HakkekageSpace Whore Academysumma cum laudeRegistered Userregular
US President Barack Obama has sent a message of support to the people of Brussels, saying: "We can and we will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world."
The psychology of terror in Europe is a bit different anyway, given that it was only 30 years ago that they were still regularly being blown up by IRA, ETA, and various Communist groups. It's harder to intimidate the Europeans through a handful of isolated attacks, even if they're higher profile.
US President Barack Obama has sent a message of support to the people of Brussels, saying: "We can and we will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world."
TV news saying at least 21 dead (11 at airport, 10 at metro), 55 wounded
The anchors are really latching on the official statement that Brussels was "hit by blind attacks", being critical that the attacks should have been anticipated because of the Abdeslam arrests
How though?? How do you prevent an attack at crowded transport hubs without shutting down the city and raiding everyone who looks kind of brown?
Some of it is just Monday Night Quarterbacking bullshit. People who want to pretend that perfect security is a realistic goal / expectation.
Some of it is people who think that racial / religious profiling is an acceptable price to pay (well, for other people to pay) for whatever marginal increase in security it would provide.
I want you to ban all muslims from America so I can die from heart disease instead of dying from heart disease anyway
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HakkekageSpace Whore Academysumma cum laudeRegistered Userregular
'It's an impossible situation' - Belgian counter-terror official
Buzzfeed interviewed a Belgian counter-terrorism official last week - before the Brussels attacks - who said police resources in the country were already stretched to the limit.
He said virtually every police detective and military intelligence official in the country were focused on international jihadi investigations.
“We just don’t have the people to watch anything else and, frankly, we don’t have the infrastructure to properly investigate or monitor hundreds of individuals suspected of terror links, as well as pursue the hundreds of open files and investigations we have,” the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media, said.
“It’s literally an impossible situation and, honestly, it’s very grave.”
The psychology of terror in Europe is a bit different anyway, given that it was only 30 years ago that they were still regularly being blown up by IRA, ETA, and various Communist groups. It's harder to intimidate the Europeans through a handful of isolated attacks, even if they're higher profile.
Yeah.. I mean in Europe every Country had its own terror, basically. And you couldn't even racially profile them!
Southern Germany still had police with automatic weapons patrolling public streets in front of some high risk targets, decades later.
Pretty open politicking for budget increases for police is both crass and predictable.
Police is spread pretty thinly in Germany, too. I don't think a higher budget for real policemen and women would be a bad thing, instead of just mass surveillance
Pretty open politicking for budget increases for police is both crass and predictable.
Police is spread pretty thinly in Germany, too. I don't think a higher budget for real policemen and women would be a bad thing, instead of just mass surveillance
Mass surveillance is pretty god damned useless if you don't have enough staff to review the findings and follow-up in a reasonable timeframe.
Pretty open politicking for budget increases for police is both crass and predictable.
I have argued previously that one needs to be careful about addressing terrorism in terms of life adjusted disability years per dollar spent*, but, well, if you only have enough people to investigate n threats per year, and are accurately triaging them, then n+1 and greater threats are going to go through.
* With the caveat that due to social, political, and infrastructure issues, looking at it from a purely public health issue misses substantial dimensions.
The psychology of terror in Europe is a bit different anyway, given that it was only 30 years ago that they were still regularly being blown up by IRA, ETA, and various Communist groups. It's harder to intimidate the Europeans through a handful of isolated attacks, even if they're higher profile.
Maybe I'm a self centered asshole, but it doesn't escape me that every time there is an attack on any place in Europe, the response from the US as a country is a push in a more extremist direction. Maybe they've realized that attacking on our soil is difficult, and completely unnecessary to get the response they want out of us. It just helps their motives to also be attacking countries in the EU as well. Again maybe I'm just a self centered American, but we're just going to get more terrified here the more this happens there, and it is way easier for them to carry out these attacks over there than it is to carry them out here.
I mean this attack seems pretty clearly a response to the capture of the leader of the attacks in Paris. So it might just be a terrorist cell having a last attack before hopefully being fully taken down. I think it is incredibly likely that these may have been more crimes of convenience than of specific planned importance or effectiveness.
