Guns for People on Terrorist Watch List

I see the President is calling for Congress to ban those on the terrorist watch list from buying firearms. While I agree with the sentiment I can't agree with the precedent of denying constitutional rights without due process. And while I personally disagree that owning guns should be a constitutional right, the fact it is currently just as much a right a free speech and I don't agree that any rights should be forfeited just because the gov't decides to put you on a list.

Agreed.

I could see such a power, if it were limited and especially if there's a simple, fair process to know when you've been placed on such a list, and to get yourself off. But as any number of people who've found themselves on such lists can attest, that's not how it works.

How about this ? How about if carrying a gun were something ABNORMAL ? What if the entire idea of someone feeling the desire to arm themselves were viewed as a person who may have a reason for wanting a weapon of mass destruction , rather than an over bloated outdated and dangerous "right" ?
Wouldn't have such a worry if this were the case. Nope....we go at it ass backwards. Texas doesn't want refugees cause it is too easy to get guns. We are INSANE. About an intimate object by the way. A giant God complex......in my opinion.

As a rule, I'm suspicious when the government feels inclined to make lists of its citizens in the name of public safety.

Is it worth revisiting this topic now after the events in Orlando? I find that I am still against "watch lists" but I am also still adamantly opposed to people being able to buy assault rifles.

I'll keep my basic view here. It's not American to have a secret list under no court oversight and with no way of getting off. If there were a more open process, fine.

That said, even if you can't stop someone from buying a gun, you can still use the watch list. When someone on the current watch list suddenly buys a raft of nasty guns--someone who's been investigated repeatedly, and interviewed twice--we would hope it would set off alarm bells all over the FBI, and they'd be following him around, reading his every text, etc. Surely there's a "crisis" status at the FBI, for situations you can't arrest someone over, but which are screaming for action.

Apparently Mateen was not on a watch list, any longer.

And was this attack related to hate of gays or to ISIS sympathies. What of the thwarted attack in LA?

Was that guy on a terrorist watch list?

Was the President too quick this time to call this an act of terrorism? rather than a terrible hate crime?

"In 2001 there were 16 names on the Known or Suspected Terrorist list. In 2013 there were 469 thousand and there are now north of 680,000."

(review by @DavidWineberg , LibraryThing member , of The Assassination Complex (I _recommend_ this review!) )

It's sheer coincidence that the assailant here had come to the attention of police authorities. Suppose, with the list, the government's next initiative is to physically search all 680,000 + people's homes for firearms and, without "further" due process, sieze and remove those weapons?

I agree with >1 jjwilson61: , >2 timspalding: , >4 southernbooklady: , >5 southernbooklady: & parts of >6 timspalding:

>8 proximity1:

http://www.factcheck.org/2015/12/rubio-on-terrorist-watchlist/

"U.S. Persons (including both citizens and legal permanent residents) account for about 25,000 of that total."

>9 timspalding:

Tim,

Thank you for that correction. It's important. There are just several thousand U.S. addresses to check.

"For everything else there's Mastercard™ er, that is, unmanned drone-strikes (~655,000). Priceless."

Calling for a ban on people on a watch list is pretty fucking cynical, doing absolutely nothing of substance about guns, and, yes, lending legitimacy to watch lists in general.

>7 richardbsmith:

It's a crime of murder--mass murder in this case--by a deranged person, apparently religiously motivated. This is not, by the way, what's called a "crime of passion." It's premeditated murder.

"Hate" is (fortunately) not a crime -- if it was, every one of us would be liable for prosecution. If I were the man's attorney, my defense would be that he's insane and needs confinement under psychiatric care (for an indeterminate period but probably not part his seventieth birthday).

Are there not hate crimes?

It looks perhaps like finally ISIS is claiming responsibility.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/breakingnews/isis-claims-responsibility-for-orland...

I am not sure that is true.

This could be a hate crime, unrelated to terrorism. Of course the murderer is already dead, so there is no additional penalty for the hate crime.

It might change the rhetoric and focus if this was not actually ISIS sponsored?

>13 richardbsmith:

Are there not hate crimes?"

Probably a good question for another thread --if there isn't one already! ;^)

There are in the U.S., I suppose, what are termed " 'hate crimes'" but I regard this concept as very bad and even dangerous jurisprudence. Philosophically, I don't believe the law should concern itself with whether the defendant was motivated by "hate." The case is one of murder. Whether he hated these people he didn't even know is something that we needn't establish in order to convict on a charge of murder.

Further, "hate crime" strikes me as a concept that fits a society such as that depicted in Orwell's 1984 .

We shouldn't "need" it. The law's business shouldn't concern revenge or efforts to pander to that passion.

To say more on it here would take this thread off-topic.

This is the right thread.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/orlando-nightclub-massacre/orlando-massacre-ter...

https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/civilrights/hate_crimes

From a philosophical point of view, there is not much difference between "hate crime" and "domestic terrorism" -- both are justified by their perpetrators ideologically; both view the victims as stand ins for some larger, despised group; both are designed to inspire fear in the targeted population; and both are seen by authority as a threat to the social order that has to be contained and neutralized.

Worst slaughter in US history, so it must be ... the gun's fault!

More gun control! It's the NRA's fault! If only there were no NRA, there would be no violence in America and one would ever die or get sick or...

>17 southernbooklady: "From a philosophical point of view", there is not much difference between "hate crime" and "domestic terrorism" --

An opinion which not is merely ignorant and stupid, but loathsome, offensive, dangerous, and destructive.

"philosophical"
What philosopher ever said this? Chairman Mao?

There's no heartlessness like liberal heartlessness.

If this thread is discussing only whether people on the terrorist watch list should not have access to guns, then I think the Orlando massacre is off topic.

As best I can tell Mateen was no longer on the watch list.

SBL,

If we are going to discuss the Orlando shooting here, for me there is a subtle and significant difference between a slaughter motivated by hate of gays and a slaughter sponsored by ISIS.

>19 barney67:

Just because southernbooklady said "from a philisophical point of view" does not mean she has to quote a specific philosopher. She explained her statement quite clearly.

>20 richardbsmith: for me there is a subtle and significant difference between a slaughter motivated by hate of gays and a slaughter sponsored by ISIS.

I suspect that motivations are rarely all one thing or the other. But you're probably correct that it is off topic.

ETA: except, of course, that if watch lists are supposed to identify potential threats, the process clearly failed in the case of Mateen.

I'm with SBL. I don't see much difference if this guy killed gays because his religion tells him that gays are bad or whether he did it because ISIS tells him that gays are bad.

>20 richardbsmith:

While I don't claim any special insight into their thinking or strategies, it seems to me that Da'esh is simply being opportunistic here in claiming "responsibility." The assailant, probably expecting to be killed, phoned in a brief acknowledgement mentioning a known terrorist organization. I very much do not believe anyone within a terrorist group had any inkling of this one-stop murder spree.

Nor do I think this is a clear case of the F.B.I. failing to catch clear signals. If they acted on every similar case, would they need more agents?

Also, Da'esh would have been just as ready to subscribe to this slaughter had the nightclub been any other type of club. Being located within the "Great Satan's" home turf is good enough for their purposes, by all observable indications.

I think the assailant was acting on a suicidal impulse and these people were the unfortunate victims of the plan which seems to have been related to his having witnessed a gay couple kissing.

One point we haven't touched directly is the fact that the private security firm, G4S, which had employed this man, failed to uncover a clear history of mental instability --and might be legally liable for its negligence. Wall Street investors seem to have quickly imagined that. Stock down sharply. Why are violent perpetrators of domestic abuse able to get jobs as armed security guards--let alone purchase firearms?

I'm with SBL. I don't see much difference if this guy killed gays because his religion tells him that gays are bad or whether he did it because ISIS tells him that gays are bad.

Or indeed if his ideology—religiously-based and ISIS-inspired—tells him Americans are bad, and gays are some of the worst of them.

While I don't claim any special insight into their thinking or strategies, it seems to me that Da'esh is simply being opportunistic here in claiming "responsibility."

It's a distinction without a difference. ISIS has two sorts of power. One is that it's a concrete, visible organization that has employees, a state, money and so forth. The second is that it's an idea people find appealing, and act in accord with, without expressly taking advantage of its material resources.

The two are connected insofar as the organization proposes and promotes the idea. The idea has implications to those who accept it, including murder, and applies whether you are within ISIS state boundaries or not. ISIS expressly calls for lone-wolves, but they don't need to--their idea is general. And they are connected insofar as the continuing existence and success of the "Islamic State," is an argument for Muslims within a certain radical frame to accept their claims and act. That is, for radical Sunnis of a certain stripe, the success of ISIS makes the case that they are what they say they are--"the Islamic State is real, the state is prospering through God's help—against the most powerful countries ever—and all good Muslims must obey its leader, the legitimate Caliph." Most Muslims don't buy it—the overwhelming majority find such thinking repellant and fight against it in ways non-Muslims cannot—but a small percent do, and that's a problem. Getting rid of the ISIS state won't solve the problem. But its continued existence is a disaster.

---

All this said, we mustn't lose sight of the fact that there were two terrorist incidents on US soil yesterday. One was by a radical Islamist, targeting gays but—we may speculate—probably not a-ok with all other Americans. The other was by some sort of apparently non-religious right-winger, targeting gays. The former "succeeded," the latter "failed." Both terrorized gays. Ordinary Americans claim they are terrorized by ISIS. Gays have rather more reason to be today.

There are a lot of pride parades this weekend. I plan on attending one. From living in Turkey, I'm used to doing the calming terrorism math in my head*--that this is a nation of 320 million people and tens of thousands of pride parades. How many could be attacked? Still, it's going to bug me. And that'll be about the only "gay venue exposure" I'll have this year.

*I've got a picture of me and my son standing not ten feet from where the Hippodrome bomb went off six months later, killing all those German tourists. But you do the math of days and hours and time spent and, well, the odds were still pretty low.

It seems to me that an attack on a gay bar by someone hating gays is different from an attack against the West, whether in the US or in Turkey or in Paris or in Britain.

There does seem to be a cross of ISIS sympathies and hatred of gays with this person.

If we win the fight against radical Islam and ISIS sympathizers, are we not still left with a guy who shoots up a gay bar?

>25 timspalding:

See the Santa Monica guy.

...I'm used to doing the calming terrorism math in my head...

Yes, otherwise you're stuck at home, frightened, and they've won (whoever they are that week). My daughter was on a school trip to Istanbul a week before the latest bombing there and we were in downtown Munich as a family the day after the Cologne attacks. I do remind myself that when the target is all of the world, there's no sense hiding at home.

>20 richardbsmith: It appears the motivation of the killer was a combination of jihad and homophobia. The lone wolf attacker is almost impossible to stop in the current USA. The FBI is almost helpless in a case like this. Until this guy takes an overt step, you just cannot put everyone in jail for their speech, hateful as it may be. The Islamic State encourages attacks like this noting the USA is awash with assault rifles. This guy bought the gun legally. He did not violate any law. But why does one need an assault rifle to kill Bambi? The assault rifle is meant for slaughter not for self-defense and that is what it was used for here and in San Bernadino.

Since it is so "easy" to accomplish, I just don't know why there are not more Jihadist lone wolves attacking soft targets like these in the USA and Europe. As noted, Omar Mateen was removed from the Terrorism Watch List. But even if he was on it, he could still buy an assault rifle. The law allows it.

>29 jerry-book: It may be logistically easy to commit mass murder but it isn't so psychologically easy, at least for most people raised in western societies. It's probably easier (psychologically) for a potential jihadi to try to get to the Middle East to fight with the ISIS army since they would be joining a cause and fighting with comrades. To commit mass murder is a dark, lonely, and likely difficult task unless the guys a sociopath in the first place.

>30 jjwilson61: Omar was raised in the good old USA. He was a loner by all accounts like many mass muderers. However, I am sure he is acclaimed a hero by Isis and like minded Muslims.

Matt Pearce at the L.A. Times, quoting FBI Director James Comey:

While working as a courthouse guard in 2013, Mateen made "inflammatory and contradictory" statements to co-workers about having relatives in Al Qaeda, the radical Sunni terrorist group, Comey said. Mateen also claimed to be a member of Hezbollah, Lebanon's Shiite militia, and his remarks drew an 11-month FBI investigation, Comey said. Both groups oppose Islamic State.

If Mateen could not distinguish Daesh from Al Qaeda and Hezbollah, his claims of affiliation may have been nothing more than aspirational. Perhaps he mentioned Islamic State on that 911 call as the scariest bogeyman he could think of. Sort of like those frustrated Bernie Bros who now insist they are going to vote for Trump, because they believe that is the scariest thing they can say to Hillary supporters. (Never mind that Trump - at least this year's model - is almost diametrically opposed to everything Bernie believes in.)

Some sources are now claiming that Mateen had been seen in the Pulse on a number of occasions. So far it is not clear whether he was there for surveillance, or to look for fun. So there is another possibility - maybe he was just a deeply closeted gay man, caught between his religious upbringing and his biology.

I can't believe ANYONE is so STUPID to believe that the Orlando massacre has anything to do with gun control.

Unless you are saying there should be gun control for Muslims. That I agree with. Maybe Muslims shouldn't have guns. And if they are so peace-loving, then they don't need guns, right?

>25 timspalding: Or indeed if his ideology—religiously-based and ISIS-inspired—tells him Americans are bad, and gays are some of the worst of them

People who want to be violent will find the excuses they need to justify it.

And they will always be able to find a gun, no matter what the laws are.

>25 timspalding:

Or indeed if his ideology—religiously-based and ISIS-inspired—tells him Americans are bad, and gays are some of the worst of them.

HE was an American.

He was a US-born and bred misogynist and homophobe who stormed and wreaked havoc on LGBTQ people and their allies. He happened to be Muslim but he could have been any flavour of right-wing Christian with exactly the same resulting misogyny and homophobia.

>36 LolaWalser:

Since he's now dead, we're left to piece together witnesses' accounts for who and what he was and what motivated his acts.

Regulars of the Pulse Club knew him as a client of the club/bar where he'd come and drink--sometimes to excess.

