Paris bombings

[Magda Hassan]

All witnesses reported that they spoke in PERFECT ENGLISH - to them [the hostages] and among themselves! That is very strange, indeed!...but don't expect it to be explored!....::

I read that too. Odd particularly since Mali is a former French therefore francophone colony not English.
I also read that France was sending special forces troops to respond to this event but that there was some sort of commando force going through the hotel floor to floor to capture the terrorists and there was a reference to US military not local Mali police or military doing this. I know the US are all over Africa especially where the Chinese are doing business. Who ever they were they didn't get them all any way.

[Magda Hassan]

Paris terrorists operated "in plain sight"

21 November 2015

Numerous media reports over the past several days have revealed that most of the Islamists who engaged in the suicide attacks in Paris that killed 130 people, as well as the reputed organizer of the attacks, were known to the French and Belgian security services well before November 13. But no intelligence or police agency took action against them to prevent the murderous rampage.
Remarkably, these accounts come from American media outlets that themselves have close ties to the intelligence agenciesthe New York Times, the Washington Post, CNNas well as the official Voice of America and the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
In an accompanying editorial, the New York Times noted, "Most of the men who carried out the Paris attacks were already on the radar of intelligence officials in France and Belgium, where several of the attackers lived only hundreds of yards from the main police station, in a neighborhood known as a haven for extremists."
The Washington Post summed up the situation as follows: "Belgian authorities had close contact with some of the men believed to be behind the bloody terrorist attacks in Paris last week, a pattern that raises questions about how the suspects could slip through the fingers of law enforcement officials."
Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Senate's second-ranking Democrat, said that several of the Paris attackers were on no-fly lists, indicating they were well-known to US intelligence as well.
Most of the accounts note that the US, Turkey and Iraq all warned France in advance of the November 13 attacks of plots under way, while Turkey actually supplied the name of one of the operatives involved, Ismael Omar Mostefai, who was himself known to the French authorities from 2010. Mostefai traveled to Syria in 2013 despite having a "fiche S," a police dossier marking him as a security concern, and returned to France the following year. He was one of the gunmen who massacred nearly 100 people at the Bataclan theater before killing himself.
Another gunman at the Bataclan, Samy Amimour, was detained by French police in October 2012 on charges of terrorist conspiracy. According to the Times: "Suspecting he was planning to go to Yemen to fight, the authorities confiscated his passport and placed him under judicial control, meaning he was barred from traveling and had to report regularly to the authorities. Nevertheless, a year later Mr. Amimour managed to make his way to Syria undetected."
The French daily Le Monde reported last December that Amimour was in monthly Skype contact with his family and that his father had traveled to Syria to try to convince him to return home. The police did not interview the father upon his return, and Amimour returned to Paris undisturbed sometime this year.
Bilal Hadfi, a suicide bomber at Le Stade de France, was known to Belgian authorities after a teacher in his class in a Brussels school reported his comments supporting the Charlie Hebdo massacre. He then went to Syria, a Justice Ministry spokeswoman told the Post, from where he posted comments on Twitter denouncing pro-Western forces as "infidels" and warning that the countries intervening in Syria "should no longer feel safe, not even in their dreams."
"We knew Hadfi had traveled to Syria and had come back," a Belgian police spokeswoman told the Post. After his return to Belgium, "For two weeks, the security services tapped the phone line of the house where he lived in Molenbeek," the newspaper reported. Hadfi was well known as an Islamist radical who had fought in Syria, appearing on lists maintained by a police advisory group and by a Belgian journalist. In November he drove to Paris and took part in the assault.
Ibrahim Abdeslam was one of the suicide bombers at a Paris café. He was also Belgian, and known to have attempted to reach Syria in February 2015, although he was reportedly detained and turned back by Turkish authorities. He was known to police as a longtime associate of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the top ISIS figure in Belgium. His young brother Salah, 26, who is believed to be the only surviving attacker, was stopped three times by French police while driving back from Paris to Belgium the night of November 13-14. Each time he was let go.
Then there is the case of the alleged principal organizer of the attacks, Abaaoud, who was killed in a shootout with French police in the early morning hours of November 19, along with an as yet unidentified man and a woman, his cousin. Abaaoud was a well-known public voice of ISIS, interviewed in the February issue of its online magazine Dabiq under the name Abu Umar al-Baljiki.
In the interview, as described by Voice of America, Abaaoud "boasted about how he could operate in plain sight in Belgium and never get caught." He added, "My name and picture were all over the news, yet I was able to stay in their homeland, plan operations against them, and leave safely when doing so became necessary." At one point he was stopped by police, but they let him go, supposedly not recognizing him. Yet he was so notorious that a Belgian court sentenced him to 20 years in prison, in absentia, for recruiting Belgian youth to fight for ISIS.
While Abaaoud attributed his seeming invisibility to divine intervention on the side of Islamic fundamentalists, there is a simpler explanation. During much of the time that Abaaoud was active in ISIS, the group was working as part of the anti-Assad campaign in Syria backed by the United States, France, Belgium and the other imperialist powers.
Until June 2014, when ISIS militants crossed the border into Iraq and seized control of Mosul, threatening the US-backed regime in Baghdad, the group's activities were tolerated, even encouraged. Even after Mosul, the US-backed "coalition" conducted a notably desultory bombing campaign, suggesting that ISIS was still considered a potential imperialist asset, at least in Syria.
This continues the pattern that goes back as far as the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington DC on September 11, 2001: the Islamic fundamentalist terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda, ISIS, and their innumerable offshoots, have their origins in the covert operations of imperialist intelligence agencies, particularly those of the United States.
Al Qaeda arose from the Arab forces involved in the US intervention to topple the Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan in the 1980s, while the war in Iraq created the forerunner of ISIS, and the US-backed campaign of subversion in Syria turned the group into a powerful force holding territory on both sides of the Iraq-Syria border.
There is another pattern as well: terrorist attacks undertaken by groups created and armed by the imperialists become the pretext for a further expansion of the powers of the national security state. In the wake of the Paris attacks, the intelligence services of the imperialist powers, and particularly the American CIA, NSA and FBI, have launched a furious campaign to profit from the atrocity.
Top US security officials have made a series of speeches blaming the latest terrorist outrage on the revelations of Edward Snowden, on built-in encryption provided by the manufacturers of smartphones and other communications equipment, and on the handful of legal restrictions on government spying.
The bogus character of these arguments is shown by examining the actual events in Paris. French police recovered one of the cellphones used by the attackers and found unencrypted text messages and GPS data that enabled them to locate Abaaoud and others who allegedly formed part of the support network for the attacks. There is no evidence that any of the attackers used encrypted communications, or that they needed to, given the effective green light they had for their operations.
It is not possible, with the limited information so far made available, to give a full and definitive account of what took place in Paris on November 13, 2015, let alone its origins in the murky world where intelligence operations intersect with Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.
Two conclusions are inescapable, however: (1) Official propaganda about this and other terrorist attacks, aimed at stampeding public opinion behind the state and the intelligence services, are based on half-truths and lies. (2) The imperialist governments, whose savage wars for oil and geopolitical advantage in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia have created the conditions for the rise of Islamist terror organizations, with which they have collaborated, are once again using a terrorist atrocity as the pretext to implement longstanding plans for military escalation abroad and the abrogation of democratic rights at home.
Patrick Martin
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/11...s-n21.html

