Islam and the Olympics > Three planned terrorist attacks on the Olympics foiled

 

It was a bit surprising and a great relief that the Olympics were not hit by a terrorist attack especially when there are so many Islamists in France and nearby Belgium. France's counterterrorism team deserves much credit for keeping the athletes and spectators safe. Well done!

France foiled three attack plots targeting Paris Olympics and Paralympics

France's counterterrorism prosecutor said on Wednesday that authorities thwarted three plots to attack the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris and other cities that hosted the events. The targets included "Israeli institutions or representatives of Israel in Paris", added the prosecutor. 

By:NEWS WIRES

French authorities foiled three plots to attack the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris and other cities that hosted the summer events, the national counterterrorism prosecutor said on Wednesday.

Olivier Christen said the plots included plans to attack “Israeli institutions or representatives of Israel in Paris” during the July 26-Aug. 11 Olympic competition. The prosecutor told broadcaster France Info that “the Israeli team itself was not specifically targeted.” He didn't give further details.

In all, five people, including a minor, were arrested on suspicion of involvement in the three foiled plots against the Summer Games, which were held against the backdrop of the Israel-Hamas war and Russia’s war in Ukraine. The suspects are facing various terrorism-related charges while they remain in pretrial detention, the prosecutor said.

France was on its highest security alert in the months ahead of the Olympics and Paralympics, which wrapped up last week. During preparations for the Games, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin repeatedly warned that security threats included those from Islamic extremist groups, violent environmental activists, far-right groups and cyberattacks from Russia or other adversaries.

In May, members of the General Directorate of Internal Security arrested an 18-year-old man from Chechnya on suspicion of being behind a plan to attack Olympic soccer events that were held in the southern city of Saint-Etienne.

The planned attack was to target “bar-type establishments around the Geoffroy-Guichard stadium,” the prosecutor said. The suspect is accused of planning “a violent action” on behalf of the Islamic State group’s jihadi ideology.

Jihadists threats dominated the foiled plots and 80% of legal proceedings against suspects include the extremist ideology that still influences France’s youth, the prosecutor said. IS continues to “spread propaganda,” he added.

Preventive measures included increased house searches and house arrests before the start of the Olympics, the prosecutor said, adding that police and other security personnel conducted 936 house searches so far in 2024, compared to 153 last year. 

France also strengthened its airspace defences during the summer Olympics and Paralympics, deploying war planes, attack helicopters, surveillance aircraft, military and police drones among others to patrol the skies over Paris and the Mediterranean port city of Marseille that hosted sailing and soccer events. 

The French Air and Space Force completed more than 750 flight hours in 350 missions that resulted in 90 interceptions, according to a statement from the Defense Ministry on Wednesday. 

Most interceptions were civilian drones, the statement said, adding that 85 drone operators were arrested. They were mostly tourists unaware of the regulations in place during the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the statement said. 

Two civilian drone operators were arrested for “delivering illegal equipment to a prison,” it added.

(AP) 

Delta and Air France expect to lose $300,000,000 on Olympics as travellers avoid Paris

 

Delta says the Olympics will cost it $100 million

as travelers skip Paris

The airline has the most service of any U.S. carrier to Paris and has a joint venture with Air France.

July 11, 2024, 12:49 PM PDT / Source: CNBC

By Leslie Josephs, CNBC

For more than 10,000 Olympic athletes, making it to Paris this summer is a dream come true. Thousands of potential tourists feel otherwise.

Delta Air Lines says travelers are avoiding the city this summer and booking to destinations elsewhere, amounting to a $100 million hit for the airline during an otherwise bustling summer for European travel, CEO Ed Bastian said.

Delta’s third-quarter profit and revenue forecast fell short of Wall Street expectations after airlines flooded the market with added flights. The airline reiterated its full-year outlook Thursday.

“Unless you’re going to the Olympics, people aren’t going to Paris...very few are,” Bastian told CNBC. “Business travel, you know, other type of tourism is potentially going elsewhere.”

Delta has the most service of any U.S. airline to Paris and has a joint venture with Air France. Together the two carriers have approximately 70% market share in nonstop service between the U.S. and France, according to consulting firm ICF.

