Posted By: Harry Callahan January 3, 2017

In each case, the Islamist forces involved in the attacks were linked either to despotic regimes allied to Washington, such as Saudi Arabia, to militias being used as proxy forces for US imperialism and its European allies in the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa, or, in the case of the Boston Marathon attack, to CIA-backed Islamist separatists operating within the Russian Federation.

In all of these cases, the perpetrators had long been in the sights of the security forces, which refrained from intervening. In every case, the attacks provided the pretext for a massive buildup of the state apparatus. In France, the Socialist Party government of François Hollande seized on the Paris attacks to impose an indefinite state of emergency, which continues to this day. The Boston attacks were used to impose a martial-law-like lockdown and police-military occupation of a major American city. The September 11 attacks served as justification for the so-called “war on terror,” involving a series of devastating wars in the Middle East and the erection of a surveillance and police state apparatus in the US.

The Berlin attack is now being exploited for similar purposes. Although there is no connection with the refugees who came to Germany last year to escape the imperialist wars in Syria and other countries, and although the German security authorities knew of Amri’s intentions, there is an unceasing drumbeat for a strict policing of borders and the construction of a totalitarian surveillance state.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/12/28/berl-d28.html