Suspect in Paris metro stabbings transferred to psychiatric hospital

France 24

The suspect in the stabbing of three women on the Paris metro has been moved to a psychiatric hospital after being released from custody, prosecutors announced Saturday. The 25-year-old man is accused of attacking the victims at separate locations along the Line 3 metro track. The victims' injuries are not life-threatening.

The suspect in the stabbing of three women in the Paris metro was released from custody and moved to a psychiatric hospital, prosecutors said on Saturday.

The man was arrested suspected of stabbing three women in the Paris metro on Friday as the capital's end-of-year festivities were in full swing.

The three victims were attacked at three different locations along the Line 3 metro track that runs across central Paris. They were injured, but not critically.

Continued police custody was not appropriate for the suspect because it is "considered incompatible with the state of his health", the prosecutors' office said.

Police had used surveillance-camera footage and mobile-tracking tools to locate the 25-year-old suspect in the Val d'Oise region north of Paris.

Transport police had opened an investigation into attempted homicide and assault with a weapon.

The interior ministry said the man was a Malian citizen imprisoned in January 2024 for aggravated theft and sexual assault. He had been required to leave France after being released in July.

The man had been placed in an administrative detention centre but failure to obtain a consular travel document required for his deportation had meant he was released after 90 days, as required by law, the statement said.

Interior Minister Laurent Nunez last week called for "maximum vigilance" during the festive season in a message to senior officials due to what he said was a "very high level of the terrorist threat" and "the risk of public disorder".

Nunez specifically asked for particular attention to be paid to security on public transport.

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Yellow Vests Return to Streets of Paris Enraged by Billions Donated to Rebuild Notre Dame

Common Dreams

"Victor Hugo thanks all the generous donors ready to save Notre Dame and proposes that they do the same thing with Les Miserables."

The contrast between the French government's and upper class's response to Monday's fire at Notre Dame and ongoing inaction to combat income inequality, was a primary driver of mass protests in Paris on Saturday.

The Gilets Jaunes, or Yellow Vests, staged their first major protest since large portions of the historic cathedral burned, apparently due to an electrical short-circuit, to call attention to the €1 billion ($1.1 billion) that the country's richest families have donated to help rebuild the church, months after the yellow vest movement began demonstrating against income inequality.

"You're there, looking at all these millions accumulating, after spending five months in the streets fighting social and fiscal injustice. It's breaking my heart," Ingrid Levavasseur, a founder of the movement, told the Associated Press.

France 24 noted that many members of the Yellow Vest movement—which began in rural areas last fall when many struggling French people demonstrated against high fuel costs and President Emanuel Macron's generous tax cuts for the rich, and has since gathered support from a number of ideological groups—mourned earlier this week along with the rest of the country as news of the heavily damaged 674-year-old church spread.

"Some of the activists said they cried in front of their TV sets as they watched the Gothic architectural masterpiece being consumed by flames Monday night and some even made small donations for the restoration of the iconic building, despite their struggles to make ends meet," reported the outlet.

But grief turned to anger for many, Levavasseur said, as the Yellow Vests watched donations pour in and Macron call for the church to be repaired within five years, exacerbating the perception of many that he is a "president for the rich."

"What happened at Notre-Dame is obviously a deplorable tragedy. But nobody died," Levavasseur told France 24. "I've heard someone speaking of national mourning. Are they out of their minds?" 

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Huge turnouts across France for 21st straight weekend of Yellow Vest protests

Comment: Largely ignored by mainstream media...

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RT

More than a dozen people have been arrested as Yellow Vest protesters flood the streets of French cities, marking the 21st consecutive week of mass demonstrations against President Emmanuel Macron and his government.

Some 21 protesters were arrested in Paris on Saturday morning, local media reported, citing police. Eric Drouet, one of the leaders of the Yellow Vests, was fined 135 euro ($150) for violating public protest laws. The ruling was slammed by his lawyer who said that "if Drouet wants to have a cup of coffee at the Champs-Elysees, he has an absolute right to do so."

Nevertheless, the rallies in the French capital and elsewhere remain largely peaceful. The Yellow Vests are singing songs and holding placards as they march to denounce the policies of Emmanuel Macron and demand his resignation. 

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Far-right protests break out across France as tensions reach boiling point

Comment: And of course, divisions, race riots and the stimulation of left-right extremism is what the PtB are looking for. Their Terrorism industry is designed to encourage exactly that. 