Air France down almost $200,000,000

On July 1, Air France-KLM, the parent of Air France, forecast a revenue hit of as much as 180 million euros $195.5 million) in June through August because of the Olympic Games.

“International markets show a significant avoidance of Paris,” the company said. “Travel between the city and other destinations is also below the usual June-August average as residents in France seem to be postponing their holidays until after the Olympic Games or considering alternative travel plans.”

The cost and availability of hotel rooms may be the biggest factor, but one has to wonder if the near daily stories of Islamic terrorism also plays a part.

Islam - Current Day > French Rioters all from Immigrant backgrounds; "I'm going to slit their throats" - Grandma; Paris must Burn

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French Politician States the Obvious:

All the Rioters Had Immigrant Backgrounds

JUL 6, 2023 10:00 AM BY HUGH FITZGERALD

In an appearance at the French National Assembly, Minister of the Interior Gerard Darmanin insisted that “only 10%” of the rioters were “foreign,” while 90% were “French citizens.” That may be true, but those 90% were French citizens only on their identity cards. By their mental makeup, they were still the Muslim migrants whom their fathers and grandfathers had been. They still refused, as citizens, to integrate into French society, still tried to milk the French welfare state of every conceivable benefit – free housing, free medical care, free education, unemployment benefits, family allowances, and more – that it offered. They still saw the world through the lens of Islam. French citizenship did not change their view that, as Muslims, they were the “best of peoples” and the French non-Muslims who had welcomed them into their midst and provided such largesse remained, as Infidels, “the most vile of created beings.”

More on the response to Darmanin’s claim can be found here: 

French riots: Top politician says ‘of course there is a link between immigration’

and devastating riots across France

by John Cody, Remix News, July 5, 2023:

In a video that has garnered over 1.5 million views on Twitter alone, the leader of the Les Republicans senate group, Bruno Retailleau, said that it is clear that immigrants, including second- and third-generation people with an immigration background, were responsible for the rioting that caused widespread destruction across the country.

“I heard that (French Interior Minister) Gerard Darmanin, yesterday at the National Assembly, said there is no link between these events and immigration. Of course there is… I’ve asked many mayors. They all tell you that it’s precisely in the neighborhoods where there are migratory [migrant] ghettos. Certainly, they are French, but they are French in their official identity, and, unfortunately, for the second, third generation (of immigrants), there’s a kind of regression back towards their ethnic origins,” said Bruno Retailleau in an interview with FranceInfo.

The first generation of Muslim immigrants are actually more willing to try to fit in, so grateful are they for what the French state provides, than those who come after. It is the second and third generations of Muslim migrants, secure in their French citizenship, who become more hostile to the French, religiously more devout, less willing to try to integrate with non-Muslims. Bruno Retailleau was simply pointing out what everyone knows but few dare say: that the rioters were almost entirely Muslims, and having been granted French citizenship made no difference in their behavior.

The remark came after French Interior Minister Gerard Darmanin stated on Monday that there was no connection between immigration and the riots in France, saying that 90 percent of those arrested were French citizens.

However, Retailleau countered the French interior minister’s claim, saying that these rioters may be French citizens, but they are also second- and third-generation migrants who have not integrated into French society, and they have presented a serious security problem.

Retailleau said he feared that politics will fail to address the root problems following the week-long riot that caused over €1 billion in damage.

“We know the causes. And I want to reiterate them. Unfortunately, I’m afraid the government is tempted by the politics of failure. Once more, the French, the silent majority do not understand that there is a cold anger that is rising in the country. Because it is a double punishment for the French, because they paid into the neighborhoods, and now they have to rebuild because the savages burned them down.”

Everyone — except the demented politicians on the far-left, in the party La France Insoumise, led by the quasi-communist Jean-Luc Melenchon – knows that the Muslims alone were responsible for the riots. And the French, knowing how much their government has spent – tens of billions of euros – on the Muslims, whether citizens or not – are now enraged that after more than one billion euros worth of destruction by the Muslims, it is they, the indigenous French, who will have to rebuild the very structures, replace the cars and businesses, restock the shops, that the Muslims vandalized, pillaged, and burned down.

He points out that there are also issues in the schools, and the justice system’s response to these perpetrators, especially those who are arrested as minors, is “inadequate.”

