Another fucking spree shooting. Great.

ahhhh

if he called the police the shooting would've never happened, just sayyyainnniing

i'm still not clear what was suspicious

A man who has been working in the area said he noticed a half-dozen Middle Eastern men in the area in recent weeks, but decided not to report anything since he did not wish to racially profile those people.

what does this "in the area" even mean

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CHwV2ZlUkAAKWeF.png

worth it

I have seen the madness in my area

^^^what I thought of too

As often happens in these situations, the horror I feel regarding the central tragedy is rippling outwards as I consider how many lives are affected or potentially affected by one selfish action. Like how much worse it has suddenly likely become to be Muslim in this country. And I can't stop thinking about the baby. Such a shitty cloud to grow up under. Your parents cared more about murdering a bunch of random people for no discernable reason than they did about being your parents.

I wish every time there was an Islamic terror attack the discourse didn't immediately shift to concern about "how much worse it has suddenly likely become to be Muslim in this country." Is there a single other minority group that gets this particular discourse over and over again? I am not denying the existence of anti-Muslim sentiment but it feels an awful lot like a strategic elision.

facebook post by the sheriff in ulster county new york.

Ulster County Sheriff's Office
3 hrs ·
December 3, 2015

ATTENTION LICENSED HANDGUN OWNERS

In light of recent events that have occurred in the United States and around the world I want to encourage citizens of Ulster County who are licensed to carry a firearm to PLEASE DO SO.

I urge you to responsibly take advantage of your legal right to carry a firearm. To ensure the safety of yourself and others, make sure you are comfortable and proficient with your weapon, and knowledgeable of the laws in New York State with regards to carrying a weapon and when it is legal to use it.

I also want to remind all Police/Peace Officers both active duty and retired to please carry a weapon whenever you leave your house. We are the thin blue line that is entrusted in keeping this country safe, and we must be prepared to act at any given moment.

Thank you,

Paul J. Van Blarcum
Ulster County Sheriff

dude needs to layoff the redbull. wow.

wtf?

Mordy yr an idiot

I'd go get the popcorn for this but then I'd have to leave the house and probably walk into a mass murder

Whenever a member of a minority group commits a crime I promise you the rest of that minority group gets worried that hate against them will increase because of it, but afaict no other group has this particular discourse emerge instantly the moment a crime is committed. It makes me think it's more political/ideological than actually borne of real concern. I don't remember a lot of people worrying about antisemitism increasing after the Bernie Madoff scandal eg.

hmm wonder if something happened in 2001 that makes this different somehow

I mean I remember a lot of Jews worried about it but I didn't see articles in the press about how careful we need to be in light of etc etc. People rightly understood that the story was the crime, not the potential blowback to the crime.

i forgot about bernie madoff killing thousands of people

What does that have to do with anything? When Israel kills a bunch of Palestinians I don't see people expressing dismay that innocent Jews in the diaspora will get blowback for it. This is literally a discourse about only one group.

a lot of it is posturing, sure. doesn't necessarily make it wrong

To clarify: I don't think any innocent people of any group should suffer because of the actions of another member of that group. But I also suspect that the reason there's always a rush after every Islamic terror incident to make it actually be about Islamophobia is not because of that consideration but because of a broader political ideology.

What does that have to do with anything? When Israel kills a bunch of Palestinians I don't see people expressing dismay that innocent Jews in the diaspora will get blowback for it. This is literally a discourse about only one group

That happens literally every time Israel kills a bunch of Palestinians.

No, literally every time Israel kills a bunch of Palestinians there is blowback. No one argues against it, and in fact I see plenty of people justify it on the grounds that Israel is really to blame.

Whose fault is it that Jews in France are targeted during the Gaza War? Israeli Jews. Whose fault is it that Muslims are targeted after a terror event? The bigots targeting them. There's definitely a double standard in place.

That is a ludicrously reductive reading of what happens in these situations.

yes people concerned about the gendered, racialized violence against women in hijabs/niqabs that come after terror attacks are blowhard political ideologues, congratulations, mordy you really nailed us. and it really seems consistent with your rant about cynicism over the zuckerberg thing yesterday on this board.

