People killed by terrorism per year in western Europe 1970-2015
datagraver.com
datagraver.com
The goal of terrorism is not merely killing people though.
See also Revised Academic Consensus Definition of Terrorism (2011) [1]
[1] http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php/pot/article/vi...
Some more reading material:
* http://international.ucla.edu/media/files/Rapoport-Four-Wave...
Could we consider the terrorism in Europe part of a new wave? Note: it's thought that "modern" terrorism started with anarchist movements in the 1880s; Lenin's brother was executed for his involvement in one of the earliest groups.
* http://www.utdallas.edu/~tms063000/website/TargetSubstitutio...
Terrorists have shifted their targets over the years from hardened military targets to "softer" ones. It's easier (unfortunately) to run over 100 civilians with a lorry than it is to attack a military outpost.
* http://www.ir.rochelleterman.com/sites/default/files/pape%20...
The "logic" behind suicide terrorism is unfortunately pretty sound. If you are in Palestine where human life is "cheap" due to environment and material resources are expensive, suicide bombing strikes groups like the West particularly hard where life is expensive and tech is "cheap", and the smartest most expensive missiles aren't nearly as smart as someone packed with explosives who is willing to die.
The worst thing about all of this is that modern terrorism became possible because media enabled terror to reach farther than before: today's social media environment is like a best-case scenario for terrorists because their actions reach so damn far so quickly. Most attacks today are livestreamed. ISIS virtually has a media empire. Zuckerberg and Ev Williams probably weren't thinking about the issue much when they were building their their networks.
What's even more striking is the fact that the refugee crisis is gonna keep this going for another generation or more. The US destabilized the Middle East by invading Iraq, which created a new wave of terrorism and refugees in Europe, and new reprisals by the West, which continues the cycle. This was one of bin Laden and al Qaeda's explicit goals.
Even though they probably understand on a logical level that they are part of the whole thing, they just can't seem to help themselves.
The media can change though.
A good example of this is how the CDC advised news organizations to cover suicide. It was determined in the 70s that suicide spiked following news coverage of famous individuals deaths which led to these guidelines.
A good example is the headline the NY Times used for Chris Cornell's death. It simply said that he died at 52.
I would really like to see these implemented for mass shootings though. There is an organization called "No Notoriety" I believe that's purpose is to prevent coverage of the perpetrators to deny them any sorts of fame.
I disagree, at least with the "equal" part, but I think entirely. I don't think Islamic extremists blow up westerners to get famous, they primarily do it out of revenge and frustration. Revenge for all the things the west has done to them for centuries, and frustration at how they are treated in western countries, not just as refugees but even as non-wealthy immigrants. I believe the west does a really poor job of properly assimilating Islamic newcomers, and as a result they often end up segregated in "slums", growing up poor and ignored, while getting the (often incorrect, from TV shows and what not) impression that "regular" people in western countries are living a life of luxury while they are dirt poor.
I don't know if the west "deserves" what they're getting with all this terrorism, but they kind of asked for it in my opinion.
If you wants bombs going off in public places, sure.
We are deciding to allow immigration/refugees from these cultures, and we have ample evidence to know what happens when they are managed in the way we are doing now. I think whose "job" it is to manage assimilation is largely irrelevant compared to the effects of not doing it properly.
Better, don't bring them in the first place
You can't integrate (some) people who won't let go of their backwards mentality.
I don't know why are we trying/pretending in the first place
As a parallel thought. The mass murder in Srebrenica was executed by Serbs; who are in large majority Orthodox Christian. The conflicts in medieval Europe between Catholics and Atheists, and Catholics and Protestants are also widely documented (Spanish Inquisition etc). It'd be silly to draw conclusions towards all Orthodox Christians or Catholics. Silly and also dangerous. How would you feel if you're on vacation in Egypt and every Muslim you see regards you as a warmonger, just because you are from the West and your country supported the war in Iraq? Generalizations like these are a dangerous line of thinking. We must refrain from these, and understand not everyone with political view X or religion Y is therefore A or B even if it does statistically speaking (merely) increase the likelihood.