Retailleau knows that the insubordination of Muslim students in the schools continues unpunished. The teachers are afraid of them; they don’t dare touch on certain subjects, such as freedom of expression, or any discussion of Islam, lest they end up like Samuel Paty. The Muslim students refuse, for example, to study certain subjects, such as the French monarchy, the Crusades, and the two world wars, for they are indifferent to French history – it has nothing to do with them, even if they are French citizens – and are especially unwilling to learn about subjects, such as the Dreyfus Affair and, above all, about the Holocaust, that would naturally cause sympathy for the hated Jews.

Retailleau also noted that the idea to hate France came from the French themselves, stating: “I think we share some of the responsibility. We simply don’t believe in France ourselves, and we’ve often presented France as an anti-model, a counter-example. How can you make young people from immigrant backgrounds love France if you say that France is detestable?”

It is certainly true that all over the Western world, there is a failure of self-confidence, a crazed belief that we in the advanced world have done great historical wrongs – slavery, colonialism, imperialism – and thus owe “the others” something, and at the head of the list of those “others” are the Muslims.

The left was quick to accuse Retailleau of racism after his remarks.

“This is a racist remark,” stated Manuel Bompard, the coordinator of the far-left party La France Insoumise.

One more time: Islam is not a race. Muslims are not a race. Islam is an ideology, one that is murderously hostile to non-Muslims. We see the dismal results everywhere that Muslims rule, and make life hell for Infidels who live in their countries. Consider the treatment of the Copts in Egypt, the Chaldeans and Assyrians in Iraq, the Christians in Nigeria, and the Christians and Hindus in Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

Meanwhile, Communist Party MP Elsa Faucillon wrote on Twitter: that this is a “racialist thesis par excellence. The right is slipping a little more every day.”

The week-long riot produced 3,000 arrests, hundreds of wounded police officers, thousands of arson attacks, and historic landmarks, including the famed Alcazar Library [in Maraseille], nearly burned to the ground. In one case, a flaming vehicle was even sent into a mayor’s home, nearly killing his family.

Right-leaning and conservative parties have pointed out that very few ethnic French people have participated in the riots, and for the most part, those who have are migrants or the children or grandchildren of foreigners.

It is not the presence or absence of citizenship that defines the rioters, but the presence or absence of Islam. Retailleau dares to suggest this, and for that, the leftists of both La France Insoumise, and of the Communist Party, choose to condemn him, preposterously, as a “racist” spreading a “racialist thesis.” More and more of the French, recently mugged nation-wide by the reality of Muslim mobs, are listening to Retailleau and the Republicans – the party of Marine Le Pen — with greater approval than they ever have before. More of the French are at last coming to their senses. Not a moment too soon.

..

France: Slain teen’s grandmother said cops ‘won’t escape.

I’m going to slit the throats of those who shot my son.’

Death of Nahel: what Florian M., the policeman who killed the shot, told IGPN investigators

Translated from “Mort de Nahel : ce qu’a dit Florian M., le policier auteur du tir mortel, aux enquêteurs de l’IGPN,” 

by Jean-Michel Décugis, Jérémie Pham-Lê and Vincent Gautronneau, Le Parisien, July 5, 2023

Premises of the Paris delegation of the General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN), on June 27. After having undergone a psychiatric examination at the Max-Fourestier hospital (Nanterre) and having been separated from his colleague to avoid any consultation, Florian M., a 38-year-old police brigadier, is heard in free hearing then quickly under the regime of police custody by investigators from the “police of police.”…

The autopsy revealed that the fatal shot hit Nahel in the chest after penetrating the teenager’s front windscreen and wrist. 

That doesn't make any sense to me. He was supposed to have been shot by the cop standing at the driver's side window.

During the investigation at the scene, the police officers stated that they heard the victim’s grandmother say threatening words, “The two policemen will not escape from my hands. I will wait for them (…) Tomorrow is mutton day, I will cut the throats of those who shot my son. There is a terrorist who will catch them all.” 

Since then, the grieving woman has called for calm….

Paris must burn

Translated from “Paris muss brennen,“ 

by Sebastian Geisler, Bild, July 5, 2023 

In the article “Youth protests in France: You have no choice,” author Mohamed Amjahid (35) puts forward remarkable thesis about the serious riots in the neighboring country.

