I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by the way Las Vegas celebrates Veterans Day. Just about every fast casual restaurant in town has some kind of free food to offer, and a lot of them start handing it out on Monday. It’s not just the Red Robins and Applebees of the world, either; Hooters, McCormick & Schmick’s, and most of the local casinos were dishing up the freebies as well. Probably going to take me a week to work off all the food I stuffed in my face last Wednesday…anyhow, it’s time again for Rule 5 Sunday, where we share the linkagery generously offered by our fellow bloggers as a break from the current cruel misery of this world and its politics. As usual, many of these links are to pics normally considered NSFW, so exercise discretion in your clicking, or an NJP may be the least of your problems. This week’s appetizer is courtesy of Harley Davidson, whose salute to the military included this pic of Marisa Miller in 40s pinup drag.
Thanks to everyone for their linkagery, both here and on the FMJRA, where Rule 5 Sunday is once again the most-linked post of the past week! Deadline to submit links to the Rule 5 Wombat mailbox is midnight on Saturday, November 21.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
by Smitty
I’d like to pause the general awe at #OccupyResoluteDesk’s “ISIS containment” prowess.
<= This little tidbit was just on my LinkedIn page, and reminds on to encourage the residents of AZ to help un-jack our politics however they can.
This story about the Mizzou twits bemoaning the fact that events in The Real World had returned them to their prior media-attention-deprived state. Gives me an idea:
Trump is making waves about mass-deportation of illegal aliens. Let’s stipulate that, if they were packing the gear to get themselves here, they’ve already showed more capability than the current crop of college nitwits. Bear with me.
Instead of deporting illegal aliens, let’s deport all of academia! (Hollyweird: you’re on notice). Send all of these feckless administrators, Commie profs, and the minds they’ve polluted. . .to the Middle East.
I figure the encounter of Radical Islam and academia with be some sort of matter/anti-matter affair. Promises to be a jolly meltdown, but hey: haven’t they all earned it?
We can give American education a fresh kickstart by. . .educating the illegal aliens (who should be quite attentive to Americanization, having seen what just happened to academia.)
And we all live maturely ever after.
What do the Democrats blame the Paris tragedy on at the debate tomorrow night? Anthropogenic global warming, plus:
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.
— 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
