Almost before the bombs had finished exploding, the media was on the streets and we were being told who was responsible. But like so many terror events in recent years, the reasons behind it and the implications of it deserve much greater consideration by all of us than just the media’s frenzied headlines.
It is well documented that ISIS/ISIL/IS, Islamic State – or whatever we are supposed to call them this week – have been funded, armed and supplied by the west for a long time. More recently the support has been intended to assist attempts by ISIS to destabilise Syria by destroying infrastructure and weakening defences to bring about the toppling of Bashar Al-Assad. Therefore, yet again, the west must accept ultimate responsibility for the tragedy it has suffered.
But funding alone does not explain how ISIS have become so accomplished as to be able to pull off the kind of sophisticated synchronised terrorist attack we saw in Paris on Friday 13th. After all, firing mortars from the back of new Toyota trucks is a long, long way from complicated operations in foreign countries that rely heavily on intelligence. And there are other facts to be taken into account that confuse the picture even further.
There were detailed warnings about the attacks up to a month in advance. Jack Murphy, an 8 year army special operations veteran, says according to his sources, the French and German police were warned of just such attacks in Paris a month prior to it. And additionally, according to the Associated Press there were also detailed warnings from Iraq to French officials at least a day in advance.
On Thursday November 5th a Montenegrin man was stopped by German police travelling in car from Austria containing AK47 rifles, ammunition, grenades and TNT explosive with Paris programmed into his Sat Nav.
Just to complicate things even further – as with nearly all other terrorist atrocities of recent years – practice drills for exactly the same tragic events were running on the morning of the 13th, which then suddenly had to go ‘live.’
Taking all of the above into account, I find it hard to believe that ISIS are continually outsmarting the smart-grid and are, therefore, one step ahead of the likes of MOSSAD, the CIA and GCHQ. Yet the attacks took place just as the warnings predicted.
And now we have the downing of a Russian fighter by Turkey, who has also been supporting and supplying arms to ISIS. Yet the US who is supposed to be fighting ISIS already, is backing Turkey’s position against Russia.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to tell where the threat from terrorism ends and the intelligence begins.
But none of these questions will be seriously addressed by the mainstream media. Instead they will be peddling fear as usual and regurgitating scripted narratives which are then accepted without question by the public as truth.
So, what now? My heart goes out to the injured and the dead – as I’m sure yours does.
But surely the best way to deal with the on-going threat is for us all to ’keep calm and carry on’ with life as normally as is possible, with courage, vigilance and resolve while un-biased, international investigations and negotiations take place using honourable people.
These would be people who have no conflicts of interest and who are only interested in achieving long-term peace and not predominantly the proliferation of arms sales. This will be difficult to accomplish I admit, as it is apparent that a will for real peace is sadly lacking by the UK, US and Israel.
The truth is that, as usual, we will, all of us, be punished by being treated from here on as possible terror suspects.
There will be talk of lock-downs and curfews and loss of liberty, constriction of free speech and movement and a ramping up of spying on us all by the state. And if we cannot apply the brakes to this on-going, ever increasing agenda of war and reprisals that keeps us all in fear and suspicion of each other, I believe we have just as much to fear in the future from the state itself as any terrorist threat.
Surely the most important thing about human life is the way it is lived – in openness, with humility, care, kindness and love above all else – for without these what is the point of it? It is these values that set us apart from the likes of ISIS and the terrorist mindset.
But how can we share these qualities with each other if we are not free to do so? We aren’t robots – despite the ruling ‘elite’ wishing that we were. And contrary to their own beliefs, the ‘elite’ are merely flesh and blood the same as you and I and we can all see that life controlled by them – as it is today – is entirely out of balance.
What sort of life do we have ahead of us if we are surrounded by never ending war? Frozen in fear in a pincer movement between the violence of terrorist events on the one hand and the prying, intimidating and controlling restrictions of the state on the other? How would we possibly be any safer? – Let alone any happier? I think by now we all know the answer to that.
Surely what we are glimpsing now is Orwell’s vision of the future: “a boot stamping on a human face forever.”
Are we just going to let it happen? Or are we going to come together to change the arrogant, selfish, psychopathic attitude at the top? -To break free from the cycle of war, violence and fear? -To root out corruption, call out the liars, deal with poverty and homelessness, redress the balance and start making the world the place it has always meant to be? And shouldn’t we start with our own countries?
Unless we choose to do that, I’m afraid we face a grim future. That future will not be avoided by intensifying the spiral of violence and fear however we go about it.
Sean Hunter
