more & more people r catch~in ON 2 their .."playbook" Ooooops ! :o
The “Terrorist” Events of Wednesday October 22nd in Ottawa and
two days earlier in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu bear all the hallmarks of a
coordinated cross-border one-two punch false flag operation.
The first, the left jab hit-and-run killing of a Canadian
soldier, would be the psychological softening up for the follow-up right
cross, the killing of another Canadian soldier in Ottawa. Together they
dazed the public to an extent that even the ostentatiously-iconic
murder at the National War Memorial alone might not have achieved.
The context was within the intensification of the so-called
“global war on terror” and in concert with the pro-military Stephen
Harper government’s deployment of warplanes supposedly fighting “the
terrorists” of the suddenly-emerging “Islamic State.” The first bombing
sorties of Canadian F-18s took place hours after the violent acts of
supposed “homegrown” and “self-radicalized” supporters of “Islamic
jihad.”
Domestically the second outrage occurred on the very day the
government was to introduce legislation giving the RCMP, CSIS and CSEC
[CSEC
is changing its name (to CSE) so that it can continue to spy – and
indeed do more spying abroad – but not have the word “Canada” associated
with this spying. “Spy agency CSEC says goodbye to Canada” is the
headline over an October 31st
Toronto Star story by Tonda MacCharles. ]
These coincidences of timing, I submit, are not coincidences at all
but quite deliberately planned to maximize the intended impacts: greater
public support for a new war in the Middle East, better chances for
faster and less-questioned support in Parliament for the increased
police and spy powers, and enhanced public approval ratings for the
Harper government in the run-up to next year’s general election.
This article delves deeper into the timing including that the events
happened, to the day, as military-intelligence “exercises” were taking
place that precisely mirrored the “surprise” events. Other hallmarks
include the prior involvement of government agents with both of the
supposed jihadists, the fact that both were easy-to-manipulate “human
wreckage” and the early “terrorism” branding led by the Prime Minister.
Other hallmarks include the unfolding parade of memorable iconic
elements and images, the “lone wolf” narratives, the dual role of the
media in general to both to reinforce the official narrative and to fail
to ask fundamental questions about it.
Ottawa shooter Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, especially, is tied to the “war
on terror.” At the highest level of visibility, he’s a pawn marketed for
public consumption to reinforce “global jihad” rhetoric.
On a subterranean level are two sets of fingerprints. One set shows
the involvement of both Canadian and U.S. spy agencies and possibly
other of the so-called “Five Eyes” (the others being the UK, Australia
and New Zealand), not to mention the grotesquely corrupt FBI, with its
record of mounting scores of false flag ops, that will be referred to
later.
The second set of prints shows the work of the agencies’ gatekeeper
“assets” in the media, in this instance in the USA as well as in Canada.
They manipulate “the news.”
Telltale hallmarks of false flag ops
1 The timing. The exquisite timing of the National
War Memorial outrage on the very day new laws were to be introduced by
the Harper regime giving expanded powers to spook agencies – as well as
additional cover for their “informants” so deep as to be impenetrable –
is one hallmark of a world-class false flag op.
Added police powers at all times in any country, when an atmosphere
of hysteria has been generated, are railroaded into laws in a flash,
historically speaking. The new or expanded laws take decades to undo or
ratchet down, if they ever are.
As Prof. Graeme MacQueen, author of an insightful and detailed new book,
The 2001 Anthrax Deception: The Case for a Domestic Conspiracy, (Clarity Press, Inc.,
www.claritypress.com,
writes, the timing of the 2001 “anthrax letter attacks” or the “anthrax
attacks” was just as the USA Patriot Act “was being hurried through
Congress.” The notorious bill, propagandistically entitled “Uniting and
Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to
Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism” Act, was signed into law October 26th,
2001, about three weeks after the first news of an “anthrax attack”
broke. Bush followed up by giving his approval “to the first bulk
domestic spying by the National Security Agency (NSA).” Such are the sea
changes set into motion by perfectly-timed false flag ops. (Watch for
an upcoming review of MacQueen’s book in Truth and Shadows.)
Interestingly MacQueen notes that
“gradually the hypothesis became widespread that the
[anthrax] attacks were the second blow in a ‘one-two punch’ delivered by
terrorists, the first blow having been the attacks of 9/11.”
Ottawa has gone the U.S. government one better by compressing the
time between introduction of “anti-terror” legislation and a false flag
“terror attack” to hours. Ottawa also subjected MPs and others on
Parliament Hill to the sounds of gunfire amidst fearful uncertainty, in a
fast-moving operation, again outdoing the Americans.
These events have also taken place during the lead-up to Remembrance
Day. Government TV ads are in heavy rotation featuring World War I and
World War II footage in black and white and colour, as well as video
clips of Canadian peacekeepers. They send us to
http://www.veterans.gc.ca/iremember.
Stirring and nostalgic, these ads cannot be divorced from consideration
of the impact of the Ottawa events. The ads (and much else) knit
together in the public consciousness.
My wife and I almost always attend the Remembrance Day ceremonies at Toronto’s Old City Hall.
