Herr Doktor John Reid's making the news in order not to make the news

After deciding that doubling (not 'splitting') Home Office resources was going to take two and half years, a defiant Herr Doktor John Reid announced at the end of January this year, 'I won't quit'. Less than four months later, last Sunday in fact, Herr Doktor Reid of the eternally 'not fit for purpose' Home Office announced that he would resign from the government within weeks, citing a bunch of traditionally lame, pat excuses for his departure.

That, superficially at least, is the beginning and end of the story. Except, as with most things behind the mendacious, mass-murdering State -- currently continuing to be led by Tony Blair, who should have been hung for his war crimes a long time ago and who still hasn't fucked off even after delivering a speech of which Adolf Hitler himself would have been proud -- there's always at least one story behind the story that makes its way into the headlines.

So what is the real story as Herr Doktor John Reid slips out of the Home Office after doubling it into the Department of Constitutional Affairs and a Ministry of Justice?

Justice, as anyone with any experience of the State's rule of law that purports to deliver it, is not something that is meted out very often, if at all. Just ask Harry Roberts (11 years in jail without charge or even knowing why he's still being held) or, if your memory doesn't stretch that far back, Dhiren Barot or the Crevice 5 who themselves have just joined the ranks of the Guildford 4, Birmingham 6, Maguire 7 amongst many, many others. See here and here. There is, however, a major difference between the alleged Irish terrorists that weren't and the alleged Muslim terrorists that weren't. Ignoring for a moment the travesties and miscarriages of justice they represent, at least with the Birmingham 6, Guildford 4, Maguire 7, and various other alleged Irish terrorists who were entirely innocent of the charges against them, crimes had been committed for which somebody had been charged. That real terrorist crimes had been committed for which innocent people were jailed should, although doesn't very often, lead to the asking of the question: If those charged, tried, convicted and jailed for real terrorist crimes that happened weren't the people responsible, where are the true perpetrators of those attacks?

Maybe someone should ask the new Head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, or maybe even Sir John Stevens under whose watch the Crevice 7 were watched and arrested and who said it was a case of "when not if" London was attacked by terrorists.

The crime of the 'new normal' is that of Thought Crime so you best all get a thinking cap on your head while its still free from 7 bullets.

But back to the point of this post which was the real story, a mini-scandal in the making, behind Herr Doktor Reid's resignation, the story that you won't read about Reid in many places, no doubt because all the dead-trees are observing voluntary D-notices about the matter. What might it be? Here's the story, in full, just in case it disappears from its source, as such things have a habit of doing:

John Reid’s nephew is fined over weapons

THE teenage nephew of Home Secretary John Reid has walked free from court after being convicted of possessing two deadly weapons in public.

John McGowan had been caught by police concealing a telescopic metal baton and a craft knife.

The 18-year-old from Airdrie, Lanarkshire, stood timidly in the dock at the town's sheriff court as he was fined a total of £400.

McGowan, an apprentice joiner, of "Kinkell", Drumbathie Road, was stopped and searched by police following an incident in Hallcraig Street, Airdrie, last month.

Fiscal Depute Agnes Meek told the court how McGowan had been attending an 18th birthday bash in the nearby Caritas Club.

The prosecutor said there had been "trouble" at the party on April 15 - which didn't involve McGowan - that was serious enough for the police to be called.

McGowan was one of several people searched by uniformed officers in Hallcraig Street and was found to be concealing the baton in his sock.

When they searched his car they found the knife, which had a blade attached.

The court also heard McGowan, whose father is a company director and one of his sisters a law student, was a first offender.

McGowan had pleaded guilty to both offences when he appeared at the custody court the day after the party.

At that appearance Sheriff Carole Cunningham had released him on bail.

But she also called for a social enquiry report, as well as a community service assessment and a restriction of liberty order assessment on the youth.

Defence lawyer Con McAfee told the court McGowan had found the baton in the car park, and that the knife was a tool for repair work he'd been doing.

He said: "He had been doing some work for his grandmother earlier in the evening, repairing her bath. He forgot he still had the knife with him."

