It was in August of last year when I first wrote in the Morning Star about Jose Couso, the Telecinco news cameraman who was killed on April 8 2003 after being hit and fatally wounded by a shell from a US Mark 1 Abrams tank fired at the Hotel Palestine in Baghdad: here.
The European Court of Human Rights rejected an appeal on Monday against its ruling that the British government breached the rights of two men it handed over to the Iraqi authorities knowing they faced possible execution: here.
Iraqi officials have reported growing fears that the military could stage a coup in response to the seven-month-long deadlock in forming a new government in Baghdad: here.
Iraq, Afghanistan among 22 Food-Insecure Countries: here.
Working class film legends offer new Iraq thriller: here.
Can it be that American military bases abroad, usually thought of as “stabilizers” in tough neighborhoods, are really the primary cause of radical terrorism against the US and its allies? Here.
During a bat-watching excursion in Haarzuilens, the parti-coloured bat Vespertilio murinus has been observed. This relatively large bat is one of the rarest species in the Netherlands.
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As many as nine species
In Haarzuilens, in total nine different species of bats have been observed. Some of these species have colonies in the village, in Castle de Haar, in the castle park and the golf course. This makes Haarzuilens one of the richest bat areas in the Netherlands.
Excursions
Natuurmonumenten organizes each year several bat excursions in Haarzuilens. Accompanied by bat experts, these evening walks are in and around the village Haarzuilens. Using so-called ultrasonic bat detectors, the sounds of bats is converted into tones, audible for humans. Each bat has its own pitch and rhythm, by which the species can be recognized.
The parti-coloured bat is a rare appearance in the Netherlands. In 1977 this species was discovered for the first time. In later years, the species was observed sporadically in autumn and winter, especially near the coast. It was thought that these were vagrants. That view became untenable in 1998 when in the district Maarssenbroek in Utrecht a parti-coloured bat maternity colony was found.
England: September 2010. The first survey into the night-time wildlife at the Forestry Commission’s Weston & Waverly Woods has revealed that the forest is a popular hang-out for bats: here.
The use of different resources by males and females exacerbates the estimation of population sizes. However, the monitoring of population sizes, particularly for rare and threatened species, is pivotal to quick and effective conservation action. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Radolfzell investigated the ecological niches of male and female parti-colored bats (Vespertilio murinus) and found out that the sexes use entirely different foraging grounds. With their results they can show that a finer grained view of what different demographic subsets of species do is essential for correct estimation of population trends with important implications on action plans for conservation: here.
Members of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra have gone on strike against demands by management that include a 33 percent cut in base pay. The World Socialist Web Site spoke to several musicians participating in a picket on October 4.
Striking members of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra will be joined by members of the Cleveland Symphony in a show of solidarity at an October 24 support concert. The walkout by DSO musicians against massive concession demands is entering its third week. Meanwhile, orchestra management says it is canceling all scheduled concerts through November 7 as well as a recording project: here.
The US State Department issued a terror alert Sunday for American citizens traveling anywhere in the continent of Europe, an unprecedented action that seems calculated to spread alarm without actually helping anyone avoid becoming the target of a terrorist attack. The Pentagon imposed a weekend curfew on troops at the US Air Force Base at Ramstein, Germany, ordering soldiers not to wear their uniforms off base “in response to a threat condition.”
Britain, Japan, Sweden and Canada all followed suit, issuing alerts to their own citizens who might be traveling to Europe. In each case, they cited the US alert as evidence that there was an increased danger of a terrorist attack at European transit hubs and tourist attractions.
The actual statement from the US government speaks only of “the potential for terrorist attacks,” without any specifics. “Current information suggests that Al Qaeda and affiliated organizations continue to plan terrorist attacks,” the State Department said.
Since this has likely been true of every day since Osama bin Laden issued his “declaration of war” against the United States in 1996, it is not clear that the alert has any objective basis or represents a new threat.
US citizens traveling in Europe “should take every precaution to be aware of their surroundings and to adopt appropriate safety measures to protect themselves when traveling,” the State Department said, although spokesmen, when pressed for more direction, conceded that there was nothing travelers should do except run in the other direction in the event of an explosion or outbreak of gunfire.
The US media, particularly the television news, has been full of ominous warnings of “Mumbai-style” attacks involving groups of gunmen engaging in suicide attacks on train stations, airports and tourist attractions like the Eiffel Tower. The reference is to the attacks in the Indian financial hub two years ago, during which 10 gunmen killed 166 people and wounded more than 300, using small arms and grenades at hotels and the main railway station.
The right-wing Fox News led the way with a lurid account of targets that included the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame Cathedral, the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and that city’s main railway station and television tower.
One unnamed US official who confirmed the reports of impending terrorist attacks to the French news agency AFP called the threat “credible but not specific.” He continued, “It’s unclear, for instance, precisely where something might occur. For that reason, people shouldn’t limit their thinking to the United Kingdom, France, or Germany.”
After the US warning, British officials raised their terror alert level to “high” for British citizens visiting France and Germany. Sweden’s foreign ministry issued a similar alert Monday, calling for Swedish travelers to exercise caution “in public places, in and around public buildings, at tourist attractions, on public transport and in other places with large crowds.” Last week the Swedish Security Service issued a heightened alert of an attack within Sweden, citing an unspecific “shift in activities” by Islamic groups in Sweden.
Japan’s alert, issued Monday by its Foreign Ministry, was similarly vague. A Japanese official told the British newspaper the Guardian “the highly unusual warning was not prompted by any specific intelligence but by the previous British and American alerts.”
The Canadian government issued a statement cautioning Canadians traveling to Europe to be vigilant, also citing the British and US warnings.