I tend to agree with predictions that turnout this year may exceed
previous years. Remembrance Day speeches, as well as the whole setup of
Remembrance Day ceremonies, tend to ennoble if not glorify war. This
year the homilies are certain to make reference to the events in
St-Jean-sur-Richeleau and Ottawa.
More than ever, this year the understandable sentiments of many will
be channeled into reinforcing belief in the “reality” of the “war on
terror.” Emotions will be manipulated into support for a militarized
monopoly capitalist anti-life system of perpetual war and
ever-increasing inequality.
Metrics are being reported that bear this out. A front-page story in
The Globe and Mailon November 7th reports “a steady stream of support for the military in the days leading up to Remembrance Day.”
Under the headline “Poppy sales a sign support for military surging
after attacks,” Tristan Simpson reports. “Legion officials say those
events have become emblematic of a renewed patriotism – and have sparked
an increase in military support.”
2 Prior “involvement” of agents of the state
“Prior contact” with alleged terrorists is a virtually guaranteed hallmark of false flag ops.
Both Zehaf-Bibeau and hit-and-run killer Martin Couture-Rouleau were
“known to authorities.” As the main front page headline of the
Toronto Star had it of Couture-Rouleau on October 22nd: “RCMP had suspect on their radar for months.”
On page A4 on the next day in the same paper, an edition dominated by
17 pages of coverage out of Ottawa, is a half-page devoted to how much
“a Canadian security source” knew about Zehaf-Bibeau’s past.
The usual phraseology is that agents of CSIS or the RCMP “had been in
contact with” the criminals or “had (these individuals) under
surveillance” or “had been monitoring their activities.”
Is it entirely coincidental that both “terrorists” – as Harper
labeled both early and often – were Quebeckers? Quebeckers as a
generality are cool to Harper and his “war on terror” rhetoric. But they
might be expected to warm up to his “national security” agenda on the
basis of fear — insofar as they buy the official narratives.
Canadian authorities, it was reported, asked the FBI to assist in the
investigation of the “terrorist” events in Canada. The FBI’s record
shows that the assistance would most likely be in sharing with their
buddies north of the border in the finer points of how to mount a false
flag op. Investigative reporter Trevor Aaronson’s book
The Terror Factoryexposes
the FBI’s inside role in creating “false flag terror.” He writes that
as of 2011 the FBI was involved in more than 500 cases of “manufactured”
terror.
References here can be found at :
http://www.presstv.com/detail/2013/0…ainst-america/
In a 2011 article in Mother Jones, Aaronson wrote:
Since 9/11, there have been hundreds of arrests of
“terrorist suspects” and 158 prosecutions. Of all the reported “major
terror plots,” only three can’t be directly tied to terror suspects who
were directly recruited, trained and supplied by the Federal Bureau of
Investigation. Truth is, we also have questions about the other three.
In the case of the “anthrax attacks” the spider web of government
agents and suspicious civilian players interacting with those initially
put forward as anthrax terrorists and/or 9/11 “hijackers” was almost
monolithic. Most were in Florida, within close geographic proximity. As
MacQueen writes:
Academic researchers have largely tended to dismiss the
Florida connections by accepting the FBI’s coincidence theory. … The
question, however, is not whether actual hijackers were involved in
sending out letters laden with anthrax spores: the question is whether
fictions, verbal or enacted, were intentionally created to make this
narrative seem credible. The [alleged hijackers] did not have anthrax,
but the script portrayed them as likely to have it. [page 138]
The U.S. government repeatedly attempted to link the “anthrax
attacks,” the “9/11 hijackers” and Iraq (remember Colin Powell’s now
totally discredited dog-and-pony show at the UN?). But when those
attempts fell apart, the domestic terror purveyors turned to Plan B, as
MacQueen persuasively shows. Plan B was to finger a domestic “lone
wolf,” scientist Bruce Ivins, who then became conveniently dead.
“The evidence suggests a grand plan, not an opportunistic foray,” writes MacQueen.
3 The chosen miscreants are “human wreckage”
It was Webster Tarpley, author of
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA who described the typical patsy recruited for manipulation by spy agencies as “human wreckage.”
It’s easy to understand how such
individuals can easily be manipulated through bribes, other inducements,
threats or psychological pressure up to and including sophisticated
brain-washing techniques. These are known to have been developed by
“spy” agencies over decades and in this country go back at least to the
CIA’s self-admitted funding of “psychic driving” experiments under the
Project MK-Ultra mind control program on unknowing civilians at McGill
University from 1957 to 1964 under the direction of Dr. Donald Ewen
Cameron:
Frequently mentally-disturbed people have been in trouble with the
law. This was true of Zehaf-Bibeau and Couture-Rouleau. Zehaf-Bibeau was
desperate, on the edge, unpredictable, wanted to die. Spy agencies find
such people easily. The “chosen ones” will have Arabic names and be
converts to Islam. Or have Middle East connections. Many combinations
fill the bill to help the label “suspected terrorist” stick.
Run-ins with the law render disturbed individuals additionally
vulnerable. Police or “intelligence” agents can promise to use their
influence to gain shorter sentences if they’ve been convicted, more
leniency if they’ve already been sentenced. Or get them off altogether.
