Terrorism against Chinese targets

Brumby said:

Can we leave out western media as a reasonable excuse. One can easily argue that wielding an axe and a knife is not prima facie evidence of peaceful intend. The description "peaceful axe-wielding" is itself self contradictory.

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We can leave out "western media" but it was clearly meant to be satire towards the perceived pattern of reporting when attacks against civilians do occur in China, more often than not a report would spend more time seemingly trying to justify the attack and portray them in a positive or even peaceful light.

So satire.

B.I.B. said:

Actually when Seige who I have reason to believe is a competent Chinese language reader posted the video at post 169 he said

“Peaceful axe-wielding protester shot and killed by PAP.”

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Are you kidding me?
Did you need him to include /sarcasm at the end?

And just in case you do not undertsand, the key words in that phrase where the sarcasm applies is "peaceful" and "protester".

Since then the video has been taken down by the authorities and we can all have our thoughts on why and to date, no one has come up with any proof to suggest the perp was anything but that

In my recollection of the video, the axe had left the hand of the perp as he was shot. There did not appear to be any attempt to avoid the trajectory of the axe by front facing PAP and the axe eventually fell by their feet. And whose to say it wasn’t the warning shot that provided the catalyst to the perps final course of action. Also the Perp did not like he had the conditioning to do a Usain Bolt dash.

(Have you ever played cricket? I have, and even as a very average player I can dodge a ball bowled at me at 100kph, so sidestepping an axe thrown at a much slower speed although at a slightly shorter distance would not have been a problem.

I have just come back from rein acting the axe throwing scenario with my brother. We substituted the axe for a short handled grubber. I threw in the general direction rather than at him and he was able to take avoiding action before it reached the 30 foot mark. My argument is the PAP could have done the same while realising Perp was no longer armed.

You can suggest the Perp had closed the distance to the front facing PAPS but that doesn’t explain the closeness of the PAPs to his right who had plenty of room to increase the distance between them.

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I think you are focusing on the wrong side of the action. You make it sound like the PAP should have waited to see how successful or dangerous the perp's axe throw was before deciding to shoot him or not.
What I've been consistently saying is that shooting the perp was justified the moment the perp stepped forwards rapidly and raised his axe in a single movement (before the axe even left his hand) in what was obviously an act of deliberate aggression.
[by the way there is a youtube mirror of the video I posted in post 185 of this thread]

If you're still trying to say that the police should have waited an extra two or three seconds to see if they would only be maimed by a flying axe or killed by the perp potentially charging at them and crossing that distance instead, then you are being unreasonable and unrealistic. In effect you are asking them to deliberately delay and put themselves at greater risk, despite evidence of an act of clear and unambiguous act of aggression with a weapon, to hope that maybe the act of aggression with a weapon would be followed up with minimal harm to themselves or anyone else.


Again, to repeat -- the PAP was justified to shoot the perp the moment he stepped forwards and raised the axe in what was obviously an aggressive manner. Whether he intended to throw it or charge at the PAP is immaterial, because before the axe had left his hand he had already acted in what was obviously a deliberate and aggressive manner towards the police with a deadly weapon.


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I can understand why you may seeking to be the devil's advocate here. In police shootings there are always ways in which one can retrospectively said XYZ action may have prevented the shooting.

But in the video we see, the perp was warned verbally, warned with a warning shot, and then despite dropping the knife he then rapidly stepped forwards and raised his weapon in an aggressive way, and it was only after he stepped forwards and raised his weapon that the police shot him in response.

Maybe if the PAP had spoken more softly or maybe if they'd been equipped with thick padding penetrating tasers then the perp could have been apprehended without violence.
But based on the resources they had in the video, the relative distances between the individuals, and the sequential steps the PAP had taken to warn the perp, and then to only use deadly force when the perp himself had acted in an aggressive way, I find it hard pressed to seriously criticize the way the PAP had handled an individual who was seen as a threat to public safety and then subsequently demonstrated himself to be such a threat as well, before being put down.

