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Wake up the President? Terrorist Mass Murder at New Zealand Mosques [Updated midday Friday]
On Friday afternoon, 15 March 2019, New Zealand time, there was a horrific terrorist attack at least two mosques in New Zealand. They are 20 hours ahead of the U.S. West Coast time. According to the initial reports, an attacker livestreamed the event. The image, at right, was captured by media before the video was taken down. There apparently was a lengthy manifesto. There have been multiple people arrested. It appears this was an attack by white New Zealand and Australian citizens on Muslims.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said: “This can only be described as a terrorist attack.” The linked BBC page has a series of videos. The PM is not inclined to tweet. Indeed, you can see her last communication was in October.
The initial casualties being reported are 40 killed and over 20 wounded at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand:
Of the confirmed 40 people killed, 30 were killed at Al Noor mosque and 10 killed at Linwood mosque. That 10 figure includes three people who were outside Linwood Avenue mosque at the time.
The casualty reports have trended up to 49 dead and 48 being treated in area hospitals. Follow the live blog on the Christchurch mosque shootings, at the Strait Times, out of Singapore, for a regional view.
Initial reports indicated a single shooter, self-identified as “Brenton Tarrant,” methodically gunning people down, starting with worshipers who had just begun their Friday evening prayers.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has confirmed that one of the four people taken into custody is Australian. Media reports had said that a man who called himself “Brenton Tarrant” – a white, 28-year-old Australia-born man – claimed to be the shooter and livestreamed the shooting for 17 minutes.
If it was only the one shooter, not only was he uninterrupted in his slaughter, but he had the freedom to drive from one mosque to another and continue his killing spree.
So, our intelligence and law enforcement community has to be asking if this is a small cell trying to make itself look significant on the internet? Is anyone in the U.S. following, interacting with, the individuals or network implicated in the attack? Are there any signs emerging overnight of people who start chattering about a copycat attack here?
The clock is ticking towards Friday evening prayer services at mosques in the United States. So, what steps are being taken to prevent an attack on one or more mosques here? At the same time, are there signs of Muslims or other Jew-haters deciding that this is as good an excuse at the last one for attacking Hasidic or Orthodox Jews on the streets, or targeting Jewish businesses or places of worship come Saturday?
A lot of professionals are surely working through our nighttime. Before waking President Trump, DHS Secretary Nielsen and National Security Advisor Bolton had better have a clear assessment and recommended a course of action.
Rest assured that the Jew-haters, led by Rep. Ilhan Omar, will shout Islamaphobia, and the media arm of the left will blame guns and President Trump. The Democrats’ failure to properly censor targeted hatred of Jews will now be praised as just the right, balanced message. In New Zealand, there is both widespread gun ownership and very strict controls and inspections for ownership fitness. Their history is not ours, and their politics are not ours. Accordingly, we should be careful in any attempted analysis or drawing of conclusions.
Update—midday Friday, U.S. West Coast time:
* The most comprehensive straight news summary, updated regularly, is in the Strait Times article “‘One of New Zealand’s darkest days’: At least 49 killed in terror attacks on Christchurch mosques.”
* National Security Advisor John Bolton spoke to reporters on the White House driveway, prior to joining the president, vice president, and national security team for a national security meeting at the Pentagon. Bolton was very measured in his words on both the New Zealand attack and North Korea developments.
* Secretary of State Pompeo had an excellent statement on the terrorist attack in New Zealand, followed by a very strong statement on Yemen, and the International Criminal Court. He echoed the New Zealand PM’s language, calling it an “hour of darkness.”
* President Trump’s first tweet of the day read:
My warmest sympathy and best wishes goes out to the people of New Zealand after the horrible massacre in the Mosques. 49 innocent people have so senselessly died, with so many more seriously injured. The U.S. stands by New Zealand for anything we can do. God bless all!
Published in General
welcome to your new normal dudes
anyone wanta talk about winning the peace now?
Odd place for it. Who knew that Muslim tensions were so high in that part of the world.
The Daily Telegraph has published (some of?) his manifesto.
Titled The Great Replacement, and from a section where he answers possible questions:
And
And
And
And
There’s also an address to Conservatives (not positive) in there.
