The massacre in San Bernadino, California is as baffling as it is chilling. I am very familiar with the Redlands and San Bernadino areas since I would spend summers in the area growing up and still have relatives there (including one of the officers responding to this shooting). What is so chilling is the lack of any indication of such an act from a couple that seemed to be living the American dream with a good income and new baby . . . and highly supportive colleagues who they proceeded to slaughter.
For me, the three most chilling facts are the following.
First, Syed Farook, 28, had a good work relationship with these people (he made $51,000 a year as an environmental health specialist for the county) and sat at an office party shortly before killing them. It appears that he may have gotten into an argument with with colleague Nicholas Thalasinos (right), a Messianic Jew who was one of the victims. Thalasinos was known to write caustic comments about Islam on the Internet. (His wife says that Thalasinos often wrote about radical Islam but was friendly with Farook). The argument discussed in the media may have occurred a couple weeks before the party and it is not clear whether the argument had rekindled shortly before the shooting. (One account has Farook telling Thalasinos that he “will never see Israel.”) However, it is clear that these two murderers were planning for terrorism based on the search of their home. A witness said that when Farook disappeared just before the photo session at the party, someone asked, “Where’s Syed?”
Second, both he and his wife Tashfeen Malik, 27, dropped off their 6-month-old girl with his mother Wednesday morning, claiming he had a doctor’s appointment. So these two were willing to abandon their baby in some pursuit of paradise — attaining glory through the slaughter of innocents.
Third, these were not strangers. Not only had these victims worked at Farook’s side, but they actually threw a baby shower for this couple who later slaughtered 14 people (and wounded 17).
Both were devout Muslims who appeared at the party (after Farook left) in dark tactical gear and masks with assault rifles and handguns. From their profiles, these two people would be viewed as well adjusted and well grounded in society. Farook actually called himself a “modern Muslim” on social media to distinguish himself from more traditional Muslims. On his dating profile before he met Malik he said that he was “living life to the fullest” and that he wanted a woman who was interested in “snow boarding, to go out and eat with friends, go camping, working on cars with me.” Indeed, Farook is quoted as telling his colleagues that Americans do not understand Islam and then proceeds to confirm that worst stereotype of Islam by critics.
Farook recently went to Saudi Arabia and may have been radicalized while in the Kingdom (a hotbed for extremism). He traveled to Saudi Arabia in 2013 to meet Malik’s family (who are from Pakistan), and then again in July 2014 to marry her. He would later be in contact with known terrorist figures according to police.
At their home, police say that they found an IED factory and 7,000 rounds of ammunition for assault rifles, 9-mm. handguns and .22-caliber rifles. So whatever the argument may have done, there was clearly planning for an attack if these accounts prove accurate. The argument may have triggered the massacre but the arsenal suggests that a massacre may have been in the works. What is clear is that both of these individuals were powder kegs before any argument with a co-worker.
The greatest question however remains the road to radicalism. We have seen this pattern before of men visiting Saudi Arabia or Syria and coming back radicalized and unstable.
Jim22, Why would I be in favor of scrapping the First Amendment? Your comment doesn’t make sense. Besides, there are already reasonable restrictions on free speech rights. Just try yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theatre and you’ll find out.
Olly, you can start with background checks as a reasonable regulation, in order to determine if a gun buyer has a history of mental illness or criminal violence. The gun show loophole allows those individuals to gain access to firearms. Also, there needs to be better ways of tracking firearms as they change ownership. Too many weapons are being funneled into the hands of criminals by gun purchasers ostensibly exercising their Second Amendment rights. I would also place restrictions on the size of ammo clips.
It’s been said that the constitution is not a suicide pact. Gun violence in America right now is a public health crisis of epidemic proportions. I think you insult the Founder’s greatly to suggest that they would have allowed this sort of violence to continue unchecked. They did,however, give us the ability to alter the constitution if parts of it failed to work, and the evidence is clear that the Second Amendment has been misinterpreted and abused to absurdity. In the face obdurate fanaticism, if we as a people can’t come up with some common sense remedies for the problem of gun violence, then the Second Amendment must be scrapped and you can secure your rights through the legislative process.
And before you tell me the only solution is more good guys with guns, think about the four LEO’s that were shot in a coffee shop while in uniform. Those officers were highly trained and fully armed, yet that wasn’t enough to save several of them from being shot by a crazed gunman. Ever wonder where he got the gun?
