Terrorist ?

[BarbTherese]

First, prayer for all those in any way connected to the recent London murders and attempted murders.  Prayer in a special way for those injured.........we are rarely if ever informed just how seriously they are injured which might mean suffering for a lifetime.

I think that "terrorist" 'glamorises' (for some) those considering hate crimes of murder.  They are murderers or mass murderers or attempted mass murderers driven by hate.  They might even be driven by the complete delusion and madness of some sort of reward for their crime or crimes after death.

I did think that the response of the police 8 minutes after being made aware of the crimes recently in London, until the execution of the murderers intent on rampage, is to be commended.

May The Lord console Londoners at this very sad time.  May He bring aspiring murderers to a state of sanity of mind and out of a deluded state of bizarre and deadly insanity.

Edited June 4, 2017 by BarbaraTherese

[little2add]

LONDON - Twenty-one of those injured in Saturday's London Bridge attack are in a critical condition, the Press Association news agency reported on Sunday citing NHS England, the health authority.

Earlier, the London Ambulance Service said 48 people had been taken to hospital after suffering injuries in the attack, which left seven people dead.

pray for the innocent bystanders, victims hurt in the unprovoked and senseless attack

[CatherineM]

I worry that now that they know that it doesn't take a bomb or assault weapon to kill a large group, we are going to be knee deep in copy cats all over the world. 

[Era Might]

11 hours ago, BarbaraTherese said:

I think that "terrorist" 'glamorises' (for some) those considering hate crimes of murder.  They are murderers or mass murderers or attempted mass murderers driven by hate.  They might even be driven by the complete delusion and madness of some sort of reward for their crime or crimes after death.

Terrorist is a political designation. We've come to basically associate terrorism with Islamics, but that's just a political worldview. It's hard to imagine that people in America used to bomb churches and lynch people, but they did. Was the Klan a terrorist group? A hate group? I don't know that it's either/or. The Klan was many things, depending on how you want to look at it. I think people get caught up in some idea that's completely unreal, but they need it to make sense of the world. The idea can be political, like a caliphate or the Confederacy, can be personal, etc. I don't think we realize how subjective all of our realities are. We generally live in a world with people who share our symbols and ideas, like national borders. But there is a huge world that has very different realities. I think the only way to stop senseless violence is not to insist on our own reality, but to try harder to build bridges and understand. Right now, there are kids in, say, Syria who are future terrorists. How we choose to act will shape our future. Maybe those kids don't have to be terrorists, or gang members, or homeless, or refugees. Maybe.

[Guest]

I agree that we need to get at the root cause of people turning to the mass murder of innocent people and address that.  I also think that the word "terrorist" gives to murder and mass murder a bizarre and deluded justification, even equally bizarre and deluded reward, at least in the minds of those intent on the murder of innocent people.  In other words, "terrorist" has an 'identity' attached to it and their leadership knows this, has created it and exploits it - effectively brainwashing with delusions.  I think that nowadays probably home grown potential murderers are our biggest problem.

Many of our young people today flounder in life without a sense of purpose*** and this creates a vacuum in their lives - and the leadership of so called jihadi, or more apt: murderers of the innocent, is giving them an 'identity' with a 'glorified' noun i.e. terrorist to fill the vacuum.  I do think strongly that we as a Church are failing "you are the salt of the earth and if salt looses its taste?"  Mind you, I also think that the word "failing" is not yet "failed".

The leadership of these murderers  has become proficient in use of the internet and social media in their cause and primarily to recruit.  I think we need to become equally proficient too for our cause and efforts to dismantle their recruiting efforts. 

Words are important - where on earth would we be without words and language.

Prime motivation with these murderers can be multiple:  political or hatred or even power........or even a combination of these and perhaps even more.

6 hours ago, CatherineM said:

I worry that now that they know that it doesn't take a bomb or assault weapon to kill a large group, we are going to be knee deep in copy cats all over the world. 

Precisely.  I watched a documentary on the rise of Isis not long ago.  These mass murderers realise that they are loosing in the middle east  (at this stage only anyway - they do envisage ongoing and long term hostilities).  What they are now striving to develop is home grown killers in the west via the internet primarily.  In the documentary I watched, effective recruiting is being accomplished in our jails too.

I think too that we need the spiritual leaders of the Muslim faith expression to speak up very loudly indeed against the murderers who are claiming Islam  as motivation.   There is something like a parallel with the scandals in our Church.  We have to clean up the mess inside our Church...........not ask that anyone else must do so.  The same applies to these murderers claiming Islam.........it is up to Muslim people to clean up the mess in the Muslim faith expression.

