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.
And now I’m going to bed but, before I do, a question for the serious cyclists.
Would you wear a helmet all the time, even in sweltering weather? Which leads me to …was Sylvain wearing one that day? I found an article about a cyclist shot in the head. The bullet penetrated the helmet to the inner lining only, and the helmet apparently saved his life. (It didn;t say how far away the shooter was however, just that the shooter was in a car.). It got me thinking..
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OK I know this one as I was recently knocked out on a Thames countryside path in the middle of nowher on my MTB. I NEVER wear a helmet. I don’t know what happened, I woke up covered in blood and disoriented. later I looked at my iphone cycling app and found that I was wandering round in circles for 45 mins, concussed. Eventually a gamekeeper found me and gave me some water and first aid. I think I hit a hidden or overgrown cattle grid, and I went over the bars.
Anyways I have not cycled since. Been researching cycle helmets and they are a bit of a con really. ANSI standards only mandate the makers to protect the brain from a 12 mph crash. Well I know I am averaging around 15-20mph on a ride, and if I hit a kerb at that speed, no dice. Hit a car and the combined impact will be 60 mph and the rest. Also the scalp is designed to “slide”, and helmets catching on something can and will break your neck.
So no helmets for me, they are pretty useless, and I can’t see them stopping most bullets unless they are a glancing blow, like the alleged impacts on the windscreen. In hot weather even less of an incentive to wear one, but most cyclists are sheep and will obey the propaganda.
The less you know, the more you will obey.
Not sure if this has been found yet or not…
G Aked
43, Taylors Crescent, Cranleigh, Surrey, GU6 7EN
01483 272 181
It seems like it should be the right address, but looking at Streetview, it’s not exactly in the same league as leafy Claygate!
Didn’t akhed say he was helping al-hilli to get a job at cern. I do like this satellite angle though!
Anders/Ferret/and now Katie who seems to be buying the possibility of extraction,
What makes you think that the first-response coppers at the scene would be able to keep quiet about the lack of bodies? Is it realistic that they would keep schtum? Do we know for a fact who was first on the scene or is it a report of a report?
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Go back and read Felix’s post on all the silence.
I’e written a few times on how and why this may have happened. In quite a lot of detail, actually.
Having lived and worked in France, and dealt with the Police a few times, two serious incidents, I am not impressed. They operate under Napoleonic law, and they are extremely subservient to their superiors. If they get a message on the radio to stay back, keep schtum, and don’t touch anything – they will do just that. Of course they will gossip later, but they know that if they cross the line, they lose their cosy jobs and cosy pensions. Not gonna happen. Add in the DA notice, yes, works in France too, via their own way of doing things, then the whole truth of the matter is shut down.
Sorry one more thing if you did bring the satellite couldn’t it come down anywhere why over England? I’m not wrong that it was seen more here than other places?
Anders, I thought it had been covered but I got into an argument with my brother about it tonight and I had a hard time convincing him that the police would be able to keep it quiet. I had to remind him of the Bridgewater 4 and the Birmingham 6 and Hilsborough etc. I’ll rescan the thread.
PS, please wear a helmet. It won’t stop you being crushed by a bus but if the bus blows you off your bike and you hit your head on the kerb (at approximately 12mph – average speed I suspect) then it may very well save it 🙂
@poster with cycling helmet question
Almost all serious cyclists will wear a helmet from habit,(all sanctioned races require helmets) if going for a ride of more than 10 miles. They are meant to protect the skull from serious injury, including the forehead and back of neck-same as horse riding helmets.
@everyone
Still no satisfactory explanation on what happened to passenger-side bike tray-unless 1=documents/data were stored inside it seeing as most trays are made to withstand the elements & therefore would be an inconspicuous & safe place to store anything seen of value thru customs etc
2= the tray was ripped off w bike on top which seems highly unlikely since it would require superhuman strength or tools, time, and disposal
Straw, re your question on what else is in Oxfordshire. Quite a bit actually, including Rutherford laboratory and Culumn laboratory (where the European JET collaboration was some years back. Not sure about now). There are at least 3 other major research laboratories around in that general area. As for Rutherford lab (I think I saw some connection to that earlier) it is generally a fairly open lab with minimal security. But yes, there’s all kinds of work going on there, from esoteric particle research to more down to earth laser related work, including on isotope separation. There may be parts of Rutherford that do most secure work but I don’t know about those.
Sorry if everyone already knows all of that.
