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A gunman fired upon thousands of people attending a music festival on the Las Vegas Strip Sunday night, in a brutal attack that is blamed for at least 58 deaths, police say. In the mass shooting and panic that ensued, 515 people were injured. At least one of the dead is an off-duty police officer who was attending the concert.
Editorializing: Interesting how media always emphasize ISLAMIC terrorists, but downplay domestic terrorism as psychologically disturbed individual lone-wolfs.
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Over 50 dead in mass shooting in Las Vegas
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I'm mentally OVERDRAWN! What's that SIGNPOST up ahead? Where's ROD
STERLING when you really need him?
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @04:23PM (36 children)
Firstly, Islamic terrorists are obviously psychologically disturbed by virtue of their religiousness, so it doesn't need to be re-stated.
However, there is still a key difference: The Islamic terrorists are explicitly aligning themselves with and fitting themselves into an large-scale, arguably global socio-religio-philosophical-political movement. That is why they are not, by definition, lone wolves.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @04:42PM (22 children)
And some clown who kills more than 50 people by randomly shooting into a crowd from his 32nd floor hotel room isn't "obviously psychologically disturbed"?
This shooter was not an "Islamic terrorist", he was a good old fashioned home-grown American terrorist. And anyone who is acting alone, but aligns themselves with a distant group to make them self feel better (unbeknownst to the distant group), is still a lone wolf. Unrequited allegiance does not a member make.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 02 2017, @04:45PM (1 child)
Hope that helps.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @04:51PM
Not at all. AC's "obviously psychologically disturbed" comment was related to Islamic terrorists and had nothing to do with last night's shooter. My comment was related to last night's American terrorist and had nothing to do with Islam.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @04:56PM (17 children)
I never said the shooter isn't obviously psychologically disturbed. I said that calling someone an "Islamic Terrorist" is also calling that someone "obviously psychologically disturbed"; it's just that one is also relaying even more information about the situation: The terrorist is part of one particular global problem.
Of course it makes a member. This disturbed individual was infected with the mind-virus that has been carefully crafted by a world-wide group that you paint as being "distant"; it's not distant, as evidenced by attackers around the world, who find in their philosophy the mental structures to prepare them for real action.
Conspiracy doesn't require the face-to-face meeting of a cabal; it doesn't even require members to know that they are conspirators, because it just requires a shared culture, often a religious one with which people have been inculcated since birth or which a person finds satisfyingly explanatory and motivational for his psychological disturbances.
Suck a cock, SoylentNews, you garbage.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @05:26PM (12 children)
Based on your logic Stephen Paddock (the shooter) could have been inspired by some random book club and you would label him a member of said book club and his actions a conspiracy with same book club.
Also, your contention that people are "obviously psychologically disturbed by virtue of their religiousness" is invalid due to the prevalence of religion throughout the world. Since the vast majority of people are religious, not believing would fall outside of societal norms and would therefore be considered "obviously psychologically disturbed". (disclaimer: I am an atheist).
In an insane society, the sane man must appear insane
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @06:12PM (9 children)
There's a difference between two things which we'll call being a being a "believer" and being religious. My family is religious. And the reason they're religious, even though they would never admit it, is because they're playing Pascal's Wager [wikipedia.org]. They're getting older and are thinking more seriously about their mortality. They found religion as a means of appeasing their minds and anxieties about going down that final path we all take. I'd like to imagine I won't, but as the saying goes - there's no atheists in fox holes. If people actually believed in their religions they'd be seeking to die at the first opportunity, preferably in the face of oppression. After all, they know that the infinite happiness and pleasure of heaven awaits them, right? And they wouldn't arbitrarily redefine their religious texts to fit their whim of the day.
And this is where Islam stands apart from other mainstream religions. They have a large number of "believers." Many obviously do genuinely believe that if they die they'll wake up in a nonstop orgy with 72 perpetual virgins. And far from moderating their religion, the religion resembles Christianity of a thousand years ago with religious education, overtly religious politics directly converting religious blatherings into enforceable law, and more. I think a big part of the religion's success (from the perspective of a religious inventor) is because it requires people to overtly display the religion and their religiosity. Apostasy was considered the most grievous of sins by most religions, but in Christianity if a person stops believing you can't really tell it so clearly. In Islam it's genuinely expected that people prostrate themselves and pray out loud 5 times a day, women are covered in glorified trash bags (and yes - there are some exceptions, but they are the exceptions), and more. If you stop believing your apostasy is going to be quite visible unless you go out of your way to pretend to keep believing. And when everybody is pretending to believe, and the penalty for apostasy is death, it makes everybody afraid to ever stop pretending. It's likely not dissimilar from the situation with Nazis. The Nazis never had huge support failing to ever once win a majority vote until they cemented their control and banned opposition parties. Nonetheless, those 50% who didn't support them probably were never going to open their mouth when that'd be a good way to end up getting disappeared.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @09:08PM (8 children)
Islam very much resembles Christianity of a thousand years ago. Just about a thousand years ago (give or take a couple hundred) Christianity was going through their crusades cycle.
