Islamic Extremist Violence v. Right Wing Extremist Violence, and Our Government
Earlier this month, the Government Accounting Office released a report entitled Countering Violent Extremism”. Its a great example of how to outright lie using data. (I note that the, um, “analysis” was performed between October 2015 and April 2017, and bears the previous administration’s imprint. The current administration’s inanities lie in an orthogonal direction.)
The upshot of the report is:
GAO recommends that DHS and DOJ direct the CVE Task Force to (1) develop a cohesive strategy with measurable outcomes and (2) establish a process to assess the overall progress of CVE efforts. DHS and DOJ concurred with both recommendations and DHS described the CVE Task Force’s planned actions for implementation.
All well and good, once you get through the acronymese. But you cannot tackle something you don’t understand, or pretend not to understand. (Sun Tzu’s dictum about the need to know the enemy and know oneself comes to mind.) And this is how the authors of the piece understand violent extremists:
Of the 85 violent extremist incidents that resulted in death since September 12, 2001, far right wing violent extremist groups were responsible for 62 (73 percent) while radical Islamist violent extremists were responsible for 23 (27 percent). The total number of fatalities is about the same for far right wing violent extremists and radical Islamist violent extremists over the approximately 15-year period (106 and 119, respectively). However, 41 percent of the deaths attributable to radical Islamist violent extremists occurred in a single event—an attack at an Orlando, Florida night club in 2016 (see fig. 2). Details on the locations and dates of the attacks can be found in appendix II.
The usual narrative we’ve seen in the past decade and change in this country is that right wing extremists are more dangerous than Islamic extremists. But bad as the right wing crazies are, the narrative is getting a bit hard to sustain, what with the internet being so easily accessible. So the rear-guard action now seems to be to say that radical extremists at least aren’t any worst than the people we actually are allowed to think of as villains, and maybe better if you ignore that Mateen fellow.
But going to appendix II, where the data, such as it is, sits, is eye opening. Appendix II is basically a collection of sordid acts, described in short blurbs. Some are well-known, such as the aforementioned Mateen case: “Orlando Night Club shooting. Omar Mateen killed 49.” Some are oddly described. The John Allen Muhammad – Lee Boyd Malvo sniper attacks are broken up into 15 separate incidents, each with one dead victim. (This seems shy of the 17 deaths attributed to them in other sources, but that’s a quibble.)
But most of the data consists of onesies and twosies, of which there are many. Examples include: “Far rightist murdered a homeless man” which occurred on 1/19/2009 in Woodstock, IL. Or “Justin Nojan Sullivan, a convert to Islam, murdered his neighbor.” However, there are an awful lot of instances that are not quickly and easily found online and/or are hard to judge exactly how much ideology was involved. Examples include “White supremacist murdered his stepfather to gain “street cred”” and “Neo-Nazi killed sex-offender priest.” (More info on the latter here.)
But those also are quibbles. A bigger issue is that some obvious cases are not included. For example, the data set doesn’t include a single Islamic extremist killing in 2012. And yet, I remember this happening in 2012:
Gelareh Bagherzadeh and Coty Beavers were both shot to death in 2012 for their relationship with Nesreen Irsan, a young Muslim woman who left her home and faith to marry Coty, a Christian. Nesreen’s father, Ali Irsan, was upset with her decision and decided to punish her by killing her husband and the woman he blamed for encouraging Nesreen to convert to Christianity.
As of now the murder trial still doesn’t seem to have begun, but Ali Irsan and his family members seem to keep getting convicted of other offenses. Perhaps if and when Irsan does get convicted they’ll issue an amendment.
But it turns out that the omission of extremist Islamist violence is systematic, and in my opinion, deliberate. Here’s an entry that illustrates my problem with the data: “Prison gang white supremacists murdered another inmate for not objecting to having an African American cellmate.” A google search turns up more here.
Now, what this crime comes down to is the perpetrators’ anger at the fact that the victim was associating with someone outside their group. With a different cast of characters, the same crime committed for the same reason would be called an honor killing. Which is to say, something bearing a close resemblance to an honor killing falls into the range of activities that qualifies it for the list of extremist activities in the GAO’s paper, at least when it is performed by a violent far right extremist. But then it is reasonable to expect that something very much like an honor killing – say, an actual honor killing – should be included on the list if it is performed by an Islamic extremist as well. And that doesn’t seem to be the case.
As luck would have it, the Justice Department commissioned a study entitled Report on Exploratory Study into Honor Violence Measurement Methods in 2015. The report tells us:
The four types of honor violence discussed frequently are forced marriage, honor-based domestic violence, honor killing, and female genital mutilation.
The report goes on:
Using a method that applies U.S. demographic characteristics to another country’s honor violence statistics, researchers estimate that between 23 and 27 honor killings occur annually in the United States (Curtis et al., unpublished).
This extrapolation may not be very precise – the report cites another paper that looked at actual cases and concluded:
Murder by the family of origin is highest in Europe (72%) and lowest in North America (49%).
The report also indicates that while honor killings occur in a wide variety of religions, it states
In Europe, 96 percent of honor killings were committed by Muslims.
I think it would be more than fair to change the last word to “Islamic extremists.” It would also probably be fair to assume the 96 percent figure is more or less ballpark for the US.
Now, assuming the extrapolations given are squirrelly, let’s cut the numbers by a lot. Let’s assume that Islamic extremists commit 10 honor killings a year in the US, with the balance of the 23 to 27 going uncommitted or committed by another group, say, Amish fundamentalists or Quaker separatists. In that case, we would expect that over the 15 years in question, the total deaths to Islamic extremists in the US would more than double from 119 to (119 + 150) = 269. Additionally, the number of incidents would more than double from 23 to 173. In fact, you can leave out Mateen, Nidal Malik Hasan, the Beltway snipers, the Tsarnaev brothers, the San Bernardino killers, and every other case that is actually mentioned in the report, and the honor killings alone would swamp all the deaths inflicted by the right wing extremists.
From what I could tell, no attempts were made to include Islamic extremists killings that fell under the category of “honor killing.” I did a quick google search and found several murders in the US that fit the “honor killing” description. I didn’t find any in Appendix II of the GAO report. Its an easy enough exercise. Try it yourself. You can even compose a one sentence blurb to see how little effort it would have taken the GAO to do this right. I can only assume someone at the GAO really, really didn’t want it done the right way.
There are other problems with the GAO report, but this post is already long so I’ll close with what I really to understand. Does any of this excuse violent right wing extremists? Heck no. But what is with the attempts to make Islamic extremism look less dangerous?
Mike,
It’s the same all across Europe. Time after time they omit or downplay jihadist motivations in crimes. They think jihadists will be Liberal voters and so it gets covered up, lest they be expelled. Less liberal voters is a non starter, policy wise. Super sad how an ideology can sell out the the safety of it’s citizens for political advantage.
I guess we can put them in camps.
Run,
If we as a society refused to distinguish between violent extremist right wingers and, say, Republicans, then
a) we’d have a lot more far right wing terrorism a la Timothy McVeigh because resources would be wasted watching middle aged non-violent librarians in Topeka
b) society would fear the average Republican
The government does nobody (except the violent extremists) any favors by refusing to differentiate between the Muslim doctor down the street and the extremist who wants to subjugate everyone he considers to be an infidel. Or, as in this report, the guy who will happily kill his daughter because she went out on a date with a Christian.
