This shooting by a police officer doesn’t fit the narrative
Another fatal shooting by a police officer, of a civilian who doesn’t seem to have been doing anything wrong.
But this one has a twist that defies the expectations of the usual activists, although they are creative enough to try to turn it around to their advantage:
Whenever a police officer shoots a civilian under questionable circumstances, one question looms large: How can our moral, ethical, and intellectual betters frame the narrative to advance liberal agenda items? When a white cop shoots a black person, of course that’s racism. When a black cop shoots a black person, then that’s institutionalized racism. But what if it’s a black Muslim cop shooting a white person?
That’s what happened in Minnesota on Saturday night, when Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor shot an Australian woman named Justine Damond behind her home after she called 911 to report a possible assault nearby. A lot of things about the story don’t add up: Damond has in her pajamas and didn’t have a weapon, the police say there’s no footage from the patrol cruiser’s dashcam or the body cameras that Noor and his partner were wearing, and Noor has had several complaints filed against him since joining the force in 2015…
When a Hispanic police officer named Jeronimo Yanez shot Minneapolis resident Philando Castile last year (which I found indefensible), it was easy to fold that into the ongoing Black Lives Matter narrative. Yanez isn’t white, but close enough. But this one is a bit more tricky. This one requires a bit more finesse.
How is the left dealing with it? Why, they’re talking about how afraid the local Muslim community (particularly the Somalian community, because the officer was Somalian) is of a backlash of hatred against Somalians.
All these shootings need to be investigated. If there was wrongdoing on the part of the officer, that officer should be punished. If not, let’s find that out as well. But is it too much to ask that these incidents not always be spun and spun and spun to the left’s advantage? Yes, apparently it is too much to ask.
The dude reached right across his partner and shot the gal while she was speaking to his fellow officer.
It’s Murder One.
“A lot of things about the story don’t add up”
One local report stated she was talking to the cop on the driver’s side in a well lighted alley in her pajamas when Noor suddenly pulled his gun and shot her to death through the driver’s side window. She was unarmed with no weapon found. In fact, she was a liberal who supported gun control.
No way can this be ruled as justifiable homicide.
This sounds like murder by a Muslim, most likely outraged at her appearance. A single, lone woman in pajamas out at night is utterly forbidden in Islam.
no twist- by the numbers more white people are killed by cops. Yes, blacks are ‘disproportionately’ represented, but with the raw numbers its ”interesting” that I and prob most people couldnt name a white person killed by cops. And i doubt its bec they’ve all been brandishing weapons- im sure theres a sympathetic victim somewhere
No death penalty in MN, so after he’s imprisoned he’ll spend his time comfortably watching TV and bringing other criminals to Islam. Where upon release, they too can act as ‘lone wolves’.
Hi everyone! Speaking as a licensed representative of The Left, I’d like to remind everyone that I have previously and strenuously argued that we face a serious problem of unaccountable police violence in this country, and our relationship to police–public servants and government employees–is the sort of thing where we should enjoy an apolitical consensus. I have repeatedly and strenuously argued that racism is something of a red herring. But if the cop faces consequences for murdering an unarmed white woman, in a way that cops don’t face when they murder unarmed black people, then it’s not unreasonable for black people to conclude their lives don’t matter to a system that prioritizes the rights of white victims of police violence–and privileges the rights of cops to make mistakes–over the rights of black people. A separate, but intersecting, issue.
But I sure hope the cops face severe consequences, both because it’s nearly impossible to imagine how this could have been justified, and because I keep hoping that each person’s unnecessary, tragic death produces SOME good in the form of a popular reconsideration of the role of police in a free society.
I believe it’s Jon Gabriel at Ricochet that has down a very good breakdown of the blame assignment for every possible victim/offender.
And Geoffrey, as an aside, your comment brings up a really interesting question.
If the cop murdered the lady because he was a Muslim and was programmed by his religion to murder ladies in their pajamas, then wouldn’t we expect considerably more Muslims-murdering-pajama-ladies?
I mean. I’ve struggled with this for a while. There’s are quite a few Muslims in this country, and many more around the world. The vast majority of them don’t murder anyone, much less ladies in pajamas. The vast majority of murders are caused by non-Muslims. If Muslims were programmed by their religion to kill kill kill, why don’t we see actual evidence? I mean real numbers. And while there is a great deal of violence by Muslims in the world, how can we consider Islam a causal mechanism if, again, the correlation is so absurdly low?
I mean. The vast majority of murders are committed by white men. But the vast majority of white men do not commit murder. It would be absurd to blame white men as a class or attribute murder to white maleness. It just doesn’t pass basic reasoning tests.
Pity them po’ Somalis, brought in by our all-caring State Dept from refugee camps in N. Kenya, taught how to use a flush toilet which they used instead to wash their precious muslim feet in, and they squatted in the kitchen of the apartments for which we paid, to defecate into the sink.
Now, 25 years later they are producing home-grown jihadis and are victims of OPPRESSION when one of theirs murders a peaceful liberal woman.
We need to put out some rat poison, but we won’t. We do not do that sort of thing. We wait for them to get better though they never have. Genital mutilation, anyone? It’s what they do!
Frog said:
“We need to put out some rat poison”
So, like, murder? Actual murder of people because one person who shares one characteristic of those people did something evil? Just looking for clarification. I mean, come on! Have confidence in your convictions. If you think murder of an ethnic group is the right answer, don’t mask it in euphemisms, say it loud and proud!
Correct this is one weird story, cop shoots a lady talking through an open window right across the body of his partner through the door several times. The only explanation I can come up with is the cop with two years experience is not a rookie but he is not well trained. I don’t see forethought or malice, just dumbass stupid.
For some goofy reason he had his gun out of the holster and his finger on the trigger and I think it was an accidental discharge followed by a couple more because his adrenaline kicked in and his brain went into neutral.
I am thinking the shooter wanted to be a hero and he was pumped up to have the chance to shoot a bad guy sexual aggressor which was what the call was about. The idiot had no business pulling his gun in the car and fingering it but that’s what he did.
I am an old guy who shoots a lot, two or three times each month. I have my CHL in Texas and I am a certified NRA range safety officer and a total believer in developing safe gun habits. The finger does not go near the trigger until the gun is point at the target, what ever it is, and the intention is to put a bullet through the target or person.
I am guessing the charge will be negligent homicide or manslaughter and because the cop should have known better he should be found guilty and do some time. There was recently a case in Tulsa OK where a half assed civilian deputy pulled his gun and killed a person and he ended up being found guilty.
I will wait for more info before guessing what happened.
Somebody,
You need to visit the DOJ and educate your bias. The majority of ‘gun murders’ are not committed by whites. Take away homicides committed by blacks and we have a per capita homicide rate lower than that of our neighbors to the north.
Obviously, a vast majority of our black citizens are not murderers. But per capita blacks have a monopoly on violent crime. As far as islam is concerned, if you are female or homosexual you might want to wise up on that subject. (And no, I am not saying a majority of muslims are savages.)
Hey Parker,
You’re right and I’m wrong! Black Americans are disproportionately responsible for murders, per the most recent data I saw, which were from 2013.
But that doesn’t invalidate my point! Even if a majority of murders is committed by black people, being back doesn’t offer a causal mechanism for murder. Similarly, the vast majority of murders are committed by men of any race. Per the DOJ in 2011, men represented 90.5% of murders in the US. That’s a lot! But being male doesn’t offer a causal mechanism for murder, since the vast majority of men don’t murder. Anecdotally, I’m a man, and I’d hope that no one would believe me a murderer-in-waiting because of my sex.
It’s a problem of correlation. The vast majority of: black people, men, Muslims are not murderers. Therefore, we can conclude that: being black, or a man, or Muslim is not a causal mechanism for murder. This seems very simple to me! It is borne out by simple statistics and reasoning.
And further:
“And no, I am not saying a majority of muslims are savages”
That is very good! But two people above you argued somewhat differently. Geoffrey argued that Islam is a causal mechanism for murder–not just that there’s a correlation, but that the religion compels its adherents to commit murders, when that simply isn’t borne out by the facts. And Frog euphemistically called for murdering Somalis. My comments are generally directed at them, and not to you.
Certainly there are places in which Islam is used to justify horrific violence and repression against women, gays, and a host of other people. This is bad! But there are places in which this doesn’t happen at all. (There are also places where there is violence against gays, women, and other people where there is no Islam.)
I have been to Muslim countries and people shot at me, and I have been to Muslim countries and people welcomed me into their homes with enormous generosity and kindness that belied their poverty. The common thread is “humanity in all its messy complexity” and not “Islam.”
Somebody,
In the Qur’an, declared by Muhammad to be his words transcribed verbatim… there are over 100 commands by Allah to Muslims to subdue every non-Muslim and then, according to their resistance… either convert, enslave or kill every infidel.
A WWII Nazi might never have killed another but his allegiance to the Nazi party supported that monstrousness.
So too with all adult Muslims. Non-violent Muslims are at best, in profound denial of Islam’s inherent nature. They do little to nothing to oppose jihad and are thus complicit in it. They do nothing because they know that the devout fundamentalist jihadists hold the theological high ground. When they speak out it is to deplore the stereotyping and non-existent persecution. I.E. they play the victim while they condone the slaughter.
Worldwide, there have been over 31,211 Islamic terrorist attacks since 9/11.
During the 2017 Ramadan, their ‘holiest’ month, 1,627 people were murdered by Muslims around the world. There were also 1,824 injuries.
