The Crime of Our Lives
How exactly is crime different from a "networked insurgency"? Opium funds Taliban operations, while extortion fuels insurgents in Iraq. When the object of the enemy may really be to create a profitable chaos, rather than the oft-stated goal of an "Islamic Caliphate", can terrorism be solved any more easily than crime can be exterminated? Maybe the greatest innovation of the modern Jihad was to make it indistinguishable, in certain respects, from organized crime; to convert the Religion of Peace into the Religion of Perps.
And thinking on the Turkish youths who killed employees in a Christian publishing house justifying their actions by saying "we didn't do this for ourselves, but for our religion. Our religion is being destroyed. Let this be a lesson to enemies of our religion," how exactly are they different from Cho Seung-Hui?
posted by wretchardthecat at 4/19/2007 04:23:00 PM
48 Comments:
[H]ow exactly are they different from Cho Seung-Hui?
The Muslim (pardon me, I meant ultra-nationalist) lads will have institutional support for homicide.
In recent years it has once more become somewhat popular to take motive into account in the sentencing of criminals, and I think perhaps we should do more with that approach.
If it was simple avarice, a crime of passion, and so forth the usual penalties would apply, but if there was a “higher purpose,” then the punishment should reflect that.
If you committed murder for religion, then the penalty would be, say, being boiled in oil instead of death by lethal injection or the electric chair. Or maybe being walled up in a tomb, alive, would work better for that; to get you in touch with God.
If you murdered in the name of your race you would be chunked into a wood chipper, the better to make your remains indistinguishable from all other races.
And if you murdered for fame, then you would be cremated, your ashes scattered on the high seas and every trace of your existence on Earth would be expunged, every photo, every written word, all records pertaining to you destroyed. Official records referring to the crime would refer to you as Mr. X and no others would be allowed to exist. And that is what should happen to the Mr. X who killed at Virginia Tech.
The last victims, for example, were a young couple engaged to be married who the killers claimed were walking together in public.
Iran Exonerates Six Who Killed in Islam’s Name
According to the Supreme Court’s earlier decision, the killers, who are members of the Basiji Force, volunteer vigilantes favored by the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, considered their victims morally corrupt and, according to Islamic teachings and Iran’s Islamic penal code, their blood could therefore be shed.
The last victims, for example, were a young couple engaged to be married who the killers claimed were walking together in public.
Members of the Basiji Force are known for attacking reformist politicians and pro-democracy meetings. President Ahmadinejad was a member of the force, but the Supreme Court judges who issued the ruling are not considered to be specifically affiliated with it.
Iran’s Islamic penal code, which is a parallel system to its civic code, says murder charges can be dropped if the accused can prove the killing was carried out because the victim was morally corrupt.
"The Muslim (pardon me, I meant ultra-nationalist) lads will have institutional support for homicide."
---
Whereas in the USA, the only institutional support comes from the MSM, PC Educational Establishment, Liberal Churches, and etc.
Lawyer Hewitt spent all day on the Copycat Enablers
Several Schools in Northern Calif are shut down after a known Meth head called a minister and said he would make Cho's work look like child's play.
doug,
Are you saying that Cho has the benefit of these institutions? I have not seen that.
"Maybe the greatest innovation of the modern Jihad was to make it indistinguishable, in certain respects, from organized crime"
Maybe not so innovative: From the very beginning, a primary motivation to join the jihad was the prospect of loot and slaves.
I meant the MSM encouraged him with their sensational treatment of Columbine, (the "Martyrs") and and they all promote the PC, Multiculti, Class Envy, Victimology Raps which can be used to justifiy just about anything.
I am amazed that people like Bush go right on acting like having Muslims going to school/college here will have a good result.
When it's a known fact that many of our own citizens are turned into America Haters in College - and given endless rationalizations for same.
The Conversion of David Allen White
So I went into the university, a modern university, where they taught me the three things that I think you get at a modern university: hate your family, hate your country, hate God (Who "doesn't exist," but hate Him anyway). That's what my head was filled with. So that when I graduated and went on to graduate school, my head was filled with absolute nonsense. I still knew nothing about religion, although I would talk about it at length, mainly to try to debunk it. As far as I was concerned, there was only nature. Nature was all we needed. Everything was material. There was really only one "Commandment", that was, "We should be nice to each other even though life has no meaning" – which is a very peculiar thought.
When I began teaching, that's the sort of nonsense I was teaching. Absolute nonsense, because I knew nothing. I had no business being in front of a class teaching anything because I didn't know anything. But I was a modern teacher with a head full of feathers and sawdust that I spewed out around the room.
Then one day...
