Bernie Gunther
Fundamentalist Druid
Yep, that's the thingy.bristle-krs said:
Tony Blair Spied For MI5
- Thread starter inks
- Start date
Not that i have much time for Shayler, i wouldn't like to see him done for slander or breaking any injuntions, or any other offence relating to his former employment
I think inks is an arse for posting this thread up on the net.
And when posting anything on here, please remember anyone can be reading what you write.
Shaylor made his comment about Blair when he was speaking in front of a hundred or more members of the public and at least one journalist from the local paper.
His claim that Blair provided reports to MI5 has been included in the only press report of the occasion that I know of:
http://www.epost.co.uk/displayNode....yContent&sourceNode=144906&contentPK=13175273
I think inks is an arse for posting this thread up on the net.
And when posting anything on here, please remember anyone can be reading what you write.
Shaylor made his comment about Blair when he was speaking in front of a hundred or more members of the public and at least one journalist from the local paper.
His claim that Blair provided reports to MI5 has been included in the only press report of the occasion that I know of:
http://www.epost.co.uk/displayNode....yContent&sourceNode=144906&contentPK=13175273
Thanks for your reply, Larry. CWF wasn't propped up by anybody.
"Essentially, Shayler has continually slagged CW off... "
Almost everyone slagged the CWF off! That's no reason to get excited
" ...even implying CW were held together by a Met Police SB officer. Not only is this insinuation CW were propped up by the state untrue, more to the point he has never properly substantiated it... "
There have been consistent reports that one prominent member of the CWF was a plant of some sort. He was never a member of the group that produced the paper though and didn't play much of a role outside of London Class War. I was locked up in a jail cell with him for a few hours once. Ho hmmm.
I've always wondered about the "Wombat92" affair and events around that time. Somebody was clearly playing games. The reason I asked you about Shaylor was that I wasn't sure if you were hinting that he might have been involved but I don't think that was what you were saying, only that he has commented on it after the event and that his version of events doesn't make much sense.
Shaylor and his partner Annie Machon struck me as nice enough people but quite naive. They had an other-worldly air about them. They went down well with the crowd at the Cube though.
"Essentially, Shayler has continually slagged CW off... "
Almost everyone slagged the CWF off! That's no reason to get excited
" ...even implying CW were held together by a Met Police SB officer. Not only is this insinuation CW were propped up by the state untrue, more to the point he has never properly substantiated it... "
There have been consistent reports that one prominent member of the CWF was a plant of some sort. He was never a member of the group that produced the paper though and didn't play much of a role outside of London Class War. I was locked up in a jail cell with him for a few hours once. Ho hmmm.
I've always wondered about the "Wombat92" affair and events around that time. Somebody was clearly playing games. The reason I asked you about Shaylor was that I wasn't sure if you were hinting that he might have been involved but I don't think that was what you were saying, only that he has commented on it after the event and that his version of events doesn't make much sense.
Shaylor and his partner Annie Machon struck me as nice enough people but quite naive. They had an other-worldly air about them. They went down well with the crowd at the Cube though.
I've just googled on "Wombat 92" - something I've never thought to do before - and it wasn't MI5 playing mind games at all. Stewart Home's claimed it as one of his spoofs. Excellent!
He got the timing right with that one, I've gotta say. So nothing to do with Shaylor then.
Edit: Oh dear; I've just started reading the feuds section on Stewart Home's website. I really had no idea.
He got the timing right with that one, I've gotta say. So nothing to do with Shaylor then.
Edit: Oh dear; I've just started reading the feuds section on Stewart Home's website. I really had no idea.
Larry O'Hara
Well-Known Member
inks said:
1) That Home claims anything is meaningless--the tosser's slogan is 'Truth is the Enemy'
2) Analysis of Wombat 92 showed those producing it knew things that a non-activist turd like Home wouldn't know, unless his controllers told him.
So, that you bring him into this, repeating garbage from him as though it were fact is, at best, unhelpful.
I also notice you have not responded to the substance of my criticisms of Shayler (note the spelling). Neither, indeed, has Gosling...