Yesterday Sheriff John C Morris fined McGowan £300 for possession of the baton and a further £100 for possession of the craft knife. He was ordered to pay the total fine at £20 per week.

The irony that the Home Secretary, who has made one of his core businesses imposing control orders and ASBOs on ordinary members of the general public, can't even keep his own fucking family in order, is not lost on anyone.

Giuliani (Criminal) Partners LLC - honour amongst thieves and pederasts

Are some strands of the American media finally finding their balls again after the 9/11 mass-emasculation event almost six years ago?

The Washington Post today makes a token effort, posing briefly as 'terrorists' with well-founded interests in the covert activities of unnacountable private tyrannies, specifically the unaccountable private tyranny that is Giuliani (Criminal) Partners -- an interest in private enterprise which is a big no-no in the UK too thanks to 'anti-terrorist' (read: anti-anti-fascist) laws.

On Dec. 7, 2001, nearly three months after the terrorist attack that had made him a national hero and a little over three weeks before he would leave office, New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani took the first official step toward making himself rich.
....
Over the next five years, Giuliani Partners earned more than $100 million, according to a knowledgeable source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the firm's financial information is private.
....
Famously loyal, Giuliani chose as his partners longtime associates, including a former police commissioner later convicted of corruption, a former FBI executive who admitted taking artifacts from Ground Zero [Pasquale J. D'Amuro] and a former Roman Catholic priest accused of covering up sexual abuse in the church [Alan Placa].

Of course, that's not the sort of thing that anyone would want to publicise, so how did Giuliani -- New York's 9/11 mayor who didn't head for his specially designed emergency bunker in WTC7 on 9/11 and who just happened to find himself in London for a conference on 7/7 -- do it without incurring the wrath of New York's Conflicts of Interest Board? Easy! Set the firm up without the cast of nasties, then wheel 'em in by the back door.

His initial letter to the city's Conflicts of Interest Board asked permission to begin forming the firm in his final days as mayor with three aides he planned to take with him -- the lawyer Hess, chief counsel Dennison Young Jr. and chief of staff Anthony V. Carbonetti. Two others -- Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik and Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen -- were not mentioned but later joined the firm as senior vice presidents.
....
To replace Kerik, Giuliani turned to a respected former FBI executive, Pasquale J. D'Amuro, who had risen through the ranks as one of the bureau's savviest antiterrorism agents to become its third-ranking official. In 2004, a Justice Department inquiry into the controversial removal of souvenirs from the World Trade Center site disclosed that D'Amuro had asked a subordinate to gather half a dozen items from Ground Zero as mementos just weeks after the attacks, and D'Amuro later acknowledged that he kept one piece of granite that he received in June 2003. The FBI took no action against D'Amuro, and he donated his memento to the New York FBI office before retiring.
....
In 2003, Giuliani also brought into the firm Alan Placa, an old friend who resigned as vice chancellor of the Diocese of Rockville Centre on Long Island a week after being confronted by Newsday with allegations that former parishioners had been abused. The newspaper published portions of a 2003 Suffolk County grand jury report in which accusers said he used his position to stifle complaints of abuse by clergy

Rudi Giuliani also happens to be the very same 2008 Presidential candidate who threatened the American public with a new 9/11 should they dare to endeavour to elect Democrats.

Spin - Footage you were never supposed to see

Don't just see what's on TV, see through it.

Artist Brian Springer spent a year scouring the airwaves with a satellite dish grabbing back channel news feeds not intended for public consumption. The result of his research is SPIN, one of the most insightful films ever made about the mechanics of how television is used as a tool of social control to distort and limit the American public's perception of reality.

Take the time to watch it from beginning to end and you'll never look at TV reporting the same again. Tell your friends about it. This extraordinary film released in the early 1990s is almost completely unknown. Hopefully, the Internet will change that.

Thanks to Sinclair for flagging this up.

Mrs Mohammad Siddique Khan's fall from grace

The latest news on the trail of the 7/7 London bombings is that of the arrest of Mrs Mohammad Sidique Khan, Hasina Patel.

