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.

Martin Amis on 'the real 9/11 conspiracy'

2 posts today that will probably attract the conspiracy theorists, but I still think the subject matter interesting. Comment moderator stays on. (Yeah, yeah, free speech. Look. There's plenty of other places on the wild west of the internet to discuss conspiracy theories and I have made it clear why I have a almost-zero-tolerance policy to publicising them: many of them are simply racist, anti-Semitic, utterly lacking in common sense, and in my opinion, help to provide the sea of paranoid disenfranchised aggrieved victimhood in which extremism can swim. And as quite a few of the people who espouse them have been bizarrely personally abusive ( I am not a team of disinfo M15 agents, ok?) I'm not having the debate all over again here. Debate here will be heavily moderated, I've heard most of it before, I do find it upsetting to be told mass-murdering suicide bombers were innocent, and like I said, this is NOT a conspiracy theory blog. Ta. )

Anyway: Martin Amis has written a fictionalised account of the last days of Mohammed Atta, ( extract here, more in tomorrow's Observer) and today he writes about September 11th in the Saturday Times reviewing The Looming Tower, by Lawrence Wright.


''Psychiatrists call it fabulation. The rest of us call it conspiracy theory — or the masochistic lust for chicanery and compound deceit. Fabulation may more simply be the failure to assimilate; and we concede that September 11 will perhaps never be wholly assimilable. The first question to be asked of the fabulist is cui bono? And the answer would be, “Well, the Administration, which could then accrue the power . . . to march on Baghdad”. We are arriving at an axiom in long-term thinking about international terrorism: the real danger lies not in what it inflicts but in what it provokes. Thus by far the gravest consequence of September 11 to date is Iraq.

The American death toll in the war will soon exceed the death toll in the original attack; and for the Iraqi people that figure is exceeded every three weeks.

Nor are the losses merely actuarial: they are also to be seen in our weakened hold on the high ground of morality and reason. It is as if September 11 entrained a net increase in suggestibility, and at every level. At the top, a President guided a) by blithe adventurists and b) by intimations from the Almighty. At the bottom, a citizenry haunted by rudderless suspicions. The fact is that America didn’t wound itself in September 2001, as the fabulists claim. It did that in March 2003 and thereafter.''

read more...

C4 and conspiracy theories

I just checked the blog traffic and found a bunch of people coming over from C4 news, not sure how they got here as I can't actually see a link. Hello to you all, anyway. I was out 'til late yesterday , and I forgot to video C4 news last night so I missed it. A researcher from C4 news did call me yesterday afternoon about the report, and ask if I could help - and Darshna Soni, who did the report, talked to me a couple of times about it, once when we met up at the Old Bailey during the Crevice trial ending, and last week. I gave C4 Nafeez Ahmed's details instead, yesterday afternoon, and said he would be a good person to have on the programme.

But I just watched and Nafeez wasn't on, which is a shame. I didn't want to be on, firstly because I am not a Muslim and the programme is about Muslims' views, secondly because it was not directly about the need for an independent inquiry, which is what I specifically campaign about, when asked, with other people directly involved in 7/7, and thirdly because if I worry that I had been on, I would have been deluged with yet more long emails from presumably well-meaning people trying to convert me to their conspiracy theories, which I am totally sick and tired of hearing about, after a year of it. And contrary to a few people's accusations, no, I don't rush off and agree to do every single media approach, and I don't especially like being the one in the spotlight just because I have a blog that's easy to find when you type in keywords. Especially when it brings me unwelcome attention, and when it takes up lots of my free time.

(Re. the various alternative theories about 7/7: I have looked at them all. Yes, all of them. In detail. For over a year. I simply do not find them credible. They are not congruent with the evidence of my own experience, and more importantly, they contradict the evidence I have heard from the police, other credible sources and from many other survivors and eye-witnesses. I am not a fan of the Blair administration, even though I have voted Labour all my life. Yes, I am calling for a 7/7 inquiry, with others affected. But I am not going to go into why I do not believe the conspiracy theories here, again, as that is a red rag to some people's bull.)

You can watch the C4 report here, (and find lots of links to conspiracy theory sites where you can chat about beliefs that the four mass-murderers, MSK, Tanweer, Hussein and Lindsay were all as innocent as new-born lambs, and the Government planted the bombs, with the people who run the websites, if you like that sort of thing. I don't. I used to find it upsetting. Now I find it wearying)

The report covered the prevalence of conspiracy theories and the rising levels of distrust within 'the Muslim community' concerning 7/7 and the Government's anti-terror policies, the breakdown in trust between communities and the Government. A survey of 500 Muslims ( not a massive sample size but reasonable) provided the basis for the report, with Darshna travelling round the UK to talk to some Muslims. Three quarters don't seem to be buying the conspiracy theories, but a worrying 24% do. And as always, it's the minority who get focused on.

It has becoming increasingly clear to me over the last two years that the frequent media hysteria about Muslims, the language used to talk about terrorism, and the disproportionate amount of airtime given to fringe extremists is fanning the flames of paranoia and mistrust and making things worse for us all. I write about this subject often, on this, my personal blog, and I raise my voice in protest, like many other bloggers. I say, again and again, that we should protect civil liberties, that we should avoid stigmatising many because of the actions of a few, that we should not pass hasty draconian laws and that we should treat terrorism as criminal activity, not make 7/7 a special case that necessitates shredding the constitution and causing people to live fearfully. That way anger, alienation, and more violence lies.

I say that a proper inquiry into 7/7 would help to heal these divisions and damp down the wild speculation in which conspiracy theories thrive. And I do not see anything healthy about the growth of the conspiracy theories. How can you work together to solve a problem if you will not even admit that it exists?

It is also obvious to me that the Blair foreign policy has raised the temperature and fuelled the anger (and indeed Blair was warned of this likely consequence before the Iraq invasion in a buried report, Young Muslims and Extremism).

I believe that we need to work together, to heal the divisions and mistrust that are running deep. That means fighting back against the spreading virus of denial and paranoia, which only disempowers people and makes them feel like helpless angry victims. Trying instead to make communication and policies fairer, clearer, more just and transparent and accountable. Looking for common ground. Remembering the majority of people are not convinced by conspiracy theories - that they only want to live and work peaceably together as neighbours and get on with their ordinary lives. But that is not an exciting news story.

I think having an inquiry into 7/7 would be a good way to kickstart the process of healing by opening the debate about why and how home-grown terrorism came at us out of our midst, and I also think that more widely-debated and more ethical foreign policies, trade policies, social and domestic policies would mean less violence and crime. Less hateful hysteria given column inches and airtime, less of the macho politics of fear would help too.

