At least 3 gunmen went on a rampage in Munich, leaving at least 6 dead and many wounded. This is madness.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
At least 3 gunmen went on a rampage in Munich, leaving at least 6 dead and many wounded. This is madness.
At least the BBC coverage is being reasonably cautious at the moment, and making no assumptions about the killers beyond the likelihood that their actions were politically motivated. It helps when the media remembers that attacks like this, especially in Europe, could very easily be the work of neo-fascist, far Right terrorists of the stripe of Anders Breivik.
and a countdown to blaming those brown skinned moosleems.
im just going to go back to watching the first lady sing in a car with a british man and forget for a while
PZ is right – this spate of mass slaughters has to stop, not only because of the horror of the deaths of so many innocents in the attacks themselves, but also because of their corrosive effect on community relations and the confidence the public has in the ability of the authorities to provide security. The mass fear that such attacks can cause can be even more dangerous than the attacks themselves if it is allowed to go unchecked, especially with the ongoing lurch to the Right happening across Europe and beyond.
Fanatical Islamists, fanatical anti-Islamists, or some other kind of fanatics? Sounds like the shooters are alive and at large.
Today is the 5-year anniversary of the 22/7 terrorist attack in Norway. Probably a coincidence.
At a certain point, will we acknowledge that maybe some of this is retaliation for the way Europe and the US have been treating people in the Middle East? I’m not saying I condone it – far from it – but “they’re bad because they are muslims” is pretty weak sauce. Maybe they’re mad because they’ve been being blown up, used as imperial puppets, displaced, and had a pretty long series of ruthless dictators put above them. You know, like, actual reasons to be pissed off that aren’t just religion?
We’ve just got to keep bombing the fuck out of ISIS until they like us. Maybe bomb harder.
Der Spiegel is reporting 8 dead plus one body of someone suspected of being the shooter and no evidence of Islamic background. It’s early days yet, but this may be a right wing terrorist. Not that the Islamic terrorists aren’t also right wing. I suppose I mean a western, probably Christian right wing terrorist as opposed to a right wing Islamic terrorist.
I only saw it in passing, and I don’t even know what source it was from, but I saw one quote claiming that the shooter I’ve seen video of was yelling, “I’m German… **** foreigners” or something to that effect.
Unless it is a neo-Nazi.
Sigh. Lots of people spreading around names of supposed suspects on Twitter, first it was Kassam Haid, then Sam Ali Aheed, and I would hate to see how much traction they are getting on Facebook. People in the know will recognise the names, and some of the photos being used as photos of Sam Hyde, and plays on his name. He is a meme that gets used in situations like this. http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/people/sam-hyde
Sadly it seems many of the posters of this misinformation are resistant to correction and are extremely credulous, first falling for the Kassam Haid tweets, then the Sam Ali Aheed tweets.
The police frequently talk of multiple attackers and end up with one shooter. Seems to be the case here as well.
Yup, 5 years since some asshole killed people in Norway.
10 dead.
Police gave the all-clear.
It’s likely some other racist asshole.
But even if it was ISIS, for me they’d be one and the same: violent authoritarian xenophobes.
Yeah. It is natural for witnesses and victims to overestimate the number of assailants. When one experiences a horrible crime one tends to think that there must have been a whole bunch of bad people involved for something so bad to have happened.
The only way to be sure is to watch through all of the security camera footage from that part of town, interview all the witnesses and so on and so forth. It’s going to take a while to be 100% sure that there was only one shooter.
This may be a great time to consider a trip to Europe. I should point out I am not from the USA, and I think I’d feel just as safe or safer in most of Europe than in most big cities in the USA.
Prospective tourists to Europe are not looking at this in the right way. Think of how the long lines at cultural institutions will be reduced, the ease of getting a hotel room at a moment’s notice, and good restaurants will have openings.
I am not really joking[1]. My first visit to France came just after a few modest terrorist attacks in about 1987. Cleared out the tourist dross (well other than me) and made travel and touristing easy.
And your trip to Europe can be a patriotic gesture showing your defiance to terrorists (This last is so sarcastic I almost choked on it.)
1. If I had the spare cash, I’d be seriously looking at southern France right now.
@5 Marcus Ranum
Piss off. Take your victim blaming elsewhere and open a newspaper. I cannot believe any logical person would think that.
Authorities now say it is one gunman, aged 18. As we all know, 18 year olds in 2016 are plugged into the early 20th century world-historical post-colonial Zeitgeist and sources of tremendous sobriety of conscience in that area. Please.
The last terrorist attack in Germany was a series of stabbings on a train from Würzburg perpetrated by another teenager, shouting in Pasto his “allegience to the caliphate”, a reference to ISIS. These were both German citizens. If their motivations were colonial angst then I’m princess of Denmark.
tasraskan@#15:
Take your victim blaming elsewhere and open a newspaper.
I was reacting to some of the comments that it might be ISIS. Not blaming victims at all – that would be saying “they deserved it” or something like that. I do think that we are misleading ourselves with the “bad muslims” angle, which focuses merely on the idea that islam is a religion of violence and ignores the long history of political violence in the region. Which newspaper do you suggest I read? I’ve been reading a lot of the history of the middle east since victorian colonialism – do you think a newspaper would be more revealing, somehow?