Larry O'Hara
Well-Known Member
inks said:
I never said it was
[QOUTE=inks]
Shaylor and his partner Annie Machon struck me as nice enough people but quite naive. They had an other-worldly air about them. They went down well with the crowd at the Cube though.[/QUOTE]
I hardly think their joint role in MI5/CIA disinformation campaign was "naive". Don't forget, these people are trained to deceive--that they fooled a hall full of gullible Leftists is no surprise
"So, that you bring him into this, repeating garbage from him as though it were fact is, at best, unhelpful."
If I'd known where it would head towards then I wouldn't. It was entirely accidental.
Do you have any alternative theories about the Wombat92 / Redwatch / C18 stuff? I've got a feeling that I have read contributions on this from you at some point but quite a while ago.
"I also notice you have not responded to the substance of my criticisms of Shayler (note the spelling). Neither, indeed, has Gosling... "
Other people can speak for themselves, I'm sure. I don't know enough about Shaylor to respond to your slightly vague criticisms of him. I'm happy for them to stand as your view of him.
I, er, didn't say that you said that the CWF was propped up by anybody. That was what you said that Shaylor said. These things are really important...
"I hardly think their joint role in MI5/CIA disinformation campaign was "naive". Don't forget, these people are trained to deceive--that they fooled a hall full of gullible Leftists is no surprise"
You wouldn't need much training to fool that particular crowd. It was disturbing how little critical filtering was going on of the cobblers that was presented. But the crowd was self-selected to be pre-disposed to it; they wanted to believe. I can see how David Icke attracted a group of followers with his lizard-stuff after going along to that particular meeting.
Back to Shaylor. I have just started reading his / Machon's book and it's odd. He claims to have had access to all sorts of secret knowledge and has a special interest in Libya. The first paragraph of the book is about Libya and it looks set to continue that way.
So why this passage on page 3:
"The UK-aided US bombing of Tripoli in 1986 prompted the murder of 270 people, most of them British and American, when Libya took it's revenge by bombing Flight PA103 over Lockerbie."
There's always been an extremely strong case that Libya had nothing to do with the Lockerbie bombing. From the 1993 film "The Maltese Double Cross", the activities of the families of some of the Lockerbie victims to the farce of a trial and subsequent appeals it's been a well-publicised issue. Shaylor is unexpectedly unaware of this and simply trots out the official line as part of his argument. Odd that. Maybe this will come later on in the book but for some reason I've got a feeling that it won't.
If I'd known where it would head towards then I wouldn't. It was entirely accidental.
Do you have any alternative theories about the Wombat92 / Redwatch / C18 stuff? I've got a feeling that I have read contributions on this from you at some point but quite a while ago.
"I also notice you have not responded to the substance of my criticisms of Shayler (note the spelling). Neither, indeed, has Gosling... "
Other people can speak for themselves, I'm sure. I don't know enough about Shaylor to respond to your slightly vague criticisms of him. I'm happy for them to stand as your view of him.
I, er, didn't say that you said that the CWF was propped up by anybody. That was what you said that Shaylor said. These things are really important...
"I hardly think their joint role in MI5/CIA disinformation campaign was "naive". Don't forget, these people are trained to deceive--that they fooled a hall full of gullible Leftists is no surprise"
You wouldn't need much training to fool that particular crowd. It was disturbing how little critical filtering was going on of the cobblers that was presented. But the crowd was self-selected to be pre-disposed to it; they wanted to believe. I can see how David Icke attracted a group of followers with his lizard-stuff after going along to that particular meeting.
Back to Shaylor. I have just started reading his / Machon's book and it's odd. He claims to have had access to all sorts of secret knowledge and has a special interest in Libya. The first paragraph of the book is about Libya and it looks set to continue that way.
So why this passage on page 3:
"The UK-aided US bombing of Tripoli in 1986 prompted the murder of 270 people, most of them British and American, when Libya took it's revenge by bombing Flight PA103 over Lockerbie."
There's always been an extremely strong case that Libya had nothing to do with the Lockerbie bombing. From the 1993 film "The Maltese Double Cross", the activities of the families of some of the Lockerbie victims to the farce of a trial and subsequent appeals it's been a well-publicised issue. Shaylor is unexpectedly unaware of this and simply trots out the official line as part of his argument. Odd that. Maybe this will come later on in the book but for some reason I've got a feeling that it won't.
Bob_the_lost
Elsewhere
Has Shayler told us who really killed kenedy yet?
