California Attack Has US Rethinking Strategy On Homegrown Terror (nytimes.com) 676
JoeyRox writes: The recent terror attack in California reflects "an evolution of the terrorist threat that Mr. Obama and federal officials have long dreaded: homegrown, self-radicalized individuals operating undetected before striking one of many soft targets that can never be fully protected in a country as sprawling as the United States." With this new type of terror risk, authorities may begin relying more heavily on citizens reporting suspicious behavior of others. The attack is also expected to renew the debate over privacy versus security for software encryption. President Obama will be addressing the nation tonight to discuss the attack.
I like how they lie and call this homegrown (Score:2, Insightful)
It makes people in American look bad even though they were ISIS supporters. That makes me so happy.
Re:I like how they lie and call this homegrown (Score:5, Insightful)
The government, through Saudi Arabia, is an ISIS supporter. And then, after ISIS, you will hear about ISIS 2.0, or is it Al Qaeda 3.0 [washingtonpost.com]? Either way, the war is coming home to roost.
Re: I like how they lie and call this homegrown (Score:4, Insightful)
And with all this government spying, a very large no fly list that often ends up in old ladies and young children being groped at the airport, why was she allowed in the US in the first place if that is true?
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Re: I like how they lie and call this homegrown (Score:2, Interesting)
She was in college there. He went there to get her, not for vacation. I'm convinced that Saudi Arabia is the epicenter of problem creation in the middle east.
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The new head of the UN Human Rights Council?
Yep. The same people who recently in the news for showcasing the beheading of 200 men for various crimes and insults to the king head the current Council.
Re: I like how they lie and call this homegrown (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not the visit to Saudi Arabia that concerns me. Its all the spying that turned out to be useless. The same happened with the Boston bombers who were warned about by Russia and found that members of a mosque they went to warned the FBI.
It seems that the spying is only harassing honest citizens who not only do nothing wrong but aren't even realistically suspected of doing anything terrorist related.
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So, you are complaining the government spying isn't 100% effective?
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Well we know it wasn't in this case and with the boston bombing so the question to contemplate is if it ever was intended to be effective at stopping this crap or if the goals are something else m
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That no fly list is a farce. No one with even the slightest clue should be advocating that it's used for anything else. It's probably not even useful as a no fly list.
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I give up, why would American officials import "millions" of those terrorists? Wait, wait, I know....it is because then Obama could declare martial law and be the Muslim President for Life!!! Yep, that must be it. The only thing preventing this must be the Republicans armed to the teeth. What could possibly make us safer then a bunch of Republican gun nuts running around: Are you a terrorist? Are you a terrorist? You are, eh...BLAM...sorry I had to shoot your kid, Madam, he should be in kindergarten with th
Re:Of course they have to lie ... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a situation where Isaac's Asimov's ideas about psychohistory are worth considering. Mass murder is an aberrant, rare behavior and predicting it in an individual or even a modest population is a very questionable thing. But it's quite predictable when you're talking about very large populations.
Obama has proposed letting in 10,000 Syrian refugees -- not "millions". How will that effect your chance of being killed in a mass murder? Will that effect be significant?
Well, let's start with the base rate of mass attacks in the US. For purposes of discussion, lets call a "mass attack" as an attack on at least four people. Just in shootings, there have been 353 mass shooting in the US in 2015, and we're on day 340 of 2015. So it's fair to say that mass attacks are a daily occurrence in America. However spread across the large pool of potential victims, any individual's chance of being killed in a mass attack is very low -- so low that in practice we treat the situation as not urgent enough to do anything about.
Three hundred million is a population large enough to predict with certainty that it contains a substantial number of mass murderers. 10,000 is not. So any fear of letting in ten thousand refugees is based on an implicit belief that there is an extraordinarily high proportion of mass murderers in that population, or that the base rate of mass murders in the US is lower than it is, or both.
Let's examine the belief that a high proportion of Syrian refugees are mass murderers. Now what we know about most terrorists, at least the kind that operate across international lines, tend to be from comfortable or privileged backgrounds -- not refugees. This was the case for Santa Barbara shooter Tashfeen Malik, who like many of the 9/11 hijackers had an comfortable, uneventful upbringing and a university degree in a technical field. Refugees who commit terrorism tend to operate in-country (e.g. Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigades) against the immediate source of their displacement. So the idea that a Syrian refugees will commit acts of terror on behalf of ISIS is pretty far-fetched -- if we're talking only 10,000 of them. If we were talking a million of them it's not something we could discount, and if we were talking a hundred million it'd be a virtual certainty, as vanishingly unlikely as any individual taking this path would be.
