Two Explosions at Brussels Airport
bbc.com
bbc.com
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)
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
terros want us to hate them
some folks are hating terros here
flag this thread so that terros don't win
That's not surprising when we know there were shootings last week "linked" to Paris attack. Euro 2016 (in France) starts in 80 days.
"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."
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...
Edit: some sources say more bombs were found...