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Daily Express

 

A peaceful demonstration taking place in the centre of Lille, northern France, was interrupted by right-wingers appearing to belong to the Front National.

The unrest came as Front National leader Marine Le Pen declared French people “are no longer safe” and called for France to take back control of its borders.

    ‘I was lying in a grave’: Survivors share their stories of Paris...
    BREAKING: Paris terrorist was a Syrian refugee, says Greece...

Many people have taken to the streets across France today to show their solidarity with Paris despite the French government banning demonstrations from taking place for security reasons.

The protesters, armed with flares and with banners reading: “Throw out Islamists” pushed their way through the peaceful crowd and started chanting “Out the Muslims”.

Protesters hurled Islamophobic chants as police surrounded the tense scenes.  

Read More

 

Stock Prices of Weapons Manufacturers Soaring Since Paris Attack

The Intercept

The Paris attacks took place on Friday night. Since then, France’s president has vowed “war” on ISIS and today significantly escalated the country’s bombing campaign in Syria (France has been bombing ISIS in Iraq since last January, and began bombing the group in Syria in September).

Already this morning, as Aaron Cantú noticed, the stocks of the leading weapons manufacturers — what is usually referred to as the “defense industry” — have soared:


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Paris Attacks Reveal Bizarre ISIS Strategy and NATO's Strategy of Tension in Europe -- Sott.net

Joe Quinn
Sott.net

"It's so shocking. When Charlie Hebdo happened, it was a specific, targeted attack. But this time it's terrifying because it is just random, innocent people going about their lives. I know a lot of people in Paris - there is panic and disorder here, no one can understand what's going on. We are all in a state of complete shock."

So said Quentin, 27, who works for an online company in Paris, and whose oldest friend was shot multiple times at the Bataclan concert hall.

Terrorist attacks like these are never "random", at least not in the sense that they have no point. If they appear random, then that is undoubtedly part of the strategy that drives them. Governments and groups use terrorism to achieve a specific goal, so there is always a point. To understand what the point is, you just have to know who is really responsible.

We've already been told that "ISIS" has claimed responsibility for the Paris attacks, a claim partly backed up by the convenient discovery of a Syrian passport on the body of one of the "suicide bombers" (why do these terrorists always carry ID on their suicide missions?). But given that most ISIS terrorists in Syria are foreign mercenaries, this isn't really evidence of anything, except perhaps that some ISIS terrorists were hidden among the Syrian refugees that transited through Greece this summer.

We're told that ISIS aims to establish a caliphate over as much of the Levant as possible. But achieving that aim necessarily involves the removal of the Assad government, which Western powers have been lobbying for for several years. Over the past 4 years of the "Syrian revolution", and until about 6 weeks ago, the group had gone a long way toward attaining that goal, with the Syrian Arab Army seriously pressed and the Assad government's areas of control limited to small areas in an around Damascus. After 6 weeks of Russian airstrikes however, ISIS is now losing ground faster than a 3-legged donkey in a horse race, and their paymasters in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Washington DC can't seem to funnel enough money and weapons to them to make a difference. 

This is the key point, and it's no conspiracy theory: ISIS and other "Syrian rebels" are almost entirely the brainchildren of the US government and their allies in the Middle East. Without their support, as noted by many mainstream news outlets, ISIS would have long since disappeared from the pages of history. In a previous article, I outlined the geopolitical strategy being pursued by Washington and its Mid-East allies in funding a 'Syrian revolution' to overthrow the Assad government; it's all about oil and gas pipelines to Europe and Asia, and thwarting Russian expansion.

So given that "ISIS" is being effectively routed by Russian airstrikes and the Syrian Arab Army, why would the ISIS leadership choose to add to their woes by massacring French civilians and provoking the expected French military response against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. I mean, do these people actually enjoy having Western bombs, in addition to Russian ones, fall on their heads?

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CIA Director Brennan Met With French Security Chief Before Paris Attacks - Report

Citizens For Legitimate Government

 

The White House correspondent for French television network Canal+, Laura Haim, reported an interesting tidbit during a live report with MSNBC's Brian Williams Friday evening. Haim stated that the Central Intelligence Agency director, John O. Brennan, recently met with his counterpart, French intelligence (DGSE) director Bernard Bajolet.