(Dr. David A. White. Professor of literature at the U.S. Naval Academy)
The only rational way to deal with it is to explicitly deny the thing that the killers are trying to accomplish. The Israelis surmised that the suicide bombers were motivated by the financial reward that accrued to the parents of the martyr. They therefore had a policy of destroying the homes of the parents, which was arguably cruel, but had at least some chance of dissuading some would-be bombers.
When NBC received the videos they should have known immediately that the killer's narcissistic objective was to become famous and impose his negativity on the rest of us. Their policy, assuming they are really working for our best interest, should be to make an extravagant demonstration of denying the killer's wishes. "From now on," they should say, "we will refer to the killer only by the term 'perpetrator'. We will not use his name or show his picture. No free publicity whatsoever. Any facts about the perpetrator or his act will, of course, be covered, but without characterizing the uniqueness of his crime. Instead we will concentrate on the lives and accomplishments of his victims." This approach could actually help with the ratings if it were done right.
As far as our counter-terrorism policy, it should be first and foremost about denying the enemy any success and any appearance of success. Their motives should be analyzed, and we should find ways to pay them back with the coin that they honor. In Afghanistan we should allow only our friends to grow opium. We should even subsidize the farmers to give them a competitive advantage.
In Iraq, you can get back at the religious ones by tracing them home to their place of worship and destroying their reputations. I don't know the answer to extortion, but I do know that our allies who pay ransoms are not doing us any favors. I imagine, however, that Gen. Petraeus has some good ideas, and some that he can't use because of handwringers in the State Department.
Well said.
NBC is at the opposite end of the spectrum:
Brian Williams reported how they agonized over it, and decided not to show it ALL.
...he then announced that further details would be released on the next newscast!
...porno at 11, don't be late.
I have not watched the video, just learned that is Dennis Millers position/statement also.
doug,
re: I meant the MSM encouraged him with their sensational treatment of Columbine, (the "Martyrs") and and they all promote the PC, Multiculti, Class Envy, Victimology Raps which can be used to justifiy just about anything.
So, NBC's decision to broadcast the Cho tapes cannot have the dreaded "copycat" effect because the animating culture was created by the MSM long before the event. Having previously poisoned the cultural well with PC, Multi-Culti, Class Envy, and Victimology, what harm could come from the publication of Cho, the societal damage having already been done?
There's a chubby Muslim politician in the Philippines who's running under the name "Osama Bin Laden": photo here. Why? Brand recognition. Sporting a half-metre-long beard, turban and a neck scarf similar to that worn by bin Laden in TV images, the 35-year-old Sharief has been campaigning frenziedly for a seat in a regional legislative council..
Why not? Forty years ago people wore Mao caps, Che Guevara t-shirts, hammer-and-sickle motifed accessories and thought it was cool. Yet those guys were a heck of a lot worse than Cho. Somewhere along the line these mass killers were transformed into a line of clothing, seen only as a kind of stylized logo emptied of context vaguely evoking style, action and rebellion. Just a bunch of colors and shapes with no more inherent meaning than the face of Mickey Mouse.
Pretty soon someone will start a snakc food named after him. I wouldn't be surprised.
‘Copycat’ threats reported nationwide
The scare comes as schools nationwide have been reporting would-be “copycat” threats in the wake of the mass shootings at Virginia Tech by Cho Seung-Hui, who killed 32 people Monday before killing himself.
Several high schools in metropolitan Detroit were on high alert Thursday after threats referring to the Virginia Tech shootings were found in bathrooms at two Oakland County schools, and Kalamazoo Valley Community College was shut down for the rest of the week, NBC affiliate WDIV of Detroit reported.
Eight buildings reopened Thursday after they were evacuated Wednesday at the University of Minnesota when a bomb threat was found in a chemistry building restroom.
Wednesday, Hastings College of the Law at the University of California shut down after police noticed a blog posting threatening a shooting on campus, NBC affiliate KNTV of San Francisco reported.
Since Monday’s killings, similar threats have also led to investigations or temporary lockdowns of schools in Arizona, Louisiana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Washington, according to local reports compiled by MSNBC.com.
Copy Catting
24 hour coverage animates the previously less animated.
"...and impose his negativity on the rest of us."
Never ceases to fascinate me that the therapeutic culture is so blessed codependent.
doug,
I do not recall reading of the Cho tapes having been essential to these purported instances of "copycatting." Indeed, some copycatters may have begun their actions prior to the identification of Cho, much less the publication of his tapes.
But, for the sake of argument only, suppose release of the tapes could stimulate imitation. Is censorship and to what degree the answer? At some point, it would seem that the publics' right and need to know will vastly outweigh any question of emulation.
a large part of NBC's decision to show the Cho Tapes was: MONEY.
