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Security So Tight at the G20 Even a Gnat Couldn’t Get In … Oh, Wait
So yesterday, the heads of the Group of 20 leading world economies arrived in the resort city of Antalya, in Turkey, for a two-day summit. The hotels housing the attendees were separated from the rest of the neighborhood by thousands of barricades. Only accredited visitors were given access to the area. The governor of Antalya, Muammer Türker, proudly announced they’d installed more than 350 new security cameras, and had also inaugurated license plate and facial recognition systems to prevent unauthorized access. The Coast Guard was deployed off the coast of Antalya to interdict threats from sea. Officials were considering establishing a no-fly zone over the area. Some 12,000 police and soldiers were deployed, and the Turkish military promised ’round-the-clock air defences. Presidential spokesperson İbrahim Kalın, who is coordinating the summit, affirmed that security was at its highest level:
“As some 35 or 36 delegations, including the world’s 20 most prominent countries, as well as heads of state, will be at the summit, we don’t see any security weakness.”
Moreover, according to Today’s Zaman,
Within the scope of the efforts to heighten security in the province, police have stepped up operations against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in a number of provinces across Turkey. Local police detained more than 60 people suspected of having links to the militant group throughout the past week.
Two indoor sports stadiums in Antalya have been turned into temporary police stations [Editor’s note: please pause to visualize that] and one of the international arrivals terminals within the Antalya Airport has been allocated for G-20 participants. The Belek resort has been declared a “high-security Red Zone area” until the end of the summit.
In addition to the police force, both the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) and the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) are on alert. The participants will also be protected by Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C) and Turkish jetfighters.
Counterterrorism units carried out simultaneous raids in three districts of Antalya province early on Friday, finding what they described as ISIL materials, with two of those detained Russian and two of them women. Twenty ISIL suspects were detained. On the same day, police also detained 41 people at İstanbul Atatürk Airport on suspicion that they were going to join ISIL after a tip-off from a fellow passenger on their flight from Morocco. Twenty of them were deported and 21 are still being held.
In light of this, I choose to see the following video as utterly charming. But I warn you that you can see it another way, and if you do, you’ll just give in to total despair. We are helpless. They can get through anything. So don’t think about that. Just get on with your lives. If they get through, they get through; if you’re lucky, they’ll be sweet little furry Turkish terrorists, and your life, like mine, will be full of terrorist-cat love — even if the last time you wear an item of clothing without a trace of cat fur or cat barf will have been in your early 30s, and even if you wake up every morning at 5:00 am with seven fat balls of Turkish terrro-cat love sticking fourteen fat fore-paws in your face insistently because to hell with your other worries, Claire, breakfast is soooo late.
As for the summit itself, I’m not there, but it sounds as if what happened on the sidelines will determine all of our futures.
Hope it went well.
Photo credit: U.S. President Barack Obama speaks with Russian President Vladimir Putin prior to the opening session of the G-20 summit in Antalya, Turkey on Sunday. RIA-Novosti / Kremlin Pool via AP
Published in General, Islamist Terrorism, Military
As for those cats, there’s two possibilities: (1) Quality control for the canine bomb sniffers (everyone knows cats are smarter than dogs); (2) They were taking a break from monitoring cyber threats in a secure facility just beneath the main stage (because, as everyone knows, cats are smarter than dogs).
HVTs:,
Whoa!
Regards,
Jim
Did I neglect to mention that cats are also better at Mixed Martial Arts than dogs? Shame on me!
I think y’all have missed the true significance of the cats.
It means that someone has just made a change to the Matrix. Expect Agent Smith to arrive at the summit any moment now.
The timbre of Obama’s speaking is all off…all his speeches seem like really bad script reads…the weird hesitations that resolve in thuds of cliche…the false build ups to nowhere. As I wrote elsewhere…you half expect him to say, “ISIL…acted…stupidly…” he seems really irritated with ISIS not because of their murderous tendencies but because they force him into these bizarre speech patterns wherein he cannot mention “Muslim” and “terror” in the same talk…
What is Susan Rice doing still employed by the US people? She is a serial liar, going on all those talk shows yakking up the White House lie that the Benghazi massacre was the fault of an awful terrible video…these are some very strange people at the top…
This post missed the important question: who got the most selfies. Luckily the CBC is on top of things.
http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/world/g20-turkey-trudeau-1.3319803
The cats behaved better on stage than the President.
And the cats are much cuter than the president. I simply cannot stand that man’s voice or face.
Don’t underestimate the cats that snuck in……dogs…pay attention:
Apparently, that’s really a (stuck) pig in a dog suit . . . it better hope so, at any rate, ‘cuz after getting owned that badly it’s gonna have to hand over its Canine Card to proper authorities (i.e., the nearest Cat Patrol Officer).