Iraq war enquiry, Iran turmoil and 9/11

Originally sent June 2009


Things are moving fast now. The EU elections were overshadowed by the tom-foolery in Westminster, with the main parties campaigning to retain credibility. Then there was much talk about how long Gordon Brown can remain Prime Minister, whilst some were doubting whether he was Prime Minister anyway. The real Prime Minister seems to be Tony Blair’s friend Peter Mandelson, though it’s not clear how much influence cabinet has in policy decisions in any case. Certainly former cabinet minister Clare Short didn’t think that the cabinet had much say in the decision to wage war on Iraq, if we go by her book ‘An Honorable Deception?’. Clare Short was back on television last night (June 15), following Gordon Brown’s announcement that there would be an independent inquiry into the Iraq war, when she was interviewed by Jon Snow on Channel 4 News. Earlier she had said in the Commons that the membership of the inquiry was rather feeble, and that it should be allowed to have hearings in private or in public as it sees fit, rather than having them kept completely secret.

One thing that Jon Snow picked up on in the news broadcast was that the inquiry would be wide-ranging, going back to 2001. Indeed, Gordon Brown stated that it “will consider the period from summer 2001, before military operations began in March 2003, and our subsequent involvement in Iraq right up to the end of July this year”. That includes 9/11. This means that we actually have an announcement of a inquiry into 9/11, in so far that it relates to the events leading up to the Iraq war. So what did the British security services know about what was really going on, and how much did they know about the subsequent cover-up? Were they complicit in the event or in the cover-up? Huge questions can now be raised in the context of this inquiry. It’s up to truthers to press their MPs for answers.

Meanwhile, truthers in New York are desperately trying to collect signatures for a petition to the state authorities. The New York City Coalition for Accountability, are aiming to collect a minimum of 45000 valid signatures from Newyorkers by July 3. In practice, they need a lot more than that because the authorities may declare some invalid. So far, they have collected 44 246 signatures. If they succeed, then a new investigation into 9/11 will become law in the state of New York.

President Barack Obama, in his Cairo speech of June 4, has warned the public not to challenge the official 9/11 story.





The US administration is clearly becoming concerned at the rise in support for a new investigation into 9/11 and the subsequent cover-up. In the same speech, he acknowledged that “in the middle of the Cold War the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government”:





This is the first time that a US President has admitted to that, as far as top Obama advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski can remember. The context was in admitting to wrongs on both sides, but it does mean that whilst denying a current ‘conspiracy theory’, he is admitting to a past one.

A friend of mine in Tehran wrote in to a politics email discussion group about the mass demonstrations that were about to take place the following day, concerning the national election, and asking for this to be made known outside Iran. I replied that we were indeed hearing about it in the West, but that it was unclear just what was happening, and exactly what evidence was emerging of election fraud. If the Iranians did have proper democratic elections, would they be destabilised from outside, as in 1953 (see Here and Here). This operation was known as Operation Ajax, and there appears to have been British involvement, including a propaganda campaign spearheaded by the BBC.



President Obama’s Cairo speech contrasts remarkably with a previous speech at the US National Archives, in which he delivered a blistering critique of the Bush administration’s “ad hoc legal strategy”, and then announced his own, to enable the administration to keep people in prison indefinitely. This was reported on MSNBC, a US cable television network, by announcer Rachel Maddow.






In the UK, Tony Blair wanted three months’ detention without trial, but Parliament limited that to 28 days, which is said to be the longest anywhere in the world. Some people are getting worried. An interview with modern historian and writer Webster Tarpley has just appeared under the title “The Men behind Barack Obama” (http://snardfarker.ning.com/video/the-men-behind-barack-obama and http://snardfarker.ning.com/video/the-men-behind-barack-obama-1). It contains plenty of food for thought.

I attended the Alternative Vision 2 conference at Heathrow at the end of May, together with about 400 others. Videos of the talks are available at the bottom of http://www.ianrcrane.co.uk/ . An evening seminar on 9/11 is planned for July 7 in London, organised by a group of media professionals. Exploring Evidence Event will be taking place in Logan Hall in the Institute of Education, Central London from 18:30 (http://www.exploringevidence.co.uk). Danish Scientist Professor Niels Harrit will present evidence of nanothermite from the debris of the World Trade Centre. A television interview with him can be seen in the videos section of the website. Dr Kevin Barret is an academic and author, who will present a ‘primer for Obama voters, presenting an academic analysis of Western foreign policy’.

