There is no question to which the answer is to wander round killing people. It takes a few words or keystrokes for any right thinking person to condemn the killings in Paris today. But that really doesn’t take us very far.
It is impossible to stop evil from happening. Simple low tech attacks by individuals, a kind of DIY terrorism, cannot always be pre-empted. If you try to do so universally, you will end up even further down the line we have gone down in the UK, where people are continually arrested and harassed who have no connection to terrorism at all, often for bragging on websites. These non-existent foiled terrorist plots are a risible feature of British politics nowadays. Every now and then one hits the headlines, like the arrests just before Remembrance Day. Their defining characteristic is that none of those arrested have any means of terrorism – 99% of those arrested for terrorism in the UK in the last decade – possessed no weapon and no viable explosive device.
In fact the only terrorist in the last year convicted in the UK, who possessed an actual bomb – a very viable explosive device indeed, was not charged with terrorism. He was a fascist named Ryan McGee who had a swastika on his wall and hated Muslims. Hundreds of Muslims with no weapons are locked up for terrorism. A fanatical anti-Muslim with a bomb is by definition not a terrorist.
I am assuming that the narrative that Charlie Hebdo was attacked by Islamists is correct, though that remains to be proved. For argument, let us assume the official narrative is true and the killings were by Muslims outraged at the magazine’s depictions of the Prophet Mohammed.
It is essential to free speech that it includes the freedom to offend. That must include the freedom to offend religious belief. Without such freedoms, the values of societies would freeze. Much social progress has caused real anguish and offence to some people. To have stopped Charlie Hebdo by law would have been wrong. To stop them by bullets is beyond any mitigation.
But that doesn’t make the unfortunate deceased heroes, and President Hollande was wrong to characterise them as such. Being murdered does not make you a hero. And being offensive is not necessarily noble. People who are persistently and vociferously offensive are often neither noble nor well-motivated. Much of Charlie Hebdo‘s taunting of Muslims was really unpleasant. That they also had Christian and other targets did not make this any better. It is not Private Eye – it is a magazine with a much nastier edge. I defend the right of Charlie Hebdo to publish whatever it wants. But once the shock dies off, I do hope a more realistic assessment of whether Charlie Hebdo was entirely admirable or not may be possible. This in no way excuses the dreadful murders.
The ability to say things that offend is an important attribute of a free society. Richard Dawkins may offend believers. Peter Tatchell may offend homophobes. Pussy Riot offended Putin and the Orthodox Church. This must not be stopped.
But that must cut both ways. Abu Qatada broke no British laws in his lengthy stay in the UK, but was demonised for things he said (or even things newspapers invented he had said). Most of the French who are today in solidarity for freedom of expression, are against people being able to express themselves freely in what they wear. The security industry who are all over TV today want to respond to this attack on freedom of expression by more controls on the internet!
I condemn, you condemn, we all condemn, and so we should. But the amount of nuanced thought in the mainstream media is almost non-existent. What will now happen is that conservative commentators will rip individual phrases from this article and tweet them to show I support terrorism. The lack of nuanced thought is a reflection of a general atmosphere of anti-intellectualism which has poisoned public life in modern western society.
If the two Algerians are killed after being surrounded (like the scooter patsy), then it may be a false flag – to dispel any such rumors they have to be captured alive.
BTW – we may all be barking up the wrong tree, it may really be all to do with Algerian politics, the Islamists who won the election there 20 years ago, have been under the yoke of an almost senile now Boutefika (twice brought back from the dead by French medical treatment) since then. “Allahuakbar” type religious cover is what the Arabs use to fight for their political rights.
@Mats 12:56pm
NATO never shouted Mission Accomplished or said they would cease operations therefore the secret armies and cells are still in place for sure.
True, in the documented case of Luxembourg, the Lux Secret Service knows who is/was active in GLADIO but these NATO terrorists/freedom-fighters refuse to demob as they haven’t (yet) been given the correct stand-down codewords! Allegedly
“good news” from Syria, parenthetically, due to the heavy snowfall that should be in the Alps – but isn’t – there have been no terrorists/freedom-fighters/civilian war deaths yesterday, for the first time in Syria in the last 3 years! ( more than 200’000 victims have been killed there since March 2011, well done Intelligence Community, another resounding success )
If every incident is going to be labelled “false flag” then we might as well believe nothing and shut this blog down. Nothing to discuss because nothing is real.
Friction between Islam and western ideologies, will continue, as long as Islam is inflexible, in its attitude,towards self criticism.