As for pajama ladies slain by Muslims. When was the last time you saw a stranger and woman out at night in her pajamas? I never have and I’d bet that’s true of most people.
In 2012 a poll by the public-opinion research and media consulting company Wenzel Strategies revealed that,
“40 percent of Muslims in America believe they should not be judged by U.S. law and the Constitution, but by Shariah standards”.
“46 percent — said they believe those Americans who offer criticism or parodies of Islam should face criminal charges”
“Asked whether U.S. citizens who are Christians have the right to evangelize Muslims to consider other faiths, just 30 percent agreed Christians have such a right. Another 42 percent said they do not have such a right, while 28 percent said they were unsure on the question.”
“32 percent — believe Shariah should be the supreme law of the land in the United States”
“One in eight respondents said they think those Americans who criticize or parody Islam should face the death penalty, while another nine percent said they were unsure on the question”
Somebody,
Just like you, I can only speak for myself.
Personal info… our daughter is married to a black man. He is a fine fellow and a great father to 2 of our grandchildren. When they met in college in Chicago and became involved during their sophomore year she brought him to Iowa for Thanksgiving. The whole family quickly came to realize he was a sincere, responsible young man. When they graduated he came up to me and humbly asked for her hand in marriage. I replied that he was her only boyfriend I ever liked and yes, please marry my daughter.
Islam… there is a violent, barbaric root in Islam. That said, we live outside Cedar Rapids which is the home of the oldest continuous mosque in the USA. I know several muslim families, one of which lives in our town of 3,000 and owns a tasty ME restaurant. Good people, but they are afraid of the darkside of Islam and are afraid of those who take the koran literally. Islam is per the Koran, the haditha, etc incompatible with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Until Islam undergoes a reformation, it will be antithetical to Western Civilization. WC is not perfect, but it strives to be.
I am not usually this ‘wordy’. So I will stop committing.
@ Somebody: “Why, they’re talking about how afraid the local Muslim community (particularly the Somalian community, because the officer was Somalian) is of a backlash of hatred against Somalians.”
Let me guess, you believe this wholeheartedly. Where’s Chris Crocker when you need him? Leave muh Muslims alone!
Geoffrey,
Not that but it matters, but I’ll preface this by saying that I’ve spent my academic and professional life studying the Middle East, Islam, political violence, and the ways they intersect. I’m well traveled in the Muslim world and I’ve literally been shot at by terrorists in the Middle East; I know what terrorism is like on a personal, visceral level.
So! Islam contains many violent verses. I don’t think this has any bearing on the behavior of Muslims today! I think this because religions aren’t computer programs and people aren’t computers. On the contrary, even religious texts that seems crystal clear are open to enormous interpretion, and most people seem to interpret their religious texts in ways that fit with the world they’d like to see, and not the other way around. For example, the Christian bible as been used to justify both chattel slavery and abolition. And it’s the same text!
To assert that there’s one true interpretation of Islam, and that you have privileged knowledge of it, and that other interpretations of Islam are false, is, of course, the same claim made by ISIS. ISIS is, of course, mostly being fought by other Muslims.
I strongly suspect that modern terrorism is primarily a function of the failing political order of the modern Middle East–decaying, repressive states hated by their own people–and is contingent on modern circumstances. This is a MUCH bigger conversation, but I’ll suggest that the absence of terrorism in the Middle East for, well, most of its history points to a contingent cause and not something like Islam that’s been around for a lot longer. (The first terrorism in the Middle East was, of course, secular nationalist Palestinian terrorism that was almost entirely replaced by Islamist terrorism following the failure of Arab nationalism in 1967.)
Parker,
I don’t think history repeats itself, but I do think it echos. And I think Islam IS undergoing a reformation of sorts. And I think, unfortunately, that reformation is represented by groups like Al Qaida–that is, by the groups that claim to represent the true, original, pure version of the religion, freed from centuries of corrupting baggage. In the same way that the Christian reformation was a process that was incredibly violent, with lots of mini dramas and tragedies playing out over centuries, in which both reformers and counter-reformers included incredibly violent religious extremists, I think Islam’s equivalent reformation is an incredibly violent process with lots of extremism that will take a long time, with no guarantee of a similar outcome.
(Anyone curious about the insanity of the Christian Reformation should read up on the extremist Calvinist rebellion in Muenster and then tell me there’s no parallel to what’s going on with ISIS now, especially when you read about how the Catholics tortured the leaders to death.)
GRA,
I haven’t followed that part at all. I certainly hope no one commits violence against innocent people in retaliation for the actions of someone tangentially connected to those innocent people. In the same way that I am profoundly appalled by violence against cops because some cops are violent, I’d be appalled by any violence against Somalis because one Somali did something wrong. (Again, I’ll note that Frog above euphemistically called for murdering innocent people because of their nation of origin, which is just as pathetically vile as calling for violence against cops because of their profession.)
On the contrary, I think the vastly more important issue is figuring out the relationship between the police–who are government employees–and the public in a free society. If it takes the murder of a pretty white lady to force us to confront the problem of police violence, then a) that’s a tragedy and b) it sucks that we needed yet another tragedy to force us to have that conversation and c) you couldn’t blame black people for being at least a little bit suspicious that all those unarmed Blake people weren’t enough to spark the conversation.
Oh, and Geoffrey, Parker:
If you want to see what Islam looks like in practice, Vice News did a series of documentaries on life in Raqqa under ISIS. It’s a test case: Sunni Muslims living in a conservative, poor part of a Muslim majority country under the rule of a group claiming to have the one interpretation of Islam, implementing Sharia.
And it looks like a nightmare. Not just to me, but in the eyes of the people imprisoned and facing torture or death by ISIS for things like having alcohol in their houses. These Muslims had their chance and still they tried to live their lives the way they wanted to. You can see the hatred and fear.
This suggests to me that: the people in Raqqa saw ISIS as the tyrants they are, not as true Muslims. That Muslims can believe that their religion is compatible with things ISIS would forbid. That maybe their understanding of the word “sharia” is different from ISIS’ understanding, which seems to be the only version of the word that has gotten any attention in this country.
Or, Iraq–a country with democratic elections, that is doing the majority of the fighting against ISIS, is a country that enshrines Sharia into its constitution. It’s almost as if it’s possible to view oneself as a good Muslim who lives by sharia and still participates in electoral democracy. It’s almost as if the word “sharia” means different things to different people, and a survey that asks about attitudes towards sharia, that doesn’t ask what people mean by the word, doesn’t tell you that much.
Look, I’m an atheist. I don’t have a dog in this fight. I think all of your religions are equally fascinating and silly, with some sublime bits and some terrible bits. (My favorite part of the Bible is when God sends bears to eat children.) I just think your critiques should be honest, and while I suspect yours are heart-felt, I think they’re also based on bad premises that aren’t borne out by the simplest exploration of the actual world.
“I’ve spent my academic and professional life studying the Middle East, Islam, political violence, and the ways they intersect.”
Ah, the logical fallacy known as the appeal to authority.
Bernard Lewis is considered by most people to be the foremost historian of Islam in the world. After 9/11 he advised Pres. Bush. I’ll give you one guess as to where Bush got the idea that Islam is a religion of peace?
“So! Islam contains many violent verses. I don’t think this has any bearing on the behavior of Muslims today!”
That statement after having it pointed out that there have been 31,211 Islamic terrorist attacks since 9/11 is prima facie evidence of willful blindness.
Then add 1,627 people murdered by Muslims around the world during Ramadan, their ‘holiest’ month…
NO people aren’t computers but their culture programs most people into their basic attitudes and beliefs.
“even religious texts that seems crystal clear are open to enormous interpretation”
“Since the end of the seventh century CE, when its verses were collected into a single, authoritative canon, the Quran has remained fixed in Arabic, the language in which it was originally revealed.”
No Muslim can argue with the assertion that to have any claim to validity, any ‘alternative’ interpretation of Islam’s strictures must never overreach the fundamentals laid down in the Quran and the Sunnah. Which means ‘interpretations’ can only be superficial and never substantive.
The Christian Bible makes no claim to be God’s direct testimony. Muhammad repeatedly and consistently made that claim and, as fallible mankind is incapable of correcting infallible Allah, not even one comma in the Qur’an can be revised.
“To assert that there’s one true interpretation of Islam, and that you have privileged knowledge of it, and that other interpretations of Islam are false, is, of course, the same claim made by ISIS.”
It is not I who claim to have privileged knowledge of Islam but Islam itself. I just take their dogma at its word, instead of making excuses for it.
In 2007, when confronted with the phrase “moderate Islam”, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan famously responded: “These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. There is only Islam”
————————————————–
“I strongly suspect that modern terrorism is primarily a function of the failing political order of the modern Middle East—decaying, repressive states hated by their own people—and is contingent on modern circumstances.”
A confused mix of the partially correct and the erroneous. Terrorism is a tactic of the weak and ruthless. IMO, modern terrorism is a reaction by devout fundamentalist Muslims to the correct suspicion that 7th century Islam cannot survive another century of an inadvertent cultural intrusion into M.E. societies by the modern world.
The average person in M.E. societies supports Islam with 86% of Egyptians supporting the death penalty for apostasy. Muslim populations that hate strong man regimes do so when their tribe is not in power (Syria today, Bahrain today and Iraq under Sunni Saddam) and because strong man regimes are a betrayal of Islam.
I recall the very first female Navy pilot to progress through to carrier training. On her first or first few landings her aircraft was far enough out of position that she was given the wave-off (abort) command. But she was sure she could make the landing and continued until the reality of the situation became more apparent, then tried to abort, and then ejected.