In his comment, my reading is that Sammy specifically wrote “the jihadists” and not “the Muslims.” I think we should all be able to agree that “the jihadists” should all be locked up. But if you aren’t willing to accept that there is a difference between “the jihadists” and “the Muslims” you will have a very hard time stopping the former from committing violence.
Oh of course Mike and that is the way most US Citizens think. You are definitely right Mike. When people say Jihadists, they think of a Jew, a Mayflower descendant, a Cantonese, and never a Muslim. Quite the opposite, when you say Jihadist, the first thought coming to Herr Trump’s minions is Muslim as sold to the public by Mr. Trump. The fact of the matter today is we refuse to distinguish to the point we will close off immigration of Muslims. I am not the issue here or the one spreading the message.
Do not explain McVeigh to me as I live in the midst of them and miles from ye old KK headquarters in Michigan.
Mr. Kimel, the information and data you think should be included but isn’t included isn’t and wasn’t the responsibility of the authors of the GAO report (nor of the GAO independent of who the authors were) nor was the requirement of the GAO to define or redefine the terms or conditions of what constitutes violent extremism.
You are picking an issue with the GAO when the GAO is simply responding specifically to a congressional mandate for the GAO to give it’s assessment of the effectiveness & progress of other agencies in carrying out the duties they were tasked with carrying out related to violent extremism.
The determination of crimes deemed “violent extremism”, which isn’t specifically defined in detail at all in fact, is the responsibility of the federal law enforcement agencies contributing information to the U.S. Extremist Crime Database (ECDB)…..
a). Departments of Homeland Security (DHS)
b) Justice (DOJ) through an interagency task force,
c) Other key stakeholders.
These agencies are the ones that decide which crimes apply and which do not. Their criteria for such decisions are not publically provided. either in general or in any specific case.
As to the GAO’s report — it was congressionally mandated for the GAO (which is an arm of congress, not the Executive office) to:
“…review the implementation and organization of CVE efforts. This report addresses the extent to which (1) DHS, DOJ, and other key stakeholders tasked with CVE in the United States implemented the 2011 SIP and (2) the federal government has developed a strategy to implement CVE activities, and the CVE Task Force has developed a process for assessing overall progress.”
FYI, the CVE was established in 2011 by the U.S. government to develop a national strategy and a Strategic Implementation Plan (SIP) for countering violent extremism (CVE).
While you are certainly entitled to define your own criteria for what is or isn’t included and delivered to the U.S. Extremist Crime Data Base you are not entitled to define if for the U.S. gov’t
While you are also certainly entitled to your opinion of what the U.S. gov’t does or doesn’t do on behalf of the best interests of the public overall (and considering costs and priorities of tax revenue uses as well) you may then certainly describe what you think the gov’t should be doing or should have done in your opinion.
In fact I applaud anybody and everybody who wishes to do so to make their opinions known… as widely and frequently as they care to make them known and advocate my position on this frequently in social gatherings, community events, public meetings of city councils, etc.
However, when-ever one makes their opinion known to others they are implicitly also inviting others to make their opinions known as well.. whether agreeing or disagreeing.
In the utopian version of this interchange somebody becomes convinced that another’s opinion is correct or more correct than their own and thus modify their own opinion accordingly.
But the realistic version is that that nobody changes their opinion or even modifies it a tid-bit, so what is critical and important and of the greatest significance of all is that people provide their opinion so that others may be aware that perhaps not everybody they know or associate with or are engaged with at a meeting are of a similar opinion.
In the best case it provides both the opinion giver and those to whom the opinion is provided reason to think about differences of opinion, which may (emphasis on may) lead to a change or modification of opinion over time, under different circumstance, or further experiences.
With those factors in mind, in an ensuing response (or responses) I’ll provide my opinion in relation to yours in the subject matter of your posted content. I will do so because you implicitly invited me to do so.
I also implore all others who have read your subject post and/or your others of a similar vein of opinion to do the same. As I said above it is a utopian idealism to think that by providing ones opinion it can change or modify one’s own opinion, so that it not the reason I implore others to respond with their own opinions on the matter of your posted content.
Rather it is to make as many other opinions on the matter known as widely as possible. Such other opinions may be as short and cryptic as “concur” or “bs”…. what matters is making opinions widely known..
Mr. Kimel, this is Part 1 of my response and opinion of your posted content.
You stated:
“But you cannot tackle something you don’t understand, or pretend not to understand. ….And this is how the authors of the piece understand violent extremists:…”
…which you then followed by a [blockquote] excerpt from the report (pages 4-5). The [blockquote] listed quantifications of several of the types of violent extremist attacks, among them being the fact that 73% of all incidents were perpetrated by far right wing extremists and 23% by radical Islamist extremists.
Your characterization that the authors of the report don’t understand extremist violence or are purposefully pretending to not understand is a blatant and intentional outright lie on your part. You then added another outright lie to the former one by describing the information provided in the [blockquote] to be “the authors understanding of violent extremists”.
To put the facts in place, the author’s gave a summary statistic on the overall rates of violent extremism provided to them by the only accepted data base they are required to use. They separated them into two major types since those two types are the most prevalent in the data base (96%): Far Right Wing extremism and radical Islamist extremism. These in no manner by any standards of interpretation can be legitimately described as being the authors’ “understanding” unless you mean that “understanding” means using a data source.
But by your own statements preceding what you mean by “understanding” is that the author’s intentionally made effort to highlight a fact that perhaps you don’t think is as relevant or significant or important to highlight … e.g. right wing domestic home grown racist US citizens and anti gov’t groups or persons are responsible for violent extremist incidents at 3x the rate relative to other types of violent extremism… e.g. Islamist extremists.
When you describe the “authors’ understanding” as you did, you are specifically indicting the authors for describing the overall statistics in a biased if not a false manner. .. and that therefore they are “mis-understanding” the statistics or perhaps using the statistics in a manner that biases the report to give a false impression of reality.
While that may be your opinion, that’s not how you described the authors’ [blockquote] text…. You described it as “their understanding” rather than “your opinion” that the author’s were using the statistics to give a false and erroneous impression or bias. of course had you made your opinion explicit and forthright it would have made the value of your opinion equal to or less than that of used asswipe.
You could have simply stated “The GAO reported that …” to be an unbiased statement of the facts of what the GOA reported .
You can hide your lie by saying it was to be “inferred as your opinion”, but then you are not being forthright, but intentionally attempting to say the authors are biased, which is an outright lie.
If I may extend this a bit by saying that the GAO is an arm of the government, and thus by your opinion or lie in saying the authors are biased, your are actually saying the GAO is biased in this report, and thus the U.S. government is biased. By inference you’re actually saying you have reason to believe the gov’t isn’t being truthful about extremist crimes.
I’ll get around to Part II of my response to your post in my next response..
Mr. Kimel, this is Part 2 of my response to your Post.
