Jihad never sleeps - today's edition

ISIS is breathing down Europe's neck:

ISIS supporters have gloated about sleeper cells nestled in Europe which are poised to carry out horror attacks on innocent civilians.

And most frighteningly of all - terror experts have backed up the chilling claims.

During the migrant crisis it was feared jihadists could sneak through the European Union’s porous borders as thousands arrived into the continent daily from war-torn nations.

This included in July, Mohammad Daleel, a 27-year-old failed asylum seeker, who blew himself up outside a party in Ansbach, Germany.

ISIS later said he was a "soldier of the Caliphate".

There was doubt around the claims as the man was said to have mental health issues and had previously attempted suicide.

But now Express.co.uk has seen online material from ISIS supporters, claiming sleeper cells are waiting to attack.

One ISIS supporter boasted over Telegram app about upcoming attacks which he claimed would be as deadly as those in Nice and Paris.

He said: ”There are many cells being set up.

"That Islam will bring fear upon their land and each home.

"And many more attacks are carded.

"And on the way in many forms and fashions. 

"Until they stop."

The jihadist, who claims to be 28, said Muslims who support the caliphate attack Europe because of the war in Syria.

He also claimed those killed in Nice and Paris should have stopped their national governments from getting involved in the war in Syria.

He said: "Victory is by Allah and with the Muslims.

"What is to happen is to happen with no consequences to anyone

"What makes the citizens normal or innocent?

"When this is their rule or else stand up and abolish the governments."

Political scientist Colin Clarke from the American think-tank RAND has warned Europe not to take the claims lightly. 

And Israel's:

The jihadi organizations that have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State terror group have allegedly launched joint operations recently mere kilometers from Israel's border on the southern Golan Heights. 

A new video released by Islamic State media shows the ISIS-affiliated coalition advancing on the Yarmouk Valley region located in the triple border junction between Israel's Golan Heights, Jordan and Syria, Channel 2 reported Sunday night.  

According to the report, the video shows the militants fighting under the banner of ISIS advancing on Syrian rebel positions in the volatile Daraa province where Syrian military troops have fought with opposition forces throughout the Syrian civil war. 

We were warned that concurrent with the shrinking of its caliphate, ISIS would ramp up terror against its prime enemies.

 

 

Post-America's enemies smell weakness - today's edition

The headlines on Drudge this afternoon are real barrel of yoks.

Yesterday, I posted about Iran test-firing some missiles - yet again. Well, yet again, they've fired some more today, complete with some rather bellicose rhetoric from an official of this newly legitimized regime:

The Guards' deputy head General Hossein Salami said the missile tests were to demonstrate Iran's "defence and deterrent power". 

"We have massive stockpiles of ballistic missiles waiting for orders and ready to hit targets at any moment from various points across the country," Salami said.

Oh, and they were "emblazoned with the phrase 'Israel must be wiped out.'" 

And Kim Jong-un's choice of a backdrop for his photo ops with his regime's nuclear scientists is a bit in your face, don't you think?

 North Korea caused a new stir Wednesday by publicizing a purported mock-up of a key part of a nuclear warhead, with leader Kim Jong Un saying his country has developed miniaturized atomic bombs that can be placed on missiles.

The North's Rodong Sinmun newspaper carried photos on its front page showing Kim and nuclear scientists standing beside what outside analysts say appears to be a model warhead part - a small, silverish globe with a ballistic missile or a model ballistic missile in the background.

The newspaper said Kim met his nuclear scientists for a briefing on the status of their work and declared he was greatly pleased that warheads had been standardized and miniaturized for use on ballistic missiles.

ISIS is staying in touch, too.

An English-speaking ISIS jihadi has warned America they will be attacked 'very soon' and 'by Allah's permission do to your country what we did to Paris'.In a chilling new ISIS video, he warns the US and President Barack Obama that the terror group will 'kill, slaughter and burn your people'.The jihadi tells America it can expect an atrocity similar to the massacre in Paris in November in which 130 people were murdered in a wave of shootings and suicide bomb attacks.

Obviously, the Most Equal Comrade doesn't give a diddly about any of this. He's on his way to the South by Southwest Conference (which he also thought was more important than attending Nancy Reagan's funeral). And now imagine the various contenders for the MEC's job dealing with such an array of developments. Are you comfortable with the way Hillionaire, who has been criminally reckless with classified information and who lied about the circumstances of the Benghazi attack, establishes foreign-policy priorities? How about Bernie? Would he have a good handle on the situation? How about Squirrel-Hair? I don't think he'd know how to ratchet down the danger level, do you?

Now picture Ted.

Your overlords don't care if you're murdered in your bed

The glaring question, of course, is why the hell not?

