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.
Everyone take 3 steps back or we’re all fucked.
Chill n think yoll.
Sure, I am afraid – but I can take it..I don’t know the future,,,for me – I might get even older and live in peace and harmony with my girl until we are both over a hundred years old.
I am not afraid of the horror and the pain of growing old..and barely be even to dance at The Rolling Stones Gig – without a Zimmerframe…
I am afraid for the life our First Grandchild is Going To Live
He will Be Born in March 2016
So that is someone to play football in the local park when I am 70 and he is 7
I can’t complain about these things.
We are both completely Delighted to become – a Grannie & Grandad.
They Live Here – at Home..the kids went to Winter Wonderland Today
Kids 27 & 22
My Son and His Girlfriend Have Made a Baby
My Wife and I Love Babies.
Tony
Tony,
Delighted for your family’s good news,wonderful=)
All the very best to you and your expanding family,i sense there is much natural love in your family world Tony…i wish i was so lucky..
=)
xx
Why be ordinary? Why not say? Why not say your theory why Craig runs this blog? (11.16 last night).
……
It is curious how media and Blairite (sounds like a secret society ritual that, get it – Blair rite: Oh well never mind)wing of labour know that Jeremy Corbyn is flying in the face of public opinion. How do they know public opinion. The media or parts of may try to shape public opinion but they don’t know it. Secondly, even if he were flying in the face of public opinion is that not what politicians and also Judges are tasked to do. Is that not what we are told on the death sentence on immigration and other issues where the so called intelligentsia appreciate that parliament ought not simply follow the sometimes cruel capricious and easily persuaded whim of the majority. Is that not why judges have rules of evidence to prevent juries hearing evidence, which might tend to prejudice.
I am not saying extra judicial killing id always wrong, but it must be used sparingly and subjected to a spotlight, or if for some extremely important secret reason it had to remain secret then so be it provided that those who work in that world examine their consciences carefully.
Unfortunately, we live in a world where people lie to themselves. So all I am saying is that if you work in that world do not harden your heart. It is a garden. Do not leave it until you retire.
Courts can only work freely if there is a good appeal system. One so robust that the Judge thinks to himself I may have my decision reviewed therefore let me be careful. If the Judge knows this is unlikely and if he does not have to give his reasons then when all else is more or less equal he may prefer the party most like himself.
We have a robust appeal system.
Everyman should try to be his own appeal court ie examine his own conscience and not lie to himself.
How then can an army or a security service operate?
The traditional approach is that good and bad should be black and white for the ranks, but may sometimes involve shades for officers.
I remember that documentary on the Israeli internal security service, where retired bosses had obviously begun to examine their consciences but concluded that whilst they had bribed and blackmailed with extraordinary competence and success fault lay not with them but the politicians, who had failed to develop a political solution notwithstanding the strong position they had been given. Their explanation wad that the coalition system always meant that liberals had to meet the intolerant demands of an extremist minority. In that way the will of the Israeli public wad and is undermined and death continues.
Anyway good morning all. That’s all my contribution to the compost till next weekend.
In the meanwhile I shall learn to type the letter s as in is not id. Id is after all to be. See how we might learn from our mistakes!
Some questions that occurs to me – I simply place them here for people to consider:
1) The subversive hackers known as ‘Anonymous’ are claiming that they have exposed a number of plots by ISIS to bomb various cities and events across the globe. If Anonymous is not an instrument of the intelligence services, why then would we doubt the claim made repeatedly by the intelligence services that there are multiple plots out there?
2) Furthermore, if Anonymous found out about these plots, did the intelligence services already know about them? if they did know, why were they not warning people who might be attending?
3) If Anonymous has taken down thousands of ISIS-supporting accounts on-line, why did the intelligence services not do this? Is it because the latter are bound by red tape? Is it because they’d rather watch some of them, to glean information?
4) What, precisely are the relationships between the intelligence services and Jihadist terrorist groupings?
5) Why are the economic lines not being obliterated or frozen? What part might offshore financial centres and Swiss banks be playing in the fiduciary architecture of Jihadist operations? Is Anonymous able to hack into these lines and expose them? Does the world public not have a right to be made aware of precisely who is funding/dealing with these groupings? Ought they not be ‘named and shamed’? Or even prosecuted, since these are proscribed organisations?
Typo, line 1: should be, ‘occur’.
http://www.charentelibre.fr/2015/11/21/hasna-aitboulahcen-morte-a-saint-denis-de-cow-girl-des-quartiers-a-jihadiste,3001580.php
I’m not really sure why this question of ‘shoot to kill’ has arisen. I think what some people mean when they talk about ‘shoot to kill’ is ‘pre-emptive assassination domestically’ which obviously is unacceptable. But I don;t think anyone is suggsting that it ought to happen. So it’s really pretty much a red herring.
