Yesterday, a Saudi-born man named Taleb al-Abdulmohsen rented a black BMW sport utility vehicle and drove it into a crowd at the Christmas market in Magdeburg, killing five people and injuring more than 200.
The story is always the same. Authorities have a suspect on the radar, or investigate, or arrest and release, prior to the final violent act occurring. Then, instead of looking inward at the failings of law enforcement, the game becomes one of shaping the narrative around motive. It will not surprise me in the least when this is linked somehow to AfD, because of course a pro-asylum Muslim would align with an anti-immigration movement.
When they look at the increase in the number of AfD supporters in Magdeburg after this attack, this man will be accused of holding a party membership drive.
I don't disagree with you, but there's also the danger of overreacting and then being criticized for heavy-handed policing. All I can say is I'm glad that's not my job.
Edit to add: as you say, re-examining their methods for improvement doesn't seem to be an option.
That’s because “the authorities” are too busy with really important, serious threats like persecuting someone calling a public official an idiot, or someone writing about the authoritarian behaviour of the Government, and trying to stamp out “populism” and looking for the elusive Far Right - it must be here somewhere.
This tragedy is another reminder that all the immigrants and refugees are going to have to go back. There is no reason that Germans should die because an ex-Islamic Saudi is mad at the German authorities. It is not the responsibility of Germany or Germans to sort out the problems and grievances of other nations. Only AfD can save Germany. Shut down the NGOs. Mass Deportation Now.
if his country asked to send him back, they should have done it. Most countries do not want their criminals back. This would not have happened if authorities export the criminals back to their home country.
Wow. For all the airtime given to anti AfD coverage, it turns out terrorists can make public claims years in advance and the police do nothing until they’ve murdered people and injured hundreds?
The misinformation on this case seems to have started minutes after the attack, or did someone know what he was planning and planted 'evidence'. The George Floyd story comes to mind. A false flag?
So, an Arab immigrant comes to Germany, he’s wanted for HUMAN TRAFFICKING (sorry for the obnoxious caps but it’s for the immigration authorities to read), but German immigration decides, he’s a winner candidate to enter Germany and become a permanent resident. Then all the NGOs presumably bend over backwards to protect this piece of excrement and the initial assessment that he’s a fine man and a productive member of society. Meanwhile, his obviously disturbed mental status must have been very clear to large swaths of people. Did he even have any actual patients?
I have to admit that I'm not certain I'm convinced by claims of human trafficking made by the Saudis. If the guy actually *is* ex-Muslim, I could see that being "He's helping our women escape." But who knows, at this point, the guy does sound crazy as a loon.
The Saudi government could release all those details- I would be more than willing to go down that rabbit hole…He had terrorism and child trafficking to Europe charges. Who were his contacts in the EU? Was it an NGO??? What happened to those who he trafficked?
What i' for one would like is for the Gyp to spend some QT at Maggie McNeill's The Honest Courtesan website archive (her 'key', introductory pieces perhaps, for it is huge) and then come back to us on political use of the insanely flexible term "trafficking*, MM is an ex-New Orleans whore* turned fiulltime blogger and not someone you should ever take on without having yout shit very much together
And -- what a coincidence -- same death toll as the recent US Christian school shooting (minus, of course, the +1 suicide bonus). Germany should surely prepare to be beset by orange-shirted harridans demanding the banning of BMWs.
It seems incredible to me that, despite the ongoing islamification (or perhaps because of it?) people seem to be unfamiliar with 'taqquiya', which permits muslims to lie to infidels when it promotes the interests of islam.
Why believe someone grown up in Saudi Arabia, the Wahabite kingdom? Wahabism is the cradle of al Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, ISIS ... but what he said on social meejah must now be taken as pure truth? Really?
the method and possibly the timing (one day after the eight-year anniversary of Berlin 2016) speak in favour of an Islamist attack. Everything else points to an obsessed mentally ill man who began to hate Germans for their failure to embrace fully enough his anti-Islam cause and take him and other ex-Muslims seriously.
The sheer volume of tweets about this, the making of open threats to kill Germans for not doing enough for ex-Muslims, over years, is just objectively hard to reconcile with a taqiya sleeper jihadi scenario.
