I did not believe the official story of Hasna Ait Buolacehn the moment I saw it. The official line was that she was a suicide bomber who blew herself up when the police stormed the apartment in St Denis where the alleged terrorist ringleader was hiding out. But that story seemed to me completely incompatible with the recordings on which she could plainly be heard screaming “He is not my boyfriend! He is not my boyfriend” immediately before the explosion. She sounded like a terrified woman trying to disassociate herself from the alleged terrorist. It was a strange battle cry for someone who believed themselves on the verge of paradise.
Then yesterday the truth emerged from forensics that she was indeed not a suicide bomber. None of the mainstream media appeared to find this in any way troubling. And just in case anybody did, the BBC (and I assume all the French and major international media) then immediately did an interview with an anonymous member of the French Police attacking squad, who stated that Hasna was:
“trying to say she was not linked to the terrorists, that she had nothing to do with them and wanted to surrender”.
But he said that due to prior intelligence, “we knew that she was trying to manipulate us”.
Unfortunately this would have been a very great deal more convincing had it been stated 48 hours earlier, rather than only after the original reports that she was a suicide bomber had been corrected on forensic examination. As it is, it looks very much like a post facto justification, a new story to cover the new facts.
Besides, it is very difficult indeed to see what prior intelligence could explain if someone was genuinely trying to surrender or not. There appears to be no information available to the public that gives the slightest indication that Hasna was an extreme Islamist; what public information there is paints the opposite picture. The best the media have been able to dredge up are quotes from friends saying “if she was, then she must have been drugged or brainwashed”. Google it yourself.
But even were she an extreme Islamist, that does not mean she was not attempting to surrender. All of which is a bit nugatory if she were then killed by an explosion triggered by the terrorists themselves. But the changing story about Hasna makes me less than confident that is what actually happened.
I have no difficulty with the principle that the police should shoot people who are shooting at them. I outraged many friends on the left for example by not joining in the criticism of the police for killing Mr Duggan. People who choose to carry guns in my view run a legitimate risk of being shot by the police, it is as simple as that. Jean Charles De Menezes was a totally different case and his murder by police completely unjustifiable. In Paris it appears plain that the police were in a situation of confrontation with armed suspects.
There are severe intelligence disadvantages to killing people with profound knowledge of terrorist organisations. It also cheats the justice system. Nevertheless I can conceive of situations where simply taking out by an explosion a terrorist cell might be justified. But only if you are quite certain of the situation. The case of Hasna is to me troublingly reminiscent of the case of Jean Charles De Menezes, in that it became obvious in the days after his death that everything the police and establishment had leaked to the media about him (leaping over barriers, running through the tunnels, heavy jacket, wires protruding) was a complete, utter and quite deliberate lie.
The media could help if they were in any way rational and dispassionate, or ever questioned an official narrative. It is an urgent and irrepressible question as to why the BBC journalist did not ask the French policeman “and why did you not say this 48 hours ago when you were content to allow the story to run that she was a suicide bomber?”
Similar media manipulation is at use here by the Guardian in telling us the police stormed a “terrorist apartment”. What is a “terrorist apartment”? Are the walls made of semtex? The intent of course is to assure us everybody inside was a terrorist. It is not just the Guardian. The phrase is all over the media. Again, google it.
I am worried in case Hollande’s Rambo impersonation is steamrollering justice. It may well be that Hasna was a dreadful and bloodthirsty terrorist. I do not know. It may well be she was killed by the terrorists not the police. All we know at the moment is she was in an apartment with people who allegedly were terrorists, and died in the “battle”. But I do not trust the changing stories of the authorities.
Neocons are generally secular jews, right? No messy traditional rituals or observances. They can work on Shabbat, too. They were all here yesterday, right? Right.
I am a man of peace..I never wanted to get into fights…but they beat the shit out of me…when I was 5 years old…as if they were in control of the school playground…and I had a physical disadvantage..I have this inherited muscular disease..and the more they beat me to the ground..the stronger my muscles kicked in..You Kick or Beat Me Down Again..Then You are Really Going To Have a Fight on Your Hands. You guys are just warming me up. Myotonia Congenita…I have never taken any drugs for it..sure I might be slow to start…but its even more important now,,,60 years after..to keep fit.
