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California Attack Has US Rethinking Strategy On Homegrown Terror (nytimes.com)
JoeyRox writes: The recent terror attack in California reflects "an evolution of the terrorist threat that Mr. Obama and federal officials have long dreaded: homegrown, self-radicalized individuals operating undetected before striking one of many soft targets that can never be fully protected in a country as sprawling as the United States." With this new type of terror risk, authorities may begin relying more heavily on citizens reporting suspicious behavior of others. The attack is also expected to renew the debate over privacy versus security for software encryption. President Obama will be addressing the nation tonight to discuss the attack.
It makes people in American look bad even though they were ISIS supporters. That makes me so happy.
This is just a rehash of the discussions that happened shortly after 9/11 (nevar forget), and the major events I recall from that was the collective assholes of the nation puckered up (really, the nation was nearly sane just prior), and the local Moroccan restaurant got firebombed (because they were obviously evil in trying to feed you).
So after the last wave of security theater, what will be different this time?
Certainly not our foreign policy. Certainly not adopting procedures from countries that do deal with terrorism successfully. Certainly not the need to throw even more money to departments that accomplish next to nothing.
But kiss even more of your civil rights goodbye.
If Obama attempts to label this as a "homegrown" terrorist, it truly conveys that he has NO grip on the situation at all, and is only looking to monopolize on the situation to further his agenda and gain political favors and to further "his legacy". Make no mistake this man was a American born citizen, however his wife was of Saudi Arabia and has just as much to do with the attack as anyone else and was done in collaboration with terrorist contacts he had external to this country. Yes there are domestic elements to it, but to go about it and treat it solely as a "domestic" incident would be stupid.
And don't forget, none of the terror incidents of late has involved strong encryption or even the hint of anybody knowing how to use it--so we have to ban strong encryption because reasons.
Or we could, you know, stop letting people into this country who have backgrounds that correspond to this kind of behavior.
This latest one was little more than a bad weekend in Chicago. Given that Chicago can't be controlled, the belief that a far more diffuse threat can be seriously challenged is the security state looking for a funding rise. Let's just be grateful that they've stayed low tech so far.
Dec 2nd, 2 baddies kill 14 people in CA = CNN says "assault weapons" for 12 straight hours.
Oct 3rd, An AC-130 gunship and crew of 13 rain 211 shells on a hospital in for nearly an hour killing 63 patients and international volunteer doctors = CNN barely mentioned it, and somehow failed to categorize the gunship loaded with 211 shells an "assault weapon"
Why didn't the pres address the nation over this one?
You want to know how to start combatting this? Stop all Islamic immigration, and begin the process of de-Islamizing the US. Yeah, I'm well aware that I will sound extreme to most of you but I've become convinced, looking at the history of Islam, that Islam can NEVER peacefully co-exist with other cultures. All it has ever done is attack its neighbours and it continues to do so today. It will never be tamed or reformed. It can only be stopped.
Wow, Robert Dear, Allen Lawrence Scarsella, Nathan Gustavsson, Daniel Macey, Joseph Backman, and Timothy McVeigh was all Muslim? The things one can learn on the Internet.
Here's a list of all the mass shootings in this country for this year, to date. Oh, and your understanding of history is about as uninformed as anything I have come across. By your standards, the United States must be the Great Satan given the amount of people we have killed during the wars we have been directly and indirectly involved in over the last century.
Please get back to us when you have figured out which other generalized groups to deport. Until that time most of the rest of us will continue to point out how you ARE the problem, not part of the solution.
It was Snowden who actually revealed the problem: the incestuous relationship between several successive US administrations and Saudi Arabia, which is the country that weaponized Islam and keeps the death-cult interpretation of the faith funded:
https://theintercept.com/2014/...
The KSA is the real enemy in the region. Time to get rid of it.
A good fix would be to stop immigration from certain countries.
Snowden who actually revealed the problem
That was well known, he didn't reveal anything new there.
"California Attack Has Some Random Slashdot Poster Rethinking Strategy on Homegrown Terror". There, I fixed that for you.
Not just some random poster. The title is actually from the linked NY Times article, right down to the URL. So there's some serious discussion going on, whether we like what comes out of it or not.
terrorists have very little ability as the incidents could have been far worse
You don't think there might be a reason it's harder for them to carry out attacks in the US than it is in some other countries? Really?
NY Times is not a reputable news source anymore... They have not been anything but a opinion rag for the past 5 years.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I see you missed the part about the Moroccan restaurant being firebombed. Somehow that wasn't labeled terrorism.
And so does your victim-blaming narrative fit there too?
Let's not forget that ISIL is a very, very recent development. I wonder if anyone can point to any recent events in that part of the world?
Or do you really want me to believe that for over 200 years Islamic people have had little beef with the US, but over the course of the last 30 have developed a hard-on of epic proportions.
And it was just out of nowhere, and not reactionary to US foreign policy.
Really?
As I said, just a rehash of discussions after 9/11. Thank you for playing your part.
The attack is also expected to renew the debate over privacy versus security for software encryption.
There have been no indications or reports that "software encryption" was involved in any way. So why would this have any bearing on that debate?
I give up, why would American officials import "millions" of those terrorists? Wait, wait, I know....it is because then Obama could declare martial law and be the Muslim President for Life!!! Yep, that must be it. The only thing preventing this must be the Republicans armed to the teeth. What could possibly make us safer then a bunch of Republican gun nuts running around: Are you a terrorist? Are you a terrorist? You are, eh...BLAM...sorry I had to shoot your kid, Madam, he should be in kindergarten with the rest of the 5 year-olds...goddamn terrorist spawn of Satan.
...Yeah, we need an American Stazi!
"The attack is also expected to renew the debate over privacy versus security for software encryption"
Why? Is the any evidence they used any form of communication or encryption? These attacks barely show as a rounding error in overall homicide statistics. Just catch/kill those who commit such acts, remove as many of the drives as possible (unemployment, collateral damage, injustice, etc) and move on with life. Our "solution" to terrorism of wildly throwing billions of dollars at the defense industry and forsaking our rights is like "fixing" a paper-cut on our finger by cutting off our arm.
Didn't something similar to this happen in the 1930's? Yea. Seems like there was an effort to round up.... hmm.... can't remember exactly. It involved a strange star patch though. I don't think they lined them up and shot them in the streets initiallly, it seems like it started with something else. They rounded up one group, then another, then I think the story ends with a few million people being mass killed in camps. Didthey call them "FEMA" camps back then? Not sure. I just eat Taco Bell and consume shit I don't need so I'm not really an authority on the subject. I'm certainly no student of history.
If we just put all the Muslims in Planned Parenthood clinics, then our homegrown terrorists will become the homegrown solution.
http://time.com/3934980/right-...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Without knowing the back-story, the Morrocan restaurant firebombing could've been intra-ethnic score-settling for all we know.
Muslims have had a beef with America as long as America has existed. Don't believe for a second that Muslims can't dish it out as good as they take it.
You're being disingenius about ISIL. ISIL is the same shit -- only the flies are different.
The white slave trade (where literally millions of white people were abducted into slavery by Muslims), has been whitewashed out of history. But the Muslims hate America, because America, very early on, ended the white slave trade by force.
American actions may have been counterproductive at times ("moderate" terrorists, *cough* *cough*), but Americans haven't waged war against Islam and Muslims per se; they have, however, fought dictators and extremists (just as they fought the Barbary pirates). If this upsets Muslims, then this reflects poorly on the Muslims, not Americans.
You give these people way too much credit.
"I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in."
- George S. McGovern
In this very relevant prank, some jokers put a Koran cover on a bible, then read out various passages and asked random passers-by to comment on them.
As I'm sure you can imagine, hilarity ensues
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
Learn history first, Islam did not exist 2000 years ago. It's about 1,500 years old
Mr. Brown was a strong arm thug that attempted to take a Police Officer's gun and then attacked him in the street.
Even the race baiting US Attorney General couldn't find a way to make it the officer's fault.
Aaron was just a sad, pathetic little shit that couldn't handle the consequences of his actions.
Neither of these two were "future leaders".
After 9/11 the government created DHS to supposedly prevent terror attacks from happening again. As others have discussed, this is nothing more than political theater. Billions of dollars and thousands of bumbling bureaucrats later, we are no safer now than we were then. All it has done is create delays for millions of air passengers every year.
So Obama will predictably call for more of the same. More invasion of privacy, more bureaucrats, more wasted effort. This is what government always does - when an idea doesn't work throw more money at it.
Meanwhile he will double down on more gun control. The problem is that law enforcement is almost always in a reactive role. A crime gets committed and they show up, clean up the mess, and try to find out who is responsible. In the interim, lots of people die. What he doesn't want to admit to is that is citizens are armed then these types of terror attacks would have minimal or no damage. Instead of everyone standing around watching people get shot someone will pull out a piece and shoot the shooter.
Once again, political correctness and party politics get in the way of common sense.
Have you ever read the old testament? Do you have any idea how often people like Moses and David ordered the wholesale murder of scores of people, including women and children? (One example, check out Number 31). It's awful.
And yet, neither Jews nor Christians today think this is an appropriate way to act. It is in their holy text, but it is not reflective of their beliefs.
Islam is the same way for most of the Muslims in the world. The bad parts of the Koran are no different than the bad parts of the Bible, and they are not seen as a command for how to act today.
We are not a muslim country, yet.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
"Robert Dear, Allen Lawrence Scarsella, Nathan Gustavsson, Daniel Macey, Joseph Backman, and Timothy McVeigh"
What organized group did they all belong to other than Crackpot?
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Quotation marks = "I'm quoting someone else".
URLs = "Here's where I got this info".
Submission != "Plagiarism".
You're welcome.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
yes, please, invade another country, leave it in shambles, and then let the europeans deal with a few more millions of refugees. great idea.
Certainly not adopting procedures from countries that do deal with terrorism successfully.
Generally the countries that deal with this successfully do so with a much higher level of citizen surveillance than many of us would find acceptable.
From TFA:
"With this new type of terror risk, authorities may begin relying more heavily on citizens reporting suspicious behavior of others."
And now you can report on your neighbor from your iPhone and Android phone!
https://itunes.apple.com/us/ap...
https://itunes.apple.com/us/ap...
It was said back in the 80's that the United States would become more like the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union would become more like the United States. Well that is coming to pass. Just do a web search on "United States to become more like Soviet Union".
From TFA:
"First, there was CIA director John Brennan, last seen deceiving the public about the CIA spying on Senate staffers, lamenting that privacy laws were to blame."
"Then thereâ(TM)s the question of why journalists always frame the encryption debate as a perilous balance between privacy and security. "
Franklin said it best!
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
- Benjamin Franklin
The Truth is a Virus!!!
All these "mass shootings" seem to take place in areas that have a lot of firearms related restrictions, where nobody has a gun and nobody is able to shoot back before the body count ramps up. Try this shit in a place like Montana or Wyoming and people will be returning fire before 10 seconds have passed...slaughter averted by local heroes.
It also boggles the mind that after a terrorist attack on US soil, that all anyone wants to talk about is gun control. Spin spin spin, that's all the useless media can try to do. Push their agenda on the masses.
authorities may begin relying more heavily on citizens reporting suspicious behavior of others
This is how Police States get started. We can either go the way of the Surveillance/Police State or we can take responsibility for our safety through things like Concealed Carry.
It's one or the other, not both.
Only for entertainment value.
Nobody with half a brain is taking foreign policy lectures off these clowns.
From what I can tell, the Obama plan is to double-down on the Bush43 plan which was:
1. Spy on all non-Muslims, while reducing spying on Muslims to show them we know mean no offense.
2. Inconvenience all non-Muslims at airports, sporting events, etc. while implementing special less-scrutinizing procedures for Muslims to sho that we are culturally sensitive.
3. Trample all over the Constitutional rights of non-Muslims, attacking the 1st amendment rights of speech and religion for all non-Muslims, the 2nd amendment right of self-defense, the 4th amendment rights against warrantless search and siezure, etc
4. Import even more Muslims into the country to prove we are not bigots, while NOT importing the Christians and Yazidis who are being raped and murdered by the day in the middle east.
5. Tell people to speak-up if they see anything "suspicious" (as long as it's not any of the things above) and then threaten to prosecute them for some unwritten hate speech crime if what they say could be construed as "anti-Muslim"
Our leaders are a bunch of castrated Dhimmis, bent on destroying Western Civilization. They've probably already started working on a new government tax agency to collect the Jizya for our new Imam overloards.