Her aircraft was partially inverted at the time she ejected and she was slammed into the deck or ocean which killed her. It was later found that people directly involved in training her were going to fail her on several crucial areas, but their decisions were overridden by superiors. There was a political rush to get the first female pilot into combat.
Now we have a great many terrific female pilots in service. But they’ve got to be properly trained and pass all basic tests.
So my analogy, and pure conjecture, is: Was Officer Noor really properly trained and certified?
Geoffrey,
It’s difficult to square your assertion that Islam–and not something else–produces terrorism when a) terrorism is a fairly recent historical development, period, and is even newer to the Middle East, while Islam was around much longer than that, and b) most Muslims are not terrorists, and c) there are non-Muslim terrorists. It’s a simple problem of correlation vs causation.
And yes! That is a very high number of terrorist attacks, and that is a terrible thing. But if Islam qua Islam provokes violence, then it doesn’t do a very good job–Europeans killed waaaaaaay more people over the 20th century than any Muslims did, and now Europe is at peace and the Middle East isn’t and it’s almost as if something else is at play than just “religion” or “identity” and that’s borne out by the most casual observation of the world.
Your insistence to have a better and truer understanding of Islam because you have access to a handful of quotes and some analysis of religious texts that was almost certainly written by non-Muslims is, you know, trite and boring. Have you ever actually spoken to an actual Muslim? Is this all just an absurdly abstract argument you’re having with no one? My point in illustrating things like the Iraqi constitution’s implied compatibility between democracy and sharia is to highlight the simple fact that, no matter how hard you want to insist you have some absolute and perfectly correct textual interpretation, this is how actual people actually live their actual lives and it doesn’t look anything like what you’re insisting.
I’m happy to discuss, in general terms, what I think is going on with the ME, but it’s a big discussion in general terms is I don’t want to just dump it into a post without any interest.
@Somebody
“I’ve spent my academic and professional life studying the Middle East, Islam, political violence, and the ways they intersect.
…
So! Islam contains many violent verses. I don’t think this has any bearing on the behavior of Muslims today!”
Are you related to Barack Hussein Obama perchance?
@Somebody
“And yes! That is a very high number of terrorist attacks, and that is a terrible thing. But if Islam qua Islam provokes violence, then it doesn’t do a very good job—Europeans killed waaaaaaay more people over the 20th century than any Muslims did,”
Oh, but this century is still young yet!
PS:
“Muslim populations that hate strong man regimes do so when their tribe is not in power”
This is the sort of thing I think you can only say if you don’t know a single thing about any of those conflicts. I mean, this is so trite and such a caricature that it’s the sort of thing that should embarrass you for having said it.
When you talk about “tribes” in, let’s say, Syria, which ones are you talking about? The Sunni arabs who make up most of the opposition? Or the Sunni arabs who make up most of Asad’s army? Do you mean the Allawites, who are doctrinally heretical to all other Muslims, but who are practically indistinguishable from Sunnis, but who were declared honorary Shia by Khomeini for politically expedient reasons that trumped any religious consideration? Do you mean the Sunni Kurds who have carved out their own enclave or do you mean the Sunni Kurds who oppose them and instead work with the KDP in Iraq, who get along with Turkey, which hates the first set of Kurds? I don’t think you know anything at all about any of these countries, and I’m guessing the only things you’ve read about them have come from anti-Islam blogs.
Read a book, dude.
Irene,
Since you have literally accused me of being an enemy of the state who should be killed, is there a point in engaging with you on anything? Just checking.
@Somebody
I literally accused you of being an enemy of the state who should be killed?
I did no such thing.
Look Somebody, I was being sarcastic in my posts on this thread because as a highly credentialed academic who professes to be some sort of expert on Islam, I’m just appalled at some of your assertions, starting with your blanket generalizations of “Islam” to your pathetic understanding of the dynamics of violence.
The victim was reporting sounds of an assault in her alley. The victim sees a police car and enters the alley to speak to the officers. They both have their body cams off. I’ve read speculation that the police car she approached was not the one dispatched to her call — and the officers she approached were involved in the assault or some other criminal activity. An officer’s weapon “accidentally” discharged multiple rounds into a potential witness to their alleged crimes. It’s just a different speculation to check out — and it does not require a suggestion that Islam made him do it.
Which understandings are pathetic, exactly? And not sure which “blanket generalizations” I’ve made about Islam. I’ve made assertions about Geoffrey’s reasoning, but fairly few about Islam in particular.
@Somebody
Here are some of your blanket generalizations:
“So! Islam contains many violent verses. I don’t think this has any bearing on the behavior of Muslims today!”
Spoken by someone who very obviously has not been to a mosque lately and heard Friday prayers, or ready about them.
“I’ll suggest that the absence of terrorism in the Middle East for, well, most of its history points to a contingent cause and not something like Islam that’s been around for a lot longer. (The first terrorism in the Middle East was, of course, secular nationalist Palestinian terrorism that was almost entirely replaced by Islamist terrorism following the failure of Arab nationalism in 1967.)”
A rose by any other name is still a rose, Somebody. Just because it wasn’t labeled “Terrorism” didn’t mean it didn’t occur. I think, for example, the Persians fighting Islamic takeover however many centuries ago might take issue with you. Persia is still considered part of the Middle East, no?
“a) terrorism is a fairly recent historical development, period, and is even newer to the Middle East, while Islam was around much longer than that,”
See my comment, above.
Re my comment about the dynamics of violence. Even if you haven’t studied the mathematics behind it, the swift and brutal rise of ISIS over a huge swath of Syria and Iraq should be instructive enough for everyone (except Barack Hussein Obama, of course) to viscerally comprehend that it takes a very, very small % of a population to implement a terrorist, totalitarian regime. You don’t need most of the population to back it. Usually you need a relatively small cohort of willing young men ready to impose their will. Everyone else falls into line after a few people have been burned alive in cages or had their heads chopped off. So your argument about Islam isn’t this, Islam isn’t that, this is causal, this is not, is just not relevant. Looking at the real actors, who use the Koran to justify their violence, says a lot.
I actually somewhat agree with your statement that “I strongly suspect that modern terrorism is primarily a function of the failing political order of the modern Middle East—decaying, repressive states hated by their own people—and is contingent on modern circumstances.” It is, of course, a very complicated subject, e.g., many terrorists come from wealthy and well-educated backgrounds. But most of these regimes use their religion (there’s that pesky Islam again!) to validate their rule and gain legitimacy (17th great grandson of the prophet, etc.)
Correction:
“Spoken by someone who very obviously has not been to a mosque lately and heard Friday prayers, or ready about them.”
Should be “read about them.”
I haven’t read all the comments yet. I’m assuming someone here blamed her for her own death because she “didn’t do exactly what the cop told her to do?”
Because that’s all we get when it’s a black guy shot by a white cop. He was probably on drugs, or was big and scary, or reached for his wallet which is suspicious. Or looked like an armed robbery suspect. Or 1000 other reasons.
I’m for prosecuting all cops who kill civilians – it is at least manslaughter. And for goodness sakes let’s train them better.
But it is interesting when a white person gets killed the narrative just flips right over.
Better preempt this before I get slaightered…. Let me clarify. I wrote: “I’m for prosecuting all cops who kill civilians”
Look, I know there are times when violence is necessary, as in when a civilian is actively committing a crime and poses a danger,
But shooting people who are literally sitting ducks, strapped in their cars, or who are trying to do the orders being screamed at them but make a wrong move . . . this needs to have consequences.
somebody (initials jk) needs to stifle somebody
Irene for the win again.
And Somebody’s declaration that “(My favorite part of the Bible is when God sends bears to eat children.)” indicates a profound lack of understanding of the Bible in general and that episode in particular.
Mark30339 Says:
July 18th, 2017 at 11:01 pm
The victim was reporting sounds of an assault in her alley. The victim sees a police car and enters the alley to speak to the officers. They both have their body cams off. I’ve read speculation that the police car she approached was not the one dispatched to her call – and the officers she approached were involved in the assault or some other criminal activity. An officer’s weapon “accidentally” discharged multiple rounds into a potential witness to their alleged crimes. It’s just a different speculation to check out – and it does not require a suggestion that Islam made him do it.
* * *
I think I saw that episode on “Castle” or possibly “Person of Interest” — which doesn’t mean it can’t have some basis in reality.
Which would be … interesting indeed.
Would they not know another patrol car was on its way?
“Spoken by someone who very obviously has not been to a mosque lately and heard Friday prayers, or ready about them.”
I’d guess that you’ve never been to any mosque in your life! I’ve been to a few, but, as a rule, I don’t spend much time in houses of worship. (I actually wish I spent more time; I genuinely wish I could be a believer but it’s just missing in me.) I generally keep tabs on state-controlled mosques in a few specific countries for a very specific reason, and am not generally on top of what I’d guess are the hundreds of thousands or millions of mosques in the world and I’d bet money you’re not either. And which mosques? In the US? Indonesia? Canada? Which sect? Which town? They’re all different and that’s kind of my point.
” Just because it wasn’t labeled “Terrorism” didn’t mean it didn’t occur. I think, for example, the Persians fighting Islamic takeover however many centuries ago might take issue with you.”