The French equivalent of MI6 and CIA is the Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure. See: CIA-GW Intelligence Conference: Panel on The Shared 21st Century International Mission -- GW Center for Cyber and Homeland Security 29 Oct 2015 Panel on "The Shared 21st Century International Mission" featuring CIA Director John Brennan, former UK MI6 Chief John Sawers, Director of the French Directorate for External Security Bernard Bajolet, and former Israeli National Security Advisor Yaacov Amidror. Held as part of the 2nd Annual Ethos and Profession of Intelligence Conference, co-hosted by the Central Intelligence Agency and the George Washington University. Held on October 27, 2015. 

Also, see: "Le Moyen-Orient d'avant ne reviendra pas" 28 octobre 2015 Le chef du renseignement extérieur français, Bernard Bajolet, a laissé entendre que des pays comme l'Irak ou la Syrie ne retrouveraient jamais leur ancienne physionomie. "Le Moyen-Orient que nous avons connu est fini et je doute qu'il revienne", a déclaré, en anglais, le directeur de la DGSE (Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure), dans une conférence mardi sur le renseignement à laquelle participait également le directeur de la CIA John Brennan.

Pepe Escobar on the Paris attacks: Who profits?

Pepe Escobar
Facebook

There's no evidence this is a false flag - at least for now. What this seems to be proving is that Daesh is a certified pro ops with badass connections.

Scouring a ton of reports, I found a Danish citizen describing one of the attackers to a Paris café; ultra-pro, black-clad head to toe, AK-47, very well trained. These are not your usual al-Zawahiri underwear bombers; these are precision killers. This one left the scene undisturbed, and contrary to French police, may not have been captured. He wore no suicide vest.

French intel swears they are monitoring at least 200 nationals who came back from "Syraq". Talk about a lousy job. Paris is hyper-policed. The mind boggles thinking of at least 8 jihadis promenading at will on a Friday night dressed as pro killers.

For me, this is also personal. Jihad came to my hood in Paris. I left Paris last week on my usual commute back to Asia. I have always mocked Fox News describing my hood as a "no-go" area - obviously for the wrong/stupid reasons.

They picked a small Cambodian restaurant, cheap and cozy, where the habitués are young and relatively hip. This means the quartier may have been carefully researched for months.
They picked a mix of heavily symbolic venues.

You have a France-German match witnessed by the President in a stadium where all barriers - ethnic, religious - dissolve, a true symbol of multiculturalism.

You have a gig by an American band in a concert hall filled with young people.

You have your average, cool, neighborhood cafés in the 10eme and 11eme, young, hip, secular, bobo Paris hoods.

This points to a calibrated conceptual spectrum - carefully mapped out by French insiders; perhaps those "Syraq" returnees.

This also points to a monumental fail by French intel and the Ministry of Interior.

There are so many accumulated reasons for blowback; overt and covert discrimination against Muslims, leading them to feel like second-hand citizens; France's coddling of "moderate rebels"; Sarko The First and General Hollande's wars on Libya and Mali; the meek bombing raids in Syria; France as NATO enforcers.

Timing: crucial. Just as the US/Brits announce they "may" have evaporated with Jihad John. And a few hours before the Vienna talks are supposed to come up with an official Top Ten terrorist list in Syria (the subject of my current article on Asia Times.)

Cui bono?  

Paris attacks: Islamic State says killings were response to Syria strikes

Comment: Since Russia has been successfully wiping out ISIS targets in Syria terror attacks against France makes no sense. Unless that is you are trying to re-create a narrative that the US-NATO has been bombing ISIS - which it hasn't.  France has locked down it's borders and allowed Parisian authorities to impose curfews if need be. Looks like this country is the first to begin a widespread "New Order" under the pretext of state-sponsored terror. Friday the 13th indeed.

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The Guardian

• Statement claiming to be from terror group says France is ‘top target’
• Attacks were retaliation for France’s bombing in Syria, Isis says
• Hollande says attacks killed 127; 200 more were injured, 99 critically
• Eight terrorists killed, seven by detonating suicide belts
• Read the latest summary

Joe Quinn: 'Paris terror attack serves same old Western imperial agenda for world domination'

Sott Media

Charlie Hebdo - The Hidden Agenda Exposed

“Je Suis CIA”

Comment: Don't forget Mossad Larry...Their sticky fingers were all over the event.

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Larry Chin
Global Research


Since 9/11, the imperial playbook has consisted of a favorite and time-tested tactic: the false flag operation.

Carry out or facilitate a spectacular atrocity. Blame it on the enemy of choice. Issue a lie-infested official narrative, and have the corporate media repeat the lie. Rile up ignorant militant crowds, stoke the hatred, and war-mongering imperial policy planners and their criminal functionaries get what they want: war with the public stamp of approval.