Larry O'Hara
Well-Known Member
inks said:
Sorry I haven't got the hang of how to reply to specific quotes yet...
1) My criticisms of Shayler aren't "slightly vague" they are covered in great detail in Notes From the Borderland, but I'm not going to rewrite them on here!!
2) I accept that you don'y say CW was propped up by the state--but Shayler has, and too Gosling.
3) Re Lockerbie, if you read on in the book, you will see that he & Machon claim to fully believe the official line, indeed that is the disinformation campaign I was speaking of. When I asked him about the breakins at the Angle cinema, he looked extremely flustered, as well he might. Shayler/Machon are not civil libertarians of any stripe.
The book will be reviewed in detail next NFB.
DaveCinzano
WATCH OUT, GEORGE, HE'S GOT A SCREWDRIVER!
has 'lobster' covered it yet?
Larry O'Hara
Well-Known Member
bristle-krs said:
If you mean Machon's book, sad to say they have--a totally uncritical & embarrassing plug that is awful. Interestingly, although it would have interested subscribers, RR refused to mention the Shayler debate before it happened, for reasons one can only guess at. Sad too.
"Sorry I haven't got the hang of how to reply to specific quotes yet... "
It might be one of those things that are best not learnt - a thread with two cut 'n' paste masters arguing it out soon becomes unintelligible to everyone else as they refer back through three or four layers of their own conversation.
1)"My criticisms of Shayler aren't "slightly vague" they are covered in great detail in Notes From the Borderland, but I'm not going to rewrite them on here!!"
Oh, blinking flip - you might well have made a sale then. Any particular editions that you reckon would be particularly interesting or do I have to collect the whole set?
"2) I accept that you don'y say CW was propped up by the state--but Shayler has, and too Gosling."
I like Tony Gosling (we're both knocking around Bristol so inevitably bump into each other) but why on earth would anyone listen to a word he has to say about the CWF? If you want to know about freemasonic trilateral commission goings on in Bohemian Grove then Tony's your man. Class-struggle anarchism in 1990's Britain? Ask someone who was around at the time.
"3) Re Lockerbie, if you read on in the book, you will see that he & Machon claim to fully believe the official line, indeed that is the disinformation campaign I was speaking of. When I asked him about the breakins at the Angle cinema, he looked extremely flustered, as well he might. Shayler/Machon are not civil libertarians of any stripe."
I will finish the book - it's my current train-ride-to-work reading. Believing the "official line" on Lockerbie is certainly strange though. Not even the officials believe that one.
I remember the film presenters at the showing I went to wibbling on about a cinema being broken into or something, is that the "Angle Cinema" you're referring to? The film itself was very boring - 45 minutes of material packed into two-and-a-half hours. I like their line on how the bomb was planted though - the CIA smuggled it through German customs because they thought it was a consignment of whizz. If that's not actually true then it should be!
It might be one of those things that are best not learnt - a thread with two cut 'n' paste masters arguing it out soon becomes unintelligible to everyone else as they refer back through three or four layers of their own conversation.
1)"My criticisms of Shayler aren't "slightly vague" they are covered in great detail in Notes From the Borderland, but I'm not going to rewrite them on here!!"
Oh, blinking flip - you might well have made a sale then. Any particular editions that you reckon would be particularly interesting or do I have to collect the whole set?
"2) I accept that you don'y say CW was propped up by the state--but Shayler has, and too Gosling."
I like Tony Gosling (we're both knocking around Bristol so inevitably bump into each other) but why on earth would anyone listen to a word he has to say about the CWF? If you want to know about freemasonic trilateral commission goings on in Bohemian Grove then Tony's your man. Class-struggle anarchism in 1990's Britain? Ask someone who was around at the time.
"3) Re Lockerbie, if you read on in the book, you will see that he & Machon claim to fully believe the official line, indeed that is the disinformation campaign I was speaking of. When I asked him about the breakins at the Angle cinema, he looked extremely flustered, as well he might. Shayler/Machon are not civil libertarians of any stripe."
I will finish the book - it's my current train-ride-to-work reading. Believing the "official line" on Lockerbie is certainly strange though. Not even the officials believe that one.
