Showing posts sorted by relevance for query caustic logic. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query caustic logic. Sort by date Show all posts

Friday 28 November 2014

Impossible to ethically continue supporting the investigation and verdict

What follows is an item posted on this blog on this date in 2010:

Old wounds that need re-opened

This is the heading over a long post on Caustic Logic's blog The Lockerbie Divide. The post consists of a thoughtful discussion of Father Pat Keegans's recent letter to US Lockerbie families and of the reaction quoted in the original report in The Herald from one US relative, to the effect that an inquiry into the safety of the conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi would "open old wounds".

The questions that Caustic Logic poses to the US relatives are questions that can equally be addressed to the Scottish Government which, notwithstanding the findings of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, continues to parrot the mantra that it does “not doubt the safety of the verdict against Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.”

The following are excerpts from Caustic Logic’s article:

Father Keegans and many others seriously feel that something is deeply wrong with this case. It's not denial or fevered imagination telling them this, but the facts themselves. The facts presented and those hidden, all considered in detail, and weighed critically, show entirely too much grounds for doubt to ethically continue supporting the investigation and verdict without reservation.  No matter how unlikely or absurd it might seem to those with the wounds they consider closed, many are feeling constantly torn open and unhealed. And they're the better-informed. (...)

Professor Robert Black recently called the unreasonable conviction a "logjam," being used as an "excuse" by the UK (and US) governments to prevent another look, which they both greatly fear [source]. It's true. Not a single piece of relevant evidence against Megrahi can be shown to have all of these traits that real honest evidence usually has:
- physically plausible
- logically consistent with a remotely sane plan
- properly examined and documented
- obtained without entangling million-dollar dreams
- obtained from people who aren't chronic liars (like ... Giaka)
- read properly without undue dismissal of key factors like dates of key events
- no contrary facts that were simply brushed aside with no good reason

Americans may be okay with all of this, but they shouldn't be so judgmental and dismissive against those who do in fact have a problem with a sham "investigation" calling itself justice and good metaphorical surgery. The murder of 270 human beings was supposed to be investigated right, but it wasn't. It was supposed to be tried reasonably, but wasn't. These errors were supposed to be resolved in the appeals process, but weren't. That leaves us with it still needing to be fixed one way or another. It might be gotten right for the history books in a few more decades, or possibly, with some courage and vision, tenacity and luck and grace, even in news articles during our own lifetimes.

Sunday 28 November 2010

Old wounds that need re-opened

This is the heading over a long post on Caustic Logic's blog The Lockerbie Divide. The post consists of a thoughtful discussion of Father Pat Keegans's recent letter to US Lockerbie families and of the reaction quoted in the original report in The Herald from one US relative, to the effect that an inquiry into the safety of the conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi would "open old wounds".

The questions that Caustic Logic poses to the US relatives are questions that can equally be addressed to the Scottish Government which, notwithstanding the findings of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, continues to parrot the mantra that it does "not doubt the safety of the verdict against Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.”

Saturday 12 December 2009

A treat from Caustic Logic

The three most recent Lockerbie-related posts on Adam (Caustic Logic) Larson's blog The 12/7-9/11 Treadmill and Beyond are a delight. They can be read here, here and here.

I am confident that all of my readers, unlike some of those commenting directly on Adam's posts, will appreciate his beguiling irony.

Tuesday 12 May 2015

The dodgy timer fragment sees the light of day

It was (apparently) on this date in 1989 that Dr Thomas Hayes of the Royal Armaments Research and Development Establishment (RARDE) discovered amongst Lockerbie debris a fragment of circuit board embedded in a shirt collar. This became PT35(b) -- the notorious dodgy timer fragment. The story of the discovery and how it was recorded is narrated an article headed Page 51 and its Environs on Caustic Logic’s blog The Lockerbie Divide. The dialogue between Caustic Logic and Rolfe in the comments following the blogpost is also a mine of information.

