Is Barcelona Safe from Terrorism?
Nov 16th, 2015, 08:38 AM
#21
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Talk about being paranoid.. Sending an aircraft carrier to get a little closer to the action does not heighten the risk of another terriorist attack, it makes attacking IS targets a little easier. France will always be a target for IS. It's stands for everything IS is against; Liberté, égalité, fraternité.
Nov 16th, 2015, 08:55 AM
#22
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Spain may be relatively immune from attacks by the jihadis because Spain dropped out of the "war on Terror" after the Atocha train station bombing.
But St. Cirq is correct---if you change travel plans because of general fear of a terrorist attack, then they've won.
We're all going to die some day, and I'd rather die in a bombing than spend my declining years drooling on my chest in a nursing home.
But St. Cirq is correct---if you change travel plans because of general fear of a terrorist attack, then they've won.
We're all going to die some day, and I'd rather die in a bombing than spend my declining years drooling on my chest in a nursing home.
Nov 16th, 2015, 10:31 AM
#23
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Where would be safer, Italy or Spain?>
chose where you REALLY want to live for a spell - as an architecture student I'd take Italy over Catalonia and Spain - Urbino is a neat smallish city in any case and Barcelona a huge city that besides terrorism has some of the most rampant street crime in Europe, along with Madrid. Muggings are not unusual as they are in most of Europe. Rome has its share of pickpockets and scams too - Urbino would be great - no fears of pickpockets, street scams as in Spain and Rome.
But the overall chance of being victimized - if you know the danger is there from street crime is small and Americans have rarely been involved in terrorists death and injured tolls in recent years - indeed the poor young Long Beach State gal killed is about the only such death I can recall.
Study where you really want to study for architectural reasons IMO and to me that would be Italy hands-down. Urbino if I recall correctly gave its name to urban development and is a treasure-trove of architecture - so is Barcelona and any European city I guess but Italy seems to be tops for what academics study.
chose where you REALLY want to live for a spell - as an architecture student I'd take Italy over Catalonia and Spain - Urbino is a neat smallish city in any case and Barcelona a huge city that besides terrorism has some of the most rampant street crime in Europe, along with Madrid. Muggings are not unusual as they are in most of Europe. Rome has its share of pickpockets and scams too - Urbino would be great - no fears of pickpockets, street scams as in Spain and Rome.
But the overall chance of being victimized - if you know the danger is there from street crime is small and Americans have rarely been involved in terrorists death and injured tolls in recent years - indeed the poor young Long Beach State gal killed is about the only such death I can recall.
Study where you really want to study for architectural reasons IMO and to me that would be Italy hands-down. Urbino if I recall correctly gave its name to urban development and is a treasure-trove of architecture - so is Barcelona and any European city I guess but Italy seems to be tops for what academics study.
Nov 16th, 2015, 11:29 AM
#24
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Stay away from Barcelona; it is a city for the hopeful, not fraidy cats.> This type of hyperbole and comment is just not useful and IMO is low.
How brave Dukey to call him a fraidy cat - low low low. Put yourself if you can in the shoes of a young student who has never traveled to Europe - yes you have more of a chance of being killed on the way to the airport than in any terrorist attack but still folks who have never traveled abroad and especially their parents may kind of be fraidy cats as you denigrate this natural aspect of human nature that if you could remember when you were young you then may sympathize with a bit more.
Low! Rude! Uncalled for!.
How brave Dukey to call him a fraidy cat - low low low. Put yourself if you can in the shoes of a young student who has never traveled to Europe - yes you have more of a chance of being killed on the way to the airport than in any terrorist attack but still folks who have never traveled abroad and especially their parents may kind of be fraidy cats as you denigrate this natural aspect of human nature that if you could remember when you were young you then may sympathize with a bit more.
Low! Rude! Uncalled for!.