For all we know, he may have been gay himself--and, since married and a father, estranged from wife and child--deeply conflicted and angry and depressed at others who could live a gay life in the open.

There are lots of possibilities here.

>35 barney67: But if he had bought the guns illegally the police or FBI could have detained him, they could have gotten warrants to search his house and phone records, and they might have discovered what he was planning before it happened. Since he bought the guns entirely legally none of that was possible.

ETA: So, tighter regulation of gun sales would give law enforcement a lot more tools to go after domestic terrorists.

What really worries me is that certain kinds of people will take advantage of the situation, and that the good Muslims will get their feelings hurt because of it. There need to be new laws to prevent that from happening, even if it means more gay people have to die.

People who want to be violent will find the excuses they need to justify it.

Would you have said this about Dylan roof?

Look, I'm not saying it's entirely one thing or another. Everyone else seems to want that--that it's "just about homophobia and nothing else" (a very popular refrain on Twitter), just about radical Islam, or guns, or mental health, or violent people, etc. It seems to me it can be about all those things, without causing our ideological palaces to crumble into dust. Indeed, my guess is that violence of this sort is never about one thing.

And they will always be able to find a gun, no matter what the laws are.

The evidence from other countries runs the other way. If you want to make a purely rights-based argument, fine, but the extensive, transnational evidence is that gun control measures work.

He happened to be Muslim but he could have been any flavour of right-wing Christian with exactly the same resulting misogyny and homophobia.

Indeed, he could have been one of various flavors of Christian anti-gay hate groups. And if he were, that would be something to notice. We should be aware that anti-gay groups of this sort exist, not sweep it under the rug arguing that such a person merely "happened" to belong to a radical anti-gay Christian group, or worry that mentioning the word "Christian" will tar all Christians.

The case here is otherwise. It's fair to say he "happened" to be Muslim, but that's not the end of the story. That alone would be nothing--the vast majority of Muslims don't approve of such things by any means. No, he explicitly linked what he did to ISIS, a specific and very extreme group. We should notice that, not sweep it under the rug.

And, yes, when we do so, we should be careful to help ignorant Americans understand that ISIS is not representative of Muslims generally. I think that message is hard to get across. And I understand why many want to ignore the role of radical Islam, because it tends to incite Americans into thinking it's about Islam generally. But then again NOT discussing radical Islam incites them just as much. It seems to me you can say both: (1) Islam is not a problem so stop hating Muslims; (2) radical Islam of the ISIS sort is very much a problem.

Agreed--or no?

>40 timspalding:.

Inter

Section

Ality

>40 timspalding:
Would you have said this about Dylan roof?

I would. I think violent people find the justifications they need or want and those have very little to do with what the rest of us understand as reality.

I also think emotions are contagious -- not just joy or happiness, but also fear and anger. So we have to acknowledge that fear breeds fear, and rage breeds more rage. Which is why I find the fear-mongering that passes for so much political discourse in this country to be pointless, pathetic, and actually dangerous. Fear has momentum in this country and it pushes people towards more fear, more anger, and eventually, more violence. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

>40 timspalding: Agree. I do want to emphasize though that because the Muslim faith is not well understood in this country that when something is said about it people tend to apply it to the whole religion whereas if the same thing is said about Christianity they more easily understand that it may only apply to a fringe element of that religion. So you two equivalent statements about the two religions may not be understood in equivalent manners and therefore much more care needs to be taken in what is said about Islam.

I would. I think violent people find the justifications they need or want and those have very little to do with what the rest of us understand as reality.

Maybe. I naively think that racism was a big part of the problem with Roof. And it would be rather naive and indeed obscuring to gloss over it.

>44 timspalding: Are you saying you think he was predominantly nonviolent until he stumbled onto the Storm Front website?

I think racism, homophobia, bigotry of any kind provides people with a path to action, a label and a target for their fears. That's hardly glossing over the issue.

But first and foremost such people are afraid. They feel threatened and they feel angry. But the potential for violence is always simmering underneath, and it will seize on any convenient excuse to come out.

>45 southernbooklady:

No, I think these things are complicated, psychologically and culturally. No doubt a variety of things came together here. Guessing, I'd say we have evidence of instability, life failures, shame about his own homosexuality from deep-set cultural and religious taboos, a violent streak, mental illness, and the appeal of Islamic radicalism, etc.

Roof checks a few of those boxes too, it seems. But I don't think we should ignore the role that white supremacy or Islamic fundamentalism played in either.

>40 timspalding:

No, he explicitly linked what he did to ISIS, a specific and very extreme group. We should notice that, not sweep it under the rug.

A few days ago ISIS didn't know this guy existed. It's pure accidental opportunism from both sides--they get "credit" for whenever wherever whatever bastard commits an atrocity mumbling "ISIS, ISIS", and whatever sick bastard--who happens to be Muslim--finds a "higher" motivation for his miserable hateful action.

It's just another form of using "God" to steal your neighbour's chickens, rape his ass, and shit in his cabbage patch. It's better than ordinary stealing chickens, raping donkeys, and shitting on cabbages because, "God". Religion is SO special.

I'll also point out the same justifications are made by those who deny pizza and cake and marriage rights to gays--we're supposed to accept they have "better" motivation than mere meanness, stupidity, and hatefulness, because, again, "God".

>46 timspalding:

So, Dylan Roof admires the KKK and wears white-Rhodesia and old South Africa patches. But nobody from these organizations directed him, or knows who he is, so we discount racism as a motive?

Weird.

I'll also point out the same justifications are made by those who deny pizza and cake and marriage rights to gays--we're supposed to accept they have "better" motivation than mere meanness, stupidity, and hatefulness, because, again, "God".

I didn't say "better." Indeed, I think it's particularly terrible thing to claim God as support for your sick hatreds. But I don't think we should ignore their brand of Christianity in all of this. I don't think in other contexts you or SBL would treat religion as irrelevant to homophobia.

Racism was I think the motive for Roof. The KKK perhaps symbolic, convenient. Roof might not have been able to spell KKK.

Hatred of gays I think was the motive for Mateen. ISIS again a convenient symbol which he coopted.

I think in both cases we are dealing with hatred. And if shooting into a crowd is terrorism, then they both are terrorist acts. Except when I use terrorism, mostly I intend to refer to a more organized and coordinated endeavor, with goals beyond simply killing as many of those people as possible.

CNN: Omar Mateen: Gunman scouted out Disney complex, Pulse, official says
http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/14/us/orlando-shooter-omar-mateen/index.html

So, if this holds up, how do we react?

We could decide that Mateen had two enemies: (1) Gays and (2) Disney.

Or we could recognize that he hatreds--while quite possibly strongest against gays--was more general. It's perfectly possible a diffuse anger and hate was primary, and ISIS was somehow an outlet for that feeling. But in light of his statements, I don't see this as a slam-dunk.

I think in both cases we are dealing with hatred. And if shooting into a crowd is terrorism, then they both are terrorist acts. Except when I use terrorism, mostly I intend to refer to a more organized and coordinated endeavor, with goals beyond simply killing as many of those people as possible.

I hate these semantic battles, but terrorism is a decent term for both. They didn't just kill a bunch of people, they chose to kill members of a specific group, with ample evidence they held a large ideology against those groups too.

>48 timspalding: I don't think in other contexts you or SBL would treat religion as irrelevant to homophobia.

On the contrary, I think religion is used to justify homophobia. Religions that condemn homosexuality in their doctrine are homophobic by default. Their condemnation is itself an act of dehumanization and a violence against gay people.

But what then makes a homophobic person, religious or not, pick up an AK 47 and mow down a room full of people? I know a fair number of bigoted people but they aren't making their views known by shooting other people.

I agree with Lola that as far as what's been made known in the news, Mateen's religious justifications appear opportunistic.

It still sounds like hatred of gays to me. Disneyworld has had a gay week for several decades. In Orlando Disney would seem to be a very prominent and close target to make a statement.

>50 timspalding:

Okay, but ISIS and other radical Sunni groups don't merely disapprove of homosexuality, or cite the comparable hadith. They're not sitting on the couch talking about how gays are evil, or preaching about Leviticus, like the bigots you know. ISIS and other groups engage in regular executions of homosexuals within their areas of control. I'm sure you've seen the video of gays being thrown off a tower in Mosul; this sort of thing isn't a one-off. It's policy, and it's justified on explicitly religious grounds. Purging the Islamic State of certain groups—gays, pagan Yazidis, immodest women, etc.—is a core religious tenet and practical aim.

For more on the topic, see http://www.cbsnews.com/news/isis-orlando-shooting-gays-execution-torture-ramadan...

Violence is always a series of steps, a "distance" to be crossed. A kid who takes up the word "faggot" against a classmate has gone part of that distance. An Evangelical who speaks of AIDS as God's punishment has gone farther. But calling for gays to be executed and then throwing gays off towers is at the end of that, and the many young Muslim men who've made those clips popular online have progressed far indeed.

Given that gap, it's easier to understand why someone who enjoys ISIS clips on YouTube is closer to shooting up a gay bar than your bigoted friends (?), or someone who doesn't want to bake a gay-wedding cake.

Disneyworld has had a gay week for several decades

Indeed, in early June. I'm not sure how the dates line up, but that's definitely possible. At least for the parks. I'm not sure the shopping malls, which he cased, would have been a good target.

>53 timspalding: Violence is always a series of steps, a "distance" to be crossed.

Indeed. In the United States the availability of guns shortens that distance dramatically.

>54 southernbooklady:

Yeah, I'd distinguish between ideological/psychological and practical steps. But there's no question you're right.

As with so much contemporary opinion, everything must "point the same way." This leaves defenders of gun rights in the weird position of claiming that gun laws will never do anything, despite the overwhelming evidence from other countries.

>48 timspalding:

I think it's particularly terrible thing to claim God as support for your sick hatreds. But I don't think we should ignore their brand of Christianity in all of this. I don't think in other contexts you or SBL would treat religion as irrelevant to homophobia.

You're missing the point. I think religion is extremely relevant to homophobia, I only don't think Islam is special in this regard. Most Muslims don't go out to shoot gays, and neither do Christians, even right-wing fanatics.

I'm not ignoring Mateen's religion at all, I'm giving it exactly the weight it deserves--which is, in the context of pig-primitive USian/Floridian religiosity (I've been stopped in the car in downtown Pensacola at midnight by scary, howling, pop-eyed anti-choice mobs brandishing Bibles, with their children hanging off their arms like shipwrecked lambs)... not very weighty at all.

What he did was much worse than what the average homophobe does, but are you certain the religious teaching he received was that much worse than the one you dissect over in Catholic Tradition?

Are then "moderate Muslims" receiving religious teaching that is worse than that of the average Christian?

I think not. "Love the sinner but hate the sin" doesn't fill me with warm cosy feelings much more than "kill the infidel" does. And it doesn't surprise me when people prodded with either slogan explode with slaughter.

From 2015 Beyond Same-sex Marriage: Attitudes on LGBT Nondiscrimination Laws and Religious Exemptions from the 2015 American Values Atlas

Assuming attitudes to marriage rights are the most pertinent index of homophobia/lack of... (marriage rights being "the final frontier" of acceptance as equals)...

The strongest supporters of same-sex marriage continue to be members of non-Christian religious traditions and religiously unaffiliated Americans. At least three-quarters of Buddhists (85%), the religiously unaffiliated (78%), and Jewish Americans (76%) favor allowing gay and lesbian to marry. Solid majorities of Hindus (66%), Orthodox Christians (61%), white mainline Protestants (59%), white Catholics (59%), and Hispanic Catholics (56%) also express support for same-sex marriage. In contrast, majorities of black Protestants (54%), Hispanic Protestants (59%), Mormons (66%), white evangelical Protestants (67%), and Jehovah’s Witnesses (72%) oppose allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry. Muslims are divided in their opinions over same-sex marriage (41% favor, 45% oppose).

So, yes, Muslims show lowest "in favour" numbers--but on the other hand, they don't show the highest "oppose" numbers.

And on questions of laws extending "equal protection" (personally I feel this is an empty category given that it doesn't include marriage rights), members of ALL major religions show majorities in favour:

Majorities of all major religious groups favor passing nondiscrimination laws for LGBT people, although the degree of support varies. The religiously unaffiliated (81%) and members of many non-Christian religions, including Buddhists (85%) and Jewish Americans (83%), are the most supportive of these laws. A majority of white evangelical Protestants (57%) and Jehovah’s Witnesses (52%) also support nondiscrimination laws for LGBT people. However, a substantial number of white evangelical Protestants (38%) and Jehovah’s Witnesses (33%) oppose this policy. And while Mormons strongly oppose same-sex marriage, their support for nondiscrimination laws (72%) mirrors support among Americans overall.

The above doesn't mention Muslims but they are in the table--67% in favour--considerably higher than JWs, and black, Hispanic and evangelical Protestants.

So, no, I don't see why Islam per se would matter. It's a chance that Islamic fundamentalism, embodied in one way by ISIS, had crossed Mateen's path at this given time. It's a chance that he lived in a place teeming with hateful religious fundamentalisms--not all his own, but very like his own. It's a chance that in that same place one can buy a fucking assault rifle and a shitload of ammo as easily as a lollipop.

I've been stopped in the car in downtown Pensacola at midnight by scary, howling, pop-eyed anti-choice mobs brandishing Bibles, with their children hanging off their arms like shipwrecked lambs

I find it remarkable you could write such a dehumanizing sentence in the course of a thread about dehumanization. If someone had written about "scary, howling, pop-eyed" Muslims, or blacks "with their children hanging off their arms like shipwrecked lambs," what would we say? Wouldn't everyone notice?

Look at the constellation you've assembled--everything from animal noises to physical anomalies. And what's the part about the children about? They breed too much? They shouldn't have their children up after 8, like respectable people do?

Ew.

in the context of pig-primitive USian/Floridian religiosity

I find it past rationality that, with all the evidence of his context, you'd try to tie Mateen to your bug-eyed evangelicals. We'll just have to leave it there.

From 2015 Beyond Same-sex Marriage…

Non sequitur. I never asserted anything about the homophobia or non-homophobia of Islam and Muslims generally. Indeed, I've said the exact opposite, repeatedly.

