Jane Standley, Jane Stanley, Richard Porter, BBC World News, Saloman Brothers, 47 WTC7 Stor(e)ys & the number 23

As regular readers will know, The Antagonist doesn't have a huge amount of time for the pursuit of 11/9 truth in the UK as, simply put, 11/9 is an issue to which the American people need to find some solutions. Furthermore, we have far more pressing issues of domestic terrorism in the UK to deal with. However, where 11/9 can be of use to anyone anywhere other than America is as an event that informs and advises, and from which lessons can be learned.

On that basis, here's some thoughts on Richard Porter's (head of BBC World news) considered response to the questions that surround how BBC World News managed to report the collapse of the Saloman Brothers WTC7 building almost half an hour before it happened, complete with rolling footage of the 'collapsed' WTC7 building still standing in the background. Porter quoted, responses follow:

Part of the conspiracy?
Richard Porter
27 Feb 07, 05:12 PM

The 9/11 conspiracy theories are pretty well known by now. The BBC addressed them earlier this month with a documentary, The Conspiracy Files, shown within the UK.

Not true, merely one interpretation of what happened. The programme was under an hour long and a large portion of the programme was dedicated to utter nonsense including looking around Dylan Avery and Jim Fetzer's homes, talking about Dylan Avery's first Radio Shack laptop on which the film Loose Change was born, along with a good unhealthy dose of anti-semitic nonsense to which nobody with any credibility gives any credence, none of which have anything much to do with the events of 11/9, how they happened or who made them happen. The final product is hardly what anyone would call a balanced piece of investigative journalism that 'addressed' alternatives to the official 9/11 conspiracy theory.

Until now, I don't think we've been accused of being part of the conspiracy. But now some websites are using news footage from BBC World on September 11th 2001 to suggest we were actively participating in some sort of attempt to manipulate the audience. As a result, we're now getting lots of emails asking us to clarify our position.

While some people may be using the footage to suggest that the BBC were actively participating in some sort of attempt to manipulate the audience, the point is irrelevant. What is relevant is the simple fact that BBC World News was reporting the collapse of a building that hadn't collapsed, hadn't been hit by a plane and that didn't collapse until half an hour after BBC World said it had, while the building was fully visible in the report about its collapse.

So here goes:

1. We're not part of a conspiracy. Nobody told us what to say or do on September 11th. We didn't get told in advance that buildings were going to fall down. We didn't receive press releases or scripts in advance of events happening.

Press releases and scripts are irrelevant. If nobody fed BBC World the news about a collapsed WTC7, where did the news come from before the event happened? Who came up with the idea of announcing a building that was still standing had collapsed? Jane Standley? A BBC World source? Another news wire? Where was the notion born prior to the event happening? Is the ridiculousness of a BBC World reporter describing an event that hadn't happened somehow lost on Mr Porter? Was it a guess? A premonition? A bit of avant-garde reporting from 23 minutes into the future, going three minutes better than the favoured technique of Network 23's Edison Carter? Was it a first hand account? From a blind man, maybe?

Simply: What was the source for the BBC World News report that WTC7 had collapsed?

2. In the chaos and confusion of the day, I'm quite sure we said things which turned out to be untrue or inaccurate - but at the time were based on the best information we had. We did what we always did - sourced our reports, used qualifying words like "apparently" or "it's reported" or "we're hearing" and constantly tried to check and double check the information we were receiving.

No such use of the terms "apparently", "it's reported" or "we're hearing" were used in connection with the reported collapse of the uncollapsed WTC7 building. Even the caption stated the building had collapsed. Past tense. But, if BBC World checked and double checked the information they were receiving, as Mr Porter tells us, this means there will be an audit trail leading directly back to the original source of the information about the collapsed building that was still standing. Then again, if the BBC "no longer have the original tapes" of "the day that changed the world", perhaps not.

3. Our reporter Jane Standley was in New York on the day of the attacks, and like everyone who was there, has the events seared on her mind. I've spoken to her today and unsurprisingly, she doesn't remember minute-by-minute what she said or did - like everybody else that day she was trying to make sense of what she was seeing; what she was being told; and what was being told to her by colleagues in London who were monitoring feeds and wires services.

Maybe Jane Standley could use her high-speed BBC Internet connection to have a little dig around the web and see for herself what she said even though she can't quite recall now. Despite efforts to 'pull' copies of the video, it can still be found. The core issue here is not what Jane Standley said, but as highlighted above, the source of the information that gave rise to her fabricated report about an event that hadn't happened. It's not as if there weren't plenty of other 9/11 spectaculars upon which to report - say, for example, how two 110 storey steel and concrete buildings had been pulverised into what Jane Standley calls "snow" after having reportedly been hit by a couple of lightweight aluminium planes.