As for satellite mapping and depth estimation capabilities, including with platforms like Cryosat and miniature satellites mentioned here, they can do a lot, but not as much as people think. Physics has a tendency to get in the way of wishful thinkers. Which may be a good thing given that the PTB do not treat greed as a finite quantity.
That being said, anything to do with space surveillance is hash-hash and SAR including laser radar versions have been making lots of progress and probably are well beyond where I think it is (I am not in a classified area). Obviously, we really need all that good technology to map out all the amazing planets we are going to visit and settle, right? (on the science Fiction channels at least).
This is an interesting board, BTW.
Anders, I thought it had been covered but I got into an argument with my brother about it tonight and I had a hard time convincing him that the police would be able to keep it quiet. I had to remind him of the Bridgewater 4 and the Birmingham 6 and Hilsborough etc. I’ll rescan the thread.
PS, please wear a helmet. It won’t stop you being crushed by a bus but if the bus blows you off your bike and you hit your head on the kerb (at approximately 12mph – average speed I suspect) then it may very well save it
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Let me tell you a secret! I run a de-restricted Triumph Rocket III in Florida, 2400 odd cc, biggest bike engine in the world, BRITISH MADE, 0-60 mph in a shade over two seconds, all that jazz! I’ve owned a lot of bikes, Ducatis, Buells, Daytonas, but this bike is the dogz bollocks! 🙂
I don’t wear a helmet! 🙂 (Though I do have an illegal CF Beanie I wear into other States…)
Thank God for America in that respect! When yer times’up, it’s up! 😉
Anders, I thought it had been covered but I got into an argument with my brother about it tonight and I had a hard time convincing him that the police would be able to keep it quiet. I had to remind him of the Bridgewater 4 and the Birmingham 6 and Hilsborough etc.
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Yep.
I also often quote the development of the Nuclear Bomb in Los Alamos, New Mexico, in the years up to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atrocities.
There were THOUSANDS of Americans working on that, thousands, for YEARS, and not a whisper leaked out.
All were kept in need to know cells, and threatened in no uncertain terms to shut their mouths.
So yes, anything can be hushed up. And if you blab, the media will disown you or marginalise you. Your story simply doesn’t get heard. If you are persistent, you’ll have an unfortunate RTA.
They have it all sewn up, which is why Assange is such a threat.
@poster with cycling helmet question
Almost all serious cyclists will wear a helmet from habit,(all sanctioned races require helmets) if going for a ride of more than 10 miles. They are meant to protect the skull from serious injury, including the forehead and back of neck-same as horse riding helmets.
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Thanks.
To back up my claims, please read this, and you may form a different view:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tomchiversscience/100174200/i-hate-to-disagree-with-bradley-wiggins-but-mandatory-cycle-helmets-would-be-a-terrible-idea/
I hate to disagree with Bradley Wiggins, but mandatory cycle helmets would be a terrible idea
Bradley Wiggins, arguably Britain’s greatest ever Olympian and certainly owner of Britain’s most reassuring face (it is, isn’t it? He looks so wise and steady. It’s partly the Darwin sideburns), has called for cycle helmets to be made compulsory in England, following the horrible news yesterday that a 28-year-old cyclist has been killed by an Olympic bus, near the Velodrome. “It’s dangerous and London is a busy city. I think we have to help ourselves sometimes,” he said.
I’m loath to disagree with Wiggo in the moment of his triumph, and obviously cycling is something that he knows more about than I do. But I fear that if his suggestion is followed, it will cause more premature deaths than it prevents.
First, it’s not clear – bizarrely, counterintuitively, but nonetheless – that cycle helmets do all that much to protect cyclists from serious injury. Certainly yesterday’s tragedy did not involve a head injury at all, but there is some suggestion that even in accidents that do, the effectiveness of a helmet is disputed. In an interesting article for The Guardian in 1999, Ed Walker, an A&E doctor, said: “A live brain is said to have the consistency of blancmange. Putting blancmange in a polystyrene box will not allow you safely to throw it against concrete without the contents being just as badly shaken as had the ‘protection’ not been present.” A helmet will protect you from cuts and scrapes, he says, but if you’re hurled into the path of a lorry, no cycle helmet in the world would protect you, and – contrary to our intuition – there isn’t much of a middle ground.
Personally I find that quite hard to believe: I know of one person who came off their bike and hit the kerb, shattering her helmet on the corner of it but avoiding injury herself. Anecdotal evidence is of course irrelevant, so instead I’ll point to a 2001 meta-analysis in the journal Accident Analysis & Prevention which found that “the evidence is clear that bicycle helmets prevent serious injury and even death”, adding that helmet use should be encouraged to the point that it is “uniformly accepted”. But there’s a significant difference between encouraging it, and enforcing it.
