Truck slams into crowd at Bastille Day Celebrations- Terror attack likely

Try to remember we are all on the same side here.
I'm certainly not on the side of a couple posting in here.

Benfti. With all due respect, I admire your obvious intellect and the humanitarian side to your nature.

But if you think that Islamic extremism isnt being funded from within the greater Islamic world-wide community, you are dreaming. Follow the money.

And I doubt that you can shake me from the belief, that when the Islamic majority sit on their hands and say nothing - that they aren’t passively condoning it.

And you know what? If they’re too frightened to speak out against their own religion.
Well - I’ll just rest my case.

Surely, if you’re following this at all, and I find it difficult to believe that you’re not, you see Moslems speak out against this stuff all the time?
I don’t know who this ‘Islamic majority’ is though.
As if it’s not enough that a site you specifically said doesn’t do that ABSOLUTELY DOES THAT.

For all of it Wim. No not really following it at all.

I’ve just arrived home after a 13-hour shift and other than glancing at my phone to respond to Blitz, where phone reception allowed, I haven’t seen an news update since about 11am yesterday morning.

And on top of that, I’ve got to the stage where I don’t give a fark… Let 'em kill each other. No one cares.

My old man was right, never talk about religion or politics.

Now why did I just know, that his name was gunna be Mohamed.

Selected bits from Arab News, just for balance.

Hollande said in a pre-dawn address that he was calling up military and police reservists to relieve forces worn out enforcing a state of emergency begun in November after Islamic State gunmen and suicide bombers struck Paris entertainment spots on a Friday evening, killing 130 people.

After the Paris attacks, Islamic State said France and all nations following its path would remain at the top of its list of targets as long as they continued “their crusader campaign,” referring to action against the group in Iraq and Syria.

Four months ago, Belgian Islamists linked to the Paris attackers killed 32 people in Brussels.

Vehicle attacks have been used by isolated members of militant groups in recent years, notably in Israel, though never to such devastating effect.

On social media, Islamic State supporters celebrated the high death toll.

Try to remember we are all on the same side here.
I'm certainly not on the side of a couple posting in here.

Benfti. With all due respect, I admire your obvious intellect and the humanitarian side to your nature.

But if you think that Islamic extremism isnt being funded from within the greater Islamic world-wide community, you are dreaming. Follow the money.

And I doubt that you can shake me from the belief, that when the Islamic majority sit on their hands and say nothing - that they aren’t passively condoning it.

And you know what? If they’re too frightened to speak out against their own religion.
Well - I’ll just rest my case.

Surely, if you’re following this at all, and I find it difficult to believe that you’re not, you see Moslems speak out against this stuff all the time?
I don’t know who this ‘Islamic majority’ is though.
As if it’s not enough that a site you specifically said doesn’t do that ABSOLUTELY DOES THAT.

For all of it Wim. No not really following it at all.

I’ve just arrived home after a 13-hour shift and other than glancing at my phone to respond to Blitz, where phone reception allowed, I haven’t seen an news update since about 11am yesterday morning.

And on top of that, I’ve got to the stage where I don’t give a fark… Let 'em kill each other. No one cares.

My old man was right, never talk about religion or politics.

Tired and posting on the phone and not quite understanding seems to be an epidemic among a certain point of view in this thread.
Perhaps it’s racial.

Thursday, Jan 7, 2016 06:32 AM +1100
Saudi Arabia funds and exports Islamic extremism: The truth behind the toxic U.S. relationship with the theocratic monarchy
The little-told history of the U.S.-Saudi “special relationship” is a story of blood, oil & violent fundamentalism
Ben Norton

Here’s some of it.

Saudi Arabia is the world’s leading sponsor of Islamic extremism. It is also a close U.S. ally. This contradiction, although responsible for a lot of human suffering, is frequently ignored. Yet it recently plunged back into the limelight with the Saudi monarchy’s largest mass execution in decades.

On Jan. 2, Saudi Arabia beheaded 47 people across 13 cities. Among the executed was cleric Nimr al-Nimr, a leader from the country’s Shia religious minority who was arrested for leading peaceful protests against the regime in 2011-12.

Sheikh al-Nimr was known throughout the Islamic world for his staunch opposition to sectarianism. The outspoken Saudi dissident firmly insisted that Sunnis and Shias are not enemies, and should unite against the sectarian regimes oppressing them. “The oppressed should unite together against the oppressors, instead of becoming tools in the hands of the oppressors,” he declared.

