FOLLOW me on my popular Twitter feed. Just click this photo! @hbbtruth - David - Common sense on #Politics #PublicPolicy #Sports #PopCulture in USA, Great Britain, Sweden and France, via my life in #Texas #Memphis #Miami #IU #Chicago #DC #FL 🛫🌍📺📽️🏈. Photo is of Elvis and Joan Blackman in 'Blue Hawaii'
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Showing posts with label Muslim radicals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Muslim radicals. Show all posts
We shall hunt down the perpetrators wherever they run to. We shall get them. We shall punish them for this heinous crime. — Uhuru Kenyatta (@UKenyatta) September 21, 2013
The way we lead our lives; in freedom, openness, unity & consideration for each other represents our victory over all those who wish us ill — Uhuru Kenyatta (@UKenyatta) September 21, 2013
Terrorism in and of itself, is the philosophy of cowards. — Uhuru Kenyatta (@UKenyatta) September 21, 2013
The despicable perpetrators of this cowardly act hoped to intimidate, divide and cause despondency among Kenyans. — Uhuru Kenyatta (@UKenyatta) September 21, 2013
Kenyatta: My nephew and his fiancé lost their lives. — InteriorCNG Ministry (@InteriorKE) September 22, 2013
Kenyatta: We need to work together to fight the terrorist battle. This is not a Kenyan war, this is an international war. — InteriorCNG Ministry (@InteriorKE) September 22, 2013
As of 6:30 tonight EDT Sunday, the Kenya Red Cross has is still reporting that 58 people were killed and 175 have been injured, confirming reports early this morning from Reuters. As of this afternoon, the second floor of the five-storey Westgate Mall was thought to be the only floor that has not been secured by Kenyan Army Special Forces or Kenyan Police, who are now both above and below the 15 terrorists and what officials believe are approximately 30 hostages. Electricity to the ground floor has been cut-off but there are still fears that more terrorists are holed-up in the large Nakumatt supermarket.
US MEDIA: FBI investigating claims that at least 2 of the #Westgate terrorists are Americans from Minnesota and Kansas City, Missouri — NTV Kenya (@ntvkenya) September 22, 2013
Sky News hasn't updated this tweet in over seven hours even as more and more people have died in the terrorist attack. NOT impressive. https://twitter.com/SkyNews
So should you. Disappointingly, but in keeping what I and many other have seen and commented on privately, even The Drudge Report has had nothing about this incident many, many hours after-the-fact. That only adds fuel to the, first, speculation, and now, common belief, among myself and people I know throughout the country in the media that despite the record numbers of readers going to that website, the people who are actually physically manning the Drudge Report on weekends, whoever they are, are NOT doing as good a job as readers were used to, and came to expect on weekends years ago. Boring stories stay up far too long -sometimes 3-4 days- and stories that ought to be up stay unposted after even lamestream media has them. What the hell is going on?
As I've detailed here on the blog more than a few times before, contemporaneously, largely as a result of MSNBC and CNN continually sleeping on the job while breaking news was happening around the world overnight -while I was awake and listening to the BBC or Sveriges Radio or watching the morning TV shows on SVT and TV4 in Sweden- Fox News Channel is what I usually turn to first when some Breaking News happens, but today they are TOTALLY f-ing missing the boat. Watching them today is painful, like watching portfolio videotapes of some once-cute girl doing Community College TV newscasts in Oklahoma, circa 1987. Why, why, why??? You have a family relationship with Sky News -you are the younger, dumber and more shallow brother in case you forgot- and yet Fox News is refusing to use any of those amazing resources, including video of the situation and reporters in the area. Why? What are you waiting for, an invitation? We have a huge country where real news is happening all the time and yet Fox News is doing another story with three guests about funding Obamacare? Really??? Can you you please stop kicking Obama and contemplating your navel and your ass for just a couple of hours? It's embarrassing for me as a regular Fox News viewer to see this disregard for viewers intelligence and be served up this swill.
And at 2 pm, as I just flipped the TV back to Fox from a college football game, they give us a tan John Boehner, the soon to be ex-Speaker of the House because of what a horrendous job he's been doing the past two years. (It's a reflection of how much everyone within the House GOP either hates or dislikes Eric Cantor that he can't push over a push-over like Boehner that is barely coherent at times.) Is everyone in New York today inside a TV studio sleeping?
