Couple Kept Tight Lid on Plans for San Bernardino Shooting

[ellenrr]

Source: NYTimes

On Wednesday morning, Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, left their 6-month-old daughter with Mr. Farook’s mother, telling her they were going out for a doctor’s appointment, a relative said.

By nightfall, it was clear that was a ruse, as the police said the couple spent the day carrying out a rampage at a social services center that killed at least 14 people before leading officers on a sprawling chase that ended with the two dead in a bloody gunfight in a suburban neighborhood.

Before the attack, Mr. Farook, 28, who was born in Illinois and whose parents are from Pakistan, joined colleagues at an annual holiday party for the San Bernardino County Public Health Department, where he worked for five years as an environmental inspector, officials said. He had attended the same party the year before, and he did not appear out of place.

Soon, however, he stormed out in anger. The nature of the dispute was not clear, but when he returned with his wife, 27, both of them were dressed in tactical gear and carrying assault rifles, officials said. That level of preparation is among the factors investigators are weighing as they examine a motive for the attack.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/04/us/san-bernardino-shooting-syed-rizwan-farook.html

[ellenrr]

1. so from what I am reading - this could still be case of individual rage

and not international "jihad"
I hope so.
Altho for the multitudes of haters in America it doesn't make a difference.

(I remember after 911 my friend's husband was beat up.
He was from Lebanon.)

Haters gotta hate.

[Proserpina]

5. So, next time someone pisses me off, I'll grab the body armor and long guns and pistols--

nope. Doesn't make it as a momentary fit of rage scenario. Too much pre-planning. It's not like he had to psyche up the wifie, either.

A peace-loving citizen, even an emotionally unstable one, doesn't shell out that kind of money for armaments, especially with a new baby. Not in this country, not in any country.

A new mother doesn't set out to orphan her child.

These were not normal people. These were not even normal for mentally unstable people.

[ellenrr]

8. true.

"These were not even normal for mentally unstable people."

[restorefreedom]

24. that was the takeaway phrase for me too. nt

[atreides1]

20. If that works for you!

The problem I'm seeing is that people are trying to deal with this by what their definition of 'normal' is.


What you perceive as a normal action...may not have applied to this couple!

I'm sure no one ever thought this college professor was capable of murder:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_University_of_Alabama_in_Huntsville_shooting

And I'm sure there was no way to determine what Adam Lanza was capable of

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_shooting


People do stupid and insane things for reasons that only they can understand, we can't read their minds.

[One_Life_To_Give]

35. The First should of been locked up for Murdering her brother years earlier

You should look into the details of how political influence kept Amy Bishop from being charged with her brothers murder years before.

[atreides1]

50. I've heard and read about how...

...she had a little assistance!

The point I'm trying to make...is that what she did after being denied tenure, was not an expected reaction...even with her history!

[wordpix]

45. Lanza (Sandy Hook) was bullied as a child in school

I live in CT and was in line at a grocery store right after the shooting. The cashier had a very long face and when it was my turn to check out, I asked if he was OK. He said he went to school with Lanza and the cashier and others bullied and harassed him as a kid b/c Lanza was different. Could have been some type of PDD (pervasive developmental disorder) and he was definitely OCD.

[Dont call me Shirley]

55. Bullying, Ostracism, Public Shaming have a way larger effect on people than the establishment is

willing to admit.

We need real programs to end bullying.

[Marrah_G]

47. Bad examples

The professor already murdered her brother and many people knew Lanza was unstable including his idiot mother who collected weapons and taught him to use them.

[whathehell]

62. Yes, his mother reportedly warned babysitters "Don't turn your back on him"

for fear of what he might do.

[ellenrr]

57. exactly. Much as we would like to prevent

these horrors, we can't.

We can reduce the damage by limiting guns.
I don't see why anyone needs a gun. period.
maybe the cops, altho they are sometimes "mentally unstable" too.

but certainly no civilian needs a gun.

I'm probably talking to people who are already for gun control, but anyway--
if that guy had had a knife he might have been able to kill one person and then would have been stopped.
Why was he able to buy bombs, no one needs to buy bombs.

but as far as "predicting" which is where some of this "mental health" talk is going, it should be clear to anyone that, as this poster says, -^ we do things for reasons we can't even understand, let alone someone else.

