A reader from California emailed Gates of Vienna with this message:
| | The Baladullah site near Dunlap, CA, referenced by daddyx in his comments to the first JF Post, is near my home in the Central Sierras of CA. They received brief coverage in the “Fresno Bee” closely following 9/11, but when investigators arrived at one of the compounds, they found the camp abandoned (dim recollection here that doesn’t agree with the link below). Similar MO and rumors of money laundering and welfare scams, as I recall. Timing of the camp closure so close following 9/11 was ominous. See this Knight-Ridder story. |
The money quote from the Knight-Ridder story is: “Officials confirmed last week that the FBI is investigating connections between the community, called Baladullah, and an organization known as Jamaat Al-Fuqra, which the U.S. State Department has listed as a terrorist group operating in both Pakistan and North America.”
| | There were also killings of Indian convenience store clerks and taxi drivers at about that time. These were never solved, and the conventional wisdom was that they were racist hate crimes in mistaken retaliation for 9/11. Your research on JF suggests an alternative hate crime motive.Interesting. |
| Other local incidents here during fall and early winter of ’01 included two middle eastern gents casing the dams and hydro facilities of the SCE Big Creek Hydro complex. When sheriffs stopped them they had no i.d., (no licenses, passports, visas, etc). They said they were sight seeing. One said he was affiliated with some program at Fresno State Univ. and was just showing his friend around the neighborhood, as I recall. To best of my recollection, they were both released. I hoped at the time the authorities put tails on them, but my optimism faded with all the confusion and absolute nonsense generated by the pc approach to homeland security and the absolute folly of denying authorities the profiling tools available to them. |
| I’ve also witnessed a van load of muslims near Boulder Dam, travelling in a shiney new rental vehicle and paying for their gas with crisp twenties peeled from a roll that would choke a camel. What the hell? It’s a free country, no? OK, I’m paranoid. Baron, you’re a racist? |
| I’m paranoid. Cheers! |
| There has to be a lot of intel gathered on these groups, but I’m not optimistic that our authorities are capable of protecting us. Thanks to you for your courageous service and open sharing of your experiences, but for Christ’s sake, be careful. |
He is quite right about the killing of Indians: Jamaat ul-Fuqra has a known history of targeting Hindus. As the
SATP reported:
| | The JF is also reported to have been involved in the killing of three Indians on August 1, 1984 in a suburb of Tacoma, Washington. Besides, the JF is suspected to be involved in a series of fire bombings of Hindu and Hare Krishna temples in Seattle, Denver, Philadelphia and Kansas City. |
In the aftermath of 9/11, Sikhs were targeted by mistake as Muslims, due the turbans they customarily wear. But there’s no way to tell how many killings of Hindus are the result of the Great Jihad and not simple “hate crimes.”
15 comments:
I'm not siding with doubledribble (who is an Islamaphobophobe), but I'd like to see a little calm here.
What real evidence is there that the residents of the complex in Red House are currently committing crimes? If there is evidence, then the authorities can deal with it. I'm sure such a well-known compound is getting the appropriate scrutiny from the FBI and DHS. I'm also sure they are a hell of a lot easier to infiltrate than Al Qaeda.
What else do you want? mass arrests? for what? saying screwy things? Even violent things? hating America? sympathizing with criminals? being in a "cult"? living in a "compound"? "Stockpiling" weapons? These are all terms which are tricky to define and very, very easy to misuse.
Deporting foreigners who foment hatred is an easy call. This is not. These people have a right to be obnoxious in private, as do you and I. As soon as there is actual evidence that these individuals (not other people in compounds with the same name) have committed crimes, then they can be dealt with. In the meantime, they can be watched by those whose job it is.
Let's not go all Janet Reno here. No need to invoke the police state against a bunch of kooks, even kooks with evil hearts and bad associates.
