Posts Tagged ‘Ft. Hood’

LinkSwarm For December 13, 2024

Friday, December 20th, 2024

Because I had to get out my book catalog last week, I’ve been as busy as Kathleen Kennedy on Ruin Star Wars Day, so this is another two-weeks crammed into one LinkSwarm. It’s just been a packed two weeks, with so many major stories breaking up not going to tease them up here, so let’s jump right in.

  • 21 Soros-linked district attorneys replaced since 2022 by voters seeking ‘tough-on-crime’ policies.”

    A new report has revealed that 21 George Soros-linked district attorneys across the United States have been replaced by “tough-on-crime” prosecutors. The report also noted that four have left office, either through recall efforts or other means.

    Among those listed by the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund were former Portland District Attorney Mike Schmidt, who lost a May election to Democrat challenger Nathan Vasquez, Western Judicial Circuit District Attorney Deborah Gonzalez, who lost her reelection bid to Kalki Yalamanchili, and Kim Foxx, the former Cook County State’s Attorney who in 2023 announced that she would not seek reelection.

    For those who were removed from office, there is Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens, who in November was indicted on federal bribery charges, and Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price, who was recalled last month after serving just 18 months in office, per The National News Desk.

    Replacements also noted by the report were Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon, who lost to challenger Nathan Hochman in last month’s election, and former Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, who lost the 2022 Democratic primary election to Ivan Bates. Since her election loss, Mosby has been found guilty of one count of mortgage fraud.

    All of them need to go.

  • Speaking of Soros tools: Subway Samaritan Daniel penny found not guilty on all charges. Just like Kyle Rittenhouse, he never should have been charged in the first place. Soros tool Alvin Bragg needs to be impeached and removed from office.
  • Christopher Wray steps down as FBI head. This shouldn’t keep the Trump Administration from prosecuting for his manifest interference in the political process.
  • More Democratic Party fundraising fraud. “ActBlue, the massive online fund-raising platform for liberal causes, has informed Congress it did not automatically block donations made with foreign-bought gift cards until recently.” Almost like the entire party is a giant money laundering scam…
  • Busted. “Georgia Court Removes Fani Willis from Trump Case over Relationship with Special Prosecutor.”

    An appellate court removed Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis (D) from the racketeering case against President-elect Donald Trump over her romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade.

    Georgia’s court of appeals ruled Thursday that Willis will be removed from the case because of the appearance of misconduct surrounding her relationship with Wade, but did not throw out the case all together.

    “While we recognize that an appearance of impropriety is generally not enough to support disqualification, this is the rare case in which disqualification is mandated and no other remedy will suffice to restore public confidence in the integrity of these proceedings,” the three judge panel ruled.

    Left unstated is that her lawfare attack on Trump was both illegal and unconstitutional.

  • Law enforcement arrested and charged a suspect on Monday in connection with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, which occurred in New York City on Wednesday outside a Manhattan hotel. Luigi Mangione, 26, of Towson, Md., was stopped by auth0rities in Altoona, Pa., on Monday. The detained suspect had a handwritten manifesto that criticized the health care industry.
  • Biden’s Department of Education spent $1 billion to infect schools with DEI, because of course they did.
  • He also handed Iran access to $10 billion, because promoting terrorism, plotting to destroy Israel, and trying to build nuclear weapons are activities that Democrats seem eager to reward.
  • Winning. “ABC News and anchor George Stephanopoulos have reached a settlement in a defamation suit brought by President-elect Donald Trump, which requires the network to apologize, contribute $15 million to a ‘Presidential foundation and museum to be established by or for Plaintiff,’ and pay Trump’s legal team $1 million.”
  • Believe it or not, that wasn’t the biggest settlement ABC owner Disney agreed to pay out this month. They also agreed to pay $233 million to settle a minimum wage lawsuit.
  • How DeSantis and Abbott bussing illegal aliens to blue sanctuary cities changed the game.

    As Saul Alinsky once said, make your enemies live up to their words.

  • Let the Democratic Party Civil War commence.

