Reports are still sketchy, but it looks like there have been major terrorist attacks in Brussels. Buzzfeed says that at least 13 people are dead in two explosions at the airport and a blast near a metro station.
Brussels cops nabbed Paris attack suspect Salah Abdeslam last week and were known to be searching for accomplices. Now the country is on lockdown. Scary stuff.
Bart
Horrible eye witness account from the airport: http://www.politico.eu/article/brussels-airport-explosions-live-blog/#liveblog-entry-667405 Beware: it is very shocking.
There is also a picture of the metro train circulating and it’s clear there must have been deaths there too.
Baud
Apparently, the airport bombs were at the American Airlines counter. Haven’t heard any reports yet about Americans killed.
PsiFighter37
Terrible. RIP to those who lost their lives.
Europeans have had a very generous policy when it comes to taking in refugees, but methinks that is going to change very quickly.
JPL
Sad news this morning.
SiubhanDuinne
I have friends who live in Brussels. This was very disturbing news to wake up to; much more disturbing, obviously, for them.
BillinGlendaleCA
@PsiFighter37: They were saying on MSNBC that most of the folk that do this kind of stuff are 2nd generation.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: I’ve heard that before. Kind of like it being the kids of self-made millionaires who are the real jerks.
PurpleGirl
@PsiFighter37:
@BillinGlendaleCA:
There are also large groups of foreign workers; not all of the foreign residents have been integrated into the native populations very well. That has set up conditions for 2nd generations to feel alienated from the countries they live in.
BillinGlendaleCA
@PurpleGirl: That’s pretty much the point they were making.
Bart
See also https://www.reddit.com/live/wmk50bsm9vt3 for a compilation of all news.
bystander
The speculators on teevee are speculating, why the change in focus from Paris to Brussels. I’m wondering if the capture of the Paris suspect in Mollenbeek didn’t precipitate an attack still in the planning. IOW, out of fear that he would spill the beans when interrogated, his co-conspirators had to step up a planned attack.
rikyrah
Morning,Everyone . Sad news from Europe ?
Keith G
Challenging times in Europe. So much of which have one thing in common.
When G W Bush dies, it will take amazing effort to protect his grave from all the people who will want to queue up and take a shit on it.
gene108
@Keith G:
If our media were honest about how bad he was, as President, people would be required to piss on his grave.
bystander
@gene108: …while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
Mai.naem.mobile
So I’m watching RWNJ Joe Kernen on CNBC and he says that the entitlement culture in Europe caused this. Any idea on what that means?
BillinGlendaleCA
@gene108: Richard Engel was saying that these guys were essentially schooling on this stuff in Iraq and Syria; thanks George.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
I blame this on lack of school prayer in europe and of course the gays.
Baud
@Mai.naem.mobile:
It’s a common right-wing trope. Usually, it takes the form of one or more of the following
(1) Entitlements increase unemployment, causing people to be idle and radicalized,
(2) people don’t build character because everything is handed to them, or
(3) entitlements replace churches and therefore morality.
Iowa Old Lady
@Mai.naem.mobile: It means Joe Kernen is an idiot.
JPL
@Mai.naem.mobile: If only those folks, had to work for a living to pay for food and health care, this wouldn’t have happened.
I streamed msnbc for one minute and I think it was Wallace who spoke about open borders.
Why is the media so clueless..
debbie
Just horrible. Every person who’s advocated for a military response to ISIS, and to any Muslim unrest, needs to be thrown out of office. And speaking of, with his usual good timing, Kasich promised AIPAC yesterday that he’d wage an air and ground war against ISIS in both Iraq and Syria.
OzarkHillbilly
Pikers. We do better than this before breakfast every day in America.
debbie
@Baud:
Or similarly, as Glenn Beck likes to opine, diversity and tolerance are destroying the country.
JPL
@debbie: Isn’t it the opposite? Trump’s language is dangerous and will only lead to more discontent.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Slight problem with #3 since most of these guys are religiously inspired. But Conservatism can never fail, it can only be failed.
Marc
@debbie: Explain please, because what you’re saying doesn’t seem to parse to me.
Basically, radicals are training in ISIS-controlled areas, returning to Europe, and massacring people at random. There is approximately no evidence that they’d stop doing this under any circumstances. And they’re also in the process of systematically killing and enslaving religious minorities – as well as instituting a complete reign of terror against women and gays.
