There is no question to which the answer is to wander round killing people. It takes a few words or keystrokes for any right thinking person to condemn the killings in Paris today. But that really doesn’t take us very far.
It is impossible to stop evil from happening. Simple low tech attacks by individuals, a kind of DIY terrorism, cannot always be pre-empted. If you try to do so universally, you will end up even further down the line we have gone down in the UK, where people are continually arrested and harassed who have no connection to terrorism at all, often for bragging on websites. These non-existent foiled terrorist plots are a risible feature of British politics nowadays. Every now and then one hits the headlines, like the arrests just before Remembrance Day. Their defining characteristic is that none of those arrested have any means of terrorism – 99% of those arrested for terrorism in the UK in the last decade – possessed no weapon and no viable explosive device.
In fact the only terrorist in the last year convicted in the UK, who possessed an actual bomb – a very viable explosive device indeed, was not charged with terrorism. He was a fascist named Ryan McGee who had a swastika on his wall and hated Muslims. Hundreds of Muslims with no weapons are locked up for terrorism. A fanatical anti-Muslim with a bomb is by definition not a terrorist.
I am assuming that the narrative that Charlie Hebdo was attacked by Islamists is correct, though that remains to be proved. For argument, let us assume the official narrative is true and the killings were by Muslims outraged at the magazine’s depictions of the Prophet Mohammed.
It is essential to free speech that it includes the freedom to offend. That must include the freedom to offend religious belief. Without such freedoms, the values of societies would freeze. Much social progress has caused real anguish and offence to some people. To have stopped Charlie Hebdo by law would have been wrong. To stop them by bullets is beyond any mitigation.
But that doesn’t make the unfortunate deceased heroes, and President Hollande was wrong to characterise them as such. Being murdered does not make you a hero. And being offensive is not necessarily noble. People who are persistently and vociferously offensive are often neither noble nor well-motivated. Much of Charlie Hebdo‘s taunting of Muslims was really unpleasant. That they also had Christian and other targets did not make this any better. It is not Private Eye – it is a magazine with a much nastier edge. I defend the right of Charlie Hebdo to publish whatever it wants. But once the shock dies off, I do hope a more realistic assessment of whether Charlie Hebdo was entirely admirable or not may be possible. This in no way excuses the dreadful murders.
The ability to say things that offend is an important attribute of a free society. Richard Dawkins may offend believers. Peter Tatchell may offend homophobes. Pussy Riot offended Putin and the Orthodox Church. This must not be stopped.
But that must cut both ways. Abu Qatada broke no British laws in his lengthy stay in the UK, but was demonised for things he said (or even things newspapers invented he had said). Most of the French who are today in solidarity for freedom of expression, are against people being able to express themselves freely in what they wear. The security industry who are all over TV today want to respond to this attack on freedom of expression by more controls on the internet!
I condemn, you condemn, we all condemn, and so we should. But the amount of nuanced thought in the mainstream media is almost non-existent. What will now happen is that conservative commentators will rip individual phrases from this article and tweet them to show I support terrorism. The lack of nuanced thought is a reflection of a general atmosphere of anti-intellectualism which has poisoned public life in modern western society.
The above bit of onanism from Canspeccy reminds me a little of the thousands of posts on the Al-Hilili thread all busily analysing the evidence from a distance of hundreds of miles and written by people expert in nothing at all and certainly not in ballistics, forensic medicine, criminology, nuclear energy or even geo-politics.
Why do they do it?
If I were unkind, I’d say they’re narcissistic, show-off wankers who have nothing better to do than construct elaborate theories – probably retired or unwaged.
On the other hand, and to be more charitable, they’re probably just like little boys, always looking for a little mystery and pretending they’re Sherlock Holmes.
As a good Christian, I feel sorry for them.
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But does that mean that they’re wrong to suggest, that something may well be a miss.
After all, the global media, and security services, have a penchant for misinformation, so in essence it would be foolish to meekly believe any incident upon first glance, would it not?
Unless of course you believe the media, and et al, never lie.
Rats, missed out a bit:
“Tosser; collaborator; hung as a traitor; wanker (keep current fixation with onanism going at all costs); more violence; our way is better; slighting reference to gender; more stuff about sex; goddamit why won’t they see *Muslims* as the enemy; reference to ‘whores’; aggressive reference to ‘fucking self’ and something to do with (?) sanity; all else fails, go and wax legs”
Don’t forget the bikini line, now!
