Paris Terror Spurs Plan For Military Zones Around Nuclear Plants

mdsolar sends this report from Bloomberg: Lawmakers in France want to create military zones around its 58 atomic reactors to boost security after this month's Paris terror attacks and almost two dozen mystery drone flights over nuclear plants that have baffled authorities.

"There's a legal void that needs to be plugged," said Claude de Ganay, the opposition member of the National Assembly spearheading legislation to be considered by parliament on Feb. 5. The proposals would classify atomic energy sites as "highly sensitive military zones" under the control of the Ministry of Defense, according to an outline provided by de Ganay.

Comments

Re:Sounds about reasonable for once...

[Roodvlees]

The same can be said for any measure.
The area around nuclear plants is already highly controlled.
So activists always get stopped within it, they don't make it to the actual nuclear reactor.
Changing that area into a military area just means it becomes illegal to fly over it and allow them to shoot those drones down.
And maybe the activists will get more severe punishments for trying to breach.

Police

[prefec2]

Fighting local terror is a police task. They are trained for that. They normally don't shoot people, they try to apprehend them. It would be a total disaster if we would think that we are on war with something. True the US is at war with all number of problems, like drugs, terror, violence you name it, but that is not a solving strategy. Beside the will of "security people" we should fight terrorists with good police work and we should address the core issues which trigger people to become terrorists. One key ingredient for radicalization (which is a requirement to become a terrorist of any kind) is a feeling of powerlessness and the feeling of lack of communication. The latter includes that nobody really listens to you. It is not enough when you are allowed to post or say anything, as long as no one is really engaging in a personal discussion (not debate) then there is no real communication in terms of the problems the people have. Also people get frustrated and angry, because what ever they do they are not getting anywhere. For instance in Germany or France it is harder to get an apprenticeship training position if you have a foreign name, especially if it sounds Turkish or Arabic. It is worse with small companies than with bigger ones and it is worse if you are male. In addition your school grades are similar effected (males) when you have a foreign name or if you have a name which is typical associated with low income (e.g. Kevin in Germany).

Re:Police

[swb]

we should address the core issues which trigger people to become terrorists.

What if one of the "core issues" is a substantial difference in cultural values?

Immigrants show up with cultural values completely at odds with the dominant culture and move into self-isolated communities. The dominant culture rejects the immigrants' value system, which combined with the isolation of a separate community, seems to contribute to the sense of alienation and powerlessness. Some, rather than choosing assimilation, instead choose a kind of victim mindset, seeing the rejection of their values as a kind of active oppression and become ripe for radicalization.

None of this is to say that the dominant culture may have in fact engaged in some actual good old-fashioned discrimination, but labeling all of the dominant cultures rejection of the immigrant's culture seems wrong when things like separation of religion and state, women's equality or concepts like blasphemy are in play.

I just don't know how you "fix" conflicts like this.

Re:Police

[swb]

Which is why I said "sense of powerlessness" -- I don't know that anyone is ever totally powerless, outside of maybe some kind of prison inmate in a 24-hour solitary confnement situation.

Obviously a member of a more or less free society can project physical power through some kind of violence (guns, bombs, going batshit nuts with a knife in a crowd, even).

But the belief that one lacks the kind of conceptual power to shape their future or influence their larger environment is what I was getting at. And usually the greater the perceived sense of powerlessness, the more over the top the physical response usually is.

The problem with talking about the actual power of "the Muslims" (a fraught concept in and of itself) is that in most ways of looking at it, relative to the West, the Muslims power seems pretty small, politically, militarily, and perhaps even culturally and ideologically.

It strikes me that most flavors of Islam are ideologically and culturally non-competitive with secularized cultures through their rejection of forms of social organization and interaction that limit their ability to adapt or innovate. As one example, suppressing women seems to cut off half your source of economic power, intellectual innovation and inhibits social values that even traditionally patriarchical cultures like Christianity seem to have embraced.

Re:Police

[drinkypoo]

As one example, suppressing women seems to cut off half your source of economic power, intellectual innovation and inhibits social values that even traditionally patriarchical cultures like Christianity seem to have embraced.

"seem to". Christianity is a whole lot less homogenized than Islam, which itself does have distinctions. Many Christian sects (I'm looking at you, Catholics) think women are fine as long as they do as they're told and don't step out of line. But some are still outright oppressing them, like the Amish. Then again, their whole culture is about oppression. Their religion can't survive without it. And indeed, the Amish suppress their people, and their women especially.

Most so-called Christians aren't particularly religious, especially if you judge them by their actions — the only valid way to judge anyone. They pick and choose freely from their holy book and ignore all the parts they don't like. Their religion isn't mandatorily theocratic, and most of them don't have doctrine that requires them to try to convert people all of the time. But more importantly, the western world has already collectively considered making it the law, and rejected it. Now we're going to have to go through that process all over again with Islam. The sad part is, we've been through this already, and these primitive screwheads want us to go through it all again. But those few of us who remember history have little stomach for it. Crusades, Inquisition, we just don't want to mix our religion and our law, thank you very much. And yes, anyone who does is seriously primitive, like centuries out of date primitive, and so is their faith.

Re:Domestic war

[prefec2]

There is no F******G war going on. 20 people where killed, 17 by terrorists. We have a problem with equality and participation and integration in Europe. However, we are not on war with a part of our own population. And while 17 dead people is horrible, we have more dead people in traffic related accidents 3250 per year or smoke or germs in hospitals everyday. So get that in perspective. Yes we have to address terrorism. We have to do this with police work and social work and a good integration strategy which does not put immigrants in ghettos and throw away the keys.

