Category ►►► Domestic Terrorism

April 23, 2013

The Lunatic Is In the Press

Domestic Terrorism
Hatched by Korso

It isn't often that you get to watch a media train wreck moving in slow motion. Usually it happens upon the public with blazing speed, proceeding heedless of logic or even common sense as it tears across the landscape, establishing a meme that quickly becomes impervious to truth and objectivity. It's ironic, then, that the rapid-fire pace of the horrific bombing in Boston last week should put the brakes on things, and allow the general public -- perhaps for the first time -- to see clearly the media bias and outright nuttery that we conservative moonbats have been calling out since time immemorial.

It all started as we've come to expect: No sooner had the echoes of the explosions faded did the commentariat make attempts to link the violence to right-wing extremism. "I’m sure what was going through the president’s mind is -- we really don’t know who did this -- it was tax day,” said Obama consigliere and uber-mustachio David Axelrod. The venerable Chris Matthews proceeded in the same vein, grumbling about his own taxes and then suggesting, "Normally domestic terrorists, people, tend to be on the far right."

Unfortunately for Chris, that particular narrative didn't quite pan out; and as the days passed and no suspects had yet been identified, David Sirota of Salon.com shifted gears a bit and openly said what most of his colleagues had only been thinking: "Let's hope the Boston Marathon bomber is a white American." Because white men "are not collectively denigrated" when one of them does something really bad. Seriously.

Now, given how members of the NRA and the Tea Party have been rather heartily denigrated for acts of racism and violence that they didn't even commit, that argument doesn't quite pass the smell test; but it does serve as an effective bait-and-switch to Sirota's larger purpose, which was to use guilt to soften up the public to the eventuality that the bombers could indeed turn out to be (gasp!) Islamic extremists. Never mind that even in the wake of 9/11, the expected dark night of anti-Muslim backlash never actually came to pass. This time, in the media's view at least, bigoted America was poised to run riot.

And then came last Friday.

A cop shot dead, a high-speed chase that left one of the bombers as roadkill, and a manhunt that shut down the entire Boston metroplex has effectively ended the bombing drama -- and even though it was revealed that the bombers were Islamic terrorists, the backlash yet again has failed to materialize. Mosques have not burned. Ladies in hijabs have not been harassed. Everything is, amazingly enough, pretty peaceful. And yet the media have still moved on to a new phase in their narrative: the deconstruction and rehabilitation of the surviving bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Megan Garber, I think, summed up the meme perfectly with her article "The Boston Bombers Were Muslim: So?" In it, we get a lot of psychobabble about how poor Dzhokhar was just a regular guy like you and me, and that we need to appreciate the complexity of his circumstances before we pass judgement on him as a monster. All of that may sound like well-intentioned bovine feces, I suppose, but one has to wonder if Garber would have written the same article about, say, Eric Rudolph -- a man so distressed over abortion that he planted a bomb of his own. No? What about someone like Ted Bundy? He was a pretty complex character too. Good looks, solid family upbringing -- but he also liked to butcher young women. Did his charm and intelligence make him any less of a monster?

Ah, but Dzhokhar is different. He didn't hate the American government, specifically, as a right-wing terrorist would. He probably just hated America -- and that's a concept the leftist media can understand. Coupled with the need to help Barack Obama downplay the embarrassment of yet another terrorist incident on his watch, it's likely that we'll see a lot more of this kind of reporting before all this is over.

Dafydd adds: And probably a lot more of this kind of terrorism, as well. Regardless of whether Napoleon and the Joker were or were not actually members of any organized terror cell, they set a precedent: America cannot, at this point, defend against small-ball terrorism in the heartland. Larger and more organized groups are sure to pick up on that fact and exploit it, so brace yourselves.

I know it's politically correct not to "politicize" such terrorist acts man-caused disasters; but if the GOP doesn't use Obama's utter failure to secure the homeland, even with all the glittering drones his baggy pockets can carry, in our next three political campaigns, then we will have failed the American people and Lady Liberty herself.

Hatched by Korso on this day, April 23, 2013, at the time of 1:42 PM | Comments (0)

April 19, 2010

Emptying My Thimble

Domestic Terrorism , Iran Matters , Movie Madness and Fractured Flickers , Opinions: Nasty, Brutish, and Shortsighted , Presidential Peculiarities and Pomposities , Tea Leaves , ¡ Rabanos Radiactivos!
Hatched by Dafydd

Over on my favorite blog, Power Line, Scott "Big Johnson" Trunk has a series of posts called something like "emptying my spindle." The phrase, for those of you younger than Scott (i.e., born after 1907), a spindle is a vicious spike sticking up out of a flat base; the idea -- horrific even to imagine in today's Nerfworld -- is to take important memos (printed on paper!) in one's hand and jam them onto the spike with a lusty whack, where they will stick... along with your hand, if your aim be unsteady. Having been "dealt with," said memos are promptly forgotten until until Doomsday.

