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Belgian Raid Kills 2, Said To Avert "Major Terrorist Attacks"
As reported by CNN, Reuters, and other outlets, a raid in the Belgian city of Verviers -- one of several counter-terrorism actions in the country today -- ended in the death of two men, and the capture of a third, who are said to have been planning imminent acts of violence akin to the ones earlier this month in France. From Reuters' coverage:
Coming a week after Islamist gunmen killed 17 people in Paris, the incident heightened fears across Europe of young local Muslims returning radicalised from Syria. But prosecutors' spokesman Eric Van Der Sypt said the Belgian probe had been under way before the Jan. 7 attack on French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. ... Describing events in the quiet provincial town just after dark, he said: "The suspects immediately and for several minutes opened fire with military weaponry and handguns on the special units of the federal police before they were neutralised." ... Earlier in the day, prosecutors said they had detained a man in southern Belgium whom they suspected of supplying weaponry to Amedy Coulibaly, killer of four people at a Paris Jewish grocery after the Charlie Hebdo attack. After the violence in Verviers, La Meuse newspaper quoted an unidentified police officer saying: "We've averted a Belgian Charlie Hebdo."
Did you not notice the part where the third wasn't killed?
And to give you an example you might understand, last week, Islamists killed 2,000 people in Nigeria.
Remind me, how many people has the Westboro Baptist Church killed?
So, as a French, I will tell you: the attacks of last week only happened because of the effective control that exists in France to keep surveillance away from the innocent and the general population. The two first attackers were known to the authorities for joining jihad in Syria; they were sent to jail when they came back and had their phone wiretapped for 3 years after they were reselased. In July 2014, the national commission on phone surveillance disallowed the secret services to continue wiretapping these two, since they had done nothing wrong had just become regular citizen (they are NOT allowed to wiretap without a warrant and they need strong clues on possible terrorist attacks to get one). It wasn only six month later these guys decided to origanize the attacks; few more month of wiretapping warrant and the attacks were prevented (just like they were today in Belgium).
The only unequivocal point is that they did surrender. If they had truly believed in fighting until the last Japanese person died in a ditch, they would have.
No, it is not the only unequivocal point. There are records of the high command's meetings.
OK, let's be clear about something here. Hirohito was not an absolute ruler, but he had a lot of clout and the people in the Japanese council were eager to spare him the task of making decisions. Also, they feared for their own status after a surrender. It is of note that ultimately, he was the one who announced to the Japanese people that it was time to lay down their arms. So he did have authority and could have chosen to wield it at any time. It is clear that the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima shocked the Japanese, but only the second strike at Nagasaki caused them to sue for peace. In this, both the ruling clique and Hirohito himself can be blamed for sitting on their asses and letting their people get firebombed (whether conventionally or atomically) for too long.
That said, the bombs came along with the Soviet invasion of Manchuria and Korea...never forget that that happened almost simultaneously. Truman's decision to drop bombs when he did was partially politically motivated inasmuch as there was an imminent plan for the Soviets to invade Hokkaido, the most northerly Japanese home island. This would have entitled the Soviets to an occupation zone in Tokyo and Japan, and we might have spoken later of "communist North Japan" and "South Japan".
Then, there was the lack of desire to let MacArthur wrap himself in glory in the invasion of Japan itself. Never mind the hundreds of thousands (or millions) of casualties expected.
It was important to the US for Japan to surrender exactly when Japan did, and no later. The answer is never as simple and black and white as we would like.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.