Modern Islam is about a thousand years younger (give or take several hundred) than Christianity, and here, today, we have Islam going through their own crusades cycle.
The big difference? A thousand years ago there was only so much killing any one individual could do using knives, spears, bows & arrows, etc. So while many were killed, there was a lot more work, and a much more up close and personal aspect to it.
Today, we have Islam going through their crusades, only with modern AK-47 rifles and modern explosives. Much more deadly than any of the weaponry of a thousand years ago.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Bot on Monday October 02 2017, @10:00PM (7 children)
Islam very much resembles Christianity of a thousand years ago
uh, nope.
Self appointed christians may have behaved like orthodox muslims, a thousand years ago and yesterday.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 02 2017, @10:08PM (6 children)
Bullshit. Show me the Christian army running around killing people of other belief systems simply because they have other belief systems. And don't even try claiming that of the US. You know damned good and well we don't give a shit who anyone worships. Our bad decisions are made for entirely secular reasons.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @10:20PM (3 children)
Well, Iraq believed they could stop using the Petro-dollar. Look how that turned out. You see, when your believe system is based on petroleum . . .
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 02 2017, @10:52PM (2 children)
Has nothing to do with religion unless you worship the greenback.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday October 02 2017, @11:01PM (1 child)
Are you implying the leaders of the US, if not most of the world, don't...?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 02 2017, @11:11PM
Yup, I think it's more sexual than religious to them.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @03:53AM (1 child)
Show me the Christian army running around killing people of other belief systems simply because they have other belief systems
The year was 1209.
The commander was Arnaud Amalric, the Abbot of Citeaux, acting on behalf of Pope Innocent III.
When asked by his crusader army whom among the captured to kill, he said, "Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius" often translated as "Kill them all. God will know His own." [google.com]"
Your ignorance of history is showing yet again, whippersnapper.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Mykl on Tuesday October 03 2017, @06:12AM
Before mouthing off at GP, you may want to re-read his posts in this thread. He made the claim that current day Islamists act like the Christian Church of 1,000 years ago, but that the Christian Church of today is different.
Then you stumble into the conversation and bring up an example from 1209, supporting the GP's point succinctly, before telling him he's full of it. Nice job.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @06:22PM (1 child)
Here: [wikipedia.org]
It's worth noting the reasons why people do things.
Terrorism is violence for the furthering of some political purpose; Islamic terrorism is different from, say, a guy who has never been able to get a woman to sleep with him and takes out his revenge on the world. The reason should be pointed out, because it's important.
To paraphrase another AC: Suck a cock, SoylentNews.
(Score: 3, Funny) by bzipitidoo on Monday October 02 2017, @09:57PM
> a guy who has never been able to get a woman to sleep with him and takes out his revenge on the world
When I was attending college and living in a men's dorm on campus, this thought belatedly occurred to me. The first dorm I was in not only was all men, it was the most luxurious, newest men's dorm on campus, and the entire football team lived there. If some crazy, hard up guy thought to reduce the competition for women by offing a bunch of men, there could not have been a more obvious choice than bombing the dorm I was in. The same logic could apply if some ultra rabid fan of an opposing football team wanted to assure victory by eliminating our team. I moved to another dorm the next year.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @05:52PM (3 children)
The invalid form key is an interesting bit, it seems to come and go. I went traveling and using my phone abroad I never ran into the form key problem, but back in the US I get the problem almost constantly on my phone, and often the only solution is to copy my text and re-post very quickly. If I can get the comment submitted within 5 seconds it seems to always succeed.
So, is the issue SN shitty code? Or are ISPs / gov fuckery to blame? The NSA is able to crack ssl sessions, so I wonder if SN traffic is just targeted, or perhaps its just specific users. Given the comments on this site it seems likely a vast majority of users here are on watch lists.
Full blown tinfoil, SN was a spin off honey pot to catch "extremists" and this is part of why there is so much partisan garbage and trolling, see if they can find the users who are likely to flip out. Same thing for Voat. Damn, shoulda saved some foil for my chicken, now its gonna dry out :(
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @09:43PM (2 children)
Full blown tinfoil
Are you using tor? Someone said the invalid form key error is from the changing of IPs that tor does every few minutes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @04:10AM (1 child)
It has been suggested before that if you are using TOR, then go ahead and compose your comment in a text editor and, when you've got that all ready, call up a comment page and cut & paste your "brilliance" into the dialog box.
There, GP. That wasn't so fucking difficult, was it?
...and, GP, just how difficult is it to cut & paste from the rejected tab|window|instance into a fresh copy of the comment page?
Jeez. How whiney can you get?
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @06:00PM
I am not using TOR, but who knows what fuckery my cell provider does.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @06:53PM (1 child)
> This shooter was not an "Islamic terrorist", he was a good old fashioned
> home-grown American terrorist.
But why a "terrorist" ? Tim McVeigh and Ted Kaczynsky were terrorists, they
had manifestos, well documented "causes" they were supporting through their
actions (however insane their reasoning and decision making processes might
have been).
