The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The New Exodus

Posted on | January 11, 2015 | 169 Comments

The four Jews killed in an attack on a kosher market in Paris will be buried in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced and, despite absurd leftist hysteria about “Islamophobia,” we need not doubt who is targeted by the real climate of hate in France:

A survey of French Muslims in 2014 found a community seething with anti-Semitism. Sixty-seven percent said “yes” when asked whether Jews had too much power over France’s economy. Sixty-one percent believed Jews had too much power in France’s media.

Jamie Kirchick recalls his trip to Paris last year:

The rabbi happened to be walking out of the synagogue with his wife. After dispensing with the facts of my Jewish background and American citizenship, I promptly asked, “What’s the situation?” Our shared patrimony obviated any need for further elaboration; as a European Jew addressing an American one, he knew exactly at what I was aiming. “There is no future for Jews in France,” he said.
If the Rabbi is right, and I fear he is, then it means that there is no future for Jews in Europe. For France is home to the continent’s largest Jewish community, numbered at over half a million. But it is declining rapidly. Emigration to Israel from France doubled in 2014 from 3,400 to 7,000 people. According to Israel’s Ministry of Aliyah and Immigrant Absorption, the number of Jews leaving Western Europe for the Jewish State increased 88 percent last year.

The Jew-haters are winning, in France as everywhere else, because the West’s intellectual elite are dishonest, decadent and cowardly.

(Hat-tip: Allahpundit at Hot Air.)

 

Category: France, Islam, Israel, Terrorism

Asked and Answered

Posted on | January 11, 2015 | 26 Comments

Headline at National Review:

Why Do the Media Refer to
‘the Prophet Mohammed’?

Always happy to be of assistance.

 

Category: Islam, Terrorism

FMJRA 2.0: Pretty Pink Rose

Posted on | January 11, 2015 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: Pretty Pink Rose

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Muslim Fanatic Defends Savage Murders by Fanatical Murderous Muslim Savages
Batshit Crazy News
Big Food, Big Garden, Big Life
Lonely Conservative
Regular Right Guy
Bits Blog
Law Of Markets
Cragin Media

Rule 5 Sunday: Happy New Year!
Animal Magnetism
Average Bubba
Political Rift
Proof Positive
A View from the Beach
Ninety Miles from Tyranny

Ex-Teenage Hooker Says She Was Forced to Have Sex With British Royalty
Batshit Crazy News
Da Tech Guy

In The Mailbox, 01.02.15
The Pirate’s Cove

Mental Illness on Parade
Political Hat

Three Home Invaders Shot After Trying to Rape Man’s 19-Year-Old Granddaughter
Political Hat
A View from the Beach

Best Mug Shot — Ever!
A View from the Beach

How to Become a Cat Lady
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Gay Patriot

FMJRA 2.0: Day Late And A Dollar Short, New Year’s Edition
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FBI Arrests Man and Woman in Maine for Pimping Runaway 13-Year-Old Girl
Political Rift
Batshit Crazy News

House of Representatives PSA
That Mr. G Guy
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The World Is Safe From Me Cramming Wool Up My Backside & Using It To Knit
That Mr. G Guy
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Thinking Man’s Zombie
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Feminism’s Campaign of Sexual Terror
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Observing The Decline

Man Rapes 7-Year-Old Girl at Gunpoint, Infects Her With Chlamydia
That Mr. G Guy
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REVEALED: Colonel Jessup’s Bean Jones
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In The Mailbox, 01.06.15
Batshit Crazy News
Regular Right Guy

UPDATED: MUSLIM TERRORISTS ATTACK MAGAZINE OFFICE IN PARIS, KILL 12; AL-QAEDA IN YEMEN?
Batshit Crazy News
Regular Right Guy
That Mr. G Guy
A View from the Beach

LIVE AT FIVE: 01.07.15
Batshit Crazy News
Regular Right Guy
A View from the Beach

OFFICIALS IDENTIFY THREE ISLAMIC TERRORISTS IN FRENCH ATTACK
That Mr. G Guy
Batshit Crazy News

LIVE AT FIVE: 01.08.15
That Mr. G Guy
Batshit Crazy News
Regular Right Guy
A View from the Beach

