James Corbett | November 21, 2015

The meme has already been floated: "Paris changes everything" according to the terrorists in government who stand to benefit from the changes that the Paris terror attacks are bringing about.



But is that so? Has Paris really "changed everything?"



Well, let's cast our mind back to those heady days of November 12, 2015, shall we? How does the pre-Friday the 13th world compare to the world of today?



Before the attacks, the EU could chide France for missing its budget deficit goals. After the attacks, the EU can try to chide them, but France can swat those concerns aside by invoking the EU's own protective security clause.



Before the attacks, the French could protest a bill granting sweeping new surveillance powers to the intelligence services. After the attacks, the government can grant the police special emergency powers and amend the constitution to make those emergency powers permanent with widespread popular support.



Before the attacks, the British people could protest their government's own sweeping, Orwellian surveillance bill. After the attacks, Prime Minister David Cameron can suggest fast-tracking the bill to 'protect the public' from the terrorists.



Before the attacks, the British government could propose a drastic £1.9 billion cut to the police budget. After the attacks, those cuts are likely to be drastically scaled back.



Before the attacks, the largest political bloc in the EU Parliament could propose an EU army but no one would take them seriously. After the attacks, the European Commission president can call for an EU army and everyone is taking him seriously.



In the wake of the attacks Donald Trump can promise a total surveillance state under his reign and Hillary Clinton can admit that she's owned by Wall Street because of 9/11, but before the attacks...well, OK, some things never change.



But you get the picture. The point is a simple one to understand: spectacular acts of violence can cause the politically unthinkable to become the politically popular.



Let me point out that the UN's own preferred definition of "terrorism" is:

"Criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes"



Well in the wake of events like the Paris attacks we certainly do have a general public that has been provoked into a state of terror. But whose political purposes does this terror serve, exactly? The Islamic State, who is now likely to be bombed off the face of the planet (and Assad along with them, of course), or the politicians pushing for increased budgets, increased surveillance powers, encryption back doors, new regional armies and the like? If the answer is that the terror serves the politicians, then doesn't that make the politicians the terrorists by definition?



This is not a new observation by any means. It stretches back decades if not centuries. H.L Mencken observed in 1918 that "the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary."



Winston Chruchill is supposed to have said: "Never let a good crisis go to waste." Whether he said it or not, former Obama chief-of-staff and current Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel did say it, and we have that on camera.



With the revelation of the NATO-sponsored Gladio terror campaign in Europe after WWII, the world was introduced to a key concept: the strategy of tension. This referred to the act of whipping the public into hysteria and fear (i.e. terrorizing them) and directing their outrage against a political enemy. In the Gladio context, bombings, shootings and other acts of carnage were committed by special forces and blamed on political enemies in order to demonize them in the public's eye.



In recent years we have learned that the Gladio campaign never really went away, only morphed. Now instead of paramilitary forces in Europe the strategy of tension is maintained by Islamic radicals carefully shepherded, controlled and manipulated by NATO operatives. This "Gladio B" and its implementation in the mid-1990s just happens to correspond with the rise of the new Global War on Terror after the collapse of the Soviet Union (and a concomitant rise in military budgets to Cold War levels).



The strategy is remarkably simple. Provoke an attack, stage an attack, allow an attack to happen or simply capitalize on a spontaneous attack. Use the public's own outrage to push through draconian new legislation, all the while pretending to be the savior. And watch the public rally around the flag, begging to give you more power to keep them safe.



This is not a new phenomenon. This is not a surprising phenomenon. It is not an unpredictable phenomenon. In fact, I have talked about this at great length over the history of The Corbett Report and many thousands of others have been talking about it for much longer. But it needs to be confronted again, now, while the public is still caught in the grip of their terror hysteria. Spectacular terrorist incidents are the magician's wand of the would-be controllers of society; they distract the public while the real action happens somewhere else.



So how do we deal with this? We break the wand of terror hysteria right in front of the audience's face. We show the bird up the sleeve. We reveal the assistant's twin hiding in the sawed-through box. We expose the false bottom on the cup. We show the trick for what it is, and we snap the audience out of their spell.



One way or another, the terrorists are those who seek to increase their own power while the country recoils in grief and outrage. One way or another, the governments themselves are terrorizing their own public.



Some people will actively resist this revelation, but that is their problem to deal with. For those of us who know the truth, it is up to us to present it to others. And now is the time to do it.