I remember the film presenters at the showing I went to wibbling on about a cinema being broken into or something, is that the "Angle Cinema" you're referring to? The film itself was very boring - 45 minutes of material packed into two-and-a-half hours. I like their line on how the bomb was planted though - the CIA smuggled it through German customs because they thought it was a consignment of whizz. If that's not actually true then it should be!
Larry O'Hara
Well-Known Member
inks said:
1) NFb issues 2 5 & 6 cover it--plus a bit in 3/4 that you get as free photocopies. visit the web-site (on my user profile)
2) Re the officials not bel;ieving the Lockerbie line--Shayler/Machon do claim to believe it, & they were officials
3) Yes, it was the Angle Cinema.
4) Re Gosling, many who don't know him will be taken in by the disinformation he still spouts re CW.
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
So what is Shayler's motivation then? I keep seeing him being announced as speaking all over the place, including at several 9/11 conspiracy type affairs, making "revelations" that turn out to be unsubstantiated or nothing like how they are trumpeted (or both). Maybe I should go along to one.
The state has cottoned on to how useful it is to have lots of conspiraloons wittering on about invisible missiles and lizards while they get on with the business of invading poor places entirely openly and has tasked their boy with encouraging that sort of thing?FridgeMagnet said:
Just a theory like.
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
That was something that came to mind... though I usually just use it to wind up said loons, by calling them "CIA disinformation agents". Works, too.
> "1) NFb issues 2 5 & 6 cover it--plus a bit in 3/4 that you get as free photocopies. visit the web-site (on my user profile)"
Eek! Day-glo drop-shadows on the links - uncool uncool!
I might email you about mail ordering rather than going through paypal. Partly 'cos it wants me to pay in dollars but also because it seems to want me to order two copies of each edition.
"2) Re the officials not bel;ieving the Lockerbie line--Shayler/Machon do claim to believe it, & they were officials"
Like I said, naive and other-worldly. I don't go for conspiracy stuff especially. What I get from this is that Shayler/Machon are pushing a line on the Lockerbie bombing that I would not expect from someone who had close knowledge of the subject and was being honest. Therefore I will read the rest of the book with more scepticism than otherwise. The Lockerbie thing was only one example from the first pages, there were a few other statements that looked equally odd.
4) "Re Gosling, many who don't know him will be taken in by the disinformation he still spouts re CW."
I found this on his site:
"Shayler revealed while in Bristol recently that a Metropolitan Police officer was recruited specifically to penetrate Class War. This he did very successfully, getting his hands on the membership database, one imagines, rather easily. So successful was the spy that he began taking on many of the administrative tasks at Class War. As the routine jobs nobody wanted to do started to be done with what was in effect a subsidy to the organisation, membership figures crept higher and higher and reliability and efficiency of Class War increased dramatically. When the copper was finally pulled out of Class War, largely due to Shayler's efforts within MI5, the organisation became a shadow of its former self."
Which is all a bit silly.
The Class War Federation didn't have a membership database. This was long before the days when hi-tech things like spreadsheets and databases and mailing lists were available to revolutionary groups. It was all on paper back then. Membership lists were held locally anyway, there wasn't one list of members for anyone to get hold of.
There were subscription lists, to the actual Class War paper itself, to the magazine The Heavy Stuff and to the internal bulletin. Maybe someone got hold of them. Certainly when the police wanted to arrested a city's worth of CWF members they knew names, addresses, faces, cars and so on. But that was taken for granted anyway.
"So successful was the spy that he began taking on many of the administrative tasks at Class War"
Admin was handled locally. If some spook got involved in licking stamps and typing out leaflets in one area then fair play to them. It would essentially be a meaningless position to have got to and not one that could be claimed to be propping up the CWF except locally in whatever area they were in.
A spook in the paper group that actually produced the Class War paper would have been in a more interesting position but there were a good number of hard-working activists involved in that, mostly in Bristol and Leeds. There wasn't anyone in particular in that group of people who was propping up the organisation.
"membership figures crept higher and higher and reliability and efficiency of Class War increased dramatically."
When was this, exactly? Which years? CWF changed to a membership organisation in, er, ooooh, about 1991? I can't actually remember. Anyway, once it changed to having a formal membership the numbers of paid up members stayed pretty much static. Reliability and efficiency? Your mileage may vary.
"When the copper was finally pulled out of Class War, largely due to Shayler's efforts within MI5, the organisation became a shadow of its former self."
