@[deleted]
Fair play to your rejoinder about the euphemistic phrase "heavy-handed policing" when it does run the gamut from racialised stop-and-search through to legal murder.
Of course any observer should remain sharply critical of, and skeptical of official accounts, among other things because law enforcement almost inevitably lies or embellishes its reports. But we should retain a corresponding skepticism about resistant accounts, and conspiracy theories which don't yet have much evidence to support them.
I believe in a "deep state" in the sense that individuals and groups make undocumented decisions to further interests which are somewhat carefully kept secret from the public. Then there's a softer category of little acknowledged bureaucratic influence, within which a concern like the Eurogroup exists, and many other unelected committees and groups that don't even have a name, each of which has its own interests, its own stakeholders and sources of funding.
There are also whole industries and governmental complexes which stand to increase their influence by the renewal of conflict. Weapons manufacturers, intelligence departments, NATO, and Frontex are all examples. So there is motive to amplify European anxiety and xenophobia regarding Islamic State and the Middle East, much as IS has its own motives to amplify that fear and loathing.
Historically there are many examples of implausible covert operations with an enormous scope. Once you learn about Operation Gladio, official reality becomes treacherous.
Although I didn't know anything about the NSU terror cell previously, I'd draw a similar distinction between what I've now read and the Paris attacks as I did when I compared them to racist policing. The NSU, a German neo-Nazi group attacked and killed non-white immigrants, but the Paris attackers killed indiscriminately from the metropolitan French population and in great numbers. Horrific as their actions were, no one will ever start a military campaign because Nazis murder Turkish migrants in Germany.
The relatively enormous risk is what makes it harder for me to believe that a deep state interest aiming at geopolitical provocation knew of, and condoned the Paris attacks. That doesn't mean ruling out foul play, but for me it does mean focusing suspicion elsewhere.
For me the fishiest locus in the broader geopolitical narrative is that around the transition in Syria—the Free Syrian Army, the militarised "moderate opposition" which seems to be an elaborate CIA confection. Since the Paris attacks precipitated a sudden thawing of relations between the US and Russia over Syria, the political base of the FSA is now implicitly being questioned even in conservative publications like the Washington Post.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2015/11/17/this-video-shows-the-absurdity-of-the-war-in-syria-in-one-single-blown-up-humvee/
banduan wrote:
But were they?
Most of them have died, which marks them as fanatics willing to die, and their actions have been claimed by a group that calls itself religious. So far I believe they were religious, even if the Islamic mainstream disavows them—much as the Branch Davidians were religious even though my Catholic relatives wouldn't have called them Christians.
If you're saying maybe they were ops, well my response is more or less what I've written in response to Jones.
