The mainstream media for the most part has moved on. But there are a few more gleanings to be had, of perhaps the most interesting comes from the Daily Mirror, which labels al-Hilli an extremist on the grounds that he was against the war in Iraq, disapproved of the behaviour of Israel and had doubts over 9/11 – which makes a great deal of the population “extremist”. But the Mirror has the only mainstream mention I can find of the possibility that Mossad carried out the killings. Given Mr al-Hilli’s profession, the fact he is a Shia, the fact he had visited Iran, and the fact that Israel heas been assassinating scientists connected to Iran’s nuclear programme, this has to be a possibility. There are of course other possibilities, but to ignore that one is ludicrous.
Which leads me to the argument of Daily Mail crime reporter, Stephen Wright, that the French police should concentrate on the idea that this was a killing by a random Alpine madman or racist bigot. Perfectly possible, of course, and the anti-Muslim killings in Marseille might be as much a precedent as Mossad killings of scientists. But why the lone madman idea should be the preferred investigation, Mr Wright does not explain. What I did find interesting from a man who has visited many crime scenes are his repeated insinuations that the French authorities are not really trying very hard to find who the killers were, for example:
the crime scene would have been sealed off for a minimum of seven to ten days, to allow detailed forensic searches for DNA, fibres, tyre marks and shoe prints to take place.
Nearby bushes and vegetation would have been searched for any discarded food and cigarette butts left by the killer, not to mention the murder weapon.
But from what I saw at the end of last week, no such searches had taken place and potentially vital evidence could have been missed. House to house inquiries in the local area had yet to be completed and police had not made specific public appeals for information about the crime. No reward had been put up for information about the shootings.
Behind the scenes, what other short cuts have been taken? Have police seized data identifying all mobile phones being used in the vicinity of the murders that day?
The idea that the French authorities – who are quite as capable as any other of solving cases – are not really trying very hard is an interesting one.
Which leads me to this part of a remarkable article from the Daily Telegraph, which if true points us back towards a hit squad and discounts the ides that there was only one gun:
Claims that only one gun was used to kill everybody is likely to be disproved by full ballistics test results which are out in October.
While the 25 spent bullet cartridges found at the scene are all of the same kind, they could in fact have come from a number of weapons of the same make.
This throws up the possibility of a well-equipped, highly-trained gang circling the car and then opening fire.
Both children were left alive by the killers, who had clinically pumped bullets into everybody else, including five into Mr Mollier.
Zainab was found staggering around outside the car by Brett Martin, a British former RAF serviceman who cycled by moments after the attack, but he saw nobody except the schoolgirl.
Her sister, Zeena, was found unscathed and hiding in the car eight hours later.
Both sisters are now back in Britain, and are believed to have been reunited at a secret location near London.
There are of course a number of hit squad options, both governmental and private, which might well involve iraqi or Iranian interests – on both of which the mainstream media have been very happy to speculate while almost unanimously ignoring Israel.
But what interests me is why the Daily Telegraph choose, in the face of all the evidence, to minimise the horrific nature of the attack by stating that “Both children were left alive by the killers”? Zainab was not left alive by design, she was shot in the chest and her skull was stove in, which presumably was a pretty serious attempt to kill a seven year-old child. The other girl might very well have succeeded in hiding from the killers under her mother’s skirts, as she hid from the first rescuers, and then for eight hours from the police.
The Telegraph article claims to be informed by sources close to the investigation. So they believe it was a group of people, and feel motivated to absolve those people from child-killing. Now what could the Daily Telegraph be thinking?
Trow,
German born Paula Broadwell IS a counter terrorist expert and she was working as a counter terrorist expert in France, in Germany and in Bosnia.
maybe off topic, but interesting:
Somebody said a while before that Obama is a British asset. It looks that he is. We all know who do we know history, that the FED is a British/Israeli/German entity.
Now Obama nominees Susan Rice.
What is particularly interesting about Susan Rice is NOT her race, but her family and her education.
1. She was studying in Oxford
2) Her father was studying in India, he worked for the Central and Reserve Bank in India (controlled by the Brits) and later he became a member of the Federal Reserve (FED) council.
I have no doubts the Susan Rice is another British/FED asset now in control of American foreign policy and that everything looks alike as if America will now politically support the imperialism of the British Empire.