This is such a tedious slight of hand that I have to presume you genuinely believe this–you seem vile but genuine–since the alternative is to presume such a crass cynicism that I wouldn’t even know how to engage it. It’s a slight of hand that rolls together all violence by any Muslims anywhere ever as intrinsically, monolithically, eternally “Muslim” in a way that you’d never do for any other category, that’s analytically useless, historically absurd, and, at the heart of it, profoundly orientalist (and man, I hate ever finding myself in agreement with the profound boor Edward Said.)
A century after the Islamic conquest of Persia, Charlemagne converted the Saxons to Christianity by waging a genocidal war against them. Does this tell us anything about Christian’s today? About the Germans today, or the French, or their last couple wars against each other? No. Of course not! That’s silly. As silly as asserting that the Arab conquest of Persia belongs, in any meaningful way, to the same category as modern Saladin jihadist terrorism.
If “terrorism” is to have any analytical usefulness, it has to mean something distinct from other words. And it does! It generally means something like “violence by non-state actor against civilians to incur fear in order to achieve a political objective.” It’s a distinctly modern phenomenon that got its start in Europe in the 19th century.
What the Arabs did in Persia was entirely different–the kind of war of imperial conquest that was nearly universal throughout human history. There was only a Persian empire with a state zoarastrian religion because the Persians had, in their turn, done the same to other peoples in the region. Same with the Byzantines who were the persian’s constant opponents.
I read one account of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, in which an Aztec chronicler wrote something like “we’re not thrilled to be conquered, but we don’t begrudge them, because this is the natural order of the world and we’ve done the same.” I once had a chance to speak to a Peruvian about her perspective on Pizzaro’s conquest of the Inca, and her answer was: Peru is a product of that conquest; they can neither hate it nor venerate it, because it was terrible but also produced her society. It might behoove you to talk to an actual Iranian and see what they have to say, instead of assuming.
So no. The Middle East of the 1950s was dominated not by Islamists or terrorists but by constitutional monarchies with elections and parliaments, and the region was relatively peaceful. Even after those monarchies were mostly replaced by military dictatorships who fought war after war against Israel, terrorism wasn’t a constant feature of the Middle East–at least outside Israel–until the 2000s. It’s a very modern feature of the Middle East. If Islam was the cause of terrorism, where was it before?
PS: thank god for Bill. We clearly don’t agree on all politics but you’re one of the few people here to argue unambiguously that liberals aren’t enemies of the state and I’m grateful for the decency. So thanks.
AesopFan,
Are you suggesting that I, as an outsider, can’t fully understand the meaning and significance of your holy text even when it seems like there’s an obvious, plain reading of it that unambiguously depicts a psychopathic god who hungers for the flesh of arrogant children?
Because…I’d agree! And that’s my point! Good for the goose and all that.
Hey Bill, I completely agree, and I’ll add this:
Democrats were wrecked in the last election in part because of their collective arrogance towards poor white Americans. “What’s wrong with Kansas” and all that. This obsession with the idea that they’d only vote republican because they suffer from some form of false consciousness.
Democrats are struggling to come to terms with this, but we’re at least having the conversation. There’s a parallel conversation on the republic side about why minorities vote democratic–mostly because they suffer from their own version of false consciousness, bought off with welfare and Obama phones. And as long as that’s the conversation–they get shot by the cops so much because they’re so crime prone and uppity I mean, uh, confrontational, but this white lady is clearly different and did you hear the cop was Somali? then, well, republicans will continue doing just as badly for a long while.
Somebody: What I hear you say is the usual grand conflation of all deaths being equivalent to all deaths regardless of the context — when it fits the liberal narrative.
Such as Obama’s weasel claim that more Americans die from bathtub falls than die from Islamic terrorism.
Which is strictly true — until the next Bin Laden manages to nuke New York City.
If one follows your reason ad absurdum, why should we pay any special attention to murder because far more people die of natural causes?
Somebody: When jihadist Muslims justify their killings in terms of Islam, I’ll pay them the basic respect of accepting their explanation for their behavior. I believe Muslims are rational actors making sensible choices based on their beliefs and values.
OTOH you offer patronizing handwaving that you know better that these Muslims, that it really comes down to some jibber-jabber about “failing political orders in the Middle East.”
I’ve read the Koran, Muhammad’s life and Islamic history. If I truly believed as Muslims do, I would be a jihadist or a jihadist sympathizer or a Muslim who doesn’t want to support jihad but knows that’s a huge part of what Islam teaches.
This is what I see going on with Muslims. The polls bear this out. As well as history.
And yes, I’ve talked to Muslims and I’ve interacted with Muslims on Muslim blogs.
Related:
https://youtu.be/Qj7NHauhgPc
Somebody – thank you for the kind words.
Regarding Treacher’s article. This graph made me Ill:
No, it was easy to fold it into the ongoing tragedy of what it’s like to be a black person in the USA because a large portion of the white population doesn’t give a cr@p when a white cop fires seven bullets into a black civilian sitting duck strapped in his car. Because he probably deserved it/takes drugs/was scary/might have robbed a convenience store/look at that “wide nose”
But this one’s different, isn’t it? This time it’s “one of ours” gunned down by “one of them”.
Police make mistakes and sometimes people die. Look, if I make a mistake and someone dies, there’s a decent chance that I might at least get a manslaughter conviction. But if the cop was white and I’m black, well, didn’t my daddy teach me to not make a single solitary wrong move if I’m pulled over by a cop? (mine, by the way, never had to teach me that as a life and death life lesson)
This one, to quote Treacher, is a “bit more tricky”. Because, as Neo pointed out, even though the cop doesn’t seem to have done anything wrong (well, other than shooting an unarmed civilian because he was scared) he was a Somali Muslim and she was blonde. So jihad.
She’ll probably get a law named after her. And I mean no disrespect in saying that. She’s a victim just like Philando Castille was a victim (even the article writer sees that).
GB:
GB: I’ve read Somebody’s comments with interest. Since when is knowing about something through actual experience and education a “logical fallacy”?
I was talking on another thread about Ukraine. It’s a place I’ve been to several times. I know people there who got kicked out of Crimea. I have friends there. A commenter literally asked why knowing something about a place and knowing people there had any bearing on my knowledge of said place. .
It’s this decades long disdain Republicans have for “elites” and the weird elevation of ignorance as a virtue.
Somebody and me probably disagree on 1,000 things. But he/she makes good points above and was dismissed out of hand by you and mocked by Irene.
I wouldn’t mock Oldflyer, for instance, and lecture him on gun safety because he knows a million times more about that than I do (I’m one of the few people in Texas that doesn’t have 500 guns :-)). Doesn’t mean he’s always 100% right on the subject, I suppose. But he deserves to be listened to. I wouldn’t tell him “ah, the logical fallacy of actually being educated on a subject°
I’ve had a few meals with Muslims in my time. They were and are lovely people. This is a complicated subject, as is jihad and the Quran and the middle east and terrorism. What happened between this cop and the woman he killed was tragic. But you jumped immediately to the conclusion that he was enraged as a Muslim man that she was wearing pajamas in public and killed her for that.
@Somebody
1. I’m still waiting for you to explain your claim that I literally wanted you killed.
2. I’ve been to many mosques, both here in the US and abroad.
3. “If ‘terrorism’ is to have any analytical usefulness, it has to mean something distinct from other words. And it does! It generally means something like ‘violence by non-state actor against civilians to incur fear in order to achieve a political objective.’ It’s a distinctly modern phenomenon that got its start in Europe in the 19th century.”
Oh for heaven’s sake. Haven’t you heard of Robespierre and the Reign of Terror? Stalin and the Great Terror? Robespierre was 18th century and both he and Stalin were definitely state actors. Actually, they were the state.
What the heck are they teaching in uni’s these days.
I limit my criticisms of you based on what you write. Why are you repeatedly attacking me personally? This is like the 3rd time, I believe. Tsk. Tsk.
“Because, as Neo pointed out, even though the cop doesn’t seem to have done anything wrong”
I need to fix this. Neo didn’t say the cop didn’t seem to have been doing anything wrong. She was referring to the victim. I misread the sentence.
Also – I saw something in the thread above that I don’t ever see on the internet. @7:39pm Somebody conceded he/she was wrong about something. Openly admitted and owned that. That’s refreshing. #respect
Irene,
In one of our previous conversations, I asked you about Trump’s call to wage war against unnamed domestic enemies, and you rattled off a list of people that included me and millions of other Americans. It was before the news of Donald Trump Jr repeatedly lying about a secret meeting with a former soviet intelligence officer in an avowed effort to violate election law, so I don’t blame you for not remembering, since a lot came up since then.
I am very heartened to hear that you have visited mosques! Are you keeping tabs on all sermons in all mosques everywhere? Or are you familiar with a small number of sermons from a small number of mosques?
And yes! I have heard of those things. It’s still analytically useful to distinguish between state terror and nonstate terror, which is something virtually everyone who talks about “terrorism” does. If you imagine all violence exists in a vast spectrum from a punch thrown in a bar fight all the way to global thermonuclear war, with lots of shading in between, nonstate terrorism falls somewhere towards the former and state terrorism falls somewhere closer to the latter, especially since the advent of the Industrial Age, when states could apply the night of an industrial economy to terrorize civilian populations. Without moral judgement, and in a purely analytical sense, this is what the US did to Germany and Japan in WWII–it didn’t really work, but we sure tried to end the war throuhg strategic bombing campaigns designed to undercut industrial power by terrorizing the civilian population. It’s one more tool in a state’s kit, but it’s worth preserving an analytical distinction between what Stalin could do, on an industrial scale, and a lone wolf driving a car through a crowd.
