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Toulouse Shootings Gifts Sarko the Avenger Climb in Election Opinion Polls

Gregory Viscusi and Mark Deen
Bloomberg Businessweek
Wed, 21 Mar 2012 06:11 UTC
Image
© Eric Cabanis/AFP/Getty Images
Nicolas Sarkozy, flanked by his yes-men and women, speaks in front of the Jewish school where four people were killed in Toulouse.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy is burnishing his crisis-fighting credentials as he seeks to catch up to Francois Hollande in an election campaign upended by the hunt for a man who shot dead seven people in nine days.

Having vowed to find the shooter who killed three children and a rabbi outside a Jewish school and three soldiers of Arab descent, Sarkozy's role as France's leader in a national emergency may bolster him just a month before the first round of the presidential election, especially if security jumps up the list of voter concerns, analysts and pollsters say.

The case is enabling "the re-presidentialization of Sarkozy's image," said Eric Bonnet, a pollster at BVA Institute in Paris. "It can help him be seen as more of a unifier than he normally would be."
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Stormtrooper

Sarko's mind: Capitalising on spectacular criminal events

William Skyvington
frenchleaves.blogspot.fr
Fri, 02 Jan 2009 06:03 UTC
No normal French citizen could be happy with appalling images of the following kind, which reoccur sadly every New Year's Eve, when certain individuals get a kick out of burning automobiles, forcing firemen to risk their lives extinguishing these absurd blazes:
Image
This year, some 1,147 went up in flames in this crazy fashion. It's easy for mindless vandals to get away with such acts, since an automobile can be torched almost as easily and rapidly as lighting a cigarette. The victims of this madness are the innocent owners of destroyed vehicles, who might even be prevented from earning their living as a result of the loss of their automobile.

While everybody is surely reassured to discover that no less a man than Nicolas Sarkozy himself is disgusted with this plague, and determined to eradicate it, the means suggested by the president are somewhat bizarre. What he suggests is a weird kind of indirect punishment for young vandals who burn automobiles. A condemned youth would be prohibited from passing his test, in the hope of obtaining a driver's license, for as long as he hasn't reimbursed the cost of the automobile(s) he happened to burn.
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Magic Hat

Sarkozy's October Surprise: Toulouse Police Lay Siege to 'Muslim Terrorist'


BBC
Wed, 21 Mar 2012 03:45 UTC

Police hunting a gunman suspected of killing seven people in southern France have surrounded a flat in Toulouse.

The 24-year-old Frenchman from Toulouse has said he belongs to al-Qaeda and acted to "avenge Palestinian children".

Police are now negotiating with the man, who is still said to be heavily armed but has indicated he may give himself up in the afternoon.

Two police officers were injured in exchanges of fire during the raid and there are reports of a fresh blast.

The suspect's brother is under arrest.

The suspect's mother, who is Algerian, has been brought to the scene, but Interior Minister Claude Gueant, who is in attendance, said she had refused to become involved as "she had little influence on him".

The minister said the suspect had made several visits to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Comment: So that's a wrap then: the killer is an 'Islamist', he threw the gun used in all three shootings out the window of his flat and his motive was revenge against Israel.

And now France is in a state of high alert 6 weeks before Presidential elections...
Image


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Bomb

How Many Violations of US Arms Laws Are Too Many?

Dr. Franklin Lamb
Salem-News
Sat, 17 Mar 2012 19:32 UTC
cluster bombs
© Unknown
It depends whether the miscreant enjoys "We will always have your back regardless".... status

On March 6, 2012, the US Congressional Research Service released a report to the US Congress concerning Restrictions on the use of American weapons by recipient countries.

For those who have followed the subject there was not a whole lot new in the CRS study, yet it is instructive in identifying Israel once again as far and away the most egregious violator of virtually every provision of every US law which purports to regulate how American weapons are used.

In accordance with U.S. law, the U.S. Government is mandated to enforce strict conditions on the use against civilians, of weapons it transfers to foreign recipients.

Violations of these conditions can lead to the suspension of deliveries or termination of contracts for such defense items, and even the cutting off of all aid to the violating country.

Section 3(a) of the 1976 US Arms Export Control Act (AECA) sets the standards for countries to be eligible to receive American arms and it also sets express conditions on the uses to which these arms may be put.
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Megaphone

France Bans GMO Corn Amid Mass US Protests Against Monsanto

Rady Ananda
foodfreedomgroup.com
Sat, 17 Mar 2012 18:06 UTC
Image
© AFP Photo/Eric Cabanis
French activists rip open bags of MON 810, a variety of Monsanto's genetically modified corn after entering a Monsanto storehouse.
Amid mass US protests against Monsanto yesterday, France imposed a temporary moratorium on the planting of Monsanto's genetically modified corn, MON810.

