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Balloon Juice

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It’s the corruption, stupid.

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Silverman on Security

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And We Have an Active Shooter/Mass Shooter in Knoxville

by Adam L Silverman|  April 12, 20214:33 pm| 43 Comments

This post is in: Gun Issues, Gun nuts, Open Threads, Silverman on Security

Cheryl indicated in comments that there was an active shooting at a school in Knoxville.

Multiple agencies are on the scene of a shooting at Austin-East Magnet High School. Multiple gunshot victims reported, including a KPD officer. The investigation remains active at this time. Please avoid the area. pic.twitter.com/ViQirnQSpx

— Knoxville Police TN (@Knoxville_PD) April 12, 2021

A reunification site has been established at the baseball field behind Austin-East High School near Wilson and S. Hembree. https://t.co/zmQGzwb6cO

— Knoxville Police TN (@Knoxville_PD) April 12, 2021

From The Knoxville News Sentinel:

Multiple people have been shot, including a Knoxville police officer, at Austin-East High School on Monday afternoon, the Knoxville Police Department posted on its Twitter account.

Two sources with knowledge of the situation who are not authorized to speak about it also told Knox News the shooting had occurred. One source said the situation is no longer “active.”

Police and emergency workers flooded the neighborhood around 3 p.m., and have blocked off access to the school and parts of the neighborhood.

The school has been locked down, according to Knox County Schools spokeswoman Carly Harrington.

Knox County Schools has established a reunification site for parents to connect with their children who attend the school. It is at the baseball field behind the school near Wilson Avenue and Hembree Street.

Not a lot of information/reporting on this yet. I’ll update as/if/when information comes in.

Updated at 5:30 PM EDT

One killed in shooting at Austin-East High School, Knoxville police confirm. https://t.co/03cBwMsY6q

— knoxnews (@knoxnews) April 12, 2021

Open thread!

 

And We Have an Active Shooter/Mass Shooter in KnoxvillePost + Comments (43)

A Quick Word On What We Know About the Police Shooting of Daunte Wright

by Adam L Silverman|  April 12, 20212:51 pm| 178 Comments

This post is in: America, Civil Rights, Crazification Factor, Criminal Justice, Domestic Politics, Open Threads, Racial Justice, Silverman on Security

I’ve just finished watching the very, and not surprisingly, combative press conference held by Brooklyn Center, MN leadership regarding the police shooting of Daunte Wright. This included watching the body cam footage that they released and played. That video is below from Fox 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul.

WARNING, THE VIDEO IS GRAPHIC!

Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Gannon described it as an accidental discharge, but that is both an antiquated and not exactly accurate description. The more accurate term, though equally banal term, is negligent discharge. It was negligent because it is clear that, as Chief Gannon described, the officer that shot and killed Daunte Wright was intending to use her taser. This is clear from the audio where she says:

I’ll tase you! I’ll tase you!

Get clear! Get clear!

TASER! TASER! TASER!

BLEEP!!! (ALS: this was either Fuck, Damn, or Shit) I shot him!

I shot him!

You can hear this in the audio in the video above. And you can see she’s holding her service GLOCK and has brought it to bear on Wright, not her Taser! And that she drops her gun/puts it down as soon as she realizes she’s shot him, which, in the video, is between the “BLEEP!!! I shot him! and “I shot him” as Wright drives off as he’s bleeding out from the wound.

The Tasers, as you can briefly see when the one on the officer trying to cuff Wright comes into focus on the video, has a yellow grip. The color is to help law enforcement distinguish it from their service weapons, regardless of make, to prevent shootings like this from happening. You can see the taser on his left hip (weak side) between the 52 and 54 second mark of the video above. It is holstered for a right handed cross draw, so the butt of the grip is facing out from the front of his body. I have no idea where the female officer’s Taser was holstered or how it was set up for draw, but it is usually they holstered on the opposite side of the body from the service firearm to prevent this from happening.

This doesn’t justify the shooting, it just explains it.

There were three officers on site and this quickly escalated from him being cuffed to a couple of seconds of scuffle before she decides to escalate to using “less than lethal” force, which, because of negligence in confusing her GLOCK with her Taser, turned into lethal force.

Daunte Wright was pulled over for expired tags, which is a running problem in Minnesota because of pandemic related delays in processing renewals. Expired tags are a misdemeanor offense. When they ran him in the computer, they got a return that he had a warrant for failing to appear after being sent a summons for a court appearance on a different misdemeanor. Neither of these things would seem to necessitate any form of escalation. Wright is not heard threatening the cops. He’s not moving towards them when he pulls away from being cuffed after the female officer intervenes while one of the two male officers is trying to cuff him. I’m not even sure why she would escalate to the Taser.

