Anger. Yes, its another conspiracy theory vent.

A recurring theme this last year has been anger. Anger that the attacks happened, anger at the Government, anger and anxiety at where we seem to be headed. I guess this is all part of the process and to be expected. I don't have counselling,I don't take anti-depressants. I come here and I write, and I campaign, instead. And it helps.

I have noticed that one of the major triggers for my anger is what are known as conspiracy theorists. Before last summer, I had little idea that there was this whole other world of communities on the internet obsessing about what they think is a series of criminal cover-ups, lies and distortions, allegations of a shadowy sinister Power behind the scenes that controls Governments, people, business, markets, and which is a force for evil in this beautiful blue planet that we all share. Like many far-out theories that spread like wildfire, there is a grain of truth in it. Just as the greatest insults are those which have a small shred of truth in them. Power corrupts, politicians lie, there is spin and self interest and lies and deceit, and this has done much damage to trust and to truth. But there is a healthy cynicism, and then there is keeping your mind so open that your brain falls out (in a famous phrase attributed to many people over the years.)

I knew that there are some people who think the moon landings are faked, or have theories about the assasination of JFK, or that Elvis is still alive. I just thought of such people as harmless cranks, before this last year, if I thought of them at all. I had no idea of the ''9/11 Truth Movement'', or what was to come later, the 'July 7 Truth Movement'' - people who thought that the story behind the London bombings was very different to what they had heard on the news.

When I first came across people who were reading my blog, linking to my words, misquoting them and positing wild theories of their own, I was puzzled. Why were they so intent on questioning what they called ''the official version'' of what happened last summer ( even though there was no official version, just a series of police briefings on an ongoing investigation and a rolling, multi-sourced developing news story) . Did they doubt everything ever written or said by the mainstream media and the police, ever, or was there something unusual about the events of July 7 and September 11 that had them asking so many questions? Actually, it wasn't the question-asking that I had a problem with, but what seemed to be the agenda behind the questions. It was clear that there was a definite, yet vague theory informing everything, that the authors of these sites saw were selectively filtering what they saw and read to find anomalies and to jump on them and cry 'cover up! conspiracy!' .

Sometimes the agenda was blatant, sometimes it was more hidden. Much of it seemed to stem from a belief that huge numbers of people were being lied to, on a spectacular scale, and that 9/11 was the primary example of this. There was, I noticed, a worrying arrogance in amongst the paranoia; those who were self-styled ''Truth-seekers'' were the ''enlightened ones'', those who would not Believe in what they called ''the paradigm shift'' and the existence of ''synthetic terror'' were referred to with contempt, as sleeping ''sheeple''. There were mentions of Masons, Facism, Zionism, the New World Order. Searching through more sites devoted to this kind of thing, it got more and more bizarre. Numerology, Occultism, blatant anti-Semitism, claims that the planes flying into the WTC were holograms, that alien shape-shifting lizards secretly controlled the world via an elite cabal, allegations that they worshipped a Satanic owl-god at a secret US camp for the rich and powerful...I would follow the links, curious, wide-eyed, and then come up for air, shaking my head in disbelief.

At a time when the pace of life is faster than it has ever been, when theories can move across continents at the spoeed of thought, perhaps this Wild West of crazy ideas was the shadow side of the internet, with its unprecedented access offering all the ideas of anyone online, ever, anywhere, anytime. Perhaps, in an uncertain and secular age, this was nothing more than an attempt to impose a stable structure on a frightening and chaotic world. To use a phrase I first used a year ago, perhaps it was filling a God-shaped hole. I can see the attraction in such a search for answers. ( I just posted about it on urban 75 website, where arguments with what the site calls ''conspiraloons'' continue to rage.

''It strikes me that with almost all the CT ( conspiracy theory) sites I have visited, what you get is lots of anxious people channelling a vague sense of personal paranoia into a belief that if only they can peer through the Veil they will find the Truth, and the Truth will set them free.

The Truth most commonly posited in CT sites is that everything that is going wrong is all the fault of some global Evil entitity super-state-machine-thing. Believing this, and asking questions and having fun trying on various esoteric theories seems to fulfils a powerful psychological need in some people. It gives them a sense of 'a not-so-nice ordered world where nobody knows what's going on' - apart from them and their fellow 'truthseekers', and there is a comfort and a feeling of superiority in that. It's not your fault, it's not that you are depressed or paranoid, not as successful in life as you'd like. It's all the fault of the Evil Machine and its uncertainities and manipulations. You, the anxious internet truth hunter are thus off the hook, and you can amuse yourself by searching through endless theories, asking endless questions, feeding your innate paranoia and thus making yourself feel better for generally feeling a bit of an odd one out and always having had this creeping sense of alientation and doom. It's not you. It's Them. Your'e not wierd. You're Neo in The Matrix films.

So I say to the conspiracy theory fan: Play on the internet if if it makes you happier, ask endless questions, gad from theory to theory like a mayfly, but don't start trying to convert me to whatever your current fave set of doubts is today, or to expect me to have much patience with endless positing of doom-mongering possible sinister theories, asking of endless questions about ''the official version'' of everything, ever, when there's little or no evidence presented to back up these claims, apart from your own selective reading. And a general malaise of societal unease and anxiety that you've had since you were a nipper which you feed with the internet sites. Because it is just tiresome. Yes, asking questions, challenging authority is good. But not if asking the questions and then just asking another load of questions is the be-all and end-all of it all - never listening to the answers and considering them and using rationality and logic to form opinions. At some point, it stops being ''truth hunting'' or ''research'' and just becomes akin to OCD.

