When I challenged my city on their plans to install CCTV all over downtown “to reduce crime” the response I got was, basically ‘Shut up with your evidence this is a waste of money. Everyone else is doing it, so it MUST work.’
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Glad you’re safe. Do you know if @renke is also based in Munich? And if so, is he ok?
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Assholiness would be the appropriate term for the religious whacko though.
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Police thinks they found the (one) guy after he commited suicide.
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Trump is already allover this as another good reason to vote for him.
Seriously.
Yellowbeard, 1983
Not @renke, but @jsroberts (who is on a self-imposed suspension because he’s with family) is based in Munich.
I hope they’re either out of Munich all together on their vacation, or at least were nowhere nearby.
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So, 18-year-old German-iranian dual citizen, according to him born in Germany, which seems plausible enough considering his flawless German with local accent and the history of Iranian immigration. Still no word on the motive.
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Sorry if the post bothered anyone. I literally quoted the police spokesman, and that did not seem particularly offensive to me. But it got multiple flags, so there most have been some sort of terrible subtext that I was unaware of.
Again, please don’t.
Religious extremism and mental illness have little to do with each other, conflating the two is not productive towards solving either problem, and neither are pejoratives towards the mentally ill.
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As far as I can tell the only witness for that is the CNN woman who talked about him killing children inside the McDonald’s, something that doesn’t seem to have happened.
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It’s an age old discussion - does social reality create ideologies, or is it the other way around? Personally I emphasize the former, but it probably goes both ways.
I think your wish to boil things down and keep quiet is understandable, but a bit mislead. It is pretty apparent that there is kind of a wave of young people who take Islam as an ideology to justify a killing spree (and we all know there are readings of Islam that encourage such despicable acts).
5 days ago, a 17-year old from Afghanistan (or Pakistan, there were apparently several passports) attacked a family from Honkong with an axe in a train near Würzburg (northern Bavaria) Würzburg train attack - Wikipedia. A video was found where he poses as an “Islamic State” supporter.
This may or may not be the case in Munich, but when we look at the last years, it is quite probable (another explanation would be actually surprising), and there is no use to cover your eyes and ears from this disturbing fact.
EDIT: apparently, police found nothing in his home that relates to IS, but they found media relating to “generic” mass shootings. So it looks like I was wrong.
Add to this the European far right who is getting a massive boost from this, add the currently ongoing transformation of Turkey into a dictatorship, and the future looks more and more bleak to me.
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None. He claimed to be from Afghanistan but some suspect that he may have been from Pakistan.
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The Telegraph indicated that children were targeted, although it does appear that CNN is the one that had a witness who reported hearing “God is Great”. There was also a witness who said that they heard an anti-foreign slur. But that one appears to be a guy who was yelling insults at the gunman from a balcony. Hopefully we will learn more in the coming days.
I don’t disagree in the slightest.
I also think that that has nothing to do with mental illness.
People designating people as the “other” and killing them is not the human brain functioning abnormally; it’s as much a part of our nature as walking upright is.
I repeat myself again: if they are not in control of their actions, they need treatment, not pejoratives.
If they are in control of their actions, then calling them “wackos” is an insult, an inaccurate one at that, and by using it as an insult, you’re saying that being mentally ill is something worthy of insult. Which, again, it shouldn’t be.
ETA: to make it clear, I’m not arguing that “religious” is inaccurate, I’m arguing that “wackos” is, and that it’s especially dangerous when you precede it with “religious.”
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Latest reports are that children were injured but no children were killed. That makes the whole statement from “Lauretta”, the witness who talked about him shouting “Allahu Akbar” while killing children, a bit suspect.
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“in control of their actions” is a sliding scale isn’t it? Couldn’t every murder be classified as a mentally abnormal? Not necessarily to a degree that would hold in court, but some degree of sociopathy seems required. I don’t think it’s “in our nature”, we are not animals, are we. There probably is something lurking in every humans brain stem that makes such acts possible, but I hold that in a sane human being this is kept under control, unless he is pushed really hard to do it by e.g. by war propaganda (group dynamics are still another thing, I find it terrifying how humans in a group can practically shut their brain down and basically revert to gregarious animals within moments).
There is always one ideology or another around that will speak to such people, and attract or even encourage them. Which does not mean we should ignore those ideologies but confront them. Well these are all quite unordered thoughts, but what can I say. Btw. I know adorable “wackos” and consider myself a high functioning weirdo. Yes and I also see how other people would legitimately reject that as pejorative.
And I think there are social circumstances that favour the development of such characters. In a “fair” society (yeah I know, a big fuzzy word) where people experience less violence, there has to be fewer of them.
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I have not heard her statement confirmed by anyone else. I guess since the children are not dead, everything is fine. There is film of him exiting the McDonald’s, then shooting at some children. The police spokesman did say that he started the shooting in the restaurant, then moved to the shopping centre. also, he said that children were injured, and minors are among the dead. There was also a strange mention of a facebook post luring children to the McDonald’s with a promise of free stuff. But that is “being investigated”. Possibly a rumor. I guess someone will come up with a screencap if it is genuine.
Indeed it is.
The lack of empathy that allows someone to commit horrible acts is fundamentally distinct from their ability to control any urge to do so.
It really depends on how you define animal. Can you offer me your definition of animals that excludes humans (without actually mentioning humans, because that’d be rather tautological), so that I can see where you think the difference lies?
I would argue it the other way; we’ve built our society up specifically for the purpose of keeping those impulses under control.
That’s basically what I’m talking about. You don’t really need the group, though; you just need a “them.” Dunbar’s number basically implies that there’s a limit to the number of people that we can actually see as people, so any “them” becomes a non-person by default, and it’s a lot easier to treat a non-person inhumanely. The groups help, though, in that the “them” is usually much clearer if there’s an “us.”
Not sure which “such people” you’re referring to, but I’d just like to note that many of these “ideologies” use the same tactics (e.g. war propaganda) to get sane people to kill.
Oh, indeed. Weirdness is the best part of humanity, and I’m sure I’ve been thought crazy (and have even described myself as such) on multiple occasions. I’m ambivalent on “crazy” as an affectionate term, but am firmly against it being used as an insult or pejorative.
I would imagine so. Let’s try it.
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For reference, from the Library of Congress:
The German system of gun control is among the most stringent in Europe. It restricts the acquisition, possession, and carrying of firearms to those with a creditable need for a weapon. It bans fully automatic weapons and severely restricts the acquisition of other types of weapons. Compulsory liability insurance is required for anyone who is licensed to carry firearms.
In recent years, German gun-control law underwent several reforms that made it even more stringent. A new Weapons Act became effective in 2003 after a school shooting in the city of Erfurt in which a student killed sixteen persons. The new Act restricted the use of large caliber weapons by young people and strengthened requirements for the safe storage of firearms.
Another reform was enacted in 2009 in response to the massacre at Winnenden, in which an eighteen-year-old killed fifteen people in the course of a school shooting. This latest reform led to the creation of a federal gun register and to intense governmental monitoring of gun owners’ compliance with requirements for the safe storage of firearms. Pursuant to the reformed legislation, the authorities may at any time request access to the premises of any registered gun owner to monitor whether proper safe-storage procedures are being observed.
