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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
We have the same problem in Europe anyway.

The basic problem is that it is impossible to stop a disaffected individual from getting a car and driving it into a bunch of people.

The very difficult to solve problem is how to discover people who are in danger of becoming disaffected and resorting to this kind of random killing spree, before they do so, and then how to defuse the social pressures and triggers that are leading them down that path.

This is an area where a blanket distrust of Muslims is actively negative. One of the things that sets these guys off is feeling alienated from the society they live in.

This.

Never lose sight that it's been 16 years now since the atrocities at the World Trade Centre and Pentagon.

Ever since then, certain corners (including Das Daily Heil, Express and The Scum) have mounted an insidious campaign of bigotry against Muslims.

That's long enough for many young Muslim men to have only known a world hostile to their faith.

Is it any wonder a tiny minority then fall prey to the vicious circle? Remember, those doing the radicalisation rarely seem to get their hands dirty. They're recruiting very angry young men, and giving them an excuse.

it's worse than that too; with every attack, the reaction from the far-right usually make things worse. Every time there's an attack by a radicalizaed Mulsim over here, the next day a handful of brown people get attacked. Usually not even Muslim, and in no way linked to the attack in any way beyond being Muslim looking. Even the guy that ran down a group of Muslims outside a mosque was regarded as a "revenge attack" and not a "terrorist attack".

We as a whole can be pretty hostile towards foreigners, and sometimes that hostility rubs off.

Here is how to think about it.

Can Islam inspire people to commit terrorist acts? Clearly yes, because a number of recent terrorists were obviously inspired by the Islamic State.
However, equally clearly, 99.99% of Muslims have not been inspired to commit terrorism.

We also see that 0.001% of Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and secular people have been inspired to commit terrorism. See the IRA, Haganah, Weathermen, numerous going postal workers, etc etc.

The implication is that 0.001% of people are liable to commit terrorism in the name of some or other cause, or no cause at all, if they are set off to it by some other kind of factors.

People see what they want to see.

 Inquisitor Lord Bane wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
It was very lucky he was not fatally shot, because he can be questioned and his psychology can be investigated.

It was the NYPD. It was lucky he was hit and not a bystander.

Personally, I think the guy couldn't find a reason to live, and ISIS was an ideology that would allow him to die with the knowledge that someone would celebrate his accomplishments . A lot of people commit suicide because they feel they have no reason to live, and noone cares about them. In this case, he found someone who would take pride in his accomplishments, as horrible as they were. A sort of instant radicalization, but not religion based.

If that made any sense, I'm tired and at work.

EDIT: Spelling

That may be an incredibly accurate assessment.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Here is how to think about it.

Can Islam inspire people to commit terrorist acts? Clearly yes, because a number of recent terrorists were obviously inspired by the Islamic State.
However, equally clearly, 99.99% of Muslims have not been inspired to commit terrorism.

We also see that 0.001% of Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and secular people have been inspired to commit terrorism. See the IRA, Haganah, Weathermen, numerous going postal workers, etc etc.

The implication is that 0.001% of people are liable to commit terrorism in the name of some or other cause, or no cause at all, if they are set off to it by some other kind of factors.

One point, Weathermen were about bringing about a socialist system through violence. Religion was not involved and would have been oppressed under their system.

gakky people will find an excuse to express their shittyness, any ideology can be the facade that covers their true drive.

I've never felt this to be a more accurate commentary:





We're doing everything we can to try and obfuscate doctrine and principles with context. We hear weasel words like "many factors" without ever hearing much about what said other factors are.

If I applied the same tactic with, say, white supremacists, I'm sure all the same open minded and compassionate individuals would be agreeing with me in lock step just how rare it is for a white supremacist to commit terrorism or violence and many of them come less than ideal socioeconomic backgrounds and poor education and home life blah blah blah. It's all true and missing the point.

 d-usa wrote:
gakky people will find an excuse to express their shittyness, any ideology can be the facade that covers their true drive.

