I do not think that every single person should own a firearm. And I know some people who own guns who in my opinion probably shouldn't. But I have never understood those who claim that only police or the military should own guns.
I have zero respect for that position, not only because there are plenty of examples of government officials harming unarmed people, but also because there are even more instances of criminals seeking to harm unarmed people and/or those whom they perceive as weaker than themselves.
Whether we like it or not, the world is full of human predators. Although most of us will likely never encounter such folks there's absolutely nothing wrong with being prepared if we do. Three white people allegedly threatened to kill a black family — including two children — during a violent home invasion in Michigan, prosecutors said.
The suspects — identified as Branden Odegaard, Michael Graves and Maci Pietryga – were arrested after cops responded to a 911 call on April 26 in Walled Lake, where witnesses said the trio “threatened to kill the occupants” and used a racial slur, the Detroit News reported.
As I mentioned previously about the Cliven Bundy situation the thing that most disturbed me was that the United States Government backed down to a few losers with rifles. This was a horribly bad idea because it legitimized the so-called protesters' idea that their threat of violence worked. If you point guns at law enforcement and law enforcement backs down well it's not such a huge leap to the next decision point of pointing guns at law enforcement and actually pulling the trigger. In Las Vegas recently, Jerad and Amanda Miller apparently took that next step, killing two police officers and another man before killing themselves. Somewhat unsurprisingly all sorts of information is coming to light about the married couple's embrace of extremely conservative and white supremacist literature and worldviews. I have a firm belief that ultimately each individual is responsible for his or her own actions. If someone who merely looks like me does something stupid it's not really fair or reasonable for other people who don't look like me to blame me. We make our own individual decisions in this world. But I do find it it well somewhat interesting let's say that anywhere in the world when say a Muslim does something savage that is taken as proof of the inherent savagery of Islam and the inability of its adherents to live peacefully in a modern world. There is no presumption of individual responsibility granted.
"Jerad Miller pulled a handgun out and shot officer Soldo one time in the back of the head," McMahill said. "Officer Beck immediately began to react ... [but] was shot once in the throat area. Amanda Miller [then] removed a handgun from her purse and both Jerad and Amanda fired multiple shots into officer Beck." After shooting the officers, police say the suspects pulled the men out of the booth and laid them on the floor. They then placed a flag – a yellow banner with a coiled snake above the words, "Don't tread on Me" – on top of Beck, along with a swastika. On Soldo, the two placed a note, police said, that read, "This is the start of the revolution." After the shooting, police say the couple took the officers' handguns and ammunition and fled across the street to a nearby Walmart. There, police say, Jerad Miller fired off one round and told everyone to get out of the store.
At some point he allegedly yelled, "This is a revolution." According to police, Walmart shopper Robert Wilcox, 31, was carrying a concealed weapon and confronted Jerad Miller. Wilcox was apparently unaware of Amanda Miller and when he walked by her to confront her husband, she shot him in the rib area. A shootout with pursuing officers ensued, during which Amanda Miller "took her handgun and fired several rounds into Jerad," McMahill said. "At that point Amanda took her handgun and ended her life with one gunshot to the head."
LINK The video below has a brief clip of Jerad Miller at the Cliven Bundy ranch giving an implied threat of violence against law enforcement. Now we all have free speech of course but just imagine that instead of being a man of European Caucasian ancestry that Miller had been of Middle Eastern, South Asian or African heritage. The response, both from media and most likely law enforcement, would likely have been very different.
Believe it or not, since 9-11 more people have been killed by white right wing terrorists than Al-Quaeda inspired terrorists. Obviously both kinds of incidents are exceedingly rare but one inspires us to invade countries, turn our airports into semi-prison environments, effectively redact swaths of the Bill of Rights while the other inspires us to do.. nothing. If you recall back in 2009 I believe Homeland Security released a report warning about domestic right wing extremists but the report received pushback from right wing extremists and nothing was done. Perhaps nothing can be done. We do after all have the right to own guns, the right to have racist or other bad points of view, the right to hate, the right to associate with whom we choose and so on. But if the NYPD and FBI can run surveillance and sting operations on Muslims and do so constitutionally, perhaps they need to worry a little less about Jabbar and a little more about Jethro. The Millers viewed the Bundy situation as the start of the revolution. There is some dispute about how long they were at the ranch or what their role was there but clearly they were energized by that stand off. Read their tweets, facebook posts and statements.
