Man Who Filmed Terrorists Shooting Paris Cop Says He Regrets Sharing Video - Really? Wonder Why
Although it’s difficult for some to watch beheading videos and other footage of violent attacks, be they "real" or not, we should be glad that footage exists and that it’s been filmed for us to glean a little bit more information. Those who can’t stomach to watch it don’t have to watch it.
In this case, what we see of the shooting of 42-year-old police officer Ahmed Merabet at close range has caused some to ask valid questions about the footage.
The man who shot it, Jordi Mir, now says that he regrets that he uploaded and shared the video to Facebook. I say thank you for doing just that.
Perhaps his sentiments is due to the Merabet family or perhaps the attention that he himself consequently has gotten. However that may be, we hope he doesn’t regret it because the footage shows too much ... or perhaps it doesn’t show enough?
Some already have conclusively deemed this particular part of the Paris attacks to be a "staging." In other words, some believe that the police officer wasn’t really shot. We’ll look at this more below, but there are two questions that need to be asked. First, was the event not intended to be filmed in the first place? With so many cameras and cellphones around, I doubt that anyone would think that it wasn’t going to be filmed, by someone ...anyone.
Second, was Jordi Mir himself somehow part of the staging?
The story from AP begins:
The man whose amateur video of a Paris police officer’s cold-blooded murder shocked the world now regrets sharing the footage online, saying he never expected it to be broadcast so widely.
Engineer Jordi Mir told The Associated Press he posted the video out of fear and a "stupid reflex" fostered by years on social media.
"I was completely panicked," he said in an exclusive interview across from the Parisian boulevard where the officer was shot to death by terrorists Wednesday morning.
The short film immediately became the most arresting image of France’s three-day-long drama, which began with a mass killing at the headquarters of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and ended Friday with the death of four hostages and the three terrorists in two separate shootouts.
"I had to speak to someone," Mir said. "I was alone in my flat. I put the video on Facebook. That was my error."
Mir said he left the video on Facebook for as little as 15 minutes before thinking the better of it and taking it down.
It was too late.
The footage had already been shared across the site and someone uploaded it to YouTube. Less than an hour after Mir removed the video from his page, he was startled to find it playing across his television screen.
In its unedited form, the 42-second film shows two masked gunmen - brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi - as they walk toward a prone police officer, later identified as 42-year-old Ahmed Merabet.
"You want to kill us?" one of the brothers says as he strides toward the wounded officer.
"No, it’s OK, boss," Merabet says, raising his hand in an apparent plea for mercy.
Then he’s shot in the head.
Here is the full video in question. Warning: graphic images (Well, I guess it’s only "graphic" if you take the approach that Ahmed Merabet really was shot:
So how many Hollywood movies have you seen?
Should blood and brains be splattering all over the place? Or have you seen too many movies?
It’s not like when JFK’s head was "opened up" at Dealey Plaza now is it, since the shooters there most likely had sniper rifles. This was an AK47. So how this "should" look, is something that someone with better experience in that area will have to enlighten me about. I don’t think that watermelons is a good comparison to a human head.
The obvious that some have pointed out, is that the shot that supposedly killing 42-year-old police officer Ahmed Merabet, is a miss.
This image is a screenshot one frame prior to the shot being fired.
Observe the angle of the aim.
Below is a screenshot of the frame when the dust cloud appears, ergo the shot has been fired.
As you can see. the impact "dust" cloud is slightly above and in front of the officer on the pavement. (The RGB curves have been adjusted in this image to show the dust cloud a bit better.)
Again, I’ve never seen anybody get shot in the head at point blank range for real so I can’t determine if the head is supposed to "explode" or even if there "should" be a lot of blood at the scene right away. That would depend on where on the body the bullet hit I guess.
Considering the aim, it looks more like he’s been shot in the back, unless the angle of the one shooting the video distorts the perspective.
Perhaps we are seeing the bullet going through the head (or the back) and the dust on the other side is the bullet hitting the pavement or the pressure from the impact from the rifle.
If we look at this footage alone, I think it’s incredibly difficult to determine or verify 100% that this is staged.
I think there are way too many people in the alternative news field that are way too quick to make up their mind about these kinds of events. They "know" right away that it’s a false flag ... and then they get to work on that premise, "proving" it ... sort of.
Personally, I’m not saying that it ISN’T a false flag or a "staging" - it might very well be - and all there are a lot of things pointing in that direction. But for the sake of truth and honesty, I think we should look at all the available material before conclusions.