As an aside, I notice many of you demonizing Muslims, but did any of you ever criticize the wackos from the Bundy Ranch who shot and killed a police officer.
Sorry paul, I did not read the link your posted.
Too lazy to write your own editorial? Still sticking to your I-am-not-writing-more-than-one-paragraph-at-a-time rule 🙂
po – if you don’t read the links then you do not have the information. It was clear from your meandering responses that you had not read them. Do read them.
Paul I have the information, what am avoiding is the misinformation you tend to provide.
Always consider the source I say.
I have not forgotten yet about the CAIR/Muslim brotherhood offices at the white house 🙂
po – dude, I even sent you pictures of the members of the Muslim Brotherhood working in the WH. What more do you want.
Paul, I usually do not break my rule to not respond to false and fallacious arguments, but I made an exception for you, on account of our long history. You ought to go back and reread it.
po – “false and falacious” is redundant. However, I sent you names and pictures. Are you saying I didn’t?
Paul, when it comes to your sources, the combo of false and fallacious is never redundant, it is necessary!
didn’t I adequately reply to that “source”?
po – I am not sure what you did. You always attack the source not the message. You need to learn to kill the message, not the messenger.
Paul, some messages are unkillable! The mere acknowledging of the messenger acknowledges the message, and once that virus is in, it can’t ever be taken out.
So if you want me to address the message, send a trustworthy messenger 🙂
I sent you a reliable messenger, however, you are, what we call in literature, an unreliable narrator.
bambam, let me guess, you posted something from Daniel Greenbeans again?
How can someone so strongly against antisemitism be such an eager islamophobe?
Ah, the lessons of the holocaust, most lost upon those who should remember them most!
I knew you sounded familiar, you were there too, urging the stoning of Jesus.
You were there too, urging going after the Jews, urging raiding the ghettos, cheering the cartoons depicting Jews with the hooked noses, the unctuous smiles.
You were in the camp, pushing them into the chambers, laughing, and years before, you were there in the streets, passing along leaflets quoting your mentor of then, the previous Daniel Greenbeans.
Ah, bam, one can’t but satisfy one’s calling! Some see goodness, feel goodwill, some care and urge healing…
Others with the thumb down, the spit aimed, the stone launched, the jeer sharpened, dark eyes, darker heart…
There were always Christians and lions, there were always Jews and Nazis…now it is our turn.
Sigh!
O Lord, make us not of the latter, and praised You be for making us of the former. We walk in your light, oblivious to darkness as it descends around us, upon us. The light with which you guided our father Abraham, and his sons Moses, Jesus and Muhamad, let us bask in it, and let it be too the armor against evil, as it calls for more evil.
Muslim “Workplace Violence” Killer Pledged Allegiance to ISIS
Coming to a workplace near you
December 4, 2015
Daniel Greenfield
Let’s not jump to any conclusions here, as Obama would say. (But let’s suspend the 2nd amendment anyway.)
“We don’t know if this was workplace rage or something larger or a combination of both,” Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in Washington, echoing President Barack Obama. “We don’t know the motivation.”
We just don’t know. Could be one of those party arguments that you respond to with heavy firepower within 20 minutes. Or it might just be… terrorism.
U.S. investigators are evaluating evidence that Malik, a Pakistani native who had been living in Saudi Arabia when she married Farook, had pledged allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, two U.S. officials told Reuters. They said the finding, if confirmed, could be a “game changer” in the investigation.
CNN reported on Friday that one U.S. official said Malik had pledged allegiance to al-Baghdadi in a posting on Facebook made on Wednesday, the day of the attack, under an account that used a different name.
So obviously it’s workplace violence.
Malik had passed a national security check. You know part of the multi-layered vetting process that’s supposed to make it impossible for ISIS supporters to come here and kill us.
Farook applied for a permanent-resident green card for Malik within the legal 90-day limit, a federal official said. In July 2015, she was granted a conditional green card, for which, as a matter of procedure, the couple had to prove that their marriage was legitimate. Additionally, Malik had to pass criminal and national-security background checks.
I’m sure none of the tens of thousands of Syrian Muslim migrants coming to America will be able to do what Malik did. And if they do, well it’ll just be more workplace violence. Coming to a workplace near you.
