"As the people I've interviewed for this film have been primarily American, aside from a handful of people from Lockerbie itself, the interviews I have shot so far are leaning heavily towards the side that Megrahi is guilty. As an objective journalist and filmmaker, I feel I must include the voice of the opposition to counterbalance the views that have divided the people of the UK vs US. (...)
"I am writing to formally ask for an interview with you for this film. With your expertise and your prominence with regards to the case/trial I feel you are an invaluable voice in this story. Please consider this opportunity, and feel free to ask me any questions about me and my film. (...)
"You can rest assured the film itself will be held to the highest journalistic standards."
This is what the documentary maker wrote. The resulting filmed interview took place yesterday.
For more than an hour, all was unexceptional, the questioning covering my upbringing in Lockerbie, my recollections of the event itself, how I became involved in attempting to bring about a trial and my views about the trial itself and the conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi. I covered at some length my concerns about the flimsiness of the evidence against him, concerns in many instances shared by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission in its 2007 report on Megrahi's conviction.
But then the entire tone of the proceedings changed. How could I hold myself out in the media as an expert when I had advised the Libyan government in relation to the Lockerbie case? The fact that I had never hidden this and it was in the public domain from the time that I first went public (in late 1997) with my January-1994 scheme for a non-jury trial in the Netherlands cut no ice with the interviewer. And if not all media outlets gave prominence to my contacts with the Libyan government, this was my fault rather than that of the journalists and media editorial staff concerned. How could I justify seeking to undermine the verdict of the Zeist court? The detailed account that I had given, and now attempted to give again, of the crucial instances in which the judges' conclusions were simply contrary to the evidence were swept aside, as were the concerns expressed by the SCCRC. After about half an hour of this, I brought the interview to an end and left the hotel room in which it had been held. This was precisely what the interviewer had been seeking to achieve. With hand-held camera running, I was followed through the hotel corridors with the interviewer ranting, amongst other things, "Do you sleep at night?"
I wonder what will happen to the first hour's recorded material? It contains lots of interesting stuff. But I doubt if it will ever see the light of day. The documentary maker had decided that what his film needed was a villain, and I was cast in the role. It will no doubt go down well in the United States and in certain Crown Office and police circles. It may also, for a time, serve to deflect attention from the terrible miscarriage of justice suffered by Abdelbaset Megrahi. But the truth will ultimately prevail.
Magna est veritas et praevalebit.
As you say Professor B, the truth is mighty indeed: so mighty that it often sends people like these journalists into a frenzy and leads them to attack you in the way they did.
ReplyDeleteWhat an awful experience for you.
Oh dear. It's very difficult to avoid giving these people the footage they want when they're in that frame of mind.
ReplyDeleteI suppose the film is just going to take Megrahi's guilt as a given, without examining why. Or we'll be told a lot of irrelevant facts, like he was travelling undercover, and was a JSO officer, and Libya in the 1980s did some very bad things. It will be stated as incontrovertible fact that Tony Gauci positively recognised him as having been the purchaser of the clothes, and that an unaccompanied item of baggage (probably stated to be known to be the bomb) travelled from Luqa to Frankfurt that morning.
I wish people would actually look at what Frank Duggan is saying, rather than assuming he knows what he's talking about - because as far as I can see he's making it up as he goes along.
Wow, this is an interesting little episode. "Objective" was it? I for one look forward to analyzing the brilliant black-casting of Professor Black should that come about. I only hope we don't spook the producers from following through on another cheap short shot that heralds only the utter bankruptcy of the official story and its supporters.
ReplyDeleteWhy, it's good to hear he had the courage to abuse a lone Professor for questioning the British and American establishments. As they say, pwnd!
ReplyDeleteAs far as sleeping goes, I'd like to know how the Zeist judges and Colin Boyd manage it. If Prof. Black is wrong (in some parallel universe....), then no injustice has actually been done. If he's right (that would be this universe we're currently inhabiting), these guys sent an innocent defendant to jail in a foreign country and branded him as an international hate figure.
ReplyDeleteInteresting. As yet, except for a little run-in with the famous non-relative Mr Frank Duggan I have not been castigated.
ReplyDeleteWith my extreme US/Iran did it views, I could well be a target.
Thank you for sharing this with us, though until the film is out it is difficult to see how to counter. it.
Were you by any chance given a copy of the film that was made; simply putting a version with the reasonable questions at the start and the denunciation at the end would be a way to counter the false impression this so-called journalist seeks to make.
Can we devise a set of ground-rules for other Lockerbie commentators to work by (such as a copy of the whole interview as made) so we can be advised as to how to deal with the enemy.
And above all is this the work of one sensation seeking jaded journalist, or is it backed by "the forces of darkness".
A very quick search, I would think discover whether this man has say "agency credentials". I would offer to try to find out, if you like - data mining has in the past produced a number of different and virtually hidden links an characters.
Like Mr Laurie Johnson - who he? Butter ask me privately.
I am desperately sorry to learn of your experience, Professor Black. Your customary openness and fairness have been exploited. In fact I’m a bit surprised that such things haven’t happened before. Let’s hope that truth does indeed prevail within the lifetimes of those most affected (and those of the rancid rabid lackeys of the establishment media).
ReplyDeleteOh dear. Was this simply a one-on-one setup, no other parties present?
ReplyDeleteI think it was very wise of you to make public the full text of the original request to meet with you Prof B. The reality was very different from what these people promised and their lack of integrity is now exposed for all to see.
ReplyDeleteSadly there are those who simply cannot tolerate certain aspects of this case. They want to believe the right man was convicted and anything which challenges this will evoke hostility, aggression and low tactics. Your own confidence in putting your case clearly riled them. As you said yourself the truth is mighty. Well done you.
Seems like a lot of UK folks are on your side Prof. Black. I have been involved with the Lockerbie case from December 21,1988 (unfortunately) and am perhaps in a better position to comment on who is and who isn't objective. You, professor, have been professing the innocence of the poor Libyans from day one long before the trial; long before anyone even saw the evidence. Never mind sleeping at night; you should be ashamed of yourself fronting for the Libyan murderers.
ReplyDeleteNever mind objectivity. The rest of us here have nothing to do with Libya, so that can't be an issue.
ReplyDeleteWhat makes you think Megrahi had anything to do with the bombing? Do you think he really did buy those clothes from Tony Gauci, in spite of Tony saying the man who bought them was ten years older and four inches taller and Megrahi merely resembled him? What evidence do you have, even on the balance of probabilities, that the bomb suitcase travelled the alleged Malta-Frankfurt-Heathrow route anyway?
These are the issues that have to be confronted, and name-calling doesn't do anyone any good.
Why has there never been a public
ReplyDeleteenquiry into the the matter?
Why have the governments of the day
been allowed to present the 'accepted' narrative?
Why was the suitcase allowed to travel unaccompanied?
Wake up and smell the stink of
collusionand cover up.
The truth will out and there will
be 'mea culpas' ten,twenty years from now when all involved are
safely retired on fat pensions.
Why wait for the truth? Jim Swire
deserves it now.
Andrew, the answer to that is that until the US and UK governments can be embarrassed into holding such an inquiry they never will. Too many people have guilty knowledge or can be demonstrated to know that what went on over Lockerebie is not the cut and shut clean cast Richard Marquise would have us believe but is mired in deceit, fraud, fakery, conveniently slipped memories and plainly convenient forgetting.
