Since when does logic have anything to do with any of this?
Meh…maybe people will wake up when the vampire squid finally goes full…
Seems illogical that they would tell us WTC7 went down because it was on fire…and we would believe it.
TPTB a bunch of psychopaths, right? Why not just arrange for people to die as reported? It's much lower risk and logistically much simpler to carry out from their perspective. This type of conspiracy is much easier to hide. No fake dead people. No pesky reporters and victims relatives acting out fake roles who might eventually slip and reveal it or decide to come clean. No crime scene to fake.
A real attack just requires the simple act of putting the idea in the heads and the means in the hands of people who are capable and eager to carry it out.
It would be just downright stupid to go through all of the extra trouble to fake it and take on all of the additional risk of being found out unless they secretly just couldn't bring themselves to kill people. There's plenty of evidence that they're perfectly comfortable taking actions that result in thousands of deaths.
Something is really bothering me about this latest attack.
Why France?
Why now?
If ISIS has a true goal of creating a Caliphate in the Middle East, this sets those plans back by drawing France in more deeply and with extra commitment. So this was not a terribly strategic move.
It was a move of pure terror against citizens.
Actual terror against a country might involve taking out the key electrical substations of a major city, for example…
If these 'terrorists' intent on a suicide mission all had passports, I will be even more concerned about the narrative.
for the reaction from Israel!
Charlie Hebdo false flag was obviously not convincing enough and this to me looks like act 2. But why France?
Chris…your comment has my alarm bells ringing very loudly!
From Jesse's Crossroad's Cafe via ZH 11/14/15:
"About 38% Of All The COMEX Gold In Hong Kong Left The Warehouses Yesterday"
Via Jesse's Cafe Americain,I don't have enough knowledge of the gold market to know if that kind of a gold movement justifies a distraction, so this is purely speculative (i.e., tossing this ball up in the air for those who do know more about the physical gold market to comment on whether this is a big enough move to "require" a distraction).Roughly 21 tonnes, or 685,652 troy ounces of gold in .999 fine kilo bars, was withdrawn, net of a small deposit of 27,328 ounces, from the Brinks warehouse in Hong Kong yesterday.
…
To put that into some perspective, that is the same amount of all gold in the entire JPM warehouse in the US.
Now compared to the Comex US, in which very little gold bullion actually changes hands or goes anywhere, that is a huge number. But Hong Kong is typically seeing large inflows and outflows of gold. Because that is how the precious metals market has been manifesting in Asia since about 2007: not with endless chains of paper just changing hands in a grand game of liar's poker, but with the physical exchange of bullion.
As I think you and others may be implying as a possibility, France may have been a target of opportunity since it has a large, disaffected immigrant population that disproportionately left the country to fight for ISIS. We don't know that this was done by French citizens identifying with ISIS, though I saw a headline that at least one was French. France is the largest source of ISIS recruits, according to this:
http://www.businessinsider.com/isis-is-recruiting-westerners-countries-2014-8
As for strategy, this seems more pure terror than strategic. Ideologues all seem to show various degrees of stupidity, and as Arthur says, these people are extreme, crazed ideologues. And, predictably, they evoke a counter response from ideologues around the world. Apparently, Ted Cruz, a Republican thoughtleader/ideologue wants to start bombing with less concern for foreign civilian populations, wherever they may be - I don't think he's specified.
All of this reminds me of the terrible raw videos of ISIS originally coming into towns in northern Iraq and just shooting random people they pass who happen to be walking down the street. Ted Cruz' similar solution has already been tried for decades in Iraq and elsewhere - hundreds of thousands dead, thousands in "collateral damage". Millions of lives affected. Pervasive hopelessness and loss. And now desperate attempts by crazed ideologues to carry the fight back to places where it hurts and disrupts. Go, occupy Syria. Boots on the ground. Declare victory and be a target for IED's and endless financial drain, endless wounded veterans year after year as the local ideologues melt back into the occupied population. Been there, done that.
Bombing a substation wouldn't scare anyone, it would just spoil the evening's TV. I can remember the IRA bombing a gas works, but other than that I can't think of an incident that didn't involve soft targets - pubs, shopping streets etc., or political targets.
that the British security services were working within the IRA. Remember the "Birmingham 6" and the "Guildford 4".
My strong sense is that the goal of hard liners on both sides is to keep the stress level high without doing actual damage. ISIS and everyone else need each other. Without ISIS, war on terror might be getting stale. TV shows introduce new characters, and now we have a new and even more dangerous terror foe to keep people interested - and renews the justification for those NSA wiretapping programs targeted at US citizens.
Likewise, for ISIS, beheading people gets old. Plus, all that beheading is happening in the middle east. You need something new to excite your recruits. But if you really damage the target country, you might actually draw a serious response that risks your own survival, but if you just execute a soft target attack, the hardliners on both sides win.
