German Market . . . .

More likely to be killed by need than by terrorists in most places..

(Edit: that was meant to say more likely to be killed by bees, but I’ll leave it)

You didn’t bump into the Balkany couple did you?

Well if you had an email address I’d send you a photo from March 2015 as he was kind enough at special request to conduct our wedding aided by my BIL who is an elected (and ceremony authorised) official elsewhere 🙂

Guys please. The “you are at more risk” argument is “winning no where” as Trump might say. How many politicians do you hear saying, don’t worry you are more likely to die in a car crash. Answer NONE.

Merkel has F***ed German security in a massive way

It’s what politicians are saying, and the legion of **** that are buying their rhetoric that’s the real terrorist threat jambalaya..
And you KNOW it..

So what exactly IS your agenda?

The notion that you can somehow protect all these public spaces from a nutcase in a runaway articulated lorry is, quite frankly, absurd

You can try, bollards and barriers built into the design of the area would help. To simply accept huge risk to public safety without trying to minimise it would itself be absurd.

I’d much rather live in a world run by people like Merkel than people like Trump. A world of compassion rather than fear and hate. YMMV.

Asylum seekers aren’t a security threat, terrorists are.

^^^ totally agree @fin. The trick is to vet them first. The vast majority in Germany faced no immediate security threat and the majority came from safe countries (as designated by Germany and other nations)

So what exactly IS your agenda?

Not being dead

You can try, bollards and barriers built into the design of the area would help. To simply accept huge risk to public safety without trying to minimise it would itself be absurd.

You can certainly try, but if you are near a road, you are near a road.

And, as others have alluded to, the risk isn’t that huge.

mikewsmith – Member

You are more at risk of heart disease than terrorism, driving poses a higher risk,

So we needn’t try to prevent terrorism or be concerned about it until it’s killing 1800 people a year in the UK (driving) or (guessing) a few 10s of thousands (heart attacks?

EDIT If they don’t DNA all asylum seekers then they should IMO.

And the rest of the population, I’ll throw in ID cards into the mix too. It’s a well known fact that countries that collect DNA from all citizens and use ID cards have zero crime rates.

It’s a well known fact that some asylum seekers are terrorists. Requiring all asylum seekers to give DNA is no different than fingerprinting them when they haven’t committed a crime. DNA evidence helps convict criminals.

.

So what exactly IS your agenda?

a police state
where every citizen is in fear of their own authorities and their own neighbours

Merkel got to go. End of.

The longer she stays the more mess they get.

Guys please. The “you are at more risk” argument is “winning no where” as Trump might say. How many politicians do you hear saying, don’t worry you are more likely to die in a car crash. Answer NONE.

Yawn, we know you are bored of facts and experts and all that.

Merkel has F***ed German security in a massive way

You and many others are using this as an excuse to put up fences, retreat and turn away missions in need mostly from the consequences of our actions.

The trick is to vet them first.

Care to explain how that works in practice, you going to mine the med? Keep them all on greek beaches until they have filled out their forms? Want to get to Europe to cause trouble they will do.

So what exactly IS your agenda?

Not being dead[/quote]
Well the best thing you can probably do is stop reading the internet it will only elevate your blood pressure, avoid roads, places where people are, mountains and hundreds of other things.
The society you want to live in with mass survelance, boder towers, ID cards (which really need lots of stoppting to be checked) presumption of guilt and many other things does not seem like a price I’m willing to pay for a tiny reduction in the chance I will die in one way.

Again perspective

UNODC figures show that 18 women are victims of homicide each day in Europe on average, and 12 of
these are murdered by intimate partners or other family members.2
Globally, WHO estimates that as
many as 38 percent of murders of women are committed by an intimate partner.

Figures from 2013
http://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2014/violence-against-women-eu-wide-survey-main-results-report
If that trend has continued then in the 2 days this thread has been running 24 women will have been murdered by their partner or family member in Europe, that is happening every day in every country.

In 12 months there have been 142 deaths due to terrorism in Europe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_Europe
The domestic violence stats will be around 4,380.

irc – Member
So we needn’t try to prevent terrorism or be concerned about it until it’s killing 1800 people a year in the UK (driving) or (guessing) a few 10s of thousands (heart attacks?

No but the response should be measured and proportional.

It’s a well known fact that some asylum seekers are terrorists

Yes, but how many out of the 10s of millions of refugees and asylum seekers around the world?

10?
20?
maybe a couple of hundred?

I’ll wager there’s a higher proportion of Belgians that are terrorists.

where every citizen is in fear of their own authorities and their own neighbours

If I was in Germany I’d be afraid of the Government. Now after the attack they have concrete blocks protecting the closed market.

In Paris we have the army on the streets every day (we don’t even live in the main part of the city, we are in a town outside), we have seriously armed police outside every Jewish School and Synagogue, we have concrete blocks and council trucks blocking the roads at the Christmas Market, we have a state of emergency and suspension of Shengen (for more 18 months now btw) …

I’ll wager there’s a higher proportion of Belgians that are terrorists.

