Lightning Times

Morning Report: 2015-01-08

France: Policewoman's killer takes hostages in kosher supermarket as Charlie Hebdo killers take refuge and hostage in printing plant. The jihadi brothers Charif and Said Kouachi fled north from Paris after the massacre at Charlie Hebdo, and they're surrounded in Dammartin-en-Goele. Meanwhile, the man who shot a policewoman Thursday is probably the guy who's holding women and children hostage in a kosher market in eastern Paris, where two people are already reported killed. It's not officially confirmed whether the two strings of terrorist attacks are connected, although that would be a reasonable guess.

Nigeria: Boko Haram attack devastates Baga. Reports on the number killed range from 100 to 2000. Witnesses said the attackers were indiscriminately shooting civilians, burning buildings, and looting.

Morning Report: 2015-01-07

France: Shooting attack at Charlie Hebdo kills 12; terrorists still at large. Victims included cartoonists Stephane Charbonnier, Georges Wolinski, Bernard 'Tignous' Verlhac and Jean Cabut. Daily Mail has more. Video (English) at Agence France-Presse.. Details still emerging.

World Today: 2014-02-26

Ukraine after Yanukovych; whither Crimea? Following a period of intense protests beginning in mid-February, Ukraine's president Viktor Yanukovych was deposed last weekend. He's now out of sight while Ukrainians, and the rest of the world, take a look at how he spent his wealth (video). Attention is now turning to the Crimea, that big peninsula that extends from continental Ukraine into the Black Sea. Stratfor has a video (registration) on the Crimea, and a free video on Russia and Ukraine (dated from before Yanukovych was overthrown). As of this morning, Reuters is reporting that Putin has put Russian troops on alert:

President Vladimir Putin put Russian combat troops on high alert for war games near Ukraine on Wednesday, the Kremlin's most powerful gesture yet after days of sabre rattling since its ally Viktor Yanukovich was toppled as president in Kiev.

Thousands of ethnic Russians, who form the majority in Ukraine's Crimea region, demonstrated for independence for the peninsula that hosts part of Moscow's Black Sea Fleet. They scuffled with rival demonstrators, mainly from the Tatar minority, who support the new authorities in Kiev. ...

RIA Novosti describes this as a "snap check" and RT calls it a "surprise drill", but Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu insists that “The drills are not connected with events in Ukraine at all.” Finally, the specter of anti-Semitism haunts yet another revolution.

Nigeria: Boko Haram killings continue. Nigeria's ongoing battle with the jihadi terrorist group Boko Haram continues to claim innocent lives. The latest Boko Haram attack in Yobe state in northern Nigeria has killed 59 students as of this morning.

President Goodluck Jonathan called the attack "callous and senseless murder ... by deranged terrorists and fanatics who have clearly lost all human morality and descended to bestiality".

The Islamists, whose struggle for an Islamic state in northern Nigeria has killed thousands and made them the biggest threat to security in Africa's top oil producer, are increasingly preying on the civilian population.

Militants from Boko Haram, whose name means "Western education is sinful" in the northern Hausa language, have frequently attacked schools in the past. A similar attack in June in the nearby village of Mamudo left 22 students dead.

Venezuela: Protests continue. Reuters: 'At least 13 people have been killed, about 150 injured, and more than 500 arrested during protests and violence that have flared since the start of February.' Anti-Chavez protesters say they have been beaten, tortured, and threatened with guns to the head and other places since the beginning of the current wave of protests. Fausta's 2/24 Carnival links to Rory Carroll at Guardian / Observer:

Hugo Chávez used to call it la revolución bonita (the pretty revolution), but the world looked at Venezuela last week and saw only ugliness. Protesters gunned down in the streets, barricades in flames, chaos. One of the dead was a 22-year-old beauty queen shot in the head.

With the government censoring and cowing TV reports, many of the images came from smartphones, grainy and jerky snippets filled with smoke and shouts. One fact loomed through them all: Chavismo, a hybrid system of democracy and autocracy built on populism, petro-dollars and quasi-socialism, was reaping the consequences of misrule.

Demonstrations in Caracas, Valencia, Mérida and other cities turned lethal, with student-led rallies provoking a fierce backlash from National Guard units and paramilitaries. They roared on motorcycles into "enemy" neighbourhoods, guns blazing. Families piled mattresses against windows to shield against bullets. ...

Video here. Carlos Eire at Babalu writes:

Somewhere, in their Cuban-authored playbook, the Chavistas are surely counting on future visits to a remaining tiny number of Jews by Jewish congregations from around the world who come loaded with gifts.

The playbook probably reads something like this: "Be sure to make life so miserable for the Jews that they have to leave. But also make sure a tiny minority stays behind. In a few years, Jews from all over the world will come to visit them and provide your "Revolution" with a very significant revenue stream."

Also (video - Español, de CNN En Español) Entrevista con Gen. Ángel Vivas.

“Los cubanos están en todas las estructuras del Estado venezolano”, dijo.