NBC is a part of the "Old Media", and as such is in a desperate fight to survive for another few years. That's why we are swimming in this huge wave of sewage: Last week, Don Imus; before that, Anna Nicole Smith. This week, Cho. Next week??
allen,
The public's right to know? Know what? What did we all do to Know before we had the internet and WMP or QuickTime and reality TV to watch deranged (or just stupid) people subject themselves and all manner of other people to their idiocy? It's part of the decline of our civilization that we can no longer discriminate between behaviours appropriate in public and private.
What more do we need to see than one single photo of the guy doing his schtick to validate that he was a sick puppy? Anything more than the one image makes us part of the problem. Time to put some things back in the closet.
Anything more than the one image makes us part of the problem. Time to put some things back in the closet.
Agreed
Allen said,
"suppose release of the tapes could stimulate imitation. Is censorship and to what degree the answer?"
---
Journalistic responsibility is what I would call it, since it demonstrably cost lives, money, and heartache for the families.
Cho makes reference to Kleibold and Co.
I doubt if there had not been a media circus over that loser Cho would have been thinking of them and their evil deeds.
A Complete Transcript would give all the facts w/o much less vicarious sickness.
Instead we get animated recreations over the voice of roommates mother, and etc.
Lawyer Hewitt spent all day on the Copycat Enablers
Several Schools in Northern Calif are shut down after a known Meth head called a minister and said he would make Cho's work look like child's play.
It defies reason to think that all the events that happened today would have happened w/o 24 hour coverage of the same "news."
[H]ow exactly are they different from Cho Seung-Hui?
One hundred years ago, Turkey’s demography was much different than today’s, where 99% of the population claims Islam. In 1900, 55% claimed Turkish ethnicity; 30% were Christian Armenians and Greeks; 15% were Kurds; the remainder was Jews and other ethnic minorities serving the Ottomans.
In 1900, there were more than 5,000 Armenian churches; today, barely 50 can be found. The plight of both the Greeks and Jews is even worse.
Pro forma, the Turkish government will bewail the recent murders of Christians and Jews, but the numbers tell a different tale. Turkey is purging itself of non-Muslims. Consequently, the trials and sentences of the murderers of the Christian book sellers will be a travesty.
Again, Cho the homicide had/has no institutional support. The Turkish martyrs will be granted aid and comfort all along the way. They will be fêted as heroes.
Kleibold was one of Cho's Heros.
Losers across the land will now choose Cho as one of theirs, thanks to the Multi-Million Dollar Ad Buy of his "Manifesto" provided free by the MSM Ghouls.
The Victims Families are not too happy having him be everywhere, all the time, either.
Certainly Way beyond "need to know."
Had Lee Harvey Oswald lived to speak to the public, the vast web of conspiracy theories that entangled the JFK assassination could have been avoided. As things now stand, tens of millions of Americans continue to believe their government and foreign governments conspired to murder a president of the United States. Intertwined in these conspiracies are all the smaller conspiracies drawing upon the support of thousands of enabling military and law enforcement officers. The damage done to national confidence and patriotism, in this one case only, is incalculable.
The sorts of fablists and fabulists who made an anti-American industry of the "questionable" deaths of JFK, MLK, and RFK for example have, in this instance, from the mouth of the beast itself, been deprived of grist for the mill. That will prove a public good.
MSM Exposure = Institutional Support.
24 hour/day coverage = Indoctrination.
RWE, like your ideas. Very clever. For Mr. X though I would prefer to let him rot publicly, until he was compost. Then you could scoop up what's left and dump it in the sea. The only image left to history would be that of the rotted corpse. NBC could run videos of that. I imagine it would take something of the elan out of the copycat.
Not for those relatives now suffering and those that will die as a result.
And the need to know could have been addressed w/o the 24 hour sensationalism.
That for Allen, obviously, not Mouse, w/whom I agree.
doug,
Wretchard, on his blog, on this thread, raised a question that piqued his interest:
"And thinking on the Turkish youths who killed employees in a Christian publishing house justifying their actions by saying "we didn't do this for ourselves, but for our religion. Our religion is being destroyed. Let this be a lesson to enemies of our religion," how exactly are they different from Cho Seung-Hui?"
In the spirit of respect for the host, I responded:
"The Muslim (pardon me, I meant ultra-nationalist) lads will have institutional support for homicide."
Have you anything to add to this discussion, or is this another attempt to hijack one of Wretchard's threads through the introduction of voluminous, wholly extraneous venting of the complaint de jour?
For instance, how will the late Mr. Cho benefit from media exposure? Will his term in Hell be reduced by a million years?
