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Sudden Jihad Syndrome?: Missing Egyptian “Devout Muslim” Drove Into San Diego Nightclub Crowd, Injured 36

By Debbie Schlussel

On Saturday Night in San Diego, there were echoes of Mohammed Reza Taheri-Azar’s Jeep jihad. This time, the Muslim driver’s targets weren’t American college students in North Carolina. They were American nightclub-goers celebrating an early Valentine’s Day on the opposite American coast.  Different location, same jihadist method, same religion of the perpetrator.

Devout Muslim Osama Hassan Daly Drove Into San Diego Nightclub Crowd

As we’re told in every single case in which a Muslim attacks Americans, the usual narrative is already in place here, with Osama “Sam” Hassan Daly, a devout Egyptian Muslim cab driver, who drove into a crowd of Americans at the San Diego nightclub where he’s been a frequent patron.  Daly is now missing, and he may have fled back to Egypt, after being released from a hospital by police.  Daly injured 36 people in his attack.

And, as in the case of Times Square Bomber Faisal Shahzad, another Muslim, we’re being told that Daly was “upset” that his house was in foreclosure. Yeah, it’s not jihad. It’s foreclosure. That’s the ticket. Why is it that all the “foreclosed” who try to kill multiple Americans are Muslim? Could it be that this is about Islam and not foreclosure? Isn’t there a reason we don’t see millions of other foreclosed upon Americans going on violent rampages . . . just mostly the Muslim ones?

One of the patrons into whom Daly deliberately drove is Dominique Gambale, a mother of two and beautiful tennis player, whose leg nearly had to be amputated after Daly drove into her and pinned it.  Hmmm . . . I wonder what Daly’s immigration status was.  Wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t here legally. So does this sound to you like the actions of someone who is “mentally ill” or someone imitating other Muslims who’ve deliberately driven into people in the name of jihad against the West? I vote the latter:

San Diego police served a search warrant on Daly’s Clairemont home about midnight Saturday and seized some of Daly’s property, said his roommate, Dan Rose. Daly has not returned home and has not spoken to his roommate since the crash. “As far as we know, it’s an unfortunate accident,” Rose said. Rose described Daly was a “pretty solitary man” who is devoutly Muslim. Rose rented a room from Daly two months ago but was recently given until the end of the month to move out because the house is in foreclosure. Daly’s plan was to move back to his home country of Egypt, Rose said. Daly filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy in May 2007, but a judge dismissed the case at Daly’s request nine months later, according to court documents.

More:

Friday night was supposed to be a special night for Dominique. She was out celebrating an early Valentine’s Day with her husband James, a San Diego patent lawyer.

As for the crash, some victims don’t believe it was an accident.

“No horns, no brakes, no screeching no yelling – not anyone saying – get out of the way.”

“All these people were out there waiting in line for their cabs, it was just the worst possible time.” . . .

Gambale’s injuries weren’t unlike some of the war wounds that Girard tended while he served as a military surgeon at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego’s Balboa Park from 2002 to 2007. “This is comparable to severe blast injuries or gunshot wounds that I’ve taken care of,” he said.

Gambale will have more surgery later this week to remove more tissue and debris. If all goes well with that procedure, plastic surgeons next week could reconstruct her leg bones with fragments taken from her hip and close the wound with skin grafts.

One of the biggest challenges facing doctors is replacing a 2-inch piece of her shin bone that had to be removed because it was too badly damaged to save. At some point, surgeons will fill the space with a bone graft or use screws and pins to incrementally stretch new bone across the space.

Gambale also might suffer chronic pain from the injuries, and bone infections will remain a risk for years to come, Girard said. . . .

The horrifying scene occurred about 1:50 a.m. Saturday outside the Stingaree nightclub at 454 Sixth Ave.

Owners and friends of the downtown restaurant Darband say the cab driver, Sam Hassan Daly, is known to them as “Osama” and was a frequent visitor to the establishment. . . .

Stingaree owner James Brennan told The San Diego Union-Tribune the cabbie was swinging around a pair of scissors at one of the club managers.

“We are treating this as an unfortunate accident,’ Lt. Rick O’Hanlon said. “We’re checking into the cab driver’s background. We’re in the process of reviewing surveillance tapes and looking for any others.’

Ron Pizarro, 31, said he was in the club near the doorwhen he heard the crash.

“I saw the cab coming through the crowd and people bouncing off the car,’ he said.

