Manchester Arena explosion: 22 killed in 'terror attack by suicide bomber' at concer

[swilow]

^Its not at all clear that's what he means Soso.

 

[Soso78]

Do you see where I said "think"?
It what I think he means.

 

[swilow]

^Yeah cool, I was saying I don't think that.

Glad we sorted that out :D

 

[Escher's Waterfall]

There's no Catholic Church teaching or for that matter any Christian school of thought that justifies suicide in any way. IRA bombings were all pre-placed bombs and not suicide attacks (to my knowledge, this stuff was a bit before my time but I am of Irish heritage so did grow up hearing about this stuff and have a read a little)

John 15:13. I'll use the Revised Catholic Standard Edition:

Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

Seems to justify suicide in certain circumstances, and even could be interpreted to justify suicidal attacks.

A quick search turns up the St. Maximilian Kolbe, who knowingly took the place of a condemned man at Auschwitz. He was canonized in 1982. He's also the patron saint of drug addicts. Huh.

 

[Somerandomdude]

John 15:13. I'll use the Revised Catholic Standard Edition:



Seems to justify suicide in certain circumstances, and even could be interpreted to justify suicidal attacks.

A quick search turns up the St. Maximilian Kolbe, who knowingly took the place of a condemned man at Auschwitz. He was canonized in 1982. He's also the patron saint of drug addicts. Huh.

I'm not familiar with that verse but at first glance it seems to be quite clearly talking about the sacrifice Jesus made. It wouldn't be accurate to call his sacrifice "suicide" even though he did willingly go to certain death. No Christian is expected to emulate his sacrifice and either way, the point I made about no Christian schools of thought condoning or promoting suicide still stands.

 

[Somerandomdude]

As for that Saint you mentioned, again that is really more of a sacrifice than suicide. I know it's the same result in substance but it's different in terms of motivations etc..

Either way you didn't really address any of the other points I made in that very long post

 

[swilow]

Jesus knowingly went to his death (if you believe that) when he could have avoided it. Like suicide bombers, he 'knew' he would awaken in paradise.

 

[Somerandomdude]

Jesus knowingly went to his death (if you believe that) when he could have avoided it. Like suicide bombers, he 'knew' he would awaken in paradise.

He didn't have the option of avoiding it. If was a selfless sacrifice because it was done to save mankind, not to ensure his own path to paradise.

Either way it's not relevant because NO Christian church condones suicide- it's a serious sin. They often can't receive Christian burials.

I won't hold my breath waiting for any of you to address the points I made before.

 

[Escher's Waterfall]

Either way it's not relevant because NO Christian church condones suicide- it's a serious sin. They often can't receive Christian burials.

It's not suicide though - it's sacrificing yourself. There's a difference in Christian theology.

Just like in Islamic theology, a suicide attack isn't considered suicide either.

 

[cduggles]

Now imagine if the Catholic Church at the time had been issuing fatwas and calling for a literal interpretation of some of the unsavoury old testament verses. Telling Catholics to chop the heads off Protestant infidels etc..

That did happen during the Reformation and Counter Reformation, which ended in the 30 Years' War. It's also a much more fitting parallel to the current situation regarding Islamist (as opposed to Islamic) terrorism than Northern Ireland and England.

Authority to kill Protestants during the Reformation was issued by the Vatican up to the Pope (this covers a long time period so let's go with definitely church-sanctioned killing and oppression). Protestant efforts were somewhat more scattered as they were not subject to a single religious or secular authority, but they gutted it out as well.

While the conflict in Northern Ireland and England is interestingly regarded as having roots in the Reformation, as you pointed out it was not so much religious as it is ethno-nationalist conflict.

The parallels of the Reformation are more relevant to the current Islamist intrareligious conflict (unless you think the Sunni and Shia get along) and the use of terrorist tactics sanctioned by some religious and explicitly or implicitly by various state authorities.

