Pissing on the fear monkeys' BS

No one is so confident in their opinion as an ignorant person.

The screams coming out of the right-wing about the horrors of resettling 25,000 refugees from the bloody Syrian-Iraqi corridor controlled by Daesh, (you may know the group as ISIS or ISIL), is an illuminating example.

They even have their own petition to stop the rescue of refugees. (No, I'm not linking to it).

Their greatest fear, (and they are certainly demonstrating huge amounts of that), is that in a single intake of 25, 000 refugees, terrorists will come in with them. And then they demonstrate their profound ignorance by pointing at the Paris attacks while they wet their pants.

1. To date, none of the Paris attackers, so far identified, were refugees. They were native-born French or Belgian. Whatever their ethnicity, religious beliefs (if they actually had any), or training, they were home-grown radicalized thugs, many of whom had criminal records in Europe.

2. The refugees being brought to Canada are currently already identified. Most are living hand-to-mouth existences in refugee camps where conditions are the closest thing to a living hell anyone can imagine. Your typical terrorist isn't drawn to that type of lifestyle. Some of the Paris attackers were described by their own families and acquaintances as hard drinkers, smokers and party animals. The refugees being brought to Canada are unique in that on this occasion we actually get to pick them. These are not people showing up on a sinking boat or putting their lives in the hands of human smugglers.

3. THIS IS IMPORTANT. Tell me WHY any idiot inclined to come to Canada to blow up the doorstep of some semi-informed redneck westerner would be so stupid as to come in via the refugee system?!
Go on ... tell me.
There are too many security, criminal and health checks and WAY too much control and supervision. It is considerably easier to show up in Canada as a TOURIST. Much less hassle and nowhere near the detailed examination of one's past to which every refugee must submit.

So, the right-wing fear monkeys cannot present the refugee-terrorist-infiltrator as an argument. They'll have to come up with something else. And with every uninformed position that gets cut away from their argument, we come closer to the real reason. And it's ugly.

When you deliberately weave religion into government...

... the anti-abortion leaders, including many of the political leaders like Jesse Helms, George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan and many others... Randall Terry, the leader of Operation Rescue, have used highly inflammatory language which has invited and encouraged people like this assassin to go kill Dr. Tiller.

[...]

The only difference between the American anti-abortion movement and the Taliban is about 8000 miles.

Dr. Warren Hern
2 June 2009

From Rachel Maddow. PSA has the video.

"Pro-lifer" : Just another word for "terrorist"

Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, responded to the gunning down of Dr. George Tiller in his church today by saying he "reaped what he sowed."

From Kos : "The alleged assassin, Scott Roeder, was an active member of Operation Rescue. On an Operation Rescue website called Charge Tiller (which in the last 30 minutes or so has been taken down), there's this comment, posted on Monday, September 3, 2007, by a Scott Roeder from Kansas, almost certainly the same Scott Roeder alleged to have assassinated Tiller:

"It seems as though what is happening in Kansas could be compared to the "lawlessness" which is spoken of in the Bible. Tiller is the concentration camp "Mengele" of our day and needs to be stopped before he and those who protect him bring judgement upon our nation."

McClatchy : Suspect supported killing abortion providers, friends say

"I know that he believed in justifiable homicide," said Regina Dinwiddie, a Kansas City anti-abortion activist. Roeder also was a subscriber to Prayer and Action News, a magazine that advocated the justifiable homicide position, said publisher Dave Leach, an anti-abortion activist from Des Moines, Iowa.

"Pro-lifer" is just another word for "terrorist" .

The sanctity of all human life?

Not fucking likely.

The shrieking anti-abortion crowd can deplore murder all they want. They either did it directly or they provoked some wingnut to do it for them.

Let's hear no more of the "sanctity of human life" from this pack of self-absorbed swine. It's time we started to get into the details of the lives of all these terrorists as much as they interfere with the lives of others. Let's start with the biggest assholes and work toward the lying scum who are telling us how much they condemn this assassination.

