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.
“Craig likes [trolls] here to add spice to the debate.”
Yeah, figures.
He couldn’t be a Scot and not have a bit of the ‘bruiser’ in him, eh?
oops this was the other link
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/video/2014/nov/20/prince-harry-sword-dancing-oman-video
Fredi
Fid.Def.
I always wondered why he opened his scope beyond the church of England.
I have been watching a repeat of the Public Affairs Committee on the sale of Eurostar. Like many other of Gideon’s sell offs, it was a City bonanza and the taxpayer lost out as per usual.
Read the National Audit Office report dated 6 November 2015.
‘The sale of the UK government’s entire financial interest in Eurostar (40% stake and preference share) generated proceeds of £757.1 million, resulted in the government achieving its objective of maximising proceeds, and represented value for money for the taxpayer, according to a report by the National Audit Office.
However, the total taxpayer investment in Eurostar, prior to its incorporation, is significantly greater than the proceeds generated from this sale. Taxpayer spending on the HS1 project, of which Eurostar cross-channel train service is one part, was over £8 billion. The NAO estimates that UK taxpayers’ financial investment directly related to the Eurostar train service amounts to approximately £3 billion.
The NAO believes that the timing of the sale, agreed in 2014, was primarily driven by the desire to sell prior to the 2015 election. Eurostar’s profits are forecast to increase from 2016 once it has introduced new higher-capacity trains, the first of which should be rolled out at the end of 2015. The government considered waiting to sell after the new trains were introduced as it thought higher profits could feed through into a higher price. It concluded, however, that any delay would come with uncertainty and risks, so the government decided to sell in early 2015 rather than wait.’
https://www.nao.org.uk/report/the-sale-of-eurostar/ Amyas Morse
These four civil servants are having rather a hard time but it’s all history now and the matter has been kicked into the long grass.
Philip Rutman Perm Sec Treasury
John Kingman Second Perm Sec Treasury
Roger Lowe Director Portfolio Shareholder Executive
Mark Russell Chief Exec Shareholder Executive
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/the-shareholder-executive
The chairman – Robert Swannell, a chartered accountant and barrister, has been the Chairman of Marks and Spencer since January 2011 having previously spent more than 30 years with Schroders/Citigroup. He will start the new role in September 2014 and has been a non-executive director for ShEx since January 2014.
They are ALL in IT together.
http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/149414/board-meets-sky-news-discuss-concerns-over-israel-reporting
As this thread started on the subject of ‘ News Management ‘ I’m glad to see the BRITISH Board of Deputies has taken that hard-left anti-Zionist news organisation Sky News to task over its biased reporting .
I quote from above article :
” The two organisations agreed that Board Leaders would meet Sky’s Middle East reporters in order to calm fears about media bias and strengthen ties between the two bodies ” .
And here was innocent me thinking the BRITISH Board of Deputies was meant to represent people like me , and now I find out it’s an outsourced arm of the Israeli Government’s PR Department .
The Board refused to comment when I phoned them to ask if they were ‘ representing ‘ my views or those of the Israeli Government .
‘Speaking to Sky’s Rhiannon Mills, Prince Charles explains how he has been educating his grandson Prince George about nature – and said “explaining the minutiae of life” to children is important.’
http://news.sky.com/video/1591555/charles-on-educating-prince-george
I suppose the little prince is much too young to be told about the ‘minutiae of death’ as enacted by this country on people with brown skins in the name of his great granny, sometimes by a missile sent from a drone or shot or bombed or burnt alive.
Climate Summit – Growth or degrowth?
Owen Jones
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/13/climate-change-melting-greenland-glacier-warning
Jobs, growth and living standards: this is surely what climate change has to be linked to if it is to become a compelling issue.
OR
George Monbiot
http://www.monbiot.com/2015/11/19/pregnant-silence/
If we want to reduce our impacts this century, the paper concludes, it’s consumption we must address. Population growth is outpaced by the growth in our consumption of almost all resources.
Thanks for that, Mary, another indication that apprentice Osborne works for the City of London, not the nation at large, the boy is a dangerous legacy in the making.
Thats interesting, Monteverdi, now that Bicom has mastered the barrel backing of the BBC, its Sky’s turn to be openly attacked until they cower and bend over backwards to adjust their headline’s to conform with the ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Parshah Vayischlach is coming up, Habby, and you should read up on Kehot Chumash.