Discrimination and failure to condemn attacks against Muslims certainly doesn't help though. Though it occurs that if we do want to say certain groups are prone to radicalization right-wing political supporters would be among them, since they are obviously prone to attack minorities.

 Crablezworth wrote:
I've never felt this to be a more accurate commentary:

Sounds an awful lot like all those 'I'm sick and tired of people calling me a bigot, so I support/did this bigoted thing' that keeps cropping up.

It's an obnoxious little meme and it's positively dripping projection.

It's also incredibly accurate.

 Crablezworth wrote:
I've never felt this to be a more accurate commentary:

the point is more "dont create a perpetually hostile cultural atmosphere around people specifically because they happen to belong to X, Y or Z group, as this fosters the crazies amongst them to do terrible things".

By all means draw silly cartoons of Mohammad or the like. Draw silly cartoons of Jesus and Yahweh and Abraham and Shiva and Buddha and Thor too. Take issue with how Islam treats women or how Christianity seemingly allows for anyone to get a "get out of hell free" card and avoid living a morale lifr by confessing everything and taking Jesus into their heart microseconds before they die. Thats fine.

Just don't go around telling telling everyone that their Nordic Pagan neighbors are gonna come over and kill them because they can only go to Valhalla if they die in battle and they cant be trusted because of that, or that they shouldn't be able to build a religious center because then Vikings are gonna go roaming about the neighborhood pillaging if that sort of thing is allowed. That sort of thing is what drives people to do insane things. That's more the point.

 Crablezworth wrote:
If I applied the same tactic with, say, white supremacists, I'm sure all the same open minded and compassionate individuals would be agreeing with me in lock step just how rare it is for a white supremacist to commit terrorism or violence and many of them come less than ideal socioeconomic backgrounds and poor education and home life blah blah blah. It's all true and missing the point.

Not really the same tactic is it. Going around screaming its Islam when dealing with terrorism is the same as screaming its white people when it comes to white supremacists. They both (white people and Islam) hold vast groups of people with only a tiny violent minority that do not represent the larger group. Also in case you missed it we do tend to go over the reasoning of why white supremacists do what they do beyond just 'they're white supremacists nuff said'. Hell you have a whole political group on the national stage apologising for white supremacist violence while just equating Muslims/immigrants=terrorists. The debate is a lot more nuanced around non Islamic terrorism.

 Crablezworth wrote:
If I applied the same tactic with, say, white supremacists, I'm sure all the same open minded and compassionate individuals would be agreeing with me in lock step just how rare it is for a white supremacist to commit terrorism or violence and many of them come less than ideal socioeconomic backgrounds and poor education and home life blah blah blah. It's all true and missing the point.

That's because the argument is nonsense when applied to white supremacists. White supremacy is inherently a violent and generally awful ideology, one that is incompatible with being a good person. If you are a white supremacist you are a terrible person, period. The fact that the threat of prison is generally successful in preventing white supremacists from committing acts of terrorism doesn't erase the problems with their ideology. Contrast this with Islam, where there are vast numbers of Muslims who are generally good people and the religion's flaws are on par with the flaws of other religions. Unlike with the white supremacists membership in the group is insufficient to explain the violent actions, so we have to look for some other factor that caused it.

A better comparison would be with Christianity, where we get the exact same sort of "not all Christians" argument every time a Christian commits an act of violence (or does something awful in general). We hear all about how most Christians are good people who have no interest in violence, it's not the religion it's {unrelated factor}, etc. And if you don't word your arguments very carefully to make it explicit that you aren't generalizing about all Christians you're likely to get a forum ban and guaranteed to get outraged Christians saying "not all of us", "hate speech", etc.

The problem is that people have simply learned nothing from decades worth of public outreach and education.

We have known for a very long time that many different socioeconomic factors contribute to crime and substance abuse, as an example. Poverty, single-parent households, incarcerated family members, education level, availability of community resources, being raised by an alternate primary caregiver, crime levels in the community, etc etc etc. We know that in many communities, certain minorities are impacted by these issues at a disproportionate rate. We also know that members of these communities are then also more likely to continue to cycle of poverty, crime, and/or substance abuse.