The world is a messy, fucked up, chaotic, beautiful place. It is what we make it. There is no shadowy force behind everything, it doesn't all link together, so if you ask the right questions enough times and join all the dots, all will become clear.If you want ineffable certainties in life, go pick a religion. All this CT stuff just winds people up, and drives people madder and madder, because it's tilting at windmills, chasing shadows. It makes the anxious more anxious, the paranoid more paranoid, the angry, angrier. There is no Grand Conspiracy. We are all part of the same dream, the same conspiracy. We are all it. Deal with it. Live it. Engage with it. Step away from the realms of paranoia and ceaseless, pointless speculation and if you want change, make it happen.''

And I believe that. But I have been deeply troubled recently by my own personal reaction of distressed anger towards the self-professed ''July 7th Truthseekers'' in particular. I find it extremely difficult to deal with all these posts about me on their messageboards and blogs, where I have been accused in the past of being a counter-intelligence professional, ( or even a team of M15 agents) in the employ of a corrupt Government; that I tell lies, that I am fake, a ''shill'', a racist, and so on. Well, of course I am going to be angry if complete strangers post up personally abusive rubbish about me, anyone would be. But there is something frightening about their relentless proselytising that affects me more deeply than just this personal abuse nonsense; and it is the allegations that the bombers were innocent, that there is no such thing as Islamist terrorism, that the bombs were not made and planted by 4 young British extremists but by the State. The way they carry on reminds me of a cult, and I think that it is sinister.

I have gone over to their websites on several occasions and tried to debate it with them, on messge boards where they are speculating about me and what I believe and who I am. It does no good, it gets nowhere, it makes me more upset and angrier still. Yet if someone is publishing and disseminating what I think is false propoganda in the name of ''truth'', and linking to my writing and talking about me in connection with it, then it is very difficult to sit on your hands and bite your lip and do nothing. It feels personal, it IS personal, it is horrible. I don't what feels worse, doing nothing, or trying to fight back and defend myself.

I care about truth, I want an independent inquiry; I want what I think is the truth about the connection between our foreign policy and the increased and deadly risk to our civilians and soldiers in this stupidly-named '' War on Terror'' to come out. I think that the link is becoming clearer and clearer. Even the Chief of Staff of the British army is saying it, for heaven's sake. Perhaps the Government will act on the Lessons Learned from 7 July, and carry out the practical recommendations that we shared, and perhaps the shameful results of their foreign policy, driven by the US policy will come out and be aired as well. Blair, a key architect of the mess will lose his job for it, and then we can try and make it better, without falling into the trap of authoritarian over-reaction and giving away our civil liberties hand over fist in a misguided attempt to be safer by becomg less free.

But I think, meanwhile, that these conspiracy-theorists' wilful refusal to accept that extremist religious terrorism even exists, and the part our Government and the US Government have played in worsening the situation, is appalling. I do not see how we can ever get past this, if this virus of ignorant denial spreads and this festering cynicism flourishes in the place of clear-eyed, righteous anger and determined questioning of what is done in our name.

I hate the picking over of what I say, what other people say in the name of ''truth and justice'' when it is done in the name of something else - an agenda to prove a theory that is held as an article of faith in something that represents almost a fundementalist religion. I am pig-sick of a year's-worth of personal attacks. Some might think that I would want to make common cause with these people, who say they want an independent inquiry,when I want the same thing too. But I do not, not now, not ever.( And I am aware of the irony, for I think that there is some State culpability in the events of 7/7, just as they do, and that makes me have an agenda to a certain extent as well. The difference is, I do not operate in a world that denies the existence of terrorism and seeks to exonerate mass-murderers.)

Oh God, I am so, so sick of this.

I don't see what else I can do though. In all conscience, I think this is too important for me to sit back and let cynical, foetid speculation take the place of the truth being held to account. Whilst conspiracy theories thrive, the demands of those who want things to be made better, fairer, can be dismissed. Conspiracy theories let the guilty off the hook, by obfuscating the calls for clarity with a fug of sick and hopeless speculation that claims a Grand Global Conspiracy - when there is none. What there is instead: cock-ups, cover-ups, failures, greed, ambition, pride, ruthlessness and cruelty. There is humanity, and humans struggling for power and wealth and position. There is not an Evil Machine, we are the machine, we are the the results of our own actions and we can call our leaders to account. Or not. We can sit and post away on the internet about satanic super-states, or we can try and change things.

I can't do very much, but I can write, and I can campaign and I can publicly state my position and keep asking for the truth to be faced up to, keep asking what we are going to do to get out of this mess and bring healing and hope and peace to a troubled, angry world. I just wish that doing so didn't make me feel so despairing and angry sometimes.

It is hard. And it makes it difficult to write; the anger, the self-doubts, the despair. And I know you've heard it all before, but it isn't going away, so I am saying it again.

I am actually considering turning the comment moderator function off just to show people what will follow after this post. I can already guess. I am weary, just thinking about what is heading my way. I am sorry to have to write about this, again. I've been reading some of the unpublished comments that have been coming in today already, before I wrote this, and I just want to give up.

Anyway, I'm going to the pub with J and Jane, because now I have written this down, I feel a bit better. This is a personal blog, and if I want to vent, then I can, I guess. You don't have to read it.

If you've got this far, then thank you. And here's the song that has been keeping me sane recently. Hallelujah - this beautiful cover is by Alison Crowe.

UPDATE: Wonderful essay by Not Saussure. And, a miracle. No obscene comments, no threats, no hate mail, not cut and paste oddyseys, only normality, sanity in the comments tonight. I haven't had to block a thing. That is amazing, the first time in weeks when I haven't flinched opening up comment moderator. Perhaps the detractors, the attackers have finally decided to leave it, and me alone. Oh, I hope so. Thank you, everyone who commented. Bless you, I'm really grateful.