There WAS no Islamic terrorism in the USA before our leaders started importing huge numbers of Muslims into the country.
There is NOTHING wrong with criticizing Islam! Islam is NOT a race. Islam is a belief system people choose to adopt just like Pastafarianism, or vegitarianism.
There is NO SUCH THING as "Islamophpobia". It is NOT an irrational fear to oppose an ideology that has been lopping off the heads of people who disagree for 1400 years and is intolerant of anybody who disagrees with it. Islam is unlike all other religious or non-religious belief systems practiced by any significant portion of the human race, in that its founder, Mohammed, taught his followers to murder all those who disagree. People need to educate themselves and read the books that underpin various beliefs. No matter which books you read, do NOT ever read individual sentences/verses - always read in at least paragraph-sized chunks to get context. Islam is the ONLY major ideology that IN CONTEXT calls for people who disagree to be slaughtered. All religions are NOT equal, just as all other belief systems are NOT equal. Some systems of belief are quite simply toxic and dangerous.
What organized groups have carried out numerous attacks on US soil?
The San Bernardino folks weren't even members of anything.
Indonesia (the largest Islamic nation in the world)
Also Malaysia
I reject the notion "gun nuts" are a significant problem, other groups are doing the shootings and they are not firearms hobbyists.
The results of our sociological experiment in the inner cities speaks for itself. Paying women to breed like maggots, with "fathers" who are mere sperm donors who do not raise the child, this is the problem. Adult babies with no responsibility, morals, or respect for life and property are the problem. Leave the gun rights of us civilized people out of it.
The per capita gun ownership rate of my neighborhood is far,far above that of any inner city, but we have zero crime.
When you can't trust your neighbour not to go on a shooting rampage society has already failed. What we need to do is spend money on building up social structure. Street parties, neighbourhood parties, things that bring people together and strengthen the social structure.
Going all "report your neighbour" is going to build up the walls of distrust and lead to more problems.
The relevance is not whether ancient religious texts contain violent and xenophobic edicts, all cultures derived from barbaric times. The relevance is whether current religious people follow those edicts - not some minuscule portion, a significant percentage. This indicates whether a culture has started maturing or not.
To save others the time, the universal reaction to that little experiment was shock and rejection of the barbaric edicts, not nodding and acceptance, whether they were fooled as to the source or not. You forgot that part.
So the proposed solution is: (1) more government supervision, (2) more gun control, and (3) more encryption? This guy was being observed by the government every day because he was working for the government, the shooting took place in one of the most strictly gun controlled states in the nation, and there is no evidence he needed encryption. In addition, the shooter wasn't a "homegrown, self-radicalized individual", he was radicalized abroad by a belief system many people share and spread.
What this reflects is the utter impotence of the current administration to do anything meaningful. Obama promised a restoration of privacy, constitutionality, and a radically different foreign policy, and he has turned out as bad as Bush, if not worse.
Addressing the terror threat will require massive changes in US foreign policy, plus many years of patience for things to calm down. Getting in bed with Middle Eastern despots for oil and cleaning up the messes that European colonialism left across the globe have always been questionable to begin with, but at least there was some economic justification for it. In the 21st century, these policies are just imbecilic.
> Have you ever read the old testament?
Likely only relevant to Jews.
In case you've never been exposed to any sort of Xianity at all ever, Xians generally disavow most if not all of the Old Testament. That's why they don't keep kosher or otherwise follow the old law.
If you want to commit mass character assassination, try starting with the New Testament.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
No they were not all Christians.
McVeigh specifically said "Science is my religion".
So he was agnostic, if not atheist.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
I did not bother checking the others. One example of the group not being Christian refutes your claim.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
They claimed allegiance to ISIL, so what are you on about?
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
California is more than capable to act on it's own. Any state is. Yet any time this nonsense happens, liberals just crassly exploit it as an excuse to whine for national legislation. Let them clean their own houses first. Then and only then do they have any standing to meddle in anyone else's business.
This last shooting is a perfect example of extra gun laws that didn't do shit.
Get your own shit together first. THEN start meddling in other people's shit.
It's not time double down on your pet agenda when your pet agenda just failed.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Business is business... whaddya gonna do?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
You racist pig!
That's just it though. We have approximately 80% of the population here that is dumber than a box of rocks and will follow any inane idea and run with it. We can only bumble down the road for so long before we get smacked by a semi.
The Islamic practice of slavery has been whitewashed out of history, not just the white slave trade.
Thanks to letting the left run our schools for decades, now we have at least one generation of people that think that white Christians from Europe were running around Africa with nets capturing peaceful blacks to ship to the new world.
The generation before them is aware that most of the capturing and selling was done by other blacks, but they think it was entrepreneurship, rather than something the Muslims organized and industrialized as they spread across Africa.
Virtually no one under 50 years of age knows that the crusades were a response to 400 years of Muslim war, piracy, slavery and harassment of Christendom and Christian pilgrims in the holy lands. Hell, most of the people reading this are going to need to google "Christendom".
See that "Preview" button?
bosnia, turkey, malaysia, egypt... i'm not that well travelled, but those are the first that come to my mind.
They claimed allegiance to ISIL, so what are you on about?
Today I learned that a crackpot can claim anything and someone will take them at their word.
Funny thing is, all those evil Christians who were involved in the founding of this country voted for a Constitution that guaranteed freedom of religion. It's that document all those evil Christians supported that guarantees the freedoms of Muslims and Hindus and Atheists in this country. And it's that very guarantee of religious freedom that so infuriates the radical Muslims that dream of a world ruled under Sharia law. I'll grant that most of the Muslims in this country do not want Sharia law here because they fled the bat shit crazy motherfuckers back in their homelands that delighted in making their lives hell using that same fucked up Sharia law. The problem is that now we have a lot of the younger ones here that have no knowledge of how truly fucked Sharia law is having never lived under it that suddenly are becoming radicalized. Sadly, it seems the only solution is to kill them.
No they were not all Christians.
I would like to think that the one group we can all agree these assholes belonged to was what we call murderers. In case you missed this, ideology isn't really important to the dead.
fought dictators and extremists
Um, excuse me? America is busy installing and funding dictators and extremists... Even the famous Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was used as an asset to keep the communists out of Iran after the Shah (remember him, right?) got sick and died. And our former friends Qaddafi and Hussein kept a pretty tight lid on things for us also. And Saudi Arabia? Ooof! Paradise! American intentions in the middle east are hardly what anybody could call "honorable". It's just business.. And business is booming (so to speak), better than it ever was.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
That's right idiot. The only way to save the country is to destroy it. Take one of the basic tenets of the founding of American culture and rip it out. Maybe we could implant RFID tags in everyone as well since you like pissing all over the Constitution. As if the fucking "Patriot" Act wasn't bad enough.
You cannot so easily dismiss the husband. He could have chosen to not go that way. He could have convinced his wife. He could even have tried an intervention or the police. But in the very end he chose to go with her plan. Putting it all on her shoulder ignore that he HAD a choice. Anyway there is plenty of homegrown terrorism in the US. Up to now it was mostly anti federalism, racism, and christian religious terrorism (yes there is some even if rare , like murder of abortion doctor, and sometimes attack on gay people). So homegrown terrorism is not a new thing. It is just that homegrown islamist radicalized terrorism is a new one.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Well, that's the problem. If the polls are to be believed, he's number one. And our lady friend, who is also number one, wants to jump into full on war also. The voters aren't even working with a tenth of their brains. They're all dazzled by shiny objects.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
ISIL accepted it, so I am still not sure what you are on about.
Maybe you should read more before commenting?
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Before I point out the problem let me point out what happened the day of the San Bernardino shooting. Within 30 seconds of the shooting, there was reporting on _every_ major new station that this was a 2nd amendment problem. Within 5 minutes, they had blamed conservatives (especially those dirty Libertarians who are despised by the Government and Media) for the shooting, and claimed that encryption needed back doors for Government snooping. The lie about the Paris terrorist attack being planned over encrypted channels was repeated several dozen times.
For 4 hours I listened to the puppet media claim that Guns were the problem and that _more_ gun control was necessary, and those libertarians and conservatives were a danger to the world.
Not one time in the 4 hours was it mentioned that California has THE strongest gun regulations in the country. Chicago was not mentioned either, which is a "gun free" city and county but has an incredibly high rate of gun violence sporting over 10 shootings a day (and over 1 dead per day) in a place where guns have been banned. At least for the citizens that abide by the law.
Within an hour of the Police finding and killing the 2 shooters we had their names. We also knew that his wife was Pakistani and the interesting circumstances for them meeting. We knew that she dropped their 6month off at a relative's house, an a few hours later knew that they had homemade weapons, links to at least one Jihadist terrorist group from Facebook posts, and attempted to wipe their hard drives.
For TWO MORE DAYS Politicians and Puppet media (*NBC*, *FOX*, *ABC*, NPR, *CNN*) claimed that the problem was home grown libertarians who owned guns, and facts were ignored to support that narrative. If the word "Muslim" was mentioned it was followed up immediately with Libertarians and/or how we lack gun laws.
So you post a number as if it has special meaning, and ignore the wise words of Mark Twain. "There are three kinds of lies. Lies, damn lies, and statistics." You also ignore that the source of that number is a Reddit group! Do you also believe every post on Slashdot and Facebook, if it looks official? Why can we not find that same information from the FBI?
Well, that would be due to the fact that the number is bullshit. According to the FBI there have been 21 mass shootings this year, not 355. A longer term study performed by that same Law enforcement agency shows that the trend has been declining, not rising. The Narrative you post works because "shooting" is intentionally conflated to appeal to the emotions and make it appear that these are all San Bernardino like events.
Damage of any kind to _innocent_ people is wrong, but remember that crime is not a one way street. Crime does not stop magically when guns are banned, and if you somehow hold such a delusion you can look at the UK and Australia for both long term and short term crime trends with unarmed citizens. Banning guns does one thing. It removes people's ability to defend themselves, making them completely dependent on the Government for defense.
For the citizens to be able to defend themselves we accept a certain level of risk. The Rights of the people to defend themselves is in the Constitution very intentionally. Nobody stops _you_ from defending yourself or throwing your life to the Government. You currently can not legally demand that others do the same, and hopefully you never will.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
"Without knowing the back-story, the Morrocan restaurant firebombing could've been intra-ethnic score-settling for all we know." - you really need to know the back story before stating a contrary opinion otherwise its based on nothing or vapourware
"Muslims have had a beef with Crusading Christians for as long as Crusading Christians have existed." - fixed..
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Your "list" contains too many "Unknowns" to be useful. But, considering, how relatively few Muslims there still are in this country, the percentage of mass shootings by them is alarming. And let's not forget the non-shooting attacks — such as the two World Trade Center bombings and the Boston Marathon tragedy.
But we can already extrapolate — by looking at what is happening in France, Belgium, Germany, and Scandinavian countries, where the rulers allowed too many Muslims in at once. Our First Amendment does not allow us to discriminate based on religion, but Islam is not compatible with it (nor the rest of the Constitution) — because it does not leave Cæsar's to Cæsar, and has very clear on how the entire world must live and what the faithful must do to achieve that...
No, that would be the USSR, with Hitler's Germany being the (distant) second.
That's easy — those, who are here illegally ought to be deported at once — terrorism or not, there are too many of them arriving too quickly to be absorbed. Instead of them adopting American culture, we become more like them — and, contrary to the popular meme, diversity is not strength. It is a luxury — a burden the society has to deal with in exchange for interesting restaurants and clothing designs.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I had this whole post in my head about all the possible things that could be done, but then I realized it's pointless cause those things will never happen.
Nothing can or will ever be done until there is a desperately needed shift in US culture. Between rabid anti-intellectualism, and nationalism, and a "fear everything" approach, the situation will continue to get much worse before it gets better.
Fox News is a symptom, not a cause.
Because the number of people dying a violent death in the US is declining . Constitution-shredding anti-gun zealots try to "not let a good crisis go to waste", but the sentiment does not last long.
Because this is a new motivation. One which, considering, what other Western countries are experiencing, could dramatically reverse the blissful trend. This terror-couple were living the life, millions of people world-wide can only dream about — American citizens with steady income, a nice house in a beautiful part of the country, blessed with a newborn daughter and supportive extended family.