Not to go all Godwin, but that combination sounds like the sort that absolutely demands a military response – and the genocide aspect of ISIS would by itself make a strong moral case as well.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Baud: that’s a perfect description of inherited wealth (idleness, lack of character, money replacing religion) and yet you never hear the RWNJs call for the elimination of inherited wealth
Baud
@debbie:
Like tolerance for Mormons, Glenn?
Mai.naem.mobile
@Baud: so why did the Oklahoma bombing occur in the US? And how come Somalia has terrorist attacks all the time? My head is hurting from overthinking this.
max
@debbie: Just horrible. Every person who’s advocated for a military response to ISIS
Does that include Obama?
max
[‘?’]
infovore
There were two explosions reported at Zaventem Airport. At least one of these is now believed to have been a suicide attack. Reported casualties are at least 11 dead and 81 injured, but at this point these numbers are provisional.
The other site is Maalbeek subway station, where the casualties are reported to be 15 dead and 25 injured. Again, treat these numbers as provisional.
There was what appears to have been a controlled explosion in the Wetstraat in Brussels.
The reported casualty numbers continue to fluctuate, and there are no official numbers yet. People are being asked to donate blood.
Public transport in Brussels has been shut down, and people have been advised to stay indoors. How they’re supposed to do both this and donate blood is not clear.
Rudaw, a Kurdish TV station, reports that IS has claimed responsibility for the attacks in Brussels. But it isn’t clear what they base this on.
Lots of talk of heightened security measures in the neighboring countries (France, Germany, Luxembourg, The Netherlands).
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Conservatives would respond, not the right religion, obviously.
max
Buzzfeed says that at least 13 people are dead in two explosions at the airport and a blast near a metro station.
The Belgian flag is black yellow and red.
max
[‘Tired of those assholes.’]
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@debbie: The crackpot is a Mormon. If it wasn’t for diversity and tolerance, he’d be in Mexico with Romney’s polygamist relatives.
Marc
Belgium has had a unique problem – in the form of almost complete governmental paralysis due to the perpetual feuding between the Flemish and Walloons. This has made it hard to do everything from provide social services to dealing with security.
Baud
@Mai.naem.mobile:
At least you know your bullshit detector is still working.
WereBear
@Mai.naem.mobile: They are not left to starve nor die in the streets for lack of medical care. This undermines their desire to become Captains of Industry.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Of course.
OzarkHillbilly
@BillinGlendaleCA: A mosque is the opposite of a church. Get with the program here.
Aimai
They bombed the place st michel and the paris metro in 1982 when i was there. There are slways going to be terrorist groups. Thry will always ostensibly have both long snd short range “reasons” for what they do. Israel and aipac are bad but surely it has not escaped anyones vision that the major displacements, massacres, multi year wars , refugee issues are muslim on muslim at this point.
debbie
@Marc:
What is it you think radicalized them in the first place? There’s no more powerful recruiting tool than a bomb in one’s neighborhood.
BillinGlendaleCA
OT(sort of): I read the transcript of Trump’s session with the WaPo editorial board, MY GAWD that man is stupid!
BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: I guess dating a Muslim in grad school skewed my perceptions, I’ll report to a re-education camp post haste.
debbie
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I heard he used a teleprompter!
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Marc: I don’t think a “conventional” military response (which is what people like Kasich who won’t be doing the fighting [are advocating]) would help.
We should remember that this is a tiny, tiny number of people doing these horrible things in Belgium [and elsewhere in Europe]. They do have support from more people there and in other parts of Europe, but only a tiny number of people actually carry out the attacks.
I don’t think one can kill mosquitoes with howitzers.
The way around this problem is with sensible laws, sensible enforcement, and in addressing the social problems in the country. Racism and fear of outsiders grows people who get angry, who get violent, and who feel that they can make a contribution to justice by lashing out.
We vacationed in Switzerland last summer and met a restaurant maitre de who saw we were American and asked which state we were from.
“Virginia”.
Oh! The Old Dominion!! You know, General Lee was a great man – one of my favorite men in history! Things really would have turned out better if he had won, right? …
“Er, no. I don’t think so.”
He was startled when we told him that Obama won Virginia twice. He couldn’t believe that we weren’t as racist as he was.