The Class War Federation voted to split in 1997. I wasn't around at the time. Basically the paper group had worked too hard for too long and run out of steam. They'd done an amazing job but because they'd had such a major role in producing the paper the other local groups hadn't developed the skills and experience to take over. And everyone had kind of moved on from the "let's overthrow the state through violent revolution" politics. It just blatently wasn't going to happen.
Nothing to do with one person dropping out, policeman or not. At a guess the policeman in this scenario would be TS.*
* I understand that this site has a very sensible policy of not allowing real names to be posted up.
Eek! Day-glo drop-shadows on the links - uncool uncool!
I might email you about mail ordering rather than going through paypal. Partly 'cos it wants me to pay in dollars but also because it seems to want me to order two copies of each edition.
"2) Re the officials not bel;ieving the Lockerbie line--Shayler/Machon do claim to believe it, & they were officials"
Like I said, naive and other-worldly. I don't go for conspiracy stuff especially. What I get from this is that Shayler/Machon are pushing a line on the Lockerbie bombing that I would not expect from someone who had close knowledge of the subject and was being honest. Therefore I will read the rest of the book with more scepticism than otherwise. The Lockerbie thing was only one example from the first pages, there were a few other statements that looked equally odd.
4) "Re Gosling, many who don't know him will be taken in by the disinformation he still spouts re CW."
I found this on his site:
"Shayler revealed while in Bristol recently that a Metropolitan Police officer was recruited specifically to penetrate Class War. This he did very successfully, getting his hands on the membership database, one imagines, rather easily. So successful was the spy that he began taking on many of the administrative tasks at Class War. As the routine jobs nobody wanted to do started to be done with what was in effect a subsidy to the organisation, membership figures crept higher and higher and reliability and efficiency of Class War increased dramatically. When the copper was finally pulled out of Class War, largely due to Shayler's efforts within MI5, the organisation became a shadow of its former self."
Which is all a bit silly.
The Class War Federation didn't have a membership database. This was long before the days when hi-tech things like spreadsheets and databases and mailing lists were available to revolutionary groups. It was all on paper back then. Membership lists were held locally anyway, there wasn't one list of members for anyone to get hold of.
There were subscription lists, to the actual Class War paper itself, to the magazine The Heavy Stuff and to the internal bulletin. Maybe someone got hold of them. Certainly when the police wanted to arrested a city's worth of CWF members they knew names, addresses, faces, cars and so on. But that was taken for granted anyway.
"So successful was the spy that he began taking on many of the administrative tasks at Class War"
Admin was handled locally. If some spook got involved in licking stamps and typing out leaflets in one area then fair play to them. It would essentially be a meaningless position to have got to and not one that could be claimed to be propping up the CWF except locally in whatever area they were in.
A spook in the paper group that actually produced the Class War paper would have been in a more interesting position but there were a good number of hard-working activists involved in that, mostly in Bristol and Leeds. There wasn't anyone in particular in that group of people who was propping up the organisation.
"membership figures crept higher and higher and reliability and efficiency of Class War increased dramatically."
When was this, exactly? Which years? CWF changed to a membership organisation in, er, ooooh, about 1991? I can't actually remember. Anyway, once it changed to having a formal membership the numbers of paid up members stayed pretty much static. Reliability and efficiency? Your mileage may vary.
"When the copper was finally pulled out of Class War, largely due to Shayler's efforts within MI5, the organisation became a shadow of its former self."
The Class War Federation voted to split in 1997. I wasn't around at the time. Basically the paper group had worked too hard for too long and run out of steam. They'd done an amazing job but because they'd had such a major role in producing the paper the other local groups hadn't developed the skills and experience to take over. And everyone had kind of moved on from the "let's overthrow the state through violent revolution" politics. It just blatently wasn't going to happen.
Nothing to do with one person dropping out, policeman or not. At a guess the policeman in this scenario would be TS.*
* I understand that this site has a very sensible policy of not allowing real names to be posted up.