On Tuesday, June 30, a new book, Terror On The Tube will be launched in London at Conway Hall in central London (Website).





The book investigates the mass of conflicting evidence, eye witness accounts and anomalies reported in the 7th July 2005 tube bombings. The author, Nick Kollerstrom, is an astrophysicist and science historian. Previous research of his uncovered the myth of Newton’s apple; it was a yarn spun by Newton to cover up his theft of the law of gravity, which was actually discovered by Robert Hooke (http://www.adam-hart-davis.org/articles/Newton.htm). Perhaps it’s fortunate for Nick that he didn’t discover that one three hundred years ago.

Keep talking, and keep asking questions!

Alternative View no.2

Originally sent May 2009

The big event that’s coming up is Alternative Vision 2 (http://www.avll.co.uk) next to Heathrow Airport from Friday (May 29) to Sunday evening. According to their mission statement: “There is a co-ordinated effort by our world leaders (elected and unelected), with the willing help of a corporate controlled mass media, to use manufactured global crises to create what they term a ‘New World Order’.

You’ve heard that term in the media, indeed Gordon Brown uses the phrase with alarming regularity, but what does it mean? Simply this: A global super state, controlled by a World Government, policed by a World Army, with a single World Currency… and a single world Religion! There is, however, an Alternative View. An alternative which will be mapped out at ‘AVII’, after we have shown our delegates - through well researched evidence and facts - what is really going on around us”.

As a three day residential conference, registrations begin at 5.00pm on the Friday, with the speakers and entertainment beginning at 7.30pm. Alongside their speakers, throughout the weekend you will have access to our Alternative Market, as well as a full programme of Workshops, allowing you a choice of activities. There will also be events and happenings every evening, right up until the early hours of Monday morning – allowing you plenty of time to network and make your own journey of discovery. This is said to be the largest event of its kind in Europe in 2009. Speakers include Professor David Bellamy OBE, who reveals what happens when you speak out against the ‘common consensus’. David Halpin recounts his ‘near death experience’ in January 2009, at the hands of the Israeli Navy. Scott Tips talks about the Codex Alimentarius programme and its role in making sickness compulsory. Dr Arpad Pusztai gives the story behind Genetically Modified foods, and researcher Brian Gerrish talks about a secretive charity called Common Purpose, and techniques of ‘messing up’.

The 911 Forum webmaster and Bilderberg researcher Tony Gosling, gives a run-down of the New World Order and what it owes to a Compliant Media. Tony Gosling will also be interviewed on Friday on Prison Planet TV. He appeared in The Corbett Report on May 5, to discuss his years of research into the group and its origins with Nazi sympathizers and Freemasons. They also discuss this year's conference and what information is available

Interview with Tony Gosling

A week later Bilderberg expert Daniel Estulin gave an interview (#084) on Bilderberg 2009, and topics up for discussion at this year's conference, including the planned destruction of what remains of the world economy and how to stop the Irish from voting No on the Lisbon Treaty (again) this autumn. Their latest video is on Medical Martial Law, and discusses the latest Swine Flu media frenzy





Their Corbett Report #86 is very worrying, reporting shipping out of live Avian Flu viruses to be mixed with flu vaccine, which could itself have caused a pandemic.

Some of us have been trying to make sense of the latest media frenzy on MPs expenses. The Mail On Sunday has been tracing the source of the leak, and there seem to be links to a former SAS man.

The Guardian reports that “Nadine Dorries, the Conservative frontbencher who claimed the Daily Telegraph's revelations on expenses could drive MPs to suicide, has had her blog shut down by lawyers acting for the newspaper”.

Her blog is here



A translation into Esperanto of John Pilger’s Chicago speech, which I did some time ago, has just appeared with illustrations on a website in Spain.

An article I wrote in an Esperanto magazine published in Russia has now appeared on the web. It’s about the Wilson Affair and strange goings on in the Esperanto movement at about the same time.