    The battle lines are now drawn between West Coast liberals, Bernie Sanders-socialists and moderate technocrats in the Midwest, who insist the party has completely lost touch with the average American voter.

    But first, there is one thing that all sides seemingly agree on: The current political establishment must be chased out of national politics for good. A reckoning is coming.

    ‘The people that are responsible for this s**tshow are the Obama people. They’re just grifters,’ a well-connected Democratic donor exclusively told Daily Mail. He singled out Jen O’Malley Dillon, who went from Biden 2024 campaign chair to serve in the same role for Harris’s camp, and David Plouffe, an ex-Obama 2008 campaign manager turned top Kamala adviser.

  • “Trump sues Des Moines Register, pollster for ‘brazen election interference’ over faulty polling in presidential race.” I think it’s very unlikely that Trump will win this lawsuit, thanks to First Amendment protections and the “absence of malice standard.” Plus pollster Ann Selzer can always just claim “I just sucked at my job.” She retired after the election.
  • After Assad fell, Israel pounded the snot out of his remaining military assets.

    Israel pounded Syrian army bases on Tuesday in strikes it says aim to keep weapons from falling into hostile hands, but denied its forces had advanced into Syria, toward Damascus, beyond a buffer zone at the border.

    Regional security sources and officers within the now-fallen Syrian army who spoke to Reuters described Tuesday morning’s airstrikes as the heaviest yet, hitting military installations and airbases across Syria, destroying dozens of helicopters and jets, as well as Republican Guard assets in and around Damascus.

    The rough tally of 200 raids overnight had left nothing of the Syrian army’s assets, said the sources.

    The Israeli Air Force has carried out over 300 airstrikes in Syria since the collapse of the regime, destroying advanced weapons and other capabilities.

    Strikes reportedly carried out by Israel in Damascus’s Barzeh area completely destroyed a defense ministry research center, AFP correspondents reported on Tuesday. Western countries including the United States struck the facility in 2018, saying it was related to Syria’s “chemical weapons infrastructure.”

    Plus they sunk the entire Syrian navy.

  • Speaking of pounding the snot out of things:

  • Videos of Russia buggering out of Syria.
  • Ukraine hit a solid rocket propellant plant in Russia.
  • “Palantir CEO Alex Karp Eviscerates Democrats: Voters ‘Do Not Want To Hear Your Woke Pagan Ideology.'”

    Alex Karp, the co-founder and CEO of Palantir, said late last week that Democrats lost the 2024 election because they did not understand the fundamental human desire to feel safe.

    Karp made the remarks during a panel discussion at the Reagan National Defense Forum while talking about what Americans expect out of the U.S. government.

    “Americans are the most loving, God-fearing, fair, least discriminatory people on the planet,” he said. “They want to know that if you’re waking up and thinking about harming American citizens, or if American citizens are taken hostage and kept in dungeons, or if you’re a foreign power sending fentanyl to poison our people, something really bad is going to happen to you and your friends and your cousins, and your bank account and your mistress, and whoever was involved.”

    He continued, “When Americans are spending a trillion dollars on ‘defense,’ what I want and what I think my peers want is: why are these people keeping our citizens as hostages, torturing our people, attacking our allies, maligning us in what was once called the United Nations — basically a discriminatory institution against anything good? We need to stand up and those people need to be scared.”

    He said that it was critical for the U.S. to dominate because “we have the best products in the world, and we can not have parity.”

    “Our adversaries do not have our moral compunction,” he said. “If it is even, they will take advantage of our niceness, our kindness, our desire to be at home in Nebraska and New Hampshire or wherever we live, in our peaceful environments.”

    “They need to wake up scared, and go to bed scared, and if you give that to the American people, the American people will go back and say — and honestly, I probably shouldn’t say this, this is why I thought the Democrats were going to lose the election, and why they did, because people want to live in peace,” he continued. “They want to go home. They do not want to hear your woke pagan ideology. They want to know they’re safe. And safe means the other person is scared. That’s how you make someone safe.”