To empty or clear one's spindle is thus to go through one's old business and respond belatedly to urgent matters that should have been taken care of months ago. Scott uses the phrase to mean going back through his voluminous file of posts he meant to make but didn't, and write some quick and pithy abstract of his thoughts on the subject, jamming two or three hundred essays into a single post, like a fossil-rich sediment layer.

Well, I don't have a spindle-full of such ancient pith, but I think I can scrape together at least a thimble-full of comtemporary stories about which I have a milliliter or so of fresh pith. So here goes nothing!

A man, a plan, a genocide -- Ahmadinejad!

Secretary of Defense and Bush leftover Robert Gates says President Barack H. Obama has no plan for what to do when Iran gets its nukes. Doesn't that make your chest swell with ideological pride?

A memo from Defense Secretary Robert Gates to the White House warned that the United States lacks a nimble long-term plan for dealing with Iran's nuclear program, according to a published report.

Gates wrote the three-page memo in January and it set off efforts in the Pentagon, White House and intelligence agencies to come up with new options, including the use of the military, The New York Times said in its Sunday editions, quoting unnamed government officials.

But of course, now that Obama's own SecDef has called attention to the gaping hole in our nuclear policy -- whoops, forgot all about that Iran thing -- surely the White House is rushing to rework our strategic posture to take into account this fairly likely scenario, yes? Well, not exactly:

White House officials Saturday night strongly disagreed with the comments that the memo caused a reconsideration of the administration's approach to Iran.

"It is absolutely false that any memo touched off a reassessment of our options," National Security Council spokesman Benjamin Rhodes told The Associated Press. "This administration has been planning for all contingencies regarding Iran for many months."

Ah, contingencies. So what contingencies are in place to deal with a nuclear Iran?

One senior official described the memo as "a wake-up call," the paper reported. But the recipient of the document, Gen. James Jones, President Barack Obama's national security adviser, told the newspaper in an interview that the administration has a plan that "anticipates the full range of contingencies."

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell, who did not confirm the memo Saturday night, said the White House has reviewed many Iran options.

"The secretary believes the president and his national security team have spent an extraordinary amount of time and effort considering and preparing for the full range of contingencies with respect to Iran," Morrell said.

Well, that certainly clears the air!

This is one area where President Obama actually has an opinion beyond voting "present." The man is so pure and adamant in his hatred of nuclear weapons that he refuses -- on principle, one must surmise -- to think about them... even to the extent of how to respond if the world's most beligerent and most anti-democratic, and most Jew-hating regime on the planet perfects them. To plan a response is to accept the existence of atoms, which is anathema to the Obamacle.

Rather, the administration's policy appears to be cajole, beg, threaten... wash, rinse, and repeat, ad infinitum. And if Iran doesn't listen?

Gates and other senior members of the administration have issued increasingly stern warnings to Iran that its nuclear program is costing it friends and options worldwide, while sticking to the long-held view that a U.S. or Israeli military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities would be counterproductive.

See? "Stern warnings": They do have a plan after all.

Renewing his bows

Speaking of the One Himself, Barack Obama has been bowing recently to all and sundry. From the Heisei emperor of Japan, Akihito, to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, to President Hu Jintao of China, Obama has groveled to them all.

This chaps my hide. What's next... will our president crawl on his hands and knees, scourging and debasing himself (or more likely George W. Bush) in penance for America's sins?

But I tell you this: The day Obama bows to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, I will forever refer to the Windy City community oorganizer as "President Hussein."

You may think it petty; I see it as symbolic... let the world know that he will have chosen up sides.

The mad tea-bash

Bill Clinton, in a fit of retro triangulation cleverly timed to remind us why we really don't miss that administration, has just equated tea-party rallies to the Oklahoma City bombing:

"What we learned from Oklahoma City is not that we should gag each other or that we should reduce our passion for the positions we hold - but that the words we use really do matter, because there's this vast echo chamber, and they go across space and they fall on the serious [read: Democrats] and the delirious [Republicans] alike. They fall on the connected [liberals] and the unhinged [neo-conservative running-dog imperialists] alike," he said.

He warns the country against that lunatic fringe of "tea partiers" who hurl incendiary rhetoric like "Taxed Enough Already" and "repeal the bill." But here's the point missed by throwback leftists such as Mr. C.:

"I'm glad they're fighting over health care and everything else. Let them have at it. But I think that all you have to do is read the paper every day to see how many people there are who are deeply, deeply troubled," he said.

He also alluded to the anti-government tea party movement, which held protests in several states Thursday. At the Washington rally, Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota railed against "gangster government."

Clinton argued that the Boston Tea Party was in response to taxation without representation. The current protesters, he said, are challenging taxation by elected officials, and the demonstrators have the power to vote them out of office.

