Trump might actually bring peace to the Middle East, the FBI behaving badly (again), Letitia James gets served a heaping plate of payback, a bomb factory goes boom, a dive into the mind of a social justice warrior, Ukraine keeps wrecking Russia’s oil infrastructure, and ShoeOnHead dives deep into really icky erotica aimed at women. Plus multiple good boys.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Peace in the Middle East? “Trump Announces Israel, Hamas Have Agreed to First Phase of Peace Deal to End Gaza War.”
President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that Israel and Hamas have agreed on the first phase of his 20-point peace agreement to end the war in Gaza.
Hamas will exchange the remaining living and dead hostages in its captivity and Israel will respond by releasing Palestinian prisoners, Trump said on Truth Social.
“I am very proud to announce that Israel and Hamas have both signed off on the first Phase of our Peace Plan. This means that ALL of the Hostages will be released very soon, and Israel will withdraw their Troops to an agreed upon line as the first steps toward a Strong, Durable, and Everlasting Peace,” Trump said.
“All Parties will be treated fairly! This is a GREAT Day for the Arab and Muslim World, Israel, all surrounding Nations, and the United States of America, and we thank the mediators from Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey, who worked with us to make this Historic and Unprecedented Event happen,” he added.
“BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS!”
Snip.
With the deal on the table, the White House said Trump is considering a trip to the Middle East after he completes his annual checkup on Friday.
Releasing the hostages and prisoners is one aspect of the Trump administration’s plan to stop the fighting in Gaza and foster economic development in the region. Hamas is expected to begin releasing the hostages this upcoming weekend.
In September, the White House released Trump’s plan for stabilizing Gaza and creating a temporary governance structure to rebuild the territory and prevent Hamas from governing it after the war. At the same time, Trump gave Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the green light to escalate the conflict in Gaza if Hamas rejected his latest overture.
“With God’s help we will bring them all home,” Netanyahu said in a statement.
Trump’s announcement Wednesday marks the beginning of end of the war between Israel and Hamas after almost two years of fighting and tens of thousands of casualties. The war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas fighters killed 1,200 innocent civilians and abducted more than 250 hostages.
If it works out and the hostages get home, fine and dandy, but Jihadis not living up to their promises and treaties is pretty much the norm, so I’m not going to hold my breath…
“Patel Fires FBI Agents, Ends CR-15 Squad After Learning Jack Smith Tracked GOP Senators. Patel also said the FBI “initiated an ongoing investigation with more accountability measures ahead.”
FBI Director Kash Patel announced he fired the agents and dismantled the squad after learning former Special Counsel Jack Smith tracked eight GOP senators while investigating then-former President Donald Trump.
Patel wrote on X:
Transparency is important and accountability is critical. We promised both, and this is what promises kept looks like. This FBI is delivering.
As a result of our latest disclosure about the baseless monitoring of members of Congress by the prior leadership team of the FBI, we have already taken the following actions:
We terminated employees, we abolished the weaponized CR-15 squad, and we initiated an ongoing investigation with more accountability measures ahead.
Transparency is important and accountability is critical. We promised both, and this is what promises kept looks like. This FBI is delivering.
As a result of our latest disclosure about the baseless monitoring of members of Congress by the prior leadership team of the FBI, we…
— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) October 7, 2025
But will the DOJ take action against Smith? That’s my big question.
The CR-15 squad is a federal public corruption squad. It helped Smith during the Arctic Frost investigation, which involved Trump allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election and the Capitol Hill Riot.
In May, Patel said he folded the squad and reassigned the agents. I’m unsure if today’s comments indicate that the FBI will no longer have another CR-15 squad.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) revealed the tracking memo on Monday. Smith tracked these eight senators:
Marsha Blackburn (TN)
Lindsey Graham (SC)
Bill Hagerty (TN)
Josh Hawley (MO)
Ron Johnson (WI)
Mike Kelly (PA)
Cynthia Lummis (WY)
Tommy Tuberville (AL)
Yet another reason President Autopen was so busy handing out pardons like Halloween candy…
R.S. McCain takes a deep dive into the Democrat Party’s social justice craziness.
