Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Miriam Hyman Collateral Damage?


Another extremely thoughtful and well argued piece from the inimitable Martin Roberts.



Miriam Hyman Collateral Damage?

By Dr Martin Roberts
19 August 2015


Death and the maiden

The story of Miriam Hyman’s death on the morning of Thursday July 7, 2005 is reminiscent of the John Ford movie ‘The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance’, insofar as the genuine executioner is not the one the audience are led to believe did the deed.

Miriam is understood to have been one of thirteen victims of the explosion aboard a no. 30 bus in London’s Tavistock square that occurred at 9.47 a.m. on the morning in question. Her parents realised she was missing and unaccounted for later that day and, in the course of their distress, proceeded to give interviews to the media, who reported as follows:
(John Hyman): "She certainly wasn't injured on the Underground because I spoke to her and at that time she was with a crowd of people evacuated from trains on the pavement outside King's Cross station. The only other possibility, apart from a road accident, is if she was on the bus that was blown up. The reason we think that is unlikely is because it wouldn't make sense for her to take that route. And I was speaking to her about that time and her office ‘phoned her at about 10 a.m., which was about 10 minutes after the explosion to say 'don't come in'. We think maybe she has gone into shock. Her mobile is off. She could have walked away from her handbag in shock. I think she's still in the Greater London area because when I checked yesterday afternoon her car was still in the local station car park." (The Independent, 10 July 2005).
The article continues:
"We would be gibbering wrecks if it weren't for those two ‘phone calls which give us a lot of hope.”
Likewise the International Herald Tribune (11 July 2005) reported:
‘John Hyman, whose 32-year-old daughter, Miriam, is missing, knows a few things for certain: She was not wounded when she left the Underground. She was not on the bus because the bus exploded at about the time he was on the ‘phone with her. Soon after, she called her workplace, and was told not to bother to come in. That was at 10 a.m., after the attacks, he said.

‘"I don't see how she could have got into the bus that exploded," he said. "And the route makes no sense, whether she's going to work or home." Her cellphone goes unanswered. Hyman's friends have papered the town with her image and raced to hospitals.’Miriam’s mother Mavis was quoted to similar effect by the Jewish Journal of 14 July:

‘Other Jewish families face an agonizing wait. Miriam Hyman, 32, a freelance photo editor, called her father, John, from King’s Cross Station at 9:45 a.m. Thursday to say she was all right. That was the last anyone has heard from her. After a fruitless search of London’s hospitals, “we are just waiting,” Hyman’s mother, Mavis, told JTA. ‘She ‘phoned work to say she was going to be late, she was still obviously determined to get in. I think she didn’t understand the seriousness of what was going on.’

‘Something Jewish’ picked up on corroboration given to the Sun Newspaper earlier by Miriam’s sister Esther. They (SJ) posted (11 July 2005):

‘Speaking to the Sun newspaper, her sister Esther said: "Something is stopping her answering the ‘phone or contacting us. It’s so scary because my dad spoke to her as soon as he heard about the bombs. She told him she was sitting on the pavement outside King’s Cross after her train had been evacuated at the station. We have heard nothing since and are frantic.”’


Matters arising

The first detail to bring attention to here is this observation on the part of John Hyman:
“The only other possibility, apart from a road accident, is if she was on the bus that was blown up. The reason we think that is unlikely is because it wouldn't make sense for her to take that route. And I was speaking to her about that time.”

Discounting any road accident (there were none involving pedestrian fatalities that day), Miriam was thought unlikely to have caught the doomed no. 30 bus anywhere near Euston Station for two reasons. First, her intended destination lay in the opposite direction, and second, she had only just concluded a ‘phone conversation with her father while outside King’s Cross (the bus had already left from Euston approximately half-a-mile away).

Things get more puzzling from here on in.
Esther Hyman: “It’s so scary because my dad spoke to her as soon as he heard about the bombs.”
Implying that Miriam’s anxious father rang to speak to her, as one might reasonably expect.

The Jewish Journal, however, would have it that: ‘Miriam Hyman, 32, a freelance photo editor, called her father, John, from King’s Cross Station at 9:45 a.m. Thursday to say she was all right. From her mother Mavis we learn “That was the last anyone has heard from her.”

Not, perhaps, a significant contradiction, but then there are others, which, given a common family origin for the story, are perplexing.

