The Guardian
Ansbach blast: Syrian asylum seeker kills himself and injures 12 in Germany
A 27-year-old man who had been denied asylum dies after explosion in southern German town
Janek Schmidt in Munich and agencies
Monday 25 July 2016 09.12 BST Last modified on Tuesday 26 July 2016 00.29 BST
A Syrian man has killed himself and injured 12 others after setting off an explosive device outside a music festival in the German town of Ansbach.Authorities said the 27-year-old had been denied asylum a year ago and had a history of making attempts on his own life. Three of those injured are in a serious condition.
It is believed a device he was carrying exploded although it is not clear whether it was a suicide bombing or whether the man intended to plant it and harm others.
The Bavarian interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, said his personal view was that the attack was likely the work of an “Islamist” suicide bomber, but this theory was played down by authorities.
Herrmann told Deutsche Presse-Agentur: “My personal view is that I unfortunately think it is very likely this really was an Islamist suicide attack. The obvious intent to kill more people at least indicates an Islamist background.”
A spokeswoman for Bavaria’s police force told Reuters it was unclear what the attacker’s motivations were. A spokesman for the prosecutor’s office in Ansbach also said the motive was unclear. “If there is an Islamist link or not is purely speculation at this point,” said the spokesman, Michael Schrotberger.
More than 2,000 people had been in the crowd in the small town of 40,000 people south-west of Nuremberg that is also home to a US army base.
Speaking at a press conference early on Monday morning, Herrmann said the man was carrying a backpack at the time of the blast, at about 10pm on Sunday, but was turned away at the entrance to the festival because he didn’t have a ticket.
The backpack contained metal items used in “wood manufacturing” and could have killed many more people, he said. Hermann did not specify whether these items were nails or screws
Hermann said the man’s request for asylum was rejected a year ago, but he was allowed to remain in Germany on account of the situation in Syria. “It’s terrible ... that someone who came into our country to seek shelter has now committed such a heinous act and injured a large number of people who are at home here, some seriously,” he said.
“It’s a further, horrific attack that will increase the already growing security concerns of our citizens. We must do everything possible to prevent the spread of such violence in our country by people who came here to ask for asylum.”
After the explosion the area was evacuated and the music festival cancelled. Ian Anderson, frontman of defunct prog-rock band Jethro Tull, had been scheduled to perform.
Thomas Debinski, who was interviewed by Sky News, described a “disturbing” scene as people in the small city realised a violent act had taken place.
“People were definitely panicking, the rumour we were hearing immediately was that there had been a gas explosion,” he said. “But then people came past and said it was a rucksack that had exploded. Someone blew themselves up. After what just happened in Munich it’s very disturbing to think what can happen so close to you in such a small town.”
Police sealed off the town centre and emergency services attended the scene. Bomb experts were sent to determine the cause of the explosion.
The explosion, which followed the killing on Friday of nine people by an 18-year-old gunman in Munich, occurred at a wine bar called Eugene’s, the Nürnberger Nachrichten newspaper reported.
Germany, and Bavaria in particular, has been on edge after a deadly rampage at a Munich shopping mall on Friday in which nine people were killed, and an axe attack on a train near Würzburg last Monday in which five people were wounded.
Both came shortly after a Tunisian man in a truck killed 84 people when he ploughed through a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in the French city of Nice, on the French Riviera.
Bavarian public broadcaster Bayerische Rundfunk reported that about 200 police officers and 350 rescue personnel were brought in following the explosion in Ansbach.
http://publications.europeintheworld.com/europes-refugee-crisis-the-media-and-public-perceptions/
More than one million migrants and refugees fleeing violence in their home countries crossed into Europe in 2015, in one of the worst humanitarian crises since World War II. Seeking a better and safer future for both themselves and their families, many have sought asylum in various EU countries with Germany and Hungary processing the largest number of applications.
Besides the huge administrative burden that accompanies such a monumental task, even those states who support resettlement still face backlash from a largely unsupportive public who are against the rehoming of refugees in their home countries. For some states, the rhetoric from national governments pushing anti-refugee sentiments has been blamed for what appears to be a largely xenophobic public.
