10/10 review fam

I agree in pretty much every aspect

Quote from: Luciana on November 21, 2015, 07:10:43 PM

Quote from: Azumarill on November 21, 2015, 07:02:27 PM

refugees and the possibility of extremists hiding among them is what prompted me to have a little more faith in the PATRIOT Act and America's ability to keep the people safe.

Even though they were all european nationals

screening for refugees here is already more thorough than you'd think

You don't have to tell me that. Believe me, I know about the 18-24 month long vetting process. I'm not anti-refugee and I've never made any claims that refugees were responsible for the Parisian massacre. All I'm saying is that the existence of America's mass surveillance programs gives me a stronger sense of security. The fact that the 1-2 thousand Syrian refugees who have already entered our country have not committed acts of terror tells me that we're doing something right with regard to both the vetting process and our ability to monitor people within the nation.

If hollow surveillance programs that haven't proven to hinder terrorism yet violate the rights of citizens makes you feel safe then alright.

Yup

I found this quote to be quite nice and I suppose show the resilience of the Belgian people in lieu of the present situation

"My wife said not to go out today. But we were invaded by Napoleon and Louis XIV and were occupied eight times. We won't be defeated this time by terrorists," he said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/21/us-france-shooting-belgium-idUSKCN0TA03H20151121

Aside from sanctuary and taffington boathouse, has anyone found any other locations that are good for water farming?

Warwick Farmstead

Spectacle Island

"Perched over Brussels stands the massive Palace of Justice, once a shining monument to democratic values, now cloaked for decades in scaffolding so decrepit it has come to symbolize Belgium's neglect for law and order. "

The Palace of Justice always has scaffolding up because it is constantly under construction. This is not because it symbolizes Belgium's neglect for law and order, but that it is the largest court in the world so once they complete one section they have to renovate another.

Yeah I thought that line was quite facetious and unsubstantiated. I think it was just their poor attempt at an analogy of sorts.

I think the analogy in question was a comparison of the scaffolding surrounding the PoJ to be a visual representation of the political and legal dissent between the two autonomous regions of Wallonia and Flanders. Which, I believe, is what the article in question is trying to identify as the causation of the recent security threats.

http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2015/11/21/paris-attacks-rooted-in-brussels-bring-question-why-belgium

By RAF CASERT and MIKE CORDER, Associated Press

BRUSSELS (AP) — The family homes of the suspected mastermind of the Paris attacks and one of the suicide bombers stand only a few blocks apart in the Belgian capital's Molenbeek neighborhood. After a string of attacks in recent years linked to its grimy streets in central Brussels, a key question arises: Why Belgium?

The tiny nation renowned for beer, chocolates and the comic book hero Tintin is now suddenly infamous for Islamic extremism — and the easy availability of illegal weapons.

Belgium has a central location in Europe; few border controls; a common language with prime jihadi target France; and a political divide between French and Dutch speakers that has long created bureaucratic disarray in justice and security.

From the prime minister down, there is widespread acknowledgment of a complicated and disjointed national structure that hampers the fight against extremism. "We have to do more and we have to do better," Prime Minister Charles Michel told legislators on Thursday, as he announced a slew of fresh measures to fight Islamic extremism.

For years, there have been calls for more funds to boost the ranks of judges and police, but progress has been slow as rival political camps bickered and austerity measures set in. Meanwhile, the splintering of municipal authority in Brussels and judicial authority nationwide means there's little sense of who's in charge of what in security matters.

Add to that a system in which policemen are often blocked from crossing borders — lacking jurisdiction to work in neighboring countries — while criminals can take advantage of Europe's open border policy, and it becomes clear why Belgium is attractive for terrorists.

"They do shop around for locations where it's easier to be unnoticed, or that your opponents will lose your trail," said Edwin Bakker, director of the Centre for Terrorism and Counterterrorism at Leiden University.

Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian who was the presumed organizer of the attacks, was killed in a raid Wednesday outside of Paris. Belgium and France are still on a manhunt for Frenchman Salah Abdeslam, a longtime Brussels resident.

Both men grew up in the hardscrabble Molenbeek district, and their family homes stand within a short walk of its main police station. Abdeslam's brother, Brahim, blew himself up in a suicide attack, while another Brussels resident, Bilal Hafdi, also died in a suicide bombing.

