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STATE-SPONSORED TERROR IN THE WESTERN WORLD STATE-SPONSORED TERROR WESTERN WORLD THE Most terrorist attacks in Europe, whether attributed to left-wing or right-wing activists or even Islamist fundamentalists, can be traced to actions by government- sponsored military or intelligence agencies. ne of the most controversial and least discussed aspects of Western society is the notion that Western governments would be able to, let alone actually, kill their own civilians. But is reality far worse than what we seem incapable of imagining? In the movie V for Vendetta, a police detective ponders: "I want to ask a question. I don't care whether you answer me or not. I just need to ask this aloud... The question that I have to ask is: what if the worst and most horrifying attack in this country's history was not the work of religious extremists?" His assistant objects: "We know it was. They were caught. They confessed." The detective adds: "And they were executed. I know. And maybe that's really what happened... What if someone else killed all those people? Would you really want to know who that was? Even if it was someone working for this government? That's my question. If our own government was responsible...was responsible for the deaths of almost 100,000 people, would you really want to know?" On 31 December 2006, three people were killed in the Thai capital Bangkok. The military-backed interim regime blamed the ousted prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, and his supporters as prime suspects. But US security expert Zachary Abuza said that "it could be the military trying to justify further crackdowns",' thus demonising the former prime minister so that it could continue to enforce martial law. Whom to believe? One of the major stumbling blocks to accepting a major conspiracy (such as the claim that 9/11 was an "inside job" performed or allowed by the authorities) is the unwillingness to believe that a nation's institutions would kill its own civilians. Thailand is not a stable Western nation and many believe that the Western world is free of such atrocious acts, whereas the sad truth is that since World War II many Western nations have seen a long series of state-sponsored terrorism—directed against its own citizens. Russia's 9/99 bombings and the stifling of dissent The deceased Russian dissident and former spy Alexander Litvinenko argued in his book Blowing Up Russia: Terror from Within that certain Russian terrorist attacks had been engineered by the Kremlin. He alleged that agents from the FSB (Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, the successor to the KGB) co-ordinated the September 1999 bombings (popularly referred to as the 9/99 bombings) that killed more than 300 people during explosions in three apartment buildings in the capital Moscow and the southern Russian city of Volgodonsk in a period of two weeks.? The Russian authorities, directed by the newly appointed prime minister Vladimir Putin, blamed the bombings on Chechen separatists and, in response, ordered the invasion of Chechnya. Former FSB officer Litvinenko, Johns Hopkins University and Hoover Institute scholar David Satter* and Russian lawmaker Sergei Yushenkov have asserted that the bombings were actually "false flag" attacks perpetrated by the FSB in order to legitimate the resumption of military activities in Chechnya and bring Vladimir Putin to the Kremlin and the FSB to power. False flag operations are covert operations conducted by governments, corporations or other organisations, which are designed to appear as if they were carried out by other entities than the ones really responsible. The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colours, which was practised in both naval and land warfare. A famous example is Operation Greif, led by Otto Skorzeny,‘ in which he ordered his men into action in American uniforms during the final stages of World War II. Litvinenko, Satter and Yushenkov thus charged Putin with ordering state-sponsored by Philip Coppens © 2007 PO Box 13722 North Berwick EH39 4WB United Kingdom Email: info@philipcoppens.com Website: http://www. philipcoppens.com PO Box 13722 North Berwick EH39 4WB United Kingdom Email: info@philipcoppens.com Website: http://www. philipcoppens.com NEXUS * 17 Inner Terror: Your Government Doesn't Mind Killing You by Philip Coppens © 2007 FEBRUARY — MARCH 2007 www.nexusmagazine.com