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HOMELAND SECURITY

Bomb Threats Called Into 27 Jewish Centers in 17 States By Bridget Johnson

Jewish community centers across the country were evacuated today after a fresh wave of bomb threats were called into the facilities.

Federal agents were already investigating a series of bomb threats delivered last week via robocalls and at least one live caller to 16 Jewish center across nine states.

The targeted centers were located in the South, mid-Atlantic region and Northeast.

Today, the JCC Association of North America said threats targeted 27 Jewish community centers across 17 states in a new wave of calls, causing the centers to “quickly engage in security protocols to ensure the safety of their participants and facilities.”

According to an NBC affiliate in Connecticut, a woman called a Jewish center in West Hartford at 9:30 a.m. to say there was a bomb in the building. A center in Woodbridge also received a threat from a woman caller at 9:22 a.m. Classes of preschoolers were evacuated while police searched buildings.

Other reports from around the country put threats between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m., with no further details on the callers.

The JCC Association said the latest round of threats were similar to the calls received last week, “causing many evacuations and a disruption to normal operations.”

David Posner, director of strategic performance for the association, said many leaders of community centers took part in a webinar including the Department of Homeland Security “to address concerns and procedures” after the first wave of threats.

“Lessons learned and best practices discussed were clearly on display this morning, and we applaud our JCCs for responding calmly and efficiently. Many JCCs not affected last week took the opportunity to review their own security plans, and speak with local law enforcement,” Posner said, lauding “the quick and thorough response from federal and local law enforcement.”

“The JCCs that have received the all-clear and been deemed safe have resumed regular operations,” he noted, but “we are concerned about the anti-Semitism behind these threats.”

“While the bombs in question are hoaxes, the calls are not. We know that law enforcement at both the local and national level are continuing to investigate the ongoing situation. We are relieved that no one has been harmed and that JCCs continue to operate in a way that puts the safety of their staff, visitors, and premises first.”

The Anti-Defamation League, which said it received reports of threats in New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Florida, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Delaware, Connecticut, Alabama, California, Maine, Tennessee, South Carolina, Missouri, Texas and Kansas, issued a security advisory to Jewish institutions across the country.

“Although so far these threats do not appear to be credible, we are recommending that Jewish communal institutions review their security procedures and remain in close contact with law enforcement,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL CEO. “While each incident needs to be taken seriously and investigated closely, thus far we are not aware of any of these threats being substantiated.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Pick Up Five AK-47 Bullets for a Buck, al-Qaeda Magazine Tells Jihadists By Bridget Johnson

A new English-language al-Qaeda magazine urges would-be jihadists to take advantage of the low price of bullets while instructing them how to avoid detection online.

The fourth edition of al-Risalah, which is published by al-Qaeda in Syria, features a full-page graphic of a grenade composed of typewriter keys with the quote, “Half of jihad is media.”

That’s attributed to Abdullah Azzam, Osama bin Laden’s late mentor and the co-founder of al-Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan.
(Facebook screenshot) (Facebook screenshot)

And like other al-Qaeda media, al-Risalah encourages jihadists with features on current jihadi operations and how-to guides. It was posted on al-Qaeda Telegram channels and on a Facebook page that appeared to have been created just for the magazine’s promotion.

The profile picture was of a smiling jihadist holding up an American passport: Moner Mohammad Abusalha, a Floridian who died as a suicide bomber in Syria in 2014. The Facebook profile has since been removed.

A full-page graphic in the middle of the 24-page glossy magazine states, “You can buy 5 bullets for an AK47 assault rifle for less than $1.” Underneath this is a quote attibuted to Muhammad: “Whoever spends in the path of Allah, it would be multiplied for them 700 times.”