I think all this "mental health screening" is another tool to oppress people.

Look at what people say about Farook - "We would never have thot he could do this." "He was such a normal fellow."

They always say that about the killers. And even if in the case of some, before the crime, if they exhibit some disturbing traits - where do you draw the line?

Obviously if someone says, "tomorrow I am going to blow up my school".
But mostly it isn't that.
You can't lock up people bec. they are "loners". or bec. they wear clothes that we don't think are appropriate. Or bec. they say weird things.
If you did that, we'd double our prison population, and still have mass killings.

[EX500rider]

60. "Why was he able to buy bombs, no one needs to buy bombs."

He didn't "buy" bombs...he built bombs....out of stuff you can buy over the counter at hardware stores most likely. (that's why they are called "pipe bombs&quot

[ileus]

31. Come on honey...it's time to show them who is boss.

grab our pipe bombs.

[Xithras]

56. It's not "either/or". It could be "workplace violence" by an actual terrorist.

It's entirely possible that they were already radicalized and were planning on hitting something in Southern California, when something happened at his workplace that made him choose them as the target. While there are certainly higher profile targets in Southern California, the goal of terrorism is to shock people and create fear. A slaughter at a facility designed to assist the disabled accomplishes that fairly well.

[Jesus Malverde]

71. and a bunch of pipe bombs and a remote control detonation system....nt

[OakCliffDem]

2. They kept the lid so tight the NSA did not detect it with all their spying

What good is the Patriot Act?

[daleanime]

3. It was never intended to protect us.

[GoneFishin]

9. +1000.

[Jesus Malverde]

11. +2000

It's J Edgar style blackmail op.

[Enthusiast]

14. I agree.

[GOLGO 13]

15. Well played. Well played.

Nail meets the hammer.

[restorefreedom]

25. plus a freakin zillion. nt

[harun]

54. +1

[Hoppy]

17. The Patriot Act puts a lot of money into the economy.

That improves the G.N.P. It also keeps our unemployment levels low. It made a few people like Chertoff into millionaires. They spend a lot of money and that helps our economy.

It also makes the sheeple feel secure at night. We haven't had an agent orange level alert in years.

What more do you want it to do.

If I left anything out, please add it.

[PassingFair]

33. Just this:

[Ikonoklast]

46. What good is the Patriot Act?

Collecting all electronic data, personal communication, and information useful for potential blackmail against those politicians deemed enemies of the surveillance state, then co-opting them into supporting the goals of the three-letter agencies involved in domestic spying..


Giving low-level information collected and spying tools to local law enforcement in order to bust small-time drug users, making them:

A. Reliant upon the clandestine intelligence information gathered and equipment largess in order to increase the police department's revenue streams through confiscation, which is useful to keep them as allies, which then leads to

B. Using local LEO as muscle to beat down any protests against the surveillance state.

[ellenrr]

4. Chief: 'the attack did not seem to be “a spur-of-the-moment thing."'

as other people have said, the planning that went into this, is so inconsistent with the idea of it being a work grievance.

there is a lot more to be known for sure...

[6chars]

6. I know they don't have any idea about motivation

but I wonder whether they were responding to calls from ISIS for their fans to do this in the US - not following orders, just a general call for independently conducted terror.

This is just a question, not trying to make any unfair assumptions that would be disparaging to either the killers or to ISIS.

[Myrina]

26. Ever see the movie "Falling Down" with Michael Douglas?

One can hold work and personal based grudges for a long, long time.
And the pot can come to a slow boil.
And the plan - you're ready because you've played out the scenario in your head so many times- can go into action.

Yeah, this could easily be an imbalanced person with a longstanding grudge.

[6chars]

28. yes. anything's possible

but I wonder if just maybe the FBI should check out my crazy hunch, just in case.

[GliderGuider]

36. That works for one person, but for a couple? With a baby?

The probabilities drop damn close to zero. This doesn't feel like a grudge to me.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

38. Great movie. Recommended.

Well educated guy. Used to have a good job. Things not going well with the family. Then one day, the complexity of his life exceeded his resilience.