And even after lots of education, we still have people who will insist that being a minority is the reason why someone is more likely to be poor, become a criminal, or abuse substances rather than acknowledge that being exposed to increased adverse socioeconomic factors increases the risk of someone being poor, becoming a criminal, or abuse substances.

So I guess we can continue to sit here with our fingers in our ears going "lalalalala Islam is bad lalalalala", or we can see that the issues and circumstances that drive people to extremism in the name of Islam are often the same issues and circumstances that drive people to join gangs and commit other violent crimes.

 d-usa wrote:
The problem is that people have simply learned nothing from decades worth of public outreach and education.

We have known for a very long time that many different socioeconomic factors contribute to crime and substance abuse, as an example. Poverty, single-parent households, incarcerated family members, education level, availability of community resources, being raised by an alternate primary caregiver, crime levels in the community, etc etc etc. We know that in many communities, certain minorities are impacted by these issues at a disproportionate rate. We also know that members of these communities are then also more likely to continue to cycle of poverty, crime, and/or substance abuse.

And even after lots of education, we still have people who will insist that being a minority is the reason why someone is more likely to be poor, become a criminal, or abuse substances rather than acknowledge that being exposed to increased adverse socioeconomic factors increases the risk of someone being poor, becoming a criminal, or abuse substances.

So I guess we can continue to sit here with our fingers in our ears going "lalalalala Islam is bad lalalalala", or we can see that the issues and circumstances that drive people to extremism in the name of Islam are often the same issues and circumstances that drive people to join gangs and commit other violent crimes.

But...but that doesn't fit neatly on a crappy MSpaint wannabe political cartoon!

I will be and often am critical of certain facets of Islam, just as I am any religion, including militant atheists that give the rest of us a bad name.

But that doesn’t mean I tar all Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Shintoists etc with the same brush.

I can tell when a religion is an excuse, and not a motivation or cause. For instance, Israeli foreign policy is nothing to do with Judaism. Like, at all. Yet criticism is often stifled under a blanket of anti-semitism. And that accusation gains credence because anti-seimitism remains a global problem.

Bigotry of all stripes is holding us back as a species. Thanks to cretins like Britain First, English Defence League and their international counter parts, intelligent, ratioral assessment of the causes is obfuscated under a pall of rank stupidity and racism.

Look at the Gutter Press. They have always thrived by promoting an us vs them mentality. In the past it’s been Jews, ‘Blacks’, Indians, Pakistanis, Gays, Germans, French. Of course, all the above are off the menu (and rightfully so). They’re left with Islam and Muslims as their whipping boys.

Anyone who can see through such tissue thin bigotry needs to call it out, just as we’ve called out others in this very thread for unreasoning and idiotic stances which simply aren’t based in reality.

Of course, now we’ve got actual Nazis to contend with, spurned on yet again by simplistic and moronic rhetoric which, again, just isn’t based in reality.

 Frazzled wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Bane wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
It was very lucky he was not fatally shot, because he can be questioned and his psychology can be investigated.

It was the NYPD. It was lucky he was hit and not a bystander.

Personally, I think the guy couldn't find a reason to live, and ISIS was an ideology that would allow him to die with the knowledge that someone would celebrate his accomplishments . A lot of people commit suicide because they feel they have no reason to live, and noone cares about them. In this case, he found someone who would take pride in his accomplishments, as horrible as they were. A sort of instant radicalization, but not religion based.

If that made any sense, I'm tired and at work.

EDIT: Spelling

That may be an incredibly accurate assessment.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Here is how to think about it.

Can Islam inspire people to commit terrorist acts? Clearly yes, because a number of recent terrorists were obviously inspired by the Islamic State.
However, equally clearly, 99.99% of Muslims have not been inspired to commit terrorism.

We also see that 0.001% of Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and secular people have been inspired to commit terrorism. See the IRA, Haganah, Weathermen, numerous going postal workers, etc etc.

The implication is that 0.001% of people are liable to commit terrorism in the name of some or other cause, or no cause at all, if they are set off to it by some other kind of factors.

