Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Deathsnake on July 22, 2016, 01:47:35 pm
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http://www.msn.com/de-de/nachrichten/panorama/liveticker-tote-und-verletzte-nach-sch%C3%BCssen-in-m%C3%BCnchen/ar-BBuFr5v?ocid=ansmsnnews11
atm Infos - 3 People Shooting in a Shopping Center at People - min. 6 dead.
GSG9 on the way....
https://twitter.com/PolizeiMuenchen?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
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And let's hope that will be the final number :/
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Today is the 5th anniversary of Breivik attack. Maybe a copycat? Or another islamist attack?
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Don't know. Here is a Video of one of them
Goes out of McDonalds, take the gun and open fire. The guy from the Video "how ill is he?" and then "he is coming our way - run!"
http://www.bild.de/news/inland/news-inland/muenchen-schuetze-46953660.bild.html
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According to police, the single attacker (initial reports were talking about 3 attackers, but that was apparently a result of confusion) took his own life. He is a German national of Iranian descent, but nothing regarding his motives has been made public yet.
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According to the police press conference, the perpetrator was apparently undergoing therapy for psychological issues, and was "researching amok runs". There is no evidence so far of any connection to IS or other terror groups.
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So can we exclude religious motives? I heard that kid had some family issues.
Meh... I sense another political sh*****rm titled "hurrr durrr ban the evil guns even harder" :rolleyes:
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"Researching amok runs?" If so, that was some dedication to his research... Anyway, either he came across some eldritch mysteries in his research that drove him mad (yes, I did read a lot of Lovecraft lately :)) or he was just plain bonkers from the start. The question is, who allowed a guy undergoing psychological therapy to get a gun? That sort of thing will disqualify you even in most of the US, nevermind Germany.
TBH, the Iranian descent is probably a coincidence. The only way that could connected (that I can see) would be his family issues being caused by some sort of cultural incompatibility. On the other hand, he could very well be a Breivik copycat, which seems somewhat more likely to me. Or just a plain madman without any agenda. At least it was a shopping center and not a school. I hope more information surfaces soon. I really don't think Islamists have anything to do with it, though. Of course, telling that to public opinion will be another matter.
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"Researching amok runs?" If so, that was some dedication to his research... Anyway, either he came across some eldritch mysteries that drove him mad (yes, I did read a lot of Lovecraft lately :)) or he was just plain bonkers from the start. The question is, who allowed a guy undergoing psychological therapy to get a gun? That sort of thing will disqualify you even in most of the US, nevermind Germany.
He didn't go mad from some revelation, he was likely just suffering from depression in one form or another.
It is at this time unclear how he obtained the weapon and ammo he used, but it wasn't legally; the investigation is still ongoing.
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IS has been using Anonymous tactics for a while now. IS doesn't provide any material support, or issue orders, they simply give out ideas for plans, instructions for how to do things, and inspire people to carry them out. This is exactly how Anonymous attacked scientology in 2008, except that was protests and info dumps, this is murder sprees. Best part is there is no direct link to them, so there is no stopping it.
I can drive an hour and buy an AR-15 and a bunch of ammo, I can easily make Molotovs, slightly less easily build some pipe bombs. The hardest thing for me to obtain is someone willing to die in order to kill, that is the limiting resource.
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So an attack that, going by what has been publicised so far, had nothing to do with IS and all to do with one man's mental health issues, has actually been orchestrated by IS.
Got it.
Bobboau: Ah, I get it! IS is causing terrorism the same way Videogames are causing violence! It's all clear to me now!
(In other words, in case the above sarcasm wasn't coming through loud and clear: Leave the conspiracy theories to the Trumps, please.)
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I believe Bobbau is correct, ISIS causes violence mostly by inspiring muslims to commit atrocities in their name (which is very hard to stop). Videogames dont inspire violence, lol, I dont even know why you are bringing that up.
That said, in this particular case I have yet to see any evidence that ISIS or islam is to blame. It is possible to make a connection to liberal immigration policies, since the shooter was Iranian, but even that is debatable.
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I believe Bobbau is correct, ISIS causes violence mostly by inspiring muslims to commit atrocities in their name (which is very hard to stop). Videogames dont inspire violence, lol, I dont even know why you are bringing that up.
Because it's the same stupid logic. IS is telling muslims to commit terror, and because young muslims are apparently eminently susceptible for that sort of thing, terrorism happens. It's bull****. Just like the idea that young westerners are being violent because of all the Halo they're playing is bull****.
In any case, that's a discussion for another thread. Given how this year's been going, I am reasonably sure that an excuse to bring it up will present itself shortly.
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Because it's the same stupid logic. IS is telling muslims to commit terror, and because young muslims are apparently eminently susceptible for that sort of thing, terrorism happens. It's bull****. Just like the idea that young westerners are being violent because of all the Halo they're playing is bull****.
That logic is sound when it comes to IS.
But not when it comes to video games, because Halo is not telling anyone to kill real people, it merely depicts killing made up characters.
Your analogy is comparing apples and oranges.
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He didn't go mad from some revelation, he was likely just suffering from depression in one form or another.
It is at this time unclear how he obtained the weapon and ammo he used, but it wasn't legally; the investigation is still ongoing.
It was a joke, in those stories it's often waved off as "depression in one form or another" (or rather the early 20th century equivalent) and the like. The subject of his "research" was a bit strange, which is why I thought of this.
It'd be very interesting to find out who sold him a gun. Illegal guns tend not to be cheap, at least from what I heard, and they require dealing with seriously shady types. I don't know what kind of therapy he was undergoing, but I think someone should've noticed something...
That said, in this particular case I have yet to see any evidence that ISIS or islam is to blame. It is possible to make a connection to liberal immigration policies, since the shooter was Iranian, but even that is debatable.
He was of Iranian descent. For all we know, he was living in Germany his entire life. If there is some connection to his origins, it'd most likely be a clash of cultural values between his family and the rest of German society. If, for example, he was often forced to chose between what his family expected and what his friends expected (and endure the scorn of the ones he didn't choose), this could have put a dent in his psyche.
Best part is there is no direct link to them, so there is no stopping it.
That's where your theory falls flat, actually. ISIS doesn't care about anyone trying to stop them. That, and they want attacks to be linked to them. They operate more like a cult than Anon, really. ISIS may give stupids ideas to some idiots, but really, what they're actually doing through social media is recruiting people so that they come to them for training. They're inspiring amateurs, allright, but they're inspiring them to come to them and learn, not to act on their own.
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If there is some connection to his origins, it'd most likely be a clash of cultural values between his family and the rest of German society.
Thats what I meant.
They're inspiring amateurs, allright, but they're inspiring them to come to them and learn, not to act on their own.
They are inspiring them to do both. ISIS propaganda is full of calls for lone wolfs to commit attacks in the West on their own.
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IS is telling muslims to commit terror, and because young muslims are apparently eminently susceptible for that sort of thing, terrorism happens.
We wouldn't be in this situation if young Muslims weren't conspicuously susceptible to 'that sort of thing'.
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We wouldn't be in this situation if young Muslims weren't conspicuously susceptible to 'that sort of thing'.
Just like young white guys were conspicuously susceptible to shooting up schools for five years after Columbine.
You're approaching the idea this is some kind of infectious behavior backwards. After the DC sniper killings there was a rash of people who went out and shot other people from a distance with a rifle, for no other reason than because they'd seen somebody do it that way on the news. It could have been a knife or handgun or car, but it was a rifle because that was "trendy".
White kids shot up schools rather than just themselves or their families because that was the in thing for violent and suicidal white kid.
Muslim kids are going for high body counts and spectacular because everyone they hear about who sounds like them and doing violent stuff did it too.
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Everyone complains that ISIS is more a threat, that they're oh so scary and dangerous, because of this. And I can only find it darkly amusing, because the harder the maslos of the world say that ISIS is a greater threat now that it was before, the more they are wrong and the dumber they look.
It's provable fact that this is a strategy of weakness and desperation, born of the inability to accomplish the goals they originally set out for, trying to stay relevant in a world that's turned against them and as they see their final impotence approach. How?
It's all going the same way that the white supremacists went.
First there was the Ku Klux Klan; they were large, scary, organized, with titles and leadership and members and money. They rose and fell with the times and the perceived need a few times. But people stopped tolerating them eventually. Because they were organized, they were vulnerable. A line of command is a line of responsibility, moral and legal. A leader is one who, when removed, leaves the rest of the organization weaker for their absence. And the power-grabbers all moved in too as the pressure mounted, and there was schism and collapse.
Many groups followed in the wake of it all. Many even named themselves the Klan, and today there are a dozen or more "Klans", most of which are opposed to each other. They were and are dangerous to those who cross their paths on an individual level, but incapable of the massive campaigns of oppression and murder that their forerunner was.
The next to become of true account was the Aryan Nations, in the early '80s. They had a new ideology, Christian Identity, and a new concept, brought to them ironically by someone not of their group who had suffered his own defeats in the traditional area. (It is to this man, Louis Beam, that we owe the very phrase "lone wolves" we use to describe what goes on today, and it is his playbook of "leaderless resistance" that describes how this is all happening.) There would be a central core, but only tenuous ties. They would bring many groups together, forge links, but not command. Encouragement and basic informational help would be offered, but no one would ask and no one would tell. Yet in this environment, less got done, because nobody had to do it. There was plenty of talking a good game, but the scale of action shrank drastically. From lynching and church bombing that was so endemic it passed almost without comment, they were reduced to the occasional murder, shooting up of a community center, and armored car robbery.
Then in the '90s, at the seeming height of their power, their effectiveness suddenly started to wane even as their reach seemingly grew. They were everywhere. But doing little. It began to tell. They started to fissure under increased law enforcement pressure and reduced recruitment in reaction to their "successes" in the late '80s. In 2000 Aryan Nations broke, and never recovered. Like the Klan, there are many remainders, fighting mostly over who is truly Aryan Nations, many of them existing as little more than a website and perhaps a dozen people, and all of them accomplishing little.
