War on Terror – Page 28

“These Are Not The Terrorists You’re Looking For..”

Published on April 28, 20072 Comments

Europol, the EU’s transnational police force, has released its first report tracking terrorism incidents and arrests within the EU and it makes very interesting reading (.pdf), especially when you compare the published figures against the perception of a Europe-wide Islamist terrorist conspiracy that’s projected by governmental spin and media presentation.

For instance, did you know that of 498 terrorist incidents reported by EU states in 2006, only 3 were Islamist-terrorism related?

Along with the failed terrorist attack that took place in Germany, Denmark and the UK each reported one attempted terrorist attack in 2006

The collected Europol data for October-December 2005 and for 2006 give a total of 549 attacks, 128 terrorist activities, 810 arrested suspects and 303 trials in the EU. From the executive summary of the report:

.In 2006, separatist terrorists carried out 424 attacks in the EU.

[…]

In 2006, left-wing and anarchist terrorists carried out 55 attacks in the EU.

[…]

Along with the failed terrorist attack that took place in Germany, Denmark and the UK each reported one attempted terrorist attack in 2006

[…]

A total of 706 individuals suspected of terrorism offences were arrested in 15 Member States in 2006. Investigations into Islamist terrorism are clearly a priority for Member States’ law enforcement as demonstrated by the number of arrested suspects reported by Member States. Half of all the terrorism arrests were related to Islamist terrorism.

Is it just me or is there an assymetry between the number of arrests and the actual incidence of Islamist terrorism? I could make any number of cheap political points about these figures but why bother, when several jump out right away by themselves, with very little coaxing?

But there are problems with the figures. This report, like any consensus report produced by the EU, is a creation of political manipulation and spin by member nations, despite the best attempts of the compilers. In the end the member countries validated their own data and picked and chose what they would release, despite having signed up to an agreed monitoring protocol.

For example, while all had lots to say on Islamist terrorism and an extensive reporting and monitoring process is in place, despite such terrorism’s admittedly low occurrence, right wing and neonazi activities are barely mentioned. That’s because some member states reported neonazi activity as terrorist and some didn’t:

Right-Wing Terrorism:

right-wing violence is mainly investigated as right-wing extremism and not as right-wing terrorism. Although violent acts perpetrated by right-wing extremists and terrorists may appear sporadic and situational, right-wing extremist activities are organised and transnational. For instance, details regarding possible targets are collected and disseminated on the Internet.

Exactly. People I know have been targeted in this way so I’m much less worried about some mythical threat from Al-Qaeda as embodied by some anonymous woman in a burqa than I am of home grown rightwing nutters in Lonsdale t-shirts and docs.

But neo-nazism and Islamism are political ideologies cut from the same authoritarian, repressive and separatist cloth, so why is the one reported and investigated but not the other? Why so many more arrests on suspicion of Moslems, and so little reporting on credible neonazi terrorist plots?

Might it have something to do with the number of quiet supporters, passive collaborationists and outright denialists – who’d rather see a threat from brown-skinned ‘others’ than from their compatriots – within the institutions of the member states and in the .eu-wide media?

So many in Europe, while condemning neo-nazism out of one side of their mouths, with the other will support the soft apologists and enablers of this kind of hatred, people like Geert Wilders or the late Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands or the right-wing theocrat Kuzcinski brothers in Poland.

Here’s one example of that passive collaborationism in the media, from Dutch writer Margriet De Moor:

Neo-Nazi movements to be taken seriously, like the ones in Germany, are practically non-existent in the Netherlands.

Non existent? No supporters? Oh, really?

Police raids led to arrest of neo-Nazis and arms finds

Serving soldiers amongst suspects
Geert Cool, LSP/MAS (CWI Belgium)

Last Thursday, after a raid by the Belgian police, 17 activists from the Neo-Nazi movement, ‘Blood & Honour’, were arrested. Amongst those held were 10 Belgian army professional soldiers. The next day, two more neo-Nazis were arrested. The main suspects organised a fascist grouping inside the army, whose activities included weekend “terrorist” training camps and trading arms.