I’m going to make a semi-informed guesstimate, however. I would put money on the fact that this officer has attended a continuing education class with Bill Lewinski* and the absolutely bullshit training from his Force Science Institute, which teaches law enforcement to immediately escalate to the highest level of force lest they be killed by any interaction with the citizenry. Lewinsky created his own course of study and “field” within psychology when he did his doctorate and Canadian courts won’t allow him to provide expert testimony anymore because he is a “self proclaimed authority” on law enforcement use of force. Lewinski’s “police psychology” and his expert witness testimony justify every police shooting on the basis that police cannot wait to employ force lest they be harmed or killed. And if she didn’t take one of Lewinski’s continuing education course, then she had one on “killology”, which is equally garbage. Or one of the other similar courses that have turned too many law enforcement officers into “shoot first and don’t answer questions later” responders.

I write this as someone who has taught hundreds of law enforcement officers as a former criminology professor, as well as conducted continuing education for Federal and state law enforcement on how to conduct Engagement to deescalate situations in order to be more effective. And as someone who is a member of the Nassau County, NY Detectives Association**. Until or unless law enforcement training – both the initial entry education and especially the continuing education – is revised to remove the bullshit junk science that justifies immediate escalations of force, this is going to continue.

I expect that the community response is going to escalate, especially because some idiot prevented most of the news media from attending the press conference, so the mayor, the city manager, and Chief Gannon were predominantly taking questions from community activists.

I’ve now seen far too many of these types of press conferences and whoever is in charge of crisis communications for these departments are terrible. Too many of these pressers are combative and/or uninformative. This one was both and did far more harm than good.

The bottom line is that Daunte Wright is dead. For, at best, a pair of misdemeanors. Even if he had been adjudicated guilty of both of those misdemeanors, neither of them carry a sentence of death. Daunte Wright is dead because a cop made four errors in a matter of seconds. The first was to escalate the arrest as Wright was being handcuffed. The second was to decide the escalation warranted applying her Taser. The third was to draw her service GLOCK when, apparently, she intended to draw her Taser. And the fourth was to then pull the trigger on the GLOCK even though a GLOCK’s grip and a Taser’s grip feel very different. Daunte Wright was extrajudicially killed under cover of law because one of the three responding officers to a potential misdemeanor traffic stop.

Two things need to happen now. The first thing, which is general and applies everywhere, is this has to stop. The second is that a thorough, independent investigation needs to take place to figure out why this officers made several operational and tactical errors in short order that resulted in her shooting and killing Wright. And the lessons learned from that independent investigation need to be applied so this doesn’t happen again.

I expect that Brooklyn Center, MN is going to be a powder keg until explanations are forthcoming.

Open thread!

* Lewinski’s work has been raised in regard to Officer Chauvin’s defense in his murder trial.

** During my year teaching criminology in New York, prior to leaving academia and going to work for and with the military, one of my students was the then Deputy Commissioner of the Nassau County Police Department. He took my graduate research design and methods and graduate statistical analysis classes. I provided a small amount of analytical support to him and his department after he’d completed my classes and my membership in the Detectives Association was his way of thanking me. The membership got me a lapel pin, which is the crest of the Detectives Association, a money clip that has the crest of the Detective Association, and a membership card. Interestingly, he encouraged me to leave academia. He said to me one day: “What the hell are you doing wasting your time doing this for? What you can do is needed and can be put to better use elsewhere.” Two months later I’d quit rather than fix student grades and three weeks after that when I was recruited to go to work for the Army I took that job. And that ultimately led me to you lovely people…

A Quick Word On What We Know About the Police Shooting of Daunte WrightPost + Comments (178)

Russian Mobilization, Ukraine, and What the Hell Is Going On?!?!?!

by Adam L Silverman|  April 8, 20219:32 pm| 58 Comments

This post is in: China, Foreign Affairs, Information Warfare, Israel, Military, Open Threads, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Silverman on Security, War

“Probe with bayonets. If You encounter mush, proceed; if you encounter steel, withdraw.” 

— Vladimir Lenin

Sorry for the delay, been a busy week, but I wanted to take a few moments and do the promised post on what is going on with Russia and Ukraine.

Reports have been trickling in from a variety of sources that Russia has been repositioning significant military assets near its western border with Ukraine. This has followed an increase over the past ten days or so of Russian Information and Psychological Operations directed at Ukraine, the US, NATO, and the EU.