If they can be radicalised into a murder-suicide mission by an organization as revolting as ISIS, who can not?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
"striking one of many soft targets that can never be fully protected"
BUUUUUUUUULLSHIT. Try attacking a building like this in George or South Carolina. About a 1 in 10 adults have a gun on them there. If the stupid democrats would just allow people to own and carry concealed guns, there would always be return fire.
So now are we going to edge even closer to the dystopian future of 1984, where everyone is spying on everyone all the time? Privacy really does become a crime? If you're not a carbon-copy of everyone else, you're suspect? Or if you're too much of a carbon-copy, you're suspect? Mass paranoia? Are we going to bring back the Committee on Un-American Activities, 21st Century Edition, and have full-on, Internet-enabled, AI automated, fully mechanized witch-hunts for 'suspected terrorists'? Someone decides to start paying for one too many things with cash instead of plastic, they might be a terrorist, better black-bag them and bring them into the blacksite you keep the enemies of America at, no legal representation, no due process, just waterboarding and finger-breaking until they sign whatever confession you want them to sign?
Memo to U.S. politicians: You make our country into the above then you may as well start shouting Allahu Ackbar yourselves and declare the U.S. a Caliphate, because the same decaptitating assholes you're trying to 'protect' us from will have won once and for all.
********************
Don't like my opinion? Stuff a sock in it, I don't care.
"They have COMPLETELY forgotten that the Muslims have _ALWAYS_ hated us. They hate us because we're white and Christian. They hate us because they think they should rule the world, and because by merely existing, we stand in their way and we are holding them away from their birthright (i.e. our stuff and our territory)."
Its only a very small section of muslims, blaming all muslims is a generalisation of the worst order. Extremist Christians also want to rule everything so its 50 of one and 50 of the other for all religious megalomaniacs. Its just lucky that there are more sensible christians, different religions and those with no religion to keep the stupid ones in check, but unfortunately the sensible muslims aren't able to control their nut jobs because they'll be killed. Unfortunately because of the religious based rulers/laws in these places, people of different religions and no religion are not allowed to exist because they disrupt the closed thinking and its stops progress to a civil and equal society.
Its not surprising that virtually all the most dangerous countries are strongly religious, christian and muslim.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
He just confirmed suspicions, that's all. Still didn't matter though. All the same politicians still get reelected. They successfully vilified him.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
true, but as you've said that all muslims want to kill every white christian (what about black christians?), you are guilty of the same paranoid ideas
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Immigrants should sign a legal document stating support of the Constitution
Guess you never heard of the Oath of Allegiance. Feel free to look it up.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
probably more of a lapsed catholic as he took the last rites but he did say this a year after the bombing "In a 1996 interview, McVeigh professed belief in "a God", although he said he had "sort of lost touch with" Catholicism and "I never really picked it up, however I do maintain core beliefs."
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
You do understand, don't you, that I am only speaking of those that have become radicalized? Or maybe you think there is some other solution to someone who has decided that the evil people that don't worship Allah must be killed? Mind you I feel the same solution is appropriate for those that think Jesus told them to blow up abortion clinics.
I recently went through a college-mandated anti-plagiarism training session required of all students.
(As Zontar The Mindless points out, by example, above) A quotation with a citation is not plagiarism.
The critical point is whether you clearly distinguish your own work from that of others. (In academic writing you are also expected to give citations, so interested readers don't have to work so hard to track down the original source of the non-original material. Here, doing so is a friendly gesture, but not customarily expected.)
Note also that Slashdot is a news-related discussion board, not an academic journal. Users bring news and ideas to the attention of others. In the absence of an explicit claim of original work, it is wise to assume any given idea or information presented may not be the original work of the poster.
It's easy to assume otherwise, because so many of us are used to doing and publishing original work, occasionally do so on Slashdot, and habitually give credit, or otherwise distinguish our work from others, when we write.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Look at the number of "mass shootings" under Obama's regime compared to before he was in power. You'll see a startling increase. He's also pushing very very hard to remove guns from the hands of law-abiding citizens while at the same time militarizing the police and training the military for operating on American soil. More mass shootings are beneficial to these goals. The more fear they can drum up among the people, the more acceptance they'll get for new laws that work towards totally disarming the law-abiding American people and increasing the police state.
One might even be inclined to think that the establishment wants this so badly that they might fabricate such events, or worse, cause them.
Those that fall for this trap don't realize that the road this takes us down is far, far worse than what we currently have.
the point was to show the bible is just as horrific as the koran. they believed the horror was in the koran and not the bible and were shocked to find it was the bible.
if you have people saying these books are the "Word of God" then they cannot cherry pick what they want to believe and follow because they are going against their God and that makes them not as devout as they think they are. If the society really grew up and matured, we'd all be atheists.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
"Likely only relevant to Jews." - whys id itn the old testament then?
" Xians generally disavow most if not all of the Old Testament." - If thats the case why is the Lords prayer and ten commandments still being used by christians and its used to justify hate of gays etc if they disavow the old testament - all you are saying is they cherry pick the good(?) bits when its convenient. Why don't they re-write the old testament and rid themselves of Gods word?
"If you want to commit mass character assassination, try starting with the New Testament." - Jesus didn;t refute any of the old testament or his dads horrific ways/demands and he lied about performing miracles so he is just as bad as his dad - how did i do?
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
True, but irrelevant to the GP's post.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Did you know U.S. inteventionist foreign policy began as a reaction to Muslim acts against the U.S.? You've probably heard the opening line of the Marine Corps hymn:
From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli...
The Montezuma part makes sense. The U.S. fought several wars with Mexico, so of course the Marines would be involved. But Tripoli? That's way over in Africa. What the hell were U.S. Marines doing there?
Funny you should ask. Way back around 1800 when the U.S. was a freshly minted nation, it ran into a problem. Prior to the revolution, the U.S. was a British colony, and thus fell under the protection of the British navy. When the U.S. gained independence, it lost that protection. The Muslim Barbary States decided to take advantage of the situation and began capturing U.S. merchant ships and holding the crews for ransom. Their thinking was that since these people weren't Muslim, there was no moral problem with kidnapping them and extorting a ransom.
The fledgling U.S. was deeply in debt and had its own domestic problems. The last thing it wanted to do was to meddle with things going on in other countries. But it didn't have a navy which could deal with the situation (it had been decommissioned after the Revolutionary War to save money), and attempts to negotiate a treaty with France to protect U.S. vessels fell through. So for the first few years, the U.S. just paid the ransom. Of course paying kidnappers just encourages them, and it became open season on U.S. flagged vessels. Eventually the payments became exorbitant (over 1/6th of the Federal government's total budget), and the U.S. recommissioned a navy (the USS Constitution on display in Boston was one of these first ships). President Thomas Jefferson (y'know, the guy who wrote famous things like, "We hold these truths to be self evident - that all men are created equal") launched a military operation to Africa to end the kidnappings and free the hostages.
And that is how the U.S. Marines ended up in Tripoli. That is how the permanent U.S. Navy was born. That is how U.S. meddling with foreign nations began. Because a bunch of Muslims decided to take advantage of a fledgling non-Muslim nation which wanted little to nothing to do with what was going on in the Eastern hemisphere, by kidnapping its citizens and extorting a ransom for their safe return. So if you want to play the blame game, the first incident, the precipitating act which began over two centuries of animosity and set the U.S. on a course for meddling with countries halfway around the world, was actually committed by Muslims against the U.S.
just shows the current guns laws are shit and weak. i mean you can't even ask a customer to stop smoking in a restaurant with getting your head shot off any more. http://www.eater.com/2015/11/3...
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
ISIL accepted it, so I am still not sure what you are on about.
You are aware that terrorist organizations take responsibility for anything that they can, right? This is what they do.
Maybe you should read more before commenting?
That's particularly funny coming from a guy who believes whatever a terrorist organization tells him, don't you think?
This is a situation where Isaac's Asimov's ideas about psychohistory are worth considering. Mass murder is an aberrant, rare behavior and predicting it in an individual or even a modest population is a very questionable thing. But it's quite predictable when you're talking about very large populations.
Obama has proposed letting in 10,000 Syrian refugees -- not "millions". How will that effect your chance of being killed in a mass murder? Will that effect be significant?
Well, let's start with the base rate of mass attacks in the US. For purposes of discussion, lets call a "mass attack" as an attack on at least four people. Just in shootings, there have been 353 mass shooting in the US in 2015, and we're on day 340 of 2015. So it's fair to say that mass attacks are a daily occurrence in America. However spread across the large pool of potential victims, any individual's chance of being killed in a mass attack is very low -- so low that in practice we treat the situation as not urgent enough to do anything about.
Three hundred million is a population large enough to predict with certainty that it contains a substantial number of mass murderers. 10,000 is not. So any fear of letting in ten thousand refugees is based on an implicit belief that there is an extraordinarily high proportion of mass murderers in that population, or that the base rate of mass murders in the US is lower than it is, or both.
Let's examine the belief that a high proportion of Syrian refugees are mass murderers. Now what we know about most terrorists, at least the kind that operate across international lines, tend to be from comfortable or privileged backgrounds -- not refugees. This was the case for Santa Barbara shooter Tashfeen Malik, who like many of the 9/11 hijackers had an comfortable, uneventful upbringing and a university degree in a technical field. Refugees who commit terrorism tend to operate in-country (e.g. Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigades) against the immediate source of their displacement. So the idea that a Syrian refugees will commit acts of terror on behalf of ISIS is pretty far-fetched -- if we're talking only 10,000 of them. If we were talking a million of them it's not something we could discount, and if we were talking a hundred million it'd be a virtual certainty, as vanishingly unlikely as any individual taking this path would be.
So what this leaves us with in practical terms is the possibility that an ISIS operative may somehow sneak in amongst the refugees. This is something the Europeans definitely can't rule out. In fact two of the nine November 13 attackers were in the EU on faked Syrian refugee papers. However it's important to note three things: (1) had they not been in the EU their places would be certain to have been taken by indigenous participants; (2) Europe is dealing with far more refugees: 750,000 by some estimates; (3) the US program would only let in people who have been through a two-year long vetting process; in Europe they're just showing up and then have to be characterized after the fact. Even so let's assume one or two terrorists make it in through the program; killing the entire program won't stop ISIS from getting people in through other methods, or radicalizing people who are already here, so keeping those guys out will neither stop ISIS or make a dent in the base rate of mass attacks in the US.
What keeping refugees will do is put ISIS in a more advantageous position. ISIS actually supports the position of people who don't to let Syrian refugees into the US, because that works for them. Remember the famous picture of the dead toddler washed up on the European beach? That saturated the ISIS controlled media in the areas they control, because that's what ISIS wants people leaving their territory to face. Muslims fleeing from ISIS territory demolishes their claim of having established a legitimate new caliphate. It also undermines them in more practical ways -- they've had e
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
"We had to destroy your freedom in order to save it."
Yes, and the crusading christians only started targeting the muslims after they had already existed for four-hundred years. Thanks to Charles Martel for defeating them in their early progress.
Um, excuse me? America is busy installing and funding dictators and extremists... Even the famous Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was used as an asset to keep the communists out of Iran after the Shah (remember him, right?) got sick and died.
Um, excuse me? Are you seriously claiming that the US installed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini?
Last I heard he was the revolutionary who created the movement that overthrew the Shah, and the whole Pahlavi monarchy (who had been re-empowered by a US/UK coup after the democrartically-elected Prime Minister nationalized the Anglo-Persian Oil Company's assets). The Shah didn't die until five years later (although he DID die of a cancer where survival times with then-current treatments were about five years, so he might have been starting to show symmptoms when he was overthrown.)
Or are you just claiming that the US used him against the Soviet Union once he had established himself and his movement? Governments tend to use everybody and everything they can to promote their interests, regardless of how they got there. Sometimes you build it, sometimes you mine it. "You have to make the good from the bad, because the bad is all you have to work with."
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I love how you completely ignore the fact that something motivated these people, Muslim or otherwise. One would think that even an idiot would understand that without being able to comprehend what drove these people to these lengths, we will not stop the problem.
As to your incredibly naive assertion that we can tell anything based on what you believe to be problem caused by "the rulers allowed too many Muslims in at once" I would point out that every single one of the people I named have nothing to do with the group you are so scared of while they are part of the group you self-identify with.