Huxley,
I’m not sure what you’re trying to claim I’m arguing re: deaths and context. would appreciate a rephrase.
Re: Muslims, I suspect that extremists genuinely believe the explanations they offer, just as I believe Christian and Jewish and Buddhist extremists genuinely believe what they claim to believe. But I also trust that the vast majority of people, including Muslims, who are not extremists or terrorists, are also genuine in THEIR claims to their understandings of their religions. You seem to think that being a genuine, pious Muslim entails behaving exactly in one way, the way of extremists, and this simply isn’t born out by the simple
observation that there are vaaaastly more Muslims who don’t live like that but claim to be genuine believers, and you can only handwave them away if you adopt the jihadi position that there’s only one true interpretation of Islam and it’s theirs. My repeated point is that the slightest observation of the world reveals vastly more people who don’t live like that, so either you know their religion better than they do (unlikely!) OR they’re all wrong about being able to live compatibly with Islam and not murdering everyone all the time.
Islams multiplicity bears this out too. Jihadists are obsessed with the concept of tawhid, the uniqueness and indivisibility of god. They consider any state but theirs to violate this, since they view any man made law as tantamount to worshipping the law’s authors alongside god. But even when given a chance to put this into effect under ISIS, the vast majority of Muslims rejected this, because they’re perfectly comfortable with states that don’t behave like ISIS. And you should be grateful, because the vast majority of of the people fighting and dying against ISIS are Muslims.
Further, Islam emphasizes the transcendent nature of God, except allawites like Assad in Syria who believe god incarnated himself in Ali, or Sufis who believe they can achieve communion through things like meditation or alcohol or whirling with god.
Again, simple observations of the world immediately give lie to this idea. Islam is not an analytically useful causal mecchanism.
To echo Bill’s points, the cop didn’t have his body camera or car camera on, as required by law. He also hasn’t been interviewed yet, because unlike any other citizen who would have been arrested after killing someone and given the opportunity to make a statement with a lawyer present, police are generally afforded immunity from arrest or interrogation, and broadly enjoy sovereign immunity, making it incredibly difficult legally to prosecute cops who do commit crimes. We’ve established a separate legal system for police that privileges them in ways that seems incomprehensible for a free society dealing with its government employees.
And for anyone interested in digging into public opinion polling in the Muslim world, I recommend starting with Marc Lynch (he’s at GWU now) and Mark Tessler (I think he’s a U of Michigan). The last time I had a chance to dig into public opinion polling was pre-coup in Egypt and pre-ISIS so I really don’t know what it looks like now, but Tessler did a lot work on anti-Americanism as a proxy for anti-regime sentiment. Basically, the argument that people living under governments like Mubarak’s in Egypt, which liked to skin people alive, could express sympathy for groups that attacked their dictator and its powerful foreign guarantor even without actually wanting those groups to win and take over.
Going back to Neo’s posting above, way back up there, I believe it was about twisting the narrative by various people to sell their view points and she was right. Away they go……
Before a person starts explaining the meaning of life for various faiths please look at the view facts we have been told. A woman walks up to the window of a police car and she is shot through the door several times by the policeman who is a passenger. Sit in the driver seat of your car and try to imagine how someone can shoot across you through the door, no through the window without hitting you.
No one and I repeat no one would ever take a shot like that on purpose and then factor in that the bullet(s) have to penetrate the door panel, go through window glass if it is down, go through exterior metal of the door and kill the poor lady standing next to the car. It does not matter if the shooter is a Baptist or a Buddhist, Methodist or a Muslim, this is an accident discharge and yes there can be multiple shots fired by a startled poorly trained frightened or startled person.
What I suppose might have happened is that the woman, manner of dress did not play into this, come up fast and excited from the back on the driver’s side to the window and startled the officers. Officer Passenger Side had his gun in his hand with his finger on the trigger and he perceived this action as a threat in the lizard part of his brain and he squeezed the trigger several times.
Some folks are getting caught up in a discussion of world history of civilizations and religions and I am totally convinced that none of the participants in the terrible shooting that night had those topics on their minds at the time the shooting occurred. However I do think bad training and or lack of training mixed with excitement and fear triggered the shooting.
OldTexan,
I’d suggest part of that training is what Scott Greenfield of Simple Justice calls “the first rule of policing,” the idea that cops can and should respond to the slightest risk with lethal force, often as a first resort, to make sure they get home to dinner safely each night. This is the bigger problem I’ve been trying to get at–that we as a society have built systems of deference and legal privilege around cops that are out of sync with our status as a free people in a free society who can and should demand more from our public servants.
Well Somebody,
I know cops and I have eaten meals with them and the good ones, carefully recruited, and well trained are nice men and women doing a job where they understand that lethal force is a last result and chances are they can put in 30 years and never have to take their gun out of the holster.
There is no system of deference and what the hell is legal privilege for police who work crappy hours, get involved in untangling human dramas, and get the job of dealing with people incapacitated by alcohol, drugs and mental illness and then of course they get to be the ones who go in and deal with folks who have been dead for a few days and try to determine what happened, etc.
The crap you see on TV shows of all sorts of cop drama with weapons and characters who have a high body count as they solve an interesting crime every week has nothing to do with reality.
I don’t know where you live but I would suggest you go visit your local police station, some weekday morning when they are not too busy and sit down and have a cup of coffee with the person in charge and ask them how things are going. Then shut up and listen and you might come away with a different point of view. Perhaps not but I would not demand more from the nine thousand and nine hundred and ninety nine who are doing a good job because of the one who is a screw up and should not be there in the first place.
By the way, how are you going to enforce your demands? Just asking because in this imperfect system we have right now it appears that most of the law enforcement people are trying to do their best as mandated by their governmental employers: City, County, State, etc.
And yes when they do screw up then let the legal system hold them accountable, judge them and if found guilty, lock them up and throw away the keys. When the system works don’t pervert it for your political goals.
The abortion may have been motivated by [class] diversity (i.e. judgment by “color of skin”). Normalization of racism, sexism, “=” (i.e. political congruence), etc. under a Pro-Choice Church has progressive consequences.
That said, a philosophy creates a predisposition, but does not determine an outcome. Case in point: Pro-Choice. Not every follower or acolyte of the Pro-Choice Church will commit abortion, practice [class] diversity, tolerate “=” (i.e. selective exclusion), or indulge in social justice adventures (e.g. elective wars, catastrophic anthropogenic immigration reform a.k.a. refugee crises, denying equal rights, protection rackets).
I’m trying to reconcile two things:
1] Body cams in this jurisdiction supposedly are normally off (battery or data storage issues, apparently), until there is an interaction which may become contentious.
2] Noor drew his service pistol. Where it was pointed is irrelevant. Surely any time a weapon is drawn, ‘contentious’ rules should already be in play.
So, yes, I’m wondering about training and political pressures.
It is possible the cop had a flashlight attached to his pistol that he was trying to turn on. If so it would have to be an approved accessory and he was to have been trained in using it. Negligent discharges have been caused in the past by inadvertently pulling the trigger when the intention was to turn the flashlight on. Training would come into play here.
We now know who Somebody is.
He(She?) is an academic.
He is an atheist.
He “studies” “intersections”, so he is in one of the gutter departments, something like sociology, anthropology, or one of the “studies” departments, like Black Studies, generators of immense amounts of post-modernism nonsense which they themselves hold in high esteem, quote one another, generate gobbledegook. They’re always studying “intersections” though they are not traffic engineers.
He is verbose, as his ilk. Drowning us in nonsense, like a Maduro talking to “his” people. His share of the total comments here is enormous. Verbosity is bluster.
He makes false claims, like claiming Muslims rarely kill people, and whites are the leading cause of human death in the 20th century. He somehow overlooks Mao and the ChiComms, the non-white numerical first place winners. He conveniently overlooks the role of the military, a top-down command structure with people like “Bomber” Harris, who order killings, often defensively. Mohamed, who claimed to have taken dictation from Allah, specified many times that Muslims must kill Jews, Christians, apostates…on an individual basis, not as military-only.
He calls for unspecified improved outcomes based on false premises, as ” the bigger problem I’ve [sic!] been trying to get at—that we as a society have built systems of deference and legal privilege around cops that are out of sync with our status as a free people in a free society who can and should demand more from our public servants.”
What more should we demand of our cops? That they take out your garbage, give your kids condoms, paint your house? What?
He parrots rubbish: “Scott Greenfield of Simple Justice calls “the first rule of policing,” the idea that cops can and should respond to the slightest risk with lethal force, often as a first resort, to make sure they get home to dinner safely each night.” Greenfield’s job, for megabucks, is to find fault with cops and the system; he is a criminal defense lawyer, and 99.9% all of his clients are GUILTY of crimes, convicted or not. Police criticism began a long while back; see the OJ Simpson murder trial.
Finally, I rather suspect He is an anarchist.
Somebody asserts that he is an academic. If he is in that profession, I am thankful that I do not have to sit through any of his lectures. I hope that he provides periodic bathroom breaks.
I often read or hear that Islam is a “religion of peace”. If so, I wonder why we hear so few public messages of peace from Muslim leaders. Why do apologists not refute the specific calls for violence in the Quran? Well, we know that they might be killed a as Apostates if they did so. Meanwhile, the Christian Bible did repudiate the violent texts of the Old Testament. (And before “Somebody”, or someone else, points out the Christian violence of the Crusades and the Inquisition, I would note that Christianity, and western society, have evolved in dogma and practice over the centuries. I look for evidence that Islam is doing the same; even as a frightening percentage of Muslims in the West express support for barbaric Sharia Law.)
