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Yet another sucky day to work at a vacation company. Luckily we have no clients there at the moment, but this means our sales are gonna suck for the next 3-4 weeks till people stop being scared again. That's about how long it took for things to pick up again after Paris happened.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
From what I see the police and security forces of Holland, France and Belgium are doing a great job. It's impossible to completely prevent this kind of terrorism. But they've arrested a number of people, each of whom when interrogated is likely to yield clues to any other cells still hidden. I am sure that membership of Interpol, NATO and the EU, and common languages, all help to make cooperation easier.

Living in Belgium, I can tell you that on the paper, cooperation is fine. In reality, inside Belgium, communication between the different levels of power (state and regions) isn't really great.

Especially with Brussel, that our Nationalists just want to "blow up" because it represents everything they dislike.

Of course, they didn't want to have this kind of event happening, but I'm not sure they really did "everything they could" in Belgium to prevent that.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
I was wondering how low it'd be until Euro-philes started calling for "more Europe".

I'm voting to leave, but a rapid reaction force for Europe, but unconnected to the EU, sounds like a good idea to me.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
I was wondering how low it'd be until Euro-philes started calling for "more Europe".

Can we please not go down this road. People on the Brexit side have said horrible things as well and this topic really isn't the place to start discussing the EU.

 Goliath wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
I was wondering how low it'd be until Euro-philes started calling for "more Europe".

Can we please not go down this road. People on the Brexit side have said horrible things as well and this topic really isn't the place to start discussing the EU.

I am fully supporting this.

There's even a specific thread for the Brexit matter. This is an entirely different thing.

Belgian news reports that Russia had informed Belgium on the possible culprits earlier this week, allegedly Belgians returning from fighting in Syria.

Bomb on the airport had nails in it.

*Shakes head*

We've got to do something with returnees. There must be some legal frameworks we can use for this.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
I was wondering how low it'd be until Euro-philes started calling for "more Europe".

People got blown up, better try and make a snarky little political "point", right?

 thenoobbomb wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
I was wondering how low it'd be until Euro-philes started calling for "more Europe".

People got blown up, better try and make a snarky little political "point", right?

It's going to happen one way or the other - pro-brexit, anti-brexit, doesn't matter - whenever there is a terrorist attack one side picks up on it as 'proof' of their opinion.

Best advice is not to let it get to you and move on.

Or you could see that as an engagement pont for an argument and jump in feet first....

Interesting how the airport bomb source looks to be luggage that was just checked, on its way behind the service counters. Don't know how you avoid that without either banning checked luggage or having a permanent staff of bomb-sniffing dogs. I would think that a lone whacko in a suicide vest could have done more collateral damage if he'd simply run into the security line, so maybe choosing a method of attack that allowed the attackers to make an exit was a priority.

The first bomb was to cause people to panic and run, the second was blown up amidst fleeing people which resulted in more victims, according to an eye witness.

 motyak wrote:

 SirDonlad wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
What Europe needs is an international crisis force that operates beyond an individual country. Traditional security in the form of governmental controlled and organized units is too ineffective to work against terror, they're inflexible and too restricted to immediately react. If you ever head to deal with transferring forces from one country to another, you stop to wonder why response times are that high. A cross-national unit of non-governmental bound soldiers will be able to quickly respond to any threat and is not hindered by borders or individual laws.

Are you saying that we need a real-life 'team America'?

I disagree.

I'm hearing a real-life "Rainbow 6". But that's just me

That's exactly what I thought as well.

Putting aside the politics, is such an idea feasible? It's interesting.

I don't think it is. Assuming such a hypothetical force existed, it would have to be based out of the upper part of France to me more or less in the middle of Europe, yes? Reaching the upper end of the UK is around 800 miles. Assuming they'd be travelling by Blackhawk or Chinooks , we're talking over 4 hours flight time if said helos are moving full speed. Even an Osprey would take almost 3 hours, I believe.

You'd have to have multiple basings everywhere, which means you can't really put aside the politics. But perhaps there is something I haven't thought of.