Look, at this point, I don’t owe anyone absolutely anything. These terrorists do not represent me, nor do christian terrorists represent Christianity.
Frankly I could not care less what you think of Muslims, and what you demand of us. And whether you take my comment as a threat or as apologism matters very little to me.
I gave you my perspective on the issue, and it involves principally our taking responsibility for the mayhem we cause elsewhere, which UNAVOIDABLY will blowback on us, as everything always does.
Yep, the san bernardino shootings are the only ones to worry about, forget about the 9 lives at the church, the 14 at the Planned parenthood…and as I said before, DOMESTIC [ WHITE, CHRISTIAN AFFILIATED ] terrorism is a much bigger problem to us than islamic terrorism. and as usual, the hypocrite is blind to one but oh so aware of the other!
More attacks will certainly happen, unavoidably, some islamic, many more domestic white christian affiliated. One can take up the Trump urging and attempt to target Muslims, and in that case the civil war some are longing for happens and this country self destructs, or one tones down the rhetoric and instead pressures its government to change its warmongering. Who benefits in the relentless demonization of Muslims? Not you, not me, solely the media that hypnotizes and distracts you and those with the hidden hands, oil companies and weapons manufacturers, along with their lackeys in congress,who ALWAYS benefit when war and violence erupts.
And lest you think that targeting Muslims will go down as placidly as it did with the japanese, think again.
And let’s remind everyone that by Muslims, we speak of less than 20% Arabs, the 80% are Asian, Blacks, Hispanics and Whites.
So if we are suggesting sending Muslims back, ask yourself where do you send back someone whose stock extends to the mayflower.
And if, like bambam, you think violence against Muslims is the answer, ask yourself, how can you tell a biker muslim from a regular biker 🙂
…a black muslim from a non- Muslim black…
a korean-american muslim vs a non- muslim Korean American?
Muslim Terrorist was Part of “Most Diverse Office in San Bernardino”
Islam doesn’t co-exist.
December 4, 2015
Daniel Greenfield
Muslim countries are not especially diverse. There’s a majority group and some cringing minority groups. If the minority groups are non-Muslim, then they really have to cringe or be massacred. Eventually they’re massacred anyway no matter how much they cringe.
Islam doesn’t co-exist. Adding Islam doesn’t lead to diversity. It eradicates it.
One health department supervisor sometimes referred to her team of inspectors as a “Little United Nations,” because they had come to San Bernardino from everywhere: Eritrea, Colombia, India, Mexico and Central America — the most diverse office in San Bernardino County.
The real UN is dominated by dictatorships and terrorists so that’s a failed model. But it takes a while for some people to figure that out.
He had taken a long vacation from work once to travel to Saudi Arabia and see the woman who would become his wife. Early in the year, he had set up a baby registry at Target for his newborn daughter, and his office mates had thrown him a baby shower. They had asked to meet his new wife and teased him lightly when he demurred.
They did eventually get meet her… to their misfortune.
Syed Farook was perfectly friendly. He went on smiling and joking with his co-workers. Right up until the moment he came back ready to kill them.
Another morning stuck in a conference room, another requisite all-staff meeting, and Patrick Baccari arrived to find his co-worker Syed Farook sitting at a table by himself. He was wearing a button-down shirt and a long beard. Baccari walked over to join him. “Ready to be bored?” Baccari asked, because that was always their joke. San Bernardino County required its health inspectors to gather at least twice each year for a day of speeches and continuing education. “I’m ready,” he would remember Farook telling him and smiling back.
“Where’s Syed?” Baccari remembered someone at the table asking, and then a little while later Farook was back, this time with his wife, two assault rifles, two handguns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
That’s the way it is with Islamic terrorists. This is a culture where deception is the norm and you keep your enemies closer so you don’t have far to reach when you stab them in the back. Friendliness means nothing. Islam forbids Muslims to take non-Muslims as friends. Friendship is a lie that ends in betrayal and death.
San Bernardino: Another Jihad Attack, Another Cover-Up
Mainstream media reporters don’t even need to show up for work. They can file their stories beforehand.