There are times when it is wrong, to write, draw or say something hurtful, one of those times is when a people, or even a single person, is already hurting through no fault of their own, for harms done to themselves or others they empathise with however remotely. Many of us no doubt could have taken the easy option of mocking people for their alleged ‘over-sensitivity’, alleged propensity for violence or intolerance, their superstitions and group identity.
I’ve written a few on that theme already today and then not posted them. Another time maybe.
Macky, I really hoped you’d understood.
OK, so let’s say the Paris killings were “true flag”. What could the flag be but Islam itself? That would certainly be the common assumption. All Muslims would have been labelled with the “flag” of these criminals, whether they supported such killing or not. So the accusation of “false flag” plays straight into the hands of Jemand, Anon and their ilk because by even considering it, we’re accepting that the primary, non-deceptive outcome is “these killings are the responsibility of Islam”.
Countries have flags; a country’s government issues orders to its military forces and carries responsibility for its attacks and other actions.
These killers were just criminals. They did not act on behalf of Islam, so there’s no flag that could be false.
The phone calls are a bit strange.
Very “on message”. No rants at all. They knew and were clear what was going on.
Don’t know many times the criminals are so calm.
No way “actors”….. but “destiny”.
They have done their bit. Now they wait…and this is the end of the job !
Republicofscotland, 9:00 pm: the corporate media rarely outright lie. Most spin or propaganda works by omission and emphasis.
In a political argument, the corporate media leave the lying, or more usually polemics and exaggeration, to the political actors. They then report some of those contradictory, polarised statements, whilst completely ignoring others.
That way, the shit can fly but hardly any of it can end up on the corporate media itself, yet the desired outcome will be achieved 😉
“the corporate media rarely outright lie. Most spin or propaganda works by omission and emphasis.”
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I’m surprised in your faith in the media, and isn’t omitting, the same as not reporting the whole story, and ipso facto, its a form of deception.
Why would the media need to use deception, when reporting?
How does that count as ‘faith in the media’?
Clark, I did not mean to disrespect you earlier, or your story about your friend who died.
As for false flags, I think you are a bit mistaken. Flags have nothing to do with it, that is just a metaphor. In Gullivers Travels there is a celebrated antagonism between the Big Endians who crack their boiled eggs at the big end, and Small Endians who go for the other end. If the Big Endians orchestrated an atrocity and made it appear the work of the Small Endians, that would be a false flag, but no flags in sight.
Republicofscotland, oh yes, it’s deceptive all right. But if they lie they sometimes get forced to print retractions, and too many of them decrease their credibility. Grief, they might even get sued! Lots of bad publicity!
But who can point a finger if they fail to mention something (“we didn’t know; no one told us”) or if they played it down (“we did report it! It was half way down page 15 last Wednesday under the cat food advertisement”)?
This is the answer when certain commenters tell us that getting our news from the Internet is no different – after all, we just post links from the corporate media, don’t we? Ah yes, but the prominence is up to us, and there are contributions from all different sorts of commenters, leading to a very different picture.
KingOfWelshNoir, I’ve never found you to be disrespectful towards me.
Regarding the ~Endians, yes, but if a small group of Big Endians orchestrated an atrocity that most Big Endians would have had nothing to do with or even prevented, and made it appear the work of the Small Endians, that would be a crime and a frame-up.
There’s a proper term for a frame-up, isn’t there? But I can’t remember it.
You are being a bit too literal Clark about the meaning of flag, but your true flag comparision worked, but might seem confusing: “So the accusation of “false flag” plays straight into the hands of Jemand, Anon and their ilk because by even considering it, we’re accepting that the primary, non-deceptive outcome is “these killings are the responsibility of Islam”.” I think I finally get it, if the ‘false flag’ claims are (and this is unlikely) disproven, then it follows ‘Islamists’ done it, in the willing, assenting name of all of that faith. Which is another good point.
Clark: “These killers were just criminals. They did not act on behalf of Islam […]”
Agreed on that, a secondary benefit of the particular target is the free speech angle, being over-played, to paint ‘Islamists’ as intolerant, and does strike at the media themselves hence their palpable hysteria and perhaps a little guilt and fear.
I have decided to post some other witterings after all, as a magnet for all extremists out there.
I’ve only ever seen the term Mohametans (and once thought they were a tribe of Indians out in, the wild West of A-merica) used in ancient texts, BC, Before Cinema and in the writings of racists and imperialist such as Winston Churchill, has this merely fallen out of fashion or is it considered outré?