Sorry, but this doesn’t sound like an accident at all. It sounds very deliberate. And, like I said, it sounds just like the jihadist massacre by Mohammed Reza Taheri-Azar, who drove his jeep into a crowd of North Carolina college students. Read more at www.debbieschlussel.com

 

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Pakistani Christian Killed by Muslim Employer, Family says police, hospital colluded with landowner

Amplify’d from www.compassdirect.org

Pakistani Christian Killed by Muslim Employer, Relatives Say

Family says police, hospital colluded with powerful landowner.

The family of Imran Masih believes his Muslim employer killed him.

LAHORE, Pakistan, February 16 (CDN) — The Christian family of 24-year-old Imran Masih in Pakistan’s Punjab Province was in anguish. The previous week, on Feb. 7, Masih was found dead at his Muslim employer’s farmhouse. The employer, influential landowner Chaudhry Maqsood Cheema, claimed that Masih committed suicide by hanging himself. Masih’s relatives believe that Cheema – seeing the young Christian man as a “soft target” whose family had little standing or legal recourse in the predominantly Muslim society – killed him for taking a day off without informing him. Masih had married eight months ago, and the couple was expecting their first child, his father Lal Masih told Compass by telephone from Nath Kallan village in Esa Nagar, Gujranwala district. He said Cheema had hired his son to care for his livestock a month ago, and that a few days before his death, Imran Masih had taken a day off from work without informing Cheema. “Cheema did not approve of this action and reprimanded him severely,” he said. Imran Masih went to work the morning of Feb. 7 as usual, said Lal Masih, who was also employed by Cheema as his tractor driver. Shortly thereafter, Cheema’s brother called him and said his son had committed suicide by hanging himself, he said. The family rushed towards Cheema’s farmhouse, where they were told that Masih had hung himself in a cattle stall. “When I entered the room, I saw my son’s body hanging with a rope, and a very loose noose was around his neck,” Lal Masih said. The body hung only about six inches off the ground, he said, and there was nothing nearby that could have served as a mount from which to fall in an attempt to hang himself. Gakhar Mandi station police soon arrived. “The police asked me if I wanted to pursue any legal action against anyone, but I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to make a decision – my senses had gone numb as the body of my son lay before me,” he said. Police asked him to sign some papers, and Lal Masih said he still does not know their content. The family took the body by tractor to the Tehsil Headquarters Hospital in Wazirabad for an autopsy. “When we reached the hospital, we saw that Cheema, his brother Munir Ahmed and some other Muslims were already present there,” he said. “The doctors carried out the autopsy, but the report was not handed over to us.” Lal Masih said his son’s sudden death shocked the village, as no one saw any reason that he would want to commit suicide. “I am sure he did not have any reason to kill himself,” he said. “He was leading a happy life. There was no reason at all.” Family members tried to register a report, but police refused to accept their complaint. “The police said that since I had refused to initiate legal proceedings at first, they were not going to register a case,” Lal Masih said. “They refused to understand that I could barely think when they were asking me this question.” In protest of the police’s refusal to register a case, Christian villagers decided to block the main road. After the Christians staged a two-hour sit-in, police registered a murder case against Cheema, his brother Munir, Rashid Ahmad and another Muslim identified only as Mohsin. Napolean Qayyum, field officer for Christian legal aid organization Community Development Initiative (CDI), said his team accompanied the family to the hospital on Feb. 10 and faced resistance when they asked for the autopsy report. Only after persistent efforts and an appeal to an outside agency were they able to obtain the autopsy report, he said. Qayyum said he suspected deliberate skewing of the report, which stated Masih died by hanging. The CDI team discovered that Cheema’s cousin, Dr. Muhammad Asif, had been present at the autopsy and might have influenced the report. “Lal told us that the men who had washed Masih’s dead body had reported seeing a swelling of his private organs, which suggested that he had been hit badly in that area,” Qayyum said. “There was also a bruise on the back of his head.” He said the CDI team would consider exhuming Masih’s body if necessary. The CDI team has yet to meet the investigating officer of the case, Sub-Inspector Muhammad Adnan, he said, but according to Lal Masih, Adnan would side with Cheema because they belong to the same caste. Sub-Inspector Adnan told Compass by phone that he and Station House Officer Iqbal Cheema had inspected the crime scene twice to ascertain whether Masih had committed suicide or was murdered. He said police would arrest the named suspects if it establishes that the cause of death warrants it. END *** A photo of Imran Masih is attached for subscribers, to be used with credit to Compass Direct News. A high resolution photo is also available; contact Compass for transmittal. Read more at www.compassdirect.org