Bltizo said:

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I also wouldn't have said any intelligence garnered from the guy could be worth anything, certainly not worth the risk injury or even death to the PAP responders.
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That's a pretty weak excuse for blowing off the intelligence potential when you don't know anything more about the case than what is shown in the video.

The more options available to authorities the more tailored the authorities' response can be, the more "use" authorities can make of such situations, and the more effectively the authorities can handle related or similar cases.

It may be a matter of resources but it is also a matter of strategy, tactics, and training for the authorities to be able and willing to capture such hostiles alive and interrogate them or better yet to convert them back to a normal person.

The first battlefield of such incidents whether with terrorists or malcontents is with the hearts and minds of the population at large, being able to mine such incidents to win hearts and minds take more resources and effort than just killing perpetrators but it will end up being more effective in the bigger picture. That is even before taking into account any operational intelligence that can be gleaned. Of course simply killing perpetrators have a hearts and minds effect too, but a much more limited one, and zero additional operational intelligence. The most effective overall policy may involve capturing perpetrators live sometimes while killing them other times.

Bltizo said:

Are you kidding me?
Did you need him to include /sarcasm at the end?

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Sorry folks for having dragged this out for so long and this is my last comment on this particular aspect of the matter.

There’s no doubt that the video was the closing scene of a long sequence of events. I genuinely believed the man to have started the day protesting peacefully until something caused it to get out of hand.

I neither speak, read, or understand the culture behind Chinese society and even now I fail to really understand as to why Siege felt the need to distort the reporting of the event with sarcasm which led to my misunderstanding the situation.

B.I.B. said:

Sorry folks for having dragged this out for so long and this is my last comment on this particular aspect of the matter.

There’s no doubt that the video was the closing scene of a long sequence of events. I genuinely believed the man to have started the day protesting peacefully until something caused it to get out of hand.

I neither speak, read, or understand the culture behind Chinese society and even now I fail to really understand as to why Siege felt the need to distort the reporting of the event with sarcasm which led to my misunderstanding the situation.

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Very well.

I do not believe siege was seeking to distort the reporting of the event to create misunderstanding, but he was using sarcasm to mock the way in which some media outlets tend to report on violent attacks by extremists in China in a manner where the attackers are often described in a context where their actions are described in a positive, peaceful, or protesting manner rather than one of violence and aggression causing death and injury.

I'm not sure if you believed the PAP were not justified in shooting him because of your initial belief that the individual was somehow a peaceful protester I wonder if it had been described without the sarcastic additional words, if you may have then accepted that it would've been justified for the perp to have been shot.

I think at this stage the case has been made quite clear by myself, plawolf, and others, that the key instigator was the initial rapid forward step and the raising of the axe in an aggressive manner which was the event which prompted the shooting.

PanAsian said:

That's a pretty weak excuse for blowing off the intelligence potential when you don't know anything more about the case than what is shown in the video.

The more options available to authorities the more tailored the authorities' response can be, the more "use" authorities can make of such situations, and the more effectively the authorities can handle related or similar cases.

It may be a matter of resources but it is also a matter of strategy, tactics, and training for the authorities to be able and willing to capture such hostiles alive and interrogate them or better yet to convert them back to a normal person.

The first battlefield of such incidents whether with terrorists or malcontents is with the hearts and minds of the population at large, being able to mine such incidents to win hearts and minds take more resources and effort than just killing perpetrators but it will end up being more effective in the bigger picture. That is even before taking into account any operational intelligence that can be gleaned. Of course simply killing perpetrators have a hearts and minds effect too, but a much more limited one, and zero additional operational intelligence. The most effective overall policy may involve capturing perpetrators live sometimes while killing them other times.

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I think we need to break this down into its components.

In this situation, if one thinks they should have sought to restrain him alive to interrogate him, that would rely on a couple of premises to be fulfilled:
1: having evidence or at least suspicions that the individual contains any useful intelligence to begin with (such as knowing if he was part of a larger organization)
2: having the capability to restrain him, alive, with minimal harm to either the responders or possible surrounding civilians
3: the suspect himself does not do anything which may prompt himself to be shot


Out of those premises, premise 1 is debatable because we simply do not know if he did have any useful intelligence, and it would probably be just as erroneous for us to assume that he knew a lot as it would be for us to assume that he knew nothing.

