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Brussels Rocked by Terrorist Attacks

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Re: Brussels Rocked by Terrorist Attacks

#331

Post by Houshalter »

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…

Gwern's fantastic essay, Terrorism is not Effective: http://www.gwern.net/Terrorism%20is%20not%20Effective

>No terrorist group has achieved a kill rate anywhere near a conventional military; and are vastly less than those death tolls for guerrilla organizations or dictators. Stalin or Mao could, in a bad day, exceed the deaths caused by all international terrorism over the last 2 centuries. 9/11, the crowning incident of terrorism in those centuries, was equaled by just 29 days of car accidents in the USA - and 9/11 was only accidentally that successful! 9/11 is also a sterling example of the availability bias: besides it, how many attacks could the best informed Western citizen name? Perhaps a score, on a good day, if they have a good memory; inasmuch as the MIPT database records >19,000 just 1968-2004, it’s clear that terrifyingly exceptional terrorist attacks are just that. Remarkably, it seems that it is unusual for terrorist attacks to injure even a single person; the MIPT database puts the number of such attacks at 35% of all attacks. Certainly the post-9/11 record would seem to indicate it was a fluke... Many terrorist organizations keep very detailed financial records (consider the troves of data seized from Al-Qaeda-in-Iraq, from Bin Laden’s safehouse, or Al Qaeda’s insistence on receipts), with little trust of underlings, suggesting far less ideological devotion than commonly believed & serious principal-agent problems. Stories about terrorist incompetence are legion and the topic is now played for laughs (eg. the 2010 movie Four Lions), prompting columnists to tell us to ignore all the incompetence and continue to be afraid.

Re: Brussels Rocked by Terrorist Attacks

#332

Post by ascorbic »

ptaipale wrote: post #321
ascorbic wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Paris attackers were French and Belgian, not immigrants. This has been the case with almost all attacks in Europe, where the perpetrators have almost always been local.

> The Paris attackers were French and Belgian, not immigrants. Two of the nine were not - they were actual, recent immigrants through asylum-seeking process. "Ahmad al-Mohammad" who came as a refugee through Turkey to Leroa in Greece, and together with him were registered the fingerprints of another immigrant known as "M. al-Mahmodin". The rest were second-generation immigrants: Bilal Hadfi was French but he spent ti…

The fact that Hadfi probably returned with refugees doesn't mean much, when he could have easily jumped on the Easyjet from Istanbul and strolled through the blue channel. Yes, two more of them also probably came that way, one of whom was on a false passport. So yes, maybe they were Syrian refugees, but all that says is that they haven't been identified. The fact that the only one of them who travelled that way who was positively identified turned out to be French means this is by no means a foregone conclusion.

If it turns out that they were in fact refugees, that still doesn't make it a migration problem when most of the attackers were French or Belgian.

Re: Brussels Rocked by Terrorist Attacks

#333

Post by ascorbic »

ptaipale wrote: post #322
ascorbic wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original comment specified recent immigration. What gave you the impression I thought religion had nothing to do with this? Of course it does. I was talking about immigration though, and the fact they're both Muslim doesn't mean that these incidents have any connection to recent refugees from Syria, aside from the fact that the Syrians are running from these kind of people.

Actually, two of the nine Paris attackers were (probably) from Syria and had come as refugees, as they were registered with fingerprints in Greece. A few of the others were French and were known to be in Syria, but how they came back to EU is apparently not known (could be with help from people smugglers, avoiding any registration at borders, because some of them were on wanted lists).

So three of them probably came as refugees. One of those has been identified and it turns out he was actually French, but you still assume the two unidentified ones were "real" refugees, rather than other French terrorists who had fought with IS and were trying the same trick?

Re: Brussels Rocked by Terrorist Attacks

#334

Post by michaelmcmillan »

ascorbic wrote: post #25
michaelmcmillan wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to attribute a lot to politics. I would argue that religion is the variable that plays the dominant role in this war of ideas.

In these situations, religion is politics.

How does the actual belief in paradise have anything to do with politics?

Re: Brussels Rocked by Terrorist Attacks

#335

Post by creshal »

gerbilly wrote: post #161
microtonal wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. It seems to be the prevalent opinion among European counter-terrorism experts that the most effective policies are: - Bringing more eyes and ears in the form of social workers and community policemen in problematic neighborhoods. - Provide better education/work opportunities for immigrants. - Better cooperation between municipalities and Muslim organisations/mosques. - Deradicalization programs. Of course, im…

>problematic neighborhoods. That's part of the problem right there that people segregate into enclaves and have little contact with each other's communities.

Indeed, but we can't dissolve them overnight. Getting people the support needed to move out of their ghettos is a good step, though.

Re: Brussels Rocked by Terrorist Attacks

#336

Post by ptaipale »

ascorbic wrote: post #332
ptaipale wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Paris attackers were French and Belgian, not immigrants. Two of the nine were not - they were actual, recent immigrants through asylum-seeking process. "Ahmad al-Mohammad" who came as a refugee through Turkey to Leroa in Greece, and together with him were registered the fingerprints of another immigrant known as "M. al-Mahmodin". The rest were second-generation immigrants: Bilal Hadfi was French but he spent ti…

The fact that Hadfi probably returned with refugees doesn't mean much, when he could have easily jumped on the Easyjet from Istanbul and strolled through the blue channel. Yes, two more of them also probably came that way, one of whom was on a false passport. So yes, maybe they were Syrian refugees, but all that says is that they haven't been identified. The fact that the only one of them who travelled that way who w…

>The fact that Hadfi probably returned with refugees doesn't mean much, when he could have easily jumped on the Easyjet from Istanbul

If he'd jumped on Easyjet from Istanbul, he'd have had to provide a passport and visa and risk being arrested at border check in case the authorities were too interested in his involvement with extremists.