No, actually, they don't; at least in most states, voters cannot recall their U.S. senators and representatives willy nilly as they please (nor do I wish they could). To set the record straight, we have the power to vote some of them out of office six months from now... but not right now.

Alas, in the upcoming demi-year, the Progressivist supermajority can do incalculable and irreversible damage to the United States of America. And we haven't even mentioned the horror that will attend the lame-duck session following the election, when scores of Democrats will know that their careers are ruined anyway... so why not be hanged for an entire abattoir of swine as be hanged for a single sheep?

Clinton says he isn't asking for us to censor ourselves, just tone down the demands; but freedom of speech includes not only the right to present the case for fiscal sanity, but also the right to do so colorfully and dramatically.

When the Left regularly drops F-bombs and N-words, plays the race card like a permanent joker, flashes its get out of jail free card to be exempt from all consequences of its actions and its own violent rhetoric, and encourages its members to confabulate wild, unsubstantiated urban legends for no reason other than to paint Republicans as ogres and cannibals... then why should the anti-Left be restricted to mild, hesitant argumentation, accompanied by much apology and forelock tugging?

I say, unconstrain your rhetoric, so long as you target the real culprits. Let the Left start responding with rational and logical debate, instead of special pleading and threats. Let a thousand points of light bloom. That may not be the Chicago way, but it's the American way.

Frame by frame

I had a fascinating revelation yesterday, what I shall call an "utterly obvious profundity."

Sachi and I were driving through an old section of town, one that was more or less intact from the twenties and thirties. As I looked at the buildings, I abruptly realized something: That world really was just as colorful and three-dimensional as today's. It's just that our only visual window into that world -- movies -- has a narrow aperature and happens to be in black and white.

While Cagney and Bogie and all the rest pursue their violent courses within a noir world of shadow, the real inhabitants of that spacetime locus wandered through the same colors, more or less, as we do today. (By the same token, when Enrico Casuso sang, his voice was not scratchy and drowned out by vinyl or wax hiss; that is simply an artifact of the recording medium.)

Perhaps this just proves my own banality; but I believe more people than myself subconsciously envison yesteryear as we've always seen it on late-night TV: grainy, black and white, occasionally silent, always narrowly constrained to the TV's dimensions... and constantly interrupted by adverts for Cal Worthington and his dog Spot.

My thimble is empty. Tally ho.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, April 19, 2010, at the time of 5:10 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

November 9, 2009

Could He Ever Bring Himself to Say It? "No We Can't!"

Domestic Terrorism , Obamic Options , War Against Radical Islamism
Hatched by Dafydd

Just an update to our earlier post, Could He Ever Bring Himself to Say It? Obamic Options 004. I posed the following question:

[W]ould President Barack H. Obama ever admit to the American people that -- contrary to the knee-jerk FBI statement -- such a shooting under these assumptions would almost certainly be an act of "jihadist" terrorism?

But I prefaced that question on five assumptions, four of which (all but he last) were being widely reported at the time; I wrote, "let's assume for sake of argument that the following reports are correct." (I even italicized it.) Here are the assumptions:

  1. The main shooter was Major Malik Nadal Hasan (or Nidal Malik Hasan -- I've seen both versions);
  2. Hasan was a recent convert to Islam;
  3. Hasan was "violently hostile" to the deployment of American forces in Afghanistan and Iraq;
  4. That the two persons currently being held in custody are, in fact, collaborators in the massacre.
  5. That the two in custody were also recent converts to Islam or radical Moslems.

As it turned out, most of the original assumptions for sake of argument were wrong:

  • Yes, it seems pretty solid that Nidal Malik Hasan was the shooter.
  • But he was not a recent convert to Islam -- he is a lifelong Moslem who is now a radical Moslem (I don't know whether he has always been radicalized or whether it's a recent event).
  • He was certainly "violently hostile" to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
  • But the two people briefly held in custody were not collaborators and were released.
  • I don't have any information whether they were Moslems, so let's call this unconfirmed.

However, my point not only stands but is bolstered. How? How can my point become stronger when 60% of the underpinning of premises on which it was based has been kicked down?

Should be obvious: Because each discarded assumption has been replaced by even more solid evidence that Hasan's massacre at Fort Hood was not senseless and motive-free, but was in fact an act of putative jihad.

We now know about Hasan's repeated anti-American, anti-infidel outbursts, his justification of suicide bombings, his incomprehension that American Moslems could possibly fight against their "brothers" in Afghanistan and Iraq. We now learn that he posted jihadist messages on the internet, that he had contacts with a radical imam who preached at the mosque that the 9/11 butchers attended, and even that he evidently attempted to contact al-Qaeda.

He was not a recent convert, but he was a radical jihadist. He evidently acted alone when he committed mass murder, but at least two witnesses insist he shouted "Allahu Akhbar" as he did it.

