Brussels cancels New Year's Eve fireworks due to threat

[webfact]

Brussels cancels New Year's Eve fireworks due to threat

BRUSSELS (AP) — The New Year's Eve fireworks display is being canceled in Belgium's capital due to threats of an extremist attack.

Brussels Yvan Mayeur, the Belgian capital's mayor, said the decision was taken Wednesday evening after consultation with government officials.

"We are forced to cancel considering the risk analysis done by the Crisis Center," he told the French-language RTBF network.

Last Dec. 31, Mayeur said, 100,000 people turned out in the Belgian capital to ring in the new year.

"In these circumstances, we can't check everyone," Mayeur said.

Brussels was home to four of the radical Islamic attackers who killed 130 people in Paris Nov. 13. The week, Belgian authorities arrested two people in connection with another suspected plot to attack police, soldiers and popular Brussels sites during the holidays.


-- (c) Associated Press 2015-12-31

[webfact]

Brussels calls off traditional New Years Eve festivities over terror alert fears



BRUSSELS: -- The traditional New Year’s Eve fireworks and festivities in Brussels have been called off over fears of a militant attack.

The decision was taken conjunction with the Belgium government reportedly due to information it had received.

“It is the nature of a gathering of so many people, an enormous number. You know last year a 100,000 were here and you cannot control and check everyone who comes to the event. And as the inquiries are still ongoing on a local and federal level and elements of those inquiries still being analysed it was decided it was better not to take the risk,” Brussels Mayor Yvan Mayeur told reporters.

The fear of a terror attack at New Year’s Eve celebrations was brought into sharp focus after arrests in Belgium on Tuesday.

It’s understood the two people arrested will appear in court on Thursday and belong to a motorbike club called the Kamikaze Riders whose members are mostly of North African descent according to one media outlet.


-- (c) Copyright Euronews 2015-12-31

[Credo]

So if there are fireworks, they won't really be fireworks.

It's sad that Europe has to abandon some of these traditions while being forced to adopt traditions they would rather not have.

[Somtamnication]

The terrorists have won.

[OMGImInPattaya]

So if there are fireworks, they won't really be fireworks.

It's sad that Europe has to abandon some of these traditions while being forced to adopt traditions they would rather not have.

It's to accommodate the sensitivities of their newest citizens...having fun is frowned upon under Sharia law. I hope Europa is happy with the new world they have caused to be made by their decades of foolish immigration policies.

It's also rumored that the police and fire departments have scheduled another mass orgy so there might not be enough personnel available to police the New Year's festivities.

Edited December 31, 2015 by OMGImInPattaya

[Cuchulainn]

This is an absolute crying shame. Anyway, you reap what you sow. Europe is fecked.

[godden]

Politicians who needs them.

[trogers]

Use the budget to build another mosque...

[Skeptic7]

The free world truly began losing it's freedoms on 9/11/2001. Before then there was the occasional infection, but nothing so serious as to ruin the world. Since then, the virus...the disease...the scourge...the real pandemic of Islam has infected the world. Forget SARS or AIDS or Bird Flu or Ebola. These were minor threats that never lived up to their sensationalist media billings, compared to the real pandemic that is actually taking over and ruining the world...Islam. The virus that breeds like cockroaches and invades normal healthy, civil societies causing fear, confusion, violence, anger and death. Multiplying like rats and causing mass chaos around the globe...denying normal earthlings their freedoms...destroying lives and killing innocent people...are the barbaric, infinitely ignorant superstitious masses of Islam.

Goodbye free world. We have allowed tolerance and ultra-political correctness of violent, ignorant superstition to deprive nearly the entire planet of it's freedoms now. Living in fear of infection is causing the world to crumble under the stupidity of ancient, barbaric ridiculous, superstitious dogma. Sad.

Happy New Year!

[Tchooptip]

Use the budget to build another mosque...

This really is not smart to give them such ideas, if by any chance they do read your comment they will do it Pfffff

[TheCruncher]

Fear mongering, the most powerful tool a government posses to control it's citizens.

[Scott]

An off-topic post has been removed. The thread is about the cancellation of Brussel's New Year's Eve celebration.

[bendejo]

Since the Paris attacks and the revelations that the terrorists were working out of Belgium, the stuff in the press about the state of law enforcement in that country has been pretty unimpressive. I know they're afraid of over-doing it, like the law that police cannot conduct raids at night (good guess what inspired that one!), but they need to adapt to a new form of menace. Perhaps this NYE over-reaction is a new beginning.

[manarak]

I am having strange thoughts about the effect terrorists have on present dynamics of politics in Europe.

While the left-center wing's response to terrorists (and to the financial crisis) is to turn countries into politically correct multicultural police states, I see there is change at poll booths where the far right gains traction.

I think that thuggish nationalism is not a viable political program, but I hope voter pressure will push the weakish politically correct politicians away from power before they cause more damage.

We again need determined leaders who are ready to trade blood for freedom.

Edited January 1, 2016 by manarak

[katana]

"A video of [muslim] teenagers lighting a petrol bomb under a Christmas tree while yelling “Allahu Akbar” has sparked outrage in Belgium...
It followed a second video taken on the same evening showing a gang of youths pushing a car down an escalator of the Clemenceau metro station..."
Continued http://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/world-economy/teenagers-set-christmas-tree-on-fire-in-new-years-eve-rampage/news-story/88f349f08c101f70ac4c91f68f449e11