January 13th, 2011
Time for another installment of This Week in Jihad.
Please note that these weekly installments are only a sampler of Jihad-related news from around the world, and that I skim a lot more stories than I post here. One reason is that, from Africa to Indonesia, regular Jihad-related violence is depressingly frequent. So I don’t report every suicide bombing or honor killing that goes on. There’s just too much to keep up with.
However, given Jared Lee Loughner’s shooting spree in Tucson, I thought I would change that for this week’s roundup, to provide glimpses of places in which political and religious violence are the rule rather than the exception. So here’s a list of all the deadly incidents related to Islam I could find mention of from this past week:
- Suicide bomb kills 18 at a police station in Pakistan.
- Suicide bomber kills two on bus in Afghanistan.
- Two killed, six wounded in Taliban attack.
- Off-duty policeman shoots a 71-year old Christian man dead on a bus in Egypt.
- Jihadis open fire in a bar, killing seven in Nigeria.
- That follows hot on the heels of 11 people being killed in Jos, Nigeria.
- Jihadist suicide bomber kills 17 at bathhouse in Afghanistan.
- Couple axed to death in Punjab, India.
- Man killed and mutilated in honor killing in Multan, Iran. “Murtaza’s ears, lips, tongue, nose were sliced his eyes were gouged out with a knife before his head was severed.”
- Ireland suffers its first honor killing.
- Iraqi police chief killed by a roadside bomb.
- Six NATO soldiers killed Wednesday in Afghanistan.
- The figure above presumably includes U.S. Private Benjamin Moore, killed by an IED.
- The figure presumably does not include Marine Lance Cpl. Ryan Giese, killed on Friday.
- Nor that of Private First Class Robert Near, also killed in Afghanistan on Friday.
- Finally, I count two more names on this list of the fallen, for the time period specified, not including those killed 1/12: SPC Ethan C. Hardin and PFC Ira B. Laningham IV (the latter of Zapata, Texas).
If I’m counting correctly, that brings the total, just for this week, up to 73. There could be twice that many I didn’t have time to search out yet, either from the Foreign Policy/Jihad sources listed to the right (JihadWatch was, as always, invaluable) or just doing a Google search. And there could be twice (or ten, or even a hundred) times as many Jihad-related killings that didn’t make news reports. I did not include Iran’s execution of five accused drug-smugglers in the total. Nor any of the other 46 executions the Islamic Republic of Iran has carried out in the last 20 days.
Other Jihad-related tidbits:
- Christopher Hitchens on the assassin of Salman Taseer
- Speaking of Taseer, Pakistani’s clerics have weighed in overwhelmingly. Overwhelmingly in favor of his assassination, that is.
- Want to know what soft Jihadis actually think? This piece by M. Shahid Alam, a mixture of truths (Pakistan’s elites are corrupt), half-truths (America is their pupper master), half-digested second-hand Marxism (“the Pakistani state fell into the lap of lumpen elites”), conspiracy theories (“The military dictator who preceded him had boasted in his autobiography that his government had garnered US$50 million by capturing and selling Pakistanis to secret US agencies.”), and Islamist rhetoric (“Pakistanis worried that this was only the start of a campaign to repeal the [blasphemy] law – and open the floodgates for Salman Rushdi-style smearing of the blessed Prophet.”). Oh, and this guy is an economics professor at Northeastern University in Boston.
- American Center for Law and Justice sues to halt construction of the Ground Zero Mosque.
- If you didn’t already have enough to worry about, the coalition government in Lebanon has collapsed.
- Not News: Jihadist death threats against synagogues. News: In Fargo, North Dakota.
- First they came for the beer…
- Hamas linked CAIR is singing from the same hymnal as The New York Times in blaming the Tucson shooting on “inflammatory political rhetoric”.
- In Saudi Arabia, accused in rape case sentenced to one year in prison, 100 lashes. The accused rape victim, that is.
