Government source [1] allegedly confirms it is a terrorist attack. Translation on Reddit [2]. 11 dead, 25 wounded. "Multiple witnesses confirm there were first shots fired, then some Arabic yelling and then 2 explosions"
> Reports also suggest that first there was a shot fired in the departure hall, then something was called out in Arabic, and only afterward, two explosions rocked the facility.
Sometimes the state of the current media is a bit saddening. One source says 11 dead, 25 wounded. Another source at the same time, the federal police nota bene, says 1 dead. Wouldn't it be better, in cases like these, if only things were reported which are actually confirmed by multiple sources?
Not that it matters much in the end, but still. I was at Zaventem just two days ago. Feels weird.
I take it as people relaying the information that they have, along with the degree of confidence of that information. The reporting of unconfirmed information eventually consolidates and a consensus is reached about the truth.
Some of the info also changes moment to moment. Maybe the number was 10 a while ago, but it's 17 now. Reporters don't want to wait a day until police have comprehensively examined the crime scene - they want to report their best guess as breaking news now, since people are curious and want to know what's going on.
The question is, how does unconfirmed information go to becoming confirmed? When several people report it. If I see an explosion first hand and post about it to Twitter, then that's unconfirmed, but people will share it to spread the word, at which point it will either be corroborated or people will call it out as a hoax. Somewhere along the line, a news organization investigates the sources and "calls it" as confirmed, but they're using their judgment in relying on sources they have access to, either from their own reporters on the ground, or from other news agencies, or from enough people reporting the same thing to take the accounts as trustworthy. There may be no "confirmed" death toll until days for now - until after the disposition of all injured victims is known, for example. (Some may day later in the hospital.)
Many different news organizations as well as bloggers and other people all posting their best guess as to what's going on. I have no first hand information about what's happening, so I'm personally trying to relay all the information I have by linking to it directly.
> One source says 11 dead, 25 wounded. Another source at the same time, the federal police nota bene, says 1 dead.
Maybe for media to report somebody as dead it is sufficient that this person is indeed dead, while for the police it takes some procedures as they are held to a higher standard?
Different agencies, different sources police doesn't release information which was unchecked while the media can get info from some paramedic during the chaos.
Mass casualty events can't be accurately covered initially because well literally something exploded, body counts tend to go up, with these kinds of events if they go down towards the end it's usually because of the nature of the incident where body parts were assigned to more bodies than they actually came from.
This isn't some investigative reporting there isn't an easy way to confirm it with multiple sources and technically the official death count will only be released after a doctor signed off the death certificates which in this case might take some time because bodies have to be pieced together and identified.
"Belgium's Het Laatste Nieuws reports that more bombs have been found.
The Belga news agency reports that shots were fired and shouts in Arabic were heard before the two explosions."
I'm also in Belgium and following the news. Only one mention of possible shots fired so far (a while ago). It does not seem likely at this time (eye-witness accounts in airport not mentioning shots fired)
As a Belgian, this news hit very hard. There's always reports of attacks in other countries, but it's a totally different feeling when it happens in your home country.
As a Belgian, this news hit very hard. Our (elected) government deployed military and police presence over the past month to ensure security. What a joke... Not that I didn't know it, but now it's certified : military in the streets is useless (and costly). They'd better help those who need it.
I've pointed out long ago that any concentration of people is a terrorist target and that any attempt at pretending that we are some how 'safe' is a total illusion. Extremely annoying because the amount of security theater is only going up.
I'm pretty sure you are wrong.
Properly armed forces patrolling might have stopped the attack from being another machinegun bloodbath like in Paris.
Sure,military can hardly help with bombs, but so far the attack had an order of magnitude smaller death count
The more people hate muslims, the more they feel like outcast.
The more muslims feel like outcasts, the easier it is to make them extremists and recruit them for their army.
You've not given a single reason why Trump would be the "greatest ISIS recruitment tool there could ever be." You just stated it as an infallible statement of truth. What exactly is there to debate? I summarily reject your assertion. Debate over.
Donald Trump has expressed considerable anti-Muslim sentiment, to the extent that he has expressed a desire to exclude all Muslims from the USA. Coupled with the point made by the post I replied to, I think there is terrifying potential for an extension in related terrorism.
Banning Muslims from entering the US is probably better from the alienation perspective than letting large numbers of them in, and then having to police them heavily to prevent attacks like the above
I disagree; discrimination doesn't lead to greater mutual respect. And since the percentage of respective offenders between Muslims versus non-muslim is a rounding error, singling them out as a group is also highly inefficient, to say the least.