There are no quick fixes. There is a lot to do to make things better, and we can all help to make common cause for peace and justice, or just a quiet life. But I do not see why focusing on our divisions and fears will make us stronger. I would rather look at what draws us together. I would rather walk to my local shops, where almost all the shops are Muslim owned, walk past the women in headscarves and veils, the men gossipping outside the coffee shops, past the Mosque where hundreds worship every Friday, and smile at people, because we are all neighbours, and not be angry, or afraid.

UPDATE: Blood and Treasure , and Radical Muslim on the subject

The US mid-term 'surprise'?

In the second of an occasional series, a conspiracy theory that might actually have something in it is invited to take a bow. U.S bloggers have been speculating about the ' surprise' coyly hinted at by columnist Ronald Kessler, on conservative site News Max.

''In the past week, Karl Rove has been promising Republican insiders an ‘October surprise’ to help win the November congressional elections.”

Well, October has been and gone and the only surprise so far seems to be how nasty the pre-elction campaigning is. Actually, scratch it - no, that isn't a surprise. Perhaps the surprise is how many conservatives are turning on Bush and his administration?

In today's Guardian report, 'Neocons turn on Bush for incompetence over Iraq war' neoconservative, Richard Perle who was a member of the influential Defence Policy Board that advised the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and a 'leading hawk' in the Reagan administration has a go, ( as do fellow former Pentagon adviser Kenneth Adelman, Michael Rubin, a former senior official in the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, and David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter, in a Vanity Fair article) . The Guardian report says

''Mr Perle, a member of the influential Defence Policy Board that advised the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, in the run-up to the war, is as outspoken in denouncing the conduct of the war as he was once bullish on the invasion. He blamed "dysfunction" in the Bush administration for the present quagmire.

"The decisions did not get made that should have been. They didn't get made in a timely fashion, and the differences were argued out endlessly," Mr Perle told Vanity Fair, according to early excerpts of the article. "At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible."

At the moment, the expected ''surprise'' seems to be the conviction and sentencing to death of Saddam Hussein, whose trial is expected to conclude November 5th - 48 hours before the US mid-term elections. ( A while back in early September, I thought it might be catching Bin Laden, still apparently lurking in Pakistan, but I daresay he is too convenient a bogey to be bagged just yet. But you never know. Maybe it'll be a double bonanza!)

Pray though, that it isn't the announcement of war with Iran. It might be the alleged ''thwarting'' of another ''spectacular''. But is it all a trick by master-tactician Rove, who is hoping to spook the Democrats?

Heaven knows, there's been a few unwelcome surprises for the Republicans. Like this one. Enjoy the revs, Rev.

Who knows? We'll have to see. Meanwhile, my favourite barking mad guest conspiracy theory of the month is the idea that the next terror attack can be predicted using this handy chart ( click on it to enlarge)




Cunningly using numerology, the mysterious links between the Saudi Arabian dialing code, the New Zealand Emergency phone number and the number of days between 9/11 and other terror attacks... it comes up with November 2nd 2006 as the next date for an attack. Oops.

Guest conspiracy theory of the month, Admiral Mullen's busy diary and whither the 'October Surprise'?

And that's my longest blog post header ever. Pre-election jitters, October surprises, it's speculation time so here is my guest conspiracy theory, the third in an occasional series. Props to me if I'm right but I'd much, much rather not be.

I note that, over the weekend, Admiral Mike Mullen - Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff - had a secretive meeting in Lake Placid with Europe's military top brass. Attendees were: Sir Graham Stirrup of Britain’s Royal Air Force, German Army Gen. Wolfgang Schneiderhan, French Army Gen. Jean-Louis Georgelin and Italian Air Force Gen. Vincenzo Camporini.

I can find only 2 media mentions of this, both in very obscure publications. The Plattsburgh Press Republican writes' The day after the planes had left, Capt. John Kirby, a special assistant to Mullen, confirmed that the top military leaders from five countries met in Lake Placid to discuss mutual security issues, including Afghanistan.
“I’m not at liberty to go into the details that was discussed, but they went through a wide range of security issues that are common to all five nations,” Kirby said.
“They discussed, in broad terms, progress in Afghanistan and where we’re heading with regard to Afghanistan, particularly the NATO mission there. And they discussed other mutual issues of security concerns.”

On Monday 20th October, Admiral Mullen met Serbian president Boris Tadic, and the Serbian Chief of Defence in Belgrade, and discussed ways the two countries' militaries could work together, two weeks after the US Defence Secretary had flown to Kosovo to voice US support for its territorial integrity. Which is pretty extraordinary.

On Tuesday 21st October, Admiral Mullen met with his Russian counterpart, at the Russians' request, apparently, in Helsinki. The first meeting since Russia invaded Georgia. This has been much more widely reported. NYT writes 'The admiral said he and General Makarov had discussed American disquiet over the war in Georgia — Russia’s first post-Soviet offensive outside its soil — as well as Russian unhappiness with the arrival of American warships in the Black Sea with humanitarian aid for Georgia. Other topics included NATO’s relations with Russia and how to improve cooperation on countering terrorism, halting the proliferation of unconventional weapons and stemming narcotics trafficking'.

Also on Tuesday, Mullen was in Riga, Latvia warning Iraq that 'time was running out' for Iraq to approve a bilateral agreement with the US to extend US military operations after December 31st, the expiration date of the UN Security Council agreement for the US military to be in Iraq. Mullen also made some strongly-worded references to Iran 'meddling'.

Ho hum. Busy, busy, busy.

Now for all I know, Admiral Mullen has these sorts of high-level, high-security international top brass meetings all the time, and his recent round of meetings in such quick succession is nothing special. I am merely flagging this up because I think it is interesting timing, less than 2 weeks before an election and with no 'October Surprise' having *cough* hoved into the erm, airspace yet.

It is no secret that the imploding economy is proving catastrophic for the Republicans' election campaign, and they are desperate to change the channel to foreign policy/war on terror stuff where they percieve their Presidential candidate to have an advantage.

So if an international incident suddenly pops up... an 'October surprise' which proves an election game-changer...it is worth remembering Admiral Mullen's busy 4 days meeting key defence chiefs from Europe, Russia and the Balkans from 18th- 22nd October.

Random speculation time: Barry Cooper, a Professor of political science, writes about a possible Russian October surprise in the Calgary Herald. Russia stirring up trouble in America's back yard? Cooking up a storm in Nicaragua, Cuba, or Venuzuela, retaliation for NATO's approaches up to its borders? So I say, hmmm, what about Venuzuela's planned naval base in the Caribbean, from whence their Russian friends can gaze beadily at the US? Ostensibly the base is to help fight narcotics trafficking. Narcotics trafficking being something Mullen and the Russians discussed on Tuesday, as you'll recall.

A spot of arms-dealing, some circling warships...a Cuban Missile Crisis part 2? A civilian airliner or military aircraft shot down by rocket launchers? God knows, and we certainly could drive ourselves all wild by guessing.