Tags: Afghanistan, Benjamin Moore, CAIR, Christopher Hitchens, Ethan C. Hardin, Ground Zero Mosque, Hamas, honor killing, IED, India, Ira B. Laningham IV, Iran, Iraq, Jared Lee Loughner, Jihad, Lebanon, M. Shahid Alam, Nigeria, rape, Robert Near, Ryan Giese, Salman Taseer, Texas, This Week in Jihad
Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad, Texas | 3 Comments »
January 13th, 2011
“Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison announced today that she will retire at the end of her current term, quashing speculation that she would run for a fourth full term in the U.S. Senate.”
Given the drubbing she received at the hands of Rick Perry in the Governor’s race, this was probably a wise decision, as Perry did such a good job painting her as an out-of-touch Washington insider that she would probably have been beaten in the primary. As for who will be the Republican nominee in 2012, there are a lot of possibilities…
Tags: 2012 Election, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republicans, Rick Perry, Texas, Texas Senate Race
Posted in Elections, Republicans, Texas | 1 Comment »
January 12th, 2011
A few links of interest, some Tucson-shooting-related, some not:
- Wow. There’s crazy. There’s super crazy. And then there’s even the people on AboveTopSecret think you’re a loon crazy.
- Cry for help, insane person, or random troll? Really, there’s no way to know.
- Why the liberal response to Palin’s video is so lame:
Let me be blunt, liberal America: no one, outside your own fever swamps, trusts you to decide what discourse is “fair”, or where the “Climate of Hate” begins and ends. You don’t get to drop buckets of blood on Palin for days, then call her a hatemonger for responding. Your behavior over the last few days is a crime against discourse, and you did not get away with it.
- Paul Krugman managed to bring up one example of conservative “eliminationist rhetoric”…and it was a lie.
- “Liberals wanted to use the Tucson massacre to smear conservatives. In the end, it will further discredit them and journalism itself. We are seeing, in a somewhat different form, the Dan Rather/National Guard story all over again. And we know how that turned out.”
- In truth, I don’t cover Krugman a lot, because: A.) Plenty of others are covering that beat, and B.) Like much of the rest of The New York Times, I view Krugman’s blinkered liberalism as a major strategic advantage for conservatives. But John Steele Gordon is right: “He is the Joe McCarthy of our times.”
- Joe Straus re-elected Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives.
- OK, something non-shooting related: This disclaimer is pretty funny.
Tags: Jared Lee Loughner, Joe Straus, LinkSwarm, Paul Krugman, Sarah Palin, Texas
Posted in Crime, Democrats, Media Watch, Texas | No Comments »
January 12th, 2011
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (the highest criminal court in Texas, as the Texas Supreme Court does not handle criminal cases) told State District Judge Kevin Fine, in essence, cut it out. One key factor in the ruling is that the named defendant, accused murderer John Edward Green, hasn’t even gone to trial yet, much less been convicted and given the death penalty.
Judge Fine (presumably no relation to Larry) was all set to hold hearings on the constitutionality of Texas application of the death penalty before the ruling told him not even to bother. This was after he had just gone ahead and declared the death penalty unconstitutional in March, only to reverse himself a week later.
Though a Democrat, Fine sounds like an interesting and sympathetic fellow: A heavily-tattooed recovering cocaine addict elected to Houston’s “drug court” in 2008. He seems like the sort of person you would want to wish well. But a compelling life-story doesn’t get you a pass on blatant judicial activism. The Constitution itself makes repeated reference to the fact that no United States citizen can be deprived of life “without due process of law,” which says that they can be deprived of life with due process of law; otherwise the Constitution would merely that that they could not be deprived of life, period. The death penalty was legal in every state after the Constitution was ratified, and the Supreme Court has reaffirmed the basic constitutionality of the death penalty in every related case it has heard since Gregg vs. Georgia in 1976.
Certainly the issue of the death penalty is troubling, as there are few fates worse than being unjustly executed by the state. However, trial by jury is probably the least corrupt of America’s democratic institutions, and the criminal appeals process is far more heavily weighted toward letting the guilty go free than executing the innocent. Moreover, application of the death penalty would rank pretty far down the list of innocent people killed by the federal government; indeed, I feel confident in stating that fewer innocent men and women have been executed by the death penalty than were killed by the ATF under the Clinton Administration. And when you examine the details of cases that anti-death penalty crusaders say prove that innocent people have been executed, you find out that those same people frequently lie, and in many cases the accused was as guilty as sin. I don’t think there’s any question that the number of murders committed by ex-cons foolishly released or paroled exceeds people executed who were not guilty of the crimes for which they were executed by several orders of magnitude.
