There has been another terrorist attack in Europe, in Brussels.
A series of deadly terrorist attacks struck Brussels on Tuesday, with two explosions at the city’s main international airport and a third in a subway station at the heart of the city, near the headquarters complex of the European Union.
At least 11 people were killed at the airport, according to news agencies, and the city’s transit agency said 15 were killed in the subway bombing. More than 130 others were reported wounded. At least one of the two airport explosions was touched off by a suicide bomber, officials said.
…
The attacks, a vivid illustration of the continued threat to Europe, occurred four days after the capture on Friday of Europe’s most wanted man, Salah Abdeslam. He is the sole survivor of the 10 men believed to have been directly involved in the attacks that killed 130 people in and around Paris on Nov. 13.
The death toll is still going up; I’ve just heard that 20 were killed on the subway, and 14 in the airport explosion.
This is a horrific attack, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it were connected to Abdeslam’s gang of fanatics, since he was captured in Brussels. The people responsible must be tracked down and arrested, but I would hope that we can all retain the civilized values that the terrorists are trying to destroy. That means not abandoning the law — Donald Trump is already advocating more torture. It means focusing on the perpetrators, and not tormenting the innocent.
I fear already that this event will be used to excuse doing great harm to Muslims who were not involved and deplore the bombings as much as I do.
The dread that muslims must feel everytime they turn on the news to another terrorist attack must be getting overwhelming at this point. It’s horrendous. I’ve got family that were there yesterday, and I worked in Paris until recently. The tensions are only going to get exponentially worse, Katie Hopkins and co are already stirring the pot…
“a vivid illustration of the continued threat to Europe”, yeeessss… I’m having thoughts about this wording right now. Waiting to see who claims responsibility for this one. And I’m sorry for the negative fallout that will most certainly affect innocent people, whether people’s immediate conclusions turn out to be correct or not.
Anyway, I’m just glad that the cousins have checked in as safe and unharmed.
(Would have been nice to see an “Ankara attacked” post, too, but that’s beside the present point.)
Already happened.
**I fear already that this event will be used to excuse doing great harm to Muslims who were not involved and deplore the bombings as much as I do.**
So do I. As a Fleming, I am well aware of the rampant racism and xenophobia in the country. It is my hope that the near-disappearance of Catholicism will soften the issue, but that is far from certain.
some hope though
We don’t yet know who is responsible for the bombing, though radical right wing Muslims are the obvious suspects. I commented earlier that it feels like right wing fundamentalist Muslims and right wing fundamentalist Christians are supporting each other’s recruiting and radicalization efforts. Neither is doing any favors to anyone else, including non-extremist religious people.
I suspect the racist and bigoted will simply think “Sweeeeeet, we don’t have to pretend we give a shit about the poor and the downtrodden anymore“
Why would that help?
Unless the info that at least one of the attackers was a kamikaze is proven false, yeah, fundie Muslims are the likelier suspects: right-wing white Christians don’t blow themselves up: they get arrested then whine because they’re not allowed to have a PS4 in their cell.
Damn. I can’t imagine what the friends and families of the victims must be going through.
# 3 laurentweppe
What has happened ?
I can: I used to live near the Bataclan, although I didn’t live in the neighborhood anymore when the attacks occurred.
I’ll confess a nasty thing about myself: in the hours and days that followed the Bataclan attacks browsing the net and newspapers articles about the victims, looking up the names and faces of the victims and thinking “Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God I hope I won’t find any close friend in that list“, and the thing is, once all the victims were identified, when I could see that the people I knew that had been killed were either casual acquaintances or friends-of-friends, when I was sure that I had been spared the punch in the gut many of my former neighbors experienced, I felt relieved.
That was selfish and petty, but I just couldn’t shake the feeling off, I knew what the families of the victims were going through, and I dreaded having to go through it as well. So, almost against my higher cognitive functions, I selfishly felt respite at the thought that I was one of the lucky ones, even knowing that many I had lived alongside with were currently crying every tear from their bodies.
Why does Daesh do the terrorist attacks? To force muslim to non/anti-muslim polarization. The Brussels attacks may or may not be done by Daesh affiliates, but that polarization is what the regressive right wing (fascists/racists/nazis/neocons and islamists) wants.
Seconding PZ: The Brussels attack was horrible. Whoever were responsible should be caught, tried with the normal judicial process and sentenced according to whatever the law is in Belgium. I repeat: Due process and law.
What do you think happened? Far-right politicians and activists are already flooding the net with demands that everyone with a muslim grandmother be disenfranchised.
Great. As if we didn’t have enough nazis already. Now we just need the Trump on the nuclear launch button and we can play Fallout IRL…
**Why would that help?**
Since Catholicism and Islam are competing organisations, it seems rather logical that these events would lead to increased hostility between the two.
However, the fact that practicing Catholics have become a religious minority in the country might lead them to be more careful than they would have been in the past.
That said, let’s not forget that it is not yet known if these attacks have been committed by religious people. I don’t know to what degree this would be relevant though. Hatred is not always altogether logical. Also and unfortunately, it seems likely that religionists are involved, since at least one suicide-bomber is said to have been involved, which makes it near-certain at least one of the bombings was committed by a religionist.
laurentweppe #12:
I think you’re being a tad hard on yourself for a perfectly understandable reaction. My sister was in London on a school-trip on the day the IRA bombed Harrods, and my mum and I went through the same gamut of feelings you describe.
#13 Ice Swimmer I can’t decide whether Daesh have a carefully constructed plan to create those divisions, or are just attacking those they see as their enemies in the only ways available to them, the divisions then being a by product. If the former I’ can never understand how their attack on fellow muslims fit into this.
laurentweppe – sorry – I thought there had been a specific “counter” attack which I’d missed – the turning up of the volume of the right wing propaganda is sadly inevitable
Blowing oneself up to become a martyr for atheism and go to the atheist afterlife paradise is, indeed, not really a concept. However, Islamic fanatics are perfectly happy to fight against “secular” or “western” values and it has been demonstrated all too many times that atheists and other non-religious people are perfectly happy to declare all Muslims suspicious fanatics and persecute them. Just look at Sam Harris if you doubt me. Finally, I’ll defer to your greater knowledge of Brussels re the local religious rivalry, but in the US, the rivalry is more between fundamentalist protestants and fundamentalist Muslims, with the Catholics mostly just on the sidelines. So, sorry, but I don’t think it’s going to help any.