Wednesday 21 November 2018

How Megrahi came to be convicted of the Lockerbie bombing

For the first time since 2011 a new item was published yesterday on Adam J Larson (Caustic Logic)'s magnificent blog The Lockerbie Divide. After a short introduction by Caustic Logic there follows a long article by Kevin Bannon entitled How Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi became convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. The principal thesis of the article is that the representation accorded to Megrahi by his legal team at the Zeist trial and at the first appeal was gravely defective and that these deficiencies contributed in no small way to his wrongful conviction and to the failure of his appeal. 

The article consists of copiously-referenced sections headed:  

The bombing 
Identification of al-Megrahi
From indictment to conviction
Supplementary evidence 
A defence laid bare 
The appeal 
Petty cash and big money 
Metamorphosis of testimony 
A miscarriage 
Postscript. 

This is an important contribution that should be read by anyone with an interest in the Lockerbie bombing and the conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.

Monday 25 January 2010

New Lockerbie blog

A warm welcome to Caustic Logic's new blog The Lockerbie Divide. This contains a series of articles setting out and commenting on the evidence against Megrahi, as well as providing useful links to primary and secondary sources, including many of the documentary films made about the Lockerbie disaster.

I came across the new blog while doing one of my periodical trawls on Google BlogSearch. Caustic Logic tells me that he would have preferred some more lead-in time before publicising the site. He writes:

"Hey, thanks for yet another plug. I wasn't quite ready to announce the new site at large, but close enough. I was hoping you could include this, or something to this effect, in that post?

"For The Lockerbie Divide, which is about ready to announce to the experts anyway, if not the whole world, I'm hoping for input from others. Opinion/analysis essays as well as, especially, just filling in slots like "London Origin Theory" or "Megrahi's links to Mebo", Megrahi's bank account", or "Origins of the drugs theory". Especially I'd be honored to invite Nennt mich einfach Adam!, Aku, Baz, Ebol, Frank Duggan, Michael Follon, Patrick Haseldine, Richard Marquise, Charles, Quincey Riddle, Rolfe, Ruth, Sfm and others I've run into round here. Those interested in contributing directly or with submissions, can contact me by e-mail at: caustic_logic@yahoo.com

"The site name and surface approach are changeable. So far I'm going for a mountain (divide) theme - learning is climbing. I have specific ideas of "surface material" that viewers will see first/grab onto, but would like input there as well. Heck, just criticism and general ideas are valuable."

Saturday 16 August 2014

The London origin theory

[This morning, by chance, I rediscovered an article dating from July 2010 headed The London Origin Theory by Caustic Logic on his website The Lockerbie Divide. The leading exposition of this theory is now, of course, to be found in Dr Morag Kerr’s superb book Adequately Explained by Stupidity? Lockerbie, Luggage and Lies. However, Caustic Logic’s piece deserves attention, too. So here it is:]

“I want to know when the bomb was placed on the plane and by whom. We have to look more closely into the "London theory" – that the bomb was placed on the plane at Heathrow and not in Malta.” - Hans Köchler, independent UN observer at Zeist trial, 21 Aug 2009 (Source)

"If I was determined to bring down an airplane, I would have put [the bomb] on in London." - Robert Baer, 'former' CIA agent and weapons expert, who doesn't buy the Libyans-did-it story line.

The London Origin theory has emerged as the most logical explanation for what happened to Pan Am 103 on December 21 1988. The official story, all the most widely-seen revisionist arguments, and even Megrahi's defense team's curious "special defense of incrimination" drew on elements of the drug swap theory, with the bomb coming in from Germany or further afield. Megrahi's counsel William Taylor QC did however give reasons to suspect a  London origin (...) to the trial judges and summarized at trial's end in 2001:  “My submission is that all of the above render the choice of Heathrow a much more likely one [than Malta]. And when that possibility is considered, one finds that there is a compelling body of evidence that points to Heathrow as being the point of ingestion.” [day 82 p9862]

But in the earliest days of the investigation, January and February 1989, British investigators labored to clear Heathrow Airport of any lapses and ensure that the bomb's origin would have to be found elsewhere. Years of confusion ensued... (see "Counter-Arguments" below for more on the dismissal of the London theory).

