Explosion at Brussels Airport (Update: also at Molenbeek metro station) 34 dead

[SUSAN CRUSHBONE]

here's a start

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

here's a start

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I'm not on board with the OMGZ BAN MUSLIMS NOW!!! crew, but let's be honest here, the claim that radical Christians kill more than radical Muslims is chickensh**t.

New York, 2001: 2,977 casualties.
Bali, 2002: 202 casualties.
Madrid, 2004: 192 casualties.
London, 2005: 56 casualties.
Paris, 2015 (both): 142 casualties.

[Omega21]

here's a start

Again I am asking you, why are 90% of the people on that list Muslims?


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI_Most_Wanted_Terrorists

Are you calling the American Security Agencies incompetent, or ar they just straight up racist and putting up random Muslims on their Most wanted?



[/quote]

here's a start

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I'm not on board with the OMGZ BAN MUSLIMS NOW!!! crew, but let's be honest here, the claim that radical Christians kill more than radical Muslims is chickensh**t.

New York, 2001: 2,977 casualties.
Bali, 2002: 202 casualties.
Madrid, 2004: 192 casualties.
London, 2005: 56 casualties.
Paris, 2015 (both): 142 casualties.

You forgot Brussels: 34 dead, happened 3 days ago.

[Green Line]

here's a start

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I'm not on board with the OMGZ BAN MUSLIMS NOW!!! crew, but let's be honest here, the claim that radical Christians kill more than radical Muslims is chickensh**t.

New York, 2001: 2,977 casualties.
Bali, 2002: 202 casualties.
Madrid, 2004: 192 casualties.
London, 2005: 56 casualties.
Paris, 2015 (both): 142 casualties.

And you're only counting major attacks in the West.  Include the whole world and the number is in the hundreds of thousands.

[SUSAN CRUSHBONE]

here's a start

Again I am asking you, why are 90% of the people on that list Muslims?


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI_Most_Wanted_Terrorists

Are you calling the American Security Agencies incompetent, or ar they just straight up racist and putting up random Muslims on their Most wanted?

you're drawing the wrong conclusion, sweetie. the distinction to make is that there are very few american terrorists on the list. (although the fbi beïng virulently racist is also nothing remotely new)

here's a start

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I'm not on board with the OMGZ BAN MUSLIMS NOW!!! crew, but let's be honest here, the claim that radical Christians kill more than radical Muslims is chickensh**t.

New York, 2001: 2,977 casualties.
Bali, 2002: 202 casualties.
Madrid, 2004: 192 casualties.
London, 2005: 56 casualties.
Paris, 2015 (both): 142 casualties.

that's merely a matter of the methods chosen.

[DavidB.]

here's a start

Again I am asking you, why are 90% of the people on that list Muslims?


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI_Most_Wanted_Terrorists

Are you calling the American Security Agencies incompetent, or ar they just straight up racist and putting up random Muslims on their Most wanted?

here's a start

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I'm not on board with the OMGZ BAN MUSLIMS NOW!!! crew, but let's be honest here, the claim that radical Christians kill more than radical Muslims is chickensh**t.

New York, 2001: 2,977 casualties.
Bali, 2002: 202 casualties.
Madrid, 2004: 192 casualties.
London, 2005: 56 casualties.
Paris, 2015 (both): 142 casualties.

People who don't see the obvious worldwide patterns by now are not going to see it, unfortunately.

[Helsinkian]

The "what about muh abortion bombers?!1" argument reminds me of another great argument: comparing the radical islamists to the Westboro Baptist Church. Yeah, WBC is a terrible group, but it has less than 100 members, whereas hundreds of millions of Muslims want sharia law.

here's a start

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I'm not on board with the OMGZ BAN MUSLIMS NOW!!! crew, but let's be honest here, the claim that radical Christians kill more than radical Muslims is chickensh**t.

New York, 2001: 2,977 casualties.
Bali, 2002: 202 casualties.
Madrid, 2004: 192 casualties.
London, 2005: 56 casualties.
Paris, 2015 (both): 142 casualties.

that's merely a matter of the methods chosen.

Yeah, the method being "let's see which terrorists have killed the most people". Sounds like a pretty good method to use when you want to find out which terrorists are the biggest threat to the world.

You don't see a lot of Christian radicalism on this list (but you see plenty of Jihadism): List of battles and other violent events by death toll: Terrorist attacks

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

A better comparison might be the anarchist movement of the late 19th and early 20th century IMO.

[dead0man]

It might be, but it's still nowhere close.  

