Most casualties of suicide attacks in the so-called "Islamic jihad" are not just civilians, but also Muslims. Let's be clear about this: fundamentalist monkeys (with their fucked up world views about women, girls education, governance, jurisprudence and a few other things) who blow up shoppers in outdoor markets in Basra, or tourists in Bali, or train commuters in London, or office workers in Manhattan, or hotel employees in Islamabad, or diners in Amman, or bus riders in Israel, are not fucking martyrs. This guy deserves to spend the rest of his life in a 12X12 concrete cell in Supermax. And if he's put to death, I won't shed any tears. #maliknidalhasan
Stop calling him a Muslim. Will someone please point out that he listed "No religious preference" on his army personnel papers, according to the New York Times?
@BowlingForDollars: There's no use attempting to be logical with people who love to rationalize their bigotry. Let them wail while the grownups handle the aftermath. #maliknidalhasan
I was in school at Texas State when this tragedy took place, but I read about it this afternoon at Austin American Statesman's website, which was a mistake. The news was fine, straight-forward, but the comments were an awful mix of the most terrifying right-wing conservative rants and the liberals that kept pleading with them to shut up. I love living in Austin because it really is a little blue oasis in a big red state, but that this happened at Ft. Hood (in Killeen Texas, just outside of Austin) was just too much for some texans, who came online with guns blazing (pun intended), pushing their agenda without tact, hesitation, or remorse. That some right-wing texans took this tragedy as an opportunity to comment about Muslims, and "Obama and the damn liberals being responsible."
Meanwhile, our neighbors are grieving the loss of their loved ones and the wounded are fighting for their lives in the hospital down the street. We've got to stop meeting destruction with destruction.
I just realized I might not be in the mood for jezebel tonight. #maliknidalhasan
Also, it's now being reported that Nidal Hassan was not shot dead, but wounded and is currently in police custody. He is being described as a lone gunman. The others who were apprehended and detained by authorities have been released. #fthoodshooting
This guy did not kill soldiers because he's a Muslim, he killed them because he's a Psychopath. And many many psychopaths present as "normal" well adjusted humans for years and years, until they commit mass murder. This has absolutely nothing to do with this man's religious affiliations in my opinion. #maliknidalhasan
@TheUpMyAssPlayers: The above quoted statement about suicide, attempting to contrast kamikazees from rejected suitors does not appear to be that of a terrorist. Trying to rationalize this psychopath's actions based on some idea that he was a Muslim terrorist seems to be a clear error. #maliknidalhasan
Wait wait wait, you mean to tell me that the FBI routinely scours the internet for postings that might seem slightly questionable and then create FBI profiles against the users simply for using their free speech? What a fucking joke.
Anyway, I'm very disappointed in you Gawker. By highlighting the text you've taken that portion of the posting out of context by giving the false impression that the now gunman was promoting terrorism. In reality he was just giving rather reasonable parallels in the mindset for a suicide bomber to other historical examples and psychological cases. Sure I can say a cat is racist, and no one would believe me, but it really helps my case when I put a sign up next to the cat pointing towards it with the a large bold type reading "RACIST". Not that it matters now since the stupidity of the internet is now shining brightly on the user's account page. If anything, his shootings follow a long line of military shootings in the past from soldiers that snapped. BUT FUCK LOGIC RIGHT?
These days on 24 news networks, everyone is trying to piece together a story which will keep the watchers hooked in order to hear the full arch. I suppose "soldier snaps and shoots other soldiers" doesn't play to well so instead "ARAB PSYCHIATRIST shoots innocent soldiers" gets played on the airwaves, and it doesn't help matters that you have the news presenters ever so lightly mention that the shooter was a arab while showing stock footage of American soldiers fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Wow. The glorious American Army at Fort Hood, the biggest ever military compound of the biggest army in history cannot defend itself from a man with two handguns, so our Army ended up with 12 dead and 31 wounded?
