Thursday Beirut suicide bombings kill 43 | Hacker News Reader

Thursday Beirut suicide bombings kill 43

cnn.com

61 pointspersonjerry20 comments

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31 October - The Russian plane brought down likely by a bomb in Sinai, Egypt

9 November - 6 people killed in a mass shooting in Amman, Jordan.

12 November - +40 people killed in two suicide bombing attacks in Beirut, Lebanon

13 November - +20 killed in suicide bombings in Baghdad, Iraq

13 November - +120 people killed in a multiple attacks in Paris, France

We're having a very busy calendar this month for violence and terrorist attacks.

On a more serious note, it's very worrying if all these ops were committed by ISIS or any off-shoot organizations and even more worrying if there was any type of central command or coordination between those seemingly unrelated attacks. We'll be in deep shit.

EDIT: Added the Iraq line item and the epiphany

and hundreds more every month in Middle East. What can we do to stop ISIS from brainwashing these people?

Injecting a chip inside a human being and terminate the rogue one when one goes bad? But that power can be abused and nobody wants a chip implanted inside their own body. What can we do!?

Stop funding "moderate" rebels. I read a few years ago that the US has trained 10.000 rebels in Jordan and sent them into Syria.

Who exactly are these rebels and who are they fighting for right now? Does anybody even know?

According to http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/1... there are already trainees betrayed the U.S. and are probably on ISIS side. On the front of Afg and Iraq wars, there have been cases in which U.S. trained Afg and Iraqi soldiers stood by the insurgents.

And Saddam Hussein was funded by U.S. to rebel against Iran in the 60s, 70s.

1. Stop screwing with other countries. No false wars, no state engineering, no exporting democracy.

2. Stop protecting the terrorist regime in Saudi Arabia.

3. Stop trying to control the world. There's no hegemony without blowback.

4. Stop being a safe haven for laundered money from the third world (looking at you City of London). Let that money be invested in third world infrastructure.

5. Stop toppling secular dictators. Saddam, Gaddafi, Assad, Bhutto, Mossadegh... spot the pattern here. This needs to stop.

Start with these 5, then we'll move on. You are making the mistake of thinking that the US gives a shit about terror, btw. Read about how foreign policy makers (people like Kissinger, Brzezinski, Stowcroft) think. They don't give a shit about blowback, they want to maintain hegemony. Terror is just a useful tool to keep public opinion in check.

For more on point 1, see Bitter Lake by Adam Curtis http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02gyz6b (if you are in the UK, if you are outside there are likely other ways to see - http://m.imdb.com/title/tt4393514/ )

The only way to stop an ideology is to supplant it with another, better one. I am very sorry that Turkey and the EU did not get very far with the baby steps to accession talks that they took last decade. I believe both parties, the Middle East, and its neighbors would have greatly benefitted from the cultural bridge that would have created, and the PR boost to moderate Islam vis-a-vis Wahabism. It also would have been a great engine of economic growth to both sides, which is actually rather central to the question of terrorism.

As it now stands, we must create a true diplomatic partnership with Iran, and the million-dollar question, figure out what to do about Bashar Al-Assad. Above all, we must avoid the mistakes that plagued the invasion of Iraq.

I will also be waiting with very keen ears to hear the reactions and policy positions of the U.S. presidential candidates, particularly the former Secretary of State.

I am also very interested to see if, during the upcoming climate change talks, any attention will be paid at all by anyone to the link that has been made between a worsening climate and sparks in the Arab Spring.

Finally, the draconian surveillance bill passed by the French this year did not help to prevent these attacks. So it's certainly time to re-evaluate the pros and very large cons of these dragnets.[1] We have yet more evidence that they do not work. __ [1] http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/24/9030851/france-surveillanc...

Don't forget when al-Shabab killed 147 college students in April in Kenya. They were allied with al-Qaeda but were being courted by ISIS.

That Russian plane carried 224 human beings - in many cases these were entire families spanning three generations. There were more than 25 children killed. Thanks for objectifying the tragedy. It's only a plane, after all, right?