While the Russian Ministry of Defense did announce military exercises along the border, these satellite images of the known Pogonovo training ground are worth pointing out amid heightened tensions between Russia and and Ukraine. https://t.co/73J1vLnSMs

— Christiaan Triebert (@trbrtc) April 8, 2021

Alongside the Iskander, which likely belongs to the 119 Missile Brigade, @JanesINTEL has identified an influx of Central Military District troops to Vorenezh:

‣ 74th and 35th Motorized Brigades
‣ 120th Artillery Brigade
‣ 6th Tank Regimenthttps://t.co/Nm0opK90pg

— Christiaan Triebert (@trbrtc) April 8, 2021

The official US position is that this is just repositioning for a military exercise:

A US official tells CNN that the US does not see the amassing of Russian forces as posturing for an offensive action, but that they are conducting training and exercises and intelligence has not indicated military orders for further action.https://t.co/JXNL0VuwP7 pic.twitter.com/uLXebN0YeP

— Rob Lee (@RALee85) April 8, 2021

This includes reports that Russia has mobilized all of its military assets everywhere.

This is actually a full mobilization of the Russian armed forces into combat readiness.

Everything from sleepy Siberian depots and air force bases to nuclear submarines and the tank divisions.#Russia https://t.co/ihO3Gxyh6m

— Petri Mäkelä (@pmakela1) April 6, 2021

And, of course, the Information Warfare and Psychological Operations are in full swing:

In Russian state TV, experts gladly discuss Russian nuclear strike in case of further escalation in Ukraine. “This will make Americans fear and we will be able to do what we want” – is the main message. pic.twitter.com/eEcbUg6U2B

— Sergej Sumlenny (@sumlenny) April 6, 2021

Yes, this is what they love to discuss. One friend of mine used to say “whoever Russia fights, it always imagines it fights the US troops”.

— Sergej Sumlenny (@sumlenny) April 6, 2021

Under Biden, games are over.

Instead of laughing about Trump’s embarrassing subservience to Putin, grim-faced experts on state TV anticipate harsh measures against the Kremlin by the Biden administration.

“We could end up living like we’re in Iran"https://t.co/kN4YZyQWY6

— Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) April 6, 2021

What I specifically think is going on with Russia vis a vis Ukraine is something similar to what we saw back in late Winter/early Spring of 2014 before Putin moved on eastern Ukraine and Crimea once the Olympics were over. Basic maskirovka principles of diversion. Russian media has been going 24/7 on and on about how Ukraine has mobilized additional assets and is preparing to take back eastern Ukraine and, perhaps, even Crimea by force. And that the US is going to move military assets into Ukraine, which is just hyperbolic fantasy for domestic Russian consumption.

The reporting also includes an explicit threat presented as real concern that this could become a tactical nuclear war, which ignores the fact that Ukraine doesn’t have nukes. But it is effective in the Information domain of reinforcing actual Russian military doctrine that, if the Russian military is unable to win a conventional fight, then Russia will use its nuclear weapons tactically to reverse conditions in the battle space. Putting out this type of information is itself part of Russia’s Information Operations/PSYOP doctrine for setting the battle space ahead of military operations. The purpose of this is to freeze the US and NATO from taking action because neither are willing to risk a nuclear strike by Russia or escalation to a nuclear exchange. I’m not really sure this information warfare is effective, but it is in line with Russia’s military doctrine of using Information warfare and PSYOP to set the battle space ahead of actual military operation at the same time that they are physically preparing to set the theater of operations.

At the same time, all of this also provides a convenient way for Putin to change the topic from the fact that Navalny appears to have contracted either COVID or TB from the other inmates on his cell block, that they’re torturing him using sleep deprivation, and that he’s now in the infirmary as a result of a combination of whatever respiratory infection/disease he’s contracted and the effects of his hunger strike.

Russia’s build up and increased Information warfare and Psychological Operations directed at Ukraine, the US, NATO, and the EU is also not happening in a vacuum. The Russians and the PRC are in fact quietly collaborating. We’ve been watching it in real time in Libya where the Russian backed Libyan general is being supported by not only Wagner mercenaries, but also Erik Prince’s Frontier Services Group, which is wholly owned by the PRC. The attempted coup in Jordan?* We already know one of Prince’s Israeli associates was involved. And Prince is the bridging node here between the PRC/Xi and MBS of Saudi and MBZ of the Emirates, who appear to have been behind the coup. So I have no doubt that there is, at least, informal coordination by Putin and Xi, as well as regional players like Muhammed bin Salman,  Muhammed bin Zayed, and Bibi because all of them suddenly are facing a very different strategic reality with the Biden administration than they did with Trump who didn’t actually give a damn about any of this stuff beyond being able to have these authoritarians say nice things about him while they took advantage of him.

One final point: this is basically the equivalent, by Putin and Xi at the geo-strategic level and Muhammed bin Salman and Muhammed bin Zayed and Bibi at the regional strategic level, of the bad guys increasing operations during a Relief in Place/Transfer of Authority (RIP/TOA) just as the outgoing units are almost out of the area of operations (AOR) and the incoming units are just fully taking control as the left seat/right seat ride comes to an end.

