The shocking death of Lee Rigby quite naturally appals us all. The intention of the crazed little group who conceived this killing was to make it as horrible as possible in order to scare people.
Horrible, sociopathic violence happens to people from time to time. They have done since Cain killed Abel, metaphorically or literally as you choose. Here is another headline today, just as horrific:
A British soldier has been jailed for stabbing a 10-year-old boy after getting drunk on vodka while serving in Afghanistan.
Both that obscene attack and Michael Adebolajo’s appalling actions are borne out of the same conflict. But it is reasonable to suppose that both these incidents involved people with, for whatever reason, a pre-disposition to murderous violence.
Such people have always been with us and will always be with us, but fortunately they are very, very few. In a nation of 60 million, involvement in violent crime is very low. If you are the victim of criminal violence, the odds over the last decade are about one in twenty thousand that the violence inflicted on you will have any linkage to political or terrorist causation. And the odds that you will suffer any kind of violent attack are thankfully pretty remote.
We should not panic from theatrical violence, just deplore and take sober stock. Sadly if a lunatic on the bus decides to strangle you tomorrow, there are no pre-emptive laws that can stop that. We should stop pretending that the state can always prevent.
“Jesus Atheist: the photo accredited to Gavin Rodgers was taken from a helicopter according to your link.”
Yes, I see. I thought it was from the high rise but it is of course on the other side of the road.
So, how does Gavin Rodgers get accredited with a photo taken from a helicopter as well as the footage taken from the ground?
A Node. 1 07 pm
Yeah, top job. Just show’s you how much thought goes into their apparent nonsense.
Ref the Tugendhahts
The older brother is very wealthy judging from his register of interests here. I thought the name sounded German but their father had Polish origins. He was an economist in the oil industry and was once suspected of being a German agent in WWII
http://www.parliament.uk/biographies/lords/lord-tugendhat/1705
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/news/german.htm
‘Family background [edit]
His family lineage includes Jewish Austrian (paternal) and Anglo-Irish (maternal) extraction; he was raised as a Roman Catholic. Tugendhat’s father, Dr Georg Tugendhat was born in Vienna, but came to United Kingdom after World War I to pursue his doctorate at the London School of Economics (LSE), where he married Christopher’s mother, Maire (Littledale). Georg Tugendhat traced his paternal forebears to the Polish town of Bielsko, Silesia which until 1918 had been called Bielitz, when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He found the graves of 25 Tugendhats in the Jewish Cemetery which had closed in 1939. He helped to fund its restoration.’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Tugendhat,_Baron_Tugendhat
The younger brother has acted for the press in several cases involving publication of SS memoirs. He must have accrued wealth from his time as a barrister from his high profile case load such as invasion of privacy cases representing the Beckhams and Zeta Jones/Douglas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Tugendhat
Photographer Gavin Rodgers (looking like a pilot in his mug shot) didn’t mention last week events on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/asproid
@Jesuit Atheist (12:50) Rather a poor article, (though the picture is interesting): “And when politicians play this down as a one-off, we should be aware that this killing may give confidence to other sick extremists, having seen it done before.”
The article fails to consider that the ‘other sick extremists’ given confidence are the far-right, EDL and others of that sort, who are as much creations of the security services as the ‘terrrrists’. Contacts, ‘man with a van’ overlaps and associations between the jihadist crews and white supremacist racist groups, seem to suggest a common over-arching organisation manipulating if not directing both groups. The similar names of those involved is confusing to me, did one or both play a more active part in the drama? The odd almost disinterested actions of passers-by has been attributed to the constant use of this area over many years, for filming of TV’s ‘The Bill’ cop soap.
It seems that these were hardly typically disaffected or excluded youth, photos of the Leicestershire home of one or another suspect, shows a well-proportioned double-garaged substantial building and the father given to be a diplomat. Some sources have given the diplomat as married to a probation officer (long a cover occupation for domestic intelligence work), others now suggest the other suspect’s mother is (or is also) a probation officer.
I think this swirling confusion and contradiction in the media is deliberate.
Whole thing stinks.
Calls for new snooping powers a red-herring, the fact that this or that technical measure is called for by the politicians, simply confirms that what they are requesting is already taking place on a massive, nationwide scale, without requirement for any legislative change.
