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.
Thanks Nevermind for the link. The Independent says the BBC says … and all the claims qualified by may and might in the end derive from the “Association of Russian Lawyers for Human Rights”, based in Arizona. The actual text of the law, translated or in Russian is not on the web anywhere I can find, every reference to the story is less than a day old. From what I can find it refers to ““personality disorders” as listed by the International Classification of Diseases Number 10 (ICD-10)”. ICD-10 refers to a whole book, it is the mental health industry ‘bible’ and is widely discredited by the medical profession, it is an American publication, which notoriously itself until quite recently classified homosexuality as a mental disorder. ICD-11 will probably be even worse and is due for release in 2017, it covers every aspect of mental health, it is not specific to transgender issues in the least. I smell a rat, infact a whole horde of them, the story is made up nonsense, untrue, complete bullshit. ‘Included in’ ICD-10 does not mean the whole book or even any specific part of the book, the law will no doubt apply in cases of very serious mental disorder, where the person is already a danger to themselves and others.
A still-born anti-Russian smear and scare, with no basis in reality.
Thanks Ros, it’s total bullshit though.
Interesting how western media are reporting this, in their usual propagandistic way.
RT gives a bit of detail.
“However, ICD-10 especially stresses that sexual orientation by itself isn’t considered a personality disorder.
“Sexual disorders” may be an obstacle to driving a car if they take “chronic and prolonged” form with “severe or persistent painful symptoms,” the decree said.”
http://rt.com/news/221235-russia-driving-ban-transgender/
Now you know what liars western media are.
Glenn : “Nah, just tired of your self-referential BS. That’s all”
If it’s BS, then it should be a joyous doddle for you to refute; but like I said, you’re obviously still smarting.
Jemand; “Can someone please check on Macky to see if he is ok? I fear that he has been either murdered or kidnapped and held captive for ransom as an intelligent impostor is comments in his name to destroy his reputation”
Of all the regular Posters here, you are without doubt the most disturbingly sinister; I engaged with you sometimes only because compared to the other knuckle draggers of your persuasion, you stand out as an Einstein in that you can occasionally concoct a point worth addressing, and often it needs addressing as the other knuckle-heads in your camp get too excited, and start flooding a thread with their inane nonsense.
As your constant nasty name calling of Mary, would you like it if others started to always refer to you as “Jemand – The Muslim Hater” ?
Herbie, I really don’t know where you’re coming from. I am anti-Islam, not anti-muslim. In just the same way that I expect you are as I am, anti-Ebola but not anti-Ebola-infected-person.
Clark and Technicolour, on the other hand, are defenders of the disease as well as the sufferers. So the suffering continues.
I say, kill the disease, cure the infected.
They say, save the disease and allow the infected to spread the disease.
Does that fix the apparent misunderstanding about me?
“Blasphemy is a means of control over dissidents by oppressive and totalitarian regimes. In modern times Communism, Islam, American jingoism and Political Correctness all have penalties for blasphemy. Indeed, you know there’s something very wrong with an idea when you can’t openly disagree with it.”
______________________________
Jemand.
Interestingly I can think of one or two historical major event, that even now, you can’t openly disagree with, without fear of recrimination of some sorts.
Resident Dissident; “And then some of them are only too happy to reshow/link to such images (often in a doctored form to increase the offence) while at the same time giving lectures on hypocrisy”
I politely refrained from both rubbing it in & persisting in an apology over your hysterical & spectacular “error” in accusing me of linking to a fraudulent Charlie Hedbo image, and tried to smear me as therefore being untrustable;
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/01/terrorism-and-nuance/comment-page-2/#comment-501556
In your usual true Free Speech champion style, you even demanded that the Mods to delete my Post;
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/01/terrorism-and-nuance/comment-page-2/#comments
It took me less than one minute to validate that the image was an authentic one that Hedbo had actually published, and I provided you with the proof. Instead of doing the honorable thing and admitting that you got it wrong, and apologising, you spent a day sulking, and are now arguing that the image was “ doctored form to increase the offence”, the very exact same image that Hedbo published !!
“Thanks Ros, it’s total bullshit though.”
________________________
Tony M.
You’re welcome, as for the story, it does seem rather improbable, I have to agree with that.
We’ll give it a few days to see, how it develops.
Thanks, Shib.
Great stuff, as ever, from Paul Craig Roberts.