Yes, the ‘never let a crises go to waste’ Progressives will use this as an excuse for both further gun restrictions and ‘hate speech’ laws. And if the ‘conservative’ Establishment in New Zealand is anything like ours, they won’t put up a fight without overpowering pressure from their constituents. Hopefully, the latter will anticipate this and be prepared, and won’t be caught off guard-I have no idea how ‘woke’ conservatives in New Zealand are.
Well, the left has another tool to bludgeon those on the right. Expect more deplatforming. Expect the media to take a gimlet eye to everyone on the right who doesn’t ascribe to their world view, then smear them.
Happy Friday.
And Timothy McVeigh too. So there!
I cannot make out what the image at right depicts.
Heartfelt condolences to the families of those murdered.
I’m sure the Left will use this against us in some way and I’ll resist it. I consider myself wary of Islam, wary of unassimilated and unchecked immigration but it doesn’t justify murder.
P.S. How did we get stuck with McVeigh anyway? Was he conservative?
He attacked gov.
The open borders/mass immigration types will try to make hay out of this as well.
From his manifesto….
To the question about whether he was a fascist, he says “The nation with the closest political and social values to my own is the People’s Republic of China”…
Not one of us.
Again. From his manifesto
However, the terrorist says that he is not a conservative since conservatism is corporatism in disguise. To the questions of whether he is a ‘left-wing’ or a ‘right-wing’, the terrorist has no answer in particular and to both, he says it depends on the definition that people attach to it.
He says that depending on the definition attached to Socialism, he could certainly be one. He says if the definition means workers’ ownership of the means of production, then it would depend on who those workers are and what their intent is and who currently ‘owns the state’.
To the question about whether he was a fascist, he says “The nation with the closest political and social values to my own is the People’s Republic of China”…
He says that when he was young, he was a communist, then an anarchist and finally, a libertarian before coming to be an ‘eco-fascist’…
Another puffed up loser, perpetually aggrieved, mentally ill, but smart enough, or cunning if you like to publish his manifesto as the attack began.
You cannot prevent someone from doing something stupid, or evil. Once the intent has been formed getting a weapon, or weapons is impossible to prevent. All you can do is try to mitigate the damage.
And he found God once he was in prison. God is on our side.
I notice that very few are playing up that there would have been more killing except there was a private citizen with a gun that chased one group off.
There are, of course, a couple of continents and a couple of oceans between Europe and New Zealand. Plus, I think the relationship between the English immigrants and the first peoples in New Zealand has been a bit different than Australia. It sounds like the PM was entirely right in branding the terrorist completely alien to her people.
This is where we need President Obama. He would tell us if this is a time to rush to judgment or not.
He’s just another twisted, sick jerk who thinks that attacking innocent people, no matter who they are, is justified. His manifesto is garbage –
Is it unlikely that the nativism that Trump preaches has no effect outside our own borders? It’s time for some self reflection amongst a lot of people.
Nonsense. Vicious nonsense.
Indeed. And yours is a more gentlemanly descriptor than I might use.
Yeah, the manifesto of a mass murderer is not going to give any good reasons or important incites.
Jeffrey Tucker has an interesting take on the killer’s ideology
https://www.aier.org/article/killer-had-ideology
Yes, it is. Starting with those who are using McCarthyite methods to smear people. (Note to those who will jump to the defense of ol’ Tailgunner Joe that I am referring to McCarthyites rather than McCarthy.)
Interesting piece. Jeffrey Tucker’s solution is sadly controversial in the United States today:
“The nation with the closest political and social values to my own is the People’s Republic of China”…
Therefore
I think that Branden O’Neil’s piece at Spiked is on point, “New Zealand: the barbarism of identity politics:”
Let it also be said that Islam demands submission from non-believers or death. This response was unjustified. Murder is murder. Yet there is also something called measure for measure, like attracts like, and what goes around comes around. Pity the victims but they associated with a
faithideology that invites this sort of thing.And yet the primary sentiment expressed about this incident in the comments here can be summed up as “Oh how terrible this will be used against us”. The mirror image of the classic liberal sentiment “gee I hope that guy mowing down a crowd with his car isn’t a Muslim, because it will just give fuel to the righties.”
Muslim worshiper gunned down during prayers: American conservatives hardest hit….
And how does the Islamic heritage of violent intolerance fit in with this new humanist politics?