In the Wake of the Terrorist Attacks. Paris: The City of Light or the City of Darkness?

French soldiers at the Eiffel Tower after the Paris shootings. Photo: Reuters

The Paris attacks on November 13, 2015 did not just “happen”. There is a back story to them.

And, regrettably, a front story as well.

What Is Past Is Prologue

For the past four years, American efforts to illegally remove Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, have failed. Even with aid from France, the Gulf States, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, the only accomplishment to date has been to dehouse, deculturalize, destabilize, and destroy Syria. Clearly, the pressure was growing to get outsiders more deeply involved in “regime change” there.

Apparently, the goal was to add Paris, and, by extension, France, to the wreckage. The rest of Europe, particularly Germany and Britain, came next. The U.S.-sponsored Migration of Peoples seems to be the means of choice. It’s built on years of recruiting and supporting terrorists in the Middle East.

The U.S. government had previously backed terrorists in South and Southwest Asia on an ad hoc basis. But then, following its use of the mujahideen to fight the U.S.S.R. in Afghanistan, America transformed them into a cadre of extremists, the Arab-Afghan Legion, ready to subvert or overthrow governments anywhere, anytime, so long as those governments were “enemies” of the U.S. (Or, in Europe’s case, capable of being dragged into the Forever War.) In recruiting the “muj”, the U.S. had help: Saudi Arabia for its money and Pakistan for its espionage organization, Inter-Services Intelligence. Later, the Israelis got involved, especially in Iraq and Syria. [For details, see J. Michael Springmann, Visas for Al Qaeda: CIA Handouts That Rocked The World (Washington , D.C., Daena Publications LLC, 2014)].

The nightmare in Paris was likely an outgrowth of all this, with special help from German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Turks, and Israel.

The New Weapon Against Syria

Beginning early in 2015, the Americans (and their Zionist allies) evidently recognized that their Syria policy was not producing desired results–Assad was still alive and still in office. Consequently, they adopted a new tack: flood Europe with Arab and Muslim “migrants”. With sufficient mutual hatred and distrust generated, Europe would end its timorous questioning of Israeli repression and move towards a more active role in the war against Syria.

That policy has been successful.

While there had been a steady stream of migrants from North Africa, it wasn’t until early in 2015 that they moved in the hundreds of thousands to Europe–through Turkey, a NATO member. The cause was straightforward: the new Ottomans, failing to unseat Assad with weapons transfers from Libya along with cross-border raids by agents provocateurs, worked with the United States and its repressive allies in the region to fill Anatolia with Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans, and many others. It then opened the floodgates. A simple stream became a deluge, one that even Noah and his Ark couldn’t handle. This flood came in waves, some Syrian, some from many other nationalities and ethnic groups. The rising tide began to cascade into the Balkans (which the U.S. and NATO had destroyed in the 1990s), then into Austria, and then into Germany. Turkey being Turkey, no Kurds were part of this river.

German Help and Propaganda

German Chancellor Merkel and her advisors (who had supported the 2003 American war against Iraq) worked assiduously in making the process run smoothly, sending railroad trains to the Austrian frontier to bring the migrants into the Federal Republic. From there, if the asylum-seekers so desired, they could move into the other nations on the Continent

Propaganda helped. Pushing the concept in Germany of the Good Man (Gutmensch), it was made clear that only selfish, xenophobic people could oppose the new arrivals. Indoctrination also targeted children. Bright cartoons with catchy music pushed the concept that “No Animal Is Illegal”. However, not a word was uttered about why Egypt, the Gulf States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia were not housing the rush of migrants.

This appears well planned. It transports Arabs and Muslims out of countries neighboring Israel, weakening them and providing Israel with the opportunity to expand. Israelis already control large parts of northern Iraq and a good-sized piece of Syria (the Golan Heights).With the tide of Arabs and Muslims washing all over Europe, there were to be and now are three results: mutual hatred and distrust, a growing split between the haves and have-nots, and, consequently, a weaker Europe. We’ve seen the articles about defecation in the streets and schools warning parents not to let their daughters dress provocatively (in hard-core Muslim eyes). There have been fights between religious Muslims and beered-up Germans at the Oktoberfest in Munich. The events in Paris were another side of this. On the 13th, the France24 Facebook page was full of posts such as “send them home”, “they are bringing their quarrels with them”, etc.