And in Putin’s case it conforms to Lenin’s statement: “Probe with bayonets. If You encounter mush, proceed; if you encounter steel, withdraw.”

Right now Putin, as well as XI, Bibi, Muhammed bin Salman, Muhammed bin Zayed, and everyone else is probing to see what Biden and his team will do. In Putin’s case it is entirely possible that he is high on his own misinformation and agitprop supply that Biden is some sort of addled, neurologically ill mental case that is being taken advantage of by Ron Klain, Kamala Harris, and Tony Blinken who are really running the US government. Regardless, all of these bad actors, even the ones like Saudi, the UAE, and Israel that are supposedly partners and clients, are probing. If they find steel, they’ll withdraw. If they find mush, they’ll proceed.

That said, I’d like to see us call Putin’s bluff. The US Army has recently stood back up V Corps. It should be temporarily relocated to Kyiv and it should be plussed up with the 1st Armored Division and the rapid response brigade combat team – the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team – should be brought from FT Bliss and Vicenza respectively to keep them company. Operational Detachments Alpha (ODAs) from the 10th Special Forces Group, Civil Affairs Teams Alpha (CAT-As), and theater strategic Psychological Operations Teams should be added as enablers from Special Operations Command Europe (SOCEUR). Let the conventional elements train with our Ukrainian, NATO, and EU partners. Have the 10th Group bubbas do some Foreign Internal Defense training, the CAT-As do some military support to government work, and the PSYOPers conduct some counter-Psychological Operations with their Ukrainian, NATO, and EU partners.

Open thread!

* It’s been a busy week. I’m nowhere near caught up, but hope to be by tomorrow noon. So I’ll hopefully get to the Jordan post I promised sometime this weekend.

Russian Mobilization, Ukraine, and What the Hell Is Going On?!?!?!Post + Comments (58)

Passover 2021: We Were Slaves In Egypt

by Adam L Silverman|  March 27, 202110:39 pm| 90 Comments

This post is in: Food, Food & Recipes, Immigration, Open Threads, Recipes, Religion, Silverman on Security

Passover 2021 has arrived. I can tell by the festive masks!

This year in quarantine.
Next year in Jerusalem.#UnleavenTheCurve#Passover2020 #Pesach #virtualseder #covid19 #passover #matzah #facemask pic.twitter.com/uFaza8BCQW

— Hannah Simpson חנה הייה-לב סימפסון (@hannsimp) April 8, 2020

 

(This is Ms. Hannah Simpson*. The Instagram with her original and initial post of the image is at this link.)

For those of you who celebrate Passover, as well as for those that don’t, like a lot of Jewish holidays it can be boiled down to: “(Insert name of oppressive ruler or nation here) tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat!”

The longer version can more accurately be distilled down to two key parts. The first is that the ancient Hebrews were enslaved by the Egyptians when a new dynasty came to power, eventually rose up, and, through a successful slave revolt that featured a lot of the hallmarks of what we today think of as irregular and asymmetric warfare, gained their freedom. The second is that the reality, that our religious forebears were enslaved simply for being who they were – a distinct community – has a relevance for all Jews in every generation in terms of both understanding the world and relating to it. While the Passover ritual, the Seder (Hebrew for order), focuses around why this night – the first night of Passover in Israel and the first two nights everywhere else – is different from all other nights, the lesson is that, in truth, this night isn’t all that special. That some three thousand years or so ago, depending on which dating schema one subscribes too, our forebears were enslaved. That we, their spiritual successors should consider ourselves to be in their place; hence the constant use of “we” throughout the Seder. And, as a result, we need to understand that the world of 2021 isn’t all that different from the Egypt that enslaved the ancient Hebrews as there are far too many who are still enslaved discriminated against, and/or subjugated for simply being a distinct community.

The lesson here is one of empathy leading to action. It is recognizing that the inequalities and inequities that our fellow Americans, regardless of faith or ethnicity or race experience, and that non-Americans face every day is exactly the same as what our forebears experienced in Egypt. The ongoing attempts by those who lost the Great Rebellion, now doing business as the Civil War, on the battlefield to win the post war peace by consolidating minoritarian, white Supremacist rule through reimposing and reinforcing the Jim Crow system first created in the 1870s to keep Black Americans functionally enslaved in a legally permissible manner given that slavery was and still is technically illegal and unconstitutional is one example.

