It’s odd the way we react to events. President John F Kennedy was assassinated over fifty years ago and we say what a nasty creature Lee Harvey Oswald was. “He got what was coming to him!” was the response at the time to the news that Jack Ruby had shot Oswald dead. Thirteen people were shot dead in Derry on Bloody Sunday and most people in Britain accepted the official story: those shot were carrying firearms or at least petrol bombs. Most people, if you ask them, would tell you the Dublin-Monaghan bombings were carried out by the UVF. Full stop, end of.
Those who are now querying the version of events in Paris are being told they are crackpots, the usual half-wits seeking out conspiracy where none exists. There are even people arguing that the entire Muslim population, in France and elsewhere,are supportive to a greater or lesser degree of these actions. What about the video clip showing the wounded policeman not being shot in the head? A detail, ignore it – think of the twelve dead journalists. What about the professional killer dropping his ID card at the scene of the slaughter? Forget it – whose side are you on anyway? What about the suicide of the Police Commissioner involved in the investigation of the attack? Forget it – and don’t start mentioning David Kelly and the weapons of mass destruction. Nothing to do with this case.
I’m not totally convinced by many of what are termed ‘conspiracy theorists’ (a loaded term intended to dismiss). But I am concerned that the points they raise are being brushed aside or ignored because they appear to complicate the official narrative.
Surely of all people, we should withhold acceptance of the official version of events until those have been successfully corroborated by independent sources. Or at least until there’s a full explanation of the apparent contradictions within the official story. If you rely on the state to do your thinking for you, you deserve what you get.
You’re right to ask these questions, Jude, and they can’t be dismissed.
Why did they pretend to shoot the policeman?
Who is in on this beyond the two policemen?
If the official narrative is that this policeman is dead where is is body?
Has he been publicly identified? What about his family? When is his funeral?
Who took these pictures? What did they see?
Similarly have the bodies of the alleged killers been seen, have they had a post mortem? What about their funerals?
Dead bodies don’t just disappear unless there is something to hide or unless they never existed.
Even a cursory investigation into the events in Ireland during the conflict should leave any rational person in no doubt about the ability of successive British governments to lie and spin. Inquests into killings thirty and forty years old still not taking place.Agents being protected. Corruption everywhere.
There is an old book called “Ireland the Propaganda War” by Liz Curtis published in 1984. You can still find an odd copy on Amazon etc. The book should be essential reading for anyone interested in the northern conflict. In addition two of the most blatant examples of British spin, Bloody Sunday and McGurks Bar. In both cases deliberately false and misleading press reports were released to get the State/Army version of events out to the press. Blind acceptance of any governments “version of events” is a dangerous path to follow.
I am not even thinking cynically but take time to find out what really happened
There are conspiracy theories and then there are, well, conspiracies.
Interesting to see where those concerning Dallas and Derry were namechecked cheek by jowl, Esteemed Blogmeister, as they bring to mind the name of one, Gentleman Jim. No, not McKeever, but a surname of a contemporary than almost rhymes, Reeves.
Gentleman Jim Reeves is not often linked with the JFK assassination c.t. but consider the following. Both toured Ireland in, June 63; the vocalist in the first half of the month, the orator in the second half. That one happened to be finest American singer of his generation and the other the finest speaker is perhaps neither here nor there.
Which is not to say there was not an element of here and there-ness about their respective tours. While one made it north of the Black Pig’s Dyke the other didn’t; while the baritone got to sing one of his favourite songs ‘Danny Boy’ under the MC-ship of a young curate, Fr. Edward Daly, the counsel of Samuel Johnson seems to have prevailed in the Presidential case: ‘the Giant’s Causeway is worth seeing but not…..’. etc. Even if the wise old Doc hadn’t quite got another Doc in mind, the Big Mon, R.I.P..
Within a year, both tourists in their Forties were dead; one, the Bostonian in Texas, the other, a Texan in Tennessee. Both deaths still have a nimbus of the unexplained hovering over them.
GJR sang in the Longhorn Ballroom in Dallas the night before the assassination. The Ballroom was well named, by all accounts as it was not only the biggest ballroom in the Lone Star State but by implication the biggest in the very Galaxy itself.
Two nights later as he watched the unfolding news on the TV the singer sat bolt upright as Jack Ruby plugged Lee Harvey Oswald with his Saturday Night Special. For he recognised both men immediately: the shooter as a co-owner of the Longhorn Ballroom
and the shot as a regular dancer in the same venue.
This connection was never teased out by the Warren Commission even it raised all sorts of other hares, if not rabbits during its deliberations. In fact it was concluded that Jack R and Lee H had never moved in the same circles. Seven months later the small single engine plane piloted by GJR crashed into woodland as it approached Nashville, Tn., killing both singer and the piano man in his band.
For reasons which remain inexplicable to this day it took the ‘search party’ almost two days to ‘discover’ the wreckage, after being given deliberately misleading co-ordinates by the authorities. Even though eyewitnesses had suggested a totally different crash site.
Suggestions are that the singer had a briefcase on board which the Secret Service wanted to get hold of first.