How long waiting to call it the most inefficient army in history? Specially, after we (with British, Latin and African American names) have been systematically killing people in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan during the last eight years?
@Btwbfdimho: People do not walk around with loaded weapons. Even in the barracks they are kept under lock and key. Sorry if you thought an abrams doing training missions 20 miles away on the same base should turned the turret and took a few pot shots.
I'd like to add this is a trained soldier, much more proficient at killing than your average psycho. #maliknidalhasan
@Btwbfdimho: Yeah, man, what a buch of pussies. Not like the Pakistani army! I can't wait until the US armed forces are as professional and humanitarian as those of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan! #maliknidalhasan
Like I said earlier, the military overlooks may things in order to keep deploying people to Iraq and Afghanistan. I am sure there were even more signs and that will all come out. This is not a rare occurrence. Those cases usually end with suicide or the murder of their spouse.This is so fucking sad #maliknidalhasan
Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS) trains health care professionals for active duty military service. The program provides tuition and a living stipend; in return, the participant commits to seven years of active duty service and a six years in the reserves. (These figures are from Wikipedia, which may be unreliable. Unfortunately, and perhaps tellingly, the numbers are not readily availble on the official USUHS FAQ. I happen to know someone who had only three years of active duty service.)
A number of USUHS participants view the program primarily as free medical school and do not give due consideration to the fact that the requisite period of indentured servitude to the military could take them overseas. The most recent birther case—thrown out with great aplomb by U.S. District Judge Clay D. Land—involved a USUHS doctor, Connie Rhodes, who was trying to weasel her way out of the program. She was represented by notorious Israeli-American dentist-lawyer Orly Taitz.
Nidal Hasan may have been one such USUHS participant, who gambled against the possibility of overseas deployment. If the source can be trusted, “Hasan was scheduled to be deployed to Iraq ‘and appeared to be upset about that,’ Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, said” (link). In one scenario, the shooting amounts to a psychotic break: he reacted psychotically to the eventuality of his deployment.
In another scenario, Hasan planned the attack as an act of terrorism, or, as the author “NidalHasan” of the blog post quoted above would have it, a “strategic victory” “to help save Muslims by killing enemy soldiers.“ While Hasan may not have wanted to be deployed to Iraq, it seems unlikely that a doctor, especially a psychiatrist, would react psychotically in this way. An attack on that scale and at a base would require much planning. (As others have noted, guns and ammo would not have been easily available to him.) As a Jordan national and a Muslim, he may have been frustrated by U.S. military activity in the Middle East, which has in fact caused the deaths of many, many thousands of Muslims. His frustrations with the U.S. would have been exacerbated by his participation in the military, the idiocy of USUHS policy (which often follows very different procedures and standards of care than would normally be followed), and likely anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bigotry all around him in the corps.
If the second scenario is more representative of what happened, my question would be: did he enter USUHS with the intention to commit an act of terrorism eventually? Or was he driven to it by the reason that I hypothesize? #maliknidalhasan
@Mr. Praline: That fabulous picture needs to be inserted whenever Orly Taitz is mentioned!
