French comedian convicted of ‘supporting terror’

Posted on February 6, 2015 by Reid Mukai

By Ramin Mazaheri

Popular French humorist Dieudonné Mbala Mbala has been convicted and fined 30,000 euros for “supporting terrorism speech” in a decision which many say exemplifies the often discriminatory and two-tiered nature of France’s legal system.

Following the recent terrorist attacks in France, Dieudonné, as he is widely known, posted on Facebook that “Je me sens Charlie Coulibaly” (I feel like Charlie Coulibaly), an apparent reworking of the global “Je suis Charlie” campaign. Coulibaly refers to Amedy Coulibaly, the terrorist responsible for four deaths at a Kosher supermarket in Paris.

The court rejected Dieudonné’s claim that he is a satirist in the same vein as Charlie Hebdo, the French weekly which has sparked worldwide protests on multiple occasions by publishing sacrilegious pictures of Prophet Mohammed.

Both Dieudonné and Charlie Hebdo defend their actions by saying they insult any and all religions, ethnicities and politicians, with plenty of evidence available on the Internet to support their claims.

While Charlie Hebdo has been exonerated for its previous cartoons of Prophet Mohammed, as well as for insulting former French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the neo-fascist National Front Party, Dieudonné has been repeatedly fined for remarks deemed to incite racial hatred and anti-Semitism, both of which are explicitly banned by French law. Dieudonné and his entourage have been taken to court some 80 times in recent years, and just this week Dieudonné was convicted and forced to pay a fine of 4,000 euros for calling current Prime Minster Manuel Valls a “Mussolini with half Down’s Syndrome”.

Many claim that the lack of a law to ban Islamophobic speeches or the insulting of Islam reflects a state-sanctioned double-standard, and there is little political support apparent to create such laws. That has led to widespread complaints from France’s Muslim community, estimated at 5 to 10 percent of the overall population.

Where Dieudonné and Charlie Hebdo differ greatly is in their favored target: For more than a decade Charlie Hebdo has been openly anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic, while Dieudonné is openly anti-Zionist. Many also believe that Dieudonné satirizes France’s politicians much more forcefully, as Charlie Hebdo’s editors have increased their ties to the conservative UMP party in recent years.

This helps explain Dieudonné’s vast popularity among the youth, Muslim and immigrant communities, as reflected by the hundreds of Dieudonné supporters present at the Palais de Justice in Paris.

“Dieudonné is the same as Charlie Hebdo, except that Dieudonné attacks our society’s ‘untouchables’,” said Enzo Columba, 23, outside Dieudonné’s trial. “In France, you can attack the Blacks, the Arabs, the Muslims, but not the ‘untouchables’, and that’s why Dieudonné is treated differently by the media and the law,’” said Columba.

“He is so popular because he is like us: He is the son of immigrants, he grew up around Paris, and, like so many French youth, he is anti-Zionist,” added Columba.

France has not released updated arrest totals for “supporting terrorism speech” since January 20, when 117 arrests were acknowledged. People have been accused, tried, convicted and sentenced to multi-year prison terms in just 3 days, causing widespread accusations of “hysteria” and “witch-hunts”.

Among the convicted have been alcoholics, homeless people and the mentally ill. Critics contend that the wave of arrests is intended to have a “chilling effect” on all criticism of the government’s policies, as well as to intimidate the Muslim community.

“I’m here to support the liberty of expression, like we had in the past,” said Madame Lamarque, an interested citizen who also awaited the verdict outside the courtroom.

“I think we are losing this freedom, and I don’t understand why,” said Lamarque. “I do not think Dieudonné has been treated like other humorists.”

France made global news this week when an 8-year-old boy was interrogated for 30 minutes by police for allegedly making remarks supporting terrorism. Ahmed, whose last name has not been released, could not even explain what “terrorism” was, and his teachers and school principal have been sharply criticized for involving the police.

“The manner in which this was handled and became so overblown is totally unbelievable,” the head of the French Communist Party, Pierre Laurent, told Press TV.

“We cannot expose a child of 8 years to such a trauma,” said Laurent. “It’s the opposite of the mission of education: To care for and protect children, not to place them under the media’s glare and render them fodder for the public’s judgment.”

Ahmed is in the third grade in the southeastern city of Nice, an affluent region which is also a stronghold of the neo-fascist National Front party.

Former CIA Official Lied in Boston Bombing Cover-Up

Posted on February 4, 2015 by Reid Mukai

By Daniel Hopsicker

Source: MadCowNews

Former top CIA official Graham Fuller lied in a press interview about his former son-in-law, Ruslan Tsarni, the uncle of “The Brothers Tsarnaev,” Tamerlan, now dead, and Dzhokhar, soon to go on trial in Boston for allegedly planting a homemade pressure-cooker bomb packed with shrapnel near the finish line of the Boston Marathon.

“A story on the Internet implying possible connections between Ruslan (Tsarni) and the Agency through me is absurd,” Fuller said in an Apr 27 2013 story headlined “Former CIA officer: ‘Absurd’ to link uncle of Boston suspects, Agency,” in Washington-D.C.-based Al-Monitor, which bills itself as the “Pulse of the Middle East.”

Fuller was responding to an exclusive report published here headlined “Was Boston Bombers ‘Uncle Ruslan’ with the CIA?”,which he and reporter Laura Rosen churlishly refused to credit, calling it merely a “story on the Internet” even as they labored to debunk it. Yet it was reported and re-published so widely in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon terror attack that Fuller felt compelled to respond.

Well, compelled to respond may be a little strong. Still, respond he did, in an interview which marshalled arguments to indicate questioning whether Ruslan Tsarni’s connection with the CIA had been through his famous former father-in-law were not just an exercise in futility. They were absurd.

Just to be clear, there is zero evidence to indicate either Uncle Ruslan Tsarni or the CIA hired the Tsarnaev Brothers to blow up Boston. There is, however, abundant evidence that elements of the U.S. Government have been playing footsie with Chechen terrorists, presumably to divert Russia from committing the kind of rash Neo-Communist Gangster stuff they’d be doing already unless we’re very very careful.

Here’s a troubling question: If it was blow-back from that campaign which blew up in Boston—throwing covert U.S. support at Chechen terrorists—do you think anyone in the U.S. Government is eager to let the American people in on that no-doubt classified-for-reasons-of-national-security secret?