Direct Evidence For the Theory
Among the first clues came from finding where the plane failed, and what luggage container the blast originated in. Container AVE4041 in forward left cargo hold, position 14L, was decided within a few days. The container's blasted out remains were found and reassembled enough to show the blast was down at the bottom of the container, in the aft outboard corner. It had been in the spot closest to the hull, only 25" from the thin and aged skin of Maid of the seas.

Unfortunately, the exact placement, origin, or even number of suitcases in that box was hard to pin down. Records and witnesses helped decide 4041 was loaded with a few bags (6-8 or so) of (apparently) interline luggage, then filled up with a few dozen cases from the feeder/first leg flight 103A out of Frankfurt. But within this generally imprecise body of memories, one stands out as of amazing possible significance.

This was always the hard part to get around in order to reject the initially obvious Heathrow introduction theory. A Pan Am worker mentioned to police right after the attack said he saw two brown hardshell samsonite suitcases, placed on the floor of container 4041. The position of these was side-by-side from the far left of the floor, at the (loading) front of the container. If the bags had been later stacked one on the other and the top bag slid a few inches left, it would be in the perfect spot to match the explosion center - aft outboard corner, second suitcase from the bottom - where just such case detonated.

An amazing lead, investigators almost seem to have tried to not follow this one.  Since the cases Bedford saw were on the floor when he saw them, and the blast seemed to have happened one layer up from that, they decided these cases were a coincidence. They must have been moved across the container, and replaced in that lower corner with an identical case from Germany, on top of some other damaged Frankfurt-originating luggage. The leaps of faith here are simply alarming.

The Bedford story is covered in great detail at this site, with the works so far compiled at the link above.

Break-in Reported
A security guard at heathrow Airport reported a break-in at terminal 3 around 12:30 am on  December 21. Ray Manly's report, of a padlock on the floor "cut like butter" was covered up for over a decade. Even at trial in 2000, the defense was not allowed to know of this. Manly came forward in 2001 with the story, soon verified by the long-suppressed police reports. (...)


Circumstantial Evidence For the Theory
The 38-Minute Coincidence
Aside from its crew and perhaps some cargo that (probably) doesn't matter here, the 747 Clipper Maid of the Seas landed empty at London's Heathrow airport mid-day December 21, 1988. There the plane took on a load of 243 passengers and their luggage, and took off at 6:25pm for New York as Pan Am Flight 103. Clearly, the bomb went on the plane at London, but the question that comes quickly behind it is where did it come from before that? A van in the parking lot, or another plane?

Such clues were vital to tracking down the perpetrators, and should be embraced when they're found. The time of explosion itself is a valuable clue - 38 minutes after leaving the ground - is a known hallmark of the altimeter bombs made just weeks earlier by terrorist bomb-maker and "double agent" Marwan Khreesat. He had produced four altimeter-triggered, radio-disguised bombs, set to detonate less than an hour after takeoff. Each of the others was a bit different, but the one that was captured and tested thoroughly would have blown up about 45-50 minutes after takeoff.  

The timing compatibility with a Khreesat bomb loaded at London notwithstanding, it's been officially decided and legally established that was a Libyan-ordered and set MST-13 timer that told the bomb to go off over Lockerbie. Officially, legally, by the evidence led at trial, it's an asbolute coincidence the timing so resembles the method first suspected.

Operational Security
When confronted with the official story of a Malta-Germany-London, the most obvious averse reaction of those who know air travel operations is to ridicule the notion that an airline bomb would make any sense being trusted to so many switches. Any functional security screen or time delay along the way coulld screw up the whole operation with a timer-based device as alleged. A trip from Frankfurt only is often suggested to replace this, but it too has one too many stops for a Khreesat bomb, and still a high chanced of the bomb being delayed or intercepted. If one could pierce security at any of the three airports, and it obviously happened at one of them, Heathrow would give one the best chance for success and the only way for a Khreesat bomb to have done what happened.   

