Al Qaeda Targets Europe NOT America, Interesting?

Strange that al Qaeda would be so interested in bombing Arab Brethren and passive, “understanding” Europeans over the evil Americans. Wondery why? Read on…

[quote]U.S. Sees Drop in Terrorist Threats
Al Qaeda Focusing Attacks in Iraq and Europe, Officials Say

By Dana Priest and Spencer Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, May 1, 2005; Page A01

Reports of credible terrorist threats against the United States are at their lowest level since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, according to U.S. intelligence officials and federal and state law enforcement authorities.

The intelligence community’s daily threat assessment, developed after the terrorist attacks to keep policymakers informed, currently lists, on average, 25 to 50 percent fewer threats against domestic targets than it typically did over the past two years, said one senior counterterrorism official.

A broad cross section of counterterrorism officials believes al Qaeda and like-minded groups, in part frustrated by increased U.S. security measures, are focusing instead on Americans deployed in Iraq, where the groups operate with relative impunity, and on Europe.[/quote]

washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co … 00704.html

Most problems in communication between US and Europ these days is this:

US: sees itself and actually the whole western society in war, in a dagerous world where a suitcase or something smaller may contain a nuclear bomb blasting a city into thin air. Or a bag full of germs may kill a few millions.

Europe thinks, 911 was just a terrorist attack, mostly like the others and US is making things unneccessarily difficult by over-reacting, as we still live in a world of peace, harmony and music.

Sadly, US is right.

Oh Bob, now that we are pop you should know better.
I still dont see a threat, but maybe my live insurance will finally pay off.

Ratzi the combat pope, bible in left hand and Streitkolben in the right hand.

Ups, played fantasy-games too long. Streitkolben is this thing to knock holes in heads or something, for the non-German speakers which sometimes hang around on Forumosa.

a mace?

My dictionary confused me with translating mace with “Amtsstab” which is the symbolic version of it, but I think it is correct. My vocabulary is somewhat restricted to computer English sometimes :unamused:

A picture is worth a thousand words:

very nice picture but not quite the same tool the pope is using to make his followers true believers

I used to be a “protestant” before I finally left the christian church. Ajooooo, too much afterlife preparation for Bob, who only is interested in gals, money, alcohol, good food and state of spiritual harmony. Afterlife? I already prepared (you never know when the blue truck comes), but I do not wanne hear about it every day.

So what tool is it? His ceremony stick, I guess. Reminds me of that religious girlfriend i once had. She said God is against us doing … something … so I told her I have this holy stick … [she ran away screamin’ then] :blush:

[attention! BobLow level of content!]

can you post a picture of your ceremony stick?

hey Fred
all germans will be save
just listen to Joseph

nice short abbreviated link that doesn’t stretch the screen

My wife did not return it to me since she used it last time… :unamused:

tja
da stellt sich die Frage ob das gut oder schlecht ist

Can the Germans be saved? Can they even be Christianized first? Such lapses into paganism every so often. Most recently Naziism and now the Love Parade and environmental fascism. I suppose in a way the irony of pacificistic fascism is lost on them as well? haha

Who do you want to save and why?
And who do you think wants or needs to be saved?

I think Europe needs to be saved as usual from itself and the best way to do this is to get a leash on Germany. But France should not be the one walking this dog in the park. Leave it to the Americans.

Anyway, I suppose in another 40 years, Germany will be mostly Muslim anyway so I guess our efforts to implement reform in the Middle East will help us provide a road map for peace when Europe becomes another Lebanon or Iraq.

in 40 years
who cares
i hope to be dead sooner

This was quite interesting…

[quote]Sixty years after the end of World War II, the world remains understandably alert to any manifestation of neo-Nazism in Germany, however negligible and marginal. Likewise understandably, the world is quick to sense and disapprove of (what is more common) German insensitivity or indifference or forgetfulness of the crimes of the past.

But it is also true that in Germany, insensitivity, indifference, and forgetfulness are not the norm. Quite the opposite: The German memory is acute, and (perhaps paradoxically) becoming more acute all the time.

So can we say - as Daniel Johnson says in the The New Criterion - that the world also has something to lose from a Germany that becomes too abashed, too ashamed, too unable to speak up for its own liberal democratic identity? Can we say that there is something abnormal and even dangerous in the extreme self-abnegation of German nationhood that continues even now, all these years later?