Amjahid writes, for example: “The images of the burning cars, the firecrackers being fired at the state power, act like a fragile life insurance for the racialized youth of France.”

Violence, riots and arson as “life insurance” for the perpetrators? Amjahid obviously means this completely seriously!

He writes: “In other countries, too, police stations have had to go up in flames in recent years to give the weakest a chance of survival. Very few understand this connection between mobilization and self-protection.”

In fact, only very few are likely to “understand” why the burning (!) of police stations and attacking police officers serves the “self-protection” and “survival” of the violent perpetrators.

The "very few" who are likely to understand are those who are criminally insane - In my humble opinion.

But Amjahid adds: “Purely analytically and from the perspective of the demonstrators: Paris must burn so that something can be done about police violence in the country, at least in the short term.”

So, what should be done about the Muslim violence in the country, in most EU countries? What shall we burn?

“Paris must burn”? An incredible statement.

Amjahid adds a justification: “The price for the murders committed by police officers and made possible by politics in the first place must be pushed up.” The author claims without any evidence that the Paris police would commit “murders” made possible by politics. The victims: residents of the hotspot suburbs (banlieues).

Background: In Paris, violent criminals had committed serious riots in the past few days after a police officer shot Nahel M. (17), who was trying to evade a traffic check. M. succumbed to his injuries. Since M.’s death, residents of the hotspot areas of the Parisian suburbs have been rioting. Demonstrations during the day, riots at night. Paris descends into chaos, destruction and violence.

The situation in the hotspot suburbs has been difficult for a long time. These are characterized by unemployment and crime, a large proportion of the residents come from abroad, many are Arab and African immigrants who have hardly made contact with French society. Violent riots broke out in 2005. Since then, France has been trying to improve the situation in the banlieues with a lot of money for infrastructure and modernization.

The opinion piece obviously also shocked “taz” readers: Under the comment, a user writes: “The comment is stunned. Looting, destroying everything to be heard? May I ask how you spend your life as an author of such theses!”

Another user writes: “So looting the shops of bystanders is the only way for young people to be heard?”

Another commented, “I have a hard time believing this article is serious.”

============================================================================================

Marijuana - 'License to Kill Jews?’ France’s Chief Rabbi Slams Exoneration of Drug-Addled, Muslim Killer

Chief Rabbi Haim Korsia excoriated the French justice system for excusing from trial the man who confessed to beating and throwing Jewish woman Sarah Halimi from her window – because he’d smoked too much marijuana.

Demanding to know “how deliberately taking considerable quantities of drugs exonerates an individual from responsibility,” Korsia called on the justice department to reinstate charges against Halimi’s confessed killer, Kobili Traore. In an open letter to Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet in Le Figaro on Wednesday, the rabbi demanded the prosecutor repair the “grave breach of trust” in the system by affirming Traore’s guilt and impose a respective sentence.

“Should it be inferred from this decision that every drug-addicted individual is licensed to kill Jews?” Korsia asked, pointing out that if consuming vast quantities of cannabis “exacerbated [Traore’s] anti-Semitic impulses, it means these impulses already existed!”

Traore confessed during a preliminary hearing to brutalizing and defenestrating Halimi, who lived in the same housing project, after breaking into her apartment on April 4, 2017.

Neighbors who called the police on hearing her cries for help also heard Traore shouting “Allahu akbar” and “Shaitan” (Satan) as he pummeled the woman for nearly an hour.

The JC reports both Traore and his mother believe he was demonically possessed: He now maintains that he had absorbed large quantities of cannabis on the previous day and that he was “possessed” by “outside forces” or “devilish forces”.

There is evidence that he also spent some time the previous day at the nearby Omar Mosque, a place connected to radical Islam. However, his mother claims that she sent him there precisely to help him overcome his “Satanic” obsessions.

And, in spite of screaming antisemitic slurs during the hour he was beating Halimi, the judge in the case, Anne Ihuelu, has declined to charge Kobili Traore with antisemitic motivations.

It seems obvious that the French 'justice' system is bending over backwards to try to not inflame the Muslim community. Blaming Traore's psychotic break on marijuana runs counter to what most people have known or experienced with marijuana, unless you believe that it does fling the door wide open to demonic spirits. 

