Since at least 9-11, and possibly for even longer, political and media leaders in the West have sought to deprecate, downplay, and dismiss concerns about Islamic terrorism by making it the equivalent of an act of God — like a flood, an earthquake, a forest fire, or a tornado. Or, in the case of the video below, like people choking to death on pieces of food.
The meme goes roughly like this [a made-up example]: “Thirty-four people were killed in violent extremist attacks last week. But during the same period, more people drowned in holiday boating accidents — so why should terrorist attacks cause so much alarm and draw such an excessive level of publicity?”
For readers who are atheists and prefer to leave all deities out of the argument, this false equivalence uses a fallacious argument that conflates human agency with stochastic process. A stochastic event is one that unpredictable or random, with causes that cannot be discerned. A lightning strike, the failure of a car’s brakes on the highway, the collapse of a riverbank — all of these are stochastic events that may have fatal consequences.
Not so with Islamic terrorism. When a Muslim screams “Allahu Akhbar!” and draws his blade across an infidel throat, the cause is fully determined and predictable. The unfortunate victim may not be able to predict the moment of his unexpected demise, but we, as a society, can certainly predict the general result. A mathematical formula can probably be devised for the process: When the number of Muslims in a non-Muslim country reaches X% of the population, there will be an average of Y jihad murders per 100,000 residents per annum — with the numbers X and Y to be filled in by careful observation and statistical analysis.
The following propaganda video from German public television seeks to shoehorn Islamic terror attacks into the same category as stochastic natural disasters. The elites in Germany want to force the general public to view terrorism as a tragedy like bad weather or accidents — horrible, but really, it’s not all that likely to happen to you, so why should you fret yourself about it?
Many thanks to Nash Montana for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling. Vlad doesn’t want to help the German government do its Orwellian job, so he has inserted explanatory counter-memes at the beginning and end of this clip:
Transcript:
| 0:00 | Terror attacks in the middle of Europe. Pictures like these | |
| 0:03 | can and are supposed to make people afraid. | |
| 0:06 | It gets worse all the time! — Will this ever stop? | |
| 0:09 | Our fear of terror grows — rightfully so? | |
| 0:12 | Briefly explained — The fact is, politically motivated terrorism is not a new phenomenon, | |
| 0:17 | not even in Western Europe, and not everything | |
| 0:20 | was better in the past, on the contrary. | |
| 0:23 | When we take the numbers of direct victims | |
| 0:26 | then especially the 1970’s and 80’s were worse. | |
| 0:29 | Between 1972 and 1988 more than 150 people | |
| 0:32 | died from terrorism — every year. | |
| 0:36 | Since 1993 this has only happened twice. | |
| 0:39 | But back then terrorism was a regional problem, | |
| 0:44 | in Ireland the IRA, in Spain the ETA, in Germany the RAF. | |
| 0:49 | Their attacks were — not to downplay, just to be clear — | |
| 0:53 | directed only towards the government or specific individuals. | |
| 0:56 | The Islamist terror of today deliberately targets the entire Western way of life. | |
| 1:00 | So the attacks in France and Belgium were | |
| 1:03 | attacks against the entire Western world. | |
| 1:06 | And with that the fear of terror has grown among Germans. | |
| 1:09 | The deliberate attacks on civilians, the unpredictability | |
| 1:12 | of the attackers, and last but not least the many pictures | |
| 1:15 | of the attacks in the media all contribute to insecurity. | |
| 1:19 | Experts and psychologists suggest not to overwhelm oneself | |
| 1:22 | with these gruesome pictures, | |
| 1:25 | and frequent sharing on social media intensifies the worry. | |
| 1:28 | Experts on fear additionally say that over time people will also get used | |
| 1:31 | to something even as horrible as terrorism. | |
| 1:34 | Is there a cure for this fear? Some people find that numbers help. | |
| 1:38 | For instance, how probable it is in Germany to become a victim of terror. | |
| 1:42 | At any rate in Germany, the probability is decidedly higher of choking to death on food, | |
| 1:46 | Several hundred people have choked to death over the last few years, | |
| 1:50 | more than all the victims of terrorism combined in all of Western Europe. | |
| 1:53 | To spread fear and shock is one of the main goals of terrorism. | |
| 1:56 | The bigger our fear, the bigger their success. | |
| 1:59 | To see this for ourselves, and to therefore free ourselves from this a bit, | |
| 2:03 | it is at least worth a try. |
A meme appearing on Facebook cites the statistics for deaths from family (= domestic–you make people take it more seriously by changing its name) violence as against Islamist terrorism (you can guess which one is significantly smaller) and then going on to quote the huge amount of money being spent on counterterrorism activities. If I were brave, I would respond that the counterterrorism activities (which do result in a few significant arrests) are almost as effective as the elephant repellent that I spray around the perimeter of my living room. In Australia we have ‘only’ about 2.2 per cent Muslims–a smaller percentage than Buddhists, who don’t seem to make it to the news very much at all. Muslim immigration has been slowed because the government has adopted a policy of only taking in people with the skills that we want, and apparently we have enough butchers, armourers and people who can recite the Quran. Link here, but not sure whether you’ll require a sub to read it: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/muslim-migration-to-australia-the-big-slowdown/news-story/6be73d718d50476f940e30281d885b99
Oh ja, “You’ve reached a subscriber-only article.” 🙁 Alas…
But I’m glad to hear that Australia slowed things down! I liked it better when I heard that they turned boats away after providing food, etc.