Which begs the question: why didn't his psychiatry work colleagues recognise his illness? Or did they and it was also brushed udder the carpet because that would've been racist and islamophobic?
For me, the other question is: why did the 'authorities' not believe the Saudi ones who demanded his repatriation? Can we say that this and the previous government would rather 'shelter' a criminal because of his 'human rights' but never mind the human rights of German citizens, never mind their oath of office, to 'protect the German people'?
It's all so sick ...
Was he a 'sleeper'? I dunno. But taqqiya can be used regardless by people like that one.
And thanks for wading through all those tweets - my eyes, stomach and brain would've given up.
From my own experience, psychiatrists and psychologists are more likely to be nut cases than the general public. Sometimes I wonder if their career choices might be based on a natural instinct towards self-examination.
The increased instability rate of psychiatrists is as legendary as the increased suicide rate of cops. Expecting mutual self policing is probably over-optimistic.
You know, if Saudi Arabia really wanted to help out the investigation, they could release all the information regarding their original charges, including fleshing out the terrorism details and exactly WHO was he involved with in the EU with the child trafficking… that would be an interesting read…
Many things may be simultaneously true. For the Saudi authorities, anyone who helps Saudi women escape Saudi Arabia, especially if they are fleeing their families, for whatever reason, is a criminal and can be construed anyway they like. They wanted him extradited for their own purposes and not necessarily because of their tender concern for the wellbeing of Germans and Germany.
It is also true that many people raised in the most particularly deranged Muslim societies have extreme mental health struggles in trying to adjust to free societies--as much as they have in trying to adjust to their own societies. They are very seriously fucked up. And people drawn to the field of psychology/psychiatry are remarkably frequently batshit crazy.
So maybe it's not so surprising that his colleagues/supervisors/patients didn't notice he wasn't wrapped too tight himself.
But what an awful, horrible, unbearable atrocity. He's murdered the families of the people he killed, too. It's not as if the bereaved are not always haunted by the terrible hole detonated in their lives but even the least momentary fleeting comforts of the holiday season are forever stolen from them too.
I don't have it to hand but I read an article in the wake of the Southport stabbing in Wales (committed by the son of Rwandan political refugees who settled in the UK after the genocide) that people of refugee backgrounds involving war/persecution and certain racial minority groups have disproportionate high rates of mental illness and are more likely to go untreated when they develop serious conditions like bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.
I think this is an aspect of migration that has not been looked at in depth and is very much an after-thought when people discuss what types of migration they support vs which they want to see restricted. It seems both this Saudi guy and the Rwandan teenager in the UK are the "right" type of refugees -- they (or their parents) are professionals who applied via official channels and showed every intent to integrate and contribute.
And yet... something went very wrong along the way.
And I'm old enough to remember that when one said the word "terrorist," lotsa lotsa white ethnic group members came to mind. And--leaving out, say, a good proportion of the IRA murderous thugs, many of the American and German and Italian kids who thought terrorism was a fun life path were from solid middle-class families. In those days I felt I was living dangerously enough just hitchhiking around the UK and I decided to skip Italy with all those Red Brigade bombings etc.
Certainly we have enough crazies amongst those who've been Americans and Germans and Britons for generations, and from the beginnings of our modern nation-states, that certainly we ought to try not importing so many additional ones from cultures completely and utterly not our own.
Thanks for that rundown of the known facts. It was dull and boring, with no excitable ranting and raving. I mean that in the best possible way; it was exactly what was needed at this time.
> German federal police and police in Magdeburg conducted a “risk assessment” of al-Abdulmohsen last year, ultimately concluding that he posed “no concrete danger.”
"I am going to indiscriminately murder German citizens" => no concrete danger
"The future of Germany lies with AfD" => Such a danger that we need to imprison the world's richest man
to elaborate on this: the Islamist people probably assessed him as not an Islamist risk. The right-wing-extreme-people probably assessed him as not a right-wing-extreme risk, and in this way he evaded the extremely specific domain-specific bureaucratic barriers. it is extremely dumb.
"I am going to Indiscriminately murder German citizens.." I have to wonder if the finding of "no concrete evidence" is because the federal police decided he did not have access to the means to commit large scale murder. He must have been very convincing that he posed no danger and that any rantings were temporary aberrations explained by stress or other factors.