Let's just jack up the question and run the new, more careful reporting under it in place of the discarded assumptions; when you finish tightening the bolts, the same question is even more urgent now than it was four days ago.

And now we appear to have an answer: No; Barack H. Obama cannot bring himself to call this brutish massacre "an act of 'jihadist' terrorism." It simply is not in his nature, nor his best interests -- which do not seem to coincide with the best interests of the United States.

Honesty may be the best policy, but it's not Obama's policy.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, November 9, 2009, at the time of 4:55 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

November 8, 2009

A Tale of Two Mentalities

Dhimmi of the Month , Domestic Terrorism , Islamarama , Liberal Lunacy , Military Machinations , War Against Radical Islamism
Hatched by Dafydd

There are so many categories for this post because it touches on so many hot-button issues; but I picked "Dhimmi of the Month" as the primary category. We never did get the polling software off the ground, so you can't vote on it... but I'll still use the category when appropriate.

Sadly, today it's appropriate.

The Chief of Staff of the United States Army, Gen. George Casey, has just uncovered the greatest threat exposed by the Fort Hood massacre, presumably committed by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. Is it radical jihadism? A future Islamic terrorist attack in the United States? The use of political correctness as a human shield for potential murderers? The inability of the Army to notice that one of its members swam in currents of hate so strong, they seared his soul (as Winston Churchill put it)?

No. Gen. Casey has identified the real danger: a potential anti-Moslem backlash!

General George Casey Jr., the Army chief of staff, said on Sunday that he was concerned that speculation about the religious beliefs of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, accused of killing 12 fellow soldiers and one civilian and wounding dozens of others in a shooting rampage at Fort Hood, could “cause a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers.”

“I’ve asked our Army leaders to be on the lookout for that,” General Casey said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union. “It would be a shame -- as great a tragedy as this was -- it would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well.”

General Casey, who was appeared on three Sunday news programs, used almost the same language during an interview on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos,” an indication of the Army’s effort to ward off bias against the more than 3,000 Muslims in its ranks.

“A diverse Army gives us strength,” General Casey, who visited Fort Hood Friday, said on “This Week....”

“The speculation could heighten the backlash,” he said on “This Week.” “What happened at Fort Hood is a tragedy and I believe it would be a greater tragedy if diversity became a casualty here.”

Losing our "diversity" would be "a greater tragedy" than the Fort Hood massacre itself? Does any rational human being actually believe this? And does any military historian believe that "a [religiously] diverse Army gives us strength?" I think it clear from context that Casey is claiming that having a tiny handful of Moslem soldiers -- 3,000 out of nearly 1.1 million soldiers -- somehow makes the Army "stronger."

This is ludicrous. I'm positive having Moslems in our ranks doesn't make us any weaker, but neither does it make us stronger, except marginally: If we banned all Moslems from the ranks, we might have to accept a lesser qualified Christian, Jewish, or Buddhist soldier instead of a more qualified Moslem. But the diminishment would be slight at best.

What really makes us stronger is:

  • The independence and initiative of our soldiers, especially officers and non-coms;
  • Our rigorous and realistic training (with live ammunition);
  • Our general population's familiarity with firearms through civilian gun ownership;
  • Our technologically advanced weaponry and other warfighting systems;
  • And most of all, our ideology of liberty, which gives our servicemen reasons to fight more powerful than "because I told you to."

Casey's remark is yet another example of transforming the criminal into the victim; it's political correctness run wild. And if George Casey cannot understand why Hasan's religion -- which appears by all reports to be a violent, extremist, jihadist sect of Islam -- could be the primary motive behind the otherwise senseless spree killings, then Gen. Casey should be removed as Chief of Staff. Immediately.

It's as stunning as if Eisenhower had said in 1942 that we should not "speculate" on the possible role National Socialism might play in the military aggression of the Axis, lest we create a "backlash" against soldiers with names like, well, Eisenhower. For heaven's sake, the ideology of National Socialism was the primary cause of World War II... just as the ideology of violent Islamic jihadism is the primary cause of global Islamic terrorism.

Or doesn't George Casey believe that? Of course, Casey also didnt' believe in the "surge;" he thought it would inevitably fail, leading to American defeat in Iraq. Fortunately for us (and the Iraqis), he was kicked upstairs, and Gen. David Petraeus took his place as Commander of Multi-National Force - Iraq.

I find it curious that Gen. Casey is so worried about a potential "backlash" against other, non-radical Moslems -- when has this ever happened, by the way? -- but he seems utterly unconcerned about the possibility of another massacre at another military installation by another radical [REDACTED]. I guess each of us must prioritize his own concerns.

