Earlier today the FBI classified the San Bernadino shooting as an act of terrorism. Real journalists, who actually know what they’re talking about, have described what happened as Tafsheen Malik self radicalizing to the doctrine of the Islamic State over a period of time after she moved to the US. And the attacks as not particularly well planned or professional. She then seems to have radicalized her husband. This could change, and as the investigation proceeds it is possible it was the other way around, but either way this appears to be leaderless resistance/lone wolf/stochastic terrorism. They made a subjective identification with the Islamic State and its teachings and took action on their own.
This makes sense. The choice of targets was bizarre for a terrorist attack, the homemade bombs thankfully never detonated, and the majority of the shooters ammunition was left at home. The Islamic State has also played a lot of catchup. Their impressive information operations section couldn’t capitalize on the attacks, because, apparently no one at the Islamic State was checking Ms. Malik’s Facebook page…
Irresponsible journalists, basically all the cable news stations and the major networks and a whole bunch of other media knuckleheads, including one particular pillock from The Times of London who tweeted about helping the landlord, broke into the shooters’ residence. This has led to dueling announcements and tweets from the San Bernarndino Police Department claiming its still an active investigative/crime scene and journalists claiming someone at the FBI’s LA Field Office said they’d released the scene. Charles Johnson, the decent one, at Little Green Footballs and his merry band of lizards* have captured a great deal of the tweets about what happened at this link. These includes reports of reporters doxxing one of the shooter’s mothers by showing footage/pictures of her driver’s license and social security card.
* This is what they call themselves. Personally I’d have gone with ballers or footballers, but I’m sure there’s some in joke I’m missing. Probably has to do with Jim Morrison.
PS – if anyone can find the Bloom County strip where they’re having a legal cull of journalists, please put the link up in the comments. I’ve been looking for the thing for 1/2 an hour and I’ll throw it up at the top of the post. Seems somehow apropos.
Adam L Silverman
I also do not know what the post field at Word Press is moving punctuation around from after the last word in the sentence to before the first word in the next sentence. It shows it correct at the Edit Post page at Word Press, so I’ve got nothing to fix – before the OCD among us start kvetching!
Baud
You clearly attended a blogger ethics panel.
Adam L Silverman
@Baud: I did the webinar!
Mike J
Have the next/prev post buttons disappeared for anyone else?
Adam L Silverman
@Mike J: I’ve got them on my Macbook Pro and my iPad.
D58826
One of Chuckles Todds guests is complaining that Obama has been to partisan. She also added that he is a weak leader because he won’t user the words ‘radical Islam’. Of course she didn’t mention that her former boss George W Bush didn’t use the phrase either. After blasting Obama for everything he has done over the past couple of days she them complains that Obama is partisan.
Germy
Ted Cruz Senator Dad actually made me laugh. I didn’t think I would.
Germy
@Mike J: I got ’em. They disappear if I zoom in.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mike J: I’ve got em on Win10 Chrome.
Mike J
@Germy: I’m unzoomed. I wonder if it’s connected to having the sidebar at the bottom.
But that’s enough reports. Don’t want to completely take over Adam’s thread with broken site stuff.
Adam L Silverman
@Mike J: You guys are the contributors to the comment sections. Do what you need to do – at least in my posts.
Baud
@D58826:
Most of the right-wing criticism of Obama only makes sense if one already vehemently hates Obama. Once you’re in that mindset, the arguments serve only to provide additional validation for what you already know to be true.
Brachiator
This is very true. I stopped following the story, and reading any blog contents when it became clear that the San Bernardino police were not even giving much in the way of background interviews to local reporters, when it was obvious that the Loma Linda hospital was keeping the press away from any wounded victims, when it was clear that material had been removed from the suspects’ home but nothing had yet been evaluated.
And yet into this vacuum of non-information, speculation and political bloviating was shooting out at supersonic speed.
One local radio host claimed that the cops told him that they had found go-pro cameras on the suspects and he boldly predicted that video of the shooting would soon appear on terrorist social media. This has not happened, thankfully. But it is stuff like this that is being used to suggest that these people, even if amateurs, had connections to larger groups.