Is it possible he created a mentally ill (schizophrenic or otherwise) persona for online postings? I think maybe he did.
Disregarding, for a moment, the issue with the concerns raised about al-Abulmohsen and how the German authorities addressed them, do you think there was an issue with the security barriers surrounding the Weihnachtsmarkt?
From what I picked up on German media, there were posts or poles to prevent trespass by a motor vehicles, but the reporter explained that there were side streets and that it was simply not possible to block every entrance. (Is this so? Could the organizers be found liable in a court?)
It seems remarkable that this could have happened after the attack at the Weihnachtsmarkt in Berlin.
Various people have remarked on the laughable security at many Christmas markets. I have no trouble believing he easily found a way through the barriers.
According to the Telegraph story linked above, the organizers left spaces in the line of bollards to allow the passage of ambulances. The openings were "guarded by police," though, so it's okay. The cops said that someone rushing through a guarded opening was "unforeseeable," so it's not their fault.
In my own experience, here in the Pacific Northwest of the US, I have been at numerous street fair events and none of them had the kind of physical security you are talking about.
Right now there is an ongoing every Saturday event called the Proctor Market, some of my kids own a food company and have a booth there every Saturday. The only thing keeping cars out are those little sandwich boards with reflectors on them, and the disinclination of anyone to violate the message that "this road Is blocked off"
The protection measures are such a drain on society and finances. We didn't live this way before. We lived normally; we need to be able to live in a society without fear.
From what i gathered from German comment posts under various MSM reports, there must be an entry and a lane to allow emergency vehicles such as ambulances and fire brigade access.
Apparently, German Town Halls aren't as yet technically able to put bollards in which can be sunk into the ground on demand ...
The fact that these things even need to be discussed is indicative of the more fundamental problem. Let's put it this way: When Germany was German and hadn't been infiltrated with antagonistic ethnic minorities at the behest of shadowy powers and behind-the-scenes oligarchs, as well as strong and not destroyed by suicidal guilt, the Ratshäuser didn't need bollards. Nor did the Weihnachtsmärkte.
The countries that collectively make up the "West" suffer from the same problem: their birth rates are almost all under the replacement rate. They suffer from this problem because their institutions have pushed entitlement programs at the same time they pushed birth control.
And now they are all staring stupidly at themselves in the mirror wondering where they ever thought the people were going to come from who were going to pay for the entitlements.
It is admittedly a difficult position, but I hardly think that "Let's commit national suicide even faster!" is a viable long-term solution to the dilemma.
That video is horrific. I’ve also read, though don’t know if it’s true, that there’s an effort to link him to the Afd. The way things are going in Germany, I wouldn’t be surprised.
he retweeted a few AfD posts, but beyond that there’s no real connection. In his latest RAIR interview he describes himself as a leftist. He seems to have liked AfD (and more frequently- counter-jihad types) to the extent they were anti-Islam.
It’s commendable that you bothered to read and think about every video and post of this individual (you already knew the knee jerk reaction of politicians and press trying to link it to AfD and you wanted to be ready with the facts), but ultimately, we are looking at a presumably schizophrenic paranoid who liked human trafficking, and whose postings and political mantras aren’t going to line up with reality. The authorities also can’t say he wasn’t on their radar when they did receive warnings and someone “checked him out”. Who checked him out -and that person needs to be hauled into the public town square of Magdeburg to explain him/herself.
People encounter nutjobs everywhere and are 100% reluctant to say anything to anyone about what they observe...for fear of being accused of something or another...racism, etc. And if they DO tell someone, then that next person is afraid to say or do anything. And so it goes.
He sounds like a typical far left activist crazy type. They are so often violent. The fact that leftism is incompatible with Islamic teaching is often pointed out by the right and nearly always ignored, but it seems this is one of the few cases of a leftist who recognized the incompatibility. Still ended up in the same violent place of "society doesn't do what I want, so I will kill people" though.
So do I understand this right, this dude is angry at Germany for admitting too many Islamic radicals, so he commits an Islamic terrorist act to promote the cause of atheism? Makes my head spin!
Whatever comes of this, I'm sure 'lessons will be learned' and our politicians and police will put safeguards in place 'so this never happens again'.
