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World Reacts To The Worst Mass Shooting In U.S. History (cnn.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Fifty people were killed inside Pulse, a gay nightclub, Orlando Police Chief John Mina and other officials said Sunday morning, just hours after a shooter opened fire in the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. At least 53 more people were injured, Mina said. Police have shot and killed the gunman, he told reporters.
The shooter is not from the Orlando area, Mina said. He has been identified as Omar Saddiqui Mateen, 29, of Fort Pierce, about 120 miles southeast of Orlando, two law enforcement officials tell CNN.
Orlando authorities said they consider the violence an act of domestic terror. The FBI is involved. While investigators are exploring all angles, they "have suggestions the individual has leanings towards (Islamic terrorism), but right now we can't say definitely..."
In the discussion on this submission, Slashdot readers reported that Reddit is among the sites that have removed some discussions about the shooter's identity, with one reader even reporting "Posts directing people where and how to give blood have been removed."
The shooter is not from the Orlando area, Mina said. He has been identified as Omar Saddiqui Mateen, 29, of Fort Pierce, about 120 miles southeast of Orlando, two law enforcement officials tell CNN.
Orlando authorities said they consider the violence an act of domestic terror. The FBI is involved. While investigators are exploring all angles, they "have suggestions the individual has leanings towards (Islamic terrorism), but right now we can't say definitely..."
In the discussion on this submission, Slashdot readers reported that Reddit is among the sites that have removed some discussions about the shooter's identity, with one reader even reporting "Posts directing people where and how to give blood have been removed."
Islamic extremist and mentally ill. Though I don't think it's possible to be an Islamic extremist without also being mentally ill.
While investigators are exploring all angles, they "have suggestions the individual has leanings towards (Islamic terrorism), but right now we can't say definitely..."
This statement is about a perp who called 911 and proclaimed himself an agent of ISIS
No matter what you think about the civil rights aspect of our surveillance state, it is increasingly clear that it does not not work.
However, instead of calls to disband it, I'm sure there will be calls to make it even more intrusive. And there is no limit to that. If another event happens, we must not be surveilling the population enough...
According to the timeline posted by the media, the gunman initially exchanged fire with three cops at 2am. They did not pursue him. 100 cops arrive. They do not attempt to enter. At 5am, the SWAT team finally breaches and kills the terrorist.
That left the attacker with 3 whole hours to kill his hostages. Shades of Columbine, where the police were similarly afraid to respond until they had ridiculously overwhelming force.
About Reddit: One specific subreddit, /r/news, was censoring the story, apparently once news came out the shooter was Muslim with possible connections to ISIS. Other subreddits responding by /r/askreddit responded by allowing a post about it even though it's not within the subreddit's topics. /r/the_donald is also talking about it and making the front page with MANY posts, and /r/uncensorednews was established by the community and they have their own thread about it.
Buddhist?
American(NY in fact) born citizen with from what I hear Afghani immigrant parents, working as an armed security guard for a courthouse in Florida. Oh, and was also investigated and cleared TWICEby the FBI for possible ties to Islamic extremism.
It is important to also remember that there are a lot of Christians in this country with not too dissimilar views towards homosexuality than what radical Islam does. In fact when I first saw "Shooting at gay nightclub" this morning my first assumption was that some anti-gay marriage person had gone off their rocker.
When a Christian does it, it's considered anomalous, mentally sick behavior, but when it's a Muslim, literally no one is surprised. I'm not criticizing the attitude, I just think it's interesting how it really doesn't matter if an Islamist is ill when he commits an atrocity like this. I figured that probably says something about the state of Islam when people really just want to ignore the sorts of differences that define Islamic mass-killings.
Though I don't think it's possible to be an Islamic extremist without also being mentally ill.
Applies to all religions, actually.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Remember, they're "moderate Muslims" until they grab an assault weapon and start shooting up the place.
And whacko loony Fundamentalist Christians are just "Christians" until they make fertilizer bombs, execute doctors and shoot up clinics and patients, target blacks, target Muslims...
Point to the Christian mass shootings against gays in this country in the last 5-10 years.
You mean like the Christian terrorist who was thwarted in LA today from carrying out his attack on gays?
Of course there are the Christian terrorists shooting up abortion clinics.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
No, it can't. It is lack of belief in deities, and, by extension, the supernatural. Usually the people claiming it is a religion are religious themselves and do it because they can't handle the possibility of people having morality that lacks dependency on the supernatural.
The two laws you mention ban weapons based largely on APPEARANCE, not functionality, and they don't mention at all the type of guns most often used in murders. You're advocating "scary looking" guns. Exactly what difference do you think a barrel shroud or folding stock would make?
Here's a look at the effectiveness of the "assault weapons" ban from the Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
Fun fact: if you're on the terror watch list you can still buy weapons. Thank God the 2nd amendment is more prescious than lives huh?