Baud
@Adam L Silverman:
You’re going to regret that.
Mike J
@Baud: I have now licked this comment section. It is mine.
Adam L Silverman
@Baud: @Mike J: didn’t take long. I’m going to go disinfect myself.
Germy
Watching BBC World News.
They found a cookbook from the 1600’s. They’re actually cooking some of the recipes.
Peale
Yeah. ISIS is behind on this one and just bragging about things they hear in our media. If they are following our media to get facts, they are soon doomed as an organization.
The NRA has been much better at getting in front of this story, just like they were every time a firearm is used. Thankfully for them the fatal couple used already illegal guns and already illegal pipe bombs and the real issue is radical Islam and if you’re not talking about radical islam you’re just changing the only topic worth talking about. I’m guessing the NRA will be able to recruit more members than ISIS over this shooting. ISIS needs to study better tactics.
Baud
@Germy:
And that’s how you open a hellmouth.
scav
Somehow I’m reminded of the “journalist” scrum in the UK, hacking into murder victims (among others) phones. Murdoch ethics in journalism, going international. Rebekah Brooks, back in the saddle again.
Stella B
Why would Shias from Pakistan identify with Wahabi Sunnis from Syria? Why is this not ordinary workplace violence? Funny last name?
Germy
@Baud: Speaking of hellmouth, are you prepping for your inevitable debate with Trump?
Thoughtful Today
???
IS THIS CREDIBLE?:
“Messianic Jewish victim of California attack had argued with shooter about Islam: Nicholas Thalasinos, 52, one of 14 fatalities, had heated debate with co-worker Syed Rizwan Farook two weeks before San Bernardino rampage.”
^ From the TimesOfIsreal.com, which I read skeptically.
Has this been reported anywhere else?
Link?
scav
Links prove nothing. At this point, everyone has an agenda and is furthering it.
Germy
They’re talking about Nicholas Thalasinos on the PBS News Hour; showed his photo. He had debated with the shooter. Not sure if they were “heated” debates; that adjective wasn’t used in the PBS report.
Mike J
@Thoughtful Today: Check the LA Times obit.
Peale
@Stella B: Why do we think that these are Shia?
Steeplejack (sky-high wi-fi)
@Mike J:
I don’t got them on my Nexus 7 (desktop site), but it has been that way since November 1.
Betty Cracker
@Thoughtful Today: Saw an interview with the victim’s wife on CNN (I think), and she said he talked to everyone about religion. Regardless, no excuse, of course, even if the guy was totally obnoxious about it. Never an excuse.
Baud
@Germy:
I working on enunciating “huge” properly.
SiubhanDuinne
@Adam L Silverman:
Dammit, Adam, it’s CDO. Spell it in proper alphabetical order!
Roger Moore
@Thoughtful Today:
Yes, it looks as if the original source is the LA Times, which has a story about this under one of their own reporters’ bylines.
goblue72
Mentally disturbed sociopaths who reach their “snapping point” – and who thanks to our insanely lax gun laws have access to weapons of mass shooting – will construct whatever worldview they need to justify their nutbar-edness.
Maybe this turns out on some minuscule chance to have had some organized connection to an actual terrorist group. Far more likely this is just the sadly mundane Muslim-American version of Elliot Rodger’s Red Pill inspired shooting in Isla Vista or Dylan Roof’s neo-Nazi inspired church shootings. And in many of these cases, the victims were chosen in part because of some vague sense of grievance that the killers had. Whether Elliot Rodger mad that his lame attempts at flirting couldn’t get him a date or Roof’s hating of non-whites.
And as for the whole – one nutbar I can understand, but TWO nutbars argument – let’s not forget the Columbine massacre. Not one but TWO teenagers (Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold) were involved. Before committing suicide. So we don’t know what their particular perceived grudge was.
Dollars to donuts, whatever purported “radicalization” occurred with Farook and his wife, its wrapped up tightly in some workplace related grievance that only made sense in his own head.
