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Of Death And Conscience

The Obvious

I’m glad we came here, said Parkenstein.  It really makes me feel alive.

Me too, muttered Festy. I love the buzz in this place.

We fell silent again until, after half an hour, Parkenstein nodded to to the barman.  Three pints.

Do you know what? I said.

What?

What?

Wasn’t it a strange decision to put phones in cameras?

No, said Festy.

What else would you put in them?  asked Parkenstein.

Nothing, I said.  They’re phones.  I mean, why not have a combined mobile phone and beard trimmer? Why did nobody think of that?

Because you’d only trim your beard once a day, said Festy, but you could use the camera all the time.  He reached for his pint wearing a smirk of triumph.

You could trim other people’s beards, I countered.  You could shave your legs and eyebrows.  You could cut your hair to the bone.  You could carve messages on your dog.  Anyway I was just giving an example.  There’s other things you could build into a phone.

Such as?

Don’t know.  A vibrator, maybe?

Great idea, said Parkenstein, but you’d have to make it, you know …

Festy was frowning.  Yeah, it would have to be …

Protected?  I offered.

That’s it, agreed Parkenstein. 

Yeah, said Festy.  Protected is good, but it wouldn’t work with a Blackberry.

Or a house phone, added Parkenstein.

I took a good strong slug of my pint and stared at them with contempt.

Typical, I spat.  Always the problems, never the opportunities.

Parkenstein stirred.  I suppose you could always use your phone as a sander, he ventured.

That’s the spirit!  I told him.

Or … Or …  Festy was getting excited.

Yes?  As what, Festy?

He shrugged.  As a hatchet?

Even though a Silverton police officer summarily and brutally executed Andrew, it falls to his family somehow to find the means of bringing him home for burial.

They’re ashamed and embarrassed to be appealing for money, but what can they do?  The cost of bringing Andrew home was gigantic and they can’t afford it.

The funeral Mass will be held in the Church in Saggart on Monday morning at 10am.   If you go to the ceremony, the family are asking that you don’t bring flowers but instead leave a contribution in an envelope to help with their huge costs. 

If you can’t be at the ceremony,  you can still contribute whatever you think is affordable, here :

Account name: Kate Hanlon re Andrew Hanlon Home Fund

Account number; 08376045

Sort code; 93 13 30

Bank; AIB Terenure, Dublin

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All Bock posts on AJ Hanlon HERE

I didn’t realise this when I started out, but I do now, and I’m a bit better at it than I used to be.  I kind of stumbled across the technique, by accident, and to be truthful with you I’m not really all that much better at it.  I just got luckier.

The Fritzl thing was huge, even though I didn’t know it was going to be.  It just caught the zeitgeist at the right moment. It was the same with the Madeleine McCann story.  I had no intention of making a stir.  I was just outraged by the behaviour of the hypocritical media.  I tried to call them a crowd of bastards and people seemed to connect with what I was feeling.  Traffic went crazy.

Leonard Cohen not only won me an award, but increased the visitor numbers even more, which was gratifying.  People all over the world are reading this  review, as Lenny’s concerts come up in their cities.  I have to admit I was hoping that would happen, unlike the previous two stories, but the one I’ve got most fun out of so far is the ridiculous PC World saga which just never seems to end.  What a great joke.  I love it.

The candidate for weirdest of all successful posts has to be Animal Sex Horse Fuck Gay Horse Sex, a post I wrote for fun one night after I came home late and fell through the door drunk.  This post has swept the world.  If I look at my map and if there are little markers in Turkey or Saudi Arabia, there’s a good fifty-fifty bet that the readers in those countries will be looking at Animal Sex Horse Fuck Gay Horse Sex.  Why people in those regions should be so interested in such matters is a mystery to me, but here’s something even weirder: lately, the post has started to sweep the planet. 

Why?

Who knows?  Somebody must have mentioned it in some gigantic pervy world-blog aggregator.

I don’t know, all right?  I don’t fucking know.  I was drunk.

Would you like to know a story I truly hate writing about?

Very well.  It’s the story of AJ Hanlon’s killing.  It’s the story of a young man brutally executed by an Oregon policeman for no good reason.

I guarantee you one thing: the AJ story will not go away until we get to the truth of what was done in Silverton.  Unlike in the past, the local officials in Oregon will not succeed in covering up a killing.

Stories like Andrew Hanlon’s killing are the reason I keep doing this ridiculous thing.  Much to my surprise, I find I can actually make a difference.

I don’t think so.  This statement was dragged out of him, kicking and spitting, and even then he couldn’t bring himself to say categorically that priests had abused children. 

No. 

He had to qualify his apology by saying that the abuse was committed by some priests. 

See?  Some priests. 

These fuckers are incapable of saying a single direct word.

