Ongoing shooting at Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado.

[Napoleon the Clown]

Saying it isn't terrorism when a guy shoots a dozen people to terrify others into obeying his political agenda just because there are terror attacks of much larger scale is like saying it isn't rape for a guy to fuck a woman against her will by using threats because there are dudes who beat women into submission as a means of being able to fuck them. Fucking someone against their will is rape, trying to murder a bunch of people to achieve a political goal through means of scaring many more people is terrorism. You don't need a body count in the triple digits for it to be terrorism any more than you need contusions or lacerations for it to be fucking rape when you have sex with someone against their consent.

Joun, please do enlighten us as to the minimum body count to reach the threshold of terrorism. You seem to be an expert on it.

[Joun_Lord]

I don't think that their should be some standard where it has to have such and such a death toll before it counts as terrorism or something like that, if that's what you're suggesting. Weather something is terrorism is not about the scale of the act so much as the motivations behind it.

Saying it isn't terrorism when a guy shoots a dozen people to terrify others into obeying his political agenda just because there are terror attacks of much larger scale is like saying it isn't rape for a guy to fuck a woman against her will by using threats because there are dudes who beat women into submission as a means of being able to fuck them. Fucking someone against their will is rape, trying to murder a bunch of people to achieve a political goal through means of scaring many more people is terrorism. You don't need a body count in the triple digits for it to be terrorism any more than you need contusions or lacerations for it to be fucking rape when you have sex with someone against their consent.

Joun, please do enlighten us as to the minimum body count to reach the threshold of terrorism. You seem to be an expert on it.

I'm not really talking about scale of attacks but the motivation and all that junk. By broad definitions of terrorism most any shooting or act of violence can be considered terrorism. Most any time someone is shooting someone else its an act causing terror. Is some husband shooting his wife for sleeping with the neighbor terrorism? Some thug harassing a scared white lady possibly just by being black? Some good ol' boy redneck named Cletus beating up a minority who was coming right for him? Terror is involved, the act is most definitely causing terror but is it terrorism?

Or like in this case, if the reports are correct and this wangjob attacked the clinic because of anti-abortion views, is that terrorism? One might argue it is, he is killing and causing terror especially to further a political goal. But what about if it was just some random act of violence that just happened to hit an abortion clinic but was completely unrelated to the abortion debate as some wondered if it might be, is that still terrorism?

That is what I was trying (probably quite ineptly) to get at, not every shooting or whatever is terrorism. Calling every single shooting or act of violence diminishes actual factual terrorism.

[Flagg]

I don't think that their should be some standard where it has to have such and such a death toll before it counts as terrorism or something like that, if that's what you're suggesting. Weather something is terrorism is not about the scale of the act so much as the motivations behind it.

Saying it isn't terrorism when a guy shoots a dozen people to terrify others into obeying his political agenda just because there are terror attacks of much larger scale is like saying it isn't rape for a guy to fuck a woman against her will by using threats because there are dudes who beat women into submission as a means of being able to fuck them. Fucking someone against their will is rape, trying to murder a bunch of people to achieve a political goal through means of scaring many more people is terrorism. You don't need a body count in the triple digits for it to be terrorism any more than you need contusions or lacerations for it to be fucking rape when you have sex with someone against their consent.

Joun, please do enlighten us as to the minimum body count to reach the threshold of terrorism. You seem to be an expert on it.

I'm not really talking about scale of attacks but the motivation and all that junk. By broad definitions of terrorism most any shooting or act of violence can be considered terrorism. Most any time someone is shooting someone else its an act causing terror. Is some husband shooting his wife for sleeping with the neighbor terrorism? Some thug harassing a scared white lady possibly just by being black? Some good ol' boy redneck named Cletus beating up a minority who was coming right for him? Terror is involved, the act is most definitely causing terror but is it terrorism?

Or like in this case, if the reports are correct and this wangjob attacked the clinic because of anti-abortion views, is that terrorism? One might argue it is, he is killing and causing terror especially to further a political goal. But what about if it was just some random act of violence that just happened to hit an abortion clinic but was completely unrelated to the abortion debate as some wondered if it might be, is that still terrorism?