Here we are again.

The Charlie Hebdo incident is being sold as “the French 9/11”. It certainly is, in all of the most tragic ways: France, like the United States on 9/11, has been used. The masses of the world have been deceived, and march in lockstep to NATO’s drumbeat again.

All signs lead from French intelligence back to Washington—and Langley, Virginia—directly and indirectly. Red herrings and deceptions comprise the official narrative.

The Al-Qaeda narrative, the classic CIA deception, gets fresh facelift. The fact that Al-Qaeda is CIA-created Anglo-American military-intelligence is ignored. The agenda behind the ISIS war—a massive and elaborate regional CIA false flag operation—registers even less.

The Charlie Hebdo terrorists have ties to Anglo-American intelligence and the Pentagon that the masses do not bother to think about. They are also tied to the (conveniently dead) 9/11-connected Al-Qaeda mastermind/CIA military-intelligence asset Anwar Al-Awlaki.

These and other obvious connections to Washington and the CIA do not raise alarm bells among the ardent ones waving Je Suis Charlie signs (which “magically” appeared, and seem to have been mass-produced in advance).

Signs of an inside job and a still unfolding cover-up are significant, from pristine, undamaged passports found on scene to the convenient suicide of Helric Fredou, the Paris police commissioner in charge of the Hebdo investigation.

The Kouachi brothers and Amedy Coulibaly were not only well known by French authorities, French intelligence and the CIA. The Kouachis were tracked and monitored—guided—over the course of many years, arrested many times, yet were allowed to continue training and plotting with fellow Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, etc. These are telltale signs of a guided military-intelligence operation. A blatantly obvious terror cell, known to authorities, “drops out of sight”, and then set loose at an appropriate moment. And then executed.

None of these things, which alarm seasoned observers, registers among the emotional masses; the lemmings who willfully refuse to address its real source: the architects of Anglo-American war policy.

Only the NATO war agenda benefits from any of this.

“France’s 9/11” is more accurately France’s latest Operation Gladio. As noted by Paul Craig Roberts, there is a reason why the Charlie Hebdo attacks took place when it did:

France is suffering from the Washington-imposed sanctions against Russia. Shipyards are impacted from being unable to deliver Russian orders due to France’s vassalage status to Washington, and other aspects of the French economy are being adversely impacted by sanctions that Washington forced its NATO puppet states to apply to Russia.

This week the French president said that the sanctions against Russia should end (so did the German vice-chancellor).

This is too much foreign policy independence on France’s part for Washington. Has Washington resurrected “Operation Gladio,” which consisted of CIA bombing attacks against Europeans during the post-WW II era that Washington blamed on communists and used to destroy communist influence in European elections? Just as the world was led to believe that communists were behind Operation Gladio’s terrorist attacks, Muslims are blamed for the attacks on the French satirical magazine.

Now France is militarized, just as the US was in the wake of 9/11. And the French right-wing has newfound cache.

The hostile takeover of the public mind

Notice that the last two false flag operations in recent months—the false flagging of North Korea over Sony and the film The Interview, and the Charlie Hebdo deception—both revolve around the ideas of “free speech” and “free expression”.

This is a phantom battle, choreographed by those who could not care less for “freedoms”. In fact, the masses are being manipulated towards supporting war and mass murder, and police state agendas that specifically curtail freedoms.

What more creative way to take away freedoms than to make people give them up voluntarily?

The hordes of American citizens that supported the “war on terrorism” to “defend freedom” got the Patriot Act, which gutted what liberties they had; the Constitution and the Bill of Rights will not be restored. This process continues all over the world. Ask the average uninformed French citizen today suffering from post-traumatic stress, and they will gladly give up their rights, anything so that “terrorists” are stopped.

Note how the powers that be have taken to inserting their pro-war messages even more forcefully where the ignorant public spends the majority of its time: in popular entertainment. In Hollywood products, in their cartoons, in their magazines, in their celebrities.

Let George Clooney, Seth Rogen and James Franco transmit the messages of war for the CIA and the Pentagon.

Weaponize stupid movies like The Interview and crude magazines like Charlie Hebdo, and watch people become bloodthirsty, vengeful, unthinking and war-loving.

It is the CIA’s ongoing mission to plant its assets and its propaganda into the media and the arts, controlling the perception of culture as well as framing all debate. It is making a huge push at the moment, relishing the speed and effectiveness of technology and social media.

Hundreds and thousands of innocent lives have been lost in this endless, brutal and criminal war. Yet its architects and functionaries remain untouched.