Instead, I would suggest that the best solution would be to deport every narrow-minded bigot we can find.
Linux Being Used for This? Then WTF is it on /. for?
Increased government restrictions on network use and encryption technology comes immediately to mind. B-b
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Shooting tracker is provided by a openly biased anti 2ndA sub-reddit, not a factual news source. Their list also does not meet the FBI criteria for "mass shootings".
Consider the following:
"As for the Washington Post’s citing the 350+ mass-shooting statistic, it’s pure unadulterated nonsense. Stephen Gutowski of the Washington Free Beacon reported that only 21 of the 355 shootings on this sub-Reddit thread met the standards for the FBI classification of a mass shooting. Second, some of the incidents on the list aren’t even shootings, as indicated by Mediaite’s Alex Griswold. Here’s one that he found:
A pair of township boys are accused of shooting four others with a pellet gun, police said.
Nobody was seriously hurt by the 11- and 12-year-old boys who shot the pellet gun at them on April 25 in the Twinbrook Village apartment complex, Detective Lt. Kevin Faller said in a statement.
Of course, many publications omitted the fact that they’re citing Reddit."
source: http://hotair.com/archives/201...
11 and 12 year-olds with a pellet gun is a "mass shooting" ?!?
Continuously re-posting grossly inaccurate information does not make it fact. Even politifact agrees: http://www.politifact.com/trut...
Until that time most of the rest of us will continue to point out how you ARE the problem, not part of the solution.
Illiberal quoting of bad data to claim wrong-think while providing non-factual data, snark remarks, and moral superiority name calling as a rebuttal is the actual problem.
(not intended to be redundant with this: http://yro.slashdot.org/commen... )
While we're on the subject of Reddits, here is one for defensive firearm use: DGU https://www.reddit.com/r/dgu (where they allow and encourage debate, unlike the owners of "shootings tracker":GRC)
The shah was not overthrown. He was sick and going to die. I won't say the US is nearly as responsible as the UK and Europe, which have much deeper interests in the region. There's a lot of *wagging the dog* going on. Yes, keeping the communists out was and is paramount. The "radical Islamists" are doing what they are hired to do. I hope you don't think they work for free! Russia's market share is down significantly.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Unfortunately, US is already settled.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Admittedly, GP's question went off the rails by saying "we have been directly and indirectly involved in" instead of just "started". Properly worded so it makes actual sense - "started" - the USSR wouldn't be at the top of the list; it wouldn't even be on any list. Germany would get the booby prize for having started the most destructive war ever seen. The US would own the 21st century list, but before that how many wars did we START? Not Korea, not Vietnam, not Gulf War. I'll give you Grenada and Panama, which were both very small potatoes and never led to any significant repercussions.
But they would have a lot harder time finding funding and reinforcements.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Or do you really want me to believe that for over 200 years Islamic people have had little beef with the US
FYI one of the first wars the US fought was against Islamic people, and they've continued from time-to-time. Check out the Barbary Wars sometime.
Also, it's worth remembering that the vast majority of Islamic people today still have little beef with the US.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The only problem with your rather well thought text is the definition of "refugee".
If, out of 10,000 "refugees", 10% are terrorist posing as refugees, you're fucked.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
The wife pledged allegiance moments before entering the building to start shooting, and the "acceptance" of that was much after her death. Of couch ISIL accepted it: it fed their ego. Much more important and to the point: so far there is no evidence that ISIL had any awareness that this was going to happen, let alone did anything material to make ti happen.
So this pair were not members of any organized group in any way that mattered. They went off the rails themselves.
That's the hard part of the fight. Once it's done, the ideological void provides ideal conditions for mass conversion. As it happens, ISIS seems almost custom tailored to be attractive in such conditions: it is, after all, first and foremost an armed gang.
Wha West is up against is ruthlessness. ISIS doesn't have any chance whatsoever to defeat us militarily, but if they can make us internalize their ruthless ethos their goal - end of the world - comes that much closer. Hence the terror attacks that are specifically designed to outrage. Hate leads to the dark side, after all.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Obama sees his job as blaming and apologizing for America. Even just last week while he was in Europe at the climate change talks (and this was before the Isis attack on California) he told the world that America was the only place where these mass killings happen. This in spite of the recent Paris killings. In truth France has lost more people to mass killings just this year than America has lost in the entire Obama Presidency (including the Isis California attack that had not happened yet).
And, of course, he will continue to try to import Syrian terrorists, in spite of the fact that the female shooter misrepresented her information on her immigration form and managed to get in the country anyway. Screw those who urge caution.
I'm looking forward to hear him apologize to the American people for once for telling them as recently as last month that they had nothing to fear and should go about their holiday plans as normal, that there were no terrorist threats to worry about. I'm sure that he will, he is not so cowardly as to just sweep that under the rug.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
That's right, only five years. Before then, they printed biblical truth and scientific fact.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Ya, you sure figured this one out fast. So, Walmart is going to allow the NSA to block your use of the IOT to not be able to buy Walmart's body armor, AR15's, and pipes? Is America a great country or WTF?
"Robert Dear, Allen Lawrence Scarsella, Nathan Gustavsson, Daniel Macey, Joseph Backman, and Timothy McVeigh"
What organized group did they all belong to other than Crackpot?
Weapon-loving America?
The bad thing is that even you know that's a lie.
This is raving fantasy.
Are pipe bombs also in the umbrella stands of "conservatives"?
The rifles they used were illegally modified. The vast majority of "conservatives" aren't doing that, either.
The only thing strange is how people "go to town" only when the shooter is white OR Muslim. The large majority of cases are, for some reason, never seen in mass media.
No, they mostly came from "ordinary" criminal violence, largely gang-related. Shootingtracker.com is a source of noise: there have not been hundreds of mass shootings this year, unless you re-define the term.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
funny, i remember the same arguments used on bush in his last years in office.
good to see the same ol same ol
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Uh, no, actually. There were Muslim American soldiers in the Revolution, and the first country to recognize the United States was the Sultanate of Morocco.
Muslims have had "beef" with the US mostly since WWII, as our stupid and brutal foreign policy started to intrude more and more on the Muslim world: the CIA-backed coup in Iran, support for the rogue nation of Israel, suport for Saudi Arabia. The grievances are rooted in geopolitics, religion merely helps gives them some specifics of form.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
that 350+ shooting number has been debunked already numerous times.
That's not the most worrisome lie.
It's the Encryption argument that's the lie. Explain to your friends that any competent programmer who attacks the problem can devise an uncrackable communications system. There is literally nothing that signals intelligence can do about a competent adversary. The thousands of articles in the news media about cutting back on encryption in the wake of the Paris attacks, based on the *speculation* that encryption was used, are nothing but a big fat lie that the media is swallowing whole. It is dependent on the ignorance of the press and its readers.
So explain to your friends. Anyone can do this. The communications strategy from the intelligence community is a fraud. Simply put, the intelligence community is trying to play the public like a fiddle to accomplish a policy change that tramples mud all over the Fourth Amendment and makes the computers in their lives snoop on them for the government.
If the last 15 years haven't fucked us, than nothing will.
Personally, I think we've been fucked longer then that.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Thank you for your civil response.
My objection is not to the lack of 100% accuracy, it is the inflation of 21 (yes too many) into 350 (overstatement used by press to invoke an emotional reaction).
While we agree that there a people who should not have access to firearms (or explosives or sharp things or the internet) the hard problem is defining and discovering who should not have them in a way that preserves civil liberties. I have heard no practical non-police-state ideas for that. Given that choice or one of "the real world is free(ish), but you have to accept some risk" I choose risk.
Are lives saved by the unfortunate yet necessary use of violence less valuable than those taken by unjust violence?
A recent hype is the proposed use of "no fly lists". There is no oversight or due process of "no fly" so that is worthless. (No, you did not suggest that, it is an example I am hearing repeatedly from "the media" and our "leaders".) Can we accuse our neighbors of being dangerous or insane as a cause to bar their civil liberties? How about an algorithm deciding their name is "too common" and they must therefore be untrusted? (Which has repeatedly happened to me. "Your name is common. Papers please to prove to the state/TSA/bank you aren't the bad person with your (similar yet not identical) name.")
I don't understand the hysteria of disarming your people to prevent terrorists attacks by people who will always be able to get weapons.
FTFY
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Bzzzt. Wrong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Note that the origin of the Barbary Wars goes back to the capture of the Betsey in 1784. The Barbary pirates weren't driven by geopolitics, but by a religion that tells them that the kaffirs owe them, and if they won't pay the jizya willingly, tribute must be extracted by force.
See that "Preview" button?
so what do you do for the 354 other mass shootings this year not done by muslims?
(repeated from above)
(Re: 355) Shooting tracker is provided by a openly biased anti 2ndA sub-reddit, not a factual news source. Their list also does not meet the FBI criteria for "mass shootings".
(new!)
Here is some actual factual data including the FBI definition of a "mass shooting": https://www.fbi.gov/news/stori...
Average of 11.4 active shooter incidents per year. 16.4 in the last 7 years of the study. Median deaths per incident = 2, median wounded = 2. (page 9)
The FBI found that 64 incidents (40.0%) would have been categorized as falling within the new federal definition of “mass killing,” which is defined as “three or more killings in a single incident.” (page 9)
I reject the definition of "mass killing" as 3 individuals, but that is the government's definition. Therefore 64/14 = ~ 5 per year average.
Another interesting quote: "In 63 incidents where the duration of the incident could be ascertained, 44 (70%) of 63 incidents ended in 5 minutes or less, with 23 ending in 2 minutes or less. Even when law enforcement was present or able to respond within minutes, civilians often had to make life and death decisions, and, therefore, should be engaged in training and discussions on decisions they may face." (page 8)
(repeated from above) Consider the following:
"As for the Washington Post’s citing the 350+ mass-shooting statistic, it’s pure unadulterated nonsense. Stephen Gutowski of the Washington Free Beacon reported that only 21 of the 355 shootings on this sub-Reddit thread met the standards for the FBI classification of a mass shooting. Second, some of the incidents on the list aren’t even shootings, as indicated by Mediaite’s Alex Griswold. Here’s one that he found:
A pair of township boys are accused of shooting four others with a pellet gun, police said.
Nobody was seriously hurt by the 11- and 12-year-old boys who shot the pellet gun at them on April 25 in the Twinbrook Village apartment complex, Detective Lt. Kevin Faller said in a statement.
Of course, many publications omitted the fact that they’re citing Reddit."
source: http://hotair.com/archives/201... [hotair.com]
11 and 12 year-olds with a pellet gun is a "mass shooting" ?!?
Google makes this easy. Indonesia:
Islamic persecution of Christians in Malaysia.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
Muslim extremists terrorize Egypt's Coptic Christians
Turkey Suppressing Christian Worship
Christians Flee Bosnia Amid Discrimination, Islamization
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
You have a very naive view of Syrian refugees and Muslims in general. True, most aren't running around committing mass murder, but that's a bit of a straw many, because scores of polls in many countries over many years prove that significant fractions (and depending on the question and sample, sometimes majorities) support imposition of Sharia law, discrimination against Christians and Jews and gays, death for apostasy, death for blasphemy, and support various Islamic terror groups. Read it and weep.
As for Syrian refugees specifically, a survey last year by an Arabic group found that 4% have a positive view of ISIS, another 9% have a mostly positive view, and another 10% have only a mostly negative view. So if we get the 10,000 refugees Obama wants, that's 400 who support ISIS, plus 900 who mostly support ISIS, plus 1000 who don't think ISIS is entirely bad. Add to that the fact that 2nd and 3rd generation Muslim immigrants are often more radical than the original immigrants, and what could possibly go wrong?
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
I appreciate your deliberate attempt to engage in a civil discussion, lord knows that is rare enough online.
Let's get this out of the way. For the sake of discussion, let's accept that the Reddit report contains errors. In all fairness, we can then also look at the other side of the argument where the claim has been made that the FBI claims that only 21 such cases have occurred in the same time frame. What I did was to try to ascertain what the FBI defined a mass shooting as and quite quickly found out that the FBI doesn't really have a set definition for what qualifies as a mass shooting - so how can we say they are effectively reporting on the situation?
