COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN SPUTNIK
'We're Up for Several
More Years of Increased Jihadi Terror in Europe'
The phrase "lone wolf" is one of the phoniest
terms in use at present. It is, quite simply, a propaganda term.
It is intended to instill fear and to suggest penetration
into a society of dark and sinister forces, allowing governments in turn to
take extraordinary measures in surveillance and control of things like the
Internet.
What we indeed have in places like London is young men
desperately trying to get some kind of vengeance for what Britain has helped do
to some Arabic countries, but the total of such incidents remains extremely
small and warrants no extraordinary measures.
We all know that young men, even without a deep grievance, can
sometimes be troublesome and violent.
In America, for example, we see case after case of young men
attacking groups and people. The incidents are common, but they are not, and
quite rightly so, labeled as terror.
Here is a list of recent multiple killings in the U.S.,
going back only two years. The list is only a tiny portion of total murders or
total homicides in America:
San Francisco UPS shooting with 3 killed and 2 injured
Pennsylvania supermarket shooting and killing of 3
Orlando Florida shooting and killing of 5
Ohio nursing home shooting and killing of 3
Fresno downtown shooting and killing of 3
Fort Lauderdale Airport shooting with 5 killed and 6 injured
Burlington Washington mall shooting and killing of 5
Baton Rouge police shooting with 3 killed and 2 injured
Dallas police shooting with 5 killed and 11 injured
Orlando Florida nightclub shooting with 49 killed and 53
injured
Kansas Excel Industry shooting with 3 killed and 14 injured
Kalamazoo Michigan shooting and killing 6
San Bernardino shooting with 14 killed and 21 injured
Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood shooting with 3 killed
and 9 injured
Roseburg Oregon Community College shooting with 9 killed and
9 injured
Chattanooga military recruitment shooting with 5 killed and
2 injured
Charleston Church shooting with 9 killed and 1 injured
Menasha Wisconsin Bridge shooting with 3 killed and 1
injured
Here are a few additional interesting statistics on American
day-in, day-out violence:
In just one city, the city of Chicago during 2016, 717 were
shot and killed, 3662 were shot and wounded, total homicides, including without
guns, were 803. Many large American cities have comparable violence.
The Guardian newspaper in Britain tracked killings by police
in the U.S. for a year, such killings being very under-reported in American
national crime stats: 1,146 were killed by their own police in just one year,
2015. That number compares to 55 killed in total by British police over a
period of 24 years.
In another kind of under-reported death, The Huffington Post
gathered statistics of more than 800 people who died in jails and police
lockups in the year 2015-16.
For 2015, 38,300 people were killed on American highways. Of
course, the overwhelming majority of such deaths is completely avoidable, but
we do not see authorities taking measures in law to any serious extent to
improve the rules and their enforcement.
Only in the area of “terror” do we see a relatively small
number of deaths bringing demands for measures resembling a police state.
I think in all serious matters, where the press screams and
where new demands are made by government, it is extremely important for people
to have some perspective.
Death from genuine terror remains, despite all the noise, something
about as common as slipping on a banana peel and dying.