We must be able to criticise Islam’s prophets and god without fear of retribution.
Another and more worrying aspect of Islam, is the thought, of Muslims setting up Islamic type states, with European countries.
The addition of Sharia Law to these areas would only further widen the gap to social integration, and an understanding of Islamic ideology.
Thinking, freedom of speech is one of those funny things.
I was just reading up on Rushdie (i’v never liked the look of him) and it seems to me class consciousness precludes at least as much possible speech as other forms of, quote “absolutist belief systems”.
wiki-……“But Rushdie seems to have assumed that diverse communities and cultures share some degree of common moral ground on the basis of which dialogue can be pieced together, and it is perhaps for this reason that he underestimated the implacable nature of the hostility evoked by The Satanic Verses, even though a major theme of that novel is the dangerous nature of closed, absolutist belief systems”
Coming from someone who seemed very snobbish the irony is clear.
Ie, Who is free to stand up in parliament and say I want to fuck the queen? Truth is among class class conscious corporations (or any upper class) there is a whole lot of stuff that in practice many would never say, and in many cases it could be dangerous to do so.
In fact they don’t just not say anything they pay homage.
Islam or a knighthood?
I have looked at the video. I have no doubt what we see is a real event. The puff of “smoke” in front of the policeman’s head is caused by the exhaust gas exiting the barrel of the gun after the bullet has been fired.
“Hey Bro, you know what we should do, now we’ve killed all these people in a slick military-style operation?”
“What’s that then?”
“Leave our IDs in the getaway car.”
“Then they’ll know it was us what did it!”
“We can call into a filling station too and get our photos on the cameras, fill up, get some food, and not pay for the fuel, then they’ll really know it was us.”
“And instead of heading out of France let’s go back to Paris. That should help them catch us and kill us in a shoot out!”
“That’s how they got Osama Bin Laden’s videos in the caves of Afghanistan.”
“Cool.”
Of course Teresa. Up the controls and restrict our ‘freedoms’ although there is no increased threat in the UK.
‘Security has been increased at UK ports, border controls and a major railway station following the attack at the Paris office of magazine Charlie Hebdo, which left 12 people dead.
There is not thought to be a direct threat to the UK, Downing Street said.
Silences have been held in the UK in tribute to the victims, who include two police officers and eight journalists.
Prime Minister David Cameron said the attack was a “challenge to our security” and “threat to our values”.
Home Secretary Theresa May, speaking after chairing a meeting of UK government emergency committee Cobra, said security had been increased at the France/UK border – notably at the Eurostar rail terminal in Paris and the Channel Tunnel entrance at Calais.
UK border staff had “intensified checks on passengers, on vehicles and goods coming from France”, she said.
The move was a “precautionary” measure and was not as a result of any specific intelligence, she added.’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30721238
A new campaign by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign has commenced. It is called ‘Deconstructing the BBC’, ie correcting their lies and omissions.
This is the first.
January 8, 2015 PSC checks BBC article for facts, bias and legal omissions BBC News reaches 81% of the UK every week via tv, radio and online articles. That is a huge number of people to be misinforming about the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. Because misinform is exactly what the BBC does. The occupation is largely airbrushed from BBC reporting and its atrocities sanitised. Events are covered without context or background, and the unlawful nature of Israel’s actions are ignored. But the reporting is so disingenuous that pinpointing exactly how it misinforms can sometimes be difficult.
PSC’s ‘Deconstructing the BBC’ series will analyse BBC online articles and show in depth just how the UK’s supposedly impartial public broadcaster is hiding the truth of the occupation.
In the following analysis, we examine a BBC article about Israeli troops stopping the delivery of aid to Palestinian Bedouins. The article fails to mention that Israel’s actions were all violations of international law. In this way, the BBC hides Israel’s criminality and the scale of it.
We expose this failure of reporting with our analysis.
http://www.palestinecampaign.org/deconstructing-bbc/
“I have looked at the video. I have no doubt what we see is a real event. The puff of “smoke” in front of the policeman’s head is caused by the exhaust gas exiting the barrel of the gun after the bullet has been fired.”
_________________________
Frazer.
I’d have said, that it looked more like the round ricocheting off the stone pavement, and with the lack of blood from the AK47 7.62 mm round, it seems plausible, that all is not what it seems.
Clark I read your comments on the Vimeo video. I saw the link on Medialens and posted it here for information. I do not know anything about guns or killing. I should have made it clear that the comments were from the website.
I still think that something very fishy has been going on. The French police are either completely stupid or they are playing the pocket pols’ games. I trust no politician, British or foreign.