But people want to be proud of something. If you tell a large and mighty nation that it can never be proud of itself, the natural egotism of human beings will seek some other outlet, less wholesome than normal patriotism. Many in Germany support the unification of Europe much less as a rational response to real needs, and much more because they yearn to feel for “Europe” the loyalty and pride they cannot allow themselves to feel for their own country and their own culture. The terrible irony is that this united Europe is emerging as a much greater threat to the Atlantic Alliance and to European democracy than the Federal Republic of Germany would ever be.

Nor is it fanciful, I think, to see much of the rising tide of German anti-Americanism - expressed most notoriously in the German enthusiasm for the crackpot works of Michael Moore - as an indirect, perverted expression of nationalism. The psychology seems to be that if Germans cannot allow themselves to feel pride in Germany, they can at least demand that Americans feel ashamed of the United States.

It’s unfortunately true that Germany is burdened now with the most irresponsible and provocative chancellor since Willy Brandt. Gerhard Schroeder has exploited ill feelings in Germany for crude personal advantage: with almost 5 million Germans out of work, there’s a lot of anger buzzing around the country, and redirecting those emotions against the United States and George Bush is one way and probably the only way for Schroeder to hold onto office.

Irritating as Schroeder is, though, today would be a good day to remember how important a force for good in the world democratic Germany has been this past half century. And even under Schroeder, Germany is today the second-biggest contributor of troops to the stabilization force in Afghanistan. Germay is also quietly training high-level Iraqi counter-terrorist officers at bases in the United Arab Emirates and in Germany itself.

For half a century, the Western world has found freedom, security and prosperity in an alliance between the United States and a Europe of sovereign states. Today that Europe is dissolving itself into a new kind of union - and as a result, the American-European partnership is daily becoming weaker, more difficult, more embittered. It’s not too late for Americans to recall to mind their national stake in European national independence, including German independence - and to recall too that national independence is sustained by national pride, including German national pride.[/quote]

nationalreview.com/frum/frum-diary.asp

To arrange oneselve with being German, is sometimes difficult. I had to do it in the 80’s, when I reached that age where you think about politics … and girls and girls and girls.
Now, whenever I traveled to another country, some people raised their arm at me and called me a Nazi. After a while, my way of making something good out of this situation was to discuss the Third Reich/Nazi times with them. Usually, they went red-faced, studdered and thanked me for my 30 minutes lecture of German history and the Nazi days vs. Germany “today”.

Only in France this did not work, as they did not speak sufficiently English. Haha, I remember a tailor-puppet was once shown to me at a family party and a drunk was extending the arm of the puppet to me being the only German. Well, they have their sense of humor, I have mine (I think I broke the puppet arm).

Until 1990, we did not even dare to say “Germany”, it was always “Bundesrepublik”. A flag is still taboo mostly, even today. I have the Union jack on my car in Germany, but I am evaluating since 10 years, if I shoud put our German flag next to it. Sounds strange to me now :blush:

So… the article could be right with a lot of things. Important: Schroeder must go, the French idea of kicking out US and UK out of Europe must be stopped. French kisses yes, but only with Coke and on the backseat of a Jaguar (damned, isn’t that already a German car?)

BobFlagParade

[Edit: ups, it is American, again …]

Andrew Sullivan recently had an interesting bit on Muslim Intolerance in Europe. Things seem pretty out of hand in the Netherlands…

[quote=“AndrewSullivan.com”] [color=black]In January, two schoolboys in IJsselstein were ordered to remove Dutch flag patches from their backpacks because Moroccan students might consider them provocative. It turned out this flag ban is officially in force at many schools. Meanwhile Muslim kids have pictures of van Gogh’s murderer on their lunchboxes because they consider him a hero, and nobody dares tell them to remove those pictures. [/color]

This is how the new brownshirts are making progress. First they take over the streets with thuggery. Then they kill politicians. And Europe is - surprise! - appeasing them. And then I see the president of the United States holding hands with the Arab dictator whose oil money is financing the propagation of this fascism. We have been here before. What part of “Never Again” does Europe not understand?

[/quote]