I can tell you right now it will not help the situation of (mostly) Syrian refugees — Muslim or Christian, since panicky Europe can’t be bothered with such fine distinctions (I don’t mean that we don’t make the distinction, that would be a step in the right direction. I mean we paint them all as Muslims).
At present, more than 50,000 refugees are trapped in Greece after the closing of the Macedonian borders, and even with the best efforts of the Greek people (I was pleasantly surprised, btw), they won’t be able to settle there — nor do they want to, really, their destination is Western Europe. An agreement is being negotiated between the EU and Turkey, and Turkey claims to intend to accept some refugees, but frankly I don’t think they will be much safer there than in Syria, even if Turkey actually honors the agreement. Meanwhile, member states of the EU have made clear their intention to more or less ignore any directives, fences are being built all over the place… it’s not looking good.
I’ve met plenty of terrorists, usually when we captured them, but I also was involved in negotiating with terrorists that were at large.
I never could see any form of sense in randomly killing men, women and children, I still cannot comprehend the point of it.
One wins no converts to one’s cause when you’ve killed a friend or family member, you’re not convincing a government of anything and overall, an entire community comes to loathe the organization behind the attack.
Even the mindset is odd, with the terrorist firmly believing that they’re doing the work of their god. That god must be pretty pathetic, as it requires a human to do the smiting or something. If I believed in a god, I’m pretty damned sure that god isn’t going to be asking me to do anything for it, as it could do what it needed without my clumsy help. Fortunately, I am not of such a belief.
The shame of it is, the faith is irrelevant, for each faith out there has had violence as part of their actions at some point in the past. We’ve even had religious warfare in US streets, requiring the US Army to suppress it, between protestants and roman catholics. http://www.publiceye.org/ifas/fw/9606/violence.html
The shame of it is, just what PZ fears, it’s likely that some disturbed people will not use this as an excuse to harm others, as has repeatedly happened. tRump will turn the bodies of the dead and wounded into political fodder and spread even more extremism and hate.
rq @ 2
That wording is problematic. Yes, it’s horrible that people are mass murdered, but still, that’s fear mongering by NYT. To put things in perspective (I axed this from my previous comment, but it seems it has to be said.):
13 people died in a bus crash in Spain on Sunday, 20th March, mostly exchange students. That wasn’t probably a deliberate attack, but they are just as dead as those who died in Ankara, Brussels and Paris. According to Gun Violence Archive, 78 people so far have died in mass shootings in USA this year.
Ice Swimmer
Yeah, I don’t like the ‘Europe under siege!!!’ imagery. :( There’s enough horrible emotions to express without evoking a damsel-in-distress.
Liked the link @5 from pfel, though. That was good to see.
Here’s a quick Google translation of a part of the text in the link @5 from pfel (for those of us whose French skills are limited to “Bonjour, je t’aime”):
Terrorism in Brussels: peace messages in chalk on the pedestrian
Of people mobilized to counter the horror of the events of Tuesday.
About 300 people gathered Tuesday on the Brussels pedestrian to draw messages of peace and hope in chalk. A reaction occurred very quickly after the announcement of several explosions in Zaventem and the Maelbeek Metro Station. These acts of terrorism have left at least 26 dead and 150 wounded, according to federal prosecutors.
Also, to repeat myself from elsewhere: really hating the media right now. I mean, I know it’s the currently most obvious conclusion, but I hate how pretty much every single article (here) ‘inadvertently’ links the explosions to Daesh. As in (and I paraphrase), “Nobody has yet claimed responsibility, but supporters of Daesh expressed joy and satisfaction on social media”. So subtle! Guess who’s going to suffer for that??
Same. Sadly, the media doesn’t seem as concerned, considering the words they’re using.
@rq, yellow journalism is alive and well and we know what war the news organization wants.
The inevitability of these attacks seems to me to make them a little more disconcerting than attacks of this nature in the past. From the moment of the Paris attacks it has been pretty clear that something was going to happen in Brussels. Have we moved to a phase similar to that seen in “the troubles” where terrorist attacks by IS (other Islamic extremist groups) in Europe are still shocking but not necessarily surprising?
This is not to say we escalate any hatred towards Muslims or any other general groups of people but recognize a “peace process” needs to be initiated as soon as possible.
**Blowing oneself up to become a martyr for atheism and go to the atheist afterlife paradise is, indeed, not really a concept.**
I couldn’t help it, I just had to giggle when I read this. Indeed, the very idea is laughable. However, I can’t help but wonder if there are atheists out there who believe in some type of an afterlife. I certainly don’t, and I don’t know any, but I can’t exclude the possibility, however remote.
**However, Islamic fanatics are perfectly happy to fight against “secular” or “western” values and it has been demonstrated all too many times that atheists and other non-religious people are perfectly happy to declare all Muslims suspicious fanatics and persecute them. Just look at Sam Harris if you doubt me.**
I most definitely don’t doubt you. I have always been suspicious of Sam Harris with his promotion of (or at least attempts to rationalise) torture and profiling and his attempts to declare Islam the worst of all religions. One would have to be almost insane to not understand that Islam is *currently* the most dangerous of all religions, but one does not have to look far to see that other religions are likely only more “tolerant” because they currently lack the power they once had.
**Finally, I’ll defer to your greater knowledge of Brussels re the local religious rivalry, but in the US, the rivalry is more between fundamentalist protestants and fundamentalist Muslims, with the Catholics mostly just on the sidelines. So, sorry, but I don’t think it’s going to help any.**
There are currently only an estimated 200,000 church-going Catholics in Belgium, and 400,000 practicing Muslims (numbers were quoted in a few days ago in an article of De Standaard, Flander’s largest “quality” newspaper). On top of that, Catholicism is still more heavily subsidised by the state than Islam. The Catholics certainly like to vilify Muslims and Jews, but given this situation, they are not very likely to become involved in physical hostilities, I think (and I hope, of course, I am right).
