Another mass shooting

FluffyMcDeath said:
Authoritarian regimes have no sense of humour. Comics (and college professors who are actually any good) are the first to go.
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Imagine where the country would be if Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton had ultimately won the presidency.
 
An Australian senator has apparently weighed in with this thoughtful, considered response to this morning's massacre in New Zealand, using quotations from his own religion whilst blaming followers of another for their own murder:
D1rWsCPUYAExYHA.jpg:large

Classy.

His prime minister isn't too impressed:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1106468588183916544
 
The Demented Politics of the New Zealand Terrorist

He says global warming and immigration:
…Are the same issue, the environment is being destroyed by over population, we Europeans are one of the groups that are not over populating the world. The invaders are the ones over populating the world. Kill the invaders, kill the overpopulation and by doing so save the environment.

I mostly agree with Sir Oswald Mosley’s [founder the British Union of Fascists, 1932–1940] and consider myself an Eco-fascist by nature.

The nation with the closest political and social values to my own is the People’s Republic of China. [Communist China]


 
Robert said:
An Australian senator has apparently weighed in with this thoughtful, considered response to this morning's massacre in New Zealand, using quotations from his own religion whilst blaming followers of another for their own murder:
D1rWsCPUYAExYHA.jpg:large

Classy.

His prime minister isn't too impressed:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1106468588183916544
Click to expand...

Always a rich time for word games and moralising point scoring - every politician has their constituency.

At a basic level - no Muslim immigration means no mosques to shoot up - is not even debatable.
If Muslims immigrated because they sought to enjoy the benefits of a new culture they would integrate - no-one needs to be a Muslim, after all.
All victims are blameless is a fallacy, but that a victim bares blame because of the actions of others like them is the fallacy of guilt by association.

Most Muslims aren't terrorists; most gun owners aren't terrorists.
Most gun owners don't have a world spanning identity group with a ready made world conquering ideology based on gun ownership - that sort of thing usually comes from their religious affiliations. Successful religions are hostile to other religions (else they would go extinct and cede to other religions which were). Islam (and Christianity and other religions) are not fundamentally benign - it takes effort to make them benign and keep them that way. Shooting up mosques is not the best way to keep Islam benign. However, protecting a religion from criticism is also a terrible way to keep it benign, and offering that protection to only one religion is a terrible way to keep the other religions benign.

All religions deserve, and should receive, criticism. Further, I think that it is true that Islam is particularly pernicious and that's not new. It was 30 years ago that Salman Rushdie had to start living under police protection because of a book he wrote. I think not even the Scientologists would go so far as to issue a public call to murder a perceived critic. Mention of Rushdie and the book still causes strong (and violent) emotions in Muslims. We have to denounce the shooting of mosques, but in between the shootings we really really really need to defuse this bomb. For a start we need to police the curriculum in religious schools or ban them all together if they won't be policed - and not just the Muslim schools, ALL of the religious schools. Free exercise of religion is incompatible with modern secular (mixed) society. Exercise of religion HAS to be subject to secular law. Not allowing challenges to Islam will leave those who fear Islam no choice but violence, and that will activate the doctrines of Jihad.

 
I smell a rat.

Perpetrator of New Zealand terrorist attack visited Turkey 'twice'

The perpetrator of a terrorist attack in New Zealand in which 49 people, mostly worshippers, were killed visited Turkey "twice", a senior Turkish official told TRT World on Friday.

"Our initial assessment is that the perpetrator of today's heinous terror attack in Christchurch, travelled to Turkey multiple times and spent an extended period of time in the country," the official said.

Why would a "white supremacist" spend extended time in Turkey, on 2 separate occasions?
 
Speelgoedmannetje said:
3 dead for now. I've got a couple of friends and acquantences living in Utrecht. They're okay but it's not particularly a nice thing to hear.:(
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Glad to hear they're okay.
Horrific situation for anyone caught up in it.
 
Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom, United States. These are the Five Eyes countries - an intelligence cooperation arrangement. The intelligence agencies of each country have been caught using each others resources to get around laws preventing them from spying on their own people, and they also seem to pursue the political goals of the intelligence agencies through each other's country's too. Eerie how much social pressure is coming to bare even in Canada so far across the globe. Here politicians have come under seemingly great pressure if they didn't immediately head to the nearest Mosque for a photo-op (and dress up as a Muslim if you are a woman, which some have seen as solidarity, others as self-serving and patronising, and by others as insulting to genuine faith). Peeps, we are in crazy land. Fifty human beings are dead and the top priority seems to be who can make the biggest displays of compassion (with other people's money if possible).
As a country with almost no gun violence, New Zealand is the place least in need of more gun laws, but this is an opportunity to leverage the US politicians and shame them into passing anti-gun laws, a goal the shooter specifically mentioned in his manifesto. The problem isn't the guns, the problem is ... well, it's one of the problems the IPCC pointed towards as a consequence of global warming - populations with different cultures and values will move in large numbers and when they come into contact with very different cultures there will be violence if there is no integration. Banning the guns won't stop the underlying problem, and it also won't stop the guns. Yugoslavia tried to disarm it's population before it fractured on ethnic/religious lines. Guns were smuggled in, in huge quantities, and by foreign powers too. There are so many old war guns continually washing around the world. The solution is integration, but the current fashion is to accentuate people's differences - and how that makes them oppressed and justified in their rage.
 
FluffyMcDeath said:
As a country with almost no gun violence, New Zealand is the place least in need of more gun laws, but this is an opportunity to leverage the US politicians and shame them into passing anti-gun laws, a goal the shooter specifically mentioned in his manifesto.
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You really think Ardern's main motivation here is the opportunity to leverage US politicians?
Personally I think that's a stretch of quite absurd proportions.

The problem isn't the guns, the problem is ...
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Why not go the whole hog and advocate arming the teachers worshippers?

Banning the guns... won't stop the guns.
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It won't stop them but it does make them more difficult to come by.

The solution is integration...
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Mass shootings happen for all sorts of reasons and your proposed solution appears to be influenced by who the victims were in this particular mass shooting.
Mass shootings are indeed very rare in New Zealand.
They were also very rare in Australia but Australia restricted guns after Port Arthur. Integration of different cultures (or lack thereof) had nothing to do with Port Arthur.
They were also very rare in the UK but the UK restricted guns after Dunblane. Integration had nothing to do with Dunblane either.
There has been little in the way of mass shootings in either country since. You could argue that might have been the case anyway but if it makes it a little more difficult for a nutter to flip and go on a rampage, I'm all for it.
 
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Robert said:
You really think Ardern's main motivation here is the opportunity to leverage US politicians?
Personally I think that's a stretch of quite absurd proportions.
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To quote the gunman's manifesto:
Won’t your attack result in calls for the removal of gun rights from Whites in the United states?
Yes, that is the plan all along, you said you would fight to protect your rights and the constitution, well soon will come the time.

Won’t your attack result in calls for the removal of gun rights in the New Zealand?
The gun owners of New Zealand are a beaten, miserable bunch of baby boomers, who have long since given up the fight.When was the last time they won increased rights? Their loss was inevitable.I just accelerated things a bit.
They had long since lost their cities, take a look at Auckland. Did you really expect they would not also lose their rights?
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Robert said:
It won't stop them but it does make them more difficult to come by.
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Unless you are willing to commit illegal acts for your cause. Even though it is definitely easier to secure an island rather than a continent, this wasn't exactly a spur of the moment act. I bet once these weapons are fully illegal to buy you could still pretty quickly pick one up completely untraceably for cash.


Mass shootings happen for all sorts of reasons and your proposed solution appears to be influenced by who the victims were in this particular mass shooting.
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Are you saying that integration is not a generally desirable thing?
Yes, there are many "motivations" for mass shootings and social stresses don't help keep loonies form snapping but offer up targets. Why would someone shoot up a country music event in Vegas? Mad at the sorts of people he thinks might be Trump voters? Mass shootings are fuelled by grievances and we are living in a time when grievance culture is ascendant.
 
FluffyMcDeath said:
You really think Ardern's main motivation here is the opportunity to leverage US politicians?
-
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To quote the gunman's manifesto:
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So you do?
And quoting a murderous nutcase as though that proves the motivation of Ardern?
I already pointed out how absurd I think the general premise is but this justification of it is even more ludicrous.
Are you saying that integration is not a generally desirable thing?
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Are you saying it's an either-or thing?
Shall we just hand out guns to everyone while we sort out cultural integration?

More seriously, given there is some evidence which seems* to support the idea that reducing access to certain types of weapons can help reduce shootings, wouldn't it be better to err on the side of caution?
Or is the idea that NZ wanting to restrict access to automatic weapons after a mass-murder is actually all a Five-Eyes** driven smokescreen so they can cause your man in Washington some tangential discomfort more important than reducing shootings?

*with the usual correlation/causation caveat.
**As wonderful a bit of illogical paranoia as I've read for quite some time.
 
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