Again, let's hope the FBI and company are doing their job. This is a job no-one should try to do for them, and they should do carefully. Acting precipitately against a group like this without evidence (I am NOT talking about investigation, but direct action) would be just plain wrong. It has nothing to do with racism or islamaphobia or profiling or PC or anything else - just the Constitition (the real one, not the "living" one).
http://www.cato.org/constitution/
Wally, that's why I say this is a tricky issue. I have no idea personally what goes on at that compound in Red House, and the people in the surrounding community might be scared of them for no reason at all, out of ignorance.
The organization has definitely committed crimes before. And two people from the Red House camp were arrested and convicted of firearms violations. John Allen Muhammad supposedly hid out there for a while.
But we can't just go in with guns a-blazing and clean them out. That's what makes it such a knotty problem.
To top it all off, as I pointed out in an earlier post, as soon as we do anything about it, no matter how justified, it will be "racism".
That's why this isn't Waco all over again, and nobody will pull a Janet Reno. They will most likely err in the opposite direction. No district/commonwealth attorney is going to put his neck on this particular block.
Also, BTW, I am NOT recommending "direct action" of any kind. Some of our commenters are intemperate.
Yup - like the Baron - "shooting from the lip" as follows:
I think it’s time to “commit a hate crime” and do something about this enemy that’s in our midst. If we allow things to continue as they are, these compounds and camps and communes will grow and spawn spinoffs and continue to amass ordnance and explosives and guns.
I think you should think about how a comment like this might be interpreted.
Personally, I think most of the real bad guys are probably in urban apartments where they can get busy and make trouble, not in rural compounds dreaming about it (and calling attention to themselves).
My anthropological learning of Sikhism was that the religion developed synthetically as an alternative to both Hinduism and Islam, by people (Guruu Nanak 1469-1539) who were caught in the crucible of the constant war between Moslems and Hindus - so Sikhs would be seen by Sunni Wahabists as apostates worse than Shi'ite and worthy of killing.
Wally, you are quite correct; you caught me out on that one.
What I should have said is something like, "It is time to alert the general public and local authorities to what is going on in our midst." That would have more temperate and appropriate.
But I don't think these rural communes are all innocent. If you read some of the articles (though, mind you, all the data are several years old), you'll see that the suspicion was that remote rural camps were used as safe houses and for firearms training.
After all, the sound of gunfire does not draw attention in Charlotte County. Although, I suppose, there are parts of Philly where no one pays attention to it either...
Wally B--
The Baron's intemperate shoot-from-the-lip quality is endearing, no?
It is interesting to hear what the locals say: that the govt does nothing, that Social Services won't investigate why none of the girl children are allowed to attend school...it's not like these people are filing their home schooling plans with the local school board. Locals are afraid of them.
Years ago, when I worked in a bldg located next to a crack house, I used to talk to the social worker who came to visit the old grandmother whose grandson had comandeered her house. The SW was with Adult Protective Services and had way more exposure to all of that than he wanted. What stayed with me was his warning that the children of these crack addicts were going to be a "lost generation" and he didn't think they'd ever be functional.
Neither he nor I could have envisioned a Pakistani imam invading the prisons and converting these lost children. They now have instant family, structure, discipline and meaning: things we all need.
Unfortunately we also have violent people who project their unresolved hatreds onto others. Infidels, for one.
So much for Johnson's War on Poverty, which set up the crack population, which in turn evolved these unintended consequences. Isn't it ironic that these people include "poverty" in their title?
Makes me long for the good old days of Farrakhan.
OTOH, I have little confidence in the current intel/national security situation. Janet Reno, indeed. If these people were Waco types, we'd probably have had another conflagration by now. That woman has a lot to answer for.
You bet - even though evil things may happen in private, we have to be very careful to avoid the urge tp abolish privacy to prevent them. Remember Janet Reno burning children to death to save them form "abuse", for which the only evidence was anecdotal (if that).
I'm not saying these rural enclaves are innocent - only that they are entitled to the presumption of innocence, just like the rest of us.
Hi Baron,
Continuing from yesterday’s thread, I guess the question is what to do with someone who is already an American citizen and is determined to be a radical islamist. If we were able to deport all non-citizen radical islamists, which we are not doing now, then I think handling the citizen islamofacists would be alot easier.