I think it’s more important to look at how an event like this is going to be used by the establishment, now when everyone in France is holding hands.
There’s three connected but separate parts to the Paris attacks, first we have the shootings inside the Charlie Hedbo offices, then we have the hostage/stand off at Kosher supermarket and then we have this, the shooting of the police officer. All we’re looking at right now is the latter of the three and not anything else. Those will be dealt with at a later time.
In order to prove that this was not a "real" shooting, as some claim, I think it would be more productive to ask some other questions and let some of these questions lead the way.
If Ahmed was not shot, what would be the routine afterwards? Would he have to lie on the street alive until a "clean up crew" arrives? Perhaps everyone who came to do work around the area and those who eventually took away the body was in on it too? Otherwise he would have to lie there breathing until he was declared dead, by someone who obviously also was in on it also. That could very well be. Did any witnesses see any of this? Where is the body now? Have the French authorities shown a body? If Ahmed is a Muslim, is there something in the Islamic customs that prevents viewing of the body, like an open casket - or the equivalent?
All these questions definitely complicate the matter for those staging something like this and it indicates that the clean up crew also will have to be a tight nit group of people who are all ready and willing to keep silent.
In the extension, would Officer Merabet lie to his entire family and agree to never see them again? Or perhaps they part of of the cover up too? Is his brother Malek Merabet, who spoke to the cameras afterwards, in on it too?
These questions could go on and on forever, but they have to be asked, if we are to conclude that this is indeed staged. More evidence would need to be produced that adds to the event that corroborates the staging theory, beyond what the footage in this video shows.
There are logically a LOT of places along the way - from when this officer is shot, all the way up to today - that could reveal more holes in the story. If there was no real victim, someone along the line must have seen something that indicates that something isn’t alright.
...and I’m not talking about this:
BBC spoof web story raises questions about Hebdo videos as this only helps to muddy the waters.
Here is the video report, trying to pose as BBC:
As the AP article continues, they try to tell you how you should feel about the footage. Keep in mind that many haven’t even seen the entire footage and the "miss" has been edited our from most versions.
The video unleashed a worldwide wave of revulsion. British tabloids described it as "shocking" and "sickening." France’s Le Figaro ran a still from the footage on its front page over a caption which read "War." CNN’s Randi Kaye called it "an unforgettable image forever associated with this horrible attack."
The iconic nature of the imagery - rebroadcast again and again - has anguished Merabet’s family. His brother Malek told journalists Saturday: "How dare you take that video and broadcast it? I heard his voice. I recognized him. I saw him get slaughtered and I hear him get slaughtered every day."
Some argue that the video plays a useful role by exposing terrorists’ heartlessness. Mir said that one official told him the video helped galvanize French public opinion.
"For me, the policeman killed, it’s like a war photo," Mir said at one point, comparing it to famed photographer Robert Capa’s controversial picture of a soldier being shot dead during the Spanish Civil War.
The video did help cause an outpouring of support for Merabet and his family, with many adopting the tag "Je Suis Ahmed" - I am Ahmed - as a spin on the solidarity slogan "Je Suis Charlie." As Mir spoke to AP on Saturday, members of the public were still gathering at the site of Merabet’s death to lay flowers and pay respect.
Mir didn’t even know what he was filming at first. Drawn to his window when the sound of gunshots interrupted his emailing, he initially thought there was a bank robbery in progress. When he spotted the rifle-wielding men in black walking down the street, he assumed they were SWAT police going to help a stricken comrade.
"And - horror - they’re not," Mir said.
As police rushed to the scene, Mir downloaded the video to his computer and then to a removable disk, which he handed to officers.
Then, he uploaded the footage to Facebook - and to the world.
Mir, a slight man in his 50s whose parents were refugees from fascist Spain, is still at a loss to explain exactly what pushed him to share the chilling video with his 2,500 Facebook friends.
"There’s no answer," he said. Perhaps a decade of social networking had trained him to share whatever he saw.
"I take a photo - a cat - and I put it on Facebook. It was the same stupid reflex," he said.
Mir wanted Merabet’s family to know he was "very sorry," saying that he had turned down offers to buy the footage and that he wanted media organizations to blur Merabet’s image before running it. But many, he said, just broadcast the unedited footage without permission.
The AP received Mir’s authorization to run the video on condition that it cut the scene of the officer’s death, which is standard AP practice.
Mir said that, if he could do it all again, he would have kept the video off Facebook.
"On Facebook, there’s no confidentiality," he said. "It’s a lesson for me."
Article from: ap.org
As usual, more work on this is needed.