That is what I was trying (probably quite ineptly) to get at, not every shooting or whatever is terrorism. Calling every single shooting or act of violence diminishes actual factual terrorism.

You are a fucking idiot. Causing terror can be achieved without violence (or criminal behavior) just by walking down the street of a black neighborhood in militarized neo Nazi uniforms, waving the confederate battle flag, and open-carrying AR-15's. Terrorism is causing terror through acts of violent criminal behavior to achieve a political goal.

[Wild Zontargs]

Huh. I'm rather confused at how this can go from "Colorado Springs police says there is no connection to Planned Parenthood" to "definitely politically motivated". Initial hand-waving by the police to keep things quiet? Started elsewhere, then moved to the PP? I'll be interested to hear the full chain of events when it's released.

[Grumman]

I do think one of the premier failures of the Obama administration is its failure to take a harder line against Right wing terrorism. No doubt they don't want to escalate the situation, but by doing so they've turned a blind eye and sent the message that such things will be tolerated, as well as feeding a double standard many hold when it comes to Muslim vs. non-Muslim terrorists.

Even when you explicitly choose your data to exclude the deadliest terror attack and you fraudulently exclude the deadliest terror attack that should be in that data set, Muslim terrorists in the United States still kill an order of magnitude more people per capita than Republican terrorists in the United States do. The numerous attempts to pretend that the right-wingers are the real threat is just politically motivated bullshit.

[Knife]

Huh. I'm rather confused at how this can go from "Colorado Springs police says there is no connection to Planned Parenthood" to "definitely politically motivated". Initial hand-waving by the police to keep things quiet? Started elsewhere, then moved to the PP? I'll be interested to hear the full chain of events when it's released.

The accounts from witnesses that the shooter yelled out 'no more baby parts', a reference to some hard core right wing statements from wu wu Presidential candidates comments. It's political, at least in part, as well as being a nut bar.

[madd0ct0r]

I do think one of the premier failures of the Obama administration is its failure to take a harder line against Right wing terrorism. No doubt they don't want to escalate the situation, but by doing so they've turned a blind eye and sent the message that such things will be tolerated, as well as feeding a double standard many hold when it comes to Muslim vs. non-Muslim terrorists.

Even when you explicitly choose your data to exclude the deadliest terror attack and you fraudulently exclude the deadliest terror attack that should be in that data set, Muslim terrorists in the United States still kill an order of magnitude more people per capita than Republican terrorists in the United States do. The numerous attempts to pretend that the right-wingers are the real threat is just politically motivated bullshit.

I'd like to see some numbers behind that claim.

[Wild Zontargs]

The accounts from witnesses that the shooter yelled out 'no more baby parts', a reference to some hard core right wing statements from wu wu Presidential candidates comments. It's political, at least in part, as well as being a nut bar.

No no, I get that. I'm just wondering why/how the original responses from the police were "no PP connection" while the same department is now acting like it was always all about PP. One of these things is not like the other, and I'd like to know where the disconnect came from.

[The Romulan Republic]

Huh. I'm rather confused at how this can go from "Colorado Springs police says there is no connection to Planned Parenthood" to "definitely politically motivated". Initial hand-waving by the police to keep things quiet? Started elsewhere, then moved to the PP? I'll be interested to hear the full chain of events when it's released.

At a guess, I'd say that they didn't know initially because they hadn't had a chance to talk to the suspect, or their was a miscommunication somewhere. Its not uncommon for information to be rendered rapidly out of date in such a situation. But that's just a guess.

I'm sure we'll get more details come the guy's trial, anyway, since they managed to take him alive.

I do think one of the premier failures of the Obama administration is its failure to take a harder line against Right wing terrorism. No doubt they don't want to escalate the situation, but by doing so they've turned a blind eye and sent the message that such things will be tolerated, as well as feeding a double standard many hold when it comes to Muslim vs. non-Muslim terrorists.

Even when you explicitly choose your data to exclude the deadliest terror attack and you fraudulently exclude the deadliest terror attack that should be in that data set, Muslim terrorists in the United States still kill an order of magnitude more people per capita than Republican terrorists in the United States do. The numerous attempts to pretend that the right-wingers are the real threat is just politically motivated bullshit.