You stated:
“But bad as the right wing crazies are, the narrative is getting a bit hard to sustain, what with the internet being so easily accessible. So the rear-guard action now seems to be to say that radical extremists at least aren’t any worst than the people we actually are allowed to think of as villains, and maybe better if you ignore that Mateen fellow.”
The “narrative” you refer to (your statement): “The narrative…. is that right wing extremists are more dangerous than Islamic extremists.”
I presume the “rear guard” you refer to are liberals? or people who aren’t racists? or people who aren’t xenophobes? or people who don’t necessarily think their christain god is the be-all end-all of the value of their life on earth? or Jews? or ACLU? or some institutituion or entity that is in your opinion trying to bias the facts to show that Islamist Extremists acts in the U.S. isn’t as big an issue or problem as our own home-grown right wing racists, xenophones, and christian religious extremists right wing extremists.
Maybe 3:1 more right wing extremism than Islamist extremism is just to be expected and normal, huh? After all it wasn’t very long ago that hanging a “n**ger” was perfectly normal in much of the south, supported by law enforcment who either participated in white robes or looked the other way. .. not to mention the “n**gers” who were prosecuted for not crossign to the other side fo the street when a white person was approaching … and then hung or was incarcerated in a state or local prison to work for the man until he died of exhaustion or beatings or thirst.
I mean if it was normal, accepted, and tolerated just a few generations ago (like since 1865 and for the first half the of twentieth century) then perhaps that’s still considered “almost acceptable” to those who aren’t in the “rear guard”. Maybe those are the ones you applaud as being our culture … inherited from white northern European christians, huh? I mean Salem’s religious extremists direct from Ye Old England were the good guys?
Or maybe you refer to the “rear guard” as being those that use objective facts, rational thought processes, and reality to draw rational conclusions?
It would be more forthright of you in making your opinion known and understood if you could describe precisely what your mean by referring to the “rear guard” as being those that now in your opinion “..seems to be to say that radical extremists at least aren’t any worst than the people we actually are allowed to think of as villains.”
What is clear in your statements though is that the “rear guard” is not a group of people or institutions you think are being as rational and objective as you think you are being… a group you dissapprove of in other words.
I’ll continue with Part 3 of my response to your post in my next response..
Mr. Kimel, this is Part 3 of my response to your Post
You cite several instances from the list if incidences (Appendix II) in the report which you characterize at “eye opening” though for what reason you consider it “eye-opening” is not disclosed to us. After spending two paragraphis selecting a few of these listed instances to to tell the reader about, you then summarize all of them as “quibbles”… nothing to get excited about..
I’m not sure why you would spend two full paragraphs and then summarize them as “quibbles” except that it servse as a lead-in to your main topic…”The bigger issue..”… the issue that isn’t a quibble I presume.
The “biggger issue” in your opinion is that the report omitted “some obvious cases” … meaning there are several obvious terrorist crimes that were not included…. perhaps because the “rear guard” chose to leave them out to bias the GAO report so that it would show nealy 3x more terrrorist crimes by the right wing extremeists than Islamist extremists… ie. intentional bias to give the public and congress a false picture of reality?
So your “some obvious cases” (plural) ;is then supported by ONE case which isn’t even an obvious case at all in fact.. it’s a case you recall that isn’t in the report, therefore “obvious to you” but not obvious to law enforcement since it wasn’t included in the cirmes incidents data base the GAO is required to use for this report. The incident you refer to occurred in 2012 … a year in which there are no Islamist Trerrorist Crimes listed in the report. Even if it was included though it wouldn’t change the statistic by any signficiant amount … 50% of years in which there was an islamist exxteremist crime instead of 44% (8 instead of 7 years out of 16).
But that doesnt’ really make the point you want to make though, so you decide inspite of the fact that if this single case were included it wouldn’t change the results of the report an iota, to highlight this case anyway. The highlight is that it was an honor killing .. Muslim father killing his daughters gril-friend and the daughter’s christain husband .. the girlfriend was killed because the father blamed her for influencing his daughter.
This was an act in your belief system of religious extremism, because you don’t happen to have been raised and taught by your religion that this is a matter of personal honor… and the U.S. laws don’t condone religious beliefs having foundations in law (ha, ha, ha) … because we don’t tolerate people killiing because of religious beliefs (well, at least not by civiliians…but we tolerated it by the State… religious foundation however.. eye-for-eye. just like the bible says)..
Be that as it may, it wasn’t included at the very least because it isn’t a crime until the father is convicted for it… and since there’s been no trial yet, he’s innocent until proven guilty… a litte factoid you seem to have forgotten. But it wasn’t included for another reason as well… because it’s not an extremist act as the gov’t is concerned with … it simply crime that is dealt with as that which is based solely on a personal reason rather than as a movement or intent to change the nature of our society by a group.
But even though I’m sure you know that a crime can’t be tallied until there’s a conviction, then why include this singular case you “recalled” from 4 years ago? Perhaps because it involved a Muslim and a religious belief? .. e.g. you former posts which have categorically found Muslims to be of a culture that isn’t compatable with the U.S. historic culture? So although inclusion or omission of this case has nothing material to do with ther GAO report of it’s statistical foundations or the recommendations made in the report, you chose to include it for incindiary propaganda purposes and to support your lie that the GAO authors were biased. Actually had they included this yet to be listed crime in the report then they would have actually been biased because they would have arbitrarily chosen to put an alleged crime into the report to bias the statistic to more Islamist incidents than there were in fact, and then not included all the other white racist extermist incidents that havne’t been prosecuted yet.
But even more than your bias and irrelevant but incindeary propaganda is what you chose to leave out, which exposes your own bias even more.
What you left out was the fact that not only was there no Islamic Terrorist crime in 2012 but there wasn’t one in 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2008, or 2010 either … in addition to there not being one in 2012. This is prominantly shown in the large bar chart on page 6 which shows how many incidents of far right wing extremists crimes and Islamist Extremists crimes by year.
Yet you chose to highlight one year in which you recalled a muslim honor murder which wasn’t included in the list of crimes in the data based used for the report… though you did, as an after thought say that this alleged crime hasn’t been prosecuted yet … hence couldn’t be in the data base of “crimes” committed. You intentionally didn’t say that the reason it isn’t’ included though is because honor killings aren’t classified as extremist acts with which the government is concerned.
In other words, from after Sept 2001 through 2016, in fewer than half those years was there an Islamist Terrorist incident (7of 16 years or 44% of years) which is to say NO (nada, zilch, zero) Radical Islamist Terrorist incidents reported. From the same chart there were a total of 23 Radical Islamist Terrorist acts — averaging 1.44 per year over the 16 year period, while over the same period of time there were 64 Far Right Wing Extremist incidents for an average of 4.0 per year. That’s a ratio of nearly 3:1 (2.8:1) or 3x as many incidents of extremist acts by right wing nuts as islamist nuts…. where “nuts” means dedicated to their cause and belief system to the level of carrying out acts which support those beliefs.
So why pick one year and one indident which doesn’t even count or make any difference in the report’s conclusions or statistical basis when there were 6x as many other years with no Islamist Terrorist crimes either? And just BTW, the GAO can’t amend the report when / if the father is convicted since the report is based on crimes in the data base between two specified points time, the end point being Dec 31, 2016. What you want is a new report requested by congress.