John Hyman (quoted in the Independent):
“And I was speaking to her about that time and her office ‘phoned her at about 10 a.m., which was about 10 minutes after the explosion to say 'don't come in.'”
Whereas the Herald Tribune’s report of Miriam’s conversation with her father proceeds:
‘soon after, she called her workplace, and was told not to bother to come in. That was at 10 a.m., after the attacks, he said.’
This was apparently echoed by Miriam’s mother in the Jewish Journal:

“Hyman’s mother, Mavis, told JTA.  
‘She ‘phoned work to say she was going to be late, she was still obviously determined to get in.”
Again, the directionality of the call might be considered of less importance than the fact of its occurrence. However, the one speaks to the other, metaphorically as well as literally, particularly in light of John Hyman’s remark:
"We would be gibbering wrecks if it weren't for those two ‘phone calls which give us a lot of hope.”
Irrespective of who dialled whom, once John Hyman’s conversation with his daughter was concluded and Miriam went on to speak to her colleague(s) at work (at 10.00 a.m. or thereabouts), how did either John or Mavis Hyman come to learn of that all-too-significant second call, given Esther’s statement that they had had no word of Miriam since the initial (9.45 a.m.) conversation (“She told him she was sitting on the pavement outside King’s Cross…..We have heard nothing since and are frantic.”’)?

‘“We are just waiting,” Hyman’s mother, Mavis, told JTA.’

That remark was published on 14 July, by which time, according to journalists Becky Barrow and Amy Iggulden (“Families receive the news that destroys all hope”), the Hymans had already been advised (13 July) of their daughter’s death (The Telegraph, 14 July 2005). In point of fact they knew by the 11th, as reported by the Jewish Chronicle Online (29.4.2010) and by Esther Hyman personally in an on-line video posted by the Guardian (6.5.2011) wherein she states: “So, we waited until the Monday and our family liaison officer came here and explained to my parents that ‘Mim’ had been identified by her dental records.”

All of which makes the appearance of Mavis Hyman’s ‘we are waiting‘ statement in the Jewish Journal afterwards rather difficult to understand.

The question as to how any of Miriam Hyman’s relatives could have been appraised of any subsequent cell ‘phone call of hers, whether to or from her place of work, remains unresolved however. It is a ‘phone call of the utmost significance, and not just because any such conversation at 10.00 a.m. that morning would rule Miriam out completely as having been a passenger aboard the devastated no. 30 bus.

In actual fact, the significance attaching to the ‘phone call between Miriam Hyman and her office does not reside in the ‘phone call per se, but in her work‘s location – Canary Wharf.



Trouble in the East-end 

Mid-morning on 7 July saw a solitary Radio Five broadcast recounting news of a shooting carried out by security services at Canary Wharf. The announcement was never repeated, although various news outlets worldwide carried the story.

Miriam Hyman has been accepted as dead since July 7, 2005. As far as her father was concerned, at least initially, “the only other possibility, apart from a road accident, is if she was on the bus that was blown up.“

There were only five fatal incidents in London that day – no reported suicides, no road traffic accidents of the ‘person in collision with a road vehicle’ variety; nothing except the four bombs detonated on London Transport and an unspecified shooting at Canary Wharf, Miriam Hyman’s declared destination.

The first three events can be discounted on the grounds that Miriam was safely evacuated from King’s Cross after they had occurred.

That leaves only two feasible explanations for Miriam’s death that Thursday:

Either she died aboard a bus which, according to her own father’s account, she could not have caught, or she was shot at Canary Wharf.

There are no other possibilities.

And now we may begin to appreciate the true significance of Miriam’s telephone dialogue(s) that morning.

The first, at 9.45 a.m., compromises the idea that she may have boarded the no. 30 bus. Rachael Bletchly of the Mirror (4 July, 2015) remains convinced however:
“Ten years ago on Tuesday, the 31-year-old picture researcher rang dad John to say that she had been evacuated from King’s Cross tube station in London and not to worry as she would get a bus to work.”
Given her declared determination to get to work, there was no reason, in principle, why she should not have done so eventually, at least in time to meet a lunchtime appointment she is also understood to have made. Nevertheless, since she has been declared dead as of the Thursday morning we know she could not have arrived, either at her office desk or for lunch.

Not only must we ask ourselves how the Hymans might have known about their daughter’s second crucial ‘phone call that morning (which did not involve either of them), but we should also question what purpose it may have served as far as they were concerned, given Miriam’s earlier personal assurance that she was safe and well.

The key detail of the alleged conversation is that Miriam was advised not to continue on to work (at Canary Wharf). The Hymans (and anyone else) might then reasonably suppose, at least initially, that if she didn’t arrive at her office that day it was because she had been told not to bother.

(This state of affairs is a dark and subtle reflection of the McCanns’ various references to their daughter’s en passant remarks, whereby they manage indirectly to suggest that she was alive when she made them).