Former head of security for British Airways, Denis Phipps, The Maltese Double Cross:
“If a device had been infiltrated into the system at Malta, it would have been necessary for that device to have been carried in an aircraft in the sector from Malta to Frankfurt, to have gone through a handling process, been carried on an aircraft through the sector from Frankfurt to Heathrow, and then timed to detonate during the final sector, Heathrow to New York, presumably whilst the aircraft was over the ocean to avoid discovery of forensic evidence …  one has to say, um, are - terrorists  - idiots? Don’t terrorists plan to have a reasonable degree of success?"  
Explosive Efficacy
If one places a device at the airport the target leaves from, rather than remotely through multiple flights, a new possibility is opened up - depending on the nature and depth of his penetration, a determined terrorist could place the bag himself and chose where in the container it went. As it happened, the bomb in PA103 was placed in the best spot (for the terrorists), and one of the few that could have even worked - the lower outboard quadrant, more or less on the sloping floor nearest the hull. Figure F13 (below) of the AAIB's report shows the deduced center of explosion that officially was achieved by accident. Considering even there, all that was blows from the hull was a chunk the size of a dinner plate. That's all it took, but it wouldn't happen at all if the bomb had wound up in the upper inboard corner, or even in the middle.

It is true, as some have pointed out, that there'd be no guarantee any cases placed in that deadly corner would stay there. But terrorists simply can't wait for guarantees. Certainly having it in the right spot, for sure, at one point, is better than relying on pure chance. Perhaps with this in mind, famous former CIA agent Robert Baer, who may have direct experience in this for all we know, has said:
"I used to teach explosives. The last thing you want to do is put a bomb on in a place like Malta and have two stops along the way ... you couldn't count on this thing hitting its target. ... Malta would not have been my first choice. It would have been London. If I was determined to bring down an airplane, I would have put it on in London." Flight into Darkness video, part two, 5:25
Counter Arguments Addressed
Forensics and the Frankfurt Link to the Rescue
UK and Germany had both been unsettled by the possibility their security forces had allowed the horror of Lockerbie to pass through. Some of their early wrangling is addressed in the post "What did the Germans Know?" British investigators decided the blast - 10 inches above the container floor - was above any possible non-Frankfurt luggage and therefore had to be some other brown, hardshell Samsonite from the one(s) Bedford described, that must have been from the feeder 103A. It was unsound reasoning and wishful thinking until the Erac printout emerged months later, showing an item apparently coming from Malta, to PA103, via Frankfurt.

The Malta Link to the Rescue
The Erac printout, emerging months after the attack from an employee's locker after all official copies somehow disappeared, sealed the deal for Malta origin. But the tiny island nation had already been mentioned in the evidence, as the place of manufacture for some of it. As it so happened, the Erac (Frankfurt) printout in August 1989 spurred a closer look, and the clothes were traced to a store on Malta where Tony Gauci was found...

Malta-based Libyan defector Abdul Majid Giaka was already on file with the culprits - Megrahi and Fhimah - that some hoped Tony saw one of. By late February 1991, they had a sort of identification of Megrahi from the shopkeeper.  A few months later, Giaka was finally removed to safety and first mentioned the suitcase - possibly the same model Bedford reported - seen on Malta the day before it reappeared on that dubious printout leaving there. The story is clearly false, but formed one basis of the U.S. indictment against Megrahi and Fhimah in November 1991.

And finally, Air Malta has airtight records that the 55 bags on flight 180 were all claimed by its 39 passengers. They've shown this in court, like in their libel suit against Granada television. How the bomb was sneaked around Air Malta's system was never explained or substantiated even back when Fhimah was accepted as an accomplice. Investigators tried to find evidence of Maltese collusion or corruption or incompetence, but came up only with 'well, they must have done it somehow.' After the dismissal of Giaka's Malta stories, the Zeist judges  found that accomplice not guilty, further complicating the feat for Megrahi. They admit it's hard to see just how he did it, but he must have. Guilty.

