Monday 31 December 2012

Recognising storms-in-teacups for what they are



September / October 2012



  • Big conspiracy cover-ups do happen: UK wakes up!
  • EU Nobel Peace Prize baffling, and against Nobel's will
  • Petition not to accept Nobel Prize – feel free to sign
  • Paedophilia ring in high places rocks BBC, politicians and society
  • How the Establishment 'amnesiated' the public over a century ago
  • Massive criminal police cover-up outrages the Brits
  • How the public is being 'amnesiated' following exposure of police crime
  • Storms in teacups as a form of false-flag operation
  • False 9/11 prophet
  • BBC continues cover-up with '7/7 Conspiracy Road Show'
  • NATO's Gladio may be behind Greece's Kristallnacht and Turkey's Ergenekon
  • How social movements are reduced to tea and crumpets
  • '9/11: Explosive Evidence – Experts Speak Out': new film goes viral
  • Election of UK Police Commissioners: lobby your candidates!


  • The façade of the conspiracy deniers in the UK is breaking down fast, as scandal after scandal consumes the mainstream media. The Establishment is constantly thrown into disarray as it tries to minimise the damage and amnesiate the public. Sooner or later a scandal of tsunami proportions will sweep over the Western world: the uncover-up of 9/11.

    Across Europe there is a growing sense of outrage, as people realise that the current ludicrous situation has been created not by some natural disaster, but by corruption in high places. The most baffling absurdity is, of course, the awarding of a Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union. I have set up an online petition for citizens of the EU to dissociate themselves from that prize.

    The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the EU is not only baffling, but it is also difficult to understand in terms of Alfred Nobel’s will. The Nobel prizes should be awarded “to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind”. Yet the Norwegian Nobel Committee stated in their justification for awarding the prize: “The union and its forerunners have for over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe”.

    So what has the EU done in the past year to justify the prize? Nobel’s will states that the peace prize is to be awarded to “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”. Have they reduced standing armies? Well, no. With the Treaty of Lisbon, which came into force in 2009, they created the EU standing army, which promises to become a mighty military force on the world stage. Just look at the coat of arms of the EU military staff; it contains an anchor and two swords, which is one more sword than that of NATO’s stay-behind paramilitary emblem. Compare also with the emblem of Gladio, the Italian branch of the NATO stay-behind paramilitary organisations, which contains an anchor and a dagger. And they get a peace prize?

    So what about peace conferences? Yes, the EU does organise peace conferences. In 2010 the guest speaker was Prem Pal Singh Rawat, who made an impassioned plea to the world’s greatest emerging military power for peace on this earth:

    He had another go last year, too. The fact that he needed to make such an appeal speaks volumes. But did the EU take any notice, to warrant a Nobel Peace Prize? In any case, Nobel’s will states that the prize should go to a person. Is the EU a person? No, it’s half a billion people. Why should I be awarded a half billionth of a Nobel Peace Prize merely by virtue of my nationality? Nobel’s will stated: “It is my express wish that in awarding the prizes no consideration whatever shall be given to the nationality of the candidates, but that the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be a Scandinavian or not”. Obviously, the Nobel Peace Prize for 2012 should have been awarded not to the EU, but to Prem Pal Singh Rawat.

    In the UK there is a sense of outrage as more and more revelations come to light over an alleged paedophilic ring in the BBC, at the centre of which was the popular entertainer Jimmy Savile, who died last year. Jimmy Savile had friends in high places in politics, and even in royalty. Reportedly, he advised Israel's President on matters of security in 1975 and received a medal in 1979. So what's going on? It appears he was so influential that he could carry on with this activity despite this being widely known, or at least suspected, in the BBC. This story is so big, and moving so fast, that it is impossible to check out the reports as they fly by. Some of the allegations will undoubtedly be wrong, but this scandal is big enough for the BBC Trust Chairman, Chris Patten, to call it a "cesspit of allegations". He also said, "Not only should the BBC have done more, but everyone should have done more" about claims against Jimmy Savile earlier. That undermines the claim against the 9/11 truth movement that if there had been a conspiracy known by so many people some-one would have spoken out.