 

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Egypt's 'Indiana Jones' at Center of Archaeology Uproar

by Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer

Great Pyramids of Egypt. stock.xchng View full size image

The political upheaval in Egypt has thrown Egyptian archaeology into a state of uncertainty — expeditions have been disrupted and Zahi Hawass, the head of the country's antiquity council, is now coming under fire from protesters. Known for his flamboyant style – including an Indiana Jones-style fedora – and his boosterism of Egypt's treasures, Hawass is the face of Egyptian archaeology. As secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), Hawass is in charge of approving any archaeological research that goes on in Egypt. And he's now the central figure in a war of words, with some archaeologists taking verbal shots at him for what they see as a corrupt system, and others, in interviews with LiveScience, defending his character and his actions.

Protesting Hawass Hawass was given a cabinet minister position shortly before Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigned, and the association has not served him well in the aftermath of the regime change. On Feb. 14, about 150 archaeology students and workers protested outside Hawass' office, demanding he resign, according to news reports. Some of the protests have centered around Hawass' handling of a Jan. 28 break-in at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Hawass originally said that no artifacts had been stolen during the break-in; later, he announced that 18 items, including some belonging to King Tutankhamen, were missing. But on a Facebook page calling for a protest at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo at 2 p.m. local time on Feb. 18, demonstrators also called for an end to "corruption" and "nepotism" in the SCA. "Archaeologists demanding proper wages, contracts and end of corruption, end of zahi #Jan25," wrote Cairo archaeologist Nora Shalaby on Twitter Feb. 14. Wage protests have occurred around Egypt in the wake of the successful bid to oust Mubarak. According to a Feb. 14 news report by the BBC, workers were striking in industries as varied as health care, banking, public transport and tourism. Support for Hawass Condemnation of Hawass is by no means universal. Several archaeologists contacted by LiveScience were unwilling to comment on the record about the protests. Those who did, however, praised Hawass' work. "Since Zahi is so well known outside of Egypt, he's a good target for reporters looking for a sensational story," Peter Lacovara, the curator of Ancient Egyptian, Nubain and Near Eastern Art at the Carlos Museum at Emory University in Atlanta, told LiveScience. But that narrative ignores Hawass' contributions to Egyptian archaeology, Lacovara said. "No director since Auguste Mariette, who founded the service in 1858, has done more," Lacovara said. "He modernized the ancient, arbitrary and uninformed bureaucracy that had existed before and moved the offices from a dusty, remote slum into a modern office building in central Cairo and one that operated swiftly and efficiently." The SCA does keep a tight reign on public information about Egyptian digs, said Jay VanRensselaer, a Johns Hopkins University photographer who has served as a dig photographer for Egyptologist Betsy Bryan since 1996. But VanRensselaer said he had nothing negative to say about Hawass, whom he called "very friendly and very kind." "Zahi has done an incredible amount of good for Egypt and for the monuments and for raising appreciation in Egypt of what they have," VanRensselaer told LiveScience. Future of fieldwork VanRensselaer was in Luxor, Egypt when the protests began. He caught a flight to Cairo on Jan. 28 and spent the night in the crowded Cairo airport, waiting for a flight out of the country. "Sometime over the night they had shut off the Internet and cell phones so we didn't know what was going on," VanRensselaer said. When the phones came back on the next morning, he called his wife in Maryland – at 3:00 a.m. Eastern time. "She said it was the one time a 3:00 a.m. phone call was very welcome," he said. The entire Johns Hopkins team evacuated Egypt within a matter of days after VanRensselaer left. A team of University of California, Los Angeles archaeologists also left the country. Foreign researchers with field seasons scheduled for the future are now watching and waiting. "We need to see how things settle out," said Stephen Davis, a professor of religious studies at Yale University who directs two ongoing digs at early Christian monastic sites in Egypt. Davis' field season is scheduled to start May 1, he told LiveScience, but he's "fully prepared" to adjust if his field season is delayed or cancelled. VanRensselaer said he has "complete faith" that the new Egyptian government will continue to allow foreign teams to work in the country. Yale's Davis isn't sure if the SCA will recover from the upheaval in time for his spring field season, but he's adopted a wait-and-see attitude about the possibility. "I think to try to push for these answers too early is not the right approach," Davis said. "There's a lot of things happening that are bigger than my dig right now." You can follow LiveScience Senior Writer Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas. Image Gallery: Amazing Egyptian Discoveries The Seven Ancient Wonders of the World CSI: Egypt Read more at www.livescience.com

