris, meanwhile, President Hollande declared a state of emergency, announcing that the French military was being deployed and that France is closing its borders.

UPDATE 6:14 p.m. ET: Associated Press:

Hollande, in a televised address to his nation, said the nation would stand firm and united against the attackers.
He said security forces are assaulting one of the sites hit by Friday’s attacks, without elaborating.
“It’s a horror,” he said.

UPDATE 6:25 p.m. ET: BBC reports:

France has declared a national state of emergency and has closed its borders after at least 40 people were killed in multiple shootings in Paris.
At least 15 people have been killed near the Bataclan arts centre, where up to 60 people are reportedly being held hostage, French media say.
Three people were killed in an attack at the Stade de France, with some reports suggesting a suicide blast.
Paris authorities have asked people to stay indoors.
Military personnel are being deployed across Paris.

(Via Memeorandum.) There are reports that gunmen at the concert hall are executing hostages one by one. Meanwhile, it has just been reported that five explosions were heard near the concert hall.

UPDATE 6:45 p.m. ET: Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch:

Islamic jihadis have long had France in their crosshairs. The Islamic State last year urged jihad attacks against the “spiteful and filthy French.” These attacks took place near the site of the Charlie Hebdo massacre. That massacre was an attempt to force the West to adopt Sharia blasphemy restrictions; there will be more of that.
Indeed, there will be much, much more of this bloodshed in the coming months and years. Meanwhile, watch for an avalanche of “This has nothing to do with Islam” statements from Western leaders and the mainstream media.

It is reported that French police are currently assaulting the Bataclan concert hall where gunmen were killing hostages.

UPDATE 6:56 p.m. ET: French police have just said their assault on the Bataclan concert hall has ended successfully. Police stormed the hall, killing two gunmen. The number of innocents killed and wounded remains unknown.

UPDATE 7:12 p.m. ET: New York Times:

French television and news services quoted the police as saying at least 60 people had been killed and many dozens wounded in apparently coordinated attacks, eclipsing the deaths and mayhem that roiled Paris in the Charlie Hebdo massacre and related assaults around the French capital less than a year ago.
One of the explosions, which French news services said may have been a suicide bombing, struck near the country’s main sports stadium where Germany and France were playing a soccer match, forcing a hasty evacuation of President François Hollande. As the scope of the assaults quickly became clear, he convened an emergency cabinet meeting and announced that France was closing its borders.
“As I speak, terrorist attacks of an unprecedented scale are taking place in the Paris region,” he said in a nationally televised address. “There are several dozen dead, lots more wounded, it’s horrific.”

UPDATE 7:48 p.m. ET: Fox News is citing reports that as many as 100 were killed inside the Bataclan concert hall. The total number of deaths from these attacks in Paris may exceed 140.

UPDATE 8:30 p.m. ET: The headline at Fox News:

Terrorists slaughter at least
118 in Paris music hall,
40 others in separate attacks





 

Faisal Mohammad: Authorities Say Stabbings at UC-Merced Not Terrorism

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The knife-wielding student who stabbed four people Wednesday before being shot by police at the University of California-Merced was not acting on a political motive, officials say. Faisal Mohammad, 18, was pursuing a personal vendetta against fellow students who had excluded him from a study group, according to authorities:

The California student who went on a stabbing rampage before being shot dead by police had planned to kill a police officer, steal a gun and shoot the classmates who had kicked him out of a study group.
Faisal Mohammad, 18, a freshman who majored in computer science and engineering at the University of California, Merced, stabbed four people on Wednesday.
But the teenager, of Santa Clara, California, ‘had far greater intentions to do damage’, Merced County Sheriff Vern Warnke said.
According to a two-page manifesto found stuffed in his pocket during an autopsy on Thursday, Mohammad had a detailed plan of revenge for the students who had expelled him from their group.
Mohammad had been carrying two plastic baggies of highly flammable petroleum jelly, ziptie handcuffs, night vision goggles, duct tape and a hammer in his backpack when he was shot in the back by officers.
He had planned to hold students hostage by using the plastic ties to bind their hands to their desks during class on Wednesday morning.
hen, he planned to call police with a fake distress call, ambush the responding officers and take their guns.
He intended to squirt the petroleum jelly on the floor to create a slippery surface for anyone entering the classroom.
But his attack on the class was foiled almost immediately and the four people he stabbed with a hunting knife — two students, a staff member and a building contractor — are all expected to recover.
Sheriff Warnke said the document written by Mohammad discussed his expulsion from the study group and listed the students he sought to harm as well as other violent musings.
Warnke added that although Mohammad made several references to ‘Allah’, he does not believe the attack was connected to religion or terrorism.
Earlier on Thursday, UC Merced Chancellor Dorothy Leland said the attacks were motivated by ‘personal animosities’ and a ‘vendetta’, not a political agenda. . . .
The student, described as ‘anti-social’ by his roommate, was ‘having fun’, one victim said, as he slashed the first student in the throat inside a classroom.
When construction worker Byron Price, 31, heard the commotion and intervened, he was stabbed in his left side by Mohammad as he tried to stop the attack.
‘He had a smile on his face, he was having fun — which is more what bothers me,’ Price told CBSFresno.
Sheriff Vern Warnke said that Price’s entrance into the classroom likely prevented the death of the first victim who was attacked.