Inasmuch as the Army Of God (I won't link to them) was brought under federal investigation for aiding and abetting Clayton Waagner, every single loudmouth anti-abortionist should be scrutinized for their involvement, however small it may seem.

Bonus: Ah, the fetus fetishist fax machine has been burning up paper.

Yeah... as deBeauxOs points out, the "vulture culture" has a problem. As much as they would like to be cheering and claiming a victory at the moment, they are forced to swallow hard and put on the pretense of being civil.

Although... Randall Terry doesn't seem willing to hold back. If I were the FBI I'd be picking this wingnut prick off the street and tossing his conspiratorial ass into an interrogation room for the next 48 hours.

Toronto18/ Paintball11/ Tim Hortons10 terrorist fatcamp update

G&M : RCMP agent concedes key role in set-up, running of terrorist training camp
Mubin Shaikh on Friday:

"I thought that if the RCMP didn't tell me I couldn't do it, I inferred that I could do it," Mr. Shaikh testified.

Lawyers for Canada's first underage convicted terrorist argued in court Friday that without Mubin Shaikh, assigned by CSIS and paid by the RCMP, there would have been no terrorist conspiracy at all.

In fact, minus Canada's new US-compliant Anti-Terrorism Act, the most he could have been charged with is shoplifting - and shoplifting items that were not even used in the RCMP/CSIS plot to, uh, blow up the Houses of Parliament, along with CBC and CSIS, although they weren't sure where the parliament buildings were, and behead Prime Minister Paul Martin, having failed to note he was no longer the PM.

Let's review, courtesy of Thomas Walkom, our young convicted terrorist's complicity in the plot :

He did not make bombs or buy guns. Nor did he advocate doing so.
He did not threaten to kill anyone, did not call for holy war, did not pledge allegiance to Osama bin Laden.
He did not even badmouth Canada's military efforts in Afghanistan.

His most damning entry on the audio tapes helpfully provided by Mr Mehta, who testified along with the other crown witness at the kid's trial in September that he believed him to be innocent, was to ask "if Muslims can use Nivea cream".

So what was he convicted of ?
Walkom explains Superior Court Justice John Sproat's guilty verdict last September :

"Under the anti-terror legislation, the government doesn't need to prove an accused terrorist took part in or even knew about a specific plot.
All it has to prove is that he knowingly participated in the activities of a terrorist group and contributed either directly or indirectly to anything "enhancing" its abilities."

Oh well, the kid definitely qualifies then.
As RCMP/CSIS fatcamp troop leader and prosecution star witness Mubin Shaikh testified at the kid's trial, he convinced the reluctant teen to attend the training camp by telling him it was a religious retreat:

"I don't believe that (he) is a terrorist," he said outside the courtroom.
"I don't believe he should've been put through what he was put through, but that's our system."
Shaikh said he did not believe that the defendant was aware of the group's violent plans."

And yet under "our system", if the kid's lawyers are not successful in overturning his conviction by a sole judge, the kid could get ten years for, as Hysperia remarked in comments at the time, "something that someone else might have been doing without his knowledge.".

Related posts :
Canada's first anti-terrorism act conviction
Toronto 18/ Paintball 11/ Tim Hortons 10 - video footage
A load of fertilizer
Clowncar terrorism -Update #2
Clowncar terrorism
RCMP, now with free delivery
.
Cross-posted at Creekside
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Clowncar terrorism update

CBC : An RCMP informant who infiltrated an alleged homegrown militant group has acknowledged the person now on trial had little or no knowledge of the group's plans.

Having recently converted from Hinduism to Islam, the accused was eager to learn. So Shaikh [the RCMP informant] told him the camp was a religious retreat where he would learn about the faith and also test physical skills, as laid out in the Koran.

G&M : While the Crown contends the camp was intended as terrorist training, Mr. Shaikh readily agreed the recruits were told they were going to a religious camp.
"That was the cover story," Mr. Shaikh said.
"They weren't told anything about attacking Parliament?" Mr. Chernovsky asked.
"That's correct,” Mr. Shaikh said.