Honestly, what is happening in the USA today and what we are seeing is an obvious fight within the CIA between Americans and British assets, or expained easier: This is a fight between FED plus the White House on one side and the Senate plus Representatives on the other side. CIA has got some of their leading people on one side and some are on the other side. That’s what’s happening today, but Obama and his British Empire will win that fight because the FED already owns America.
@NR
In the off-topic case of “The Dude” in Montreal, there are shopped pics and faked vids to frame him for 1, 2, or 3 crimes. Or he went to extraordinary lengths to frame himself. Also a possibility of a Doppelgänger, suggested on Icke way back.
Interesting. The tactic of splitting an ID photo vertically seems to be reused time and again. See for example the picture of Jeremy Forrest at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-18204401 (half-way down on the right hand side). It is clearly a composite of two separate ID photos joined vertically.
That’s the problem, there are so many individual pieces of evidence of a conspiracy that in total it seems improbable.
Can’t follow your logic here. Too much evidence?
Did the conspirators themselves plant some of these conspiracy tales to confuse?
Again, I can’t follow your logic here. The bombs in the basements are not a “conspiracy tale” – they are recorded fact. Go to youtube and feast on the evidence if you wish. Live video, with booms and shaking. Eyewitness accounts too. Bombs in the basement cannot have been caused by the planes, and reportage of them was suppressed soon after in the MSM. Another fact.
The one I’d buy into is a missile at the Pentagon, but even there it means they had a team ready to scatter the correct type of airplane wreckage on the lawn.
Well, first of all the “wreckage” on the lawn isn’t even close to being correct. Eyewitnesses reported seeing something like a commuter jet at the Pentagon, not an airliner, and with no windows. Same at WTC (initially). As James said, the turn that the “aircraft” pulled off at the Pentagon would have been all but impossible for a commercial airliner never mind hitting it.
Bringing down the WTC with explosives and the Thermite residue raises the question of why did they need to do that? Wouldn’t 2 planes into the top of the towers be enough?
Of course not. Plane impacts would never have brought down the twin towers, firstly because they were built to withstand exactly that impact (actually a 707 but the masses are similar), fully laden with fuel, and secondly because fire has never brought down a steel-framed skyscraper for the simple reason that kerosene and office fires don’t burn hot enough to weaken steel sufficiently.
As proof, even towers that have burned for DAYS have stayed standing. And WTC itself had a serious fire many years before and survived unscathed. Yet on 9/11 somehow no less than THREE of them suddenly collapsed or exploded due solely to “fire”. Ho hum.
Thirdly the thermate residues speak for themselves (as do peaks in Caesium and Strontium in the residual dust). We do not need to figure out a motive for us to know that thermate was used – it is there in the evidence.
I recall reports early on, when the media made a major stink over the smallest girl not found for hours, “somebody” said that in France police procedure was to freeze crime scenes until forensic investigators arrived.
Do you or does anybody have a link to this? I remember that the local police were told to lay off until Paris showed up, which would have meant that someone would have had to tell them, ergo no “standing orders”. But memory is fickle.
Not they wouldn’t rescue people, but where victims were obviously dead. Don’t know how they determined that for sure without opening the car, unless the victims had such extensive head damage they could not be alive. Then where is blood and gore in pics of car?
Agreed – not enough blood/gore.
The 8 hour delay was what was extraordinary, what with bringing a team from Grenoble and/or Paris (plus the “military looking” people and the British embassy people).
Agree about this last bit – but think the waiting for forensics was not standard practice also. Hopefully someone can unearth a link?
@ Kenneth Sorensen 20 Nov, 2012 – 9:11 am
“It is new to me that Mossad should be behind the poisoning of Litvinenko. All the talk has from the start been that it was the Russians who poisoned him. Could you provide some evidence to back up your claim that Mossad killed Litvinenko?”
Now there are suggestions MI-6 did it.
http://www.dailystar.co.uk/posts/view/280413/MI6-face-probe-on-dead-spy-Alexander-Litvinenko/MI6-face-probe-on-dead-spy-Alexander-Litvinenko
“THE inquest into the death of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko will look at whether British agents were involved. Both MI6 and the Russian secret service will be probed when the hearing begins next year.”