I said nothing about mutual respect: I was merely comparing the pro-ISIS propaganda effects of "they won't let Muslims into country X", and "the Muslims in country X are under continuous police surveillance".
I've mostly just refrained from discussing politics since I was involved with it more as a youth, as I've just come to realize the pointlessness of it. Either you are both sane parties and conclude that you land slightly differently on values which lead you to different opinions/candidates, or one party is just too ignorant to provide for a reasonable discussion to begin with. This is what Trump and his followers are. I can't fathom why this is even remotely necessary to debate. It's not even hyperbole. Sure he exploits the misguided frustration of a certain size of populace, but that he's ACTUALLY the frontrunner for a basically two-party country of 300M people honestly disgusts me.
If you want to discuss Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz or any other politician I simply disagree with I guess I'd be up for that, but Trump has no policies or ideas or plans. He just says random shit that idiots want to hear, and when he goes too far he backs on it and says "he's researched the subject and changed his mind", and some poor monkey wrangler has to carefully word his positions on the latest crazy he's withdrawn from.
I know there is nothing tangible here, but that's because you can't argue with crazy. He has no positions.
They're trying to build a radical Muslim state, so they need radical Muslims to support them. Exploding bombs is the best way to get the non-Muslims to turn against all Muslims, who become more likely to radicalize as a result. Moderate people are useless to ISIS and their kind.
At least, that's how I understand ISIS explains it themselves in their promotional material, haven't actually read those myself.
And it seems to work. I'm from Belgium and I can even see a moderate average guy like myself turning against Islam. Frightening really, how easy it is to manipulate people into in-group out-group thinking. All we need now is a charismatic leader for history to repeat itself.
> Still can't get my head around it as to why or what they get with this.
ISIS and other violent Islamist groups don't hide their motives for deliberately massacring innocent people. Here[1] is a statement by ISIS after the November 2015 Paris attacks. It's about what you'd expect. They are certain that our culture corrupts the pious and leads people to Hell. From their point of view, there's no action worse than this. It's far worse than killing, as that just sends the pious to heaven.
There's also the "wedge" factor: These attacks sew mistrust between all Muslims and the rest of the society, hopefully (from ISIS's perspective) alienating many nonviolent Muslims and driving them to become more radical. But this is just a side benefit to these attacks. ISIS would be committing these atrocities even if they didn't contribute to anti-Muslim sentiment.
Note that both of these reasons are completely unrelated to avenging the west's actions in the middle east. ISIS would be doing this (and in fact is doing this) to civilians from countries which have never been involved in past oppression.
The key point you have to understand is that Jihadists really take their religion seriously. They're like the Branch Davidians or the Peoples Temple... if those cults had grown to millions of adherents.
Could you leave that kind of news out of Hacker News plz ? Counting deaths and bombs is not an efficient way of understanding and improving the world's situation.
We are having explosions targeting civilians in Turkey. They are occuring in two big cities Istanbul and Ankara. People are frightened to go outside nowadays. They are trying not to use public transport. And these news keep pressuring Turkish people to stay at home more and more. Our last explosion was at heart of Istanbul, Taksim at 19th March and 13th March, 17th February before that at Ankara.
Thank you for pointing out. Turkey has been a consistent target of frequent terrorist attacks from ISIS. However, such facts are somehow being "overlooked" in the Western media because of seemingly Orientalist attitudes.
Over 100 people had been killed in an explosion in their capital, Ankara, following a suicide bombing attack from ISIS. Nobody cared. Then afterwards another attack had happened in Paris, and the whole world broke loose.
It seems that so-called "universal" values of "humanity" is biased towards Western societies.
The same thing happening again and now. Turkey has been recently suffering from similar attacks frequently in Istanbul, and Ankara; and only following an attack in Brussel that HN responds with a protest changing the title color, etc.
Not to mention that authoritarian government of Turkey throttles or censors Twitter, Google, Youtube, etc. after each attack, and spreads misinformation through some mass media channels that they "own". I do not remember any discussion about these censorships in HN. Are such concerns not of value to HN community?
Is that because such bombings and authoritarian regimes are somehow perceived as "normal" in the "Eastern European" or "Middle Eastern" countries? I am confused.
I don't think nobody cares. The attacks in Turkey this week were the top headline in UK news sites. I think the reason the coverage doesn't last as long as something like Paris is that Turkey is in a much closer proximity to ISIS and attacks like these are much more common there. If anything happens often it loses it's ability to shock you even if you are saddened and disgusted by it. Take Syria for example. For the first few months of the war there was daily news coverage. Now? Nothing. It's not that people don't care, it's just that it's no longer shocking enough to get people to buy newspapers.