Traore's psychosis probably has much more to do with his Islamic beliefs. “I came to the absolute conviction that it is impossible…impossible…for any human being to read the biography of Mohammed and believe in it, and then emerge a psychologically and mentally healthy person.” - Syrian Psychiatrist Dr. Wafa Sultan.

All radicalized Muslims are insane, if not demonically possessed! They need to be permanently segregated from French society.

And Halimi had told relatives she was afraid of him after he called her daughter a “dirty Jewess” when they passed on the building’s staircase just weeks before the murder.

But the Paris Appeals Court on December 19 upheld a ruling excusing the 29-year-old from trial after two psychiatric assessments found he had suffered a “delusional episode” from excessive cannabis consumption.

While the court maintained Traore had “voluntarily” ended Halimi’s life, and included anti-Semitism in its determination of motive, it nevertheless declined to proceed to trial. Instead of imprisonment, Traore will be sent to a drug rehab program or hospitalized for treatment of his psychotic lapses, according to AFP.

And that will not be the last we hear of this lunatic, or the judge who declined to prosecute him. This is an example of the growing political power of Islam in France and a far cry from - Liberté, Equalité, Fraternité.

Why the Kyoto/Paris Agreement is Not Working - Diane Francis Nails It

Trudeau’s ridiculous, holier-than-thou climate policies

are making emissions much worse

For every pipeline and well and LNG plant that is not built in Canada,

the Chinese and Indians will simply burn more dirty coal

Bloomberg Best of the Year 2019: A man tends to vegetables in a field as emissions rise from nearby cooling towers of a

coal-fired power station in Tongling, Anhui province, China, on Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2019. Qilai Shen/Bloomberg files

Diane Francis

The inconvenient truth about the Kyoto-Paris Agreement on climate change is that the 1997 deal has been a major flop because it was flawed from the beginning. It should be scrapped and completely overhauled and Canada’s Liberals should have realized this before they embarked on their ruinous attack against the country’s resource base.

The failure of the agreement, evidenced by emissions that are climbing alarmingly fast, reveal how the Trudeau government’s holier-than-thou approach on climate change is naive and completely misguided. The facts are that Ottawa should have been building lots of pipelines, approving many LNG export projects, and leading an international movement to scrap and try to redo the Paris agreement.

The agreement has been dramatically counter-productive because targets were not applied equally and globally. Of the 192 countries that signed on in 1997, only the 37 developed countries had to agree to reduce emissions. The undeveloped nations — notably China and India — had no restrictions placed on them. They argued that restrictions on emissions would hold back their economic development.

That’s fine, but targets should have been phased in and applied to all countries. This benefit should not have been permanently baked in.

Energy intensive companies help developed countries

approach their Kyoto targets by moving to countries

that have no targets. How crazy is that?

The result was predictable and noted by the Americans, Canadians and Australians at the time. Today, the developing countries’ emissions have soared, which has allowed them to keep their costs low based on the burning of cheap local coal as their principal energy source.

Naturally, this patchwork quilt of regulation has resulted in a gigantic global arbitrage — companies from countries with restrictions — have moved plants or outsourced energy-intensive products such as steel and cement to environmentally dirty nations. For instance, Canada’s imports of steel jumped between 2018 and 2019 alone by 87 per cent, bought, directly or indirectly, from countries not bound by the Kyoto-Paris Agreement. Germany and the United States have done the same.

“Since 1997, the 37 developed countries have reduced CO2 emissions by about 7 per cent, while exempted country emissions rose 130 per cent. And overall global emissions hit a new record in 2018, up two per cent year over year and up 49 per cent since 1997,” according to official figures contained in a report by former Canadian investment bankers who are now investors, Steve Larke and Adam Le Dain. “Driven by good intentions and accelerating energy demand, the world is facing an unintended energy crisis.”

And that wasn't predictable?

Counterintuitively, Canada must prioritize the building of pipelines to export its oil, with relatively low emissions, and to build natural gas pipelines and dozens of LNG projects on both coasts. This is because every single energy molecule that is exported from Canada to Asia or elsewhere replaces their need to burn dirty coal, or to fuel their vehicles with electricity generated by coal. (This was a platform in the Tory energy policy this election, plus conservation subsidies for consumers.)

