Suicidebombing in Germany

[cosmicalstorm]

There has been a suicidebombing in Germany, reports of 13 injured so far.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36880758

[hunter5]

Geez missed that on the news this morning.

[Broomstick]

I think I heard there was some sort of machete attack, too, but of course that having a lower body count it got less press than the bombing.

[Edi]

I think I heard there was some sort of machete attack, too, but of course that having a lower body count it got less press than the bombing.

That one was a crime of passion when some kebab stand worker went berserk after his female coworker turned down his advances. No machete, but a kebab-knife.

[Broomstick]

Ah, well, the usual errors of reporting when immediacy takes priority over fact-checking.

[Thanas]

Suicide bomber was a Syrian whose asylum application was turned down. Compared to earlier attacks this one seemed to have an islamic background.

[Thanas]

Or maybe not entirely.

Here is what the ministor of the Interior said:

“The Ansbach perpetrator was a 27-year-old refugee from Syria who arrived in Germany two years ago. In August 2014 he requested asylum.

“As part of the asylum procedure there were indications he had already been registered as a refugee in other European countries. An application had been registered in Bulgaria and Austria. We contacted the Bulgarian authorities who informed us that the perpetrator had been afforded refugee status. As a result, on 2 December 2014, the asylum application of the perpetrator was refused, and deportation to Bulgaria ordered. The court in Ansbach reaffirmed this decision.

“Following that court ruling, medical certificates were submitted proving that the person in question suffered from psychological instability. As result the deportation order was suspended. On 13 July this year the deportation was again started, and deportation to Bulgaria was threatened and duly served.

“The perpetrator is said to have twice attempted to commit suicide which is why he spent sometime in a psychiatric hospital.”

EDIT: Mentally unstable asylum seeker who turned to ISIS once his application had been denied.

Bavaria’s top security official says a video has been found on the Ansbach bomber’s phone showing him pledging allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State group.

Joachim Herrmann says that according to an initial translation of the Arabic-language video the 27-year-old man announced a “revenge” attack against Germany.

[SolarpunkFan]

God damn, why has the world gone insane?

[Joun_Lord]

Not sure if it deserves it own thread but apparently there was another Syrian refugee who attacked someone though with a machete and unfortunately did kill someone.

Assuming this most recent attack is legit, thats an attack with a gun, a bomb, an axe, and a machete all by people with some connections to either refugees or immigrants.

It goes without saying I feel terrible for the German people going through this shit but I also feel bad for the majority of refugees and immigrants who aren't bastards. Far right twats everywhere are going to be using these attacks to shit on refugees and immigrants in general. Normal people are going to be far more wary of supporting immigration and refugee assistance. I mean shit part of the big Brexit thing was people worried about immigration. Probably not racists that hate brown people or anything, just people who see attacks like this or the Rotherham rape gangs or any other bad thing an immigrant or refugee does and don't want any part of it. Thats without even getting into the made up shit like the Sharia patrols and Sharia zones.

There are bad immigrants, bad refugees, nobody can deny that. But the fact is they are an extreme minority. Something needs done about those who are bad, sure, but to act like scared white old ladies clutching their purses around a black youth over all immigrants and refugees is just stupid.

Hopefully this doesn't change Germany's dealing with immigrants and refugees as they have been very welcoming to refugees and have been welcoming to immigrants before that (I remember reading that over 10% of the German population was immigrants and that was before the influx of refugees).

[Esquire]

God damn, why has the world gone insane?

It hasn't. Once again, 'the world,' insofar as that's a meaningful term, is massively better off than it's been at any point in recorded history. Calm down.

[Block]

God damn, why has the world gone insane?

You just hear about every single thing that happens, so it gives you the false perspective of a world out of control.

[Napoleon the Clown]

God damn, why has the world gone insane?

Well, about 70k years ago...

It's always been a rather chaotic, violent place with many shitty things happening. The difference is that we're hearing about it wherever it happens. Political unrest, to put it lightly, over in the Middle East has pushed a great many people away from their homes, and a handful of them are shitty. There's also a few shitty people who are, shall we say, "inspired" by the shitty people making great swaths of Syria and Iraq hellholes. These attacks are happening in countries that Western media gives a damn about, which is why it's announced so broadly. That the Current Enemy™ or someone resembling them performed an attack gives it more coverage than if it had been some white guy. (See: kebab murderer)

As others have mentioned, things are less violent and horrible on a global scale than at any point in history. There are certainly areas that are worse than they were a few decades ago, but there's always gonna be hotspots of unrest.