And my last 9/11 Berkshire Truth newsletter appeared in Esperanto translation on a Russian linguists website

Perhaps I’ll see one or two of you at AV2 next week. Keep asking questions!

The untimely death of Ian Tomlinson and the rise of the Police State

Newsletter originally sent April 2009

The various threads suggesting a move to a more authoritarian state have been coming together spectacularly in Britain over the past few weeks. The financial meltdown, anticipated for some time in certain quarters ofthe 9/11 Truth Movement, is now developing into a merger of state and corporate power. Was it caused by the bankers being incompetent, as we are being constantly told, or was it a massive fraud by bankers and politicians in collusion? More on that below.

Then there are the typical signs of an emerging fascist state, with evidence of gratuitous police violence hitting the national headlines practically every day. It seems that in the Metropolitan Police’s Territorial Support Group we have a militia in the heart of London. Channel 4 News managed to put together a number of videos taken from different locations during the recent G20 demonstration in London. They tracked the movements of the police officer who had previously been caught on camera assaulting, from behind, bystander Ian Tomlinson, who died shortly afterwards. The Independent Police Complaints Commission,who are reviewing police behaviour during that demonstration, attempted to get a court injunction to prevent Channel 4 News from broadcasting that footage. Why? The footage also shows that Ian Tomlinson’s head appears to have struck the pavement when he was brought to the ground. That surely must raise questions on the two post mortem examinations which concluded that he had died of a heart attack and an abdominal haemhorrage respectively.

At the same time, the truth on what didn’t happen on the 11th of September 2001 seems to be permeating through. One mystery has been why the left has been so quiet. George Galloway MP has a regular Talksport radio show on his website, and on Friday and Saturday, April 17 and 18, he held a phone-in on 9/11. Opening the show, he said that he stil lholds Islamic extremists responsible, but a recent chance meeting with Tom Kiley in New York has planted seeds of doubt in his mind.

"Soon into the second show George Galloway admits "it's hard to see scientifically why both of the Towers fell down in the way that they did and it'spractically impossible for me to see how Building 7 could have fallen inthe way it did"

These particular broadcasts turned out to be amongst his most popular. The full broadcasts are on his website:

Part 1: 33 minutes

Part 2: 38 minutes

Author Naomi Wolf, author of ‘The End of America’, published in April 2007, has now published a DVD, which updates the book by bringing it into the Obama era. Details are on her website







In short, the ten steps are:

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy,
2. Create a gulag,
3. Develop a thug caste,
4. Set up an internal surveillance system,
5. Harass citizens' groups,
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release,
7. Target key individuals,
8. Control the press,
9. Dissent equals treason,
10. Suspend the rule of law.




At the time I tried to bring to the attention of the British Esperanto Congress Step 5 (Harass citizens' groups), because I think that any membership association needs to be aware of this. What happens in the US is likely to follow in the UK. Membership associations, I think, should be seen much more as a litmus test for society as a whole. People don’t seem to make the connection, but I think we all need to be much more vigilant on the small things. The continued shift to a fascist state is further considered in an new Alex Jones video, ‘The Obama Deception’.






“The Obama Deception is a hard-hitting film that completely destroys the myth that Barack Obama is working for the best interests ofthe American people.“

The Obama phenomenon is a hoax carefully crafted by the captains of the New World Order. He is being pushed as savior in an attempt to con the American people into accepting global slavery. “We have reached a critical juncture in the New World Order's plans. It's not about Left or Right: it's about a One World Government. The international banks plan to loot the people of the United States and turn them into slaves on a Global Plantation.“ Covered in this film: who Obama works for, what lies he has told,and his real agenda.

If you want to know the facts and cut through all the hype, this is the film for you.” Just what a shift to a fascist state means is described by trends forecaster Gerald Celante, head of The Trends Research Institute.


Russia Today sent out an interview with him on April 19, headed “America lives in a fascist state”. Fascism, according to Mussolini, is the merger of corporate and government powers. That, according to Gerald Celante, has come to the US in broad daylight. “It’s a two-headed one-party system”, he said.

