61–70 of 144 posts
With all due respect to Mr Schneier, I think this comparison is not 100% valid. There is a substantial difference between a terrorist threat from a lone mentally ill person and an organized group with ideology shared by thousands of people.
This is not about Republicans.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "regional security departments" the article refers to are high-security psychiatric wards. The problem was that if the court declares Breivik insane, Norway couldn't (legally) put him in a high-security criminal prison, and there was no equivalent for psychiatric cases. Now there is. It is a change, and clearly in response to this case, but the scope of the change is limited.
The problem was that if the court declares Breivik insane, Norway couldn't (legally) put him in a high-security criminal prison. That's wrong - they can do that without Lex Breivik. The issue is when he's declared healthy, what would then happen? It's legal to detain him if it can be proved that he constitutes a danger to society. However, if he is not considered a danger to the society, he will be able to walk freel…
From an article on the opposition to the law[1] (my translation):
The Department of Health hasn't tried to hide that the
goal is a stricter set of laws which can be
used if Breivik is sentenced to compulsory mental
health care.
The department has long wanted a change of laws to
improve the security in institutions that hold highly
dangerous patients. This work was sped up after July 22.
The criticisms I've seen seem to center on that the new law makes it too simple to declare someone "dangerously insane".
Do you have a link supporting your interpretation?
[1] http://nrk.no/227/dag-for-dag/lovforslag-moter-kraftig-motbo...
[2] http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/Lex-Breivik-splitter...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We've been yelling at the sheeple long enough to know it's ineffective. What I want to know is what would it take to wake them?
Proper civics and all-rounded technical and humanities education, preferably life long[1]. Without the humanities you will be left without an understanding of social repercussions, technical education helps you (in my experience) stay logical and methodological. [1] Journalism, wikipedia articles, books, adult education classes, when good and proper are all education.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about the London tube/bus suicide bombings: those were domestic terrorism and elicited a distinctly different response than we're seeing in Norway now. Or is it only domestic terrorism when the perpetrators are white one wonders!
Good call. I would say that in public perception, since there is an international jihad underway (again, narratively speaking) it is easy to label the tubes bombings as non-domestic. If there was the perception of a global right-wing/fascist war on western society underway then perhaps the Norwegian massacre would have been seen differently. Any Brit here caring to comment on British public perception of the tubes bo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And at what point do such things become a pattern? Unfortunately, mass shootings happen in the US at a rate of roughly one per year.
firearms killings _are_ a pattern, if I recall correctly they are something between 5 and 10 times more frequent in US than other first wold countries. I personally believe that US citizens are unable to understand how dumb their attitude to weapons is, but + mass shootings wouldn't be much impacted by changes in the policy + mass shooting don't seem to have a strong correlation with firearm policy
However...
>firearms killings _are_ a pattern, if I recall correctly they are something between 5 and 10 times more frequent in US than other first wold countries. I personally believe that US citizens are unable to understand how dumb their attitude to weapons is,
You can't compare crime rates without controlling for other differences. Most other first world countries are much more ethnically homogenous than the U.S.
And they don't suffer from the cultural problems caused by the fairly recent institutional persecution of an entire class of people.
It's not very PC to talk about, and I think that the high incidence of crime amongst black Americans is directly caused by the decades of persecution they suffered which causes them to occupy a lower socio-economic position on average than whites, not any inherent racial differences.
But whatever the reason, whites and blacks both have similar access to guns and similar gun ownership rates, yet if you only count white americans, you'll find a fairly similar gun crime rate to the rest of the first World, so clearly, easy access to guns isn't the problem.
The closest country I can think of to our situation is South Africa (Rights recently restored to an historical lower class. Though it's still not a great comparison because of their relatively lower GDP per capital, and different demographics). Their gun violence rate is about 5 times that of the US.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Suffering will eventually wake them up, but by then the opportunities to do something about it will be considerably less.
"...and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." One wonders the level of suffering people actually endure by having to purchase new deodorant at the duty free.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/census-shows-1-2-people-103940...
Sobering. I cringe every time I remember that it is likely that someone will propose metal-detectors at movie theaters now.
While I agree with you, there is interesting data about effectiveness of these things coming from Israel: Back in 2000, Israel had a series of suicide bombing attacks, which resulted (among other things) in a law requiring every mall, restaurant, cafe, theatre, office buildings and many other businesses to have a full time security guard who will check every person coming in with a metal detector. There were a lot of…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And at what point do such things become a pattern? Unfortunately, mass shootings happen in the US at a rate of roughly one per year.
So about one shooting a year, this year's had 12 fatalities. Remember that heat wave/power outage combination we had on the east cost (USA); at least 46 fatalities [1] [1] http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/06/12597271-dozens...
I do find it rather worrying that people around the world seem absolutely fine with all the various initiatives introduced, all in the name of preventing terrorism. I've had friends consider me crazy for complaining - way after the time, I hasten to add - that I'd had a small deodorant can taken off me in airport security, which I'd then had to purchase in the duty free shop. My wife's now tired of me complaining - a…
I do find terrifying what's happening in UK lately, seemingly all of the sudden from those of us not living there, like that new law proposal to monitor everyone's private communications. Not too long ago that kind of proposal would've been seen as insane. Now it seems a lot of politicians are taking it seriously, as if history before the past 20 years doesn't even exist, and we've all started from scratch 20 years ago. They now think monitoring everyone is a "necessary" thing to prevent the "evils" of the world.
Also, in US, isn't it strange how they don't talk about terrorists "hating us for our freedoms" anymore? Is it because they've realized what a stupid statement that was to begin with, or because they know they're taking them away one by now one, and it's best not to mention this dirty word "freedom" anymore?