Breaking News - Major Terrorist Attack In Oslo, Norway

[grumbler]

How about a position in between those two, such as a belief that a certain group has a higher proclivity for evil?  Racist or not racist?

Depends on what you mean by "a certain group."  "People with certain beliefs have a higher proclivity for seeking violent solutions to their problems" sounds better, and avoids that dreadful "evil" tag.

[Slargos]

Just imagine a school shooting where the kids cannot escape the building and it takes two hours for the police to show up.

I don't want to imagine that. 

Also, is there an objective reason why it took the police two hours to arrive or is there a suspicion of incompetence?

To begin with, there was this little thing about a terrorist attack in the capital. 

Then, there's the MO for shootings. Scandinavian police next to never goes in guns drawn and blazing. There's simply no culture of this kind of thing here, and the police acts in a methodical rather than impulsive manner. I can't even remember the last time a gunman was actually shot. Probably around the Malexander murders.

In addition, there's the tactical complexity. Cops don't have weapons available until given the access by the operational commander. There's also the little problem of a large body of water in the way.

Early on, we simply didn't know what was going on. There was "shooting" and "an armed man".

In hindsight, if we'd known all along that the guy intended to murder as many people as possible, would the police have acted sooner and in more haste? I would expect so.

There were assertions made that it was problematic to use helicopters "on account of the weather" but that sounds like horse shit because the weather was just fine.

[Martinus]

It is possible to be concerned about the problems that come from friction between members of different cultural groups on both an individual and societal level without being racist. But once you're in the territory of labeling entire ethnic and cultural groups as evil then you're racist.

How about a position in between those two, such as a belief that a certain group has a higher proclivity for evil?  Racist or not racist?

Depends if the group in question is defined by race or not. If it is defined by ethnicity, creed, culture etc. but not race then it cannot be racist.

[Grallon]

Trust grumbler to turn this into another pissing contest - this time about who can be more callous without appearing to be. 



G.

[Admiral Yi]

Depends if the group in question is defined by race or not. If it is defined by ethnicity, creed, culture etc. but not race then it cannot be racist.

You're off the hook Slag.

[Martinus]

Trust grumbler to turn this into another pissing contest - this time about who can be more callous without appearing to be. 



G.

I think it's between you, me, grumbler and Slargos.

[Razgovory]

What's better than a tardfight between Slargos and Pat?

A tardfight between Martinus, Grallon, Viking, and Slargos, with Raz throwing in some hand grenades! 

*pops popcorn*

It's not a real 'tard fight unless you join.  We need at least one 'tard

[Slargos]

Trust grumbler to turn this into another pissing contest - this time about who can be more callous without appearing to be. 



G.

I think it's between you, me, grumbler and Slargos.

If I'd realized it was a contest, I would've started playing. 

[Slargos]

Depends if the group in question is defined by race or not. If it is defined by ethnicity, creed, culture etc. but not race then it cannot be racist.

You're off the hook Slag.

I am so relieved. 

[dps]

Maybe this kind of incident will raise awareness that the proper response to a mass murder is to zerg rush someone, just like 9/11 taught as that the proper response to a hijacking attempt is for all the passengers to attack the hijacker at once.  These kind of strategies are hard to learn, because they require many people at the same time to have the same idea and suppress the diffusion of responsibility, which is why it takes these kind of tragedies to instill the idea en masse.

An ABC news report I saw said that the guy had a fully automatic weapon, which makes even a mass rush problematic.  600 people in one group, yeah, that's still a good option, but the 600 people in this instance were apparantly spread out in several groups.

[Martinus]

Incidentally, are views about some races being inferior to others in certain aspects (e.g. evil, or stupid etc.) always racist, or only if such views are untrue?

E.g. would a belief that the uruk-hai are more evil than elves, or that hobbits are lazier than dwarves be considered racist?

[Razgovory]

Marty, I hate to break it to you, but orcs and elves aren't real.

[Razgovory]

Jacob is attacking you because you made actual racist remarks.  Examples:

When you go on about "mud people", that would be racism.

When grallon goes on about how Muslims are vermin, that would be religious bigotry.

See the difference?

No, I really don't. It's six of one, half a dozen of the other.

Am I being racist if I call you a porch monkey?

Regardless, it's completely beside the point. Jacob insists that it's racism to villify a religion. [Or actually, he specified culture, so he sortof dodged it that way. But since no one was calling a culture evil, I guess his "argument" is a complete red herring. My bad.]

Perhaps the problem is you don't know what words mean in the English language.

[Martinus]

Marty, I hate to break it to you, but orcs and elves aren't real.

According to some there is no such thing as a "race" either, so racism must not exist either, right?

[Admiral Yi]

Incidentally, are views about some races being inferior to others in certain aspects (e.g. evil, or stupid etc.) always racist, or only if such views are untrue?

E.g. would a belief that the uruk-hai are more evil than elves, or that hobbits are lazier than dwarves be considered racist?

You're only allowed to generalize negatively about white males.