I don't get your point about blue channel; flights from Istanbul are not EU/Schengen internal.

Again, that's not something that totally prevents acts of terror, but would work as a bit of deterrent. I believe I should have a voice about this, because I live in the same Schengen area.

Re: Brussels Rocked by Terrorist Attacks

#338

Post by AnthonyMouse »

tmptmp wrote: post #329
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How exactly do you want them to justify. Your demand is too vague to be even considered. How do you propose, they should advertise every thwarted terrorist attack, without alerting the other terrorists? How about they stop doing it and if the level of terrorism remains in the "still kills fewer people than bathtubs" range, we realize we didn't need it. > All security is plain unproductive overhead, which is compuls…

>... if the level of terrorism remains in the "still kills fewer people than bathtubs" range, we realize we didn't need it. Comparing terrorism to bathtub is foolish at its best and outright dangerously misleading at its worst. Tomorrow you can say `if the level of terrorism remains in the "still kills fewer people than old age" range, we realize we didn't need it.` Statistics can be (mis)used to justify any claim. O…

> Statistics can be (mis)used to justify any claim.

Do you want to compare it to numbers instead of things? How about we not worry this much about it as long as the chance of the average person being killed by it is less than 0.1%. Or here's a good one: how about we limit the amount of money being spent on it in proportion to how many people it kills. Spend a trillion dollars fighting heart disease and a billion fighting terrorism instead of the other way around.

> One reason why people find terrorism more dangerous than heart disease, cancer, etc is this - bathtub and cars are NOT human beings and thus do NOT actively not tolerate difference of opinions amongst other groups of people and do NOT engage in acts of "killing other people for difference of opinions" while human terrorists do engage in such killings and do constantly search for opportunities to kill people with different opinions.

And what of it? A lion has a difference of opinion with you about whether you're its dinner. Do we need to spend a trillion dollars and have a war on lions? What about Streptococcus? It's alive, it adapts, it wants to kill you, another trillion dollars?

> Define "it".

Mass surveillance. And pretty much the entire TSA.

Re: Brussels Rocked by Terrorist Attacks

#339

Post by ptaipale »

ascorbic wrote: post #333
ptaipale wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, two of the nine Paris attackers were (probably) from Syria and had come as refugees, as they were registered with fingerprints in Greece. A few of the others were French and were known to be in Syria, but how they came back to EU is apparently not known (could be with help from people smugglers, avoiding any registration at borders, because some of them were on wanted lists).

So three of them probably came as refugees. One of those has been identified and it turns out he was actually French, but you still assume the two unidentified ones were "real" refugees, rather than other French terrorists who had fought with IS and were trying the same trick?

I can't really say whether they are "real" refugees or not. The point is more that border checks have ceased to exist.

Schengen area doesn't actually even try to verify who comes in, and that enables also movement of jihadists - even if they are only a few among thousands and thousands, but the few can avoid border controls.

Re: Brussels Rocked by Terrorist Attacks

#340

Post by tmptmp »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #338
tmptmp wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>... if the level of terrorism remains in the "still kills fewer people than bathtubs" range, we realize we didn't need it. Comparing terrorism to bathtub is foolish at its best and outright dangerously misleading at its worst. Tomorrow you can say `if the level of terrorism remains in the "still kills fewer people than old age" range, we realize we didn't need it.` Statistics can be (mis)used to justify any claim. O…

> Statistics can be (mis)used to justify any claim. Do you want to compare it to numbers instead of things? How about we not worry this much about it as long as the chance of the average person being killed by it is less than 0.1%. Or here's a good one: how about we limit the amount of money being spent on it in proportion to how many people it kills. Spend a trillion dollars fighting heart disease and a billion figh…

>And what of it? A lion has a difference of opinion with you about whether you're its dinner. Do we need to spend a trillion dollars and have a war on lions? What about Streptococcus? It's alive, it adapts, it wants to kill you, another trillion dollars?

The point about lion is good and that's why our ancestors had spent a huge amount of resources (money, time, hunters etc) to "eradicate" lions. Due to our ancestors' efforts and the consequential huge spendings towards this eradication, today we don't have to worry too much about the opinions of lions. Today the lions are rendered as what we proverbially call "toothless tigers/snakes".

A similar argument can be made about Streptococcus or (any such bacteria/virus or even any other such animal) and humans want to be in charge of things so much so that their opinions and thence their consequential actions do not become a significant danger/hazard to the humans.

Many fanatical animal lovers do hate this idea (of humans wanting to be in charge/control of other animals) too. But that is a different story.

Now with terrorists, the things become different in a very important manner. Lions and other animals are different species and thus their eradication problem doesn't first pose a very difficult "identification" problem. To deal with human terrorists, first we have to "identify" them and their sympathizers who can/do provide safe harbour to them and thus help the terrorists in their intended terrorist actions. This "identification" problem is what requires mass surveillance. This brings "cancer" to my mind, as in case of "cancer" also we face a very "identification" problem: problem of identification of dangerous cells.

Hope this helps.

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