The Guardian reports:
At least 19 people were killed and more than 50 injured after an explosion in the foyer area of a crowded Manchester concert hall, which left hundreds of people fleeing in terror. [...] Police said they were dealing with a possible terror incident and counter-terrorism officials were assessing what caused the explosion. Investigators from the police and the domestic security service MI5 were part of the investigation.
Greater Manchester Police statement:
I can confirm the details of events tonight that we currently know. At around 10.33pm last night we received reports of an explosion at the Manchester Arena in the city centre. It was at the conclusion of an Ariana Grande concert.
Currently we have 19 people confirmed to have died and around 50 people injured.
The injured are being treated at six hospitals across Greater Manchester. My thoughts are with all those who have been affected and we are doing all we can to support them.
[...] We are currently treating this as a terrorist incident until we know otherwise. We are working closely with the national counter-terrorism policing network and UK intelligence partners.
Unnamed sources, who have not been directly quoted are widely reported as suspecting this incident was a suicide bombing.
Multiple senior U.S. law enforcement officials briefed by British authorities told NBC News that forensic evidence at the scene — including a body found at the blast site — indicated a suicide attack. British and U.S. law enforcement officials said they believed they had tentatively identified the bomber.
U.S. officials said initial reports indicated that some of the casualties might have been caused by a stampede of concert-goers.
Sky News reports:
Officers carried out a controlled explosion at nearby Cathedral Gardens shortly after 1.30am, but have since confirmed the item they found was abandoned clothing and not suspicious.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by XivLacuna on Tuesday May 23 2017, @03:07AM (89 children)
Because that's all the English will do about this. Sad.
(Score: 3, Touché) by takyon on Tuesday May 23 2017, @03:10AM (3 children)
That's overly pessimistic. How about an Ariana Grande memorial concert?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday May 23 2017, @03:15AM (2 children)
How about an Ariana Grande latte?
Or: why the hell were people at an Ariana Grande concert????
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday May 23 2017, @03:19AM
I heard one guy showed up just to upstage Grande.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @03:26AM
I don't think I'll ever get over macho grande.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday May 23 2017, @03:12AM
Pound sags vs yen after Manchester blast, euro at six-month highs [reuters.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by coolgopher on Tuesday May 23 2017, @03:27AM (50 children)
And just what would you say should be done? Bomb the living daylights out of another corner of the middle east? Because that's sure to work - I mean, it's worked so well so far. Or perhaps round up all foreigners into work camps? Because that's another stellar idea right there.
Fighting violence with violence doesn't lead to more than more violence.
(Score: 2) by BK on Tuesday May 23 2017, @03:38AM (27 children)
Well sure. If you half-ass it. You can't shoot missiles at it and then look away again. If you want it to lead to something else, you have to be willing to win.
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @03:44AM (25 children)
Win what and for how long? Are we going to stay in the middle east for all eternity? If you completely destroy one terrorist group, another will form in its place. Even without terrorist groups, there will still be lone wolf terrorists. War is a non-solution for this problem, and perhaps even an anti-solution.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by coolgopher on Tuesday May 23 2017, @03:55AM (11 children)
In its extremes, you only have two options. One is that you glass the entire planet. The other, in the words of WOPR, states that "the only winning move, is not to play".
Anything in between pours fuel on one fire or another and doesn't solve anything.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @04:44AM (10 children)
We no longer need to glass the entire planet. We can mass-produce drones. We can build drones that fire autonomously, reducing the labor needed to operate them.
Your so-called "winning move" is not an option. You might not be interested in war, but war is interested in you. You can not avoid conflict. This is particularly true when faced with a cult that is determined to spread and exterminate. You can respond in kind, or you can die.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @05:15AM
You can not avoid conflict. This is particularly true when faced with a cult that is determined to spread and exterminate.
I don't much fancy pop music either, but come on.
(Score: 3, Disagree) by shortscreen on Tuesday May 23 2017, @06:55AM (6 children)
You can't completely avoid conflict, but you can mostly avoid it. One nation isn't going to conquer another just by hitting them with a suicide bomber once every other month. As infuriating as that would be, it's not necessary to escalate the situation to a war (and may after all be what the bombers had desired). If there is a coordinated brainwashing effort which is creating suicide bombers, it can be impeded by less drastic means (eg. cut off the funding), and the toxic ideology can be displaced by promoting an alternative ideology.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @07:24AM (1 child)
I think importing them should count. Letting them breed on our soil should count. Coordinated brainwashing occurs in universities, where liberals encourage ideas like bringing in refugees from hostile places.
We could eliminate student loans and grants for non-technical studies.
Yes, the alt-right is much less toxic. It beats BLM, Antifa, and so many other violent self-destructive ideologies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @07:53AM
It's not a good idea to have a complete blind spot on political and social issues. But there's a need to demand that people prove their thesis as permitted in a subjective field.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday May 23 2017, @11:22AM (3 children)
You know what? "Bomb" them with food - much cheaper than explosives, the logistic of "targeting" is simpler and it doesn't cost that much to transport overseas (as a ready-for-combat air carrier+support).
Even better: include many sugary items - obese people aren't that good combatants, and I reckon neither as suicide bombers.
Supplementary, it create more jobs than the defence industry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @11:53AM (1 child)
Don't you get it? If you don't convert to Islam it will be seen like just and a duty to kill you. Giving them food won't solve this. These people don't reason like us.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @12:12PM
(another brain-bleached)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @02:40PM
This is retarded. Surplus food causes increase in population. You would placate them (maybe) for now, next generation the problem is 3x worse.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Tuesday May 23 2017, @07:16AM (1 child)
This is particularly true when faced with a cult that is determined to spread and exterminate. You can respond in kind, or you can die.
Or join the cult. As a white male who speaks English and has no strong religious feelings either way I'm part of the 'cult' that's spent the last 500 years spreading. Trouble is when the other cults fight back.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @07:56AM
Islam has spent the last 1400 years spreading using extermination wars and enslavement. Even communists and Nazis would pale in historic context. What saved Europe and Christianity is technology and brains.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday May 23 2017, @10:06AM (8 children)
> Win what and for how long?
