Tag: terrorism

(Alleged) Occupy Wall Street activist arrested in ANOTHER (alleged) bomb plot.

Please note: “another.”

To the best of my knowledge, accused bombmaker Aaron Greene is not linked in any formal way to last year’s plot by Occupy Wall Street activists to bomb a Columbus, Ohio bridge.  Then again, it’s not entirely clear what Greene was (allegedly) planning to bomb: when the cops arrested him and his bourgeois moll Morgan Gliedman they had just gotten to the stage of putting an actual bomb-making shop together*.  A charming little substance called HMTD was found on-scene**; for those without access to Wikipedia, it’s the triggering explosive of choice for suicide and car bombers worldwide.  And, naturally, Greene and Gliedman are both children of privilege.  One would wonder if Mummy and Daddy hugged them enough… but then, most people who don’t get hugged enough still somehow manage to avoid making bombs in response, so perhaps the answer isn’t really all that interesting after all.

Not much else to note, except for this rather unfortunately surnamed lawyer’s quote from the Huffington Post:

“The whole situation’s sad,” said attorney Lisa Pelosi, who represented Greene. She declined further comment.

Continue reading (Alleged) Occupy Wall Street activist arrested in ANOTHER (alleged) bomb plot.

#rsrh Can’t wait to hear how the Chicago bomb thing was a stupid video/Mitt Romney’s fault.

Because God forbid that we assume that any of this could be due to a failure of leadership:

Undercover FBI agents arrested an 18-year-old American man who tried to detonate what he believed was a car bomb outside a downtown Chicago bar, federal prosecutors said today. Adel Daoud, a US citizen from the Chicago suburb of Hillside, was arrested last night in an undercover operation in which agents pretending to be extremists provided him with a phony car bomb. But the device was inert and the public was never at risk, officials said.

Or, more accurately, a failure to induce the proper bed-wetting terror that should accompany any thought of setting off an explosive on US soil.  Because if you’re thinking that this sort of story seems to have gotten more and more common since 20[0*]9… well.  Yes, it has.

Moe Lane

[*Nag, nag, nag.]

Former Kerry staffer arrested for blowing agents’ cover.

Mind you, you wouldn’t know that from the Washington Post’s article on the arrest of John Kiriakou.  While the Washington Post – from appearances, somewhat reluctantly – reported that Kiriakou (a former CIA officer and Senate Foreign Affairs staffer) had been arrested for revealing names, operations and investigations to the media back in 2008-2009, the paper completely neglected to mention who Kiriakou ended up working for – which is to say, Senator John Kerry (D, MA).  Oddly enough, the Washington Post managed to simultaneous note that “[t]he committee had not been aware of the criminal probe of Kiriakou, according to a former U.S. official familiar with the matter” in its article, while unaccountably mentioning that Kiriakou has been leaking classified information publicly for years – including to the, well, Washington Post.  One can only guess why a premiere Left-Establishment paper would be so eager to whitewash the record when it comes to protecting prominent Left-Establishment politicians… like, say, John Kerry, who is the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee (at least until next January)… Continue reading Former Kerry staffer arrested for blowing agents’ cover.

#rsrh Mostly-good article by Charles Lane…

…(no relation) on the vicious attempts by Democrats to smear Tea Partiers as ‘terrorists.’ Note that Charles Lane does not actually agree with the Tea Party, but manages to tell the difference between them and, say, people who try to murder civilians with nail bombs and rat poison; something that the Left seems to be having (deliberate) trouble with these days.  However, there’s this howler:

…[liberals] are surely correct to condemn such ugly rhetorical excesses as the Obama-is-Hitler placards that flowered across the land in the summer of 2009.

Indeed.  LaRouche Democrats were unwelcome interlopers in the Tea Party movement… Continue reading #rsrh Mostly-good article by Charles Lane…

Jonah Goldberg is tired of the vicious hypocrisy of these people…

…for that matter, so am I.

‘These people’ being the media, and their contemptible willingness to accept a double standard when it comes to violent rhetoric.  After screaming for so long about every possible hint of a suggestion of a possibility of violent speech from the Right, it’s amazing what will be forgiven when it comes from the Left:

Tom Friedman — who knows a bit about Hezbollah — calls the tea partiers the “Hezbollah faction” of the GOP bent on taking the country on a “suicide mission.” All over the place, conservative Republicans are “hostage takers” and “terrorists,” “terrorists” and “traitors.” They want to “end life as we know it on this planet,” says Nancy Pelosi. They are betraying the founders, too. Chris Matthews all but signs up for the “Make an Ass of Yourself” contest at the State Fair.  Joe Nocera writes today that “the Tea Party Republicans can put aside their suicide vests.” Lord knows what Krugman and Olbermann have said.

Then last night. on the very day Gabby Giffords heroically returns to cast her first vote since that tragic attack six months ago, the Vice President of the United States calls the Republican Party a bunch of terrorists.

Regardless, No one cares.

Continue reading Jonah Goldberg is tired of the vicious hypocrisy of these people…

Europe starting to talk about ‘war crimes?’

Pajamas Media took a survey of various European media sources and their evolving reaction to the Osama bin Laden excision.  It will not surprise anyone in the slightest to hear that the level of disapproval has been increasing all week, with many an envious sneer along the way.  The German response is particularly telling  (they’re usually a leading indicator of Left-wing antiwar thinking*): even the center-right (hah!) magazines want international tribunals and investigations and whatnot.  So we should probably see the first calls for that over here in about… a week or so.  Probably followed with the leaking of the SEAL team’s names by some fellow-traveler in the Executive Branch with a grudge against the military and an iPad, so I hope that the SEALs are taking my advice and getting a lawyer now.

I’m also going to give some free advice to the White House: and I actually hope that they’ll take it, because this is an American issue, not a Right/Left, Republican/Democrat, or Competent/Incompetent one.  Let’s just say that I don’t really care what’s on the tapes that we’re suddenly now saying that we don’t actually have.  This is because I’m reasonably sure that there’s nothing drastically awful on them, given that they weren’t suppressed from the get-go: so there’s nothing like an actual noncombatant being molested or shot out of hand or anything like that.  If there is something like that on them then I would have to wonder why the administration didn’t react with horror at the time, but never mind that right now: the point is, I expect that the video record doesn’t show an actual atrocity. Continue reading Europe starting to talk about ‘war crimes?’

John Brennan’s a little… touchy for his position, no? #rsrh

I was looking for fodder for a couple of light and fluffy posts, but I probably shouldn’t let this pass by without comment.

In an oped in USA Today, John Brennan — Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism — responds to critics of the Obama administration’s counterterrorism policies by saying “Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda.”

The title of the op-ed is “We need no lectures” – which, given the fact that this administration rather stupidly read a foreign terrorist his Miranda rights, and has been trying to wiggle out of the consequences of it ever since, is self-evidently not true – is ably enough pushed back on here and here by AoSHQ, so I’ll just repeat something that I’ve written before.  The oddity of the current administration is that it’s as if the Democrats went out and found somebody who was just like what they thought George W Bush was – only, in this case?

It’s all true.

Weird.

Moe Lane

Report: WH in full CYA/BDS mode over Christmas attack.

A quick survey of priorities:

  • In 2001, the American government’s response to a successful series of terrorist attacks was to look outwards to see who to hit for this*.
  • In 2009, the American government’s response to an only-because-we-got-lucky unsuccessful terrorist attack was to look inwards to see who to blame for this. (H/T: Nice Deb)

I think that, all things considered, I prefer the first approach.

Moe Lane

*To somewhat purify the Onion’s point.

Crossposted to RedState.