[David Guyatt]

VoltaireNet

The Paris attacks Passports revisited

by Jean-Claude Paye

This is almost turning into a farce, albeit a tragic one: since 9/11 there has been one single terrorist attack in which the authors, who are supposed to try and remain unidentified, have not somehow left ID documents behind. For sociologist Jean-Claude Paye, what might look like repetitive asininity must be interpreted as a rhetorical device used by those in power to achieve sideration. It is because the official version is absurd that we may not, must not question it.

VOLTAIRE NETWORK | BRUSSELS (BELGIUM) | 20 NOVEMBER 2015 FRANÇAIS ESPAÑOL ITALIANO فارسى ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΆ

 In the context of the enquiry about the Paris massacres, a Syrian passport was found next to one of the kamikaze bombers of Stade de France. After being pointed out as responsible for the attacks by President Hollande, the Islamic State' claimed that they had engineered the onslaught. The French executive, that had already stated that they wanted to take action in Syria allegedly against ISIS, but actually against Bachar El Assad, who has to go', sees in this a significant clue that comfort their military expedition. Using doublespeak supporting an organization while pointing at it as the enemy and calling terrorists people who were previously hailed as freedom fighters', is not some prerogative of the French government. Producing one's own enemy has become a pivotal process in Western strategy, one that comforts an imperial structure in which there is no separation any more between inside and outside, between law and sheer violence, between citizens and enemies. In Belgium the muslim preacher Jean-Louis Denis is tried in court for having promoted the jihad in Syria among young people because he is suspected of being acquainted with  Sharia4Belgium, a group that is labelled as terrorist. His lawyer exposed the equivocation in the prosecution when he reminds the court that kids were indeed sent to fight for the Islamic State in Syria but by the Belgian intelligence service. He was referring to the part played by an undercover agent of the Belgian federal police.

