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.

Morning Report: 2015-01-05

Canada: Christian convert and refugee fears deportation. Edmonton resident "John Calvin" was expected to go into the family business, which was terrorism. The son of a Hamas family had other ideas, though, and converted to Christianity. He declared refugee status while in Canada, but on New Year's Eve 2014 he received a letter of deportation. Calvin argues that returning to the Middle East will mean certain death for him as an ex-Muslim and supporter of Israel. And it doesn't help matters that he's gay.

Afghanistan / USA: President Ashraf Ghani suggests reconsidering troop withdrawal. '"Deadlines concentrate the mind. But deadlines should not be dogmas," Ashraf Ghani told CBS' "60 Minutes" in an interview that aired Sunday evening. ...'

USA: Jury selection begins for Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tsarnaev trial. 'Some 1,200 potential jurors are due to report to federal court in Boston beginning on Monday as selection begins for the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, charged with the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people and wounded more than 260 others. ... '

Nigeria: BH overruns MNJTF base at Baga (follow-up). Long War Journal:

At around 5 a.m. yesterday, the al Qaeda-linked jihadists attacked the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) base, which is located just outside the town of Baga in northeastern Borno state, and battled with soldiers for hours. The Boko Haram fighters attacked the MNJTF base "from all directions," and forced the soldiers to abandon the base, the BBC reported. The number of those killed during the assault, including Nigerian and allied troops as well as Boko Haram fighters, has not been disclosed.

Premium Times via AllAfrica:

In the last two years, Baga has suffered five major attacks with high casualty - the latest was that of November 2014 when Boko Haram terrorists ambushed fishermen returning from a night fishing expedition and slit the throats of 43 of them.

Details of the damage done in the Saturday attack is still sketchy even as residents of neighbouring village of Monguno who reportedly heard the gunshots and explosions echoing in their neighborhood fled to Maiduguri for safety.

Morning Report: 2012-08-21

Ethiopia: PM Meles dies. 'Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has died, Ethiopian state television said on Tuesday. Meles had not been seen in several weeks. The government said in July that he was taking a break to recover from an unspecified condition. State television said Deputy Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn will be acting prime minister. ...'

Syria: FSA bans torture, prisoner killings. 'The Free Syrian Army issued new orders Aug. 20 forbidding the torture and killing of prisoners following criticism by U.N. investigators, Reuters reported. ...'

Russia / Israel: Gazprom eyes Leviathan. 'Russian state-owned energy company Gazprom is studying opportunities to participate in the development of Israel's Leviathan offshore natural gas field, Bloomberg reported Aug. 20 ...'

Turkey: Gaziantep bombing kills 8. CNN: 'Eight people were killed in a bombing in the Turkish city of Gaziantep, an official in the Interior Ministry said Monday. A spokesman for the Gaziantep governorship said 66 people were wounded in the blast. ...' Bianet - English: 'An explosion that took place near the Karşıyaka Police Station in the southeastern province of Gaziantep killed eight people and injured 61 at around 20:00 on Monday. The blast occured after someone detonated the explosives loaded inside a vehicle, Gaziantep Governor Erdal Ata told the broadcasting station NTV. The victims of the blast were passengers inside a nearby automobile and a minibus, according to reports. Two buses also caught fire in consequence of the explosion ...'

Gaziantep, previously and still informally called Antep; ʻayn tāb [ʕajn tæːb] is a city in southeast Turkey and amongst the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world. The city is located 185 kilometres (115 miles) northeast of Adana and 127 kilometres by road north of Aleppo, Syria. The city has two urban districts under its administration, Şahinbey and Şehitkamil. It is the sixth most populous city in Turkey.

USA / terrorism: Hezbollah funds seized. BBC: 'The US authorities say they have seized $150m (£95m) from a bank allegedly linked to a money-laundering scheme of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Last year, US officials accused the Lebanese Canadian Bank (LCB) of helping the group launder profits from drug trafficking and other crimes. The funds were allegedly used to ship cars from the US to West Africa, with the proceeds smuggled back to Lebanon. ...'

