Zelo Street regulars will be familiar with the modus operandi of Murdoch-bankrolled right-wing website Heat Street, the domain of (thankfully) former Tory MP Louise Mensch. This is not a site known for factual accuracy: it is a site that peddles falsehood and misinformation on a regular basis. Its latest excursion across the dishonesty line was made yesterday by Ms Mensch herself, and an “exclusive” claimed for it.
The article, “France ‘suppressed reports of gruesome torture’ at Bataclan Massacre”, tells “A French government committee has heard testimony, suppressed by the French government at the time and not published online until this week, that the killers in the Bataclan appear to have tortured their victims on the second floor of the club”. But nothing has been suppressed, and there is no evidence of torture.
But this is an area where Ms Mensch, who wrote this particular article, has displayed her prejudices against followers of The Prophet, reporting “According to this testimony, Wahhabist killers reportedly gouged out eyes, castrated victims, and shoved their testicles in their mouths. They may also have disemboweled some poor souls. Women were reportedly stabbed in the genitals – and the torture was, victims told police, filmed for Daesh or Islamic State propaganda”. Wahhabists are a favourite Mensch villain.
And, although the piece mentions that the claims have been dismissed as a rumour, it closes with “The news follows reports that German police sat on the huge number of sexual assaults committed by Islamist migrants in Cologne, which a secret report estimated at thousands, not hundreds. Heat Street will continue to report”.
It’s more of those Scary Muslims (tm)! There are migrants! They are coming over here and attacking us! Ms Mensch’s copy is constructed in order to tell readers what to think, and judging by the incendiary nature of many comments - Heat Street has, at long last, began to allow these - those readers are thinking what she wants them to .
However, and here we encounter a significantly sized however, rumours are all that these claims are. As Snopes has pointed out, this story only came out after the Nice attack, giving the air of Muslim-bashing opportunism. The report referenced by Ms Mensch had not been suppressed, and investigators had debunked the torture rumours.
As to the idea that there had been a cover-up, Snopes made this conclusion: “the post-Bastille Day attack rumor operated on the assumption such a coverup was even possible. By all accounts, 89 people died at the Bataclan on 13 November 2015, while another 200 were wounded but survived, and many more escaped unscathed. Contemporaneous reports estimated that 1,000 people were in attendance at the Bataclan on 13 November 2015 with 700 of them were physically unharmed. Had the French government opted to cover up acts of torture and emasculation at the venue, there was nothing stopping the vast majority of surviving witnesses from sharing their stories. None did”.
The Heat Street piece has prompted similarly-framed articles at Mail Online and the website of Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse). But Louise Mensch was not only wrong, she was misleading in a malicious and dishonest manner in order to whip up hatred over acts that did not take place. Her wilfulness is becoming worrying, and it is high time that this little Wild West Show was brought to an end.
20 comments:
I've read that French report and all I'm going to say is that if Ms Mensch's reporting has taken some liberties (probably accidentally, since I wouldn't trust her to tie her own shoelaces), then the people denouncing her report are taking even bigger liberties. This matter is nowhere near as clear-cut as either side wants you to believe.
And what element is it that links Heat Street, Mail Online and Fox News Channel?
Which editing policies?
Which political policies?
Which type of ownership?
Answers on a postcard......
To Anonymous 17:30.
Proof?
Facts?
This rumour seems to have evolved from the information that some of the deceased were identified by DNA/clothing/dental records and returned to their families in sealed coffins. Some of the weapons used were high velocity which cause very serious damage to the human body. As they seemed to aim for the head in many cases, the dear people would have have been in a terrible state. Body parts would also have been seen, so I do believe that police officers would have vomited and fainted on entry.
To Anonymous (16 July 2016 at 17:43).
Take a look for yourself, the report is available online, having been published ten days ago.
To Anonymous at 18:52.
Link, please.
There were witnesses at the time saying they saw the terrorists disembowelling people and heard horrific screams.
Even on the video on You Tube at the back of the theatre you can hear screams that must have been people being tortured.
How unbearable that you try to pretend this Islamic evil does not exist.
@7
What part of "Aucune trace de mutilations" (from the report in Le Parisien) do you not understand?
Why "must they have been" anything other then people who were very, very frightened?
Why did none of the hundreds of survivors say anything about this "torture"?