The issue we should be examining is what can be done to reduce the number of shooting victims annually. We do know that in China, almost no murders by firearms are committed - but I am not suggesting that I would be happy trading my rights for such a society. I would be fine making sure that every single firearm owner was held to a stricter level of responsibility. What I mean by that is if you have a gun stolen from you, the first question which should be asked if the was gun properly secured. A specific example of irresponsible gun ownership might be leaving one in the glove compartment of a car. I submit that no one would do that with a substantial amount of money, why should we let someone also be as careless with any firearm?
I understand that on occasion a firearm might be stolen in a home break in but if it was secured in a gun locker, this wouldn't happen. We need to break the path that allows firearms to be bought legitimately but through whatever means finds their way into the wrong person's hands. None of us what the bad guy to get these weapons, not the police, not me and not you. And no one really is against the millions of responsible firearms owners who hunt or carry for personal protection - but once the situation turns to what it has been lately, people want this to stop.
Mod up.
If gun control is a viable option, then let the facts speak for themselves. Constantly fudging numbers for shock value makes me doubt seriously the motives of the pro-gun-contol side.
Home grown, implies the terrorist indoctrination was local. Born in the US, true but the indoctrination was all Saudi Arabia, the bullshit by the US government to cover that up is just mind boggling. What did happen in Saudi Arabia, what was done to those people in Saudi Arabia. For all the world it looks like an early accidental work place triggering of implanted response. Likely part of a team, taking into account the very narrow nature of weapons and explosives (very focused thought, not a whole bunch of different weapons), the volume of weapons indicating more than one team. What was the real target and how many Saudi mk ultras are left floating about. No random act of terror this, just a plan running into a glitch. Yet, the US government still gives Saudi Arabia a free hand because it feeds into sales for the US military industrial complex. Stop the Saudis and they end the profits from the Terror Wars, this bullshit has being going on decades, WTF America.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
So, the Shah wasn't exiled? That's what you're asserting?
I am asserting that Oceania has firm control of the disputed regions in the middle east at the moment. They are not fighting against dictators and extremists as you have asserted. Quite the contrary. The profit is in the conflict. The shah is a single chapter in the ongoing story. It's a story of power and passion. The nuance of religion and politics can be left outside. Applying our values to this *game of empires* is futile presumptuousness.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
If you think 1,000 muslim terrorists in this nation means "we're fucked" then you truly are a pussy. Just because 1 of the suspects in the French attack posed as a refugee doesn't mean you need to run around clutching your pearls and screaming like a bitch about every refugee.
Why don't republicans ever refer to things like the Planned Parenthood shooting as "Radical Christian Terrorism?"
More people have died this year from slipping in the tub than from Jihad in the US so what is the big deal? What exactly is the problem?
Ocean.
"The last 5 years"...I take to mean "since Obama became President". I'm more than a little shocked that - even in the current libertarian/conservative bent that /. is under these days - a post that basically memes the old Fox/talk-radio theme that "the NY Times is *in the bag* for Obama", etc gets modded +4, Insightful. Insightful? Really, fellow /. ers?
Even if it's only 310, that doesn't really change the argument.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Saudi Arabia is full of factions. Some of them are our friends, some are our enemies, and most are mostly neutral. The idea we'd try to "get rid of" a country because some of the people there are our enemies is daft.
Based on what we've seen in Europe, this is the way things work. If you allow immigrants from countries with incompatible cultures, it's the second generation who carry out attacks in concert with co-ethnics from the home country.
That's exactly the same as 3000 dead Americans and two gigantic skycrapers down!
372 of the victims on 9/11 were foreign nationals.
Oh, and not that this has anything to do with what you said, but over 30 were Muslim.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
What did I assert, again?
Don't forget the home grown self-radicalized terrorists like McVeigh and Kaczynski.
Are you sure about that?
450,000 Christians Flee From Muslim Attacks in the Central African Republic
... when millions of black African Christians and Animists were massacred in Sudan (many forced into slavery and forcibly converted to Islam) you never had the threat of Western intervention. Likewise, the mainly Christians of West Papua are currently facing Javanization and Islamization in Indonesia but the world is turning a blind eye once more just like they did when the Catholic Timorese were massacred in vast numbers by the same forces.
African Christians Slaughtered by ISIS-Affiliates
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Mostly off-topic... The adage, as I know it, is:
"Six to one, half a dozen to (or for) the other."
I.e. they are nominally different but the result is the same.
Fifty to one and fifty to the other doesn't really convey the same thing. Maybe fifty to one and a half-hundred to the other? Ah well.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Well, it works when we want to believe they're Christians. "Well, they went to church sometimes!" Yeah, I've been to church. The difference is, I'm not batshit crazy with a desire to control other people.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I "ignore", because I consider it irrelevant. Glad, you like it.
You listed a few names and then offered a list, which, according to you, provided more. It did not — too many "unknowns". So, other than purely anecdotal evidence, you offered nothing.
I contend, we — the Western world — are allowing in too many immigrants at once. Which leads to us becoming more like them, instead of them assimilating among us.
You have no idea, how I identify myself. I guess, stereotyping is only wrong, when your opponents do it...
That will certainly disproportionally affect Muslims. Ever heard of a gay-pride parade in Gaza or Riyadh or Tehran or Cairo or Jakarta, for example? Me neither... Are you still sure, you want to do that?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The USSR did start the WW2 — by entering into the secret Pact with Hitler, and then collaborating with same in dividing up Poland. Fail.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Indonesia (the largest Islamic nation in the world)
Also Malaysia
I spent two weeks touring Indonesia back in '86. Jakarta, Jogjakarta (ancient capital), and Bali. My tour guide volunteered to me that they'd had a huge influx of Muslims You might consider reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Just another day in Paradise
If you were to make it to the United States to attempt your campaign of terrorism you might find millions of Americans trained, armed, and willing to shoot you dead. That is the flip side.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
They claimed allegiance to ISIL, so what are you on about?
Today I learned that a crackpot can claim anything and someone will take them at their word.
Today I learned that Muslim extremists that proclaim their loyalty to a major Islamist terrorist group and then conduct attacks slaughtering many innocent people going about their business as that terrorist group has directed won't be taken at their word because .... reasons .... like they don't have embossed membership cards and receipts for dues? That must be it.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Education cutbacks have whitewashed just about everything out of history.
I guess you haven't heard the news.
Obama: New citizens can skip pledge to take up arms and defend the U.S.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
It's two separate sentences so perhaps the above poster was not connecting the two things.
What can be confirmed is that we paid Khomeini a lot at the start of the Reagan Presidency and that he did execute every communist he could find in Iran. However quite a few were executed before he was paid and relations with the USSR hit rock bottom. It's probably making the best of a bad situation.
The KSA is the real enemy in the region. Time to get rid of it.
Your clever plot to induce the US to attack the guardians of the Holy cities of Mecca and Medina and thereby instigate a conflict with the entire Muslim world is a bit obvious.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Are you really so raised on Disney Pirates that you think that they would have had a moral problem with anyone they could get away with?
There may have been newspaper articles, books and even a hollywood movie with a star studded cast (Syriana - 2005), but a lot of people didn't notice until Snowden.
The whole problem is that the holy cities are under control of the tribe that sheltered and promoted Wahhabism, the cult that ruined Islam. Read up on it and weep.
Sitting Bull said something like that.
Nuts are the problem and it is very easy for them to get guns.
Do you disagree?
Let's get this out of the way. For the sake of discussion, let's accept that the Reddit report contains errors. In all fairness, we can then also look at the other side of the argument where the claim has been made that the FBI claims that only 21 such cases have occurred in the same time frame. What I did was to try to ascertain what the FBI defined a mass shooting as and quite quickly found out that the FBI doesn't really have a set definition for what qualifies as a mass shooting - so how can we say they are effectively reporting on the situation?
It can be daunting to wade through a long report. On page 9 of https://www.fbi.gov/news/stori... they define "mass killing" as 3 or more persons involved. (I disagree that that should be defined as "mass" but that is the definition the FBI is using) "The FBI found that 64 incidents (40.0%) would have been categorized as falling within the new federal definition of “mass killing,” which is defined as “three or more killings in a single incident.” [19]
[19] Investigative Assistance for Violent Crimes Act of 2012, 28 USC 530C(b)(1)(M)(i).
That is applicable to 64 of the 160 "active shooter" incidents from 2000-2013.
The issue we should be examining is what can be done to reduce the number of shooting victims annually. We do know that in China, almost no murders by firearms are committed - but I am not suggesting that I would be happy trading my rights for such a society. I would be fine making sure that every single firearm owner was held to a stricter level of responsibility. What I mean by that is if you have a gun stolen from you, the first question which should be asked if the was gun properly secured. A specific example of irresponsible gun ownership might be leaving one in the glove compartment of a car. I submit that no one would do that with a substantial amount of money, why should we let someone also be as careless with any firearm?
While proper security is the responsibility of the firearm owner it is difficult for the state to enforce or set a standard. I have two safes: one high security for weapons, the other is for ammunition. I would still not appreciate the police wanting to regularly inspect my house for storage compliance (and whatever else they decide they can fine me for while they are there). Whatever weapon is ready for a short-term response can't be in the safe. When transporting, I can lock items in my vehicle, but a determined person with tools and time can retrieve it/them; a vehicle is not a safe. Some attorney would gleefully make the argument that my secure storage is sloppy and/or inept no matter how disciplined or secure it was by accepted standards.
I understand that on occasion a firearm might be stolen in a home break in but if it was secured in a gun locker, this wouldn't happen. We need to break the path that allows firearms to be bought legitimately but through whatever means finds their way into the wrong person's hands. None of us what the bad guy to get these weapons, not the police, not me and not you.
California is a good example. At the end of my last read they had non-compliant rifles and magazines for california. That means they either executed a felony modification themselves or executed an illegal interstate transfer without the california legal requirement to process through a Federal Firearms License (FFL) holder. Two felonies at least right there.
After Columbine and Connecticut very little effort was made to find and prosecute the sources of the weapons. Why not? This sounds like the kind of "making the guilty responsible" that should have been done. (and don't even get me started on Fast and Furious) Instead we hear platitudes like "we need to put this behind us".
Let's not kid ourselves about what's going to happen if you are caught in an active shooter situation:
1. 5-10 minute emergency vehice response, after my 911 responder takes 2 minutes to determine the situation, after it takes me 2 minutes to duck, cover, and call. So now we're at 8-14 minutes of me sitting in a building with an armed shooter.
2. Depending on how heavily armed the attackers are, the initial police may not enter immediately and wait for SWAT. I don't really know how long that takes, but even if it's 5 minutes, it's too long when someone is just intent on killing as many people as possible.
3. No one getting slaughtered has a gun because carrying one is stigmatized by the government and fellow citizens and you can't carry it in most buildings that post against it anyway (but your attacker can!)
Basically, if you're a soft target in the US, you're fucked. The government considers you soft because you're not really that important. And they don't want you carrying your own gun so they can keep you in line.
This isn't really a sustainable solution as terrorist attacks increase, but it's generally easier for the government to let some number of people get shot all at once, and then use that tragedy to fund their overseas excursions, then it is for them to let you defend yourself.
The vast majority of those shootings are drug dealers shooting at drug dealers. Which is why the proper number to compare against is the FBI's active shooter classification. Between 2000 and 2013 there were a total of 127 such shooters.
Only in your flawed logic.
Absurd reduct
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
it is important to the living if they want to continue living.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
I was not aware any of the people listed were policemen.
Why are you commenting again?
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
McVeigh did not kill people with a gun.
Yes, a bomb is a weapon. But so is an axe, a rock, or a point stick.
So your categorization is meaninglessly broad.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
And what were they against?
Oh yes, technology and government overreach.
Sounds like if we crack down and add more surveillance, we get more domestic terrorists.
I'd rather just keep foreign ones out than create conditions for more very effective homegrown terrorists.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Maybe, but they hardly hold a candle to the murderous animals that claimed to be atheists and killed millions in the name of "science"
Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc..
The leopard never changes his shorts.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Oh brother! So that's your game, eh?
Americans haven't waged war against Islam and Muslims per se; they have, however, fought dictators and extremists ...
Wanna keep playing?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Well, that's just the kind of thing the "religious freedom" people have been screaming for, isn't it? Maybe they oughta be more careful what they wish for.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
No, they mostly came from "ordinary" criminal violence, largely gang-related. Shootingtracker.com is a source of noise: there have not been hundreds of mass shootings this year, unless you re-define the term.
You mean other than: Muslim with a gun shoots people?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
I'm Romanian, I see more muslims in a month than you see in a year, most likely.