My wife still has the copy of Hemingway’s book that I gave to her many many years ago when we were courting and visited Paris.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34884809
Solidarity – the bastards will never win.
Apposite words from Peter Hitchens.
Cameron has guns, bombs and a plane – and not one good idea
So far there is little sign of serious thought about the Paris atrocities. We are to have more spooks, though spooks failed to see it coming, and failed to see most of the other outrages coming, and the new ones will be no more clairvoyant than the old ones.
France and Belgium are reaching for emergency laws, surveillance, pre-trial detention, more humiliation of innocent travellers and all the other rubbish that has never worked in the past and won’t work again.
[..]
I hope that if Mr Cameron brings a plan for war to Parliament, there will be enough informed and wise men and women there to question him thoroughly on these points, and vote against him if they are not convinced.
Trickery and propaganda do not invariably arrive in the same shape. Just because we all now know that Anthony Blair defrauded us into a dangerous war with WMD, we shouldn’t be too sure that we won’t be just as easily fooled by his equally smooth and persuasive heir.
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2015/11/cameron-has-guns-bombs-and-a-plane-and-not-one-good-idea.html
~~
Cameron’s sidekick, Osborne, on Marr this morning is full of it.
@Resident Dissident
ALL of the 7 people arrested in the operation have now been released. People close by in situations like that get arrested in order to detain them so they can be interrogated and cleared. It is not a ‘no smoke without fire’ message. Which their release overnight shows.
In the modern world of cyberspace, cyber-security, cyber-attacks, cyber-false-flags – the thinking technologists have started a game of word-play.
Rather then simply rejecting any document or article as inane piffle when it has more than 6 mentions of the “cyber” word, we’ve simple started replacing it with the equally valid word of “spider”
The breathless docu can now be read in peace, and if it makes sense in its new ‘arachno-form’ then it might be worth a read in the unmodified version. . .
But stuff like GCHQ says that spider-wars are inevitable if the spider-jihadis continue their constant spider-attacks on spider-infrastructure, Osborne promises 3 trillion more spider-warriors to be trained by Christmas to avoid spider-geddon
can be simply ignored
The best Hemingway story from his Paris years is not in A Moveable Feast (unless my memory misleads me). It happened when Hemingway was in Lausanne and met a journalist who wanted to see some of his writing. Hemingway wired his wife Hadley and told her to get the train and bring his work along. So she packed all his writings, including duplicates and carbon copies into a suitcase and headed for the Gare de Lyon. She found a compartment, dumped the suitcase and went to buy a bottle of Evian water. When she came back the case was gone. Never seen again.
The Henry Jackson Society were given their usual BBC slot this morning on BBC 1’s Sunday Morning Live in the form of their ‘research fellow’ Emily Dyer.
http://henryjacksonsociety.org/people/professional-staff/research-staff-and-associates/emily-dyer/
The opening question was: Should Britain join air strikes in Syria?
Ms Dyer was in favour, a wet CoE bishop prevaricated, the right wing LBC presenter Iain Dale wanted bombing and the twerp Owen Jones spread some more lies about President Assad and barrel bombs. Only a Muslim lady whose name is not given in the blurb spoke sense.
Episode 21
Sunday Morning Live, Series 6
Should Britain join air strikes in Syria?
French authorities believe that the so-called Islamic State decided to launch the Paris attacks. They have responded by bombing IS militants in Syria and Iraq. The US, as well as Russia, are also attacking IS to varying degrees, but Britain has not joined the air strikes in Syria.
Speaking in Parliament this week, David Cameron made the case for military intervention in an effort to eradicate what he calls ‘the head of the snake’ in the IS stronghold of Raqqa. A recent ComRes poll suggests 60 per cent of Britons agree with air strike action. But is the necessary solution to such terrorism the use of more violence? Would air strikes put us in more danger? Should Britain join air strikes in Syria?
Panel:
Owen Jones – writer and columnist for the Guardian
Emily Dyer – foreign policy and extremism researcher and writer for the Daily Beast
Iain Dale – radio presenter and political commentator
Stephen Cottrell – the bishop of Chelmsford
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06qz67g
Why is the loss of Hemingway’s work the best story from his Paris years?
“Owen Jones spread some more lies about President Assad and barrel bombs”
Are you claiming that they were never used by Assad’s forces?
“Ms Dyer was in favour, a wet CoE bishop prevaricated, the right wing LBC presenter Iain Dale wanted bombing and the twerp Owen Jones spread some more lies about President Assad and barrel bombs. Only a Muslim lady whose name is not given in the blurb spoke sense.”
Of course Mary doesn’t like state broadcasters where a range of different views are expressed. There is only one true view isn’t there?
