19-Jul-16: Tentacles in Germany: Again, a train, an axe, a religious war-cry, innocent victims and a search for motives

Sadly familiar: Disingenuous reporting from
Aljazeera where the "real" victim gets
mentioned in the headline and motive is always
a deep mystery [Source]

From Associated Press this morning:

A man armed with an ax and a knife attacked passengers aboard a regional train in southern Germany | Police kill attacker who slashed passengers on German train
Monday, July 18, 2016 | BERLIN (AP) — A man armed with an ax and a knife attacked passengers aboard a regional train in southern Germany on Monday night, injuring four people before he was shot and killed by police as he fled. Wuerzburg police said on their Facebook page that three of the victims suffered serious injuries and one was slightly injured. Another 14 people were being treated for shock. Police said there was not yet any information on the motive behind the attack, nor details on the identity of the attacker. The train was on its way from the Bavarian town of Treuchtlingen to Wuerzburg, which is about 60 miles (100 kilometers) northwest of Nuremberg.

Certainly not the first such recent attack on a European train [background]. And reminiscent of an attack in May 2016 when a man shouting "Allahu Akbar" stabbed one innocent victim to death and slashed three others at a railway station near Munich. That act of evident jihad "raised fears that Germany... was now being targeted by Islamist extremists". That's a dramatic revelation.

And did we mention the role of "Allahu Akbar" in last night's attempted murder-by-slashing? Though it does not get mentioned at all in AP's report or in the vast majority of newspapers this morning, one British source says

Police have confirmed that 18 people have been injured in the horrifying attack - which began in a train this evening. Four are understood to be seriously injured. A 17-year-old Afghan refugee believed to be behind the attack was shot dead by police as he reportedly charged at them following the incident at Würzburg-Heidingsfeld station. The boy is reported to have shouted "Allahu Akbar" before the attack... The Bavarian Interior Ministry has now confirmed the attacker shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is great) before hacking at passengers... An official has said the incident was ‘probably’ linked to Islamic extremism.

Aljazeera manages to avoid touching on any issues of religion or the theological war cries in telling what happened. It's sadly typical of a certain kind of disingenuous reporting in which they specialize there. See "Afghan refugee shot dead after train attack in Germany" and note whose victimhood is mentioned in the carefully-phrased headline.

Here's how German's state broadcaster recounts what happened:

Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Hermann confirmed in a television interview that the teenager boarded the train in Ochsenfurt, where he had been staying with a foster family after traveling unaccompanied to Germany to seek asylum. "The attacker appears to have been a 17-year-old Afghan who has been living in Ochsenfurt for some time," Herrmann said. "He suddenly attacked passengers with a knife and an axe, critically injuring several. Some of them may now be fighting for their lives." The Afghan national reportedly shouted "Allahu Akbar" before launching the attack, wielding a knife and axe. "The perpetrator was able to leave the train, police left in pursuit and as part of this pursuit, they shot the attacker and killed him," a police spokesman said. The motive of the attack was not immediately clear.

The BBC says

Although the motive has not been established, the BBC's Damien McGuinness in Berlin says there is nervousness in Germany about attacks by Islamist extremists following the attacks across the border in France.

Yes, we can fully understand the nervousness.

But among the questions we're left to ponder: don't they do careful checks of passengers on public transport in Germany to see if they happen to be carrying axes? Or knives? Perhaps they should.

And at what point, under what circumstances, does the motive of a young man with a knife and an axe and an urge to kill people by slashing them to death while invoking an only-too-familiar religious war cry become "immediately clear"? If ever?

28-Nov-14: Tentacles: Anti-terror raids in Austria today

Austrian police via Aljazeera

From TheLocal.at ("Austria's news in English") this afternoon:

Austrian police arrested 13 people and raided homes, prayer rooms and mosques around the country early Friday in a mass operation targeting suspected jihad recruiters, prosecutors said. Some 900 police were involved in the raids, which took place in Vienna, Graz and Linz. They follow a two-year investigation into several people suspected of recruiting young people to fight in Syria. Media reports said a Vienna-based Bosnian preacher, who was the main suspect, was among those arrested in the raids which began at 4:00am. Police also seized "terrorist propaganda," files and money in various homes, said prosecutors in Graz, who were coordinating the operation. Beyond recruiting fighters, the Kronen Zeitung newspaper said that the suspects were investigated for helping to finance the Islamic State group.... Austria's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counterterrorism (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz und Terrorismusbekämpfung) warned in June over the threats faced by the country, saying: "Religiously motivated extremism and terrorism – above all of Islamic character – as well as Salafi-jihadi groups continue to present a great potential threat…The number of young radicalized followers of violent Salafism continues to rise. In this context, the conflict in Syria is of urgent relevance for Austria, since systematic efforts are being made within [Austria] to radicalize and recruit people for the war in Syria…The conflict in Syria has become very popular among violent extremist Salafis... The spectrum of recruits to the conflict in Syria is broadly ethnically diverse. The motivation, however, seems to be uniformly jihadi."