We all must answer for our own crimes in this world or if you prefer, in the next. Muslims ritually and predictably denounce evil actions of other Muslims. But that denouncement doesn't really matter to some conservative pundits or bloggers. They believe that there is a war of civilizations and that Islam, whether it's practiced by extremists or moderates, is inherently bad. Well when a white conservative acts out does that mean that conservatism or whiteness is irredeemably bad and the only reason we don't say so is because of political correctness? I don't think so. But the double standard is incredibly frustrating. You can, if you so desire, find problematic and downright ugly elements in any group or worldview. But to paraphrase Jesus' reported advice from the Sermon on the Mount perhaps it's time that some conservative elements stopped worrying about the mote in the Muslim eye and became more concerned with the beam in their own. Evil is everywhere. It's not only in the people who don't look "American" or have turbans or beards. We forget that to our peril.
The predictable reactions about the recent murders in Isla Vista were that people immediately used the tragedy to argue for previously accepted conclusions. So if you already felt that whiteness, white masculinity or even masculinity itself are all highly problematic or needed to be interrogated and altered you felt that your premise was vindicated by these murders, never mind that Rodger was half white. He clearly identified with white privilege and saw himself as better than other non-whites. If you thought that interracial marriages and immigration are bad ideas then you looked at the British born half-Asian Rodger and argued those characteristics were somehow salient to his actions. If you were convinced that the path to better living is found via psychiatry and aggressive state law enforcement intervention then you were outraged that therapists or police didn't do something earlier, as surely you would have done were you in their position. If you think that pick up artists or game theorists are synonymous with misogyny, hatred and terrorism then you probably wanted to know why the NSA, FBI or other agency weren't keeping tabs on Rodger's online presence and targeting him with drone strikes. If his last name hinted at Muslim heritage maybe agencies would have been watching him. If you think that youthful "bullying" will often bear dark poisonous fruits in later years then you were outraged that teachers or other authority figures didn't pick up on and correct Rodger's persecution feelings earlier. There were even some people who thought that the delicate featured Rodger was dealing with gay panic. And of course if you think that the NRA is the source of all evil then you were upset that Rodger was able to legally purchase guns in the first place. And so on.
You can find all of these perceptions and more across the net if you deign to search. Some might even have some validity. But I think that most of them are the worst examples of Monday morning quarterbacking. For those who have lost loved ones or have had their lives altered by being wounded by this madman, I would not contradict anything they might say in their grief. But the rest of us must step back, analyze what happened and see if we can prevent such things. I don't think we can. I think it's only too human for everyone to look at this incident and immediately argue that they are justified in whatever preexisting conclusion they already had. It is understandable of course but it would make for bad public policy. First off let's look at the guns. Rodger bought the guns legally roughly a year before he went on his killing spree. He passed all the background checks. The guns were not "assault rifles". They had limited capacity magazines. In short, there was nothing under current law, which in California is tilted towards more restrictive purchasing standards, which would have prevented Rodger from buying a gun. Nothing. Absent outlawing guns in private hands, I'm not sure what more gun control advocates would like to see done. Keep in mind that Rodger stabbed three men to death and ran over at least one more with his BMW. For those who fixate on the guns I would just like to know what law, what standard would they seek to impose that would be able to distinguish between a monster like Rodger and the thousands of other people who purchase guns each year?
Next look at the opportunities for intervention. If someone is thought to be an imminent danger to himself or others, there is an ability to place that person under a 72 hour hold. But the key word there is imminent. No one except the therapists and police involved know how Rodger presented himself but evidently they did not see the threat. It is easy after the fact, as some CNN windbags did, to pompously talk about missed signs. But the reality no one knows what any human is capable of, given the right stimuli. Our justice system is designed to convict people for what they have done after a trial by jury. It is not, with very few exceptions, designed to imprison or convict people for what they might do, on the say so of family members, police or mental health experts. If you want to open the floodgates and start locking people up for things they haven't done, well you will need to radically change our concept of law. Most people with mental health problems are not violent. I don't want people to be arrested for what they might do or even for their hateful ideologies. Rodger could accurately be described as a loser, a racist, a misogynist, a misanthrope. He attempted to find other people who shared his views. Despite his outwardly directed hatred the person he most despised appears to have been himself. His sense of race and class based entitlement was apparently very strong. There was a yawning gulf between who Rodger was and who he thought he should be. Unable to stand it any more he wanted to make everyone else pay. I can't think of any consistent method to identify and intervene with people like this. Maybe if Rodger had improved his social skills with (white) women he would have reduced his frustrations and found happiness. Or perhaps not. Maybe eventually he would have snapped and killed any girlfriend or other sexual partner he had. We don't know and will never know. Anyone who tells you they have the answer to stop horrific events like this is mistaken. I understand and sympathize with the urge to find the reason why this happened and get the government to fix it. But sometimes there simply aren't answers. Rodger Manifesto
My father drove up to Santa Barbara to meet me a few days later. When we sat down at our table, I saw a young couple sitting a few tables down the row. The sight of them enraged me to no end, especially because it was a dark-skinned Mexican guy dating a hot blonde white girl. I regarded it as a great insult to my dignity. How could an inferior Mexican guy be able to date a white blonde girl, while I was still suffering as a lonely virgin? I was ashamed to be in such an inferior position in front my father. When I saw the two of them kissing, I could barely contain my rage. I stood up in anger, and I was about to walk up to them and pour my glass of soda all over their heads.