By executing a dissident who challenged sectarianism, the Saudi monarchy was only further fomenting it.

Human rights organizations condemned the executions. Amnesty International said the Saudi regime is “using the death penalty in the name of counter-terror to settle scores and crush dissidents,” sentencing activists “to death after grossly unfair trials.” Amnesty called this “a monstrous and irreversible injustice.”

Yet atrocities like the mass beheadings are by no means new in Saudi Arabia. What is new is the global attention to them.

Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, the nephew of the murdered cleric, was arrested at age 17 for attending a peaceful pro-democracy protest in 2012. He was allegedly tortured, before being sentenced to death by beheading and crucifixion.

Saudi Arabia is one of the last places on the planet where crucifixions are still practiced — ordered by the government itself.

In recent years, the Saudi monarchy has also arrested at least two other peaceful teenage pro-democracy activists and sentenced them to death.

Furthermore, a Palestinian poet was sentenced to death by Saudi Arabia in November for renouncing Islam and criticizing the royal family.

In 2015, the Saudi regime executed 158 people, largely by beheading. On average, approximately half (47 percent) of people executed in Saudi Arabia are killed for drug-related offenses, according to Amnesty International. Every four days, then, on average, the Saudi monarchy executes someone for drugs — while its own princes are caught with thousands of pounds of drugs at foreign airports.

Saudi support for extremism

Saudi Arabia is a theocratic absolute monarchy that governs based on an extreme interpretation of Sharia (Islamic law). It is so extreme, it has been widely compared to ISIS. Algerian journalist Kamel Daoud characterized Saudi Arabia in an op-ed in The New York Times as “an ISIS that has made it.”

“Black Daesh, white Daesh,” Daoud wrote, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS. “The former slits throats, kills, stones, cuts off hands, destroys humanity’s common heritage and despises archaeology, women and non-Muslims. The latter is better dressed and neater but does the same things. The Islamic State; Saudi Arabia.”

“In its struggle against terrorism, the West wages war on one, but shakes hands with the other,” Daoud continued. “This is a mechanism of denial, and denial has a price: preserving the famous strategic alliance with Saudi Arabia at the risk of forgetting that the kingdom also relies on an alliance with a religious clergy that produces, legitimizes, spreads, preaches and defends Wahhabism, the ultra-puritanical form of Islam that Daesh feeds on.”

Since the November Paris attacks, in which 130 people were massacred in a series of bombings and shootings for which ISIS claimed responsibility, the West has constantly spoken of the importance of fighting extremism. At the same time, however, the U.S., U.K., France, and other Western nations have continued supporting the Saudi regime that fuels such extremism.

Saudi political dissidents like Turki al-Hamad have constantly argued this point. In a TV interview, al-Hamad insisted the religious extremism propagated by the Saudi monarchy “serves as fuel for ISIS.” “You can see [in ISIS videos] the volunteers in Syria ripping up their Saudi passports,” al-Hamad said.

“In order to stop ISIS, you must first dry up this ideology at the source. Otherwise you are cutting the grass, but leaving the roots. You have to take out the roots,” he added.

In the wake of the November 2015 Paris attacks, scholar Yousaf Butt stressed that “the fountainhead of Islamic extremism that promotes and legitimizes such violence lies with the fanatical ‘Wahhabi’ strain of Islam centered in Saudi Arabia.”

“If the world wants to tamp down and eliminate such violent extremism, it must confront this primary host and facilitator,” Butt warned.

In the past few decades, the Saudi regime has spent an estimated $100 billion exporting its extremist interpretation of Islam worldwide. It infuses its fundamentalist ideology in the ostensible charity work it performs, often targeting poor Muslim communities in countries like Pakistan or places like refugee camps, where uneducated, indigent, oppressed people are more susceptible to it.

Whether elements within Saudi Arabia support ISIS is contested. Even if Saudi Arabia does not directly support or fund ISIS, however, Saudi Arabia gives legitimacy to the extremist ideology ISIS preaches.

What is not contested, on the other hand, is that Saudi elites in the business community and even segments of the royal family support extremist groups like al-Qaida. U.S. government cables leaked by WikiLeaks admit “donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.”

“It has been an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority,” wrote former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a leaked 2009 cable.

