the toon above is a Gus extrapolation of an image that is popular on the social media...

http://www.smh.com.au/world/brussels-explosions-plantu-cartoon-expressin...

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has criticised Europe's border protection measures in the wake of the atrocities in Brussels, arguing Australia is more secure because of its strong borders and geographic isolation.

Extending "our most resolute solidarity" to the Belgian people, Mr Turnbull nonetheless said Europe had "allowed their security measures to slip" and that this was "a lesson for all of us". He was critical of the Schengen agreement that enables free movement within Europe, as well as the "very porous" external borders that encouraged entry to the continent.

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/brussels-explosions-malcolm-turnbull-criticises-security-in-europe-and-warns-attacks-still-possible-in-australia-20160322-gnoyps.html

This comment by your (not mine) Prime Minister sucks big. His comment is populist crassness plus. He may have no idea on how the system works over there and even with the most stringent detention alla Manus in Europe, IT WOULD NOT STOP THIS KIND OF CAPERS. Trust me, Europe is always on the look out for "terrorists" — home grown and imported. Most (all) of its airport, railways station have police and army patrols armed to the teeth. And refugees are not the problem per se.

Imagine camps like Nauru in Europe? housing the population of a city like Sydney? They would make the Nazi concentration camps pale into insignificance. About 2000 people land on Greek shores daily. Anyway, the Europeans and the Turks have made a 6 billion Euro deal to prevent more influx of refugees, which to say the least come from "our" helping "moderate" (think not as vengeful as ISIS) rebels in Syria, to help our friends build a pipeline through Syria whoever comes first — the Qataris or the Saudis or both (qatar's involvement in syria is motivated by a pipeline...) — all in order to stop Europe being dependant on Russian gas. This is the reality of the matter. 

Malcolm sux... 

At least 30 people have been killed after a suicide bomber blew himself up near a football field after a local tournament, south of Baghdad.

• 65 people wounded after suicide bomber detonated, many of the dead are young people
• Mayor Ahmed Shaker among the dead
• Bomber named as Saifullah al-Ansari, looks to be a teenager

The Islamic State (IS) militant group claimed responsibility for the attack that wreaked carnage on the field where supporters, officials and security forces were gathered after the game.

"They were just handing the trophy to the winners, the suicide attacker blew himself up in the crowd," a police captain from the village, Al-Asriya, told news agency AFP.

The village is near Iskandariyah, a town about 40 kilometres south of Baghdad.

The police captain said more than 65 people were also wounded in the blast.

A medic at Iskandariyah hospital confirmed the toll and warned it could rise further.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-26/football-pitch-suicide-attack-kill...

Three suicide bombers have struck security checkpoints in the southern Yemeni city of Aden, killing at least 26 people.

Dozens of people were also wounded in the Friday attacks, which coincided with the first anniversary of the start of civil war in Yemen and were claimed by the Islamic State (IS) militant group.

In one of the blasts, an ambulance laden with explosives was detonated as it arrived at a military checkpoint in the Buraiqa area in north-western Aden, killing around 14 soldiers and civilians.

The other two bombs hit checkpoints on the road to a base used by the Saudi-led military coalition that is fighting in Yemen.

Security sources said at least 12 people died, though with no immediate reports of coalition soldiers among the casualties.

Nizar Anwar, a spokesman for the local government in Aden, said the bombers were targeting the coalition command base but local fighters guarding the checkpoints prevented them from reaching their targets.

"More than 20 people were killed, most of them civilians," he said in a statement.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-26/suicide-bombings-hit-yemen/7277452

An apparent suicide bomber has killed at least 52 people outside a public park in the Pakistani city of Lahore, rescue officials have said. The blast in the parking area of Gulshan-e-Iqbal park on Sunday happened just outside the exit gate and feet away from a children’s play area. The park was particularly busy because of the Easter holiday weekend.

“At least 38 people were killed and more than 100 are injured,” Mustansar Feroz, police superintendent for the area, told Reuters soon after the explosion. “Most of the dead and injured are women and children.” Khawaja Salman Rafique, the health adviser for Punjab province, later gave a revised figure of 200 injured.

The explosion in the eastern city happened in prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s political heartland of Punjab. Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation of 190 million people, has been plagued by a Taliban insurgency, criminal gangs and sectarian violence. Punjab is its biggest and wealthiest province.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/27/dozens-killed-in-blast-outside-lahore-park-pakistan

An investigation into the Brussels and Paris terror attacks has widened to cover other European countries, with a man suspected of producing false identification documents for the attackers being arrested in Italy.Trends
Brussels terror attacks

Forty-year old Djamal Eddine Ouali has been detained by Italy’s anti-terrorism agency, the General Investigations and Special Operations Division (DIGOS), Reuters reported. The suspect is of Algerian origin.

The arrest was carried out in the small town of Bellizzi in southern Italy on Saturday.

An international arrest warrant had been issued for Ouali in January, a police statement said.

Ouali is suspected of being a part of a criminal network that produces false documents used in illegal immigration, according to Italian AGI news agency.

He was interrogated in Salerno prison on Sunday, but exercised his right to remain silent, AGI said, adding that, following the interrogation, the investigating judge validated the arrest, and a process for the suspect’s extradition to Belgium was launched.

The alleged accomplice of the terrorists will be extradited to Belgium in the coming days, according to the police statement.

Authorities are now trying to determine how the suspect came to be in Italy, as well as checking his possible connections to other criminal and terror networks. According to the initial findings, Ouali has been in the Salerno area for at least two months. He is married to a woman who is about to give birth, AGI said.