My two housemates were nice, but they kept inviting over this friend of theirs named Chance. He was black boy who came over all the time, and I hated his cocksure attitude. Inevitably, a vile incident occurred between me and him. I was eating a meal in the kitchen when he came over and started bragging to my housemates about his success with girls. I couldn’t stand it, so I proceeded to ask them all if they were virgins. They all looked at me weirdly and said that they had lost their virginity long ago. I felt so inferior, as it reminded me of how much I have missed out in life. And then this black boy named Chance said that he lost his virginity when he was only thirteen! In addition, he said that the girl he lost his virginity to was a blonde white girl! I was so enraged that I almost splashed him with my orange juice. I indignantly told him that I did not believe him, and then I went to my room to cry. I cried and cried and cried, and then I called my mother and cried to her on the phone. How could an inferior, ugly black boy be able to get a white girl and not me? I am beautiful, and I am half white myself. I am descended from British aristocracy. He is descended from slaves.
I was going to write about a foreign policy situation that was on my mind but that can wait as some news a bit closer to home is getting national attention. A suburban man named Steven Utash (pictured above with family) driving a pickup truck accidentally hit a young Detroit boy who ran out into the street. The man got out to help/see what happened and was attacked by a group of teens and men who beat him into a coma.
One of two teens is charged with assault with intent to murder after their arrest on suspicion in the brutal beating of a driver who hit a Detroit boy last week, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy announced Monday. Bruce Edward Wimbush Jr., 17, faces charges of assault with intent to murder and assault with intent to do great bodily harm. Wimbush is to be arraigned at 2:30 p.m. today in 36th District Court before Magistrate Millicent Sherman. The 16-year-old hasn’t been charged yet and remains in Wayne County Juvenile Detention Center, with a court hearing scheduled for 1:30 p.m. at the Juvenile Detention Center. The two are believed to have been among a crowd that attacked Steven Utash, 54, of Clinton Township on April 2 after his truck struck a 10-year-old boy who ran into the street. When Utash got out to check on the boy, he was severely beaten by people “with their fists and feet,” according to a news release from Worthy.
LINK I was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. There are many reasons I live outside the city but a major one certainly has to be crime. The city has a high number of crimes of violence and theft. The city has a new police chief who has overseen many high profile arrests and raids as well as an increasing number of Detroit citizens who, faced with home invasions, have fought back with deadly force. But an incident like the one shown in the video below the jump can lead to increased fear and loathing between city and non-city residents. It also may lead to a man dying. Accusations of racial animus and bias are over local radio stations and newspaper comment sections. I don't really know about that. I suspect that the mob may well have attacked the driver regardless of his race. But that's small comfort to the driver who is currently clinging to his life or to the young boy with a broken leg. If some or all of the mob can be shown to have acted out of racial animus then they should be charged under the relevant hate crimes laws. I have no problem with that. I do find it sadly ironic that locally some mostly white people are immediately certain that race was an issue in this case but did not see race in the George Zimmerman case.
We can't take the law into our own hands without giving everyone else the same ability and thus devolving into a Max Max society. Some cynics would likely claim that some areas of Detroit are already like that. This incident brought up questions of when if ever it is appropriate to hit someone and not stop. My understanding is that you're supposed to stop or go to the nearest police station. It also raised the question of who is at fault when a pedestrian is hit. When I learned to drive it was drilled into me that the pedestrian almost always has the right of way, even if they do something stupid. I do a lot of driving in Ann Arbor, where pedestrians and bicyclists routinely ignore the most basic traffic laws. However here the initial police investigation has determined that the driver was not at fault. So there was no reason for anyone to have attacked Utash. Now if this man dies, would his family or friends then be justified in finding the people who did it and removing them from the planet. Because that is what would be on my mind. But where does it stop. There has to be one law for everyone. And that means that no matter how much you might want to deal out some street justice, you can't do that. Many of us have been in or will be in an auto accident at some point in our life. Should we really expect that even in tragic situations like this one, that we should prepare for a mob attack? There is another local case where evidently white or Arabic men beat a white Army vet because he said or did something nice for a black person. UPDATE: Prosecutor declines to file charges against men who beat Army vet. She says vet started the confrontation. LINK Fox 2 News Headlines
I've been really busy with other things over the past month so I am just now getting around to writing about this. But I as it turns out with it's still somewhat timely because of our recent discussions over illegal immigration, the President's decision to administratively implement portions of the Dream Act and this week's expected Supreme Court decision on Arizona's SB1070 law.