Despite the growing threat from the self-proclaimed Islamic State in Libya, the Obama administration has turned down a U.S. military plan for an assault on ISIS’s regional hub there, three defense officials told The Daily Beast. 

In recent weeks, the U.S. military—led by its Africa and Special Operations Commands—have pushed for more airstrikes and the deployment of elite troops, particularly in the city of Sirte. The hometown of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, the city is now under ISIS control and serving as a regional epicenter for the terror group.

The airstrikes would target ISIS resources while a small band of Special Operations Forces would train Libyans to eventually be members of a national army, the officials said.

Weeks ago, defense officials told The New York Times that they were crafting military plans for such strikes, but needed more time to develop intelligence so that they could launch a sustained air campaign on ISIS in Sirte.
But those plans have since been put on the back burner.
“There is little to no appetite for that in this administration,” one defense official explained.

Ostensibly, the reason is that Libya has two governments, the Most Equal Comrade's policy being it needs to get down to one before post-America does anything other than occasionally zapping individual high-ranking operatives with drone strikes.

But in the meantime, we're still sitting ducks. 

The contained jayvee team displays some notable business savvy

A certain NATO member is getting its energy need met by cozying up to some rather problematic characters:

How is Barack Obama going to get out of this one? On Tuesday, the Russian military produced an impressive array of evidence that clearly shows that ISIS oil is being smuggled into Turkey on an industrial scale. The evidence included photographs taken by satellite and during aerial reconnaissance missions. What the Russians have shown the world is extremely compelling, and it raises some very disturbing questions. First of all, how involved is the Turkish government in all of this? There is no way in the world that an endless parade of trucks carrying ISIS oil could have marched through Turkish border checkpoints without the cooperation of the central government. Secondly, what did Obama know and when did he know it? The U.S. military has far better surveillance capabilities than the Russians do, and so it seems absolutely absurd to suggest that Obama didn’t know what was going on.

This new Russian evidence was presented to the world by Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov, and he says that “thousands of oil trucks” have been going back and forth over the Turkish border…

According to Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov, Russia is aware of three main oil smuggling routes to Turkey.

“Today, we are presenting only some of the facts that confirm that a whole team of bandits and Turkish elites stealing oil from their neighbors is operating in the region,” Antonov said, adding that this oil “in large quantities” enters the territory of Turkey via “live oil pipelines,” consisting of thousands of oil trucks.

But Antonov didn’t stop there. He went on to publicly accuse President Erdogan of Turkeyand his family of running the entire operation…

“Turkey is the main consumer of the oil stolen from its rightful owners, Syria and Iraq. According to information we’ve received, the senior political leadership of the country – President Erdogan and his family – are involved in this criminal business,” said Deputy Defence Minister Anatoly Antonov.

“Maybe I’m being too blunt, but one can only entrust control over this thieving business to one’s closest associates.”

“In the West, no one has asked questions about the fact that the Turkish president’s son heads one of the biggest energy companies, or that his son-in-law has been appointed energy minister. What a marvelous family business!”

“The cynicism of the Turkish leadership knows no limits. Look what they’re doing. They went into someone else’s country, they are robbing it without compunction,” Antonov said.

And he is right.

The Erdogan family is knee deep in this scandal, and Barack Obama has known about it the entire time. For much more on the involvement of the Erdogan family in the smuggling of ISIS oil, please see my previous article entitled “The Biggest Obama Scandal? He Knows That Turkey Is Buying Oil From ISIS And He Is Doing Nothing To Stop It“.

Double interesting that it is alpha dog Russia who is pointing this out to the world.

Monday roundup

As I've said here before, when W first proposed the idea of a Department of Homeland Security in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, I thought it was a bad idea that would lead to inevitable overlap, redundancy, corruption and PC silliness. We already had a Defense Department and a CIA. Alas, it turns out that the bureaucracy charged with keeping us secure may get us all murdered in our beds:

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson resisted calls last year to allow immigration agents to review visa applicants’ social media activity because of fear of “bad public relations,” according to a former agency official.

“During that time period immigration officials were not allowed to use or view social media as part of the screening process,” John Cohen, a former under-secretary at DHS for intelligence and analysis, told ABC News, where he now works as a national security consultant.

The issue of social media vetting has taken on new significance during the investigation into Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, the jihadi couple who killed 14 people in a terrorist attack in San Bernardino earlier this month.

And how's this for a wake-up call?

Early Saturday morning two “foreign speaking” men set off alarms after they entered the local Walmart store in Lebanon, Missouri and purchased 60 cellphones. The purchase was made around 4 AM in the morning. Police were called but released the men saying they didn’t have a legal reason to detain them.

The Macon County Sheriff’s office is investigating a second suspicious purchase of dozens of cellphones at the Columbia Walmart on Conley Road.

A third suspicious purchase was made at a Walmart in Macon, Missouri.

