Have you heard the news about the attack in London?

Thanks for the news. I currently don’t have access to TV so I wouldn’t be able to know if you hadn’t posted.

Sad for the people, they just had to die from some random maniac.

The anniversary of the Brussels attack.

I heard about it because I was there. It won’t change anything. I still feel safe here.

I’m in Memphis. No terrorism, but I don’t feel safe. Terrorism is relatively rare but crime is out of control in many areas.

Eh. Only 4 dead, and one of them was just stabbed.
How pedestrian.

In the US (Wisconsin) yesterday there was a family argument (sorry domestic violence) that resulted in 4 dead and 100plus officers trying to deal with the situation. And that probably didn’t make the news outside of the county where it happened.
1 guy with a knife is quite frankly a little dull.

I think you have to develop a fatalistic attitude toward this kind of thing. This doesn’t mean you don’t take precautions. it just means you have to accept that it can and will happen anywhere. and that perhaps the changes you make will keep you alive, perhaps not.

Me, not at all. Although I have walked over that bridge next to Big Ben myself.

I’ve been in other places (Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, London Kings Cross Station, Paris) where terrorism had occurred weeks or months before. Sad, but life goes on. I would do what you plan – be watchful, but don’t change your plans or your life.

My local news mentioned it.

Every day in America 28 people die from alcohol related car accidents yet I still drive.

Nobody was shot except the perpetrator, and that was by police.

U.S. homegrown nuts take out more in a movie theater.

We had more killed by an elderly driver in Santa Monica.

I heard about it on the news shortly after it happened. My daughter was working nearby so I was pleased to get a text from her to say she was OK.

@zenvelo Jesus, it’s not a competition.

Yeah, I live in America. I’m numb to these stories.

@cinnamonk You’re right, It is not a competition.

But half the motivation for terrorist attacks is the news and notoriety that comes after the act. Terrorism breeds on the terror that follows. Yesterday, the London incident (I would not call it an attack) was on the cable news all day long.

Why are we agonizing over a mundane “terrorist” incident? 28 people were injured when a drunk driver ran into a Mardi Gras parade last month. But we don’t see people suggesting that car keys be turned over for 24 hours when someone buys booze.

I do not live cowering in a cellar, but I am certainly not numb to such attacks.
I saw the footage, including the woman who fell from the bridge.
Quite a lot of pain is involved, including the loss of lives.
I feel concern for the safety of innocent people, going about their daily activities. I feel grief, for those already harmed, I feel anger at those who would set about planning such abhorrent acts.

@zenvelo I had forgotten about that incident. It’s hard to keep track when there’s a new tragedy every goddamned day.

I’m glad that more people weren’t hurt (remember the truck attack in Nice?) and feel terrible for the victims. What else is there to say? These kind of events are becoming commonplace.

Perhaps if we quit labeling such attacks as terror and just called them murder?

@rojo The motivation of the attack was to terrorize, and ISIS has already claimed responsibility for it. What would be the purpose of concealing the motivations of the attacker?

@cinnamonk I think you’re missing @rojo‘s point. As someone who lives and works a stone’s throw away from this “terror” attack I can assure you that no one round here feels in the least bit terrorised. ISIS have a standing instruction to claim responsibility for all terror acts irregardless of whether or not the had anything to do with it.

I remember back in the day when real terroists would detonate a ton (as in a literal ton) of high explosives (kindly paid for by the good citizens of the US) in central London on a weekly basis and we weren’t terrorized then either.

Call it something else then, but it’s dishonest to call violence inspired by Islamic ideology simply “murder.”

@cinnamonk What would be the purpose of concealing the motivations of the attacker?

The purpose would be taking any “moral authority” the terrorist claims by aligning himself with some struggle, real or perceived.

@zenvelo I don’t follow.

@cinnamonk You call it a “terrorist attack” and ISIS gets to tell its adherents what a “glorious struggle taken to the heat of the infidel.”

Call it a chicken shit mass murder and it takes the propaganda power out of the act.

Yours is the right approach. These tactics on the part of terrorists are effective only if the populace can be persuaded to cower in fear.

Yes, I saw the headlines first thing yesterday, very sad. I do not allow fear to dictate my freedom to move about as I choose. Good for you @Stinley , just go about your business and don’t let fear get a hold of you. My daughter is traveling to Poland, Amsterdam and Rome in May, if all goes well with the potential visa requirements in Europe. Still waiting to see if her plans will be effected.

You cannot allow fear to dictate your freedoms.

The police have now named the attacker as English born Khalid Masood. In a statement, the Metropolitan Police said: “He was known to police and has a range of previous convictions for assaults, including GBH, possession of offensive weapons and public order offences.”

He sounds like a social misfit rather than a bona fide terrorist and his victims include three French children, two Romanians, four South Koreans, one German, one Pole, one Irish, one Chinese, one Italian, one American and two Greeks.

ISIS has been losing in Iraq and Syria, and last year they stopped asking for foreign recruits.

Instead they are encouraging sympathizers to make low-level attacks at home. That’s how we got the Nice and the Pulse nightclub massacres. Low-level meaning not from organized groups and not thoroughly planned (though the body counts were horrendously high).

It’s the same mentality as Dylann Roof in Charleston and “militia” groups like the Kansas group who wanted to bomb Somali immigrants in Kansas.

Impressionable losers buy into conspiracy thinking and become convinced they are heroes making a stand to save their people.