What I Read On My Christmas Vacation
Regular Right Guy
Batshit Crazy News
Political Rift
That Mr. G Guy

TERROR IN FRANCE: POLICE KILL MUSLIM FANATICS IN STANDOFFS; UPDATE: HUNT FOR FEMALE TERRORIST BOUMEDDIENE
Batshit Crazy News
Regular Right Guy
That Mr. G Guy

LIVE AT FIVE: 01.09.15
Regular Right Guy
Batshit Crazy News
Proof Positive

Shootout in Shawnee, Kansas
That Mr. G Guy
Batshit Crazy News

Top linkers this week:

  1.  Batshit Crazy News (19)
  2.  Regular Right Guy (11)
  3.  That Mr. G Guy (10)
  4.  A View from the Beach (6)

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery!


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Category: FMJRA Award

France and Terror

Posted on | January 11, 2015 | 41 Comments

Reacting to Ross Douthat’s New York Times column about the plight of France, I deployed my usual caustic sarcasm:

If the fate of the West is in any way dependent on the French, then our civilization is doomed beyond all hope of redemption.

This could create the impression of thoughtlessness, and I don’t wish to leave such an impression. Any wise person who has studied modern history knows that the French Revolution set loose upon the world a destructive spirit — presenting us alternately with the threat of anarchy and tyranny — that has since seldom permitted us to enjoy prosperity in peace. What is remarkable is the extent to which French intellectuals have caused this endless tide of human misery.

“We are not the converts of Rousseau; we are not the disciples of Voltaire; Helvetius has made no progress amongst us. Atheists are not our preachers; madmen are not our lawgivers. We know that we have made no discoveries, and we think that no discoveries are to be made, in morality; nor many in the great principles of government, nor in the ideas of liberty, which were understood long before we were born, altogether as well as they will be after the grave has heaped its mould upon our presumption, and the silent tomb shall have imposed its law on our pert loquacity.”
— Edmund Burke, 1790

Burke’s insight into the fundamental error of the French Revolution — its inspiration by such philosophes as Rousseau and Voltaire — could be extended to every “progressive” movement ever since.

The modern Cult of Progress, the characteristic “presumption” of the intelligentsia in their belief in their own superiority, has repeatedly afflicted humanity with enthusiastic schemes for political, social and economic change. Always these innovations require us first to destroy “hitherto existing society” (to quote the Communist Manifesto), and to entrust our future to the control of elites. Always the result is the same. From the Reign of Terror in revolutionary France to the Bolshevik Terror in revolutionary Russia, from Kristallnacht in Germany to the “Great Leap Forward” in China to the “Killing Fields” in Cambodia, the path of “progress” is a trail painted in blood, littered with the corpses of those murdered or starved to death for the sake of political theories.

Opponents and critics of these deadly theories — conservatives, as we have generally been called — are mocked and demonized by the intelligentsia, who lend their prestige to popularizing bad ideas, particularly inspiring naïve idealistic youth to imagine that they have found the formula for Progress and Reform that will lead them to that promised utopia, Equality. The young have no direct knowledge of the intelligentsia’s numerous previous failures, and what the young are taught in school about history does little or nothing to warn them against the dangers of such theoretical schemes.

For many decades now, America’s schools, colleges and universities have been less concerned about teaching facts than about teaching attitudes. The elites in academia and the bureaucratic mediocrities who operate the K-12 school system don’t teach young people that Lenin’s Bolsheviks and Hitler’s Nazis were both ideological heirs of the French Revolution. Indeed, it’s rare nowadays to meet anyone under 50 who knows a damned thing about the French Revolution. The history of the Soviet Union is largely neglected in our schools, while the history of Nazi Germany becomes a caricature — Hate is Bad Thing, in case you didn’t know — and the true lessons of that era are never taught. There was an excellent little book by A.L. Rowse, Appeasement, which should be required reading in our universities, but which is instead out of print, so that unless you search it out on Amazon you’ll never understand why Neville Chamberlain thought he could purchase “peace for our time” at Munich. Likewise, students must find for themselves William Shirer’s classic history of Hitler’s Germany, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, because their teachers will never assign it.