I completely agree with this sentiment, but I would use it to argue for exactly the opposite. What we should have done in Afghanistan, was build a nation. That takes decades - generations have to live in peace, a middle class has to flourish. Bush/Blair's childish, naive mistake was to expect that this would take anything less than 50 years. It was obvious even in the 90s that building a nation takes a long time.
> War is a non-solution for this problem, and perhaps even an anti-solution.
I sort of agree. War will never create peace, this is obvious. Wealth, however, will. Bringing wealth and education to the poor people in the Middle East can break the cycle of violence. Military can support this goal by providing a framework for economic growth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @11:00AM
Speaking of naive, what you're doing is looking at an alligator eating a chicken and talking about what the alligator should have done to help the chicken.
That's so far from what the alligator was trying to do. Go look at US Gov's track record. How many nations have they destroyed. How many have they built?
Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Syria, etc are all shittier places after USA's involvement.
Syria:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-syria-wikileaks-idUSTRE73H0E720110418 [reuters.com]
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/world/middleeast/cia-said-to-aid-in-steering-arms-to-syrian-rebels.html?pagewanted=all [nytimes.com]
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/05/newly-declassified-u-s-government-documents-the-west-supported-the-creation-of-isis.html [washingtonsblog.com]
Libya:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8407047/Libyan-rebel-commander-admits-his-fighters-have-al-Qaeda-links.html [telegraph.co.uk]
There's more if you bother looking. And many of these are mainstream sites not conspiracy nutjob sites.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @11:25AM (2 children)
The Marshall plan didn't take that long. Granted, there's a difference between Germany and Afghanistan.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday May 23 2017, @12:29PM (1 child)
People today forget that the Nazi die-hards continued a terror campaign of resistance [wikipedia.org] after the official surrender.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @12:29AM
Your link says the exact opposite.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday May 23 2017, @12:40PM (3 children)
The history of that region would indicate it would take much, much longer than that and would have to be a much, much more severe campaign of indoctrination and identity formation than democracies generally care to undertake. The Persian Empire controlled the area for a long time, but those people never came to think of themselves as Persians nor to have Persian values or behave as Persians do. The Romans took their turn later, and those people did not give up calling themselves Jews and Assyrians and become Romans and think of themselves as such. Still later the Ottomans took over, and the tribal identities of the people they conquered did not change.
You'd really have to have a very strong system yourselves that can outlast the millenia it would take to beat the tribal out of the Middle East and form them into something else.
But, why would you bother? It's far less trouble to dump fossil fuels, which is the only thing that region has that the rest of the world wants and is the only reason why anybody from anyplace else gets involved in that clusterf*k. We don't need their falafel, because we can make our own now (we have the technology!). We don't need their, I dunno, their gaudy gold jewelry or hijabs either.
The best thing to do is walk away from the whole catastrophe, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia...the whole lot. Then dump fossil fuels for renewables to deny them the income they need to project their hatred and violence elsewhere. Then, if they persist in sending suicide bombers and the like to other parts of the world, then we glass the whole fucking place and put a sign in the middle of the wasteland for posterity: "This is What Happens to Those Who Refuse to Play Well With Others."
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday May 23 2017, @01:09PM (1 child)
Israel would do very well without any petroleum product exports. Regardless, oil corporations in USA profit from the whole deal so they will run with it until they can't.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday May 23 2017, @01:21PM
If Israel can do perfectly fine without anybody else, they should. America can cease its support of that country categorically.
You are right about oil companies. Nevertheless dropping oil is the obvious solution to the problem of Middle East terror and Islamic extremism. I offer the evidence of the Janjaweed in Darfur. They're as nasty as any, but they have no oil that allows them to project their hatred elsewhere. They remain nasty, but are contained as far as the rest of the world is concerned.
So I raise the connection of oil to terror with each such attack. No oil means reducing global Islamic extremist terror to a local phenomenon. Then the people in those localities can decide if they're ever going to get sick of it and put an end to it, or put up with it the way they always seem to have done.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday May 23 2017, @01:52PM
> The history of that region would indicate it would take much, much longer than that and would have to be a much, much more severe campaign of indoctrination and identity formation than democracies generally care to undertake.
By the same argument, Europe (and US!) were fighting over "the tribal identities of the people" up until 20th century. It turns out that "country" is just a code word for "tribal identities of the people". The Italians have been trying to suppress the British for 2000 years! The Holy Roman Empire took over where the Romans failed! etc etc. I am trying to say that your interpretation is very superficial.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Tuesday May 23 2017, @10:06AM (2 children)
As long as there is religion, resources and human beings, there will be conflict.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @12:20PM (1 child)
And removing one of them stops the conflict..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @12:47PM
So let's remove all the human beings!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by BK on Tuesday May 23 2017, @02:01PM
What makes WWII different from WWI?
WWI ended with a political solution. The 'injustice' and general impracticality of that solution festered. 20 years later, everyone got to try again.
WWII was ended by the total defeat of various nations. The defeated had no capacity to resist the terms of the victors. The victors administered their countries, wrote constitutions, established institutions, and generally made all of the rules that mattered. This doesn't mean that Germany or Japan or their successors won't ever be involved in a war again, but that the issues that caused those wars were settled and remain so generations later.
The victors in WWII smashed and burned cities, impoverished nations, and fought until the other side surrendered. Berlin, Dresden, Hiroshima, and Tokyo were _Destroyed_.
"It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it." -- I'm sure you've heard the phrase before. To be clear, the defeat of the South in that war was assured, not by the surrender of Lee at Appomattox, but by Sherman's March to the Sea.
Since WWII, the western position is that we should make war less terrible. That we should focus on 'cutting off the head of the snake' and letting be the rest. Precision missile strikes. Drones. Etc. The analogy is flawed though. We fight continuously because the snake keeps growing a new head. Cutting off the head doesn't kill this type of snake. The lesson is that we need to burn the whole damn snake.
Now I'm not saying that the snake _should_ be burned, that war is _necessary_. At least, I'm not saying that here. What I am saying is that, if we aren't willing to win, to burn the snake until it's dead, we should leave it the fuck alone.
Bull. Better: War is a solution to this problem IFF we are willing to win, with all that would entail.
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday May 23 2017, @02:21PM
You gotta define what "win" means.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @06:53AM
Use criminal records especially concerning violence or drugs, combine with religion leanings or participation. Lock them up, no need to punish. Just to separate them from a society they obviously can't respect, ever. Fingerprint and eject from the country.