Pretty sure it won’t prevent our politicians from looking for an easy scapegoat, but seeing all those people drawing peace messages on the ground only a few hours after the attacks was still a huge relief, given the hate and fear climate…
Can’t help but thinking about all those Middle East countries where the situation I live today has been daily routine for years now…
@29
“Can’t help but thinking about all those Middle East countries where the situation I live today has been daily routine for years now…”
pfel, exactly. The reason millions of people are trying to enter Europe is because the sort of guys that have blown up Brussels are the people the refugees are running from in their home countries.
mclarenm23, thankfully, such horrors are not daily events in the Middle East. The closest one can get to that is Syria and parts of Iraq where ISIL is fighting.
Still, civil wars are far from being civil, they’re the most brutal of all wars.
It’s a shame, Syria was originally a very peaceful place, with shops that would make Fredericks of Hollywood embarrassed.
My hopes have just been dashed. It seems that Islamic State has claimed responsibility for these attacks.
How my fellow primates are so enthusiastically destroying themselves and others for an imaginary sociopath in the sky is something I never have, and probably never will understand. It is so sad.
Bart, terrorist groups have taken credit for all manner of disaster, some natural, so I’ll await the results of an investigation.
Of course, our own nation’s idiot brigade already are treating these attacks as one against the United States, with demanding bombings of heaven knows where and the use of the Ronco MagicNuke. How very Christian of them, demanding random genocide, with no specific information on who the attacker is.
Fortunately, our political leadership has learned to ignore the idiots, but alas, tRump feeds their agitation to new, terroristic heights.
wzrd1
If not daily occurrences I think you will agree that bomb attacks have been weekly occurrences in Iraq for at least 10 years and more recently very common in civil war era Syria?
Not sure where you are going with your point and you seem to be missing the spirit of pfel’s point.
NBC is also reporting that ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack. They said that the claim came from a source that has proven reliable in the past.
CNN has the same report, as do news sources in the UK.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/654577/Brussels-terror-attack-Islamic-State-responsibility-Belgium-bomb-blasts
Hope is a very good thing to hold on to.
wzrd1 #31:
Not literally daily, no. Sadly far too common, though. From The Fount Of All Knowledge™’s list of Islamist terrorist attacks:
Wzrd:
I wasn’t talking about “terrorist” attacks per se, but how would you describe a situation where being bombed or attacked by so called armies has become usual ?
Do you really think all those migrants would flee their country for an attack that “only” killed a few dozens ?
I don’t want to belittle the pain of the survivors, but I really fear that the worst is yet to come if we focus on the victims of today attacks instead of what really caused them…
Well, ISIL attacking Brussels will guarantee a full NATO response. The only thing that ISIL could have done worse would have been attacking Beijing and Moscow, just to get the entire planet mad at them.
The creative lengths some people go to commit suicide never ceases to amaze me.
WZRD1
Daesh has already released (been leaked?) their strategy to eliminate the “grey zone”, the coexistence between muslims and non-muslims in the west.
1. Get some bastards to kill as many innocent people as possible
2. Right wingers declare open season on everyone conceivably “looking muslim”
3. The resulting discrimination allows Daesh to recruit young muslims with legitimate grievances.
Go back to 1.
Let me get this straight. Muslim terrorists murder dozens and wound hundreds of innocent people (again), and the most pressing issue for you is the backlash against innocent Muslims? Let’s see. Who has it worse? The innocent Muslims who might be yelled at to go back where they came from or have their mosque vandalized, or the innocent people blown to pieces by adherents of Islam. Of course I’m the bad guy for choosing the latter.
You people are sick and you don’t even know it.
thanks, mr. Drumpf
Probably, and chances are, European authorities will be as incompetent as British authorities were during the early years of the Troubles.
I’ve already seen one comment (that isn’t coolnago from Ed Breyton’s blog) about how it’ll only stop once we turn the middle east into glowing radioactive glass.
Yes, dumbfucks, because genocide and WMDs will get us out of a situation racism and warmongering got us into. Genius fucking plan.
Also; go fuck yourself jesusfuckingchrist
jesusfuckingchrist, #41
I chose the latter too.
Not in simplistic terms like ‘adherents of Islam’ but yeah, the terrible thing here is that many people’s lives were destroyed violently by a gang of murderers.
And you are a sick Islamphobic bigot. Your fears have gotten the best of your meager thinking capacity. Typical case.
Bernie Sanders’ response:
Hillary Clinton’s response:
Also, jesusfuckingchrist you piece of shit, Muslims are *far mmore likely to be murdered by Daesh terror attacks than anyone else*
so please continue to fuck off.
@jesusfuckingchrist, I’m very concerned as well. There’s been far more than mere yelling done in this country, but apparently, getting shot at, being battered by strange men in groups and arson is business as usual to you.
So, why are you so terrified of those women and children, whereas I, a man who has actually met terrorists and captured them, am not? Are you that big of a coward?
How about growing a set and realize that freedom is inherently risky, be it religious freedom or any other right we currently enjoy.
Wzrd:
… And a full Nato response can’t do shit about the problem. No armed response will ever solve terrorism.
I’m no pacifist, but wars are waged against other armies, no ideologies, even those so batshit insane as Isis.
Donald Trump’s response:
The quoted text is from Trump’s twitter feed.
@41
That reach though
I’m pretty sure just about everyone here is bothered by the people killed by the assholes that did this attack. However, they’re dead and there’s nothing we can do about that. The continued hyper-nationalism, racism, and islamiphobia that will follow this attack is something we actually can address.
The best way to deal with these attacks is to up the intelligence gathering to arrest and bring to justice the perpetrators and their abettors, without impacting negatively the lives of the peaceful Muslims in the process, or negatively effecting the Middle East immigrants getting away from the war zone, and do all that without losing any of the freedoms that we in the West have and want to keep. If you give into the fear, you have lost the battle.
Jesusfuckingchrist:
No, you have that wrong. There is a very sick, bigoted, evil asshole in this thread, alright. Want a look? Head straight for the nearest mirror.
Increasing hate and bigotry aimed at innocent people is indeed a pressing concern, one we should all be working against.
@49: exactly
So, jesusfuckingchrist, go read the numbers instead of playing the victim card. You’re still more likely to die from a air crash than from a (Muslim/Christian/Jew/Hindu/whatever) attack
pfel, I don’t disagree. However, the short minded snap judgement always is to make war. Afghanistan is a prime example.