Let's say that a group of Caucasians ran violently amok against Third World illegal and legal immigrants, whom they blamed for increased crime, disease, unsustainable fertility and basic cultural and racial incompatibility. Imagine that their political and religious leaders endorsed the rioters' concerns in explicitly white supremacist language and promised new steps to detain and deport illegal immigrants while preventing legal immigrant entry on the basis of stopping a clear and present demographic danger. Allow that the leaders spoke of shooting illegal immigrants dead and driving out legal immigrants who were the wrong color or who had had the chutzpah to either compete for jobs with citizens, open businesses or date/marry citizens. Finally let's say that political leaders started building new detention centers just so any particularly dense illegal immigrants got the hint.
You'd probably think that Arizona had finally lost it. You might say that the National Guard needed to be sent into Arizona to protect visibly Hispanic people from violence. And if you shared the immigrants' ethnicity or were otherwise just a decent person upset about violence and racist language, you might be demanding that President Obama make it clear through word and deed that these sort of actions would not be tolerated.
Israeli citizens express desire for Africans to leave
What I described above above all happened but it was not in Arizona and did not involve Hispanics. It occurred in Israel and involved Africans. So this didn't get a lot of mainstream U.S. media attention. Surprising I know. I was intrigued by it though because it touched on some basic truths about humanity and history that I think we overlook at our peril.
The United States is unusual in being (theoretically anyway) a country in which race and ethnicity are delinked from citizenship. As long as you are born here you are a citizen. Period. Most Americans may still be Caucasian but anyone on the planet can become an American. There is no way that you can look at someone and automatically say he's not an American. This country was multiracial and even multicultural from the start. The American political journey has been to formally recognize these facts and deal with the hypocrisies, challenges or opportunities that flow from them.
But many other countries simply were not created like that and certainly aren't crazy about diversity now. Although times are changing there remains a pretty good chance that you can visually discern Ugandans from Finns or Japanese from Scots. Some countries make a link between ancestry, culture, ethnicity and citizenship. Israel is one such country. If you are non-Jewish, there is a slightly less level of citizenship enjoyed, that is if you are allowed to become a citizen in the first place, which you probably won't be. Israel intends to remain a Jewish state.
So the current situation in Israel vis a vis the immigrants and refugees from sub-Saharan Africa is pretty interesting because there is hypocrisy enough to go around for everyone. Obviously I don't and can't agree with the ugly white supremacist thinking revealed and reveled in by some Israelis. One woman legislator compared the Africans to cancer patients and then apologized ...to cancer patients. Seriously. Someone tried to burn down an apartment building inhabited by Eritreans. Netanyahu has said the Africans are a demographic threat. A rabbi who is the spiritual leader of Shas said that Africans are ruining the Jewish dream and need to go build their dream in their own countries.
"A society personifying a social time bomb of robbery, violence, sodomy as well as assimilation alongside the destruction of the institute of marriage and the proper family unit – such a society must be separate and distant, and the sooner the better. Listen up, dear and kind Sudanese people. In the United States, Martin Luther King's dream came true. Giuliani will tell you how he made it happen. Go forth and implement this in Sudan and Eritrea. We promise to help you, we'll even be delighted to help, as always."
Yishai, of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, told the newspaper Maariv on Friday he saw the African arrivals, many of whom are Muslims or Christians, as a demographic threat."The infiltrators along with the Palestinians will quickly bring us to the end of the Zionist dream," Yishai said, adding that Israel had its own health and welfare issues. "Most of those people arriving here are Muslims who think the country doesn't belong to us, the white man," Yishai said in the interview with Maariv.
Abraham Alu, a 35-year-old refugee from what is now South Sudan, was on his way to the store last Wednesday night when an anti-African protest in south Tel Aviv turned violent. Jewish Israelis chased and beat African asylum seekers, broke the windows of a car full of African men, and smashed storefronts of African-owned stores in south Tel Aviv. Alu, who was headed out to buy food, almost ran into a mob. But police pointed to the group headed in his direction and said, “Run, they’ll murder you! Run!” Alu turned around and headed back to the tiny, one-room apartment he shares with 11 other South Sudanese men.