Nick Kollerstrom (author of Terror on the Tube) has researched the events of 7/7 in considerable depth and posted the following comment on an internet forum discussing the case:
“From King’s Cross, one gets to Canary Wharf by bus travelling Eastbound, by taking the 30 bus half way then changing. There is no way you would walk back to Euston, which is in the opposite direction, to get the no. 30 bus, which by the way left Euston station before she rang her Father at 09.45 – when she said she was at King’s Cross. So, one must agree with what the Father was quoted as saying, about his daughter’s fate. When I spoke to him (today, a second time) he denied having said this, and said he had been misreported.

“Speaking to her father, on the ‘phone, he confirmed that she had rung him at 09.45, however he denied that she had rung her place of work at ten o’clock. He is convinced she was dead by then.”
That makes three people (John, Mavis and Esther Hyman) all separately misreported by at least three different media outlets.

So what, exactly, has John Hyman retracted? His doubts about Miriam’s having boarded the no. 30 bus, obviously, as well as his daughter’s conversation with colleague(s) at Canary Wharf, about which he couldn’t have known in the first place – except he did. That was prior to his acceptance of the ‘official line’, which then made the office ‘phone call story (as an explanation for Miriam’s non-arrival at work) redundant. The bus bomb was ultimately considered to have taken care of that.

One cannot but feel sympathy for any truly grieving parent, and I have no wish to impugn the Hyman family. However, in the light of what appear to be something other than trivial contradictions on their part, together with the lack of any categorical confirmation by them of exactly what they knew and when they knew it, there are genuine grounds for suspecting their daughter Miriam did not fall victim to a bomb at Tavistock Square, but to a bullet at Canary Wharf, and that her 10.00 a.m. ‘phone call to work was a ‘storyline’, fed to the Hymans, so as to defer further inquiry until such time as a more appropriate location for their daughter’s demise could be decided upon. Either that, or (heaven forfend) it was a storyline constructed by the Hymans.


Stereotypes

Nick Kollerstrom again:
‘On 10th July 2005 the Observer reported that “Police have put a tracking device on Miriam’s ‘phone so that if it is activated they will be able to find her.”‘
Whereabouts in relation to Miriam’s body was her ‘cell phone eventually found? It was clearly functional after the bombings that morning or the Police couldn’t have downloaded a tracker ‘app’ onto it; something there would scarcely have been any call for beforehand. The answer – it was never reported as having been found. That is not to say of course that it was never actually found.

Miriam’s mother Mavis is Indian, born in Kolkata. Miriam was therefore of mixed race (Jewish-Asian), and exhibited traits of each. Being an artist/picture editor, and based professionally at Canary Wharf, might she perhaps have been carrying a camera, a lap-top computer bag or portfolio case, and did these various characteristics conspire to appear suspicious when viewed through a telescopic gun-sight?

Answers to these several questions are provided by the Jewish Chronicle Online (29 April, 2010) in commenting upon the belated inquest into the many deaths, five years previously, on 7/7. Albeit lengthy, the following passage from the Jewish Chronicle is richly informative:
“The family of Miriam Hyman, who died in the 7/7 terror attack, was forced to wait four days to be officially told of her death, even though identification documents were found on her body.

“In the High Court this week, lawyers acting for the Hyman family and that of Israeli Anat Rosenberg, who was also killed by the Tavistock Square bus bomb in July 2005, urged the coroner to resume the inquests and investigate whether the security services failed to act upon information known about the bombers before the attack.

“The hearing heard that many families had suffered long delays in being informed of the deaths. One had to wait 11 days.

“Counsel Janine Sheff told the court that relatives of Ms Hyman, a 32-year-old picture researcher from Hampstead Garden Suburb, had to wait "four agonising days" to be told she was among the 52 victims.

“Ms Sheff said: "She was found with her bag strapped to her, with numerous documents with her ID on her."

“She added that the parents of Ms Hyman were unable to travel to London and search hospitals, instead relying on her friends, who were told the police had no information.

“Ms Sheff said: "So troubled were they from the lack of information from the police - who said they had to live with that lack of knowledge - that they sought a [bomb] survivor to help them understand what happened."

“Ms Hyman's mother, Mavis, said: "Those four days of no news were unquestionably the most horrendous of my life. Nobody had any suggestion as to what had happened. Her family and friends couldn't just sit still and we spoke to the media and survivors to try to get any information we could.

"The police were not helpful and gave us little information. We would have appreciated knowing about the identification found."
Indeed.