Conversely agents can threaten to use their influence to make things
much worse for these individuals. Those promising or threatening often
are in a position to deliver.
In this connection,
the lead article in the Focus section of The Globe and Mail on October 25th by Doug Saunders actually describes, without his using the term, false flag ops by U.S. “authorities.”
It’s worth excerpting that section of his piece:
Authorities in the U.S. adopted the practice of catching
lone-wolf figures in sting operations, in which they’d find disturbed
young men online, provide them with prefabricated terror plots and
(fake) weapons, and arrest them a moment before they were about to carry
out their planned attack. This approach has been numerically successful
– that is, it has intercepted a lot of putative terrorists – but many
wonder if it’s simply making the problem worse, and turning police
agencies into terrorism enablers.
“Often these are down-and-out losers in society who wouldn’t be able
to pull off a decent attack on their own,” Dr. [Ramon] Spaaij, an
Australian scholar with Victoria University and author ofUnderstanding Lone Wolf Terrorism,
says, “but the undercover police provide the weapons and suggest the
targets … what that does is it has sown a lot of bad blood in Muslim
communities – we’re out there preying on vulnerable young people and
turning them into terrorists.”
What Saunders, whose body of work I happen to greatly admire, fails
to note is that these “sting” (e.g., false flag) operations generate
thousands of fear-inducing headlines; this may be their main purpose.
Readers, listeners and viewers are led to believe that police have
caught “real terrorists.” These false flag ops contribute the bulk of
the “proof” for the so-called “war on terror.” It’s a continuous
psychological assault and distortion of reality through manufacture of
“reality.” The impact goes ‘way beyond “sowing bad blood in Muslim
communities.” It’s a main driver of the fictional “war on terror.”
Besides, “bad blood” in Muslim communities would be one of the goals
of the authors of this continuous fakery. This “bad blood” would fulfill
at least two functions. One is to keep many Muslims in docile fear mode
in which they can be more easily controlled. Second is that less docile
Muslims, especially young unstable men, will react with anger and
possibly go off the deep end. Perfect.
This is the same entrapment technique used to create the “Toronto 18.” And this is the same
modus operandi the police use when they enable or program or bribe or threaten their patsies to cause violence.
As University of Guelph professor Michael Keefer wrote:
The theatrical arrests of 18 (mostly young) Muslims in
Toronto in the Summer of 2006 reinforced media-driven paranoia that
homegrown terrorists were everywhere. The unraveling of the case two
years later exposes to view yet again the sinister and disgraceful
behavior of Canada’s security intelligence apparatus, which has formed a
habit of confecting false accusations of terrorism against Canadian
citizens. The threat to Canadian society is not a bunch of Muslim boys
playing paintball, it’s an ideologically driven government willing to
curtail our civil liberties.
4 The “lone wolf” or “lone gunman” narrative
Without doubt there are instances of demented individuals who perform
outrages single handedly. The USA provides the most examples by far,
with a plethora of berserk gunmen mowing down innocent citizens in
malls, on college campuses and elsewhere.
In politically-charged false flag ops, by definition in virtually all
cases agents in the shadows pull the levers to bring about the
outrages. In the three highest profile assassinations of the last
century and arguably most impactful historically, those of JFK, RFK and
MLK, the establishment narrative has been that lone gunmen were
responsible, in each case in the face of much evidence to the contrary.
Lee Harvey Oswald was known to have worked for U.S. intelligence. He’s a
classic “lone gunman” who wasn’t. Others include James Earl Ray,
allegedly the killer of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who wasn’t, as
proven in a civil trial in Memphis in 1999. The half white half black
jury returned a verdict that civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.
was the victim of an assassination conspiracy involving the CIA and the
U.S. Army and did not die at the hands of an unaided lone gunman.
In the case of Zehaf-Bibeau the likelihood of enablers is rendered
very high because of many unanswered questions. Among them, how did a
deranged misfit living in shelters obtain both a gun and a car needed
for him to go on his rampage?
5 “Lone wolves” tend to become quickly deceased
From Lee Harvey (“I am just a patsy”) Oswald to Rolando Galman (who gunned down
Benigno Aquino, Jr., former
Philippine Senator,
as he stepped off his plane, and then himself was gunned down) to the
“Boston bomber” Tamerlan Tsarnaev, patsies or hired assassins tend to
become deceased – quickly. Dead men tell no tales. Typically, Michael
Zehaf-Bibeau and Martin Couture-Rouleau are no more.
In 2002 U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft named scientist Steven
Hatfill a “person of interest” in connection with the “anthrax attacks”
of a year before. As Graeme MacQueen writes: “The FBI concentrated on
investigating him, publicly and aggressively. A year later Hatfill sued
the Justice Department for libel and eventually he received $5.82
million in compensation…”
The FBI – presumably after a massive search for patsy material –
decided in 2008 that the “anthrax killer” was Dr. Bruce Ivins, who had
been working on an anthrax vaccine at the U.S. Army Medical Research
Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland.
“This time,” MacQueen writes, “the FBI faced no serious challenge
from its chosen perpetrator because Ivins died shortly before he was to
be charged with the crime. He was said to have committed suicide.”
Tellingly, no autopsy was performed.