Also, I've wanted to say this for quite a few days and since i haven't seen anyone else say it anywhere -that I've seen- let me be clear. IF hundreds of people were missing from New York City's Upper West Side after a flood there, you better believe the national news coverage would've been a lot more intense, professional and lengthy than what we saw in Colorado this past week, which many NY and DC-based news organizations treated like another bus in India or Bangladesh that went off the side of a mountain and killed all aboard. Colorado, they still consider you "flyover country," even if they come visit you to go skiing. Oh well, hurricane season isn't over yet here in South Florida! And we all know how the people in New York at the TV networks root for us to get hit hard by one so they can fly in and do stories where they can 'act' like brave journalists facing the elements! Just saying...
ABC News: Senior U.S. Official: Intercepted Al Qaeda Communications Indicate Planned Attack ‘Big,’ ‘Strategically Significant’ By Martha Raddatz and Jonathan Karl August 4, 2013 9:00am http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/08/senior-u-s-official-intercepted-al-qaeda-communications-indicate-planned-attack-big-strategically-significant Meanwhile, that same day in South Florida, all Sunday afternoon, hours after the ABC News telecast above, the Miami Herald has had nothing VISIBLE on their homepage about the al-Qaeda security threat. Really. Not that this is surprising given how far they've fallen over past 15 years... Here's a screen capture of the homepage when I checked it for one of the last times late Sunday afternoon, little changed from what It'd been in the morning and after Noon. The proof is in the pudding, since more often than not over the past few years, the Miami Herald reads like the weekly community newspaper of a suburb of Tulsa or Des Moines. http://www.miamiherald.com/
For months I've been closely following American writer Claire Berlinski's incisive writing from Istanbul, via her various online pieces and her very intensive and very popular Twitter feed, @ClaireBerlinski Berlinki's like a one-woman wire service the way the timely and useful information just flows in and out of her feed every few seconds for what often seems like hours at a time. It's quite impressive in its scope in ways that Florida media websites and Twitter feeds aren't and never have been, but ought to be, given their greater resources. Yet she's the one who pulls it off. Berlinski reminds us again thru her hard work and diligence that the wonders of technology are useless unless the people using it are both savvy and energetic, not one-note town criers.
That Berlinskilives four blocks from Taksim Square and knows the ins-and-outs of everything, plus speaks the language and is NOT one of the many foreign correspondents there who are forever having to get everything second-hand even while they're eyewitnesses, gives her the effect of knowing things before they happen. In my opinion, she's lapping the field, which is why I've sent multiple emails out over the past two months with links to particular tweets of hers that were prophetic and spot-on.
Now that she's been front-and-center for months on what's really going down in Taksim Square, and with Prime Minister Erdogan's imperious march to the past, just as Turkey finally has the well-educated and dynamic population it's long needed to take its full place on the stage, the West's fear of Turkey finally going a bridge-too-far -and a subsequent brain drain- is more than just an idle threat as she tells below in a great essay that captures what's really animating the push against Erdogan. Here's a taste:
According to legend, when the great historian Robert Conquest was asked if he wanted to rename the updated edition of The Great Terror, his history of the Stalinist purges, he replied, “How about, I Told You So, You F***ing Fools.”
And that’s what I’m saying now to every single lazy journalist and policy wonk, professional sycophant, diplomat and idiot pundit who’s never so much as visited this place, the duly-funded social scientists and craven Western politicians and everyone else who for years swallowed Erdoğan’s nonsense and helped to manufacture the fantasy that Turkey was getting more and more democratic by the day.
That's what I'm talking about!
The Tower magazine The Gezi Diaries: Can We Still Call Turkey Civilized? By Claire Berlinski
Some see it as a modern democracy with an Islamic tint, an improving, reforming country. But if you were in Istanbul during the last month and a half, you’d have seen something completely different: a violent, authoritarian, increasingly suppressive and brutal regime. Tales from the Dark Side, Turkish style.
I’ve always been a critic of armchair reporting. But when your armchair is four blocks away from Taksim Square, it has one of the best views of the uproar in Istanbul any diligent reporter could ask for. I’m now able to calculate with great precision the time between the beginning of the screaming, the sound of the shot, and the entry of the gas through my window. It’s two and twelve seconds respectively.