In coordinated 7am raids by the Metropolitan Police this morning Hasina Patel, 29, of Thornhill Lees, Dewsbury, was arrested along with two West Yorkshire men, her brother 30-year old Arshad Patel and Khalid Khaliq, 34. A fourth man, 22-year-old Imran Motala, was arrested in the Selly Oak area of Birmingham as part of the coordinated raids.

In the space of just a few years the combined forces of the Khan and Patel families appear to have fallen rather a long way from grace. Or have they?

Mohammad Sidique Khan gained notoriety as the alleged ringleader of the alleged 7/7 bombers. He was formerly a teaching assistant in Leeds working for the school's headteacher Sarah Balfour, the wife of Labour MP for Hemsworth Jon Trickett, at the now defunct Hillside Primary School.

In July 2004, three months after the arrests of the Operation Crevice 'terror cell' to which it is alleged that Mohammad Sidique Khan was intimately connected, the same Operation Crevice on the periphery of which Farida Patel's home was noted while Khan was being followed driving his wife's car, Mohammed Sidique Khan was given a tour of the House of Commons by Labour MP Jon Trickett.

Also in July 2004, around the same time as Khan was being given a tour of the House of Commons, his mother-in-law Farida Patel was pictured at a Buckingham Palace garden party with her husband and their daughter Hasina Patel, in tow. The Hasina Patel at the Queen's garden party in July 2004 is the same Hasina Patel arrested this morning.

Furthermore, 2004 wasn't the first time Farida Patel had been invited to one of the Queen's tea parties. In fact, Farida Patel -- the mother of newly arrested Hasina Patel and the mother-in law of alleged 7/7 ringleader Mohammad Sidique Khan -- made a small piece of history back in 1998 by being the first Asian woman ever to attend a garden party at Buckingham Palace.

So, in July of 2004 the entire Khan family were all in London and all of them had been invited by representatives of the State. At least three of Khan's extended family were invited by the Queen with Mohammad Sidique Khan himself entertained by Labour MP Jon Trickett.

The above information was compiled by J7 researchers as part of the ongoing 7/7 investigation being conducted by J7: July 7th Truth Campaign. The information was compiled in a similarly concise format to that in which it appears above only days ago and, as if by magic, the 2004 guest of the Queen, daughter of the 1998 and 2004 guest of the Queen, and the wife of Jon Trickett's guest at the House of Commons, has just been arrested, despite it being 22 months since the events of 7th July 2005 happened.

And, of course no 'intelligence' authorities or the police knew anything about any of this even though they had followed Hasina Patel's car to Farida Patel's house when it was driven there by Mohammed Sidique Khan.

With all of these facts being a little too close to home, is it any wonder the State doesn't want an inquiry into the events of 7/7, even under the nobbled legislative framework of the Inquiries Act 2005 which legally requires all inquiries to be neither public nor independent?


Update: Thanks to Anonymous for the following information about Farida Patel's connections to the State that passed the Inquiries Act 2005 and still refuses a public inquiry into 7/7:

Her [Farida Patel] community work also led to an invitation to Downing Street, where she received an award for her work for the Inner City Religious Council at a ceremony in 1999, hosted by Tony Blair. The local newspaper says she "rubbed shoulders" on that occasion with the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Charles and former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Condon.

....

Mrs Patel, who taught at Dewsbury's Birkdale High School until two years ago and served on the local police forum, added: "I am very well known in the Asian parts of Dewsbury and police often come to my house for advice."

Update 2: ".... it has emerged that [Farida] Patel was a co-opted member of the British government's council of religious leaders from 1996 until 2000. || Patel, who is in her late fifties, was born in Germiston as the daughter of Ismail Patel, an anti-apartheid activist who died in 1973 after he had been under house arrest for 10 years."

Any answers?

No answers, but certainly a lot of questions even though Jonathan Dimbleby doesn't like them, as demonstrated by his defence of well documented examples of British State terrorism in Ireland. Enter stage right, Jonathan Evans, the new head of MI5 who cut his State-terror teeth just across the water.