We are confronted with the spectacle of an entire generation of young people who are at once “educated” (possessing college diplomas) and yet also vastly ignorant. For the past 20 years, our youth have been led to believe that as long as they know how to look up something on the Internet (if they were honest, they might footnote everything in their assigned writings to Wikipedia) then there is never any need to know anything. One sometimes finds young feminists blabbering on about this or that example of patriarchal oppression in such a way as to make it evident that they haven’t read any more feminist theory that could be found in an introductory Women’s Studies textbook. Likewise, we have become accustomed to encounter young progressives lecturing us on economics when it is plainly evident they know almost nothing about the subject. (Learn something: Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell.)

As dismaying as is this vast ignorance among young liberals, many conservatives are not much better and, in some cases, much worse. Because it has become nearly impossible for any conservative to gain employment in academia — university faculty are nowadays as ideologically “diverse” as Stalin’s Politburo — there is no professional incentive for any conservative to study history in depth.

Sometimes it seems conservatives are trapped in current events, always arguing about whatever’s at the top of the Drudge Report, never bothering to trace our problems back to their historical roots which, as I say, can be found in the French Revolution.

From the day the mob stormed the Bastille in July 1789, events in France proceeded with a certain relentless logic. In October 1789, the revolutionaries exploited an economic crisis to incite the mob to march on Versailles. The economic policy of the revolutionaries, as Burke observed, could be summarized in a single word: “Assignats!”

Whatever the problems of the ancien regime, the revolutionary regime unleashed upon the citizenry of France new problems that became steadily worse, as Burke had presciently foreseen. Establishing a pattern for all such future regimes, revolutionary propagandists insisted that all problems of the regime could be blamed on the regime’s enemies — royalists and other counterrevolutionary elements of society, including Catholic clergy, to say nothing of hostile foreigners. More than 200 priests were killed during the September Massacres of 1792, the King and Queen were executed in January 1793, the Committee of Public Safety was established in April, Marat was assassinated in July and in September 1793 began the Terror. About 40,000 people were executed in a span of 10 months. In one of the last atrocities of the Terror, 16 Carmelite nuns were sent to the guillotine in Compiègne.

The acknowledged leader of the Terror regime, Robespierre, had been foremost among those who demanded the execution of the King: “Louis must die so that the nation may live.” Finally overthrown in July 1794, Robespierre himself was executed by the guillotine, to which his revolutionary fanaticism had sent so many others.

Does it not strike anyone as ironic that the French Republic, whose founding gave birth to the idea of revolutionary terror, should today be threatened by another species of terror? A nation that was baptized in blood for the sake of radical theories and slogans — “Liberté! Egalité! Fraternité!” — now encounters fanatics whose ideas are less theoretical but whose slogan is slightly more frightening: “Allahu akbar!”

Charlotte Corday could not be reached for comment.




 

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Category: France, History, Terrorism

FRANCE RALLIES; SUSPECT BOUMEDIENE FLEES TO SYRIA

Posted on | January 11, 2015 | 23 Comments

Hundreds of thousands are rallying today in the streets of Paris in the wake of Wednesday’s Charlie Hebdo massacre:

Dignitaries and world leaders are expected to join hundreds of thousands of people in France on Sunday in what government officials are calling a “unity rally” in defiance of a terrorism spree that claimed 17 lives.
French officials announced “exceptional measures” to protect not only the throngs expected to gather near the Place de la Republique in central Paris, but also a veritable who’s who of foreign leaders that will test security forces of a nation rocked by days of terrorist violence. . . .
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve has outlined extraordinary security measures to protect VIPs such as Britain’s David Cameron, Germany’s Angela Merkel and Spain’s Mariano Rajoy.
Other dignitaries expected to stand with French President François Hollande are Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Queen Rania, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Extremely heavy security measures are in place in Paris:

French law enforcement officers have been told to erase their social media presence and to carry their weapons at all times because terror sleeper cells have been activated over the last 24 hours in the country, a French police source who attended a briefing Saturday told CNN terror analyst Samuel Laurent.
Amedy Coulibaly, a suspect killed Friday during a deadly kosher market hostage siege, had made several phone calls about targeting police officers in France, according to the source.

