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And what makes you think we are disregarding them? Much less disregarding them intentionally?

This thread isn't about what happened in other countries, its about the terror attack in Boston.

Its like going into a thread about "How IG can deal with the new Tau" and saying we need to talk about how GKs can deal with the new Tau.

 Manchu wrote:

 Monster Rain wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
This whole thing reminds me of 1995 when we were convinced we were looking for Pakistanis in the wake of the Oklahoma city bombings. And of course it turned out to be Tim McVeigh instead because he was mad about Waco.

Going with a subtle racist angle now?

Er, no? I don't think McVeigh was a racist -- or at least, he explicitly disavowed racism. I don't think these Boston attacks had anything to do with racism, either. My point is, people in countries where these attacks are more frequent don't have to look far overseas to find the culprits. They are more aware of the violent unrest at home than Americans seem to be. We have a tendency to dismiss public violence as either international terror or mental illness. McVeigh is a good example of how such assumptions can be dead wrong. This attack, undertaken on tax day and entailing crude, small bombs, fits the domestic terror profile from what I've heard on the news.

Yep
More ~80% of everyone arrested in the past decade for politically motivated violence were right wing nuts
http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/16/opinion/bergen-bombings/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

The Dark Apostle wrote:
Grey Templar, it is natural to care more about your own country, but to show an almost blatant disregard for the happenings in many is bad.

Saying that "I'm sorry that this happened in Boston, MA USA" is not the same as saying "I'm not sorry at all about your country's plight at all."

The fact that this happened in a highly populated city, on a holiday, at the finish line of a very popular sporting event makes this an absolutely shocking event. Of course it's getting a lot of media attention.

EDIT: Make a post about the incident(s) in your country that you feel needs attention. I'll make a point to give you my thoughts, and condolences, as warranted. Understand that I'm not upset at you The DA. Just confused about your choice in moving this conversation into something else entirely.

 Frazzled wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Yeah, there are plenty of better targets for a racially motivated terrorist.

Thats also kinda why I'm not sure about the anti-government terrorist angle. You think an anti-government terrorist would blow up a public building like a courthouse or IRS office, not a sporting event.

Exactly. Home grown (aka nonIslamic) will go after government, the opposing party, or some focal point.
Jihadi - anything that kills the most people in the most public manner.

Could be a serial killer type as well, but more doubtful. Pulling off delivery of multiple bombs takes more effort. has happened before though, and with more fatalities.

Home grown can still easily be radicalised Islamists, and is becoming the favoured tool of our fav Terror group and their off-shoots.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Yeah, there are plenty of better targets for a racially motivated terrorist.

Thats also kinda why I'm not sure about the anti-government terrorist angle. You think an anti-government terrorist would blow up a public building like a courthouse or IRS office, not a sporting event.

Again, I don't think there's anything pointing at a racial motivation here. As to the target, I don't think we're necessarily talking about the sporting event so much as the city itself. Seems to me the attack was on the public and the sporting event was just what drew the public there. That's still pretty ambivalent in terms of whether the culprit is more of a McVeigh type or more of a Faisal Shahzad type.

Indeed. That would be my guess, a homegrown islamic terrorist.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Manchu wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Yeah, there are plenty of better targets for a racially motivated terrorist.

Thats also kinda why I'm not sure about the anti-government terrorist angle. You think an anti-government terrorist would blow up a public building like a courthouse or IRS office, not a sporting event.

Again, I don't think there's anything pointing at a racial motivation here. As to the target, I don't think we're necessarily talking about the sporting event so much as the city itself. Seems to me the attack was on the public and the sporting event was just what drew the public there. That's still pretty ambivalent in terms of whether the culprit is more of a McVeigh type or more of a Faisal Shahzad type.

I suppose. We can think too hard about the motivation and thinking there must be symbolisim in the event attacked.

 Grey Templar wrote:
And what makes you think we are disregarding them? Much less disregarding them intentionally?

Maybe I misread him but I don't think DA was talking about people ITT specifically. Rather, he was talking about the American media. And can anyone really dispute that when attacks like this happen in other countries they often get little or no coverage in the USA? I mean, what makes an attack in Dublin local news and an attack in Boston international news? It's a good question.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grey Templar wrote:
We can think too hard about the motivation and thinking there must be symbolisim in the event attacked.

Both domestic and international terrorists seem to care a lot about that sort of thing, however.

http://humancounter.com/

Following the last page of this thread to its logical conclusion, no one is allowed to be more sad about a death than any other given the carnage that happens every second. If you aren't tearing your clothes and sobbing for the 30 people that died in the space it took you to read this you are a rank hypocrite.

 kronk wrote:
Just confused about your choice in moving this conversation into something else entirely.