 

6 hours ago, Era Might said:

. I think people get caught up in some idea that's completely unreal, but they need it to make sense of the world

Precisely and spot on!  And this to me is where we are failing.  Many unemployed teenagers especially cannot make sense of the world, other than they need money to survive and have a quality of life and a work of Satan...("you cannot serve God and mammon").......and from what I have seen they do it through whatever the government might give them as unemployed - and the rest they steal.  The 'badge of honour" for them is crime and the greater the crime the more honour to the 'badge'.

_______________

*** I lived for 30 years in a very poor suburb with ever kind of social problem.  I had much to do with the teenagers there and I witnessed their floundering and lack of meaningful hope and purpose in life.  Their purpose and meaning was money (Satan) through collecting unemployment benefits and the rest was crime.  Many of course today are being 'lost' to drugs - a way of cushioning for them the pain of being alive.

Edited June 5, 2017 by BarbaraTherese

[Era Might]

16 hours ago, BarbaraTherese said:

Precisely and spot on!  And this to me is where we are failing.  Many unemployed teenagers especially cannot make sense of the world, other than they need money to survive and have a quality of life and a work of Satan...("you cannot serve God and mammon").......and from what I have seen they do it through whatever the government might give them as unemployed - and the rest they steal.  The 'badge of honour" for them is crime and the greater the crime the more honour to the 'badge'.

_______________

*** I lived for 30 years in a very poor suburb with ever kind of social problem.  I had much to do with the teenagers there and I witnessed their floundering and lack of meaningful hope and purpose in life.  Their purpose and meaning was money (Satan) through collecting unemployment benefits and the rest was crime.  Many of course today are being 'lost' to drugs - a way of cushioning for them the pain of being alive.

Part of the problem is the hyper-professionalization and specialization of modern society. Many, maybe most, jobs can be done by someone with common sense and ability to adapt. It's not that young people today lack common sense, but that's not really a job requirement anymore. It's about having a specialized field and a professional commitment to that field. So, at the same time when there are so many specialized fields to choose from, which is great for people with a definite and predominant interest, many others are unable to get into the system because their interests and abilities are not of a specialized sort. And unfortunately, college kind of dooms them from the start, because they have to choose when they have no experience to draw from. Or maybe they don't go to college, or dropout, and no matter their intelligence or ability, they're shut out from many jobs that just require common sense, but employers don't want common sense, they want degrees, specialization, etc. Some young people turn this to their advantage and go into business for themselves, but not everyone is suited for business. So, we have a situation today where young people are overeducated and underqualified. And there is so much competition, so many young people are economically useless anyway, even if they have the specialization, a college education is the new high school diploma. And this only covers, generally speaking, youth of the middle or working class...young people coming from poverty face all sorts of other dynamics, like violence and lack of objective opportunities to even be part of the system.

All this might seem remote from people who become fanatically violent, but I think fanaticism can be a type of specialization. It gives a person that One Big Idea that they can give their life to. This can be benign, like someone who becomes a fanatical Catholic more Catholic than the Pope (we've all known a few of them here at Phatmass, some of us have been that person lol). Or, it could be a violent conversion, to terrorism or just outbursts of violence in school.

Margaret Thatcher was wrong. There is something called "society" and we are all living in its dynamics. We are all part of historical and social processes that we only see in hindsight. But, it takes so very little for someone to fall in society today. One lost job, one major illness, one nervous breakdown, one failed marriage, one bad decision, can leave someone completely outside of any kind of social support system. And since we are a society based on individualism, the family is not the fallback support that maybe it used to be.

Quote

There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.

--From Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar"

Edited June 5, 2017 by Era Might

[Era Might]

I should add, I'm not trying to explain the London attackers in what I wrote above. I don't know what drove them. But, I happened to see this in a BBC article about one of them:

Quote

The attacker, who had at least two older siblings, can be seen in last year's TV documentary arguing with police officers in the street.

An online CV seen by the BBC shows that he got an NVQ Level 2 In business administration and went on to work in an administrative role for a company called Auriga Holdings based in East Ham which manages Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets.

He had also worked in a customer services role for Transport for London and was the sole director of a now-dissolved company called Kool Kosmetics.