EDIT: And I see above that Farook may have been having a feud with a right-wing, Limbaugh listening, messianic Zionist who liked to post racist shit on his FB page. Completely unsurprised to see a personal beef issue as part of this.
Bobby Thomson
@Peale: the guns were legal.
Felanius Kootea
The New York Times also reported on Farook and Thalasinos having a heated discussion about Israel.
OT: Three men who shot Black Lives Matter protesters emerged from Internet’s racist swamps. Was the BLM shooting an attempt at domestic terrorism? Of course, there will be very little attention to this as everyone freaks out about the idea of self-radicalizing Muslims.
SiubhanDuinne
On the day of the shootings (Wednesday?), during that long SUV chase that ended ultimately in the deaths of Farook and Malik, there were hours of coverage about a “third suspect” who was reported as being “on the loose” and being hunted by law enforcement.
Have not heard another word about this person (I think female, not sure, but will use the pronoun). I may well have missed it, but I haven’t heard anything about, either, the cops determined there was no such person, or she is still at large, or she was apprehended, interviewed, and released.
Honestly, most of what I hear is either NPR or (briefly, in the car) audio from MSNBC and CNN. I sometimes see CNN on a restaurant TV screen, but with sound muted; and I’ve already reached my firewall limit for the month at the NYT. So what I know is likely incomplete. Still, it was enough of a long tease the other day that I’d like to know if there was some resolution.
GregB
@srv:
Can we give Limbaugh the hat tip for the radicalizing assist?
goblue72
@Felanius Kootea: They can’t be radicalized. They are white. Which means they are all lone gunmen.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Felanius Kootea: Ron Fournier was clucking on twitter that President Daddy needs to come and talk to us because “the nation has been attacked”. Chuck Todd, hang on to you wigs and keys, was beating the same drum in the couple of minutes I accidentally turned on MSNBC during his slot. I’m guessing someone on twitter asked him if “the nation was attacked” in Co Springs or Minneapolis, and I’m guessing he was unfazed.
And speaking of MSNBC: Wasn’t Brian Williams supposed to take over afternoons? I haven’t seen or heard him in a while. Was he quietly asked to turn in his keys?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@SiubhanDuinne: I heard yesterday that the third accomplice was mostly due to the confusion of multiple reports on the original scene, and a bystander who took off running from (near) the scene of the shoot-out, as one would, was picked up for questioning and turned out to have a misdemeanor warrant.
SiubhanDuinne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Thank you!!
Peale
@Bobby Thomson: nope. Just like Mr. deal wasn’t an transsexual actvist, whether or not the weapons were or weren’t legal, or were legal but were illegally altered, or whatever. Doesn’t matter. Sure to you maybe, but to those who profit from gun ownership the Facebook posts make it clear. It wasn’t them.
Thank god they weren’t on a no fly list.
Steve Crickmore
When you have devoted much of your life to memorizing the entire 700 page plus Koran- including the 164 jihad verses, — and boast online about “enjoying target practice in the backyard”, and then marry a girlfriend who grew up in Saudi Arabia from a family coming from a hotbed of Islamic funtamentalism ,the Layyah District of Punjab Province. -Pakistani officials consider the area a center of support for extremist jihadist groups, including Lashkar-e-Taib, becoming, swayed and then radicalized into Islamic jihadism doesn’t seem such a surprising leap.
Librarian
“What is it now, you great pillock?”
Felanius Kootea
@Steve Crickmore: It probably also helps to have a Rush Limbaugh devotee at work belittling your religion in that subtle, gentle way that Rush has.
WereBear
@Felanius Kootea: Sometimes I try to imagine what Karmic retribution would look like for Limbaugh, but I can’t even handle Game of Thrones, much less what a Universe of Justice has in store.
Adam L Silverman
@Stella B: I hadn’t seen anything that indicates that she’s Shi’a. While there are a lot of 7er/Ismaili Shi’a in Pakistan, there are also a lot of Sunni Muslims. Pakistan also has its own Sunni radicalism, deobandism, which has been heavily influenced with the tawheed concepts at the heart of both the Wahhabis and the Islamic State. Given that her family moved from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia, and that Saudi Arabia is not the most welcoming place for the Shi’a as the concepts associated with tawheed teach that Shi’ism is unbelief and apostasy and all Shi’a everywhere are to be killed, I’m going with her being Sunni.