So maybe monitoring and surveillance for the citizen radical islamists and deportation for the non-citizens. Another issue is what to do if the islamofascist's country of origin does not what them back (Who can blame them?). I am leaning toward a kind of intermediate location, perhaps an island in the carribean, where they can live and have freedom of movement, but cannot get off until they can find a country to accept them. A kind of Gitmo-lite. Am developing this idea.
I know I'm just asking for trouble, but I need to respond to "A4g".
In the first place, I know the Baron wasn't actually trying to stir up a lynch mob - I've known him for almost 35 years. my objection was to intemperate language which would tend to stir up the tender-minded and overly excitable to think they should do something.
In the second place, I don't think any call to action is required. People deserve to be left alone until they commit a crime. People are creatinly not required to be neighborly or "let the press in" to be allowed to live in peace.
IMHO, a4g is conflating the terms "thought crime" and "hate crime". A hate crime is usually something which is already a crime (murder, assault) but the left wants to make an extra-special crime becuase of the state of mind of the actor. "Hate speech", non-PC attitudes and the like are "thought crimes" - actions whose "criminal" nature depends entirely on the state of mind (and conformance with approved opinion).
Which category does wanting to harass (some would even inter) all followers of an obnoxious creed, regardless of their actual actions fall into? Sounds like we're convicting THEM of thought crimes.
I am catching just a whiff of the same flavor of hysteria that often characterizes the left's attitiudes about survivalists, militias, tax resisters etc.
The republic is strong enough to stand even if people are "preparing for war" against it, as long as the rest of us are vigilant and the police do their job (and not the job they did at Waco and Ruby Ridge). The Republic might not survive the effort to stamp out all "thought criminals" - not in any recognizable form.
"We are in a fight for our principles, and our first responsibility is to live by them"
George W Bush - September 20, 2001
wally ballou--
The initial reaction to feeling threatened is likely to be somewhat less than moderate. And JF is threatening. Just because they live in a compound and don't bother the neighbors doesn't mean they're not a mortal threat. I don't think the family members of those killed by the Beltway sniper would feel so live-and-let-live about a place that gave their loved ones' killers refuge.
It's good -- a good -- to know where they are, and knowing exactly where they are is the "eternal vigilance" required of those who would have liberty.
Do I trust Homeland Security to protect me from people like that? Hell, no. Am I suggesting we raid them? Heaven forefend.
Do I think we ought to harrass them? -- well, it depends on what "harrassment" means. If taking a picture of the place and attempting to ascertain exactly where they are and how many of these places exist is harrassment, well...yeah, then harrassment is fine by me.
Living near a "compound" of Hindus is a good contrast to the one in Red House. The Hindus here invite the neighbors in, come to town meetings, mingle with the folks, and even suggest we come to their services and stay for lunch.
Big difference -- makes them un-threatening. As Frost said, fences make good neighbors. But a country with JF compounds full of those who profess to wanting to destroy us, makes for uneasiness -- and even hysteria, initially.
Intemperate talk is merely venting in the face of fear.
I have nothing to add - I am just testing my picture (stolen from Bobandray.com)
HAW! Ol' Wally -- is that a statement or a command on your hat?
Somebody is a bit behind the times. Janet Reno hasn't been out burning people in some years.
As far as places like Red House goes, someone in authority can just go visit them and see what's going on. If there's suspicious activity, the proper search warrants can be got.
Benign neglect is not always a prudent course. If there are Bad Guys in our midst, we should find out sooner rather than later.
If we go in and find nothing but happy campers, by all means, invite them over for dinner.
Either way, find out now.
MikeZ -- I mentioned in my original JF-in-VA post that, according to my local source in Red House, the Charlotte County authorities are afraid of the people in the compound.
And with good reason -- I've heard from another source (a local hunter) who says that JF people patrol the perimeter of the compound with AK-47s. This is bad-dude stuff.
So it's not so simple to deal with. It's a tough nut to crack. I don't know how it will all turn out.
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