Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Charlie Hebdo Massacre: Another Staged Event to Incite War and Destroy Freedom?

By Brandon Martinez | Non-Aligned Media | January 11, 2015

The “Islamists” strike again – at least that’s what those who stand behind the latest outrage in Paris want us to believe.

On Wednesday, two masked gunmen wielding AK-47s stormed the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical newspaper based in Paris, France, assassinating the entire leadership of the paper. Twelve people were killed in the ensuing rampage, mostly Charlie Hebdo employees and a few policemen. Days later, four more random civilians were gunned down at a kosher supermarket by two other militants allegedly connected to the shooters in Paris.

Sporadically shouting “Allah Akbar” throughout the duration of their onslaught, the two attackers were caught on video making a spectacle of themselves as they paraded down the Paris street guns blazing. It is typically unusual for terrorists to immediately make it known who they are and what they stand for before concluding their dirty work, an anomaly the mainstream media refuses to emphasize for obvious reasons.

Other anomalies are cause for skepticism. How did the terrorists get ahold of military-grade weaponry undetected? Journalist Gearoid O Colmain told Russia Today that the two deceased suspects, French-born Said and Cherif Kouachi, had received military training from militants in Syria and had also traveled to Yemen to meet with al-Qaeda leaders there. And yet the pair was able to return to France without interference from authorities. Other reports indicate that the brothers were known and being monitored by French intelligence, but were still able to obtain the necessary armaments to conduct Wednesday’s attack without a hiccup.

In a Jan. 8 article, Sputnik News reported: “Said and Cherif Kouachi, two brothers in their 30s who are suspected of committing the [Charlie Hebdo] terror attack, have been known to France’s General Directorate for Internal Security and the prefecture of Police of Paris, Le Point news magazine said Thursday.” The Sputnik article further revealed that in 2008 Cherif Kouachi had been arrested and sentenced to a prison term of three years for attempting to recruit others to fight for al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Others contend some aspects of the Paris shooting were completely staged like a scene from a Hollywood action movie. Ali Şahin, a Turkish MEP and member of the ruling AKP party, echoed this view, citing the mysterious absence of street traffic where the shooting took place, and the odd lack of blood or recoil when a Paris cop was shot point blank by one of the gunmen.

In an op-ed for Press TV, analyst Kevin Barrett calls into question the dubious story that authorities found IDs left behind in the terrorists’ get-away car, which led police to quickly identify the suspects. Barrett contends that such a ‘mistake’ would not be made by sophisticated terrorists, but rather bears the markings of a false flag deception aimed at implicating Muslims.

“Al-Qaeda in Yemen” is officially being blamed for the Charlie Hebdo massacre, an unusual detour from ISIS or ‘Islamic State’ (IS) as it is now called, which has been the go-to bogeyman for neoconservative talking heads on the mass media for months.

According to a Fox News report, “Cherif Kouachi told a French TV station before Friday’s raid at an industrial park that he was sent by Al Qaeda in Yemen and had been financed by the cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.” The same report goes on to admit that al-Awlaki was “killed by a U.S. airstrike in Yemen in 2011,” but failed to explain how a dead man was able to finance and direct an attack four years after his death.

Many questions about the Paris attack remain and will likely go unanswered by the subservient sell-outs who populate mainstream media outlets.

Western Foreign Policy and Muslim Discontent

Even if we were to presuppose that a group of Muslims carried out a terrorist attack like the one we saw in Paris, one question journalists and reporters should be asking is ‘why would Muslims be angry enough to want to harm France and its citizens?’ To evade this essential line of inquiry, the prevailing script contends that it was Charlie Hebdo’s anti-Islamic cartoons, which depict Islam’s prophet Mohammed in a derogatory manner, that motivated the attack, and nothing else — a convenient narrative for France’s political class whose militaristic foreign policy warrants scrutiny.

Following the lead of Washington and Tel Aviv, France has as of late pursued staunchly anti-Muslim foreign policies, yet it befuddles journalists to ask why Muslims are upset with the present pro-American, pro-Israeli puppet regime in Paris?

It cannot be overlooked that America and France led the NATO onslaught against Libya in 2011, bombarding civilians and infrastructure in the name of “liberating” the predominately Muslim North African country from a ‘dictator.’ Thanks to the US, Britain, France, Canada and other rogue states, Libya ­– once a boon of progress in an otherwise bleak part of the world – is now a failed state plagued by terrorism and civil war. The stability and prosperity that Libyans once enjoyed under Gaddafi is nothing but a distant memory as the country is teetering on collapse whilst NATO-backed Takfiri gangs and warlords wrestle for control of Tripoli.

