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| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| Can Identifying Mental Illness Stop Terror Attacks? |
| 2014-12-16 |
| [IsraelTimes] A radical Moslem killed a soldier outside Canada?s Parliament. A right-wing bully boy opened fire on buildings in Texas? capital and tried to burn down the Mexican Consulate. An al-Qaeda-inspired assailant hacked an off-duty soldier to death in London. Police said all three were snuffies and motivated by ideology. Authorities and family members said they may have been mentally ill. A growing body of research suggests they might well have been both. New studies have challenged several decades of thinking that psychological problems are only a minor factor in the making of terrorists. The research has instead found a significant link between mental problems and ?lone-wolf? terrorism. Now academics and law-enforcement officials are working to turn that research into tools to prevent deadly attacks. ?It?s never an either-or in terms of ideology versus mental illness,? said Ramon Spaaij, a sociologist at Australia?s Victoria University who conducted a major study, funded by the US Justice Department, of lone-wolf bully boys. ?It?s a dangerous cocktail.? The study preceded the end of a 16-hour siege involving a gunman who took hostages in a cafe in Sydney. The gunman, Iranian-born Man Haron Monis, was already facing charges including sexual assault and accessory to murder in separate cases, and his former lawyer said the standoff was ?not a concerted terrorism event? but the work of ?a damaged-goods individual.? With groups like Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... spreading violence in Syria and Iraq ? and bloodthirsty rhetoric on the Internet ? authorities around the world have issued increasingly insistent warnings about the threat posed by lone-wolf attackers. They can be difficult to stop with a counterterrorism strategy geared toward intercepting communications and disrupting plots. Solo terrorism ?doesn?t take an awful lot of organizing. It doesn?t take too many people to conspire together. There?s no great complexity to it,? London Police Chief Bernard Hogan-Howe told the BBC recently. ?So what that means is that we have a very short time to interdict, to actually intervene and make sure that these people don?t get away with it.? Police forces and intelligence agencies are examining whether insights from research by Spaaij and others could help. Spaaij said a number of law enforcement and intelligence agencies have shown interest in his work. In Britannia, a police counterterrorism unit is using a major study of lone-wolf snuffies to develop risk-assessment analysis. A British security official who spoke on condition of anonymity, because he is not authorized to talk on the record, said many attackers display warning signs, but that recognizing them is easier in retrospect. He said British intelligence officials are studying the link between mental illness and lone-actor terrorism. Most people with mental health problems are neither snuffies nor violent, and mental illness alone can?t explain lone-wolf attackers. Some experts dispute whether there is a link at all. After Michael Zehaf-Bibeau?s deadly attack on a soldier October 22 in Ottawa, Jocelyn Belanger, a psychology professor at the University of Quebec at Montreal, told the Canadian Senate?s national security committee that ?to believe that radicalized individuals are crazy or not playing with a full deck will be our first mistake in developing effective counterterrorism strategies.? But the new research suggests that solo snuffies are much more likely to have mental health problems than either members of the general public or participants in group terrorism. Spaaij and Mark Hamm of Indiana State University studied 98 lone-wolf attackers in the US. They found that 40 percent had identifiable mental health problems, compared with 1.5 percent in the general population. Their conclusion? Mental illness is not the only factor that drives individuals to commit terrorist acts, but it is one of the factors. Spaaij said mental illness can play a part ?in shaping particular belief systems and in constructing the enemy, externalizing blame for one?s own failure or grievances onto this all-threatening enemy.? A second study by Paul Gill and Emily Corner of University College London looked at 119 lone-wolf attackers and a similar number of members of violent bully boy groups in the US and Europe. Almost one-third of the lone wolves ? nearly 32 percent ? had been diagnosed with a mental illness, while only 3.4 percent of terrorist group members were mentally ill. ?Group-based snuffies are psychologically quite normal,? the researchers said. They said one reason may be that terrorist recruiters are likely to reject candidates who appear erratic or mentally ill. Mental illness could make lone-wolf attacks easier to foresee: Gill said 60 percent of the attackers he studied leaked details of their plans, sometimes telling friends or family. He and Corner are working with a British counterterrorism unit as police try to develop ways of distinguishing genuine threats from hot-headed talk. The unit declined to discuss the project, but recent cases suggest that determining who really is a threat is fraught with difficulty. More than a year before he hacked a soldier to death in London in 2013, Michael Adebowale?s online extremism drew the attention of Britannia?s intelligence services. Domestic intelligence agency MI5 told a parliamentary inquiry into the murder that it uses a range of factors to assess the threat from potential lone wolves, including an inability to cope with stress and anxiety, social isolation and mental health problems. MI5 agents suggested that Adebowale ? who is now serving a life sentence in a psychiatric hospital ? be assessed by the agency?s Behavioral Science Unit, a team of psychologists and social scientists, but the assessment was never done. The politicians? report called that a missed opportunity, and recommended that ?MI5 should ensure that the unit?s advice