An article on steps to correctly use the Tor browser, which keeps a user’s browsing history and location anonymous, is bylined Kybernetiq, the name of a cyberwar magazine for jihadists launched a year ago. A new Twitter account named Kybernetiq — with the hashtag #WeAreNotISIS in the bio, along with “made in Bavaria” — advertises the al-Qaeda magazine and tweets in German.
(Al-Risalah magazine) (Al-Risalah magazine)

“The Tor browser bundle designed by the Tor project is one of the most important devices in our defensive weapons arsenal,” the article states. “It covers and anonymizes our origin and makes us nearly invisible from being monitored; bypasses the firewalls and serves as a gateway to an uncensored internet. However using it negligently can expose and leave you vulnerable to e-incursions by the intelligence agencies,” the article states.

MICHAEL CUTLER MOMENT: PRESIDENT TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION/JIHAD CHALLENGE

This special edition of the Glazov Gang presents The Michael Cutler Moment with Michael Cutler, a former Senior INS Special Agent.

Michael discusses President Trump’s Immigration/Jihad Challenge,as he looks forward to the new president putting security back into the Department of Homeland Security.

Don’t miss it!

And make sure to watch Ingrid Carlqvist focus on How Sweden Became Absurdistan, as she shares her fear that her country could become the first Sharia state in Europe:http://jamieglazov.com/2017/01/06/michael-cutler-moment-president-trumps-immigrationjihad-challenge/

Berlin Truck Massacre Shows the Soundness of Trump’s Views on Illegal-Alien Criminals Pro-sanctuary mayors and the New York Times are appalled by the suggestion there’s any connection between immigration and terror. By Heather Mac Donald

Donald Trump was asked on Wednesday if the Christmas-market truck massacre in Berlin had caused him to reevaluate his various proposals regarding immigration from terror-spawning regions. His answer sent the liberal media into another nervous breakdown: “I’ve been proven to be right,” Trump responded. “One hundred percent correct.”

And so he has. To the New York Times, however, Trump’s words were front-page news. “Trump Suggests Berlin Attack Affirms His Plan to Bar Muslims,” read the headline (even though Trump had not specifically addressed the temporary ban in his response to the reporter’s question). The Times assumes that its readers will be shocked by any suggested connection between Islamic terror attacks and immigration policy. The Times, for its part, treats the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” like the Ebola virus, inoculating itself from any misperception that it would independently pen such scandalous words by the liberal use of scare quotes. “One area where Mr. Trump and his advisers have been unswerving is their repeated denunciation of ‘radical Islamic terrorism,’” writes the Times incredulously.

Despite the Times’ protestation, the problem of Islamic terrorism in the West is, among other things, an immigration issue, whether an attack has been committed by first-generation immigrants or second. But the Berlin massacre does more than vindicate Trump’s planned reassessment of entry protocols. It also vindicates his intention to eliminate local sanctuary policies. The suspected Berlin attacker was, like many previous Islamic terrorists, a thug first, a terrorist second. Anis Amri had been arrested several times in his home country of Tunisia for various street crimes, including petty theft; he was sentenced in absentia to five years in prison for stealing a car. He committed arson in Italy. He assaulted fellow prisoners while jailed in Italy. He sold drugs in a Berlin park.

Such crimes, if committed by an illegal alien in San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, or the 300 other sanctuary jurisdictions in the U.S., would induce local jail authorities and police chiefs to hold that alien in order to protect him against any federal effort to deport him. Politicians in sanctuary cities work feverishly to bury this core fact: The sanctuary policies they have rushed to defend in the wake of Trump’s election are designed to shield street criminals and thugs from deportation. Such policies forbid jail authorities from honoring a federal request to hold an illegal-alien criminal beyond his release date so that federal agents can start removal proceedings against him.

On Friday, BBC Radio interviewed Seattle mayor Ed Murray about his city’s recently reaffirmed sanctuary policy. Murray ducked any question that would have clarified the fact that it was criminal law-breakers Seattle was shielding. Instead, Murray waxed self-righteous about his “moral obligation” to defeat immigration enforcement, with not a peep of acknowledgment that Seattle’s defiance of federal authority meant that law-abiding Seattle residents would be forced to pay the costs of illegal-alien crime.