Joe Biden certainly seems to think something is afoot, in the next six months, mentioning Russia and the Middle East, telling people to 'gird their loins' and making Kennedy comparisons. Biden said, somewhat unguardedly, at a fund raiser

'It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

War is of course what saved the US economy in the early days of Bush's administration, following the Enron scandal. I really hope they don't intend a war with Iran. We've had enough energy-related military interventions for a while, don't you think?

That last sentence of Biden's, by the way, was really asking for it. Conspiracy theorists will have an absolute field day when whatever it is happens, saying it was 'generated'. And something will happen, because it always does - that's the nature of international politics, and testing times during new administrations.

Just look at what's going on in Pakistan under its new cash-strapped government, as the country faces economic collapse and the loss of its western regions to militant extremists, criminals and tribal warlords. It's close to chaos, and America roaming about in the militant strongholds and tribal badlands bombing villages, ostensibly in search of Bin Laden, isn't helping. It's also making a vengeful terrorist strike on UK or US soil more likely as well. As the Americans (and everyone else) damn well knows.

You have to wonder if they'd be that cynical as to practically provoke one for election-winning reasons...but....no, I'm not going there. Pakistan, meanwhile is awash with conspiracy theories of its own.

I'm not surprised, they bloom like mould during tense times like these. They don't help, they just make people freaked out and fearful, and that is why I don't give them airtime very often. I have a temperature and am feeling pretty ill today, which probably explains why I've started rummaging through international geo-economic-politics and spooking myself out.

Re-reading Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, which isn't very soothing either. It remains essential reading though, now more than ever.

Thank God there's less than 2 weeks til the US elections, though I suppose all the legal wrangling will delay the result, unless there's a landslide. These bastards really, really don't want their party to end, nor judgment day to ever come.

7/7 Conspiracy Theories: the TRUTH at last

UPDATE NOTE: the collection of conspiracy theories below is SATIRE. It has been posted because after three years of seeing utter rubbish disseminated on the internet through blogs, forums, home-made 'truth documentaries' and 'truth research', which are nothing more than paranoid speculation, I believe it is time to show this stuff up for what it really is. The sane, clear-eyed calls for a 7/7 inquiry are nothing to do with conspiracy theories that are posted and repeated endlessly on the internet, and passed around by people who have apparently little grasp of Occam's razor or logic or evidence-based research.

I have noticed that it is a frequent conspiracy theorist tactic to focus obsessively on any small anomaly - normal in archived coverage of rolling, multi-sourced news coverage of a major event under massive investigation, and to relentlessly ask endless questions, which seek to raise doubt on the 'official account'. Very rarely will the practised conspiracy theorist attempt to come up with a counter-narrative of their own; instead, the onus is always on 'The Powers that be' to disprove negatives, and respond to every rumour and question, no matter how evidence-free its orgin. This account represents a round-up of the main 7/7 consipracy theories and attempts to refute them, using logic, evidence and satire. If you are likely to be offended by the lies that are circulated about the 7th July murders - and many are - please don't read on. To those who have expressed interest in the 7/7 conspiracy theories without considering carefully their provenance, origin, agenda and basis in fact, I hope this makes you think twice before passing them on.

You may also want to look at this: 10 characteristics of conspiracy theorists.

SATIRE ALERT: This is a guest post from
Connor Spiracy and Thea Wrist

''After three years of 7/7 research on the internet, I can reveal the TRUTH, and I would like to share it with you all now. Everything in the following is taken from a real internet 7/7 research source available only on the internet. Placed together, I'm sure you will see what a compelling case it all makes - much more convincing than the official version. Hold tight - this will change your world...

A few years ago, wicked people agreed upon an evil scheme. In order to bolster their nefarious plans for

(a) introducing ID cards (b) endless war for oil (c) endless war against Islam

a dreadful 'false flag' plot was hatched by

(a) the UK government (b) a shadowy Bilderberg hyper-capitalist neocon cabal (c) the CIA (d)M15/6 (e) Israel (f) Jews, somewhere, (g) possibly an elite part-reptilian super-race.

They decided to attack London on 7th July and blame it on Islamist terrorist suicide bombers. (There are no such things as Islamist terrorist suicide bombers, especially not UK ones, who have wives and children and look normal.) The terrible plot went like this:

M15 placed bombs under the trains, which had been timed to explode. They worked with Israel to do this, Mossad probably, and maybe the CIA as well. The Israeli PM, who was staying near Russell Square, knew in advance and was warned, even though what actually happened was that after the Russell Square bomb went off, he was warned to stay in his room with his security detail, so missing the fourth bomb in Tavistock Square round the corner less than an hour later. A huge world-leading Israeli-owned security and surveillance company won the contract to put in enhanced security systems on the London Underground in September 2004, ten months before the bombings, so that proves everything. Oh, and a passenger who was in the same carriage as the bomb at Edgware, who remained with a dying woman then staggered out in shock said he 'couldn't remember' seeing where a bomb or a bag was. Which also proves it. Kind of.

But if you want a final piece of proof, one survivor also mentioned to a journalist outside the station shortly after fleeing the train, that they had seen tiles on the floor of the carriage fly up. This was because of the bomb which had been placed in a rucksack on the floor of the carriage in front. Erm, but it could also indicate a bomb under the carriage, although photographs of the train interior indicate the bomb was inside. As does eye-witness evidence from survivors who were in the carriage with the bomber. Including a man who stood opposite him and survived with terrrible injuries.

The bombers were innocent; they were however standing in the carriages and killed by the bombs in their rucksacks that they were carrying. But that wasn't their fault, because they were innocent 'patsies' who thought they were smuggling drugs or taking part in a mysterious terror training exercise. That was why they'd bought return tickets, even though a cheap day return is cheaper than a single. They'd even made videos describing why they considered themselves soldiers in a war against the UK. And been to terror training camps abroad and everything. They took their acting role very seriously indeed. But they were completely innocent, remember.

The person co-ordinating the mysterious terror exercise was Peter Power, an ex-Scotland Yard officer, who like many other former cops had set up his own company. His company specialises in training management to be crisis-prepared. So on July 7th, in a shocking and unimaginable coincidence, he was sitting in an office teaching some managers, in a publishing company that employed about a thousand people, how to plan for disasters, like he did every day.

At 9am, the start of the working day, he was asking the managers to consider what would happen if major tube stations were attacked at rush hour. I know. Amazing and frankly not believable - even though there had been a rush hour Al Qaeda attack on Madrid commuters, and a London tube attack was widely considered to be a likely terror target. As part of his training material, he used recordings of a Panorama programme simulating a terror attack on London. He'd been on the programme - God knows why the BBC would ask a respected security and risk expert onto a programme about terrorism and the risk to security, but there you go.