Does Casey's response make him a "dhimmi," by which we popularly mean a non-Moslem who bends over backwards to explain away or excuse the excesses of radical jihadism? Yes, I argue it does... because Casey tries to deflect blame from the horrific ideology of jihad: "Nothing to see here, folks; let's just MoveOn!" We know that the jihadist mindset directly causes Islamic terrorism; this appears to be terrorism, perpetrated by a Moslem who increasingly appears to have been radicalized. But we can't "speculate" on this seemingly urgent question for fear of that putative "backlash."

Casey's delusional political correctness was echoed by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC, 82%), naturally enough:

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican of South Carolina, and Sen. Jack Reed, a Democrat of Rhode Island, took also pains on Sunday to say that Muslims have served honorably in the military and at risk to their lives.

“At the end of the day this is not about his religion -- the fact that this man was a Muslim,” Senator Graham said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

I wonder if Graham thinks that Osama bin Laden's hatred of the West and of Jews has anything to do with his religion; I'm afraid to ask.

In order to conclude that Hasan's religion had nothing whatsoever to do with the attack, one really must ignore an awful lot of evidence. For example (of both the evidence and how it can be brushed aside):

The San Antonio Express-News has reported that classmates in a graduate military medical program heard Major Hasan justify suicide bombings and make radical and anti-American statements. But investigators have said that Major Hasan might have suffered from emotional problems that were aggravated by the strain of working with veterans of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan and by the knowledge that he might soon be deployed to those theaters as well.

I think I would go along with the general premise that every radical Islamic jihadist "suffers from emotional problems;" but I understand the defense:

Only a lad
You really can't blame him
Only a lad
Society made him
Only a lad
He's our responsibility
Only a lad
He really couldn't help it
Only a lad
He didn't want to do it
Only a lad
He's underprivileged and abused
Perhaps a little bit confused

I note, however, that "understanding" is not the same as "exonerating."

Before we swing to the second "mentality," let's encapsulate the Casey mentality here:

On the base Sunday morning, mourners were asked [by the garrison chaplain] to pray for Major Hasan and his family, The Associated Press reported.

Yeah. That and not blaming the perpetrator are the most urgent tasks before us right now.

There is, however, another way to respond to the Fort Hood "tragedy" (man-caused disaster?); it was exemplified today by the man who is rapidly becoming one of my favorite senators:

A key U.S. senator called Sunday for an investigation into whether the Army missed signs that the man accused of opening fire at Fort Hood had embraced an increasingly extremist view of Islamic ideology.

Sen. Joe Lieberman's call came as word surfaced that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan apparently attended the same Virginia mosque as two Sept. 11 hijackers in 2001, at a time when a radical imam preached there.

God forbid we should "speculate" about how Hasam's religion might have slightly influenced his murderous actions. "This is not -- the radical imam -- I knew...!"

Classmates participating in a 2007-2008 master's program at a military college complained repeatedly to superiors about what they considered Hasan's anti-American views. Dr. Val Finnell said Hasan gave a presentation at the Uniformed Services University that justified suicide bombing and even told classmates that Islamic law trumped the U.S. Constitution.

Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, wants Congress to determine whether the shootings constitute a terrorist attack.

"If Hasan was showing signs, saying to people that he had become an Islamist extremist, the U.S. Army has to have zero tolerance," Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, said on "Fox News Sunday." "He should have been gone."

Couldn't we arrange for Gen. George Casey to be gone? He could be kicked upstairs again, this time to junior assistant deputy shavetail to the RINO Secretary of the Army, John McHugh. Then we could replace Casey with a new Chief of Staff, one with a mentality more like Joe Lieberman than George Casey.

Alas, that wouldn't work: The new Chief would have to be nominated by Barack H. Obama... and the One would probably name John Murtha!

Cross-posted to Hot Air's rogues' gallery...

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, November 8, 2009, at the time of 6:26 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

November 5, 2009

Could He Ever Bring Himself to Say It? Obamic Options 004

Domestic Terrorism , Obamic Options , War Against Radical Islamism
Hatched by Dafydd

Regarding the shooting at Fort Hood; let's assume for sake of argument that the following reports are correct:

  • The main shooter was Major Malik Nadal Hasan (or Nidal Malik Hasan -- I've seen both versions);
  • Hasan was a recent convert to Islam;
  • Hasan was "violently hostile" to the deployment of American forces in Afghanistan and Iraq;
  • That the two persons currently being held in custody are, in fact, collaborators in the massacre.

And let's make one final assumption that is admittedly based on nothing more than my speculation about the nature of the shooting:

  • That the two in custody were also recent converts to Islam or radical Moslems.

My question is this: In such a case, would President Barack H. Obama ever admit to the American people that -- contrary to the knee-jerk FBI statement -- such a shooting under these assumptions would almost certainly be an act of "jihadist" terrorism?

Or would he insist it was just a trio of motiveless killers, no matter what?

(Maybe he would dub it a man-caused Major disaster, suggest we respond by initiating a domestic contingency operation, and blame George W. Bush.)