Those arrested are part of a section of Blood & Honour that go under the name, ‘Bloed Bodem Eer Trouw’ (BBET; Blood, Soil, Honour, Fidelity). There are two different groupings using the name Blood & Honour in Flanders, both linked to rival international groupings. The Blood & Honour group that was targeted by the police regularly use the name of its paper, ‘BBET’, as its public face.

Last Thursday, when police made the raids, they found over 100 high-tech weapons, including sophisticated weapons of war. On Friday, two more raids followed, in which another 100 pistols and machine guns were recovered. The police also discovered a large quantity of munitions, explosives and a sophisticated bomb. There was even a model letter claiming responsibility for terrorist attacks.

Although the Belgian police say the group did not have detailed plans to use the weaponry, one of those arrested declared publicly that the group did have the intention to strike against the state, migrants and radical left organisations. In an interview on television, this suspect said members of the security services, soldiers in the army and politicians would be involved in the planning and execution of these plans.

No right wing terrorism? Conspiracies like the above and the Lancashire right-wing bomb plot I referred to earlier are just the visble tip of potentially viciously violent and Europe-wide rightwing terrorist movement.

I’m certainly not suggesting there is no threat from Islamist terrorism in Europe; that would be patently absurd, given what happened in London and Madrid.

What I am saying is that, as so many times before, the facts are being fixed around the policy. While our leaders ramp up the paranoia and suspicion of the Moslems in our midst and present the available data to make it appear our biggest threat is from ‘outsiders’ (thus validating the ‘war on terror’ propaganda and rhetoric we’ve been subjected to since 2001) quietly the wannabe stormtroopers on the inside are regrouping.

Ve Haff Ways Of Hearing You Talk

Published on April 20, 2007

The shadow of fascism is creeping up on us again in Europe.

Blah3:

The further US-ification of Germany… …appears to be firmly in place.

From German News:

Telephone surveillance expanded

In Germany, all telephone and internet connection data will be stored for half a year in the future. The federal Cabinet approved a resolution to that effect today. The information to be filed will be who called whom when. In the case of cellular-phone calls, the location at which the call was made will also be kept. The contents of telephone conversations will not be saved. The bill also introduces other changes to the regulations governing telephone surveillance. It is a subject of controversy because the data will be filed regardless of any concrete suspicion of a crime. Privacy advocates have already announced that they will challenge the changes on constitutional grounds. The bill represents the implementation by the federal government of a directive from the EU.

There is also this:

Schaeuble opposed to presumption of innocence

Federal Internal Affairs Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble wants to abolish the presumption of innocence when it comes to preventing terrorism. “The principle cannot apply for self-defence against threats”, he told the magazine ‘Stern’. Schaeuble also defended plans to allow police automatic access to digital records of passport photos. Karl-Dieter Moeller, a legal expert for ARD television criticized Schaeuble’s comments. He told the news website ‘tagesschau.de’ that “that would call a fundamental principle of the rule of law into question”.

Martin had a letter from some government quango yesterday inviting him to register the details of all our phone accounts.

To which my own response is “make me”.

This is all part of a quiet sea change in controls on the freedom to of Europeans to communicate with one another. The NYT, February 17:

PARIS, Feb. 19 — European governments are preparing legislation to require companies to keep detailed data about people’s Internet and phone use that goes beyond what the countries will be required to do under a European Union directive.

In Germany, a proposal from the Ministry of Justice would essentially prohibit using false information to create an e-mail account, making the standard Internet practice of creating accounts with pseudonyms illegal.

A draft law in the Netherlands would likewise go further than the European Union requires, in this case by requiring phone companies to save records of a caller’s precise location during an entire mobile phone conversation.

Even now, Internet service providers in Europe divulge customer information — which they normally keep on hand for about three months, for billing purposes — to police officials with legally valid orders on a routine basis, said Peter Fleischer, the Paris-based European privacy counsel for Google. The data concerns how the communication was sent and by whom but not its content.

But law enforcement officials argued after the terrorist bombings in Spain and Britain that they needed better and longer data storage from companies handling Europe’s communications networks.

European Union countries have until 2009 to put the Data Retention Directive into law, so the proposals seen now are early interpretations. But some people involved in the issue are concerned about a shift in policy in Europe, which has long been a defender of individuals’ privacy rights.