But this Islamist act which isn’t included because it’s not in the cime stats (no conviction = no crime until conviction) illustrates to you in irrational thought processes that there’s a “systematic omission” and “deliberate omission” of data which should be included… but apparenty the “rear guard” (whom ever that is) is the party that is systematically and intentiionally omitting such acts.
So you support this belief with another crime, which IS listed in the report as an illustration that there’s a systematic and deliberate omission by the “rear guard”. How does this make sense? Systematic omissions using a crime which wasn’t omitted to suport that belief? Only through some form of illogical thought process is this even remotely possible. It’s how people we refer to as “crazy” think… irrational thoughts and beliefs not withstanding reality.
The crime referred to is a white racist far right terrorist crime in which two white supremacists killed another white guy because the other white guy wouldn’t or didn’t complain that his room-mate (in prison) was a black dude. We usually and normally refer to this as a hate criime because it was motivated by racial hate. We could also refer to it as a gang crime … not conforming to the gang in charge edicts (either you do as we say or we’ll kill you). This isn’t an extordinary type crime… it’s pretty common in fact. The Cribs and Bloods and the Blues and Reds (in our area) do this pretty much routinely… it can happen in or outside of the prison system.
But the fact that we normally classify a crime by it’s motivation seems to be to Mr Kimel’s way of thinking the wrong way to classify a crime. His preference is to classify it as follows (if you can follow hjis logic):
A) Change the cast of characters in the crime.. apparently in this case change three white guys two males and a female
B) Change the motivation — in this case change a racially motivated hate crime to a religiously based “honor killing.”
C) Describe the hate crime as an honor killinng instead.
Why? Because according to Mr. Kimel’s twisted thought processes a white supremacists who kills a white guy for not complaining about having a black cell-mate is a matter of the white supremacists’s honor being violated. What honor is that? I imagine that Mr. Kimel see’s this as being the white supremacist’s power in a gang of white supremacists being refused to he honored by not doing as the power gang member deems appropriate under the circumstances.
Now it’s possible in this twisted illogic that honor is a matter of one’s power status being refused to be acknowledged. That would make the father who kills a daughter or her husband or non-accepted boy-friend (or girlfriend for that matter) have the same motivation for killign as the white supremacist .. both have had their power status refused to be acknwledged which justifies the killing of somebody to restore their power status (aka honor)..
Now as a matter of reality, we allow the cuckholded husband to kill the guy screwing his wife (Texas law) … it’s a matter or honor .. or is it actually a matter of the cuckholded husband’s power being refused to be acknowledged by the wife (his property) or by the guy doing him dishonor by not fearing him enough? Hmmmm. And then there’s the “stand your ground” defense which is purely a matter of honor … which is to say defending your honor by standing up to somebody who doesn’t acknowledge it by refusing to do as you say.
So Mr Kimels’ motivattion for calling a hate crime to be little or no different than an honor killing has as it’s purpose and intent to include all kinds of religious and cultureal beliefs which result in a crime being committed by those motivations to be included in the Islamic Extremist crimes stattisitics… but if that were the case then we’ed also have to classify all other relgious and culturally baed crime motifves as honor killings too… which would of course include far more white christians than any other religous or cultureal group in the U.S.
Mr. Kimel says this in so many words, though he omits to memtion that the sme standard would have to be applied to the white christians committing crimes in this nation:
What Mr. Kimel says is:
” Which is to say, something bearing a close resemblance to an honor killing falls into the range of activities that qualifies it for the list of extremist activities in the GAO’s paper, at least when it is performed by a violent far right extremist.”
In other words, my interpretation of Mr. Kimel’s illogic, a hate crime is a close resemblance to a religiously based honor killing, thus classifying it as an extremist crime when perfomed by a white supremacists racist right wing extremist..
Then he says:
“But then it is reasonable to expect that something very much like an honor killing – say, an actual honor killing – should be included on the list if it is performed by an Islamic extremist as well. And that doesn’t seem to be the case.”
Huh????
First of all honor killings in the U.S. are all crimes… except in Texas for cuckholded husbands and in “stand your ground” law states… where killing soimebody is a considered honorable enough to prevent being convicted of murder.
I refer Mr. Kimel to the very first page of the report which gives the current bast understanding of violent extremism:..
“Violent extremism—generally defined as supporting or committing violent acts to achieve political, ideological, religious, or social goals—has been perpetrated and promoted by a broad range of groups in the United States for decades. Such groups include white supremacists, anti-government groups, and groups with extreme views on abortion, animal rights, the environment, and federal ownership of public lands; and radical Islamist entities, such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), among others.”
Religious honor killings aren’t classified as violent extremism…. simply because they are not in support of or motivated by achieving a political, ideological, religious, or social goal, just as the cuckholded husband in Texas who kills the wife’s boy-toy isn’t motivated by achieving one of these goals or similar ones. Or the guy in the bar who kills another guy for flirting with his wife, or because another guy looked at him cross-eyed… showed disrespect.
Mr. Kimel is trying to equate honor killings to racially or religiously motivated hate crimes crimes because in Mr. Kimel’s view honor killings are normally associated with personal religious moral codes among the Musliim religious communmities and thus if they were classified as violent extremism along with hate crimes, then there would be a greater proportion of Islamic extermist crimes added to the statistics and thus reduce the relative proportion of white racists / neo-nazi / anti-gov’t motifvated crimes in the statistical counts.
The crimes for which the DHS, and Justice Department and congress are concerned though are those acts of violtent extremism which are designed to over-thrown and change the established order of things …. anti-semitism to rid the nation or globe of Jews or at least their interaction with everybody else; racists crimes to provide a naiton and system of justice which benefits the white race at the detrement to any other race. The motivations of those with these belief systems is to carry out in some small part at least of these objectives by violent acts (thus termed extremists because their motives are extreme)..
It is not the intent of those who kill in the name of their honor to change the established order of things or to disrupt society or create havoc in general. You can call these personal “honor” acts to be expressions of individual freedoms as well… just that they are very often acts which aren’t tolerated by the law, and thus many particular forms of personal freedoms are forbidden in the U.S. When one attempts to or espouses a personal freedom which then restricts the personal freedoms of everybody else (e.g. not in that tribe or group or class or religious belief, etc) thren it is no longer a personal freedom being sought, but a class, or group or religious freedom that has a negative benefit on soime other group or class or religious belief system. Mr. Kimel’s llogic would equating personal expression with group or class or religious expression which expression specifically removes the rights of other groups or class or religions.
What Mr. Kimel is in fact trying to do is to re-classfiy some specific types of personally jusrified crimes to be crimes of extremeists simply because Mr. Kimel doesn’t like the statistic of reality that 3x the number of terrorist extremist crimes are conducted by right wing extremists than by Islamist extremists.. He blames the “rear guard” for keeping the definitions of extremism in the context of what governments are concerned with to satisfy his personal belief system simply because he believes his personal belief sytem is also best for everybody else in the nation as well. I’m reminded of the national socialist’s leaders in the 1930’s in Germany. I’m reminded of the present day neo-nazi’s and KKK and other white suppremacists … Sesssions comes to mind in fact, as does Trump. I’m reminded of the closet racists and anti-LGBT marriage religious believers that want to “make America great again”. by selective racist and cultural identies, including the christian zealots who would have the rest of use comport ourselves as they decide is alloweable.