READ MORE: Police negligence let Brussels bomber avoid arrest after deportation from Turkey – Belgian minister

According to some reports, Ouali’s name was discovered in a raid in a Brussels apartment last October, during which hundreds of digital photographs were found among false documents, such as passports, along with the equipment to produce them. Images of three men suspected of planning the November Paris attacks, as well as a picture of Najim Laachraoui, a suicide bomber at Brussels Airport, were discovered among the photographs, The Local said.

READ MORE: Belgian prosecutor files terror charges against 3 men

Laachraoui, who was reportedly a Brussels native, was among three terrorists who carried out attacks in the Belgian capital on Tuesday. Four of the 28 people who were killed in the attacks remain unidentified, Reuters reported, citing officials. The 24 identified fatal victims – 14 at the airport and 10 on the Metro – were of nine different nationalities.

https://www.rt.com/news/337374-brussels-suspect-arrest-italy/

Activating the SleepersIslamic State Adopts a New Strategy in Europe

By Christoph Reuter in Beirut

Last week's attacks in Brussels show that Islamic State has built up a sophisticated network of terrorists that goes well beyond al-Qaida's capabilities. It is now able to strike using sleepers who have not yet been identified by security officials.

They chose the perfect moment. Just as Europe was letting out a sigh of relief, having captured one of the Paris terrorists after months of pursuit, the bombersdetonated their explosives. The signal sent by the arrest was that Islamic State (IS) is defeatable. But the Brussels attack tells us that isn't the case. Just when you think you've beaten us, we'll strike you right in the heart.

Investigators and intelligence agencies both agree that preparations for the attacks in Brussels must have begun long ago. The Belgian bombs thus heralded a new approach for Islamic State in Europe -- one that does not bode well for those trying to prevent acts of terrorism -- because the threat is no longer limited to individuals known to the police or already on wanted lists, but also comes from those in the shadows in the second or third rank. Even jihadists who have not yet been identified by officials are now capable of striking.

This approach reflects the one used in IS' main battle grounds of Syria and Iraq. For some time there, unsuspected aggressors, who have been discreetly trained, have infiltrated targeted circles and built up long-term sleeper cells. Or men from regions neighboring a target are recruited to wait and attack at the right moment.

Surprisingly Farsighted

This is a modus operandi that has been employed by terrorists against prominent and often well-defended opponents multiple times -- it's how Abu Khalid al Suri, the Syrian emissary for al-Qaida boss Aiman al-Zawahiri, was betrayed by one of his own employees and killed in early 2014 by IS despite all possible protective measures being taken at his top secret hideout.

A rebel commander who had fled after Islamic State had taken over Raqqa was abducted by his own driver in Turkey, who was working under the orders of IS. And the founder of the secret activist network Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently was massacred in his apartment in the Turkish city of Sanliurfa by an IS agent who had infiltrated the opponents months before, posing as a supporter.

The people behind this terror are proving to be surprisingly farsighted, patient planners and not rash actors -- and this applies in both Europe and Syria. This is the new and long underestimated side of IS.

The length Islamic State goes to in order to install sleeper cells is illustrated by a lesser-known case -- one in which IS attempted to infiltrate opposition forces.

Jamil Mahmoud, a young Kurdish man from Afrin who worked as a furniture painter in Beirut, was selected to be inserted into the ranks of the People's Protection Units (YPG) in the northern Syrian district where he had come from. Once his recruiters were confident enough that he would act in their interests, Mahmoud was smuggled through the harbor in Tripoli into Turkey, without ever having to show his passport.

From the sea, he was driven inland for four hours, the Kurd later told SPIEGEL. "Until we got to a large, isolated farmhouse. There were around 25 men there, Arabs and Turks. We were trained in the use of Kalashnikovs and Glock pistols."

They never left their camp. But the area of Gaziantep came up often in conversation. After two months, he was assigned to join the YPG militia in Afrin (a group close to the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK) and told to await further orders. "They said simply they would always be nearby and that they would get in contact when it was time to take action." Mahmoud was driven to the border, whereupon he traveled to Afrin and joined the militia, as ordered. After a few months, however, he handed himself in to to the Kurdish authorities -- before the order to strike came through.

Sleeper Cells in Europe

IS' behavior is in many ways more like that of a secret service than of animated fanatics. Al-Qaida committed its attacks as its raison d'etre, the result being that there were no subsequent attacks far outside their usual theaters of war following their acts of violence on New York and Washington in 2001, on Casablanca, Madrid, Amman and elsewhere. Al-Qaida had acted, not reacted. But IS appears capable of doing so.

Testimony from deserters suggests the terror organization began establishing sleeper cells in multiple European countries early on, in Turkey in particular. According to the former IS fighters, they are made up of men who aren't on any watch lists. This enables IS to elude the vulnerability suffered by many based in Europe -- namely that they are known terrorists. The biographies of many terrorists are very similar: an early period of radicalization precedes a period of preparation just before an attack. By this point, however, many are already known to the authorities as dangerous and are subsequently often placed under surveillance. This included the Belgians who, in January 2015 wanted to attack police stations in Brussels immediately after the Charlie Hebdo massacre. Apartments, telephones and cars were bugged -- the authorities always had a clear picture of what was going on.

Attacks could repeatedly be thwarted mostly because the aggressors had left behind traces. Just after the July 2005 attacks on London, a British investigator warned that investigations placed too little emphasis on terrorists acting below the security services' radar. At that time, most of the attention had been focused on "homegrown terrorists," young men who radicalized themselves without even coming into contact with the al-Qaida leadership or prominent hate preachers. This category applied to each of the four men who blew themselves up in London.

Terrorism has become more professional since then. IS' masterminds now build up sleeper cell networks from an early stage in order to attack without hindrance at any chosen moment. That they are doing so in Syria is well documented. And that they are doing the same in Europe is very probable.

• http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/islamic-state-adopts-a-new-approach-in-europe-a-1084489.html