They're all fine, I have no problem with them. I buy excellent food from a Syrian store and best sweets from a Lybian store.
On the other hand, my country isn't regarded as "must destroy" by extremists.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Bzzzt. Wrong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Note that the origin of the Barbary Wars goes back to the capture of the Betsey in 1784. The Barbary pirates weren't driven by geopolitics, but by a religion that tells them that the kaffirs owe them, and if they won't pay the jizya willingly, tribute must be extracted by force.
Yawn. The Barbary pirates were pirates. What excuse for the actions of Christian pirates do you have? What were they driven by?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
There hasn't been a Crusade in a thousand years -- and there'll never be another.
False. There were a number of Crusades up to the the 15th century like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... in 1444.
Coincidently, there were the anti-Hussite crusades which were crusades against Heretic Christians by Catholics.
And the reasons why "there'll never be another" is because the Popes since then were moderately sane, while the foaming-at-their-mouths fundamentalist Christians can't call an actual Crusade (and wouldn't, because that's evil Catholicism stuff). Instead they do things like start the Lord's Resistance Army
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
I have met a lot of really wonderful Christians, ones who actually follow what Christ taught. Sadly, they are in the minority.
Try four. Even Anti-gun, extreme left wing Mother Jones only counts four. But then they actually have the intellectual honesty to keep to the original FBI definition of 4 Dead, not the three dead that the President ordered the FBI to change their criteria too, or the 4 or more shots fired that shootinglist uses.
Four, not 355, not 310. Four. Charlestown AME, Marine and Navy Recruiting station, College in Oregon and San Bernadino.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Yes, actually, I still want to do that. I know better than to believe that Sharia Law is being instituted here, or that because a million Muslims came to this country across five years that it would change anything.
What I do understand is the language common to every bigot who ever walked the face of the earth. Yes, they are always shocked when they are called that because it's tough to see yourself as others do but the terms you use are exactly like the prejudiced assholes of the past said about black integration. It's identical to what was thrown around when we created our immigration laws to keep the Chinese out (once they had finished building our railroads, of course). And it's almost quoted verbatim what the assholes used to fight against interracial marriage and somewhat ironically the same slurs people still use when we talk about gay rights. That last instance is especially wry, don't you think with you using that as an example to defend your particularly brand or prejudice?
Hey, did you know that gullible isn't included in the dictionary? No, seriously, did you know that? Don't bother checking, I already did that for you.
Oh, if you get the chance, please pass this information on to everyone you know. They will surely appreciate it.
To be fair, let's leave out politicians who are pandering to their base - on all sides of the issue. I suspect that neither of us have any respect for these people, nor do they really represent us in this day and age.
Moving down the list, yes, there are people who believe that no one should be allowed to own firearms and given the crap they are being fed by the media, I can almost understand that - almost. The reality is, the message has become so distorted that no one really knows what to believe any further. I live in an area where guns are looked at like a shovel, a tool one needs to own to deal with problems like black bears and other not so friendly animals. Most of my neighbors hunt and eat what they shoot. In Vermont, a fair number of families either shot a deer or had little to no meat for the winter - which I can understand might be difficult for a resident of New York City to comprehend.
Back to your main point - how the FBI defines mass shootings.
My definition does not include number of deaths - because we are not talking about mass murder, we are talking about how many people were shot. If three people are shot (or even two) that is a multiple shooting. What differentiates this in my mind is that when a premeditated murder happens there is usually only one victim, even though we both know more than one person is killed on occasion. But, what we are talking about here is when some asshole (or assholes) begin shooting people, it really doesn't enter into the equation if they can hit a victim with a clean kill shot. If there are multiple people shot but not killed, it is a multiple shooting incident. Now, based on that criteria, how many mass shootings have there been in 2015? Well, I think it is safe to say, more than 21 but even 21 is too damn many.
One of this countries first treaties was the Treaty of Tripoli. A little known fact is this states that it states that ""the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." If I had the $$$, I would personally pay for ads in newspapers and on billboards all across the country, especially in the "South" and near Evangelical churches, with Article 11. Possibly across the street from Huckabee's and Carson's house too. I even made a facebook page about it, with a list of the "Founding Fathers" that voted for it; but I can't really talk about it in public because I live in Oklahoma and don't want to get dragged out of my house and lynched.
The Barbary Pirates were organized and controlled by the local government. Notice that they started attacking our ships when we moved outside the protection of the Treaty of Alliance, and they briefly respected the Treaty of Tripoli.
Christian pirates, however, could expect to be chased down and killed whenever they came within sight of a military vessel of any Christian country. Privateers were a slightly different matter, since they had written permission from their country to conduct war at sea, which didn't include enslaving the crews and passengers of ships they captured.
See that "Preview" button?
Yeah, that's what Christians CLAIM often...until there is some Old Testament idea they want to push. Then they quote Matthew 5:17 so they can justify applying laws written for a Bronze age nomadic desert tribe. Or using John 7:19, or Luke 16:17. "We don't follow those rules, except when we do." If you had a flowchart of all the rules in Christianity, you'd notice that it's impossible to not commit a sin due to conflicting rules.
While the federal government was not founded as a Christian theocracy, several of the colonies had active state religions at the time of the founding. The first clause of the first amendment, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion", was specifically to prevent the federal government from messing with those churches.
That said, pretty much no one seriously questions that each state government and the federal government was founded by people with overwhelmingly Christian values, or that our laws and institutions reflect those values.
See that "Preview" button?
I don't really know. I think the majority of the ones that I've known who were seemingly more than nominally Christian seemed *mostly* sane and not zealots. Even the Jehovah's Witnesses aren't generally *that* bad. They're just annoying. I've had them come all the way to my house in the mountains of Maine on a snowy Saturday. So, there's that. But, I'm not a Christian or anything so I don't really expose myself to a lot of them as far as I know. I don't generally ask what people have for a religion.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
The Barbary Pirates were organized and controlled by the local government.
Most of them where independent entrepreneurs, much like American privateers Are you a fucking Communist that you hate free enterprise?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
In this very relevant prank, some jokers put a Koran cover on a bible, then read out various passages and asked random passers-by to comment on them.
As I'm sure you can imagine, hilarity ensues
That's cute. But when people 'vote with their feet', it's away from majority Muslim countries, and often towards majority Christian nations. Why do you suppose that is?
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
I live right on the buckle of the Bible Belt, having moved here a decade ago from the Great White North. ;-) My neighbors (most of them, anyway) are very giving people. They work incredibly hard to do whatever they can to help our less fortunate neighbors and work tirelessly to volunteer whenever they can. They don't preach and have accepted us (a family of practicing atheists) into the community openly. Yes, I know there are the lunatics amongst us, they are everywhere but thankfully they seem to be in the minority.
"Robert Dear, Allen Lawrence Scarsella, Nathan Gustavsson, Daniel Macey, Joseph Backman, and Timothy McVeigh"
What organized group did they all belong to other than Crackpot?
Citizens of the United States. So yeah, Crackpot is a synonym judging by the posters here.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Why don't you login to post so everyone can know who to block, please.
More people have died falling out of trees this year than from Islamic terrorism in the U.S. Get a fucking grip.
You mean something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ?
If we are worried about freedom, civil rights etc, then introducing restrictions based on fear is probably not a good idea. The borders of any country are as open as a sieve, unless you introduce a truly draconian regime, so it is likely to be a lot of wasted effort. But of course, we can't just sit passive and hope for the best - we planted our foot firmly in the muck years ago, most recently with our stupid invasion of Iraq, but it has happened again and again for something like a century, if not longer. It is too late to change our mind now - we have to see it through to the bitter end - and no doubt it will be very bitter.
In the meantime we have to stop contributing so heavily to the causes of terrorism. And we have to stop being so bloody simplistic in our analysis of things - people don't become terrorists because they 'hate our freedom' or are 'envious' - and 'democracy' is not the only thing needed to fix things. It is even possible that democracy has no place in those countries for many years to come - after all, it took us in the West generations to learn to live with it. And, it is very likely that we in the West would help the peace best in the long term, if we were to leave the rebuilding to others, since we don't have too much of a good reputation in the Middle East.
So, you still want to deport "narrow-minded bigots", which will disproportionately include Muslims. Congratulations, racist.
My prejudice is not against an in-born trait, such as skin-color, but rather a religion. And religions are not all equal. I even explained to you, what is particularly wrong with Islam — it does not leave Cæsar's to Cæsar. And you better know, what this means...
Other than several more terror-attacks, you mean? You can't deny that downside. What is the upside?
What did we gain by allowing the Tsarnaev family to move to Boston and thousands of other Muslim families like them? Sure, most of them did not raise their children into terrorists, but, still, what is the upside?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Sure, he probably did. Only his culture was a disastrous dead-end, while the Western civilization lead — and continues to lead humanity to new heights.
Westerners moving to America weren't attracted by the Sitting Bull's civilization or wealth — only by the vast unsettled lands conveniently located far away from the rotten monarchies of Europe. That's the difference with today's migrants, who come in to this very rich and reasonably well-governed country, attracted by the wealth of it and the opportunities it provides.
And I don't blame them for wanting to — I am an immigrant myself. But I do blame (some of) them for wanting to change it — they don't have the right to that. Our children might be entitled to advocate changes, if they feel like it, but the first generation's duty — out of sheer appreciation — is to defend and protect the order, that saved them from misery.
Diversity is beautiful — I want my kids to know Ukrainian language and songs, for example — but I don't want them to give bribes, as remains common-place in Ukraine... Yet, if you move too many immigrants from the same place at once, government-corruption and other bad things are sure to come with them — haven't you learned anything from the decades-long fight with Italian Mafia, for example?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Fair question, exactly what did we gain when we let your family settle here? Are there any family members you are related to who didn't turn out to be pope? No? No shit, every family has one eventually.
What do we get when we allow a million Muslims to come here to live? About the same thing we would get when we allow any other million people to come here.
One more thing, if your best and only argument is that you're not a bigot because you only are prejudicial against religions, then you're really no better than the average garden variety bigot, are you?
Do you even know what you are talking about? You ALWAY pay city/local income tax in the place where you work, not where you live. Property tax is about the only tax that is based on where you live. In most cases, for large metropolitan areas, a good portion of county/regional property taxes are specifically earmarked for the adjacent major metropolitan city. So your argument is complete bunk.
yes, please, invade another country, leave it in shambles, and then let the europeans deal with a few more millions of refugees. great idea.
Go learn some history. The US has not invaded any country which was not originally fucked over by European Empires. Any mess in any of those shitholes was caused by you assholes in the first place, then you packed up and left when things got too sticky for you. And now you're blaming us because we had to try to clean up your mess, and the problem is finally coming full-circle back to where it started- Europe.
Karma's a bitch, suck on it Eurofags.
Fortunately you can because the link I gave includes a spreadsheet with a web-link for each shooting. The ones I sampled and looked at didn't have any clear "criminal" motive.
The fact that you point to an opinion-piece that claims to have different numbers (again without substantiation) and that you claim that "unless you redefine the term" these (recorded) shooting don't count doesn't hold water.
As far as I can see from the web-links those shootings didn't have a clear (i.e. criminal) motive. I think that makes them "Because I felt like it" shootings. The very thing we were talking about.
Notably, the answer remains missing in your response...
Not true. Prejudice against in-born traits, such as skin color, is one thing — it is something a person can not change and it has no discernible effect on their intellect, fitness, or demeanor. Prejudice against things cultural — acquired from society — is completely different, for it is changeable and does affect their outlook.
It is common for the weaker minds to not see the difference, but you would notice, that UNESCO has never hosted a Cannibal Month, for example — the very idea is a jest.. Because some cultures really are better — and worse — than others.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
This was "home-grown terror", but not the way the media and our typically lying President describe it.
When your co-workers don't say shit to management about that psychotic aggressive NRA loving, ZIonist promoting religious nutjob constantly harassing another co-worker that happens to be Muslim, this is exactly the kind of batshit crazy thing you get.
Instead of depicting how this thing is an act of "home-grown terror", which is just another way to justify doing idiotic, expensive, and ineffective bullshit, let's talk about how religious bigots have turned this country into a paranoid shithole ruled by Fox News watching retards hell bent on bringing about Armageddon.
Because that's what this incident was all about. It was disgruntled employees latching on to their own extremist bullshit, and taking everyone else down with them.
