Verbal

The next criminal case involving charges of peadophilia will no doubt bring out the same 'EDL enthusiasts' complaining about 'trial by media'.

Mikey, Bournemouth does have a good reputation in film, TV and radio production. But perhaps a more secure and cost-effective way of dealing with this is to complete your BA in anthropology at what is a very good university, while keeping your radio work up, and then doing a one-year taught MA in radio production. That way you end up with two qualifications in four years instead of one in five - and an MA will be regarded as a superior qualification to a vocational BA.

You are SO tragically misunderstood.

Keep in mind that for the majority of those courses you'll be 'trading down' to a post-92 univ.

Mikey, if you're interested in radio, the gold standard is still, by miles, the BBC, so the fact you're at a Russell Group university taking a social sciences degree, and already working in radio, all places you in a pretty good position when it comes to applying for news or production trainees' positions at the Beeb, which are graduate-entry only.

How far are you into your course? Change it if it's not too late, although Anthropology is more useful than you might think. Don't be too surprised if you discover that radio is dying as an employer of technicians and production staff. Multi-skilling and new technology, as well as the proliferation and downsizing of radio stations, is cutting into jobs prospects. Actually one of the few opportunities you have of developing a radio career is by going to (or in your case staying at) university and getting heavily involved in the uni radio station. Doesn't Southampton University have its own station?

I'm hurt. I was agreeing with you. All i was saying was I can quite imagine you tucking happily into boiled dog. How not like halal eaters you are! And before you say it - you're welcome.

Don't you just hate halal butchers? And kosher, of course - LOATHE the Jews. Damned pig-haters. Let's find a solution for them too, and make it final. You, of course, are quite different, settling down each night with an imaginary Mrs Mash, and tucking into a nicely aged roast chihuahua.

I would never throw an accusation of racism around carelessly. You have my word.

Brown faces REALLY goose you, don't they - the sight of an Asian evidently makes your superior white skin crawl. The wonder is not how you live with ethnic minorities, but how you live with yourself. It must be a nightmare.

I see the sexist baiting of BTF goes on as ever.

Well said. There is a kind of lazy racism implicit in the ‘who would live in Luton, East London…’ view, in that it really is ignorant of what it’s actually like to live in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods. I’d lived in predominantly Asian areas for many years, and the best way to describe it is that it’s a bit like discovering an old, and long-extinct England. Those qualities you traditionally associate with this – such as public civility, commitment to family life, the generous welcome offered to strangers – are all present in Asian communities. Anyone who’s spent serious time within the community would understand perfectly the cave scene in EM Forster’s Passage to India: nothing is too much trouble, and sometimes it’s overwhelming. By contrast, in far too many white working class estates, the despair of chronic and often wilful unemployment, combined with drug-driven violence and family breakdown are more the norm. And in white middle class ‘communities’, such as one I lived in until recently, the nastiness is competitive, ruthless, selfish and cynical. If the EDL were truly about the rediscovery of qualities of Englishness, they would embrace Asian communities. But of course that’s all a smokescreen. They’re just scumbag racists hoping that they can hide beneath the festering sticking plaster that says they’re ‘defending’ something worthwhile.

It was until you joined in and made it The Tellytubbies.

Away in foreign lands. If I can make your lives a little more meaningful, my work is done.

Only for those who have lost 'faith' (!) in scientific method. Of course, it's possible to deny the overwhelming scientific evidence, just as it is possible for creationists to say they don't 'believe' in evolution. There is essentially no difference. Evolution, climate change, stem-cell research, etc., are all part of a 'conspiracy', or are a 'hoax'. What lies at the heart of this is a denial of scientific knowledge - so much so that in the US, for example, to support science is to risk a colossal electoral liability.

Actually I'm just applying to be a school governor. Will you give me a reference? ...and do read the damned book.

I'm not blind to the details - just determined not to get into a pointless google-duel with you. Arguing details with truthers is like arguing with Scientologists. You have no first-hand knowledge of the subject, as far as I can see, and have never ventured away from your computer to look at any aspect of this. If my 'big picture is fundamentally flawed', you'll have a ready answer to the question I've been asking for so long now about the AQ prequels. Why no conspiracy theories about them? Now go away and read a book, instead of obsessing over the non-existent evidence for the use of thermate. You need to break out of your oddly US-centric view of the world and realise that you don't HAVE to be American to have committed the atrocity on 9/11.