  • Democrats are now, finally, pissed at Obama. “There are people there are people who are now multi-millionaires as a result of the Harris campaign, and we know exactly who they are. And I just want to say that half a billion dollars in advertising went to just four well-heeled Democratic firms. This whole thing is deeply incestuous.”
  • China cracks down on economists telling the truth about how much their economy sucks rather than parroting Beijing’s approved lies.
  • “Ozy Media Founder Carlos Watson Sentenced To Hefty Prison Term For Defrauding Investors. [He] was sentenced to 116 months, or nearly ten years, in prison for conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in an unusual case that briefly captivated the media world.”
  • Crystal Mangum admits to fabricating 2006 Duke lacrosse scandal accusations.” And by “scandal” they mean “false accusations of rape.” So when can we expect apologies from Nancy Grace and Amanda Marcotte? (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • “Biden’s EPA just made the first-ever “climate change” related arrest.”
  • More of that voting fraud Democrats swear doesn’t exist. “2020 Carrollton Mayoral Candidate Admits to Mail Ballot Fraud. Zul Mohamed pleaded guilty Monday to 109 voter fraud felonies.”
  • “After Donald Trump flipped his county for the first time in a century, longtime Democratic Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina has announced he is switching parties to the Republicans saying that “the [Democratic] party left me, and the people of South Texas behind.”
  • Three soldiers arrested for smuggling illegal aliens into the country.

    Three U.S. Army soldiers have been arrested in Texas on criminal charges relating to smuggling illegal aliens.

    The three soldiers were based at Fort Cavazos, which is near Killeen in Central Texas.

    Fort Cavazos is The Fort Formerly Known As Fort Hood. I might have been a little more worked up over the name change if Hood hadn’t been such a shitty general.

    U.S. Border Patrol agents made an initial traffic stop of a suspicious vehicle in the city of Presidio, located in West Texas on the Rio Grande. As an agent approached the vehicle’s passenger side, the driver sped away—hitting a second Border Patrol vehicle and injuring the agent inside.

    The vehicle was eventually stopped by local law enforcement officers who detained four individuals in the car. Three were illegal aliens, and one was identified as U.S. Army soldier Emilio Mendoza Lopez.

    The driver of the vehicle was reported as being another soldier named Angel Palma, who fled on foot from the vehicle but was located in Odessa a day later.

    Presidio is nearly 500 miles away from where the soldiers were stationed.

    “Mendoza Lopez and Palma allegedly traveled from Fort Cavazos to Presidio for the purpose of picking up and transporting undocumented noncitizens,” announced the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas. “A third individual, Enrique Jauregui, is alleged to be the recruiter and facilitator of the human smuggling conspiracy.”

  • Tren De Aragua Gun Runner Released by Biden Admin Charged in Texas Capital Murder.” Democrats sure love murderous gang members… (Hat tip: Issues and Insights.)
  • Laredo Educator Arrested for Production of Child Pornography. Carlos Jobany Castaneda Lechuga was a lecturer at Texas A&M International University, but has since been removed from the staff directory.”
  • Three More Texas Teachers Nabbed for Child Porn.”

    Three Texas teachers made news last week over charges of child pornography—also known as child sexual abuse material, as the images and videos depict sex crimes being committed against minors.

    The educators worked in Dallas, Leander, and Wall Independent School Districts. Two of the three taught band.

    On December 13, Dallas Police arrested Sean Turner, 34, and charged him with possession of pornography featuring a child younger than 10 years old—a first-degree felony.

    Snip.

    Retired principal Curtis John Locklear was arrested December 12 and charged with felony possession of child porn.

    Locklear was arrested by the Montgomery County Precinct 3 Constable’s Office working with the Houston-area Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force.

    Snip.

    Also on December 12, a federal judge sentenced Joshua Carroll to 30 years in prison for possessing and producing child porn.

    Carroll was an assistant band director in Wall ISD from January 2022 until his crimes were discovered earlier this year.

