BECAUSE THE WORLD IS A SCARY PLACE
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This is how the AFP is reporting on Robert Bowers’ horrific crime in Squirrel Hill:
Gunman Robert Bowers only needed 20 minutes to sow terror at the Tree of Life synagogue in the US city of Pittsburgh, where congregants had gathered peacefully for Shabbat services marking a day of rest.
Shortly before 10 am (1400 GMT) the 46-year-old Bowers – who had penned virulent anti-Semitic messages on social networks – burst into the synagogue armed with an assault rifle and three handguns.
Stephen Weiss, a member of the congregation who was inside the building, told the Tribune-Review newspaper he heard dozens of shots coming from the front lobby.
“We had services going on in the chapel when we heard a loud noise in the lobby area,” he said. “I recognized it as gunshots.”
Like any other Saturday, people from three different congregations were scattered throughout rooms in the building, located in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood that is historically the heart of Jewish life in greater Pittsburgh.
Bowers entered a room where a baby-naming ceremony was taking place. He rained bullets, killing 11 people, all of them adults.
As he attempted to leave the synagogue, he found himself face-to-face with a uniformed officer calling for reinforcement.
He barricaded himself on the building’s third floor and was taken into custody after a shootout with police.
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On Gab, an Extremist-Friendly Site, Pittsburgh Shooting Suspect Aired His Hatred in Full:
THIS IS DISGUSTING
Early Saturday, moments before the police say he barged into a Pittsburgh synagogue and opened fire, Robert D. Bowers’s anti-Semitic rage finally boiled over and he posted one last message online.
But he didn’t turn to Facebook or Twitter. Instead, the man accused of killing at least 11 people went to Gab, a two-year-old social network that bills itself as a “free speech” alternative to those platforms, and that has become a haven for white nationalists, neo-Nazis and other extremists. There, he posted a signoff to his followers.
“I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered,” Mr. Bowers wrote. “Screw your optics, I’m going in.”
The shooting in Pittsburgh came on the heels of another violent episode involving social media extremism. Cesar Sayoc Jr., the suspect in the pipe bomb mailing campaign, had a history of posting hateful and violent messages on Facebook and Twitter that were laced with misinformation and conspiracy theories.
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‘Star Trek’ animated comedy series ordered from ‘Rick and Morty’ writer:
The new project will bring to mind Fox’s The Orville, a dramedy from Family Guy‘s Seth MacFarlane which is clearly inspired by Trek.
The new show is the latest Trek project by the CBS All Access streaming service, which also has Star Trek: Discovery, which returns for its second season in January, and a new show with Patrick Stewart reprising his TNG character Jean-Luc Picard in the works.
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