Kibo Noh, re: car impact site and lack of skid marks and damage to post.
When I have seen cars that have been in large impacts often you see debris all around the wheels and underneath which has been dislodged from the wheel arches and floor-pan – from where mud, dirt and brake dust etc. build up.
None of that is present which means there was either no impact of the car was *perfectly* clean when it hit the post.
“All the images that started the ‘no blood at the scene’ conspiracy theory”
I think said theory is based on the fact that there appears to be no blood between the car impact point (where there clearly is blood) and the point in the road where the victim ended up. How did he get from one place to the other and why isn’t there a trail of blood?
And where is the victim’s head?
@Jesuit Atheist (12:50) Rather a poor article.
Yes, but I was drawing attention to the photograph… accredited to Gavin Rodgers… taken from a helicopter… while Gavin Rodgers is on the ground… the same Gavin Rodgers who produces anti-Arab terrorist propaganda for The Sun. OK?
Gavin Rodgers may not have had much to say on Twitter about what he saw but he did manage to retweet the ‘eye-witness’ account that featured very prominently in the press from ‘Boya Dee’ where he graphically talks about seeing ‘brudders’ cutting of a white man’s head with a machete – which did not happen.
Are these raised arms any different to the one displayed on Facebook recently when the guy got dropped by Farage?
Thousands of EDL and supporters pay respects in march through Woolwich
May 26th, 2013 by Paul Davey
http://static2.demotix.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/a_scale_large/2000-8/photos/1369600247-thousands-of-edl-and-supporters-pay-respects-in-march-through-woolwich_2090468.jpg
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/ukip-candidate-alex-wood-suspended-1862713
Incredible.
Murdered soldier Lee Rigby has been formally identified but the cause of his death was not confirmed by a post-mortem examination, police said today.
Drummer Rigby, 25, was hacked to death in the street in a horrifying attack in Woolwich, south-east London on Wednesday.
A post-mortem examination was carried out on his body yesterday but no cause of death has been confirmed, Scotland Yard said.
An inquest into his death will be opened in due course.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/woolwich-attack-murdered-soldier-lee-rigby-cause-of-death-unconfirmed-8630883.html
Wot? No ‘waiting for toxicology tests’? That’s the usual.
April Showers 27 May, 2013 – 2:03 pm
I see lots of unshaven men between 18-35 with 3-4 days growth. Could be soldiers given time off duty a few days ago to attend EDL/BNP demos etc. and trying to look more ‘civvie’ or it’s a south London fashion thing.
How times have changed…
http://www.kued.org/productions/2worlds/historical_images/salute.jpg
“…cutting of a white man’s head with a machete – which did not happen”
Well, the corpse appears to be headless in the pics. I wonder how, where and when the victim was beheaded. Was a headless corpse dumped at the scene? Sounds unlikely but it would certainly account for some of the inconsistencies.
@JesuitAtheist (1:51) Yeah I know it was for the clear photo that you gave the link, thanks for that, the article accompanying it however is dire, the comments bonkers! No criticism for posting it was implied.
Presumably the large military rucksack belonged to the soldier, how and when it came to be placed at the corner of the wall is hard to surmise. The front nearside (passenger side) of the car bore the brunt of a hard impact with something solid, not just flesh and bone; lamp-posts struck often shear by design, none of those in the picture did so, nor show the least distortion or damage, I don’t think any of them could have been struck by the car. There might be some projecting solid object, under the over-hanging trees, in front of the wall which could have caused the oblique damage to the car; above a fairly low speed a body struck would tend to ‘surf’ up and over the windscreen and roof, a self-preservational strategy in such a situation could be to leap onto the car itself before it strikes, assuming the victim was ambulant and sentient and aware what was taking place, a better strategy would to get out of the path of the vehicle entirely as with all the obstacles the car would have had almost no maneuvrability and successful evasion would be highly probable.
“Presumably the large military rucksack belonged to the soldier”
Why do you presume that? He was off-duty and in civilian clothes.
“I’d like to know why Muslim countries are reluctant to provide sanctuary to their Muslim brothers…” Habbabkuk.
You make some good points there. You’re correct that western Europe/north America is less oppressive and much more free than most other places in the world, including most majority Muslim countries.