But his point isn't about something else entirely. He's wondering about this particular incident in relation to other similar ones that happened elsewhere.

to stop the high levels of off-topic traffic here is a thread to discuss news that probably wont get good media coverage, but are equal or worse to current happenings.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/521291.page

Probably a multitude of reasons.

As the news media themselves said, the Boston Marathon is a big worldwide event. IIRC they said second only to the Olympics in many respects.

That alone automatically qualifies it as international news, people from all around the world participate. They mentioned that in some places in Africa in particular this is a big deal.

Then we have that it happened in the US, not often that there is a terror attack here. Just makes it a little more news worthy because of it being out of the ordinary.

Every single one of you in this thread making stupid with your typing to say 'isn't it gakky that Americans only care when it's one of their cities that gets bombed' should really consider that all suffering is relative.

I think cancer is terrible, I generally go about my business and don't worry about it though, I might watch a news article on it or I might change the channel so I can watch King of the Hill. If I hear that someone in Thailand has woken up today with cancer, I will feel a modicum of sympathy, if I read on facebook that a friend of a friend has cancer, I will feel more sympathy and perhaps offer a condolence note to my friend asking if I can help, if I am told over the phone that a friend I've known for years has just come back from the doctor's with the news they have cancer and it's incurable, I will be devastated.

This bombing is important to Americans because it happened in America, that doesn't make Americans cold to the horrible things going on right now everywhere else, just more concerned that their own homes may now not be safe, that their friends and family might have been injured or killed or that it happened to people they can more readily identify with and therefore empathize more closely with through shared national identity, language and culture. That doesn't make them monsters, that makes them human.

Hey, 'IRA is terrible' guy, it could be really easily argued that you are selfish, going on about some guy killed by the IRA when there are hundreds of thousands of people languishing in North Korean prison camps and suffering terrible human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia, the Yemen, China etc, aren't you a terrible person for going on about the IRA and just one man, just because you're in Ireland...





... pssst, or maybe that has a greater degree of significance on your list of priorities, not because you are a callous fethtard, but because you are just near to it and feel it deeper.


Now, all you clever chaps, take your 'Scoring points at Frank the ex Democrat guy because I'm not a Democrat and I hate Democrats more than pedos' or 'You're bad for being American and being selfish because other things happened' and most especially, most assuredly you 'Well, in the greater context of the world, this is a fairly minor explosion so, you know, don't be going overboard', I'd really like it if you stop, at least in this thread.

Because this.

This is human blood smeared all over the floor by an explosive, planted in an inner city area attended by huge numbers of families at a sporting event during a holiday. The explosives were designed to inflict massive wounding. Again, to remind you as you conjure ways to strike at your political enemies over this or try to dismiss it as minor or want to attack the nation this went on in because you don't like their foreign policy or whatever banner you've come to this thread to wave and tout.
This is human blood, smeared all over the floor by an explosive, your argument is fething invalid. I passed some of these people, the ones the bits of red on the floor used to belong to, yesterday and I am imploring you to stop peddling crap in this thread.

So, lets just show some decorum, some small measure of class, just this once.

Well said, MGS.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
So, lets just show some decorum, some small measure of class, just this once.

Perhaps moderators actively egging them on would cut down on the phenomenon.

Indeed, have an exalt.

I don't think that Manchu's statement has anything to do with racism, he just rightly points out that during events like that we usually assume that somebody did this to us, instead of us doing it to ourselves.

Hence the reason why everybody jumps on the "this looks like AQ" bandwagon, or the reason why everybody reported "the police are talking to a Saudi national". There was an interestic statistic in the news today that the majority of bomb plots stopped since 9/11 have been orchestrated by domestic groups, with Jihadist groups coming in second. But who do we suspect first?

Let me give you my first hand experience in this:

In 2002 I was going through nursing school, and during my clinical rotation in the ICU I was taking care of a native american patient who would only speak his native language. He grew up speaking the language of his tribe but he could speak perfect English prior to his accident. When I asked about that the doctors told me that sometimes, during traumatic incidents such at that, a person can revert back to his first language.

About a month later my school, together with another university, participated in a mass-casualty drill & terrorist attack drill. The scenario was that evil terrorists caused an accident on the interstate, wrecked a tractor trailer filled with anhydrous ammonia that was contaminating the scene, and that there was a secondary explosive in the trunk of one of the vehicles next to our wrecked school bus, there were no terrorists on scene. All the agencies (Fire Departments, Highway Patrol, local sheriff) knew was that it was an accident that was suspicious with lots of victims.

