Yesterday, around 7 pm, dozens of people were at a contest hosted by New York-based American freedom Defense Initiative at the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, Texas when police said two men pulled up in a vehicle and shot a Garland Independent School District Security guard in the ankle at about 7 p.m. The men were then shot and killed by Garland police.
The incident occurred as the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland hosted a
controversial art event put on by New York-based American freedom
Defense Initiative featuring cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
controversial art event put on by New York-based American freedom
Defense Initiative featuring cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Police officers address attendees at the Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest after they are prevented from leaving when it was reported that shots were fired and a man is down in Garland, Texas May 3, 2015.
According to NBCDFW, "Texas officials are actively investigating to determine the cause and scope of the senseless attack," Texas Governor Greg Abbott said in a statement. "This is a crime that was quickly ended thanks to the swift action by Garland law enforcement."
The security guard, 58-year-old Bruce Joiner, was treated released from a hospital nearly two hours later, police said.
"Our thoughts and prayers remain with all those affected tonight," Abbott said.
As NBC further reports, fears of an "incendiary device" inside the suspects' vehicle prompted an investigation by a bomb squad unit and the evacuation of nearby businesses. Police are currently using robotic detection equipment to search the vehicle. No device has been found as of this writing.
Pamela Geller, president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, said that she planned the Sunday event to make a stand for free speech in response to the outcries and violence over drawings of Muhammad.
And while the FBI did not have any immediate comments or speculation on the reason behind the attac, according to the Site intel group, overnight it was Islamic State supporters who took "credit" for the bungled shooting attack.
If indeed ISIS has found its way to the US, whether for pure provocation, false flag or any other "purposes" of inciting terrorist acts, this will likely be just the first of (many) other attacks which will see the successor of al Qaeda take responsibility for.
The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the shootout at a Prophet Muhammad cartoons exhibition in Garland, Texas, Agence France Press reported.
Two gunmen opened fire in a parking lot near the Curtis Culwell Center in Texas on Sunday evening, wounding a security guard in the leg.
The identities of the gunmen have not been revealed, but ISIL militants reportedly praised the attack and took responsibility for it online.
According to media reports, a radical account entitled “AbuHussainAlBritani” posted remarks before and after the attack. The first message threatened to hit US streets with “death and slaughter.” In another tweet, the account referred to the two suspects who opened fire at the exhibition center in Texas as "brothers."
“They Thought They Was Safe In Texas From The Soldiers of The Islamic State,” the final message posted on the account read, as quoted by the LA Times.
This Twitter account, as well as the pro-extremist account “Sharia is Light” that posted a comment with the hashtag #texasattack minutes before the Texas shooting on Sunday, have been suspended.
The fact the event was attacked is proof that free speech needs protection in America, event organizer and author Robert Spencer told this writer in a late-night telephone interview.
“The shooting shows how much the event was needed,” Spencer said. “The shooting shows freedom of speech is under violent assault in the United States. It shows that the jihadis are willing to kill to enforce our obedience to Shariah law.”
Spencer was not optimistic that the right conclusions would be drawn from the attack.
“The unfortunate and predictable response will be to call for more submission, more surrender, more adherence to Shariah law,” he said.
The attack yesterday took place around 7 p.m. local time at the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, Texas, northeast of Dallas. The occasion was the “Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest,” a sold-out event organized by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), a group founded by activist and “Atlas Shrugs” blogger Pamela Geller, and by Jihad Watch, a website run by Spencer that is affiliated with the David Horowitz Freedom Center, which publishes FrontPage. Geller and Spencer attended the event.
At the Jihad Watch website, Spencer noted that some supporters of Islamism have taken to Twitter to celebrate last night’s attack. “Allahu Akbar!!!!! 2 of our brothers just opened fire” at the Muhammad art exhibition in Texas, says one tweet.
Depictions of Muhammad have enraged the Islamic world in recent years.
The violence in Garland has not deterred Pamela Geller from spreading her message about the existential threat that Islam poses to the U.S.
