Jews, Muslims murdered in France

This is a video of a demonstration in Paris, protesting the murders in Toulouse.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Police continue hunt for French school killer

Tuesday 20 March 2012

by Our Foreign Desk

Schools across France held a moment of silence for the victims of the deadliest school shooting the country has seen in decades.

Police blanketed the south searching for the killer.

President Nicolas Sarkozy warned that “a monster is on the loose”

Of course, every reasonable person will agree that this murder of Jewish children and a teacher is horrible and monstrous.

However, Mr Sarkozy should seriously ask himself whether right-wing politicians, of the neo-fascist Front National (National Front) of Jean-Marie Le Pen and his daughter Marine, but also Mr Sarkozy himself, have contributed to creating a climate favourable for crimes like this.

Members of the National Front have openly praised Norwegian extreme Right mass murderer Breivik. Front boss Le Pen denies Hitler’s Shoah. A Front National supporter like Brigitte Bardot preaches both hatred of Jews and Islamophobia.

Sarkozy and people of his administration have recently, in the French presidential election campaign, attacked Jews for kosher food and Muslims for halal food.

and Interior Minister Claude Gueant confirmed that police believed the gunman, who sped away on a motorcycle after the attack, may have filmed his actions.

“He was wearing an apparatus around his neck” that could be used to film and post videos online, the minister told reporters, though he added that while this information helped investigators they were no closer to an arrest.

The deaths of the rabbi, his two children and another child at a Jewish school in Toulouse were almost immediately linked to the deaths of paratroopers killed in Toulouse and Montauban.

Those murdered soldiers were of North African ancestry, so prabably Muslims; and of black Caribbean ancestry. Like Jews, favourite targets for “white nationalist” neo-nazi criminals.

Mr Gueant has suggested that the killing spree may be linked to the case of three paratroopers who were expelled from a regiment near Toulouse in 2008 for alleged neonazi activities, including being photographed doing nazi salutes in front of a swastika flag.

However, he admitted that this was merely one possibility “not favoured any more than the others” and that the perpetrator or perpetrators had not been identified.

Police raised the terror threat level across much of the country’s south to scarlet – the highest possible – and boosted security around both Jewish and Muslim institutions. Mr Sarkozy met with leaders from both communities yesterday.

France has the highest Jewish and Muslim populations in Europe, at 500,000 and five million.

Murders in France follow Sarkozy’s racist speech: here.

By Alex Lantier in France:

One witness in Montauban said the visor on the gunman’s helmet briefly flipped up, revealing an extensive tattoo and a scar on his left cheek. She described him as being solidly built and of medium height.

At 9PM yesterday evening, the news magazine Le Point reported that police were searching for three paratroopers dismissed from the 17th Parachute Regiment in 2008 after they posed for photographs wearing neo-Nazi uniforms and standing in front of a flag with a swastika. Jamel Benserhir, the former soldier who reported them to officers at the time, said they had “explicit tattoos.”

The Francazal base was involved in a tragic scandal in 1989, when four paratroopers were found guilty of torturing and murdering three young women and killing a forest ranger.

French paratroopers have a history of torture and other crimes, like during the Algerian colonial war (in which Jean Marie Le Pen participated as well).

Wars, like the Afghan war which Mr Sarkozy supports and the Somalia war which Sarkozy supports as well, create a climate for violent crimes. In Afghan villages close to United States Special Forces bases. And at the “home front” in France and elsewhere.

Alex Lantier continued:

Others, however, felt obliged to acknowledge the political link between the targeting of religious or ethnic minorities and the development of French bourgeois politics. Le Nouvel Observateur cited Abderrahmane Dahmane, a former Sarkozy adviser, as criticizing Sarkozy’s right-wing Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) and the FN. Dahmane said, “These acts are a strong signal sent to politicians and particularly to those who, in recent months, have played with fire… These attacks are the consequence of a campaign that has been particularly violent and hateful towards religious minorities.”

Chris Hedges | Murder Is Not an Anomaly in War. Chris Hedges, Truthdig in the USA: “The war in Afghanistan – where the enemy is elusive and rarely seen, where the cultural and linguistic disconnect makes every trip outside the wire a visit to hostile territory, where it is clear that you are losing despite the vast industrial killing machine at your disposal – feeds the culture of atrocity…. Civilians and combatants merge into one detested nameless, faceless mass. The psychological leap to murder is short”: here.

The latest slaughter in Afghanistan is part of a decade of savage civilian killing: until Nato leaves, it is certain to continue: here.