Shoot to Kill and News Management 689


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.


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689 thoughts on “Shoot to Kill and News Management

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  • Anon1

    For anyone watching BBC or C4 News this evening, it turns out ISIS terror is caused by, wait for it, Climate Change!

  • Habbabkuk (scourge of the Original Trolls)

    “Silvio” and “Monteverdi” – both as authentic as an old 900 lire note 🙂

  • Anon1

    Also from the BBC, it is reported that the discovery of a 2,000-year-old African skeleton in London means that London was always a multicultural city! Hence the fact that London and other major cities being almost entirely a foreign country is entirely normal, according to this evening’s agenda-driven news from the Beeb!

  • Why be ordinary?

    2,000 years ago the place started crawling with Italians – it’s been downhill ever since

  • Mary

    The troll at 9.02pm is as barbaric and repellent as Alistair Burt, FCO minister at the time, who said of President Assad ‘And the only thing that would deflect this man and this regime is if they fear they are going to end up in a storm drain with a bayonet up their backside.’

    This was after the Cons didn’t get their vote to attack Syria in 2013.

    Alistair Burt reveals anger over Syria vote at Westminster
    Former minister says the decision to defy David Cameron on military action created a ‘constitutional mess’ http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/dec/30/alistair-burt-anger-syria-westminster

    Burt is an ‘active Christian’ and a member of CFoI, the Henry Jackson Society and is now a junior health minister, god help us.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alistair_Burt

  • BrianFujisan

    Nevermind..Spot on …A Tall Brown Belt Type…Using Effin Shoulder..To do an effin Shoulder throw, ooocch.

    YouKnowMyName

    ” I saw Peter Gabriel sing this with Youssou n’Dour in some Swiss festival,”

    Ya wee Lucky so n So… i have seen Gabriel 4 times and he played Biko twice… The real world tour was just amazing… And BIKO..Changed instantly my whole outlook on music

    Great video Cheers

  • Anon1

    According to our resident Trolls, the BBC is some sort of extreme right-wing fascist organization hell-bent on exterminating all Muslims.

    There ought to be a sit-down seminar featuring tonight’s BBC and C4 News in order to put a few heads right. Perhaps also a feature on the latest Eastenders plots as the ISIS terror unfolds.

    Watch it on iPlayer and whatever the C4 version is. Jon Snow in Bangladesh blaming Islamic fanaticism on climate change.

  • fred

    ‘So your answer to “Who are the winners in post-intervention Libya?” is “Some of the people who support the Western appointed government.”’

    No it wasn’t. If you are going to attribute something to me and put quotes round it then kindly quote what I said.

  • Ben-Outraged by the Cannabigots

    See? Comprehension reliably fails for the trolls.

    They can’t see how a lack of rain affects crops, affects crop yield, affects individual’s income, affects local economy, affects regional economy, affects employment etc, etc, etc. They need a better excuse for social unrest than climate unrest.

    Global warming derails their choo-choo train. It never makes it to it’s destination.

  • Ben-Outraged by the Cannabigots

    YKMN; Free speech is for everyone, but you have to use it or lose it.

  • Anon1

    The C4 presence in Bangladesh tonight plugging manmade climate change theory was a laugh in itself, even without the absurd claims about Islamic State being caused by climate change. They actually had a map showing parts of Bangladesh that would disappear if certain climate change conferences weren’t attended.

    Nothing mentioned about deforestation in the Himalayas and of mangrove forest in the Ganges/Bramaputra delta as the cause of land loss which they continually blamed on rising sea levels.

    I have seldom seen such appalling propaganda as C4’s on man-made climate change and the BBC’s in promoting multiculturalism as I have seen in tonight’s early evening news.

  • Suhayl Saadi

    Anon1, there were lots of soldiers of the Roman Empire, plus merchants, slaves and so on, in Roam Britain. the Romans would station soldiers from, say, Syria/Africa here, and would put British soldiers in other parts of their large empire. Divide-and-rule, you see.