Did you ever wonder how the Democratic Party got so crazy? For example, how is it that the governor of Illinois is inciting violent mobs against federal immigration authorities and meanwhile, in Virginia, every Democrat is rallying to the defense of Attorney General candidate Jay Jones, who openly fantasized about murdering political opponents?
To summarize briefly: Bad causes attract bad people.
To understand the symbiotic relationship between toxic political movements and their toxic supporters, my advice is to first read Eric Hoffer’s 1951 classic, The True Believer, especially Part 2: “The Potential Converts.” Next, you should read Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, focusing on Chapter 10, “Why the Worst Get on Top.” Among the personal experiences that led me to comprehend this phenomenon was being swarmed by a mob of “Occupy” protesters in 2011. If you ever had the misfortune to be in close proximity to a zombie horde like that, you would never doubt that the fundamental problem of the Democratic Party is that its grassroots “base” is composed of dangerous lunatics.
If you ever needed a reason to vote Republican, this is it: Democrats are the party of people who celebrate terrorist massacres of innocent Jews.
All of which is preamble to introducing you to the person calling herself “Cloud,” who describes herself as “Pisces / 26 / ATL / Immortal Angel Femboy / Cosplayer” on an Instagram account with approximately 8,000 followers. If ever anyone needed a Kiwi Farms LOLCow file . . .
This summer, “Cloud” went viral with a video denouncing Taylor Swift’s engagement to “MAGA-adjacent” Travis Kelce:
“I can already feel myself regretting making this video. If ten people are sitting at a table, and one of them is a Nazi, and the other nine people are not telling the Nazi to fuck off, then you’re at a table with ten Nazis. When Taylor Swift first started dating Travis Kelce and Travis Kelce was so open about his ‘respect’ for Donald Trump, I already knew we were reaching the beginning of the end, right? When she was posting photos with, like, other NFL wives and girlfriends or whatever, and they were all open MAGAs, and Taylor was happily posing with them on Instagram, I knew we were at the beginning of the end. I just didn’t know how long it would take for the general populace to catch on that it was the beginning of the end. You cannot be friends with people who have different opinions on you when those opinions are life and death for other people — when the Supreme Court ruling today has decided that certain people’s lives are genuinely worth more on paper than others. This is a black-and-white issue. I’m sorry, but there is no nuance when it comes to Trump. You’re either chill with the guy who has death camps in El Salvador or you’re not. And the only reason I’m making this video is because I’ve been very open about how much I love Taylor Swift during the last few years. So I do feel obligated to come on here and say she is MAGA — or at least, MAGA-adjacent. And I’m sorry, as a trans person, if you’re Nazi-adjacent, that’s still a Nazi to me. Do with that info whatever you will.”
Oh, wow — where to begin unraveling this gigantic yarn-ball of dangerous craziness? To start with, the Supreme Court ruling she references (see “NY Times on the Left’s Skrmetti Bungle: ‘Somebody Set Up Us the Bomb’,” June 21) was a consequence of transgender activists overplaying their hand, trying to claim that a state law prohibiting transgender “treatment” for children to be a form of sex-based discrimination that violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Pause for a moment to ask yourself whether those who voted to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 intended for it to protect the use of synthetic hormones and surgery to turn children into carnival sideshow freaks. As a legal theory, this is bizarre, and yet “Cloud” (who identifies as a “trans person” despite apparently having undergone no such treatment herself) sees the Skrmetti ruling as “life or death.” This over-the-top rhetoric is entirely consistent with her lazy formula “MAGA = Nazi.” If you don’t vote for Democrats, you are a latter-day Hitler, she contends, and therefore . . . ?
Violence is the logical conclusion of a syllogism built on such premises, and good luck trying to convince Democratic voters that their belief system is based on dubious premises and fallacies. Having convinced themselves that they are “on the right side of history,” they consider it a hate crime to disagree with them. This fanaticism attracts bad people to the Democratic Party banner, and the bad people expect their party to represent their beliefs, which is why the Democrats are so crazy.
A federal grand jury in Eastern Virginia has indicted New York Attorney General Letitia James on one count of bank fraud, multiple outlets are reporting.
US Attorney Lindsey Halligan presented the case to the grand jury on Thursday, according to sources, one month after she was installed in her role.