I’ll continue with Part 4 of my response to Mr. Kimel’s Post in my next response..
And just btw, Mr. Kimel, don’t forget that I’m responding because you implied an invitation to others to provide their opinions on the topic of your post.. and by that act your intent and purpose is to hear other’s opinions since you publically proclaimed your opinions and beliefs.
I am therefore not arguing with you, but rather just providing my opinions on what you wrote as your opinions.
Less can sometimes be more.
Run,
Gresham’s law of lemons would kick into into overdrive if the government tells you aren’t even allowed to speculate on the difference between a good used car and a bad one. If most honor killings are committed by people who claim they are acting in the name of Islam, and we refuse to label honor killings as the act of Islamic extremists, we are in effect labeling this as “Muslim behavior.”
Mr. Tooth,
You are welcome to post a wall of text as you always do. I understand that it is your process of confusing the issue.
In this instance, though, I actually did invite your comment by noting a Justice dep’t report said this:
I wanted to see if you would comment on it, since you have said that fgm and bacha bazi are part of cultures and who are we to judge, much less avoid importing?
Mike:
So it is your stance to lump Muslims into believing in the practice of honor killings. You can’t do this as it is a generalization of Muslims and in the believe of Islam.
Have fun with Longtooth . . . a man of few words.
Run,
Not my stance. This post is a long complaint that honor killings are not extremist behavior. And if you don’t consider it to be extremist when people engage in violent acts because they perceive it is in defense of an ideology, then what is it? If it isn’t extremist then it is ordinary. Hence, as I noted, they should have called honor killings extremist behavior.
Left out a word…
This post is s long complaint that honor killings are not considered extremist behavior.
I think they should be considered just that.
Extremist is not every Muslim in the world which you appear to imply. How many American women are killed by a current or former romantic partner? One study says one every 16 hours.
“Its a great example of how to outright lie using data.”
Oh, the irony..
Yep, honor killings should be considered extremist behavior, cause y’know, non muslim fathers never, ever would do such a thing.
Oh wait, they just would not call it honor killings, so they don’t count.
Run, I find the problem with Kimel’s post to be too few words in fact which is what he does to allow him to imply or draw conclusions with no foundations in fact.. purely in his beliefs but without basis.
All I’m doing is being as explicit as I can in responding to Mr. Kimel’s opinions that are purely subjective but posted with “selective data” to make his conclusions appear to have foundation.
From my analysis of his current Post (thus far) he
1) doesn’t trust gov’t administration by non-conservative leadership because he thinks they bias the facts to favor a liberal point of view.. e.g. in this case the GAO report’s authors, which have nothing to do with the facts they were mandated to express their opinion about. .
2) thinks Islamic cultures (or those not his own), including religions not his own or the one’s he prefers are relics with evil purposes or “bad” outcomes, where “bad means not in his personal interests and in support of his belief system.
3) doesn’t find U.S. cultural practices and behaviors are worse than extremist Islamic behaviors in the U.S. because he thinks law enforcement in the U.S. doesn’t properly account for what he considers to be most important in how to account for those illegal behaviors.
Reading between the lines and from his other posts he wants to change U.S. gov’t laws and systems to support his own belief system — and don’t we all want that? … but he wishes that those who are in direct opposition to his personal belief system can be banished to a Gulag or otherwise suppressed to hold no sway in their gov’t. .. or perhaps more precisely stated that he thinks gov’t is comprised of or should e comprised of only those he defines and deems have the correct values..
Even if he doesn’t realize it yet he actually espouses eugenics as the solution to the problems he thinks exist… and if he won’t acknowledge this directly (because he want’s to sound “legitimate”) then selective traits, cultural heritage, intelligence quotients, and belief systems are how the U.S. should be managing it’s population…. both internal growth and by immigration practices. He hasn’t decided yet, however, what should be done about those he deems to be of inferiorities in these selective conditions who are already U.S. citizens. I’m waiting to hear eventually how he proposes to deal with this. Thus far it seems that he wants to change laws to obtain behaviors he deems acceptable and correct, and incarcerate those who don’t comply. It’s the same utopian idealisms promoted by the national socialists pure Aryan society. No different.
LT:
Your words are good; but, it requires a 500 yard stare to sight-in on a few choice words to target. There must be a way for you to be more concise and brief.
Draw two equal radius circles. Label one Mr. Kimel, the other Longtooth.
Now adjust these circles so that their radii overlap by perhaps 1% or even 2%. That’s where I stand in relation to Mr. Kimel’s’ beliefs and positions.
Oh, and for some relevance to political systems, put Mr. Kimel’s circle on the right and Longtooths on the left.
Next elongate Mr. Kimel’s circle along the horizontal such that the bulk of the area comprising the area encompassed by Mr. Kimel’s region is a virtual bubble at about 5 diameters of the original circle from the former center of that circle.. Do the same to the region labeled Longtooth in the opposite direction.
This will give you a diagrammatic approximation of the difference between where Mr. Kimel stands and where I stand on the subject matter of Mr. Kimel’s composite set of posts.
Correction: Longtooth’s elongated region on the left should be about 2.5 diameters from it’s original center .. not 5 diameters.. in other words Longtooth’s political and social belief system is about half the distance from the center to the left as Mr. Kimel’s is to the right.
Run,
I would disagree with that reading.
EMichael,
Sure, and not all murders are ideological. The point here is that they were trying to measure acts that were committed for an ideological reason. A guy who comes home drunk and kills his wife because “she made him do it” is just a piece of crap. A guy who comes home and kills his daughter because she’s dating someone from a different religion is more than a piece of a crap, he’s also an extremist.
Longtooth,
I will respond to this:
I have pointed out a number of times that my political stance correlates very, very closely with the stated position of California Democrats in the early to mid 1990s.
No Mr.Kimel, you are lying outright again.
They were NOT “… trying to measure acts that were committed for an ideological reason.” That is not interpretable or subject to “opinion:.
The GAO was tasked with measuring incidence of crimes that law enforcement deemed to be extremist crimes — which the gov’t is concerned with in the context of having an adverse effect on our society by changing it to become one which is in concert with their ideologically extreme beliefs of what society should be.
There are many types of extreme crimes .. we have many good examples of them — Columbine and similar events for example. These were not crimes committed by extremists seeking to change society to match their own ideologies… so the crimes are extreme ut the perpetrators are not “extremists” as Dept of Homeland Security and the Justice Department define them for purposes of measuring the rate or level at which they are occurring and by which type of extremists..
You are intentionally using the word “extreme” to intentionally confuse two different things…. accepting the gov’ts definition in terms of “extremists” in the context of that term by gov’t and then adding your own definition of “extremist” to include personal acts having nothing to do with “extermists” in the gov’t’s context.
Any crime which you consider to be “extreme” means a crime that you consider is “abnormal”.