When the real attacks happened in London, where he was working that day along with hundreds of thousands of other people, he was shocked - but used the opportunity to mention the prescience of his security firm. A most untypical reaction of a self-employed risk consultant with an opportunity to talk about his company on national news, I'm sure you'll agree.

The poor not-bombers were killed, along with passengers on the tube trains. But one bomber remained alive. When he realised he was a dupe, he fled to Canary Wharf, where he knew there were lots of journalists in media organisations who would help him. That's what anyone would do in such a situation - hurry across the city to Canary Wharf.

When the young non-bomber arrived at Canary Wharf, he was promptlyshot in broad daylight by black-clad gunmen, in the full view of lots of towering office blocks full of journalists and business people. A much smarter idea than taking him into a van and bumping him off, eh?

His remains were then chopped up, taken back to the exploded bus and carefully scattered about to fool everyone.

The bus wasn't really exploded at all, however. It was full of actors and stuntmen, and used clever pyrotechnics to look like it was exploded. It was all part of Peter Power's mysterious terror drill.

But Peter Power didn't know the real reason why he had been asked to run a complicated terror drill complete with fake exploding bus for the benefit of a few managers in a publishing company who never left their office and were doing a planning exercise on powerpoint with videos in a different part of London.

The wicked plotters behind it all were using Power as a dupe, to add weight to their plot to blow up three trains and blame it all on Muslims. They were so evil that they actually wanted to be found out and send a coded message of their mocking disdain by doing the high-risk strategy of the shooting and faked bus explosion as well; to add insult to this they then cynically arranged for a red London bus with a lift-off roof full of dancers to appear at the Olympic handover to London ceremony.

Thousands of passers-by, police, emergency services workers have all kept quiet about all this, aided by a complicit media. M15 and their masters ruthlessly suppress the truth by allowing bloggers and internet truth campaigners to write about this and distribute DVDs and hold meetings about it regularly.

I realise when I write all this down it looks very silly, and that there is not a single shred of credible evidence to support any of it - which is why it is always better not to explain this is what happened, and instead just ask lots of questions and look at isolated details out of context whilst ignoring anything that contradicts the theory. But now you know that the official account is all lies and the ultimate proof is of course, that 9/11 Was An Inside Job.''

Sometimes all you can do is laugh. Because otherwise, you'd cry. Enough of this insulting, illogical, lazy, deceitful paranoid conspiracy crap flying round the internet, let's have an inquiry - to put this trust-corroding, intelligence-damaging nonsense to bed as much as to get at the truth.

Meeting the ISC

See Mirror today
and today's Evening Standard

Back in October last year, the '7/7 Inquiry Group' - a group of survivors and families campaigning for an independent inquiry into the London Bombings of July 7th 2005, helped pro-bono by Oury Clark Solicitors - had a breakthrough in terms of the process of trying to get more answers to the many questions which still remain about the 7th July bombings.

Following a meeting with Jacqui Smith last autumn, we made contact with the Intelligence and Security Committee (the security services 'watchdog') and attended one of their meetings. The ISC have been sitting every month since May 2007 to re-examine the 7th July events - in particular, what was known about the bombers and whether they could have been stopped from unleashing their deadly attacks which killed 52 innocent passengers and injured nearly 800 more.

Tony Blair asked the ISC - a cross-party committee of Parliamentarians appointed by the PM - to re-investigate following a huge outcry and masses of media coverage in the wake of the 'Crevice' fertiliser-bombers trial - after it came out in court that two of the 7/7 bombers had been associating with the group of 'fertiliser bomb' terrorists when under surveillance by M15. The would-be fertiliser-bombers were thankfully prevented from carrying out their attacks after an enormous police and security services operation. The 7/7 bombers, tragically, succeeded.

Some background might be helpful. The initial ISC report published by the ISC back in May 2006 completely exonerated the security services of any blame in failing to stop the bombers, even though it later found out that two of the bombers had been bugged and photographed and followed by the security services - and so were definitely known, named and on the radar - rather than being 'clean skins', who attacked 'out of the blue,' as initially claimed by the then-Home Secretary Charles Clarke.

It was in 2005 that I first found out that this 'clean skins' business was nonsense: at a survivor meeting I attended in the Home Office, a senior police officer was asked how they managed to identify the bombers so quickly. He blurted out that credit cards and other ID in the name of Mohammed Siddique Khan had been found at three of the crime scenes 'and when we ran the name through the police computer it came up that he had links to international terrorism'.

Hardly a 'clean skin' then.

So that was when we started getting annoyed and wanting more truthful answers - back in 2005.

In May 2006, two reports were published- the original ISC report about the security services and 7/7, and a Home Office Narrative, written by an anonymous civil servant. The narrative appears to contain worrying inaccuracies, including placing the bombers on a *train into London that never ran. The lack of clarity soon led to various conspiracy theories being bandied about, (*John Reid later corrected the train time in Parliament.) The conspiracy theories include unhelpful and inaccurate speculation that the bombers were never in London, or were part of a 'fake terror exercise' and frequently assert that the bombers were innocent of murdering 52 people.

Our conspiracy-theory-free campaign for an independent inquiry into 7/7 carried on, supported by the media, notably the Mirror, and by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties, and by the Greater London Assembly, who had held their own inquiry into communication failures and the city of London's resilience to the attack.

Numerous meetings occurred with the John Reid, Home Office, Tessa Jowell and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (which is responsible for victims of disasters), but still no inquiry.

In November 2006 we were we grateful to be offered pro-bono representation by Oury Clark Solicitors, a firm with a strong human rights reputation, and in May 2007, we went to the Home Office the day after the news had broken of the fertiliser's plotters' guilty convictions - and their association with the 7/7 bombers.

See this BBC news video report

John Reid, the Home Secretary of the moment said no to our request, reiterating Blair's old argument that the inquiry would be a' diversion of resources' .

We went back with a legal argument via Oury Clark, saying that the government had a duty to protect life and an inquiry was a necessary part of that. The Treasury solicitors responded with further legal arguments rejecting our case. So we were put into a litigation corner, and we had to issue proceedings for a judicial review, within the three month window that we had to respond. Meanwhile, Tony Blair asked the ISC to re-start their investigations.

John Reid left the Home Office later that summer. Tony Blair resigned as PM, and off we went to meet the new Home Secretary Jacqui Smith in October 2007. We stressed yet again that we didn't want to engage in litigation and were not seeking to blame people, but were just keen to get proper answers about what had happened - especially about what was known about the bombers and whether they could have been stopped.

We also said that the families were still waiting for inquests, and asked why there was such a delay. It was suggested that we asked the Director of Public Prosecutions about the delay, so we did, and he came back and said the inquests were on hold because of the forthcoming criminal trial of men alleged to have helped the bombers plan the attacks ( starting April 2008). It was also suggested that we met the ISC.