Many have also forgotten that the French invaded Mali, a Muslim-majority country in West Africa, in January of 2013 to put down the rise of armed groups opposed to France’s puppet regime in Bamako. Add to that France’s unyielding support of Israel and its terroristic policies against the Palestinians.

In the case of real Muslim violence directed at France and other NATO member states, it would be wise to broach the underlying causes of Muslim discontent, rather than objectifying it with stale neocon propaganda memes about ’72 virgins in heaven’ and other inanities.

Could it be that the Muslim world has suffered a litany of Western military invasions over the past few decades, causing the deaths and displacement of a few million Muslims, which may lie behind the deep-seated consternation and disdain emanating from that part of the world? Or do they simply ‘hate us for our freedoms,’ as neocon warmongers and Zionists assure us?

An average intellect could easily deduce the above puzzle, but those are queries that few in the degenerated ‘mainstream’ dare to raise with any serious vigor.

Islamic Extremism: A Manufactured Enemy?

So now we’ve seen attacks in Ottawa, Sydney and Paris within a relatively short period of time. Is it reasonable to believe that this recent string of ‘lone-wolf jihadist’ attacks across the West have been organic occurrences, cooked up in the deranged minds of mad-men? Or is there something more sinister at work?

Many analysts are questioning the dubious timing and nature of all of these incidents, which come at just the right moment to lend credence to the US-led coalition against ISIS. It is nothing short of miraculous that just as various Western countries gear up for military strikes against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, ‘terror incidents’ hit their respective homelands right on cue to give the politicians their belated ‘casus belli’ for joining the campaign to be rid of ISIS.

In any case, the West’s crusade against ISIS is as counterfeit as it is comical. The West’s ‘fight against ISIS’ is not truly aimed at combatting the militant group, but rather at destabilizing the region as a whole to further weaken and disorientate Israel’s rivals. Al-Qaeda, ISIS, al-Nusra Front — they are all outgrowths of the same poisonous American-Zionist imperial tree. Washington and Tel Aviv have routinely sponsored Takfiri zealots against regimes they seek to depose, the latest victims being Bashar al-Assad in Syria and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. These armed radical groups have served a two-tiered purpose for their clandestine backers in America and Israel: firstly, they provide a pretext for the US and its lapdogs to invade the Middle East; secondly, they act as scare-crows to corral public opinion behind the interventions, providing a replenishing source of patsies and dupes that can take the fall for false flag attacks engineered by the state.

After each and every one of these terror events, Western governments have immediately enacted legislation which increases the powers of the secret services and police, effectively establishing a police/surveillance state aimed at cracking down on civilian dissent against government policies. Extirpating the ‘war on terror’s’ critics at home, while attacking Israel’s enemies abroad – what a perfect brew for the masterminds of this global strategy of tension operating under the guise of ‘Jihadism.’

“Free Speech” to Bash Muslims, but not Zionists

In response to the atrocity in Paris, French politicians and other Western leaders have been pontificating about Western ‘values’ and have selectively invoked ‘freedom of speech.’ “We live in a free and open democracy which has freedom of speech,” the West’s dishonest leaders say. “Radical Muslims don’t believe in ‘our values,’ hence the necessity to fight them overseas” is the standard establishment talking point, trotted out time and again by the professional script readers fronting as presidents and prime ministers.

The hypocrisy is stunning. Like most of Europe today, France is certainly not a bastion of freedom of speech, having implemented numerous draconian laws over the years, especially the infamous “Gayssot Act” which criminalizes opinions that contradict official World War II and ‘holocaust’ historiography. French revisionists such as Robert Faurisson, Vincent Reynouard and others who have questioned the “Six Million” mythology have been jailed and fined extortionate amounts of money by the French state for their dissident historical viewpoints. The existence of such repressive laws in France unveils the duplicity of the newfound love of free speech being expressed by the likes of French President Francois Hollande and his ministers.

Taking a page out of Stalin’s playbook, the French regime recently banned pro-Palestine protests, even going so far as to prosecute a number of prominent pro-Palestinian activists as “hate criminals.” And while France’s reprobate leaders fully sanction and even encourage satirical assaults upon Islam and Muslims in the name of “free speech” – not to mention lobbing bombs on Muslims in places like Libya and Mali – these same miscreants have outlawed any parodying of Zionism and Jewish privilege.