But I'm not. I'm not worried about tourists from any country in general, I'm worried about people that come to Europe expecting a free ride while not think they have to adapt. Then somehow if they get frustrated "it's the west's fault". Come on.
And get rid of the well financed ones that "are asking for asylum" because "they're persecuted in their home country" (for being an islamist)
> is therefore A or B even if it does statistically speaking (merely) increase the likelihood.
"Merely" is ending up with a lot of people killed.
Yes, up to a point, or are we supposed to bend over to accomodate backwards/barbaric practices?
Multiculturalism works if it doesn't involve a-holes
> And saying most of them want a free ride is just nonsense.
I didn't say most. See (try google translate, the video is interesting but can't be easily translated):
https://www.reddit.com/r/de/comments/4j9cip/falsche_versprec...
http://cicero.de/berliner-republik/migrationspolitik-jedes-u...
Talk about white guilt...
[citation needed]
I can't speak for bin Laden but in 2000 I would have never predicted that the EU will allow this kind of immigration on such scale. I suspect some of the new member states would have been much more reluctant to join if they knew.
FYI, graph at the start is missing the most recent years. End graph is more up to date: http://www.datagraver.com/thumbs/1300x1300r/2017-05/ter-we-i...
Also, Western states and NGOs supported and continue to support various rebels against old, mostly totalitarian and often USSR/Russia-friendly regimes in the region which used to maintain order and keep extremists under their boot. They do it in the name of democracy but how it is turning out we all see.
So, if my understanding of the situation is right, there are a number of conflicts that involve militant Islamic groups, but some of these conflicts are being spurred on by foreign powers with ulterior motives. These foreign powers provide support to some of these groups (in the form of arms, training, and/or direct combat support?)
And the solution would be for these foreign powers to, in one way or another, directly address and resolve their disagreements? At that point there's no reason to be waging proxy wars and the foreign powers can withdraw their support / intervention, or intervene with more benign motives (e.g. humanitarian) where appropriate.
Just to preface this, my understanding of what's happening in the middle-east is tenuous at best. But I think one possible wrinkle is that we now have a situation where there are 'proxy wars within proxy wars'. Starting from the outermost layer, you've got the US on one side and Russia on the other (I think?). I'm actually not 100% clear on their motivations. And on the inside layer you have two opposing regional powers and major oil producers (i.e. economic competitors, despite the recent tepid OPEC agreement) who also have religious differences: Saudi Arabia (Sunni / Wahhabi - US aligned) and Iran & Syria (Shia - Russia aligned). These two might engage in some direct military action (not with each other though), but also fund groups like Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah (who are variously thought of as legitimate political entities, terrorists, resistance movements and so on depending on where you stand).
And then there are 'third-party' groups who I'm not sure are strongly aligned with one side or another, but are nonetheless involved: IS / Daesh (who are religiously opposed to Iran, but to whom Saudi Arabia responded by building a 600 mile wall to try and keep them [Daesh] out of their territory), Turkey(?), Kurdistan and Israel (who, weirdly, I guess are nominally aligned with Saudi Arabia and the US, given their concerns about Iranian nukes and conflicts with Hezbollah).
Does that sound right to you, or have I gone horribly wrong somewhere?
The low, low price for this is our inching ever closer to police state status. No big deal, right.
"An operation run by GCHQ, the British intelligence and security organisation, used interception warrants to monitor phones owned by individuals linked to the 2015 plot, it was reported."
Whereas earlier you mentioned the panopticon.
Well, the above has very little to do with mass surveillance. If anything, that just muds the water. It has to do with targeted surveillance. Which has a proven track record.
I've yet to see the efficiency of mass surveillance in a direct relation to catching terrorism.
Either way, terrorism does contribute to bulk surveillance. And heck, it might even actually be helpful. You don't know because it's secret.