There will be no race war, no glorious victory on the field of battle. The dream is dead and the dreamer crippled. All that is left is mindless violence, spastic, uncoordinated, and ultimately small in scope. It is a violence born of hopelessness, not in any sense that there was no hope for the doer, but that there is no hope for it to have meaning, no hope for it accomplish anything. It is violence born of the realization that all they have taken upon themselves and all they stand for will be nullified, and so in a nihilistic last stand they try to nullify a few other people before they too see the sum effort and meaning of their lives come to nothing.
Change a few names and dates and you have the history of Islamic terrorism, from Islamic Jihad to al-Qaeda to Daesh. We're watching these stages play out before our eyes.
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Just like young white guys were conspicuously susceptible to shooting up schools for five years after Columbine.
Were they?
Though the perpetrators of school shootings are often said to be almost exclusively white males, this is misleading. A study of 48 shooters found that though white males constituted 79% of secondary school shooters, white males were actually a minority among college and other adult perpetrators.[15] There is significant racial, ethnic, and gender diversity among school shooters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shooting#Profiling
It's all going the same way that the white supremacists went.
It is going the opposite way so far. Several decades ago, there was no large scary organized islamic terrorist state in the middle east, and no regular islamist attacks in the West. Now there are. Islamic terror is getting steadily worse and more powerful, not less.
You are equating two different things - white suprematism and islamic terrorism. There is no deep reason to do that. And you even think this is some kind of a "provable fact". Well, your threshold for calling something a fact must be very low, then. Id say it is just speculation and guesswork. Maybe, maybe not.
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Reading comprehension check, Maslo.
When NGTM-1R says:
It's all going the same way that the white supremacists went.
Is there anything that implies, states, claims, declares, or gives you any reason to infer that he's equating either of those groups as they stand now to ISIS as it stands now? Because it was pretty obvious that he was laying out how similar the progression of radical Islamic terrorism has been playing out as compared to the past ascendance and decline of other terror groups. The KKK did not get to the point it is now (that is to say, almost totally and utterly irrelevant and ineffective) by magic coincidence, and ISIS is displaying a similar progression.
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Just like young white guys were conspicuously susceptible to shooting up schools for five years after Columbine.
Well what we didn't have were thousands of young white guys running away to fight overseas in a militant army in the name of... being edgy? They didn't identify with a consistent ideological cause, and the numbers were much smaller than the number of European Muslims taking up arms in the name of ISIS. The alt-right can take their xenophobia and culture war narrative and go **** themselves with it, of course, but I don't have much time for the mainstream liberal line that 'this isn't really a big problem, it's all exaggeration, we can't overreact'. This situation is clearly symptomatic of some vast ****up in the way European multiculturalism has been handled that needs immediate, effective action to repair.
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Because it was pretty obvious that he was laying out how similar the progression of radical Islamic terrorism has been playing out as compared to the past ascendance and decline of other terror groups.
But thats exactly how I understood his post.. so there is no lack of reading comprehension on my part. But maybe you should reread my post, this time with comprehension, hm? What I am saying is that this progression is not really similar.
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It is going the opposite way so far. Several decades ago, there was no large scary organized islamic terrorist state in the middle east, and no regular islamist attacks in the West. Now there are. Islamic terror is getting steadily worse and more powerful, not less.
The year is 1955. Several decades ago, there was no large scary organized KKK in the Southern US, and no regular bombings in Birmingham, AL. Now there are. The KKK is getting steadily worse and more powerful, not less.
The part you either failed to grasp or outright dismissed is that every group, without exception, that is powerful in any sense of the word right now was once not powerful at all, and greater than 99(.99999)% of those powerful groups throughout history are once again not powerful at all if they even still exist. ISIS is currently powerful. In the (potentially near) future, it will not be.
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Just like young white guys were conspicuously susceptible to shooting up schools for five years after Columbine.
Well what we didn't have were thousands of young white guys running away to fight overseas in a militant army in the name of... being edgy?
We did have Generation Kill though. Thousands of young white guys enlisting the army to fight overseas in the name of... Something.
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Well what we didn't have were thousands of young white guys running away to fight overseas in a militant army in the name of... being edgy?
I'm not sure if you managed to connect the end of that era with 9/11. Perhaps you should have.
It is going the opposite way so far. Several decades ago, there was no large scary organized islamic terrorist state in the middle east, and no regular islamist attacks in the West. Now there are.
You literally do not know your history. There was actually more than one. We called them Libya. The PLO. Hamas. Hezbollah. Iran. Libya got themselves bombed for blowing up an airliner over Scotland in the '80s. Islamic Jihad under the aegis of Hamas or Hezbollah or both staged bombings in France and Germany. The Munich massacre, the original one, during the 1972 Summer Olympics, was Palestinian nationalist terrorists and is the reason the GSG 9 branch deployed to this incident exists. Iran suffered through several rounds of Tomahawk strikes for supporting terrorist attacks on US soil in the '90s, including the first try at blowing up the World Trade Center. These were all actions that required skilled people and significant financial resources.
Note that the modern era of lone-wolf terrorism explicitly denies the possibility of skilled plotters or significant financial resources, if you have the wisdom to make such a distinction.
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Well what we didn't have were thousands of young white guys running away to fight overseas in a militant army in the name of... being edgy?
I'm not sure if you managed to connect the end of that era with 9/11. Perhaps you should have.
possibly you should stop ****posting in every political topic like it's a rhetorical game for other people to figure out how much smarter you are than them
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possibly you should stop ****posting in every political topic
Physician, heal thyself.
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Both of you cut it out. PH, at least NGTM-1R actually contributes instead of posting driveby one liners about other posters. NGTM-1R, don't be a condescending dick.
I don't care if there's exaggeration in the above, cut it out.
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at least my ****posts are in earnest
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Best part is there is no direct link to them, so there is no stopping it.
That's where your theory falls flat, actually. ISIS doesn't care about anyone trying to stop them. That, and they want attacks to be linked to them. They operate more like a cult than Anon, really. ISIS may give stupids ideas to some idiots, but really, what they're actually doing through social media is recruiting people so that they come to them for training. They're inspiring amateurs, alright, but they're inspiring them to come to them and learn, not to act on their own.
you misunderstood the advantage they are getting, it's not that ISIS doesn't get 'tainted' with their actions, it's the fact there is no way to find the people who are going to be committing attacks, it's like trying to find a TV using a broadcast signal.
IS is causing terrorism the same way Videogames are causing violence! It's all clear to me now!
Not what I said.
IS is making available plans for making bombs and tactics for committing attacks.
Are you familiar with Inspire (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspire_(magazine)) and Dabiq (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabiq_(magazine))? Are you familiar with how Anonymous operated (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Chanology#Formation) in the 2008 Scientology raid?
None of this is like vidjya not even in the Sarkeesian/Thomson sense.
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The year is 1955. Several decades ago, there was no large scary organized KKK in the Southern US, and no regular bombings in Birmingham, AL. Now there are. The KKK is getting steadily worse and more powerful, not less.
The year is 1955. Several decades ago, there were regular lynchings and society didnt care, and few decades before that, slavery was the norm and accepted. Now there arent.
The fact is, white suprematism is on a downward trajectory for several centuries. Its peak was somewhere around colonization period, and ever since then it is slowly but surely declining.
On the other hand, islamic extremism is as strong as ever, in fact it is on the rise over the past few decades.
And its not even about ISIS, if ISIS is defeated, then another group will take their place or it just decentralizes. I am talking about islamic extremism in general.
As I said, maybe your optimistic scenario is right, maybe it isnt. Surely it is a possibility that islamic extremism will begin to decline in the future, too. But trying to "prove this fact" it by some vague comparisons with unrelated events in history is complete pseudoscience and nothing more than an opinion.
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You literally do not know your history. There was actually more than one. We called them Libya. The PLO. Hamas. Hezbollah. Iran. Libya got themselves bombed for blowing up an airliner over Scotland in the '80s. Islamic Jihad under the aegis of Hamas or Hezbollah or both staged bombings in France and Germany. The Munich massacre, the original one, during the 1972 Summer Olympics, was Palestinian nationalist terrorists and is the reason the GSG 9 branch deployed to this incident exists. Iran suffered through several rounds of Tomahawk strikes for supporting terrorist attacks on US soil in the '90s, including the first try at blowing up the World Trade Center. These were all actions that required skilled people and significant financial resources.
Note that the modern era of lone-wolf terrorism explicitly denies the possibility of skilled plotters or significant financial resources, if you have the wisdom to make such a distinction.
Current wave of islamic terrorism easily matches or exceeds those past waves.
Also, lone wolf terrorism is much worse, because it is usually homegrown. And thats what makes it especially dangerous and persistent. There is very little defense possible against homegrown terrorism, while you can defend against foreign terrorists. And while attacks by some foreign state actors will only go on as long as that particular regime or group exists (usually not long in the middle east, lol) and the west interferes in their affairs, attacks by homegrown terrorists will go on indefinitely unless the cultural divide present inside the country itself is resolved (and it is just not possible to appease an ISIS sympathiser). These lone wolf attacks are the like the first stage of a civil war, and there is a reason why civil wars are considered the worst wars. So no, this is an indication of things getting worse, not better. It will be a much more persistent and ultimately a more deadly problem than a handful of attacks by the likes of Iran ever could be.
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So an attack that, going by what has been publicised so far, had nothing to do with IS and all to do with one man's mental health issues, has actually been orchestrated by IS.
Got it.
Bobboau: Ah, I get it! IS is causing terrorism the same way Videogames are causing violence! It's all clear to me now!
(In other words, in case the above sarcasm wasn't coming through loud and clear: Leave the conspiracy theories to the Trumps, please.)
Well, at least one of these opinions seem to be popular enough to be spouted by the German Interior Minister (https://twitter.com/NaomiConrad/status/756841820919857157).
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And the next one.
This time one woman dead and two injured. the guy is catch by the Police.
http://www.msn.com/de-de/nachrichten/panorama/mann-mit-machete-%E2%80%93-eine-tote-zwei-verletzte/ar-BBuKL2S#image=1
🆘‼️ BREAK: In #Reutlingen (Germany) a man killed with a machete at least one woman and injured more people!
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Current wave of islamic terrorism easily matches or exceeds those past waves.
