The Other McCain

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Faisal Mohammad: Authorities Say Stabbings at UC-Merced Not Terrorism

Posted on | November 6, 2015 | 78 Comments

The knife-wielding student who stabbed four people Wednesday before being shot by police at the University of California-Merced was not acting on a political motive, officials say. Faisal Mohammad, 18, was pursuing a personal vendetta against fellow students who had excluded him from a study group, according to authorities:

The California student who went on a stabbing rampage before being shot dead by police had planned to kill a police officer, steal a gun and shoot the classmates who had kicked him out of a study group.
Faisal Mohammad, 18, a freshman who majored in computer science and engineering at the University of California, Merced, stabbed four people on Wednesday.
But the teenager, of Santa Clara, California, ‘had far greater intentions to do damage’, Merced County Sheriff Vern Warnke said.
According to a two-page manifesto found stuffed in his pocket during an autopsy on Thursday, Mohammad had a detailed plan of revenge for the students who had expelled him from their group.
Mohammad had been carrying two plastic baggies of highly flammable petroleum jelly, ziptie handcuffs, night vision goggles, duct tape and a hammer in his backpack when he was shot in the back by officers.
He had planned to hold students hostage by using the plastic ties to bind their hands to their desks during class on Wednesday morning.
hen, he planned to call police with a fake distress call, ambush the responding officers and take their guns.
He intended to squirt the petroleum jelly on the floor to create a slippery surface for anyone entering the classroom.
But his attack on the class was foiled almost immediately and the four people he stabbed with a hunting knife — two students, a staff member and a building contractor — are all expected to recover.
Sheriff Warnke said the document written by Mohammad discussed his expulsion from the study group and listed the students he sought to harm as well as other violent musings.
Warnke added that although Mohammad made several references to ‘Allah’, he does not believe the attack was connected to religion or terrorism.
Earlier on Thursday, UC Merced Chancellor Dorothy Leland said the attacks were motivated by ‘personal animosities’ and a ‘vendetta’, not a political agenda. . . .
The student, described as ‘anti-social’ by his roommate, was ‘having fun’, one victim said, as he slashed the first student in the throat inside a classroom.
When construction worker Byron Price, 31, heard the commotion and intervened, he was stabbed in his left side by Mohammad as he tried to stop the attack.
‘He had a smile on his face, he was having fun — which is more what bothers me,’ Price told CBSFresno.
Sheriff Vern Warnke said that Price’s entrance into the classroom likely prevented the death of the first victim who was attacked.

Despite official statements that Mohammad’s attack was motivated by personal grievances, several commentators — including Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer — noted the resemblance between the UC-Merced violence and a recent series of knife attacks by Palestinian terrorists against Jews in Israel:

The Twitter account on which the attack was praised appears to be one of thousands that regularly reference ISIS, according to Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium (TRAC), which translated the message. Veryan Khan, of TRAC, which monitors ISIS and other groups on social media, said ISIS mounted a call for stabbings on Oct. 18, with the release 19 videos, but could not say what motivated Wednesday’s attack.
“Over the past three days, the Islamic State has released nineteen videos encouraging Palestinians stabbing attacks on Israel,” Khan said. “The media campaign coincides with a wave of renewed violence between Israel and Palestine, after a wave of seemingly lone wolf attacks by Palestinians targeting Israelis.”

Determining the motive of a “lone wolf” terrorist could be difficult. Even if Mohammad himself declared his actions to be a matter of personal revenge, it may be that his antisocial attitude — the moody loner fantasizing about violent reprisals against those he felt had wronged him — could reflect the cultural alienation of a young Muslim man unable to adapt to secular Western society. Speculation about such factors, which liberals would condemn as “Islamophobia” when regarding Muslim criminals, is commonplace when violence is committed by persons whose background and choice of targets could be interpreted as suggesting a “right-wing” political motivation. If the UC-Merced attack had been perpetrated by a white Christian male who praised God in his “manifesto,” liberals would be quick to claim that this was right-wing violence inspired by talk radio, Fox News or Republican politicians.

The difference between (a) legitimately trying to understand the motives of attackers, and (b) trying to score political points for partisan advantage, is one we should always keep in mind when we see how the liberal media pick and choose which violent incidents to give saturation coverage, and how that coverage presents the “moral of the story.”