Well, that and a certain segment of the US populace wanting to use their Ronco MagicNuke, which seeks out the enemy wherever that enemy is and magically makes problems go away. Not bright, but a common demand, albeit without the brand name.
Wars are fought to destroy the will of the adversary to continue fighting. In that, ISIL is actually winning.
Ideas can only be effectively combated with superior ideas.
That’s one off my bucket list. I’ve always wanted to just ban jesusfuckingchrist, and now I have.
Jesusfuckingchrist was also wrong. It is not the case that — there are dead and injured people right now, and my first concern is that they get help and that the perpetrators are stopped from ever doing it again. But events like this aren’t simply over and done with in the instant of the explosion…there will be aftershocks. We have to work now to minimize those, and reduce the death and injury that will be coming next.
And that means we have to maintain a civilized society with a rule of law, and we have to avoid using this crime as an excuse to harm the innocent.
Why can’t a single goddamn politician, even our supposed “left-wing” ones realize that the middle east is a political powder keg that can’t be solved simply by throwing more bombs at it? As if we didn’t have a major role in destabilizing half the countries over there by playing kingmaker and deposing leaders we dislike.
Even if you killed literally every ISIS member, another one would spring up in a month or two. There are actual societal issues that lead to the formation of these groups, and playing whack-a-mole with the groups for thirty-odd years has done jack shit to address them.
As to the “we gotta fight them” thing;
I think we *are* going to have to use military force, in some capacity, against Daesh. They have a fucking army, for all intents and purposes, after all.
However, the military force *should not and cannot be* the main means of dealing with them. That will just lead to an even more extremist group taking over, as recent and past history has shown. We can’t just throw out some drones, tank down some militia, and call it a day. There has to be a concerted, worldwide, change in how the Middle-East is treated in general before there is even a shred of hope of this ending properly.
Almost all the Moslem terrrorists in Belgium and France were born there. They are Belgium and French citizens. As is true of much of the Moslem population in those countries. They are where they came from!!!
Why don’t you, jesusfuckingchrist go back where you came from? Hmmm, where do idiots come from anyway? The swamp of ignorance and incoherent ranting, wherever that is.
Tashiliciously Shriked, we’ve been handling this militarily. Special operations personnel have been on the ground – those air strikes don’t magically guide themselves, they’re guided by men on the ground.
What those men rarely do is directly engage the adversary, instead, they collect information, they target leaders, logistical centers, groups of fighters and guide in high explosives where they’d do the adversary the least good.
The downside of high explosive is, it knocks the building next door down as well. That was noticed and new, smaller explosives are now in use.
We can continue those operations and degrade ISIL, just as we degraded Al Qaeda from a world class terror organization to diaper and shoe bombs that fizzle. It just takes time.
We all wish we could end this pointless terrorism.
What Bush taught us accidently and everyone knows: We can’t bomb our way out of it. We’ve tried that for over a decade and it hasn’t worked.
And Trump is wildly wrong too. We can’t torture out way out of it either. That is silly or would be if torture wasn’t so morally reprehensible.
wzrd1; I know we have boots on the ground. I was saying “We need those boots, but *ALSO WE NEED MORE THAN JUST THAT*”
sorry if I wasn’t clear. I was trying to stress the second half about what else needs be done, not the facile answer of “just send more army”
This is typical Trump. A simple solution to a complex problem.
A terrorist attack in Brussels. Let’s torture a bunch of people. It won’t help at all but it will make a few sadists happy.
but raven those sadists are yuuuuuge friends of drumpf
I suspect these bombings serve as both retaliation for Salah Abdeslam’s arrest and practice for a US October Surprise, to guarantee we jump deep into the quicksand with both boots…
Tashiliciously Shriked, I don’t really know how to address religious fundamentalists wanting to create a theocracy, there or here.
I will say that I suspect that this was planned well in advance. It takes time to build bombs, let alone case out locations to detonate them. It could be a “on my capture, bomb” or an attack waiting for a time.
Cross posted from the Moments of Political Madness thread.
More fear mongering and blather that is not helpful from Donald Trump:
Think Progress link.
I agree. In 2013, in the US, there were 505 deaths by *accidental* firearms discharge. While every death is a tragedy, the bombings in Belgium are dwarfed by this.
The one thing that makes this irrelevant, is that the suffering of those who remain behind, does not depend on how many people are killed. Also, let’s not forget the suffering and often life-changing consequences for those who are not killed, but injured nevertheless.
That is, of course, the wisest attitude.
American Xtians seem to love their guns more than their god.
My condolences to families and friends of the victims.
If Europe wants to show terrorists that they can’t intimidate us, that we stand united, then we should stand united with refugees and immigrants escaping the same terrorist organizations. Sadly, I expect opposite to happen.
We want to spite them, right? Then let’s not send their victims back to be slaughtered, let’s not abuse or kill them ourselves.. Let’s give a collective Fuck you to terrorists, not just say that we are not afraid but show it.
Bart B. Van Bockstaele, as a competition marksman, I consider those “accidents”, nearly universally, negligence. Save for the rare malfunction, every case I’ve read of were carelessness. For that matter, even with a malfunction, save for the weapon exploding, it’s still negligence, as the weapon should always be pointed in a safe direction.
But, we ignore those deaths, save if it happens to someone in our immediate family, some will deflect with some inane bullshit about swimming pools and motor vehicle accidents, all to continue ignoring the problem.
Apparently, we may only address one problem at a time, motor vehicle accidents, swimming pool accidents or firearm related – oh wait, can’t address that one.
Personally, I’m entirely for mandatory secure storage of firearms. Mine are secure, they’re dangerous in the wrong hands and they’re dreadfully expensive (mine aren’t general purpose firearm, they’re precision engineered firearms that would be lousy for any other purpose than competition).
But, the real truth is what you’ve mentioned, there are around one hundred things that would be more likely to kill us before a terrorist even came nearby.
As I had said to a woman in Yeadon, PA, shortly after 9/11, “Do you think anyone would even notice if Yeadon sunk into the earth, let alone be the target of a terroristic attack? No? You’re not a target.”
Also, as an aside – it does seem kind of funky that we attribute a special kind of horror to terrorist attacks and mass shootings that we don’t attribute to totally mundane murder. There’s been like 600+ murders in the last year in the county where I live, but that’s not a television worthy deal like “Terrorist kills twenty people!” apparently.