If men were angels we would need no laws. The death penalty should only be applied judiciously, but it is constitutional, and should be applied.
Tags: Crime, death penalty, Gregg vs. Georgia, Houston, John Edward Green, Kevin Fine, Supreme Court, Texas
Posted in Crime, Supreme Court, Texas | No Comments »
January 11th, 2011
Remember Paul Kanjorski? You know, the Democratic congressman and Stupak block turncoat from Pennsylvania that Lou Barletta slaughtered in November? (Can we still use “slaughtered” in a political context post-Jared Lee Loughner? How about creamed? Spanked? Hmm, I should probably desist from that line of thought…) The guy who wrote a $10 million earmark for his own relatives? Thought you’d heard the last of him, didn’t you?
That was until he published a New York Times editorial calling for civility and respect in political discourse. That would be great, if it weren’t coming from someone who recently called for the shooting of a Republican candidate:
“Instead of running for governor of Florida, they ought to have him [Rick Scott, the Republican candidate for Florida governor] and shoot him. Put him against the wall and shoot him.
A class act, Mr. Kanjorski. It makes me very glad that Lou Barletta was one of the candidates I actually donated to in 2010.
Surely there has to be at least one Democratic official calling for tact and civility who hasn’t called for the murder of political opponents. Hasn’t there?
(Hat tip: Instapundit)
Tags: Instapundit, Jared Lee Loughner, Lou Barletta, Paul Kanjorski, Rick Scott
Posted in Democrats, Elections | No Comments »
January 10th, 2011
I was going to post another piece on the shooting, but Instapundit has already covered pretty much everything I wanted to say. (Shakes tiny fist in impotent rage. “Damn you, Glenn Harlan Reynolds! Damn you to Hell!”) By now the story is less about a crazy man killing political figures and innocent bystanders than it is the left’s desperate and distasteful attempts to pin the act on the Tea Party.
So. Some links:
- They need to deftly pin this on the tea partiers,” said the Democrat. “Just like the Clinton White House deftly pinned the Oklahoma City bombing on the militia and anti-government people.”
- “There also was a second sickness on display, and it was the swiftness and the vigor with which the left-wing blogosphere and some more mainstream Democrats immediately sought to blame Sarah Palin and right-wing ‘vitriol’ in general for the shooting.”
- Has any political movement ever been as obsessed with a political figure as the left is obsessed with Sarah Palin? Especially one that no longer holds any elected office?
- Michelle Malkin goes into a great deal of detail on the angry, eliminationist rhetoric that’s poisoned the well of rational political discourse.
- “We barely knew all the facts in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, though, before this vicious act was being milked for political advantage by ghoulish opportunists on the Left.”
- Federal charges filed. I think we can all agree that, if Loughner is found fit to stand trial (I doubt he will be), then he should eligible for the death penalty, yes?
- Since Loughner was obsessed with mind control, here are some of his fellow crazies discussing his obsession. However, just to be fair, I should make clear that I don’t blame the Nutso American Community for Loughner’s spree. The vast majority of people on Above Top Secret and InfoWars are honest, hardworking, non-violent Americans who just happen to be deluded cranks. Most of them wouldn’t harm a fly, unless it was aiming a tiny parabolic microphone at them. (You know the CIA has those now, don’t you? Don’t you??????)
- I seem to have drifted off-track. There’s nothing funny about Loughner’s shooting spree, but I think we all need to take a step back and enjoy a little levity in the midst of grim times. And the David Ickes and Gene Rays of the world aren’t the ones we need to worry about.
Tags: David Icke, death penalty, Gabrielle Giffords, Gene Ray, Jared Lee Loughner, Michelle Malkin, mind-control, Sarah Palin, Time Cube
Posted in Crime, Democrats | 1 Comment »
January 9th, 2011
The good news is Democratic congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is alive and able to communicate. Sadly, Federal Judge John Roll, appointed by President George H. W. Bush to the bench in 1991 is dead. Roll received death threats over his ruling in an illegal alien case in 2009.