The death of an actual
bona fide terrorist or, much more
often the case, a recruited patsy (the classic being Oswald) obviates
the possibility of a trial in a court of law (as distinguished from
trial in the “court of public opinion”). Trial in a court of law carries
with it the possibility of evidence emerging that could be damning to
the state and the Crown’s case.
The bodies of killers, alleged killers or dead “terrorists” frequently are not dealt with appropriately.
As Prof. John McMurtry of Guelph, author of The Cancer Stage of Capitalism: From Crisis to Cure, wrote in an October 29th Global Research essay: Zehaf-Bibeau
“…went on a killing spree, with no known blood testing
afterwards for the drugs he was evidently driven by, in the video record
of his frenzied and super-charged behaviour, just as there was no known
test of the body of crazed drive-over killer, Martin Couture-Rouleau.
How extraordinary. How unspoken in the lavish profusion of other
details… All such strange coincidences are part of the now familiar
covert-state MO.”
The de facto executions of the killers or alleged killers are,
however, less a necessity than a convenience to the national security
state. This is because in those cases where the patsies, killers or
alleged killers survive, their trials uniformly are fixed, as was the
case with the “Toronto 18,” who rapidly became the Toronto nine, as
charges were dropped against many of the teenaged “terror suspects.”
6 The branding
The St-Jean-sur-Richelieu events were instantly defined as
“terrorism” by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the House of Commons and
thereafter were widely so defined by the military, by “intelligence
experts,” RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson and by many media players.
(There are honourable exceptions to the general rush to judgment within
the media. We identify some later.)
The “anthrax attacks,” MacQueen writes, “were the result of a
[domestic] conspiracy meant to help redefine the enemy of the West,
revising the global conflict framework from the Cold War to the Global
War on Terror.”
The events in Ottawa were not meant to replace the global-conflict
framework but rather to reinforce the new 2001 model: “Islam” as the
permanent mortal enemy of “the West.”
The rhetoric, like ad copy, is part and parcel of the branding.
Buzzwords (“war on terror,”), code words (“national security”), snarl
words (“terrorists,” “radical Islam,” “threats”) and purr words (“our
allies,” “security”) as semanticist S. I. Hayakawa dubbed them, displace
rational thought.
Equal in impact to that of language repetition, if not greater, were
the iconic elements. The National War Memorial and Parliament are about
as iconic as one can arrange in Canada. So to have the shooter start at
one, then skedaddle over to the other on the same crazed mission is to
do so on iconosteroids.
Add to that: two worthy soldiers representing Everyman, all Members
of Parliament, the Prime Minister, a car-jacked driver, a hero in the
person of the gun-toting Sergeant-at-Arms, the heart-wrenching footage
of Corporal Cirillo’s five-year-old son wearing his father’s regimental
hat, the corporal’s pet dogs, the grieving spouses and relatives and
more.
It would be a mistake to overlook that the flesh and blood victims,
Corporal Cirillo and Warrant Office Patrice Vincent, also were symbolic.
They represent “Canada’s military,” “our men and women in uniform” who
“serve our country” who “made the ultimate sacrifice.”
Many of the iconic themes of October 22nd were pre-echoed in the
Toronto 18 trials, one of them being the alleged planning by the
teen-aged patsies and dupes of “blowing up Parliament” and “beheading
the prime minister.”
7 “Security exercises” and the false flag curiously overlap
A hallmark of false flag ops is that military, security, police or
“intelligence” exercises precede or run simultaneously with a false flag
operation. Run-throughs are necessary for all complex maneuvers. A
drill also justifies assembling the human and other resources required.
Perhaps the most egregious exercise was the one admitted to be taking
place at the time of the “London 7/7” tube “terror bombings” of July
7th, 2007. Peter Power, managing director of crisis management for the
firm Visor Consultants, in a
live interview on
ITV News that
was aired at 8:20 p.m. on the evening of the bombings, tells the host
“…today we were running an exercise …. 1,000 people involved in the
whole organization … and the most peculiar thing was that we based our
scenario on simultaneous attacks on the underground and mainland station
and so we had to suddenly switch an exercise from fictional to real.”
Elsewhere he said the exercise specified the same stations that the
“surprise bombers” targeted, which would qualify as one of the most
far-fetched coincidences of all time.
On the day of 9/11 a minimum of five military drills were underway.
One of them, Vigilant Guardian, involved the insertion of false radar
blips onto radar screens in the Northeast Air Defense Sector, a fact
that even made it into the fraudulent
9/11 Commission Report (although the others did not, which made the appearance of Vigilant Guardian a limited hangout).
All of which is relevant to what
Mark Taliano wrote about the events in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu and Ottawa on the Global Research website on October 31st:
“The theory that U.S agencies were somehow implicated in
the [Ottawa] tragedy is further reinforced by … Operation Determined
Dragon, a joint Canada/U.S counter-terrorism drill…”
The first Canadian event, the fatal hit-and-run carried out by
Couture-Rouleau, occurred on the first day of that drill, October 20th.
From that day to 29th was the “execution phase” of a joint
Canada-U.S.-NATO military-intelligence “linked exercise” named
Determined Dragon 14 (in internal documents called “Ex DD 14”).