is integrated more thoroughly into investigations.? Signals also were misread in the case of Nicky Reilly, a 22-year-old convert to Islam who walked into a restaurant in the English town of Exeter in 2008 with a homemade bomb. The device went off in the restroom, injuring Reilly and no one else. At his trial, jurors were told that Reilly had learning difficulties and had had many years of contact with mental health services. In 2003, he talked to a psychiatrist about making a bomb. The information was passed on to the police, who judged that Reilly wasn?t a serious threat. American authorities, in contrast, have been accused of being too aggressive in pursuit of lone attackers. The FBI has foiled several alleged attacks through sting operations in which agents posed as terror supporters, supplying advice and equipment. Critics say the strategy can amount to entrapment of mentally vulnerable people who wouldn?t have the wherewithal to act alone. Meanwhile, ...back at the wreckage, Captain Poindexter wished he had a cup of coffee. Even instant would do... the fundamental question of whether there is a link between mental health problems and terrorism remains controversial. The most lethal lone-wolf attacker in recent years was anti-Moslem bully boy Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in a bombing and gun rampage in Norway in 2011. Breivik was unrepentant. One psychiatric report found him to be insane, while a second concluded that he was sane ? and judges agreed, sending him to prison indefinitely. The killer was happy with the outcome. For Breivik, it was recognition that his views were legitimate and not those of a madman. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #13 I'm not sure I'd be comfortable with the Surgeon General or HHS Secretary determining what is or is not mental illness, as what Pappy said. You know that will spiral out - (email pops up) The Director of EPA has determined coal advocates contribute to global warming which is contrary to their health and you must report to such and such place for screening and sensitivity training and tracking device implantation within 48 hours. Failure to report will be cause for suspician of conspiracy to commit a crime and you will be contacted by your local DHS representative. I'm not sure how much of a straw man that is. The non-partisan IRS would never be used to punish political opponents, right? Our new surgeon general kinda says that only loons would want a firearm. Sebelius is a straight party hack. It wouldn't work anyways without political machinations because we no longer have equal application of law. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2014-12-16 18:23 |
| #12 Predicting the future is always difficult, because it hasn't happened yet. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2014-12-16 15:39 |
| #11 Seems I recall that the Soviets were very good at "treating the mentally ill" who were deemed a risk to the social order. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2014-12-16 12:49 |
| #10 Mentally Ill, That covers a lot of legal ground, Expensive (Profitable) too. |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2014-12-16 12:08 |
| #9 I doubt our CiC would accede to such an evaluation. |
| Posted by: Floluling Ebboluck7929 2014-12-16 12:00 |
| #8 The lone wolf theory will probably satisfy many people and allow them to go about their business. Certainly it explains why the other dude blew himself up in the bathroom. Still, Richard Reid didn't pack his own shoes with semetex nor did he design his own matyrdom scenario. This guy seems an unlikely candidate for a lone wolf attack in that he had accomplices in some of his other crimes and had thousands of Twitter followers. Parlaying this incident as a lone wolf attack seems as unlikely as finding a quarter behind a kid's ear. Sure this is a handy time for this guy to trot out his discertation, but it is probably a non sequitur. Investigate his bimbo sidekick and all his buddies before they comete whatever he had originally planned before he detoured into the coffee shop. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2014-12-16 10:44 |
| #7 Always the same thing, a protracted political lecture about what is ostensibly a practical dilemma and all by yet another individual who lacks the basic initiative to actually read their book. |
| Posted by: Cesare 2014-12-16 08:52 |
| #6 Ever the same denial about the possibility of an ideology no matter if political or religious being evil. The ideal nazi, the one the regime tried to build was the mmember of the Einsategruppen or of the SS Totenkopf Verbande not the guy who after having voted for Hitler in 19933 ended saving KJews. The ideal Communist was ready to kill his own mother if ordered by the Party (Lenin's words: "We must steal, lie and kill even our own mothers if needed") not the guy that sincerely tries to helmp the poor (help not convert). And the ideal Muslim, the one Muhammad would favour if he were alive is not the so-called moderate Muslim but the Jihadist and the suicide bomber. His own writings and sayungs are full of imprecations against the hypocrites, that is those who don't go to jihad and don't supoort it financially. Moderate Muslims, like moderate Nazis or moderate Communists are failures in the manufacturing process. |
| Posted by: JFM 2014-12-16 08:45 |
| #5 "Can Identifying Mental Illness Stop Terror Attacks?" Only if treated with lead pellet therapy. |
| Posted by: ed in texas 2014-12-16 07:41 |
| #4 Denial appears to be a major mental illness that afflicts the apparatchik class. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2014-12-16 07:40 |
| #3 If you recognize that modern "Liberalism" is a mental illness, then the answer is yes. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2014-12-16 04:42 |
| #2 a meme dreamed up by a psycho with seizures? I can see the attraction to the mentally ill. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2014-12-16 01:24 |
| #1 Islam must be very attractive to the mentally ill. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2014-12-16 00:27 |