Mae culpa also as per Ross Kemp - but as you say the advertising was woeful 'ever wondered about Gaza - our man Kemp sorts aaawt the issues'. Ah, good lad.

As per Portillo - hmmm... he's cruising for a job with Call Me Dave - pointless hackery.

Kemp's documentary was better than I was expecting also. However, one disappointing aspect of the documentary which I fully expected, was the fact that it made NO effort whatsoever to contextualise the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. There was no mention of the Nakba or the occupation, in fact the 'O' word wasn't even used apart from a fleeting subtitled comment by a Palestinian girl.

This lack of context in the mainstream is to blame for the masses' incorrect understanding of the conflict as a fight between equals. The reality is very different - an occupying superpower vs a third world country.

There was one particularly unsavoury piece of editing when showing a UK conference, at which an ex-detainee was making a very emotional and harrowing point; the director then cut away to a shot of Moazzam Begg grinning merrily and apparently completely inappropriately at the point.

Maybe you could right a letter to the BBC asking if artistic license was used here....

"There was one particularly unsavoury piece of editing..."

Remember when they previewed that documentary about the Queen to suggest she stormed out of photo session? That provoked the mother of all rows, so expect a similar response again... not.

I saw Portillo's piece on Guantanamo and it left a lot of questions as to the editing and portrayal of the lack of resolve.
The only time he mooted that something in Gunatanamo might be not quiet right was when he fleetingly mentuioned that the staged event involving the 911 relatives might have been staged. Now that China has seen the bermuda home of the Uighurs pawns in the great US vs. China game, it might be a good idea for Mr. Portillo to ask for them to get somewhere more safe to live.
His pathetic attempt at a documentary, and the Yemen part must have been shot not very long ago, will otherwise endanger the lives of those four men.

Five comments (not including my own) and nothing posted yet about the justification of pre-emptive miltary action or the evils of terrorism? Nothing about how Palestinian civilian casualties are because of the evil Hamas "human shield" policy? Looks like the GIYUS megaphone isn't working today.

Or maybe they're all over at the BBC.

How many Brits WON'T realise or have noticed the editing? A damn large number I bet.

I saw Moazzam Begg in the flesh reinact the way the US torture dispensers (mis)handled him. After doing it he almost collapsed emotionally, as one may well expect. The same was true of his horrified audience. Sami Al-Hajj's story was similar as were some of the Abu Graib victims stories.

If the media (BBC right?) did this cut it vile even by the BBC sewer standards. I don't buy Portaloo's "I've seen the light" greasy-spoon lobbox. What a weasel this guy is.

The BBC is preping you for YET MORE WAR, a war that will never end until you and time itself comes to an end.

Switch it off! Advise friends to do so likelwise and get you news from somewhere that isn't (as) politically buggered as the BBC is.

BBC is the FOX News of Britian. Ditch this putrid Sunday Sport of a Newz organisation. Sorry for the insult SS.

Not being a pacifist I almost felt like strangling a another guest at a party I attended recently.

He was the editor of provincial newspaper and he was convinced that the "Terrorist/Muslim Threat" is real, and that the reason behind it is their hatred of our freedoms, culture, and way of life.

Even though the enemy repeatedly say they are attacking us because of what we have done to them, as they perceive it; and not because our ways are so "free" and ungodly. They don't give a damn about what we do in our own countries, as long as we don't do it in theirs.

Yet this journalist/editor wouldn't have any of it. He agreed that the terrorists did express their opposition to western interference in their affairs, yet he thought they were lying. They are not attacking us for what we do, but because of who we are, and how we choose to live.

His attitude is widespread. It's the official propaganda line of our glorious leaders. We have to fight them overthere, or we'll have to fight them here.

It's amazing that this fairytale version of the world can be taken seriously and repeated over and over again, despite not a shred of evidence that it contains any truth.

"We have to fight them over there, or we'll have to fight them here."

And if one accepts the fairytale as true, don't we run into a logical paradox? It cannot legitimise the actions of British forces abroad without simultaneously legitimising the retaliatory efforts of terrorists here.

Could we know the name of the newspaper Writerman. I live in a town where the Surrey Advertiser is the local weekly with specific editions for each area.

There is no critical comment on the
war(s) but lots of 'Our brave boys' stuff and photo spreads of regimental homecomings through Surrey towns. Headley Court is in Surrey so there is a good deal about fund raising, Help for Heroes, parcels for the troops, visits by dignitaries inc the princes etc etc. The Surrey Ad is owned by the Guardian Media Group.

'Oh What a Lovely War' which was recently brilliantly staged by the Guildford School of Acting comes to mind.

For those looking for alternate sources of news than the BBC and Faux might I suggest:

1. www.democracynow.org

and

2. Al Jazeera. It's a pity you can't get it on FreeView in the U.K.; the standard of reporting now far surpasses the BBC, which seems to have been going downhill for years. (Note: Al Jazeera TV English language news is excellent - for some reason the English language version of the website doesn't seem so good.)

"for some reason the English language version of the website doesn't seem so good." - Editors!

Portillo has intellectual dishonesty as the bedrock of his belief-system, though I don't know how you can tell, in the general case, whether it is deliberate or not. Perhaps even the most intelligent people can be brainwashed! In July 2007, he wrote this in the Sunday Times of London, of anti-terror legislation (see url):

> We are shrugging off the political correctness that once
> hampered an effective response. We are getting over the
> idea that we are to blame for the terror threat. We are
> not. It does not arise from social disadvantage, globalisation,
> capitalism or foreign policy.

This blinkered rubbbish stuck in my craw so much that I wrote to the editor, specifically marking the letter as not for publishing, and said he should have struck this out given that it is so patently false that most people of any political stripe would disagree with it. To his credit the editor, John Witherow, wrote back with a half-hearted defence of his editing, plus some dire warnings about Islamism - but Portillo, who was copied in, did not respond at all.

Such is the dilemma, I suppose, with interacting with the worst excesses of propaganda: the media was always intended to be a one-way conversation, and if inconvenient facts get in the way of an article, the author rarely has to answer their critics.

quote: "Islamic hatred of the West".

Blair claimed this as well and It is sad to read this line here. it is absolutely wrong. I've never heard anyone talking about Sweden, Norway, Finland.. or any country who mind it's own business....
Even when talking about the US or Britain, people mention the US/UK government, not people.

Do you thin Bush administration or Blair gangsters can be balled THE WEST?

Craig, you are wrong.

Do we have a new moderator system or is it just me?

US DoD report on the causes of terror from 2004 (Rumsfeld era):
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/10/20/terrorism/

Robert Pape (Political Science Prof Uni of Chicago who catalogued every suicide bombing from 1980 to 2003 in his book Dying to Win) on Afghanistan policy, and how the occupation is self-defeating:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/15/opinion/15pape.html

"What motivates suicide attackers, however, is not the existence of a terrorist sanctuary, but the presence of foreign forces on territory they prize"

In his book Pape also concludes that religion does play a role in suicide terrorism, but only through the social dynamics between religions and not the nature of any particular religions (e.g. most Hizbullah suicide bombers were secular and some Christian).

Some more Pape links:
Wikipedia on Dying to Win:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_to_Win:_The_Strategic_Logic_of_Suicide_Terrorism

Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism, from which one can search Pape's suicide terrorist database:
http://cpost.uchicago.edu/

As I say in 'intelluctual' bar conversations, why can't britain (not great!) be more like The Netherlands or Spain or Norway, Sweden, Finland and Ireland. They don't pretend to be a world player and the GDPs of these countries are similar to Britain.
After reading the brilliant book "Lions, Donkeys and Dinosaurs" I am convinced that the UK forces are there to keep BAe in business and therefore Britains place on the security council.
Can anyone please tell me any other business wherein if the supplier makes a crap product, SA80 rifle for one example, and the receiver i.e. the taxpayer has to pay for it to be fixed?

'War' is wrong, after all, how would YOU like it if it happened to YOU?

Happy new year Craig and similar minded readers.

Mary.

I'm in a slightly difficult position, in that the people I meet professionally, and the circles I move around in, "tolerate" me and my "liberal" "anarchist" views, because I make them money. I'm like highly paid court jester, or maybe that should be courtisan?

So I feel the need to hide details of the conversations I have with people "of the record." I don't want to get into Craig's position of being pushed out of the golden circle. It interests me to wander in and out, observe, and provide "entertainment" for a price. Whereas Craig took the swine on face to face, I just watch and listen, and take their money.

I value my anonymity and not revealing too much, though these days it's becoming harder and harder to cling to ones illusions as one observes a world going to hell in a bucket.

I quite understand Writerman. I am so sorry to have intruded into your privacy.

I have just been looking at this terrible litany of names of the prisoners at Guantanamo produced by Andy Worthington. http://tinyurl.com/ykckztm

Whatever will future generations think of us and will they ask why we allowed these things to happen? We now look back at what happened in Germany. Have you ever read They Thought They Were Free by Milton Mayer. V good.

(thirdreich.net/Thought_They_Were_Free.html)

I know someone very like Ross Kemp, who does similar stuff, but much of it is without a film crew - well at least initially - and he does do some positive stuff too - like organising and raising funds - to actually improve the lives of some of the poorest, most desperate people in the World...

But when he got back from Afghanistan, and I wanted to hear more of his experiences, the animosity he got from others in the pub was so overwhelming that he had to leave

I don't believe the first article in the following link by David Swanson (No one is that evil) - but read the second
by Joe Quinn

http://www.sott.net/

Tony

The situation in Gaza is so appalling, so grotesque, so obscene, that one would literally have to blind, deaf, and dumb, not to regard the situation of the Palestinians, as an affront to decency and morality. Yet most people in the west know next to nothing about what's happening in Gaza; but if they did their reaction would be the same as all beings, disgust and anger, that we allow such crimes to continue year after year.

Our glorious leaders rely on a climate of ignorance to maintain their positions of power and a false picture of the reality of the world around us. The reason we are living in form of police state and chains are tightening, is because it's becoming increasingly difficult to hide the brutal realities hidden beneath the shiny veneer of "liberal democracy." It's becoming increasingly difficult to "buy us off", as business as usual collapses.

This end of consumerism, which killed-off the concept of the citizen, will lead us towards a far more authoritarian form of state, where "order", or slavery, will require "robust" measures applied across the board.

The New Imperialism we are engaged in, to grab what's left of the world's dwindling reserves of oil and gas, and other vital raw materials, requires a plausible "cover story", and that's the role the war on terror fulfills.

But, as the Romans discovered, blatant imperialism, and wars of conquest and subjugation, are incompatible with "democracy" even on a limited scale, before the rule of the emperors, and the long decline as the empire undermined itself from within. Yet, the Roman aristocracy had a ball, as long as it lasted; and we are on the same tragectory, which seems to apply to many empires. The ruling elite are so protected, and live lives so detached from the reality of ordinary people, that they don't give a damn about the suffering and destruction they create, because it simply won't affect them as they are protected by their castle walls, their army, wealth, their laws, and their state.

The present ruling elite's grip on power is so strong that "reform" of the system is virtually impossible to envisage. Our system reminds one of the other empires before they collapsed from within. Yet this process of rotting from the centre can take a long time, and is often ghastly and very bloody. But maybe a miracle will happen and people will rise up and overthrow the old order.

Perhaps the elite's efforts to paper over the huge cracks in the financial system will fail miserably, and the markets will collapse leading to open revolt as reality tears a gaping hole in the manufactured "reality" we live in?

Mary,

I don't feel that you have intruded on my privacy at all, so you don't need to feel sorry about a thing.

I'm not sure that we have much choice about how much we "allow" our rulers to get away with anymore. They do, more or less, what they want, and what we think doesn't really matter much either way.

Yet, the effort and expense they put into propaganda and lies, suggest that they are accutely aware of just how dangerous their positions would be, if people became aware of what they were really up to. And keeping people fooled is going to become increasingly difficult as the Iraq model, is repeated again and again, but with subtle variations, much like the colour-coded, people's "revoltions" that have become so popular.

I think the slow strangulation of Gaza, which reminds one of the blockade of Iraq, with many of the same consequences for the civilian population, is just the beginning of process designed to rid "Israel" of all the Palestinians.

This "final solution" to the Palestinian question, problem, threat, is uppermost in the minds of the most extreme, nationalist, elements in Israel, who, unfortunately are gaining ground. They want to find a way of getting rid of the Palestinians, one way or another, because they represent a demographic timebomb under the "Zionist" state. Already the Palestinians are in a majority inside the borders of Israel/Palestine. In a few decades they will almost certainly form a majority inside present day Israel, given their high birthrate.

Israel cannot exist as a state for real Israelis exclusively, with a huge and growing Palestinian minority, heading for a majority in twenty or thirty years. So a way to remove this threat to the Zionist and "Jewish" character of Israel has to be found. At least seen from the Israeli nationalist perspective.

Recently Israeli extremists have begun to talk about a "biblical solution" to the Palestinian/Arab problem. This would appear to be code for ethnic cleansing on a "biblical" scale.

The problem is how to get away with it without losing the support of the west and causing the entire Muslim world to explode resulting in the destruction of their pro-western regimes? War would seem to be the obvious solution, yet after the recent failed onslaught on Gaza, this tried and tested method seems not to work anymore on the Palestinians. They have learnt that whaterver they do they musn't leave their homes, because they will never be allowed to return. Better to die where you stand, than die in miserable refugee camp somewhere.

Therefore the Right in Israel are in a predicament. They know they have to drive the Palestinians out somehow, that decision has been made, the difficult question is exactly how does one do it without threatening the Israeli state itself?

Of course Israel's nuclear arsenal would come in useful here, as the ultimate weapon to crush any Arab uprising and threat, an outcome that hardly bears thinking about. The very idea of Jews resorting to the use of nuclear weapons against cities is an abomination, yet if they've never thought of using them, in the last resort, why have them when their neighbours don't have them? And the tragedy is that the policies pursued by the Right inside Israel and leading them, seemingly inexorably, towards precisely such a disasterous future. It's surely time that we stepped in to save Israel from itself, before it's too late.

@writerman

"Recently Israeli extremists have begun to talk about a "biblical solution" to the Palestinian/Arab problem. This would appear to be code for ethnic cleansing on a "biblical" scale."

I find that really hard to believe. I don't suppose you could link to something could you?

Cheers

PS - My £0.02 on Israel's nuclear arsenal - it's bigger than the UK's, and it's not there to deal with a Middle Eastern threat - how could it be? Probably more to do with winning leverage in global politics. Perhaps there's some secret strategic link between the US and Israel's nuclear strategy. Just speculation though.