The signifier's comeback

It seems that in Paris too a major concern for the terrorists was to make it easy for them to be identified. Yet this paradox is no longer really a surprise. The miraculous find of ID papers has now become a classic feature in such circumstances. It is a recurring event, a repetitive compulsion that points again and again at people who belong to some jihadist movement.In the official version for 9/11 the FBI claimed that they found the unscathed passport of one of the pilots near one of the towers that were reduced to ashes by explosions whose heat melted even the steel columns in the buildings' structure. The fourth plane's crash near Shanksville also yielded a passport which, though scorched, still made it possible to read the person's first name and surname and to see his ID photo. This is all the more disturbing as nothing at all was left in the crater, no part of the plane or of the people travelling in it, only this partly scorched passport.

Unlikelihood as measure of truth

In the case of the attack at Charlie Hebdo, investigators found the ID papers of the elder Kouachi brothers in a car they had abandoned in the north-east of Paris. This document allows them to conclude that the authors of the attack were known to the anti-terror department as pioneers of the French Jihad.' The hunt' could begin. How can killers who operate with such professional skill make such blunder? It is an elementary caution known to any burglar that you do not to take ID papers along.Since 9/11 unlikelihood has become part of our lives. It has become the basis on which truth is assessed. Reason is banished. We must not believe what is said but the speaking voice, whatever nonsense it may utter. The more patently absurd, the more unwavering our belief in what is stated must be. Unlikelihood has turned into the measure of truth.The discourse developed around the Merah or the Nemmouche affairs testifies to it. While besieged by dozens of policemen Merah is said to have left his flat to call a France 24 journalist from a public cabin so as not to be identified. He then allegedly returned to be conveniently killed by a sniper who is said to have shooted in self-defence' with non lethal weapons'.Nemmouche, the author of the killing in the Jewish museum in Brussels, is supposed not to have thrown his weapons away since he wanted to sell them. And he chose the most closely monitored international transport, the bus connecting Amsterdam, Brussels and Marseilles. A random border control' allegedly resulted in his being caught.

The sideration of "national unity"

In any case the derealizing nature of what is presented results in sideration. Like the Gorgon's look it turns us into stones. It shows that something is wrong in discourse. It highlights a flaw that is not intended to deceive us but to break us into inconsistent parts. The report of how the attacks occurred is an exhibition enforced upon the audience. It exists outside of any representation and results in sideration, not so much because of the dramatic nature of events as because of the impossibility to decipher the real. The audience can only retrieve some measure of unity through a fuller unreflective adhesion to what is stated. A fusion occurs with the one who names. We have to give up any distance with what is said and shown. "National unity", the fusion between those who monitor and those who are monitored can then take place. Indeed exposing flaws in the discourse of power on those various attacks results in a form of psychosis and the suppression of any defence mechanism, not only in front of some definite actions or statements, but towards any action and statement of power, for instance laws such as the law on intelligence that takes privacy out of the field of basic liberties.

An act of war against the people

Though it had been drafted for over a year the law on intelligence that was voted in June 2015 was presented as a response to the Charlie Hebdo attack. The law makes it legal to set up black boxes' with Internet access providers so as to capture users' metadata in real time. It also allows for the setting of mikes, of locator transmitters, and of spy software and cameras. Those who are subjected to these investigation techniques are not agents of a foreign power, but French citizens. These are treated as though they were enemies of an executive power that decides on and monitors those secret devices. Under cover of fighting terror, this law makes existing measures legal, giving the executive a permanent, surreptitious and almost boundless facility to monitor citizens. Its total inefficiency when it comes to prevent attacks shows that what is targeted are French people not terrorists. As it changes the nature of intelligence services, from espionage to monitoring citizens, this law is an act of war against them. Evidence of its reality is provided by the recent slaughter in Paris.

A poor translation, but hey, sometimes it's fun...

[R.K. Locke]

Join the dots:

http://journal-neo.org/2015/11/25/israel...ants-down/


https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourbeeb/ch...reate-them

For me, the worst of these sins (from a journalistic perspective) is the uncritical deference shown to "experts" and pundits invited to help viewers put horrific events "into context." More often than not, these experts muddy already filthy waters by spouting guesses and half-truths. Or, they take the opportunity to forward a particular political agenda. In one of the most egregious cases right after the Paris mass murder, BBC World invited ex-CIA chief James Woolsey into the studio to offer some nuggets of wisdom. He used this platform to offer a mélange of US talking points about terrorism, compounded with the suggestion that the mass influx of refugees from Syria "set the context" for the horrific events in Paris. Instead of challenging Woolsey by asking, for example, how the influx of refugees was connected given the fact that almost all of them were fleeing the very violence seen in Paris, the presenter simply gushed how lucky the BBC were to have him on the show…and moved on.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_Energy

[R.K. Locke]

Gun in Paris False Flag Terror Attacks Linked to Iran-Contra' Florida Arms Dealer:




http://www.rawstory.com/2015/12/gun-link...a-scandal/


https://www.rt.com/usa/325689-gun-paris-...an-contra/

[Peter Lemkin]

Paris Attacks: Western Intelligence's Vision Blinded by Allah?

