URGENT! BREAKING! Shooting At AFDI/Jihad Watch Event In Garland, Texas

IS THIS PARIS/CHARLIE HEBDO HAPPENING IN TEXAS???

Tammy Swofford is at the scene, contacted AoW. Has since been forced (by authorities?) to hang up.  AOW here...I am updating as I am able to do so at the bottom of this blog post.

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION EVENT APPARENTLY UNDER ATTACK IN TEXAS

Dallas Morning News:

Breaking: Gunfire reported at anti-Islam event at Garland ISD facility

A spokesman for Garland ISD has confirmed that gunfire was reported at an anti-Islam event at the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland ISD.

Initial reports indicated that shots were heard outside the facility where an art show devoted to caricatures of Muhammad was being held.

WFAA-TV (Channel 8) has said an officer was involved in the shooting, and there are reports that SWAT officers had responded to the incident.

KXAS-TV (NBC5) says Garland police were still working to secure the area, and there were reports that officers had sealed the doors to the center.

Opponents had said the American Freedom Defense Initiative's Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest on Sunday would be an attack on Islam. But its organizers said they were simply exercising their right of expression.

The contest, which was offering a top prize of $10,000, has received about 350 entries depicting Muhammad. Caricatures of the Islamic prophet are considered offensive by many Muslims.

In January, a French newspaper that published such cartoons was attacked by terrorists and 12 people died.

As part of its contract with the district, the American Freedom Defense Initiative has paid $10,000 for extra security - nearly $50 for each of about 200 tickets that have been purchased so far. That cost doesn't include private security the group is employing.

AOW cutting in here: The bomb disposal unit has arrived; apparently, two devices were found. Those attending the event have been moved to a safe place and are under armed guard.

The explosive devices are believed to be in the parking lot where those attending the event are parked. Attendees are not allowed to go to their vehicles; buses are being brought in to take the attendees away from Curtis Culwell Center.

While waiting, the attendees are singing "God Bless America," "The Star-Spangled Banner," and other patriotic songs.

I got this information from Tammy Swofford, who is on the ground there and is attending the event.

AOW again...Heavy.com has this information.

midnight rider: per Pam Geller:

Two men with rifles and backpacks attacked police outside our event. A cop was shot; his injuries are not life-threatening, thank Gd. Please keep him in your prayers. The bomb squad has been called to the event site to investigate a backpack left at the event site

. -

AOW here...The lights have now gone off in the safe room. This information via Tammy Swofford, who is on the ground there.

She sent this picture

UPDATE - For some reason blogger is not posting our updates.

UPDATE FROM PASTORIUS - I have to wonder if the Police/authorities are trying to send this story down the rabbit hole by forcing our correspondent Tammy Swofford to turn off her phone and then corraling all attendees into a safe room, AND THEN TURNING OFF THE LIGHTS!

ANOTHER UPDATE - Jihad Watch's site is now inaccessible. It could be that there are too many people attempting to get their news there and the site crashed.

OR IT COULD BE THAT SOMEONE HAS ATTACKED THE SITE AND TAKEN IT DOWN -

IF THAT IS THE CASE, THE QUESTION IS, IS THIS A COORDINATED ATTACK?!?!?!?

UPDATE - GOOD NEWS - JIHAD WATCH IS BACK UP - PAMELA GELLER IS POSTING AT JIHAD WATCH BECAUSE ROBERT IS IN LOCKDOWN AT THE CARTOON CONTEST FACILITY.

UPDATE - At Fox News, commentator Harris Faulkner is getting worked up about this story. She is a conservative black lady, and she's hot, and she seems to cognizant that this is a big, big story.

MY QUESTION IS, HOW DO WE AS FREE PEOPLE LIVE WITH MUSLIMS WHEN THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE CRITICIZE THEIR RELIGION?

In a free society, all loci of power need to be criticized. It is part of our system of checks and balances. It is absolutely necessary that we be free to criticize all religions, businesses, academic insitutions and  government officials. 

That is a necessary part of freedom.

If we are importing Muslims by the tens and hundreds of thousands, granting them political asylum, this is what we are going to get.