Alternatively there is something by your mate Johnathan Sachs on ‘feeling the fear’. All the usual fear and damnation story made up to control people, make them conform. Its about creating fear and the worship of made up rules, its about rape of Dinah and Esau making up with his old man, a bit like Coronation Street.
@Brian Fujisan, hope your rip will heal soon, we’re both wishing it better, darn overhead throws? just guessing…
http://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/3117173/jewish/Feeling-the-Fear.htm
So the phantom Russian sub, meanacing the Scottish coast, story strikes again, I suppose it makes a change from the spy plane BS, it’s truly a great way to dish out contracts for 100′ of billions of pounds to your Neocon buddies, in this particular case it’s Boeing who are the lucky recipients.
I wonder if Putins spins the same BS at the Kremlin, using either a British or US sub, to justify spending billions of
Rubles on weapons.
But if there’s a winner there also has to be a loser, and in this instance it looks like the BAE shipbuilders on the Clyde are the unlucky ones.
Instead of the pledged 13 frigates awarded to BAE by the British government, it looks like that number will drop to 8. If you voted no and you work at the yards…….told ya.
But what about our Nimord fleet of aircraft I hear you say, scrap is the reply, the Chancer of the Exchequer in his haste to slash and cut consigned in my opinion, a perfectly good fleet of aircraft to the scrapyard to save cash.
So what happens if the phantom sub or spy plane or UFO’s or small green men with pointy heads, appear again whilst Boeing builts our shiny new aircraft, well the lickspittles and double speakers at Westminster and the BBC, say our NATO friends will watch our backs till our planes are a go.
Can someone tell me how to embed a picture with their avatar?
Did anyone see Cameron and Hollande in Paris today, both were sporting a white rose, aw… a sombre touch indeed. Dressed in black overcoats, looking like street corner sellers, about to open their jacket to reveal a raft of watches and earings, that Del Boy would be proud of.
Both paused on the top stair of some important French building, their black three-quarter length coats fluttering in the breeze, both had solemn scowls on their faces, as though they were about to reposses a tv or sofa from said building.
It was a tad reminiscent of the day Cameron Hollande, Netanyahu and other war mongers, embraced each other like a phalanx of soldiers, parading down some French boulevard without their spears, smiling to the crowd as the unsuspecting and proselyting cried out “We are Charlie.”
“He could have spared his country and its people a good deal of grief if he had been less of a cunt.”
_____________
I take it you’re referring or Cameron or Osborne?
Note how the street was cordoned off for them.
Pathetic “World Leaders”: Photo-Op By Some of the Greatest Violators of “Free Speech”
http://www.loonwatch.com/2015/01/pathetic-world-leaders-photo-op-by-some-of-the-greatest-violators-of-free-speech/
ROS this is how the OOM distort reality and then the keyboard brigade reinforce the myths propagated thus.
Case in example Libya that was a functional country providing a measure of secure and decent quality of life for it’s nationals, as it has been reduced to a lawless dysfunctional fragmented emirates with no social progress in sight for decades to come. That is being hailed as “success”. Furthermore disputed are the facts about that country which are apparently “untruths”, free; housing, education, health care, electricity, etc.
Saddam tried to abdicate and tried to engage and was in talks with the US about this abdication. But those talks were deliberately sabotaged and war went ahead regardless of Saddam’s willingness to leave Iraq to a third destination. Evidently this was an unacceptable move by Saddam. the only hint of this in the OOM was the sun headline; will the real Saddam stand up please?!!! Elaborated upon by oodles of farticles about Saddam and his “eleven doubles” that in fact ensured that even if the talks were succeeded and Saddam was let go to get out of Iraq, the attacks on Iraq would go ahead regardless. Do you remember the vile neo con vermin were on the telly and telling us all that Iraqis would come out with sweets and songs to greet “their liberators” that is the invading US hoards?
The degree of obfuscation and distortion of realties were so great that included further abuse of the US personnel through clothing these in BCW (Biological Chemical Warfare) suits in the heat of the Iraqi deserts in the full knowledge of no such weapons to have existed in Iraq for years! The lies that were the basis of the war on have been since laid bare to some extent, and are known, however the tenner a day keyboard warrior units are still busy propagating the lies regardless to further obfuscate the truth as a matter of course method.
“Would you care to be more specific? Who are the winners in Libya post-intervention?”