CHRISTOPH GERMANN | NOVEMBER 17, 201524 COMMENTS
"…through its massacres in Paris, ISIS may now have dealt Assad the death blow."When the United States and Saudi Arabia decided to curb Iranian influence in the Middle East by embarking on a strategy that involved bolstering Sunni extremist forces, Prince Bandar bin Sultan and other Saudi officials told Washington not to worry about religious fundamentalists. Their message was plain and simple:
"We've created this movement, and we can control it. It's not that we don't want the Salafis to throw bombs; it's who they throw them atHezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran."[1]
At that time, the Bush administration began forging closer ties with the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood "to keep up the pressure" on the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.[2]
Four years later, the U.S. and its allies tried to capitalize on growing public discontent in Syria by launching an Operation Cyclone-style war against the Assad government. Western media played a decisive role in enabling the covert operations which inevitably led to an escalation of violence.[3]
While Western and Gulf media were trying to perpetuate the myth of the "moderate rebels," U.S. intelligence knew full well that "the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria." The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) predicted early on that the insurgents "will try to use the Iraqi territory as a safe haven" and pointed out that "there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in eastern Syria." According to the DIA, "this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime."[4]
As former DIA chief Michael Flynn emphasized in an interview with Al-Jazeera's Mehdi Hasan, the rise of the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) came not as a surprise.[5]
What came as a surprise to U.S. intelligence was the resilience of the Assad government and the Syrian Arab Army (SAA).
Thanks to support from Russia, China, Iran and Hezbollah, Assad and the SAA are still standing after 30,000 foreign fighters from more than 100 countries have poured into Syria, turning parts of the country into a jihadist paradise.[6]
Reports of Western countries encouraging radicalized Islamists to join the fight cast doubt on claims that Western intelligence agencies have tried to stem the flow of jihadists to Syria.[7]
Moreover, NATO member Turkey has been instrumental in funneling fighters, weapons and all kinds of other supplies to anti-government forces in Syria, including ISIS.[8]
Parts of southern Turkey increasingly resemble Pakistan in the 1980s. The border region from Hatay to Gaziantep has already been dubbed the "Peshawar of the Middle East."[9]
Turkey has paid a high price for its ill-fated policy vis-à-vis Syria and even the Saudis have gotten a taste of their own medicine,[10] but for the most part, the Salafis have thrown bombs at the "right" people.
Since the start of the conflict, terrorist attacks have become the new normal in Syria. When a car bomb rips through a residential area, Western media focuses on stressing that "the rebels have managed to infiltrate" an Assad stronghold, which "shows how the regime is losing ground."[11]
Similarly, after ISIS suicide bombers recently targeted a busy residential district in southern Beirut, killing at least 43 people and wounding more than 200 in the worst attack in the city in decades, Western media turned the victims into Hezbollah human shields.[12]
When ISIS claimed responsibility for the downing of a Russian passenger plane which claimed the lives of 224 people, the West didn't even bother hiding its Schadenfreude and gloated over Russia paying the price for "Vladimir Putin's military adventurism in Syria."[13] British foreign secretary Philip Hammond told The New York Times that he hoped the attack would persuade the Russian President "to take a more flexible posture in the Syria talks."[14]
But on November 13, one day before the Syria talks in Vienna and one day after the bombing of a "Hezbollah stronghold" in Beirut, "everything changed" because the terror reached a Western capital.
The world watched in horror as at least 129 people were killed and more than 300 injured in a series of coordinated terrorist attacks across Paris.
ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks and French President Francois Hollande left no doubt that this was "an act of war committed by Daesh that was prepared, organized and planned from outside [France]" with help from inside France.[15]
Investigators quickly found that the trail of the Paris killers leads to Belgium and Syria. Three of the seven suspected perpetrators are from Brussels' Molenbeek district, which has "grown into a hub for jihadist networks,"[16] and according to French officials, six of the people directly involved in the attacks had spent time in Syria.[17]
The presumed mastermind of the Paris attacks, Belgian citizen Abdelhamid Abaaoud, returned to Belgium "at some point under the radar of authorities" after fighting with ISIS in Syria. He left again for Syria in January 2015 when Belgian police foiled a terrorist plot that he allegedly masterminded.[18] In February, the ISIS magazine Dabiq published an interview with Abaaoud, in which he boasted that Western intelligence agencies were neither able to prevent him from entering Belgium and establishing a terror cell nor from leaving the country:
