Recent terrorist attacks prove ISIS is on the run
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- Start date
Sooo, the British were actually bombing their own neighbourhoods and blaming the IRA for it to manipulate the British people into...what exactly?
4 more dropouts unfortunately agree with your gratingly stupid post.
Must be that they also couldn't fathom that not all car accidents are actually accidents.
Especially that one you can't stop talking about that was also....a terrorist attack.
Don't follow Loc's lead kids.
Stay in school.
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The state in Islamic State, as a geographic and political entity, is being pushed back, but everything is not going to be OK.
If they're going out it seems clear that it will be with a bang. This is a big no Bueno in my opinion and we have to face that down
You don't understand terrorism. Terrorism is responsible for the expansion of the worlds most powerful nation state.
Despite The Headlines, Steven Pinker Says The World Is Becoming Less Violent
As you know, we've been following the attack on the boardwalk in Nice and the attempted coup in Turkey, both of which claimed dozens of lives. But those are just two of recent violent episodes that shocked the world. There was also the assault on a park in Bangladesh and on the airport in Brussels, the suicide bombings in Baghdad, not to mention the spate of mass shootings here in the U.S.
You can see why reasonable people might wonder if the world is falling apart or at least becoming more violent. So we posed that question to Harvard University psychology professor Steven Pinker. He says the answer is no, a thesis he put forth in his book "The Better Angels Of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined." We reached him in Cape Cod, Mass., via Skype, and I asked him to explain his argument.
STEVEN PINKER: The only way you can really answer the question - has violence gone up or down? - is to count how many violent incidents have there been as a proportion of the number of opportunities, and has that gone up or down over the course of history? And that's what I tried to do in the book. I looked at homicide, looked at war, looked at genocide, looked at terrorism. And in all cases, the long-term historical trend, though there are ups and downs and wiggles and spikes, is absolutely downward. The rate of violent crime in United States has fallen by more than half in just a decade. The rate of death in war fell by a factor of 100 over a span of 25 years.
MARTIN: And you say this is a worldwide phenomenon.
PINKER: Well, it's highly uneven. If you certainly choose the most violent parts of the world at any given time, they're going to be pretty violent. But if you count the number of parts of the world that are violent versus those that aren't, then you see that the world is becoming more peaceful. The impression that some kinds of violence have gone up over the last five years has some truth to it. Because of the Syrian civil war, the rate of death in warfare has drifted upward a little bit in the last five years. There has been a small increase in homicide in the United States in the last three years. But both of those figures are at a fraction of what they were in the '60s, '70S and '80s.
MARTIN: Why is the rate of violence going down around the world?
PINKER: There are a lot of individual whys because the decline of war, decline of homicide, decline of capital punishment, and so on take place over different time scales. If there's a common denominator - in the long run, violence really is irrational. I might get an advantage if I harm someone else for my benefit, but on the other hand, he feels the same way. And if we both are constantly trying to kill each other, we're both worse off. And certainly the police and government have had a huge role in reducing violence.
In the international arena, of course, we don't have a global police force. And there it is partly dependent on institutions of cooperation that make it more profitable to trade with other countries than to invade them. You don't kill your customers. The rise of democracy has probably made a difference. Democracies are less likely to wage war against each other. And there's also been a change in norms, just what decent countries do or don't do.
MARTIN: What would be the implications of embracing your point of view? You've heard, for example, the president sort of encouraging people not to panic. If we were to absorb that thinking, what do you think the implications of that might be?
PINKER: I think the president is absolutely right. For one thing, we must not assume that society is falling apart. We're pretty safe. Remember that terrorists in particular, really, by design, distort our view of violence. That's almost what terrorism means.
PINKER: The amount of damage that terrorists do in terms of the number of people they kill is a fraction of the number of people who die in ordinary day-to-day homicides.
But they have hit on a formula for guaranteeing news coverage and guaranteeing the attention of the world. I actually think that is a pathology of journalism that because it is so driven by events that happen in a discrete moment in time, it often ignores long-standing trends that transform the world that you may not notice on a day-to-day basis. It also creates an opportunity for violence entrepreneurs who can game the system by making a presence on the world stage knowing that it is the sudden, dramatic, violent events that make it on page one or get the most clicks.
MARTIN: That's Steven Pinker, professor of psychology at Harvard University, speaking to us from Cape Cod via Skype. Professor Pinker, thank you so much for speaking with us.
PINKER: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Despite The Headlines, Steven Pinker Says The World Is Becoming Less Violent : NPR
As you know, we've been following the attack on the boardwalk in Nice and the attempted coup in Turkey, both of which claimed dozens of lives. But those are just two of recent violent episodes that shocked the world. There was also the assault on a park in Bangladesh and on the airport in Brussels, the suicide bombings in Baghdad, not to mention the spate of mass shootings here in the U.S.
You can see why reasonable people might wonder if the world is falling apart or at least becoming more violent. So we posed that question to Harvard University psychology professor Steven Pinker. He says the answer is no, a thesis he put forth in his book "The Better Angels Of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined." We reached him in Cape Cod, Mass., via Skype, and I asked him to explain his argument.