Sorry Mad Dog, Waterboarding Works I respect Gen. Mattis, but he has never employed enhanced-interrogation techniques. I have. By James E. Mitchell

While meeting with the New York Times last month, President-elect Donald Trump was asked about waterboarding. He explained that Gen. James Mattis, his choice for Defense secretary, said he “never found it to be useful.” The general reportedly advised, “Give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers and I do better with that.” At the risk of making a man nicknamed Mad Dog mad, I have to respectfully disagree.

Gen. Mattis, a retired Marine four-star, is by all accounts a gentleman, a scholar, and a hell of a warfighter. I have the greatest respect for him, and the full nuance of his views might have been lost in the retelling. But on the subject of questioning terrorists, I have some practical experience. In 2002 I was contracted by the Central Intelligence Agency to help put together what became its enhanced-interrogation program. I spent much of the following six years at “black sites” around the world, trying to extract lifesaving information from some of the worst people on the planet.

It is understandable that Gen. Mattis would say he never found waterboarding useful, because no one in the military has been authorized to waterboard a detainee. Thousands of U.S. military personnel have been waterboarded as part of their training, though the services eventually abandoned the practice after finding it too effective in getting even the most hardened warrior to reveal critical information.

During the war on terror, the CIA alone had been authorized to use the technique. I personally waterboarded the only three terrorists subjected to the tactic by the CIA. I also waterboarded two U.S. government lawyers, at their request, when they were trying to decide for themselves whether the practice was “torture.” They determined it was not.

I volunteered to be waterboarded myself and can assure you that it is not a pleasant experience. But no one volunteers to be tortured.

Waterboarding was never the first, nor the best, choice for most detainees. We started out with the “tea and sympathy” approach and only escalated to harsher methods when it became clear that the detainee held vital information that might save innocent lives and was determined not to provide it. We quickly moved away from enhanced interrogations as soon as the detainee showed even a little cooperation.

The people I dealt with were not run-of-the-mill battlefield detainees, but hardened terrorists. Men like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. These people were hellbent on bringing about further devastation.

I would ask Gen. Mattis this: Imagine being captured by America’s enemies. Would you give up important secrets that could get fellow Americans captured or killed in exchange for a Michelob and a pack of Marlboros?

Report: Nearly Half of American Jihadists are Not Fighting for ISIS By Bridget Johnson

A new study out of George Washington University underscores that nearly half of all terrorism charges brought since March 2011 are connected to terrorist groups other than the Islamic State.

“The jihadist threat to America goes far beyond the Islamic State (IS),” writes Sarah Gilkes from GWU’s Project on Extremism. “While there has been a relative surge in the number of U.S. persons radicalized and recruited by the group in the last five years, other jihadist organizations, primarily al-Qaeda, remain popular and active.”

She noted that “many American recruits are driven by a broad counter-cultural idealism, and are less tangled up in the minutiae of the power plays that divide such groups abroad.”

From March 2011 to July 31, 2016, 178 people were charged with terrorism-related offenses in this country; 79 of those had no relation to ISIS.

Thirty-eight percent of those accused of working on behalf of a terrorist group other than ISIS attempted or successfully traveled abroad to locations such as Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. Forty-six percent of ISIS recruits attempted or completed travel during the same period.

Only four of the people accused of working for terror groups other than ISIS were refugees. Fifty-two of the 79 were U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents, reflecting a trend of truly homegrown jihad. Two were in the country illegally at the time of their arrest, and one was here on a student visa, states the report.

The non-ISIS jihadists were charged in 22 states, with New York having the largest share of cases at 11. Twenty-eight percent of those charged were converts to Islam.

The terror-related arrests involved not just those planning or conducting attacks but fundraisers and recruiters. The tally includes only Salafi jihadist groups and does not include arrests linked to groups like Hezbollah or Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.

