Context: What he said:
Yes, and treating an incident like this first and foremost as a criminal act (a taxonomic term anyone can agree upon) encourages the authorities to investigate methodically and properly instead of turning to lazy and often counter-productive shortcuts like profiling and Muslim bans and restricting the free flow of information for everyone – shortcuts that usually support the goals of terrorists by undermining the institutions and norms of Western liberal democratic institutions.
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Yes, but note: no glasses!
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The answer to the first is well documented, the answer(s) to the second more difficult.
Mind if I drive?
Not if you don’t mind me clawing at the dash and shrieking like a cheerleader.
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If you or Mister44 want more - try the TellTale sequels. Not as good as the original but enjoyable.
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“Something must be done!”
“This is something” “So it must be done”.
This is also relevant:
I know it’s a chain of tweets, but DAG aka Jack of Kent is a legal expert and a damn fine communicator, too (despite a fine Brummie accent ;))
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If the IRA bombs a pub - should the police methodically investigate Scottish pipe bands to avoid profiling the Irish?
Already have them all. They are not the same, but they are close.
This is an area I worked in grad school . Although I did not specialize in it I do follow the literature. You have to parse suicide attempts into actual attempts and "suicide gesture."
Suicide gesture there is no intent to commit suicide, but to garner attention sympathy etc. Women, especially young women suicide gesture is more common and this is commonly lumped in in statistical reporting with suicide.
Also there is a lot of peer reviewed work that indicates up to half of US suicide maybe misclassifieds as accidental.
We know from Australia where a sudden decrease in guns caused a sudden decrease in gun suicide, that about half of the decrease was compensated for with increased suicide ruled a suicide by other means. So there was self congratulation there on the half that seemed to have been prevented. But there as also a sharp increase in “accident” death ruled accident but by means often associated with suicide. so either immediately following gun control, Australians either: a) somehow exhibited sharp increase in fatal clumsiness falling off of buildings, swimming out to sea, etc or b) Australia just swept the problem under the rug by moving suicide to means more likely to misclassifed as accidental death
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I can’t fully agree. i do agree with being cautious about having our buttons pushed by organized terrorists. but these terrorist attacks are not the same as criminal violence on many many levels affecting understanding and countering the phenomena.
Yes Muslims who are integrated into western society are also the target and victims of the terrorists, so we should not enable their victimization. But we should recognize this attack as profoundly different than general crime. it arises out of utterly different motives, involves different types of conspiracies and its method, MO and affect are very different. It also cannot be countered by normal law enforcement
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If the IRA took responsibility for the bombing (as they were wont to do back in the day) then that would be kind of silly, wouldn’t it?
I disagree. The NYPD has a special department that investigates terrorism, for example. So, I’m sure, does the London constabulary, which responded very quickly in this case and is now doing follow-up (including arrests). Solid and proven investigative techniques aren’t reserved for intelligence agencies. And it’s not like police and intelligence agencies can’t work together in a lawful investigation that doesn’t take shortcuts.
The point is to start investigating an incident like this as a crime. If it is indeed a terrorist incident it will become apparent very quickly, because terrorists take credit (sometimes, as it turns out, falsely) in order to push their agenda. But sometimes the crime is committed by a mentally ill guy, and not all terrorists are Muslim.
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yes and as that notes you cant really trust the stats because they are a mess. I
For example we know in western countries is a reticence at the local level, where the rulings are made, to rule a death a suicide. the family is usually opposed as well.
