I have to say that the news out of San Bernadino is about the worst possible for pious American Muslims who go to work everyday, get along with their co-workers, and don’t cause any problems of any kind. It’s not great news for Muslim American women, either.
Basically, this shooting is perfectly designed to make people lose their minds in fear around Muslims.
I guess that’s probably the point, although I’ll wait for more details to make firm declarations about a point.
Watch to see which politicians make things worse and which try to make them better.
There is a lot unknown in this case, and the entire thing is just way different from any shooting situation that I am familiar with. Saying nothing is best.
True, but on its surface, it’s a disaster for the Muslim community in the U.S. I say this as a Muslim convert. Here’s a guy who appears to completely harmless, living a quiet, ordinary life and then he suddenly goes off in a completely unpredictable manner. What could be scarier? Heck, it scares me.
Agree, but not inclined to view this attack as scarier than any other aspect of our lives in this country at this time. The “very scary sleeper” terrorist/foreign agent/etc. that lives among us is rarer than multi-million dollar lottery winners. And the nuts and conspiracy freaks among us, including many in high office, have been promulgating this fear based story line for at least seventy years; so, they’re bound to get lucky every once in a while.
I agree with you as well. It’s horrible and truly scary, and yet should be kept in context. I’m far more frightened every time one of my kids gets behind the wheel of a car for a road trip. That doesn’t make it alright or something to be easily tolerated. But it also doesn’t make it something to jump up and down and scream about, frightening the children. Politics is a mean business and the only real solution to our problems is better public education so people are less easily duped.
In the “Dangerous Believers in Invisible Sky Daddies” category Christians are heads and tails above Muslims.
No.
They are not.
On the evidence.
Equal opportunity haters, equally devolved, kneejerk believers in religions that are themselves so far devolved from their original forms that they would now be totally unrecognizable to the people who founded them.
Once one believes that “God” gives His OK to murder, it’s all over but the shooting.
The only reason that so-called “Christians” have been more dangerous than so-called “Muslims” in the past was that the so-called “Christians” had more advanced technologies than the so-called “Muslims.”
Them days are pretty much gone forever.
Bet on it.
Watch.
We are teetering right on the edge of The First Nuclear Crusade.
Watch.
AG
I agree with the basic assertion here, but you undermine your own case by calling it a crusade.
Why does that “undermine” what I said? It’s so-called Islamic fools battling so-called Christian fools, just like the Crusades. Meanwhile…also just like the Crusades…innocents suffer and nothing is ever solved.
Seems pretty close, to me.
AG
You just said its time for an era of muslims being more dangerous because the tech disparity is basically gone (this is what I agree with, power imbalance on either side causes one to become more of a threat) then you talked about a Christian nuclear holy war so that seems to undermine the idea that muslims have roughly equal parity in the danger department.
Where did I say a Christian nuclear holy war?
You think a dirty bomb in Times Square isn’t nuclear war?
WTFU.
Nuclear weapons have gone missing at least since the fall of the USSR.
Please.
Should something like that happen inside the U.S., the reaction would be massive. U.S. nuke subs are sitting on the bottom of the Mediterranean with Islamic city coordinates locked in. All they need is an order and all hell will break loose.
WTFU.
AG
Christian = Crusade
Muslim = Jihad
Watch.
AG is going to post yet another declamation that ends with the words “watch” and “bet on it”. These words are evidently supposed to convey the impression of deep analysis.
Bet on it.
Watch.
OK.
Don’t bet on it and if you are watching, stop.
No matter to me.
AG
Of course BushII, a born against Christian, ended up causing the death of a few hundred thousand innocent Iraqis.
But, Bush is a regular-sounding name here in the US, so we’ll ignore that, and focus on the mooselmans with mooselman names who are so powerless that they have to use pissant rifles and home-made IEDs to make people scared.
Sure, the US participates in drone terrorism every single day, but hey, individual mooselmans with rifles are something that we should all be worried about.
Americans have proven time and time again that they talk tough, but are big ol’ cowards. All you have to do to get them to make massive, irreparable mistakes, is to scare them a little bit.
“Watch to see which politicians make things worse”
Batting first, Ted Cruz…
Obama’s presser this morning and his statement were the first I’ve heard where the comment wasn’t geared towards choosing sides of the political arguments. It was clear that after being briefed by Comey & Lynch, and that the FBI will be the lead in the investigation that the dangers of assumptions before facts are not what this tinderbox needs.
Yes.
They will run the “argument at the gathering” thing that is now poking into all of the coverage for all they are worth. But it won’t be enough. These people were armed to the teeth with high-end military gear. This was not a spur-of-the-moment move.