    On 22 October the BBC broadcast a special edition of their BBC 1 investigative programme Panorama on 'Jimmy Savile - What the BBC Knew', and in particular on why the BBC decided to drop the original investigation on Jimmy Savile carried out by the BBC 2 programme Newsnight. The bizarre thing was that both Panorama and Newsnight went out at the same time that evening, and the main Newsnight story was the Jimmy Savile affair as well. I was struck by a comment in the programme by presenter Paul Gambaccini, who said, "Because it was off the scale of everybody's belief system, they didn't really come to terms with it". That's exactly how it's been with 9/11.

    I was surprised earlier to hear a statement by former Director General of the BBC Greg Dyke, who himself had been forced to resign when the BBC revealed a little too much of the truth on the claims of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. He said that he would be surprised if pressure had been placed on Newsnight from above, because that's not how the BBC works; if that were to happen, journalists would do their best to get the story out, and it would be leaked. He repeated this in a discussion with child protection campaigner and presenter Esther Rantzen on Sunday's Andrew Marr show, in which Esther Rantzen replied, "That's what happened".It happened in the case of 9/11, too.

    There are now questions on how far police investigations went. I notice that during the Summer fifty police officers across the UK were arrested in child porn raids (Daily Mail).

    And it's all happened before. There was an even bigger scandal over a hundred years ago, when journalist W T Stead exposed 'child prostitution' in high places. In order to do so, he paid for a child and went to prison for it. The popular idea of the British Empire was that the British were bringing Christian values to the uncivilised world. And now, in the newspapers such shocking revelations were being made about the elite in the centre of the empire which claimed to be spreading those Christian virtues. Subsequently Stead was marginalised, and the public was 'amnesiated' by the Establishment. His memory should be revived, because that is exactly what the Establishment will now try to do with the Jimmy Savile case. It is also what they are trying to do over 9/11. It seems that there is a common element in the psychology of sex abusers and war criminals: the need for power and control.

    Only weeks before the Jimmy Savile affair broke out, the nation had been rocked by a report of widespread criminal activity by South Yorkshire Police. On 12 September an independent panel on the 1989 Hillsborough football stadium disaster published their findings. In that disaster 96 Liverpool football fans had died, and thousands had been injured. Yet the fans were being blamed for the disaster in a monumental cover-up by South Yorkshire Police. The report challenges the inquest's assumption that all 96 victims had an irreversible condition when the first ambulance arrived on the scene, saying that 41 had the potential to survive. It stated that South Yorkshire Police and the emergency services made strenuous attempts to deflect blame for the crush onto victims. In contrast to their professional training, officers were instructed not to record their experiences in pocket notebooks, but to produce statements of 'recollections' rather than 'notes'. Out of 164 statements, 116 were subsequently redacted. Then there was a press campaign of disinformation, blaming the Liverpool fans, the origin of which was a local Sheffield press agency informed by several South Yorkshire Police officers, a South Yorkshire Police Federation spokesperson and a local MP. The documents "also demonstrate how the SYP Police Federation, supported informally by the SYP Chief Constable, sought to develop and publicise a version of events that focused upon several police officers' allegations of drunkenness, ticketlessness and violence among a large number of Liverpool fans. This extended beyond the media to Parliament". These findings gained massive press coverage, but perhaps the most appropriate news item to mention is the one broadcast by the BBC to the people of Liverpool, which appears on their website under the heading 'Hillsborough report damns police and emergency services'.