The French Foreign Ministry said the US-initiated alert was “in line with the general recommendations we ourselves make to the French population.” The government of President Nicolas Sarkozy, in deep political crisis over its attacks on the democratic rights of Roma and Muslim immigrants, as well as unpopular efforts to raise the retirement age, has embraced the anti-terror scare as a diversion.
There has been a sustained effort to whip up public fears of terrorism over the kidnapping of five French citizens in the Sahara, one of whom was reportedly executed by Al Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb. Bernard Squarcini, a top intelligence official, told reporters three weeks ago that threat of an attack in France “has never been greater.” Twice over the past month the government has closed the Eiffel Tower, the number one tourist destination, because of alleged terrorist threats.
Elsewhere on the European continent, however, there seems to be a more skeptical attitude to the US-inspired terror scare. The German Interior Ministry, which controls the police, said Germany has “still no concrete indications of imminent attacks,” concluding, “The government does not currently see any reason to modify its evaluation of concrete risks.”
The German magazine Der Spiegel published a lengthy account of the source of the terror scare, claiming that it is a single German citizen of Pashtun descent, Ahmad Sidiqi, who was detained by US forces in Afghanistan in July and is currently in US custody. He is being interrogated by “special units of the CIA and the American military,” the magazine said. In other words, he is being tortured at a CIA “black site,” the prison on the grounds of the huge US air base at Bagram.
Who, in fact, wages terrorist attacks in Europe? Mostly Muslims? or mostly non-Muslims?
Europol Report: All Terrorists are Muslims…Except the 99.6% that Aren’t
Posted on 28 January 2010 by Danios
Europol releases an annual study of terrorism; the results do not support claims that “(nearly) all Muslims are terrorists”
Islamophobes have been popularizing the claim that “not all Muslims are terrorists, but (nearly) all terrorists are Muslims.” Despite this idea becoming axiomatic in some circles, it is quite simply not factual. In my previous article entitled “All Terrorists are Muslims…Except the 94% that Aren’t”, I used official FBI records to show that only 6% of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil from 1980 to 2005 were carried out by Islamic extremists. …).
But what about across the pond? The data gathered by Europol strengthens my argument even further. (hat tip: Koppe) Europol publishes an annual report entitled EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report. On their official website, you can access the reports from 2007, 2008, and 2009. (If anyone can find the reports from earlier than that, please let me know so we can include those as well.)
The results are stark, and prove decisively that not all terrorists are Muslims. In fact, a whopping 99.6% of terrorist attacks in Europe were by non-Muslim groups; a good 84.8% of attacks were from separatist groups completely unrelated to Islam. Leftist groups accounted for over sixteen times as much terrorism as radical Islamic groups. Only a measly 0.4% of terrorist attacks from 2007 to 2009 could be attributed to extremist Muslims.
Here are the official tables provided in the reports…
(According to the report, there was 1 “Islamist attack” in the UK in 2008, which was omitted in the table above. It has been included in the bar graph below.)
Just glancing at those tables is enough to know how absurd it is to claim that “all terrorists are Muslims.” That statement is nowhere near the truth. If we compile the data, it comes out to this:
On p.7, the 2009 Europol report concludes:
“Islamist terrorism is still perceived as being the biggest threat worldwide, despite the fact that the EU only faced one Islamist terrorist attack in 2008. This bomb attack took place in the UK…Separatist terrorism remains the terrorism area which affects the EU most. This includes Basque separatist terrorism in Spain and France, and Corsican terrorism in France.”
Perception is not reality. Due to the right wing’s influence and propaganda, people mistakenly think that Islamic terrorism is the greatest threat to the Western world. It is even a commonly held belief that Islamic terrorism poses an existential threat–that the very survival of the Western world is at stake. Of course, the reality is that there are other groups that engage in terrorism on a much larger scale, yet these terrorist incidents are minimized. Acts of terrorism committed by Muslims are purposefully sensationalized and focused upon, culminating in the idea that “(nearly) all terrorists are Muslims.”
Terrorism from Islamic extremists is certainly a cause for concern, but it need not be an issue that creates mass hysteria. Nor should it be allowed to be such a critical issue that we are willing to sacrifice our ideals or civil rights for fear of it. Neither should we be reduced to a status of absolute sissitude. We have analyzed data from America and Europe (a good portion of the entire Western world), and the threat from Islamic terrorism is much more minimal than commonly assumed; in the U.S., it accounts for 6% of terrorist attacks, and in Europe not even half of a percent.
It is only through sensationalism and fear mongering that the topic of Islamic terrorism is allowed to be used to demonize a religious community that happens to be a minority in the West. When confronted by such lunacy, we ought to respond with the facts and the truth.
In a future article, we shall analyze the data for terrorism on the world stage in order to further strengthen our argument.
Considering that about 5% of people in Europe are estimated to be Muslim, 0,4% of terrorists is remarkably low.
German government criticizes US government about terror scare: here.
Leading European politicians have gone on record this week denying US claims of an imminent terror danger in Europe: here.
Europe, Pakistan claim terror threat more about US election: here.
The extradition of a terror suspect to the US would violate his rights and amount to “a breach of process,” a London court heard on Tuesday: here.
Wild speculation linking University College London (UCL) to an alleged bomb plot by a former student was put to rest today by a report which cleared it of any blame: here.
Australian terrorism trial produces evidence of police entrapment: here.
A federal judge in Manhattan barred testimony from the government’s star witness in the trial of accused African embassy bomber Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani because the evidence was derived through torture: here.
If someone mentioned terrorism in Europe, you would probably have an idea about the size of the threat and who’s responsible. It’s big, you would think. And growing. As for who’s responsible, that’s obvious. It’s Muslims. Or if you’re a little more careful with your language, it’s radical Muslims, or “Islamists”: here.
