455 replies to this topic

[BeefontheBone]

I'd say the first thing that's "wrong" is the widespread availability of guns...

[DeathDude]

Yeah think that can be the case in some places, up here though I wouldn't say it's so widespread, in fact the shooter in the Montreal incident, had legally registered guns, that fell under the whole gun registry that we have up here, where you have to register your guns. Still think it needs to be tightened the laws to prevent the easy access of high powered weapons, make more restrictions and such it won't stop them from getting used but it may curb some of the buying that some people may do.

Also agree that the whole idea that there will be losses in such situations is a bad attitude, in this case more probably could have been done to prevent the shooting but hopefully they can learn from this experience and understand where they went wrong.

[Sinke]

Hey, A.J.- I remember that theatre horror. I actually wrote a play about it.

What I wanted to say is that whenever you have a bad guy and bunch of hostages, when this guy doesn't care for negotiations and you can't take him out with sniper, and if he has some explosives- the only thing you can do ( concerning swat intervention ) is to bang in and shoot him. You could poison the waterflow in the building or something similar, but that takes some time.

In Russian theatre for example, you had huge building, huge ammount of hostages, huge number of terrorists ( who claimed they know they will die ), when you have failed negotiations attempts- then you get in and bang them. Alas, that usually ends up with tons of killed hostages.

[A. J. Raffles]

Yes, I see your point. It still means that it's a failure, though. If your job is to save hostages and you end up killing them, you have failed, even if you succeed in killing the people who would have killed them if you hadn't. In the case of the theatre, the fact that the police chose to use gas (which they must have known would affect the hostages just as much as the Chechnyan(?) rebels who were holding them hostage) does make you wonder what they were trying to save. The building?
By the way, do you remember whether there actually were negotiations in that case? I always thought the Russian government usually wasn't too keen on spending a lot of time negotiating with rebels/terrorist/whatever the proper name for them is but tends to send in special forces rather quickly...

[Sinke]

Chechen terrorists usually issue a request which won't be met, for example, freeing hundreds of their soldiers from Russian prisons. They commit what is known as political terrorism, where their act of terror isn't formed to jeopardize the security of the enemy but send a message through medium to the whole world. If they appear as heroes more then terrorists, they will rise the awarness about their fight to the whole world.

Altough the logic is twisted, it is hard to ignore the opposite side. In given example, Russians commited horrible atrocities during their march in Chechenia. Many Beslan terrorists were infact woman, widows of people who were killed in Russian actions.  Terrorism is just an act of despair, altough I am afraid it is getting more and more power in the world.

PS: As for topic of hostage death in this cases, you never know what is really behind all that. Sometimes people just want to end it all, which especially goes for more media-influenced societies. You get in not to rescue the hostage, but to get rid of the situation. Sad, but true.

[DeathDude]

Well and plus we don't know the "whole" story of what really happened at the school and the exact situation or circumstances that caused the swat team to act in such a way.

[Sinke]

Precisely. Not to mention that I'm quite sure Swat or anybody else there in charge gave it's best to make situation fine. I mean, those folks go on their job every day thinking that maybe this will be day they will end up in coffin. I agree there were mistakes in process, but I still believe those people are pros in their job.

[Juni Ori]

greywolforiginal, on Sep 28 2006, 07:54 PM, said:

I don't think it would be wise to just start shooting into a room as soon as the door opens when the gunman has a hostage. The smoke from the explosives blowing the door open probably also added to the confusion and slow response of the SWAT team to stop the gunman from shooting the hostage as well.

Again I was misunderstood. I said "can be" covered. Not in any way meaning that I recommend opening uncontrolled automatic fire with all available weapons. And those charges doesn't cause smoke. Also special forces, even SWAT, have many ways to scout the room(s) where the suspect(s) are, thus giving significant information to which way breachers should aim and which way to keep the finger off the trigger.

Few facts about the Russian drama: That thater was in Moscow, in Dubrovka area. Chechens demanded withdrawal of all Russian forces from Chechenya. Insanity. There were women Chechens also in Moscow. No matter what, the use of possibly lethal gas was irresponsible.

Beslan was also irresponsible. Not even proper scouting was done before badly improvised breaching began. It was a disaster. Then again, Kreml got what it wanted: bad guys down.

Sinke, those guys going in usually are pros. Those who give the orders them, necessarily aren't. There has always been endless debate how, why and when to go in. "Surprisingly" those who don't have clear picture of the risks would send forces in in earlier stage. Russians, among with many others, on the other hand don't care. They have never been too keen to negotiate with terrorists and their whole culture accepts a lot more disasterous results. Which brings to my mind what friend once said: "In truly sophisticated society we can't unfortunately have effective enough measures to truly pre-empt terrorism and crimes."

[taikara]

http://www.aftenpost...icle1458080.ece

[Juni Ori]

Tom..?

[DeathDude]

that's just scary. *cringes at the article*

[a1s]

No it's not. in fact, mark my words, in 20 years you'll be prohibited by law from expressing anti-zoophilic views. they will also legalize cross species mariages (though it will take the church another 50 to reconise them)

[Juni Ori]

I understand your belief, a1s, but I sincerely hope you're wrong...

[Tom Henrik]

Yikes.

I remember hearing about the last part of that article - that many vetenarians suspect sexual abuse of animals that they have treated. The problem is that they can't prove it, and that many of them are afraid of reporting it to the police - as often it is just a hunch, and very few obvious proof that such an act has taken place. And as the article says, there is no rule against it, as long as the animal does not suffer.

I think that is because no-one ever suspected that such a problem would ever occur, so there never was a law made. However, animal abuse does occur, and is illegal. But in order for it to be animal abuse, the animal has to suffer, and it's difficult to prove that, unless there are physical damages. (Yes, Norway is a bureaucratic nightmare.)

I really hope a new law will be put into action as soon as possible. It is sickening that this happens. However, it's still not as bad as Denmark, where it seems to be not only legal, but acceptable.

[Tulac]

a1s, on Oct 7 2006, 02:24 AM, said:

No it's not. in fact, mark my words, in 20 years you'll be prohibited by law from expressing anti-zoophilic views.

Depends if the Greeks and Romans did it, I know homosexualism was normal with them(and paedophilia), but I'm not sure if they had sex with animals, and there's still some time until we reach their decadency.