As for the supposed detonation of buildings at WTC, your argument (although you pretend otherwise) is really only that it’s possible to do this, not that it happened. This is like your ludicrous argument earlier: that because a construction/demolition company was allegedly working on WTC, and was also based in it, that’s conclusive proof that they were busy rigging detonation points. Beyond a nudge and a wink among conspiracy nuts, this is rubbish. ‘Commercial pilots’ have NOT said the maneuvers of AA77 were impossible – only a few ‘truther’ pilots have. You’re falsely casting this argument is if there were some consensus about it. The Manhattan Project comparison is absurd. You claim that 290,000 people (actually it was 130,000) were involved in it, yet only a very small number of them knew what the ultimate aim of the project was – and they were all ensconsed in remote hills near Santa Fe, New Mexico. It was in the midst of World War Two, when secret programmes were necessary and quite common. That Truman wouldn’t know about it is hardly a surprise – and pretty stunningly irrelevant to 9/11. Did you know, however, that the Soviets DID know about it, and had penetrated it? So let’s wait and see, shall we? After all, the leaders of the Manhattan Project subsequently wrote extensive accounts of the work they did (notably Oppenheimer). Who do you think is going to write an account of how they, and not AQ, brought down the Twin Towers with the assistance of a quarter of a million or more (presumably) absolutely silent participants, in the gravest crime committed against America, on American mainland soil, in modern times. ‘Science’ does NOT ‘tell us one thing.' It’s capable of looking at a problem in many different ways and coming up with many different conclusions. Ultimately, however, science is poorly served by people hitching it to conspiracy theories that have so little contact with recognisable reality. Truthers offer no credible names, and no credible motives – or when they think they do, they look particularly silly. What’s depressing for someone who claims to be a ‘scientist at heart’ (what does that mean, by the way, other than making some feeble attempt at claiming a special privileged access to wisdom?) is the lack of coherent thinking. Bigger picture, pap, bigger picture. Read Looming Tower, then come back and say that AQ could not have carried out the attacks.

You raise an interesting point, though. Why is it otherwise intelligent, seemingly sane, non-American people fall into this paranoid hole? One explanation is a kind of imperialism of imagination. The 'truther' movement is a predominantly American phenomenon, with an overwhelmingly American focus. It's as if nothing other than 9/11 ever happened. Hence wannabe 'truthers' like pap can happily ignore events in Dar es Salaam, The Cole, Nairobi, Luxor and the assassination of Ahmad Shad Masoud. It's as if these prequels to 9/11 never happened. There re no conspiracies about them because, although their targets were American or Western-related, they didn't happen on American soil. Then those more 'moderate' truthers, who desperately try and avoid spelling out the exact nature of their conspiracy theories for fear of looking completely foolish, get lost in a blizzard of googled detail. Which is why, as aintforever memorably put it, arguing with them is like arguing with a cat. But the lack of sense - the lack of any coherent thought as to who and why - is deployed as a good thing: it demonstrates some kind of spurious objectivity in the face of those Mossad agents or dupes like you or me, who have swallowed whole some fictitious 'official account' (so aptly and ludicrously expressed in that link that pap was so desperately proud of). And when they do finally come up with some 'motives', they reveal - surprise, surprise - the hopeless, paranoid vacuity of the truthers' view of the world. The appeal to these 'motives' also betrays a stunning ignorance. It's as if the actual pre-emptive pretext for the second Iraq invasion, for example, the faked existence of WMDs, was never offered as the reason for war! Tiny bits of tangential or irrelevant trivia (like the non-governmental think tank report, which is laughably supposed to be evidence of a government conspiracy to murder its own people) are nailed to the theories in an attempt to make the whole thing make sense, but only has the effect of making it look even more ridiculous. What's worse, the 'truther' movement is an American exceptionalist phenomenon with a racist undertow. Only the good, whitebread, technologically savvy good people of Langley and DC could pull off 9/11 - certainly not that bunch of towelheads. However ludicrous the 'truther' movement is in the US, I have no idea why it should appeal to people in other countries, where, you might reasonably hope, they have a bit of perspective. But no. Pap and other papists have no answers about AQ prequels in Africa and the Middle East because they have no interest in them. Or the slightest knowledge. They are doomed to wallow in a google soup forever - seeing mysterious 'patterns' in everything. They even get a certain thrill from this - because they are privileged. Like John Nash, they see shapes and sinister connections no one else can. From the simple truism that governments are often devious, they've constructed an edifice of such obvious nonsense that they comfort themselves with the thought that only they have the special mental goggles to see it all. Or maybe it's just as you say it is.