This is because a person on the terror watch list often do not know they are being watched and the terror watch list is completely arbitrary in that anyone can be placed on it for any reason. To deny someone a constitutional right because they are placed on a list would be a violation of their Fifth Amendment rights to not be deprived of; life, liberty or property without due process of law. In essence to deny someone rights because they are arbitrary placed on a list without being informed and no way to appeal being placed on such a list that deprives one of their life, liberty or property would be presuming them guilty of a crime without an indictment and trial which the Fifth and Sixth Amendments also prohibit.
Talk to a shrink, lose your right to own a gun...No unintended consequences in that.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I know, I know. You're just trolling with ignorance. But here's how it works.
Atheism is just a lack of beliefs in gods. It's not a religion. Now you have have an atheist who is dogmatic about other things, usually ending in -ism. Capitalism, communism... But if you question what their theology is (theism being key) you don't get capitalism as an answer.
It's exactly the same as someone being Christian and being a right wing capitalist. Even if the two may statistically go hand in hand, when you ask that person what their theology is, you get Christian as an answer.
Words and concepts matter. You don't get to throw them out for 10 seconds so you can say something, but then expect YOUR OWN words to carry weight.
I've read that homosexual relationships between Afghani men and boys are surprisingly common in Afghanistan, although forbidden and not entirely consensual.
Maybe this guy was in the category of less than consensual youth participant at some point and is having trouble with the cognitive dissonance of that experience.
Combine that with kind of a loser lifestyle and maybe the purifying mission of ISIS became appealing, offering an opportunity to get in on a little jihad, punish "those men" who made him perform homosexual sex acts, and purify his own tainted soul by demonstrating he's not one of them.
He chose gays to kill on purpose and it was a pretty deep and personal hostility. You can argue the strategic merits of a nightclub (limited egress, lots of people in a small space, etc) but dozens of places meet that criteria -- movies, malls, sporting events, and all of them filled with degenerate, gluttonous and heretical Westerners, all of them much higher value targets than Hispanic homosexuals.
He picked gays to kill because of his own psychological issues, ISIS propaganda was just a catalyst that set off the reaction.
What I really worry about now, though, is that every fringe nutjob with a personal axe to grind now using ISIS as an excuse to start killing people. I worry it will become a meme for lunatics that will take on a self-perpetuating dynamic.
Your citation of isolated anti-gay incidents over the course of the past century (from... where? Wikipedia, Mother Jones, and The Nation? Good job, there, Mr. Murrow...) just proves my point.
Meanwhile, the number of (Muslim) districts and (Muslim) nations which are *EXPANDING* their adoption of the strictest code of Sharia is GROWING. Yeah, you know, the strict kind: where gays and women with children out of wedlock are executed... Kind of what Christian nations did... IN THE MIDDLE AGES. Pray that Islam has a Reformation in the 21st century at least half as comprehensive as Christianity did in the 16th century.
>>pinning all violence carried out by people who might be Muslim on Islam
I'm not pinning it on Islam, you fool, the shooter called 911 before his crime and did that himself!
Should being on a watch list bar you from having due process, the protection from self incrimination, or free from unreasonable searches and seizures? Should it allow your speech to be silenced by the government? Should it bar you from being able to vote?
If you can bar any constitutional right by simply being on a watch list, you can be denied any rights for being on a watch list.
Many atheists treat the non-existence of god(s) like a fact just like the religious treat the existence as fact, that their belief is the only right belief and all other beliefs are wrong. Sure, atheists have no religious practices but they can be just as insistent on spreading their belief, shutting down alternate beliefs and intolerant of those who believe differently than themselves. As much as it'd probably be more scientifically correct to be an agnostic I have problems respecting people who believe in adult fairy tales just like superstition and astrology or that there's goblins and gremlins. I can't prove it, but yeah... I'm going to act like this is all a bunch of mumbo-jumbo with no basis in reality.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
How can atheism be a religion?
Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby. -- Penn Jillette
Editors didn't mod any of those links up or down. What happened is, of the 300,000 unique visitors per day that view Slashdot, more than a handful decided that you're comments sucked and modded appropriately.
Statistically, there are no examples of gun owners who do not own guns killing anyone. Or existing.
I have, however, run into atheists who are every bit as zealous and annoying as the people they love to publicly hate.
In all fairness, that's about the only type of atheists you're GOING to run into - or at least realize it. The ones that silently ignore people when they start talking about religion aren't really gonna make much of a lasting impression.
Generally religious people aren't hurting anyone - and religion actually keeps some people inline who wouldn't be mentally strong enough to behave without fear of consequences in the afterlife. As such most of them I'm happy to let believe whatever they want.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Allow me (different AC) to offer a different conspiracy theory. Taco Cowboy (and his obvious AC posts) is really APK. This posting is really quite similar to the way APK conducts himself and both are batshit crazy.
It is a belief. It is an affirmative belief. It might qualify as a religion or creed depending on how you define those words.
There are traditionally philosophical distinctions made between "strong" (or "positive") atheism vs. "weak" (or "negative") atheism. "Strong atheists" have a positive belief that no gods exist. Most atheists are merely "weak atheists," who don't actively believe in gods -- and may think they sound unlikely -- but don't have an (unprovable) belief in their non-existence. Lack of belief in something doesn't necessarily entail a positive (and equally unprovable) belief in an opposite.