    Criminal prosecutions are now being considered. This isn't just a case of a few bad apples. Forty years ago, Robert Mark, who had been appointed Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police to clean out the bad apples, defined a good police force as "one that catches more crooks than it employs". Every police officer who had been told not to make an entry in his notebook would have known that there was a criminal conspiracy within the South Yorkshire Police, but no-one spoke out. Yet so far there have been no sackings and only one resignation. The people of Liverpool had been castigated as conspiracy theorists for 23 years, and bad feeling ran so high that The Sun newspaper continues to be boycotted. The independent investigation was eventually set up after thirty thousand Liverpool fans had been chanting "Justice for the ninety-six". There must be more than thirty thousand maligned 'conspiracy theorists' now calling for an independent investigation into 9/11. Can we now make ourselves heard?

    A similar point was made by David Bowman who runs the Berkshire 9/11 Truth website. In a letter in the London Metro on 14 September he stated: "The conspiracy theory label must be stopped [from being] used as a derogatory term to justify censorship, lack of transparency and accountability – not only by the media, but by individuals to hide behind their own fears and insecurities. We should have the courage to wholeheartedly support those who demand truth and accountability for the deaths of loved ones, whatever the consequences".

    A documentary, 'Hillsborough', is now being produced by Mike Nicholson, and the first two parts can be seen, together with additional material, on his website. Further revelations have been made in a video 'Farrell and Pidcock on Corruption in South Yorkshire Police', in which former Principal Intelligence Analyst, whistleblower Tony Farrell, is in conversation with David Peacock, leader of the Islamic Party of Britain.

    Then there was a wave of sympathy for the police, following the brutal murder of two innocent female police officers in Greater Manchester on 18 October. This was an unusual case, in that they had been lured out by an emergency call, and shot when they arrived. Bizarrely, someone then walked into a police station to confess. Then, unusually, after Dale Cregan had been charged, Judge Andrew Gilbart made an order under the Contempt of Court Act, section 4(2), preventing the reporting of any proceedings in the matter until after the conclusion of the trial "or further order". The Guardian's Law Blog states that the reason given by the judge that publication of material or comment could affect the jury "stretches the purpose of section 4(2) order". No comment.

    Then there was a ludicrous storm in a teacup when Cabinet Minister Andrew Mitchell was leaving Downing Street on his push bike. No, not a Rolls Royce, but a push bike. The police blocked his exit by refusing to open the security gate, and telling him he had to walk round to the other side. It appears that he became angry, as he was entitled to do, but exactly what was said remains in dispute. Not surprisingly, if he denies having said the words attributed to him, he is not going to apologise for saying them. There was much talk about what the police officers had written in their notebooks, as if what they had written in their notebooks was definitive proof. Even Gavin Esler on Newsnight (2012-09-21) said that if you have a choice between believing a politician and a police officer you tend to believe the police officer. That, following revelations of widespread deception by one police force, was just not credible. The police and the press do not normally put such emphasis on a policeman's notebook; clearly this was a reaction to the criminal instruction by South Yorkshire Police to police officers not to record the truth in police notebooks at the time of the Hillsborough disaster. I have seen no explanation by the police on why they refused to open the Downing Street gate. Clearly, this bore the hallmarks of a set-up right from the start, but the police continued to escalate the matter, and it was being put out that Andrew Mitchell was a 'posh boy'. He may have been to public school (ie private residential school), and some of his cabinet colleagues may have been sociopaths from Eton and the Oxford Bullingdon Club, but Andrew Mitchell had his cycle clips on and was riding an ordinary push bike on his way from work, when he became angry at police officers who were apparently unnecessarily blocking his way, as any normal worker would have.