Just chop up the quoted text by adding in [ quote]xxxxxx[ /quote] (without the spaces) around the bits of text you want to quote.Larry O'Hara said:
For example:
[ quote=TeeJay]abcdefghijklm[ /quote]
would become>>>>>>>>
[ quote=TeeJay]abc[ /quote]
[ quote]def[ /quote]
[ quote]ghi[ /quote]
Doing this without the spaces will result in the following:
TeeJay said:
If you want the "Originally Posted by Name" bit in each one then add =TeeJay into the first [ quote] bit ... [ quote=Name]
Clandestine Service Trainee Program
Core Collector: Operations Officer/Collection Management Officer
Work Schedule: Full Time
Salary: $47,390 to $65,769
Location: Washington, DC metropolitan area
Minimum requirements include a bachelor's degree and an excellent academic record, with a strong interest in international affairs and solid interpersonal and communications skills. Foreign travel, foreign language proficiency, prior residency abroad, military experience, a background in Central Eurasian, East Asian and Middle Eastern languages, and degrees and experience in international economics and business, as well as in the physical sciences, are preferred. Maximum age for entrance into this program is 35.
http://www.cia.gov/employment/jobs/core_collector.html
++++++++++
Hmmm, I still have a year or two to get in there I suppose.
++++++++++
Edit: Whoops!
To be considered suitable for Agency employment, applicants must generally not have used illegal drugs within the last twelve months. The issue of illegal drug use prior to twelve months ago is carefully evaluated during the medical and security processing.
Core Collector: Operations Officer/Collection Management Officer
Work Schedule: Full Time
Salary: $47,390 to $65,769
Location: Washington, DC metropolitan area
Minimum requirements include a bachelor's degree and an excellent academic record, with a strong interest in international affairs and solid interpersonal and communications skills. Foreign travel, foreign language proficiency, prior residency abroad, military experience, a background in Central Eurasian, East Asian and Middle Eastern languages, and degrees and experience in international economics and business, as well as in the physical sciences, are preferred. Maximum age for entrance into this program is 35.
http://www.cia.gov/employment/jobs/core_collector.html
++++++++++
Hmmm, I still have a year or two to get in there I suppose.
++++++++++
Edit: Whoops!
To be considered suitable for Agency employment, applicants must generally not have used illegal drugs within the last twelve months. The issue of illegal drug use prior to twelve months ago is carefully evaluated during the medical and security processing.
FridgeMagnet said:
gurrier said:
I didn't know much about Shaylor's most recent activities, but this thread says a lot.
If Tony Blair really was an MI5 agent, which I'm sure isn't impossible, then I don't think David Shaylor is the best conduit for rendering those claims the slightest bit credible.
Anyone prepared to give clearly bonkers 9/11 conspirobollocks house room is instinctively to be mistrusted IMO ....
sihi said:
newbie said:
I didn't think my already rock-bottom esteem for (most) Trots was capable of getting any lower, but I've ben proved wrong ....
For what it's worth I've made it as far in the Machon / Shaylor book as the chapter on the Lockerbie bombing.
It's a poorly written piece, I think.
To summarise: the Lockerbie bombing was carried out by the Libyans and anyone who says otherwise has been fooled by Libyan propaganda.
They present virtually no evidence to support this view, however.
The evidence given is:
1) A Libyan, Al Megrahi, has been convicted of the bombing.
2) "Documentary evidence has established that a member of the Libyan intelligence services technical department placed the order, while the ministry of transport was responsible for taking possession of a batch of timers exactly like the one used to explode the bomb over Lockerbie."
3) Libya has offered £2.7 billion compensation to the victims families.
4) A Palestinian bombmaker, Marwan Khreeshat, who many allege to have made the Lockerbie bomb, previously used barometric devices to trigger bombs in aeroplanes not timers as used in the Lockerbie bomb.
And that's it. Disappointing.
Point 1) is not evidence of guilt. It is evidence of muddled thinking on Machon / Shaylor's part. It would be ludicrous, for example, if the fact of an initial conviction was presented as evidence against someone appealing that conviction. It's a circular argument.
Point 2) seems to be a reference to the fragment of circuit board recovered from an unknown place at a disputed time by two Scottish detectives and claimed to be a part of the Lockerbie bomb. This was part of a batch of 20 circuit boards sold to Libya by a Swiss company. This has always been a controversial item from the moment when it was 'found'. Subsequent to the publication of Machon / Shaylor's book a senior Scottish detective has claimed that it was planted by the CIA. Many people have believed this for a long time.