Analysis: Benjamin Kerstein on Chomsky, NPR. Michael Totten interviews Benjamin Kerstein on Noam Chomsky:

Benjamin Kerstein: There are a couple of main points that should be made. First, Chomsky is an absolutely shameless liar. A master of the argument in bad faith. He will say anything in order to get people to believe him. Even worse, he will say anything in order to shut people up who disagree with him. And I’m not necessarily talking about his public critics. If you've ever seen how he acts with ordinary students who question what he says, it's quite horrifying. He simply abuses them in a manner I can only describe as sadistic. That is, he clearly enjoys doing it. I don't think anyone ought to be allowed to get away with that kind of behavior.

Second, Chomsky is immensely important to the radical left. When it comes to American foreign policy he isn't just influential, he's basically all they have. Almost any argument made about foreign affairs by the radical left can be traced back to him. That wasn't the case when he started out back in the late '60s, but it is now.

Third, he is essentially the last totalitarian. ...

Go read the rest. Now via a Facebook friend here's Kerstein in 2010 on NPR:

Put simply, NPR is for coastal liberals what Rush Limbaugh is for heartland conservatives: a means of relating to the world from within the confines of a specific subculture. The difference, of course, is that Limbaugh’s admirers do not force others to pay for it.

Nor, I imagine, are Limbaugh’s listeners laboring under the same illusion as NPR’s. Most of them probably understand that Limbaugh is giving opinions based on his political point of view, which is, to say the least, well known to his listeners. NPR’s listeners, on the other hand, are quite convinced that they are receiving nothing less than the pure, unvarnished, objective truth from the network. They believe themselves to be smart and informed, and thus the network they love must also be, perhaps by definition, smart and informative. ...

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.

Night Flashes

Commerce Department considers labeling Arab Americans a disadvantaged minority.

Bomb kills NATO fighter in Afghanistan.

Michael "Jihad" McCright admits to attacking Marines, tied to terror suspect Abdul-Latif.

Tehran fiddles while Flame burns.

"The Jews invented lawfare, the Jews invented law ... "

Commentary on Shurat ha-Din:

At a radical left-wing coffee shop in Washington, D.C. last month, Code Pink founder and “Freedom Flotilla II” passenger Madea Benjamin woefully recounted the moment she realized her boat, the Audacity of Hope, wouldn’t be legally permitted to leave a port in Greece to sail to Gaza.

“There was something called a ‘complaint’ that was put against our boat,” Benjamin explained to a crowd of anti-Israel activists stuffed into the back room of the restaurant. “Well, it didn’t take long for somebody to uncover that the person, or entity, that lodged the complaint was none other than this right-wing Israeli law center based in Tel Aviv, that knew nothing about our boat and certainly had no interest in the passengers’ safety.”

The “right-wing” law center that caused Benjamin so much grief is Shurat HaDin – the Israeli group that single-handedly took down the “Freedom Flotilla II” simply by filing creative lawsuits. In total, nine out of the 10 boats in the flotilla never touched Israeli waters, largely due to Shurat HaDin’s work.

Led by Nitzana Darshan-Leitner and her husband Avi Leitner, the legal center is pioneering a new strategy of Israeli-self defense: Pro-Israel Lawfare. ...

Read the rest at the link. And pay a visit to Shurat ha-Din.

"The Sheikh's New Clothes", Feminist Book by Nancy Kobrin, Under Threat from Islamic Fascists

The Jawa Report:

Rioting and threats of violence from Muslim extremists have apparently triumphed once again over the First Amendment.

According to psychoanalyst Dr. Nancy Kobrin and noted feminist Phyllis Chesler, who wrote the introduction, Kobrin's new book, "The Sheikh's New Cloth: The Naked Truth about Islamic Suicide Terrorism", was to be published in November by Looseleaf Law Publications, Inc., but Dr. Kobrin's contract was suddenly cancelled over concerns for their staff's safety.

