My post on the shootings in France has brought tens of thousands of people to this site – but not to read my dull contribution. People are coming to read the comments from other readers.

Today’s development of the bomb squad descending on the al-Hilli house does not in itself worry me enormously. You may recall the massive terror scare that was ramped up when some Muslim students in Manchester were found to own a bag of sugar.

In fact we have the opposite phenomenon today, with the spook-fed “security correspondents” on TV lining up to tell us it is probably just everyday household stuff. This deviation from the standard Islamophobic “Muslims = bombs” narrative is so startling it makes me wonder why the “move along, nothing to see here” line is being taken so quickly.

My own security services sources insist that al-Hilli was not a person of current interest to the UK intelligence agencies and was not involved in anything clandestine. I have no reason to disbelieve them. On the other hand, the limited and confusing information in the media is almost entirely from official sources. I find it very strange indeed how little attention has been paid to the murdered French cyclist, and how easily it is presumed he was just a passerby. Surely it is as likely he was the intended victim and the al-Hillis the accidental witnesses?

Please do read the comments on my first entry on the subject to see the debate unfettered by the censorship in the mainstream media. This is perhaps my favourite comment:

From Janesmith101

All comments regarding Sylvain, Al-Hilli and a possible nuclear link are being removed from sites I’ve posted on in The Guardian, Independent and Huffpo UK.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/sep/09/alps-killer-motive-baffles-police

Here was my comment, I added as a point of fact it was completely speculative and an unproven theory in a later comment, also removed.

Sylvain Mollier, the ‘passing’ cyclist, was in fact a nuclear metallurgist who worked for a french nuclear company called Cezus (a subsidiary of Areva). Cezus fabricates and processes zirconium into metal and nuclear grade zircoaloy for nuclear fuel assemblies – it also has other applications in aerospace such as components and ceramics for missiles and satellites. Mr Al-Hilli was also a skilled aerospace engineer, on what looks to be his first camping holiday.

What is the probability that two highly skilled engineers managed be at the same remote place, at the same time, yet still managed to end up dead as a result of what looks to be a military style assasination?

As someone else pointed out in The Independent comments, the deceased were found by a ‘retired’ RAF officer who, we assume, will recieve perpetual anonymity as a witness. If the police are looking for a motive, try an intercepted rendevous by a security service fixated on denying a hostile power illicit nuclear technology.

http://wrmea.org/component/content/article/162-1995-june/7823-israel-bombs-iraqs-osirak-nuclear-research-facility.html

The Huffington Post UK reports that this wasn’t the family’s first trip to the camp site. An earlier report had asked other camp site visitors whether they had seen the family before and they had replied they hadn’t. If this isn’t wasn’t the first visit by Al-Hilli, it might slightly increase the odds that he knew or had met Mollier before, this being the last in a series of rendevous of a transactional nature. Mollier lived and worked locally.

Again, I’m not sure of the truth of these reports, there is some very sloppy journalism, as there is always seems to be. I’ve read for example Mollier’s company Cevus descirbed as a steel firm something which it is patently not, but perhaps it may have been a detail lost in translation.

An interesting comment summing up some of the strange coincidences, at least, surrounding these murders. My other favourite comment calls me a “macchiavellian shill”.

I have only one thought of my own I want to add at the minute. Al-Hilli was a Shia muslim and had been on pilgrimage to Qoms in Iran. What if it is indeed true that he was in possession of no especial nuclear or defence secrets to pass on to the Iranians, but the Israelis thought that he was? The Israeli programme of assassination of scientists involved in Iran’s nuclear programme is a definite fact. It makes as much sense as anything else at the moment, as a possibility.

I am not saying that is what happened. But the directions in which the mainstream media is being so strenuously pointed by official sources, like the massacre of an entire family over an inheritance, are certainly no more inherently probable. Certainly as we are now told all the shots were from one gun, for the assassin to get each victim in the head with none of them being able to escape, indicates real proficiency with the weapon and a very high level of training.

According to the ebuzzing (formerly wikio) rankings, this is the third most influential political blog in the UK – and the fifth most influential blog of any kind. It beats, hands down, the heavily funded ConservativeHome and Labourlist propaganda operations.

