(February 17, 2017 at 12:24 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote:

(February 17, 2017 at 11:55 am)CapnAwesome Wrote: It's funny how both sides of the politically ally both complain that not enough people are labeled as terrorists. Right wing people started this crap and now the left wing decided that it's also good to label every mass killer as a terrorist. I'm old enough to remember when nobody considered any mass shooter to be a terrorist. Considering that you get special prosecutorial powers and special detaining powers against terrorists, I can see the appeal for those in charge. Why everyday citizens what more people to be labeled as terrorists is beyond me. I think we'd be better off using the label, and the additional powers that go with it in as limited a manner as possible or getting rid of it and the 'war on terror' altogether. Once that was a popular idea, now even good well meaning left wing people want to expand the war on terror.

Its a frightening world.

I think the issue is that the label "terrorist" is slung about in an inequitable manner, with it being far more likely to be hung on Muslim murderers rather than non-Muslims here. It's not that people "want more people to be labeled as terrorists", it's that people want the term to be applied fairly.

This.

Personally I don't think every mass shooting is "terrorism", because for it to be "terrorism" there has to be a political motivation behind it. You can call The KKK and the likes of Dylann Roof terrorists because their violence against blacks is in pursuit of white supremacist ideology, that's not the same as someone shooting up a school because they're just psycho (although it's equally as horrible).

The problem is though, "terror" has become synonymous with Islamic terror. Because of that I think some people honestly do forget there are other motivations for terror, and other people who might commit acts of it. My parents would remember a time when "terrorism" meant IRA members blowing up pubs in our city, it was the same problem then, one kind of terror just dominated the discourse.

(February 19, 2017 at 11:41 am)Regina Wrote: The problem is though, "terror" has become synonymous with Islamic terror. Because of that I think some people honestly do forget there are other motivations for terror, and other people who might commit acts of it.

The vast majority of terror is not commited by Islamists. The vast majority is commited by seperatists and other groups with religious terror (not even singling out Islam) only making up about 4 to 5 percent of all terror attacks, according to Europol and FBI statistics alike. Might have risen slightly in the year 2015/16, but still, it doesn't make up the majority of terror.

No, but it does make up the majority of reported terrorism, at least here in America. By the allegedly left-biased mass media, no less.

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Quote:No, but it does make up the majority of reported terrorism, at least here in America. By the allegedly left-biased mass media, no less.

While this is true, it is also true that terror attacks that occur outside the western world hardly get any coverage even if they are Islamic and even if they take many lives.

On February 19th a suicide bomber killed at least 39 people at a busy market in Mogadishu
On February 16th a suicide bomber killed at least 88 people at a shrine in Pakistan
Also on Feb 16th a car bomb in Baghdad killed 59 people

That's just this past week!


There are acts of Islamic terrorism on a constant basis in Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, India, Pakistan, The Philippines, Somalia, Syria, Nigeria, India, etc... and we hardly ever hear a thing. The ones above were just in the last few days and yet very few people in the west even know about them. 
Mind you, the media did report on all of these, so I think it's incorrect to blame the media because the audience doesn't care. Perhaps the audience needs to look in the mirror.

I'm very leery of stats on the number killed by terrorism. 
For example, this study from the Guardian contradicts the FBI stats and claim that religiious extremism is now the leading cause of terrorism.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablo...-to-report

Do the people killed by ISYS in Iraq count as war fatalities or terrorist fatalities? Are those part of the Guardian study? are they not counted by the FBI? 

Is it proper to count people killed by drug cartels as terrorism when their goal is selling more product and not pushing any political or religious ideology? Surely they are scaring the crap out of people, but isn't that a crime stat and not a terrorism stat?

Who's "we"....all of that showed up in my liberally biased newsfeed....? You must have heard about it too...or...you're getting your news word of mouth, which I doubt.......soo.......?

(February 21, 2017 at 5:21 pm)Crunchy Wrote: While this is true, it is also true that terror attacks that occur outside the western world hardly get any coverage even if they are Islamic and even if they take many lives.

Three guesses as to who the victims are. Maybe muslims?

There you also have the answer why they don't show up on mainstream news coverage. They actually do, by the way, but 80 muslims don't get as much and continued coverage as a single westerner being killed.

(February 21, 2017 at 6:45 pm)Khemikal Wrote: Who's "we"....all of that showed up in my liberally biased newsfeed....?  You must have heard about it too...or...you're getting your news word of mouth, which I doubt.......soo.......?

Sooo...The point I made, which was quite clear, is that it hardly registered in the west... not that it didn't register at all. I mean I even wrote "the media did report on all of these"
How many discussions did the Charlie Hebdo attack generate here vs the three much more deadly attacks I just listed that happened this past week?

Because we usually only care about things that happen to us?

Also Muslim-on-Muslim violence is harder to sell than claiming Muslims are attacking Western culture – then again it has always begged the question that if they're attacking Western culture, then whose culture are they attacking during sectarian violence?

News is a business - if it doesn't sell, it gets deprioritized and ignored. Isn't that what a private interest is supposed do to?

(February 21, 2017 at 7:08 pm)Crunchy Wrote:

(February 21, 2017 at 6:45 pm)Khemikal Wrote: Who's "we"....all of that showed up in my liberally biased newsfeed....?  You must have heard about it too...or...you're getting your news word of mouth, which I doubt.......soo.......?

Sooo...The point I made, which was quite clear, is that it hardly registered in the west... not that it didn't register at all. I mean I even wrote "the media did report on all of these"
How many discussions did the Charlie Hebdo attack generate here vs the three much more deadly attacks I just listed that happened this past week?

And that's sorta my point as well about Western media -- while there may be perfunctory reports about such attacks in Islamabad or Ankara, here in America such attacks get not nearly the coverage that even a simple arrest in New Jersey gets before the attack even goes in, if the suspect is Muslim.

It's almost as if American media places a higher value on American lives because Americans are its audience. Who woulda thunk it?