Friday 12 May 2017

Discovery of circuit board fragment PT35B

It was (apparently) on this date in 1989 that Dr Thomas Hayes of the Royal Armaments Research and Development Establishment (RARDE) discovered amongst Lockerbie debris a fragment of circuit board embedded in a shirt collar. This became PT35(b) -- the notorious dodgy timer fragment. The story of the discovery and how it was recorded is narrated an article headed Page 51 and its Environs on Caustic Logic’s blog The Lockerbie Divide. The dialogue between Caustic Logic and Rolfe in the comments following the blogpost is also a mine of information. Another useful source of enlightenment is Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer’s PT35B website.

Thursday 13 January 2011

Responses to Debra J Saunders

On 28 December 2010 the San Francisco Chronicle published an article by conservative columnist Debra J Saunders headlined "Libya, Lockerbie and commercial warfare" which I referred to at the time in this post. Today on his blog The Lockerbie Divide Caustic Logic publishes two responses to Ms Saunders's article, one from Michael Follon and one from Caustic Logic himself. They can be read here.

Wednesday 15 June 2011

Doubts over new Lockerbie trial

[This is the headline over a brief report in today's edition of The Independent. It reads as follows:]

Experts cast doubt on claims yesterday that the Libyan airline employee cleared of the Lockerbie bombing could stand trial under double jeopardy laws.

Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah was found not guilty of assisting his friend and colleague Abdelbaset al-Megrahi in planting the bomb on board Pan AM flight 103 in 1988 that claimed 270 lives.

Families of those who died had said they hoped that a new prosecution could shine fresh light on the case following the original trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands in 2001.

But Professor Robert Black QC, the architect of the legal process which led to the conviction of Megrahi, said it was highly unlikely that a new unit set up to examine unsolved cases under Scottish Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland, would go ahead with a prosecution.

[Two interesting blog posts have emerged following the Aljazeera documentary (which can be watched on You Tube here). The first, Al Jazeera on Al Megrahi..., is on bensix's Back towards the locus and the second, Two secondary suitcases?, on Caustic Logic's The Lockerbie divide.

I am delighted to see that my second home, South Africa, has now notched up 1000 unique visitors on Flag Counter. Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika!]

Monday 9 November 2015

Germans link Heathrow with Lockerbie bomb

[This is the headline over an article by David Pallister that was published in The Guardian on this date in 1989. It is no longer to be found on the newspaper’s website, but is reproduced on Caustic Logic’s website The Lockerbie Divide:]

West German forensic experts have discovered evidence which suggests that the bomb which brought down Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie last December could have been loaded at Heathrow.

The evidence comes from an examination of three other bombs made by the Palestinian group believed to be responsible for the attack. It casts serious doubt on the theory that the bomb was placed on an earlier connecting flight.

All three devices were identically constructed, with electronic timers set to detonate the Semtex explosive within 43 to 46 minutes of being activated by a barometric pressure trigger at about 3,000 feet. [RB: These timings are not wholly accurate.] The West German police believe they were destined for El Al planes or flights to Tel Aviv.

If the Lockerbie bomb was the same, it would have had to have been placed on board the jumbo at Heathrow, rather than at Frankfurt, Malta or Cyprus - the three possibilities so far publicly canvassed.

The bombs have been connected with the terrorist cell run in West Germany by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command. The first was found in October 1988 in a radio cassette player in a car driven by Hafez Dalkamoni, who has been identified as a senior member of the PFLP-GC. He is awaiting trial in Frankfurt for a bomb attack on a railway in Lower Saxony in August 1987.

The discovery of the cassette bomb led to warnings from the West Germans to airlines and other western governments in November.

In April this year West German police found three more devices in the basement of a house owned by one of Dalkamoni's relatives in the town of Neuss. One exploded at the Wiesbaden headquarters of the BKA, the federal criminal investigation agency, killing a bomb disposal expert.

The three unexploded devices were all made by the same man. The BKA thinks he was the man arrested with Dalkamoni, Marwan Khreesat, who was mysteriously released without charge two weeks later, along with 12 other Palestinians arrested in October. Khreesat, it has been alleged, was probably an agent working for either Jordanian or West German intelligence, or both.