Supporters of the Saudi monarchy resist comparisons to ISIS. The regime itself threatened to sue social media users who compared it to ISIS. Apologists point out that ISIS and Saudi Arabia are enemies. This is indeed true. But this is not necessarily because they are ideologically different (they are similar) but rather because they threaten each other’s power.

There can only be one autocrat in an autocratic system; ISIS’ self-proclaimed Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi refuses to kowtow to present Saudi King Salman, and vice-versa. After all, the Saudi absolute monarch partially justifies his rule through claiming that it has been blessed and ordained by God, and if ISIS’ caliph insists the same, they can’t both be right.

Some American politicians have criticized the U.S.-Saudi relationship for these very reasons. Former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham has been perhaps the most outspoken critic. Graham has called extremist groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda “a product of Saudi ideals, Saudi money and Saudi organizational support.”

Sen. Graham served on the Senate Intelligence Committee for a decade, and chaired the committee during and after the 9/11 attacks. He condemned the illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq, which he deemed a “distraction” from the U.S.’s real problems, and has warned that Saudi Arabia may have played a role in the 9/11 attacks that left almost 3,000 Americans dead.

This is not in any way to suggest that there was a conspiracy, and that the U.S. government was involved in the attacks; such a notion is preposterous, and can be refuted with even rudimentary knowledge about the Middle East and a basic understanding of history. There was no “inside job”; the conspiracy theory is absurd. Rather, critics like Sen. Graham have suggested that the U.S. government sees its close relationship to Saudi Arabia as so critical that it may have downplayed potential Saudi involvement in the attacks.

Of the 19 Sept. 11 attackers, 15 were citizens of Saudi Arabia. Zacarias Moussaoui, a convicted 9/11 plotter, confessed in sworn testimony to U.S. authorities that members of the Saudi royal family funded al-Qaeda before the attacks. The Saudi government strongly denies this.

The 2002 joint House-Senate report on the Sept. 11 attacks has 28 pages on al-Qaeda’s “specific sources of foreign support,” but this section is classified, leading Graham and others to suggest it may contain information about potential Saudi involvement. The 9/11 Commission insisted in its 2004 report, however, that it “found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded” al-Qaeda.

Sen. Graham has nevertheless insisted that the possibility that elements of the Saudi royal family supported the 9/11 attackers should not be ruled out. In his 2004 book “Intelligence Matters: The CIA, the FBI, Saudi Arabia, and the Failure of America’s War on Terror,” Graham further argued these points, from his background within the U.S. government.

The independent, non-partisan Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania has detailed the allegations and possible evidence — or lack thereof — of Saudi ties to the 9/11 attacks on its website FactCheck.org.

Whatever its role, what is clear is that Saudi Arabia’s support for violent extremist groups is well documented. Such support continues to this very day. In Syria, the Saudi monarchy has backed al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate. The U.S. government has bombed al-Nusra, but its ally Saudi Arabia is funding it.

Yet despite its brutality and support for extremism, the U.S. considers the Saudi monarchy a “close ally.” The State Department calls Saudi Arabia “a strong partner in regional security and counterterrorism efforts, providing military, diplomatic, and financial cooperation.” It stated in September 2015 it “welcomed” the appointment of Saudi Arabia to the head of a U.N. human rights panel. “We’re close allies,” the State Department remarked.

Click the link to read the rest. It’s too long to post.

Think they're saying he was estranged from wife & kids. Could be just a depressed angry lone nutter.

If that’s the case, what’s with the payload full of weapons in the back of the truck?
But if it’s not that, why wasn’t there anyone else in the back of the truck.
Nothing about it seems to make any sense.*

*Aware that looking for sense in a massacre may be an exercise in futility.

Of course, the soldiers of Islam kill more Islamics than they do Westerners… There can be only one true stream of religion dontcha know.

From the Arabic newspaper Alsharq Al-Awsat

http://english.aawsat.com/2016/07/article55354134/isis-just-made-potentially-disastrous-mistake

Opinion: ISIS Just Made a Potentially Disastrous Mistake
David Ignatius
6 days ago 861

In the global revulsion at the past week’s terror attacks in four Muslim countries, the United States and its allies have a new opportunity to build a unified command against the ISIS group and other extremists. But as the U.S. seeks to broaden this counter-terrorism alliance, it should be careful about partnering with Russia — unless Moscow distances itself from a Syrian regime that many Sunni Muslims despise.