December 4, 2015
Robert Spencer
The San Bernardino jihad massacre is the latest jihad atrocity, but it’s just like the last one, and just like the next one: it has played out in exactly the same way that the last jihad atrocity did, and in just the same way that the next one will play out as well. Mass killings by “radicalized” Muslims are followed by earnest statements from the President and the mainstream media that we must not rush to judgment, that the motive of the shooters was unclear, that we need gun control, that we need to address the real threat of climate change, that Muslims fear “Islamophobia,” and so on. It’s always a new massacre, but it’s always the same story.
Surely by now mainstream media reporters don’t even need to roll out of bed to file their stories. How much legwork does it take to write, “Syed Farook and Tashfeen Melik murdered 14 people at a Christmas party in San Bernardino; yes, Farook was a devout Muslim, but authorities are searching for a motive; moderate Muslims condemned the attack and said they feared anti-Muslim backlash”? Change the names and date, change the number of victims and the place, and they’ve filed that story dozens of times. They can just take out their last New York Times or CNN piece on the Paris jihad attack, change the details, hit send, and pour a cold one.
A few years ago, a couple of writers for Salon.com showed up at a panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on which I was speaking, and were deservedly ridiculed after they were caught writing their story before the panel had even begun. But you can’t really blame them for trying to save some time: their story was going to be the same “Racist Bigoted Islamophobes Say Egregiously Evil Things” no matter what anyone on the panel really did say, so why not get a head start on the writing?
With San Bernardino, and every jihad attack, it works the same way. The media trims the facts to fit the Procrustean bed of their narrative, such that, in this case, most of the American public will likely never hear that San Bernardino jihad murderer Syed Farook had been “radicalized”; or that he had been in touch with Muslims being investigated for jihad terror activity; or that he spent his free time in the mosque, memorizing the Qur’an.
If they do hear about such things at all from the mainstream media, their significance won’t be explained: no one on CBS or NBC or ABC or PBS or NPR or in the New York Times or the Washington Post will remind his or her audience that the Islamic State and other jihad groups consider themselves to be at war with the United States, and have explicitly and repeatedly called upon Muslims in the U.S. to commit mass murder of American civilians. Would anyone have wondered about the motive of a German national who slaughtered fourteen Americans on U.S. soil in 1943? Of course no one would have, but that was a long time ago. Now we are engaged in a great ignored war, a war that only one side is fighting, a war in which enemy combatants are tried in civilian courts – as if they were criminals, not enemy soldiers — by a government that desperately wishes to maintain the illusion that there is no war at all.
This play has played to rapt audiences in Boston and Fort Hood, and all over the country. It is so familiar that all the players hit their marks with the nonchalant and unthinking precision of the overtrained. But it needs to close. The endless proclamations after every jihad attack, that it has nothing to do with Islam, and that Muslims are the real victims, are not only ludicrous; they’re offensive. The mainstream media and the Obama Administration have insulted the intelligence of Americans long enough. Their denial and willful ignorance are endangering us all, as they continue to behave after every jihad attack that their primary duty is not protecting Americans, but protecting Islam’s image.
San Bernardino has so far been just another production of this dreary little play, but it still has a chance to be much more than that. If Americans see the real lessons of San Bernardino and no longer accept this nonsense we are being fed; if we demand of our elected officials and presidential candidates that they must speak the truth about this threat we are facing, and formulate realistic ways to counter it, or their political careers will be over; if we no longer accept this endless portrayal of Muslims as beleaguered victims of “Islamophobia” after every murder of non-Muslims by Muslims – then San Bernardino could be a defining moment.
But for that to happen, people would have to be informed as to the true parameters of this issue, and those who are charged with informing them are instead doing all they can to spread disinformation. So San Bernardino will fade in memory once it is replaced by the next jihad carnage. And that one won’t have anything to do with Islam, either. Journalists can get their stories ready now, so that when that carnage comes, they can just fill in the requisite blanks and be the first to file. In fact, they better have five or ten jihad attack story templates ready. They’re going to need them.
“Frustrated’ Muslims Can’t Stop Killing Jews… and Everyone Else
Muslim “Frustration” caused 9/11 and every other act of terror.
October 19, 2015
Daniel Greenfield
As Jews were being butchered in the streets of Jerusalem, Secretary of State John Kerry blamed them.
“There’s been a massive increase in settlements over the course of the last years, and now you have this violence because there’s a frustration that is growing,” the nation’s greatest diplomat said.