In the case of the Muslim murderers of Christian Bible publishers in Turkey, the institutions of mosques, imams, media, and radicalized or intimidated politicians and jurists will doubtless serve to aid the murderers at every turn. How does this actual activity correspond to the case of Mr. Cho?
"is this another attempt to hijack one of Wretchard's threads through the introduction of voluminous, wholly extraneous venting of the complaint de jour?"
---
You also contributed to the the volume with your tenditious argumentation.
I can either respond, and be criticised for further voluminousness, or not.
Not wanting to elict further voluminous gratuitous rancor, I will not.
This leads back to the question of Lawfare vs Warfare.
The radical islamists want to fight the assymetrical battle of War by Terror with the West responding via Lawfare. The down side for them is small, and the upside of propaganda is huge.
Instead meet War by Terror with War under the Customary Laws of Warfare, as those laws make War by Terror a war crime punishable by any interested great power. Seek the vermin out wherever they hide and kill them. If they allow themsleves to be captured, give them their Article 5 hearing under Geneva III, then try them for warcrimes. This approach denies them the propaganda benefit, while removing the perpetrators from the field.
Let their fates be lonely and un-remarked. Let their graves be anonymous and un-marked. Expunge their persons and their names from human ken.
Out Here
Rodney Graves
rodney.g.graves@gmail.com
Doug,
By way of a Post Script, Dr. White was one of my Professor low those years ago...
Out Here
Rodney Graves
rodney.g.graves@gmail.com
'87
Mouse:
Actually, I think a good approach would be the one offered by Dean Ing in his novel from the 80’s, “Soft Targets.” It dealt with terrorism and how to respond to it.
His suggestion was to ridicule the terrorists, show them as bumbling, foul-mouthed idiots that everyone would laugh at and no one would wish to emulate.
I think that would work well with Chu; he cuts a fairly ridiculous figure anyway. Expunge his name but get a comedian to “do” him, Saturday Night Live style, as close as possible. Let no one be able to look a photo of him without thinking what an idiot he was.
doug,
Re: tenditious (sic?)
Did you mean to say “tendentious”?
___Wretchard asked a question.
___I responded to that question.
___You responded to my response.
___I asked for your thoughts within the confines of the topic.
___You accuse me of “tendentiousness” (I think).
Hmm…
____tendentious: marked by a strong implicit point of view; partisan
It is almost a certainty that the Muslims who murdered the Christian book publishers in Turkey, some days ago, will be vociferously defended by Islamic institutions across the board. The Islamic state of mind that guarantees such perversion of justice can be found here: Virginia Tech: “Muslims Cannot Pray for the Non-Muslim Dead”
To date, I have seen nothing indicating that Cho has been or will be so defended by American institutions. If you know otherwise, please share.
This point is consistent with my thoughts for the past few years. I have often suspected that bin Laden was less interested in being the next Caliph than in being the Prince of the Arabian Oil Fields. It is so hard to tell, though. The problem with Islam is that it is so convenient for melding spirituality with murderous self interest. A one stop religion shop that lets you engage in murder, rape and robbery and be godly all at the same time.
This comment has been removed by the author.
Re: ISHMAEL Ax:
Aquarium said...
State College Builds Muslim Prayer Facility
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
A public college president who banned Christmas displays to avoid entanglement with any religion and assure separation of church and state will spend taxpayer dollars to construct facilities for Muslim students to pray.
The president of Minneapolis Community and Technical College, Phil Davis, announced a costly plan to install foot-washing facilities for Muslim students so their feet will be clean during prayer sessions. This clearly contradicts the school’s supposedly strict policy of not promoting religion or favoring one religion over another.
The hypocrisy among officials at the public institution was exposed by a newspaper columnist who pointed out that, where Christianity is concerned, the school goes to great lengths to avoid any hint of support for the church. In fact, a coffee cart playing Christmas music was immediately banned from the campus last December.
Administrators have a vastly different attitude toward Islam, however, and actually go out of their way to accommodate the school’s 500 Muslim students. College officials have worked closely with local Muslim leaders to ensure the prayer needs of the campus Muslims are adequately addressed. In fact, the Muslim Accommodations Task Force http://www.msa-national.org/, which describes itself as the oldest and most influential religious organization in America, is guiding them with the foot-washing plan.
NRO
Today, we let the media do our dirty work for us. We let them “explain” the killer. We let them tell us about his “manifesto,” as if he were the love child of Karl Marx and Betty Friedan. His rantings and ragings run in an endless loop on the cable channels: bad movie dialogue, bad movie poses, bad knockoff “Voice of Doom” intonation.