I wonder who rules Britain. So how has the economic meltdown come about?

“The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One”, says a leading US expert in fraud prevention, Bill Black. That’s the topic of an interview in the Bill Moyers Journal


and the title of a book he authored in 2005 entitled

The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry

In this amazing video interview on the current financial meltdown, Bill Black explains how the current financial meltdown was brought about by fraud, enabled by deregulation by the Bush administration. An important part of this was brought about with fraudulent “liars’ loans”. The toxic loans were deliberately created so that swindlers could exploit them. The system became a gigantic ponzi scheme. The FBI warned about thisbefore 9/11, but FBI agents were transferred to work on 9/11, and so their warning went unheeded. The Government was working with the industry to destroy regulation. He says that they don’t want to changethe bankers because if they did they’d put honest people in. It was themost elitist of institutions in America that were engaging in orfacilitating fraud, he said. The tragedy of this crisis, he said, isthat it didn’t need to happen. And neither did 9/11.

Torture, civil rights and medical professionals for 9/11 truth

Newsletter originally sent March 2009

Dear all,

Various truth issues have recently been hitting the headlines in the mainstream media. The big issue was the case of Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed and his allegations of British involvement in torture inflicted on him whilst held in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Morocco. Lord Justice Thomas issued an astonishing ruling concerning nondisclosure of Government documents. "The ruling implies that torture has taken place in the Mohamed case,that British agencies may have been complicit, and most important of all, that the United States Government has threatened our High Courts that if it releases this information, the US Government will withdraw its intelligence co-operation with the United Kingdom on matters of security." Stated former shadow home secretary David Davis, "The judge rules that there is a strong public interest that this information is put in the public domain even though it is politically embarrassing." David Davis was demanding a Commons statement from the Government on the allegations and he also urged the Government to address an alleged US threat to withdraw intelligence sharing relations with Britain if details of the Binyam Mohamed case are released. Mercifully, Binyam Mohamed is now back in this country, but the case still rumbles on, withwidespread concern that the government may be hiding something under theveil of national security. A video has been released called "Outlawed: Extraordinary Rendition,Torture and Disappearances in the 'War on Terror'". It tells the stories of Khaled El-Masri and Binyam Mohamed, two men who have survivede xtraordinary rendition, secret detention, and torture by the U.S.government working with various other governments worldwide.

Similar concerns have been expressed in connection with the government's veto on the publication of minutes of key cabinet meetings held in the run-up to the Iraq war in 2003.

The Information Tribunal had upheld a decision by the Information Commissioner that details of the March 13 and 17 sessions should be disclosed. The former cabinet minister Clare Short stepped in with an interview with The Mail on Sunday (March 3).


"The Government is refusing to release minutes of Cabinet meetings before the Iraq War because they would reveal there was no discussion on the issue", states the article. "I wanted to know if the Attorney General had any doubts about the legality of the war", stated Clare Short, but "They all said, 'Clare, be quiet, stop.' No one else wanted to talk about it. I was shouted down."

I recently read her book, 'An Honourable Deception?: New Labour, Iraq,and the Misuse of Power', in which she gives details of what happened and what didn't happen. Her account makes it abundantly clear that the UK has not had cabinet government since 1997.

Further on the Civil Liberties front, Chris Huhne MP, of the Liberal Democrats, is introducing a Freedom Bill, which 'calls on the government to repeal the tide of legislation that has stripped away our rights'.The bill would repeal legislation in 20 areas where liberties have been eroded including The Right to Protest, The Right to Public Assembly andCriminalising Trespass.


Even a former head of MI5, Dame Stella Rimington, is now saying that Britain is moving towards a police state

The 9/11 Truth movement has lost yet another leading campaigner inunusual circumstances. Beverly Eckert was one of the 'Jersey Widows' who first latched on to there being something fishy about 9/11, and lobbied for the 9/11 Commission of Enquiry, whose report is now widely seen as a whitewash. The previous week she had been at the White House to talk with President Barack Obama about how the new administration could deal with terror suspects. She was killed in the air crash in Buffalo, which was widely reported in the media http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7889106.stm

On the 9/11 campaigning front, a new group has been formed: Medical Professionals for 9/11 Truth [http://mp911truth.org/]. Their website contains a petition calling "for a new and independent investigation into the events of 9/11/01 by a duly constituted legal body with the authority to subpoena and require testimony under oath, and with authority to prosecute if criminal activity is discovered, so that the perpetrators of these crimes against humanity can at last be brought to justice". There are links on the site to similar groups from other professions.