Why, the very idea seems—to use Mr. Fuller’s word—absurd.

Uncle Ruslan meets ‘the boys’

In his interview, Graham Fuller admitted that a second bombshell disclosure in an exclusive Apr 26, 2013, report headlined Boston bombers’ uncle married daughter of top CIA official, also was true: The Tsarnaev Brothers’ uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, was his former son-in-law.

Tsarni was married to Graham Fuller’s daughter Samantha between 1994 and sometime near the dawn of the millenium, Fuller grudgingly admitted. Still, he insisted,without explanation, that suggestions that law enforcement should be checking to see if Ruslan Tsarni had “hooked up” with the CIA through Fuller were “absurd.”

It was an odd assertion. At the very moment he was making it, investigators with the FBI—who remained convinced the Tsarnaev Brothers had outside help and support—were in an intensive manhunt to find foreign connections to the case. Asking questions about links between Ruslan, the CIA, and the bombers would not be seen as out of bounds. Or would they?

Of course, statements by former top CIA officials should be taken with a large grain of salt. Double the salt allowance if the “former” official is still engaged in intrigue in Central Asia.

Hannibal crosses the Alps; Fuller fords his Rubicon

And that’s before discounting fstill further for being widely and infamously known as the man who convinced the Reagan Administration that it would be a neat idea to send a callow Marine Lt. Col. named Oliver North with a cake under one arm and some TOW missiles under the other to a meet-and-greet in Tehran with the Ayatollah.

But back to the body blows being thrown against the credibility of anyone with the temerity of reporting the obvious…

“Fuller retired from the agency almost a decade before the brief marriage,” sniffed Laura Rosen, the reporter selected to give him a sympathetic hearing.

“I, of course, retired from CIA in 1987,” Fuller offered helpfully, suggesting his Agency past had receded into the far reaches of recorded history, a dimly-remembered time located somewhere just this side of Hannibal crossing the Alps.

If Fuller retired, moved to Florida, and taken up golf while decked out in the vibrant hues of lime-green and canary-yellow sweater-slack combinations favored in the Florida golfing fraternity, he might have a point.

That was not, alas, how Fuller chose to spend his dwindling years. Even today he keeps stirring the pot in Central Asia, a long-time player in what previous generations called the Great Game.

He’s a consultant at Rand Corp; and he’s written a prodigious number of books with Great-Game-y titles: “Turkey & the Arab Spring;” “The Arab Shia’a;” “The Future of Political Islam;” “Turkey’s Kurdish Question;” “The Geopolitics of Islam & the West. “

Kazakh-style crony capitalism, illustrated

Ruslan Tsarni’s former father-in-law isn’t his only link to the CIA. There’s also his decades-long work history, discovered in a press release from a dodgy oil-related company with no assets and a ridiculous name whose President had been somehow lured away from a life-long career with Halliburton.

It reveals that Tsarni had worked in Central Asia for the Agency for International Development (USAID)—a U.S. Government Agency often used for cover by the CIA, including a two-year stint in the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan during the “Wild West” days of the early 1990’s, when anything that wasn’t nailed down in that country was up for grabs.

At a time when vast natural resources and enormous fortunes were ‘in play’ during the economic free-for-all in the “Stans” after the collapse of the Soviet Union, 24-year old Ruslan Tsarni was already a ‘player.’

Ruslan Tsarni is once again working (since 2010) working for USAID. Oddly enough, Russia, the country competing with the US for influence in the region, unceremoniously kicked USAID out of the country just months before the Boston Bombing terror attack, for, according to a Putin spokesmen, encouraging his political opposition.

Ruslan Tsarni & the Congress of Chechen International Organizations

In his interview with Laura Rosen, Fuller uncorked a whopper. Said Fuller,“Like all Chechens, Ruslan was very concerned about his native land, but I saw no particular involvement in politics [although] he did try to contact other Chechens around.”

Perhaps Fuller felt that no one would notice. Perhaps he felt immune to fact-checking, a sentiment common among Reagan-era CIA officials. But whatever his motivation, he has been caught in a provable lie. Ruslan Tsarni, as Fuller well knows, has been up to his neck in Central Asian political intrigue for decades.

On August 17,1995, while Ruslan Tsarni and Graham Fuller’s daughter Samantha were still virtual newlyweds, Tsarni incorporated a company in Maryland called the “Congress of Chechen International Organizations.”

Ruslan Tsarni was listed as the company’s resident agent. The group sent aid to Islamic terrorists in Chechnya, including thousands of pairs of combat boots, coordinating its efforts with another so-called “charity,” Benevolence International, designated “financiers of terrorism” by the Treasury Department before being shut down by US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald.

The company’s listed address, 11114 Whisperwood Ln. Rockville MD., was the home address of former top CIA official s Graham Fuller.

Today, the home remains listed in his wife’s name.

“An impromptu press conference aired live on network television”

With worldwide attention on the upcoming trial of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, what facts could possibly be being deliberately de-selected and hidden from view?

In “Long Mile Home” a book about the Boston Marathon Bombing by two Boston Globe reporters, everything they have to say about Ruslan Tsarni isn’t much:

“On the Friday morning after Tamerlan was killed, with police still hunting for Dzhokhar, investigators and reporters found their uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, a corporate attorney living outside Washington D.C.

When he emerged after speaking to FBI agents inside his home, he walked up to television cameras and reporters gathered outside looking for the latest in what had become the biggest story in the world. In an impromptu press conference aired live on network television, Tsarni offered condolences to the bombing victims, denounced his nephews, and ordered Dzhokhar to turn himself in.

Asked to explain what provoked the brothers to attack, Tsarni said, “Being losers. Hatred for those who were able to settles themselves. These are the only reasons I can imagine. Anything else—anything to do with religion, with Islam –that’s a fraud. It’s a fake.”

Asked how he felt about the United States, Tsarni said, “I respect this country. I love this country.”

An opinion writer for the Washington Post called his words “inspiring,” and said his press conference was “a moment we all needed.”

The New Yorker said he “looked like he might hunt his nephew down himself.”

That’s it. That’s everything they wrote about Ruslan Tsarni. Nothing about his work overseas for USAID. Nothing about being the former son-in-law of a top CIA official, or about running an organization out of his house that was sending aid to Chechen terrorists. Most of all nothing about his being—at the same time he was calling his nephews “losers”— a guy involved, according to the London Telegraph, in the biggest bank fraud in history.