Note how "She was found with her bag strapped to her, with numerous documents with her ID on her."

Whether taken in or out of context, this is an altogether extraordinary turn of phrase, no doubt originating with the person(s) who actually ‘found’ Miriam in the first place.

Miriam is not described as having ‘a bag over her shoulder’ nor, however unlikely, ‘wearing a rucksack or back-pack.’ Instead her bag is ‘strapped to her’, conjuring up images elsewhere of an explosive waistcoat. To which we are invited to add ‘numerous documents with her ID.’ Well it was London, so I suppose even a pedestrian might be expected carry one or two means of identification – but numerous examples?

All we have to do here is bring forward the conventional wisdom of the day (that suicide bombers were wont to deposit evidence of their identity at the scene of their martydom, as Mohammed Sidique Khan is posthumously accused of having done at two locations on the London Underground, despite being credited with only one bomb) and we have the Blair government blueprint for a long-haired, dark-skinned terrorist.

And yet there was no mobile ‘phone, nor any information of immediate interest to the parents for four whole days?

Miriam may well have been found with ‘her bag strapped to her body,’ but where exactly was her body at the time?

It gets murkier.


Distortions in Space-Time

This from Esther Addley of the Guardian (6.5.2011):
“At around 9.45am one sunny morning in July 2005, John Hyman took a call from his daughter Miriam. There had been some sort of problem at King's Cross, she said, and she had been evacuated from the tube. She was fine, though, and he wasn't to worry. Her father suggested she find a coffee shop and wait until things calmed down.

“In the hours and days that followed the terrorist attacks on London, the Hyman family clung to that phone call like a lifebuoy, desperately telling themselves the call had come after 9.49am, the moment when 18-year-old Hasib Hussain blew himself up on the upper deck of a number 30 bus to Hackney.

“Four days later, after touring the capital's hospitals, putting up posters and making appeals via the media, they were at last told by a police family liaison officer that Miriam had been identified by her dental records. She had been sitting directly in front of Hussain at the moment of explosion, and was blown from the bus and on to the pavement, where she died very shortly afterwards.”
We ought here to interpolate another statement by Esther Hyman, again recorded within the Guardian video of the same date, which specifies even more precisely the location of Miriam’s corpse, an observation shortly to assume particular significance:

“She was thrown from the bus onto the pavement directly outside the entrance of the BMA building.”

Notice how this Guardian article allocates Miriam two additional minutes in which to catch the no. 30 bus, how the police somehow knew whose dental records to track down (presumably from the ID they were decidedly reluctant to reveal to the parents), and exactly where this lady was sitting in relation to other passengers on board the bus. (Reported at the inquest to have had an inboard seat, she is nevertheless catapulted onto the nearside pavement).

It doesn’t end there. The Guardian continues:
“The Hyman family made an even more striking discovery. They had been contacted, two years after the bombings, by Clive Featherstone, who had been working in Tavistock Square when the bomb went off, and who had held Miriam's hand in her final moments. "At first we didn't get back in touch with him … [But] since then we've become very close with him."

“It was only during the inquest process that they discovered the existence of another man, a passer-by called Richard Collins, who had gone to Miriam's side after Featherstone had been told to move along by a policeman. Initially they thought he must have been mistaken and confused Miriam with another victim, but no. "Richard told us afterwards: 'I would have felt a bit silly if it had turned out not to be Miriam, as I actually had her initials tattooed on my chest.' It's his only tattoo but it turned out that he had been so moved that he had this indelible mark put on himself. We find that exceptional."*
The Hymans thought at first that Richard Collins had been mistaken, yet he had sufficient confidence in his identification of their daughter as to have her initials tattooed on his chest afterwards. Thus confirmation of Miriam Hyman’s last moments becomes a pre-requisite for validation of Collins’ tattoo! We are not told the basis for Clive Featherstone’s identification of her.

Featherstone and Collins’ displayed their separate acts of sympathy toward the same young lady, whom counsel at the inquest would make every effort to identify as Miriam Hyman. There were however several dark-skinned female victims aboard the no. 30 bus, two of whom are known to have taken their last breaths at the roadside. Neetu Jain was 37 years old and originally from Delhi. Gladys Wundowa was black. Both are said to have been occupying nearside window seats.

In March 2006 Michelle Du-Feu, a doctor, described having treated a middle-aged Middle-Eastern or Asian-looking woman lying on the road at the rear of the bus. At the Inquest in January 2011 she said that when shown a photograph of Miriam Hyman a year earlier she had become confused, “because things obviously weren’t how I had remembered them.“

Despite attempts by lead counsel Hugo Keith to get Dr Du-Feu to admit she had treated Miriam Hyman, she did not do so. Ms. Gallagher, counsel for the Hyman family acknowledged that Dr. Du-Feu was thus “not so sure” to have treated and seen Miriam.