Ms. Chesler writes:

...in the wake of the Pope's mistreatment, they would not be able to provide security for their staff people were her book to inflame the "Muslim street." Dr. Kobrin's book discusses, in depth, the normalization of cruelty and child abuse, including pederasty and daughter-abuse that is pandemic in the Arab Muslim world and how such shame and honor childrearing practices renders adults vulnerable to death-cult temptations and brainwashing. She focuses on the degradation of women in the Islamic world and how that is a crucial factor in suicide terrorism.

Bluto adds that 'Looseleaflaw is a small publisher and can hardly be blamed for getting cold feet' and I quite agree. Full post at the link. This is appalling, sad, and tragically ironic in light of some of my liberal friends' ravings about the supposedly imminent "brown shirts and book burnings" resulting from the new anti-terrorism bill.

More on Transatlantic Terror Plot

Debka: 'The White House says the terror plot to blow up six UK planes bound for the United States was a direct threat to the US. Five major American cities were targeted but not named. American officials reported the terrorists had planned to target flights to California, Washington and New York by United Airlines, American Airlines and Continental Airlines. The terror alert for incoming British flights was raised to red after the general level was put up to orange. The terror plot was suggestive of al Qaeda, according to US homeland security, which is sending federal air marshals to the UK. New York Mayor Bloomberg announced extra security measures at international airports and baggage searches on the subways as a precaution. All liquids have been banned on hand luggage in America. The suicide bombers were suspected of plotting to smuggle explosives aboard targeted flights in liquid form in hand luggage. Scotland Yard said 21 suspects, all British Muslims of Pakistani origin, had been arrested in the police operation and more were on the way. They said the terror plot was bigger than 9/11, would have involved deaths in “unimaginable” numbers and had “global dimensions.” ...'

ThreatsWatch explores the Pakistan connection and the link with Lashkar-e-Taiba.

From ABC News, Brian Ross and Richard Esposito report that British Intelligence had a man on the inside of the 30-man cell that sought to blow up US-bound airliners in a plot becoming known as “Bojinka II,” nearly identical in scope and method to Operation Bojinka I in 1995. In British Penetrate Terror Cell, it is also detailed that an arrest in Pakistan two days earlier caused the British operation – Operation Overt – to descend upon the cell before they learned of the individual arrested. A link between the deep mole and the arrested would have apparently tipped the cell to the British operation.

Also, the BBC reports that a Pakistan arrest several weeks ago originally unearthed the plot, which Pakistan claims uncovered the plot and led to the British investigation.

While it was feared that the Pakistani arrest on the Afghan border days ago would jeopardize the British operation, it is worth noting that the five ringleaders of the 30-man terror cell are not among the apprehended and on the loose, presumably still in Britain. Word from Pakistan would logically reach the leaders first. Did they take immediate evasive action and run aground in haste without informing the 24 who were eventually arrested? ...

The analysis disputes the conventional wisdom of the "busted-up, decentralized" terrorist organization, and of the "homegrown terrorist". Worth reading in fulll.

CTB has a roundup..

British authorities have been tracking the plot for months, and the arrests were made "when they learned several of the men had booked flights to the U.S. in the next several days, for apparent trial runs." The plot is walked back to Karachi, Pakistan. See the ABC News story on Matiur Rahman, key Al Qaeda operative who might have planned this operation. Also on ABC News site: Three alleged ringleaders have been identified; two recently traveled to Pakistan and later received money wired to them from Pakistan, reportedly to purchase tickets for the suicide bombers. Sources identify the three, now in custody, as Rashid Rauf, Mohammed al-Ghandra, and Ahmed al Khan. Fox News at 3 pm ET:"British authorities are 'urgently' seeking the arrests of up to 10 more suspects in the terrorist plot uncovered early Thursday morning to blow up U.S.-bound flights with liquid explosives carried onto planes via carry-on luggage." Twenty-four main suspects are now in custody. ...