Meanwhile, we learn Coulibably’s wife Hayat Boumediene — who had been suspected as an accomplice — had left Paris before her husband and Kouachi brothers made their attacks:

According to CNN, she left France on either January 1st of 2nd — days before the massacre at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Sources close to French security say she crossed the border into Spain and flown from Madrid to Istanbul, a common stopover for many potential jihadis, before attempting to cross the border into Syria by foot.

Interesting coincidence (which may not be a coincidence): A man named Lakhdar Boumediene was one of the so-called “Algerian Six” who were taken captive by U.S. forces in Bosnia in January 2002 after the 9/11 attacks and held at Guantanamo Bay. He was the lead plaintiff in the Boumediene v. Bush case. After his release from Guantanamo Bay in 2009, Lakhdar Boumediene lived in France.\

I’m not sure how common a surname “Boumediene” is among Algerians, but the coincidence of terror suspect Hayat Boumediene sharing a surname with a former terror suspect is quite suggestive.

UPDATE: Islamic terror is everywhere:

A German tabloid that reprinted cartoons from the French satirical paper Charlie Hebdo lampooning the Prophet Mohammed was targeted in firebombing Sunday, police said.
With security services on high alert after a killing spree in Paris by Islamic extremists, police in the northern German port city of Hamburg said no one was injured in the blaze at the headquarters of the regional daily Hamburger Morgenpost, which caused only slight damage.
“Rocks and then a burning object were thrown through the window,” a police spokesman told AFP.

UPDATE II: Ross Douthat on French decadence:

The France that endured a vicious terrorist attack last week is a France that has suffered, for decades and centuries, from anxieties about its own decline. And for good reason: Since the 18th century, when it bestrode Europe and seemed poised to dominate the globe, France has seen its relative power diminish, suffering defeats and humiliations at the hands of rival forces, from Britain’s navies to Germany’s jackboots to the invading might of American popular culture.
Now these longstanding anxieties have been thrown into relief by the murderous attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, an attack linked to all the various specters haunting contemporary France: fears of creeping Islamification and rising anti-Semitism, fears of the far right’s growing power and anti-Muslim backlash — and all of it bound up in a larger sense, amid economic stagnation, of betrayal at the hands of the Continent’s elite.
But notwithstanding these declinist fears, France isn’t actually irrelevant or spent. Instead, it’s arguably becoming more important, more central to the fate of Europe and the West.

If the fate of the West is in any way dependent on the French, then our civilization is doomed beyond all hope of redemption.




 

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Category: France, Islam, Terrorism

Meet ‘Tony’; Senator Reid’s Occasional 6’2″, 225lb, Taciturn ‘Exercise Instructor’

Posted on | January 10, 2015 | 12 Comments

by Sissypuss the Blog Kitty

Tony Scambilloni isn’t the sort of chap that gives interviews. He operates in that twilight realm at the edge of the law and traditionally documented society. Where everyone is “workin’ real hard, tryin’ to keep ‘the business’ legal”, and failing more often than not. Too many rules, changing way too often for a reasonable man even to read them all, much less keep up, you know?

I caught up with him at his posh little villa between Searchlight, Nevada and Lost Wages, from which Tony’s fourth wife had recently fled. He’s currently batching it with this cat named Guido. A black cat, about my size, who really needed to get his Brian Setzer on, if you know what I mean. So I paid Guido to go out and find some entertainment while I, suitably dyed and lensed, stroked Tony’s ankle. He was relaxing in his art studio. He never noticed the extra charm I’d put on the collar I’d borrowed from Guido, which let me silently beam questions into Tony’s mind. Ah, those clever ancient Egyptians!

While nobody’s art aficionado, it looked to me like Tony was forging ahead on Peace and War, by Reubens. He appeared a relaxed Robert DeNiro, in a comfortable, paint-speckled seersucker robe and slippers, hair jet black and combed straight back. My excellent sense of smell detected some kind of Rémy Martin in the snifter.

“A little frisky tonight, Guido?” he seemed mildly surprised, but not irritated as he fussed with Minerva’s helmet on the canvas. The ancient Egyptian charm worked well.