Signals to drone operators at RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire may have leaked a message originating from Michael Fallon that communicated the drone attack which killed two British men was a ‘perfectly legal act of self defence’ because of the threat posed by Islamic State and Britons who join the group.
International law expert Simon Behrman says the UK’s Syria drone strike was “dodgy” and revealed, “”If the UK were engaged in an armed conflict in Syria and the target was an enemy combatant, then it would be legal.”
Craig is clearly accurate in saying, “There are severe intelligence disadvantages to killing people with profound knowledge of terrorist organisations,” which inspires on to challenge the reasoning involved in taking down Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen and senior Al-Qaeda recruiter, whom the CIA killed in Yemen with a drone strike in 2011.
Anwar and others are of course our own assets who like David Kelly know too much. Senior analysts at RAF Waddington have accumulated a great deal of intelligence using their advanced surveillance capabilities on Assad’s command and control structure and Russian airbourne operations using Reaper aircraft flying daily armed reconnaissance missions.
Britain now has a ‘token’ imperative, a no turning back compulsion for war; to take out Syrian assets gone bad, to hamper Russia in her fight against illegal foreign mercenaries designated the appellation ‘Free Syrian Army’ fighting Syrian government forces, to hamper the Russian strikes on illegal oil refineries and oil convoy movements, to kowtow to America and Saudi and to add further grease to the wheels of the ‘war on terror’ arms industry and finally to make agent Cameron the bastard look good while paying the price in blood.
The seeds of our foreign policy fertilize the Middle East for D’aesh or ISIS to grow.
Peter Ford, Britain’s former Ambassador to Syria:’Britain is NOT coming clean’ – deception rules! Cameron wants to BOMB the Syrian army.
https://www.rt.com/shows/going-underground/322979-uk-bomb-syria-police/
Mary
“the twerp Owen Jones spread some more lies about President Assad and barrel bombs”
_______________
The underlying “reasoning” appears to be as follows: Owen Jones said that Assad Junior used barrel bombs against his opponents (true), therefore he is guilty of spreading lies and is also a twerp.
It seems logical to deduce from the above that Mary does not believe that Assad Junior used barrel bombs against his opponents.
Mary us a
Mary
“the twerp Owen Jones spread some more lies about President Assad and barrel bombs”
_______________
The underlying “reasoning” appears to be as follows: Owen Jones said that Assad Junior used barrel bombs against his opponents (true), therefore he is guilty of spreading lies and is also a twerp.
It seems logical to deduce from the above that Mary does not believe that Assad Junior used barrel bombs against his opponents.
Mary us a silly Old Goose and should not be taken very seriously.
Not only me noticing what was going on at the BBC this morning.
Is anyone watching bbc sunday morning live? So much biased questioning it beyond belief…. Nm
Lots of ‘ Assad is a murderer ‘ speak no evidence given.
‘we have a moral duty to intervene in Syria’ choice quote
http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/thread/1448187398.html
btw they had Douglas Murray of the HJS on last week’s programme so HJS represented two weeks running post last weekend’s events.
The problem for “commenters” who are against almost everything and everyone (except J. Pilger Esq and Dr Mads “Mad” Gilbert) is that they end up in all sorts of incoherent, inconsistent and contradictory positions which they are then unable to defend when they come under even cursory scrutiny.
Such are the perils of unthinking and ceaseless negativity.
Mary
“Lots of ‘ Assad is a murderer ‘ speak no evidence given.”
___________________
Well, Mary, you appear to have been following Middle Eastern matters quite closely for a long time.
Are you seriously saying that Assad Junior is not a murderer??
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I shan’t ask you about Assad père but feel free to answer the same question about him as well if you wish.
So we have lots of people killing other people, and lots of people arguing about who did what.
You have ISIS partaking in the killing fest and lots of people wondering how they can be so evil and where they came from.
You have the US Pentagon admitting that they have supported ISIS and no-one interested in this. You have ISIS attempting to become partially self financing by selling oil via a company controlled by the son of Turkish leader Erdogan and no-one interested in this.
You have Putin seting out the real dangers – but hey who cares about him because Hillary Clinton says he is comparable to Hitler.
With such a toxic combination of bad intentions, ignorance, and stupidity it is unlikely that the march toward WW3 can be halted.
I meant in the sense of it being a damn good yarn: a suitcase containing a load of Hemingway’s early writing being stolen. What did the thief think when he opened the case expecting, no doubt, to find valuables? Hemingway’s name was unknown then, so the thief would have had no inking that the case contained riches beyond measure. Imagine what it would be worth if it turned up now. So the thief probably threw the stuff away, but the intriguing possibility exists that the case is still out there somewhere, waiting to be discovered. This story is always the one they (interviewers) ask Hadley about. It took her hours before she could bring herself to tell Hemingway what she had done. He reassured her endlessly that, whatever it was, he would forgive. But we don’t know exactly what he said when she told him. He later told Ezra Pound that it was just juvenilia and not worth getting upset about, but by all accounts he was a lot more upset than that would suggest. Such stories are always interesting, there’s a whole website devoted to lost manuscripts. T. E. Lawrence lost the entire manuscript of Seven Pillars of Wisdom at Reading railway station and rewrote it from memory.