On Thursday a fourth Walmart in Jefferson City in mid-Missouri reported another bulk cell phone purchase.** On Friday The Gateway Pundit reported that dozens of propane tanks were recently stolen near Kansas City.
Two more Walmarts reported bulk cell phone purchases by Friday night.Now this…

A stash of explosives was discovered in Mark Twain National Forest in Mid-Missouri in October. 

The Most Equal Comrade makes a rare trip across the Potomac to the Pentagon for a national-security briefing on the contained jayvee team.

And back in its caliphate, the contained jayvee team issues a fatwa ordering kids with Downs Syndrome and other congenital irregularities to be killed. 38 have been exterminated so far.

Precisely why we think so highly of Bibi here at LITD: the post-American overlords don't like the way he's "disrespectful" of the Most Equal Comrade:

A new profile of US Secretary of State John Kerry in The New Yorker casts light on the stormy relationship between the US and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who have often clashed publicly over the Iran nuclear deal and the Palestinian conflict but who also routinely refer to each other as friends.

The piece, written by the magazine’s editor in chief, David Remnick, quotes “American officials” who describe Netanyahu as “myopic, entitled, untrustworthy, routinely disrespectful toward the president, and focused solely on short-term political tactics to keep his right-wing constituency in line.”

The overlords have that last part wrong, though. Bibi is focused solely on trying to preserve his nation and Western civilization generally. But Freedom-Haters view everything through the lens of self-serving political maneuvering.

Rahm Emanuel is the leader of Chicago in name only. In actuality, he's toast.

One political figure who is anything but toast right now is LITD's fave prez candidate Ted Cruz. At The Hill, political analyst and communications strategist Naomi Konst has an uplifting perspective on the current juncture:

Every show has an end. Just like "The Apprentice" — gripping the first few few seasons, tired and contrived in the last — Donald Trump's campaign is aging toward death, one reckless outburst at at time. Although the casual political junkie wouldn't know by the looks of most polls, the media fetish with The Donald and his cultish following.

With primaries a bit less than 50 days out, at this point, previously skeptical pundits have assumed not only that Trump is the front-runner in the GOP primary, but that there is no real contest. But while cable news is capitalizing off of kabuki theater, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has been backstage outplaying the entire GOP field.In the modern ratings-based media world we live in, where candidates get attention off fundraising numbers and sensationalism, we often miss the politics brewing below the surface. Even seasoned politicos get distracted by earned media and national polls; but just as former House Speaker Tip O'Neill (D-Mass.) declared decades ago, the tried and tested formula of winning a presidential primary remains the same: It's all local.
Which is why, at this point in the campaign, we should prioritize "likely GOP voter" polls in early primary states over national and "total registered GOP voters" polls — like the Monmouth University poll out last week taken of Iowa GOP voters who have voted in previous caucuses, which shows Cruz winning at 24 percent (Trump is at 19 percent). Or, Sunday's Des Moines Register poll of likely Republican caucus-goers, which has Cruz at 31 percent and Trump 10 percentage points behind.
Recent general GOP polls (like this one and this one), where Trump is winning, factor in new Republican voters — a key portion of his support, but also those less likely to engage in the arduous Iowa caucus voting. And if those voters don't turn out, suddenly Trump drops below Cruz (in Iowa and South Carolina) and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (in New Hampshire) in early primary states, making him dead on arrival to that "brokered convention" the media are fantasizing about.
All the focused polls in early primary states this week show Cruz's momentum growing, a reflection of his formulaic long-term strategy centered on fundraising, investment in ground game across the country, key endorsements and messaging to a coalition of conservative voters.
As we approach the final stretch before primaries begin, third-quarter fundraising reports indicate the health of a presidential campaign. Cruz not only out-raised all other candidates ($12.2 million), but he has assiduously maintained the most cash on hand ($13.8 million). While other big raisers (former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina) have spent resources on pricey ads, Cruz focused on field — perhaps saving media buys for the final days and tight race states. Cruz's investment in ground operations has paid off, as he notably has the strongest infrastructure in Iowa and South Carolina, and is far ahead of the pack in Super Tuesday primary states.
Cruz's organizing success is related to the number of conservative influencers he has wooed — from prominent conservatives like Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) and influential evangelical pastors. In presidential primaries, endorsements still matter, as community leaders are surrogate advocates for the campaign — speaking to congregations and at events, making personal phone calls and rallying other leaders.

You may wonder why Cruz surged this week? A predictable phenomenon in GOP primaries is occurring: As the flavors of the month rise and fall, the candidates focused on the long game benefit. 

I'm going to wrap up this roundup on that positive note. Positive notes are not so easy to come by in this dark time, so let us all proceed into the afternoon with this in the forefront of our mental file drawers.