Meanwhile, back in the United States ...

[JohnHurt]

No, the dodge is to refuse to discuss the topic of this thread.

I was speaking of the way you dodged the question.

Then you took us down the bunny trail to change the subject so you wouldn't have to give an answer.

[Bootstrap]

No, the dodge is to refuse to discuss the topic of this thread.

I was speaking of the way you dodged the question.

Then you took us down the bunny trail to change the subject so you wouldn't have to give an answer.

The subject is the subject of the thread. The first several posts tried to hijack the thread and change the subject. I am not going to pursue those bunny trails. That also means I will not answer questions that are not about the subject of the thread. Those are the bunny trails, the subject of the thread is not a bunny trail.

Do you have any comments about the original post, the article it references, or anything else that is on topic?

[JohnHurt]

There are, in fact, hate crimes in America. Some of them are committed against churches. If you are offended by any discussion that mentions swastikas, I suggest we launch a new thread to discuss why that is. In this thread, it's OK to discuss whatever arson occurs, and that includes spray painted swastikas, which the bishops of the Catholic Church chose to mention in their one-paragraph summary.

It's a big assumption that arson committed against churches is even a "hate crime". Arson happens for a lot of different reasons, but is usually an in-group activity.

More importantly, I'm not sure what spray-painted swastikas have to do with arson. Flammable aerosol cans?

I did not see that the arson against the St. John's Church in DC by BLM activists was called a hate crime. Maybe who did it determines if it was a hate crime?

And I never see that any attack on white people is ever called a hate crime.

Like the Waukesha Christmas Parade, where a black man ran over a lot of white people in the parade because he hated white people:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waukesha_ ... ade_attack

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported that the contents of Brooks's Facebook account, which contained "Black nationalist and antisemitic" viewpoints, and his crime were exploited by white supremacists in order to push racist and antisemitic conspiracy theories, claiming Brooks's attack was racially motivated, that he killed his victims specifically because he hated white people, and that Jewish people were attempting to cover up the incident. Law enforcement did not give a motive for the attack

See how they report this. The ADL reports that the man actually had Black Nationalist and anti-semitic viewpoints on his Facebook account (stop there).

Then they whitewash whatever he actually wrote on Facebook by saying his words were used by the white supremacists and so whatever he wrote or thought and was the reason for his actions must be discredited.

The media and the ADL are very dishonest, and causing racial division.

Then there is Audrey Hale/ Aiden Hale, the Nashville shooter, where a transexual person killed white Christian children:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Nash ... l_shooting

As of April 14, 2023, police have not publicly disclosed a motive for the shooting. Hale's surviving writings, including diaries and a planning document, initially called a "manifesto", were described by police as "rambling" and empty of any specific political or social issues.[33] Three pages of Hale's diary, described by CNN as containing "hate-filled language" directed at the school and its children, were leaked by conservative commentator Steven Crowder on November 6, 2023.[44] The journal ramblings included homophobic and racist rhetoric and religious metaphors.[45]

Crowder and others released actual copies of the Hale manifesto. The mainstream media ignored it.

The authorities in Nashville had covered up the motive for Audrey Hale up for months, until it was finally leaked. Hale killed these children because Hale hated white people for their white privilege. But I never saw what Hale did called a "hate crime". There is a clear agenda on how the media reports these "hate crime" incidents.

It looks to me that when white people are killed by those that hate them, it is never called a "hate crime", and the media covers it up or ignores it.

But the media plays up any white person that commits an interracial crime as a hate crime.

And swastikas that someone put around burned churches causes a media circus, which benefits this same narrative.

But "BLM" sprayed on a burned church in the middle of downtown DC is no big deal, it doesn't benefit the narrative.

Some people are more equal than others, at least in the media.

Again, look at who benefits from all of this to find the culprit. They are using racial division to make us fight each other.

That is why J. Edgar Hoover had Martin Luther King killed, because King was a Christian that wanted us to all live as brothers, and that we would judge a man not by the color of his skin, but by his character.