I was a victim with a broken leg and arm hanging halfway out of the school bus and also had a camera with me to take pictures for the student paper. When the firefighters got to me I spoke only German to them (remembering the native american guy) since that could very well be a real thing that I would be doing in a situation like that. Not knowing what I was saying the firefighter moved on to the next victim. Within a few minutes more firefighters came by, placed me on a backboard, strapped me down, and left me there. Over the radios I could hear that they said that they had the suspected terrorist and before I knew it the bomb disposal robot was going through my camera bag.

The agency failed their test because once they got to the foreign guy they thought that they had the non-existing terrorist and they quit securing the scene and they never did find the bomb in the car.

So my personal experience is that the "foreign bad guys did this until proven otherwise" mindset can exist.

Well said MGS It should almost be required reading

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

*Sensible talk*

Seconded. Look, irrespective of your political or social thinking, this is a thread about a tragedy that happened. People died, a lot more were injured, and a city is in shock.
The thread is dedicated to that, and as a result, that is the topic of the thread; bringing up other tragedies is therefore off-topic, unless it's by comparison.
Enough with the point-scoring, it's not big and it's not clever.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Then we have that it happened in the US, not often that there is a terror attack here. Just makes it a little more news worthy because of it being out of the ordinary.

I actually think that is the real issue. From without and within, there is an attitude about the US that it is safe from political violence and that is pretty true in a certain sense. But I also think that a lot of American violence is political and that political dimension is often washed out as insanity. From a certain POV, the contemporary IRA are simply sociopaths. Their organization, however, seems to belie that POV. Well, what if whoever did this was acting alone? If so, will we see this sort of spectacle at the trial:



Looking abroad, I'm also thinking of Anders Brevik here. That guy has been largely passed of as a simple lunatic in his country -- and we know the prosecutors there wanted to take that angle as a way of dismissing him. If they called him a terrorist, people might think he had a perspective even if it was a strange one. Looking back to McVeigh, yeah, what does it take to kill so many people? He must have been crazy in some sense. Same with Brevik. But this brand of crazy does strike me as having more to do with the insanity of political violence, whether perpetrated by one man or global organizations.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 d-usa wrote:
that during events like that we usually assume that somebody did this to us, instead of us doing it to ourselves.

That's well put, better than I had been saying it I think.

I don't know if this is foreign or domestic, so I'm not speculating on either. IF they used cell phones to detonate the bombs... well, I don't know how difficult that technology is to pull off. TV and movies =/= real life.

Maybe 5 guys in the US could do that by pooling resources, or maybe it takes REAL money, perhaps from oversees.

I don't know, either way. My knee-jerk reaction from last night's report that a Saudi man was being interviewed and people piling on Facebook that it was a foreigner was to think of Richard Jewell and people jumping to conclusions. This isn't our first rodeo. Let's see how things develop before pointing blame and attacking someone at Kroger's because they "look foreign" (re: people post 911 attacking foreigners).

 Grundz wrote:

 Manchu wrote:

 Monster Rain wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
This whole thing reminds me of 1995 when we were convinced we were looking for Pakistanis in the wake of the Oklahoma city bombings. And of course it turned out to be Tim McVeigh instead because he was mad about Waco.

Going with a subtle racist angle now?

Er, no? I don't think McVeigh was a racist -- or at least, he explicitly disavowed racism. I don't think these Boston attacks had anything to do with racism, either. My point is, people in countries where these attacks are more frequent don't have to look far overseas to find the culprits. They are more aware of the violent unrest at home than Americans seem to be. We have a tendency to dismiss public violence as either international terror or mental illness. McVeigh is a good example of how such assumptions can be dead wrong. This attack, undertaken on tax day and entailing crude, small bombs, fits the domestic terror profile from what I've heard on the news.

Yep
More ~80% of everyone arrested in the past decade for politically motivated violence were right wing nuts
http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/16/opinion/bergen-bombings/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

Damn... really? That's an opinion piece and I think these sorts of discussion in this thread is uncalled for...

 kronk wrote:
Let's see how things develop before pointing blame and attacking someone at Kroger's because they "look foreign"

Yes, exactly so. I think that's why the President was so circumspect with his statement yesterday. There is a lot of violence in this country, political and otherwise. The fact that we have little idea about who did this or why is kind of frightening in that context. It could have been someone from almost any background. It could have been someone with any variety of grievance.

MGS... exalted. Couldn't have said better.