Nov 16th, 2015, 12:27 PM
#27
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I think it's naive to derive a cause and effect from NATO actions in the Middle East to terrorist actions in Europe. ISIS along with its forerunner, Al Qaeda, has been bombing targets in Uganda, Kenya, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines, none of which has ever dropped a bomb on Syria. They've also been attacking Christian churches, Jewish synagogues, and Shiite mosques all over the world, and any religious minorities that don't adhere to their Salafist or Wahhabi dogma. In the Middle East, they want to de-stabilize every government that exists. They've wreaked havoc in Pakistan. They launched a major attack in Lebanon just a week before the attack in Paris. (The world didn't pause for even a second of silence to remember those victims, nor did any public monuments in the west light up in the colors of the Lebanese flag.) What harm had the Yazidi people done to call upon themselves the mass murder, rape and enslavement they suffered?
If they don't find a big excuse, they'll find a little excuse. They were punishing men in Syria who didn't roll up their trousers at the ankle.
These actions in Syria may be inept or unwise strategically, but they're not the reason behind this terror. This extreme interpretation of Islam has been trying to propagate itself in the world since even before the founding of the Saudi state, which was already a mistake on the part of the British almost 100 years ago.
Hate-mongering, nihilistic creeds with a Big Grievance have always attracted misfits, unhinged dreamers, and people addicted to violence.
This is a very thorny problem, and there are no easy solutions. If all the foreign forces left Syria today, would ISIS start sending diplomatic missions to Europe? You can't reason with people who still call southern Spain al-Andalus and want it back.
If they don't find a big excuse, they'll find a little excuse. They were punishing men in Syria who didn't roll up their trousers at the ankle.
These actions in Syria may be inept or unwise strategically, but they're not the reason behind this terror. This extreme interpretation of Islam has been trying to propagate itself in the world since even before the founding of the Saudi state, which was already a mistake on the part of the British almost 100 years ago.
Hate-mongering, nihilistic creeds with a Big Grievance have always attracted misfits, unhinged dreamers, and people addicted to violence.
This is a very thorny problem, and there are no easy solutions. If all the foreign forces left Syria today, would ISIS start sending diplomatic missions to Europe? You can't reason with people who still call southern Spain al-Andalus and want it back.
Nov 17th, 2015, 05:17 AM
#30
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bvlienci,
Please read this from the New York Review of Books, by Ahmed Rashid. Few people in the world know as much as he does about these issues:
"In October a bombing in Ankara that killed 102 people was blamed on ISIS by the Turkish government. A few weeks later, ISIS’s Sinai affiliate claimed to have brought down a Russian airliner, killing 224 people. On November 12, ISIS claimed responsibility for a double-suicide bombing of a busy shopping street in a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut that left forty-four people dead. There were bombings in Baghdad. And then there was Paris.
"In fact none of these targets is random. What they show is that ISIS is now determined to launch attacks against those states that are waging war against it. Turkey has just given the US government permission to use some of its airbases for strikes against ISIS; Hezbollah is helping Bashar al-Assad fight ISIS. The Russians are now bombing ISIS and other groups, while the French are crucial partners in the anti-ISIS coalition. French warplanes bombing ISIS from runways in the Gulf states are about to get a fresh boost as the French government sends its only aircraft carrier to the Gulf."
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog...mbai-to-paris/
There is another article in the same blog publication describing the psychology of ISIS members, and why it is a mistake to believe what you believe about them. Even more than militarily, ISIS needs to be defeated ideologically, and while they would be happy to have you think the thoughts out do about them, it is important not to feed the narrative they are looking to promote:
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog...trategy-chaos/
I give you these articles because they are short and in one place. But you can find many more in seriously policy journals, trying to get a hearing against the mistaken and uninformed tide of beliefs about ISIS. To be fair, ISIS has caught nearly everyone by surprise. But the window for not paying closer to attention to why it is doing what it is doing has already slammed, and if people want their safety back, they are going to need to think in a new way about this.