As noted in August, a criminal referral was filed against James, alleging that she had “falsified records” to get home loans for a Virginia property that she claimed was her “principal residence” in 2023 – while she was serving as a New York state prosecutor.
Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director William Pulte sent the missive to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy AG Todd Blanche, claiming that in late August 2023 – weeks before she launched her civil fraud trial against the Trump Organization for inflating the values of its properties.
In 2021, James also purchased a 5-family Brooklyn property, but has “consistently misrepresented the same property as only having four units in both building permit applications and numerous mortgage documents and applications,” the letter noted.
Loans secured for this property could have reduced her mortgage interest rate by as much as 1% – leaving James with lower monthly payments under the federal Home Assistance Modification Program (HAMP) since it was listed as containing just four units, according to Pulte.
More on that subject:
Not trying to make a political point here.
I spent years as a mortgage banker at Quicken Loans (now Rocket Mortgage), the number one mortgage lender in the country, before I ever went to law school. So when I see stories like this, I look at them a little differently.
The Trump Administration has designated international drug cartels as unlawful combatants.
President Donald Trump has finally named the enemy: Mexican drug cartels. Declaring them unlawful combatants and recognizing a “non-international armed conflict” marks one of the most consequential national security shifts in modern history.
For decades, Washington treated cartel violence as a crime — a problem for prosecutors, not generals. Indictments were filed, assets seized, and sanctions imposed. But the cartels fought a different kind of war, one that combined terror, intelligence, and territorial control. Calling it “crime” guaranteed defeat.
We refused to define the cartels as belligerents — and fought the wrong fight.
According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, Mexico ranks among the world’s most violent conflict zones — behind only Palestine, Myanmar, and Syria. It is also the second-most dangerous country for civilians. Those numbers are not from a failed state overseas. They come from our southern border, where cartel wars spill into American communities daily.
For decades, federal authorities insisted on using a law-enforcement lens. Agencies operated under Title 21, Title 50, and limited “detect and monitor” authorities. They punished crimes but never broke campaigns. The narrow scope bred strategic blindness. While U.S. prosecutors filed indictments and built cases, cartels corrupted institutions, coerced populations, and built empires.
As the Marine Corps teaches: How you define the environment determines how you operate in it. We refused to define the cartels as belligerents — and fought the wrong fight.
By every operational measure, cartels are hybrid threats. They control territory, command loyalty through terror, and run parallel governments. They tax, adjudicate, and even “protect” local populations. Their power rests on corruption and espionage: bribing officials, infiltrating agencies, and compromising law enforcement through human networks that resemble intelligence tradecraft.
Cartels operate across land, air, maritime, subterranean, cyber, and electromagnetic domains. They deploy drones, tunnels, jammers, and encrypted systems. They are multi-domain actors running hybrid campaigns.
Cartels don’t just smuggle — they destabilize. Mass migration has become a weapon of war: overwhelming institutions, hiding operatives, and masking foreign infiltration. Millions of illegal entrants from more than 170 nations have crossed under cartel supervision. The intent is not just profit. It’s demographic disruption.
Under federal law, terrorism includes violence intended “to intimidate or coerce a civilian population” or “influence government policy.” By that definition, Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation qualify as terrorist organizations.
Munitions plant explodes in Bucksnort, Tennessee. Which is a real place off I-40. “Accurate Energetic Systems, LLC (AES) is a certified Women-Owned Small Business specializing in the production, handling, and storage of energetic materials for military, aerospace, and commercial demolition sectors.” Chopper footage shows the place leveled.
“Ukrainian drones hit multiple targets in Russia [including] the Feodosia oil depot in Crimea, a chemical plant Sverdlov in Dzerzhinsk and power plants in Belgorod and Klintsy.”
They also carried out a drone strike on a key oil pumping station in Efimovka. “The station [is] a key node on the Kuibyshev-Tikhoretsk pipeline that moves Urals crude to the Black Sea.”
Finland’s President Alexander Stubb says that Russia’s economy is crumbling. “Inflation is over 20% which means that their [financial] reserves are close to zero.” Also: “In the past roughly 1,000 days, Russia has advanced only one percentage point of Ukrainian territory.”
