07/20/15

Forum: What Was Your Reaction To The Chattanooga Attack?

Every week on Monday morning, the Council and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher’s Forum with short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week’s question: What Was Your Reaction To The Chattanooga Attack?

Don Surber: C-in-C should order every officer (commissioned and non-com) to carry a sidearm when on duty stateside. Exemptions for chaplains and working physicians. Maybe a few other MOS. National Guard and reservists would be up to the discretion of commanders as a matter of protocol, while preserving the authority to order so. Any civilian who feels uncomfortable can kindly resign/retire from DoD.

Puma By Design: Courtesy of the dysfunction in the present administration, America’s enemies are at war with us on U.S. soil empowered by our so-called leaders who are in denial, stupid and in the pockets of our enemies while at the same time, refusing to call this evil by its name.

America’s enemies are targeting our service members and their families because it is a known fact that they are not armed.

ARM THEM. They have the right to defend themselves…and us ON American soil.

GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD: Gun free zones get people killed.

In Chattanooga, the dark one liner is “From DUI and weed to J!had in 90 days.” Busted in April, it appears he made a fast conversion to violence.

We often prided ourselves here about our easy going laissez-faire attitude. Not anymore. Was this cat self radicalized? Inspired by the mosque? Both? Doesn’t really matter now as armed vigilance is replacing the Coexist stickers and memes.

We really need all the prayers and good vibes y’all may send.

JoshuaPundit: Unfortunately, the minute I heard about this atrocity, I knew exactly what was coming. The theme by the media, assorted political figures and the Obama Regime, as always, was to repeat the mantra of ‘senseless violence.’ Hillary Clinton said it, as did the president, Defense Secretary Ash Carter, Florida senators Bill Nelson (Democrat) and Marco Rubio (Republican).

And of course, no one can imagine why this happened. Nothing to do with Islam, surely! The Pentagon will investigate this for months to let everybody forget about it, and our president will determine what they’ll say. They can’t call it workplace violence like Fort Hood this time, but maybe they can work the mental health angle. Never mind that every attack involving Muslims resulting in mass casualties or attacks on military facilities like this has been jihadist in nature.

These attacks are not senseless violence. They are directed attacks, whether carried out by so-called lone wolves or otherwise. The orders are in the Qu’ran, and there’s enough evidence on Mohammed AbdulAzeez’s computer thus far to show the usual pattern – jihadist social media, and as I’m sure we’ll eventually find out, a jihad preaching mosques with a radical, Islamist imam somewhere in the picture.

Since 9/11. we, or at least the people we’ve chosen to lead us have made the point time and time again that we’re ‘not at war with Islam.’ Maybe, but anyone observing the world as it is would have to be in a coma not realize that a significant part of Islam’s adherents consider themselves at war with us. That, or willfully deceptive.

A normal country faced by these kind of facts would secure its borders, limit visas to countries where jihadists and Islamists tend to thrive, and vet very carefully those visas that were approved. It would place Islamist front groups as well as mosques and madrassahs under close scrutiny and eliminate those preaching jihad, radicalizing young Muslims and/or thought to be a security risk. Most important, government facilities like military recruiting offices or bases that are obvious targets would be hardened and guarded with armed security.

We are doing none of these things. In fact, since Barack Hussein Obama became president, we’re doing exactly the opposite. There have been numerous attacks, planned and executed against U.S. military facilities on his watch, and yet, the mantra coming out of the White House is always the same..’senseless violence.’

Here’s a thought as uncomfortable for me to write as it may be for you to read. The four Marines and the Navy Petty officer whom were murdered in Chattanooga may be mourned by us, but in a very real sense, we have their blood on our hands for not calling our elected officials to account…especially this president.

The one covenant a leader has with those he or she rules is to protect a country’s sovereignty, its people and its borders. America does not have that.

If we had any national self respect we would be thronging by thousands in the Capital, and flooding the congressional switch boards demanding this president’s impeachment. We would be insisting on immediate action to remedy this situation rather than sitting back placidly waiting for the next attack.

We would be screaming bloody murder.

The Right Planet: My initial reaction was one of outrage, followed by profound sadness for the families and friends of those murdered in cold blood in Chattanooga. You know, it’s not like ISIS and its ilk haven’t expressed their desire and intent to kill members of our military right here at home. Furthermore, there have been some 34 service personnel killed at military facilities within the United States on Obama’s watch—specifically, one soldier killed at a Little Rock recruiting station in 2009, 13 murdered at Fort Hood in the same year, three more killed at Fort Hood in 2014, 12 killed at the Washington Navy Yard two years ago, and now four Marines and one Navy petty officer are dead in Chattanooga. Several state governors, including my own, have ordered their National Guardsmen to start carrying weapons. But, to my knowledge, no such orders have been given at the federal level to allow U.S. troops the ability to defend themselves.