ReplyDeleteRolfe: I suppose the film is just going to take Megrahi's guilt as a given, without examining why.
ReplyDeleteJust like the recent STV documentary did.
There have been two types of documentary made on this subject, so far: (i) Human angle - which will always side with feelings of the majority victims. (ii) Alternative theories or conspiracies - which can never prove anything, beyond doubt.
Therefore, maybe it's time to fight fire with fire, and try to interest an independent film-maker to examine the case for Megrahi's innocence via the trial only.
Of course, a documentary that only examined the miscarriage of justice by keeping narrowly to the trial events might not be as interesting as all the diverse alternative conspiracies, but might document, as a useful resource for objective investigators, the legal technical facts behind the (wrong) guilty verdict.
While I think Blogiston's idea is a good one, I think there has been too much written about the trial and virtually all the facts that are presented as clues have fallen by the wayside.
ReplyDeleteI offer any filmmaker my own work as on adifferentviewonlockerbie.blogspot.com as a basis for a really gripping piece of film noir.
Any takers?
Maybe Dan Brown....
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteRolfe: I was being serious. Dan Brown deals in fantasy!
ReplyDeleteI very much agree with Blogiston. I think the reason Lockerbie is often dismissed as "conspiracy theorising" is the concentration by various documentary-makers on nefarious goings-on - drug smuggling, fabrication of evidence, warnings only made available to those "in the know" and so on.
ReplyDeleteMaybe that stuff happened, right enough. But that isn't the reason the conviction was a miscarriage of justice. The reason the conviction was a miscarriage of justice is that the evidence didn't support the verdict even if it was all completely on the level. This is the main point that is so often missing from the sensational presentations.
That was what was so good about Lockerbie: Unfinished Business. There were a couple of places where a larger conspiracy was hinted at (not necessarily wisely in my opinion), but the main thrust of the production was showing how the various pieces of evidence against Megrahi were discredited one at a time until there was nothing left.
A larger-scale production like that, mentioning planting of evidence and so on only as an aside, as something suspected (if at all), and majoring on the weak evidence, the circular reasoning and the whole Giaka scandal, would be very constructive in my opinion.
Rolfe: I was being serious. Dan Brown deals in fantasy!
ReplyDeleteCross-posting here! Blogiston, I seriously agree with you 100%. My "Dan Brown" response was directed at Charles. The details of his theory make the average Dan Brown plot look positively plausible.
Amazing to see that Rolfe agrees with me for once!
ReplyDeleteWhat, you think your own theory is a fantasy? Some self-awareness at last?
ReplyDeleteNo, Rolfe, you silly chump. That we both believe Blogiston has said something good.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, my theory is not fantasy. I have told it with what facts I have been able to glean from the web, and whole parts of it like the extraordinary tale of Mr Behbahani, you have just managed to skate over.
But, where there is unsupported fact, I tell you. Hence the bomb suitcase. Just beacuse it was found on a Lockerbie hillside does not mean it necessarily came out of Pan Am 103. We know that things were dumped there. Ambrosia has come across a very interesting exchange between Hayes and Keen on holes cut in McKee's suitcase.
Now why were they cut? It's no good saying it doesn't matter, for it does, and I've come with a theory of why it was done, and nobody has yet managed to say it's wrong!
Charles: Dan Brown has his limits - even he would find your conspiracy a little far fetched...and like your legal adviser (so brutally) advised, regarding Bush's likely reaction; he would not dignify it, in any manner.
ReplyDeleteThe point is, Blogiston that Bush would not dignify it, not because it was wrong, because any attack on it would be considered by rational observers (which interestingly do not seem to include you ) to conclude that it was true.
ReplyDeleteI'll point out again that any reasonable survey of possible perpetrators must include the US Government/CIA or it is incomplete.
It is simply an argument from incredulity to say the the US government could have had nothing to do with the bombing of Pan Am 103.
Merely saying my story is nonsense or fantasy or I'm a conspiracy theorist is simply name-calling and the first sign of a failed argument.
This is quite an important point. I am not going to abandon my theory and I get increasing coverage according to Google search every time I mention it. Now up to 1190 according to my scoring system.
The CIA know, I hope that if they do anything to me directly, my friends and supporters will immediately spot it. So the CIA has to sit there like the sitting duck, while the blows come raining down.
I think Blogiston's idea of making a film about the Libyans' trial is brilliant. It would bring home not only exactly how the Scottish judiciary etc manipulated the trial but also how trials in general can be fixed.
ReplyDeleteIn giving an account of the trial detailed descriptions could presented of how different tactics were used to bring in the guilty verdict ie undisclosed evidence such as the payment to Gauci or falsified evidence. Focus could be put on the judges and where their loyalties lay.
The cost of making such a film would surely not be too high but made well would surely be highly influential.
Charles:
ReplyDelete1. Insinuating that I am an irrational observer - is by your own convolutions, "name-calling". However, it may be the only factual thing you've ever written.
2. I would re-examine your legal adviser's comments - even lawyers are not immune to irony.
3. It is simply an argument from incredulity to say the the US government could have had nothing to do with the bombing of Pan Am 103. It is simply a wrong argument from first predicate logic to advance the negative of your assertion as being true - as in, the only truth.
4. Don't take too much solace in increasing Google hits as a metric on whether your conspiracy is true, or not. Even Blair's biography is receiving loads of hits right now!
5. Re: last paragraph about CIA. There are probably a few names above you who will disappear first - so that should give you a bit of warning.
A couple of comments on what Blogiston just said. First, we would need some concrete evidence that the US government was complicit in the bombing of PA103. Nothing credible has been produced. One counter-argument is to consider the passengers who joined on the flight from Frankfurt. Very few were German nationals, most were the families of US forces stationed in Germany returning to the US for Christmas. Americans tend to idolise their troops to the point of hagiography. Is it really likely that their government would decide to blow a bunch of them out of the sky on a whim?
ReplyDeleteSecond, Charles's "score" on his pet Google search is increasing because he recently joined the JREF forum to discuss his theory. That forum has a high Google rating, and tends to get indexed high and quickly. (He's currently on a week's suspension for persistent incivility and ignoring moderator instructions though, so he won't be able to continue that campaign till Friday.) Anyway, it's navel-gazing. No evidence at all that anyone is paying particular attention to the theory, and in fact the JREF posters have stomped all over it.
Poor Rolfie.
ReplyDeleteYou really get your knickers in a twist. What really upsets you is that someone has bothered to sit down and consider eall the evidence that counts as evidence and has come up with a theory that you were too lazy to think of for yourself.
So you bluster away at your computer, and no-one will ever come up with a better theory than mine, which I can prove is being shamelessly ignored and suppressed as far as possible by the CIA.
Now why, Rolfie, is my theory apparently causing such a storm? Perhaps because it contains something that suggests it is correct.
Rolfe randi "Pan Am 103" 869
Rolfe "Pan Am 10" 4100
"Charles Norrie" "Pan Am 103" 1170
4100 = 3.5 x 1170 Ergo?
ReplyDeleteIncivility indeed! Even the irrational observer can see how accusing a lady of uncoordinated application of her undergarments got you a ban in the other place.
Charles, the only other person I ever knew who seemed to think there was some significance to how many returns a Google search came up with on his name was a Pakistani homoeopathy proponent who was probably the most impenetrably dense mortal I have ever had the misfortune to debate with.