By anyone’s standards, that’s a lot not to report. The authors must be proud.

“Uncle” Ruslan Tsarni is the elephant in the living room

“News,” someone once wrote, “is selection.”

And selection is always based on an ideology and an agenda. Just something to remember the next time you’re reading, or watching, the ‘news.’

As jury selection proceeds in Boston in the upcoming trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the most pressing question about the attack remains one which is so obvious even Time Magazine is asking it: Did They Really Act On Their Own?

The logical place to start would be with Uncle Ruslan, who’s been married to the daughter of a former top CIA official who remains a”player” in Central Asia’s Great Game. But, of course, it ain’t gonna happen.

Whether by accident or design, Ruslan Tsarni played the same role in the aftermath of the Boston terror attack played after the 9/11 terror attack by Rudi Dekkers, manager of Mohamed Atta’s flight school in Venice. And just like Rudi Dekkers before him, his pronouncements were received uncritically.

The mainstream media fawned all over him. He was soon being called “Uncle Ruslan. He became the primary go-to source on the suspects, peddling his brief about the perfidy and all-around loser nature of his two nephews, one of whom, who he’d helped raise and bring to America, had just been killed in a hail of gunfire with police.

There were no tears for Uncle Ruslan. He was “protected,” and no doubt glad for it.

When Graham Fuller fibbed about Ruslan’s political activities, was it out of personal loyalty, or in support of a larger operation which had Ruslan Tsarni leading every 24-hour news cycle for more than a week during the biggest story of the year? Is there anyone in America who still thinks this happens by accident?

What does this say about the CIA’s ability to mold news coverage of a major event?

Already a valuable asset, Uncle Ruslan hadn’t even executed his most valuable task yet. Tsarni would soon be single-handedly responsible for leading the entire mainstream media of the Western World on a two-week long wild goose chase. Like a Pied Piper for the electronic age, he led the world away from whoever had actually punched the Tsarnaev Brothers ticket to jihad, towards something that didn’t even exist, “a chubby red-haired Armenian Muslim exorcist named Misha.”

Uncle Ruslan’s network for “international corruption”

When he was pontificating daily on live network television, why had no one thought to ask him about his contemporaneous involvement in what London newspapers had begun calling “the biggest bank fraud in history?”

That’s the other side, the well-connected oil executive-side, of Ruslan Tsarni, that remains hidden. When one reporter had the bad manners to ask him what he did, Tsarni got touchy, and would say only, “I work for a living.”

End-of-story,CIA-style.

Tsarni is implicated in an international criminal investigation that oddly enough also involves another name currently in the news: Britain’s Prince Andrew, who sold his run-down estate to a Kazakh billionaire banker-turned-fugitive looking for asylum in London who paid Andrew $10 million more than it was worth.

Before he left Almaty for a more exciting life in London, the banker, with Tsarni’s help, had made off with a cool six billion dollars. Six billion. With a “B.”

The FBI is Great at Disrupting (Its Own) “Terror Plots”

Posted on January 27, 2015 by Reid Mukai

By Kevin Carson

Source: Center for a Stateless Society

On January 14 the US Department of Justice announced that the Joint Terrorism Task Force had disrupted the latest “domestic terrorism plot” — this time by “a Cincinnati-area man … to attack the U.S. Capital and kill government officials.” House Speaker John Boehner immediately cited the disrupted plot as evidence that Congress should think carefully before refusing to renew the NSA’s bulk data collection powers. Only it turns out the feds had at least as much to do with hatching the plot as did the alleged plotter, Christopher Cornell.

The FBI investigator became aware of Cornell’s pro-ISIS comments on Twitter thanks to a tip-off from an unnamed informant who “began cooperating with the FBI in order to obtain favorable treatment with respect to his criminal exposure on an unrelated case.” The informant, on FBI orders, arranged two meetings with Cornell where they discussed attacks on the capital, after which the FBI arrested him to “prevent” the attacks. In other words, it identified Cornell as a suspect entirely on the basis of his expression of radical political opinions, with the help of a jailhouse snitch who rolled over in response to prosecutorial blackmail. And the actual “plot” was worked out only in subsequently arranged meetings in which one party — working for the FBI — may well have been leading Cornell. It wasn’t for nothing that ecological activist Judi Bari said “the first person to mention bringing dynamite is probably a fed.”

In this the Cornell case has a lot in common with a great many other so-called “domestic terrorism plots” federal law enforcement has “disrupted,” going back to the Lackawanna Six. A good example is the so-called “plot” of the Newburgh Four, who supposedly plotted to blow up synagogues and attack a military base. The judge commented that the government “came up with the crime, provided the means, and removed all relevant obstacles,” in the process making a terrorist out of a man “whose buffoonery is positively Shakespearean in scope” (“US: Terrorism Prosecutions Often An Illusion,” Human Rights Watch, July 21, 2014).

This reminds me of a story I read — from Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams, I think — about a software company that offered programmers a bonus for every bug they detected in code. Predictably, creating bugs to “detect” became a major source of revenue for employees. H.L. Mencken once remarked on government’s tendency “to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

We see this in the dismaying, Starship Troopers-like media narrative involving any and all armed government personnel in uniform. Last weekend’s highest U.S. box office receipts came not from Selma (the story of oppressed people organizing to fight for their freedom) but from American Sniper. The latter movie glorifies a vile wretch who gloated over all the “savages” (his word for any male age 16 to 60) he murdered in Iraq, on the grounds that he was saving American troops from being shot at. Never mind that the people in Iraq were shooting back at an invading army in their own country. Domestically, we see the same phenomenon with shows like COPS, and local news coverage of police in paramilitary gear (breathlessly referred to as “the authorities” by nitwit reporters) storming alleged “meth labs.”

And remember, the very concept of a “sting operation” (also known as “entrapment”) invokes the principle that some human beings are superior to the law. The first professional police forces were justified on the grounds that they were simply being paid to exercise the same posse comitatus powers of “citizen’s arrest” possessed by any other member of society. By that standard, if it’s illegal for an ordinary citizen to solicit or instigate illegal activity, it should be illegal for anyone — including uniformed state officials.

But most importantly, this is an example of how the state mostly “solves” problems of its own making — and has an incentive to keep creating more problems to justify giving it the power and resources to “solve” them.