If you're wondering "what about non-Christians during the Reformation"?, first of all, good for you!, and don't worry. Plenty of non-Christians (e.g., see "the Jews") were oppressed and killed by Catholics and Protestants before, during, and after the Reformation.

The Catholics and Protestants harbored deep hatred for the Jews for different and interesting but still horrible reasons. See the Catholic Papal Bull Cum nimis absurdum from 1555 and Protestant Martin Luther's later writings such as the rather obviously titled "On Jews and their Lies" and his vividly detailed call for a pogram. (Luther recanted these beliefs in his last sermon, for what it's worth).

(I'm just going to ignore a lot of stuff here... let me know if you want a reply to it.)

The point here being that an enemy who is quite happy to kill himself in the course of his attacks on you is far, far more dangerous than the one who values his own life too much.

Only as a largely psychological strategy with casualties in relatively small numbers, with the exception of a highly coordinated and strategic attack like 9/11. I'm not in any way admirably commenting on it. It was a suicide attack with large numbers of casualties.

Arguably a large, well-armed force with troops that are willing to die is also very dangerous. Add the power to kill remotely with weapons that can be launched from an aircraft carrier or a submarine quickly or stealthily with drones and you have a formidable enemy.

Anyway, as of mid-2015 ~ three-quarters of all suicide attacks occurred in three countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq.
Ninety percent of suicide bomber attacks occurred in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.
Stay away from these places.

ISIS members goal is a worldwide caliphate, BUT dying in the course of achieving this and going to paradise is a perfectly acceptable/desirable. In fact you could argue its more important.

You could. But this isn't, no matter how much you want it to be, the philosophy of Islamic teachings accepted by the vast majority of Muslims.
And you write as if for time immemorial all Muslims have strapped bombs onto each other to kill everyone except them. They haven't.

And also by your reasoning, it is a central tenet, as opposed to a twisting of Islamic beliefs, to commit suicide and murder infidels, in which case there would be a consistent number of bombers everywhere there are Muslims and accessible infidels. This is simply not true.

Suicide bombers were unheard of in Iraq until the US invaded. Afghanistan followed a similar pattern.

I leave you with this sobering analysis: "foreign military occupation accounts for 98.5%, and the deployment of American combat forces for 92%, of all the 1,833 suicide terrorist attacks around the world" between 2004 and 2009."
Pape (2010), Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It

To everyone: "Let's kill them all" is a so-so chant, but a stupid idea. Let's look at the current American President's policy to see why.
In his infinitesimal wisdom, Trump has let loose control of the US war machine. Frantically signing executive orders to shift military authority to the Pentagon, using skills he acquired after his harrowing experience avoiding fighting in an actual war, a qualitative shift in target areas and significant increases in US-attributed civilian casualties are occurring in Iraq and Syria.
So?
I would suggest looking at Somalia circa 1993 for a great answer. The US came in with good intentions, accidentally killed almost all of our influential allies in one swoop and despite sending an elite military team to kill Mohamed Farrah Aidid ended up evacuating with 19 killed, 73 wounded and 1 captured and a lot of dead Somali civilians. (Yes, Black Hawk Down).
The lesson was that if you turn the local people against you en masse (Somalis initially embraced American presence), say by indiscriminately killing a lot of innocent civilians, despite superiority in technology and military might, you either end up in a quagmire or accept your losses and leave.

This isn't our first rodeo. The US has played a major role in the current situation in the Middle East and it escalated during the Afghan War (the one where the US-backed mujahideen defeated the Soviet-backed Afghans in a sort of proxy Cold War). Leaders in the Mujahideen network joined something called the Taliban and had ties to someone named Osama bin Laden. We intervened and fought the Taliban... and so on.

So instead of trying to look decisive, gutting humanitarian aid and deciding diplomacy is for losers and dropping some more big bombs in a place from which we won't accept the refugees we are creating, it's time to understand that every time we do this in the Middle East things get worse. We need to partner with (not create) the governments of countries that have some interests that align with ours and some that don't, but do have a stake in ending ISIS and help them, except Russia. And accept that, in large part, we've created something we can't just bomb out of existence.