Re:Domestic war

[prefec2]

No it is not. However, most people are unable to distinguish between islamists, islamistic terrorists and normal muslims. While the first and second make and ideology out of their religion, the third (most muslims) do not. If you want to fight the problem then you have first to understand the problem. The problem is that people become fanatics and try to use force to push their ideology onto you. So why do people become fanatics? We had our share of fanatics in Europe in context of different ideologies. For example, the Red Army Fraction (RAF) in Germany and Basque terrorists. The RAF was fought with police methods and their support was diminished by starting a dialog with those people who sympathized with them. Resulting in an integration and dialog. If this dialog had been established in the beginning , the radicalization would not have taken place at all. Most of those terrorists where from religious (Christian) background and loved peace. However, they felt that the system was oppressive and must be overthrown. The felt helpless and radicalized. We know from research that similar processes cause radicalization of people into islamists. War is never a good solution, if you want to reduce violence.

Re:Domestic war

[cold fjord]

The Maginot Line was largely successful in repelling direct assault. German forces were forced to go around it in the interests of time.
The meaningful difference between Dien Bien Phu and the nuclear plants is the possibility of rapid response by external forces to assist the garrison, and this time la Légion étrangère would be available for intervention rather than invested, as would the la Gendarmerie nationale.

Multiple zones are needed, including zone de sécurité, zone d'exclusion.

Re:Safe nuclear energy?

[Chrontius]

A coal plant with ten years worth of coal stockpiled on site, plus a similarly sized ash pond, would be just as juicy a target.

We just don't have the technology to detect the toxins released by that remotely - except in so far as the coal ash is itself startlingly radioactive.

Re: Domestic war

[Anonymous Coward]

Europes problems with equality, participation and integration are caused by a rapidly growing minority, who refuse the secular, humanist principles that modern Europe is founded on.

So yes, in a sense Europe is at war with its own citizens. Though it occasionally flares up into armed combat, It's primarily a war of principles and ideas.

Secularism vs. religion permeating government and every public and private space.
Equality of race and gender, vs. religiously mandated misogyny, and medieval standards of decency and sexuality.
Humanist principles vs. religious orthodoxy.

Re:Domestic war

[Flavianoep]

The problem is not the it is islamophobic to define the enemy. Out of more than 6 million Moslems only three committed attacks, which is less than 0.000 5 %o of the Moslem population. Moreover, such shooters where in association with a foreign militant group; AFAIK there is no militant group of French Moslems nor are such attacks condoned by any representative of Moslem groups in France. Therefore, it would be too immature to identify Moslems as the enemy.

Re:Who forced the French to accept...

[nospam007]

"...millions of muslims in their country?"

It's a small thing called 'Constitution'. Also, half of Africa speaks French for some reason you can't remember, I'm sure.

Re:The enemy

[Flavianoep]

The real enemy of France is the government

It is the government of France which has allowed unabated invasion of the Moslems into the country

Most of those Moslem that immigrated to France are from former French colonies, what is to say that they are from countries that France invaded first.

Re:Sounds about reasonable for once...

[gtall]

You have no understanding of the modern U.S. military. They spend a lot of effort just on understanding the social dynamics of any conflict zone. If they thought killing everything in sight was a wise idea, Afghanistan and Iraq would be barren wastelands where nothing would life. The inhabitants seem to have every intention of turning them into wastelands. Maybe you got the two groups confused.

Re:Domestic war

[Roodvlees]

Seems to me they just don't understand why people are flying drones over nuclear reactors and wanna be able to shoot down those drones, just in case it's a bunch of criminals.

Re:Domestic war

[Yoda222]

It's difficult to get rid of something which don't exist. But be reassured, the number of remaining "no-go" zone is now zero. Vous pouvez éteindre Fox News et reprendre une activité normale.

Re:Domestic war

[cold fjord]

There are guerilla wars, insurgencies, or even open warfare, going on across the world by Islamic extremists to impose their view of society, including Iraq, Syria, Yemen, the Phillippines and many other places. What makes you think Europe is immune to this?

16% of French Citizens Support ISIS, Poll Finds

One in six French citizens sympathises with the Islamist militant group ISIS, also known as Islamic State, a poll released this week found.

The poll of European attitudes towards the group, carried out by ICM for Russian news agency Rossiya Segodnya, revealed that 16% of French citizens have a positive opinion of ISIS. This percentage increases among younger respondents, spiking at 27% for those aged 18-24.

Poll reveals 40pc of Muslims want sharia law in UK

Ignorance and denial are a poor basis for public policy, although they are often the fodder for moderation.

Re:Domestic war

[K. S. Kyosuke]

and politicians rightly so won't touch that with a 10' pole.

That would be a three-meter pole in France.

Re:Domestic war

[cheesybagel]

Uh... You are kind of overestimating Jewish contributions to those programs. While it is true that Edward Teller was Jewish and Enrico Fermi left Italy because his wife was Jewish a lot of the work was done by other people. As for the space programs in both the Soviet Union and the USA a lot of contributions came from former Nazi scientists rather than Jews.

In the end the war was unwinnable because the Nazis simply did not have neither the population nor the production capacity. Germany lost WWII before nuclear weapons were actually available. So they only were actually used in Japan. As for the Germans they had like three teams working in nuclear weapons problems and just because Heisenbergs, the most well funded, was crap does not mean all of them were. For example one of those other small German nuclear teams got shipped to the Soviet Union and finished the uranium centrifuge separation process there.