    I came to realise when I undertook my Esperanto research that whenever there is a storm in a teacup, there is undoubtedly someone stirring things for their own motive. I was under attack following an explosion of indignation from the treasurer to a question I had put; her only complaint was that she didn't like my tone. I managed to weather that storm at the following meeting, and we agreed on a diplomatic entry in the minutes. But then I discovered that the treasurer had been obscuring the real financial situation in the accounts, and falsifying it in her statements to the committee and to the membership. That's when the real storm-in-a-teacup began. This time it was based on the fact that I hadn't apologised for the incident, which by then had happened six months earlier. Clearly, they couldn't find a single instance of me putting a foot wrong in the meantime. Bearing that experience in mind, I had no difficulty in recognising the Andrew Mitchell case as a set-up. The police were clearly whipping the whole thing up. This has become a stand-off between the Cabinet and the Police Federation. The parliamentary opposition is jumping on the bandwagon, but former left-wing Labour minister Chris Mullin has spoken out in an article in The Times (2012-10-16, p22). "Don't let police bullies oust Andrew Mitchell" runs the headline, with a sub-heading "The federation intimidates all those who attempt reform. I know as I was one of them". He points the finger in particular at the West Midlands Police, which "is the force which fitted up six innocent people for the Birmingham pub bombings". It is also the force, he says, of the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad, "which was disbanded after many of its members were involved in serious criminality". He describes how the wrath of the federation descended on his head, when they rang each member of the Home Affairs Committee which he was chairing. "The federation is a bully", he writes, "It has a track record of intimidating ministers, journalists and anyone else who gets in its way". That is so similar to my experience when I came under attack in 2006, and it would be a good description of how the Esperanto Parliamentary Group, which I had initiated in 1972, was finally extinguished in 1999.

    The generally presumed motive seems to be that the police are fighting for more resources. But the initial effect was a widespread wave of sympathy and support for the police in the wake of the public sense of outrage following the Hillsborough revelations. The idea that that could have been their primary motive becomes credible when you look at what else they've been doing. And of course many people now suspect that the 7/7 Four were also set up by various police forces.

    To me, recognising such storms in teacups is the key to success in the truth movement. At the international level many truth campaigners can latch on quickly to likely storms in teacups. The downing of a Syrian airliner by Turkey was such a case:

    It was provocative, and there was no published evidence that the airliner had been breaking any law. This is a typical example of how wars begin; they are normally provoked by a party which has something to gain. Turkey is a member of NATO, and NATO countries are providing military assistance to the anti-government forces in Syria, and seem to be looking for an excuse for war:

    I think that most Turks would not think it was in Turkey's interests to create a dispute with Syria, but I doubt whether the Turkish elite is representative of the people in this.

    It's all happened before, many times, most notably in the Boer War, which was provoked by the friends of Cecil Rhodes, in order to give an excuse for the British imperial forces to take over Southern Africa, where Rhodes was the most powerful colonialist. Rhodes had formed a secret society, ostensibly to bring peace and civilisation to the British Empire by use of his enormous wealth. Other founding members in 1891 were a confidant of Queen Victoria, and the super-famous journalist and human rights campaigner W T Stead. When Stead realised what Rhodes was up to, he objected. Stead was thrown out of the secret society, and he then campaigned against the Boer War. I wrote this up in my newsletter for November/December 2011. The public was eventually 'amnesiated' by the Establishment, and now Stead's name is barely known. We need to counter this amnesiation. That's why my slogan is not just 'spread the word' but 'keep talking'; in other words, don't just spread the word, but keep reminding people of simple facts, because otherwise the Establishment will ensure that they forget.

