SOTT FOCUS: Sarkozy’s Backers To Use Toulouse Attacks To Steal French Election?

March 21st, 2012

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

French President Sarkozy’s 2012 re-election bid has been faltering almost since he was ‘elected’ in 2007. Long viewed by a majority of the French public as a latter-day Napoleon wannabe, some were perplexed as to how he won the 2007 presidential race, given that one year before the election, opinion polls placed him a definite second, and between then and the election he did nothing to justify his alleged increase in popularity, with his ‘Bling Bling’ approach to electioneering turning the stomachs of many French people. In addition, within a few months of his ‘victory’ in May 2007, Sarkozy’s popularity had plummeted to around 30% as people reacted to his austere economic reforms, on which he had openly campaigned, mind you. How to explain such a sudden turnaround so soon after his victory? It was only on election day that, somehow, the diminutive son of a Hungarian immigrant and his ‘princes of Paris‘ were gifted 5 years in the Elysee palace.

Rigged Elections?

Today it’s common knowledge (or it should be) that election results, even in the world’s ‘greatest democracies’, can be easily ‘flipped’ by way of electronic voting machines. That such machines were introduced by Sarkozy himself (as Minister of the Interior) in 2004, for around 4% of the French electorate raised a few eyebrows, and offered a plausible explanation for Sarkozy’s unexpected victory, especially since the official tally was 53.06% for Sarko and 46.94% for Royal, i.e. within the 4% ‘flip’ margin. It also struck me as rather strange that opinion and exit polls were so accurate (some months in advance of the election) in their prediction that Sarkozy would win 53% and Royal 47%.

Since 2007, ‘Sarko the American’ has evoked little more than disgust from the majority of the French public. In 2007, when it became clear that he planned to make good on his election promises to slowly destroy France’s social welfare system while giving tax breaks to corporations and the rich, millions of public sector workers took to the streets in protest. Millions of public and private sector workers demonstrated again throughout September and October 2010 against the raising of the retirement age from 60 to 62. On both occasions, Sarkozy arrogantly broke with tradition (and democratic principles) by dismissing the protests as insignificant and pushed ahead with his elitist policies. In addition, Sarkozy has been implicated in several financial and criminal scandals. On a personal level, the French president’s conceitedness, frequent inability to control his anger and lack of humility are seen as unfitting for an alleged statesman, and have repeatedly provoked the disdain of the majority of French citizens. Consequently, his chances of legitimate reelection in May this year lie somewhere between slim and non-existent.

Even someone like Sarkozy is not impervious to awareness of his extremely low approval rating, and a few weeks ago he appeared to be predicting his defeat (“I’d rather be a Carmelite monk than carry on in politics if I lose”). While Sarko is unlikely to end up in a monastery, he undoubtedly would love to disappear off the radar if he is booted out of the Elysee in May. You see, as President Sarkozy, he is immune from prosecution. As plain old Sarko, he is not, and there are many people (Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin to name but two) who would be only too happy to facilitate investigations into his extremely dubious business and political deals dating back over 20 years. That is in fact precisely what Manuel Valls, the campaign director for Socialist Party candidate Francois Hollande has stated – that Sarkozy is terrified of losing the election because he would lose his immunity.

But, as everyone should know by now, few, if any, Western presidents and prime ministers are elected on the basis of genuine public opinion, even if people like Sarkozy allow themselves that delusion. In reality, elections are all about spin, and the spin is provided by wealthy lobbying groups, organisations and individuals who have a vested interest in seeing a particular type of candidate prevail.

Few will deny that, over the course of the last decade, many of the major Western ‘democracies’ have implemented political and social policies that resemble those of a police state, that is, a state in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic and political life of the population. Both the rationale for and acceptance (by the population) of most of these social control mechanisms is the co-called ‘war on terror’, which, for authoritarian follower types is a ‘necessary evil’, but for those with a mind of their own, a literal scam to justify imperial aggression and plunder and force the population to accept it. A particular type of president or prime minister is required to act as the public face or steward of such policies. They must be authoritarian types who can convincingly pull off the ‘strong man in a crisis’ routine (mainly because they believe their own lies). And crises, of course, must be created.