ReplyDeleteIf you create a lot of pages with those terms, then of course the number of returns will go up. If you frequent a high-ranking forum like the JREF, it will go up faster. This has precisely zero bearing on whether you have any actual credibility.
Until you tell us your theory, Rolfie, it doesn't. Poor old Rolfie.
ReplyDeleteOh, he's not banned, Blogiston, only suspended for a week. Not just for incivility, though that was part of it, but for persistently ignoring repeated requests from the moderators to use the forum's quote function, or at least to do something to distinguish text he was quoting from his own words.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is, that forum has a high google ranking, and new threads get indexed almost before the originator has time to check. It also has quite a lot of people who like debunking silly conspiracy theories, so he got a fair bit of attention before the suspension.
I'm a bit shocked to realise he thinks "argument by Googlefight" (as we dubbed it when Kumar started doing it) has any validity.
Dear Professor Black,
ReplyDeleteThe heading of your latests contribution about vindictive American film-makers reminds me of the late lamented Ivor Cutler's offering in "Life in a Scotch Sitting Room", I do hope he uses uses the harmonium as mood music. You will have to laugh it off as I do my critics, but be assured when you are attacked there will be those around who will supply our tu'ppences of wit to your defence.
ReplyDeleteThere have been two types of documentary made on this subject, so far: (i) Human angle - which will always side with feelings of the majority victims. (ii) Alternative theories or conspiracies - which can never prove anything, beyond doubt.
Therefore, maybe it's time to fight fire with fire, and try to interest an independent film-maker to examine the case for Megrahi's innocence via the trial only.
Are directors just too cynical? The human angle story would appeal to those who need their angels, while a conspiracy tale would grant them a real evil baddie. Your suggestion - while a good one! - doesn't led itself to an emotional narrative arc: 'cos the truth of it is just dishonest and insalutary.
Magna est veritas et praevalet
ReplyDeleteDon't you mean, Magna est veritas et praevalebit? (joking - btw - Romanes Eunt Domus)
Rolfie, in my standard search
ReplyDelete"Pan Am 103" there are only two terms, and a lot of strange folk like Theodore Shackley (if, "who he", you haven't done your research) comes up with a hit or 1,370. Now why? Because he was in charge of the whole Lockerbie project for the CIA, innit!
FOTLMAO!!!!!
ReplyDeleteWell, I have some sympathy, but for a bereaved relative you do have a bizarre sense of humour, I can't help but feel.
ReplyDeleteLaughter, tears, love, hate... thin line. At least I have the bereaved relative motivation in all of this. What's yours, Rolfe?
ReplyDeleteHow pathetic that you all blather on about this, yet very few of you were actually involved. Have you nothing else to do with your lives outside of looking for "clues" in a case that has been judged TWICE?
Until you can actully find a way to do what the families have done, and convince authorities otherwise, Megrahi is
GULTY! GUILTY!!! GUILTY!!!
Til then, I'll continue to snicker about how you carry on withy your merry little pathetic CT ways.
Still completely lacking any coherent argument then? Figured out how to persuade anyone that the bomb suitcase travelled from Malta to Frankfurt yet?
ReplyDeleteHave YOU????
ReplyDeletePROOF???
ReplyDeleteWhat, proof that the bomb suitcase travelled from Malta to Frankfurt? Of course not. There isn't even a "balance of probabilities" case that it did that.
ReplyDeleteWhich gives Megrahi an alibi, as it happens.
Right. That's all you have? And what about his abibi for being at Luqa on the day of the bombing? Traveling on a false passport? His abibi for the lies he told about not being at Luqa that day in his interview with Pierre Sallinger? his alibi for his relations with Bollier? The lies he told when he said he was a "simple man" when in fact he was a JSO officer? His relations with Senussi, and Kussa, Why Kussa showed up at PTA negotiations? Simple, innocent man. Right.
ReplyDeleteSo, how about that meeting in Tripoli??? You defend a man who is a terrorist, but you and your cranks. YES, I said it. CRANKS just like Frank said, when he hung up on that reporter. Just like Black walked out of the interview. Again... Pot... Kettle.
Clearly you all can banter on here, all day long for years on end, but the bottom line is, none of you have made any progress. I went to the UN, I went to the trial, I went to my government along with my fellow family members, and we made progress, we got a result, and the VERDICT IS GUILTY. Stand up, put up, do something that actually makes progress or shut up.
Oh, and let us not forget about Megrahi's millions in his bank account.....and his palatial estate in Tripoli. Simple man. HMMMMMM....
ReplyDelete"How pathetic that you all blather on about this, yet very few of you were actually involved. Have you nothing else to do with your lives outside of looking for "clues" in a case that has been judged TWICE?
ReplyDeleteUntil you can actully find a way to do what the families have done, and convince authorities otherwise, Megrahi is
GULTY! GUILTY!!! GUILTY!!!"
And I suppose Dr Jim Swire is somehow unworthy too judging by this vicious little rant. "The relatives" consist of more than those referred to above and they count just as much.
Furthemore to remotely suggest that no one outwith the relatives has any right to express a view of legal proceedings where decisions were made which directly contradicted the evidence presented is ludicrous, even by American standards. Justice is something all good people should have a healthy interest in. And no one has the right to order anyone else to stay out of the debate. Those who do wish to limit the debate invariably have questionable motives for wanting it that way.
To ignore utterly the payment of millions of dollars by the US government to the star witness at this particular trial is quite something too. For its called bribery and should have no place in any court of law. Such payments render any testimony gained by such means completely unsafe. And the details of those payments which were to be made to the Gauci brothers, by the US government, should have been made public at the trial along with other minor details like the break-in at Heathrow.
I went to the UN, I went to the trial, I went to my government along with my fellow family members, and we made progress, we got a result, and the VERDICT IS GUILTY. Stand up, put up, do something that actually makes progress or shut up
ReplyDeleteIs that what matters?
Terrorists blew up a passenger aircraft in December 1988. 270 people were killed, many more lives were deeply affectd as a result.
Some time later the authorities who seemed desperate to blame someone, anyone, for what happened to appease those people affected pinned the blame for the whole thing on one man.
The verdict was condemned by an impartial UN observer at the time, and subsequent examination of the details of the case by people not emotionally involved with the case points time and again to the fact that the Zeist trial was oneof the biggest miscarriages of justice in recent history.
Megrahi is no saint, but there is to date NO evidence to prove beyond reasonable doubt that he is a mass murdering terrorist. Like it or not he is the 271st victim of Lockerbie, and his family must have gone through almost as a tough a time as you did, and as other families have whose lives were affected by this dispicable act of cowardly terrorism.
I want to live in a world where the police prosecute the right people for doing the bad things and make sure that the people who do carry out such awful acts are prevented from being able to do so again and are held to account for their actions. I think that that is what matters, not that people have some make believe bogey man to vent their anger at to make them feel a little better.
The other delusion here of course is that the American families "did" anything. Their government had it all sewn up early on. So there's another false claim by you Bunntamas - that you can take credit for any of it. Your government did it, not you, not any of you.
ReplyDeleteBut here's something that makes me lose all respect for any in your group, but especially for you Bunntamas due to the manner in which you conduct yourself here frequently.
If I was part of that group and I thought there was the slightest doubt a particular verdict pertaining to someone of mine, one of my family who had been murdered, I could not rest until I got to the bottom of it. I could not possibly behave as you do, merely shouting, GUILTY, GUILTY, GUILTY, and inserting the odd LOL into certain threads. I would move heaven and earth to get to the truth because that is the very least my family would deserve.