However, even the states with governments in favour of resettling refugees are still facing staunch opposition from a public that does not want to see policy implemented that will allow an ‘influx’ of people seeking asylum. If political figures are in favour of opening their countries to refugees, what is influencing the public to think otherwise? Some argue that a media that continues to perpetuate myths is to blame.
Broadly speaking, academic work has proven that an effective relationship exists between the way the media portrays a migration story and how the public feels about the issue. However, it is difficult to quantify the impact that the political rhetoric and the way it’s reported has on public opinion regarding those seeking asylum. There are several other factors that also play a role in shaping how a person feels about issues such as these and it is difficult to separate and quantify the effect of information received via media channels. It is also still difficult to determine what drives the narrative; the media’s portrayal or public opinion, but the media is still obviously a persuasive source in shaping public perception.
Migrant vs. Refugee
One of the most common language errors is media outlets using ‘migrant’ and ‘refugee’ interchangeably, and the UNHCR argues that it does matter. Migrants choose to leave their home country, often in search of better prospects and are able to go home without fear, while refugees are fleeing conflict or persecution and it is too dangerous for them to return home.This distinction is important because different laws apply depending on the situation, immigration policy is designed to process migrants while refugees are protected under both national and international law and countries have responsibilities towards them that migrants are not afforded. Misrepresenting refugees “takes attention away from the specific legal protections refugees require” and “can undermine public support for refugees”.
While a large number of those arriving in Europe have been refugees fleeing their war-torn countries, there are also a number of migrants choosing to relocate and it is important to make this distinction correctly when reporting related stories.
Language Matters
One of the authors of the Ethical Journalism Network’s ‘Moving Stories’ report, Zakeera Suffee, says that language matters because its misuse can incorrectly and unfairly portray groups of people in a negative light.“Words such as illegal are so loaded, not in the least because they are a façade for a more racist undertone, but also because they criminalise and dehumanise people. When this is used day in day out, it reaches a level of normality, so people associate undocumented migrants with criminality,” Ms Suffee said.
“This reduces an issue to one point, rather than exploring and critiquing the layers that arise from all migration. This has a massive impact public perception, it automatically creates two categories ‘good migrants’ and ‘bad migrants’.”
She also sees the terms ‘refugee’ and ‘migrant’ as being manipulated by the media to convey a political message.
“One implies that there is a level of legitimacy in someone’s movement – a deserving subject, whereas the other is perceived to be associated with the act of movement. In both cases it is not for the media to define which is which. What this does is frames the subject on those who are travelling, and diverts from questions of responsibility of governments to provide adequate reception facilities, for example, so that claims can be assessed,” she said.
The ‘Refugee’ Label and Identity
Even when the distinction is correct, being labelled a ‘refugee’ can carry negative connotations due to the way that unfounded stereotypes are perpetuated by the media, politicians and the general public. This negative identity that is forced upon a person attempting to become a part of a society often leads to them feeling isolated and ostracized.People expect newspapers to be a reliable source of information and as such, are likely to believe any claims made against refugees and asylum seekers. These negative attitudes consequently affect the identities imposed upon the subjects of those stories, influencing public opinion in such a way that they may be reluctant to interact with them and get to know these new members of their society themselves.
The Media’s Role
The media in the UK regularly fuels anti-refugee sentiment with the negative tone of their reporting on issues regarding forced migration. From increased crime to issues with healthcare, it is often suggested that refugees are responsible for these societal problems.An analysis on a sample of headlines from British daily newspapers between 2002 and 2004 found that they repeatedly depicted asylum seekers and refugees in a negative light. Many of these were subsequently proven to be false accusations but this was not often reported adequately to readers.