On Saturday authorities raised the threat alert for the Belgian capital to the highest level, citing "quite precise information about the risk of an attack like the one that happened in Paris." Heavily armed police and soldiers patrolled key intersections, subways were closed and many stores shut their doors as citizens were encouraged to avoid areas where large numbers of people gather.

Perched over Brussels stands the massive Palace of Justice, once a shining monument to democratic values, now cloaked for decades in scaffolding so decrepit it has come to symbolize Belgium's neglect for law and order. From there, one can look out onto the Midi, a grimy neighborhood that has become a treasure trove for any criminal looking for illegal arms.

Until 2006, Belgium had a very permissive gun law by European standards, and many weapons used in the 1990s Balkan wars easily found their way into the Belgian criminal underworld. At the same time, the Justice Ministry was hurt by austerity measures, rendering it powerless to dig into the root causes of the problem.

"It is relatively easy to get your hands on heavy arms in Brussels," said Brice De Ruyver, a professor of criminology at Ghent University, who was security adviser to the prime minister from 2000 to 2008. "That applies to terror and serious crime. That is because the illegal arms trade has been neglected far too long. ... And once you have a reputation, it is tough to get rid of it."

Molenbeek is separated from Midi by part of a mosaic of jurisdictions of 19 municipalities and 6 policing zones — all for a population of 1 million — which has long hampered cooperation. In comparison, New York, with five boroughs for 8.4 million people, has one police force.

Often municipalities were socialist or liberal fiefdoms with little interest in being swallowed up by a centralized Brussels administration. The number of police zones has been reduced from 19, but the current six is still considered an anachronism given the need to unify forces in combating extremism.

"Talent and manpower are badly spread out over the zone," said De Ruyver. "It is not where we need it most, namely in Molenbeek."

Extremist ideology has also been allowed to thrive due to police neglect. For years, the leader of Islamic radical group Sharia4Belgium directed one of Europe's more potent recruitment machines for fighters in Syria. Yet it was only this year that he was sentenced to 12 years in prison as the leader of what a court determined was a terror group. "Sharia4Belgium has been able to act with impunity for too long," said De Ruyver.

Prime Minister Michel has promised to crack down on radical mosque financing and clandestine places of worship, which have thrived largely because of Belgium's failures in integrating its 650,000-strong Muslim population.

"There is a part of the population that lives in the margins, that doesn't look to have contact," said Molenbeek mayor Francoise Schepmans. "We let it happen."

Many of the weaknesses have been linked to Belgium's complicated linguistic divide. Belgium's 6.5 million Dutch speakers in northern Flanders and the 4.5 million Francophones in southern Wallonia enjoy considerable political autonomy — seen as a way to help keep the country together. However, political appeasement between the groups has often trumped efficiency in decision-making.

"It's a nightmare," Bakker said of the language barriers within law-and-order institutions.

AP Physics and AP Calculus, made a 3 on both of them

Would have taken a lot more but my actual high school didn't offer any AP classes. I took the ones that I did in the Pre-Engineering Academy at the vocation school I went to for half the day.

The Atlantic is fine when they're not crying into a bowl of oppression soup.

I was surprised that they were actually criticizing the Missouri protesters in a few of their recent articles.

Quote from: The Lord Protractor on November 20, 2015, 11:46:47 AM

Your mom after I fuck her good.

Really though, this is how I learned of the paris attack.


"Demolish that pussy like the sandniggers demolished the Bataclan Theatre."

Stop

Stouts is the only correct answer

Otherwise you're probably gay

Japanese lagers are also good though they're sort of a class of their own

yes

Flag the authorities found off of one of the attackers


Malian soldiers display grenades and other supplies they said belonged to jihadists in front of the Radisson hotel in Bamako.

Islamist militant group al Mourabitoun said it was jointly responsible with al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) for a hotel attack in Mali's capital on Friday in which at least 27 people died, Mauritania's Alakhbar news agency said.

Al Mourabitoun is led by veteran Algerian militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who was reported killed in a U.S. air strike in June. AQIM later denied he had been killed.

(Reporting by Kissima Diagana; Writing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg; Editing by Gareth Jones)

http://live.reuters.com/Event/World_News

Quote from: Sᴏʟᴏɴᴏɪᴅ on November 19, 2015, 08:52:51 PM

OPs should NOT be able to request locks

yeah they should

in fact, they shouldn't have to request a lock--OPs should be able to lock it themselves

That's very libertarian of you verby-chan