ITN YouTube Channel video: The family of slain Royal Fusilier Lee Rigby visited the scene of his grisly murder outside the Woolrich Royal Artillery Barracks in Artillery Place at the hands of two Radical Islamists. They laid flowers and read many of the tributes for the 25-year-old soldier who while off-duty and walking down the sidewalk last Tuesday was intentionally run over by a blue Vauxhall Tigra automobile and hacked to death with a machete. Meanwhile, British Home Secretary Theresa May warned there are potentially thousands of people at risk of being radicalised in the U.K., as she indicated plans for a fresh crackdown on extremist groups. Reported by Tom Ellis. Uploaded May 26, 2013. http://youtu.be/j0xrrb27OCc
Channel4News YouTube Channel video: One week after the Woolwich attack on drummer Lee Rigsby, while hundreds of members of the Metropolitan Police Service continue investigating the case, Channel 4 News has been told that one of the suspects, Michael Adebolajo, was described as having a split personality. Uploaded May 29, 2013. http://youtu.be/fZeUQzongVE
Another Islamist terror attack, another round of assurances that it had nothing to do with the religion of peace
By Ayaan Hirsi Ali
May 27, 2013, 6:40 p.m. ET
I've seen this before. A Muslim terrorist slays a non-Muslim citizen in the West, and representatives of the Muslim community rush to dissociate themselves and their faith from the horror. After British soldier Lee Rigby was hacked to death last week in Woolwich in south London, Julie Siddiqi, representing the Islamic Society of Britain, quickly stepped before the microphones to attest that all good Muslims were "sickened" by the attack, "just like everyone else."
This happens every time. Muslim men wearing suits and ties, or women wearing stylish headscarves, are sent out to reassure the world that these attacks have no place in real Islam, that they are aberrations and corruptions of the true faith.
Ever since the spectre of Islamic terrorism in the West first manifested itself, Britain has had its head stuck firmly in the sand.
After both 9/11 and the 7/7 London transport bombings, the Labour government promised to take measures to defend the country against further such attacks.
It defined the problem, however, merely as terrorism, failing to understand that the real issue was the extremist ideas which led to such violence.
SHOWTIME video: Season Two, Episode One: An asset from Carrie's old life comes in from the cold. Uploaded September 30, 2012. http://youtu.be/-xtJ5lLkW70
In honor of espionage and the Season Two premiere of SHOWTIME's Emmy Award winning HOMELAND getting a 60% increase in viewers over last year's premiere, I present some amazing video that needs to be seen to be believed: VICE News videos - Hezbollah's Propaganda War; Morena Baccarin @missmorenab
Have already watched the new episode on TV twice. Plus, watched the DVD-RW I made looking for hidden clues, so I guess that makes thrice! More HOMELAND clips are at SHOWTIME'sYouTube Channel:http://www.youtube.com/show/homeland/
"Hezbollah has built a multi-million dollar theme park celebrating its military victories over Israel. It's the latest PR offensive from the Iranian-funded Shia Muslim militia its followers call the "Party of God." Host Ryan Duffy heads to Lebanon to visit this bizarre tourist site to learn how this group that started as a ragtag militia in the 1980s has skillfully used propaganda to transform itself into a military and political force to be reckoned with, and how anti-Hezbollah groups are trying to compete in this war of words." September 2012.
IkoIko video: A 2006 Fox News Channel segment by reporter Steve Harrigan on immigration strife in Sweden and ethnic violence caused in the Rosengård area of Målmo by Muslim immigrants. Uploaded April 17, 2006. http://youtu.be/whWgCOE56K8 Despite all the changes that have taken place since it first came out, Prof. Fouad Ajami's 1982 book, The Arab Predicament, which I first read in school, still remains a go-to
book for those who need to make sense of the current Mid-East reality and how we got to this point, for better and worse, as well as an insightful look at Arab sensitivities and sensibilities (and ultra-sensitivities) to being seen as the outlier. My comments follow the essay.
The Washington Post
Why is the Muslim world so easily offended?
By Fouad Ajami
Published: September 14, 2012
Modernity requires the willingness to be offended. And as anti-American violence across the Middle East and beyond shows, that willingness is something the Arab world, the heartland of Islam, still lacks.
Time and again in recent years, as the outside world has battered the walls of Muslim lands and as Muslims have left their places of birth in search of greater opportunities in the Western world, modernity — with its sometimes distasteful but ultimately benign criticism of Islam — has sparked fatal protests. To understand why violence keeps erupting and to seek to prevent it, we must discern what fuels this sense of grievance.