Did accused shooter Jared Lee Loughner assassinate Judge Roll for political reasons?
Hell no. Loughner killed Roll and five other people because he was a violent, unstable lunatic, and more and more evidence is coming out to that effect. As Arizona Senator John Kyl put it: “It’s probably giving him too much credit to ascribe a coherent political philosophy to him.”
Despite that, the far left is still trying to pin this on Sarah Palin. I suspect that will work out for them almost as well as their “the Tea Party is racist” meme.
Sometimes people do commit horrific acts of violence for easily-identifiable ideological reasons. Maj. Nidal Hasan’s Ft. Hood shooting spree is a classic example. Jared Lee Loughner’s shooting spree is not.
Tags: Crime, Gabrielle Giffords, Guns, Jared Lee Loughner, Sarah Palin
Posted in Crime, Democrats, Guns, Republicans | 1 Comment »
January 9th, 2011
The evidence is now in, and what little seems to be known about accused Arizona shooter Jared Lee Loughner from people that knew him was that “he was leftwing” and “liberal in wanting to change the way the world was run, we both wanted to. He took it to an extreme I never would’ve.”
Does that mean that Arizona Democratic Congressman Gabrielle Giffords was shot by a “left wing extremist?” No. When you read his manifesto, you see that his political leanings, such as they are, were not “left” or “right” so much as “completely farking loony toons batshit insane.” His manifestos jump from subject to subject more quickly than a jittering tweaker flips channels on a TV remote. To paraphrase an entry in the Bulwer-Lytton contest, ideas seem to tumble around randomly in his head, making and breaking connections like a load of laundry in a dryer without Cling Free. They have some of the same quality of argument as Time Cube Guy: It’s less that his manifesto is wrong than that you can’t actually understand what he’s trying to say.
(Boing Boing has even more of his manifestos up, and the Time Cube Guy vibe only gets stronger. Except for the fact that Gene Ray never killed anyone…)
Loughner’s liberalism didn’t make him crazy, his crazy made him crazy.
I mean, how crazy do you have to be to expelled from a pre-algebra class? “Solve for X.” “Admit it! X is a total lie!!!! There is no X, only Zuul!”
Which makes it all the more galling how quickly The Usual Left Wing Suspects tried to pin his deeds on the Tea Party in general and Sarah Palin specifically. Never mind that military terminology has been in politics for a long time, or that liberals have done the exact thing they’re now jumping on Palin for.
Every time anyone even remotely connected to conservative causes commits a violent act, the nutroots and their media enablers are quick to label them a “right wing extremist,” but anyone with demonstrable left wing sympathies is a “lone nut.” (Indeed, they’re pretty blatant about it.) Indeed, one of the most famous assassins in American history was a known communist sympathizer who defected to the Soviet Union, but you never hear Lee Harvey Oswald described by the media as a “left-wing extremist.”
And don’t forget that the far left’s open and oft-stated desire to assassinate George W. Bush. Thus the attempt by prominent liberals to make Loughner a Tea Partier is more than a little contemptible. But such contemptible behavior is no longer surprising; it’s merely what they do.
(Hat tips to Instapundit (more than once), Powerline, and a few random Fark posters.)