  • Texas Republican Congressman Dan Crenshaw got dinged by the Internet for insider trading. So then Crenshaw attacked the Internet. It didn’t go well for him.
  • Phllly man awarded $41 million for overturned murder conviction is back in jail for murder.
  • AOC loses an election to be the ranking member of the Oversight and Accountability Committee to 74-year-old Gerry Connolly. “Connolly is undergoing chemotherapy and immunotherapy for esophagus cancer.”
  • In addition to being a brutal dictator, Bashar Assad was also a drug pusher.
  • Google unveils a newer, more powerful quantum chip.

    Google on Monday introduced a new chip called Willow, which solved in five minutes a computing problem that would take a classical computer more time than the history of the universe.

    Tech companies are chasing quantum computing in hopes of developing systems that perform at speeds far faster than traditional silicon-based computers.
    The building blocks of quantum computers, called “qubits”, while being fast, are error-prone, making it hard to ensure quantum computers are reliable and commercially viable.

    The more qubits used in quantum computing, the more errors typically occur. But Google said on Monday it found a way to string together qubits in the Willow chip so that error rates decline as the number of qubits rise, adding that it can also correct errors in real time.

    My understanding of how quantum computers work is limited to popular explanations, but D-Wave is evidently still in business, so maybe they work?

  • It’s been a long time since I found Louis Black funny, but this rant on the Democrats post-election reactions is pretty good.
  • MSNBC viewers haven’t returned.

  • City in Florida tries to fine man over $1 million for 10 year old code violation fines against the previous owner for a home the new owner bought on foreclosure.
  • Company YesMadam surveys employees to see how stressed they feel…then lays off employees feeling stressed. Then reveals the whole thing was a publicity stunt.

  • Assad had a really shitty survival bunker. Plus a garage of luxury cars.
  • Jordan Peterson Flees “Totalitarian Hellhole” Canada For U.S. Due To Censorship, Taxes.” Welcome to the land of the free and the home of the brave.
  • How Now, Woke Longhorn? An Open Letter to University of Texas President Jay Hartzell.”
  • “Trump announces $100 BILLION investment to create 100,000 US jobs from Japanese company Softbank.”
  • Add Big Lots to the list of retail chains that died thanks to the Biden Recession. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Broadcom hit $1 trillion in market cap this week.
  • Jaguar is going all in on woke thanks to new CEO Adrian Mardell, and the infection is spreading to fellow Tata subsidiary Land Rover.
  • First reaction to Mufasa: The Lion King: “Profoundly awful.”
  • The trailer for James Gunn’s Superman dropped. I’ve never seen a Superman film in theaters, and this will not be getting me in. But you’ve got to give Gunn credit for thinking way outside the box and including Krypto the Superdog and Hawkman, two characters that absolutely no one in the greater viewing public was clamoring for.

  • Don McMillan has cracked the Hallmark Christmas movie code.
  • Heh:

  • “Now Now, Let’s Not Be So Hasty To Find And Assassinate Everyone Responsible For The Healthcare Crisis,’ Says Nervous Obama.”
  • “Assassin Luigi Mangione Takes Lead In 2028 Democratic Primary Polls.”
  • “Members Of Congress Explain They Need Pay Raises To Keep Up With The Inflation They Caused.”
  • “Biden Calls For New Gun Laws He Can Pardon His Son For Breaking.”
  • “Running Low On Ideas, God Makes Oklahoma.”
  • “Unclear If Pianist Total Beginner Or Professional Jazz Player.”
  • In you go:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • M1A2C Abrams Tank Hits The Field

    Thursday, August 13th, 2020

    Remember last year’s story about development of the M1A2 SEPv3? It’s now out in the field and christened the M1A2C:

    Soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, have begun receiving the US Army’s M1A2C Abrams main battle tank (MBT), also known as the M1A2 System Enhancement Package (SEP) version 3 (M1A2 SEP v3), and are preparing for upcoming live-fire exercises.

    On 21 July, the service announced that over the past few weeks it has been delivering the vehicle upgrade to members of the 3rd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division.

    “This is the first time we have fielded a new tank in about 16 years,” said Lieutenant Colonel Nicholas Sinclair, commander of 3rd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment. “We will be the first ones trained on this so it’s really special to us to make sure we’re doing it right.”