What would have been wrong with Ratzo talking about abuse committed by priests and leaving it at that?  Nothing, that’s what.  Absolutely nothing, but Ratzo had to follow the instinct of his kind and talk about some priests, to diffuse the accusations.  What a miserable, begrudging way to treat rape victims.

Look, Ratzo, we know they weren’t all child-rapists.  We know that some of them were all right, so what’s this some priests shit about?

Stop insulting my intelligence, and maybe I’ll start taking you seriously, you silly old gobshite. 

No.  Wait. Here’s a better idea: stop insulting the intelligence of abuse victims.

How about it, Ratzo?

All Bock posts on AJ Hanlon HERE

The woman in the recording claimed to be a relative of the woman on whose door Andrew had been knocking.  This woman claimed that her relative believed she was being burgled and phoned the police.  She went on to claim that the woman in the house called her husband, who arrived with a friend and chased Andrew away.

After that, two men chased Andrew down the hill, but we don’t know who these two men were.

The woman on the tape stated that the policeman, Gonzales, arrived and intercepted AJ as he ran down the street, that Andrew tripped and that Gonzales opened fire when he tried to get up.

The woman claimed to have heard Gonzales telling Andrew to get down.  Whoever this woman is, she was closely associated with the events that caused Andrew’s death and now she’s in a panic.  Whoever this woman is, she’s knows exactly what happened to poor AJ.

We don’t know who this person is, claiming to be relative of the woman who lives in the house Andrew knocked on, but it’s plain that her account is a subtle distortion of the facts, compiled by somebody very frightened.  It seems to me that the woman in the mysterious recording might be afraid a close friend or relative is in danger of prosecution.

This CD needs to be investigated because the person speaking on it appears to be engaged in an attempt to divert attention from the facts of a cold-blooded killing.

It seems to me that whoever spoke on this recording is hiding some vital facts about Andrew’s death.

The woman is right about this though: Andrew fell down before Gonzales shot him the final time.  He fell down, but it wasn’t because he tripped while running.  Andrew fell down because he had been shot, probably fatally, and without warning.

Gonzales only shouted a warning to Andrew after he was already fatally injured.  When Andrew was lying on the ground, trying to get up, Gonzales then shot him again several times, in the limbs, causing the young rookie policeman who accompanied him to throw up in horror.

Now why would Gonzales do this?  Well, one possible reason is that he knew Andrew was going to die.  He knew that the earlier shots were fatal, and he needed to show that some disabling shots had been fired first.  Therefore, he needed to have some bullet wounds in Andrew’s legs, so he shot the dying kid again, just to get those wounds.

My guess is that he will now try to reverse the chronology and claim to have fired the leg and arm shots first.  He’ll claim that the fatal wounds were inflicted only after Andrew refused to stop.

I’ll remind you again: Andrew Hanlon was shot seven times, and possibly by two different weapons.  His injuries include a bullet hole between the shoulder blades and another in the abdomen.  Who was firing these different guns?

Let me remind you of another thing: the place where Andrew knocked on the door is about five minutes walk from his sister’s house, and not on the other side of town, as some have suggested.  He was in the neighbourhood where he used to live when he first arrived in Silverton.  This was no burglar.

That’s why the CD is important, despite the fact that it attempts to mislead.  One vital fact it confirms is that Andrew didn’t just trip.

We don’t know who Andrew’s pursuers were, but it appears that Andrew met his death at the hands of a number of people.  These people were the policeman, Tony Gonzales, and the unidentified men who flushed Andrew down the hill.

I don’t know who these men were who chased Andrew, nor do I know how they became involved in chasing him, but I do know this: Andrew Hanlon was executed after he knocked at the wrong door.

They exterminated him as they might dispatch an animal, and after they killed him they ran to the back of a nearby building like the cowards they are.  That’s where one of them muttered Got it or Shot it.

Got it. For all that this killing affected these two men, they might as well have been shooting a dog.

I hope the Oregon authorities hold the killers to account for their part in taking the life of this harmless kid.

_________________________

All Bock posts on AJ Hanlon HERE

______________________________________________

I would like to say that I have been reading through your posts with interest and I would like to let you know that AJ’s family have been reading your posts too.

I would like to thank many of you who have openly expressed support and condolences to the family during this extremely difficult and painful time.

There has been a lot of press coverage both here in Ireland and the USA that has been full of speculation and unsubstantiated drivel about family, AJ himself and private lives of the Hanlon / Carroll family. This is causing a lot of pain and difficulty to the family and has no place or relevance in this case. This is something that is being used to sensationalise the story and sell newspapers.