You Knock Me Down..and Make a Bloody Mess Out Of Me..I get back on my feet and I Fight Back.
Tony
Bevin your cogent and coherent contribution has patently hit the nerve to produce the involuntary fits of the keyboard brigade exercising their master race rights to throw at with their buckets of feces and urine that is part of the settler munitions stock.
Very true the meme of the Oligarch Owned Media* that is bent on pushing the primitive “improvised explosive device” (ie Heath Robinson) “Barrel Bomb” as the most deadly bit of kit that the embargoed Assad Army is fighting the drug crazed mercenaries of Daesh who are not moderate terrorists and are classed as extremist Muslim fanatics (another patent lie, these godless bastards are only in the war for what they can get out of it, the best pay rate in an area which has no jobs and the best number of women and little boys they can have access to for their “comfort”!!!
I enjoyed your contribution keep up the good work!
*( mistakenly pushed as main stream media, there is no main stream about a minority media that is less and less accessed by the we the people, in fact there was a cry piece about youngsters not watching TV or reading and instead spending their time on you tube!!!)
[mods: retrieved from spam]
Fredi
Lets just say that you need to learn how to make an argument before deciding to pick one.
“exercising their master race rights”
You just cannot help yourself can you?
Why be Ord, noted and thanks for that. It takes guts to shove a long ‘item’ like that in everyone’s faces just because one happens to ‘like’ it oneself. There’s so little grace left around these days and sometimes, things are too subtle for some.
I appreciate your lateral thoughts/insights.
Tony, nobody’s gonna knock you down. Everybody here loves you.
I never saw such skillful dancing between two different personas; Asshole or Playful but incompetent Adept? Make up yer friggin mind.
I was just being humorous…
We need more humor…
Do you resident neocons comprehend my 8:54?
It’s a challenge to read but verrrry complimentary.
And….very humorous.
Ron Paul Warned 911 Would Happen! in 1998!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_JY0OStlU8
Lifer that is the best one liner of the thread in response to the unconscious drivel of the resident spammer.
Yes
No it wasn’t
Only to an idiot
Now piss off
The Tory party seem unable to silence the press on this sordid scandal.
Turbulent rule of the Tatler Tory
A bullying scandal centred on a Conservative activist continues to torment the party hierarchy. Josh Boswell and James Lyons report
22 November 2015
Comment (4)
Mark Clarke, in grey hat, has been expelled from the Conservative party amid of a series of allegations about the sexual harassment of women and ‘institutionalised bullying’. He ran a campaign called RoadTrip 2015 that bussed young Tory activists around the country
Two more young Tory activists are alleged to have tried to take their own lives as a result of a sex, drugs, bullying and blackmail crisis that threatens to engulf the party.
The Sunday Times has been told by two reliable sources that the two activists have attempted suicide since the death of Elliott Johnson, a friend and fellow party campaigner, in September.
Johnson, who took his life on the railway tracks at Sandy station in Bedfordshire, had allegedly been bullied by Mark Clarke, who ran the Tory party’s RoadTrip2015 campaign that bussed young activists around the country.
Clarke, who denies any wrongdoing, was expelled from the party last week amid a slew of lurid allegations about his sexual harassment of women, the “pimping” of young activists to MPs, drug use and “institutionalised bullying”.
The saga has also embroiled senior Tory figures, including Grant Shapps, the former Tory chairman, and….paywall
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/Politics/article1636134.ece
and Politics Home
Mark Clarke Tory bullying scandal deepens amid sex tape allegation
A scandal surrounding a Conservative aide expelled from the party deepened last night with claims he blackmailed a colleague over a sex tape.
– https://www.politicshome.com/party-politics/articles/story/mark-clarke-tory-bullying-scandal-deepens-amid-sex-tape-allegation
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Thanks fedup but I’m not lifer, I’m kind of new here.
Fredi and Fedup
Good to see you operating on the same intellectual level where abuse trumps argument.
Haters going hate hate hate…….
No – I do regret how the Islamists used the power vacuum that arose afterwards – but even without Western intervention Ghadaffi or his successor would have fallen eventually (as tyrants always do) leaving an even greater power vacuum. The lesson is not to intervene, but how to intervene and with whom and how to handle the subsequent transition.
The above is abuse to intelligence, common sense and reason.
