I like the phrase “importing terrorists” that’s getting a lot of use suddenly. Like the government is going to someplace that sells foreigners and saying, “We’ll take some suicide bombers, a few that are trained on AK-47s, and a couple of utility infielders. Oh, and a mastermind.”
One guy out of how many recent migrants?
NO system will be 100% safe and, frankly, in some ways I’d be more worried about tourists and students (the 19 hijackers of 9/11 were in the US on student visas) than Syrian refugees who will, perhaps, be more strongly scrutinized.
OK, Back to this.
According this this website your numbers are way off. France has over 200,000 frontline military personnel.
Where did you get your numbers?
Well since the U.S. has bases in the Middle East and quite actively supports regimes there, I have a hard time describing it as “spill over” when someone attacks the U.S. citing that as a reason. When Hungary has to deal with hundreds of thousands of refugees, that’s a spill over effect. Bali is probably a valid example, when someone attacks tourism areas frequented by Westerners. Maybe you can explain what the phrase means to you…
I’m impressed by Hollande; he talks tough.
And for now he has the ability to back it. Europe has very liberal terrorist laws. I think I read that dozens have been detained in France and Belgium with tenuous links to the suspects.
If they’re paying for their food and shelter isn’t that pretty much what they’re doing? Do you think ISIS hasn’t figured out they can send in their buddies at their enemy’s expense.
Something that seems to have gone unnoticed is the train attack. Had that not been foiled the shooter had a captive audience of 554 people which would have dwarfed the current attack. It’s not like you can hop off a high speed train or find a place to hide.
Yeah, with their assault rifles and IEDs in their carry-on bags.
Nor is it likely that one perpetrator was going to shoot 554 people. Also, the shooter didn’t say he was doing it for polical reasons.
Considering there are 120+ dead bodies it’s safe to assume they figured out how to do it.
Or, and I’m just throwing it out for discussion, it’s possible for thousands of people to walk into Europe without anyone knowing.
Are you fucking kidding me? He was in a tube full of people who couldn’t leave. Where were they going? There were fish in a barrel. It was shear dumb luck that somebody got the jump on him because once he started shooting there was no way to rush him. In what universe was this not another Islamic attack?
His claim that he was going to rob people for food is ludicrous in a country where it’s literally illegal to throw food away.
Most of the attackers were French and Belgian. They certainly had arms and explosives locally.
Cite
Cite.
Oh, a train is 200 meter long tube. Also he’s a terrorist despite not making any political statement. Educate me more please
so, what exactly? You think they didn’t infiltrate the refugees? Is that what you’re saying?
i seriously don’t think that’s possible.
The articles were quite clear. Read 'em again.
I agree.
I’m utterly unimpressed with him. The git trawled his motorcade to the Bataclan like 10 minutes after the police assault, while the EMTs and police were still trying to sort out the mess, triage the wounded, keep everybody safe, keep watch for further attacks… Yeah, I’m sure a 20 car presidential detail coming to make a few “tough” statements musta helped everybody a ton.
But I guess some photo ops are a matter of life and death…
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OK, Back to this.
According this this website your numbers are way off. France has over 200,000 frontline military personnel.
Where did you get your numbers?
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French wikipedia. We have an army ~350,000 strong, actually. However, only 15,000 of those are tasked with foreign ops. The rest are for defending the country with (and I’m pretty sure that number includes the gendarmerie, which while administratively part of the armed forces is really a domestic, rural + crisis police force)
A LOT of countries are involved in the Middle East. Just about everyone does business with them of one sort or another. The lines are all muddled here.
You think the French weren’t involved in the Middle East? They were already involved in attacking ISIS in Syria, and they are major players in North Africa, fighting Islamists there. They weren’t and aren’t uninvolved bystanders in all this.
Yes, Bali is spillover. Hungary/Serbia/Croatia/etc. dealing with hundreds of thousands of migrating people is a spillover, but you can’t tell me that those countries haven’t been burning Middle Eastern oil like the rest of us, and it’s oil money that’s paying for most of the havoc coming out of the MENA. If you use anything made from petroleum you’re contributing.
Welcome to the global civilization, where the flapping butterfly in Syria causes slaughter in Paris and brings down Russia airplanes.
It’s not unnoticed - the French suspect the “mastermind” behind the Paris attacks was also involved in planning for the attempted train attack. The English media isn’t saying much about it, but some of us can read/hear French media.
It’s doubtful that guy would have killed all 554 people aboard - at some point, if death looks inevitable either way, some folks are going to rush him, it’s just our good fortune it happened sooner rather that later. You’re current, though, it would have been a blood bath if he hadn’t been stopped so soon.
Here’s the problem:
Let’s say you have 1,000,000 refugees. Even if NONE of them are a terrorist (however you define the term) statistically you’re going to have some criminals in there, ranging from petty pick-pockets up to rapists and murderers, you’re going to have some mentally ill people, probably some folks with a nasty disease, and so on. In other words, ANY sufficiently large group of refugees will have some not-nice people in the group. Some may be OK now, but down the line will become criminals or terrorists, and you can’t reliably predict who is going to be an Oscar Pistorus, known for wonderful accomplishments who later kills a family member/friend and goes to jail as a murderer, or some other good guy gone bad.
This notion currently being bandied about by some US governors that the Feds have to guarantee no immigrant will ever be or become a bad guy is bullshit. It can’t be done regardless of country of origin, ethnicity, religion, or any other characteristic. The ONLY way to guarantee no bad guy ever immigrates is to completely shut down all immigration. No newcomers, period. We could do that, just as we could drop a nuke on Raqqah, but it would definitely violate some of our own cultural norms in a big way.
Singling out Syria refugees is condemning people due to guilt by association. It’s discriminating on the basis of national origin - something we normally find reprehensible and indeed it is even criminal to do that in most circumstances in the US. It’s ignoring all the other ways Bad Guys can and have “infiltrated” our societies and caused mayhem and death. It ignores that MOST of the perpetrators of modern terrorists attacks are LOCAL PEOPLE who have joined the Bad Guys.
Oh - and it’s ALSO playing into the hands of ISIS who want to turn this into a war of the west against all Islam, who want safe haven denied to the Syrians who dared to flee their “nation” - they aren’t going to welcome those Syrian refugees back, they want to slaughter them as traitors.
Mind you, I am all for screening newcomers to our nation, but this is kneejerk bigotry.
My understanding of the gendarmerie is that they function much like the US National Guard does domestically - our National Guard provides aid after natural disasters, extra security domestically, and so forth. I don’t think the gendarmes are divided up by province the was the US National Guard is by state, but given the much greater geographical extent of the US de-centralizing the force makes some sense (along with historical/administrative/legal differences between US states and French provinces). Don’t take the analogy too far - our National Guard does travel abroad to fight, not sure the gendarmes ever have.