Or, to rephrase my question: Why should I be afraid of foreign terrorism when it’ already dangerous to just walk down the street where I live? I’m way more likely to be a victim of local crime than any sort of foreign threat.
Beatrice, when the refugee crisis was still nascent, I had offered my spare bedrooms to any refugee who needed them. That offer has no expiration date.
Vivec, I have a friend who is preparing his PhD paper on violence in Baltimore. He has case studies and even community involvement. Hopefully, he’ll come up with some good solutions to our many problems.
You answered your own question, Vivec.
Foreign.
This is monstrous. The September 11 attacks occurred 14 years ago, and Muslims as well as people with a Middle-Eastern *look* are still being harassed and discriminated against for no reason at all. This type of behaviour is intolerable and reprehensible in the extreme.
Ted Cruz said some more stupid stuff about the terrorist attacks in Brussels:
Link.
That’s exactly the fear Trump is aiming to feed. Can’t trust Muslims, anywhere. I think Hillary Clinton’s remarks this morning on the subject are worth reading:
Vivec,
The same reason a lot of people have been more afraid of riding a plane than riding in a car, even before any terrorist attacks – various other factors make some things seems scarier than they statistically should be.
You can argue statistics all you want, but few people will take it into account if that fear is already there. That’s especially true in cases like these attacks where fear is stoked by the media and politicians.
Donald Trump said some more stupid stuff: In a TV interview he said that Belgium’s capital is a “horrible city” that has been ruined by Muslim immigration. He tweeted: “Do you all remember how beautiful and safe a place Brussels was. Not anymore, it is from a different world! U.S. must be vigilant and smart!”
More blather from Trump:
The quoted text is from an interview on Fox and Friends.
The Trump-Prat is making a fear-mongering tour of TV shows today.
I agree. People should be punished for the crimes they commit, not for simply being who they happen to be. Anyone who does not harm anyone else should be allowed to live a peaceful, happy and worthwhile life without harassment or violence of any kind. That’s what society is for.
Cross posted from the Moments of Political Madness thread.
On CBS, Trump said:
Trump’s claim that there are areas where “the police can’t even go” is false. He has made that claim in the past, and he has been called out as wrong. That doesn’t stop him, doesn’t even slow him down.
During the CBS interview, Trump said “I would close up our borders.” A minute later, in the same interview, he said, “I didn’t say shut down the border. What I said is we have to be very, very strong and vigilant at the borders.”
He added:
Pretty strong assertion there. Let’s take a look at what googling “Brussels crime” gets me:
Whoops.
And guess what, UKIP joined the chorus of bigotry.
One of Trump’s supporters, conservative radio host Alex Jones, is claiming the the attacks in Brussels are “the ultimate false flag.” To which I just have to say, “oh, FFS.” On the theory that is good know how deep the slime pit is, I’ll post what Jones had to say:
Media Matters link.
That sounds reasonable enough. When I hear of people who have been shot by their own dog, I can’t help but wonder what these people were thinking to be so careless.
Acts like these bombings are clearly intended to terrorise people and encourage them to destroy their paradise in order to save it. Yet, acts like this remain rare and – in relative numbers – negligible in comparison with other causes of death. While the deaths and injuries caused by these bombings remind us of how barbaric humans can be, but any fear – while understandable – should have no effect on our way of life. There are simply no rational reasons for such changes. The rational attitude – in my opinion – is to continue as before and simply continue life as before.
Bart, the best way to say a hearty “fuck you” to the terrorists is to do just as you say, continue life as usual.
Otherwise, they’ve won by changing the ones that they want to change and force that nation, through fear, to do whatever they want them to do.
Not that I want to derail or anything but I just gotta mention that Salah Abdeslam totes looks muslim and that if only everyone had listened to Sam Harris, they’d have caught him way soonerz.
Marcus, what precisely does “look Muslim” look like? I’ve long been curious, especially considering how many Muslim nations I’ve been to.
Is it anything like “looks atheist”?
indeed. If they want to destroy our way of life, they must do it. We should not do it for them.
Ted Cruz’s official written statement about the attacks in Brussels:
Where does he get that “United states voluntarily surrendering to the enemy…” bit? Sheesh. Some of the facts:
In 2015, ISIS lost 14% of the territory it held. In 2016, ISIS lost more territory. Mirror link. The ISIS loss of territory is now up to about 22%. In addition, we have reports of ISIS troops having their salaries cut in half, and we have reports of increasing defections from ISIS.
As for Cruz’s suggestion that law enforcement patrol Muslim neighborhoods:
– how do you define a “Muslim neighborhood”
– how do you “patrol” neighborhoods in a way that does not violate civil rights
– how does a patrol prevent radicalization
It seems to me that patrolling so-called Muslim neighborhoods in such an invasive way that you can spot who is being radicalized is a sure fire way to increase radicalization of the people that live there.
I haven’t yet looked, but it would not surprise me in the least to find that even after today’s attacks Brussels is still far, far safer than Washington DC.
Patrolling neighborhoods in a way that is so invasive as to even monitor political speech is repressive enough that I’d happily organize resistance cells.
@94
You’d be correct. Brussels has a homicide rate of 10 per 100k, DC has a homicide rate of 15.9 per 100k.
Marcus @ 90:
I don’t know, what if he looked like Seinfeld?
Well, if you kill everyone who may have a reason to be angry at you…
You’ll end up all alone and then die of thirst, hunger or diarrhea because the very civilization that sustained you’re couch potato lifestyle is no more. BUT no one will ever have the opportunity to retaliate against your own sociopathy, so you’ll “win” in the end, at least according to a sociopath’s logic
***
Yes you are: because you’ve always wanted an excuse to indulge in your little bully’s fantasies and the most recent attack is not the trigger of your behavior but the pretext you use to justify what you always wanted to do, because deep down you do not, never have and never will give a shit about the victims of terrorism, because you are a poltroon trying to disguise his cowardice as bravery by employing belligerent verbosity and because you’re far from being clever enough to hide all that.
***
Daesh lost half of its territories since late 2014: do not confuse the violence of a confident invaders with the last spiteful convulsions of an outmatched foe which grossly overestimated its strength.
