9/11 CultWatch

A Quick Note For Trolls

As this site has got more popular, so the attacks on it have increased.

It is a shame we have had to edit or delete a small number of posts to this site - either because they appear to have threatened physical violence towards the people running the site, or in the case of a post yesterday someone falsely claimed to be Larry O'Hara.

Trolls doing such things should note the following. We will not hesitate to pursue you via your Internet Service Providors, which in the instances above have been traced to Sunderland University and to Telewest in Newcastle Upon Tyne. In the case of home computers, you can also expect to have your ISP addresses published as well.

Then again behave yourselves, debate properly, and nothing will happen - oh except for you losing the arguments. You can handle that, can't you?

The Truth Movement's Prime Minister

It is hard to know whether to laugh or cry at the news that Michael "Rachmann" Meacher is going to stand for the Labour Party leadership.

Oldham's dodgiest landlord has been pretty quiet in recent years, save for his odd foray into 9/11 conspiracy circles.

Perhaps he will challenge Gordon Brown to debate the respective virtues of LIHOP v MIHOP? Or even "no-plane theory".

Meacher's intervention does mean one thing however - those betting on John McDonnell coming bottom of the leadership poll may lose their money!

Expecting Higher Standards Of Their Opponents.....

The toys have been flying out of the pram this week in the world of the UK and Ireland "truth" movement.

It seems a picket of the BBC is planned for this lunchtime to respond to Sundays 9/11 documentary. And what devastating action are they planning?

Is David Shayler going to project a hologram onto the side of the White City building? Is Tony Gosling going to re-enact an attack on the twin towers by a crack Mossad hit squad? Will we see Annie Machon shout "Lets Roll" before the BBC is stormed and its most reactionary journalists beaten to death with old MI5 wage slips?

No - they are going to give out a leaflet, complaining about the standards of the BBC's investigation into 9/11. The words pot and kettle rather leap to mind.

We suspect, despite this intervention, that the BBC may well survive another week......

George Monbiot On The 9/11 Cult

Well, it is not just us who has spotted what is going on.

You can read George Monbiot's Guardian article here.

Amongst the usual rambling responses from the 9/11 "Truthers" is this prescient comment from one person in Devon who seems to have seen through these clowns.

I live in Totnes in Devon. Long known as a kook-magnet, the town naturally has a particularly active 911-denier group. Their antics illustrate a couple of themes not mentioned in your article.

First, antisemitism. The local 911-deniers recently planned to show a DVD interview with one Eustace Mullins, billed as 'one of America's foremost historians'. He's actually a particularly vile Jew-baiter with a decades-long record of fascist activism. His self-published tract, 'The Biological Jew', compares Jews to rats. At the beginning of the video in question he states that Israeli 'neo-Zionists' intend to destroy all Muslims, neatly parrotting bin Laden's ideas. The screening was cancelled after what should have been obvious racism was pointed out to the organisers. The original medieval conspiracy theory featuring satanic Jews undermining Christendom from within has clearly found a new home in the 911-denier movement, as John Ronson found out when he visited the forum of the British 9/11 Truth Campaign (chaired by Annie Machon) a few months ago.

Second, the presence of David Shayler and Annie Machon, ex MI5 agents. These two jumped into the 911-denier milieu from the Stop The War Coalition before they could be pushed, and the movement has embraced them. They've been to Totnes at least twice. As far as I'm aware, nobody here has yet asked them why in 2002, the time of Shayler's high media profile, neither he nor Machon said a dickie bird about a 911 conspiracy. Similarly no one in the movement is asking why Machon's 2005 book 'Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers - MI5, MI6 and the Shayler Affair', attributes the 911 attacks to intelligence failures rather than an impossibly large, impossibly efficient cabal of impossibly clever murderers. Yet in June 2005, interviewed by the bullhorn buffoon himself, Alex Jones, Shayler says he was suspicious from the start.