These doubts aren't figments of anyone else's imagination. They are there in the transcripts of the trial. And I really don't care that you were there Bunntamas. You have demonstrated clearly that you were, but that you also didn't want to listen to anything that didn't suit what you wanted to hear.
Even now when there has been time to go over those transcripts and much of the evidence and the doubts, you still don't want to see it. All you want to do is tell others to shut up and get out of the debate. That speaks volumes.
Rice Pudding, thank you for that very fine post.
ReplyDeleteRight. That's all you have?
ReplyDeleteNo. Bunntamas, as far as I can see, it's all you have, if you would stop a minute and think about what you're saying. If you can't substantiate that point, the rest of it collapses in a heap.
And what about his abibi for being at Luqa on the day of the bombing? Traveling on a false passport?
You make my point for me. There's no credible evidence the bomb was ever within a thousand miles of Luqa, on that day or any other. Unless you can show different, then whatever Megrahi was doing there that morning, it didn't have anything to do with Lockerbie.
His abibi for the lies he told about not being at Luqa that day in his interview with Pierre Sallinger?
A man who was accused by America of a capital crime lied to a journalist? Come on, are you really that desperate?
his alibi for his relations with Bollier?
Lots of people (who have my sincere and heartfelt sympathy) have relations of one sort of another with Edwin Bollier. Why are you picking on this one in particular?
The lies he told when he said he was a "simple man" when in fact he was a JSO officer?
"Everybody lies, Michael. The innocent lie because they don't want to be blamed for something they didn't do, and the guilty lie because they don't have any other choice."
His relations with Senussi, and Kussa, Why Kussa showed up at PTA negotiations? Simple, innocent man. Right. So, how about that meeting in Tripoli???
If you could link any of this to the actual subject on the card, I might begin to understand why it might be relevant.
You defend a man who is a terrorist,
I have no idea whether he is a terrorist or not. That would be that pesky evidence thing. And yes, I'd defend anyone against a false conviction for a crime they didn't commit, no matter what else they had done. That's the central pillar of justice, and without it we are headed for barbarism.
but you and your cranks. YES, I said it. CRANKS just like Frank said, when he hung up on that reporter.
Again, get your facts right. Duggan (now there's someone I might actually not cry too hard if he was convicted of a crime he didn't commit....) didn't hang up on a reporter, he hung up on a Member of Parliament (and also a crank, but some times he's on the ball and this was one of them).
Have you NO conception of what a prize fool Duggan made of himself in that interview? Almost every "fact" he stated about the case was verifiably wrong. It was embarrassing.
Just like Black walked out of the interview. Again... Pot... Kettle.
I'm sure Prof. Black can look after himself.
Clearly you all can banter on here, all day long for years on end, but the bottom line is, none of you have made any progress. I went to the UN, I went to the trial, I went to my government along with my fellow family members, and we made progress, we got a result, and the VERDICT IS GUILTY. Stand up, put up, do something that actually makes progress or shut up.
I've explained to you my reasons for believing that Megrahi had nothing to do with the Lockerbie bombing until my fingers are numb. He didn't buy the clothes from Gauci. There's no credible evidence the bomb was ever anywhere near Luqa airport, so whatever he was doing there, it wasn't that.
He would never have been indicted in the first place if the CIA and the DoJ hadn't bribed and threatened Giaka to invent a pack of lies.
Oh, and let us not forget about Megrahi's millions in his bank account.....and his palatial estate in Tripoli. Simple man. HMMMMMM....
So, everybody who has (or has access to) a lot of money may be assumed to be guilty of a terrorist act now?
Can you get any more tenuous?
Oh, here we go... I KNEW Jo G. would have to jump in here with her twistings. I assume this will go nowhere but in the toilet from here, other than another "apology" (of the many) for violations of and possble deletions by Pr. Black and his blog; Can't wait for "lower than a snake's belly"... amongst other non sequiturs.
ReplyDeleteBunntams, let's get one thing clear. I will post here with or without your approval. I do not need it in order to express a view. And, I can assure you, if Prof Black had any concerns with anything I have posted it would have been removed. So haud yer wheisht, as we say here.
ReplyDeleteAs for the phrase used in your final sentence, if the cap fits, wear it! And incidentally, when it comes to insulting others you have a neat line yourself in your arrogance for suggesting that none of us here is even entitled to contribute an opinion on Lockerbie because we don't meet your criteria.
And I see, as always, you have nothing else to come back with except for personal insults. Some things never change.
.The other delusion here of course is that the American families "did" anything.
ReplyDeleteOMG. Do your homework darling. You might want to read up on the fact that the Pan Am 103 families actually got US legislation changed re: soverign immunities act. Yeah. We did nothing. Right.
And what have you, and your fellow cranks here done for Megrahi, outside of blather on about pathetic conspiracies?
And BTW, I'm not saying you need my approval, nor do I nee your approval to post here. None of my posts here have eever been deleted by Pr. Black. However, you have apologized NUMEROUS times for your posts. Go figure.
ReplyDelete"pesky evidence thing LOL! LOL!
ReplyDeleteBunntamas, calm down. Go and take your tablets now. You're becoming stressed and upset. Its bad for your blood pressure.
ReplyDeleteI think some of us have achieved quite a lot actually. We evidently have you wound up enough to come in here and rant as you do. It must be making you nervous. I mean, hell no, what if the truth comes out! Unthinkable prospect for you I would imagine Bunntamas. The truth has no place in this for you. That's why I have not an ounce of respect for you.
Oh, and going back to the beginning of these posts, re: number of hits, dont' you, Pr. Black find it interesting how the number of posts on your blogs increase when I join in the comments?!!! HA!
ReplyDeleteEr no Bunntamas, you go figure. That last post of yours is a pile of nonsense. I know it and that's what matters.
ReplyDeleteHA, Jo, you must be referring to a previous post I made about you taking your own medicine. Can't you find some new material? Or must you continue to rehash old rubbish where you were clearly outdone?
ReplyDeleteOutdone? By you Bunntamas? I'm not here to compete but I have to say if I was I would not be remotely concerned with your presence here or see it as any sort of threat.
ReplyDeleteHow many times have you been asked about your government's payment, of millions of dollars, to the Gaucis for their testimony and how many times have you ignored the question? Well you're a fan of Duggan's so it figures: he ignored the question too and flounced off. Didn't want to answer. I wonder why. Probably for the same reason you avoid the same question and evade it by attacking others who call it by its better know name - bribery.
Continue on as you may. Research away.. spend countless hours posting. I know it upsets you all when we call you CRANKS, and utter the word GUILTY.
ReplyDeleteUntil you can actually DO something in the courts, or at the UN, and unless you align with Megrahi, outside of publishing a book, posting a stupid poll with no results, which anyone can do, you will all be viewed as CRANKS, and Conspiracy Theorists with ZERO crdibility. And Megrahi will always be viewed on record as GUILTY. Blather on fools....
Oh, and going back to the beginning of these posts, re: number of hits, dont' you, Pr. Black find it interesting how the number of posts on your blogs increase when I join in the comments?!!! HA!
ReplyDeleteInteresting? It's hardly surprising. When everyone is in broad agreement, you tend to get a few posts from each poster, then it fizzles out unless Charles is pushing his wacky conspiracy theory at the time.