Yet Al Sharpton is literally everywhere, never molested by anyone, and promoted in the media as he creates racial division.

So why do they do so much to create racial division in the USA?

Because if all of the people from all races were brothers, then we would realize who are the people that are causing all of our problems.

It is not people of other races that is our problem.

It is the elite that run the banks, Big Pharma, and the military industrial complex that are hurting humanity by causing poverty, sickness and wars.

If we all came together and demanded justice for all of the terrible things the elite has done to all us, like the COVID shots that is creating excess deaths in healthy young people - then they would all go to jail.

They don't want that, so they create this racial division between us so that we will hate each other, and not them.

That is why there are swastikas on burned churches.

[JohnHurt]

No, the dodge is to refuse to discuss the topic of this thread.

I was speaking of the way you dodged the question.

Then you took us down the bunny trail to change the subject so you wouldn't have to give an answer.

The subject is the subject of the thread. The first several posts tried to hijack the thread and change the subject. I am not going to pursue those bunny trails. That also means I will not answer questions that are not about the subject of the thread. Those are the bunny trails, the subject of the thread is not a bunny trail.

Do you have any comments about the original post, the article it references, or anything else that is on topic?

Yes, thank you.

The articles you quote fit the mainstream narrative.

The common thread in these articles, at least the ones I looked at, is that they cannot seem to catch whoever is tearing up someone's nativity scene, or spray painting something on a church. You would think if these events are important enough to deserve media attention, then they would be important enough for the police to catch the criminals.

I think the reason they are not apprehended is that would discourage copy cat crimes by people that also want media attention. They want to keep this going as long as possible.

If they were apprehended, then the Catholic church would not ever get the $200,000,000.00 in grant funding for the "Non Profit Security Grant Program". If there is that kind of money involved, I would suggest that some people might be spray painting their own churches.

The church arson is different.

Arsonists are usually caught. They have a motive, and they are usually local people. Church arson is happening in many places separated by distance, and the motive appears political, not personal. If it is a group of people doing this for political reasons, they are well funded, do not have to work, and can travel.

Soros funds a lot of weird groups, like the BLM the burned down many cities as a "mostly peaceful protest". I would bet Soros has something to do with funding these church arsons, as it fits his agenda. He is also very powerful with politicians, so his group would never be investigated by the FBI.

With Christopher Wray and Merrick Garland both admitting - by omission - that they brought busloads of FBI agents to the Capitol on January 6 to dress up as Trump supporters and incite a riot (Ray Epps) to implicate Trump in their bogus "insurrection", it would not surprise me if Wray and Garland didn't have at least knowledge of who is burning down these churches. But they won't act on it. You learn a lot from what they won't do.

The FBI is good at their job, they have excellent resources and they could find all the evidence they need to get the people convicted who are burning these churches. But they are failing, and I think, for a reason.

There is a narrative here, and this arson activity promotes the narrative. That is why it cannot be stopped.

[JohnHurt]

Somewhere around 1995, there were several black churches that were burned in Tennessee, one near me.

There was a mentally deranged man that was doing this.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) staked out every church that fit the modus operandi of the arsonist.

The arsonist was caught, and no more churches were burned.

Why can't the FBI do the same thing?

Why can't the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) catch who is burning the churches in Canada?

[Bootstrap]

There are, in fact, hate crimes in America. Some of them are committed against churches. If you are offended by any discussion that mentions swastikas, I suggest we launch a new thread to discuss why that is. In this thread, it's OK to discuss whatever arson occurs, and that includes spray painted swastikas, which the bishops of the Catholic Church chose to mention in their one-paragraph summary.

It's a big assumption that arson committed against churches is even a "hate crime". Arson happens for a lot of different reasons, but is usually an in-group activity.

More importantly, I'm not sure what spray-painted swastikas have to do with arson. Flammable aerosol cans?