Thanks to Postman for picking up the call to Radio 4 that the best efforts of the BBC didn't manage to screen and prevent from airing, and to Stef for putting words and pictures together.

Tom Griffin ties it all together with a few pertinent points about the Inquiries Act 2005, State terrorism in Ireland and the renewed calls by various groups for a public inquiry into 7/7.

Meanwhile, the media consensus manipulation machine, in collusion with individuals, groups and organisations, complete with kow-towing bloggers-a-plenty -- shame on them one and all -- are still calling for a public inquiry into the events of 7th July 2005, while either ignoring, being ignorant of, or simply refusing to address, the issue of the flawed, limiting and inadequate legislative framework imposed by the Inquiries Act 2005, despite the best and continuing efforts of J7: The July 7th Truth Campaign.

Once again, under the Inquiries Act 2005, there can be no such thing as an 'independent' or 'public' inquiry so all the combined forces calling for one and who refuse to acknowledge the Inquiries Act 2005 are, without any shadow of a doubt, wasting their, and everyone else's time.

Operation Crevice trial ends and the cracks are showing

Below is a transcript of Imran Khan's statement on behalf of the 5 (of 7) patsies men convicted in the Crevice trial:

I'm giving this statement on behalf of those defendants convicted today, that is Omar Khyam, Anthony Garcia, Waheed Mahmood, Jawad Akbar, and Salahuddin Amin. These are their words that they wish me to read out:

In the name of Allah the merciful, the compassionate, we bear witness there is nothing worthy of worship except Allah, and Mohammed as his messenger.

This was a prosecution driven by the security services, able to hide behind a cloak of secrecy, and eager to obtain ever greater resources and power to encroach on individual rights.

There was no limit to the money, resources and underhand strategies that were used to secure convictions in this case.

This case was brought in an atmosphere of hostility against Muslims, at home, and abroad. One stoked by this government throughout the course of this case.

This prosecution involved extensive intrusion upon personal lives, not only ours, but our families and friends.

Coached witnesses were brought forward. Forced confessions were gained through illegal detention, and torture abroad. Threats and intimidation was used to hamper the truth. All with the trial judge seemingly intent to assist the prosecution almost every step of the way.

These were just some of the means used in the desperate effort to convict. Anyone looking impartially at the evidence would realise that there was no conspiracy to cause explosions in the UK, and that we did not pose any threat to the security of this country.

It is not an offence to be young, Muslim and angry at the global injustices against Muslims.

Allah says in the Qur'an, "Oh mankind, worship your Lord who created you, and those before you, that you may become righteous."

And that's the end of the statement. Thank you.

Imran Khan, Nabeel Hussain (acquitted) & Michael Mansfield QC

An MP3 of Imran Khan's statement can be found here, courtesy of J7: The July 7th Truth Campaign.

Those who are more than a little predictably getting all het-up and excited about the revelations-that-aren't of the Crevice trial wouldn't go amiss peering a little deeper into the Crevice before calling for a Public Inquiry into the events of 7th July 2005. They would also do well to understand the -- restrictive-to-the-point-of-futility -- legislative framework the State imposed on public inquiries via the Inquiries Act 2005, a piece of legislation that was affectionately known as the "Public Inquiries Cover-up Bill" and which came into force on 7/6/2005, just in the nick of time. In summary, any Independent Public Inquiry is legally obliged to be neither 'independent', nor 'public' and the scope of its inquiry is determined by the very State into whose self-preserving interests a truly independent public inquiry would legitimately inquire. Simple enough?

As a point of fact, the July 7th Truth Campaign is the only grass-roots organisation to echo the sentiments of the Law Society of England & Wales, Amnesty International and Geraldine Finucane in calling on the judiciary to boycott any inquiry proposed under the terms of the Inquiries Act 2005. If the Inquiries Act 2005 is not fit for the purpose of investigating the killing of a Human Rights lawyer almost 20 years ago, it is most certainly not an acceptable piece of legislation under which to conduct an inquiry into the deaths of 56 people. Sign the petition.