>58 timspalding:

...", with their children hanging off their arms like shipwrecked lambs." --

was by far my favorite turn of phrase. Poetic, it compares well to any of the Romantic period's best poets.

>58 timspalding:

Oh, my, do watch your back with THAT pose.

I find it remarkable you could write such a dehumanizing sentence in the course of a thread about dehumanization. If someone had written about "scary, howling, pop-eyed" Muslims, or blacks "with their children hanging off their arms like shipwrecked lambs," what would we say? Wouldn't everyone notice?

Look at the constellation you've assembled--everything from animal noises to physical anomalies. And what's the part about the children about? They breed too much? They shouldn't have their children up after 8, like respectable people do?

I described to you the scene I was in, which I found scary and upsetting. I didn't hate those people--they hated others (which would have or did include me, although I was just a passer-by, simply by dint of what they were protesting against). It was an ugly crowd doing ugly things. Three men came up to my car and shouted through the closed window, shaking their Bibles at me (us, I had a passenger). Again, this was just at a street crossing in downtown Pensacola close to midnight, in traffic already slowed down by post-hurricane rains and wind, and then blocked by the white-shirted religious maniacs.

They were popping their eyes and generally grimacing extraordinarily, yes. I expect that's what yelling at the top of your lungs does to one's face, especially if what one is yelling is one's religious belief, and if one is yelling them at utter strangers, in those circumstances.

You can call that a "physical anomaly". I think something mental was behind it.

As for the children--seriously, are you really this dense or just pretending because you have nothing pertinent to say to my posts?--I was shocked, horrified and disgusted that those people dragged their children--little children, pre- or elementary school-looking kids--to this kind of demonstrations, at that time, in that weather. I got a good look at them. They looked as scared as I was. They looked miserable. One little girl was being held up basically by the pull of the man's arm, she was obviously dead tired, her head lolling side to side.

Later on someone told me (or I read, can't remember) that they were the hardy remnants of an even bigger mob that had protested all over downtown that whole day or longer.

Me dehumanise them? Yes, because I am totally given over to the cause of dehumanisation, Mr. "Collateral Damage".

No. What horrifies me is that they ARE human. Humans behaving inhumanly.

To get back to Mateen...

>58 timspalding:

I find it past rationality that, with all the evidence of his context, you'd try to tie Mateen to your bug-eyed evangelicals. We'll just have to leave it there.

How is it "past rationality" to point out that Florida (and US in general) teems with religious fundamentalism? Not to mention the knuckle-dragger gun culture. Why wouldn't--HOW could it not--this wider context play a role in shaping someone like Mateen, just as much or more than his faith?

From 2015 Beyond Same-sex Marriage…

Non sequitur. I never asserted anything about the homophobia or non-homophobia of Islam and Muslims generally. Indeed, I've said the exact opposite, repeatedly.

Well, no, it's not a non sequitur at all, because you told me above we must pay attention to his faith. So I looked for data showing what "his faith", as is manifested in the US, generally thinks about gays.

..."As for the children--seriously, are you really this dense or just pretending because you have nothing pertinent to say to my posts?--I was shocked, horrified and disgusted that those people dragged their children--little children, pre- or elementary school-looking kids--to this kind of demonstrations, at that time, in that weather. I got a good look at them. They looked as scared as I was. They looked miserable. One little girl was being held up basically by the pull of the man's arm, she was obviously dead tired, her head lolling side to side."

Your strong point in a comment that's not got many points going for it.

In their defense, they're probably unable to afford a sitter for the kids--but I wonder why couldn't a few of their own group baby-sit the children?, after all!

RE:

..."What horrifies me is that they ARE human. Humans behaving inhumanly."

Their behavior may be inhumane but it is incontestably human, through and through.

Well, no, it's not a non sequitur at all, because you told me above we must pay attention to his faith. So I looked for data showing what "his faith", as is manifested in the US, generally thinks about gays.

Right, but I have repeatedly emphasized that it's not about Islam. You want me to say that, but I've repeatedly and emphatically said that it is not. I've repeatedly and emphatically criticized those right-wingers who make it about Islam. You know this. You've read it again and again, here and in other threads. I couldn't be more clear.

The faith that's of interest here is a particular dark corner of Islam--the radical Sunni Islam of ISIS and some others, which is miles away from the Islam of ordinary Muslims around the world, including my friends and neighbors in this country and the Middle East. We should pay some attention to that, because, among other things, Mateen explicitly and repeatedly linked himself to it as the justification for his actions.

By ignoring that, and trying to pretend that I'm saying it's about Islam, your point is a non sequitur, and your approach is fundamentally dishonest and in bad faith.

>63 timspalding:

Right, but I have repeatedly emphasized that it's not about Islam.

No, I genuinely haven't noticed that. I'm not following your posts everywhere, I was responding to what you wrote in this thread. In this thread I responded specifically to and about the idea in this:

I think it's particularly terrible thing to claim God as support for your sick hatreds. But I don't think we should ignore their brand of Christianity in all of this. I don't think in other contexts you or SBL would treat religion as irrelevant to homophobia.

your approach is fundamentally dishonest and in bad faith.

No, yours is. We could do it that way, or you could stop frothing at me--you threw garbage my way above that obviously shows you could do with some calming down and re-reading--not to mention some honesty and good faith--and take another look at what I responded and how. In this thread, where this conversation is occurring.

But, you know, all this is meta. Insult me all you want; I already know you'd condone anything that damages me personally. And I don't give a shit.

To move this forward in a constructive fashion, if possible--so what features of Mateen's faith are to blame? How "good" of a Muslim (or believer), was he anyway? I don't get the impression that the answer is "very".

I think it's particularly terrible thing to claim God as support for your sick hatreds. But I don't think we should ignore their brand of Christianity in all of this. I don't think in other contexts you or SBL would treat religion as irrelevant to homophobia.

Right. I don't think we should lay refusing to bake a cake at the feet of all Christians either. That's the word "brand" there. Refusing to bake cakes for gay people is particular to a certain evangelicalism--albeit far more common than ISIS.

I'm not sure what else you get from this. If you think by "religion" I mean "Islam generally" you are wrong, as I have repeatedly stated. I'm unclear how many times someone can make themselves clear, and you pretend they haven't. But at some point it's just a dishonest accusation.

To move this forward in a constructive fashion, if possible--so what features of Mateen's faith are to blame? How "good" of a Muslim (or believer), was he anyway? I don't get the impression that the answer is "very".

I think the jury's still out. I merely think that the killer's stated motivation--to 911 and to TV producers--ought to be in the conversation about his motivation, not instantly dismissed as irrelevant because he lived in Florida where white evangelicals won't bake cakes for gay people.

The two of you are speaking right past each other.

>65 LolaWalser:

The old man's family are Pashtun. I haven't read enough on their flavor of Islam to have any good idea of what it's like. The son's behavior during the killing spree according to survivors was sadistic and he said he'd carry on killing there until he was killed. His father strikes me as weird in a way that I find accords with that behavior of his son.

Pashtuns @ Wikipedia:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pashtuns

"Well, I'm not dumb but I can't understand
Why she walk like a woman and talk like a man
Oh my Lola, lo lo lo lo Lola, lo lo lo lo Lola..."

>66 timspalding:

I'm sick of your accusations of MY dishonesty, but do continue. It really builds up a fine image of yours.

I merely think that the killer's stated motivation--to 911 and to TV producers--ought to be in the conversation about his motivation, not instantly dismissed as irrelevant because he lived in Florida where white evangelicals won't bake cakes for gay people.

It's not instantly dismissing as "irrelevant" to note that it's unknown how much of a motivation Islamism (Islamism not Islam) was in this case. Like I said, ISIS didn't know about him at all. Haven't heard so far that any other extremist group did.

You wrote:

I don't think in other contexts you or SBL would treat religion as irrelevant to homophobia.

Which is why I posted about religion. Whatever you say, it's completely germane to the topic.

Mateen was a fuckup with a zillion hangups whose already-existent aggression and will to harm found a channel for release, an excuse, in nuttery and extremism.

Tim: Right, but I have repeatedly emphasized that it's not about Islam. … The faith that's of interest here is a particular dark corner of Islam--the radical Sunni Islam of ISIS and some others, which is miles away from the Islam of ordinary Muslims around the world, including my friends and neighbors in this country and the Middle East. We should pay some attention to that, because, among other things, Mateen explicitly and repeatedly linked himself to it as the justification for his actions.

Lola: No, I genuinely haven't noticed that. I'm not following your posts everywhere, I was responding to what you wrote in this thread.

Well, look no further than message >40 timspalding:, which was addressed to you and to which you even responded, quoting directly from it, indicating, I think, that you had read it:

The case here is otherwise. It's fair to say he "happened" to be Muslim, but that's not the end of the story. That alone would be nothing--the vast majority of Muslims don't approve of such things by any means. No, he explicitly linked what he did to ISIS, a specific and very extreme group. We should notice that, not sweep it under the rug.

And, yes, when we do so, we should be careful to help ignorant Americans understand that ISIS is not representative of Muslims generally. I think that message is hard to get across. And I understand why many want to ignore the role of radical Islam, because it tends to incite Americans into thinking it's about Islam generally. But then again NOT discussing radical Islam incites them just as much. It seems to me you can say both: (1) Islam is not a problem so stop hating Muslims; (2) radical Islam of the ISIS sort is very much a problem."

I'm not sure how I can draw the distinction more clearly. I have nothing against Muslims and consistently oppose efforts to blame Islam for the actions of that small portion of its members who belong to a nasty sect. And I resent this continual charge that I have anything against Muslims. I don't know if it's not reading, or forgetting or just distortion, but it's not right.

@Southernbooklady and @Jesse_wiedinmyer, can you come out and say that her characterizations are unfair, or is this repeated distortion okay with you--we're just "talking past each other," etc.?

I would have to give a close reread of the thread, but on gut and memory, I think I would stand by my original statement. I believe that you're both essentially trying to say the same thing, but stumbling on each other's sensitivities.

The entire dynamic is...

Muslims!

But not all Muslims.

Religion!

But not all religion.

Misogyny!

But not all men.

Guns!

But not all gun owners.

It's less that you're disagreeing than it is that you're stumbling into each other's sore spots.

And on an extremely charged topic.

Richard's distinction earlier between a man that was homophobic misogynist because he was informed by ISIS and a misogynist and homophobe who went on a killing spree and chose to offer validation to ISIS after the fact might be the closest I can come to describing it.

They're not completely different perspectives.

You're arguing over which syllables to accent.

No, I think the dynamic is:

"Islamic radicals on the ISIS sort."

"Muslims? Bigot."

"No, I said Islamic radicals of the ISIS sort."

"You never said that, bigot."

"No, I said Islamic radicals of the ISIS sort."

"I don't read other topics. You said Muslims, bigot."

Incidentally, I never made any sort of not-all-gun-owners or not-all-men argument at all. Fine, you don't remember. But I didn't say it. The only not-all I argued was not-all-Muslims.

And I think we disagree on him being radicalized by Florida evangelicals.

Which is precisely why I said you're stumbling into each other's sore spots.

Because from Lola's side I'm getting...

Homophobia perpetrated by Radical Islam.

But what about the Homophobia perpetrated by Radical Christians?

No, I said homophobia perpetrated by Radical Islam.

But what about the "non-violent" homophobia perpetrated by well-intentioned Catholics.

For the "liberal" ear, Radical Islam is just dog whistle for "muslims," with Trump (or Cheney) playing Pavlov.

For the "conservative" ear, an equivalence between random Western homophobia and the sort of violent extremists (or Islam and Radical Islam) is nothing but a gross apologism informed by an inability to recognize that "tolerance" has limits (especially as applied to favored groups.)

I actually shade to Lola's interpretation, but...

You're speaking directly to each other's sore spots and reacting accordingly.

A simpler way to say that may simply be that "We're all bringing a fuckton of baggage to the discussion."

For a crazed killer, Omar Mateen had quite a few characteristics of an otherwise rationallly-functioning person: (Unless otherwise noted, all the following from the Wikipedia page on Omar Mateen)

He was twice-married (separated in the first marriage after only four months) and the father of a child, (born in 2013) by his second wife, (and still married to her at the time of his assault).

worked as a prison guard for the Florida Department of Corrections,

worked for British-based security firm G4S Secure Solutions in Jupiter, Florida,

held an active firearms license and an armed security guard license

passed a psychological test and had no criminal record

Imam Shafiq Rahman at the Fort Pierce Islamic Center told reporters that Mateen would come to the mosque "three or four times a week" (6) with his father and his three-year-old son as recently as two days before the shooting, and said "He was the most quiet guy. He would come and pray and leave.

However, none of the above precludes this other datum :

..."A former coworker who worked with Mateen in a gated community in western Port St. Lucie described him as "unhinged and unstable". He also said that he frequently made homophobic, racist, and sexist comments, and talked about killing people." (Wikipedia page)

So, like many people, he was a person both sometimes rational and capable of sane social interaction and ordinary reasoning as well as mentally disturbed, sometimes violent and agressive, sometimes depressed.

But all the so-called normal aspects of his life were, it seems, in fact the less salient ones for himself.
He displays a strange mix of political awareness and ignorance. He did not know enough about militant Islamic insurgencies to distinguish between Hezbollah and Al-Quaeda and ISIS. ( ..."Comey also revealed that in "inflammatory and contradictory" comments to co-workers in 2013, Mateen had claimed to be a member of Hezbollah, the Shiite militia based in Lebanon." / https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/06/13/omar-mateen-may-not... )

He was, by what was the end of his life at only 29, a person at once religiously Muslim, deeply angry and disturbed emotionally (mentally ill), and not looking forward to living--on the contrary, he seemed to be bent upon ending his own life in a dramtic, sensationally-news-making manner. He did that in a way that brought together the varied threads in his inner life-- his religion, Islam, a confused awareness of international political conflicts related to the "West" and Islamic Near and Middle East; his associations with gay life through an occasional attendance at a popular Orlando gay and lesbian nightclub; and profound disenchantment with his life.