"Allah blinded their vision and I was able to leave and come to Shām despite being chased after by so many intelligence agencies. All this proves that a Muslim should not fear the bloated image of the crusader intelligence. My name and picture were all over the news yet I was able to stay in their homeland, plan operations against them, and leave safely when doing so became necessary."[19]
Another Belgian citizen who has emerged at the center of the Paris probe can tell a similar story. Salah Abdeslam lived only a few blocks away from Abaaoud in Molenbeek and spent time in the same prison. Belgian officials have no doubt that the two men knew each other.
Abdeslam also tried to travel to Syria earlier this year but he was one of the few would-be jihadists that were stopped by Turkish authorities. Despite his attempt to cross from Turkey into Syria, the Belgian government concluded that he didn't pose a risk. A Belgian official said that "the investigation showed no signs of him actively going to terrorism." Perhaps he was just trying to join the "moderate rebels" and he is really as innocent as his family claims.[20]
The first Paris killer who was been identified by French police is French national Ismael Omar Mostefai. Like Abdeslam, Mostefai caught the Turkish authorities' attention when he tried to travel to Syria. But in contrast to Abdeslam, he was more successful.[21] Turkey notified France twice in December 2014 and June 2015 about Mostefai but only heard back after the Paris attacks.[22]
Either French authorities didn't view Mostefai as a major threat or their vision was "blinded by Allah."
This would also explain how someone managed to steal 180 detonators, 40 grenades and 10 blocks of 250 grams of plastic explosives from the Miramas military site near Marseille in July although France had been on high alert for terrorism since the Charlie Hebdo attacks.[23]
As the military website SOFREP revealed, some of the stolen explosives were later found when terrorists tried to blow up industrial targets in France. French and German police and intelligence were reportedly meeting in the weeks prior to the Paris attacks "to discuss an imminent pre-planned terrorist attack in Paris." French security services were only wondering "whether or not the target would be soft (civilian) or hard (military, government, industrial) in nature."[24] The bomb threat that forced Germany's national football team to evacuate their Paris hotel on the morning of the attacks should have raised red flags.[25]
Instead of holding intelligence agencies to account for failing to prevent terrorist attacks at home while supporting terrorists in Syria and elsewhere, the response to the Paris attacks will likely entail even greater powers for security services and more support for the "Syrian rebels" under the guise of fighting ISIS.[26]
There is a certain irony in the fact that individuals like former senior CIA official Graham Fuller are now calling for the elimination of ISIS.[27] After all, Fuller has been one of the leading proponents of using jihadists against adversaries of the United States. He is credited with saying, "The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them against our adversaries worked marvellously well in Afghanistan against the Red Army. The same doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia."[28]
Fuller himself has been heavily involved in these operations.[29] Therefore, it came as a surprise when he called for ending Operation Cyclone 2.0 in Syria [30] and conceded that ISIS is "made in the USA."[31]
After facilitating the rise of ISIS "in order to isolate the Syrian regime," the U.S. and its allies are now stepping up their fight against the terrorist group. But as Graham Fuller noted, the real target is somebody else and the Paris attacks may prove very useful in this regard:
"Ironically the enormity of the ISIS/ al-Qaeda alternative to Asad had lately sparked some western hesitation in pursuing his overthrow, but now, through its massacres in Paris, ISIS may now have dealt Asad the death blow."[30]
# # # #Christoph Germann- BFP Contributing Author & Analyst Christoph Germann is an independent analyst and researcher based in Germany, where he is currently studying political science. His work focuses on the New Great Game in Central Asia and the Caucasus region. You can visit his website here
[1] Seymour M. Hersh, "The Redirection," The New Yorker, 5 March 2007: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/0...edirection.
[2] Jay Solomon, "To Check Syria, U.S. Explores Bond With Muslim Brothers," The Wall Street Journal, 25 July 2007: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118530969571176579.
[3] Sibel Edmonds, "What & When We Exposed, and the MSM- Quasi Alternative Culprits Who Fought Our Exposés," Boiling Frogs Post, 29 August 2013: http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2013/08/...r-exposes/.
