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2016 Brussels Bombings

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  • #31
    Although impossible to hide the arrests, it would have made more sense to quietly extract the perp and claim he died resisting arrest. Let him understand that noone will come looking for him now and then hand him over to the French secret squirrels to 'extract' everything he knows...
    The best part of repentance is the sin

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    • #32
      Originally posted by 1980s View Post
      Islam has been at war with all non-Muslims ever since the day Mohammad and his bandits made up their religion of submission.
      It appears we have an easy solution: convert to islam. Look at all the muslim nations. They are completely at peace.
      "Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

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      • #33
        U.S. Officials Bash ‘Shitty’ Belgian Security Forces

        Americans claim the Belgians are like clueless “children” who are too incompetent to handle today’s terror threat—or the attack that could come tomorrow.



        U.S. counterterrorism officials are frustrated and angry at Belgium’s inability to tackle ISIS terror cells that are successfully plotting murderous attacks on the West from inside the country’s tiny capital city.


        The twin terror attacks in Brussels that left at least 30 dead and 230 injured on Tuesday, despite repeated warnings from Washington, left U.S. officials fuming.
        A senior U.S. intelligence officer likened the Belgian security forces to “children".
        Continues
        In the realm of spirit, seek clarity; in the material world, seek utility.

        Leibniz

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        • #34
          Originally posted by drhuy View Post
          when in the last 50 years the kinds of paris attack or this attack are a norm?
          Scale is unimportant in terrorism. Terrorism is violence to perpetuate a feeling of fear among the population in order to further a political goal. The very fact that people take precautions of some kind puts the group in their mind; that's the goal.

          Originally posted by drhuy View Post
          besides, i'm curious as how you categorize "positive" and "negative" comments?
          A person telling her to shut the fuck up (with those words) or similar is a negative comment to me.

          Originally posted by Malchert View Post
          Brussels isn't the capital of Europe.
          Technically the "capital" is currently Amsterdam. It was Luxembourg until the end of last year, and will switch to Bratislava in July.

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          • #35
            Originally posted by kato View Post
            Scale is unimportant in terrorism. Terrorism is violence to perpetuate a feeling of fear among the population in order to further a political goal. The very fact that people take precautions of some kind puts the group in their mind; that's the goal.


            A person telling her to shut the fuck up (with those words) or similar is a negative comment to me.


            Technically the "capital" is currently Amsterdam. It was Luxembourg until the end of last year, and will switch to Bratislava in July.
            scale in unimportant in wars. so by your logic we are still technically in world war II.

            and its STILL funny when you STILL conveniently omit other parts of my comment.

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            • #36
              Originally posted by kato View Post
              Technically the "capital" is currently Amsterdam. It was Luxembourg until the end of last year, and will switch to Bratislava in July.
              I think maybe with Brussels being the seat of the EU parlay,voo , may hold some credence to being the capital , but there again , maybe not huh .

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              • #37
                Gentlemen.We should always try to see the good part.Pension problem is solved for 34 people,due to the efforts of a few hard working,innovative and industrious descendents of migrants.

                By the way.Fortunately all my friends in Brussels are fine.Was worried for a buddy who did not answered duly,but all is good.Life moves on.See ya for the next episode.
                All bets are off.My guess are Munchen or Malmo.
                Last edited by Mihais; 23 Mar 16,, 11:14.
                Those who know don't speak
                He said to them, "But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. Luke 22:36

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                • #38
                  Originally posted by Mihais View Post
                  Gentlemen.We should always try to see the good part.Pension problem is solved for 34 people,due to the efforts of a few hard working,innovative and industrious descendents of migrants.

                  By the way.Fortunately all my friends in Brussels are fine.Was worried for a buddy who did not answered duly,but all is good.Life moves on.See ya for the next episode.
                  All bets are off.My guess are Munchen or Malmo.
                  i think berlin, those terrorists aint stupid (which i cant say for some particular members here), they know where to strike for maximum impact.
                  Last edited by drhuy; 23 Mar 16,, 11:55.

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                  • #39
                    Originally posted by tankie View Post
                    I think maybe with Brussels being the seat of the EU parlay,voo , may hold some credence to being the capital , but there again , maybe not huh .
                    The primary (and official) seat of the parliament is in Strasbourg.

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                    • #40
                      Originally posted by chakos View Post
                      Although impossible to hide the arrests, it would have made more sense to quietly extract the perp and claim he died resisting arrest. Let him understand that noone will come looking for him now and then hand him over to the French secret squirrels to 'extract' everything he knows...
                      Agreed but speed is important when catching these types who are on active operations. Once you have one you need him/her to spill pronto. If he doesn't spill the beans you can say he is doing so and force his pals to break cover as I rather think happened in this case. Shame they didn't flee for safety is all.

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                      • #41
                        Originally posted by Parihaka View Post
                        How sad.

