Try harder
The Orlando gunman’s wife has told federal agents she tried to talk her husband out of carrying out the attack, NBC News has learned.
Omar Mateen’s wife, Noor Zahi Salman, told the FBI she was with him when he bought ammunition and a holster, several officials familiar with the case said. She told the FBI that she once drove him to the gay nightclub, Pulse, because he wanted to scope it out.
Oh. Oh really. So she knew he was planning it but she didn’t tell anyone who could have stopped him. Well thanks a lot.
I’m seeing people say maybe she was abused, maybe she was too afraid to tell anyone. Maybe so but that’s a lot of people dead or injured because she kept his secret. I think she should have taken the chance.
We shall see what she actually said as the investigation progresses. The corporate media is no longer an reliable information broker.
Blaming a woman for a man’s violence, eh?
Women are not responsible for what men do.
Let us, for the sake of argument, assume that every woman contacts the designated appropriate state authorities, in a timely fashion, when they know a man who is threatening to carry out an attack/has a history of DV and racism/whatever other red flags one might think of.
The noise-to-signal ratio is going to obscure all the useful information.
One ends up with the same mathematical problem as is well-known to health researchers with respect to health screening accuracy, the false positives overwhelm the true positives, and there are also false negatives, e.g. see https://www.mathsisfun.com/data/probability-false-negatives-positives.html
Really, jstuart? You really think that is a fair representation of what Ophelia is saying? I don’t think you do. I think you’re just throwing shit about.
I do think it’s a fair representation. The murderer was a known abuser of his first wife: what makes anyone think he didn’t treat this woman the same? What makes anyone think she would not have been risking her life? This falls squarely into the ever-present blaming of women for doing/not doing things to prevent male violence that is constantly around us, whether blatantly or implicitly. I don’t see anyone saying his father should have done this or that, or even that the murderer (or any violent man) should _not_be_violent. That the responsibility falls squarely on their shoulders.
‘that’s a lot of people dead or injured because she kept his secret’
That’s literally blaming her, it’s not even subtle!
jstuart: I’ll note that Ophelia has already written at least one piece about the father, and in fact, several others have also done so. And like it or not, she had explicit information about his intentions, which as far as we know, the father did not. That does make her partly culpable, even in the eyes of the law, IIRC.
And the regressive left shows up again to strike a blow for social justice.
jstuart @ 5 –
Riiiiiight, because I’ve never said a word to suggest that violent men should not be violent and that the violent man who shot up Pulse should not have been violent. Uh huh.
Yeah, right. It was up to Mateen to just ‘not be a mass murderer.’
How much his spouse/victim knew, and whether she had opportunities to take preventive action, isn’t clear yet. She married a man who beat his previous spouse to the point of her needing family to rescue her.
The local mosque had murderous homophobes as guest speakers. Mateen’s ‘instructor’ was a convicted terrorist. Mateen may have been a self-hating closet case. Steroids. Untreated bi-polar. Unheeded warnings from co-workers who heard his racism and hatred and tried to give warning.
pallygirl, methinks you are overlooking the fact that this guy went further than simply ranting angrily while in her company. While in her company, yes he did that standard stuff, AND he bought ammunition and a holster in her company, AND he stated that the purpose was to kill people, AND she drove him to the venue AND he told her that the purpose was to scope the place out.
Now I’ll grant that there is the possiblity she was cowed by abuse and convinced that there was no way of calling police without him finding out, but there is also the possibility that she had opportunity to warn, but didn’t.
There is also the possibility that she was an active accomplice. Time, and investigation, will tell.
Holmes @11
You just stated the corporate media spin, on information leaked by (they say) a member of the FBI, as though it were fact. You would think we would have learned not to do that by now.
We learned it after the Central Park Five persecution and after the Atlanta Olympics Jewell persecution and yet we never learn.
‘She married a man who beat his previous spouse to the point of her needing family to rescue her.’
What a stupid b!tch am I right bro! *hi 5’s all round* Glad the general consensus is that it’s every bugger elses fault.
Yes, that’s an accurate assessment of Ophelia and her regular commenters. We are woman-hating scum. We focus our energy on punishing “stupid bitches” for what their men do. We are the unreconstructed worst.
That or else yu have fallen for a media story promoting the first rule of misogyny which is that women are responsible for what men do.
Here is a piece at WaMo that speaks to the issue. http://washingtonmonthly.com/2016/06/15/the-tie-that-binds-mass-shootings/
Not blaming women for what men do is a good principle, but so is not letting women off the hook simply because they’re women.
‘Oh really. So she knew he was planning it but she didn’t tell anyone who could have stopped him. Well thanks a lot.’
‘that’s a lot of people dead or injured because she kept his secret.’
