Officer stabbed at UK Parliament; report of car rampage

Jihadi terrorist offences were unknown in Britain until the disastrous and illegal war in Iraq.

Basic law of cause and effect.

The man police say was responsible for the Westminster attack has been formally identified as 52-year-old Khalid Masood.

He is believed to have had at least three children.

The Metropolitan Police says he was born as Adrian Russell Ajao - but the story appears to be more confusing still, because of a string of alternative names or aliases he used.

He was entered onto the birth registry in the Dartford district of Kent as Adrian Russell Elms, in the weeks after he was born on Christmas Day 1964.
Masood's first conviction came when he was 18 years old, in November 1983, for criminal damage.

In 2000, when he was living in Northiam in East Sussex, the then Adrian Elms was jailed for two years after admitting attacking a man with a knife following a row in a pub.
He lost his temper with Piers Mott, with the local press reporting that Elms slashed him on his face, leaving an 8cm gash on his left cheek.

Mr Mott has since died, but his widow Heather recalled the incident and said: "My husband was defending someone who was working for him.

"I don't know how it happened. Piers was just defending this guy."

The trial heard that Elms had reacted to racist provocation and had been ostracised in his village.

In 2003 - after leaving prison and moving to Eastbourne - he was back in court.

He was convicted of possession of a knife, after being initially charged with stabbing a 22-year-old man. He was then returned to prison for another six months.

In total, he was held at three different jails - HMP Lewes, Waylands, and Ford.
Masood has never been convicted of a terrorism offence and the prime minister told Parliament he had not been subject of any current investigations.

However, Mrs May added that "some years ago" he was "once investigated in relation to concerns about violent extremism".

She went on: "He was a peripheral figure [in that investigation]. The case is historic - he was not part of the current intelligence picture. There was no prior intelligence of his intent - or of the plot."

We don't know at this stage what that particular investigation was and how he was connected to it.

Here are just some of the possibilities of what that could mean:
◾He was an associate or friend of a main suspect who was being monitored in some form - but turned out, at the time, to not apparently have any extremist leanings
◾He could have been closer to an inner circle of aspiring extremists - but he personally was not considered to be a risk and so the operation was focused on others
◾There could have been more concerning intelligence about his ideology and intent - but there was nothing that could make a criminal charge - and in time he was discounted as a serious threat
◾He could, at the highest end, have been arrested in the past as part of an operation and later released without charge.

Judging by his name, he is not of Middle Eastern heritage at all. He seems to be an average Brit who converted to radical Islam.

Jihadism was a convenient vehicle for his frustrations and desire to be noticed.
He was an arsehole long before he'd even heard of Islam.

Corporate media are quick to claim that ISIS is to blame.

It was an arsehole acting on his own, end of. ISIS couldn't organise anything right now.

That is, home-grown.

Not as quick as IS.
It was an arsehole acting on his own, end of. ISIS couldn't organise anything right now.

The July 2005 Tube & bus bombings were correctly termed, not Britain's 9/11, but rather Britain's Columbine. That is, home-grown.

Agreed, and the whole "war on terror" propaganda campaign in the corporate media is equally to blame.