Be afraid of the hype

The next time you hear something about the apocalyptic threat from Islamic terror, remember this:

Almost all the terrorist attacks in the European Union in 2006 were unrelated to Islamist terror, a new report reveals — but the potential impact of an attack aimed at mass casualties made Islamist terrorism a top priority for European investigators nonetheless.

According to a report released Tuesday by Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement organization, 498 attacks were carried out in the EU in 2006. Of them, only one — the failed suitcase bomb attacks in Germany — was perpetrated by Islamist terrorists.

The vast majority of terrorist attacks were carried out by separatist terror groups targeting France and Spain. Almost all attacks “resulted only in material damage and were not intended to kill,” the report’s authors write.

The threat is real, of course, but some governments, like Gordon Brown’s Britain, prefer to rush through hasty and extreme anti-terror legislation to be “tough on terror.”

Failure is the likely outcome (like in Australia today, and the collapse of yet another terrorism case.)

Text and images ©2024 Antony Loewenstein. All rights reserved.

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