[4] Brad Hoff, "2012 Defense Intelligence Agency document: West will facilitate rise of Islamic State in order to isolate the Syrian regime,'" Levant Report, 19 May 2015: http://levantreport.com/2015/05/19/2012-...an-regime/.
[5] Brad Hoff, "Former DIA Chief Michael Flynn Says Rise of Islamic State was "a willful decision" and Defends Accuracy of 2012 Memo," Levant Report, 6 August 2015: http://levantreport.com/2015/08/06/forme...2012-memo/.
[6] Eric Schmitt and Somini Sengupta, "Thousands Enter Syria to Join ISIS Despite Global Efforts," The New York Times, 26 September 2015: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/27/world/....html?_r=0.
[7] "Lethal exports - Germany admits to urging some Islamists to leave in past," Deutsche Welle, 2 October 2014: http://www.dw.com/en/lethal-exports-germ...a-17971327.
[8] "'IS' supply channels through Turkey," Deutsche Welle, 26 November 2014: http://www.dw.com/en/is-supply-channels-...v-18091048.
[9] Kadri Gursel, "Has Turkey Become the Pakistan of the Middle East?,'" Al-Monitor, 24 September 2013: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/security/2013/09/time-act-al-qaeda-turkey-jabhat-al-nusra.html#.
[10] Kareem Shaheen, "Islamic State claims suicide bombing at Saudi Arabian mosque," The Guardian, 6 August 2015: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/au...udi-arabia.
[11] David Blair, "Syria car bomb kills 10 in Bashar al-Assad's stronghold," The Telegraph, 2 September 2015: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnew...ghold.html.
[12] Ben Norton, "Media Turn Civilian ISIS Victims in Beirut Into Hezbollah Human Shields," FAIR, 13 November 2015: http://fair.org/home/media-turn-civilian...n-shields/.
[13] Simon Tisdall, "Sinai plane crash may show price of Putin's military adventurism in Syria," The Guardian, 5 November 2015: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/no...a-analysis.
[14] Somini Sengupta, "Invitation List Looms as Test for Syria Talks," The New York Times, 9 November 2015: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/10/world/...talks.html.
[15] Tom Heneghan, "Hollande says Paris attacks an act of war' by Islamic State," Reuters, 14 November 2015: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/1...JG20151114.
[16] Natalia Drozdiak and Julian E. Barnes, "Brussels District of Molenbeek Is Home to Some Suspects in Paris Attacks," The Wall Street Journal, 16 November 2015: http://www.wsj.com/articles/brussels-dis...1447718699.
[17] Jethro Mullen and Margot Haddad, "'France is at war,' President Francois Hollande says after ISIS attack," CNN, 17 November 2015: http://edition.cnn.com/2015/11/16/world/paris-attacks/.
[18] Benoit Faucon, Matthew Dalton, Stacy Meichtry and David Gauthier-Villars, "Paris Attacks Suspect Was Monitored by Western Allies Seeking to Kill Him," The Wall Street Journal, 17 November 2015: http://www.wsj.com/articles/french-autho...1447661092.
[19] Bill Roggio and Thomas Joscelyn, "Key suspect in Paris attacks has been featured in Islamic State propaganda," The Long War Journal, 16 November 2015: http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2...aganda.php
[20] Ibid., Faucon et al.
[21] David Chazan and Rory Mulholland, "French suicide attacker trained in Syria,'" The Telegraph, 15 November 2015: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnew...Syria.html.
[22] Orhan Coskun and Humeyra Pamuk, "Paris attacks: Turkey says it notified France twice about attacker, says senior official," The Independent, 16 November 2015: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/...36131.html.
[23] Jamey Keaten, "200 detonators, explosives stolen from French military site," The Associated Press, 7 July 2015: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/bbd903968...itary-site.
[24] Jack Murphy, "Breaking: French and German Police Knew Paris Attack Was Coming a Month Prior," SOFREP, 13 November 2015: http://sofrep.com/44480/french-and-germa...z3rQM86ve0.
[25] Chuck Penfold, "Bomb threat forces Germany out of Paris hotel," Deutsche Welle, 13 November 2015: http://www.dw.com/en/bomb-threat-forces-...a-18847733.
[26] Phil Stewart, "Exclusive: U.S. delivers ammunition to Syrian Arab fighters battling Islamic State," Reuters, 15 November 2015: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/1...2O20151115.
[27] Graham E. Fuller, "ISIS- The Hour Has Struck," grahamefuller.com, 14 November 2015: http://grahamefuller.com/isis-the-hour-has-struck/.
[28] Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, "Our terrorists," New Internationalist, 1 October 2009: http://newint.org/features/2009/10/01/bl...d-version/.
[29] Sibel Edmonds, "Turkish Intel Chief Exposes CIA Operations via Islamic Group in Central Asia," Boiling Frogs Post, 6 January 2011: http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/01/...tral-asia/.
[30] Graham E. Fuller, "Embracing Assad Is a Better Strategy for the U.S. Than Supporting the Least Bad Jihadis," The Huffington Post, 29 September 2014: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/graham-e-f...98142.html.
[31] Ezgi Basaran, "Former CIA officer says US policies helped create IS," Al-Monitor, 2 September 2014: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/politics/2014/09/turkey-usa-iraq-syria-isis-fuller.html#.
[32] Ibid., Fuller, 14 November 2015.