Checked baggage seems a dangerous route to go though. You're interacting with people more, who may notice signs of stress, you have to provide some manner of ID, even if fake it can still help the authorities out. Dumping a bomb in a trash can to create that panic effect seems a much safer bet in my eyes.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ouze wrote:

 motyak wrote:

 SirDonlad wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
What Europe needs is an international crisis force that operates beyond an individual country. Traditional security in the form of governmental controlled and organized units is too ineffective to work against terror, they're inflexible and too restricted to immediately react. If you ever head to deal with transferring forces from one country to another, you stop to wonder why response times are that high. A cross-national unit of non-governmental bound soldiers will be able to quickly respond to any threat and is not hindered by borders or individual laws.

Are you saying that we need a real-life 'team America'?

I disagree.

I'm hearing a real-life "Rainbow 6". But that's just me

That's exactly what I thought as well.

Putting aside the politics, is such an idea feasible? It's interesting.

I don't think it is. Assuming such a hypothetical force existed, it would have to be based out of the upper part of France to me more or less in the middle of Europe, yes? Reaching the upper end of the UK is around 800 miles. Assuming they'd be travelling by Blackhawk or Chinooks , we're talking over 4 hours flight time if said helos are moving full speed. Even an Osprey would take almost 3 hours, I believe.

You'd have to have multiple basings everywhere, which means you can't really put aside the politics. But perhaps there is something I haven't thought of.

I'd say unlikely to be feasible. To many levels of bureaucracy they'd have to work through. Leave it to a nations military/police forces to deal with, and the european intel agencies can come together on their own.

 motyak wrote:

 SirDonlad wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
What Europe needs is an international crisis force that operates beyond an individual country. Traditional security in the form of governmental controlled and organized units is too ineffective to work against terror, they're inflexible and too restricted to immediately react. If you ever head to deal with transferring forces from one country to another, you stop to wonder why response times are that high. A cross-national unit of non-governmental bound soldiers will be able to quickly respond to any threat and is not hindered by borders or individual laws.

Are you saying that we need a real-life 'team America'?

I disagree.

I'm hearing a real-life "Rainbow 6". But that's just me

I was hearing real-life "GDI"

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
I was wondering how low it'd be until Euro-philes started calling for "more Europe".

Can you at least wait for the bodies to be cool before you start using the dead for your political snark? Classless.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:


Perhaps the better option would be to let NATO handle it.

Britain, France, and Germany have excellent anti-terror/special forces units, and a force could be drawn from them. The Americans could get involved by providing the intelligence, and leave the bulk of the heavy lifting to Europe, so as not to get bogged down in American politics and accusations that America is bailing out Europe again.

Other smaller NATO members could provide personnel and equipment or funding.

Precisely. Resources are already there and you can draw both from governmental and non-governmental sources to recruit from. Plans to do such a thing exist but haven't been pooled much attention to, mostly due to politics and a strong anti-americanism in some member states.

 Ouze wrote:


I don't think it is. Assuming such a hypothetical force existed, it would have to be based out of the upper part of France to me more or less in the middle of Europe, yes? Reaching the upper end of the UK is around 800 miles. Assuming they'd be travelling by Blackhawk or Chinooks , we're talking over 4 hours flight time if said helos are moving full speed. Even an Osprey would take almost 3 hours, I believe.

You'd have to have multiple basings everywhere, which means you can't really put aside the politics. But perhaps there is something I haven't thought of.

No, that's it and how most plans see it. One main base (several ideas on where to deplay), several deployment bases in individual countries, mobile bases suggested. Politics is the problem, funding isn't. A lot of countries feel uncomfortable having a neutral force on their ground they can't command and thus reject the idea. That's the main problem, neutral boots on ground. Which is understandle politics-wise, but rationally, this means higher cost at way less efficiency...and in regards to politics, we haven't even started discussing jurisdiction on such a force yet, i.e. by which law they would be held responsible.

Then again, I don't want to derail this thread any further. This should be about the incident at hand and people expressing their feelings for those involved in it, to families and friends who had to suffer a great loss on this day.

For any American Dakka members who don't follow European Union politics, here's a quick re-cap of the problems facing Europe and why it'll be hard to create a multi-nation rapid reaction force to deal with future terror attacks in Europe.

1) The EU is 28 different member nations, so that's 28 different agendas. It's hard to get these nations to agree on simple stuff like agriculture and benefit reforms, never mind something of this magnitude.

