Explosions at Zaventem Airport (Brussels airport)/Brussels metro

[DGuller]

yep

I wonder if this is moving slowly but surely towards the right wing camp, though. I know my views shifted recently, I think Berkut's did too somewhat.

well, it depends. Collective guilt or punishment will always remain the far right's own thing, but the rest is up for grabs by sane people if they are willing to. Like what's being discussed in the Paris thread about extra security screening on Syrians. Or admitting that integration of Islamic culture into the main European one has failed in such a way that it makes EU citizens commit suicide attacks on what should be their home soil. That's what should be looked at by moderate forces and a rational debate to see if this has been a correctable mistake or what we are seeing is simply an unavoidable byproduct of trying to have two very different views on social and cultural matters coexist in the same society. I honestly don't know which.

But if the mainstream continues to pretend the above questions are not valid, then the far-right's rise to power in most of the EU is pretty much guaranteed.

I agree with that.  I think the rise of people like Trump in US, and far-right parties in EU, is directly caused by the muffling of free speech via political correctness.  When the respectable people say what everyone knows deep inside is total bullshit, the people not filtering themselves start sounding more reasonable.

[Martinus]

Yeah. The right wing "solutions" to this are nasty - but they are the only solutions on the table - everybody else is not proposing anything except for saying that any religious, cultural or ethnic profiling is "kind of racist".

[Martinus]

If only the people in 2) limited themselves to "saying it must stop", you might have a point.

Yeah. Pretty much everyone across the political spectrum is saying it must stop. Firebombing refugee shelters and organizing nazi street patrols is not quite the same thing, though.

What are the solutions the non-right-wing parties propose?

[Solmyr]

If only the people in 2) limited themselves to "saying it must stop", you might have a point.

Yeah. Pretty much everyone across the political spectrum is saying it must stop. Firebombing refugee shelters and organizing nazi street patrols is not quite the same thing, though.

What are the solutions the non-right-wing parties propose?

Solutions to what, exactly? It would help if you defined this. For example, most right-wingers conflate immigration and terror attacks, and their proposed "solutions" are the same for both, as if they are one and the same. This is bullshit, of course, so I assume you as an intelligent person aren't conflating the two. Which one are you looking to solve, then?

[viper37]

More from the religion of peace?

they have as much to do with Islam as Charles Manson with America.

[Tamas]

More from the religion of peace?

they have as much to do with Islam as Charles Manson with America.

Yep, we ARE going to have the same 50 pages thread.

[derspiess]

More from the religion of peace?

they have as much to do with Islam as Charles Manson with America.

Yep.  "ISIL is not Islamic."

[Crazy_Ivan80]

More from the religion of peace?

they have as much to do with Islam as Charles Manson with America.

Yep.  "ISIL is not Islamic."

neither was their socalled prophet by that yardstick

[alfred russel]

Apparently a coworker was in the Brussels airport when the bomb went off. Someone woke me up this morning by calling to tell me he was fine. Didn't want me to worry. I wouldn't have worried because I didn't know he was even out of the country.

[lustindarkness]

[The Larch]

I have a few friends in Brussels, so I just found out about this Facebook "your friend isn't dead" notification system. Not sure whether is helpful or creepy.

I think it's useful, even if we don't know anyone in the places affected by these events you never know who might be around visiting. When the Nepal earthquake hit it turned out that a friend of mine was vacationing in the area. For people who have lots of friends there it's also quite useful, I guess. A girl I know said this morning that she had had 146 friends reported safe already but was still missing some.

[Berkut]

yep

I wonder if this is moving slowly but surely towards the right wing camp, though. I know my views shifted recently, I think Berkut's did too somewhat.

No, these things don't really shift my views at all, to be honest.

I know they are coming - there will be more attacks. The only unknown is who and when and how.

So when they happen, I like to think that my personal views on policy have already accounted for their inevitability.

What concerns me more is that the masses views seem very susceptible to these kinds of actions, which of course is entirely the point of these attacks to begin with - and we keep making the same mistake as a society that we seem to make decisions about what we should do about systemic problems in the aftermath of these kinds of things, rather than before they happen, even though we *know* that they are in fact going to happen.

[Berkut]

yep

I wonder if this is moving slowly but surely towards the right wing camp, though. I know my views shifted recently, I think Berkut's did too somewhat.

well, it depends. Collective guilt or punishment will always remain the far right's own thing, but the rest is up for grabs by sane people if they are willing to. Like what's being discussed in the Paris thread about extra security screening on Syrians. Or admitting that integration of Islamic culture into the main European one has failed in such a way that it makes EU citizens commit suicide attacks on what should be their home soil. That's what should be looked at by moderate forces and a rational debate to see if this has been a correctable mistake or what we are seeing is simply an unavoidable byproduct of trying to have two very different views on social and cultural matters coexist in the same society. I honestly don't know which.

But if the mainstream continues to pretend the above questions are not valid, then the far-right's rise to power in most of the EU is pretty much guaranteed.

I agree with that.  I think the rise of people like Trump in US, and far-right parties in EU, is directly caused by the muffling of free speech via political correctness.  When the respectable people say what everyone knows deep inside is total bullshit, the people not filtering themselves start sounding more reasonable.

Yep, I have to agree with both Tamas and DG.

The demand to not "seem kind of racist" is letting the actual racists more voice that they do not deserve.

[Berkut]

More from the religion of peace?

they have as much to do with Islam as Charles Manson with America.

This the left wing "solution".

Pretend the problem does not exist, because to acknowledge it might "seem kind of racist".

If Manson killed those people because he thought that the ideals of America demanded that he do so, and there were hundreds of attacks like that from other people who thought that American ideals *demanded* that they murder pregnant women, it would be incredibly foolish to demand that everyone ignore those ideals and pretend like the people executing those attacks don't actually believe in the things they say they believe in, and in fact insist motivate their actions.

It would, in fact, be stupid to then claim that Manson's group actions had nothing to do with America.

Especially if you then show that some significant portion of Americans say things like "Yeah, Manson is right, and we support those attacks" or "Manson and his kind really shouldn't do that, but you can hardly blame them..." or "I don't support Manson, because he sometimes kills the wrong pregnant people, but killing pregnant people is fine in other cases and in fact demanded by America".

[Malthus]

What are the solutions the non-right-wing parties propose?

Not sure what left-wing parties in Europe propose.

Here in Canada, the left wing solution is to engage Muslims, including Muslim immigrants, as basically "us", so that the "us" versus "them" dynamic is "everyone in our country, including Muslims and Muslim immigrants" is versus "terrorists, including Muslim terrorists".

Rather than "everyone in the country except Muslims and Muslim immigrants" versus "Muslims, Muslim immigrants, and terrorists (mostly if not exclusively Muslim)".

Part of that strategy is to avoid expressly "targeting" Muslims, as much as reasonably conforms to essential security imperatives. Not because to do so would be "racist", but rather, as part of a deliberate strategy of inclusion. The idea is that if Muslims feel they are part of society, the radicals are less likely to be able to recruit, less likely to get a sympathetic hearing, less likely to be sheltered by the surrounding community, and more likely to be turned in by other Muslims - as indeed some have been, like the two bozos planning train derailments in the Toronto/NY rail line.