For details of Determined Dragon 14 one need look no further than the National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces website
http://www.forces.gc.ca/en/operations-exercises/ddragon.page:
“Ex DD 14 will primarily focus on the lateral interface between
NORAD, United States Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) and United States
Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) specifically in cyber and space domains,”
visitors to the site are informed.
Among the strategic objectives specified on the are to “enhance
interagency partnerships” and to “institutionalize battle procedures
with partners such as regional and component commanders, the Strategic
Joint Staff, the Associate Deputy Minister (Policy), and the Canadian
Forces Intelligence Command.” Another is to enhance “bilateral planning
with USNORTHCOM and USSTRATCOM; and CJOC coordination with NORAD.
Under the heading “Linked Exercises” the Canadian site says that Ex
DD 14 “is bound to other allied exercises by a common scenario and
linked through multiple events:
- Ex VIGILANT SHIELD, a NORAD-USNORTHCOM exercise focused on homeland defence and homeland security missions; and
- Ex GLOBAL THUNDER, a USSTRATCOM-led exercise with the primary emphasis on exercising nuclear command and control capabilities.
It concludes that Ex DD 14 “offers an opportunity for regional joint task forces (RJTF) to leverage their own exercises.
For someone paying close attention to
CBC-TV’s The National on October 25th,
CBCsenior
correspondent Adrienne Arsenault came close to giving away the game.
Anchor Peter Mansbridge begins by saying there are “lots of questions”
about the day’s events. After he hears the usual line from regularly
seen Ray Boisvert, “ex-CSIS,” Mansbridge turns to Arsenault, “who’s been
looking at this whole issue of radicalization for the past year or so”
and asks her what she can say. Arsenault replies:
(
http://www.globalresearch.ca/canadian-authorities-ran-war-game-drills-depicting-isis-attack-scenarios/5409707)
They [Canadian authorities] may have been surprised by
the actual incidents but not by the concepts of them. Within the last
month we know that the CSIS, the RCMP and the National Security Task
Force engaged in, I suppose they, ran a scenario that’s akin to a war
games exercise if you will where they actually imagined literally an
attack in Quebec, followed by an attack in another city, followed by a
tip that that “hey some guys, some foreign fighters are coming back from
Syria.” So they were imagining a worst case scenario. We’re seeing
elements of that happening right now. … [Canadian authorities] may talk
today in terms of being surprised but we know that this precise
scenario has been keeping them up at night for awhile.” [my emphasis]
Mansbridge shows no interest in this remarkable statement by his senior correspondent.
But truth activist
Josh Blakeney of the University of Lehbridge who also was one of the first out of the block in nailing these events as false flags, comments:
What an amazing coincidence that Canadian intelligence
ran a drill envisioning an attack first in Quebec, then another city.
What are the chances that these mock terror drills are just a
coincidence? In nearly every instance of a major terrorist occurrence in
the West, it has been revealed that intelligence services were
conducting war games exercises mimicking the very events that later come
to pass. And now we have confirmation that Canada’s intelligence
services were doing the same thing.
All of which would seem to reflect adequate “information exchanges”
with “our U.S. partner” and other “allies.” Yet Harper’s new
“anti-terror” legislation will merge Canadian spooks and military even
more into the global apparatus that can manufacture terror incidents
pretty well anywhere any time.
8 Media manipulation on both sides of the border
On the crucial propaganda front the evidence is that “U.S. officials”
initiated journalistic input, and government agents planted within the
media on both sides of the border meddled with journalistic output.
Key mainstream media stories as well as tweets “disappeared.” Stories
disappeared from Google. Both U.S. and Canadian mainstream reports were
altered significantly. This could only be carried out by internal
gatekeeper agents. Inputs and outputs left permanent fingerprints of the
overt as well as behind-the-scenes manipulation.
Students of false flag operations have learned – just as regular
detectives have learned in regard to standard non-political crimes – the
first 24 or 48 hours provide critical evidence, before the criminals
can begin covering their tracks.
Amy MacPherson of Free The Press Canada (
https://www.facebook.com/FreeThePressCanada) hit the ground running in those first hours and days. On Tuesday, October 23rd she posted a
lengthy piece, carried the next day on GlobalResearch containing damning evidence of rolling censorship on social media including Twitter and in mainstream media including the
Toronto Star and the
CBC.
Equally if not more damning are her frame grabs showing that U.S.
news outlets were fed information by “U.S. officials” identifying
Zehaf-Bibeau as the Ottawa shooter prematurely, before Canadian media
were able to identify him.
With accompanying grabs, MacPherson writes: “While Canadian news personalities were at police gunpoint, American outlets like
CBS News and the [always suspect]
Associated Press had a full story to sell, complete with the dead shooter’s name.”
At 10:54 a.m. Eastern, when the National War Memorial crime scene was not yet secured,
CBS News stated: “The gunmen [sic] has been identified by U.S. officials to
CBS News as
Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a Canadian national born in 1982.” MP Charlie
Angus described gunshots around 10 a.m. American media had solved the
murder 54 minutes later.