Close down all mosques without exception and especially don't accept any Imams financed by foreign countries. Those that can't or won't accept the secular state and be a net economic contributor better find another country better suited for them. Those mosques that partake in inviting persons that preach killing of infidels etc should be shut down immediately and people involved fingerprinted and ejected or lest they engage in indiscriminate violence. Same action can be taken with those that participate in Sharia patrols.
Not all Muslims are violent, but there's no reason to find out either.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Tuesday May 23 2017, @07:14AM (3 children)
I suspect the perpetrator will have come from somewhere like Oldham. And to be fair flattening Oldham isn't the worst idea I've heard.
(Fun fact - in the Amanda Tapping 'Sanctuary' series they went to 'Oldham'. Real Oldham does not look like that portrayed in Animus)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @07:58AM (2 children)
Oldham is a Muslim infested hive?
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Tuesday May 23 2017, @09:03AM
Sure, they Oldham down and force-feed them dogma...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @08:28PM
Oldham is a Muslim infested hive?
No, ham is Muslim Kryponite
(Score: 4, Interesting) by mojo chan on Tuesday May 23 2017, @07:37AM (2 children)
The standard reaction from the UK is:
- More surveillance
- Enhanced surveillance powers
- Division and xenophobia
- Electorate swings to the right
- Islamophobia
- New surveillance powers for the security services
This will definitely increase the Tory vote.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @11:53AM
Conspiracy theory says this attack was perpetrated or allowed to happen for just this reason.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @12:20PM
You forgot the 2nd and 3rd mention of increasing surveillance powers...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday May 23 2017, @01:26PM (5 children)
If you find yourself at the bottom of a multicultural pit and as an inevitable result the bodies of your children are starting to stack up, might want to stop digging as a first priority.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday May 23 2017, @08:24PM (4 children)
Where do you live that's mono-cultural? I wonder because multiculturalism is a hobby horse of yours. I am willing to bet that you eat pizza, chow mein, hamburgers, and hot dogs. You probably watch TV shows and movies that have non-white characters. The video games you play all do, unless you only play Stormfront-approved games. I'm also pretty darn sure that wherever you live, there are even real, live non-white people. I know there are in the town I grew up in, and it was in what the Stormfront folks call the "American Redoubt;" there were 30 years ago, and there are even more now.
How pure is your racial and cultural daily life, that you feel so threatened by the Other? Do you refuse to eat anything but Cornish pasties and Spotted Dick? Do you bristle when somebody offers you beer made by those degenerate Papists, the Irish? Do you mock Italians by asking them where their wrench and Donkey Kong are?
Because unless you do, then surprise! You're a multiculturalist.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @09:16PM (1 child)
There's a huge difference between consuming pizza, chow mein, hamburgers, hot dogs. TV-shows, movies, videogames, beer, wrenches and Donkey Kong. And wanting to have the people or culture that created or practice these things in your country or neighborhood.
Absorbing specific parts of a culture that you have chosen yourself volunteerly is completely different than having customs forced upon you or having them next door. Or even having large groups of people that don't subscribe to social minimum standards and continually goes to lectures that tech them that you shall be killed and the government overthrown. A significant part will also rob you and rape your women. And if you don't like those practices then.. you are against multiculturalism?
There's also a confusion on multiethnicity and multculturalism. A better predictor for success is multiideas.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday May 24 2017, @01:09PM
Its also worth pointing out that multicultualism is only used as a cudgel to bash in more people who cannot live in civilized society because they keep spontaneously exploding or knifing people or driving into people.
Its critically important to point out that the political justification for multiculturalism is solely the people who aren't allowed in legally anymore but can live in a civilized society. Whereas the actual result of modern political multiculturalism is solely and exclusively the importation of only the people who can't live in a civilized society and spend all their time raping, looting, and exploding.
If multiculturalism meant importing more Polish plumbers, yeah sure. The mean time between spontaneous explosion of Polish people is what, maybe a century or more? Wasn't one of the anarchists who blew up a bomb at the NYSE about 125 years ago a Pole? So we can set an observed floor for spontaneous explosion of Poles at a minimum of a century or so. I'm willing to tolerate that level of spontaneous explosion, which is likely an extreme over-estimate, in exchange for Polish food and their somewhat hot women and obviously the service of Polish plumbers. Poles are OK, and even the bad ones are still OK-ish.
Now there's another ethnic group, lets see if we can guess who, where the mean time between spontaneous explosions is about a month. Wonder who that might be. I got a plan! Lets import even more! Because we're not stacking up enough dead bodies!
I just find it fascinating that politically speaking multiculturalism means you can't import a plumber or a scientist from Europe but we must, absolutely must, increase our import of people we know are about to explode.
What good do we get out of all the death?
Its sort of a marginal cost thing. If drinking a gallon of water per day keeps you alive in the desert, I guess we need to drink ten gallons a day of paint stripper. What, you say people are dying from drinking paint stripper? WTF is wrong with you, all liquids are equal and you really seemed to enjoy drinking water, are you some kind of closet liquid-ist? We need to start drinking 20, 30, maybe 40 gallons a day of paint stripper. Children are dying in the streets? Well not all paint stripper kills children, we need 50 gallons a day of paint stripper! Look at the incredible rewards we're getting from this, theres ... um ... well ... social status signalling on twitter, yeah thats right.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 24 2017, @04:16AM (1 child)
It's worth noting that you don't need to be a racist, or even oppose immigration in any form, to be opposed to multiculturalism. You just need to hold the belief that people operating under disparate codes of conduct and with different social mores will often come to conflicts which, if allowed to grow unchecked, threaten to tear society apart.
Nothing says you can't forge a new national culture from disparate parts; multiculturalism is the ideology that you don't have to, but rather that various different cultures will coexist peacefully despite their myriad ideological disagreements.
There's a reason David Cameron came out against it a number of years back [newstatesman.com], and it's not that he's a secret Nazi.
There's an important middle ground to be found here, but both sides are too busy rattling sabres to actually get any productive work accomplished.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday May 24 2017, @01:17PM
The modern national socialist view of that is we really like the other cultures... over there. And visiting them ... over there... is a fun vacation. And its great to economically trade with them and all that.