4. We no longer have the original tapes of our 9/11 coverage (for reasons of cock-up, not conspiracy). So if someone has got a recording of our output, I'd love to get hold of it. We do have the tapes for our sister channel News 24, but they don't help clear up the issue one way or another.

No further comment required. Oh, fuck it.... why not - the day that changed the world, the new Pearl Harbour, the attack on America, not one but four hijacked planes and the BBC has lost the tapes? For the record, the BBC's own policy statement on archiving material requires the retention of, "Two broadcast standard copies of all transmitted/published TV, Radio and BBCi output - one to be stored on a separate site as a master". Some going to lose both copies.

5. If we reported the building had collapsed before it had done so, it would have been an error - no more than that. As one of the comments on You Tube says today "so the guy in the studio didn't quite know what was going on? Woah, that totally proves conspiracy... "

Of course it was an error. What a great line to end on -- especially given his job title -- an offhand comment from a YouTube video. Shouldn't a little more be expected from the BBC than a trashy anonymous quote in response to serious questions about the provenance of the information that led to BBC World's amazing foresight with regard to their reporting of the collapse of WTC7, 23 minutes before it did?

Richard Porter is head of news, BBC World

Oh dear.

On the subject of the BBC's Conspiracy Files addressing of 11/9, it should be noted that the series producer for the Conspiracy Files, Mike Rudin, openly admitted about his research into the mysterious death of Diana, "I was right away impressed with just how little I knew". In what other profession is it possible to openly admit one's ignorance, much less how impressed one is by one's own ignorance, and still manage to hold down the job?

For the beleaguered BBC journalist floundering away in similar ignorance, The Antagonist recommends you take the time to watch one or two of your own TV series -- series from back in the day when the BBC wasn't afear'd to do something that vaguely resembled proper investigative journalism --and get up to speed on something that closer resembles the nature of the real world in which you live.

The story of the 23-minutes premature announcement of WTC7's collapse -- the original source for which is still unknown -- continues....

Mark Thomas at the Troops Out - No Trident Demo

Ho ho ho! Does this shit still wash?

What no mention of nigh-on a million dead Iraqi civillians? Since when was Democracy a march? "Keep fighting until we win?" Who's fighting? The odd march happens occasionally and there's a war on drugs, smoking, fat people, drinking, chavs, water, hoodies, recycling, car drivers, anti-social behaviour (a war ironically waged by the most anti-social bastards of the lot), council tenants, parking, global warming climate change, etc, etc, and Blair's going whenever it suits the regime best. The Critical National Infrastructure is owned by unaccountable, foreign, private tyrannies. And so on.

Seems like a marked case of Monbiot syndrome, if ever there was one.

Video courtesy of Disillusioned Kid.

BBC World News and the 9/11 Smoking Gun? UPDATED!

The following snap is from a BBC World News stream supplied by the BBC to archive.org. It features BBC World news coverage from 11th September 2001, circa 5pm.


Notice the caption at the bottom of the picture which states "TERRORISM ATTACKS IN US" and "The 47 storey Salomon Brothers building close to the World Trade Centre has also collapsed." The caption, however, is not the interesting bit. The interesting bit is that just over the reporter Jane Standley's left shoulder is - wait for it - the 47 storey Salomon Brothers building close to the World Trade Centre which, according to the news report from which the still image came, is the building that BBC World is announcing has collapsed and no longer exists. Something which BBC World News reported as much as 23 minutes before it actually did collapse.

The original footage stream has disappared from where it was once hosted on Google Video and also from YouTube, but the original BBC News stream is still available from its original source on Archive.org (warning 1Gb file size):

http://ia311517.us.archive.org/2/items/bbc200109111654-1736/V08591-16.mpg

An edited version of the footage, including some caption overlays detailing the sequence of events, the original broadcast times and the timing of the WTC7 collapse can be found as a BitTorrent file: 911 - WTC7 Collapse - 23 Minute Warning! Below is a transcript of the 23 Minute Warning BBC World footage (note the transcript refers to on-the-scene-reporter 'Jane Stanley', without a 'd'):

Segment Broadcast

11-Sep-2001 16:54 to 17:36 (Eastern Daylight Time; GMT -04:00)

0:14:50 [START TRANSCRIPT]