Tags: Gabrielle Giffords, Guns, Jared Lee Loughner, media bias, Media Matters, MSM, Paul Krugman, Sarah Palin, Tea Party
Posted in Democrats, Guns, Media Watch | 3 Comments »
January 8th, 2011
Here is part of the alleged manifesto of accused Gabrielle Giffords shooter Jared Laughner (which comes from people doing screen caps of his purported videos):
Hello, and welcome my classified leak of information that’s of the United States Military to the student body and you. Firstly, I want you to understand this from the start. Did you know grammar is double blind, listener? Secondly, if you want to understand the start of revelatory thoughts then listen to this video. I’ll look at you mother fuckin Anarchists who have a problem with them illegal illiterate pigs. :-D If you’re a citizen in the United States as of now, then your constitution is the United States. You’re a citizen in the United States as of now. Thus, your constitution is the United States. Laugh. I’ll let you in on their little cruel joke that’s genocidal. They’re argument is appeal to force on their jurisdiction with lack of proof of evidence. Each subject is in question for the location! The police don’t quite get paid correctly with them dirty front runners under section 10? Their country’s alliances are able to make illegal trades under section 10. Eh! I’m a Nihilist, not someone who put who put trust in god! What is section 10 you ask? If you make a purchase then it’s illegal under section 10 and amendment 1 of the United States constitution. You make a purchase. Therefore, it’s illegal under section 10 and amendment 1 of the United States constitution. We need a drum roll for those front runners in the election; those illegal teachers, pigs, and politicians of yours are under illegal authority of their constitution. Those dirty pigs think they know the damn year. Thirdly, tell them mother fuckers to count from 0 to whenever they feel a threat to stop their count. We can all hope they add new numbers and letters to their count down. Did you run out of breath around the trillions, listener? Well, B.C.E is yet to start for Ad to begin! What does this mean for a citizen in any country? Those illegal military personal are able to sign into a country that they can’t find with an impossible date! How did you trust your child with them fraud teachers and front runners, listener? Did you now know that the teachers, pigs, and front runners are treasonous! You shouldn’t jump to conclusion with your education plan. The constitution as of now, which is in use by the current power pigs, aren’t able to protect the bill of rights! Do you now have enough information to know the two wars are illegal! What is your date of time, listener? Fourthly, those applications that are with background checks break the United States constitution! What’s your riot name? I’ll catch you! Top secret: Why don’t people control the money system? Their Current Currency(1/1) / Your new infinite currency (1/~infinte) This is a selcte information of revoluntary thoughts! Section 10 – Powers prohibited of States No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility. No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it’s inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress. No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay. Each subject is unlocatible!
If that is indeed his real manifesto, then the only political faction he seems to belong to is The Republic of Loony Tunes. It seems like something more from an Ionesco play or a Monty Python skit than a political assassin.
Nothing to add except linking to this Radley Balko bit, which pretty much sums it all up.
Tags: Gabrielle Giffords, Guns, Jared Laughner, Jared Lee Loughner, manifesto, spree shooter, volume shooter
Posted in Crime, Democrats, Guns | 2 Comments »
January 6th, 2011
I hope everyone had a Happy New Year. Here’s a roundup from the world of Jihad, where things aren’t nearly so happy:
- Salman Rushdie explains the Islamist threat:
One of the things that liberal opinion in the West doesn’t understand is that there actually is an enemy. There actually is an enemy that means us harm. And they’re not just going to go away if you’re nice to them.
- Prosecutor gives plea bargain deal to a man who murdered his own daughter in Arizona so as to ensure “there is no appearance that a Christian is seeking to execute a Muslim for racial, political, religious or cultural beliefs.” You’re doing it wrong.
- Police in the UK are monitoring roughly 500 jihadists at any given time.
- Muslim cocaine dealer outraged at Nebraska prisons serving him pork.
- She’s baaaaack…
- I think I’m going to have to add Creeping Sharia to the blog roll. Lots of good information there.
- “While WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is celebrating his $1 million-plus book deal on a 600-acre estate and enjoying his status as a lefty fringe hero, former cartoonist Molly Norris is in hiding.”
- To prove you’re a moderate and that the Ground Zero Mosque will not represent a threat, do you: C.) Kick off your speaking tour in front of a Hamas-linked font group?
- Jihadis attending CPAC? Having attended CPAC way back in the dim mists of time, I doubt there is terribly much damage they can do, assuming they don’t detonate a bomb…
- Newly elected Florida congressman Allen West appointed to the House Armed Services Committee. “If truth has become hate speech, then you might as well lock me up, because I’m not shutting up.”
- Coptic Pope Shenouda may cancel Christmas over Islamist threats. No word on whether Shenouda was born in Arizona or lives in a condo made of ston-a.
- In related news, there have been over over 150 Copts targeted for attack.
- Then again, Egyptians are crazy.
(Hat tips: JihadWatch, Creeping Sharia, Michael Totten, etc.)
Tags: Egypt, Ground Zero Mosque, Hamas, Helen Thomas, honor killing, Jihad, Molly Norris, Salman Rushdie, This Week in Jihad
Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad | No Comments »