Of the two political blogs ahead of it, Guido Fawkes has permanent paid staff, whereas Liberal Conspiracy is a collective of 32 high profile ultra politically correct guardianistas; many of whom are paid by mainstream media.

Yet this blog has total funding of precisely nil and is only me, an ageing and disillusioned man sickened by the growing gap between rich and poor, the domination of mainstream political parties by corporate interests, and the continual promotion of aggressive war.

This blog does everything wrong. There are frequent gaps between posts, sometimes of weeks on end, because I get too depressed at instances of the callous disregard of the powerful for ordinary people.

I do not tweet, except that the start of each blog entry automatically gets tweeted, which someone set up for me.

This is an SNP supporting blog based in Ramsgate, Kent, written by a manic depressive sacked diplomat of eclectic views, whose guiding lights are the deeply unfashionable John Stuart Mill and William Hazlitt, whose favourite book was written by Michael Foot, and who is still metaphorically on his knees begging forgiveness for advising people to put Nick Clegg into government.

This blog, like all the other top blogs, could make substantial money from advertising, but is the only one not to carry advertising because it does not desire money.

It is webhosted for free, and kept running by a team of techies and moderators who do it for free also, not because they support a party or policy line or everything I say, but because they like the blog. It has the most free, well nigh anarchic moderation policy of any major blog. You can say what you like, including being very critical of me. Racism is pretty well the only red line. Opposing voices are very welcome.

I don’t do political correctness.

Even more heretically, this blog succeeds despite the fact the ebuzzing rankings show the majority of its posts are about international relations. Not only is it interested in foreigners, it tends to concentrate on Africa, Central Asia and other places the mainstream media scarcely believe exist. This blog succeeds so well because the mainstream media leaves unmet an active desire for information by very large numbers of people who are not as stupid as they think.

I have been lucky to have led a fascinating and varied life and as a result not only have a large number of high level contacts who would be the envy of any journalist, but am prepared to publish facts that mainstream political discourse finds uncomfortable.

To give just a few examples, this blog made public that Adam Werritty and Liam Fox had eight meetings with Matthew Gould, now British Ambassador to Israel, not the two reported in Gus O’Donnell’s whitewash “report”. At least two included Mossad, and the purpose throughout was to coordinate on the ramping up of official support for an attack on Iran.

This blog made public the deal whereby the US obtained Arab League support for the attack on Libya in return for US support for the Saudi invasion of Bahrain.

This blog revealed Lord Taylor of Blackburn’s role as bagman for New Labour, and for Jack Straw personally, in collecting from the defence industries, and BAE in particular.

This blog revealed the dirty deal between the British government and the Karimov regime to resume arms supplies and military training in return for logistic support for Afghanistan.

You would be surprised by how many people actually embedded in the establishment, including Members of Parliament and very senior mainstream media journalists, have told me they regularly read this blog to see what is really happening. it is an antidote to the model of single propaganda narrative that now characterises mainstream media.

The stratospheric rise of this blog up the industry rankings is not actually caused by a sudden increase in popularity. That popularity has been there for years. But at last it is being measured.

The old wikio rankings measured the number of links from other blogs; in the case of political blogs, only from other political blogs. So clusters of New Labour, Tory and Lib Dem blogs, by constantly linking to each other, could collectively drive themselves up the rankings.

But over 70% of incoming links to this blog are from outside the UK; they did not count for anything at all in the rankings. Nor did the frequent links to this blog from the sites of major newspapers and broadcast companies in the UK and around the globe.

Ebuzzing now has abandoned the old wikio algorithm in favour of a much wider measurement, which draws on more reference sources, including twitter and newspaper sites. The result reflects much more the actual readership and influence of a blog than did the old wikio rankings:

More than 2 million sources are catalogued and analysed. The semantic content ranking is performed automatically. Blog and article popularity are calculated using our algorithm, which takes into account content shares and recommendations on Twitter, Facebook and the primary content exchange platforms.

I think it is hilarious that the huge wedges of cash put by Lord Ashcroft or Unite into the Tory and New War Criminal blogging propaganda arms cannot see off this old chap with his ancient laptop.

The internet remains a great leveller, and that remains reason to hope.