Social Democracy Now

Along with Ralph Schoenman, Fintan Dunne and many other commentators, I have drawn attention over the last few weeks to the fact that the official story of the 7/7 London bombings is wholly implausible. Over the last few days, it seems that the authorities have tried to plug some of the more obvious holes in the story. We are now being told that the bombers set the bombs off with buttons:

'All four bombs were triggered by the bombers pressing a button and not through mobile telephones. The disclosure contradicted theories that the four may have been duped into becoming suicide bombers.'

These statements - published with not a whit of evidence (Fintan Dunne correctly asks how the police know how the alleged bombers set off their bombs) - came out at the same time as a narrative of Habib Hussain's movements which is designed to account for the perplexing interval of nearly an hour between the explosions on the tube trains and the bomb aboard the Stagecoach bus. We are now being expected to believe that after the bombs had gone off at the previously agreed time, Hussain, whose inability to explode his own bomb at that time remains a mystery, tried to contact his erstwhile comrades on his mobile phone, and that he had a McDonalds 'meal' (if a Big Mac can be called such) shortly before he planned to shred his own stomach. Personally, I am amazed he still had an appetite, let alone that he saw any point in trying to ring his deceased comrades.

What the new 'information' (if police reports can be called such) actually does is incorporate even more nonsense into the existing  story, generating a result that has still not budged an inch in the general direction of plausibility. After all, we know the four men fingered by the authorities didn't set off the bombs, whether by means of buttons or anything else, because the eyewitness testimony, which carries far more weight in my book than the police reconstruction of the crime, makes it abundantly clear that as was the case with the Madrid bombings the explosives had been planted underneath the trains. What's more, there are still no eyewitness accounts of sightings of any of the four alleged bombers at any of the crime scenes, nor has any CCTV footage been released - meaning that we still don't have any evidence that they were even in the Underground network at the time of the bombings. (They obviously can't be blamed for carrying out crimes if they can't even be placed at the crime scenes.)

It looks to me like the police turned up some CCTV footage of Hussain in a McDonalds and they realized that it could somehow be exploited to account for his movements in the mysterious missing hour. If we ever get to see this footage which The Independent thinks may exist (how is it that The Independent wasn't able to confirm whether or not the footage exists?), there will still be no way to verify that it was taken on 7/7 and not some prior occasion.

The fable of 7/7 deserves to be discounted by all reasonable people. Even if we accept that the four men made it to Luton station, which on account of a faked photograph is in doubt, the police still haven't even come up with an explanation as to how they made their way from Luton to London. In a previous post, I drew attention to an eyewitness who pointed out that events at Luton station that morning do not conform to the police narrative. That view has only been confirmed by researchers Nick Kollerstrom and James Stewart (here), who carried out their own interviews with 7/7 commuters at Luton station on August 23. According to their information, on 7/7 'it was physically impossible for the "supposed" London bombers to be filmed at 7.22 am at Luton station and also catch a train which arrived at Kings Cross prior to being filmed at 8.26 am.' Although there was a train at 7.24 am which arrived at Kings Cross at 8.20 am, Kollerstrom and Stewart found that it 'took 3 Minutes 35 Seconds to walk from the ground floor entrance, up and over to the ticket office, and back down to the London Platforms 1 & 3, without even including any time to purchase a ticket.' The bombers therefore could not have been on board the 7.24 am train unless it was running late. (If the train did depart a few minutes late, thereby enabling the four men to jump on board, why have the police told us they were on the 7.40 am train, which was cancelled?)

Since the public still hasn't been given a coherent story of how the alleged bombers got to London, I remain extremely sceptical about any allegations as to what they might have done once (if) they got there. The latest 'disclosures' should have us all holding our noses - although doing so rather makes it difficult to applaud Kollerstrom and Stewart for their admirable efforts in undermining a crucial part of the London bombings hoax.

AN ABSOLUTE MUST: Ralph Schoenman and Mya Shone's excellent commentary on the de Menezes murder here. This one-hour radio programme is the only sane and sensible commentary to be found anywhere about this festering sore on the British body politic and its true meaning. British civil liberties are history, folks! (Australians beware - you're next.)

Investigating the intellectual roots of the so-called 'French malaise' has become my chief preoccupation over the last few weeks. As part of my ongoing investigation, I turned up an interesting book - On the Brink (1999) by an English writer, Jonathan Fenby. Although supposedly a Francophile, Fenby's book contains a good deal of derogatory commentary about France, a country which he measures by English standards and generally finds wanting. Although this raises questions as to the extent of his purported Francophilia, this is pretty much as you'd expect from someone who used to edit The Economist.

