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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."
They'll keep doing it till they're kept so busy at home that they don't have time for this foreign adventurism. It's an asymmetric war. You can choose to ignore it and the murders, or you can fight it. Staying neutral isn't an option.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Seems like ISIS has effectively declared war on the US and Europe. How many attacks like the ones in France, and how many thwarted attacks like the ones discussed here, will it take before we decide to load up and actually take them out? This is different than the last two Iraq wars, and different than Afghanistan. Does anyone know what we are actually waiting for? Is it because there is no oil, or not enough public outrage? Are we waiting for another catastrophic attack to justify our actions? Why are we not taking them out now?
Like Charlie Whosit major? We are so weak and pathetic. What was the toll? 10? 15? More people probably choked and died eating fast food that day. And thousands march supposedly to defend "freedom of speech" at the same time their leaders/legislators wish to take as much of it away as possible.
Oh did anybody march in Nigeria this week? Last month? How many world "leaders" showed up there? More died as a result of terrorism there in the past month than probably in the past five years (if not quite a bit more) in Europe.
Terrorism as existed for ages. To get wound up and bent out of shape the way people do now over a handful of deaths is insane and contributes to the continuation of the attacks.. If this is the best that Al or Bob Qaeda and ISIS can manage can't we all just give it a freakin rest? It is one thing to feel some sorrow for the families of those kiled but quite another for whole societies to change their principals and ways of life.
Isn't that what we're asking? How could this all happen? Why did those kids become radical jihadists? Do we have to be afraid of Islam now? Is there going to be another threat to the Occident from the Turkish raiders like in 1600s and 1700s? Should we kick all Muslims out? Or put them in camps to give them a chance to concentrate better? And anti-Islam organizations are forming already. In Germany, PEGIDA formed. Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West (it does work as an acronym in German, but PEATIOTW simply has no ring to it). And every right wing nutjob party left and right jumped up and cried that THEY are the REAL pegidiots. And everyone is wondering just why this all happens and what we can do now.
Why, what, how?
It's actually quite simple. And it's no wonder that it started in France. Europe has had a lot of immigration from Arab and Maghreb countries. Middle Europe more from Turkey, France more from North Africa. And those immigrants have two things in common: They're mostly Muslim, and they're treated like shit in the countries they went to. They were dumped into ghettos ... sorry, into certain areas that are suitable for them to settle in "so they can be among themselves", got shitty jobs nobody else wanted to do, get inferior payment to "good native" citizens, are looked down upon ... in a nutshell, they're second class citizens. If that.
But, well, they didn't complain. As odd as it may sound, they didn't think this was wrong. They came here because, well, the situation at home was not too great and they were needed as workers. Yes, really. Back when most of these people came there was actually a shortage of laborers. People who'd clean our floors, empty our waste baskets, cleaned our yards and did all the other petty crap nobody wanted to do for the pennies offered. They were actually content with it, they looked back at their former home country and could at least say, hey, it's better than that shit! And our kids will one day be living here and they'll have it better. They were mostly accepting it with the prospect that their kids will be French/German/Austrian/Danish/Dutch/Belgian/yougettheidea, and then they'll no longer be second class but they'll be one of "the good natives". And while usually religious, they were hardly what we today would consider fundamentalists. They were Muslims, often quite devout, but not out to preach or even kill the Infidels.
Well, time went on and the second generation came to be. They were born "here". They had no real ties to their parents' native country except that they'd maybe remember having family there, maybe even going there to visit Grandfather and Grandmother, along with the others that stayed. For the US people here, think of it as if your forefathers once came from Europe, say, after WW2, and you're visiting those relatives. Yes, sure, you remember that your family has ties there. But you feel like you're from the US, don't you? Well, these people feel like they should be French/German/..., but they cannot. To the French/German/... they're still "the African" and "the Turk". They're not "one of us". They're still "one of them". They still get only the crappy homes, can only get the crappy job, can still just get shitty payment and are still looked down as second class citizens.
And that's something that's hard to digest. Because the message is clear: You'll never be one of us. That you're born here means jack. You're still the African to us. You're still the Turk to us. You're still second class. You will never belong here. And you can't even hope that your kids will.
Now, for a moment think how you'd feel if the country you call home considers you "inferior" and a good portion of the people would just love to "send you back home", to a country you have no ties at all to. With a good chance that you don't even speak the language properly, if at all.
You might understand that this does breed some contempt. And you
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Only 900,000 to go in Belgium.
I'm a little segfault, short and stout.
Why is there the fanatical demand that the GP not 'stop there'? When you have Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Shintos, Hindus, Taoists and others causing terror and other law & order problems, THEN it will make sense equating them with the others. Charlie Hebdo, for instance, insulted the 3 major religions, but did their staff ever get threatened, much less killed, by any Christian or Jewish fanatics? It was only the Muslims who threatened them and carried it out. Where are the Jewish or Catholic ghettos in Paris, which are no go zones for French police? Where are the churches or synagogues that instruct their sheeple on how to carry out a terror attack for $DEITY? Given all the events of the last 2 weeks, people are quite justified in directing their rage at just Muslims, and not other religious groups
After the carnage of World War II, Europe used to be a place where people, no matter if they are truly civilized or not, tried to behave with civility
... until the Europeans decided to "diverse" their society by importing the Islamists in
With the Islamists came the bombings and killings and mayhems and intimidation and you know what the so-called 'European Leaders' wanna do ?
Import even more Islamists into Europe !
As though the cure for a cancer patient is to put even more cancerous cells inside the body
Sooner or later Europe gonna be overwhelmed by the Islamists
Sooner or later National Cathedrals will be replaced by National Mosque
No more bikini, no more women's rights, no more diversity, for all must kow-tow to Allah, or have their heads cut off
Congratulations, Europeans, for you have brought the troubles all onto yourselves !
There is a pretty good reason for Islam to be singled out. There have been close to 25,000 terror attacks since 9/11. It's the reason security clearances thru airports now involve removing shoes, belts, coats and putting them in baggage trays. Which other religious group has carried out relentless campaigns of terror and intimidation worldwide? When was the last time Jews flew planes into skyscrapers? When was the last time Christians issued death threats against newspapers or cartoonists? When was the last time Hindus went off on a religious war to Nepal, planning to return to the West to carry out terror attacks? When was the last time Buddhists made any part of any city ghettos that the city's police couldn't enter? But each of the above has been done by Muslims, and throughout the world - whether it's Jihadi attacks by Abu Sayyaf in Philippines, to last weeks rampage in Paris.
It's one thing for a group of people to simply believe in an imaginary leader. It's quite another to try and make the imagined diktats of that leader the law for everybody, regardless of whether they believe in it or not.