Paris attacks: More than 120 killed at Bataclan and restaurants

[Ulyses]

The problem is, Western Europe immigration was once looked upon as a gift, now is looked upon as a right. Hence, nobody from the immigrant crowds is going to take a stand against the ones that might jeopardize this "right", before or after. So, no chance of an actual solution to terrorism or to criminality as a whole from inside the immigrant crowds.

[Vykranth]

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/11/19/world/paris-attacks/index.html

 

Prosecutor: Paris attacks ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud dead

 

-

Paris, France (CNN)The ringleader in last week's bloody terrorist attacks in Paris was killed in a pre-dawn raid Wednesday on an apartment building north of the French capital, the Paris prosecutor's office announced Thursday.

Authorities zeroed in on a building in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis after picking up phone conversations indicating that a relative of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who authorities believe coordinated the shootings and bombings that killed 129 people, may have been there, a Belgian counterterrorism official said.

French police believed Abaaoud himself was then still in the country, though they didn't know exactly where. Some residents in Saint-Denis told CNN that they had seen Abaaoud recently in the neighborhood and at a local mosque.

It turns out Abaaoud was in that building in Saint-Denis. And after a violent firefight that included explosions and gunfire, he was dead.

In a statement released Thursday, the Paris prosecutor's office said that Abaaoud's body was found in the Saint-Denis building riddled with bullets. The office said that he was positively identified using papillary prints, which include patterns on fingers, palms and the soles of the feet.

Exactly how he died, at this point, isn't known. Police fired around 5,000 rounds of ammunition in the confrontation and used strong munitions that spurred a floor to collapse.

The prosecutor's office said Thursday that authorities still don't know whether Abaaoud blew himself up or not. That's what officials say happened with the raid's only other fatality, that of a woman suicide bomber that Belgian state broadcaster RTBF reported was Abaaoud's cousin.

A police dog also died in the operation, while five police officers were slightly wounded.

Speaking Thursday about Abaaoud's demise in the Saint-Denis raid, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said, "The target was achieved."

 

Good, one less ######. Now, get the others and do not wonder how he died: at 5000 rounds of ammo, the diagnostic is terminal lead poisoning.

[FloatingFatMan]

Good, one less ######. Now, get the others and do not wonder how he died: at 5000 rounds of ammo, the diagnostic is terminal lead poisoning.

 

As much as I won't shed a single tear over his death, it's a pity he wasn't taken alive.  Dead, he's a martyr.

Edit: I just came across this lighter look on things.  It's as funny as hell (to me anyway), and even has elements of truth to it, especially right at the end!

Note: THIS IS A JOKE SITE, NOT SERIOUS!

http://newsthump.com/2015/11/18/no-one-picks-on-france-except-us-says-britain/

Edited November 19, 2015 by FloatingFatMan

[DocM]

 

Short answer: yes, it does include Schumer

Longer answer: yes and it plays right into the hands of ISIS propaganda, dehumanizing the refugees and making them remote hostages from ISIS.

 

 

Honduras stopped 6 on the way into the US.

http://twitter.com/BNONews/status/667061035275259904

@BNONews  

BREAKING: Honduras says has detained 5 Syrians who were traveling by land to the United States with stolen Greek passports - Reuters

Edit

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0T72UE20151119

>

Five of the men were detained late on Tuesday in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, on arrival from Costa Rica, and had been planning to head to the border with neighboring Guatemala, police said. They said passports had been doctored to replace the photographs with those of the Syrians.

Anibal Baca, a Honduras police spokesman, said the five were trying to reach the United States.

A sixth man was turned away on Friday on arrival by plane from El Salvador, and was sent back. They are the first such cases of attempted illegal entry by Syrians into Honduras since the Central American country started compiling records in 2010.

However, the case appears to form part of a spate of such incidents. Police in the former Dutch Caribbean colony of St Maarten on Saturday arrested three men they believed to be Syrians who arrived on a flight from Haiti and were traveling on false Greek passports.

In Paraguay, police detained a Syrian man on Sunday who was traveling on a stolen Greek passport.

Reports that at least one of the Paris attackers may have slipped into Europe among migrants registered in Greece prompted several Western countries to begin to question their willingness to take in refugees from war-torn Syria

>

[wakjak]

Those aren't "refugees". they're terrorists. And you know it.

