I tweeted the photo of the piece this morning, and here's the online article, "Texas attack refocuses attention on fine line between free speech and hate speech":
.@RSMcCain Front-page L.A. Times pushes "extremist" moral equivalence attack on @PamelaGeller. #Garland pic.twitter.com/kYA8YbKdg6
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) May 5, 2015Pamela Geller is a 56-year-old Jewish arch-conservative from New York, a vehement critic of radical Islam who organized a provocative $10,000 cartoon contest in this placid Dallas suburb designed to caricature the prophet Muhammad.Still more at that top link.
Elton Simpson was a 30-year-old aspiring Islamic militant from Phoenix who fantasized to an FBI informant about “doing the martyrdom operations” in Somalia and was convicted in 2010 of lying to the FBI about his plans to travel to the volatile eastern African nation.
Their lives intersected Sunday in this small town in north-central Texas, an unlikely venue for a violent collision of cultures. After a Sunday evening shootout outside the contest site between police and Simpson and another man firing assault rifles, both gunmen lay dead in the street. And Geller quickly posted a defiant blog: “This is a war on free speech. ... Are we going to surrender to these monsters?”
The Texas showdown was America’s Charlie Hebdo moment, erupting just four months after gunmen shot and killed 12 people at the Paris offices of the satirical newspaper that had published cartoons of the prophet considered blasphemous by many Muslims. The Garland attack refocused public attention on the fine line between free speech and hate speech in the ideological struggle between radical Islam and the West.
The shooting unfolded just before 7 p.m. Sunday outside the Curtis Culwell Center, a public school building where about 200 people had just heard an impassioned anti-Islamic speech — “The less Islam, the better!” — by Geert Wilders, a right-wing Dutch politician. Wilders said the venue was significant: It was chosen as a defiant response to an American Muslim group that had held a “Stand With the Prophet Against Terror and Hate” conference in January in the same building.
Security had been intense, with officers from local police, SWAT teams, a bomb squad and school security, along with FBI and other federal agents waiting for trouble, and it came: The two men pulled up and opened fire but were quickly shot and killed by a Garland police officer firing his service handgun.
“He did what he was trained to do and did a very good job,” Garland police spokesman Joe Harn said. “He probably saved lives.”
Harn said of the gunmen, “Obviously, they were there to shoot people.” He said they wore some form of body armor, and police found ammunition — but no explosives — in their car.
In Phoenix on Monday, police searched Simpson’s home. A federal law enforcement source said Nadir Soofi, 34, identified as the second gunman, was Simpson’s roommate.
The cartoon contest was organized by Geller as a rallying point for cartoonists and conservatives united in their belief that verbal attacks on radical Islam are a form of free speech.
Geller has posted bus ads and billboards condemning Islam. In 2010, the same year the FBI was investigating Simpson’s vows to fight “kafirs,” or nonbelievers, Geller cofounded American Freedom Defense Initiative, also known as Stop Islamization of America. The organization, considered a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, hosted the Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon contest, offering $10,000 for the best cartoon of the prophet.
“We know the risks,” Geller wrote in a blog promoting the event. “This event will require massive security.”
Police said the gunmen drove a sedan up to a police car blocking access to the conference, jumped out and opened fire with assault rifles. A school security guard was wounded in the leg...
As Pamela always says, "truth is the new hate speech."
Actually, there's no such thing as hate speech. As the FIRE notes, "“Hate speech” is not a category of speech recognized under current constitutional law. It is merely a convenient way to pigeonhole speech that some people find offensive."
Yeah, well, Muslims and regressive leftists don't like being called out with the truth. Hence, as soon as shots rang out virtually the entire media establishment and the left's terror-enablers blamed Pamela for the attack. It's an enormous perversion of reality, but this is the nature of the war we're in. Obviously, the reporters at the Times are down with a sick moral equivalence that smears a freedom fighter who calls Islam for what it is --- a political ideology seeking to eliminate all opposition, using any means necessary, including murderous jihad. Ironically, our mass media overlords truly believe that genuninely speaking your mind, quoting the words of the jihadists themselves, and courageously standing up for your right to do it, is extremism. It is, according to the Times, exactly the same as launching an armed attack on peaceful citizens attending a political convention about drawing cartoons. It's so absurd it's to die for.
More at Memeorandum.
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