Most of multiculturalism is just being anti-white anyway. Wake me up when some lefty wants to block bust and annihilate Chinatown because obviously Chinatown would be improved by busting it up and replacing Chinese culture with a fusion of other cultures. Multiculturalism is only used as a weapon against white people, never any others, ever. Its just dolled up academic and dry racism against white people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @02:21PM (2 children)
That's kinda silly, isn't it? Blow up a lot of sand, maybe hit a couple palm trees. Well, with "precision" bombing, we can probably hit the oasis pretty consistently. A lot of bother, with no real results.
Better idea: revoke whatever "rights" all those Muslims claim in the UK, and ship them out. Just ship them out, land them somewhere in or near their countries of origin, and forget them. It doesn't really matter if they get the right country or not, just ship them to where the sun shines bright all day on glittering sand. They're interchangeable, after all. Are you going to tell me that you can tell one brown sand nigger from another? That's like distinguishing between sand fleas.
Deport them, and be done with them. And, to hell with all the sniveling about "human rights". Yeah, maybe they are human. Maybe they have rights. But, they don't have any special right to invade other human's spaces. Deport them.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Tuesday May 23 2017, @04:34PM (1 child)
How will your policy address those that were born and raised in the UK? They form a significant proportion of those recently arrested for terrorism-related offences (as reported in the press). While you can choose to bar entry to (or deport) foreign nationals whose views and actions are not favoured by the national government, you can't do that with your native population. (There may be some leeway if they hold dual citizenship.) Indefinite detention [wikipedia.org] (incarceration) is a very expensive and politically sensitive choice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @06:13PM
According to this article "Former British citizens killed by drone strikes after passports revoked [thebureauinvestigates.com]". A UK law from 2002 allows for citizens with dual nationalities to have their UK one cancelled.
But there are other options, like removing any welfare benefits or simply make an act that allows revocation of nationality for certain acts of really bad disloyalty and vote on it. Violating the Human Rights Act and the European Convention on Human Rights has been done before, so it's obviously possible. But the reasons better be good, clearly communicated and have public support. Or things may become unhinged quickly.
When the push comes to shove and peoples lives are at stake or their loved ones. There probably will be leeway to remove foreign subjects forcefully. Reality has the ugly property to not bend to laws or wishes but realities. And that means people will have to act. It's simple unsustainable to have a significant portion of the population that want to overthrow the life for everyone else using violent coercion and which has no ancestrally link to the land or people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @04:53PM (1 child)
Kill every. single. one. of. them. It is the only practical solution.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Wednesday May 24 2017, @01:14AM
Take care not to kill yourself whilst doing so, else you will have sunk to the level of the suicide bombers. Can't have that!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @11:31PM
Stop importing the people who are responsible for 99.9% of suicide bombings?
Just MAYBE, that might possibly help?
(Score: 2) by gidds on Wednesday May 24 2017, @12:56PM (1 child)
Well said.
The terrorists want to make us afraid. They want us to fear them; and to fear each other; and to suffer as a result. If we do that, then they win.
So the best retaliation we can take is this: nothing. We can refuse to seek revenge, refuse to be afraid, refuse to change our way of life, refuse to be suspicious of each other.
Instead, we can do what many of the people of Manchester are already doing: come together, care for one another, look past ethnic &c differences, and choose love over hate. That's how some good may come out of this tragedy.
It's not an easy option, but it's likely to work out far better in the long term than the sort of festering hate and gung-ho adventurism that some seem to be advocating. After all, you can't bomb someone into liking you. You can't threaten them into trusting you. You can't oppress them into looking up to you. And you can't fight them into accepting you.
You'd think the USA would have learned that by now. Did all their reaction to 9/11 make things any better? No — it just sowed the seeds for the terrorism we're seeing now. I'm ashamed that the UK joined in with that; and Manchester is one of the many prices we've paid and may go on to pay.
Let's not repeat that mistake.
[sig redacted]
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Wednesday May 24 2017, @01:40PM
They've been trying [wikipedia.org] though...
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Tuesday May 23 2017, @03:32AM (6 children)
This attack shows the need for CCTV cameras everywhere, not just in public. Also: send soldiers to the Middle East--not just certain countries, but the whole thing--and no more of that "not engaging in combat" nonsense.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/yemen/11500518/UK-will-support-Saudi-led-assault-on-Yemeni-rebels-but-not-engaging-in-combat.html [telegraph.co.uk]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday May 23 2017, @03:37AM
The CCTV idea could work...... if the cameras are paired with Google Tensor Machine Learning TPUs ™.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @06:23AM (4 children)
That's bullshit. What's needed is to lockup all Muslims with a history of criminal activity and religious leanings. They are now by track record the obvious group that execute actions like this.
Let's not the government use this as an excuse to suppress free citizens.
(Score: 1) by butthurt on Tuesday May 23 2017, @08:44AM (3 children)
> What's needed is to lockup all Muslims with a history of criminal activity and religious leanings. [...] Let's not [let?] the government use this as an excuse to suppress free citizens.
Because Muslims aren't free, right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @12:26PM (2 children)
They can't be seen as real citizens. Their belief system and virtues are inherently incompatible with a flourishing society. At least with western standards.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Tuesday May 23 2017, @12:50PM
I think I understand now. Muslims aren't citizens because their values are incompatible with a decent society, hence lock up the Muslims to make society decent again. Thank you for explaining.
(Score: 2) by pe1rxq on Tuesday May 23 2017, @01:23PM
The same can be said about yours...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @03:41AM
Are you sure? Usually these kinds of events are used as excuses to expand democracy-destroying mass surveillance, something that both the US and the UK governments love. And then when the broader mass surveillance still doesn't completely stop terrorism, that will be used as yet another excuse to expand it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by isostatic on Tuesday May 23 2017, @04:19AM (20 children)
Been 21 years since the last time Manchester was blown up, by US funded Irish terrorists. 2 years later we had the good friday peace agreement.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Tuesday May 23 2017, @05:35AM (17 children)
Is it confirmed that the Irish are behind this latest attack?
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Tuesday May 23 2017, @05:47AM (13 children)
Not at all. But that's not the point being made by GP. (The people responsible for last bombing in Manchester engaged in a non-violent resolution process two years later.)