STEVEN PINKER: The only way you can really answer the question - has violence gone up or down? - is to count how many violent incidents have there been as a proportion of the number of opportunities, and has that gone up or down over the course of history? And that's what I tried to do in the book. I looked at homicide, looked at war, looked at genocide, looked at terrorism. And in all cases, the long-term historical trend, though there are ups and downs and wiggles and spikes, is absolutely downward. The rate of violent crime in United States has fallen by more than half in just a decade. The rate of death in war fell by a factor of 100 over a span of 25 years.
MARTIN: And you say this is a worldwide phenomenon.
PINKER: Well, it's highly uneven. If you certainly choose the most violent parts of the world at any given time, they're going to be pretty violent. But if you count the number of parts of the world that are violent versus those that aren't, then you see that the world is becoming more peaceful. The impression that some kinds of violence have gone up over the last five years has some truth to it. Because of the Syrian civil war, the rate of death in warfare has drifted upward a little bit in the last five years. There has been a small increase in homicide in the United States in the last three years. But both of those figures are at a fraction of what they were in the '60s, '70S and '80s.
MARTIN: Why is the rate of violence going down around the world?
PINKER: There are a lot of individual whys because the decline of war, decline of homicide, decline of capital punishment, and so on take place over different time scales. If there's a common denominator - in the long run, violence really is irrational. I might get an advantage if I harm someone else for my benefit, but on the other hand, he feels the same way. And if we both are constantly trying to kill each other, we're both worse off. And certainly the police and government have had a huge role in reducing violence.
In the international arena, of course, we don't have a global police force. And there it is partly dependent on institutions of cooperation that make it more profitable to trade with other countries than to invade them. You don't kill your customers. The rise of democracy has probably made a difference. Democracies are less likely to wage war against each other. And there's also been a change in norms, just what decent countries do or don't do.
MARTIN: What would be the implications of embracing your point of view? You've heard, for example, the president sort of encouraging people not to panic. If we were to absorb that thinking, what do you think the implications of that might be?
PINKER: I think the president is absolutely right. For one thing, we must not assume that society is falling apart. We're pretty safe. Remember that terrorists in particular, really, by design, distort our view of violence. That's almost what terrorism means.
PINKER: The amount of damage that terrorists do in terms of the number of people they kill is a fraction of the number of people who die in ordinary day-to-day homicides.
But they have hit on a formula for guaranteeing news coverage and guaranteeing the attention of the world. I actually think that is a pathology of journalism that because it is so driven by events that happen in a discrete moment in time, it often ignores long-standing trends that transform the world that you may not notice on a day-to-day basis. It also creates an opportunity for violence entrepreneurs who can game the system by making a presence on the world stage knowing that it is the sudden, dramatic, violent events that make it on page one or get the most clicks.
MARTIN: That's Steven Pinker, professor of psychology at Harvard University, speaking to us from Cape Cod via Skype. Professor Pinker, thank you so much for speaking with us.
PINKER: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Despite The Headlines, Steven Pinker Says The World Is Becoming Less Violent : NPR
In the 1970s there was a hijacking nearly every week.
Was it a change of mindset that makes them now nonexistent or hardcore diligence making it nearly impossible to pull off?
Was it a change of mindset that makes them now nonexistent or hardcore diligence making it nearly impossible to pull off?
Look at all the mileage they got out of it. London and cameras is one such item. The underground terrorist network had ties to the IRA and they are the same as ISIS in that the ones they were fighting against were actually their handlers. This is Britain we are talking bout, please take off your rise colored glasses and start thinking that the (dear old Queen) is the epitome of what Ma Barker could have been
That underlined bit is exactly what Uncle Sham does, commits acts of mass terrorism and then distorts our view of that violence. There is no almost about that. If you think Lybia Iraq and Syria lay in rubble and the dead because of something other than terrorism you are an idiot.
ISIS is on the run cuz Uncle Sam has lost resupply capabilities. The coalition of Iran Syria, Russia and Hezzbollah, and others has beaten Israel, the USA Europe and the Limeys and Canada. The same will happen in Ukraine. We might also wonder who is actually on the run. Certainly no one cares about hired scumbag murderers being put down enmasse but thier supporters might want to start moving toward the exits while there still are some.
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Everyone speaks according to his own imagination, and may be (or certainly) to his own desires.
A parable in Arabic:
Love (or like) someone and you then speak (seeing him without defects or flaws)...
and dislike (or hate someone) then speak (seeing him full of defects and flaws)
To me, truly I dislike the Zionists, and see all the evil comes from them ... this may be true to some or to much extent,
then I thought: it may be the various sects are conflicting and combating ...
but anyhow: all such seditions and conflicts ... lead to the advantage of the Zionists; therefore, it is most probable they are the true criminals who are behind every war and trouble.
A parable in Arabic:
Love (or like) someone and you then speak (seeing him without defects or flaws)...
and dislike (or hate someone) then speak (seeing him full of defects and flaws)
To me, truly I dislike the Zionists, and see all the evil comes from them ... this may be true to some or to much extent,
then I thought: it may be the various sects are conflicting and combating ...
but anyhow: all such seditions and conflicts ... lead to the advantage of the Zionists; therefore, it is most probable they are the true criminals who are behind every war and trouble.