Via the LA Times:

Despite being active-duty servicemen with military weapons training, few of the victims in these attacks had an opportunity to defend themselves, thanks to Department of Defense Directive 5210.56, enacted in 1992 under President George H.W. Bush.

That policy strictly limits the military and civilian personnel who can carry firearms at military facilities to those in law enforcement or security roles. U.S. bases and recruiting centers have been “gun-free zones” ever since.

There have been recent reports of civilians with legal-carry permits standing guard at a few recruitment centers. How messed up are things in this country when civilians must provide security for own troops? Enough, already … ARM OUR TROOPS!

Laura Rambeau Lee, Right Reason: What is my reaction to this terrorist attack? I am at once saddened at the tragic loss of life of four Marines and one sailor, yet angered that this has happened again on America soil.

The shooter’s name was Muhammad Youssuf Abdulazeez, a 24 year old Kuwaiti born naturalized American citizen whom friends described as a “devout Muslim.” It is reported he traveled to Jordan in 2014 and to Kuwait and Jordan in 2010. Friends said he changed after his last trip to the Middle East.

In a media/theater of the absurd, we are being told not to jump to any conclusions about his motivation for these attacks. Isn’t it time we got past wanting to know the shooter’s motivation in these all too familiar scenarios? No one questioned Dylan Roof’s motivation for his slaughter of nine Black church members in Charleston, South Carolina. It was racism – end of story.

Reports are coming out that Adbulazeez suffered from depression. Perhaps a religion that teaches hatred of all non-believers and rewards martyred jihadis with seventy-three virgins might lead to depression… and violence.

I am mad that the rules on military bases and these recruitment centers prohibit our service members from being armed. At the very least, this policy should be changed immediately. They must be able to carry firearms, especially knowing they have been specifically targeted by ISIS for attacks. To have served heroically overseas and then to return home only to be attacked in a store front recruiting center should send chills down everyone’s spines, and maybe wake up some. President Obama says we are not at war with Islam, but we should be past the point of acknowledging radical Islamists are at war with us.

The Glittering Eye: It’s early days in the investigation yet and I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. I say at this point let the investigation takes its course.

I’m willing to let the Pentagon decide whether soldiers in recruitment centers or on military bases carry sidearms or whether they should be ordered to do so.

As of this writing whether there are ties to Al Qaeda or DAESH, whether the perpetrator of the murders was mentally ill or not, and just what lead him to kill people are all unknown. Policy considerations need to be conditioned on actual circumstances rather than imagined ones. Maybe he was radicalized on the Internet or self-radicalized or had some conversion experience on a visit to family in Jordan. We just don’t know.

Ask Marion: ARM THEM! ARM THEM! ARM THEM! Arm all military personnel on American soil!!

The wolf is no longer at the door, America’s enemies are at war with us on U. S. soil!! America’s enemies are targeting our service members and their families and they know they are not armed. Let them carry a sidearm when on duty stateside.

ARM THEM… They have the right to defend themselves…and us ON home soil. As Judge Jeanine Pirro said in her opening statement this past weekend: They Want To Kill Us, They Determine To kill Us… And They’re Here.

Some of the governors have already stepped up in wake of the Chattanooga attacks. Governor Fallin of Oklahoma, has authorized their adjutant general to arm full-time military personnel. Arkansas, Texas and several other state governors have also already stepped up or in the process. Some other groups like Oathkeepers are also meeting.

For anyone who thinks this is extreme, just look at Switzerland, a neutral and one of the most peaceful countries in the world. Every adult is a trained member of the Swiss militia and they keep their weapons at home on the ready. In 2011 the Swiss law and tradition was tested and put to a vote. Let us remember our own history and minutemen who were armed and ready to defend themselves and freedom at a minutes notice and step back to using common sense!!

Well, there you have it.

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum. And remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council and the results are posted on Friday morning.

It’s a weekly magazine of some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere and you won’t want to miss it.

And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter… ’cause we’re cool like that, y’know?

02/23/15

Common Sense Profiling or Racial Bias by U.S. Police Departments?

By: Bethany Stotts
Accuracy in Media

With mainstream media figures such as Al Sharpton acting as race-hustlers, adding fuel to the conflagrations that grow up around police violence, the media establishment has given America’s political leaders cover to claim that last year’s Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases are evidence of endemic police discrimination. But FBI Director James Comey was supposed to strike a new, more moderate tone with his speech at Georgetown University on “hard truths” about law enforcement and race.

“In addressing race relations, Mr. Comey will be trying to do something that politicians and law enforcement leaders—including his boss, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.—have failed to do without creating significant backlash,” wrote Michael S. Schmidt for The New York Times in advance of his speech. If the Director’s speech didn’t invite racial backlash, it’s probably because most people don’t understand the parlance he’s speaking, and the media aren’t about to enlighten them as to how much Comey’s speech echoes the ongoing Department of Justice agenda to reeducate the police.