@Phyllis Nefler: Thank you! I wanted to consider the possibility of a terrorist act without degenerating into the kind of discourse that would make a terrorist out of every Muslim. #maliknidalhasan
@iplaudius: "(As others have noted, guns and ammo would not have been easily available to him.) "
Less readily or easily available to him than to the "average" American? You know, "average" Americans like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold or Seung-Hui Cho or Charles Whitman... #maliknidalhasan
@olivepony: Actually, you may be right to suggest that he brought guns in from outside the base. It is now being reported that his weapons were two handguns (link). #maliknidalhasan
Sure is a lot of AP linkage going on here tonight, rightfully so, but strange given how often they get shit on as being a crap news organization. They're not. Just a reminder. #maliknidalhasan
@Trixie from Toronto: You really think linking to something means that something is necessarily more than a crap news organization? And if the answer to that is yes, I assume this is your first time on the internet? #maliknidalhasan
@Atilla the Bun: Uhhh, no. But it's a good news organization, is often out on front on stories like these, but constantly gets shit on on this site and others for the crime of trying to protect its content. I also tire of the anti-MSM argument so prevalent here and elsewhere, when it's the MSM still doing the lion's share of original reporting, and digging up some of the best information, on big stories like these. Go read the Washington Post's story on Hasan today, just by way of example -- a billion blogs are linking to it. #maliknidalhasan
As a South Asian from a small Southern town, I'm just praying that this guy is not dark-skinned or of South Asian origin. I've already been informed by a previous boss that I "look like a terrorist" while my pretty, blond and blue-eyed ex co-worker looked on and giggled. I'll be spending the next couple hours looking for color pics of the guy. If he is indeed as dark as I am, I'll be rushing to buy red dots at the nearest South Asian store first thing tomorrow, even though the dots give me acne. Maybe I'll invest in a big blingy crucifix instead. Anything to show I'm not a muslin and the good friendly folk around here don't have to shoot me to keep themselves safe from turrists. #maliknidalhasan
@Queef_Of_All_Media: get over it.. give me the stories of how americans have gone out and shot people, as you say, to keep them safe from terrorists.. please...
you can hate the right.. but dont make stuff up...there has been exactly no evidence of southerners or anyother americans of doing this vigilante shit..
Oh and I personally know a Sikh man who was beaten very badly by some naughty bad-boy locals. He is still profoundly traumatized. But who cares? He's just an immigrant. Some stories don't make the news because the local media doesn't consider the victims to be Real Americans.
Pull your head out of your ass.
Oh but I guess in your world, all these people were just asking for it, right? The days after 9/11, no South Asians I knew left their homes.
Don't fucking tell me to get over it. I'm guessing you're white. Well congratulations on winning the genetic lottery. You never have to worry about terrorism from white people. Unless you're a kid in a public school or you work at a post office or you go to the mall or you're hunting down a serial killer. Now run along, you good old Real American, you. #maliknidalhasan
You wanted me to get over something that involves the safety of my life and limb? You get over your cloudy thinking and uninformed opinions. #maliknidalhasan
@Queef_Of_All_Media: Yes, I shall breathe a huge sigh of relief if this guy isn't dark or Southeast Asian. Because that'll make everything all right! And of course, Muslim equals terrorist. How lucky for us you've got this whole thing figured out.
Your powers of logic and reasoning are unsurpassed. Thanks so much for sharing. I look forward to more of your wit and wisdom, #maliknidalhasan
@OrneryBabe: What are you talking about, babe? Where did I say everything's fine and dandy if the guy is light-skinned or isn't of Asian descent? Where did I say Muslim equals terrorist? Where are you getting this?
It's precisely because of the perceptions of a large number of Americans that Muslim = terrorist, Middle Easterner = terrorist and also dark-skinned and South Asian-looking = Middle-Easterner = Terrorist that so many people have become victims of hate crimes. What's wrong with openly talking about it?
What's so different about what I'm saying versus how Jews are relieved when it turns out some asshole, who might be Jewish, isn't? I recall a lot of East Asians being really worried in the aftermath of the Cho Seung-hui attacks that they would be the targets of hate crimes. Don't shoot (heh) the messenger here. The fact is that every time a minority person hurts a large number of people of a majority race, the others belonging to the minority ethnicity or race worry about how they will be perceived or if they will face retribution for something they didn't do.
