Bloodthirsty Liberal

Maybe poverty does cause terrorism: her student loans alone must be a “daily humiliation”:

After two days of deliberations, a jury yesterday found Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani woman with MIT and Brandeis degrees, guilty of attempted murder and assault of Americans in Afghanistan.

Following the verdict, Siddiqui, a 37-year-old former Roxbury resident, calmly addressed the spectators in the courtroom.

“This is a verdict coming from Israel, not from America,’’ she said, speaking through a white scarf that covered her face. “Your anger should be directed where it belongs.’’

I’m sorry, did she say Israel?

“This is a verdict coming from Israel, not from America.”

And you went to Brandeis, honey?

Maybe you can use that MIT degree to explain how Israel was responsible for this:

Insisting she had been framed by the US government, Siddiqui said she had been tortured and held for years in a secret US prison.

Oh gee, sweetie, that’s awful. I wonder why they treated you so bad?

The verdict ends a two-week trial in which prosecutors used eyewitnesses - but little forensic evidence - to prove that Siddiqui grabbed a machine gun from an American soldier, who had come to interrogate her, and fired it toward his colleagues but missed. Another soldier testified he barely escaped with his life, and an Afghan interpreter said he tried to wrestle the gun from her. She was subdued when a US soldier shot her in the abdomen.

The jury also heard from an employee of the Braintree Rifle and Pistol Club, who said Siddiqui had taken a 12-hour pistol training course in the 1990s.

Defense lawyers, backed by expert witnesses, countered that her fingerprints were not found on the gun and that there was no evidence it had been fired.

Reasonable objections, I suppose, but the jury didn’t buy them.

I just want to point out that this Pakistani woman who has advanced degrees from America, (allegedly) shot at American troops in Afghanistan—and blames Israel.

So I guess education isn’t the answer to terrorism either.

Jail is one answer, but I have to ask why an assault on US servicemen in Afghanistan is a criminal offense, not a military one.

Excellent!

- Aggie

Not often you see a headline like that.

Can you guess who she blames for the verdict?

A Pakistani neuroscientist was convicted on Wednesday of attempted murder for trying to kill American soldiers and F.B.I. agents in Afghanistan.

Federal prosecutors said the neuroscientist, Aafia Siddiqui, 37, grabbed an M4 rifle in a police station in the city of Ghazni, Afghanistan, on July 18, 2008, and fired on American officers and federal agents.

After slightly more than two days of deliberations, a jury in Federal District Court in Manhattan found her guilty.

As the jurors began leaving the courtroom, Ms. Siddiqui, who studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brandeis University, turned in her chair to face them.

“This is a verdict coming from Israel and not from America,” she said, holding her right index finger in the air. “That’s where the anger belongs. I can testify to this, and I have proof.”

Ms. Siddiqui was then led out of the courtroom while the judge and lawyers for both sides discussed a sentencing date.

Ms. Siddiqui peppered her trial with colorful outbursts that caused her to be removed from the courtroom on several occasions. Her competency — first to stand trial, and then to take the stand — were also major points of contention in the case.

But Ms. Siddiqui was allowed to testify last week, and she claimed that the prosecutors’ assertions that she fired a weapon at officers was “the biggest lie.”

The weapon was never in her hands, said Ms. Siddiqui, who explained that she was merely trying to escape from the station because she feared being tortured. She had been arrested the day before and was found to be carrying documents on how to make explosives and a list of New York targets, officials said.

We’re feeling kind of proud here in Boston.

- Aggie

According to US intelligence officials, we will be attacked in the next six months That is the Al Qaeda goal.

America’s top intelligence official told lawmakers on Tuesday that Al Qaeda and its affiliates had made it a high priority to attempt a large-scale attack on American soil within the next six months.

The assessment by Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, was much starker than his view last year, when he emphasized the considerable progress in the campaign to debilitate Al Qaeda and said that the global economic meltdown, rather than the prospect of a major terrorist attack, was the “primary near-term security concern of the United States.”

At Tuesday’s hearing, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, asked Mr. Blair to assess the possibility of an attempted attack in the United States in the next three to six months.

He replied, “The priority is certain, I would say” — a response that was reaffirmed by the top officials of the C.I.A. and the F.B.I.

