Friday, June 26, 2020

This Week's Terrorist Attacks and Stories - 20:24 > Germany, Israel, Scotland

The Night of Shame in Stuttgart
Rioters shout "Allahu Akbar"
Source: BILD

Stuttgart - A trail of devastation runs through downtown Stuttgart. 500 rioters have turned the city into a battlefield - out of sheer lust for violence!

THE NIGHT OF SHAME!

► Saturday, 11.30 p.m. The meadows on Eckernsee near the city center are full of people celebrating when a police patrol controls "a 17-year-old German with a white skin," said police vice president Thomas Berger (48): It's about drugs.

300 young people immediately gather and throw bottles and paving stones at the police. While the officials call for reinforcements, the mob moves in small groups towards the city center.


Sunday, midnight. The violence explodes. "Windows were demolished, the pavement torn open, the stones thrown at police officers," said local resident Matthias Grohe. "It was a war-like situation."


Rioters, masked with balaclavas and scarves, break shop windows, carry away what they can carry. Alarm systems howl, glass splinters.


"People were looking for shelter with us," says Alexander Günther (22), who waits in the café "le theater". "They were scared."

"The waiters quickly cleared everything," says Daniel Schmidt (43) from the "Terrazza" bistro. The landlord barricades himself, turns off the lights: "Our tables and chairs were thrown around and ended up in police cars."



Several police officers were injured during street battles in downtown Stuttgart during the night of Sunday.

Stuttgart: Brutal attack on the police - video shows kung fu kick

Video link not available

A police officer fixes a man on the floor. Suddenly a rioter comes and kicks the policeman from behind - with full force.

1.15 a.m. A man in a green vest throws in the rear window of a police car and pulls out equipment. The crowd cheers and applauds. When an officer wrestles a riot to the ground, a hooded man comes running and kicks the policeman off the suspect with full force.

It is an incredible dimension of violence. Blind rage of destruction, paired with power tests with the police and the possibility to disappear undetected in the crowd and the dark.


Who are the rioters?

"It looks like young people with a migration background were among the leaders in the riots," says Hans-Jürgen Kirstein (54), head of the GdP.

Police deputy Thomas Berger said yesterday: Of the 24 detainees, 12 are Germans, three are from a migrant background. The other half comes from. a. from Bosnia, Portugal, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan. They are “from the party scene”, which has been boasting of aggressive behavior against the police on social media for weeks.

► 4.30 a.m. Only now the 280 police officers have the situation under control.

19 officers are injured in a night that will make history as the "disgrace of Stuttgart".




Sky News Headline Skews Facts About
Car Ramming in Israel
BY GIDON BEN-ZVI  JUNE 25, 2020
Honest reporting

On Wednesday, a Palestinian Arab driver drove into soldiers at an Israeli checkpoint tower near Jerusalem. In response, Israeli Border Police on the scene opened fire and killed the driver.

Palestinian officials charged Israel with cold-blooded murder. According to them, the suspect, a nephew of senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat, was simply rushing to pick up his sister and mother ahead of a family wedding later Tuesday evening.

However, security footage released by the Border Police, showing the vehicle turning sharply and speeding up abruptly when close to the soldiers, leaves little doubt as to the nature of the incident.

This is the headline from Sky News:




From the headline, you wouldn’t have known that Israeli soldiers were the target of a terrorist attack. Instead, Sky News buries that lead. Readers are told only that the border guards opened fire on and killed a relative of a top PLO official, with no justification mentioned.

In the much less noticeable sub-headline,  lip service is paid to the Border Police’s version of events. “Police say” the suspect drove at officers.  This is followed up with the family’s take on the events. Presented this way, both versions are equally likely. Also, note that while words like ‘relative’, ‘family’, and ‘accident’ humanize the deceased, words such as ‘car ramming’, ‘attack’, and ‘terrorist’ are nowhere to be seen.

This is much more than a mere matter of semantics. People tend to scan headlines first and only read the articles that catch their eye. But if all that people know about this incident comes from this headline what conclusions will they draw?

Video is available at Times of Israel

The video evidence is irrefutable: this was a clear-cut attack.  Yet Sky News’s headline and sub-headline suggest something very different: a young man rushing to a wedding getting caught in the cross hairs of trigger-happy Israeli soldiers. And if the video footage isn’t sufficient, here’s an eyewitness account of a Border Police officer who was injured during the attack:

“I signaled to him to halt, the car started to slow down, and I moved in his direction… He saw that I took a step, he looked me in the eye, turned the steering wheel and rammed into me, and I flew to the other side of the median.”

This isn’t just a bad headline, it’s a serious lapse of journalistic standards.

Sky News readers deserve much better than this.




Glasgow Park Inn stabbing updates: Incident not being treated as terrorism as six critically injured

A stabbing in Glasgow city centre has left six people critically injured,
including a police officer. 
By Craig Williams  Gary Armstrong
Glasgow Live

Six people are critically injured in hospital following a major stabbing incident at a Glasgow city centre hotel.


Emergency services earlier raced to the Park Inn Hotel on West George Street as the council confirmed streets had been shut down in response to a 'serious police incident'.

Two teenagers are among those in hospital, all men aged 17, 18, 20, 38 and 53.

A 42-year-old police officer was also injured and is in ‘critical but stable condition’.

The suspect was shot dead by an armed officer, Police Scotland has confirmed.

Assistant Chief Constable Steve Johnson said: "Police responded to a report of an incident at the Park Inn Hotel in West George Street, Glasgow, at 12.50pm today.

"Officers were on the scene within two minutes, and armed officers shortly afterwards, and the incident was quickly contained.

"A man was shot by armed police and has died. Six other men are in hospital for treatment, including a 42-year-old police officer, who is in a critical but stable condition. The officer's family is aware.

“The other men in hospital are aged 17, 18, 20, 38 and 53. Liaison officers have been appointed.

"Our thoughts are with the families of those who were injured, including our officer.

"The incident is not being treated as a terrorism and our investigation is continuing into the circumstances. There is no wider risk to the public, however the street remains closed and people should avoid the area.

"As would be the case in any police discharge of firearms involving a fatality, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service has instructed the Police Investigations and Review Commissioner to investigate."

Unfortunately, police seem to have chosen to not disclose the perpetrator's name. The Park Inn was being used to house migrants. Police have not released whether the perpetrator was a migrant, or how many of his victims might have been migrants. If this is not a terrorist incident, it is curious as to why the police are not being very candid with information.




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