After noting the wealth of statistics he cites to bolster the case against France, I thought I would examine some of his claims in detail. What I have found is a mass of unflattering statistics that initially overwhelm the reader, but very few of which withstand close scrutiny. This is therefore the first post in what will be a series of examinations of the claims made in On the Brink, as well as other Anglocentric writers who have it in for the French model.

According to Fenby, 'Spending on drugs to soothe the nervous system is 50 per cent higher [in France] than in Britain and twice that in Italy.'

This sounds bad, doesn't it? I mean, it looks like the French must be suffering from some really terrible mental health problems.

The reality is considerably more complicated (and more interesting)!

Spending on psychotropic medications has increased dramatically over the last 15 years in all OECD countries, largely because many new such drugs were invented in this period. (See Frank et al. "Mental Health Policy and Psychotropic Drugs," The Milbank Quarterly 83.2, 2005), pp. 271-298.) They are regarded by the UN as overprescribed in virtually all western countries. (SOURCE)

Since relatively little information has been gathered on this subject from a cross-national perspective, it is in fact much too early to say whether the consumption of such drugs tells us something about the mental health of the people of a specific country or other factors, such as the willingness of public health systems to prescribe them, the willingness of individuals to experiment with them, or their addictiveness, which encourages people to continue to take them long after the need to do so has ceased. Also, as the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) warns, 'Conclusions on the actual level of consumption of psychotropic substances should be drawn with caution, as data on manufacture and trade reported by Governments may not be complete or may not cover all substances. High levels of consumption may, however, indicate overprescription and/or diversion into illicit channels.' (SOURCE: PDF available here)

In terms of the limited body of information available, it is true that, according to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Pharmacy & Therapeutics, Vol 28, Issue 1, February 2003, France has the highest consumption of such drugs in Europe. However, INCB data suggests that this statistic is wrong. According to a survey that measured the average consumption of sedative-hypnotics for the period 1998-2003, France comes well down the list (#20). Fifteen European countries are ahead of France - and one of them, Ireland, ranks first. As for the consumption of anxiolytics, France ranks seventh, behind six other European countries (Slovenia, Belgium, Finland, Switzerland, Portugal and Malta). (See Table IV here)

Admittedly, the U.K. was below France in both categories. However, the U.K. has nothing to crow about. Such drugs are being heavily pushed on British children and adolescents. According to a recent report, a survey of prescription rates for psychotropic drugs for people under 18 covering the period from 1992 to 2001 found that the UK had the highest percentage increase (68 percent) and the lowest was Germany (13 percent). (SOURCE)

What's more, the U.K. is the world leader in the consumption of stimulants, followed by the U.S., Singapore, Australia and South Africa! (France is not even on the list, which is of the top fifty countries.) Since I am not a health professional, I asked a friend who is to explain the meaning of the INCB data to me in laymen's terms. His response? 'Well, the French are a little on the anxious side but the British are extremely depressed.'

I think that just about says it all.

The controversy surrounding the police murder in London of Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes is not going to go away soon. Thanks to the leaking of inside police documents this week, we have learned that  the police account of the slaying, which was already falling apart, is at odds with the real story in every conceivable detail. The shocking mendacity of the U.K. police now forces us to ask hard questions about the integrity of the eyewitnesses, whose accounts were apparently given immediately after the shooting itself, which tended to depict de Menezes as dangerous or highly suspicious - thereby supporting what we now know was a police cover up.
 
As Fintan Dunne reminds us, Mark Whitby, a man widely reported in the media as the member of the public who was closest to the murder, gave an account of what he had seen shortly afterwards that conformed exactly to the official police story. (BBC report here) Whitby's claims - which included the suggestive claim that the man had looked like a Pakistani - therefore inclined many people to accept at face value the story that the police had been engaged in an attempt to eliminate a potential suicide bomber.
 
But we now know that Whitby's story was a crock of lies. Its convergence with the police cover story means that at some stage before he was interviewed by the media he has to have been instructed by somebody as to what to say. It's even likely that he was briefed before the murder took place.