***
America has a yuuuuuuge tradition of lynching innocent people to fix problems after all.
***
You talk these were two different things
***
And without having to justify their existence every time someone who tangentially look like them misbehave.
***
If that was the case, Abdeslam would never have been arrested in the first place.
***
“look Muslim” = Does not look like a white-skinned bourgeois.
Laurent:
Except for when they do.
laurentweppe, my point in asking what Muslims look like is simple, Muslims look like everybody else, they come from all over the world and have the same appearances as everyone in the world. There are Chinese Muslims, Indian Muslims, African Muslims, Turkish Muslims, Arabian Muslims, Indonesian Muslims, etc. In short, they look like any other multi-ethnic people that could be found in the UK or US (for only two examples).
ISIL is indeed winning in one aspect, nations change their traditions, practices and restrict freedom, where they previously did not, the terrorists have made a victory. While they may lose territory and even their lives, they’ve forced a change in their targeted society.
Look at post 9/11 life in the US. Mass surveillance, fear driven attacks on people who “look Muslim” (usually, Indian men and women), security theater by the TSA. All because a couple of office buildings were destroyed, with a lower fatality count than our highways claim each year.
That isn’t what victory looks like, it’s what cowardice looks like.
Oh, thanks for the new word, poltroon. I love expanding my vocabulary and learning new things overall. Today, I am one additional word better armed. :)
Yes they do: and my own answer wasn’t about what Muslims actually look like, but about what people who claim that there is a “Muslim Problem” imagine Muslims look like: they imagines that “the enemy” doesnt look, cannot look like them.
***
The thing is, I don’t think these stupid and harmful policies happened because people where afraid of Al Quaeda & co: I suspect that a large suspect of the population always wanted t turn western nations into authoritarian walled gardens and 9/11 gave them the excuse to indulge in their darkest impulse and the mean to bully those who didn’t agree into craven silence.
wzrd1, I may be misunderstanding your comment, but I think you misread Marcus. He was being ironic about things Sam Harris has said.
wzrd1:
We know. The point has been made here a million times. You took Marcus literally, you shouldn’t have. His comment was a riff on the countless arguments we’ve had here over Harris’s insistence on profiling Muslims.
That’s true as far as it goes, but the pioneers of suicide bombings were the Marxist (hence presumably atheist) “Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam” (LTTE) in Sri Lanka. People can apparently be persuaded to blow themselves up along with others for the sake of a political cause, even without any belief in an afterlife.
It’s quote telling that the banned dipshit thinks that those are fundamentally opposing categories. Apparently, muslims are magically protected from mass terrorist attacks on public transport. They don’t work at airports or use the metro or are, I don’t know, police officers charged with protecting a newspaper or something like that.
Muslims in Europe are at the exact same risk of becoming victims of terrorism as the non muslim population PLUS they are at risk of becoming victims of hate crimes against them.
BTW, nobody who listened to the news after the Paris attacks should be surprised that Brussels was the next target. Not only is it the capital of islamist terrorists, it also has several police forces competing for authority and not working together well….
Urgh, emphasis was supposed to be on “people”. It’S been a long day
If I came off like I was snapping Marcus’ head off, that wasn’t intended. Others may come here and not realize the riff being what it was. That’s why I asked my question.
Let’s face it, this country is full of people who think that Afghanistan is in the Levant and that the Levant is something one uses to make bread rise.
When I was in the Persian Gulf region, my skin got quite dark. That was courtesy of my Sicilian parents and grandparents. Meanwhile, because of that Sicilian heritage, my “everybody face” had me accepted both by Indians and Arabs. Alas, I didn’t and still don’t speak Hindi, leaving me having to explain that I’m not Indian. I didn’t quite have to explain to Arabs, as I spoke the local dialect reasonably well, with a trace of a Kuwaiti accent. I got some really sweet discounts at the souqs! :)
I came home on leave and got that “Go back to where you belong” crap once, to which I replied in my Philadelphia accent, “Yo, where the fuck is that, asshole?”. I got quite a chuckle out of the confused expression on the face of the asshole.
Lynna, #93
I think that’s spineless white supremacist speak. He probably means something like how the “neighborhoods” of Jewish people in Poland were “patrolled”.
I actually work close by the Maalbeek Station and just like many of my colleagues, use it regularly for my commute. I wasn’t in Brussels today, but many of my colleagues were (and as of this writing, we haven’t yet heard of a few of them).
But this is a clear “it could have been me” situation, so I guess I speak with a certain degree of authority when I say: “Fuck you De Winter! Fuck you Wilders! Fuck you Trump! Fuck you Le Pen! Fuck you [fill in right wing asshole of your choice]! How dare you exploit this tragedy (and any previous tragedy like this) like salivating remorseless hyenas to continue pushing for policies that will only radicalise more people?! Also, how does one profile ‘Muslim looking people’? Have you looked at the pictures of the suspected terrorists in Zaventem? They couldn’t look more average than that.”
Ugh … there’s so much more I’d want to say but I’m still too overflowing with conflicting feelings to clearly formulate my thoughts.
I can only say that while I contemplate my relative luck, my thoughts go out to victims of this barbarism all over the world.
Alex @ 109:
I’m with you. Glad you’re okay, Alex.
Glad you’re OK, Alex
Hope your colleagues are as well
That’s terrorism expert Malcolm Nance, the head of the Terrorism Asymmetrics Project and a veteran of Navy intelligence, speaking. Nance was reacting to what Trump had to say today about the terrorist attacks in Brussels.
Lynna, tRump is pure recruiting gold for ISIL and every other extremist group around.
They only need point and say, “See? This is why we must fight, before they invade our lands and desecrate our faith”.
@112: Quite right. But here’s the scary thing: Trump is convincing anyone with any sense — even the WaPo editorial board, say I nastily — that he is an ignorant buffoon. And yet his base seems to respond by saying, of any of his critics, “well, if the [New York Times or whoever] is against him, I’m for him.” Worse, the often unspoken next sentence is “When do the missiles start flying?” We’ve got real trouble, here at home, and the next seven or eight months are going to be rather important — for us, and (alas) most of the rest of the world.
This latest event is tragic, and if we can help I hope we do — but it is emphatically NOT an existential threat to the United States. Hoo-boy. Here I hope we dont go again.
