I just thought I'd get in there before the usual crowd who are quick to label a homicidal Muslim a terrorist, or a homicidal black guy a thug, but also quick to label a homicidal white guy 'mentally unstable' did.

Fair enough, that's a pretty good definition if I'm honest. A better one, in fact, than the dictionary definition. I'll concede that, in legal terms, this person is not a terrorist.
Coming on to hate crime, is another tricky subject, and there's plenty of it about.

In regards to the accusations of hijacking a tragedy for political correctness, perhaps I could be accused of that, but equally no more than people who use events like Ferguson to further their anti-black agenda or the Boston bombings to further their anti-Muslim agenda.

Dylann Roof, 21

http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/...lann-roof.html

Pictured wearing Apartheid era South Africa flag, and Rhodesia flag patches, alledgedly told the people in the church "I have to do it. You're raping our women and taking over the country. You have to go."

Legal definitions never convinced me.
They're written by rich people in air conditioned offices that were either born into a complete failure to understand the world or became that way from all the years of living isolated from the dirt and grid of the real world.

What matters is the opinion of the people affected and I'm certain they were terrified.

The law may be an ass, but it is still the law.
But still, this is an interesting exercise in compare and contrast.
Quite insightful. :yep:

Just in, Roof has been arrested.

Good that they got him alive.

President Obama spoke touched upon various topics including American history, race and gun violence. But get this, no mention of terrorism.

Incident will be investigated as a hate crime and rightfully so.

But y'all you go ahead and keep digging your hole.



.

I'm aiming for the 'All Muslims are Terrorists' hole, going to meet up with it and connect with the 'All Blacks are thugs' hole, start a subway system going. :yeah:


Obamas speech was good though, I noted in particular his pained expression at "I've had to make statements like this too many times."

He's not wrong.

That was quick enough on catching him ... another nut job that wants to be heard. The weak ones shoot themselves in the head at the scene this one is just plain crazy blaming the blacks for anything.

I'll say it out loud, "it's the devil stirring up the pot" for one big blow out for a race war in the making.

The young man was just 21 and for his birthday his dad gave him a gun.

Here go the gun rights debates again :yep:

Sure seems like something stirring up the pot. Perhaps the internet, certainly it facilitates ease of access to radical media and thoughts, you couple that to a firearm or explosive and it's dangerously easy to kill people.

But yes, the gun rights debates will start again, and both sides will holler and shout and nothing will change and eventually people will stop talking about it, the media will stop giving it air time and life will return to normal, until the next mass killing. :dead:

Gotta agree with you Rockstar - the pic of him on Facebook with the old SA flag and Rhodesian one is a give away together with his victims on his motives.
Another interesting thing that Obama said in his speech was is that he asked the question why does this type of incident happen so frequently in the States. Not, as he said, that it does not happen in other countries but it happens far too frequently in the States. A question to ponder.

I can think of many questions to ask in order to answer his question.

Are there more unstable people in the States per pop than other countries?
Are gun laws more relaxed in the States than other countries?
Are racial tensions higher in the States than other countries?
Do different race groups feel more threatened by other race groups in the States than other countries?
Is the States going under a faster social/political/economic change than other countries - bringing with it a sense of fear to some groups?

Many, many more questions can be asked and the answers sought in order to address Obama's prime question and hopefully the answer to his.

Some people must be affraid that if this is called terrorism, the all muslims are terrorists argument goes out the window because today would mean that all whites are terrorists.

That's actually a really interesting question, and well put forward, I would echo it being one that needs to be asked.
Certainly the ethos of the United States has always been liberty, freedom and equality, the freedom of the people to be able to live their lives without heavy restriction from the state or government. That being said, those founding thoughts were brought about over two hundred years ago, based upon ideals brought forward many years before that (the French revolution, to name one).
The whole world has undergone massive social, economic and political change in the past one hundred years, and the rate of that change has only increased exponentially over the past five decades. It is scary, sometimes I look at the internet, in particular the way it can basically get into your real life and tear it apart if you should make one false step, and it does scare me. I'm grateful that I went to school when I did, in an era before smart phones and youtube meant that any mistake you made would be recorded for prosperity and kept forever to haunt you.
That being said, you cannot halt progress, some people might try to push back the tide, but eventually they find themselves in deep water and trying to make sense of this new world.

Coming back to this particular individual, I cannot help but find similarities between his words of "You're raping our women and taking over the country." and those people who have the conspiracy theory that Muslims are taking over Europe by breeding indiscriminately. It's that fear of being overtaken and losing dominance in your surrounding nation, the fear of invasion which is a classic fear which stretches back millenia, only usually it's been by another nation rather than by a particular ethnic group.
Will it change? Can it change? I honestly don't know, for some people there's too much profit in the status quo for it to change (and this is for people on both sides here, Sharpton, I'm looking at you) but for others there is a real driving force, and a lot of frustration that things are moving as slow as they are. But move they are, and perhaps things will change, at one point people might have said that Apartheid would never end, and yet it did. So anything is possible. :yep:

Over here we had a group killing mainly Turkish citizens. They called themselves NSU (Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund / National socialist Underground). They did mainly the same thing and they are officially called right wing terrorists here.:yep:

All y'all can quibble and fret about ultimately meaningless definitions 'til you're blue in the face, but the facts are this: as of now, 9 people are dead and more are wounded and none of the legalese, defining, or debate is going to make the dead any more alive or the wounded any more whole. The time is not to point fingers or quibble over nonsense, but to extend to those affected by this tragedy deepest sympathies and condolences. I extend mine to them and their loved ones and hope this never happens again...


<O>