Come along and provide some opposition, even if it's baseless and spurious, and obviously a debate will develop.
That's why I wish you'd return to the JREF forum. Nobody there is prepared even to try to make an argument for Megrahi's guilt. You'd be an interesting novelty.
Continue on as you may. Research away.. spend countless hours posting. [snip content-free foam-flecked ranting....] Blather on fools....
ReplyDeleteBunntamas, I'm only asking you substantiate your screams of "GUILTY" with some actual evidence linking Megrahi to the Lockerbie bombing. Not shoowing that Libya was a terrorist state, or that Megrahi was a Libyan security official, we know that. Something that actually connects him to the fact that PA103 fell out of the sky.
The more you post content-free rants, the more certain it gets that you don't have anything.
Oh yes, and maybe you would comment on the US bribery of witnesses, that others have mentioned a few times but you've always side-stepped.
ReplyDeleteThe CIA and the DoJ bribed and threatened Giaka to invent "evidence" to link Megrahi and Fhimah to the crime. That's one thing the court certainly got right.
And then there's the Gaucis. They didn't come forward with evidence, the police identified them from an independent lead. Since when is it normal to pay witnesses who haven't come forward of their own accord to testify against the accused?
Aren't you ashamed of your own country, that paid witnesses to lie in court to get Megrahi convicted?
Come along and provide some opposition, even if it's baseless and spurious, and obviously a debate will develop.
ReplyDeleteThat's why I wish you'd return to the JREF forum. Nobody there is prepared even to try to make an argument for Megrahi's guilt. You'd be an interesting novelty.
Because no one with any sense wants to entertain the CT's pathetic novelties. I gain a chuckle or two here and there by popping in on this blog and JREF and ruffeling feathers. But nothing anyone of you says has any credibility. What the PA103 families have done has actually achieved credibility and results; in the courts and at the UN. NOTHING you people post has proved any results or credibility. You, all of your obvious countless hours of research, Pr. Black and his Justice for Megrahi campaign have produce ZERO results. All the while, the elephant in the living room is asking, "where is Megrahi in all of this? Why is he not participating with you all in his alleged innocense?" Where is his voice? If he is healty enough to produce a book, why is he not joining with you all, the Justice for Megrahi Campaign, the research, the evidence? Why is he not posting here? Why is he not posting elsewhere? Why is he not pushing the UN?? And WHY are you all so hell bent on Megrahi? As I questioned Rolfe above, is this really about Megrahi? or is this reallty more about the Scots and their independence. Twisted indeed.
I'm wondering if Bunntamas is Dan Cohen? He used to attack anyone who's views didn't match his in much the same fashion as Bunntamas does here.
ReplyDeleteRolfe's line of reasoning is, of course, spot on from a logical standpoint.
Buntamas is clearly a person who is not interested in finding the truth or engaging in logical reasoning. He is only interested in bully tactics.
It's about justice, Bunntamas. This may be a novel concept for you.
ReplyDeleteAnd not every body who has a false pass port like those Israelite tennis players who killed the man from Gazza, is a murdererer.
ReplyDeleteDont forget the Swiss who ban minorettes like that mysteron guy Bollinger sell army knifes and timer bombes to Lybians who wear burquois and then say they are neutrill!
It's becoming obvious to me slowly.
Nope. Got my justice Rolfe. Unfortunately it was diminished by the Scots whoring to the UK for an oil deal with Libya.
ReplyDeleteFullinquiry, my own speculations are that Bunntamas is a member of the Flynn family. However, I acknowledge that I could be entirely wrong and it's not important anyway.
ReplyDeleteI just have a bit of a hot button for Irish Americans who get worked up about terrorist attacks, especially terrorist attacks that might involve Libyan-supplied munitions, considering what people in England and Ireland suffered for decades, and all that terrorism openly funded by the US Irish-American community.
Did the Americans contributing to NORAID care nothing for Tim Parry and Jonathan Ball and all the other victims of the IRA terror attacks?
Nope. Got my justice Rolfe. Unfortunately it was diminished by the Scots whoring to the UK for an oil deal with Libya.
ReplyDeleteEpic fail. How can you cram so much wrong into one tiny post?
You got no justice. You don't even know what justice is. You got revenge - on the wrong man.
The Brits who were whoring to Libya for an oil deal were the Westminster government. Nothing to do with the Scots.
And if you want to know who else has been whoring to Libya for oil deals, you could look a lot closer to home too.
Hey Condoleeza, Wasn't it you whom on the eve of a holiday weekend when congress and the senate were about to leave for holiday lifted the sanctions on Libya just in time for an oil deal to be signed with Libya? Too bad the PA 103 families stepped up to the plate and actually took action to block all finances to Libya the following Monday. I was there by invitation, that day in congress. Too bad no one here has any power or courage (lest the be kidnapped or killed or by their favored Libyans) to do anything for Megrahi, considering they all think he's innocent, but have no power or evidence to prove it.
ReplyDeleteProfessor Black and Dr. Swire's credibility will ultimately prevail (and they are not alone) as will the truth.
ReplyDeleteI look forward to that day and it is comforting to know such honest people who display the highest integrity continue to carry the torch for truth about Lockerbie.
Such men and women are the true heros in all of this, and will also one day be rightfully recognized as such.
I applaud Professor Black both for giving the interview and walking out of it when he needed to, and for recording the facts here.
Also affected by Lockerbie, I've remained silent far too long. It's time to for me to stand up and be counted among fellow truth-seekers.
You got no justice. You don't even know what justice is. You got revenge - on the wrong man.
ReplyDeleteUntil you, and your pal Megrahi can prove that, you have no argument. And he remains GUILTY.
The Brits who were whoring to Libya for an oil deal were the Westminster government. Nothing to do with the Scots.
Right. And what koolaid are you drinking.?
And if you want to know who else has been whoring to Libya for oil deals, you could look a lot closer to home too.
Yep. I agree with you there on oil deal whoring. BUT, the US is independent. Sorry about that situation with your government and the UK. Maybe some day you'll be able to pull yourselves up out of the mire and stand stop sucking the UK's you know what. The US may be whoring for oil, but they stood up for the victims and families of PA103. They pushed for sanctions on Libya around terrorism by Libya and passed and legislation that allowed the families to sue Libya. They froze Libyan assets and blocked financing to Libya. ALL because they listened to their citizens. What is the Scottish government doing for you? What are you doing to make them listen to you, besides posting on a blog and in forums.?????
Rolfe: My money is on Dan. When I get more time I'll tell you why in a different forum. I respect Prof. Black too much, and have done so for too long, to get into that debate, or offer a wager, here.
ReplyDeleteHey Fullinquiry, ever wonder whom those folks from the "engineering firm" were that approached Pr. Black about negotiating with Libya for the Lockerbie trial? Ever wonder what may have compelled Pr. Black to risk his life in traveling to Libya against sanctions to hold those negotiations? Honesty? Credibility? Hmmmm... Prior to this, Pr. Black was nothing but a civl attorny and Sheriff Judge. To risk his life in a terrorist country where he very well may have been kdinapped, one must wonder what else might have been in it for him. Hmmm???? Ever wonder why Black has never provided more information on that other than glombing on to the "title" of "Architect of the Lockerbie Trial? Hmmmm....