The Dire State of Our Nation (What You Won’t Hear from the Politicians)

Posted on January 22, 2015 by Reid Mukai

By John W. Whitehead

Source: The Rutherford Institute

No matter what the politicians might say about how great America is, the fact is that the nation seems to be imploding. Consider the following facts:

Our government is massively in debt. Currently, the national debt is somewhere in the vicinity of $18 trillion. More than a third of our debt is owned by foreign countries, namely China and Japan.

Our education system is abysmal. Despite the fact that we spend more than most of the world on education ($115,000 per student), we rank 36^th in the world when it comes to math, reading and science, far below most of our Asian counterparts. Even so, we continue to insist on standardized programs such as Common Core, which teach students to be test-takers rather than thinkers.

Our homes provide little protection against government intrusions. Police agencies, already empowered to crash through your door if they suspect you’re up to no good, now have radars that allow them to “see” through the walls of your home.

Our prisons, housing the largest number of inmates in the world and still growing, have become money-making enterprises for private corporations that rely on the inmates for cheap labor.

We are no longer a representative republic. The U.S. has become a corporate oligarchy. As a recent survey indicates, our elected officials, especially those in the nation’s capital, represent the interests of the rich and powerful rather than the average citizen.

We’ve got the most expensive, least effective health care system in the world compared to other western, industrialized nations.

The air pollution levels are dangerously high for almost half of the U.S. population, putting Americans at greater risk of premature death, aggravated asthma, difficulty breathing and future cardiovascular problems.

Despite outlandish amounts of money being spent on the nation’s “infrastructure,” there are more than 63,000 bridges—one out of every 10 bridges in the country—in urgent need of repair. Some of these bridges are used 250 million times a day by trucks, school buses, passenger cars and other vehicles.

Americans know little to nothing about their rights or how the government is supposed to operate. This includes educators and politicians. For example, 27 percent of elected officials cannot name even one right or freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment, while 54 percent do not know the Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war.

Nearly one out of every three American children live in poverty, ranking us among the worst in the developed world.

Patrolled by police, our schools have become little more than quasi-prisons in which kids as young as age 4 are being handcuffed for “acting up,” subjected to body searches and lockdowns, and suspended for childish behavior.

We’re no longer innocent until proven guilty. In our present surveillance state, that burden of proof has now been shifted so that we are all suspects to be spied on, searched, scanned, frisked, monitored, tracked and treated as if we’re potentially guilty of some wrongdoing or other.

Parents, no longer viewed as having an inherent right to raise their children as they see fit, are increasingly being arrested for letting their kids walk to the playground alone, or play outside alone. Similarly, parents who challenge a doctor’s finding or request a second opinion regarding their children’s health care needs are being charged with medical child abuse and, in a growing number of cases, losing custody of their children to the government.

Private property means little at a time when SWAT teams and other government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, wound or kill you, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family.

Court rulings undermining the Fourth Amendment and justifying invasive strip searches have left us powerless against police empowered to forcefully draw our blood, forcibly take our DNA, strip search us, and probe us intimately.

Americans have no protection against police abuse. It is no longer unusual to hear about incidents in which police shoot unarmed individuals first and ask questions later.

If there is any absolute maxim by which the federal government seems to operate, it is that the American taxpayer always gets ripped off. This is true, whether you’re talking about taxpayers being forced to fund high-priced weaponry that will be used against us, endless wars that do little for our safety or our freedoms, or bloated government agencies such as the National Security Agency with its secret budgets, covert agendas and clandestine activities.

Americans are powerless in the face of militarized police. As police forces across the country continue to be transformed into extensions of the military, Americans are finding their once-peaceful communities transformed into military outposts, complete with tanks, weaponry, and other equipment designed for the battlefield.

Now these are not problems that you can just throw money at. As I point out in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, these are problems that will continue to plague our nation unless and until Americans wake up to the fact that we’re the only ones who can change things.

For starters, we’ll need to actually pay attention to what’s going on around us, and I don’t mean by turning on the TV news, which is little more than government propaganda. Pay attention to what your local city councils are enacting. Pay attention to what your school officials are teaching and not teaching. Pay attention to whom your elected officials are allowing to wine and dine them.

Most of all, stop acting like it really matters whether you vote for a Republican or Democrat, because it doesn’t, and start acting like citizens who expect the government to work for them, rather than the other way around.

While that bloated beast called the federal government may not listen to you, you can have a great impact on your local governing bodies if you’ll just take a stand. This will mean gathering together with your friends and neighbors and, for example, forcing your local city council to start opposing state and federal programs that are ripping you off. And if need be, your local city council can refuse to abide by the dictates that continue to flow from Washington, DC.

All of the signs point to something nasty up ahead. The time to act is now.

What the Charlie Hebdo Execution Video Really Shows

Posted on January 19, 2015 by Reid Mukai

By Jonathan Cook

Source: Global Research

I am well aware that I’m stepping into a hornet’s nest by posting this video, which is going viral. Those who wish to silence all debate have an easy card to play here, accusing me of buying into a conspiracy theory. There’s only one problem: unlike the video-maker, I have few conclusions to draw about what the significance of this video is in relation to the official story. That is not why I am posting it.

But it does, at least to my mind and obviously a lot of other people’s, judging by how quickly it’s spreading, suggest that Ahmed Merabet, the policeman outside the Charlie Hebdo office, was not shot in the head, as all the media have been stating.

That said, it does not prove much more. It doesn’t prove that Merabet did not die at the scene. Maybe he bled to death there on the pavement from his earlier wound. It certainly doesn’t prove that the Kouachi brothers were not the gunmen or that the one who fired missed on purpose. Maybe he just missed.

Nor does the video’s removal from most websites prove that there is some sort of massive cover-up going on. Ideas of good taste, especially in the immediate aftermath of a massacre close to home (ie here in the West), can lead to a media consensus that a video is too upsetting. That can occur even if it does not show blood and gore, simply because of what it implies. Herd instinct in these instances is very strong.

But the unedited video clip does leave a sour taste: because unless someone has a good rebuttal, it does indeed seem impossible that an AK-47 bullet fired from close range would not have done something pretty dramatic to that policeman’s head. And if the video is real – and there doesn’t seem much doubt that it is – it clearly shows nothing significant happened to his head either as or after the bullet was fired.