“By 4:58 p.m.” MacPherson notes, “the [
CBS] story was edited
to remove the shooter’s name, or any mention of the U.S. government’s
knowledge.” She continues: “The only problem is no one could update the
Google database quick enough with these changes, so the original
information still appeared with general search results.
“The story was altered again in the evening, when the Canadian government allowed [her
emphasis] the name of a shooter to be released and American media added
law enforcement to their list of official sources. They also added a
middle name, Abdul, to emphasize the suspect’s Islamic ties with an
accusation of terrorism.”
She asks:
“…how American intelligence knew the name of a ‘possible
terrorist’ as the mayhem was still unfolding. How did Americans know
when Canadians didn’t, and how was this information so widespread that
American media and Google had access to distribute, but domestic
reporters on the scene did not?
“Canadian parliamentary bureau chiefs didn’t possess the same
information as their U.S. counterparts and faced the barrel of police
guns as a press narrative was provided on their behalf by another
country. If this is dubbed an act of terrorism that American sources had
knowledge about to pre-report, then why weren’t steps taken to prevent
the violence?”
Then there are the all-Canadian media anomalies. “The
Toronto Star reported
[that] multiple witnesses saw [Couture-Rouleau] with his hands in the
air,” writes MacPherson, “when at least one police officer opened fire.
They also say a knife was ‘lodged into the ground near where the
incident occurred.’
“Well,” MacPherson continues, “that’s what the original story by
Allan Woods, Bruce Campion-Smith, Joanna Smith, Tonda MacCharles and Les
Whittington stated.
A syndicated copy had to be located at the Cambridge Times, because a newer, edited version at the
Toronto Star appeared dramatically altered by Tuesday.”
That article (changed without disclosure) claims Couture-Rouleau was
an Islamic radical who emerged from the vehicle with a knife in his
hands. No mention of eyewitnesses who saw his hands in the air and the
knife lodged in the ground (an image seen later on
CBC-TV news).
As MacPherson writes: “The article was more than edited and qualifies
as being replaced entirely, having lost its tone, facts and spirit from
the original published version.
If it weren’t for smaller papers carrying
The Star’s original syndicated content, there would be little or no proof of the first comprehensive version, she adds.
9 Failure of media to ask fundamental questions
These include, first and foremost: “Is it possible that agents of the
state had a hand in this outrage?” This question might not be as
difficult to raise as one might imagine. Suppose it were handled this
way:
“There’s a long and well-documented history of authorities staging
iconic events aimed at stampeding their publics into supporting
government initiatives, especially initiatives supporting existing or
proposed wars. Examples include Colin Powell’s introduction at the
United Nations of alleged compelling proof – subsequently proven false –
that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. [pause] Can it be
ruled out definitively that behind-the-scenes actors in government
circles in Canada had
no hand whatsoever in the events of October 22nd?”
Of course, for any media person to ask such a question would
pre-suppose that those who reach the level of Parliamentary
correspondent or, higher still, anchor of a national news program would
have developed deep skepticism based on hard-won knowledge of the
history of such operations.
It would further pre-suppose that, had they developed such a grasp of history, they would be promoted to those levels.
What can we say? We can say: “These things ain’t going to happen.”
Tihe “failure” to ask fundamentally important fully justified
questions based on documented history known to many readers, listeners
and viewers deserves extensive treatment in itself. The “failure”
represents, from the point of view of a cover-up, success for the real
perpetrators.
Such unasked questions are masked by the repetitive posing of
essentially superficial questions and questions that beg answers. Press
conferences are rife with the acceptance of the official line along with
questions about minutiae within the line. One also hears a lot of
really dumb and repetitive questions.
The graphically impressive front page of
The Globe and Mail had it on October 23rd: “The murder of Corporal Nathan Cirillo, the storming of Parliament and the
tough questions[my emphasis] arising from the chaos.”
The phrase “tough questions” in this context suggests – and their
subsequent rollout reinforces – a central theme that buttresses the
official line: that there have been “security lapses,” that these lapses
are serious, that therefore “security agencies” need “more resources”
to do their jobs “protecting our security” and “making us safe,” and so
on and on.
Included among the questions most frequently trotted out by the
media: “How can we strike a balance between “the need for greater
security” on the one hand, and “the protection of privacy,” on the
other.
This endlessly posed question has embedded within it several
unexamined major premises, concealed significant historical facts and
trends, as well as an ambiguity serving both concealments and that
drives conclusions among readers, listeners and viewers that are
ill-based, self-defeating and that inoculate those who are so
manipulated against gaining greater understanding.
The premises include that privacy is ever and always a stand-alone
good; that every person’s privacy is at risk equally with every other
person’s; that privacy for each person or group means the same as for
every other person or group; that in fact the two sides of the equation
are security
vs. privacy (as opposed, for instance, to security vs. freedom,
although that equation – much more relevant – is raised fairly
frequently) and that it is the good-faith activities of “security
forces” that endanger “privacy.” Left out of the equation are the proven
bad faith activities of “security forces.”
The concealments include that the threat to citizens can come from
the good-faith actions of “security forces,” yes, but that in fact by a
large preponderance come from rogue actions of “security forces” and
“intelligence agencies,” both of which are virtually out-of-control now.