Also yeah if there is any place I've seen that is ripe for setting off an explosion it is the pre checked in region of an airport, especially right at the security check in. It's essentially a giant gaggle of people in a confined space with no checks upon what they are holding as they all wait in line to get what they are holding checked. Unless you make the process way more fluid and quick thus that there is no queue this is literally the dumbest part of airport security. I'm just surprised it's taken this long for a terrorist to hit such a place. Subways are just a standard attack vector from my understanding of things.
Terrorist org's always claim responsibility immediately following something, doesn't mean they actually did it. I believe ISIS claimed San Bernadino was theirs as well when it was just a wannabe.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
At the face of it it seems timed to that arrest, that could just as well be coincidental though.
I'm wondering why it would be tied to his arrest, since reports say he's only alive because he didn't follow through in Paris.
By which I mean I would have thought an organization as extreme as this one would have thought him a coward.
The running theory is that because they think he is a coward they think he will talk to the authorities and rat on the rest of his organization. Nothing says, 'hey ditch all your explosives as offensively as possible with very little planning', like the very real threat of never getting to use them because one of your compatriots got caught and will likely inform on you.
Between this and Paris, it seems Europe needs a more unified intelligence front to help prevent stuff like this from happening. Maybe via NATO, maybe via the EU, but it seems a system to share info and shift reasources to hotspots is necessary.
Like when I read that Belgium's security forces and reasources we're already streched to the limits, I'm wondering where was NATO and the EU to help them.
I don't know, I just want to stop read about terror attacks.
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HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Oh! That seems even more logical now, in retrospect.
Between this and Paris, it seems Europe needs a more unified intelligence front to help prevent stuff like this from happening. Maybe via NATO, maybe via the EU, but it seems a system to share info and shift reasources to hotspots is necessary.
Like when I read that Belgium's security forces and reasources we're already streched to the limits, I'm wondering where was NATO and the EU to help them.
I don't know, I just want to stop read about terror attacks.
The EU is too integrated to be called a trade alliance and not sufficiently centralized to function coherently as a political entity.
I think the second tweet is real good and I hope more people echo it. We cannot allow fear to undermine our principles or else we have given into terror. Hopefully there won't be to much backlash against immigrants and refugees.
Oh, and for the love of God don't poke around Trump or Cruz's twitter, "just to see what their saying". It's nothing good, trust me.
Terrorists do want to destroy democratic values, specifically the ISIS bunch, they want us to enact worse and worse laws restricting our freedoms in fear of things we really shouldn't be that worried about. More likely to die of a heart attack or cancer than terrorism.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
HakkekageSpace Whore Academysumma cum laudeRegistered Userregular
BREAKING Image of airport attack suspects released Posted at
16:05
A picture released on March 22, 2016 by the Belgian federal police on demand of the Federal prosecutor shows a screengrab of the airport CCTV camera showing three suspects of this morning's attacks at Brussels Airport, in Zaventem
AFP/Getty
An image widely published by Belgian media is said to show three men who are believed to have carried out the attack at Zaventem Airport.
The two men dressed in black are believed to have blown themselves up, while the man in white is thought to have escaped, RTBF reported.
The men in black both appear to be wearing a single black glove on their left hands, which some reports suggest could have been in order to conceal detonators.
The image was unintentionally leaked on to social media by Belgian police before the authorities later confirmed its authenticity, local media said.
They really don't care about us that much at this stage of their development. The goal is to get people like Trump and AfD into power to make things bad for Muslims so that they can get more converts to the cause and continue to promote the idea that Islam cannot coexist with anything else.
Terrorists do want to destroy democratic values, specifically the ISIS bunch, they want us to enact worse and worse laws restricting our freedoms in fear of things we really shouldn't be that worried about. More likely to die of a heart attack or cancer than terrorism.
And we'll end up letting them. Because if there's one thing we're great at, it's fascism.
The psychology of terror in Europe is a bit different anyway, given that it was only 30 years ago that they were still regularly being blown up by IRA, ETA, and various Communist groups. It's harder to intimidate the Europeans through a handful of isolated attacks, even if they're higher profile.
There are still people that remember the bunch before them, the Nazis in all their goosestepping glory.
Or the two giant armies standing on each side of the Iron Curtain with nukes to back them up.
Scary as ISIS are, they are amateur compared to Europe's own terrors.
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
Terrorists do want to destroy democratic values, specifically the ISIS bunch, they want us to enact worse and worse laws restricting our freedoms in fear of things we really shouldn't be that worried about. More likely to die of a heart attack or cancer than terrorism.