    Among the key features are full integration of the Israeli Trophy active protection system (to defend against RPGs, etc.), additional armor plates to the front turret face, and improved electronics.

    The National Interest offered up this picture last year:

    And here’s a video of it in action:

    LinkSwarm for April 14, 2017

    Friday, April 14th, 2017

    Good news, everyone! Your tax returns aren’t due until April 18th this year. So you can panic slightly later than usual…

  • How Trump won: by “consolidating the Republican base and then earning massive levels of support from whites without a college degree.” With lots of wonky demographic data goodness. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • More on that district-by-distract voting map in last week’s LinkSwarm.
  • The Beltway has a spending problem.
  • Republicans retain Kansas’ fourth congressional district.
  • Brian Krebs would like you to know thatches week’s Russian spammer arrest in Spain had nothing to do with election hacking.
  • Scumbag who killed Brian Terry with a Fast and Furious gun arrested in Mexico. (Insert innocent until proven guilty yada here.)
  • Hey Lois Lerner: If you want to seal your testimony because you think it might bring death threats, maybe you shouldn’t have used the IRS as a weapon against your domestic political enemies… (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • BATF spending taxpayer dollars on NASCAR race suites.
  • Did Hezbollah take out their own second-in-command?
  • Texas Governor Greg Abbott: build the border wall with funds withheld from sanctuary cities. (Hat tip: Dierctor Blue.)
  • Gavin McInnes at Taki’s Magazine thinks the Syria strike was five different 4D chessboard wins. Excerpts: “This shows women that America is in charge and we will keep the world’s children safe. Deep down, all they really want is a patriarchy.” And: “Obama’s legacy was the only death on April 6, 2017.”
  • U.S. forces drop a GBU-43/B Massive Ordinance Air Blast bomb on Islamic State fighters in Afghanistan.
  • “Obama’s covert drone war in numbers: ten times more strikes than Bush.” Details: “A total of 563 strikes, largely by drones, targeted Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen during Obama’s two terms, compared to 57 strikes under Bush. Between 384 and 807 civilians were killed in those countries.”
  • Inside baseball account of the Gorsuch confirmation battle. Also:

    It turned out the open seat was an “electoral asset” for Trump. Voters didn’t like him or Hillary Clinton. But once filling the seat became the “principal issue,” Trump had the advantage. Everyone knew she would dump Garland, a moderate, for someone further to the left.

    “We didn’t know if the president would be a conservative or not,” McConnell said. However, he had promised to pick a nominee from a list of 20 conservative jurists. (McConnell had advocated such a list.) “This reassured conservatives.” The result: he got 90 percent of the Republican vote and won.”

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Daily Mail pays Melania Trump $2.9 million for calling her a whore.
  • Prisoners secretly build computers from recycled parts, hide them in the ceiling, hook them up to the prison network, and use them to commit fraud. “They were able to travel through the institution more than 1,100 feet without being checked by security through several check points, and not a single correction’s staff member stopped them from transporting these computers into the administrative portion of the building. It’s almost if it’s an episode of Hogan’s Heroes.” That’s some mighty fine correctional supervision there, Marion Correctional Institution…
  • Is the Trump dip over in gun sales? (Hat tip: Shall Not Be Questioned.)
  • Archeologist Jacques Cinq-Mars was attacked and shunned for offering up evidence that challenged the scientific consensus of the day. Good thing there’s no way that could possibly happen in climate research…
  • Why not a reverse auction for airline overbooking? (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Ft. Hood brings the Funk.
  • Austin-area massage parlor turns out to be a front for prostitution. Try to contain your shock.
  • Enjoy your Easter weekend!

    Finally

    Wednesday, March 4th, 2015

    Most of the news of the last 24 hours is by turns annoying and depressing, so let’s start with a bit of good news.

    Ft. Hood shooter Nidal Hasan has finally been given the death penalty for his act of jihad. It should not have taken over five years (longer than it took America to win World War II) until the obvious conclusion, but at least it’s done. Now it’s a matter of winding through the military appeals process, which could take years.