‘she had explicit information about his intentions…That does make her partly culpable, even in the eyes of the law’
‘The local mosque had murderous homophobes as guest speakers. Mateen’s ‘instructor’ was a convicted terrorist’
‘While in her company…he bought ammunition and a holster…AND he stated that the purpose was to kill people, AND she drove him to the venue AND he told her that the purpose was to scope the place out.’
‘there is the possiblity she was cowed by abuse and convinced that there was no way of calling police without him finding out, but there is also the possibility that she had opportunity to warn, but didn’t.
There is also the possibility that she was an active accomplice.’
Now where would I ever get the idea that Ophelia and her commenters were blaming a woman? It are an entire mystery!
And you got the idea that I call women “stupid bitches” from…?
It’s always a bit disconcerting when the lurkers speak up and don’t hear you the way you hear you, innit?
Bye, Felicia.
John the Drunkard felt the need to point out how ‘she’ became involved with a man who ‘beat his previous spouse to the point of her needing family to rescue her’ why would he bring this up? Is it in support of the woman in question? It doesn’t seem to be, it seems to be pointing out what a fool she is? Am I wrong? Have I got entirely the wrong end of the stick? Are all my above quotes taken entirely out of context?
Ophelia, I never suggested you did.
Source http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/12/omar-mateen-everything-we-know-so-far-about-orlando-gunman/
“Patrons have said they saw Mateen drinking at the bar several times before the shooting. Ty Smith told The Orlando Sentinel he saw Mateen inside at least a dozen times.”
Why did he need his wife to drive him to scope the place out when he had been noticed there at least 12 times?
How come he had a job “as a security guard for G4S in Florida, a large security company which provided contractors to securing federal buildings”? Was he vetted for this work – he should have been? He had been working in that job for around 9 years, so he should have been re-vetted during that time. Did that happen? How did he manage to get a job that enabled him to conceal carry when he had committed DV against at least his first wife? Why is his employer not viewed as culpable in his ability to carry out this massacre, and the interest has honed in on his second wife? Why did the 2013 and 2014 FBI investigations into him not affect his job or his weapon permits?
“Now where would I ever get the idea that Ophelia and her commenters were blaming a woman?”
Blaming ‘a woman’ in a particular incident is a bit different than ‘blaming women’ in general, don’t you think? Are you actually trying to argue here that it’s wrong to ever blame a woman for anything? They’re just dainty little beings blowing with the wind, no responsibility for their actions at all? Because that’s 100% what it sounds like you’re trying to say.
Not to mention the difference between blaming her for his actions vs. blaming her for her own failure to act (if she indeed had the opportunity). I wouldn’t have thought that was a necessary distinction to point out, but some of the commenters here are making me think otherwise.
Laugh Out Loud. The entire post was about blaming a particular woman which is ‘a thing’ if you hadn’t flippin’ noticed.
A man murders 49 people and here we are talking about his wife. It’s almost as if you think it’s men who are ‘just dainty little beings blowing with the wind, no responsibility for their actions at all’.
“A ghost” you’re just trolling. Adios.
It’s the lack of good faith that gets me. It’s the immediate jump to censure as harshly as possible. It’s the nasty, spitting way of getting one’s point across—as if you knew nothing of the character of the author or her commenters. The hissing way you’d rebuke a vile politician.
It’s not that these points aren’t debatable. It’s how gross it feels to be treated that way.
Call me a troll, don’t publish my comment, whatever. You’re a damn hypocrite only listening to your fanboys. Good faith doesn’t mean shit. Anyone is capable of getting stuff wrong. If you’re happy to continue being wrong and not listening to evil outside influences that’s your prerogative. I’ve only used their words and you know those words don’t sound good.
As I said – just trolling.
I don’t listen only to fans (and “boys” are not the only people commenting here). Plenty of people who comment here disagree with me regularly. I expect a minimum of good faith though, and you haven’t demonstrated that, to put it mildly.
What does ‘good faith’ mean? What is your post doing other than involving/blaming the murder’s wife? I honestly can’t see? You’re not a fool, you know women are often blamed for men’s violence. Whether it’s beaten women who ‘allow’ the abuser to kill her child, or the mother of a murderer, it always comes back to some women, so how is your post any different? It doesn’t matter who you are or what you believe, your post fits in nicely with the average woman blamer.
See what musubk said @ 22. Yes, I do know women are often blamed for anything and everything. That doesn’t mean women never do anything wrong. That’s not a hard claim to understand, is it? The fact that women get blamed a lot doesn’t mean one must never blame (or criticize) a woman for anything. The fact that I criticized a woman in this one instance doesn’t mean I blame women for everything all the time no matter what with no regard to the particulars.
Maybe I’m wrong, maybe you’re not a troll but just simplistic in your thinking. Either way you’re not contributing anything of value.