If god existed and was all that great, would he really want us running around shouting it all the time, must get rather boring for him, what with him being omnipresent and all that.
For all this French magazine was, it is claimed an equal-opportunites mocker of everything and anything, isn’t it rather the case that it had a special prevailing slant against Islam, far more often and far more offensively than anything else? Rather like our mainstream media, for pretence of balance, they sometimes lets something slip past that isn’t quite 100% bollocks.
Is it ok to say Mohammed?
If no-one knows or ever did know, what The Mohammed looks like, how does anyone know it’s a drawing or picture of Mohammed, is it enough for the artist to say or imply it’s Mohammed, or should he be drawn wearing a badge with his name on it, for the avoidance of doubt, or is it for the offended to see some resemblance to some other drawing or picture, they’ve already seen somewhere else of Mohammed which they shouldn’t have, or never have seen a good likeness, but just ‘feel’ it’s him, no question, based on intuition. I think it would be good to have a sort of reference or photofit of the real one true Mohammed, so we’ll know him when we see him and have an idea whether or not another image might or possibly might not, offend some other person. Need it then even ‘resemble’ some demonised or idealised Mohammed. Does the prohibition then not really extend to the human form itself, as anyone can say this or that image looks a bit like Mohammed, in a certain light, and all hell could break loose.
How could someone so shy of publicity have founded a religion? Did he ever exist at all?
“Who said Jehovah?”
There’s something much deeper than cartoons at the root of this, I doubt anyone is or could genuinely be offended by the aforementioned doodles. Whole thing is ridiculous, aren’t some merely looking for something to be offended by and giving lots more people a bad name in the process? It’s not the only thin-skinned religion out there not by a long chalk, there are some you can’t even mention at all, it must be as if they do not did never did ever exist or else … This way lies madness.
See it’s different if it’s an operation by a country’s secret services. Then it is “false flag” because secret services act with the resources and authority of the government.
So if some government is behind the Paris killings then I’ll agree it’s sorta half false flag, half frame-up. But there’s still only one flag – the other flag can’t be “Islam”, and the crime can’t be pinned on God or Allah.
Tony M; aah, propaganda! It’s etched right into our language, nestling where we least expect it, in our very own thoughts.
Canspeccy, time up, please turn over your answer sheet now.
Now if we turn to the question sheet:
http://www.insanemedia.net/memory-hole-the-dawn-hochsprung-file/4717
we see the following paragraph:
This is part of the output of a whois lookup – I believe I’ve seen you post one of these in a comment on this blog. let’s try another example:
Now, Canspeccy; do you suppose the server for this blog is located in Craig’s flat? Do you suppose it’s even in the same (big clue) time zone?
@Clark, Firstly you appeared to have posited your statement as a universal aphorism true for all false flags, which is clearly nonsense; second you are getting yourself in a muddle over the term “False Flag” which is purely a term to mean that something is not what it purports to be, nothing to do with attaching a identifying flag/emblem per se; thirdly whetever Muslim extremists did this of their own volition, or not, the fact is that from the outset “Muslims” were established as the gunmen, so we all already know that the narrative automatically generated & generally implied would be Islam(/all Muslims) are responsible, us calling it a False Flag makes no difference in this respect.
(Just seen that others have pointed out your literal flag muddling !)
Wow, that was more of a muddled statement about muddling than a keynote Muddle speech on Muddlestatement day.
Still, since the definition of ‘false flag’ is so muddled that it might even be a false flag in itself; I suggest, along with Clark, that we just go with the probability: people who kill like this are insane.
I’d like to ask Canspeccy and jemand, however: are the people who did this symptomatic of the religion of Christianity, and should we all be up in arms about Christians because of them? It is, of course, the Wikileaks footage of two Apache gunships killing a Reuters journalist and around eleven other people (2 children were also wounded in the attack)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0
Macky, I know you’re very reluctant to concede any point, so I’ll just say this. The propaganda blow was struck as soon as the mainstream corporate media called the criminals “Muslim extremists”.
Propaganda, as Chomsky would remind us, is a battleground in language. The propaganda term itself has to be rejected, ie. we shouldn’t use it. It is tainted in such a way that if we pick it up, we are already fighting on the oppositions’ home ground.
Who are the opposition? Why, the propagandists themselves! You know, the ones who tell us that the “Western” military is protecting “freedom of speech” in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, and would like it to help out in Syria, too.