Oh and quit the sarcasm. Someone of your intelligence can do with being a lot more direct and attack from the front. #maliknidalhasan
@OrneryBabe: One more thing. I don't think you'd be too thrilled to resemble or be mistaken for a Middle-Eastern person if it meant that you too would be attacked, beaten and yes, fucking killed for just having the wrong genetic code at the wrong time and place. If your ass is on the line and your very appearance could be a fatal flaw, you too would be scared shitless and want to go out of your way to show that you're not One Of Them. Instead of grumbling at some online commenter for telling the truth, why don't you spend more time keeping Muslims and non-Muslim South Asians safe from getting attacked and killed? But that would involve real effort and putting your money where your mouth is. Not some liberal outrage that you can easily dispense and then feel a warm glow of sanctimony. #maliknidalhasan
@Queef_Of_All_Media: I'm surprised people are jumping down your throat here.
Doesn't anyone think it strange that the NYT article this morning quotes a response to the attacks from the Muslim Public Affairs Council? This man has listed no religious affiliation, why are they responding? It's great that they think it was terrible and all, but already, simply, I'm assuming because of his name and possibly how he looks, people are wanting to hear from the Muslim Public Affairs Council. According to the information we actually have at this point, we should be asking what the local humanist society thinks. Even if we're assuming he lied when listing "no religious affiliation", isn't it premature to assume he's Muslim? It may very well be that he was at some time or is now Muslim, but at this point, it's quite an assumption.
If people are prepared to jump to the syllogism that because he has the name he does or looks how he does (Barack Hussein Obama anyone?) that we need to hear from the Muslims (thus implying he's Muslim), I don't think it's paranoid to think that other syllogisms and generalisations, especially on a local level, might follow. #maliknidalhasan
@Queef_Of_All_Media: Gotta love the anonymity of these great Internets and the ridiculous presumptions it allows.
I'm Black. I think it's fair to say my people have been persecuted and killed for having the "wrong genetic code." So I'd really back off of that argument if I were you.
@OrneryBabe: And given that you haven't responded to any of my other arguments, I'd say they all still stand just fine. And nice way to cover your tracks there with just addressing the one flaw in my argument. I still have no idea what your quibble was with my original statements. In fact, if you're Black, you'd know the pain and misery of unfair stereotyping really well. So what exactly is your point of disagreement with me?
Or is it that the only people allowed to criticize racism on Gawker are white liberals and black people? And no one really wants to hear first-hand from one of those ethnic types? God forbid someone insinuate that immigrants also suffer horribly from racism. Then who would these Gods of Snark have left to mock? Plus we can't have any new contestants in the Suffering Olympics. #maliknidalhasan
@Queef_Of_All_Media: No, man. There are people here who are hearing you. I know exactly what you mean.
Discourse about racial problems in the U.S. tend to become black/white issues. You don't hear often about situations involving racial ambiguity or "mistaken identity" (where a person of one ethnic descent is mistaken for another) but they are everyday problems. If you're of a certain skin color and your race is not "obvious," then being jokingly called "terrorist" is not uncommon. I've seen it myself. I've heard the terrorist comment used on white/Latino/South Asian/East Asian guys! Just because they were of a certain skin tone and had beards. Sometimes, they were just hipsters with Italian blood in them.
11/07/09
11/06/09
[www.nytimes.com]
11/06/09
He only attacked once his ass was getting sent to Iraq. Hardly noble, even if you do think suicide bombers are noble. #maliknidalhasan
11/06/09
11/06/09
EXACTLY!
The majority of people are NOT ON FACEBOOK. (This may be a shocker, but they also aren't on Twitter and don't have a Tumblr blog.)
By the way, if your "investigation" went as far as Facebook, then you probably saw this guy and his freaking huge gun: [www.facebook.com] #nidalhasan
11/06/09
Yeah well, he was Caucasian and American. #maliknidalhasan
11/06/09
11/06/09
Meanwhile, our neighbors are grieving the loss of their loved ones and the wounded are fighting for their lives in the hospital down the street. We've got to stop meeting destruction with destruction.