Try Googling “When it comes to immigration, the government and opposition are in agreement. Our migration program is proudly non-discriminatory and that is how it should remain”, with the quotes. The story comes up at the top and works from the Google link.
Great idea Merkel. Let’s just choke the Muslim b[oyo]s on pork sandwiches.
So Fra Merkal advances some of the same arguments that the NRA uses against Obama’s gun control. Interesting. If Mohammedans are not responsible for violence then how can guns be held accountable?
Choking on food kills
Several hundred people die from choking on food each year
One can avoid choking on food by chewing properly
And avoid talking and chewing at the same time
Chewing food properly and not talking while eating
Reduce your risk of choking
One can simple chew food properly and
One can avoid talking while eating
Therefore, one can take preventive action
To avoid choking on food
No need for elevating anxiety and fear from choking.
Hypothetical:
You die from strangulation
When a cord is wrapped tightly around the neck
Several hundred people die each year from being strangled to death
The stranglers are not easily identifiable
Avoid being strangled by avoiding stranglers
But stranglers are not known
So avoid strangulation by avoiding unknown persons
But avoiding unknown persons requires one to be suspicious (near paranoid)
And maintaining suspiciousness requires high state of alert
And maintaining high state of alert makes one fearful and anxious.
So, will a reduction in terror also reduce the mundane risks – like choking or falling – of our lives? No; terror is an ADDITIONAL risk. Also, the numbers used for the “risk of terrorism” are ongoing. They are but the BEGINNING, and, left unchecked, they will escalate. They will escalate because a solid foundation for intra-societal conflict is being laid with the mass-importation of the bearers of a culture that is incompatible with the existing culture, and the invaders are compelled to strive for cultural domination . . . of which violence is but one component.
I forgot to mention that the ARD argument will sound convincing . . . to the unthinking products of statist indoctrination. a.k.a. “education”. Alas, that appears to be a majority if we go by election results.
Yes it is an act of god.
But NOT the GOD of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, just and loving Creator of heaven and earth.
It is an act of the same serpent found in the garden of old, father of lies and liar from the beginning, working through spiritually blind & willing agents, inspired by the spiritually blind so-called prophet.
As in the beginning, the serpent is again fooled by his pride that he finally has the upper hand. Not so.
GOD will write the final chapter – in His time, in His way.
Our job? Stand up for what is right, good & wholesome and speak the truth in love, but with clarity and without compromise.
People trying to minimise the problem tend to point to the terror attacks and deaths through terror attacks. They forget the greater extent of the problem–the fact that there are so many Muslims requiring society to be turned inside out to accommodate them, not to forget Cologne and Rotherham and similar events. Add the rapes and the Taharroush to the murders, and you’re getting more of the extent of the problem. Then add the demands for special treatment–as I pointed out above, we have more Buddhists than Muslims in Australia and I don’t notice them making any demands at all.
In the meantime Soviet era Merkel feels secure in her Berlin bunker surrounded by her Muslim allies. One day there will be nowhere to run and nowhere to hide for these western Euro sell out scabs and monsters.
The reason they constantly conflate stochastic with intentionally caused events is because they don’t believe in free will. This is why firearm murders get treated like a “safety” issue the same as accidental falls from a stairway or ledge.
They’re essentially saying that an accidental fall down a stairway is the same as someone being intentionally pushed down the stairway. This only makes sense if you buy the idea that the perpetrator’s intentional act is no different from an accident since he has no free choice in the matter. His brain might as well have randomly misfired in just the right manner to cause him to push someone down the stairs.