It's less satisfying and takes longer than bombing a bunch of people and accepting their collateral damage as unimportant, but that approach clearly isn't working.

Or we can build walls and do extreme vetting and deport all the Muslims and just hope they don't hijack some planes flying to the US or shoot down American planes or put anything in a shipping container like a dirty bomb, etc. In other words, we can try to hide geographically while simultaneously being part of the global economy.

Unfortunately it looks like we are choosing the worst of both options.

tl;dr Maybe we'll do better with the next mess we create in the Middle East, or I've vastly underestimated Jared Kushner.

Ask me for any sources.

 

[spacejunk]

Great post.

 

[swilow]

^Seconded, great, reasonable, correct post cduggles

 

[Somerandomdude]

That did happen during the Reformation and Counter Reformation, which ended in the 30 Years' War. It's also a much more fitting parallel to the current situation regarding Islamist (as opposed to Islamic) terrorism than Northern Ireland and England.

Authority to kill Protestants during the Reformation was issued by the Vatican up to the Pope (this covers a long time period so let's go with definitely church-sanctioned killing and oppression). Protestant efforts were somewhat more scattered as they were not subject to a single religious or secular authority, but they gutted it out as well.

While the conflict in Northern Ireland and England is interestingly regarded as having roots in the Reformation, as you pointed out it was not so much religious as it is ethno-nationalist conflict.

The parallels of the Reformation are more relevant to the current Islamist intrareligious conflict (unless you think the Sunni and Shia get along) and the use of terrorist tactics sanctioned by some religious and explicitly or implicitly by various state authorities.

If you're wondering "what about non-Christians during the Reformation"?, first of all, good for you!, and don't worry. Plenty of non-Christians (e.g., see "the Jews") were oppressed and killed by Catholics and Protestants before, during, and after the Reformation.

The Catholics and Protestants harbored deep hatred for the Jews for different and interesting but still horrible reasons. See the Catholic Papal Bull Cum nimis absurdum from 1555 and Protestant Martin Luther's later writings such as the rather obviously titled "On Jews and their Lies" and his vividly detailed call for a pogram. (Luther recanted these beliefs in his last sermon, for what it's worth).

(I'm just going to ignore a lot of stuff here... let me know if you want a reply to it.)



Only as a largely psychological strategy with casualties in relatively small numbers, with the exception of a highly coordinated and strategic attack like 9/11. I'm not in any way admirably commenting on it. It was a suicide attack with large numbers of casualties.

Arguably a large, well-armed force with troops that are willing to die is also very dangerous. Add the power to kill remotely with weapons that can be launched from an aircraft carrier or a submarine quickly or stealthily with drones and you have a formidable enemy.

Anyway, as of mid-2015 ~ three-quarters of all suicide attacks occurred in three countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq.
Ninety percent of suicide bomber attacks occurred in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.
Stay away from these places.



You could. But this isn't, no matter how much you want it to be, the philosophy of Islamic teachings accepted by the vast majority of Muslims.
And you write as if for time immemorial all Muslims have strapped bombs onto each other to kill everyone except them. They haven't.

And also by your reasoning, it is a central tenet, as opposed to a twisting of Islamic beliefs, to commit suicide and murder infidels, in which case there would be a consistent number of bombers everywhere there are Muslims and accessible infidels. This is simply not true.

Suicide bombers were unheard of in Iraq until the US invaded. Afghanistan followed a similar pattern.