Je Suis Langley

No Anglo-American war of conquest, no Charlie Hebdo massacre.
No CIA, no Militant Islam, no Al-Qaeda, no ISIS, no Charlie Hebdo massacre.
No 9/11, no “war on terrorism”, no ISIS deception, no Charlie Hebdo massacre.
No war against Russia, no Charlie Hebdo massacre.

Je Suis Charlie? No.

To the naïve ones who believe the lies and march on the streets carrying the signs, you are the victims, the gullible, the dupes, the pawns.

Tu es CIA.

Tu es NATO.

Paris: March of the hypocrites

Justin Raimondo
Antiwar.com
Mon, 12 Jan 2015

It was only natural that "world leaders" would place themselves at the head of the Paris "unity" demonstration held to express outrage at the vicious Charlie Hebdo murders. Daniel Wickham, a student at the London School of Economics, compiled a list of the enemies of free speech who elbowed their way to the head of the march. Most hypocritical of all are the French themselves, who have laws against "hate speech" which are only selectively enforced and which have been used against the editors of Charlie Hebdo in the past. This cognitive dissonance was eloquently expressed by one Frenchman who carried a sign saying: "I'm marching but I'm conscious of the confusion and hypocrisy of the situation."

That politicians would steal the spotlight and turn the sincere outrage of millions into an opportunity for self-advertisement is hardly surprising. Sincerity has its uses, however, and these will become apparent in the days and weeks to come. Those marchers will soon be cheering their soldiers as they go marching off to war, with "Je suis Charlie" inscribed on their banners.

The target? Syria, where "links" have been found between the Paris attacks and the self-proclaimed "Caliphate"of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The New York Times reports:

Amedy Coulibaly, one of the three gunman responsible for the terrorist attacks in France last week, produced a video that appeared online on Sunday, two days after his death, showing him sitting below the flag of the Islamic State militant group and pledging allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the organization's leader.

If you read the transcript of the video it reads almost like a script prepared by our biggest warmongers. It takes the form of an interview, with the invisible interviewer represented by words on a screen and Coulibaly answering:

Which group are you linked to and do you have an Emir?

Coulibaly: 'I am pledging my allegiance to the Caliph of the Muslims, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. I have made a declaration of allegiance to the Caliph and the declaration of a Caliphate.'

The Islamic State has been trying to provoke a major military response from the Western powers for months now, executing American journalists and aid workers and posting videos of the executions on the Internet, but so far the US has reacted with caution. So they resorted to attacking the West on its own soil, and now the chorus of voices calling for an all-out invasion of Syria will become deafening, drowning out all reason. And Coulibaly dots all the i's and crosses the t's:

Are you linked to the brothers who attacked Charlie Hebdo?

Coulibaly: 'We are a team, in league together. I am with the team who did Charlie Hebdo. I went out a little against the police too. So that's that. We did some things together, some things separately to have most impact. [Sound of TV news in the background in which newsreader can be clearly heard talking about the attacks].

'We have managed to be synchronized together, to come out at the same time, because we are close in the same business.'

It's all so pat, an engraved invitation: Come and get us!

From his permanent pulpit on the Sunday morning TV talk-fest, Senator John McCain declared his intention to oblige them. Railing against the failure of the United States to defeat ISIS, McCain is asked by journalist Gloria Borger what exactly he has in mind, and his response is a preview of things to come:

ISIS right now is winning. And we need to go after them, and we need to have more boots on the ground. We need to understand that Syria and Iraq are the same. We need to arm the Free Syrian Army. We need a no-fly zone, which many of us have been calling for, for years, and a coherent strategy that can be presented to the Congress, because they're going to be wanting an authorization for the use of military force.

There's something more than a little counterintuitive about McCain's call for a no-fly zone: after all, ISIS doesn't have an air force, while the most effective counterweight to them - the Syrian government - does indeed. If McCain's concern is ISIS, then why go after Bashar al-Assad? And as for arming the Syrian Free Army: those arms are more than likely to show up in the hands of ISIS. As Debka File reports:

The Syrian rebel militia Al Yarmouk Shuhada Brigades, backed and trained for two years by US officers, mostly CIA experts, in Jordan, and supported by the Israeli army, has abruptly dumped these sponsors and joined up with the Islamic State in Iraq.

If McCain has his way, the next terrorist attackers who show up in the streets of a Western city are more than likely to have been trained by our very own CIA. A purer form of "blowback" could hardly be imagined.