2) Europe seems to engulfed in a tidal wave of problems. The migrant crisis is getting worse. Britain is having a vote on staying or leaving, and quite frankly, our leaders are just not up to the task. Any of these problems on its own would be hard to solve, but combined? Hard to see it happening.

3) Red tape. European institutions are notorious for red tape and bureaucracy . Given the level of the threat, you would hope that the red tape would be swept away and nations would unite for the common good, but IMO, any rainbow six style force would be snuffed out before it even got off the ground.

An expert of the BBC was saying that Belgian intelligence wasn't passing on information that quickly to the Belgian police!

Good luck trying to make this work across nations. It can be done, but I don't think the will is there.

My condolences to the Belgian people and all war and so called "human" stupidity victims. Our race is the biggest problem. In fact all of us are heartlings so (in my personal opinion), ther's no difference if a bomber is Turkish, Iraki or Hawaian or wtfplace is from.. Is real but I can't believe that no one could note anything before.. Are these ghosts that walks trough walls?

 Archimede wrote:
Are these ghosts that walks trough walls?

How in the world do you screen for terrorists while allowing Merkel's open-door policy (or elevator door, or turnstile, or whatever iteration it's on now) unimpeded? This was likely a terror attack undertaken by some militant ME group or individuals with funding from same. At this point, attacks are ongoing, with the EU urban centers being 'easy' targets given 'open' borders if you can ingress through one of the fringe EU nations. If mass influx of people with poorly documented origins into a borderless system is the backdrop that security forces are supposed to manage through, how in the world can they be expected to screen effectively? I'm surprised that there have not been more successful attacks.

Picture of the suspects has been released.

There's also rumours they're from Belarus.

 sourclams wrote:

 Archimede wrote:
Are these ghosts that walks trough walls?

How in the world do you screen for terrorists while allowing Merkel's open-door policy (or elevator door, or turnstile, or whatever iteration it's on now) unimpeded? This was likely a terror attack undertaken by some militant ME group or individuals with funding from same. At this point, attacks are ongoing, with the EU urban centers being 'easy' targets given 'open' borders if you can ingress through one of the fringe EU nations. If mass influx of people with poorly documented origins into a borderless system is the backdrop that security forces are supposed to manage through, how in the world can they be expected to screen effectively? I'm surprised that there have not been more successful attacks.

Aye however much defences we establish and design. If you let the enemy through the open gate.. That's fething useless. She has a wide open gate, its a weak point to all of Europe.

Its a sad day, but we may be letting wolves into our cities, waiting to attack. Not good
.

I'm agree that screening couldn't be effective with actuals boundary conditions (EU has to move "UNITED" and I only can demonstrate my disappointment about external policy management) My "ghost" where related to 1st and 2nd generation of "integrated" citizens that has common blind and deaf neighbours..

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:

 Goliath wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
I was wondering how low it'd be until Euro-philes started calling for "more Europe".

Can we please not go down this road. People on the Brexit side have said horrible things as well and this topic really isn't the place to start discussing the EU.

I am fully supporting this.

There's even a specific thread for the Brexit matter. This is an entirely different thing.

People in this thread are calling for more European task forces and agencies to counter terrorism, which will almost certainly be tied to and involve the European Union. If you want to avoid this thread becoming a partisan argument with people trying to make political capitol out of it, fine. I fully agree. Its crass and far too soon to start making political points out of today's attacks, that is exactly what I was criticising.

So please direct your comments at the people here who are actually doing what you accuse me of.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 curran12 wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
I was wondering how low it'd be until Euro-philes started calling for "more Europe".

Can you at least wait for the bodies to be cool before you start using the dead for your political snark? Classless.

So its OK for the Pro-EU side ITT to immediately exploit the attack and start calling for more European agencies and political integration, but when the Anti-EU side call them out for it, its "political snark"? Double standards.

Many terrorists are home-grown.

You've a very negative view of people mate.

If someone suggests a solution to this problem that occurs to them, that is not some "political seizure" of the issue - people are thinking about the problem and if they think of a solution they mention it. It's hardly a co-ordinated power grab.

A decent response from you, if you dislike that policy, would be to suggest how we could become more secure without EU integration of security forces, rather than attacking your political enemies.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Many terrorists are home-grown.

Call me a skeptic, but I doubt this attack was undertaken by a French, German, or Belgian Nationalist (i.e., for an extreme-Right purpose, like protestation of the EU).

