NOVEMBER 17, 2015, 1:40 PM LAST UPDATED: TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2015, 4:53 PM
BY DUSTIN RACIOPPI
STATE HOUSE BUREAU |
THE RECORD
Governor Christie on Tuesday officially notified President Obama that he will not accept any Syrian refugees following last weekend’s terrorist attacks in Paris, citing a “broken federal monitoring system” and the “very real threat” of an attack on New Jersey by the Islamic State.
Christie, who is running for the Republican party nomination for president, sent the letter a day after two dozen other governors announced they would close their states to Syrians fleeing the war-torn country. On Monday night Christie told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that he would not accept any refugees, a shift in his position from two months ago.
His refusal appears to have no authority, however. While states can refuse to offer their resources to the federal government, the Refugee Act of 1980 gives the president the power to allow refugees into the states. Florida Gov. Rick Scott also acknowledged in a letter to Congress on Monday that “it is our understanding that the state does not have the authority to prevent the federal government from funding the relocation of these Syrian refugees to Florida even without state support.” And foreign affairs, including immigration, are the responsibility of the president.
NEW JERSEY: SITUATIONAL REPORT AS OF 2:00 PM
November 15, 2015
As of 2:00 today, there are no specific, credible threats to New Jersey in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Paris. Nevertheless, out of an abundance of caution, New Jersey’s homeland security and law enforcement agencies will remain on heightened alert throughout the day. Security has been increased at all events where large numbers of people are expected.
Updated death tolls from Paris reveal at least 132 have been killed, with over 350 injured. One American from California has been confirmed killed, while three other Americans were reportedly injured.
OHSP convened two conference calls yesterday with county and local authorities, as well as with the faith-based community. Both calls totaled roughly 300 participants.
OHSP, along with counterterrorism partners from New York, will host a webinar tomorrow at 2:00 pm on the Paris attacks.
French authorities announced this morning they are actively searching for an individual directly involved with the Friday attacks. The ongoing investigation into the attacks suggests direction possibly from Syria, and the involvement of multiple coordinators in several countries.
According to the FBI and French media, seven attackers were killed during the attacks and investigators are searching for accomplices. French authorities have identified two of the deceased attackers; one was as a French national on a government terrorist watchlist, while the other is believed to have been a Syrian refugee who entered Europe through Greece last month.
Yesterday, Belgian police conducted raids near Brussels in connection with the Paris attacks and arrested seven people. On November 5, German police arrested a man near the German-Austrian border with hidden firearms, explosives, and hand grenades in his vehicle; he possessed documentation possibly linking him with the attacks.
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It’s beyond surreal that the president of France is making the American president look like a cheese-eating amateur.
The terror attacks in Paris Friday took scores of livesand thrust the entire civilized world into paroxysms of grief and despair. Then something unexpected happened.
French President François Hollande stepped up to the soccer goal. And he displayed the kind of leadership one normally does not associate with the randy politician presiding over the land of vintage Champagne and Brie.
No sooner had ISIS claimed responsibility for the butchery than Hollande got in front of TV cameras and told the traumatized public that the savagery was an “act of war.’’ He vowed to pound ISIS into submission.
Compare that to the American president’s initial reaction. President Obama, who once ridiculed ISIS (or “ISIL,” as he calls it) by comparing it to a junior varsity squad, was loath to point fingers. “I don’t want to speculate at this point in terms of who was responsible for this,” he said.
In any time and place, war is fiendishly simple. It is the ultimate zero-sum contest — you win or you lose.
That eternal truth is so obvious that it should not need to be said. Yet even after the horrific slaughter in Paris, there remains a distressing doubt about whether America’s commander in chief gets it.
President Obama has spent the last seven years trying to avoid the world as it is. He has put his intellect and rhetorical skills into the dishonorable service of assigning blame and fudging failure. If nuances were bombs, Islamic State would have been destroyed years ago.
He refuses to say “Islamic terrorism,” as if that would offend the peaceful Muslims who make up the vast bulk of victims. He rejects the word “war,” even as jihadists carry out bloodthirsty attacks against Americans and innocent peoples around the world.
He shuns the mantle of global leadership that comes with the Oval Office, with an aide advancing the preposterous concept that Obama is “leading from behind.” He snubs important partners like Egypt, showers concessions on the apocalyptic mullahs of Iran, and called the Islamic State the “jayvee team” even as it was beginning to create a caliphate.
