Have we become desensitized to terrorism?

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Russ
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Have we become desensitized to terrorism?

Post by Russ »

In Western Europe we have had many many terrorist attacks in the past 24 months.

Yesterday another, this time in Barcelona. Such a beautiful city that I had the pleasure of visiting a few short months ago

Yet, nothing. Simply the feeling of "oh no, not another one". Facebook activated their "I'm safe button" and the news gave inaccurate numbers.

Is this now just part of our daily lives? Something we have to accept? Or is there something we can do?

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Re: Have we become desensitized to terrorism?

Post by BR »

Russ wrote:In Western Europe we have had many many terrorist attacks in the past 24 months.

Yesterday another, this time in Barcelona. Such a beautiful city that I had the pleasure of visiting a few short months ago

Yet, nothing. Simply the feeling of "oh no, not another one". Facebook activated their "I'm safe button" and the news gave inaccurate numbers.

Is this now just part of our daily lives? Something we have to accept? Or is there something we can do?

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I think the audience here would probably be more 'desensitized' than most. (Not especially happy with that word, but it'll do for now). As someone said to me yesterday - "Call that heightened security? It was harder to get into Woolworths in the 70s"

Bad siht has happened around the world for a very long time, and continues to do so every day. Whether that be largely natural like in West Africa or more man-made like in Spain.

Mostly unless it's happening in western Europe, USA, Can, Aus, NZ - we could be accused of not finding a fck to give.

The world is smaller (communications-wise), so incidents that happen in Spain, for example, seem closer to home. Many of us have walked Las Ramblas, that would not have been the case 40 years ago. So we identify with it better.

However rolling news has almost bitten off more than it can chew over the years. There has to be a hierarchy of coverage and how novel an incident is, how close it was to our country (physically and culturally), how many victims, age of victims, nationality of victims all determine the place on the hierarchy. And that doesn't include the 2 big questions for TV news - is there something bigger happening today? And do we have pictures?

"I didn't even make the papers, 'cause I only killed one man..." - how many times can you multiply that line by?

So yes, it is part of our daily lives (always probably was, we just didn't know about it). We have to accept it. Is there anything we can do? We can try to keep better informed and keep things in perspective. Ultimately for me, it comes down to 'my family and friends are OK' which is perhaps a shame, but honest.
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Re: Have we become desensitized to terrorism?

Post by Rooster »

BR said it all.
I personally feel desensitised to it then again I saw too many carried to the grave early, first time you see someone with a lump of their head missing it is a big shock, not so much the next time, sad but true.
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Re: Have we become desensitized to terrorism?

Post by Neil F »

People always get on like terrorism now is worse than it ever was; either worldwide or more specifically (in correspondence to BR's post) in Western Europe. Whilst the number of incidents now are growing and have been in the last few years, let's not forget that the number of terrorist incidents now is historically very low. Sure, you need to go back to 1997 to find the same number of incidents as last year, for example, but there was (significantly) more terrorism in every year from 1972 until 1997 (with the exception of 1973 and 1974, which some from Northern Ireland may find rather ironic) than there has been in the last couple of years.(1)

What I think has changed - and where I think people should take some comfort - is that the complexity and planning of recent attacks has been minimal. It's a long way from crashing planes into skyscrapers to crashing a hired van into crowds of people. In some sense, that 'terrorism' can be so easy initially seemed to capture fear and the darker sides of imaginations. I think now, however, there is a growing acceptance that, actually, if this is the best that terrorists can do, then whatever systems are in place are probably working. The increase in volume of attacks is desperately sad but, on the part of the people committing these acts and the groups who claim responsibility, this in itself reeks of desperation. Terrorism won't go away; but as it gets increasingly desperate and random, people will fear it less and less. That, I think, is happening now but I wouldn't call it desensitisation. Maybe more resilience, even if they default to the same thing.

Finally, is there really an implication that becoming desensitised (or resilient) to terrorism is a bad thing? Academically speaking, at least, terrorism is something that is designed around changing the behaviour of a large audience beyond the immediate victims. If desensitisation stop that large audience changing behaviour, it kind of defeats the point of terrorism...

(1) https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/search/Re ... x?region=8
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Re: Have we become desensitized to terrorism?

Post by BR »

The flip side of Neil's point about the incidents being more desperate and random, is that they are less predictable. Adding in the trend of suicide-type attacks and you and I feel more helpless to do anything to avoid being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
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Re: Have we become desensitized to terrorism?

Post by Rooster »

BR wrote:The flip side of Neil's point about the incidents being more desperate and random, is that they are less predictable. Adding in the trend of suicide-type attacks and you and I feel more helpless to do anything to avoid being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Feck it, live your life and just get on with it, those guys want people to worry about going out enjoying life, they loose out when people carry on as normal.
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Re: Have we become desensitized to terrorism?

Post by Cap'n Grumpy »

For all the terrorism there is worldwide, I suspect that more people die or are wounded daily in the US than most places on this planet, from gun crime and accidental shootings with legally held weapons that are never even reported outside the local community because they are accepted as "normal" in the land of the free.

For all that so many of them carry or own weapons to defend themselves, none of them seem to have a gun to hand when some looper goes ballistic on a shooting spree.
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Re: Have we become desensitized to terrorism?

