Now it's Germany's turn.

[Workingman]

I went to a concert with Tom a few days after the attacks in Paris and found myself looking around while waiting for it to start, my mind had started looking for possible ways to exit the place should we need to.

Jo, that is what us ex mil are trained to do. We run, hide, inform and, as a last resort, fight.

Leeds' German Christmas Market is also a big and long-standing one. It only has one major road nearby, next to the hospital, and that is separated from the market by a huge wall. The entrances are controlled, some by armed security police, but that actualy makes me think that I might be a target.

The thing is that no matter how good our security services are a lone wolf, or group of wolves, will one day get through. It has alrady happened so we have to learn to be alert.

[Suff]

Sadly it is the truth that so long as we do not target the most likely suspects in both terror, money for terror and trafficking the arms and explosives for terror, then they will continue to carry out these acts with impunity.

What price our democracy and high moral standards? Well, our lives actually.

So as WM says. Those of us who are trained go into trained mode when we see insecure situations. We look for exits, we look to see how we can avoid being hit, we look to see who is in authority and how we might get information to them. But, above all, we preserve self. If we have to fight we strike to kill in the first instance; there are no half measures in this.

I know a lot of Germans, we dance there, I've worked there quite a bit and we are sorely missed when we can't make it to balls. These are Germans who miss us, not British ex pats. I bleed for them, but they have to learn. They can't excuse or apologise away the actions of these extremists and you simply can't invite them in, wholesale.

Witness the Calais Jungle. I went to look for it on Google today and, for the first time, I had to put in Calais, not just the jungle. The first line of the wiki page on the Calais Jungle states

The Calais Jungle was a refugee and migrant encampment in the vicinity of Calais

After all the blackmail, all the press, all the claims that the UK were somehow maltreating these illegals, the UK voted to leave the EU. Then the Tory party elected a new PM with non Nonsense, in September. The Jungle was gone in October. All those illegals were in correct housing with food, welfare, warmth and schooling for the children.

Germany needs to take a long hard look at that and understand just how badly they have been used. Because had we allowed those people to come in we would have invited in some of the worst self seeking, belligerent and intolerant of those leaving... Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and, yes, some came from the wars in Syria.

The UK is neither so stupid nor so unprepared. Germany and, for that matter France, still, have a lot to learn.

We, in France, have a local dance festival in our town. It is international. In fact the Mains of Fintry pipe band who piped at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics were talent scouted at our festival (we're twinned with Pitlochry and have a pipe band every year).

So, this year, at the festival, we had fully armed riot police and three man roving army teams, also fully armed. People were shocked. People were scared, people were suddenly left with the feeling that they were no longer safe in their own country.

I guess my answer was not helpful but my stance is this. You join Schengen and devolve your borders to other, less capable, countries. You pick a fight with Moslem jihadist groups in Syria and start bombing the hell out of them. Then you let in tens of thousands of them and don't either control their movements or process them.

Then you don't feel safe? Welcome to the British world.

[saundra]

It's just been on the news the person they are looking for had 6names and 3nationalities
He's only one of such like immigrants
Whatever will next year bring I dread to think

[Suff]

Yep and he was Tunisian and on a German authority threat list.

What the hell were they doing? Oh I forgot, protecting people's rights.

[cromwell]

One question that is being asked (it's asked a lot these days, in various contexts) is "could more have been done?".

And the question seems to be aimed at the German police in a way that I think is very unfair. Could more have been done? Yes, but the German police are operating within laws set for them by the politicians and interpreted by lawyers. They have to work to rules set by others.

OK, but when politicians decide to let 1 million plus immigrants into their country in one year, actually actively encourage them to come despite repeated warnings that some of these people are wrong 'uns, what are the police going to do?

It's like doubling the size of your village by building new houses and then moaning at the doctor's receptionist that you can't get an appointment! The doctor isn't responsible for all the new houses; it wasn't the police's decision to allow jihadists into Germany.

"Could more have been done"? Yes, the politicians shouldn't have let people like him in in the first place.

But the politicians and a lot of the media don't want the discussion to go in that direction - they just want to point the finger somewhere else, like at the police.

[Suff]

I guess my TIC comment was not quite clear.

When I say they were protecting peoples "rights" it was a side swipe at the latest ECJ decision. Which was all about protecting the "rights" of the people whilst ignoring the "right to live" by denying terrorists the opportunity to kill them.

The UK learned with 7/7 that we can no longer afford to be blinded to information which might block terrorists and we can no longer afford to have ivory towers within our intelligence community. Most of the EU has not come to terms with the fact that they are at war, on their home soil amongst their own houses and people.

The UK came to that much easier. Conversation at the coffee shop this morning. One of the women has a daughter in Berlin who is worried about here safety. The implication being that London is much safer. To which I replied that for much of my life London was more of a terrorist target than anywhere in the EU and remains very much at threat today. If they could get us they would and there is no doubt about it.