Panorama is to be commended, for once, for venturing close to the brink of of the gaping Crevice chasm, but not for hiding the brief jaunt away among the usual old tosh that passes for investigative journalism these days. In addition to the litany of crimes referred to in Imran Khan's statement on behalf of the five men convicted of having comitted no crime, the State was forced to resort to relying on the testimony of an FBI informant, having the rules of the game of law changed and abandoning all notions of a unanimous verdict.

Desperate times, it seems, call for even more desperate measures and the precedents continue to be set. If it's 'justice' you want, you're increasingly unlikely to get it under a system of 'law'.

Who lives in a house like this?

"There’s a man in number 4 who swears he’s Saddam Hussein
Says he’s on the chart to start a third world war"

Who lives in a house like this?


Who lives in a house like this?

The Naval Amphibious Base (NAB) Coronado is located just across tha bay from San Diego, CA. The base is situated on the Silver Strand, between the San Diego Bay and the Pacific Ocean. NAB Coronado is a major shore command, supporting 27 tenant commands, and is the West Coast focal point for special and expeditionary warfare training and operations. The amphibious base houses Commander Naval Surface Force, US Pacific Fleet, responsible for the training, maintenance and crews of the approximately 90 ships of the Pacific Fleet and Commander Naval Special Warfare Command, US Pacific Fleet. Also located there are most of the Naval Expeditionary and Naval Special Warfare units of the Pacific Fleet as well as the famed Navy Parachute Team, the Leap Frogs.

Source: Global Security

In fact, quite a lot of people live in a house like that:

"The average on base count of all personnel, military and civilian, at any one time is 5000 permanent and 7000 students, reservists, and transients."

That the United States Naval Amphibious Base in Coronado, California, USA, just happens to be swastika shaped will come as no suprise to those that recall the manner in which Britannia ruled the waves.

"The only things we are afraid of are APATHY and SILENCE!"

This is pretty powerful stuff. This is the stuff that Flash player was invented for.

Crank your speakers, go here to watch, listen and learn and get a little faith-based hellfire in your bellies, courtesy of DJ Paul Edge.

http://wewillnotbesilenced.com/

Skiing and surfing, working class style

Once upon a time, this used to be doable without skis on the silver-topped covering between escalators, before they introduced those annoying raised bits which now make such high-jinks impossible.

Still, there's always the up-down loop-de-loop and the shiny-pant rail-slide.

004 dk.eos.net.FtpError: Login incorrect.

Having skillfully and successfully knocked this blog offline while messing about with some blog settings, if you get the following error in Blogger....

004 dk.eos.net.FtpError: Login incorrect.

.... if you are using blogspot.com hosting service, or FTP, and to save a little blind panic, you can fix the problem by clearing your browser cache, or logging in to Blogger using a different browser temporarily (IE <-> firefox, or vice-versa). Many thanks to i-admin.

WTC7 & Dutch demolition expert Danny Jowenko

While we're on the subject of September 11th and WTC7, a building that wasn't hit by a plane but just happened to be the third ever steel-framed structure to allegedly collapse owing to fire(s) -- the first two being WTC1 and WTC2 on the day that the laws of physics were inexplicably changed -- here's a video of one of Holland's foremost demolition experts, Danny Jowenko -- who didn't know of WTC7 -- and his observations when shown footage of its collapse on 11th September 2001. The clip is in Dutch with English subtitles.

His reaction is says it all and his credentials appear to be impeccable.

A brief recap of the military thinkers' guide to modern [information] warfare....

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.

EU States Vs the CIA

Italy, December 2006:

EU-wide warrant over 'CIA kidnap'

An Italian court has issued Europe-wide arrest warrants for 22 suspected CIA agents accused of helping to kidnap a Muslim cleric in Milan in 2003.

The suspects are accused of abducting Osama Mustafa Hassan, also known as Abu Omar, without Italian permission, and flying him to Egypt for interrogation.