Under the proposals in Germany, consumers theoretically could not create fictitious e-mail accounts, to disguise themselves in online auctions, for example. Nor could they use a made-up account to use for receiving commercial junk mail. While e-mail aliases would not be banned, they would have to be traceable to the actual account holder.

“This is an incredibly bad thing in terms of privacy, since people have grown up with the idea that you ought to be able to have an anonymous e-mail account,” Mr. Fleischer said. “Moreover, it’s totally unenforceable and would never work.”

Mr. Fleischer said the law would have to require some kind of identity verification, “like you may have to register for an e-mail address with your national ID card.”

Jörg Hladjk, a privacy lawyer at Hunton & Williams, a Brussels law firm, said that might also mean that it could become illegal to pay cash for prepaid cellphone accounts. The billing information for regular cellphone subscriptions is already verified.

[…]

In the Netherlands, the proposed extension of the law on phone company records to all mobile location data “implies surveillance of the movement of large amounts of innocent citizens,” the Dutch Data Protection Agency has said.

More…

It’s all very well us Eurobloggers sitting here taking potshots at Bushco – and heaven know there’s cause enough – but meanwhile, quietly our own governments are drawing the net tighter on the expression of dissenting views and as individuals we’re doing bugger-all to fight it.

10 years down the line when your children ask you “What did you do in the information war, Mummy/Daddy?” what will you be able to say?

“Nothing really, but I moaned a lot?”

Meanwhile, In Other Education News

Published on April 17, 2007

The Register:

US teen jailed for school’s daylight-saving cock-up
12 days’ chokey for bomb threat log error

By Lester Haines Published Monday 16th April 2007 15:38 GMT

A Pennsylvania student was held in jail for 12 days after a bomb threat recorded by a school hot line service was wrongly attributed to him, Fox News reports.

Fifteen-year-old Cody Webb, of Greensburg, “called a school district hot line to listen to a recorded message about school delays at 3:12am EDT on 11 March”, his mobile phone records later revealed. The next morning, school officials discovered said bomb threat logged at 3:17am.

The powers that be therefore concluded that “Webb had made the threat because they also found a record of his phone call”, the lad’s attorney Tim Andrews explained. The school’s principal confirmed his guilt by asking Webb for his cell phone number later that morning and then quickly declared: “We got him. We got him.”

Webb refused to confess, was arrested “on a felony charge of threatening to use a weapon of mass destruction and related misdemeanor counts” and thrown into Westmoreland County Juvenile Detention Centre for 12 days until the truth was revealed.

In fact, because the school had not reset the clock on the hot line, which continued to show Eastern Standard Time, officials and police failed to spot that the bomb threat had actually come in at 4:17am – more than an hour after Webb’s innocent call.

Andrews explained: “The district attorney subpoenaed the cell phone records, and it didn’t take more than a minute to see the times didn’t match.”

Webb was finally released “when a state trooper failed to show up at another hearing”. The charges were dropped on 27 March.

Andrews, unsuprisingly, added that “the boy’s family is considering a law suit against the school district or police for false arrest”. Webb said of his ordeal: “I wasn’t going to admit to something I didn’t do. Me and God know I didn’t do it.” ®

Palpatine’s Progress

Published on April 15, 20074 Comments

A while back there was a lot of fuss in Australia about Dick Cheney’s entourage of imperial stormtroopers and the military clampdown that they imposed on Sydney citizen’ during his visit:

For three days and nights before Cheney arrived, army Black Hawk helicopters buzzed the Sydney CBD, ostensibly for counter-terrorism training. Several residents contacted newspapers to complain of unbearable noise. One reader told the Sydney Morning Herald: “We are … being buzzed by huge noisy helicopters flying probably only about 20 storeys up. [Five] times in an hour—we can’t hear TV, we can’t talk on the phone.”

Last night, the airspace over Sydney was closed for US Air Force Two to land, and sections of the airport were virtually “locked down”. No members of the public were permitted to enter the vicinity. Dozens of police, security officers and snipers were on the tarmac, as well as inside and outside the airport. A grey Air Force plane arrived first, carrying Cheney’s cavalcade of bulletproof black limousines and an armoured van, while at least three state police helicopters hovered above.

