Friday, April 27, 2007

EUROPOL confirms: There Is NO Islamist Terror In Europe

Mathias Bröckers on "The Invented Terrorist Threat"(translation to follow):

24. April 2007

Die erfundene Terrorgefahr.

Am 10. April veröffentlichte Europol, der Zusammenschluß der europäischen Polizeibehörden, einen Bericht über die Gefahren des Terrorismus: “EU Terrorism and Trendreport 2007” . In den Großmedien hierzulande wurde die umfangreiche Studie nicht zum Thema, ja sie wurde nicht einmal erwähnt. Eine Meldung aus den USA hingegen, dass us-amerikanische Einrichtungen in Deutschland einer stärkeren Bedrohung ausgesetzt seien, landete vergangene Woche in sämtlichen Wiederholungsschleifen der Nachrichten. Wie kommt es, dass eine Meldung mit der zweifelhaften Quelle “US-Militärkreise” groß die Runde macht, eine umfangreiche Studie der EU-Polizei aber keinerlei Erwähnung findet ?

Die Europol-Studie hat sämtliche Terroranschläge, die 2006 in 11 EU-Ländern stattfanden, analysiert– von den 498 Anschlägen, die von den Euro-Polizisten untersucht wurden, hatte nach diesen Erkenntnis nur ein einziger einen “islamistischen” Hintergrund, es handelte sich um die verhinderten “Kofferbomber” im letzten Sommer in Deutschland. Zwei weitere angeblich geplante Anschläge in England und Dänemark, die im Vorfeld entdeckt wurden, wurden nicht in die Statistik aufgenommen. Die meisten Anschläge – 136 – werden der baskischen ETA zugeschrieben, insgesamt kamen bei allen 498 terroristischen Attacken in der EU im Jahr 2006 sage und schreibe zwei Menschen ums Leben.

Angesichts dieser Lage von einer “islamistischen Bedrohung” und “Gefahren des Terrorismus” zu reden, ist reine Demagogie. Kein Wunder also, dass diese Terror-Statistik keine Erwähnung fand – die “Terrorischten”, vor denen Wolfgang “Stasi 2.0” Schäuble uns schützen will, existieren einfach nicht, die Bedrohung durch Terrorismus ist für EU-Bürger deutlich niedriger als die Gefahr, vom Blitz getroffen zu werden.


-- As far as I can see, this has been entirely unreported in the British and US media.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Barcelona v Getafe last night (LEO MESSI)




Previous video was removed due to a copyright violation.

No problema!! Aljazeera Sport won't mind I'm sure. Better commentary anyway..

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Monday, April 09, 2007

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Journalism is corruption

Glenn Greenwald:

Even six months after this country invaded Iraq, 70% of Americans continued to believe that Saddam helped personally plan the 9/11 attacks. That heinous fact, by itself, should have provoked a major crisis in political journalism -- a desperate effort to find out what went so fundamentally wrong. Yet it did nothing of the sort. Most of the energies of national journalists are devoted instead to defending how they operate and, most of all, condescendingly disparaging their critics as shrill partisans who don't understand the real role of journalists. I honestly find it unfathomable that any national journalist(s)... can defend their profession, and deny that there are deep-seated and fundamental flaws in it, when this country started a war with the overwhelming majority of citizens -- 70% -- believing an absolute, complete myth, a known falsehood, one which, more than anything else, caused them to support that war. Leaving aside every other issue of gullible, government-propaganda-based reporting, that fact standing alone is a towering indictment of our country's press corps, and the fact that they continue to believe that the way they operate is proper, that they are sufficiently adversarial to the political powers that be, and that it is their critics who are "ideological" and therefore easily dismissed -- all reveals that they have not changed at all.They may not know it, but the disaster of the Iraq War and the absolute myths which they allowed to take root -- and which they never investigated, exposed or attacked -- is an inescapable indictment of what they do. That is the foundation on which media criticism rests, and there is nothing "partisan" about it. It is the opposite of "partisan." It is instead a demand that the media fulfill their core responsibility -- to serve as an adversarial check on government -- a responsibility which they have profoundly abdicated.
[via]

Well said, but it's not nearly enough. How should we describe the journalists who allow half the US population to go on believing that their government has proven Osama bin Laden's responsibility for the very same crime?

Everything's coming up roses


And one of the things that I think is most important for progressives to challenge is the discourse that everything in Iraq is a disaster. I think we need to start asking and insisting, disaster for who, because not everybody is losing. It’s certainly a disaster for the Iraqi people. It's certainly a disaster for US taxpayers. But what we have seen -- and it’s extremely clear if we track the numbers -- is that the worse things get in Iraq, the more privatized this war becomes, the more profitable this war becomes for companies like Lockheed Martin, Bechtel, and certainly Blackwater.

(Same applies to everywhere else, of course.)