Paris attacks 128 dead at Batclan reported, 99 in criticsl.

I don't watch Sky so cannot comment. But yes the BBC reporters are asking the most banal of questions.

 

Unless you're in Glasgow, in which case we'll boot you in the balls while you're on fire.

 

Pretty well, considering.

I was stationed to Basra for 4 months. 127 mortar and rocket attacks later (we got a nice PoI map on the last day), it was just another daily occurrence. Only if you heard the launch would it get a bit hairy as you knew their homemade rockets had the range to hit the base.

 

I'm not frightened because I don't watch the news and, more importantly, don't live in a capital city.

 

If ISIS really wanted to put the willies up the general populace, they would *snip*

Not going to give them ideas, though I know what I'd do....

 

If you're going to say 'target towns and random smaller cities', I thought this years ago too. But I'm sure these guys want to go out with a bang (pun really not intended) and be the legendary martyr that infamously blew up a capital or monument. They're not gonna die for a charity shop in Wetwang, because ultimately it's not about religion or a higher purpose, it's for themselves.

 

Because getting fake passport is hard?
Foreigners are required to have passport/id with them at any time, even nationals can be detained to verify their identity. It wouldn't be in bombers interest to be detained before he reached its target, would it?

 

This whole thing is rather grim.

But I don't see IS going anywhere any time soon. Unless someone stoops to their level and starts using terror tactics. Which seems unlikely.

 

I think these surgical strikes paired with (probable) SF teams are doing a pretty good job of taking out the hierarchy.
These goons don't have the nouse to act covertly in the open, so I don't think it'd be such a stretch to pick them out if they decided to go to ground.

The thing that gets me, is that almost all of these attacks have been carried out by 'known' individuals. It's a slippery slope, but something needs to be done pre-emptively instead of waiting for these PoS' to do something like this.

 

I, somehow, don't think removing the hierarchy is the way to fight these groups.

Considering the number of "big names" we've killed over the years in groups like IS, and made no difference to their effectiveness. I believe they're called "cells" because they don't rely on the same force organisation that we do. It protects the overall plan, and the leaders, from being directly involved with every plan.

 

Hence my 2-pronged statement. Most of the individuals with connections to IS in western countries are 'known' by their respective intelligence services.
My proposals are probably pretty extreme to most, but to pull in the 'guaranteed' jihadist's, and 'question' them for information on their connections is the only way to get anywhere.

The USA did a lot of things wrong with Guantanamo, but the amount of plots it foiled proved that the system worked if used correctly.
The same thing goes for PRISM. I personally don't give a flying you-know-what if the government want to track my 'habits', but if that same tracking leads to the apprehension of murderers, then I'm all for it.
If the public have nothing to hide, then why are they so against it?

 

Nearly all of them were "French citizens" - they were born in France.

 

I am a big fan of not being stalked by my own government - The people of any country should not be afraid of their government, the government should be afraid of its people. Striping away an entire countries privacy in the guise of protective surveillance does nothing (See: Lee Rigby, his killers were known to government agencies and deemed low risk - Yes they only killed one person, but they were astonishingly brutal about it, and no one should be killed by some psychotic extremists nutjob).

I realise my habits are largely uninteresting and I'd never get flagged as a terrorist, but unless you want to live in a dictatorship and actually enjoy freedom of information, then you have to take a stand against being stalked.

If I had the time to form a cohesive opinion about it (with evidence), I'd argue that the wests continued interference with the sand-trap countries with oil has been the largest motivation for people to blow us up, kill us like animals, and generally get us all willing to sign our rights away in the name of protection.

What happened in Paris was awful, no country deserves that, but equally no that is no excuse to force us into a world where every man woman or child is stalked by their government. And if that's the direction the world goes, it won't be far behind that every country has a GITMO, and people are abducted in the street in the name of 'security'.


That's the price of freedom - Sometimes we piss off the wrong people and we become the target.

 

Isn't that a little contradictory, if most of the individuals with connections to IS in western countries are 'known' by their respective intelligence services then why the need to lock people up without due process, or to throw away the presumption of innocence, one of the corner stones of society and our legal system, by treating everyone as guilty.

It's seems if we head down that route we are no better than those who wish to do us harm.

 

Great, so our intelligence services can know everybody who's going to carry out a terrorist attack, but can't do anything to effectively stop it, as was the case in Paris.
These people are known individuals, with connections to IS. You can't possibly tell me that that connection is to send them milk and cookies on a monthly basis.

To pre-empt them is the only way to stop or at least minimise these attacks with the least amount of collateral damage.

 

that's not the point I was making - why did they even have them on them in the first place....

 

As it was already explained before - they could have been stopped by police for a routine car check; also pretty much all of them were coming from Belgium. Unlike UK and US, you usually carry your ID card with you, in case police officer would ask you to prove your identity. Yeah, they have that right.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34830233

And the retroactive action has begun.

These suspects could probably all have been arrested a long time before these attacks took place, but the public outcry has forced the law's hand to take action.

 

You seem to have missed the point, you said, and i agree that most of the individuals with connections to IS in western countries are 'known' by their respective intelligence services.

But you then go on to say that we should lock people up without due process, without trail, or just on the basis of a rumor because of the amount of plots doing that foiled, if it foiled so many plots and the individuals were known to the respective intelligence services then why didn't locking them up work?

Then same holds true for mass surveillance, if the bad guys were known to the intelligence services then why the need to survival people that have done nothing wrong.

You seem to be saying we should disregard due process and treat everyone as guilty because there's bad guys wishing to do us harm, bad guys that are already known. If we already know who the bad guys are why the need for extrajudicial punishments and killings, why the need to treat innocent people as guilty?

 

Because we don't seem to do anything with the bad guys until they start senselessly killing in a western city!
I'm sure that once the dust has settled and their histories are uncovered, we will find out that some of these individuals had been to Syria/Iraq/Lebanon etc and had carried out killings for IS.