A Dr Michael David Peters, who was also invited to testify at the Inquest, said that when he came out from the BMA building he saw a torso:
“There was a sort of mass of sort of tissue, red, about one metre by a metre there. And then, on the other side, to the left as I was looking from the square in, there was a body of, I think, a black woman who was wearing a dress. The body seemed to be swollen, motionless, and I presumed she was dead.“ 
Although Hugo Keith once again tried to convince Dr. Peters that he may actually have seen Miriam Hyman, Peters insisted the woman he saw was black.

Hence two critically injured females were immediately attended in the road (or on the pavement), one of them Asian. Yet neither was identifiable as Miriam Hyman. According to ‘the Mirror’ (20.1.2011) Clive Featherstone described at the Inquest how Miriam “kind of moved to try and lift herself up or towards me” as he knelt beside her. However, the first thing Dr Peters noticed on exiting the BMA building was a torso. If this were Miriam’s body, which, according to her sister Esther, had landed in that very entrance, then she would have been killed instantaneously and there could have been no attempted movement whatsoever.

When asked about an earlier statement he had made concerning the absence of Miriam’s left leg, Richard Collins replied:
From the knee down, halfway across the knee down”. Loss of the lower half of one lower limb does not represent a ‘torso’.
Unless, therefore, an additional female body is known to have been lying in the immediate vicinity, then there are few grounds for believing Miriam was ever there, especially given the death also of Shahara Islam, another Asian female on board the no. 30 bus, positioned originally, it is supposed, among the group of seats directly across the aisle from the exploding bomb.


The eyes have it

Bearing in mind that Featherstone and Collins each claimed to have comforted the same individual, it is worth recording their respective observations regarding her facial appearance, especially as they were complete strangers to each other.

First Featherstone:
“I noticed that she had these little polystyrene balls in her eyes, which apparently later I heard was from the padding of the seats.”
And now Collins:
“Looking at my witness statement, I recalled that her eyes were green, if that is the case. So obviously, I was looking in her eyes, but I don't recall any polystyrene balls.”
Miriam Hyman’s eyes were unquestionably hazel brown, as one might expect of a lady of Asian extraction. Extraordinarily however, the eyes of 20 year old Shahara Islam, herself a victim from the rear of the upper deck, were considerably paler, and might easily have been taken for green. (See: HuffPo (Or below Ed)


Both Featherstone and Collins comforted the same badly injured, green-eyed lady, not an incomplete corpse. That lady was clearly not Miriam Hyman, and Richard Collins’ subsequent tattoo does not make it so. The inquest account of the state in which Miriam was found does not include mention of where, nor does it lead one to suppose that her body was other than intact, despite Esther Hyman’s announcement of her sister’s last known whereabouts in death, and what that would necessarily imply.

As http://aldeilis.net/bpb/london/ further informs us:
“According to the Daily Star, inquests were opened on 13 July 2005 into the deaths of Miriam Hyman and others. No family members, however, were invited to attend the hearing which was held at St Pancras coroner’s court. It has not been explained why no family members were invited to attend. Dr. Reid then adjourned the inquests until after the end of police investigations.“
Miriam Hyman is said, conventionally almost, to have died aboard a no. 30 bus, in a misguided attempt to reach her place of work at Canary Wharf. Her name is after all included on a wall plaque placed in memory of the Tavistock Square victims. It is a bus she could not have caught, unless of course one subscribes to the Times Group account of 28 December 2005, which renders the father‘s contention false from start to finish:
“Miriam Hyman, 32, a freelance picture researcher was travelling to work, but was told by her agency not to bother coming in. Amid the chaos, she was evacuated from the Tube train she was travelling on at King's Cross. She walked to Tavistock Square, from where she rang her parents to let them know she was alright. She then alighted the doomed number 30 bus.”
John Hyman’s story is indeed questionable, especially the part where he describes a later ‘phone call he could have known nothing about unless informed of it by someone else. Miriam could have walked to Tavistock Square, where, according to the Times, she actually got off the ‘doomed no. 30’ bus, rather than on it.

Such verbal carelessness however hardly inspires confidence in the content of the report, or the belief that John Hyman’s own twice confirmed account was significantly incorrect.