BBC Banner [TERRORISM ATTACKS IN US - World Trade Centre destroyed by hijacked planes. Pentagon hit and burning]

PRESENTER: Now more on the latest building collapse in New York. You might of heard a few moments ago that was talking about the Saloman Brothers building collapsing and indeed it has,

Editor's Comment [WTC7 Collapsed? - It's only 5:07pm EST [EDT]]

apparently that's only a few hundred yards away from where the World Trade Centre towers were and it seems this was not a result of a new attack, it was because the building had been weakened during this morning's attacks. We'll probably find out more now about that from our correspondent Jane Stanley. Jane, what more can you tell us about the Salomon Brothers' building and its collapse?

BBC Banner [LIVE - TERRORISM ATTACKS IN US - World Trade Centre destroyed by hijacked planes. Pentagon hit and burning]

STANLEY: Well, only really what you already know. Details are very, very sketchy. There's almost a sense, downtown in New York behind me, down by the World Trade Centre of a .. just an area completely closed off as the rescue workers try to do their job. But, this isn't the first building that ...erm... has suffered as a result. We know that part of the Marriott Hotel next to the World Trade Centre also collapsed as a result of this huge amount of falling debris from a 110 floors of two ... the two Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre. As you can see behind me the Trade Centre appears to be still burning,

Editor's Comment [ooops it's still there. Someone Press Released too early]

we see these huge clouds of smoke and ash. We know that behind that there's an empty piece of what was a very familiar New York skyline, a symbol of the financial prosperity of this city, but ... er... completely disappeared now

BBC Banner [LIVE - TERRORISM ATTACKS IN US - JANE STANLEY. New York]

and New York is still unable to take on board what has happened to them today.

BBC Banner [TERRORISM ATTACKS IN US - World Trade Centre destroyed by hijacked planes. Pentagon hit and burning]

PRESENTER: Presumably there were very few people in Salomon building when it collapsed, there were I suppose fears of possible further collapses around the area.

BBC Banner [LIVE - TERRORISM ATTACKS IN US - World Trade Centre destroyed by hijacked planes. Pentagon hit and burning]

STANLEY: That's what you would hope because this whole downtown area behind me has been completely sealed off and evacuated, apart from the emergency workers, that was done by the Mayor Ruidi Gulliani, much earlier today, because of ... of course the dreadful collapse of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre. But ... er ...

BBC Banner [LIVE - TERRORISM ATTACKS IN US - The 47 storey Salomon Brothers building close to the World Trade Centre has also collapsed.]

New York very much a city still in chaos, the phones are not working properly, the subway lines are not working properly, and we know that down there near the World Trade Centre there are three schoools that are being turned into triage centres for emergency treatment and I know that over in New York Harbour where the famous Statue of Liberty is, there's a field hospital where 1500 people are being treated and we have heard, though it's unconfirmed as yet that a hundred New York City police officers have been taken there as well for treatment but we do need to confirm those figures for the officers.

BBC Banner [TERRORISM ATTACKS IN US - The 47 storey Salomon Brothers building close to the World Trade Centre has also collapsed.]

PRESENTER: It's now what some eight hours since the attacks, is there any estimate yet available of the number of casualties in the World Trade Centre.

0:17:40 [END TRANSCRIPT]

And, some 23 minutes after BBC World first announced that WTC7 had collapsed, sure enough, it collapsed:



It very much appears as though someone (a senior Al Qaeda leader, of course) press-released the WTC7 collapse about an hour too early. And, of course, there's nothing suspect about the fact that the live-link between studio and on-the-scene reporter Jane Standley fizzled out and broke five minutes before WTC7 was due to collapse on-screen and right behind her.

So, now what?

Update: The BBC responds - Richard Porter - DOG ATE MY TAPES OF THE DAY THAT CHANGED THE WORLD! In a shock revelation the BBC says: We didn't get told in advance that buildings were going to fall down but we still managed to report WTC7 had collapsed 23 minutes before it happened!

London 7/7: J7 goes historically contextual

For those still labouring under the misapprehension that the quest for truth about the events of 7th July 2005 is little more than a single issue campaign with single-issue politics not underpinned by real politics, the July 7th Truth Campaign have published not one, but two brand new articles dealing not with the specifics of what happened on 7/7 but instead the day itself in its historical context.

First up is, Capitalising on Terror - Who is really destroying our freedoms, an article that looks at how 7/7 has been used as the justification for the imposition of radical, reactionary and Draconian legislation that criminalises everyone as 'terrorists', yet the true story of what happened on 7/7 is still not known.