Point 3) is not evidence of guilt. Libya decided to pay the money to get back into the international community and have sanctions against oil sales lifted. They'll get their money back ten times over. This decision would make just as much sense if the Libyans were innocent as if they were guilty.
Point 4) is not evidence of Libyan guilt. It is evidence that the bomb was not built by one Palestinian individual but that is all.
Libya may or may not have been behind the Lockerbie bombing but Machon / Shaylor's attempt to make the case against Libya is pathetic.
Essentially their argument is that Shaylor was made head of a Libyan sub-group within MI5 in 1995 and therefore knows what he's talking about therefore if he says the Libyans did it then the Libyans did it.
This logic is typical of the sections of the book that I have read so far. It says more about Machon and Shaylor than it does about Libya and the Lockerbie bombing.
In a previous section of the book, when talking about an IRA suspect, they describe evidence as statements from witnesses who can be questioned. I can't immediately find the exact quote but that was the gist of it. I think that this goes some way toward explaining the flaws in the chapter on the Lockerbie bombing.
Shaylor regards himself as a witness and sees himself as someone open to question (I know that Larry O'Hara would dispute this) because he stands up in public and answers questions. Therefore from his point of view his own statements should be taken as evidence and it's only necessary to mention a few incidental details to build his case.
Perhaps this is a general approach taken by spooks in the course of their work that has become ingrained into Machon and Shaylor's thinking?
It's a poorly written piece, I think.
To summarise: the Lockerbie bombing was carried out by the Libyans and anyone who says otherwise has been fooled by Libyan propaganda.
They present virtually no evidence to support this view, however.
The evidence given is:
1) A Libyan, Al Megrahi, has been convicted of the bombing.
2) "Documentary evidence has established that a member of the Libyan intelligence services technical department placed the order, while the ministry of transport was responsible for taking possession of a batch of timers exactly like the one used to explode the bomb over Lockerbie."
3) Libya has offered £2.7 billion compensation to the victims families.
4) A Palestinian bombmaker, Marwan Khreeshat, who many allege to have made the Lockerbie bomb, previously used barometric devices to trigger bombs in aeroplanes not timers as used in the Lockerbie bomb.
And that's it. Disappointing.
Point 1) is not evidence of guilt. It is evidence of muddled thinking on Machon / Shaylor's part. It would be ludicrous, for example, if the fact of an initial conviction was presented as evidence against someone appealing that conviction. It's a circular argument.
Point 2) seems to be a reference to the fragment of circuit board recovered from an unknown place at a disputed time by two Scottish detectives and claimed to be a part of the Lockerbie bomb. This was part of a batch of 20 circuit boards sold to Libya by a Swiss company. This has always been a controversial item from the moment when it was 'found'. Subsequent to the publication of Machon / Shaylor's book a senior Scottish detective has claimed that it was planted by the CIA. Many people have believed this for a long time.
Point 3) is not evidence of guilt. Libya decided to pay the money to get back into the international community and have sanctions against oil sales lifted. They'll get their money back ten times over. This decision would make just as much sense if the Libyans were innocent as if they were guilty.
Point 4) is not evidence of Libyan guilt. It is evidence that the bomb was not built by one Palestinian individual but that is all.
Libya may or may not have been behind the Lockerbie bombing but Machon / Shaylor's attempt to make the case against Libya is pathetic.
Essentially their argument is that Shaylor was made head of a Libyan sub-group within MI5 in 1995 and therefore knows what he's talking about therefore if he says the Libyans did it then the Libyans did it.
This logic is typical of the sections of the book that I have read so far. It says more about Machon and Shaylor than it does about Libya and the Lockerbie bombing.
In a previous section of the book, when talking about an IRA suspect, they describe evidence as statements from witnesses who can be questioned. I can't immediately find the exact quote but that was the gist of it. I think that this goes some way toward explaining the flaws in the chapter on the Lockerbie bombing.
Shaylor regards himself as a witness and sees himself as someone open to question (I know that Larry O'Hara would dispute this) because he stands up in public and answers questions. Therefore from his point of view his own statements should be taken as evidence and it's only necessary to mention a few incidental details to build his case.
Perhaps this is a general approach taken by spooks in the course of their work that has become ingrained into Machon and Shaylor's thinking?
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