    The truth movement itself has much to learn in recognising storms in teacups. The breaking up of the national 9/11 Coordinating Committee was clearly such a case, yet it wasn't recognised as such. There were cries of 'antisemitism' against Tony Gosling, who does an excellent job in running the 9/11 Truth Forum (http://www.911forum.org). There seemed to be no willingness in some quarters to reach any sort of reconcilliation, but only to whip up the quarreling further. Then there was a further storm in a teacup, over alleged 'holocaust denial'. When they extended that to me, suggesting that that was the source of my problems in the Esperanto movement, even though I had never been involved in the holocaust controversy, and my friend with whom I was working on the Esperanto affair happened to be Jewish, it was pretty obvious what was happening. When we set up '9/11 Keep Talking', it was my full expectation that from time to time we would have to deal with such storms in teacups in the future. Accordingly, we set up a private email group, with no anonymous members. I was fully prepared to deal with any disruptive elements who were attempting to instigate storms in teacups. A short time ago I was incapacitated for a week, and when I came to look at the correspondence, I found just that. It wasn't that I disagreed with what two of them were saying, though indeed I did. Nor was it that they had turned the whole thing into an irrelevant religious rant, which indeed they did. Nor was it that I thought they were infiltrators from the Establishment with a mission to neutralise our activities, though I do have my suspicions on that. It was that they were being disrespectful to others, were being autocratic, were being foul-mouthed, and they were creating an elite which was impervious to criticism whilst they launched personal attacks on others. They were also inciting others to break the law and thus get arrested. I put them under moderation and they left in indignation. These are pretty typical signs – together with trying to change the objectives of the group rather than themselves setting up a new group with different objectives – and it has to be dealt with calmly and surgically.

    Most people's reactions is to want to brush such things under the carpet, but I think that is wrong. I was amazed when I was investigating a storm in a teacup in 1973 to find that something similar had happened in 1955, only seven years before I had entered the Esperanto movement, yet no-one had talked about it. Everyone says that these things should be put behind them and that they should move on. But they don't move on; they just fall into the same traps that they fell into before. Storms in teacups need to be documented and made available, so that we learn from experience. The Establishment will persistently try to amnesiate us; often they will explicitly keep saying: "That's history".

    We also need to remember examples of proven infiltration. The story of Tania Head, who falsely posed as a 9/11 surviver, was shown on Channel 5 in the UK on 16 August. She became the main spokesperson for the survivors of the twin towers, and was only outed when she audaciously persuaded a film director to make a documentary about her. What came across very strongly was the sense of shock and betrayal felt by her former friends. Yet the only possible explanation being suggested for her behaviour was that she had some sort of psychological condition. When we have overwhelming evidence of massive state deception over 9/11, it seems pretty obvious that the state would infiltrate such groups in order to keep any questioning of what actually happened within certain limits. Whether or not Tania Head was a paid agent, that story looks to me like a classic case of infiltration and taking posession of a group, which potentially could present a threat to the Establishment. Anyone who is part of any campaigning group needs to be aware of such things, and they need to see the emotional reactions of betrayed members in a case such as this. Imagine if Tania Head had been exposed not by a film director but by an ordinary member; they could well have shot the messenger. This story is being kept alive by a book and a video, 'The Woman Who Wasn't There'.

    The Establishment is also trying to amnesiate us on incongruities in connection with 7/7, the terrorist attacks in London on 7 July 2005. On 8 October BBC Three put out another of their dishonest programmes twisting the facts and making those who question the politicians' version of events look irrational, with their '7/7 Conspiracy Road Show'. It was presented by a comedian, whose job was to convince four 'conspiracy theorists' that they may be wrong. Many of us had been approached, but turned it down because of previous experience of BBC cover-ups. After the show, one participant, Jon Scobie, was interviewed by Paul Watson, London correspondent of Infowars, and revealed what had gone on behind the scenes. There's a comprehensive write-up by Keelan Balderson, with videos, on the Wide Shut website. Now that the public are beginning to accept that the BBC is capable of a massive cover-up in the case of paedophilia, it should be possible to get the message across that they can cover up war crimes and Gladio-style terror crimes.

    One thing that I have been puzzled about, however, is the question of which train the alleged terrorists took from Luton to Kings Cross, if indeed they did. The televison programme appeared to show that it would have been possible for them to have taken an earlier train than the one originally claimed by the government, which had been cancelled. All sorts of things are possible, but we need evidence. I'm pretty sure that if they had, and everything had been as is now being claimed, that information would have been put out pretty quickly. So whatever the final conclusion is, the train times are significant, even if only to demonstrate government falsification. I still find '7/7 Ripple Effect' the most persuasive attempt at a reconstruction, even if it does present supposition as fact. However, I think that all options need to be considered. When looking at any reconstruction, we should be asking not only whether the reconstruction is true, but also whether it is genuine.