 

“Sure is shame, all that news about Harry Reid. . .” I prompted. The charm worked for light prodding, not mind-reading. The target required gentle encouragement to divulge information. Which is why, if you’re not Cleopatra, your best bet is not even to be human, and have someone in a moment as unguarded as this one. Especially when ‘someone’ is a promising mid-career thug like Scambilloni, who thought waterboarding is what the President does in Hawaii when he needs a break from the links.

“Yeah, Harry sure is tough sunny beach,” muttered Tony, putting down the brush and reaching for the snifter. “Goes without saying, though. You aren’t Kermit the Frog and Senate Majority Leader.”

 

“Some would argue that we now have Bunsen Honeydew for a Majority Leader.”

“Heh. This Rémy sure is packin’ the heat. I better lay off if I want to get this Reubens out by Monday.”

 

“A lot of people sure are laughing about Harry Reid’s excuse for his ‘Bad, Bad Leroy Brown’ look in the new Congress.” I was circling his right ankle, looking up at him. He looked right at me, but was lacking the imagination to grasp that I might be the one whispering in his head.

“See, the funny thing is, Reid’s being more honest than usual about this. Which is commendable. A businessman has got to be about keeping his promises.”

 

“Ah, but to whom?” I threw in a little purr as he scratched behind my left ear.

“Yeah, there’s hardly a thug in Vegas without a hook in Harry. Now and then I think I should be more curious about who makes these calls, but why bother? The simple truth is that Harry Reid had some commitments, and I was tasked to remind him of them by my union buddy Joey.”

 

“And how does one manage these. . .reminders?” A little meow, but not too wild.

“It’s always tricky with clients, especially politicians–they’re such sociopaths and narcissists, Harry Reid is a poster child. I guess that implies Harry Reid must have had a mother at some point? Poor woman. Anyway, it wasn’t my first visit to his ranch, so I knew where I was going, and the guards new my mug. Only this time there was nothing in my gym bag that wouldn’t pass muster with those grabby jerks at McCarran Airport–just gym gear. The guards would’ve objected to me packing heat, of course, so I left that in the lockbox in the car. As though I need a gun to conduct business, anyway.

“The gym’s down in the basement, I knew, with the usual sauna, jacuzzi, massage, and changing room amenities. I hadn’t myself worked out there previously, but the client had had trouble getting time with Harry before the Christmas shutdown. Harry was all blustery about being too busy, not having the time, the usual run-around we get from people who don’t want to fulfill their obligations. So Harry was going to ‘sqeeze’ the client in during a workout. I guess Harry still thinks he’s 35, or just doesn’t respect the client. Or didn’t understand that he’d gone far enough over the line that a helpful reminder was  deemed necessary.”

 

“So Reid is on the treadmill, getting his sweat on. . .”

“Yeah, I changed in a flash and walked into the fitness studio. Madonna. He’s got vintage Madonna on the speakers, which works great for my mood: I hate that little strumpet as much as I hate little weasels that don’t meet a commitment. He’s walking on the treadmill in a wife beater and shorts. He’s a bit too old to jog, so he does a brisk walk at 3.8 miles per hour.

“‘Happy New Year from M.W.,” I says.

“‘Well, I was led to understand that he was coming personally. Does sending a lackey indicate that he finally calmed down and decided to be reasonable?’ Reid came out swinging like usual. There was  no point in me discussing anything with him whatsoever. So I reached down and cranked the treadmill up to 6.8 miles and hour. Arrogantly, refusing to give anything, Harry tries to keep up, and can, initially.

So I crank the thing up to 10.0 miles an hour. If Harry could have ever supported a six minute mile, it was probably back during the Ford Administration. He tries to put his hand down on the treadmill’s handhold, but he kinda ‘misses’. With some help from me. The belt kinda flings him off the back end, where he SPLATS! on the foam rubber mat.

He’s got a pretty nice gym, including a big crossover frame facing a mirror wall, and the exercise bands he mentioned to KNPR. Seeing the racks of dumbells bolted to the floor in front of the mirror, it wasn’t hard to make a human-sized slingshot with the big rubber bands, and pull them back to the crossover frame. Harry was dazed, and picking himself up from the mat when I set him inside the band and let go.