So what this leaves us with in practical terms is the possibility that an ISIS operative may somehow sneak in amongst the refugees. This is something the Europeans definitely can't rule out. In fact two of the nine November 13 attackers were in the EU on faked Syrian refugee papers. However it's important to note three things: (1) had they not been in the EU their places would be certain to have been taken by indigenous participants; (2) Europe is dealing with far more refugees: 750,000 by some estimates; (3) the US program would only let in people who have been through a two-year long vetting process; in Europe they're just showing up and then have to be characterized after the fact. Even so let's assume one or two terrorists make it in through the program; killing the entire program won't stop ISIS from getting people in through other methods, or radicalizing people who are already here, so keeping those guys out will neither stop ISIS or make a dent in the base rate of mass attacks in the US.
What keeping refugees will do is put ISIS in a more advantageous position. ISIS actually supports the position of people who don't to let Syrian refugees into the US, because that works for them. Remember the famous picture of the dead toddler washed up on the European beach? That saturated the ISIS controlled media in the areas they control, because that's what ISIS wants people leaving their territory to face. Muslims fleeing from ISIS territory demolishes their claim of having established a legitimate new caliphate. It also undermines them in more practical ways -- they've had e
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You have a very naive view of Syrian refugees and Muslims in general. True, most aren't running around committing mass murder, but that's a bit of a straw many, because scores of polls in many countries over many years prove that significant fractions (and depending on the question and sample, sometimes majorities) support imposition of Sharia law, discrimination against Christians and Jews and gays, death for apostasy, death for blasphemy, and support various Islamic terror groups. Read it and weep. [thereligionofpeace.com]
As for
Re: Of course they have to lie ... (Score:4, Informative)
The vast majority of those shootings are drug dealers shooting at drug dealers. Which is why the proper number to compare against is the FBI's active shooter classification. Between 2000 and 2013 there were a total of 127 such shooters.
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If gun control is a viable option, then let the facts speak for themselves. Constantly fudging numbers for shock value makes me doubt seriously the motives of the pro-gun-contol side.
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Four, not 355, not 310. Four. Charlestown AME, Marine and Navy Recruiting station, College in Oregon and San Bernadino.
Re:Of course they have to lie ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Of course they have to lie ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm Romanian, I see more muslims in a month than you see in a year, most likely.
They're all fine, I have no problem with them. I buy excellent food from a Syrian store and best sweets from a Lybian store.
On the other hand, my country isn't regarded as "must destroy" by extremists.
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They have guns [youtube.com]
Logic? Logic is a feeble reed... when you're nuts (Score:3)
I don't understand the hysteria of disarming your people to prevent terrorists attacks by people who will always be able to get weapons.
FTFY
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Right now, there are more firearms (and also, more weapons of other types, such as knives and bats) in the USA than there are people. The idea that the US would become a "gun free society" is completely without any hope of bearing fruit at our current level of technology.
It isn't in any way an abhorrent idea to me. But I no more
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Are pipe bombs also in the umbrella stands of "conservatives"?
The rifles they used were illegally modified. The vast majority of "conservatives" aren't doing that, either.
The only thing strange is how people "go to town" only when the shooter is white OR Muslim. The large majority of cases are, for some reason, never seen in mass media.
Re:Because the shooter was an American? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they mostly came from "ordinary" criminal violence, largely gang-related. Shootingtracker.com is a source of noise: there have not been hundreds of mass shootings this year, unless you re-define the term. [unreasonable.org]
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Explain to your friends that any competent programmer who attacks the problem can devise an uncrackable communications system
That's a really bad argument, because to most of the population programmers are wizards who understand the magic that goes on inside the magic boxes that they use. More importantly, you can go to a library, read a book about encryption, and use a pencil and paper to encrypt messages in a way that they can't be decrypted (it's a bit time consuming, but there's nothing involved beyond high-school maths) and, because it's offline and not subject to timing attacks or side channels, it's going to be far more se
So we're not going to over-react this time, right? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just a rehash of the discussions that happened shortly after 9/11 (nevar forget), and the major events I recall from that was the collective assholes of the nation puckered up (really, the nation was nearly sane just prior), and the local Moroccan restaurant got firebombed (because they were obviously evil in trying to feed you).