If their motivations were colonial angst then I’m princess of Denmark
Well, your highness, I see you’ve mistaken the desire to restore the caliphate for a religious phenomenon, rather than a political one. It’s a shame, because a monarch-in-waiting like yourself would do well to understand the difference.
ISIS are sunni, as are Al Queda – and the last Caliphate to fall was the ottoman empire, which was knocked over by the european imperialist powers during WWI. Can’t possibly be a political connection there, at all. No way!
As I said: I deplore violence. I also think it doesn’t help people understand what’s going on when everyone promotes a simplistic “muslims are baaaaaad” “islam is a religion of violence” trope. Unless you’re a Donald Trump supporter, I mean, your highness.
Me@#16: I should have mentioned the ottoman empire was sunni (yeah, ISIS wants their empire back!) and was cut up into unhappily co-existing states by the Brits. None of that was political, nossir. And the US’ constant anti-democratic interventions in the region, those surely haven’t pissed anyone off in the slightest.
Some sources are now saying it was, according to the Munich police chief, an 18-year-old German-Iranian who lives in Munich, acting alone. It doesn’t seem like anyone is sure about the motive.
SC@#18:
There’s allegedly some video of the shooter being called a racial epithet (about being an immigrant) and replying: “I am a German … born in Germany … in a Hartz IV neighbourhood,” referring to the unemployment benefits program in Germany. “I was in Giesung, I was in treatment there.”
One witness reports hearing the shooter saying that he wanted to shoot foreigners. Another heard him saying that it was to him “scheissegal” and he would shoot them all. He was not an immigrant.
no. the witness called the shooter a wanker and an asshole.
really really.
to which the shooter replied: “I am German” and mumbled some stuff about being bullied as a teen in school.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/692416/Munich-shooting-brave-shopper-German-gunman
this looks more like a Dylan Klebold thing to me. A teen who felt they were bullied deciding to take it out on everyone else.
Icthyic@#22:
this looks more like a Dylan Klebold thing to me.
More like Bernie Goetz: a spur of the moment attack by an armed Walter Mitty.
Oops – no, now they’re saying he had researched spree killers. And that he had “mental health issues”
So, yeah, more of a Klebold than a Mitty.
The vast monitoring infrastructure built in the War On Terror helps not a whit against homegrown lone-wolves. All that expensive privacy-violating, wasted.
I wonder now how much time this kid spent on hate websites.
Ichthyic #21
I had read elsewhere that the person shouting also called him a “mad turk” and some else yelling called him a “fucking foreigner”. I don’t speak the language, so I have no idea – this is not the case?
@tkreacher:
Yes, in the full video, someone yells out “Scheiss Türken”(“Fucking Turks”), and then balcony guy says “Scheiss Kanaken”, which is a racial slur for Turks.
Here’s a transcript, in German unfortunately, too lazy to translate:
Balkon: Ey du Arschloch du Hund du blöder.
Typ: Wegen euch wurde ich gemobbt, 7 Jahre lang.
Balkon: Du Wicher du, du bist ein Arschloch.
Typ: Und jetzt muss ich hier ne Waffe kaufen und euch alle abknallen.
Balkon: Weisst was? Dir gehört der Schädel abgeschnitten.
Typ: Ja ja, damit [?] oder?
Balkon: Der hat eine Schusswaffe, der Wichser alter.
Dritter: Scheiss Türken.
Balkon: Scheiss Kanacken alter.
Balkon: Ey, er hat die Schusswaffe, der hat seine Waffe geladen, holt die Bullen alter, der läuft hier umher, der Wichser alter.
Typ: Ich bin Deutscher.
Balkon: Du bist ein Wichser, bist du.
Typ: Hört auf zu filmen.
Balkon: Ein Wichser, was machst du für einen Scheiss?
Typ: Ja was denn? Ich bin hier geboren worden.
Balkon: Ja und was machst du für einen Scheiss?
Typ: [?] hier in der Hartz4 Gegend. In der Türkenregion, hier in Hasenbergel.
Typ: [?] ich war stationär in Behandlung.
Balkon: Ja Behandlung, da gehörst du [zügig?] hin du Arschloch du blödes.
Typ: Ja deswegen [?] ich hab nix getan in der fünften Klasse.
Typ: Ja [?] halten sie die Schnauze man.
Balkon: Du Wichser du, EY!
Balkon: Der läuft auf dem Oberdeck, läuft er umher, Ihr Vollidioten, er hat eine Schusswaffe.
Balkon: Du bist doch nicht ganz dicht im Schädel, du Wichser du.
Balkon: Du Arschloch du verschissenes, alter.
Balkon: Dir haben sie ins Gehirn geschissen du blöder…
Typ: Ja… haben sie nicht, das ist das eben, haben sie nicht!
Just saying, Bavaria is Germany’s Texas.
Hope that helps to understand what’s happened here.
There’s a movement now in both France and Germany to take the piss out of all the ‘ISIS claims responsibility’ stuff. In French it’s #DaeshRevendique or #ISISclaims
There’s #DaeshRevendique notre défait à l’Euro (ISIS claims responsibility for France’s defeat in the European Championship cup final)
and
#DaeshRevendique les chaussettes qui disparaissent de la machine à laver (#ISIS claims responsibility for the socks that disappear from the washing machine)
That’s the right approach to ISIS claims, in my opinion.
@davidrichardson: That does sound like a good approach. Twitting.