The ISC were very nice to us and invited us to attend a meeting with them, stressing that they intended to 'leave no stone unturned 'in their investigation We said we still had many questions, and we asked if we could put them to the committee in writing after the meeting. I think they thought we'd have six or seven key questions, and that they themselves would already have asked them. But we came back with 67 very detailed questions.

We still don't know when the ISC will come back with their report. Nor do we have a date for the inquests yet, though details of how loved ones died were sent in the post before Christmas last year to the families. The 7/7 alleged conspirators trial starts at the beginning of April; this is also when the government will debate and vote on the new terrorism laws, which includes a proposal that inquests in the cases of 'matters of national security' can run without a Coroner, instead having a Judge or person appointed by the Government, and without juries, and where deemed necessary, hear the facts and the evidence in secret.

(See tonight's BBC 6pm news for more on our fears about the proposed inquest legislation.)

But at least, and at last, we have finally managed to put our questions to the security services through the medium of the ISC, who we hope will ask them on our behalf, and then report back with the answers as soon as possible. Probably after the 7/7 alleged conspirators trial, although we still do not have a date for the ISC report.

It's the first time that anything like this has happened with the ISC meeting victims of a terrorism attack - it's unprecedented - and we are very grateful to them for allowing us access and to ask questions. We hope that we will hear back from them soon and that we will be a little closer to knowing more of the truth.

The Judicial Review proceedings are stayed - it hasn't gone away - but in the light of the argument that running an independent inquiry in tandem with ISC inquiry would be a problem, we and the government have agreed to hang fire from going to court whilst the ISC continue their investigations.

One of the best ways to look at the failures of the past is to look at what has changed since. New regional M15 offices, including one in West Yorkshire, the roll out of S019 and new plans for greater communication between the police and security services have all been planned or implemented since 7/7. Which tells you a quite a lot.

But it doesn't tell you the whole story, a story which we would like to be investigated publicly, independently and thoroughly by someone independent of government and the security services who can compel witnesses and review evidence.

Des Thomas, a former police officer has explained that it is possible to hold this sort of inquiry quite easily without diverting resources. When the trial of the alleged 7/7 conspirators begins next month, more information will come out. There has been a constant drip, drip of new information coming out for the last few years and it is largely because of ongoing media interest and legal processes that we have found out what we know so far.

I can't understand why anyone would think this is a good strategy - it means the story just runs and runs and that people just get more and more frustrated and think that the government/police/security services has something to hide, which is hardly helpful or productive. It allows idiotic conspiracy theories to take root, which in turn impacts on levels of public trust, which makes it harder to gather intelligence - our best weapon against extremism and terrorism. And it adds to the distress of people directly affected who understandably want closure.

Well, we shall see where we get. The campaigning continues.

Smearing and sneering

It is unworthy of someone in a senior government position - it is unworthy of anyone, come to that, and it is absolutely pathetic. This is how people in the Government respond to a wide-ranging public debate on the important issue of the erosion of ancient freedoms. With tittle-tattle lies and grubby little smears and sneers, innuendo and baseless gossip: and so it starts. I expect worse to come in the next three weeks. And will anyone from Labour stand and fight the corner they claim they have overwhelming public backing for?

No. And that says it all, doesn't it?

Lots of talk about a changing world and ghastly threats to our way of life in the PM's recent speech about liberty and security. But who is really feeling threatened? It looks to me like the government is running scared. Too scared to run a candidate in the liberty by-election, just as they seem too scared to allow us a referendum on the EU, and were too scared to have a general election last year. Bottling it, then. Again.

When this government talks about 'security', it looks like the security that they are most interested in is their own job security. And by 'liberty', they seem to mean the liberty to snoop and spy and spin and lie and then retreat into a bunker saying that we don't understand and it's for our own good and if we knew what they knew, then we'd all be grateful and shut up. We should always keep a-hold of Nurse, for fear of finding something worse,

What a disgrace. No wonder people across the country are completely fed up with it all, and are saying so. The old right/left divide is falling away; it's now authoritarian and libertarian lines that we divide along. Those who want to keep a-hold of Nurse and those who would rather not, thank you very much. Lions? Hmmm.

UPDATE: Liberal Conspiracy

'The comments sprang from a subconscious, short-sighted, self-aggrandising boorishness - which often involves chauvinism, but is in fact a different beast. It’s the arrogance of the territory-jealous middle-manager run power-mad (not a bad description of the Labour experience as a whole, in fact).

We’ve all been half-bullied by these half-people at some time (or maybe I just think we all have and it’s actually just me…) and the drip-drip narrative goes something like this: You disagree with me, ergo everything you do is worthy of ridicule, all your motives are untrustworthy and you are to be treated with contempt.

It’s a narrative that twists facts to fit its own picture of how the world should be - Davis obviously must be a lying snake in the grass, therefore any impassioned discussions he may have with senior civil liberties figures can only be a “joke” that reflects badly on both of them.'

UPDATE 2: Guardian - see also the comments raging.

P.S: The casual implication that the phones of anyone prominent in the civil liberties lobby are routinely tapped is particularly creepy and might as well be guest conspiracy theory of the month, though the genuine shock when Davis announced his resignation actually proves that this isn't so...

P.P.S: And this issue has been running as news for eight days so far. And shows no sign of dying down. Heh.

A 'completely false' sense of grievance

BBC: 'Mr Blair told MPs: "If we want to defeat the extremism, we have got to defeat its ideas and we have got to address the completely false sense of grievance against the West...'

You see, though, I do feel angry. I am particularly angry right now at the rape and murder of a 15 year old girl and the massacre of her family by US troops. It is an abhorrent crime and has caused widespread rage all over the world. I am angry about Haditha, Falujah, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and all the other horrible litany of names that now stand for something wicked and wrong. I am sad and angry about the fact that every day in Iraq is 7th July, that Afghanistan is becoming yet again a brutalised battleground.

I am angry that despite the '7/7' bombers' videos explaining the July 7 murders were committed because of foreign policy, in Iraq, in Afghanistan - and far more importantly, despite reports commissioned by the Government themselves such as the Foreign Affairs Committee - the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary bizarrely still seem not to want to listen or admit any link between widespread anger amongst its citizens - and its own foreign policy.


If we have nothing to hide we have nothing to fear, we get told whenever new freedom-limiting legislation is in play. Why can our leaders not even listen at least, and be seen to humbly re-examine their own policies, and heed the counsel of calm voices who have useful criticism and advice to offer? Why do they seem to stop their ears? Why do so many of us stop our ears? Where does that get us all?

