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Brussels Rocked by Terrorist Attacks

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Re: Brussels Rocked by Terrorist Attacks

#311

Post by appleflaxen »

rtpg wrote: post #172
DoubleMalt wrote: post #136

What I find reassuring in the midst of this tragic mayhem however, is how little actual damage the terrorists could do. They had explosives, weapons, the resolve to sacrifice themselves and tried their best to do as much damage as possible. And they managed to to kill less than 30 people (provisional count). Of course every death that brought on by this fanatic mob is too much, but we should keep our perspective. A b…

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…

Compared to other risks we take every day, it already is close to zero.

Re: Brussels Rocked by Terrorist Attacks

#312

Post by ptaipale »

realitygrill wrote: post #301
SonicSoul wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wait. you cycle because driving is too risky? are you statistically less likely to get injured while cycling, or is it mainly about caring for not injuring others?

Cycling appears to be about an order of magnitude (~10x) times more dangerous, per mile travelled, than driving.

I made the same calculation from the statistics in my country (Finland). Risk of death in a car is in the order of 1 per 300 million km, risk of death on bike is ten times higher.

Most bike deaths are single-vehicle accidents (they do not involve another party).

Re: Brussels Rocked by Terrorist Attacks

#313

Post by ptaipale »

x1798DE wrote: post #237
acjohnson55 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I haven't heard is "we didn't see it coming". Quite the opposite. Everybody's been bracing for this ever since Paris. But I agree that this is a problem we can't bomb our way out of.

From 5 days ago, Travel Stack Exchange, "What areas to avoid in Brussels after the recent terrorism events": https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/65332/what-areas-...

Sadly, there were really no answers, just the usual meta discussion.

For any city, I could give the advice: avoid the airport, trains stations, the metro, and famous tourist attractions.

On the other hand, these are typically the places that you need and want to go if you visit a city, so it's anyway better just not care. The risk is very, very, very small.

Re: Brussels Rocked by Terrorist Attacks

#314

Post by ptaipale »

DavidHm wrote: post #222
pluma wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything's better than the status quo. The only difference between Assad and the other remaining dictators in the region is that the US was heavily invested in getting rid of Assad -- and then Russia came and basically ruined their plans indefinitely. If there's one Muslim country whose government is in dire need of being overthrown it's Turkey -- but sadly Erdogan has learned from his country's past and made sure th…

Around 2010 I was speaking with a Turkish friend. I expressed my admiration towards the fact that the Turkish military has multiple times intervened to stop the country from becoming religiously-governed. She (while not being religious) did not fully agree, as she thought democracy was more important. Fast forward a few years and she has completely turned around and regrets her former opinions. This doesn't really pr…

Indeed. We have disapproved the military coups in Turkey over the past decades, but now that there hasn't been one in recent times, we see a religious leadership do purges in the military, the judiciary, and the executive, and then the press, and there's going to be authoritarian rule.

Re: Brussels Rocked by Terrorist Attacks

#315

Post by ptaipale »

mtgx wrote: post #92
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?

Also - "how come nobody ever gets fired over such disasters?" It's like the spy agencies and law enforcement are always highly competent and can never do any wrong.

Generally, people (authorities, policemen, etc) don't get fired if they failed to prevent a disaster.

They get fired if they break rules, fail to obey standard operating procedure, do not fill tick marks correctly on a paper.

They work in a system, and the system has responsibility, not individual people who work for it -- unless they neglect or break rules and procedures.

Re: Brussels Rocked by Terrorist Attacks

#316

Post by ptaipale »

tomp wrote: post #46
josteink wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a mess larger than I can comprehend, with scores of innocent dead. What's most sad about it, is that the current situation is the result of doing nothing, despite having crystal clear data on the situation, and in which (wrong) direction things has been changing. It's been clear that something needs to be done for years, even decades, but actually doing something about the situation would mean publicly ackn…

> that the current situation is the result of doing nothing I think the current situation is the result of doing way too much the the past decade (or two). If the US and EU stayed out of the Middle East (Iraq, Libya, Syria), the EU+ME part of the world would be a much more peaceful place.

>If the US and EU stayed out of the Middle East (Iraq, Libya, Syria), the EU+ME part of the world would be a much more peaceful place.

I very much doubt that. Of course, there is no alternative reality where you could observe how things went when things were done differently, but there's no lack of violence in parts of the world where US and EU have not been doing things.

And of course you are neglecting that especially after WWII, Soviet Union did not exactly stay out of places, either. For instance, Afghanistan and Somalia, the two most notorious failed states in the world, were actually run under Soviet influence for a considerable time. Syria is still very much in the Russian sphere of influence. Etc.

Re: Brussels Rocked by Terrorist Attacks

#317

Post by JoeAltmaier »

ptaipale wrote: post #316
tomp wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that the current situation is the result of doing nothing I think the current situation is the result of doing way too much the the past decade (or two). If the US and EU stayed out of the Middle East (Iraq, Libya, Syria), the EU+ME part of the world would be a much more peaceful place.

> If the US and EU stayed out of the Middle East (Iraq, Libya, Syria), the EU+ME part of the world would be a much more peaceful place. I very much doubt that. Of course, there is no alternative reality where you could observe how things went when things were done differently, but there's no lack of violence in parts of the world where US and EU have not been doing things. And of course you are neglecting that especi…

Include in the doubts, that some of those places were doing really abhorrent things (gassing whole villages and burying them in enormous berms with bulldozers). To stick your head in the sand, because some mad bombers, is a moral issue all it itself.

Re: Brussels Rocked by Terrorist Attacks

#318

Post by ptaipale »

rorykoehler wrote: post #99
themartorana wrote: post #15

This is a mess larger than I can comprehend, with scores of innocent dead. The spectrum of political issues this crosses is vast. We're talking nationalism, immigration, religion, extremism, surveillance, privacy, and war to name a few. The nuance required to understand and attack the big picture is almost nowhere to be found. I saw the French PM said something like "we're at war" - I'm not sure who they're at war wi…

> And I don't know that those in charge are up to the task. They created the mess in the first place with regressive colonial era imperialist policies. Just take a look at this photo from Afghanistan [0] before the US decided to arm the Taliban in a proxy war against the Russians. [0] https://www.pinterest.com/pin/107734616059030266/

Well, just remember that the time of these pictures is also from before USSR started to meddle extensively in the country. Afghanistan was a kingdom until 1973, then after a coup a "republic" with closer ties to USSR, and was later declared an "Islamic republic" by Soviet ally Najibullah.

Re: Brussels Rocked by Terrorist Attacks

#319

Post by dang »

eis wrote: post #255

I wonder why this important event is getting not many upvotes and also ranks lower than other stories with less upvotes but older. Is it getting flagged for being off-topic?

> Is it getting flagged for being off-topic?

Yes, users have been heavily flagging all these posts.

Re: Brussels Rocked by Terrorist Attacks

#320

Post by dang »

vixen99 wrote: post #168
twoquestions wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You and many others seem to post that there is a mental cancer infecting 1.5 billion people on this planet, and at any time it could transform its host into a bloodthirsty murderer seemingly at random. I don't buy it.

You don't have to. It's working its infection through. Just read the holy text and go figure. Or is that hate speech?

> Just read the holy text and go figure. Or is that hate speech?

It's certainly religious flamewar, which has no place on Hacker News.

It's also intellectually puerile, as if there's such a thing as "just reading" any text and "going figure", let alone an ancient text with countless interpretive traditions.

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