For me, this is a story of a deeply depressed and suicidal young man who'd grown up in a very violent and commercial society, lightyears in culture from his own religion's traditional concepts of meaning and purpose and who, in ending his life, sought to patch together a semblance of a rationale for his acts which seem ultimately to have been to end his life while taking a kind of twisted revenge on people who were innocent of any direct part in what he'd found he rejected. He wanted three things: an exit from a life which cannot have been satisfying to him (or he'd not have behaved as he did), some sort of revenge on some people for what was to him injustice of various sorts--though the victims themselves weren't necessarily related to these injustices; and he wanted to leave this life in a way that made a news-media impression--to be noted, even if for a notorious act.

For a crazed killer, Omar Mateen had quite a few characteristics of an otherwise rationallly-functioning person: (Unless otherwise noted, all the following from the Wikipedia page on Omar Mateen)


..."A former coworker who worked with Mateen in a gated community in western Port St. Lucie described him as "unhinged and unstable". He also said that he frequently made homophobic, racist, and sexist comments, and talked about killing people."

Sounds like most (probably white) American males I know.

Racism, sexism and homophobia aren't evidence of our irrationality, they're our bread and butter.

>73 timspalding:

I posted it otherwhere, but...

http://www.vox.com/2016/6/15/11932454/orlando-shooting-LGBTQ-homophobia-religion

I'd suggest (re)reading the piece and then revisiting this thread in light of that context.

For what it's worth, Dr. Spalding, I do think you have made it clear that you are not saying all Muslims, and I think Dr. Wiedinmyer has a fair grasp of the back and forth.

>74 Jesse_wiedinmyer:

Look Jesse, I know you mean well, but damn if I understand what you think I'm saying, and I definitely am not signing any of that.

As for you, Tim, you are behaving as if I somehow terribly terribly insulted you by quoting your own fucking words--that phrase when you said

I don't think in other contexts you or SBL would treat religion as irrelevant to homophobia.

...and responding off that. I quoted it in the VERY FIRST RESPONSE ALREADY.

You elaborated, you explained, you protested, you showered me with insults, and we all get the message: you too don't blame Islam. I never said you did, and I didn't think you did--but it was important to point out because so many do blame Islam.

I have absolutely nothing more to say to YOU on this, but I'll keep making the same points I made above because all this screeching about meta and your narcissistic injuries has derailed a good and necessary discussion.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/cia-director-predicts-more-terrorist-attacks-li...

"CIA Director John Brennan warned Thursday that as Islamic State loses ground in Syria and Iraq, it probably will use “guerrilla tactics” to launch more terrorist attacks like those in Orlando, Fla., Brussels and Paris."

The article goes on to explain that with Orlando shooting there was "no sign" that Mateen was in contact with ISIS.

Which for me seems to make Orlando something different from Brussels and Paris.

Perhaps we have three variations.

Just plain hate attacks
Just plain terrorist sponsored attacks
Hate attacks taking inspiration from terrorist movements

Defeating ISIS does not stop the hate attacks, and the valiant effort of all these LT posts aside, I think Orlando is more like Charleston than Paris.

If it applied, the comparandum would be to San Bernadino. There's no evidence those guys were in contact with ISIS--they were lone wolves. But clearly quite sincerely committed to the cause. Mateen's case is much less certain. Although his stated motivation was ISIS, and US bombing of Afghanistan—seemingly connected—some are speculating that this was either a smokescreen or epiphenomenal and opportunistic to a purely anti-gay motivation.

The selective target is suggestive for me.

Charleston black. Orlando gay.

San Bernandino seemed not to have targeted a group because of who they are.

>83 richardbsmith:

Well, he targeted his WORKPLACE. That cuts against narrative.

As for Orlando, the FBI asserts he cased a Disney Mall too--both places more than once. I don't for a moment think Pulse "just happened" to be a gay place. And indeed I think it's possible his pro-ISIS statements to the news media, 911, on Facebook and to victims were more of an excuse than a driving factor. But we shouldn't imagine that homophobia and pro-ISIS sentiment are exclusive. Just yesterday the British charged five radicals with calling together meeting to support ISIS. Among their topics was the need to throw gays off tall buildings. ( http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2016/06/16/undercover-police-uncover-uk-death-to-gays-... ) Extreme, homicidal sentiment toward gays is part of the ISIS package. So we're left wondering whether one was dominant, the other an excuse, or what.

>84 timspalding: Also we're back to why such weapons are so easy to get. Killing 49 by throwing them off tall buildings would be hard work and they'd probably be able to resist it. Episodes like this happen in Denmark too, but they mostly involve shotguns and one or two suffering injuries or death, but very, very seldom more than that.

Lola, might I ask what you think of this...?

http://davidniose.com/orlando-shows-the-utter-failure-of-all-abrahamic-religion/

I will jump in ahead of Lola.

I think religions have a lot to answer for in creating a culture and language of repression.

One of the hallmarks of politics today is that every event supports your narrative. What used to be called "spin" is now the normal mode of political thinking--people aren't even aware they're spinning anymore. In Niose's case, everything shows the perfidy of theism and the necessity of atheism. He even managed to reach the same anti-religious conclusion with regard to Dylan Roof, whose manifesto and other statements include no religious language whatsoever, and who went to a black church and killed nine black Christians.

You've probably heard of Rep. Rick Allen and the debate about praying and parsing Romans 1:32 in Congress. Some Republicans apparently walked out on him.

One version here: http://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/bible-verse-homosexuals-heard-house-gop-pr...

Washington Post: "I reported Omar Mateen to the FBI. Trump is wrong that Muslims don’t do our part."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/06/20/i-reported-omar-mate...

"Immediately after Moner’s attack, news reports said that American officials didn’t know anything about him; I read that they were looking for people to give them some background. So I called the FBI and offered to tell investigators a bit about the young man. It wasn’t much – we hadn’t been close – but I’m an American Muslim, and I wanted to do my part. I didn’t want another act like that to happen. I didn’t want more innocent people die. Agents asked me if there were any other local kids who might resort to violence in the name of Islam. No names sprang to mind.

After my talk with the FBI, I spoke to people in the Islamic community, including Omar, abut Moner’s attack. I wondered how he could have radicalized. Both Omar and I attended the same mosque as Moner, and the imam never taught hate or radicalism. That’s when Omar told me he had been watching videos of Al-Awlaki, too, which immediately raised red flags for me. He told me the videos were very powerful.

After speaking with Omar, I contacted the FBI again to let them know that Omar had been watching Al-Awlaki’s tapes. He hadn’t committed any acts of violence and wasn’t planning any, as far as I knew. And I thought he probably wouldn’t, because he didn’t fit the profile: He already had a second wife and a son. But it was something agents should keep their eyes on. I never heard from them about Omar again, but apparently they did their job: They looked into him, and finding nothing to go on, they closed the file.

The article as a whole is very powerful. It demonstrates the hollowness and cruelty of Trump's comments, and general approach. Islam is no more a threat to America than any other religion or none.

I had told the FBI about Omar because my community, and Muslims generally, have nothing to hide. I love this country, like most Muslims that I know. I don’t agree with every government policy (I think there’s too much money in politics, for instance), but I’m proud to be an American. I vote. I volunteer. I teach my children to treat all people kindly. Our families came here because it is full of opportunity – a place where getting a job is about what you know, not who you know. It’s a better country to raise children than someplace where the electricity is out for 18 hours a day, where politicians are totally corrupt, or where the leader is a dictator.

But it also demonstrates that Mateen's attraction to Islamic radicalism and violence goes a ways back—at least two years. It's not some irrelevant fact we should all shut up about, because it's obvious this was really just about homophobia and nothing else. It wasn't just something he invented to get himself more publicity, or to somehow hide the fact that he was (maybe) gay. It's part of the legitimate, working model of his motives, and recognized as such by the people who actually knew him.

So, a couple of other significant things about that article:

I think this paragraph is telling:

But as news reports this week have made clear, Omar did have a dark outlook on life. Partly, he was upset at what he saw as racism in the United States – against Muslims and others. When he worked as a security guard at the St. Lucie County Courthouse, he told me visitors often made nasty or bigoted remarks to him about Islam. He overheard people saying ugly things about African Americans, too. Since Sept. 11, I’ve thought the only way to answer Islamophobia was to be polite and kind; the best way to counter all the negativity people were seeing on TV about Islam was by showing them the opposite. I urged Omar to volunteer and help people in need – Muslim or otherwise (charity is a pillar of Islam). He agreed, but was always very worked up about this injustice.

Hate breeds hate. Obviously the path Omar Mateen took that led him to dying in a nightclub after killing 49 people is a twisty one filled with an ever-increasing series of moments where he became more and more isolated and disconnected from his fellow human beings. But the ugliness that is prejudice has real world consequences. (and that's one reason why Trump -- already contemptible in my mind, is now downright despicable). How much is prejudice responsible for starting him down that path, I wonder?

I'm also trying to get my head around the idea that reporting the people we know to the FBI because of videos they are watching is somehow an admirable, praiseworthy state of affairs in this country.

>91 southernbooklady: "I'm also trying to get my head around the idea that reporting the people we know to the FBI because of videos they are watching is somehow an admirable, praiseworthy state of affairs in this country."

I find that a remarkably disturbing implication of that post. I also find it disturbing that the poster writes, with no evidence other than that the man watched videos of a famous man, who judging by the date had already been murdered by the US government: "But it also demonstrates that Mateen's attraction to Islamic radicalism and violence goes a ways back—at least two years." After the man and then his son were killed extra-judicially, it says nothing at all--I recognize the poster wants to expand the possibilities of motive for the Orlando shooting, but that one doesn't do the job.

Eta: It strikes me as crass to be so fixated on finding another motive for a shooting that already has an obvious one. It's a shadow of Trumpism. Sure, the man may have had other motives, but it seems we who have no information can wait before straining to find one that helps us argue on LT.

I'm also trying to get my head around the idea that reporting the people we know to the FBI because of videos they are watching is somehow an admirable, praiseworthy state of affairs in this country.

Well, he obviously liked and approved of the videos, and the videos explicitly call for civilian Muslims to murder of Americans, include advice about how to do it, footage from such events, etc. And Awklaki was actually involved in planning such attacks, having recruited people in part from the videos.

If I found out someone I knew was a big fan of videos that called for people to kill gays, and showed them the best ways how, I would report my worries to a competent police agency. I'm sorry you guys thing this is evidence of my, or perhaps the country's, unfortunate "state."

My guess is that more people had this sort of information—coworkers, neighbors, family, etc. We already know of one other report. The rest held their tongue, and 50 people are dead.

It strikes me as crass to be so fixated on finding another motive for a shooting that already has an obvious one.

And that one is what? So far everything the killer actually said refers to a specifically Islamist anti-American motive. This includes his Facebook posts, a call to a news station and statements to police. While I don't doubt he had it in for gays specifically, and that this was part of the mix, I find it somewhat peculiar you guys apparently regard the thing he never mentioned as "obvious," and the thing he repeatedly mentioned as some sort of racist reaching.

By the way, here's his 911 call, as released by the Florida PD ( https://www.fbi.gov/tampa/press-releases/2016/investigative-update-regarding-pul... ).

OD: Emergency 911, this is being recorded.
OM: In the name of God the Merciful, the beneficent \Arabic\
OD: What?
OM: Praise be to God, and prayers as well as peace be upon the prophet of God \Arabic\. I wanna let you know, I’m in Orlando and I did the shootings.
OD: What’s your name?
OM: My name is I pledge of allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of the Islamic State.
OD: Ok, What’s your name?
OM: I pledge allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi may God protect him \Arabic\, on behalf of the Islamic State.
OD: Alright, where are you at?
OM: In Orlando.
OD: Where in Orlando?

Reading this, I think we can all agree there's only one obvious motive—hatred of gays—and that any connection to radical Islamism is racist reaching.

>93 timspalding:

It's not some irrelevant fact we should all shut up about, because it's obvious this was really just about homophobia and nothing else.

Has anyone claimed this, or is this the "most ridiculous strawman" hour?

>91 southernbooklady:

I don't know whether you're following anything regarding the murder of MP Jo Cox by a white neo-Nazi "patriot" but it's notable how differently the two perpetrators are regarded (by some). I know it's been brought up before--anyone brown/Muslim is automatically a terrorist; but the white men are all troubled loners nobody expected this from. It's been brought up before, but the coincidence of events happening practically at the same time makes the contrast especially glaring. And instructive.

Hate might breed hate, but it doesn't often breed murder. If he were simply repressed, he would have settled with being an alcoholic like a normal person.

Has anyone claimed this, or is this the "most ridiculous strawman" hour?

"It strikes me as crass to be so fixated on finding another motive for a shooting that already has an obvious one."

MP Jo Cox

I don't know. I think we'd need to go story by story. I certainly think it happens. But the stories I read about the Cox murder have had much about what he yelled at the time, and during his arraignment. Indeed, it looks like shock at the thing has caused "Brexit" to lose in polling—a result that would hardly have happened if the political motive were unspoken and regarded as irrelevant. Nor do I think we should take it as irrelevant. Whether or not Britain should or should not leave the EU, it's clear—if it weren't clear before—that the "leave" faction has some real nasties in it.

I would also note that Mateen was a functioning member of society, with a full-time long-term job, wife, kid and so forth. His wife-beating and reports of his anger stands out, but no medical history of mental problems has been cited. He wasn't by any imagination a "loner."

By contrast, Mair has a well-documented a history of mental problems, lived with his mom until a few years ago, when she died, had no wife or kids (he is reputed to have had one girlfriend, once) and at 52 had literally never held a single full-time job. That's pretty much the definition of an asocial loner. I am fully willing to believe both were severely disturbed people, and that ideology played a major role in their crimes, but I don't think we have a clear case of the media simply going for brown=terrorist, white=headcase.

"Islam is no more a threat to America than any other religion or none."

You're speaking of the religion itself, I assume, which is debatable. What isn't debatable is that certain Muslims are a threat.

>97 barney67:

Indeed, and certain of pretty much every other group. I hold out hope there's some species of Quaker that has a 0-percent shooter rate.