In other parts of Europe, such as Italy and Germany, this problematic language has dominated recent media reports that depict refugees as illegal and as outsiders. This tendency to to sensationalise and only skim the surface of these stories provides readers with largely negative ideas about refugees that exacerbates issues related to segregation and perceived cultural differences.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/25/shooting-nightclub-fort-myers-florida
The Guardian
Florida shooting: two dead and up to 17 injured outside Fort Myers nightclub
Police say two killed and as many as 17 injured at Club Blu Bar and Grill
14-year-old boy killed, hospital says youngest person affected was 12
Monday 25 July 2016 10.59 BST Last modified on Monday 25 July 2016 23.32 BST
A shooting outside a nightclub in Fort Myers, Florida left two dead, including a 14-year-old boy, and as many as 17 injured, police said.Police responded to reports of an incident at Club Blu Bar and Grill, on Evans Avenue, at about 12.30am local time and found several victims with gunshot wounds. Two were confirmed dead; injuries ranged from minor to life-threatening.
One of the victims was 12 years old, Cherly Garn, a spokeswoman for Lee Memorial Health System, told local station WINK. In a tweet, the station said: “Lee Memorial treated 16 nightclub shooting victims. Youngest 12, oldest 27. 4 still in hospital, 1 is critical and 1 is serious.”
Witnesses told media there had been an argument outside the club, which was hosting a “Swimsuit Glow Party” for teenagers, before the shooting. A motive was not known.
Club Blu said in a statement that there was “armed security” inside and outside the club, and that the shooting occurred “as the club was closing and parents were picking their children up”.
Three adults were detained for questioning, police said. The area around the club had been “deemed safe” although some roads in the vicinity were closed as the investigation continued.
Syreeta Gary told WFTX-TV her daughter ran and dodged between shots to avoid being hit. Her daughter was OK, but her daughter’s friend “got hit in the leg and luckily it’s just her leg”, Gary said.
“Her dodging bullets and running, dropping in between cars, it’s ridiculous that these kids have to go through this,” Gary said. “They can’t enjoy themselves because you have other people that have criminalistics minds and they just want to terrorize things.”
Police said there were two other scenes connected to the shooting. One was at 2550 Parkway Street, where a house and vehicles were shot at. The other was on Ortiz Avenue, where a person of interest was detained.
The shooting came a month after a shooting at a nightclub across the state in Orlando, in which a lone gunman killed 49 people and wounded 53 in the deadliest such event in US history.
Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report
On this day in 1837 the first commercial use of an electrical telegraph is successfully demonstrated by William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone on July 25, 1837 between Euston and Camden Town in London.
From Chapter 25 of Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhan
TELEGRAPH
The Social Hormone
During its early growth, the telegraph was subordinate to railway and newspaper, those immediate extensions of industrial production and marketing. In fact, once the railways began to stretch across the continent, they relied very much on the telegraph for their coordination, so that the image of the station-master and the telegraph operator were easily superimposed in the American mind.
It was in 1844 that Samuel Morse opened a telegraph line from Washington to Baltimore with $30,000 obtained from Congress. Private enterprise, as usual, waited for bureaucracy to clarify the image and goals of the new operation. Once it proved profitable, the fury of private promotion and initiative became impressive, leading to some savage episodes. No new technology, not even the railroad, manifested a more rapid growth than the telegraph. By 1858 the first cable had been laid across the Atlantic, and by 1861 telegraph wires had reached across America.

That each new method of transporting commodity or information should have to come into existence in a bitter competitive battle against previously existing devices is not surprising. Each innovation
is not only commercially disrupting, but socially and psychologically corroding, as well.
It is instructive to follow the embryonic stages of any new growth, for during this period of development it is much misunderstood, whether it be printing or the motorcar or TV. Just because people are at first oblivious of its nature, the new form deals some revealing blows to the zombie-eyed spectators.
The original telegraph line between Baltimore and Washington promoted chess games between experts in the two cities. Other lines were used for lotteries and play in general, just as early radio existed in isolation from any commercial commitments and was, in fact, fostered by the amateur "hams" for years before it was seized by big interests.

