Terrorist Attacks in Denmark

[ghost]

The fate of the brownshirts, when their leaders no longer needed a dimwitted army of bruisers - and worse, began to see them as a threat - should give these young Jihadis serious pause:

These people mean as much to their leaders as the men they kill mean to them.

This is all too true and scary I fear we are spiraling towards another world war.

[Cleopatra7]

The fate of the brownshirts, when their leaders no longer needed a dimwitted army of bruisers - and worse, began to see them as a threat - should give these young Jihadis serious pause:

{b}These people mean as much to their leaders as the men they kill mean to them.{/b}

This is exactly what I was trying to say. The guys (and gals, since there have been more than a few female suicide bombers) who engage in these lone wolf attacks knowing they'll be killed are little more than canon fodder for the higher ups in groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS. Osama bin Laden obviously wasn't afraid of engaging in direct combat as he did during his last stand, but he never would have committed a suicide bombing himself, because he fancied himself as a leader whose survival was crucial to the project of building an Islamic state. It's the same thing with ISIS, whose leadership remains largely hidden from sight while the impoverished foot soldiers take all the risks.

[Coco]

This is all too true and scary I fear we are spiraling towards another world war.

What's frightening is the dance that Russia, Germany, and China are doing. i hope Angela Merkel can hold on to sanity for everyone, for dear life. Supposedly China is going to help Russia out, which is cause for some concern. Then you have the Russian people who are really feeling the pain from the sanctions and getting angry. That's kind of what was going on in Germany back before WWII - angry people devastated after the first world war. Everyone has to be so, so careful.

I wish that i were smart enough to have a better grasp on events. Listening to 30 minutes of the McLaughlin Group is where i've gotten this information. The coming presidential election debates are going to be fascinating this time around. I hope the candidates spend a lot of time talking about real issues.

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[Coco]

As it happens, there's a really phenomenal article in The Atlantic about this very thing. It should really be required reading for anyone trying to understand ISIS, the organization's motivations and operational strategies and what motivates a lot of the "true believer" types that are joining (as opposed to the teenagers running off thinking they'll have an adventure, then discovering that life without iPhones and movies kind of sucks). Not all Islamists are alike, not all Islamists share the same goals (although there's some overlap between groups), and Al Qaeda and ISIS are not at all the same deal and do not operate in the same way. It's a really well-written, fascinating article.

Thank you for the link to that article, it's very clear and well written. It's a terrifying ideology in so many ways.

[Clementine]

Good points.

I think this danger of European muslim youth radicalizing is somewhat overplayed. These kids are a very very small minority, I believe there are less kids radicalizing in the direction of Islam as there are kids radicalizing into the violent right (national socialist, if you will) direction.

Nevertheless, we should be asking why this is happening all over Europe. I think it has to do with the fact that Europe (just like the US) is running a refugee/immigration policy that is utopic and damaging. Have you ever seen one of those refugee homes up close? It's a prison, and a very fucked up one at that. Refugees are lumped together in a parallel society, with no chance to receiving tools to succeed in western society. They are treated worse than zoo animals. We have nothing they want because we aren't giving them anything. We don't LET THEM. People are "othered" left and right, "put into their places" and excluded. We stigmatize them right away ("those brown people", no matter if they are African refugees or Mexican immigrants who steal our jobs and screw our women and whatnot).

Once these kids (migrational/refugee background) enter society, they are traumatized, and on top, they are still excluded. They are often pushed into low-paying jobs by teachers who think that "the foreigners" can't perform the same way a local (ie white male) could. We keep them in devestating social positions, pushing them into getthos (which self-respecting white wants to live next door to one of "those", right?). And then we are all surprised that they aren't hyped about our societies, values and all that freedom we talk about all day.

I think you hit the nail on the hat when you say that we have nothing they want. That's because we're showing them that what we have can never be attained by them. What we could do is role modelling a different society. One that is different from theirs, but also different from the one we currently live in in Europe and the US.