That’s not what “Extremists” mean in terms of the concerns gov’t has with “extremists” and with which the GAO was tasked by congress to report upon… .such as KKK, other white supremacists, anti-abortion extremists, Islamic terrorist acts, neo-nazis (subset of white supremacists and religious extremists). You know this because you read the GAO report (even citing some excerpts from it in your Post). That report stated at the very outset:
To: “Congressional Requesters:
Violent extremism—generally defined as supporting or committing violent acts to achieve political, ideological, religious, or social goals—has been perpetrated and promoted by a broad range of groups in the United States for decades. Such groups include white supremacists, anti-government groups, and groups with extreme views on abortion, animal rights, the environment, and federal ownership of public lands; and radical Islamist entities, such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), among others”
If you were an honest person you would admit that you are intentionally misleading by conflating the word “extreme” to mean two entirely different things. Indeed, if you were an honest person you would have written your post in an entirely different fashion to say the least rather than for example beginning your post with an outright and intentional lie. To wit:
“But you cannot tackle something you don’t understand, or pretend not to understand {referring to the GAO] (lie #1)
“And this is how the authors of the piece [referring to the GAO] understand violent extremists”. [referring to the summary statistic in the data the GAO was tasked with evaluating by congress] (lie #2):
The lie is that you intentionally told readers in the 1st lie that the GAO doesn’t understand and even subverts understanding by “pretending” to not understand what they were tasked with doing by congress.
The lie you told readers in the 2nd lie is that the GAO makes provides its understanding by adjusting or modifying or emphasizing some statistic of the data provided to them to evaluate that is not true or truthful or significant or by some other method of giving congress a misleading picture of assessment.
Liars intentionally seek to advance their own interests at the direct expense of others by telling others things that make them believe something is true or false when in fact it isn’t, or by omitting significant and relevant information to the same ends..
You’re a blatant liar by definition. Don’t take this as a personal assault on your character .. it’s just the definition of what you are by what you have written relative to the content of the report you lied about..
Mr. Kimel, one of your responses to Run (May 1, 8:53 a.m.) you stated:
“Gresham’s law of lemons would kick into into overdrive if the government tells you aren’t even allowed to speculate on the difference between a good used car and a bad one. If most honor killings are committed by people who claim they are acting in the name of Islam, and we refuse to label honor killings as the act of Islamic extremists, we are in effect labeling this as “Muslim behavior.”
When and why did Greshams law of lemons come into the discussion? Run made no inference to the fact that lemons (vehicles goods) would become highly prevalent if congress decreed people couldn’t question that reliability of goods sold to them under pretense of perfectly fine when the seller or mfg’er knows it is not or that t it is very likely to be significantly less fine than it was told to be.
You then follow this new anecdote about lemon laws restricting sellers and mfg’ers from intentionally selling damaged goods to unsuspecting customers with a statement about Islamic honor killings.
By my best ability to see or infer any relationship between lemon laws and Islamic honor killings I surmise you mean that if there were no laws which punished those who commit honor killings, then honor killings in the U.S. would increase in quantities and frequencies. But since the U.S. already has laws against murder (and which are vehemently enforced), then what do lemon laws have to do with anything? or especially honor killings.? A rational logic of the relationship escapes me entirely, since we have laws against doing all kinds of things.. burglary, assault, fraud, etc. Are lemon laws of any particular significance in relation to honor killings?
Leaving that aside, let me focus then on your statement regards Islamic honor killings to see if I have propely deduced or understand the intent of your statement.
Your statement is a hypothetical.. as defined by the predicate “If”
a) IF most honor killings are due to Islamic religious beliefs
b) IF law enforcement labels honor killings as honor killings
c) Then law enforcement labels them as Muslim behavior.
I fail to see the logic in your statement. If a) and b) are true then c) cannot be true, since a) and b) are both hypothetical pre-requisite givens. I can change “law enforcement ” to “we” and there’s still no logic.
So let me go back and see if there’s a logic by changing some things.
a) IF most honor killings are due to Islamic religious beliefs.
b) IF law enforcement does not label them as honor killings
c) Then law enforcement labels them as Muslim behavior.
I still can’t find any logic in the statement. If a) and b) are true then what makes c) true since b) is a “NOT x” statement, but c) is a statement of “y” where “NOT x” does not equal “y” by any predicate given condition.
Let me try to find the logic again by making more changes.
a) IF most honor killings are due to Islamic religious beliefs.
b) IF honor killings can also be labeled Islamic Extremism.
c) IF law enforcement labels honor killings as honor killings.
d) Then law enforcement labels them as Muslim behavior.
Nope, I still can’t find the logic in your statement.
Maybe I’ll get it right if I keep trying though.
a) IF most honor killings are due to Islamic religious beliefs.
b) IF honor killings are defined to be a sub-set of Islamic Extremism.
c) IF law enforcement does not label honor killings by using the super-set Islamic Extremism as one form of Islamic extremism.
d) Then law enforcement labels them as Muslim behavior.
Logic still fails. d) has no predicate relationship to a), b), or c) . Even if Islamic behavior is given the condition Islamic = Muslim it still doesn’t work. It doesn’t work simply because “NOT x” does not egual “y” where “Not x” = Not labeled x and “y” = labeled y.
Not let me add a few more factors to the illogic above. The condition c) that if honor killings are a subset of Islamic Extremism requires that other forms of Islamic Extremism be differentiated from honor killings by those who have Islamic religious beliefs. If it is not differentiated then all acts of Islamic Extremism have the same motives at honor killings.
So since motive and intent is the basis for deciding a specific crime in anglo and U.S common law, therefore by law enforcement agents, then honor killing must be predicated to have the same motive as all other forms of Islamic Extremism. That predicate isn’t included in Mr. Kimel’s prerequisite conditions however.
If it were a predicate condition then Mr. Kimel would have to know & also show that the motives of all criminal acts by Islamists have the same motive for the committed criminal acts.
Now perhaps Mr. Kimel believes that all criminal acts by all people who believe in the Islamist religion have the same motive — e.g. to follow the rules laid out by the religious leaders. But then if that is true then all criminal acts by all Christians must also have the same motive .. e.g. to follow the rules laid out either by the biblical sages in new and old testaments of the bible.
Logic dictates that if either statement is false then both statements are false (or one statement is true so must be the other) since the only distinction is in the name given the different religious rules being followed.
Simple observation and experience of humans since forever shows quite completely and without equivocation or uncertainties that motives for crimes are rarely, much less predominantly, based on ones religious beliefs.
Indeed in the case of honor killings this has been going on since polytheism long before any of the monotheist religions were even a twinkle in anybody’s eye Whenever a husband in modern societies have murdered their wife or their wife’s lover, the motive is never assessed to be due to a god’s or religious belief. The fact that monotheist religions usurped prior cultural norms in their own rules is simply because those prior cultural norms could not be rejected and still obtain converts to the new monotheist religions. The famous line of the Ten Commandments “thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife” was actually “don’t fuck around with another mans chattel” (because it creates emotionally based retribution often resulting in death.. not a good thing, presumably, to grow the size of the religion).
