• Pinboard Links,  The Morning Flap

    The Morning Flap: May 9, 2012

    The Morning Flap: These are my links for May 7th through May 9th:

    • Wave of violence in Germany over party’s use of anti-Muslim cartoons– GERMANY is beginning to regret its decision to allow a far-right political party to display anti-Muslim cartoons near mosques as part of an electioneering campaign.Spikes in violence at recent gatherings – including a major riot on Saturday that left two police officers seriously injured with stab wounds – have triggered fears of more bloodshed.Courts in Germany took the view that cartoon images of the Prophet Mohammed and Allah – both outlawed under Islam – were acceptable in a country where freedom of expression is enshrined in the constitution. But with resistance growing to the tactics of the radical Pro NRW party, Germany is looking to defuse tensions.More than 100 people were arrested at the protest in Bonn on Saturday where the police officers were stabbed in the legs; a further 27 officers were injured. One man has been charged with trying to incite the deaths of three policemen among the crowd of 600 Salafist Muslim demonstrators outside the King Fahd Academy in Bonn.The far-right Pro NRW party has said it intends to send activists to 25 mosques in the run-up to the state election in North Rhine-Westphalia on 13 May, staging protests in Cologne, Bonn, Düsseldorf, Aachen, Wuppertal and Solingen.
    • Roots of Lugar’s Defeat Began Back Home – The tea party, an unsteady movement that was beginning to resemble a wayward ship in 2012, found its north star in Indiana on Tuesday night.
      State Treasurer Richard Mourdock defeated six-term Sen. Richard Lugar in the Republican primary, a victory owing to the incumbent’s inept campaign, the outside groups that lashed him on the air, and a story about his out-of-state residency that would not go away. But well before those issues got a foothold, a grassroots-driven, local movement to unseat Lugar was well under way.
      Sixteen months ago, a collection of tea party organizers met in the city of Tipton. Their goal was to address flaws in the movement that were exposed in 2010, when infighting and competing agendas largely driven by national groups and consultants hindered its ability to make lasting gains. What resulted was “Hoosiers for a Conservative Senate,” a network of 60 tea party groups dedicated to retiring Lugar.
      “We didn’t have the unity [in 2010]. Once we built the foundation of unity, we went out and educated people about Lugar’s voting record,” said Monica Boyer, one of the group’s cofounders.
      The group endorsed Mourdock after a September straw poll showed that he was the preferred choice of conservative activists. National groups like the Tea Party Express that in 2010 were responsible for the rise of Christine O’Donnell in Delaware and Joe Miller in Alaska had yet to enter fray in a major way. The national group FreedomWorks had met with Boyer’s organization, but it didn’t jump in with full force until Mourdock emerged as the consensus candidate.
    • Elizabeth Warren Ancestor Rounded Up Cherokees For Trail of Tears
    • Will gay marriage haunt Obama in November?– Gay marriage is in the news — because Vice President Joe Biden put it there. He let the genie out of the bottle and got ahead of his boss on an issue the president has been trying to straddle for the last year and a half.President Obama’s coalition — minority voters and young voters — have very different views about gay marriage, evidenced in 2008 in California, when young voters came out to oppose an amendment that would ban gay marriage, while African Americans supported it.And then there’s the money, according to the Washington Post, one in six bundlers — the people who raise the big bucks for the Obama campaign — is gay. They are still raising money for a man who continues to twist himself into a pretzel over gay marriage, and whose White House still can’t figure out how to message it. Why? Because they believe wholeheartedly that he actually supports gay marriage, and if re-elected he will come out in full support of it and flip his position.
    • Christie won’t say whether he’ll seek re-election
    • Why Dick Lugar lost
    • Lugar unloads on ‘unrelenting’ partisanship
    • Carville: Wake up Democrats; you could lose
    • Obama ‘disappointed’ by North Carolina same-sex marriage ban– President Obama’s campaign said he was “disappointed” that North Carolina voters approved a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in the state.”The President has long opposed divisive and discriminatory efforts to deny rights and benefits to same sex couples,” Obama North Carolina campaign spokesman Cameron French said, in a Tuesday statement on the vote over Amendment 1.
    • Lugar loss has lessons for Republicans, Democrats
    • Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » Day By Day May 7 & 8, 2012 – Base Voters – Day By Day May 7 & 8, 2012 – Base Voters
    • Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-05-08 – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-05-08
    • Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » Day By Day May 6, 2012 – Phat Future – Day By Day May 6, 2012 – Phat Future
    • Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » President 2012 Poll Watch: Obama and Romney in a Dead Heat – President 2012 Poll Watch: Obama and Romney in a Dead Heat
    • Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » President 2012 Poll Watch: Race Close in 12 Swing States – President 2012 Poll Watch: Race Close in 12 Swing States
    • Capitol Alert: Tobacco firms chip in another $15 million against Prop 29 – RT @CapitolAlert: Tobacco firms chip in another $15 million against Prop 29
    • Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » The Morning Flap: May 7, 2012 – The Morning Flap: May 7, 2012
  • Jyllands-Posten,  Kurt Westergaard,  Muhammad Caricatures

