Another fucking spree shooting. Great.

i'm not sure guns are really enough of an old vs young issue that we can be sure the problem is going to improve with time

Farook was "fixated" on Israel and supported ISIS' ideology of establishing an Islamic caliphate, his father told an Italian newspaper.

Before the shooting, the younger Farook had expressed some troubling beliefs, his father told La Stampa newspaper.

"He said he shared the ideology of (Abu Bakr) al-Baghdadi to create an Islamic state, and he was fixated on Israel," the elder Farook said, referring to the ISIS leader.

The father, also named Syed Farook, recalled the first time he saw his son with a gun.

"I became angry. In 45 years in the United States, I yelled, 'I have never had a weapon.' He shrugged his shoulders and replied, 'Your loss,' " the father said.

Damn.

headlines were calling these two "terror couple" all morning which of course made me think "kill colonel". they've changed it to 'terror duo' which isn't as fun.

whose headlines?

cnn I think

folie a terror deux

nomar what's that quote from

The CNN story.

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/07/us/san-bernardino-shooting/

Chesley told CNN Monday that the father was on medications and didn't recall making those comments to the Italian newspaper.

their very bad attorney doing a very bad job of trying to backpedal so none of them are held accountable for not raising warning flags sooner.

Farook was "fixated" on Israel and supported ISIS' ideology of establishing an Islamic caliphate, his father told an Italian newspaper.

Thoughts? http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/195673/moderate-islams-real-litmus-test-israel

I've heard the argument made before that antisemitism is the gateway drug to radicalism since it presents a complete conspiracy theory into which one can buy. idk how common anti-Israel sentiment is in Muslim communities v. antisemitism in general v. the weird place where the two intersect but I do wonder if tolerance (and stoking) of that kind of hate is indivisible from more general manifestations against other groups. aka it's not a fire that can be contained.

How, then, did Farook soothe his son when junior ranted about Israel?

“I told him he had to stay calm and be patient,” Farook, Sr. told his interviewer, “because in two years Israel will not exist any more. Geopolitics is changing: Russia, China and America don’t want Jews there any more. They are going to bring the Jews back to Ukraine. What is the point of fighting? We have already done it and we lost. Israel is not to be fought with weapons, but with politics. But he did not listen to me, he was obsessed.”

But he did not listen to me

Listen to the voice of reason, son.

my brother and I (as well as a few other Jewish friends of ours) used to attend a local poker game at a bar that was organized by a non-observant, non-practicing Muslim gentleman who was very sweet until he drunk one night and started talking all kinds of horrible shit about Jews and Israel (and yes, about both - it was during chanukah last year and he was going on about how Jewish holidays are bullshit). me and my brother have gone back once or twice since but none of our other friends have. i don't mean to extrapolate this to every Muslim bc everyone is an individual but my impression is that antisemitism /and/ anti-Zionism are pretty prevalent and i'd love to hear that there's something being done to fight it (as opposed to apologetics about why it's natural + understandable). idk i was loathe to bring this up bc it feels a bit like hobbyhorsing but idk i think it's important and when Obama talks about Muslim communities fighting extremism that's the first thing I think of.

idk why i mentioned that anecdote - i guess bc i was shocked that someone who didn't even really self-identify as a Muslim to the extent that he was willing to drink alcohol was still harboring hateful ideas about Jews and i guess i assumed then that probably a lot of Muslims feel that way and i hate generalizing like that but then i see polls + all kinds of numbers that show that yeah - lots of Muslims have a lot of v negative opinions.

anyway, maybe relevant: http://www.npr.org/2015/12/07/458797632/6-times-obama-called-on-muslim-communities-to-do-more-about-extremism

Can I ask what were his ethnic origins?

the relationship between muslims and israel seems intractably broken at this point; everything went to shit after Rabin's death, I don't envision it ever getting any better.

idk he was at least second generation american xp

so Obama often says that Muslims should rejected extremism, but he doesn't ever really say that includes rejecting hatred toward other religions or races

at the UN last year he did say: https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/09/24/remarks-president-obama-address-united-nations-general-assembly

"It is one of the tasks of all great religions to accommodate devout faith with a modern, multicultural world. No children are born hating, and no children—anywhere—should be educated to hate other people. There should be no more tolerance of so-called clerics who call upon people to harm innocents because they’re Jewish, or because they’re Christian, or because they’re Muslim. It is time for a new compact among the civilized peoples of this world to eradicate war at its most fundamental source, and that is the corruption of young minds by violent ideology."

He's always droning on huh

jeff goldberg on the topic (and sorry i won't spam this thread w/ more links on this subject/ just wanted to get this off my chest):

And while it is true that Muslim leaders and organizations, in the U.S. and elsewhere, do, in fact, condemn extremism, many do not condemn all forms of extremism and violence, and many remain far too tolerant of Saudi-funded and trained imams in their communities. I’ve argued for 15 years that, in addition to being morally reprehensible in its own right, organized Muslim extremist violence against Israelis, and against other geographically specific enemies of extremist Muslims, is a kind of gateway drug to the broader use of tactics such as suicide bombing. It was 15 years ago, in Cairo, that I had an argument with Amr Moussa, who was then Egypt’s foreign minister, about widespread Muslim support for mass terrorism, particularly suicide bombings, directed at innocent Israelis. I made the argument to Moussa that tactics used against Israelis would one day be used by Muslims against other Muslims. It seemed obvious to me, but not to him. Sometimes I’m wrong, but I wasn’t wrong then.