That being the case there is only one place Miriam Hyman could have died that morning, and it would not have been as the result of any random act of terrorism.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair has publicly lamented the deaths of British soldiers sent to fight in Iraq, as well as the many hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women and children, who also perished as a direct result of the West’s unprovoked ‘War on Terror‘. It is tempting to speculate that his dogmatic refusal to authorize a public inquiry into the London bombings of 7/7 stemmed, at least in part, from his being unprepared to countenance the revelation of an innocent British citizen, a Londoner, being shot dead on the streets of their own capital, and by a member of their own security services. The state-sanctioned murder of Jean Charles de Menezes a fortnight later proved difficult enough to handle - and he wasn’t even British.

Dr Martin Roberts



Blair attends 7/7 memorial, full of contrition no doubt.

* Not as much as I find it unbelievable. Ed

24 comments:

Anonymous said...

July 7, 2005

QUESTION: Can you tell me -- the rumors that a police sniper shot dead a suicide bomber at Canary Wharf (ph). Do you know anything about that?

PADDICK: We have no reports of any police sniper shooting at anybody today.

http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0507/07/bn.03.html



July 9, 2005

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10334992


?

Martin Roberts said...

"PADDICK: We have no reports of any police sniper shooting at anybody today."

Note the qualifier.

Compare:

http://z13.invisionfree.com/julyseventh/ar/t374.htm

"Posted on 2005.07.07 at 12:54

"I've just had a text message from Rachel (my little Rae of Sunshine). She's in London as was called in for holiday cover at Mirror Group where she works. She is locked in Canary Wharf Tower. The police have just shot a suicide bomber. She is safe but a bit freaked out."

!

Himself said...

I am just in the process of reading, I was about to pass it on.

More from Maren, as yet unopened.

http://onlyinamericablogging.blogspot.com/2015/06/comments-and-link-dump-new.html

Himself said...

Pray pardon, I tripped myself up with the links.

Just breezing through your link Martin, the thing is massive. And prior to this, totally unknown to me.

Anonymous said...

Martin

I knew of Miriam and the Canary Wharf reports but knew nothing of this. Another profound lesson from you, or a ‘dance of the intellect among words’ (E P). No ‘fandango’ here. Bobby would want to meet you!

I’m so grateful.

Good wishes.

Peace to Miriam, wherever she is.


‘Bobby’ (Fisher) as in ‘Bobby wants to meet me’

Martin Roberts said...

Anonymous @17:03 (20.8)

Hello and thank you for your kind comments.

For me Miriam's death is to 7/7 what WTC7 is to 9/11.

Conventional wisdom cannot account, unequivocally, for Miriam's whereabouts at the time of her death. Why not?

Such being the case, the explanation must reside with 'unconventional wisdom.' (cf.that Sherlock Holmes quote - 'what remains must be the truth').

Kind regards

Martin R.

Anonymous said...

You poor misguided souls. Have you not found anything else to fill your lives with yet? I suggest interacting with a neighbour, doing a small good deed, going for a walk, smelling the flowers, baking bread...

If you weren't so pitiful you would actually be funny. At least you wish Miriam peace.

And you, may you find peace.

Martin Roberts said...

And I suggest, Antony, that you come down from your moral perch and treat others with the same degree of respect that you would wish to receive in return. They might not have your piercing intellect, but then some might consider they were better off without it if all it accomplishes is promotion of an arrogant cynicism as fertilizer for your bitterness.

We can all be judgemental, but the place for lectures is the Open University, not a blog comments section, or, for that matter, unsolicited e-mail (that’s the approach of a double-glazing salesman, not someone with an even-handed attitude toward others).

‘A still tongue keeps a wise head’, so it is said. Errare humanum est is also popular, I believe. Just remember that you too are human.

M.R.

Anonymous said...

"For me Miriam's death is to 7/7 what WTC7 is to 9/11."

I agree.

As an aside, all WTC buildings were destroyed beyond repair on 9/11 and apart from Bankers Trust, which eventually had to be rebuilt after repair, no adjacent buildings were lost.

Thank you for yet another incisive article on these very important topics MR.

A.

Martin Roberts said...

Anonymous @16:47

Hi

Given a regrettably worsening climate of confusion, is there any chance of your adding another initial to 'A' (surname perhaps) so as to disambiguate your identity?

Thanks and regards

Martin R.

Anonymous said...

Sure, Amanda S do?

Sorry. I'll try and remember if I post in future.

Amanda S

Martin Roberts said...

Amanda S @19:27

Thank you!

M.R.

Himself said...

That which is below was posted elsewhere on the blog. It is my pleasure to import it to where it belongs.


Good evening H/MR

Today was just an ordinary day.