“Settlements” are Jews living in parts of Israel captured by the invading Muslim armies in 1948, from which Jews were ethnically cleansed, and then retaken and liberated by Israel in 1967. A Jew living in a part of Jerusalem from which Jews were driven out in 1948 is a “settler” who “frustrates” Muslims.
And who can blame Muslims for taking an axe or a knife to those frustrating Jews? Not John Kerry.
Back before 1967, Muslim terrorism had to be attributed to “frustration” at Jews living anywhere in Israel. Before Jews had an independent state or any realistic possibility of achieving one, Muslims were frustrated at Jews living. And so they strove to make the Jews into the “unliving” by murdering them.
That much hasn’t changed.
“Frustration” is one of the most common excuses for Muslim violence. Most frustrated people just punch a wall. It takes a special sort of person to respond to frustration by ramming into a bus stop and then hacking at an elderly Rabbi with a cleaver or stabbing a 13-year-old boy on a bike.
But Muslim “frustration” is an international problem.
9/11, according to the OIC, was caused by Muslim “frustration.” Boko Haram’s bombing of churches and mass murder of Christians in Nigeria is due to “frustration.” When the Taliban blew up the Buddha statues in Afghanistan, their spokesman claimed that they did it out of “frustration” with the West.
In the UK, Jahangir Mohammed, director of the Centre for Muslim Affairs, says Muslims are “very angry and frustrated.” A Home/Foreign Office report warned that Muslim terrorism was caused by “the lack of any real opportunities to vent frustration.”
NPR tells us that French Muslims are “frustrated.” Muslim migrants showing up in Sweden are also finding “frustration” there. In fact, as far back as 1995, the New York Times informed us that “Europe’s Muslim Population” is … you guessed it: “Frustrated.”
Are the Muslims frustrated in Australia? Yes, they are. They’re frustrated in New Zealand. They’re even frustrated in Canada. They’re frustrated in Atlanta and Baton Rouge. Are Muslims frustrated in China? Newsweek warns us that “frustration” could “drive” Muslims in China to join ISIS. Muslims are even frustrated in Pakistan where they’ve managed to kill or repress all the non-Muslims.
In India, we are told that “Muslim frustration broke into violence on Direct Action Day… when after three days of dreadful slaughter 20,000 Muslims and Hindus lay dead in the streets of Calcutta.”
The textbook, “The Muslim World in the 21st Century” informs us that “Indonesia saw an outburst of the frustration against Chinese domination of the economy in 1997.” This is a nice way of saying that angry Muslim mobs ran wild murdering and raping Chinese people because they actually worked for a living.
But what other people consider psychotic behavior and war crimes is just Muslim frustration. When they get frustrated enough, Muslims have to stab a bunch of Jews in Jerusalem, rape hundreds of Chinese women or fly planes into the World Trade Center.
If only everyone else didn’t frustrate Muslims into behaving that way.
Back in the US, political scientist M. Steven Fish claims that Muslim terrorists feel “frustration and humiliation” because the “Christians won big.” The Christians have been giving back their winnings since the 1950s, but Muslims have only been getting more “frustrated” with every Christian concession.
Fathali Moghaddam at Georgetown invented “Staircase Terrorism” (which despite the name doesn’t involve Muslims pushing non-Muslims down staircases), which claims that Muslim aggression begins with feelings of “frustration” that lead to violence.
Muslim frustration leads to aggression. When the poor dears get worked up enough, they get violent. The more their violent efforts are frustrated, the more violent they become. Before you know it, they’re throwing a suicide bomber tantrum and diplomats rush off with a pile of candy and concessions to reduce their frustration levels to slightly less murderous norms.
Instead of giving them an immigration time-out or a shock-and-awe spanking, they hunt down whoever made poor Mohammed Jr. feel so frustrated that snookums is out on the streets stabbing people.
“What do you want from Mohammed? He’s frustrated. He’s a very sensitive boy. Why can’t you be more understanding of his feelings and stop trying to fight back when he comes at you with a butcher knife?”
All this global Muslim frustration, though, seems to indicate that the problem might be Mohammed.
Muslims are frustrated by the Jews in Israel, the Christians in Europe, the Buddhists in Myanmar, the Yazidis in Iraq, the Hindus in India and the atheists in Bangladesh.