>93 timspalding: "Well, he obviously liked and approved of the videos, and the videos explicitly call for civilian Muslims to murder of Americans, include advice about how to do it, footage from such events, etc. And Awlaki was actually involved in planning such attacks, having recruited people in part from the videos."

Obviously? Where do you get that from? And which videos did he watch? Have you seen them? I think my more measured response that it would be natural to be interested in what someone who was murdered, and whose son was murdered, extra-legally by the US, has to say is more clear than that he obviously approved.

Sure, though, there may have been more than one motive, as there usually is in our acts, but I find the need to claim that 'Islamic radicalism' is definitely one of them, based on scant evidence rather ugly, Trumpish.

If you consider an Islamic man who is troubled as this man apparently was, and possibly because he was gay or bisexual (if not, then long-term obsessively anti-gay), who gets to the point of taking bizarre and extreme action, yes, he is liable to bark out a lot of jihadi jargon.

Even the comparison of the mental health status of the two shooters is bizarre to me, and I would guess motivated by the desire to be proven right that Mateen was a healthy good old-fashioned Islamic terrorist, while the other guy was simply nuts, if shaded by UKIP extremism. There simply isn't enough information to make the assumptions you are making, which makes your motives questionable to me.

>93 timspalding: If I found out someone I knew was a big fan of videos that called for people to kill gays, and showed them the best ways how, I would report my worries to a competent police agency. I'm sorry you guys thing this is evidence of my, or perhaps the country's, unfortunate "state."

Yeah, I'm still creeped out.

So among the recent books I've cataloged in my library is the new edition of The SCUM Manifesto, which begins thus:

Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex

Anyone planning on calling the FBI on me?

Radicalism has its place, and we have to be able to dance with it or we spiral down into a tyrannical state.

The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated. The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not. To ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity. But no society is really anxious to have that kind of person around. What societies really, ideally, want is a citizenry which will simply obey the rules of society. If a society succeeds in this, that society is about to perish.

--James Baldwin

>96 timspalding: I would also note that Mateen was a functioning member of society, with a full-time long-term job, wife, kid and so forth. His wife-beating and reports of his anger stands out, but no medical history of mental problems has been cited. He wasn't by any imagination a "loner."

That in itself speaks volumes about the way American society "functions."

>96 timspalding:

I would also note that Mateen was a functioning member of society,

I suppose it depends on how one defines "functioning". If you're stoking yourself toward an act like this, just when exactly is it that you have stopped "functioning"? Two hours before?

By contrast, Mair has a well-documented a history of mental problems, lived with his mom until a few years ago, when she died, had no wife or kids (he is reputed to have had one girlfriend, once) and at 52 had literally never held a single full-time job.

Mair is a political assassin whose right-wing nuttery and neo-Nazism have ten times the chronological pedigree of Mateen's Islamism. (Choice quote: "The receipts, some of which date back to the 1990s, showed Mair spent more than $620 (£436) on literature from the group, which advocates the creation of an all-white homeland and the eradication of Jewish people.")

And if not living with your mom, getting married and holding a full-time job are most pertinent indicators of sanity, the pool of potential murderers has just expanded exponentially.

I also don't get why "mental problems"--when it's white men's mental problems--are taken to mean their political affiliations or any opinions whatsoever suddenly don't matter. How, for instance, can Mateen be said not to have had "mental problems", when he was, again documentedly, abusive and known as a homophobe?

One can have "mental problems" AND reasoned opinions at the same time. Conversely, not having mental problems doesn't mean you can't think or do crazy or silly stuff.

How, for instance, can Mateen be said not to have had "mental problems", when he was, again documentedly, abusive and known as a homophobe?

I suspect Mateen had an independent mental problem. But if wife-beating and homophobia equates to mental problems, then a very large share of the world is mentally ill. Maybe so, but, for example, in Afghanistan, where Mateen's family came from, 90% of women approve of wife-beating ( see http://www.webcitation.org/6No6sOCPi, the highest recorded rate). I can't say, but it's likely he grew up with that dynamic in his home.(1) It's not about race or religion to say that people who witness abuse as children tend to turn into abusers.

Are 90% of Afghans mentally ill? Are all American abusers mentally ill? I'd prefer to speak of a sick culture and society—and, yes, American culture of all sorts is sick too, although somewhat less so than Afghanistan's in this particular area.

Either way, Mateen and Mair knew what they were doing. You mentioned most unmarried 52 year olds who've never had a job don't go killing politicians. Very true. And most wife-beaters and homophobes don't shoot up clubs either. We might look for other, presumably supplementary, explanations, like, for example, what the killer himself said about it. In one case, the killed shouted about killing traitors and "Britain first." In the other, the killer repeatedly proclaimed his allegiance to the Islamic state.

Mair is a political assassin whose right-wing nuttery…

Yes, I agree.

---

1. The Daily Beast dug up a domestic-abuse police visit when Mateen was 16. See http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/06/18/the-unhinged-home-that-raised-o...

>100 southernbooklady:

"Radicalism has its place, and we have to be able to dance with it or we spiral down into a tyrannical state."

》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》

"The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated. The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not. To ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity. But no society is really anxious to have that kind of person around. What societies really, ideally, want is a citizenry which will simply obey the rules of society. If a society succeeds in this, that society is about to perish."

--James Baldwin

================

I'm "proximity1" and I approve this message.


I agree with those (not necessarily yourself, SBL, just those in general) who believe that much about Islam, even "mainstream" Islam, is antithetical to what I call the essential aspects of an open and tolerant society. That there are many apparently tolerant Muslims tells us about their personal traits as individuals and their capacities to ignore some of the most inhumane aspects of their religion's sacred texts.

The same state of affairs is seen in Christianity's and Judaism's adherents. Many of their faithful are significantly more humane in their daily life than a strict hewing to their ancient sacred texts should lead us to expect of them. Others read those same texts and find all they need for a rationale to murder complete strangers in the name of God.

Today, other than varieties of Capitalist economic doctrine, no other organized belief system (of a religious sort) has anything approaching the raw numbers of its fanatical faithful who demonstrate themselves ready to commit homicide (murder and mayhem) in the belief that their faith requires this of them--Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists included.

However, none of that neans or proves that Islam or its fanatics are among the greatest threats to "the American way of life" or even to a real Open Society.

Much more dangerous are the ordinary and official workings of state power and control and supervision of a public less and less free to go about life unsupervised, free from the ubiquitous surveillance by networked CCTV camera lenses and the monitoring of any and all of their networked communication devices.

We've already lost (if we or our predecessors ever possessed any in the first place) effective popular control--even by several removes--of what are supposed to be our free and democratic political and electoral institutions. Radical Islamist killers have had almost nothing to do with that long and disgraceful story.

But their hyped threat to our society's safety serves quite well the interests of those who are delighted to find any effective excuse for even greater control and supervision of the daily lives of ordinarily people.

>103 timspalding:

"Are 90% of Afghans mentally ill? Are all American abusers mentally ill?"

Mental health and illness are not static and objectively defined states. They're defined according to a set of assumptions which include social standards of acceptable behavior and thus the definition tracks --both positively and negatively--the rise and fall in the moral and emotional enlightenment of the general publics concered.

So, briefly, in the context and by the standards of our contemporary society's value systems, Yes, I don't hesitate to say that, to the extent that they practice or tolerate wife or child beating as socially acceptable, they are indeed what we should describe as mentally ill.

>103 timspalding:

But if wife-beating and homophobia equates to mental problems, then a very large share of the world is mentally ill.

And so it is, IMO. "Sanity" and "insanity" are defined by social compromise, not things chemically definable and measurable in everyone's head. The cult of masculinity that men in particular are frequently raised with produces well-nigh or full blown psychopathic traits. The military is in the business of creating directed psychopaths. Advertising propaganda of every stripe--commercial to political--encourages extreme psychology, not the Greek "everything in moderation". To give but one example, in what world is Trump's nomination for presidential candidacy "sane"? We look back at Hitler and his speeches and can't fathom how people "didn't see" he was a nutter, or at a minimum, how ridiculous he was. (Well, maybe Charlie Chaplin did...) Point is, his nuttery was of his time, so instead of going omg, maniac! get a doctor!, his contemporaries went "you know what, yes, we can do this. Let's follow this dude with ridiculous hair moustache, he's got something."

>107 LolaWalser:

RE : ..."Point is, his nuttery was of his time, so instead of going omg, maniac! get a doctor!, his contemporaries went "you know what, yes, we can do this. Let's follow this dude with ridiculous hair moustache, he's got something."

Indeed, for our times, it may just be one of the most pertinent lessons for us--among so many--in looking back at mid-and-late 1920s Germany, that Hitler was able to enjoy such mass popularity in no small part because his political "competition" had been deemed so unspeakably worthless and ineffective.

We take almost no account of that but it was a key and a constant part of the awareness of millions of Germans--normal Germans, not fanatical fools all. Weimar Germany was so terrible at effective governance under the terrible economic conditions which prevailed, that one didn't have to be crazy to find a certain appeal in things Hitler said.

A much larger number of Germans than some of us suppose to have done, did recognize him as the danger he was. But, as with Sanders' supporters trying to convince the national Democratic Party's elite of the folly of nominating Clinton over Sanders, these Germans' insights were swimming against a large and powerful counter-current.

My comments here are informed by my reading of

William Shirer The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich , and his Berlin Diary

and Victor Klemperer LTI Notizbuch eines Philologen (LTI -- la langue du IIIe Reich : carnets d'un philologue, (French edition)) and I Will Bear Witness

In this scenario is Clinton playing Hitler?

"He happened to be Muslim but he could have been any flavour of right-wing Christian with exactly the same resulting misogyny and homophobia."

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Mateen pledged allegiance to Islam, acted in the name in Islam, took the advice of a group of Muslims who not only advocate the KILLING of homosexuals -- AMONG OTHERS -- but have actually done so.

That is NOT true of any Christian group.

I don't know how ANYONE can be so stupid as to believe some of the things I read here. This by the so-called educated who have read enough just to be dangerous.

I don't which is worse, these people or the ones who watch reality TV, buy rap music, and pay absurd amounts of money for the nosebleed seats at pro football games.

I have little hope for this coutry. Now you know why I don't care about voting.

>109 richardbsmith:

"In this scenario"? I do not mean for a moment to suggest that things are as simple as taking a contemporary figure and "plugging" that person into the place, part and role of an actual historical figure--as though, when done, we can make useful predictions about what shall happen next and who shall do what as a part of it.

"Is Clinton in the role of Hitler?" to that simple question the simple answer is, "no."

But our challenge is not--or not simply (as too many are already straining to do) -- to recognise whether Clinton or Trump do or don't fit a Hitlerian scenario. It's more a challenge of recognizing whether we are about to, in these different circumstances, fail to grasp a vital political awareness about our choices that compares tragically with the choices the German people made between 1931 and 1933 in theirs.

We are already very late into a bad course of events politically. Compared to us and what may happen if we aren't more prudent, potential events ahead may prove that the Germans under Hitler were actually more fortunate than we turn out to be.

>107 LolaWalser:

I have no particular interest in fighting out the degree of social construction involved in mental illness. I know it's a political hobby horse. I think we can usefully distinguish between Afghans who are paranoid schizophrenics, or Brits who can't stop rubbing themselves all over with Brillo pads and can't hold down a job, and the 90% of Afghans who approve of spousal abuse. But whatever.

In any case, in agreeing that such a high percentage of people are mentally ill, on account of their psychopathic attitude toward women and gays, you've destroyed the foundation for asserting that Mateen's murders can be chalked up to them. An explanation that applies equally to billions of people is not a very convincing one, and might prompt us to examine other explanations like, for example, the one they themselves kept giving.

>110 barney67: Who called anybody here educated?

>112 timspalding:

... "An explanation that applies equally to billions of people is not a very convincing one,..."

I think that, as over-simplifications go, that may be one, too.

I doubt that, whatever the metric (practice, profession or other), it also indicates any sort of equality on the part of these peoples' potential to commit multiple homicides later in life. That these 90m Afghanis are in the ' "wife-beating --good! " club,' also indicates a virtual equality of probability in starting from that 'factoid' and procceeding by whatever series of twists to calculated mass-shootings with automatic weapons is much more than anyone here tried to claim. It suffices that there be a demostrated reasoned association between adherents of the former belief and practitioners of the later acts.

The problem is indeed the fact that there's no predictable probability in moving from one case to the other. Thus, we don't know exactly which "wife-beatery--good! " adherents are actually going to go on a mass-shooting spree later. But it's now a fair bet that some of them shall.

So, "the foundation for asserting that Mateen's murders can be chalked up to them" has not been destroyed. It's merely where it always has been: in the realm of "not precisely predictable" by more than very rough averages--which may alter with time.

>112 timspalding:

In any case, in agreeing that such a high percentage of people are mentally ill

I have "agreed" no such thing. Mental illness is a diagnosis I'm not eligible to make; I've spoken of traits and think in terms of tendencies, connected to previous mention of "mental problems". I've simply pointed out that the concepts of sane and insane aren't god-given absolutes. Take a look on what grounds women used to be committed. (And what's "political hobby horses" got to do with soundness of argument?)

on account of their psychopathic attitude toward women and gays, you've destroyed the foundation for asserting that Mateen's murders can be chalked up to them. An explanation that applies equally to billions of people is not a very convincing one, and might prompt us to examine other explanations like, for example, the one they themselves kept giving.

First, it's you who seem obsessed with finding one "explanation" for Mateen's act--I'm perfectly aware no such thing is completely possible, and therefore I haven't offered any. On what evidence I've seen, I believe it is most likely he was motivated primarily by homophobia, and acutely so perhaps because of his own unresolved "issues"--the "mental problems".

Whether you're a self-hating gay or just someone who hates gays so much you can actually execute a mass murder, I'd say that qualifies for "mental problems". It need not equate "mental illness". It's what people colloquially refer to as "issues". If your "issues" involve beating someone up and becoming widely, publicly known for your hatred of gays, then yes, I'd speculate that maybe you can't be (or be regarded as being) in splendid mental health. Not in this time and age.