He was a young guy, maybe 25, from Antwerp, if I remember correctly…
:-(
I fear that Europe is going to over-react again and only strengthen the right wingers who want to do nothing but make the situation worse. I hope they’ll learn from our mistakes after 9/11.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
BillinGlendaleCA
@debbie: That was at AIPAC, this was his sit-down with the WaPo editorial board.
Marc
@debbie: I think that Gulf oil money funded radical religous training across the globe; Saudi islam is uncomfortably close to ISIS islam. The undefensible Iraq war destablized Iraq.
I don’t think that attacks on AQ in Afghanistan or attacks on ISIS have much of anything to do with the wave of terrorism in Europe. And they are unquestionably using their control of territory in the Middle East to train people to attack civilians (and, of course, Jews in particular) in Europe.
Punchy
So terrorists sproutin’ up in Brussels, eh? I’ll assume they’re Russian to arrest others before they Finnish the job. There’s Norway they continue this refugee program….they’re Syriaus about kicking these peeps out. Kenya blame them?
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@debbie: the best part, he was on CNN earlier complaining that Hillary used a teleprompter and then hours later he’s using the very same telepromter.
JPL
@BillinGlendaleCA: There is no other explanation. His discussion of nuclear weapons was quite telling.
He released this statement today
OzarkHillbilly
@BillinGlendaleCA: HERETIC!!! KILL THE HERETIC!!! I once dated a Lebanese Christian. I wonder if I’m safe or not.
debbie
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Ah, sorry. So much for my skimming skills.
debbie
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Right! Also, too, when Romney resorted to a teleprompter in 2012.
BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: I dated a Malay.
Marc
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: In the end, ISIS with military bases is a lot worse for the West than ISIS without them, and they are commiting active genocide and atrocities in their turf. I am a strong opponent of military force in almost all cases, but the word almost is relevant.
The primary issue is within Islam. There have been extremely illuminating public polls on attitudes in Islam, and unsurprisingly Muslims in the US are broadly tolerant. Radical views in the Middle East and Africa, however, have substantial support. Majorities favor executing people who renounce the faith, for example. ISIS is unpopular, but gets support up to 10-15 percent in some countries. This is not a group of a couple hundred fanatics.
The primary victims of this are Muslims, and the solution will have to come from there. But it’s honestly depressing to process exactly how reactionary mainstream opinion in Islam in a lot of the world actually is.
BillinGlendaleCA
Here’s a palate cleaner in light of the bad news: Nikki(my Cocker Spaniel)!
MrSnrub
We are planning a trip to Europe this summer, including Brussels for 2 days. Everyone around me is freaking out that I’m going there 4 months from now. We are going, and we are going to have a great time.
raven
@BillinGlendaleCA: Sugar got a haircut!
JPL
@BillinGlendaleCA: How sweet and thanks for sharing.
OzarkHillbilly
@BillinGlendaleCA: Aaaaaawwwwwww…..
gene108
@Marc:
Part of the problem is Middle East oil money is being used to turn otherwise more moderate strains of Islam, in Asia, into mirroring the more conservative ME version.
Matt McIrvin
Around the time of the Paris attacks, I remember a bunch of news stories about how Brussels was actually the center of extreme radical Islamist activity in the region. Much of the investigation centered on Brussels, if I recall correctly.
Patricia Kayden
Horrible news. RIP for any deceased and hoping for a quick recovery for any injured. Also looking for a speedy capture of the perpetrators of this crime.
PurpleGirl
@BillinGlendaleCA: Awww. She (am I right) is so cute.
Matt McIrvin
@Marc: ISIS has explicitly said their aim is to “eliminate the greyzone”, which means fostering enmity between Muslims and everyone else. Part of that effort is spreading apocalyptic radicalism directly, and part is carrying out terrorist attacks in the West to make non-Muslims hate and persecute Muslims, which is supposed to radicalize them in turn and eliminate any tolerant attitudes they might have.
And of course the idiots in this country who insist that all Muslims are secret terrorist moles who are lying to you because of the “taqiyya” passage in the Qu’ran are playing right into that.
JMG
Brussels has symbolic status as location of much of European Union government. It’s a big city in a small country with therefore limited security resources and a weak central government because the country is split by its own political-ethnic differences.
It’s a great target in other words.
OzarkHillbilly
@Matt McIrvin: You recall correctly.
Patricia Kayden
@Aimai: By now, terrorism has morphed into something beyond anger at the existence of the country of Israel and displacement of Palestinians. That’s why it appears impossible to combat.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Matt McIrvin: Yup. We’ve tried he “fight them over there so we don’t fight them over here” stuff for going on 15 years. It doesn’t seem to be working all that well.
