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What is certain is that if these people are contacting BK and her family, she needs to involve the police. I think she is right to question the sanity and stability of some people who support these theories; her willingness to speak out on the web and in person makes her a threat to their beliefs.

Add unsupported beliefs and lunacy and you have a real danger.
 
:D

Guess who's coming to the Brixton Academy on Saturday 6th May?

David Icke
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Anyone dare start a thread about it?

Maybe we could sponsor editor to go and write a report on the loonspud-in-chief himself - we collect money a) for his ticket and b) all extra proceeds to go to a good cause (eg the server fund or oxfam etc)?

I'd love to see it written up here. :D
 
Lock&Light said:
I've already pointed out that this thread is one-sided. It's topic needs no extra illumination from me. The original posting on the other thread by the OP has been more than sufficiently torn to pieces by others.
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so you have only bothered commenting on thsi thread to whine about others who have commented.

then you try to take the moral high ground when you are told you'e being a tit.

How impressive. :rolleyes:
 
Came across this earlier today:

'False Flag' Fundamentalism: Tilting at Tube Trains

Milan Rai wasn't sure if he'd make it to his own book launch. He's been in court this morning, charged with organising an unauthorised demonstration in the vicinity of Parliament - this was when he and Maya Evans read out the names of dead soldiers by the Cenotaph last year. However, he's here (having been fined, although he's refusing to pay) for the launch of his measured, analytical book '7/7: The London Bombings, Islam and the Iraq War' and a public meeting at a Friends Meeting House in central London. Evans, a member of the group Justice not Vengeance, is the chair, and the speakers are Iraqi activist academic Nadje al-Ali, 7/7 survivor and writer Rachel North and 'radical historian' Mark Curtis. The room is filled with thoughtful people who want to listen and discuss the issues, and as it transpires, some who are convinced that a lack of CCTV footage proves that Tony Blair personally Sellotaped exploding wombats to the underground tracks...

full article: http://www.thefridayproject.co.uk/hi/tft/politics/002015.php
 
toggle said:
And I don't find your willingness to snipe at people rather than engage in the debate impressive.
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I frequently engage in the debate with conspiracyloons. This thread never looked like being the right place to do it.
 
Can this off-topic bitchfest be taken somewhere else?

You do realise that some people are trying to have an on-topic bitchfest here? :mad:
 
The speakers are excellent...

...Then questions are taken, and the fun really begins after the first one or two. An imperious voice says something about Rai's book being, with all due respect, wrong...

...A tall middle-aged man in a crinkled cream suit comes to the front and explains that 'the purpose of 7/7 was to abort the G8 summit - there were no Muslim terrorists - the bombs were maybe strapped underneath the trains...' The hot, stuffy room goes still - any incipient boos and tuts are suppressed, exasperation released only in barely-audible sighs. It's standard-issue conspiracy theorist tripe, and yet there's a discomfort felt in hearing it which may come from the knowledge that if he believes this, others will, and the search for truth is put into further needless jeopardy by people who loftily claim to be the only real seekers of it. He continues with strident pronouncements as to train time discrepancies and other details he considers evidence of governmental skulduggery, and insists that 'synthetic terror' is being created. Wonderful phrase, but unfortunately anchored in nothing but hubris. He sits down to a mighty clatter of applause from one row. Nadje al-Ali wearily responds that 'your anger is misplaced. Mil is trying to expose government lies - we are not polarised. But in saying there were no bombers, you're not helping me, you're not helping anyone.' North, the subject of some colourful theories herself (apparently, she's a whole team of MI5 operatives), merely says, 'I think you can probably guess my response.'...

:D
 
But at least it didn't end like this:

2909oapb.jpg
 
TeeJay said:
Can this off-topic bitchfest be taken somewhere else?

You do realise that some people are trying to have an on-topic bitchfest here? :mad:
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You don't think there are already too many of these sort of threads?
 
Here's a thought-experiment that might be useful. If anyone wants to play.

Whichever interpretation of the events of 7/7 you personally favour, are you at least provisionally able to entertain the idea that the sort of interpretation of those events which you normally don't accept might actually be correct?