So after the last wave of security theater, what will be different this time?
Certainly not our foreign policy. Certainly not adopting procedures from countries that do deal with terrorism successfully. Certainly not the need to throw even more money to departments that accomplish next to nothing.
But kiss even more of your civil rights goodbye.
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And don't forget, none of the terror incidents of late has involved strong encryption or even the hint of anybody knowing how to use it--so we have to ban strong encryption because reasons.
Or we could, you know, stop letting people into this country who have backgrounds that correspond to this kind of behavior.
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You racist pig!
How many people were killed? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How many people were killed? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I'm just kind of grateful they aren't interested in subtlety. In this case, the guy was a health inspector... he could've eventually had a higher body count if the worst thing he did was fucking up his job. If he were actively sabotaging things, it would have gotten ugly.
Re:How many people were killed? (Score:5, Insightful)
This latest one was little more than a bad weekend in Chicago. Given that Chicago can't be controlled ...
Of course it can be controlled. The problem is that the entrenched liberal local government and voters in Chicago don't want to admit the nature of the problem, or take the steps needed to control it - because that would be, you know, mean. Or racist. Or something.
... and not even a pale shadow of the violence problem that Chicago (or Baltimore, or New Orleans) has. This is a local culture problem, period.
... and religiously motivated theo-thug terror killings done in the name of a large and growing, well funded, well organized Islamist group's international agenda. Those things manifest themselves differently, and involve pretty specific demographics, travel, and communication.
Other large cities (even ones with much worse local economies) have far less draconian gun laws, less of a police presence, more guns owned per capita
That said, there are some substantial qualitative differences between local street corner turf wars and grudge killings
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Certainly not adopting procedures from countries that do deal with terrorism successfully.
Generally the countries that deal with this successfully do so with a much higher level of citizen surveillance than many of us would find acceptable.
Re:So we're not going to over-react this time, rig (Score:5, Insightful)
I see you missed the part about the Moroccan restaurant being firebombed. Somehow that wasn't labeled terrorism.
And so does your victim-blaming narrative fit there too?
Let's not forget that ISIL is a very, very recent development. I wonder if anyone can point to any recent events in that part of the world?
Or do you really want me to believe that for over 200 years Islamic people have had little beef with the US, but over the course of the last 30 have developed a hard-on of epic proportions.
And it was just out of nowhere, and not reactionary to US foreign policy.
Really?
As I said, just a rehash of discussions after 9/11. Thank you for playing your part.
Re:So we're not going to over-react this time, rig (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you know U.S. inteventionist foreign policy began as a reaction to Muslim acts against the U.S.? You've probably heard the opening line of the Marine Corps hymn:
From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli... [youtube.com]
The Montezuma part makes sense. The U.S. fought several wars with Mexico, so of course the Marines would be involved. But Tripoli? That's way over in Africa. What the hell were U.S. Marines doing there?
Funny you should ask. Way back around 1800 when the U.S. was a freshly minted nation, it ran into a problem. Prior to the revolution, the U.S. was a British colony, and thus fell under the protection of the British navy. When the U.S. gained independence, it lost that protection. The Muslim Barbary States decided to take advantage of the situation and began capturing U.S. merchant ships and holding the crews for ransom. Their thinking was that since these people weren't Muslim, there was no moral problem with kidnapping them and extorting a ransom.
The fledgling U.S. was deeply in debt and had its own domestic problems. The last thing it wanted to do was to meddle with things going on in other countries. But it didn't have a navy which could deal with the situation (it had been decommissioned after the Revolutionary War to save money), and attempts to negotiate a treaty with France to protect U.S. vessels fell through. So for the first few years, the U.S. just paid the ransom. Of course paying kidnappers just encourages them, and it became open season on U.S. flagged vessels. Eventually the payments became exorbitant (over 1/6th of the Federal government's total budget), and the U.S. recommissioned a navy (the USS Constitution on display in Boston was one of these first ships). President Thomas Jefferson (y'know, the guy who wrote famous things like, "We hold these truths to be self evident - that all men are created equal") launched a military operation to Africa to end the kidnappings and free the hostages.