Eman Abdelhadi, an associate professor in the university’s Department of Comparative Human Development, was arrested Friday and charged with two counts of aggravated battery to a government employee, a Class 3 felony, and two counts of resisting/obstruction peace, a Class A misdemeanor, the Cook County Sheriff’s Office told Fox News.
Radical sociologist Abdelhadi, who previously cursed out her employer while speaking at a “Socialism 2025” conference, is due in court again on Tuesday.
It sounds like University of Chicago already has plenty of evidence to fire Abdelhadi for cause.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton joins lawsuit to close the Texas Republican primary. Paxton might quite rightly have a conflict of interest here, since Democrats voting in he Republican primary would obviously favor his Senate race opponent John Cornyn…
EPCOR Utilities Inc. recently announced its intent to begin construction and eventual operation of a facility in Galveston Bay, a region that is home to almost eight million people.
Beginning with a permit application with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), EPCOR is planning to construct a desalination plant on the San Leon Peninsula, which, according to a press release, will supply approximately 26.5 million gallons of fresh water per day.
The Bayshore Desalination Facility is projected to be completed in approximately five years if the design and construction phases are allowed to proceed.
Various government entities have been warning about potential water shortages for some time now, so it’s good to get ahead of the curve.
“Morning Glory Milking Farm [is] a popular romance novel about a young woman down on her luck who does what every young woman does when facing financial struggle. She starts an Only Fans. No, I’m just kidding. She wouldn’t degrade herself like that. She gets a job jerking off monsters.”
“I forgot to inform you that there is a new epidemic. An epidemic that many have yet to discuss and that epidemic is female Gooners. Now, for those of you unaware, Goonar is internet slang for someone addicted to porn, and smut is slang for dark romance novels, otherwise known as porn.” [sigh] I did a tiny bit of research on the term “gooner” when I first came across it in an Asmongold video, and Shoe is slightly off in her definition, as the most common use of the term seems to be someone who masturbates constantly without achieving orgasm.
“I actually read the book myself, and I’m not going to lie: the Nineteenth Amendment needs to be abolished.”
“I like how in this fantasy world, student loans still exist. Like, we can imagine a world with minotaurs and humans in a relationship, but we can’t imagine a world without student loans.”
She reads a goodly portion of the scene where the minotaur insists on paying for his handmaiden’s dinner. “Inside every woman there are two wolves or two bulls, the strong independent girl boss and the submissive doting housewife. And in the presence of a masculine man, or a farm animal, she will fold like a lawn chair and instantly return to factory settings.”
“Women are going to be picking up Animal Farm now, ‘like, where’s the horse cock?'”
One of the books Amazon recommended after she bought this one: Pounded By Produce.
“Are we really going to pretend that a story about a young woman getting a job milking mythical creatures to pay off her student debt is not funny? It’s funny. If that makes me a sexist misogynist, you got me. To act like you are so different and above the other Gooners is just it’s silly. I’m sorry, but you are no different than Joe Schmo jerking it to Fat Booty Latinas in Space 12.”
Just wait until she talks about women attending the “Sinners and Stardust” convention and actually sexually assaulting a man there. So if you’re a single man desperate enough to attend such a convention know that the odds are good, but the goods are odd…
“The women are like conquered and taken and overpowered by these monsters. And I think many of these women are reading these books containing monsters and not men because masculinity and dominance in men has been completely demonized in modern society. But the truth is many women still crave it. You see, the monsters in these stories have those like dominant masculine traits that women like so much, but they’re not human men. They have all these traits women desire without the problematic baggage human men bring without being the men they hate or have been told to hate. It is the perfect guilt-free slop.”
On the other hand, he thinks Tron: Ares is “complete arse. “I’ve got plenty of issues with Tron: Legacy, but that movie was a goddamn masterpiece compared to this.” “Not only can Disney not be trusted as the custodians of other people’s IPs that they bought their way into, they can’t even be trusted to manage their own fucking IPs at this point.”
Ridley Scott says that most films today are crap. on the one hand, he’s right. On the other hand, he’s also the director of Prometheus, so glass houses, stones…
Bump fire stocks (or just “bump stocks”) are replacement stocks for semiautomatic rifles that let the shooter simulate automatic by firing several shots without having to re-squeeze the trigger, are a hot topic in the news after Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock used them as part of his deadly rampage.