For example, could you write a post taking seriously the merits of a point of view distinctly different to the one you hold? By which I mean, if you're a "7/7 truth" advocate, taking seriously the strong points of the "official" account, and vice versa obviously.

Or do you have some sort of existential committment that gets in the way?
 
Bernie Gunther said:
Whichever interpretation of the events of 7/7 you personally favour, are you at least provisionally able to entertain the idea that the sort of interpretation of those events which you normally don't accept might actually be correct?

For example, could you write a post taking seriously the merits of a point of view distinctly different to the one you hold...
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Small flaw in the experimental procedure, Bernie G.

Sure I could. After all, the foundation of evidence-based epistemology is that we don't know: we work towards the most probable explanation (and we understand that when we use the phrase "the probablility of the alternatives is vanishingly small" we mean "less than the probability of 666 exploding wombats simultaneously sellotaping themselves to the Eiffel Tower while doing the exact tap-dance out of Singing in the Rain and proving the Goldbach Conjecture on the back of an envelope").

But I don't think I would. The conspiraloons follow an entirely different mode of story-building - that is, the mediæval theological practice of Argument from Authority (as have said over and over). So if I were actually to publsh my considered exposition of the Wombat Theory, they'd just go ahead and quote it as if it were "evidence" - for whatever they damn well pleased.
 
Here's why I think it's an interesting thought-experiment.
Indeed, living in terms of transcendence makes cybernetic self-correction very difficult, for two distinct reasons. First, the act of existential surrender to the myth makes critique of the myth unlikely, for the act of surrender already entails a whole-hearted self-subjectification to the truth of transcendence. To submit to the pull of myth is uncritical by definition.

Second, that from which one has fled equally makes resistance to the myth unlikely. The appeal of myth in the first place is precisely that surrender to it seems the most coherent and life-fulfilling act one could perform under unsatisfactory real-world conditions. To abandon the myth is both to revoke allegiance from that which promised to be salvific, and worse, to return one without resources to precisely the same unsatisfying reality from which one sought to escape.

To put it another way, consider how difficult it is to invoke the observer from within a mythic frame, let alone to act upon what one notices. One cannot afford to allow oneself to observe for fear of what one might notice; one cannot afford to doubt. As in a classic double-bind, should one find oneself beginning to doubt the myth, one must suppress not only one's doubting but also the consciousness that one was on the verge of doubting. To even entertain, even in the most provisional way, any notion of doubt toward the myth is already to have moved beyond it. To be in the myth is to accept the truth of the myth without question.

Alternatively, the consequences of doubt are almost entirely negative both psychologically and socially. Socially, one encounters dishonor and further alienation, the disrespect and contempt of one's peers. Psychologically, if one abandons the myth one may not simply re-assume a posture within prosaic reality, as though nothing had happened. One is likely to feel even more alienated, but also to now feel anomie, a loss of ground, as that which was thought to be salvific is revealed as fraudulent or flawed. Moreover, one returns to prosaic reality with no more affection for it and no more psychological resources to cope with it than before.
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source

So, the reason I suggested the experiment was because I was interested in whether people could simply provisionally entertain a different point of view. Even for just one post. I'd like to think that I could, and would be quite worried if I just bounced off the notion of even provisionally entertaining a view different to the one I hold (which is that the most probable explanation was a self-starting cell of young British muslims politicised by Blair's support for Iraq and similar events.)

I understand and respect editor's choice of not tolerating conspiracy theory on these boards, but I guess I'd like to come up with a test of whether it's conspiracy theory as cultism, or just reasoned scepticism about the official line. For me, the key question is whether an existential committment of the kind described above is taking priority over reason and it seems to me that the experiement I proposed above would test whether this was the case.
 
Bernie Gunther said:
...For example, could you write a post taking seriously the merits of a point of view distinctly different to the one you hold? By which I mean, if you're a "7/7 truth" advocate, taking seriously the strong points of the "official" account, and vice versa obviously...
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Hmm let me see...