The NFA and their supporters at the moment.
In the future who knows, the wheel is in spin.
Never mind the hidden russki mini-sub with barrels of Cobalt-60 aboard, the Guardian has revealed that the Sun has revealed that we have an enemy within:
Spider-Security, global war on unicorns, looks like UK defence spending is going to focus on real targets!
Coming up at 3.30pm
Statement on National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review: 23 November 2015
Prime Minister, David Cameron, expected to make a statement at 3:30pm.
He will have done a quick change Nevermind into one of his £7k Savile Row jobs.
So Brussels is now seal up tighter that a ducks sphincter during a biblical flood. Belgian PM Charles Michel, has ordered the security level to be set at defcon 4.
Schools and universities in Brussels will remain closed and the city’s underground will remain shut. Officials also recommend all sports competitions and activities in public building be cancelled for the time being.
So why the Stasi styled semi-martial law, well apparently someone (a secret of course) has told PM Michel that Brussels is under “imminent threat.”
Unsurprisingly the tacit informant/s claim the threat can be traced all the way back to Syria, how convenient is that.
Brussels is the HQ of the EU, and and is home to over 1 million Brusselaar’s or Brusseloi’s or whatever the proper term is, ( no sprout jokes please) have been told not to gather together in public places.
The pair at the Bataclan theatre.
https://twitter.com/David_Cameron/status/668692596861091840
In the week when the climate change conference opens, was the generation of greenhouse gases created by the spiv’s return journey London/Paris really necessary?
Fredi : Can someone tell me how to embed a picture with their avatar?
They are called “Gravitars”. You can attach one to an email address and it will appear on any blog or website which recognises gravatars.
You first have to register with this site :
https://en.gravatar.com/
then upload the picture you want to use – preferably square.
Warning. Doesn’t matter what your handle is on a blog, the gravatar will be displayed according to the email address you use. This applies retrospectively, so for example, once you have a gravatar, all the posts you made on this blog using that email address will display that gravatar, including those you posted before you created the gravatar.
Order! Order!
The monkey wants to talk.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34901946 DC live HoC
The Corporate-State Media’s War Propaganda Exposed!
The fat heap sitting behind him, Oliver Colvile, Con Plymouth, has shirt buttons so much under strain that his abdomen is showing. Not a good look.
“Who are the winners in Libya post-intervention?”
Fred:The NFA and their supporters at the moment.
The NFA are politicians. You are saying that the winners in post-intervention Libya are the western appointed government. Thank you for demonstrating my point.
Fedup, Gaddafi was a Western compliant dictator, the British government fell over themselves to please Gaddafi, during the “Deal in the desert”
Blair met Gaddafi personally, both laughed and joked, one psycho to another. See here.
https://seeker401.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/blair_1833408c.jpg
Gaddafi was indeed a murderous dictator, but Libya was at least a stable country, to a certain degree to live in for its denizens.
The West put paid to that, and now it’s a civil war torn country, in which far more murders are committed, in my opinion, than when Gaddafi ruled.
Of course the same thing happened to Saddam Hussein when he out lived his usefulness to the West, he too was retired without a pension so to speak.
Thank Node
(thanks)
The whole piece by John Hilley. No apologies. It’s so good. Live links within.
http://johnhilley.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/liberal-war-media-let-rip-over-paris-is.html
23 November 2015
Liberal war media let rip over Paris, IS and ‘defence of civilization’
Doesn’t the heart surge to hear crusading Western liberals warn of the ‘existential threat’ from Islamic State and the call for ‘dutiful military responses’? And all in the name of ‘our civilizational values’.
Some, like arch-neocon Douglas Murray peddle their ultra-zealous message with undisguised hostility for Islam. Others, like Paul Mason, try to dress-up the case for Western militarism in more faux left tones, warning, again, about that looming ‘threat to our civilization’.
And there’s always Jonathan Freedland’s cloying pitch for the war agenda. His latest is an invocation of the “grey zone” (read, liberal comfort zone) of ‘civilized coexistence’, while lamenting the West’s “inaction” and ‘lost opportunity’ to attack Syria in 2013.
It’s all too typical of the Guardian. In the immediate hours after the Paris attacks, reactionary views on the need for civil clampdowns and revenge bombing filled the airwaves. In contrast, we now belatedly learn, the Guardian spiked any critical comment suggesting that the attacks might be causally linked to Western aggressions in the Middle East.