Unlike the overwhelming majority of our press corps, I had actually heard of bump stocks before the shooting, and seen videos like this, before the shooting:
Usually the NRA’s reaction to any call for gun control is “See you in Hell first!” However, their reaction to a call for bump stock regulation was quite different:
“In the aftermath of the evil and senseless attack in Las Vegas, the American people are looking for answers as to how future tragedies can be prevented. Unfortunately, the first response from some politicians has been to call for more gun control. Banning guns from law-abiding Americans based on the criminal act of a madman will do nothing to prevent future attacks. This is a fact that has been proven time and again in countries across the world. In Las Vegas, reports indicate that certain devices were used to modify the firearms involved. Despite the fact that the Obama administration approved the sale of bump fire stocks on at least two occasions, the National Rifle Association is calling on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) to immediately review whether these devices comply with federal law. The NRA believes that devices designed to allow semi-automatic rifles to function like fully-automatic rifles should be subject to additional regulations. In an increasingly dangerous world, the NRA remains focused on our mission: strengthening Americans’ Second Amendment freedom to defend themselves, their families and their communities. To that end, on behalf of our five million members across the country, we urge Congress to pass National Right-to-Carry reciprocity, which will allow law-abiding Americans to defend themselves and their families from acts of violence.”
So the NRA just signaled it’s willingness to sign on to a national gun control regulation. You better head out early, as the lines for the ski lodges of Gehenna are going to be out the door.
Of course, NRA support was contingent on getting national carry reciprocity in return, so watch congressional Democrats derail the deal, probably by tossing in the usual knee-jerk demands for for banning other “scary” gun part, higher capacity magazines, etc. Because NRA.
I’ve never fired a bump stock, and don’t know anyone who owns one. To get a better handle on this issue, I sent a few questions to old friend and master class shooter and trainer Karl Rehn about bump fire stocks.
1. My impression is that bump stocks are generally not well-regarded in the majority of the firearms community, and that they’re not allowed at the overwhelming majority of shooting ranges. Is that true? Do you allow bump stock firearms at any classes or events at KRTraining’s A-Zone range?
I’ve never had a student show up for a long gun class with a gun with a bump fire stock. They aren’t considered professional grade gear. You won’t find a SWAT team or a Navy SEAL or a professional shooting competitor using one.
I do not prohibit the use of bump stock equipped guns in my long gun classes. I’ve just never had anyone show up for a class wanting to use one. The drills we run in my long gun classes generally don’t involve firing more than 3 rounds at any target, and accuracy is part of the scoring for every drill.
2. Is it possible to rapid fire a bump stock equipped gun accurately, or is it a “spray and pray” weapon?
I haven’t used one. See answer #1. People serious about shooting quickly and accurately, or even just accurately, don’t use them.
3. What, if any, legitimate use cases are there for bump stock guns besides “having fun on your own land?”
It was originally invented as an aid for disabled shooters to operate a rifle more easily.
4. Besides the ill-conceived and ill-fated “Assault Weapons” ban, has the federal government ever attempted to regulate rifle stocks, or indeed anything beyond the receiver?
Will a bump stock ban have any impact on crime? Unlikely. If the shooter had not had the bump stock, could he have fired just as many rounds in the same time? Probably yes.
I would oppose a bump fire stock ban on general principles of federalism, and the fact that it won’t actually prevent any mass shootings, nor will they actually prevent new bump stocks, since bump stock designs are readily available for 3D printing.
That said, if you’re going to sacrifice any firearm component on the alter of appeasing mass hysteria, heavier regulations on bump fire stocks (which have always struck me as a quick and dirty hack) is probably the best option. Especially if we get national carry reciprocity in the bargain.
Following the Las Vegas shooting, we were treated to the same weary parade of liberal Democrats making the exact same noises they make after every shooting:
“Now is the time for a national dialog and common sense gun laws. And by ‘dialog,’ I mean that Republicans shut up and let us shame them into voting for gun control. And by ‘common sense’ I mean ‘complete civilian disarmament of the sane and law-abiding.'”
There was the ritual denunciation of the NRA. “Column after column is fired off about how much the National Rifle Association donates to congressional candidates (spoiler: it’s not much, about 200K a year). For every breathless declaration that the NRA has blood on their hands, it’s worth noting more journalists have committed mass shootings in this country than NRA members.”