On protecting the identity of “intelligence sources
The historical record – not in the slightest acknowledged by the
“security vs privacy” equation – shows conclusively that those most
spied upon, whose personal security is threatened repeatedly, are those
who question authority, those who are peaceful dissidents, those who
seek and act for improvements to the status quo, specifically for more
equality and justice, those who are left-of-centre up to and including
revolutionaries. The danger posed to loss of privacy among those on the
left is
much greater than it is for those on
the right or for those not politically involved at all, which is to say
the vast majority of citizens. This historical record goes unaddressed
in 99% or more of the discourse about the dangers of “loss of privacy.”
The large majority of people have little reason to fear the state,
because they pose no perceived threat to the state. Accordingly, their
need or wish to protect their privacy – for instance about their
personal sex or financial lives – is of less interest to, is far less
important to, the national security state than are the personal facts
and political beliefs or acts of those on the left who pose a perceived
threat to the status quo, however lawful or justified their words or
actions may be.
Providing deeper, almost impenetrable, cover for informants,
otherwise known colloquially as rats or ratfinks, is far from a pressing
need for national security.
Rather, the history of informants shows that the majority, and in
particular those who are chosen or come forward to “intelligence”
agencies (or are assigned by these agencies), are owed much less
protection from identity than they even now enjoy.
The case of RCMP informant Richard Young is just one that should give pause.
Young was recruited by the RCMP in British Columbia (he approached
them) prior to 2007. He convinced them he had information on drug
operations. An accomplished con man, he suckered the Mounties big time.
While they, through failure to carry out due diligence among other
things, came under his spell he was taken under their witness protection
program. Doing so is labour intensive and expensive. Under it, Young
committed a murder, which is uncontested. The Mounties then did all in
their considerable power to shield him from the consequences of that.
This and more
was documented by two
CanWest reporters and then a
Globe and Mail investigative team in 2007.
At the heart of the stupidity, naivete and wrong-doing by the RCMP
was the continued insistence on protecting Young’s identity. Ultimately
the Mounties’ failure and the harm done (wasted public money, a man
getting away with murder under the protection of the RCMP, and the RCMP
not properly held to account) were exposed by less than a handful of
dedicated reporters.
A compelling but illegitimate reason for these agencies to seek total
anonymity for their “informants” is that so many of these do not even
qualify as such, but rather are individuals planted to manufacture false
“intelligence” or carry out dirty tricks on targets chosen by these
agencies. Documented history shows that typically the targets are
law-abiding, well-informed, politically active (on the left) and even
courageous citizens who nevertheless are considered “enemies of the
state” by the security apparatus and its overlords.
Remember that the RCMP spied on Tommy Douglas to the extent that his
dossier numbered 1,100 pages, only a few of which CSIS, which inherited
the RCMP dossier, has released. The grounds for CSIS’s refusal are that
it must protect the informants. This is the very group of unsavoury
snitches that the Harper government wants to give deeper cover.
The otherwise much-touted need for transparency and accountability is
not only forgotten within “terrorist threat” hysteria. It is turned on
its head. It is claimed that transparency and accountability are
threats to
the public! And that anyone who suggests otherwise also is a threat. In
a world of fear the good becomes bad and the bad becomes good.
The so-called “war on terror,” fed by the national security state to
the public like slops to pigs, paves the way through regression to a
world of “military tribunals” (an oxymoron), of Star Chambers, to a new
Dark Ages.
Outcomes of this particular false flag op
√ It makes the task much harder for those
warning the public of the dangers of the government’s legislation
endowing intelligence agencies with greater powers, more resources,
fewer restrictions and less transparency.
√ Providing the RCMP and other spy
agencies with even more anonymity for informants is a particular danger,
as noted at length above.
If the laws being pushed by Harper today
go through, the RCMP, CSIS or CSEC in a similar case in the future would
be even more enabled to waste the time of personnel and of other
resources, and of taxpayer public money, for little or no gain in public
safety or security.
√ Reduction of civil liberties: easier detentions, extraditions
√ Increased invasion of privacy
√ Intimidation of legislative branch, as happened in spades in the USA in response to the “anthrax attacks.”
√ More pressure on the judiciary to bow to omnipresent low-level “terrorism” hysteria
√ Marginalizing of both the legislative and judicial branches
√ Increased integration of Canadian spy agencies with those
of “our” allies, so that the globalist
integrated deception apparatus can operate even more freely and in ever
more sophisticated ways.
√ Buttressing of the grand made-in-Washington pax Americana imperial design.
Honourable exceptions in the media
In fairness, quite a number of voices of reason, caution, skepticism
and outright objection to the Harper government’s obvious exploitation
of the events of the week of October 20th to forward its militaristic
pro-American pro-Israeli agenda could be found. Unfortunately, as usual
with false flags, these voices accepted the government’s version of
what happened.
With this fundamental
caveat in place, however, here are just a few individuals within the Canadian mainstream who made cogent arguments of dissent.
In the
Toronto’s Star’s 17 pages of coverage on October 23rd
Martin Regg Cohn cautioned:
“The risk is that we will overreact with security
clampdowns and lockdowns that are difficult to roll back when the threat
subsides. The greater risk is that we will hunker down with
over-the-top security precautions that pose a more insidious menace to
our open society.”