[Kingmaker]

God damn, why has the world gone insane?

Improvements in media and communications technology has made crazy people more aware than ever that they are not alone.

Improvements in media and communications technology has made you more aware than ever that you're stuck on a planet with crazy people, even if the relative number of crazy people has declined.

Alternatively, Samuel Huntington was right. Buy guns and build a bunker.

There are bad immigrants, bad refugees, nobody can deny that. But the fact is they are an extreme minority. Something needs done about those who are bad, sure, but to act like scared white old ladies clutching their purses around a black youth over all immigrants and refugees is just stupid.

This is a shitty rebuttal to nativism, because your typical nativist doesn't think that literally all immigrants are secretly psycho killer terrorists just waiting for the moment to strike. They think that immigrants are a net harm because, e.g. they harbor/generate terrorists, threaten native culture and clash with local values, exhibit greater criminal tendencies, are benefits/welfare sponges, 'dey turk er jerbs', and so on. Incidents like this do not help, because, they reinforce the feeling that we'd all be better off if we just shut the door (related: for many people, they trigger a visceral "We Are Being Attacked" response in a way accidents and routine crime do not), but there's far more to it than hand-wringing about a few acts of terrorism.

Unfortunately, I'm not really sure what a good way to defuse that sentiment is, only that whatever we're doing now doesn't seem to be working.

[K. A. Pital]

God damn, why has the world gone insane?

It hasn't. Once again, 'the world,' insofar as that's a meaningful term, is massively better off than it's been at any point in recorded history. Calm down.

Except that is debatable, if not flat out wrong. Why today families have to have two people working to maintain a living standard of one-worker families decades ago? Why it is flat out impossible to save for an apartment or house, only buy it in credit?

[ray245]

This is a shitty rebuttal to nativism, because your typical nativist doesn't think that literally all immigrants are secretly psycho killer terrorists just waiting for the moment to strike. They think that immigrants are a net harm because, e.g. they harbor/generate terrorists, threaten native culture and clash with local values, exhibit greater criminal tendencies, are benefits/welfare sponges, 'dey turk er jerbs', and so on. Incidents like this do not help, because, they reinforce the feeling that we'd all be better off if we just shut the door (related: for many people, they trigger a visceral "We Are Being Attacked" response in a way accidents and routine crime do not), but there's far more to it than hand-wringing about a few acts of terrorism.

Unfortunately, I'm not really sure what a good way to defuse that sentiment is, only that whatever we're doing now doesn't seem to be working.

It would rely on the Syrian refugees to actually be an actual community, and 2, actively condemn and "punish" any individuals of their "community" with radical Islam views. It's similar how everyone stops neo-nazism from growing, with a community actively working against any members known to be a neo-nazi.

If not, then islamophobia will only grow. Muslim organisations in Europe NEEDS to be seen at the forefront of discouraging radicalism and work with any individuals they know that might be susceptible to such influence. I think a big reason why Islamophobia is getting worse in Europe has largely been a result of Muslim organisations seen as taking a backseat approach towards combating radial Islam.

[Esquire]

Except that is debatable, if not flat out wrong. Why today families have to have two people working to maintain a living standard of one-worker families decades ago? Why it is flat out impossible to save for an apartment or house, only buy it in credit?

The short answer would be that both of those are, unfortunately, the historical standard. If required working adults per household and average home debt stay constant as wages and standard of living rise, this supports the idea that things are better on average than they have been in the past. Not as good as they could or perhaps should be, but I'll take gradual improvement over most other states, thanks very much.

[Esquire]

I should expand - the idea of the one-worker household, as far as I'm aware, has only been reasonable common (and by no means universal) since the 1950s; before, during, and since then, many (or most, as applicable) families had two working adults and, historically, frequently several working children.

[Kingmaker]

Whether or not your house costs more in relative terms than your grandfather's, you are substantially less likely to die violently than your grandfather, allowing for some local variation (as far as I've read).