So much for reaching out our unclenched fists, or whatever we were doing. Obama has made us less safe.

At times, the senators seemed more interested in debating one another than in hearing testimony from witnesses. Midway through the hearing, partisan bickering broke out about whether terrorist suspects ought to be tried in civilian courts and whether the man charged as the Dec. 25 bomber should have been given Miranda rights that could protect him against self-incrimination.

Help! I think that’s funny. Can you imagine that these are the people we’ve elected to protect us?

Other stuff: They think that alongside blowing us up in the sky, the terrorist are planning very sophisticated cyber attacks. All of this after a year of pretending that the problem will just go away if we make nice. Instead, apparently the opposite has occurred. Notice that the Obama administration has gotten tougher in both rhetoric and action, but the usual suspects are not screaming about loss of our civil liberties, not marching in the streets, and not producing images of Obama as a mass murderer. I suppose that is a step forward.

- Aggie

I disagree with almost everything that Richard Cohen writes, but he’s right about terrorism

Interesting that he is able to understand the nuances - or lack thereof - of fighting terrorism in Lower Manhattan by opening the city up to financial disaster and potential physical attacks, but can’t see how that plays out in Israel. A simple blind spot, I suppose. But that’s a digression.

There is almost nothing the Obama administration does regarding terrorism that makes me feel safer. Whether it is guaranteeing captured terrorists that they will not be waterboarded, or whether it is reciting terrorists their rights, or whether it is the legally meandering and confusing rule that some terrorists will be tried in military tribunals and some in civilian courts, what is missing is a firm recognition that what comes first is not the message sent to America’s critics but the message sent to Americans themselves. When, oh when, will this administration wake up?

And so it goes. This is the astonishing conclusion:

The Obama administration, on the other hand, seems to have bent over backward to prove to the world it is not the Bush administration and will, almost no matter what, ensure that everyone gets the benefit of American civil liberties. But the paramount civil liberty is a sense of security and this, sad to say, has eroded under Barack Obama. Repeatedly, the administration has shown poor judgment. Abdulmutallab’s silence is a scream that something is wrong.

Remarkable. Does this guy live in Manhattan? His kids maybe? I’m asking because he is so sensible and so sensitive to the security needs of the area, but that respect for security and a the need to live life in a fairly normal manner certainly isn’t a theme from past columns.

Whatever the reason, glad to have him on board. After all, a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality.

- Aggie

The use of female suicide bombers is becoming more popular

Girls can do it too.

At least 41 people were killed and 106 others wounded Monday in a suicide bombing that targeted Shiite pilgrims in northeastern Baghdad, Iraq’s Interior Ministry said.

The bomber detonated her explosive vest in the middle of a procession of pilgrims in Boob al-Sham, in a predominantly Shiite area of the Iraqi capital, according to an Interior Ministry official.

The attack took place amid tight security as thousands of Shiite worshipers are making their way to the holy city of Karbala, south of Baghdad, to mark the Arbaeen — the end of the 40-day mourning period at the close of Ashura.

Ashura commemorates the martyrdom of Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed who was killed in battle in Karbala in 680 A.D. That event helped create the schism between Sunnis and Shiites, the two main Muslim religious movements.

There have been a number of roadside bomb and grenade attacks on pilgrims over the past few days.

Iraqi officials have warned of attacks during the pilgrimage ahead of national elections on March 7.

I wonder if suicide terrorism is embedded in these sub-cultures the way the beer and pizza are part of watching a football game? Because once a habit like that forms, it is difficult to break.

- Aggie

TSA guard takes cat nap at LaGuardia Airport on Sunday. The agent has been reassigned to desk duty pending investigation.

Desks have been duly warned.

I post this only to alert frequent fliers to bring nail clippers, plastic forks, small amounts of shampoo—anything—with which to defend themselves should another Calvin Klein killer attempt to detonate his derriere mid-flight. You’ve got to look out for yourself because some of the people we’re entrusting with the duty are not up to the job.

Does she seem chagrined in the least? What would make her think she was safe to pass out in front of everybody at a busy airport? Can we be sure this was the first time—for her or anyone else?