    I think there is a growing realisation of what is going on, both in the truth movement and amongst the public. It is necessarily a slow process, rather like getting an ocean liner moving. When I first tried to handle a canal boat on the Norfolk Broads I quickly realised that giving the boat a huge push made virtually no difference; the way to move it was to gently lean on it and keep gently leaning. We now have that momentum.

    The news in the mainstream media seems to get more and more ludicrous by the day, as Europe moves towards Fascism. Newsnight on 17 October featured the rise of the far right Golden Dawn party in Greece, which is violently targeting non-Greeks. "This was the Greek Kristallnacht", said the director of a play, Corpus Christi, after his theatre had been stormed by Golden Dawn thugs. The Greek Prime Minister recently compared his country to Weimar Germany. The programme reported on collusion within the Greek police force. "And the police stand by", said Newsnight's reporter Paul Mason. This does indeed sound like Kristallnacht, when police were instructed not to interfere with the riots unless the guidelines were violated. And I've just found a blog site called Daily Mail the morning after the Newsnight programme, on pages 30-31, carried a double-page spread headed 'A Fascist party in full cry. Black-shirts smashing migrants' homes. Swastikas on the streets. No, not Germany in the Thirties: Greece 2012'. Who is stirring this lot up behind the scenes? I asked Richard Cottrell, author of 'Gladio: NATO's Dagger at the Heart of Europe' if he had any idea. He replied: "The local Gladio set-up, which is closely linked to the Golden Dawn goons. The country is being set up for a military coup, breakdown of law and order as the excuse for intervention. Golden Dawn is a CIA/NATO/MI6 'Al Qaida'". In a later email to me he compared Golden Dawn with the story of the Greek terrorist group 'November 17' and three decades of urban guerillas, as described in his book. "We're looking at classic strategy of tension tactics, designed to demonstrate to the world that the sober guardians of Greece (namely the utterly corrupt political classes) are flying the standard of law and order in the face of hoodlums, rioters and 'anarchists'. Just like London, eh?".

    He had just sent me an article on attacks on non-Muslims in Turkey, in which a suspect on trial had told the court that the National Strategies and Operations Department of Turkey (TUSHAD), a clandestine organisation within the Turkish Armed Forces, was behind the attacks, and that it is the armed wing of the illegal Ergenekon organisation. Richard Cottrell commented: "My thesis that Gladio is still up and running is thus confirmed".

    He also told me that the NATO people had stopped the Sterling bookshop in Brussels from retailing his Gladio book in situ, following a very clear and immediate response to promote the book. "Suddenly the emails and the phone calls from myself and the publisher went dead", he told me. He got the same treatment from stores that they approached in the Netherlands, in Italy and in Germany. "We sent people to the store in Brussels and they got the real cold shoulder brush off", he wrote. I had indeed noticed a dearth of real investigative books on the 'War on Terror' in my local bookshops. [Editorial note: I have only bought one book by David Ray Griffin about 9/11 in a Waterstones bookshop and that was about the death of Bin Laden. There is very little appetite for stocking such books in public view even though they can be bought on Amazon.]