I have read with interest the recommendations of Muslims and other informed experts about how to tackle beligerent Islamic extremism, and how understanding its roots is critical if it is to be rooted out. I have read the earlier warnings that the invasion of Muslim lands, especially if done illegally and without UN sanction and popular support and post-invasion planning, was likely to cause violence and only increase the risks of terror, and bring misery, here and abroad. I see the warnings were true.

Well, we are here now, and cannot turn back the clock; we can only try to make things better. That means listening to all sensible suggestions. What harm can it do? What good might it do? Even making the effort to listen is a healing thing that might defuse some of the tensions that make us all so defensive and yes, so frighteningly angry.

I am saddened that many informed voices, and the initiatives they suggested do not seem to have not been heeded or acted upon, despite promising early publicity.

Because whilst all this anger remains at foreign and domestic policy, more and more people, including me sometimes, miss the real debate. That there is a yet another new totalitarian, nihilistic ideaology abroad and what makes it so dangerous is that it uses legitimate grievances to feed its toxic agenda.

I am more than sad, I am deeply angry, that malice is in our midst, that poisonous paranoid propoganda is spewed, that an ancient religion is perverted by a few into politicised Islamic extremism via an action-heavy, theology-lite conspiracy-theory that preys on the anger and aggrievement of rootless adolescents and makes them into walking weapons of destruction. I am desperately sad that it is widely said that many adherents of Islam are not willing to use the minds God gave them to question how to live to the glory of God in a world where we are still at war with each other, and to work for peace and understanding.

I see that many are in fact doing just this, whether they are Muslim or no, but it is not so widely reported. I see that, yes, there are still those in denial, defensive, still hooked on foolish conspiracy theories and a sense of nihilistic self-pitying rage dressed up as 'concern' for the oppressed.
I am trying not to despair, today, as I read the news.
People like Hassan help.

I am still hoping that there is a better future ahead, a way for us all to honour each other, whatever our personal Gods, as fortunate custodians of a beautiful blue planet full of life and marvellous creatures and organisms, a place that so far seems to be unique in all of endless space.


I am fed up that completely legitimate criticism of current government foreign policy is portrayed by some as sympathy for terrorism and traitorous treachery. It is not. You can criticise the Government and remain a true and honest citizen. I am angry that real anger is now portrayed as' false grievance' and as fake 'victimhood'. I am frustrated that despite the exhortations by politicians to religious men and women, men and women who care passionately about justice, to 'look into their hearts' and 'engage' their minds, those representing me do not seem capable or willing to do the same - though they call themselves wise and well-counselled and even 'guided by God'.

I am sad, I am angry, today, and this blog is where I express my anger and sadness and my personal opinions. On Friday I remembered the dead, and the victims of bombs, here and everywhere else. Now I am thinking about the future, and I am thinking about how to use my life that was spared to listen and to learn and to work for hope and healing.

My leader seems, a year on from homegrown horror, to still be dismissing voices like mine as having a ''completely false sense of grievance.'' No, Mr Blair, there is legitimate grievance and illegitimate grievance. Legitimate protest was seen when millions marched against the Iraq war. Hundreds of thousands have protested against brutal policies in Chechyna, Palestine, Afghanistan. It seems to fall on deaf ears - and so people get frustrated and angry. But only 4 British citizens have so far taken this rage and made themselves into weapons of mass destruction an dsucceeded in killing fellow-citizens. And we do need to hold onto that fact.

I think a young man's sense of uninformed grievance that is hijacked by evil men's propoganda and lies to say that it is right to kill and maim in the name of God is utterly wicked and wrong. But I do not think that sadness and anger at bombings here and abroad is not legitimate. I do not think to say so is to act like a victim. I do not think to want to question the actions done in my name as a UK citizen is foolish, naive, or empathising with terrorism.

I wear no hijab, I attend no place of worship, I am white and well-educated and have a small platform to speak out here on this blog. I have seen close up the violence that al Qaeda-inspired idealogy brings. I have no sympathy for its idealogy, I hate it. I will aways hate it. And maybe, just maybe for a short while, people will read what I say, not because of who I am, but because of where I was a year ago.

I try not to hate those who espouse the murder of innocemts. I try to see the person behind the poison, to stay hopeful and calm. To try to think of the bomber who attacked me as the fatherless child he was before he became the fantatic killer, blowing himself and others to pieces. I try. Because where does hate and anger and vengeance get me? I cannot function if I am as consumed by hate and rage as him, if I swear myself to vengeance and only vengeance. I have to let the hatred go to survive.

I walk in the middle ground, with my questions and my anxieties like the moderate millions everywhere. I listen, I look, I try to learn and to understand. I do not think, after considering carefully for a year, that my personal position and opinions are wholly false or foolish, and I wonder, I wonder, how many more feel like me, and what it will take for leaders to listen to us .

I hope that it does not take thirty years of 'long war' and the endless horrors of bombs exploding in the midst of innocent civilans.

I think is the duty of every man and woman alive to seek justice and healing, to work for peace and reconciliation, to root out and report abuse and extremism, and to challenge and speak out what they find to be cruel and unfair. I do not think it matters what I call God, or whether I call on no God at all but instead look to a common humanity..

If my neighbour's house is burning, I will call the fire service, if my son or my neighbour's son is burning with rage I will listen to him and talk to him, if he is plotting murder and mayhem I must report him and stop him for the greater good.

For this is citizenship, this is civilised, and to frame the debate in terms of 'with us' or 'against us', as 'the Muslims' problem' not 'society's problem, our problem, is foolish, dangerous and arrogant.

Am I my brother's keeper? asked one of a pair of disgruntled warring brothers, Cain and Abel, in a story we have told for thousands of years. Unwilling to listen to the answer - which was of course, yes, you are your brother's keeper and he yours - he murdered his brother, and so the story tells of how division and hatred and war entered the world. There is a fundemental truth in this ancient legend, whch is why we remember it still. In this question is the root of all the cycle of bloodshed that convulses us as a species.

Your brother, my brother is the man on the London tube, the woman in Afghanistan, the child in Pakistan, the baby in Sudan. Religion and nationality shouldn't even come into it. Social problems are not religious problems, they are human problems. They are our problems. Our duty is not just to listen to what purports to be the words of God as interpreted by a few men, but to each other, to all of God's creation, not just to a select few.

If you believe in God, then why not trust that your God is big enough and wise enough to have given you the free choice to honour him with your life and your dealings and your doings? If you do not believe in God, (and I mostly don't, at least, not to a God I find in any organised religion) , you have your own life and deeds which define all that you are and all that will be remembered of you.

One year after I stumbled away, shuddering, from some of the worst that humanity could do to each other, I remember what I have written of time and time again, the voices and hands of strangers asking 'are you all right'. Instinctively reaching out, all of us our brother's keepers.