"Recently Israeli extremists have begun to talk about a "biblical solution" to the Palestinian/Arab problem. This would appear to be code for ethnic cleansing on a "biblical" scale."

I find that really hard to believe. I don't suppose you could link to something could you?"

I'll do it for him:

http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2010/01/04/rabbis-for-peace-urge-going-biblical-to-solve-israeli-palestinian-conflict/

The Book of Joshua details the Biblical version of the establishment of ancient Israel. It described a series of unprovoked divinely enabled and commanded genocides, starting with Jericho.

amk wrote:
---start quote
"In his book Pape also concludes that religion does play a role in suicide terrorism, but only through the social dynamics between religions and not the nature of any particular religions (e.g. most Hizbullah suicide bombers were secular and some Christian)."
---end quote

It's hard to see why suicide-bombing is religious in its basis at all. Surely it's a weapon of last resort by the weak against the powerful. An American friend angrily put to me, "Do Americans do suicide bombing? No. Do Israelis? No." Of course, the response is obvious - they don't have to, when they can sit in aircraft or even offices pushing buttons to do the same job.

But the Japanese did plenty of suicide bombing as things got more desperate, and so did the Tamil Tigers and the Viet-Cong, without any religious imperative whatsoever. So it appears more to do with the imbalance of power, and the desperation of the people, than religion. I think Pape is not looking at the full picture. Americans tend to think that suicide-bombing was invented by Arabs, as if being Arab/Muslim predisposed one to the practice, because they forget even their own history so quickly, and have such a conveniently selective memory.

Various Zionist trolls around the websites keep referring to Purim and giving a date of 27th February 2010. There is an implied menace in their comments. Does anyone know what it's about?

"It's hard to see why suicide-bombing is religious in its basis at all. Surely it's a weapon of last resort by the weak against the powerful."

Sure, Glenn! Let's sympathize with those who strike back against the evil powers who watch volleyball tournaments.

"At least 88 people have been killed by a suicide bomb attack at a volleyball court in the troubled north-west of Pakistan, local police say.

Police chief Ayub Khan said the bomber drove towards a field where people were watching a match, before detonating a load of high-intensity explosives."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8437114.stm

Mark,
“Do we have a new moderator system or is it just me?”

Well, is it Chomsky – or – just Chomsky and me..

A distorted morality thinking that an exclusive “democracy” claims high moral ground:-

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=676452061991429040#docid=4054523048548733881

Angry-soab: Where did I say to sympathise with suicide bombers ... [checks back] ... ah that's right, I didn't. Who are you referring to, that said we should sympathise with suicide bombers then? [checks again]... Ah, that's right. Nobody. You made that up

What is it with you people that you need to fabricate (that's lie) all the time to make your point?

Glenn, your apologetics for "suicide-bombing" included the fatuous nonsense "Surely it's a weapon of last resort by the weak against the powerful." Well, then "surely" you can tell me how those watching the volleyball game were powerful and the truck bomber was weak and why this was his "last resort".

"So it appears more to do with the imbalance of power, and the desperation of the people, than religion."

In some cases the "imbalance of power" determines who straps on the bomb. Don't you think the father of this 13-year old kid could have detonated himself rather than his son?

"At least 41 people were killed and dozens injured when a 13-year-old boy launched a suicide bombing in a market near Pakistan's Swat Valley."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/6305970/Boy-13-kills-41-in-Taliban-suicide-bombing-in-Pakistan.html

Awww! The poor loves in the Taliban. The despair they must feel to do such things.

What is it with you people who'd sooner think up excuses for suicide bombers than condemn their murders?

Most religions have a good word or two for sympathy actualy. Condemnation gets us nowhere just keeps on killing.
Sensible people can discuss attackers circumstances and motivations without screaming Apologist! and Sympathiser!

"Sensible people can discuss attackers circumstances and motivations without screaming Apologist! and Sympathiser! "

Okay then, what was the circumstances and motivation of Abdulmuttalab?

Poverty? I think we can discount that one.

Invasion of his home country? I think we can discount that one.

Perhaps you could offer a possibility and let us nibble on cucumber sandwiches as we do.

All I know is what the teenage kids said last night when they saw the police cordon and the body bags

My wife was trying to make out it was just a local film company doing a drama scene...

I said - they don't work at night

All the night scenes are done in broad daylight

The last thing you want if you are recording a scene is an absence of light...

And so I didn't know whether or not it was true

And I still do not know his name - and no one down my local pub knows anything about it

And I think

Well I know you were Male and a bit Younger than me...

But what about the poor cunts who had to clean up your blood and guts...

You didn't give a fuck about them did you?

Tony

The "new" strategy being employed in Afghanistan by the Americans seems to be high-risk - counter terrorism, which when directed at a civilian population is often counter-productive; instead of being terrorised and cowed, they become angry and even more resolute in their resistance to foreign occupation, and in a country like Afghanistan such an outcome is garanteed.

Also, one needs to be sceptical and cautious about exactly who is behind the terror bombings of civilian targets in Afghanistan, and especially in Pakistan. To accept without question that it's the "Taliban" who are responsible for all the bombings is foolish. The bombings in Pakistan serve the purposes of a number of different groups and countries, determined to destabilize Pakistan.

"To accept without question that it's the "Taliban" who are responsible for all the bombings is foolish."

But when the Taliban claim responsibility for a suicide bombing, or Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's gang do, or Jalaluddin Haqqani, (or al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula for that matter) isn't it worth entertaining the possibility they were responsible?

Not exactly off topic, I think it is important to know who is funding/initiating terror bombings. History teaches us that the CIA has a very strong record in this area in many parts of the world and the USA in recent years certainly hasn't had problems with just bombing whole villages at a time. It's not what people say but what they do that counts.

The Biblical ethnic cleansing some people can't get their heads around is not so unbelievable.

If you can begin to overcome the conditioning that goes with living in a thoroughly Judaized culture you would understand that the pernicious genocidal faith is not Islam at all.It's Talmudic Judaism.

Purim was the date for the launch of Bush's Israelite blitz against Iraq in 2003.Given the power of the Israeli Lobby that wasn't a coincidence.

Talmudism like the basis of most world faiths has laudable elements that form the basis of social cohesion and co-operation but you don't have to look too deeply to discover it also contains the seeds of a centuries old separatist and supremacist political project for world dominion.A kingdom of this world rather than the next one.

Notwithstanding textual revision Pharisaic teachings about a vengeful tribal deity and Laws about the destruction and enslavement of non-believers are still there for all to see in the first five books of the OT, especially Deuteronomy.

So stop worrying about the Islamic caliphate it's a corporate media-driven deception.Jewish power is entrenched in all the most powerful governments and international forums whereas muslims are barely represented in the system of global governance at all.

The dispersion of World Jewry that many believe is a weakness and basis for vulnerability is actually the very source of their current domination in all the places where it really matters.

The seeds of the civilisational War on Terror lie not so much in the Koran as the Talmud.Talmudic teaching and Hebraic custom and law have penetrated over centuries into Christianity to form the Judaeo-Christian tradition.

Nowhere is Israelism more entrenched than among the Anglo-US masonic elites who set their sights on Jerusalem and the Second Coming centuries ago.These elites were America's Founding Fathers!

If you want to follow these guys into WW3 then Portillo,the BBC and all the other Islamophobic agitators will gleefully lead you to it.

Allelujah!

@mary: "Various Zionist trolls around the websites keep referring to Purim and giving a date of 27th February 2010. There is an implied menace in their comments. Does anyone know what it's about?"

and

@Steelback: "The seeds of the civilisational War on Terror lie not so much in the Koran as the Talmud. Talmudic teaching and Hebraic custom and law have penetrated over centuries into Christianity to form the Judaeo-Christian tradition."

I came across this four-page pdf about the Ancient Hebrew prophecies, in which the prophecies from the Book of Daniel are translated in terms of Iraq, Iran, Israel and the West. It starts:

"Iraq’s defeat by the American-led coalition commenced on March 19, 2003, at Shushan Purim — the day Purim is celebrated in Jerusalem. Triumph over neighboring Iran by Western powers has also long been predicted in Daniel 8:1-8. In fact, this Persian Gulf conflict with old Persia is the catalyst that sets in motion a torrent of end-time disasters, which follow in quick succession."

http://www.focusontheprophecies.org/PT.%202%20PERSIAN%20GULF%20WAR%20CONFLICTS.pdf

Portaloo is part of the torture and the wars on Islam so what do we expect from him?
He obviously supports the torture because he orders it.
Let’s do a translation here; when they say “Detention with out charge” what they mean is they are allowed to lock up anyone they want for how ever long without even accusing them of a crime.
They are using Muslims as an excuse to bring in to justify it but wants people get used to it, they will use it on others.
Just as they used Muslims as an excuse to bring in the extradition agreement with America in which people are extradited to America without any evidence and without means to challenge.
To the best of my knowledge all the people extradited with it were non-Muslims who had not broken any British law.

Ah, I dunno if I'm going to get into all this biblical prophesy stuff myself. Sounds as mad as a box of frogs. But thanks for the link.

@angrysoba: Man, you are ANGRY. :) Careful you don't frighten the Japanese. But seriously, don't you think the Pape book makes sense?

Here, read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_to_Win

And if it cools your baubles any, Robert Pape isn't some woolly pinko apologist liberal. He taught air strategy at the USAF school of advanced studies, amongst other jobs.

It looks like a good, rational objective study to me.

PS - I think we can all agree that suicide bombing is very bad, mmm'kay?

"Just as they used Muslims as an excuse to bring in the extradition agreement with America in which people are extradited to America without any evidence and without means to challenge.
To the best of my knowledge all the people extradited with it were non-Muslims who had not broken any British law."

That is certainly true. I'd fucking love to know exactly what was said, and by whom, and to who, in the transatlantic discussion on UK-US extradition. Presumably it has something to do with our intelligence-sharing agreements and nuclear-rented weapons and the possibility the US would just kidnap who it wanted.

angry-soab: I don't say terrorism is the weapon of the weak, Amnesty International does.

Nobody was offering sympathy and cucumber sandwiches, you made that up. Just like you make up so much.

But I'll agree, terrorism is not confined to the weak - indeed, the CIA invented the car-bomb. America employed terrorism expansively across central America. Death-squads, torture and other terrorist devices were used by America and its stooges, trained in "The school of the Americas" in Georgia (US). A terrorism academy, a place to train dictators. You must be very proud.

But suicide bombings are always done by the weaker army. And we're not talking about the end target, that would be an idiot's point in measuring relative force. We're talking about the central power involved.

I think it's a waste of time trying to talk with you, frankly. Being so angry all the time, you probably see the world through a red haze and can't think properly.

'Kemp himself plainly "got", that those attitudes were caused by the atrocities and indignities to which the Palestinians are subjected.'

You're priceless.

Glenn,

Please address the following, from a previous thread:

Heh Glenn, do you believe, as Anno believes that "nobody here believes that Obama had a Muslim education, except in order to be able to pose as a friend to Islam."

Do you believe what Jaded wrote:

"An Israeli firm controls security at Amsterdam airport by the way. Same with all the 9/11 flights. I guess saying this must make me an 'anti-semite' or something, but what the hell!"

Just how much do you align yourself with Texan right-wing nutjob Alex Jones - as much as Arsalan Goldberg?

Larry: Here's a shocker for you. Glen Beck has been lying, along with the propaganda arm of the Republic Party Fux News, and Obama is not a secret Muslim.

Israel does a lot of security, so it wouldn't surprise me if they had involvement in Schiphol too. Another shocker, eh?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-harris/what-israel-can-teach-the_b_408720.html

Please refer to my previous comments on Alex Jones, I addressed that subject more than adequately.

Glenn, I agree that Obama is not a secret Muslim, but you allow the silly Anno's comments to pass without comment.

Your point out that "Israel does security stuff" is a bizarre failure in relevance. It's certainly not the case that there's any evidence that the Israelis had anything to do with the Schiphol bomber or the 911 suicide Muslims.

You seem ready to paint me as some Fox News nutjob, which is certainly not true, and there are plenty of nutjobs in the comments at this site that are even nuttier than Glenn Beck.

If you don't like Alex Jones so much, don't you think it's odd that you've dreamed up the same conspiracies?

Several Christian pastors across the US now encourage their flocks-who have been proselytized to think of themselves as Israel's lost sheep to observe Jewish holidays.

The real "fun" day is 19th March:Purim which according to the book of Esther celebrates the slaughter of tens of thousands of Persians.

angrysoba

"Sensible people can discuss attackers circumstances and motivations without screaming Apologist! and Sympathiser! "

Okay then, what was the circumstances and motivation of Abdulmuttalab?

Poverty? I think we can discount that one.

Invasion of his home country? I think we can discount that one.

Perhaps you could offer a possibility and let us nibble on cucumber sandwiches as we do."

What you are missing is the phenomenon of identification or affiliation of a person with a group to which he himself does not belong. PETN underpants man was not poor, was not Arab and does not come from a country that is currently under foreign occupation. However it is possible that seeing what he perceives to be injustice happening to others with whom he identifies for whatever reason, common Muslim religion is an obvious one, may be enough to prompt action. Also Nigeria is not now occupied by a foreign power but not so long ago it was so and the historical memory of that time may still persist.

When communist revolutions start they are waged on behalf of the working class but the main actors always come from the bourgeoisie intellectual class whose attitude to the lumpen proletariat on whose behalf they claim to act is one of contempt. Most of the people who agitated against the institution of slavery were not themselves slaves but they still felt enough affiliation with people who were to work on their behalf.

Imagine if Zimbabwe started expelling the remaining white citizens just as Uganda under Amin expelled the Asians, would not you angrysoba feel affiliation with these white Christian anglo people and be outraged on their behalf and want to support some action against Zimbabwe? If the action against the whites went on long enough and was extreme enough might there not be some white suicide bombers not just from white Zimbabwe but from the UK.

It is obvious that in the Arab/Muslim parts of the world, consciousness of what Arab/Muslims see as injustices to themselves and their coreligionists is both wide spread and acute.

Steelback,

7's the key number here. Think about it. 7-Elevens. 7 dwarves. 7, man, that's the number. 7 chipmunks twirlin' on a branch, eatin' lots of sunflowers on my uncle's ranch.

angrysoba

Perhaps I am over-interpreting things, but I take your handle "angrysoba" to be expressing something that you need to say about yourself. I read it as An Angry Son of a Bitch. This suggests that like me you come across things on the internet that talk about injustices and absurdities that enrage you. How many of these result in injustices to your own group rather than groups of which you are not a member but for whom you feel affiliation and sympathy?

