Another fucking spree shooting. Great.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/police-indiana-man-arrested-near-los-angeles-gay-pride-event-had-rigged-magazines/

sorry if that was already posted. i missed it. yikes!

My opinion is that dude was just going to hit up Pride, party with some gay friends, then roll out to the desert for some crazy redneck shootin', only to get popped for weapons violations because back in Indiana, no one blinks if you're cruising around with heavy artillery in the backseat. It's the modern day equivalent of Axl Rose stepping off the bus with an actual piece of hay jutting out of his mouth.

Whoever did this deserves to die in a fire
http://m.kcra.com/news/deputies-investigate-paintball-attack-at-stockton-gay-club/40057476

xp: lol nevermind.

http://gawker.com/l-a-pride-weapons-suspect-charged-with-molesting-12-ye-1782061586

thanks for playing lol

Westboro's in town y'all

normally I'd just say "ehh ignore em" but no grieving family deserves to see that. someone began organizing a human wall for each funeral starting yesterday so the families won't have to see any picketing. rules are no engagement, peaceful signs, either silence or singing - haven't been able to make it out to any, but hoping to either tomorrow or Friday.

even if they no-show, it's still a nice show of solidarity to the families.

there's a *little* friction amongst some members of the group though tonight. nothing major, mostly valid concerns about respecting the wishes of the families, cos obviously it would be horrible if WBC were thwarted only for the family to be upset by the behavior of the counter-protesters.

that hasn't happened so far, mostly cos they've done exactly that. An admin of the counter protest group is generally checking with the families first, and then admins are scouting the site to determine if WBC does indeed show, and then puts out the call for the counter-protesters.

though there's been some veiled finger-pointing on the boards with no specifics provided suggesting insensitivity of some attendees - I don't know the validity or not as I wasn't there, but does bring up valid concerns of not wanting to lose or steal focus from the goal. I just hope that it stays at that level - there are dangers with putting together these types of counter-protests, when you throw a whole bunch of people with different ideas together without vetting them first.

thankfully, I hear tonight's counter protest went according to plan - WBC showed up but were so outnumbered they couldn't get close at all and eventually just tweeted, took pics, and gave up. they were so outnumbered the counter-protesters thought they hadn't showed up.

I'm kinda suprised theres anyone much left of the WBC now, what with papa dying and all the defections.

so there's some local asshole calling in death threats to the hospital that many of the victims are being treated simply because the hospital is treating gay people. his name is M!ch@el All3n Z!ngale and they have a BOLO up with a picture and a number to call (407-313-1916) if anybody knows anything or spots him. I know none of y'all live here but posted the # in case anybody has l33t internet skills and can find out stuff. piece of shit.

also threat of a massive shooting at the LGBT parade in Houston next week. Probably a hoax, police investigating and will have a heavy presence at the Pride parade. this is just fucked at having these parades marred with fear, I hope everybody still shows up in great numbers in defiance.

this is a really sad time to be alive IMO

the local threat-maker in question has a p checkered criminal past, tho mostly petty things....also middle name W@rren not Allen

Then after the gunfire began, Mateen paused. Sources told CBS News he searched for "Pulse Orlando" and "shooting," perhaps to see if the massacre was trending online.

this is a really sad time to be alive IMO

possibly true, but not very long ago you could kill dozens of gay men and couldn't expect a police response, and people wouldn't even talk about it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UpStairs_Lounge_arson_attack

it's always a sad time, living, if you look at humanity's eternal instinct for destruction

#MusicalNumber

the link you posted 3 days ago was the first i'd heard of that to my astonishment xp

me too.

it's definitely not the worst things have been by any rubric. I think what makes it sad to me is that we should be past this by now, given all of the progress we've made and the wealth of information available.

we are, though, witnessing a changing of the guard as the 'greatest generation' dies out - I know even when I went to high school, 'tolerance' wasn't what it was now in my neck of the worlds. I went to high school 30 minutes outside of Orlando and didn't know anybody who was gay my entire four years there - not because nobody was, but because macho-culture and homophobia were fairly ingrained and people at my school were afraid to come out until college. a lot of my fellow alumni came out in their 20s.

I look at the comfort with which many of my younger folks I know today come out in our local high schools and the support system is much greater - the inherent problems are still there, but it's a less harsh world than the one I grew up in. not a universal thing though - definitely depends on where you live.

*woods

http://jezebel.com/family-of-orlando-shooters-wife-says-she-is-innocent-in-1782276491

so what's the deal w/ the redacted phone call? hard to imagine what he could've said that would've been a threat to national security...

Seems dumb and pointless. People are just going to fill in the blanks with whatever supports their own take on the situation. The redactions prove that he really WAS a sleeper agent for ISIS!!!

I think it was game of thrones spoilers.

i can kind of see the logic of not wanting to provide the soundbites for the next season of isis videos but it appears unconfident, panicky and untrusting to me.

it makes me think that he said specific information about isis or related terror groups in the US and they don't want the information out there to tip them off - but that would also mean that he was more implicated in organized terrorism than has been reported

Multimedia walk-through of the Pulse events from witness POVs. This could be tacky if it weren't done so well:

http://www.tampabay.com/projects/2016/breaking-news/orlando-nightclub-shooting/choice-chance-3d-map/#

*link not working, but it's out there.

this excerpt from a cnn.com article says it all:

But support for specific gun control measures was very strong, with 92% saying they wanted expanded background checks, 87% supporting a ban for felons or people with mental health problems and 85% saying they would ban people on federal watchlists from buying guns. Among Republicans, that number is even higher -- 90% say they favor preventing people on the terror watch list or "no fly" list from buying a gun. That number is at 85% for Democrats.