Yeah, yeah. The only lessons to be learned from this is that it was a terrible idea to allow mass immigration from Muslim countries in the first place, to put weaklings in charge of our immigration policy, our policing and the media reporting on all of this, and the only way to make things safer would be to repatriate the criminals and those who are a financial drain on the country. That, at least, would be a start.
So the German authorities are happy to take direct action and fine and imprison people who critisize government officials with silly names, but someone posting threats of serious harm are ignored until people end up killed. This is what happens when officials spend all their time on imagined ideological disadents. The real threats to society go unrestricted and get away with literal murder. What a tragedy for German society.
As much as one doesn't want to give the authorities a pass, how many tens if not hundreds of thousands of people post unhinged shit like this on twitter daily? None of whom go on to actually do anything, rendering any resource spent on "watching" them wasted. It's looking at the problem from the wrong end. 100% of terrorists post unhinged shit, but only 0.0001% of people who post unhinged shit are terrorists.
What makes this immediate security failure reprehensible is the effort spent on prosecuting citizens for using robust vocabulary about politicians policies, whereas this guy has made fairly unveiled threats of violence.
I feel there is a lot more about this to come out. There is not "one Islam", especially not in Saudi, and in many ways similar sectarian wars that Europe had centuries ago are still being fought there. There are sects that mutually regard one another as "apostates" or even atheists, there are small sects that both the big sects regard as apostates (like Jehovahs Witnesses or Mormons are not regarded as mainstream Christians by most Protestants or Catholics).
i am just trying to put known facts with as little personal opinion as possible into English here, I absolutely agree that retrospective critiques are unreasonable, without a view of the context from the receiving end.
I think if this guy was an obvious Islamist, he would’ve been snapped up. If he was a clear-cut right-wing extremist (however you want to define that), same. Politically he presented as incoherent and all over the map, because he was crazy, and there is no specific task force for that.
OK, there's no taskforce but in this case the suspect was working for a government-run psychiatric clinic and there are (presumably) high standards that a medical professional must meet to work with patients (if, indeed, this guy worked with patients).
He posted under his real name, right? And presumably he was holding down his job up until carrying out the attack? So this isn't like Luigi Margione, the CEO killer who went AWOL and hadn't been in contact with friends or family for a year. He similarly appeared to spiral into paranoid behaviour and developed a deranged vendetta, but no one was around him to see the warning signs (since he was floating around San Fran and Hawaii).
This Magdeburg attacker, surely his spiralling and unhinged opinions would have been picked up in his workplace or noticed by someone in his life...? Not that this means law enforcement would have done anything, but maybe there could have been a psychiatric intervention? His colleagues at the clinic would surely be well equipped to detect signs of psychological pathology...
Yes, but the police are there to protect us from violent people. They can't work miracles but they don't need a 'task force' for everything. Much as I dislike them monitoring social media, the focus on mean tweets is way off. Do your job.
Yes, but we are not discussing policing in the US. In many countries there are security and other agencies that are allied to the police who monitor communications and share information. Police spend millions where I live communicating with the public about how to behave and act so they certainly portray themselves as keen to protect everyone. Whether they actually do this is another matter of course.
No country is so small that you would doxx yourself by merely naming it? I am quite curious to know exactly which place it is where the "Police spend millions ... communicating with the public about how to behave and act ..."
The story is always the same. Authorities have a suspect on the radar, or investigate, or arrest and release, prior to the final violent act occurring. Then, instead of looking inward at the failings of law enforcement, the game becomes one of shaping the narrative around motive. It will not surprise me in the least when this is linked somehow to AfD, because of course a pro-asylum Muslim would align with an anti-immigration movement.
When they look at the increase in the number of AfD supporters in Magdeburg after this attack, this man will be accused of holding a party membership drive.
It's always the same: Ignore overt threats of violence coming from politically favored groups, overreact to innocuous speech from political "enemies".
Grandma is much less likely to fight back.
I don't disagree with you, but there's also the danger of overreacting and then being criticized for heavy-handed policing. All I can say is I'm glad that's not my job.
Edit to add: as you say, re-examining their methods for improvement doesn't seem to be an option.
That’s because “the authorities” are too busy with really important, serious threats like persecuting someone calling a public official an idiot, or someone writing about the authoritarian behaviour of the Government, and trying to stamp out “populism” and looking for the elusive Far Right - it must be here somewhere.