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Tuesday May 23 2017, @07:21AM (12 children)
Obviously the same thing won't happen here. If (and it's a big if - last time there was a nailbomb attack in the UK is was a neo-nazi) the perpetrator is a radicalised Muslim the only way to deal with it is to prevent that radicalisation, which means removing the cause of that radicalisation.
(Score: 3, Touché) by sce7mjm on Tuesday May 23 2017, @09:54AM (11 children)
The problem is "the cause" of the this is western democracy.
The extremists don't want anyone to be free if it is a definition of free different from there own. They use fear and violence to rule. The west (in their own countries) do this to a relatively lesser extent and guarantee certain rights, to (almost) all of their populations.
The western world threatens them because we are free to a much greater extent than there doctrine demands,
Not that we advertise it much in the east, since we seem to play into the propaganda machine of various extremists groups, in their own countries. But the real reason the war exists is POWER. Heaven forbid that common men, women, gays, infidels, gingers etc. should realize that they don't have to do what some idiot demands.
This is demonstrated by the targeting of the attacks in the west. Innocent people expressing their freedom at night clubs, concerts, football games etc. How terribly evil of them.
To remove "the cause" would be to remove the freedom the western population has. Either capitulate or tighten security so the nations become just like the oppressive regimes we are currently being attacked by.
Being free comes at a cost of allowing nasty bastards to also be free. That will never end.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @11:33AM (2 children)
Bullshit. In the '90-ies, the western democracy wasn’t quite the joke it is today, yet I didn't hear about any "radical Islam terrorism" at that time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @12:30PM
Because in the 1990s most practitioners of radical Islam terrorism were present in their own continent. And had few options to mess around with people in the west. Smartphones with internet didn't enable efficient organization either, because they didn't exist in any large numbers.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday May 23 2017, @06:41PM
Maybe you should inform yourself, then. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2, Disagree) by VLM on Tuesday May 23 2017, @01:27PM
Western progressives behave exactly the same way. In this situation its not an us vs them.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday May 23 2017, @01:32PM
Classic left wing vs right wing perspective problem.
The view from the left is they're standing on magic dirt so they're one of us and if there's any problem we must change.
The view from the right is if they're carrying out military operations against our civilians that is a hint that they might not see themselves as "us" or see themselves as part of western civilization, regardless of standing on magic dirt, so if there's any problem the troublemakers need to be kicked out, just like a bouncer at a bar would do if a fight breaks out.
No matter how many western civilization civilians we enable and encourage them to kill, they're not going to join our culture or share our values. Any more than military success in gunning down Taliban in Afghanistan would somehow magically convert western soldiers into joining the Taliban.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday May 23 2017, @05:57PM (5 children)
> The western world threatens them because we are free to a much greater extent than there doctrine demands,
Bullshit. Propagandist bullshit, at that.
The Western civilization keeps fucking up people's way of life, for its own profit (physical and/or moral).
Note that even china is guilty of this, by flooding markets worldwide with cheap stuff.
Add the remnants of colonialism, racism, and a nice big economic crisis, and you end up with a whole lot of people feeling useless and angry at the world in general, and specifically the West since their last reference point (the preacher) rightfully tells them that's the easy answer.
How do I exist? How am I someone important when every door is slammed in my face?
By frightening those who saw themselves as all powerful and made us nobody ... because fuck you all, even if I'm dead when I'm famous.
Many good western Christians could think the same way about the current rape of the economic system by a few shameless bastards, but their system has been optimized to make most of them believe they have something to lose.
It's was never about hating our freedoms. Forget that W-era bullshit.
(Score: 2) by sce7mjm on Wednesday May 24 2017, @09:41AM (4 children)
I have not said that the entirity of the problem is entirely down to the freedom of the west, but that is the cause of these attacks on these specific targets. Which was my point.
But the targetting is designed to simply kill 'pagans' as often claimed by ISIS themselves or designed to change Western government policy to reduce Western engagement in the East or designed to conduct easy murder of any westerner because the opportunity is available.
Or most likely a mixture of all three.
Their definition of PAGANS is those who do not follow their own rules. That includes an awful lot of people. Including other Muslims.
You may be right in terms of the overall effect and the large extent impact of the West on the environment that exists in the East,
But trying to justify killing innocents because of the detrimental effect of the west whilst at the same time ignoring the economic benefits of trading with the west, at the same time really is BULLSHIT. Thats all propaganda. But the bombs from both sides are real and the bodies are real. None of it is really justifiable.
'It's was never about hating our freedoms. Forget that W-era bullshit.'
In their claims about the targetting of the bataclan, that is what ISIS said. They may not have said 'hate' but that was the claimed reason it was targeted, "exhibiting prostitution and vice", I believe were the words used to discribe kids having a dance, so yes it was about having freedom.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday May 24 2017, @05:23PM (3 children)
That's why those guys have already leveled Bangkok and Macau, right?
(Score: 2) by sce7mjm on Wednesday May 24 2017, @06:03PM (2 children)
Muslims are tolerated but their practices restricted in those countries, are they not?
Logic would say that they should be attacking their oppressors. Your right it is odd. But that just backs up what I am saying.
Muslims are FREE to pray and do what they like in the UK .
You don't think the freedom aspect has any relevance?
You don't think hate preachers see the freedoms that are allowed in the UK and are concerned thier own followers and community will leave the religion not because of opression but because of freedom? When looked at like that could freedom be classed as temptation? You don't think they would want to prevent that by causing fear of the actions that freedom allows?
Do you really think if the west did not intervene at all (does that include not buying oil, where do you draw the line?) that the middle east would be peaceful? That oppression in the middle east would not exist?
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday May 24 2017, @06:15PM (1 child)
Are you asserting that preachers are sending people to blow themselves up, so they don't leave for the freedoms which they have been enjoying since they were born?
That logic contortion hurts my brain.
(Score: 2) by sce7mjm on Thursday May 25 2017, @03:42PM
Not quite. Thats probably why it hurts.
The preachers are sending people to blow themselves up so others don't leave the faith and remain loyal to the faith, but also to scare the pagans enough to either change behavior to be more like the religion, or get the west to not intervene in the east.
Same as gang culture.
Same as a cult.
Power by fear.
It makes about as much sense as the UK withdrawing all interaction with the east (aid, purchase of oil,as well as military support) to prevent the attacks.