The abuse of those non-Americans fleeing tyranny, oppression, and political, criminal, and/or domestic violence to reach the US is another. As was the case with the Hebrews led by Moses into the desert, no one grabs whatever they can carry, takes their children, and flees from danger through danger for shits and giggles. They do it because they have no choice. Because staying put is not a viable option. And, in the case of those fleeing to the United States, because they know if they can make it to the end of their journey, they’ll eventually reach the border and, if they’re seeking asylum, a US government facility flying the American flag. They know that if they can make it to the end of their journey, if they can survive fleeing from danger through danger, they’ll eventually see the American flag, like a pillar of smoke by day or a pillar of fire by night, and they’ll know that they’ve reached safety. Because they believe to the point of knowing that where that flag flies, there is hope and safety and the chance for something better. A modern promised land even if those of us living in it all too often take it for granted and we fail to live up to the ideals that inspire non-Americans to risk everything to join us here.

The intolerance, discrimination, and abuse of LGBTQ Americans, especially the recent shift of focus to discriminating and abusing Americans who are trans, is a third example. Since the political and judicial battle regarding gay marriage has been lost, the same bigots, or simply political and religious hucksters seeking to enrich and empower themselves through the use of a wedge issue, have decided that transgender Americans make a useful target. Exact same type of bigotry with brand new packaging and marketing to continue a grift that puts people lives at risk.

Passover teaches us, in the words of Faulkner, that the past isn’t dead; in fact it really isn’t past. But where Faulkner’s turn of phrase was meant to illuminate the benighted nature of the south that was the Confederacy, for Passover it has, or it should have, a different meaning. Specifically, that because our forebears were slaves then, which has to be understood as we were slaves then, that we cannot forget what it means to not be free, to fight for one’s freedom, and to make sure that we continue to help others do so until everyone is free.

And now, if you’ll indulge me, I will put on the emergency tiara, the new grill gloves (rated to 1,427F!), and the frilly apron so I can regale you with the culinary part of Passover 2021.

Tiara

I just got a new 22 inch Weber Master-Touch Kettle Grill. And I inaugurated it this afternoon by doing an indirect heat roasted boneless leg of lamb and roasted root vegetable medley of multi-color fingerling potatoes and carrots for my Mom and myself for a small, COVID-19 safe Passover meal. I did the reverse sear method. So I brought the lamb up to an internal temperature of 125, removed it from the indirect heat side of the kettle, wrapped it in silver foil, and let it rest for half an hour while my oven warmed up to 500F. Then I reverse seared it for 15 minutes until it was nice and crackling crisp on the outside, removed it, and sliced it. I had the indirect heat side of the grill at a consistent 278 to 283 degrees and the direct heat side around 375 or so. It took around 2 and a 1/2 hours from lighting the charcoal chimney to doing a 20 minute burn off to prepare the grill, to actually roasting the lamb and the vegetables, to resting the lamb, to reverse searing it, to slicing and serving it.

Here’s a picture of when I opened the kettle to put the potatoes and carrots on:

Passover 2021: We Were Slaves In Egypt

And here’s the finished product ready for serving:

Passover 2021: We Were Slaves In Egypt 1

It came out perfect. You could really taste the difference between doing it over coals versus in the oven. I’m sure I’ll be doing steak or chicken on it over the next couple of days, but the next big project for the kettle grill will be to do a hybrid brisket sometime in the next couple of weeks. Basically, this’ll be for my mom who doesn’t really like smoked foods other than pastrami and lox. So while I’ll set the kettle up for an indirect heat as if I was smoking something, the snake method of setting up the coals, I’m not going to add any wood chunks for smoking, just the all natural chunk wood charcoal. And I’m going to prep the brisket like I would for in the oven: trim the hard fat that won’t render, then apply kosher salt and black pepper in a dry brine/rub for 12 to 24 hours prior to cooking to form a pelicule. Then a light wet rub of mustard with a little tomato paste or ketchup and bed it down in a roasting pan on thinly sliced onions with more on top just before roasting time. This will go on the grill and I’ll use the indirect heat to do it low and slow. So not a Texas style smoked brisket, but sort of a hybrid of how I’d do it in the oven with doing it over hot coals. I’ll do a post to let everyone know how it turns out.

Open thread!

PS: Last night when I removed the lamb from the shrink-wrap so I could dry brine it, I managed to splash lamb’s blood all over my face and head. So I’m pretty hopeful that the Angel of Death will definitely be passing over tonight.

* Update 11:30 PM 4 APR 2021: Ms. Simpson reached out and contacted me, via the comments, which, of course got caught in the SPAM filter for a week and would’ve gone completely unnoticed if WaterGirl hadn’t been in there trying to recover a regular commenter’s comment that had been eaten out of there. She wanted to let me know that she was both the creator and the model for the image in the original post and, of course, to be properly acknowledged as such. I’ve updated this post with her tweet of the image and a link to the original image she posted at her Instagram and done a new post giving her explicit credit and apologizing for not attributing the original pic because I had no idea who it was.

