Terrorists in Algeria used AK47 assault rifles, Obama wants to ban our AR15's.

[52ndStreet]

The Terrorists in Algeria all used fully automatic AK47 assault rifles, and took over 650
foreigners , including 20 Americans hostage. President Obama
wants to ban your right to buy an AR 15 or AK 47 assault rifles.
How would we defend ourselves againsts these terrorists if Obama bans our
ability to buy assault rifles, to combat the terrorists fully auto AK47's?

 

[Borillar]

1. Unless you happen to be in Algeria or Mali, I don't think you need to worry overmuch about these Algerian terrorists.

2. Obama hasn't banned anything, nor does he have the power to ban anything.

 

[52ndStreet]

1. Unless you happen to be in Algeria or Mali, I don't think you need to worry overmuch about these Algerian terrorists.

2. Obama hasn't banned anything, nor does he have the power to ban anything.

Yes , I need to worry when we have a New York govenor that has banned assault rifles
, and high capacity clips. And a president who has passed executive orders, without
congressional approval.

 

[waltky]

Sure coulda fooled me...

Why the Sahara is not the 'new Afghanistan'
5 February 2013 : The brazen attack on a desert gas plant in Algeria last month and the French-led campaign against Islamists in northern Mali have triggered stark warnings in the West of a new front opening in the campaign to combat Islamist extremists but there is a danger of exaggerating the threat, analysts say.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke of the need to prevent northern Mali becoming a "safe haven" from which militants could launch attacks against America. British Prime Minister David Cameron said this "global threat" required a response that would take "years, even decades". "Just as we had to deal with that in Pakistan and in Afghanistan so the world needs to come together to deal with this threat in North Africa," he said. But militancy in the Sahara and Sahel, which stretches across the desert regions of Mali, Algeria, Libya, Niger and Mauritania, is tied to local dynamics and plays on local grievances and it would be a mistake to see all of the region's numerous armed groups as always acting in unison.

The only clear parallel with the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan where the Taliban have flourished, analysts say, is the absence of central governments, which are unable or unwilling to counter extremism. This is a long-standing problem in northern Mali. It emerged more recently in North African countries that saw Arab Spring uprisings, including Libya and Tunisia, allowing militant groups to gain ground. "Right now we're not seeing as much an uptick in the strength of these groups as much as we are new areas that they're able to operate in because of the weakening of states," said William Lawrence, North Africa director for International Crisis Group. "That's the major change in the last two years."

Kidnappings

The most prominent militant group in North Africa is al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), formed from the remnants of the Islamist insurgency in Algeria Its leaders have increasingly aligned themselves with international jihad (holy war), adopting the al-Qaeda name in 2007. In the desert over the past ten years they have raised their profile - and tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in ransom money - by taking westerners hostage. Robert Fowler, a Canadian former UN diplomat kidnapped in Niger in 2008, has described the professionalism and apparent religious fervour of the men who abducted him. "Their every act was considered and needed to be justifiable in terms of their chosen path of jihad," he wrote in his book, A Season in Hell.

The kidnappers were led by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who more recently formed the AQIM splinter group, the Signed-in-Blood Battalion, blamed for January's attack on the Algerian gas plant of In Amenas. Two other groups, Ansar Dine - dominated by former Tuareg rebels - and the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (Mujao), took control of northern Mali's major towns and cities following a coup in the capital, Bamako, last March. They destroyed shrines sacred to Sufi Muslims and applied a radical version of Sharia law, chopping off the hands of thieves, authorising the stoning of adulterers, and forcing women to wear veils. The Associated Press reported in December that they had set up bases in the desert north of Kidal, using heavy machinery to dig a network of tunnels, trenches and ramparts.

Social climbing

 

[TruthSeeker56]

Maybe Obama will issue all of us teleprompters, so we can TALK the terrorists to death?

 

[Politico]

Sigh.

 

[waltky]

Uncle Ferd says dey pro'bly had a buncha rent-a-cops guardin' the place...

Statoil Reveals Chronically Weak Security at Algerian Plant Before Attack
September 12, 2013 — Oil major Statoil missed multiple warning signs and failed to foresee or prepare for incidents like January's deadly attack at an Algerian plant in January, an internal company investigation said, painting a picture of chronic security problems at the site.

Some 40 workers, including five Statoil workers, were killed when Islamist militants raided the In Amenas gas plant deep in the Sahara desert, near the Libyan border, taking foreign workers hostage in a four-day siege that ended when Algerian forces stormed the plant. Statoil and BP, its partner in the In Amenas venture, have said it was impossible to predict an attack of such unprecedented scale. The Statoil report, however, shows that security at the plant was inadequately managed and revealed for the first time that the facility was struggling with an internal crisis; workers were on strike from mid-2012 until just days before the assault, and some had threatened expatriate employees.

A checkpoint at the entrance of a gas field near Zarzaitine in Ain Amenas, southeast of Algiers, Algeria

Statoil's board commissioned the report from a panel of internal officers and external international defense and security experts including a former acting director of the CIA, John E McLaughlin. “Although unforeseen and unprecedented, an attack on In Amenas should not have been entirely inconceivable,” the 78-page report said in a section titled Failure of Imagination. “Despite the turmoil in the region, the In Amenas joint venture operated on an unchanged threat level from February 2012 until the attack,” the report said.

The 78-page report concluded: “Security is generally not well understood within Statoil's leadership ranks, and as a result has not been prioritized, resourced or managed properly.” Statoil Chief Executive Helge Lund acknowledged the report and said he did not plan to resign. Chairman Svein Rennemo said the board had full confidence in Statoil's management. “Before the investigation started, Lund said he was the man in charge and he was responsible,” said Hilde-Marit Rysst, the head of Norwegian energy union SAFE. “He needs to consider his position after this report, he should consider stepping down,” she said.

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