And that is how the U.S. Marines ended up in Tripoli. That is how the permanent U.S. Navy was born. That is how U.S. meddling with foreign nations began. Because a bunch of Muslims decided to take advantage of a fledgling non-Muslim nation which wanted little to nothing to do with what was going on in the Eastern hemisphere, by kidnapping its citizens and extorting a ransom for their safe return. So if you want to play the blame game, the first incident, the precipitating act which began over two centuries of animosity and set the U.S. on a course for meddling with countries halfway around the world, was actually committed by Muslims against the U.S.
Re:So we're not going to over-react this time, rig (Score:4, Interesting)
The Islamic practice of slavery has been whitewashed out of history, not just the white slave trade.
Thanks to letting the left run our schools for decades, now we have at least one generation of people that think that white Christians from Europe were running around Africa with nets capturing peaceful blacks to ship to the new world.
The generation before them is aware that most of the capturing and selling was done by other blacks, but they think it was entrepreneurship, rather than something the Muslims organized and industrialized as they spread across Africa.
Virtually no one under 50 years of age knows that the crusades were a response to 400 years of Muslim war, piracy, slavery and harassment of Christendom and Christian pilgrims in the holy lands. Hell, most of the people reading this are going to need to google "Christendom".
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Um, excuse me? America is busy installing and funding dictators and extremists... Even the famous Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was used as an asset to keep the communists out of Iran after the Shah (remember him, right?) got sick and died.
Um, excuse me? Are you seriously claiming that the US installed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini?
Last I heard he was the revolutionary who created the movement that overthrew the Shah, and the whole Pahlavi monarchy (who had been re-empowered by a US/UK coup after the democrart
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Re: So we're not going to over-react this time, ri (Score:5, Insightful)
Its only a very small section of muslims, blaming all muslims is a generalisation of the worst order. Extremist Christians also want to rule everything so its 50 of one and 50 of the other for all religious megalomaniacs. Its just lucky that there are more sensible christians, different religions and those with no religion to keep the stupid ones in check, but unfortunately the sensible muslims aren't able to control their nut jobs because they'll be killed. Unfortunately because of the religious based rulers/laws in these places, people of different religions and no religion are not allowed to exist because they disrupt the closed thinking and its stops progress to a civil and equal society.
Its not surprising that virtually all the most dangerous countries are strongly religious, christian and muslim.
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Funny thing is, all those evil Christians who were involved in the founding of this country voted for a Constitution that guaranteed freedom of religion. It's that document all those evil Christians supported that guarantees the freedoms of Muslims and Hindus and Atheists in this country. And it's that very guarantee of religious freedom that so infuriates the radical Muslims that dream of a world ruled under Sharia law. I'll grant that most of the Muslims in this country do not want Sharia law here beca
Re:So we're not going to over-react this time, rig (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: What about Aaron Swartz? Michael Brown? (Score:3, Insightful)
"I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in."
- George S. McGovern
Homegrown? Come on (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Homegrown? Come on (Score:5, Insightful)
He has a solid grip on it. and calling it that is very calculated.
Homegrown terrorist makes people feel more helpless that they can not do anything about it and need daddy government to help them.
If you call it a real Terrorist attack, even the hard left liberals will be in line at the gun shop to buy AR15's and a ammo can of 1000 rounds. Americans will gleefully arm themselves to fight a foreign threat.
but homegrown? I'm helpless, my neighbor could be one! Help me daddy gubment! Where can I report them?
The LAST thing republicans and democrats want is all of america's citizens arming themselves heavily and organizing.
Re:Homegrown? Come on (Score:5, Insightful)
Your argument is badly flawed. I have almost nothing to fear from foreign terrorists. The true threat is my own countrymen and always has been. I'm much, much more likely to be shot stopping at a local convenience store than by any terrorist home grown or not. I avoid areas around town that are known to be "combat zones" and when I travel to Atlanta I always pack heat but really I have virtually no fear. My most likely means of demise will be either cancer or heart disease just like most Americans. Cancer due to the exposure to chromium and other substances in my job in the aviation industry and heart disease because I eat too fucking much. Terrorists make for good TV but if anyone stops to think about it they'll realize that they're just an annoyance.