In Australia some extensive studies were done about tn years ago., They found a large majority of medical examiners and coroners started their process in determination with presumption of suicide in two types of self caused death: firearms and hanging. Essentially they presumed suicide and required direct evidence to move them to accidental or indeterminate. The exact opposite occurred with all other forms of self caused death. they took their initial presumption as accident and required clear evidence to rule that a suicide. Even compounding this more was the fact that the researchers found it was likely families withheld evidence such as suicide note, or more commonly withheld evidence such as statements indicating depression, severe anxiety, or voicing of suicide intent
In the literature this is called suicide misclassification. Australia was a good laboratory as there were about half a dozen in-depth peer reviewed studies about ten years after large scale confiscation of firearms ten years before that which had reduced firearms access about 60% over a short period of time. The initial statistical data showed a large benefit in reduced suicide. this was celbrated, is still in the statistics. Peer reviewed work a decade later showed that was simply less valid statistics and that the drop after broad firearms confiscation is not statistically valid. (The Australian Statistics Bureau now has a caveat that that large under-counts may have now be present and you cannot compare years and draw any conclusions although people still do)
In other words societies with less stigma attached to sucide and less inclination to be inaccurate (Japan, S. Korea), and societies with more firearms (US) end up with more accurate rates, where as other societies likely have much higher misclassification and undercounts.
So removing firearms did not reduce suicide at all there, it just vastly increased suicide by means ruled accident or undetermined. In fact it likly caused more suicide by making authorities and the public think the problem was being soilved, and misdirecting assets, attention and resources. Look at chart on bottom of page 6 here ( http://www.aihw.gov.au/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=6442458845 ). so accidental and in-determinant death, self caused death not ruled as suicide went form about 400 per year to a sharp and massive increase to 1,000 -1,400 per year as firearms confiscation went into effect.
CHAPTER 3 – Parliament of Australia
https://www.mja.com.au/system/files/issues/192_08_190410/del10779_fm.pdf
http://suicideprevention-icrc-s.org/sites/suicideprevention-icrc-s.org/files/sites/suicideprevention-icrc-s.org/files/webinars/17_3_1_slides_final.pdf
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ice/ice95v1/c26.pdf
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How does the fact that that NYC recognized these threats and acts as terrorism and has a special squad and treats them very differently than crime, along with vastly increased attention by US intelligence agencies to the prime terrorist target of New York, jive with you saying that they are not terrorist oriented but simple law enforcement?
And the point is to NOT start investigating incidents like this as a simply crimes – because that is not what they are.
Terrorists groups eventually never take credit for these type of attacks falsely. In fact over time we tend to learn that some events originally classified simply as crimes, turn out to be terrorists attacks with international communications and conspiracy (Ft. hood).
In the case of the London Bridge terrorist attack, three of the attackers were dead within 8 minutes of the start of attack. I can promise you within nine minutes of the start of the attack their prints were digitally scanned and uploaded with a handheld device and vetted though US, EU and UK databases – and five minutes after that a few hundred people in Intel in the US, UK and EU know it was terrorism. In fact it was leaking as that out of the home office about 20 minutes of the attack
[quote=“RaB, post:109, topic:102120”]
can promise you within nine minutes of the start of the attack their prints were digitally scanned and uploaded with a handheld device and vetted though US, EU and UK databases – and five minutes after that a few hundred people in Intel in the US, UK and EU know it was terrorism.
[/quote]I’m not even sure how you think this works…
Oh I now how it works Eric. I carried one in Afghanistan, albeit it with a sat connection (which you don’t need in europe unless you are in northern Norway).
Even in civil enforcement, your finger can be held into a scanner on a device smaller than an iphone, and a NICS report will be back up n the screen in a couple of minutes sometimes less than a minute.
It is a certainty one, two or three of the three were on databases all over. At least one of the attackers have arrests for prior terrorist associations and their biometrics would be in a multiple databases. You can be sure this was lighting up screens as a terrorist attack in Berlin, Washington and Paris within 15 minutes of the start of the attack
In some literature, this is the difference between a successful terrorist attack and an unsuccessful one. Even deaths are caused, if the target nation/group does not act as expected, the attack can be understood as unsuccessful.
Strange way to look at it, but such a view exists.
These attacks yes. OTOH there is also “narco-terrorism” in Central America where there is an overlap.
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Because they want Theresa May in power, perhaps?
A lot of radical Islamists want to force a global war between Islam and everyone else, which they believe they will win with God’s assistance. But there’s not enough disposable radical lunatic Muslims, and too many just trying to keep their heads down and get through the day. They want to alienate the latter from all non-Muslim people and force them to fight for their lives and families, so helping elect tough-on-brown-people authoritarians serves their goals nicely.
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