“In the past five years, Holder has more than doubled the number of police department probes compared with the previous five years, opening more than 20 investigations and pressuring 15 consent orders to stop ‘biased policing’ and other alleged violations,” wrote Paul Sperry for the New York Post last December. One such city was Seattle, where Professor Rachel D. Godsil questioned whether the DOJ-condemned excessive use of police force was due to racial bias.

“To overcome implicit bias in behavior requires people to consciously override their automatic assumptions and reactions,” wrote Godsil. “This is particularly true in policing when the stakes are so high.” She cites studies in which police reacted more negatively to dark-colored faces than white ones when making decisions.

Similarly, the Post’s Max Ehrenfreund picked up on one thing about Comey’s recent speech: the Director said that no one was colorblind and quoted from “Q’s Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist.” In other words, no matter how colorblind someone attempts to become, they, too, will fail at confronting their own unconscious stereotyping.

The FBI Director’s public admission that creating a completely unbiased person is an impossible goal was apparently “huge” to Ehrenfreund. And the Post reporter referred his readers to an online program which tests racial bias based on how participants sort white and black faces so that they, too, can identify their implicit racism.

“[Lorie] Fridell contrasted implicit bias with what most people think of as racism against minorities,” continues Ehrenfreud. “It doesn’t require any hostility toward those groups,” Fridell, a criminologist at the University of South Florida, said. “It can happen outside of conscious awareness, even in people who are well-intentioned and who reject biases and discrimination.” In other words, such allegations can hardly be quantified—and are therefore difficult to challenge.

“She said that her group, Fair and Impartial Policing, has received several times as many inquiries since Brown’s death as before,” Ehrenfreund continued.

Fridell has ongoing research-related contracts with the Department of Justice, though her opinions about the police are controversial.

“She [Fridell] believes legal definitions of unlawful discrimination are ‘outdated’ and should be broadened to include even unquantifiable prejudice against people of color that occurs ‘outside our conscious awareness,’” wrote Sperry.

“Social psychologists report that bias has changed in our society,” writes Fridell. “What these scientists have determined—through voluminous research on this topic—is that bias today is less likely to manifest as explicit bias and more likely to manifest as ‘implicit’ (or ‘unconscious’) bias.” The solution, she suggests, is counter-stereotyping, or exposing her participants to information “that is the opposite of the cultural stereotypes about the group.”

“By retraining cops’ minds to perceive blacks as less of a threat, Fridell hopes they’ll be less likely to use lethal force against black suspects,” writes Sperry. “Problem is, she’s never produced any empirical results to prove her theories actually work to reduce discriminatory policing. She admits it’s impossible to look at the actions of an individual cop and know for certain they were influenced by prejudice.”

As the goalposts for what constitutes racism or bias shifts in society, we are drifting dangerously toward subconscious vetting and reeducation efforts. Those efforts don’t match common sense or basic assumptions about human psychology. Should America be left with a “modernized” and “de-biased” police force whose members hesitate to make decisions based on prior life experience?

Such psychological experimentation could add a deadly edge to life-or-death confrontations, and could change the instincts of a police officer at a key moment.

In an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos last year, Darren Wilson, the policeman who shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, said, “All I wanted to do was live. That was it.”

“And you’re absolutely convinced, when you look through your heart and your mind, that if Michael Brown were white, this would have gone down in exactly the same way?” responded Stephanopoulos, intent on vetting for subconscious bias—or, at least, securing a good headline.

The mainstream media champion assertions of widespread racism, or at least unconscious bias, because they believe such factors caused the deaths of Brown and Garner, despite evidence to the contrary. Wilson was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing, and eventually of any federal civil rights violations as well.

On the surface, the FBI Director’s speech seemed to call for moderation in this debate made hotter by the media spotlight. “Debating that nature of policing is very important, but I worry that it has become an excuse, at times, to avoid doing something harder,” said Director Comey, going on to say that police enlist because they want to help people and that there isn’t a racist epidemic in that profession.

Rather, he argues, police confront “cynicism.” It isn’t racism that causes the disproportionate number of blacks to end up in jail, but because “young people in ‘those neighborhoods’ too often inherit a legacy of crime and prison,” he said.

However, “Those of us in law enforcement must redouble our efforts to resist bias and prejudice,” said Comey. Something “happens to people in law enforcement,” he said.

“The two young black men on one side of the street look like so many others the officer has locked up,” he said. “Two white men on the other side of the street—even in the same clothes—do not. …We need to come to grips with the fact that this behavior complicates the relationship between police and the communities they serve.” But he still doesn’t think the police are racists.

No, apparently they just are unconsciously biased, jaded, or “cynics” using mental shortcuts.