Sarkozy is just such a man, but after five years of his bluster and the ‘war on terror’ wearing very thin, the French people are more than eager to see how he looks in the robes of a Carmelite monk. On the other hand, Sarkozy’s likely rival, the socialist Francois Hollande, while consistently ahead in the polls, is just not the kind of guy who can convincingly push ahead with the police state and imperial policies favored by those ‘vested interests’. The first problem is that he is a socialist. The second problem is that he has to campaign on policies that are more or less the opposite to Sarkozy’s, and in France, he would have to follow through on at least some of them to remain credible and avoid widespread protests. A few of Hollande’s 60 election propositions include raising taxes for big corporations, banks and the wealthy, creating 60,000 teaching jobs, bringing the official retirement age back down to 60 from 62, creating subsidised jobs in areas of high unemployment for the young and pulling French troops out of Afghanistan in 2012.

All of which creates a problem for the psychopathic spin doctors and selectors of presidents and prime ministers who wish to see Sarkozy re-elected.

As noted previously, a Sarkozy ‘win’ could, theoretically, be achieved via electronic voting, but that would only swing the vote by a maximum of 4%, too little to plausibly secure a victory given his long-term dire approval ratings and the fact that Hollande has consistently been placed well ahead (at least 60%-40%). So what to do? In the absence of the possibility to manipulate a large percentage of votes electronically, a little social engineering is the next best bet. But how to encourage large numbers of French people to reconsider their disdain for Sarko and turn towards him, for ‘protection’?

The Crisis

A little over a week ago, on the 11th March, a French off-duty soldier was shot dead by an unknown gunman wearing a helmet in a suburb of Toulouse. The gunman escaped on a Yamaha T-Max scooter.

Then on the 15th of March, the same gunman shot dead two soldiers and wounded a third outside their barracks in Montauban (30 mins north of Toulouse). Again, he escaped on a scooter.

Then on the 19th March, the same gunman arrived at a Jewish primary and secondary school in Toulouse at 8am and shot dead a Rabbi teacher, his two young sons and a four-year-old girl, the school principal’s daughter, whom he pursued into the grounds, cornered, and shot in the head at point blank range with a .45 caliber handgun. He again escaped on a scooter. French security services have definitively linked the shootings and concluded that the same person was responsible for all three.

Several theories about the identity and motive of the killer have been proposed. Could he be a disgruntled neo-Nazi ex-soldier, a Muslim terrorist, or just a crazed assassin? The killer’s choice of targets seems intended to maximise outrage. Witnesses of the broad-daylight shooting in Montauban saw him calmly reload his weapon and shoot one of the unarmed soldiers from point blank range as he tried to crawl away. Whoever it was has clearly had professional training. However, the almost complete lack of evidence as to the killer’s identity has left the French authorities perplexed. Coincidentally, (or not), the attack on the Jewish school came 9 years to the day after the beginning of the US invasion of Iraq.

The brutality of these attacks, especially the latest involving young children, has shocked France, and the spotlight naturally fell on the president to address the nation and take affirmative action to find the killer. To say that these shootings were, as regards his reelection bid, a ‘godsend’ to Sarkozy, would be an understatement. Sarkozy has wasted no time in marshaling the full force of the police state, calling on thousands of police and intelligence operatives to aid in the hunt for the killer. He has also announced the highest level of alert (‘Scarlet’) on France’s national security alert system which calls for “notification of a risk of major attacks, simultaneous or otherwise, using non-conventional means and causing major devastation; preparing appropriate means of rescue and response, measures that are highly disruptive to public life are authorized”. That’s one step away from martial law. And that’s the ‘strong man in a crisis’ response, in case you were wondering.

On the same day as the Jewish school attacks, Sarkozy appeared in Toulouse and addressed the public:

Apart from his blatant pandering to the virtues and strength of the French state (with him as its steward of course), I have to take issue with Sarko’s comments at the very end. He said:

“These are images that we have seen in other countries, but that we have never seen in ours.”