Versions of those proposals are being taken up in the Senate Monday evening -- but are all expected to fail along mostly party-line votes.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/fbi-full-transcript-orlando-shooter-islamic-state

they censored al-baghdadi's name - it's absurd.

Omar Mateen, the Muslim gunman who committed the Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, was "100 percent" gay and bore a grudge against Latino men because he felt used by them, according to a man who says he was his lover for two months.

“I’ve cried like you have no idea. But the thing that makes me want to tell the truth is that he didn’t do it for terrorism. In my opinion he did it for revenge,” he told Univision Noticias anchor Maria Elena Salinas in an exclusive interview in English and Spanish on Tuesday.

He said Mateen was angry and upset after a man he had sex with later revealed he was infected with the HIV virus.

Asked why he decided to come forward with his story, he said: “It’s my responsibility as a citizen of the United States and a gay man.”

The man said he had approached the FBI and been interviewed three times in person by agents.

http://www.univision.com/univision-news/united-states/orlando-massacre-was-revenge-not-terrorism-says-man-who-claims-he-was-gunmans-lover

B-but radical Islam! ISIS!

yeah it's crazy anyone thought it had anything to do w radical islam or isis. it's not like the shooter said anything like that himself.

there's also the first wife saying Mateen was gay and she was asked by the FBI not to tell the media.

xpost It's not crazy, but from relatively early on it has increasingly seemed that he was trying to throw the scent off of his actual motivations. Although my point was more that police could uncover a handwritten note from Mateen stating 'I am going to commit these murders because I am a self-loathing closeted man' and certain parties would still crow about him being a sleeper agent.

yeah it's crazy anyone thought it had anything to do w radical islam or isis. it's not like the shooter said anything like that himself.

I kinda thought better of you than whatever you're trying to get across here

it seems pretty obvious to me that his fundamentalist beliefs and self hatred are linked so I find this "oh it's not really about religion" when dude made that explicit is pretty transparently disingenuous. I don't know what or why you'd think better of me than this pt.

It seemed like he was throwing the scent off his real motivations from fucking Monday. Let's look at how many actual ISIS affiliates / Daesh radicalize-ees have acted completely alone, and how many of them used only firearms instead of firearms + explosives. By MO alone he's a crazy spree shooter, the kind we get every month in this fundamentally crippled excuse for a democracy. But no, Occam's Razor is for cowards who refuse to say racist propaganda terms like "radical islam" so yeah, totally ISIS, I'm a believer!

Although my point was more that police could uncover a handwritten note from Mateen stating 'I am going to commit these murders because I am a self-loathing closeted man' and certain parties would still crow about him being a sleeper agent.

also this

dude, he literally declared allegiance to isis and al-baghdadi in his call to 911. this idea that it was a lie meant to throw off the scent is pretty insane. i don't believe he had intimate contact w/ isis or was being trained but it seems like the natural conclusion here is that he said those things bc they were a part of all the other weird stuff going on in his head along with his anger at the gay community bc of his own closeted self-loathing. the things are linked - isis throws gay ppl off roofs. it's pretty obvious to me.

some good confirmation bias going on itt

On this board

everywhere we look.

it seems like the natural conclusion here is that he said those things bc they were a part of all the other weird stuff going on in his head

100% otm!

Mordy OTM. you can't separate the two. he was obviously a self-hating gay man, but he fucking pledged allegiance to ISIS in the 911 call. Having a fun time imagining what it must've been like in Syria when they first heard about this, and when it came out that the dude was gay. Oops?

Maybe you can't separate the two but you can put all that together in a pot with uncontrollable rage and a premeditated mass murdering / ethnic cleansing impulse and call it a pathological condition that really has very fucking little to do with actual political or religious affiliations or sexual orientation.

How many spree shootings is that not true of regardless of stated reason

but like isis are pathological mass murdering / ethnic cleansers too - it's not like they have a platonic theological paradigm that the shooter didn't live upto - from what i can tell his actions, however ultimately they are motivated by %, fall right in line w/ their general malevolence

The part I'm arguing with is that line of reasoning is unhelpful in diagnosing the actual problem and emphasizes frankly superficial shit that plays right into the hands of assholes

His pro-ISIS declarations feel similar to the deathbed conversion of somebody making a last-ditch effort to get into heaven.

Don't you guys read the news? ISIS-nut or no, apparently a fellow attendee at his mosque was suspicious enough to report him to the FBI, so there was clearly more going on than just self-loathing.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/06/20/i-reported-omar-mateen-to-the-fbi-trump-is-wrong-that-muslims-dont-do-our-part/

Then, during the summer of 2014, something traumatic happened for our community. A boy from our local mosque, Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha, was 22 when he became the first American-born suicide bomber, driving a truck full of explosives into a government office in Syria. He’d traveled there and joined a group affiliated with al-Qaeda, the previous year. We had all known Moner; he was jovial and easygoing, the opposite of Omar. According to a posthumous video released that summer, he had clearly self-radicalized – and had also done so by listening to the lectures of Anwar al-Awlaki, the charismatic Yemen-based imam who helped radicalize several Muslims, including the Fort Hood shooter. Everyone in the area was shocked and upset. We hate violence and were horrified that one of our number could have killed so many. (After an earlier training mission to Syria, he’d tried to recruit a few Florida friends to the cause. They told the FBI about him.)

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 to 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, about 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 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 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.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/23/armed-man-opens-fire-at-german-cinema-kinopolis-viernheim