Credit Where Credit Is Not Due

French investigators are still trying to piece together the motives behind the gruesome truck attack on the Nice seafront that killed 84 people last week, even as ISIS passively took credit for the attack with a tepid statement that experts suspect reflects a new strategy by the group to win publicity from attacks committed by people with no known ties to it.

[...]

In response to the ISIS statement and a lack of direct evidence of a connection, the French Interior Minister responded that Bouhlel appears to have been “rapidly radicalized.”

“[The statement] reflects how little we have found [about an ISIS link], although the investigation continues,” said one of the officials, supporting reports that Bouhlel had never displayed religious devotion and led a life of drinking, drug use and petty crime that had led to run-ins with police and a conviction for assault.

[...]

The attacks in Orlando and now Nice [...] have seen statements that appear to show a willingness to claim attacks that ISIS had literally no direct involvement in beyond the possible interest of the attackers in the group, as was the case with Orlando, where Omar Mateen only declared his allegiance to the group as the attack was underway and investigators were unable to find a direct link beyond the statement.

  Buzzfeed

[Mohamed Lahouaiej] Bouhlel, who had been known to the French police since January, had been on the radar for six months for petty criminality. It is understood he lost his job as a delivery driver when he fell asleep at the wheel and crashed into four cars and had also been involved in a bar brawl. Walid Hamou, a cousin of Bouhlel's wife Hajer Khalfallah, told MailOnline: 'Bouhlel was not religious. He did not go to the mosque, he did not pray, he did not observe Ramadan.'He drank alcohol, ate pork and took drugs. This is all forbidden under Islam.

'He was not a Muslim, he was a s***.

'He beat his wife, my cousin, he was a nasty piece of work.'

Yesterday, he was stopped by police just hours before he crushed scores of people underneath the wheels of his 25 tonne truck and fired shots indiscriminately at police and innocent bystanders.

[...]

[He] was in the process of getting a divorce.

  Daily Mail

Sounds very much like the Orlando killer. Authorities might stop more mass killings if they focused on wife beaters instead of Muslims.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Psychotic

On the morning before the massacre at Orlando’s Pulse gay nightclub, shooter Omar Mateen drastically altered his appearance, shaving his head and face, and seemed agitated and surly, said an acquaintance who saw him that day.

Mateen also talked about staying up all night to do online research into anti-psychosis medication, the acquaintance said in a interview. The acquaintance requested anonymity, saying authorities had asked him to keep quiet.

  Reuters

Dude, I think they're going to know it was you.

The FBI would not comment on the acquaintance’s remarks, but several senior U.S. sources told Reuters the investigation was moving more toward the belief that Mateen's motives were personal rather than political.

Too late. We've already labeled him. And we have legislation we want to enact.

We'll Never Get the Whole Story

[A] reporter asked the Orlando police chief, John Mina, if some of the patrons killed at the [Pulse] nightclub might have been shot by his officers as they stormed the building. Mina said this was still under investigation, but appeared to acknowledge that it did occur, saying, “Those killings are on the suspect and on the suspect alone, in my mind.”

[...]

After Attorney General Loretta Lynch said on Sunday that the transcript would be partial and redacted — to, in her words, “avoid re-victimizing those who went through this horror."

  The Intercept

Hmmmmm. How would that happen?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Radicalized on the Internet

Omar Mateen went online and searched for the terms “Pulse Orlando” and “shooting”, according to a letter released by a Senate committee, even as his victims lay dead or dying in the gay nightclub.

The 29-year-old American Muslim also apparently posted “America and Russia stop bombing the Islamic state..I pledge my alliance to [its leader] abu bakr al Baghdadi..may Allah accept me,” on one of at least five Facebook accounts thought to be associated with him.

According to the Senate committee’s letter, he then posted: “The real muslims will never accept the filthy ways of the west” and “You kill innocent women and children by doing us airstrikes..now taste the Islamic state vengeance.”

In a final message, Mateen apparently wrote: “In the next few days you will see attacks from the Islamic state in the usa.”

Republican senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, chairman of the Senate homeland security committee, quoted the posts in a letter to the Facebook chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, asking for help uncovering Mateen’s digital tracks. Johnson did not explain how the committee obtained the information about Mateen’s Facebook activity.

  Guardian

Ramblings of a nutter. A nutter with assault weapons.

Orlando on Thursday awaited the arrival of Obama, who plans to meet victims’ families and doctors, paramedics and first responders and offer words of solace. Vice-President Joe Biden will accompany him.

[...]

The White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, said: [...] Obama would tell Orlando’s residents “that they’re not alone, even as they endure what surely have been several dark nights”.

The president also intends to speak publicly during his visit “to make clear that the country stands with the people of Orlando, stands with the LGBT community in Orlando, as they grieve for their loss”, the spokesman said.

Very helpful. And also a lie.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

But We Don't Believe Them

Can't somebody manufacture one?  This is the CIA, after all.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Why the Orlando Massacre Was Not a Case of Islamic Terrorism

Unbalanced, disturbed young Christian Americans who want to act out power fantasies that end in murder-suicide tend to claim a KKK, neo-Nazi, Christian fundamentalist or other white-nationalist identity in a desperate bid to make their loser lives and loser behavior seem cosmically important. And, Jewish young men with mass murder on their minds tend to do so in the name of some flavor of radical Zionism (Jewish nationalism, which makes Judaism a national identity rather than a private religious one). Muslim American young men with similar power fantasies and violent impulses inflate their egos with reference to al-Qaeda, ISIL, whatever the far right fringe Muslim boogey man of the day is.

[...]

[A] distinction must be drawn between nihilism and terrorism, between the senseless action of a disturbed individual (no matter how he justifies it) and an actual political group to which a suspect actually belongs that deploys terrorism to achieve a deeply political goal.

So here are some tips for recognizing a Muslim fundamentalist who has turned to terrorism, i.e. what most counter-terrrorism experts call a Salafi Jihadi (I prefer the term fundamentalist vigilante).

[...]

1. Salafi Jihadis don’t drink alcohol.

2. Salafi Jihadis don’t hang out in bars.

3. Salafi Jihadis don’t, in particular, frequent gay bars.

4. Salafi Jihadis don’t text potential hook-ups using a gay dating app.

5. Salafi Jihadis aren’t usually clean shaven.

6. Salafi Jihadis belong to a fringe interpretation of Sunni Islam and despise Shiites; they don’t typically claim to have an affiliation with a Shiite group such as Hizbullah, which is fighting ISIL in Syria. (Here “typically” means, like, “ever.”)

7. Salafi Jihadis don’t express a hope that non-Muslim police will assault their wives. In fact, they wouldn’t want men other than close relatives to so much as see their wives unveiled.

This is what a real Salafi Jihadi looks like, ie. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

[...]

Omar Mateen was a disturbed person. [...] When he felt bullied at work for his race or religion, he talked big, invoking Salafi Jihadi groups, without any understanding of them. He never adopted that lifestyle or joined any such group. He didn’t even know the difference between Sunni and Shiite.

It is possible, in fact, that his psychotic break came from being jilted at the club, and the massacre was his revenge.

To put all this on Muslims and Islam in general is frankly absurd.

  Juan Cole

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.