One point, Weathermen were about bringing about a socialist system through violence. Religion was not involved and would have been oppressed under their system.

I said 0.001% of secular people (i.e. like the Weathermen) have been inspired to some form of terrorism by secular ideas. My point is that a small number of people of any persuasion whatsoever are liable to turn to violence, so it's unrealistic to pick specifically on any one group.

As a side note, it's being reported that the suspect in question has been seeing driving around for weeks in a rented U-haul truck with the same 4 or 5 dudes in a really suspicious manner. There might be a fair chunk left to this story so maybe we can try not to get this thread locked just yet.

So the President has said (on twitter no less) that he should get the death penalty. Is it normal for a sitting President to chip in like that?

 Ouze wrote:
As a side note, it's being reported that the suspect in question has been seeing driving around for weeks in a rented U-haul truck with the same 4 or 5 dudes in a really suspicious manner. There might be a fair chunk left to this story so maybe we can try not to get this thread locked just yet.

He had two cell phones on him. One had the numbers of person's already on the NYC radar.
Declare him an enemy combatant and ship him to Gitmo.

Yeah, to hell with due process! Who needs laws anyway?

 Frazzled wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
As a side note, it's being reported that the suspect in question has been seeing driving around for weeks in a rented U-haul truck with the same 4 or 5 dudes in a really suspicious manner. There might be a fair chunk left to this story so maybe we can try not to get this thread locked just yet.

He had two cell phones on him. One had the numbers of person's already on the NYC radar.
Declare him an enemy combatant and ship him to Gitmo.

thats gonna be difficult given that he was in the US legally, committed the attack in the US, is held by civilian law enforcement, etc.

On what legal basis would he be transferred to military jurisdiction?

To me this line of thinking is dangerous. If the justice system can handle McVeigh, it can handle this guy. No need for American Gulags.

But McVeigh was a disaffected white Christian. He wasn't a terrorist like this guy...

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
As a side note, it's being reported that the suspect in question has been seeing driving around for weeks in a rented U-haul truck with the same 4 or 5 dudes in a really suspicious manner. There might be a fair chunk left to this story so maybe we can try not to get this thread locked just yet.

He had two cell phones on him. One had the numbers of person's already on the NYC radar.
Declare him an enemy combatant and ship him to Gitmo.

thats gonna be difficult given that he was in the US legally, committed the attack in the US, is held by civilian law enforcement, etc.

On what legal basis would he be transferred to military jurisdiction?

To me this line of thinking is dangerous. If the justice system can handle McVeigh, it can handle this guy. No need for American Gulags.

In fairness, did they not try ksm by jury but eventually had to to do tribunal because the jury selection didn't go well? It's going to be hard to find people who don't already have opinions of this guy one way or another. (not sure whether or not that means gitmo or stateside)

 Frazzled wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
As a side note, it's being reported that the suspect in question has been seeing driving around for weeks in a rented U-haul truck with the same 4 or 5 dudes in a really suspicious manner. There might be a fair chunk left to this story so maybe we can try not to get this thread locked just yet.

He had two cell phones on him. One had the numbers of person's already on the NYC radar.
Declare him an enemy combatant and ship him to Gitmo.

No. We have a justice system for that currently.

In fact, I'm pretty sure you can't declare him an enemy combatant.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 skyth wrote:
But McVeigh was a disaffected white Christian. He wasn't a terrorist like this guy...

Erm... McVeigh is by definition a domestic terrorist.

 Crablezworth wrote:
I've never felt this to be a more accurate commentary:





We're doing everything we can to try and obfuscate doctrine and principles with context. We hear weasel words like "many factors" without ever hearing much about what said other factors are.

If I applied the same tactic with, say, white supremacists, I'm sure all the same open minded and compassionate individuals would be agreeing with me in lock step just how rare it is for a white supremacist to commit terrorism or violence and many of them come less than ideal socioeconomic backgrounds and poor education and home life blah blah blah. It's all true and missing the point.

QFT.

