Sorry Jane Austen for abusing your book title.
Assaults and abuse of all kinds are overwhelmingly done by men. It makes absolutely no sense to hunt for the perpetrator of violent assaults among women. That is profiling. It is inappropriate to hate all men as violent criminals. That is prejudice. Why can't we apply that to Muslims?
The press tries very hard to talk about domestic terrorists, and there are some. There are some violent, assaultive women too. But not many of either. When we talk about violent crime almost all of it is done by men. When we talk about terror attacks almost all of them, nationally and internationally, are done by Muslims.
But this does not make Muslims or Islam bad. Far from it. Islam is a beautiful religion, despite smears that it is intrinsically violent. Read Deuteronomy for some violent material. ALL the descendants of Amalek are to be killed. No exceptions, forever. All strangers and occupants in the land Israel is to occupy are to be killed. No exceptions. Saul loses the favor of the Lord because he declines to kill a helpless captive. These are not sweet images. The Koran has violent passages as well. But Muslims are no more intrinsically violent than Jews or Christians, and if you want mass murder done in the name of religion then Christianity is surely at the head of such a list.
It is not right to label Muslims, hate Muslims or hate Islam. It is wrong to hate men, hate masculinity, hate masculine sex or physical strength. But it is simply common sense to seek violent criminals among men. And it is equally common sense to seek terrorists among Muslims.
The word 'profiling' is a nice, legalisitc word for institutional, typically police, prejudice. All terrorists must be Muslim. Well, almost all of them are. Profiling is nothing more than looking for trouble among those where trouble is common. To suggest that everyone is equally likely to be a terrorist is a politically correct insanity that leads to 78 year old women in wheelchairs getting patted down at airports and children with toys being barred from schools and aircraft. We are not all equally likely to be terrorists.
Israel has a highly successful profiling system. Admittedly Israel only has a couple of airports to cover, but their system of screening has worked perfectly for an airline and country at overwhelming risk for terror. In the name of 'fairness' and correctness we have the paradoxical result that we simultaneously suspect everyone while also condemning and vilifying all Muslims. We fail to target trouble while also sneering at perfectly peaceful persons.
Gavin de Becker has a great deal to say about profiling. His whole business is profiling, predicting threat for those at high risk. It is easily done for an individual, and can equally well be done at a national level. So what constitutes appropriate profiling, as opposed to simply hating all Muslims or men?
de Becker talks about pre-incident indicators, or PINs. Every terrorist, assailant and mass murderer has them. They are often very obvious, but our society has a variety of perceptual and structural blocks to seeing and acting on them. For example, those who engage in workplace violence have an overwhelming pattern of PINs. More than 90% have engaged in violence toward animals, come from broken or abusive homes, and/or have had abusive relationships. They then have trouble at work, and when disciplined make statements that are hopeless and /or threatening. They are already seen by employers and colleagues as a danger before they are fired, and after their violence others are completely unsurprised. We are perfectly able to pick these people out, but we do nothing about it out of fear of suit, unwillingness to label and a lack of societal system and precedent to intervene.
The Press always describe these killers as unpredictable monsters, always present these events as tragedies that could not be stopped. But the real tragedy is they can almost always be stopped, and the perpetrators were well identified in advance, and nothing was done. The Va Tech killer had PINs of every kind, and nothing was done. The Fort Hood killer had numerous warning signs, and nothing was done. The Columbine kids were classic examples of PINs not acted on. And on and on and on.
The Boston Bombers had typical terrorist PINs, and this based only on the tiny amount of information now available. The one nominally professed appreciation for the US while also saying he had no US friends because he could not understand them. They talked all over the internet about their values and anger. All over it. They were interviewed as potential terrorists by the FBI in 2011! But we have no process for pre-emptive detention. Ask any woman who complained about a violent spouse and was told nothing could be done unless he broke a law. And the first law he broke was to murder her. And we have no mandatory surveillance or psychiatric observation laws. Some of them were taken away in the 60s, when psychiatric hospitals were seen only as a way of incarcerating the annoying.
Pre-emptive detention was how concentration camps were filled. And psychiatric hospitalization was indeed used against lesbians and political opponents. But those abuses do not condemn the concept any more than profiling terrorists should condemn all Muslims. For those who have PINs of this nature it is perfectly fine to have 7-14 days of pre-emptive custody. If after that time no charge is brought then the person is released. And if you say that is fascism you should see how many western democracies have such laws. And also consider that such law would only be applied for manifest risk behavior.
In our efforts to be 'fair' we condemn everyone to both risk and hatred. We talk about 'towel heads' and 'sand monkeys' when we should be targeting risk behaviors. Hatred is poisonous. Prejudice is wrong. But profiling and intervention are not. The tragedy of these 'unpredictable' crimes is that they are all to predictable, and we do nothing about it.
Ted
Assaults and abuse of all kinds are overwhelmingly done by men. It makes absolutely no sense to hunt for the perpetrator of violent assaults among women. That is profiling. It is inappropriate to hate all men as violent criminals. That is prejudice. Why can't we apply that to Muslims?