Doubtful. The current wave doesn't include any just-short-of-3000 bodycount events. Your denial is sure to be forthcoming, but 9/11 doesn't belong to what we look at now; it was the most extreme example of the coordinated terror attack planned and financed from a large organization outside the country the attack took place in, and in many ways was the end of an era for global terrorism. After 9/11 a much higher level of scrutiny and resources began to be applied to them, and a much higher willingness to come at them preemptively with lethal force. Say what you will for the drone campaign, but when people associate talking on a satellite or cellular phone with dying, it's a lot harder to coordinate an operation. If someone were to write a history of Islamic terrorism, 9/11 would be a "then everything changed" and in most cases not in a good way for terrorism.
I've done you the courtesy of proving why you're wrong one way, but there are other reasons waiting in the wings if you have actually studied the issue. You haven't countered any of them. You've simply made a bald statement. I only remember Lockerbie dimly. I was three. But I actually bothered to learn about this stuff before I started talking about it. Show me you've got more than your conviction that this is special.
Also, lone wolf terrorism is much worse, because it is usually homegrown.
But it's not. You're arguing it's much worse because it's harder to defend against. So are gnats compared to mosquitoes. But mosquitoes can give you lifelong illnesses. Gnats can...get in your eye and make you uncomfortable for about a half-hour if you're really unlucky?
You need organization and resources to fight organization and resources. Humans are the dominant species on the planet because we can communicate, organize, and execute complex plans. That is our strength as a species and you need only look at a picture of New York, Berlin, London, or Beijing to understand just how incredibly powerful that ability is.
A "lone wolf" reduces themselves to a level below even than their namesake. At least a wolf is capable of simple communication and planning. These are people who won't even do that. They can kill us, in relatively small numbers. But they can't make us change our minds. Terrorism as a political and social tool works through constant pressure, through the stabbing a day that can't be stopped, through the regular civil defense siren call, through a campaign across months and years. Operating alone, and more or less ensuring they'll never be able to stage a repeat performance, such is impossible.
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9/11 doesn't belong to what we look at now
You are completely full of ****.
"done you the courtesy"
"actually studied the issue"
and you're arrogant as possible in the process. I'm sorry I don't keep a folder on what credentials everyone has, but what PhD in terror studies do you have?
The panicked flailing of arms the US did after 9/11 did nothing to stop terrorism, the biggest thing we did was give every jihadi on earth a huge flashing bullseye in iraq to go after, THAT is the only reason there were not that many major events in the western world (none in the US iirc) for 8ish years. Making you take off yours shoes and making you split your gallon of liquid into a dozen smaller containers had no affect other than making the populous think they were doing something.
ISIS has the same Wahabi/Salafi ideology behind it the 9/11 attacks had. It is directly descended from the war in Iraq (back when they called themselves Al Qaeda in Iraq). The ware was directly caused by 9/11. yeah, 9/11 was a changing point, but to say that event and current events are unrelated distinct things, that there was some sort of break between then and now, is the height of idiocy. A shift in tactics does not denote a completely different war. Please tell me you are joking here.
The current strategy of large numbers of small attacks is arguably more effective because it keeps the terror in people's minds constantly at a lower operational cost and with a lower requirement of complexity. complex plans requiring resources are inherently vulnerable, if you can get the same result with something simpler that is less likely to fail due to some of the many complexities going awry, you have a better plan.
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also. another one:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36880758
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You are completely full of ****.
You going to actually refute my explanation of why? No? Okay, you're completely full of **** too. That's the level you want to argue on.
and you're arrogant as possible in the process.
To quote Battuta, maslo's only contribution to most of these topics is that by his ignorance other people might learn something when it's explained to him. I dunno man where were you when he was talking about doing exactly what ISIS wants us to do so that we can beat ISIS? When he could never engage with a point, only slide the goalposts?
The panicked flailing of arms the US did after 9/11 did nothing to stop terrorism, the biggest thing we did was give every jihadi on earth a huge flashing bullseye in iraq to go after, THAT is the only reason there were not that many major events in the western world (none in the US iirc) for 8ish years.
Like, I hate to be the guy to tell you this, but Osama bin-Laden doesn't agree with your analysis. The papers picked up in the raid that killed him and have been declassified are pretty clear about his frustration with his compatriots. He urged them to go global, they went local, he urged them to go big, they went small, he urged them to coordinate, they decentralized (because gathering together exposed them to elimination by drone strike, natch).
Of course, you're also not actually engaging with what I said really did change after 9/11, which was that resources were applied on the intelligence side via NSA and the drone campaign started disrupting leadership and coordination. Rather than argue about what I actually said, you're moving the goalposts to airport security because that makes a more convenient argument for you.
To borrow your own phraseology, you're full of ****. You don't even have the courtesy to pretend otherwise.
ISIS has the same Wahabi/Salafi ideology behind it the 9/11 attacks had.
Actually it doesn't. Remember al-Qaeda still exists and considers ISIS an enemy to the point blood has been shed between the two. ISIS' ideology and theology has crossed a line in al-Qaeda's eyes, taken on apocalyptic nonsense and a disturbing willingness to accuse other Muslims of apostasy on what even al-Qaeda would regard as flimsy pretexts.
I've pointed this out in previous threads.
A shift in tactics does not denote a completely different war.
Go back and read the posts again. I never argued for a completely different war. I argued for a break in methodology, effectiveness as a social and political tool, and in organization and skill level. Eras and wars are not the same thing.
The current strategy of large numbers of small attacks is arguably more effective because it keeps the terror in people's minds constantly at a lower operational cost and with a lower requirement of complexity. complex plans requiring resources are inherently vulnerable, if you can get the same result with something simpler that is less likely to fail due to some of the many complexities going awry, you have a better plan.
This is all true insofar as it goes, but you're making some assumptions that aren't warranted. Europe's going through a sequence right now, but there was no way to know beforehand that it would become a series, or to ensure it did so. America's experience with the lone-wolf ISIS method has been distinctly less continuous, with months elapsing between attacks; global media doesn't make for local experience of fear. Europe is thousands of miles away and they're not particularly real to the average person in front of a television. Leaderless resistance lacks a guiding force to sustain or start it, as the white supremacists (coming full circle now) have learned to their frustration.
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To quote Battuta, maslo's only contribution to most of these topics is that by his ignorance other people might learn something when it's explained to him.
Yeah but when Battuta posted in these threads he was eloquent and insightful, whereas everything you post comes with a torrent of abusive sophistry.
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Yeah but when Battuta posted in these threads he was eloquent and insightful, whereas everything you post comes with a torrent of abusive sophistry.
I'm frustrated with maslo. I think it's understandable given that even you're acknowledging Batts had a point. I'm prompting him to show he's got some background, some grounding, that he's not just talking about things he hasn't even bothered to look up on wikipedia, again. Does that bother you so much you feel the need to post driveby complaints about it constantly, even when warned not to? Fine. But it's not like you wanted to have some kind of serious discussion in here, that's not something you do. All you've got to offer to a discussion is your own abusive one-liners.
Hell, at least I try to dress it up nice when I'm frustrated. At least there's actual content in there too. That's a comparison I'll cop to gladly. Both ways.
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also. another one:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36880758
yea... it is just 50km from me away...thanks Merkel!
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I dunno man where were you when he was talking about doing exactly what ISIS wants us to do so that we can beat ISIS? When he could never engage with a point, only slide the goalposts?
What ISIS wants is two things:
1. for the relations between muslims in Europe and the majority to deteriorate, so that their recruiting pool inside enemy land is increased
2. for the unregulated mass immigration to continue so that so that their recruiting pool inside enemy land is increased
What the ISIS does not want is tight border control and Europeans treating muslims well.
I have explained this to Battuta, too, I didnt slide any goalposts at all.
I will respond to the rest of your posts later.
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PH, please have a warning for doing literally and exactly what I already told you not to do in this thread.
NGTM-1R, please have the same for doing the same. If you can't be the better man, don't post.
Bobbau, please have a warning for inciting the warmest flames this thread has seen so far totally unprompted. If your entry to the discussion is "you're full of ****", you are entering the discussion wrong. That goes double for a Global Mod.
The next time I have to step in this thread is getting locked for a day.
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Ansbach appears to just have had a "real" Islamistic bombing. Investigation ongoing. Islamistic background highly suspected due to how it went down (Nail bomb in crowd detonated by Syrian refugee.)
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/24/syrian-refugee-kills-woman-with-machete-in-southern-germany/
Grab another one from Germany. Interesting way of solving heart issues by a "refugee". Looks like nobody told him that we don't deal with woman's rejection with a knife here :nono:.
That gives us third Polish woman murdered abroad within a couple of weeks. 2 died in Nice.
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I know next to zero to what is going on exactly right now, but it feels as if the trends are accelerating in Europe towards something rather unbecoming. The ****show that Turkey is, the shenanigans surrounding the refugee crisis, ISIS *still* lingering on (and like a bad infection, threatening the life of an entire limb of a continent), all the crescendo around terrorist attacks.
If it's his thing, I welcome all NGTM's refutations based on facts, he's usually good at delivering "pwnages". Especially at "feels", which are often wrong against actual data points and so on. Still, I do have this glaring feeling that **** is slowly approaching the fan.
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I know next to zero to what is going on exactly right now, but it feels as if the trends are accelerating in Europe towards something rather unbecoming. The ****show that Turkey is, the shenanigans surrounding the refugee crisis, ISIS *still* lingering on (and like a bad infection, threatening the life of an entire limb of a continent), all the crescendo around terrorist attacks.
I wouldn't really disagree about the mood of Europe and what's in the air, but on the other hand, of all these things, the only one one that seems likely to result in a serious, permanent change is Turkey. And I don't think the Turkey thing has its genesis near the others either. Edrogan et. al. wouldn't stop seeking supreme power if they didn't have a civil war on their doorstep or if ISIS went away.
ISIS and their side effects have been going on for awhile; one of the reasons ISIS switched to attacking Europe was that they were losing ground in the Middle East. I doubt they'll ever have a moment where Satan comes to Jesus as did the IRA, so there will never be a clean end to the ISIS campaign. (If you can even call what happened to the IRA a clean end, considering.)They'll lose their territory and linger on as a more traditional terror group, tapping the apocalyptic mindset al-Qaeda wouldn't touch.