It is not that all Muslims are Jihadists. But a percentage of them are. Look in our sidebar under "Game Over". There are 10 posts there featuring statistics that will show you what percentage of Muslims in various countries around the world, including the West, hold anti-Freedom ideas. 

That is the percentage we are dealing with.

and that is why this is happening. 

We can not live with this. We can not abide it for one second.

midnight rider: Fox TV reporting a local Walmart has now been evacuated

UPDATE - This appears to be a Tweet from one of the attackers - 

UPDATE - THE ATTACKERS HAVE BEEN KILLED

VIDEO 

Jihad Watch Wins CPAC Award, Barred From Receiving It

Robert Spencer writes:

I was surprised and honored that Jihad Watch was among the nominees for the People's Choice Blog Award, sponsored by Right Wing News and TheTeaParty.net, to be awarded at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) 2013.

... Jihad Watch won decisively, getting over 50% of the vote in a field of fifteen....

But as time went by and no announcement was made of this victory, and the voting continued despite my having been told that it officially ended last Friday night and that I had won, and the promised links and other placement promised to the winning blog didn't materialize, I started to wonder. So I contacted the organizer who had written me telling me I won and asked him what was going on.

He told me that there was a slight problem: the Tea Party group, which co-sponsored this People's Choice Blog Award, didn't want to allow me to receive it at CPAC next week unless I promised not to criticize Grover Norquist and Suhail Khan as I accepted the award.

I told the organizer that I couldn't agree to that. He asked me if I had planned to talk about Grover and Suhail. I said no, I hadn't, but I had to now.

So that's that. The People's Choice Blog Award is now the Grover's Choice Blog Award. I will not be going to CPAC and will not be receiving this award.

And since I will not be allowed to receive this award at CPAC, I will talk about Norquist and Khan here....

Read the rest HERE.

Pamela Geller has also been shut out of CPAC 2013.

We're back to the 9/10 mindset — and not only inside the Obama administration.

We are witnessing the further marginalization of the anti-jihad movement.

Prepare for the reaping of the whirlwind.

Meanwhile, Over At Jihad Watch

Major problems, says Robert Spencer:

I really don't have all that much to report, but I wanted to let you know I'm working on it. The situation is very much the same: the comments feature is still not working, it is still very difficult to post articles at all, and other features of the site are non-functional..

Several tech experts are working on the problem. Some malicious code has been found, which makes it likely that the site was hacked, although this hacking was not a conventional one: no eradication of the main page and its replacement by a taunting message, as is the usual practice. In fact, the malicious code is apparently (if I understand the explanation correctly, which is chancy at best, since I'm no techie) slow-acting, unfolding over time. We are looking into how it got there, and who planted it.

In any case, all I can say now is that we're working on it and will have the site fully operational as soon as possible. This kind of action just shows yet again how desperately insecure and thuggish the enemies of freedom are -- they can't refute us, so they try to shut us down. And how many Leftist and Islamic supremacist sites do you ever hear about getting hacked?

Finally, thank you all very much for your many, many emails of concern and support.
Posted by Robert on February 14, 2013 8:39 AM

These problems have been ongoing for days now.

Today's Interview With Robert Spencer

On today's The Gathering Storm, WC and I interviewed Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch.

We primarily discussed Did Muhammad Exist?, Mr. Spencer's latest book.

CLICK HERE to listen.

June 8, A.D. 632

From Jihad Watch:

"'A'isha and Abdullah reported: As the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) was about to breathe his last, he drew his sheet upon his face and when he felt uneasy, he uncovered his face and said in that very state: Let there be curse upon the Jews and the Christians that they have taken the graves of their apostles as places of worship. He in fact warned (his men) against what they (the Jews and the Christians) did." -- Sahih Muslim 1082

"Narrated 'Aisha: Allah's Apostle in his fatal illness said, 'Allah cursed the Jews and the Christians, for they built the places of worship at the graves of their prophets.' And if that had not been the case, then the Prophet's grave would have been made prominent before the people. So (the Prophet ) was afraid, or the people were afraid that his grave might be taken as a place for worship." -- Sahih Bukhari 2.23.472

According to Islamic tradition, Muhammad died on June 8, 632, after once again cursing the Jews and Christians.