While championing Charlie Hebdo’s anti-Muslim cartoons as “free expression,” France’s mealy-mouthed political class have simultaneously led a ceaseless witch-hunt against French comedian Dieudonne, whose anti-Zionist parodies have angered the country’s Jewish ruling class. French authorities have enacted stiff bans against the wildly popular Dieudonne, preventing him from performing at public venues across the country under penalty of prison time and fines. Britain too has banned the comic from entering that country on the grounds that his famous “Quenelle” gesture resembles a Nazi salute and is therefore ‘anti-Semitic.’

In reference to Dieudonne, French President Francois Hollande himself pledged to use every means at the disposal of his government to “fight against the sarcasm of those who purport to be humorists but who are actually professional anti-Semites.” In Hollande’s Orwellian France, “free speech” is reserved only for those who defame Islam, whereas critics of Zionism and Jewish exceptionalism are first stigmatized and then criminalized – a tribute to the real power behind the throne of that once-free country.

Copyright 2015 Brandon Martinez

January 11, 2015 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism | , , , , , | 2 Comments

African-American leaders visit Palestine, vow solidarity with Palestinian liberation movement

460_0___10000000_0_0_0_0_0_dd_delegation_nazareth
Dream Defenders in Nazareth (image by Dream Defenders)
By Celine Hagbard | IMEMC News | January 11, 2015

A delegation of young African American leaders from Ferguson and other US cities organized by ‘Dream Defenders’ are traveling through the Occupied Palestinian Territories this week to see first-hand the reality of life under military occupation.

According to one of the delegation organizers, Ahmad Abuznaid, “The goals were primarily to allow for the group members to experience and see first hand the occupation, ethnic cleansing and brutality Israel has levied against Palestinians, but also to build real relationships with those on the ground leading the fight for liberation. In the spirit of Malcolm X, Angela Davis, Stokely Carmichael and many others, we thought the connections between the African American leadership of the movement in the US and those on the ground in Palestine needed to be reestablished and fortified.”

Abuznaid added, “As a Palestinian who has learned a great deal about struggle, movement, militancy and liberation from African Americans in the US, I dreamt of the day where I could bring that power back to my people in Palestine. This trip is a part of that process.”

Soon after the delegation arrived in Palestine, one of the members of the delegation tweeted, “Our brother, Legal & Policy Director, and the organizer of this trip, Ahmad Abuznaid is only allowed in Jerusalem, the place of his birth, on a work permit now. Due to the fact he is Palestinian, he can only get into Jerusalem by walking through a Checkpoint. Today, we joined him on his journey through gates that reminded us of cattle pens. #WeCantBreathe.”

Some of the organizations represented in the delegation include Black Lives Matter and the Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100). Patrisse Cullors, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter, told reporters from Ebony magazine that her first impression of occupied Palestine was that, “This is an apartheid state. We can’t deny that and if we do deny it we are apart of the Zionist violence. There are two different systems here in occupied Palestine. Two completely different systems. Folks are unable to go to parts of their own country. Folks are barred from their own country.”

Cherell Brown, another participant in the delegation, noted that “So many parallels exist between how the US polices, incarcerates, and perpetuates violence on the black community and how the Zionist state that exists in Israel perpetuates the same on Palestinians. This is not to say there aren’t vast differences and nuances that need to always be named, but our oppressors are literally collaborating together, learning from one another – and as oppressed people we have to do the same.”

The delegation has traveled to refugee camps in Bethlehem, as well as visiting Jerusalem, Ramallah, Haifa and Nazareth and meeting with various organizations.

Hip-hop artist Tef Poe wrote upon the conclusion of the delegation, “When I get home I get off the plane and go back to the north side of St. Louis a place where most of us are in just as much bondage as these people but the difference is we don’t know it or acknowledge it ….Power concedes to righteousness eventually.”

January 11, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | 2 Comments

On Guantanamo 13th anniversary, detainee describes ongoing torture

Reprieve | January 11, 2015

13 years after the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay was opened, a hunger striking detainee who has been cleared for release, yet remains imprisoned, has described his ongoing torture.

Emad Hassan, a Yemeni detainee who has been on hunger strike since 2007 and cleared for release since 2009, wrote in a recent letter to his lawyers at human rights NGO Reprieve that “they have strapped us to the torture chair for four hours – two in the morning and two in the evening”.

Mr Hassan wrote that when visitors – such as journalists or Congressional members – are touring the prison, the medical staff rush force-feedings, despite him telling the doctors, “I will vomit.” Mr Hassan wrote, “We have to be force-fed slowly, but if there are tourists they do it very fast… one of the medical staff says ‘there are tourists and you have to finish in five minutes.’”

The US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay was opened on January 11th, 2002. 127 men remain at the prison, 59 of whom have been cleared for release. At its height, the prison held nearly 800 men.