    Workplace violence, my ass…

    Ft. Hood Shooting Followups

    Thursday, April 3rd, 2014

    A few random followups on the Fort Hood shooting:

  • Three people remain in critical condition.
  • More on Fort Hood shooter Ivan Lopez, who was apparently Puerto Rican, not Mexican American as some sources erroneously asserted.
  • Lopez saw no combat in Iraq.
  • Lopez was evidently on Ambien. There’s long been persistent anecdotal evidence that several spree shooters were on similar drugs (some sources for which are more reliable than others). I’m not a chemist, pharmacist or psychiatrist, so I’m not in a position to evaluate such claims, nor to answer the chicken and egg “were they crazy before or after taking such drugs” question. But maybe it’s time for people who do know to take a closer look at the question.
  • Time to allow soldiers to carry their weapons stateside? (Warning: Autoplay.) I think you know my position…
  • U.S. Congressman Mike McCaul agrees.
  • Another Ft. Hood Shooting

    Wednesday, April 2nd, 2014

    Another active shooter at Fort Hood. One confirmed dead. 14 reportedly injured. (Some reports have the shooter dead of self-inflicted wounds; let’s hope so.) Early reports of two shooters are most likely erroneous (as is fairly common in these situations).

    Now is also a good time to go over Karl Rehn’s advice for what to do when faced with an active shooter.

    Update: Shooter identified as one Ivan Lopez, reportedly a soldier. (And remember folks, there’s probably more than one Ivan Lopez in Texas. Don’t break out the Jump to Conclusions mat just yet…)

    Hearing reports that now have four confirmed dead on Twitter, but haven’t seen media confirmation.

    Update 2: Blithely ignoring my own advice one paragraph up, this would seem to be Ivan Lopez’s Google+ page (“Works at 2-8 CAV/Lives in texas”) and his connected YouTube channel. What little this says about the shooter could be measured in a very small thimble.

    Update 3:

    Update 4: Four now confirmed dead, including the shooter.

    Update 5: 11 wounded, two in “extremely grave” condition.

    Update 6: Lopez evidently served four months in Iraq in 2011. “They said the gunman was taking medication and seeking help for depression and anxiety and was undergoing a diagnosis process for PTSD but hadn’t yet been diagnosed.”

    I’m far from an expert, but if it’s been two plus years since Lopez saw combat, I would think that would be ample time to make a PTSD determination or not.

    Update 7: “I don’t endorse carrying concealed weapons on base,” [Lt. Gen. Mark] Milley told reporters. “We have military police officers on base.”

    You know, general, I think we now have enough data points to conclusively prove that that policy isn’t working.

    This Week in Jihad for March 10, 2011

    Thursday, March 10th, 2011

    Another week of Jihad news from the usual sources:

  • Multiculturalism is a failure in France, Germany, and the UK.
  • Egypt has sent special forces into Libya to help topple Gadhafi.
  • Turkey cracks down on critics of the Islamic government.
  • Alabama latest state to have law introduced banning Sharia.
  • Death penalty suggested for Ft. Hood shooter Nidal Hasan. Given that the shooting happened all the way back in 2009, isn’t this a little slow even for the usual wheels of American justice? Maybe if we’re lucky, the actual trial will occur in the home stretch of the 2012 election…
  • France recognizes the rebel government in Libya.
  • What’s the best way to protect the rights of women worldwide? Obviously, appoint the Islamic Republic of Iran to the UN Commission on the Status of Women.
  • Iran is arming the Taliban with rockets.
  • Zimbabwe to sell uranium to Iran. Chalk up another victory to the Axis of Assholes…
  • Fire a disc jockey for expressing reservations about Islam? WMAL decides to Gopher it.
  • Rep. Peter King (R-NY) to hold hearings on the radicalization of American Muslims.
  • Cops agree with King that they don’t get enough tips from the Muslim community.
  • Mark Steyn thinks that if we are going to be doing nation-building, we shouldn’t do such a half-assed job of it.
  • C.) The Jews.
  • You’ve probably seen the news that another James O’Keefe sting caught the director of NPR on camera bashing Republicans, Christians, and Zionists.