It's a noodle

Soba noodles are native Japanese noodles - is that relevant perhaps?
The "angry" remains.

At least the troll has quit with the non-stop stupid questions.

Some words have owners, and no matter who uses them they always serve the interests of their owners.

Some words are weapons and can only used in word games that are in fact actions in a war.

Some words are bent, the attributes that are associated with them are such that they are prefabricated parts for lies and those who use the words are unaware of this.

All the above apply to the words "terror" and "terrorism". The dishonesty is in what they don't cover, they never cover the actions of the agents of a state even though these actions induce terror and are meant to induce terror. When 4 NYPD plains clothes police pumped 19 bullets into Amadou Diallo while he was in front of his apartment building fumbling for his keys, this was not terrorism. It did in fact inflict terror on Blacks in the USA, the subsequent acquittal of the 4 police on charges of murder was a reinforcing act of terror. When Israel killed 1400 Gazans, most of them civilians this was not terror even though it had the effect of terrorizing as it was meant to do so. When the coalition of the willingly murderous inflicted "Shock and Awe" on Iraq that was not terrorism even though it caused terror as it was meant to do so. Also not terror is calling air strikes against Afghan wedding parties.

The words terror and terrorist can only ever be used agains poor people who don't have a state with an army with tanks, helicopter gunships and F16s. The words are weapons used by the USA, Israel and the UK and lately by Russia in the propaganda wars against the people whose resistance to oppression is to be delegitimized.

@Rob Lewis: "Ah, I dunno if I'm going to get into all this biblical prophesy stuff myself. Sounds as mad as a box of frogs."

I'm with you on that. But I suppose the important point is: do those who do believe in it have the power to influence events?

writerman

I am beginning to wonder whether winning is what the US wants in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The USA is ruled on behalf of a kleptocratic elite of no more than 1% of the population. This elite has two right wing parties that alternate in power. The Democrats pretend to be in opposition when the Republicans are ruling and can do nothing against Republican thievery, but when the Republicans are so much on the nose that they lose power, the Democrats continue Republican policies and wimp out on all the promises they made to get elected. In my view the Democrats exist to block the formation of other electable parties that would govern in the interests of the majority of non-elite Americans, to wit the "losers".

I begin to wonder whether the destruction of the US economy , the pauperisation of the middle and working classes and hocking the nation to China actually makes sense from the point of view of the 1% of the elite. The problems of the US will be those of the other 99% as they will move their money and their corporations off shore and leave the crippling debt to the schmucks. Permanent war efficiently to transfer money from poor taxpayers to rich shareholders in corporations that contract to the Pentagon may be what they want. If this is so blowing innocent Afghan children across the landscape to maybe get a few Taliban may be a conscious strategy, they want to alienate the Afghan population precisely because it causes greater resistance and if it does cause more terrorism that is a bonus as it provides more justification for the police state.

The fact is that the US Army has never been any good at winning hearts and minds. It has however been very good at doing the opposite. The question is does the US army actually want to win hearts and minds?

The establishment of every colonial nation sooner or later requires a final solution to the indigenous question.

The feasibility of the project depends on transferring the land from the indigines to the colonists at a price that the colonists are prepared to pay. Of course the indigines will not sell because the need the land, and money is of no use to them as they do not have the cultural knowledge necessary to use it. It slips through their fingers very quickly. This means that force has to supplement the offer of payment, and once force is allowed, why bother to pay at all?

The only possible solutions are ethnic cleansing or genocide. That does not mean that the colonist has to destroy every last one of the unwanted, but they have to reduce the population drastically and convert the remainder into a demoralized rabble who direct their violence inward. We Australians has successfully done this with our aborigines. Most of the genes in their gene pool are white genes thanks to generations of a differential sexual access ratio or rape ratio. The remnants are uneducated, bellicose resentful and mostly in prison for drug offenses or violence against their relatives. We Aussies can lean on our swords and gloat as they finish themselves off. Our police only occasionally meet the need to beat one of them to death.

Since Australia is a strong supporter of Israel we should be advising them on our successful methods.

The fact is that ridding the Jewish state of the Palestinians was always a central component of the Zionist colonization though they had to hide this from the rest of the world, just as Hitler had to hide the holocaust with a war.

Carlyle Moulton: The pauperisation of the middle class is very much the plan, it would appear, and the same will be true for us in Britain if we don't watch it. Forget the "service industries", we're going to have a "do you want fries with that?" economy.

Every last damned thing is made in China. Why? Because it suits corporate interests. The prices haven't significantly gone down, even though costs of manufacture have. When Phil Nike outsourced manufacturing to Indonesia (or wherever), did the price of the products go down? Of course not. When Indonesia started getting too expensive, manufacturers switched and switched, finally ending up with communist China as the bottom level of manufacturing costs, where fair wages, working conditions, pensions, health and safety, pollution and other such nonsense gets no consideration.

Progressive changes happen when we have a strong middle class (or upwardly mobile working class). Equal rights for women, ethnic minorities - basically for those who aren't white, straight, Christian males - all came when people had time to do more than just grind away to keep poverty and starvation at bay. Conservative forces saw this and thought it was terrible, society is falling apart. Women not knowing their place anymore? Blacks and "coloureds" allowed into polite society? My God, this has to be stopped!

So they are stopping it. It's a war against the middle/working classes, and the richest class is winning. Why do the bottom 99.9% want tax cuts for the super-rich in America? Because they're stupid enough to believe they'll be that rich one day, and they'd appreciate those tax cuts when finally they get there. With the MSM all tied up by the largest corporate interests, and very few independent media of any significance, people get the impression their interests really do tie up with those of the mega-rich. Keep us misinformed, distracted and working harder than ever, and they'll do their evil work while we're not looking.

The world's economy will be flattened, if the ultra-rich get their way. All manufacturing done by those making a dollar a day. The rest of us living on increasing debt, until the entire financial system collapses - again. Then the likes of Goldman Sachs will pick up shares, property and commodities for pennies on the pound, and we'll get the whole thing rolling again. Just like they did in the 1930's. Only this time, there will be no manufacturing base with which to recover. We'll remain mostly in poverty - they like us that way.

courtenay - gratefully received thankyou

Back in the seventies I used to read an Australian paper called the National Times. I can remember an article the headline of which went something like this:-

"Israel's brutal plan to drive out the west Bank Palestinians."

What is extraordinary is that Israel has managed to fool so many of us (including me) for so long with its own self justifying mythology. For many years I bought the myth of poor little Israel, surrounded by nasty Arabs who want to stamp it out and attacked in in 1947 and then again in 1967. So many Israeli myths have penetrated deep into the Western mind:-

1/ The Terra Nullius myth of no Palestinians, they all came after Zionist migration started to profit from the good economy.

2/ The Palestinians fled their homes because Arab nations told them to do so on radio.

It is now being admitted by some revisionist Israeli historians that ethnic cleansing was part of the strategic plan for establishing the state. If Arab nation radio did tell Palestinians to flee it was no doubt because the Jewish Death Squads had informed them of their plans. In any case fleeing a war zone sounds sensible to me.

3/ The Israel was attacked in 1967 myth.

4/ The Israel want peace myth, the Palestinians are the problem.

Sure Israel wants peace but only on its terms after it has secured vacant possession of the remaining Palestinian occupied pieces of Palestine.

These myths have penetrated the Western mind to the extent that its leaders are incapable of recognizing that Israel is not now nor ever has been negotiating in good faith.

Israel is still in the Native dispossession phase that happened in the US, Australia and Brazil before the advent of world wide news media. Their actions appear brutal, but if we could take a time machine back to the 16, 17, 18 and 19 hundreds when the US, Australia and Brazil were going through the same phase of colonization, the dispossession phase, the actions we would see would horrify us as far worse than anything Israel has done, but very few would be things documented in today's history books. Israel is inhibited to some extent by other nations' awareness of its actions, a problem Australian, Brazilian and US genocide did not have.

Glen.

I believe that the Brazilian model is what the 1% elite want their nations to follow, a tiny elite, a small professional class and the rest underclass or working poor.

Glen.

One thing that has allowed the US elite to make their society so regressive is racism.

The fear by the white working class that any progressive legislation would result in Niggers getting something that they don't deserve is so intense that it makes the members of the white working class oppose progressive legislation that would help them. The New Deal was carefully structured to be implemented through the states so that Negroes could be excluded. That is why the white working class accepted it.

Craig.

Some blogging software allows subscription to a service of email notifications of new comments on a thread. Does yours? If it does I suggest implementing it.

Chomsky quoted Shultz as saying terrorism was "a cancer in our landmass" - here is my take:

The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth that the ‘war on terror’ spread from the cancerous growth that emerged from the CIA distributed ‘The Freedom Fighter's Manual’ and the malignant pardon by Bush Snr that would damage a healthy Carter closeted society and emerge as the most potent source of evil the world would experience in a millennium.

The spores of deception would undermine the ‘innocence’ of Reagan, to be nurtured and cultivated into a foreign policy based on the covert use of ‘black propaganda’ to produce the mist of revolutionary violence that would engulf Presidents for decades in an enigma of funds, fear, coups and threat that became an ugly monster with legs and arms of the mujahadeen resistance in Afghanistan and the cancerous neurons of the Intelligence community.

History repeated, the curse lives on; only the actors have changed, the insipid and life threatening deception remains.

Carlyle Moulton:

"What you are missing is the phenomenon of identification or affiliation of a person with a group to which he himself does not belong. PETN underpants man was not poor, was not Arab and does not come from a country that is currently under foreign occupation. However it is possible that seeing what he perceives to be injustice happening to others with whom he identifies for whatever reason, common Muslim religion is an obvious one, may be enough to prompt action. Also Nigeria is not now occupied by a foreign power but not so long ago it was so and the historical memory of that time may still persist."

Give me a fucking break!

You are the one advocating or condoning the murder of innocent passengers on airlines and even saying that this is a war which must be fought totally, with no room for sentiment.

Do I sympathize with those of a group I do not belong?

YES! I sympathize with the 90 or so Muslim Pakistanis sadistically murdered by the psychopathic maniacs you are an apologist for.

I'm also sympathetic to the Muslims in Iran oppressed by their loony theocratic rulers, not to the loony theocratic leaders.

So I don't much care for your Frantz Fanon-esque armchair revolutions. The Taliban, the pants bomber, the shoe bomber, the 9/11 hijackers, the 7/7 bombers, the embassy bombers etc... are not the Wretched of the Earth, they are the SCUM OF THE EARTH!

"Imagine if Zimbabwe started expelling the remaining white citizens just as Uganda under Amin expelled the Asians, would not you angrysoba feel affiliation with these white Christian anglo people and be outraged on their behalf and want to support some action against Zimbabwe?"

Let's compare like with like. Would I get on a plane to Harare and blow it out of the sky on to an urban area or hijack it and fly it into a tower block or drive a TNT-laden truck onto a volleyball court? NO! Why not, because TARGETTING civilians like that is psychopathic.

@Rob: "Careful you don't frighten the Japanese. But seriously, don't you think the Pape book makes sense?"

Don't worry, I don't frighten the Japanese. Usually, when a terrorist attack happens such as the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo underground then the blame is put on the culprits and I don't have to get angry listening to wild-eyed conspiracies about Zionists conducting attacks to get them into a war.

(Usually, although when Richard Gage - the supposedly respectable Truther came to Japan to express his lunatic "theory" about the WTC buildings being demolished one member of the audience did ask, "If United or American Airlines buys JAL will they use them for false flag terror attacks to get us into a war?"...this kind of idiocy is spreading and might be what causes my blood pressure to rise.)

Last I heard there were something like 70,000 US troops stationed here in Japan (might be a bit lower now) and they're not always popular (sometimes for good reason). That said I have never heard of a Japanese citizen hijacking a plane or blowing themselves up on a bus or a train to protest.

Now, there were a group of "revolutionaries" who called themselves the Japanese Red Army Faction who flew into Lod airport in Israel in the 70s and shot the place up and threw hand grenades about the place killing a number of people, most of them tourists.

What was the justification for their behaviour?

And as another connection to Japan, 1997 could be considered pre-2001 by most people's calendars. Prior to the "war on terror", I think we can agree. So what was the justification for the attack on the Japanese and Swiss tourists in Luxor. Japan and Switzerland? Could you get less crusder than those two?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxor_massacre

angrysoba

This countepunch article has interesting ideas about the motivations of the underpants bomber.

http://www.counterpunch.org/block01042010.html

@angrysoba: Interesting you mention the Japanese subway attacks, I have Murakami's Underground on my bookshelf to read in the near future.

And you're going to hate this, but no less a personage than KGB-defector Alexander Kouzminov thinks that Aum Shinrikyo operated with the collusion of at least one intelligence agency (its Russian HQ was a couple of doors down from KGB's HQ). Don't know what the motivation for such collusion would be but there you go. I don't create 'em, I just relate 'em.

Oh and I tried reading the CounterPunch article but I couldn't get any further than the start of the second paragraph, when the author proudly admits she's a sex therapist, and argues this qualifies her to comment.

Rob

Me to 'oower' seems like Jack's bean stalk has overtaken her mind - different?

Rob

Me to, 'oower' seems like Jack's bean stalk has overtaken her mind - different?

Rob

Me to, 'oower' seems like Jack's bean stalk has overtaken her mind - different?

Carlyle Moulton "3/ The Israel was attacked in 1967 myth."

Correct, Israel launched a masterstroke pre-emptive attack on the Egyptian airforce because Egypt had massed thousands of tanks and 100,000 troops on the border and and were about to invade Israel. The fact that Israel destroyed the armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan, who were supported with men and arms from six other Arab states, certainly adds to the myth of plucky Israel and was the foundation for a tragedy that has endured ever since. But whether that tragedy is the fault of Israel or the stupidity and intransigence of Arab states is a matter for debate. You know what I think.

"And you're going to hate this, but no less a personage than KGB-defector Alexander Kouzminov thinks that Aum Shinrikyo operated with the collusion of at least one intelligence agency (its Russian HQ was a couple of doors down from KGB's HQ)."

Well, I'd be surprised if there were no conspiracy theories linking Aum to someone or other.

It seems that some people have pointed the finger at Russia or at North Korea (who are the bogeymen for the Japanese). But mostly they were a cult for highly intelligent misfits.