Cheney even pressured the .au government into changing the law so his henchmen could carry guns openly in public, which is bad enough – but a story from Sifu Tweety at The Poor Man makes it horribly clear just how obscene the VP’s arrogance is getting. Apparently Cheney is so completely paranoid that he travels in a plane inside another plane.

Airstream’s appeal seems to have few limits, and indeed a powerful world traveler recently provided proof of its persistent appeal. On a trip to Asia in February, Vice President Dick Cheney traveled in an Airstream — inside an airplane.

Mark Silva, chief of the Washington bureau of The Chicago Tribune, accompanied the vice president as the press corps’ pool print reporter. The group flew on a huge gray C-17 cargo plane that the Air Force calls the Spirit of Strom Thurmond,in honor of the late senator.

!?! Strom Thurmond?. That says so damned much…

Mr. Silva said that when he boarded he noted the familiar outline of the Airstream roof inside the vast fuselage.

What? That’s how he travels? Seriously, is Cheney trying to make himself into a cartoon supervillian? He’s like a white trash Dr. No; would it be surprising at this point if his team of doctors turned out to be sexy martial artists or dwarfs?

Pelosi gets shit for following the common sense recommendations of security professionals, and meanwhile Cheney’s rocking the turducken of air travel. When does this crappy-ass Bruckheimer movie of imperial sunset end, again? Because it’s really stupid.

By the way, I’m sure he uses the C-17 for security purposes. But seriously, the fact that he needs to travel with a small army anywhere he goes in the world doesn’t make it any easier not to see him as, well, what he is.

“The turducken of aviation”. Heh. There’s only one thing missing to make that comparison absolutely perfect.

US To Give Telcos Retrospective Immunity From Spying Lawsuits, Expand Spying

Published on April 12, 2007

(Cartoon from Bunnyherolabs)

From Wired (h/t Norwegianity)

Spy Chief Seeks to Expand Power

The new director of national intelligence is seeking to expand the government’s ability to conduct black bag searches, allow the National Security Agency to spy on foreigners inside the United States without a warrant, kill off lawsuits against telecoms for helping the government spy on American’s phone calls, and make it easier for the government to get phone and email records, even as the FBI remains mired in a scandal over its illegal and widespread use of a Patriot Act power, according to the Associated Press.

The draft bill being circulated by spy chief Mitch McConnell would, according to the AP:

Give the NSA the power to monitor foreigners without seeking FISA court approval, even if the surveillance is conducted by tapping phones and e-mail accounts in the United States.[…]

Clarify the standards the FBI and NSA must use to get court orders for basic information about calls and e-mails — such as the number dialed, e-mail address, or time and date of the communications. Civil liberties advocates contend the change will make it too easy for the government to access this information.

Triple the life span of a FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] warrant for a non-U.S. citizen from 120 days to one year, allowing the government to monitor much longer without checking back in with a judge.

Give telecommunications companies immunity from civil liability for their cooperation with Bush’s terrorist surveillance program. Pending lawsuits against companies including Verizon and AT&T allege they violated privacy laws by giving phone records to the NSA for the program.

Extend from 72 hours to one week the amount of time the government can conduct surveillance without a court order in emergencies.

The bill would be yet another attempt to update FISA, a bill that seems to always be not up to the task. It was last updated in 2005. Shortly thereafter, the government’s warrantless wiretapping program and a related program in which phone companies dumped their phone call databases to the NSA were revealed, giving lie to campaign assurances from President Bush that all wiretaps had court approval.

The provision to include what can only be retroactive immunity for telcos is very interesting in that this provision has been widely rumored in many bills floating around Congress, but has never been inserted in a publicly introduced bill. It’s evidence that the telcos remain afraid that they could be found liable for billions of dollars in fines if a court finds they indeed helped the government spy on Americans without requiring valid legal process.

McConnell is going to have a tough road ahead of him, given the bill needs the blessing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which these days is talking about rolling back Patriot Act powers, not increasing them.