Your quote does not directly support mass surveillance. It might just as well be an argument for targeted surveillance. I got nothing against targeted surveillance (I'm a proponent for that).
It doesn't need to. I wanted to point out that mass surveillance is one of the costs of terrorism, regardless of its effectiveness in fighting it. And that we know little about its effectiveness because presumably there is lots of top secret stuff going on. Surely they don't want ISIS to know which channels are compromised and how, which means you can't know too.
It is possible that the libertarians are right, that mass surveillance doesn't in of itself prevent acts of terror. There's considerable evidence there's a TMI problem. Just as with any form of education, too much information can prevent learning because prioritization gets shot.
What the libertarians don't address though is the possibility that mass surveillance may as a side affect hold back a higher order of terror.
The feeling of being watched changes people's behaviour, known to often make them self police. This applies to future terrorists becoming more passive also. Terrorism is a very tiny subset of human behaviours after all.
The supporters of mass surveillance don't want to make that argument because they rightly think it plays into the hands of the civil liberties people.
Against this is 'Culture' or the side affect wouldn't be as consequential. Post World War 1 German society, Islam today, different Mafias, they have in common a normalization of political violence. To get the full value you'd need to break the society down e.g. Denazification, anti-racketeering laws...
There are other plausible reasons to consider why terrorism has lowered in Western Europe:
1) IRA is dismantled. IRA and UK are at peace.
2) ETA is dismantled as well. That's more recently though.
3) The Iron Curtain is down. Its a well known fact Eastern Europe states were supporting terrorists such as Carlos and the RAF. In the 80s this became less feasible already.
4) Right after the Iron Curtain went down there were wars and new countries (eventually) born. After that, the region more or less stabilized. NB: This is merely my perception.
The IRA were vastly more capable than the Islamic terrorists we face in the UK today, but they never had to face a security service as well equipped to deal with them.
Can you objectively prove this? Specifically that its due to 1) experience 2) advancement in tech?
Terrorists also gain experience. Terrorists also advance in tech.
You do realize terrorist plots were foiled in the 70s and 80s as well? Minimizing (casualties from) terrorism is of all times.
Yet the so-called 'vastly more capable' security services did not stop 9/11, Madrid, London attacks, Boston, or the attack on the USS Cole. All of that happened after mid 90s, arguably when mass surveillance was possible.
What your posts continue to lack is any kind of substance on the positive effect of mass surveillance.
The fact targeted surveillance is much older is a fallacy. However targeted surveillance has a proven track record. I've yet to see the efficiency of mass surveillance. I'll put my money on a lot of false positives, and a cat and mouse game where the mouse is going to adapt pretty quickly to the mass surveillance. In Belgium, for example, the government wants to have all SIM cards registered. All anonymous SIM cards will be disabled in a month. Hows that going to help catch terrorists? If not only for the fact anonymous SIM cards are still sold in the neighboring The Neherlands?
Finally, as I posted in the other post, we must remember the main goal of terrorism is not (merely) 'killing people' [1]. So the statistic isn't accurately describing the 'effectiveness of terrorism'.
[1] Specifically: "7. The direct victims are not the ultimate target (as in a classical assassination where victim and target coincide) but serve as message generators, more or less unwittingly helped by the news values of the mass media, to reach various audiences and conflict parties that identify either with the victims’ plight or the terrorists’ professed cause;"
By proves I don't mean the security services saying that they have saved you from numerous terror attacks per year (but all the details have to remain secret "because of security reasons").
Without proves your comment is pure right-winged surveillance propaganda.
Terrorists simply shift their attacks to the simplest form that still works and could not care less about those that get caught, they are the equivalent of probes to determine what works and what does not, they were expendable, whether they succeed or not is not relevant as long as some of them do succeed. The conclusion seems to be that low tech attacks carried out by a minimum number of people against soft targets have the highest chance to succeed.