McCain and Graham Seek to Gut 9/11 Bill to Immunize Foreign Governments Funding Terrorists By Patrick Poole

In a Senate floor speech today, Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham announced that they are offering an amendment to strip a key element of the recently passed Justice Against Sponsors of Terror Act (JASTA) that clarifies U.S. law for civil claims against foreign governments for funding terrorism.

JASTA was passed in the Senate in May with no objections, and passed the House of Representatives unanimously in September. President Obama promptly vetoed the bill. The Senate and House successfully voted to override the veto and the bill became law.

McCain and Graham specifically said they want to strip the “discretionary state function” provision from JASTA that creates liability for foreign governments funding terrorist groups.

According to Hill sources familiar with the McCain/Graham amendment, their intention is to immunize countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar that have funded Sunni terrorist groups in Syria — the Syrian “rebel” effort that both McCain and Graham have publicly supported since 2011.

The McCain/Graham amendment was slammed by 9/11 family groups that fought for JASTA.

The 9/11 Families and Survivors United for Justice Against Terrorism put out the following press release this afternoon:

In a speech on the Senate floor this afternoon Senator Graham pitched this new language as a simple “caveat” but in reality he is proposing to amend JASTA to add a specific jurisdictional defense Saudi Arabia has been relying on for the last 13 years to avoid having to face the 9/11 families’ evidence on the merits.

Moreover, Senator Graham and Senator McCain mischaracterized JASTA in several material respects during their speeches today. For example, Senator Graham argued that JASTA is deficient because it does not require that a foreign state have “knowingly” supported terrorism in order for liability to attach, but in fact JASTA’s liability provision expressly requires that the foreign state have “knowingly provided substantial assistance” to a designated terrorist organization in order for liability to arise. Senator Graham also suggested that adding a discretionary function provision to JASTA would protect the US from claims for drone strikes in Pakistan, which is simply incorrect given that Pakistan has made clear its view that domestic and international law prohibit those strikes.

Notably, Graham’s and McCain’s efforts come in the wake of a massive lobbying campaign by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia which is now employing roughly a dozen Washington lobbying firms at a cost of more than $1.3 million per month.

Muslim Refugee Brings Jihad Terror at Ohio State And the Left uses it to call for…gun control. Robert Spencer

Ohio State University student Abdul Razak Ali Artan on Monday morning set off a fire alarm on campus, the drove his car into the crowd of students evacuating the building. Then he jumped out of his car and began stabbing people with a butcher knife. In a departure from the usual denial and obfuscation, Columbus Police Chief Kim Jacobs was refreshingly honest, saying: “I think we have to consider that it is” a terror attack. Leftists took advantage of the occasion to call for gun control, which might have been a cogent argument were it not for one inconvenient detail: Artan didn’t have a gun. But above all, Artan was a “refugee”: the attack vindicates President-elect Trump on Muslim immigration.

Artan was no poster boy for gun control, but he may have been one for the Islamic State, which issued this call in September 2014:

So O muwahhid, do not let this battle pass you by wherever you may be. You must strike the soldiers, patrons, and troops of the tawaghit. Strike their police, security, and intelligence members, as well as their treacherous agents. Destroy their beds. Embitter their lives for them and busy them with themselves. If you can kill a disbelieving American or European — especially the spiteful and filthy French — or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war, including the citizens of the countries that entered into a coalition against the Islamic State, then rely upon Allah, and kill him in any manner or way however it may be….If you are not able to find an IED or a bullet, then single out the disbelieving American, Frenchman, or any of their allies. Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car, or throw him down from a high place, or choke him, or poison him….