I'd like to see some numbers behind that claim.

As would I. While Islamic terrorism would undoubtably be the more costly factoring in 911, if you take every event since then, I'm honestly not sure who would take the lead. And in any case, you should be prepared to provide sources as a matter of principle.

Regardless, I must point out that I never claimed Muslim terrorists are not a threat, that Right wing terrorists are "the real threat", that "right-wingers" generally are terrorists, or even that Muslim terrorists are less of a threat. By painting my post in that light, you have portrayed me as an apologist for Islamic terrorism and a "politically motivated" liar, for which I expect an immediate retraction and apology.

I simply said that Right wing terrorists were also a threat that should not be ignored, and that ignoring them encourages them and encourages a double standard regarding terrorism. In other words, that they and Islamic terrorists should both be treated as terrorists, and a threat.

Its not just a question of which one is a bigger threat. Its a question of one having major wars fought over it, the Constitution shredded over it, and perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars spent on it while the other is often not even acknowledged as terrorism. Now don't get me wrong- I'm not saying we should start destroying the Constitution and fighting wars over Right wing terrorism too. But it would be nice if people took it a little more seriously.

Although I would point out that radical conservatives have a far bigger base with far more power in America, even if most of them aren't violent, than radical Muslims.

From where I'm standing, you are insinuating that I am a liar who is trying to minimize Islamic terrorism for no other reason than because I dared to suggest that other terrorists should also be taken seriously. The only reasonable conclusion, to me, is that you pretty much feel its only terrorism or worth worrying about if its a Muslim doing it. If that is the case, you are a bigot, an imbecile, and part of the very problem I'm trying to address.

[Channel72]

I think a big part of the reason that domestic right-wing terrorism has been seen as much less of an issue in the recent years is simply because there hasn't been any really high-profile incident of right-wing terrorism, at least in the US, since the Oklahoma City bombing. If we include international incidents, Anders Breivik is probably the most recent high-profile terrorist incident, but most Americans don't really even understand that his motivations were closely related to right-wing Christianity.

Plus, domestic terrorism is always something of a less politically sensational problem, because by it's very nature, it can be speedily dealt with by law enforcement. And so, right there, all of the issues about US military invasions, national sovereignty, drone strikes, rendition, torture, etc., go right out the window. Tim McVeigh was basically just arrested by the police, and then given a fair trial! How quaint.

International terrorism is simply a whole other game - it blurs the boundaries between acts of war and criminal acts in ways that domestic terrorism simply never will.

That said, I posted an article on here a while back (I currently can't find it...) that was basically a study showing that right wing domestic terrorism is actually dangerously on the rise at the moment. It's just that for the most part, nobody really notices because it is mostly manifested in many small incidents, rather than singular media-extravaganza events, like the Oklahoma City bombing. These incidents include things like hate crimes, racially-related murders, etc. Apparently these things are on the rise in the 2010s. But since 9/11, Islamic terrorists have hogged the spotlight, since essentially every 3 years or so there's been a spectacular high-body count attack in the West since 9/11 (Madrid, London, etc.). Then there was a lull for a few years, and now Paris... And of course, there's an Islamist terror attack almost every week in the MENA region.

[The Romulan Republic]

Fair point about the distinct issues international terrorism has.

As to the lack of Right wing attacks with high bodycounts, maybe. However, we did have a white supremacist mass shooting this year in the south which had quite a high death toll (and was the impetus for their finally being a massive push to stop flying the Confederate flag).

But to me, the big wake up call, even if it didn't cost a single life, should have been the Bundy ranch incident. That a gang of anti-government militia types were able to engage in an armed stand-off with the government and get away scot free (well, I suppose its possible their have been arrests since that I just didn't hear about, but not to my knowledge)... that's some scary shit. And their was a case where a couple of people who were linked to the Bundy incident went on to commit a shooting and kill three people:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/pos ... un-battle/

And I can't help but suspect that if those asshats had been Muslim, we would have seen every Right wing pundit screaming about Muslims taking over, followed by the FBI or even the National Guard storming them.

