Conspiracy theories are swirling around last week\u2019s terror attacks in Paris, and beyond the customary fringe websites, they are being aired by Turkish politicians and mainstream Russian and Iranian media outlets.<\/p>\n
Those making \u2013 or hinting at \u2013 the claims would have the world believe that U.S. or Israeli intelligence services were behind the attacks on the offices of the Charlie Hebdo newspaper and a kosher supermarket, which together with a street shooting left 17 victims and three terrorists dead over three days.<\/p>\n
A mass circulation Russian newspaper, Komsomolskaya Pravda, ran a front-page headline Monday asking whether \u201cthe Americans\u201d were behind the Paris terror attacks.<\/p>\n
In the related story, a political analyst, Col. Alexander Zhilin, linked his theory to differences between the U.S. and European Union over sanctions against Russia in response to the Ukraine crisis.<\/p>\n
Zhilin, who heads a body called the Moscow Center for the Study of Applied Problems, said immediately after French President Francois Hollande on January 5 raised doubts about continuing with the sanctions, he \u2013 Zhilin \u2013 had predicted that terror attacks could now be expected in France.<\/p>\n
The U.S. needed a way to consolidate U.S.-E.U. unity over the sanctions, he said, and planning a terror attack was a \u201ccheap and effective\u201d option.<\/p>\n
Separately, Komsomolskaya Pravda interviewed Russian economist Mikhail Khazin, head of a consulting firm called Neoconomics. He wondered who benefited most from the Paris attacks, and concluded that the primary beneficiary was the United States.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet me add that in the elite of the United States there are several groups, each of which has its own opportunities to promote and organize such attacks,\u201d he was quoted as saying.<\/p>\n
Khazin went on to list others who, in his view, could also benefit from the attacks, including Britain, Saudi Arabia and \u201cIslamic State, al-Qaeda and so on\u201d \u2013 although he added that the latter possibility was \u201cthe least likely.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other reports in the paper highlighted skepticism expressed by some quarters over the attacks, with one headline highlighting a comment by an Arab caf\u00e9 waiter in Paris: \u201cSomeone needs a war between Muslims and Christians \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
In Iran, the Press TV broadcaster ran on its website an article by Paul Craig Roberts, a columnist, former U.S. Treasury official, and 9\/11 conspiracy theorist, who wrote that one way of seeing the attack on Charlie Hebdo \u201cis as an attack designed to shore up France\u2019s vassal status to Washington.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe suspects can be both guilty and patsies,\u201d said Roberts. \u201cJust remember all the terrorist plots created by the FBI that served to make the terrorism threat real to Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Roberts\u2019 own website, he also highlights reports from other sources suggesting that the Paris attacks were a \u201cfalse flag operation\u201d \u2013 that is, a covert operation designed to point a finger at a purported perpetrator, while the actual mastermind\u2019s identity remains hidden.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhether or not it is a false flag operation, the shootings are being used for a wider purpose or purposes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Those purposes could include \u201cbringing France back into Washington\u2019s orbit,\u201d stifling \u201cthe growing European sympathy for the Palestinians,\u201d and countering \u201cthe rising opposition in Europe to more Middle Eastern wars,\u201d Roberts charged.<\/p>\n
\u2018A plot against the Islamic world\u2019<\/p>\n
Meanwhile Melih Gokcek, the veteran mayor of the Turkish capital, Ankara, raised the specter of the Mossad\u2019s involvement, while speaking at a youth congress of the Islamist ruling Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) on Sunday.<\/p>\n
According to a report by the official Anadolu news agency, Gokcek laid the blame on Israel\u2019s security agency, charging that Israel was angry by a recent vote by French lawmakers supportive of Palestinian statehood.<\/p>\n
\u201cIsrael certainly doesn\u2019t want this [pro-Palestinian independence] sentiment to expand in Europe,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s why it is certain that Mossad is behind these kinds of incidents. Mossad enflames Islamophobia by causing such incidents.\u201d<\/p>\n
Turkish lawmaker Ali Sahin, a senior AKP member, was quoted as saying in Twitter messages that the attack on Charlie Hebdo was \u201cstaged like a scene from a movie,\u201d by forces determined to discredit Islam.<\/p>\n
The most senior figure to insinuate that all was not as it appeared in the Paris attacks \u2013 although he did also condemn them \u2013 was Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.<\/p>\n
\u201cTake note that the acts of terror are not carried out in a vacuum,\u201d he said during a joint press conference in Ankara with Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas \u201cThe acts follow a predetermined script and we should be alive to a plot against the Islamic world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Erdogan, an arch-critic of Israel and key supporter of Hamas \u2013 a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization \u2013 also used the opportunity to slam Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu\u2019s participation with other leaders in a mass anti-terror rally in Paris on Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI also hardly understand how he dared to go there,\u201d Anadolu quoted Erdogan as saying, accusing Netanyahu of carrying out \u201cstate terrorism by massacring 2,500 people in Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n
Source: CNS News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Conspiracy theories are swirling around last week\u2019s terror attacks in Paris, and beyond the customary fringe websites, they are being aired by Turkish politicians and mainstream Russian and Iranian media outlets. Those making \u2013 or hinting at \u2013 the claims would have the world believe that U.S. or Israeli intelligence services were behind the attacks … Continue reading “Russian, Turkish media hint at Paris false flag”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,123],"tags":[1195,8807,6167,286,178,1004,66,1632],"class_list":["post-17464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-world","tag-charlie-hebdo","tag-conspiracy","tag-false-flag","tag-gaza","tag-israel","tag-paris","tag-russia","tag-turkey"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17464"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17465,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17464\/revisions\/17465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}