“The idea we are going to abridge our freedom, our most basic inalienable rights, in order to not offend savages is egregious,” Geller told Fox News Channel last night.
“It is outrageous. This is a war and the war is here.”
The Garland police “handled this situation brilliantly,” Geller said.
They understand that “there’s an enemy among us. They need to crush our freedoms, our emotions, basic freedoms.”
Dr. James Dobson, who founded the highly influential groups Focus on the Family and Family Research Council and now runs Family Talk Radio, is warning that if the U.S. Supreme Court redefines marriage as analysts predict, the ruling will presage the “fall of Western civilization.”
“I do not recall a time when the institutions of marriage and the family have faced such peril, or when the forces arrayed against them were more formidable or determined,” he writes in a letter distributed to his hundreds of thousands of supporters.
“Barring a miracle, the family that has existed since antiquity will likely crumble, presaging the fall of Western civilization itself. This is a time for concerted prayer, divine wisdom and greater courage than we have ever been called upon to exercise,” he writes.
He also, amid his lawsuit against the administration over Obamacare’s abortion requirements, told the president he would refuse to obey any law that required him to participate in the killing of an unborn child.
“I believe in the rule of law, and it has been my practice since I was in college to respect and honor those in authority over us. It is my desire to do so now. However, this assault on the sanctity of human life takes me where I cannot go,” he wrote in an open letter to the president.
“I WILL NOT pay the surcharge for abortion services. The amount of the surcharge is irrelevant,” he said. “To pay one cent for the killing of babies is egregious to me, and I will do all I can to correct a government that lies to me about its intentions and then tries to coerce my acquiescence with extortion. It would be a violation of my most deeply held convictions to disobey what I consider to be the principles in Scripture. The Creator will not hold us guiltless if we turn a deaf ear to the cries of His innocent babies. So come and get me if you must, Mr. President. I will not bow before your wicked regulation.”
WND also reported that when Dobson spoke to the National Day of Prayer in Washington, hundreds stood and cheered his condemnation of the abortion-funding plan, now defeated multiple times in U.S. courts.
“We … are not simply ‘slouching toward Gomorrah,’ as Judge Robert Bork warned in his best-selling book; we are hurtling toward it,” he writes. “The old earthen dam that has held and protected the reservoir of Judeo-Christian values since the days of our Founding Fathers has given way.”
If the Supreme Court redefines marriage, he says, “an avalanche of court cases will be filed on related issues that can’t even be imagined today.”
Religious liberty “will be assaulted from every side.”
He says Christian businesses and ministries, as already has happened to florists and bakers, will be forced to serve at same-sex ceremonies, and Christian colleges “may be unable to teach scriptural views of marriage.”
WND has compiled a “Big List of Christian Coercion” with dozens of cases in which Christians have been fined, threatened or penalized for recognizing the biblical definition of marriage.
Many organizations and companies endorsing traditional and biblical marriages will simply be shut down.
Defence minister Ursula von der Leyen last week spelled out her wishes for a continental force capable of swift reaction anywhere in the world.
Her comments came just two months after European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker expressed his wish for an army commanded by Brussels, saying it “would help us to build a common foreign and security policy, as well as jointly assume the responsibilities of Europe in the world”.
Mrs von der Leyen, talking to her Dutch counterpart in The Hague, said international crises such as the Ebola outbreak and the swift advances by Islamic militant group Islamic State could have been countered better by a well-trained European army.
Juncker insists any Euro army would not be in competition with Nato. “Rather, a European army would bring an intensive co-operation in the development and the purchase of military equipment and bring substantial savings,” he said.
Dutch defence minister Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert backs the idea.
Her comments came just two months after European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker expressed his wish for an army commanded by Brussels, saying it “would help us to build a common foreign and security policy, as well as jointly assume the responsibilities of Europe in the world”.
Mrs von der Leyen, talking to her Dutch counterpart in The Hague, said international crises such as the Ebola outbreak and the swift advances by Islamic militant group Islamic State could have been countered better by a well-trained European army.