By Alex Napoliello | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
on November 15, 2015 at 4:34 PM, updated November 15, 2015 at 5:58 PM
For Kelly Coyle, the terrorist attacks in Paris are all too familiar.
The 45-year-old Hoboken resident worked in 7 World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, and was just blocks away when the first tower collapsed.
On Friday night, Coyle and a friend were having dinner near their hotel in the 7th arrondissement of Paris when she started receiving text messages from family and friends asking if she was safe.
Coyle didn’t know it at the time, but a series of coordinated terrorist attacks were being carried out across Paris. The attacks left at least 129 people dead and hundreds of others injured.
Attacks threaten viability of Schengen agreement and the vision of tolerant, multi-cultural society that is “essence” of Europe, analysts warn
By Peter Foster, Europe Editor
12:22PM GMT 14 Nov 2015
The Paris attacks that killed at least 128 people on Saturday night will put renewed pressure on Europe Schengen agreement and threaten the “very essence” of the European way of life, as far-right parties seek to capitalise on the attacks, analysts have warned.
With Paris now enduring this second major terror bloodbath in under a year, questions are now being asked about how much longer both Europe’s open border system and vision of a tolerant, multi-cultural society can survive.
“With Paris in lockdown and France closing its borders, we can see all too clearly that what is at stake here is the very essence of our way of life in Europe,” said Davis Lewin, the deputy director of the Henry Jackson Society, a conservative think-tank.
Designed to facilitate the free movement of goods and labour that is the economic life-blood of the continent, the Schengen system has also enabled the easy transfer of both weapons and, potentially jihadist fighters, across those same borders.
Following the attacks, Francois Hollande, the French President also re-imposed border controls in a bid to ensure that none of the Paris terrorists or their support network in France were able to escape, as occurred after the Charlie Hebdo atrocity.
Even before the Paris attacks, Donald Tusk, the EU president, had warned that Europe faced a “race against time” to save the 20-year-old system, which is seen as one of the Union’s most concrete achievements.
Ridgewood NJ, seeing the images of Friday nights Paris attack were a sad reminder of all the people I knew who were murdered on 9/11 .It is
so long after that day it still astonishes me that I can go to the 9/11 memorial and see all those names of people that I recognize and used to have daily interactions with .
What also has remained the same is the self doubt and blame game ,some would suggest cowardise that our political leadership continues to engage in ,instead of dealing with the threat of Nihilistic Islamic Extremism . While the names may have changed , ISIS, al Quada and so on the ugly reality as demonstrated over and over is that these “people” ,are sworn to destroy western society and all it values of freedom and individualism . They want to kill you ,yes YOU living in Ridgewood and your family ,end of the story and they will do anything to achieve their means.
And NO this dose not mean all Muslims are terrorist , but alas many are . Like World War 2 , all Germans were not Nazi’s we just concentrated on the ones that were.
While western politicians acted more like self indulgent children blaming Bush,western culture, the USA, a CIA conspiracy , an inside job, global warming and a litany of other non causes all the while attempting to placate a philosophy that like the NAZI’s and Communism ,is dead set on destroying western society.
These continued wrong headed excuses have amounted to nothing more than pure cowardice and have encouraged our enemy at every step.
So here we are 14 years later and we are still dealing with the same but a much stronger enemy and the same issues despite giving up an significant level of personal freedom .
This weekends Paris attacks have led once again to the media spin machine launching the we deserve it , you asked for it,its your fault “because you eat bacon” campaign all the while looking to again curtail more of our personal freedoms .
Am I the only one to notice that the President seems to utterly clueless about what our enemies are up to but , yet the NSA and IRS as well as local police are spying on virtually every activity an American citizen can undertake ? And the current administration as well as most of the Democrat party along with their media allies are still referring to utterly FAUX climate change as the greatest security threat to our nation? Really , I didn’t see much climate change in Paris on Friday night .
While Americans who question our government’s behavior have become the focus of suspicion , others engaging in irresponsible behavior like “the clock maker” , or banning certain activities because they might to offensive are celebrated ,while all forms of American culture are constantly being denigrated .