As for the historical reliability of these traditions, see here. But the Muslim contempt and hatred for Jews and Christians remains.

DHS Now Surveilling Jihad Watch

From Robert Spencer in this announcement. Excerpt:

Welcome, DHS agents!

I've just learned that the Department of Homeland Security has Jihad Watch under surveillance, along with a broad spectrum of sites all over the ideological and political map, including Live Leak, Vimeo, Youtube, Flickr, Counter-Terrorism Blog, Danger Room, Drudge Report, Foreign Policy, Global Security Newswire, Google Blog Search, Homeland Security Today, Huffington Post, LongWarJournal, MEMRI, Newsweek Blogs, NYTimes Lede Blog, Plowshares Fund, Popular Science Blogs, Science Daily, STRATFOR, Technorati, Terror Finance Blog, and many, many others.

Clearly there is no commonality here -- in other words, the DHS isn't just watching anti-jihad sites, or conservative sites. The explanation given is this: "This is a representative list of sites that the NOC [National Operations Center] will start to monitor in order to provide situational awareness and establish a common operating picture under this Initiative. Initial sites listed may link to other sites not listed. The NOC may also monitor those sites if they are within the scope of this Initiative."...

I suppose that any of us on Jihad Watch's blogroll might also be under surveillance.

HERE is the pdf with the list.

Well, no ducking and running from me!

If A Muslim Wishes You "The Best" At Christmas

Know what he really means (hat tip to Jihad Watch for the first video below:


So, when a Muslim says to me, "Happy holidays," what is he really saying?

There's also this:

Why Anders Breivik was not and could not have been radicalized by Robert Spencer or Pamela Geller

From Jihad Watch:

Just When You Thought That Political Correctness Couldn't Get Any Crazier...

...along comes THIS:

UK: Plastic bags to be put over "terror cameras" to avoid offending Muslims

Bags are to be put over scores of surveillance cameras in parts of Birmingham with large Muslim populations, after local objections.

Read the whole insane thing at Jihad Watch.

You can't make this shit up.

BTW, maybe an administrator here could add an appropriate graphic to this post.

Our Dhimmified State Department

From Jihad Watch, citing the Daily News:

State Department bows to Sharia, condemns Motoons

WASHINGTON: The US has deplored blasphemous images of Prophet Muhammed (PBUH) on Facebook as "deeply offensive to both Muslims and non-Muslims alike", saying America does not condone expressions that lead to violence or hatred. The US State Department also expressed respect for any actions that need to be taken under Pakistani law to protect their citizens from offensive speech, but expected a balance between restricting offensive material and ensuring flow of information for the Internet users. "Obviously, this is a difficult and challenging issue. Many of the images that appear today on Facebook were deeply offensive to Muslims and non-Muslims alike," Philip J Crowley, assistant secretary of state, said.

I think I'm gonna puke.

Visit Jihad Watch to read Robert Spencer's commentary.

In part, Mr. Spencer said:

[T]he Motoons are not a stunt, not a joke, not a raspberry to anyone, not an exercise in obnoxiousness or gratuitous offense. The Motoons are rather the foremost battleground in the defense of the freedom of speech today.

Be sure to read the rest!

On the Need to Recognize Islam as the New Cold War

Below are excerpts from a long article by Hugh Fitzgerald that appeared on the JihadWatch site. The entire post is here and well worth a read.

Fitzgerald: Jihadology: Unremarkable, and remarkable

The other day I was asked by an email correspondent to comment on a recent piece by David C. Engerman that appeared in "Foreign Policy." Engerman's piece is both unremarkable and remarkable at the same time. It may be called "unremarkable" though the word seems somehow churlish when used about it, because - as we shall see - the piece is also, in these great times, even more "remarkable" than it is "unremarkable."