Where this always falls down is on what people are actually expected to do. There is no structured 'Muslim community' in any country i'm aware of. There might be a Somali community, an Iranian community or a Turkish community but no overarching organisation or leadership to unite them. Even that is a stretch given hot atomised contemporary urban society is. How do Muslims remove 'Saudi-funded clerics' from their local areas if the police and government can't? It's something that came up time and again in my local area with a mosque that was later linked to all sorts of dubious stuff - people stopped going, complained to the authorities, etc, but there's not much else that they can do beyond that. It took the police about ten years to catch up.

I think that's Obama's argument, right? That change in a diverse group of communities that may foster radicalism has to come from within because it can't be imposed from without?

It can't really be "imposed" from within though. For the most part, it looks like the people getting sucked into terrorism are already on the fringes of, or removed from, whichever communities they might have once been part of.

Jeffrey Goldberg is a moron. "would one day be used against other Muslims" -- they have been used against other Muslims for about as long as they have been used at all.

lol I knew that was going to be in the Atlantic before I clicked it too. What a shitty media outlet that has become.

many do not condemn all forms of extremism and violence

this is true of everybody tho

many remain far too tolerant of Saudi-funded and trained imams in their communities

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/05/hillary-clinton-foundation-state-arms-deals

I think there are problems w/ arming the KSA (cf Yemen) but I don't getting fighter jets from Boeing encouraged/enabled them to support Wahhabism abroad. Ultimately they're a military ally of the US /and/ they need to stop exporting radicalism.

Yeah, don't think that'll ever happen with this regime. Too dependent on the clerics, too corrupt to live up to the tenets otherwise. Really, depending on SA as THE regional muslim ally means accepting them exporting radicalism.

out of weird curiousity earlier today i downloaded a chrome extension called "do you sound like a nazi?" that replaces all instances of Muslim/Islam/etc on a news page with Jew/Judaism/etc--to make the kind of obvious and obfuscating point that a lot of anti-Muslim rhetoric would sound at home in Hitler's Germany. it's a little silly and i forgot i had it on.

anyway, here's how Mordy's anecdote appeared to me

my brother and I (as well as a few other Jewish friends of ours) used to attend a local poker game at a bar that was organized by a non-observant, non-practicing Jew gentleman who was very sweet until he drunk one night and started talking all kinds of horrible shit about Jews and Israel (and yes, about both - it was during chanukah last year and he was going on about how Jewish holidays are bullshit). me and my brother have gone back once or twice since but none of our other friends have. i don't mean to extrapolate this to every Jew bc everyone is an individual but my impression is that antisemitism /and/ anti-Zionism are pretty prevalent and i'd love to hear that there's something being done to fight it (as opposed to apologetics about why it's natural + understandable). idk i was loathe to bring this up bc it feels a bit like hobbyhorsing but idk i think it's important and when Obama talks about Jew communities fighting extremism that's the first thing I think of.

― Mordy, Tuesday, December 8, 2015 7:30 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i was extremely confused.

(((in case it's not clear in my post i'm just saying mordy's post becomes incomprehensible/funny))))

That's super weird, because I had "do I sound like a steendriver?" turned on when I read your post and totally forgot, lol.

my brother and I (as well as a few other HOOSish friends of ours) used to attend a local poker game at a bar that was organized by a non-observant, non-practicing HOOS gentleman who was very sweet until he drunk one night and started talking all kinds of horrible shit about HOOS and Israel (and yes, about both - it was during chanukah last year and he was going on about how HOOSish holidays are bullshit). me and my brother have gone back once or twice since but none of our other friends have. i don't mean to extrapolate this to every HOOS bc everyone is an individual but my impression is that antisteenitism /and/ anti-Zionism are pretty prevalent and i'd love to hear that there's something being done to fight it (as opposed to apologetics about why it's natural + understandable). idk i was loathe to bring this up bc it feels a bit like hobbyhorsing but idk i think it's important and when Obama talks about HOOS communities fighting extremism that's the first thing I think of.
― BIG MORDY, Tuesday, December 8, 2015 7:30 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a non-observant, non-practicing HOOS gentleman who was very sweet until he drunk one night and started talking all kinds of horrible shit about HOOS

me irl

ok sorry done derailing

nobody sounds like a steendriver, NOBODY

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/10/us/colorado-planned-parenthood-shooting.html?module=Notification&version=BreakingNews®ion=FixedTop&action=Click&contentCollection=BreakingNews&contentID=55660514&pgtype=Homepage&_r=0

Bearded, unkempt and cuffed at the legs and arms, Mr. Dear frequently disrupted the proceedings in state court here, shouting out declarations of anger and defiance.

“I’m guilty. There’s no trial. I’m a warrior for the babies,” he yelled at one point. “Let it all come out. The truth!” he yelled at another.

^Is Dear secretly ODB

hates women, loves babies: GOP 2016

http://basementrejects.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/dead-zone-ending-greg-stillson-holds-baby-as-shield-brooke-adams-charlie-sheen.jpg

now now lets not jump to conclusions and assume this was politically motivated

Police have a dude with gun surrounded at Arkansas State U. I don't call him a 'shooter' because I guess he forgot to do the shooting part

active gun holder

blessed american citizen u mean

Looking forward to lots of incidents like this with open carry coming to the UT Austin campus

if i saw someone (other than police) w/ a gun pretty much anywhere except a shooting range i would

- get the hell away
- call police

Are there still assholes who open carry assault rifles in supermarkets and stuff? What is standard operating procedure if you encounter one of them? Just leave? Complain and leave? Leave then complain?

Shoot 'em obv