                        How much they have fallen since the 1980s when they were dealing with the Red Brigades, RAF, etc. The NATO countries used to show us the way.

                        Perhaps 9/11 shifted the balance. The UK has always been high up despite the London Transport bombings...they IRA taught them that. I would have hoped that London and Madrid would have energized them more fully...especially in light of borders opening wide.
                        “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
                        Mark Twain

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                        • #42
                          So remember the Moscow call that Malchert referred to? Turns out it was Belarusian...and refers to two brothers called Dovbash born in Belarus. “They are natives of Belarus. The KGB is aware of their existence, the Committee is carrying out checks on their participation in terrorist activity.” (in Belarus the KGB name still exists). Both brothers deny any participation but are in Brussels and have converted to Islam; Ivan is now "Suleiman" and Alexei calls himself "Khalid" apparently.

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                          • #43
                            actually, this doesn't cover the fact that Belgium has a paralyzed state, with the Flemish/Walloon divide. Europe is finding out that a lot of its arthritic institutions, problems swept away under the rug during the 90s and early 2000s, are now incapable of decisive action in a more unstable world.

                            http://www.vox.com/2016/3/23/1129017...lgium-jihadism

                            An expert explains how Belgium’s jihadism problem got so bad

                            Updated by Zack Beauchamp on March 23, 2016, 9:40 a.m. ET @zackbeauchamp [email protected]

                            In the wake of Tuesday's terrorist attack in Brussels, which ISIS has claimed responsibility for, there's one big question on everyone's mind: Why Belgium? How did this small European country become a hub and a target for radical extremists?

                            To find out, I called up Peter Neumann, a professor at King's College London and the director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation. As the name of his organization might suggest, Neumann is one of the world's leading experts on how people in the West come to commit violence in the name of groups like ISIS.

                            “"The security institutions in Belgium are very, very small"”

                            According to Neumann, Belgium isn't just one of many European countries with a homegrown extremist problem; it's the country with the biggest such problem on the entire continent. It's likely, then, that at least some of perpetrators of Tuesday's attacks at least have links to this Belgian radical network (as initial info about the suspects uncovered on Wednesday suggests).

                            There are at least two reasons why Belgium has this problem, by Neumann's account. First, the country has an especially longstanding and well-organized network of radical Islamist recruiters, making it easier for people to join up there than in other European countries. Second, its police and intelligence agencies are epically undersized, making them incapable of dealing with the past five years' massive surge in jihadist recruiting.

                            The Belgian state, according to Neumann, mostly turned a blind eye to these problems. So it was "just a question of time until something happened."

                            What follows is a transcript of our conversation, edited for length and clarity.

                            Zack Beauchamp: How big of a problem is jihadism in Belgium?

                            Peter Neumann: It's a big problem.

                            If you take, as a proxy, the people who have gone to fight in Iraq [and Syria], which are now estimated for Belgium to be 500, that's the biggest number per capita in all of Europe. That's why people like me who study this having been saying, for two or three years, that Belgium is top of the list of places where something might happen.

                            But it's not only the number of people that have gone. It's also relative to the size of the security institutions that are charged with monitoring them: The security institutions in Belgium are very, very small.

                            If you'd spoken to intelligence people or police people in Belgium, they would have been the first to admit that their agencies were not built for the number of people that they're supposed to monitor.

                            There's a huge gap between the size of the threat in that small European country and the institutions. Because of that gap, it was really just a question of time until something happened.

                            Paris was a warning. [The November] attacks were in Paris, yes, but they were essentially prepared in Belgium. So Belgium is at the top of the list for everyone who studies this phenomenon in Europe.

                            ZB: How did the problem of radicalism get so out of control in Belgium?

                            PN: There's a couple of things coming together.

                            In Belgium, like in France and other countries in Europe, you have these areas in cities that have over the past years, if not decades, become migrant ghettos. You had a lot of issues with social/economic deprivation — the best example of that is Molenbeek, the part of [Brussels] where all these jihadists seem to be coming from.

                            These are parts of Europe that have been completely abandoned by the state, by the authorities, by even Muslim communities. And for a long time, people were happy with that. They would be leaving us alone, and we would be leaving them alone.

                            But over the years, this situation festered. Jihadist structures took advantage of that, and basically go about their business almost unhindered. What happened after 2011-'12 is that groups like Sharia4Belgium — a prominent group — went into these places and very systematically recruited large numbers of people.

                            “"You have motivation all across Europe, but people don't always have the opportunity"”

                            The places where those groups operate are the places where most of the foreign fighters are going from, to Syria and Iraq. And they're also the places where we now think those networks are hiding.

                            It's the combination of having deep social and economic problems, a government that was no longer interested in engaging in those areas, and extremists taking advantage of that vacuum and implanting themselves in those areas. Quite a lot of things have gone wrong in Belgium. Not only in Belgium but also in France.