Perhaps, but it certainly was never articulated like this.

Canada’s foolish belief in an international treaty that doesn’t work has left us badly behind. The Americans have dozens of LNG export projects completed or under construction and Canada, with one of the biggest natural gas endowments on the planet, has been unable to get one built — thanks to the usual suspects in Ottawa, British Columbia and Quebec. The country could be a major player in LNG exports but time is running out as Australia and Qatar also move aggressively to compete.

Not to mention Russia's superport LNG in the Arctic, and the pipeline to China.

Instead, Trudeau cripples Alberta, subsidizes profitable Loblaw to buy lower-emission refrigerators and campaigns across the country about climate change in two fuel-guzzling aircraft and does nothing to curb demand at home by consumers.

The inconvenient truth is that for every pipeline and well and LNG plant that is not built in Canada, the Chinese and Indians will simply burn more dirty coal.

The Liberals and greens in Canada are not the solution. They are the problem. 

They are committing economic suicide, and rather than saving the planet, they will make it impossible for our next generations to be able to respond, because they will be so heavily in debt, our debt.

Financial Post

Last Week's Islamic Terrorist Attack in Europe Killed 4 in Paris Police Station, Had Top Secret Clearance

Radical Islamist police officer who killed his Paris colleagues had TOP SECRET security clearance & info on UNDERCOVER COPS

Security personnel is seen after an attack on the police headquarters in Paris, France, October 3, 2019.

© REUTERS/Christian Hartmann

France is having a ‘who watches the watchmen’ moment after learning that the suspected radical Islamist who went on a stabbing spree at Paris police HQ had access to the names of undercover cops investigating domestic jihadists.

Mickaël Harpon, who went on a bloody knife rampage last week, killing three officers and a female administrator before he was shot in the head, worked as an IT specialist at the police headquarters. As the investigation into the man continues, more troubling facts have been revealed which show a major lapse in security.

His job gave Harpon a top security clearance and access to computers in a police department tasked with monitoring suspected radical Islamists in France, and he was found to be in possession of sensitive data. When they searched his home, investigators discovered the personal details of police officers who had infiltrated a number of mosques in Paris frequented by suspected radicals. The information was next to propaganda videos of the terrorist group Islamic State, which is worrisome, to say the least.

“It's staggering as well as maddening. How was this person able to get through the net? This is amateurism that needs to be sorted out,” Yves Lefebvre, a police union spokesman, commented on the discovery.

It was not immediately clear if Harpon kept the information to himself or used it to warn fellow Islamists. The French government hopes he didn’t share the data.

“I cannot guarantee he did not use his access to give information. For the time being, nothing indicates that he did,” French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said in a radio interview.

The minister is on the defensive now that the French opposition and some media have accused him of negligence which, as Le Figaro’s front-page editorial put it, allowed “the poison of radical Islam” to penetrate “the heart of the state apparatus.”

Harpon is said to have converted to Islam around ten years ago, with his religious convictions becoming more extreme as the years went by. It has been revealed that he had had contact with suspicious individuals, including a suspected Salafist preacher. Salafism is a fundamentalist branch of Islam strongly associated with extremism.

Officials initially said Harpon’s behavior at work sparked no suspicions, but according to fresh media reports, a number of red flags concerning him actually went unaddressed. He wouldn’t kiss female colleagues on the cheeks, as is customary in France but forbidden under strict gender separation rules of Salafist Islam. In 2015, he purportedly defended the Charlie Hedbo shooting in an argument with a colleague, claiming the victims “had it coming.” A probe was launched at the time, but none of his coworkers would officially report Harpon.

It doesn't pay to be nice to a terrorist, or, potential terrorist.

The news that French police ranks had such a dangerous individual in a position of high trust is sending shockwaves across the force already struggling with plethora of problems, including dwindling salaries and uncertainty around pensions, a lack of manpower and skyrocketing suicide rates.

Radicalized Muslims need to be locked up. They are insane and can explode at any moment. France has been fortunate that they seem to explode only one, or a few, at a time. But, I believe there will come a day when something causes them all to explode at the same time. How many thousands are there in France, how many tens of thousands in Europe? It's a terrifying scenario, yet, no country in Europe is preparing for such and event.

