It is also very interesting how this kind of thing happens when the warmongers need to "justify" whatever they do before the public. Tony Blair is not really popular, not to speak of the G8 meeting in Scotland and the controversy of their privatized "debt reduction" for 18 countries in Africa.
9/11 has so many question marks that politicians everywhere prefer to not even mention it anymore because ugly questions could arise.
Madrid 3/11 turned out to have been perpetrated with American explosives "donated" by a police informant.
London 7/7 will probably turn out to have been perpetrated with explosives "Made in US" or "Made in UK". No arrests will be made, and if, nothing in the way of credible evidence will turn up against whatever poor suckers they decide to put thru the court system.
I fear that we'll soon see mass arrests and expulsions of muslims throughout the UK and Europe. In any case, bad times will descend upon them as the crusade must go on. Radio says that muslims in the UK have fetched their kids in fear of reprisals. What will happen next ? Will we eventually see muslims cleaning sidewalks with toothbrushes ? Will beating up muslims in the streets just for the hell of it become tolerated ? Will Soviet-style "internal passports" be introduced in Europe ? Will checkpoints appear throughout our cities and countries ? Just remember that whatever happens to Muslims will soon after also happen the the rest of us.
I am with the people of London who have to go thru this. I was there in 2002 and remember a beautiful city and lots of very friendly people. I hope you all are able to take it in stride.
If you have to spout ridiculous tinfoil lunacy like that, at least have the courtesy to save it for another day. The world's northernmost desert wind.
I mean, where was their attack on radio station Gliewitz? Or, indeed, where are the WMD? If someone is willing to organise a terror attack on their own country or allied countries for political reasons (and I wonder what that would have been in the case of Madrid...), why not fake Iraqi WMD?
If one looks at what they did, it is bloody obvious: their weapon of choice to influence the public is spin, spin, massive spin. (Which kind of underlines their disconnect from reality.)
The US and British leaders are so much into spin that even the big fakes they used - the bioweapons trailer story, the Niger yellowcake story, the 45 minutes story and such - they only got passed on by someone else (Chalabi's men, or the Italian secret service), rather than fabricate stuff themselves. And during the war, the most the psy-ops troops could do in terms of active propaganda was an improvised Saddam statue pulling and the Jessica Lynch 'rescue' - which were neither terribly complicated undertakings, nor particularly professional (both were exposed real fast).
And, if one looks at some US polls on Gitmo, prospects for Iraq, or Iraqi WMD, one has to admit that this PR weapon works well enough for them. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Otherwise, this attack has all of the hallmarks (your word) of a certain islamist terrorist group. Another group that will be looked at is the IRA, but the IRA has not attacked in over a decade. Additionally, they have a tradition of attacking on Friday evenings, or Saturday mornings, so as to limit casualties. They also normally provide a coded warning to citizens. The rush hour bombings of mass transit is most definitely becoming the hallmark of al qaeda. This is most likely their goal. They strive for adjudication.
The Romans of old, who knew something about politics, used to say "Cui prodest scelus, is fecit".
Would any putative "Al-Qaeda" or Iraqi resistence sound of mind attack common british folks, knowing that a significant majority were, and are, against the war of terror ? Would it not serve their interests better if they tried to do something against those in a position of power and who subscribe to the "GWOT"?
First of all, those in a position of power are genuinely hard to get at. Second, even if you, say, successfully assassiated Bush, that wouldn't necessarily alter policy. All you would get is President Cheney with a licence to kill.
As to why the revolutionary movement we call al-Qaeda would conduct terrorism against Western civilians: Well, that isn't very hard to explain. The long-term objective of this movement is to overthrow the regimes of the Middle East and North Africa and create a vast political unit modeled on the early Islamic caliphate. To achieve this they must accomplish two preliminary goals:
Who has the RESOURCES and the CAPABILITY to plant multiple bombs in London, one of the most surveilled cities in the world ? Some putative "islamists" or secret service and special forces operatives of western govts ?
Answer: Well-organized terrorists and noone else have such resources and capability. 'Secret service and special forces operatives of western govts' plainly do not, simply because a) these agencies are largely staffed by professionals dedicated to public service, as opposed to evil, soulless tools who would willingly carry out orders to massacre their fellow citizens for the transient political gain of their civilian bosses; b) even if they weren't, it would be impossible to keep such a devilish conspiracy secret even in one country, let alone in three.
By the way, why expressions like "putative 'al-Qaeda'" and "putatuve 'Islamists'"? Do you doubt, or deny, that these phenomena exist?
How many people were arrested AND sent to jail for the Madrid attentate ? It strikes me as "convenient" that the putative terrorists were all killed by the Sspanish Guardia Civil when they found them.