I read Underground a number of years ago and it's okay, but very little commentary, mostly just eyewitness accounts from those who were on the subway and some ex-members of the cult.

Sorry - looks like a 'bouncy' keyboard, not 'repetition psychosis.'

eddie - correct - the seed of modern pre-emption had germinated and grows within the diffused light of deception.

"As a sex therapist, I think it wise to try to get inside both heads of this young man, not just the one between his ears but the one between his legs, to look into the dirty underwear, so to speak, of the Panty Bomber who didn’t actually bomb anything, yet had enough PETN next to his junk to bring down a whole plane with all 278 passengers and 11 crew members."

What are the requisite qualifications for "sex therapist"? Having watched all the Carry On movies and Frankie Howerd comedies?

Oooooh panties!

BEWARE:Zio-gremlins have hijacked us again!

You can spot them from the off-topic red herrings they introduce to the conversation.

Try offering them a bacon sandwich!

I think the ruling elite in the United States don't give a damn about the other 99% of Americans, especially as they may have outlived their usefulness as both producers and consumers. Production has systematically been moved abroad to low wage regions, and now, I believe consumption will follow, as the debt-fuelled, consumption model collapses.

American friends of mine, lovely, decent people, really believe their kids will have a higher standard of living than they enjoy. They really believe the American economy is ready to bounce back like a coloured beachball on the golden sandy shore of "capitalism island."

I think they are clinging to straws, which is understandable. Who wants to face up to harsh reality, when its' so harsh? The "American Dream" dream, is broken and rapidly turning into a nightmare for the middle class. They, like everyone else can now longer borrow and live on debt to finance their standard of living.

Spot on writerman - they are also my friends and distant family and I wish I could do more to help without sounding arrogant...

"American friends of mine, lovely, decent people, really believe their kids will have a higher standard of living than they enjoy. They really believe the American economy is ready to bounce back like a coloured beachball on the golden sandy shore of "capitalism island."

I think they are clinging to straws, which is understandable. Who wants to face up to harsh reality, when its' so harsh? The "American Dream" dream, is broken and rapidly turning into a nightmare for the middle class. They, like everyone else can now longer borrow and live on debt to finance their standard of living."

I'm sure you won't gloat too much. Maybe they can emigrate to North Korea!

Larry I don't know anything about Alex Jones. But since you don't like him, he must be doing something right?

Arsalan: Alex Jones is an American journalist and radio show host. He's essentially a mouthpiece for the traditional 'Patriot' Right, meaning that he's anti-NWO, anti-corporate, anti-Patriot Act and anti-war. His website is updated several times a day and is usually quite interesting and entertaining - especially the reader comments at the end of each story.

If you fancy a look it's at http://www.infowars.com/

Writerman: It appears that the American Dream changed at the same time that things were turned around in the US, so that the working class (those who work for their living, including the "middle-class" who work for a quite comfortable living) were propelled on their downwards trajectory, helped by Clinton and the Bushes.

The American Dream used to be that one could get good pay in a steady, reliable job, own a property, put your kids through college and retire reasonably comfortably. Taking a proper holiday every year, and having quality time with the family. That's no longer possible for the majority. So the dream had to change.

Now the 'Dream' is winning the lottery. Or getting your fame/fortune on "Pop-Idol", some "reality-TV" show, becoming a star sportsperson or film-star. And then you've made it - and if not, well you're not anyone who really matters anyway.

The original 'Dream' ended under Reagan, when - for the first time since the Industrial Revolution - wages stopped tracking productivity. We then were told that "supply side economics" is the future. Some rich person would build a factory producing widgets, and people would buy them. The trick was to give a rich person sufficient tax cuts, they would then create the factory, and we'd all become better off.

The trouble was, it was all BS. Tax cuts were made, and the factories were built - in _Mexico_ , then communist China eventually. With wages falling behind productivity, both parents in a family were required to work, whereas just one (usually the male) sufficed in the past.

Eventually, even with both members of a couple working, it was not enough. Longer hours and overtime became standard, yet still that was not enough. Finally, debt and credit filled the gap, until that came to a crises over the last couple of years. America is much more in debt even that the UK, on credit cards, overdrafts, personal loans, mortgages, and all the other credit instruments bedeviling our lives.

But there's still the New, Improved American Dream, tantalisingly dangled by MSM - get rich, become famous, win the lottery... and it can still be all yours. Just keep things sweet for the top 1% in the meantime with nice tax cuts, btw, because you wouldn't want to pay tax when you finally get there, would you?

Not worked it out yet?

Larry,angrisoba et al are a Shabbos Goy disinfo. team. who've hijacked the thread.

They're so dumb to think we'd never work it out!

While their distraction chat proceeds why not join me here:

@juggedhareonthebone.com

My site is not moderated and has not yet been Zio-hijacked.My latest post is about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion-that antisemitic "hoax" by Nilus they don't want you to read.

I believe the process of sucking dry 99% of the UK population is well underway and has been for a while.
The 1%(government/the Establishment or whatever you call those who control us) have been setting up a structure where they control business and through this of course employment and hence us.
Over the years I believe billions has been diverted from tax through scams such as excise and VAT fraud.
There's evidence that some of these funds may have been diverted into quite legitimate companies and used possibly for the setting up of new companies to rival established ones.
If this has been happening and is as extensive as I believe, then we'll be living in a kind of communist society where everything is owned and controlled by the few. It's quite interesting to see how many members of the Establishment get plum jobs when they retire as directors etc of companies particularly those in security. Ownership of many of these companies is opaque.

Douglas Coupland's Generation X is an interesting literary landmark in the American dream's road to ruin. The last bit of the book is just a compendium of how the main characters' parents were better off than them. Coupland was originally advanced to write a non-fiction book about the kids of baby boomers and it sort of came out as a novel, although it wasn't published until 1991.

Anyway, America's economy was on the skids for a long time before the credit crunch hit.

Hmmm. Seem to be in a literary mood today.

@apostate

Do you mean sympathetic gentile propagandists?

Douglas Coupland's Generation X -

so what passes as evidence around here is a boring gimmicky book-lite from the early 90s that received far too much readership because the whiny narrator was part of the Zeitgeist at the time.

You haven't read it, have you?

Mark,

"courtenay - gratefully received thankyou"

My pleasure.

What irks me is that we in the West focus ( non-focus from the mainstream media) as if there is some high democratic moral ground that we occupy. It is horrendous what is/has happened in Iraq and Afghanistan. These countries, no threat to either Britain or America, invaded, and everything done ( Falluja and drones bombing villagers indiscriminately - included)to subjugate the populace in their own countries - and - we pontificate about our democracy, humanity, advanced civilization and "just wars".

Courtney,

It irked me, it screwed me up, now I am exhausted - most times I think we live in hell - but something mysterious keeps you fighting - keeps you digging inbetween the lines to keep ahead of disinformation. Seeing the misery of Iraq first-hand was soul destroying; complete destruction of an ancient civilisation.

Grrr tired

Courtenay,

It irked me, it screwed me up, now I am exhausted - most times I think we live in hell - but something mysterious keeps you fighting - keeps you digging inbetween the lines to keep ahead of disinformation. Seeing the misery of Iraq first-hand was soul destroying; complete destruction of an ancient civilisation.

Hey Mark,

What's the best (safest/cheapest) way to visit Iraq right now for a civilian? Do you know?

Rob - you asked:-

Q. " What's the best (safest/cheapest) way to visit Iraq right now for a civilian? Do you know?"

A. Travel via Mark's web site - stay at home - and stay safe.

That's good advice for a civilian - its both safest and cheapest.

"You haven't read it, have you?"

Yes, probably around 1994. It was boring and justifiably condemned as a gimmick.

"Yes, probably around 1994. It was boring and justifiably condemned as a gimmick."

I haven't read Generation X, but I did read Girlfriend in a Coma. If there is a worse novel than that I can't think of what it is.

Well, each to their own. I think it is probably a mistake to consider Coupland a poster-boy for the Left, and then to adulate or condemn him according to ones own belief-system. These things should be judged on their own merits.

From Wikipedia: The Guardian of London (mainstream centrist paper) described the author of the book as "becoming extraordinary" for this novel. The Times of London (right-wing broadsheet) said that the book was a "disturbing, thought-provoking and moving novel. Girlfriend in a Coma has something of the quality of a fairytale, but it contains a sharp realism that makes the book scarily contemporary".

Elsewhere, the New Statesman (London, centrist/liberal political monthly) said the novel was "about the longing for a great cleansing act that may redeem humanity and allow us all to start again, unchained from history" and that it was a "remarkable book".

(Apologies to Craig for the O/T!)

Arsalan, here's Alex Jones in all his "glory":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVRw79NmEq4

Angry thanks.
Now that I have seen Alex I think I have more respect for Alex than I do for Larry.
Because what Alex talks about in that clip happens, just do a search on youtube for tazer.

arsalan: one of Jones's finest contributions is his interview with film producer Aaron Russo. In the following extract Russo tells us, straight from the horses mouth, what the ruling elite have in store for us and, in ten devastating minutes, consigns once and for all the shrill witterings of the assorted angrylarrys of this world to the dustbin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nD7dbkkBIA

MJ,

You moron. When is your RFID chip coming?

This guy was mildly successful at certain entertainment ventures, and was a major nut. If this constitutes the "horse's mouth" for you, you have some real problems.

Now what other Argument from Charlie Sheen are you going to make?

Truthers are so much fun to make fun of. You idiots make it so easy.

Russo's qualities as a film producer are irrelevant: it's the account of his relationship with Rockefeller that makes it from the horse's mouth.

The use of RFID chips is already growing rapidly (criminals, children, pets) but note my use of the words 'have in store'.

Russo was obviously not a 'nut'. That your only response to his comments is a feeble attempt at character assassination is says it all really.

By the way, if you find 911 'truthers' easy to make fun of, just imagine the fun they have with those who still cling to the official account. Give them a miraculously preserved passport, a couple of holdalls containing flying manuals and a copy of the Koran and they'll believe anything. Tee hee.

"it's the account of his relationship with Rockefeller that makes it from the horse's mouth."

He was lying, you gullible silly goose.

A miraculously preserved passport? What other Loose Change lies do you believe in?

MJ, please tell me about the top secret super-duper nano-therm*te. I could use a good laugh.

Larry: do you really think he was lying?

As for the passport, I think you'll find that it was an FBI lie rather than Loose Change. You'll recall that the FBI held a televised press conference at which said document was triumphantly brandished.

Not sure about the 'top secret super-duper nano-therm*te' but I have heard that a team from the University of Copenhagen found traces of regular thermite in three separate samples of the dust.

Perhaps you could tell me about the military drill that was being held on the morning of 911, based on the scenario of hijacked passenger jets being flown into the twin towers and the Pentagon. Tell me it was just a coincidence. I need a laugh too.

MJ, you sound like a creationist.

- The hijackers were presumably in the cockpits of the planes that hit the WTC. If they didn't recover any of the passports, wouldn't you be claiming that it was mysterious that none of the passports were recovered? And that passport was not "miraculously preserved" - again, you've been manipulated by the boys from Dylan Avery, whose stupidity is verifiable - he was held back in high school for failure to pass economics. Do you know how easy it is to graduate from an American high school?

There was no therm*te at the WTC. Again, you've been manipulated. Are you seriously suggesting that black ops teams planted thermite in the Towers beforehand? How exactly did they do that?

You're wrong about the military drills the with hijacking scenarios. Do you realize how little sense that makes? In any event, it's all made up.

Do you believe everything that crazy people tell you?

You do strike me as someone who doesn't read the responses to your positions. Perhaps you're too afraid.

"If they didn't recover any of the passports, wouldn't you be claiming that it was mysterious that none of the passports were recovered?"

Given that the flight data recorders didn't survive then certainly not.

"There was no therm*te at the WTC"

Well if you say so that's good enough for me. Those pesky chemists with their silly analyses should just shut up.

"How exactly did they do that?"

Heck well if you hadn't just reassured me that there wasn't any there I suppose I would guess they did it on those occasions when WTC was shut down for rewiring.

"You're wrong about the military drills the with hijacking scenarios"

OK, thank you for clearing that up. It was Gen Richard Myers, then Joint Chief of Staff, who said the drills were taking place but he obviously should have checked with you first.

"Do you believe everything that crazy people tell you?"

Well I believe everything you tell me Larry and I feel much better for it. Now I realise that the passport and those two holdalls really are cast-iron evidence and more than to convince me that the government is telling the truth.

Sorry not to have read your post. I'm too afraid.

You know, I'm taking a stab at finding actual evidence for your claim that Richard Myers said that hijacking drills were taking place. Nope; not seeing any. Just a bunch of truther websites.

I'm afraid it was at that well-known crazy 'truther' forum, the Armed Services Committee Congressional Hearing on February 16th 2006, in response to a question by Cynthia McKinnon.

The full details of the exercises were not stated here, but Myers did let slip the details in a video interview with author Richard Clarke.

The following may give some idea of the confusion caused that day when drill and reality get blurred:

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/08/norad200608

"... on those occasions when WTC was shut down for rewiring."

Are you kidding me? The WTC was never shut down for rewiring. I must admit that I hadn't heard that before - bravo. However, there's no evidence for that silly claim, and it's contrary to the way the world works.

As a lawyer in NYC, I closed two deals at the WTC prior to the attacks. I can assure you that there was plenty of activity up there all the time, and all night for that matter. That's how things are in the real working world.

If, based on something you read on a truther website, you believe that the WTC was shut down for rewiring, you really will believe anything.

By the way, we can forget about the passport because a few weeks later the FBI changed its mind and said that reports of the passport were just a rumour. When I heard that I laughed (it was the FBI that had announced it in the first place) but I now realise that was just me being mad, moronic, scared etc etc.

So let's focus on the only remaining hard evidence: those holdalls. Great aren't they? Flying manuals (of course, so they could do a bit of last minute mugging up on how to fly!) Copies of the Koran (so they must have been Muslims!) Pilots' uniforms (so they could go disguised as crew!) A letter and a bunch of wills (so we know all their names!). It's the best and most convincing evidence ever!

OK it's a bit odd that they were due to go into the hold, so hijackers wouldn't be able to put the uniforms on. And it seems that rubbish pilot Hani Hanour, who took over AA77, was able to perform an expert, high-speed 270 degree descending turn, levelling out just feet above the ground - so low he was clipping trees and lamp poles - before steering the plane through a first floor Pentagon window, all without consulting his flying manuals one last time. Still, beginners luck I suppose.