And of course, people from wherever come here for all kinds of reasons – escape from political/religious/ethnic oppression, economic betterment, etc.
We know taht Islamist/Jihadists and their preachers have abused those freedoms.
But while what you say/suggest here is valid, I think it important to point out that during the invasion of Iraq, Syria and Jordan took in millions of Iraqi refugees and (for all its faults and problems) more recently, Iraq has taken in lots of Syrian refugees. During the wars in Afghanistan of the 1980s/90s, Iran, Turkey and Pakistan together took in many millions of Afghan refugees.
So, as I say, while you do make some good points here, it’s important to look at the bigger picture.
Suhayl,
It is encouraging to me that your questions are answered coherently by nothing more than interpretation and insight by others here.
I can offer a small amount of ‘insider’ knowledge but please appreciate I am not an expert in national intelligence. History tells the plotters are always those commanded to infiltrate the group. These lower level informers contribute useful intelligence that can be accumulated to support an agents provocateur hypothesis, their wagging tongues are not responsible to duty or loyalty or OSA threat of punishment.
Islamists(a neutral term I prefer) or indeed anarchists are not a mortal threat to Western civilization. They do not warrant the suppression of civil liberties or the huge cost, in lives and money, of the wars waged by Blair/Cameron and Barack Obama.
Cracking down on supposed terror threats through mass arrests or drone air attacks, can create martyrs and encourage counterattacks. Many acts of anarchist terror were explicitly conceived to avenge comrades caught and killed or brutalized by Western governments. Sometimes the blow-back is more long term, harder to predict, and more terrifying.
Clearly that is my Raison d’être to hinder such efforts by exposure.
From solid evidence EDL London division have such informers in place who interface via Special Branch to SIS.
Your insight Suhayl and history has given us a most important lesson for our current war on terror. The threat may have been smaller than those responsible for its policing liked to maintain.
That haunting thought should help guide British voters and sane politicians[sic] as they consider the future of the Second War on International Terror and the modus operandi of our governments 2013 proposals that I have elucidated earlier, intended to empower an obscene, obsessed strategem to elicit public support and itself forming part of the West’s geo-political master plan.
The other point, Habbabkuk, is that many Muslims and non-Muslims from South Asian and the Far East work in the Persian Gulf/Saudi Arabia (and previously also in Libya, Iraq, etc.). These countries have a bad record wrt institutional and personal, unreconstructed racism. Nonetheless, people earn money and send it home (s do many British and other Europeans, whose conditions and pay in these Arab countries tends to be much better than those of the South Asians and those from the Far East. Nonetheless, the point I suppose is this: Many Muslim people do go to work and live in many other Muslim countries (as do many non-Muslims). It’s normal.
@MJ, 2:38pm:
Well I take that back as speculative, though there is a fair probability it did. It might well, but less probably have belonged to the other two, perhaps to carry their collection of cutlery and weapons? Or a passerby or first-aider brought it in the aftermath?
Perhaps in an added twist the rucksack was there to add the threat of an explosive device if sufficient hysteria could not be whipped up by overkill sensationalist chatter of machetes and beheadings. An alternative or reserve scenario that was judged unnecessary.
It is hard to determine where real events (if any) begin and the psy-op took over, there is no doubt that this event has been used by politicians to manipulate public opinion, aided by thoroughly dishonest controlled and primed media, to further a fascist warmongering agenda abroad and another ratcheting up of the dystopian security state apparatus at home.
from aangirfan:
BBC Newsnight may have been used to create disinformation on the MI5 connection.
‘A friend [Abu Nusaybah] of Michael Adebolajo’ told the BBC that MI5 had attempted to recruit Michael Adebolajo six months ago.
It is more likely that Michael Adebolajo had been an asset of MI5 for many years.
When Michael Adebolajo was arrested in kenya, his family had been told by the Kenyan authorities that he would be hanged or beheaded.
But he was freed to return to Britain.
“The decision has raised questions over official involvement in Mr Adebolajo’s release – and the true extent of his connections with the intelligence services since he returned home to the UK.”
============
Note also that Michael ‘Toby’ Adebowale was injured at a stabbing in January 2008 where Lee James, reportedly high on cocaine, killed Faridon Alizada ‘at a crack den in Erith, Kent’. (The Guardian reported this here)
From court reports of Lee James trial:
‘James, who also used the last names Peacock and Cantwell, told people ‘he had robbed, murdered and stabbed the occupants of the flat’.
