READING, England (AP) — A stabbing rampage in Britain that killed three people as they sat in a park on a summer evening is being considered a terrorist attack, British police said Sunday as a 25-year-old believed to be the lone attacker was in custody.
I noticed that the police were able to apprehend the suspect without a gun.
Britain spends a century bombing the middle east indiscriminately, then when someone strikes back with a 2-dollar knife they call it terrorism.
Terrorism is one explanation, possibly even one the attacker himself (and it usually is a he) might give, but there are others that I find equally if not more plausible in this troubled era.
For example, John Brunner in his seminal sci-fi novel, Stand on Zanzibar, refers to “mucker” attacks which, at first, I took as a corruption of “mugger” but that turned out to be a reference to “amok;” i.e.,
Running amok , sometimes referred to as simply amok or having gone amok ,[1] also spelled amuck or amuk , is the act of behaving disruptively or uncontrollably. The word derives from Southeast Asian Austronesian languages (especially Malaysian[2] and Indonesian[3]), traditionally meaning “an episode of sudden mass assault against people or objects usually by a single individual following a period of brooding that has traditionally been regarded as occurring especially in Malay culture but is now increasingly viewed as psychopathological behavior”
Authorities admit they’re Trumped in finding a cause…
This is so sad. If only guns had been freely available he would have been able to kill many more people. Now he’s left with the memory of his failure.
Nice to see someone else still remembers John Brunner!
Some sci-fi greats see far and away, Brunner saw closer and here: he missed details and is a bit dated as anyone would expect but mostly in surprisingly trivial ways; his exploration into the implications of overpopulation, corporatism, mass communications, etc have not only stood the test of time they still make damned good reading.*
*Stand on Zanzibar (1968; overpopulation and depersonalization), The Jagged Orbit (1969; weapons proliferation and interracial violence), The Sheep Look Up (1972; environmental collapse), The Shockwave Rider (1975; hacking outlawry and AI)
If only the people in the park had been allowed to carry guns. A park full of people openly carrying would have deterred a measly knife-wielding madman/terrorist — who would have then gone out to buy appropriate armament to insure sufficient mayhem.
Condolences to the families and friends of the victims and to those injured and trying to recover. Thanks to the officers who risked their lives to stop him.