I’m off to visit a friend. Thanks to all for a good chat. Here’s to peace, and condolences to the victims and those who love them.
Bad planning (they had to ask where the actual office was).
Excellent execution.
Terrible escape. Terrible evasion. Terrible “next step”.
All seems odd.
Dear! Dear! I see some people on here cannot see the wood for the trees with regard to all of these FALSE FLAG events even though every one of them have been exposed as such with loads of EVIDENCE.
Some people have asked if people are claiming the likes of Sandy Hook was FAKE – Yes it was with plenty of people taking that event apart online. Here is just one documentary proving it to be a massive scam with documents and links to where you find the names of the COMPANIES these FAKE families worked for:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-8nbSFw12k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs80Bjb3bsc
Of course it is all just a co-incidence!
@Billy Carlin
Thats for the links….but I don’t understand that person. Is he speaking English ?
And why is it all “abot gan cuntrol” ????
@Clark, For somebody who was arguing against false flags, it’s funny that you now object to them being called Muslim Extremists; calling them simply “criminals” implies they committed an ordinary common crime, be it robbery or murder; calling them simply “insane” is not even factually true. Yes they did murder people, but not in the normal context of common murders, so to stop being misleadingly general, to be detailed & specific, they need to be called something that accurately identifies them & their crime, and the apparent “fact”, as they themselves made clear, is that they were Muslims who took such extreme exception to blasphemy against their religion, that they committed an extreme act of mass murder. I really don’t see this as propagandistic labeling rather than just being objectively accurate.
I have a certain affection, grace, respect and always a little work-out for the foot-soldiers of the Security Service (MI5). I have to say some aspect and factors of their recruitment interviews I find amusing (so do some applicants), yet the calibre and integrity of those young candidates are beyond reproach; they are impeccable characters with a strong sense of duty.
That cannot be said for MI6, a bunch of thugs, assassins, torturers and importantly a cache of psychopathologists, psychotherapists and propaganda specialists who sneak, wriggle and snake to arrive through dark tunnels and biometric access control to nuclear proof filtered and TEMPEST checked tombs.
The tug-of-war ever present between these two monolith pillars of security, defence, ‘safety without freedom’ and anomaly always pulls to the side of corrupt foreign policy with national security most times falling into the moat and powerless.
Some off-the-cuff even throwaway information however penetrates through, usually and interestingly from the top down. So with other fish to fry and my time short I offer the ISIS/IS performance witnessed in France over the past 48hrs is the template for more Saudi funded distractions (US just desert air-dropped massive weapon supplies to IS) and fear to the rest of Europe including Britain.
The impending financial collapse of the NATO group countries has catalysed a Saudi funded ‘call to arms’ to quell dissent, turmoil and revolt by fear while oil price subsidence crashes world economy, prostrates Russia, restrains and ‘sweats-out’ China AND IMPRISONS SOCIETY for decades.
@Jemand 9/1/15, 19:44 : “Clark is a phoney … arrogant wanker .. can’t admit when he’s wrong… invested in his image… cannot back down … character flaw….” (Continues at some length)
Christ almighty, did he screw your misses or something? I’ve found Clark to be reasonable to a fault, the only person he ever actually beats up upon is himself. If you catch him saying something untrue, I guarantee he’ll withdraw the comment and apologise. Try it, if you can.
Golding.
Proof is for whisky and judges.
Those that recall the bad old days of the mainland bombings know this. The Intelligence Services can not “just act”…..there would be an outcry.
But if you want a society that mindwashed loons just do what they please…and kill, then the “internet” seems to be the place to come to find people that support this. As you clearly do.
Glen
Yes. Clark is just a gem, He fights himself, i fight myself sometimes,
i have met Clark, spent an adventure week in his company, we have nothing if not a moment, or Ear, or Patience for others.
@Canspeccy 9/1/15, 20:17:
So now I – personally – am a “defender of the imperial truth”? Seriously? Gosh, blow me down with a feather, I never knew! Surely there’s a stipend of some kind that I should be collecting as such an upholder!
“But one has to admit that Clark and Glenny-boy are quite ingenious in demanding that I prove for myself their own spavined and ridiculous case against my own argument.”
You mean, having the temerity to question your silly and wild assertions?
Come on, you used to be better than this. I’ve been here for years. So has Clark. Are we actually part of some deep sleeper-cell, just posting progressive, liberal stuff all this time, just to thwart a truth-teller like you – biding our time? LOL!
Give me a break.