Post by Rooster »

Cap'n Grumpy wrote:For all the terrorism there is worldwide, I suspect that more people die or are wounded daily in the US than most places on this planet, from gun crime and accidental shootings with legally held weapons that are never even reported outside the local community because they are accepted as "normal" in the land of the free.

For all that so many of them carry or own weapons to defend themselves, none of them seem to have a gun to hand when some looper goes ballistic on a shooting spree.
Actually never understood why there was never a western style gunfight at any incidents over there, probably most are too scared to use their weapons.
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Re: Have we become desensitized to terrorism?

Post by BaggyTrousers »

BR wrote:The flip side of Neil's point about the incidents being more desperate and random, is that they are less predictable. Adding in the trend of suicide-type attacks and you and I feel more helpless to do anything to avoid being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
BR I liked your first post here, I also agree entirely with Neil as to the merits of being desensitised and not giving a rat's fart about the unlikely event of being caught up in a terrorist incident. I've got the tee shirt for having been "inconvenienced" by "the troubles" with my workplace being levelled on one occasion and being held at gunpoint more than once by the Provies.

Russ's opener was, like a wee hysterical bitch wanting to prove they are more upset by some celebrities death than anyone else, (sorry Russ I only say that in a kindly way believe it or not) the current type of emotional bullshit as distinct to a rational response & taking it on its merits.

Rooster is entirely right in saying live your life. The logical fact is that I as one single individual am considerably more likely to die crossing the road than to perish at the hands or van of a jihadi motherfukka. In the same way, as I never dwell on the life-endangering act of crossing of a road, I haven't the slightest concern about terrorism as it applies to me as a person, though I have many fecks about its root causes & as an issue.

As an issue, I think very differently, I'd take on the "Nazi response" fly over the village in Tunisia where the guy who rented the van is from and obliterate it, let it be known that this is the future response to acts of terrorism. I'd even sign up the modern equivalent of the Luftwaffe to do it. Go biblical on their asses and take several eyes for an eye. You kill our innocents, we wipe out yours.

:duh: :duh: :duh: :duh: :duh: feck I've gone all Daily Mail. :banghead:
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Re: Have we become desensitized to terrorism?

Post by Rooster »

Saddam knew how to control them !
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Re: Have we become desensitized to terrorism?

Post by BaggyTrousers »

Rooster wrote:
Cap'n Grumpy wrote:For all the terrorism there is worldwide, I suspect that more people die or are wounded daily in the US than most places on this planet, from gun crime and accidental shootings with legally held weapons that are never even reported outside the local community because they are accepted as "normal" in the land of the free.

For all that so many of them carry or own weapons to defend themselves, none of them seem to have a gun to hand when some looper goes ballistic on a shooting spree.
Actually never understood why there was never a western style gunfight at any incidents over there, probably most are too scared to use their weapons.
Actually, my fine feathered friend, I suspect that the statistics don't tend to support that. :lol: :lol: :lol:

I always think it's instructive that Canada is said to have more guns per head of population than the US yet 40% of the murder rate (per head of population) and in sheer numbers 23 times more murders in USA.
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Re: Have we become desensitized to terrorism?

Post by Cap'n Grumpy »

Have we become desensitized to celebrity* deaths?

No Brucie thread ?

* Like him, loathe him or indifferent, he had the element of "celebrity"
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Re: Have we become desensitized to terrorism?

Post by BaggyTrousers »

Cap'n Grumpy wrote:Have we become desensitized to celebrity* deaths?

No Brucie thread?

* Like him, loathe him or indifferent, he had the element of "celebrity"
First I'd heard of it Cap'n, I enjoyed old Brucie over the years going back to the Generation Game & all that malarkey, if I thought hard enough, probably much earlier, though a little of him would go a pretty decent way.

The old hoofer certainly had something to bring a smile from most, whether at him or with him. I'm not an :oman: so fair enough to say RIP................ but then I don;t believe in that sort of thing, he's brown bread, he ain't resting, he's has shaken off his mortal coil and is no more, he has ceased to be, he has joined the bleedin' choir celestial, like Beethoven he is decomposing.
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Re: Have we become desensitized to terrorism?

Post by big mervyn »

I used to hate the Generation game when I was a kid although I did appreciate Brucie more when I got older. I certainly never considered him to be a terrorist.

His finest moment was probably hosting HIGNFY.
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Re: Have we become desensitized to terrorism?

Post by bazzaj »

big mervyn wrote:I used to hate the Generation game when I was a kid although I did appreciate Brucie more when I got older. I certainly never considered him to be a terrorist.

His finest moment was probably hosting HIGNFY.
I must admit I am shocked to hear about Brucies involvement in the Barcelona terrorist attack.
Seems a bizarre step from being Britain's best loved entertainer to becoming a radicalised fundamental terrorist in such a short space of time.
Who could possibly have seen that coming?

I personally will always prefer to remember him for his engaging public persona whether it was on Strictly, the Palladium or Play your cards right, not to mention his endless charity work, rather than the deluded soul driving vans into people on the belief he will end up with several Virgins by Allah's side.
It may have all come down to a switch in meds so I'm prepared to give him a pass for now..

Thanks for the laffs Bruce it was nice to see you.
Allah has truly gained another freedom fighter/ light entertainer.

All eyes surely on Lionel Blair now if the intelligence agencies have any sense.
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