The newspapers have already started associating this creep with AfD.
This tragedy is another reminder that all the immigrants and refugees are going to have to go back. There is no reason that Germans should die because an ex-Islamic Saudi is mad at the German authorities. It is not the responsibility of Germany or Germans to sort out the problems and grievances of other nations. Only AfD can save Germany. Shut down the NGOs. Mass Deportation Now.
if his country asked to send him back, they should have done it. Most countries do not want their criminals back. This would not have happened if authorities export the criminals back to their home country.
The Saudi government wanted him back so they could punish him.
Wow. For all the airtime given to anti AfD coverage, it turns out terrorists can make public claims years in advance and the police do nothing until they’ve murdered people and injured hundreds?
They're saying he was pro-AfD: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/12/21/magdeburg-suspect-is-pro-afd-saudi-doctor/
Eugyppius, what do you reckon of this angle? A brazen lie?
Yeah - because 'liking' a tweet or retweeting it makes one an AfD fan in Germany ...
The misinformation on this case seems to have started minutes after the attack, or did someone know what he was planning and planted 'evidence'. The George Floyd story comes to mind. A false flag?
So glad likes are private now
"Never let a crisis go to waste."
He was (reportedly) anti-Muslim, but pro-immigrant. If I'm taking my pick, I'd say he's anti-AfD. Is AfD anti-Muslim? Was he a member of AfD?
So, an Arab immigrant comes to Germany, he’s wanted for HUMAN TRAFFICKING (sorry for the obnoxious caps but it’s for the immigration authorities to read), but German immigration decides, he’s a winner candidate to enter Germany and become a permanent resident. Then all the NGOs presumably bend over backwards to protect this piece of excrement and the initial assessment that he’s a fine man and a productive member of society. Meanwhile, his obviously disturbed mental status must have been very clear to large swaths of people. Did he even have any actual patients?
I have to admit that I'm not certain I'm convinced by claims of human trafficking made by the Saudis. If the guy actually *is* ex-Muslim, I could see that being "He's helping our women escape." But who knows, at this point, the guy does sound crazy as a loon.
The Saudi government could release all those details- I would be more than willing to go down that rabbit hole…He had terrorism and child trafficking to Europe charges. Who were his contacts in the EU? Was it an NGO??? What happened to those who he trafficked?
No, I agree, I'd also like to see those details from them.
What i' for one would like is for the Gyp to spend some QT at Maggie McNeill's The Honest Courtesan website archive (her 'key', introductory pieces perhaps, for it is huge) and then come back to us on political use of the insanely flexible term "trafficking*, MM is an ex-New Orleans whore* turned fiulltime blogger and not someone you should ever take on without having yout shit very much together
*her preferred term for her former profession
But the AP said the car drove itself into a crowd.
Wow. Another self-driving, unoccupied vehicle. Who knew so many marauding autos?
And -- what a coincidence -- same death toll as the recent US Christian school shooting (minus, of course, the +1 suicide bonus). Germany should surely prepare to be beset by orange-shirted harridans demanding the banning of BMWs.
LOL I noticed that.
The rental of BMW SUV's must be stopped as was similarly done with the prohibition of swiss army knives recently.
Blunt summary, this.
It seems incredible to me that, despite the ongoing islamification (or perhaps because of it?) people seem to be unfamiliar with 'taqquiya', which permits muslims to lie to infidels when it promotes the interests of islam.
Why believe someone grown up in Saudi Arabia, the Wahabite kingdom? Wahabism is the cradle of al Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, ISIS ... but what he said on social meejah must now be taken as pure truth? Really?
the method and possibly the timing (one day after the eight-year anniversary of Berlin 2016) speak in favour of an Islamist attack. Everything else points to an obsessed mentally ill man who began to hate Germans for their failure to embrace fully enough his anti-Islam cause and take him and other ex-Muslims seriously.
The sheer volume of tweets about this, the making of open threats to kill Germans for not doing enough for ex-Muslims, over years, is just objectively hard to reconcile with a taqiya sleeper jihadi scenario.
Which begs the question: why didn't his psychiatry work colleagues recognise his illness? Or did they and it was also brushed udder the carpet because that would've been racist and islamophobic?