Passover 2021: We Were Slaves In EgyptPost + Comments (90)

Not Everything Is Terrorism: Boulder, Colorado Mass Shooting Edition

by Adam L Silverman|  March 23, 20219:01 pm| 75 Comments

This post is in: America, Ammosexuals, Crazification Factor, Domestic Politics, Gun Issues, Gun nuts, gun safety, Open Threads, Politics, Silverman on Security

While it is early in regards to the investigation into yesterday’s mass shooting in Boulder, it is important to remember that not everything is terrorism. Even if it winds up terrorizing people. Terrorism in general and both domestic and what we call foreign terrorism (also doing business as just terrorism) have very specific definitions. And sometimes some acts technically fit the definitions, but would be better categorized as one of the forms of mass murder, such as serial or spree murders. Ted Kaczynski is probably the best example of this. Kaczynski’s terrorism campaign did have a political objective, however, the whole campaign and the motivations behind it were the result of Kaczynski’s delusions that arose from untreated mental illness. As such, Kaczynski’s behavior was far, far more similar to that of David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam Killer, than to someone like Eric Robert Rudolph. Like Berkowitz, Kaczynski’s beliefs and actions resulted from delusions that were part of their untreated mental illness. Rudolph had clear political and religious/ideological, doctrinal, and dogmatic objectives he wanted to achieve and the motivations to undertake his campaign is rooted in the racialized charismatic evangelicalism of the Christian Identity movement he was raised in.

The now identified shooter in Boulder is alleged by his family members to have been suffering from untreated mental illness. This included paranoid delusions that he was being both physically stalked and cyber stalked because of his Muslim faith. So far nothing reported has indicated any self radicalization into any form of religious or political extremism. Just that he was introverted, had a temper, was bullied in high school, seems to be suffering from paranoid delusions, and, as a result, that his family believes he is mentally ill.

From The Daily Beast:

The motive for the nation’s second major mass shooting in a week remains unknown, but a family member said he believes the alleged shooter—a former high-school wrestler who was born in Syria but raised in Colorado—is mentally ill.

Ali Aliwi Alissa, 34, told The Daily Beast in a phone interview that his brother was paranoid, adding that in high school he would talk about “being chased, someone is behind him, someone is looking for him.”

“When he was having lunch with my sister in a restaurant, he said, ‘People are in the parking lot, they are looking for me.’ She went out, and there was no one. We didn’t know what was going on in his head,” he said.

He said he was sure the shooting was “not at all a political statement, it’s mental illness.”

“The guy used to get bullied a lot in high school. He was like an outgoing kid, but after he went to high school and got bullied a lot, he started becoming anti-social,” the brother said.

In one Facebook post, the suspect appeared to express fears that someone was targeting his phone for Islamophobic reasons.

“Yeah if these racist islamophobic people would stop hacking my phone and let me have a normal life I probably could,” he posted in July 2019.

He made similar allegations months earlier, accusing his former high school of hacking his phone. He asked Facebook followers for information about laws against phone hacking, and said he suspected someone was starting rumors about him, which “set off” the alleged hacking.

On Facebook, his politics appeared mixed throughout several camps. He shared an article rebuking Donald Trump’s stance on immigration, but also posted about his own opposition to gay marriage and abortion.

A day after the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings in New Zealand, Alissa had shared a Facebook post from another user that read, “The Muslims at the #christchurch mosque were not the victims of a single shooter. They were the victims of the entire Islamophobia industry that vilified them.”

If – and it is early days in the investigation, so it is a big if – Alissa is in fact mentally ill and the shooting was as a result of his paranoid delusions, even if investigators do get an explanation out of him, it may not make any sense to anyone else. If Alissa is in fact mentally ill and he is put on an appropriate therapy regimen and the paranoid delusions go away, he may still not be able to provide a coherent motive for his actions even as the reality of what he did is able to finally sink in.

Mental illness is a weird thing when it comes to motivating violence. When I was a post-doc at UF one of my colleagues was beaten to death by her foster son who she was in the process of adopting. She’d helped to save him from the foster system and from a life of being largely abandoned by parents that couldn’t take care of him because of their own demons and problems. He loved her fiercely. And yet one day they got into an argument and something was said that triggered all the trauma that he’d endured from his birth parents, in the foster system, from schools and social services not set up to actually resolve these types of problems and he beat her to death with a baseball bat. Apparently he’d been writing about his anger for several days and had confided in his girlfriend, so this wasn’t completely spur of the moment. And he did realize what he did, panicked, tried to cover it up for several days by claiming she was out of town, and he is now in Florida’s maximum security prison where he’ll spend the rest of his life. However, I’m pretty sure that to this day, over fifteen years later, if you asked him what set him off that day or why he did it, he still cannot provided a coherent answer other than she made him angry.* The only real answer, as insufficient as it is,  is that on that day, for a brief, unfortunate moment all of the years of trauma he’d endured came into contact with something that Barb said to him and now two lives were destroyed.

