50 dead in Orlando gay nightclub shooting

[Eric the Green]

“I believe that in this country, we should not be selling automatic weapons which are designed to kill people,” Sanders said Sunday. “We have got to do everything that we can on top of that to make sure that guns do not fall into the hands of people who should not have them, criminals, people who are mentally ill.”

NBC News PR ✔ @NBCNewsPR
"It's horrific, it's unthinkable," says @BernieSanders on #OrlandoShooting this morning on @MeetThePress. #MTP #Orlando
6:24 AM - 12 Jun 2016

The Democratic presidential candidate called the shooting, which began at the gay nightclub Sunday at around 2:00 a.m., “horrific” and “unthinkable.” Sanders added that he believes exists “a very broad consensus in this country” between most gun owners that the U.S. government has “got to do everything that we can to prevent guns from falling into the hands of people who should not have them. That means expanding the instant background checks, it means doing away with the gun show loophole, it means addressing the straw man provision. I think there is a wide consensus to move forward in that direction.”

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/06/...-shooting/

[Dan '82]

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/orlando-shoo...nish-gays/

Quote:The Orland gay club gunman's father has well-known anti-American views and is an ideological supporter of the Afghan Taliban. A new message posted by the father on Facebook early Monday morning also makes it clear he could have passed anti-homosexual views onto his son.

Seddique Mir Mateen, father of Orlando gunman Omar Mateen, who died in a shootout with police after killing at least 49 people early Sunday morning, regularly attended Friday prayers at a Florida mosque with his son...


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/orlando-shoo...nish-gays/

[Dan '82]

I created a new thread about gun control; lets keep this thread about shooting.

[Eric the Green]

I don't get the distinction there. There would have been no shooting without the weapons.

So, we can discuss "the shooting" on this thread, but not the cause of the shooting?

On the other hand, no doubt everything's already been said, regardless of which thread it's on.

But, why not a new thread about mental illness, then?

[Dan '82]

(06-13-2016, 07:08 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I don't get the distinction there. There would have been no shooting without the weapons.

So, we can discuss "the shooting" on this thread, but not the cause of the shooting?

On the other hand, no doubt everything's already been said, regardless of which thread it's on.

But, why not a new thread about mental illness, then?

Gun Control debates tend to get very heated and I'd like this thread to be for news about the shooting, if arises about other issues I'll start a thread about that.

[Ragnarök_62]

Eric The Green Wrote:I don't get the distinction there. There would have been no shooting without the weapons.

There'd been no shooting if there was no oxygen either.

Quote:So, we can discuss "the shooting" on this thread, but not the cause of the shooting?

You've already mentioned your opinion.  There are other opinions other folks may have.

Quote:On the other hand, no doubt everything's already been said, regardless of which thread it's on.

Maybe Dan is awaiting for a few more replies and after sufficient time, he can lock this one.

Quote:But, why not a new thread about mental illness, then?

Yes, that can be done.  It's times like this that I miss Dr. The Rani.

Dan Wrote:Gun Control debates tend to get very heated and I'd like this thread to be for news about the shooting, if arises about other issues I'll start a thread about that.

We already have one for gun control, Dan.

http://generational-theory.com/forum/thread-194.html

Of utmost service,
Rags

[Dan '82]

Quote:We already have one for gun control, Dan.

http://generational-theory.com/forum/thread-194.html

Of utmost service,
Rags Cool

That's the one I split off from this thread

[Ragnarök_62]

Dan Wrote:That's the one I split off from this thread

Excellent moderation there.  That's a fine example of everything's in its place and a place for everything!

[Eric the Green]

(06-13-2016, 08:08 PM)Dan Wrote:

(06-13-2016, 07:08 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I don't get the distinction there. There would have been no shooting without the weapons.

So, we can discuss "the shooting" on this thread, but not the cause of the shooting?

On the other hand, no doubt everything's already been said, regardless of which thread it's on.

But, why not a new thread about mental illness, then?

Gun Control debates tend to get very heated and I'd like this thread to be for news about the shooting, if arises about other issues I'll start a thread about that.

Well let's see; Obama and Hillary both commented on the shooting that there's a great need for gun control and an assault weapons ban. Now, that's "news." It certainly was on the news. Here in CA, our legislature is moving. Now, when will some posters here start to move in response to the reality?

[Eric the Green]

(06-13-2016, 09:50 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:

Dan Wrote:That's the one I split off from this thread

Excellent moderation there.  That's a fine example of everything's in its place and a place for everything!

Segregation

[Ragnarök_62]

Dan Wrote:Gun Control debates tend to get very heated and I'd like this thread to be for news about the shooting, if arises about other issues I'll start a thread about that.

Obviously.

Quote:Well let's see; Obama and Hillary both commented on the shooting that there's a great need for gun control and an assault weapons ban. Now, that's "news." It certainly was on the news. Here in CA, our legislature is moving. Now, when will some posters here start to move in response to the reality?

1. I beg to differ with both of them and Eric. Banning stuff doesn't work. Look how well the war on drugs is going.
2. It doesn't matter who holds what position wrt gun control, it BELONGS ON THE OTHER THREAD!

[Eric the Green]

As I have pointed out, the "news" of this tragic event, and discussion of the causes for it, can't be separated, and is NOT being separated in the ACTUAL news reports of this event. There is not one single cause of this event, but at least several. The hateful beliefs and ideologies of those who claim to speak for God, as Obama called it, is one; along with the organizations that promote this hatred and advocate murder of those who disagree. This coupled with the easy access which the United States permits to weapons of mass killing, makes these incidents inevitable. Inadequate investigation and restriction of those who are affected by this hatred, or are otherwise unstable, from having security clearances and access to weapons, is a problem, as is permission of such propaganda over the internet.

[Mikebert]

I am wondering how this will play out with the revelations today that the shooter might have been a self-hating gay man.  Makes it harder to peg this event as externally-driven and more like an internal unrest event.  That is, this event might have more in common, sociologically, with Dylan Root's shooting of Black Christians than it does with the 911 attack.

This is relevant because Donald Trump is trying to paint this as a terrorist attack like 911.  That is, a political statement made by a foreign entity (AQ in the case of 911 and ISIS here) and not a internal instability event like a rampage killing or a riot.  (I think we can all agree that the sheer scale of the carnage moves it beyond the category of mass murder--e.g. family annihilators or serial killers).

On the other hand the response of president Obama and Hillary Clinton implies this is a rampage killing in the vein of Virginia Tech in 2007 (33 dead); Sandy Hook in 2012 (28 dead); Luby's massacre in 1991 (24 dead) and  the San Ysidro McDonald's massacre in 1984 (22 dead). 

So how do folks here see this event?  Is it a terrorist attack like 911, Oklahoma city, Bath or Wall Street? Is it a rampage (perhaps partially politically motivated like Dylan Root's or Elliot Roger's rampage)?

[Danilynn]

Terrorist attack like Oklahoma, 9/11

[pbrower2a]

(06-14-2016, 07:08 PM)Mikebert Wrote: I am wondering how this will play out with the revelations today that the shooter might have been a self-hating gay man.  Makes it harder to peg this event as externally-driven and more like an internal unrest event.  That is, this event might have more in common, sociologically, with Dylan Root's shooting of Black Christians than it does with the 911 attack.

This is relevant because Donald Trump is trying to paint this as a terrorist attack like 911.  That is, a political statement made by a foreign entity (AQ in the case of 911 and ISIS here) and not a internal instability event like a rampage killing or a riot.  (I think we can all agree that the sheer scale of the carnage moves it beyond the category of mass murder--e.g. family annihilators or serial killers).

On the other hand the response of president Obama and Hillary Clinton implies this is a rampage killing in the vein of Virginia Tech in 2007 (33 dead); Sandy Hook in 2012 (28 dead); Luby's massacre in 1991 (24 dead) and  the San Ysidro McDonald's massacre in 1984 (22 dead). 

So how do folks here see this event?  Is it a terrorist attack like 911, Oklahoma city, Bath or Wall Street? Is it a rampage (perhaps partially politically motivated like Dylan Root's or Elliot Roger's rampage)?

1. Self-hatred often leads to lashing out. I can only wonder how close Dylan Roof was to sorting out that white supremacy was a sham... maybe when he could no longer have anything to believe in, he had to lash out. Maybe we would know nothing of Dylan Roof had he so recognized that African-American Christianity is valid. Maybe if things had really gone right he would have found a new cultural and religious milieu to join, even to the extent of marrying and having children by a black woman. It might be an obscure story in Essence, Ebony, or Jet Magazine... but it would be an unqualified success.

2. Self-hating gay man? I am reminded that some leading Nazis lived in fear that they had some Jewish ancestry.  Thus Hitler, Heydrich, and Eichmann. Eichmann often got teased in school as "the little Jew"... and even in Israel he was noticed as looking very ordinary among people who had been victims of or refugees from Nazism.

Killing a bunch of gay men could be to himself what killing Jews was to Nazis -- proving that they were not sullied with some connection to an 'evil' set of humanity.

3. I doubt that we can blame any President for mass killings. There is no political fault except for the availability of firearms to people who can be shown to be the wrong people to have them.

This said... everyone has some problem. Few of us who have problems do mass murder. Suicide, maybe, but that is the end of the suffering for many. If I found myself with a strong urge to cause mass carnage, then the most ethical thing for me to do would be to remove the menace to Humanity.

[Bob Butler 54]

(06-14-2016, 07:08 PM)Mikebert Wrote: So how do folks here see this event?  Is it a terrorist attack like 911, Oklahoma city, Bath or Wall Street? Is it a rampage (perhaps partially politically motivated like Dylan Root's or Elliot Roger's rampage)?

I read it as a messed up young man.  If one is going to commit suicide, might as well make the front pages.  In this case the target suggests it was more likely gay than ISIS, but something messed him up and it could very well have been neither.

[Mikebert]

(06-14-2016, 08:18 PM)Danilynn Wrote: Terrorist attack like Oklahoma, 9/11

This is an interesting response.  I gave a list of four examples of terrorism, three of which were perpetrated by Americans: Oklahoma city, bath and Wall St.  In contrast, 911 was carried out by a team of operatives (essentially soldiers) of a foreign polity, who was at war with America.

Since the Orlando shooter was an American, that is it was an example of domestic terrorism, one might think this event to be more similar to one of the first three that were also carried out by Americans.

911 and the Wall street bombing were both committed for explicit political purposes, making them examples of classic terrorism, defined as using fear-inducing tactic against civilian populations into order to further specifically political objectives (persuading the US to leave the Middle East in the case of 911 and fomenting a popular revolution in the case of the Wall St bombing).

Since the Orlando shooting seems to have had a more fuzzy motive along the lines of general hatred of gays, the gay lifestyle and gay-friendly America, which would seem to make it more similar to McVeigh's or Dylan Roof's motivations.

And yet the choice made was 911 in a short statement as if this were obvious.  I submit that this response is actually a very common one, and it exactly the same reaction Trump is channeling when his response to this event is to call for keeping Islamic people out of the country.  Obviously this could have no effect on the Orlando event since the shooter was an American citizen who was born here and already in the country.  That is, a very logical response to 911 was offered as a response to this event, event thought the logistics of the two events are completely different.

[Mikebert]

(06-15-2016, 12:27 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(06-14-2016, 07:08 PM)Mikebert Wrote: So how do folks here see this event?  Is it a terrorist attack like 911, Oklahoma city, Bath or Wall Street? Is it a rampage (perhaps partially politically motivated like Dylan Root's or Elliot Roger's rampage)?

I read it as a messed up young man.  If one is going to commit suicide, might as well make the front pages.  In this case the target suggests it was more likely gay than ISIS, but something messed him up and it could very well have been neither.

This too is an interesting response for two reasons.  First it is noncommital and does not answer the question.  Second it seems to imply that it was obviously a rampage (that is, a criminal act rather than an attack by a member of an irregular military unit like 911) and went to the next level of speculating why the shooter decided to commit this criminal act.

[Mikebert]

My point is that these two views are diametrically opposed to each other.  If Orlando is seen as like 911 then it means the shooter may be sane and acted out of ideology, like the 911 hijackers.  It falls into a category like this event, and is most effectively addressed using foreign policy tools.  That is one might try to block entry into the country of potential agents of radical Islam, or respond directly to the state sponsor of this terrorism (ISIS).  For example both Ted Cruz and Donald Trump have suggested this as a response to ISIS:

Dresden


Hamburg.

On the other hand, seeing the Orlando event as a rampage means interpreting it as a criminal act by a psychologically disturbed person which would be addressed with domestic policy.

[Odin]

How G4S tolerated the homophobic hatred of Orlando’s IS terrorist

Quote:Omar Mateen, the terrorist who massacred 49 people and left 53 injured at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) in a 911 phone call during the attack.

The connection has rightly drawn attention to the insidious role of IS in legitimising violence against theologically dehumanised civilians: Yazidis, Shia Muslims, Sunni Muslims who oppose IS, and LGBTQ people, to name just a few of the "deviants" IS wants to wipe off the face of the planet.

Yet Mateen’s ideological evolution takes us well beyond the banal idea that this was "just another" IS-inspired atrocity.

G4S and the largest mass shooting in US history

Mateen was a longtime employee of the giant security contractor G4S, a British firm that provides security services for numerous governments around the world.

He joined G4S in September 2007 as an armed security officer, and remained an employee until he was shot and killed in the police operation in Orlando.

But before his G4S stint, Mateen was not a homophobe.

Ten years ago, according to a former high school friend Samuel King, Mateen “didn’t have an issue with the LGBT community”.

Mateen was friends with King despite him being a gay drag queen, and would visit the restaurant where they worked and “laugh with us. He might’ve even sat down at the bar and had a drink and laughed with the bartenders, knowing that they were lesbians.”

King last saw Mateen in 2009. So what changed since then?

Turning point

According to Mateen’s ex-wife, Sitora Yusufiy, Mateen became increasingly abusive after they were married in April 2009 – two years after he joined G4S: “He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasn’t finished or something like that.”

She described him as mentally ill, unstable and suffering with bipolar disorder and a “history with steroids”. Yusufiy said that Mateen was not particularly religious, but “seemed like a normal human being”.

However, he was already displaying homophobic tendencies: “There were definitely moments when he’d express his intolerance towards homosexuals,” she said. Within a few months, the marriage broke down and Yusufiy was rescued by her parents.

During his marriage to Yusufiy, while working at G4S, he was employed as a correctional officer at the St Lucie Regional Juvenile Detention Center near Fort Pierce, run by the State of Florida’s Department of Juvenile Justice. The company contracted by the department to handle the facility is G4S.

The problem is that G4S’s approach to domestic security in the US homeland amounts to a hotbed of routine abuse, sexual violence, extremism and homophobia, tolerated at the highest levels of G4S’s management.

G4S’s Florida managers harbour homophobes

Last October, four G4S security officers filed a religious discrimination lawsuit against the Florida-based firm for firing them when they complained about the extremist, homophobic bigotry of their senior G4S supervisor.

The lawsuit, which demands $3.5 million in damages, says that a G4S kiosk where the guards worked at a shopping centre was managed by “a devoutly Christian supervisor who told employees their gay family members were going to hell, played videos about the Illuminati and warned that the security kiosk could be attacked by demons,” according to a local Portland publication.

The supervisor would post Bible verses on the walls and hold daily "prayer circles" with two other guards as part of a campaign of “fervent evangelising”, according to the court filings.

When the G4S employees filed written complaints with upper management about the behaviour, the filings say, they were summarily dismissed.

Harbouring extremist views and bigotry is apparently par for the course at G4S, as became clear after Mateen’s former G4S co-worker Dan Gilroy complained to his superiors about his colleague’s incessant bigotry.

A former Fort Pierce police officer, Gilroy had worked with Mateen over several months between 2014 and 2015. He described Mateen as openly racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic.

“I quit because everything he said was toxic and the company wouldn’t do anything,” said Gilroy. “This guy was unhinged and unstable. He talked of killing people.”