I think you should get your facts straight before you start pointing your finger at Europeans who currently are flooded with refugees from the wars that the US has started.

I have no idea where refugees are treated "worse than zoo animals". Speaking for Scandinavia and here people who come here to seek asylum will immediately be transfered to a place to stay, usually a regular apartment in a regular area where Swedes live. Right now the pressure is immense on Sweden, 95 000 people applied for asylum here last year (in a country with 9 M people), so we now have a shortage of housing and a lot of them have to stay at hotels instead of an apartment. A lot of regular hotels are now used as asylum centers.

After they get a permanent residence permit, the state will provide them with apartments (one apartment per family), they get free languge classes, are introduced as interns at a normal workplace, get different subsidiaries from the state (social wellfare checks plus $150 per child per month, plus different "settler" subsidiaries), free healthcare, free dental care, free education, freedom of speech and religion, subsidiaries for their national clubs and churches. And they are supported for life by the Swedish taxpayers, if they don't support themselves.

They can settle wherever they want to. We don't really have ghettos like in the US here. There are strict rules and regulations regarding the housing standard.

If they have an education from their home country, they can get it validated and use it to work here. (My doctor is an older Palestinian gentleman from Jordan, one example).

We don't really have the kind of low paying jobs that the US has. It would be illegal to have waitresses fork for $3 plus tips an hour. We have strong unions that have made sure that the wages are high enought to support the worker because we don't want to have a class of working poors who need to have 2-3 jobs or rely on welfare checks even if they work full time.

Apparently this is not enough, since about 300 people from Sweden are currently fighting for the Islamic State.

I also want to add that we have a lot of Christian refugees here, from South America, Russia and the Middle East, and a lot of Roma from Eastern Europe. I guess that they are in the same situation as the muslim refugees and yet we have no Roma or Assyrian suicide bombers or terrorists.

Also Sweden has soft terror laws, so we are a great place to have as home base for terrorists. It's not illegal to join a terrorist organisation and the terrorists who are returning from IS are getting a warm welcome from our government: free health care for their battle wounds, free mental care and help to find jobs to "encourage" them not to go back or not to slaughter Swedes.

I wish we could offer the same thing to our veterans, but sadly we don't.

How many refugees are the US accepting from Afghanistan and the Middle east?

[RosyDaisy]

I am freaking worried about the future of the world. :cry:

Me too. I smell another world war coming, unfortunately.

[RosyDaisy]

I am freaking worried about the future of the world. :cry:

Me too. I smell another world war coming, unfortunately.

[morri]

Europe is seasoned to extremism terrorist though. England/(N)Ireland had the IRA terror, Germany had the Red Army Fraction terror group. As long as civil liberties arent cut everything will be good.

[Clementine]

Europe is seasoned to extremism terrorist though. England/(N)Ireland had the IRA terror, Germany had the Red Army Fraction terror group. As long as civil liberties arent cut everything will be good.

Some countries are, some are not. Norway were not prepared for a massacre à la Breivik and Sweden will be f*cked if terrorists decide to strike at two places at the same time. I don't even think that Norwegian police officers carry guns.

Besides, this new kind of terrorism consists mainly of lone wolves and they are very hard to stop. One person could do a lot of harm with just a knife if he or she wanted to. Intelligence from last summer in Norway and Sweden talked about an attack where one IS supporter would enter a home and decapitate a family in front of a camera. It is difficult to stop attacks like that. And we are not allowed to own or carry guns like in the US so basically we're sitting ducks in our homes if somebody wants to harm us.

[morri]

unless you haven't got a butchers knife at home. I think the chance of that happening is reasonably low. especially those lone wolves. They will happen even for other reasons if it wasnt fundieism it would be some kind of amok run..

[Clementine]

unless you haven't got a butchers knife at home. I think the chance of that happening is reasonably low. especially those lone wolves. They will happen even for other reasons if it wasnt fundieism it would be some kind of amok run..