I guess nobody gives a damn about bombings in Lebanon because it's basically "our guys" (crazy terrorists) bombing the Iranian proxy.

Or think about the reporting a few days ago when the Russian airliner was shot down.

All kinds of accusations where made against the Russian government and against Putin in specific. (it's their own fault, they are hiding the truth and so on)

Charlie Hebdo even created some nice caricatures making fun of the Russian victims.

I bet Charlie Hebdo wont make fun about the victims in Paris.

> I guess nobody gives a damn about bombings in Libanon because it's basically "our guys" (crazy terrorists) bombing the Iranian proxy

ISIS has claimed responsibility for the Lebanon bombings and the target was Hezbollah. Which of those two is supposed to be "our guys"?

Michael Flynn, former director of the DIA until 2014 stated in a live interview, that the US government knew about the rise of these extremists in 2012 and that the US government made a "wilful decision" to turn a blind eye on them in the hope that they will get rid of Assad.

He also stated that the US government supported Al-Qaeda in Syria.

https://www.rt.com/usa/312050-dia-flynn-islamic-state/

This link is from RT, but you can watch the video of it.

Oh, and then there's general Petraeus who tried to convince the government that there is some part of Al-Nusra that is cool and okay, and we could use them.

Juan Cole disagrees.

http://www.juancole.com/2015/05/strategic-against-assad.html

Short summary: the text of the actual DIA memo is much more complicated than the interview lets on, but the memo itself was uncovered by conservative media sites who then spun it into "Obama sponsored ISIS".

Please explain how it is possible that ISIS expanded their territory during a time when the US-led "anti-ISIS" coalition flew more than 8000 sorties against them and now when Russia starts a war against them with a significantly smaller force they are loosing ground massively.

How is that even possible? I cannot believe that the US military is so ineffective.

The US military was ordered to be ineffective, they are probably bombing the desert or some infrastructure that isn't used anymore just to make it seem as if they are doing something against ISIS.

And to be frank: It would not surprise me if we one day see proof that ISIS was actually trained, supported and equipped by the US.

I think that most US citizens wouldn't be surprised by this.

There's just no way you can explain away the fact that a smaller Russian force crushes ISIS so quickly while the strongest military power in the world cannot seem to stop them with much more firepower, allies and time at their hand.

Edit: Another reason why I am sure that the US government supports Sunni terrorism: All the countries where the US intervened in the last 15 years sank into total chaos and are today ruled by either ISIS or Al-Qaeda affiliates.

This is not mere incompetence, the US military has probably some of the most competent personell in the world. Total chaos in these countries was no coincidence, it was their OBJECTIVE.

I am not interested in this political debate at all. You can safely assume any argument I'd come up with would just be sourced from people like Juan Cole anyways, and go read him instead.

Okay, I'll just quote parts of the declassified the document you linked to:

"C. IF THE SITUATION UNRAVELS THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A DECLARED OR UNDECLARED SALAFIST PRINCIPALITY IN EASTERN SYRIA (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS TO THE OPPOSITION WANT, IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE SYRIAN REGIME, WHICH IS CONSIDERED THE STRATEGIC DEPTH OF THE SHiA EXPANSION (IRAQ AND IRAN)."

So a Salafist principality is exactly what the supporters (US, Turkey, Saudi Arabia) of the opposition want.

You picked one of the very few parts of the memo Cole quotes directly, and then applied a meaning to it that was the opposite of the one Cole took. I'm not persuaded.

> Which of those two is supposed to be "our guys"?

E) None of the above.

Frankly, I find the different reactions to Beirut and Paris sickening. The U.S. (media and residents) cares more about people that are 'more like them'. Too many paint the middle east with a single brush and consider it a disaster not to get upset over unless the issue involves Israel.

I think that's too simple a view.

Paris of recent decades has not experienced frequent terror attacks. It's not expected to happen there. It is not a war zone. There aren't belligerent factions attacking each other. It does not have the sectarian violent history of Beirut.

When ETA was bombing around Spain and it became commonplace, it also received little attention after a while. That's just how it goes.

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