Sachi believes Obama would not; that no matter how much evidence emerged, Obama would never say that this was domestic radical-Islamic terrorism. But I'm not entirely sure; he might realize that the disconnect between what he was saying and what the average guy or gal on the street was thinking would be so great that his approval would suffer significantly.

Recall, we made some assumptions up there: First, that all "facts" reported so far hold up, and second, that the accomplices were also Moslem converts or radicals. So everything I'm saying here is conditional.

But given those assumptions, what do you think the One would say?

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, November 5, 2009, at the time of 3:40 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

October 14, 2009

From CAIR's Congressman to CAIR's Interns

Domestic Terrorism , Islamarama
Hatched by Dafydd

Power Line (my fave blog) has kept close tabs on Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN, 100%), who they dubbed "CAIR's congressman" for his deep and suspicious connection with groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim American Society (a front group for the Muslim Brotherhood), and Hamas. For the most recent example, see this post.

It's bad enough to have an openly radical Moslem in the House of Representatives... but what's flying under the radar might be even worse; four Republican representatives charge that CAIR is trying to sneak its own operatives into the vast population of aides and interns who really run Congress, analyzing and often even writing the bills that eventually become the law:

Republican members of the Congressional Anti-Terrorism Caucus said the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) have tried to plant “spies” within key national-security committees in order to shape legislative policy.

Reps. Sue Myrick (R-N.C.), John Shadegg (R-Ariz.), Paul Broun (R-Ga.) and Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), citing the book Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld that's Conspiring to Islamize America, called for the House sergeant at arms to investigate whether CAIR had been successful in placing interns on key panels. The lawmakers are specifically focused on the House Homeland Security Committee, Intelligence Committee and Judiciary Committee.

Surprisingly enough, CAIR denies the charge:

“God forbid American Muslims take part in the political process and exercise their rights,” said Ibrahim Hooper, a CAIR spokesman, in a telephone interview. “I suppose they’re going to investigate the Muslim Staffers Association next.

Hm. Not a bad idea, Mr. Hooper.

“If these people weren’t so hate-filled, it would be laughable, but unfortunately they have an audience and, given their positions, it’s going to get picked up by the hate blogs.”

I hope our readers don't cease reading our hate blog; I know there are an awful lot of other hate blogs out there, but please continue supporting this particular hate blog with your eyeballs and attention!

Hooper said that CAIR is in full federal compliance with its status as a 501(c)3 nonprofit group, and that the group devotes less in terms of resources than the maximum legal limit allowed.

“We’ve always stayed within our legal limits,” he said. “If anything, we don’t have enough staff to lobby as much as we legally can.”

CAIR was, of course, named an unindicted co-conspirator with the Holy Land Foundation, in a trial where the latter was convicted of funneling millions of dollars to Hamas; the HLF's two founders were sentenced to life in prison.

But the Capitol Hill newspaper the Hill is right on the job, having found the perfect way to discredit one of the authors of the book on which these four members of Congress rely. P.David Gaubatz, "a former federal agent, is a U.S. State Department-trained Arabic linguist and counterterrorism specialist who has held the U.S. government's highest security clearances," according to the Amazon.com page for Muslim Mafia. This would appear to be some hefty credentials; but the Hill isn't fooled, and it reports this crushing retort to its readers:

Gaubatz, the co-author of Muslim Mafia, could not be reached at press time. On his website, daveg.us, he asks supporters for money to “legally destroy CAIR....”

“Please support me in these eforts [sic] to help shut this terror supporting organization down. donate all weekend. We need to raise $25,000 to put more research in the field and to bring more intelligence agianst [sic] them … If you want to protect your children and America, then help me now.”

See? Not one but two typos on his website! How can we possibly take such a man -- or his charges -- seriously if he writes "eforts" and "agianst" and doesn't even use spellcheck? (The Hill even missed one: Gaubatz forgot to capitalize the letter "d" in "donate.") If there is any reason to quote this particular post on Gaubatz's website other than "impeachment by typo," I hope some enlightened reader can explain it to me.

Of course, in the Hill's article, it first treats CAIR as a plural noun -- "Republican members of the Congressional Anti-Terrorism Caucus said the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) have tried to plant 'spies' within key national-security committees in order to shape legislative policy" -- but later treats the same noun as singular: "While the Republicans said they did not know of specific legislation that CAIR had affected, Franks said he wouldn’t be surprised if it was trying to amend the Patriot Act." I hope this doesn't discredit the Hill!

(I'm actually more concerned that reporter Jordy Yager -- I rib you not, that's how the byline reads -- appears uncertain whether Hamas, which routinely engages in suicide bombings of Jews in Israel, is actually a terrorist organization; cautious Yager is willing only to go as far as writing "Hamas, which the U.S. has labeled a terrorist organization.")