Juncker insists any Euro army would not be in competition with Nato. “Rather, a European army would bring an intensive co-operation in the development and the purchase of military equipment and bring substantial savings,” he said.
Dutch defence minister Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert backs the idea.
She said: “America is taking on the biggest part of the burden. To regain the balance we European allies must make ourselves stronger together.”
Mrs von der Leyen said the project remained a long-term goal and would “probably only be something that my children would experience”.
A UK government spokesman said recently that defence was a national responsibility and there was no prospect of a European army.
Mrs von der Leyen said the project remained a long-term goal and would “probably only be something that my children would experience”.
A UK government spokesman said recently that defence was a national responsibility and there was no prospect of a European army.
A magnitude 4.0 earthquake with a series of aftershocks has struck the San Francisco Bay Area, shortly after 2:00pm local time. It comes less than 12 hours after shakes were reported in the Los Angeles area.
No immediate damage or injuries were reported when the 4.0 earthquake struck at 2:13pm just outside of the city of Concord. The shake was preceded and followed by four smaller trembles, ranging from 1.6-2.7. The earthquakes struck at a depth of eight to nine miles.
A 3.9-magnitude earthquake was recorded in the Los Angeles area early Sunday morning. According to the US Geological Survey the quake was shallow, residents across the basin say they were woken up by the tremor.
The shallow earthquake occurred just one mile from View Park-Windsor Hills, California, at 4:07 am on Sunday morning.
The quake, which struck at a depth of 5.6 miles, was classified by the USGS as "light". However, it was still felt over a wide area of the LA basin.
It was the second earthquake in less than a month along the Newport-Inglewood fault. A magnitude-3.5 quake hit the same area on April 12.
The Los Angeles Fire Department briefly went into "earthquake mode." As its helicopters surveyed more than 470 square miles in the area and all 106 fire stations conducted safety checks, the alert was lifted.
“At some point, we will need to start releasing all of this pent-up energy stored in the rocks in a series of large earthquakes,” Dolan said.
The earthquake could spark a “super cycle,” meaning “a flurry of other Big Ones, as stresses related to the original San Andreas fault earthquake are redistributed on other faults throughout Southern California,” he said in late April.
A 5.6 magnitude earthquake has struck 30km north west of Wanaka, on the South Island of New Zealand. Hundreds of people felt tremors, registered by the local geological hazard information service as “severe.”
There were no immediate reports of damage after the initial quake struck at 2:29pm local time. The USGS registered the depth of the quake at 10km.
A second and lighter 3.4 tremor followed about 10 minutes later. It was located 20km west of Wanaka at a depth of 11km.
GeoNet geohazards information manager Kevin Fenaughty told Fairfax NZ News that no structural damage is expected as a result of this earthquake. Moderate shaking was also felt in Dunedin, Alexandra and Queenstown on the South Island.
New Zealand partially lies on the eastern margin of the Australia plate which is one of the most seismically active areas of the world, due to the convergence of the Australia and Pacific plates.
Sen. Jeff Sessions is sounding the alarm to his colleagues Senate-wide, warning them and the American public with a “critical alert” published Sunday evening that voting for the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) deal that would set up the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal with Asian countries is fraught with problems and concerns.
The Sessions document then goes point-by-point for five full pages through the TPA trade deal, laying out why it wouldn’t help Americans—rather, it would likely hurt American workers—and why the deal doesn’t in fact provide Congress with more power over trade despite talking points from the Obama trade deal’s proponents like House Ways and Means Committee chairman...The first point lays out how the deal would result in a “consolidation of power in the executive branch,” a point in which Sessions takes to task those like Ryan who have argued that the deal would return more power to Congress.
“TPA eliminates Congress’ ability to amend or debate trade implementing legislation and guarantees an up-or-down vote on a far-reaching international agreement before that agreement has received any public review,” Sessions writes. “Not only will Congress have given up the 67-vote threshold for a treaty and the 60-vote threshold for important legislation, but will have even given up the opportunity for amendment and the committee review process that both ensure member participation. Crucially, this applies not only to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) but all international trade agreements during the life of the TPA.
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