Answers a question often put by the gullible.
Clampdown on whistleblowers. Anyone heard of that. No.
“The gullible always say that if a conspiracy existed someone would have talked. But people do talk. It just doesn’t do any good. For example, during George W. Bush’s first term a NSA whistleblower leaked to the New York Times that the NSA was bypassing the FISA Court and spying on American citizens without warrants. Under US law, NSA was in a conspiracy with the Bush regime to commit serious felonies (possibly for the purpose of blackmail), but the New York Times spiked the story for one year until George W. Bush was re-elected and the regime had time to ex post facto legalize the felonies.
Operation Gladio was a conspiracy kept secret for decades until a President of Italy revealed it.
The Northwoods Project was kept secret until years afterward when the second Kennedy Commission revealed it.
More than one hundred first responder police and firemen report hearing and personally experiencing multiple explosions floor by floor and even in the sub-basements of the World Trade Center twin towers, and these testimonies had no effect whatsoever.
It only took one high school physics professor to shoot down NIST’s account of the collapse of WTC 7. The fact that it has been conclusively proven that this building was brought down by controlled demolition has had no effect on the official story.
The co-chairmen and legal counsel of the 9/11 Commission published books in which they say that information was withheld from the Commission, that the US Military lied to the Commission, and that the Commission “was set up to fail.” Neither Congress, the media, nor the US public had any interest in investigating why information was withheld, why the military lied, and why the Commission was set up to fail. These extraordinary statements by the leaders of the official investigation had no impact whatsoever.
Even today a majority of the US population believes Washington’s propaganda that Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed some provinces. Neither judgement nor intelligence are strongpoints of the American public and juries.
Government tells Americans whatever story the government puts together and sits and laughs at the gullibility of the public.
Today the US public is divided between those who rely on the “mainstream media” and those who rely on the alternative Internet media. Only the latter have any clue as to what is really happening.
The stories of Charlie Hebdo and the Tsarnaev brothers will be based not on facts but on the interests of government. As in the past, the government’s interest will prevail over the facts.”
Macky — “As your constant nasty name calling of Mary, would you like it if others started to always refer to you as “Jemand – The Muslim Hater” ?”
They already do. Haven’t you noticed?
“Interestingly I can think of one or two historical major event, that even now, you can’t openly disagree with, without fear of recrimination of some sorts.”
I know what they are.
Well ‘snooped’ Tony M – most refreshing.
http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/rupert-murdoch-helpfully-wades-into-the-charlie-hebdo-tragedy–gyJL94pqql
I don’t know about the present tense ‘wades in’. His Sky News (and presumably all his other set ups) have broadcast from France incessantly to the exclusion of other topics and most of it Islamophobic.
‘“Maybe most media professionals are rational, but until they recognise…” Wait, wait. That’s not how this works is it?
Rupert Murdoch, the Australian media mogul, has a few tips for the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims, or “Moslems” if we’re using his antiquated version.
Despite the attacks by three men in Paris being widely condemned by the Muslim community, Murdoch is still holding all 1.6 billion people responsible.
Rupert Murdoch ✔ @rupertmurdoch
Follow
Maybe most Moslems peaceful, but until they recognize and destroy their growing jihadist cancer they must be held responsible.
10 Jan 2015
~~~
PS The wonderful playwright Dennis Potter called his pancreatic and liver cancer, which proved to be terminal, Rupert. How right he was 20 years ago.
‘As a writer you will know that one of the favourite fantasy plots of a writer is, a character’s told ‘you’ve got three months to live,’ and who would you kill? I call my cancer Rupert, so I can get close to it. Because that man, Murdoch, is the one who, if I had the time (I’ve got too much writing to do…) I would shoot the bugger if I could. There is no one person more responsible for the pollution of what was already a fairly polluted press. And the pollution of the British press is an important part of the pollution of British political life, and it’s an important part of the cynicism and misperception of our own realities that is destroying so much of our political discourse.’
“The Long Goodbye,” The Guardian (6 April 1994); the quote is from Potter’s final television interview with Melvyn Bragg (5 April 1994)
I adored this other quote of his –
‘The blossom is out in full now, it’s plum tree, it looks like apple blossom but it’s white. It’s the whitest, frothiest blossomest blossom that ever could be, and I can see it. Things are both more trivial than they ever were and more important than they ever were, and the difference between the trivial and the important doesn’t seem to matter. But the now-ness of everything is absolutely wondrous.’