Then again it's not like al-Qaeda never advocated lone-wolf attacks. ISIS had a legitimacy, for want of a better term, they didn't, because they put a flag on the map and actually started accomplishing things against state actors for awhile. I guess the real question is, once that's taken from them, will it make things change in Europe? I'm hopeful but can't swear to anything.
I can't think of any especially appropriate parallels for Europe and the refugee problem at the moment. (It's not like a minority Muslim population in Europe is exactly new, France, Belgium, and Germany have had a noticeable minority for at least a decade.) The best fit, I think, would probably be...well. I'm not sure it's really a best fit, but see the last paragraph for why I feel like it does. The late '80s and early '90s, the US, gang violence, only focused outward rather than mainly in. Disenfranchised minority. Hated and feared. The cure for that was better policing on the one hand and the '90s economic boom on the other. (Mainly the economy, since it actually enabled the improved policing too.)
I suppose the former is possible; the French police seem to have some hangups about proper information-sharing, the Belgians have done a piss-poor job keeping an eye on their radicals, other areas of improvement doubtless exist. You can always get better. But the economic improvement...Europe's economy is technically on an upslope at the moment, but nothing like America in the early '90s.
As a personal aside, I admit a level of dark amusement as an American, watching Continental Europe, which has scolded us for so long about how much better they're integrated with their minorities, encounter a large group of brown people and completely lose their minds. A lot of the rhetoric you see get tossed around by people complaining about their new neighbors is very familiar in tone to that attacking African-Americans via the language of law and order from '70s onwards. But some of it is also straight Jim Crow-era nonsense, like banning hijabs. An attempt to force external conformity won't make them French in their hearts. Just piss them off.
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Doubtful.
As I said, the current wave of islamic extremism easily matches or exceeds past waves of islamic extremism. Here is actual data I googled up:
http://www.datagraver.com/thumbs/1300x1300r/2016-03/terror-split2.png
To get back to the original discussion we had, it is pretty much a statistical fact that islamic extremism is increasing, or at best continuing as usual, both in Europe and around the world. This is enough to disprove your ignorant assertion that islamic extremism is going the same way as white suprematism went, meaning slowly became irrelevant. You just have no argument supported by any data left here, except for empty speculation about the future.
But it's not. You're arguing it's much worse because it's harder to defend against. So are gnats compared to mosquitoes. But mosquitoes can give you lifelong illnesses. Gnats can...get in your eye and make you uncomfortable for about a half-hour if you're really unlucky?
You need organization and resources to fight organization and resources. Humans are the dominant species on the planet because we can communicate, organize, and execute complex plans. That is our strength as a species and you need only look at a picture of New York, Berlin, London, or Beijing to understand just how incredibly powerful that ability is.
A "lone wolf" reduces themselves to a level below even than their namesake. At least a wolf is capable of simple communication and planning. These are people who won't even do that. They can kill us, in relatively small numbers.
Decentralized organizations such as a terrorist networks are still an organization. Neither centralized nor decentralized organizations can really threaten the superpower that is the West. So neither mosquitoes nor gnats can give you any serious illness, in this case..
But, a decentralized terrorist network (or worse - a terrorist inducing ideology/meme) is a bigger threat because it is much harder to eliminate, much harder to defend against and ultimately will kill more people over time than an actual enemy state you can target, simply because they can keep up the campaign of terror long-term. Any centralized organization such as Iran or IS (the state) is pretty much done after the first big attack, because it paints a big target on itself and cannot hide from the western military. This is not true of lone wolf attacks. An analogy with illegal file sharing comes to mind, where decentralization is also a desirable trait to make sharing much more robust and secure from law enforcement.
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In unrelated news, this happened (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-36890655)
I mean...
... I actually have no idea what to mean I'm just a bit depressed about it all okay?
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Another attack in France:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-hostages-idUSKCN1060VA
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These asswipes want a huge holy war, but if the media wasn't complicit in spreading their terror, they'd kill us at a rate FAR below the rate at which we kill ourselves.
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In unrelated news, this happened (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-36890655)
I mean...
... I actually have no idea what to mean I'm just a bit depressed about it all okay?
on the bright side, at least this mass killing can be said to have nothing to do with Islam uncontroversially.
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In unrelated news, this happened (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-36890655)
I mean...
... I actually have no idea what to mean I'm just a bit depressed about it all okay?
on the bright side, at least this mass killing can be said to have nothing to do with Islam uncontroversially.
/me cheers with an extreme lack of enthusiasm.
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Maybe we should change the thread's name. So much happened recently that we can't just talk about Munich only.
Besides I am quite worried about World Youth Day in Kraków which started today and will last till 31'th of July. Security is tight as hell, we put armed officers, AT squads and even Military Police on the streets everywhere but still... That's several hundreds of thousands of people to protect. Yesterday the police revealed that they caught a citizen of Iraq who was in possession of explosive materials (small amounts, not enough to create a serious bomb but we still don't know if there was more or where it is. Police is looking for the rest). Guy rented several apartments in Kraków, very close to the pope's route. Police traced the explosives which were present in one of the apartments thanks to specially trained dog. Man was arrested for 2 months for now. If they find him guilty, then he will have up to 8 years to think about it in Polish prison.
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As a personal aside, I admit a level of dark amusement as an American, watching Continental Europe, which has scolded us for so long about how much better they're integrated with their minorities, encounter a large group of brown people and completely lose their minds. A lot of the rhetoric you see get tossed around by people complaining about their new neighbors is very familiar in tone to that attacking African-Americans via the language of law and order from '70s onwards. But some of it is also straight Jim Crow-era nonsense, like banning hijabs. An attempt to force external conformity won't make them French in their hearts. Just piss them off.
Not to disagree with you regarding the sometimes knee jerk reaction towards migrants, but the (vast?) majority of the migrants are white. Muslim is not synonymous with brown.
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As a personal aside, I admit a level of dark amusement as an American, watching Continental Europe, which has scolded us for so long about how much better they're integrated with their minorities, encounter a large group of brown people and completely lose their minds. A lot of the rhetoric you see get tossed around by people complaining about their new neighbors is very familiar in tone to that attacking African-Americans via the language of law and order from '70s onwards. But some of it is also straight Jim Crow-era nonsense, like banning hijabs. An attempt to force external conformity won't make them French in their hearts. Just piss them off.
Not to disagree with you regarding the sometimes knee jerk reaction towards migrants, but the (vast?) majority of the migrants are white. Muslim is not synonymous with brown.
That would depend entirely on who you talk to...
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Not to disagree with you regarding the sometimes knee jerk reaction towards migrants, but the (vast?) majority of the migrants are white. Muslim is not synonymous with brown.
Someone who's lived in Northern Europe their whole life is unlikely to be able to tell the difference between "Arabic" and "Mediterranean" as a complexion. I have a friend of Saudi descent who's forced to spend huge amounts of time on planes and overseas skating on that inability while traveling for her job, by telling people she's from Andalusia.
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As I said, the current wave of islamic extremism easily matches or exceeds past waves of islamic extremism. Here is actual data I googled up:
http://www.datagraver.com/thumbs/1300x1300r/2016-03/terror-split2.png
So, it's only for Europe, which is a problem since I specifically cited Europe and the US, and it has no breakdown into the strategies of terrorist operations I pointed out, where on one hand we have planned, organized attacks coordinated from outside the country, and on the other we have
If we were to actually address the argument I made, and attempt to make a useful breakdown of the attacks by how they were conducted per my original thesis, the spike in 2005-2006 belongs mostly to the first category, and the spike for the current era belongs mostly to the second and is noticeably smaller.
You've actually managed to disprove yourself. Would you care to try again?
To get back to the original discussion we had, it is pretty much a statistical fact that islamic extremism is increasing,
This is an obvious lie. It's not a misstatement, it's not ignorance, you are lying to my face. You know this statement is false. You literally linked the chart that disproves it. 2005-2006 was worse than the current situation.
Decentralized organizations such as a terrorist networks are still an organization.
There is no decentralized organization behind lone wolf attacks. Try again.
But, a decentralized terrorist network (or worse - a terrorist inducing ideology/meme) is a bigger threat because it is much harder to eliminate, much harder to defend against and ultimately will kill more people over time than an actual enemy state you can target, simply because they can keep up the campaign of terror long-term.
Linking to that chart was your worst decision ever.
You see that big mess up to 1992?
Do you know what's behind that?
The Soviet Union and Libya providing material and financial support and safehavens to terrorist groups throughout Europe.
Similarly, Iran continues to provide support to various terrorist groups throughout the Middle East.
These states were never "targeted" for these in a systemic, coherent, way, for their actions. Going to war over terrorist activities is frequently not worth it. The Soviet Union never even suffered real consequences, the Tomahawk strikes on Iran were the equivalent of a warning shot and in no way stopped their patronage. Libya, though bombed in the late '80s, did not cease their support until the mid-1990s, though without Russian help they had relatively little to offer. They did so because of an economic opening to Europe, not because of any military pressure.
You don't know anything about this.
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It can be easily argued that the spike between 2005 and 2006 has already been surpassed, given how that graph only includes data until march 2016. If you multiply that bar by 4 times (I'm obviously assuming the rest of the year will mirror the first half of it), it will be a bar that is pretty much in the same ballpark as 2015. Now that's something that is quite... ahhh... existing. And so, we may be able to say that something is definitely going on, it's not just a sentiment or a media coverage bubble.
I agree with NGTM's analysis, although the point he makes at the end is not entirely hopeful. The idea that market forces will somehow tame everything down is maybe historically accurate, but may not have any predictive power regarding countries with a completely different social culture than ours. Eastern europe was, at bottom, a christian / atheistic society / political infrastructure, with common values that easily map to our own. I do believe we just take for granted all these values and institutions that form what we holistically call "Democracy", that stem from a tradition of a mish mash of christian individualism, enlightenment, stoic personal responsibility, etc., all of which are completely alien to muslim societies.