Australia made cycle helmets legally required in the 1990s. Immediately, cycling participation in the country dropped, by as much as 40 per cent, according to studies in New South Wales, the Northern Territories and Victoria. That is a public health disaster: it has been shown that cyclists live longer and healthier lives than non-cyclists on average, even taking into account the risk of injury. A 1992 British Medical Association study found that the average life years gained through the increased fitness gained by cycling far outweighed those lost in accidents.
What’s more, reducing the number of cyclists on the road increases the risk for those cyclists who remain on it. The well-established “safety in numbers” principle dictates that the more cyclists there are on the roads, the more likely motorists are to expect them, and to notice them, and thus not to kill them. One estimate of the effect suggests that for every doubling of cyclist numbers in a city, the risk to every individual cyclist drops by 34 per cent. That’s on top of the already vast health benefits of cycling. But it works the other way as well: if we reduced the number of cyclists in London by forcing them to wear helmets, we could expect a corresponding rise in risk to each cyclist.
And finally, although it gets a lot of press, we should remember that cycling is actually very safe. A 2010 Transport for London study found that there were an average of 500,000 cycle trips made per day in the capital, which we think of as a sort of accident black spot, but only 17 cyclists have been killed per year on average since 1996. That’s a figure which has remained fairly steady even though the number of cyclists has practically doubled, as the death rate per 100,000 cyclists per kilometre per year has dropped from 20.5 in 1992 to 11.1 in 2006. It’s more dangerous per kilometre than driving or walking, but far less than motorcycling, and you have to cycle a hell of a long way to raise your odds above negligible.
There are other social benefits of cycling, of course: reduced air pollution, reduced congestion on the roads, less noise, less risk to other road users. But most of all, cycling is healthy and safe, and it gets safer the more people do it. Bradley Wiggins is right to be concerned for cyclists, and to try to make them safe. But the best way of making cyclists safe, and one of the best ways of making people healthier generally, is to get more people cycling. Sadly, mandatory cycle helmets will do the opposite.
Yeah, Saddam’s Iraq was probably a lot freer than these western countries.
@ Anders- thanks for your viewpoint.
Why I’m fixated on the bike rack (h. Poirot quotes)
“Facts that are concealed acquire a suspicious importance. Facts that are frankly revealed tend to be regarded as less important than they really are.
When the criminal sets out to do a crime, his first effort is to deceive. Whom does he seek to deceive? The image in his mind is that of the normal man…. You show me what the criminal wishes me to believe. It is a great gift.”
“I also often quote the development of the Nuclear Bomb in Los Alamos, New Mexico, in the years up to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atrocities.
There were THOUSANDS of Americans working on that, thousands, for YEARS, and not a whisper leaked out.”
You wish. Only strict wartime censorship kept it out of the press but the Japanese and the Germans knew about the Manhattan Project and the Germans tried, unsuccessfully, to infiltrate it. The Soviets had more luck with at least four agents inside Los Alamos itself and they’re just the ones we know about. The speed with which the Soviets produced their own bomb post-war suggests that there must’ve been others.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Spies-Who-Spilled-Atomic-Bomb-Secrets.html
In the case of these murders you can never be sure that somebody won’t have a twinge on conscience or feel they have to tell all for the public good. Anyway what do you do if the family want to see the bodies before burial as is common practice in Islam? Murder some look-a-likes? Where would you find any that would be good enough to fool close family members?
To answer Blue_Bear’s question whilst it would be useful to know the location of any underground bunkers your enemy might have, lead lined or not, satellite mounted GPR is not going to do it.
@Grogrogri
You said:
“Let’s add up everything:
Hicheur and al-Hilli both worked as collegues for RAL where they apparently worked for the top secret SILEX project…”
It’s an interesting theory, but it appears to me to have a fatal flaw. Saad al-Hilli did indeed work at the Rutherford Appleton Lab (according to some newspaper reports, at least)- but that was back 1986. And Adlene Hicheur was ten years old in 1986. So I don’t see how they could possibly have worked there as colleagues. Or am I missing something?
@ferret
Job done from their POV.
That’s a shame.
And yeah, something spooked them alright.
I think it was ATK but who knows.
We have had an easy time of it the prev 24hrs.
Maybe they regrouped and thought up some new tactics?
Shame I wasn’t online realtime to witness it all and watch you out them all!