Yes, it's brilliant evidence. It trumps all that rubbishy physics and chemistry stuff. You're right: anyone who looks beyond those holdalls is obviously mad, moronic, scared etc etc.

"The WTC was never shut down for rewiring"

See the testimony of Scott Forbes, who worked in the IT department of Fiduciary Trust (WTC2):

http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2005/11/interview-with-scott-forbes.html

MJ, you're priceless.

Like an automatic Troofer-factoid machine just spitting out nonsense in rapid-fire.

"And it seems that rubbish pilot Hani Hanour, who took over AA77, was able to perform an expert, high-speed 270 degree descending turn, levelling out just feet above the ground - so low he was clipping trees and lamp poles - before steering the plane through a first floor Pentagon window, all without consulting his flying manuals one last time. "

I doubt it was his plan to pull off a maneouvre like that. But if it wasn't him who do you think it was?

That link you gave us showed a small amount of one of the towers getting refitted. How many silent explosive charges, which sometimes went bang would they need to rig those buildings up with and with didn't the planes set those charges off when they flew into the Towers?

And as I said before you are treating it as though it is suspicious when no evidence is found and then suspicious when evidence is found. You want it both ways. P and -P work equally well in the Trooferverse!

MJ,

Kono bideo mitte kudasai!

http://video.google.co.jp/videoplay?docid=-3214024953129565561&ei=21dFS4KDMYiuwgPvzYWZBQ&q=screw+loose+change#

What a boring link about one person named Scott Forbes. Yes, you managed to find, out of the thousands and thousands that worked there, one person who said something about all the electricity being shut off.

What makes his story so completely full of bullshit is that (i) it's very unlikely that power would be completely shut down from many of the businesses in his Tower and (ii) shutting down the power for a few hours would seem quite insufficient to "update the cabling" as he put it. So it would seem that the mythical Men in Black should have come up with a better mythical cover story.

Heh MJ -

Your "team from the University of Copenhagen" is referenced below - btw, one of the them is Stephen Jones, a disgraced former professor who has published another vanity paper - one that claims that Jesus came to America in a wooden submarine.

http://11-settembre.blogspot.com/2009/04/active-thermitic-material-claimed-in.html

"And as I said before you are treating it as though it is suspicious when no evidence is found and then suspicious when evidence is found."

Well said!

If there were flying manuals, it's a conspiracy.

If there were no flying manuals, it's a conspiracy.

"one of Jones's finest contributions is his interview with film producer Aaron Russo. In the following extract Russo tells us, straight from the horses mouth, what the ruling elite have in store for us and, in ten devastating minutes, consigns once and for all the shrill witterings of the assorted angrylarrys of this world to the dustbin."

Who is Aaron Russo?

MJ, explain to me how thermite, thermate, superthermite, nanothermite, liquid thermite or explosives or whichever one you are going with today did this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rbfLLp7rBI&feature=player_embedded

You can see this Tower buckling at the impact points!

Given that the collapse can be seen happening from steel losing its strenght, buckling and giving way (not MELTING, mind you) what kind of job is left for your magical super secret weapons to do?

What does Steven Jones (Dr Cold Fusion) have to say about that?

In fact you can hear what the chief engineer of the Twin Towers, Leslie Robertson says to Steven Jones here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAdcNEa6PTQ

Jones babbles on about "Peer-reviewed" papers saying all manner of crap. These "peer-reviewed" papers appeared in the Journal of 9/11 Studies.

Noam Chomsky, I am sure you know of him, said the credibility of the Journal of 9/11 studies is on a par with that of the Journal of Intelligent Design Studies. (They even once refused to publish a paper that showed the collapses to be perfectly in accordance with the laws of physics because the editors of the Journal of 9/11 Studies said they were no longer publishing anymore). I am sure you Troofers are wetting your pants laughing at him too.

These "peer-reviewed" papers were written by a scholar of Buddhism and a mechanical engineer. None of them were written by anyone with credentials in the field.

Robertson dismisses Jones' claim that the Towers should have arrested the fall saying that none of the floors of the Towers were designed to support the WEIGHT of upwards of TEN FLOORS of steel and concrete. So when the Towers began collapsing nothing could arrest their fall.

Jones seems to concede this and then says something ridiculous along the lines of "Ah! But would they have fallen as quickly as they did?"

Ridiculous! The only purpose of the "thermite bombs" was, therefore to make the Towers collapse a bit faster?

You Truthers make yourselves look silly. For your own self-respect don't you think it worth finding another ridiculous cause? How about one a bit less harmful such as "The Moon Landings were faked!" or "My next door neighbour is a descendent of Christ" or even, as fellow Twoofy Twoofers Davids Icke and Shayler you could go the whole hog and say you are the son of God!

A few points to address here since I've been asleep, so forgive me if I ignore the usual character assassinations, rants and non sequiters and focus only on the sunstantive issues.

"I doubt it was his plan to pull off a maneouvre like that"

Well no. And I doubt also that, even if it were, he would be capable of doing it without crashing the plane.

"But if it wasn't him who do you think it was?"

There is insufficient evidence for anyone to say with certainty. The planes may have been empty and controlled remotely for all I (or you) know.

"That link you gave us showed a small amount of one of the towers getting refitted"

Indeed. If explosives were planted I doubt it was done then. I provided the link only in response to Larry's incorrect assertion that WTC was fully operational throughout the days leading up to 911.

"you are treating it as though it is suspicious when no evidence is found and then suspicious when evidence is found"

Don't understand this remark. I'm interested in evidence full stop. In my view the holdall evidence is weak without corroboration. There is none. It sounds like planted evidence to me.

"Stephen Jones, a disgraced former professor"

Sacked because he started rocking the boat over 911. Not quite the same as disgraced.

"Who is Aaron Russo?"

He was a reasonably well-known and successful film producer who got befriended by a Rockefeller and spilled the beans when he found out he was about to die from cancer.

"what kind of job is left for your magical super secret weapons to do?"

The issue is what enabled the "collapse" to continue, symmetrically and at free-fall speed, right down to the bottom.

"What does Steven Jones...have to say about that?"

I think he makes the point that the towers do not actually collapse, but that each floor is destroyed in rapid succession and turned into dust. This is why there was so little rubble to speak of, only dust. I think he says that this is most unlikely under normal collapse conditions and that an extra source of energy is required to achieve it.

"Robertson dismisses Jones' claim that the Towers should have arrested the fall saying that none of the floors of the Towers were designed to support the WEIGHT of upwards of TEN FLOORS of steel and concrete"

This is patent nonsense and I can only think you've misquoted him. If it were true the towers would not be able to stand at all. They were about 120 floors high! Robertson is at best being disingenuous. He does not mention that building regulations require that all high-rise buildings have regular reinforced floor sections, for the express purpose of preventing the 'pancake effect' in the event of catastrophe. Thats why it never happens, except in the case of controlled demolitions where those reinforced layers are targeted.

It has obviously escaped your notice that I have made no claims one way or the other about thermite and have only responded to a couple of Larry's silly questions. I'm not wholly convinced by the hypothesis as it happens, but to be fair it is the only one so far that explains the vast pools of molten steel that stayed molten for weeks after the event. Any views on that? Supporters of the official account tend to avoid that evidence like the plague.

Perhaps before you induge in silly rants and insults, you should reflect that your own interpretation of 911 is based solely on two holdalls found at Logan. I suspect even David Icke would be embarrassed to develop an argument based on evidence as flimsy as that.

My own view is that there should be a full public enquiry into the events of 911 at which all the evidence is considered. Given the scale of the event, I find it rather odd that there hasn't been one already.

"And I doubt also that, even if it were, he would be capable of doing it without crashing the plane."

Why? What makes you an expert on piloting?

"The planes may have been empty and controlled remotely for all I (or you) know."

So a guy who's been trained to pilot a plane would have more difficulty flying it than someone remotely piloting it?

Doesn't sound plausible and it doesn't explain what he was doing on the plane in the first place.

"If explosives were planted I doubt it was done then. I provided the link only in response to Larry's incorrect assertion that WTC was fully operational throughout the days leading up to 911."

Your link doesn't do that.

"I'm interested in evidence full stop. In my view the holdall evidence is weak without corroboration. There is none. "

Do you want Atta to appear and reclaim his luggage? It's a piece of evidence which corroborates other facts that we know.

"Sacked because he started rocking the boat over 911. Not quite the same as disgraced."

The professors of structural engineering found his work to be bad and highly speculative. They allowed him paid leave to think it over.

"The BYU physics department has also issued a statement: "The university is aware that Professor Steven Jones' hypotheses and interpretations of evidence regarding the collapse of World Trade Center buildings are being questioned by a number of scholars and practitioners, including many of BYU's own faculty members. Professor Jones' department and college administrators are not convinced that his analyses and hypotheses have been submitted to relevant scientific venues that would ensure rigorous technical peer review." The College of Engineering and Technology department has also added, "The structural engineering faculty in the Fulton College of Engineering and Technology do not support the hypotheses of Professor Jones.""

So he wasn't sacked to cover up a monster crime unless you think BYU are in on it or they've been leaned on.

"He was a reasonably well-known and successful film producer who got befriended by a Rockefeller"

Next...

"The issue is what enabled the "collapse" to continue, symmetrically and at free-fall speed, right down to the bottom."

Gravity.

And it WAS NOT at free-fall speed. How do we know? Because the debris from the buildings collapse falls faster than the "collapse front".

And why wouldn't it collapse to the bottom?

"I think he makes the point that the towers do not actually collapse, but that each floor is destroyed in rapid succession and turned into dust. This is why there was so little rubble to speak of, only dust. I think he says that this is most unlikely under normal collapse conditions and that an extra source of energy is required to achieve it."

You are wrong. Watch this video:

http://angrysoba.blogspot.com/2009/12/regarde.html

"This is patent nonsense and I can only think you've misquoted him. If it were true the towers would not be able to stand at all. They were about 120 floors high! Robertson is at best being disingenuous. He does not mention that building regulations require that all high-rise buildings have regular reinforced floor sections, for the express purpose of preventing the 'pancake effect' in the event of catastrophe. Thats why it never happens, except in the case of controlled demolitions where those reinforced layers are targeted."

Did you listen to the debate? Les Robertson says that the floors themselves gave way. Did you watch the video? The steel perimeter frame is no longer holding the building up. The top of the building is falling INSIDE it and the floors cannot hold up the WEIGHT of ten to twenty stories!

"I'm not wholly convinced by the hypothesis as it happens, but to be fair it is the only one so far that explains the vast pools of molten steel that stayed molten for weeks after the event. Any views on that?"

Yes, there were no "vast pools of molten steel that stayed molten for weeks after the event".

"Perhaps before you induge in silly rants and insults, you should reflect that your own interpretation of 911 is based solely on two holdalls found at Logan."

No it is not! It is based on vast amounts of corroborative evidence. One of those is, despite what you think, the actual flight manifests showing who was aboard. The fact that the CIA and FBI were actually looking into the activities of a number of them etc... etc...

"My own view is that there should be a full public enquiry into the events of 911 at which all the evidence is considered. Given the scale of the event, I find it rather odd that there hasn't been one already."

I suppose this is your ultimate retreat. You have no evidence or coherent theory all you're doing is...

http://angrysoba.blogspot.com/2009/12/just-asking-questions.html

"Why? What makes you an expert on piloting?"

I'm no better a pilot than Hanour. However many pilots have stated that such a manoeuvre would in their view be impossible in a regular 757 travelling at that speed.

"So a guy who's been trained to pilot a plane would have more difficulty flying it than someone remotely piloting it?"

See above and note words 'regular 757'

"Doesn't sound plausible and it doesn't explain what he was doing on the plane in the first place".

We don't know he was. The official flight manifests have never been published, remember?

"Gravity"

The lower reinforced floors, unaffected by fire or impact, should have arrested the fall sooner rather than later.

"And it WAS NOT at free-fall speed"

Not quite, but too close for comfort. All those intervening tons of steel and concrete offered little more resistance than air.

"Did you watch the video"

I've watched videos of the collapse countless times. Obviously the floors are not falling inside the building.That would require them to fall at faster than free-fall. In any case the next reinforced layer would arrest any collapse. There was no 'collapse'. The building clearly 'burns' down, like a roman candle, from top to bottom, each floor being converted to dust, which goes upwards and outwards. The weight bearing down on the lower floors is actually diminishing as time goes on.

Yes, there were no "vast pools of molten steel that stayed molten for weeks after the event".

Oh dear, I know you guys don't like this evidence but this is the first time I've heard it side-stepped with total denial! You can dismiss all the eye-witness reports if you wish and even the on-site photos, but you can't dismiss the aerial thermal imaging photos I'm afraid.

"It is based on vast amounts of corroborative evidence"

Such as? Do tell...

"the actual flight manifests showing who was aboard"

We're still waiting to see those. Was there anything else?

"I suppose this is your ultimate retreat"

Eh? I would have thought a full public enquiry is a prerequisite, the very least we could expect and something that everyone could agree on as essential. Surely you're not suggesting that there shouldn't be such an enquiry? If you are, could you explain why?

Sorry missed one:

"If explosives were planted I doubt it was done then. I provided the link only in response to Larry's incorrect assertion that WTC was fully operational throughout the days leading up to 911."

"Your link doesn't do that".

He makes it perfectly clear that on the weekend prior to 911 WTC2's power supply was down and only support staff, such as himself, were present. The building was swarming workmen, who had not gone through normal automated ID checks owing to the lack of electricity, attending to the recabling.

I think the Antiwar movement is made up of many different groups of people with different ideas. And the Pro wars want to disunite us. So they will tell people like me to hate people like Alex Jones because he is a right wing truther. But at the same time they will tell Alex and the rest of you to hate me, because I am Muslim. And They will probably tell others to hate each and everyone of you for what every you believe in which isn't shared by the rest of us. They want to do this to make sure we are all too busy hating each other to hate them.
So Larry, go to hell, and take all your NeoCons, Zionists and Imperialists with you.

Amen

The troll is only time-wasting here anyway.

Well I'm having a bit of fun anyway.

MJ
What does "shrill" mean?

In this context it means grating, rude and unsophisticated, in the manner that the angrylarrys here launch into knee-jerk personal attacks and insults as soon as someone challenges them or their most treasured preconceptions.

I thought it was some sort of new meaning invented by Internet people that everybody here understood but me.

No no, it's quite an old-fashioned pre-internet term.