The extension of another mans chattel includes his daughters since there were and remain economic consequences if and when the daughter gets pregnant before she is officially betrothed which until very recently in western cultures required the father’s permission at least (if not the extended family’s elders as well). Enforcing that condition was by punishment of the daughter (and if possible the perpetrator who’s intent was intercourse)… which translates to punishment by death since it had to somehow overcome the natural human instinct to get laid beginning with adolescents.
In short while more recently western religion renounced such types of punishment, the Islamic fundamentalists have not necessarily renounced this form which is termed “honor killings” .. a daughter’s or wife’s promiscuity iindicates the head of the household or it’s male members are not in sufficient control of their “chattel” and are therefore in the final analysis at risk of supporting a child not wanted or not their own as the case may be. These are ancient pre-history human behaviors, developed for sound economic reasons at the time.
Western religions carry these same behaviors forward in time in different and now modified forms which are not necessarily counted as being unjustified in laws derived and modified from those religious laws and those modified and derived form pre-historic human behaviors.
Fortunately the advent of condoms with more reliability and since then with contraceptive pills the economic issue of pregnancy’s unwanted or of another mans child has helped to reduce the clear awareness of being pregnant due to promiscuity of females and thus “saved face” for the males. That is not however universal yet so Christians now deem those punishments including those we call honor killings to be a function of religious beliefs in a non-Christian prophet and their teachings.— when it is actually not that at all. It may be carried forward by those teachings or by interpretations of them — not necessarily any different than christian teachings interpretations that black people are on earth to be slaves to whites for example, or that homosexuals are an abomination of god’s will and law, punishable by imprisonment (at least, and death in some jurisdictions) until recently under laws by secular nations that simply passed down religious beliefs in laws.
Didn’t we just have a case a year of so ago about a law that made it legal for LGBT couples to marry and have equal rights as anybody else and which one of our state governments deemed wasn’t valid for their jurisdiction. Didn’t we just have a case a few years ago where the State Judge defied the order of Federal law that the Ten Commandments couldn’t be displayed and placed on government property? Aren’t we still fighting against a supposed religious rule that says women can’t abort a fetus?
So Mr Kimel, you’ are simply describing one religion which is not your own or to your liking as being one in which people who believe in that religion should not be allowed to be in the U.S. even though some practices by some who believe in that religion are illegal in the U.S. when it isn’t even that religion’s universal interpretation of their religion.
By Mr. Kimel’s illogic I predict he will now say I favor honor killings.
Mr. Tooth,
You have several times provided strong support for FGM and bacha bazi, saying these are cultural behaviors and who are we to judge.
As to this:
Term ideology shows up numerous times in the report I cite. Oe of the many times was this (I don’t have time to cite them all):
So they are not trying to measure acts committed for an ideological reason according to you, but measuring acts that were motivated by ideologies and beliefs according to the report.
So a muslim father who commits a murder tries to invoke it as an honor killing which makes him an extremist driven by his religion as opposed to some ah who is trying to avoid punishment just like the “she made me do it” ah.
I guess that makes sense in the same way as your attack on islam because of female mutilation. You find something horrid and then say islam is the cause.
“Considering these numbers, the fact that this was the first arrest is perhaps even more surprising—or perhaps not. As the news began to circulate, it seemed that many were focusing not on the ghastly procedure, but on Nagarwala’s identity as a Muslim. Potentially lost in the periphery were details and actual discussion of the continued prominence of FGM, which is still performed in 30 disparate countries, as documented by the World Health Organization. Instead of lighting a fuse behind the indisputable need to bolster women’s rights and access to proper medical care, the hysteria around Islam’s role is ratcheting up as the story becomes a magnet for Islamophobes looking to buttress their case of why the religion is irreconcilable with American life and values…..
The problem with these criticisms is that female genital mutilation is not a fundamentally Islamic practice. A closer look at maps and numbers debunks these circulating claims: The ancient, barbaric practice originated in pre-Islamic Africa and has endured irrespective of the prevalent religion of the area. Today, it is primarily a cultural problem in central Africa, with Muslim-majority countries such as Egypt and Somalia on the list alongside Christian-majority ones such as Ethiopia and Eritrea. Though much lower in comparison to many African nations, the practice is also seen in Iraq and Yemen.
It is uncommon in some of the largest Muslim countries such as India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh (Bohra communities being the exception) and in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, Jordan, Oman). Further, there is no religious sanction for the procedure found in the Quran. In 2006, the grand sheikh of the deeply venerated Al-Azhar University and other Islamic scholars ruled that female genital mutilation is antithetical to Islam’s teachings. As Kevin Drum of Mother Jones concluded, “The only way to represent [female genital mutilation] as a uniquely Islamic problem is to imply it with a wink and a nudge but without actually producing any evidence.” And yet Nagarwala’s case seems likely to become a tool of the right’s pursuit of a fictional Muslim enemy within that spawns more misguided policies.”
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2017/05/politicization_of_female_genital_mutilation_makes_it_harder_to_treat.html
Just to reiterate that the GAO was not trying evaluate or measure acts committed for ideological reaaons:
The GAO was tasked with measuring incidence of crimes that law enforcement deemed to be extremist crimes — which the gov’t is concerned with in the context of having an adverse effect on our society by changing it to become one which is in concert with their ideologically extreme beliefs of what society should be.
CRIMES LAW ENFORCEMENT deemed EXTREMIST CRIRMES.
This needs to be made very clear. The GAO said:
“Congressional Requesters:
Violent extremism—generally defined as supporting or committing violent acts to achieve political, ideological, religious, or social goals—has been perpetrated and promoted by a broad range of groups in the United States for decades. Such groups include white supremacists, anti-government groups, and groups with extreme views on abortion, animal rights, the environment, and federal ownership of public lands; and radical Islamist entities, such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), among others”
From The Department of Homland Security on Countering Violent Extremism:
“The term “countering violent extremism,” or CVE, refers to proactive actions to counter efforts by extremists to recruit, radicalize, and mobilize followers to violence. Fundamentally, CVE actions intend to address the conditions and reduce the factors that most likely contribute to recruitment and radicalization by violent extremists.”:
https://www.dhs.gov/cve/what-is-cve
The GAO said specifically what they were measuring:
“Given the broad scope of activities associated with CVE and the importance of effective programs to address domestic threats, you asked us to review the implementation and organization of CVE efforts. This report addresses the extent to which
(1) DHS, DOJ, and other key stakeholders tasked with CVE in the United States implemented the 2011 SIP and
(2) the federal government has developed a strategy to implement CVE activities, and the CVE Task Force has developed a process for assessing overall progress.
In the GAO report a “Note 2″ addresses the following:
” 2The U.S. ECDB is maintained by the University of Maryland National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START). The ECDB is a database of the attacks committed by far rightists, radical Islamists and animal and environmental rights extremists in the United States since 1990…..
….START defines far right extremism as that which is motivated by a variety of far right ideologies and beliefs, generally favoring social hierarchy and seeking an idealized future favoring a particular group. Far right extremist groups include white supremacists and antigovernment militias, among others. START defines far left extremists as including those with extreme views on animal rights and the environment.”
What you intentionally left out of your quote on what START defines as far right extremism was designed with intent to deceive.. by lying The complete sentence which you intentionally only quoted a part of is
::
” START defines far right extremism as that which is MOTIVATED BY A VARIETY of FAR RIGHT IDEOLOGIES and BELIEFS,
GENERALLY FAVVORING SOCIAL HIERARCHY and SEEKING an IDEALIZED FUTURE FAVORING A PARTICULAR GROUP.