The reason they are hitting France and Germany and Belgium is because they are soft targets whi don't have a clue how to protect themselves at home. They simply haven't had the experience so have grown soft and complacent. The UK, on the other hand, is the toughest nut to crack of all for the terrorists. Why? Because we abuse the freedoms of our citizens. We have CCTV culture, monitor the phones, web postings, email, phone calls, texts and web instant messaging.

My main worry is that in a war you can change the rules till the threat is over and the enemy is defeated. Terrorist war can go on for centuries. Cementing the control of the state into the psyche of the country and allowing abuse by governments.

In this particular instance the ECJ is being stupid. Stupid for simply blocking because the escalating terror incidents will overrule them. Even more stupid for not going with it but putting a time rider on it where there is constant review and an expectation that it will end.

Stupid because by closing and barricading the door they ensure it will be destroyed and the security it represents with it. Always better to open the door a crack and control what flows through it than to make Imperialistic declarations which become nonsense later on.

But, back to today. The Polizie and the Bundeskriminalamt have to work with the rules that are given to them. The Bundesnachrichtendienst (MI6 equivalent), have a bit more scope but, like MI6 and the CIA are not supposed to operate on home soil.

And where is Interpol? Never a word heard. Nor the fabled Schengen "criminal information" sharing which we're apparently going to lose.

In reality the Intelligence and information gathering capability of the EU sits in the UK, in alliance with the US. We disseminate information to the other EU countries, but are restricted by the fact that there are some key EU countries who "leak" due to political affiliations of some government staff.

The Polizie may be in a straightjacketed, but it is a restraint device made by their own people and their demands for freedom.

Some day the realisation will be that their freedom also includes the freedom for terrorists to organise and kill them. It's going to be a sad day when this happens. To be honest I'd rather turn Mecca into a radioactive car park than turn the western worlds back to the days of serfs and Lords.

[Workingman]

I will add another twist to this issue.

The other day the BBC ran an article about Berlin which was fawning and patronising and ran a quote from the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, claiming that all Londoners were standing shoulder to shoulder with Berliners. It was one of the most sickening sycophantic pieces I have ever read, so I made a compliant.

I pointed out that not all Londoners, or even Britons, were standing anything like with Berliners. That there are some in our midst who wish to do us harm and that is why the UK's security status is at "severe". It is why major cities are using armed police to protect Christmas markets and other events, and why there are road closures in place round Buckingham Palace for the changing of the guard.

The reply I received accuses me of implying that all Muslims are terrorists or terrorists-in-waiting and that generalising about that religious group is wrong.

I never once mentioned Muslims or Islam in my complaint, but what the uber politically correct wonks at the BBC did was twist my complaint about the tone of the article into an attack on Islam, and that is not allowed. I have now fired off a registered letter to the BBC Trust demanding an apology.

What I am pointing out with this is that there is manipulation and spin being applied to the news and that it is done aggressively by the likes of the BBC in an attempt to modify our thinking to be the 'correct' type of thinking as defined by them, whoever 'they' are.

In many ways the media and politicians are actively hampering our security by proscribing what can be said and done. Our police and security services already know this, and the Germans are about to find out.

[Suff]

Back in the late 90's I had a similar rant at me by some twerp in their support organisation when I suggested they use the high value areas to pay a premium to subsidise the provisioning of cable services to the community at large.

I was subjected to a left wing rant about how people with money shouldn't get what they want just because they had money. I replied that the person should take their political beliefs out of the business sphere and shove it where the sun didn't shine as people of this kind were denying the most vulnerable a service they could have otherwise, paid for by the more affluent.

Needless to say the entire community of the town still don't have cable services and get their services from BT today. Also Telewest doesn't exist any more. The person who wrote that mail probably lost their job in the take over..... Well at least I can fantasise.

The BBC though... Perhaps we should all send them a complaint about the article on the same lines and then all complain to the Trust when we are accused of being Anti.... Whatever.

Might be fun and would help your case no end...

[TheOstrich]

Good for you taking the BBC on, WM. They are nothing less than a propaganda organisation and they need to be challenged.

Hope you get your apology, but I suspect it'll be a bland, patronising brush-off ....

[cromwell]

I think you are right Os.

Politicians must feel that they have to say something supportive and well intentioned, I just wish they wouldn't be so asinine. "We must not let these people divide us".
This presupposes that the "communities" of the UK are united, and they absolutely aren't, otherwise the security services wouldn't be having to foil home grown terrorist plots every other week, right?

But this propaganda supporting some fairy tale view of the world gets trotted out after every terrorist atrocity, Charly Hebdo, Nice, Bataclan, Berlin, you name it.

The image of the national flag projected on a building, a hashtag like #JeSuisCharlie, sad songs sung at a candle lit vigil - cliche heaped upon cliche. I wonder how long they can keep pumping it out?