The forensic experts, working for the BKA, believe the devices were designed to withstand examination by El Al's pressure chambers which are used to screen baggage.

Dr Jim Swire, the spokesman for the UK Families-Flight 103 group, believes the findings could point to the Lockerbie bomb, which was also in a cassette player, being loaded at Heathrow.

The plane took off at 6.25pm and disappeared off the radar screens between 53 and 54 minutes later [RB: Actually 38 minutes later, at 7:03]. It takes between seven and 10 minutes to climb to 3,000 feet, which fits in precisely with the timing system on the other bombs.

Monday 11 May 2015

Mrs Horton's mysterious manual

[What follows is an excerpt from a report on proceedings at the Lockerbie trial published on this date in 2000 on the BBC News website:]

Gwendoline Horton, a witness, described how she helped gather debris in the fields near her home in Northumberland.

Among her finds was what looked to be "a document relating to a radio cassette player", she told the court.

Ex-police constable Brian Walton, to whom Ms Horton handed in the item, identified it as "pieces of an instruction handbook".

Asked what had struck him about the object, Mr Walton said: "It had tiny bits of singe on some of the edges of the pieces."

[RB: Mrs Horton’s find was both significant and mysterious. Read all about it on Caustic Logic’s blog The Lockerbie Divide here and here.]

Saturday 23 January 2016

Shocking admissions about date of Malta purchases

A long journey, followed by a power cut, made it impossible for me to post to this blog yesterday, 22 January. Here is what I would have posted had circumstances permitted:

[On this date in 2010 an article headed Harry Bell and Paul Gauci on the date of purchase: two shocking admissions was published on Adam "Caustic Logic" Larson's blog The 12/7-9/11 Treadmill and Beyond. The admissions relate to the date of purchase in Mary's House, Sliema, of the clothes that, in the official explanation of the Lockerbie disaster, were in the brown Samsonite suitcase along with the bomb. It was essential to the prosecution case against Megrahi that the date of purchase was shown to be 7 December 1988 (when Megrahi was on Malta) and not 23 November (when he was not). The following are excerpts from the article:]

Detective Inspector Harry Bell, who headed the Scottish police effort on Malta and was the main contact point for the Gaucis, was interviewed in 2006 by the SCCRC [Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission]. Some extracts were re-printed in Megrahi's rock-solid grounds of appeal.

Excerpts from there:

DI Bell SCCRC interview (25-26/7/06)
"...The evidence of the football matches was confusing and in the end we did not manage to bottom it out..."
"...I am asked whether at the time I felt that the evidence of the football matches was strongly indicative of 7th December 1988 as the purchase date. No, I did not. Both dates 23rd Nov and 7th Dec 1988 looked likely.
"...It really has to be acknowledged how confusing this all was. No date was signficant for me at the time. Ultimately it was the applicant's [Megrahi’s] presence on the island on 7th December 1988 that persuaded me that the purchase took place on that date. Paul specified 7th December when I met with him on 14th December 1989 and I recorded this..."

The bolded is a shocking admission of just what many had guessed. And then, almost as an afterthought (and a quick one I'd venture) "Paul specified 7th December" as the right day, during a meeting of "14th December 1989." He even has the date memorized! No direct quotes provided there of this meeting. But two months earlier, in a 19 October meeting with the same Harry Bell, he clearly specified the other day. In a police report obtained by Private Eye and published in Paul Foot's 2000 booklet Lockerbie: The Flight from Justice, Mr. Gauci said:

“I was shown a list of European football matches I know as UEFA. I checked all the games and dates. I am of the opinion that the game I watched on TV was on 23 November, 1988: SC Dynamo Dresden v AS Roma. On checking the 7th December 1988, I can say that I watched AS Roma v Dynamo Dresden in the afternoon. All the other games were played in the evening. I can say for certain I watched the Dresden v Roma game. On the basis that there were two games played during the afternoon of 23 November and only one on the afternoon of 7th December, I would say that the 23rd November 1988 was the date in question.” [Foot, 2000, p 21]