Bet on it.
AG
About the only thing I bet on is the trite “bet on it” at the end of everything you post.
You lose.
AG
What the news has told me is that he was a US born citizen who worked for the local Health Dept as an inspector. He was with the group at the scene and had an altercation with someone, left the building and returned.
He and his Saudi wife left their 6 month old baby with her grandmother. The pair left the scene unharmed which would not comport with a terrorist/suicide bomber creed. They were killed while fleeing. There’s been no statement from them left behind. These things may argue that this was a planned act of revenge against a workplace.
To tell you how effed up the coverage of this event is, the Guardian reported that he was “South Asian” and his wife was “Pakistani”. The Guardian now says that it was Farouk who was Pakistani and says very little about his wife. It also says Farouk went on the hajj to Saudi Arabia in 2013 (by my math, at age 24).
The current story says there were management problems in the department in which Farouk and the other workers at the “Christmas luncheon” were employed. The insistence on portraying it so as to not offend Bill O’Reilly, who is cranking up his traditional War on Christmas caught my attention. Where did that portrayal come from? Was that the official department characterization of the event? So many questions.
What I do know is the hard-nosed “war on Christmas” bullshit is beginning to offend non-Christians. Our neighborhood had a “holiday parade” (a Santa Claus and fire trucks parade) annually. This year it became a “Christmas parade”. Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, and of course Muslim neighbors who had turned out in the past expressed that they are skipping this year’s event because the insistence on “Christmas” tells them they are not welcome.
There is a word that has become a bit of a fad — microaggressions — in explaining how modern polite racism and bigotry work. The traditional word for aggression in this sense is “snub” or maybe “very pointed snub”. The “micro-” refers to the core content of the issue — minor things, things that people are regularly reminded to just brush off. The social import is when it becomes repetitive, socially legitimized, and widespread. [Act of being] “while black” is the current anectdotal example of this social act of agression at work. Asian-Americans who are constantly asked about what country they are from are another cited example. Mormons face their own variety of this phenomenon of social enforcement of a default culture and identity.
There is not enough evidence to draw conclusions about this particular case, but there are certain things know about how DAESH recruits in the West and part of it has to do will tapping alienation of young (20-30 years old) Muslims from their surrounding societies. One commentary after Paris talked about the attack as an attempt to eliminate the gray area–to polarize Muslims and their surrounding neighbors to self-segregate and isolate the two communities.
How the people in this country process this case publicly in the media then affects DAESH recruitment. Unfortunately there are fools in the media and in the general population who want to do DAESH’s propaganda and recruiting prep work for them. And they have shown repeatedly that actual evidence does not matter.
Reports are that France is closing selected mosques. If a nation wants to take that approach against civil liberties, in the US we should shut down selected video pundits and radio shock jocks. And have a litmus test for political candidates.
More important that wringing hands over two people who are now dead is making sure that this event — regardless of the facts of the case — does not become the poster child in DAESH recruiting.
It’s simple for me.
When terrorists go out and kill lots of people, they aren’t attempting to cause the government of that country to suddenly collapse, allowing the caliphate an opportunity to move in, establish power, and rule forever.
Terrorists realize that what they can do is what right-wingers of all stripes do (pardon my microaggressive statement about right-wing scumbags)…
Divide and Conquer.
You get a majority non-Muslim population to suspect Muslims. The non-violent super ultra mega majority of non-violent Muslims (99.999% of them) are then pushed on and against and then a few of them become radicalized because they didn’t do shit, and they’re being treated like a terrorist.
Anyone who encourages divide and conquer reactions to events that happen like this are, in fact, working on behalf of the very terrorists they say they hate. Both the terrorists and the reactionaries are pushing a divide and conquer strategy.
The fact that Republicans and terrorists both subscribe to divide and conquer tactics, are both, in fact, right-wingers, and are opposed to expanding membership in their perceived tribes, is what needs to be hammer the fuck home every time you see your ostensibly reasonable friend on the Facebook sewer posting divide and conquer posts.
I don’t post on Facebook, but when I do, it’s to give my friends shit, publicly, about their tacit support of terrorism by furthering terrorist goals.
Yeah.
Right.
Whaddayou!!!??? Kiddin’ me or what!!!
C’mon…
WTFU.
These poor fools thought they were earning Paradise for their actions!!!
WTFU!!!
