{"id":19058,"date":"2016-03-21T12:36:51","date_gmt":"2016-03-21T17:36:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=19058"},"modified":"2016-03-21T12:36:51","modified_gmt":"2016-03-21T17:36:51","slug":"how-politicians-duck-the-blame-for-terrorism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=19058","title":{"rendered":"How Politicians Duck the Blame for Terrorism"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"headline\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2016\/03\/21\/how-politicians-duck-the-blame-for-terrorism\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">How Politicians Duck the Blame for Terrorism<\/a><\/h3>\n<p class=\"post_meta\">The capture of Salah Abdeslam, thought to be the sole surviving planner of the Paris massacre, means that the media is focusing once again\u00a0on the threat of terrorist attack by Islamic State. Questions are asked about why the most wanted man in Europe was able to elude the\u00a0police for so long, even though he was living in his home district of Molenbeek in Brussels. Television and newspapers ask nervously about\u00a0the chances of Isis carrying out another atrocity aimed at dominating the news agenda and showing that it is still in business.<\/p>\n<div class=\"post_content\">\n<p>The reporting of the events in Brussels is in keeping with that after the January (<em>Charlie Hebdo<\/em>) and November Paris attacks and the\u00a0Tunisian beach killings by\u00a0Isis\u00a0last year. For several days there is blanket coverage by the media as it allocates time and space far beyond\u00a0what is needed to relate developments. But then the focus shifts abruptly elsewhere and\u00a0Isis\u00a0becomes yesterday\u2019s story, treated as if the\u00a0movement has ceased to exist or at least lost its capacity to affect our lives.<\/p>\n<p>It is not as if\u00a0Isis\u00a0has stopped killing people in large numbers since the slaughter in Paris on 13\u00a0November; it is, rather, that it is not doing so in Europe. I was in Baghdad on 28 February when two\u00a0Isissuicide bombers on motorcycles blew themselves up in an outdoor mobile phone market in Sadr\u00a0City, killing 73 people and injuring more than 100. On the same day, dozens of\u00a0Isis\u00a0fighters riding in\u00a0pick-ups with heavy machine guns mounted in the back attacked army and police outposts in Abu\u00a0Ghraib, site of the notorious prison on the western outskirts of Baghdad. There was an initial assault\u00a0by at least four suicide bombers, one driving a vehicle packed with explosives into a barracks, and\u00a0fighting went on for hours around a burning grain silo.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How Politicians Duck the Blame for Terrorism The capture of Salah Abdeslam, thought to be the sole surviving planner of the Paris massacre, means that the media is focusing once again\u00a0on the threat of terrorist attack by Islamic State. Questions are asked about why the most wanted man in Europe was able to elude the\u00a0police [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[5493,1239,447,512,13056,1577,793],"class_list":["post-19058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","tag-counterpunch","tag-is","tag-islamic-state","tag-media","tag-patrick-cockburn","tag-politicians","tag-terrorism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19058"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19059,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19058\/revisions\/19059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}