So what points am I making?

The first one is more tentative. It seems – though I suppose there could be an explanation I have overlooked – that the authorities have lied about the cause of the policeman’s death. That could be for several probably unknowable reasons, including that his being executed was a simpler, neater story than that he bled to death on the pavement because of official incompetence (there already seems to have been plenty of that in this case).

The second point is even more troubling. Most of the senior editors of our mainstream media have watched the unedited video just as you now have. And either not one of them saw the problem raised here – that the video does not show what it is supposed to show – or some of them did see it but did not care. Either way, they simply regurgitated an official story that does not seem to fit the available evidence.

That is a cause for deep concern. Because if the media are acting as a collective mouth-piece for a dubious official narrative on this occasion, on a story of huge significance that one assumes is being carefully scrutinised for news angles, what are they doing the rest of the time?

The lesson is that we as news consumers must create our own critical distance from the “news” because we cannot trust our corporate media to do that work for us. They are far too close to power. In fact, they are power.

Official narratives are inherently suspect because power always looks out for itself. This appears to be a good example – whether what it shows is relatively harmless or sinister – to remind us of that fact.

UPDATE:

I’m still trying to imagine a plausible explanation for the video. I’m no ballistics expert, so I’m firmly in the land of conjecture. But I wonder whether, if the bullet hit the pavement close to Merabet’s head, it might have been possible for bullet fragments to hit him, possibly killing him.

This possibility (assuming it is one) does not invalidate the point of my post. If it was indeed the case, certainly no media outlet has suggested that the gunman missed Merabet and that he died from the exploding fragments.

This isn’t meant to raise technical, or gruesome, details of the case. It is to suggest that western journalists do not report fearlessly and independently when they examine events being narrated by official sources. They mostly regurgitate information on trust, because they trust the authorities to be telling the truth. They do the same when the acts of official enemies are being examined – they again turn to official sources on their side. In short, most journalists have no critical distance from the events they are reporting on our behalf.

That leaves us, ordinary news consumers, in a position of either blindly trusting our own officials too or trying to work things out for ourselves. You would hope that the issues raised by this video get aired by journalists as part of establishing greater trust in our profession and proof of our independence. Instead, I expect it will simply be consigned the “conspiracy theory” bin.

Preconditions of Revolution in the USA Today

Posted on January 16, 2015 by Reid Mukai

By Robert David Steele

Source: Public Intelligence Blog

SHORT URL: http://tinyurl.com/Steele-Revolution

Phi Beta Iota: To those who have been leveraging the below, thank you for your interest. It seemed like a good idea to go ahead and post a version of the chart showing in red all of the pre-conditions of revolution in the USA that are now actively present. The failure of leadership to manifest ethics and to nurture education is particularly harmful–white collar criminals do not prosper when the political leadership is ethical and upholds its responsibility to protect the public interest. The ONLY thing–the one RIGHT thing–that needs to be done to make everything else possible is Electoral Reform (1 Page, 9 Points). If the various parties and committees and alliances claiming to represent the public interest fail to sponsor this one simple fix, they reveal themselves for what they are: partisan quasi-criminal organizations operating in betrayal of the public trust, with no interest in restoring America the Republic, America the Beautiful.

EDIT: For those who really do not understand the integrity of the above in today’s context, we will make this explicit:

1. The country has been run into the ground–the bottom 98% have had their seed corn stolen and eaten by the top 2%. There is no going back, neither revenge nor expropriation will do. What has been done is done, get over it.

2. There isn’t a leader or leadership team or party or “elite” network on the planet that can put the USA back together again [except perhaps We the People Reform Coalition].

3. HOWEVER, “bottom up” collective intelligence is agile, intuitive, ethical in the aggregate, and so on. This is REALLY SIMPLE: restore the integrity of the electoral system (local to national) and get out of the way. This is called Epoch B Leadership. It is also the root “good” of Advanced Information Operations You start by empowering your own public and not lying to them.

Graphic: Pre-Conditions of Revolution

Graphic: Revolution Model Simplified

2011 Thinking About Revolution

1976 Thesis: Theory, Risk Assessment, and Internal War: A Framework for the Observation of Revolutionary Potential

Review: Theory, risk assessment, and internal war–A framework for the observation of revolutionary potential

Review: Revolutions and Revolutionary Movements

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The Government Killed Martin Luther King Jr.

Posted on January 15, 2015 by Reid Mukai

Since today marks the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. it’s an appropriate time to reflect on his life and legacy but we must also never forget the forces which sought to crush his dream. Because of the work of investigative journalists, we have a clearer idea of the scope of the government’s efforts to discredit and psychologically torment Martin Luther King Jr. such as the following excerpt from an FBI letter to MLK:

King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days in which to do it (this exact number has been selected for a specific reason, it has definite practical significance). You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation.

Read the complete unredacted FBI letter here: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/fbis-suicide-letter-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-and-dangers-unchecked-surveillance

Given such psychotic threats from the government agency, it’s not much of a stretch to imagine them opting for a more direct approach than trying to bully MLK to commit suicide.

How the Government Killed Martin Luther King, Jr.

By Carl Gibson

Source: Reader Supported News

efore scoffing at this headline, you should know that in 1999, in Memphis, Tennessee, more than three decades after MLK’s death, a jury found local, state, and federal government agencies guilty of conspiring to assassinate the Nobel Peace Prize winner and civil rights leader. The same media you would expect to cover such a monumental decision was absent at the trial, because those news organizations were part of that conspiracy. William F. Pepper, who was James Earl Ray’s first attorney, called over 70 witnesses to the stand to testify on every aspect of the assassination. The panel, which consisted of an even mix of both black and white jurors, took only an hour of deliberation to find Loyd Jowers and other defendants guilty. If you’re skeptical of any factual claims made here, click here for a full transcript, broken into individual sections. Read the testimonies yourself if you don’t want to take my word for it.

It really isn’t that radical a thing to expect this government to kill someone who threatened their authority and had the power to organize millions to protest it. When MLK was killed on April 4, 1968, he was speaking to sanitation workers in Memphis, who were organizing to fight poverty wages and ruthless working conditions. He was an outspoken critic of the government’s war in Vietnam, and his power to organize threatened the moneyed corporate interests who were profiting from the war. At the time of his death, he was gearing up for the Poor People’s Campaign, an effort to get people to camp out on the National Mall to demand anti-poverty legislation – essentially the first inception of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The government perceived him as a threat, and had him killed. James Earl Ray was the designated fall guy, and a complicit media, taking its cues from a government in fear of MLK, helped sell the “official” story of the assassination. Here’s how they did it.