A huge, very explicit goal of terrorism is to cause overreaction, we should never forget that.
That said, ISIS would commit genocide (both executions and the arguably worse fate of being forced into lifelong sexual slavery until one kills themselves or dies from abuse or neglect anyways) and end all human rights, dignity, and progress in the entire region, and perhaps eventually the world if no one was willing to violently oppose them, and we shouldn't lose sight of that.
The correct response is neither flattening entire areas or waterboarding, nor becoming willing victims by failing to offer any defense.
Whenever I hear about weak old Europe, I always want to go "bitch, this is the continent that made the Holocaust. 6 million dead over a period of 3 year".
That's whats worries me about attacks like this. If Europe gets angry, I wouldn't want to be a Muslim for all the tea in China.
I am more scared of watching somebody re-enacting the Reich's greatest hits, then I am of being caught up in a terrorist attack.
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
Whenever I hear about weak old Europe, I always want to go "bitch, this is the continent that made the Holocaust. 6 million dead over a period of 3 year".
That's whats worries me about attacks like this. If Europe gets angry, I wouldn't want to be a Muslim for all the tea in China.
I am more scared of watching somebody re-enacting the Reich's greatest hits, then I am of being caught up in a terrorist attack.
I'm not entirely comfortable with the suggestion in this that Europe is in any way a cohesive, homogeneous thing, because I think that's a deeply flawed, inaccurate misrepresentation. *Europe* didn't "make the Holocaust". There are trends you'll find in lots of countries, and one particularly worrying trend in that respect is the shift towards the (far) right, but even that isn't one coherent thing, and to the extent that it does exist it's also observable in the United States, with its Tea Party/Donald Trump excesses.
Thirith on
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Terrorists do want to destroy democratic values, specifically the ISIS bunch, they want us to enact worse and worse laws restricting our freedoms in fear of things we really shouldn't be that worried about. More likely to die of a heart attack or cancer than terrorism.
i always hear people say this and i wonder where it's coming from. i don't think they give 2 shits about our values.
i think they want us to stop meddling in their affairs and to stop supporting israel maybe? mostly, i think they want us to stop fucking with them (as they see it).
Terrorists do want to destroy democratic values, specifically the ISIS bunch, they want us to enact worse and worse laws restricting our freedoms in fear of things we really shouldn't be that worried about. More likely to die of a heart attack or cancer than terrorism.
i always hear people say this and i wonder where it's coming from. i don't think they give 2 shits about our values.
i think they want us to stop meddling in their affairs and to stop supporting israel maybe? mostly, i think they want us to stop fucking with them (as they see it).
They've outright talked about "eliminating the gray space" - placing the Western and Muslim worlds in conflict with no space in between.
Pretty open politicking for budget increases for police is both crass and predictable.
Police is spread pretty thinly in Germany, too. I don't think a higher budget for real policemen and women would be a bad thing, instead of just mass surveillance
I think this is the general situation all over Europe. "Austerity rules! :cool:" after all.
Terrorist org's always claim responsibility immediately following something, doesn't mean they actually did it. I believe ISIS claimed San Bernadino was theirs as well when it was just a wannabe.
Also, remember when various jihadist assholes claimed the Breivik thing was one of theirs?
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Zavianuniversal peace sounds better than forever warRegistered Userregular
in Wahhabism, the world outside the authority of Islam is considered a warzone until the people submit to the will of Allah, therefore murder is justified to them as a means to that end. One of the unintended consequences of overthrowing governments like Saddam, Gaddafi and trying to topple Assad is that those dictators actually had much more moderate societies compared to Wahhabist countries like Saudi Arabia (i.e. women were allowed to drive, walk around unveiled, goto college, not have acid thrown in their faces, be stoned to death after being raped, beheaded for being homosexual, etc.). But because of the deal FDR made on the Bitter Lake after WWII we've agreed in exchange for their oil to let the Saudis set up Wahhabist schools all over the middle east that teach fundamentalist Wahhabism which is all about setting up a Caliphate. Shiite Islam is actually 100% opposed to this (a caliphate) and Iran is actually a natural ally against this kind of fundamentalist ideaology, but because the CIA has been doing coups and setting up dictators in Iran/Syria since the cold war (which were then toppled by popular uprisings) their governments are anti-US (as well as the fact that the US government is still largely allied with the Saudis).