If “innocents” are killed on a battle field , the US grovels and apologizes, yet our enemies, have slaves ,take child brides, think of women as property , decapitate women and children , cook children ,murder gays, murder all non believers, destroy ancient artifacts and places of worship and its all in a days work.
As any parent knows continuing to tolerate bad behavior only invites more of it .Meanwhile has our president ever asked the jihadist in the Mideast to put down their guns and stop clinging to their religion like he told so many Americans ?
Its time to face facts, we are at war with “Radicalized Islam ” and we need to start acting like it.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) says he thinks President Obama is “not interested” in protecting the United States from terror attacks.
“I recognize that Barack Obama does not wish to defend this country. He may have been tired of war, but our enemies are not tired of killing us,” Cruz said in a “Fox and Friends” interview.
“They are getting stronger. Every region on Earth has gotten worse under the Obama-Clinton foreign policy.”
Cruz, a 2016 Republican presidential candidate, accused the president of ignoring the threats posed by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in light of a coordinated set of attacks in Paris on Friday.
He said Obama and Hillary Clinton, the leading Democratic presidential candidate, are “ideologues” who “don’t recognize that enemies of America want to kill us.”
Cruz’s interview came after an attack in Paris left at least 129 people dead Friday. ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Athens (AFP) – Greek police on Saturday said at least one man with a possible connection to the Paris attacks had registered as a refugee with Greek authorities earlier this year.
French authorities had asked their Greek counterparts to check the fingerprints of one man who died in the attacks, with a Syrian passport found next to him, in addition to the fingerprints of another man.
There were efforts to establish whether both had registered in Greece, the main entry point into Europe for Syrian refugees.
The Greek minister for citizen protection, Nikos Toskas, said one of the men had been registered on the Greek island of Leros in October.
“We confirm that the (Syrian) passport holder came through the Greek island of Leros on October 3 where he was registered under EU rules,” he said a statement.
French police said the passport was found “near the body of one of the attackers” during the investigation into the main site of Friday’s carnage, at the Bataclan concert hall where 89 people were killed.
By Steve Almasy, Pierre Meilhan and Jim Bittermann, CNN
Updated 1:18 AM ET, Sat November 14, 2015 | Video Source: CNN
Paris (CNN)On a night when thousands of Paris residents and tourists were reveling and fans were enjoying a soccer match between France and world champion Germany, horror struck in an unprecedented manner. Terrorists — some with AK-47s, some reportedly with bombs strapped to them — attacked sites throughout the French capital and at the stadium where the soccer match was underway.
Scores were killed in the coordinated attacks late Friday, leaving a nation in mourning and the world in shock. CNN will update this story as information comes in:
[Latest developments, posted at 11:59 p.m. ET]
• Paris Prosecutor spokeswoman Agnès Thibault-Lecuivre said eight extremists are dead after attacks. Seven of them were killed in suicide bombings.
• U.S. President Barack Obama spoke with French President Francois Hollande to offer condolences and assistance in the investigation, the White House said. Earlier, Obama said, “This is an attack not just on Paris, not just on the people on France, but an attack on all humanity and the universal values we share.” He called the attacks an “outrageous attempt to terrorize innocent civilians.”
• A total of six locations were attacked in and just outside the capital, Paris prosecutor François Molins told reporters Saturday.
Nation’s oldest Muslim organization condemns multiple acts of violence in Paris, France
The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA expresses our deepest condolences to the victims and families of the horrific acts of terrorism in Paris, France. French officials report more than 40 people killed, with many more wounded and held hostage. The
Community urges calm and patience as authorities work rapidly to restore security and order.
“Our deepest condolences are with the people of France. This is an attack on all of humanity.” said Dr. Nasim Rehmatullah, Senior Vice President of Ahmadiyya Muslim
Community USA. “While we await additional information about the attackers and their motives, we condemn any attempt to justify the killing of innocent lives. We stand committed to restoring peace.”
The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA prays for swift justice and the speedy recovery of the wounded.
About Ahmadiyya Muslim Community:
The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is a dynamic, reformist and fast-growing international movement within Islam. Founded in 1889, the Community spans 206 countries with membership exceeding tens of millions. Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA, established in 1920, is among the oldest American-
Muslim organizations.
The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is the only Islamic organization to believe that the long- awaited messiah has come in the person of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835-1908) of Qadian, India. Ahmad claimed to be the metaphorical second coming of Jesus of Nazareth and the divine guide, whose advent was foretold by the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad.