  • Today brought followup news that O’Keefe caught another NPR promising to shield members of the group from a government audit.
  • Even NPR staffers are offended. Or at least pretending to be, in order to prevent that sweet, sweet taxpayer teat from being turned off.
  • HELLO I AM MAJOR NIDAL HASAN

    Friday, July 30th, 2010

    YOU MAY BE SURPRISED AT HEARING FROM ME, AS WE HAVE NOT SPOKEN BEFORE, BUT I AM UNDERSTANDING THAT YOU ARE A PERSON OF TRUSTHWORTHYNESS.

    I AM RECEIVING MONTHLY PAYMENTS OF OVER $6,000 A MONTH FROM THE UNITED STATES (U.S.) ARMY, BUT NO BANK WILL CASH THEM FOR ME.

    IF YOU WOULD OPEN A BANK ACCOUNT IN MY NAME, I WILL SPLIT THE PROCEEDS WITH YOU 50/50.

    PLEASE REPLY IN UTTER CONFIDENCE.

    ALLAH AKBAR!

    MAJ. NIDAL HASAN
    CELLBLOCK 3F
    BELL COUNTY JAIL
    111 WEST CENTRAL AVENUE
    BELTON, TX 76513-3078

    The Ft. Hood shooter and the Saudi call to Jihad

    Thursday, November 12th, 2009

    Stratfor suggests that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan may have been heeding a call to jihad by Nasir al-Wahayshi, leader of al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula. (They also note how difficult it is for the FBI to investigate individuals such as Hasan.) Since mine is a relatively young blog, some readers may be unfamiliar with the tenants of Wahhabism, and the Saudi role in spreading its radical ideology. For more background on that, you might want to read Stephen Schwartz’s The Two Faces of Islam. And don’t forget the Saudi role in bankrolling CAIR, the primary Islamist apologist front group in the US.

    Bottom line: The Saudis are still not our friends.

    Tactical Firearms Expert Karl Rehn Examines the Ft. Hood Shooting

    Monday, November 9th, 2009

    I’ve known Karl Rehn for over two decades. Founder and owner of KR Training, a certified NRA instructor, Master Class tactical handgun shooter, and teacher of SWAT teams and other first responders from around the country, I wanted to get his analysis of the Ft. Hood shooting, so I emailed him some questions (in italics below).

    1. When faced with a spree shooter, what is the first thing an unarmed person should do to maximize their survival chances?

    The term typically used by law enforcement is “active shooter”.

    What to do? Take action. There is no one universal action that is guaranteed to work in all situations, because all of these variables are in play:
    – weapon(s) in use by the shooter
    – shooter’s ability
    – your distance from the shooter
    – what others are doing around you
    – features of the building or environment you are in

    If the shooter isn’t in the room you are in now and isn’t aware of you, escape, moving away from the sound of the gunfire. If you are in a room with no avenue of escape except toward the gunfire, lock the door and block it to deny the shooter access to that room.

    Find something to get behind that might stop a bullet, and find something (or multiple things) that you could use to defend yourself should the shooter gain access to the room. Anything that can be thrown or swung like a club is better than empty hands.

    If you are in the same area as the shooter, try to gain the element of surprise and counterattack as aggressively as you can with whatever weapons you can improvise. Public authorities cannot advise citizens to fight back out of fear of liability if citizens are injured or killed fighting back.

    The lessons of previous active shooters incidents are that those that do nothing do not survive. Those that take action have better odds. Go back and read the accounts of the survivors of Virginia Tech. Those that fled quickly, locked and blocked doors and took other defensive actions lived and/or saved others.

    2. Likewise, what is the first thing an armed citizen should do?

    The advice is the same. The only difference is that the armed citizen will have some weapons available.