Adam L Silverman
@Thoughtful Today: No. I saw reporting last night on TV, local pick up of a national feed, that the two coworkers frequently debated religion and politics, but that Thalasinos said he was a nice guy and never expected him to do anything like this. So its almost true.
Adam L Silverman
@srv: There’s no indication of that yet in any reporting I’ve seen. Would they have likely tried for something larger, sure. Remember that at least one of the victims killed was also Muslim.
Adam L Silverman
@SiubhanDuinne: It was someone picked up in the area on an unrelated warrant/charge/issue. The media got wind the cops had picked someone up in the area and folded it in to the coverage.
Steve Crickmore
@Felanius Kootea: Does Rush Limbaugh reach the UK?- When surveyed, 33 percent of British Muslims expressed a desire to resurrect a caliphate-or Saudi Arabia? where the results of an opinion poll of Saudis were released on social networking sites, claiming that 92% of the target group believes that “IS conforms to the values of Islam and Islamic law”. http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/politics/2014/07/saudi-families-refuse-condolences-isis-position.html
Thoughtful Today
Associated Press via WFMJ.com:
“Friends: Syed Farook stopped going to mosque weeks ago.”
Inexcusable violence.
But it seems like very important context:
Messianic ideologue repeatedly insults fundamentalist prepper’s religion while at work, in front of at least one co-worker … … … … ..
Adam L Silverman
@Thoughtful Today: Apparently he recently changed mosques, based on some of the reporting I’ve seen, and was attending a different one in the area.
PhoenixRising
@srv: Nailed it.
She found him online, followed him home and brought her ideas along for the ride. With help from Rush, O’Reilly and the rest of the gang, she was easily able to convince him that his identity was under attack in his homeland. Just add bullets!
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Steve Crickmore:
Since the shooter in question was born and raised in the US, I’m not really sure what the beliefs of people in the UK have to do with anything.
I think any American guy who goes in search of a foreign mail-order bride is already pretty high in the creep factor, so I’m not sure I would rush to decide his wife made him do it.
SiubhanDuinne
@Adam L Silverman:
Thanks!
PhoenixRising
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): She didn’t make him do it, but it’s not such a stretch to look at her background and consider the prospect that she may have taken him along for the ride instead of the other way around.
Further I suspect that, were the sexes reversed, many would assume that the Saudi from a radical neighborhood in Pakistan was able to convince his US-born, raised, recently haaj’ed young wife to get more fundamentalist.
Adam L Silverman
@PhoenixRising: Its interesting, and possible, how probable – we don’t know yet. In the US, among domestic extremists and terrorists, there is precedent. Shelly Shannon, who was the primary cutout for the Army of God in the late 80s and 90s was the radicalized one in the family. Her husband never went along, but one of her daughters did to a certain extent. She would drag the kids to her anti-abortion protests and other more violent activities while her husband was off doing diving jobs. Vicki Weaver was the real ideologue and brains behind the Weaver family’s activities. She was the one that radicalized very easily into Christian Identity and separatism and she was the one writing stacks of threatening letters to local, state, and Federal officials telling them that, as the Whore of Babylon, they would burn in fire and brimstone.
PhoenixRising
@Adam L Silverman: Vicky Weaver was the one I had in mind. It’s not intuitive for me, thinking about religious fringe ideologies that happen to also preach sex roles as ordained by their God, to think of the wife as leading her husband into more radical versions of their shared fundamentalism…but it does happen.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@PhoenixRising:
In my experience, American guys who specifically look for foreign brides already have a few screws loose, so I would think it was more a case of like calling to like than an innocent guy getting caught up. It wouldn’t be the first folie a deux type of murder spree. Those Bundy fans who killed a few cops at Wal-Mart were a husband and wife, and some of the witnesses said she seemed more gung-ho than he did.