- See more at: http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2015/11/...5ddIB.dpuf

[R.K. Locke]

New from Kevin Ryan:

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/01/t...-2015.html

[David Guyatt]

From Voltaire:

Who organised the attacks of January and November 2015 in Paris?

by Thierry Meyssan

New information, published by the Croatian daily Slobodna Dalmacija, alleges that the French state was responsible for the attacks which occurred in Paris in January and November 2015. Either the French authorities had previously infiltrated the groups which perpetrated these attacks, and chose not to intervene to prevent them, or else they were directly implicated in the organisation of the attacks. In any case, it remains to be determined who made these decisions, and whether or not he was acting on behalf of the Republic.

VOLTAIRE NETWORK | DAMASCUS (SYRIA) | 22 JANUARY 2016 FRANÇAIS ESPAÑOL عربي DEUTSCH TÜRKÇE NEDERLANDS ITALIANO فارسى

On the 11th January 2015, 56 heads of state and government met in Paris, in a street close the the Voltaire Métro station, to demonstrate their opposition to terrorism. Among them were the godfathers of Al-Qaïda and Daesh, such as Ahmet Davutoğlu.According to the official version, the attacks of January and November 2015 in Paris were sponsored by Al-Qaïda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP) for the execution of the editors ofCharlie-Hebdo and by Daesh for all the others. The authorities have admitted that the Charlie-Hebdo attack was coordinated with the attack against the supermarket at the Porte de Vincennes, although, according to them, AQAP and Daesh are enemies. They also admitted that doubt persists concerning the claim that Amedy Coulibaly was a member of Daesh.Reuters revealed that the weapons used in the attacks came from the factory of Crvena Zastava, situated in Kragujevac (Serbia) [1]. Both Associated Press and thePalm Beach Post believed that one of the Serbian pistols had been transported by Century International Arms, a Florida firm linked to the CIA [2], although the Press Agency but not the Post has since retracted the claim [3].According to the Croatian daily Slobodna Dalmacija, the weapons used in the January attack against the supermarket, and others used during the attack in November, came from the Serbian manufacturer Crvena Zastava, and were moved to France by the same dealer, Claude Hermant [4].Our readers will remember that in 1998, the Réseau Voltaire uncovered the surprising activities of the security contingent of the Front National, the Département Protection Sécurité (DPS). This unit had been compiling a list of personalities and had scouted their homes apparently a small group of individuals within the DPS were preparing certain illicit activities. After a long period of complicated negotiations, we managed to obtain the creation of a Parliamentary Commission of Enquiry to investigate these facts [5]. The elements that we provided for the Assemblée Nationale, specifically concerning the double mission of members of the DPS - for the Front National in France and for the organisation of coups d'état in Africa - were quickly blocked by the Secret-Défense [6]. However, this information provoked a crisis and division within the Front National, so that finally, no-one was available to answer the allegations. Two years later, in 2001, one of the ex-members of the DPS, Claude Hermant, (mentioned above), admitted to the French dailyLibération the existence of the « Action » structure within the DPS [7].Here's a reminder of our work between 1998 and 1999. We had established that in 1972, the « Front National pour l'Unité Française » had been created in secret by Jacques Foccart, then responsible for Affaires Africaines et Malgaches at the Élysée, by request of President Georges Pompidou. The FN was led from the beginning by Jean-Marie Le Pen, who had played an important rôle in Charles de Gaulle's ascension to power in 1958, before turning against him [8], and by François Duprat, who had engaged with Bob Denard in the support of Moïse Tchombé in Katanga. Also, we had shown that in 1984, François Mitterrand and Guy Penne, Jacques Foccart's successor at the Élysée, had used secret Republican funds to finance the electoral campaign of the Front National in the European elections. We thus arrived at the conclusion that the FN was, and had always been, not so much a political party with the desire to exercise power, but a structure necessary to the Élysée, which it used first of all to control personalities of the extreme right wing, then to introduce them into the national political landscape.Concerning the DPS, we have shown that it was directed at the time by Bernard Courcelles, also the bodyguard for Anne Pingeot, François Mitterrand's mistress, and by Gérard Le Vert. The DPS included a secret group of about 60 men, all of whom were linked to the secret services, and were mobilised whenever necessary to carry out secret missions, mainly in Africa. This is the group to which Claude Hermant belonged. The true directorate of the DPS was not the Front National, but the Ministry for Defence, with the DPSD, a secret service with almost the same name, whose mission was the protection of the armed forces.Now the revelations of the Slobodna Dalmacija make sense. In January 2015, when he was jailed for « arms trafficking », Claude Hermant described himself to the committing magistrate as an « informer » for the Customs and the Gendarmerie. When asked by the magistrate for details of the weapons he had sold, he played the Secret-Défense card. The Advisory Committee for Secret-Défense, and then the Minister for the Interior, Bernard Cazeneuve, opted in his favour [9].In summary, Mr. Hermant belonged to a structure which, under cover of the security unit for the Front National, was unofficially charged by the Élysée with secret missions overseas. Today he is paid for freelance work by the Customs and the Gendarmerie, still without any official status. According to Slobodna Dalmacija, he bought decommissioned weapons in Serbia and recommissioned them himself, and that these were the weapons used in the attacks of January and November. The Croatian daily also spoke of the results of a microscope analysis of a firearm which no-one has so far mentioned. Mr. Hermant also allegedly sold weapons to Islamists in Brussels. His trafic, despite being illegal, is covered by the Secret-Défense.Let us mention that according to the US Press agencyMcClatchy, the Kouachi brothers, the killers of Charlie-Hebdo, were linked to the French secret services [10]. Finally, let us also note that Claude Hermant was imprisoned on the decision of judges from Lille, Stanislas Sandraps and Richard Foltzer, who were investigating his arms trafficking, and not by the Parisian judges who were investigating the attacks, Christophe Tessier, Nathalie Poux et Laurence Le Vert. Madame Le Vert is incidentally the cousin of Gérard Le Vert, mentioned above, Claude Hermant's ex-boss in the DPS.In conclusion, either Mr. Hermant was working on infiltrating the terrorist cells who perpetrated the attacks, without their action having been prevented, or else and this is less probable his current superiors, probably in the Élysée, themselves participated in the organisation of the attacks. But it still has to be determined why, and in whose name, Claude Hernant's superiors acted as they did.