The comment then finishes with this link.

A Curate's Egg From The BBC

Several weeks later than expected, the BBC's take on 9/11 conspiracies has finally limped onto our screens.

The first point to make is that although produced by the BBC, this was very much a programme about the US - no European voices - either in favour or against the 9/11 Commission were to be heard. Indeed the tone was arguably set by the fact that after the narrator one of the first voices heard was the booming drawl of Texas snake oil salesman Alex Jones.

If anything the BBC understated the size of the 9/11 industry, concentrating only on several of the bigger names out there - Jones, Jim Fetzer of 9/11 Scholars for Truth and Dylan Avery of Loose Change fame. Other voices - and some of the zanier theories - did not get much of a look in. Of those interviewed Fetzer was a classic example of the American who could not accept that his mighty country could be humbled by a small group of hijackers - Osama Bin Laden lives in a cave, it just could not be!

Several of the key issues to 9/11 "Truth activists" were debated - the attack on the Pentagon, the collapse of WTC 7 and the fate of the fourth plane, Flight 93. Anyone who has tried to debunk some of the dafter 9/11 theories will have some sympathy for the Indiana academic who expressed his shock at the abuse received when he published his findings into the Pentagon attack. We know how he feels! The dangers of web based research were suggested by the anomalies concerning Flight 93 wreckage - many "researchers" had calculated the mileage from crash site to debris by road mileage, using the Internet, not how the crow flies. Some people really do need to get out more beyond their computer screens.

Rather inaccurately the BBC traced the birth of the conspiracy theory back to 1963 and the Dallas
assasination of President Kennedy. In fact conspiracy theories go back centuries. When listening to the explanations of some of the anti-semitic myths that have grown up since 9/11, it is easy to recall that (to take just one example) anti-semitic myths have a depressingly longer history than 40 years. Countless others could be added.

Due to the safe old image of the BBC, the need to reach a nice fluffy middle of the road conclusion was hardly a surprise. Yes there was a conspiracy, but it was of the arse-covering, don't question Capitol Hill variety. Perhaps so - but also being the BBC no hard questions were raised about some of the biggest 9/11 issues. Not what did the Americans knew before hand - what did Saudi Arabia know? What did Pakistan know?

Such questions are not on the BBC's radar. Here they cannot claim ignorance - Senator Bob Graham from the Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 was interviewed. Graham has expressed his considerable frustrations at the lack of a desire in Washington to look into the behaviour of Saudi Arabia, but you would never have got that impression from this documentary.

Such questions are on our radar, as they should be for any serious researchers. For the BBC, taking on the likes of Alex Jones using taxpayers money is one thing. Messing with the Saudi's is clearly quite another.....

Loose Change?

The most hyped film amongst 9/11"truth" campaigners is currently Loose Change.

Given the quality of a lot of the 9/11 Truth DVDs and video clips out there, this is perhaps a boast on a par with being the biggest midget in the circus. Screw Loose Change is a blog site devoted to debunking the tall tales and exaggerations of Loose Change.

But, don't take our word for it. Why not see the film, and then look at the counter-blog?

The Conspiracy Files - BBC2 Sun 18 Feb 9pm

Tommorow sees the various 9/11 conspiracies getting the BBC treatment.

Just to make it clear - no one from 911 Cultwatch was involved in this programme. That means if it is good, we can't take the credit, and if its awful, we can't take the blame!

The BBC webpages devoted to the conspiracies series can be viewed here.

Top Secret

There appears to be some problem in the ranks over at the 9/11 Truth Movement.

Not content with having a public forum for discussion and organising, it now appears a second private forum is required. This is invite only, and you apparently only get on if you get the nod from two existing 9/11 Truth leaders. Larry O'Hara and myself are not holding our breath for our invitations!

All in all entrance to this inner sanctum for the positively vetted sounds a bit like joining the Freemasons. No doubt we will soon be hearing plenty of noise from those 9/11ers excluded from the elite - the cries back and forth of "shill" are likely to be deafening.

