Moderator: Peak Moderation
Indeed Biff, and the perps need to be punished to the full extent possible.biffvernon wrote:Today we are reminded that Muslims have been on the receiving end of genocide.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35893804
If your chart was titled people killed in the Western World instead of just Western Europe there would be a very very long bar for 9 1 1.biffvernon wrote:And while everybody is, quite rightly, horrified at terrorist attacks, it's worth seeing the historical context; terrorism in Western Europe generally and in the UK particularly, isn't what it used to be.
https://www.statista.com/chart/4093/peo ... ince-1970/
They are closing down. I'll bet they are down to a skeleton staff by nowkenneal - lagger wrote:Going off topic slightly, having read that article, is the Ipedendent doing a Gruniad? I thought these journalists were supposed to be English graduates! It's not the grammar that's wrong just spelling. Doesn't the Ipedendent have spell checking on its computers.
It has happened again. Jihadists have struck in the heart of Europe, spreading terror while murdering dozens and maiming hundreds of innocents. Yesterday’s coordinated attacks on Brussels have woken Europeans, yet again, to the threat that exists in their midst—a grave danger politicians seem to have no idea how to handle.
The bombings at Zaventem airport and the Brussels metro at current count killed 31 and injured 270—over 300 casualties in all. Belgium is not accustomed to such a bloodbath. Its army contingent in Afghanistan suffered only 15 casualties, with just one killed, during that U.S.-led war. It’s been over 60 years since Belgians died violently in any numbers. Their battalion serving in Korea lost 101 killed and 478 wounded in action between 1950 and 1953. This is a distant memory today.
Belgium is a small country. Relative to population, this would be equivalent to 900 dead Americans and a staggering 7,800 wounded. To say nothing of the symbolism of yesterday’s attack on the metro near Maelbeek station in downtown Brussels, right next to the offices of the European Union. Striking at the very heart of the European project, revealing its vulnerability to even a handful of ardent madmen, sends a powerful message that nobody can miss.
At this hour, two suicide bombers, brothers, have been identified while the surviving member of this evil triumvirate is in custody, although not yet positively identified. The Islamic State, the notorious ISIS, has claimed responsibility for the attacks, and there’s no reason to doubt their claim, nor that the attacks were linked to ISIS in some fashion. As always, the killers will have a support system in their community too. After all, Belgium is an outlier of a toxic kind, its angry Muslim population producing jihadists eager to fight for ISIS out of all proportion to its size.
Yet its very status as a Jihadistan of sorts gave Belgium a degree of protection until very recently. While mass-casualty attacks struck across Europe since 9/11—Madrid in 2004 (191 dead), London in 2005 (53 dead) and Paris twice last year (17 dead in January and 137 in November)—Belgium was left nearly unscathed. Radicals appreciated that Brussels, being lax in security matters, was granting them de facto sanctuary to plot attacks elsewhere. This was a deal that the terrorists sensibly saw no point in disrupting.
Superb article, one of the few out there, which captures the seriousness of the threat posed by ISIS.The depressing bottom line is that even the best intelligence cannot compensate for political failings on an epic scale.
Simply put, Europe has imported a major threat into its countries, one that did not exist a couple generations ago. It can be endlessly debated why this problem has grown so serious so quickly—for instance, how much is due to Europe’s failures at assimilation of immigrants versus the innate aggression of some of those immigrants (and their children)?—but that the threat is large and growing can no longer be denied by the sentient.
What, then, is to be done? Admitting the extent of this threat is the necessary first step, albeit one that the EU’s political class seems congenitally unable to address. Instead, the public is treated to the now-customary clichés about religion having “nothing to do with terrorism,” combined with ritual admonitions about “Islamophobia.” One wonders how much more of this organized dishonesty the European public can take.
Europe is now at war again. The threat today is less terrorism than a low-grade insurgency, a guerrilla war of sorts, that hangs over much of the continent as thousands of jihadists, made proficient killers by ISIS in Syria and Iraq, return home with visions of killing “infidels,” their former neighbors. There will be no parley or negotiation with such mass murderers. Parsing the death-cult ideology that drives ISIS fighters, with the hope of making it less noxious, makes as much sense as trying to divine the finer political points of the Manson family.
We should expect more guerrilla-like attacks like Brussels yesterday: moderate in scale, relatively easy to plan and execute against soft targets, and utterly terrifying to the public. At some point, angry Europeans, fed up with their supine political class, will begin to strike back, and that’s when the really terrifying scenarios come into play. European security services worry deeply about the next Anders Breivik targeting not fellow Europeans, but Muslim migrants. “We’re just one Baruch Goldstein away from all-out war,” explained a senior EU terrorism official, citing the American-born Israeli terrorist, fed up with Palestinian violence, who walked into a Hebron mosque in 1994, guns blazing, and murdered 29 innocent Muslims.