In a more general sense, the principle of "blowback" operates in the terrorists' favor as the US and its allies get more deeply involved in Syria and Iraq: if the Western powers follow McCain's advice, jihadists will stream from Europe to the region in even greater numbers and the legitimacy of the "Caliphate" in the eyes of Muslims everywhere is increased. McCain and his fellow interventionists have a symbiotic relationship with the terrorists: both are legitimized on the home front by the actions of the other.

ISIS was itself birthed in the chaos that accompanied our invasion and conquest of Iraq, and McCain and the War Party are intent on duplicating that Orc factory in the territory of Syria.

So how does this policy of creating and succoring the very threats they rail against benefit the leaders of the West?

Without the threat of terrorism, our foreign policy of perpetual war would have zero public support. Without the excuse of having to monitor the ever-escalating activities of the Coulibalys of this world, the very idea that the government has the "right" to scoop up our communications and store them in a giant facility out in the Utah desert would be dismissed as a dystopian fantasy.

But then again, that's the world we live in, in the year 2015: a dystopia so absurd that no writer, prior to September 11, 2001, would have dared put it into print, either as fiction or speculative nonfiction.

And so the hypocrites march on, right over a cliff and into an abyss of their own making.

Terrorism as an Instrument of Imperial Conquest. From Afghanistan to Syria, America Supports Al Qaeda

“At last the world knows America as the savior of the world!”

– President Woodrow Wilson, Paris Peace Conference, 1919

The horrors reported each day from Syria and Iraq are enough to make one cry; in particular, the atrocities carried out by the al-Qaeda types: floggings; beheadings; playing soccer with the heads; cutting open dead bodies to remove organs just for mockery; suicide bombers, car bombs, the ground littered with human body parts; countless young children traumatized for life; the imposition of sharia law, including bans on music … What century are we living in? What millennium? What world?

People occasionally write to me that my unwavering antagonism toward American foreign policy is misplaced; that as awful as Washington’s Museum of Horrors is, al-Qaeda is worse and the world needs the United States to combat the awful jihadists.

“Let me tell you about the very rich,” F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote. “They are different from you and me.”

And let me tell you about American leaders. In power, they don’t think the way you and I do. They don’t feel the way you and I do. They have supported “awful jihadists” and their moral equivalents for decades. Let’s begin in 1979 in Afghanistan, where the Moujahedeen (“holy warriors”) were in battle against a secular, progressive government supported by the Soviet Union; a “favorite tactic” of the Moujahedeen was “to torture victims [often Russians] by first cutting off their nose, ears, and genitals, then removing one slice of skin after another”, producing “a slow, very painful death”.

With America’s massive and indispensable military backing in the 1980s, Afghanistan’s last secular government (bringing women into the 20th century) was overthrown, and out of the victorious Moujahedeen arose al Qaeda.

During this same period the United States was supporting the infamous Khmer Rouge of Cambodia; yes, the same charming lads of Pol Pot and The Killing Fields.

President Carter’s National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, was a leading force behind the US support of both the Moujahedeen and the Khmer Rouge. What does that tell you about that American leader? Or Jimmy Carter – an inspiration out of office, but a rather different person in the White House? Or Nobel Peace Laureate Barack Obama, who chose Brzezinski as one of his advisers?

Another proud example of the United States fighting the awful jihadists is Kosovo, an overwhelmingly Muslim province of Serbia. The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) began an armed conflict with Belgrade in the early 1990s to split Kosovo from Serbia. The KLA was considered a terrorist organization by the US, the UK and France for years, with numerous reports of the KLA having contact with al-Qaeda, getting arms from them, having its militants trained in al-Qaeda camps in Pakistan, and even having members of al-Qaeda in KLA ranks fighting against Serbia.But Washington’s imperialists, more concerned about dealing a blow to Serbia, “the last communist government in Europe”, supported the KLA.
The KLA have been known for their torture and trafficking in women, heroin, and human body parts (sic).The United States has naturally been pushing for Kosovo’s membership in NATO and the European Union.

More recently the US has supported awful jihadists in Libya and Syria, with awful consequences.

It would, moreover, be difficult to name a single brutal dictatorship of the second half of the 20th Century that was not supported by the United States; not only supported, but often put into power and kept in power against the wishes of the population. And in recent years as well, Washington has supported very repressive governments, such as Saudi Arabia, Honduras, Indonesia, Egypt, Colombia, Qatar, and Israel.

