Spread the Fear

After Paris: The fear industry mobilizes — right on cue

After months of intricate planning, three teams of ISIS-linked terrorists attacked soft targets in Paris — including a soccer stadium where President François Hollande and other foreign dignitaries were sitting in the stands — murdering 129 people and injuring scores of other innocents.

So where were France’s security services? I’ll tell you where they were: AWOL, and they’re already making excuses for their abject failure to prevent yet another mass murder in Paris (not to mention losing track of one of the alleged terrorists, who apparently slipped through the dragnet).

You may recall that, after three terrorists stormed the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher market in Paris last January — killing 20 and injuring another 20 — French security services got more money, spies and extraordinary new surveillance powers, presumably so they could prevent the kind of atrocity that struck the city last Friday. Clearly, they didn’t.

Every time French, British, American or Canadian security services fail, they trot out the same excuse, which — stripped of all the self-serving embroidery — goes something this:Hey, you don’t expect us to stop them all, do you? If you want us to, we’ll need more money, powers and resources.

That’s what happened after one suicidal man with a gun went on shooting spree in Ottawa; Stephen Harper obliged our security services by making Bill C-51 law and giving a largely unaccountable security intelligence infrastructure a lot more money and powers.

http://ipolitics.ca/2015/11/16/after-paris-the-fear-industry-mobilizes-right-on-cue/