ReplyDeleteFullinquiry, I have seen some of Dan's old posts on another forum, and I agree there's a lot of similarity. Though I suppose shouting "GUILTY" in block capitals and refusing to engage with the arguments isn't necessarily a signature.
ReplyDeleteYou're right, this isn't the place. If you contact me elsewhere, we can swap reasons.
My goodness, here i am again, and the posts on Pr. Black's blog are approaching double digits. Haven't seen that since the last time I chimed in. LOL!
ReplyDeleteSorry ...meant to say triple digits....
ReplyDelete.... that mysteron guy Bollinger....
ReplyDeleteIs there any sort of prize we can give this post?
And my goodness here you are again Bunntamas, and you manage to type so much peripheral irrelevance and personal attacks, and completely side-step all the arguments of substance put to you.
ReplyDeleteDid you take special training or something?
I just wondered on to this sight from the WTC forum. That forums full of cranks who hate me. Sanctions were lifted on Lybia because they gave up nuclear fusion like Iran hasn't. That Florida church of Dove should not be a loud to burn the Quorn!
ReplyDeleteDid we not learn anything from 911? May be they should not build a mosque on ground zero even though Menendez and O'bama want it. Anytime some peace guys come along like John Lenin someone like Chapman killed him and Yo Ko (is Yo her given name?) want to keep him in Attica like McGrahy in Scotland I guess.
Rolfie, this one's for you:
ReplyDeleteGUILTY, GUILTY GUILTY!!!
You can't ignore it. No matter how much time you spend researching. Go do something more than posting on blogs and in forums if you "think" you can change that. Maybe call up Megrahi.Or go visit him in his "simple man" palatial estate" in Tripoli. Maybe he'll treat you to lunch via his million dollar bank account. Maybe Senussi and Kussa will then treat you to a tour of the Libyan prison and show you how they treat "visitors" after you them what they think about your "so called" educated and well researched queries. Until then yes, he IS GUILTY.
Condoleeza: "Sanctions were lifted on Lybia because they gave up nuclear fusion like Iran hasn't. "
ReplyDeleteYou must be drinking the same koolaid that Rolfe is drinking.
That's a funny use of language you have there. He either was involved in that bombing or he wasn't. Whether I ever visit Libya doesn't affect that at all.
ReplyDeleteAnd shouting in capitals has been shown scientifically to have no influence on the nature of reality.
Bunntamas, can you give just one single piece of credible evidence at all, that links Megrahi to the actual bombing of PA103?
ReplyDeleteI mean, you're so sure and you believe it's so clear - why wouldn't you do this?
I'm trying to put together Bunntamas's case for him, since he seems strangely unable to do it for himself.
ReplyDelete- Megrahi was travelling on a coded diplomatic passport on the day of the bombing
- Megrahi lied to a journalist
- Megrahi was a business acquaintance of Edwin Bollier
- Megrahi knew other senior members of the JSO
- Libya as a state was involved in some pretty nasty things back in the 80s
- Megrahi's family is rich
- Megrahi had access to a large amount of money in a Swiss bank account
My God, that seems to be it! Not a single piece of actual evidence linking him to the Lockerbie bombing in any way whatsoever.
We all know there are a lot of terrorists in the world. From the IRA and ETA to Jibril and his disgusting crew. Libya was a terrorist state in the 1980s, but it was hardly the only perpetrator of terrorist attacks.
Even the evidence that Libya was responsible for Lockerbie was never more than tenuous. Libya was well-known for supplying munitions to other terrorist groups, so finding munitions that had been through Libyan hands was never going to be conclusive on its own. You might as well blame Libya for the Warrington bombing, because it was Libyan Semtex that was used (bought by IRA terrorists funded by the US "Irish-American" community too, but that's a whole other story).
But even if Libya was wholly or partly responsible, why this Libyan?
If he didn't buy the clothes from Tony Gauci, which he didn't, then there's nothing left that should have supported a conviction. Bunntamas hasn't even tried to claim that he bought those clothes, which is probably wise because that idea was trashed some time ago.
Even so, if we could find some credible evidence that the bomb went into the baggage system on KM180, I'd certainly agree Megrahi's being at Luqa with the coded passport that morning was bloody suspicious. But Bunntamas won't try to support that one either.
The rest is fluff. Without any connection to the actual bombing at all, harping on about Libya's sins and Megrahi's circle of acquaintance is completely irrelevant.
I don't know what it would take to get Bunntamas to stop shouting irrelevancies and address these points though.
Ah well, the very rotation of the Earth conspires to give Merikans the last word, every time....
ReplyDeleteGoodnight all.
LOL. And you think posting on blogs and forums your "research" about everything that has already been judged twice is "reality"? Like I said, if that's all you and the other cranks can muster, whilst begging for more information and more posts from "outsiders" like me, it gathers zero credibility, only begs the answer to the question about how little you know and can prove about what has already been proven, and is far from what the PA103 families have accomplished. If you want to do something more, I'd love to see it. Call Pr. Black, arrange a meeting with the Libyans, Buy a ticket to Tripoli. Work with your govnernment. DO SOMETHING, besides researching everything everyone has already rehashed, and posting and re-posting on the internet about what you believe. If you can in any way do what the PA103 families did THEN, I might consider you credible. Until then, you and your fellow posters are just CRANKS. And I'm still yawning and laughing at you.
ReplyDeleteBunntamas: No I've never wondered those things about the honorable Prof. Black. I simply admire him for his calls for the truth.
ReplyDeleteI have been in Libya hundreds of times, and the only time I didn't feel safe was in 1986 when bombs were being dropped on us by US warplanes. Many people think that was a terrorist attack, and I am one of them. That tends to happen to one when one is in the line of fire, regardless of who is doing the firing.
I too had to risk my life, as did my employees, travelling to Libya to work during sanctions. Some friends of mine lost their lives doing so. They all died because of one guy - Giaka, who was proven to be a liar by the same court you rely on to say Abdulbasset is guilty. Giaka was rewarded, many were compensated, possibly by the wrong party. There was no need for sanctions, and Libya was following international law (the Montreal Convention) but that or having any sense of decency or distaste for foul play doesn't matter to you or your kind.
I've also been in cities in the US hundreds of times, and didn't at all feel safe. I've seen people mugged and thereby terrorized. Nothing like that happens in Libya to any foreigners I've ever known. Trust me neither Libya nor the US is perfect, but there are plenty of things far better in Libya than in the US, and one of them is the integrity of people on the street.
I also know a friend who was kidnapped outside the US and taken to the US - his crime, doing business with Libya as a non-American. Hmm. Who really did the kidnapping?
Oh and what about all the US companies doing business INSIDE Libya durig the sanctions? Did you ever lobby your government to shut them down? I did mine, and was told that those US companies weren't actually there. It was a figment of my imagination.
I think you would do better to keeping your comments to things you actually know about.
One's profession or station in life, or whether or not one has been invited to Congress, has nothing to do with one's credibility.
I'm am drinking! Tequila too. How you guess? Spookie. and toasting all mericans. Did Rofle mean mexikans i think? she spelled it all wrong lol. The WTC forum always do that on me for once its someone else. YEEHAW!
ReplyDeleteBunntamas, can you give just one single piece of credible evidence at all, that links Megrahi to the actual bombing of PA103?