It's a bit awkward indeed. Even as French I felt it was improper to have so much contrast between media coverage and people response. I believe it's partly due to the fact that the middle east has been at war for so long it doesn't shock people much anymore, while for Paris it was some kind of a first.
That's exactly why it happens. The news outlets will report the unusual with a lot more energy than something that - very unfortunately - happens several times per year. Proximity to the news outlets main audience is another large factor.
There was a bit more than media dynamics at play. People somehow treated Paris like an old family aunt that shouldn't be touched. Nice but a bit out of place considering the silence treatment on countries of lesser glow.
That's because 'Paris' is something special on the world stage, Istanbul (for no good reasons, it's a beautiful city) less so.
I think a good comparison is with Mexico, drug cartels murdering people hardly makes the news, even if the numbers are comparable or exceed the attacks in Paris. People more or less expect that sort of thing from that particular region so it is not considered newsworthy to the same degree.
It's not only that Turkey is a much more frequent receiver of such acts mainly due to ongoing conflict with the Kurdish minority.
Bombings in Ireland were also not that heavily reported on in the West, yes world wide web didn't really exist back then but the main media usually reported it as a footnote unless it was really an extreme event.
When Israel was averaging one suicide bombing every 3 days in the late 90's and early 2000's it seems that in the west it only reached the headlines once the death count came to 30 or so or as far as the US media goes when ever Americans were either targeted or were otherwise casualties of the event.
hint : human nature. After millions of years of being trained to look over our short territories, we're now watching the whole world. And guess what, we still don't care about things more than 100km away.
Hopefully, we'll get better.
Moreover, you're definitively right. I just watch Belgian TV (official channel). And I can say that people (opposed to governments) of Syria, Libya, Palestine,... are 99.99% of the time represented as mourning their death, singing and jumping; or represented with ruins behind them; or with weapons, or as super poor (compared to our materialist standard down here). So it's very hard for us to build a correct representation of what it is to live in the "orient". The web can give more information, but many (I guess) people get their information from mass media.
So yes, it's super biased towards western (ex colonialist) societies... And that's a shame. I'd love to see what's good in Africa, Turkey, south america, china,...
> It seems that so-called "universal" values of "humanity" is biased towards Western societies.
No. It's just that western societies have more money and more media running on it so western events get amplified. That and...
> Is that because such bombings and authoritarian regimes are somehow perceived as "normal" in the "Eastern European" or "Middle Eastern" countries? I am confused.
Yes. For as long as I remember the middle-east, part of north Africa, has always been in the news mainly for some bombings against civilians or something like that. Iraq, Lebanon, the whole Iran-Iraq war, the Egyptian bombings from the 90's, the Gaza strip, etc. As a child, in western Europe, I grew up with always the same pictures on TV about the middle east.
Yes, these are just as important. The whole polarization effect of these attacks is what it is all about, the more that can be deflected the better. As you indicate explosions in Turkey are pretty much on the order of the day, proximity to Syria and direct involvement there as well as a very muddled political situation do not make it easier for interested outsiders to get a grip on what is going on there, but one thing is certain, Turkish civilians would very much like it to all just go away.
Turkey is rapidly becoming a focal point in this whole affair and the way the politicians deal with it seems to only add more fuel to the fire. It must be extremely frustrating to live in Turkey at the moment, the people I'm in contact with there are literally worried for their lives and the lives of their families.
I'm not seeing it either. I hope it's not being buried. It seems like it should be the sort of thing we have on the front page just so people in the area can be aware and stay safe. I don't understand why anyone would flag it.
Personally I have flagged it. Not that I am not concerned or worried, but they are plenty of "live threads" of event in many news site all over the world.
HN is not a good format for unfolding events, nor that there is something especially insightful to gain.
Unfortunately, it seems there is a major terrorist attack every month. (From last few weeks Ivory coast, Istanbul,..), I don't think there is anything to gain by turning HN into a news hub.
I wouldn't have known about it for many hours if not for HN. Really, you just couldn't wait to flag an attack on what is technically the capital of Europe because it was competing for space with 'Essential Copying and Pasting from Stackoverflow'?
I am fine with people disagreeing, and I can understand that it hits close to home, but this is a matter of principle, I don't think it is desirable that HN turns into a news source, particularly for unfolding events.
HN is often praised for having a good signal to noise ratio, this is something that should be "defended".