You are Welcome Fredi, sorry to get your moniker wrong, I was laughing away hence the mistake!
resident …… at 9:49 pm
resident …….
The above is abuse to intelligence, common sense and reason.
Fredi you are so right mate!!
There was a special Paris edition of Songs of Praise earlier before the news. I caught the end.
Archbishops Welby CoE and Nichols RC said the words of the Lord’s Prayer in French each taking one line in turn. Their assumed solemnity and their excruciating French accents were really funny.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p038qpcq
If you hadn’t had Western intervention in Libya then the civil war would have dragged on for years, perhaps decades. There was at least a decisive outcome and the prevention of much further bloodshed from that intervention.
The love expressed for the dictatorship of Gaddafi by Node, Fedup and several others is really quite revolting when one considers the ease with which the democratic West is labelled as ‘fascist’ by these same characters.
Muammar Gaddafi – Last letter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0z0Tg8APjE
Libya & Gaddafi – The Truth you are not supposed to know
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XorKTwkFPDU
Revolting is the fat tosser that sired you!!!
Dictator!!
Libyans had free water, free health care, free electricity they lived rent free and they all had jobs!
Civil war that is raging in Libya and not getting hinted at in the Oligarch Owned Media.
Libyans now don’t have access to water, electricity, and their ruined and destroyed home they get robbed and there is no security, but boy they have all the freedom they can handle!!
“If you hadn’t had Western intervention in Libya then the civil war would have dragged on for years, perhaps decades. There was at least a decisive outcome and the prevention of much further bloodshed from that intervention.”
Nonsense. This is pure Neocon collateral damage bullshite.
Compare Lebanon, Since 1975 that country has been under the knife. Reagan intervened and then turned tail and ran and there are hundreds of thousands of Lebanese who are alive today because St Ronaldus had more sense than neocons.
Apparently the jihadi democratic freedom fighters sodomised him with a knife.
So how is the democratic and free Libya doing these days?
Hillary Clinton on Gaddafi: We came, we saw, he died
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgcd1ghag5Y
Gaddafi’s last moments’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_j8SwvsliaA
Anon1 You is one crazy geezer. Have you not noticed that there is ongoing civil strife in Libya. No end is in sight. It produces people who go and do bad things on Tunisian beaches, spreads bad ideas around the region, kills US Ambassadors and supplies a large number of refugees to the EU.
Maybe you is having visions because I don´t think no other people can see any “decisive outcome” in Libya.
Or perhaps you have been on holiday to Libya recently…or then again perhaps you have not.
Gaddafi was a serial child-rapist who used his fame to curry false narratives about his humane and progressive policies. Like Nero, he knew the way to his people’s hearts was free entertainment at Circus Maximus. Fast forward and you have the new entertainment for the masses; free healthcare and subsidized foodstuffs.
The sleaze factor is raised as more allegations emerge. Now MPs are involved. Procuring of young male and female activists is reported.
Tatler Tory scandal: 22-year-old activist’s “lost night” with MP
Party source tells The Telegraph young woman has “no recollection” of how she ended up staying the night with politician http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/12010764/Tatler-Tory-scandal-22-year-old-activists-lost-night-with-MP.html
Note Halfon CFoI and his £30k expenses claim for his club where he met his mistress. The expenses were allowable apparently because he has a medical condition. I have seen him arrive at his seat in the HoC using crutches. He manages to go to Israel with CFoI though.
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/regmem/?p=24784
Massive personal donations from the likes of Poju Zabluowicz, Cruddas, Lord Kalms and Lord Howard Leigh who turns out to be on the executive board of the Conservative Friends of Israel.*
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/24784/robert_halfon/harlow#register
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Leigh,_Baron_Leigh_of_Hurley
When you are invited directly from someone you know and love direct from The USA…and she doesn’t just invite you..she also invites All your Family and Friends..and She is Flying From The USA to England with her Family and Friends and says Here is The Menu..What would you Like…its a bit impolite not to Reply to The Invitation
It’s My Sister’s 70 Birthday Party a Week Today…
She doesn’t know – its a Secret
27 people coming (including us lot)
You seriously cannot complain about getting old….the only alternative you cannot discuss..because you are not here with us..You Died Young.
Us old people are still here.
Tony