Open societies are by definition incapable of stopping terrorist attacks in a direct way. Any idiot with a driving license (or even without) can be instructed in how to turn a lorry or even a regular car into a weapon.
The internet enables effective command and control and the media helpfully increase the apparent magnitude and effectiveness of an attack.
'vastly' indicates huge numbers, 'all of the people' indicates huge numbers as well. In reality those numbers are (1) really small and (2) do not account for those attacks where governments helped a little bit to get the ball rolling (or in fact did almost everything).
Keep in mind that terrorists, just like hackers only have to succeed once in a while, that in spite of using plain comms a substantial amount of these attacks succeed and that in an open society there is no effective way of stopping terrorists to begin with.
So if you really want to get to the point where each and every terrorist attack is stopped you are arguing for a police state because that would stop you from getting into your car and driving wherever you want to go as well. Otherwise what is there to stop you from driving into a bunch of pedestrians and claiming terrorism?
It's almost like they want attacks to continue happening for political gain
Not successfully following up could be a number of things though, it's pretty difficult to determine which it might have been when you can hardly trust what is printed in the newspapers or comes out of politicians mouths.
Looking at the graph, I can't help but think that even the peak of yearly casualties is a rounding error compared to the other types of threats facing Europeans.
Terrorism isn't warfare, it is a strategy. The object is to get two groups to conflict aka sectarianism.
I'd say Islamic terror coupled with MENA mass migration is well on its way to producing low intensity civil conflict in countries such as France.
Examining the civil wars in Lebanon and Syria will likely reveal a series of escalating attacks before they broke out proper.
You're saying the spark from each struck match is not meaningful. I agree, but we're at Gas Station across the street from the Dynamite Store!
*try to
Risk assessment is about probabilty and impact. People overweight risk in cases of extreme impact or high probability. We're also bad at identifying root cause.
https://theintercept.com/2015/11/17/u-s-mass-surveillance-ha...
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20...
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-aclu-tsa-20170207-stor...
http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/03/opinions/abend-tsa-screening-f...
Terror attacks destabilize societies. Car crashes don't.
The more the media focuses on the terrorists themselves instead of commemorating the victims, the more would-be attackers will want to have their 15 minutes of infamy. The more shocking the reporting the media crafts, the more fearful the citizens become, and thus the more effective terrorism becomes. If terrorist see that they can fundamentally alter the way an entire Western nation functions, they will be encouraged to continue. More groups will pop up and thrive. More people will die.
The question is, how do we actually stop kids from dying? Looking at the big picture and changing the way we respond to attacks is one such way, knee-jerk accusatory reactions are not. Why don't we at least try it?
We could try stopping killing their kids and see if that changes anything.
"If you alter the way these attacks are covered by the media, they will stop being so destabilizing."
"... how do we actually stop kids from dying? Looking at the big picture and changing the way we respond to attacks is one such way."
Stop the morbid coverage -> less fear and panic -> terrorism is less effective -> terrorists have a smaller incentive -> fewer people die
You probably meant something more like "If you alter the way these attacks are covered by the media, they will stop being so frequent."
That said, my intuition (I doubt anyone knows for sure, and the reason varies) is that these attacks are not to be famous, but more so out of revenge ("justice") or frustration.
Here is the thing: When driving a car, you have some level of control of your destinity. Take precaution, use the seat belts, children seat, and so on... You know there is risk involved, but that you also can lower that risk.
Worrying that your next train trip, museum visit, or national day celebration will end up fatally, changes your way of life. You have zero control over that. You worry about those dearest to you.
Statistics are rather difficult to come by on this, but assuming the US population incidence is 0.28% [0] of all 735,000 'heart attacks' per year in the US [1], with a mortality rate of 60% (wikipedia says 70% but that number is iffy), that's 1235 random "sudden deaths" per year from just one non-preventable and non-predictable medical condition alone.
So I suspect the more general point, that statistically you are much more likely to be randomly killed by "not terrorism", is probably a valid one.