The new warrants allow for the suspects' detention anywhere in the 25-nation EU, a prosecutor said. -- BBC

Germany, yesterday:

Warrants issued for 13 in connection with alleged CIA kidnapping of German citizen

BERLIN – Arrest warrants were issued for 13 people in connection with the alleged CIA-orchestrated kidnapping of a German citizen in the agency's extraordinary rendition program, a Munich prosecutor said Wednesday.

Prosecutor Christian Schmidt-Sommerfeld told The Associated Press that the warrants were issued in the last few days against the 13 alleged kidnappers on suspicion of false imprisonment and serious bodily harm in connection with the abduction of Khaled al-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent. -- AP

Anyone seen any arrest warrants issued for criminal CIA operatives in the UK, the United Mistakes of America's 'junior partner' and one of the many EU countries actively complicit in facilitating the endless list of illegal activities that are the core business of the CIA?

Lord Levy Busted! Again.

The perennial pantomime of the ruling classes, 'Freedom & Democracy', continues as Labour's chief fundraiser Lord Levy is arrested for a second time, on suspicion of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, by police investigating cash-for-honours allegations.

No wonder our very own terrorist-in-chief and lapdog of Primate Bush, Tony Blair, wouldn't answer any questions from Jon Sopel in Davos earlier this week. Note in the interview how Blair says that he must be allowed to press on with his 'radical programmes', despite being a mendacious and murderous war criminal, yet anyone else labelled 'radical' is a terrorist and must be locked up.

Poor? Blunkett wants to blow-up your home

Remember David Blunkett? The peripatetic, priapic, blind, former Home Secretary that legislated the locking up of everyone he couldn't see and whose guide dog couldn't sniff out the difference between its owner's wife and an employee of Spectator magazine? The same David Blunkett who fast-tracked the illegal immigrant nanny employed by his lover with whom he thought he had fathered an illegitimate child? Yes, him. The blind man with the decadent and "dysfunctional" lifestyle is back and this time, if you're poor - and as word hits the streets that greedy, pilfering state and e-state agents have heisted average UK property prices to £100,000 EVERYWHERE - Big Brother Blunkett wants - for your own good, you understand, to stop you and your children from being anti-social criminals, parents of illegitimate children, etc - to bulldoze your "dysfunctional" council home.

Daily Mirror - news from the future

The guerrilla journalism of Network 23's Edison Carter was cutting-edge by virtue of it being 20 minutes into the future. The Daily Mirror has gone several better and is now reporting its news from the trial of the 21/7 flour-power peroxide bombers-with-no-bombs a whopping 2 WHOLE DAYS into the future. Note the date and the futuristic headline:

19 January 2007

BIN LADEN 'NOT BEHIND 9/11 ATTACKS'

By Mirror.co.uk

CONTROVERSIAL Islamic preacher Abu Hamza told one of the alleged 21/7 bomb plotters that terror leader Osama bin Laden was not behind the 9/11 attacks, a court was told today.

What next from The Mirror? 'Tony Blair to be hanged'?

Good though that the Mirror is on the case with coverage of the 21st July 'chapati' 'burka' bombers because - scoop time - Sky News only applied for permission to reproduce the trial transcripts for the first two days of the trial and therefore only the case for the persecution prosecution. Anyone interested in the details of the case for the defense is, well, out of luck for now if they're a Sky News devotee. Who else in the media has taken the path of most obvious propaganda and neglected to obtain permission to publish any further transcripts that cover the case for the defense?

Meanwhile, no sooner has the judge asked the jury to forget anything that might prejudice the trial, the dead-tree news organs fill their pages with yet more 7/7 related photos released to the world by the Americans, who seem to have a monopoly on 7/7 pictures, which are alleged to show an exact mock-up of the 'bomb factory' alleged to be have been used by those accused of making 7/7 happen. Subtlety has disappeared into obscurity. The Americans also forgot to include one of the main bits of kit in the mock-up, the industrial fridge, the same industrial fridge for which Lord Patel of the Internet has issued a million pound reward.