In a background analysis published just a few weeks back ["Radical Islam in Austria is active and growing", TheLocal.at November 11, 2014], the same newspaper observed that Austria

has become a hub of extremism that includes not only Islamic State terrorism but also Iranian nuclear proliferation activities as well as active support for Hamas... The mushrooming recruitment by Islamic State, and the presence of a large pocket of support for Hamas, pose major challenges for Austria's struggling counterterrorism establishment. Even so, Iranian intelligence's extensive network, including agents who have previously carried out a 1989 terrorist attack with impunity in Vienna, will remain Austria's greatest terror threat for the foreseeable future. The interrelationship among the three jihadist movements -- Hamas, Iran's regime, and the Islamic State -- playing out in Austria helps to explain why critics view the relatively small Central European country as a danger zone.

A syndicated Reuters report ["Facing fears over extremism, Austria unveils new law on Islam", Reuters, October 2, 2014] noted that Austria is currently home to about half a million Muslims, about 6 percent of the total population. Growing concerns about rising Islamist radicalization and reports of Austrian Muslims joining Islamist forces in the Middle East led the Austrian government to announce a new law that will

prohibit foreign funding of Muslim organizations on its soil... prompting concern from a major local Islamic body, which saw it mirroring widespread mistrust of Muslims. "The clear message should be that there is no contradiction between being a faithful Muslim and a proud Austrian," said Foreign Affairs and Integration Minister Sebastian Kurz, a member of the conservative People's Party. "If you don't have orderly legal regulation ... this can always bring dangers (of extremism). In this sense, if you like, this is maybe a part of prevention," he told reporters. He added that Sharia, or Islamic law, had "no place here". [Reuters]

On December 27, 1985, Palestinian Arab terrorists hurled grenades and fired guns at travelers lined up at the El Al check-in counter of Vienna's international airport,  Three people were killed.

26-Aug-11: Tentacles in Nigeria

Two years ago, TIME Magazine wrote: "A huge government operation against
the group in 2004 ended with police claiming victory. (Now the terrorists) are
back, stronger and more vicious." [Source]

Major terrorism in Africa today: An explosion at the United Nations offices in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, killed at least 18 people and injured more than 60 today. A vehicle penetrated the protective barriers at the compound and crashed into the main UN building on Independence Avenue in Abuja's central business district. (Voice of America says about 400 people work inside the UN building, located near other diplomatic offices including the U.S. embassy.)

So far, no group has claimed responsibility for the blast. But SMH says the speculation is that it was the Islamic group Boko Haram. The media are fond of writing that they draw their inspiration from Afghanistan's Taliban movement. The reality is more complex: Boko Haram opposes Western education, Western culture and modern science. Ustaz Mohammed Yusuf, then the group's leader (his career ended permanently shortly afterwards), said in a 2009 BBC interview that he rejects claims that the earth is a sphere, a view that would be contrary to Islam. He opposes Darwinism and the fact that rain comes from water evaporated by the sun. Leaving serious ideology aside, the group's goal is the imposition of Shariah law in Nigeria's northern states.

Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, sits on what TIME Magazine calls a religious fault-line, the population (150 million) roughly split between a mainly Muslim north and a predominantly Christian south. For many years, the northern Muslim élite (says TIME) have dominated Nigerian politics, using their positions to enrich themselves and their families. More than 14,000 people died in ethnic and religious clashes in the ten years to 2009. Evidently that number was too small for the jihadists.

TIME says:

"Over the past few years a new breed of young Muslim activists, most of them educated and from the middle class, have aggressively embraced a stricter version of Islam, rejecting anything Western and Christian."

Sound familiar? Like jihadists everywhere, the Boko Harams seek (in the words of Jihad Watch) to create chaos and terror, and to create a vacuum of stable governance, and then move to fill the void with Sharia, the only "solution" they will accept to the problem of their own deliberate making.

In mid June, angered by the statement of a Nigerian police chief that 'the days of Boko Haram are numbered', they delivered this self-fulfilling message in a hand-written note to a news agency: "

"Very soon, we will wage jihad. We want to make it known that our jihadists have arrived in Nigeria from Somalia where they received real training on warfare from our brethren who made that country ungovernable... This time round, our attacks will be fiercer and wider than they have been [and] will target all northern states and the country's capital Abuja".

This ongoing war has many fronts. And the forces of good are not winning.