**And to think the original saltines tried to take s***es with them and duplicate the ninstitution that it was in America-but then RightWingNuts tell me the civil war was not about s***ery...and they wonder why I tell them what of mine they are free to kiss**

By Ron Soodalter
May 8, 2015 7:00 amMay 8, 2015 7:00 am 16Comments

ntributor to America’s Civil War magazine, and has written several features for Civil War Times and Military History.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter, and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

Two extremes collided at anti-Islam gathering



BY JONATHAN KAIMAN, TINA SUSMAN AND DAVID ZUCCHINO
GARLAND, Texas — Pamela Geller is a 56-year-old Jewish arch-conservative from New York, a vehement critic of radical Islam who organized a provocative $10,000 cartoon contest in this placid Dallas suburb designed to caricature the prophet Muhammad.
Elton Simpson was a 30-year-old aspiring Islamic militant from Phoenix who fantasized to an FBI informant about “doing the martyrdom operations” in Somalia and was convicted in 2010 of lying to the FBI about his plans to travel to the volatile eastern African nation.
Their lives intersected Sunday in this small town in north-central Texas, an unlikely venue for a violent collision of cultures. After a Sunday evening shootout outside the contest site between police and Simpson and another man firing assault rifles, both gunmen lay dead in the street. And Geller quickly posted a defiant blog: “This is a war on free speech. ... Are we going to surrender to these monsters?”
The Texas showdown was America’s Charlie Hebdo moment, erupting just four months after gunmen shot and k**led 12 people at the Paris offices of the satirical newspaper that had published cartoons of the prophet considered blasphemous by many Muslims. The Garland attack refocused public attention on the fine line between free speech and h**e speech in the ideological struggle between radical Islam and the West.
The shooting unfolded just before 7 p.m. Sunday outside the Curtis Culwell Center, a public school building where about 200 people had just heard an impassioned anti-Islamic speech — “The less Islam, the better!” — by Geert Wilders, a right-wing Dutch politician. Wilders said the venue was significant: It was chosen as a defiant response to an American Muslim group that had held a “Stand With the Prophet Against Terror and H**e” conference in January in the same building. Security had been intense, with officers from local police, SWAT teams, a bomb squad and school security, along with FBI and other federal agents waiting for trouble, and it came: The two men pulled up and opened fire but were quickly shot and k**led by a Garland police officer firing his service handgun.
“He did what he was trained to do and did a very good job,” Garland police spokesman Joe Harn said. “He probably saved lives.”
Harn said of the gunmen, “Obviously, they were there to shoot people.” He said they wore some form of body armor, and police found ammunition — but no explosives — in their car.
In Phoenix on Monday, police searched Simpson’s home. A federal law enforcement source said Nadir Soofi, 34, identified as the second gunman, was Simpson’s roommate.
The cartoon contest was organized by Geller as a rallying point for cartoonists and conservatives united in their belief that verbal attacks on radical Islam are a form of free speech.
Geller has posted bus ads and billboards condemning Islam. In 2010, the same year the FBI was investigating Simpson’s vows to fight “kafirs,” or nonbelievers, Geller cofounded American Freedom Defense Initiative, also known as Stop Islamization of America. The organization, considered a h**e group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, hosted the Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon contest, offering $10,000 for the best cartoon of the prophet.
“We know the risks,” Geller wrote in a blog promoting the event. “This event will require massive security.”
Police said the gunmen drove a sedan up to a police car blocking access to the conference, jumped out and opened fire with assault rifles. A school security guard was wounded in the leg.
A tweet from an account called “Shariah Is Light” was posted under the hashtag #texasaattack at 6:35 p.m. Sunday, about 15 minutes before the shootout. It appeared to predict an impending attack:
“The bro with me and myself have given bay’ah [oath of allegiance] to Amirul Mu’mineen [a caliph**e leader, possibly Abu Bakr Baghdadi, leader of Islamic State]. May Allah accept us as mujahideen [holy warriors]. Make dua [a prayer of supplication].”
The avatar on the Twitter account featured the image of Anwar Awlaki, an American Islamic militant aligned with Al Qaeda who was k**led in an American drone strike in Yemen in 2011. It is not clear whether Simpson or Soofi posted the tweet.