Of course, Gaubatz is only the co-author of the book; the other author, Paul Sperry, "a media fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, is former Washington bureau chief for Investor's Business Daily, and author of Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington;" this would appear to bring an even more powerful set of credentials to the book. But perhaps we can find a typo on Sperry's website as well.

Is CAIR's steady infiltration of Congress part of the change we should believe in?

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 14, 2009, at the time of 4:32 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

September 24, 2007

Cindy Sheehan's Day of Out-of-Tunement Manifesto

Afghan Astonishments , Asquirmative Action , Dhimmi of the Month , Domestic Terrorism , Drama Kings and Queens , Econ. 101 , Enviro-Mental Cases , Hippy Dippy Peacenik Groove , History of Moral Philosophy , Illiberal Liberalism , Impeachment Imbecilities , Iraq Matters , Kriminal Konspiracies , Liberal Lunacy , Logical Lacunae , News of the Weird , Palestinian Perils and Pratfalls , Politics 101 , Scurrilous Scribblings , Terrorism Intelligence , Unnatural Disasters , Unuseful Idiots
Hatched by Dafydd

I rarely do this, as you know: I rarely link to some piece and say simply "read this." (I'm too in love with the sound of my own fingers typing on a keyboard.)

But here's an exception. Read Cindy Sheehan's Yom Kippur "sermon," delivered at Michael Lerner's Beyt Tikkun "synogogue;" you will be -- if not exactly glad, then at least agape. (Rabbi Lerner is Hillary Clinton's mentor, author of the Politics of Meaning and other works of Socialist agit-prop masquerading as theology.)

My response (I love this) is entirely contained in the list of categories I had to attach to this post.

(Well, one more thing. It has always been my understanding that Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, is a day for each person to atone for what he, personally, has done wrong -- not "atone" for his enemies failing to live up to his own lofty standards, apologize for all the times America hasn't followed his lead, or wallow in self-righteous indignation that nobody listens to him. 'Nuff said; read the list of categories above.)

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, September 24, 2007, at the time of 2:36 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

November 29, 2006

Intimidating Imams and Ludicrous Lawsuits

Domestic Terrorism , Ludicrous Lawsuits , Terrorist Attacks , War Against Radical Islamism
Hatched by Sachi

The story of the six Intimidating Imams, whose suspicious behavior caused them to be chucked off an airplane at Minneapolis St.Paul International Airport, is starting to smell more and more like a conspiracy...

At first, it just seemed that six obnoxious, insensitive, and clueless Imams, who did not understand the concept of TPO (time, place, and occasion), exhibited behavior that would worry almost anyone -- and then got upset about being questioned by the police. But the more details I read, the less I believe they were simply oblivious to the surroundings:

  • They prayed loudly and as a group at the gate and made a point of criticizing the United States for everyone to hear before boarding;
  • Three normal-sized Imams asked for seatbelt extenders. Rather than put them on, they placed the extenders -- which would make excellent weapons -- under their seats, within easy reach;
  • Two of them then switched to unassigned first class seats, thus positioning the six around the cabin in a formation eerily reminiscent of the 911 hijackers.

The overtly (and deliberately) suspicious behavior of the Intimidating Imams cannot be dismissed as clueless; it was far too organized. They knew exactly what they were doing, and it was purposeful: the intention, made clear by their subsequent legal action, was to scare the crew and passengers enough to get kicked off the plane.

This gave them the perfect opportunity to raise a hue and cry about racism and racial profiling -- providing a cause of action to file a "civil-rights" lawsuit.

In fact, one of the Intimidating Imams has been involved in just such a lawsuit before:

Then there's the case of Muhammed al-Qudhaieen and Hamdan al-Shalawi, two Arizona college students removed from an America West flight after twice trying to open the cockpit. The FBI suspected it was a dry run for the 9/11 hijackings, according to the 9/11 Commission Report. One of the students had traveled to Afghanistan. Another became a material witness in the 9/11 investigation.

Even so, the pair filed racial-profiling suits against America West, now part of US Airways. Defending them was none other than the leader of the six imams kicked off the US Airways flight this week.

Turns out the students attended the Tucson, Ariz., mosque of Sheikh Omar Shahin, a Jordan native. Shahin has been the protesters' public face, even returning to the US Airways ticket counter at the Minneapolis airport to scold agents before the cameras.

The goal of the lawsuit is not simply to make money; it's much more sinister than that: the Intimidating Imams are trying to bully Americans into submitting to the "religion of peace" by manipulating our own cultural sensibilities, our legal system, and the incoming congressional majority Democrats.

Ultimately, the goal of such Islamists is to outlaw all criticism of Moslems or Islam itself, as in nearly all Islamic countries. But they intend to start by getting the incoming Congress to pass special legislation forbidding the "racial" or behavioral profiling of Moslems.