Intriguingly, before his jihad attack, Artan demonstrated that he knew well how to play the victim card. He appeared in Ohio State University’s The Lantern, in a feature entitled “Humans of Ohio State.” In it, he spoke about being “scared” about performing his Islamic prayers in public:

I just transferred from Columbus State. We had prayer rooms, like actual rooms where we could go to pray because we Muslims have to pray five times a day. There’s Fajr, which is early in the morning, at dawn. Then Zuhr during the daytime, then Asr in the evening, like right about now. And then Maghrib, which is like right at sunset and then Isha at night. I wanted to pray Asr. I mean, I’m new here. This is my first day. This place is huge, and I don’t even know where to pray. I wanted to pray in the open, but I was kind of scared with everything going on in the media. I’m a Muslim, it’s not what the media portrays me to be. If people look at me, a Muslim praying, I don’t know what they’re going to think, what’s going to happen. But, I don’t blame them, it’s the media that put that picture in their heads so they’re just going to have it and it, it’s going to make them feel uncomfortable. I was kind of scared right now. But I just did it. I relied on God. I went over to the corner and just prayed.

Abdul Razak Artan, “third-year in logistic management,” is dead now, so The Lantern can’t go back to him and ask him if he understands better now why people might be nervous about Muslims praying, and why it isn’t just the fault of “the media.”

Ohio State Attack Was a Ram-and-Stab with ‘Possibility’ of Terrorism, Say Police By Bridget Johnson

ATTACK COMES AFTER ISIS “STABBING GUIDE”

Columbus Police Chief Kim Jacobs said officials “have to consider that it is that possibility” that a mass stabbing on the Ohio State University campus this morning was a terrorist attack.

The campus was locked down for an active shooter situation, but authorities said at a press conference that the bullets were fired by a responding officer. “There’s no indication of a firearm being used by that suspect,” Jacobs said.

The attack occurred on 19th Avenue in front of Watts Hall. Shortly before 10 a.m., a vehicle jumped the curb and ran into a group of pedestrians on the sidewalk. That initial impact injured “several,” OSU president Michael Drake said.

Then the suspect, who has not been identified by police, got out and used a butcher knife to cut “multiple” people. Ten were transported to area hospitals, with one victim in critical condition.

Dispatch first received the call of the attack at 9:52 a.m., followed by a call at 9:53 a.m. that an OSU police officer fired at the suspect.

OSU public safety director Monica Moll said officers from multiple jurisdictions responded to the scene and law enforcement personnel in the area continue to investigate, but “we believe the threat was ended when the officer engaged the suspect.”

A few buildings remain shut down “as a precaution,” Moll said, as officers “continue to sweep those.”

‘They Want an Operation in Times Square’: Brooklyn Man Arrested on ISIS Charges By Bridget Johnson

Federal authorities arrested a Brooklyn driver early Monday on charges of attempting to support ISIS just days before the annual Thanksgiving parade in New York that was the subject of a recent threat in an Islamic State magazine.

A criminal complaint alleges that Mohamed Rafik Naji, 37, a legal permanent U.S. resident and citizen of Yemen, discussed a plot to try to conduct a Nice-style attack using a garbage truck to mow down people in Times Square.

Naji was seized at his apartment on Clarendon Road in Flatbush in a multi-agency arrest. Authorities said he worked as a driver for Uber, though the company told NBC4 that he didn’t work for them.

According to the unsealed complaint, Naji began sounding off on Facebook about his support for ISIS beginning in 2014 soon after the group’s declaration of their caliphate. He even made an ISIS image the cover photo on his Facebook page.

From March to September 2015, Naji traveled to Turkey and Yemen “in an effort to join ISIL.” After flying from JFK airport to Istanbul, Naji emailed his girlfriend back in the United States, telling her, “Everything ok so far I met this taxi guy look like a good guy he said he’s gonna take me short cut almost there inshallah I love u hunny so much.”

Naji allegedly followed up in another email to his girlfriend six days later after trying to access ISIS-controlled parts of Yemen, complaining “it’s very hard to get in I’m on my 5 try.” Two days after that, the complaint states, he told his girlfriend that he and his party “almost got killed today by army” and were hiding in the mountains without food or water — “glad u didn’t come.” He emailed his girlfriend a photo of jihadists on their trek, followed by an admission that he was “thinking of coming back m really really tired.”