Others have made the distinction, but I’ll make it, again, for the hard-of-thinking:
Salman is not being blamed for Mateen’s actions. Salman is being blamed for her own failure to act.
It may turn out that she was too unfamiliar with American law enforcement to realize she could report him anonymously, and too deeply scared to make the attempt. If that’s so, that’s understandable. But be that as it may, “I think she should have taken the chance,” is not “it’s her fault he did what he did!”
.
Some people seem to think feminism means women never have to be held responsible for their actions (or for their failures to act.) Because women are oppressed, any moral failing exhibited by a woman is explained away and excused.
Infantilizing bullshit.
I agree with LM @31. I’ve been watching this thread unfold today and quietly head-desking.
The media used to use the phrase ‘battered wife syndrome’. I can recall several uses of it over the years. In two notorious (read controversial) cases the outcomes were similar yet different. In the first a women was repeatedly violently abused and threatened. After one such incident she waited for her partner to fall asleep and then killed him using repeated blows from a hammer/cleaver/knife – I forget which. IIRC she was acquitted, because the Jury and Court agreed with the defence that she was in fear of her life and could not see another way out of her situation. She couldn’t comprehend that walking out the door or calling the Police was an option. In the second case, the women had confided her situation to friends who helped cache a variety of pills for her to drug him. She then gave him more drugs when he passed out which resulted in an overdose. She disposed of the body in the back garden – with the assistance of at least one of those supportive friends – where it remained for over a year before discovery. She was found guilty of murder, lost appeals to both the Court of Appeals and the Privy Council. She was paroled after 8 years as the Parole Board exercised discretion under it’s powers to consider evidence about the effects of BWS. Given the level of support she had from outside sources and her failure to tell the Police what had happened when a missing persons case was opened the defence of BWS remains controversial. Certainly I can think of more clear cut cases.
My point re Salman being that we don’t know all the necessary fine detail. She may have been an active accomplice. She may be a terribly cowed victim of BWS. She may simply be a weak willed individual who passively allowed a bad thing to happen because she didn’t want to put herself out there. At best BWS is mitigation for failure to act to prevent what she would have known could be massive loss of life (assuming the reports of her knowledge are true), not an excuse absolving her of responsibility.
Finally, is the US public’s view of Government and it’s institutions really so poor that there is a widespread default presumption of corruption, cover-up and conspiracy as some comments seem to suggest? If so, you’re fucked and terrorism is the least of your worries.
@Rob,
I was thinking of women like Canada’s Karla Homolka. Though the leniency extended her ultimately had more to do with the fact that she testified against her male accomplice, she did try to escape culpability by claiming she was abused and fearful. The families of her victims did not see justice.
It can be difficult to assign responsibility. Hedda Nussbaum was horribly abused, and probably did suffer from BWS or Stockholm Syndrome or something like, yet she spent hours alone with a dying child and did nothing to save her. Do we excuse Nussbaum on the basis of her psychological issues?
That said, I understand why, in extreme situations, women (and children) have sometimes killed to protect themselves.
Self-defence laws in the U.S., at least, traditionally defined “self-defense” as defending yourself while in danger of immediate harm. But women (and children) are at a distinct disadvantage in such situations when faced with a larger, heavier antagonist. And we all know that the systems in place to support and protect them are notoriously faulty. The police can’t do a lot to protect a woman from somebody determined to harm her, and abused women are most likely to be killed when they’re leaving their abusers.
(I mean, killed with premeditation.)
I will note that Florida, in particular, has had some notorious incidents involving failing to apply their infamous “stand your ground” law (the one that was used to acquit Treyvon Martin’s shooter) when the person standing their ground is a woman being threatened by an abusive spouse (or ex-). So I cannot rule out the possibility that the woman really felt she had no safe options available to her. Hell, the fact that the FBI had twice investigated this guy and cut him loose both times may have led her to believe that calling the authorities would have no effect at all.
But I’m also of the opinion that it’s perfectly reasonable for the FBI to investigate the woman’s actions and prior knowledge. The laws about reporting dangerous activity exist for a very valid reason, and they also need to be enforced. I’m not ‘blaming’ the woman, at this point, and I don’t think Ophelia was, either. We’re making the point that it’s reasonable to investigate the matter further, and it’s a good thing that the authorities are doing so.
I think most women know what will happen if they call the local police to report their husband, the private security contractor, said he was going out clubbing with friends but she is certain sure he plans to shoot up one of the clubs that he has been visiting the past few months. Who knows, maybe she did call, or maybe the FBI is trying to deflect the heat from their failure to prevent to her failure to prevent. Leaking this story about the wife to the press stinks of bait to me.
Maybe I got it wrong. Maybe not. We don’t know yet. If I did I promise to roll in the mud for a few hours.