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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 may have averted their own Charlie Hebdo event, but sadly, the credibility of both sides of the "War on Terror" has been shot to hell -- primarily because of the actions of government which they thought people would take lying down. Most of them have, but even if they aren't in the streets protesting, they'll still roll their eyes and say "yeah, right".
Let's assume for the moment that this is completely legitimate, and an opportunity for the authorities to win back some respect. If so, they should carry the ensuing trial(s) openly for all to see. "We used surveillance programs to detect X, Y, and Z and couldn't have done it without them because A, B, and C" is exactly the sort of rational argument we'd like to see. If it turns out they did it through traditionally acceptable (like warrants) means, this weakens the argument of being able to do an end run around such procedures. Obviously this would be unwelcome from an authoritarian perspective, but it might win back some trust from those of us who do respect the actions of legitimate and responsible investigators.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
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?
Not if they get a nuke. Since Islam is an incredibly violent, sexist, evil false religion (source cited: the Quran) it should simply be outlawed everywhere. I don't give a fuck about religious freedom. All that does is allow Scientology to exist.
evil false religion (source cited: the Quran)
Out of curiosity, what would you consider a "true" (not false) religion?
And by not giving "a fuck about religious freedom," what exactly are you advocating? The thought police?
You nuke a city, we nuke a city. I say we start with Mecca. Three times a day, you can kneel, bow, and remember - for 10,000 years.
It took hundreds of years for Christians to let go of blasphemophobia. It may take as long for Muslims to let go of theirs.
They've *had* hundreds of years. What makes you think another hundred years will change anything?
Christians started tolerating "blaphemy" after they rose to power, and after they got their story straight to the point where they could face academic introspection, and after secular authority was predominantly in charge of the society in which they lived.
I jut have to point out that this happened in Australia. 16 men were picked up for exactly this same reason and then let go without charge. As it turns out the very day before wikileaks data revealed that NSW police were using spyware, an illegal technique as it is the same as domestic spying.
In the media frenzy that followed the politicians whipped the masses into a frenzy on one hand saying "we're all gonna die", then "everybody stay calm" and at the right moment introduced legislation that made the illegal techniques, legal.
I have to wonder if the same thing is happening here to the Belgian people. I am no fan of Islam and it's plethora of human rights violations however, any salient person can observe the governments using Islam to tighten their grip on ordinary people's freedoms.
Unfortunately since objective media doesn't exist anymore those who care can see the persistent slide to a police state world emerging with horror replete with the knowledge that dead men cannot be bought before a court of inquiry.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
And I don't know if he is commenting on events in the news.
Or perhaps he is commenting on a movie he saw.
He clearly has quite an imagination. He should be a writer!
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
There was a piece on NPR yesterday while I was driving home and the French guy they were interviewing was saying that their secret service people knew of about 5000 people who had gone to Syria and become radicalized and had fought and trained over there and have since returned. He then went on to complain about the level of surveillance it took to keep and eye on that many people, and on and on he went. I just don't get it. Call me stupid but if you know who they are and they're radicalized and especially if they are an immigrant, why don't you simply revoke their passport, put em on a plane back to Syria and call it a day?
Why would France or any other country not take these steps? If they were fully naturalized citizens I can see there being some other steps necessary but honestly even in this country with it's anti-terror laws if someone goes overseas to fight and be trained then they are immediately considered an enemy combatant and subject to detention. At least for the ones you have credible evidence and intelligence on. Someone gets convicted of trying to recruit for IS or AQ and they let em go? Seriously kick em out!
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.
Get them all free tickets to that great Muslim garbage disposal called Syria. Give them guns and send them out to shoot other islamofacists and be shot themselves. Win-win!
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
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.
It occurs to me that if you took a population and forbid explicit graphic representations depiction certain forms of art hundreds of generations you could actually cause a change of genetics, a fundamental alteration of the brains of the core members of that group which would result in the loss appreciation and sense of humor related to these types of illustrations. Individuals within this group might have a great deal of difficulty understanding that other cultures highly value cartoons. Selective breeding is a very interesting tool whether in the hands of man or Mother Nature. Evolution works, intentionally and sometimes not so intentionally. Be very careful what you inadvertently select for while aiming for your goals. World wars have been caused by lesser things.
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 !
reverting bad mod
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
I've been told there are some sects of buddhism that believe we can't possibly know any metaphysical crap and just need to focus on the here and now. i'm paraphrasing, but that sounds like a pretty rational basis to start with.
I'm not certain I'd even call that a religion.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I say cut it off at the source. The fundamentalist puritanical practices can be traced back to Saudi Arabia. If you read the history of the House of Saud you will see that the got where they are by doing exactly what ISIS is doing. Enslaving people, cutting off people's heads and basically getting where they were by the sword. If it weren't for all that oil money they'd be just another tribe in the middle east, but all that oil money gave them what they needed to spread their radical version of Islam far and wide through funding madrasses and various other institutions world wide. Is it any wonder that most of the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia? ISIS, Al Qeada, etc. can all trace their roots back to Saudi Arabia.
Here's an excerpt from Frontline on what Saudi Arabia is teaching their young people.
It seems there are not many candidate for suicide or life prison, even within jihadists. Now law enforcement fight back, I am not sure we will see waves of terrorists engaging SWAT-like units.
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.
I'm not Buddhist, but Buddhism itself doesn't have a deity. So even atheists can be comfortable w/ that one
If you are not With the Regime, you are Against the Regime.
Write an insightful blog? Speak too loudly at the local cafe? Hell, post something on Slashdot...