So he’s being really honest when he says he did it to himself, as his image rushed up in the mirror and really hit him hard by the eye. He bounced off, tried to control his motion, and staggered over into some cabinets holding towels and water bottles and wipes. He’s all laying on the floor real still. I checked to make sure he had a regular pulse, wasn’t bleeding too profusely, wasn’t going into shock, and such. Threw some towels on him for warmth while he lay there on his back, just to be on the safe side. Then I asked him that burning question on the tongues of all the wise guys:

‘What does Marcellus Wallace look like?’

Of course he’s too knocked out to answer.”

 

“Really? Are gangsters all Tarantino fanatics?” I’d just stopped and stared at him.

“Yeah. Well, I’ve got to change Cognac brands. This stuff must’ve been sitting too close to the absinthe, the way I’m blubbering on like some easy mark that came in on a bus from Duluth to blow his rent check in the slot machines. Guido, do you want the rest?”

Category: Democrats, Farce

The Hunt for Hayat Boumeddiene

Posted on | January 10, 2015 | 70 Comments

“The Charlie magazine team deserved what they got. Many warnings have been given before, but they were persistent. They had the freedom to use cartoons in their magazine, and we have the freedom to use bullets from our magazines. . . . The lions of Jihad have stood. The followers of Muhammad — peace be upon him — have never forgotten. As Sheikh Anwar Rahimahullah put it: The Dust Will Never Settle Down. Do not look for links or affiliation with Jihadi fronts. It is enough they are Muslims. They are Mujahideen. This is the Jihad of the Ummah.”
— Al-Qaeda message reported by the Intercept

Authorities in France continued searching Saturday for Hayat Boumeddiene, 26, the wife of Islamic terrorist Amedy Coulibaly, who was killed by police Friday in Paris. Coulibaly killed four people and took more than a dozen hostages at a kosher market in the Porte de Vincennes neighborhood, one of the city’s main Jewish communities. Coulibaly was an accomplice of brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi, Muslim terrorists who killed a dozen people in the Charlie Hebdo massacre Wednesday.

A report (translation added) from the French magazine Le Point:

Amedy Coulibaly et Hayat Boumediene ont été vus dans Paris ensemble jeudi dans la soirée, la veille de la prise d’otages, a-t-on appris samedi de source proche de l’enquête.

(Amedy Coulibaly and Hayat Boumediene were seen in Paris together Thursday night, the eve of the hostage-taking, a source close to the investigation said Saturday. . . .)

Hayat Boumediene, est recherchée dans l’enquête sur la fusillade mortelle de jeudi matin à Montrouge (Hauts-de-Seine), mais les enquêteurs n’excluent pas qu’elle ait pu “avoir un rôle logistique” dans la fusillade et la prise d’otages près de la Porte de Vincennes, selon cette source.
“Elle ne figure pas parmi les personnes décédées ou blessées lors de la prise d’otages et de l’assaut”, a expliqué une source proche du dossier.

(Hayat Boumediene is sought in the investigation into the fatal shooting [of police officer Clarissa Jean-Philippe] Thursday morning in Montrouge (Hauts-de-Seine), but investigators do not exclude that she could “have a logistical role” in [Coulibaly’s] shooting and hostage taking near the Porte de Vincennes, the source said. “She is not among the dead or injured during the hostage-taking and assault,” explained a source close to the case. . . .)

Des liens “constants et soutenus” existaient au travers de leurs compagnes entre Chérif Kouachi, l’un des auteurs de l’attaque de Charlie Hebdo, et Amedy Coulibaly, le preneur d’otages de Paris, a indiqué vendredi soir le procureur de Paris François Molins. . . .
L’épouse de Chérif Kouachi, Izzana Hamyd, est depuis mercredi en garde à vue. François Molins a révélé vendredi soir que l’examen de la téléphonie des suspects avait permis de déterminer que Mme Hamyd avait “passé plus de 500 appels sur l’année 2014 avec la compagne de Coulibaly”. Un chiffre qui est selon le haut magistrat “de nature à établir des liens constants et soutenus entre les deux couples”.