[Rogue 9]

The accounts from witnesses that the shooter yelled out 'no more baby parts', a reference to some hard core right wing statements from wu wu Presidential candidates comments. It's political, at least in part, as well as being a nut bar.

No no, I get that. I'm just wondering why/how the original responses from the police were "no PP connection" while the same department is now acting like it was always all about PP. One of these things is not like the other, and I'd like to know where the disconnect came from.

As far as I can tell, they didn't; they said they didn't know. They didn't deny it so much as publicly refuse to jump to conclusions before interrogating the suspect.

[The Romulan Republic]

Some of the candidates for the Teabagger Party weigh in:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/pos ... -rhetoric/

Several Republican presidential candidates on Sunday condemned the attack on a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs but stopped short of agreeing with liberal critics who say that fiery antiabortion rhetoric contributed to the shooting.

“It’s obviously a tragedy. Nothing justifies this,” former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina said on “Fox News Sunday.” “Any protesters should always be peaceful. Whether it’s Black Lives Matter or pro-life protesters.”

Calls to defund Planned Parenthood through congressional action have escalated in recent months amid a protracted national debate about the ethics of collecting fetal tissue for research.

[How Planned Parenthood actually uses its federal funding]

That dialogue was cast in a grim light after reports that the suspected Colorado gunman is said to have used the phrase “no more baby parts’’ while discussing his motives for the attack, as reported by The Washington Post on Saturday. Liberal critics of antiabortion activism have linked escalating rhetoric on the right with Friday’s attack, including Vicki Cowart, president of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, and Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

“We’ve seen an alarming increase in hateful rhetoric and smear campaigns against abortion providers and patients over the last few months,” Cowart said in a statement. “That environment breeds acts of violence.”

How a stricken Colorado community is reacting to shootings at Planned Parenthood
View Photos A gunman opened fire at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic, authorities said, killing at least three people and wounding at least nine others.
"It is offensive and outrageous that some politicians are now claiming this tragedy has nothing to do with the toxic environment they helped create," Laguens said in a statement on Sunday. "One of the lessons of this awful tragedy is that words matter, and hateful rhetoric fuels violence. It's not enough to denounce the tragedy without also denouncing the poisonous rhetoric that fueled it."

Fiorina rejected such comments, calling them "typical left-wing tactics."

"This is so typical of the left to immediately begin demonizing a messenger because they don’t agree with the message," she said. "The vast majority of Americans agree what Planned Parenthood is doing is wrong."


Fiorina took a particularly hard line against Planned Parenthood during the second Republican presidential debate, held in September. In one instance, she described “a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.”

That characterization struck an emotional chord with voters but was ultimately proven to be an inaccurate representation. Though no video showing what she described was found to exist, Fiorina has held that her depiction was accurate.

Business mogul Donald Trump called the alleged Colorado shooter a “sick person” in an interview on Sunday with NBC’s Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press."

"Well, this was an extremist. And this was a man who they said prior to this was mentally disturbed,” Trump said, according to an early transcript of the interview. “So, he's a mentally disturbed person. There's no question about that.”

He added: “I will tell you, there is a tremendous group of people that think it's terrible, all of the videos that they've seen with some of these people from Planned Parenthood talking about it like you're selling parts to a car,” he said. “I mean, there are a lot of people that are very unhappy about that."

[How the Planned Parenthood videos set off a renewed wave of activism on abortion]

Retired pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson called the shooting the work of “extremism.”

“Unfortunately, there's a lot of extremism coming from all areas. It's one of the biggest problems that I think is threatening to tear our country apart,” Carson said on ABC’s “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos, according to a transcript of the exchange. “We get into our separate corners and we hate each other, we want to destroy those with whom we disagree.”

Carson did not directly address antiabortion rhetoric but did warn of increasing political divisions in the country.

“If we can get rid of the rhetoric from either side and actually talk about the facts, I think that's when we begin to make progress,” he said. “And, you know, a lot of people, when they don't have facts, when they don't have a good backup, that's when the rhetoric starts. That's when the name-calling starts.”


Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee expressed similar dismay at the attack and added that the gunman's actions in fact stood against the principles held by antiabortion activists.

"Regardless of why he did it, what he did is domestic terrorism," Huckabee said on CNN's "State of the Union." "What he is did is absolutely abominable, especially to those of us in the pro-life movement, because there's nothing about any of us that would condone or in any way look the other way at something like this."

I'm surprised but pleased that Huckabee used the term "domestic terrorism", but Fiorina's a piece of shit.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Even when you explicitly choose your data to exclude the deadliest terror attack and you fraudulently exclude the deadliest terror attack that should be in that data set, Muslim terrorists in the United States still kill an order of magnitude more people per capita than Republican terrorists in the United States do. The numerous attempts to pretend that the right-wingers are the real threat is just politically motivated bullshit.

So far as I can tell, in the past DECADE (i.e. since 2005), there have been 17 deaths in 3 attacks by Muslim terrorists in the U.S..

Defining the motivations of domestic terrorists is always tricky, but just from attacks that can be unambiguously attributed to right-wing viewpoints (so the Charleston shootings and the Wisconsin Sikh temple shootings) gives us 15 deaths from from 2 attacks, and that's just looking back to 2012 (I don't feel like trawling the internet further back than that to see if there are more). And this is excluding both the present incident and all the other anti-abortion violence described here.

So, it looks like you have to rely on extraordinary claims or special pleading to say that Muslims have been "an order of magnitude" more deadly than domestic terrorists in the past decade. Of course, I doubt you even bothered to think your statement out that far, as you are probably just talking out of your ass like you always do when these threads pop up. I'm guessing you'll just say "RAH RAH 911" then think of bullshit rationalizations for why the domestic terrorist incidents "don't count".

[Grumman]

I'd like to see some numbers behind that claim.

As would I. While Islamic terrorism would undoubtably be the more costly factoring in 911, if you take every event since then, I'm honestly not sure who would take the lead. And in any case, you should be prepared to provide sources as a matter of principle.

Like last time, my comment was a reference to This article and its sources.

Regardless, I must point out that I never claimed Muslim terrorists are not a threat, that Right wing terrorists are "the real threat", that "right-wingers" generally are terrorists, or even that Muslim terrorists are less of a threat. By painting my post in that light, you have portrayed me as an apologist for Islamic terrorism and a "politically motivated" liar, for which I expect an immediate retraction and apology.

I simply said that Right wing terrorists were also a threat that should not be ignored, and that ignoring them encourages them and encourages a double standard regarding terrorism. In other words, that they and Islamic terrorists should both be treated as terrorists, and a threat.

There are ten times more Republicans than Muslims in the country, yet Islamic terrorists in the United States kill more people than right-wing terrorists do, even when you exclude 9/11. It's like drunk driving: sober drivers actually kill more people than drunk drivers do, but only because there are so many more sober drivers than drunk drivers. The fact that sober drivers kill 2-3 times more people does not mean that focusing on drunk drivers is evidence of a double standard, because those few drunk drivers kill far more people per capita than the sober drivers do.

None of that makes you a liar. But it does still mean that your argument is founded on other people's politically motivated bullshit, even if you wouldn't spread such lies by choice.

Even when you explicitly choose your data to exclude the deadliest terror attack and you fraudulently exclude the deadliest terror attack that should be in that data set, Muslim terrorists in the United States still kill an order of magnitude more people per capita than Republican terrorists in the United States do. The numerous attempts to pretend that the right-wingers are the real threat is just politically motivated bullshit.

So far as I can tell, in the past DECADE (i.e. since 2005), there have been 17 deaths in 3 attacks by Muslim terrorists in the U.S..

Defining the motivations of domestic terrorists is always tricky, but just from attacks that can be unambiguously attributed to right-wing viewpoints (so the Charleston shootings and the Wisconsin Sikh temple shootings) gives us 15 deaths from from 2 attacks, and that's just looking back to 2012 (I don't feel like trawling the internet further back than that to see if there are more). And this is excluding both the present incident and all the other anti-abortion violence described here.