TJ, a 29-year-old migrant from Nigeria, watched the violent chaos from his rooftop having been chased and pelted with rocks when he attempted to leave his house."There were protesters everywhere smashing shop and car windows," he said. "A group of about 10 or 15 boys stopped one black kid cycling on his bike. They pulled him off and were punching and kicking him in his head. The police just stood and watched until it got really out of control." Other witnesses described a gang assaulting a mother carrying a young baby so violently that she was forced to drop her child. Others stopped shuttle buses to search for migrant workers among their passengers.'TJ' says he is among the few who has left his home following the violence: "Black people have been too afraid to leave their homes to go to work today. Racism in Tel Aviv is not only getting worse it's getting out of hand and the police are no help. We are terrified."
These immigrants and refugees generally aren't welcomed in Arab North Africa either or the Middle East, often for the same reasons. The overthrow of Qaddafi released some of the same anti-black hatred. Israel hardly stands alone. Egypt doesn't want these people any more than Israel does. Some Israelis feel that because Israel was set up as a place of Jewish refuge then it must be one for other refugees, even if they look different or have different cultures. Some Israelis are saddened and disgusted by the vituperative racism shown by some of their countrymen and countrywomen. Others say, racism or no, that there is a point beyond which a group or nation cannot accept outsiders without losing that which made the nation worth having in the first place. There are roughly about 5.8 million Jews in Israel. They have no intention of allowing immigrants to reach the numbers or percentages that are seen in America or France or the UK. Israel was not the former colonial power of Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia or Eritrea and in this point of view really bears no responsibility for economic or political refugees from those countries. A new law allows a three year detention of illegal immigrants to Israel.
The really incredibly disgusting hypocritical thing though is if any political leader in Europe dared to say anything remotely negative about the presence of Jewish people within their historic homelands, some of the same thugs yelling "Throw the blacks out" in Tel Aviv would be the first people howling about anti-semitism in Europe. And God forbid if an European nation experienced a new anti-Jewish Kristallnacht type riot. I have no doubt that the US ambassador to the UN would be standing up to loudly condemn that country while Netanyahu adroitly reminded everyone that this is how the Holocaust got started. But that's life I guess. Hypocrisy is deeply woven within humans. Perhaps we all have a tendency to look out for our own first and say to hell with the other guy.
Both liberal and conservative strands are part of what make us human. To horribly generalize for a moment, often the liberal wants to accept and help others and often has an issue admitting that peoples or cultures are different or that there really is such a thing as "in-group" or "out-group". Liberals are at their best making appeals to universal and transcendent human values and not necessarily parochial national or ethnic ones. Some liberals can be rather suspicious of or hostile to solidarity appeals based solely on group membership, especially if the group is one you were born into or is not a "disadvantaged group". At the extremes of course well this can fall into an inability to recognize that your own culture or way of life is valid and worth defending.
African immigrants seeking food
But the conservative person has no problem accepting in-groups and out-groups. Often such identities track closely with how he sees the world. "Ours" and "Mine" are not automatically bad words to a conservative. The idea that this particular bunch of goodies or patch of land belongs to the people who live there and not to those "others" is self-evident to many people with this pov. Again, taken to the extremes this falls into hierarchical thinking, an inability to recognize yourself in others, xenophobia and open gleeful racism. There is a serious conflict between democracy and racial/ethnic/religious tribalism.
This is not just a black-white phenomenon or even a First World-Third World issue. There have been anti-Chinese riots in Zambia, anti-African riots in China (The Tiananmen Square uprising mutated from anti-African clashes), Muscovite Russians rioting against Caucasian Russians, Indian Hindus seeking to slaughter Indian Muslims, Black South Africans attacking illegal immigrant Black Zimbabweans and so on. US/THEM thinking is something that may be ugly and seemingly atavistic in humankind but it's certainly not going away anytime soon. The trick is to recognize it and channel it properly without giving into it completely, as seems to be happening in Israel. There is a middle ground which welcomes the legal newcomer but doesn't ask to remove the concept of a nation. Despite all the epithets hurled at Americans who are opposed to illegal immigration, I don't see the current American political structure welcoming or endorsing the open violence we see in Israel. I think part of this is chickens coming home to roost as some forms of political Zionism lend themselves or almost require the sort of ugly chauvinism and racism that we see expressed. Zionism is not, after all, completely congruent with the American political system.
What's your take? 1) Had you heard about this? Are you surprised? 2) Do countries have a right to expel illegal immigrants and/or people who have different cultures? Do countries have a right to seek to maintain a certain demographic balance? 3) Does Israel have any special duty to accept refugees? 4) Should President Obama censure Israel for its actions? 5) Is the nation state passe? Should everyone have open borders?