Paris Police Knifeman had ‘Radical Vision of Islam,’ But PC France Reluctant to Call 4 Murders Terrorism

©  Reuters / Philippe Wojazer

The knife-wielding attacker who murdered four people at a Paris police station adhered to a “radical vision of Islam,” French anti-terrorism prosecutors say. The knifeman apparently converted to Islam 10 years ago.

Mickael Harpon, a 45-year-old police computer expert with 15 years’ experience on the force, was shot dead by fellow officers on Thursday, after killing four people and wounding two in a stabbing rampage at police headquarters in Paris.

Though terrorism was not declared the motive in the attack, the case was handed over to the country’s anti-terrorism prosecutor on Friday. The prosecutor said on Saturday that Harpon followed a “radical vision of Islam,” following media reports a day earlier that he had converted to the faith 18 months prior to the attack.

However, authorities now say the suspect converted to Islam around 10 years ago, and displayed signs of “latent radicalization.” He also exchanged 33 text messages with his wife in the runup to the attack, all of which were of a religious nature, prosecutors said on Saturday.

French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said that Harpon – whose rampage was ended with a shot to the head from an automatic rifle – had “never shown any behavioral problems” during his time with the force. Harpon’s wife, however, told investigators that her husband “heard voices” and had become “incoherent” on Wednesday night, before waking “abruptly” on the morning of the killing spree.

Radical Islamism is real insanity, if not Satanic invasion! I'm leaning more and more toward the latter.

©  Reuters / Christian Hartmann

As prosecutors probe Harpon’s religious leanings, the French government went out of its way to urge people not to jump to conclusions.

“It is important to emphasize you are not a terrorist [just] because you are Muslim, and converting to Islam is not an automatic sign of radicalization. The facts need to be looked at carefully,” government spokeswoman Sibeth Ndiaye told Franceinfo radio on Friday.

After all the radical Islamic attacks in Paris and elsewhere in France, the government is still very reluctant to call a spade a spade. #PCMadness!

Europe is Not Adjusting to Having Terrorists in Their Midst, And It Just Might Kill Them

It’s fine to protect terrorists’ privacy – but then you have no one to blame when they blow you up

Paris attacks in November 2015 ©  Getty/Thierry Orban / Contributor

Europe now has to be honest with itself – with enemies in its midst, it can either sacrifice some of the legal rights it holds so dear, or tolerate the deaths of innocents as a price worth paying for keeping its principles.

The decision to pay €500 to Salah Abdeslam, the last man alive of the Paris attackers who killed 131 people in November 2015, as compensation for illegal 24/7 surveillance of his French prison cell since his arrest, has provoked widespread outrage. To many he is lucky to have avoided a public execution, a luxury not afforded to his jihadist gang’s victims, never mind safeguarding his right to use the toilet without being watched.

But to advocates of the rule of law this is something of a pedantic triumph to the situation – according to the present legal system even a convicted man enjoys the same constitutional right to privacy. No one is below the law.

Other than as a lightning rod of public anger the incident is trivial – withholding the money wouldn’t have brought those mowed down in the Bataclan back – but it does illustrate the tightrope authorities in Europe have to walk in regards to those who pose a danger to society.

The French, Germans or Brits say they do not want American Patriot Act-style legislation that would give security agencies untrammeled power to snoop on its citizens, whether they are just suspects or have already been convicted of some offense. European voices were some of the most outraged at the Snowden revelations that exposed the true spying capacities of the NSA, while a Guantanamo would be politically untenable for any government on the continent. Extra-judicial practices are unacceptable, and the fundamental principles are not violated – at least not openly.

Europe’s law enforcement apparently works with one hand behind its back – having to monitor thousands of people from a distance, but unable to stop them from joining Islamist causes abroad, or freely coming back, incapable of curtailing their radical activities at home until they explicitly violate the law, not empowered to step in before something bad happens.

Which makes it rich when the same public voices and media complain about authorities not doing enough, particularly in cases where the future terrorist was known to them. Most recently illustrated last month, when MI5 had to explain to relatives of victims of the 2017 London Bridge attack why it did not stop the deadly vehicular assault, despite being aware of the chief perpetrator for several years. But what was MI5 supposed to do – snatch him off the street and take him to a “black site,” or try to convict him and thousands of other potential jihadists through a closed court without sufficient evidence?

