I wish a speedy recovery, both physically and mentally, to the people stabbed at Leytonstone tube station. It must have been horrifying.
The following comments are in part predicated on a presumption that the media reports of the incident are broadly true. This comes with a serious health warning. At this stage after another tube station incident, we were universally assured that various official “sources” and “eye-witnesses” had affirmed that Jean Charles leapt the barriers and ran through the tunnels, wearing a bulky jacket with wires sticking out. All of those turned out to be absolute lies deliberately spread by the Metropolitan Police and the Home Office.
But assuming this time the account of his shouting about Syria is not lies, what we can see from video is that a single man in a very silly hat, armed with a very small knife indeed, can carry out a vicious terrorist attack with apparently no need for planning at all. Not even planning enough to get a less tiny knife from his kitchen.
Because, sadly terrorism is easy. As I stated recently, if I were crazed enough to want to kill somebody tomorrow, and did not care how I did it, who I killed or if I died myself, I could kill a few people without too much effort or planning. That is why the continual propaganda about “seven foiled ISIS terrorist plots” or “4,000 active Islamic terrorists in the UK” is quite simply untrue. If all those terrorists existed, they would not be so entirely unproductive. What the authorities do catch continually are fantasists, often children, boasting and “plotting” online about being terrorists. That is quite a different thing. It is worth noting that nobody has been charged over any of these seven foiled ISIS plots. Strange that, isn’t it?
As for the man in the silly hat, I fear he is mentally unstable. That is no comfort to his victims. The truth is, of course, that it is always the little people who get hurt. None of the 1% who foment, promote and profit from war have ever set foot in Leytonstone Tube Station. But their agenda is forwarded today. By its continual acts of violence and repression, the neo-con state eventually goads a mentally unstable person into a nasty, vicious and pointless act. They then use that act to justify more wars and repression.
For the security and armaments industry it is a very profitable cycle.
The SNP have to say why they cancelled the 2010 strengthening programme which might’ve avoided this problem.
You answered your own question.
“You support a Westminster government that sat on its arse and said “it’s only Scotland’s vital infrastructure, what’s the hurry?” You’re part of the problem.”
It wasn’t Westminster who in 2008 scrapped tolls which deprived the bridge of £25 million a year which had been spent on maintenance and it wasn’t Westminster who in 2011 cut the Fourth Estuary Transport Authority budget by a whopping 65 per cent.
Thank you for your reply Iain Orr. I had not appreciated that you assisted Craig in Norwich North in 2009. It was a pity about the result. Just think what his independent voice could have achieved. I think of Richard Taylor, the retired doctor, who was elected for Wyre Forest. He spoke up the NHS and against the closure of the A&E at his local hospital in Kidderminster.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Taylor_(British_politician)
Would that there were more like him instead of the lobby fodder clones we now see.
I see you have a section on OUR NHS on your own excellent website. Well done.
I see from Colin Mackie’s website that you and Craig worked together in Ghana. Your friendship is long standing and enduring.
Sorry
…for the NHS and….
I heard on BBC South news that Hampshire police are now recruiting 100 extra officers because of the increased terror threat. A short while back, we were hearing of cuts within the same force and the likelihood of people living away from conurbations recruiting and paying for their own private police.
YCNMIU
“…. cut the Fourth Estuary Transport Authority budget by a whopping 65 per cent.”
You getting your lines from the Sun now? And tolls? You’re not changing the subject are you? Introducing some whopping red herrings?
Habba, Oxbridge?
More like fucking Uxbridge.
“You getting your lines from the Sun now? And tolls? You’re not changing the subject are you? Introducing some whopping red herrings?”
http://www.audit-scotland.gov.uk/docs/local/2013/fa_1213_forth_estuary_transport.pdf
“Constraints on expenditure have continued with FETA experiencing a 65% reduction in its three year capital grant.”