I leave you with this sobering analysis: "foreign military occupation accounts for 98.5%, and the deployment of American combat forces for 92%, of all the 1,833 suicide terrorist attacks around the world" between 2004 and 2009."
Pape (2010), Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It

To everyone: "Let's kill them all" is a so-so chant, but a stupid idea. Let's look at the current American President's policy to see why.
In his infinitesimal wisdom, Trump has let loose control of the US war machine. Frantically signing executive orders to shift military authority to the Pentagon, using skills he acquired after his harrowing experience avoiding fighting in an actual war, a qualitative shift in target areas and significant increases in US-attributed civilian casualties are occurring in Iraq and Syria.
So?
I would suggest looking at Somalia circa 1993 for a great answer. The US came in with good intentions, accidentally killed almost all of our influential allies in one swoop and despite sending an elite military team to kill Mohamed Farrah Aidid ended up evacuating with 19 killed, 73 wounded and 1 captured and a lot of dead Somali civilians. (Yes, Black Hawk Down).
The lesson was that if you turn the local people against you en masse (Somalis initially embraced American presence), say by indiscriminately killing a lot of innocent civilians, despite superiority in technology and military might, you either end up in a quagmire or accept your losses and leave.

This isn't our first rodeo. The US has played a major role in the current situation in the Middle East and it escalated during the Afghan War (the one where the US-backed mujahideen defeated the Soviet-backed Afghans in a sort of proxy Cold War). Leaders in the Mujahideen network joined something called the Taliban and had ties to someone named Osama bin Laden. We intervened and fought the Taliban... and so on.

So instead of trying to look decisive, gutting humanitarian aid and deciding diplomacy is for losers and dropping some more big bombs in a place from which we won't accept the refugees we are creating, it's time to understand that every time we do this in the Middle East things get worse. We need to partner with (not create) the governments of countries that have some interests that align with ours and some that don't, but do have a stake in ending ISIS and help them, except Russia. And accept that, in large part, we've created something we can't just bomb out of existence.

It's less satisfying and takes longer than bombing a bunch of people and accepting their collateral damage as unimportant, but that approach clearly isn't working.

Or we can build walls and do extreme vetting and deport all the Muslims and just hope they don't hijack some planes flying to the US or shoot down American planes or put anything in a shipping container like a dirty bomb, etc. In other words, we can try to hide geographically while simultaneously being part of the global economy.

Unfortunately it looks like we are choosing the worst of both options.

tl;dr Maybe we'll do better with the next mess we create in the Middle East, or I've vastly underestimated Jared Kushner.

Ask me for any sources.

I'm on my phone so I'll be brief, thanks for the response

1. Yea you're correct the Catholic church did do that stuff circa 1500s but that's not relevant to my point about them NOT doing that stuff during the time of the IRA. I was trying to say imagine how much bloodier that conflict would have been if they were doing so.

2. It is a central tenet of Islam to murder infidels. This is obvious. It is explicitly commanded a in the quran. How do you think Islam spread from Arabia all through the middle east to North Africa, central Asia, Malaysia, India etc...

They didn't go around handing out leaflets and knocking on doors. It was spread by the sword. Look at the example of Muhammad. What was he? A warlord who killed innocents and abused a small girl. What are Isis doing that he didn't do? Nothing.

3. I'm not saying western foreign policy has done Nothing to inflame the current situation but it's far from the only cause. Look at the problems the Phillipines are having with Isis style militants. Who did they ever invade or colonise ? Sweden got attacked last month. The most neutral country ever.

France was a prominent opponent of the Iraq war. Didn't spare them from losing 300+ ppl to terror in the last 2 years.

Germany was too. They have had a spate of attacks since the "refugee" crisis. Plus the sex attacks

 

[swilow]

France fought recently against Islamists in Mali.

Also, Algeria.

Not justifying the attacks on France, just pointing out that they have 'meddled' in the Islamic world.

 

[Wolfsangel 88]

I'm really starting to see why isis likes working with left wing activists.

Sweden will be the same country when muslims are 51% of the population, yes or no?

I am noticing this question is ignored. The resounding answer is an obvious NO.

Already there are areas of German cities that are majority Moslem migrant / refugee. These areas are particularly dangerous to women and also to gay people. Paris is exactly the same: 'no go' areas for women, who risk verbal harassment and worse, simply for holding their heads high or dressing in a normal western manner.