ReplyDeleteOMG. Seriously???? Seriously??? You've clearly read the case. All of the eviedence is there. The only shred that you cling to is the planting of the bomb at Luqa. I've already stated on JREF that Libya had financial control of Malta and Luqa after Malta booted the UK, including the fact that Libya had huge arms stores at Luqa, and that as a result of Libya's financial interest in Malta, they (Malta) were a very close ally of Libya, including alerting Libya on US bombing of Libya (among other things). Do you honestly think that Malta would not cover up the bomb being planted there? Are you serioulsy THAT DAFT??? Well, maybe I can understand that, considering Scotland / UK relations and you know what sucking of the UK by Scotland, and the release of Megrahi, and the fact that Scotland actually believed that load of crap.
In additon to this, all of the evidence that resulted in the guilty (notice I dindn't post in caps, so as to not piss you off) verdict at trial, which you and your other crank posters here and at JREF continue to ignore, along with the other points about Megrahi that I have posted avove. Gawd, it's like banging one's head against a wall with you all. Good luck with that trip to Tripoli, your you know what sucking with the UK and your continued research.
I'm done for now. Pine away in my absence whilst I continue to laugh.
Correction: and the fact that Scotland actually believed that load of crap..
ReplyDeleteMeant to say some of the people of Scotland believed that load of crap....
Oh, and btw, Rolfe, I am NOT a member of the Flynn family. Keep trying.
ReplyDeleteFullinquiry, Very interesting. You refer to your country. What country might that be?
ReplyDeleteSeems it's quite hard not to join the Bunn fight...
ReplyDeleteBunntamas the irony in the fact that you are shouting about how the VERDICT was GUILTY and thats all the proof anyone ever needs, in the comments section of a blog whos author is dedicated to proving that the verdict reached at the Zeist trial was utterly incomprehensible is interesting.
in a case that has been judged TWICE?
Actually only once. The first appeal case was thrown out on a legal technicality to do with the incompetance of Megrahis defense team, they didn't look at the evidence of the case.
3 judges ruled Megrahi guilty in 2001. A review, one that took heel dragging to new lengths, was completed in 2007 by the SCCRC, who recommended that a miscarriage of justice had happened and Megrahi should be permitted to appeal. Had the SCCRC not found serious doubts about the conviction a 2nd appeal would not have been permitted at all.
You could say that the SCCRC have judged Megrahi and found him to e not guilty.
You believe Megrahi is guilty, and that is your perogative.
Being convicted of a crime, and being guilty of a crime are however not the same thing.
Bunntamas: My county is not important, I'm not Libyan or American. I have Scot blood but Scotland is not my home country either. What matters as far as I am concerned is that my country is a member of the UN, and as such had to follow the UN Security Council Sanctions, which were, in my view. improperly passed and in any event were based on the lies of Giaka and ultimately those who handled him.
ReplyDeleteIt's 11 and time for sleeping solidly, Donald.
ReplyDeleteI should like to remind Mr B that Malta won a libel action against Granada TV for their allegation that security at Luqa Airport had been faulty and the device had been loaded there. This action took place long before the disgraceful Zeist trial, which in the opinion of many was not a valid process as it lacked a jury.
ReplyDeleteNow a libel action is a civil case and is decided at a lower level of proof that a criminal trial. The tests are for a civil trial "on a balance of probabilities" and in a criminal trial "beyond reasonable doubt".
Now how the same facts can support a finding that in proved civilly in one direction and proved legally in another direction over a criminal matter is far too complicated for one as simple as me to sort out.
Perhaps it's because Scotland and England and Wales are different legal jurisdictions. Unlike the situation in civil law, appeals in Scottish criminal trials end up in Edinburgh not the Supreme as is (then House of Lords) in London.
If the Libyans ever thought that the Granada libel trial would get them off the hook, they had a nasty shock coming.
Simply repeating the word guilty in bold, gothic or flashing capitals does not contribute to serious argument, and the fact that Mr B. may be masquerading as someone else, who is known to us, only diminishes his authority.
He doesn't appear to like Scotland, either.
Enough for now. I can't write another line about this histrionic loony.
I don't think the intergovernmental relations between Libya, Malta and UK, can even in Mr B.'s very crude take on them count as evidence of anything at all, except his profound ignorance of international affairs.
ReplyDeleteMISSION LOCKERBIE: attn. Bunntamas,
ReplyDeletesorry only a computer "Babylon" translation German/English:
Mr. Bunntamas be afraid of the TRUTH like the devil the dedicating water.
Please they notice, it give a fact which show that Mr. Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi alias "Ahmed Khalifa Abdusamad" with its visit on 20th -21st December 1988 in Malta, absolut nothing can have to do with the PanAm 103 attempt !
+++
Mr. Bunntamas, fürchtet die WAHRHEIT wie der Teufel das Weihwasser.
Bitte merken sie sich, es gibt eine Tatsache welche zeigt, dass Mr. Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi alias "Ahmed Khalifa Abdusamad" mit seinem Besuch am 20.-21. Dezember 1988 in Malta, absolut nichts mit dem PanAm 103 Attentat zutun haben kann !
by Edwin Bollier, MEBO Ltd., Switzerland. URL: www.lockerbie.ch
LOL. And you think posting on blogs and forums your "research" about everything that has already been judged twice is "reality"?
ReplyDeleteNo, as has already been pointed out to you, it was judged once. The first appeal was dismissed for technical legal reasons (appeal was brought on the wrong grounds).
Do you really believe it's impossible for a trial court to get the verdict wrong? These three judges were somehow infallible? Like the Pope or something?
So what about the SCCRC report? That's an official judicial enquiry too, and these judges thought the verdict was a miscarriage of justice. You don't seem very keen to mention that part.
Like I said, if that's all you and the other cranks can muster, [snip hysterical word salad....] Until then, you and your fellow posters are just CRANKS. And I'm still yawning and laughing at you.
This isn't a very strong argument you have here, you know.
And why should I want to go to Libya? Libya isn't the point. The Scottish justice system is the point. That, and the corrupt US system that bribed and blackmailed witnesses to give perjured evidence against Megrahi in the first place.
Oh, and btw, Rolfe, I am NOT a member of the Flynn family. Keep trying.
ReplyDeleteThat's all right, my apologies Mr. Cohen. I was misled by your rabid and content-free defence of Brian Flynn early in the debate, and your choice of an Irish word for your discussion handle.
You see, changing one's opinion when more information comes to light is quite easy. You should try it some time.
Wow! 70 posts since last night - all the 'fun' I missed...and now we're playing Guess the pseudonym.
ReplyDeleteCan I play too, Rolfe?
Are you saying that the writer Mr B is in fact the famous Mr Dan Cohen?
ReplyDeleteI have a number of questions to put to him.
Firstly, I must offer my profoundest sorrows for the loss of your daughter's life.
Secondly, Mr Cohen was befriended by no less than Vincent Cannistaro, who introduced himself as someone from the CIA. Mr Cohen got so chatty with the old rogue as to refer to him publicly as "Vinnie the spook".
Now, why did VC seek out DC. Might it be because that as a fully paid up member of the "nuke Tripoli yesterday" lobby, Mr Cohen was making too much traction with his patriotic fellow Americans, and VC was sent in to calm him down?
The CIA to the best of my knowledge has never used nuclear weapons in an operation; I think even it draws the line here, though it is quite willing to blow up a commercial aircraft though it be only 2/3 full. Truman threatened to use nuclear weapons in Korea and Nixon in Vietnam, but the Soviet Union said it would take exception to their use. So to protect world peace the US listened and held back.