The idea that free will doesn’t exist is the new fatalism of the leftist kind. While it takes the radical determinist position it is no less fatalistic than the Islamic radical non-determinist position of “everything is caused to happen by the unknowable Allah”.
Either way, nobody is responsible for their actions because nobody is in control of themselves. And either way, society turns into a hellhole.
Postmodernism starts here:
‘There is no provable, objective world out there because our evidence of it has to traverse our senses before it gets to our brains and our various sense organs alter and distort all the information going through them. Thus, reality is what we think, and we cannot prove we are not brains in a vat.’
I think we can prove this is false and that we can show that there is an objective reality. One has to use the notion of time to do this.
Until we reintroduce The Holy Spirit to the Equation we will continue to flail about. The early Crusades were Church driven. Atheism will never win against a determined ideological foe like Islam.
The Christian faith inspired. I said in a previous post “We are being tested and found wanting”. I believe the Holy Spirit is testing our resolve although I will not openly say “Holy Spirit” but perhaps “Moral Imperative” or “Nature abhors a vacuum”.
Nature demands its Creation act in a clearly moral way. It is a high standard to follow and Kant the philosopher referred to it as Duty- the highest act an individual can perform in spite of their reluctance and risk to their own safety and well-being.
Aquinas said we have a choice too to interact with time and space that we observe as conscious beings. He also stated “God is a Actuality outside of space and time, that may through an act of grace choose to intervene in Man’s affairs”. That is what we do too. We can either fail to act or do so to save ourselves. God will see we are determined to earn his grace. He gave His Son on the cross so why should he assist folk that will not help themselves?
That is why I am so angry with what passes for a “Church” these days that sells us and its soul to Islam in pursuit of “interfaith worship and dialogue”. Even the Pope is in on it. The one before last even kissed the Koran and not just once. The “Imam” holding it for him to “kiss” would in Islamic lore and Law regard it as the Catholic Church-indeed all of Christendom accepting the superiority of Islam and Mohammmed as the “true and final Messenger of God”. The Church became dhimmi. the next step is paying jizya head count tax. I do not believe the Pope is so stupid to believe Jaweh is the same God as “Allah” that simply means “A god” or “the god”…even its antecedents are not “Abrahamic” but pagan as the early Church knew and called them “infidels”. Islam grew out of a misunderstood heresy called Arianism and attached to itself many more beliefs that had nothing to do with Christianity or Judaism. Christ loved and respected women.
Where does Christ and the Holy Spirit demand taxes from non-Christians or kill apostates? Where does Christ invade places of worship and hack people to death? I don’t see any horde of caravan raiders on the Mount of Olives waiting to ambush the Five thousand? do you?
Christ never said anything about sucking up to Evil in “interfaith dialogue” or polluting consecrated Church grounds by allowing shared services. Islam is a “religion” of this world with material and sexual rewards in the “Afterlife”…”Rewards” like 72 whores and permanent erections. Where do you see any of this in Christ’s Afterlife? Christ told the Devil to get lost when offered an Earthly Kingdom.
The CIA and other western agencies thought western wealth and materialism would defeat the fanatics and other Moslems. It did not and will not. They make the same mistake as the Socialists. Christ stated that “Man cannot live by bread alone”. That is as true today as it was in 33AD.
Mock me if you wish but without Christ and the call to do one’s best in following the same, we will fail.
Christianity has been incredibly successful. That is a self-evident Truth. Bad people exist in all religions and dumb people too and misguided souls. It is men that cause war and terror, not Christ. But he never said just keel over and die. We have the absolute duty in fact to defend against evil, by all and every means if it threatens our lives, wives and children. There is nothing “unChristian” about righteous indignation. A Church that fails to defend or exhort its flock to self defence is not a Church worthy of Christ. Read up on the First Crusade and the reasons for it in 1095.
Pope Urban stated…
“They have occupied more and more of the lands of those Christians, and have overcome them in seven battles. They have killed and captured many, and have destroyed the churches and devastated the empire. If you permit them to continue thus for awhile with impurity, the faithful of God will be much more widely attacked by them. On this account I, or rather the Lord, beseech you as Christ’s heralds to publish this everywhere and to persuade all people of whatever rank, foot-soldiers and knights, poor and rich, to carry aid promptly to those Christians and to destroy that vile race from the lands of our friends. I say this to those who are present, it meant also for those who are absent. Moreover, Christ commands it.”