Please read this from the New York Review of Books, by Ahmed Rashid. Few people in the world know as much as he does about these issues:
"In October a bombing in Ankara that killed 102 people was blamed on ISIS by the Turkish government. A few weeks later, ISIS’s Sinai affiliate claimed to have brought down a Russian airliner, killing 224 people. On November 12, ISIS claimed responsibility for a double-suicide bombing of a busy shopping street in a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut that left forty-four people dead. There were bombings in Baghdad. And then there was Paris.
"In fact none of these targets is random. What they show is that ISIS is now determined to launch attacks against those states that are waging war against it. Turkey has just given the US government permission to use some of its airbases for strikes against ISIS; Hezbollah is helping Bashar al-Assad fight ISIS. The Russians are now bombing ISIS and other groups, while the French are crucial partners in the anti-ISIS coalition. French warplanes bombing ISIS from runways in the Gulf states are about to get a fresh boost as the French government sends its only aircraft carrier to the Gulf."
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog...mbai-to-paris/
There is another article in the same blog publication describing the psychology of ISIS members, and why it is a mistake to believe what you believe about them. Even more than militarily, ISIS needs to be defeated ideologically, and while they would be happy to have you think the thoughts out do about them, it is important not to feed the narrative they are looking to promote:
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog...trategy-chaos/
I give you these articles because they are short and in one place. But you can find many more in seriously policy journals, trying to get a hearing against the mistaken and uninformed tide of beliefs about ISIS. To be fair, ISIS has caught nearly everyone by surprise. But the window for not paying closer to attention to why it is doing what it is doing has already slammed, and if people want their safety back, they are going to need to think in a new way about this.
Nov 17th, 2015, 05:36 AM
#31
" people who still call southern Spain al-Andalus and want it back."
Not just southern Spain. Any land that has once been Muslim is regarded as always Muslim according to certain interpretations of Islam. In any case, someone was saying on NPR last night that what ISIS actually wants is to convert the entire population of the world.
Not just southern Spain. Any land that has once been Muslim is regarded as always Muslim according to certain interpretations of Islam. In any case, someone was saying on NPR last night that what ISIS actually wants is to convert the entire population of the world.
Nov 17th, 2015, 05:55 AM
#32
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<< "In fact none of these targets is random. What they show is that ISIS is now determined to launch attacks against those states that are waging war against it. >>
And I repeat, what about the Shiite mosques in Iraq that were bombed? The Yazidis? The Copts beheaded in Libya? Were all of them waging war against ISIS?
One has to turn a blind eye to most of their atrocities to make out a narrative of military necessity for their attacks.
<<Even more than militarily, ISIS needs to be defeated ideologically >>
Do any of these bloggers have a serious proposal of how to accomplish this? Who is going to do it? Meanwhile, no one should try to interfere with their ethnic cleansing of the areas they control?
And I repeat, what about the Shiite mosques in Iraq that were bombed? The Yazidis? The Copts beheaded in Libya? Were all of them waging war against ISIS?
One has to turn a blind eye to most of their atrocities to make out a narrative of military necessity for their attacks.
<<Even more than militarily, ISIS needs to be defeated ideologically >>
Do any of these bloggers have a serious proposal of how to accomplish this? Who is going to do it? Meanwhile, no one should try to interfere with their ethnic cleansing of the areas they control?
Nov 17th, 2015, 06:17 AM
#33
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We call these kind of debate 'politique de comptoir' in French. Because these discussions usually take place in a bar ('comptoir' is the bar) with usually half enibrieated people who whne sober onlh have half a brain.
It is boring in a bar, except if you are drunk yourself, so on a forum... that would be the last palce I'd come for political inspiration.
It is boring in a bar, except if you are drunk yourself, so on a forum... that would be the last palce I'd come for political inspiration.
Nov 17th, 2015, 07:51 AM
#34
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I take it someone thinks IS has a master plan. World conquest? An Arab Hitler. A bunch of fanatics on the loose?