We're all on the same train, I know this now; we can choose to be suspicious and to attack each other, or we can help each other on our journey. We can refuse the ideaology that says to kill each other is somehow holy or we can hide from the questions, nurse the grievances, feed the anger and make victims of each other and ourselves. Our leaders need to help, not hinder in this, by showing they are capable of the soul-searching they demand of others, and by ceasing to frame the debate we all need to have in such unfair, and unhelpful terms.

Guest conspiracy theory of the week

Why do the Government keep coming back with the unpopular proposal to bang people up without charging them for six weeks?

Is it because the Bush administration has asked them to shove it through?

'US fears Europe-based terrorism'

I have to say the biggest threat comes from overseas, and one of the places we are increasingly worried about is Europe

Michael Chertoff
Homeland Security Secretary

Not that anyone is suggesting CIA officials or any US officials might want to question terror suspects detained for questioning in the UK, before or after their being charged. As far as I know, people in the custody of the UK police and security services are certainly not passed about like parcels or given up for interview to agents of other states.

On an entirely unrelated subject, torture flights ,
secret CIA jails on British islands,
Red Cross not able to visit terror detainees
secret CIA jails in Europe
CIA videos of interrogations destroyed
'ghost prisoners'.

You can see how these wild ideas get started, can't you?
UPDATE: Members of the public commenting on the BBC site do not seem at all keen on the idea of 42 days

Bin Laden captured in US mid-term bonanza?

As we're all having great fun today with wild rumour and speculation... it's time for my guest conspiracy theory of the month. Could it possibly be that Bin Laden will pop up in handcuffs just in time for the US November midterm Congressional elections? Rumsfeld has just made a speech comparing him to Hitler? And Bush has finally admitted to CIA secret prisons as he moves 14 key terror suspects to Guantanamo to 'face trial', including an alleged 9/11 master mind? ( 'No torture', mind, just ''an alternative set of procedures once suspects had stopped talking''. Euch. Yeah, right.) Bin Laden, hmmm. What super luck for Bush THAT would be. ABC today.... Quick back-peddling.... more back-peddling ...

Yes Minister maxim. Never believe anything until it has been officially denied.
I might just put a bet on...

What's going on with the ISC?

One of the things I notice in the wake of Peter Hain's resignation to spend more time being interviewed by the police/clearing his name, is that Paul Murphy has been re-appointed to the Cabinet to Hain's old post of Secretary of State for Wales. After being Secretary of State for Wales from 1999-2002, Mr Murphy was made Secretary of State for Northern Ireland from October 2002 to May 2005, whereupon he left Government to become Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee ( ISC), the security services watch dog.

As far as I am aware, serving members of the Cabinet are not allowed to serve on the ISC.
Incidentally, the ISC's 2007 annual report was submitted to Gordon Brown on December 4 2007* but has not yet been published.
*Hmm. I wonder if it will make a strategic appearance at the height of the debate about the Government's new anti-terror laws that are proving so unpopular?

Paul Murphy re-joining the Cabinet presumably means the ISC will have to find a new Chair.
UPDATE: 29th January - I was right. And the new Chair is Margaret Beckett


Why am I following this closely? Well, last year, you may remember a media storm at the end of a big terrorism trial, 'Operation Crevice'. News finally came out that, far from being 'clean skins' as originally described by then-Home Secretary *Charles Clarke (*who was presumably briefed to say this by M15) , two of the 7/7 bombers had been known to the security services and police.

They had been taped, followed, and generally been under surveillance, as part of a big investigation into another plot. This led to a devastating question being asked: could the 7/7 bombers have been arrested, and thus could 7/7 have been prevented?

When the Crevice trial finished and reporting restrictions finally ended, the 7/7 Inquiry group, consisting of bereaved families and survivors of the 7/7 bombings asked the Home Secretary to have an independent inquiry into the 7/7 bombings. We said we were prepared to go to court to try and get a Judicial Review into the decision not to have one if necessary.

Tony Blair predictably once again refused to have an inquiry, but presumably to quell the headlines - the story ran every day for over a week - the ISC were quickly re-tasked by Blair with going back over the matter and making a second report looking at the 7 July bombings in the light of the new evidence which came out during the Crevice trial about the extent to which the police and security services knew about some of the 7/7 bombers.

It was claimed - in fact, John Reid, the Home Secretary at the time told me personally - that the Committee's work would be ''the same as an independent inquiry'' - despite the fact that the Committee is appointed by the Prime Minister, and was effectively being asked to re-investigate its own omissions from the first report in the light of information that had subsequently come out in a public court and caused a scandal in the newspapers.

This is what Paul Murphy said on Newsnight, when interviewed by Jeremy Paxman ( emphases mine)

...as you know, the Prime Minister has asked the Committee to revisit one or two of the issues to see whether it would have made any difference to our conclusions. Personally, I don't think it will...'

(So not-pre-judging the issue at all, there! - RN)

Paxman: But it's clearly not the case, as was alleged, that the perpetrators were so-called ''clean skins''?

Murphy: Well, what was said was that they [the security services] identified people, um, after they were dead, in the sense that they knew that these two people [7/7 bombers Mohammed Siddique Khan and Shazad Tanweer] have talked to these people who were involved in the Crevice conspiracy, and we knew that, and we were, we reported that in our final report to the, er, Parliament and Prime Minister.

Paxman: But it's not true, is it, I mean, they were known beforehand and identified beforehand a year before the July 7th bombings?

Murphy: No, they weren't identified until after they were dead, they knew that they were two people...

Paxman: Yes, they were, I'm sorry, they were...

Murphy:..who were talking to the Crevice conspirators - but they didn't know their names.

Paxman: It emerged at the trial that Mohammed Siddique Khan's car was traced to him and through that, he was identified.

Murphy: The car was traced after Siddique Khan was killed. It was only then that they [the security services] knew who they were. The issue of course, was whether these people were involved in planning an attack, and they weren't, they were dealing with credit card fraud and relatively less important activity that, they certainly weren't involved in attack planning, but they knew they went to Leeds.

Paxman: Sorry, the evidence that we have is that the car was traced to him [MSK] and that he was therefore identified, over a year before the July 7th bombings.

Murphy: Well, that's not our understanding, but clearly if there is more information that has arisen as a consequence of this trial, the whole purpose of the Prime Minister asking us to have another look at it is to see whether in fact these things are the case or not.

Paxman:Mr Murphy, you've conducted an inquiry. You are the only body to whom these people [the security services] are formally accountable, and you're now being asked by the Prime Minister to carry out another inquiry, because you may have been - what? Misled?

Murphy: No, what he's asked us to do is to have a look at some issues which have arisen from the trial and of course, to which we couldn't refer in our report because it was sub judice, and to see whether we can offer some reassurance to people, that at the end of the day our conclusions remain the same as what they were a year ago.