Recommend it to your friends! Keep campaigning! Keep the feedback coming! And do pass this newsletter on to your friends. Best wishes, Ian.

Vanity is getting to Bin Laden

Newsletter originally sent January 2009

Dear all,

I had a welcome break from it all in Germany over the post-Christmas week. As usual when I take my eye off things the world goes crazy.

I was at an Esperanto get-together in Dusseldorf, attended by 160 people from 22 countries. I took the opportunity to show the film 'ZERO: an investigation into 9/11'. There were only 17 at the presentation,because there was an unusually full programme, but it went down really well. There was also a write-up in the programme booklet - a translation of the standard blurb. Something bizarre had happened on the subtitling,so I just explained that that's perfectly normal in 9/11 truth activities, and proceeded to do a simultaneous interpretation. I also presented a lecture/piano recital, and as part of that presented a six-part composition called 'The Aftermath'(Ground Zero, In Memoriam,The Dawning, Reopen 9/11, Guantanamo, Lament). That went down well, too. I talked to a lot of people about it. Out of 160 people from 22 countries, no-one said I was crazy. What a long way we've come since I woke up to this in December 2006! I explained to people that my main interest in this is the psychology of Western propaganda. They couldn't have kept something like that quiet for so long without preexisting structures. People are now beginning to see the common elements of that and the British problems in the Esperanto movement. No-one called me crazy on that issue either :-) Talking of Esperanto, it's listed in the top 25 ideas on Barak Obama's change.org website at http://www.change.org/ideas . I doubt whether anything will happen on this. My interest lies in the idea of democratic relations between nations,and the Esperanto idea is the language part of that.

Will Obama bring about the change that so many aspire to?

Some people have doubts. Historian Webster Tarpley, who seems to be a prolific mine of information, has written a new book called 'The Post-modern Coup"





Meanwhile, the truth on 9/11 continues to seep out. There's a film out called "Rescue me" about a 9/11 ladder fire service. Daniel Sunjata is a 9/11 truth advocate and managed to get his opinion on 9/11 into one of the episodes:





We need to get it shown in the UK. There's also a new false flag drama called Body of Lies and a Bollywood film just shown in London called Shoot on Sight.

On the civil liberties front, there are reports of people being stopped by the police from taking pictures in public places. Yet whenever there is an event, the police appeal to the public for videos (see here) .

Then there was the case of the journalist who was threatened with life imprisonment for reporting perfectly legitimate information

As the world awaits the closure of the Guantanamo concentration camp,the Bush administration admits there was torture

There are also stories, as usual, which look like planted disinformation. Osama bin Laden is now reduced to audio tape, since images of his face have been so controversial:












There's a new book out today called 'The Assault on Liberty':





With a comment by Nick Cohen

"Britain is a country where the state persecutes shop keepers who sellin pounds and ounces, but allows murderers to use the Human Rights Actto kill again; where law-abiding citizens are spied on, but teachers are frightened to discipline violent children. With literary verve and philosophical insight, Dominic Raab tears into a justice system which has turned Britain’s liberal values upside down. A book that could make Gordon Brown vote Tory."

Martial Law and election fraud

Newsletter originally sent October 2008

After I joined the 9/11 Truth Campaign in December 2006 I was asking what happens when half the US population no longer believes the official story.

Some of us thought the US Administration might panic and launch a false flag attack and abolish elections. I thought the dollar would collapse as confidence fell, but others, who had a better understanding of how economic cycles work, were telling me that there would be an engineered economic collapse.

Alex Jones, who runs a radio chat show in the US, has been warning of Martial Law for a long time. He predicted 9/11. He's produced films on the topic. See his website at http://infowars.com.

Well, we're there now. The event was the financial melt-down. But it's not just the dollar, it's the world. The US regime is acquiring enormous powers as a result. Something similar is happening in the UK.