George Bush and Tony Blair once thought that all that the middle east required was a shock and awe kind of democratic infusion, and all these values would automatically flourish, for they were already inherently human values. Except they are not. They were embedded for so long in our culture that we, again, just take them for granted.
It might well be that, while we all get along with everyone, middle east included, market-wise, we may be in a long haul of total bifurcation culturally-wise with most of these societies. Here's where Maslo has a point: society is collapsing like a black hole through "the power of the internet" and other media forces. This means that while once we could just ignore these people and these people could just ignore us, this seems to be increasingly difficult. And given the trends in technology, social media and general connectivity, it seems that it will become almost impossible in a decade or two. Given how irreconcilable certain aspects of our cultures are, we are really in for a ride here.
If it's something that will go the "good route" or the really nasty one, we can only guess at. This is why things like Turkey are important checkpoints, they are big enough to set the trend going.
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That would depend entirely on who you talk to...
That is very true, the question is is there anyone on this forum who would make that distinction? I do not know of anyone who would be so discriminating here (I have certainly encountered such people elsewhere though).
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It can be easily argued that the spike between 2005 and 2006 has already been surpassed, given how that graph only includes data until march 2016. If you multiply that bar by 4 times (I'm obviously assuming the rest of the year will mirror the first half of it), it will be a bar that is pretty much in the same ballpark as 2015.
You're going to get dragged down by a smaller 2015 in comparison anyways.
But even if it's true, as I already pointed out to Bob, this lone-wolf sequence is inherently far more random. The complete lack of organization or control in a series of attacks driven entirely lone wolves means that there is a great deal of random chance about when they start, stop, what gets hit, and how successful they are. Surpassing 2005-2006 would reflect only exceptional bad luck, not any kind of inherent threat. Aryan Nations in their heyday were a lot more dangerous than the Klan nearing their nadir, too, but they never reached the heights the Klan did. (The elephant in the room here that I've tried to refrain from pointing out, but I suppose I should: if we're going to talk about Islamic terrorism's successes, we have to consider Israel in the '90s where people were constantly blowing up buses and ambulances vs. having resorted to stabbings and pretty much ineffective rocket attacks in the modern era. If we compare the height of the Jim Crow Klan to the bad old days of 1970-2000 Israel vs. what's going on now in the whole world, this argument is all over.)
It's also a declining asset. Not just in that the lone wolf mentality is relatively rare, but in that while Turambar has a point about media coverage begets copycats who beget media coverage, it also has a negative effect in discouraging people who might otherwise go down that path. The copycats are simply those awaiting a spark, not those who might someday. This is one of the reasons why such patterns are cyclical in the first place.
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I think those comparisons are not only fair but they are required for understanding. Here's the thing though, yes, we can totally see that Israel had it a lot worse in the past, and that things that happened a hundred years ago were usually even more violent than whatever it is that is happening today. However, people smell trends. And this trend can end tomorrow. But that's not what even politicians are communicating to the public (the french saying we have to start treating these things like we treat a bad case of rain or smth to that effect), what is being communicated is that the whole of Europe is slowly turning into an Israel. Except without its own stubburness and persistence.
Regarding that graph where 2015 is still smaller than 2005 or wtv, well is that remotely important? If we add Nice to that chart (and all the others that have happened since March), 2016 has probably already surpassed 2015 by this point.
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This is getting bizarre: http://www.berliner-kurier.de/news/panorama/patient-attackiert-chirurgen--er-schrie-allahu-akbar-und-wollte-mich-enthaupten--24461488
Now a patient not listening to what the surgeon tells him comes back with his brother and father, who was wielding a 30cm knife and proceeded to threathen and manhandle the surgeon, beating his wife (who suffered a heart attack), shouting Allahu Akbar... police detained them, surgeons wife in hospital.
Now this probably isn't terror but seriously WT* is this?
Is everyone going crazy suddenly or something?
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Anti-intellectualism?
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Anti-intellectualism?
Nah, I'd blame the vegans here. That must have been it. ****ing vegans.
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This is an obvious lie. It's not a misstatement, it's not ignorance, you are lying to my face. You know this statement is false. You literally linked the chart that disproves it. 2005-2006 was worse than the current situation.
Oh, sorry, the bars are around 20% smaller... Are you seriously trying to imply that means I am lying? Do you think this is some kind of an exact science, lol? It is basically the same. So the chart obviously does prove me right, islamic terror is not on a downward trajectory at all. Not to mention that it doesnt even include most recent attacks.
Linking to that chart was your worst decision ever.
You see that big mess up to 1992?
Do you know what's behind that?
The Soviet Union and Libya providing material and financial support and safehavens to terrorist groups throughout Europe.
Do you see how quickly the terror ended after the collapse of the Soviet Union?
You aint getting that when the terrorist sympathisers are among us, as a decentralized organization, or even worse, mere lone wolfs created by an abstract idea of extremism which has taken root in the population.
Current terrorism wave will be much more persistent and the West will be even less able to defend against it. Ultimately, it could be more dangerous than Soviet Union and Iran were, and I say it as a citizen of a post-communist country with lots of aversion towards the Soviets. Because solving it wont be as trivial as a regime change in some country. It is to a large degree homegrown and decentralized. And that was my point. If you cant see how that makes it more resistant and dangerous than a top-down organization such as an foreign enemy regime, then you have no strategic thinking.
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And to get back to the incident that started this whole mess of a thread, there is a growing amount of evidence to show that the Munich shooter was motivated by racist motives. Apparently, he had quite a strong anti-immigrant, pro-aryan streak, and wanted to take revenge on the arabs and turks; chat logs show him as your typical internet alt-right idiot, spewing hate and supporting the AfD.
I now turn over the thread to maslo to explain why this was definitely IS' fault.
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I now turn over the thread to maslo to explain why this was definitely IS' fault.
I dont think this particular attack was IS fault. Let me quote my own post here:
That said, in this particular case I have yet to see any evidence that ISIS or islam is to blame.
I do think it can be argued that it was a fault of multiculturalism, tough. If you randomly import Iranians, Arabs, Turks, Sunnis, Shias etc. you are going to import their mutual conflicts, too. And this immigrant background is really what all these recent wave of attacks have in common, even more so than a connection to IS. The obvious lesson is, strict immigration control is the best cure and prevention for 21st century terrorism (and not just terrorism, for every deadly terrorist attack you have a thousand incidents of less serious ethnic tension). This doesnt mean you have to build THE WALL and ban all them muslims, but maybe n well regulated immigration policy inspired by those in Eastern Europe or east Asia is appropriate here. The goal is to have a small muslim minority that is well integrated and wealthy, not x million of random arabs coming every year..
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And to get back to the incident that started this whole mess of a thread, there is a growing amount of evidence to show that the Munich shooter was motivated by racist motives. Apparently, he had quite a strong anti-immigrant, pro-aryan streak, and wanted to take revenge on the arabs and turks; chat logs show him as your typical internet alt-right idiot, spewing hate and supporting the AfD.
I now turn over the thread to maslo to explain why this was definitely IS' fault.
It does seem quite absurd to hold up the fact that we've finally had a terror attack that wasn't in the name of IS as evidence of anything.
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the Munich shooter was motivated by racist motives. Apparently, he had quite a strong anti-immigrant, pro-aryan streak, and wanted to take revenge on the arabs and turks; chat logs show him as your typical internet alt-right idiot, spewing hate and supporting the AfD.
link?
I mean last I heard the guy was an ethnic Iranian named Ali...
Pro-"aryan"? :wtf:
At the very least I have a hard time seeing this as the mold from which your typical anti-immigrant AfD supporter is cast.
or was there another shooting I missed? (being serious, there are so many maybe I missed one or am just thinking of the wrong one)
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I mean last I heard the guy was an ethnic Iranian named Ali...
Iranian ethnicity isn't Arabic or Semitic, y'know. The are that Caucasian takes its name from is right next door to Iran, even. In Hitler's perfect world, they would have been a-okay, and one of the fun little farces of history was the Nazi effort to provoke Iran into resisting the British and Russians who wanted to use it as a supply corridor for Lend-Lease to Russia and oil to the British forces in North Africa and India.
If you go back to the source material, there's plenty there for an ethnic Iranian to like.
Oh, sorry, the bars are around 20% smaller... Are you seriously trying to imply that means I am lying?
20% is well beyond any reasonable margin of error. Do you have any kind of science background at all, much less social science? Trends are normally predicted on much smaller differences.
Do you see how quickly the terror ended after the collapse of the Soviet Union?
Yes, but you don't seem to understand why it's important. An organized campaign backed by a nation state. That is what one looks like. That is what one can do. Even given the vast disparity in resources between the USSR and ISIS what is currently going on looks nothing like that.
You aint getting that when the terrorist sympathisers are among us, as a decentralized organization, or even worse, mere lone wolfs created by an abstract idea of extremism which has taken root in the population.
Your goalposts are sliding. This is the first time you've admitted the possibility of a total lack of coordination rather than a decentralized network.
Current terrorism wave will be much more persistent
Why? What about a group of disorganized, unfunded, unconnected attacks makes them likely to beat out a large number of organized groups conducting a coordinated campaign with the backing of one of the two superpowers on the planet for funding, training, technical support, mission planning, intelligence?
Again, the strength of humanity, the most successful of its accomplishments, have always been through our ability to coordinate with each other and plan to accomplish things larger than we ever could alone. 9/11 took the work of at 19 people at the point of fire and required the active participation in funding, transport, planning, and other ways of at least three dozen more, plus the existence of a network that could have even contemplated going to that scale in the first place, which took the efforts of hundreds if not thousands.
The 1970s and 1980s took the work of an entire specialized department of handlers in the KGB, millions of dollars equivalent, weapons and equipment by the literal ton, the work of the entire Soviet intelligence service for operational planning, the complicity and support of Iran, East Germany, and Libya in maintaining training facilities and putting people up there, and dozens of other things I could spend hours listing. It was an operation that required the efforts, peripheral or direct, of tens of thousands of people and the investment of well over a million man-hours, and the risk of hundreds of actual terrorist or supporters in Western Europe.
You're proposing that something like a hundred and fifty to two hundred people, if we continue at current rate to this time next year, whose only abundant resource is their willingness to do violence, are able to match that.