    Muhammad Cartoons “Mumbai-Style” Terror Plot Foiled by Danish Intelligence

    Offices of the Jyllands-Posten Newspaper which published the Muhammed Cartoons

    An imminent terrorist plot against the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten who published the infamous Muhammed Cartoons was foiled today.

    The Danish intelligence agency said Wednesday that it had arrested five men suspected of an “imminent” terror plot against the Danish newspaper that ran controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005.

    The arrests come only a couple weeks after central Stockholm was rocked by two explosions that Swedish police have deemed a terror attack. The plots in the two Scandinavian countries are unusual because the region has been largely removed, until now, from the terrorism concerns that grip much of Western Europe.

    Three of the men linked to the plot in Denmark are Swedish citizens and one of the five men arrested was arrested in Sweden, the New York Times reported. The men are not connected with the attack in Sweden, in which only the bomber was killed.

    he men arrested in Denmark are a 44-year-old Tunisian, a 29-year-old Swede born in Lebanon, a 30-year-old Swede, and a 26-year-old Iraqi asylum seeker. The man arrested in Sweden was a 37-year-old Swede with Tunisian roots, Agence France-Presse reported. The Copenhagen Daily reports that the arrests stem from collaboration between Danish intelligence and Swedish law enforcement in a long-term surveillance operation.

    The cartoons, published in 2005 in the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, featured caricatures of the Prophet, which are considered blasphemous by most Muslims and prompted anger and violent rioting in some Muslim countries.

    The men planned to kill as many as possible in the building housing the newspaper, the Copenhagen Daily reports.

    The New York Times account of the “Mumbai-style” attack is here.

    This is not the first time the newspaper or Kurt Westergaard, the cartoonist who drew the Muhammed Cartoons.  Remember the Somali who was linked to Radical Islamic al-Shabab and al Qaeda who tried to assassinate Westergaard with an axe?

    And, the attack in Sweden may have been linked to another controversial caartoon.

     …the e-mail threat connected to the attack references Lars Vilks, a Swedish cartoonist who drew caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad as a dog in 2007 in the Swedish newspaper Tidningarnas Telegrambyra, the Monitor reported.

        “Now, your children — daughters and sisters — will die like our brothers and sisters and children die,” the recording said, according to the Times. “Our actions will speak for themselves. As long as you do not end your war against Islam and the insult against the prophet and your stupid support for that pig Vilks.”

    Of course, there was security in the building just as Westergaard had a “panic room” installed in his residence.

    The Jyllands-Posten building was already under high security before the arrests, said Lars Munch, the director of the newspaper’s corporate owner, on the newspaper’s Web site. He called the plot “appalling” and said the newspaper was cooperating with Danish police in their investigation.

    Prime Minister Loekke Rasmussen of Denmark told reporters that he was “shocked” by the attack.

    “Regardless of today’s event, it remains my conviction that terrorism must not lead us to change our open society and our values, especially democracy and free speech,” he said.

    And, here are the cartoons that have created this “EXCUSE” for terrorist activities.

    And, all of this for what?

    Cartoons of Muhammad


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