"Due to the proximity of the planting season," said Agriculture Minister Bruno Le Maire along with Francois Fillon, Minister for Ecology and Sustainable Development, in a press release on Friday, authorities "decided to take a precautionary measure to temporarily prohibit the cultivation of maize MON810 on the national territory to protect the environment."

­All prior plantings of MON810, trade name YieldGard, become illegal on March 20.

Headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, Monsanto announced in January that it would not sell genetically modified corn in France due to public opposition.
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Vader

FBI Linked to Yet Another Domestic Terrorism Plot


American Free Press
Sun, 18 Mar 2012 16:56 UTC
FBI raid
© Tracy A. Woodward / The Washington Post
In its latest effort to panic the American public, the FBI last month fabricated an alleged al Qaeda terror plot against the U.S. Capitol Building. According to reports published by Russian news outlet RT and others, after arresting an intoxicated American-born drug dealer of Moroccan descent, FBI agents drove him to the Capitol and handed him a fake bomb before summarily rearresting him on Feb. 17.

Over the course of a year, 29-year-old Amine El Khalifi, who was clearly mentally ill and often high on cocaine and other drugs, was persuaded by an FBI informant to agree to attack the U.S. Capitol. Because El Khalifi didn't have a gun, a bomb or a car, the FBI informant graciously offered to provide him all three - and thus El Khalifi was driven to the U.S. Capitol building by the FBI, handed a gun and a bomb, and then arrested as an "al Qaeda operative."

Comment:

Legislating Away Your Freedoms - One 'Homegrown Terrorist' At A Time

The Underwear Bomber - Crushing Freedom With Phony Arab Terrorism

FBI Tries To Coax Muslim Into Bombing US Capitol

FBI Organizes Almost All Terror Plots in the US

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Red Flag

Syria: Armed Opposition Groups Committing Abuses

Human Rights Watch
AlertNet
Mon, 19 Mar 2012 16:36 UTC
Syrian opposition
Armed opposition elements have carried out serious human rights abuses, Human Rights Watch said today in a public letter to the Syrian National Council (SNC) and other leading Syrian opposition groups. Abuses include kidnapping, detention, and torture of security force members, government supporters, and people identified as members of pro-government militias, called shabeeha. Human Rights Watch has also received reports of executions by armed opposition groups of security force members and civilians.
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War Whore

Beatings, sexual abuse, electric shock: US torture camps 'still operative'


RT
Tue, 20 Mar 2012 16:29 UTC
Taliban insurgents
© Reuters / Mustafa Andalib
Three captured Taliban insurgents are presented to the media in Ghazni province.
A new report reveals that US forces continue to send detainees to prisons where torture is practiced, despite NATO's promise to suspend prison transfers last September.

­The report carried out by the Afghan Independent Rights Commission and the Open Society Foundation documents numerous cases of torture in Afghan detention facilities between February 2011 and January 2012.

The document has credible evidence in 11 recent cases where practices such as "beatings, suspension from the ceiling, electric shocks, threatened or actual sexual abuse, and other forms of mental and physical abuse" were commonplace. Researchers also discovered widespread violations of prisoners' rights were in evidence, "including the right to counsel and family notification."

According to the study, these techniques are "routinely used to obtain confessions or other information."
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Video

Toulouse gunman may have filmed the shootings

Angelique Chrisafis
The Guardian
Tue, 20 Mar 2012 16:14 UTC
French interior minister says man who killed rabbi and three children at Jewish school had a video camera around his neck


The gunman who killed a rabbi and three children at a Jewish school in Toulouse on Monday was wearing a small video camera around his neck and may have filmed the attack, according to the French interior minister.

Claude Guéant said the attacker was wearing "a kind of filming apparatus" on his chest when he struck just before 8am and opened fire on children and adults outside the school. Asked whether the gunman recorded the scene, he said: "We can imagine that."

Guéant said on Tuesday that authorities were combing the internet to see if the killer had posted a video online, but had not yet found any traces.

The biggest manhunt in modern French history is under way to find the motorcycle gunman, who is still at large.

Schools across France held a moment of silence on Tuesday to honour the three children and a rabbi killed in Monday's attack.
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Che Guevara

Outlaw Occupy: US set to strangle protests with jail threats


Russia Today
Mon, 19 Mar 2012 14:03 UTC
New York City police are investigating death threats made against staff through the phone and on twitter. This after officers forcibly arrested more than 70 people during an Occupy Wall Street protest. Since the start of the movement, nationwide protests have faced numerous cases of police brutality with batons and tear gas often used to disperse crowds. As the movement continues, so too does Washington's desire to silence the American public, as RT's Marina Portnaya explains.

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