    Armed citizens are not police officers and have no specific duty to use deadly force to save others or even in their own self defense. Any person moving within an area where there is an active shooter could be mistaken for the shooter by responding officers and shot or killed. There is great risk in an armed citizen going into “hero mode”, both from the shooter and from responding officers. Choosing to do anything beyond protecting yourself is a very personal decision. Some students have told me that they simply could not retreat in a situation where they could save others, regardless of the risk.

    Unarmed friends, associates, and family members of those who regularly carry need to understand that in this type of situation, they need to refrain from doing or saying anything that would cause the armed person (off duty officer or armed citizen) to lose the critical element of surprise in a counterattack.

    3. What particular actions did Officer Kimberly Munley undertake that helped limit Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s death toll?

    I don’t have enough specifics to comment. I know that she attended multiple law enforcement courses offered by TEEX (http://www.teex.org), including the ALERRT program, which specifically trains officers how to respond to an active shooter.

    4. Have you undertaken any specific active shooter scenarios for KR Training classes?

    We have a block of scenarios set in a convenience store in one of our “force on force” classes. In those scenarios, students are placed in a variety of roles, including store employee, unarmed citizen and armed citizen. During the scenarios, each student has to make decisions based on the behavior of the other roleplayers, and the timing and position of people within the store. What they learn from this is how to read a situation and determine the best course of action. Some scenarios end with deadly force and some do not.

    5. Obviously, information about Hasan’s shooting spree is fairly sparse right now. Of the limited information available, does anything strike you of being notable about this incident?

    If it had occurred outside the base, where citizens have the right to carry, there probably would have been one or more armed citizens present that might have taken action to stop the attack earlier in the incident. An armed citizen in Tyler took action during an active shooter incident a few years ago. He was killed by the shooter, but police and city leaders credited his action with saving many lives, including those of police officers.

    6. What do you think about the quality of the news coverage of the issue?

    During the first evening of coverage, I watched CNN because I was staying in a hotel that did not get other news channels. They repeated the phrase “he had a semiautomatic handgun, and that allowed him to get off lots of shots quickly” over and over again.

    The truth is that a revolver can be fired just as quickly as a semiautomatic handgun, and both fire one shot for each pull of the trigger. This is yet another example of reporters showing their ignorance of gun technology and/or their personal biases toward gun control.

    The real story was that he chose a place where he knew that people would be unarmed. Active shooter incidents never happen at shooting ranges and gun shows. Theoretically if guns were the primary ’cause’ of violence, those places would be the most dangerous.

    The history of active shooter incidents is full of cases where the shooter chose a ‘gun free zone’ as the killing ground — and the mainstream media and most Americans continue to blind themselves to this glaring truth, because recognizing it would require them to accept that concealed carry is a deterrent to crime, and that the best approach to personal defense includes carrying a concealed handgun.

    7. What base and/or army policies do you think helped contributed to the tragedy?

    It’s a real tragedy that people that we trust to carry arms in a combat zone were not trusted by their own leaders with the same rights that citizens of Texas are trusted by their government outside the base.

    8. Any final thoughts on how to prevent such incidents in the future, or the best ways for bystanders or police to respond to minimize the death toll for future incidents?

    The most important step each adult should take is to understand that when seconds count, professional help is minutes away. Every adult should learn enough self-defense, first aid and firefighting skills to be able to take action in that critical period between the start of the incident and the arrival of professional help. That means getting training in armed and unarmed self defense, CPR, basic first aid, how to use a fire extinguisher — skills that might keep you and those you care about alive until better equipped, better trained help can arrive. A teacher at Columbine died because he bled to death waiting for the SWAT team to clear the building to let medics in. The basic medical training that soldiers receive saved some lives in this incident, as they applied tourniquets and took other measures to treat those that were shot. That aspect of this incident should not be overlooked or forgotten. Even those that are morally opposed to violence or believe themselves physically or psychologically incapable of fighting can and should be willing to render aid. There are emergency trauma kits and video tutorials available from law enforcement supply companies and training schools like Tactical Response (http://www.tacticalresponse.com). One of these should be in every adult’s car, along with other emergency items like a flashlight, fire extinguisher, and pepper spray. Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.