@114
To build on that, I remember when Trump first started running CNN had a couple of “establishment-type” businessmen on that supported Trump. CNN asked how they could support trump after a lot of his statements were shown to be false, and they said something to the tune of “Look, I know he says a lot of incorrect things, but I don’t care. I like what Trump represents.”
By this point, I think Trump could start ranting about the yuuuuge population of reptilians that want to nuke us from their secret liberal moonbase and not lose a single vote. He appears to be immune to even fundamental fact-checking.
Cruz isn’t very smart here.
There aren’t many Moslems in the USA, 1.8 million. They often don’t even live in ethnic neighborhoods.
Instead they are scattered among the general population. There are a fair number of Moslems in my area. They are from everywhere, Palestinians, Iranians, Indians, Bosnians, Gulf, college students etc.. Most of them are scattered everywhere. Good luck patrolling those nonexistent Moslem neighborhoods.
Syed Farook, the San Bernadino killer lived in a typical east SoCal neighborhood.
That is so far off removed from reality, I have no words for it. Except for a few touristic and not-all-that-badly maintained areas, Brussels is hostile, dirty, derelict and dangerous.
The city you are talking about is Brugge, certainly not Brussels.
There is really only one neighborhood in the land that is predominantly Muslim, 40000 Muslims, largely Arab and Palestinian, in Dearborn. That said, there are also Lebanese Christians in the same area.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Middle_Eastern_people_in_Metro_Detroit
covers it reasonably nicely. Quite the melting pot in the metro area!
I guess the assholes think we’ll bug all of the mosques and homes, or some other Constitution ignoring idiocy.
Indeed, and I have always found it puzzling. Nevertheless, it can be argued that the situation of the Tamils was so desperate that desperate measures were indicated, in the same way many people commit suicide.
Also, while I profoundly disagree with suicide bombers, I also disagree with those who call these people ‘cowards’. Of course they are not cowards. Cowards don’t blow themselves to smithereens. Just because they do it to please an imaginary friend in the sky does not make them cowards. They profoundly misled, but they are not cowards. To call them that is an unhelpful misrepresentation.
Bart, they’re also quite bright, as in well above average intelligence. Indeed, I recall a DoD study that I can no longer locate, where the DoD tested if they could avoid sending our best and brightest, so they tested well below average intelligence people.
They wouldn’t override their survival instinct and run into harm’s way for a mere idea.
The PLO learned that lesson in a rather sad and comical attempt. They persuaded a mentally challenged man’s family to have him wear a suicide vest and attack Israeli soldiers.
He arrived and asked for help getting the explosive vest off.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussam_Abdo
I recall laughing, while my blood was boiling over the abuse of trust in that incident. Someone of such limited understanding should never have been sent to prison.
That is interesting, since some companies also test potential employees looking for below average intelligence in order avoid hiring people who are able to put 2 and 2 together. I would certainly like to obtain that study, and I suspect I am not alone.
I remember the Abdo case, though only vaguely. Whether or not he should have been sent to prison is something I am uncertain about.
On the one hand, prison has a tendency to utterly destroy people’s lives. Sure, they often have committed crimes, but is destroying their lives really a good way of dealing with this?
On the other hand, society has (should have) a right to protect itself from threats. Prison is one way of doing that, but I can’t help but wonder who belongs there: the people who “choose” to be criminals (terrorists, whatever), those who lack the ability to choose between right and wrong and therefore are at least to some degree unable to refrain from harming others, or perhaps no-one.
Maybe prisons should be closed down altogether, while expanding the mental health system with open institutions for people who do not present a clear threat and *pleasant* closed institutions with (re)educational facilities for those who do, realising that they may in some cases never be allowed to get out.
@109 Alex: I’m glad you’re okay and hope that your colleagues are too. As someone who lived in downtown Manhattan in 2001 (though I had no particular reason to be in the WTC on 11 September), I’d like to join you in a hearty “fuck you” to all of those you mentioned, plus the AfD plus Trump, Cruz, and Kasich, plus Dubya who is, after all, the one who set up the circumstances that allowed ISIS to exist. plus Obama who keeps feeding the fire. May we be wrong about the afterlife and all of them spend eternity being eaten by angry cockroaches. Or, even better, finally understand what they’ve done and experience appropriate remorse.
Not my memory of Brussels, but I was mostly in and around the train station which is likely the touristy area. Plus, I lived in Chicago for 4 years and that’s affected my standards pretty severely.
I lived just outside of the core, a short walk from the Atomium. I have been in Toronto for over 20 years now. I am guessing that has severely affected my standards as well. I love Toronto.
Toronto’s nice.
Hell, the remarks made by Clinton still look significantly different in tone and substance from those made by Cruz and Trump.
I guess I must still be a stupid, morally vapid sheeple-type who hasn’t awakened yet. Damn.
It might also mean having a serious, frank, and adult discussion about risks, costs, benefits. It may be that our current policy is sufficient, and the best approach is just to suffer through the occasional horrific terrorist event. I’m all for looking what can be done better, but I’m not for abandoning all of our civil liberties on the pretense of stopping all terrorist attacks.
I was listening to the BBC about it on NPR, and all I heard was the BBC reporter asking “How did this happen? What are you going to do to make sure it never happens again?”. I wish anyone had the guts and gumption to say publicly to such questions “We’ll see what we can do, but it might be that we did the best that can be done, and that this is just one of the costs of living in a free society”.
it may well be that, pragmatically, that is where we are at – but to formalize it doesn’t send a good message to the terrorists, and certainly won’t play well with the general public.
In terms of “how do we make this not happen again?” I think the first question would be “how have similar events been stopped in the past?” Northern Ireland doesn’t experience Catholic/Protestant violence on a regular basis any more. How was it stopped? I don’t know the details, but I think that it involved more education and finding common ground than waterboarding and bigger explosives. Another thing that would help is if the western world could stop causing terrorists groups to form. Al Qaeda is a direct product of Reagan’s desire to counter the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. I guess it worked…sort of. ISIS came about because of the conditions Dubya set up in Iraq. Maybe it’s time to remember the first rule of holes?