[Vykranth]

Another part of the article on http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0T72UE20151119 reads:

 

"They are normal Syrians," the police spokesman added, saying there was nothing to indicate they were tied to the Paris attacks.

And, in another artcile from Reuters http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/19/us-mideast-crisis-usa-texas-idUSKCN0T81Y120151119

Separately, Honduran authorities said on Wednesday they had intercepted six Syrians traveling with doctored Greek passports over the past week, including five who were trying to reach the United States. Police there said there were no signs of extremist links. The original photos on the passports were said to have been replaced with those of the Syrians.

 

So, trying to illegally enter the US, definitively without any doubt, with terrorism ties, that remains to be proven because, innocent until proven guilty unless you want go in Trump mode and recycle the Mexican immigrants speech.

[Emn1ty]

So, trying to illegally enter the US, definitively without any doubt, with terrorism ties, that remains to be proven because, innocent until proven guilty unless you want go in Trump mode and recycle the Mexican immigrants speech.

Well, they are guilty. Just because they aren't terrorists doesn't make them innocent.

[Vykranth]

Well, they are guilty. Just because they aren't terrorists doesn't make them innocent.

QED for xenophobic assumptions

[DConnell Member]

QED for xenophobic assumptions

Illegal entry into the country is a crime, therefore they aren't innocent. No xenophobia involved. They may not be terrorists, but they still broke the law.

 

[Vykranth]

Illegal entry into the country is a crime, therefore they aren't innocent. No xenophobia involved. They may not be terrorists, but they still broke the law.

I am not contesting the illegal entry part, I am contesting the assumption that they would automatically be terrorists.

Furthermore, Daech has been trying to radicalize homegrown terrorists in the US like they did in Europe so the threat might be different than the refugee influx.

 

 

 

[DConnell Member]

 

I am not contesting the illegal entry part, I am contesting the assumption that they would automatically be terrorists.

Furthermore, Daech has been trying to radicalize homegrown terrorists in the US like they did in Europe so the threat might be different than the refugee influx.

 

 

 

It didn't look to me like he was making that assumption - he was saying they weren't innocent because they entered illegally.

[DocM]

 

I am not contesting the illegal entry part, I am contesting the assumption that they would automatically be terrorists.

>

 

Absense of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Just because a short check shoes no islamist connections....

[DocM]

8 Syrians, 2 families, detained trying to cross Texas border: guess we're next for an extralegal influx.

https://t.co/RNZwMPGejm 

[ctebah]

Gotta love US media handling of this, basically declaring that the ISIS is here when these people actually turned themselves in...

[Vykranth]

Seriously, does anyone is surprised that Syrian refugees fleeing war zone are trying to get to the US as Turkey/Jordan/Lebanon and the rest of Europe is already overloaded? Traffic mafias will help anyone get anywhere as long as the money is paid.

And, yes, these people turned themselves in, seeking border agents.

Also, about the background process: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2015/nov/19/politifact-sheet-5-questions-about-syrian-refugees/

Do the refugees get background checks?

The refugees admissions program, created in 1980 and retooled after 9/11, does actually perform background checks on all refugees, to the extent possible.

Before refugees face U.S. screening, they must get a referral from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (or occasionally a U.S. embassy or another NGO). The UN refers about 1 percent of refugees for resettlement through its own vetting process, which takes four to 10 months. During that process, UN officials decide if people actually qualify as refugees, if they require resettlement, and which country would accept them.

Once the cases are passed along to the United States, the refugees undergo security clearances. Their names, biographical information and fingerprints are run through federal terrorism and criminal databases. Meanwhile, the refugees are interviewed by Department of Homeland Security officials. If approved, they then undergo a medical screening, a match with sponsor agencies, "cultural orientation" classes and one final security clearance.

Syrian refugees in particular must clear one additional hurdle. Their documents are placed under extra scrutiny and cross-referenced with classified and unclassified information.

The process typically takes one to two years or longer and happens before a refugee ever gets onto American soil.

Is the screening process thorough enough?

There are undoubtedly challenges to screening refugees from conflict zones like Syria. Intelligence and national security officials have noted the paucity of data.

