The BBC’s reaction to the shootings in Germany by Ali Sonboly is fascinating….they absolutely avoided any mention of early reports that suggested an Islamic angle to the killings but did publish reports that he shouted he was German and that he also shouted racist abuse…failing to tell people of the context and that he wasn’t shouting racist abuse against foreigners….the BBC immediately going for the interpretation that this could be a Far Right attack.
Now it seems that the BBC is being rather circumspect when it comes to reporting his name….downplaying the fact that he is called ‘Ali’…even though pupils at his school called him that. The BBC has history here as it frequently alters the names of Muslims to engender sympathy or to avoid links to Islam and radicalism.
The BBC’s pro-Hamas Jon Donnison changed the name of his Palestinian friend and colleague when a Hamas rocket fell short and killed his son [Donnison and Co reported falsely that it was an Israeli bomb], changing it from Jihad to Jehad in the hope the readers wouldn’t think the worse.
Then we Alyan Kurdi, the young boy drowned in the Med. The BBC changed his name to ‘Alan’, not a bad name but it wasn’t the boy’s. The BBC wanted desperately to make him seen less foreign so that people would connect more to him and thence other immigrants in a similar plight and so disrespectfully changed his name in an act of political propaganda intended to make people scared to criticise open borders in case they seemed heartless or racist.
Alan was not the boy’s name, Alyan was…a fine Arab name …
Meaning of Alyan
Alyan is an indirect Quranic name for boys that means “one who climbs upwards”, “one who ascends”, figuratively meaning “high”, “supreme”, “exalted”, “great”. Alyan is an ancient Arabic name used since before Islam. It is derived from the AIN-L-A root which is also the root for the common name Ali.
Utterly different to the Celtic, or is it French, name Alan.
The BBC now reports the Munich killer as ‘David Sonboly’ more often than not, missing out his name ‘Ali’ for some reason…
Munich shooting: David Sonboly ‘planned attack for year’
They do later admit he was also called ‘Ali’ but relegate it to his middlename…
David Ali Sonboly
Ahhh…Breitbart says the addition of ‘Ali’ was in response to its own story on this subject.
UPDATE 1520 EST: The BBC has now edited it’s article to add in the name “Ali” following Breitbart News’s expose. READ MORE HERE
The Telegraph calls him Ali Sonboly and when referring to his full name uses this…
Ali David Sonboly
Just why did the BBC swap his names around?
Even the Guardian calls him Ali Sonboly….
On Saturday we had the ever more hopeless Frank Gardner, supposedly the BBC’s expert on security issues. On the Today programme he gave us his analysis of the Munich shootings telling us that as the killer was an Iranian [so possibly Shia] there was almost certainly no chance that he was with the Sunni Islamic State. He made no mention that a witness reported him shouting Allah Akbar nor that the Islamic State were praising the killings on social media.
As for the killer being Iranian and therefore not at all likely to be in ISIS…The Iranian population is around 20% Sunni….who are pretty well persecuted by their Shia rulers….and therefore one could surmise that the boy just might be from Iranian Sunni refugees. It’s a possibility that Gardner just didn’t bother to consider as he determinedly tried to scrub out any perceptions that this may be a terrorist event telling us that there were no religious or political overtones [remember this was long before we had an official German briefing on their conclusions] and that there was no IS connection and that the boy clearly held a grudge, was probably mentally disturbed and this was more like the US than IS.
This was Gardner jumping to conclusions very early on, conclusions based as much on wishful thinking as much as fact and is pretty much the narrative that the BBC churns out every time we have an attack that looks like it may have an Islamic link. Remember Nice? No links to the Islamic State and a lone wolf who was mentally unstable and had become an instant Jihadi, quickly self-radicalised? Turns out he has links to IS and had planned the attack for over a year with several likeminded fellows. The BBC got lucky this time in Munich, their default narrative turned out to be true, but that doesn’t hide the fact that they failed to report all the claims which were just as credible as the ones the BBC did choose to report and that they now seek to scrub Islam from the killer’s name.
The BBC is possibly not the worst offender here though. It started off with overheated claims of links to Breivik and added in long sections on Breivik and his crimes for good measure…turns out they were wrong….the killer was obsessed with mass murder not Breivik’s politics…and why would an Iranian, Muslim, son of immigrants, take up with someone who was against Muslims and immigrants?
The gunman who killed nine people in Munich was obsessed with mass shootings and had an obvious link to Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, German police say.
Police who searched the 18-year-old’s room say they found written material on attacks.
Police had not found the manifesto of Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik when they searched the gunman’s room at his parents’ flat.
A day earlier, officials had raised the possibility of a link to Breivik, whose own attack was carried out five years earlier to the day.
However, there was no evidence of any political motivation.
Odd how keen the BBC were to publicise those ‘possibilities’ of a link to Breivik and yet didn’t report ‘possible’ links to ISIS.
The Mirror manages both…
Who’s to blame for Munich shopping centre massacre? ISIS gloat online but right-wing extremists also suspected
Some German news outlets have claimed right-wing nationalists are behind the incident while others have pointed the finger at Islamic State after a witness claimed the killer shouted “Allahu Akbar”.
Supporters of the Islamic State militant group have been celebrating the attack on social media.
“Thank God, may God bring prosperity to our Islamic State men,” read one tweet in Arabic on an account that regularly favours the radical Islamist movement.
A witness to the horror also claims the gunman shouted “Allahu Akbar” – God is Greatest – as he opened fire after bursting out of a McDonald’s toilet.
Even the Times of India notes a possible IS link…
Islamic State supporters hail deadly Munich shooting on social media
Not sure how the BBC managed to miss all that.
The Telegraph is possibly worse though as it links the Munich killings not only to the Far Right as a whole but to nationalist groups as well…which can range from the mild UKIP to the SNP and the BNP and on…..
Munich shooting: link to Anders Breivik is reminder of rising tide of far Right anger
Nationalist and far-Right groups are enjoying a surge in support across Europe, propelled by the migration crisis, sluggish economic growth and waning confidence in the EU.
And although their ideas have moved into the mainstream, a violent hardcore remains on the fringes responsible for a string of “lone wolf” attacks.
The German police and politicians seemed all too quick to pronounce the killings in Munich as the work of a lone madman and to link it to a right wing mass murderer….any chance they were trying desperately to pull Merkel out the brown smelly stuff?
Here’s what the arrogant and dismissive German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière says about immigration…essentially saying Merkel and Co in their armoured cars, bodyguards and 24 hour protection, don’t give a stuff that the poor old public are open targets on the streets of Germany because of their immigration policies….
SPIEGEL: Was it a mistake to allow so many migrants to enter into Germany last year without knowing who they were?
De Maizière: We were shocked by the murders of the NSU. We have also seen young people commit massacres in schools. Such instances leave you stunned and asking yourself: Is it not possible to recognize this earlier? Can it be prevented? That there are such excesses of violence is, unfortunately, a fact of life. We do everything we can to prevent something like that, but to a certain extent, a society must endure it — as bitter a pill as that may be to swallow.
Surprised the bankrupt Guardian reported this….
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/24/munich-gunman-ali-sonboly-planned-attack-for-more-than-a-year-say-investigators
Perhaps he wasn’t such a ‘lone ‘wolf’ after all.