Responses to the Ajami essay, which I sent out via email early on Saturday evening, consisted largely of "Maybe because the lunatic religious fanatics are running the show?" and even a link to Google Maps of the Middle East and questions about where are those Moderate Muslims that the Mainstream Media so adores, anyway?
Where are they hiding, exactly? Well, actually, they're not hiding, per se, rather it's just that a disproportionate number of them live far from the field of battle and the negotiating table, living as so many of them do in New York, London, Paris and Berlin among many other places, which is why reporters there have no problem finding them - THERE. This, of course, is a self-fulfilling prophecy in a sense in that having so many educated "moderates" in Western cities -a problem the MSM never sees or brings up- means that there's less actual resistance to tenets of radicalism in those countries. Radicalism fills the vacuum, not reasonableness. As for the rest of his essay, I do have an important correction for those of you who will perhaps not see it yourselves, and it actually touches on a subject that I've been wanting to write about and update since my last post on it, which netted me many interesting emails, though not all positive, since there's always someone who prefers butt-kissing to honesty. In the middle of his essay, Prof. Ajami says something that with just a slight bit of word substitution could just as easily be said is true of large swaths of current-day Miami, "You can live in Stockholm and be sustained by a diet of al-Jazeera television."
While that is factually true about Stockholm as much as it is true of dozens of other large and dynamic Western cities, as I've stated previously here on the blog, a better yet more troubling example of what he speaks about is in Målmo, on Sweden's west coast, opposite Denmark's capital, Copenhagen. See my January 6, 2011 post titled, Uh-oh! Upcoming BBC World Service 'Open Eyes' segment on racial tensions in Malmö. Hmm-m...; Swedish immigration policy costs borne by local residents
Unfortunately for Målmo, owing to both past immigration patterns, geography, and familial ties, it's now home to not only an area that soon will be 50% Muslim, but also home to a large percentage of Muslim immigrants in the Rosengård area who, in many cases, make little effort to even try to assimilate Swedish values and norms.
No, Malmö, despite an avalanche of internal and external Political Correctness regularly sprinkled on the city and its inhabitants by a very PC and often patronizing national and European news media, is also the home to what all reasonable parties acknowledge is a very big long-term problem: a large percentage of all the Muslim immigrants in Sweden who fail to fully appreciate Sweden's freedoms, liberties and culture and incorporate that into their daily lives, people who actively fight assimilation, live right there. And many of the people who don't feel they should need to change are cocky and uncivil and don't care what you think about them being so publicly ungrateful. And they aren't afraid of using violence, either, as the video at the top makes clear. When you attack firemen trying to put out a fire in YOUR neighborhood... you DON'T get the benefit of the doubt.
But it's a lot more than just a PR problem to be solved, since the things that have happened there the past ten years have ranged from very negative to extremely dangerous and even deadly, and have been well-documented by the Swedish news media. Everyone knows what has happened there. Because of this extensive coverage, the rest of the country has largely started to develop negative feelings about Målmo as a whole because of what they view, essentially, as a policy of appeasement. No, even worse from the point of view of Swedes who don't like what they see with a small but not insignificant number of immigrants taking advantage of their good nature and willingness to help, they see far too many people who won't even pretend that they're trying to assimilate, which, if you didn't know, is the one thing that educated Swedes of all political persuasions DO rather INSIST upon -immigrants actually trying to assimilate. And that includes learning enough Swedish to at least get by, not consciously going out of your way to cause offense by intentionally NOT speaking Swedish in public or govt. interactions, just to make others uncomfortable.
That tension and anger felt by a majority of Swedes is largely due to not only the natural resentment of knowing that you're being taken advantage of by others, but also, frankly, knowing for a fact that there are many more would-be immigrants in other countries who would only be too happy to do what little is expected of them if they could legally move to Sweden. People who'd be happy to try their best to fit in without having to be asked or reminded, and who would contribute something positive to society. That's who they want more of!