Meanwhile the same people, here and elsewhere who insist that it is a 'tiny minority' of Islamic fundamentalists we have to worry about, are sure that the far right is everywhere and for each attack there are reprisals. Where?

Also we must be nice to these radicals. The scum who stabbed Lee Rigby in the street, its all our fault, if only we had given them more love hugs and Sharia law they wouldn't need to be so angry at us and swing machetes so much.

The Glasgow bombers were a pair of doctors, not exactly an underprivileged, uneducated underclass struggling for freedom and equality.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 d-usa wrote:
The problem is that people have simply learned nothing from decades worth of public outreach and education.

We have known for a very long time that many different socioeconomic factors contribute to crime and substance abuse, as an example. Poverty, single-parent households, incarcerated family members, education level, availability of community resources, being raised by an alternate primary caregiver, crime levels in the community, etc etc etc. We know that in many communities, certain minorities are impacted by these issues at a disproportionate rate. We also know that members of these communities are then also more likely to continue to cycle of poverty, crime, and/or substance abuse.

And even after lots of education, we still have people who will insist that being a minority is the reason why someone is more likely to be poor, become a criminal, or abuse substances rather than acknowledge that being exposed to increased adverse socioeconomic factors increases the risk of someone being poor, becoming a criminal, or abuse substances.

So I guess we can continue to sit here with our fingers in our ears going "lalalalala Islam is bad lalalalala", or we can see that the issues and circumstances that drive people to extremism in the name of Islam are often the same issues and circumstances that drive people to join gangs and commit other violent crimes.

If this was true the African-American community, which shares these grievances and is statistically greater presence in underclass society would be involved in more domestic terrorism.

Nobody's saying 'hey, if you see someone drive a truck down a bike path, give him a hug'. It's pretty universally agreed that that was a terrible thing to do.

People are saying 'respect the rule of law, don't be a bigot, and for crying out loud, don't drive a truck into a crowd in front of a mosque'.

It's a shame we can't have a reasonable debate about the factors influencing terrorism without being accused of a terrorist hugging circle jerk by the 'blame all the Muslims' faction.

 Orlanth wrote:


If this was true the African-American community, which shares these grievances and is statistically greater presence in underclass society would be involved in more domestic terrorism.

Exactly, socio economic status is a massive factor, but people's ideas are rarely self generated. They're external, come from somewhere. And there is a difference between being groomed into criminal enterprise and gang warfare (and the short sighted rationale $) and being groomed to potentially committing an act of terrorism.

Plenty of taliban fighters really fight for whoever will feed them (its not uncommon to spend seasons fighting for either side). But that like with gang warfare is semi rational if it means sustaining life. Not the same once recruited for a suicide mission and whether we say naive or devout, it really doesn't matter how it's framed in hindsight.




This individual shows no remorse for his actions and I think a fair statement would be he is proud of his actions.

He wanted to drape an isis flag on his wall while in hospital.

Human beings are certainly nuanced and complicated things, maybe breastfeeding and vitamin deficiency are at the heart of this, I can't help but feel the fact that he was taken alive certainly turned the volume down on the assumptions that are usually made freely in cases where the perp is deceased. The lets do everything we can to divorce his actions from religious ideology crowd kinda struggled as the evidence of just how much a garbage human this individual was mounted up over the course of the thread.

Actually suicide bombing has motivations beyond that of religion or being naive. It includes a range of motivations such as emotional or political factors like fighting for independence, as the Tamil Tigers did.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Actually suicide bombing has motivations beyond that of religion or being naive. It includes a range of motivations such as emotional or political factors like fighting for independence, as the Tamil Tigers did.

Certainly, and I've fully run the numbers as to the likelihood of this individual accidentally swapping souls with that of a japanese kamikaze pilot kinda like quantum leap. Only a 31% likelihood sadly. In fairness, what I thought was a calculator turned out to be cocktail napkin.


"Al, they want me to clip my toe nails and drink some sake" -




It's generally preferably if one must choose their horrors to have a soldier or soldiers die from a suicide attack than civilians. Whether it's for god or country or both.