‘He told others he believed that the men in the flat [Faridon Alizada, Michael ‘Toby’ Adebowale & Ahmed Ahmed] were supporters of Al Qaeda and that they had offered him money to act as a suicide bomber to blow up the nearby Bluewater Shopping Centre,’ said prosecutor Tony Leonard.‘
The whole thing is a mangle of anomalies, inconsistencies & dis/mis-info, designed to create a strategy of tension to be talked about over the bank holiday weekend………..
(good points over the previous 2 pages from Jesuit Atheist, discussing the anomalies & inconsistencies)
Bert. Thanks. More stuff to choke on.
Re Lee James: “….they had offered him money to act as a suicide bomber…”
An offer he must have found hard to resist no doubt?
The whole thing gets more bizarre by the hour.
Cryptonym, thanks for the earlier link to the Laurel Canyon scene, etc. It is possible that people like Jim Morrison as part of the establishment etc and therefore in a sense conditioned, but the two musicians i quoted, including Hendrix were amazingly gifted musicians and highly successful in their own right.
The fact that the hippie-peacenik movement didn’t last is another matter. The Big Picture demonstrates very clearly that people don’t change — we expect somehow to be lead to change and we fall for hollow promises by our politicians; instead of working on ourselves, i.e. self-knowledge. And so the vicious circle continues. Its all so obvious.
Anyway, i pay tribute to Ray Manzarek who died a week ago of cancer. An interesting snippet “Manzarek met drummer John Densmore and guitarist Robby Krieger at a Transcendental Meditation lecture. Densmore says, “There wouldn’t be any Doors without Maharishi.”[4]
Their game –
Release three who were arrested
Arrest another
BREAKING NEWS:Officers investigating murder of soldier Lee Rigby arrest 50-year-old man on suspicion of conspiracy to murder
The Gavin Rodgers photo has some interesting details.
A substantial quantity of light fluid (water perhaps or power-steering fluid, not blood) has drained from the car. This is consistent with the car hitting a strong fixed object that wrecked a sump or two in the lower part of the engine compartment.
Also there’s a smaller and separate flow of liquid on the other side of the car, emanating from some point beyond the driver’s door. That might or might not be blood. It’s a shame we can’t see whether this flow links up with the larger bloodstain.
http://www.capitalbay.com/uk/344070-woolwich-beheading-analysis-mi5-s-worst-nightmare-has-come-true.html
Wasn’t “I’d like to know why Muslim countries are reluctant to provide sanctuary to their Muslim brothers…” just an attempt to criticize Muslims? Anyway evidence has been given that they do give sanctuary.
~~
The EU foreign ministers are ‘pondering’ the move by Hague and Fabius to ease the arms embargo for the rebels.
Thanks, Mark, very much appreciated.
“The fact that the hippie-peacenik movement didn’t last is another matter. The Big Picture demonstrates very clearly that people don’t change”
A little history to augment your point Villager;
When I first saw the ‘movement’ with my own eyes it was mid-1967, and although there were flower children, most of them were counterfeit hangers-on. The Oracle was still being published,but it was being ‘hawked’ at intersections similar to the newsboys of yesterday. People trying to make a buck were everywhere, selling hand-made Ankhs pounded from brass and held with a leather thong. The real movement had moved on nearly a year earlier. Even though the atmosphere was not the liquid state of Love permeating the air, there was a benign friendliness, but it would turn nasty in the coming months because an even trashier element took over. It was sad, really.
Sorry. I forgot to add this was Haight St., San Francisco.
Ben and Suhayl, thanks for your comments, especially the latter for smashing to the ground, Habbakuk’s volley. Although i have to say, i am not for him being banned and glad to observe he’s eased off somewhat on Mary.
Overall, this thread has proved to be one of the most depressing with all the talk about organised religions. We think we are ‘modern’ man but we are medieval in our behaviour — a Type Zero Civilisation. Zero.
Next subject please Craig. This story has far exceeded its sell-by date.
Live feed in Westminster (Occupy)
http://bambuser.com/channel/occupynewsnetwork