Belgium has the highest percentage of IS recruits of any European Country vs population but far less in numerical terms than France, Germany and most certainly less than Tunisia which is the number 1 nation outside Syria and Iraq.

I have no issue with asylum seekers if they are vetted in advance of entry. This is exactly the UK’s stance. Smart.

strange. was borderless when I crossed from Germany to France the other day. maybe the Schengen suspension is only part time or something.

PS see way more Polizei here in Germany on a day to day basis than I do police in UK.

But UK, at least, is on the path towards replicating NK and former East Germany.

I have no issue with asylum seekers if they are vetted in advance of entry. This is exactly the UK’s stance. Smart.

And given a large number of the terrorists from the Paris and Brissels attacks were French and Belgiun citizens what next? Your massive vetting programme (still no ideas on how you would of implemented that) wouldn’t have stopped those attacks.

The reason that there are people across Europe is that the couldn’t all stay in Greece, they were overwhelmed. What is done is done time to move along and keep things in perspective you may be marginally/fractionally/mincrospically less safe than you were 2 years ago but don’t let that ruin your life. Get one with it, as they say you could be dead tomorrow (from millions of reasons)

I have no issue with asylum seekers if they are vetted in advance of entry. This is exactly the UK’s stance. Smart.

The UK’s approach to refugees and asylum seekers is far more about deliberate delay tactics, mindless bureaucracy and deterrent than it is about security.

I have helped a couple of guys whose asylum applications are a cycle of written deportation threats, appointments with home office staff who constantly delay decisions, being moved around, a lot, and a life with no security, no certainty, no money, no job and no worth at the mercy of a bureaucratic system which shows them nothing but contempt. One of the guys now has pretty serious mental health problems (a mixture of past trauma and current anxieties), he’d be pretty easy pickings for anyone looking to “radicalise” him.
Now, if his life was one lived in security, with a certainty about his future and the ability to work and set up a home, maybe he would not be so vulnerable.

Treat enough people like shit for long enough and some of them will resent you for it. Some of them might even end up doing something really nasty.
Show them respect, treat them with dignity, welcome them as you would hope to be welcomed and yes, you’ll still get the odd whack job, but you’ll have a whole lot more people on your side.

Show them respect, treat them with dignity, welcome them as you would hope to be welcomed and yes, you’ll still get the odd whack job, but you’ll have a whole lot more people on your side

The odd whack job, well then if its only the odd one I think we would all be cool with that.

I suspect not taking a chance and actually making efforts to have an efficient and fair vetting procedure would properly be a better options, plus an effective way to remove those not deemed to be refugees would make get even more people on your side.

There are a couple of issues here, one is the perception on the number of actual immigrants/refugees entering Europe and also that that those who are not real refugees are somehow circumventing the law and staying and not being deported.
I suspect the 2nd issue is something that needs to be remedied for the first to be removed as a concern.

Sadly politics needs this problem not to be solved as the left and right feed of it.

So we needn’t try to prevent terrorism or be concerned about it until it’s killing 1800 people a year in the UK (driving) or (guessing) a few 10s of thousands (heart attacks?

I think everyone is concerned about terrorism and we are already working to prevent it. The point being made is that the chance of being killed or injured in a terrorist attack in the West is very, very low.

None of us take a totally objective view of risks, so it’s important to take a step back and ask yourself where the real dangers lie. On R4 last night, an expert on risk pointed out that it is estimated that there were 1500 more deaths on the roads in the USA after 9/11, because more people chose to drive instead of flying.

The Christmas Market attack is a horrible tragedy for the people killed and their families, but still a very unusual incident. Everyone knows the statistics about road deaths already, and there is a long list of other everyday events that are much more likely to kill you.

We have to fight terrorism (in all sorts of ways) but we have to keep the risk of terrorism in perspective.

The “you are at more risk” argument is “winning no where” as Trump might say.

Aah well, if Trump says it, it must be true. Case closed.

I have no issue with asylum seekers if they are vetted in advance of entry. This is exactly the UK’s stance. Smart.

Why wouldn’t that work? Based on 1998 we should have a vetting process going into France and have to prove that we’re not football hooligans, or have speeding tickets (cars are dangerous), or whatever.

Fin, blame the victims eh? That’s the kind of attitude that fuels terrorism in the first place. Plenty of migrants throughout history and the world have been treated like shit by their host countries, I”ve yet to hear of any Filipino’s truck bombing Singaporean shopping malls in protest of OFW conditions.

That’s because they don’t have a societal victim complex that thinks that 9/11 was a hoax and that crusaders are out to get them combined with feelings of “make murica the caliphate great again”

Fin, blame the victims eh? That’s the kind of attitude that fuels terrorism in the first place.