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Fooled you, his wife was the daughter of Pakistanis, they emigrated to SA about 20 years or so ago. Please try to keep up,
Re:Homegrown? Come on (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently nor do you as she was Pakistani.
It is domestic because it was not (from what has been leaked as "known" so far) directed from outside the US.
And as wtih Paris, the hyperventilating over the death of a small number is sickening (don't confuse that with a lack of sympathy for the dead/wounded). The number killed in terrorist attacks (even using the incredibly lose definitions of the government) is, well, not even microscopic. So yeah, lets just toss away more of our rights and liberties to let "daddy" protect us from something he can't stop and is very rare (see Paris - they knew most of the attackers) After all, those rights and liberties don't serve any real purpose so just give them back to the terrorists.
What I do want to hear from Obama before he creates a new Stasi is who from DHS will be fired for giving her a visa in the first place.
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Is there some reason to believe there was collaboration with foreign terrorist contacts? I haven't come across that information.
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LA times [latimes.com]
Claims the woman was in contact with two foreign terrorist groups. Of course they immediately then say there was no outside influence (because politically that would be damaging to Obama). But yes, they were contacting outside, should have been picked by by NSA legally for contacting foreign known terrorists, should have been under watch, etc. etc. etc.
The NSA spying doesn't work, even when people contact known terrorists they are not looked at. If you are a journalist that is critical of the adm
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What do you mean by monopolize here? Do you maybe mean capitalize?
So, ponder this... (Score:5, Insightful)
Dec 2nd, 2 baddies kill 14 people in CA = CNN says "assault weapons" for 12 straight hours.
Oct 3rd, An AC-130 gunship and crew of 13 rain 211 shells on a hospital in for nearly an hour killing 63 patients and international volunteer doctors = CNN barely mentioned it, and somehow failed to categorize the gunship loaded with 211 shells an "assault weapon"
Why didn't the pres address the nation over this one?
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Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So, ponder this... (Score:4, Insightful)
Because the US military committed a war crime and leveraged everything they had to suppress the story.
I truly hope that MSF is successful in taking the US to The Hague over this atrocity. I know that may seem like I'm holding the US military to an unfair standard, but actually, under the circumstances they absolutely should have done better. What's the point in having all this modern near-instant communication equipment, surveillance gear, and data-exchange if such tragedy can still occur.
Here's the latest for those who haven't heard anything in a while:
http://www.aviationpros.com/news/12143532/us-service-members-suspended-for-attack-on-afghan-hospital-could-face-court-martial
The US should hang its head in shame, rather than try to suppress this as they have done. For a truly sickening experience, go back and read the news reports in the days and weeks following the event. The blatant way they drag their feet over the incident is just as disgusting as the event itself.
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Why? (Score:2)
"The attack is also expected to renew the debate over privacy versus security for software encryption"
Why? Is the any evidence they used any form of communication or encryption? These attacks barely show as a rounding error in overall homicide statistics. Just catch/kill those who commit such acts, remove as many of the drives as possible (unemployment, collateral damage, injustice, etc) and move on with life. Our "solution" to terrorism of wildly throwing billions of dollars at the defense industry and
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A Modest Proposal (Score:3)
If we just put all the Muslims in Planned Parenthood clinics, then our homegrown terrorists will become the homegrown solution.
http://time.com/3934980/right-... [time.com]
My prediction.... (Score:4, Insightful)
After 9/11 the government created DHS to supposedly prevent terror attacks from happening again. As others have discussed, this is nothing more than political theater. Billions of dollars and thousands of bumbling bureaucrats later, we are no safer now than we were then. All it has done is create delays for millions of air passengers every year.
So Obama will predictably call for more of the same. More invasion of privacy, more bureaucrats, more wasted effort. This is what government always does - when an idea doesn't work throw more money at it.
Meanwhile he will double down on more gun control. The problem is that law enforcement is almost always in a reactive role. A crime gets committed and they show up, clean up the mess, and try to find out who is responsible. In the interim, lots of people die. What he doesn't want to admit to is that is citizens are armed then these types of terror attacks would have minimal or no damage. Instead of everyone standing around watching people get shot someone will pull out a piece and shoot the shooter.
Once again, political correctness and party politics get in the way of common sense.