I just realized I might not be in the mood for jezebel tonight. #maliknidalhasan
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/05/09
Anyway, I'm very disappointed in you Gawker. By highlighting the text you've taken that portion of the posting out of context by giving the false impression that the now gunman was promoting terrorism. In reality he was just giving rather reasonable parallels in the mindset for a suicide bomber to other historical examples and psychological cases. Sure I can say a cat is racist, and no one would believe me, but it really helps my case when I put a sign up next to the cat pointing towards it with the a large bold type reading "RACIST". Not that it matters now since the stupidity of the internet is now shining brightly on the user's account page. If anything, his shootings follow a long line of military shootings in the past from soldiers that snapped. BUT FUCK LOGIC RIGHT?
These days on 24 news networks, everyone is trying to piece together a story which will keep the watchers hooked in order to hear the full arch. I suppose "soldier snaps and shoots other soldiers" doesn't play to well so instead "ARAB PSYCHIATRIST shoots innocent soldiers" gets played on the airwaves, and it doesn't help matters that you have the news presenters ever so lightly mention that the shooter was a arab while showing stock footage of American soldiers fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.
11/05/09
How long waiting to call it the most inefficient army in history? Specially, after we (with British, Latin and African American names) have been systematically killing people in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan during the last eight years?
11/06/09
I'd like to add this is a trained soldier, much more proficient at killing than your average psycho. #maliknidalhasan
11/07/09
11/05/09
11/05/09
A number of USUHS participants view the program primarily as free medical school and do not give due consideration to the fact that the requisite period of indentured servitude to the military could take them overseas. The most recent birther case—thrown out with great aplomb by U.S. District Judge Clay D. Land—involved a USUHS doctor, Connie Rhodes, who was trying to weasel her way out of the program. She was represented by notorious Israeli-American dentist-lawyer Orly Taitz.
Nidal Hasan may have been one such USUHS participant, who gambled against the possibility of overseas deployment. If the source can be trusted, “Hasan was scheduled to be deployed to Iraq ‘and appeared to be upset about that,’ Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, said” (link). In one scenario, the shooting amounts to a psychotic break: he reacted psychotically to the eventuality of his deployment.
In another scenario, Hasan planned the attack as an act of terrorism, or, as the author “NidalHasan” of the blog post quoted above would have it, a “strategic victory” “to help save Muslims by killing enemy soldiers.“ While Hasan may not have wanted to be deployed to Iraq, it seems unlikely that a doctor, especially a psychiatrist, would react psychotically in this way. An attack on that scale and at a base would require much planning. (As others have noted, guns and ammo would not have been easily available to him.) As a Jordan national and a Muslim, he may have been frustrated by U.S. military activity in the Middle East, which has in fact caused the deaths of many, many thousands of Muslims. His frustrations with the U.S. would have been exacerbated by his participation in the military, the idiocy of USUHS policy (which often follows very different procedures and standards of care than would normally be followed), and likely anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bigotry all around him in the corps.
If the second scenario is more representative of what happened, my question would be: did he enter USUHS with the intention to commit an act of terrorism eventually? Or was he driven to it by the reason that I hypothesize? #maliknidalhasan
11/05/09
@iplaudius: #maliknidalhasan
11/05/09
11/05/09
@Phyllis Nefler: Thank you! I wanted to consider the possibility of a terrorist act without degenerating into the kind of discourse that would make a terrorist out of every Muslim. #maliknidalhasan
11/05/09
Less readily or easily available to him than to the "average" American? You know, "average" Americans like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold or Seung-Hui Cho or Charles Whitman... #maliknidalhasan
11/05/09
11/06/09
11/05/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/05/09
11/05/09
you can hate the right.. but dont make stuff up...there has been exactly no evidence of southerners or anyother americans of doing this vigilante shit..
11/05/09
[en.wikipedia.org] #maliknidalhasan
11/05/09
O Rly?