Premise 2 was incapable of being fulfilled, because the police were not armed with any sort of taser weapons, and it is debatable if any tasers could be used in such a situation given they can be impeded by thick clothing and it is not clear if it would've penetrated the individual's clothes. The PAP could have potentially aimed to shoot at his legs in a non lethal way to restrain him, however it is worth remembering that this suspect was armed with a deadly weapon, and that responders are typically always trained to aim at the chest. The entire point of a gun is if a situation has been reached where it must be used, then peaceful opportunities of restraining an individual would already have been long past.

Premise 3, of course was incapable of being fulfilled when the suspect rapidly stepped forwards towards the PAP and raised his axe in a split second, which forced the PAP to interpret that as a deliberate and unambiguous act of aggression which could have resulted in immediate harm if they did not respond, therefore they shot him.



If the suspect did not end up trying to attack the police, or if the police had some sort of reliable clothes penetrating taser weapon, then maybe they could have tried to restrain him alive and tried interrogate him for any possible intelligence he may have had. But in the absence of any indications that he could have held any sort of intelligence or information, and given the aggressive actions the suspect then committed himself to, I think PAP's response to shoot him was absolutely correct.

Bltizo said:

In this situation, if one thinks they should have sought to restrain him alive to interrogate him, that would rely on a couple of premises to be fulfilled:
1: having evidence or at least suspicions that the individual contains any useful intelligence to begin with (such as knowing if he was part of a larger organization)
2: having the capability to restrain him, alive, with minimal harm to either the responders or possible surrounding civilians
3: the suspect himself does not do anything which may prompt himself to be shot

Out of those premises, premise 1 is debatable because we simply do not know if he did have any useful intelligence, and it would probably be just as erroneous for us to assume that he knew a lot as it would be for us to assume that he knew nothing.

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I am seeing a double standard in reasoning being used. Is there any evidence to suggest that the person is even a terrorist to begin with because all the arguments going back and forth is based on this single opening premise?

I note your earlier post and comments regarding this, which is :

Bltizo said:

The title of the video does use the word "terrorist" and some other pages have said it occurred in Xinjiang. I trust that you are aware of the recent wave of violence in the region in the last few years and the high state of security there?
Certainly this incident occurred somewhere where PAP were available enough such that they were rapidly able to respond to the threat, suggesting it was an area of high alert, even if it may not have been in Xinjiang province itself.

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Based on the explanation I have seen is that this person is a terrorist because of association to a location and by descriptive title of a video. If such a premise is the basis, then by extension the notion of gathering intelligence by capturing a terrorist becomes a reasonable consideration subject to whether it is possible given the circumstance. Whether there is evidence that the person actually has such intelligence becomes secondary. Having said that, it is unreasonable to establish a primary premise i.e. the person is a terrorist based on inconclusive evidence but yet expect actionable evidence of a situation which is simply reasonable extension of your own primary premise (which was not subject to similar qualification).

Brumby said:

I am seeing a double standard in reasoning being used. Is there any evidence to suggest that the person is even a terrorist to begin with because all the arguments going back and forth is based on this single opening premise?

I note your earlier post and comments regarding this, which is :


Based on the explanation I have seen is that this person is a terrorist because of association to a location and by descriptive title of a video. If such a premise is the basis, then by extension the notion of gathering intelligence by capturing a terrorist becomes a reasonable consideration subject to whether it is possible given the circumstance. Whether there is evidence that the person actually has such intelligence becomes secondary. Having said that, it is unreasonable to establish a primary premise i.e. the person is a terrorist based on inconclusive evidence but yet expect actionable evidence of a situation which is simply reasonable extension of your own primary premise (which was not subject to similar qualification).

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I am glad that you picked up on that.