That they wouldn't allow themselves to be taken alive is to be expected from people who crave 'martyrdom' over any earthly reward, not to mention life in jail.
Was it not weird that the Spanish Govt first adjudicated that attentate to ETA and then to Al-Qaeda, based obviously on their calculation of what would be better for their purposes ?
Not particularly. Just disgusting.
OK, that's all I have time for right now. Maybe someone else can reply to your concerns about the Internet.
And yes, I am indeed accusing you of paranoia and kookery. You're right about that much.
By the way, I'm sure the gays among us would appreciate if you laid off such slurs as 'fags,' as in "G8 fags." But that is up to you. The world's northernmost desert wind.
Now I fully agree with the rest, but I think the above is rather naive. Those not dedicated to public service seem to dominate nowadays anyway, "evil, soulless tool" seems to be a perfect definition for intelligence agents participating in dirty wars to me, and history does have plenty of examples for willingly carrying out orders to massacre fellow citizens for the transient political gain of their civilian bosses. (For example, read up on SISMI, Gladio, and the Bologna railway station bombing.) *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
If you disagree with this, then I guess we differ as to what is a realistic assessment of the situation. The world's northernmost desert wind.
The rest can hardly oppose them if they act clandestinely. I don't see how suicide missions come into the picture - the conspiracy theorists don't claim Atta & co were CIA agents.
Then again, I emphasize again, I don't believe for a moment that 9/11 specifically was an inside job. I am confronting your general argument here about intelligence. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Those not dedicated to public service seem to dominate nowadays anyway, "evil, soulless tool" seems to be a perfect definition for intelligence agents participating in dirty wars to me, and history does have plenty of examples for willingly carrying out orders to massacre fellow citizens
..is three separate counter-claims, regarding three non-indentical small minority subsets of intelligence agents. The first is the largest, it includes those in the MI6 going along with sexing up dossiers in the hierarchy. The second are obviously intel foot-soldiers working mostly abroad. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
My claim was just that "these agencies are largely staffed by professionals dedicated to public service," by which I meant to imply that given the massive scale of an operation such as 9/11, it would be hard to recruit enough traitors to pull it off.
About the Bologna station bombing I don't know much, so if it has been proven that SIGNI - as opposed to a few fascists in the stay-behind network GLADO - were part of this, I was unaware of that. The world's northernmost desert wind.
As for the second, yep, but what does that prove? See also what I wrote in another comment regarding their Iraq war propaganda.
As for the third, in part see what I wrote for the first; and given that the USA & allies are at this point clearly defeated in Iraq & Afghanistan, sending more troops would hasten the process.
The fourth is strongly tin-foil hat. I only respond with two general points: one, the total surveillance police state is not meant to protect you. Two, I think to believe that to defeat anything Western is an exceptional feat is a form of indirect and unconscious chauvinism. We aren't that superior, not at all.
As for the 9/11 jailed, I believe three, or if we include those held in the US gulag system, half a dozen. The rest died in the attacks.
The next is hyper-tin-foil-hat and simply wrong. The firefight wasn't started by the Guardia Civil, nor was the bomb set off by them. And anayway, Aznar was out by that time, so you have a really really big conspiracy in your theory here.
As for ETA than al-Qaida, that was not at all weird, but typical of the lying bastard Aznar, who even wanted election advantage from a terror attack. But he lost when exposed. Now, the only thing I don't understand how this fits into your conspiracy theory.
As for anything traced back, no, it can't. If you sit down in a run-down internet bar somewhere in Karachi, you can very well post anonymously, and a few tricks are enough to significantly delay the time until even the internet bar is tracked down.
As for the next, indeed, you don't know Arabic.
As for the next: they are not in the West, and sites can be changed frequently if they are closed down.
As for the last, since I don't know Arabic either, your request is impossible to fulfill. I guess you should ask around some blogs by Arabic-speakers. (And don't expect the MSM to allow itself be accused of giving bandwidth to extremists by linking to such a site.)
You should know, even with the general argument I made with Iraq in that other comment, I'm not one dismissing conspiracy theories out of hand. Specifically about 9/11, I have checked many of the claims circling around (in the first few months still with the suspicion that they might be real clues). But most turned out to ignore something, quote out of context, or be the result of lack of technical knowledge. (The two latest for me were the Kevin Ryan email casting doubt on the temperature of WTC fires, and the allegedly too small engine wreckage found in the Pentagon - I post the details of what I found if you're interested.) Some of the rest expose misconduct, but one far short for the alleged conspiracy (for example the delays in engine scrambling, or the alleged hijackers found alive stories). *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