Re:My prediction.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Whatever happened to, "Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself"?
I don't want to trade liberty for security. Am I in the minority here with my wanting to have my civil liberties?
Re:My prediction.... (Score:5, Insightful)
What he doesn't want to admit to is that is citizens are armed then these types of terror attacks would have minimal or no damage. Instead of everyone standing around watching people get shot someone will pull out a piece and shoot the shooter.
So how many armed civilians do you need to drop the mass killing rate by 50%? Quite a lot to have 1 or more on hand at every large gathering. Bear in mind, dropping the mass killing rate by half would drop the homicide rate by less than 0.3%. Meanwhile, now every office party where people are drinking now has at least someone armed in attendance. Does getting a CCW permit automatically cause abstinence from drinking and drug use while carrying? What could go wrong? Considering that in the US accidental shootings alone kill ~10 times more people than mass shootings, I think more people would die rather than fewer.
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I'm waiting for them to try this kind of terror attack in someplace like Waco, Texas.
Re:My prediction.... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Welcome to Soviet and Nazi style U.S.! (Score:3)
From TFA:
"With this new type of terror risk, authorities may begin relying more heavily on citizens reporting suspicious behavior of others."
And now you can report on your neighbor from your iPhone and Android phone!
https://itunes.apple.com/us/ap... [apple.com]
https://itunes.apple.com/us/ap... [apple.com]
It was said back in the 80's that the United States would become more like the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union would become more like the United States. Well that is coming to pass. Just do a web search on "United States to become more like Soviet Union".
From TFA:
"First, there was CIA director John Brennan, last seen deceiving the public about the CIA spying on Senate staffers, lamenting that privacy laws were to blame."
"Then thereâ(TM)s the question of why journalists always frame the encryption debate as a perilous balance between privacy and security. "
Franklin said it best!
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
- Benjamin Franklin
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Android app:
https://play.google.com/store/... [google.com]
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The breakup of the East Bloc has led to an outpouring of academics and migrants who bring the bad ideas of those regimes with them to the West. In addition, a lot of the younger generations in Central Europe don't remember how bad socialism and fascism actually were, and are now reverting to the older political ideas common to their cultures. Likewise, US
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When you can't trust your neighbour (Score:5, Insightful)
When you can't trust your neighbour not to go on a shooting rampage society has already failed. What we need to do is spend money on building up social structure. Street parties, neighbourhood parties, things that bring people together and strengthen the social structure.
Going all "report your neighbour" is going to build up the walls of distrust and lead to more problems.
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Re:When you can't trust your neighbour (Score:4, Interesting)
I trust my neighbors to not go on a shooting rampage. Or run me down with their SUV either.
And I live in a place where it's pretty much guaranteed that everyone within a mile owns gun(s).
Now, do I trust YOUR neighbor? Well, no so much as I do my own, but prolly more than you might expect.
Seriously, I'm not sure I've ever been anywhere that people were quite that paranoid. Though you wouldn't know that from the news, would you?
Re:When you can't trust your neighbour (Score:4, Informative)
What we need to do is spend money on building up social structure. Street parties, neighbourhood parties, things that bring people together and strengthen the social structure
Reports are that the coworkers of this guy threw a baby shower for his wife, not long before he shot them.
government employee kills 14 people (Score:5, Insightful)
So the proposed solution is: (1) more government supervision, (2) more gun control, and (3) more encryption? This guy was being observed by the government every day because he was working for the government, the shooting took place in one of the most strictly gun controlled states in the nation, and there is no evidence he needed encryption. In addition, the shooter wasn't a "homegrown, self-radicalized individual", he was radicalized abroad by a belief system many people share and spread.
What this reflects is the utter impotence of the current administration to do anything meaningful. Obama promised a restoration of privacy, constitutionality, and a radically different foreign policy, and he has turned out as bad as Bush, if not worse.
Addressing the terror threat will require massive changes in US foreign policy, plus many years of patience for things to calm down. Getting in bed with Middle Eastern despots for oil and cleaning up the messes that European colonialism left across the globe have always been questionable to begin with, but at least there was some economic justification for it. In the 21st century, these policies are just imbecilic.