Final television interview with Melvyn Bragg (5 April 1994)
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dennis_Potter
This is about right.Been there seen it,how the colonial powers operated.
http://www.raialyoum.com/?p=202938
Here ya go, Jemand
Let’s kill the disease:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me7v2gJI6zk#t=109
False flag events do occur. False flag ops like Operation Northwoods really are conceived at the very highest levels of government. The then Defence Secretary, Robert ‘Strange’ McNamara knocked that one on the head. Despite his oversight of the terrible Vietnam War that he had limited control over, he had the sort of intellect and integrity that few people in government display these days. The documentary ‘Fog of War’ gives insight into his thinking and it is no wonder he wouldn’t tolerate that kind of bullshit.
Although McNamara was able to kill Operation Northwoods, it was roundly endorsed by all of the chiefs of staff at the Pentagon, I believe. So that’s a stain on their integrity.
However, whatever the proven incidents of dirty tricks, false flag suspicions are not automatically valid in the absence of evidence. Simply conceiving of a plausible scenario does not make it valid.
And that means that 95% of conspiracy theories, especially those espoused by CT ‘enthusiasts’, are, in my view, complete bullshit. Even if there were state sanctioned criminal conduct in the events that are alleged to be conspiracies, these fuckwits destroy all credibility of genuine lines of enquiry.
So may I introduce my own conspiracy theory and say that the governments love conspiracy theories because it gives them a ready-made reply to enquiries into their crooked ways.
Tony M 5.23pm : “I smell a rat ….. A still-born anti-Russian smear and scare, with no basis in reality”
I smell it too. They use the same tactic during the Olympics over Russia’s so-called ‘new anti gay laws’. We read, heard, and saw it . . . . in newspapers, and on radio and TV . . . from politicians, sports commentators and stand-up comedians . . . in editorials, chat shows, and news. And it wasn’t true. It was our MSM doing what they do so well, – 24-hour saturation, wall-to-wall- blanket lying.
It was all about bashing Putin. Brian M.Heiss did a thorough analysis of the whole affair and demonstrated conclusively that …
(1) The law wasn’t new, it had been around in various forms for a decade.
(2) The law was only peripherally to do with gays and was in fact primarily concerned with protecting Russian minors from the corrupting influence of Hollywood films.
(3) Russian ‘gay legislation’ compared very favourably with most of the world, and was far more liberal than its counterpart in the USA.
However, the sad fact is that today, the majority of people in the West still believe what they were told about Russia’s ‘new anti gay laws’. And they will continue to believe that Russia’s ‘new anti-transvestite laws’ are true too even after they are similarly debunked.
^^^sorry, link to above ^^^
http://static.prisonplanet.com/p/images/february2014/white_paper.pdf
OldMark
Yes, that’s what I was saying, isn’t it?
No one in the public or in the poilitic
Homophobia is a problem in Russia, as it is in many other places. It is not illegal to be gay in Russia, only dangerous, as it is in many other places. Existing Russian law on ‘promoting or exhibiting homosexuality to minors” or similar, refers it occurring in the media and in education primarily. It is no different to the law promoted in this country, Scotland, by Brian Souter in his ‘Keep the Clause’ campaign and the equivalent legislation in the rest of the UK, abolished in the late-90s. Such Russian law is unfortunate and wrong, as it is state sanctioned support for inequality, which some might wrongly use to discriminate or see as justifying their own homophobia, possibly leading to or encouraging homophobic crime, which should be anywhere vigourously and pro-actively investigated and prosecuted. Neither being homosexual, homosexual practices between consenting adults, nor indeed Transexualism, Transvestitism or anything like these are in any way abnormal, nor should any state make such matters their business in any way.
This new legislation Russian legislation touted needs to be closely monitored in its eventual implementation, but it is more about road safety, notoriously poor in Russia, and is nothing to do with discrimination.
..in the political world ever said it was the “Reds”; on the contrary it was the extreme right wing which was suspected.
But “Paul Barbara” claimed that the “Reds” were blamed. They were not.
Can’t you read?
@macky
“It took me less than one minute to validate that the image was an authentic one that Hedbo had actually published,”
Try spot the difference please! That is not what the Charlie Hebdo published.