And don’t forget the four or five national media reports in which basic firearms details are so obviously and egregiously wrong that any knowledgeable gun owner could have spotted the error.
Let me know where I can buy some of those “automatic rounds.” Ace of Spades has similar thoughts on that piece, including slamming them for this obvious lie about gun experts: “Those who are knowledgeable often don’t want to talk on the record.” Sayeth Ace:
Are you fucking kidding me with that? You have 100 conservative gun expert bloggers and reporters trying to explain to you the difference between semi-auto action and full auto action (and revolver action, etc.) every time a fucking gun crime occurs, and you put your hands over your ears and say “My ears are hurting” like that childish retard on MSNBC.
Every single time. This is not our first go-round on this, Media Gun Control Experts. It’s not even our hundredth go-round.
Actual gun owners and experts are begging to explain the basics to you — but you won’t listen. Instead, you babble on ignorantly about “automatic rounds” and the modifications you need to make to your gun to get it to fire these exotic bullets.
These rank stupidities get corrected again and again, but major media organizations still don’t bother to give their reporters the training or fact checkers necessary to catch these obvious errors. It’s as though they wear their ignorance on their sleeve as a badge of virtue signaling honor.
But all this is off my central point: Why do Democrats persist in pursuing the exact same strategies when it is obvious they’ve not convinced voters any previous time before?
Indeed, the Democrats’ most fervent advocacy for gun control comes during the same period when Democrats where hemorrhaging seats to Republicans. Gun control isn’t the only issue that’s made them unpopular everywhere but urban centers, but it’s certainly a contributing factor.
So why do Democrats keep pursuing the same strategies over and over again even though they not only aren’t working, but seem to be counterproductive?
Maybe complete civilian disarmament is the Democratic Party’s core value, and they feel a compulsion to spout it akin to a fervent Christian’s drive to “give witness” by reciting the gospel to unbelievers.
Like Charlie Brown, Democrats just can’t keep themselves from trying to kick the gun control football, even though they must know by now that the scene ends with them lying on the ground in pain and humiliation.
Legally-owned fully-automatic weapons have been used in three crimes since 1934.
So, a person who’s “not a gun guy” has either expended untold thousands of dollars to legally purchase fully-automatic weapons, somehow found them on the black market, or purchased and substantially modified multiple semi-automatic weapons — and did so with enough competence to create a sustained rate of fire. This same person also spent substantial sums purchasing just the right hotel room to maximize casualties. I cannot think of a single other mass shooter who went to this level of expense and planning in the entire history of the United States.
Snip.
He was the multimillionaire son of a notorious bank robber. He had no known history of mental illness, there’s no record of radical politics, and he had no criminal history. It looks like his first crime was the worst mass murder in American history, and ISIS is still trying to take credit for his attack. These facts are unique, to say the least.
Alburn Edward Blake, who was 60 when he shot up a Wendy’s, might be the closest comparison shooter. But Blake already had a long history of weird behavior and mental instability (like legally marrying a women who he had never met and who wasn’t present during the ceremony).
“Responding to the call of [Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi] to target the states of the Crusader alliance, and after careful observation of gatherings of the Crusaders in the US city of Las Vegas, one of the soldiers of the caliphate (Abu Abd al-Bar al-Amriki, may Allah accept him) lay hidden armed with machine guns and various ammunition in a hotel overlooking a concert,” it said.
“He opened fire on their gathering, leaving 600 killed and injured, until his ammunition was finished and he departed as a martyr.:
Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, immediately called both for more gun control, as well as defeating a bill under consideration to make suppressors more readily available for shooters. This piece explains why that position is bunk. “An automatic weapon creates so much heat that it rapidly deteriorates the effectiveness of sound suppression (or simply melts it).”
Indeed, it’s part of the usual liberal push for disarming law-abiding citizens. “They are interested not merely in stopping mass shootings, but limiting gun ownership.”
If Paddock wasn’t working for the Islamic State, and absent some reason showing up in his autopsy (ala Charles Joseph Whitman’s brain tumor), his motivation for meticulously planning and perpetrating the largest mass shooting in American history (with a death toll at 59 as of this writing) seems unfathomable.