But we can begin by noting that, looked at in one way, it is "unremarkable" because its gist is simple and, one might think, obvious: that the American government should do today, with the threat it currently is attempting to deal with, just as it did during the Cold War. And what did Americans do in the Cold War, daddy?, you may well ask. The answer is: just about everything. But in order to have the ability, and will, to do just about everything, the American government, which had treated Soviet Russia as an ally during World War II, had to put away that temporary (and justified) alliance, and begin to get a more reasonable idea of what the Soviet Union was all about. Two decades of warnings from Russian émigrés had done little. The Comintern had been most effective in blunting Western opposition, and then along came Mr. Hitler with his crazed invasion of the Soviet Union, his greatest error of tactics and timing, and the Soviet Union was, in the American view, off to the races as our ally.

But then came the peace, or the haggling over what the post-war settlement would look like. Franklin Roosevelt was not quite as suspicious as Churchill of the Soviets, and unfortunately it required acts of obvious aggression - the Red Army entering, and not leaving, the countries of Eastern and Central Europe - for the Americans to finally get the point. But once they got the point, there was no further wavering on this side of the Atlantic, among those who were in the government, being our leaders and not merely "taking a leadership role." During the 1930s there had been a series of defectors from the Soviet Union, given little attention, but after World War II new defectors, some even from the KGB, appeared in the West, and they were joined by large numbers of people who had, in the turmoil of the war and post-war periods, managed to escape from the new satellite nations or, in some cases, from the Soviet Union itself. And some of these people had even fled Europe just before the war, one step ahead of the Nazis and, as it turned out, two steps ahead of the Communists who would follow the Nazis. Such names as Richard Pipes, Adam Ulam, Czeslaw Milosz, Leopold Labedz, come to mind.

[...]


It's quite a story, and no doubt Engerman, who has written that history of that story, was struck by the contrast between what the Americans did then, and what they are so singularly failing to do now: to make use of similar refugees from the world of Islam, including those who, while not Muslim, have a native command of the relevant languages - Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, and so on. These should be supplemented by the subsidized creation of a homegrown cadre of experts on Islam who, being well-prepared in the ideology of Islam, will be immune to personal charms radiating from individual Muslims (think of the effect of Ahmad Chalabi on various members of the Bush Administration).

Europe realized that it had to learn a good deal about Communism, and Russia, and the way the Soviet system worked. And so it did. For once the Soviet Union, and smiling Joseph Stalin, our World War II ally, had their measure taken. The government remained steadfast in its correct understanding that the Soviet Union was a mortal enemy of the West, that it would try, through every means at its disposal, to undermine the position of the West, not least through a worldwide propaganda effort, in which "Peace Festivals" and "Youth Congresses" would play their part, and Soviet agents would find many, especially in the Communist parties of the West, who would act as apologists and agents for the Soviet Union and its polices, foreign and domestic.

And thus, says Engerman, just as the history of Communism in theory and practice, and Russian history and literature and culture, and Soviet-Area studies (including all the member-republics back in the USSR), including relevant languages, were all subsidized and promoted by the American government. For all of them constituted aspects of the problem.

[...]

Engerman suggests that now the American government should go and do likewise, that is, imitate its former self. He suggests that this new field be called "Jihadology," a term that I think many will find so rebarbative, and comical, that they won't want to use it. And there really is no need to use it, for we can talk about "study of Jihad" or, if we are truly daring, create "experts on the ideology of Islam" or "experts on the doctrine of Islam" and other - or sometimes the same - "experts on the history of Islamic conquest and subjugation of non-Muslim peoples." Might such people not be called, simply, "students of Islam"? Apparently that will not do for some. Perhaps the proffered term "Jihadology" will at least focus attention on the word - on the duty - of Jihad, and that would be a good thing.

[...]

The word-wars can be fought later. But those who come to JW know just how obvious, how "unremarkable," Engerman's suggestion is. Think of how many dozens of times, at this website, the point has been made that unless Islam is studied, unless the texts of Islam - Qur'an, Hadith, Sira - are read and understood, unless the attitudes that arise naturally from the tenets of Islam, and the atmospherics of societies suffused with Islam analyzed, the flailing about, the endless gullibility in dealings with Muslims will continue. See those who rule Afghanistan and Pakistan, for example, and how they intend to extract even more tens of billions from the Americans. We shall continue to have the squandering of men, money, materiel, and morale, that has been such a dismal feature of the response, so far, to all that has happened since the attacks of 9/11/2001, which ought to have merited a response with a lot less baby-huey tromping around, and a lot more thought and cunning, exploiting every pre-existing fissure within the Camp of Islam, and attempting to create the conditions that will force at least the most advanced Muslims to recognize all the ways in which the political, economic, social, intellectual, and moral failures of their own societies are a result of Islam itself.