I'm talking about Islamophobia on the ground, not in think pieces ffs

people won't help little girls with their homework every time israel kills palestinians. i read that on the internet.

mordy iirc it happens because there IS significant blowback to muslims (and people incorrectly assumed to be muslims, eg sikhs) in the US after these types of events

but i'm still not sure.. are we talking about madoff/palestine and israel/ or terrorism?

we can rehash the statistics but from what i've seen blowback against muslims is not particularly significant as far as hate crimes go compared to other groups

but what is the actual problem, mordy? that people are 'overly concerned'? seems like a non-problem to me.

like why the rush to start worrying about future bigotry? how about worry about the actual victims of this actual event and if there's blowback condemn it. why make the event be able the possible blowback and not about what actually happened? i suspect it's because ppl on the left get very uncomfortable when a muslim commits a terror attack and they'd rather discuss something else. obv ymmv. i think my pov is clear and i don't really feel like making this into a clusterfuck so if you disagree and think i'm a terrible bigot that's ok.

also one crime does not a trend make, i know, but: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_Sikh_temple_shooting

xxxpYou've seen personally or in some chart you pulled out of your ass?

we discussed it on another thread recently:
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/hate-crime/2013/topic-pages/victims/victims_final

Religious bias
Of the 1,223 victims of anti-religious hate crimes:

60.3 percent were victims of crimes motivated by their offenders’ anti-Jewish bias.
13.7 percent were victims of anti-Islamic (Muslim) bias.
6.1 percent were victims of anti-Catholic bias.
4.3 percent were victims of bias against groups of individuals of varying religions (anti-multiple religions, group).
3.8 percent were victims of anti-Protestant bias.
0.6 percent were victims of anti-Atheist/Agnostic bias.
11.2 percent were victims of bias against other religions (anti-other religion). (Based on Table 1.)

we can rehash the statistics but from what i've seen blowback against muslims is not particularly significant as far as hate crimes go compared to other groups

wasn't there a bunch of news about the terrible people in Texas who posted the addresses of all the supposed muslims in town? the same town where the guys with guns decided to follow people home from the mosque?

not trying to impose a hierarchy of hate crimes and threats but islamophobia in the wake of recent events is not made up

mordy, we have a front-running presidential candidate suggesting that we bulldoze mosques and force muslims to 'register' with the federal gov't. sure, donald trump is not going to be president (knocking on wood several times right now) but it's not as though anti-muslim sentiment isn't a major part of our discourse.

and my link (about the sikh temple shooting in milwaukee a few years ago) was meant to point out that this sentiment has turned to violence in the past (and probably will again).

i don't think you're a bigot! i just can't quite grasp what your grievance is here. it reminds me a little of the people yelling about people offering condolences to france and not giving equal time to every other tragedy that occurred. it's a non-problem.

i guess i am sensitive to islamic terror and what i see when something like this happens is that the moment is happens the left starts praying that the killer was a white guy and not a muslim and then when it is a muslim they start praying it has nothing to do with islam and then when it does have something to do with islam they start worrying about the blowback. it seems bizarre to me and yes makes me worry that it's bc the left in general would rather not deal w/ it at all if they could avoid it.

and fwiw i very much worry whenever israel does something awful that there will be 'blowback' in the form of attacks on jews in other places (or in israel for that matter) that had nothing to do with it. although in that case it's less about one particular thing israel did as the kind of pervasive, day to day awfulness of israeli policy.

xpost

i wonder how you are construing 'the left' -- like what are the constituent components of 'the left' that allow you to make this generalization. that is an honest question, not needling.

I particularly liked the speculation that they were muslim affiliates of the sinaloa cartel. I wanted to believe.

xp idk obv the left is a complex multifaceted group among which i even include myself but am i wrong that this thing exists? doesn't every event like this immediately get followed up w/ concerns about islamophobia? are you saying you aren't observing what i'm noticing, as opposed to observing it but thinking it is a completely innocent well-meaning compulsion?

i don't know, i have everybody hidden on my facebook feed and don't read twitter, so i don't always know what "the reaction" is to stuff.

not literally everybody, but pretty much everybody who posts dumb things about politics.

One of the reasons I get concerned about anti-Muslim blowback is that it serves as very effective propaganda for ISIS and its allies.

i love that this is a "handgun". that you can actually buy. i guess you buy this to protect your other smaller guns.

http://www.gandermountain.com/modperl/product/details.cgi?pdesc=CZ-USA-805-Bren-S1-Handgun&i=913928

like is this an unfair characterization: many people on the left are much more concerned with anti-muslim blowback to islamic terror than they are with islamic terror? acknowledging that they're both legitimate and real problems i'm questioning whether that makes a whole lot of sense. i'm more concerned about islamic terror for probably selfish reasons - it frequently targets jews and jewish spaces (which is why my daughter's montessori is put under police observation whenever there's an elevated threat and why they recently installed an expensive and complex security system in the building). i'm also concerned about anti-muslim backlash but tbh that's a secondary concern to having my family personally targeted.

I'd point out that data appears is totally context free. A simple google search will indicate that concerns about spikes in hate crimes re: Muslims are pretty high and rates have jumped considerably in recent years (heck even in the last year).