John G
-But I would be interested in other people’s thoughts-
Yes, the story gets more and more like something Edward Lear wrote. No blood at Sandy Hooky school either, funny that.
But I will check out BBC World.. go find our what my thoughts are supposed to be ..be back later to let you know
I’ve just got back from shopping. On Tesco’s newspaper stand, at least three different paper’s front pages are carrying an identical headline:
WAR ON FREEDOM
Wrong. Three criminal extremists, captured within twenty-four hours, killing twelve people, definitely does not count as a “war”. And printing offensive cartoons to make profit is a very minor and unimportant aspect of freedom, the rights of assembly and protest, for instance, being far more important.
Good riddance. The US is going down.
Major US Airbase RAF Mildenhall To Close
More than 3,200 military personnel will be moved or lose their jobs after the Pentagon decides it no longer needs the airfield.
http://news.sky.com/story/1404418/major-us-airbase-raf-mildenhall-to-close
The last sentence here is hilarious.
‘RAF Alconbury and RAF Molesworth in Cambridgeshire will also undergo “divestment”, but according to US defence news outlet Stars and Stripes they will be returned to British control.
Although all are termed as RAF bases, they have been under the control of the US Air Force for several decades.’
@ RepublicofScotland Actually the AK takes a 5.56 round, not a 7.62. With a headshot with that type of round I would not expect to see any instant blood. Believe me, I know what I am talking about when it comes to this stuff..
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why it won’t boost our economies;
how politicians know that much of what we’re being told about the supposed benefits of TTIP is a lie.
If TTIP is adopted:
a million jobs in the US and EU combined will be lost, 600,000 of them in the EU;
Europe will lose exports;
the precautionary principle as the basis of European regulation would be trashed, along with food safety rules, labour rights, and the European social model;
corporations will be able to sue national and regional governments (i.e. the taxpayer) in secret courts for daring to regulate their products.
A written report by John Hilary is here
http://www.waronwant.org/campaigns/trade-justice/more/inform/18078-what-is-ttip
When CM says “The ability to say things that offend is an important attribute of a free society” what he means is that the ability to say things that offend those who are not liberals is an important feature of the Fascist New World Order.
Obviously anything offensive to liberals is hate speech, racism, whatever and is to be condemned absolutely and punished by both by law and by administrative actions (e.g., the police officer fired for using the term “niggardly”).
One wonders how much longer this new world order scam of suppressing the freedom of expression in the name of free speech can continue.
The video that Tony-Opmoc linked to yesterday has been removed by U-Tube, which suggests it is worth looking at. It’s available here: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1ec_1420640263. The slo-mo sequence of the shooting of a police officer sure looks fake, but I’m not an expert on the business of blowing people’s brains out. Maybe it really can be done without loss of even a drop of blood, or any recoil of the gun or opposite reaction of the victim’s head.
‘If the two Algerians are killed after being surrounded (like the scooter patsy), then it may be a false flag – to dispel any such rumors they have to be captured alive.’
The third named suspect, the 18 year old Hamyd Mourad, handed himself to the police at around 11pm last night after reportedly seeing his name on the news. Unless he subsequently dies in custody that fact should cast doubt on Puzzled’s false flag theory.
The Kouachi brothers however will be presumed to be armed, and thus the odds on them being captured without a fight must be pretty slim.
Some Jews in France have apparently been motivated by the Charlie Hebdo killings, or should we say “killings,” to pack up and move to to their homeland. They are fortunate to have that option, something unavailable either to the Palestinians, or in the great cities of Norther Europe, the people, like Emma West, who have been made a minority in their own community by a combination of anti-natalist policies and mass immigration.
Still the humbugs and hypocrites who make up the narrative that rationalizes the bullshit will no doubt stick-handle their way around the latest atrocity and all its grotesque implications as they have done with all the other atrocities for which the Western elites are entirely to blame.
It’s an amazing disparity between those who condemn deaths in this manner, and not all the others. Do they matter less? Are they not often as tragic? They don’t want to know those deaths they help cause, in ways that i’d pick a rusty blade over any day of the week, or a clean headshot.
In fact I hope i’m bringing the tone of this thread down. I can’t stand this Orwellian 5 minute tragedy that we are all meant to feel about some events. It’s bad enough for those who it actually does effect.
“ I condemn, you condemn, we all condemn, and so we should”
I agree it’s maybe ok to condemn many sorts of actions, or better still set a better example, but as far as spacific events go, are we meant to connect intimately to every tragedy that befalls mankind? It’s this kind of mass (and quite fake) cauldron of feeling that’s enhanced to serve more injustice.