A few months ago John Crosby wrote to the New York Herald Tribune from Paris in a way that well illustrates why the "content" obsession of the man of print culture makes it difficult for him to notice any facts about the form of a new medium: Telstar, as you know, is that complicated ball that whirls through space, transmitting television broadcasts, telephone messages, and everything except common sense. When it was first cast aloft, trumpets sounded. Continents would share each other's intellectual pleasures. Americans would enjoy Brigitte Bardot. Europeans would partake of the heady intellectual stimulation of "Ben Casey." . . . The fundamental flaw in this communications miracle is the same one that has bugged every communications miracle since they started carving hieroglyphics on stone tablets. What do you say on it?
Telstar went into operation in August when almost nothing of importance was happening anywhere in Europe. All the networks were ordered to say something, anything, on this miracle instrument. "It was a new toy and they just had to use it," the men here say. CBS combed Europe for hot news and came up with a sausage-eating contest, which was duly sent back via the miracle ball, although that
particular news event could have gone by camelback without losing any of its essence.

Any innovation threatens the equilibrium of existing organization. In big industry new ideas are invited to rear their heads so that they can be clobbered at once. The idea department of a big firm is a sort of lab for isolating dangerous viruses. When one is found, it is assigned to a group for neutralizing and immunizing treatment. It is comical, therefore, when anybody applies to a big corporation with a new idea that would result in a great "increase of production and sales." Such an increase would be a disaster for the existing management. They would have to make way for new management. Therefore, no new idea ever starts from within a big operation. It must assail the organization from outside, through some small but competing organization.
In the same way, the outering or extension of our bodies and senses in a "new invention" compels the whole of our bodies and senses to shift into new positions in order to maintain equilibrium. A new "closure" is effected in all our organs and senses, both private and public, by any new invention. Sight and sound assume new postures, as do all the other faculties. With the telegraph, the entire method, both of gathering and of presenting news, was revolutionized. Naturally, the effects on language and on literary style and subject matter were spectacular.
In the same year, 1844, then, that men were playing chess and lotteries on the first American telegraph, Soren Kierkegaard pub- lished The Concept of Dread. The Age of Anxiety had begun. For with the telegraph, man had initiated that outering or extension of his central nervous system that is now approaching an extension of consciousness with satellite broadcasting. To put one's nerves
outside, and one's physical organs inside the nervous system, or the brain, is to initiate a situation-if not a concept-of dread.
Having glanced at the major trauma of the telegraph on conscious life, noting that it ushers in the Age of Anxiety and of Pervasive Dread, we can turn to some specific instances of this uneasiness
and growing jitters. Whenever any new medium or human extension occurs, it creates a new myth for itself, usually associated with a major figure: Aretino, the Scourge of Princes and the Puppet of Printing; Napoleon and the trauma of industrial change; Chaplin, the public conscience of the movie; Hitler, the tribal totem of radio; and Florence Nightingale, the first singer of human woe by telegraph wire.
Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), wealthy and refined member of the powerful new English group engendered by industrial power, began to pick up human-distress signals, as a young lady. They were
quite undecipherable at first. They upset her entire way of life, and couldn't be adjusted to her image of parents or friends or suitors. It was sheer genius that enabled her to translate the new diffused anxiety and dread of life into the idea of deep human involvement and hospital reform. She began to think, as well as to live, her time, and she discovered the new formula for the electronic age: Medicare. Care of the body became balm for the nerves in the age that had extended its nervous system outside itself for the first time in human history.
To put the Florence Nightingale story in new media terms is quite simple. She arrived on a distant scene where controls from the London center were of the common pre-electric hierarchical pattern. Minute division and delegation of functions and separation of powers, normal in military and industrial organization then and long afterward, created an imbecile system of waste and inefficiency which for the first time got reported daily by telegraph. The legacy of literacy and visual fragmentation came home to roost every day on the telegraph wire: In England fury succeeded fury. A great storm of rage, humiliation, and despair had been gathering through the terrible winter of 1854-1855. For the first time in history, through reading the dispatches of Russell, the public had realized "with what majesty the British soldier fights." And these heroes were dead. The men who had stormed the heights of Alma, charged with the Light Brigade at Balaclava ... had perished of hunger and neglect. Even horses which had taken part in the Charge of the Light Brigade had starved to death.