The savage attacks in Turkey, Bangladesh, Iraq and Saudi Arabia should convince Muslim nations and the West that they share a common enemy in extremist groups such as the ISIS. What they need now is a shared command-and-control structure, like what the U.S. and Britain forged in December 1941, after the shock of Pearl Harbor. Merging military and intelligence resources wasn’t easy, even for longstanding partners in Washington and London. But Prime Minister Winston Churchill knew that once America had fully joined the battle, the allies’ eventual victory was certain.

Similar confidence would be inspired by a command structure that truly fuses the resources of the U.S., Europe, Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Pakistan and the many other nations that have been targeted by ISIS terrorists.

A sign of how unpopular these attacks are with Muslims is that ISIS isn’t taking credit for the attacks in Turkey and Saudi Arabia — even though it’s widely seen as the likely perpetrator — and that other Islamist groups are condemning the violence, especially the bombing in the holy city of Medina.

On Tuesday the SITE Intelligence Group gathered some of the online ripostes from rivals of the ISIS group. An Australian cleric named Abu Sulayman, who is a member of Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, tweeted: “The #MedinaBlast is a criminal act that Muslims must condemn.” Another pro-Al Qaeda account tweeted: “[I]f ISIS is not behind the attacks in Istanbul and Medina they should deny their involvement.”

Naughty, naughty ISIS etc. etc.

wtf does naughty naughty ISIS mean?
In any context?
Go to bed. Please.

Wait…was all that over one bad pun?

Saudi Arabia, 9/11, and what we know about the secret papers that could ignite a diplomatic war

There is growing clamour for declassification of the pages along with allegations about attempts by the Saudis to keep their alleged role in the attacks hidden

Kim Sengupta Diplomatic Editor
Monday 25 April 2016

…The allegations of Saudi involvement in the attacks come against a backdrop of the ultra-conservative Kingdom’s funding violent Islamist groups, often with the encouragement and support of the West. This continues now with accusations that the Saudis have supplied money and arms to the most extreme of the rebels fighting the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

There is no easy solution to what the world is facing. When Sep 11 happened I admit I was angry and shattered and openly willing to condemn the religion most directly associated with the attack. Maybe I am getting old but the problems are so much more nuanced than that. On one end you have disaffected youth, many from dictatorial regimes like in the middle east, flocking to take up arms on behalf of a religion I would argue they don’t even understand. On the other you have the frightening scenario of folks who aren’t even directly impacted (like the kids you killed western hostages in Dhaka the other week) finding a reprehensible ideology not just attractive but good enough to die for.

Easy for me as an atheist to say but I wonder if the problem is higher up.

Vast majority of 9/11 terrorists were Saudi nationals, don’t need an investigation to know that.
Zero Iraqis, so…lets invade Iraq I guess.

Reckon you need your own thread for this ■■■■ though.


France4 minutes ago Aljazeera
Nice attack: Who was the driver in the lorry attack?
French prosecutor and Tunisian security sources identify Nice attacker as 31-year-old Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel.

Apparently it’s all the fault of the intelligence service, for not stopping this bloke.

…“And it will be those intelligence services who will face some of the harshest questions. Why were they unable to prevent, yet again, a gruesome attack on innocent lives – the third here in France in just 18 months. For many, it will be seen as the president’s failure,” said Al Jazeera’s Jonah Hull, reporting from Nice.

…His home town of Msaken is about 10km (six miles) outside the coastal city of Sousse, where a gunman killed 38 people, mostly British holidaymakers, on a beach a year ago.

Well there’s another surprise

Are you sure its not the bloke sitting next to me at work, funding the hire of a truck, who’s at fault?

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/World/2016/Jul-15/362181-truck-terrorist-kills-80-in-attack-on-nice-bastille-day-crowd.ashx

The Daily Star - Lebanon

Jul. 15, 2016 | 08:38 AM (Last updated: July 15, 2016 | 07:32 PM)
Dozens fighting for their lives after Nice attack: Hollande

…The third mass killing in Western Europe in eight months caused more fear across an already anxious continent struggling with security challenges from mass immigration, open borders and pockets of Islamist radicalism.

Humph, I didn’t know radicalism existed.

…Nice, a city of 350,000, has a history as a flamboyant aristocratic resort but is also a gritty metropolis. It has seen dozens of its Muslim residents travel to Syria to fight.