[Yo_Mama]

40. It's two people, not one. That isn't a workplace grudge.

It's relatively easy for one person to go off his/her rocker, develop a mania, stockpile stuff and create and execute a weird plan of revenge/violence. Consider the Unabomber, the "Joker" theater shooter, and Lanza.

But this was at least two people, perhaps more in the background. That makes it something like the Manson gang or the Boston bombers - there was a controlling ideology behind this.

I'm just happy they didn't take the baby along.

My hunch is that these two got "INSPIREd".

[KittyWampus]

43. Columbine

[TwilightGardener]

51. Yep, liked that movie. Just a regular guy slowly losing it.

[Igel]

69. Ever see the movie "The Lord of the Rings"?

One can hold a long-standing aspiration for power through trying to possess the One Rignt, and still be defeated by a furry-toed hobbit.

Both are works of fiction.

[Warren Stupidity]

13. but people will cling to that here, the same way the right refuses to admit

that Dear acted out of his religious/political motivations. We are all frequently blinded by our ideological filters.

[leftyladyfrommo]

7. We blame it on the mentally ill. But the problem is guns.

Just how many mentally ill people do we have out there?

Seems like there is one in every neighborhood now. We have a mass shooting a day. Now not all those people are mentally ill.

There isn't any way to know who is going to flip. We have got to get these guns under control.

[ellenrr]

10. after every shooting, there is always a call to re-evaluate mental health in this country

but I don't believe that is the issue.
Mental stability is not like TB- TB you either have it or you don't.

Who is mentally stable?

Someone who drops drones on a wedding party?
Is Kissinger mentally stable? Is Trump? Is Carson?

Who decides?

Are the cops who kill mentally stable?

I can always see someone doing something "crazy".
People in my building literally smoke every hour outside so I see them, when they are not eating or sleeping, they are smoking.
Do I get to call this "crazy"?

I am frightened of people (not referring to Leftylady) who want to determine what behavior is normal and what is not.

[leftyladyfrommo]

12. That whole argument (the mentally ill one)is so full of holes.

Last edited Thu Dec 3, 2015, 09:40 AM - Edit history (1)

Anyone can go off the rails if their life falls apart for some reason. Someone loses their job, or someone gets hurt, or their wife ups and leaves. It can happen to anyone.

If there isn't a gun available you can't shoot someone when you are so mad you are crazy. If there isn't a gun in the house the two year old can't shoot his little brother. If there isn't a gun in the house and enraged son can't kill his parents

I am beginning to think I need a gun just to protect myself from all the other people out there with guns. Now that's crazy.

How on earth did we let things get this bad? And now how on earth do we fix it?

[secondwind]

16. You spoke for me... I feel the exact same way.

[SmittynMo]

18. Part of the problem is health care (or lack there of)

Under many current plans, including the ACA, psyche doctors are not covered as a wellness visit. In my opinion, they should be treated as a wellness visit. Therefore if you go for a scheduled visit, which can be frequent(3-4 times a year), all those payments go directly towards your excessive high deductible. And don't forget that there are still 29M without insurance.

So part of the problem is our so called healthcare insurance. How do you fix that?
Single payer for all. It can't force you to go, but going to a doctor would no longer be considered a direct hit to your pocket. Maybe then people will get the help they need.

And this is yet, another reason to support Bernie. No one else wants single payer. Our elected officials have been useless in this area and we need a political revolution.

[6chars]

30. Is ISIS and Al Queda incitement to violence a problem too?

Probably not. If only Farook had better healthcare.

[olegramps]

39. "How on earth did we let things get this bad?"

I believe that a major contributing factor is Hate Radio and FOX News. They preach a constant diatribe against anyone who opposes their radical view along with constant criticism of government, liberals, homosexuals and anyone who doesn't share their corrupt concept of Christianity. They spew a message of total intolerance keeping their faithful in a constant state of agitation. It has resulted in complete polarization of the nation rather than providing an atmosphere of cooperative compromise and understanding. It is tragic when the citizens are divided into two camps that literally hate each other.