Keith G
@goblue72:
How much does this matter?
Just spit balling:
If they wanted to commit a terrorist act in solidarity to ongoing terrorism, does it matter if they didn’t receive certification from the Raqqa branch of the University of Phoenix? If they were willing to commit a suicidal terrorist act, but lacked the vision or discipline to fully utilize their resources, aren’t they terrorists anyway?
Based on what I remember Obama administration officials saying many months ago, this is a sample of one of their most worrisome scenarios: Individual or small groups become self starters with no or little outside contact and attack soft targets killing dozens at a time and really fucking up the American psyche.
Thus I really do not get the “Is this or is this not (religion inspired) terrorism” thing since it seems that we will find out soon enough. Equally, I wonder why some folks seem to want to lay down a marker that this was not a ISIL joint. At least one of the now dead terrorists had affection for ISIL and the Islamic State have made it clear that this is a type of activity they approve of. It seems likely that ISIL was not aware of this in advance. Nonetheless, their leadership might be a bit pleased that someone over here took the hint.
jl
@Keith G: I think OK for a spit-ball.
But I think anti-terrorism and law enforcement policy would look a lot different in this country, if the same reasoning was applied across the board to reactionary white racists and fundamentalist Christians who commit attacks.
Adam L Silverman
@PhoenixRising: From everything I’ve read, and the little I’ve seen of him on TV, he’s not particularly bright. She, however, seems to have been. So smarter, dominant personality, and that, as they say, is that.
WereBear
I believe all of these terrorists start with grievances and the desire to get even and feel powerful.
It doesn’t matter what justifications they choose… what clothes they put on it. Sadly, there’s a bloodthirsty fundamentalism in most any flavor.
schrodinger's cat
@Adam L Silverman: Why haven’t we even seen a photo of hers? She applied for K visa and then a greencard, you need photos for both those applications.
Keith G
@jl: Yeah. I wonder about that a lot.
But they aren’t the same kind of thing are they? Are they?
Apples and oranges? Apples and crab apples? Oranges and lemons?
There seems to be a difference or two beyond the “blow shit up” thing and I do not want to lazily paper over those differences such as they are.
Edit…One of the big differences that inspires different treatment is the possibility of a foreign based unified command.
jl
@Keith G: I think from what we know now, it might well be the same thing. As AS said, looks like lone wolf free-lance terrorists loosely in touch with people and organizations that gave them inspiration and ideas, but not much more connection. Certainly not part of a larger organized conspiracy.
So, from what we know now, similarities with Dear PP shooting, except these two managed to kill more people than Dear. New info could obviously change that. Fact that Dear looks similar to the non-Hispanic white community and has, on the surface, a more similar culture doesn’t change that for me.
In fact, in one important sense, Dear is more clearly terrorism, since he went to a PP office to commit attack, not much evidence that a local beef personal grudge played a factor. There is significant evidence local beef personal grudge played a role in San Bernardino.
Adam L Silverman
@schrodinger’s cat: I have no idea. I’m not a journalist and I do not work for Immigration and Customs.
GoBlue72
@Keith G: Leacing aside a fisking of your argument, let’s just suppose all you spitball is true. So the fuck what?
Seriously. So. The. Fuck. What.
What, let’s go bomb “ISIS” because some deranged nut somewhere liked their FB page? What the heck does their inspiration for this have fuck-all to do with a public policy response?
J R in WV
@Adam L Silverman:
Thanks, but we don’t need your permission! Do we? I kid. ;-)
Adam L Silverman
@J R in WV: No, and there’s not much I could do about it anyway.
schrodinger's cat
@Adam L Silverman: Was just thinking out aloud, wasn’t really a question for you.
Adam L Silverman
@schrodinger’s cat: Okay, didn’t mean to interrupt your musing then. Carry on!
Keith G
@GoBlue72: What the heck are you talking about? I’m not advocating bombing in my statement.
Just because one asserts a continuity of decision-making from foreign terrorists to local kids gone wrong doesn’t mean the only way to combat this is to blow shit up in some rockpile half the world away.
Chill.