I’d like to think that these 2-3 attacks in Brussels this morning is the dead-enders of the Paris cell acting before they were arrested. And maybe they were. But there will be more until we find a way to make lashing out like that less appealing.
:-(
People in government and law enforcement really should take Obama’s mantra “Don’t Do Stupid Shit” to heart when it comes to responding to mass murder and provocations like that.
Cheers,
Scott.
Betty Cracker
@BillinGlendaleCA: Dogs make everything better.
@Matt McIrvin:
Exactly right. It takes intelligence, clarity of vision and compassion to avoid falling into the trap they’re setting for us, which are three qualities in sadly short supply.
Ksmiami
@gene108: ding ding ding and they do this ESP in Saudi Arabia to deflect reform and criticism of their own government and institutions. The Saudis are not our allies
Keith G
@Marc: You are certainly on to something. Bad guys tend not to go away, thus it will take a martial effort, or better, a combination of efforts to (as Obama says) desroy ISIS.
The US military will have to play a role. How much of a role that will be will vary based of the abilities of other interested parties to “pull their weight”. The more the locals kick in, the better off we will be, but I can’t count on that.
I imagine that we will continue to dither for some longer time until conditions in Europe become troubling enough that a very serious, united effort (NATO-like) will be seen as necessary. By this I envision action that is stepped up from what is now occurring and like the Cold War is fought with overt military, diplomatic efforts, and covert stuff that we won’t think is nice.
ISIL, Diesh, ISIS, will not quit on it’s/their own. Arab states are too fucked up to deal with this as primary actors. The longer these groups are able to be seen as being successful, the more able they are to recruit both the muscle and, worse yet, the brains to continue to destabilize their neighborhood, Europe, and eventually points further away.
Chris
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
It’s fascinating that the Confederacy is so widely recognized by white racists everywhere as Our Kind Of People. Not only all the nitwits in the Northeast and Midwest with Confederate flag bumper stickers, but apparently even their equivalents in Europe, too. All the people who have no Southern “heritage” to celebrate.
In fact, the only other white supremacist regime I can think of with that kind of broad recognition is Nazi Germany.
WereBear
It doesn’t seem like much of an accomplishment for the actual bombers. Which is why I understand they recruit the suicidal and mentally ill for the task.
The leaders never seem to volunteer.
Technocrat
@Betty Cracker:
It also takes a certain distance from the tragedy. It’s difficult to advocate for long-term solutions while your kith and kin are being murdered around you. If 9/11 had happened overseas, I suspect our response would have been much more measured. If Paris had happened here, hoo-boy.
Baud
@Technocrat: Yep. Compare the media response to the terrorism in Paris and Brussels to Turkey to Iraq to anything in Africa.
Baud
@Chris: I blame The Dukes of Hazard.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: Yay!
Matt McIrvin
@Technocrat: Though, as it was, the US actually seemed more terrified by the Paris attacks than most European governments were. And it’s been remarked that within the US, hysterical reaction to the 9/11 attacks actually seemed to increase with greater distance from the attack sites. People in New York were just trying to survive, but in Podunk they were freaking out about al Qaeda infiltrating the shopping mall. The whole thing became more of a grand symbol for larger anxieties the further away you were.
Patricia Kayden
@Baud: I blame Obama. He’s always to blame.
I guess Republicans/Conservatives are already somewhere yammering on about how President Obama’s trip to Cuba is to blame for the bombings in Brussels. Sigh.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud:
Racism writ large and small.
Matt McIrvin
@Patricia Kayden: I’m going to be watching closely how this affects the US presidential race. Offhand you’d say any foreign terrorist attack helps Donald Trump and his xenophobic line, but on the other hand, Hillary Clinton scores very highly in general polls of who you’d trust to handle an international crisis, and Trump scores very low. It may just harden the existing evolution of the contest toward a Trump/Clinton showdown.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Remember that one of the earliest response to 9/11 was Falwell and Robertson blaming gays and abortion supporters.
Chris
@Marc:
It’s a lot like white supremacism historically has been in the U.S. There’ll always be radical movements that take it to such an extreme that they’re rejected by the rest of the population; but at the same time, slightly toned down versions of same are broadly accepted far beyond the radical movements.