Obama administration considering moving terror trial outside of Manhattan

I can’t figure out why the residents of Manhattan are upset about this? Is it the great big target being painted on their fair city, or is it the cost? Or maybe it is both. I am scratching my head.

Facing mounting pressure from New York politicians concerned about costs and security, the Obama administration on Thursday began considering moving the trial of the chief organizer of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks out of Manhattan, administration officials said.

President Obama said through a spokesman that he still believed a civilian criminal trial for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who has admitted planning the attacks, and four accomplices could be conducted “successfully and securely in the United States.” He did not mention New York specifically.

Mr. Obama left the decision on possible alternate sites to the Justice Department, which was scrambling to assess the options, administration officials said.

A decision to move the Sept. 11 trial from Manhattan would be a retreat by the administration from its calculated choice in November to bring the defendants to a courthouse just blocks from where the World Trade Center stood.

This administration can’t tie its shoelaces.

- Aggie

Mayor of Malmo equates anti-Semitism with Zionism

News flash to all concerned: Zionism is the Human Liberation Movement of the Jewish People. When you think Zionism, think Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr. The early Zionists and founders of the State of Israel, and the modern Zionists today, represent the hope of the Jewish people to live together, in peace and dignity, in our homeland.

Anyone who believes that Zionism is a dirty word is at best misguided, but if they are over twenty years old, more likely a hater.

On to the Swedes:

Swedish Jews are upset about comments made this week by the mayor of Malmo, who said anti-Semitism and Zionism were both forms of “unacceptable extremism,” and urged local Jews to disassociate themselves from Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip.

“These statements and other events in Malmo are making the Jewish community feel very uncomfortable and some people, especially the young, are leaving the city,” George Braun, the president of the Jewish community in Gothenburg, about 250 kilometers from Malmo, told Haaretz. Ilmar Reepalu, mayor of Malmo, Sweden’s third largest city, spoke in an interview published in a Swedish newspaper on Wednesday, International Holocaust Remembrance Day. “We accept neither Zionism nor anti-Semitism,” Reepalu said. “They are extremes who put themselves above other groups, seeing others as something lesser.”

He said it was “terrible” that Jews felt so insecure in Malmo that they felt compelled to leave, but that a recent city-center demonstration in solidarity with Israel by local Jews stirred up feelings against them

“I wish the Jewish Community would distance itself from Israel’s violations of the rights of the civilian population in Gaza,” he said. I wish that representatives of Muslims in Malmo would clearly say that the Jews in Malmo shouldn’t be mixed up in the Israel-Palestine conflict.”

Malmo’s Jewish community has complained about harassment by extreme left-wing and right-wing activists, but mostly by radical elements from the city’s Muslims, who make up about 15 percent of the population of 250,000.

Malmo drew international attention last March when the city council barred spectators from a Davis Cup tennis match in which Israelis were competing, citing public order concerns because of planned anti-Israel protests.

The problem isn’t with the Jews; it is with the haters who deny us freedom of speech or assembly outside of Israel, and who create propaganda about what Israel is. Israel is a normal nation surrounded by abnormal amounts of hatred and hostility. This hatred, sadly, has plagued the Jewish people for centuries.

The Swedes should be ashamed that only the Jewish population is uncomfortable with the Mayor’s remarks. They should all be upset.

- Aggie

For many Palestinian children the answer is: a Jackson Pollack (not Jackson Pollack himself, but one of his splatter paintings).

In the most recent episode of the show Tomorrow’s Pioneers, the child host asks a 10 year-old girl who phones into the program whether she had been afraid of dying during the 2009 Gaza War.

…

Host to girl on phone: “How was it for you during the [Gaza] war [2009]? Were you afraid that you would die, that you would leave this world?”

Girl: “No. I wasn’t afraid. I wished for Shahada (Martyrdom) — Shahada for Allah.”

Host: “How wonderful. Even this little girl - how old are you?”

Girl: “Ten.”

Host: “[She] is not more than ten years old, and wants to die as a Shahida (Martyr) for Allah. We all wish for this [Shahada].”

Here’s the vid (lower the sound—it’s way overmodulated). Check out how excited Falafel the Bear gets (or whatever his name is). But the other two kids sitting there look like they’re making a hostage tape.