The media and the President are setting another narrative entirely - because they have something to gain from that. Profiteering is what the USA is all about, and it's no wonder we are DETESTED around the world.
I don't know about conservatives but preppers sometimes have IED's (some of the mwere caught and sentenced). I'm not sure whether they stored them in umbrella stands. Perhaps we can set up a survey.
Rifles being "illegally modified" sounds scary, right? They were filed down a bit for fully-automatic fire and to accept high-capacity magazines (both of which is admittedly illegal in California). Nonetheless it's anything but uncommon among gun enthusiasts (see e.g. http://denver.cbslocal.com/201... ). Gun enthusiasts correlates strongly with "conservatives" too. Also you seem to be able to get those high capacity magazines by mail order.
So I'd say having high-capacity magazines is really ordinary. Big shocker huh? And who can say about rifles being surreptitiously filed down for automatic fire? Who's going to check, right (unless after a shooting)?
All links I found in the spreadsheet I downloaded (see my earlier post for a link) were to newspapers, news-sites. How are those not "mass media"?
Because some cultures really are better — and worse — than others.
Today's vocabulary word is subjective. That's subjective. It means: Proceeding from or taking place in a person's mind rather than the external world: a subjective decision or particular to a given person; personal: subjective experience.
What's funny about your little diatribe is that it exposes you to exactly what we call projection - and that's today's bonus vocabulary word.
I don't understand the hysteria of disarming your people to prevent terrorists attacks by people who will always be able to get weapons.
FTFY
If the USA joins the other countries in the universe, to become a gun-free society, the consequences or penalty of being stopped with a (untraceable) gun from an unknown owner can be set to a very high penalty. As the number of guns disappear, as they should, the accidental deaths from guns or deaths due to being angry and stressed (rage) while holding a weapon also drops.
Can I see you out walking with your child and a gun strapped to your body, when a terrorist attacks? Are you going to be a first responder? And what will you do if you kill the innocent bystander?
At the time of the constitution, there was a fear of a violent overthrow of the government by government militia. Today the militia has tanks, drones planes, bombs and missiles. Can you protect yourself from your own army with a paltry hand gun or rifle? 1053 group shooting deaths in 2 years does not speak well for the USA. Ten thousand deaths from guns each year is a shame.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
I lived in NYC during the 1970s, and I consider being *anywhere* near a gang or drug shooting scene to be closer than I want to be ever again. For people living anywhere near such activity - especially any closer than I did - I'd think it terrorizes them. So I would include those cases of drug dealers shooting at drug dealers as part of the problem.
"4 dead". So if someone was shot and first aid got there fast enough that he/she didn't die, it doesn't count? How about permanently crippled, it doesn't count? Or the person was just a lousy shot - or a freakin SADIST - who didn't aim for direct kill shots, it doesn't count?
This was immigrant related so "homegrown" doesn't really apply. And there is zero connection to encryption. And making the people part of Stasi effectively is hardly a solution for anything except creating a massive Police State.
Why not just ensure that the people that own Guns are mentally stable and make sure they are aware that holding a gun has responsibilities.
It may be subjective, but I was asking your opinion. Please, state for the record, whether you consider cultures, where kai-kaiing people is acceptable (and even heroic) to be neither better nor worse than those, where eating people is considered an outrage?
And, should your answer be affirmative, why is it, that neither UNESCO nor any other prominent organization has yet organized a Cannibalism Month (or Week) — complete with recipe-exchanges and denunciations of the evil West appropriating the authentic practice while adopting "knee-jerk" laws against it? Is not ignoring such cultures — and their unique contributions to the wonderful tapestry of diversity — evidence of despicable bigotry and closed-mindedness? Should the Western colonizers not atone for extinguishing most of such rituals?
Given your already demonstrated tendency to puh-puh inconvenient questions, I regret to inform you, that a post not containing direct answer(s) to the above will be returned unopened.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Some weren't and some were. A few considered themselves Deists and some called themselves Christians. As far as I know none were Muslim. Jefferson respected Christ's teachings but did not consider him a divine being. They were a complex group of individuals.
http://www.jameswatkins.com/ar...
Most were raised in Christian environments but later came to question much of what they were taught. Still almost all of them respected the Christian religions moral teachings.
http://www.britannica.com/topi...
So while they were not all Christians many were and I never claimed all were.
Right now, there are more firearms (and also, more weapons of other types, such as knives and bats) in the USA than there are people. The idea that the US would become a "gun free society" is completely without any hope of bearing fruit at our current level of technology.
It isn't in any way an abhorrent idea to me. But I no more worry about being a victim of a terrorist attack or gun violence in general than I do of being struck by lightning. However, I do worry about my fellow citizens becoming overly and immediately paranoid at the sight of a firearm due to the constant droning of the hysterics in their ears, so I don't carry, although I could, legally speaking.
No. Not to lightning strikes or car accidents or heart attacks, either. But if I'm there during the incident, yes, certainly I'd do what I could.
The appropriate responses are those made by the people at the scene, and the government's subsequent actions, presuming they are constitutionally authorized. I am all for immediate, extremely harsh and highly escalated direct response(s) by any injured or threatened party. Someone brandishes a weapon at me or my family and I manage to gain control of the situation, they will have completely obviated any inclination on my part to treat them as human beings.
If I was carrying a firearm (I don't, I'm simply not worried, because I can do math and recognize hysteria when I hear it), and if I was present at a terrorist attack (highly, highly unlikely), and I killed a bystander (also unlikely, highly unlikely in fact as I am an expert with a pistol, but...) I'd regret it, of course. It would certainly be accidental, as opposed to the (presumably) mass killing that inspired me to draw in the first place, so in terms of should I or should I not draw and fire if carrying and present at a terrorist attack, clearly, I should, and just as clearly, the responsibility for the accident lies with those who created the incident in the first place, so I'd be able to sleep all right. As it happens, I have some related experience, just not with firearms, so I know what my actual reactions are in such a matter.
No. The militia was the people. The government was the government. Two entirely separate entities. And there wasn't so much a fear of violent overthrow of government by the people (who were, and remain today, the militia), there was intent and legally sanctioned capability in the very paperwork that authorized the government to do so if it got out of hand. And, in fact, that is basically what happened to ol' king George III.
No, the military, which is to say, the government's standing armed forces, has those things. The militia (us, the citizens) variously have knives, small firearms, marital arts training, the ability to cobble up IEDs and so forth.
One on one, clearly not. However, that's not the issue and has never been the issue. People die in armed conflicts. Generally everyone who dies in a conflict of any nature on either side has been overwhelmed by either the opposition's firepower, strategy, tactics, or numbers, most often a combination of these.
The only issue actually related to your question is, can a
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Stalin had been trying to get an alliance with Britain and France in 1939, who really weren't interested. Hitler, on the other hand, did like a pact that would let him attack in the West before returning to his main target. By your criteria, then, Britain and France started WWII by forcing Stalin into a position where he thought he had to make a treaty with Germany.
WWII in Europe started with Germany's invasion of Poland. By the time Soviet troops entered Poland, the war was well and truly on (and Poland had lost).
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
But then they actually have the intellectual honesty to keep to the original FBI definition [...]
If the FBI ever had a definition of "mass shooting", it's news to me. The FBI term is "mass killing". The comment that I replied to used the word "shooting", not "killing".
And in case it isn't obvious, the fact that it has to be four deaths to rise to some level of significance says a lot about how complacent the United States has become about violence.
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The FBI term is "mass killing".
...or "mass murder", of course. I knew that.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Citations?
He made it not because he was forced, but because he was planning an attack himself. USSR's entire military posture was offensive — materiel dumps, artillery, bombers were located on the edge of the borders. Which is why they were overtaken by Germans so quickly leaving USSR nearly naked in 1941, when Hitler outplayed his pal. Whether Hitler actually knew of Stalin's designs or not remains subject of debate among historians, but it is quite common knowledge, that Stalin was preparing an attack.
That's not true. Polish troops were retreating to reorganize, when they were attacked from the other direction by the Red Army — to this day Poland refers to the events as "Stab in the Back".
Instead of killing the Poles, Stalin could have helped them — but he and Hitler were allies and thus both share culpability for starting the WW2.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I didn't post that.
Whoops! I promise to get new glasses! Can't track who I'm talking to... Anyway, from the department's point of view, the Shah's departure was quite orderly.
What's all this about endangered feces?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Theoretically individual states could still have an official religion, unless their individual constitutions prohibit it. I'm just pointing out that when people say "the United States is a Christian Nation" this is demonstrably false, at least as far as John Adams and the other 40+ Founding Fathers who voted for this treaty show. There is a huge difference between a country being founded on Christian morals vs being a "Christian nation".
Yes I learned that Hoover was on the take.
Don't get hung up on tiny little bits of tax law that vary from place to place when the big picture is rotting away. The simple fact is very rich states have pockets of very poorly funded infrastructure - abandoned due to an "I've got mine" approach and areas that don't really need the extra tax money spending it on sculptures and mayors on $1million+ per year for a suburb of 25,000 people. It's a fast track to the third world.
Does it help you if your lovely house is two blocks away from a shithole where the police never go?
Are abortion clinic bombers conservatives? Yes they fucking are. Christianist Conservativists.
In most cases, probably yes. But this has absolutely nothing to do with the subject under discussion.
I also like your sig. Is your middle name Narcissus?
Also, I will point out that Syed Farook claimed to be politically "very liberal". That kinds of throws a monkey wrench into your "right-wing second amendment gun nut" idea, doesn't it?
Being "ordinary" doesn't make them any less illegal. Further, I believe it's illegal to import them into California, so any "mail order" house which did so would also be breaking the law.
Personally I wouldn't call the modifications "scary" at all. The point was that it was illegal.
In fact the entire point was: all of this was already against the law. More laws wouldn't have stopped it.
Maybe. The point was, while each individual Italian was, probably, a reasonably nice person, by importing too many at once, America imported Italy's Mafia-problem with them. Those Italians didn't become Americans — they corrupted America with their old-world habits instead — today, decades later, the country is still not quite clean of them.
It is perfectly reasonable to be concerned, that America is now repeating a similar mistake by importing too many Muslims at once.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Michael Brown a future leader of America? Oh my God, we were FUCKED.
Erm. There certainly is a Christian nation here, and possibly a Christian state, but not a Christian government.
That won't make any sense if you think that nation, state and government are synonyms.
There is a common type of douche around that likes to imagine Christians as ignorant hicks, so that they can loudly proclaim their superiority over these straw Christians to anyone nearby. Most often, they don't understand much of anything, but they sound good because they've got a library of misquotes and snippets-taken-out-of-context in their heads. I've only read like two paragraphs that you've written, but I've got serious deja vu, like I've met many of your brothers.
See that "Preview" button?
"Personally, were I in charge (never happen), the first step I would take is to see to it that the media, and the net, stopped providing free publicity. The second thing I would do is see to it that our energetic building of a permanent lower class with no hope via eternal public record and subsequent hopelessness..." I think this remark is getting really close to something.
Yes but my point was that most of the population of the United States and a pile of other places was built by "importing too many at once" of Irish, Germans, Norwegians, Polish, Italians, Vietnamese etc. Also the number of Muslims imported at once fades into insignificance in comparison the the number of Roman Catholics coming in at the same time from Central America.
That's why I was so dismissive. You can choose to disagree but it looks a lot like business as usual instead of any sort of threat to me - especially since they are coming because they want want America offers instead of the values of the people they are fleeing from.
Sorry to reply again, but I'd argue that the Mafia actually got worse when they landed in prohibition era US - plus it's worth reading books like "Gangs of New York" and a similarly titled one on New Orleans to see what was going on before they turned up. They thrived in an environment that was already corrupt.
The FBI insisting the Mafia did not exist, among other things (the OSS and the CIA HIRED them at times in the 1950s FFS) led to their longevity so I think using the longevity of the Mafia as a argument against immigration is a bit strange.
Typo - should be "want what America offers" instead of a repeated want.
