That appears to be our country's way of dealing with violence. It is part of the problem, not the solution.Originally Posted by Eric the Green
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That appears to be our country's way of dealing with violence. It is part of the problem, not the solution.
"The only Good America is a Just America." .... pbrower2a
"They *must* be “terrorists” only if you believe people with Muslim or foreign family backgrounds can *never* be just “disturbed individuals”
"The only Good America is a Just America." .... pbrower2a
This was an act of terror, independent of national origin or religion. A terrorist is a terrorist.
Because we want to create the illusion that mass shooters can be anyone, just like we want to maintain the illusion that terrorists are all foriegn born invaders.
Those are two different things. Any of us can go off the deep end and become mass shooters if weapons are easy to get, and these weapons makes it easier to happen. For most of us, it is still highly unlikely. But it is about a 50-50 chance that a terrorist would be foreign-born as home-grown. I don't know what the exact percentage is.
I admit it is hard to fathom how the Tsarnaevs can be called terrorists but Adam Lanza is not. Maybe a terrorist is working with at least one other person. Maybe a terrorist uses weapons which are illegal and harder to make, or at least not as common (like bombs), but shooters are using legal weapons which our society has had the wisdom to put within the easy reach of anyone. It is clear to me that both kinds are weapons of mass destruction and should not be allowed. And anyone can become either a terrorist or a shooter; nothing human is alien to me or you.
Last edited by Eric the Green; 04-19-2013 at 07:35 PM.
Maybe you think you can just "go off the deep end", but the truth of the matter is that it takes a particular sort, just like terrorism, and it takes a particular set of inputs. When life is good to you, you don't just run around and shoot people or blow them up. It's when life is rough on folks that they wig out. An increase in either is evidence that social pressures have become too intense.
Yes, and that's exactly why anyone can become a terrorist or a shooter, because life can go rough on any of us at any time. Most people still won't go off the deep end, and you can't predict who will at all.
I don't need to predict who will and who won't to midigate the crap factors of life, thereby rendering it a nonissue. We don't need to figure out who might be a violent person and single them out for particular treatment, we need a sustainable system that doesn't ruin so many people. It's not like these folks actions are born of a vaacum.
That's true, and there are many elements needed for such a sustainable system.
For those interested, a live stream of a local police scanner can be found here. Police have him (or someone anyway) cornered in a partially covered boat in a residential back yard.
*Edit*
Now in custody.
Last edited by Copperfield; 04-19-2013 at 08:43 PM.
And here is the boat.
Everyone should own a police scanner. I'm actually surprised more people don't.
Not really. It's more there are a few big elements we've spent the better part of 80 years eroding because they were, indeed, problematic, but we replaced them with nothing.
Osama had life pretty good but that didn't stop him from eventually becoming a terrorist.
Osama wasn't a terrorist, he was a financier with delusions of grandeur. The people he finances are the terrorists.
From the article:
Yes, we are and will continue to experience the blow back of the drone attacks. But this General makes it sound as if these drone attacks only kill the so called enemy. He doesn't say that, for the most part, 50 innocent people are murdered for every one suspected terrorist.“We’re seeing that blowback,” retired Marine Gen. James Cartwright, Obama’s former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently told the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations. “If you’re trying to kill your way to a solution, no matter how precise you are, you’re going to upset people even if they’re not targeted.”
We are creating more and more terrorists by being terrorists.
"The only Good America is a Just America." .... pbrower2a
Mother Of Boston Bombing Suspects Says FBI Was In Contact With Her Son
Zubeidat K. Tsarnaeva, the mother of Boston bombing suspects Dzhokar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, suggested Friday that the FBI had been surveilling her older son for several years prior to Monday's attack.
In an interview with Russia Today Friday, Tsarnaeva said that Tamerlan Tsarnaev got involved in "religious politics" five years ago, and that the FBI had previously contacted her about her son's activities.
"He was controlled by the FBI, like for three, five years," she said. "They knew what my son was doing, they knew what actions and what sites on the Internet he was going [to], they used to come...and talk to me...they were telling me that he was really a serious leader and they were afraid of him."
"How could this happen?...They were controlling every step of him, and they are telling today that this is a terrorist attack," she added.
A spokesperson for the FBI told Business Insider Friday that the agency would be putting out a statement "shortly" regarding its previous contact with either of the Tsarnaev suspects. The spokesperson would not confirm or deny that the agency had had any previous contact.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/tsarn...#ixzz2R1IqRqiE
"The only Good America is a Just America." .... pbrower2a
"The facts are that he is a U.S. citizen accused of domestic terror, hunted down by the FBI and state and local police, facing both state and federal charges. He is not a foreign national, nor a soldier for another country, and he committed those crimes within our borders. He is entitled, regardless of how heinous those crimes were, to Constitutional protections and a fair trial."......... Philip Bond
Not surprised by this:
Graham, McCain: No criminal trial for captured suspect
Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill...#ixzz2R1MY8Y00
"The only Good America is a Just America." .... pbrower2a
McCain and Graham are scum. The whole "enemy combatant" thing was just the first step onto the slipperyslope of tearing up the whole bill of rights.
That idea is apparently fading quickly into the sunset. Indeed, welcome to Amerika!
"The only Good America is a Just America." .... pbrower2a
What, the deployment of 10,000 police to catch a single, injured 19 year old kid wasn't enough? (not to mention a few thousand instances of B&E into citizen property to go along with several thousand rounds of ammunition expended in residential areas)
Are you kidding? Even this isn't enough. They could have just dragged the kid out in the street and done him right on the spot, Nguyễn Văn Lém style. And one or two people would use the opportunity to make 'slippery slope' and other comments about how now things might start looking like they're going to go bad. And then not give it another thought at all. And most everyone else would just get that warm feeling that comes from one's team having scored a goal against the other team. It's what the rulers said was happening from the get-go, after all.
Rah rah American Heroes.
"Qu'est-ce que c'est que cela, la loi ? On peut donc être dehors. Je ne comprends pas. Quant à moi, suis-je dans la loi ? suis-je hors la loi ? Je n'en sais rien. Mourir de faim, est-ce être dans la loi ?" -- Tellmarch
"Человек не может снять с себя ответственности за свои поступки." - L. Tolstoy
"[it] is no doubt obvious, the cult of the experts is both self-serving, for those who propound it, and fraudulent." - Noam Chomsky
Siss boom bah. *shrugs*
Jordan, we've been on this slippery slope for a long while. No need to declare we're just starting it now... just welcome to the club of seeing what's already been well known.
~Chas'88
"There have always been people who say: "The war will be over someday." I say there's no guarantee the war will ever be over. Naturally a brief intermission is conceivable. Maybe the war needs a breather, a war can even break its neck, so to speak. But the kings and emperors, not to mention the pope, will always come to its help in adversity. ON the whole, I'd say this war has very little to worry about, it'll live to a ripe old age."
I know, man. We've been declaring people enemy combatants for at least 11 years now, and been fighting the War on Drugs/"colored people" for decades. We've been trying to rule the world since WWII and we've had an overseas empire since the Spanish-American war. Doesn't mean I have to be happy about it, or call a spade anything but a spade.
If you like I will concede that we've been on this slope a while, and the whole swathe of reforms post-9/11 are just an exciting new chapter in our slide into tyranny.
I'm surprised they didn't use a drone to get him.
Last edited by JordanGoodspeed; 04-20-2013 at 08:06 PM.