@128: While I agree that “that’s just the risks we take” isn’t going to play well with the public, I’m not sure it’s a bad message to send to the terrorists. They want to be something extraordinary and categorizing them as just another risk, like any other criminals, might make them less interesting to potential recruits.
@130 – Sure – we want the terrorists to think they can’t disrupt our way of life, but they know the scale of what they can do takes them way beyond other criminals. Sadly, if their activities don’t get the reaction they want, I suspect they will just up the ante. It’s all very shitty.
With regard to the catholic protestant thing – although sectarianism exaggerated the differences, in truth what the catholics\republicans wanted was really not unreasonable, and certainly something we can be seen to work towards. I’m not sure the same can be said of Daesh.
@131: Do they? Take them beyond the scale of other criminals, that is. Maybe in Belgium, but in the US more people die in mass shootings than they do in politically motivated bombings so I’d say that the “official” terrorists are the lesser danger.
I doubt that what Daesh wants is completely unreasonable without any way to compromise at all any more than what the IRA wanted was completely reasonable and something that could be simply worked out. Find the people within the community who are asking for something reasonable and work with them. They are there, possibly even within Daesh. Find them and convince them not to hate and the problem will, eventually, resolve itself.
So … what exactly? Are you endorsing and advocating lying, fear-mongering, and hysterics, instead of reasonable public policy discussions, from BBC reporters, and from elected officials on programs like the BBC? Presumably no. I hope no. I hope you retract your point.
In particular, this is patronizing. You are implicitly stating that you are adult enough, competent enough, to be told the truth, but the rabble of the “general public” are too stupid, or too irrational, or otherwise too mentally incompetent to be able to handle the truth like you obvious can. I find that sentiment deeply offensive, deeply condescending, deeply patronizing, and deeply narcissistic.
(I am not claiming that lying in public policy discussions is always bad, but this is not such an example.)
@132 Daesh terrorists operations are mainly confined to Europe at the moment, so I’m not sure that comparing mass shootings in the US with political bombings there is valid. The US seems to have a particular problem with mass shootings, which seems to have a lot to do with gun culture.
I’m all for negotiated settlements, but Daesh goals do seem pretty intractable at the moment :
Patrick Cockburn is The Independent’s Middle East correspondent
Isis wants all Muslims to declare allegiance to its caliphate and the caliphate to rule all the world. Its more practical objectives are to survive and expand which it has so far succeeded in doing.
Farah Pandith is a former Special Representative to Muslim Communities for the US State Department and senior fellow at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics
Isis has stated that it wants to build a caliphate, and they have a careful, steady and organised plan to demonstrate the strength of their conviction and purpose, their military strength and the strength of their right to be the saviours of what they see as Islam.
So while they are aiming towards a long-term strategy, they have very specific ways in which they’re doing it.
I think that their ability to get to their goals will only be prevented if we understand that we all need to believe and act. A quarter of the planet is Muslim. That’s 1.6 billion people, 62 per cent of that number is under the age of 30. So that matters to us and we need to understand that the threat is not just Isis but the demographic that is being affected, and the virtual armies that will be around long after Isis is gone.
The sky is the limit
Hassan Hassan is the co-author of Isis: Inside the Army of Terror and associate fellow in the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House
The group is expansionist and thrives on gaining more territory. The sky is the limit for it, unless it is forced to remain in its territories and then shrink. Its ideology is global and inspires like-minded adherents throughout the world.
From what’s emerging now, it appears that we didn’t “do the best we could have done”, and it seems a lot more could be done without impinging on the freedoms we are lucky enough to enjoy.
We never do, because the best we can do can only be ascertained with the benefit of hindsight.
That would be great, but increased security seems to always entail decreased freedom. I am unconvinced.
Whoops – editing ham-fistedness, sorry
Isis doesn’t want anything, being a non-sentient organization. The people in Isis may all be supposed to want what the leaders say the official position is, but do they? And are they all entirely unwilling to compromise? I doubt it. But if we keep bombing them at random, I don’t see any way that a compromise can be reached.
The US in particular has a tendency to see it’s enemy of the moment as a monolithic power that will never compromise and only respects “strength”, i.e. military force. This can’t always be true. I strongly suspect that if given a compromise that allows them to get some of what they want, the vast majority of people who make up Isis would take it and declare that they’d won against the heathen and call it good.
ajbjasus #135:
Not sure where you get that idea from:
2015 and 2016 timelines.
Those timelines are for all related events, including “proper” military actions, but even just a casual skim shows that they’re not even close to confining acts that are unquestionably terrorism to Europe.
According to last night’s BBC “Panorama special”, watchable here, a car containing one of the Paris bombers was stopped three times by police on its way to Belgium. Despite the bomber being on a terrorist watch list, and the driver admitting at one stop that he had been drinking (this driver was a friend of his passenger, but ambivalent about him), it was allowed to proceed. Police and security service incompetence has played a larger part than open borders in allowing the terrorists to operate.
ajbjasus #142:
Given that much of the talk in this thread has been regarding right-wing reactions in the US to a perceived Islamist threat to the US though, the comparison is valid, yes?
I guess that shows how (looking at this from Europe) it’s hard to put yourself fully in someone else’s shoes.
I think it is worth pointing out to the terrorists how truly insignificant they are. They get lots of attention and hurt plenty of people (which is surely hateful to any god that there might be). If they kill themselves they destroy any chance they might have had to do anything truly great with their lives, including truly promoting Islam, if that’s what they want. But in the larger sense, what have they done? Not much.
Take the 9-11 attacks as an example. Big, nasty attack, killed lots of people. But what did it really do, to the city of New York or the US as a country? Not much. Brief dip in the stock market, but that was going to happen anyway due to Bush’s economic policies. The attacks were just the excuse for it to happen then and not 6 months later. Made a big hole in the ground, took some years to rebuild it, but there is, once again, a WTC complex in NYC. Five buildings, one much taller than the others, because it’s New Fucking York and we’ll just rebuild. Bigger. Better. Ruder. Certainly, hurricane Katrina did a much better job of destroying New Orleans than al Qaeda did of destroying NYC. The rest of the damage was all due to US-Americans overreacting and reacting badly to the events. If they had shrugged and rebuilt rather than attacking randomly, there’d probably never have been a Daesh.
So the terrorists? Not threat #1. Just pathetic, hateful attention seekers.