Morning Report: 2013-01-02

France: Charlie Hebdo publishes Mohammed comic. The French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo published on Wednesday a comic book biography of Islam's founder entitled "The Life of Mohammad," based on writings by a Franco-Tunisian sociologist.

Turkey: Erdogan talks to Kurds. Walter Russell Mead: 'It’s all very messy and complicated, but a settlement with the PKK would bring big advantages to Turkey—not least an end to the guerrilla war in the southeast, which has drained a lot of blood and treasure and hampers Turkey’s efforts to exert influence in the region.'

Space: Giant leaps for private space travel. Space.com: 'Of the many spacecraft being developed only one has already flown in space, the Dragon capsule built by Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) in Hawthorne, Calif.The unmanned cargo ship has flown in space three times so far, and carried supplies to the International Space Station twice in 2012 — first in May during a test and then again October. ...' But there's lots more in the works. Full article at the link.

Commentary: Scary times - VDH.

There is no historical appreciation among the new progressive technocracy that central state planning, whether the toxic communist brand or supposedly benevolent socialism, has only left millions of corpses in its wake, or abject poverty and misery. Add up the Soviet Union and Mao’s China and the sum is 80 million murdered or starved to death. Add up North Korea, Cuba, and the former Eastern Europe, and the tally is egalitarian poverty and hopelessness. The EU sacrificed democratic institutions for coerced utopianism and still failed, leaving its Mediterranean shore bankrupt and despondent.

Nor is there much philosophical worry that giving people massive subsidies destroys individualism, the work ethic, and the personal sense of accomplishment. There is rarely worry expressed that a profligate nation that borrows from others abroad and those not born has no moral compass. ...

Bulgaria: Bomb Kills Israeli Tourists

NBC News: 'UPDATED AT 1:11 p.m. ET: SOFIA, Bulgaria -- Israel's prime minister blamed Iran for the deadly explosion that struck a bus of Israeli tourists in Bulgaria. "Iran is responsible for the terror attack in Bulgaria, we will have a strong response against Iranian terror," said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Haaretz reported. Earlier: An explosion on a bus carrying Israeli tourists at an airport in the Bulgarian Black Sea city of Burgas on Wednesday killed at least three people and injured as many as 20 others, the interior ministry told NBC News. ...'

Fox: 'A bus carrying mostly Israeli youth in a Bulgaria exploded near an airport Wednesday, killing 7 people, according to local media reports, and wounding at least 27 others, police and hospital officials say. Witnesses told Israeli media that the huge blast occurred soon after someone boarded the vehicle. ...'

Atlas: 'Open season on the Jews, anywhere and everywhere the jihad has its tentacles. A bus of young Jews was blown up today, death toll still undetermined. At least 3 dead. Israel has previously warned Bulgaria of the threat posed by Hizbollah. This comes on the anniversary of the fatal bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which killed 85 people and wounded hundreds.'

Tablet's new editor, Adam Chandler has more.

Eurabia

Andrew Bostom:

Serendipitously, perhaps, in the midst of Geert Wilders’ visit to the U.S., warning of the consequences of Europe’s ongoing Islamization, today I came across a State Department memo from the U.S. embassy in Madrid, dated September 19, 1974 (1974 Madrid 05880), declassified June 30, 2005. This document reveals that the U.S. was fully aware of the advent of “Eurabia,” precisely as self-characterized in an official European socio-political journal bearing the title Eurabia.

Eurabia was the title of a journal published in the mid-1970s by the European Committee for the Coordination of Friendship Associations with the Arab World. ...

Go read the rest.

Geert Wilders: Speech at Gatestone Institute, New York

Geert Wilders:

It is great to be in America, the beacon of liberty, the land of the free, the land where people are still allowed to speak freely. I know what I am talking about. I was acquitted after a legal ordeal that lasted almost 3 years. I had been brought to court for criticizing Islam.

Though at the end of the day I was acquitted, the court case had been a disgrace. It was a time-, money- and energy-consuming nightmare. This charade that happened in the Netherlands for the last few years could not have happened in your great country, where the First Amendment guarantees people the freedom to express their opinions.

The first Amendment is what we need in the Netherlands and Europe.

I am in New York for the release of my book "Marked for Death". It explains why Islam is the largest threat to freedom which the world is currently facing. It argues why Islam is a totalitarian ideology rather than a religion. It reveals how Islam has already profoundly changed Europe in the last decades. It exposes the cultural relativism which has affected Europe so deeply that many in Europe refuse to stand for liberty and prefer to appease Islam.As you know, people who speak out like myself and I pay a steep price for speaking these truths. Apart from legal attempts to silence me, there are also the threats by radical Muslims to kill me. I have been living under permanent police protection for almost eight years now. People like me pay this price for speaking the truth about Islam. But I do not regret one word. I see it as my duty to warn the West. ...

The First Freedom

Via Internet Haganah, excerpt from Der Spiegel's interview with outgoing Europen Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security, Franco Frattini.