Brussels Rocked by Terrorist Attacks • Hacker News Board

Re: Brussels Rocked by Terrorist Attacks

#271

Post by AnthonyMouse » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 2:49 PM UTC

BFatts wrote: post #211

dmichulke wrote: post #7

As sad as it is, I think the responses will be: - we need more surveillance rights and money for the secret services - we need more police and higher spending - and possibly bomb some country (Syria is en vogue) What won't be said is: - How come this happens again without anyone having seen it coming? - What does it say about the success of the Western anti-terror foreign policy adopted ~2001?

For every attack that they "didn't see coming" there are, most likely, plenty of attacks that they "did see coming" and stopped. Even more likely is that we don't hear about these stopped attacks because they aren't sexy news. Or, when attacks ARE stopped, and it's published, people question whether it's just blustering by the government to justify their jobs. It's not like you can say "yeah, we saw that coming and l…

> For every attack that they "didn't see coming" there are, most likely, plenty of attacks that they "did see coming" and stopped. Even more likely is that we don't hear about these stopped attacks because they aren't sexy news. Or, when attacks ARE stopped, and it's published, people question whether it's just blustering by the government to justify their jobs.

The problem with this argument is that it can be used to justify any security measures, no matter how costly or stupid. Because maybe it's really very effective in practice but we can't tell you about it?

You're basically saying "trust us, we're the government." It's the recipe for total unaccountability.

So no, they have to justify that the costly and stupid security measures actually work. Or we'll have nothing but costly and stupid security measures that don't actually work.

Re: Brussels Rocked by Terrorist Attacks

#272

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 2:50 PM UTC

danharaj wrote: post #143

artursapek wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Religion is the way the leaders of these groups convince their followers to blow themselves up. Without religion it would be completely against their self interest to do so.

I'm pretty sure desperate economic conditions, political instability and alienation have a lot more to do with it.

[deleted]

Re: Brussels Rocked by Terrorist Attacks

#273

Post by qb45 » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 2:50 PM UTC

sydneysider wrote: post #228

I wonder how long it will take for people to connect the dots... Meanwhile Europe has no borders, massive security risk which we are only beginning to see the consequences of.

The problem is mainly with external borders, not internal. They are likely getting weapons and other aids from outside, you can't just buy AK47 in EU.

Re: Brussels Rocked by Terrorist Attacks

#274

Post by Strom » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 2:51 PM UTC

tremon wrote: post #148

Strom wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what more police will do. Make people feel safer, not actually be more safe. It's security theater. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_theater

That's simply not true. A larger police force translates to more comprehensive law enforcement. If it doesn't, then there's a systemic failure in the way police are run (and we have plenty of examples of those too). Of course "more police" isn't the only way to increase the effectiveness of policing, but it does help. The security theater was specifically about TSA and other untrained (or minimally trained) symbolic…

More police can help with theft, possibly with solving murders. It will do almost nothing to prevent terrorist attacks. This airport attack is a prime example of the reason why. You can put large checkpoints everywhere, but there will always be, by definition, a line of people that haven't yet passed the checkpoint and this is where they will attack.

Re: Brussels Rocked by Terrorist Attacks

#275

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 2:58 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #157

odinduty wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it's hard to feel in any other way when recent migration policies have translated into a sharp decline of our own security in our own developed countries.

Caitlin Moran - > Always good, on days like this, to remind everyone that the guys blowing up Brussels are THE PEOPLE THE REFUGEES ARE RUNNING AWAY FROM

[deleted]

Re: Brussels Rocked by Terrorist Attacks

#276

Post by rahvin » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 3:08 PM UTC

mdemare wrote: post #230

rahvin wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really easy to say about any capital city, but not what the parent means at all.

Not any capital city - Brussels specifically. There was a lockdown of nearly a week after the Paris attacks. People were really bracing for an attack, in a way that London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Vienna, etc. weren't.

My point was that it is really easy to say that any big city will have a terrorist attack. So it's never if, but always when. Yet with all the surveillance and lockdowns they have, they didn't see this coming, which was the point of the parent, that more surveillance is not going to solve anything.

Re: Brussels Rocked by Terrorist Attacks

#277

Post by noobie » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 3:09 PM UTC

gotchange wrote: post #187

noobie wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that so? Why is it that terrorism goes hand in hand with religion then? Terrorism is about fulfilling an arguably skewed view of religion.

That's just one strain of terrorism i.e. religious terrorism or more specifically Islamic terrorism as I may speculate that's what you intended. There are many other strains of terrorism like the last terrorist attack in Ankara last week where a female Kurdish ultra-nationalist militant blew herself in a bus killing about 40 civilians in the process. This was just an instance of a political/nationalist violence/terro…

I stand corrected.

Re: Brussels Rocked by Terrorist Attacks

#278

Post by brudgers » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 3:17 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #238

rtpg wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A major airport and the entire rail system of the city was shut down. A lot of damage was done. And, of course, a bunch of people died from something not many signed up for. Driving a car at least gives you the opportunity to reject taking on the risk. The fabric of society is based around us not shooting each other/ blowing up trains. Every event like this (or, say, some countries bombing out neighborhoods in other…

> There's absolutely nothing inevitable about these kinds of attacks. We could bring this sort of event down to a number real close to 0. I don't think so. Even if you exclude international politics completely the number still isn't zero. Take the 2011 Norway attacks where 77 people died. That was one guy, a Christian fundamentalist, likely paranoid schizophrenic who wanted to rid the world of Marxism/feminism/islam/…

The parent comment uses the phrase "close to zero".

Re: Brussels Rocked by Terrorist Attacks

#279

Post by ptaipale » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 3:19 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #238

rtpg wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A major airport and the entire rail system of the city was shut down. A lot of damage was done. And, of course, a bunch of people died from something not many signed up for. Driving a car at least gives you the opportunity to reject taking on the risk. The fabric of society is based around us not shooting each other/ blowing up trains. Every event like this (or, say, some countries bombing out neighborhoods in other…

> There's absolutely nothing inevitable about these kinds of attacks. We could bring this sort of event down to a number real close to 0. I don't think so. Even if you exclude international politics completely the number still isn't zero. Take the 2011 Norway attacks where 77 people died. That was one guy, a Christian fundamentalist, likely paranoid schizophrenic who wanted to rid the world of Marxism/feminism/islam/…

Labeling Breivik as a Christian fundamentalist serves a political need, but if we really have to attribute to a religion what he did, he was more like a pagan fundamentalist ("Odinist") who expressed his belief that Jesus was "pathetic".

Edit: However I agree with the part that this is never going to go away (completely). You cannot totally prevent terror, and living in a society that could would be terror itself.

Re: Brussels Rocked by Terrorist Attacks

#280

Post by cholantesh » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 3:20 PM UTC

cafard wrote: post #251

fweespee_ch wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Surveillance doesn't work. 2) Finding real plots are too hard so they entrap people and even then, they don't find many. 3) They aren't spreading around their "successes" because they are absurdly few and borderline entrapment. 4) Homegrown threats are a greater danger and largely being ignored. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/25/us/tally-of-attacks-in-us-... > But the breakdown of extremist ideologies behind those…

Right, but this was in Belgium.

But surely it will trickle back into the conversation in NA. Here in Canada, the Liberal government has been unwilling to commit to scaling back programmes put in place by their Conservative predecessors. I think it's a legitimate concern that an incident like this gives them resolve in continuing such programmes.