    So what are the problems and difficulties of the 9/11 truth movement, and have there been attempts to silence us? That question was put to Professor Jim Fetzer in an interview appearing in Iran Review on 13 September on the Vancouver Hearings, which he organised earlier this year. He replied that the most serious problems have arisen from conflicts internal to the movement coming from various factions which have adopted negative or even hostile attitudes towards others, mentioning some in London and in the US. A more detailed account had appeared the previous day on the Veterans Today website, headed '9/11 Truth will out: Vancouver Hearings II'. He details some of the correspondence with Ian Henshall of 'Reinvestigate 9/11' and concludes that "he is not serious about 9/11 Truth but prefers to run a social club where 9/11 can be discussed over tea and crumpets!". I reached the same conclusion shortly after it had been set up, having recognised the symptoms from the Esperanto movement in the UK. It became clear that this a deliberate policy, which they had turned into a 'philosophy' called 'Rauxmismo'. The president was also the president of the Simplified Spelling Society, and he did exactly the same thing there. It seems it's a common technique for neutralising any movement, and so I've been extending the term 'raumism' to the neutralisation of any movement by that technique. Jim Fetzer commented: "I find it difficult to believe that anyone takes 'Reinvestigate 9/11' seriously". Well, you have to look at Conformity Theory to start to understand that, as I did when the members of the Esperanto association believed that the capital had been decreasing when the figures showed it had been increasing. All the Raumists have to do is to form an authoritative elite, and keep smiling, and then find some excuse to vilify anyone who asks dangerous questions. Virtually everyone rallies round out of tribal loyalty. That's how they maintain a façade of democracy.

    It's not easy to tackle the Raumists; any free discussion will be deflected or sabotaged, and in my case it proved impossible to get any sort of action group of more that a couple of people without eventually finding it was being undermined from within. Any pot of gold is in danger of being blocked. When people start to latch on to what is happening the fake elite can no longer maintain the façade of democracy, and so they resort to blatent censorship. So it's not difficult to see why Iran's Press TV was banned in the EU and replaced by a pro-NATO Iranian station, as Tony Gosling explains on Russia Today ('Anti-Tehran TV launches as Iran state media gets EU boot', 25 October:

    Nor is it difficult to see why Iran should have launched its own satelite.

    However, in the US the Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth have made a significant breakthrough. In August their new film '9/11: Explosive Evidence – Experts Speak Out' made its broadcast TV premiere on Colorado Public Television (CPT12). Then on 11 September the film became the most watched and most shared video on PBS Online, and held the top spot for over a week. The webpage for the broadcast received more hits than any programme page in its history. The film may be viewed online on their website. PBS reaches nearly 123 million people through television, and more than 21 million people online each month.

    So when will the BBC broadcast such material? Cabinet minister Vince Cable made a point in BBC 1's Question Time on 26 October: "[The BBC] is damaged, but not fatally, but I would say in its defence: 'What other media organisation in the world would put out a programme attacking itself, which is what it did in the Panorama programme …".He makes a good point. The BBC was set up that way. That doesn't mean that there is no abuse of power by the hierarchy. Nor does it mean that there is no undue influence from outside bodies, such as the security services and financial corporations. Jeremy Paxman's sudden abandonment of a tie in Newsnight suggests he is standing up to such a hierarchy, whereas no informed person could doubt that the BBC's Conspiracy Files team presents distortions and lies in order to support the Establishment's version of events. The banning of Press TV undermines any pretence of political neutrality by the Establishment. But the structure of the BBC, even if it is corrupted, gives me some hope of making a breakthrough like that on PBS.

    I wonder what Vince Cable thinks about 9/11 and 7/7. His colleague the deputy prime minister Nick Clegg wrote to Neal Austin: "You will appreciate that the suggestion that the government of the time allowed – or instigated – such a horrendous act of terrorism in such a cynical manner for political expediency is difficult to accept. You clearly believe that the research would lead a rational person to this conclusion – and I am sorry to say that I must disappoint you as I do not arrive at that conclusion myself". Fine, but does he accept the research, and what does he mean by 'government'? This correspondence arose from a campaign launched by Richard Hall on his website 'Rich Planet', asking people to write to their MPs. Whilst I think that is a great initiative, we seem to be in danger of overlooking the forthcoming elections, on 15 November, for Police and Crime Commissioners throughout England and Wales. This gives us a chance to ask the candidates what they will do to reduce crime within the police force.

    Liverpool football fans have the slogan "You'll never walk alone", and their anthem runs "Walk on with hope in your hearts". Now they can be sure that they will never talk alone. We must all talk on with hope in our hearts. Keep talking.

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