Continuing my supposition--as I said way back in the very first post--it seem to me most likely, not to say obvious, that such a person is dry tinder--and religious fundamentalism is a very potent incendiary device. ETA: and as I said before, the "best" excuse of them all.

Anyway, I'm sick of your attitude to my arguments. If the only way you'll argue with me is through your strawmen bullshit so you can get to mindless "gotchas", let's end it here once for all.

Even mental illness, btw, also doesn't mean all responsibility is gone. Depressed people are nowadays considered mentally ill (as opposed to merely being very, very sad, as once upon a time)--but no one is arguing they are non compos mentis as a group.

First, it's you who seem obsessed with finding one "explanation" for Mateen's act

This is the second time in this thread you've asserted something that is not only false, but easily shown to be false from reading multiple topics in this very thread. Here's three times in three messages I said it:

Look, I'm not saying it's entirely one thing or another. Everyone else seems to want that--that it's "just about homophobia and nothing else" (a very popular refrain on Twitter), just about radical Islam, or guns, or mental health, or violent people, etc. It seems to me it can be about all those things, without causing our ideological palaces to crumble into dust. Indeed, my guess is that violence of this sort is never about one thing.

No, I think these things are complicated, psychologically and culturally. No doubt a variety of things came together here. Guessing, I'd say we have evidence of instability, life failures, shame about his own homosexuality from deep-set cultural and religious taboos, a violent streak, mental illness, and the appeal of Islamic radicalism, etc.

Or we could recognize that he hatreds--while quite possibly strongest against gays--was more general. It's perfectly possible a diffuse anger and hate was primary, and ISIS was somehow an outlet for that feeling. But in light of his statements, I don't see this as a slam-dunk.

All I am or have argued is that we should not dismiss Mateen's stated motivation and aims.

Anyway, I'm sick of your attitude to my arguments.

The feeling is mutual.

>117 timspalding: I know you are not speaking to me, but: Fair enough. I suspect your motives because I more or less know your politics, but I apologize for failing to take into consideration the above.

>118 RickHarsch:

Unpack the baggage. Hang some shirts in the closet. We're going to be here for a while.

>119 Jesse_wiedinmyer: You mean I'm invited? Thanks. Now I won't complain that you post things I have to concentrate too hard to read (court decisions).

A glimpse of hope.

Yes Occupy Congress. I wonder why the actual Occupiers never tried that. Probably because from coast to coast they were getting their heads bashed in--pepper sprayed--rubber bullets--teargassed and if they had actually taken it to the White House or the Congressional buildings they would have been fucked over much much worse. It didn't matter what color, gender or race--whether they were high school or college students--Iraq/Afghan war vets even old ladies--if you were actually out there you were taken your chances of being trampled by a police horse, arrested, beaten down with a nightstick.

I like John Lewis. I'm not against what he's doing. I know enough about him to know that he was with MLK Jr. pretty much every step of the way during the civil rights marches back in the 60's. He's a good man but.....he was nowhere to be found during the Occupy protests and neither were practically all of his democratic partners in congress. There was very little support for the Occupy movement by any member of congress. Bernard happened to be one of the very few who did support them. Now these guys come up with this Occupy idea--Steny Hoyer like the number two guy in the democratic house right there too and he's a guy who's gerrymandered his Maryland district over and over to keep it as white as possible.

It's not that they're wrong but it rubs me the wrong way and the day that any of these democratic congresspeople get pepper sprayed for standing up for anything I'll come on here and say a mea culpa. I don't think it's ever going to happen. I don't think they have real skin in the game. They basically stole this idea but for them there's never going to be any real consequences. Their performance strikes me as a parody of the real thing.

>124 lriley: I like John Lewis. I'm not against what he's doing. I know enough about him to know that he was with MLK Jr. pretty much every step of the way during the civil rights marches back in the 60's. He's a good man but.....he was nowhere to be found during the Occupy protests...

"When civil rights era icon Rep. John Lewis stopped by the Occupy Atlanta protests over the weekend, the human microphone used by protesters — a practice of repeating every phrase said so those in the back of the crowd can hear — couldn’t decide whether to let Lewis interrupt the scheduled talks and speak.

In footage that has emerged from Atlanta, it’s clear Lewis left the protests without being heard" https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/occupy-wall-street-remains-le...

John Lewis on Occupy Wall Street: "“Occupy Wall Street is saying, ‘We will not take it anymore.’ When the people have taken all they can take, they have to use their marching feet to say to corporate America and to those in power we must humanize corporate and government policy. They are saying we must not forget about those in need, about those who work for starvation sages, those who bear their burden in the heat of the day and in the darkness of the night. These people are important too, and they make a massive contribution to our society. Their voices must be heard. The Occupy Wall Street Movement represents a growing impatience among the people that has transformative power. It is a push for change to improve the economic conditions not just of this generation, but future generations." http://johnlewis.house.gov/press-release/rep-john-lewis-speaks-out-solidarity-oc...

#125--good find and thanks for that. I did say Lewis is a good guy....

Generally though the democratic party was not on the side of the Occupiers. They waited and waited for the Obama administration and for support from democrats to do something positive for them and there was reason to think that might happen--such as a lot of trade unions (traditionally a bastion of the democratic left) were coordinating and strategizing with them. It never happened--what the Obama administration actually did was coordinate with Governors and Mayors all over the country--whether republican or democrat to undermine and put down that movement. Many of those from that movement are the millennials who threw their support behind Sanders. If Warren had run they would have supported her candidacy as well.

The problems that the Occupy movement were protesting against back then have exacerbated and are worse now. The banks and corporations continue to run the economy having bought off the bulk of the politicians of both parties. The neo-liberal economic project is a boon for banks and corporation but a failure for the masses of the population. We need a national health care free from insurance companies and the manipulations of pharmaceuticals. We need to educate our young people without strapping them with 20 years of debt. We need to reinvest in infrastructure--to get on top of the climate control problem--when asked about what is the biggest threat to our nation Sanders correctly said climate control. I don't think any of the other presidential candidates said that. We also need to get away from being the world's policeman--to end the idiotic war on drugs and to stop incarcerating our citizens at a greater rate than any other country in the world. People who are against or trying to slow down progress like that are simply in the way.

I haven't seen anyone on LibraryThing mention Istanbul, or, really, any of the ISIS attacks that have killed over 200 Turks in the last year. I didn't see it much on Twitter either.

Has anyone established what the Istanbul attacks was "really" about yet?

>128 RickHarsch: The first thing that jumps to my mind in regard to Istanbul, not just this one but the last, was that Istanbul and Turkey in general is an easy target, and, second, that the attacks are likely self-defeating.

The first reports already blame ISIS not Kurds. I would imagine they know their Kurds.

>127 timspalding: Turkey has started talking nicely to Israel recently, which may have drawn some fire? But until they find out who the suicide bombers were, it's anyones guess, I'm afraid. My guess would be ISIS as revenge for recent military pressure on ISIS.

>128 RickHarsch: I don't think Turkey is an easy target. But self-defeating, yes.

Why don't you think they are an easy target, bn?

Getting past airport security didn't look easy. Also there's a lot of armed and trained police around (compared to the local streets here, anyway). But maybe I just didn't understand what you meant by "easy target"?

>131 bnielsen: From what little I understood from the report I listened to yesterday the bombers blew themselves up outside of the secured area. That's the problem with security, there's still the area outside where people are lining up to go through it.

>131 bnielsen: I mean Istanbul, for instance, is enormous and filled with recent arrivals, Erdoganian madmen, etc.

I just saw that there is suspicion the bombers were Russian, Uzbek and Kyrgyz!

ETA: Russian Chechen from Dagestan.

Sarcasm doesn't work, I guess.

There's little doubt Istanbul was ISIS. ISIS has never claimed responsibility for attacks inside Turkey; they are sending a signal to the powers that be, but avoiding alienating sympathetic Turkish Muslims. It's not the PKK, who almost invariably--and always in recent attacks--go after state actors, such as the military and police. What was it really about? It was about the Islamic State.

The problem is, who cares? ISIS terrorism doesn't push the right buttons for Americans, especially on the left. I can't tell you how many times I've seen that "toddlers have killed more people this year than terrorists" meme; I saw it twice on the very day ISIS blew up the airport. I saw little mention of Istanbul, except for among my Turkish friends. And, here, we've seen a truly desperate attempt to turn Mateen, who repeatedly claimed an ISIS motive, in a problem of Florida and its bug-eyed, right-wing Christians. But no discussion of Istanbul, until I brought it up. It doesn't fit the comfortable narrative.

The comfortable narrative falls apart when confronted with 200 blown apart in Turkey this year, and tens of thousands of dead Syrians and Iraqis. It falls apart if we spend a moment looking at Yazidi and Christian genocide. It falls apart looking at the rape of tens of thousands of Yazidi women, justified by actual chattel slavery. There's no meme for any of this—no right-wing oxen to gore, no easy virtue to signal, no politician to boor or cheer. Brown people killing and raping brown people, far away, and none of the Republicans.

Most importantly, looking squarely at the unprecedented power, reach and success of ISIS, we might need to do something about it. And that's clearly not a priority.

>134 timspalding: The reason why it's not a priority, Tim, is that ISIS has historically been, and in some senses still is, a strategic asset of the US and its partners. I brought this up in another thread, but here's another take on the DIA document that Judicial Watch FOIAed last year. https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/secret-pentagon-report-reveals-west-saw-...

<eyeroll>

To vastly oversimplify: if a primary goalETA: HRC email via Wikileaks -- not that a footnote is needed of the deciding faction of your national security apparatus is to take down the Syrian regime by whatever means possible, and your initial plan to pin use of chemical weapons on them as a casus belli falls through (ah, but I suppose you don't like Seymour Hersh either...), you and your allies have got to resort to proxies -- preferably deniable ones. Besides, dealing with such proxies is not always entirely disagreeable. (A very nice collection of annotated media reports by some researchers out of Columbia U.) Nifty little plan; pity the Russians had to come and throw a monkey wrench in the works, eh? (Now please excuse me while I vomit...)

What, then, to make of the latest terrorist attack in Istanbul and who is behind it? That's hard to say, and I don't claim to have the answers -- all the more so since I haven't been paying close attention recently. But suffice it to say there are a lot of moving pieces.

> 134 'Sarcasm doesn't work, I guess.' Not when, as in your case, you're smarter than everybody else. Plus, Tim Spalding the humorist still has a cult following. Patience, friend.

>139 davidgn: Some good analysis here, particularly from Naiman and Phillips. http://www.salon.com/2016/06/30/turkey_is_at_war_with_itself_experts_on_the_ista...

and here http://www.salon.com/2016/06/30/turkeys_double_game_on_isis_and_support_for_extr...

(which leads me to Phillips' research paper of March, 2016 -- new to me! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-l-phillips/research-paper-isis-turke_b_61289... )

>134 timspalding:

I'm descended from ancestors of which Pan troglodytes is a descendant branch.

Our typical behavior is to flee immediate violence that is not directly related to or directed at us personally or our nearest kin-groups. At a safe distance, we observe. At an unsafe distance, we seek a safe distance. Alfred has taken my cape and and Bat-paraphenalia to the dry-cleaners, the Batmobile is in the shop.

ETA:

Now, to leaven that smarty-pants comment with some back-story explanation :

By most indications I see in this site, U.S./U.K. democratic culture and feeling is not--how shall I put this? : "robust."

On the contrary, appreciation for, understanding and knowledgeable awareness of democratic theory and practice is not even up to junior-high-school level here. I call it shockingly weak. People here often don't even know how to put up a respectable pretense of adherence to democratic principles.

Now, for me, this constitutes an all-alarm critical condition for this Anglophone society. In other words, all the warning lights are flashing bright red : "Urgent Emergency! "

In that context, for me, nothing going on in the Near and Middle East among and between strife-ridden factions trumps in importance getting our own Anglo-American political house in order. And I make no apologies for that rather different sense of priorities.

>134 timspalding: Damn, who dropped the ball? Whose turn was it to start threads on terrorist bombings in P&C? Someone's going to get fired for this!

Did that sarcasm get through?

>140 proximity1: On the contrary, appreciation for, understanding and knowledgeable awareness of democratic theory and practice is not even up to junior-high-school level here.

Actually I'd say the junior-high-school level response would be to say 'that's democracy dude, deal with it'.

What I've observed in this group is an adult conversation about the subtleties and edge cases of democracy. Where and how it should be applied, etc.

>140 proximity1:

You lost me at Anglo-American.

>134 timspalding:

I no doubt have my "buttons" and a susceptibility to comfortable narratives which need to be re-examined, but really, what are you suggesting, concretely, that would improve the situation for the Yazidi and Christians and other ISIS victims?

Sure, there's grandstanding on the "left," but "we" are not indifferent to these victims. (In Europe, at least, refugees are welcomed more by some people than others.)

There's also a recent context, informed by American interventions, that has been problematic, to put it mildly.

I have reservations about Obama but the current administration's push-back against ISIS does not seem to me foolish or misplaced. It's a horrible mess, and today's calibration is a reflection of that fact.

If the objective is to improve the plight of victims, and not to score points in our parochial American squabbles, what measures (more? fewer?) would you suggest?

Please school me. This is not snark. I would sincerely like to know. I struggle with this.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/07/01/paris-orlando-and-turkey-displacing-the-n...

With the CIA fully involved in training and equipping what was referred to as the “rebel” forces and with the assurances from Saudi Prince Bander that they had the jihadists fully under their control, the Administration didn’t appear to be too concerned when ISIS broke off from al-Qaeda and began to establish its own independent economic base once it captured the oil fields in Syria. It all seemed like part of the plan, especially when it became clear that NATO member Turkey was being used to get the Syrian oil to world markets.

Michael Flynn, the frustrated head of the Defense Intelligence Agency ( DIA ) who naively thought that the U.S. was concerned about “Islamic terrorism,” revealed recently that after the DIA submitted analysis in 2012 that U.S. policies in Syria were enhancing the power of Islamic forces and leading to the establishment of a “Salafist principality” not only was that analysis ignored, it became clear to him that the Obama administration had made a “willful decision to do what they were doing.”