He said the campers could have viewed wearing fatigues, playing paintball or pretending to be Muslim fighters in Chechnya as a game of cowboys and Indians or cops and robbers, he added.
At one point, he said, the leaders hid in the bushes and made wolf and bear noises.
"They sat in the tent terrified," court heard of the other campers. "They ended up huddled, shivering in the tent."

This is the testimony of the prosecution's star witness.
The case so far : Getting the accused to join what they were told was a religious retreat and then prosecuting them for not doing something that they didn't know anything about.

The solution is to get rid of phone booths

BC Ferries received a bomb threat over the weekend. That instantly turned into a Terrorist Threat. Why? Well, initial reports issued by BC Ferries president David Hahn contained the information that the caller, who has been traced to a Coquitlam phone booth, had a middle-eastern accent.

As Vive le Canada has noted, news reports which made that reference, apparently the part which elevated this from a run-of-the-mill bomb-threat to a threat of terrorism, have removed those words from their online reports.

Run-of-the-mill?! Yeah. Bomb threats almost always turn out to be hoaxes, just as this one did. This one however, caused the cancellation of 21 sailings. Because it was "credible".

The details we are being given? The call was made by a person unknown to the Delta police 911 line at around 3:30 pm on Saturday from a phone booth at the Coquitlam Centre Mall by a man with a middle-eastern accent.

How much does everybody actually know?

... finding the person who made the threat may be like looking for a needle in a haystack, said police spokeswoman Sharlene Brooks.

"Unless someone comes forward that has personal knowledge of the individual that may have made this call, identifying this suspect may be next to impossible," she said.

In other words, this could be a kid who's having an incredibly boring summer and the police have nothing.

That hasn't stopped the pants-pissing though.

B.C. Ferries spokeswoman Deborah Marshall said security was heightened at terminals yesterday, but wouldn't go into detail. "We don't want to tell the terrorists what we're doing," she said. "Our employees are always vigilant. Their eyes and ears are the best tools they can use to see if anything is unusual."

Vigilant for what? Merchant mariners and terminal attendants aren't trained to spot terrorists. I defy BC Ferry Services to prove otherwise.

And to claim terrorists are behind all this is to ignore a single basic fact. By way of demonstration:

- 1972 Munich Massacre
- Cubana flight 455 bombing
- Air India flight 182
- Narita airport bombing
- Pan Am 103 Lockerbie Scotland
- 1993 World Trade Center bombing
- Oklahoma City bombing
- Khobar Towers bombing
- 1998 US embassy bombings
- Omagh, Northern Ireland
- Sept. 11, 2001 attacks WTC and Pentagon
- 2002 Bali bombing
- 2004 Madrid bombing
- 2005 London bombing

What does this sample of a long list of terrorist attacks have in common? NO WARNING.

Terrorists don't phone in an attack. They take credit for it after the fact.

Keep working on it people. You'll eventually get it right.

Want something to worry about? Try this on for size.

Practice saying this:

OH SHIT!

Do it again.

Now go to Global Guerrillas and read the short and very incisive observation made by John Robb. Don't feel like linking out? Allow me:

Fareed Farooqui reports from Pakistan on the effects of a minor electricity outage (unintentionally caused by construction activity and exacerbated by load shedding due to insufficient production of power) in Karachi. Here are some examples:

• Vicious rioting broke out Wednesday evening in several parts of Karachi and continued into the night in protest against long spells of power outages.
• Residents of the affected areas came out on to the streets and burnt tires and other materials. In some areas, the protesters broke traffic lights and damaged fast food restaurants by pelting them with stones. The police resorted to shelling and aerial firing to disperse the crowds.
• Riots also took place in various areas of Lyari Town including Aath Chowk and Shah Baig Lane. Protesters besieged a KESC complaint centre near Aath Chowk, and tried to set it on fire, but the police reached there on time.

