Nothing To See Here, Folks. Just (Another) Isolated Incident
Via TPM:
Roger Stockham, a 63-year-old Army veteran from California who was reportedly angry at the U.S. government, was arrested by police in Michigan and charged with allegedly threatening to blow up a Mosque in Dearborn.
Dearborn police allegedly found Stockham inside his vehicle outside the Islamic Center of America with a load of M-80s in his trunk and other explosives, the Detroit News reported.
Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Counsel on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), told the newspaper that police told him the suspect was drinking in a Detroit bar on Monday and threatened to do harm to a mosque in Dearborn. An employee at the bar followed the man outside and wrote down his license plate, which he reported to police, Walid told the newspaper.
First, let me say how impressed I’ve been with law enforcement for stopping yet another attempt of domestic terrorism.
Second, there are way too many attempts (and successes) for my peace of mind.
And I’m sure it was just a coincident that he’s angry with the government and targeted a Mosque.
Tags: domestic terrorism, Extremists
Nothing to see here either I guess
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/28/idINIndia-54468220110128
A group calling itself Revolutionary Perspective said in a statement on an activist website it had targeted the luxury Posthotel with a firebomb and said Swiss ministers and representatives of top bank UBS were staying there.
“Our fight against the dictatorship of capital is focused on the social alternative to capitalism: communism,” the group said in the statement.
Just to review: Targeting specific people who represent the leaders of capitalism equals targeting a nearby mosque. Got it.
Not to mention the post was on domestic terrorism.
@Geezer: the point is that stupid/evil/crazy people target other people for their beliefs or what they represent.
Update:
Emphasis added.
So what should we believe? This guys is a right wing republican tea partier blah blah blah. That was, of course, the first assumption here. Or he is as he describes himself. A Muslim terrorist on a roll.
Or maybe, just maybe he’s mentally ill and his reasoning is no more sound that Jared whathisface who shot Giffords?
keep humpin that “lone wolf” theory.
keep adding the lone wolves and you get a wolf pack. A lone wolf wolfpack.
I’m sure the fact that Sharron Angle said that Dearborn, Michigan was under sharia law is just a coincidence.
Let’s look here.
Hates George W. Bush and threatened his life.
Claims to be a Muslim out to commit jihad.
Angry at government agencies that he feels aren’t doing enough for him.
Crazy as a loon.
By my calculation, at least three out of the four would put him in the Democrat column — and make him a clone of Jared Loughner. You know, just another Left-winger with a screw loose who is acting on the hatred that undergirds most leftist philosophies.
Well, if he was packing anything more than fireworks, this might be really newsworthy. Next week a multi-branch task force will take down a man with a vest full of snakes and sparklers.
Joe, think you could lighten up a little on the factual information? While an occasional prod in the general direction of realism is usually a good thing, the actual truth tends to scare the shit out of them.
Why can’t he just be crazy?
He can just be crazy, but there’s an awful lot of crazy out there targeting Mosques, the Tides Foundation, MLK parade, IRS building, Holocaust Museum, etc., etc., etc. Crazy people will do crazy things. It would be helpful if certain people could stop giving the voices in their head directions.
This is exactly how political violence works. It’s always some crazy person on the fringe who does the deed, not the leaders and spokespeople for the movement. You don’t see Taliban leadership strapping on suicide vests.
“the point is that stupid/evil/crazy people target other people for their beliefs or what they represent.”
I would reject the notion that the bombers in India were stupid, evil or crazy. They clearly weren’t stupid or crazy, and they’re only “evil” in your eyes because they’re not on your (our) side.
“Why can’t he just be crazy?”
Why must he just be crazy?
@Geezer:
I would reject the notion that the bombers in India were stupid, evil or crazy. They clearly weren’t stupid or crazy, and they’re only “evil” in your eyes because they’re not on your (our) side.
No. They are evil because they entered a hotel full of tourists and other unarmed civilians and murdered them with machine guns. That is evil. If the US Marines did that you’d be baying for blood and I would want see them hanged. If you don’t think that killing unarmed civilians is not either evil or crazy you are morally bankrupt.
M80’s ? Was he trying to blow up a mail box?
“If the US Marines did that you’d be baying for blood”
My point exactly — when, not if, the US Marines do it, do you call it evil then? Or is it just collateral damage?
“If you don’t think that killing unarmed civilians is not either evil or crazy you are morally bankrupt.”
I don’t think you have the credentials to ascertain whether I’m morally bankrupt. Either way, terrorism is a strategy. Unless you’re prepared to say that America commits more of the atrocities you decry as “evil” than any other force we’re aware of, I think the same of you. So we’re even.
@Geezer;
If anyone intentionally murders unarmed innocent people that is evil. The difference between the Mumbai attacks and civilian war deaths is vast. The killers in Mumbai loaded up and entered a hotel nowhere near a war zone with no soldiers or any other armed people and slaughtered them.
The US armed forces have undoubtedly killed innocent people in war. The vast majority of them were accidental and they have been far more careful about avoiding civilian deaths than any other army in history. The difference is intent.
Do US troops commit atrocities? Yes. Is that evil? Yes. Should they hang for murder? Yes.
I am in no way going to say that America commits more atrocities than anyone else we’re aware of. I’ll direct you to North Korea or the Hutus or Janjaweed etc.
The Hutus alone are estimated to have killed over a million Tutsis. To believe the US is worse either that number is a lie, the US killed more than a million innocent civilians or Hutus don’t count for much.
“The difference between the Mumbai attacks and civilian war deaths is vast. The killers in Mumbai loaded up and entered a hotel nowhere near a war zone with no soldiers or any other armed people and slaughtered them. The US armed forces have undoubtedly killed innocent people in war. The vast majority of them were accidental and they have been far more careful about avoiding civilian deaths than any other army in history. The difference is intent.”
No wonder you are willing to toss around the word “evil” with such certainty — you are willing to believe the Amero-centric version of these events.
Ask the war dead — whoops, you can’t — whether their “accidental” deaths make them less dead than the terrorism victims. The difference is intent? Not to the dead, sport. Indeed, if you believe, as I have so commonly heard conservatives say, that you have to expect a certain amount of “collateral damage” in a war, then our invasions of both countries would have to be judged immoral — not evil, immoral.
And what of the numerous incidents of mistaken drone attacks? There were no “soldiers” involved in the way you’re thinking of — the decisions are made at a remote location. It’s just an accident, so it’s not “evil”? Again, tell it to the dead and their mutilated survivors.
I believe it was Eichmann, a man who knew something about evil, who exposed this hypocrisy for what it is.
Pandora — is it REALLY your argument that conservative political speech is “giving directions” to deranged liberals like this clown with the fireworks and Jared Loughner? That ranks right up there with the argument that the voices of anti-Kennedy conservatives provoked the murder of JFK by a pro-Castro Commie.
Um… no. There’s no deranged liberals here. There are, however, certain conservatives who give “directions.” See Sharron Angle/Dearborn, Michigan; Beck/Tides Foundation, Obama’s gonna take my guns/Guy who killed police officers in Pittsburgh, etc., etc, etc.
Embrace your language, Joe. You own it.