No need to worry then, I feel so much better now.

[whoviana]

I had to unscramble my fucking brain for the 10th time because of her pieces of wisdom.

[samurai_sarah]

I think you should get your facts straight before you start pointing your finger at Europeans who currently are flooded with refugees from the wars that the US has started.

I have no idea where refugees are treated "worse than zoo animals". Speaking for Scandinavia and here people who come here to seek asylum will immediately be transfered to a place to stay, usually a regular apartment in a regular area where Swedes live. Right now the pressure is immense on Sweden, 95 000 people applied for asylum here last year (in a country with 9 M people), so we now have a shortage of housing and a lot of them have to stay at hotels instead of an apartment. A lot of regular hotels are now used as asylum centers.

After they get a permanent residence permit, the state will provide them with apartments (one apartment per family), they get free languge classes, are introduced as interns at a normal workplace, get different subsidiaries from the state (social wellfare checks plus $150 per child per month, plus different "settler" subsidiaries), free healthcare, free dental care, free education, freedom of speech and religion, subsidiaries for their national clubs and churches. And they are supported for life by the Swedish taxpayers, if they don't support themselves.

They can settle wherever they want to. We don't really have ghettos like in the US here. There are strict rules and regulations regarding the housing standard.

If they have an education from their home country, they can get it validated and use it to work here. (My doctor is an older Palestinian gentleman from Jordan, one example).

We don't really have the kind of low paying jobs that the US has. It would be illegal to have waitresses fork for $3 plus tips an hour. We have strong unions that have made sure that the wages are high enought to support the worker because we don't want to have a class of working poors who need to have 2-3 jobs or rely on welfare checks even if they work full time.

Apparently this is not enough, since about 300 people from Sweden are currently fighting for the Islamic State.

I also want to add that we have a lot of Christian refugees here, from South America, Russia and the Middle East, and a lot of Roma from Eastern Europe. I guess that they are in the same situation as the muslim refugees and yet we have no Roma or Assyrian suicide bombers or terrorists.

Also Sweden has soft terror laws, so we are a great place to have as home base for terrorists. It's not illegal to join a terrorist organisation and the terrorists who are returning from IS are getting a warm welcome from our government: free health care for their battle wounds, free mental care and help to find jobs to "encourage" them not to go back or not to slaughter Swedes.

I wish we could offer the same thing to our veterans, but sadly we don't.

How many refugees are the US accepting from Afghanistan and the Middle east?

If I recall correctly, Mellanya is one of us "refugee- flooded" Europeans. I'm glad that Sweden attempts to be such a caring and liberal place for refugees, but other European countries aren't so nice. Mellanya has very aptly described the way refugees are treated in Germany - like criminals. Sweden may put refugees into hotels, Germany puts refugees in old schools, barracks or anything really, with a high enough fence around. You can't leave, you can't work, it takes forever for your claim to be processed, and lately you run the added risk that your home will get fire-bombed by "patriotic Europeans". Not everywhere in the EU is like Sweden!

[sparkles]

The Atlantic article was chilling. Thanks (I think) for posting the link, FS.

These extremists are clearly people who don't care how many they kill or how they carry it out. They show absolutely no hesitation, no remorse, no compassion, no human decency and certainly no opportunity for reason or negotiation. For the first time, I am actually afraid of what would happen if they had nuclear capability or access to other weapons of mass destruction, especially of a biological nature. I have no doubt that they'd use them.

I do, however, think that it's the smaller scale attacks that can do the most damage, since it strikes directly at our psyche. As someone who lives in the New York metro area and is frequently in the city, I'm far less afraid of a 9/11 style attack than I am of a random homicide bomber who decides to take out a populated area like Times Square. It's those kinds of attacks worldwide that wear people down and cause us to start suspecting and mistrusting everyone, even people we think we know well. (See Zone, Twilight: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.)