The next sentence elaborated on that:
“FAR RIGHT EXTREMIST GROUPS INCLUDE WHITE SUPREMACISTS and ANTIGOVERNMENT MILITIAS , AMONG OTHERS.”
START is an acronym for:
STUDY OF TERRORISM AND RESPONSES TO TERROISM.
There is no inference or implication by the term START or it’s stated.
purpose to include all ideological beliefs or acts due to those beliefs.
In case anybody wants to read the GAO report to understand that Mr. Kimel is lying outright I offer the link here (Mr. Kimel also offers the link at the start of his Post). https://www.gao.gov/assets/690/683984.pdf
More on START and what is does; It is focused on terrorism and terrorists.
“National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) is a research and education center …focused on the scientific study of the causes and consequences of terrorism in the United States and around the world.[1] It maintains the Global Terrorism Database, which includes over 125,000 terrorist attacks which it describes as the “most comprehensive unclassified data base on terrorist events in the world.”[
The data in START’s Data Base is on Terrorism which COMPRISED of TERRORIST ATTACKS as well as a knowledge data base which holds TERRORIST ORGANIZATION PROFILES.
“START offers a number of datasets related to terrorism. The most important of these is the Global Terrorism Database, a database of over 113,000 terrorist attacks from 1970 till 2015, excluding the year 1993 (as of July 2016). START also hosts the MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base, now known as the Terrorist Organization Profiles, but does not actively maintain or take responsibility for the data.”
Reference to the above:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Consortium_for_the_Study_of_Terrorism_and_Responses_to_Terrorism
The GAO report was tasked with using that Data Base which is refereed to as the “U.S. Extremist Crime Database (ECDB)”.
From “About START” on their website to make it perfectly clear what the GAO was measuring in their report.
The START data basis is used for
“conducting original investigations into fundamental questions about terrorism, including:
•What is the nature of terrorism in the world today? How has terrorist activity evolved over time? How does terrorism vary across geographies? And what do these trends indicate about likely future terrorism?
•Under what conditions does an individual or a group turn to terrorism to pursue its goals? What is the nature of the radicalization process?
•How does terrorism end? What are the processes of deradicalization and disengagement from terrorism for groups and individuals?
•What actions can governments take to counter the threat of terrorism?
•What impact does terrorism and the threat of terrorism have on communities, and how can societies enhance their resilience to minimize the potential impacts of future attacks?
http://www.start.umd.edu/about/about-start
So Mr. Kimel lies outright and intentionally, then repeats his lies willfully and prominently by responses which he lifts highly selectively from partial sentences in the GAO report..
i just want to make it extremely clear by using the source information easily found by google, that Mr. Kimel has lied repeatedly and intentionally throughout his entire Post.
Mr. Kimel stated in his post at the very top of it in fact:
“Earlier this month, the Government Accounting Office released a report entitled Countering Violent Extremism”. Its a great example of how to outright lie using data. (I note that the, um, “analysis” was performed between October 2015 and April 2017, and bears the previous administration’s imprint.”
Interpretation of his statement is that he doesn’t trust the GAO which is an arm of Congress which is one branch of our Government. He also says the GAO report is an “imprint of” the prior Executive branch of gov’t.
He then adds to this later in his post:
“So the rear-guard action now seems to be to say that radical extremists at least aren’t any worst than the people we actually are allowed to think of as villains, and maybe better if you ignore that Mateen fellow.”
Who are the “rear guard” he refers to? I asked him this directly in one of my responses.. I even emphasized to him in that post that understanding what he referred to as “rear guard” action was critical to understanding Mr. Kimel’s understanding of the repot. However Mr. Kimel chose not to address my question to him to define who / what he meant by a group that conducts the ‘rear guard” action.
None-the-less, by direct interpretation of his statement is that he’s referring to a group in government or the federal government in general who are intent on modifying what radical extremism means or doesn’t mean.
This means he doesn’t trust the gov’t> At least not this gov’t or at least not some governments or at least not some branch of gov’t. Specifically he’s accusing somebody or some group or some part of gov’t of changing and adjusting and biasing the report to mislead the congress (to whom the report was addressed and by whom the report was mandated) and/or the public.
I suggested perhaps that ‘rear guard” mean liberals, among manyh other possibilities I could come up with to define who was acting as the “rear guard” action. No response from Mr. Kimel.
But then Mr. Kimel said May 1, 9:36 p.m.) that:
“…. my political stance correlates very, very closely with the stated position of California Democrats in the early to mid 1990s.”
Now for a matter of fact, during that period CA was governed by two right wing republicans George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson.
From 1992 through mid 1990’s the CA Senate held onto a small Democratic majority…..6 seats 1992- 1994, 2 seats from 1994 – 1996.
The CA House held a 7 seat Democratic majority in 1990-1992 , an 8 seat majority 1992 – 1994, and a 2 seat majority 1994 – 1996.
With a republican executive administration the Senate and House democratic majorities were hamstrung and were able only to keep the republican administration from going any further right than they did.
This was not known in CA (and I’ve been a resident since forever almost) as a Democratic success period and was for the most part the most right wing CA gov’t we’d had since Reagan.
Pete Wilson ws Governor from 1991 to 1999 so I presume it is the Wilson administration Democrattic Senate and House he says his own politics is correleated.
However Wilson proposed and won proposition 187 in 1994, which was CA’s anti-immigration law.(called the “Save our State” law). The only districts that opposed the law were the Democratic strongholds in Northern CA bay area counties….. it was a major Democratic defeat. 64% of Democratic voters opposed it.
Wilson championed the 3 strikes “tough on crime” law 1994) which also passed during his He raised the University of California college tuition by 40%.
So this was not known in CA as a Democratically run period in our history. It is therefore not at all clear what Mr. Kimel means by his politics “correlates” with Ca Democrats in the early to mid 1990’s.
Does it mean he’s a liberal on the left or social conservative but fiscal expansionist or the reverse?
It’s impossible to know what “correlates” with CA democrats in the early to mid 1990’s means. In other words it doesn’t mean anything relative to my statement that his post indicates that
He “doesn’t trust gov’t administration by non-conservative leadership because he thinks they bias the facts to favor a liberal point of view.”
Ca demiocrats are far more in control today than under a conservative republican with a relatively small democratic Senate and House majority in the early to mid-1990.s.
Why didn’t Mr. Kimel say his politics correlates with the current CA democrats if he means to imply that he’s a liberal politically (though none of his posts align with democratic party or liberal ideologies).
But he didn’t refute my accusation that his statements in this post indicate that he doesn’t trust liberal administrations or the GAO arm of Congress. He said he answered, but he didn’t in fact at all.
Tooth,
I’m shocked you can write like that (quantity and quality) without it being in ALL CAPS.
Mr. Kimel, I’d have just used bold type with italics or just underlines if those options had been available on AB’s responses. Plain text is all I have at my disposal.
Mr. Kimel, but you knew that already (referring to my immediately prior response to you).