They need to be treated as the petty gangsters that they are.

@Call_Me_Jay you mean, taken out to a cornfield somewhere, beaten near to death with baseball bats, and then buried alive?

Interesting philosophy. So if they kill my wife and family but I still go to the Opera, they don’t win, I do. Is that about right?

@Jaxk as long as you avoid calling it terrorism, then apparently yes.

@Call_Me_Jay What else are you supposed to do, wall yourself from the world and cease living? Living well IS the best “revenge.” If we allow fear to control us we are not living. I know people that refuse to leave their homes without their concealed weapons, that refuse to shop in certain establishments that don’t allow CC permits to enter, that refuse to go to the movie theater.

Fuck that!
If it gets to a point where you’re afraid to leave home, or leave home without a gun,travel anywhere, well shit…you might as well just shoot yourself because you are not living anyway. Terrorism is not any different than any other risk of random crime, it just gets a lot more attention and while it does happen the odds are still quite small that any of us will ever be directly effected.

@Coloma I assume you are responding to @Jaxk, not me.

This is not a new concept. …then the terrorists win.

and, if you compare the society of the United States now with that 17 years ago then I feel there is a valid argument to be made that the terrorists have already won.

I heard the news, but I didn’t know much details.
I don’t think it’s terrorism, seems more like some random nutjob. Not that it makes any difference.
Thankfully, the police acted in time and managed to tame him before any more people got killed.
As for me personally, attacks like this don’t bother me much. Sadly, those happen all the time. Made me numb a bit. Sorry if that sounds insensitive. Hope you’re well.

The ghost of Cho Seung Hui is laughing at this amateur.

There are a lot of Brits on this island. I was down at the yacht club yesterday afternoon. It got honorable mention in our conversations and that’s about it. Brits don’t show their concerns like Americans do. I like that about them. Not a fucking anyone here could do anyway.

@Lightlyseared

“I remember back in the day when real terroists would detonate a ton (as in a literal ton) of high explosives (kindly paid for by the good citizens of the US) in central London on a weekly basis and we weren’t terrorized then either.”

Are you referring to the IRA?

It seems, I don’t know, a little insensitive to the suffering of the actual victims to boast about how we’re all troopers for moving on and “not letting the terrorists win” when none of us here were tangibly affected by this event in any way.

However you want to spin it, there are dozens of people whose lives were definitely upended by acts of terror yesterday.

^^My God, man. Do you spend every waking hour of every day of your life in mourning for all the victims in this world? When do you ever have the time to live the one and only chance you have at a life?

There are people out there taking care of this. For a regular citizen to spend one unnecessary minute in fear or paranoia, to accede to outrageous laws against freedom in the name of security, to not live life to the fullest and pursue your own happiness in your own way, is to give these assholes a win. Don’t do that. Give them nothing.

@Espiritus_Corvus no, of course I don’t. Why have you been picking on me so much lately? It feels really mean.

Well, I was pretty annoyed the US media talked and talked and talked about Trump yesterday every time I turned on the TV when I was trying to find out more about what happened in London.

Was it connected to a terrorists group? I still am not sure what was reported, because I haven’t had the chance to really look into how it was reported.

I don’t think we should ever get used to this sort of thing, whether it be terrorism or a mass killing.

Upsetting. People were injured a few died. Yesterday my heart and mind was in England not knowing exactly what had happened. I think a lot of Americans often don’t identify, or bother to have empathy with other countries when things like this happen, but we should. When the Paris attack happened a friend’s friend on Facebook actually wrote “now Europe knows what it was like for America on 9/11.” Seriously?! Fucking idiot. Like Europe didn’t have terrorism before 9/11? I do think 9/11 at least got more Americans paying attention to the world. Some of that is good, some bad.

@JLeslie ISIS took credit for the attack but that may not mean anything.

^^Thanks. I’m sure my company wrote about it. I haven’t even looked up stories from the company I work for. Lol. I’m a mess.

The man was a born Brit. He acted on his own, but he was on intelligence radar because of past activities.
He said he did it for ISIS, that is why they claimed credit.

If he did it for ISIS then I count it for ISIS.

Doesn’t affect me personally at all, unless I were there, or knew someone involved.

If he did it for ISIS then I count it for ISIS

They say basically that, claim it is in our name and we will confirm.

It’s a strategy to make a dwindling force seem larger.

^^Interesting.

I just feel like if the killer identifies with ISIS then it counts as ISIS. If someone burned a cross on a lawn and said they were KKK, I don’t really care if the person in charge of the KKK ordered it or not. The KKK promotes hate and so anyone hateful identifying with them counts.

@JLeslie He didn’t claim to do it for ISIS, ISIS claimed him. He is dead, and was not available for questions.

I got my details early this morning. I guess there was still confusion then. They said he claimed he did it for ISIS. Yes, he was killed, after he attacked people with a knife, and killed a cop up close and personal. He had plenty of opportunity to declare his motivation.
So, I dunno. I guess details got more sorted out since this morning.
Sorry.

@zenvelo I figured he had some sort of message somewhere. I misunderstood.

@Call_Me_Jay Oops, yes, i was addressing @Jaxk Sorry.

I have heard about it. It makes me feel very sad for those who have lost their lives or have lost loved ones. I feel sad for those who are now hopefully recovering in hospital and I hope they are well soon. I’m glad to see that those in the UK and the British government refuse to be quelled by this most recent senseless attack.