The press tries very hard to talk about domestic terrorists, and there are some. There are some violent, assaultive women too. But not many of either. When we talk about violent crime almost all of it is done by men. When we talk about terror attacks almost all of them, nationally and internationally, are done by Muslims.
But this does not make Muslims or Islam bad. Far from it. Islam is a beautiful religion, despite smears that it is intrinsically violent. Read Deuteronomy for some violent material. ALL the descendants of Amalek are to be killed. No exceptions, forever. All strangers and occupants in the land Israel is to occupy are to be killed. No exceptions. Saul loses the favor of the Lord because he declines to kill a helpless captive. These are not sweet images. The Koran has violent passages as well. But Muslims are no more intrinsically violent than Jews or Christians, and if you want mass murder done in the name of religion then Christianity is surely at the head of such a list.
It is not right to label Muslims, hate Muslims or hate Islam. It is wrong to hate men, hate masculinity, hate masculine sex or physical strength. But it is simply common sense to seek violent criminals among men. And it is equally common sense to seek terrorists among Muslims.
The word 'profiling' is a nice, legalisitc word for institutional, typically police, prejudice. All terrorists must be Muslim. Well, almost all of them are. Profiling is nothing more than looking for trouble among those where trouble is common. To suggest that everyone is equally likely to be a terrorist is a politically correct insanity that leads to 78 year old women in wheelchairs getting patted down at airports and children with toys being barred from schools and aircraft. We are not all equally likely to be terrorists.
Israel has a highly successful profiling system. Admittedly Israel only has a couple of airports to cover, but their system of screening has worked perfectly for an airline and country at overwhelming risk for terror. In the name of 'fairness' and correctness we have the paradoxical result that we simultaneously suspect everyone while also condemning and vilifying all Muslims. We fail to target trouble while also sneering at perfectly peaceful persons.
Gavin de Becker has a great deal to say about profiling. His whole business is profiling, predicting threat for those at high risk. It is easily done for an individual, and can equally well be done at a national level. So what constitutes appropriate profiling, as opposed to simply hating all Muslims or men?
de Becker talks about pre-incident indicators, or PINs. Every terrorist, assailant and mass murderer has them. They are often very obvious, but our society has a variety of perceptual and structural blocks to seeing and acting on them. For example, those who engage in workplace violence have an overwhelming pattern of PINs. More than 90% have engaged in violence toward animals, come from broken or abusive homes, and/or have had abusive relationships. They then have trouble at work, and when disciplined make statements that are hopeless and /or threatening. They are already seen by employers and colleagues as a danger before they are fired, and after their violence others are completely unsurprised. We are perfectly able to pick these people out, but we do nothing about it out of fear of suit, unwillingness to label and a lack of societal system and precedent to intervene.
The Press always describe these killers as unpredictable monsters, always present these events as tragedies that could not be stopped. But the real tragedy is they can almost always be stopped, and the perpetrators were well identified in advance, and nothing was done. The Va Tech killer had PINs of every kind, and nothing was done. The Fort Hood killer had numerous warning signs, and nothing was done. The Columbine kids were classic examples of PINs not acted on. And on and on and on.
The Boston Bombers had typical terrorist PINs, and this based only on the tiny amount of information now available. The one nominally professed appreciation for the US while also saying he had no US friends because he could not understand them. They talked all over the internet about their values and anger. All over it. They were interviewed as potential terrorists by the FBI in 2011! But we have no process for pre-emptive detention. Ask any woman who complained about a violent spouse and was told nothing could be done unless he broke a law. And the first law he broke was to murder her. And we have no mandatory surveillance or psychiatric observation laws. Some of them were taken away in the 60s, when psychiatric hospitals were seen only as a way of incarcerating the annoying.
Pre-emptive detention was how concentration camps were filled. And psychiatric hospitalization was indeed used against lesbians and political opponents. But those abuses do not condemn the concept any more than profiling terrorists should condemn all Muslims. For those who have PINs of this nature it is perfectly fine to have 7-14 days of pre-emptive custody. If after that time no charge is brought then the person is released. And if you say that is fascism you should see how many western democracies have such laws. And also consider that such law would only be applied for manifest risk behavior.
In our efforts to be 'fair' we condemn everyone to both risk and hatred. We talk about 'towel heads' and 'sand monkeys' when we should be targeting risk behaviors. Hatred is poisonous. Prejudice is wrong. But profiling and intervention are not. The tragedy of these 'unpredictable' crimes is that they are all to predictable, and we do nothing about it.
Ted
I have spent this week pondering many of the same issues. Never more than a non-verbal paragraph away from my internal arguments is the future of our younger daughter. She has PINs galore. We, her legal parents, have little say over the consequences for her current actions. The courts, her lawyer, JPPO, Guardian Ad Litum, the staff at the group home make the day to day decisions. I see them get sucked into her chaos making that controls those around her. I imagine her in place of these two young men, enjoying the chaos they created Boston. Perhaps it is a blessing that she is a female, making the risk of her killing people lower. I fear her daily need for chaos creation will hook her up with men who see her potential for them.
ReplyDeleteWell said. I agree.
ReplyDelete-D-