It is a belief because you can't prove something doesn't exist. It's a consequence of logic. All reason is necessarily based on a foundation of beliefs.
This is a bit of a different issue, which is more related to the traditional definition of agnosticism. A traditional agnostic is someone who has a positive belief that the answers to some questions are unknowable. ("Gnostic" refers to knowledge, an agnostic believes that one can't have that knowledge.)
These days the word "agnostic" is often used for weak atheism, but it's actually a separate issue. An agnostic traditionally is someone who believes we CANNOT know whether God exists -- it's just not a question that can be verified one way or another on the basis of normal empirical evidence. (Philosophers sometimes draw a distinction between "strong" and "weak" agnosticism too.)
An agnostic is someone that neither believes in the supernatural nor does not believe in it. They are undecided or uncommitted.
Again, that's not the word traditionally meant. What you're describing is what philosophers and theologians would generally call weak atheism (i.e., lack of a "theist" belief, hence a-theism). Agnosticism is about what we ALL could possibly know on the basis of evidence, and whether we have sufficient grounds to justify belief, not about whether an individual believes or not.
People colloquially use the label atheist when they mean a person that atheist or agnostic since to them both are guilty.
Agreed, though as I noted -- there are even more distinctions that you make. Using these terms the way philosophers would, it's quite possible to be a gnostic atheist (i.e., a person who has a positive belief that God by definition doesn't exist and believes that he has certain knowledge of this fact), or an agnostic theist (i.e., a person who believes that God exists, but believes it is outside the possibility of science to prove it), or even other stranger combinations.
Most people are agnostic no matter how much say they are atheistic and will readily prey when faced with imminent death.
This is again a separate issue. If I were dying of starvation, I'd definitively prey on animals to survive... sure.
Perhaps you have never lived in a Communist country, which were by law atheistic. The Gulags were filled with religious and priests.
Any country can have an official religion, or no religion. Neither have a monopoly on morality, or immorality.
Myself, I tend to think that morality is based on some pretty simple concepts, like the golden rule. Treat others as you would like to be treated.
What I find disturbing is that many religious people believe that all morality comes from religion, ant we would be rapists, murders, and child molesters except for belief in their particular Gawd.
I do tend to bring that conversation to an embarrasing halt when I say " You just said that the only thing keeping you from being a rapist, murderer and child molester is fear of your gawd punishing you!"
Me? I don't do that kind of stuff because I know it is inherently wrong, not because if I do it, I'll get a toasty reception when I shift this coil.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
"That Muslim loon actually has a church preaching the death and destruction."
I guess you never got to see a Catholic IRA affiliated preacher in action.
Or Ashin Wirathu, the Buddhist leader in Burma that has been, and still is leading the massacre of thousands of muslims in the name of Buddhism (yes, really).
Or the many Buddhist preachers in Sri Lanka that supported and continue to support the massacre of Hindu Tamils.
Or the Orthodox leaders in Bosnia in the 90s, that preached in support of the Serbian genocide of over 10,000 muslims.
Or Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army preaching that they're doing the Lord's work in killing civilians in parts of Africa still to this day.
Turns out, bad people can coopt religion and use it as an excuse to do their bidding whatever that religion may be.
You hear about muslims the most because that is the group that most concerns the Western media. Militant Buddhists in Asia, and Christian warlords in Africa just aren't a threat to us, so the media just doesn't care about those.
Frankly, I defend none of them, extremists are extremists and are all vile human beings, but when people try and pretend that muslims are the only real problem it gives away a disappointing lack of global knowledge in an individual. It comes across as incredibly insular, that you're unaware of anything going on outside your own bubble.
So sure, chat away about this being the biggest threat to the West, you wouldn't be wrong, but you can't rationally pretend that there's something inherently more problematic about their religion than any other. There are over a billion of them living perfectly peacefully wishing no harm on anyone just as most Christians living in America and Europe are doing exactly the same. Most people in the world are decent human beings, you can't let extremists win by falling into the hate trap they're pushing, by seeking to divide those of us who are decent people against each other. I'm an atheist and I find religion nonsensical but blaming a whole group for the actions of a minority? pretending it's inherent to the majority of the group as a whole? It's not a nice path to go down and it simply isn't true. It's also exactly what extremists that you profess to hate want you to do, so if you really hate islamic extremists then why are you giving into them and doing exactly what they want? They want division between otherwise peaceful people who identify with different religions because they see that as the path to holy war (jihad), and that's exactly what you're giving them.
Animals do not, generally, behave as amoral rapists, murderers and child molesters
Rape is very common in the animal kingdom. The notion of consent is quite difficult in a species that doesn't have language, but even if you limit the definition of rape to the male holding down the female and forcing himself on her then it's still common. Go and see how ducks mate sometime - three or four of the males hold the female down and take it in turns. Or look at dolphins.
In terms of murder and child molestation, it's fairly common for a male (especially in the large cats) to kill the cubs fathered by another male that they displace.
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