You realize how insane that sounds, right?
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Ok, did not know Nazis where down with Persians. I mean they didn't like Slavs so I figured Iranians would be way out.
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20% is well beyond any reasonable margin of error. Do you have any kind of science background at all, much less social science? Trends are normally predicted on much smaller differences.
This is complete BS. The amount of dead fluctuates randomly year by year much more than 20%, so it is mathematically impossible for 20% difference to be significant. The only thing that would be significant here are order of magnitude differences over multiple years, such as witnessed after the fall of the soviet union. Otherwise it is statistical noise. May be enough to speculate about, but not enough to do any science, except for pseudoscience, that is.
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Your goalposts are sliding. This is the first time you've admitted the possibility of a total lack of coordination rather than a decentralized network.
My goalposts are sliding because it is a sliding scale. The more decentralization you have, the harder it is to stop the threat.
Why? What about a group of disorganized, unfunded, unconnected attacks makes them likely to beat out a large number of organized groups conducting a coordinated campaign with the backing of one of the two superpowers on the planet for funding, training, technical support, mission planning, intelligence?
You are implying that islamic extremism has degenerated into decentralization, I am saying it evolved into that. This will make it much harder to eliminate, if its at all possible.
The former is much harder to stop because there is no centralised power structure to target, no relatively military solution, therefore the campaign of terror can continue for a longer period of time. If we have a specific terrorist state conducting attacks against us, the plan is clear - eliminate the terrorist state and the attacks stop (just like happened with Soviet Union and is happening with ISIS). What can you do against a virulent ideology or meme? You can try education, but that might not work for a long time, if at all. How effective was such strategy recently against other virulent problematic memes, like Brexit or Trump? Not very.
Or you can try to limit the % of problematic meme carriers in your society (by controlling their immigration in this case), which is a blunt solution, but guaranteed to be reasonably effective in preventing the increase of the threat. It is already too late for this solution in western Europe to completely prevent the threat, you will unfortunately have to get used to this new normal (as French PM said) and attempt to implement the harder solutions on your existing muslim populations. But fortunately its not too late for V4 countries, we can still learn from your mistakes and not repeat them. And in a rare show of competence, it seems that most of our politicians understand that. :)
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You are implying that islamic extremism has degenerated into decentralization, I am saying it evolved into that. This will make it much harder to eliminate, if its at all possible.
No, it's definitely a degeneration. Under al-qaeda, islamic terrorism had a game plan, a unified vision behind it. Now, with IS and all those lone wolfs, there is no unified goal anymore (other than the somewhat nebulous "attack the west!"). 9/11 was a grand gesture, a massive blow to the US on many, many levels. A random guy taking over a church? Some dude blowing himself up at a market somewhere? That's nowhere near the same level of effectiveness. All it does is cause a momentary panic (and its motivating guys like you to draw wrong conclusions); it's a nuisance more than anything. Qaeda wanted to bring down nations. The worst things the current crop of idiots are capable of is encouraging people like you to do what they want.
The former is much harder to stop because there is no centralised power structure to target, no relatively military solution, therefore the campaign of terror can continue for a longer period of time. If we have a specific terrorist state conducting attacks against us, the plan is clear - eliminate the terrorist state and the attacks stop (just like happened with Soviet Union and is happening with ISIS). What can you do against a virulent ideology or meme? You can try education, but that might not work for a long time, if at all. How effective was such strategy recently against other virulent problematic memes, like Brexit or Trump? Not very.
You could start by reframing the problem. Lone wolf terrorism isn't an attack on the state, it's an attack on the people, and as such no longer a military issue but a policing one. Second, treating those perpetrators with the reverence and respect that people like bin Laden got has to stop. They're deluded idiots, barely above football hooligans in terms of their effectiveness, nothing more. We, or rather our media, are doing the heavy lifting for these morons right now, and that's got to stop.
Or you can try to limit the % of problematic meme carriers in your society (by controlling their immigration in this case), which is a blunt solution, but guaranteed to be reasonably effective in preventing the increase of the threat. It is already too late for this solution in western Europe to completely prevent the threat, you will unfortunately have to get used to this new normal (as French PM said) and attempt to implement the harder solutions on your existing muslim populations. But fortunately its not too late for V4 countries, we can still learn from your mistakes and not repeat them. And in a rare show of competence, it seems that most of our politicians understand that. :)
You ... do not understand the issue you yourself brought up. If lone wolf idiots are so hard to stop, why would you think that (in the absence of the ability to read minds and see the future) any one of them can be stopped at the border? Memes are like diseases: All it takes is one carrier to infect others. And they're not like diseases, because the carrier doesn't even have to be a person. It can be an article, a video, a tweet, and we cannot control those things without sacrificing the fundamental liberties our societies are justly proud of.
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No, it's definitely a degeneration. Under al-qaeda, islamic terrorism had a game plan, a unified vision behind it. Now, with IS and all those lone wolfs, there is no unified goal anymore (other than the somewhat nebulous "attack the west!"). 9/11 was a grand gesture, a massive blow to the US on many, many levels. A random guy taking over a church? Some dude blowing himself up at a market somewhere? That's nowhere near the same level of effectiveness. All it does is cause a momentary panic (and its motivating guys like you to draw wrong conclusions); it's a nuisance more than anything. Qaeda wanted to bring down nations. The worst things the current crop of idiots are capable of is encouraging people like you to do what they want.
It does not matter what al-Quaeda wanted, what matters is what they were capable of accomplishing. Al-Quaeda was never capable of bringing down any western nation with their attacks. All they were capable of is momentarily killing people at a higher rate than lone wolfs, but in the process exposing themselves and thus ensuring their own timely elimination or at least containment. With IS the situation is the same, and will be the same for any future islamist organization that is spawned by worldwide islamist underground and follows their footsteps. This is the area where often recommended intelligence counter actually works. What it does not work against is the lone wolfs or very small decentralized networks.
You could start by reframing the problem. Lone wolf terrorism isn't an attack on the state, it's an attack on the people, and as such no longer a military issue but a policing one.
That does not actually solve anything. Police are already trying to stop the attacks, some still slip by.
Second, treating those perpetrators with the reverence and respect that people like bin Laden got has to stop. They're deluded idiots, barely above football hooligans in terms of their effectiveness, nothing more. We, or rather our media, are doing the heavy lifting for these morons right now, and that's got to stop.
You are right that media can make spreading of harmful memes easier, but that cannot actually be practically prevented, especially in the modern information age. What do you propose, media censorship? Internet censorship? I dont see how you could accomplish something like that without significant authoritarian anti-free-speech measures. This is not desirable or realistic at all, and thus a non-solution.
If lone wolf idiots are so hard to stop, why would you think that (in the absence of the ability to read minds and see the future) any one of them can be stopped at the border?
Perhaps I have not made myself very clear. I am not proposing we limit only immigration of islamic extremists, that wont be possible since as you say we cannot read minds or see the future. We limit the immigration from all populations where the prevalence of these extremists is high (or which spawn these extremists at an increased rate). I am not even talking about an absolute limit here, merely strict selection so that resulting muslim minority is integrated, wealthy, educated and so on. This way their tendency to commit terrorist attacks would be balanced by these factors which are negatively correlated with terrorism.
Memes are like diseases: All it takes is one carrier to infect others. And they're not like diseases, because the carrier doesn't even have to be a person. It can be an article, a video, a tweet, and we cannot control those things without sacrificing the fundamental liberties our societies are justly proud of.
When it comes to the islamist extremism meme, it is not like a flu that it spreads universally. It pretty much a disease that targets only some specific populations, with others being (almost?) completely resistant. If you limit those the immigration of those problematic populations, you limit the prevalence and spread of islamist extremism in your country, without needing to resort to such drastic measures as restricting freedom of speech (as I said above, that wont be desirable or realistic).
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Lone Wolf attacks would severely diminish if not outright stop .... if only moderate muslims and especially moderate muslim leadership, i.e. Imams at the very least, would publically take a stand and condemn these things on a large scale, publically denying those people paradise with religious authority and clearly defining what is "islamic behavior" and what is not in a civilized way.
Instead we get some vague noise and if Imams make the news at all then it's more often than not with another ultra conservative outrage if not outright radical extremism... or merely idiotic nonsense.
Best example: Let the Saudi Grand Mufti (the prime religious authority in Saudi Arabia - you know that reliable "partner" country we sell all those weapons to!) explain to you what ISIS *really* is all about: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/205570
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You are implying that islamic extremism has degenerated into decentralization, I am saying it evolved into that.
It doesn't matter.
Get this through your head. It doesn't matter. How they got here hasn't got an ounce of relevance.
What does have relevance is the ability of their current structure to support operational goals. Which has gone from "relatively high" to the absolute nadir of "completely unable".
Two hundred guys, operating alone in rough parallel, no matter how brilliant or well-equipped, will lose in a direct confrontation with a hundred thousand other humans who are coordinating. It might as well be a physical law. We are stronger together than they can ever be apart. Your only argument, that it makes them harder to find, has no bearing on their physical ability to accomplish some kind of political pressure or policy change in Europe through violent direct action. Anyone can be hard to find. All it requires is to do nothing suspicious.
Lone wolves, by their nature as violent and possibly disturbed individuals who will profess their beliefs in public, beat their significant others, be socially withdrawn, and all the other risk signs of the angry loner, actually tend to be much more visible to law enforcement agencies than trained operatives from a major network, who will go out of their way to present a picture of relative normalcy. The trick is in separating the ones who need a spark from the ones who don't, since even among that demographic they're relatively rare. Have you learned nothing from the fact the majority of lone wolves have a prior criminal record?
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What does have relevance is the ability of their current structure to support operational goals. Which has gone from "relatively high" to the absolute nadir of "completely unable".
No such thing happened. Islamic terrorism is as deadly as ever, and as effective as ever, if not more so. And it is composed of everything ranging from actual terrorist state, through well organized terrorist networks, to random muslim extremists and lone wolfs.