Imago in Latin means the inner “spirit” or “genius” of the personality that drives the physical. Islam betrays it origins and close contact with late Rome. We are made in God’s Image, hence my statements above, This “Image” is not a “Selfie” but a spirit with free will and liberty to act through its own agency. God can choose to act with us as can other humans/
Sorry Baron and Dymphna for my earlier anger. It was general not specific. Where I live in UK. one mile away as the crow flies in Runnymede from Magna Carta Meadow and Island, The Moslems are attempting to make their presence felt. Burkas, hijabs are a common siight at the Memorial, that is nex to the Kennedy Memorial that stands on a spot declared US territory. Above it is the RAF Memorial.
My wife who is from South America (Panama) felt intimidated by this “takeover” an absolute irony considering what the site represents. They were also intimidating dog walkers. I reported these events to my local municipality and guess who was viewed with suspicion?
Islam is a daily reality even here in the most sacred of English sites. They have no respect. They tried to take Windsor too but Her Majesty apparently had a word with “officials”. It really annoys me so forgive my anger. It was not directed at your writers but a crie de coeur from a deeply hurt spirit. Mine.
May God bless you both for the work you do! Thankyou.
I guess you didn’t men to imply that the dog walkers were muslims?!
Dog walkers were local Brits. Sorry
[Deleted for failure to maintain decorum]
If your God is all that why doesn’t it fix them itself? I’m as disbelieving as any Richard Dawkins or Hitchens, have served in Iraq and Afghanistan and wouldn’t hesitate all over again. The following attributes are required of anyone involved in fighting this sub-human dross: Ruthlessness, relentlessness and with absolutely no remorse.
Please don’t try and tell me there are no atheists in a foxhole, I was one.
“If your God is all that why doesn’t it fix them itself?”
is exactly the same rhetorical question the Jews gave to Christ on the cross:
“You who are going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save Yourself! If You are the Son of God, come down from the cross!”
The point was and has never been for God to fix it himself. The union toward God requires that we submit to Him in love, because God is love (John 4:8), and through that union, things are changed.
Now to turn that into a point relevant to the topic of Islam, they do not understand the concept of God as love, and therefore do not see God nor God’s creation through the lens of love. That is fundamental issue of the Mohammedan heresy, and the actions that come from believing that false ideology.
And on a slightly relevant note: ruthlessness, relentlessness, and no remorse — authentic Christianity understands this thoroughly, which is how it became the single most influential religion the earth has ever seen. And it did it for the first three centuries without a military force 😉
The old submission thing again, yes that’ll do it. There are plenty of passages that would suggest your imaginary deity isnt all that loving. You carry on regardless though, so long as your happy.
i am
That’s next. Not quite at the critical mass yet. Who’s big battalions move first?
Nimrod, so true.
A little off-topic – regarding the critical mass of Moslems in a society. I come from an “Eastern Block” country and I remember the Communists kept the number of Party Members at about 10% of the population. There might have been some variations in different countries, but this was the general rule. Once a highly organized group controls 10% of the population, they have got the power. Of course, in the Commie times there was a quota (“nomenclature”) so that 90% or the same of the “elite” was meant to be Communist.
The Muslims will hardly ever comprise 90% of the “elites” in UK or France, BUT… I doubt in the Communist elites there was a mere 1% ready to die for the “ideology”. While with the Muslims, you have got fewer numbers, but incurably infected with morbido.
Regardless whether the Islamics are majority or minority, they appear to have some sort of sinister Islamic clout that tends to inflict extreme discomfort and extreme harmful effect on us poor nonbelievers who value our free will to be free from their typically nasty Islamic inferior obsession with their so called superiority.
It would be wise to have NOTHING to do with them.
Yes. Pity those who lose all because they dare.
So, if we will simply take the ostrich route and stick our heads in the sand, everything will be all right? All that will do is more easily expose our necks to the sword!
Me thinks that woman is completely right. We should not be tracing the trends of Islam itself, but we should understand the situation by the trends of IRA in 70s.
Now that I am completely hypnotised, and circles are radiating from my eyes, I would like to share this valuable lesson with investors to not to analyse trends of NASDAQ itself, but invest according to trends of vacuum cleaner sales in 1970s. Such is logic.
Look how many people die of old age! Merkel and her ilk are ensuring less people die of old age by importing as many murderers as she can.