Now,Perkie’s inner conspiracy guy is not sure whether there is a whiff of either cordite or even gunpowder itself off this particular theory or not.
Unlike the case of another conspiracy theory concerning what is often grandiosely called ‘The Great Hunger’.And which a proposed sit com for Channel 4 has recently attracted the ire of the usual censor-prone enemies of freedom of expression in the Land of Ire.
For Fawkes’ sakes ! demands Perkie;s inner conspiracy guy, it is high time to slaughter this most sacred of all cows. You either take the side of genocide or you don’t. Most adamantly, Perkie does not. For the following reason.
Recent ground-breaking historical research, largely conducted in the hospitality suite of a RTE studio, has unearthed new evidence that clearly points the bony finger of truth at ….bulimia rather than John Bull.
For the Emerald Isle was not only a land overflowing with m. and honey at the time but this was the very reason that it suddenly became gripped by a mid-19th century version of Weight Watchers.
‘Up-chucky ar la !’ suddenly began appearing on gable walls as the peasantry alternatively went on eating binges and orgies of technicolour yawning. The latter achieved by a combination of the local laxative of the day, ‘purgoid na manach’ (rhubarb) or the traditional two-fingers down the throat job.
Thus, far from being the victims of perfidious Albion as the MOPEs would have us believe ( Most Oppressed People Ever) the death toll was overwhelmingly down to voluntary bulimia.
Even the most, erm, iconic image of ‘The Famine’ was down to a misspelling, more dyslexia than involuntary anorexia. Based on the throat tickling caused by the two-fingered insertion mentioned above.
Best summed up,perhaps, by Perkie’s inner poetaster thus:
A favourite trope of the hopeless dopes
Who failed to make the class that copes;
Those coffin ships
Were coughin’ ships
But try telling it to those Pope-led MOPEs.
Pine Coffin or a different train of thought
In the ‘authorised version’ of ‘An Gorta Mór’ it was the ‘Hand of God’ that delivered the blight in Ireland and Scotland, according to Trevelyan dealing with Ireland and Edward Pine Coffin in Scotland. Potato blight, phytophthora infestans, didn’t cause famine. People did not starve for potatoes, they starved for food. Evidence indicates that livestock, flour, grains, meat, poultry and dairy products were removed from the country, (Disposition of the Army: Public Records Office, London). The European potato crop failed in 1844 and food prices rose. When blight hit the 1845 English potato crop, regiments were already in Ireland to facilitate the removal of food to England. Trevelyan insisted that all reports of starvation were exaggerated. The Society of Friends refused to facilitate starvation by pretending that the famine was an act of nature. Over 5 million people died of starvation or malnutrition-induced disease. Immigration records of the U.S., Canada, Argentina and Australia establish the number of people who were forced to leave Ireland.
All in the past I hear you say. Michael Portillo was filmed in Derry for part of his series on train journeys. He took time off to lecture us on the failure of the spud and the resultant ‘famine’ and the programme is shown from time to time as the ‘authorised version of An Gorta Mór.
Commentary and comments today illustrate the importance of interrogating ‘authorised versions’ An alternative train of thought is required especially when one sees An Taoiseach expressing solidarity with the people of France and water protestors in Ireland are labelled, ‘rent a mob’, ‘troublemakers’ and ‘economically illiterate’.
Has anyone noticed the narrative being fed at the minute? The theme is that all Muslims must bare responsibility for this Paris farce. If they don’t shout from the rooftops their rejection of the mad jihadi etc then they somehow are complicit in their activities. What a fantastic way to label an entire race don’t ye think? What a fantastic way to inject suspicion and paranoia into the way we think? What a obvious way to make us hate someone.
Alas if the same narrative is aimed at those who didn’t openly show contempt for those who carried out murder and claimed it was on their peoples behalf eg uvf,uda etc it would be rejected as unhelpful. If I was to urge sweaty Betty Windsor and her followers to publicly reject those who murdered, and claimed they did in defence of her and hers, I would be told to move on blah blah.
The eighth wonder of the world has to be hypocrisy.
As a conspiracy – by definition – means more than 2 people involved, the question really is : to believe – or to reject – the OFFICIAL conspiracy theory on sale. As you correctly point out Jude, we all have the right – nay, the responsibility – to question the OFFICIAL version(s) and to seek the truth if there are gaping holes in same.
Incidentally, now that “pilot error” has been (this being the original theory) officially discounted as the cause of the Mull of Kintyre helicopter crash in 1994 – killing almost half of the RUC Special Branch along with several 6-county MI6 top brass – does anyone know what is the most recent OFFICIAL conspiracy theory ?
Anyway, we can all be sure it had absolutely nothing to do with the IRA ceasefire which was announced a few weeks later.
“we should withhold acceptance of the official version of events until those have been successfully corroborated by independent sources. Or at least until there’s a full explanation of the apparent contradictions within the official story.”
The posters above have cited several examples that illustrate these concepts. While haphazardly surfing the net the other evening I came across a film which is banned in the UK about the death of princess diana. It too seems to fill the above criteria to a T
you can connect to it here
https://eurofree3.wordpress.com/2015/01/14/unlawful-killing/