Despite official statements that Mohammad’s attack was motivated by personal grievances, several commentators — including Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer — noted the resemblance between the UC-Merced violence and a recent series of knife attacks by Palestinian terrorists against Jews in Israel:

The Twitter account on which the attack was praised appears to be one of thousands that regularly reference ISIS, according to Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium (TRAC), which translated the message. Veryan Khan, of TRAC, which monitors ISIS and other groups on social media, said ISIS mounted a call for stabbings on Oct. 18, with the release 19 videos, but could not say what motivated Wednesday’s attack.
“Over the past three days, the Islamic State has released nineteen videos encouraging Palestinians stabbing attacks on Israel,” Khan said. “The media campaign coincides with a wave of renewed violence between Israel and Palestine, after a wave of seemingly lone wolf attacks by Palestinians targeting Israelis.”

Determining the motive of a “lone wolf” terrorist could be difficult. Even if Mohammad himself declared his actions to be a matter of personal revenge, it may be that his antisocial attitude — the moody loner fantasizing about violent reprisals against those he felt had wronged him — could reflect the cultural alienation of a young Muslim man unable to adapt to secular Western society. Speculation about such factors, which liberals would condemn as “Islamophobia” when regarding Muslim criminals, is commonplace when violence is committed by persons whose background and choice of targets could be interpreted as suggesting a “right-wing” political motivation. If the UC-Merced attack had been perpetrated by a white Christian male who praised God in his “manifesto,” liberals would be quick to claim that this was right-wing violence inspired by talk radio, Fox News or Republican politicians.

The difference between (a) legitimately trying to understand the motives of attackers, and (b) trying to score political points for partisan advantage, is one we should always keep in mind when we see how the liberal media pick and choose which violent incidents to give saturation coverage, and how that coverage presents the “moral of the story.”

Too many journalists view the news as a series of opportunities to indulge in didacticism, intended to teach the news consumer liberal political lessons. This attitude means that events which don’t fit the liberal narrative are treated as “local news” of no national significance, whereas events that lend themselves to a liberal interpretation are highlighted, given in-depth coverage and made a focus of commentary by “experts” and pundits. Conservative criticism of media bias should be aimed at exposing to public scrutiny the falsehoods and distortions created by the political prejudices that prevail in the news industry.

People must have access to every fact in order to be able to form accurate judgments, and media bias tends to deprive people of facts that would lead people to question the liberal worldview. Once people realize that the media are attempting to deceive them, and that this attempted deception has political motives — e.g., to enhance the electoral success of the Democrat Party — then they begin to view media skeptically, to question the accuracy of what is reported, to seek out facts that are overlooked by the liberal media. There is a difference between skepticism and paranoia, of course, but once we realize that the partisan tilt in America’s newsrooms favors Democrat over Republicans by a factor of at least 4-to-1, there is never thereafter a moment when we can entirely trust the media to tell us the whole truth.

Rush Limbaugh: The Conservative-Media
Revolution Has Forced the Liberal Media
to Abandon Any Pretense of Objectivity

Limbaugh’s point is that in the past 30 years, under pressure from conservative critics, allegedly “objective” journalists have been unable to maintain their pretense of neutrality. The biased reporters, editors and producers at major news organizations like NBC, ABC, the Associated Press and the New York Times are no longer able to imagine that they are doing anything else than performing as cheerleaders for the Democrat Party. They cannot pretend to be anything other than partisan propagandists and, knowing that their readers and viewers are aware of their dishonesty, these journalists must either drop the mask of “objectivity” or else lose whatever self-respect they ever had.