Let's look at the alternatives here. If Whitby was a genuine commuter who just happened have been sitting nearest the spot where the shooting took place, how is that within hours of the event (I don't know exactly when the BBC interviewed him but it was within an hour or two), he had begun spouting a version of the shooting that was completely at odds with anything he could have seen? While he could have been taken aside by the police very shortly after the murder and coached as to what to tell the media, what are the chances that the police would risk pressuring an ordinary member of the public to tell complete lies to the BBC and other media organizations, which would involve that person accepting the risk of being exposed as a liar if he were ever asked to repeat his account in the context of legal proceedings that could potentially arise from such a murder? Most genuine eyewitness would baulk at telling a story which they knew to be at odds with what they had just seen with their own eyes. Yet Whitby tells his story with considerable gusto, suggesting a man who had no qualms whatsoever about recounting a fabrication and no concerns about his account being queried in court. How many bona fide commuters would agree to tell a bogus story and, if pressured to do so, would manage to pull off such a convincing performance?

The only alternative to a coerced witness scenario is that Whitby was planted at Stockwell station as part of the operation so as to ensure that his account would be the first put into circulation by the media (which indeed it was). This means is that the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes was premeditated and that it was the intended result of an operation that had been planned in meticulous detail, down to the fabrication of a cover story that would explain away the killing, as well as the provision of planted witnesses.

And I write 'witnesses' because there may be several other planted witnesses in addition to Whitby.  Other witness accounts are also suspect:
 
'Commuter Anthony Larkin, who was also on the train at Stockwell station, told 5 Live he saw police chasing a man. "I saw these police officers in uniform and out of uniform shouting 'get down, get down', and I saw this guy who appeared to have a bomb belt and wires coming out and people were panicking and I heard two shots being fired."' (BBC report here)
 
A bomb belt and wires coming out????
 
A certain Chris Wells - described as a '28 year old corporate manager' - claims to have seen de Menezes 'jump over the [tube station] barriers and the police officers were chasing after him and everyone was just shouting ‘get out, get out”.'

Jumped over the barriers????

One of the most bizarre accounts came from a certain Teri Godly, who told Sky News that 'A tall Asian guy, shaved head, slight beard, with a rucksack got in front of me.'

Asian? Shaved head? Slight beard? A rucksack????

The BBC also interviewed another alleged commuter, Dan Copeland, whose account also contains a detail at odds with the real story, which is that de Menezes had grabbed the throat of another commuter.

What????
 
It is impossible to reconcile such witness statements with the legend of a police 'mistake.' Their accounts lent too much support to the subsequent police cover up story to have been coincidental.
 
The way things look to me now is that 1) there was a covert operation to eliminate de Menezes and no one else and 2) those responsible would rather have the police seen to have killed an innocent man while overzealously pursuing their duty to protect the public rather than admit that there was a covert operation that successfully brought about de Menezes's elimination.

This leaves the question of why the police might have wanted de Menezes dead. In this piece, F. Napoli of Gibraltar speculates as to whether, as a contract electrician, de Menezes may have known something about the power surge that appears to have been the trigger for the July 7 bombings. This suggestion seems virtually the only explanation for the shooting that would make sense. We badly need an inquiry into this outrageous killing and we need it fast.

This Truthseeker interview with a Luton-Kings Cross commuter strikes me as incredibly important. According to this woman, who arrived at Luton station at about 7.25am on the morning of July 7, the official story of the bombings cannot be true. The public has been told that the four would-be bombers arrived at Luton station at 7.20am and departed for London on the 7.40am train. However, when this commuter arrived she found that both the 7.30am and the 7.40am trains had been cancelled. So the 'bombers' could not have been aboard the 7.40am train because there wasn't one. In fact, she says that a train for London did not depart Luton until about 7.58am.

Let's get this straight. The 'bombers' were supposedly inside Luton station waiting for a train from 7.20am onwards. So if there was no Kings Cross train until about 7.58am, they were inside the station for nearly 40 minutes before they could have gone anywhere. Yet there are no reports of anyone seeing them inside Luton station. Nor have we been shown any CCTV footage of the would-be bombers on the platform(s). What's more, this witness says that there was such uncertainty that commuters were obliged to run between platforms 1, 2 and 3. She gives no indication that during this to and fro-ing she observed any of the four alleged bombers, who would have been extremely conspicuous running in a group from platform to platform with their large rucksacks. The obvious conclusion to draw is that they weren't at Luton station at all that morning.

A final fact to consider, The 7.58am train did not arrive at Kings Cross station until 8.43am. By this time, of course, the 'bombers' are supposed to have been captured on CCTV more than ten minutes before. So here we have another gaping hole in the official story of the London bombings. No wonder the drama centres now on the non-bombings two weeks later.

LIGHT RELIEF: Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, the high priest of globaloney, is one of the daftest writers of our time. At last he gets the review he deserves.