(*cough* So definitely not massively pre-judging the issue at all then! Good grief - RN)

Paxman: Did M15 not tell you that that they had identified Mohammed Siddique Khan, and his car, over a year before the July 7th bombings?

Murphy: We knew that they had, erm, they knew about two people who were doing these things but not their names, and that the identity of these two people were discovered afterwards, but even if they were known, the issue is that, whether they would have been involved in planning a terrorist attack, and the information that they knew at the time was that they were involved in something that was peripheral, for the actual main body of the Crevice trial itself, for the Crevice case. In other words, the attacks which led, or the proposed attacks which these people were dealing with, which eventually led to them being arrested and today, sentenced, they were dealing with attack-planning. The people we were looking at were dealing with something different, although they did have contact with these Crevice planners. Now, what we've got to do is obviously look and see if there was anything further to that, I'm not convinced that there was, but we have an open mind and we have to look at any evidence that might have come from the trial.

Paxman: Well, our information is that they knew a year before the attacks who this man was, who'd been consorting with these Crevice conspirators - but let us leave that to one side. Do you conclude from your experience of your enquiry that you were misled, or should we conclude that you were somehow complicit, or the agents of M15?

Murphy: Well, certainly, neither of those things. Our job is to present an impartial, independent assessment and investigation into, in this case, the events of July 7th. We came up with a number of critical points, we came up with a number of recommendations and conclusions including, for example, the need for better co-operation between Special Branch and the security agencies, we looked at that, but in addition to that, um, we now need to look at some of the issues that arose in the trial, which of course we couldn't use during the course of our reporting. I don't think that we were misled, I, um, have no evidence to suggest that we were lied to, but I do understand the feelings of relatives of the victims of July 7th, and if we can give them any reassurance that by revisiting some areas that we now know arose from this trial, then we'll certainly do that.

Paxman: Mr Murphy, thank you

So - despite the Committee's job being to 'to present an impartial, independent assessment and investigation into, in this case, the events of July 7th' the Chairman made it quite clear before he had even started the second investigation, that the Committee was only going to look at stuff that came up during the trial ( and therefore is public domain and cannot be brushed under the carpet) - and that in any event, he didn't think his Committee's conclusions would be any different to before!

This does not sound very impartial at all to me. Nor is it the same as, or even a substitute for a proper independent inquiry.

The excuse we're given that having such an inquiry will ''divert resources'' is also looking daft given that on the one hand we are being told that the ISC are conducting a second investigation, which will presumably, involve people giving evidence and going through documents and reviewing decisions, ie. diverting resources to do so. Unless you have a tacit admission that they are not going to do a proper, thorough job, in which case, why bother at all?

In any case, why did the Committee not get all the information out of M15 the first time around? That a trial was looming was not an excuse for not mentioning all the facts to the ISC -who are the Security Services watchdog, with wide-ranging powers exceeding that of a select Committee to investigate and review whatever the security services do ( in theory. In practice, the ISC no longer has even a single independent investigator, since John Morrison was sacked for speaking out about [the lack of] WMD intelligence).

If M15 knew the two lead bombers' names because they had bugged, snapped them and traced MSK through his following him in his registered car, then why did they put it about at first that the 7/7 bombers were nameless 'clean skins' - and then later, that they were only peripheral unnamed figures at the edges of another plot, who remained unidentified until after the explosions, when it was later to become clear in public court that this was not the case at all?

Even if the ISC couldn't publish the full details of this until after the Crevice trial ended, it still doesn't excuse the fact that M15 did know this information - and should not have concealed it from the ISC, whose Chairman was still claiming the bombers' names were not known, when confronted by Jeremy Paxman explaining to him that they had been identified.

Interestingly, just before Gordon Brown became Prime Minister he announced his anti- terrorism plans which included making the ISC more accountable, and giving MPs and peers greater powers to scrutinise the work of the security and intelligence services, allowing them to cross-examine the heads of MI5 and MI6 in public, and placing the ISC on a similar basis as parliamentary select committees, which are accountable to MPs. Nothing more has been heard of these plans so far, but it looks like a tacit admission that there are problems, doesn't it?

Meanwhile, the ISC are still meant to be still working on the second report into 7/7. Their previous report famously found the security services 'not to blame' for failing to prevent the 7/7 bombings. This now looks increasingly shaky. The bombers, not the security services were to blame for the bombs, that is obvious. It is human nature that mistakes get made. It looks like mistakes were made by a harried, over-stretched security services, compounded by a lack of effective communication with Special Branch. The bombers could have been arrested before they set off their bombs, ( for credit card fraud, if nothing else) - but they weren't. Why not? An appalling tragedy then occurred and 52 people died and hundreds were injured in the worst bomb attack on UK soil since the Blitz . Let's learn from it and let's get confidence in the police and security services as high as possible, because they are our best chance of preventing future attacks. Hence the calls for an inquiry.

What is not excusable is trying to cover up mistakes, particularly when you are in a highly sensitive position involving a great deal of public trust. If M15 misled the Committee, or the ISC didn't find out the truth, then the calls for an inquiry will just carry on and on.

With the departure of the ISC Chairman, Paul Murphy, I wonder whether the second ISC report on 7/7 will be any different to the first? And I wonder whether the new Chair will be asked to preside over a different kind of ISC in future- perhaps one with at least one independent investigator? I wonder whether the new ISC Chair will also find him or herself sure of what the Committee will find before it has started investigating?

I hope not. It is crucial for any organisation to be accountable, even spooks, especially spooks - and if the ISC are pre-judging the results of investigations, and not asking the right questions, and having to go back and go through what they have been told all over again, then how are they to have our confidence in ensuring the security services are doing their job and learning from any mistakes made?

We still have many questions and we are still waiting to see if the ISC's next report will answer them. Otherwise, it'll be back to the courts for an Judicial Review to see if we can get the Government to defend why it has still not had an independent inquiry into 7/7 and why so many questions - particularly questions about what was known about the bombers and whether there was reason to arrest them before the 7 July 2005 - remain unanswered.

The Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have joined our calls for a proper independent inquiry. It's hopeless having things coming out in dribs and drabs like this, it only encourages wild conspiracy theories and adds to the distress of survivors and families. It's not good enough.

The Coroner's inquests into the deaths of July 7th are currently postponed until after the trial of three men on conspiracy charges relating to the planning of the 7th July bombings; their trial is expected to start in April this year.

I don't suppose the ISC will get their report into 7 July out until after the trial, possibly even after the inquests - but you never know. Given the stuff that came out at the Crevice trial, why would they risk looking silly a third time by releasing another bland, incomplete report - and then having a load of potentially embarrassing contradictory stuff come out in court?

Then again, if they are confident of their ability to get the whole truth out of the security services, and fulfil their remit to be independent and investigatory, inquiring AND open-minded, they might well release the report earlier.

After all, as the Government is so fond of telling us, if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear.