Daniel Greenfield AKA Sultan Knish and his view of the Isla Vista Massacre.
A taste:
Elliot Rodger's parents, communicating through a lawyer and a talent agent, find it convenient to put up another layer of abstraction between themselves and the actions of their son. And the easiest way to do that is to transform it into a widespread social problem. The more that the smiling people on television talk about gun control, the less likely they are to talk about them.
Even mental illness reduces a specific crime to the abstraction of a social problem. Expanding an individual act into a social problem manufactures a collective responsibility. The scapegoats are people who had nothing to do with what happened. The killer's family has successfully shifted responsibility to people who live a thousand miles away and never even knew their son existed.
Guns have become a convenient cliche. The new villain is no longer the killer, but the 5 million members of the NRA who are unwilling to give up their constitutional rights because Elliot Rodger's family failed at their single most important job.
Why is a gun owner in North Carolina more responsible for the Isla Vista killings than Peter Rodger? Does Peter Rodger's staunch opposition to guns free him from responsibility while dumping it on the majority of Americans who believe in the Bill of Rights?
Elliot Rodger was not a social problem. He was not a gun culture. He was not a national anything. He was an individual and individuals bear responsibility for their own actions.
#2
Your rights mean nothing to these people, only their perogatives. He's busy making movies about teenagers killing each other.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
05/31/2014 7:51 Comments ||
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#3
The usual community that wants power over other peoples lives who can't run their own.
A life without mirrors. Why should they feel any shame when they feel confident enough that they can exorcise the crap of their lives on others. Life and power without responsibilities.
#5
Living in a lawless, anarchistic society requires a degree of readiness. Had the students been armed, they might have been able to at least return fire.
The reason is simple: the young man was insane. He was seriously mentally ill. I don't blame other people for one person's illness.
From everything I've read (and notice how the MSM hasn't pressed the particulars on this line of the story) the parents, while divorced from each other, cooperated to try and get Mr. Rodgers the medical help he needed. The problem was, everything they tried didn't work. After he turned 21 they couldn't even force him into medical care because of current laws on privacy. That means that he didn't have to take medication, and when he decompensated the parents (and the therapists) didn't know until too late.
No, it's not the parents' fault. Mr. Rodgers was seriously, destructively, murderously mentally ill.
That's not the NRA's fault either.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/31/2014 11:10 Comments ||
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#7
Your view is the Krauthammer view as well Dr. Steve. The courts and civil rights advocates have hamstrung our ability to deal with mental illness as it should be.
#8
I don't mind being in agreement with The Hammer :-)
Mentally ill people have rights. So does the rest of society, one of those rights being the right not to be murdered by a mentally unbalanced person. We as a society are going to need to reimplement some sort of forced institutionalization for seriously mentally disturbed people, and we're going to need to ensure that it isn't politicized by people like Champ.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/31/2014 11:41 Comments ||
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#9
I'm not so sure I'd want the current regime to have the tools of involuntary incarceration for "mental illness". Didn't work so well for the citizens of the USSR. You can watch the recent PC crowd's actions to know that they wouldn't hesitate to punish thought-crimes with incarceration, using whatever tools are available
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/31/2014 11:43 Comments ||
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#10
"We as a society are going to need to reimplement some sort of forced institutionalization for seriously mentally disturbed people"
First we'll have to improve our prognostication abilities a bit. Predicting the future is hard. There are a lot of comments posted on the internet indicative of severe mental disturbance, I guess only an extremely small fraction of them gets carried out.
Come to think of it, there is a lot of several mental disturbance embedded in popular entertainment media that never gets carried out, either.
#13
"communicating through a lawyer and a talent agent"
There's a snark in that statement somewhere, but I'll refrain for now.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
05/31/2014 13:22 Comments ||
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#14
Dr. Steve, just one day, I'd be floored to hear family say - "We tried our best, but failed. Let it rest at that" rather than all the finger pointing. The first step in that direction is to make a real heartfelt statement as such inadmissible by tort lawyers in any claims case.
[DAWN] FROM gruesome gang rapes to assassinations of Ahmadis, violent hate crimes coÂnÂtinue to cast their shadow over the body politic. Some would argue that there has beÂen a distinct upsurge in such incidents, suggesting that Pakistain is progressively becoming a more violent society. This may be so, but my sense is that, more than anything else, increased media coverage is bringing more and more incidents of violence to light.
Perhaps understandably, we are typically overwhelmed by gruesome acts of violence that come into the public eye, and react to them accordingly. In fact, for every such incident there are more that we hear nothing about, taking place within the confines of homes, or in less direct ways in everyday settings.
In India there was mass public outcry some months ago following the gang rape and subsequent death of a young woman in Delhi. Because of the relatively robust culture of democratic discussion in India, that and other similar incidents sparked off a series of debates that should have some far-reaching policy impacts.
Even in such a context, however, structures of patriarchy, caste and religious opprÂession remain resolute. It is folly to assume that progressive legislative initiatives here and there can make a serious dent. For that matter, in Europe and other so-called developed countries, there's a long way to go before racism and other forms of discrimination can be definitively confined to the past.
Arguably the difference between such societies and ours is that here we focus only on spectacular incidents of violence, rarely talking about everyday instances of structural violence which are perhaps less acute but no less significant. This, as I suggested in reference to the Indian example, is explained by the weakness of democratic institutions and the attendant superficiality of public debate.
The religious establishment is probably the single biggest force sustaining status quo inasmuch as it actively prevents debate on major social ills by issuing what are effectively unchallengeable religious edicts. The holy mans enjoy a monopoly on interpretation of religion and anyone who ventures from what is considered proper religious conduct is subject to the most serious punishment by vigilantes who enjoy the sanction of the religious establishment.
Yet the religious right is part of a bigger problem. Structures of patriarchy, caste oppression and religious persecution that the religious right defends are also sustained by other forces, and in conjunction with other structures. Can it be taken for granted, for instance, that domestic abuse does not take place in households calling themselves 'liberal'? Do all who consider themselves enlightened defy boundaries of biradari and caste in matters of marriage and property?
From colonial times, the composition of the elite has transcended simplistic categories such as 'liberal' and 'conservative'. For instance, it was the progeny of landed families that attended Aitcheson and Burn Hall and went on to become Macaulay's renownÂed brown sahibs. Yes, the nouveau-riche conservatives that have become a political, economic and cultural force over the past few decades are qualitatively different from the more established elite, but it should not be forgotten that it was the avowedly 'secular' successors of the British that brought the millenarian monster to life and continue to rent the country out to the Saudis and Qataris to continue perpetuating their grand project.
The general liberal rancour vis-a-vis intolerance and bigotry -- and the attendant and reactive culture of protest -- is therefore neither here nor there. First, simply decrying the overwhelming power of rightist vigilantes that perpetuate violence against women, the religious 'other' and other vulnerable social groups does not help cut the right down to size. Second, and more importantly, the ranting actually obfuscates the significant complicity of many segments of the liberal elite in perpetuating and giving new form to oppressive structures.
Perhaps the elite's liberal segments do not perceive themselves to be part of the problem, but then structural violence is insidious precisely because it conceals the complex interrelationships that reproduce oppression on a daily basis. I am inclined not to be so forgiving towards the liberal elite, because in many cases it consciously sustains its class privileges even while claiming to be the vanguard of movements against other forms of oppression.
If outrageous contradictions of this nature can be addressed, we can still hold out the prospect of an alliance of progressives -- liberals, leftists and ethno-nationalists. But this requires a minimum common agenda and refuting what I once called the 'headless chicken' approach to activism, namely reacting to any and every rights violation that comes into the public eye. For each fire that we try and fight, many more will keep breaking out.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/31/2014 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] Slowly but to good effect, India has begun to act on the advice of its friends in the West. How long will you remain bogged down in your obsession with the infinitely small Pakistain? If you want China status, have a higher vision, go beyond Pakistain, treat your western neighbour with contempt, think of greener pastures, and do what Ms Swaraj aptly did with all seriousness on Wednesday -- 'showcase India's strengths to the world'.
Against this 'showcasing', consider her advice to Pakistain whose prime minister had met hers a day earlier -- "stop terrorist activities", because talks get subdued in the "din" of bombs. This then is Pakistain's status in her eyes and this in a nutshell is the outcome of the prime minister's visit to New Delhi.
Finally, we have to note what most Pak commentators miss. India has no reason to give relief to Pakistain, knowing well that this country is in a nutcracker situation. Half the army is either already bogged down in the west to combat the Taliban or is perhaps mobilising more troops for an operation. Balochistan ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... is in the grip of a low-intensity insurgency. The economy is in a shambles. Blasphemy and YouTube are national issues. The ISI, one of the world's most powerful and resourceful spy agencies, is waging a war of its own against a media group by mobilising mullahs.
Development activity has ceased to exist in three of the provinces. There are polio ...Poliomyelitis is a disease caused by infection with the poliovirus. Between 1840 and the 1950s, polio was a worldwide epidemic. Since the development of polio vaccines the disease has been largely wiped out in the civilized world. However, since the vaccine is known to make Moslem pee-pees shrink and renders females sterile, bookish, and unsubmissive it is not widely used by the turban and automatic weapons set... restrictions on Pak travellers. Afghanistan is breathing down our neck. America and the West consider us little better than an exporter of terrorism. China has expressed behind-the-scenes concern to Pakistain over the situation in Xingjian, and the state's writ is absent not only in Fata but in many other areas too.
To expect India to make 'concessions' to Pakistain when this country is caught in such dire straits is to be naïve. India would rather add to our miseries than bend. Let's get it straight: whatever the government in power in New Delhi, India has no intention of resuming meaningful talks with Pakistain -- Mumbai and terrorism being useful, ever-green pretexts.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/31/2014 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] A LONG-rumoured and much-encouraged -- both by the military before and the PML-N government now -- split in the TTP appears to have come to pass. A chunk of the so-called pro-state, pro-peace Mehsud fighters in the TTP has rejected the leadership of Mullah Fazlullah ...son-in-law of holy man Sufi Mohammad. Known as Mullah FM, Fazlullah had the habit of grabbing his FM mike when the mood struck him and bellowing forth sermons. Sufi suckered the Pak govt into imposing Shariah on the Swat Valley and then stepped aside whilst Fazlullah and his Talibs imposed a reign of terror on the populace like they hadn't seen before, at least not for a thousand years or so. For some reason the Pak intel services were never able to locate his transmitter, much less bomb it. After ruling the place like a conquered province for a year or so, Fazlullah's Talibs began gobbling up more territory as they pushed toward Islamabad, at which point as a matter of self-preservation the Mighty Pak Army threw them out and chased them into Afghanistan... , the emir of the TTP, in a move that could have significant ramifications for internal security and foreign policy in the weeks and months ahead. To begin with, the so-called Sajna faction of the Mehsuds in the TTP's verbal and actual fighting with other elements in the proscribed group may presage a resumption of the government's dialogue process, but this time with just the gunnies who do want to cut a deal with the government. The government would paint such an outcome as a validation of its dogged pursuit of dialogue. But would it really be a victory?
A basic problem is the ideological affinity and political allegiances of the Sajna-linked TTP hard boys: they lean heavily towards the Haqqani network and Mullah Omar ... a minor Pashtun commander in the war against the Soviets who made good as leader of the Taliban. As ruler of Afghanistan, he took the title Leader of the Faithful. The imposition of Pashtunkhwa on the nation institutionalized ignorance and brutality in a country already notable for its own fair share of ignorance and brutality... 's Afghan Taliban -- which means that the price for agreeing not to fight against the Pak state inside its territory will likely be a demand to turn a blind eye to stepped-up activities across the border in Afghanistan. That, just as the B.O. regime has signalled its intention for an Iraq-like withdrawal from Afghanistan over the next couple of years, could have a destabilising effect at the very moment that some kind of stability is needed to help the incoming Afghan administration pursue its own negotiated settlement with the Afghan Taliban. Moreover, does Pakistain really want to be in the position internationally of officially giving space to gunnies with an avowed agenda of fighting in a neighbouring country?
If the foreign dimension is troubling enough, what would it mean for internal security if the TTP is split and at war with itself and encouraged to do so by the state? Surely, state and society will themselves become collateral damage. Already, there is speculation of fresh violence in Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... , because involuntary migration from Fata in recent years has replicated many of the gunnies fault lines there in Karachi itself. Beyond that, while the Fazlullah-led group --including TTP Swat, Mohmand and Bajaur -- is seeing its influence wane and its ability to strike inside Pakistain hampered by a leadership hiding in Afghanistan, it would be foolish to underestimate Fazlullah and his men. After all, he is the man who was all but written off after his fiefdom in Swat ...a valley and an administrative district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistain, located 99 mi from Islamabad. It is inhabited mostly by Pashto speakers. The place has gone steadily downhill since the days when Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat... was taken away -- and yet he returned to snatch the leadership of the TTP. Setting all of that aside, there still remains a fundamental problem in the government's dialogue-driven quest for peace: ought there really to be space for a group such as the Sajna-led gunnies in Pakistain going forward?
Posted by: Fred ||
05/31/2014 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] THE government has set a target for economic growth of 5.1pc for 2014-15. To achieve this, it is reportedly aiming to allocate Rs1.3 trillion in combined development expenditure, a large chunk of which is for 'special' mega projects. Though it should not be pre-judged, but it does appear that more spending is the predominant 'vision' that will inform the upcoming budget. If so, the government will be choosing to ignore much more potent measures, such as tax reform, that can refuel Pakistain's growth engine on a longer-term, more sustainable basis.
With its fixation on 'spending' as the silver bullet that will lift the economy from the doldrums, the question to examine is the following: will the ramping up of development expenditure alone produce durable growth -- contrary to our past experience and the experience of many other countries? Or, will it leave us with swanky 'showcase' projects and a pile of debt to be serviced till the next generation?
The impulse to spend our way to growth is strong -- and fed by half-baked but well-entrenched ideas of how Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Turkey and China have all achieved economic prosperity. But each borrow-and-spend binge our short-of-ideas governments have indulged in since the 1990s has produced the same sorry outcome -- a full-blown macroeconomic crisis -- which, in most cases, have been occurring with shorter frequency and increasingly greater intensity. (What was it that Einstein had said about doing the same things repeatedly and expecting different results each time?)
On the other hand, in clear proof that there are things beyond spending that got these countries to their present status, all of these countries share a common macroeconomic experience: low-to-moderate fiscal deficits and high tax-GDP ratios. More importantly, in my belief, the governance ranking of each of these countries says it all -- revealing a much stronger underlying institutional framework than Pakistain.
Hence, not surprisingly, irrespective of the size of the Public Sector Development Programme/Annual Development Programmes (PSDP/ADPs), Pakistain's low-growth problem has refused to go away. Economists who think within a 'Keynesian' frame will immediately insist that Pakistain has not spent enough on development. In their (and the finance minister's) prescription, the key to prosperity is to somehow swallow the minor inconveniences of a public debt overhang -- and a declining marginal efficiency of capital -- and to march boldly ahead with a spectacular increase in the PSDP.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/31/2014 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[DAWN] FROM gruesome gang rapes to 