The Community believes that God sent Ahmad, like Jesus, to end religious wars, condemn bloodshed and reinstitute morality, justice and peace. Ahmad’s advent has brought about an unprecedented era of Islamic revival and moderation. He divested Muslims of fanatical beliefs and practices by vigorously championing Islam’s true and essential teachings.
(CNN)[Latest developments, posted at 5:38 p.m. ET]
— 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.
(CNN)Iran has successfully test-fired a new precision-guided, long-range missile, state-run media reported on Sunday.
The Emad (Pillar) surface-to-surface missile, designed and built by Iranian experts, is the country’s first long-range missile that can be precision-guided until it reaches its target, said Brig. Gen. Hossein Dehqan, Iran’s defense minister.
“To follow our defense programs, we don’t ask permission from anyone,” he said, according to state-run news agency IRNA.
The new rocket is “capable of scrutinizing the targets and destroying them completely,” IRNA reported.
The Emad would be Tehran’s first precision-guided missile with the range to reach its enemy, Israel.
Israel is bitterly opposed to Iran’s nuclear program, and observers have speculated that it could be prepared to launch pre-emptive strikes on Iranian nuclear sites in an effort to derail their progress.
Dehqan said following the launch that the Emad would greatly increase Iran’s strategic deterrence capability, state media reported.
The controversial religious leader Jeremiah Wright compared Native Americans to Palestinians at the 20th anniversary of the Million Man March on the National Mall on Saturday, going so far as to assert that “Jesus was a Palestinian.”
Wright, who once served as pastor to President Obama, was one of several hours’ worth of speakers in Washington, D.C., for an event called “Justice or Else!” that sought to channel the energy of the Black Lives Matter movement. Wright placed the event in historical context.
“The same issue is being fought today and has been fought since 1948, and historians are carried back to the 19th century… when the original people, the Palestinians — and please remember, Jesus was a Palestinian — the Palestinian people had the Europeans come and take their country,” Wright said.
He said African-Americans in the United States have much in common with Palestinians in Israel.
“The youth in Ferguson and the youth in Palestine have united together to remind us that the dots need to be connected,” Wright said. “And what Dr. King said, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, has implications for us as we stand beside our Palestinian brothers and sisters, who have been done one of the most egregious injustices in the 20th and 21st centuries.”
Wright, who was the reverend of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, which the president attended intermittently from 1988 to 2008, also accused Israel of being an apartheid state.
“As we sit here, there is an apartheid wall being built twice the size of the Berlin Wall in height, keeping Palestinians off of illegally occupied territories, where the Europeans have claimed that land as their own,” Wright said.
Immigration: As the White House prepares to dump another 10,000 Syrian refugees on U.S. cities, it assures us these mostly Muslim men undergo a “robust screening” process. Not so, admits the agency responsible for such vetting.
Under grilling from GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions, head of the Senate subcommittee on immigration, the Homeland Security official in charge of vetting Syrian and other foreign Muslim refugees confessed that no police or intelligence databases exist to check the backgrounds of incoming refugees against criminal and terrorist records.
“Does Syria have any?” Sessions asked. “The government does not, no sir,” answered Matthew Emrich, associate director for fraud detection and national security at DHS’ U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Sessions further inquired: “You don’t have their criminal records, you don’t have the computer database that you can check?” Confessed Emrich: “In many countries the U.S. accepts refugees from, the country did not have extensive data holdings.”
While a startling admission, it confirms previous reporting. Senior FBI officials recently testified that they have no idea who these people are, and they can’t find out what type of backgrounds they have — criminal, terrorist or otherwise — because there are no vetting opportunities in those war-torn countries.
Syria and Iraq, along with Somalia and Sudan, are failed states where police records aren’t even kept. Agents can’t vet somebody if they don’t have documentation and don’t even have the criminal databases to screen applicants.
So the truth is, we are not vetting these Muslim refugees at all. And as GOP presidential front-runners duly note, it’s a huge gamble to let people from hostile nations enter the U.S. without any meaningful background check. It’s a safer bet just to limit, if not stop, their immigration.
“If I win, they’re going back,” Donald Trump vowed. “They could be ISIS. This (mass Syrian immigration) could be one of the great tactical ploys of all time.”