What I find interesting is that "business administration" and "customer service" are perfect examples of the kind of non-work that young people have. They're just sort of generic jobs handling routine, process, procedures, policies, etc. Enough to get a regular paycheck and maybe have a girlfriend and a car, but not enough to grow into anything beyond that job. Business administration is not necessarily business. It's something that might get you a good job as a functionary in any company, maybe part of the middle class if you don't mess up, but maybe you're not suited for real business. An intelligent young person might make that sensible decision to get a "practical" degree and a good job, but then realize the mind-numbing reality of working as a generic employee. Many great writers wrote about these kinds of people. Heck, many great writers WERE these kinds of people, but also had some hidden genius to pursue away from their day job as a clerk or other office functionary. Maybe a young person is smart enough to realize the dead end they're in, but has no genius or passion to find a way out, so they seek it in other things...radical religion, for example. Maybe all they need is just a job working with their hands to blow off steam and feel productive, but how can they go from the office to the factory? Isn't that going backwards, in our society. So it goes.

Edited June 5, 2017 by Era Might

[Luigi]

The point of being a "terrorist" is to inspire "terror" in the minds of your foes. The recent attacks in London really didn't kill that many people - I know, I know, even one is too many, and for the families of the survivors, and so forth - I understand all that and I agree with it. But 8 people dead doesn't really compare to the 2,996 who died in the 9-11 attacks, or even to taking down a plane over Lockerbie. And even 2,996 people dead isn't that many in a country of 310+ million. 

The point is to scare the living daylights out of your enemy. It forces the enemy to pay attention to you, even if it's very negative attention. It's like a child throwing a tantrum - the tantrum forces the parents to stop what they're doing and deal with the angry child. (Even if that means whupping the child.)

After these events, political leaders always say, "We must carry on our normal routine. We won't let these events control our lives," intending to send the message that 'we will not let you inspire terror in our minds.' 

But that's equivalent to the parent ignoring the child throwing the tantrum. (Or the police cracking down on the 'cell' and arresting lots of people - equivalent to a whupping.)

But then, IS/ISIS/group-of-the-day really doesn't have an official headquarters where our government leaders can call and make an appointment for heart-to-heart reconciliation talks.

 

 

Sigh.

[Guest]

Religion for these mass murderers is merely a vehicle, an exploited vehicle, for what are political objectives of power.  Our governments who have military in active service in the middle east do not have objectives related to religion........nor related directly to the religion of anyone else either.  Our military are seeking out evil murderers.

The language we use can make it seem it is all about religion, even underscore it.  And this is what these criminals want.   In that way, they can divide communities.

In my book they are murderers and mass murderers - and in their minds, "terrorist" has some fanciful delusions attached.  Such deluded notions are used (very effectively) in recruiting.   Murderer and mass murderer is socially abhorrent and nothing fanciful about it.  Murderer and murderers cannot mask their actions in the name of religion unless they are insane.  Psychopath and sociopath might even be more accurate for some.

A commentator on the news this morning used "murderer" rather than "terrorist".  It did change what my ears were hearing i.e. criminal in the act of committing major crime.  Last night in Melbourne a known criminal took a hostage.  Was his real target counter-terrorism police?  Three were shot but will recover at least physically - and I do hope psychologically as well.

What we do need is leadership in Muslim communities to be invited to radio and television stations and make extended commentary speaking out against these people and their claim of religion motivated and why it cannot be the Muslim religion - and to also speak up that their evil recruiting ploys which are all lies and why they are lies.  I did see one Muslim leader speak up this morning.......for about 10 seconds - if indeed that long.   Blink and I might have missed it!

For me the previous paragraph is matter of national security.

[Guest]

Apparently too, our leadership from various countries have been talking about banning these murderers posting their propaganda and sickening videos etc - Google, Facebook and Twitter were mentioned (something or other I was watching last night).

Apparently the claim was made that the video or videos of beheadings "slipped through the cracks".  Were I in the position, I would be fining them and very heavily indeed, as well as any outlet at all publishing propaganda type material and sick videos - and not permitting "slipped through the cracks" as an excuse.  It might be a (lame) reason, but not an excuse.

And if I were in the position, I would have Muslim leadership address the nation.

These murderers are brilliant in their use of the internet to advance their evil cause - and with all of our resources and know how, I do not believe we cannot do even better.  After all most all of them have been trained here in the west. 

It seems logical to me with our current situation not making much sense to me at all.

Edited June 6, 2017 by BarbaraTherese