When that violence comes, a practically disarmed Europe will be all but powerless to stop it. To take the case of Belgium, at the Cold War’s end a generation ago, its army had seven brigades with 18 infantry battalions, plus some 30 more battalions in the reserve. Today, Belgium’s army has only two brigades and six infantry battalions, some 3,000 bayonets in all. That tiny force would have trouble exerting control over even one bumptious Brussels neighborhood in the event of serious crisis.
Back in 2012, Switzerland conducted military exercises premised on conditions in Europe getting out of control, between migration, radicalism and economic decline. They repeated those exercises the following year, and since then the Swiss, who have a knack for preparing for all contingencies, have warned that Europe’s burgeoning interlinked crises may result in major war. Such warnings were pooh-poohed by EU bien-pensants at the time; now they seem prescient.
What happens next is the main question. It’s difficult to miss that Central Europe, whose illiberal leaders have been castigated by Brussels for their unwillingness to accept Muslim migrants, singularly lack the terrorism and radicalism problems of their EU neighbors to the West. Their standing fast on the migration issue seems wise now. Belgium, along with much of the EU, has given itself a political crisis that lacks tolerable solutions. After the Cold War, with the birth of the European Union, many Europeans believed they had achieved the “end of history.” Issues of war and peace had been settled; henceforth Brussels would debate nothing more worrisome than agricultural subsidies. But history has returned, as it always does. And when politics fail, violence follows, and violence on a large scale becomes war.
Nine days before the Paris attacks, Islamic State leaders gathered in the Syrian town of Tabqah to talk about what was coming next for the terror organisation. Senior officials from across the so-called caliphate had made difficult journeys under constant fear of airstrikes to the small town west of Raqqa.
In what marked a critical phase in the group’s evolution, there was to be a new focus on exporting chaos to Europe, the assembled men were told. And up to 200 militants were in place across the continent ready to receive orders.
Details of the meeting have been relayed to the Guardian by two Isis members who are familiar with what was discussed. Both said the mood in Tabqah that evening in early November was triumphant. Senior leaders said they were turning their focus to European capitals, and had dispatched foreign fighters back to their homelands to prepare attack plans. And wait.
Isis under airstrikes – a guide in maps
Read more
The move marked a decisive shift away from putting all the organisation’s efforts into holding on to lands it had conquered in Syria and Iraq – a cause it acknowledged could not prevail against 14 different air forces and the omniscient eavesdropping powers of its foes.
Instead, the group now had the capacity to take the fight to the heart of its enemy. The means to do so had always been there through Europe’s porous borders, which had often facilitated the original journeys. However, the migrant route that had ferried hundreds of thousands of Syrians and Iraqis fleeing persecution had also allowed a small number of Isis members to blend in, and head back the other way.
In essence, Isis had begun to prioritise controlling populations over geography. While it hadn’t given up its grip on the large swath of Iraq and Syria it had seized at the expense of each sovereign state, the original area it controlled was now less important than the faraway societies it could influence.
Well, here it is folks. Successful terror attacks on France and now Belgium. Germany, Italy and the UK left... might be wise to avoid going to either Germany or Italy this year.The men were to form classic sleeper cells, and wait for orders. Isis leaders saw opportunity wherever it may arise, but this new wave would place emphasis on wreaking havoc in Italy, Belgium, France, Germany and the UK.
“They said the UK was the hardest to get to,” one Isis member said. “But Belgium was easy. Spain was also mentioned, but not as much as the rest.”
Appears that the terrorists intended to target the nuclear power station.A security officer at a Belgian nuclear plant has been found dead with his work pass stolen. This disturbing development, revealed by the newspaper Derniere Heure on Saturday, follows concerns that the Brussels bombers wanted to build a radioactive dirty bomb — but apparently shelved the plan after security was stepped up at Belgium’s nuclear plants following intelligence warnings.
The security officer was murdered on Thursday evening as he walked his dog in the city of Charleroi, but news of the killing only emerged on Saturday. His pass was quickly cancelled, according to officials.
Investigators are exploring a theory that the man, who has not been named, was killed to steal his pass and gain access to a nuclear facility. Nuclear power plants are known to be targets for the terror network behind the Brussels bombings and the Paris attacks in November.
very sad story and works as a warning to the rest of community don't integretekenneal - lagger wrote:And then there's the "guilty" Muslim shop keeper stabbed to death in Glasgow for wishing his customers "a Happy Easter"!
The religion of peace strikes again!
Lord Beria3 wrote:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... atest.html
Appears that the terrorists intended to target the nuclear power station.A security officer at a Belgian nuclear plant has been found dead with his work pass stolen. This disturbing development, revealed by the newspaper Derniere Heure on Saturday, follows concerns that the Brussels bombers wanted to build a radioactive dirty bomb — but apparently shelved the plan after security was stepped up at Belgium’s nuclear plants following intelligence warnings.
The security officer was murdered on Thursday evening as he walked his dog in the city of Charleroi, but news of the killing only emerged on Saturday. His pass was quickly cancelled, according to officials.
Investigators are exploring a theory that the man, who has not been named, was killed to steal his pass and gain access to a nuclear facility. Nuclear power plants are known to be targets for the terror network behind the Brussels bombings and the Paris attacks in November.