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Lone Wolf attacks would severely diminish if not outright stop .... if only moderate muslims and especially moderate muslim leadership, i.e. Imams at the very least, would publically take a stand and condemn these things on a large scale, publically denying those people paradise with religious authority and clearly defining what is "islamic behavior" and what is not in a civilized way.
And here's the core of the problem, the hardest nut to crack. Islam as a whole is very fractured and basically not centralized with many factions , some of them opposing each other (victims of Islamic terror are mostly.... Shia Muslims. Usually when something blows up in Iraq... Shias are killed) so there is no common doctrine. In the Catholic Church for example there are clear definitions and pointed goals. Things which the Church stands for. Anything less is outside. Making Islam more like Catholic Church <as an institution> should be a huge step forward. And I certainly wouldn't mind those changes to be triggered here in Europe. Though it's a naive dreaming, at least for now.
And mind that some things which we call "civilized way" may not be viewed as such by some Muslims. Look here. Your sister goes to the club to have fun, doesn't ask for your permission, does what she wants. You're okay with that. Now the same thing happens in some place in the ME. In most extreme case it could end up with an "honor killing" (Qandeel Baloch, recent case).. Our moralities can be measured by different standards. That's why we have a*****es in the heart of Europe who complain about women that their clothes are not long enough. You say that putting a murderer in a prison will be fine, some Saudi will say that chopping his head off with a sword will be fine.
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Have you learned nothing from the fact the majority of lone wolves have a prior criminal record?
Has he learned nothing from the fact that several of these so-called lone wolf attacks came from people not only known to the security forces but in one case supposedly under house arrest as a threat?
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Best example: Let the Saudi Grand Mufti (the prime religious authority in Saudi Arabia - you know that reliable "partner" country we sell all those weapons to!) explain to you what ISIS *really* is all about: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/205570
That should really come as no surprise, given that Saudi Arabia is both the breeding ground for and a major financial contributor to Wahhabism, the very ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam that spawns many of these terrorist groups.
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Lone Wolf attacks would severely diminish if not outright stop .... if only moderate muslims and especially moderate muslim leadership, i.e. Imams at the very least, would publically take a stand and condemn these things on a large scale, publically denying those people paradise with religious authority and clearly defining what is "islamic behavior" and what is not in a civilized way.
And here's the core of the problem, the hardest nut to crack. Islam as a whole is very fractured and basically not centralized with many factions , some of them opposing each other (victims of Islamic terror are mostly.... Shia Muslims. Usually when something blows up in Iraq... Shias are killed) so there is no common doctrine. In the Catholic Church for example there are clear definitions and pointed goals. Things which the Church stands for. Anything less is outside. Making Islam more like Catholic Church <as an institution> should be a huge step forward. And I certainly wouldn't mind those changes to be triggered here in Europe. Though it's a naive dreaming, at least for now.
Thing is, Christianity is also quite fractured and not centralized with a few opposing factions as well ( the Catholic Church is itself a splinter faction and has it's own splinter factions) and Christianity as we know it very much started centralized under Constantine when it was relatively young.
Putting Islam under one big central authority is unlikely to work: First of all, you need one big central authority, and nothing akin to the Roman Empire exists nor is anything like it likely to rise again. Secondly, Constantine had the advantage of being able to utilize christianity when it was still relatively fresh. Islam has already been solidified in it's many forms. The two religions have a very different history, and the way they are now is the result of that history. One can not assume that attempting to do the same to Islam now as constantine did to Christianity 1700 years ago would create a similar result. Or indeed create any result except murder and children crying.
Lastly, I think many a person would argue that a lot of issues have been caused by making the roman church an integral part of the roman empire. One only needs to look at the political meddling of the papal state, the crusades, or lovely events such as the thirty years war to see that attempting to see that institutionalized religion isn't always all that cracked up to be.
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Centralizing Islam is impossible, due to theological foundations.
Catholicism is not a "splinter faction", what kind of historical rubbish is that? There were basically two old churches, the catholics and the ortodoxes (who shared communion till the 11th century), and then much later on Lutherism came along and split from catholicism, kickstarting a cambrian explosion of different denominations.
Lastly, what the **** is this about the crusades as if they are this really "bad thing"? I could never understand this utter lack of proportion and perspective. You realize that the "Crusades" were a real timid reaction to the overly aggressiveness of islam imperialism invading europe as if it's made of butter, right? Right?
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Lastly, I think many a person would argue that a lot of issues have been caused by making the roman church an integral part of the roman empire. One only needs to look at the political meddling of the papal state, the crusades, or lovely events such as the thirty years war to see that attempting to see that institutionalized religion isn't always all that cracked up to be.
These have absolutely nothing to do with the Roman church being an integral part of the Roman empire. The crusades happened way after the Roman empire fell and the crusades came purely out of religion and lords of many different nations looking for war rather than any church-state meddling.
There were basically two old churches, the catholics and the ortodoxes (who shared communion till the 11th century), and then much later on Lutherism came along and split from catholicism, kickstarting a cambrian explosion of different denominations.
What kind of historical rubbish is that? In its early days Christianity was very divided due to differences in beliefs about the nature of Christ, you had at least 4 different interpretations as early as Constantine. Otherwise the council of Nicaea would've never happened. There were huge schisms way before the catholic and orthodox split.
Lastly, what the **** is this about the crusades as if they are this really "bad thing"?
Maybe the fact that they killed way more civilians than they did soldiers? Or the fact that most of those civilians were actually Europeans? They sacked way more European cities than they retook holylands.
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It's true, the Crusades were wars.
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Centralizing Islam is impossible, due to theological foundations.
Catholicism is not a "splinter faction", what kind of historical rubbish is that? There were basically two old churches, the catholics and the ortodoxes (who shared communion till the 11th century), a
There was only one old church, subdivided into five parts: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. These five seats of the pentarchy all were seated by patriarchs (the bishops of those five cities), who answered to the Emperor. It's the Roman bishop who later decided during the East-West schism that he in fact was the ruler of not only the entire church, but that his power was higher then that of any king or emperor. There were already great differences between the Church of Rome and the other four, but the bishop of Rome deciding that he should be the pope is what triggered the schism. As such it's the latin church who broke away from their parent group, making them a splinter faction by definition.
Lastly, I think many a person would argue that a lot of issues have been caused by making the roman church an integral part of the roman empire. One only needs to look at the political meddling of the papal state, the crusades, or lovely events such as the thirty years war to see that attempting to see that institutionalized religion isn't always all that cracked up to be.
These have absolutely nothing to do with the Roman church being an integral part of the Roman empire. The crusades happened way after the Roman empire fell and the crusades came purely out of religion and lords of many different nations looking for war rather than any church-state meddling.
Arguably, no, but it's doubtfull that the Catholic Church would have been as powerfull as they had been or spread as far as they had been if they had not been an integral part of the Roman empire beforehand. The amount of organization that carries the church is enormous and a legacy of it's origins. Had Constantine not done what he did, it's doubtfull that the Catholic Church would have even existed and it's very doubtfull that people would have listened to the pope when he made the call for those crusades, for instance. There is a lot of political backbone that would not have been there otherwise.
You realize that the "Crusades" were a real timid reaction to the overly aggressiveness of islam imperialism invading europe as if it's made of butter, right? Right?
You sure you are not talking about the Reconquista here? The crusades were called 500 years after the overly agressive waves of islam imperialism had ended. The First Crusade was called after the Eastern Roman Empire had called for aid, but the first Crusade also focused on Jerusalem, a city which had not been christian for hundreds of years, and the lands captured were captured for christians, not restored to the ERE.
Europe was not being invaded like it was butter: The reconquista was slowly gaining territory, whilst the turks never managed to actually seize constantinople (At which point they would be inside europe). As such, Islam was actually receding from Europe by the time the crusades were called.
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What kind of historical rubbish is that? In its early days Christianity was very divided due to differences in beliefs about the nature of Christ, you had at least 4 different interpretations as early as Constantine. Otherwise the council of Nicaea would've never happened. There were huge schisms way before the catholic and orthodox split.
Fiiiine.
Maybe the fact that they killed way more civilians than they did soldiers? Or the fact that most of those civilians were actually Europeans? They sacked way more European cities than they retook holylands.
Rethorical shenanigans. Yes, wars were not morally up to 21st century standards those days. So the **** what? Can you seriously compare the crusades to what it was generally a response to, the islamic empire expansion? No, you bloody can't. Unless you're not being serious.
Now, do the crusades hold up to the supposed moral high ground from which they spawned? No. That's a ridiculous position to hold as well. But to state that this was this most horrible terrible thing ever is silly. It's historically relevant but not really numerically relevant.
To have some inkling of a perspective: at around 1230-1260 the Khans killed approximately 50 million people in all of their wars. Entire cities were completely obliterated and their people as well. Now that is something you might feel ashamed for. But the crusades? Those ridiculous incursions from a couple hundred of cavalry units? Jesus Christ. Yeah, ****ty things happened. As they happened in every war at the time.
There was only one old church, subdivided into five parts: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. These five seats of the pentarchy all were seated by patriarchs (the bishops of those five cities), who answered to the Emperor. It's the Roman bishop who later decided during the East-West schism that he in fact was the ruler of not only the entire church, but that his power was higher then that of any king or emperor. There were already great differences between the Church of Rome and the other four, but the bishop of Rome deciding that he should be the pope is what triggered the schism. As such it's the latin church who broke away from their parent group, making them a splinter faction by definition.
Curious reading of history, but fine I get your point. It's silly though. By that definition, almost everything is a schism and a splinter faction "by definition".
You sure you are not talking about the Reconquista here? The crusades were called 500 years after the overly agressive waves of islam imperialism had ended. The First Crusade was called after the Eastern Roman Empire had called for aid, but the first Crusade also focused on Jerusalem, a city which had not been christian for hundreds of years, and the lands captured were captured for christians, not restored to the ERE.
I'm comparing the "evilness" of the two, given how those are the two actors at play here. It's easy to say that X is evil. By some criteria, everything that happened 600 years ago was horrible. It's a ridiculous acusation. So I'm comparing it to things that actually make sense.
Europe was not being invaded like it was butter: The reconquista was slowly gaining territory, whilst the turks never managed to actually seize constantinople (At which point they would be inside europe). As such, Islam was actually receding from Europe by the time the crusades were called.