Given that there is not an official, accurate and coherent account of what happened on 7/7, how it happened and who was responsible for making it happen, only an official and highly flawed 'conspiracy theory', a fresh look needs to taken at the laws and technologies of political control that have been imposed upon an innocent and unsuspecting British public by an authoritarian regime that has legislated itself the right to indiscriminately take life, liberty, worldly goods, chattels and monies:

In less than two years the UK has descended into a police state. Taking photographs of landmarks is now classified as 'terrorist reconnaisance', being caught in possession of a map has been prosecuted as 'having information likely to be useful to a terrorist'. Protesting outside the people's Parliament is now a crime unless the state has first granted permission and you can be arrested for wearing a t-shirt a policeman doesn't like. Your DNA and fingerprints will be taken and stored indefinitely. Everyone from young children to old age pensioners are actively being targeted under anti-terrorist legislation and this legislation is being used to suppress dissent and opposition to the government, its policies and the way it enforces them. Blair has talked of implementing private police forces and police powers have been given to thousands of non-police entities including amongst others traffic wardens, landlords and council officials.

The primary justification, the driving force behind the implementation all new legislation and technologies of political control, is that 7th July 2005 happened according to the official conspiracy theory involving four young British Muslim men who conspired to kill themselves and others.

However, the government has already admitted that there are several critical flaws in the official Home Office report, flaws so crucial to the maintenance of the official story that the Home Office version of events cannot be what happened. So, if as admitted by the government, 7/7 didn't happen as per the Home Office account, there can be no justification for condemning the British public to laws and administration methods of a third-world dictatorship.

Read the full article here: Capitalising on Terror - Who is really destroying our freedoms?

The second J7 article, "The economics of 7/7 and other mysteries of capitalism explained" published today and written specially for the July 7th Truth Campaign by writer, author and journalist, William Bowles, asks the question:

"If a country like the former Soviet Union, armed to the teeth and with the massive resources of the state could not achieve the alleged objective of overthrowing capitalism after seventy-five years, it is reasonable to ask the question, why has the British state embarked on a policy of creating a de facto police state replete with laws which have more than a passing similarity to those passed by both Hitler and Mussolini?"

The article examines how, 'following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.... A new climate of fear had to be engineered to justify imperialist wars of conquest'. A new common enemy created behind which Western capitalism could, can and does hide.

Above all therefore, what was needed were actual deeds with corpses and culprits, and what better than four ‘Islamic fundamentalists’ who conveniently perished in the carnage of 7 July 2005.

The contradictions and unanswered questions concerning the events of 7 July, 2005 are addressed elsewhere, suffice to say, there are so many holes in the official story that it’s no wonder the government has resisted all demands for a public inquiry, although if the Hutton Report is any measure of what an inquiry under the Blair government is worth, we would learn little of consequence from one and indeed, it can be argued that ‘public inquiries’ effectively quash further investigations by creating the illusion of an ‘independent investigation’.

Read the full William Bowles article, The economics of 7/7 and other mysteries of capitalism explained, here.

For those with an interest in the detail and specifics of what happened on 7th July 2005, check out the J7 London Bombings Dossier. The 31 page J7 dossier was compiled by former National President of the MSF Union (now Amicus), David Minahan, who in his introduction to the dossier states of his findings:

"I am convinced that there has been a massive cover up and campaign of disinformation about this matter."

Why the troops are coming home

A brief clue as to why British troops will be heading home from Iraq, as hinted at by George Galloway at the end of his speech during today's anti-war demonstration in London.

Video courtesy of Davide Simonetti, picked up via Blairwatch.

For those of you that didn't catch the number that'll get you on all the watchlists, text "peace1" to "78789". Anyone who texted during the march will have identified themselves as active political dissidents, more commonly referred to as 'terrorists', and have almost certainly added themselves to the special priority watch lists as well as the waiting list for New Labour's Labour Camps.

This is the Big Brother text revolution, democracy by txtspk (gr8!), and while the revolution will not be televised, you can at least watch bits of it on YouTube. For now.

George Monbiot: denial, petards and the true colours of ‘radical’ left politics

In a true testament to the information age, just five whole years on from the events of September 11th 2001, ideas, questions and theories about what happened in New York have begun to ignite some coverage in the UK mainstream media, from the dead trees right through to the BBC, complete with more than a little heated debate. In keeping with most discussions about the events of 11/9, the debate has been highly polarised with the extremes of polarity demonstrated nowhere better than the recent treatises on the subject by Guardian regular, George Monbiot.