I interacted with several fellow human beings, bought my neighbour her groceries (a small good deed), whilst I went for a walk. I also cycled through the woods. After finishing my work at the office, I prepared dinner, interacted with my family and did some housework. Then I worked in the garden until darkness settled on the trees. Naturally, I smelled the flowers since I am surrounded by flowers.

Finally, surfing around the world, I ended up Oop North where I read some interesting blog posts. As the writers have an excellent writing style I feel doubly blessed; I am still trying to improve my English. Utile dulci!

Well, I did not bake bread, I’ll give him that. I’m not really into baking, I love reading though. Can’t have it all.

As you will understand, I have not found anything else to fill my life with yet.

I’m going to bed with a head full of wonderful thoughts, that words cannot describe.

Thank you and good night.

Mx

Himself said...

Anonymous 27 August 2015 at 15:14

You sound very much like a troll. Choosing to do that which is common to all of your ilk, offering no argument of your own to what is writ, but nevertheless choose to attack the writer. (and by proxy, me)

Have you recently become the victim of your own shortcomings regarding this case?

Anonymous said...

Last updated: 2005-07-11

http://www.somethingjewish.co.uk/articles/1523_search_for_miriam.htm

--------------------------

http://aldeilis.net/bpb/london/

Martin Roberts said...

Anonymous @13:50

You're on the money. Both references are either cited or quoted in the above text, but drawing attention to them further does no harm whatsoever.

And isn't that 11 July 'update' interesting?

How sadly coincidental, that on the very day the Hyman family go to press, so to speak, to announce that they are totally bereft of information after four days, the police liaison turn up with tragic confirmation of Miriam's death, which they must have been in a position to ratify from day one, given the numerous documents with ID she is said to have had on her possession.

As you may read for yourself among the comments above, there is one at least who considers it pitiful even to consider such matters. However, death being life's only certainty, there is no such thing as an inexplicable exit, however 'mysterious' it may seem.

If it should be accepted that a certain young lady has died, then so too ought we to be in a position to know why (and I include members of her family in that). And should the answer to that question not be found within four out of only five options, then it can only reside in the one remaining. It's not rocket science after all.

The above-mentioned critic has elsewhere, and in a different context, waxed lyrical about the 'Arrow of Time'. Well, Miriam would have had to be something of an arrow herself to have caught the no. 30 bus on time.

Supposing her father's confirmed account of events to have been truthful, his daughter must have been a world-class athlete to have made the distance between King's Cross and Tavistock Square in under two minutes, much less Euston Station.

Was the father's account accurate? Well he seems to think so - he repeated it to the media often enough!

Thanks for looking in and for your constructive contribution(s)

Kind regards

Martin R.

Himself said...

Anonymous @13:50

Jeebus! what a read, and I'm barely half way through it.

Hard to choose the highlights out of the thing, but these so far.

On July 9, 2005, Andy Hayman, in charge of Scotland Yard’s antiterrorism unit, announced that the four bombs detonated in London contained each less than 4.5 kilograms of explosive material.

The sheer mention of Andy, not me Guv, Hyman brought forth a groan, and as we shall see a little later on, quite justified.

To eliminate incriminating evidence and prevent anyone from observing the operation, the police two weeks later evacuated 70 houses in the area around Alexandra Grove and burned down the “bomb factory”.92

Run that by me again. and burned down the “bomb factory”

As you do. Fuck me!

Lady Justice Hallett added: To argue or find to the contrary would be irrational. It would be to ignore a huge body of evidence from a vast array of sources. Had there been a conspiracy falsely to implicate any of the four in the murder plot, as some have suggested, it would have been of such massive proportions as to be simply unthinkable in a democratic country.[…] Just to state the proposition is to reveal its absurdity.105

Right

"We must speak the truth about terror. Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the 11th; malicious lies that attempt to shift the blame away from the terrorists, themselves, away from the guilty. To inflame ethnic hatred is to advance the cause of terror."
November 10, 2001 - President Bush Speaks to United Nations

Andy Hayman

According to the Associated Press of July 9, 2005, ”there are more than 6,000 [CCTV’s] watching the Underground subway network [in London].”107 Peter Clarke, head of the anti-terrorist branch of the Metropolitan Police told a police conference in London that detectives had seized “more than 5,000 CCTV tapes.”108 According to the Daily Mirror of July 9, 2005 “[f]ilm from every Tube train and station will be examined as well as footage from the 12 main line termini and scores of platform cameras and trains across the British Rail network.”109 Andy Hayman, the Met’s Assistant Commissioner and terrorism co-ordinator, said: „The bombers are all certain to have been caught on many cameras during their journey to and on the Underground. They were not masked so we will end up with very good pictures that will identify them.”110 Hayman thereby revealed that he knew in advance that the alleged bombers had not been masked. He added: „They [the bombers] probably walked away and are still at large and may be preparing to strike again.”111 Yet, in spite of London’s world record, there exists not a single CCTV showing any of the four alleged bombers boarding the trains and bus they allegedly bombed. In 2010 a representative of the Metropolitan Police Services (MPS) admitted at the inquest that „there was no [CCTV] coverage“ of the Underground platforms from where three of the alleged bombers had departed.112

But you can trust Andy, he's a policeman.

The same representative of the MPS also revealed at the inquest, that out of 76 CCTV’s installed at King’s Cross train station, only a single device functioned on July 7 between 8.30am and 8.50am.114

Fancy.

I shall return to the article after I have done my necessaries.

Good link http://aldeilis.net/bpb/london/ (Maren?)

My anti-virus didn't like Somethingjewish.




Anonymous said...

Thank you Martin R. (15:05) for the elaboration. It is very much appreciated.

http://aldeilis.net/bpb/london/

After severe floods or earthquakes, it may indeed be difficult to determine with precision the number of victims. But was there any particular reason why determining the number of fatalities of the bus explosion that occurred in daylight, was so difficult?

I keep on wondering.

Kind regards

13:50

Anonymous said...

Martin, Himself, Maren,

Having not visited this thread for a while, only now do I realise the significance of the "baking bread"! (I had wondered)

There are those who have no recourse other than to stew in the pedagogical mire of what "all right thinking people must see", or it's close relative, "what the sheeple must be made to realise/be protected from". They are the gatekeepers of "proper thinking", or else they are those who would "drag us out of the cave".

Happily, there are also people generous enough to share the fruits of their own research for free consideration and for debate; the assumption being that people do not require shepherding and that the gravity of their own lives, and their own learning, are worthy of such respect . Markedly, we share the desire for knowledge, as opposed to repetitive dogma.

(Apologies to the sea shepherds in the above!)

Of course Martin, you are of the "Happily" variety!

Warmest regards to all,

Agnos

Himself said...

They are the gatekeepers of "proper thinking"

Hard not to attach the gatekeeper tag to those, who in spite of some great past writings, advocate Operation Grange as a bona fide investigation.

Extremely hard.

Harder than smelling flowers even.

Amongst all the bullshit that is.

Martin Roberts said...

Agnos @11:32

Hello, and thanks for looking in.

The internet having placed the equivalent of a University library in each of our living rooms (bedrooms or laps even), are we now to be discouraged from reading its contents, failing others' approval of our powers of reasoning?

Not on your life! You, me, and countless others, have bought the right to a library ticket many times over.

Human behaviour is not an instance of the 'Entscheidungsproblem'. If events should appear puzzling it is often because the true explanation has been cordoned off for some reason(as nicely illustrated in the 'Planet of the Apes', for example).

If I ask a question, it is because I am not satisfied I know the answer, and I get seriously annoyed when the persons of whom I ask it respond as though their understanding is a universal 'given'.

It is of course far easier to be dismissive, in the hope of being convincing, than just plain convincing. (Could that be why 'Chilcot's such a long time in coming, I wonder?). In this, as in other areas, I remain to be convinced.

Thanks again for your support.

Kind regards

Martin R.













Anonymous said...

It's no good relying on the MSM to give us anything in the way of real stories. Each one contradicts the other until the story is so riddled with inconsistencies and outright differences the story reported is no story at all. Is that the idea? I don't know what the hidden agenda is but this I know. Newspaper reports are BS ...................I DON'T believe a word of them.

Anonymous said...

"Still, it's hard not to feel a little disbelief at some of the day's chance occurrences: the bus bomb that exploded outside the British Medical Association, for example, or the scene at the helipad on top of the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, the headquarters of the air ambulance service, where large numbers of current and former helicopter-trained doctors and paramedics happened to be gathering for a study day."

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2005/jul/21/attackonlondon.terrorism2

Himself said...

London Terror Drill – Bombs in Brussels
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?p=130850

Former Israeli Intel Operatives Run Security at Brussels Airport
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?p=130781

Umar Abdulmutallab

Underpants Bomber More FBI/CIA Entrapment?
http://onlyinamericablogging.blogspot.com/2012/02/underpats-bomber-more-fbicia-entrapment.html

Department of Fear: Must Try Harder
http://onlyinamericablogging.blogspot.com/2012/05/department-of-fear-must-try-harder.html