Until we know more, this guy might simply have been a good old-fashioned
nutjob. Terrorism is by definition the attempt to frighten people into
complying with one's "cause". I'd like to eventually find out if (and what)
this guy's "cause" was, before I'm ready to label him a bona fide "terorist".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @04:24AM
What are you? Some kind of commie?
The American Way is to jump off the deep end and start throwing around baseless accusations.
Don't you consume Lamestream Media?
Haven't you noticed what cops do routinely?
...and the shooter was an over-60 real estate guy.
Haven't you noticed what whackos that lot is?
It was just about time for him to snap.
{Picture of Donnie Tiny Hands with his jaw jutted out Mussolini-style goes here}
Oh, and his brother says that the shooter wasn't a gun guy.
...despite his having dozens of firearms in his hotel room.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 02 2017, @06:49PM (8 children)
As of yet, there is no indication that this guy was *any* kind of terrorist. His acts were terrifying for sure, but no one knows what his motives were. Maybe he converted to Islam, maybe he's a white supremacist, maybe he's just nucking phutts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @08:14PM (2 children)
Correct. If I were a beating man I'd bet on Leftist terrorist, but I'm not. Coincidentally I have never felt the need to visit Las Vegas.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Monday October 02 2017, @08:32PM
Only someone on the political right would be beating on a leftist and calling them a terrorist.
As for betting, I don't have any reason to visit Las Vegas. No desire to
beatbet. I grew up there decades ago when it seemed cleaner and nicer. I've seen every sob story there is of people coming there, losing everything, and crying about it. Let's do some more gambling today to make up for what we lost yesterday!Like Joshua says on Wargames: the only way to win is not to play.
What happens in Vegas, stays on YouTube.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @08:33PM
And if I were a burning man, i'd beat that it was a Rightist, but mostly I would want some one to put me out.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday October 02 2017, @09:03PM
Yet!!!
Early days.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @09:12PM (2 children)
His social media looked pretty much like that of the shooter who went to the congressional baseball practice and hit Steve Scalise: all sorts of Bernie stuff, following Rachel Maddow, the "not my president" stuff, etc.
His wife did travel to UAE, so there's that, but she wasn't covered up and she seems to have gone alone. This probably isn't directly Islam, though Islamophilia could play a role.
After the election, losing VP candidate Tim Kaine said to fight in the streets. It's happening. Mao said that power comes from the barrel of a gun, and the commie types are taking it to heart.
It didn't take long after this shooting before numerous liberals (teachers and a news executive even) were expressing hope that it was all Trump supporters who were killed. Note that the target was a country music event, stereotypically the type of thing that might attract Trump supporters. No doubt, this was political. The left is violent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @10:06PM
Look it up. It is all true. Some of the evidence is here: https://i.redd.it/n5le2zvuqgpz.png [i.redd.it]
Tim Kaine really did tweet about fighting in the streets, and his son got arrested for doing just that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @04:41AM
Based on the comment to which you are responding, it appears that you are claiming that a Dumbocrat is a Leftist.
Heh. You're funny.
Oh, you were serious?
In that case, you're just plain ignorant.
Tim Kaine is a Wall Street lackey.
There's absolutely nothing Anti-Capitalist about him.
If you're taking your marching orders from Tim Kaine, you're being led down a Neoliberal pathway: exported jobs; austerity; ridiculous student debt; tax cuts for the rich; etc.
You'd need a -really- thin feeler gauge to find any space between a Neoliberal Dumbocrat and a Reactionary Repug on the Left-Right axis.
Probably on the Authoritarian-Civil Liberties axis as well.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @08:08AM
"As of yet, there is no indication that this guy was *any* kind of terrorist."
You make it sound like he has to be in order for this to be turned into another reason to put everyone else (except maybe 1% of us I guess.) on lockdown for our own good. Give it 3 days tops and you'll see politicians screaming for backdoors in every form of encryption (Again) even as sources say the guy didn't try to contact anyone at any time. Or you'll find them screaming to increase domestic spying so they can catch people like this even as police confirm they already had the guy investigated years ago, etc etc. It'll be the same story as every time before. Just plug in a few different names and locations. And that's the sad part.
(Score: 2) by number11 on Tuesday October 03 2017, @05:44AM (3 children)
And Christian terrorists get free ride?
Not only in the past (Crusades, Inquisition), but nowdays (Srebrenica, Oklahoma
City, Atlanta Olympic bomber, abortion doctor murder, Dynan Roof, the Milwaukee
Sikh Temple assassin, etc.).
If you're going to identify one mass murderer by religion, identify them all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @06:39AM (2 children)
plz post yr vids of Christian terrorist supporters dancing in the streets celebrating Srebrenica, Oklahoma City, Atlanta Olympic bomber, abortion doctor murder, Dynan Roof, the Milwaukee Sikh Temple assassins, etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @08:21AM (1 child)
They do it online becuz they rnt poor brownz
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @08:50AM
plz repost vidz they not show 4 me