Must say I prefer this attitude to the problem - Diana Lamplugh gave us some training about 20 years ago when I was a councillor. I think the other lot are using scare tactics to drum up trade.

And "silliness" is surely not appropriate in this discussion.

Having just read what has been happening to gay men in Syria - and I wish I hadn't - I am no longer in the mood for trying to keep things light-hearted.

Nordmann...you have avoided answering the questions below which impinge on our differences of opinion regarding  Stereotyping vs profiling....which support my position and detract from yours. What are your answers...yes or no...huh? huh? Answer up Mr. Timex. (That's from the old Timex ad..."It takes a lickin and keeps on tickin"

Ms Rourke? ....zzzz

Here is a quick test:  Do you think a woman could ever pose a threat to your personal safety?  How about a senior citizen?  How about a child?  If your answer is “no” to any of these three scenarios, let alone all three scenarios, this will be an eye-opening presentation.

But the answers are rather obvious, I thought, and actually don't have much bearing on violent extremism such as was being discussed here before this diversion you have introduced, Parallax.

Of course a woman can pose a threat to one's personal safety. Senior citizens have also been known to be dangerous, some in very well documented incidents. Small children are less of a threat in the same sense, though in some parts of the world they can be an extreme threat, be it as soldiers or suicide bombers. Children as in youths or young teenagers also are potentially dangerous, as even the stereotypical view agrees with.

However I didn't find the presentation as eye-opening as all that - realtors might face some dodgy people in the course of their job but have probably as much chance of being killed by extremists as anyone else. In fact at the moment cartoonists would seem to be running a much greater risk than realtors in that department. But if the good folk down in Dallas Trouble Spotters teach people to use profiling skills with intelligence and not rely on stereotypical assessment then fair play to them. Though why you've decided to promote them here defeats me.

Parallax wrote:

Answer up Mr. Timex. (That's from the old Timex ad..."It takes a lickin and keeps on tickin. "

Oh, for goodness' sake, Parallax, do shut up. Do you really think you are giving nordmann "a lickin'"? You are just making a total and complete arse of yourself, and we are all too polite here to tell you so.

I'm sorry: I do not like being impolite, but, having had several glasses of wine at lunch, and having argued at length with someone just as obtuse as you, I really have had enough.

I shall probably delete this later - but then again, I may not.

Well, I'm just confused as how we've ended up here, talking about personal safety courses. I'm going to make you worry even more about my personal safety, less than 2% of our police force are armed response officers permitted to bear firearms, they are obviously not all on duty at any one time and they do not routinely carry guns except in airports.

What a shame you don't know know any Muslims, Pax, that's your loss. Do you know any gays or socialists or Marxists or pacifists, or moles come to that? If you don't, can I recommend you correct that omission as soon as possible, expanding your social circle can only be enriching.

But he ought change his trousers first. I think his are scat damp from laughing at a misconception all of his own making. Yesterday, we had to make a long ride through countryside and I saw a tall hide for bird watchers - twitchers is their nick name here. I thought of you  then Pax. Sat all alone somewhere people twitching. If you had later met the motley crew with whom I was doing business you would have had a breakdown. Somehow I survived the ordeal - and had a few laughs even. I bet not one of them rushed home to oil a gun after meeting me, either. This is all too, too sad.

And why keep on about the gay moles?

Personally I blame it all on the gay badgers:

I was about to stop looking at & posting on this thread, now you have introduced a weapon which I consider far more dangerous than a gun - Harry bleeding Hill. Can't stand the man. Just lead me to the "stop watching this thread" button.

Well I wouldn't worry too much about it Gil .... that youtube clip refuses to play, so you can remain Harry Hill free.

Only ... who will groom the badgers for the Badger Parade?

Vivent (is that the plural subjunctive form of vivre???) et les blaireaux et les taupes - le plus gai le better.

et aussi

ferval wrote:

et aussi

http://lyrics.wikia.com/Les_Blaireaux:L%27Auberge_Du_Chat_Qui_P%C3%A8te


Et de Lille, Ferval...

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Blaireaux


...

nordmann wrote:

But the answers are rather obvious, I thought, and actually don't have much bearing on violent extremism such as was being discussed here before this diversion you have introduced, Parallax.

Of course a woman can pose a threat to one's personal safety. Senior citizens have also been known to be dangerous, some in very well documented incidents. Small children are less of a threat in the same sense, though in some parts of the world they can be an extreme threat, be it as soldiers or suicide bombers. Children as in youths or young teenagers also are potentially dangerous, as even the stereotypical view agrees with.

However I didn't find the presentation as eye-opening as all that - realtors might face some dodgy people in the course of their job but have probably as much chance of being killed by extremists as anyone else. In fact at the moment cartoonists would seem to be running a much greater risk than realtors in that department. But if the good folk down in Dallas Trouble Spotters teach people to use profiling skills with intelligence and not rely on stereotypical assessment then fair play to them. Though why you've decided to promote them here defeats me.