Says the person that has never even once submitted anything. As a matter of 'principle' I'd prefer it if you voiced your disagreement by submitting links that get voted to the homepage rather than by squelching the discussion by and dissemination of information to others that might be of use to them.
I'm unconvinced that HN should be your sole source of news. I think there are much better sources of breaking news, and it isn't clear to me that HN has any unique expertise to add.
(I didn't flag this - I don't feel strongly enough either way.)
It was flagged off the homepage. I find this extremely rude and an abuse of flags. I'm imagining that this is because this is 'Brussels', at the same time I wonder if multiple bombs going of at SFO or in Washington, DC would get flagged off the homepage in the same manner. Disgusted.
"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 143 ms ] threadEdit: some sources say more bombs were found...
From Sky News Live: "Train staff say explosion has occurred at metro station in Brussels near the European Union headquarters" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y60wDzZt8yg
From the pictures, it looks like terrorism. Accidental explosions in the check-in lobby of an airport seem unlikely. Photos: https://www.rt.com/news/336519-explosions-hit-brussels-airpo... or http://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20160322_02196237
Government source [1] allegedly confirms it is a terrorist attack. Translation on Reddit [2]. 11 dead, 25 wounded. "Multiple witnesses confirm there were first shots fired, then some Arabic yelling and then 2 explosions"
From RT: https://www.rt.com/news/336519-explosions-hit-brussels-airpo...
> Reports also suggest that first there was a shot fired in the departure hall, then something was called out in Arabic, and only afterward, two explosions rocked the facility.
[1] http://www.demorgen.be/binnenland/live-zeker-een-dode-bij-ex... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/4bgfx5/reports_o...
I take it as people relaying the information that they have, along with the degree of confidence of that information. The reporting of unconfirmed information eventually consolidates and a consensus is reached about the truth.
Some of the info also changes moment to moment. Maybe the number was 10 a while ago, but it's 17 now. Reporters don't want to wait a day until police have comprehensively examined the crime scene - they want to report their best guess as breaking news now, since people are curious and want to know what's going on.
The question is, how does unconfirmed information go to becoming confirmed? When several people report it. If I see an explosion first hand and post about it to Twitter, then that's unconfirmed, but people will share it to spread the word, at which point it will either be corroborated or people will call it out as a hoax. Somewhere along the line, a news organization investigates the sources and "calls it" as confirmed, but they're using their judgment in relying on sources they have access to, either from their own reporters on the ground, or from other news agencies, or from enough people reporting the same thing to take the accounts as trustworthy. There may be no "confirmed" death toll until days for now - until after the disposition of all injured victims is known, for example. (Some may day later in the hospital.)
Many different news organizations as well as bloggers and other people all posting their best guess as to what's going on. I have no first hand information about what's happening, so I'm personally trying to relay all the information I have by linking to it directly.
Maybe for media to report somebody as dead it is sufficient that this person is indeed dead, while for the police it takes some procedures as they are held to a higher standard?
Mass casualty events can't be accurately covered initially because well literally something exploded, body counts tend to go up, with these kinds of events if they go down towards the end it's usually because of the nature of the incident where body parts were assigned to more bodies than they actually came from.
This isn't some investigative reporting there isn't an easy way to confirm it with multiple sources and technically the official death count will only be released after a doctor signed off the death certificates which in this case might take some time because bodies have to be pieced together and identified.
UPDATE: Fire department is now reporting 10 dead in the metro. No additional details for the airport.
The Dutch (Flemish) news just confirmed. Currently 13 dead in Airport, 35 heavy wounded. In the metro, 0 dead. There are wounded but unclear how many.
Belgium is shutting down: No trains or metro in Brussels. Government asking people to stay where they are in the whole country.
Police is looking for suspicious packets. The prime minister is scheduled to give an update in 20 minutes (around 11:30 AM Brussels time)
That's not surprising when we know there were shootings last week "linked" to Paris attack. Euro 2016 (in France) starts in 80 days.
Still can't get my head around it as to why or what they get with this.
The more people hate muslims, the more they feel like outcast. The more muslims feel like outcasts, the easier it is to make them extremists and recruit them for their army.
Edit: downvote or debate, your choice. You can also do both.
If you want to discuss Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz or any other politician I simply disagree with I guess I'd be up for that, but Trump has no policies or ideas or plans. He just says random shit that idiots want to hear, and when he goes too far he backs on it and says "he's researched the subject and changed his mind", and some poor monkey wrangler has to carefully word his positions on the latest crazy he's withdrawn from.
I know there is nothing tangible here, but that's because you can't argue with crazy. He has no positions.
End of rant.
