terrorism
gregladen | August 15, 2017Not the same.
Muslims must take the blame for all things done by anyone linked to an extreme Islamic group or ideology. Christians have nothing to do with anything, they were just standing there minding their own beeswax.
The video below was fixed by Media Matters for America thusly:
In a notably hypocritical segment on Fox & Friends, the hosts and their guest, David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network, attacked media outlets that called on Christian leaders to denounce white supremacy and the recent violence in Charlottesville, VA. Fox & Friends highlighted articles that…
gregladen | September 18, 2016Update:
From WCCO:
An Islamic State-run news agency claims the man who stabbed and wounded eight people at a mall in Minnesota before being shot dead by an off-duty police officer was a “soldier of the Islamic State.”
Original Post:
We know nearly nothing about the Saint Cloud attack, but I'm going to offer some preliminary context-related thoughts anyway. Not conclusions or guesses, just context. (See below for some basic info on the attack.)
One thing you need to know is that Minnesota is a state with the least racist and most socially and culturally enlightened people in it. And, some of…
gregladen | August 25, 2015The terrorists have defeated the railroads, and by extension, the people. Well, not totally defeated, but they won a small but important battle.
We have a problem with the wholesale removal of petroleum from the Bakken oil fields, and the shipping of that relatively dangerous liquid mainly to the east coast on trains, with hundreds of tanker cars rolling down a small selection of tracks every day. I see them all the time as they go through my neighborhood. These trains derail now and then, and sometimes those derailments are pretty messy, life threatening, and even fatal.
There has been…
gregladen | July 10, 2014Islamic distain for Islamic extremism
Muslim people in the Middle East are getting fed up with Islamic extremism. This is indicated by a new poll from the Pew Research Center. Nigerians, regardless of religion, dislike Boko Haram. Ninety-two percent of Lebanese are concerned about extremism in their country (that's the highest number in the poll) up from 81 percent last year.
Majorities in most of the nations polled are concerned about extremism. And in most Middle Eastern countries, concern about extremism has increased in the past year.
In Lebanon, which shares a long border with…
gregladen | April 16, 2013We watch these events unfold through a veil of tears. And over time, it only gets worse as we learn the identities of some of the victims, and learn of the horrors of this particular kind of bomb attack. We wonder if the bomber knew that few would die but many would lose their legs, or if families of living vibrant people, standing together to watch other family members finish their run for some worthy cause, would be turned into a collection of news stories about the dead and the maimed. We also wonder why this target was chosen. Timothy McVeigh attacked a Federal office building to…
oracknows | November 5, 2012It's no secret that I have little but contempt for radical animal rights activists. I make no apologies for this and, quite frankly, consider my contempt for them well-justified based on their behavior and words. Be it their fetishization of violence against researchers who use animals, their threatening of students in order to frighten them away from careers in scientific research that might involve the use of animals (for example, Alena Rodriguez), intimidating researchers by declaring their children as "not off limits," trying to burn investigators' houses down, harassing researchers, and…
gregladen | September 11, 2012A young woman was driving along the road, at night, and needed to focus her attention on a cell phone call, so she pulled into an open parking lot of a closed restaurant along side the road and visible to passing motorists. She pulled her car into a parking space, switched it off, and made the call.
A passing police officer noticed the young woman alone in her car talking on the cell phone. He pulled into the parking lot and switched on his emergency lights, got out of his police cruiser and approached her. He started asking her questions about what she was doing, who she was talking to,…
mikethemadbiologist | August 11, 2011Monday, I wrote about how Standard & Poor's (S&P) downgrade of U.S. debt had political motivations--avoiding fraud investigations as well as 'convincing' the Securities and Exchange Commission to remove new regulations that could undercut their business:
...I won't rule out that S&P is stupid incompetent and ideologically blinkered. But they routinely commit fraud (and I'm certain if other states investigated, they would find the same thing). They are attempting to bully the American people to prevent an investigation into the role in the housing crisis, as well as preserve their…
mikethemadbiologist | July 25, 2011From The NY Times:
Marc Sageman, a former C.I.A. officer and a consultant on terrorism, said it would be unfair to attribute Mr. Breivik's violence to the writers who helped shape his world view. But at the same time, he said the counterjihad writers do argue that the fundamentalist Salafi branch of Islam "is the infrastructure from which Al Qaeda emerged. Well, they and their writings are the infrastructure from which Breivik emerged."
"This rhetoric," he added, "is not cost-free."
Just another lone wolf, I guess.
Of course, Glenn Beck has compared the murdered children to "Hitler Youth."…
mikethemadbiologist | July 19, 2011Keep in mind, this probably means there is a murderous terrorist running loose out there:
Now, however, Justice Department lawyers have acknowledged in court papers that the sealed area in Ivins' lab -- the so-called hot suite -- didn't contain the equipment needed to turn liquid anthrax into the refined powder that floated through congressional buildings and post offices in the fall of 2001.