Forty-plus people have been arrested in connection with 21st July 2005 - the day when nobody was killed, nobody was injured and no explosions occurred and there's still not been a single arrest of anyone at all in connection with the events of 7/7 two weeks previously, when 56 were killed and over 700 injured. What a crack team the four 7/7 lone nuts must have been. Or, if you prefer, if over forty people have been rounded up and detained for 18 months for not killing anyone with their chapati flour bombs, the law of averages states that there must be at least a few others involved with making 7/7 happen, doesn't it?

A nice touch in the 21/7 trial proceedings for those with long enough memories (or the research skills to learn a bit about the history of terrorism on mainland Britain) is the implication of guilt that follows the discovery of a rubber glove with traces of something suitably nasty-sounding found on it during a raid somewhere. See the case of the Macguire 7 [PDF] for how this old judicial one-two, the forensic fox-trot, was used to great effect in the successful conviction of another bunch of innocent individuals for crimes they didn't commit.

Terror on Planet Google Earth

One of the most laughable stories of the last weekend - of which there have been as many as usual - has to be this one in Saturday's Telegraph which reports that terrorists are using out-of-date aerial footage displayed by the Google Earth tool to pinpoint their attacks on British bases in Basra.

"This is evidence as far as we are concerned for planning terrorist attacks," said an intelligence officer with the Royal Green Jackets battle group. "Who would otherwise have Google Earth imagery of one of our bases?"

Well, as a point of fact - not that anyone appears to care much about facts anymore unless, of course, they're celebrity facts - and in response to the question, "Who would otherwise have Google Earth imagery of one of our bases?" - the answer is: Lots of people, such as those who want to know what all their tax money is being spent on and including those nice folk over at The Register and their 'terrorist' readers who ran and participated in a competition to - guess what - see who could find the most interesting parts of the world, hidden within Google Earth satellite imagery. For example, the following comes from, "Spot the black helicopter":

It doesn't end there, though. Donald Massyn notes:

I found this collection of black helicopters at the Basra airforce base in Iraq, which probably means they're British!! (and I though it was only the Yanks who belong to the black chopper brigade).

Amazingly enough, the entire readership of The Register, by focussing their mapping efforts on looking for U.S. military bases around the world, with or without black helicopters and alleged alien landing pads, missed out on one or two little architected-into-the-earth gems, the existence of which everyone should know about for their pointers to another world of history contained within the conventional study of history that only makes itself apparent if, and when, the ability to be able to perceive previously obscured evidence in its correct historical, physical and temporal context makes itself available.

Which it eventually does, because there ain't no putting the genie back in the bottle, no matter how great the forces that conspire against it. Enter GoogleMaps, Buckingham Dollar Bill Pyramid Palace and Trafalgar Square's Jolly Roger, the latter of which being the traditional flag of all pirates).

So, while Google Earth is showing the world high-quality satellite imagery of the world, including the land of Pirate Ship Britain - for free - and leaving everyone to wonder what resolution images the military are watching over the rest of us with, the military think it's a bad idea if ordinary people can explore the bluey-green planet upon which most people generally try and do their best to happily and peacefully coexist with one another, while another group - a much smaller and much more pernicious group - endeavours to make everything so the only method of survival available to normal, decent people is to live in a way that is exactly opposite to the one which would be best for themselves and everyone else.

When everything has truly become its opposite, and there is evidence in the public domain to suggest that everything isn't quite as it is portrayed to be, you know that drastic changes are a-coming.

European terrorism, lessons in history

Given that an anti-tank missile was fired at the U.S. Embassy in Athens just before sunrise this morning, now is as good a time as any to link to some background information on terrorism in Europe that came via a three part BBC Timewatch documentary series detailing Operation Gladio - a Nato/Western intelligence-supported, far-right alliance responsible for perpetrating 'false flag' terrorism via 'stay-behind' networks of operatives whose primary objective was/is to incriminate the enemy of the day.