As part of the regime's pressure which was being put onto members of the US House of Representatives, some members of the house were told that if the bill for government intervention in the banking system was not passed, then a state of Martial Law would be declared.




One blogger has pointed out that there is no difference between martial law and the threat of martial law.

The author of a new book 'Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries' has claimed in an Internet TV interview that a coup took place in the US on October 1









The book is a sequel to End of America where you can watch the trailer. See also 'My America Project'









Recently she wrote a piece describing how thousands of US troops had been deployed on US streets for 'crowd control'

According to Infowars, their correspondent "has learned from knowledgeable Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) sources that the Bush administration is putting the final touches on a plan that would see martial law declared in the United States with various scenarios anticipated as triggers. The triggers include a continuing economic collapse with massive social unrest, bank closures resulting in violence against financial institutions, and another fraudulent presidential election that would result in rioting in major cities and campuses around the country."

On election fraud, a new documentary is going around Picture House cinemas, called 'How Ohio Pulled it Off'.

The way in which plans for Martial Law were developed are reviewed at Global Research.

Martial Law has been going through a series of incremental changes.

It describes how anti-terrorist legislation has been extended to enable the arrest of opponents of the Government. In the UK we saw how anti-terrorist legislation was brought in recently against Iceland, following the collapse of financial institutions there.

Some time ago, we saw how Labour party veteran Walter Wolfgang was grabbed and detained under anti-terrorist legislation when he shouted 'Nonsense' at Foreign Minister Jack Straw, who had claimed that they were bringing democracy to Iraq:









In the US we saw how student Andrew Meyer was grabbed by police and tortured when he asked former US Presidential candidate John Kerry why he had so easily submitted to George Bush when he, John Kerry, had won the election, and then went on to ask whether they were both members of the same secret society:










That was just the tip of the iceberg.

In the UK we have seen creeping legislation affecting basic democratic rights, and this was featured in the film 'Taking Liberties' (http://www.noliberties.com/).



Some lawyers were saying that whoever was to take over from Tony Blair, he would inherit more means of gaining absolute control than Adolf Hitler inherited from Hindenburg.

Now a large-scale covert infiltration called Common Purpose has been reported in all sorts of public institutions across the country, following extensive research by former naval officer Brian Gerrish. A political organisation masquerading as a charity now has 18 000 of its own people in key positions in local government, the National Health Service, the BBC and other institutions, with the aim of taking control. They divert public funds and have people in high places.

Brian gave a lecture on October 7 under the title 'Who's really running Britain?'. which can be found at Changing Times and where you can find audio

I had realised that something like this must exist from my own observations. What Brian Gerrish describes is much deeper than anything I had imagined. I had been investigating membership collapse in a charitable membership association that I had been involved in for many years. That led me on to look for parallel examples, and I found them in the penetration of even 'tiny organisation which pose no threat to national security'.













It later became clear to me that there had to be some bigger network. It is possible that Common Purpose is only the tip of the iceberg. Brian Gerrish, in his talk, urges people to expose what is going on at the grass roots level. That means being alert in any organisations you are a member of, however charming the people concerned may be.

Naomi Wolf's 'Ten Steps to Tyranny' include subversion of citizens associations (http://www.obsidianhustle.com/2007/11/ten_steps_to_tyranny.html). It's now widely believed that this is far more extensive than just the big protest movements. I think it's important for us all to be alert in whatever groups we may be involved with. All too often these things are left to individual whistleblowers, whilst others remain silent, and the majority go along with the official line. To understand how this works, see Solomon Asch's experimental work on Conformance













To break this, we need to understand the importance of speaking out, or at least asking the right questions. As soon as the whistleblower is no longer in a minority of one, things begin to change. So, if you are in a membership organisation, be especially alert if there is a move to

• criticise an individual on the basis of only vague allegations


• be evasive on straight-forward questions * answer questions by attacking the character of the questioner


• obfuscate on the accounts


• focus in the treasurer's report on details of investments rather than on the essential issues, such as the use of the money and budgets


• distance the members from the committee on the basis of Charity Status or the Trustees being 'professionals'