While we wait for more information to come out, it is important to remember that sometimes there aren’t answers. That doesn’t excuse what Alissa did yesterday, nor does it make it right. But it is important to remember in our hyper-politicized, 24/7, chasing the headlines, controversy creates cash news media culture that not everything is terrorism. Sometimes it is just a tragedy. But there are a lot of subject matter experts – both real ones and self promoting charlatans – on social media, as well as a news media that needs controversial content to attract eyeballs across multiple platforms, that has a vested interest in driving the events of yesterday into very specific directions. Not everything is terrorism. Not everything has a nice, neat answer or resolution. That doesn’t mean there may not be a political component to yesterday’s events, such as the ability of someone whose family says has untreated mental illness to be able to easily purchase a firearm. Or the NRA’s, as well as other similar groups’, stupid fight to remove every last reasonable firearms regulation at every level of government aided and abetted by every Republican member of the House and the Senate. All of these people, from the talking heads on TV to “terrorism” experts on twitter to the GOP senators that decided to put on a show during a committee hearing today on gun violence all have a vested interest in this being something that is considered newsworthy. Domestic terrorism, radicalized Islamic terrorism, an excuse for those commie Democrats to grab everyone’s guns, etc. There are two real issues here: untreated mental illness and easy access to firearms by everyone in the US, including those who are mentally ill. That’s where the focus should be. Everything else, unless some startling revelation occurs as to motive, is a sideshow intended to raise people’s visibility – terrorism experts, anchors and pundits, politicians, and special interest groups – and then monetize that visibility.

Just one quick, final note: this tragedy was definitely compounded because Alissa had ready access to a rifle he had purchased on 16 March. In this case, based on the reporting in The Daily Beast, a Ruger AR-556, which is Ruger’s AR pattern rifle. If Alissa had, instead, purchased a different rifle, Ruger or otherwise, it might not have made much difference in the number of casualties. Using a bolt action or lever action rifle would have slowed things down a bit as the rifle would have had to be manually cycled after each shot. But many of these manually loading rifles still come with either detachable box magazines or with integral to the rifle tube magazines. Not every non AR or AK pattern rifle is a single shot rifle. Every single non AR pattern rifle that Ruger sells with one exception – all bolt action – have either an integral tube magazine or a box magazine allowing the rifle to be loaded with between 4 and 10 rounds with the factory magazines. The same is true for the majority of lever action rifles. Getting caught up in a discussion of AR rifles is a rabbit hole. The one definitely confirmed problem here – Alissa’s ability to get a rifle – and the one unconfirmed, but suspected one – that Alissa was suffering from paranoid delusions as a result of untreated mental illness – are the two immediate concerns. Especially in regard to each other provided his family’s speculation’s about his mental health are correct. The issue is not that he purchased an AR 556 rather than the Scout or the Precision or a lever action rifle. The issues are that both his family and some friends suspected he was having mental illness related problems – such as paranoid delusions – nothing was done about that and that he was also able to easily obtain a rifle. And that the American political system has decided that mental illness isn’t really a public health crisis and that the solution to each and every one of these mass murders by mass shootings, regardless of motivation, is to do nothing because doing anything is somehow un-American and unconstitutional, none of which is true.

Open thread!

* If you click through to that article, you’ll see that my description isn’t lining up 100% with the reporters. I knew Barb, she was a friend and a colleague. I knew her foster son, though not well. I’m also the person that went over and packed up her things for her parents, as a favor for the departmental administrative staff, so they could take what they wanted home with them after the crime scene people and the local cops released the apartment and the apartment complex could have the apartment prepared to for a new renter. You’ll notice in the reporting that her son could not articulate an actual coherent reason for why he did what he did when he did it other than “she was holding me back” and he was angry. In reality he was doing well in school, was a successful athlete, and had a lot of potential opportunities he never would have had had he not met Barb. But mental and emotional trauma is a hard thing. And it sometimes leads people to do terrible things. And this was one of those times.