Boom! Now you can be shot down in cold blood and the government can spin any story it wants because everybody will believe it sight unseen.
Welcome to yesterday. Which of your neighbors do you think needs to be killed in the middle of the night for holding anti-government views? (You know, for thinking things like, government ministers shouldn't rape children at so-called "Pink Ballets".)
Good luck, friends.
They live in an impoverished country with little real government to speak of with lots of tribal warfare that may or may not have anything at all to do with religion.
That is unbelievable whitewashing bullshit of what happened, and you dishonor the 2000+ dead with your sickening lies/ignorance.
Boko Haram has stated openly they are an Islamic group and are trying to form an ISIS like African Caliphate . What more do you need to see the truth?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
I explicitly said the other YHWH-worshipping religions. So we can eliminate "Buddhists, Shintos, Hindus, Taoists and others" from your list, since that only includes Islamics, Christians, Jews, and their splinter sects. Your ignorance is spectacular, willful or not. And yes, we continue to see ongoing terrorism by all three of these religions. Most of the christian terrorism is Catholic, but they're still a kind of Christian, so it still counts. I'm not even talking about the inquisition here, although IMO that's still a valid reason to abolish their religion, since they proved they were insufficiently mature to handle the responsibility of being able to tell people what to do. Their whole religion is based on fear and guilt! The catholics are terrorizing their own believers. If you don't think that makes the world a worse place, you're not thinking. Guilt is one of the most powerful motivators we have, and its results are typically negative. But we also occasionally see a honest-to-God Christian right-wingnut terror attack, basically all the terror attacks by white people are by religious white people who always cite their faith as a factor if they bother to make an excuse at all.
TL;DR: You are disingenuous and/or a total fucking moron when you suggest that my call to abolish "all the YHWH-worshipping religions" slights "Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Shintos, Hindus, Taoists and others". No, just Muslims, Christians and Christian sects, and Jews. Get it straight, coward. Then run back to mama and hide behind her skirts.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's the reason security clearances thru airports now involve removing shoes, belts, coats and putting them in baggage trays.
Wrong. The reason we have to do that crap is to give the appearance of actually doing something instead of actually doing something. Add in that we are told that these actions are necessary for our protection and it makes people accustomed to hearing that so that other things (NSA domestic spying, terror watch lists, no fly lists, border checks not at the border, FISA court) also seem acceptable. This gives people like my mother the false sense of security and she will parrot lines like "if you have nothing to hide", and "if it stops even one terrorist" while telling people how great these programs are and she really didn't give up anything of value.
What has prevented another 9/11 even was 2 things, installing locking hardened cockpit doors, and the fact that if some terrorist tries to hijack a plane they will quickly become a red smear on the carpet with their remains stuffed into a airplane toilet. There are plenty of soft targets and anyone could build a bomb or take a semi auto hand gun into an airport security line and law waste to a large number of people but they don't. The simple fact that we don't see daily terrorist attacks tells me that there really aren't that many terrorists or that the ones that do exist are so phenomenally dumb that I am surprised they don't choke on their own tongues. Reality tells me that is it likely both as the few that are caught are so dumb that I find it hard to believe that they managed to find food without help. Take the latest one in the US with the guy wanted to go shoot up the US capitol. How hard is it to buy a firearm and not get noticed in the US. If you have a criminal record or might be being watched, should be assumed if you are planning a terrorist plot, go fucking buy one off Craig's list or out of the newspaper classified from a private seller. Also 600 rounds of ammo isn't much, at deer camp we call that just getting warmed up and will usually go through close to 2000 round putting holes in cans or other things that aren't deer.
Time to offend someone
OK, the whole scenario is a bit far fetched, however this is how it would play out, and their is historical precedent.
1) The USA has by far the largest, most powerful, most advanced, most strategic, military forces in the world. The next two in line Russia and China, are also not all that dominated by Muslims. When you start to look down the list, you got to go WAY down the list to find Muslim dominated countries with advanced military might. So in a strictly conventional war, it is really no contest.
However, as recent history has shown, it isn't entire nations, but radicalized groups... but of course we are talking entire populations, but whatever....
2) Only two nuclear weapons were ever used in war. They were used for basically one reason. The reports on what the estimated casualty rate of American soldiers varied but it was in the range of 500,000 to 1 million troops dead to invade Japan. A politician then weighed how unpopular it would be to order 1 million american citizens to their death VS incinerating a couple hundred thousands enemy civilians in a far off land. Obliviously, they went with Plan B, and that was just on the off chance that it MIGHT work. If you think that the US is incapable of making that exact same decision again, if faced with similar circumstances, particularly when the enemy lacks a response or anyway to deliver it, then you would be wrong. If you want to see how fast the moderates are in exposing and eradicating the radicalized components of that society, it wouldn't take long.
So you are right, anything like that would be unpopular as hell. However it only has to be less unpopular than the alternative for it to happen.
Wednesday at 5:00 AM, I woke up, in Antwerpen by the sound of a bomb. First they tried to get through the window of the neighbours, but they couldn't push their window-rollers up. They tried to ram my (armorized burglar-proof) door once as well. After, they rammed 2 ports and a few doors for more than 12 times in order to arrest someone who wasn't even officially living there. When going outside to check what was going on, as it sounded a war has started, I saw two armed masked men which were anything but friendly.
Never have seen this before like this and never woke up that fast, but with a barrel of a gun right in front of me when opening my front-door to see what was going on.
Tomorrow they will be having the military protecting Antwerpen. Happy happy, joy joy ..
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
They must be killed - judge, jury, executioner - before they can reveal that "Charlie" was a Gladio.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."