• elitism


• fob off critics rather than acting on criticisms


• ignore points made at the AGM in subsequent committee meetings


• do things which gain credit for the committee rather than to get results


• target the membership with their publicity or promotion rather than the outside world


• misapply the Data Protection Act to cut off regional branches


• criticise a committee member for being critical of the committee


• criticise a member for being in a minority of one too often in the voting


• con members into voting for a resolution on the basis that only Trustees of a Charity can really decide


• use gestures or oratory to persuade rather than facts and arguments


• implement excessive secrecy or confidentiality


• make allegations in respect to others of which they themselves may be guilty


• make serial mess-ups whilst showing no willingness to leave office


• create furores without any visible sign of attempts to sort the problem out
• serially to create quarrels with key individuals


• blame everyone but themselves for things going wrong


• defend themselves by saying "I've heard that a hundred times before" but not saying what the answer was record questions in the minutes without giving the answers. Beware also of people who use their status, their authority or their credence in order to persuade, rather than the force of argument.

The one about having heard a complaint or question a hundred time before was a repeated reaction both of the President of my association and the former head of MI6, who played a role in making a fallacious case for invading Iraq. Once his authority was disregarded in questions following a lecture at the London School of Economics, he had nothing to fall back on. I was surprised how my own observations seemed to apply right up to Cabinet level. See Clare Short's autobiography ('An Honourable Deception?: New Labour, Iraq, and the Misuse of Power'), in which she states that the UK has not had cabinet government since 1997. If you are in Liberty, ask yourself why only the paid Chief Executive Officer is ever interviewed by the mainstream press. She is a former Home Office barrister. I attended one AGM, and was appalled at a resolution to enable the committee to expel any committee member who said anything to the press that he had not been authorised to say. That seemed to me like an attack on civil liberties. I was the first to speak out, saying that I had met a similar situation in another membership organisation and that such provision can be abused. The motion was thrown out. That's where we are in civil liberties. I agree with Brian Gerrish's approach, that in order to preserve democracy we must work at it at grass roots level and speak out. We must also avoid being angry or provoked. If you are too persistent they will try to push you over the edge. Once you accept that they may be doing this on purpose life gets a whole lot easier. I stuck it out for two years of constant ad hominem attacks in six issues of the journals of my association per year, simply because I had ignored their intimitation. In the end they made a mistake by admitting that a communication of mine bore the implication that they were out to destroy the association, but they denied nothing of what I had written. Instead, they invented clearly faked allegations to knock down ('straw man argument'). Their own former legal adviser stepped in (http://rik.poreo.org) and I reported this at the 2008 AGM. The campaign then stopped, and then many people started taking an interest in what I had to say. In short: observe, listen, discuss, don't be fobbed off, don't be provoked. Document everything. We all need to wake up to what is going on, and to call people in official positions to account, whether in national government, in local government, in public bodies, in quangos, and even in small voluntary associations.

Welcome

This blog is being developed for the purpose of presenting personal opinions on important topics and developments such as 9/11, the war on terror, civil liberties, the Iraq enquiry, the death of Dr Kelly and other areas that might take our fancy like climate change (or climategate as it is now known) and the corrupt banking system (which seems to be getting everyone angry at the moment).

I know what you might be thinking: "Here we go, another crank writing about conspiracy theories on the internet".

With regards to the mainstream press, some may not choose to believe what they read on the internet, but my view is the opposite: I don't trust too much what I read in the newspapers because it is controlled and I know that what is published can be biased and uninformed. Paying for content on the web will only encourage people to read alternative opinion and news on the internet that is not controlled. In fact, I would recommend a book by Nick Davies called "Flat Earth News".

In fact, there are two of us who will be writing commentary for this blog. I will make my position clear that I am not a 'conspiracy theorist' or a 'denier'. These words are being used more often simply as a way of enforcing censorship and stopping individuals from questioning those in authority. I have a scientific background and I only look at evidence to come to my own informed decision about the world I live in.

I would also like to make clear that I hate the word 'sheeple' because that creates an 'us-and-them' mentality. When certain sections of the community want to encourage others to look at alternative opinions the last thing they would want to do is drive them away or create divisiveness.