As the Euro championship games draw thousands of supporters to the French capital, social tensions remain high as workers continue to take to the streets in protest against the Government’s proposed reforms of labour laws. The entire French nation is in agitation.
Queues of distressed workers line up for train services acutely disrupted by the SNCF (Société nationale des chemins de fer français- the French national railway company)strike. Although only 8.5 percent of the rail workers are currently on strike, a majority of the SNCF’s train drivers have stopped work. Strikes and protests are intensifying throughout the country, with bin collectors now joining the fray. In response to these working class mobilisations, government agencies have resorted to repression and terrorism in order to gain the upper hand in this class war.
Hooded thugs were caught on camera driving iron bars through shop windows during a recent demonstration against old-age pension cuts. When one of the demonstrators attempted to stop the criminal, he was promptly joined by a colleague that clearly showed he had military training, assaulting the demonstrator with a martial arts style jump-kick. Meanwhile, the police, who were present at the scene, simply looked on. It was clear these two thugs were police agents provocateurs.
The incident was denounced on French television by the leader of the Front de Gauche coalition Jean-Luc Mélanchon. Melanchon’s statements’ strongly indicate that the criminal activity of the police is being orchestrated by the Ministry of the Interior led by Bernard Cazaneuve.
The use of agents provocateurs by the state to provide the pretext for class repression is an old ruling-class technique. Its use here shows that false-flag terrorism – terrorist attacks carried out by state agencies and blamed on designated enemies real or fictional – is a standard feature of modern governance. This fact should be borne in mind by those who would argue Western ‘democracies’ do not engage in acts of terror against their own citizens.
The current strike by French bin collectors provides apposite context for extending our analysis to the frontiers of French imperialism. In November 2004, Belorussian mercenaries, on the payroll of the French secret service (DGSE), bombed a French military base in Bouaké, Ivory Coast, killing 9 French soldiers, one American citizen, and wounding over 40 other military personnel. Paris blamed the attack on President Laurent Gbagbo, whom the French were attempting to depose through a terrorist insurgency in the North of the country.
The French military immediately destroyed the Ivory Coast’s entire air force and French tanks entered the country’s capital Abidjan, surrounding the presidential palace and occupying the airport. When hundreds of thousands of Ivorian citizens took to the streets to protest peacefully against this act of neo-colonial aggression, French troops opened fire on the protesters murdering over 56 people. The incident was barely covered by the ‘metropole’s press agencies. Some of the military personnel involved were later decorated for their crimes by French president Jacques Chirac.*
After the attack on the French military base, the bodies were dumped in bags and immediately transported back to France. Contrary to standard procedure, no autopsies were carried out and the families were not allowed to see the bodies in the coffins. One family even buried the wrong body and had to exhume it for reburial. Several high court judges have resigned from the case over the government’s refusal to cooperate with the investigation. All the evidence points at a false flag. Several senior military and legal personnel have confirmed this. It has not been denied by the media but has been massively understated and quickly forgotten. It proves the criminal contempt of the French ruling elite for African and French citizens alike.
It is unlikely that the French government will ever be prosecuted for high treason and crimes against humanity in the Ivory Coast. Few Europeans care about what their governments do in the ‘Third World’. The double standard is deeply ingrained in Western consciousness.
Racism and ethnocentrism also pervade many working-class organisations. For far to long, genuine proletarian internationalism has been superseded by a spurious, petty bourgeois mentality of political correctness with leftists and ‘anti-racists’ cheer-leading for Western imperialism rather than opposing it.
Every evening at dusk, black men arrive in posh French neighbourhoods to collect the rubbish from the same bourgeoisie who are robbing their countries resources; it is a humiliation the very mention of which is best eschewed in polite circles. For real political change to occur, the workers of the Northern Hemisphere states must liaise, organise and fraternalise with those of the Southern Hemisphere. They must understand that the same class, waging war on French workers, the same companies pushing for more profits in Europe at the expense of human life, are complicit in genocide and crimes against humanity in the world’s Southern Hemisphere. They must see the link between terrorism and class war. Mass consciousness of this fact will overcome all attempts by oligarchic states to repress through terrorism, the working-class struggle for emancipation.
Gearóid Ó Colmáin, AHT Paris correspondent, is a journalist and political analyst. His work focuses on globalization, geopolitics and class struggle. His articles have been translated into many languages. He is a regular contributor to Global Research, Russia Today International, Press TV, Sputnik Radio France, Sputnik English , Al Etijah TV , Sahar TV Englis, Sahar French and has also appeared on Al Jazeera. He writes in English, Irish Gaelic and French.
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