According to a knowledgeable source, S. Germek, this “army of invaders” will likely be 1 million strong by the end of 2015. She noted that EU politicians and human rights NGOs insist on describing them as “Syrian war refugees”. European mainstream media, she observed, goes out of its way to present photogenic Syrian children in tragic scenes to sell an unspecified and unexplained agenda to the public. It is clear, our interlocutor added, that true Syrian refugees are in a minority while mostly young, male economic migrants as well as radical Islamists from many countries make up a large portion of the migrant tsunami. Furthermore, most do not qualify for political asylum by EU laws, she continued. Yet, many are wealthy, each paying traffickers US$7,000 to US$15,000, some of which supposedly comes from American government pockets, she remarked.

Our source opined that not all bother to register as asylees. There are reports, she said, that migrants vanish by the thousands once inside Germany. She mentioned that many are drawn into Salafist networks busy recruiting the newcomers, particularly the countless unaccompanied minors among them.

Benefits? Cui Bono?

Merkel sees this, some think, as a way to do what the American news media have long been urging: bring more immigrants into the country. This will generate more taxes to support social benefits for an aging population. Also, it’s a golden opportunity to either keep wages from rising or force them down since so many are willing to work for a pittance. That’s something that’s worked quite well in the U.S. for years.

What these people don’t realize is that, in the end, it undermines Europe as a competitor for the U.S. Countries riven by ethnic and religious hatred can’t produce high quality goods. Low wage workers don’t care about making superior items. (Remember the East German Trabi?)

Also, by inflaming relations between the migrants and Europe, manipulators can force the Continent more deeply into the Middle East conflict, getting France, Britain, Germany, and other NATO members to send soldiers, warplanes, weapons, and money to fight “terrorists”. These are the low-lifes the U.S. and its repressive allies in the area, the Gulf States, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey have been recruiting, training, and supporting.

What Hath Been Wrought?

The French are now deeply engaged in fighting Syria. The British and Germans are becoming embroiled also.

On December 3, 2015, the U.K. began airstrikes against Syria, just hours after Parliament, despite strong opposition, authorized military action. Earlier, on November 26, 2015, Germany had sent a frigate, the FGS (Federal German Ship) Augsburg to join Teutonic support vessels already with the European force in the Mediterranean. Another frigate, the Karlsruhe, will escort the French nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle. The de Gaulle’s deployment to the eastern Mediterranean was allegedly planned before the November 13 attacks in Paris. The carrier is now sailing to the Persian Gulf for further attacks on Syria and Iraq.

On November 4, the German Parliament voted to send 1200 men against ISIL. Included are six Tornado warplanes for “reconnaissance”. Additionally, Germany is sending ground forces to Mali (208) to hunt “terrorists” and to Iraq (100). That Mali force will increase to 650 men by June 2016. Germans soldiers in Iraq will increase to 150 by January 2016. (Excluded from this tally are Federal Republic fighting men already in Turkey staffing Patriot missile batteries and AWACS scouting flights.) German taxpayers will shell out €134 million (approximately US$146 million) for this.

Still, many people contested this. Not from the Left, whose thought processes apparently were stultified, calcified, and frozen in amber, but from the Right. Journalists asked, is it true that there are at least 4,000 ISIL terrorists mixed in with the hundreds of thousands of migrants, economic and otherwise? Our answer was probably not, but, then, you can’t rule out the possibility that at least some trouble-makers are swimming in the stream of Middle Easterners and others.

Paris Showed That This Was True.

On Friday, November 13, 2015, allegedly unknown people, allegedly out of nowhere, attacked a concert hall, a sports stadium, a restaurant, and other locations, killing 130 and wounding an unspecified number. French government officials identified the attackers as Arabs, some from Europe, some from the Migration of Peoples.

But, the officials never clarified some really essential and very basic information. In tightly-controlled France, how did the terrorists get their AK-47 rifles? In tightly-controlled France, how did the terrorists get their explosives? They apparently had help from “the usual suspects”.

According to Radio Free Europe, a CIA-linked sender, the AKs, produced by Serbia’s Zastava works, were weapons stolen from the former Yugoslav military (likely by Croatians, Bosnians, and Kosovo Albanians). They then passed the firearms on from long-held stocks to German weapons traffickers. These sent them on to Paris. BUT, the Croats are old-time helpers to CIA gunrunners and Albanians are suppliers for Germany. All likely have ties to NATO, also historically notorious weapons brokers.

And how did France’s General Directorate for External Security, and the Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence, fail to deal with the attackers whom they knew had jihadi backgrounds? (At least five of them had traveled to Syria to fight Bashar al-Assad’s forces and then returned to France or Belgium.) The best “gover-up” answer? A tactical mistake.