Yes I know, it means a high pitched sound.
But I thought you were using it to mean people or a group or an organisation. Do you know like how Larry and Angry call people who disagree with the government truthers. I thought you were using it to mean people who always agree with the government or people who go to blogs to cause problems.

angrysoba - you are wasting your time trying to argue with the troofers on this board using logic. They know what they want to believe and will suspend all belief in order to rationalise their world view. Without it their whole world would collapse. They are like the creationists who argue that God placed fossils into Cretaceous beds.

Not necessarily. The high-pitched sound is nearest in meaning, really. Abrasive and vaguely offensive but at the same time rather feeble.

Thst's right eddie, we just don't buy dem holdalls. Just imagine how your world would collapse if you didn't either!

"I'm no better a pilot than Hanour. However many pilots have stated that such a manoeuvre would in their view be impossible in a regular 757 travelling at that speed."

Well it clearly wasn't impossible and you do not have a commercial pilots license. Hani Hanjour did. He didn't need to be able to take off or land a 757 and his English wasn't very good (which is necessary for speaking to ATC and without which you may not be permitted to fly).

"See above and note words 'regular 757'"

So in your expert opinion, you believe a 757 of exactly the same size and appearance as a "regular 757" with American Airlines markings and with plane parts that exactly match those of a 757 was flown by remote control into the Pentagon because you and David Ray Grifter...er Griffin are personally incredulous that Hani Hanjour could fly a plane. So what was different about this 757 then? Was it sprinkled with pixie dust?

"We don't know he was. The official flight manifests have never been published, remember?"

Yes they have.

http://www.911myths.com/html/official_manifests.html

"The lower reinforced floors, unaffected by fire or impact, should have arrested the fall sooner rather than later."

Les Robertson, one of the chief engineers of the World Trade Centre, disagrees. What are your credentials, MJ? What value is your bloke-in-a-pub commentary? What are retired theology professor David Ray Grifter's qualifications?

"Not quite, but too close for comfort. All those intervening tons of steel and concrete offered little more resistance than air."

So you're willfully misrepresenting the facts? Well, there's a surprise, a lying Truther.

Again, your "opinion" and your lies clash with the opinion of those who know what they are talking about.

"I've watched videos of the collapse countless times. Obviously the floors are not falling inside the building.That would require them to fall at faster than free-fall. In any case the next reinforced layer would arrest any collapse."

More bullshit. Watch the video I've linked to. Explain how that steel giving way under the weight of the stories above is in fact super duper loopy thermite...

Were there explosives or not?

If there were, where are the sounds of them? If not what supersubstance exactly managed to replicate a building falling collapsing under its own weight following structural collapse?

Is this more pixie dust, MJ?

"There was no 'collapse'. The building clearly 'burns' down, like a roman candle..."

Holy mama! I demand to know which Truther first came up with the "roman candle" analogy because you aren't the first.

"Oh dear, I know you guys don't like this evidence but this is the first time I've heard it side-stepped with total denial! You can dismiss all the eye-witness reports if you wish and even the on-site photos, but you can't dismiss the aerial thermal imaging photos I'm afraid."

There are no pictures of pools of molten steel!

The thermal imaging shows high temperatures within the rubble but not the temperature of molten steel. Not. Even. Close. They are temperatures consistent with fires of burning debris such as burning cars (petrol-filled cars) or burning office materials, jet fuel etc...

"Such as? Do tell..."

DNA evidence. Body parts. The fact that the hijackers have never been seen again. The fact that they appear in videos at the airport. The fact that they were known by the FBI and the CIA as suspicious and had phone calls traced by them to other cells. The fact that two of them appeared in martyr videos in Afghanistan. You think the fact that their flight manuals were found in a hold-all and further implicating them DISCOUNTS all this when in the real world it BOLSTERS it. Do you actually deny that these guys took flying lessons? If you do then it undermines your argument that Hani Hanjour was a bad pilot, you moron!

"We're still waiting to see those [flight manifests]. Was there anything else?"

I've shown you those flight manifests a number of times. You simply maintain they are fake and yet think that the CNN VICTIM list with added biographical details are the REAL flight manifests. Why do you think that? Because senile old duffer David Ray Grifter says they are yet his "scholarship" has been shown to be abysmal time and time again.

"Eh? I would have thought a full public enquiry is a prerequisite, the very least we could expect and something that everyone could agree on as essential. Surely you're not suggesting that there shouldn't be such an enquiry? If you are, could you explain why?"

9/11 has been investigated on many levels. There are disputes among some politicians about whether or not some people's incompetence or other failings have been covered up. John Farmer, for example, is not happy about certain things. But John Farmer is not a Truther. David Ray Grifter has been babbling about how Farmer is shilling for the "official story" (a Truther concept).

MJ, a Truther is not the same as a skeptic. A skeptic does ask questions of the government but a Truther isn't interested in doing real research. I'll bet you haven't read the 9/11 Commission Report (maybe you've read Grifter's interpretation of it and added to his royalties, allowing him to continue to profit handsomely from this attack and pretend he's doing it for "the families"). You call it a false flag attack and have implicated a number of people already.

You're just one of the louder voices in the moron chorus.

"angrysoba - you are wasting your time trying to argue with the troofers on this board using logic. They know what they want to believe and will suspend all belief in order to rationalise their world view. Without it their whole world would collapse. They are like the creationists who argue that God placed fossils into Cretaceous beds."

Yeah, that's true. MJ's very brain is fossilized and it is only capable of believing what he clearly thinks is very, very radical and original but like all other Truthers its very boring and predictable and completely immune to logic.

"you do not have a commercial pilots license. Hani Hanjour did".

Yet he could barely handle a Cessna.

"He didn't need to be able to take off or land a 757"

And indeed couldn't.

"you believe a 757 of exactly the same size and appearance as a "regular 757" with American Airlines markings and with plane parts that exactly match those of a 757 was flown by remote control into the Pentagon"

Not necessarily; it's just that on the basis of the scanty evidence available it could have been. While many eyewitnesses reported seeing the AA livery there was insufficient debris to determine that it was 'exactly the same size and appearance'. And the one engine that was found was not a Pratt and Witney, as it should have been.

"Yes they have".

You and your favourite website are missing the point here. The FBI published a set of passenger lists in 2006 but they were not the official manifests, which remain unpublished. This may or may not be a significant distinction; we'd need to see the official manifests to find out.

"Les Robertson, one of the chief engineers of the World Trade Centre, disagrees. What are your credentials"

He omits to mention that building regulations require strengthened layers at regular intervals. I don't need to be an engineer to remind him of the law.

"Watch the video I've linked to".

I've seen the videos. It is true that at the start of the collapse the building gives way along the faultline of the impact and fires. It is also true that, in the case of WTC1, the TV mast, attached to the central core, starts to sink even before that.

If there were [explosives], where are the sounds of them?

Thermite is not an explosive. It simply cuts through steel once ignited. It makes very little sound - a bit of hissing.

"So you're willfully misrepresenting the facts?"

Not sure what you're referring to here. An accusation without an object. Please clarify.

"They are temperatures consistent with fires of burning debris such as burning cars (petrol-filled cars) or burning office materials, jet fuel etc..."

This is just plain silly. I'm talking about weeks, months after the event, long after your little fires had gone out. And yes in the early days the temps were consistent with molten steel, corrobarated by many eyewitness reports from workmen at Ground Zero.

"DNA evidence. Body parts"

How do these tell us who was responsible?

"The fact that they appear in videos at the airport"

Everyone at the airport will have appeared in videos! Why are the alleged hijackers picked out? Because of the holdalls!

"The fact that two of them appeared in martyr videos in Afghanistan"

The provenance of those videos has always been rather dubious.

"Do you actually deny that these guys took flying lessons?"

No. Only that the evidence linking them with 911 is tenuous at best.

"I've shown you those flight manifests"

See above. You are really missing the point here. Lists published by FBI not official manifests. Official manifests never published: get it now?

"9/11 has been investigated on many levels".

Except the most basic and important one: a full forensic analysis of the events themselves, as the police would routinely do after any major crime.

"I'll bet you haven't read the 9/11 Commission Report"

I downloaded it the very day it became available and read it immediately. Its basic flaw is that it is teleological; it presupposes the very things it should be attempting to investigate.

You're being an idiot.

You're trying to argue every which way to obscure the fact you have no coherent point.

You say the manifests don't show Hani Hanjour on the plane but when I say he was seen on the videos checking in you say it doesn't prove he was a hijacker.

Which one is it? You won't say.

The manifests do show he was on the plane. You say you don't believe they are real. Has AA or United disputed them?

No, I guess they were in on it then...

You say it may have been a plane looking exactly like a 757 but not really one. And it may have been flown by remote control.

Look at this website. It was made by a Truther. I suppose you think this guy is in on it too:

http://911research.wtc7.net/talks/noplane/parts.html

"Thermite is not an explosive. It simply cuts through steel once ignited. It makes very little sound - a bit of hissing."

You've actually said something correct for once. Congratulations!

Thermite is NOT an explosive and it is NOT used in controlled demolitions. It is used to cut through beams, as in the clean up operation after 9/11 when workers on the site had to use thermal lances to cut through the steel beams still remaining.

Thermite acts very slowly and is difficult to direct. So it would be an absolutely stupid material to try and demolish a building with at "FREEFALL SPEED". So Thermite cannot possibly have been the thing that brought down the WTC TWIN TOWERS.

"Not sure what you're referring to here. An accusation without an object. Please clarify."

You misrepresent the facts by saying the Twin Towers collapsed at freefall speed. They DID NOT.

I said that you are a liar because you persist in using this lie.

"This is just plain silly. I'm talking about weeks, months after the event, long after your little fires had gone out. And yes in the early days the temps were consistent with molten steel"

Show me this thermal imaging photography that depicts fires at the temperature of molten steel. Show me just one!

You won't because they don't exist and because you are a liar!

If you think thermite explains fires under the WTC WEEKS after the collapse then explain how it is that it continued to react for such a long time. What you are saying is like saying that a matchstick head will continue igniting for weeks. It doesn't behave like that.

The fires came from the initial impacts and from the jet fuel which spilled down the elevator shafts and began buring things in the basements. We also KNOW because the video I showed you demonstrated that there were fires from the impact zones in the towers.

"How do these tell us who was responsible?"

Moron! They tell us who was on the plane. Guess what? Some of those guys knew guys who also trained in flight schools who also hijacked planes that same day and flew them into buildings.

Put it all together, moron!

"Everyone at the airport will have appeared in videos! Why are the alleged hijackers picked out?"

See above, moron!

" You are really missing the point here. Lists published by FBI not official manifests. Official manifests never published: get it now? "

Official manifests released, dickhead!

"Except the most basic and important one: a full forensic analysis of the events themselves, as the police would routinely do after any major crime."

I hope for humanity's sake you are sterile. It would be the height of cruelty for anyone to be born with your genes.

"You say the manifests don't show Hani Hanjour on the plane"

Pay attention. I said the official manifests have not been released.

"when I say he was seen on the videos checking in"

The only video released by an airport or the FBI is of Atta at Portland. There were no cameras at Logan. There were cameras at Dulles, but no videos have been released either by the airport or the FBI. The video alleged showing Hanour is not airport video. It was released privately and its origins are unverifiable. It's generally thought to be dodgy evidence and both the airport and the FBI have refused to endorse it.

"Has AA or United disputed them?"

They have not released them.

"it is NOT used in controlled demolitions"

It is used occasionally in demolitions, when it is necessary to bring down a tall building precisely into its own footprint in order to protect adjacent buildings. These occasions are rare and only a few companies have the expertise to do it.

"Thermite acts very slowly and is difficult to direct"

It acts astnishingly quickly and, applied skilfully, can be directed very precisely. Like a knife through butter.

"an absolutely stupid material to try and demolish a building"

Unless in expert hands, yes. As I said howwever there are a handful of companies that can and do use it for this purpose.

"You misrepresent the facts by saying the Twin Towers collapsed at freefall speed. They DID NOT."

WTC7 collapsed in 6.1 seconds as against 6.0 seconds freefall. The twin towers were only a second or so short of freefall speed. As I said, it's too close for comfort.

"Show me this thermal imaging photography that depicts fires at the temperature of molten steel. Show me just one"

These may be of interest:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KglmMbprfkw&
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCdRA09pztM&

"explain how it is that it continued to react for such a long time"

You're missing the point here. The suggestion is that thermite was used to melt the underground steel foundations and that the rubble and dust then insulated the molten steel, rather as molten lava stays molten below ground. No need for any ongoing reaction. Thermite is the prime suspect because there is little else that could get the steel to this temperature in the first place (and certainly not kerosene).

"jet fuel which spilled down the elevator shafts and began buring things in the basements"

One of the main problems with that little theory is that there were no elevator shafts running from the top right down to the basement. The fuel would have had to alight at the Sky Lobby, then wait for another lift to descend to the basement. The Sky Lobby was still functioning throughout the period in question and there are no reports of fuel coming down one shaft, surging across the Lobby then going down another shaft. In any case most of the kerosene was consumed in the initial fireball and even if some did make it to the basement it would not burn hot enough to make any impression on the foundations

"They tell us who was on the plane"

DNA is claimed to have been recovered only in the case of AA77. The Pentagon claims it recovered body parts from everyone on board and used these for DNA identification. There are doubts over the veraity of this claim. For instance, in circumstances such as this the body parts are usually returned to the family for burial. Yet there have been no funerals for any of the passengers from AA77. Even so, I'm still not clear how DNA would identify the hijackers. It could at best identify only who was on board, surely?

"Official manifests released"

Link please (not the FBI lists, the official manifests)

"thermite was used to melt the underground steel foundations" - but the towers collapsed from above downwards, from just below the points of impact, they did not collapse from the base upwards, as any fule kno.
(Whoops, getting involved in a pointless argument)

hello eddie, good to hear from you again, you logician extraordinaire! To bring down a building of WTC's size, strength and complexity you need to target all the reinforced sections, including the foundations. Otherwise the central steel core would have remained standing, as the floors fell down.

sorry you think it's a pointless argument; I think it's a good one.

yes a bit like trainspotting, ultimately pointless. The whole building was reinforced. The buildings collapsed downwards from the points of impact as anyone can see. It would have required an incredibly sophisticated piece of engineering to weaken the buildings sufficiently to allow its collapse but to prevent any visible shearing below the points of impact and the fact that no one would be able to anticipate the level of structral damage caused by the aircraft above means that your thesis is without any credibility whatsoever.

""Official manifests released"

Link please (not the FBI lists, the official manifests)"

You have to download them here. But of course you can always claim they were faked.