At least we have the ‘resolute impartiality’ of the BBC to rely on. Or that, presumably, is how we’re expected to understand the monologue rantings of This Week’s Andrew Neil, almost quivering with hubris as he invoked the greats of French philosophical thought, in his lambasting of IS as ‘Islamist scumbags’.
Missing from Neil’s list of French greats and achievements was Frantz Fanon, (born on the French colony of Martinique, 1925). If only that fine voice of resistance to decades of French oppression in Algeria was here today surveying France’s ongoing colonialist interventions and the tragic fallout of IS violence.
In taking apart the myth of BBC leftism, Mehdi Hasan notes how Neil’s Thatcherite presence has loomed large over the corporation for decades now. As David Edwards records, Neil also stated on his Daily Politics show in 2005: “We went to Iraq to make it a better place.”
Yet, this warmongering right-winger has been roundly commended for his This Week performance, not only by ‘classic liberals’ and Tories like Toby Young and Dan Hodges, but by a chorus of ‘celebrity liberals’, from Richard Dawkins to Stephen Fry to Piers Morgan.
Thankfully, writer Bea Campbell provided some rational objection to Neil’s crude invocation of Enlightenment figures. But doesn’t it say so much about the poverty of intellectual thought these days that ideological carpetbaggers like Neil can command this kind of applause and adulation for wallowing in such bathos?
And with the default media and political rush to embrace ‘France’, the reactionary liberal finds even safer platforms to wage more ‘civilized war’:
In “How to be a Western liberal in an age of terror”, Stephen Daisley, STV’s digital political correspondent, pours forth in another such rant:
What we need as keenly as military might is civilisational confidence. […]It’s time to get a little less dainty and a lot less squeamish. We are already deploying drones and extra-judicial killing; we should be prepared to extend the use of these techniques where necessary. As we eliminate the hard infrastructure of Islamism, we will need to target its softer furnishings: Hate preachers and inciters should face deportation or the loss of British nationality, as applicable. Intelligence gathering and policing will become more intensive and at times intrusive but we must take care to cabin this to counter-terrorism. There will be difficult decisions on how we go about identifying suspects, how long we may detain them, and the conduct of interrogations. None of these are easy questions; some make me very uncomfortable. We are fortunate to be rich and privileged and alive. We don’t get to be innocent too. [Emphasis added.]
Here speaks the voice of the ‘liberal hawk’. That’s not an oxymoron, just a fair reading of how people like Daisley profess their ‘Western civilized values’ through a chest-beating desire for ‘moral vengeance’ and more illegal murder.
One can only presume that STV know Daisley is peddling such virulence on an STV site.
Daisley is also, unsurprisingly, a dedicated apologist for Israel’s mass crimes, and a vanguard liberal voice on the ‘perilous dangers’ of Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘anti-Semitic associations’.
If nothing else, it all helps dispel the facile notion of the ‘objective journalist’, as so often peddled by news organisations.
Just don’t try saying anything truly challenging of such media or the establishment power structure. Amid all the live correspondence from Paris, which BBC or other ‘objective’ reporter would dare raise the truths of France’s and the West’s dark culpabilities in creating the space for IS to emerge?
In an act of true, independent journalism, Glenn Greenwald has alerted us to the case of reporter Elise Labott, suspended by CNN for sending an innocuous tweet about US refusal to admit refugees fleeing the conflict. As Greenwald documents, many more journalists have met similar career fates for daring to editorialise with words and sentiments decidedly ‘off-message’ for their corporate employers and political overseers.
One Twitter message summarises it perfectly:
If you’re sympathetic to the weak, it’s activist journalism. If you’re sympathetic to the powerful, it’s objective journalism.
As Greenwald says, “No truer tweet has even been written”.
Craig wrote about Daisley last month.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/10/the-disgraceful-far-right-stephen-daisley/
@Fedup
23 Nov, 2015 – 3:37 pm
As I’ve probably said before on here, Vietnam was the last open American war in which journalists were allowed to roam freely. Think how many decades ago that now was; and, arguably, the honest reporting on the Vietnam war was one reason why the American people turned against it.
RE the Paris attacks: I’m sure many here will have already seen this interview done on the day after the Paris attacks. I’ll chuck it into the mix anyway, for those who may not have seen it…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7GAbVhjTSw