The horrors that William Howard Russell relayed by wire to The Times were normal in British military life. He was the first war correspondent, because the telegraph gave that immediate and inclusive dimension of "human interest" to news that does not belong to a "point of view." It is merely a comment on our absentmindedness and general indifference that after more than a
century of telegraph news reporting, nobody has seen that "human interest" is the electronic or depth dimension of immediate involvement in news. With telegraph, there ended that separation of interests and division of faculties that are certainly not without their magnificent monuments of toil and ingenuity.
But with telegraph, came the integral insistence and wholeness of Dickens, and of Florence Nightingale, and of Harriet Beecher Stowe. The electric gives powerful voices to the weak and suffering, and sweeps aside the bureaucratic specialisms and job descriptions of the mind tied to a manual of instructions. The "human interest" dimension is simply that of immediacy of participation in the experience of others that occurs with instant information. People become instant, too, in their response of pity or of fury when they must share the common extension of the central nervous system with the whole of mankind. Under these conditions, "conspicuous waste" or "conspicuous consumption" become lost causes, and even the hardiest of the rich dwindle into modest ways of timid service to mankind.
At this point, some may still inquire why the telegraph should create "human interest," and why the earlier press did not. The section on The Press may help these readers. But there may also be a lurking obstacle to perception. The instant all-at-onceness and total involvement of the telegraphic form still repels some literary sophisticates. For them, visual continuity and fixed "point of view" render the immediate participation of the instant media as distasteful and unwelcome as popular sports.
These people are as much media victims, unwittingly mutilated by their studies and toil, as children in a Victorian blacking factory. For many people, then, who have had their sensibilities irremediably skewed and locked into the fixed postures of mechanical writing and printing, the iconic forms of the electric age are as opaque, or even as invisible, as hormones to the unaided eye. It is the artist's job to try to dislocate older media into postures that permit attention to the new. To this end, the artist must ever play and experiment with new means of arranging experience, even though the majority of his audience may prefer to remain fixed in their old perceptual attitudes. The most that can be done by the prose commentator is to capture the media in as many characteristic and revealing postures as he can manage to discover. Let us examine a series of these postures of the telegraph, as this new
medium encounters other media like the book and the newspaper. By 1848 the telegraph, then only four years old, compelled several major American newspapers to form a collective organization for newsgathering. This effort became the basis of the Associated Press, which, in turn, sold news service to subscribers.
In one sense, the real meaning of this form of the electric, instant coverage was concealed by the mechanical overlay of the visual and industrial patterns of print and printing. The specifically electric effect may seem to appear in this instance as a centralizing and compressional force. By many analysts, the electric revolution has been regarded as a continuation of the process of the mechanization of mankind. Closer inspection reveals quite a different character. For example, the regional press, that had had to rely on postal service and political control through the post office,
quickly escaped from this center-margin type of monopoly by means of the new telegraph services.
Even in England, where short distances and concentrated population made the railway a powerful agent of centralism, the monopoly of London was dissolved by the invention of the telegraph, which now encouraged provincial competition. The telegraph freed the marginal provincial press from dependence on the big metropolitan press. In the whole field of the electric revolution, this pattern of decentralization appears in multiple guises.
It is Sir Lewis Namier's view that telephone and airplane are die biggest single cause of trouble in the world today. Professional diplomats with delegated powers have been supplanted by prime ministers, presidents, and foreign secretaries, who think they could conduct all important negotiations personally. This is also the problem encountered in big business, where it has been found impossible to exercise delegated authority when using the telephone.

The very nature of the telephone, as all electric media, is to compress and unify that which had previously been divided and specialized. Only the "authority of knowledge" works by telephone
because of the speed that creates a total and inclusive field of relations. Speed requires that the decisions made be inclusive, not fragmentary or partial, so that literate people typically resist the telephone. But radio and TV, we shall see, have the same power of imposing an inclusive order, as of an oral organization. Quite in contrast is the center-margin form of visual and written structures of authority.