"...Another interesting test is the nationality of the company that was selected by Metronet Rail to provide a "networked video solution" for installation in the entire London Underground. The company is Verint Systems, previously known as Comverse Infosys (before February 1, 2002), and is a subsidiary of Israel's Comverse Technology. The Israeli security company's control of the software and computers involved in Verint Systems' "networked video solution" enabled multiple 'malfunctions' to occur at the very times and places that a Mossad operation was in progress. Hence, they had a camera-free window of opportunity to install the 7/7 bombs. The zionist mafia's massive spy network, and puppet "leaders" of government and police etc who are either bribed, blackmailed, or brainwashed Masons, provided them with the means and the opportunity..."

From this throughly nasty piece-of-shit website: www. takeourworldback. com (link broken)

I am not sure exactly what kind of posts I could write along these lines, except to say "some people claim it was a vast zionist conspiracy and point to any and every jewish connection possible, plus invent a few others".

"...Let's consider the Jewish population in these areas. Bradford has 356 Census respondents who declared their religion as Jewish. Birmingham has 2,343 (0.2%), Luton has 534, Leicester has 417, Kirklees has 171, Manchester has 3,076. In contrast, Leeds has 8,267. In addition to the requirement that the "bombers" drive part way (e.g. to Luton) and take the train to King's Cross, Mossad agents were directing the plot. Hence, it was more likely that the patsies' place of origin was an area with an above average Jewish population. Outside of London, Leeds and Bury are the only local authority areas with a Jewish population of more than 8,000. The Bury Muslim population is 6,756 compared with 21,394 for Leeds. Leeds is the only area outside London where both Jewish and Muslim populations are over 8,000. The combination of 8,267 Jewish and 21,394 Muslim makes Leeds an obvious choice as an operational centre for 7/7, and convenient for grooming of patsies and planting of fake evidence of homemade explosives. The official theory has "Muslim bombers" travelling from an area with an above average Jewish population to attack an area with a high Muslim population. Ever heard of the expression "carrying coals to Newcastle"? We conclude that Israel ordered the Mossad to carry out 7/7 with a high degree of certainty, with the odds against innocence being a minimum of tens of thousands to one..."

Sorry Bernie, I am having a bit of trouble with this. Which bits am I meant to be taking seriously here? Or am I having some kind of anti-racist, anti-neo-fascist arsehat "existential commitment problem" (whatever that means)? :confused:
 
Bernie Gunther said:
I suggested taking the strong points, not the most toxic ones.

This is proving interesting in a way that I didn't expect.
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But if you filter out what you judge to be the "strong" points, are you really looking at it from the other point of view? That presupposes some shared, common basis of logic, reason and evidence - precisely what I often find lacking. My "strong" points might well be their "weak" ones and vice versa?

I find it possible to engage in "what-if" speculations - "what if x, y and z were lizards", "what if badger kitten was a team of MI7 operatives who had in fact murdered the real rachel north and replaced her with a plant" (a suggestion I read on the nine-eleven forum this afternoon btw) ... but this is for me the realm of sci-fi-fantasy and spy thrillers - I'm not sure I could actually turn one of these what-if speculations into a coherent and reasonable argument or try and persuade people that this is what actually happened.
 
OK, well. Having suggested this, I guess I should try to take the test myself.

As I said above, I think the most probable explanation of the 7/7 bombings was that some British muslim youth were sufficiently radicalised by Blair's support for Iraq and other US crimes against humanity, that they did what the official version says they did. Some argue that it's more complex though.

The starting point for 911 arguments has always, as far as I can see, been 'who benefits?' Clearly 911 helped Bush, Cheney et al mobilise support for their long-standing (plenty of documentation of this) project of invading Iraq.

Equally, there is considerable evidence, some of it arising from court cases, for example the evidence of the connections between Italian intelligence and the neo-fascists who performed the Bologna station false-flag bombing, that spooks do sometimes promote terrorism for their own reasons. In the case of Italy, it was apparently to justify a crack-down on a widespread popular left which was making inroads into Italian politics against the interests of the right.

So, just provisionally entertaining the idea that something similar might have been the case with the 7/7 bombings, what would be the motivation?