Excellent longer piece on the whole affair here:
http://www.nysun.com/foreign/specter-that-haunts-the-death-of-litvinenko/73212/
“What it obscured is the elephant-in-the-room that haunts the case: the fact that a crucial component for building an early-stage nuke was smuggled into London in 2006.”
“Litvinenko had been a person of interest to the intelligence services of many countries, including Britain’s MI-6, Russia’s FSB, America’s CIA (which rejected his offer to defect in 2000), and Italy’s SISMI…”
Sorensen, that is all what I found in a short time about the apparent Mollier siblings:
Alain Mollier:
He has a facebook page with photo.
http://www.facebook.com/alain.mollier#!/alain.mollier/friends
I wouldn’t be so sure that this is THE Alain Mollier if he hadn’t linked Christophe Mollier as one of his friends.
There is also a Alain Mollier-Camus. This could be the same guy or it is just somebody else who is not related. In another blog they say that Alain Mollier-Camus is a cousin.
That guy is working here:
http://www.e-pro-construction.fr/savoie/realisation-de-couvertures-par-elements/mollier-camus-alain-marc-gilbert_f1624686
Christophe Mollier (linked by Alain Mollier)
He is a teacher in
Lycée Les Portes de Chartreuse
Voreppe, Rhone-Alpes, France
(that is approx 1 hour from Ugine, near Grenoble).
Christophe likes skiing, tennis, cycling, rugby and soccer.
However, he is politically very active:
He supports the following groups on his facebook site:
He supports Lyon Anti-Antifa
He supports Division Fenrir, a militant Nationalists Division
{http://www.facebook.com/alain.mollier#!/DivisionFenrir
He supports Les Amis de Terre et Peuple
Another Nationalists organisation, Resistance indenititaire europeenne
He supports UDJ Lyon, Union et Defence de la Jeunesse, another nationalsocialist movement.
{http://www.facebook.com/alain.mollier#!/UDJLYON
He supports Groupe Union Defense
{http://www.facebook.com/alain.mollier#!/pages/GUD-PARIS-Syndicat-%C3%A9tudiant/246145445426551
Interestingly there are many Iraqi’s and other Arabs in these organisations, like a Hanaa Quassim, etc.
He supports the politician Alexandre Gabriac
{http://www.facebook.com/alain.mollier#!/pages/Alexandre-Gabriac/386248294732180
If you’d like to find a superb, perfect and ideal LaRouche support character, here he is!!
Christophe also linked Alice Mollier who studies (or else works) at college de l’europe.
By now I saw nothing regarding Mado Ronaldo. I found a linkedIn regarding her husband Aldo Ronaldo, but that’s in Paris and I don’t know whether or not that is related.
Could somebody translate that please? This seems to be hot but my translation makes no 100% sense.
Le propriétaire de Terre Celtique (située 40, cours Berriat à Grenoble) est un dénommé Christian Mollier ancien du MNR qui s’est illustré publiquement à deux reprise. La première est l’attaque d’une conférence de l’association ALI (amitiés et liens France-Maghreb) sur l’immigration qui lui vaudras son exclusion du MNR et une peine de 10 mois de prison avec sursis et 5 ans de privation de droit civique. Le président d’ALIF avait suite à cela reçu des menaces, puis sa femme a été agressée et torturée (il parait évident que Mollier n’est pas étranger à cette agression).
This is from here:
http://grenoble.indymedia.org/2012-05-23-Alerta-Antifascista-Deracinons-l
Interestingly, those Le-Pen branches like MNR, Anti-Antifa, etc. were funded by Saddam Hussein(!!) AND by MEDEF, particularly by their steel worker union branch (remember: Cezus!), particularly for the MNR!
Both Christophe Mollier and Christian Mollier are members in MNR!
Saddam Hussein funds? Hadn’t we heard about such in connection to SAH?
French NeoNAZIs, Saddam Hussein, money, killings, ….. ?!? Perhaps a good start here to investigate further.
Ferret
Re the being frozen.
If you look up Geraldine Chain (or chaine), she is the French journalist who is talking to Eric (plus one other) at the scene.
I think that was filmed the next morning.
