I’m in general agreement with Jbomber, but Soulnet posed I think a very interesting question which I think I have an answer, not the answer. Soulnet wrote.
“I’m not here to offer a solution but can I ask, if the Americans are the image of western society why arn’t they being targeted more often.”
A very good question worthy of serious thought. The only response it got that I saw was from Deckham who wrote.
“Maybe because fundamentalist Muslims tag all non-muslims tag with the same brush? Perish the thought.”
Which is true, (though I prefer tagging these scum with the term Jihadists rather than fundamentalist Muslims because only some fundies kill people, Jihadism is all about killing people.) It doesn’t answer Soulnet’s question.
Earlier today I was lurking on a British blog site called Samizdata and an American made an interesting post that addresses this issue on a thread discussing the general arming of citizens in response to these sorts of terror attacks.
llamas
“Exactly why you will never see an attack like this in the open street in a place like Dearborn Mi, a city with a large Middle-Eastern population and more than its fair share of Islamist nutters. Because the chance of coming across an armed citizen is quite high. Even though the nutter wants to die and go and meet Allah, his death would send the wrong message.
These attacks only occur in places where the public is (effectively) powerless to respond. That’s the point of them, to reinforce the message that `we can attack you at anytime, your puny state is powerless to prevent it, and it prefers you to be helpless victims. But submit to us, and this will stop.’ Armed citizens putting a stop to such things shows that there is a different way and that you do NOT have to submit to make it stop.”
A warning to any easily triggered progressive snowflakes that might want to check out Samizdata. It’s an individualist cranky libertarian/conservative blog with zero tolerance for leftists, and Theresa May who is generally regarded as a clueless Labour lite authoritarian. But if you are interested in a different take on things and lets face it conventional ideas aren’t working, check it out you will get a laugh if nothing else.
harryr
Have you seen baristas these days?
Police are saying the call will be investigated, but they seemed unconvinced at this point of its importance.
Thanks for posting - its interesting to get your perspective on this. My family emigrated from North England in the 70’s in part (among many other reasons) because the IRA bombing campaign had moved across the Irish Sea for soft targets, e.g. the 1974 Birmingham and Guildford pub bombings that killed 26. Thank god those days are over. I was too young to be much affected, but I guess the feeling in the UK was similar to now. I don’t think there were calls to ban the Irish though.
My own brush with terrorism was in Nairobi in 1998 where we were all too close to the US embassy bombing - one of Al Qaeda’s early adventures.
Sure, tho Islamic terror seems the lesser of two evils when you consider the figures from USA -
440,095 deaths by firearm 2001-2014
3,412 deaths by terrorism 2001-2014 (most on 9/11)
Yes, but those who want to ban Muslims don’t like these stats…
Not to mention death by preventable causes but for lack of Health Care.
Fake news.
Please, I absolutely think guns should be banned. It’s madness to think they allow people to own them.
In saying that it’s interesting to factor into those stats the number of guns in the US (around 300m) vs the number of Muslims (3.3m).
Using the data around gun deaths v Islamic Terror deaths since 9/11, deaths per gun equates to approximately 0.14, terror deaths per Muslim living in the US equates to approximately 0.10.
Now the sheer number of guns in the US throws the stats out and it’s clearly not a good comparison. 87% of Islamic terror related deaths are also made up from the one event so that makes the comparison between them even more flawed. What it does do is highlight how easily statistics can be used to frame an argument by both sides.
Depends on how often you expect it to be happening. We are coming up on the 1 year anniversary of the Orlando Massacre. Also San Bernadino (2015), Boston marathon bombings (2013), and who can forget the Bowling Green massacre of 2011.
Three months ago you could have asked the same question about the UK, which had been largely (but not completely) incident-free in the nine years since the 7-7 bombings. Meanwhile the US, and neighbouring European countries (France, Belgium, Germany etc.) had experienced significant attacks.
Can’t help but laugh if this is true.
This is the stuff you halve to stamp out, if you are protesting with an ISIS flag you’re either jailed or deported. Punishing him now isn’t going to do a lot of good is it…
I think that we can agree on.
They’re just over there… to the left.
Its a shame they didn’t die a slower death. Anyone seen the film Four Lions? I’m reminded of the brainless banality of terrorists when I think of it. Its quite funny in parts too.
After the Westminster attack I saw some barriers around Trafalgar Square that I hadn’t seen before. It may be that I was just noticing them for the first time. They have now put in temporary barriers on three of the bridges in London. It is impossible to protect every public space however they will at least deter copycats and make the public feel better protected.
Are there barriers on Bourke Street?
No one’s commentating on this?
Entirely reasonable, but again you need to watch for the consequences. It’s a delicate balance between keeping the peace and erring on the side of removing freedoms
Chris Morris is probably the greatest satirist on the planet, his work on Brass Eye and The Day Today so subversive I struggled to take media seriously as a result of watching those two shows back in the 90’s. Four Lions was brilliant, I can’t believe it’s seven years old. I first watched it on a flight back from Europe, uncensored.
The guy said this is for IS, this is for Al-Qaeda!
They are rival factions.
Can we get hysterical over it?