Frankly, I had forgotten the definition of arson. Thanks for pointing this out!

the criminal act of deliberately setting fire to property.

I would like to allow discussion of other serious property crimes against churches and their properties. Defacing cemeteries, for instance, is a fairly serious act.

[Bootstrap]

Looks like relatively few arsonists are ever caught.

Obviously, that makes it a lot harder to be certain of their motives. If we only arrest suspects for 10 percent of arsons, and only convict 1 percent, the people who get convicted may look quite different from the generic arsonist.

https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/Digitizat ... 5NCJRS.pdf

Yet most arsonists pay no penalty for their deeds. It's estimated
that only 10 percent of all arson cases are "cleared" by arrest-and
that only one percent of all arsonists are convicted of the crime. (A
few others are institutionalized for psychiatric treatment as an alter-
native to conviction.)

[Bootstrap]

Why can't the FBI do the same thing?

Why can't the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) catch who is burning the churches in Canada?

Looks like only a small percent of arsonists are ever caught, though the percent is higher for church arsonists, especially high profile ones.

[JohnHurt]

Why can't the FBI do the same thing?

Why can't the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) catch who is burning the churches in Canada?

Looks like only a small percent of arsonists are ever caught, though the percent is higher for church arsonists, especially high profile ones.

Clearance rate of arson offenses in the United States in 2022, by type

https://www.statista.com/statistics/252 ... s-by-type/

In 2022, about 24.7 percent of all arsons in the United States were cleared by either arrest or exceptional means. In the same year, about 26.8 percent of all structure arsons were cleared by arrest or exceptional means.

After 4 or 5 incidents, they should be able to catch someone or figure out what is causing the problem.

Nearly every home has security cameras, and a security system. Same for church buildings.

A fraction of the $200 million dollar grant for the Catholic churches for security would stop all of this.

I worked for the State of Tennessee as an IT project manager, among other things. I knew the State Fire Marshall and his staff, the Colonel of the State Troopers, the top people at the TBI (TN Bureau of Investigation). These people are not slouches that can't do their job. They stopped the burning of black churches in TN in the 1990's by catching the culprit.

When we focus on criminal groups that spray paint symbols, either swastikas or the BLM symbol, we are not focusing on the solution. We cannot arrest every BLM or White supremacist as a solution stop these fires.

Government has to work to find the guilty and protect the innocent. Government has to respond to protect all of us from this problem. Government is failing to do its job here. Asking why it is failing is a good start, but holding those in authority as responsible for this problem is the solution.

The symbols that are spray painted are either a diversion, or a deliberate means of someone who is molding public opinion, along with the mainstream media. That is what makes me suspicious - how these fires are being used for political purposes. Someone is doing this on purpose. And someone is not investigating or getting the results to catch these criminals, I believe, on purpose.

Regardless, it is the governmental administration that has jurisdiction over this situation that is responsible, not some obscure group. That is who everyone should hold accountable.

[Josh]

I would like to allow discussion of other serious property crimes against churches and their properties. Defacing cemeteries, for instance, is a fairly serious act.

I look into things a bit and you did have a significant point: the rise in church arson in Canada coincides with the rise in the U.S., and it may be the timing with the residential-school scandals was merely coincidence.

Arson is one of the major felonies that is the least likely to be successfully prosecuted. (Ask any business owner who has suffered a fire, and they'll tell you it's routine to interrogate pretty much everyone involved to make sure there wasn't insurance fraud and so forth.) In the case of church arson, it does seem to be taken seriously, but it also seems to be, much like domestic violence, a crime mostly perpetrated by "insiders". Political narratives of it being perpetrated by outsiders (such as a few of us, myself included, were prone to in the residential-schools thread) are common, but they also look unlikely.

Arson and vandalism tend to be copycat as well. Which is why it's good to clamp it down as soon as it starts. This is one reason I'm in favour of "broken windows" policing - the visual environment should be kept free of vandalism, graffiti, broken windows, and so forth. Doing so leads to less crime overall, or so research claims.