The all purpose terrorism thread featuring plenty of allah akbar

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

Is it a possible reason why it hasnt this happenend in other European countries or the U.S.? Or is it just a matter of time before it does?

I suspect just a matter of time.

[Tchocky]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

Not to sound sarcastic, or insensitive. But are French security forces and intel gurus overwhelmed?

There's absolutely no way we can know that. We don't know all of what was stopped.

Obviously there were plotters arrested in Verviers recently with weapons and explosives. That could have been an event like yesterday - we don't know.

Or are these so called no-go areas so isolated from the rest of French society. There is no way to penetrate and develop any good intel on the players and potential threats of massive coordinated attacks with automatic weapons and hand grenades?

The "no-go" myth running around again. France has deep problems with assimilation and alienation, but the old story of hundreds of places where police fear to tread just isn't true.

Certainly it can't be easy for the French security services.

Is it a possible reason why it hasnt this happenend in other European countries or the U.S.? Or is it just a matter of time before it does?

It has happened. In London, in Madrid, in Turkey just a month ago.

How quickly we forget.

[Betonov]

Not overwhelmed, it's that the terror tactics have changed from large bombs going off and it's easy to get the authorities alerted to it when one buys a barrel of ammonium nitrate and owns no fields, now they're focusing on mass shootings and grenades, which can be aquired slowly, maybe one piece at a time or smugled component by component into the country.

And as Tchocky said, for this one attack maybe 10 were stopped, maybe this attack was planned for a later time in bigger extent but the intel was too close to busting them.

[Buddahaid]

Ugh. I just woke up to the nice news out of Paris. Be strong France.

[Betonov]

Someone on imgur hits the nail

I don't think the people conducting these attacks quite understand: on an individual level, for those directly caught up in the event, terrorism is as harrowing and tragic an experience as any other act of aggression, but collectively, no one here gives a damn. Why? Because Europe was the birthplace of INDUSTRIAL WARFARE! Random killings don’t achieve anything. Small minded fools with delusions of grandeur who think killing a few civilians and then dying themselves will somehow benefit their cause are just seen as an irritation. Take the 2005 bombings in London, for example. More people were pissed off because the Tube was shut down rather than because an act of terror had just happened in the capital. Picking up a gun and shooting lots of unarmed people before you yourself are taken down doesn't make you special. Anyone can do it and at the end of it, you’re dead, so the problem has essentially solved itself. The infrastructure you’re blaming for all the evils in the world is still fully functional because it’s never military or industrial targets that are attacked. It’s not “warfare”, it’s just random violence, and that’s easy for a nation to shrug off.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

I suspect just a matter of time.

Sadly, yes. I've been waiting for another attack in London, Birmingham or Manchester for a while. One can only presume it's slightly harder to get the weaponry across the Channel or something. But yes, this is a war after all, sadly, and we are going to suffer casualties.

Originally Posted by Betonov

Someone on imgur hits the nail

Ah, Jollyjack, he's done some brilliant topical comics, a couple on North Korea that are perfect.

[Rockstar]

Sooo, we what is being said then its part of the new norm, we shouldnt get too worked about it. Well I mean as long as I can get too work other than that we shouldnt be concerned?

And as far as the myth of no go zones. The myth is nobody not even police venture in. Reality is its not exactley a tourist destination. And the police when they do go they go heavily armed, and take other special precautions not normally associated with routine patrols. At least according to French governemnt sources and european news agencies.

Look this is becoming an increasing problem. When my dog gets fleas I dont let them itch, if I do they spread multiply and eventually get on me. No, when it comes to fleas I exterminate them at the first sign.

[Oberon]

In a way, yes, it is the new norm, it has been the new norm since September 2001. We should expect terror attacks, but no-one is going to be able to take away the shock when they happen. Yes, we can work to prevent them and we have done, there are countless terror attacks that have been averted, potential terrorists that have been arrested, but no force is perfect and some are going to slip through.
Should we just shrug and say 'fair enough', well...no, of course not, and we need to make sure that if there is a way that does not undermine the values of the nation that we hold dear, if there is a way to stop something like this from happening then we should take it.

So yes, if your dog gets fleas, you de-flea it...but unless you eradicate every single flea in the world in a mass flea-genocide, you're not going to completely prevent the dog from the chance of getting fleas again.

[mapuc]

I'm so to say confused in many way

I shall try as good as I can to explain one of my confessions

For the moment I have only Danish TV-channels one Swedish TV-channel and depending on the weather(antenna-air) 10-20 different German TV-channel

I try to get as much information about ISIS/The terror in Paris and other places

I hear Danish,Swedish and or German terror expert make statement in some news program I try to remember what they have said

Here is a the lastest from the former leader of the Danish PET(equal FBI)
"Its not that easy to "hear" what ISIS are saying to each other, they are using advanced military coding system"

This was his answer to a question from the journalist.