TLDR: sometimes ignorance and arrogance in foreign policy has tragic unintended consequences, especially when our allies and enemies aren't clear cut good guys and bad guys
Terrorists do want to destroy democratic values, specifically the ISIS bunch, they want us to enact worse and worse laws restricting our freedoms in fear of things we really shouldn't be that worried about. More likely to die of a heart attack or cancer than terrorism.
Specifically short term they want us to restrict and bully muslims. Their goal is to drive a wedge between muslims everywhere and western civilization, since it's necessary for their own success*.
They look better every time they can point to us as the enemy, and they get screwed any time we look like allies. I mean in the end they'd love it if we all died in a fire, but the strategic point isn't to hassle me with checkpoints on my way to work. It's to make me and my muslim neighbor believe it's impossible for us to coexist and cooperate.
*The alternative being muslim countries being assimilated fully into the global community and the fundamentalists marginalized into obscurity and crushed/strangled by people backed governments.
France24's coverage(at least in French) has been excellent(much better than that of previous events). Reactions of the guests have been so level headed and different than what is usually screamed across the pond(and yes, they were probably quiet editorial with invitations....)
Was very pleasantly surprised by the complete lack of knee jerk commentary. There was a guest that suggested as way to react to this is for society to grow and learn being able to function despite it(UK, Israel etc). There was also a very leading question about more security and a guy pointing out that a security checkpoint, by definition, has a multitude of people who have not passed it on one of the sides.
Trying to follow along, but I'm not sure I'm grasping the full implications of this. The group claiming responsibility is targeting its PR at EU/US and not it's own people?
Trying to follow along, but I'm not sure I'm grasping the full implications of this. The group claiming responsibility is targeting its PR at EU/US and not it's own people?
that appears to be the case. I edited and added the other two tweets because as soon as I posted the one urging caution at spreading around IS' initial claim (in English), he updated with the other two that IS just released the same statement in Arabic and French
previously he talked about "erratic behavior" on known ISIS propaganda channels (their chat rooms and stuff)
Posts
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but. I'm shivering at the thought of how.
NNID: Hakkekage
Predator drone attacks (IMHO, ineffectual ones).
I want you to ban all muslims from America so I can die from heart disease instead of dying from heart disease anyway
NNID: Hakkekage
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Yeah.. I mean in Europe every Country had its own terror, basically. And you couldn't even racially profile them!
Southern Germany still had police with automatic weapons patrolling public streets in front of some high risk targets, decades later.
Police is spread pretty thinly in Germany, too. I don't think a higher budget for real policemen and women would be a bad thing, instead of just mass surveillance
Mass surveillance is pretty god damned useless if you don't have enough staff to review the findings and follow-up in a reasonable timeframe.
I have argued previously that one needs to be careful about addressing terrorism in terms of life adjusted disability years per dollar spent*, but, well, if you only have enough people to investigate n threats per year, and are accurately triaging them, then n+1 and greater threats are going to go through.
* With the caveat that due to social, political, and infrastructure issues, looking at it from a purely public health issue misses substantial dimensions.
Maybe I'm a self centered asshole, but it doesn't escape me that every time there is an attack on any place in Europe, the response from the US as a country is a push in a more extremist direction. Maybe they've realized that attacking on our soil is difficult, and completely unnecessary to get the response they want out of us. It just helps their motives to also be attacking countries in the EU as well. Again maybe I'm just a self centered American, but we're just going to get more terrified here the more this happens there, and it is way easier for them to carry out these attacks over there than it is to carry them out here.
I mean this attack seems pretty clearly a response to the capture of the leader of the attacks in Paris. So it might just be a terrorist cell having a last attack before hopefully being fully taken down. I think it is incredibly likely that these may have been more crimes of convenience than of specific planned importance or effectiveness.
Also yeah if there is any place I've seen that is ripe for setting off an explosion it is the pre checked in region of an airport, especially right at the security check in. It's essentially a giant gaggle of people in a confined space with no checks upon what they are holding as they all wait in line to get what they are holding checked. Unless you make the process way more fluid and quick thus that there is no queue this is literally the dumbest part of airport security. I'm just surprised it's taken this long for a terrorist to hit such a place. Subways are just a standard attack vector from my understanding of things.
