“European banks are sitting on bad debts of €1tn – the equivalent to the GDP of Spain – which is holding back their profitability and ability to lend to high street customers and businesses. The €1tn (£706bn) of so-called non-performing loans amount to almost 6% of the total loans and advances of Europe’s banks and 10% when lending to other financial institutions are excluded. The equivalent figure for the US banking industry is around 3%. As well as bad debts, the EBA pointed to the cost inefficiencies and the cost of so-called conduct issues, such as fines, compensation and legal costs, which absorb almost 4% of banks’ operating income.”
“The same draft document that includes a crackdown on Bitcoin is said to also include a plan ‘to curb more effectively the illicit trade in cultural goods,’ presumably a reference to antiquities smuggled out of ISIS held territories and sold on the black market for a profit. Bitcoin’s role in the Paris terrorist attacks isn’t entirely certain, despite the fact that the Ghost Security Group suggested earlier this week that Bitcoin may have been used to finance the attacks. It may be cliched to say cracking down on anything as a result of terrorism is a case of letting the terrorists win, but without question the proposal by the European Union precisely fits this definition.”
“Even authoritarian and totalitarian states can’t prevent domestic terrorism. What hope do relatively open societies have? Open societies abound with ‘soft targets,’ that is, noncombatants going about their everyday lives. They are easy hits for those determined to inflict harm, especially if the assailants seek to die in the process. We also know, as U.S. officials acknowledge, that NATO bombing of jihadis boosts recruitment. So if Americans and Europeans want safer societies, they must discard the old, failed playbook, which has only one play — more violence — and adopt a new policy: nonintervention.”
“Paris Orly airport had to close temporarily last Saturday after the failure of a system running Windows 3.1—yes, the operating system from 1992—left it unable to operate in fog. This use of ancient systems is apparently not unusual. Vice quotes Alexandre Fiacre, the secretary general of France’s UNSA-IESSA air traffic controller union, as saying that ‘The tools used by Aéroports de Paris controllers run on four different operating systems, that are all between 10 and 20 years old,’ with Windows 3.1 being joined by Windows XP and unspecified UNIX systems. Fiacre says that the systems are poorly maintained as well.”
“Most significant for the French state in the current context are the powers given to the security services and police to act without judicial oversight. They can conduct house searches at any time, enforce house arrest and confiscate certain classes of weapons, even if people hold them legally. Using the special measures, 168 homes have been raided and 104 people have been placed under house arrest in the past 48 hours. These have led to 23 arrests and the seizure of 31 weapons. On Sunday the French president, François Hollande, was reported to have told parliamentarians he was considering an extension of three months.”
“Today’s horrific attacks in Paris have moved us all, and the more we learn, the more our hearts ache,” said Governor Cuomo. “These were cowardly acts of evil by people who have inexplicably chosen to believe in radical hatred above all else.”
‘Inexplicable’; perhaps, for the pathologically dense.
Let France and all nations following its path know that they will continue to be at the top of the target list for the Islamic State and that the scent of death will not leave their nostrils as long as they partake in the crusader campaign, as long as they dare to curse our Prophet (blessings and peace be upon him), and as long as they boast about their war against Islam in France and their strikes against Muslims in the lands of the Caliphate with their jets, which were of no avail to them in the filthy streets and alleys of Paris. Indeed, this is just the beginning. It is also a warning for any who wish to take heed.
France? That effete land of art, fashion, and cheese?
It’s not as if they should be surprised. After all, if the Paris bombings were a reaction motivated by French foreign military adventures, we have seen this before. From the article:
This isn’t the first time France’s involvement abroad has led to terrorism at home. In 1995, Algerian Islamists set off eight bombing attacks that killed eight people and wounded 200 in Paris to punish France for supporting the government in that country’s civil war.
There is, however, said to be no specific intelligence indicating there is a direct terrorist threat to attack Britain. The heightened measures in the UK are partly to reassure the public [..]
Knowing Syria was a critical piece in its energy strategy, Turkey attempted to persuade Syrian President Bashar Assad to reform this Iranian pipeline and to work with the proposed Qatar-Turkey pipeline, which would ultimately satisfy Turkey and the Gulf Arab nations’ quest for dominance over gas supplies, who are the United State’s allies. But after Assad refused Turkey’s proposal, Turkey and its allies became the major architects of Syria’s “civil war.”
Mainstream media outlets repeat the comfortable myth that terrorist attacks are primarily motivated by the desire to impose Sharia law in Western countries. While the precise mechanism by which random acts of violence lead to a formal Sharia law regime is yet to be identified, it is perhaps more instructive to examine the statements made by the attackers themselves, which invariably cite not only their religious beliefs, but specific acts of military violence carried out by U.S., NATO, and/or GCC partners in Middle Eastern countries. Two recent examples are the statements following the Charlie Hebdo and November Paris attacks.
But let’s step back to the bigger picture for a moment:
It is not hard to imagine that every one of these attacks that senselessly kills children, friends, and loved ones creates motivation to retaliate among those remaining. ISIS recruiters offer a vision of utopia to a generation of young people that has only known war, poverty, and personal tragedy.
Explaining the inexplicable: How can terrorists be gaining ground versus the most powerful governments in the world?