Like how most of the U.S. banded together to save the Union and defeat the Confederacy, but once the war was over it turned out a lot of white Northerners had zero interest in helping the newly freed black people. Or how George Wallace only won, what, four or five states, but Nixon and Reagan’s heavily racialized law-and-order rhetoric gave them landslide victories. Or – as I’m reminded this morning flipping through my right-wing relatives’ already hysterical Facebook posts about Belgium and Muslims – like the non-trivial number of Republicans who attack Trump as a bigot but are rabidly prejudiced themselves.
Technocrat
@Matt McIrvin:
True enough. I remember going home from work the day of the attacks. We were plotting our route through downtown to avoid the largest skyscrapers. It wasn’t quite panic, but it wasn’t normal.
To be fair, I worked across the street from Pittsburgh Plate Glass, which is a 61-story building made of…plate glass.
FlipYrWhig
@Keith G:
This is what the UN is theoretically there for, right?
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
There was an Iraqi in one of my undergrad classes who’d lived through the 2003 war and its immediate aftermath. According to her – at least in her city – the way the AQI originally got a foothold involved going to Sunni neighborhoods that had been hit hard by the invasion, and offering money to people who were homeless or otherwise hurting to wander into the nearest Shi’a neighborhood and kill somebody. Lather, rinse, repeat until the backlash from the Shi’a. Then, with society properly polarized along ethnic lines, start the heavy recruiting among Sunnis.
I was surprised it was that blatant, but it definitely fits the MO we’ve seen since.
FlipYrWhig
@Matt McIrvin: The right calls Hillary Clinton a cold-blooded ice queen and the left calls her a bloodthirsty warmonger. I think she’ll hold up pretty well under the circumstances. The major candidate who’s not going to hold up very well in public opinion if the discussion swings to terrorism and public safety is Bernie Sanders.
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
It’s telling that we’re more terrified of this than we are of the NRA-enabled mass shootings that actually do happen nearly every day.
Keith G
@FlipYrWhig:
I have always thought that the UN is there to remind us of why the Articles of Confederation government was a failure.
Technocrat
@Chris:
Ain’t that the truth. But of course it’s easy to justify those shootings because Mah Freedumz!
I need a t-shirt that says ‘Explosive vests don’t kill people, people kill people!’.
Marc
@FlipYrWhig: It’d be nice if we could avoid that particular food fight here.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Those 2 blamed gays and abortion supporters for Hurricane Katrina.
FlipYrWhig
@Marc: Point taken.
Matt McIrvin
@Chris: Familiar dangers are less upsetting than unfamiliar ones, and dangers over which you have some possibly illusory sense of control are less upsetting than ones you clearly can’t control. That means that foreign terrorists are scarier than home-grown mass shooters, and home-grown mass shooters are in turn scarier than the everyday, penny-ante suicides and homicides that are the vast bulk of violent deaths. Which are in turn scarier than the illnesses that actually kill most of us.
Cermet
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: You should be blaming President Obama …for not carpet bombing Europe … .
p.a.
@Matt McIrvin: Most danger Americans face is when we’re in a car. But they’re familiar.
rikyrah
IT’S A FAMILY AFFAIR
Cuban women welcome Michelle Obama and first black first family
by Tim Rogers
……………………………………
But this week things got even more serious between them: It was time to meet the family. For many Cubans the fact that Obama brought his whole family to their island is a very important gesture that underscores the strong blood ties that have long existed between the two nations.
And the fact that the first family is African American seems to be an added source of pride and inspiration for many black Cubans.
“Since the days of Spanish rule, it’s been the white race that’s been in power and making decisions here. I’ve never seen someone my color in government,” says Daylí, a 24-year-old waitress in Havana.
Mrs. Obama, in particular, represents a woman of strong family values and individual empowerment. She plays the roles of wife, mom and role model—and Cubans seem to appreciate that solid multitasking performance.
“We are very happy that Obama and Michelle are visiting with their kids, who are lovely,” says Marilin Montez, who stopped to talk to me as she walked through downtown Havana with her daughter, Odesa Maria de los Santos. “The fact that the U.S. has a black first lady sets an example for the whole world.”
Dork
@p.a.: BAN CARS! BAN ROADS! BAN CARS WITH ROADS! CAR REGISTRIES! ROAD MAPS! BROWN CARS WANT TO KILL US!
danielx
@Mai.naem.mobile:
He clearly didn’t get the memo. First blame Obama, then blame entitlement culture (whatever that may be).
japa21
This has been alluded to a couple of times, but I want to expand on it and explain my thinking.