MURDEROUS NEW BUNCH OF FANATICS ON THE LOOSE
December 25, 2004 7:00PM
"Ansar al-Sunnahs first statement surfaced on the Internet, pronouncing itself a group of jihadists, scholars, and political and military experts dedicated to creating an Islamic state in Iraq. The statement was signed by the groups emir, or leader, the previously unknown Abu Abdullah al-Hassan Ibn Mahmoud. "
MURDEROUS NEW BUNCH OF FANATICS ON THE LOOSE
December 25, 2004 7:00PM
"Ansar al-Sunnahs first statement surfaced on the Internet, pronouncing itself a group of jihadists, scholars, and political and military experts dedicated to creating an Islamic state in Iraq. The statement was signed by the groups emir, or leader, the previously unknown Abu Abdullah al-Hassan Ibn Mahmoud. "
Nov 17th, 2015, 08:06 AM
#35
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We are due to go to Barcelona next May.. and Paris, and London and Dublin.. and Greece..
We do not have a death wish, nor are we oblivious to risks.. but at this point I would make no decisions to change any of our plans, and would only do so if developments seriously changed the situation. War maybe?
For the OP I see your dilemma because you have to start payments now,, but for a course that is almost a year away! It would seem to me it the situation changes severely in Europe you would not be held to paying for a course that maybe would not even occur, so I would personally choose the places that would best suit your education plan and not worry too much about the "what ifs" because if its just acts of terrorism.. fact is, you are not safe in any large city in and country, including yours!
We do not have a death wish, nor are we oblivious to risks.. but at this point I would make no decisions to change any of our plans, and would only do so if developments seriously changed the situation. War maybe?
For the OP I see your dilemma because you have to start payments now,, but for a course that is almost a year away! It would seem to me it the situation changes severely in Europe you would not be held to paying for a course that maybe would not even occur, so I would personally choose the places that would best suit your education plan and not worry too much about the "what ifs" because if its just acts of terrorism.. fact is, you are not safe in any large city in and country, including yours!
Nov 17th, 2015, 08:36 AM
#36
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With the resources, arms, technology, oraganisation, extremists views, cultural revolution of the West which IS hold and the porous nature of the EU's external/internal borders it's strange that the events of this weekend aren't happening every week.
Strange or suspicious?
Currrent military action against IS is a side show and comical. NATO are running 15 to 20 air operations a day. During the Balkans conflict of 1992, that number was 250 per day, this amount of activity was deemed the tipping point for the operations to be successful. The resources and geographic spread of IS is far greater than the Bosnian Serbs.
Strange or suspicious?
Currrent military action against IS is a side show and comical. NATO are running 15 to 20 air operations a day. During the Balkans conflict of 1992, that number was 250 per day, this amount of activity was deemed the tipping point for the operations to be successful. The resources and geographic spread of IS is far greater than the Bosnian Serbs.
Nov 17th, 2015, 11:39 AM
#39
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Its getting very nervous in Europe.
Tonight's international friendly between Germany and Holland has be cancelled two hours prior to kick off, in response to a credible intelligence of a potential threat.
International football games are not cancelled without good reason.
Tonight's international friendly between Germany and Holland has be cancelled two hours prior to kick off, in response to a credible intelligence of a potential threat.
International football games are not cancelled without good reason.
Nov 21st, 2015, 09:40 AM
#40
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Odds are very Remote. I wouldn't worry about it.
I have been to Barcelona and felt safe there, and I am of a different skin colour, if that is relevant.
I would only worry about theft/pick-pocketing, just as I would elsewhere in Europe.
Enjoy your trip, and we will be happy to read from you again.
I have been to Barcelona and felt safe there, and I am of a different skin colour, if that is relevant.
I would only worry about theft/pick-pocketing, just as I would elsewhere in Europe.
Enjoy your trip, and we will be happy to read from you again.