 

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U.S.C.C.B. on Climate Change

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U.S.C.C.B. on Climate Change

Kevin Clarke

The U.S.C.C.B. has issued an update on its climate change policy. In the interest of reducing my carbon footprint, I'll link to a digital copy here. Please read it online! And don't forget to feed the gerbils that I presume are powering your computer. Mine are all tuckered out so this will be the last post today from moi.

The U.S.C.C.B. position:

Pope Benedict XVI has continually emphasized the moral dimensions of climate change and our responsibility to care for creation. In his World Day of Peace Message, our Holy Father declares there is an urgent moral need for solidarity with creation and those affected by climate change. The pope insists, “To protect the environment, and to safeguard natural resources and the climate, there is a need to act in accordance with clearly-defined rules ... while at the same time taking into due account the solidarity we owe to those living in the poorer areas of our world and to future generations” (no. 7).

The work of the Bishop’s Conference is guided by the leadership of Pope Benedict XVI and the bishops’ statement, Global Climate Change: A Plea for Dialogue, Prudence and the Common Good. Our efforts promote prudent action in a very polarized debate. The bishops’ primary concern within the current public debate is to place the needs of the poor and vulnerable at the center of climate legislation. Poor people cannot be made to bear an undue burden of the impacts of climate change or the global adjustments needed to address it.

The bishops and other leaders of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment outlined in a letter to Congress broad agreement on four key principles:

•        The principle of prudence requires us to act to protect the common good by addressing climate change.

•        The consequences of climate change will be borne by the world’s most vulnerable people and inaction will only worsen their suffering.

•        Policies addressing global climate change should enhance rather than diminish the economic situation of people in poverty.

•        Policies should help vulnerable populations here and abroad adapt to climate impacts and actively participate in these efforts.

The USCCB supports strong leadership by the United States and policies that protect poor and vulnerable people, at home and abroad, from 1) bearing the most severe impacts of climate change and from 2) the human and economic costs associated with legislation to respond to climate change. Read more at www.americamagazine.org

 

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INQUISITION: Catholic Priest Father Thomas Euteneuer Calls FOX News' Sean Hannity A Heratic

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The devil made him ... never mind

Kevin Clarke

Over at Politics Daily, Dave Gibson tries to unravel, with as straight a face as he can manage, the sorry tale of Father Thomas Euteneuer, the charismatic leader of Human Life International whose fall from grace has been rapid and spectacular. Father Tom's side gig as roving exorcist apparently got the better of him. When he admitted as much, a good-sized web war erupted between those who are pretty much done with him and those willing to overlook a lapse or two (or more? We may know soon.) It didn't help much that Father Tom devoted much of his energy to pretty hard-knuckled handling of any he deemed insufficiently faithful, including Gibson, a good friend to this house and, most memorably, Sean Hannity. Really.

See more at www.americamagazine.org

 

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Madoff Calls Banks ‘Complicit’ in Ponzi Scheme

Max Read — The New York Times interviewed a "noticeably" thinner Bernie Madoff in prison and, wouldn't you know it, he said that "unidentified banks and hedge funds were somehow 'complicit' in his elaborate fraud," and also this:

"They had to know," Mr. Madoff said. "But the attitude was sort of, ‘If you're doing something wrong, we don't want to know.'"

The banks, of course, deny it: To date, none of the major banks or hedge funds that did business with Mr. Madoff have been accused by federal prosecutors of knowingly investing in his Ponzi scheme. However, Mr. Picard in civil lawsuits has asserted that executives at some banks expressed suspicions for years, yet continued to do business with Mr. Madoff and steer their clients' money into his hands. All the financial entities facing civil lawsuits by Madoff victims and Mr. Picard have denied they had any knowledge of the fraud. Madoff's interlocutor, Diana Henriques (who's writing a book about Madoff for the Times' vanity press) sounds vaguely unconvinced by the guy's accusations, maybe because she (or her paper) doesn't want to come right out and say it, but, come on, duh, right? I mean, how could they not have known? Sure, Madoff is the guilty one; he has no one to blame but himself; etc., but, really, any investment banker or hedge fund manager who was looking at his returns and didn't suspect something should probably not be in the business of dealing with large sums of money! Though, come to think of it, one thing the past five years have made clear is that very few investment bankers and hedge fund managers should be in the business of dealing with large sums of money, so maybe they actually could not spot a Ponzi scheme. [NYT; image via AP] Read more at gawker.com