I'm still curious about these "methods chosen" and how much spin it's going to take to explain it.  Should be fun.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

I don't really understand why people thinks that fact that Christians making less terrorist attacks is something good and its crucial argument that Christian (or rather post-Christian) world is "better" and MUSLIMS ARE TERRORISTS OMAHGAWD. It's not the problem of faith (although I wish for all Muslims that some day they will leave their heathen ways, just for their well being) its the problem caused by many complex factors like economic situation of many Muslim dominated countries, youth unemployment, political movements inside the Islam, etc. etc. We should pray for them, not hate them. Or at least somehow help to start better lives. Hating each other will not end the "conflict".
People who thinks that the only or crucial factor making people terrorists is Islam are just stupid.

And I am not trying to say not nice things to some posters - just be careful and do not let discussion to go into the wrong direction :I Be nice to each other.  

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

As much as - as a leftist - I'd like to boil the issue of terrorism down to poverty and inequality and class; it doesn't really work (much like people trying to boil the issue down to religion). The world is too complicated for such singular issues; and terrorists and jihadis draw their ranks from people of all income groups. The only constant is that terrorists are normally young men; further evidence for that old canard that societies fall on the backs of bored youth.

The reason I brought up anarchism is because the parallels are pretty obvious. Although the anarchist terror campaign was partially a media hysteria campaign, in its heyday there was a pretty terrifying death toll: five world leaders dead, a good few bombing campaigns (in NYC, in Barcelona, in Paris). Although for obvious reasons there was no 9/11 you could bet that if jet planes or skyscrapers had existed back then, well...

Like Islamism, anarchism is an idealogy I find distasteful. But the violent wedges of both ideologies are not really indicative of them (which I must emphasise, are disagreeable in other ways). Anarchist terror, like Islamist terror, used the shimmer of an intellectual cover for its crimes ('propaganda of the dead'), but its practitioners seemed ultimately more motivated by, well, the same motivations of the Columbine shooters:  attention seeking self-glorification, nihilistic latent resentment and plain adoloscent boredom.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Religious terrorism is difficult to disentangle from various other causes of course. Religion is used to shore up nationalistic movements (as in modern Burma, as in Hindutva, as in The Troubles to name some non-Islamic examples) and so in those cases nationalistic or ethnic conflicts pick up religious dimensions (see also: the Balkans). Religion is a useful complement because it gives people more of a reason to sacrifice their lives, but it's normally a useful tool of terror; rather than a motivator. Even when religion seems like the biggest issue, it's normally because of good old-fashioned cultism (which ranges from the LRA (of KONY 2012 fame) and the Japanese sarin bombers to Charles Manson's family - I.e. a a central manipulator(s) and a collection of psychological basket cases and hangers-on.

Now violent Islamism has attributes of both the cults (KONY etc) and the quasinationalism. Let's recollect what we know:

A) the Islamic revival is a relatively recent phenomona. Not that crazy stuff wasn't going on the Islamic world before, but it was usually associated with stuff like communism, or Arab nationalism. But these movements were basically discredited, and young radicals don't like to latch on something their parents support. That's lame, man.

B) the Islamic political revival seeing a gap, started to replace discredited secular movements in long stagnant conflicts - MILF replaced MILN, Hamas replaced Fatah etc (who remembers now that the Palestinian movement used to be most associated with Christian Arabs?). They also rushed into mosques (helped via healthy funding from factions of the Gulf, exerting soft power) where they swiftly became the only viable, non-discredited competition to creaky old regimes across the Muslim world.

C) these political Muslim organisations have enjoyed great success, but themselves have hit backlash due to the way they governed - I.e. although Erdoganism is distasteful, it seems to be boilerplate authoritarianism rather than a desire to create some sort of Islamist utopia. Same goes for MB, and  Ennahda etc.

D) the alternative to these mass member political movements for your young radical is terror. Terror is more cathartic an outlet than politics, so certain personality types gravitate towards that. Especially the McTerrorism of ISIS (which it should be stressed doesn't just emphasise Terror in its propaganda, otherwise the only people that would go are genuine psychotics) which has far more in common with Jimmy Jones and his Temple than anything else.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Crabcake's posts here are really excellent.

[DavidB.]

Crabcake's posts here are really excellent.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Crabcake's posts here are really excellent.

They really are, and I feel bad that there's no way I could possible contribute to the discussion except reiterating that.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

The police, security and intelligence services are really looking incompetent as hell, even for Belgium

[DavidB.]

On request of the French authorities, a French national was arrested in Rotterdam today on suspicion of terrorism. He is presumably connected to the Bataclan attackers. Apparently it was a large-scale operation: several people in the neighborhood had to be evacuated. According to French press agency AFP, the suspect is called Anis B.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The police, security and intelligence services are really looking incompetent as hell, even for Belgium

Back in the 90s Marc Dutroux briefly escaped custody by pushing over his guard and running away, so...

[RightBehind]

So who is the man in white if it's not Faycal Cheffou?