Note the UK currently has less troops now in iraq or afghanistan so surely the terrorists plan of 'get the west out of the east by planting bombs' were getting what they want. This attack is likely to increase support of miltary in the east, completely the opposite to what they supposedly want. So it also makes no sense.
Trying to apply logic to the situation only works if the situation is black and white. The situation is not black and white so logic becomes fuzzy and the result's are often surprising, unless you look past the obvious (but not the complete) picture.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @06:25AM (2 children)
Irish people don't have a history of suicide bombing?
(Not attacking children explicitly either I think)
(Score: 1) by butthurt on Tuesday May 23 2017, @06:56AM
> Irish people don't have a history of suicide bombing?
AFAIK they don't (or didn't). Is it confirmed that this is a suicide bombing?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by isostatic on Tuesday May 23 2017, @07:10AM
(Not attacking children explicitly either I think)
Just targeting McDonalds the day before mothers day when kids were out shopping for presents. The fuckers, and their american paymasters, can die in a burning pit of fire
Fortunately for me, those most closely affected were able to swallow their anger and turn that energy into something positive.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Tuesday May 23 2017, @06:05AM
And this time it is most likely ISIS, also originally US funded. Unfortunately, ISIS is less likely to come to the negotiating table...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday May 23 2017, @12:43PM
Yet more proof that Irish culture and identity are incompatible with civilized society. Or, at least that's if you apply the logic some apply to Muslims. Yet they don't. Why is that?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 5, Touché) by andersjm on Tuesday May 23 2017, @06:09AM (3 children)
Yeah, if they're not careful, they'll repeat Norway's mistakes.
After Breivik, they failed to turn Norway into a police state, as, you know, you're supposed to after a terrorist attack. And now 6 years later, we see the consequences: Peace and prosperity. Nothing but peace and prosperity. Peace and prosperity has infested every layer of Norwegian society. Oh the humanity, will it ever stop?!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @07:01AM
Planes on 9/11: novelty method, and easily stopped with hostage policy changes and cockpit door reinforcement.
Guns and conventional bombs: difficult to stop even in gun control countries, but even with good planning it is hard to kill even a hundred people.
Dirty bomb: hard to create, causes more panic than death.
Nuclear bomb: hard to create, hard to steal, probably hard to deploy.
Chemical weapons: requires expertise and resources but not insurmountable. New technology may make it easier for a lone wolf to produce the chemicals. The Manchester Arena seats up to 21,000. Teenage girls have a low body mass.
Bio weapons: hard for an individual to create, but getting easier all the time. Potential to spread easily and silently to hundreds of thousands of people in a short amount of time. Millions could be affected, and the resulting response and panic could cripple economic and social activity.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday May 23 2017, @12:45PM
Well, Norway has the exceptionally effective measure of feeding lutefisk to any who won't behave. Far more compelling than war or torture.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @11:44PM
Nothing but peace and prosperity and record high crime rates, especially rapes! Hooray!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @03:42AM (5 children)
We won't have these base instincts after the Singularity.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by idiot_king on Tuesday May 23 2017, @04:46AM (4 children)
Most incoherence of your post aside, a lot of these modern terror attacks come from self-radicalized individuals performing acts of violence because they see it as furthering a cause that they primarily either interpret as vengeance for transgressions they cannot control or to make a statement about their radical views. Notably Dylan Roof and Adam Lanza come to mind with attacks like these.
Now the Trumpen SS will try, unsurprisingly, to somehow spin this as an "Islamic" terror attack. But those who have studied Islam know much, much better about the nature of violence in Islam and when, if at all, it is justified, especially in unprovoked scenarios.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @05:08AM
Of course, no true Muslim! It's just coincidence. ;-)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @06:29AM (1 child)
It's a Muslim command to kill anyone that is not a Muslim. Get with the news. Those that don't subscribe to that don't follow their Quran properly. And so they will always slide towards that.
"Religion of peace" is bullshit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 24 2017, @03:49AM
Many of them don't read it or understand it and there's a long tradition of leaving it to their "betters" to tell them what to do.
Of the minority that read it, many are in denial so if stuff looks bad or makes them too uncomfortable they'd go back to leaving it to their betters and stop reading. Or they'll start cherry picking.
The rest? What they read suits them and they embrace the evil bits in their religion. Some become leaders and then they tell the others what to do.
Many like to claim it's the same with other religions but that's not true. If more Christians really followed Jesus's supposed example and teachings there would be more Christians _dying_ to save others (especially adult non-Christians who'd supposedly end up in hell if they die). If more Buddhists really followed the examples of various Buddhas they'd all be sitting about teaching others about peace etc. Whereas if more Muslims really followed Muhammad's example and teachings there would be more Muslims warring against and subjugating non-Muslims. The issue is Muhammad is no longer around to be the definitive interpreter of Islam. And it doesn't take much to get different groups of Muslims with different interpretations to fight each other. They just have to call each other traitors to their religion and the popular punishment for that is death...
Take this guy for example: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/122176/Egypt/Politics-/AlAzhar-head-says-IS-murderers-deserve-to-be-kille.aspx [ahram.org.eg]
He's considered a top religious leader by very many Muslims. But from his words there really isn't a huge difference between him and the ISIS. They agree on the methods and "org culture" they just disagree on who is top and who gets killed.
Suppose he succeeds in getting his barbaric stuff done to the ISIS for their barbaric acts, then the ISIS can issue similar statements to get their barbaric stuff done to his team for their barbarism ;).
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday May 23 2017, @02:33PM
How many Ways are there in Islam? And, how many are accepting of the Way of Death? Everyone is required to perform jihad, aren't they? My Way may be different from your Way, but we are all supposed to be jihadists, right? https://edwardcline.blogspot.com/2016/05/a-complete-way-of-death.html [blogspot.com]
FYI, DAESH has taken ownership of this new terror act. http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/uk-world-news/manchester-arena-terror-attack-ariana-13076165 [coventrytelegraph.net]
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @06:12AM (23 children)
Something that invariably happens after the increasingly frequent attacks is religion comes into play. One side mocks the "religion of peace", the other side argues what the terrorists are doing actually goes against the nature of the Koran.