Scotland is falling apart. Education, Health Service, Policing, the Forth Bridge and the Nationalists just keep canting the mantra “it’s Westminster’s fault it’s Westminster’s fault”.
“Constraints on expenditure have continued with FETA experiencing a 65% reduction in its three year capital grant.”
Remind me how much the new bridge is costing, then explain in greater detail how the “whopping” reduction in FETA’s budget is contributing to Scotland falling apart.
“Remind me how much the new bridge is costing, then explain in greater detail how the “whopping” reduction in FETA’s budget is contributing to Scotland falling apart.”
Now it is you changing the subject.
You just can’t admit the SNP screwed up, took a gamble and lost and now the people of Scotland are paying for it.
Now it is you changing the subject.
No, I’m asking you to justify your statement that Fourth Estuary Transport Authority budget cuts are significant in the context of a new £1.5 billion Forth Road Bridge.
1) It may or may not be true that the knife attacker shouted something about Syria. I’m inclined to think he probably did, and that he is among the small proportion of mentally ill people who take it into their heads to attack passersby for some “cause” they’ve heard about in the media. It is possible that Daesh can get some support from within the said headcase demographic without having to go to the trouble of using money, ideological indoctrination, coercion or plays on ego, which are among the more common ways of recruiting agents behind the lines. Even one case would be scary enough, but it’s even more scary given that London and other cities harbour a lot of headcases. That said, what named witnesses heard the attacker mention Syria?
2) An onlooker did say “You ain’t no Muslim, bruv”. IF the attacker said something about Syria, those were well-chosen words indeed. Power to the guy’s elbow. I don’t think I’d have been that lucid.
3) The onlooker may or may not have said “You’re an embarrassment”. I’ve seen those words quoted but I haven’t heard them on any video. Things do get amended. I’m less inclined to believe those words, because they seem to convey a message that there is a Muslim “community” in which some members act “embarrassingly” by stabbing passersby and claiming religious or politic-religious motivation. That is a DIFFERENT message from “You ain’t no Muslim, bruv,” which tells the knifeman straight that his action shows unambiguously that he is NOT a Muslim.
4) The Jewish vigilante force known as the Shomrim (which boasts a faster response time than the London Metropolitan Police and better access to surveillance footage) were distributing a “graphic” image of the Leytonstone scene on Twitter. (Now apparently Winston Smithed.) Whether and when they were on the scene, I don’t know.
(Note: if anyone has a problem with my use of the term “Jewish vigilante force”, you’d better read up on the Shomrim before you say anything, okay?)
Any idea why my 12.59am comment got moderated?
“The only other bustard who superseded moustache bustards is chairman mao. He killed 5 times more people in China than today’s population of Scotland…”
Of course you don’t actually mean that Mao killed any substantial number of people, any more than “moustache bustard” (who I suspect, Mr Uzbek, was long dead when you took your post in the corner taking notes) is accused of …What precisely?
Heading a government in a period in which millions of people died, in part at least because of government action or inaction.
Well 5 million Bengalis died between 1942-45 thanks to British government actions and inaction.
How many millions died in Indo-China between 1956 and 1972? Very many.
How many died in Indonesia in 1965-7 as a result of the CIA/MI6 backed coup? At least a million. How many in Korea during the USAAF bombing campaign of 1951-53? How many in Guatemala, to take one example out of many in Latin America, in successive genocidal attacks against the left leaning poor? How many in the DRC in the past five years, during which US backed Rwandan and Uganda armies have run amok while plundering mineral resources?
The truth is that Mao and Stalin were pikers compared with western Imperialist regimes over the past two centuries: the 1942 famine in Bengal was the last in a long series in one province; every region of India had similar ‘famines’ directly consequential on British economic policies.
In China a series of C19th wars including the Taiping “rebellion” (in which an estimated 50 million lost their lives) arose thanks to imperialist interventions which shattered the Ching state. Then, of course, there are Japan’s crimes in China- whose victims far exceeded the number reputed to have died because of Stalin’s policies.