The latest news on the Quebec mosque shootings goes to show that, once gain, early media reports on active shooters are usually horribly wrong.
Where once we were told that there were three shooters, then two, both of whom were in custody, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are now saying that Alexandre Bissonnette (AKA The Whitest Guy in the Chess Club) is now the only suspect, and that the aforementioned Mohamed Khadir is only a witness.
Bissonnette is described as an anti-feminist troll. Pro-tip: Despite feminists’ best efforts, there are not a lot of feminists to be found in mosques.
Also, here’s a handy guide:
Trolling people on Twitter or Facebook: Free speech.
Shooting people in a mosque: Not free speech.
Here’s Mr. Mackey to provide a visual reminder.
Feel free to use that, just in case anyone was unclear on the concept.
My working assumption is that the “AK-47” Bissonnette used in the shooting is in fact a semi-automatic knockoff rather than a true full-auto capable AK-47. But even the semi-auto AK-47 variant is explicitly prohibited in Canada, so where did he get it? He either broke Canada’s gun laws, or those of the United States (unless he had a valid hunting license for some U.S. state), or both.
I get the feeling that that we still don’t know the full story of the attacks, Stay tuned…
One of two gunmen who shouted ‘Allahu akbar!’ as they opened fire at a mosque in Quebec City was of Moroccan origin, a witness and local media reported Monday, revealing the first details about the attackers in the massacre that killed six men.
The terror suspects were identified as Mohamed Khadir and Alexandre Bissonnette, the CBC reported. The two men were arrested soon after the shooting at the Quebec Islamic Cultural Centre Sunday night and were expected to appear in court later Monday, police told reporters.
Also: “The attackers were students at Université Laval, a school in Quebec, a source close to the investigation told Radio Canada, saying one was Moroccan. Police said the suspects were not on their radar.”
And this is an interesting tidbit: “The French-speaking province of Quebec has been embroiled in a lengthy debate about race and religious accommodation. The previous separatist government of the province called for a ban on ostentatious religious symbols such as the hijab in public institutions.”
Safwan Choudhry, the national spokesperson of Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at, one of the largest Muslim communities in Canada, told CTV Toronto he was in disbelief.
“Nothing like this, on this scale, has ever happened in Canada to my knowledge,” Choudhry said on Sunday night. “Never has a mosque been shot up quite like this during prayer time and during worship.”
I’ve read comments on Twitter saying that this was Ahmadiyya mosque. As Ahmadiyya are considered heretical to both Sunni and Shia, that would greatly increase the scope of possible attackers if that were true.
His Facebook page reveals few details about his reasoning for the shooting, and appears similar to other 20-something college students. His last public post, on January 20, was a photo of a dog wearing a Dominos pizza delivery outfit, with the caption, “I want one! #fridayfeeling.” Other photos show him with family, with friends at parties and in a Halloween costume, as the killer from the movie “Scream.” He has also posted recently about discoveries on Pluto, camping and wanting to travel one day to Torngat Mountains National Park. He also shared a video last year about a brewery owned by members of the band Megadeth. Bissonnette likes the Facebook pages of U.S. President Donald Trump and French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, but he does not express support for them elsewhere on his page. Other likes include the Israel Defense Forces, United With Israel and Parti Québécois of Université Laval.
Nothing about him screams “jihadi,” and if he’s a convert, he would seem to be an extremely recent one.
By contrast, there’s next-to-nothing coming out about the purportedly Moroccan-born Mohamed Khadir.
A witness, who asked to remain anonymous, told CBC’s French-language service Radio-Canada that two masked individuals entered the mosque.
“It seemed to me that they had a Quebecois accent. They started to fire, and as they shot they yelled, ‘Allahu akbar!’ The bullets hit people that were praying. People who were praying lost their lives. A bullet passed right over my head,” said the witness.
Initial reports were saying five people were dead; now I’m reading on Twitter that it was eight.
Assuming the reports of attackers yelling “Allah Akbar” were true, it does rather suggest that the spin the media was desperately hoping to pin on this shooting (“hate” and “Islamophobia” ginned up because President Trump signed some executive orders) is untrue.
Early reports have been silent on whether this is a Sunni or Shia mosque; that’s fairly key information for determining who the attackers might be. (The Islamic State loves little more than slaughtering Shia, and has a history of doing so in Shia mosques.)