Steam Me
pleasepaypreacher.net
I'm wondering why it would be tied to his arrest, since reports say he's only alive because he didn't follow through in Paris.
By which I mean I would have thought an organization as extreme as this one would have thought him a coward.
Because the authorities said (rather goosily) that he was talking. Which may have pushed the cell there to accelerate their planning.
The running theory is that because they think he is a coward they think he will talk to the authorities and rat on the rest of his organization. Nothing says, 'hey ditch all your explosives as offensively as possible with very little planning', like the very real threat of never getting to use them because one of your compatriots got caught and will likely inform on you.
Like when I read that Belgium's security forces and reasources we're already streched to the limits, I'm wondering where was NATO and the EU to help them.
I don't know, I just want to stop read about terror attacks.
The EU is too integrated to be called a trade alliance and not sufficiently centralized to function coherently as a political entity.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
I think the second tweet is real good and I hope more people echo it. We cannot allow fear to undermine our principles or else we have given into terror. Hopefully there won't be to much backlash against immigrants and refugees.
Oh, and for the love of God don't poke around Trump or Cruz's twitter, "just to see what their saying". It's nothing good, trust me.
pleasepaypreacher.net
NNID: Hakkekage
And we'll end up letting them. Because if there's one thing we're great at, it's fascism.
Steam: pazython
There are still people that remember the bunch before them, the Nazis in all their goosestepping glory.
Or the two giant armies standing on each side of the Iron Curtain with nukes to back them up.
Scary as ISIS are, they are amateur compared to Europe's own terrors.
A huge, very explicit goal of terrorism is to cause overreaction, we should never forget that.
That said, ISIS would commit genocide (both executions and the arguably worse fate of being forced into lifelong sexual slavery until one kills themselves or dies from abuse or neglect anyways) and end all human rights, dignity, and progress in the entire region, and perhaps eventually the world if no one was willing to violently oppose them, and we shouldn't lose sight of that.
The correct response is neither flattening entire areas or waterboarding, nor becoming willing victims by failing to offer any defense.
That's whats worries me about attacks like this. If Europe gets angry, I wouldn't want to be a Muslim for all the tea in China.
I am more scared of watching somebody re-enacting the Reich's greatest hits, then I am of being caught up in a terrorist attack.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
EDIT: 3 minutes ago:
36 sec ago:
NNID: Hakkekage
i always hear people say this and i wonder where it's coming from. i don't think they give 2 shits about our values.
i think they want us to stop meddling in their affairs and to stop supporting israel maybe? mostly, i think they want us to stop fucking with them (as they see it).
They've outright talked about "eliminating the gray space" - placing the Western and Muslim worlds in conflict with no space in between.
Edit: Also, remember when various jihadist assholes claimed the Breivik thing was one of theirs?
TLDR: sometimes ignorance and arrogance in foreign policy has tragic unintended consequences, especially when our allies and enemies aren't clear cut good guys and bad guys
Specifically short term they want us to restrict and bully muslims. Their goal is to drive a wedge between muslims everywhere and western civilization, since it's necessary for their own success*.
They look better every time they can point to us as the enemy, and they get screwed any time we look like allies. I mean in the end they'd love it if we all died in a fire, but the strategic point isn't to hassle me with checkpoints on my way to work. It's to make me and my muslim neighbor believe it's impossible for us to coexist and cooperate.
*The alternative being muslim countries being assimilated fully into the global community and the fundamentalists marginalized into obscurity and crushed/strangled by people backed governments.
Was very pleasantly surprised by the complete lack of knee jerk commentary. There was a guest that suggested as way to react to this is for society to grow and learn being able to function despite it(UK, Israel etc). There was also a very leading question about more security and a guy pointing out that a security checkpoint, by definition, has a multitude of people who have not passed it on one of the sides.
Trying to follow along, but I'm not sure I'm grasping the full implications of this. The group claiming responsibility is targeting its PR at EU/US and not it's own people?
You can't give someone a pirate ship in one game, and then take it back in the next game. It's rude.
that appears to be the case. I edited and added the other two tweets because as soon as I posted the one urging caution at spreading around IS' initial claim (in English), he updated with the other two that IS just released the same statement in Arabic and French
previously he talked about "erratic behavior" on known ISIS propaganda channels (their chat rooms and stuff)
NNID: Hakkekage