The Anchoress
:::UPDATE II::: A reader graciously sent me a link to this map which really lays out the path of the perp. Clearly the neighborhood was not “Jewish,” and although I did qualify my remarks (saying it “appeared to be a somewhat Jewish neighborhood” on the basis of the first input of readers), on further examination, one cannot conclude that the perp was “targeting Jews.” Whether this can rightly be called “terrorism” at this point is debatable. I don’t mind saying it when I am wrong, and I feel this time that I was too quick to “write while angry.” This fellow sounds like he is over-controlled by his parents and it made him nuts. Those of you who have read about my birth family know I can sympathize! :-) More thoughts on “never mind,” are here.
:::End Update:::
:::UPDATE::: (SCROLL DOWN FOR ORIGINAL POST)
Maxed Out Mama has a brilliant and temperate post wherein she looks beyond the sputterings of some who (like me) “wrote angry” last night or in the wee small hours. As usual she is clear-thinking and wise, and she bounces an important idea off of my comment, below, that the press and powers-that-be are – by their reactions – fomenting distrust and prejudice toward moderate and peaceful Muslims much moreso than are these violent acts by Islamic Fundies. When people see a thing happening and are told, “no, that’s not happening, it’s something else and if you think otherwise, you’re an immoral person,” it creates enormous resentment, a sense of disorientation and a further sense that someone, “either me or thee” is nuts and must be guarded against. She writes:
I think there is a war here, but it is not a war between religions, but as Ali says, between Violence and Reason. Violence has a theology, but so does Reason. And coming back to the Anchoress’ point, I think that failure to confront and examine the “war within the Law of God” will leave people in the US with the impression that this is a different war, and that all Muslims are prone to go off like popguns in Jewish neighborhoods. I think it’s time to come to grips with what Violence is truly saying in order to let Reason prevail.
I want to reiterate this: for every act of violence in the west, there are ten in the Muslim world. The ideology of Violence must be defeated, because it will never surrender – but that need not mean that Muslims must be outcast, or that being Muslim is at all incompatible within being humane and just. What we should do is speak and live reason, even if we have to carry a gun to do this. I must, in the end, have a radical addiction to freedom, because I would rather live in an armed society than in one which carried out pograms against innocent Muslims.
Our society doesn’t fail to criticize and examine the violent Christian teachings which occasionally arise, and I think we now must confront openly the violent Muslim teachings without fear or favor. Unless we do this, it will end in pograms. H/T Sigmund Carl and Alfred.
That’s the crux of all of this. When I read about these sorts of events, be they the synagogue shooting, the LAX incident, the Tarheel SUV attack or this new one, and see how quickly there is movement to make excuses for that behavior, I get an image in my head of an American, looking around at all of it, and feeling like it’s all happening under water, in ripples of distortion. If the American does not feel like he or she can get a clear sense of what is going on, the frustration is going to ratchet up. Not good.
:::END UPDATE:::
This is becoming an appalling habit in the press and by politicians. An Islamic fundamentalist shoots Jews in a Synagogue, and it’s some sort of random incident. An Islamic fundamentalist uses his SUVto kill people partly in front of a Synagogue, and in what would appear to be a somewhat “Jewish neighborhood” and the press takes a hours to cover the story (probably looking for the appropriate “frame,”) and until someone in authority can be found to sing out, “ROAD RAGE”! Yeah, that’s the ticket! Road rage! Mayor Newsom sees no problem, here…a “relatively young” person, obviously confused! Yes, that’s the ticket!
Omeed Aziz Popal, the poor confused youngster, is 29 years old.
Can you imagine, if someone had (God forbid!) driven a car into 14 gay people, how quickly the press would have managed to cover the story? Can you imagine that Mayor Newsom would call it “road rage” and suggest that there really probably wasn’t a “hate crime” attached to the action?
What the hell is wrong with the press, what the hell is wrong with the leadership? Why are they so incapable of calling anti-semitism what it is, of calling a terrorist action what it is? Newsflash, folks, when someone decides to drive his car into people as they’re crossing the street, it’s the same as tossing a molotov cocktail at them, it’s the same as tossing a grenade. It is destructive, it kills people and terrifies communities, that is called t-e-r-r-o-r-i-s-m! Hey, guess what, fellas, we don’t need no stinking anthrax to kill and terrify…we can use our cars.
I swear, these people are tempting me to some vile language.
I know this is rather an intemperate post for me, and I’ll probably regret some of these words, later…but I’m getting weary of watching the press and the people “in charge” go out of their way to downplay it anytime someone with an “Islamic” sort of name drives a car into people on a city street, or on a campus, or starts shooting people in a synagogue, or raises cain at an El Al counter at LAX. I know that somewhere in the minds of these movers and shakers they think they are protecting Muslims-in-general from reactionary prejudice, distrust and bias from us unruly, racist, mouth-breathing Americans (because we went nuts and burned down mosques after 9/11, right? We took to the streets and rampaged and lynched anyone named Abdul back then, right?) but the truth is, by their incessant downplaying, their knee-jerk move to protect-and-explain perps like this, they’re just making some people very resentful, and in the end, I think that’s going to do more to foment prejudice and bias, distrust and hate toward decent Muslim persons than would simply acknowledging the fact that when these Fundamentalists DO this crap, it is what it is – an act of aggression, hate and terror – and not some “mistake” that can be cooed away.
Gateway Pundit shows a map of the rampage, and lots of photos and updates. He says three people have been taken in for questioning.
LGF had the breaking story and lots of updates in the comments thread.
Apparently he perp “made comments” to arresting officers. I wonder if they were anything like Mel Gibson’s comments? We’d hear about them, then, certainly, wouldn’t we? UPDATE: LGF has video with a reporter saying the perp referred to himself as a terrorist. I’ll take it with a grain of salt, only because a year ago reporters were telling us babies were being raped in the Superdome…they’re not really good with breaking news anymore, so who knows what is known?
One of Michelle Malkin’s sources writes: “The 3500 California St hit was a 1/2 mile from the main Jewish temple, Temple Emanu-El and 41 miles from his starting point in Fremont.”
It will be very interesting to see how the reports go.
More coverage here:
Up to 14 hurt in SF hit-and-run spree
7 critical; driver believed to have struck, killed a man in Fremont earlier
One dead, at least 14 hurt in hit-and-run rampage
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