Perpetrator is still missing.

The Moroccan's ID was used to rent the van used in the attack so we don't know his exact relation to it.

Another terrorist attack using the same method happened this night in Cambrils (Tarragona, Catalonia). Three Mossos wounded, three civilians wounded, no deaths except for the five terrorists.

I wasn't trying to do anything better or worse.

When I need to post, I sign up and post, it's not complicated.

And the explosion in Alcanar from Wednesday turns out that is also related to this attack. I guess we were lucky and the bomb they were making exploded on them.

A violent attack by a violent thug is not a terrorist attack.
Labelling this a terror attack alienates the majority Muslim population that are not violent.
Most Muslims are peaceful, law abiding citizens leading uneventful lives.
Labelling acts of violence as terrorism creates fear, alienates Muslims and it fuels far-right wing propaganda.

Hypothetically speaking, it WOULD be safer to make a country where you exiled anyone who espoused violent viewpoints, racial or religious supremacy, and immigrants from nations where religious-inspired violence is common. Maybe a flat ban on all religions just to be fair.

I'm not trying to be cute, or hateful, or xenophobic, just an interesting thought experiment in a type of sci-fi 'what-if' scenario. It would be easier to accomplish with some type of sentient AI running the government with absolute oversight, visual, auditory, and spatial, of the entire nation, every room, etc. Full-time cognitive scanning via cerebral implant would even make pre-crime prevention possible, or full brain reformatting and reloading of 'defective' citizens.

I'm about 50/50 on whether or not I'd want to live in such a place if it existed, but it's fun to consider.

On a more down-to-earth note, while it's really sad that this, the thing in VA, etc, happen, these types of evil bastards really are pretty powerless in the big picture. Suicide, cancer, drowning in bathtubs, accidental medication mixups, slip and falls, being overweight to an extreme, all of these things even individually kill MANY MANY MANY MANY MANY more people than these butthole hate-filled jerkoffs ever have, but of course it doesn't make for splashy media hype, or fodder that politicians and talking heads can use to try to put people into 'us vs them' arguments.

I'm so tired of extreme left-wing and extreme right-wing nuts try to pit people against one another, I can hardly stand it. Best wishes and thanks to the majority of people who are sane and not a part of the madness. Cheers to you guys, regardless of ethnicity, gender, age, or whether you enjoy PS, Xbox, or Nintendo :P

A terrorist attack is an attack for ideological reasons. I'm fairly sure this one is not just a crime for money.

"A violent attack to create terror" is pretty much what terrorist attack means. In some way I get your point, but it just doesn't make much sense.

The problem with this is, that if we don't help refugees, a lot of them would die or live in terrible conditions. I'm not a huge fan of religion, but we can't let a whole group of people die because some of them have the wrong ideas.

Well, you can stop cars from having steering wheels and gas pedals. So in the far future that's not going to be a problem anymore.

Absolutely. I do believe you understood me with the totality of my post, but just in case someone else might have missed the overall message I was attempting to convey :

I believe that overreaction to things like VA, the London attacks, Barcelona, etc, are a bane on society. Giving such hype and coverage to these bastards is giving them entirely too much power by extension. Spending billions or trillions fighting an idea, when the actual threats are laughably pathetic in the big picture. It's almost farcical how so much money, blood, and even suspension of legal rights have been given away towards responses to such weak-minded losers. Terrorists, 'supremacists', etc, are always too cowardly to attack a legitimate force, they go after unarmed civilians or defenseless targets. Still, they are few in the big picture. In 2015, in the USA alone, 52,000+ people died from opiod related causes. 40,000+ died in automobile accidents. 42,000+ died from suicide. Any one of these is higher in a single year than the entire death count on Western nations from 'terrorism' in the past hundred years combined.

Islamic Terrorists manage to kill more Muslims than any other target group, because they're cowards and losers. And even if I think religion is fairly dumb (not necessarily spirituality itself, mind you), the vast majority of Muslims are just regular people trying to go about their daily lives in peace.

I contrasted the absurdity of the goals in making us safer from threats that are ineffective, while ignoring or glossing over threats that kill countless times more of our citizens. A concerted effort in any area could reduce deaths far more than our government's wanking over Terrorism boogeymen. But of course, we know it's not really about fighting terrorism. It's about scaring and dividing people. It's about getting pork spending on useless boondoggles. It's about bloating bearucracies. It's about creating entirely new redundant agencies. It's about greed, power, money, fear, and stupidity.

I agree with your sentiments about providing aid and hope to refugees of course. The stories of regular men, women, and children fleeing the zones of madmen and wanton destruction are truly harrowing.