So, it looks like you have to rely on extraordinary claims or special pleading to say that Muslims have been "an order of magnitude" more deadly than domestic terrorists in the past decade. Of course, I doubt you even bothered to think your statement out that far, as you are probably just talking out of your ass like you always do when these threads pop up. I'm guessing you'll just say "RAH RAH 911" then think of bullshit rationalizations for why the domestic terrorist incidents "don't count".

Not "an order of magnitude more deadly", an order of magnitude more deadly per capita. As in, the only reason right-wingers and Muslims kill about the same number of people in terrorist attacks (37 killed by right-wing terrorists from just after 9/11 up to the start of this year, and slightly more by Islamic terrorists) is because there are ten times more right-wingers than Muslims (~30,000,000 Republicans vs. 3,000,000 Muslims).

[Channel72]

Also, none of this is counting failed terrorist attacks between 9/11 and now. There's a list on Wikipedia. Almost all of the would-be attackers/conspirators are Muslim foreigners, or Americans who converted to Islam. Actually, scratch that... it looks like literally all were Muslim, and all were motivated to commit these acts by radical Islam, except for this one psychotic Jewish guy who seems to simply like causing destruction for no reason.

[Channel72]

Here's another list from Wikipedia, which includes some failed terrorist attacks in the last decade that weren't Islamic extremists. But still, most of them are Islamic extremists in this list as well. Among the non-Islamic terrorist incidents are some crazy animal-rights group, a Jewish extremist who tried to blow up a mosque in California, and an attempt to blow up an abortion clinic in Austin. Still, I mean, there's no sense in denying it... the majority of these incidents are related to Islamic extremism. The non-Islamic ones are few and far between.

[The Romulan Republic]

The murder victims. May they rest in peace, and never be forgotten.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/slain-civilia ... d=35478788

A mother of two children and an Iraq war veteran, both of whom were accompanying friends to the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic, have been identified as the two civilians killed in the shooting that also left a police officer dead and nine others wounded.

Jennifer Markovsky, 35, was at the Colorado Springs clinic Friday with a friend, Markovsky's father John Ah-King told ABC News. Markvosky's friend was injured during the shooting and taken to a hospital.

Markovsky lived in Colorado with her husband, Paul, and her son and daughter.

Wife of Slain Colorado Officer Describes Him As 'Devoted Husband,' 'Wonderful Father'
Planned Parenthood Standoff 'Appears' to Be Domestic Terrorism, Colorado Springs Mayor Says
Colorado Springs Shooting Suspect's Ramblings Suggest Animosity Toward Planned Parenthood, Sources Say
Ah-King said his daughter “always was a [great] woman and she would help anyone in need.”


The second civilian killed was identified as Ke’Arre Stewart, 29, a veteran of the Iraq War and the father of two, a relative of Stewart told ABC News.

Stewart was accompanying someone at the clinic when he was killed, Amburh Butler, a lifelong friend and family spokeswoman, told The Associated Press.

Markovsky and Stewart’s identities were confirmed by officials this afternoon, who called this a preliminary identification, adding that a full identification would be provided once autopsies were completed.

The third victim was Garrett Swasey, a University of Colorado-Colorado Springs campus officer who responded to the clinic in support of Colorado Springs police. Swasey's wife said in a statement today that, "Helping others brought him deep satisfaction and being a police officer was a part of him. In the end, his last act was for the safety and wellbeing of others and was a tribute to his life."

Nine were injured in the shooting. The suspected gunman was taken into custody.

[cmdrjones]

I wouldn't automatically label drone strikes terrorism. I don't know if that was your intent, but it reads that way. Now, don't mistake that as support for America's recent approach to drones, because I've got major problems with it. But I would say that weather a strike is terrorism depends on the target and the reasons for it. Air strikes on civilians designed to panic/demoralize civilians (see strategic bombing in WWIII) I would call state terrorism. Strikes on legitimate military targets, of course, would not be. So weather a drone strike constitutes terrorism would depend on the target and the reasons for hitting it, rather than the fact that a drone was used.

We agree again, somebody move the apocalypse clock up a minute!