Once ISIS got their own ideas -- and particularly, of course, after Russia stepped in and the whole matter became a bloody stalemate -- ISIS became more liability than asset. However, as ex-Bundeswehr officer Bernhard of MofA pointed out yesterday, "The U.S. has no interest in ending the fighting in Syria. It wants to keep the conflict going as long as possible to "bleed" Syrian, Iran and Russia as much as it can." Commitment to the wholesale destruction of ISIS does not fit with that strategy.

Anyone who want to get rid of these pricks would do best to start by demanding a sea change in US foreign policy.

I no doubt have my "buttons" and a susceptibility to comfortable narratives which need to be re-examined, but really, what are you suggesting, concretely, that would improve the situation for the Yazidi and Christians and other ISIS victims?

The United States has missed boat after boat here. Yes, the Bush administration did great harm, but Obama owns the problem now, and oversaw the incredible growth and persistence of ISIS. The Obama administration refused to take ISIS seriously when it was growing. It refused to fund opposition forces in Syria, giving ISIS and other bad actors a clear field. It abandoned Iraq both militarily and politically, leading to the anti-Sunni purges which left Iraq open to a Sunni counter reaction. And on and on.

All that is water under the bridge now. At present, the US has fewer options. It has no good options. But defeating ISIS needs to be more than a long-term aspiration--their success is too dangerous. It needs to be an immediate military and political goal.

To that end, we need to scale up military involvement, up to and including substantial "boots on the ground." We don't necessarily need boots on the ground--American air and supply efforts continue to be weak by historical standards. But I think we may want them. Yes, American intervention can cause blow-back, but the ISIS situation is simply too dangerous to allow to continue.

And, for what it's worth, we have to get back to the idea that genocide carries international obligations. The abandonment of that idea is going to be haunting us, and the world's persecuted minorities, for decades to come. "Never again" has ceased to have any meaning, and future bad-actors know it.

As another example of priorities, we should be managing the Assad situation--credibly threatening to bomb Assad if he continues to break the cease-fire, as those 90-something State Department diplomats urge. Indeed, we should go further, and use our great military and diplomatic power--especially against a "normal" state, like Syria--to freeze that conflict where it is. Without that, Sunnis in Syria will continue to feel ISIS is their only protector, and Syria continue to focus on defeating ISIS's rivals, including the paltry remaining secularists, in order to make the choice a sharp one between Assad or ISIS.

Maybe I'm wrong. I'm open to being so. But either way, I'm not wrong that our ISIS strategy has been an abject failure, and that the Obama administration wants to avoid talking about it, or doing anything any time soon. Perhaps if we could face the situation squarely, with all its failures, we could devise better solutions.

If the objective is to improve the plight of victims, and not to score points in our parochial American squabbles, what measures (more? fewer?) would you suggest?

While I favor taking in lots of refugees, of all religions, this isn't a real solution; the total numbers are just too great to solve it that way. The best way to help the victims is to defeat the victimizer, so the victims don't need to be concentrated in massive camps in Turkey and Jordan, or desperately trying to cross the Aegean in a rubber boat.

>146 timspalding:


There is really some staggering irony in your analysis. You began well when you observed that, indeed, there are now no good options. But there remain vast differences in the gradations from bad to worse and your proposed course is not what I think of as the best of the bad.

Here is the irony: the fact that “we” now have no good options is intimately related to a factor which never occurs to many people. The U.S has been for so long a time a sham democracy— a place in which the voting public can no longer turn to the nation's political institutions and expect them to respond at all (let alone effectively) to their urgent political and social needs—that it is seen around the world (mainly by its most observant and determined critics) as democratically weak and vulnerable. Unfortunately, that judgment is not mistaken.

If you really want to defeat “ISIS” then you're going to have to face the difficult problems rather than keep them under the rug where they've been swept for so long: address the moral rot in the depraved and corrupted practice of democracy because, if you do not, you shall have little reason to defend the nation from these supposed threats from extremist groups. (Some are beyond all doubt extremist in the extreme while others (notably the presidents of South American nations, the late Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, etc.) are merely labelled extremists because Obama/Clinton are bent on overthrowing them or their successors)

If the U.S had the legitimacy which a democracy worthy of the name deserves and routinely gets from admirers and, even grudgingly, from detractors, that fact alone would constitute a body-blow to ISIS and every other group like it. It would devastate their capacity to successfully appeal to the world's growing numbers of political and social outcasts, people ignored and left behind by a take-no-prisoners “Winner-take-all” capitalist order. I have little reason to suppose that much of this shall reach you—as an admirer of William Weld, as one who seems enchanted by libertarian nonsense, but the link is a crucial one and the long-standing failure to recognise it is doing us immense harm and is a vast and undeserved boon to those who look only for ready reasons to motivate their prospective recruits against us.

This state of affairs is destroying us from the inside—destroying us where it most counts and does the most terrible and lasting damage: morally.

If I were a committed foe of the United States, my strategy would be very clear and simple: say and do nothing. For the quickest way to destroy everything which provides meaning and purpose to the nation's body politic is already being done now and the worst thing in the world for an arch-foe to do would be to disturb or interrupt that.

Their unspoken cry, “Re-elect the Clintons!”
------

* This comment has been revised since the posting of >148 timspalding: . Previously the term "extremists" (sic) appeared. It has been revised and now appears without the scare-quotes.

defend the nation from these supposed threats from "extremist" groups

If you can't bring yourself to the word extremist about a group that has brought back religiously sanctioned rape and chattel slavery for "pagan" women captured in war, I can't help you, and I won't read you.

>146 timspalding:

"Maybe I'm wrong. I'm open to being so."

Not _very_ open:

"If you can't bring yourself to the word extremist about a group that has brought back religiously sanctioned rape and chattel slavery for "pagan" women captured in war, I can't help you, and I won't read you."

Oh, that's an extremist group, all right! But not every group which the political elite of the U.S:, U.K., or the rest of the G-8 agree to label "extremists" actually are extremists.

You're a quasi-Libertarian! for crying out loud! I'll be damned and fucked if I need your "help" (yes, that goes between quotation marks!) or your readership.

Read and ignore AS YOU PLEASE!

When did strikes become extremism? - Jonathan Pie - YouTube

>Staggeringly arrogant POST! I took the quotes around extremist to suggest that not all uses of it are fair. For instance, the acts that #146 ("Yes, the Bush administration did great harm, but Obama owns the problem now, and oversaw the incredible growth and persistence of ISIS.") excuses as something we can simply forget despite its horrific nature--transparently bullshit casus belli, millions dead, torture, Guantanamo, drones, and on and on, war crime after war crime--are as extreme as any acts ISIS has committed. This is a war between two criminal organisations, one that begat another, and will not end without negotiation, which cannot occur as long as US citizens fail to see that what they have always condemned when committed by others (besides Israel obviously) they far too easily excuse in their own country. Injustice is a powerful motivator and the US has been unpunished far too long and committed far too many international crimes to be justified in ANY act at this point against ISIS.
>147 proximity1: Venezuela, Bolivia, but also Honduras, where the US DID manage to change the regime (obviously speaking only of very recent events).

>151 RickHarsch:

It's not excusing to say that Obama owns the problem. He's been in office more than seven years now. The invasion of Iraq itself, was fully 13 years ago--as distant from us as the Invasion was to the Fall of the Berlin Wall.

As for the rest, let's say we differ politically. I disagree morally that it is a war "between two criminal organizations" and, practically, that it "will not end without negotiation." I do not agree that the US is morally prohibited from acting against ISIS. I'd expatiate on all this, but, really, what's the point?

>152 timspalding: Okay, leaving aside what you want to leave aside, I should say that I agree that it's Obama's problem now, but particularly because he did none of the realistically available things he could have done to break the US link to the Bush era damages. Of course he wasn't going to prosecute US office holders for war crimes, but he got off to a great start with his announcement of the closing of Guantanamo--yet he promptly oversaw airstrikes in Afghanistan that killed dozens of civilians and drone strikes in Pakistan (within his first two weeks), signalling to European allies and Islamic internationalists, that the leaving of Bush was not really going to substantively alter US foreign policy.

As for the amount of time passed, it doesn't seems so long when you observe the continuity, when you consider that much of the leadership of ISIS spent time in Abu Ghraib.

ETA: A story about Obama's first drone strike: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/23/drone-strike-victim-barack-obama

Washington Post: The worst ISIS attack in days is the one the world probably cares least about
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/07/03/the-worst-alleged-i...

Toll is now up to 222.

Since June 1, we've had seven different ISIS attacks—Kazakhstan, Orlando, Magnanville (France), Istanbul, Bangladesh, Baghdad and Medina. So far this year, ISIS attacks have killed over 733, and injured over 1,710. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_linked_to_ISIL).

Yes, ISIS is bad news. But it does little good to avoid understanding what generated their extremism and their power.

>154 timspalding: But the US started the problem by invading the Middle East and kicking ass. Do you really think we can solve the problem by invading the Middle East and kicking ass?

>156 jjwilson61: If the US kicks EVERY ass, maybe. But then the world is stuck with a Middle East run by the US and Israel directly.

>156 jjwilson61:

This is a fair question. To my mind, it's important to avoid both repeating the past and being trapped by one reading of it. It's too easy to make either mistake. After Vietnam, many Americans were convinced we could never do anything right--no invasion could succeed, no military action could avoid a quagmire. After the Grenada, Panama and then the Gulf War, consensus flipped--American forces we so professional and militarily superior, you could send them anywhere, with any mission, and they'd win. Both views are, obviously, wrong.

ISIS's power is two-fold. First, they derive support from Sunnis in Iraq, who found themselves oppressed by the Shiite majority. We started that by upsetting Sunni power in the first place, by invading a country ruled by a minority dictator. But the nearer cause was our withdrawing from Iraq, militarily and diplomatically, giving Maliki a free hand to tear the country apart in his sectarian interest. From that came his purge of Sunnis, the 2013 riots and so forth. Second, they derive support from Sunnis in Syria, who hate their evil dictator. We didn't start that fight, and contributed only insofar as, by staying out and refusing to help better actors, we gave ISIS and its foreign backers no choice of protector, but ISIS.

So, confronted with a problem we created by invading, withdrawing and doing nothing, are we to not invade, not withdraw or not do anything?

run by the US and Israel directly

Trump's social-media team called. They want their memes back.

Re : "But the nearer cause was our withdrawing from Iraq, militarily and diplomatically, giving Maliki a free hand to tear the country apart in his sectarian interest. From that came his purge of Sunnis, the 2003 riots and so forth."


Don't you mean 2013 rather than 2003?

Fixed.

>146 timspalding:

Back online after a needed respite...yes, I agree that somehow it will have to happen that Syrian Sunnis will no longer look to ISIS to be their protectors. But I doubt that putting U.S. troops on the ground is, in the current maelstrom, useful in that regard.

Is there not hope that a slow grind of contraction for ISIS might happen, or is already happening? They can do terrible acts both in and beyond their terrority, as we've seen, but they can't really "win" and make their caliphate.

On the other hand, putting U.S. troops into the mix risks fostering a rallying cry against the invading infidel, etc. It could be a propaganda and recruiting tool for ISIS, and bolster them when they're getting wobbly.

>158 timspalding:

Maybe we didn't start the fight in Syria but we considerably destabilized the place when over a million Iraqi refugees came across the border in the wake of American military action next door. Syria is smaller than Kansas and Syrians were just expected to suck it up, while their dictator was cultivated by the American administration as a useful partner for extraordinary renditions.

Am I saying that the U.S. is to blame for Assad's many horrible actions against his people? Absolutely not. Or that the U.S. should have no future role in the region? Absolutely not. But this context is worth remembering.

On the other hand, putting U.S. troops into the mix risks fostering a rallying cry against the invading infidel, etc. It could be a propaganda and recruiting tool for ISIS, and bolster them when they're getting wobbly.

That's a concern, although the cry is already out there. Even if we weren't helping the Kurds, and bombing ISIS a little, and trying to get four moderate Sunnis together in a training camp somewhere, we'd be accused of intervening and a "War against Islam." And Israel, of course. You could relocate Jews to the moon, and these guys would see Israel at the back of it.

Such concerns aren't phasing other actors--Hezbollah, Russia, especially. Has the entry of Hezbollah made the Sunni/Shiite divide greater? Sure. Has it contributed to Assad's battlefield success? Definitely.

I don't think we need to put troops on the ground. I would hope, however, that we'd do so, rather than merely cranking up the bombing without regard for costs. ISIS is very good at using the civilian population as shields, and bombing is a tricky thing. It's anathema to US policy, but I'm willing to put US soldiers at risk if it means fewer civilian casualties. The chaos in Iraq was started by American troops, but particularly by having very too few of them for effective control. Later, we won against the insurgency and stabilized the country with a surge of troops--in numbers and in on-the-groun engagement--not by having few, or doing everything by air.

There's a lot we can do short of troops, though. We can pressure Assad to keep the ceasefire. If he doesn't do it, there are a lot of government buildings and government bases we can hit--Assad's is a real government and a real army. He backed down the last time we threatened him, over chemical weapons, only reintroducing chemical weapons partially, when he realized the Obama administration had no spine. We threaten him again, and it will work.

After that, we need to make sure the Kurds have all the military equipment and support they need. And the Iraqi army needs enough--keeping in mind that much of the equipment we gave them before is now in ISIS hands. We need to use our power to reimpose a non-sectarian regime in Baghdad--what Iraq had before Obama abandoned it. The Iraqis need out support; they'd be willing to stop the prosecution of Sunni politicians for it, if we threatened.

>162 timspalding: Tim, do you know what an S-300 anti-aircraft missile system is? And what it does? Clearly you do not, since you seem to have gravely miscalculated the strategic military position. Unless you believe the Russians and their Syrian trainees will hold their fire where they've explicitly promised not to, your proposal of bombing Damascus is likely to lead directly to World War III. I'd research that angle a bit more if I were you.

"You could relocate Jews to the moon, and these guys would see Israel at the back of it."

We don't really know that until we try it.

>163 davidgn:

( you mean to ref. post >162 timspalding: )

Re : ... "your proposal of bombing Damascus is likely to lead directly to World War III."