 

Hillary Is Lying, People Are Dying

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Patrick Howley reports:

Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s embassy in Tripoli, Libya, warned State Department officials in Washington, D.C., not to blame the Youtube video, Innocence of Muslims, for the Benghazi terrorist attack.
The House Benghazi Committee released a new email Saturday that a Tripoli embassy official sent to Clinton’s underlings in Washington, D.C., on September 14, 2012, two days before Susan Rice appeared on Sunday talk shows to use the administration’s “video” talking point.
“Colleagues, I mentioned to [redacted] this morning, and want to share with all of you, our view at Embassy Tripoli that we must be cautious in our local messaging with regard to the inflammatory film trailer, adapting it to Libyan conditions,” the official wrote.

You can read the whole thing. The official in Tripoli told the State Department that it was “increasingly clear that the series of events in Benghazi was much more terrorist attack than a protest which escalated into violence,” and warned against conflating the simultaneous protests in Egypt with “this well-planned attack by militant extremists” in Libya. What this email shows is that Clinton cannot plausibly claim she believed the lies about the Benghazi attack that she and others (including Susan Rice) promoted in the days after Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed on Sept. 11, 2012.

The Benghazi cover-up was necessary, first of all, to protect Obama’s re-election campaign message that, with the death of Osama bin Laden, the threat of Islamic terrorism had been defeated. By deliberately lying — portraying the Benghazi attack as a protest against a YouTube video — Clinton sought to reverse the meaning of this event, creating the false impression that right-wing “Islamophobia” was a greater threat than radical Islam itself. Furthermore, there is clear evidence that what happened at Benghazi was a consequence of U.S. covert operations to influence the so-called “Arab Spring” uprisings that had begun in 2011. Questions about what Ambassador Stevens was doing in Benghazi, and the nature of the CIA operations in Libya he was apparently overseeing, are at the heart of what this scandal is really about.

 

“What difference, at this point, does it make?”

The answer to Hillary Clinton’s now-infamous question is that the death of four Americans in Benghazi brought to light an aspect of Obama administration policy that continues to have consequences for U.S. national security. Was the “Arab Spring” a spontaneous occurrence or was it a result of a U.S. covert policy intended to overthrow the governments of Libya, Egypt and Syria? There have been reports that the United States supplied weapons to the rebels who toppled Libyan dictator Moammar Qaddafi and then sought to recover those weapons, shipping them to opponents of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. It is believed that Ambassador Stevens went to Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, as part of that operation, to conduct negotiations with Libyan rebels who were refusing to give up their U.S.-supplied weapons. This backstory of the Benghazi attack, as part of a much larger U.S. policy in the North Africa/Middle East region, is why this ongoing investigation cannot be dismissed as mere partisan politics or a trivial concern with Hillary Clinton’s personal emails. The current crisis surrounding ISIS militants in Syria and Iraq, which has caused the deployment of U.S. Special Forces to Syria, is directly connected to the policies that Hillary Clinton implemented and supervised during her tenure as Secretary of State.

Meanwhile, Islamic extremists are exploiting the instability that the Obama administration’s policies have created. Egypt:

ISIS has released a video purporting to show the final moments of the Russian jet that crashed in Egypt, killing all 224 people on board.
The terror group has claimed it downed the aircraft, but has not said how it might have done so. The horrific footage . . . shows a large structure resembling a plane falling through the air, before being consumed by a mass of smoke.
Cairo and Moscow have denied any possible terrorism link in the incident, which was one of the deadliest Airbus crashes in the past decade.
However, it has emerged that the aircraft broke up mid-air scattering debris and bodies over a wide area. . . .
Professor Michael Clarke, Director General of the Royal United Services Institute said early indications suggest that the jet may have been destroyed by a bomb on the aircraft.
He told BBC Radio Five Live: ‘This aircraft was 200km north of its take-off zone, that means it was flying at around 31,000 feet. Terrorists, as far as we know, don’t have equipment to take down an aircraft at that height.
‘They have shoulder-launched missiles, known as man-portable missiles. They can get aircraft when they are taking off or landing, when they are going low and slow. But anything above 8,000 or 9,000 feet is out of the range of the weapons that they’ve got.’
He said the area where the jet crashed is a known location for groups affiliated to Al Qaeda and ISIS, but it was highly unlikely that a ground-based weapon was responsible for the in-flight break up.
‘Early reports said it split into two and that suggests a catastrophic failure, not a mechanical failure, but perhaps an explosion on board, so I would be much more inclined to think, if we have to guess at this stage, it is much more likely to have been a bomb on board than a missile fired from the ground.’

A terrorist attack in Egypt against a Russian airliner, at a time when Russian forces are engaged in defending Assad’s regime in Syria? We are seeing the consequences of a disastrous policy failure by the Obama administration, a failure in which Hillary Clinton is deeply implicated.