Let alone that it does no good, how are you/we contributing to a remedy that can help some ? We can feel as much as we want, So? When problems aren’t really faced in clear mined practical ways (that btw in no way excludes compassion) it adds to the issues. As I feel some seem to be trying to do, make things worse, Ie those who always ask us to condemn the slightest impropriety (not that this is slight, but they do).
Maybe some feel they can condemn. But those working for or in the state? This is nothing to them. I think people should make up there own mind, most are adults.
Just some thoughts.
The term ‘liberal’ is in itself meaningless, interpretations vary from person to person, within one nation or culture, and more so widely so across different ones. This ambiguity allows Canspeccy to use it to label and define anyone he happens to disagree with or actively dislikes on the flimsiest and on no grounds, allowing him to thereby dismiss them as being of lesser worth than superior ‘illiberals’ like himself. Anything they have to say is automatically invalid, as no doubt emanating from instruction given at the secret ‘liberal’ control headquarters, deep in the bowels of every city, town and village, where liberals, in the dead of night, commune in furtive furtherance of their deeply sinister plans. These dangerous liberals, being such devils, cunningly contrive to look indistinguishable from other non-liberal human beings, and only the very wise like Canspeccy can spot them, Canspeccy is not easily fooled by their seemingly normal appearance and lives.
@ Old Mark:
The third named suspect, the 18 year old Hamyd Mourad, handed himself to the police at around 11pm last night after reportedly seeing his name on the news. Unless he subsequently dies in custody that fact should cast doubt on Puzzled’s false flag theory.
I don’t quite follow your logic, Old Mark. If a state agency were to undertake a murder to manipulate public opinion, they would surely not hesitate to manipulate the aftermath in whatever way they deemed necessary, including bullying, drugging, terrorizing of torturing innocents into making false confessions, or substituting using as a suspect an actor who will make the necessary confession, accept the statutory penalty, and then be sprung from jail with new ID and a nice pension.
Oh Jeeze, here’s Tony M doing his psycho-analytical stunt. Do tell us more, Tony, about the limbic system. Or rather don’t.
A Liberation News report states that an ID card was left in the Citreon car [une carte d’identité découverte dans la Citroën C3 noire abandonnée rue de Meaux dans le XIX].
The way that the ‘terrorist’ that shot the cop lying on the pavement would indicate that he had killed before – the nonchalance with which he finished the job demonstrated a professionalism and detachment that would not accord with mistakely leaving a full ID in the vehicle.
It would appear that the ID card was meant to be found. Case closed?
“Within the book, the purpose of the Two Minutes Hate is said to satisfy the citizens’ subdued feelings of angst and hatred from leading such a wretched, controlled existence. By re-directing these subconscious feelings away from the Oceanian government and toward external enemies (which likely do not even exist), the Party minimizes subversive thought and behavior.”
Seems many events are being focused into this amorphous whole. As if it’s all just one big bug and if we stamp on it hard enough life will be forever peaceful as we know it’s meant to be.
Of course in reality your stamping on your neighbour or college or family.
Jemand
“If every incident is going to be labelled “false flag” then we might as well believe nothing and shut this blog down. Nothing to discuss because nothing is real.”
__________________
Entirely agree.
But you know why certain people on here do so label, surely….?
Mary
“Of course Teresa. Up the controls and restrict our ‘freedoms’ although there is no increased threat in the UK.
‘Security has been increased at UK ports, border controls and a major railway station following the attack at the Paris office of magazine Charlie Hebdo, which left 12 people dead.”
____________________
In which way does increased security at entry points to the UK constitute a “restriction of freedoms?
@Bert
A Liberation News report states that an ID card was left in the Citreon car
That’s nothing. Mohammed Ata’s passport just fluttered down from the crash of American Airlines Flight 11, even though the plane’s black boxes were total evaporated (the intense heat of office paper fires, you know).
Republicofscotland
“Friction between Islam and western ideologies, will continue, as long as Islam is inflexible, in its attitude,towards self criticism.
We must be able to criticise Islam’s prophets and god without fear of retribution.
Another and more worrying aspect of Islam, is the thought, of Muslims setting up Islamic type states, with European countries.
The addition of Sharia Law to these areas would only further widen the gap to social integration, and an understanding of Islamic ideology.”
________________
Well, I must say that you are able to surprise me. I never thought I would read the above from you. And hope that you’re serious and not just fooling about.