You are just a word processor nordmann, like an attorney. You know very well that men passing by older women automatically write them off as not threatening. The same goes for the other two questions. That is stereotyping. There are other examples also...like we assume all bulldogs are dangerous. It's done by knowledge supplied by the history of the subject. That's stereotyping. The same applies to sheep and as the black goat of this forum, you know that. Of course, having gotten a bit more familiar with your method of operating, I know you would find an instance where the questions may be true 99% of the time and try to nullify it and weasel out. You just plain waddle in your own crap.

Temperance, like Clark Gable said, "Frankly my dear...I don't give a damn". You wanted me to stay now you want me to go and I shall so oblige. Others who feel the same, read above.  For any of you who do not have that feeling, thank you and so long.

There is a huge difference between assuming a bulldog is dangerous because it is a bulldog and assuming a muslim is dangerous because they are a muslim. Likewise there are reasonable grounds to assume an elderly lady is not threatening whereas a masked man carrying a Kalashnikov and aiming it at you probably is. This could of course be called "stereotyping" but only if you have less respect for the English language than you obviously have for your fellow man.

Bye bye.

On the RIP thread earlier today, Caro posted this. The use of the word "cowardly" - which so many, including myself, have used about various attacks on unarmed civilians (not just this recent incident) - has also been dismissed by nordmann as being, in this context, a "cliché".

Caro wrote:

The news about the attack was headline here, and very sad to read, but I am always a bit uncertain about referring to them as "cowardly" - knowing you are putting yourself in the line of death is hardly cowardly, and even if he knew those police were unarmed he must have known others would be brought in smartly.  I was surprised to find the perpetrator was in his 50s.  It seems very old to be radicalized.

I was stung by the cliché accusation and, if I am honest, rather surprised by Caro's remark. My immediate reaction was a tart retort that the man hardly deserves a posthumous George Cross for his actions. But I have had a cup of tea and have thought a bit more about this. Are "terrorists" moral, if not physical, cowards? And, if this man was killing because he felt he was honestly a fighter in a "just war", could it be argued that we should then actually respect - whatever respect means -  his actions and the actions of those like him, and acknowledge that a kind of defiant courage is being displayed? But then mowing down schoolkids with a rented Hyundai is hardly what warriors do, is it? I include in my question all terrorists (freedom-fighters?), not just those who claim to be Islamic "soldiers"; but also, for example, members of any paramilitary organisation who deliberately set out to kill and maim unarmed civilians. But then, should we acknowledge that, even if their actions horrify or have horrified us, many of them, like former members of the IRA for example, have - to quote Henry James - "been taught by masters" - teachers who have often, although not always, been English? Reap what you sow, and all that?

So, how do we define moral cowardice in ourselves and in others? And what is true courage? I always thought moral cowardice meant a refusal to face the truth, but then truth is a can of worms - that's for sure. And where, if at all, does mental illness - or mental instability - or mental inadequacy come into all this? Are those with psychopathic tendencies often/always good terrorist - or hero - material?

I still like the Queen's response when, shaking the hand of a man whose organisation had killed members of her own family, she replied to his "How are you?" with the ambiguous comment: "Well, I'm still alive."


EDIT: A very muddled post, but I'll still send it. People are probably sick to death of discussing this anyway: hashtags and tealights - the whole twitterfest nonsense - get very tedious very quickly.

Terrorism (itself a woefully inadequate cliche) is a subversion of principle, how it is normally defined and how it is expressed, along with being a subversion of quite a lot of other things too. The person at the receiving end, in grappling to understand it, finds that they must participate in that subversion too to an extent, at least semantically when expressing their thoughts using standard linguistic means - so it is no surprise that "respect" as a term becomes subverted in the process (along with "courage", "cowardice", "moral" etc).

Subversion occurs linguistically when the commonly assumed semantics employed in normal discourse are in fact revealed to be inadequate to the task of expressing thought and sentiment lucidly, and the weakest assumptions are by definition the first casualties, the first to be targeted by the subverter. Political subversion follows the same lines. As does religious. These are both, in semantic terms, hotbeds of potentially subverted language and expressions. The person who - for whatever reason - elects to murderously exploit these weaknesses presents simply an extreme example of this, and often quite a traumatic one for those left to account for their actions in terms of logic.

Human society accommodates individuals within it who have little or no compunction regarding the murderous extinction of life. Some of these individuals are facilitated by the standard machineries of society (from the political to the linguistic) and some need to subvert those mechanics to prosecute actions based on the same lack of compunction.

The children injured in London by a "terrorist" would find common grounds of understanding with the many more children who, on the very same day, were killed, maimed and traumatised in Mosul in US-led air strikes. Explaining to all these children how a few thousand miles and shades of political expression employed by the perpetrators separate "just and moral" from "unjust and immoral" is much more than an exercise in semantics, but essentially that is what it is too.

Well, I did say - of my use of the word respect in my above post - "whatever respect means". We are all subversive, intentionally or not, when we try to communicate.

As for the rest of your post - well, what honest person can disagree?

I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

W.H.Auden

Temp wrote:

Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

W.H.Auden

Thankfully Auden is being very inexact. Only some of those to whom evil is done actually respond in kind. Most people's gods, even when challenged to be, are not psychopathic.