It always seemed like a Gladio type operation - as did Charlie Hedbo - and this theory now seems to be gaining strength.

[R.K. Locke]

Mystery as DNA of Europe's top terror suspect not on discarded suicide vest

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnew...-vest.html


Police find no DNA traces of Salah Abdeslam, the fugitive terror suspect thought to have helped mastermind the Paris attacks, on a suicide belt they thought he discarded in Paris, as another mystery DNA found on two vests could be that of the bomb maker.

By Henry Samuel, Paris

1:54PM GMT 12 Feb 2016

The DNA of Salah Abdeslam, France's most wanted terror suspect, was not on an unused suicide belt discarded in a Paris rubbish bin, French investigators have confirmed, adding more mystery to who was involved in the November 13 attacks that killed 130.

However, DNA belonging to Bilal Hadfi, one of the Isil-affiliated suicide bombers who died outside the Stade de France, was found on the used belt.

It also emerged that unidentified DNA was found on the explosive vest used by Brahim Abeslam, Salah's brother, who blew himself up on the boulevard Voltaire. The same unknown DNA was found at a flat in the Belgian town of Auvelais used by some of the terrorists and rented under a false name.

The mystery DNA could belong to an unidentified bomb maker, French media suggested.

French Police released a new image of Salah Abdeslam in November, saying he is now thought to be wearing a wig and glasses and using the name "Yassine Baghli"

Abdeslam, 26, a Belgian-born French national, is thought to have been a member of the terror commandos that attacked Parisian bars and the Bataclan concert hall.

The suicide vest was found in Montrouge, a suburb South of Paris, not far from where investigators located Abdeslam's mobile phone signal on the night of the attacks.

According to investigators, after driving two suicide bombers to the Stade de France football stadium and apparently having second thoughts about launching an attack in the 18th arrondissement, Abdeslam then took the metro. He is thought to have spent the rest of the night walking around the Montrouge-Châtillon-Bagneux district from where he phoned his cousin telling him he was "in the sxxx".

Two of his friends, Mohamed Amri and Hamza Attou eventually drove from Brussels to pick him up the following morning before dropping him off in Brussels. He is still at large.

Despite the fact that his DNA was not detected on the discarded vest, investigators told AFP that one shouldn't "draw conclusions" from this, and that they cannot rule out the possibility that he wore it but no left no genetic traces.

A Europe-wide manhunt has been launched to find Abdeslam, who investigators believed was one of the chief organizers of the carnage.

There has been speculation he fled to Syria, but this week Belgian police launched an investigation after a witness told them he spotted the fugitive in a train station in the Belgian town of Genk.

French police have issued an international arrest warrant and described the 26-year-old as highly dangerous, warning anyone who comes across him not to approach him.

[R.K. Locke]

Well, well:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/...ed-7529853