There are some positive things going on in Rosengård, thanks to the hard work of some very dedicated people who want to show Sweden and the rest of the world that there are lots of immigrants who are, indeed, grateful for their new lives in Sweden, and the myriad opportunities that they and their families now have. No, not every immigrant has a chip on their shoulder -or a rock in their hand. Some DO take pride in their area, and are well-adjusted, including the kids shown in this mittomrade video, which got posted to YouTube last week.
mittomrade video: Sophästen på Rosengård. Ivan Varga of "Ivan's Wagon Trail" and his horse, Bango, paid a trip recently to the Rosengård area of Malmö and proved an instant hit.Uploaded September 14, 2012. http://youtu.be/gAw1r4DJ_6Y
I didn't mention it before but among the many aspects of the failed immigration policy that causes people heartburn is the not-insignificant matter of all that taxpayer money being spent on all these social programs and activities, which contrary to what you may think in the U.S., actually comes more from local government, not from the national government. Which means that something locally that might've done some good, was not funded because something for immigrants was. A majority of people in Sweden feel that thru not only their words and actions but also thru their willingness to put their money where their mouths are, and bankroll a humanitarian process that makes it easy for newcomers to become part of the dynamic modern world that is Team Sweden, they don't think it's unreasonable for the newcomers to act more civilized and think before acting, not throw-down at the smallest sign of a slight, like where they came from. Taxpayers feel like they've shown their good intentions, and think it's not unreasonable for more immigrants to show more effort and gratitude, NOT act like they're still living in their old Mid-East country, and act publicly and privately in ways that are contrary to Sweden's customs and culture.
Yes, unfortunately for the people of Malmö,many Muslim immigrants in their part of the country have really mastered the art of bending-over-backwards to be seen publicly as the sullen "other," the outlier, and to get media attention for that. The foreigner who publicly takes advantage of Swedish hospitality and who won't get with the program. Is it because that's how they really feel, or because they thought they could get away with it and know that it gets them more attention? Probably both, but then the outlier never tells, do they? The thing is, despite all their democratic freedoms, Sweden, like Japan, is a consensus-driven and still-largely homogeneous country, and one that does NOT like people trying to consciously go against the grain and undermine Swedish society or customs simply for the sake of doing so; as opposed to doing so because of some larger, well-intentioned principle or policy. You can be a thirty-SOMETHING college-educated female that thinks that teenage girls in Sweden vying to be selected as the Lucia in their hometown, school or church is pretty silly in the 21st Century, and write about it on your too-cool-for-school political or fashion blog. But that's very different than verbally attacking the teenage girls in public, or you publicly saying that the tradition should stop merely because you and your hip pals are not enthusiastic about it.
Nobody is forcing you or your hung-over pals to get up early on December 13th and watch the national TV broadcast of the candlelight and music ceremony from some well-known church, while you all sit on your sofa thinking and saying disparaging thoughts about people you don't even know, while eating hot crossed buns or cold pizza pulled from the fridge. Sleep-in, it's all the same to everyone else It's freedom of choice. But denying others the choice to make their own personal decisions, well, that's the problem in a nutshell isn't it for the Muslim in Muslim-dominated countries today? He or she is part of a religious culture that continues to deny personal choices and freedoms and micro-manage all aspects of someone's life.
That sort of attitude is anathema to most Swedes, who, thanks to several well-chronicled exploits of several Muslim troublemakers, have in many cases largely given up on the idea that most future Muslim immigrants will do the right thing and assimilate. Which, logically, is why some ask, Why not just turn off the faucet to the Middle East? ----- Meanwhile, over at Romesnsko.com... NEWSWEEK’S #MUSLIMRAGE = BIG #FAIL http://jimromenesko.com/2012/09/17/newsweeks-muslimrage-big-fail/
A week later, after reading many other articles about what's been going on in Afghanistan that either just beat around the bush or which -surprise- made excuses for President Obama, this essay still resonates for a reason:
National Review Online
Why Apologize to Afghanistan?
By Andrew C. McCarthy
February 25, 2012 4:00 A.M.
We have officially lost our minds.
The New York Times reports that President Obama has sent a formal letter of apology to Afghanistan’s ingrate president, Hamid Karzai, for the burning of Korans at a U.S. military base. The only upside of the apology is that it appears (based on the Times account) to be couched as coming personally from our blindly Islamophilic president — “I wish to express my deep regret for the reported incident. . . . I extend to you and the Afghani people my sincere apologies.” It is not couched as an apology from the American people, whose frame of mind will be outrage, not contrition, as the facts become more widely known.
The facts are that the Korans were seized at a jail because jihadists imprisoned there were using them not for prayer but to communicate incendiary messages. The soldiers dispatched to burn refuse from the jail were not the officials who had seized the books, had no idea they were burning Korans, and tried desperately to retrieve the books when the situation was brought to their attention.