Anyway, she has a blog (or something to that effect) and detailed the events of that afternoon. It goes something like…
She gets the call…and goes to the Valley of Wrath road, which is obviously now blocked off by police. Arriving at about 6.30pm
She starts collecting information
The Grenoble forensics arrive at 8pm. She notes this down.
She also notes (keep in mind she is at the police barrier) she had to go into the town to get reception..inorder to file her report.
I am under the impression (from reports) that “Paris Forensics” arrived at Midnight. I’ll find where I read this.
Further it was they (Paris) that found the 4 year old.
So why is that odd ?
Well importantly the “local” police frozen the scene. SOP I guess.
But Grenoble Forensics arrive at 8pm ….and don’t start work !
Why ????
Somebody went to work…as the 4 year old was found.
And this is were “the helo story” comes in.
It is claimed they over flew the scene and used their heat seeking equipment. But they would have been tasked to search a vast area of mountain and forest for a “gunman”, not a car for a body !
BUT…if you can say, well we searched the car (by hand or with special eqipment) and found nothing…so kept the scene frozen until work could be begin, then you don’t have to answer the simple question, which is…..
If forensics were on scene (8pm) why did they NOT start work then ?
Or rather, who instructed them NOT to start work.
So the scene is “unfrozen” at midnight.
By whom ? Paris Forensics ? But they already have forensics there ?
The devil is in the detail. And they keep trying to cover it up.
The car that was “stuck” on the bank ???
It was in reverse. It would only be “stuck” if the direction of travel was backwards through the forest.
The liitle girl was found at midnight, yet forensics were there at 8pm ??? Why didn’t they start work
Bluebird, I’ve inserted the image of Alain Mollier from his Facebook page here.
Trouble is, he doesn’t look older than 45 (Sylvain’s age) and he is supposed to be Sylvains older brother? shouldn’t you be careful as to take the circumstance that he has Christophe as a Facebook friend, as any evidence of anything, because as far as I understand Olifant, he is not certain that Christophe is the same family.
More on the connection Lyndon LaRouche and Le Pen and the Le Pen support for Saddam Hussein and most recently for Iran:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/le-pen-mightier_552978.html
{http://www.jihadwatch.org/2007/01/fitzgerald-a-le-pen-victory-would-be-terrible.html
{http://www.unidivers.fr/le-pen-cheminade-les-elus-ont-choisi-leur-candidat-fasco/
Somebody should search the archives on this website of that LePen “neonazi” club. Two of the Molliers were confirmed members of this Grenoble club. Perhaps somebody could find here something about/from other Molliers, too?
http://terresceltiques.hautetfort.com/
That whole connection makes sense now. Forget the nuclear stuff.
SAH (or his father) were apparently part of the Oil for Food money laundering Program. Saddam Hussein did fund LePen and his organisations. When SAH was part of the money laundering ring, then he had a contact from the LePen organisation for submitting them money since how long? 20 Years? An old friendship and usual way of work every now and then. And then, he had somebody to contact for giving him money in cash or else a key for a depot in a Geneve bank. That’s going on for 20 years.
Now let’s go back to August 2012.
SAH wants that money. He is fed up with Iraqi politics. He supports the anizionistic politics of LePen and he supports the pro Arab politics of Nationalism. Le Pen is anti American and so is SAH (due to waht we have heard). He then decides that it is time to get hold of the money (15 million sterling?) and either:
a) he planned to get all of that alone (what would have set up anger on two other sides)
or
b) he planned to share that money with the neonazi organisations. I prefer the second option.
He also blackmails al Maliki to give him money in return for his documents. Those documents would have details about false flag operations in and outside the Iraq and they would have details about the oil for food fraud and about drug smuggling and money laundering.
al Maliki agrees to negotiate and the negotiations should take place in Annecy with the neonazi partners, with a representative of al Maliki and with SAH and his Swedish LaRouche representatives. During the days before the event there are negotiations.
Finally they decide on the deal and meet in that forest for exchange of documents versus money access. Apparently SM will be there as a representative of the French neonazi side.
Something gets wrong and the shooting starts.
I won’t see it as unlikely that e.g. Mossad or CIA had knowledge about such a meeting. Either the got disturbed or else the killer was the third party at the meeting representing al Maliki.
HOUSTON – Gelareh Bagherzadeh was a gregarious Iranian-born woman studying molecular genetics. She taught children to play the piano and volunteered at her church.Why on earth would someone want to kill her?
