On another thread I predicted that all the talk about personal freedom in relation to the Charlie Hebdo killings would be quickly followed by radical government moves to crush civil and human rights. The political background is Europe's deepening economic crisis and the political crisis for the establishment as electorates in Greece and elsewhere veer left, rejecting neo-liberal stagnation and inequality.
The week before the Charlie Hebdo attack, Hollande had already got thousands of troops and police out onto the streets on the pretext of a car ramming incident in Paris. . http://www.newsweek.com/55000-office...attacks-295954
Thousands of troops are being brought onto the streets in the UK, Belgian and France. This is without precedent.
New laws and increased surveillance are proposed in France. The French government has also voted for increased airstrikes on Iraq.
"A Odoxa poll published by Le Parisien today showed that 76 percent of the French favor exceptional security measures against terrorism even if that could limit freedom. "
In Spain, Rahoy's government is using the Paris attacks to justify a new laws criminalising access to websites deemed pro-terror and allowing the gathering of data on airline passengers - on top of the deeply unpopular new anti-demonstration "gag law".
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015.../spai-j17.html
http://www.yorktonthisweek.com/franc...road-1.1728841
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30774114
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30774114
As there has been an alleged Greek connection with alleged Islamicist cell members, will there be troops on the streets leading up to the Greek General Elections in the coming week ?
The slogan "we are not afraid" has been pushed aside by news media and governments in favour of "be very afraid".
And who are the real culprits? In all the reporting on returning fighters who have been in Syria, will there be mention that these fighters were publicly endorsed and openly funded by the US, with European support ? Unlikely, as all the emphasis is on emergency measures involving troops.
Belgium is deploying more troops on its streets to counter a heightened terror threat as the fallout from last week’s attacks in France led to arrests across Europe and fueled protests in several African countries.
Security forces have arrested at least 28 people across the continent after attacks in Paris last week by Islamist gunmen and a deadly police raid on Thursday in the eastern Belgian town of Verviers. The threat is an “urgent and very serious challenge,” Europol Director Rob Wainwright told Sky News today.
As many as 300 soldiers will be deployed in Belgium starting today, Prime Minister Charles Michel said in a statement. The troops will be deployed in Brussels and Antwerp as well as Verviers and other locations if needed, protecting potential targets such as Jewish neighborhoods and embassies.
... Read Morehttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-0...rom-syria.html“There’s always been jihadi activity within Belgium,” said Pieter Van Ostaeyen, an independent historian who studies Belgian Islamists. “It doesn’t surprise me that right now we are facing this high number of Belgians going over to Syria and Iraq to fight.” The trend started in the late nineties, with fighters returning from wars in Algeria and Afghanistan, and may be linked with economic and social disenfranchisement, he said.
It seems likely that the events in France will be used to achieve the kind of militarisation of the public realm that has taken place in the US, with the Patriot Act and tooling up of the police into a military force, equipped with tanks and heavy weapons. Racial tensions are being stoked in the States to justify similar police state "tooling up". This American left blog makes the connection with the last weeks events in Europe.
http://www.greanvillepost.com/2015/0...ne-it-and-why/
Reporting of alleged Islamication of western based people of moslem background constantly and slanderously alleges that it is poor / working class moslems that are the basis of so-called jihadist gangs and organisations. In fact most migrant jihadist fighters are young graduates, and are middle / small business class. The constant implication that it is working class Muslims that provide most recruits to jihadism is a slur against the over 80% of French moslem background who are pro secularlsation and are politically socialist. It is also indication as to who will be the real targets of police/military state measures now being introduced.
"Strategy of Tension" was the term applied in Italy to measures that were taken at US behest to block the rise of the Italian CP to government in the early 1970s -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_of_tension
Whether the Paris attacks were or were not at any level instigated by covert agencies or whether the attacks are the result of "blow back" is not the issue here. The events in Paris are being used to the full as an opportunity to reduce civil rights and to remind us of the armed power of the State. By any standards, to bring troops onto the streets across Europe is a measure will that have a dampening affect on political opposition and tend to pressurise people to accept restrictions on their civil rights.General Gianadelio Maletti, commander of the counter-intelligence section of the Italian military intelligence service from 1971 to 1975, stated that his men in the region of Venice discovered a rightwing terrorist cell that was supplied military explosives from Germany, and he alleged that US intelligence services instigated and abetted rightwing terrorism in Italy during the 1970s.[6]
The fear of an imminent second stage economic collapse in Europe, as deflation makes trillions of debt unrepayable, is most likely the driving force of these measures. Even ahead of the Greek elections, two Greek banks have asked for emergency funding. Politically, the split between Germany and the rest in the EU renders it incapable of any coherent approach preventing to the imminent crisis. Supposed European QE it seems is now proposed to be by individual nation states, rather than the ECB: it is hard to envisage how that is possible to "ring fence" quantitative easing (money printing) within nation states without an end to the Euro.
Defence of democratic rights - not of rights to incite race and religious hatred - and defence of, and solidarity with, working class muslims in France and across Europe,- along with a resounding vote for the left in the Greek elections, is the best reply to these moves by European governments, which are co-ordinated at a high level .
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