[Anny Nym]

Europe is seasoned to extremism terrorist though. England/(N)Ireland had the IRA terror, Germany had the Red Army Fraction terror group. As long as civil liberties arent cut everything will be good.

This is a extreme relativizing approach... frantically ignoring is on the same level dangerous and damaging as frantically fear-montering.

Also, please don´t talk about Europe as if it is one giant aligned mass. Because it´s not!

My country is DEFINITELY NOT "seasoned to extremism terorrist (attacks)". The few "terrorist attacks" we ever had, you could literally count on one hand. I don´t want my children to have to grew up in fear and political instability. I didn´t have to, why should they?

[Anny Nym]

...

If I recall correctly, Mellanya is one of us "refugee- flooded" Europeans. I'm glad that Sweden attempts to be such a caring and liberal place for refugees, but other European countries aren't so nice. Mellanya has very aptly described the way refugees are treated in Germany - like criminals. Sweden may put refugees into hotels, Germany puts refugees in old schools, barracks or anything really, with a high enough fence around. You can't leave, you can't work, it takes forever for your claim to be processed, and lately you run the added risk that your home will get fire-bombed by "patriotic Europeans". Not everywhere in the EU is like Sweden!

Is it really that bad in Germany (I have to read up about that)? Don´t they get Hartz 4/welfare if they are refugees in Germany?

This with the "it takes a very long time to get refugees processed", I admit, we have this one problem too. Switzerland is processing them in 48 hours. We: way longer.

But they will change that now (I think beginning in June) and process easy cases in 10 days max.

There is just WAY TOO LESS staff. The case workers are hopeless overloaded.

Also, a refugee home recently got FIRE BOMBED?! When was that on the news, normally here they always cover news of that kind, coming from Germany. In what city did that happen?

[Cleopatra7]

No need to worry then, I feel so much better now.

If it makes everyone feel any better, terrorist attacks in the West are pretty rare. ISIS is mostly focused on creating havok in the Middle East and its bloody and vile videos are really meant to act as recruiting videos to get more fighters/cannon fodder to fight for them. This is why they encourage people to "wage jihad" with anything they can find, because unlike Al-Qaeda (whose main interest in its heyday was franchising out terrorist attacks), ISIS is too busy building what they perceive to be an Islamic state and want their supporters in other countries to attack the West for them. Similarly, Boko Haram's primary interest is in gaining control over Nigeria, not carrying out terror attacks in other countries.

That being said, the military approach towards terrorism that has characterized the War on Terror is incrediably ineffective. An extensive RAND Corporation study on how terrorist groups end, indicated that most terrorist convert to mainstream political ideologies (43%) in combination with being arrested by law enforcement (40%). Only 10% of terrorists achieve their political goals and a slim 7% are defeated through military action. This study was written before the rise of ISIS, but it indicates that the best way to deal with lone wolf attacks on our soil (here I mean collectively, not just one country) is to just use regular police work. Here is the link to the study:

http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_brief ... ndex1.html

(not broken because it's a pretty dense academic work and the authors would probably appreciate the traffic)

[Mellanya]

I wasn't referring to countries like Sweden, but to countries a bit more south - Italy, France, and yes, Germany. There is literally no room here for the flood of refugees. None. They are packed into old schools and office buildings because there's just no way to accommodate this many people this quickly. I have seen these "refugee camps". I've even entered one. What I have seen there, and I swear this, is conditions worse than any prison in Europe. Buildings surrounded by cameras and fences, 6-10 people sleeping in small rooms. The windows don't have any drapes or any way to close the windows at night, so passer-bys can stare at the refugees at night when they turn on the lights in their rooms - like zoo animals. Security scandals are rampant all over Europe ("security officers" beating up people in some cases). There aren't enough people to teach language. So yeah, I do know what I'm talking about, because I do in fact live 2 streets away from one of these refugee camps, and it's not a nice sight. But unlike many other Europeans lately, I don't think that voting them out of the neighborhood is magically going to solve the problems. In fact, I'd rather have them remove those god-awful fences.