I even see this happening within our own party between Sanders and Clinton camps. The rhetoric is at times beyond polite differences of opinion. I realize that their have always been disagreements but it appears to me that we are victims of being in a constant state of agitation. Some times I think that the only way to peace of mind is to completely divorce myself from society and go live in the woods.

[nruthie]

42. Agreed.

[leftyladyfrommo]

44. I read Drudge just to see what the other side is up to.

He is constantly goading people on. It's nonstop. Every argument he can think of is put there no matter how stupid or just plain ignorant. Or just plain wrong. Every awful bit of gossip or out and out lie about Hillary or Bernie. Every conspiracy theory. He is constantly fanning the flames.


That has to have a huge effect over time

[nruthie]

41. I know exactly how you feel.

I also ask myself if I need to go buy a gun to protect myself against the hordes of armed people out there. Do I have to suddenly perceive others as a potential danger to me personally? Do I need to alter my way of thinking in order to survive? Can I?
Do I even want to at this stage of my life? I don't think I can.

[ellenrr]

59. i'll take a try at an answer..

besides the guns,
I think what is wrong is that our society is so atomized.
People don't have community, they feel alienated and their lives feel purposeless.

I'm reading a fascinating book, "The Spiral Notebook: The aurora theater shooter and the epidemic of mass violence committed by American youth."

written by 2 authors who live in Denver. Their son was 5 when Columbine happened, and 15 when James Holmes shot up the theatre.

they have researched major school shootings, focusing on James Holmes, but others too.
And interspersed are comments by Millennials - "a group dogged by big pharma, anti-depressants, and ADHD drugs, by a doomsday/apocalyptic mentality and by an entertainment industry that has turned violence into parlor games." (book jacket)

to read these youngsters' comments is illuminating and heart-breaking.
If I knew how to scan, I'd post them.
Really, they make me cry to read about how they see their lives, and how they see the world-- empty, hollow, meaningless

[leftyladyfrommo]

61. Speaking as an anthropologist

I am not sure that society doesn't need religion in order to survive. Now I am not speaking about fanatics because no one really needs them. They just do a lot of damage.

But human society and culture have relied on religion to give life meaning and ethics and moral structure. As a species we have had religion from the beginning of our development. It was there before government. It gives people a feeling that they have some control over their lives and their arbitrary natural environment. It also sets up rules for human behavior that are necessary for our own existence.

I practice Zen and Buddhism doesn't have a creator God like western religions. But it stresses compassion and has a code of ethics and morality. Those things are important in a society. Without them humans can really go off the rails.

Nihilism can be pretty depressing. I just don't want to live that way.

[Cosmocat]

19. its what it is - a bullshit right wing meme

grasping at anything they can to deflect attention and distract from the real issues ...

[christx30]

21. It's ok to label certain behavior as "crazy".

My family and I were riding the bus a few years ago and it pulled over for a 15 minute layover. The driver got off to go to the bathroom. There was a very large, scary looking guy that got on, sat for a couple of minutes, then got up in the aisle, and started waving his staff in the air, as if he were practicing with his weapon (like Donatello during a training montage). He then laid it at his feet, and genuflected. He suddenly stood up, raised the staff in both hands and yelled out "ARE YOU WITH ME!!!!" as if he were addressing a crowd of thousands.

That kind of behavior is a little nutty. I got between him and my family and I didn't take my eyes off of him as long as he was on the bus. Being crazy doesn't stop you from hurting other people. It just means you can't be held responsible for doing it.

[leftyladyfrommo]

64. And some people aren't crazy all the time.

I have a friend who is rational most of the time but once in a while she just goes off on some bizarre tangent that's not rational at all. But it blows over pretty fast. Used to scare me but it doesn't any more.

[jwirr]

52. Thank you. We have always tried to cover up the real evil that

drives one to kill another by giving it a generic label of mental illness. And IMO that has stopped us from researching and recognizing the real reasons someone kills another.

It is like calling alcoholism and drug addiction an illness. It may be but that is not what led to it.

[cigsandcoffee]

23. Yes. We should ban them, like in Paris. n/t

[leftyladyfrommo]

27. France has 1,800 gun deaths a year

As compared to 33,000 in the US.