Eh... the media will always decide what's more important and what is not... on the BBC there is more coverage about Thatcher rather than the Boston attacks.

 kronk wrote:
I don't know if this is foreign or domestic, so I'm not speculating on either. IF they used cell phones to detonate the bombs... well, I don't know how difficult that technology is to pull off. TV and movies =/= real life.

Maybe 5 guys in the US could do that by pooling resources, or maybe it takes REAL money, perhaps from oversees.

I don't know, either way. My knee-jerk reaction from last night's report that a Saudi man was being interviewed and people piling on Facebook that it was a foreigner was to think of Richard Jewell and people jumping to conclusions. This isn't our first rodeo. Let's see how things develop before pointing blame and attacking someone at Kroger's because they "look foreign" (re: people post 911 attacking foreigners).

I just heard that pressure cookers inside of bags were used to detonate the explosives. The same type of device was used in the London Bombings a few years ago. It's a commonly used device though, worldwide.

Still don't know who is responsible, but we're getting more and more clues.

 Gorskar.da.Lost wrote:

 captain collius wrote:
I'm a noted right-wing person on these forums but I must say that the First responders of Boston have been heroic in everything they have done.

President Obama who I do not like has been out front and done a superlative job.

To MGS and anyone else who was in that area or knew someone who was I am so glad to hear that everyone is alright

As the President himself said, these sorts of things transcend political boundaries, and judging by the comments on here and my own feelings on the matter, national ones too.
Though some'll try to take advantage - they always do - the vast majority of people will keep a stiff upper lip, to use the age-old cliche, and show the people responsible that they will not be cowed.
The best response to terrorists is to show that they have no power over you, and carry on defiantly in the face of their actions.

Exactly I just feel that many people take a political leaning to be a hatred of the other side when this is not true.

Also Keep Calm and Carry On is always the order of the day.

 djones520 wrote:


I just heard that pressure cookers inside of bags were used to detonate the explosives. The same type of device was used in the London Bombings a few years ago. It's a commonly used device though, worldwide.

Still don't know who is responsible, but we're getting more and more clues.

If that's the case, it certainly makes domestic plausible if not probable. Can't say for certain until someone's in hand cuffs or someone steps up and claims responsibility.

 Breotan wrote:
Well, not even 24 hours have passed and we have Congressmen spewing their partisan bile.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/barney-frank-no-tax-cut-would-have-helped-us-deal_717921.html

Ignore Frank he just wants attention.

Monster Rain wrote:http://humancounter.com/

Following the last page of this thread to its logical conclusion, no one is allowed to be more sad about a death than any other given the carnage that happens every second. If you aren't tearing your clothes and sobbing for the 30 people that died in the space it took you to read this you are a rank hypocrite.

How very utilitarian of you. Of course, a reasonable counterpoint is to question whether that equality is absolute, or if there are tragedies that ultimately should be considered less tragic (such as those who make their own bed, so to speak... like Timothy Treadwell, to give you a non-political example)

Also: BAM! Snuck some "blame the victim" into this thread (because it's Dakka, after all).

Anyway, the roundabout point I'm trying to get at is we all live in and as part of communities, and our locus of familiarity will always give us a bias that some people are more important, subjectively, to us than others. There's no point in calling someone a hypocrite, because we all are in that respect. And we're generally all okay with that, too.

Now, to answer the original question: attacks in Boston, MA get more attention globally than does an attack in Dublin, Ireland because terrorist attacks in Boston are thankfully very rare occurances; whereas Dublin has seen its fair share of attacks. To put it bluntly: dog-bites-man isn't news. Man-bites-dog is news. Couple that with a global telecommunications network that is largely comprised of American-based mega-conglomerates (see previous statement about locus of familiarity) and you've got your answer. that's why the attack in Boston gets more press than one in Dublin. It's not really a sympathetic answer, but that's how it is.

The Dark Apostle wrote:
Kronk how was I being trollish? I worded my sentence badly, but Manchu corrected me. Think of other countries, and how much they suffer, this morning in Pakistan, 12 people were killed in a very similar incident to that in Boston. In a year today, I won't be seeing a memorial to them will I?

Are you really of the opinion that the Pakistanis don't care enough about their own people to have memorial to them? If it is true they don't, that is sad, but is irrelevant to this topic.

I seriously doubt they care too much about the attack in Boston though, and those in the US probably do. Hence THIS topic. Perhaps you should also post on a Pakistani forum and point out they are ignoring violence in some country other than theirs...

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
So, lets just show some decorum, some small measure of class, just this once.

I have disagreed with you many times.

However I have never seen a more well defended position on this forum. BRAVO