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It seems he first started going to mosques in April. That’s indeed a “rapid radicalization.” But how do you prevent something like that, especially someone using such a low-tech method, requiring no training, to slaughter large numbers of people?
“Aaron Cohen, a counterterrorism expert and former member of the elite Israeli special forces unit, said on CNN early Friday that the Bastille Day attack in Nice, France, was a “colossal” security failure that could have been stopped. At least 80 people were killed on Thursday when a truck barreled through a crowd of people celebrating on Nice’s Promenade des Anglais.”
https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/2016/07/14/nice-attack-a-security-failure-on-a-colossal-level-says-terror-expert/
Whatever your political views, it does seem that it wouldn’t have been all that hard to put enough bollards or other barriers in place to prevent something like this. It’s not like this kind of attack is exactly unforeseeable. Apparently, they blocked off the street with a few police cars, but there was no barrier at all on the sidewalks, so the guy just drove up on the sidewalk.
Hindsight is 2020.
You do not.
Chemically, it is very easy to make a bomb that can kill 100s of people in one shot using only basic off-the-shelf products from the standard kitchen, and it can be transported unseen in a backpack. Rather easy to do and requires no training, just the guts to put it together because it is so darn volatile. Going to now ban standard household products and backpacks? Of course not.
The answer is: 1) to monitor and to have intelligence about the places where this radicalization is known to be going on and stop the event before it happens, and 2) take everyone seriously that is brought to your attention who proves to have such ties and keep them on a short leash.
"The “lone wolf, mentally ill non-Muslim” meme is another one of those fake narratives that really should be put to the wayside just like that stupid term “home grown.” Lone wolf is a fake narrative intended to try not to implicate a group that is obviously responsible.
There is nothing lone about a person who is studying and is inspired by others. A singular acting terrorist did not think any of this stuff up on his own - he had lots of help. Just because he did not hang out with his inspirers in a group settings and sign and official allegiance form does not mean that the group is not the reason for his actions.
Whether the singular acting terrorist learned and was inspired on the internet, in a mosque, from reading a extremist book or magazine, or seeing an extremist speaker, he was not a lone operator in the truest sense. The singular acting terrorist may be the one who carries out the attack, but he had lots and lots of help getting him to that point.
I see no evidence that any of these Muslim terrorists could think of and organize any of these attacks by themselves. In fact, has anyone noticed that after every stupid lone wolf claim we learn that each had a network of friends and family who knew something was up (some even helped), but often said nothing to authorities? I have.
Please sell the lone wolf charade to people who have their heads in the sand like an ostrich. It is getting laughable at this point to see adults using that term as if such a Muslim terrorist really exists.
Foresight can be 20:20 as well, but if one purposely ignores the obvious, clear danger in front of you because it is considered incorrect to acknowledge it for fear of offending others, then you are compounding a problem that could be stopped.
Additionally, this silly fear of offending others is also stopping us from learning from hindsight. And sadly, we pay with the lives of fellow citizens for our inaction.
French people have zero fear of offending others in these matters I can assure you.
The Promenade Des Anglais had 110 police officers - what is considered tremendous force in France. There were metal barriers but those can’t stop a 19-ton truck.
All it took was one person letting the truck in.
Six people in custody.
When I said he didn’t attend mosque, someone said I couldn’t know that. I, personally, no, but French law enforcement does - there are Police Officers in every mosque. In addition, if the faithful say they never saw him, why not believe them ? ( keep in mind the Nice mosques were well known for their fight against Islamist ideology, to the point the radicalized cells sent weekly death threats to the imams.) Now, he could have attended “basement mosques”, illegal outfits where anybody will preach anything but that’s different.
The minute of silence just ended. After the Marseillaise ended, Manuel Valls the prime minister, was booed and whistled at.
No doubt that Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president, who spoke yesterday on TV to criticize the government response, has a lot of followers who enjoyed this. The Homeland Security minister reminded people that Nicolas Sarkozy had cut national police numbers by 12,500 as well as various police budgets.
One need only ask European truck drivers how they feel about the state of immigration and multiculturalism in Europe…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43w8-LjVNp0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxcsP4vWN8Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XelUcfPpmM
Wow @fractalmstr thanks for the links, I had no idea it had gotten that bad.
Depends who you ask. The educated professionals I know in Europe love multiculturalism, pride themselves on having friends of all nationalities, speak multiple languages and enjoy the career possibilities of living all over Europe and moving from country to country with as much ease as we move from state to state. That’s eroding and it’s unfortunate.