If there’s a religion that Muslims can live in peace with, it has yet to be discovered. If frustrated Muslims succeeded in their goal of wiping out or enslaving all non-Muslims, they would go back to taking out their “frustrations” on each other with Sunnis and Shiites slaughtering each other as they do today.
It’s not us. It’s them.
Muslim frustration is as universal as death and taxes. If Muslims just had an issue with Israeli Jews, then it might be the fault of the Jews. But how does one explain ongoing Muslim conflicts with Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Yazidis, atheists and even other Muslims? It can’t all be the “settlements.”
Either everyone (including other Muslims) is picking on Muslims, oppressing and frustrating them, driving them so deep into despair that they have no choice but to hack elderly Rabbis to death or rape Chinese women in Jakarta… or the Muslims are the ones picking fights with everyone else.
When one group of people is constantly bombing, stoning, murdering, raping, burning, beheading and stabbing every other religion it can get its hands on… maybe it’s the real problem.
John Kerry blames the “settlements” for Muslims stabbing Jews.
And yet during the Scorpions’ Pass Massacre in 1954, there were no “settlements.” Despite that, “frustrated” Muslim Brotherhood Bedouin terrorists massacred eleven Israeli passengers on a bus; including a 9-year-old boy whom they shot at point blank range. A 5-year-old girl who survived found her mother had been raped and her finger had been cut off for her wedding ring.
But back then the rapists and child-murderers were “frustrated” at the existence of Israel. So what of the Hebron Massacre in which the Jewish population was exterminated with knives and axes? Blame Zionism. Then what of the Safed Massacre in 1834? The Jewish victims were raped and murdered. This was not to be confused with the Muslim attacks on Jews in Safed in 1838 or 1927 or 1517.
Were the Muslims frustrated by Zionism or “settlements” in 1517?
Muslim “frustration” with Jews leading to outbreaks of butchery has a long history. Because it’s not about “settlements” or even Jews. It’s not about unemployment in Europe or American foreign policy. It’s not about Myanmar’s refusal to accommodate Muslim Rohingya invaders or Chinese businesses in Indonesia. All of these are excuses for Muslims to do the terrible things they want to do anyway.
Muslim violence is not about anyone else except Muslims. No one else is responsible for Muslim violence except Muslims.
The one thing that Muslim murderers excel at is playing the victim. Someone always “made” Mohammed do it. Someone got him so frustrated and upset that he had no choice but to rape and kill.
There’s a term for the kind of people who think like this; criminals. There’s a term for the kind of people who defend them; leftists.
The Muslim case for justice can be found in the books of a million police departments where all the stories begin with the criminal feeling sorry for himself and end in hospitals and morgues. The story always begins with, “I wanted what was coming to me” or “She shouldn’t have made me angry.”
We don’t put up with that behavior from individuals. Why do we put up with it from an entire culture?
There’s a place we send people who start killing when they get frustrated enough. It’s called prison. We can’t lock up the entire Muslim world, but we can lock ourselves away from it by ending migration and immigration to the civilized world from a Muslim world where frustration justifies violence.
And maybe, if Muslims get frustrated enough by this civilizational time-out, they’ll choose civilization over barbarism.
Jim22 – Commissar from the Presidium
The First Amendment was written for the American People.
The First Amendment was not written to be scrutinized, denigrated or overturned by psycho-babblers of the ilk of Karl Marx, Barry Soetoro or Loretta Lynch.
Treason, nullification, subversion and insurrection were addressed with drawing and quartering in 17th century Britain.
The following is the brilliance, nay, genius of the American Founding Fathers. Read it. It is clear English.
“CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW…”
First Amendment
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Jim22 – Commissar from the Presidium – he’s watching us.
com·mis·sar
/ˈkäməˌsär/
noun
noun: commissar; plural noun: commissars
an official of the Communist Party, especially in the former Soviet Union or present-day China, responsible for political education and organization.
•a head of a government department in the former Soviet Union before 1946.
•a strict or prescriptive figure of authority.
_____
pre·sid·i·um
/priˈsidēəm,-ˈzid-/
noun
noun: presidium; plural noun: presidiums; noun: praesidium; plural noun: praesidiums
a standing executive committee in a communist country.