There is a good deal of speculation here about what actually happened; and that it may have been an accidental shooting due to poor training. That may be the conclusion; but, it is hard to imagine training so incompetent as to lead to the chain of events as described. Several reports document that Officer Noor had accumulated three formal complaints during his short two year career, and was named in a law suit. Forgive my obvious racist attitude; but, I smell a diversity hire.
Somebody said, terrorism is a fairly recent historical development, period, and is even newer to the Middle East,
Have you never heard of the assassins?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassins
Frog, you’re banging away on “Somebody” for being that hated profession, an “academic”, but you lost all your moral authority with me when you wrote “We need to put out some rat poison, but we won’t”
“There is a good deal of speculation here about what actually happened;”
Oldflyer – in my view there’s very little speculation on this thread. A number of the commenters jumped immediately to JIHAD. You, on the other hand, have posited the most plausible idea (it was an accidental discharge).
I think that’s the proper benefit of the doubt to give. For the majority, it seems the benefit of the doubt only goes to those with the same skin color.
On a side, more theological note: the Christian Bible is a unified whole, and there is no repudiation in the NT for what’s in the OT. That’s a common misconception.
It’s the same God in both testaments.
… There is a sense of “fulfillment” in the NT or expansion – for example, the end of the sacrificial law since Christ’s sacrifice fulfilled the atonement requirements for man’s sin. And the revocation of the Jewish dietary laws (yay! Bacon!) in Acts 10.
OK, sorry for the theological side-track.
For some goofy reason he had his gun out of the holster and his finger on the trigger and I think it was an accidental discharge followed by a couple more because his adrenaline kicked in and his brain went into neutral.
Oh my. It wasn’t accidental. He is supposed to have been trained on firearms, including their safe use.
As my pap used to tell me never point a gun at something unless you’re ok with it getting shot, and never ever point a gun at another human being unless you intend to kill them.
The poor woman was murdered by an aimed shot. He should be held to the same standards as I, a civilian would be in similar circumstances.
OldTexan,
In Texas, the legislature just passed a bill that would allow for diversion courts for police officers who can plausibly argue that job-related mental illness contributed to their misconduct.
This is one small example of what I mean by “legal privilege.” Based on what you wrote, I strongly suspect you completely misunderstood what I wrote, and that happens a lot, so it doesn’t surprise me.
Police are, of course, public servants and government employees, the sort of people we might otherwise expect fairly high standards of behavior. Police are a special category of public servant, those who are given the legal right to use lethal force within defined limits.
I think we’ve eroded those limits, and we have transfered an understandable gratitude and deference to the police–in recognition for their dangerous and difficult public service–by establishing a legal regime in which cops enjoy things like:
– qualified immunity, making it nearly impossible to punish police even when they violate obvious constitutional rights;
– separate, more lenient court systems;
– internal investigations by partial, sympathetic police instead of impartial investigators from outside the police system;
– and etc.
Among those police departments that do require body cameras, many of them retain the right to review the footage before the public (if they let the public see it at all). In the cases of shootings, cops are often allowed to view the footage before they write their reports about the shootings. In the Minnesota case, the cop hasn’t been interviewed–a right he enjoys but I sure wouldn’t if I had shot an unarmed lady.
My point is: we established systems to protect cops, but taken together they’ve had the perverse effect of incentivizing violence, or at least reducing disincentives to police violence. And, again, as a free people in a free society, we should expect more from our government.
As always, I recommend everyone go read Radley Balko, who has been writing more smartly than me on this for years.
PS–I’m not an academic! I said I had “an academic career.” That’s a fancy way of saying I done went to school.
Ray,
Yes! There was once an Assasin cult. Their violence is not meaningfully similar to modern terrorism.
Terrorism–non-state actor violence against civilians to instill fear in order to effect political goals–is, as I’ve said, a very modern phenomenon. I think this is purely a function of means of violence.
During the age of the Assassins, they could kill, at most, one person at a time (and lose one attacker in each attack). This is pretty ineffective in terms of achieving goals. The Assassins were also quickly and easily annihilated by the Mongols. The Mongols did the opposite: instead of relying on the lethal means available to individuals, they massed the lethal capacity of an entire nation and used that violence to achieve their goals.
And this is why states came to dominate the globe–because they were the most effective human instrument at extracting resources and turning those resources into organized violence to achieve their goals. And as long as effective violence meant massing many individual people, each of whom had limited means of violence (spears, muskets, etc) but who collectively could apply lots of violence, states dominated.
But modern technology has shifted the relative balance of power from the state to the individual. Killing 3,000 people in one attack by 19 men used to require the industrial might of a state, building bombs and planes, but now a non-state actor can do it.
So yes, every basic text book on terrorism starts with the Assassins and the Zealots and I think this is analytically useless.
“Christianity, and western society, have evolved in dogma and practice over the centuries. I look for evidence that Islam is doing the same; even as a frightening percentage of Muslims in the West express support for barbaric Sharia Law.) ”
I agree! I think that Muslim societies–as diverse and complex as Christian societies–have also evolved. It’s difficult to see the forest through the trees, but it’s worth noting that the violence the Middle East is experiencing is a recent historical development–again, the Middle East was, not that long ago, dominated by constitutional monarchies with parliaments and elections that weren’t at war with each other or experiencing terrorism.
Re: the Sharia thing, I think a good analogy would be something like this: if you asked many Americans whether American government should be guided by Christian principles, quite a few of them would say, “yes.” I like many Christian principles! I wouldn’t think it a bad thing if Donald Trump were guided by more actual Christian principles. But if you called “Christian principles” something like “Sharia,” it would sound more ominous. And I suspect that your only introduction to the concept of Sharia has been through anti-Muslim rhetoric, so this should not be a surprise. When some people say “Sharia,” they mean “chopping off hands.” and when other people say it, they mean “the first amendment.”
That is, the concept has a sufficiently broad range of understandings that it’s impossible to read any specific inference from polls that show widespread support for Sharia. Are they all for hand chopping? Are they all for the first amendment? Not clear from the polling. Get more data!
I R A Darth Aggie,
I agree completely. This is the higher standard that we should hold police to: minimize the situations that place people in harms way and suffer reasonable consequences when you fail to do that.
I think of Tamir Rice. The cops drove up to him and shot him dead within 2 seconds of their arrival. Two seconds! That’s not enough time for a kid to react with perfect reasoning and calmness. That’s not enough time for the cop to make a calm, reasoned decision about risk. That’s enough time for the cop to reach the only reasonable conclusion in our system, that he has to kill the kid in order to make it home for dinner safely. Or Castile, a man who literally did every single thing right and still died because the cop thought his life was in immediate danger and resorted immediately to lethal force.
The questions we need to ask are things like: why does the cop need to drive up so closely that he has only two seconds to make a life-and-death decision? And, will anyone suffer any consequences for that action? There’s something systemic at play–a system that encourages cops to provoke crisis situations, in which lethal force becomes the only resort. That encourages them to demand immediate and perfect compliance, and to treat any resistance or mistake on the part of a citizen as a lethal threat. That grants enormous leeway to cops to make mistakes, but virtually none to anyone else.
So it’s easy to hear this as a call to punish THIS cop and maybe this cop does deserve punishment, but the more important thing for us as a citizenry is to ask what we’re going to do about this system we’ve created.
Somebody needs their own blog. Jeez. On and on and on and on…
Somebody,
I started to write some come backs and digs about your responses to what I shared. My thoughts are the same and that’s that, an internet argument is just about weapons grade stupid so please have a wonderful day as you go your way.
I used to love the comments here. You are right Griffin – Somebody needs to start their own blog.
Janetoo:
Just scroll past his comments. If he starts being really bothersome I’ll do something about it. But for now I think he sparks some interesting exchanges and is not abusive.
Yes, I have been scrolling. No worries. I should have kept it to myself.
Yeah, his/her comments hit a couple of sore spots with me. I hate the super long/multiple blog comments and couple that with victim type mentality mixed in with a holier than thou attitude and it rubs me the wrong way.
I scroll past him too, he ‘s boring, has verbal diarrhea, and ADD. When I asked him questions important to a point I had made a couple of topics down he chose to ignore it. He does not support conversational repartee just hopes to bury a fellow commenter under a pile of “your guess is as good as mine” and thinks it stands for telling conservatives off and giving us the benefit of his superior mind and attitudes.
His handle speaks a lot about him “Somebody” apparently he needs to think that in this blog because apparently he is Nobody in reality ! LOL
I’m not sure what you’re trying to claim I’m arguing re: deaths and context. would appreciate a rephrase.
Somebody: Earlier in the thread you compared Islam deaths to the larger number of all deaths caused by Western civilization as though, “See, no difference! If anything Western Civ is worse than Islam.”
This is what I mean by conflation — as though all the killings in WW1 and WW2 were no different than 9-11 or the poor sods beheaded on the street by some Muslim with a machete screaming “Allahu Akbar!”
I say there is a big difference between intentional religious murder and the killngs that go on in nation-state wars.
By your reasoning, generalizations cannot be made.
As long as there is one Muslim not murdering infidels, one cannot note Islam’s propensity to violence.
As long as one Chrstian or one Jew killed someone in the name of religion somewhere in history, one cannot say Christianity and Judaism (and other major religions as well) are more peaceful than Islam.
To me this is crazy.
Hi Molly! it feels like you want it both ways! I write too much, that’s bad. I miss a question, that’s bad too.
