Confusing picture emerging of last night's events, at least on the news here. One explosion and another unexploded device found but 'no credible threat' to New York?
Plus a bomb near a race in New Jersey.
Family there and visiting for Christmas so does hit home quite a lot. Such a great city.
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Never a good thing to see in the news though, regardless of intent behind it.
Political leaders should just assure people that the appropriate security forces are dealing with the situation and doing everything they can to ensure that the threat is contained and that the appropriate intelligence agencies have started investigations to assertain who was responsible.
Reasons for that are probably twofold, 1) no claim of responsibility thus far and it's been 15+hours. 2) this doesn't fit with the MO of major international terrorists.
I drew the same conclusions immediately after the Nice attacks.
Sorry for asking but, how come you feel the need to question my instinct to draw an early conclusion? What is your point?
You've got literally no evidence, and frankly no business investigating this from your armchair. It sounds a bit self-important to me. When the Boston bombings occurred, Reddit users decided to carry out their own investigation, pouring over videos and images before coming to the conclusion that one Sunil Tripathi was the guilty party.
He wasn't, and tragically committed suicide soon after, most probably as a result of the Internet detectives who blamed him for murder, leading to a witch hunt. Try telling his family there's no harm in people with no connection to the event drawing their own conclusions because they saw an episode of Columbo once and decided it's their God-given right to get involved.
Why not just let the experts do their thing? It might be human nature to find intrigue, but surely we're bright enough to get over that basic instinct and not come to unqualified conclusions? What good could you possibly do otherwise?
This includes if you're the twitter account of a police station:
http://kdvr.com/2016/07/08/dallas-police-slammed-on-social-media-for-tweeting-picture-of-innocent-suspect/
There are many good things about the Internet and the unfettered access everyone has to information and access to means to voice and share reactions to events. There are of course also many bad things about it. But one of the good things is that people in authority no longer have complete control over what information its citizens have access to and they can no longer control the conversations and discussions that their citizens choose to have about that information
Of course people are going to come to their own - often wrong - conclusions, as Red says, it's human nature.
For what it's worth, I'd suspect this was Islamist related due to Amaq claiming ISIS responsibility for the shopping mall stabbings. However, I will say that those who immediately point fingers towards Islam are as dangerous as those who refuse to accept that Islam has an issue.
Crucially, however, I didn't speculate, rather I read it as a report long after the fact (although I accept that report may have been erroneous). That's not the same thing as you figuring out the motive for a terrorist attack the day of the attack, from a thousand miles away based on second or third hand evidence. Again, I fail to see what you hope to achieve by doing that, beyond entertaining yourself.
And while the availability of information is a good thing, I think you're somewhat self-aggrandising to cite that as justification for your speculation.
There's lots of things that are human nature that I am proud to say I don't do. I don't think that works as an excuse.
That's not the same as theorising about the individuals behind the attack and their motive though. With increasing regularity, and usually within minutes of an incident, you quickly see two types of people:
(a) those who hope it was a middle class white man to prove a point about other people being capable of the evils that Islamism seem to evoke;
(b) those who immediately take it upon themselves to point the finger towards certain parts of the community before any evidence is heard.
Both are dangerous for different reasons. (A) is a horrific mentality that avoids confronting a very real problem within the Muslim community, and (B) tends to whip up a reactive frenzy without any basis.
1) In the US, the word "Terrorism" is pretty much only connected to that of extremist Islam. Nothing else is ever universally referred to as terrorism, no matter how disgusting or deadly (insert reference to however many mass shootings we've had).
2) This is New York, the site of the worst domestic terrorist attack in the US, whose 15th anniversary has just gone.
I can speak to the first far better than the second, as I am not a New Yorker, but when Di Blasio says "it's intentional" but doesn't say it's terrorism that is code for "we don't know Muslims did it" because as soon as you say "terrorism" you invoke that it was an act by an Islamic Extremist.
Also, I know how to use it correctly, thanks.. I never attempted to shoehorn it into this discussion though. Which makes that entire post a bit bizarre to be quite honest.
Normally I'd say each to their own, but when such stuff is damaging an unhelpful, I think it's fair to call it out.
If you think anyone expressing a view is guilty of self-aggrandising then everyone posting on this forum is guilty of it every time they post.
Personally, whenever these situations occur I've been posting quite heavily about them - a combination of social media access, a messed up sleep pattern and interest in current affairs means I end up seeing quite a bit of the news as they develop. I've always try to draw the line under wild speculation though, and where I have speculated I've generally provided a bit of background or a quote.
With the Internet it's all too easy to put 2 + 2 together and accidentally further misinformation unfortunately, and that often incites quite a nasty reaction. For that reason, I totally agree with you.