The Setup

The defendant in the 1999 civil trial, Loyd Jowers, had been a Memphis PD officer in the 1940s. He owned a restaurant called Jim’s Grill, a staging ground to orchestrate MLK’s assassination underneath the rooming house where the corporate media alleges James Earl Ray shot Dr. King. During the trial, William Pepper, the plaintiff’s attorney, played a tape of an incriminating 1998 conversation between Jowers, UN Ambassador Andrew Young, and Dexter King, MLK’s son. Young testified that Jowers told them he “wanted to get right with God before he died, wanted to confess it and be free of it.”

On the tape, Jowers mentions that those present at the meetings included MPD officer Marrell McCollough, Earl Clark, an MPD lieutenant and known as the department’s best marksman, another MPD officer, and two men who were unknown to Jowers but whom he assumed to be representatives of federal agencies. While Dr. King was in Memphis, he was under open or eye-to-eye federal surveillance by the 111th Military Intelligence Group based at Fort McPherson in Atlanta, Georgia. Memphis PD intelligence officer Eli Arkin even admitted to having the group in his own office. During his last visit to Memphis in late March of 1968, MLK was under covert surveillance, meaning his room at the Rivermont was bugged and wired. Even if he went out to the balcony to speak, his words were recorded via relay. William Pepper alleges in his closing argument during King v. Jowers that such covert surveillance was usually done by the Army Security Agency, implying the involvement of at least two federal agencies.

Jowers also gave an interview to Sam Donaldson on “Prime Time Live” in 1993. The transcript of the interview was read during the trial, and it was revealed that Jowers openly talked about being asked by produce warehouse owner Frank Liberto to help with MLK’s murder. Liberto had mafia connections, and sent a courier with $100,000 to Jowers, who owned a local restaurant, with instructions to hold the money at his restaurant.

John McFerren owned a store in Memphis and was making a pickup at Liberto’s warehouse at 5:15 p.m. on April 4th, roughly 45 minutes before the assassination. McFerren testified that he overheard Liberto tell someone over the phone, “Shoot the son of a bitch on the balcony.” Other witnesses who testified included café owner Lavada Addison, who was friends with Liberto in the 1970s. She recalled him confiding to her that he “had Martin Luther King killed.” Addison’s son, Nathan Whitlock, also testified. He asked Liberto if he killed MLK, and he responded, “I didn’t kill the nigger but I had it done.” When Whitlock pressed him about James Earl Ray, Liberto replied, “He wasn’t nothing but a troublemaker from Missouri. He was a front man … a setup man.”

The back door of Loyd Jowers’ establishment led to a thick crop of bushes across the street from the Lorraine Motel balcony where Dr. King was shot. On the taped confession to Andrew Young and Dexter King, Jowers says after he heard the shot, Lt. Earl Clark, who is now deceased, laid a smoking rifle at the rear of his restaurant. Jowers then disassembled the rifle, wrapped it in a tablecloth and prepared it for disposal.

The corporate media says it was James Earl Ray who shot MLK, and he did it from the 2nd floor bathroom window of the rooming house across the street from the Lorraine Motel. The official account alleges the murder weapon was dropped in a bundle and abandoned at Dan Canipe’s storefront just before he made his getaway. But even those authorities and media admit that the bullet that tore through MLK’s throat didn’t have the same metallurgical composition as the bullets in the rifle left behind by James Earl Ray. And Judge Joe Brown, a weapons expert called to testify by Pepper in the 1999 trial, said the rifle allegedly used by James Earl Ray had a scope that was never sighted in, meaning that the weapon in question would have fired far to the left and far below the target.

The actual murder weapon was disposed of by taxi driver James McCraw, a friend of Jowers. William Hamblin testified in King v. Jowers that McCraw told him this story over a 15-year period whenever he got drunk. McCraw repeatedly told Hamblin that he threw the rifle over the Memphis-Arkansas bridge, meaning that the rifle is at the bottom of the Mississippi river to this day. And according to Hamblin’s testimony, Canipe said he saw the bundle dropped in front of his store before the actual shooting occurred.

The Conspiracy

To make Dr. King vulnerable, plans had to be made to remove him from his security detail and anyone sympathetic who could be a witness or interfere with the killing. Two black firefighters, Floyd Newsum and Norvell Wallace, who were working at Fire Station #2 across the street from the Lorraine Motel, were each transferred to different fire stations. Newsum was a civil rights activist and witnessed MLK’s last speech to the striking Memphis sanitation workers, “I Have Seen the Mountaintop,” before getting the call about his transfer. Newsum testified that he wasn’t needed at his new assignment, and that his transfer meant that Fire Station #2 would be out of commission unless someone else was sent there in his stead. Newsum talked about having to make a series of inquiries before finally learning that his reassignment had been ordered by the Memphis Police Department. Wallace testified that to that very day, while the official explanation was a vague death threat, he hadn’t once received a satisfactory answer as to why he was suddenly reassigned.

Ed Redditt, a black MPD detective who was assigned to MLK’s security detail, was also removed from the scene an hour before the shooting and sent home, and the only reason given was a vague death threat. Jerry Williams, another black MPD detective, was usually tasked with assembling a security team of black police officers for Dr. King. But he testified that on the night of the assassination, he wasn’t assigned to form that team.

There was a Black Panther-inspired group called The Invaders, who were staying at the Lorraine Motel to help MLK organize a planned march with the striking garbage workers. The Invaders were ordered to leave the motel after getting into an argument with members of MLK’s entourage. The origins of the argument are unclear, though several sources affirm that The Invaders had been infiltrated by Marrell McCollough of the MPD, who later went on to work for the CIA. And finally, the Tact 10 police escort of several MPD cars that accompanied Dr. King’s security detail were pulled back the day before the shooting by Inspector Evans. With all possible obstacles out of the way, MLK was all alone just before the assassination.