Too many journalists view the news as a series of opportunities to indulge in didacticism, intended to teach the news consumer liberal political lessons. This attitude means that events which don’t fit the liberal narrative are treated as “local news” of no national significance, whereas events that lend themselves to a liberal interpretation are highlighted, given in-depth coverage and made a focus of commentary by “experts” and pundits. Conservative criticism of media bias should be aimed at exposing to public scrutiny the falsehoods and distortions created by the political prejudices that prevail in the news industry.

People must have access to every fact in order to be able to form accurate judgments, and media bias tends to deprive people of facts that would lead people to question the liberal worldview. Once people realize that the media are attempting to deceive them, and that this attempted deception has political motives — e.g., to enhance the electoral success of the Democrat Party — then they begin to view media skeptically, to question the accuracy of what is reported, to seek out facts that are overlooked by the liberal media. There is a difference between skepticism and paranoia, of course, but once we realize that the partisan tilt in America’s newsrooms favors Democrat over Republicans by a factor of at least 4-to-1, there is never thereafter a moment when we can entirely trust the media to tell us the whole truth.

Rush Limbaugh: The Conservative-Media
Revolution Has Forced the Liberal Media
to Abandon Any Pretense of Objectivity

Limbaugh’s point is that in the past 30 years, under pressure from conservative critics, allegedly “objective” journalists have been unable to maintain their pretense of neutrality. The biased reporters, editors and producers at major news organizations like NBC, ABC, the Associated Press and the New York Times are no longer able to imagine that they are doing anything else than performing as cheerleaders for the Democrat Party. They cannot pretend to be anything other than partisan propagandists and, knowing that their readers and viewers are aware of their dishonesty, these journalists must either drop the mask of “objectivity” or else lose whatever self-respect they ever had.





 

Category: Education, Islam, Media Bias, Terrorism

Comments

78 Responses to “Faisal Mohammad: Authorities Say Stabbings at UC-Merced Not Terrorism”

  1. NeoWayland
    November 9th, 2015 @ 1:13 pm

    Are you saying I don’t take gun ownership seriously?

    Are you saying I don’t take gun ownership personally?

    Just in case you’re too blind to notice, I’m defending gun ownership even as I despise guns.

    You can’t get much more serious or personal than that.

  2. KAI!
    November 9th, 2015 @ 1:13 pm

    Anybody can collect radioactive material from microwaves and dust brushes to make a dirty atomic bomb. SO YES! If I was evil and spent a few thousand dollars collecting radioactive material and ground it into a find dust and exploded it… The answer is for a few thousand dollars a terrorist could build an radioactive bomb that would kill thousand from cancer.
    Worse yet, a terrorist could just spread that dust in the air for years and kill millions.
    So yes!

  3. NeoWayland
    November 9th, 2015 @ 1:19 pm

    Radioactive material in microwaves? Radioactive materials in dust?

    Assuming you could find radioactive material (you have just shown that you have NO IDEA where to look), by the time you processed and refined the materials (cost again), you would have killed yourself.

    Just because you can buy depleted uranium from Amazon doesn’t mean it can be made into a dirty bomb.

  4. KAI!
    November 9th, 2015 @ 1:19 pm

    I own guns and support massive gun control!
    I would say, I have far more experience than you do!
    I’ve had handguns in my face 5 times and only once was the person not white. The non white guy was a cop responding to my 911 call from a robbery!
    I have far more experience and I own many more guns than you do!
    I NEVER take my guns into public! That would invite getting shot!
    I call 911 about 6 times a year! Do you report crimes?
    Ben Carson does not!

  5. NeoWayland
    November 9th, 2015 @ 1:21 pm

    All that means is that you don’t trust yourself with a gun in public.

  6. KAI!
    November 9th, 2015 @ 1:22 pm

    You moron! A static dust brush for film is made with deadly radioactive plutonium!
    YOU ARE A MORON!

  7. KAI!
    November 9th, 2015 @ 1:26 pm

    Guns don’t belong in public outside of a war zone. If a person is under a specific threat of death that is real, I support my local sherifs to give them a concealed carry and they do!
    Real men don’t bring guns to the grocery store or into a restaurant. You wouldn’t like a bunch of Latinos entering your favorite restaurant with AR-15s and AK-47s would you?

  8. NeoWayland
    November 9th, 2015 @ 1:26 pm

    There’s a reason why I said “processed and refined.”

    Frankly, anyone who thinks that there are radioactive materials in a microwave has just about enough technical knowledge to endanger themselves.