They figure they can use the appropriate code words and intimidate politically correct, weak-kneed Americans so much, they will be afraid to fight back. After all, it's worked in Europe.

In France, political correctness has gotten so ridiculous that the French media cannot even bring themselves to identify the gangs who burn a hundred cars a day (on a "relatively quiet day") as radical Moslems, not even after they seriously burned a young woman on a bus. Attacks on the police by Moslem youths during this "French intifada" have become so common that the police cannot even protect themselves, and instead are ceding swaths of territory to the intifada -- and essentially allowing those areas (some in Paris itself) to be governed under sharia law.

The same thing is starting to happen in Great Britain, though it's not so bad there yet. Dafydd will write about this in a subsequent post.

Nowadays, throughout much of Europe and nearly all the ummah, criticizing Islam, or even so much as speaking out against wearing the veil, can land you in 24-hour police protection... or the morgue. Militant Islamists are trying to bring this same war to America; let's not forget that the Intimidating Imams did not act out their little passion play in a vacuum... MSP is the same airport where Moslem taxi drivers have demanded they not be penalized for refusing to ferry passengers who are carrying alcohol; a cabbie of any other religion who refuses to carry a lawful fare is fined or even fired.

Four of six Intimidating Imams are now working hand-in-sock-puppet with the known Islamic terrorist-supporting organization CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations -- which now boasts its own member of Congress -- to bring their lawsuit. They are traveling around the country (who is sponsoring their travel?) and appearing on TV talk shows to promote their legal cause and disseminate anti-American propaganda. And the American media is lapping it up.

I don't have a transcript, but these are a couple of the tough, penetrating questions CNN’s Paula Zahn asked the Imams on her show:

  • "How humiliating was this experience?"
  • "Do you think, after 911, that Moslems have been unfairly targeted?"

Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX, 100%) has also chimed in, according to the Washington Times story above:

Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, Texas Democrat, said the September 11 terrorist attacks "cannot be permitted to be used to justify racial profiling, harassment and discrimination of Muslim and Arab Americans."

"Understandably, the imams felt profiled, humiliated, and discriminated against by their treatment," she said.

So according to Jackson-Lee, not only can't we profile on racial or religious grounds -- we cannot even profile based upon suspicious behavior! (Maybe she thinks it's a case of "threatening while Moslem.")

Judging by the response of American liberals, one must say that Phase One of the Imam's strategy has worked. We're not yet in the dire situation of many European countries; but that can change almost overnight if we allow this nonsense to continue.

If we refuse even to profile suspicious behavior, then all the banning of liquids and X-Raying bags at the airport won’t do any good: nothing better indicates mal intent than threatening behavior.

We must realize we are at war -- war against radical Islamism and jihadism, as represented by these very Imams and their CAIRing sponsors. We cannot allow ourselves to be intimidated or bullied into submission. This is our country, these are our lives, and we must protect and defend them. Passengers and flight crews -- all Americans everywhere -- must be vigilant against such highly suspicious or odd behavior... it's our first and best defense against attack, something the Israelis discovered long ago.

There is one thing that radical Moslems don't understand: we Americans are the people who refuse to give up our guns. We are the people who say “I’d rather be judged by twelve than carried by six.” For the same reason, I’d rather be called a racist by reporting potential terrorists than keep my mouth shut from fear of offending someone's sensibilities -- and be blown up.

I sure hope all my fellow passengers feel the same.

Hatched by Sachi on this day, November 29, 2006, at the time of 4:21 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

November 5, 2005

Six Billion Chickens Come Home to Roost

Domestic Terrorism , Enviro-Mental Cases
Hatched by Dafydd

Ingrid Newkirk, founder and president-for-life of PETA (People for Eating Tasty Animals the Ethical Treatment of Animals), is well known for saying that the massacre of six million Jews during the Holocaust is nothing compared to six billion chickens barbecued each summer.

But now, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) has extracted from an animal "rights" activist the obvious consequence of that sort of mentally unbalanced, misanthropic floccinaucinihilipilification: an explicit call to "assassinate" human beings in order to save "10 million non-human lives" from medical research.

From Robert Novac's column today (scroll to the bottom):

Sen. James Inhofe, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, at an Oct. 26 hearing drew from an animal rights activist an admission that he advocated murder of medical researchers who performed experiments on animals.

Dr. Jerry Vlasak of North American Animal Liberation was quoted as saying at an animal rights convention: "I don't think you'd have to kill, assassinate too many. I think for five lives, 10 lives, 15 human lives, we could save a million, 2 million, or 10 million non-human lives."

Questioned by Inhofe whether he was "advocating the murder of individuals," Vlasak replied: "I made that statement, and I stand by that statement."

(Ten million non-human lives? What is Jerry "the Pickle" Vlasak counting -- experiments performed on bacteria?)

Well, there you are. Does this really need comment?

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, November 5, 2005, at the time of 9:48 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

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