What neither side seems to really consider is that religion cannot be studied, or judged, in a vacuum. The Christian bible says lots of completely ridiculous things. For instance what's the penalty for disobeying your parents? Death. (D-e-u-t-e-r-o-n-o-m-y 21:18-21). Something in that word is hitting a post filter on Soylent, really annoying. Lots of the really insane things, such as that, are in the old testament though the new testament has its own share of insanity and in any case refuses to distance itself completely from the old (Matthew 5:18). The Koran is just a stack full of crazy particularly when you start considering tafsir, which are official explanations for the text's meaning. Ibn Kathir's tafsir (~1300AD) in particular endorses radicalism, and still extremely highly regarded.
But the point is that none of this really matters. Religions are defined not by these books, but by what their followers define to be the standard. Christians, for the most part, are not Christians so far as a strict interpretation of the bible is concerned. The religion has gone so far astray from the text that it's mostly just a weekend social club with story time for adults. And this is a very good thing. The people who wrote these religions texts lived hundreds of years ago in a world far different than today. So what one can do is survey the opinions of peoples towards their religion. Pew [pewforum.org] did exactly this for Muslims. I think anybody who truly wants to formulate an objective opinion on these matters (as well as possible solutions) ought first familiarize themselves with the actual data instead of just positing things one way or the other. Be that 'All Muslims are evil.' or 'Terrorists are just a tiny minority of extremists with no meaningful support.'
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @06:46AM (9 children)
That particular book of the bible is banned on Soylentnews due to the infamous "Marry young girls" trolling. A whole book of the bible!
Islam and Christianity won't end the world. What will end the world is increasing capability of the lone wolf individual to do harm. The attackers today can kill 19 people, maybe 77 or more with a little planning and legwork. In a couple of decades, it will be up to millions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @07:05AM (4 children)
Christianity had their age of enlightenment. Islam seems to lack theirs and until they had one they can't be allowed in a free and secular societies. And while Christianity didn't end the world. They sure made it miserably for hundreds of years and made sure that is their legacy.
Islam in the current incarnation will only be satisfied when you become a Muslim, no other condition will satisfy. Until then it is according to their belief alright to kill and maim you. The result is obvious for anyone that thinks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @07:30AM (1 child)
Pakistan, a country created in the name of Islam, has enough nuclear weapons to do some serious damage. They can make plenty more over time. The people there could elect an extremist government if they so chose. They have not.
Large amounts of the Muslim world are enlightened enough, or at least held back by the majority or minority (kings).
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @08:03AM
They are held back by the fact that India will bomb their country flat if they ever try. Pakistan is full of extremists anyway, no need for a government to be it. They are complicit anyway.
(Score: 3, Informative) by cafebabe on Tuesday May 23 2017, @09:17AM
That's an over-simplification. Radical Islam is only satisfied if you're converted, taxed or killed [theatlantic.com].
1702845791×2
(Score: 3, Informative) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday May 23 2017, @08:55PM
Historical background:
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/why-the-arabic-world-turned-away-from-science [thenewatlantis.com]
An excerpt:
But the Islamic turn away from scholarship actually preceded the civilization’s geopolitical decline — it can be traced back to the rise of the anti-philosophical Ash’arism school among Sunni Muslims, who comprise the vast majority of the Muslim world.
***
A more recent take on the situation:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/19/stop-calling-for-a-muslim-enlightenment [theguardian.com]
Excerpt:
The reform of the Muslim world began in earnest at the turn of the 19th century, when Europe penetrated the Middle East with all the brusqueness you would expect from a rapidly developing civilisation whose constituent parts were in a race for colonies, wealth and glory. The cultural heartlands of Islam, by contrast, were lame, lachrymose, and chronically resistant to novelty. Cairo’s school of Al-Azhar – the acknowledged citadel of Islamic learning – suspected science, despised philosophy and hadn’t produced an original thought in years. The paradigmatic idea was that society under the prophet Muhammad had attained a perfection from which later generations were condemned to live at an exponentially increasing remove.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @07:13AM
I guess it depends on what you mean by "young", but I'd marry them. As soon as the pelvis has grown enough that a birth 9 months later would not be abnormally dangerous, she should get married.
I'll guess that this applies to 1% at age 12, 30% at age 14, 70% at age 16, 85% at age 18, 90% at age 20... and that is it. An unfortunate 10% just never grow a safe pelvis.
Being ready at age 10 would be really rare, maybe 1-in-10000, and age 8 is probably 1-in-1000000. Yeman allows age 7, WTF. That is probably a 1-in-a-billion chance of being safe.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @12:33PM (2 children)
> maybe 77 or more with a little planning and legwork.
Are you suggesting that there is a shortage of virgins available for recently deceased jihadists? Perhaps that explains the attack on this specific concert?
Inquiring minds want to know if Allah has requested this kind of help from the living, and how the request came to be known. Seems like Allah should be able to handle this one without our earthly help.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @04:34PM (1 child)
Anders Behring Breivik kill count = 77
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @06:17PM
Are you suggesting that Muslims are incapable of efficient operations?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @06:47AM (12 children)
Yeah ok, so the solution is to have more religion? How about we grownups say goodbye to all that. Tax sheltered, child abusing, ignorance promoting leaches on society the lot of them. And there's some bad ones too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @07:15AM (11 children)
Religion is just an excuse to kill. There's no actual god, remember? If you take religion out of the equation, people will just find other reasons to kill.
One could argue that Islam is special and that more followers are encouraged to kill while hikikomori atheists are not motivated to kill. But that isn't the problem. The problem is the increasing lethality of attacks. Bio weapons and other technologies will make it so that a literal handful of crazies can eliminate large amounts of population. It is easy to find an intersection of pissed, talented, and resourceful individuals within the global population. Which is about to reach 8 and 9 billion. The resources and knowledge needed to commit a bio attack will decline.
"Tax sheltered, child abusing, ignorance promoting leaches on society the lot of them."
Who are the majority in the US. Good luck curing them or scrubbing government clean of their influence.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by isostatic on Tuesday May 23 2017, @07:31AM (10 children)
The problem is the increasing lethality of attacks
This is what really worries me. It used to be that an individual could kill someone else. Explosives and guns could expand this by an order of magnitude, or even two if well organised. To kill a lot of people you had to organise in large groups, which were headed by governments, and were identifiable. This expanded throughout the millions killed in WW1, and then even more in WW2. In 1945 a small group could kill 10^7 people, but these groups were identifiable and controlled by their population and other groups. Nuclear weapons increased At that point we amalgamated into two equal powers both capable of killing 10^9, but those groups were identifiable and thus controllable.
