Bourke Street Part Deux

A Trolley in the shopping centre is safe, but that is not what trolleys were made for.

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Saying that all terrorists are mentally ill is incorrect and cheapens the term. Many people have mental health issues and don’t commit these atrocities

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The alliance that we willingly commit to, drops bombs in populated areas which are aimed at enemy military leaders, but which inevitably and regularly kill innocent people. We have in recent living memory engaged in wars that have killed 100s of 1000s of innocent people in these same foreign countries. Expecting these acts to be forgotten and free of consequence 5, 10, 20 years later is naive.

People who live in or are allied to those countries (ethnically, religiously or historically) and in some cases connected to these losses (by family) perceive us as terrorists. That label is not useful as it does not address the root causes as to why we are engaging in war in their homeland, which is usually a complex mix of some noble cause (liberate their country from evil and implement democracy), and the need to keep oil flowing to western economies to maintain our material wealth.

As a direct result of the military activities of our alliance, the incidence of suicide bombings and attacks against our military and civilians has increased significantly. The people who do this believe they are engaging in war against the enemy and bringing the war to our homeland, killing innocent people as we have done in theirs. Whilst ISIS have no claim to any religious justification whatsoever for their acts of evil, Sarah Palin who at the time was a leading voice for the Republicans when campaigning with McCain, described the Iraq war as ‘God’s war’ and a religiously righteous act of god. Both sides have their evil fanatics who pretend to be inspired by their god.

No doubt some of these people are mentally ill, but that label, as with the terrorist label does not address or acknowledge their motivations for committing these acts of evil. This is probably the point ie attach a label to them which dehumanizes them and which denies any connection to anything we ‘normal’ people have ever done. Whilst both sides continue to misunderstand or deny the underlying causes for this continuing violence, then we are unlikely to find any common ground.

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Yep, totally agree. Let’s demonise people with mental health issues! Ignoring the fact that people with me talk health problems are far far more likely to be victims of crime than the perpetrators.

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Not exactly sure anyone that plans on killing, could be of sound mental health.

That’s what people with a conscience say to ease the pain of knowing that so called normal people can kill in such violent ways.

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yep. It’s not a black and white definition. We are all different and we all fall on a spectrum of normal. Some are clear cut, but for other situations it depends on what is defined as normal or better yet acceptable behaviour.

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Having had friends & colleagues working as psychologists in the prison system, they’ve told me that 80% of the people committed for murder had undiagnosed and untreated personality disorders.

Very very rarely did they have any clients that didn’t have some sort of trauma, psychosis, Substance abuse, or suicidal tendencies. If they had no diagnosed mental illness, it was simply because they’ve likely been blackmailed or they felt they had no other option.

A lot of people struggle to understand the externalising behaviour of mental illness… as we’ve only just started to have an accepting conversation about internalised behaviour to mental illness.

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It is easy to diagnose criminals with one thing or another. The issue isn’t that people have issues, it is that most people in society that are undiagnosed do not commit a crime.

I think it’s fair to say the majority of “home grown” terrorist-styled attacks in the West are generally not from credible, organised terrorists.
Majority - not all.
Inevitably, there will be something serious here.

It actually isn’t easy to make a diagnosis. That’s why many people are undiagnosed or misdiagnosed.

Diagnosis is very resource intensive and incredibly costly… and requires multiple senior clinicians to have the same conclusion.

It’s not an excuse for behaviour, but it’s a reason.

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Are we talking about criminals here or radicalised terrorists

I disagree.

As I said, many in society have mental illness in some form and most do not commit crimes. People use it as way to to understand why someone does the thing they have, but that gives it an excuse and doesn’t really help people understand at all.

Some people either have no conscience or have so severely seared it that they can no longer use it. That does not really happen just because you have a mental illness.

Tell that to the people who get paid by the papers to diagnose famous people without having never met them.

You mean sort of like james hird being a total narcissist

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Now that is a completely different matter. Politicking is a very narcissistic game and also a long standing boy’s club. Not much different to working with the AFL I suppose.

Yep, agree.

Its coming. The Intelligence people - and the Muslim community - have probably actually done a brilliant job so far to prevent it.

Incidentally, the fact that this blokes brother is already on remand for allegedly plotting an attack is cause enough for me to not object to the tag of “terrorism”. There’s been some sort of planning to this.

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I don’t get some recent posts about demonizing the mentally ill or suggesting that most mentally ill people don’t kill. Of course they don’t, and no one has intimated that they do.

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You know how things work around here

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