Monday 25 October 2010

Crashing the petition

[This is the heading over a post today by Caustic Logic on his blog The Lockerbie Divide. It reads in part:]

Conspiracy theories naturally arise among many commentators [RB: referring to commentators here, on this blog], naturally I think given the duplicitous handling of this case from the beginning. Others have voiced a more generous interpretation. For example, Robert Forrester (as "Quincey Riddle") said somewhere in there, three days ago, when people were starting to voice suspicions:

JFM deals in verifiable facts only. The facts concerning the current difficulties on the Scottish Parliament Petitions Site are at present:
1 The site crashed in the early hours of 21/10/10.
2 BT is still working on a solution.
[...] Speaking personally, I do not hold with the contention that those whom JFM is confronting on the Lockerbie/Zeist case are attempting to sabotage the petition. There are far more effective methods of dealing with us, also including the tried and tested 'just-ignore-them' tactic. To do something as blatant as this would simply present JFM with yet another weapon to use against them.


That's a darn good point, and considering the known issues with the occoasional ill-managed government site, and how inundated as this one was by signers and viewers, something along these lines should be the obvious default conclusion. But the days dragged on without a fix and, by number, the comments espousing the paranoiac view are predominating. (...)

Forrester continued, helping put this in perspective:

Once the petition comes down on the 28/10/10, we will be able to assess any impact this breakdown may have had. However, given that the JFM petition went online on the 8/10/10 and was around the 1,500 mark at the time of the crash, there are good grounds for concluding that it had already broken existing records for the number of signees over time. [...] the average number of signees per day has been around a steady 100 plus. [...] the phenomenal response to the petition has already made a very significant point, and one which cannot easily be ignored, even if the site remains down right up to the 28/10/10. [...] I believe in sporting circles that could be described as something of 'a result'. (...)

Let's do what we can to keep the word out there for a few more days, encourage e-mail submissions unless/until the petition is restored. And then come Thursday it'll be time to move on to the next things as we wait and see. Any evil plot that may lurk here has already failed (unless it's very clever and will unfurl itself in our midst later on...).

[How to sign by SMS is explained here and how to sign by e-mail here.]

Wednesday 23 December 2009

Compare and contrast

"Lucy, Lucy, Lucy. How did you get to be 'Chief Reporter?' I would be happy to give you the facts if you inquired. Fr Keegans was not invited to address the Pan Am 103 memorial service. In previous years, we have asked him if he would like us to read a statement from him, as a number of US families are very fond of him. He was not going to address the group, and we would have read his note this year except that it was deemed by the Board, not by me, to be inappropriate for a memorial service. We try to avoid any political statements or any discussions of the convicted bomber, so Fr Keegans' note was sent out to the families on our mailing list rather than read at the cemetery on December 21st.

"I hope you enjoyed your visit to Libya. I am sure they all took good care of you there. Have a blessed Christmas and a healthy New Year."

[The above is the text of an e-mail sent to Lucy Adams, Chief Reporter of The Herald, by Frank Duggan, President of the US relatives' group Victims of Pan Am 103 Inc.]

"You taught us to find the strength to carry on even when the world seems to make no sense at all, as it did again this past year. I will not recount those events here. But on behalf of President Obama, and on behalf of his administration, let me say this. The evidence was clear. The trial was fair. The guilt of Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi was proven beyond a reasonable doubt. His conviction stands. The sentence was just. And nothing — not his unjustified release and certainly not a deplorable scene on a tarmac in Tripoli — will ever change those facts or wash the guilt from his hands or from the hands of those who assisted him in carrying out this heinous crime."

[The above is an excerpt from the address delivered at the Arlington ceremony by John O Brennan who, a year before his Arlington address, withdrew his candidacy for the post of Director of the CIA in circumstances which are discussed here on the politics and government blog of The New York Times.

An excellent commentary by Adam "Caustic Logic" Larson entitled "Keeping the politics out of Arlington" can be read here on his blog The 12/7-9/11 Treadmill and Beyond.]