If we were talking about Euro-colonialism of Moslem countries (see Israel, a country I fully support) then there would be uproar among many of the leftist posters, and yet they are welcoming what ultimately amounts to de facto colonialism by Moslems with no interest in integrating or respecting the culture and customs of their hosts. No wonder western Europa is seen as such a soft target.

 

[CFC]

If anyone hasn't watched Adam Curtis' BBC documentary Bitter Lake yet, I recommend it. It covers the history of a lot of these tropes being thrown up about Islamic terrorism, suicide bombers, Western interference etc:



Btw: this copy of the documentary isn't great, the sound is fucked in the beginning, but you get the idea.

 

[spacejunk]

I'm really starting to see why isis likes working with left wing activists.

Sweden will be the same country when muslims are 51% of the population, yes or no?

I am noticing this question is ignored. The resounding answer is an obvious NO.

Already there are areas of German cities that are majority Moslem migrant / refugee. These areas are particularly dangerous to women and also to gay people. Paris is exactly the same: 'no go' areas for women, who risk verbal harassment and worse, simply for holding their heads high or dressing in a normal western manner.

If we were talking about Euro-colonialism of Moslem countries (see Israel, a country I fully support) then there would be uproar among many of the leftist posters, and yet they are welcoming what ultimately amounts to de facto colonialism by Moslems with no interest in integrating or respecting the culture and customs of their hosts. No wonder western Europa is seen as such a soft target.

I can't speak for anyone else, but the reason i ignored this post is because it opens with what i can only assume is a lie.

Care to back up the claim that isis are "working with left wing activists", ryan?

As for Sweden - yes. It will be "the same country". Same borders. Same history. Countries are just political borders drawn on a map. Just ask the people of Iraq, Kuwait or Turkey.

No need for hysteria.
Perhaps if Swedes were worried about refugees making their country unrecognisable, we'd have some swedish people posting here about it. Enough people there speak English, and we've certainly got Swedish members of bluelight.

Funny how Sweden is always held up as some idealised "white" european country by certain people on the far right, yet i rarely see such paranoid xenophobia from swedes themselves.
I suspect, like a lot of the nonsense you hear about refugees, that the fears people express for Sweden are exaggerations or outright lies.

Either way, the obvious implication that we should deny people their democratic rights - or right to seek asylum or residency - because of their belief system goes against some of the most important values in Western democratic systems - basically freedom of religion, and freedom of association.
When people say that drastically curtailing civil liberties in the wake of terrorist attacks is "letting the terrorists win", this is what they are referring to.

Trump acts like some kind of military strongman for attempting to block muslims from the USA, but from my point of view it looks like extreme cowardice, and extremely counter-productive if preventing terrorism is the intention. I suspect, however, that more islamist terrorist attacks on US soil would play into trump's agenda perfectly.
Call me cynical...

A friend of mine is moving to Sweden in the next week or two, so i will be interested in hearing her thoughts on the issue.

Until then, i'm really looking forward to hearing about these left wing activists who are apparently collaborating with ISIS. How fascinating.

 

[Wolfsangel 88]

The Sweden Democrats are now the second largest party in Sweden, and they are 100% anti-immigration: https://www.thelocal.se/20170601/an...oderates-as-swedens-second-largest-party-poll

 

[Somerandomdude]

France fought recently against Islamists in Mali.

Also, Algeria.

Not justifying the attacks on France, just pointing out that they have 'meddled' in the Islamic world.

True. But has the Philippines? Sweden? Germany ? Belgium?

 

[spacejunk]

The Sweden Democrats are now the second largest party in Sweden, and they are 100% anti-immigration: https://www.thelocal.se/20170601/an...oderates-as-swedens-second-largest-party-poll

what's your point?
People seeking asylum are not the same as migrants. People need to stop conflating these topics.