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Free software exists that can record anything that happens on the screen. One of you could run it on a seperate computer, and if nothing interesting happens, simply delete what you have recorded, but IF something happens, like last night, you will have documentation, that would be as good as witnessing it in real time.
I have “Camstudio”, which back in the 90’s cost a lot of money, but which was made freeware around 2000, but surely today much niftier programs exists. I found that just the threat of recording, was enough to make the people concerned think twice about their (mis)doings.
Blue_Bear wrote at 12.16 am:
Above the tin-foil: Sheets of material that imitates typical ground reflection. All of this surely have been made already, IF any satellite borne radar was realistic.
Anders777
”We got hit tonight by multiple new aliases, stirring the shit, probably james, busted, under a new guise or three, others too. It was like a DDOD attack, distributed denial of service attack. All the sensitive subjects triggering reflex auto-responses set up this WAVE of attacks, and sliding and all the rest went on.
The poor old mod comes along and it is WW3.
It is really too bad all was deleted as I outed all of them, every single one, with their elementary mistakes.
Job done from their POV.”
*laughable* i think everybody is entitled to read or comment on this thread and i shall continue to do so regardless of ‘your tactics’
@Kenneth Sorensen
People who express certainty over how much science can and can’t predict could perhaps consider things about which science knows very little, such as Dark Matter and Dark Energy.
We postulate their existence from an otherwise unexplainable observations, but we do not know even what they are, never mind what they do.
I am not, of course, saying that Dark Matter and Dark Energy are behind any technological advances but it is important to remember that science can only tell you about what it knows, and not about things it does not.
And there are possibly an infinite number of these unknown areas.
“The more I learn, the more I learn how little I know.” – Socrates
And while we’re on the subject of sagacious quotes, how about this one from our good old friend Albert Einstein:
“I do not know how the Third World War will be fought, but I can tell you what they will use in the Fourth — rocks!”
@Justcurious
Relax, that was just for my benefit, not yours.
Keep posting.
… and one final post to kick off this morning…
ATK’s satellite technology could (if it does what it claims) allow them to steal other people’s satellites.
Wouldn’t that put the cat amongst the pigeons?
Oh OK, one more, if you insist.
🙂
Engineer, Mr. Scott:
Ye cannot change the laws of physics, laws of physics, laws of physics;
ye cannot cahnge the laws of physics, laws of physics, Jim.
Ah! We come in peace, shoot to kill, shoot to kill, shoot to kill;
we come in peace, shoot to kill; Scotty, beam me up!
It’s worse than that, he’s dead, Jim, dead, Jim, dead, Jim;
it’s worse than that, he’s dead, Jim, dead, Jim, dead.
Well, it’s life, Jim, but not as we know it, not as we know it, not as we know it;
it’s life, Jim, but not as we know it, not as we know it, Captain.
There’s Klingons on the starboard bow, starboard bow, starboard bow;
there’s Klingons on the starboard bow, better calm down!
Ye cannot change the script Jim.
Och, #!*& Jimmy.
It’s worse than that, it’s physics, Jim.
http://www.quantumnow.com/trek/lyrics.html
Ferret
Are you the same ferret who lied his way around the Myt site, if so your words are useless.
@Ferret
Thank you 🙂
I am one of the ‘aliases’ Anders talks of, i find it bazarre to think that every new poster is here for the wrong reasons, like i said on my first post i find this thread fascinating. I have no hidden agenda.
Question.
Did Eric Maillaud ever visit the site of the alleged incident? I suspect not. My feeling is that the changing story was conveyed to him at base camp from “up above”. Who then were EM’s sources? The security services who had sealed off the site? His performances are good, but he is merely relaying what is told to him.
The only other source relating to the car park is BM. And his rehearsed bed-time story has been laughed out of court by most people here.
So, what is credible?
a. Nothing.
b. Something
c. Everything
We have no bodies, no bikes.
We have a car with broken windows, and (perhaps not at the same time) some glass, some cartriges,and some blood.
Doesn’t add up to much, Sherlock.
@Ferret 24 Sep, 2012 – 11:22 pm
‘@Anders
Thanks for the link!
General Wesley Clark: Wars Were Planned – Seven Countries In Five Years
Like, on Sept 20th (9 days after 9/11) they’d already decided to go to war with Iraq?!?
Jaw dropping…
Jesus H Christ!!!’
I think the plan was already in existence. 9/11 was the pretext ..
But that’s another story.
@Dogs Bowl
No idea what Myt is
@Justcurious
You’re welcome.
🙂
@Felix
I think the plan was already in existence. 9/11 was the pretext ..</em
That'd make sense…