Gilroy’s complaints to his G4S superiors went nowhere. Even after Mateen began stalking him – sending him dozens of text and voice messages everyday – the firm did nothing. Gilroy felt he had no other choice but to seek a transfer and eventually quit to get away from Mateen.

G4S has said that Mateen underwent security screening when he was hired and was re-screened in 2013 with "no adverse findings".

Yet Gilroy was not the first of his colleagues at the firm to complain about his homicidal sympathies. The FBI had already interviewed Mateen in 2013 and 2014, and even placed him temporarily on a terror watch list, after he had told co-workers about his sympathies with militant or terrorist groups that the agency has not identified publicly.

So around this period, Mateen had suddenly begun to display an increased interest in a belligerent Islamist extremist ideology. By the time he met Gilroy, he had begun praying regularly, bringing his prayer mat to work. But even Gilroy observed that Mateen’s ritualistic religiosity was completely at odds with his behaviour – he would frequently rail against black people, display sexual interest in random women, and openly talk about wanting to kill people.

G4S has not yet provided any clarity as to why it failed to act on these repeated complaints which, at the very least, should have entailed an internal investigation into Mateen’s professional conduct.

G4S and the homicidal security complex

It seems difficult to avoid the conclusion, though, that G4S superiors simply did not see Mateen’s sociopathic tendencies as a problem. In much the same way that G4S management decided to protect an extremist Christian homophobic supervisor in Portland, they preferred not to reign in Mateen’s openly homicidal extremism.

G4S’s routine protection of violent, racist tendencies among its security officers appears to be an institutionalised global problem for the government contractor.

Over the last decade, the firm has been beset by scandal after scandal due to allegations and findings of systematic tolerance of astonishing abuse.

Within Florida alone, G4S Youth Services, which runs 30 residential and juvenile detention centres across the state, has faced numerous cases of employees being charged with the sexual abuse of young boys; including running a detention facility that was so inept, abusive and unsanitary it was condemned by a grand jury as “a disgrace to the state of Florida”.

Indeed, according to a report by the American Friends Services Committee: “In Florida there have been consistent reports of sexual abuse, use of excessive force, recurring riots, and numerous resulting lawsuits against the company.”

In Malawi, Mozambique and South Africa, among other countries where G4S has security contracts, official complaints under OECD guidelines documented disturbing “testimonies of racial segregation and poverty wages” discriminating against black workers under the company's management.

G4S employees in Britain have been found to routinely engage in racist, misogynist and homophobic banter, and the firm’s child services systematically subjected children to physical abuse often resulting in “life-threatening harm”.

Once bitten, twice bitten

Worse, Omar Mateen is by no means the first time that G4S has turned a blind eye to warning signs of the dangerous volatility of an employee, who ends up going on a killing spree as a result.

This is exactly what happened in 2009, when military veteran Danny Fitzsimmons was hired by the firm and dispatched to Iraq. Fitzsimmons was a racist with a criminal record, had been diagnosed with PTSD, and at the time of his employment was on bail and not permitted to leave Britain.

G4S didn’t care. Thirty-six hours after landing in Iraq, Fitzsimmons had shot dead two of his colleagues.

In Mateen’s case, the response was much the same. Despite repeatedly voicing to his G4S colleagues his desire to kill people, his sympathy for terrorists, along with racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic views, G4S superiors opted to keep Mateen armed, dangerous and on the payroll.

The exact mechanics of Mateen’s journey into the arms of IS remain unknown. But what is clear is that the privatised national security complex in which he operated provided a toxic, fertile environment that at the very least did nothing to prevent his conversion into a hateful, murderous fanatic.

How "Islamic" his motivation really was can be discerned from the emerging eyewitness reports that Mateen had visited the Pulse nightclub at least a dozen times before the shooting, where he would get drunk, and sometimes chat with club-goers.

Consider the irony here. The world’s largest "security" company measured by revenues provided the ideal environment for the flourishing evolution of a homicidal, homophobic drunken terrorist who pledged allegiance to IS in the midst of a killing spree.

In this context, the real question is: why should taxpayers continue to bankroll G4S so that it can reap billions while tolerating extremist bigots in the name of "security"?