Thanks for that Tony M. and I believe the term is ‘gender disphoria’ it is not a mental disorder. It is not a surprising move by those who are busy destabilising Europe by whipping up fear of and opposition to Muslims. Disgraceful of the BBC to play ball in this smear, but hey they get paid by us so its in our name.
Anything to get us to hate Putin and if we want to stop the sanctions then we have to be told in no uncertain terms and by any possible means.
False flag events constitute the vast majority of these kinds of incidents. One of the reasons for that is that the vast vast majority of people just don’t run around killing people, no matter how outraged they are by govt policy.
You’ll get the random nutters and serial killers and whatnot, but what you find with their activities is that there’s no political benefit to anyone.
False flag events are characteried by the political benefit, the publicity, the improbably easy identification of perps who are already known to spooks and the media choreography and massive interest, the over reaction and so on.
They’re also characterised by improbable official accounts and handy enemies.
The Colour revolutions, Gene Sharp’s work, are an example of false flag applied to political processes. The astroturf stuff, and so on.
Deception is the key. And deception is a fundamental part of war. It’s fundamental to biology as well and has been with us for eons.
The pattern in this case is the same bloody pattern we’ve seen in all the other cases of false flag. That’s a bit of a clue.
False flags have been going on since humans first started to fight. They’re so common indeed that it’s always safer to assume false flag in the first instance than not, where political issues are involved.
False flag doesn’t mean that the French govt did it, though their spooks will have been involved. It just means that state actors are involved to their own purposes and some handy enemy is blamed.
We’ve seen it so often you’d think people would learn, but no, they have to relearn each and every time.
Most people just don’t understand how the world works, the players involved, their interests and so on. They’re quite naive, and are misinformed about nearly every aspect of political life. There’s a reason for that of course.
C’est incroyable! All the gangsters-in-charge will be there. The collective noun for gangsters is ‘a knuckle’.
‘On Sunday David Cameron and Angela Merkel, as well as the Ukrainian, Italian and Spanish leaders, Petro Poroshenko, Matteo Renzi and Mariano Rajoy – 30 world leaders in all – will take part in one of the most significant public occasions in the history of post-war France.
Behind what is sure to be an impressive, emotional show of solidarity, however, the cracks have already appeared, suggesting political unity in France is unlikely to hold out much beyond the 3km march from Place de la République to Place de la Nation.’
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/10/french-unity-terrorism-paris-march-charlie-hebdo
Human Rights activists have condemned the decision, and I agree with them.
“@Mary
10 Jan, 2015 – 3:37 pm
Mods Could these unpleasant references to me be deleted please.”
And while youa re at it could you delete all the unpleasant references Mary has made to myself over the years! LOL
Macky, writing about Jemand:
“Of all the regular Posters here, you are without doubt the most disturbingly sinister;”
_______________
I’ve got it now, they’ve divided up the work: Macky calls Jemand the most sinister and Jives calls me the same.
Do they have to divide up the work coz they’ve only half a brain each?
Resident Dissident; “Try spot the difference please! That is not what the Charlie Hebdo published”
Ok, let’s compare;
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B6yjZGHCMAAHnH0.jpg
http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/bjmir4cbrhsrfdwzxiux.png
Are you are seriously arguing that the translation of the caption from French to English amounts to forgery ?!!
EoS
“I don’t think posters on this blog automatically, assume an event is a false flag, I’d give them more credit than that,”
________________
If you read the first page of this thread attentively I think you might have to revise that judgement; it didn’t seem to take them very long.
Of course there were also the cunning ones, who adumbrated a false flag and then swiftly said “but I don’t know” (they’re probably the biggest cunts of all coz they’re cowards).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“even if they do assume an event is a false flag, and it turns out it isn’t (undeniable proof required)isn’t it a good thing in most part, to question everything we’re told.”
_________________
I’m not sure it’s always a good thing and I can see certain drawbacks to the automatic questioning of everything. But, as I’ve already said, it is their right to do so. It would, however, be nice if they occasionally ate a little humble pie and admitted they were wrong. But of course they do not, because they will always deny the existence of “undeniable proof”, as you put it.
“Most people just don’t understand how the world works, the players involved, their interests and so on. They’re quite naive, and are misinformed about nearly every aspect of political life.”
________________
In that case, Professor Herbie, we must count ourselves fortunate to have people like you gracing this blog, people who can lead the unfortunate ignoramuses towards the true light (as revealed by no other than your own good self, of course).