About ghettos: It's silly to deny that Europe has ghettos. We all do. Even Stockholm has one. And I believe most ISIS fighters from Europe are not in fact actual refugees, but kids who were born in France/Britain/German/Sweden/Whereever.

[Mellanya]

Is it really that bad in Germany (I have to read up about that)?

Well, it is at least in the big cities like Munich, where the housing problem is rampant anyway and prices are outrageous. Some landlords demand you to "apply" for a 1-room apartment as you would for a job, CV and everything. Finding something even with a university degree has become difficult in some areas. Now add a ton of refugees to the mix, and you get... well, jealous locals who can't find appropriate housing, refugees in overcrowded rooms and whatnot.

[Anny Nym]

Well, it is at least in the big cities like Munich, where the housing problem is rampant anyway and prices are outrageous. Some landlords demand you to "apply" for a 1-room apartment as you would for a job, CV and everything. Finding something even with a university degree has become difficult in some areas. Now add a ton of refugees to the mix, and you get... well, jealous locals who can't find appropriate housing, refugees in overcrowded rooms and whatnot.

Ãren´t you mixing that up now a bit with the problem of a general shortage in housing? Munich was always a very high-priced city. Where should the Apartments come from?

We need a EU-wide quota of how many refugees every country needs to accomondate. Some countries in the EU take the main case load, while others don´t take any. This is imho very wrong: Every country, who joined the EU, had to prove a certain level of stability and is profiting... but it seems some don´t want to take their responsibilities too.

This is very problematic.

[OkToBeTakei]

Some countries are, some are not. Norway were not prepared for a massacre à la Breivik and Sweden will be f*cked if terrorists decide to strike at two places at the same time. I don't even think that Norwegian police officers carry guns.

Besides, this new kind of terrorism consists mainly of lone wolves and they are very hard to stop. One person could do a lot of harm with just a knife if he or she wanted to. Intelligence from last summer in Norway and Sweden talked about an attack where one IS supporter would enter a home and decapitate a family in front of a camera. It is difficult to stop attacks like that. And we are not allowed to own or carry guns like in the US so basically we're sitting ducks in our homes if somebody wants to harm us.

I think there is a middle ground here both being sensationalistic posts really.

More people die in School shootings in the US where people do carry guns than died that awful day in Norway. Carrying guns could not have prevented that, just as carrying guns clearly does not prevent school shootings. I think most countries are not 'ready' for such eventualities until they happen.

There absolutely is a risk that some deranged terrorist will do what was outlined above. They thrive on the fear such a threat is. They hope you fear them. That's their biggest tool. They want you cowering at home fearing them and suspicious of your neighbours, your government, your Jordanian neighbour. They want to see you frightened and fearful of your governments ability to protect you. What they want is to fracture our societies. They hate and detest our 'freedom' our cultural tolerances. They detest and hate integration, they hate that Jew and Muslim and Christian can live in a country of their choice and as a citizen of that country, they hate the West. ISIS was born out of the void created in Iraq after two disastrous wars. The leader of ISIS radicalised whilst sitting in a US/UN prison in Iraq.

Immigration is very different to Asylum seekers. Every country has different policies as mentioned above. Ultimately the youth in the UK attracted to radicalisation are second generation. They are led to it for many reasons. Dissatisfaction with as mentioned economy, perceived and real racism, loss of identity. Some of these kids dislike the integration their parents worked so hard to attain in a new country. They are dissatisfied, young and looking for adventure (they are ripe for targeting.)

It's a perfect storm of shit hot mess. The solution is untangling the mess of decades. I think it's normal to be horrified and frightened. I think it's important not to fear-monger and perpetuate the terror. Throwing around doomsday and third world war predictions is not really helpful. The internet is a double edged sword, a place for extremists to preach and convert, but it's also a tool to be used to have intelligent decent conversation to shine a light and example tolerance and solidarity.

The solution is a total mystery to me. Lessons learned from the past I suspect.