Even where the culprits have lived 'domestic' for some period of time, radical Islam has been the unifying theme of the higher profile attacks of recent years, going back to the Boston Marathon bombings or Ft. Hood shootings.

 Sigvatr wrote:
Then again, I don't want to derail this thread any further. This should be about the incident at hand and people expressing their feelings for those involved in it, to families and friends who had to suffer a great loss on this day.

Not to be callous or intentionally provocative, but as someone who lives in a country with more mass shootings than days in the year, I can tell you that posting your prayers, condolences, and suchlike are pretty much utterly worthless and sort of a waste of bandwidth at this point. They simply don't mean anything at all. I mean, I guess they might make the poster feel momentarily better, but that's like the absolute lowest form of slacktivism, the Dakka version of posting "amen" on some Facebook agony-porn post.

I think discussing solutions to, or ways to try and ameliorate at least, these sorts of attacks is at least interesting, if not any more useful, pragmatically speaking.

 Ouze wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
Then again, I don't want to derail this thread any further. This should be about the incident at hand and people expressing their feelings for those involved in it, to families and friends who had to suffer a great loss on this day.

Not to be callous or intentionally provocative, but as someone who lives in a country with more mass shootings than days in the year, I can tell you that posting your prayers, condolences, and suchlike are pretty much utterly worthless and sort of a waste of bandwidth at this point. They simply don't mean anything at all. I mean, I guess they might make the poster feel momentarily better, but that's like the absolute lowest form of slacktivism.

I'm on the same boat and my wife's facebook is already filling up with "Sorry for Belgium" posts, images etc. The thing is, however, that this could be said for most things on the internet - sure, we could continue other topics in this very thread, but no posts ever actually "does" something. You won't convince people over the internet, never, ever will that happen. We could discuss plans to make the EU more secure (and with its current policy, everything would make it much more secure as right now, Germany destabilized the EU), but said discussions won't lead anywhere, plans are already suggested, developed, hosted etc. and noone will ever say "...but this guy from the internet, on the tabletop gaming forum said...". We'd be discussing things that have already been discussed on a much, much higher level with politicans, private contractors and country representatives. There are already talks appointed throughout the entire year where all of this is discussed.

The funny...or rather disturbing issue about all this is that it's the "industry" / contractors who want to push for a change because it's cheaper (!) for each country than what they do today. Much cheaper if you go with a relatively adjusted fee / fund paid by each EU country. Yet politicians don't want to touch that matter with a very long stick. As a consequence, we see a radicalisation of Europe towards the right, a severely decreased trust in politics and civil uproar. People don't feel safe anymore and the government ignores them, actually even makes them feel /MORE/ insecure. Private companies could be fine with this as the more people feel insecure, the more people are looking for help the state cannot provide. If there's any sort of crisis, it's the upper level citizens that don't have anything to worry about as they already have contracts with private companies ensuring their safety. Even middle class civilians are slowly starting to ask for support - and to me, civilians asking for a quite expensive service because they are too scared, that's a pretty bad sign for a state. That state then even further spitting in its citizen's face is more than worrying.

 sourclams wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Many terrorists are home-grown.

Call me a skeptic, but I doubt this attack was undertaken by a French, German, or Belgian Nationalist (i.e., for an extreme-Right purpose, like protestation of the EU).

Even where the culprits have lived 'domestic' for some period of time, radical Islam has been the unifying theme of the higher profile attacks of recent years, going back to the Boston Marathon bombings or Ft. Hood shootings.

I would take the 'home-grown' comment to imply that many so-called Islamist terrorists are 'home-grown' in the sense that they're born nationals who are radicalised at home, then (some) travail abroad to learn fighting/exploding things in general skills, & then return home to cause havoc.

 Ouze wrote:

I think discussing solutions to, or ways to try and ameliorate at least, these sorts of attacks is at least interesting, if not any more useful, pragmatically speaking.

Only question in my mind is whether these are 'new' immigrants, or more established. If 'new', then this will easily be framed as the inevitable result of an open-door immigration policy from countries in turmoil.

I actually doubt that's the case given the seeming level of organization with multiple coordinated attacks. If Russian intelligence really did tip off Western authorities, then that makes it even less likely that these were fresh off the boat terrorists.