For me, the other question is: why did the 'authorities' not believe the Saudi ones who demanded his repatriation? Can we say that this and the previous government would rather 'shelter' a criminal because of his 'human rights' but never mind the human rights of German citizens, never mind their oath of office, to 'protect the German people'?
It's all so sick ...
Was he a 'sleeper'? I dunno. But taqqiya can be used regardless by people like that one.
And thanks for wading through all those tweets - my eyes, stomach and brain would've given up.
From my own experience, psychiatrists and psychologists are more likely to be nut cases than the general public. Sometimes I wonder if their career choices might be based on a natural instinct towards self-examination.
Hear hear. You stole my thunder.
Only *sometimes* do you wonder that???
LOL! I hope there are some legit ones out there.
The increased instability rate of psychiatrists is as legendary as the increased suicide rate of cops. Expecting mutual self policing is probably over-optimistic.
You know, if Saudi Arabia really wanted to help out the investigation, they could release all the information regarding their original charges, including fleshing out the terrorism details and exactly WHO was he involved with in the EU with the child trafficking… that would be an interesting read…
The Muslims do indeed have this concept, as do the Jews, who call it hasbara.
The key is to frequent independent media, never trust the mainstream. It's all lies.
Many things may be simultaneously true. For the Saudi authorities, anyone who helps Saudi women escape Saudi Arabia, especially if they are fleeing their families, for whatever reason, is a criminal and can be construed anyway they like. They wanted him extradited for their own purposes and not necessarily because of their tender concern for the wellbeing of Germans and Germany.
It is also true that many people raised in the most particularly deranged Muslim societies have extreme mental health struggles in trying to adjust to free societies--as much as they have in trying to adjust to their own societies. They are very seriously fucked up. And people drawn to the field of psychology/psychiatry are remarkably frequently batshit crazy.
So maybe it's not so surprising that his colleagues/supervisors/patients didn't notice he wasn't wrapped too tight himself.
But what an awful, horrible, unbearable atrocity. He's murdered the families of the people he killed, too. It's not as if the bereaved are not always haunted by the terrible hole detonated in their lives but even the least momentary fleeting comforts of the holiday season are forever stolen from them too.
I don't have it to hand but I read an article in the wake of the Southport stabbing in Wales (committed by the son of Rwandan political refugees who settled in the UK after the genocide) that people of refugee backgrounds involving war/persecution and certain racial minority groups have disproportionate high rates of mental illness and are more likely to go untreated when they develop serious conditions like bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.
I think this is an aspect of migration that has not been looked at in depth and is very much an after-thought when people discuss what types of migration they support vs which they want to see restricted. It seems both this Saudi guy and the Rwandan teenager in the UK are the "right" type of refugees -- they (or their parents) are professionals who applied via official channels and showed every intent to integrate and contribute.
And yet... something went very wrong along the way.
Severe mental illness is not rare in any group.
And I'm old enough to remember that when one said the word "terrorist," lotsa lotsa white ethnic group members came to mind. And--leaving out, say, a good proportion of the IRA murderous thugs, many of the American and German and Italian kids who thought terrorism was a fun life path were from solid middle-class families. In those days I felt I was living dangerously enough just hitchhiking around the UK and I decided to skip Italy with all those Red Brigade bombings etc.
Certainly we have enough crazies amongst those who've been Americans and Germans and Britons for generations, and from the beginnings of our modern nation-states, that certainly we ought to try not importing so many additional ones from cultures completely and utterly not our own.
Thanks for that rundown of the known facts. It was dull and boring, with no excitable ranting and raving. I mean that in the best possible way; it was exactly what was needed at this time.
> German federal police and police in Magdeburg conducted a “risk assessment” of al-Abdulmohsen last year, ultimately concluding that he posed “no concrete danger.”
"I am going to indiscriminately murder German citizens" => no concrete danger
"The future of Germany lies with AfD" => Such a danger that we need to imprison the world's richest man
Your country is full of retards
yes.
to elaborate on this: the Islamist people probably assessed him as not an Islamist risk. The right-wing-extreme-people probably assessed him as not a right-wing-extreme risk, and in this way he evaded the extremely specific domain-specific bureaucratic barriers. it is extremely dumb.
Indeed, they don't seem to have any concept that the left can be dangerous, even though it's full of violent extremism.
