Charlie Hebdo: Report from Europe

Here is a video of the execution of Amedy Coulibaly. It is a German website with the actual live French video of the police assault on the deli. There are three videos. The first one repeatedly shows Coulibaly with tied hands containing no weapons shot down and killed when he could easily have been captured. It is as if the order was to make sure that there is no live suspect whose story might have to be explained away. The first video also repeatedly shows the execution in slow motion. Commentary in French accompanies the video.

In response to my Charlie Hebdo update, European readers report that the situation in Europe is much the same as in the US and UK. The “mainstream” print and TV media parrot the official line and raise no unsettling questions. The independent Internet media is where real information is reported.

The German print and TV media have suffered dramatic declines in readers and viewers. This decline accelerated when Udo Ulkotte’s book about CIA penetration of European media was published by Kopp Verlag and became a best seller. Thinking people no longer trust the German media. The German media have lost the intelligent part of the population and only retain the somnolent sheep.

There are efforts to infiltrate the Internet media. Sites funded by money, such as Salon, appear. These sites attempt to discredit all who raise honest and obvious questions. Readers report that the Huffington Post has lost credibility by its move into “respectability.” Salon, apparently, has no more credibility than Fox News or The Weekly Standard.

The view I get from Europe supports my view. The left wing, or what little remains of a left, supports the official stories of terrorist attacks, because the stories confirm the left wing’s emotional need to believe that peoples oppressed by Western colonialism/imperialism are capable and determined and strike back at their oppressors. The left wing’s sense of justice demands that oppressed and abused peoples don’t just sit there and take it.

The right wing accepts the official stories for two different reasons. The anti-immigrationists among them use the terror attacks as evidence against immigration. The patriotic right can go along with this, but also responds to writers such as myself, who defend the Constitution against the government, with the argument that it is the government’s job to interpret the Constitution and I should not use the Constitution in order to criticize our government. Much of the American right believes that liberals use the Constitution in order to defend criminals and terrorists, who simply should not be tolerated. In other words, the Constitution is seen not as our defender but as a defender of those the right wing regards as undesirables, such as criminals, terrorists, abortionists, and homosexuals.

The rest of the population has simply succumbed to the many years of demonization of Muslims. Indeed, Israel has been demonizing Muslims for 60 years and has created the image of Muslims as terrorists wearing suicide bombs. If a person has been prepared to regard Muslims as terrorists, the official stories simply fit that already prepared compartment in the brain.

Additionally, although false flag attacks are commonplace and have been used throughout history to advance undeclared agendas, the public has been brainwashed to regard them as “conspiracy theories.” Thus, anyone who raises questions is dismissed as a “conspiracy theorist.” Many Americans do not even understand that the official story of 9/11, for example, is a conspiracy theory. So is the official explanation of the Boston Marathon Bombing and the Charlie Hebdo attack. What it boils down to is that official conspiracy theories are accepted as true, but everyone who questions them is a “conspiracy theorist.”

Readers point out that as stupid as governments are, populations are even more stupid and that governments succeed in brainwashing populations. Many conclude that in the absence of an adversarial media, democracy is a sham as the people have no inclination or means of confronting the government.

The hope appears to be that the mainstream media will continue to diminish and will be replaced by the independent Internet media, thus releasing populations from their brainwashed state. Others think that this hope will come to naught as governments will assert control over the Internet and that governments will make dissent the equivalent of terrorism.

Those who try to suppress dissent might be simply defending a personal bias or they might be agents of a cover-up. Regardless, it comes to the same thing in the end. People who raise dissenting points and honest questions are ridiculed or demonized in efforts to silence or marginalize them. Whether or not truth can actually prevail, it doesn’t usually prevail in time. For example, “Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction” prevailed over truth. After Iraq was destroyed, we learn that the basis for the US invasion of Iraq rested firmly on an orchestrated lie.

The culpability of the Western media in lies, death, and destruction is extreme. Consider the Malaysian airliner that went down in Ukraine. The US, UK, EU, and the puppet government in Kiev blamed Russia and forces of the breakaway eastern province for shooting down the civilian airliner. An investigation was convened. It has been six months since the investigation was completed, and the results have not been released.

Clearly, if the investigation supported the Western propaganda, the results would have been released. We can safely conclude that the investigation does not support the West’s propaganda. There has not been one word from the Western media demanding the results of the investigation. The world has forgotten it, but the world remembers the loudly shouted propaganda, and the conclusion, unsupported by any evidence, is that Russia is guilty.

The Western media works the same way when it reports Charlie Hebdo.

Copyright © 2015 Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, How America Was Lost, is now available.