The head of the National Counterterrorism Center told Congress in October that the intelligence in Syria is "not as rich as we would like it to be," while FBI Director James Comey told Congress there are "gaps" in data availability.

Challenges and gaps, however, don’t translate into "no ability" to vet at all.

"No system is foolproof. If we really wanted a foolproof system, we would shut down immigration entirely," said David Martin, a University of Virginia professor who’s previously held posts at DHS and the State Department. "The alarm is way overblown."

According to the State Department, Syrians tend to have more identity documents than other refugee groups around the world, and the reasons they give for missing documents (a bomb dropping on their house) can be verified.

Experts also warned against conflating the European vetting process, which is extremely chaotic, with the process used by the United States.

In the United States, very few resettled refugees — three since 9/11, according to the Washington Post’s Fact Checker — have been implicated in terrorist situations. Daryl Grisgraber of Refugees International pointed out that the Tsarnaevs came to the United States as children from Chechnya and applied for asylum, but were radicalized here.

Refugees are subject to the highest level of security checks of any traveler category to the United States. So for ISIS to take advantage of the refugee program "makes no operational sense," said Anne Speckhard, a counterterrorism expert at Georgetown University.

"Given how easy it is to send a European extremist to the U.S. via Europe, why would an ISIS guy in Syria wait the three years it takes to get refugee status?" she said.

So much for a 'small' check ...

After that, you have pearls of widsom like Louie Gohmert: The Terrorists Are Here, Thanks Obama. Yeah, because Timothy McVeigh was not a terrorist? Or the pundits wondering if terrorists would attack soft targets in the US. Soft targets like schools? Already done: Columbine, Movie Theaters? Already done: Aurora, Colorado or the people who forgot that Irish or Italian immigrants were also once deemed an existential threat ot the US.

And Donald Trump wants to register all muslims in a database. Sure, as long as all Christians are registered in a database for abortion clinic bombings and all white men are registered in a database because of the Charleston bombings.

As Docm said, 'Absense of evidence is not evidence of absence. '

Keep opening your goddamn mouth, Mr. Trump, you are giving ISIS propagandists everything they ever wanted for their next video

[Jim K Global Moderator]

Yep, Donald Trump and anyone else advocating a national registry based solely on race/religion/sex/etc. needs to go away.  This level of hysteria feeds ISIS and gives them exactly what they want...while undermining the very fabric for which the US stands for.  Current political climate towards Muslims are at an all time low...which is something ISIS wants.  Simply put, this gives ISIS a vector for recruitment "see they hate you ... join us"

We have been a place of refuge from those who are persecuted, oppressed and in despair.  It is troublesome that a presidential candidate (and other elected officials) advocate something which slaps our Founding Fathers in the face.

On the Statue of Liberty there is an inscription which reads:

 

Give me your tired, your poor, 
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, 
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. 
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, 
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

We've succumbed to fear before ... after the attack on Pearl Harbor. We put over 100K American-Japanese into internment camps even as their sons fought in the war. We, as Americans, lost our way then and it is easy to lose our way now. Yes, the easiest thing to do is reject any Syrian refugee ... but in doing so we'll have lost the moorage for who we are as a country. I choose to stand with the founding principles of the Nation, not cower in fear or make an exception to our Nation's character because of radical extremist.

Edited November 21, 2015 by jjkusaf

[DocM]

If you really want to support the refugees displacing them overseas isn't the answer, it's a feely good band aid.  The US, NATO, Russia and willing Muslim countries getting on the same page and glassing these bastards is. Then the refugees can go home. That's a fix worth doing.

One tweet for each of the fallen. Reading through them make me so sad, but also angry as hell. These IS asswipes need to go down, hard. 

@ParisVictims 

https://twitter.com/ParisVictims?s=09

[FloatingFatMan]

If you really want to support the refugees displacing them overseas isn't the answer, it's a feely good band aid.  The US, NATO, Russia and willing Muslim countries getting on the same page and glassing these bastards is. Then the refugees can go home. That's a fix worth doing.

One tweet for each of the fallen. Reading through them make me so sad, but also angry as hell. These IS asswipes need to go down, hard. 

@ParisVictims 

https://twitter.com/ParisVictims?s=09

This is why, from the very start, the UK government has focussed on providing aid and support at the refugee camps just outside Syria, and bringing very few of them back to the UK.