Re:A good start (Score:4, Insightful)
You want to know how to start combatting this? Stop all Islamic immigration, and begin the process of de-Islamizing the US. Yeah, I'm well aware that I will sound extreme to most of you but I've become convinced, looking at the history of Islam, that Islam can NEVER peacefully co-exist with other cultures. All it has ever done is attack its neighbours and it continues to do so today. It will never be tamed or reformed. It can only be stopped.
Wow, Robert Dear, Allen Lawrence Scarsella, Nathan Gustavsson, Daniel Macey, Joseph Backman, and Timothy McVeigh was all Muslim? The things one can learn on the Internet.
Here's a list of all the mass shootings in this country for this year, to date. [shootingtracker.com] Oh, and your understanding of history is about as uninformed as anything I have come across. By your standards, the United States must be the Great Satan given the amount of people we have killed during the wars we have been directly and indirectly involved in over the last century.
Please get back to us when you have figured out which other generalized groups to deport. Until that time most of the rest of us will continue to point out how you ARE the problem, not part of the solution.
Re:A good start (Score:4, Insightful)
"Robert Dear, Allen Lawrence Scarsella, Nathan Gustavsson, Daniel Macey, Joseph Backman, and Timothy McVeigh"
What organized group did they all belong to other than Crackpot?
Re:A good start (Score:4, Insightful)
What organized groups have carried out numerous attacks on US soil?
The San Bernardino folks weren't even members of anything.
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They claimed allegiance to ISIL, so what are you on about?
Re:A good start (Score:5, Interesting)
They claimed allegiance to ISIL, so what are you on about?
Today I learned that a crackpot can claim anything and someone will take them at their word.
Re: (Score:2)
No they were not all Christians.
McVeigh specifically said "Science is my religion".
So he was agnostic, if not atheist.
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I did not bother checking the others. One example of the group not being Christian refutes your claim.
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No they were not all Christians.
I would like to think that the one group we can all agree these assholes belonged to was what we call murderers. In case you missed this, ideology isn't really important to the dead.
You didn't notice the problem? (Score:5, Informative)
Before I point out the problem let me point out what happened the day of the San Bernardino shooting. Within 30 seconds of the shooting, there was reporting on _every_ major new station that this was a 2nd amendment problem. Within 5 minutes, they had blamed conservatives (especially those dirty Libertarians who are despised by the Government and Media) for the shooting, and claimed that encryption needed back doors for Government snooping. The lie about the Paris terrorist attack being planned over encrypted channels was repeated several dozen times.
For 4 hours I listened to the puppet media claim that Guns were the problem and that _more_ gun control was necessary, and those libertarians and conservatives were a danger to the world.
Not one time in the 4 hours was it mentioned that California has THE strongest gun regulations in the country. Chicago was not mentioned either, which is a "gun free" city and county but has an incredibly high rate of gun violence sporting over 10 shootings a day (and over 1 dead per day) in a place where guns have been banned. At least for the citizens that abide by the law.
Within an hour of the Police finding and killing the 2 shooters we had their names. We also knew that his wife was Pakistani and the interesting circumstances for them meeting. We knew that she dropped their 6month off at a relative's house, an a few hours later knew that they had homemade weapons, links to at least one Jihadist terrorist group from Facebook posts, and attempted to wipe their hard drives.
For TWO MORE DAYS Politicians and Puppet media (*NBC*, *FOX*, *ABC*, NPR, *CNN*) claimed that the problem was home grown libertarians who owned guns, and facts were ignored to support that narrative. If the word "Muslim" was mentioned it was followed up immediately with Libertarians and/or how we lack gun laws.
So you post a number as if it has special meaning, and ignore the wise words of Mark Twain. "There are three kinds of lies. Lies, damn lies, and statistics." You also ignore that the source of that number is a Reddit group! Do you also believe every post on Slashdot and Facebook, if it looks official? Why can we not find that same information from the FBI?
Well, that would be due to the fact that the number is bullshit. According to the FBI [fbi.gov] there have been 21 mass shootings this year, not 355. A longer term study [fbi.gov] performed by that same Law enforcement agency shows that the trend has been declining, not rising. The Narrative you post works because "shooting" is intentionally conflated to appeal to the emotions and make it appear that these are all San Bernardino like events.