I wrote out a lot more but Craig Murray is keeping it because it included too many links, apparently.

Scroll down and download those J-pegs.

http://www.911myths.com/html/the_passengers.html

Oh sod it!

" Yet there have been no funerals for any of the passengers from AA77."

Rubbish!

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-78278130.html

"One of the main problems with that little theory is that there were no elevator shafts running from the top right down to the basement. "

Yes there were.

"WTC7 collapsed in 6.1 seconds as against 6.0 seconds freefall."

Wrong. More like 14 seconds. Or more.

"Wrong. More like 14 seconds. Or more".

That's WTCs 1 and 2. My figure was for WTC7 and the figure is correct.

"Yes there were".

Check it out. Before WTC was built, architects were constrained in how high buildings could go by the elevator problem. All the elevator shafts needed to service the building efficiently would take up all the space. The designers of WTC solved this problem by inventing a two-tier system. A large number of lifts took people 30-odd floors up to the Sky Lobby. Here they had to get out. A smaller number of shafts then serviced the higher floors.

That link was for the FBI lists again, released in 2006. They are not the official manifests from the airlines. It's those that I'm interested in.

Re funerals: yes my mistake, there has been one, excluding the pilot. Barbara Olson of course, a very interesting name on the flight, particularly since her husband began telling 911 porkies within two hours of the event!

"That's WTCs 1 and 2. My figure was for WTC7 and the figure is correct."

It's false.

You probably can't even calculate the time it took for WTC7 to collapse because no film footage I know shows it falling all the way to the ground and none that I know of shows the interior progressive collapse.

But even of the collapse that is visible, the collapse time is far longer.

I don't know who told you the building collapsed in 6.1 seconds.

"Check it out. Before WTC was built, architects were constrained in how high buildings could go by the elevator problem. All the elevator shafts needed to service the building efficiently would take up all the space. The designers of WTC solved this problem by inventing a two-tier system. A large number of lifts took people 30-odd floors up to the Sky Lobby. Here they had to get out. A smaller number of shafts then serviced the higher floors. "

The service elevator shafts ran all the way from the bottom to the top.

Check it out.

"That link was for the FBI lists again, released in 2006. They are not the official manifests from the airlines. It's those that I'm interested in."

Did you download them?

"Re funerals: yes my mistake, there has been one, excluding the pilot. Barbara Olson of course, a very interesting name on the flight, particularly since her husband began telling 911 porkies within two hours of the event!"

Where on Earth do you get the idea that there were no funerals except for Barbara Olson and the pilot?

Whoever said this?

And what lies was Ted Olson telling?

"To bring down a building of WTC's size, strength and complexity you need to target all the reinforced sections, including the foundations." Says Gordon Ross.

He's wrong.

MJ: What's the point? These true-believers accept every word of Official Truth like wide-eyed, trusting children, even when the Official Truth is self-contradictory, full of holes, and even denounced by the authors of that Truth (such as Farmer's denouncement of his own 911 Commission Report).

There's a good proportion of the population who'll believe _anything_ they're told, particularly when it requires no personal sacrifice. For instance, "Larry", "soab" et al don't appear to be serving in the army right now, even though they think it's absolutely necessary to prevent us being murdered in our beds. But like the chicken-hawks who call for war, it's for others to do the fighting and dying.

They are very, very frightened, and need a big-daddy figure like Bush to keep them safe. And they're ready to snap the right-arm salute to any authoritarian figure who wants it.

"no film footage I know shows it falling all the way to the ground"

Fair point. I was being too precise, without proper justification. Similarly you cannot say it is definitely false, only that it cannot be proved conclusively. Do I sense a bit of straw clutching here? We all know they fell at free-fall speed within a margin of a couple of percentage points and that is much too fast.

"The service elevator shafts ran all the way from the bottom to the top"

I'll take your word for it. It would make sense to have a single service shaft that circumvented all the rest. Am I to take it then that your contention is that some unignited kerosene made its way down the service shaft, reached the steel foundations, ignited and was able to reduce them to vast molten pools of steel, even though kerosene can't achieve anywhere near the temperature necessary? Do you really believe that? Do I sense more straw clutching here?

"Did you download them?"

I've seen them. Passenger lists "according to the documents we’ve obtained" it says. Fascinating. As I keep saying, the official manifests are all that matter and they're nowhere to be seen.

"Where on Earth do you get the idea that there were no funerals except for Barbara Olson and the pilot?"

I've certainly not seen any reported but if you can find any then do let me know. Given all that DNA you'd expect a great flurry of them. Must have passed me by.

"And what lies was Ted Olson telling?"

A few hours after the event Olson telephoned CNN and told them his wife Barbara had phoned him - twice - from AA77 to say the plane had been hijacked. She called call-collect, he said, because she'd forgotten her credit card. She must therefore have been using the airphone in the arm of her seat, which would have required a credit card. She couldn't have been using a cell-phone anyway because at the time of her call the plane was travelling too fast and at too high an altitude to get a connection. Anyway, it turns out that AA 757s didn't even have airphones fitted! His story is therefore a complete fabrication. I suppose the trauma of losing a loved one can make you do strange things.

Interestingly it was this piece of fiction that gave us the box-cutters story and therefore the ban on carrying penknives on flights that has remained ever since. Funny old world.

The cynic in me reckons that if Olson can tell porkies like that on a day like that he's perhaps not beyond burying an empty coffin.

"They are very, very frightened, and need a big-daddy figure like Bush to keep them safe. And they're ready to snap the right-arm salute to any authoritarian figure who wants it."

I voted for Obama, you silly person. Come to think of it, everything that you wrote there must also apply to Obama, because he doesn't remotely entertain your silly fantasies.

Obama's election was not a problem with the crazy American right wing, who serve as a genesis for about 90% of what MJ writes. As predicted, they immediately put him right in the middle of the conspiracy. Now his election was a problem for the left wing - in fact they believed that once elected, Obama would fall in line with their nutjob theories. As predicted, those folks have shut up now.

Tell me glenn, if you had "20 minutes with the President," as fantasized by Charlie Sheen, what would you say?

angrysoba, thanks for taking this up! I got busy with work.

"Fair point. I was being too precise, without proper justification. Similarly you cannot say it is definitely false, only that it cannot be proved conclusively. Do I sense a bit of straw clutching here?"

No, the whole collapse of the building includes the descent of the East Penthouse which falls some four or five seconds before that of the facade of the building collapsing. The descent of the East Penthouse is the result of a progressive collapse of the interior which is then followed by the collapse of the West Penthouse and then finally the collapse of the buildings facade. This means all the interior columns have already gone leaving little resistance.

"I'll take your word for it. It would make sense to have a single service shaft that circumvented all the rest. Am I to take it then that your contention is that some unignited kerosene made its way down the service shaft, reached the steel foundations, ignited and was able to reduce them to vast molten pools of steel, even though kerosene can't achieve anywhere near the temperature necessary? Do you really believe that? Do I sense more straw clutching here?"

Do I sense a bit of STRWMANNING here? I never contended there were vast pools of molten steel in the rubble. You did! And to account for it you had to make up some elaborate and exotic and unheard of method of controlled demolition. So it is you clutching at straws and introducing your deus ex machina to explain parts of your theory which don't make sense.

"I've seen them. Passenger lists "according to the documents we’ve obtained" it says. Fascinating. As I keep saying, the official manifests are all that matter and they're nowhere to be seen."

Don't be an idiot! The airlines have never disputed these lists and there is corroborative photographic evidence to show they bought tickets, boarded the planes, were never seen again etc...

You're like a birther who demands to see Obama's birth certificate. Except you would be even more extreme and say without seeing it you couldn't believe he was ever born!

"I've certainly not seen any reported but if you can find any then do let me know. Given all that DNA you'd expect a great flurry of them. Must have passed me by."

MJ, you're a weirdo! Why would greiving families trumpet their relatives' funerals in the press? Are you now telling me there was no plane? No passengers? The plane disappeared?

What about the debris of the plane that I showed you from that Truther site?

"A few hours after the event Olson telephoned CNN and told them his wife Barbara had phoned him - twice - from AA77 to say the plane had been hijacked. She called call-collect, he said, because she'd forgotten her credit card. She must therefore have been using the airphone in the arm of her seat, which would have required a credit card. She couldn't have been using a cell-phone anyway because at the time of her call the plane was travelling too fast and at too high an altitude to get a connection. Anyway, it turns out that AA 757s didn't even have airphones fitted!"

I am guessing that David Ray Grifter is your source here. Guess what! He's wrong! The senile old gimp made a mistake as even he has admitted.

I suppose you are going to tell me next that Ted Olson flashed Department of Justice phone records to show the phone calls went through, right?

Don't bother, that was just another fiction by the great detective.

"Interestingly it was this piece of fiction that gave us the box-cutters story and therefore the ban on carrying penknives on flights that has remained ever since. Funny old world."

You have provided no evidence it was fiction. As I said above about airphones.

"The cynic in me reckons that if Olson can tell porkies like that on a day like that he's perhaps not beyond burying an empty coffin."

Moron.

"angrysoba, thanks for taking this up! I got busy with work."

Ah! But I thought this WAS work!

;)

"For instance, "Larry", "soab" et al don't appear to be serving in the army right now, even though they think it's absolutely necessary to prevent us being murdered in our beds."

What have I ever said about war? I am talking about your deeply silly nonsense. And while I would certainly hope most people aren't murdered in their beds, I'll make an exception for you Glenn?

;)

"Yet there have been no funerals for any of the passengers from AA77."

You really are a SICK and STUPID piece of shit. Really, are you that stupid? Do you actually think that the friends and relatives had to go without funerals of the plane victims?

I have to keep in mind that 911 Truthers really are that dumb. And narcissistic. They believe that spouses had to do without funerals for their loved ones, but they're just so stupid that they don't even ask why, and it takes the Truthers to point this stuff out.

MJ,

Consult your local doctor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder

"This means all the interior columns have already gone leaving little resistance".

This raises the question of what, in the case of WTC7, caused all its interior columns to go? Being covered in dust from WTCs 1 and 2?

"I never contended there were vast pools of molten steel in the rubble".

No, you denied it. I remember now.

"Why would greiving families trumpet their relatives' funerals in the press?"

They get reported anyway, on local newspaper websites if not national ones. Links please.

"What about the debris of the plane that I showed you from that Truther site?"

I've pored over all the debris pics thanks. Nothing there that supports your belief that the plane must have been "exactly the same size and appearance as a regular 757". I'm not saying wasn't, only that the debris, such as it is, does not prove it. Then there's the matter of that anomalous engine...

"am guessing that David Ray Grifter is your source here"

You omit to say which parts of my comments on the Olson phone calls you believe are wrong.

Re Olson's phonecalls: found the problem. In 2001 AA 757s did have airphones, the service was discontinued in 2004. However, at the Moussaoui trial in 2006, the FBI produced records of calls from AA77 showing one call to Olson's office, an unconnected call lasting 0 seconds.

MJ, tell me about the lack of funerals! I want to know more!

The lack of funerals (if this is case of course - links would be received with thanks) casts doubt on the Pentagon's claim that it found body parts of all the passengers on AA77.

Good work MJ, so the cell phone call didn't get through and Barbara Olson used the airphone. We know this because, as you said, her husband explained she called collect. No mystery then and Ted Olson didn't lie.

As with many other things David Ray Griffin said, it was wrong and yet still gets repeated as truth online years after it has been debunked.

"I've pored over all the debris pics thanks. Nothing there that supports your belief that the plane must have been "exactly the same size and appearance as a regular 757". "

It was identified as a 757 by people on the ground. Thierry Meysan put some creatively edited quotes in his book to get the no-plane story up and running. Particularly his selection of Mike Walters to make it sound like it was a missile hitting the Pentagon. DRG picked up the same quote from Meyssan, etc...

http://www.nationalreview.com/robbins/robbins040902.asp

"Links please."

I'm not your monkey. Why should I go looking for links to funerals of more passengers, you strange ghoulish man?

You say there were no funerals, you prove it.

MJ, if your father or mother or son or daughter were killed (by a terrorist, government, whatever), would you notice if a funeral were not held?

"her husband explained she called collect"

But she didn't get through. The unconnected call was from the airphone. You can't do call collect from an airphone. You need a credit card to activate it. A cell phone call wouldn't register at all. No signal. Olson did lie.

"It was identified as a 757 by people on the ground"

Some eyewitnesses identified the AA livery. The incident happened so quickly however it is asking too much to expect a reliable identification of the plane type. Hence the large array of coflicting reports regarding its size, whether it was jet or turbo-prop etc etc.

"Why should I go looking for links to funerals of more passengers"

No, I haven't seen any either.

Angrysoba,

I've been paying attention to these silly people for a while now and I've never heard this "no funerals" claim - that's just the most awesome claim these silly gooses have ever made.

I mean, even if there were some super-secret conspiracy, wouldn't funerals still be held?

It's clear that, from their childhoods, people like MJ are unduly influenced by fictional TV and movies.

So let's take a moment to recap. I challenged you to cite the evidence that corroborated the information conveniently set out in the holdalls. Cooraborative evidence is not the same as supporting evidence. It is stronger than that. Corroborative evidence stands up in its own right. It means in this instance evidence that is persuasive in itself without recourse to the holdall evidence. You manfully stepped up to the challenge, for which I am grateful.

What did you come up with?

1) DNA evidence and body parts (AA77 only).

Well, even if the DNA evidence is genuine, it can't tell us whether or not the plane was hijacked and if so by whom.

2) The fact that the hijackers have never been seen again. The fact that they were known by the FBI and the CIA as suspicious and had phone calls traced by them to other cells

What hijackers? These comments presuppose the existence of hijackers, they do not prove it.

3) A couple of dodgy videos

It's a bit more difficult than you thought, isn't it? See how almost everything comes back to the holdalls in the end? Take those holdalls out of the equation and there's precious little to establish that the planes were even hijacked, let alone the identity of the alleged hijackers.

Let me come to your assistance however. There is one body of evidence that does corroborate the holdall evidence but, oddly perhaps, you didn't think to mention it.I however have recently alluded to it. It's the phonecall evidence. It corroborates the holdall evidence because it is the only other evidence that suggests that the planes were hijacked and that the hijackers were middle-eastern in appearance.

Those phone calls eh? A can of worms as I'm sure you're aware. Wanna go there?

Barbara Olson's funeral
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-78278130.html

"It's clear that, from their childhoods, people like MJ are unduly influenced by fictional TV and movies."