Not exactly the grand savior our sad old world is yearning for. (Oh, did I mention that Washington’s policies create a never-ending supply of terrorists?)
And what do American leaders think of their own record? Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was probably speaking for the whole private club when she wrote that in the pursuit of its national security the United States no longer needed to be guided by “notions of international law and norms” or “institutions like the United Nations” because America was “on the right side of history.”

If you’ve never done anything you wouldn’t want the government to know about, you should re-examine your life choices.

“The idea is to build an antiterrorist global environment,” a senior American defense official said in 2003, “so that in 20 to 30 years, terrorism will be like slave-trading, completely discredited.”

One must wonder: When will the dropping of bombs on innocent civilians by the United States, and invading and occupying their country become completely discredited? When will the use of depleted uranium, cluster bombs, CIA torture renditions, and round-the-world, round-the-clock surveillance become things that even men like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Barack Obama, and John Brennan will be too embarrassed to defend?

Last month, a former National Security Agency official told the Washington Post that the Agency’s workers are polishing up their résumés and asking that they be cleared – removing any material linked to classified programs – so they can be sent out to potential employers. He noted that one employee who processes the résumés said, “I’ve never seen so many résumés that people want to have cleared in my life.”

Morale is “bad overall”, said another former official. “The news – the Snowden disclosures – it questions the integrity of the NSA workforce,” he said. “It’s become very public and very personal. Literally, neighbors are asking people, ‘Why are you spying on Grandma?’ And we aren’t. People are feeling bad, beaten down.”

President Obama was recently moved to declare that he would be proposing “some self-restraint on the NSA” and “some reforms that can give people more confidence.” He also said “In some ways, the technology and the budgets and the capacity [at NSA] have outstripped the constraints. And we’ve got to rebuild those in the same way that we’re having to do on a whole series of capacities … [such as] drone operations.”

Well, dear readers and comrades, we shall see. But if you’re looking for a glimmer of hope to begin a new year, you may as well try grabbing onto these little offerings. When the American Empire crumbles, abroad and at home, as one day it must, Edward Snowden’s courageous actions may well be seen as one of the key steps along that road. I’ve long maintained that only the American people have the power to stop The Imperial Machine – the monster that eats the world’s environment, screws up its economies, and spews violence on every continent. And for that to happen the American people have to lose their deep-seated, quasi-religious belief in “American Exceptionalism”. For many, what they’ve been forced to learn the past six months has undoubtedly worn deep holes into the protective armor that has surrounded their hearts and minds since childhood.

A surprising and exhilarating example of one of these holes in the armor is the New Year’s day editorial in the New York Times that is now well known. Entitled “Edward Snowden, Whistle-blower” – itself a legitimation of his actions – its key part says: “Considering the enormous value of the information he has revealed, and the abuses he has exposed, Mr. Snowden deserves better than a life of permanent exile, fear and flight. He may have committed a crime to do so, but he has done his country a great service.”

The president has been moved to appoint a committee to study NSA abuses. This of course is a standard bureaucratic maneuver to keep critics at bay. But the committee – Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies – did come up with a few unexpected recommendations in its report presented December 13, the most interesting of which perhaps are these two:

“Governments should not use surveillance to steal industry secrets to advantage their domestic industry.”
“Governments should not use their offensive cyber capabilities to change the amounts held in financial accounts or otherwise manipulate the financial systems.”

The first recommendation refers to a practice, though certainly despicable, that is something the United States has been doing, and lying about, for decades.Just this past September, James Clapper, Director of US National Intelligence, declared: “What we do not do, as we have said many times, is use our foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies.”

Clapper is the same gentleman who told Congress in March that the NSA does not intentionally collect any kind of data on millions of Americans; and, when subsequently challenged on this remark, declared: “I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful, manner by saying ‘no’.”

The second recommendation had not been revealed before, in a Snowden document or from any other source.

“That was a strangely specific recommendation for something nobody was talking about,” observed the director of a government transparency group.

ABC News reported that “A spokesperson for the NSA declined to comment on the issue of bank account hacking, and a representative for U.S. Cyber Command did not immediately return an emailed request for comment.”

Manipulating bank records is about as petty and dishonorable as a superpower can behave, and could conceivably, eventually, lead to the end of the NSA as we’ve all come to know and love it. On the other hand, the Agency no doubt holds some very embarrassing information about anyone in a position to do them harm.

The bombing of Flight 103 – Case closed?