Not Everything Is Terrorism: Boulder, Colorado Mass Shooting EditionPost + Comments (75)

Breaking: Mass Shooting At a Boulder, Colorado King Soopers

by Adam L Silverman|  March 22, 20216:44 pm| 180 Comments

This post is in: America, Ammosexuals, Crazification Factor, Gun Issues, Gun nuts, Silverman on Security

We will continue to tweet updates as we have them. If you live nearby please stay inside for now 2/2 #Bouldershooting

— Boulder Police Dept. (@boulderpolice) March 22, 2021

Here’s the YouTube live feed of KCEN 6’s coverage:

Law enforcement has taken away an individual in hand cuffs, but it is unclear if he is the suspect:

https://twitter.com/DanSnyderFOX25/status/1374112891419435020

Police in Boulder, CO escorting a man in handcuffs after an active shooter was reported at a King Soopers grocery store. pic.twitter.com/n3yZz5X093

— Kyla Galer (@kylagaler) March 22, 2021

There is a video bouncing around from an unidentified live streamer who actually caught some of the shooting on video. This includes several gun shots, several injured or dead people, and one exceedingly nonchalant old guy checking his cell phone and wearing his mask wrong…

I’ve yet to see anything official regarding the number of fatalities, I’ll update once a reliable and confirmable source provides credible and verified information.

Boulder police say situation is still active, ask people to stay away from King Soopers where apparent shooting happened this afternoon. No confirmation on casualties/arrests.

— KOA NewsRadio 850 AM & 94.1 FM (@KOAColorado) March 22, 2021

Here’s Governor Polis’s statement:

Like my fellow Coloradans, I am closely watching unfolding events at King Soopers in Boulder. My prayers are with our fellow Coloradans in this time of sadness and grief as we learn more about the extent of the tragedy.

— Governor Jared Polis (@GovofCO) March 22, 2021

Update at 6:50 PM EDT

Here’s reporting with footage from Reuters on the individual taken out in handcuffs:

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT – Police in Boulder, Colorado, reported an ‘active shooter’ at a King Soopers grocery store, and aerial footage broadcast live from the scene by local media showed one person being placed in an ambulance and a man in handcuffs https://t.co/9j5m64WvXz pic.twitter.com/wREnM43QsH

— Reuters (@Reuters) March 22, 2021

Update at 7:15 PM EDT (via TaMara):

Emergency notification just went out: Boulder police asking people near 17th and Grove to shelter in place while they respond to report of armed, dangerous individual. PD is investigating to determine if this is related to King Soopers shooting.

— Boulder Police Dept. (@boulderpolice) March 22, 2021

Open thread!

Breaking: Mass Shooting At a Boulder, Colorado King SoopersPost + Comments (180)

Contra A Faux Hillbilly – Fauxbilly? – the Liberal Arts Education Was Created To Train What We Now Call Military Officers

by Adam L Silverman|  March 19, 20218:54 pm| 181 Comments

This post is in: America, Crazification Factor, Domestic Politics, Glibertarianism, Military, Open Threads, Politics, Silverman on Security

The other night AL brought the musings of fake hillbilly JD Vance on education for the officer corps of America’s All Volunteer military (AVF for All Volunteer Force) to the blog’s attention. I’d already seen his “jenius” on display earlier in the day.

We should eliminate the university degree requirement from the officer corps. It’s dumb to make people get a BA before becoming officers anyway, and it may just make the military leadership less woke.

— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) March 13, 2021

Ordinarily I’d ignore Vance even as he’s receiving financial backing from Peter Thiel who seems to have a sweet tooth for Holocaust deniers, white supremacists, and neo-fascists and enjoys bankrolling them.

But in this case I just want to point out, as someone who has spent a lot of his career involved in professional military education, that the whole reason the Liberal Arts and the liberal arts education was created was to educate the young men who were destined to become the officer corps of their day. Take it away Professor DeLong (emphasis mine):

But originally the “liberal arts” had the most direct vocational objectives of all:

Wikipedia: The Liberal Arts: The liberal arts… are those subjects or skills that… were considered essential for a free person… participating in public debate, defending oneself in court, serving on juries, and most importantly, military service…. Grammar, rhetoric, and logic were the core liberal arts. During medieval times… these subjects (called the Trivium) were extended to include arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy…. Together the Trivium and Quadrivium constituted the seven liberal arts of the medieval university curriculum…

From which I deduce:

  • The original “liberal arts” make up a vocational program–an education suitable for some landlord scion who is going to be a player in civic governance.
  • Timothy Burke, Professor of History at Swarthmore, does not teach one of the seven “liberal arts”–and by calling what he teaches.

Ladies and gentlemen, please allow me to present JD Vance: fake hillbilly, funded by a neo-fascist, enlisted Marine Corps Public Affairs* veteran, and someone who apparently paid little to no attention to anything while attending THE Ohio State University and Yale Law School the producer, along with Harvard Law, of America’s worst elites and notables since the 1820s.

Open thread!

* Here is a simple pictorial explainer of Public Affairs.

Contra A Faux Hillbilly - Fauxbilly? - the Liberal Arts Education Was Created To Train What We Now Call Military Officers

Contra A Faux Hillbilly – Fauxbilly? – the Liberal Arts Education Was Created To Train What We Now Call Military OfficersPost + Comments (181)

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