Clearly, it was terrible for Tony Blair. It confirmed what many of us had been predicting for a very long time, that his arse-licking support for US crimes against humanity was not in the interests of the British public. So I feel that it's unlikely that Blair instructed SIS to go arrange for the Tube to be bombed.

Who might want to do that? Well, it's not at all inconceivable that some people on the neo-fascist fringes of the secret state might want an excuse to intensify their power. Northern Ireland is no long the boom-town for spooks that it once was, and there are a great many of them presumably looking to justify their future existence and operating budgets. In addition, there is fairly ample evidence to suggest that the spooks are more responsive to the needs of the US intelligence community than to the interests of the British people (ask Alan Turing what I mean here). So it seems quite plausible that they would be up for arranging some false flag terrorism in support of both their own, and their US sponsors agendas.

What about method? Well, if I were a spook being tasked with producing an incident to justify draconian attacks on the rights of British citizens I would probably reason that laws brought in against muslims, especially if everybody could be terrified by grotesque acts of muslim terrorism, would be the best way to get some generally applicable draconian laws on the books.

If that were the objective, nothing could be simpler, given that the UK and US intelligence services, and various dubious fringe groups like the World Anti-Communist League and third world agencies like the ISI, have been messing about with Islamic crazies since at least 1979 if not earlier. So there would be plenty of prospects on file, who would be persuadable to take part in an attack on the tube with suitable assistance and ideological direction. Any reasonably competent case officer could presumably do this.

There would be no obvious approach to proving this one way or another, so you'd be pretty sure of being able to get away with it. The spooks in question would have all of the necessary contacts and capabilities and as long as they could keep the normal cops from getting too close to any serious evidence, which would be straightforward under the official secrets act, they'd be laughing all the way to the gulag.
 
That's what I meant by provisionally entertaining the possibility that I might be wrong in thinking that the basic official story is the correct one. It doesn't require any involvement with lizards or anti-semitism. Just the ability to provisionally entertain the possibility that I'm wrong and to take seriously the strongest arguments of the other side.

I would be very interested to see any of our '7/7 truth' advocates try to take the test I proposed.
 
Sorry Bernie, but I have a bit of a problem with the way you went about that "argument"...

I don't see why 'who benefits' is the starting point. Taxi drivers benefitted because more people avoided the tube? Paris benefitted because more tourists avoided London? There are examples of people doing things (eg terrorists) that backfire on them - that hurt their own cause. I could make a whole list of people, interests or causes who benefitted or were hurt but I can't see why this is the "starting point", especially if the question is "who did it". Surely the starting point is the evidence - witnesses, forensics, cctv and so forth.

You then mention past form and bring in the Italian secret service. Again, why not bring in Aum Shrinrikyo (Sarin attack in Tokyo) or any or every personality type, cult, groups or organsiation that has been involved with violence? You jump directly to extremists at the fringes of secret government agencies. If you are inventing peope why not just invent random nutters who like setting off bombs?

As for the fantasy world of government agencies that can seemingly easily persuade people to go and kill themselves, somehow get loads of normal British people who work in various public sector jobs to take part in mass murder as if they were all working for the gestapo - sorry, but this is utterly bonkers as well.

I know you are just doing a thought experiment, but this isn't a "strong case" scenario IMO.

A strong case scenario would be more along the lines of "let's just sit and watch these guys, let them operate in the UK, let them do all sorts of stuff, because they are not going to attack inside the UK" - the same kind of attitude that the police take to drug delaers or prostitution - ie don't bother with the small fry, hope that they lead them to the key players, try and keep them 'contained' and 'under control'.

From this point of view the lie would be that this was the actual policy (they would want to pretend that in fact they had "zero tolerance" of Islamist terrorists) and cover up would be after the fact - agencies trying to avoid getting the blame for fucking up by concocting a "they came out of nowhere - it was all masterminded in Pakistan by the big bad kingpins" story).

This strong case scenario doesn't need shadowy neo-fash figures working for the americans and persuading young guys from leeds to go and blow themselves up.

ps as for the train time stuff: I've noticed that the 0748 train was scheduled to get to KingsX at 0820, whereas the train that actually arrived at 0820 was the delayed 0724. If someone simply assumed at some point that the 0724 train was the 0748 train (because it arrived at 0820) then this would explain why everyone was reporting that they travelled on the 0748.