Monbiot’s first outing on the 11/9 front, A 9/11 conspiracy virus is sweeping the world, but it has no basis in fact, saw George entering the fray with a few shots across the bow of what is generically referred to as the 9/11 Truth community with a critique of a popular 9/11 movie that has taken the Internet by storm, Loose Change (1st edition, 2nd edition, and 2nd edition recut). The approach is flawed on several levels, not least of which is that the topics covered by Loose Change, or the assertions made, are not necessarily representative of the many questions that anyone might have about what happened. This, however, didn’t deter George and he proceeded with judicious use of condescension and a barrage of disparaging terms such as "gibbering idiots" and other emotive language like "virus", "disease" and "infect" to describe both the questions and the questioners, terms not required for Monbiot to have made the point he was endeavouring to make. In fact, it could be argued that avoiding the use of such terms might have added some much needed gravitas to his article by making it appear more balanced and less like a petty playground sniping match. 11/9 is after all a serious issue.

Monbiot’s first 9/11 article received a grand total of, wait for it, 777 comments which you can read here and inspired Mr Monbiot into a flurry of activity once again to ‘defend’ his right to an opinion in exactly the opposite way to the way he was seeking to deny the right to an opinion to anyone that disagrees with his particular worldview. The “gibbering idiots” had understood what Monbiot had written, took offence at being labeled and dismissed as such and some responded in kind with a few insults of their own, providing much needed fuel for Monbiot’s second diatribe directed at anyone with questions about the day that changed the world.

This time he took a slightly more aggressive and derogatory tone, demonstrably upset by the responses to his first effort. The response was ‘9/11 fantasists pose a mortal danger to popular oppositional campaigns’. To which the only logical response from anyone with a vaguely rational mind would be, “What popular oppositional campaigns?” – the Tories? The Greens? The BNP? Or Stop The War, who didn’t, haven’t and who, in all likelihood, won’t stop the next one either? Further, given the subheading of the article, “These conspiracy idiots are a boon for Bush and Blair as they destroy the movements some of us have spent years building”, the question more specifically must be, “Which popular oppositional campaigns that George Monbiot has ‘spent years building’?” Since either of those questions might meet with potted media-friendly, challenge-nothing answers, deliverable complete with customary middle-class whine, the next obvious question wouldn’t, nor could it: “What has the popular oppositional campaign, at least in part built by George Monbiot, here or in the U.S., achieved – say, since 11/9, that benefits the greater mass of humanity?” Thinking caps on, folks.

9/11 article two from Monbiot sees him teaching the ultimate lesson in doublethink and making a virtue of indignance, which is somewhat strange when you consider that Monbiot is the same man who just weeks after 11/9 wrote this little gem about the very same incident:

Gagging the sceptics

The US, founded to protect basic freedoms, is now insisting that its critics are its enemies

... If we are to preserve the progress, pluralism, tolerance and freedom which President Bush claims to be defending, then we must question everything we see and hear. Though we know that governments lie to us in wartime, most people seem to believe that this universal rule applies to every conflict except the current one. Many of those who now accept that babies were not thrown out of incubators in Kuwait, and that the Belgrano was fleeing when it was hit, are also prepared to believe everything we are being told about Afghanistan and terrorism in the US.

There are plenty of reasons to be sceptical. The magical appearance of the terrorists' luggage, passports and flight manual looks rather too good to be true. The dossier of "evidence" purporting to establish Bin Laden's guilt consists largely of supposition and conjecture. The ration packs being dropped on Afghanistan have no conceivable purpose other than to create the false impression that starving people are being fed. Even the anthrax scare looks suspiciously convenient. Just as the hawks in Washington were losing the public argument about extending the war to other countries, journalists start receiving envelopes full of bacteria, which might as well have been labelled "a gift from Iraq". This could indeed be the work of terrorists, who may have their own reasons for widening the conflict, but there are plenty of other ruthless operators who would benefit from a shift in public opinion.

Democracy is sustained not by public trust but by public scepticism. Unless we are prepared to question, to expose, to challenge and to dissent, we conspire in the demise of the system for which our governments are supposed to be fighting. The true defenders of America are those who are now being told that they are anti-American.

And in one slickly executed fell-swoop, George Monbiot hoists himself deftly by his own long-established petard.