The Cover-Up

Around 7 a.m. on April 5, the morning after the shooting, MPD Inspector Sam Evans called Public Works Administrator Maynard Stiles and told him to have a crew destroy the crop of bushes adjacent to the rooming house above Loyd Jowers’ restaurant. This is particularly odd coming from a policeman, since the bushes were in a crime scene area, and crime scene areas are normally roped off, not to be disturbed. The official narrative of a sniper in the bathroom at the rooming house was then reinforced, since a sniper firing from an empty clearing would be far more visible than one hidden behind a thick crop of bushes.

Normally, when a major political figure is murdered, all possible witnesses are questioned and asked to make statements. But Memphis PD neglected to conduct even a basic house-to-house investigation. Olivia Catling, a resident of nearby Mulberry Street just a block away from the shooting, testified that she saw a man leave an alley next to the rooming house across from the Lorraine, climb into a Green 1965 Chevrolet, and speed away, burning rubber right in front of several police cars without any interference. There was also no questioning of Captain Weiden, a Memphis firefighter at the fire station closest to the Lorraine, the same one from which Floyd Newsum had been transferred just a day before.

Memphis PD and the FBI also suppressed the statements of Ray Hendricks and William Reed, who said they saw James Earl Ray’s white mustang parked in front of Jowers’ restaurant, before seeing it again driving away as they crossed another street. Ray’s alibi was that he had driven away from the scene to fix a tire, and these two statements that affirmed his alibi were withheld from Ray’s guilty plea jury.

The jury present at Ray’s guilty plea hearing also wasn’t informed about the bullet that killed MLK having different striations and markings than the other bullets kept as evidence, nor that the bullet couldn’t be positively matched as coming from the alleged murder weapon. Three days after entering the guilty plea, James Earl Ray unsuccessfully attempted to retract it and demand a trial. Incredibly, James Earl Ray turned down two separate bribes, one of which was recorded by his brother Jerry Ray, where he was offered $220,000 by writer William Bradford Huey and the guarantee of a full pardon if he would just agree to have the story “Why I Killed Martin Luther King” written on his behalf.

The Deception

One of the 70 witnesses that William F. Pepper called to testify in King v. Jowers was Bill Schaap, a practicing attorney with particular experience in military law, with bar credentials in New York, Chicago, and DC. Schaap testified at great length about how the government, through the FBI and the CIA, puts people in key positions on editorial boards at influential papers like the New York Times and Washington Post. He describes that although these editorial board members and news directors at cable news outlets may be liberal in their politics, they always take the government’s side in national security-related stories. Before you write that off as conspiracy theory, remember how people like Bill Keller at the New York Times, as well as the Washington Post editorial board, all cheerfully led the march to war in Iraq ten years ago.

Another King v. Jowers witness was Earl Caldwell, a New York Times reporter who was sent to Memphis by an editor named Claude Sitton. Caldwell testified that the orders from his editor were to “nail Dr. King.” In the publication’s effort to sell the story of James Earl Ray as the murderer, the Times cited an investigation into how Ray got the money for his Mustang, rifle, and the long road trip to Tennessee from California. The Times said that according to their own findings as well as the findings of federal agencies, Ray got the money by robbing a bank in his hometown of Alton, Illinois. In Pepper’s closing argument, he says that when he or Jerry Ray talked to the chief of police in Alton, along with the bank president of the branch that was allegedly robbed, neither said they had been approached by the New York Times, or by the FBI. Essentially, the Times fabricated the entire story in order to sell a false narrative that there was no government intervention and that James Earl Ray was a lone wolf.

So for the following 31 years after King’s death, nobody dared to question the constant reiteration of James Earl Ray as the murderer of Martin Luther King. Even 13 years after a jury found the government complicit in a conspiracy to murder the civil rights leader, the complicit media continues to propagate the false narrative they sold us three decades ago and vociferously shout down any alternative theories as to what happened as “conspiracy theory,” framing those putting forth such theories as wackjobs undeserving of any credibility. It’s strikingly similar to how the Washington Post defended their warmongering in a recent editorial commenting on the invasion of Iraq, and had one of their reporters defend the media’s leading of the charge into Iraq.

As we remember Dr. King and the important work he did, we should also reject the official account of his death as loudly as the government and media shout down anyone who tries to contradict their lies. As Edward R. Murrow said, “Most truths are so naked that people feel sorry for them and cover them up, at least a little bit.”

Carl Gibson, 25, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nationwide creative direct-action movement that mobilized tens of thousands of activists against corporate tax avoidance and budget cuts in the months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Carl and other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary “We’re Not Broke,” which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin. You can contact him at carl@rsnorg.org, and follow him on twitter at @uncutCG.

Martin Luther King assassinated by US Govt: King Family civil trial verdict

The Curtain Rises on Another Act in the Continual Global War on Terror Play

Posted on January 12, 2015 by Reid Mukai

By Wayne Madsen

Source: Strategic Culture Foundation

The attacks in Paris on the editorial offices of the weekly satirical journal Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket have, once again, conveniently turned the attention of the world away from the economic turmoil in the European Union and the extreme unpopularity of its major leaders to the seemingly never-ending «global war on terror».

French President Francois Hollande announced that on January 11, he would march in solidarity on the streets of Paris along with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny, and the ISIL-enabling Turkish Prime Minister, Ahmet Davitoglu. All of these leaders, facing huge popularity problems at home, were able to use the terrorist attacks in Paris to bolster their own flagging electoral profiles. In addition to the unpopular leaders, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, European Council President Donald Tusk, and European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker were also scheduled to march in Paris in the grandiose «photo op» to help honor a magazine staff that often lampooned many of these leaders with cartoons that were almost always of a sexual nature.

Once again, the alleged perpetrators of the recent attacks, Franco-Algerian brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi, who were said to have murdered 12 people, including the editor-in-chief of Charlie Hebdo, and Franco-Senegalese Amedy Coulibaly, said to have killed hostages at the supermarket, were well-known to the French police and intelligence services. It was claimed by one of the supermarket customers that Coulibaly said proclaimed that he was from Mali and that he supported ISIL and Palestine. The Kouachis’ names were even included on the American «no-fly list».

