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[Jopax]

Speaking of France, what the fuck is going on in Paris, some sort of attack again?

[martinuzz]

Yeah, guy drove his car to a couple of police cars at the Champs Elysee, and started emptying an automatic rifle at them. One police officer was killed, and two were seriously injured before they could kill the assailant.
The anti-terrorism section of the Paris justice department is investigating the case, meaning it is treated as a terrorist attack.
According to BFMTV, The assailant was known to the intelligence services and announced on Telegram he was going to kill police officers.

[smjjames]

How are the intel services not keeping a close enough eye on the person? Yeah, I know, there's the usual 'they're stretched thin, lack of resources, etc'.

Anyways, France just had their equivalent of the 'October surprise', the first round is three days away.

[Sheb]

How are the intel services not keeping a close enough eye on the person? Yeah, I know, there's the usual 'they're stretched thin, lack of resources, etc'.

Anyways, France just had their equivalent of the 'October surprise', the first round is three days away.

Litterally that. I mean, if you want someone watching a guy at all time, it means you probably need 8-10 intelligence guy by suspect. You can't do that.

[martinuzz]

Meanwhile in Germany, it has become clear that the bombing of the Borussia Dortmund player bus was not a terrorist attack. Instead, it had financial motives. The perpetrator had speculated on stock devaluation of the football club shortly before he bombed the bus. The perpetrator is a Russian - German man who was already in the sights of justice department since a few days before Easter.

The man has been arrested last night, and will be charged with attempted murder, and causing grieveous bodily harm (the injured player had cuts in his face, and also broke a bone in his hand. At first, police had classified it as light injury, but they have edited their reports and changed that to serious injury).

The letters found near the scene claiming it was a terrorist attack were fake, and meant as a diversion.

[Sheb]

Meanwhile in Germany, it has become clear that the bombing of the Borussia Dortmund player bus was not a terrorist attack. Instead, it had financial motives. The perpetrator had speculated on stock devaluation of the football club shortly before he bombed the bus. The perpetrator is a Russian - German man who was already in the sights of justice department since a few days before Easter.

Ahah, so it WAS russia :p.

[martinuzz]

Holy shit, intelligence / justice fail.
The guy arrested for the shooting in Paris yesterday has quite a record.

In 2005, Karim C. was convicted to 15 years in prison, for attempted triple homicide. This happened in 2001, when he was being chased by the police, in a stolen car. He crashed into another car, in which sat 2 borthers, of whom one a police academy student.

He then proceeded to flee on foot. When the 2 brothers persued, and caught up with him, he shot them both in the chest with a revolver.

Not long after that, he was arrested. Two days later, he managed to steal the gun of a police officer who was transferring him to another cell, and shot him multiple times, grieveously injuring him.

Skip forward in time, apparently he has been released early (EDIT: or perhaps not, since he was apprehended in 2001 already), to 23 february this year. His messages on Telegram, indicating he wants to kill police, and in which he is inquiring into acquiring a firearm, leads to him being apprehended and charged. He was then cleared by the court for lack of evidence, and released again.

Which allowed him to pull up next to a few police vans in Paris, and open fire with an autumatic weapon, killing one officer, seriously injuring 2 more, and lightly injuring a tourist, after which he was shot dead.

Not much later, IS claimed the attack, yet named the assailant 'Abu Yussef el Belgiki'. This puzzles the intelligence agencies, and makes them suspect there might be an accomplice who is still at large, for Karim C. was not a Belgian, he was from Paris itself.

[Antioch]

You can shoot 3 people of whom 2 are police officers and get only 15 years in jail?

[martinuzz]

Meanwhile, Dutch beach tourism in the southwestern provinces has seen more German tourists then ever during the Easter Holidays, and bookings are through the roof for the holidays in May. A reported interviewed German tourists, to find out why.
Apparently a lot used to go to France, but no longer feel at ease there, because there's police with machineguns everywhere at the beach sites, ever since the Nice attack. So they rather come to the significantly colder Dutch beach, to get that real holiday feeling, without the machinguns.
This might lead to serious overcrowding if the trend continues to the summer holidays. In summer, there's already about 2 million Germans every year, camping at our beach sites. There's even a joke about it. 'No one will invade the Netherlands from the sea during the summer, there's Germans dug into the beaches everywhere.' More would probably not fit, unless you like lying on a beach like worms in a can

EDIT: it's ironic. I can dig their feeling. I had the same thing when I went to Berlin on the 1st of May about 15 years ago. There were green men with machineguns in the U-bahn trains. Didn't feel comfortable being so close to a deadly weapon.
 

[Erkki]

--
Didn't feel comfortable being so close to a deadly weapon.

Do you feel comfortable near vehicles or other tools? Not saying I cant understand you. In the ever-urbanizing, safe European nations with little to no old gun or even hunting culture that have also mostly abolished conscription long ago, people see firearms ever more in violent movies, games and war documentaries only. I feel we're quickly heading down the same path, just yesterday there was news on how people were "frightened of a black assault rifle like gun" when someone in service carrying his rifle went to buy something from a gas station's shop.

Back on topic; what I think is really unfortunate is how armed police needs to there, guarding places in force, in the first place. Great mistakes have already been made and I have a feeling that security wise things arent going to improve in Europe for my lifetime.

[Arx]

It's a bit different because an assault weapon isn't just a tool, it's a tool explicitly for killing, almost certainly for killing people. Chainsaws freak me a little too, but it's different because they have another purpose.

[smjjames]

So, first round of the French presidential election tomorrow.....

[Sheb]

Before anyone asks, right now the polls have it at as too close to call.

That is, any combination of two out of the four on the top are within the polling margin of error for a runoff.

Polls will stay open until 20 in some cities so it'll be a while before we have results. We might get some exit polls in Belgian media before that. It's important to note that not only are polls close, there is a relatively large numbers of undecided voters.

[martinuzz]

Meanwhile in Belgium, the Belgian branche of the Dutch ING bank has to reorganize, and fire part of their employee force. They have decided that everyone age 55 or above that gets fired will get paid 60-80% of their last wage until their retirement (so until they're 67 or whatever the current retirement age in Belgium is), including a yearly raise, without having to work for it.
The Belgian minister of Labour has protested, although he acknowledges that legally, there are no issues with the plan.
He does say it discriminates those employees under 55 who get fired, and that it also gives off a wrong signal, beause the Belgian government has been pushing for people to keep working for longer until retirement.

While it does sound sympathetic, rest assured that the bank's plan does not stem from altruistic beliefs.
With the current state of employee rights in Belgium, it's simply cheaper to keep paying an employee his wage for 10-15 years, without any work done, that to fire him/her through legal procedures.

Former ING employees in the Netherlands, who met the same fate of reorganisation not too long ago are gouging out their own eyes in envy. They didn't get any such deal, they're in the unemployment queues, dropping to social minimum.

[Helgoland]

Well, Macron is about four or five percent ahead of both Fillon and Mélenchon even in his worst polls. Shouldn't that mean that his chances are pretty good?