West demonizes Muslims to justify Mideast intervention: Analyst

Press TV has conducted an interview with Joe Quinn, an editor and researcher with sott.net from Paris, to discuss a call by the French interior minister on all reservists to help boost security in the wake of the terrorist attack in Nice.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Why has France been such a repetitive target do you think for these tragic attacks? I’m sure this is the question boggling many minds.

Quinn: France has the highest population of Muslims among other European countries. So, for those people who have an agenda to demonize Muslims and to set the West against the Muslim world and people in Muslim countries in the Middle East, France is an obvious target for stoking that kind of fracture point where they could create the reality in a certain sense. They would like to create the reality of Muslims being seen as terrorists by the West because that simply furthers their long-term agenda of controlling the Middle East and if they want to control the Middle East they have to be directly involved in it with their militaries and to justify that they have to make people in Western countries believe Muslims, all Muslims, are terrorists which makes invading Muslim countries more easy.

Press TV: France did indeed support the invasion of Syria and militants operating in Syria and a bunch of French citizens who actually went and fought in Syria, many have returned to France. Is that not correct?

Quinn: Absolutely; and there has been a very clear French involvement in supporting the Western war on Syria, on the Syrian people effectively, to try and get rid of Bashar al-Assad. And of course this ties them directly with the general Western kind of renewal of the Cold War effectively led by the US against Russia but of course as everybody knows Assad is sided with Russia and Russia has a lot of strategic interests in Syria and Syria is remaining kind of independent from Western powers as much as possible. So of course France was also directly involved in the bombing campaign against Libya. So, these are part of Western foreign interventions that have the goal of controlling largest oil resources and gas resources and also we’re keeping Russia out of global game effectively and maintaining particularly US dominance in the world. Of course the EU and France have been aligned with the US for many decades and the EU is following the suit but I think there may well be factions at the same time within France who are increasingly reluctant to play along with the US agenda because it hurts France’s own interests and the interests of other European countries.

Press TV: With this horrible track record that France’s intelligence community has had over the last 18 months now, what will this deployment of reservists now do to change things? Will having a heavy military presence throughout the streets not just be more terrorizing of the public?

Quinn: Well, absolutely they would terrorize the public and obviously the agenda’s focus will be on Muslims in France which are about six million. They have been demonized over the past 15 years particularly since 9/11 by Western countries. So, these people, these reservists who are being called up are going to have that in their minds because they have been propagandized for the past 15 years against Muslims and this is a very dangerous situation not just for Muslims in France but for the entire French population because you’re talking about something that could be pushed towards a civil war. Re-enactment of a Nazi Germany kind of scenario where a section of the population and the Muslims today in France could end up being the Jews during the second World War.

Press TV: And then one more thing. How do you think this is going to affect all these attacks on top of one another? How do you think it is going to ultimately affect France’s foreign policy in the Middle East?

Quinn: It is going to be used by those powers within France that are aligned with the NATO agenda, US agenda of continuing aggressive involvement and aggressive military involvement in the Middle East, to control the Middle East, to keep back Russia largely, [to wage] geopolitical war against Russia. They’re going to use this and every attack like this, whatever the origin is. There are definitely certain elites in France who will use it to  basically fill their own pockets, to enrich themselves, to further meddling and warmongering in Middle Eastern countries. So, it’s not looking good.

Press TV: Does it surprise you as odd that Francois Hollande is still the president of the country? He has had a lot of terrorist attacks taking place under his watch; yet somehow he still hasn’t stepped aside, he still hasn’t been pressured to step aside. Why is he still the president of the country?

Quinn: He is the president the country because he was elected on false pretense I suppose as most presidents in Western countries. They lie and pretend something that they aren’t. But like most French presidents certainly over the past few decades Francois Hollande has very little power in France. It’s a ceremonial position. The guy obviously isn’t a popular president. He is very ineffective and he has never been more than a puppet really for people behind the scenes in France and that is true in many Western countries as well.

So, I think the people in Franc are looking forward to the upcoming elections in France next year to get rid of Francois Hollande, but I’m not very hopeful that there will be anybody better offered to him as a new “president.”