[Esquire]

Precisely. Things suck, they just suck less than they ever have before, on balance.

[K. A. Pital]

Whether or not your house costs more in relative terms than your grandfather's, you are substantially less likely to die violently than your grandfather, allowing for some local variation (as far as I've read).

But am I substantially less likely to die than my father? Why the entire post -WWII period, including the height of social democracy in Western Europe, is somehow worse than what we have now?

I do not see a huge improvement over the 1980s in personal safety, for example. Maybe it is counter-intuitive, dunno.

[Kingmaker]

I do not see a huge improvement over the 1980s in personal safety, for example. Maybe it is counter-intuitive, dunno.

You, personally? I possibly couldn't say. It wouldn't mean anything, anyway, since you're just one person. There are, of course, local variations (e.g. I imagine it would be safer to be a Syrian man in the 1980s than right now) over time, but the general global trend has been fewer deaths from war, fewer deaths from terrorism, fewer deaths from disease, etc...

[K. A. Pital]

No, I mean Western Europe in general. It is true that things may be getting better somewhere (usually due to China and South East Asia rising back to prominence), but here - I am not convinced.

So if the heart of the matter is the security situation in Germany, I find it a bit worrisome to just ignore the worsening because, to quote from a hypercapitalist DHL ad "things are getting better for everyone everywhere".

Not to mention that they really are not uniformly getting better.




So as an Asian, I am clearly on the winning side in the "less likely to die" (get mugged, robbed, raped etc). But as a European or an American (not just US, but overall from the Americas)... Not really.

[Titan Uranus]

Well, honestly, comparing the breakdown by nation, it seems like the European homocide rates began rising after mass immigration from muslim nations began, it would be quite odd if that didn't involve a rise in crime, as you are adding people from a high crime population to a low crime population.

It's unfortunate that there isn't a large Western European nation that didn't accept very many muslim immigrants.
You could say Poland, but given the fall of communism and the fact that your graph only shows a rise in offences, I'm willing to attribute that to a more efficient police force less willing to accept bribes for minor offenses. And of course, depending on which nations in the Americas we are talking about, several have collapsed into failed states since the 1970s, especially in Central America.

Although that doesn't really explain the 1970's or the dramatic fall in the UK.

Were there any othe major immigration waves from high-crime regions? Say Eastern Europe or Africa?

Though I'm open to economic inequality playing a role, there are huge differences in crime rates between the first, second, and third worlds.

For instance, the Sudan (3rd world, but at war) had a murder rate of 295/million in 2008, the more reasonable Pakistan had 79/million in 2008, while Estonia (2nd world) had a rate of 52/million in 2010, and first world France had 10/million in 2009.
I couldn't find a rate for violent crime across a large variety of countries. And of course the third world and the UK are subject to the possibility or fact of cooked books, but still.

I'm not sure how to explain the drop in the UK though. However given the way they count homocides, it's possible that they are cooking the books and that what happened in Rotherham was not as much of an outlier as it appeared.

[K. A. Pital]

I did not ask to explain the reasons (yet), I merely sought to dispell the bullshit "things are getting better for everyone everywhere" because I'm fucking sick of this capitalist lie that's leading people into a future of cyberpunk oppression with an almost caste-like structure of society.

Now that's out of the way, I want to understand the core of your argument.

Is the world "much better than at any point in history"? Why the hell should this "utopia point" be now? We're living in a sick, miserable world where fates of powerless billions are decided by a tiny sick psychopatic elite of botox-filled politicians and oligarchs who simply live in a different reality. Which is an improvement over a world war hell or the purgatory of the Middle Ages, but it seems like it's getting more sick, not less sick, compared to some 30 years ago.

If the situation in the Middle East has worsened (and I doubt that there'd be one fucker to deny it here, with the bloodbath from 2003 onwards and the refugee numbers at a 50-year or something high according to the UN statistics), and the situation in Europe has worsened, and in the US homicide rates simply returned to where they were in the 1970s...

Where's that massive improvement outside Asia? Or does Asia now mean "the world"?

I hope that now my point is completely clear.

[MKSheppard]

Comrade KA PITAL. I notice how overall violent crime in the US is trending downwards, but Europe, it's going up up up up