[morri]

obviously in the mezzogiorno (south italy) where living standards are amongst the lowest(not least thanks because of all the organised crime there(camorra, mafia etc)in the EU the living conditions are absolutely havoc . They basically live in informal settlements there . the terrorist though arent refugees, they are so far mostly teenage or early twenties, similar to france charlie hebdo attack: People on the fringes of society never really accepted from poor areas. This is where the German education system comes in which singles out people from poor backgrounds as mentioned by the UN study. If you hardly get a good education you will hardly make it.and continue to live on the fringes.

[samurai_sarah]

Is it really that bad in Germany (I have to read up about that)? Don´t they get Hartz 4/welfare if they are refugees in Germany?

This with the "it takes a very long time to get refugees processed", I admit, we have this one problem too. Switzerland is processing them in 48 hours. We: way longer.

But they will change that now (I think beginning in June) and process easy cases in 10 days max.

There is just WAY TOO LESS staff. The case workers are hopeless overloaded.

Also, a refugee home recently got FIRE BOMBED?! When was that on the news, normally here they always cover news of that kind, coming from Germany. In what city did that happen?

The fire-bombing: http://www.stuttgarter-zeitung.de/inhal ... 97f32.html (Link is a German news-site) Thankfully no one was living there yet.

The situation in German refugee homes is bad. The one I have the most personal knowledge of is nothing short of an overcrowded prison. Asylum seekers receive welfare, but mostly vouchers that can be redeemed in shops for some items. You can't work and the system is so clogged it takes forever to process claims. It's just one big mess.

[OkToBeTakei]

Ãren´t you mixing that up now a bit with the problem of a general shortage in housing? Munich was always a very high-priced city. Where should the Apartments come from?

We need a EU-wide quota of how many refugees every country needs to accomondate. Some countries in the EU take the main case load, while others don´t take any. This is imho very wrong: Every country, who joined the EU, had to prove a certain level of stability and is profiting... but it seems some don´t want to take their responsibilities too.

This is very problematic.

Sweden and Germany had roughly 49k Syrian refugees each as of October 2014.

UK 5k Spain 1705. France 3750. Yup..a definite imbalance. Not sure of the rest of the world.

syrianrefugees.eu/?page_id=10

[Anny Nym]

The fire-bombing: http://www.stuttgarter-zeitung.de/inhal ... 97f32.html (Link is a German news-site) Thankfully no one was living there yet.

The situation in German refugee homes is bad. The one I have the most personal knowledge of is nothing short of an overcrowded prison. Asylum seekers receive welfare, but mostly vouchers that can be redeemed in shops for some items. You can't work and the system is so clogged it takes forever to process claims. It's just one big mess.

Ah! The incident in the village of Vorra. Yes, they indeed covered that one. Thanky you! (I thought you meant like military fire bombing)

Edited: Wait, are we now talking asylum seekers? I think there we need to make a difference to avoid confusion. Asylum seekers who got their case positive processed are allowed to work in Germany and are accredited to welfare, no?

At least, this is the case in Austria:

For asylum seekers there is a basic care law in place, which states they get food&board,clothing, juristic and pychologic councelling, translators, and medical aid if needed. Positive processed refugees could work or get Mindestsicherung/welfare.

ad. clogged system:

Recently, there was some terrible confusion going on here, with the mass migration of employment seekers from Kosovo to the EU. Apparently, some human traffickers told them they should make a claim for asylum in Austria "because they give you welcome money and you could just stay there this way" which is a terrible urban legend the traffickers telling around to fraud Kosovari People into giving them their money (500-1000 euros) to get them to Austria. And then for this people, there is a very bad awakening, because a) nobody "just gives you money" not in Austria or anywhere else and b) Kosovo is a safe state and not eligible for asylum status, their claims are file negative anyway.

So they just made a very expensive journey to Austria and back, plus their files are slowing down the processing system even more.

It´s a very ugly situation for everyone.