The fact that the Kouachis had been involved in recruiting and training jihadist volunteers to fight for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria and had earlier been involved in recruitment efforts for jihadist armies in Iraq and Yemen should have placed a surveillance net over the two brothers. But, as in a previous case in France involving an alleged jihadist terrorist who allegedly killed people at random, the Kouachi brothers, as well as Coulibaly, who was also well-known to the police, were permitted to obtain weapons and other materials without tipping off law enforcement. Coulibaly actually met with French President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2009. Coulibaly worked at a Coca Cola plant in the poor «banlieue» of Grigny, outside of Paris. Coulibaly was one of ten workers selected to meet personally with Sarkozy at the Elysee Palace to discuss youth employment issues. As with the U.S. Secret Service and the American president, French security thoroughly vets those who meet with the French head of state, which makes Coulibaly’s selection to meet Sarkozy even more perplexing. «Le Parisien» quoted Coulibaly as being excited over his meeting with Sarkozy and hoped the French president might help him find him a good job. Coulibaly is said to have first met Cherif Kouachi in 2010. However, Coulibaly supposedly converted to radical Islam while serving time in prison in 2005 for armed robbery. It was in prison that Coulibaly became an adherent of Djamel Beghal, said to be a Franco-Algerian member of Al Qaeda who, in 2001, tried to blow up the U.S. embassy in Paris. Out of all the unemployed and under-employed youth in France, the French president’s security team decided to vet a known follower of an Al Qaeda member to enter the Elysee Palace to meet with Sarkozy. As the French say, «incroyable!»

Pre-attack knowledge by the authorities of an alleged perpetrator was certainly the case in the Merah affair in March 2012 when Mohammed Merah, a French national, was killed by French police. Merah was accused of killing three French paratroopers in Montauban and three students and a teacher at a Jewish school in Toulouse. It was later discovered that not only did the French Central Directorate of Internal Intelligence (DCRI) maintain a thick dossier on Merah, but that French intelligence tried to recruit him as an agent. Merah traveled with ease to Afghanistan and Pakistan with the foreknowledge of French intelligence. The then-governing conservatives of President Nicolas Sarkozy and the opposition, now ruling, Socialist Party conspired to cover up Merah’s links to French intelligence.

The Kouachi brothers are said to have returned from Syria this past summer, where the CIA and French intelligence have been backing Islamist guerrilla groups battling the government of President Bashar al-Assad. The similarities of the Kouachis and Coulibaly to Merah are amazing. All were known to French intelligence before they allegedly carried out their terrorist attacks and all had connections with Al Qaeda groups and affiliates.

Ever since the 1980 time-bombing of the Bologna train station that killed 85 and injured over 200, Western European «false flag» operations have become fairly standardized «boiler plate» operations. This was certainly the case with the three-man professional military assault carried out in a precision manner by the alleged Islamist terrorists on the Paris editorial offices of the satirical journal Charlie Hebdo. Although the two Kouachi brothers, killed by police at a warehouse north of Paris, are said to have carried out the attacks on the newspaper, there is still no explanation of what happened to the third gunman. A third suspect in that attack, a brother-in-law of the Kouachis named Mourad Hamyd, voluntarily turned himself in to the police after he heard his name broadcast by the media. However, Hamyd, 18, was in school at the time of the attack on Charlie Hebdo.

The attack on the Bologna train station began the age of modern false flag attacks. Although in 1980 the Italian government and media originally blamed the bombing on leftist radical Italian guerrillas, it was, in fact, carried out by an underground fascist cell that obtained the bomb materials from hidden caches belonging to the secret NATO «stay behind» paramilitary network known as «Gladio».

Gladio was intended to mobilize guerrilla forces to fight the Soviets in the event of a ground war in Europe. Weapons and materials were hidden underground and in caves throughout Western Europe for future guerrilla assaults on occupying Soviet troops. However, Italian rightists and Zionists attempted to use the discredited Mitrokhin Dossier, allegedly obtained from KGB files, to pin the blame for the Bologna attack on the Soviets acting in concert with radical Arabs, including Palestinian groups. It was later discovered that it was the CIA that funded such news stories in a psychological warfare operation against the Soviets and the Arab countries. From his Paris jail cell in 2005, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, the famed terrorist known as «Carlos,» revealed that it was the CIA and Mossad that carried out the Bologna bombing and that the Mitrokhin Dossier was being used to «falsify history». Other independent accounts have proven Carlos’s allegation.

Ever since Bologna, the tell-tale signs of Western intelligence false flag operations are extremely evident in attack after attack. By sticking to the same doctrine for over 40 years, Western intelligence fingerprints are becoming as clear as day.

One such tell-tale sign of a false flag operation is the convenient discovery by police of evidence linking attacks to the perpetrators, be they unknowing double agents or patsies who believe in whatever cause has been dangled before them.

One sign of a false flag operation is that «evidence» linking the intended perpetrators to the crime scene is always discovered. French police claim they were able to pin the attack on Kouachis, because Said, the eldest brother, left his French identification card in a black Citroen used as a getaway car. Police would not say whose identification card they found. Some French security experts warned that the ID card may have been purposely planted in the car to confuse the police. Police also conveniently found Molotov cocktails and Islamist jihadist flags inside the getaway car. Alleged 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta’s passport was supposedly found in pristine condition in the rubble of the World Trade Center.

Often, the true perpetrators of false flag attacks are masked. This was the case with the three reported gunmen who killed the Charlie Hebdo staff.

There are always other attacks in the region to confuse police. For example, while French police were concentrating their search for the gunmen from northern Paris to the Belgian border, a French police woman was shot and killed in Montrouge, south of Paris. French authorities were quick to say the events south of Paris and at Charlie Hebdo were not linked. Later, it was announced that the two events were linked. Some witnesses at the warehouse and at the newspaper office were convinced that the masked men who turned out to be terrorists were actually counter-terrorism special troops. One man at the warehouse who escaped injury said he shook hands with one of the masked terrorists who he believed was a special policeman. At the same time French police launched their hostage-freeing operations at the warehouse and kosher supermarket, a hostage situation at a jewelry store in Montpellier, in the south of France, was being reported. Police soon said that situation was not connected to the events in the Paris region. Nevertheless, the Montpellier situation conveniently added to the fear factor.

The events in France have given a boost to anti-Islam immigration movements throughout Europe, from the PEGIDA movement and Alternative for Germany (AFD) party in Germany, to the National Front in France, and the UK Independence Party in Britain. Coming so soon after France’s UN Security Council vote to recognize Palestine as a state and the rising political fortunes of the pro-Israel National Front, a «price tag» attack on France, masked as a jihadist terrorist operation, cannot be ruled out.

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