Really? The treatment of some people leaves them more vulnerable to radicalisation, if you beat somebody down enough then they may be tempted by some very clever grooming techniques. People are praying on these things it may be newer and more evident at the moment but it’s a change in what we are seeing. It’s not victim blaming it’s accepting that current policies may not be the best

That’s because they don’t have a societal victim complex that thinks that 9/11 was a hoax and that crusaders are out to get them combined with feelings of “make murica the caliphate great again”

I don’t think you can dump every person who “acts like a terrorist/does things that the media describe as terrorism” in a convenient box marked “radical Islamist” There are many many reasons why these young people might find themselves doing this stuff, and quite a few of the acts on continental Europe have a much more complex background to them than at first glance reveals. The Nice Truck Driver; petty criminal, drinker, violent, perhaps mentally unstable, had lived in France for 10 years and only started to go to mosque in April, this was not an active and determined member of an Islamic terrorist organisation like the 9/11 bombers.

The Nice Truck Driver; petty criminal, drinker, violent, perhaps mentally unstable, had lived in France for 10 years and only started to go to mosque in April

Hang on – are you saying he wasn’t one of the people on Farage’s poster? Confused!!

Personally, I think what you are saying Mike coulld offend all sorts of various groups who have been treated just as badly – if not worse and not resorted to strapping on a bomb vest.

The act of a man who has been living in France for 10 years was not the act of a man who felt a bit poor and downtrodden, it was the act of a chauvinistic prideful nationalistic male who feels historically slighted by the fact that the Muslim world has fallen behind the west, a culture that he vuews as inferior and undeserving of its wealth.

What you’re trying to say Tom_W is that Muslims have a chip on their shoulders, or a “societal victim complex” as you call it, which explains why only 99.99% of Muslims in Europe aren’t terrorists.

Well it might not make a lot of sense to a rational person who thinks beyond knee-jerk reactions but it certainly maintains your long standing Islamophobic narrative.

What’s your explantation btw for the German NSU terrorists who went around in recent years murdering Muslims ?

That Germans suffer “societal victim complex”, or doesn’t that fit in so neatly with your Islamophobic agenda ?

I see what you’re saying, Tom. I’m not victim blaming, far from it. I work with very vulnerable children, some of whom are refugees. If you put me in their position I think I’d be pretty angry and desperate. I also help out with a few adult refugees and asylum seekers. Watching people’s mental health deteriorate day after day living in a Kafkaesque semi-nightmare, it’s not difficult for me to see how that despair can turn to hate. That’s why I help, so that we all get to see the human in each other.

If we don’t see the humanity in people we are lost. A lot of those people going to fight for Daesh are victims in one way or another. This is no good verses evil story, I wish it was that simple.

it was the act of a chauvinistic prideful nationalistic male who feels historically slighted by the fact that the Muslim world has fallen behind the west, a culture that he vuews as inferior and undeserving of its wealth.

and had an obvious and well signposted route to infamy thanks to a media and public discourse obsessed with terrorism.

Tom_W1987 – Member

it was the act of a chauvinistic prideful nationalistic male who feels historically slighted by the fact that the Muslim world has fallen behind the west, a culture that he vuews as inferior and undeserving of its wealth.

I blame the Germans losing two world wars for this :

Racism and Xenophobia Still Prevalent in Germany

Hundreds of right-wing extremists and local thugs spent four days in late August of 1992 throwing rocks and firebombs at a building used to house asylum-seekers, most of them Sinti and Roma, in the outlying Lichtenhagen district. Thousands of others stood by and cheered on the attackers, shouting “foreigners out!”

Merkel comes out of this with far more credit than Seehofer

What’s your explantation btw for the German NSU terrorists who went around in recent years murdering Muslims ?

The exact same reasons that I stated for the truck attackers.

Whenever there is a narrative of being victimized, this is what happens.

Do you see South East Asians and Chinese people shooting up schools in the USA or Britain? Despite historical racism and colonialism. Rarely, because they have an attitude that places a lot of emphasis on their own personal agency. It’s whites there, who blame everyone but themselves that like to go on mass killing sprees.

The full question involved a second part :

What’s your explantation btw for the German NSU terrorists who went around in recent years murdering Muslims ?

That Germans suffer “societal victim complex”, or doesn’t that fit in so neatly with your Islamophobic agenda ?

So do Germans suffer “societal victim complex” ?

Or when it comes to German terrorists to you just see them as individuals, unlike how you see Muslim terrorists ?

Germany does have a far right victim complex and has done historicalky, I’ve met a lot of Germans who still like to blame WW2 on us being a bit mean to them during Versailles.

The middle east in general though, is utterly dripping with victim memes. It’s driven the internal conflict and their conflict with the west and countries on the borders of the Islamic world. What they need to do is look to other post colonial countties like China and India, for some hard lessons.

Germany does have a far right victim complex and has done historicalky

Yeah, I’ve read a bit of Nicholas O Shaughnessy & Ian Kershaw recently and there’s no doubt that’s true.

The middle east in general though, is utterly dripping with victim memes. It’s driven the internal conflict and their conflict with the west and countries on the borders of the Islamic world. What they need to do is look to other post colonial countties like China and India, for some hard lessons.

I was going to ask you if by the Middle East “utterly dripping with victim memes” you meant the Zionists, or what you thought of the likely consequences of a co-ordinated Western military attack on China to force regime change, but I don’t think I bother. This is obviously going to go nowhere – you’ll still be an Islamophobic bigot long after this thread is dead.