AG
Your scenario in bold is clearly not what the usual response to micro-agressions are. But they do set people up for the appeal of movements that appeal to their identity and sense of justice and power. But the background polite Islamaphobia in the the West can be just as much a factor in why it is that young people (primarily young men) wind up as recruits and explains how the attack can come out of nowhere. Obviously, there were decisions sufficiently prior to yesterday that caused the couple to acquire the firearms they used. There was sufficient planning in how to carry out the attack and there was reasonably solid operational security in having only two committed people involved. That premeditation and invisibility in normal society are a much to scare the shit out of the American public with the ideas of careful preparation as they are in carrying out the attack. The maximum terror with the minimum investment is the nature of asymmetric warfare.
The other part of these attacks that freaks people out is that they are increasingly self-managed and not command-chain-directed attacks. So the selection of target, timing, location could be driven by mixed and confused motives. Religious martyrdom plus wanting to take out the boss and a few of boss’s lackeys plus having your nose rubbed in forced “Christmas” and the political strategic goal of killing as many Americans as possible. It is clearly a damn fancy way to go postal or get yourself killed.
You write:
That it is, Tarheel.
That it is.
AG
What happened to the third gunman? What happened to the detained person?
Just curious.
Oh, and everyone missed the Turkish-ISIS oil deal.
Well if the only thing they did was run from a gun battle in progress they will likely be released and their name withheld for privacy reasons.
And that’s just what the news was at the presser. This was a neighbor fleeing from the scene seeking safety. The Chief said he was cleared of any connection and let go.
San Bernardino is as close to a hometown as I’ve got. My family moved there when I was 4 years old, and we moved away when I was 15, but to a small, nearby mountain town, such that San Bernardino was “the city” as far as my friends and I were concerned. That’s where we went for entertainment once we were old enough to drive. It’s presently a pretty impoverished place, really slammed by collapse of the housing bubble, for example.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but at my age I have a far higher probability of dying from heart disease or cancer than I do from scary muslims. So pardon me while I continue to go about my business.
Of course, in a country with a working political system it would be nice to do something rational about these very improbable events, provided it is not too onerous. Better gun regulation, mental health care? I would not include bombing brown people on the list.
Agree with all you say.
Of course that’s true. The chances of dying in a car accident are far higher than from an act of terrorism. But it’s not an adequate reply because fear of violence is not irrational in the least.
We ought to point out that any discussion of terrorism needs to include gun control; that far more people die from gun violence not labeled “terror” than that which is. And it all needs to be addressed in a rational, coherent manner.
Yeah, good luck with that; I know.
If I had a nickel for every time I have made this same point to every gun-cleaving, fear-filled person I know, I would be lying on a beach in Aruba right now sipping a fruity cocktail and counting my stacks of nickels. And your point is, of course, entirely rational. Unfortunately, the human ability to properly weigh risks is always completely clouded by their overwhelming knee-jerk fears. On occasion I have to reel my wife in when she gets swept up in the tidal waves of fear that regular wash over the greater American populace.
“I don’t want you to go to that NFL game this Sunday”…..
“I don’t want you to fly on that business trip next week”….
“I’m staying away from malls during this Christmas season”….
“No way would I go anywhere that there are large crowds”….
The steady drumbeat of FEAR, FEAR, FEAR!! Maybe I’m just too rational about it. I understand that statistically, I will most likely die of cancer, heart disease or an accident of some sort. My end will likely come, not as a result of some nationally newsworthy event, but as a result of a self-destructive lifestyle choice I have made, the misfortune of my genetic makeup or a moment of inattention by myself or someone crossing my path in the daily course of an ordinary life. And the same applies for all those fear soaked, gun toting, bunker building, doomsday prepping irrationalists who daily are steeling themselves for some sort of zombie apocalypse.
And no amount of talking or citing of statistics is going to change the view of those who wake up every day, mentally preparing themselves for that mortal threat that they think is coming every minute, every hour of every day. Who knows? I might defy the statistics and be in the wrong place at the wrong time, like every victim of these mass shootings has been, and confirm the rightness of the paranoid among us who are screaming DANGER! DANGER! DANGER! round the clock. But I am not going to waste what precious time I have on this earth embracing that level of constant fear. That is just not the way that I am going to live my life.
I cringed when I heard their names. SIGH.
The GOP hesitated not one nanosecond in taking no responsibility whatsoever for Dear’s shooting at a PP clinic, despite their incessant incendiary (and completely untrue) rhetoric. Would Dear have done this deed anyway? I say: unlikely that he would have chosen THAT place and said THOSE words without having the media & GOP pols, pres candidates, rightwing “preachers,” etc, incessantly trumpet out the bullshit.