If you have something you’re sad I missed, just remind me and I’ll try to address it!
And surely everyone can forgive a little length when I’m usually the only person arguing for a contrary position on many of these issues; making a case to a hostile audience requires more than concurrence, no?
Huxley,
Thanks for the clarification. I think you missed my point! It’s precisely that violence by individuals doesn’t accrue to all members of all groups to which those individuals might belong. So, within living memory of some people, white Christian Europeans and Buddhist/shintoist East Asians fought the worst war in human history, killing upwards of 100,000 million people. That was preceded shortly by the second worst war in history, fought by many of the same groups and states. At the time, the Muslim world was incompatible more peaceful. Now, the roles are reversed. It’s a simple matter of causation vs correlation–if Islam is so intrinsically violent that it compels its followers to violence, then how can this discrepancy possibly exist?
I never argued that a single non-violent Muslim said anything about Islam–rather, I said that the vast majority of Muslims don’t commit violence, which speaks against a causal role for violence.
This is a common cognitive mistake. Nearly every murderer ever probably ate bread at some point in, let’s say, the month prior to the murder. We shouldn’t attribute a causal role to bread! Why not? Precisely because it is so commonly eaten that of course you’d expect virtually every group, including murderers and non-murderers, to have eaten bread.
Similarly, if only a small number of Muslims commit violence–and it is a tiny percentage, and of that percentage more are under arms AGAINST groups like ISIS–then your causal model had to account for all the Muslims who were not compelled by their religion to commit violence.
Sorry, should have been “100 million.” I’m typing everything on a very tiny keyboard, hence the sloppiness.
Somebody, kindly refrain from responding to my comments, I tend to have little interest in dialoguing with individuals who badger people, in other words it dosent qualify as a discussion to me. Thank you for your restraint !
Ok! Everyone is pretty mad at me! I find this pretty amusing, because earlier in this thread Frog actually called for murdering people (in a pretty slimy way, too), and Bill’s the only other one upset about that. But I write too much and I’m condescending! That’s much worse. It probably helps that Frog was calling for the murder of Somalis, and I guess that’s ok with everyone!
Couple of points: It is not necessary that being a Muslim caused Noor to shoot the woman. What is also possible is that being Muslim allowed a poor candidate for police work to be accepted, complete training, and have various performance issues swept under the rug.
Various people close to the issue have said that the mayor was a raging lefty who was all over such diversity.
WRT the female Navy pilot who crashed. She and another woman pilot graduated F14 flight school with grades that should have flunked them. Instead, th Navy took two guys–the F14 is a two-seater, see Top Gun–and had them flying with pilots who were, by Navy standards, unfit to fly the Tomcat. That’s treachery. Now, there are lots of flying jobs in the Navy and not all of them are hotshot fighters flying off carriers. But that was the glam job at the time and the Pat Schroeder side of Congress was demanding scalps for Tail Hook.
When the word got out that the Navy was passing unqualified women, the Navy’s response was to threaten various folks who’d related the information to find the leaker.
Point is,when it comes to required diversity, performance and qualifications are not important. And so, some are suggesting, this is why Noor was a cop.
Somebody/Something……
Wow: And surely everyone can forgive a little length when I’m usually the only person arguing for a contrary position on many of these issues; making a case to a hostile audience requires more than concurrence, no?
Don’t know where you came from or where you’re going but personally I would just as soon you move along, as the cops say, nothing to see here keep moving.
A number of us who comment on Neo’s site have been sharing our ideas and viewpoints for over a decade. I can only speak for myself but I like to see comments from various people who do not agree with me but your comments that say,
Thanks for the clarification. I think you missed my point!
And other condescending statements are incorrect. We are intelligent people who may not agree but we don’t often talk down to each other and yes we do make hyperbole statements that might sound strange to you.
As for being mad at you, you kind of remind me of a fly who eats crap and buzzes around bothering people, usually not worth swatting just shooing away, as it were.
Why would you walk into anyone’s area, start trying to dominate the conversation and straighten other out. Hell, I might think you voted for Hillary or something and don’t like our boy Donald and his beautiful wife but you seem too smart to be that kind of a person.
Bill, I simply do not agree with what you postulate. The very intent of Christ on earth was to turn people from the old ways. The Old Testament is a history of wars of conquest, slavery, murder, and adultery. The Songs of Solomon and the Psalms of David are chronicles of such. The teachings and examples in the New Testament strongly, if implicitly, repudiate that legacy. The Books of the New Testament clearly intend to point Believers in a new direction.
True, as you say, the God of the Old Testament and the One of the New are the same; but, how can you believe that the God that the Christians worship had not evolved from the One known to Old Testament Prophets? (It would be as odd to deny that concept in the Deity as it would be to deny that humans can evolve over the course of a life. Since I believe that God gave humans free will (even if we exercise it badly), and the ability to adjust to circumstances, I reject that He would deny the option for Himself.)
Anyway, the difference between Christians and Muslims is that, within the bounds of human frailty, Christians try to live by the benevolent strictures set forth in the New Testament. Moreover, Christian Orthodoxy has become less harsh as civilization has evolved; Muslims accept no modification to the harsh dictates of the Quran. Not only are there no formal revisions, there is ample evidence that anyone in a Muslim dominated society who deviates from the original orthodoxy does so at significant risk.
By the way. I do not postulate that the shooting was accidental. My comment noted that some do; and that they infer that it resulted from inadequate training. My observation was that if this be true; the training had to be unbelievably bad. Actually, I have no idea what caused Noor to pull the trigger the first, second, or third time. (I don’t know which, or how many, shots were lethal.)
Richard Aubry, off topic; but, the Navy lost a very fine Admiral (outstanding combat record, and he commanded Navy forces in the First Gulf War) simply because he did his job and signed off as the final authority that washed out a woman. It apparently got pretty bad for awhile.
On the other hand, I was involved in the transition of the first three women Naval Aviators into jets. At the time, we were under no pressure at all that I could detect. Two of the three, as it turned out, were plenty proficient and professional. (I failed the other on a “safe for solo” check, with no repercussions. She seemed to feel “entitled” and managed to construct a negative reputation in her short Navy career; and in her brief airline career as well. She certainly did no favors for the women who followed.)
Somebody
I mean. The vast majority of murders are committed by white men.
While you DID later admit you were mistaken in this assertion, your making the claim in the first place indicates to me that you write without much reflection. Which indicates to me that I have been correct in not paying much attention to your wordy, “nuanced” comments.
Oldflyer. Kara Hultgren, Ltjg, was the one who blew an approach and was killed. Her RIO ejected safely. The other woman who was passed illegitimately was grounded for unsafe flying.
As I say, they got as far as F14 school, so they were no slouches in the stick and rudder game. Unless they’d been passed along, come to think of it.
I happened to read a fighter jock’s description of the missed trap second by second according to the accident report. She could have pulled out of it by doing what she was supposed to have done and others presumably have.
Further reason for not paying much attention to Somebody:reply which indicates Somebody didn’t closely read the comment. All to often, Somebody is in the write first and think later mode.
I rarely come back to a previous thread, but somebody is as good as it gets when it comes to leftists. At least I detect no foaming at the mouth.
Oldflyer,
I once attended a Bar Mitzvah in a hippy-dippy LA synagogue. The rabbi and cantor spent the whole ceremony calling God “the great oneness of all being” which was an obnoxiously New Age LA thing to do. And then the poor kid’s Torah portion was all on God’s clear instructions for killing animals and burning their bodies as sacrifices to God. Not “the great oneness of all being,” but a bloodthirsty God who demanded death to appease him. And somehow, they coexisted in the same breath in the same ceremony.
I couldn’t imagine a better illustration of my point than you and Bill arguing over the role of the Old Testament in Christianity. Surely, you argue, the plain text of the Bible–like God ordering the Israelites to murder unborn babies–is perfectly compatible with your understanding of Christianity! Can you imagine, even in the abstract, a Muslim denying what you think is a plain reading of the Quran in fact means something different from what you think it means?
I don’t know if that’s what anyone actually believes, because I’m not privy to what’s in their hearts. But I suspect that’s the case, because most Muslims would probably claim to be pious believers in their faith, to know their faith, and to live lives without violence. So either nearly a billion people are all lying about their faith OR they’re doing exactly what you’re doing, interpreting their faith differently from the way psychopathic terrorists interpret the faith. And no matter how many times people abstractly insist that there’s no interpretation in Islam, the world bears out a billion counter examples.
Thing is, their RIO’s hadn’t done the Navy any harm that we know of and the Navy put them in A/C with demonstrably unqualified pilots.
Same kind of impulse may have gotten Noor into his spot and kept him there.
Richard,
A great many cops shoot people every year in this country, and surely not all of them can be bloodthirsty jihadis (the Frog school of thought) or affirmative action hires (your supposition). Is it possible there’s something else wrong? If he had been white–like the cop who shot another cop in, I think, St Louis not that long ago, what would you have thought then?
Somebody.
Missed the clear point. As I said, as you know I said, it isn’t necessary that he shot the woman because he’s a bloodthirsty jihadi.
It could well be because he’s a famous diversity grab and a good deal will be overlooked, as with the female jet pilots used as an analogy.
Since you deliberately misrepresented my point, which is to say lied about me, I am no longer bothering with you.
Richard,
On the contrary! I explicitly attributed to you the affirmative action hire explanation.