Worse, from what’s been on TV, there might be some outside planning involved in this. How reasonable is it that some random fanatic is going to bring his counterfeit passport, a SYRIAN one, with him while blowing things up? Naturally, this helps demonstrate that Syrians are dangerous and need to be bombed back into the Stone Age–which the French and British are doing now.

Was Any of This Really a Surprise? Was Any of This Really News?

No.

As previously noted, Visas for Al Qaeda: CIA Handouts That Rocked The World set out the basics of American foreign policy in the Middle East and South Asia: recruit, train, and support radicals. With the financial backing of Saudi Arabia (suspected to figure in the still-classified 28 pages missing from the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on 9/11 failures) along with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, the U.S. used them to fight the Soviet Union in the 1980s. In the 1990s, the U.S. and its NATO allies, including Germany, exploited them to destroy Yugoslavia. These trained terrorists then moved at the behest of America into Iraq, wrecking that country following the U.S. invasion of 2003. In 2011, America’s extremists, working in concert with NATO forces and U.S. and European intelligence services, obliterated Libya. By the end of that year, weapons and fighters were moving into Syria, with the big push occurring in 2012.

But Darkness Is Coming.

France helped create the jigsaw puzzle that is today’s Middle East. In May 1916, in the infamous Sykes-Picot Agreement, it arranged with Britain to divide the Arab world, taking what are now Lebanon and Syria into the French Empire. It then pursued a policy of divide and rule, splitting its new lands along the lines of religion, region, and ethnicity. Since then, la belle France has profited from massive arms sales to the region, ranking third after the United States and Russia. It has built close ties with the reactionary Gulf Cooperation Council. Moreover, France accepts and supports Egyptian Dictator Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s policies. The French Republic is suspected of directly or indirectly supplying radical forces, such as Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic Front, opposing the Assad government in Syria.

Now, after two years of hectoring the world about the need to unlawfully depose the president of Syria, France began surveillance flights over Bashar al-Assad’s country on September 8, 2015. On September 27, the Armée de l’Air began bombing what was left of Syria.

On November 13, 2015, shadowy but somehow known figures shot up and blew up various sites in Paris.

In response, François Hollande, French President, declared a state of emergency, putting 5,000 soldiers onto the streets of Paris. Additionally, he announced the hiring of thousands more policemen as well as plans to cancel the French citizenship of dual nationals thought to engage in suspicious activity. Hollande also planned to increase domestic surveillance. He instituted numerous, broad dragnets combined with wide-ranging searches without probable cause. The President also banned large public protests and gatherings, seemingly abandoning Liberté and Egalité in the name of Securité.

Government officials both in Europe and the U.S. (particularly John Brennan, CIA Director) are now demanding the end of any kind of encryption that citizens can use. Claiming that it thwarts official surveillance and supposedly aids “fanatics”, various spokesmen assert that this attack on civil liberties will aid in preventing “terrorism”. There are now calls to “check” travelers at airports. (To date, most “terrorism” has been government sponsored, with America’s drone attacks and Arab-Afghan Legion being in the forefront.)

It’s past time to ask some hard questions. Who’s planning this? Why? Was the proposed attack on the Hannover football stadium, November 17, a real event or was it another, carefully calculated undertaking to keep the fear alive and justify more assaults on peoples’ rights? While this was happening, we had a running online commentary from a German friend watching this unfold in real time. She repeatedly noted that genuine information and hard facts were few and far between. In another email, our contact stated that Germany is now panicking, with every misplaced suitcase being a security risk. Police sirens are now part of the sound of city life, she said.

Moreover, on Sunday, November 22, the Washington Post reported the previous day’s shut down of Brussels, capital of Belgium and the EU and the site of NATO headquarters. After the government announced a “serious and imminent” threat against the capital, the subway closed, department stores and restaurants were shuttered, and concerts canceled. According to a Belgian contact, Brussels was almost a ghost town. The populace stayed indoors, and the streets were full of soldiers, regular police, and a federal counterterrorism unit, she said. Additionally, she told us that these forces had increased three times and the country was at its highest state of alert, Level 4. As a result, the people don’t know what to do. It’s as if the country were at war, she added. She also noted that many Belgians are referring to this as “their” 9/11.

Coincidence? The journalist Sarah McClendon claimed such things don’t exist.

The concept of terrorists everywhere has already taken root in the United States. Are the Paris attacks, the Hannover story, and the Brussels closure an effort to spread this concept among the far more realistic and skeptical Europeans?

Regrettably, it seems so.


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Articles by: J. Michael Springmann

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