Looking back on my posts I've mostly used the word suspect or perpertrator, however in post 198 I used the word terrorist because that was the way that various other posts and titles of the video elsewhere on the net have described him as.
In that part of my post I was directly responding to BIB's part of his post where he said "C'mon wolf I think you are over dramatizing the situation.First I dont think there was any mention of him being a terroist." -- I was merely saying that actually yes there was mention of him being a terrorist in the title of the various mirrors of the videos and in some of the places where they have been posted.
I want to repeat again, that I do not believe the word terrorist is suitable in this case, but perhaps attacker or extremist or preferably suspect or perpertrator is better.

Now, what you seem to be saying is that:
1: I am claiming he is a terrorist (or perhaps extremist, or perhaps attacker) based on the location and the description in the video and the various other places it has been posted (and that my logic is not reasonable)
and 2: because of 1, my belief that he is a terrorist means that I should logically hold the belief that capturing a terrorist alive is reasonable under any circumstance

I will respond to point 1 first, by again stating that I do not believe he is a terrorist and in most of my posts I have used the word suspect or perpetrator instead. In other words, point 1 is not correct to begin with because I've never claimed he was a terrorist, I've only clarified that other places the video has been posted have described him as a terrorist.
However, I do then go on to describe the recent violence in the area, which one could interpret as possibly endorsing the "terrorist" label, however when I describe the recent violence it was also to provide context as to why the region was in high alert.

For point 2, even if we assume that I am claiming he is a terrorist, it would be incorrect for us to broadly say that all terrorists would then all have equal value for potential intelligence. In my previous post, I did say "useful intelligence," in a deliberate way to suggest that not all intelligence from individuals are equal. I thought it would've been obvious, but I will describe it more explicitly: some actors may be of higher value such as terrorist masterminds or group leaders, some may be of lower value such as lone wolf actors, and there is everyone in between.

In this case, the PAP would've had to make a judgement call regarding the potential degree of intelligence benefit of apprehending him, and thus the risk they were willing to take in apprehending him. And in this case, I think they appropriately judged the individual to have a relatively low potential of intelligence that he could provide, and thus it likely reduced the risk the PAP were willing to expose themselves to in trying to apprehend him peacefully.
(Side note: we should also remember that apprehending him without harm should have been the first and optimal resolution of the crisis, the problem is that peacefully bringing the suspect in -- even regardless of his potential intelligence -- became all but impossible when he suddenly acted in a rapid move of deliberate aggression with a deadly weapon.)

This brings me to a larger point, which is that the value of apprehending a suspect for intelligence must also be balanced against the risk of apprehending them: even lone wolf no-brain actors would be worth trying to apprehend if a completely safe and zero risk opportunity presented itself, and on the flip side, terrorist masterminds may not be worth trying to apprehend if apprehending them meant unacceptably high risk to one's own forces.

In other words, my previous three premises are a joined argument:

The first premise:

1: having evidence or at least suspicions that the individual contains any useful intelligence to begin with (such as knowing if he was part of a larger organization)

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must be balanced against the second and third premises:

2: having the capability to restrain him, alive, with minimal harm to either the responders or possible surrounding civilians
3: the suspect himself does not do anything which may prompt himself to be shot

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And all three premises must meet a certain threshold to have been willing to entertain a certain degree of risk in apprehending the suspect.

Brumby said:

They are trained to shoot to kill and not to disarm.

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In the Netherlands and I understand several other countries police men and women are hardly trained at all in the use of their pistols. As they can't be policemen without carrying their weapons ......

B.I.B. said:

Sorry folks for having dragged this out for so long and this is my last comment on this particular aspect of the matter.

There’s no doubt that the video was the closing scene of a long sequence of events. I genuinely believed the man to have started the day protesting peacefully until something caused it to get out of hand.

I neither speak, read, or understand the culture behind Chinese society and even now I fail to really understand as to why Siege felt the need to distort the reporting of the event with sarcasm which led to my misunderstanding the situation.

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Not meaning to ruin the spirit of your post, but as a purely logical and intellectual nit pick, one does not leave the house with a large knife and axe if one was only intending to make a peaceful protest.

There can be no doubt or ambiguouity about that.