Pakistani guerrillas haven't yet (fortunately) adopted systems disruption against Pakistan's crowded cities (Baloch guerrillas have focused on the disruption of regional natural gas deliveries). However, given the example above, it appears that Pakistan's legitimacy is so weak (particularly given recent events) that if they did adopt systems disruption, the returns on investment would be exceptional.

Now, all together, OH SHIT!

If you're not reading Global Guerrillas, you may not understand what constitutes one of the greatest threats in this century.

Don't read it before going to bed. You won't sleep well.

If you own 200 grenades, you may be a redneck... but not a terrorist.

You might have caught this news story a little over a week ago where six members of the Alabama Free Militia were arrested for having just a little more than a hunting rifle.

Agents recovered 130 hand grenades, a grenade launcher, about 70 hand grenades rigged to be fired from a rifle, a machine gun, a short-barrel shotgun, 2,500 rounds of ammunition, explosives components, stolen fireworks and other items, said Jim Cavanaugh, regional head of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The local U.S. Attorney had this to say about it at the time:

"They just have a beef with the government, and they stockpile munitions," U.S. Attorney Alice Martin said at a news conference in Fort Payne.

Really?! Coming from someone who should be digging hard to prosecute this lot with all the force that can be applied, that's pretty much minimizing things, particularly since one of those arrested is a federal fugitive. Why wasn't Martin treating this as a clear-cut case of illegal terrorist activity?

In any case, via Dave Neiwert, there is a little update on the case. It seems a federal judge in Birmingham has a slightly different view than the U.S. Attorney.

Five members of a self-styled militia were denied bail Tuesday after a federal agent testified they planned a machine gun attack on Mexicans, but a judge approved bail for a sixth man.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Armstrong said at a hearing in Birmingham federal court he could not grant bail to the five because of the agent's testimony and the amount of weapons - including about 200 homemade hand grenades - that were seized in raids Friday in DeKalb County.

"I'm going to be worried if I let these individuals go at this time," he said.

A little worried?

Adam Nesmith, an agent with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, testified that the five - Raymond Kirk Dillard, 46; Adam Lynn Cunningham, 41; Bonnell Hughes, 57; Randall Garrett Cole, 22; and James Ray McElroy, 20 - planned a machine-gun attack on Mexicans in Remlap, a town just north of Birmingham, and went there on a reconnaissance mission April 20. The agent provided no further details.

Michael Wayne Bobo was released on bail.

So, let's get this straight. A federal prosecutor doesn't see anything too terribly nefarious about this lot. They're just a bunch of good old boys with a hair across their collective asses over the government, which causes them to go into bomb-building mode. The prosecutor's statement has all the impact of describing a bunch of pissed-off squirrels hoarding cashews. A federal ATF agent, who obviously has some gathered intelligence on his side says, noooo, these guys were probably going to go on a shooting spree. The judge gets a little uncomfortable and denies bail to five of the six.

Without the details we have no way of knowing what part Bobo played in the alleged manufacture and storage of all the neat stuff they were all caught stockpiling. What is mind-boggling however, is that some are quite willing to flip this off as a just a bunch of rednecks acting like rednecks.

They're not terrorists. And only five out of six present enough of a threat to be remanded to custody.

I just had a recent discussion about the problems encountered by cruise ship passengers entering the United States. Keep in mind most of the guests on cruises either have blue hair or blue pills. Yet, the level to which the US Dept. of Homeland Security goes to protect the citizenry from these potential geriatric jihadists is more than just inconvenient - it's paranoiac to the extreme.

But a bunch of good old boys with an arsenal are just, you know, a little over the top.

What would have happened if they were brown, swarthy, black-haired, bearded and spoke English with a middle-eastern accent? Would any of them have made bail?

This is going to be worth keeping an eye on.

Before anyone goes off half-cocked and suggests it's typical Alabama, keep in mind that Alabama is home to some great people. And in the event that we all start pointing south with some kind of smug grin it would be worth reading this series of posts.