Dumb is running rampant. Sigh.
We have similar examples here.
"I am going to Indiscriminately murder German citizens.." I have to wonder if the finding of "no concrete evidence" is because the federal police decided he did not have access to the means to commit large scale murder. He must have been very convincing that he posed no danger and that any rantings were temporary aberrations explained by stress or other factors.
Is it possible he created a mentally ill (schizophrenic or otherwise) persona for online postings? I think maybe he did.
Disregarding, for a moment, the issue with the concerns raised about al-Abulmohsen and how the German authorities addressed them, do you think there was an issue with the security barriers surrounding the Weihnachtsmarkt?
From what I picked up on German media, there were posts or poles to prevent trespass by a motor vehicles, but the reporter explained that there were side streets and that it was simply not possible to block every entrance. (Is this so? Could the organizers be found liable in a court?)
It seems remarkable that this could have happened after the attack at the Weihnachtsmarkt in Berlin.
Various people have remarked on the laughable security at many Christmas markets. I have no trouble believing he easily found a way through the barriers.
According to the Telegraph story linked above, the organizers left spaces in the line of bollards to allow the passage of ambulances. The openings were "guarded by police," though, so it's okay. The cops said that someone rushing through a guarded opening was "unforeseeable," so it's not their fault.
Why couldn’t they use those plastic/rubbery blocks you fill with water? If a crisis ensues, you pierce it. They still need to be guarded, though.
Well it must have been foreseeable or the police would not have been told to guard such openings.
Good grief. This is tragically comical
It reminds me of secret service managers who didn’t post snipers on a roof because it was too slanted. Sometimes people do their job very poorly.
What, do we live in a war zone?
In my own experience, here in the Pacific Northwest of the US, I have been at numerous street fair events and none of them had the kind of physical security you are talking about.
Right now there is an ongoing every Saturday event called the Proctor Market, some of my kids own a food company and have a booth there every Saturday. The only thing keeping cars out are those little sandwich boards with reflectors on them, and the disinclination of anyone to violate the message that "this road Is blocked off"
Yes.
The protection measures are such a drain on society and finances. We didn't live this way before. We lived normally; we need to be able to live in a society without fear.
From what i gathered from German comment posts under various MSM reports, there must be an entry and a lane to allow emergency vehicles such as ambulances and fire brigade access.
Apparently, German Town Halls aren't as yet technically able to put bollards in which can be sunk into the ground on demand ...
The fact that these things even need to be discussed is indicative of the more fundamental problem. Let's put it this way: When Germany was German and hadn't been infiltrated with antagonistic ethnic minorities at the behest of shadowy powers and behind-the-scenes oligarchs, as well as strong and not destroyed by suicidal guilt, the Ratshäuser didn't need bollards. Nor did the Weihnachtsmärkte.
That was my (intended) point, too
.
If Germany didn't allow mass immigration there would be no need for such security.
Germany's options are limited.
The countries that collectively make up the "West" suffer from the same problem: their birth rates are almost all under the replacement rate. They suffer from this problem because their institutions have pushed entitlement programs at the same time they pushed birth control.
And now they are all staring stupidly at themselves in the mirror wondering where they ever thought the people were going to come from who were going to pay for the entitlements.
It is admittedly a difficult position, but I hardly think that "Let's commit national suicide even faster!" is a viable long-term solution to the dilemma.
That video is horrific. I’ve also read, though don’t know if it’s true, that there’s an effort to link him to the Afd. The way things are going in Germany, I wouldn’t be surprised.
he retweeted a few AfD posts, but beyond that there’s no real connection. In his latest RAIR interview he describes himself as a leftist. He seems to have liked AfD (and more frequently- counter-jihad types) to the extent they were anti-Islam.
It’s commendable that you bothered to read and think about every video and post of this individual (you already knew the knee jerk reaction of politicians and press trying to link it to AfD and you wanted to be ready with the facts), but ultimately, we are looking at a presumably schizophrenic paranoid who liked human trafficking, and whose postings and political mantras aren’t going to line up with reality. The authorities also can’t say he wasn’t on their radar when they did receive warnings and someone “checked him out”. Who checked him out -and that person needs to be hauled into the public town square of Magdeburg to explain him/herself.
How did his superiors miss him becoming more and more unhinged?