Finally there are the millions of Russians who died, after the fall of the Soviet Union, when Harvard’s economists introduced shock therapy- I suspect that there were far more of these premature deaths in the 1990s than in the 1930s under Stalin. Only Robert Conquest never wrote about it and the imperialist academy pretends that it never happened.
Sadly, valiant efforts to prevent terrorism meet with all kinds of obstacles…
“Needless Interrogation of a Belgian Academic is Just What Isis Wants” by Robert Fisk
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43643.htm
” This is the root of the problem – a lack of urgency by Westminster government. ”
Oh so the Westminster Government are at fault for not predicting years in advance the results of the 2003/2005 survey? How remiss of them. It was however they that decided on a new bridge in 2005/6 and commissioned the Study to work out and cost the best option. All the SNP had to do was accept the study’s findings; and take all the credit for other peoples’ work.
” The SNP have to say why they cancelled the 2010 strengthening programme which might’ve avoided this problem. ”
The point is we’ll never know because it was cancelled.
“The point is we’ll never know because it was cancelled.”
What there should be and what there would be in a properly run country is an independent enquiry. How are the SNP getting away with refusing to hold one?
Derek Mackay has admitted that the work cancelled in 2010 would have replaced the part of the bridge which failed.
http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/14133462.Transport_minister__Cancelled_2010_Forth_Road_Bridge_works__would_have_replaced_faulty_section_/
The Forth Bridge response from Alex –
Alex Salmond on the new Forth road bridge – the 3rd great engineering marvel spanning the Forth
The Old and The New..explained by Alex.
Alex Salmond on the new Forth road bridge – the 3rd great engineering marvel spanning the Forth
http://www.thecourier.co.uk/news/politics/alex-salmond/salmond-s-folly-i-m-glad-i-didn-t-view-a-new-forth-crossing-as-a-bridge-too-far-1.914374
Cnn’s program about Mark David Chapman’s murder of John Lennon far worse than I anticipated.
Nothing about it occurring right after Reagan was elected, and soon after almost assassinated himself, so nothing about his assassin, John Hinckley. Jr.
Nothing about Manchurian Candidates, and his supervisor at Castle Medical Center in Hawaii, psychologist Leilani Siegfried who gave Chapman those little men in his brain who told him to do it when he finally killed him through drugs and hypnosis, like what happened to Anna Lindh when Mijailo Mijailovic heard voices telling him to kill her on the second anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
And of course program said nothing about the CIA, former DCI G>H.W. Bush, Ted ‘ The Blond Ghost” Shackley, Mae Brussell, G.W. Bush, and Margaret Singer, John Connally et al.
The program is a complete fairy tale..
“Alex Salmond on the new Forth road bridge – the 3rd great engineering marvel spanning the Forth”
When Alex Salmond isn’t busy blaming his failings on Westminster he’s trying to take credit for what the other parties got right.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/north_east/6115244.stm
Labour had already committed to building the new Forth Bridge before Salmond ever got to be FM.
Re ‘Sadly terrorism is easy’, it’s even easier if planned and executed by either State actors or their patsies, replete with the almost obligatory ‘Terrorism Drills’ taking place at the same place and time, or very close (just to make sure all goes to plan). The San Bernardino ‘terrorist attack’ recently has all the characteristics of a classic ‘fALSE fLAG’ Op, as shown here: MEDIA REFUSING TO COVER POLICE & WITNESS ACCOUNTS OF “3 WHITE MALE SHOOTERS” IN SAN BERNARDINO
Published: December 10, 2015
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/media-refusing-cover-police-witness-accounts-3-white-male-shooters-san-bernardino/
SOURCE: MATT AGORIST
@ Trowbridge H. Ford, the John Lennon assassination is covered well here:
Evidence of Revision – Part 3- LBJ, Hoover and Others, What So Few Know Even Today
The whole 6 part series is brilliant, from JFK to Jonestown!