At least, that's how I understand ISIS explains it themselves in their promotional material, haven't actually read those myself.
ISIS and other violent Islamist groups don't hide their motives for deliberately massacring innocent people. Here[1] is a statement by ISIS after the November 2015 Paris attacks. It's about what you'd expect. They are certain that our culture corrupts the pious and leads people to Hell. From their point of view, there's no action worse than this. It's far worse than killing, as that just sends the pious to heaven.
There's also the "wedge" factor: These attacks sew mistrust between all Muslims and the rest of the society, hopefully (from ISIS's perspective) alienating many nonviolent Muslims and driving them to become more radical. But this is just a side benefit to these attacks. ISIS would be committing these atrocities even if they didn't contribute to anti-Muslim sentiment.
Note that both of these reasons are completely unrelated to avenging the west's actions in the middle east. ISIS would be doing this (and in fact is doing this) to civilians from countries which have never been involved in past oppression.
The key point you have to understand is that Jihadists really take their religion seriously. They're like the Branch Davidians or the Peoples Temple... if those cults had grown to millions of adherents.
1. https://ent.siteintelgroup.com/Statements/is-claims-paris-at...
Please post geopolitical analysis instead.
Over 100 people had been killed in an explosion in their capital, Ankara, following a suicide bombing attack from ISIS. Nobody cared. Then afterwards another attack had happened in Paris, and the whole world broke loose.
It seems that so-called "universal" values of "humanity" is biased towards Western societies.
The same thing happening again and now. Turkey has been recently suffering from similar attacks frequently in Istanbul, and Ankara; and only following an attack in Brussel that HN responds with a protest changing the title color, etc.
Not to mention that authoritarian government of Turkey throttles or censors Twitter, Google, Youtube, etc. after each attack, and spreads misinformation through some mass media channels that they "own". I do not remember any discussion about these censorships in HN. Are such concerns not of value to HN community?
Is that because such bombings and authoritarian regimes are somehow perceived as "normal" in the "Eastern European" or "Middle Eastern" countries? I am confused.
I think a good comparison is with Mexico, drug cartels murdering people hardly makes the news, even if the numbers are comparable or exceed the attacks in Paris. People more or less expect that sort of thing from that particular region so it is not considered newsworthy to the same degree.
Bombings in Ireland were also not that heavily reported on in the West, yes world wide web didn't really exist back then but the main media usually reported it as a footnote unless it was really an extreme event.
When Israel was averaging one suicide bombing every 3 days in the late 90's and early 2000's it seems that in the west it only reached the headlines once the death count came to 30 or so or as far as the US media goes when ever Americans were either targeted or were otherwise casualties of the event.
Hopefully, we'll get better.
Moreover, you're definitively right. I just watch Belgian TV (official channel). And I can say that people (opposed to governments) of Syria, Libya, Palestine,... are 99.99% of the time represented as mourning their death, singing and jumping; or represented with ruins behind them; or with weapons, or as super poor (compared to our materialist standard down here). So it's very hard for us to build a correct representation of what it is to live in the "orient". The web can give more information, but many (I guess) people get their information from mass media.
So yes, it's super biased towards western (ex colonialist) societies... And that's a shame. I'd love to see what's good in Africa, Turkey, south america, china,...
No. It's just that western societies have more money and more media running on it so western events get amplified. That and...
> Is that because such bombings and authoritarian regimes are somehow perceived as "normal" in the "Eastern European" or "Middle Eastern" countries? I am confused.
Yes. For as long as I remember the middle-east, part of north Africa, has always been in the news mainly for some bombings against civilians or something like that. Iraq, Lebanon, the whole Iran-Iraq war, the Egyptian bombings from the 90's, the Gaza strip, etc. As a child, in western Europe, I grew up with always the same pictures on TV about the middle east.
That's just my anecdotal opinion though.
Turkey is rapidly becoming a focal point in this whole affair and the way the politicians deal with it seems to only add more fuel to the fire. It must be extremely frustrating to live in Turkey at the moment, the people I'm in contact with there are literally worried for their lives and the lives of their families.
HN is not a good format for unfolding events, nor that there is something especially insightful to gain.
Unfortunately, it seems there is a major terrorist attack every month. (From last few weeks Ivory coast, Istanbul,..), I don't think there is anything to gain by turning HN into a news hub.
HN is often praised for having a good signal to noise ratio, this is something that should be "defended".
(I didn't flag this - I don't feel strongly enough either way.)
Judging from comments, I suspect many flaggers are folks operating on the
program. IOW, nothing to do with location."Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."