We let them “agonize” over the morality of showing it, all the while assuring us that this is part of the “healing process.” Deep down, every reporter yearns to be a screenwriter — after all, we’re both in storytelling business, aren’t we? And after the week NBC News prexy Steve Capus has had, Elysian Fields and Echo Park are probably looking better than Park Avenue right about now.
---
You choose to ignore the power of these intstitutions, Allen, so what can I say?
---
"I don’t blame people for watching the killer’s tape, but they should acknowledge that in doing so they are not being “informed” or “educated” or otherwise advancing some lofty intellectual pursuit, but are instead satisfying their lurid curiosity. The killer’s tape is pornography; it’s okay to watch it, just don’t tell me you’re interested in the plot."
Jack Dunphy, LAPD @NRO
TV exposure does not affect behavior.
Budweiser just likes to waste their money on ads.
The last testament Cho sent to NBC seemed more clear evidence of mental illness--posing with his pistols, big tough gangsta gonna take you out. What is it evidence of when NBC News, a great pillar of the mainstream media, runs the videos and pictures on the nightly news?
Brian Williams introduced the Cho collection as "what can only be described as a multi-media manifesto." But it can be described in other ways.
"The self-serving meanderings of a crazy, self-indulgent narcissist" is one.
But if you called it that, you couldn't lead with it. You couldn't rationalize the decision.
Such pictures are inspiring to the unstable. The minute you saw them, you probably thought what I did:
We'll be seeing more of that.
Peggy Noonan
doug,
re: You choose to ignore the power of these intstitutions, Allen, so what can I say?
Perhaps, when you explain what you mean by "these institutions", I might see their relevance to the comment I made in reference to Wretchard's question.
On another matter, you wrote elsewhere:
“Yeah, Kevin Granata should have been given a lot more press. Just as Heroic as the old guy, and younger, w/family.”
(“Kevin Granata” would be the late Professor Kevin Granata of VT. The “old guy” would be an acknowledged hero, the late Professor Librescu, also of VT.)
Care to elaborate on that pornography?
Oh, while I know you do not like to be unduly reliant upon facts, you might check out the Washington Post article detailing the events.
Page 2
Rant on, Allen.
---
Dr. Michael Welner, Schizophrenia, Rampage Killers and NBC's Decision
Dr. Michael Welner is a psychiatrist experienced in the diagnosis and study of the awful psychosis of rampage killers.
He is one of the experts behind the development of The Depravity Scale, and has just published an article on schizophrenia for ABCNews.com.
The transcript is posted here, and the audio here.
And so the answer to a news organization receiving a package is, I would say well, what would you do if somebody mailed you anthrax?
Would you open it because of the media’s right to know?
Or would you send it to law enforcement authorities, because they have appropriately skilled people who can handle these things.
Well, the answer is fairly obvious. This is exactly what this is. It is a psychological warfare that has societal, catastrophic ramifications of some kind of biological agent or radioactive agent.
And responsible individuals should recognize what their skills are, and what their skills aren’t.
Hewitt:
What’s your professional response to that argument, that the cumulative effect was in fact inconsequential?
MW: My professional response is different for the two groups. For people who had poorly formed plans…mass shooting is not about the victims.
It’s not inspired by seeing people suffer.
It’s carried out by a person seeking immortality. It’s all about a person and what he wants to achieve for himself.
That person so dehumanizes the others around him that that’s what makes it easy for him to kill strangers.
But it’s a person who kills just as he would kill an ant or a bug, or destroy something needed to make an implement. And so essentially, he destroys the soul of a number of folks in order to essentially ingest it, and become that much more significant and inflated.
The only thing that was exposed to us in the early days after the shooting was the grief and suffering of people who lost loved ones.
It was only once Cho Seung Hui was exposed as a figure of intimidation and menace, and done so with such spectacular exposure, that…in intrigue and interest, that we want to know about him, that these kinds of attacks have followed.
HH: So would the next time someone mails a DVD of themselves, or still photos, or uploads of You Tube video, will you trace that back to Wednesday night?
MW: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. How can I not?
Dr. Welner has interviewed several Mass Murderers.
Credentials:
MW: I went to the University of Miami in Florida, and trained at Beth Israel Medical Center in Psychiatry here in New York, and did a fellowship in forensic psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania.
And when I began practice, took on a full-time practice, and then worked in correction psychiatry at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan,
and have since graduated, I suppose, to being
chairman of the Forensic Panel, which is a national forensic science practice in psychiatry, toxicology, pathology, and other medical specialties.
This is proof that the surge is not working on the VATech campus and we ought to set a date certain to remove all of the campus policemen and secuirty personell.
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