Kind of like the DEA and the drug cartels need each other. If drugs were suddenly legalized, they'd both lose big time.
But on top of that, I think the price of oil, the sudden avalanche of migrants/refugees, Ukraine, Syria, the Iran nuclear deal, Russian intervention, and now this attack in Paris - they're all tied together somehow. This isn't just blowback. Blowback is Iran having a revolution in 1979 where the crowds are all chanting "death to america."
This - its about three levels of complexity higher.
That's just my sense.
One of the IRA’s most senior former officers has admitted for the first time that the terror group was responsible for the Birmingham pub bombings.http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/ex-ira-chief-admits-terror-group-4775000Kieran Conway, who was head of the IRA’s intelligence-gathering department in the 1970s, broke a 40-year silence by the organisation to make the admission.
Deadly chemicals in the water supply. There is very little security at most water treatment plants, and the amount of chaos, death, and fear created by doing this throughout many rural college towns, small cities, etc. would be overwhelming. Every shower, meal, snack, and drink would become an opportunity for death.
It would take a while for people to figure out what's wrong as well.
ISIS statement of responsibility - answers why France and Germany, why a rock venue.
https://ent.siteintelgroup.com/Statements/is-claims-paris-attacks-warns-operation-is-first-of-the-storm.html
Perception
An Israeli Newspaper Photoshopped Female Leaders Out Of The Charlie Hebdo March (Business Journal)
Reality
They're a bit late calling the French crusaders, they became a secular republic a long time ago. The US and Russia are more likely to use crusader rhetoric in their military adventures.
But ISIS have a (submissive) place for people of the book in their world view, whereas atheists and secularists have none, so maybe the more mature values of the French state make them a more likely target.
Hugh sent me a nice private message regarding my earlier post and made a good point.
Here is my disclaimer:
I really think that is a threat to all developed countries, and I really hope the government recognizes this and does something about it! Better security measures at our water treatment plants would really make me feel safer! Thanks!
That post was not there to provide "ideas" to terrorists, but rather to identify a major vulnerability in the water system that should be mended!
I think there's a lot to your comment, Dave, that extremists on all sides need each other and that the interactions are complex, and agree with much of what you said. But I think it's also true that this was actual damage in a way that holds the potential to push the status quo towards further disruption at a social level. It seems to me less intelligent and strategic act by the players than a gradual ramp in general chaos and response that increases risks of destabilizing alliances and finance in Europe and elsewhere. There's hope that this attack may be somewhat isolated and that life may settle down again, as after the attack by Al Queda on trains in Spain many years ago, or the IRA bombings in England. But the risk of a rise of destabilizing extreme political parties in western countries seems to be growing and supported by this. These can easily affect policy beyond war policy - and may or may not work well for "the powers that be".
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-14/frances-far-right-party-calls-nation-re-arm-itself-revoke-muslims-passports-eradicat
In France, this AM, Marine Le Pen, France's far-right leader who's contemplating a run for French president in 2017 and leading for that office in some polls, apparently called for a series of measures against Moslems in France, etc. Regional elections in France are happening at the beginning of December. Of course, she's also been calling for withdrawal of France from the Euro - which ultimately is a dying currency, IMO. But if she were elected with that agenda on a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment, prepare for a wild ride sooner instead of later. My point is, whether we agree with the outcome or not, isolationist agendas and xenophobic forces may be accelerated by these events if they continue, and may not follow TPTB script.
I've predicted for awhile that a major likely disruption of global finance may come as countries become more isolated from each other and act more and more out of individual interest, creating more and more dissonance and economic/political conflict rather than the "clean economic machine" TPTB are working on with central banker coordination and the corporate agenda of a "Trans-Everywhere Partnership" ruled world. It's already happening with the US ready to raise interest rates as the rest of the world says don't do it and loosens rate policy. If national policy and self-interest divergences grow, it seems likely that social and financial dissonance and disruption will grow; the coordination that has maintained the current, artificial economy that feeds and is favored by TPTB will become increasingly difficult.
This too was a "made for TV special" that was designed for maximum psychological impact on the little people, but which did no actual damage to the country.
9/11 was the same way, just larger in scale.
Any of us with slightly active imaginations could imagine a wide variety of things that could be done to economically or strategically harm a country with relatively high chances of success and low cost.
But those things never seem to happen. Instead it's always soft targets, innocents, blood and not much else besides a crippling psychological fear among the masses that is then used by current politicians to consolidate power and/or ram through unpopular laws that further erode rights and concentrate wealth and power.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
Exhibit A, this mornings headline in The Guardian:
Paris attacks leave France in trauma, fearing for the future
Not bad … they managed to work in three powerful, emotion-evoking words in a ten word sentence. "Attacks" "Trauma" "Fearing"
Lots of that going around…the MSM knows its role…play on the fear and whip it higher. Nobody will ever lose a promotion or their job for doing so.