Of course, this complete about turn in Monbiot’s stated views is far easier to place into a useable and understandable context when one considers one of George Moronbiot's books, 'The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order', in which he outlines a New World Order, where notions such as Anarchism and Communism are very, very, very bad indeed and mustn't exist, no doubt because Mummy and Daddy would be very upset if a more equitable system than the barbarism of Capitalism manifested itself through the desires and actions of the people.

By way of additional context, the author of A Manifesto for a New World Order happens to be the same George Monbiot whose father, Raymond, is the deputy chairman of the Conservative Party and Chairman of the National Convention as well as a big noise in the meat and poultry world, and whose mother, Rosalie, is a Conservative councillor who led South Oxford district council for a decade and is Norfolk County Council's Cabinet Member for Children's Services.

It’s plain to see that George Monbiot was always destined to be a revolutionary left-wing radical extremist, ever since his early days at Stowe and, later, Brasenose College, Oxford.

Monbiot’s approach to the many issues that surround 9/11 leaves a lot to be desired and is symptomatic of a much wider and deep-rooted problem among the established ‘left’; principally the belief that the greatest threat of terrorism comes from one man hiding out in a cave on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border and he -- and he alone -- has the wit, resources and ability to orchestrate an event with the military precision required to pull off 9/11.

Still, if nothing else, Monbiot has, seemingly unwittingly, led everyone into the murky and not-oft discussed world of 11/9 Class Politics. Let’s see if anyone picks up and runs with it.

Antagonista TV #77-311-911: The Power of Nightmares, by Adam Curtis

The Power of Nightmares
The Rise of the Politics of Fear
Part 1 of 3: "Baby it's cold outside"




The Power of Nightmares
The Rise of the Politics of Fear
Part 2 of 3: "The Phantom Victory"




The Power of Nightmares
The Rise of the Politics of Fear
Part 3 of 3: "The Shadows In The Cave"

Antagonista TV #311: Century of the Self, by Adam Curtis

Lazy sunday afternoon,
I got no mind to worry,
Close my eyes and drift away

-- Small Faces

The Century Of The Self - Part 1 of 4 - By Adam Curtis




The Century Of The Self - Part 2 of 4 - By Adam Curtis




The Century Of The Self - Part 3 of 4 - By Adam Curtis




The Century Of The Self - Part 4 of 4 - By Adam Curtis

21st Century Britain: Fascist regime or third-world dictatorship?

Dr Mohammad Naseem, chairman of Birmingham Central Mosque, speaking after the latest made-for-TV-and-the-gullible terror-inducing police raids in Birmingham last week, for which the Home Office appear to have written the story 24 hours before the raid took place:

"The German people were told Jews were a threat. The same thing is happening here. This is a persecuting course of action that the Government has taken. They have invented this perception of a threat. To justify that, they have to maintain incidents to prove something is going on. There is dismay and people feel they are being persecuted unjustly.

"There is no reason for that. If there is a reason, the process should be open and for everybody to see what is happening."

"People are upset. If there is evidence either charge them or release them. If they (the police) have been working on this for six months, what is the delay?"

Of course, Dr Naseem is a Muslim, there-by making his words -- according to conventional Islamophobic media wisdom -- the words of an extremist, but is it possible that there is also a Church of England extremist in our midst too? Dr John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, on the same subject:

"Why does he [Home Secretary, Dr John Reid] want these days [90 days detention]? So the police do what? Gather more evidence? To me that becomes, if you're not very careful, very close to a police state in which they pick you up and then they say later on we'll find evidence against you. That's what happened in Uganda with Idi Amin."

Or maybe it's the inherent anti-capitalist nature of adherence to religious doctrine. Either way, Dr Naseem and Dr Sentamu both make interesting and highly pertinent analogies.

In the case of Dr Naseem's drawing of parallels between Britain today and 1930s Nazi Germany, he is right. We have seen it all before.

In the case of Dr Sentamu's analogy, he too is right. While it is unlikely that the true death toll during Idi Amin's regime will ever be accurately known, an estimate from the International Commission of Jurists claimed that it was not less than 80,000 and more likely around 300,000. 300,000 deaths just happens to be significantly under half of the known deaths that one Mr Tony Blair can chalk up on his list of 'achievements', along with the privatisation, privatisation, privatisation of education, public services and everything else that once belonged to 'we, the people'. 60 million people in Britain, largely unwittingly, now find themselves dumped into an increasingly militarised state, backed by a complete legislative decimation and eradication of any notions of, and legal premises for, freedom or democracy that might once have existed.

21st century Britain: Fascist regime, third-world dictatorship, or the worst of both? You decide.