I thought of that, too. At the very least, it's taking a huge chance that V. Putin will just stand by and do nothing. There is probably already a clear expression from Putin to Obama/Clinton as to what Putin would do if a war to remove Assad was taken up in earnest by the U.S.

>163 davidgn:

Review the history of Syria's chemical weapons. Syria is absolutely vulnerable to American action. Their military is a shadow of what it once was. They backed down because they were afraid before; they'd back down again.

If you don't believe me, ask the US diplomats who issued the recent letter.

NYTimes: 51 U.S. Diplomats Urge Strikes Against Assad in Syria
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/17/world/middleeast/syria-assad-obama-airstrikes-...

>158 timspalding: Nice snipe: 'Trump's social-media team called. They want their memes back.' Thanks for leaving out the context - that was ugly typing. But serious readers will understand that you do that with every warmongering post you write on the Middle East, where you equate US invasions on your Trumped causes with civil war that you naively believe the US had nothing to do with ("State Department cables made public by WikiLeaks show that the Bush administration tried to destabilise Syria and that these efforts continued into the Obama years. In December 2006, William Roebuck, then in charge of the US embassy in Damascus, filed an analysis of the ‘vulnerabilities’ of the Assad government and listed methods ‘that will improve the likelihood’ of opportunities for destabilisation." quote from article below.)

Your posts are simply not to be taken seriously in discussion of the US and Middle East.

The Pope's take: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-pope-idUSKCN0ZL17H
The real concern about where arms go: http://thefreethoughtproject.com/cia-weapons-syrian-jihadis-isis-selling-faceboo...
Hersh, quoted above: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n01/seymour-m-hersh/military-to-military

>162 timspalding:: "I don't think we need to put troops on the ground. I would hope, however, that we'd do so, rather than merely cranking up the bombing without regard for costs." You have children. If they were old enough would you expect they go? Would you join them?

edited for clarity

>167 RickHarsch:

I'm glad we tried to destabilize Syria. It was and is a horrible, murderous regime, guilty of unspeakable crimes against its own civilians. I'm glad its people rose up and tried to topple them too. Monster that I am, I'm in favor of overthrowing tyrants. If Syria had gone the way of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, Assad would be gone. It didn't go that way, because Assad particularly nasty, and because his army was used to shooting civilians who opposed him.

You have children. If they were old enough expect they go? Would you join them?

We don't have a draft, and I've recently aged out, but, yes, I'm willing to use American force to stop horrific results. I think we did a good thing in stopping Hitler (in which family members fought), in forcing a conclusion to the Bosnian and Kosovo wars, etc. I wish we'd done more for Rwanda, and I wish we were doing something now.

>169 timspalding: Great. I believe you are sincere. But you still seem in your posts to be unable to grasp the dynamics of the Middle East, and still seem unaware of the US role in supporting tyrants of every stripe, many over the years worse than Assad, but Assad included, on and off.

Now see if you can answer #168.

ETA, It is not a frivolous question. If my wife thought the things your posts say, I would divorce her on the grounds that she was endangering our children.

ETA I have to ask about your sincerity given the evasions in your posts. I no longer can honestly say I believe you are sincere.

>169 timspalding:

Okay then. It's a big (or a small) world. Moving on, how about Venezuela? Brazil? Ecuador?

Washington really would love to see these governments crushed, overturned. You ?

>166 timspalding: Who's talking about the Syrian military? I'm talking about the Russian military and their shiniest new toys. You didn't think they left, did you? The integrity of the Syrian regime (and, a fortiori, Tartus) are stated red lines for Putin.

As for those diplomats, it seems to me they're simply itching to get along with the master plan that's been on the table for some time now. General Wesley Clark laid it all out for us in '07. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RC1Mepk_Sw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-zoPgv_nYg
Sound like a plan?

>168 RickHarsch: It is common here to use ETA to fix your posts. Now answer the question. I didn't ask about the draft, I asked about your morality and convictions. Would you expect your children to go and would you join them?

I turn the question around: If Slovenians were subject to genocide, your women sold into slavery and rape, wouldn't you hope someone did something?

Or should I insinuate something about your wife, as you feel comfortable doing?

As for those diplomats, it seems to me they're simply itching to get along with the master plan that's been on the table for some time now.

Oh those evil mid-level non-partisan career diplomats! All part of the "master plan." As all right-thinking people know, diplomacy is friend-making, and never requires the threat of action.

>174 timspalding: I insinuate nothing about your wife. If you read that into it, I am sorry if there is anything there to be read--I have absolutely no intention of insulting her, or even you for that matter. I was speaking honestly about my own opinions and in no way meant it to reflect on your family. Please try to understand what I am saying without thinking I wish any harm to come to any of you--strongly as I feel about some of these things I can't bring myself to wish ill on humans who disagree with me and don't threaten me or my family.

ETA...rushed to stop the unintended offense so fixing.

>174 timspalding:

Thank you.

That said, it remains a fair question, because we are in fact talking about a lot of people dying, and I would say we have moved beyond the right to claim that the US is capable involvement in a just war.

> 174 'I turn the question around: If Slovenians were subject to genocide, your women sold into slavery and rape, wouldn't you hope someone did something?'

As you have not answered my question, I won't pay regard at this point to yours.
Otherwise, it is enough to say that I live in Slovenia because I could not tolerate US foreign policies, particularly since WWII, when the US indeed helped defeat Hitler's Germany. It was a scan couple years after that that the US intervened in Greece using an early recipe for napalm. At the same time the US was paying for 80% of the French war efforts in Vietnam. When the US took over the helm in Vietnam they were also overthrowing the government of Guatemala, a country that took about half a century to recover from US terrorizing. As you know I could go on and on. Lumumba: replaced by friend Mobutu Sese Seko, whose 'evil' cannot be lesser than any of the dictators you have mentioned. He was a US supported dictator for quite some time, enthroned by the US. And yes, if I lived in the Congo in 1966, say, I would welcome efforts to unseat Mobutu.

>174 timspalding: Action on what grounds? Violating the cease-fire? Sorry, as far as I can tell that's just self-serving rhetoric. Our Al-Qaeda friends violated the cease-fire. Even Juan Cole will tell you as much. http://www.juancole.com/2016/04/syrian-ceasefire-in-tatters-as-al-qaeda-allies-a...
I particularly like the vilification of Assad for using "barrel bombs." What are they but poor man's cluster bombs? Are they so reprehensible merely on account that they weren't purchased from Textron? It's a cheap rhetorical trick, but nothing's beneath the Grey Lady anymore.

I should add that around the same time period the "moderate rebel" types began bombarding YPG-held quarters of Aleppo with improvised chemical weapons -- apparently simple chlorine gas bombs. But that warranted barely a peep from anybody. ETA: Amnesty got around to a press release six weeks later. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/05/syria-armed-opposition-groups-com...

As you have not answered my question, I won't pay regard at this point to yours.

I did. I support use of military force. It's silly for me to say I'd send my son or myself—we don't have a draft, my son is 10 and I'm too old. If there's ever a draft to fight ISIS, they'd make me a computer guy anyway, not a foot solider. But, yes, I think it was appropriate for my father to volunteer for Korea, and my grandfather to volunteer to fight Nazis. (I even think my Union ancestors did right fighting the Confederacy. I am a warmonger!)

If your Slovenian ancestors fought the Nazis or Fascists, I'd say they did right, and if some Muslim relative of yours fought the Serbs in Srebrenica, they did right too. Too many in Europe didn't fight the Nazis or stand up to the Serbs, and genocide was the result. Those stand by while their neighbors are butchered are not innocent.

As for me, fighting ISIS is not within my power. I've done what I could for Syrian refugees in the Turkish town where I lived. I'm sorry so many drowned within sight of my former balcony, but, well, I couldn't save them, and peace-loving people like you wouldn't stop the tyrants and terrorists that sent fleeing from their country.

>181 timspalding: I regard your answer as an evasion. Would you expect your son to go were he an adult. Would you not do all in your power to prevent him going. But far more pertinent is whether YOU would go. IF! That's what you pose, an if...If you were physically fit for fighting, would you?

I have no Slovenian ancestors. But, just for the record, Slovene partisans were actively fighting both Italians and Germans before any other Yugoslav peoples. It's quite a remarkable slice of history.

Peace-loving people like me are powerless to reign in the murderous US, so yes, we can't do much anywhere besides tell it like it is.

I regard your answer as an evasion. Would you expect your son to go were he an adult. Would you not do all in your power to prevent him going. But far more pertinent is whether YOU would go. IF! That's what you pose, an if...If you were physically fit for fighting, would you?

If there were in fact a draft—something that should happen only in extreme national need—and if the war itself were just, I would indeed expect him to go, and I would go myself. I do not think the goal of life is to avoid all possibility of death, but to do what is right. Fighting Nazis, North Korea or ISIS are all just.

But, just for the record, Slovene partisans were actively fighting both Italians and Germans before any other Yugoslav peoples.

Would you have done everything you could to prevent your children from fighting the Nazis?

I have no Slovenian ancestors.

Ah. What are your ancestors?

>158 timspalding: But the nearer cause was our withdrawing from Iraq, militarily and diplomatically, giving Maliki a free hand to tear the country apart in his sectarian interest.

Withdrawing after a decade with no indication that we were making any sort of progress towards further stabilization of the country, in fact a strong case could be made that our presence was destabilizing the country. How long do you think we should have stayed, another 10 years, 20 years? At some point if the gov't can't stand on it's own we have to just let it fail.

Furthermore, the Iraqi gov't didn't want us there anymore and the American people didn't want us there anymore, so the only option Obama had was to withdraw.

>183 timspalding: 'Would you have done everything you could to prevent your children from fighting the Nazis?' Frankly, the question is unfair not to me but to those who endured the times--so many families were torn apart by ignorant circumstance. A goes off to join the partisans, b and c are press-ganged by the Germans...It remains sensitive to this day.

The answer in regard to me is that you have to give me an age, and so born just after WWI, and the truth is I would not have had children--I would have been killed by the Italian fascists as a teenager.

My ancestors are English, Irish, Scots-Irish, Scottish, German, Danish, and French. a mixing that works better with dogs than people.

(My son's baseball team is just over the border in Italy. His 'Italian' team has among its ancestry above Indian, Ethiopian, Venezuelan, Dominican, Slovene, Croatian, Italian if you go back just two generations, maybe more, certainly some Czech, some Austrian, probably Greek and Armenian, too. Hebraic. Moor.)

Iraq and ISIS: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/07/uk-foreign-secretary-us-decision-i...

If a child of mine were drafted to fight in the middle east, I'd drive him or her to the Canadian border myself. Or, being a child of mine, to the airport for a short flight to St. Maarten.

>187 SomeGuyInVirginia:

St Maarten's homicide rate is about 20 times that of Canada, so if your child's safety is your primary concern, The Great White North might be the way to go.

At least we are all in agreement that one should get one's child OUT!

>189 RickHarsch:

I don't believe in fighting an unjust war, but avoiding a just war that others have to serve in isn't prudence, but cowardice. Americans with means always figure out how to avoid war. Thus, South Boston High in Boston, MA lost more young men in Vietnam than every Ivy League School combined. People who can afford to get away, are the ones who shouldn't.

>191 timspalding: South Boston High in Boston, MA lost more young men in Vietnam than every Ivy League School combined

Really? I'm sure you are familiar with the Memorial in M Street Park set up in the early '80s. It has twenty-five names on it. Yale lost thirty-five.

Perhaps you had in mind something related to selective service, where such disparity is much more in evidence. There was only one draftee from Yale; all the rest were volunteers. And again Harvard men killed were one draftee to a dozen volunteers.

>192 MMcM:

I can't find your number. Where'd you find it?

This may be a wrong statistic. I find it here, directly:


from The Culture of Defense by Christopher D. Van Aller
https://books.google.com/books?id=ZRCh8933RQ4C&pg=PA146&lpg=PA146&dq...

The footnoted source isn't on Google books.

This is close, from a Mark Shields column:


https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2199&dat=19960427&id=8qcyAAAAIBAJ...

But the numbers there suggest to me at least that, if you added the WHOLE Ivy league in, it would be larger than South Boston.

The latter comes from The Legacy: The Vietnam War in the American Imagination
By D. Michael Shafer
https://books.google.com/books?id=ipgHd7bcyPMC&pg=PA69&lpg=PA69&dq=%...

It seems that we substantially agree on the per-institution numbers. As you note, they do not seem to bear out the claim, unless there were more from Southie than are on that memorial. That's just possible, because it was done by friends remembering rather than more systematically. But it would have to be around a hundred more.

Harvard 12
Princeton 6

Cornell 27: http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2003/02/memorial-honors-cornellians-who-serv...
Dartmouth 21: http://dcusa.dartmouth.org/s/1353/clubs-classes-interior.aspx?sid=1353&gid=1...
Brown 20: http://www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/1996-97/96-125.html
Columbia 12: http://www.warmemorial.columbia.edu/find-deceased?war=The%20Vietnam%20Conflict

Yale 35: One such source is an anti-draft paper from the time https://books.google.com/books?id=p6jg4gV_URcC&pg=PA191
That number might well not be correct, as it isn't on the university's own site that I can find right now. And I do not see a number given for the names in the Memorial Rotunda of Woolsey Hall http://ctmonuments.net/2011/08/woolsey-hall-new-haven/. As you probably know, this was a major influence on Maya Lin http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2000/11/02/making-the-memorial/.

>188 cpg: It's better to burn out than to fade away.

Related? Reminds me of a family story--good thing that my grandfather took my dad, recently returned from WW2, on FISHING trip, and not a hunting trip. G'pa awoke in their tent to find Dad's fingers around his throat!

House OKs Bill Allowing 'Mentally Incapacitated' Veterans To Buy Guns

...The House has approved legislation allowing veterans who are "mentally incapacitated, deemed mentally incompetent" or prone to blackouts to buy guns. Critics of the bill say it could raise the suicide rate among veterans — a rate that has risen in the past decade...

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/03/17/520510426/house-oks-bill-allow...

Um, raise only the suicide rate? Those sneaky backseat executioners didn't think this through if they reckon that would be the only outcome.