[www.nytimes.com]
[www.itvs.org]
[valariekaur.blogspot.com]
[saldef.org]
Oh and I personally know a Sikh man who was beaten very badly by some naughty bad-boy locals. He is still profoundly traumatized. But who cares? He's just an immigrant. Some stories don't make the news because the local media doesn't consider the victims to be Real Americans.
Pull your head out of your ass.
Oh but I guess in your world, all these people were just asking for it, right? The days after 9/11, no South Asians I knew left their homes.
Don't fucking tell me to get over it. I'm guessing you're white. Well congratulations on winning the genetic lottery. You never have to worry about terrorism from white people. Unless you're a kid in a public school or you work at a post office or you go to the mall or you're hunting down a serial killer. Now run along, you good old Real American, you. #maliknidalhasan
11/05/09
[www.democracynow.org]
You wanted me to get over something that involves the safety of my life and limb? You get over your cloudy thinking and uninformed opinions. #maliknidalhasan
11/05/09
Your powers of logic and reasoning are unsurpassed. Thanks so much for sharing. I look forward to more of your wit and wisdom, #maliknidalhasan
11/06/09
Commie bastard. #maliknidalhasan
11/06/09
It's precisely because of the perceptions of a large number of Americans that Muslim = terrorist, Middle Easterner = terrorist and also dark-skinned and South Asian-looking = Middle-Easterner = Terrorist that so many people have become victims of hate crimes. What's wrong with openly talking about it?
What's so different about what I'm saying versus how Jews are relieved when it turns out some asshole, who might be Jewish, isn't? I recall a lot of East Asians being really worried in the aftermath of the Cho Seung-hui attacks that they would be the targets of hate crimes. Don't shoot (heh) the messenger here. The fact is that every time a minority person hurts a large number of people of a majority race, the others belonging to the minority ethnicity or race worry about how they will be perceived or if they will face retribution for something they didn't do.
Oh and quit the sarcasm. Someone of your intelligence can do with being a lot more direct and attack from the front. #maliknidalhasan
11/06/09
11/06/09
Doesn't anyone think it strange that the NYT article this morning quotes a response to the attacks from the Muslim Public Affairs Council? This man has listed no religious affiliation, why are they responding? It's great that they think it was terrible and all, but already, simply, I'm assuming because of his name and possibly how he looks, people are wanting to hear from the Muslim Public Affairs Council. According to the information we actually have at this point, we should be asking what the local humanist society thinks. Even if we're assuming he lied when listing "no religious affiliation", isn't it premature to assume he's Muslim? It may very well be that he was at some time or is now Muslim, but at this point, it's quite an assumption.
If people are prepared to jump to the syllogism that because he has the name he does or looks how he does (Barack Hussein Obama anyone?) that we need to hear from the Muslims (thus implying he's Muslim), I don't think it's paranoid to think that other syllogisms and generalisations, especially on a local level, might follow. #maliknidalhasan
11/06/09
11/06/09
I'm Black. I think it's fair to say my people have been persecuted and killed for having the "wrong genetic code." So I'd really back off of that argument if I were you.
11/06/09
Or is it that the only people allowed to criticize racism on Gawker are white liberals and black people? And no one really wants to hear first-hand from one of those ethnic types? God forbid someone insinuate that immigrants also suffer horribly from racism. Then who would these Gods of Snark have left to mock? Plus we can't have any new contestants in the Suffering Olympics. #maliknidalhasan
11/06/09
Discourse about racial problems in the U.S. tend to become black/white issues. You don't hear often about situations involving racial ambiguity or "mistaken identity" (where a person of one ethnic descent is mistaken for another) but they are everyday problems. If you're of a certain skin color and your race is not "obvious," then being jokingly called "terrorist" is not uncommon. I've seen it myself. I've heard the terrorist comment used on white/Latino/South Asian/East Asian guys! Just because they were of a certain skin tone and had beards. Sometimes, they were just hipsters with Italian blood in them.
People are so stupid sometimes. #maliknidalhasan