Again, seems to be someone who was inspired by IS. How are we to prevent this from occurring regularly in Western countries?
This is why I think letting disillusioned members of IS who want to come back would be effective in preventing this from happening.
Live news from Australia:
If other feeds are correct the somewhat good news is that there are less hostages being reported, about 12.Without meaning to sound completely cynical, Russia, a country that is far more of a security state with vastly less freedom than a Dick Cheney wet dream has had Malory hostage incidents.
So long as you live in a western free country like Australia, there are certain risks.
Why are occasional terrorist hostage crimes a big deal when there are about 15,000 murders a year in the U.S.?
How many of those murders are prompted by international tensions? How many of them are deliberate provocations?
Most of our murders are pretty ordinary. A drug deal gone bad, or one guy insults another guy’s girlfriend, or someone shoots the clerk at a store to rifle the cash register, or somebody goes off their head, etc.
Very few of our murders involve the taking of hostages, or the declaration of support for a foreign state. We take those a little more seriously, as they appear to be organized and warlike in intent.
Yeah, the word “terrorism” is overused – and I am more in “terror” of the local street gang than I am of Isis – but it really is qualitatively different than most domestic murders.
The idea of the word terrorism being overused doesn’t make sense. If people are randomly attacking others in the name of a religious movement I don’t know what else to call it. Repetition doesn’t negate or lesson the word.
Did you read the OP?
This happening in Australia not the US?
Do you only use the word in relation to attacks carrying out in the name of a religious movement?
I’d say it applies to any ideologically-motivated random attack. An anarchist throwing a bomb in a market is a terrorist attack, as is the KKK burning down a black church. It’s a useful descriptive term.
And terrorist attacks are scarier than "regular"murders because of their randomness. We can convince ourselves that if we stay out of dangerous neighborhoods, or don’t interact with criminals, or don’t do anything stupid then we’re pretty much immune from murder; there’s an illusion of control there that may or not be justified. But with terrorist attacks, there is no control. It can happen to anyone, anywhere at any time, based solely on your nationality, religion or color of your skin. Of *course *it scares people a lot more than any other crime.
What would like to call it? If they’re being robbed I’d call it a robbery but that doesn’t appear to be the case. The person claims to have bombs on him and also in the financial district and he wants a meeting with the Prime Minister.
I think we used to call it a crusade.
Even Urban Dictionary isn’t helping with a definition.
Russia has had a whole bunch of hostage situations, the big one being Beslan and the Moscow theatre.
Probably an Autocorrect frak-up.
Supposed to be “many”. Posting while tired and autocorrect.
Well, how about “Open Carry”? Come on, this is “Great Debates”, isn’t it?
The gunman was just named as Man Haron Monis.
Ended in a shootout.
Sounds like an attention-seeking mental case.
I’m happy to call it “terrorist”. My concern that your justification for calling it terrorist seemed to rest on the fact that the attack was carried out “in the name of a religious movement”, the implication being that if the same tactics were used in the name of a non-religious ideology, there would be the same justification for calling them “terrorist”.
Not in Australia mate, we don’t want anyone just walking around with guns. Bloody dumb idea in Australia, we don’t have that many murders etc to even justify this.