I mentioned to my wife this morning as I was getting ready for work and the TV was on, that these attacks in Brussels was getting a massive amount of attention. Not to minimize the attacks, but the casualty toll is not overly high. Almost that many kids were killed in Newtown. Yes, still too high, but compared to many attacks, not as high.
Of course, many of those other attacks are in the Middle East and Africa. Usually, when those happen, the news spends maybe one or two minutes at most. Today we see pictures of people, very white people, stunned, bleeding, etc. In the other attacks, we may see pictures of smoke billowing.
We see the attacks as attacks by Muslims against the West (in many people’s eyes that translates as Christian). We don’t see the Muslim on Muslim attacks, which reduces our ability to separate radical Islam from the common, every day, most Muslims practice Islam.
Perhaps, if as much time was spent covering a suicide bombing by UISIS in Baghdad which kills 90-100 people and saw Muslims bleeding as a result, we might be more tolerant of the victims and realize this is a small, but still dangerous, strain of radical, misappropriated Islam.
Cermet
@japa21: There you go again; using logic! Ray-gun’s ghost sigh’s …
Bobby Thomson
@Marc: other than the European terrorists saying that their attacks were motivated by military action in the Middle East, there’s no reason to think there’s any connection.
Amaranthine RBG
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: @Cermet:
We have to fight the terrorists over there so we don’t have to fight them here!!!
O. Felix Culpa
@rikyrah: Awesome. Love that family!
OzarkHillbilly
@japa21: Again, racism writ large and small, or if you like, “Muslim Lives Don’t Matter”.
Rob in CT
@japa21:
Some people would see things that way, yes. Others would take it as further (to them) proof that “those animals” and/or that religion are just irredeemably violent, justifying whatever idiotic bloodthirsty response on offer.
The reality is that there isn’t actually a ton we (Americans, Europeans… outsiders) can do. We can bomb. We can send diplomats and aid money. We can take in refugees. I favor some of these over others, certainly. But none of them are going to work all that well or quickly. This will fester, and the quick, flashy (and expensive and probably stupid) response is always attractive to people who are scared & angry.
Bobby Thomson
@gene108: in addition to its effect on global warming, one salutary effect of alternative energy is that it starves repressive regimes in places such as Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Texas.
WarMunchkin
@BillinGlendaleCA: It doesn’t matter. The attitude is to ban “them” and that includes refugees, regular legal immigrants, brown skin. Same shit, different continent.
But seriously, horrible news. Not even shocked by these anymore and that’s sad too.
oldgold
Every time something like this happens, I ask what in the hell is this about.
Why are we blowing them up? Why are they blowing us up? What is either side trying to accomplish?
Madness.
Technocrat
@Rob in CT:
I think it’s hard to overstate how the luxury of time plays into decisionmaking.
I remember when my toddler had some weird bronchial infection. She’d wake up in the middle of the night, falling out of her bed, gasping for breath. So we take her to the pediatrician, who tells us that while antibiotics would be effective, they don’t like to overprescribe. Let’s wait a couple of weeks and see how it plays out.
Of course my wife and I were like, “Oh, so she just gasps in terror for another two weeks? How about no”.
Our new pediatrician gave us a few milliliters of orange liquid, and the problem went away two days later. Ironically, it’s not that I disagreed intellectually with the first pedo. But it was my kid, and frankly I wonder if she would have been as sanguine about her own children.
I strongly believe that any “proper” course of action cannot be devoid of empathy for the victimized.
bemused
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Interesting that he seemed to assume that as Americans you would agree with him.
sherparick
@Mai.naem.mobile: It is always the liberal/socialist/Government’s fault default right wing meme. No Joe, what caused this is human nature has a rotten streak and with some men and women,some will find a way to vent that rotten streak in nihilistic violence, as they, to quote Alfred Pennyworth, “they want to watch the world burn.”
However, it wont stop the Joe Kernan’s of the world from pursuing their own sociopathic agenda with any club they find handy. ‘
Matt McIrvin
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: I know someone who thinks that the US is actually ahead of Europe in publicly dealing with racism because we’ve been forced by repeated crises to get it out in the open.