Wow. @fractalmstr, I had no idea people were congregating on the roads and attacking trucks. That is scary. All those security checks and they still can’t control the masses of people.
Last time we were in France, spent alot of time in rural areas in the eastern and southern parts of the country. It was very easy to illicit complaints about immigrants, particularly north African immigrants, coming in and living off the welfare state. Much like the US, the educated professional class doesn’t bear the burden of increased immigration and they enjoy all of its benefits. They are oblivious to the impact these open borders policies have on the working class. The political awakening of the working class on this issue is what drove Brexit, and what is driving the FN.
These videos Have nothing to do with multiculturalism. This is Calais’ jungle , Europe 's largest slum, where people live in dreadful conditions, children are exploited, women raped, and fights erupt constantly. Yup, this is in France. It pretends it doesn’t exist, much to Calais’mayor’s anger. (The previous government 'solved’thevproblem by bringing TVs to film how they destroyed the previous camp. The 'jungle’was born from that.) Some are refugees hoping to get to their family in Britain - with Brexit, they’ll become Britain’s problem, no longer France’s, unless the treaty keeping them there is renegotiated. Most of the other are economic migrants who want to go to Britain at any cost. They attack trucks, sometimes people. Some are made desperate because the equivalent of ‘coyotes’ threaten them if they don’t pay back the cost of passage. Others were either lawless in the first place, or became so during the endless time in the jungle.
An odd thing is how little official multiculturalism (in the American sense) there is in France. France is diverse and most people are proud to know people from all over Europe/the world.
Strictly speaking, French/German people who use the American term ‘multiculturalism’ also believe admitting people from another culture is ‘national suicide’ (as they believe in inferiority of races or cultures, and consider immigration, including the kind, legal, including the family-reunion kind, as inherently bad), and are inevitably on the extreme right.
‘multiculturalisme’ in frnxhbis a misnomer, it is a bit what ‘identity politics’ would be in the US.
More mainstream, a few years ago there was an uproar when it was decided to include a chapter on Africa before the French colonized it, in the middle school history curriculum. That outrage was because, as far as I could tell, most of the outraged people held the view France had brought civilization to Africa and many contested the existence of any history before Europeans went to colonize; I’m not talking fringe politicians there, but the main party of the right asking for history curricula officially discussing the ‘positive role of colonization’. Didn’t the former president make a speech , in Senegal no less, about the fact ‘The African man has not entered history yet’(followed by an evocation of Africans in their savanah village listening to the seasons and nature, etc.)
In France there’s strong adherence to a set of canon authors, texts, dates, ‘things to know’- the idea that there is one core body of knowledge is considered self evident. In itself this is something good for national unity.
However, it has not been touched by multiculturalism at all - even Harold Bloom 's list would seem wayyyyy multicultural compared to that ‘core.’ it may be changing but I’m not seeing it.
When a list of twenty historical figures was drawn as the absolute basics all primary school children should know, there was one woman (Joan of arc) and zero person of color. Can you imagine a list of 20 important American people that’s look like this? Nowadays?
The fact Alexander Dumas (author of the three musketeers) was Black was carefully removed from school curricula and when recently he was buried in the ‘Pantheon to great men’ in Paris the fact was revealed; the revelation was met with outrage, not that it’d been hidden, but because ‘why should you drag that out in the open when that’s not who he was’.
Both news stories struck me as shocking because it’s been at least 30 years since such insensitivity (? Not sure it’s the right term) was publicly shown in the US (I’ve read about it but never witnessed it.)
Again, the videos are not related to multiculturalism, French culture, terrorism, etc.
The latest news make it appear that this was 1) a guy with serious mental issues 2) violent, with antisocial/aggressive tendencies 3)who met Islamist radicals.
His computer revealed he spent most of his time online watching porn, including rapes and scenes of torture.
However he didn’t watch daesh channels (preachers, propaganda, etc, etc) . He did like scenes of beheading, including daesh ones.
Washington Post: - “The Latest: Official: Nice Attacker Expressed Support for IS”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/the-latest-france-announces-new-airstrikes-on-is/2016/07/18/4431184a-4ccb-11e6-bf27-405106836f96_story.html
Nicolas Leslie, the Berkeley student who went missing after the attack has just been confirmed dead. I feel so sorry for his family. What a terrible loss.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-0717-nicolas-leslie-20160717-snap-story.html
@coralbrook, my condolences to you and his family and friends. Heartbreaking.