•the standing executive committee in the former Soviet Union, which functioned as the legislative authority when the Supreme Soviet was not sitting.
Lets be fair to Muslims. Turks no matter what their religion are a special flavor of nasty.
They were nasty before they were Muslims, nasty when they were a Sultanate, and nasty as a republic.
I know plenty of Muslims that truly are peaceful and just individuals. I know some decent Jews too, and some Christians and pagans and materialists who are all decent.
The problem Muslims are Salafists. Wahabists. They’re the rabid dogs of Islam. And they are the ones the US and the Saudis boost, and apparently, the ones the Turks have been arming and trucking with too.
The main thing the American government has against the Shiites of Lebanon, Syria, and Iran, is their alliance with Russia. They are nowhere near the “fanatics” that our ally Saudi works with nor the nutty Turkmen terrorists righteously targeted by Russia.
We are reaping the evil fruit of mischief. Born of ignorance and passivity before the throne of the American oligarchs.
American peasants like us, need to bone up on the basics about the geopolitics in the region. Most Americans don’t even know that Turks and Arabs are wholly different peoples, not to even get into Kurds or Pashtuns or Chechens etc etc. Time to learn some basics people.
John Smith is right. There is a great deal of misunderstanding and misinformation out there. The basics need to be mastered in order to develop a strategy. The schism in Islam occurred when the Kharijite, those who defected from the Islamic groups that rebelled against the third and fourth caliphs in 644. There had been a civil war over the choice of leader and following the Battle of Siffin an arbitration process was agreed to select the leader. The Kharijites refused to take part in this and broke away to continue a guerilla war. This is the basis for a blueprint for ISIS and the model on which they build their legitimacy. The Kharijites held that “judgement belongs to God alone”, and that God would decide succession by determining the victor in battle, whereas arbitration would be decided by men. ISIS claim to follow the same doctrine.
Wahabism is a different sect, named after an eighteenth-century preacher and scholar, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. He started a revivalist movement of strict religious aherence analogous to eg the Christian Free Presbyterians which bans singing etc.
Eventually he formed a pact with a local leader Muhammad bin Saud offering political obedience and promising that protection and propagation of the Wahhabi movement would mean “power and glory” and the rule of “lands and men. So the House of Saud struck a deal to gain power in the area which exists to this day. This is the reason for the Power Base which supports the Saudi Royal Family which went on to conquer most of the Arabian Peninsula, with the creation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It explains the inability to change and what the west would view as intransigence. The relationship is the Saudi equivalence of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. It is a sort of sacred pledge which has its counterpart in pledging allegance to the Flag of the United States. So this sort of relationship needs to be handled with care diplomacy and respect if a diplomatic solution is to be achieved.
The vitriolic talk on this blog at the moment is understandable buy will only escalate problems. American Muslims need to understand that non-muslim Americans have had enough. They need to prove their commitment to America in words and deeds.
Americans need to understand that if a well thought through strategy is not developed, escalation to massive proportions is possible with potential Muslim allies deserting the American camp.
This is potentially a very dangerous situation and needs great skill and understanding to manage. No good can come from angry emotional outbursts that are not thought through. This is a conflict America must win and this includes the hearts and minds of all reasonable people.
And of course conflict is what ISIS wants. To disrupt the democratic process and to create chaos out of which, they believe, the Caliphate will survive.
There is, of course, a danger of reckless responses to these ongoing acts of terrorism.
There is another danger which needs to be examined. Trivializing the real danger by dismissing real threats as “jv team” minor issues.
You can go back to the first WTC bombing in 1993 and see how “serious” the U.S. was about a real terrorist threat.
By 1998, that was pretty hard to miss. After 2001, we focused on that threat for a time. Complacency and trivialization of that threat subsequently reappeared.
There is now a “refocus” on this issue in the wake of the Paris attacks and the San Bernadino murders.
I think it’s pretty well established that we’re not dealing with a jv team, that this isn’t overhyped by the media, nor is it similar to “a big city mayor dealing with a crime issue”.
Rudy Guliani probably has the best perspective on that.
We know nothing about the wife – no friends, in- laws have no information about her, what she did while living in Saudi Arabia and nary a photo, which is odd because she is reported to have a Pakistani passport, would have had to apply for her fiancé visa with a photo. She is a mystery woman, and I feel she is the key to the investigation, the instigator.