I know. It's ironic that we're told we watch too much TV and are brainwashed by the media yet they derive their entire worldview from movies like the Matrix and fancy themselves as detectives like Poirot.

I think we might be a bit cruel trying to disabuse them of their fantasies sometimes.

And that funeral thing is something that I have never heard before either yet I debunked MJ's original claim in about thirty seconds.

Angrysoba,

Yeah, this business with MJ denying that funerals were held reminds me of how funny the Loose Change boys thought of the death of Bernard Brown Jr.:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-4Nf5vqHpA

"Take those holdalls out of the equation and there's precious little to establish that the planes were even hijacked, let alone the identity of the alleged hijackers."

No. It was obvious to ATC that the planes had been hijacked because they heard the hijackers speaking. It is unlikely they were talking to ATC but to the passengers. They also switched the transponders off. ATC called up through the chain of command and fighters were scrambled.

They didn't wait until phone calls or to discover the hijackers personal belongings before they knew there was a hijack.

Then of course, the planes smashed into buildings and it was clear that people were onboard deliberately doing this. It should be elementary and it was before people started dreaming up these silly theories about remote controlled planes.

(I could be wrong about this but I seem to remember a story about George Tenet watching this unfold and saying something like, "Oh God! I hope it wasn't those guys we were tracking." Or something along those lines.

The phone calls are corroborative evidence and there is no reason for believing they were never made. Some of the calls on some of the flights WERE RECORDED as I am sure you know. And please don't bother with all that "Why did he say "Mark Bingham"?" crap...

Thanks Larry for the link but we've already been there.

Speaking of fictional TV and movies, have you seen "Let's Roll"? Good, innit?

Angrysoba,

You know this idiot believes that the phone calls were faked, the Men from U.N.C.L.E. having employed super-secret technology.

MJ, I believe that the Mark Bingham phone call was real. Go.

"have you seen "Let's Roll"?"

No.

"Speaking of fictional TV and movies, have you seen "Let's Roll"? Good, innit?"

Never heard of it.

"they heard the hijackers speaking"

Yup. They certainly heard menacing voices at any rate.

"They also switched the transponders off"

A fascinating detail, of which much has been made.

"fighters were scrambled"

If only they hadn't waited until it was too late. The testimony outlining Cheney's apparently deliberate procrastination on this matter - and then scrambling fighters from a base over a hundred miles away - is genuinely shocking.

"silly theories about remote controlled planes"

Given that all eyewitnesses described it as a small plane, and the 'Fireman's Video' seems to show a small plane without engines on its wings, those theories may be incorrect but they're not exactly silly in my view.

"there is no reason for believing they were never made"

No, but there are nevertheless certain "issues" pertaining to the precise circumstances under which they became committed to tape, shall we say. In its evidence submitted to the Moussaoui trial even the FBI seems to have tacitly acknowledged some of the more obvious points made by the 'truthers'.

"Never heard of it".

It was the film about Flight 93. I think that's what it's called.

"It was the film about Flight 93. I think that's what it's called."

United 93, I think you mean.

MJ, are you still convinced that funerals were not held for Bernard Brown Jr. and Betty Ong?

"If only they hadn't waited until it was too late. The testimony outlining Cheney's apparently deliberate procrastination on this matter - and then scrambling fighters from a base over a hundred miles away - is genuinely shocking."

You know what happened with the fighters because you've read the 9/11 Commission Report. Planes were scrambled to intercept the first two only after the first one had hit and very shortly before the second.

The lack of transponder signal made it difficult to know for sure where any of the planes were. When later planes were scrambled there was confusion about where they were supposed to go and which planes to intercept. There were also regulations about how fast they could fly (regulations which the pilots broke nontheless).

This is obviously stuff that you are throwing up to make things seem more suspicious than they are but have pretty reasonable if at times infuriating explanations.

But there is no way you would accept a US fighter jet shooting down a civilian airline so there's not much point playing the "Why didn't they shoot them down?!?" card.

And what do you mean "airbase over 100 miles away"?

Oh, and turned up any information on the funerals yet?

"You know what happened with the fighters because you've read the 9/11 Commission Report. Planes were scrambled to intercept the first two only after the first one had hit and very shortly before the second".

I'm talking here about the response to AA77. Although the transponder signal was lost, the plane was picked up on radar heading towards Washington over 30 mins before the attack. Cheney held back from scrambling jets until it was 10 mins away - and then from Langley AFB in Virginia rather than the nearby Andrews AFB in Washington.

"But there is no way you would accept a US fighter jet shooting down a civilian airline"

True. Nevertheless fighters are routinely scrambled whenever a civilian airliner loses its transponder signal. One practical reason is to report on the plane's altitude. Another is to try to make contact with the pilot.

"turned up any information on the funerals yet?"

No but Larry may have found a couple. Larry: I think you'll find Betty Ong was a stewardess on AA11 and, now I think of it, I seem vaguely to recall a report of remains being found. Not sure about the other one, but remember there is a difference between a funeral and a memorial service.

"United 93, I think you mean"

Yes that's the one. Thank you.

MJ, please tell me the difference between a funeral and a memorial service. Are you still telling me that the relatives were not granted funerals? Why didn't they bring this up before?

Larry, a funeral is where the actual body (or parts thereof) are consigned to the ground or cremated. A memorial service is where a death is formally mourned, but there is no physical burial or cremation, either because this has already been done or if there is no body for some reason.

If a family knows someone is dead, but does not have a body to bury, they just hold a memorial service. There is nothing for them to 'bring up'. If there's no body, there's no body.

MJ, so just to reiterate - not based on any evidence, but solely Internet rumor, your contention is that there were no funerals for the victims of Flight 77. Is that true?

I'm saying that, apart from Barbara Olson, I have not seen evidence, or even rumours, of funerals (as opposed to memorial services) for the passengers of AA77, despite the Pentagon's claim to have recovered body parts of every single one. This does not of course mean there were none. It may just mean that I've missed them.

Incidentally, I'm now doubtful that Barbara Olson's service really was a funeral. I think it must have been a memorial. It was held on September 15th, but it appears the Pentagon did not complete its DNA analysis of body parts until November 16th.

http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=armed_forces_dna_identification_laboratory_1

"It was held on September 15th, but it appears the Pentagon did not complete its DNA analysis of body parts until November 16th."

Doesn't that undercut your insinuation that there were no body parts?

MJ, this is a little too grim to dwell on for a long time, but looking into it it seems you are taking a fairly typical Truther approach to this by trying to cast doubt without examining the story more closely. The identification process was apparently inordinately long and exhausted all possibilities in trying to discover the remains of five people killed at the Pentagon. They finally formally ended the investigation into these remains on 16th November meaning that they were working for two solid months for the sake of the family relatives to retrieve even the smallest identifiable body part of those victims.

Read the story here:

http://old.911digitalarchive.org/crr/documents/1276.pdf

Oh, and just to pre-empt any "Aha! An inconsistency!" silliness, the five people whose body parts could not be found were those of Pentagon employees. You are correct in saying that the funerals were only held for those for whom body parts were found as one of those in the military couldn't have a funeral at Arlington as his body was never recovered. However, as pointed out all aboard AA77 were identified through DNA samples provided by families except the DNA of the hijackers which corroborates other evidence that they were the responsible parties.

MJ, surely you can see what is meant by a convergence of evidence upon a single point. The more these lines of evidence cross the same point the more you can see how the identification of the hijackers themselves wasn't as bizarre as you seem to think.

"Doesn't that undercut your insinuation that there were no body parts?"

No. I do not doubt that many Pentagon employees died in the attack and that their body parts would have to be identified using DNA analysis. It's only the claim that they found body parts of passengers that I question.

"this is a little too grim to dwell on for a long time"

Agreed. You'll recall I only made a one-line observation that there have been no funerals for the passengers of AA77. This has yet to be refuted. I only keep talking about it because you and Larry won't let it go!

"The identification process was apparently inordinately long"

Indeed. DNA analysis is a lengthy process at the best of times. Impossible for Barbara Olson to be identified, bagged up and returned to Ted within four days. Totally out the question. No way.

The Pentagon staff who died were buried at Arlington, details here: http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/pentagon-attack.htm. At the bottom of the page it says that the unidentifiable remains of five victims (inluding one from the plane) were buried on 12/9/02 and that the remains of the hijackers had been separated.

"as pointed out all aboard AA77 were identified through DNA samples provided by families"

The Arlington page is silent on the fate of the remains of the passenger. Standard practice would be to return the body parts to the families for burial. We might therefore reasonably expect a spate of funerals around December 2001 (including Barbara Olson's). It's these to which I can find no reference. I assume the hijackers were not identified by samples provided by their families. Not quite sure then how it was possible with certainty to distinguish and separate these from the other five, but perhaps I'm being pedantic.

"except the DNA of the hijackers which corroborates other evidence that they were the responsible parties".

Teleological reasoning - again!

"trying to cast doubt without examining the story more closely"

It was you who claimed Barbara Olson's funeral was held on 15th September, not me. Closer examination of the story shows that to be impossible. Closer examination of the story in fact only exposes more inconsistencies. The main issue is: if body parts of the passengers were indeed found, what the hell happened to them??

MJ, you seem to be using these sources selectively. Taking out what you want and then questioning that which doesn't fit your "theory".

The memorial service for those whose remains weren't found included Dana Falkenberg, a two-year old. It is probably unsurprising that her body parts may have been more difficult to find than the others but there is no mention that those of the others weren't. Why do you persist in this strange idea that because you can't find a "spate of funerals" around Dec 2001 (why DEC 2001?) that there were none. How many people do you think die in New York and the Washington area on a daily basis? Do you want Larry and I to go looking for the dates of each funeral of everyone who died in the Twin Towers? Do you accept that planes hit the Twin Towers? Do you accept that when you read my comments that an actual human being has typed them on another computer? Or that anyone or anything exists except you?

"It was you who claimed Barbara Olson's funeral was held on 15th September, not me. Closer examination of the story shows that to be impossible. "

How do you know? How do you know how much was left of her or how they identified her? Like, I've said before, there are some things that seem a little too ghoulish to go into and which may not have made the papers but some kinds of skepticism simply end in solipsism which is a pretty useless position to determine the truth of anything.

"Why do you persist in this strange idea that because you can't find a "spate of funerals" around Dec 2001 (why DEC 2001?) that there were none."

It's just an observation. I may be wrong. I just think there'd be some record of them, but perhaps they happened and there's no record. I thought December 2001 because the body parts would most likely have been released some time after November 16 and the families would have arranged funerals shortly after receipt.

"How many people do you think die in New York and the Washington area on a daily basis?"

Plenty, but 911 was still a hot topic in the media in December 2001 or thereabouts and a spate of related funerals might be expected to make the news (local news at the very least).

"Do you want Larry and I to go looking for the dates of each funeral of everyone who died in the Twin Towers?"

I don't want you or Larry to go looking for any funerals, but if you come across any relating to the passengers of AA77 on your travels perhaps you could let me know. (Those relating to victims in the Towers have already been noted and are not a point of contention).

"Do you accept that planes hit the Twin Towers?"

Something we can agree on!

"Do you accept that when you read my comments that an actual human being has typed them on another computer?"

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

"Or that anyone or anything exists except you?"

That's just a moronic conspiracy theory!

"How do you know? How do you know how much was left of her or how they identified her?"

Oh come on. First of all Ted and everyone else had to provide samples. Then they had to sort out all the scattered body parts and do DNA tests on each bit. Just analysing one sample takes several days. Then all the bits had to be collated, one bag of bits per family, with no mingling. No wonder they didn't finish before November 16. They wouldn't know how much was left of her until they'd finished the whole painstaking process and they wouldn't release any bodies until then either. Of course it couldn't all be done in four days. I'm sure you know that really.

I don't know why I even do this but I have dug up a Washington Post article that reports on the first spate of funerals that took place.

Barbara Olson's funeral is mentioned. But so too are those of AA77 passengers James Debeuneure and Todd Reuben. (The article is not explicit about whether the latter too are actually funerals but it certainly suggests they are).

It also mentions a memorial service for Kenneth and Jennifer Lewis, a married couple who were flight attendants on AA77.

Please read it:

http://old.911digitalarchive.org/crr/documents/1032.pdf

Now, I understand you still have trouble with this, but I maintain that the manifests are the same as those shown by the FBI in the Moussaiou trial and that it was quite possible to zero in on who the hijackers were partly through the fact that the relatives of the victims contacted the authorities to enquire where their loved ones were and the fact that on each plane there appeared to be a number of names that were unclaimed, some of whom began to coincide with those that the FBI and the CIA had been following.

Now it is true that the FBI initially released one or two different names as they may well have been under the impression that some of their other targets were travelling under assumed names. It turned out later that this wasn't the case and the hijackers used their own names.

I think this does at least lay to rest the "no funerals" claim does it not?

"I have dug up a Washington Post article that reports on the first spate of funerals that took place"

You really shouldn't have...but thanks. The problem is the date, September 15th, so same comments apply as with Barbara Olson. I suspect the only funerals were of Pentagon staff who were identifiable. The others must have been memorials. Judging by the pictures of the interior of the Pentagon the chances of identifiable bodies being found are remote and, more to the point, there were no reports of that.

"I maintain that the manifests are the same as those shown by the FBI in the Moussaiou trial"

I maintain that they may be, but that there's only one way to find out. What gets me is that the 911 Commission didn't request them from the airlines as a simple matter of routine. Another thing that gets me is that those "victim lists", without the hijackers' names, were first released on the 11/12th, yet the FBI didn't release the list of 19 names until the 14th. The Washington Post's list for AA77 is still online: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18970-2001Sep12 (the web page is dated Sept 13 but the page address suggests it was published in the print copy of the 12th and therefore acquired on the 11th).

I really wish they'd just publish the official manifests and have done with it. It would immediately put to bed all the wilder 'alternative' theories. Provided those names are on them of course.

MJ,

I just want to say that you've done an excellent job of keeping your cool, with all the insults that have been directed at you. Good research, too.

DOh!

My other comment's in moderation...

Just one more time, do you deny this is a flight manifest from AA77?

http://www.flight77.info/docs/Flight_77_Manifest_a.jpg

Apologies for absence, had a computer problem for a couple of days, now sorted.

"Just one more time, do you deny this is a flight manifest from AA77?"

Its source is unaccredited so I don't know if it's genuine or not. It may be. It was provided by an author who wrote a book. It is unclear where he got it from.

Clark: thank you. To be fair to angrysoba he got much less vituperative as time went on and argued a good case.

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