That question has befuddled family, friends and police for five months, ever since Bagherzadeh, 30, was found in mid-January slumped over the steering wheel of her Nissan Altima steps from her home with a single gunshot wound to the head.
“It’s a unique case,” says Houston Police Sgt. J.C. Padilla, the lead investigator on the case. “It’s a senseless crime that happened to a young, intelligent female who had her future taken away from her. Someone out there knows what happened.”
The facts that nothing was stolen from her car and that Bagherzadeh was an outspoken activist against Iran’s Islamic theocracy, championed women’s rights in the Middle East and had recently converted from Islam to Christianity have spawned a host of theories about her murder (everything from an Iranian intelligence agency hit to claims of other foreign government involvement).
Police say they have found no evidence linking the killing to foreign assassins but are still investigating. In fact, they have no leads or suspects. Her family says that’s not enough, and they would like to see participation by federal investigators.
Are we seeing the extrordinary programme of targetted assassination in Iraq/Iran largely ignored by western media now spilling over into Europe and N America?????????????
Iranian. Shot to head. Nothing stolen. Apparently motiveless. Outspoken critic of regimes. Anything sound familiar?
Now how about this one? http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/apr/06/richard-descoings
found in hotel room. porn. natural causes – “nothing to see, move along there”
Richard Jean Marc Descoings, academic, born 23 June 1958; found dead 3 April 2012
thanks to Shelock H.
19 Nov, 2012 – 10:07 pm for that Houston ref.
Q
19 Nov, 2012 – 11:00 pm – Like noses attract?
Perhaps off topic,
but maybe on topic. Don’t know if you knew that already:
http://100777.com/node/1343
History:
That database was usually named “Alien CIA Database”, used for CIA recruited Afghan mercenaries who did fight the Russians in Afghanistan. As usual in america, they began to shorten their long database name in the office, starting to call it: “Al(ien)CIAda(tabase)”, AlCIADA. That was hard to talk and tongue breajers occured, so finally the tonguebreakers changed the commonly used name of the mercenaries database into ALCAIDA.
When for the first time (to defend a terror attack on America) a fake and scripted Arab terror organisation was urgently needed as the GUILTY, they gave that name to the press (because they knew that those were their people from that database). However, ALCAIDA doesn’t look Arabic when printed, so they changed the C for a Q. In their own business, when spelled, that spelled name didn’t change at all, however the dumb people out there did actually believe that this was an Arab word with some meaning when they said “ALQAIDA”. That’s the history of that name, plus apparently still up to today this is just the name of their mercenaries database.
Q
19 Nov, 2012 – 11:03 pm – no but they could be used to locate people in a remote spot with no radio coveration. My feeling is such is the timing in this case, EITHER it was a prearranged meeting between parties that the killers knew about (from bugging mobile phone or computer communication) or it was pre arranged with the killers or killers agents themselves.
If it wasn’t pre arranged rendevous and it wasn’t chance encounter, you have to come up with a theory as to how a hit team knew exactly where to go and when to move given the very brief “window of opportunity” when Mollier and Al Hilli would actually be together.
This isn’t like waiting next door. It has to allow for a three mile journey up a cul de sac and therefore a return journey as well, all to be completed before police can arrive. Therefore if not pre arranged meeting something like drone or satellite observation would be essential. Of course the signal could be given by a “spotter” concealed in the woods, if the rendez vous point was previously known. Or it could be another passing cyclist. The problem however is mobile phone reception.
Now if the the name of the location is significant (d’Ire/rage/revenge) it must indicate it was chosen by the killers presumably? It would have been so much easier to have met up somewhere near the campsite.(It could be a factor in the participants minds but i dont think it has the same symbolism for victims as for assailants) The significance of name would have this implication: it was not the victims that chose the location but the killers – ergo Al Hilli and Mollier were there to meet people,replaced by,or were,their killers.
@Felix: No, gas explosions don’t look like the murder scene in Indianapolis. I reviewed one in particular that killed three people in two houses. It was arson, to cover up a murder. Two adjacent homes were destroyed. The debris was not shredded to the same extent as in Indianapolis, and there was no scorched earth. Whatever left the black, directional scorch marks in Indianapolis certainly wasn’t gas, or even a Jesus toaster.