And today on TV, as reporters were visually ( and hopefully not physically) scavenging through the Redlands residence, the NBC reporter held up her California drivers license for the camera to see.
Isn’t the Redlands residence part of a crime scene and why was it allowed to be open to the public so quickly ? Is this an FBI mess up?
Stephen Jones McVeigh’s lawyer tried to subpoena information from Israel and the judge would not compel. Read his book “Others Unknown.”
There’s also ATF memos about “Carol Howe,” an informant jointly managed by ATF and SPLC’s Morris Dees– who warned IN ADVANCE that people were going to attack the Murrah building.
McVeigh definitely had accomplices, and he took the rap on himself. Since the feds executed him, you know what they say, “dead men tell no tales.”
maplady…the vetting of Syrian refugees will be as comprehensive as the vetting of the wife, Tasheen Malik.
There is justifiable skepticism about the true capabilities of the vetting agencies, and the vetting process.
John smith……there were a number of theories about additional accomplices (beyond McVeigh and Nichols).
In his role as defense attorney, I’m not sure that producing other conspirators would in any way exonerate McVeigh.
So I’m not sure what his objective was, as defense attorney, in trying to show that others participated.
As an author selling a book years later, he can put forth his theories…..but at trial, I don’t see how those theories would help his client.
Tom Nash “At some point, people will have to decide if the “Tim McVay” type of terrorist is as great of a threat as…..” As what? You may want to rethink that, but then again maybe not.
Monty,
What reasonable legislation and/or regulation do you suggest would prevent these events from taking place? Pretending for one ludicrous moment that government is populated by angels, what means of self-defense should law-abiding citizens be left with when not-so-law-abiding individuals come calling?
I wonder if Monty would be for this next after removing the Second Amendment…..
In the face of the fanatical free speech rights opposition to accept the merest of common sense speech regulation, then scrapping the First Amendment and replacing it with legislation that sets out basic responsibilities for speech and allows communities to regulate speech in ways that make sense for themselves is the sanest option we can take to bring an end to these senseless free thinking.
jim22 ‘senseless free thinking’ Good one!
Hildegard..I said “as Islamic terrorism”
po – “I no longer watch the news while they are around, because it is either black kids being killed or Muslims being demonized.
As long that continues, more unhinged Muslims will react violently. They will make it a point to make others pay for how they themselves feel inside. That simple.”
This almost sounds like a threat. “You better stop reporting on our bad behavior or we will kill more of you!” But, I get it, it’s really our fault. Sorry po, I’m not here to make you or anyone feel good inside.
One last thing po, I could almost understand and agree with some of your assertions, but you really want to know what has turned me? It is really quite simple, it happened at the soccer game where the moment of silence for the French terrorist victims was not honored by the crowd. This wasn’t just one or two hecklers. This was a stadium full of hateful people and more than 15%.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/18/world/paris-soccer-fans-turkey/
So you can try to explain away or point to other “facts” all you want that Islam is peaceful and non violent. I’m not buying it.
Thus endeth the Islam Apologetic’s 101 lesson. Nicely done Po.
Let me boil down your ‘moral equivalency’ post: The religion of Islam is not responsible, it’s those (in the West) that force “good” Muslims to abandon their legitimate faith in a sick and twisted effort to save it. Why is it that a radicalized Muslim IS NOT representing Islam but “most domestic terrorism comes from a christian background? (9 church goers, 20 children and staff at sandy hook…)”?
“No matter how often some say it, the issue is not Islam.”
Perhaps, but it certainly is those radicalized to believe it IS Islam.
Olly, The string your tugging is the same either/or fallacy that the NRA has been ladling out to Americans; either we allow people to carry any weapon they wish everywhere they go or we take them away from everyone.
Not so. I’ll assume you’re pretending to have never heard of “grandfathering”.
In the face of the fanatical gun rights opposition to accept the merest of common sense gun regulation, then scrapping the Second Amendment and replacing it with legislation that sets out basic responibilities for gun ownership and allows communities to regulate firearms in ways that make sense for themselves is the sanest option we can take to bring an end to these senseless tragedies.
Monty Z. – “Tom Nash, the issue is how many mass murders French gun regulations have prevented.”
Or, how many murders/rapes/burglaries the second amendment has stopped.