Tom Walkom pointed out the events were not
unprecedented. In 1984 a disgruntled Canadian Forces corporal killed
three and wounded 13 in Quebec’s national assembly. “We know,” Walkom
continued, “that in a situation like this, facts are secondary,” and “at
times like this, it is easy to lose all sense of proportion.”
Haroon Siddiqui asked
why, “if Martin Rouleau, a.k.a. Ahmad the Convert,” was in the
crosshairs of CSIS and the RCMP for months, he was not being tailed.
“Smoking out such suspects and throwing the book at them
requires good policing, not wars abroad or the whipping up of fears at
home for partisan political purposes.”
On October 27th in
The Globe and Mail Elizabeth Renzetti quoted extensively from James Risen’s new book,
Pay Any Price: Greed, Power and Endless War. “The war in question is the war on terror, which Mr. Risen, a Pulitzer-Prize winning security reporter for
The New York Times,
says has been used as an excuse to conduct a largely secret campaign to
undermine Americans’ civil rights, spy on their communications and line
the pockets of security consultants. As one reviewer said, it reads
like a thriller – except, unfortunately, it’s not fiction.”
She quotes Risen:
“Of all the abuses America has suffered at the hands of
the government in its endless war on terror,” Mr. Risen writes,
“possibly the worst has been the war on truth.”
On the same day in the
Toronto Star Tim Harper wrote:
“Here’s a vote for the power of time and perspective.” “And here’s a vote of confidence in a Parliament that
will not jump to conclusions in
the heat of the moment and a government that will resist the temptation
to use October’s events as an impetus to move into new, unneeded
realms.”
“Before we move too far, time and perspective should force us to ask
whether we were dealing with mental health issues last week rather than
terrorism, even as the RCMP said Sunday it had ‘persuasive evidence’
that Michael Zehaf-Bibeau’s attack was driven by ideological and
political motives.” “We must twin increased powers with increased
oversight.”
On November 2nd, the
Toronto Star published a long lead editorial headed “’Terrorism’ Debate: Get beyond the word.”
The second paragraph:
“Down one path is a U.S.-like response to the perceived,
though unsubstantiated, threat of terror: increased police powers and
indiscriminate state snooping, the chipping away of civil liberties.
This the way of the government.”
Down the other “is a more considered, deliberate approach that takes
the rule of law as primary…” The choice, the editorial continues “ought
to be fertile ground for a pivotal public debate but so far that
conversation has been eclipsed by a lexicographical matter: whether we
can rightly call the attack on Ottawa ‘terrorism.’”
It concludes:
“As long as our leaders insist on reducing these complex
issues to a binary debate over a slippery word, we cannot have the
conversation we need nor choose the country we’ll become.”
Many writers of letters to the editors of these papers are in no mood
to be panicked by inflated “terror” talk. “Denying [Zihaf-Bibeau and
Couture-Rouleau] their passports had the equivalent effect of putting
them in cages and poking at them with a sharp stick. They broke out and
two soldiers are dead.” This was from a retired RCMP officer, in
The Globe and Mail.
False flag events benefit the Canadian right
Some commentators to their credit have observed that these events as
played are calculated to pay off domestically to increase the Harper
government’s chances of re-election next year.
Harper now holds a couple of aces for a winning electoral hand. One
is his rightwing anti-taxes stance tied to producing a federal money
surplus whatever the cost to the environment, science, social services
(including more help for the mentally ill) and more. Some of that
surplus is already being earmarked in the highest-profile ways as bribes
(with their own money) to Canadians with children.
Last week’s events now constitute another ace. “Family-friendly”
leaders seen as standing tall against an external enemy almost always
benefit electorally. But this second ace is a fixed card. In this game
there are five aces: clubs, spades, hearts, diamonds and false flags.
Only when a politically relevant portion of Canada’s and the world’s
people understand the dominant agenda-setting function of false flag
operations can decent people the world over begin a successful effort to
replace the vast global inequality-and-death structure with a
life-sustaining and fair socio-economic structure.
As Prof. John McMurtry of Guelph put it on October 29th in an essay entitled
“Canada: Decoding Harper’s Terror Game. Beneath the Masks and Diversions” published by Global Research:
“If the stratagem is not seen through, the second big
boost to Harper will be to justify the despotic rule and quasi-police
state he has built with ever more prisons amidst declining crime, ever
more anti-terrorist rhetoric and legislation, ever more cuts to life
support systems and protections (the very ones which would have
prevented these murderous rampages), and ever more war-mongering and
war-criminal behaviours abroad.
Adds McMurtry:
“Harper rule can only go further by such trances of normalized stupefaction now reinforced with Canadian blood.”
Barrie Zwicker is a renowned Canadian journalist, best selling author and documentary producer.
Posts
The GM Contamination Register database has been run by Genewatch
and Greenpeace for about ten years and contains cases dating from 1997
to the end of 2013 [1]. The authors of a new paper, published in the
International Journal of Food Contamination, analysed the 400 or so
cases in the database by crop and country [2].