Many analysts have been misled by electric media because of the seeming ability of these media to extend man's spatial powers of organization. Electric media, however, abolish the spatial dimension,
rather than enlarge it. By electricity, we everywhere resume person-to-person relations as if on the smallest village scale. It is a relation in depth, and without delegation of functions or powers. The
organic everywhere supplants the mechanical. Dialogue supersedes the lecture. The greatest dignitaries hobnob with youth.
When a group of Oxford undergraduates heard that Rudyard Kipling received ten shillings for every word he wrote, they sent him ten shillings by telegram during their meeting: "Please send us one of your very best words." Back came the word a few minutes later: "Thanks."

The hybrids of electricity and the older mechanics have been numerous. Some of them, such as the phonograph and the movie, are discussed elsewhere in this volume. Today the wedding of mechanical and electric technology draws to a close, with TV replacing the movie and Telstar threatening the wheel. A century ago the effect of the telegraph was to send the presses racing faster, just as the application of the electric spark was to make possible the internal-combustion engine with its instant precision. Pushed further, however, the electric principle everywhere dissolves the mechanical technique of visual separation and analysis of functions.
Electronic tapes with exactly synchronized information replace the old lineal sequence of the assembly line. Acceleration is a formula for dissolution and breakdown in any organization. Since the entire mechanical technology of the Western world has been wedded to electricity, it has pushed toward higher speeds. All the mechanical aspects of our world seem to probe toward self-liquidation.
The United States had built up a large degree of central political controls through the interplay of the railway, the post office, and the newspaper. In 1848 the Postmaster General wrote, in his report, that
newspapers have "always been esteemed of so much importance to the public, as the best means of disseminating intelligence among the people, that the lowest rate has always been afforded for the
purpose of encouraging their circulation." The telegraph quickly weakened this center-margin pattern and, more important, by intensifying the volume of news, it greatly weakened the role of
editorial opinions.
News has steadily overtaken views as a shaper of public attitudes, though few examples of this change are quite so striking as the sudden growth of the Florence Nightingale image in the British world. And yet nothing has been more misunderstood than the power of the telegraph in this matter. Perhaps the most decisive feature is this. The natural dynamic of the book and, also, newspaper is to create a unified national outlook on a centralized pattern. All literate people, therefore, experience a desire for an extension of the most enlightened opinions in a uniform horizontal and homogeneous pattern to the "most backward areas," and to the least literate minds. The telegraph ended that hope. It decentralized the newspaper world so thoroughly that uniform national views were quite impossible, even before the Civil War. Perhaps an even more important consequence of the telegraph was that in America the literary talent was drawn into journalism, rather than into the book medium. Poe and Twain and Hemingway are examples of writers who could find neither training nor outlet save through the newspaper. In Europe, on the other hand, the numerous small national groups presented a discontinuous mosaic that the telegraph merely intensified. The result was that the telegraph in
Europe strengthened the position of the book, and forced even the press to assume a literary character.
Not least of the developments since the telegraph has been the weather forecast, perhaps the most popularly participative of all the human interest items in the daily press. In the early days of telegraph, rain created problems in the grounding of wires. These problems drew attention to weather dynamics. One report in Canada in 1883 stated: "It was early discovered that when the wind at Montreal was from the East or North-East, rain storms traveled from the West, and the stronger the land current, the faster came the rain from the opposite direction." It is clear that telegraph, by providing a wide sweep of instant information, could reveal meteorological patterns of force quite beyond observation by pre-electric man.
1964 Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man; 1st ed. McGraw Hill, NY; reissued by MIT Press, 1994, with introduction by Lewis H. Lapham; reissued by Gingko Press, 2003.
McLuhan's most widely known work, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), is a pioneering study in media theory. Dismayed by the way people approached and used new media such as television, McLuhan famously argued that in the modern world "we live mythically and integrally ... but continue to think in the old, fragmented space and time patterns of the pre-electric age."[53]
McLuhan proposed that media themselves, not the content they carry, should be the focus of study—popularly quoted as "the medium is the message". McLuhan's insight was that a medium affects the society in which it plays a role not by the content delivered over the medium, but by the characteristics of the medium itself.
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