Documentary Series on Operation Gladio in Italy -- NATO/Western Intelligence supported 'false flag' terrorism

Part 1: Gladio part 1: The Ringmasters (wmv.46mb)
Part 2: Gladio part 2: The Puppeteers (wmv.46mb)
Part 3: Gladio part 3: The Foot Soldiers (wmv.46mb)

Danielle Ganser, whose book NATO's Secret Armies - Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe does a great deal to uncover the previously less exposed but still hidden hand of the far-right in major terrorist atrocities that are blamed on the, historically Communist/left-wing and, since the end of the 'cold war', Muslim, enemy of the day, also runs a web site with a bunch of related articles, some of which are in English:

NATO's secret armies linked to terrorism? [PDF]
ISN Security Watch, 15th December 2004

Able Danger adds Twist to 9/11 [PDF]
ISN Security Watch, 25th August 2005

The end of the 'age of oil' [PDF]
ISN Security Watch, 30th May 2006

Ganser also has a series of scientific papers:

FEAR AS A WEAPON

Title: Fear as a weapon
Subtitle: The effects of psychological warfare on domestic and international politics
Language: English
Author: Daniele Ganser
Date of Publication: Volume 9, Number 4, Winter 2005
Journal: World Affairs. The Journal of International Issues
Pages: 28-44
ISSN: 0971 8052
Free PDF:

If we think about weapons today, we often produce the pictures of guns, tanks, atomic bombs, aircraft carries and fighter jets in our minds. However, one of the most influential weapons is invisible to the human eye: Fear. The phenomenon fear is being studied by the military discipline “psychological warfare” (PSYWAR) and is being used also today on the global battlefields to discredit and weaken an enemy. This paper presents examples from the Cold War period when fear was used as a weapon in order to inform the reader how fear might be used as a weapon today.

===============================================

TERRORISM IN WESTERN EUROPE

Title: Terrorism in Western Europe
Subtitle: An Approach to NATO’s Secret Stay-Behind Armies
Language: English
Author: Daniele Ganser
Date of Publication: Volume VI, Number I, Winter-Spring 2005
Journal: The Whitehead Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations
Pages: 69-97
ISSN: 1538 6589
Free PDF:

Research into terrorism in Western Europe has for many years focused on the „Red Brigades“ in Italy, the „Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF)“ in Germany, the "Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA)" in Spain, and the "Irish Republican Army (IRA)" in Ireland. New historical research shows, however, that next to these well known terrorist groups another set of secret units existed on the same continent: stay-behind armies controlled by NATO, the CIA and MI6, some of which seem also to have been linked to terrorism and crime. This new data, as presented in the paper, opens up a set of disturbing new questions on our understanding of the history of terrorism in Europe.

===============================================

THE BRITISH SECRET SERVICE IN NEUTRAL SWITZERLAND

Title: The British Secret Service in Neutral Switzerland
Subtitle: An Unfinished Debate on NATO's Cold War Stay behind Armies
Language: English
Author: Daniele Ganser
Date of Publication: December 2005, Volume 20, Number 4
Journal: Intelligence and National Security
Pages: 553-580
ISSN: 0268 4527
Free PDF:

In 1990, the existence of a secret anti-Communist stay-behind army in Italy, codenamed ‘Gladio’ and linked to NATO, was revealed. Subsequently, similar stay-behind armies were discovered in all NATO countries in Western Europe. Based on parliamentary and governmental reports, oral history, and investigative journalism, the essay argues that neutral Switzerland also operated a stay-behind army under the code name “P26”. It explores the role of the British secret service and the reactions of the British and the Swiss governments to the discovery of the network and investigates whether the Swiss stay-behind army, despite Swiss neutrality, was integrated into the International NATO stay-behind network.

There is also another article, 9/11 Terror, lies and deception, in which Ganser takes on some of the issues surrounding the events of 11th September 2001.

'Never believe something until it is officially denied', goes the oft-quoted phrase. Well, if it's denial of Ganser's research you want, or denial of 'stay behind' networks, its denial you've got, straight from the horse's mouth.

The comments are open for discussion of the above.