On social media, ISIS supporters celebrated the high death toll and posted a series of images, one showing a beach purporting to be that of Nice with white stones arranged to read “ISIS is here to stay” in Arabic.

You’ve written this one just for me Wim.

http://www.alarabonline.org/?id=5266

Misunderstanding Islam
Much ignorance persists. Ignorance in this instance is real enemy. Not Islam. Not Christianity. Not Westerners. Not Middle Easterners.

2016/05/29 Issue: 58 Page: 7
The Arab Weekly
Claude Salhani

There is a great misun­derstanding of Islam in the West, a fair amount of which falls under the banner of Islamophobia — the unfounded fear of Islam.

True, much of this misconception has been accentuated by actions of Islamist fundamentalists such as members of al-Qaeda and its spinoff, the far more radical Islamic State (ISIS). It is so bent on cruelty and violence that even al-Qaeda refers to its members as terrorists.

Yeah. Well no ■■■■ Sherlock.
The rest of your article is just pure dribble.

http://www.alarabonline.org/?id=5263

An Arabic editorial calling for religious and sectarian harmony, it doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence though.

The need for tolerance in the Arab world
Religious, sectarian coexistence in Arab world is crucial not only for ending war, civil strife, but also for developing modern societies.
2016/05/29 Issue: 58 Page: 6
The Arab Weekly
Editorial

Religious and sectarian violence continues to be the stock-in-trade of jihadist organisations across North Africa and the Middle East.

The Islamic State (ISIS) has undertaken a relentless campaign of religious and sectarian cleansing aimed at emptying the region’s countries of minorities whose mere presence contradicts its vision of what Muslim-majority nations should look like.

On May 23rd, ISIS carried out suicide bombings in Tartus and Jableh in Syria. The attacks were unusually ■■■■■■, even by ISIS’s dubious standards, and were intended to inflame strife between religious communities in Syria. They killed more than 150 people and wounded 300. Throughout the Syrian conflict, ISIS has targeted minorities in order to encourage sectarian strife.

According to European Parliament figures, 40% of Syria’s 700,000 Christians have left the country since the start of war in Syria.

In Iraq, sectarian strife and jihadist violence have devastated minority communities: The Christian population is said to have decreased from 1.5 million before 2003 to less than 500,000 today.

Jihadists and other extremists are tapping into lingering undercurrents of bigotry and fanaticism in Arab societies.

Intolerance still manifests itself too often in the Middle East and North Africa. During the last few days, Orthodox Copts in Egypt have complained that, on May 20th, seven Christian homes in a province south of Cairo were ransacked and torched. The attacks apparently followed rumours that a Christian man had had an affair with a Muslim woman.

The problem is rooted in education systems that have failed to disseminate tolerant value and legal systems that do not always deal firmly with crimes stemming from racism and bigotry. Other social institutions — such as the media, cultural elites and the family — do not always play constructive roles.

Another factor is the abuse of religion by preachers and politi­cal extremists whose message is tainted with religious fanati­cism. Religious institutions do have an important role to play to ward off this negative influence. Al-Azhar University and its network of affiliated schools, for instance, reach hundreds of thousands of students in Egypt and beyond. Its high standing in the Arab world lends it great influence.

The meeting on October 23rd between Pope Francis and Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayyib, the grand Imam of al-Azhar, and their decision to reactivate dialogue between the Vatican and Egypt’s prestig­ious Muslim institution of learning is a positive development. Such cooperation will help send a message of cross-religious entente between the worlds of Islam and Christianity.

Bigotry does not rule the day. The Arab world has a legacy of coexistence and tolerance on which progress can be based. The ancient Jewish festival recently held on Tunisia’s Djerba island is a case in point. Thousands of Jews were welcomed by Tunisia’s predominantly Muslim society for their annual pilgrimage. The event highlighted the potential for religious tolerance in the Middle East and North Africa, despite the ongoing conflicts and the legacies of hate, bias and distrust.

Religious and sectarian coexistence in the Arab world is crucial not only for ending war and civil strife, but also for developing modern societies that constructively engage with the world.

I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore Toto …??

My sister in law, partner and her 2 girls were in Nice for the week, waited all day and half the night to here from them. They are all OK. They weren’t at the fireworks, thank goodness, however they left Nice in the afternoon.

Meanwhile in turkey

Humans eh?

Scum of the earth.