Nope. You establish criteria for classification reasons. If someone survives they were not killed, and the shooter faces a lesser charge. The criteria were established decades ago. It may seem heartless, but you have to set and stick to criteria.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
I understand the ideas that Philo of Alexandria expounded upon, the effects of the Council of Nicea, have read what's left of the War Scroll, while attempting to trace back the transformation of Judaism into a mystical apocalyptic cult that is now a major world religion. I also agree that the "giants in the Earth" are probably ancient oral retelling of encounters with Neanderthals, and that the actual location of "Eden" is currently underneath the Persian Gulf. I also do NOT loudly proclaim anything, if you had read my original post you would have seen that I purposely keep most of my beliefs under wraps due to living in the Bible belt. And it's not just sitting around reading the internet, I've had many discussions with Catholic priests, Rabbis, and other religious figures about my "heretical" thoughts.
And I also understand the context of Article 11, this treaty was with Muslim pirates who were attacking our ships on the principle that we weren't fellow Muslims. It was actually George Washington's idea for this treaty, perhaps he thought by declaring this it would mitigate the cargo seizures. It was also a declaration against state religions such as the Church of England. Yet the text is an actual treaty, and is part of US law.
No, actually it doesn't. What I'm trying to show is that (apart from being delusional) he wasn't very different from "ordinary" Americans in terms of gun ownership and preparations, and not so very different from several other perpetrators of shootings.
This shooter (Syed Farook) may have been politically "liberal", my argument centers on: (1) placing his shooting taking against a background of "Because I felt like it" shootings by non-islamists and not finding enormously big differences in terms of number of casualties
(2) pointing out that the scary sounding modified rifles he possessed are in fact relatively ordinary modifications among ordinary gun nuts. Showing that he really wasn't so far out from mainstream America as regards guns owned. His explosives clearly set him apart though, and place him among the more extreme "preppers".
Sitting Bull said something like that.
If he did, then he was right. And he got conquered.
The USSR did start the WW2 — by entering into the secret Pact with Hitler, and then collaborating with same in dividing up Poland. Fail.
So neither the annexation of the Sudetenland by Germany nor the invasion in China by the Japanese count as the start of WW2? Or the first two weeks where Germany alone invaded Poland? Wow, that definition of when WW2 started is even odder than the "Pear Harbor, because that's when the US got involved" one.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Because the number of people dying a violent death in the US is declining .
Then terrorism shouldn't be reason to do anything different either.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
just shows the current guns laws are shit and weak. i mean you can't even ask a customer to stop smoking in a restaurant with getting your head shot off any more. http://www.eater.com/2015/11/3...
As the gun nuts say: "Try taking it with your dead hands."
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
More people have died falling out of trees this year than from Islamic terrorism in the U.S. Get a fucking grip.
Well, Washington already knew what to do with those dangerous trees...
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Nope. You establish criteria for classification reasons. If someone survives they were not killed, and the shooter faces a lesser charge. The criteria were established decades ago. It may seem heartless, but you have to set and stick to criteria.
So your definition of a mass shooting doesn't count how many people were shot, but killed. That's not heartless, that's fucking with the meaning of words to further an agenda.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
It's not mine, it's the FBI's long standing standard.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Also, I will point out that Syed Farook claimed to be politically "very liberal". That kinds of throws a monkey wrench into your "right-wing second amendment gun nut" idea, doesn't it?
"Very liberal" was one of the many misspellings in his profile. He meant "very Libertarian". Also funny how your anti-Liberal source forgets to mention his dating profile also talked about how much he loved guns.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Oh brother! So that's your game, eh?
Americans haven't waged war against Islam and Muslims per se; they have, however, fought dictators and extremists ...
Wanna keep playing?
Well, yeah, Muslim civilians were just the vast majority of casualties in those fights (at least several hundred times as many as dictators and extremists), almost exclusively killed by American strikes. But hey, they were only in the way of your righteous cause, so no harm done.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Muslims have had a beef with America as long as America has existed. Don't believe for a second that Muslims can't dish it out as good as they take it.
Yes, pretty much since Tripoli, where they made it abundantly clear that it was their divine duty to subjugate and pillage non believers.
While the Bible makes it clear that somebody has to tell Jews and Christians that GOD told them it was his will before they can do it.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Funny thing is, all those evil Christians who were involved in the founding of this country voted for a Constitution that guaranteed freedom of religion. It's that document all those evil Christians supported that guarantees the freedoms of Muslims and Hindus and Atheists in this country. And it's that very guarantee of religious freedom that so infuriates the radical Christians that dream of a world ruled under GOD Yahweh's laws
FTFY. And guess which group is actively trying to change those guarantees in the USA?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Well, it's not really my "righteous cause", but I will quote you this:
What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
I would say the ploy is working, "righteousness" doesn't really enter the picture.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
because a fine young man is not a coward.
What is a coward? Somebody who kills thousands remotely with a drone, while sitting in an air-conditioned container in the Nevada desert, and get a medal of valour for it?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Actually I don't believe it is. I would think your advice applies double to you.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Of course it is. *Refusal to serve* fits right in with their schtick. No exceptions.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I doubt, Hitler would've gone further without securing either British or Soviet support or, at the least, "neutrality" first.
Yes, some of the blame for starting WW2 is on the Japanese too. That said, I would not even consider the American-Japanese war to be part of WW2 — the conflict was (almost) purely between these two countries, and neither one coordinated its actions with nor received much support from its allies.
That happened because of the secret agreement with Stalin — when (and whether) Soviet troops began participating is unimportant. Stalin bears responsibility because he promised Hitler his cooperation.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Shoudn't we go back even further to the crusades if we want to talk about 'first incidents'?
McVeigh's philosophies fell well in line with a lot of radical militias and separatist groups in the US. He may not have been a card carrying member, but those groups (militias, separatists, etc..) have books, manifestos, and other media that I'm sure he read and was influenced by. Like, he passed out and sold copies of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turner_Diaries . That sort of literature is very common in white supremacist, militia, and separatist groups.
Robert Dear - that one is easy: he believed himself to be deeply Christian. He used it to justify all sorts of bad behaviors according to people who knew him.
I don't have time to look up the rest.
I doubt, Hitler would've gone further without securing either British or Soviet support or, at the least, "neutrality" first.
Well, just like the British would have stopped Hitler after bringing Austria home into the Reich.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Well, it's not really my "righteous cause", but I will quote you this:
What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
I would say the ploy is working, "righteousness" doesn't really enter the picture.
So propping up radical Islamists to fight the evil Soviet empire was the right thing to do? Is that your final answer?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
It's not mine, it's the FBI's long standing standard.
For mass shootings or for mass murder? According to tthe Wikipedia page "The Congressional Research Service acknowledges that there is not a broadly accepted definition,[2] and uses a definition of a "public mass shooting"[3] if 4 or more people are actually killed, not including the perpetrator, echoing the FBI definition[4][5] of the term "mass murder"
To make it clear, your "FBI's long standing standard" is their definition of mass murder, not of mass shootings. For shootings they use the "Active Shooter" definition: An active shooter is an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area - IOW, nobody has to die, not even be hurt for that definition.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
No, not "just like" — for British to stop Hitler, they would've had to fight. For Stalin to stop him, he just had to abolish his own imperialistic designs — on Baltic republics, Finland, and Eastern Poland.
Taking an expensive and bloody action vs. not taking one. That's not at all "just like"...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
No, not "just like" — for British to stop Hitler, they would've had to fight. For Stalin to stop him, he just had to abolish his own imperialistic designs — on Baltic republics, Finland, and Eastern Poland.
Taking an expensive and bloody action vs. not taking one. That's not at all "just like"...
Wait, what? When Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, they weren't prepared - how could Stalin have stopped Hitler from invading Poland 2 years earlier?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Nope, did I say it was? I am merely remarking that there is no "righteousness" in foreign policy, there are only interests. But since you asked, what's your recommendation?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
They weren't prepared to defend — because they were themselves preparing for an assault . Exactly when it was going to happen and whether Hitler knew about it remains an argument among historians, but they are all in agreement, that USSR was preparing for attack.
An attack-posture favors different weapons and training: faster and lighter vehicles rather than heavier dug-in equipment, materiel-depots as well as artillery and bombers positioned very close to border (to bomb the enemy's defenders on his side), rather than further back (to bomb the advancing invader on your own land), etc. Hitler surprised Stalin and was able to overrun all of those positions and hardware.
If, instead, Stalin helped the Poland's significant military, Hitler's efforts would've ended there — if he'd even tried it at all. See the other fork of this thread for more links to citations.
But, at any rate, Hitler and Stalin were allies, when WW2 was starting — both share responsibility for it.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
No, actually it doesn't. What I'm trying to show is that (apart from being delusional) he wasn't very different from "ordinary" Americans in terms of gun ownership and preparations, and not so very different from several other perpetrators of shootings.
I think I know what you're "trying" to show. The point was, you're not showing it.
For one thing, far over 100 MILLION "ordinary" gun owners in the United States do NOT do this kind of thing. So your very starting point is a huge statistical anomaly. From the beginning this person is separated from "ordinary" Americans by a nearly impenetrable statistical wall. Any other similarity is just fluff. Guess what? Mass murderers wear jeans and hoodies too. And some of then drive Toyotas. And BMWs. Big deal.
my argument centers on: (1) placing his shooting taking against a background of "Because I felt like it" shootings by non-islamists and not finding enormously big differences in terms of number of casualties
And so? How does number of casualties correlate with number of intended casualties? Until you can show the latter, the former is nearly meaningless.
(2) pointing out that the scary sounding modified rifles he possessed are in fact relatively ordinary modifications among ordinary gun nuts.
I have no opinion about whether the modifications were "scary sounding" or not. The point about the modifications was that they were ILLEGAL. (And though it is a separate issue: the fact is that they are illegal for no other reason than that they are "scary sounding".)
But the point I want to make here is that your whole idea contradicts itself. If they're ordinary, then they're not "nuts". Nuts aren't ordinary. If you think the average American is a "gun nut", and you live in America, then you're probably living in the wrong country.
Showing that he really wasn't so far out from mainstream America as regards guns owned.
You showed no such thing. The vast maority of "mainstream America" does not own illegally modified guns.
His explosives clearly set him apart though, and place him among the more extreme "preppers".
They place him in the category of Radical Islamic Terrorist. Your attempt to compare him to average Americans did not succeed. Not even close.
"Very liberal" was one of the many misspellings in his profile. He meant "very Libertarian".
Oh, you read his mind, did you?
Then why didn't you turn him in, numbnuts?
Why are you replying to me? Those weren't my links. You're apparently following an argument between someone calling himself "SmallCorpses4Sale" and another calling himself "Dumb Scientist". The latter here on Slashdot aka "khayman80". Isn't that you? If not, then who are you, and why the hell are you bothering ME on Slashdot over an argument someone else had on Twitter? I do not appreciate this kind of BS.
Why would you include me in this? Your arguments are with others. Are you just stupid, or what?
Hopefully you just didn't read the PSI Slayer link you posted, which repeatedly mentions "Steven Goddard" and his baseless accusations.
Repeat: why are you putting this crap argument with someone else in a reply to me? You seem to be insinuating that I am "SmallCorpses4Sale", but I assure you I am not, and I take your insinuation -- in a completely different public forum, no less -- to be a deliberately malicious act. Among your many others.
This exchange had exactly nothing to do with me. Go the hell away and stay the hell away.
"Very liberal" was one of the many misspellings in his profile. He meant "very Libertarian".
Oh, you read his mind, did you? Then why didn't you turn him in, numbnuts?
Don't ask me, ask Donald Trump.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
The percentage is very small. Your claim is nonsense.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
As you believe. Keep the faith, oh faithful servant
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
That line would seem to work just as well for you.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
It would seem that way, wouldn't it? But since I'm not the one propagandizing for more war on false pretexts, I kinda doubt it. A little note to y'all, stop supplying the terrorists with guns and cash, and the war just possibly, might end. Of course that isn't the goal, but whatever. Leave the religious bullshit outside. I ain't buying it. Hired killers work for money, not for "Allah" or any other deity.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
You seem have some mistaken ideas here. How much would someone have to pay you to be a suicide bomber? Is there any amount? And yet people do it. Why? Because they are ideologically committed. That ideology may be secular as it is/was for the Tamil tigers, or it may be religious as it for the Muslim extremists that engage in suicide terrorism. You may not like the fact, but that doesn't change the fact.
They not only believe in the cause to the point that they will blow themselves up, but also to fight to establish a society built upon the principles they believe in: Islam and Sharia law. Your disbelief has no affect on their beliefs or actions.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Wow! I'm impressed the way you swallow the propaganda. You're a real stand up guy...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”