Attack at Parliament

But, they didn’t really. I mean, considerably less so than when the IRA lobbed a mortar into 10 Downing Street, or bombed the Tory party conference, or blew up the Queen’s cousin.This attack was far, far less threatening to the politicians. It’s horrific, but the casualties were mainly bystanders and the direct attack had zero chance of killing a politician.

Oh, sure, I mean not here, just in general. That’s why assassination is generally seen as being off the table for most civilized nations as once you start killing leaders expeditiously in lieu of full scale war it’s pretty much turtles all the way down from there.

As a friend of mine posted on Facebook, and as I am responding to all my breathless relatives, “My family and I are fine here in London; we were not affected by the attack at Parliament. Meanwhile 56 people were shot across the USA
yesterday in non-“terrorist” gun violence”.

I’m actually pretty angry at the media for all the terrorist sensationalism. A day from now we’ll find out he’s an nutjob with a few screws loose who lost his job and is blaming the MP’s… but what will stick is more continued Islamic paranoia.

Well CT police arrested 8 people, and the attacker is British born and known to the police and intelligence services so its starting to look obvious where this may go.

Yawn, I read the stupid intelligence and terrorism report, about how this was masterminded by strategic thinkers within IS…blah bull crap

Here is the real story…

A person with a probable mental illness who thinks IS is cool drives down a bunch of people and goes amuck with knives, is shot dead.

How much fucking planning does this need world…

Probably died more people on the roads than this attack did in the time it took me to write this…

We’re living in a parody…

Fake News CNN has the perp’s name

SOUNDS BROWN!
fuck discourse

Show me a mentally ill atheist committing car/knife attacks and I might believe your defense. Until then I’ll recognise the method as one popularised by Hamas and ISIS and undertaken for political means.

It wasn’t car/knife, but doesn’t Sandy Hook fit this description, except with a gun as a weapon instead? From what I’ve heard, it’s much harder to get a gun in the U.K.

One might argue that susceptibility to religion’s toxic influence is itself a sign of mental illness. . .

But that would probably get one branded a militant, hateful atheist. Which I’d never want to be thought of . . . :)

Clearly the ideology of extremist Islamist groups plays a role in these sorts of attacks. But just as clearly, these attacks are only as disruptive to society at large as society at large lets them be. Every frantic, panicked, breathless demonstration of existential angst when something like this happens simply feeds the people who perpetrate or inspire this sort of thing.

Die, heathen! ¯¯̿̿¯̿̿’̿̿̿̿̿̿̿’̿̿’̿̿̿̿̿’̿̿̿)͇̿̿)̿̿̿̿ '̿̿̿̿̿̿\̵͇̿̿=(•̪̀●́)=o/̵͇̿̿/'̿̿ ̿ ̿̿

(please note: the above is a joke, and I love Armando and respect his belief system)

Yeah, there must be a happy medium between remembering 9/11 and being aware that ISIS would like to get a nuke and doing what needs to be done on diplomatic/military/law-enforcement levels to address such threats, versus completely losing our shit every time someone kills someone else in Allah’s name.

9/11 is a real watershed in that, at least in the U.S. and probably through the West, terrorism stopped being an uncomfortable problem that one can live with and became a full-on existential threat. Even Oklahoma City didn’t accomplish that.

McVeigh was a born and bred American white christian, and only durn furner mooslambs are the real terrerists.

He is a terrible example to use. He also stated science was his religion, that he was agnostic, never really believed in his religious upbringing, and still had a priest do last rites. I think it is safe to put him in the just plain crazy category unless you really want to argue all of the points of his ever shifting religious beliefs.

But he didn’t do what he did in the name of any religion.

An atheist example was explicitly asked for…

And you shouldn’t blame Hezbollah for Timothy McVeigh just because they pioneered the method of attack he used.

Masood was born Adrian Elms. Convert. His victims were a British-Spanish local and an American tourist.

Great, that’s going to ensure that the response to this is calm and measured.

Oh. I didn’t realize CraigM’s complete lack of reference to atheism in his post was in response to a request for an atheist example from half a dozen posts earlier.

My bad.

Also, if you noticed, McVeigh wad all over the map with his professed beliefs. He is s poor example to reference when trying to make a point about any religious ideology.