Europe was invaded like it was butter. And europeans couldn't do much about it other than retrieve some lands some hundreds of years later. Like Portugal. But they couldn't take "the holy land" for a long time, until they tried to do so with the crusades. Now, we can agree that being "obsessed" with holy lands is a problem that is still today destroying the middle east, but it's not atypical. It's not as if the catholic church was this singular entity that made this horror possible or whatever. No, they were incapable of achieving almost all of their objectives anyway, it wasn't that big a deal as far as wars go.
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Curious reading of history, but fine I get your point. It's silly though. By that definition, almost everything is a schism and a splinter faction "by definition".
The Great Schism is the name for that historical event and that historical event alone. It's unique in history! It's a clear case of one party rebelling against both established tradition and other people who are of the same rank as his! It is as straight a definition as a definition can be.
You sure you are not talking about the Reconquista here? The crusades were called 500 years after the overly agressive waves of islam imperialism had ended. The First Crusade was called after the Eastern Roman Empire had called for aid, but the first Crusade also focused on Jerusalem, a city which had not been christian for hundreds of years, and the lands captured were captured for christians, not restored to the ERE.
I'm comparing the "evilness" of the two, given how those are the two actors at play here. It's easy to say that X is evil. By some criteria, everything that happened 600 years ago was horrible. It's a ridiculous acusation. So I'm comparing it to things that actually make sense.
But that never was the point. The point was not to say that the crusades are inherently more evil then islamic expansion or whatnot.
The point was that Col. Hornet made the argument that if Islam could be institutionalized it would be a huge step forward. My argument is that Christianity being institutionalized did not prevent various things happening, such as the crusades or the inquisition or the thirty years war. Islam has seen their own jihad and religious presecution and violent wars between different aspects of faith. The level of instutionalization doesn't really matter here, arguably all the difference is that Italian history has been made a lot more interesting (Borgias!).
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Curious reading of history, but fine I get your point. It's silly though. By that definition, almost everything is a schism and a splinter faction "by definition".
The Great Schism is the name for that historical event and that historical event alone. It's unique in history! It's a clear case of one party rebelling against both established tradition and other people who are of the same rank as his! It is as straight a definition as a definition can be.
aaaahhhhh you're mixing names now. Check it out.
But that never was the point. The point was not to say that the crusades are inherently more evil then islamic expansion or whatnot.
The point was that Col. Hornet made the argument that if Islam could be institutionalized it would be a huge step forward. My argument is that Christianity being institutionalized did not prevent various things happening, such as the crusades or the inquisition or the thirty years war. Islam has seen their own jihad and religious presecution and violent wars between different aspects of faith. The level of instutionalization doesn't really matter here, arguably all the difference is that Italian history has been made a lot more interesting (Borgias!).
Col Hornet's point is a very widespread point, namely that if you could get one head to manage all this stuff, you could put pressure into this person and make him say the politically correct things and clamp down on every muslim out there, which is something the pope is known to do. If you think this wouldn't be positive because "crusades" and "inquisition", etc., I think you're wrong. Catholicism prevented what otherwise would be a continuous fraticide between christian cells and denominations, something we saw all so clearly in protestant denominations.
However, my point is that this is a fantasy not worth having. For it is completely forbidden in islam to have a "pope" of any kind. At most, you have a Caliph. But in order to have that, you must have a Caliphate. And this is a political enterprise. And no islam country is really with any desire to be under a "Caliph"'s orders nowadays. Nor do they want to call themselves a Caliphate and be hated by all islamic governments that border them. The "Pope" thing was actually quite clever. It allowed the Vatican to hold some secular power but at the same time being able to defer most power to Kings, who in turn got their "Divine Right" as further establishment of their authority.
In essence, the Pope in Vatican was a substitute for the Emperor in Rome, but one who couldn't really muster an army or a policy of his own. But he could unify all christians into some kind of force and somewhat prevent european intra wars. He thus became a "spiritual leader" of the western world, something that the muslims totally lack today. Unless you want to say that the ISIS self proclaimed Caliph is in any way an authority in the wider muslim world.
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Curious reading of history, but fine I get your point. It's silly though. By that definition, almost everything is a schism and a splinter faction "by definition".
The Great Schism is the name for that historical event and that historical event alone. It's unique in history! It's a clear case of one party rebelling against both established tradition and other people who are of the same rank as his! It is as straight a definition as a definition can be.
aaaahhhhh you're mixing names now. Check it out.
I am? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East%E2%80%93West_Schism)
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It was undeniably a schism, but to call the Roman Catholic church the 'splinter group' is quite partisan.
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In essence, the Pope in Vatican was a substitute for the Emperor in Rome, but one who couldn't really muster an army or a policy of his own. But he could unify all christians into some kind of force and somewhat prevent european intra wars. He thus became a "spiritual leader" of the western world, something that the muslims totally lack today. Unless you want to say that the ISIS self proclaimed Caliph is in any way an authority in the wider muslim world.
Just as a side note .... part of ISIS appeal/success is that this is exactly what the Caliph is saying about himself.
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It was undeniably a schism, but to call the Roman Catholic church the 'splinter group' is quite partisan.
You may even say it's a very orthodox view on things :p. It's just that I put a lot of weight on the papal supremacy doctrine here as a reason for the split.
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Curious reading of history, but fine I get your point. It's silly though. By that definition, almost everything is a schism and a splinter faction "by definition".
The Great Schism is the name for that historical event and that historical event alone. It's unique in history! It's a clear case of one party rebelling against both established tradition and other people who are of the same rank as his! It is as straight a definition as a definition can be.
aaaahhhhh you're mixing names now. Check it out.
I am? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East%E2%80%93West_Schism)
My bad I thought you were referring to pre-Nicea schisms.
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It was undeniably a schism, but to call the Roman Catholic church the 'splinter group' is quite partisan.
I've noticed this to be mostly an american thing, I've seen american protestants even stating that catholics aren't christians, really what is it with religious fanaticism in one of the first illuministic countries in the world?
I mean, I've never met a catholic priest that would never say anything like that about protestants here in Italy, can't vouch for american catholics though, americans seem to have fundamentalism in their blood.
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Alrighty, Mika is back in the town after a vacation and a conference. A conference in Germany that is.
Very interestingly, I noted that Germany has now deployed Bundeswehr to assist with the refugees so so much for that being an unrealistic and ridiculous proposal.
The Ansbach incident happened some 80 km away from the conference venue, though I didn't feel particularly stressed about it. Knew it could happen when I left Finland. The security was the tightest in Frankfurt airport I have seen in Germany, with clear visible police presence everywhere. Hopefully that Formula 1 cup goes without a hitch.
Then a couple of general notes: younger Middle Eastern taxi drivers did not want to disclose their origins. It's quite interesting, as the older ones did. I haven't seen that before in Germany, most of the foreign origin taxi drivers said their country of origin without hicups. And yes I do speak German, but not well enough to impersonate a German national.
There seems to have been a razzia to mosque in Germany, just forgot which city it was. It's about time they started to do something like that. I mean, raids to mosque yielded only automatic weapons and hand grenades in France and Sweden. At least it is now possible to rule out or determine the role of the mosques as a hub of extremism. What is still missing are disguised informants and agents, they will still be needed.
Apparently, Merkel has finally taken it seriously that the refugee crisis really is not black and white she made it out to be. She got Germany into a mess, and now starts to take active steps to pull it out of it. Whether that is enough to get her re-elected remains to be seen. She'll likely not apologize Hungary, but the way Germany handles this is probably going to rise some Told you so's from Hungarians.
Finally, I think the big discord between the participants in this discussion is coming from that Eastern Europeans see the refugee waves as the equal of the immigration waves that brought down Rome (and a couple of other civilizations), while Central Europeans see the extremism as policing problem and compare that to home bred terrorism as was the case with IRA.
Also, tonight at eleven (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bbIBs0P2t0)
(Those who did not get the reference, this is related to the EU decision of whether to bail out the Italian bank or not. Decision is scheduled to be broadcast 23.00 Finnish time, Friday. On the advent of Central and Southern European summer vacations. Hmmmm)
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I am? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East%E2%80%93West_Schism)
The term "Great Schism" is also commonly used to refer to the messy multiple-popes business (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Schism) in the 14th and 15th centuries. That's pretty much exclusively how I heard the term used during my Catholic schooling years. Amusingly enough, I'd also never heard of the Pentarchy until you brought it up, and as you noted upon further research it seems to be very much an Eastern-pushed concept, which I suppose would explain why we didn't look at things that way. :p
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You realize that the "Crusades" were a real timid reaction to the overly aggressiveness of islam imperialism invading europe as if it's made of butter, right? Right?
You have that kind of backwards, considering that in the area the Crusades were actually directed, Muslims did not invade Europe until after the last of the Crusades managed to wreck the remainder of the Byzantine Empire so badly that the Muslims got in. They were really a series of elaborate favors to the Patriarch of Constantinople from the Pope, which then misfired horribly because the Crusaders decided to ignore the Byzantine Empire as the local power that could have helped them hold what they took.
The situation in Spain and Portugal was something that does not appear to have factored into the process that lead to the Crusades.
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The crusades did help in the reconquista of Portugal, at the very least.
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You realize that the "Crusades" were a real timid reaction to the overly aggressiveness of islam imperialism invading europe as if it's made of butter, right? Right?
You have that kind of backwards, considering that in the area the Crusades were actually directed, Muslims did not invade Europe until after the last of the Crusades managed to wreck the remainder of the Byzantine Empire so badly that the Muslims got in. They were really a series of elaborate favors to the Patriarch of Constantinople from the Pope, which then misfired horribly because the Crusaders decided to ignore the Byzantine Empire as the local power that could have helped them hold what they took.
The situation in Spain and Portugal was something that does not appear to have factored into the process that lead to the Crusades.
Sicily, a stone's throw from Rome, was under the control of Muslim conquerors until a mere twenty-some years before the First Crusade was called. Europe had been attacked plenty of times, they simply never gained a mainland foothold outside Spain and their attempts at pushing into France were defeated by Martel.