 

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Political Unrest Spreads to Libya

Jeff Neumann — Libya's Brother Leader Muammar Qaddafi got a taste of the region-wide popular uprisings Tuesday night, after the government there arrested a prominent human rights activist setting off protests in the country's second-largest city, Benghazi. The BBC reports that around 2,000 people took to the streets and threw rocks and molotov cocktails at police, who responded with rubber bullets, teargas and water cannon. "Last night was a bad night," one resident told Reuters.

The government today organized a pro-Qaddafi rally in Tripoli, which was also used as an opportunity to attack Al Jazeera. Qaddafi is scheduled to make an appearance today at the opening of a new soccer stadium, and the BBC reports that Qaddafi has said he might even join the anti-government protests tomorrow. That's one way to co-opt a growing movement!

Smaller protests took place in several Libyan towns during the revolt in Tunisia, but they never managed to materialize into larger, more organized protests. More anti-government demonstrations are planned for tomorrow.

[Image via Getty] Read more at gawker.com

 

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Borders Is Bankrupt. Use Your Gift Cards Now!

Hamilton Nolan — As expected, second-tier book chain Borders filed for bankruptcy today, after a last-ditch effort at a lifesaving loan failed. The company now says it will be closing 30% of its stores—nearly 200 locations—over the next several weeks. But...but what about my gift card? On its website Wednesday, Borders told customers that it will continue business operations "as normal." All reward programs and gift cards will be honored, the company says. Sure, sure. Excuse me, I'm just going to sprint to Borders as fast as possible and use my gift card on anything with cash value that I might be able to sell on Craigslist. BRB. [Photo: AP] Read more at gawker.com

 

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Texas Refuses to Compensate Man Wrongly Imprisoned for 18 Years

Richard Lawson — The good news is that Anthony Graves was released from prison back in October after serving eighteen years on death row for a murder that prosecutors now say he had nothing to do with. Charges dropped, man freed, name cleared. Good things! The bad news is that Graves is now rightly seeking some financial compensation for the nearly two decades he spent in the Texas hoosegow, but the state comptroller's office is telling him and his lawyers no, because of a technicality.

From the Houston Chronicle:

After capital murder charges against Anthony Graves were dropped and prosecutors declared him innocent, his attorneys realized that state law required two crucial words to make him eligible for compensation for his 18 years of wrongful imprisonment: "actual innocence."

The October order dropping the charges lacked those words. Graves' attorneys discovered that only Burleson County District Attorney Bill Parham could ask the judge to insert them. The law gave him 15 days to do it.

But Parham, who had vociferously proclaimed Graves' innocence, refused to return phone calls from Graves attorney Jimmy Phillips Jr. "Once they put the two magic words in there, that would have solved the problem," Phillips said.

The 15 days lapsed. Without the words "actual innocence," the Texas comptroller's office last week refused to qualify Graves for $80,000 compensation for each year of wrongful imprisonment.

A conspiracy-minded person might theorize that the district attorney wanted to get this guy out of the clink, but, in order to get permission to do so from on high, had to promise that he'd make sure the state wouldn't have to cough up any money after the fact. That's what a nut would think, anyway.

[via Think Progress; photo via AP] Read more at gawker.com

 

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Now You Can Sue Stores for Asking for Your ZIP Code

Hamilton Nolan — Do you know how sometimes you go to buy a pack of gum or some spoons or a pack of washcloths and the person at the register demands that you tell them your ZIP code, in order to be granted the right to hand over money for your purchase? And you're like "Buh? That is so exploitative. Well whatever, I really need these spoons." Yes, well, last week that practice was ruled illegal by the Supreme Court of California. And already, "More than a dozen new lawsuits have been filed against major chains that do business in California, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Bed Bath & Beyond Inc., Crate & Barrel and Victoria's Secret" over their ZIP Code-asking ways.

I hope they lose so bad. [LAT, photo via AP] Read more at gawker.com

 

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