Despite public assurances that all violence is unacceptable it often appears that Europe has made its unspoken peace with its own laxness, as repeated attacks, from Charlie Hebdo to Nice to Manchester Arena to Las Ramblas, have not resulted in any open change in approach. Or perhaps authorities believe that as much as can be done is already being done behind the scenes – UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid boasted in May that 19 major terrorist attacks had been foiled in the past two years alone, and hundreds more prevented before they took shape.

But no one can promise that even this is the new baseline. Javid himself warned that the frequency of the plots is growing, so unless there has been a breakthrough in prevention, there is no reason to assume that there won’t be future attacks of the same magnitude, or ones designed to top them for greater attention.

More fundamentally, the problem of which terrorism is only the sharp edge has not been resolved. There are still tens of millions of poorly integrated migrants living deprived lives in the suburbs of the continent’s large cities, and with migration their proportion will only grow. Most of them will not buy chemicals and nails online, but they will bring a host of social problems.

So, Europe has not just to ask itself whether privacy in prisons is sacred?

But if it can abandon freedom of worship by banning religious schools and mosques that teach anti-Western ideologies?

If it should target people and neighborhoods on the basis of race and religion?

If migrants are to be accepted no-questions-asked, even if there are violent radicals among them?

If it must maintain the liberal justice system that saw Abdeslam and his friends getting only fines and months-long sentences for drug dealing and robberies, or 

the social security that gave him thousands of euro in benefits that he used to finance the purchase of guns and peroxide?

How much longer can Europe put off these questions, pretending that nothing has changed in its cozy little Old World?

By Igor Ogorodnev

Igor Ogorodnev is a Russian-British journalist, who has worked at RT since 2007 as a correspondent, editor and writer.

European countries need to write laws declaring radical Islam to be a dangerous form of insanity, for it certainly is. Only then can these monsters be arrested before they commit atrocities, and segregated from other prison populations, and hopefully kept in custody until they renounce Islam or die.

Paris Teacher Fatally Stabbed in Throat by Former Student - a Pakistani Immigrant

© Google Maps

A teacher at Léonard-de-Vinci University near Paris has died, after being stabbed in the throat by a former student in front of the institution. The attacker is of Pakistani descent.

The victim, a 66-year-old English teacher, was stabbed in the throat in front of Léonard-de-Vinci University on Wednesday, Le Parisien reported. The suspect is a Pakistani male, 37, who had been expelled from the institution last year.

According to Le Parisien, the assailant had failed his 2017 school year and was not allowed to progress with his studies. He returned to the university around noon on Wednesday and took his revenge, stabbing his former teacher multiple times in the throat in broad daylight.

The teacher greeted his attacker moments before the violent stabbing, a student at the university told RT France. Other students at the scene tried to administer first aid to the dying teacher, but to no avail.

“The spate of school violence continues and worsens, [what] horror: the stabbing of a teacher in Courbevoie by a former Pakistani student calls for urgent measures. Support to his family and colleagues!” said David Rachline, mayor of the small French town of Fréjus.

Other French politicians focused on the attacker’s background, calling for tougher immigration laws.

"I demand they finally consider the link/connection between the rewildening of the country and anarchical immigration," read a tweet from Marseille Senator Stéphane Ravier, a member of Marine Le Pen’s populist National Rally party."For how long will the French blood flow?"

Et pourquoi?

Léonard-de-Vinci university is located in Courbevoie, a suburb of Paris on the edge of the city’s business district.

Violence in the classroom is a growing problem in France. A viral video showing a student holding a replica gun to a teacher’s head in a suburban Paris high school shocked the nation in October, with President Emmanuel Macron declaring the incident “unacceptable” and calling for the Ministry of Education to investigate.

In another incident in Paris last month, a teenage student punched his teacher in the nose and “grabbed his neck to strangle him,” sending the teacher to the emergency room. The student was indicted for “aggravated violence,” and was expelled from the school.

As with the gun incident, the attack sparked a social media outcry, with French twitter users lamenting the declining quality of education in their country, and the fact that some school children “refuse to follow the rules.”