Either way, 9/11 Cultwatch would like to suggest a logo for this new, top secret board. Who better but Secret Squirrel!

Tomorrow The World!

One characteristic of the UK 9/11 Truth Movement is its feeling of self-importance, its almost messianic zeal.

Take this line from the University of East London 9/11 Truth Society, in the UEL magazine Re:Fuel

"The goal is to turn UEL into a 911 and 7/7 Truth University, something brave and courageous, yet ultimately righteous. To be that spark that will spread from campus to campus, country to country. Just like the Student Anti-Vietnam War campaigns."

They are not many certainties in life. But one is that Stratford is not the Sorbonne, nor is the 9/11 Truth movement remotely comparable to the 1960s anti-war movement.

A Criminal Record?

It was amusing to see that amongst today's evidence presented against the 21/7 bombers is the "possession" of copies of the video "Dirty Kuffah" by Sheikh Terra.

This example of "Jihad Hip-Hop" is hardly fresh - you can find copies on You Tube, and Sky News ran an "expose" of it over a year ago. Indeed Sky showed most of the video if I recall, and the BNP made it downloadable in full from their website in one of their rants against British Muslims. As such it has probably been seen by hundreds of thousands of people by now.

I can't say playing it on You Tube five minutes ago has made anyone at Cultwatch HQ want to go out and murder our fellow civilians on the London transport system either......

7/7 Issues Outlined

In a comment on this blog, "suckerpunch" tells us to go away and look at 7/7.

Suckerpunch, who also uses the name Violet, Paul O'Hara and Guillotine when commenting on this blog, clearly needs to get out more. If he takes a look at the current Notes From The Borderland, he will find Larry O'Hara doing just that.

As for futher comment - watch this space.

Common Sense Views From The US

The Class War Federation has recently been bombarded with e mails from an American correspondent, on the subject of 9/11.

I reproduce his/her most recent e mail, I hope their description does not apply to this site as well!

wildvocalmaker HOOD"
To: londoncwf
Subject: Re: hello from The United States...Please read
Date: Wed, 07 Feb 2007 14:47:14 -0800

You are a complete Government Shill.

AND an asshole.

Bush/Cheney did 9/11. Blair is a FASCIST. You are Big Brother from 1984 Orwell.

AND go fuck yourself.

Islam is NOT the Terrorist. YOU ARE.

There speaks the voice of reason!

William Rodriguez Meeting Analysed

To the University of East London's Docklands campus, where last night the UK and Ireland 9/11 Truth Campaign held a public meeting, with William Rodriguez topping the bill.

Annie Machon's Introduction
A good 150 people attended this meeting, which unfortunately started nearly an hour late. Annie Machon spoke for five minutes, discussing her background and the issue of false flag terrorism. It is noteworthy that whilst she cites this as a major reason why she and David Shayler left MI5, she does not mention the issue flase flag terrorism once in her 2005 memoirs "Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers". Machon correctly illustrated how, post 9/11 a legal assault had been launched in most Western democracies, with certain long standing rights ripped up, and new powers given to the police and security services. She sees the basis of this in the west's thirst for oil.

Whilst this is hard to disagree with, it is important not to look at 9/11 as a sort of year zero - Machon herself appears happy to forget that the decades from 1969 onwards saw some very dubious legal machinations used, mostly in Northern Ireland, but also against the Irish community in England and its supporters. As a former MI5 officer who made use of such laws, she can hardly be unaware that we have been here before.

Although the meeting was not the full room the organisers would have been hoping for, Ms Machon argues the 9/11 Truth Movement is on the up and up, and is open to people of all religions, classes and political persuasions. I wonder if Ms Machon reads some of the routine anti-semitism on the 9/11 Truth Movement forums, and actually believes the movement is welcoming to - for example - Jewish or Israeli people?