However if you get unidentifiable groups or individuals capable of killing more than 10^2 you get. Lockerbie was a 10^2 event, 9/11 was a 10^3 event. Bio-weapons have the potential of 10^4 or even 10^5, all instigated by a group or even an individual. That's a concern - there's no checks and balances. Even Kim Jong Un has checks and balances (he wants to stay in power, he has generals who will overthrow him). Terry Terror in his bedroom in Cardiff has no such checks and balances, and once you don't care about dying the final check of self preservation goes away.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @07:55AM (5 children)
A constructed bacteria or virus designed to spread quickly and then kill could do more like 10^6 or 10^7, if not more. An airborne version of AIDS with much less killing potential could become a huge problem and kill off countries that are unable to afford or distribute treatments.
You may have heard claims that the elites or some elites plan to kill off billions of poor people. If they did want to do that, they could engineer an airborne AIDS or similar virus, making sure it becomes as common as the cold or HPV, and then consolidate power as things go to shit. There is no need for a cure. As long as living with the disease is manageable, it can be cured decades later after the damage has already been done. A lone wolf can be used as the scapegoat.
Whether Terry Terror can do something like this all by himself is an open question. Terry Terror, PhD has a better chance. Anthrax spores in envelopes won't cut it. He needs to have a few infected individuals coughing away on street corners, at subway stations, and airports. It would be best to spread it from multiple cities at once to maximize spread before travel bans and quarantines can take effect.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @08:24AM
There is already activity in this direction going on. In 2009 WHO changed the definition for pandemic. So that the protocol can be activated without heightened mortality. This makes it possible to force countries to vaccinate their population. In February 2009 Baxter Pharmaceutical, Austrian subsidiary shipped a batch of unattenuated bird flu of 2005 together with ordinary seasonal flu to sixteen laboratories in Czech Republic, Slovenia, Germany. That is the optimal way to make the viruses mix and create a cocktail that will be deadly and contagious at the same time. But a Czech lab technician at the Company Bio Test, tested the batch on ferrets just to be sure it was safe before being delivered for vaccination. The next day the lab animals were all dead and a emergency alert was sent out to stop the batch.
If it had went through, a gigantic epidemic might have been set of. So some people say they will just refuse to get the vaccine then. Sure, but states like Massachusetts, US can charge you 1000$ per day for that. Regardless the government can in most cases impose itself on any citizen by various means. And in emergencies law makers are eager to get things done with speed and thus skip checks and sign away liabilities.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday May 23 2017, @12:52PM (3 children)
A billionaire with a plan like that would be profoundly stupid to even attempt it. The breakdown in order from a plague scenario is much more dangerous than the plague itself. How would he protect himself when his private army instantly deserts to take care of their own families? Who protects him from the thugs in the private army after the government is gone and they decide they should be in charge instead? They'll take his daughters and trophy wife and double tap him in the head. If he was enough of a dick to them in the BeforeTime they might do it in that order, too, instead of the other way around.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday May 23 2017, @01:51PM
Oh please. You release it on a battlefield or a border and get two groups to coordinate a he-said she-said. Convince the Islamic world its crazy Christians trying to promote the end times, convince the Christians its an Islamic biowarfare terror attack..
None of the strategies or policies or political tools are new, all that's new is the individual weapon and its lethality which doesn't affect the management of the overall project.
Whats infinitely more likely is something like the smallpox blanket scenario where China wants Africa's resources and the Africans are so unable to get their stuff together that they're kinda in the way. Also not kidding about smallpox. Everyone not in Africa gets vaccinated against smallpox its no big deal, whoops no one in Africa gets vaccine there's just not enough effective doses, what little order exists in Africa breaks down, the (vaccinated) Chinese army jumps in to "maintain order" which boils down to make sure the locals get no food, water, police coverage, or vaccinations, then China gets all the African resources. That's much more likely sci-fi movie plot than some James Bond world wide stuff. It'll be easy to spin the propaganda too, whoops a daisy those things happen ya know.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @04:58PM
It only takes one. The amount of billionaires in the world is climbing. They don't need to have a cure if it's AIDS. AIDS can currently be managed, not cured. If the disease can be cured, can every North/South American, African, European, Asian, and Australian afford the cure? For everything else, you just get a self-destructive billionaire who doesn't care about family or their own life. Private army? Try bot army. Or a bunker or Vault.
Profoundly stupid? Is supporting terrorism smart or dumb? Osama bin Laden was a pampered multimillionaire. He could have lived decades longer and in luxury if he had not taken up his cause.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 24 2017, @03:55AM
1) You eventually wouldn't need the resources of a billionaire: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/exclusive-controversial-us-scientist-creates-deadly-new-flu-strain-for-pandemic-research-9577088.html [independent.co.uk]
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jun/11/crazy-dangerous-creation-deadly-airborne-flu-virus [theguardian.com]
2) There are stupid/crazy/evil billionaires.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday May 23 2017, @08:16AM
My thoughts too. The big problem is that as the cost and complexity goes down the threshold for some deadly event to occur will be lower and lower and thus happen with increased probability and frequency.
Now adding a larger population and environmental stress will just push up the likelihood of bad things taking place.
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Tuesday May 23 2017, @09:12AM (2 children)
I've discussed this with an ex-housemate and we have absolutely no solution for keeping murders in check. In the base case, a reasonable person with self-preservation can be kept in check through consequences such as natural justice. However, there is no suitable justice for a multiple murderer because incremental costs rapidly become meaningless. Killing the first person is hard. Killing the two millionth person is easy.
1702845791×2
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @12:34PM (1 child)
Lockup and eject persons with violent belief systems.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday May 23 2017, @12:57PM
It is possible to exterminate beliefs, but you have to be willing to exterminate. The British exterminated the Thuggees. The Spanish exterminated the Aztecs. The Russians exterminated the Chechens; they pretty much leveled Grozny to do it. You have to be so ruthless that you raise the certainty of the extinction of them, their families, and their entire way of life to 100%. Then, you offer them a more palatable alternative of cooperation on your terms.
Not many these days have the stomach for that.
Washington DC delenda est.