When the 25th anniversary of the 1988 bombing of PanAm Flight 103 occurred on December 21 I was fully expecting the usual repetitions of the false accusation against Libya and Moammar Gaddafi as being responsible for the act which took the lives of 270 people over and in Lockerbie, Scotland. But much to my surprise, mingled with such, there were a rash of comments skeptical of the official British-US version, made by various people in Scotland and elsewhere, including by the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom and Libya.

In a joint statement the three governments said they were determined to unearth the truth behind the attack. “We want all those responsible for this brutal act of terrorism brought to justice, and to understand why it was committed”, they declared.

Remarkable. In 1991, the United States indicted a Libyan named Adelbaset al-Megrahi. He was eventually found guilty of being the sole perpetrator of the crime, kept in prison for many years, and finally released in 2009 when he had terminal cancer, allegedly for humanitarian reasons, although an acute smell of oil could be detected. And now they speak of bringing to justice “those responsible for this brutal act of terrorism”.

The 1988 crime was actually organized by Iran in retaliation for the American shooting down of an Iranian passenger plane in July of the same year, which took the lives of 290 people. It was carried out by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC), a 1968 breakaway from a component of the Palestine Liberation Organization, with some help from Syria. And this version was very widely accepted in the Western world, in government and media circles. Until the US buildup to the Gulf War came along in 1990 and the support of Iran and Syria was needed. Then, suddenly, we were told that it was Libya behind the crime.

If the US and UK now wish to return to Iran, and perhaps Syria, as the culprits, they will have a lot of explaining to do about their previous lie. But these two governments always have a lot of explaining to do. They’re good at it. And the great bulk of their indoctrinated citizens, with little resistance, will accept the new/old party line, and their mainstream media will effortlessly switch back to the old/new official version, since Iran and Syria are at the top of the current list of Bad Guys. (The PFLP-GC has been quiescent for some time and may scarcely exist.)

If you’re confused by all this, I suggest that you start by reading my detailed article on the history of this case, written in 2001 but still very informative and relevant. You may be rather surprised.

The UK, US and Libyan governments have now announced that they will co-operate to reveal “the full facts” of the Lockerbie bombing. And Robert Mueller, the former head of the FBI, said he believes more people will be charged. This could be very interesting.

Notes

1. Washington Post May 11, 1979; New York Times, April 13 1979
2. William Blum, “Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower” (2005), chapter 10
3. RT TV (Russia Today, Moscow), May 4, 2012
4. Associated Press, December 14, 2010
5. Foreign Affairs (Council on Foreign Relations), January/February 2000 issue
6. New York Times, January 17, 2003
7. Washington Post, December 7, 2013
8. Washington Post, December 18, 2013
9. Washington Post, December 7, 2013
10. “Liberty and Security in a Changing World”, p.221
11. See Anti-Empire Report, #118, June 26, 2013, second part
12. Statement by Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper on Allegations of Economic Espionage, September 8, 2013
13. NBC News, June 9, 2013
14. Kel McLanahan, executive director of National Security Counselors, speaking to ABC News Radio, December 23, 2013
15. ABC News Radio, December 23, 2013
16. Reuters news agency, December 22, 2013

French group calls for Spain-style street protests

(Reuters) - A French group has called for a large demonstration in Paris this weekend to show solidarity with tens of thousands of youth protesters demonstrating against austerity programs in Spain.

Eyes will be on France this week when President Nicolas Sarkozy hosts world leaders in the seaside town of Deauville for a meeting of the Group of Eight industrialized countries. Such meetings are often the target of anti-globalization protests.

In Spain, tens of thousands of demonstrators, angry over unemployment and austerity measures, packed Madrid's Puerta del Sol square all last week ahead of local elections, overshadowing the last few days of campaigning. The ruling Socialists suffered a major loss at the polls on Sunday. [nLDE74M02A]

Solidarity with "los indignados" (the indignant) in Madrid has already inspired several dozen French youths to spend nights camped out at the Place de la Bastille, the Paris square where a jail was torn down during the 1789 French Revolution.

Protesters say demonstrations spreading this year through the Arab world have crossed the Mediterranean. They describe the fight in Spain as a European struggle against governments who favor the interests of financial institutions.

"They take money, we'll take the street," a French group named after the Spanish "Real Democracy Now" movement said on its website. "We're being strangled by these austerity plans that are multiplying throughout Europe."

Youth unemployment in France, at about 20 percent, is well below Spain's level of 45 percent, but opinion polls suggest the French are angry at sliding purchasing power as stagnant wages fail to keep up with inflation.