  9. KAI!
    November 9th, 2015 @ 1:28 pm

    DON’T BRING YOUR GUNS TO TOWN! If I shot a man dead in my yard for having a gun on his waist it’s my word on my property against his dead corpse!

  10. NeoWayland
    November 9th, 2015 @ 1:28 pm

    Guns don’t belong in public outside of a war zone.

    Your opinion, not the law.

  11. KAI!
    November 9th, 2015 @ 1:28 pm

    I single molecule of polonium in your lungs or bloodstream will kill you from cancer.

  12. KAI!
    November 9th, 2015 @ 1:30 pm

    It is the law in most places and every business that I ask has banned open carry in their stores!

  13. NeoWayland
    November 9th, 2015 @ 1:31 pm

    If you shot someone for having a gun on their waist, you’ve just murdered them.

    Last time I checked, you have to hold a gun to shoot it.

    You are going out of your way to prove that you can’t be trusted, with or without a gun.

  14. KAI!
    November 9th, 2015 @ 1:32 pm

    In florida a person can shoot to kill at any perceived threat. Guns are threatening, therefore a person can shoot to kill the things that their mind fears.
    Stand your ground in Florida means you can shoot at anything that is scary to you, including Geroge Zim with a gun…
    NICE!

  15. KAI!
    November 9th, 2015 @ 1:33 pm

    Not murder. Bringing a gun onto private property is a reasonable threat. I will shoot to kill right through the eyes if I don’t see a badge!

  16. KAI!
    November 9th, 2015 @ 1:35 pm

    I don’t have to wait for them to point a gun at me, If they brought a gun onto my private property I can assume that they are there to commit a crime!
    What kind of moron would take their gun onto private property and near a persons house unless they wanted to be shot dead?

  17. NeoWayland
    November 9th, 2015 @ 1:36 pm

    One person, maybe.

    You need a sizable concentration for a weapon.

    And that goes back to “processed and refined.”

  18. KAI!
    November 9th, 2015 @ 1:38 pm

    8 yeas ago some hunters came to my house uninvited, one of them had broken his arm in a fall. I asked them, “where are your guns?”. They told me they left them at my gate on the road. I sprang to action and got them to the hospital, guns and all. There was never a threat to my family.

  19. NeoWayland
    November 9th, 2015 @ 1:39 pm

    You can’t assume that they are there to commit a crime.

    And neither would the police or courts.

    It’s not a crime to carry.

    ETA: Pardon, I should have said it’s not a crime in all states to carry.

  20. KAI!
    November 9th, 2015 @ 1:39 pm

    You’re an idiot! NO MORE FOOD FOR YOUR BROKEN BRAIN!
    I PROVED YOU WRONG!

  21. KAI!
    November 9th, 2015 @ 1:40 pm

    It is the ULTIMATE trespass on an Americans private property. You don’t have to wait for a gangster to start shooting when they walk in to your driveway with guns!
    Ask a COP!

  22. NeoWayland
    November 9th, 2015 @ 1:45 pm

    My brother served as a Marine. He knows ways to kill you without a gun.

    Is he a threat? Would you kill him if he stepped foot on your property?

    Guns aren’t the threat.

    You certainly want to be, but you aren’t convincing me.

  23. NeoWayland
    November 9th, 2015 @ 1:46 pm

    It’s not the law in my state.

    And I can’t help but notice that the cities with the strictest gun control laws have some of the highest homicide rates.

  24. NeoWayland
    November 9th, 2015 @ 1:48 pm

    I could ask those cops from Ruby Ridge,…

  25. NeoWayland
    November 9th, 2015 @ 1:50 pm

    But you said that you would murder someone for nothing more than wearing a holstered gun.

    Of course you wouldn’t do that to someone carrying a gun Officially®, would you?

  26. NeoWayland
    November 9th, 2015 @ 1:53 pm

    No, you didn’t.

    All you’re doing is showing your appalling ignorance when it comes to radiation.

    Fortunately, you’re no real danger except maybe to yourself.

  27. theoldsargesays
    November 9th, 2015 @ 10:47 pm

    We’re still stuck on the fact that your original supposition was entirely wrong or entirely a bold-faced lie.
    Oh and….
    Didn’t I tell you to wipe your chin?
    Or have you been sucking more pole?

  28. KAI!
    November 10th, 2015 @ 9:04 am

    I have facts. What do you have?