The government said it continued to believe that Ivins was "more likely than not" the killer. But the filing in a Florida court didn't explain where or how Ivins could have made the powder, saying only…
mikethemadbiologist | April 1, 2011...hopefully, they won't murder anyone. Speaking of Research has documented the anti-medical research threats by an organization known as Negotiation Is Over (italics mine; no direct link to terrorist organizations on this blog):
Students also need to understand that making the wrong choice will result in a lifetime of grief. Aspiring scientists envision curing cancer at the Mayo Clinic. We need to impart a new vision: car bombs, 24/7 security cameras, embarrassing home demonstrations, threats, injuries, and fear. And, of course, these students need to realize that any personal risk they are…
mikethemadbiologist | March 12, 2011And I'm not talking about the four-legged kind. As I've noted before, whenever some right-wing associated nut shoots someone, we always hear it described as the actions of a 'lone wolf.' Because members of another militia group were arrested for planning to kidnap and murder police officers and judges:
Five people in the Fairbanks area were arrested Thursday by state and federal law enforcement on charges connected with an alleged plot to kidnap or kill state troopers and a Fairbanks judge, according to the Alaska State Troopers....
An investigation "revealed extensive plans to kidnap or…
mikethemadbiologist | January 15, 2011There have been a lot of proposals floating around about protecting congressmen. One suggestion is to use local police as security:
According to a federal official who is preparing the advice, the Capitol Police will recommend that when members hold well-publicized outside events with uncontrolled access, they should request the presence of a police officer from the local jurisdiction. In most cases, the police will know about the event anyway, because congressional staffers would have obtained permits. In a conference call with members yesterday, Capitol Police officials emphasized that…
mikethemadbiologist | January 8, 2011Just when we thought the Turkey Menace had disappeared, they're back:
Thanksgiving II: The Revenge
A Gardner Road [Brookline, MA] man told police that he and his 9-month-old son were "surrounded and attacked by six turkeys" at about 12:14 p.m. on Dec. 12. Police offered to dispatch EMS to treat any injuries, but EMS was refused, according to the police log.
I wish the far right would stop trying to convince people to invade Mexico (um, yes, really), and, instead, deal with our own native evildoers.
mikethemadbiologist | June 22, 2010You mean, conservatives lied to us? From the NY Times coverage of the guilty plea by Faisal Shahzad in Times Square bombing plot:
...Mr. Shahzad was unapologetic, characterizing himself as "part of the answer to the U.S. terrorizing the Muslim nations and the Muslim people."
"I want to plead guilty, and I'm going to plead guilty 100 times over," he said, "because until the hour the U.S. pulls its forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, and stops the drone strikes in Somalia and Yemen and in Pakistan, and stops the occupation of Muslim lands, and stops killing the Muslims, and stops reporting the…
mikethemadbiologist | February 27, 2010Many of my ScienceBloglings have rightly called out animal rights terrorists who target researchers' children. They are absolutely right to do so. The one issue I have is that I often read something along the lines of "Terrorism is wrong, regardless of if you're for or against animal rights..." Actually, I'm not willing to disregard that at all. In the midst of condemning these thugs, we need to remember something very important: the consequences of the ideas that non-violent animal rights advocates hold are still reprehensible. Outsourced to ScienceBlogling Mark (italics mine):…
grrlscientist | January 7, 2010tags: politics, terrorism, economics, social psychology, Red Brigades, Italy, TEDTalks, TED Talks, Loretta Napoleoni, streaming video
Loretta Napoleoni details her rare opportunity to talk to the secretive Italian Red Brigades -- an experience that sparked a lifelong interest in terrorism. She gives a behind-the-scenes look at its complex economics, revealing a surprising connection between money laundering and the US Patriot Act.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their…
revere | January 7, 2010We all saw it coming. If you could have a bomb under your balls, why not a bomb in your honey pot?
U.S. officials say a suspicious material found in a passenger's bag that triggered a security scare at a California airport on Tuesday actually turned out to be bottles of honey.
The scare caused a shutdown at the Meadows Field Airport in the city of Bakersfield and a hazardous material crew and bomb squad were called to the scene. (Voice of America News, h/t Boingboing via Backwards beekeepers)
It gets better:
Two Transportation Security Administration officers were also treated and released…
revere | December 31, 2009Given the usual response to terrorist threats on airplanes, we expect the latest move to protect us will be to require us to travel nude. OK. Probably not. Republicans are too skittish about public nakedness. They prefer it in the privacy of their mistresses' beds. What we will see, instead, is yet another attempt at a technical fix, spearheaded by high priced security and aviation "consultants." I saw one of them, Mary Schiavo (former inspector general of the Department of Transportation) the other night on the PBS Newshour. She was hawking expensive explosive sniffers for airport check-in,…
revere | November 1, 2009When swine flu began there was a hue and cry in some quarters to shut the border to prevent the virus from taking root in the US. It seems fairly clear, now, that by the time we detected the virus, in late April, it had already situated itself in the US -- assuming that it didn't start here in the first place. We don't really know where the jump from pigs to humans occurred, although the best guess is Mexico. Closing the borders would have done no good and would have stranded thousands of students and other tourists in Mexico. Since the US has more world travelers than Mexico, it was in fact…