I am pretending nothing. No witnesses are claimed, even by Heat Street. All is rumour. You are believing what you want to believe.
The law requires more than a rumour......It requires A FACT.
At least it does in a truly democratic court.
Holy crap! I've just read the comments BTL.
What a bunch of fruitloops and loons.
Have those people never heard of snopes?
And this:
Prosecutor: I specify, for the sake of clarity: some of the bodies found at the Bataclan were extremely mutilated by the explosions and weapons, to the point that it was sometimes difficult to reconstruct the dismembered bodies. In other words, injuries described this father may also have been caused by automatic weapons, by explosions or projections of nails and bolts that have resulted.
Q. Would those have put a man’s balls in in his own mouth?
Prosecutor: I do not have that information.
How the hell is this a fact of any baring? The question could just have easly been "so is it true there were green men from mars?" - "I do not have that information"
Why in gods name do people read this mountain of absolute shite on shitstreet?
I agree Tim but found the final sentence disturbing.
Words matter.
Whatever the truth Mensch doesn't care about the victims, she just cares about hits on her shabby website.Not a care that the rumours will be read by families and friends of the victims, adding to their distress. Imagine the needless, horrific deaths and injuries of loved ones being used to score hits on a grubby tabloid website.
It's so badly written, is it being reported as fact or the opinion of one person. If there is any truth of a cover up why aren't Heat Street seeking comment via official channels, other witnesses or even "proper" journalists. No, they just want website hits and to claim to be the first. I liked the man from (I think) the FT at Leveson Enquiry - who said he would rather be right than first.
If you do some research you will find that some witnesses saw people's stomachs being gutted, and many heard screams that sounded like people being tortured.
That is an official enquiry ffs. Yet you still deny. How do a mans balls end up in his mouth ?
This just isn't funny, & past mocking this deluded, self-publist woman - please can someone make her stop?
Imagine your loved one was one of those victims. Bad enough their wounds made hard to identify; but now you have seed sown in your head by crazy lowlife,no evidence, entirely for her own ends,that they suffered torture first.as said, why would all survivors keep shtum?
Sick.
To jaden002.
Can you please list here those "witnesses" you claim, plus links so I can check what you're saying is not just a load of disgusting, opportunist propaganda?
In your own time......
To jadenoo2
Even if true, the feelings, dignity and care of the victims families is paramount. There are ways to seek truth, expose injustices and atrocities, real journalists do it all the time, they seek comment (and permission) from families and their sources. Good journalists don't just translate one page of an inquest and leave it hanging in the air purely to get website hits and then do laps of honour that they were first. Total disregard for the feelings of the very recently bereaved. It's Mensch revelling via other peoples misery, grief and despair that really turns my stomach. There is no sensitivity shown in that Heat Street article towards the victims and their families. That whole article just shouts "look at me, look what I found first" Sickening.
To Anonymous (16 JULY 2016 AT 18:57). Here is your link, you'll need to run it through a translation service. I used Google, which gives choppy results but it's intelligible. Those whose interests were piqued by Jonathan Wilson's dismissal (above) of the 'balls-in-mouth' exchange might like to pay close attention to the context in which those remarks were made: http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/14/rap-enq/r3922-t2.asp
@Anonymous 19:48.
Already read it.
Nowhere does it establish facts of "torture or mutilation." All it does in that respect is record speculation and rumour. Which it has to as a matter of procedure.
NOW......About that list of "witnesses"......Where is it?
Anonymous (17 July 2016 at 20:10) - I think you are muddling me up with someone else. I have never claimed to have a list of witnesses, and you have never made such a request to me. Well, I say "I think," actually I went back and checked and I know it for a fact, as can you. But on the matter of the contents of the report, your claim to have "already read it" (after asking for a link?) sits uncomfortably with your claim that reports of torture and mutilation are 'all speculation and rumour'. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink, and I've provided a link but you'll have to read it for yourself. Oh, sorry, you have already read it haven't you. Where on earth did I get the idea that you hadn't so much as skimmed it...?
@Anonymous 22:40.
Do keep up with common sense. That link was already available to everyone and read accordingly. You provided no new link.
Hence no evidence. Hence you have no case, "witnesses" or no "witnesses."
But why do I get the idea this scarcely matters to you as a propagandist?......Why, from your own vacuity, that's where.
Next.
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