Damage of any kind to _innocent_ people is wrong, but remember that crime is not a one way street. Crime does not stop magically when guns are banned, and if you somehow hold such a delusion you can look at the UK and Australia for both long term and short term crime trends with unarmed citizens. Banning guns does one thing. It removes people's ability to defend themselves, making them completely dependent on the Government for defense.
For the citizens to be able to defend themselves we accept a certain level of risk. The Rights of the people to defend themselves is in the Constitution very intentionally. Nobody stops _you_ from defending yourself or throwing your life to the Government. You currently can not legally demand that others do the same, and hopefully you never will.
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That's right idiot. The only way to save the country is to destroy it. Take one of the basic tenets of the founding of American culture and rip it out. Maybe we could implant RFID tags in everyone as well since you like pissing all over the Constitution. As if the fucking "Patriot" Act wasn't bad enough.
Re:A good start (Score:4, Informative)
Also Malaysia
Re: A good start (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
We are not a muslim country, yet.
Re:More blood... (Score:5, Insightful)
It was Snowden who actually revealed the problem: the incestuous relationship between several successive US administrations and Saudi Arabia, which is the country that weaponized Islam and keeps the death-cult interpretation of the faith funded:
https://theintercept.com/2014/... [theintercept.com]
The KSA is the real enemy in the region. Time to get rid of it.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"California Attack Has Some Random Slashdot Poster Rethinking Strategy on Homegrown Terror". There, I fixed that for you.
Not just some random poster. The title is actually from the linked NY Times article, right down to the URL. So there's some serious discussion going on, whether we like what comes out of it or not.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
NY Times is not a reputable news source anymore... They have not been anything but a opinion rag for the past 5 years.
Re:Who is this person who claims to speak for the (Score:5, Insightful)
Quotation marks = "I'm quoting someone else".
URLs = "Here's where I got this info".
Submission != "Plagiarism".
You're welcome.
Re: (Score:2)
terrorists have very little ability as the incidents could have been far worse
You don't think there might be a reason it's harder for them to carry out attacks in the US than it is in some other countries? Really?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Did your media cover up inconvenient bits? (Score:4, Interesting)
In this very relevant prank, some jokers put a Koran cover on a bible, then read out various passages and asked random passers-by to comment on them.
As I'm sure you can imagine, hilarity ensues [deadstate.org]
Re:Did your media cover up inconvenient bits? (Score:5, Insightful)
The relevance is not whether ancient religious texts contain violent and xenophobic edicts, all cultures derived from barbaric times. The relevance is whether current religious people follow those edicts - not some minuscule portion, a significant percentage. This indicates whether a culture has started maturing or not.
To save others the time, the universal reaction to that little experiment was shock and rejection of the barbaric edicts, not nodding and acceptance, whether they were fooled as to the source or not. You forgot that part.
Re: (Score:2)
> Have you ever read the old testament?
Likely only relevant to Jews.
In case you've never been exposed to any sort of Xianity at all ever, Xians generally disavow most if not all of the Old Testament. That's why they don't keep kosher or otherwise follow the old law.
If you want to commit mass character assassination, try starting with the New Testament.
Re: Saudi Arabia (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Because the number of people dying a violent death in the US is declining [motherjones.com]. Constitution-shredding anti-gun zealots try to "not let a good crisis go to waste", but the sentiment does not last long.
Because this is a new motivation. One which, considering, what other Western countries are experiencing, could dramatically reverse the bliss
Re:Why is this mass killing different? (Score:5, Insightful)
I reject the notion "gun nuts" are a significant problem, other groups are doing the shootings and they are not firearms hobbyists.
The results of our sociological experiment in the inner cities speaks for itself. Paying women to breed like maggots, with "fathers" who are mere sperm donors who do not raise the child, this is the problem. Adult babies with no responsibility, morals, or respect for life and property are the problem. Leave the gun rights of us civilized people out of it.
The per capita gun ownership rate of my neighborhood is far,far above that of any inner city, but we have zero crime.
Re: (Score:2)
California is more than capable to act on it's own. Any state is. Yet any time this nonsense happens, liberals just crassly exploit it as an excuse to whine for national legislation. Let them clean their own houses first. Then and only then do they have any standing to meddle in anyone else's business.
This last shooting is a perfect example of extra gun laws that didn't do shit.
Get your own shit together first. THEN start meddling in other people's shit.
It's not time double down on your pet agenda when your