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MI5 Chief Seeks New Powers After Paris Magazine Attack
An anonymous reader writes with news that the head of MI5 is asking for more snooping powers following the attack at Charlie Hebdo. "The head of MI5, Andrew Parker, has called for new powers to help fight Islamist extremism, warning of a dangerous imbalance between increasing numbers of terrorist plots against the UK and a drop in the capabilities of intelligence services to snoop on communications. Parker described the Paris attack as "a terrible reminder of the intentions of those who wish us harm" and said he had spoken to his French counterparts to offer help. Speaking to an invited audience at MI5 headquarters, he said the threat level to Britain had worsened and Islamist extremist groups in Syria and Iraq were directly trying to orchestrate attacks on the UK. An attack on the UK was "highly likely" and MI5 could not give a guarantee it would be able to stop it, he said."
Fuck them both. People are forgetting what freedom is...
It seems clear that extremism cannot be fought with violence. Afganistan? Irak?
9/11 came with a massive increase in power, and what has that done for us?
Aparently there is no such thing as lessons learned for these guys.
Even more so with these guys. So what we must do is try to understand the underlying problem.
In my opinion that's religion. It blocks people's ability to think rationally about something because of indoctrination.
We should stop supporting religion. People are free to believe whatever they want, but they should pay for it themselves.
More police power just reduces the freedom we have, which is exactly what these terrorists want.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
What I am talking about is the problem of Islamic barbarism --- not Islam itself
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
The police officer which was murdered by the terrorists was also a muslim.
Remember that American aid worker Peter Kassig that got his head cut off?
He has converted in Islam but that still didn't prevent them barbarians from cutting his head off
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Killing 1+ billion people is RATIONAL?
If so, I'm PROUD to be crazy!
Most muslims are quite harmless, though, their religion do have problems being mixed up in affairs of the state, politics and law, making muslim countries repressive and racist compared to Western countries. Especially against minorities.
There is a problem. You are part of it.
Captcha: rearrest
When you say "arming the population", that implies you think the population wants to be armed, I live in the UK and in general people are much happier without these weapons. Guns are designed to kill, that is there one and only purpose. We don't (and wouldn't for long) have enough natural animals to even hunt where they would have any other use, so the prime use for guns would be to kill other people. That's it.
I think being an island nation we have always taken for granted that it is easier, than say being part of the continent, to prevent lots of illegal firearms from spreading. The people want it to stay this way and a massacre or two will not change that.
I have a very hard time seeing that the same problem doesn't exists in Christianity and Judaism
Yeah, all of those contemporary examples of Christians and Jews doing things like shooting up rooms full of satirical journalists, and sending mentally challenged young women into vegetable markets with bombs strapped to them - they just won't stop doing that! All of those Christians and Jews that post online videos of themselves beheading their captive hostages, lining up villagers and gunning them down, burning teachers alive for daring to teach girls to read - it's definitely just like what all those thousands of Muslims are doing, no question.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I'm from Northern Ireland, it is/was a hell of a lot more about land, allegiance and which constitution you're following than if the pope was the head of your religion or not. Actual arguments about religious dogma never featured very much at all when I was growing up around paramilitaries. It was very much country on country hate, religion just happened to also be a convenient divider - and remember Wolfe Tone was a protestant...
They were not standard terrorists, That was a military strike team. This is not the typical idiots that shoot with the gun over their heads, these guys were Navy Seal level of skills.
Yet none of the news outlets are talking about it.
Yes and no.
They had *just enough* training to be comfortable with the weapons and have a plan, but consider that they went up against newspaper editors in an office, and not a hardened military squad. And yes, judging by my radio on the way in, it is being discussed (albeit on the more right-leaning shows... the left-leaning ones are too busy trying to loudly restate the obvious, as in "OMG islam is a peaceful religion and these guys are not representatives of it and OMG they're no different from Jerry Falwell when he sued Hustler!**
I mean, c'mon - we're used to bumbling fools like the frickin' underwear bomber, so any terrorist with even a small modicum of military training is going to look like a 'SEAL-Delta-Para-Ranger-Force-Space-Shuttle-Door-Gunner(!)' to the masses.
TBH, at most they probably have about the same skill and training as, say, the typical Army boot half way through OSUT training. In other words, they know and are skilled enough to pull off the stunt they did, but would most likely collapse/die/fail if they faced anything stronger than a gaggle of cops (which is pretty much the most that they'd had to go up against so far).
** No shit - some idiot commentator on MSNBC made that comparison yesterday. And they wonder why no one takes that damned channel seriously these days...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?