People encounter nutjobs everywhere and are 100% reluctant to say anything to anyone about what they observe...for fear of being accused of something or another...racism, etc. And if they DO tell someone, then that next person is afraid to say or do anything. And so it goes.
He sounds like a typical far left activist crazy type. They are so often violent. The fact that leftism is incompatible with Islamic teaching is often pointed out by the right and nearly always ignored, but it seems this is one of the few cases of a leftist who recognized the incompatibility. Still ended up in the same violent place of "society doesn't do what I want, so I will kill people" though.
So do I understand this right, this dude is angry at Germany for admitting too many Islamic radicals, so he commits an Islamic terrorist act to promote the cause of atheism? Makes my head spin!
Whatever comes of this, I'm sure 'lessons will be learned' and our politicians and police will put safeguards in place 'so this never happens again'.
Yeah, yeah. The only lessons to be learned from this is that it was a terrible idea to allow mass immigration from Muslim countries in the first place, to put weaklings in charge of our immigration policy, our policing and the media reporting on all of this, and the only way to make things safer would be to repatriate the criminals and those who are a financial drain on the country. That, at least, would be a start.
So the German authorities are happy to take direct action and fine and imprison people who critisize government officials with silly names, but someone posting threats of serious harm are ignored until people end up killed. This is what happens when officials spend all their time on imagined ideological disadents. The real threats to society go unrestricted and get away with literal murder. What a tragedy for German society.
As much as one doesn't want to give the authorities a pass, how many tens if not hundreds of thousands of people post unhinged shit like this on twitter daily? None of whom go on to actually do anything, rendering any resource spent on "watching" them wasted. It's looking at the problem from the wrong end. 100% of terrorists post unhinged shit, but only 0.0001% of people who post unhinged shit are terrorists.
What makes this immediate security failure reprehensible is the effort spent on prosecuting citizens for using robust vocabulary about politicians policies, whereas this guy has made fairly unveiled threats of violence.
I feel there is a lot more about this to come out. There is not "one Islam", especially not in Saudi, and in many ways similar sectarian wars that Europe had centuries ago are still being fought there. There are sects that mutually regard one another as "apostates" or even atheists, there are small sects that both the big sects regard as apostates (like Jehovahs Witnesses or Mormons are not regarded as mainstream Christians by most Protestants or Catholics).
i am just trying to put known facts with as little personal opinion as possible into English here, I absolutely agree that retrospective critiques are unreasonable, without a view of the context from the receiving end.
I think if this guy was an obvious Islamist, he would’ve been snapped up. If he was a clear-cut right-wing extremist (however you want to define that), same. Politically he presented as incoherent and all over the map, because he was crazy, and there is no specific task force for that.
OK, there's no taskforce but in this case the suspect was working for a government-run psychiatric clinic and there are (presumably) high standards that a medical professional must meet to work with patients (if, indeed, this guy worked with patients).
He posted under his real name, right? And presumably he was holding down his job up until carrying out the attack? So this isn't like Luigi Margione, the CEO killer who went AWOL and hadn't been in contact with friends or family for a year. He similarly appeared to spiral into paranoid behaviour and developed a deranged vendetta, but no one was around him to see the warning signs (since he was floating around San Fran and Hawaii).
This Magdeburg attacker, surely his spiralling and unhinged opinions would have been picked up in his workplace or noticed by someone in his life...? Not that this means law enforcement would have done anything, but maybe there could have been a psychiatric intervention? His colleagues at the clinic would surely be well equipped to detect signs of psychological pathology...
Yes, but the police are there to protect us from violent people. They can't work miracles but they don't need a 'task force' for everything. Much as I dislike them monitoring social media, the focus on mean tweets is way off. Do your job.
Contrary to popular belief, police are NOT there to protect you from violent people. This is settled law in the US.
https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/police-arent-there-to-protect-you
Yes, but we are not discussing policing in the US. In many countries there are security and other agencies that are allied to the police who monitor communications and share information. Police spend millions where I live communicating with the public about how to behave and act so they certainly portray themselves as keen to protect everyone. Whether they actually do this is another matter of course.
No country is so small that you would doxx yourself by merely naming it? I am quite curious to know exactly which place it is where the "Police spend millions ... communicating with the public about how to behave and act ..."