Markus

[Tchocky]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

Sooo, we what is being said then its part of the new norm, we shouldnt get too worked about it. Well I mean as long as I can get too work other than that we shouldnt be concerned?

Not what I was getting at, no. I mean, yes, large scale terrorist attacks are more common in Europe now, but low-level long-term insurgencies are almost gone.
We have 7/7 and 13/11, instead of The Troubles and Red Brigades. DOn't ask me if this is an improvement, I've no idea.

Look this is becoming an increasing problem. When my dog gets fleas I dont let them itch, if I do they spread multiply and eventually get on me. No, when it comes to fleas I exterminate them at the first sign.

As a metaphor this is almost peerless. As security or public policy it's lunacy. Like it or not we have a framework of human rights and process. If we decide to chuck it out the window, I guess that's possible (if undesirable in my view)

But if it's going to go, dismantle it rather than destroy it through negligence and disrespect.

Originally Posted by mapuc

Here is a the lastest from the former leader of the Danish PET(equal FBI)
"Its not that easy to "hear" what ISIS are saying to each other, they are using advanced military coding system"

Yeah that's tricky. You can't snoop a coffe shop conversation and you can't break all encryption in real time. I'm fairly certain that metadata collection and the like really serves to help investigations after the act. Pick up the pieces, as it were.

We're no closer to cracking the IS nut today than yesterday - we're just a little deeper in innocent blood.

[mapuc]

Another thing that makes me sad

Reading some peoples response

"Islam has declared war on us, we can not trust a Muslim"

Islamic radicalism has declared war on us, that's true. but they are not every Muslim or every Muslim is not radical in their belief and that's a mega huge different.

Markus

[Tchocky]

Worrying rhetoric bubbling up around the place, though.

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by mapuc

Another thing that makes me sad

Reading some peoples response

"Islam has declared war on us, we can not trust a Muslim"

Islamic radicalism has declared war on us, that's true. but they are not every Muslim or every Muslim is not radical in their belief and that's a mega huge different.

Markus

That's very true.

[Skybird]

My concern is that this has been just the opening act.

Amongst IS' legionaires, a huge number has French passports - passports which will help them to return to France legally. The French contingent amongst IS' foreign fighters, is one of the biggest foreign groups in IS' service.

One of those attackers who got killed was a known "radical", already known to the police since 2010. And still he could freely move around and get himself into striking position.

I fear France must take into account that there could be several hundred, maybe even over a thousand, sleepers ready to strike within its national borders currently. Impossible to completely neutralize that threat.

Of the killed attackers today, one has owned an Egyptian passport, and at least one Syrian, maybe even two Syrian passport shave been found by the authorities. One of these Syrian passports is linked to a Syrian "refugee" who had entered Greece via Turkey sometime in October. The German BKA has warned already weeks ago that several tens of thousands of forged Syrian passports were circulating at the time of this BKA announcement. In past weeks, several countries let Syrian and other migrants and refugees travel without registration and checking their papers at all, due to the huge pressure at the borders. The head of the German coalition party SPD several days ago admitted that tens of thousands of refugees just disappear after they crossed the German border, and are moving around in Germany untracked, unknown off and completely unregistered.

In other words: nobody has any clue on how many of those masses of foreign people who were let in, were not what they pretended to be. Dozens? Take that as a certainty. Hundreds? Could be possible. Nobody can say for sure.

This is a perfect security nightmare.

If the story about that Syrian passport gets further confirmed, it means that those 130 people got killed and those hundreds got wounded in exchange for letting happen uncontrolled border crossing and unregulated mass migration. Nice trade. Headless sentimentality and wishful dreaming has quite a bit to do with it.

Today's threat by IS that this has been just the first of several strikes, absolutely is no empty threat, but must be taken into account as a substantial threat for sure. What they would need for maintaining that threat, is a sufficient supply of suicide attackers, no matter whether national residents ( many of the attackers seem to have spoken accent-free French, also the attackers in London and Madrid held British and Spanish passports), or IS-returners or false "refugees" streaming into Europe.

Did I already say that this is a security nightmare? But one that one could have easily foreseen - if only one would have wanted that. But since many years one stuck the head into the sand, and in recent weeks and months insanity turned from bad to worse. Madness, when turning pandemic, is called "reason".

[Oberon]

Aye, sadly that is likely. I think it was inevitable that there would be radicals hidden in the refugee crowds. But do you turn away millions for a low percentage of troublemakers?