They were seen at Luton on cctv at just before 0722 (assuming the cctv clock was correct) so could have got on the 0724 - people have said it would be impossible to run and catch the train, but anyone who uses trains knows that the platform guards often wait for people running to catch a train especially if the service is all screwed up anyway - so unless there are actual witnesses the 0724 departure time could be a minute or two later as well - enough time to get it.

The 0724 arrived at KingsX at 0820, they were seen on cctv at king x at 8.26 and the tubes left at 08:35, 08:42 and 08:48 meaning they had time to get on them.

I hope that this particular crock of shit can be finally laid to rest, although of course it would be vene better if someone could go and check all these timings, speak to other people who were on the Luton to Kings X train and if some of the 0826 CCTV footage from Kings X was released.

edit: Hmmm. This is kind of turning into a conspiracy thread isn't it? :confused:
 
TeeJay said:
Hmmm. This is kind of turning into a conspiracy thread isn't it?
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That was the OP's intention: that this should be the continuation of their risible original thread.

You do illustrate another problem with Bernie's thought experiment, though: that the space of possible "alternative theories" is so huge. In fact, it encompasses everything except what did happen. Beings teleporting in from parallel universes because of a warped sense of xuda not excluded.
 
laptop said:
That was the OP's intention: that this should be the continuation of their risible original thread.

You do illustrate another problem with Bernie's thought experiment, though: that the space of possible "alternative theories" is so huge. In fact, it encompasses everything except what did happen. Beings teleporting in from parallel universes because of a warped sense of xuda not excluded.
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Sure, but all that's required by the criterion I propose is a sincere attempt to construct and provisionally entertain some reasoned alternative to one's own beliefs.

The whole point is that one isn't required to be emotionally or existentially comitted to it, but by coming up with an alternative to one's own preferred theory, one demonstrates that one isn't so emotionally or existentially commited to another theory, or to the exclusion of some class of theories, that one can't even provisionally entertain any alternatives for a moment.

Talking in terms of the space of probability, this isn't what I'd call the most probable theory, but I think what I constructed above is at least somewhat plausible and I can provisionally entertain it without causing my world-view or self-image to collapse. It also isn't the theory I think is most probable, which is the mainstream 'self-starting British muslims radicalised by Iraq' theory.

So it meets the criteria I'm proposing as a test or challenge to determine whether one is operating from existential commitments rather than reason.

If I was emotionally invested or existentially committed to believing the mainstream version, rather than approaching these events with the tools of reason, then I wouldn't be able to even provisionally entertain any sort of conspiranoid alternative to the mainstream interpretation of these events.

Similarly, if I'm right about conspiracy theorists, they won't be able to provisionally entertain the possibility that the mainstream version might be correct.
 
TeeJay said:
All you ever do is hang around making snide comments about other posters, like some annoying, parasitic, poisonous, little toad. Either say something substantive to do with the topic of this thread or fuck off, arsehat.
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I actually quite enjoy your postings. Most of the time.
 
Bernie Gunther said:
...I think what I constructed above is at least somewhat plausible and I can provisionally entertain it without causing my world-view or self-image to collapse...
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But surely proposing some kind of gestapo-like mass-murdering government body lurking in the shadows could be quite a big change to many people's world view - at least as it applies to their view of life in the UK and how UK law and the state operate. If you change that you have to change all sorts of other things and could even end up a paranoid delusional wreck. You'd have to find other people who believed this or keep it to yourself for fear of people thinking you were bonkers, yet the act of finding other people would both deepen your fears and make you think that now you were a target to be silenced. The trouble with going down a fantasy route is that you can dig yourself further and further into paranoia. It's not so much only changing on detail - its the process and logic behind changing those details, the reaction you will get from others and your own reaction to information ("misinformation") around you.
 
This really is proving quite an interesting experiment, and in a way that I didn't expect.

I really thought it was going to be the conspiracy theorists who would be avoiding the challenge.

Still, perhaps some of them will show up to try it.
 
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