I know this family, I know Dorothea & Justin, I know Melanie, Eamonn Thomas, Andrew James, Mary Kate and Danielle, I also know Andrew’s father Eamonn Hanlon and the extended families on all sides. I know that truth and the background. These kids, most young adults now, are loved and cherished by their family and never would you say that this was a neglected home nor was anyone of the kids abandoned as reported by the gutter press in both countries. I know that anyone that knows this family or has had the opportunity to spend time with this family will know this to be true.

Also I would like to inform all of you of the arrangements for AJ’s funeral.

The Funeral will be held on Monday the 21st of July at 10am in Saggart church, Co Dublin.

Also as per the wishes of the family I would ask that those wishing to attend not bring floral tributes as there will be a facility for contributions towards AJ’s repatriation fund.

This tragic event has put the entire family both immediate and extended at large financial strain as no one expects to lose a son, a brother, a nephew or a friend like this.

Again thank you for your support and a special thank you to Bock for making it possible for comments and views to be aired openly on the unnecessary slaying of this young bright Irish Son.

_______________________

UPDATE

Andrew’s friends set up a memorial site where he was killed. the site contained personal memorabilia, flower arrangements, trinkets,artwork and photos.

The Silverton public works department removed all the objects and destroyed them.

______________________

All Bock posts on AJ Hanlon HERE

I’ve just realised there’s been a general theme of violence here over recent days, and so I thought, why not bring you something utterly violent and at the same time utterly ludicrous?

Have a look at this.  See what you make of it.

That’s right.  It’s a knife, but it isn’t just any old knife.  No indeed.  I wouldn’t like to be stabbed with this knife, though of course, at short notice, I don’t know if I’d like to be stabbed with any knife, but this one in particular holds a special dread for me.

Why?

Well, you see, when the Special Forces assassin stabs you with this weapon, he doesn’t just twist it in the traditional evil villain method any more.  Not at all.

Instead he presses a small button, and guess what happens.

Go on.  Guess.

Yes?  No?  Not sure?

Ok. I’ll tell you.  The knife injects a high-pressure cloud of frozen gas the size of a basketball that instantly turns your heart, lungs, liver, lights, guts, spleen, and kidneys into one solid block of frozen dead person.  It then blows you to bits.

What?

Yup.

Here’s a cutaway picture of the Wasp knife and you can see the little cylinder of gas embedded in the handle.  Clever, eh?

Have a look at this video.

You can see how handy the Wasp knife would be around the kitchen or at barbecues.  Never again worry about cutting that melon in half. 

The manufacturers think this knife will be a great advantage for divers when a shark attacks them, and if they happen to be running cross country in their flippers and facemasks, they can also use it to kill any bears they bump into.  Then, in a moment of pure inspiration, the makers think about it some more, and they realise that it could also be useful for killing human beings.

Here’s the list of people they think  are suitable to have a Wasp knife:

Special Ops Troops (Land or Sea)

Downed Pilots Stranded In Open Water or Remote Forests

S.W.A.T. and Special Police

Security Guards

Got that?

Right.  Now, on reflection, I reckon I can live with the idea of Special Ops having it.  After all, they’re going to kill you one way or another.  And I always had a soft spot for downed pilots.  You couldn’t leave them defenceless.  SWAT and police?  Well, why the hell not?  After all, they’re blowing people away already, as we’ve seen in the last week or so in Silverton, Oregon.

But then we get to security guards and I start to think, Wait a minute!  What the hell is this?  Are you saying that the fat unshaven bastard lounging outside the supermarket in an ill-fitting button-popping shirt is getting a knife that can blow me to bits?  This is considered a suitable weapon for security guards?

What the hell kind of planet do these people live on?  In what demented, violent universe did somebody think it was a good idea to sell such a weapon to security guards?  So I check, and suddenly it all makes sense: there’s the logo.

Why am I not surprised?

While I’m at it, here’s something equally ridiculous.

You’ll remember I wrote extensively about this disgraceful story when the frenzy was at its height.  After behaving like absolute swine, the British press were eventually forced to print front-page apologies to Kate and Gerry McCann for printing lies about them.

Now they’ve been forced to apologise to another of their victims and to pay him £600,000 in compensation.  Robert Murat was vilified and libelled by the papers.  His life was destroyed.  He was turned into a figure of hatred by the media hyenas who trailed him everywhere he went and made his days and nights into a hell.

They imprisoned him in his house and tried to convince the world that he was responsible for Madeleine’s disappearance, when in reality he had nothing whatever to do with it.

All that Robert Murat did was try and help the investigation by translating for the police.  That was when a fool of a reporter from the Sunday Mirror, Lori Campbell, reported Murat to the police because she thought he was creepy.  The thundering idiot.

These are  the kind of cretins who work for the major papers and TV stations.  Talking heads without a brain between them, who trade in suspicion and ignorance to destroy the lives of innocent people.

Scum.

____________________

Previously

Madeleine McCann