Yawn. The trolls ride in two by two. I have no intention of giving them any sustenance and will leave them to read and learn from:
Obama’s Ludicrous ‘Barrel Bomb’ Theme: Singling Out Assad
By Robert Parry
September 30, 2015
http://www.globalresearch.ca/obamas-ludicrous-barrel-bomb-theme-singling-out-assad/5478928
Fabrication in BBC Panorama ‘Saving Syria’s Children’
Analysis of the 30 September 2013 BBC Panorama documentary ‘Saving Syria’s Children’ and related BBC News reports, contending that sequences filmed by BBC staff and others at Atareb Hospital, Aleppo on 26 August 2013 purporting to show the aftermath of an incendiary bomb attack on a school in Urm Al-Kubra are largely, if not entirely, staged.
https://bbcpanoramasavingsyriaschildren.wordpress.com/
(that was a different lie)
Craig himself
‘Attempts to demonise the Assad regime over use of chemical weapons have been almost entirely unconvincing. The effort by the media to demonise “barrel bombs” – as though being eviscerated by a proper western made technological bomb is preferable to being eviscerated by a homemade bomb – has been bizarre. What is needed is an immediate halt to the funding of combatants by the USA, Saudi Arabia and their allies, and at least an internal acknowledgement that was what created ISIL in the first place. Russia should instead be authorised and funded by the UN to help enforce peace, and Russian troops should wear blue helmets. We then need a comprehensive peace deal which guarantees that the Assad regime will not pursue reprisal, and includes the return of the illegally occupied Golan Heights to Syria.
No other outcome can lead to a sustainable solution which can halt the flow of refugees compelled to leave their homeland. The first step towards such a deal must be a summit meeting between the western powers and Putin. Ideally, Ukraine should also be on the agenda. The obvious solution there is a major UN force followed, after a year of peace, by a genuine referendum on joining Russia in each of the various districts of Eastern Ukraine and the Crimea.’
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/09/living-with-putin-and-assad/
24 September 2015
Good morning. Such a lovely sunny day after a very cold night in leafless Surrey. -5.4C
Watch out for that old rogue finger pressing ‘Submit Comment’ before you’ve finished your little pieces.
KOWN
“Hemingway’s name was unknown then, so the thief would have had no inking {sic}that the case contained riches beyond measure.”
_______________
At the risk of appearing contrarian, I should be inclined to move a vote of posthumous thanks to the unknown thief for having saved the reading public from yet more Hemingway.
The mature Hemingway was ghastly (I refer to the man’s output but that is true of the man himself) so God only knows what literary horrors his juvenile stuff might have contained.
Just this before I go out.
On Medialens also.
“IS” – Israeli Settlers – burn young Palestinian to death
November 22, 2015, 9:44 am
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/11/22/438645/Israel-Palestinian-West-Bank-Fadi-Hoosh-Ali-Dawabsheh-Burned
“A young Palestinian man has reportedly been burned to death after a group of illegal Israeli settlers mercilessly beat him and then set fire to his car in the northern part of the occupied Palestinian territories.
The charred body of the 22-year-old Palestinian man, identified as Fadi Hoosh, was found inside a car in the garbage dump of Kafr Kanna town, which lies in the northern Israeli region of Galilee, on Friday, the Hebrew-language Yedioth Ahronoth daily newspaper reported.
Palestinian witnesses said they saw a number of Israeli settlers attacking the Palestinian youth and forcing him into a car before setting it ablaze.
“After a couple of minutes, they extinguished the fire, left him inside the car, and very quickly fled the scene,” the witnesses said.”
Is this the new meaning of IS – Israeli Settlers? When does Cameron propose we go into action against them?
~~~
Mary
Thank you for the sustenance offered at 11h34.
Three comments (no need to answer, just digest and learn):
1/. Anyone who has to call on Professor Michel’s egregiously propagandist “globalresearch” to back up their claims is more or less admitting he/she hasn’t got a leg to stand on.
2/. Your second example (of what?) has nothing to do with Assad’s use of barrell bombs.
3/. It may have escaped your notice that Craig was not denying that Assad had used barrel bombs against his own people. He was just questioning the emphasis put on that fact.
+++++++++++++++++++
PS – Have you done anything yet about taking in a refugee on a temporary basis? Stop stalling – you have room, you can afford it and you have often expressed loud support for refugees. Get on with it!