Keep in mind that early reports on active shooters are often wrong. Initial reports said there were three shooters, the ones I’m looking at now say two are in custody. Reports are they had AK-47s; 90% of the time that’s wrong and they’re using an AR-pattern MSR. Even the “Allah Akbar” part could be wrong.
But it was certainly a terrorist attack.
Stay tuned…
Update 1 Some news outlets have fallen for a fake report from a fake Twitter account that the attackers were “white supremacists.”
This is a relatively short post, as I don’t currently have time to address some of the larger issues, like what should be the response when someone who shares at least some of the same beliefs you do commits a heinous act. Just as the violence of John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry did not automatically invalidate the moral underpinnings of the anti-slavery cause, Anders Behring Breivik’s rampage does not automatically invalidate concerns about the Islamization of Europe.
Mark Steyn, one of the authors Breivik quotes in his manifesto (along with “Churchill, Gandhi, Orwell, Jefferson, John Locke, Edmund Burke, Bernard Shaw, [and] Mark Twain”) comments with his usual eloquence. “When a Norwegian man is citing Locke and Burke as a prelude to gunning down dozens of Norwegian teenagers, he is lost in his own psychoses. Free societies can survive the occasional Breivik. If Norway responds to this as the Left appears to wish, by shriveling even further the bounds of public discourse, freedom will have a tougher time.”
Bruce Bawer, who lives in Oslo, makes a number of important points about the shabby treatment of Jews in Norway, and how the current government has played footsie with Islamic terrorism and squelched criticism of Islam.
Bawer also had this to say in The Wall Street Journal: “Several of us who have written about the rise of Islam in Europe have warned that the failure of mainstream political leaders to responsibly address the attendant challenges would result in the emergence of extremists like Breivik.”
Geert Wilders, probably the leading European opponent of Islamization, called Breivik “violent and sick” and said that he and his Freedom Party “abhors all that Breivik represents and has done.”
Powerline: “A key ingredient in the tragedy was the fact that the killer had the only gun on the island.”
If you’re really a right-winger, why would you want to copy large chunks of your manifesto from the Unabomber?
Furthering the weird-conspiracy theory vibe of Breivik being a Freemason, he also considered himself a member of the Knights Templer. It’s like he was trying to live out a Dan Brown novel.
This Telegraph piece on the shooting contains many interesting tidbits, including the fact that one of the people killed on Utoya was an off-duty police officer and half-brother of Norway’s Princess Mette-Mari.
There’s been a lot of interest in what sort of weapon Breivik used. Though police have not released any details on what weapons were involved in his killing spree, in line with some comments here, Breivik appeared to own a Ruger Mini-14 and a Glock 17. The Ruger Mini-14 may be the gun shown here:
Though one knowledgeable emailer thinks it could just as easily be an AR-15 or an AK-47 with mounting rails, tricked out with what appears to be a mount (more below), a light, a bayonet, and maybe a laser sight? Though you don’t often see one mounted so far off the center line. He’s got so much tactical bling on there it looks like he’s trying to win a contest for Most Crap Mounted Off a Forward Rail. Seems deeply impractical. Though if it was tricked out like that during his rampage, obviously it wasn’t impractical enough.
Dwight located what appears to be the actual mount shown in that picture: the Botech Tactical Grip Pod Automatic Tactical BiPod Foregrip. As the animation on the product page illustrates, the two parts of the bipod telescope out to a standard bipod, making it a lot less useless than it seems in the picture.
I’m not enough of a gun expert to tell you what the light, scope, etc. shown are. Feel free to comment below if you do.
The Ruger Mini-14 Tactical Rifle fires 5.56mm NATO/.223 Remington, which is the same cartridge usually used in other “assault rifles” like the AR-15 and the M-16.
The Glock-17, despite some media scare-mongering, is a solid, reliable, bog-standard 9mm automatic pistol notable only for lighter weight achieved through the use of composites.
Both will indeed kill you quite dead in the hands of a knowledgeable shooter. Then again, wearing a police uniform, alone on an island with unarmed teenagers for more than an hour, Breivik probably could have killed just about as many with a bolt-action M1903 Springfield rifle.