Indeed. Images and reports of children being summarily murdered are quite common these days. In fact, over the past two weeks we have seen (or should have seen) images of many Palestinian men, women and children being blown to pieces by Israeli drone rockets. In approximately the same time frame as the three attacks in France, which resulted in the deaths of four adults and three children, the Israeli military killed 26 Palestinian civilians, including many women and children. There was, however, no presidential speech lamenting the barbarity and cruelty of those attacks. On the contrary, they were largely ignored by the entire world (except by Israel, which cheered them). Strangely enough, it took the murders at the Jewish school in Toulouse for any official mention of the regular murder and torture of Palestinians by Israeli forces to be made.

And when mention was made, the Israeli government was furious, accusing the EU foreign minister, Baroness Ashton, of comparing the murders of Jewish children in France to the murders of Palestinian children in Palestine (how DARE she!). Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s hate-filled foreign minister, even demanded that she resign for her outburst of humanity and common sense. For the Israeli government, nothing can ever be allowed to diminish, if only by comparison, the suffering of Jewish people anywhere at any time. For reference, here are the offending words of the EU foreign minister:

“We remember young people who have been killed in all sorts of terrible circumstances – the Belgian children having lost their lives in a terrible tragedy and when we think of what happened in Toulouse today, when we remember what happened in Norway a year ago, when we know what is happening in Syria, when we see what is happening in Gaza and in different parts of the world – we remember young people and children who lose their lives.”

Shameful, isn’t it?

Of course, I could further flesh out Sarkozy’s comment by noting the thousands of Libyans (including many children) murdered by bombs from French jets last year, or the daily murder of Afghan, Pakistani or Yemeni civilians by rockets from US drones, all of which, as a partner in the ‘war on terror’, Sarkozy and his government support. Or I could point to the ongoing murder of Syrian civilians (children included) by the ‘Syrian Free Army’, a band of cutthroat mercenaries hired and armed by Western powers, France included. Yes indeed, far too often we have seen images of civilians being gunned down, blown up or otherwise attacked over the past ten years, and far too often it has been as a result of the actions of a Western ‘democracy’, like France, so perhaps we shouldn’t be so appalled that such events have arrived at France’s door.

Spooky Foreknowledge?

One day after the first shooting in Toulouse (March 12th), French political analyst and director of the political magazine L’Express, Christophe Barbier, appeared on the French TV show ‘C dans L’Air’ (‘It’s in the Air’) and is reported to have said the following:

“The only chance for Sarkozy to win the election is if an event outside of his campaign occurs. An international, exceptional or traumatizing event. Only a cataclysm that is capable of rallying the French people around their president can offer Sarkozy the chance of reelection.”

(The article containing the above quote was removed from the web the same day it was posted (20/03/12). See here for a screen shot before it was removed.)

M. Barbier appears to have been ‘on the money’ on two counts. Not only did a ‘traumatizing event’ occur, but it seems to be having the effect of rallying the French people around their strong, militant president. At the beginning of this month, polls had Sarkozy on 42% and Hollande on 58% for the second-round vote. During last week (after the first shooting on the 11th of March), polls showed Sarkozy’s ratings rising towards that magic number of 47% to Hollande’s 53%, yet again, right within that 4% e-voting flip margin.

In short, it seems that a replay of the 2007 election could be on the cards, with a little help from the Toulouse killer, who is still on the loose with six weeks to go before election day, and those wonderful electronic voting machines. It also seems that few, if any, French people will wonder how their presidential election voting trends could be exactly the same 5 years apart. Or how Nicolas Sarkozy could possibly have won a second term when most French people spent those last 5 years waiting for the day when they could kick him out. Or how it came to pass that they ended up voting for Sarkozy for reasons that, only a few weeks before, were the reasons they were determined not to vote for him.

All French citizens however, would do well to recall the words of the founder of the Nazi Gestapo, Hermann Göring, interviewed in his cell in 1946:

Interview in Göring’s cell (3 January 1946)

Göring: Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.

Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives.

Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.