(There were “constant and sustained” links through their wives between Cherif Kouachi, one of the authors of the attack on Charlie Hebdo, and Amedy Coulibaly, the Paris hostage-taker, the prosecutor of Paris François Molins said Friday. . . . The wife of Cherif Kouachi, Izzana Hamyd, has been in custody since Wednesday. François Molins said Friday evening that a review of the suspects’ telephone records had determined that Ms. Hamyd had “spent more than 500 calls over the year 2014, with the wife of Coulibaly.” [The large number of phone calls] “establish consistent and sustained ties between the two couples.”)

Relatively little is known about Hayat Boumeddiene, who apparently was recruited to radical jihad by her husband:

Boumeddiene is believed to be of Algerian descent but changed her name to make it appear more French and reportedly worked as a cashier before being radicalised.
She and Coulibaly are believed to have married in a religious ceremony in 2009, which is not recognised in French law.
The 26-year-old reportedly lived in his apartment while he was in prison for his part in a plot to help Paris metro bomber Smain Ait Ali Belkacem escape.
During that time, he is believed to have met Cherif Kouachi. Both men and possibly Boumeddiene were avid followers of extremist Djamel Beghal. . . .
Beghal, a convicted terrorist who was once based at London’s Finsbury Park mosque, was jailed for plotting to bomb the American embassy in Paris and mentored Coulibaly and Cherif Kouachi, according to Le Monde. . . .
Boumeddiene was previously interviewed by French anti-terror police in 2010, it was reported, but it was unclear whether any action was taken against her.
During interrogation, she reportedly said she was inspired by her boyfriend and radicals she lived with to “read a lot of books on religion”.
“When I saw the massacre of the innocents in Palestine, in Iraq, in Chechnya, in Afghanistan or anywhere the Americans sent their bombers, all that . . . well, who are the terrorists?” she said, according to the Daily Mail.

You can read the Daily Mail report here. Boumeddiene’s views on U.S. policy were basically the same as any MSNBC viewer or Daily Kos contributor during the “Bush lied, people died” era. There was no fundamental disagreement between her and Keith Olbermann. The liberal Democrats who hate America and the foreign enemies who hate America only quarrel over why America is wrong, bad and evil. In the famous words of Jeanne Kirkpatrick, they always blame America first.




 

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Category: France, Islam, Terrorism

Shootout in Shawnee, Kansas

Posted on | January 9, 2015 | 14 Comments

Four criminals made a very bad decision:

The co-owner of a Shawnee gun store was fatally shot and three suspects were wounded during an attempted robbery Friday afternoon.
The gunfight broke out after four robbers entered She’s A Pistol, at 57th Street and Nieman Road, about 2:10 p.m., according to Shawnee police.
One robber struck the store’s female co-owner in the face, police said. The shooting started after that. Police didn’t know who fired first or how the gun battle unfolded, but it left the other co-owner and two robbers with critical gunshot wounds. A fourth person, one of the robbers, had less-serious gunshot injuries.
Later Friday, police said that the 44-year-old store owner had died of his injuries. . . .
A large amount of gunfire was exchanged, said Major Dan Tennis, a police spokesman.
Two of the robbers fled the store, shedding some of their clothing as they ran to the southeast, Tennis said. Shawnee police called in tracking dogs and the Kansas City police helicopter. . . .
Jim Allen, a member of the Johnson County Board of Commissioners who operates an insurance agency near the shooting location, spoke with a witness shortly afterward.
“She said she saw three individuals walking in wearing hoodies,” Allen said. “She said she had been suspicious because they had parked on the side of the building. One of them was carrying a duffel bag.”
When one of the individuals raised an arm, as if to shoot a weapon, Allen said, the witness called 911. . . .
She’s A Pistol caters to female gun owners and offers self-defense and gun safety classes. It is owned by Becky and Jon Bieker, according to state business records.

(Via Memeorandum.) Our condolences to the Bieker family. Based on this account, it is likely Jon Bieker’s quick thinking and accurate fire saved his wife’s life. The suspects have not yet been named, but all four of these criminals should face the death penalty.

 

Category: Crime
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