Mr Hassan continued in his letter, “We have been cleared for years yet we are still here! They cannot send us to our home countries because those countries may torture us. So what are you doing to us here every day?”

Last year, a US Federal Judge ruled that the government should release video footage of a long-time hunger striker and Reprieve client, Abu Wa’el Dhiab, being force-fed. Mr Dhiab has since been released to Uruguay but legal wrangling over the release of the tapes is ongoing. 16 media organisations joined the litigation in an attempt to force the government to release the video tapes. The Obama administration has appealed this order.

Among the remaining detainees is British resident Shaker Aamer, who was been cleared since 2007, and whom the UK government has said they want returned to his British wife and children in London. Mr Aamer’s lawyers and his family are urging the Prime Minister to raise Shaker’s case with President Obama in his upcoming US visit, and establish a date for Mr Aamer’s return.

Cori Crider, Strategic Director at Reprieve and attorney for Guantanamo detainees, said: “Guantánamo shames us all. It shames us not just on these bleak anniversaries, but with every single day that we shelve and forget cleared prisoners like Britain’s Shaker Aamer. Guantánamo remains Exhibit A for people around the world who would teach the disaffected and hopeless that the West is a hypocrite when it preaches to other states about human rights. And to this day, Guantánamo punishes and abuses cleared men – men like ninety-pound Emad Hassan, who has the temerity to hunger strike in protest at his unjust fate. Send Shaker home. Set Emad free. Shut it down.”

January 11, 2015 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | 1 Comment

Four Charged with Violating Utah’s “Ag-Gag” Law

By Ken Broder | AllGov | January 11, 2015

Four Californians stopped in Utah for taking pictures of agricultural buildings last September are apparently the first non-residents to be charged with violating the state’s controversial “ag-gag” law.

It has been against the law in Utah since 2012 to photograph agricultural operations, including the mistreatment of animals. Utah and a half a dozen other states have enacted laws to crack down on animal rights activists and others who have documented cruel and unsanitary conditions around the country.

The four, members of the Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM), were each charged with one count of misdemeanor criminal trespass on agricultural land and agricultural operation interference, according to the Salt Lake City Tribune. They said they were aware of the ag-gag law and were filming a documentary tracing pigs’ journey from Utah to a Los Angeles slaughterhouse.

Sarah Jane Hardt, one of the defendants, told the Tribune they planned to legally record events at the Circle Four pig farm from vantage points on public property, not surreptitiously. But someone ratted them out and deputies handed them citations. The other three charged are Robert Penney, Harold Weiss and Bryan Monell. Circle Four is owned by a Chinese company, the Shuanghui Group.

A lawsuit (pdf) challenging the statute as unconstitutional was filed in July 2013 by the Animal Legal Defense Fund, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and others. One of the plaintiffs, Amy Meyer, was arrested five months earlier after she used her cellphone to record images while on private property next to a slaughterhouse.

One of the pictures was of a sick cow being pushed by a bulldozer. The charge against her was dismissed after three months. Will Potter at Green Is the New Red says that the two Utah cases are the only ag-gag enforcements, nationally.

The Utah law defines four activities that are used by whistleblowers to uncover illegal behavior as, themselves, illegal: recording an image or sound without the operator’s permission; gaining “access to an agricultural operation under false pretenses;” asking for a job at a place for the purpose of making recordings; and making a recording while trespassing.

The lawsuit says the statute threatens groups like PETA as well as the investigators and whistleblowers they support:

“These statutes have the effect of criminalizing undercover investigative activities targeting agricultural operations, as well as the planning and assistance of such activity, thereby making the investigations and the journalism surrounding such events virtually impossible.”

The format for Utah’s ag-gag law was drafted in 2002 by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate-funded conservative political organization that brings lawmakers and lobbyists together to draw up model legislation that can be adopted in multiple venues.

To Learn More:

California Activists Charged under Utah’s “Ag-Gag” Law for Photographing Pig Farm (by Jessica Miller, Salt Lake Tribune )

4 People Prosecuted Under #AgGag Law for Photographing Factory Farm from the Road (by Will Potter, Green Is the New Red)

Judge Won’t Toss Suit Challenging Utah’s “Ag Gag” Law (by Marissa Lang The Salt Lake Tribune )

An Overview of “Ag-Gag” Laws (by Jeff Zalesin, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press)

Animal Rights Groups Sue Utah over Law Criminalizing Undercover Photography of Farm Abuse (by Matt Bewig, AllGov )

Animal Legal Defense Fund, et al v. Governor Gary R. Herbert and Attorney General Josh Swallow (U.S. District Court District of Utah Central Division) (pdf)

January 11, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | 1 Comment