[...]


Why is Engerman's plumping for the encouragement of a field he calls "Jihadology," then, "remarkable"?

Because it is an achievement to state the obvious these days: to note that there is no discernible American effort to analyze the ideology of the enemy - an ideology which we will demurely pretend is limited to just a few, those who believe in "Jihad" and whose view of the world can, therefore, be understood by those well-versed in "Jihadology." And it is all the more "remarkable" to do this not on the web, but in the pages of one of the mainstream foreign-policy journals. It is a sign that things are moving. The ice is melting. Those who have for so long remained impervious to the idea that they have a responsibility to study, and to encourage others to study, the ideology of Islam (for that is what "Jihadology" means, what it synecdochically stands for), are losing out. They are having to recognize, at long last, that every other explanation or excuse has been held out and found wanting -- such as those various "root causes" which were initially identified with poverty or joblessness or Western foreign policy, all in order to delay the day when those who presume to protect us would have to grapple with the texts and tenets of Islam, not only a religion but a Total Belief-System, and one with a hold on the minds of its most brainwashed adherents akin to that of totalitarian political doctrines, Communism or Nazism.

The appearance of Engerman's piece in such an establishment setting indicates that not everyone can remain impervious to the obvious forever, even among those heretofore so willfully insistent on refusing to look into the ideology of Islam. Could it be that the days of the banana-peel slip-and-sliding up and down those corridors of power at long last coming to an end?

An Excellent Speech By Robert Spencer

From Jihad Watch:

Anti-Taliban Squads

In some parts of the North West Frontier Province (in Pakistan), people are enlisting in anti-Taliban squads to take on the jihadists who are blamed for a spate of abductions and arson attacks on girls’ schools, rural clinics and cyber cafes.

I say good for them!

Read the whole story: Pakistani villagers rise up against Taliban.

The Dhimmis At The WaPo

So what else is new?

Via Jihad Watch (emphases mine):

In "5 Myths About Terrorism" in the [September 11, 2007] Washington Post (thanks to Steve), Alan B. Krueger provides a sterling example of the politically correct myopia that prevents an accurate analysis of the global jihad and Islamic supremacism. And he does so in such a clumsy way that it is remarkable that no one at the paper caught this before it was printed:

4. Terrorism is mainly perpetrated by Muslims.
Wrong. No religion has a monopoly on terrorism. Every major religious faith has had followers involved in terrorism. (Sri Lanka, for instance, has grappled for decades with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a separatist group that pioneered suicide bombing as a terrorist tactic and hopes to create a homeland for the country's mostly Tamil minority, who are largely Hindu.) Although radical Islamic terrorists are the worry du jour because of 9/11 and Iraq, the data show pretty clearly that the predominant religion of a country is not a good predictor of whether its people will become involved in terrorism.

After all, it was not long ago that homegrown villains such as Timothy McVeigh and the so-called Unabomber were the most notorious terrorists. That makes sense; the vast majority of terrorist incidents are local, motivated by local concerns and carried out by natives. Even international terrorist events tend to be local affairs, most frequently carried out by local militants who target foreigners who happen to be in their country. (Just think of last week's foiled plot to attack U.S. targets in Germany.) This suggests that the likelihood of attack by homegrown terrorists is far greater than the threat of another 9/11-style attack by foreigners.

Did you catch that? Terrorism isn't "mainly perpetrated by Muslims" because "no religion has a monopoly on terrorism." This doesn't even establish what Krueger wants it to establish, because the fact that people of all religions have committed terrorist acts doesn't disprove the contention that terrorism is mainly perpetrated by Muslims. If one group is responsible for something, say, 80% of the time, it is mainly responsible for it: you can't point to the existence of the other 20% as if it were proof that the 80% group is not mainly responsible.

Read the rest at Always On Watch. I've added some info from the September 15, 2007 edition of the WaPo.