In this case, so much is unknown that the best course of action is silence until we know more. But I read and see that Fox & the usual suspect Haters in the media are already pounding the anti-Muslim/all Muslims are terrorists/booga booga scary scary drums.
The tiny toe I dipped into the fetid cesspit of comments on websites shows the right out in force, shrieking about terrorists + none of this would have happened if everyone in San Berdoo was only armed to the teeth with zillions of guns. sigh again.
Yet it’s the horrific “liberal media” that does all the “damage.” Eh? What and/or where is this “liberal media” that’s constantly brow-beaten by the right??
Yeah, this is really, really bad.
This is what upsets people the most about ISIS*: that they are disconnected from a normal set of human emotions. And that they can be hidden among us because they are the most profound sort of psychopath.
It’s like Leopold and Loeb founded a worldwide movement that has access to advanced weaponry.
* It’s ISIS, right? Has to be ISIS.
Sounds like you’re leaping to a lot of conclusions there, none of which are justified by any solid facts that I’ve read or heard about the case so far.
How about now?
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/05/us/tashfeen-malik-islamic-state.html?hp&action=click&pgtyp
e=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=a-lede-package-region®ion=top-news&WT
.nav=top-news
Cart, meet horse.
WHY does it “have to be ISIS.” Links, please?
Oh right. There aren’t any… because we do NOT know anything at this time about their rationale for doing this.
I encourage you to cease projecting your fears onto this situation. JMHO, of course. You may choose to disagree.
“I encourage you to cease projecting your fears onto this situation.”
Links, please?
If this is Daesh, then this is the kind of thing that would be done to poison the beliefs of both sides essentially starting an end times war.
If you wanted to radicalize a population you need a grievence. So to the WASPs the boogeyman will be anyone Muslim.
To the average population of Muslims who want nothing to do with this stuff, they are attached verbally and physically as terrorists. Eventually you would think that would turn some of them into just what Daesh wants.
This also plays into the idea of using military forces in Syria ( who is on our side? ) to fight them. That’s what they want, crusaders to invade. They think the end times apocalypse will be at a place in Syria. They even named their literature after it Dabiq.
Yes.
My heart sank into my shoes when I saw the suspects’ names.
As did mine, although earlier in the press conference the not very well spoken lead FBI guy hinted at the developments to come. So I wasn’t altogether surprised when LOD announced those names at the start of his 10 p.m. show.
Just as a side comment, the San Bernardino Police Chief was a much more impressive voice in front of the microphone. No whining, no partisianship, no waffling, just the facts, and move-on. Am NOT at all impressed with the FBI man from the LA field office.
I would watch the national security establishment and law enforcement agencies like a hawk. They are seeking broader powers that invade further the Constitutional rights they has already substantially compromised. They are still pursuing the idea that prevention is a matter of arresting someone for a pre-crime based on big-data correlations. And yet their current systems, which are very intrusive, missed this event developing.
Moreover, I don’t trust all rank-and-file national security and law enforcement employees to keep their own partisan political opinions of the President out of their work. Especially over the next 13 months in which the GOP is jonesing for a big one like Paris to sully the President’s record.
But W’s 3400 is kinda hard to top.
Melissa speaks for me, particularly here:
Her emphasis. Of course, Rod Dreher of TAC and Emma Green of The Atlantic took this meaningless gesture shit to the extreme, with a true victim complex they (well, Dreher I know has now dedicated his blog to what he views as “black victimology” and “SJW’s run amok” mixed in with “HALP CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION!”) constantly assign to their political opponents with the advent of “prayer shaming”. As Betty Cracker of Balloon Juice says, “It’s not the “thoughts and prayers” that are the problem — it’s the “nothing else.” That should be obvious to a toddler, let alone a managing editor at The Atlantic.”
Anyone else finding it more and more peculiar that comparing these shootings when the Christian shooter in Colorado is painted as a nutcase and the authorities check out his home but give his Church a pass? Then the San Bernadino shooters’ mosque members have armed FBI agents at their doors?
There’s a fair amount of duh to the question and certainly a superficial answer or two but then when the media is plastered with Christian church leaders saying outrageous things, shouldn’t we be asking if they are radicalizing their flocks? And shouldn’t the FBI be including a look into that shooter’s religious sources?
The CS shooter appears not to have been affiliated with any church. Not a church going man. So, even if anti-christian vigilantes existed, there isn’t a target point for them wrt to this killer.
Farook regularly worshiped at a specific mosque. LEO protection of this mosque seems appropriate to me.
There’s this
Where are “Army of God” churches located?