The fact that the Trump phenomenon has been so much more successful than its many European counterparts on the racist extreme right casts some doubt on that, to me; Europeans have pointed out that UKIP, PEGIDA, the Front National, etc. never got as big a slice of the electorate as Trump has. I suppose the comparison looks better if you analogize Trump to Berlusconi.
dedc79
The only “slice of the electorate” that Trump has gotten so far is a plurality of Republican primary/caucus voters in a subset of american states.
French, Austrian, Hungarian (and numerous other) right wing nationalist parties have won representation in actual parliamentarian elections.
Miss Bianca
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Thank you for the palate cleanser.
@Matt McIrvin:
I had a friend from the South who took me (and by proxy, other Northerners) to task on the racism issue, claiming that very same thing. While I was a little shaken by the argument, I was not stirred sufficiently to agree whole-heartedly. It just seems that no matter how much we lance this particular boil, it just never seems like it’s going to run clean.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Matt McIrvin: It’s complicated. It’s hard to imagine an African-German replacing “Mutti”, and it’s hard to imagine mobs at (American) football games screaming racial epithets at AA players. But Trump’s popularity is very concerning (I think he’s much scarier than Berlusconi ever was). What’s been going on in Hungary (and recently Turkey) is very concerning, too.
We can all do better…
Cheers,
Scott.
sherparick
@bystander: From reading reports since Paris and subsequent investigation that traced the cells to the Belgium and Brussels in particular, the Belgium authorities have been concerned about an attack locally since Paris. It is now very difficult for these guys to travel to Paris without being picked up.
By the way, although the terrorist attacks of the 1970s and early eighties were wide spread and frequent, but this was the age (mostly) before Cable News and the internet. http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/28/opinions/bergen-1970s-terrorism/ Also, the people who ran the world in 1970s and early 80s were veterans of WWII and cold war. They just did not get so worked up or feel as personally threaten as the current generation of elite opinion.
gene108
@Matt McIrvin:
We have an African-American President. We have two Hispanic governors. We have one Indian-American governor, and had another one, who ended his two terms in office.
We have had several African-American and Hispanic high ranking generals.
Yes there are racists and they aren’t content to putz around their little racist cliques anymore, but Europe does not have the level of diversity the USA has managed to achieve.
In short, the racists are not winning, at any strategic level that matters other than making noise.
Calouste
@Matt McIrvin: So that someone you know has never heard of the European crises of 1939-1945? Race played a part in that.
Calouste
@dedc79: American racist right-wing nationalists have had representation in Congress continuously since 1789. They’ve even held the presidency numerous times.
And if you only want to talk about the present day, it’s not like the members of the Congressional Freedom Caucus or the Republican Study Committee are measurably to the left of the various Freedom (sic) parties or their equivalents in Europe.
Calouste
@sherparick: Well, you didn’t hear about European terrorism in America in the 70s and 80s I guess, but in Europe ETA/IRA/RAF/Red Brigades/etc. etc were on the evening news almost every single day.
EthylEster
I read something over the weekend that mentioned that the Paris attacker arrested recently had something to say about a weapons cache. Then a police stmt along the lines of: attacks often happen right after the weapons are cached and so this info from suspect was disturbing. I wish I could find the article. The Guardian, maybe.
Matt McIrvin
@Calouste: And because of that, European countries are indeed much more vigilant than the US about cracking down on fascist movements specifically (I recall an Austrian telling me he was horrified that the First Amendment allowed American Nazis to be Nazis and wave swastika flags around out in the open). The question is whether it generalizes to other racist tendencies.
Anti-antisemitism was complicated by the fact that the Nazi genocide was so enormous that European Jews became a considerably smaller minority. Kind of like the situation of Native Americans in the US.
Matt McIrvin
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: We just had an incident in Massachusetts of some Catholic-school basketball fans chanting “you killed Christ” at their mostly Jewish opponents.
Rafer Janders
@Matt McIrvin:
I’ve never understood why the answer to that isn’t always (a) “no, it was the Italians” or (b) “thank you!” (after all, if the whole point of Christ was coming to Earth to die for our sins, then killing him is part of God’s plan, isn’t it?)
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Matt McIrvin: Yikes. :-(
Cheers,
Scott.
(Who remembers screaming “pumpernickel” at opponent teams from the audience at HS basketball games (the idea being to distract them), but who was 15 at the time.)
schrodinger's cat
@Matt McIrvin: What were the colonial empires of Europe about, other than racism based on exploitation? Also don’t forget the two World Wars.