Plenty of evidence of motive? Like what?! Because as sure as **** that list of yours is pathetic. Yes, there were ideas among the Neo-Cons that Iraq should be invaded prior to 9/11 So what? Rebuilding America's Defenses is a policy document written by a right wing American think tank, not the government. And again, so what? Pre-emptive war doctrine proves the OPPOSITE of your case. The doctrine - quite an old one! - states that the US should reserve the right to invade pre-emptively. Therefore it wouldn't need some hugely convoluted conspiracy to attack itself in order to achieve this. All you needed were the claims about WMDs. And that's exactly what the basis of the invasion was. The money made selling heroin in Afghanistan? Are you kidding? Benefits in oil contracts was a result of the Iraq War. As I say, that did not require anything remotely as preposterous as an attack on the twin towers and the Pentagon. Western-friendly governments in the ME? What does that MEAN? That 9/11 was necessary because there are (or were) such governments? So, yes - you're right on one thing at least. No motive s at all. Even I thought you could make a better fist of it than this. Oh, and about Aziz ElHallan? EDIT: Oh, I see. The conspiracy nuts have already taken him apart. What a surprise. He's a Mossad agent apparently. That link of yours is interesting in that it seeks to cast as an outright liar everyone who witnessed the plane going into the building. What charming company you keep.

You mean like this guy (although having an Arabic name naturally makes him part of the conspiracy):

Well if you READ the books I'm suggesting it might help. I'm happy to think about any credible evidence. I won't take seriously 'evidence' based on sophomoric mistakes, ignorance and paranoia. I also come back to plausibility, because you have to be something of a demented fool to think it's worthwhile spiralling after ever more arcane bits of 'evidence' if it's not in pursuit of a plausible scenario. But you deal with this with a simple logical fallacy: because governments have a record of lying, they are not only lying about 9/11 but are at the heart of it. Of course governments lie. For example, the British government lied about the existence of Gulf War Syndrome, the Chinook crash that killed a number of senior special forces operatives working in Ireland, the removal of the indigenous people of Diego Garcia, etc, etc, etc. In EVERY case, though, the government lied for plausible reasons. You could see why they acted as they did, as reprehensible as it was. But to kill thousands of people, to attack and destroy the emblematic buildings of American economic and military might? Or to bomb the Underground and a bus? Give a PLAUSIBLE reason why they should do this. What - as I keep asking you - is their MOTIVE? And let me see if I understand your point about the books. You're saying that because these books are already 'narratives' they are less trustworthy 'in the first place'. What on earth does that mean? I have Ahmed Rashid's email address - would you like to tell him, given his experiences, that his book is merely 'a narrative'? Do you even know who he is and what he's done? Do also tell us about the conspiracy theories you have that provide an alternative explanation for Dar Es Salaam, Nairobi, The Cole, Luxor and the murder of Masood.

It's not 'the one book' at all. I'd recommend Dexter Filkins' The Forever War, or Ahmed Rashid's Descent into Chaos, or Peter Bergen's Holy War, Inc. Or any number of others written by journalists who used a little more than google to get out there and research. Of course, they're part of the conspiracy too, no doubt. As for Power of Nightmares, a film I know very well, you miss the point completely. It is NOT about the formation of Al Qeada. Curtis is arguing that there is an ideological parallel between the Neo-Cons and Sayyid Qutb. He is NOT arguing that 'our politicians' wilfully do anything - only that the Neo-Cons and Qutb (who spent time living in Colorado before going on to be the inspiration for Zawahiri) have a mutual interest in creating a mythic view of a world worthy of destruction. It's kind of funny that truthers exist outside the US, because the movement is really the bastard child of an old ideology indigenous to the US - American exceptionalism. The truther variant is: how DARE anyone suggest that 9/11 could be carried out by anyone but the most technologically sophisticated country in the world. THAT is the circular argument that the flag wavers of the truther movement wrap themselves in, and it seems more than a little slavish being repeated by impressionable googlers outside the US. As I say, read Looming Tower, because you talk as if 9/11 was the only event Al Qeada was involved in. Unless, that is, you have a headful of conspiracy theories for The Cole, Dar Es Salaam, Nairobi, Luxor, as well as the murder of Masood on 9/10, etc, etc.

Yes, I saw that garbage. It is the essentially racist argument that a bunch of ignorant A-rabs marooned in the Afghan desert couldn't possibly bring down the crowning edifices of US economic and military might. It then wraps itself in knots with the idea that the story is 'brought to you' by 'the media', all and every one of them wrapped up in the conspiracy. The sooner you get started on The Looming Tower the better. You need to get away from your computer.

You seem to have problems with the English language. You talk about 'proof', and then write a highly detailed post that contains nothing but wishful speculation - although I can tell how desperately you want to believe it. And the 'official conspiracy theory'? Again? WTF is that? And who's in on it? Oh, and do have a word with the hundreds of eye witnesses of the Pentagon crash, including motorists sitting in a traffic jam, over whom the plane passed, shedding bits as it struck objects on the ground. Some of these shards were picked up and kept by these witnesses, who clearly describe an AA 757 flying 60 feet over their heads. But I guess there isn't any point, is there? They are part of the official conspiracy too.