[cigsandcoffee]

32. About 20K of our 33K are suicides. Banning guns won't change that number much.

Not as long as there are knives or rope available.

Guns may exasperate whatever problems we have, but they are not the root cause of them.

[leftyladyfrommo]

37. Those figures include all gun deaths.

I'm not arguing. Those are just the stats. I am not anti gun but our our gun stats are horrible.

UK has 58 gun murders a year. US has about 8775.

Britain 2011: 638 murders equivalent to 3095 murders if you adjust for population.
Number by firearms -58. Equivalent to 290 if you adjust for population size.

US 2010. 12,996 murders
8 775 by firearms.

[rockfordfile]

66. the right wingers

I don't think banning all guns would completely solve "our" problems.

The republican party and nra help make guns part of the root problem. It's a gun culture because of the republican party and nra.

The right wingers of today want to solve a problem get violent, and the first thing they reach for is a gun. I've heard people say that when they get angry they like to go run off a few rounds at gun range. A gun culture.

[EdwardBernays]

29. When the French

Start having hundreds of shootings a year, and lose hundreds of kids a year to guns, I'll consider your point.

[zalinda]

53. What is the population of France?

And what is the population of the US? Equating small countries with our large country is not correct. Come up with population equivalents and then let's talk.

Btw, auto deaths are just about equal to gun deaths. If you can't find a gun a car will do in a pinch to killing or maiming lots of people.

Z

[EdwardBernays]

58. France is not a small country

It's got 66M people in it.

And the Firearm fatality rate per capita of the US is over 70% higher.

For every 3 Americans that die at the end of a gun in France, 10 die in America, more actually.

It's homicide rate is also 75% lower than the US.

No country in Europe has anything near the gun violence of the US.

In fact, Europe as a whole, which has more than TWICE the population of the US (743M) has a grand total of about 6700 people killed with guns annually. That's almost a thousands less a year than the US for over twice as many people.

So yeah... those are the facts...

As for cars... once cars do as much good as guns, let me know... until then, good luck with that absurd analogy...

[whathehell]

63. Yes, and it's a LOT easier (in normal countries, anyway) to restrict firearms than to determine

who is violently mentally ill and then enact restraints on them...That's just another dodge by the Repukes,

who certainly don't want to pay for no stinkin social services like mental health clinics anyway.

[leftyladyfrommo]

67. And a lot of our shooters were under psychiatric care

Either at the time of the shootings or at other times in their lives.

Mental health people can't predict who is going to go off the rails at some point and who isn't.

[whathehell]

68. True...It's just a dodge. n/t

[DCBob]

22. I wonder if the wife was radicalized already then brainwashed her husband.

Syed sounds like a normal guy. They need to investigate her background in Saudi if possible.

[wordpix]

48. authorities are looking into how he met her, maybe in S.A.

on MSNBC today

[Marrah_G]

49. Maybe!

"love" can make people change

[Frank Cannon]

34. This whole thing is just bizarre.

But, hey, when you live in a country where daily mass shootings are the norm, you're going to run into an occasional outlier.

[Strelnikov_]

70. Yep

On the plus side, when someone wants to declare war on the citizens of this country, we make it easy as possible to use domestically produced weapons.

The business of the US of A is business, after all. There's profit to be made!

[hollowdweller]

65. All I know is it is going to keep getting harder on Islamic people

There's not going to be any western country where they aren't discriminated against or viewed with suspicion.

It's sad that it's only a small subset of the population but it's really going to fuck up the future of the whole membership.

Their birth rate and countries are such that they they can not sustain all the citizens they produce. Then they must move to the countries with lower birth rates more opportunity. But then they wind up hating those countries and shooting them up.

I can really see a time that a lot of countries seriously limit immigration or even visits by people from Islamic countries.

On the gun issue. Very few mass shootings in the US are done with actual machine guns. They are done with high capacity pistols and assault weapons. I believe that is because the bar for owning a machine gun is higher.

I can see a time coming when the US makes the ownership of any high capacity gun more complicated or expensive than owning say a revolver or a pump or lever action gun.

This would not totally prevent mass shootings but if buying the guns were either more red tape or higher expense it would cut down on their purchases but not prevent collectors from owning them.