    So, yes, like many old-style land empires and more recent, maritime empires, – Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, Arab, Persian x several, Indian x many, Russian, Tatar, Mongol, Polish, British, French, Dutch Empires – the Roman Empire was indeed a multicultural polyglot.

    Why would that be that surprising?

    Now we live in a neoliberal ‘globalised’ domain where transnational capitalism actively promotes a sort of decaffeinated multiculturalism for its own ends.

    And…? What exactly is your point?

  • Ben-Outraged by the Cannabigots

    Our trollops are mainstream thinkers. This may be why there is a chasm. At the least it explains partially.

    Conformity is their bread-and-butter. Nonconformity drives them barmy and their motivation for camping overnight on this blog is an epic testimony to their average abilities and tepid insight, but also their deep hatred for exotic politics like Democracy. I don’t mean the democracy of ideal structure, but the bastardized form our governments call democracy, which is what they like because it makes some more equal than others.

    IOW’s, they have oatmeal between their ears, so how about a little compassion for the weak?

  • Tony M

    Lockerbie. It was Palestinians (the Israeli and Jordanian intelligence-run PFLP-GC) what done it, says Morag Kerr, disagree, you’re a “knee-jerk anti-semite”.

  • Ben-Outraged by the Cannabigots

    No one is saying it is the only cause; it’s one of the causes. More oatmeal?

  • fred

    “Lockerbie. It was Palestinians (the Israeli and Jordanian intelligence-run PFLP-GC) what done it, says Morag Kerr, disagree, you’re a “knee-jerk anti-semite”.”

    No it wasn’t Palestine, it was Palestinians, there is a big difference.

    It was Iran that did it.

  • Ben-Outraged by the Cannabigots

    The West occupying Iraq and having military bases in Saudi Arabia didn’t create Islamic state.

    Carpet bombing Arab towns and cities made orphans shriek with delight at the West’s ordnance parties didn’t create the Islamic state.

    Supporting Israel without exception didn’t create the Islamic state.

    Serial US vetoes on Israel sanctions didn’t create the Islamic state.

    What created the Islamic state?

  • Republicofscotland

    “Also from the BBC, it is reported that the discovery of a 2,000-year-old African skeleton in London means that London was always a multicultural city!”

    ____________________

    Anon1, It was probably Septimius Severus, the Roman Emperor old Seppy as his friends like to call him landed at the white cliffs he promptly did a veni vidi vici, he was the replaced by his son Caracalla.

    Seppy soon fell foul to the Tory benefit sanctions and killed himself.

    Old manuscripts foretelling the future, written by Seppy tell of two evil men known in latin as David Camerous and George Osborneous, Seppy predicted these evil men would be known as c*nts.

    Habbs been calling them that all day and night, who’d have thought such a waster would know such a thing.

  • exexpat

    Conversely, anon1, you won’t see the beeb cover much, if at all, of what can only be referred to as the “Jewish Power Maniacs” (or JPM) problem.

  • Anon1

    Suhayl

    The clear agenda within the BBC’s report about the archaeological finds was that the presence of military personnel from diverse backgrounds in Roman Britain somehow normalises (in desperation) present-day open-door immigration policy and the ideology of multiculturalism.

  • Ben-Outraged by the Cannabigots

    “What created the Islamic state?”

    I guess you could call it a ‘whim’.

  • Resident Dissident

    “Lord Forte had a farm in leafy Surrey.”

    Just a guess but I suspect his religion (or Zionism as it is not so cutely referred to here) meant that he was never accepted and invited around for tea by Lady Dorking.

  • Resident Dissident

    Rosa Khleb will be pleased to know that I am back at work tomorrow and so will not be joining her for tea.

  • fred

    “The clear agenda within the BBC’s report about the archaeological finds was that the presence of military personnel from diverse backgrounds in Roman Britain somehow normalises (in desperation) present-day open-door immigration policy and the ideology of multiculturalism.”

    It is normal isn’t it?

  • Resident Dissident

    And what are Jewish charities, Ben? Please understand some have no problem in blurring the boundaries.

  • Anon1

    No Fred, there is nothing ‘normal’ about open-door immigration or the ideology of multiculturalism as promoted by the BBC.

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