NR
20 Nov, 2012 – 3:33 am *Clay = a Masonic material. Isn’t there something in the Bible about Clay Idols or am I mixing that up with a Golden Calf or feet of clay?
thats 5.9.12 (Deut. Ch 9 v 12)
“12 Then the LORD told me, “Go down from here at once, because your people whom you brought out of Egypt have become corrupt. They have turned away quickly from what I commanded them and have made a cast idol for themselves.” 13 And the LORD said to me, “I have seen this people, and they are a stiff-necked people indeed! 14 Let me alone, so that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven. And I will make you into a nation stronger and more numerous than they.” 15 So I turned and went down from the mountain while it was ablaze with fire. And the two tablets of the covenant were in my hands. 16 When I looked, I saw that you had sinned against the LORD your God; you had made for yourselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. You had turned aside quickly from the way that the LORD had commanded you. 17 So I took the two tablets and threw them out of my hands, breaking them to pieces before your eyes. 18 Then once again I fell prostrate before the LORD for forty days and forty nights; I ate no bread and drank no water, because of all the sin you had committed, doing what was evil in the LORD’s sight and so provoking him to anger.”
Drone work is boring, but it’s a growing field for employment:
http://blogs.ottawacitizen.com/2012/11/16/fighting-boredom-among-drone-drivers-new-study-suggests-distractions-may-alleviate-boredom-among-uav-operators-and-improve-performance/
Fighter pilots: now that’s interesting. From what I read yesterday, this work is mainly done by civilians, at least when the CIA is doing it.
@Straw: There are activists with much higher profiles than the young woman murdered in Texas. I doubt that her views were the reason for her death.
Her father’s patent concerns extracting chemicals from methane gas. Strangely, Dion Longworth is connected via his father’s partner to some patents for arc welders (excitation) and furnaces.
Blue_Bear
20 Nov, 2012 – 9:46 am I’ve entered it in the Hundred Best LEAST Believed Police Stories of All Time” Bear.
@ Ferret
20 Nov, 2012 – 10:24 am AT LAST Private Eye might be getting on board. I sent them an article weeks ago but they didn’t bite.
I personally think you are barking up the wrong tree with Chevaline and Combe D’ire
That car park is known as Martinet:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martinet
They met their to be punished and thats exactly what they got.
*there lol
@Straw: Martinet=Martin.
The French must not like children or pets.
Children are an integral part of these stories:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/official-says-investigators-in-deadly-indianapolis-blast-looking-at-appliances-from-homes/2012/11/13/58cdcdce-2def-11e2-b631-2aad9d9c73ac_story.html
Maybe she smelled burnt toast.
Next up: the cause may not be known for a decade?
Can’t wait to read the newspapers….ten years from today !
Everything “solved” !
…and Eric sat in Corsica…on a nice big fat French pension !
These stories are from June 2012, FWIW:
http://www.disclose.tv/news/Explosions_Military_Helicopters_Near_Indiana_Radiation_Zone/85284
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29TwRWdQRdc
The easy out:
http://www.ibtimes.com/indianapolis-home-explosion-being-investigated-homicide-891080
Was there a lock box on the door?
@ NR
20 Nov, 2012 – 11:01 am “The 8 hour delay was what was extraordinary, what with bringing a team from Grenoble and/or Paris (plus the “military looking” people and the British embassy people).”
The 20 military types from the british embassy puzzled me for a long time. Even in the Paris Embassy it would be unlikely to keep this many available unless expecting something. (Think Benghazi) But I think I may have cracked it. They were there (probably a detachment of SAS) for a completely different reason and were called in partly because of the nature of the killing but more importantly in case of implications elsewhere. It was one thing to “have allowed” the killing of Diana but William and Catherine a completely different ball game.
Where were THEY on the 5th September, 2012? Why they were in France about 130 miles to the south.
Kate and William enjoy romantic break in French Chateau
By Ceri Roberts, Sep 9, 2012 “It’s just a couple of days until they head off on their eight-day tour of south-east Asia, so last week Kate and William treated themselves to a romantic break at a French chateau in the Luberon Hills.”
And whilst there the small matter of the top-less photographs, which of course from a security point of view could equally well have been a telescopic sight!