In Iraq, then Libya, then Egypt, former U.S.-backed authoritarians heading secular governments were deposed one by one. Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi were victims of openly executed military regime change operations, while Hosni Mubarak was the victim of a series of events that led to the present U.S.-backed military dictatorship. The latter was accomplished through an alphabet soup list of NGOs:
Washington’s democracy assistance programme for the Middle East is filtered through a pyramid of agencies within the State Department. Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars is channeled through the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL), The Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), USAID, as well as the Washington-based,quasi-governmental organisation the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
In turn, those groups re-route money to other organisations such as the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute (NDI), and Freedom House, among others. Federal documents show these groups have sent funds to certain organisations in Egypt, mostly run by senior members of anti-Morsi political parties who double as NGO activists.
The Middle East Partnership Initiative – launched by the George W Bush administration in 2002 in a bid to influence politics in the Middle East in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks – has spent close to $900m on democracy projects across the region, a federal grants database shows.
USAID manages about $1.4bn annually in the Middle East, with nearly $390m designated for democracy promotion, according to the Washington-based Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED).
The US government doesn’t issue figures on democracy spending per country, but Stephen McInerney, POMED’s executive director, estimated that Washington spent some $65m in 2011 and $25m in 2012. He said he expects a similar amount paid out this year.
A main conduit for channeling the State Department’s democracy funds to Egypt has been the National Endowment for Democracy. Federal documents show NED, which in 2011 was authorised an annual budget of $118m by Congress, funneled at least $120,000 over several years to an exiled Egyptian police officer who has for years incited violence in his native country.
This appears to be in direct contradiction to its Congressional mandate, which clearly states NED is to engage only in “peaceful” political change overseas.
We know where the military dictatorship gets its money and weapons. Where do terrorists get the money and weapons with which they can become an organized army, occupy territory, and train recruits?
The source of motivation for terrorist attacks is apparently not “inexplicable”. The means by which those attacks are carried out also does not seem to be at all “inexplicable”.
What may be the truly “inexplicable” and uncanny part of the process: the ability of Western governments and media to cultivate such mass ignorance that they are able to pretend to be mere victims of purportedly “inexplicable” attacks, thus enabling ever-ongoing seizures of extra-constitutional police and emergency powers that are unlikely to be relinquished voluntarily.
The Reichstag Fire in Nazi Germany was perhaps the template for this mechanism of permanent ’emergency’ escalations of state power, which has today evolved into a global phenomenon, fueled by ISIS and at the same time fueling ISIS through its reactions.
One could ascribe failures to stop future attacks on power elite ‘interests’ or on civilians to malice, or to incompetence instead, depending on your perspective.
What’s the answer?
Interpret the latest attack as another datapoint indicating failure of the policy, and reverse course. Withdraw from foreign military occupations, renounce illegal emergency powers and secret spying on citizens, convert payments to foreign militaries and governments into aid for war victims including resettlement domestically, and sweep away the hubristic ruling class ideology that enabled this global human rights catastrophe and policy disaster in the first place.
Which course will the U.S. and NATO governments pursue from here? Perhaps a course they could have chosen almost 10 years ago that would certainly not have trained and armed ‘friendly’ terrorists, would certainly have not motivated young people to join terrorist organizations with more anger-inducing tragedies, and would certainly not have deliberately destabilized an entire region of the globe through armchair regime change pursuits.
Only a madman would repeat the same courses of action and expect differing results. So are Western leaders mad, or are they openly pursuing the same results?
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“At the height of the ‘Grexit’ crisis, Greeks were limited to cash withdrawals of about €60 a day. For nearly two weeks, under the terms of an emergency decree, they could not send money out of the country. But tens of thousands of Greek businesspeople had to pay for imported goods to keep their enterprises running. Those who’d thought ahead and stockpiled euros packed wads of currency into suitcases, flew to the countries where their suppliers were based and paid in cash. They didn’t have to declare anything and weren’t stopped as they boarded planes to other EU destinations. That will probably not be allowed to happen again.”
“In a statement from Downing Street, the prime minister expressed solidarity with France and warned that ‘however much we prepare, we in the UK face the same threat’. After a meeting of the emergency Cobra committee, Cameron said the terror threat level for the UK would remain at severe but it would be further reviewed in the light of evolving risks from groups and individuals associated with Islamic State. There will also be extra security at airports, especially those with routes with France. However, there is said to be no specific intelligence of a direct terrorist threat to attack Britain. There will be extra security at events where large crowds gather, at least in the short term.”
“David Cameron knew UK pilots were involved in US-led bombing missions of Isis targets in Syria, even though parliament had expressly rejected British military involvement in the country in 2013. The prime minister’s spokeswoman said on Friday that up to a dozen pilots had been involved since September, but they were not operating under a British chain of command. ‘The PM was aware that UK personnel were involved in US operations and what they were doing.’ Details of British personnel’s involvement in strikes by allied nations’ forces were revealed by a freedom of information request by the pressure group Reprieve.”
“The prime minister will go public this week with a long-awaited list of measures aimed at redefining the terms of Britain’s EU membership before an in-or-out referendum he’s pledged to hold by the end of 2017. With the referendum campaign under way, investors are being warned to wake up to the threat of the U.K. leaving the 28-nation bloc in a vote that might come as early as next year. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker are among the leaders to have said they want to help Britain stay in the EU, and that will require acceding to as many of Cameron’s demands as they can stomach.”