Which is, honestly, also bigoted, though in a much milder and significantly less vile way than Frog’s. you don’t know anything about him other than his nationality, and that’s the first thing you went for, because why not? Do I need to explain this? If you assume the cop made a mistake because he was only hired because of his race, and ipso facto was unqualified because of his race, that’s…pretty racist.
I dream of a world where we can believe that all cops, white and black and brown and yellow, can be held accountable for mistakes we can attribute to them as cops, and not look for racially motivated explanations as a matter of first recourse.
Oh, and lest anyone think I think this is a conservative issue, it’s definitely not. The flip side of irene’s argument that all violence by any Muslim anywhere ever belongs to all Muslims, is this obnoxious idea I’ve seen kicked around by liberals that all non-white people were Innocent until white people introduced imperialism and war. Which is just as racist as this notion that the cop’s race is to blame for his violence, because it denies al non-white peoples their god-given right to be as awful as anyone else. Can we not agree that all peoples are equally capable of being terrible, that being terrible is color blind, and judge people as people, and not as Muslims or Somalis or white people, and not automatically assume that their nationality or race had anything to do with it?
(Since so many cops of so many different races have killed so many people from all different races, I stand by my position that racism is a red herring and the real problem is the structure we’ve built around cops to immunize them from any consequences of their violence.)
Somebody,
Islam has engaged in terrorism for 1400 years. News flash! Murder, pillaging, rape and enslavement are, most definitely a form of terrorism. As is holding non-Muslim populations in a second class status, i.e. the Jizza tax.
Most Muslims condone terrorism and in continuing to remain Muslim are complicit in that terrorism.
The number of non-Muslim terrorists are so few in comparison to Muslim terrorists as to amount to an apologetic.
Over its 1400 year history, Islam has killed far more people than every other ideology combined. Limiting the comparison to the 20th century and labeling it as ‘European’ is disingenuous. Stalin, Hitler and Mao… all ‘socialists’ were responsible for 90% of the 20th centuries deaths.
Once again, I haven’t claimed to have a ‘better’ understanding. I simply take Allah and Muhammad at their word. It’s you that is attempting to apologize, rationalize and ‘interpret’ their plain meaning away.
“this is how actual people actually live their actual lives”
86% of Egyptians self-report as supporting the death penalty for apostasy.
What’s trite is your caricature of the M.E. In Syria, it is the Allawites tribe’s ruthless domination and alignment with Shia Iran that is relevant NOT their doctrinal heresy.
Get over yourself ‘dude’.
Bill,
“I’m for prosecuting all cops who kill civilians — it is at least manslaughter. [unless a civilian is actively committing a crime and poses a danger]… this needs to have consequences.”
Oh, there are already consequences. Crime is way up in a number of jurisdictions. But the real consequence is that when you need a cop Bill, they increasingly won’t be there. As why should they risk their lives for us, when their sanctimonious ‘betters’ are ready to “Monday morning quarterback” them? And destroy their lives? See Ferguson, MI…
You have clearly bought into the crap that white cops are racist. Rather than that cops know that blacks are committing a huge amount of the crime. Something like 90+% of gun crime in NY is perpetrated by blacks.
But if the cops are racist, why aren’t they targeting Asians? Surely you agree that racists, by definition, hate anyone of a different skin color? News flash! Cops aren’t ‘targeting’ Asians because they’re not committing crimes…
On the Rat-Poison-Gate scandal: caustic hyperbole is a staple technique of most verbal fisticuffs.
Some of us take such comments seriously but not literally.
Geoffrey,
“Murder, pillaging, rape and enslavement are, most definitely a form of terrorism.”
Again, it’s worth maintaining “terrorism” as a destinct subset of violence, as destinct from, say, war in general. This is the least controversial thing i could imagine saying and yet I have to keep repeating it and I don’t really know why, except insofar as it sounds cool to imagine yourself a hero of an ancient war or something?
(I spend time watching white supremecists out of morbid curiosity and they love Lord of the Rings because they love to imagine themselves as heroic Men of the West fighting off brown hordes from the East as part of some epic struggle.)
Anyway, if Muslims of today who commit no violence are somehow…responsible for? tainted by? all those bad things–murder, rape, enslavement, pillaging–then aren’t you? Because you have ancestors who did those things (and some who had those things done to them) because they were near universal features of all human societies. Humans can be pretty terrible! But this remains a slight of hand–atttibuting any violence by any Muslim anywhere ever to a monolithic category of Islamic violence, but explaining away all violence by anyone tangentially related to you. A great many of my ancestors were German, but I feel no affinity for or responsibility for Nazi Germany’s violence, and great pride and reverence for my American family members who fought against the Germans. Right now there are Iraqi and Syrian and Kurdish and even Iranian Muslims fighting and dying against ISIS; far more are aligned against it than are part of it. How does your ledger count them?
And I think your understanding of Syria remains a caricature. This is an honest question, and I don’t really expect an answer because it would be super easy to cheat, but do you know anything about Syria at all? Do you know how the Assads came to power? The names of any Syrians besides Bashar? I strongly suspect you don’t! I suspect you know one thing, and have concocted a story about that one thing, and that one thing is all you care to know.
But Somebody “knows it all.” We just haven’t realized it yet, although he/she keeps trying to tell us!
Somebody: I suggest you get yourself a decent keyboard and a big screen then do some thinking and proper revising before you post your comments.
When I respond to you, I feel like Mickey Mouse in “Fantasia” dealing with the exponential increase of brooms and buckets.
Each time I comment back to one of your multiple dubious points (IMO) you come back with another dubious response and four more dubious talking points.
Then you tell me I didn’t understand you or my reasoning is sadly flawed.
This is too much work. Kinda like dealing with Mitsu, another liberal/progressive who parachutes in to neo’s blog occasionally.
It’s hard for people to talk across large rifts. The only constructive way I can see for that to happen is to speak slowly, carefully, and in small steps.
Somebody,
“Again, it’s worth maintaining “terrorism” as a destinct subset of violence, as destinct from, say, war in general. This is the least controversial thing i could imagine saying”
“Wars” are conducted by nation states. That assertion is supported by the Geneva Convention. Modern day combatants who wear no uniform and are therefore indistinguishable from civilians are NOT subject to G.C. protections. By definition they are terrorists. So much for your “distinct subset of violence”.
You’re avoiding the point. Non-violent Muslims are complicit in Islamic violence because they embrace an inherently totalitarian ideology.
That they don’t directly participate in that violence does not absolve them from complicity in Islam’s crimes against humanity. You cannot embrace a totalitarian ideology without offering tacit support for that ideology. The vast majority of Muslims agree that the world should be Islamic. That amounts to silent approval. The only difference is the means they advocate for reaching that goal.
Oldflyer, I can not disagree with your take on the Old Testament more. Christianity is rooted in history–the only subject God commands that his people be schooled in. One can rest-assured that heresy abounds where the history of the faith is discarded, opening wide the door to the esoteric/gnostic enterprises that have been present from the beginning and flourish in present-day manifestations everywhere–Christ being the “calling card” of plentiful enterprises passing as the true religion. You cite the Psalms as something to discard, when, as one example, Psalm 23 has offered solace to countless people–even people that don’t practice Judaism or Christianity. In Micah we find these words, “What has God required of you O man, but that you do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with the Lord your God.” I can go on and on with the scriptures that you say speak of a God different than that found in the New Testament. But let’s go there and see Jesus’ parables that speak of judgment (even of those that seemingly have the signs of a believer), and judgment of whole cities, and parables of seeming unfairness–the talents, the virgins’ oil lamps, the owner of the vineyard. Suffice it to say on the subject of historical Islam and historical Christianity–if we follow the words of Jesus, the world is a good and a safe place–if Muslims follow the words of Mohammed, the world is good and safe for Muslims or those that convert.
SharoncW
Well said.
Welcome to the Novus ordo seclorum
I still remember how some people were outraged that I was talking about LEos executing Americans.
How does it feel now, that crowing.
The human livestock sheep again think they know what the shepherd is doing.
Non-violent Muslims are complicit in Islamic violence because they embrace an inherently totalitarian ideology.
That they don’t directly participate in that violence does not absolve them from complicity in Islam’s crimes against humanity. You cannot embrace a totalitarian ideology without offering tacit support for that ideology.
The same is said about the Leftist alliance and Democrats, yet you GB resisted the concept that regular Democrats like your associates, were guilty. You quoted out of context the ritualistic dogma that “forgive them, they know now what they do” as a way not to cast the judgment of justice on those who indirectly support violence. You are willing to condemn ragheads like Islamic jihadists, yet are unwilling to condemn your own compatriots. That resistance negates whatever point you think you made.
The teachings and examples in the New Testament strongly, if implicitly, repudiate that legacy. The Books of the New Testament clearly intend to point Believers in a new direction.
Here we go with religion again.
Just to put the intro out there, Jesus of Nazareth, his apostles, nor the sanhedrine had the English King James bible. That needs to be said/written, because of the King James bible only sect.
Thus what people know as the Bible, was constructed by humans and politicians. There was no break between New or Old Testaments. It was all the same testament, right up until the crucifixion.
It was only “new” after Jesus of Nazareth fulfilled the blood sacrifice required for sin as dictated in the Leviticus chapters. That was the entire point, that a god would die himself to his own laws, and thus be consistent and just.
As for the concept of Jehovah “evolving”, that is an interesting claim, but not factual. Human civilizations don’t evolve so much as de evolve, considering what many churches and pastors can’t even get the visions and powers of the disciples of the Messiah in 1st century AD, let alone the powers of the Apostles. Did Jehovah change or did human civilization change?