                            ZB: Okay, but if Belgium and France have similar problems with neglected and isolated communities, why has Belgium's per capita rate of jihadism gotten so much worse in recent years?

                            PN: The war in Syria was the cause of this mobilization: That affected Belgium and other European countries. But for some reason — and people in Belgium haven't completely figured it out — it affected Belgium a lot more strongly than other European countries.

                            If you go to Belgium, that's the first question they ask themselves: "Why us?" I'm not sure I have the perfect answer to that; other European countries are also strongly affected by that, but Belgium seemed to be particularly strongly and particularly suddenly affected.

                            I think it is correlated with the activities of certain groups — like the one I just mentioned, Sharia4Belgium — which were particularly active in picking up people and channeling them into [radical] structures. Some of them go to Syria, but some of them stay back and become part of the jihadist movement.

                            ZB: Are there equivalents to Sharia4Belgium — which existed before the Syria war — in other countries?

                            PN: In some countries, yes, but it was particularly active and particularly strong in Belgium.

                            Look, there's grievances everywhere. In a lot of countries, people are unhappy, they maybe don't like society particularly much. But not in every place is there something that you can channel your grievance into. And the activities of these groups, and the presence of those groups in particular in Belgium, made it possible for them to channel that grievance in the direction of jihadism.

                            Whereas in other places, people would have looked around and not found anything. Perhaps they would have been very frustrated but would not have had the opportunity to do something.

                            So it's about motivation and opportunity, like every crime. You have motivation all across Europe, but people don't always have the opportunity.

                            ZB: So Belgium had a preexisting network of radical recruiters before the Syria war, who could then really ramp up their activities once the war began. And to make matters worse, the Belgian security forces are unusually weak.

                            PN: It's a country with a population of 11 million people that, historically, hasn't had a big terrorism problem. It's also a country that's deeply divided within, where you don't really have a functioning federal structure.

                            All of that contributed to the situation we're having now: We have security agencies that could have maybe coped with, say, 100 people going to Syria, but not 500.

                            “"Politicians in Belgium reacted too late"”

                            Compare this to America. In America, we have a country with a population of 330 million and security agencies that are all over the place. And you have 100 foreign fighters to look after.

                            In Belgium, a country with a population of 11 million, you have 500. And every foreign fighter comes with people who are connected to him [in radical activity] who have stayed at home. So this is a massive, massive, sudden rise of jihadist activity that security agencies were not able to cope with from 2013 onward.

                            People in the intelligence community in Belgium were pretty open, saying, "Guys, we are completely overwhelmed. We have no idea what's going on, and it'll only be a question of time until something blows up."

                            ZB: So why didn't Belgium build up its security establishment in response?

                            PN: No one saw this coming. [In] 2011-2012, you suddenly have people in large numbers — numbers that the agencies and authorities were not expecting — going to Syria and Iraq. And the threat perception wasn't so great, so the growth of these institutions didn't keep up with the growth of the threat.

                            It's also very questionable whether you can grow security agencies as fast as the threat. You cannot just say, if the FBI is suddenly surprised by 10,000 foreign fighters in America, that tomorrow we're going to hire 10,000 people for the FBI. It doesn't work like that. You have to grow these institutions organically; people have to be trained.

                            So you cannot double the size within half a year, but that wasn't even the intention. Politicians in Belgium reacted too late to what was happening on the ground. It was a political failure, in terms of not allowing these agencies to grow.

                            But the more profound failure was to basically allow this situation to grow in the first place: to not engage with parts of the Belgian population that clearly were being abandoned. You essentially allowed a vacuum to rise in your own country. And that's the root cause of the problem: Where you have a vacuum, that vacuum will be filled.

                            If you have a vacuum that consists of alienated, marginalized people from migrant backgrounds who are socially and economically deprived, then it is only a question of time. Of when extremists go into that, take advantage, and push their narrative — which is basically that society is against you, and you need to engage in war.
                            There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

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                            • #44
                              Blame Belgium not Obama... but it started in Syria and no doubt in retrospect many things could have done better but it takes time to follow one lead let alone a few thousand. Blaming this on Belgium is easy but we all share responsibility.
                              Last edited by snapper; 23 Mar 16,, 16:39.

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                              • #45
                                Originally posted by Albany Rifles View Post
                                How sad.

                                How much they have fallen since the 1980s when they were dealing with the Red Brigades, RAF, etc. The NATO countries used to show us the way.
                                Isn't it. The Paris attacks placed Belgium squarely in the crosshairs, yet they all seemed to go to sleep afterward. Yes they caught Abdeslam, but seriously, how many months did that take. It should have been 48 hours. There's something much worse than incompetence there.
                                In the realm of spirit, seek clarity; in the material world, seek utility.

                                Leibniz

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