After reading this thread I've no desire to see a capital letter ever again...
ReplyDeletejoin the ee cummings lobby then,
ReplyDeletecharles
Cameron Lewis from Sacramento, Ca?
ReplyDeleteOMG. Seriously???? Seriously??? You've clearly read the case. All of the eviedence is there.
ReplyDeleteAnd there isn't any left after the discredited parts are discounted. If you disagree with that, then please state which parts you think are still valid.
The only shred that you cling to is the planting of the bomb at Luqa.
No, that's just your strongest point of what's left, as far as I can see. So I try to see if you can substantiate it.
Your obsession that Megrahi was involved in the bombing rests entirely on his being at Luqa that morning. If you can't show any evidence that the bomb was there too, then you have nothing left.
I've already stated on JREF that Libya had financial control of Malta and Luqa after Malta booted the UK, including the fact that Libya had huge arms stores at Luqa, and that as a result of Libya's financial interest in Malta, they (Malta) were a very close ally of Libya, including alerting Libya on US bombing of Libya (among other things). Do you honestly think that Malta would not cover up the bomb being planted there? Are you serioulsy THAT DAFT???
I'll take that as a no then?
There is actually zero evidence that the bomb was ever within a thousand miles of Malta, and the paperwork supports that to the hilt. And all you can say is, well they would have covered it up. It's the invisible cat argument, Bunntamas.
At the same time the security at Frankfurt was dreadful and the German police "lost" all the baggage records at that airport within days of the crash. And the security at Heathrow was also dreadful, and there are huge gaping holes in the chain of custody of the luggage where anyone could have added anything.
But you believe that the entire ground staff at Malta were part of a Libyan conspiracy to fake all the paperwork showing good security there, and lie to the investigators, and no evidence of this could ever be discovered despite phone tapping and intensive interviews and lots and lots of people who must have known this happened and caused an appalling atrocity.
And you call us conspiracy theorists?
[snip more hysterical word salad....] In additon to this, all of the evidence that resulted in the guilty (notice I dindn't post in caps, so as to not piss you off) verdict at trial, which you and your other crank posters here and at JREF continue to ignore,
ReplyDeleteIn what way are we ignoring the verdict? Explaining that the verdict was a miscarriage of justice is not ignoring it. It's not like there has never been any other miscarriage of justice in the history of the courts. Even miscarriages directly traceable to the fabricated forensic evidence of Dr, Hayes, you know.
along with the other points about Megrahi that I have posted avove.
Bunntamas, I'll say this again and I'll try to keep the words short.
If you have credible evidence linking a person to a specific crime, then evidence that he's the sort of person who might commit that crime, and that he hangs out with other people who are believed to have committed similar crimes, would be relevant.
But without any evidence to link him to the crime in the first place, that's completely irrelevant.
At the moment, you're like someone banging on that Joe Bloggs is absolutely definitely the person who was speeding on the M6 last Tuesday, because he's the sort of person who probably drives too fast and a couple of his mates were nicked for speeding on the A24.
And continuing to insist on this despite there being no evidence at all that Joe Bloggs himself has ever broken the speed limit anywhere, and that he was nowhere near the M6 last Tuesday.
Gawd, it's like banging one's head against a wall with you all.
Believe me, I know that feeling....
Good luck with that trip to Tripoli, your you know what sucking with the UK and your continued research.
Why would I want to go to Tripoli? It's too damn hot. Tripoli is not the problem. The Scottish criminal justice system is the problem, and the corrupt US CIA and DoJ, they are the problem.
Please remind Mr B. that to spread libels about baggage security at Luqa Airport is a case that has been decided by the High Court in London, and if he continues to do so, he may find himself put on a plane to London and required to pay heavy damages to the Maltese.
ReplyDeleteThe English High Court has a lot of power, and does not consist of political placemen who have taken the presidential shilling to sit on what passes for the Supreme Court of the United States
Bensix quoting Blogiston:
ReplyDeleteThere have been two types of documentary made on this subject, so far: (i) Human angle - which will always side with feelings of the majority victims. (ii) Alternative theories or conspiracies - which can never prove anything, beyond doubt.
Therefore, maybe it's time to fight fire with fire, and try to interest an independent film-maker to examine the case for Megrahi's innocence via the trial only.
Are directors just too cynical? The human angle story would appeal to those who need their angels, while a conspiracy tale would grant them a real evil baddie. Your suggestion - while a good one! - doesn't led itself to an emotional narrative arc: 'cos the truth of it is just dishonest and insalutary.
Well, just the evidence can't be the arc then. It has to be one half of the curve, followed by some more emotional re-explaining of what it means that a miscarriage of justice like this occurred and hasn't been corrected.
Random names are appearing. Someone mentioned "Bunnfight." Bunny said:
ReplyDelete" Do you honestly think that Malta would not cover up the bomb being planted there? Are you serioulsy THAT DAFT???"
That's a weird sentence, mate. Sure you didn't fail write that backwards, didn't you? Without showing any knowledge of the evidence for a bomb on Malta that day, you think it's "daft" to not believe the Maltese authorities helped cover up the bombing?
Logic, Caustic, does not appeal to some people and they really don't know what an argument is. I believe the Bunnfellow who writes here is a chidren's fantasy author is he not
ReplyDeleteCharles
'To risk his life in a terrorist country where he very well may have been kdinapped, one must wonder what else might have been in it for him. Hmmm????'
ReplyDeleteSmearing is a tactic of the intelligence services and the Establishment. Note the disgusting remark by Lord Fraser, the former lord advocate, that Dr Swire was victim of Stockholm Syndrome.
Desperate attempts to protect their or their masters' backsides.
Nope. I'm neither Cohen or Cameron.
ReplyDeleteSo, you're just another Usan no-hoper loony, then?
ReplyDeleteBunntamas is repeatedly making the "invisible cat" argument here.
ReplyDeleteIf there were an invisible cat on that chair, that chair would look empty.
That chair does in fact look empty.
Therefore there is an invisible cat on that chair.
Lots of Americans worked in Libya all during the sanction years. Rather than risking being "kidnapped in a terrorist country" they actually received special treatment. Libya would issue their entry and re-exit visas on a separate slip of paper as opposed to stamping such visas in their American passports - all this so Americans would not get in trouble for breaking US law when they went through customs back home.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly the Libyan companies the Americans worked for would issue two plane tickets to their American employees. For example one ticket from Tripoli to London round trip, and a separate ticket from London to America return. This to avoid scrutinty by US customs about where the American citizen had travelled to.
Does this sound like a country that might kidnap these people or harboured hatred for Americans?
How do I know this? Because I worked every day with Americans in Libya, broke bread with them, scrutinized their visas and passports when travelling through the Tripoli airport with them, or later over land or sea after the air embargoes were imposed.
As in many things, reality is not always what it appears to be, and in this matter the vast majority of what little North Amercian news coverage there was on this issue was highly biased if not fully misinformed.
That is why sites such as this one are so important to provide some balance.
Buntammas is not interested in balance or determining the truth. I can only speculate that the truth is not in his best interest (or some of those he has associated / worked with).
I believe what Prof. Black states: The truth is so mighty that it will ultimately prevail.
Fullenquiry's comment is very sensible.
ReplyDeleteOne way to look at Mr Magrahi's career is that he was a businessman with a relatively limited technical education, which he had got at Cardiff University in Britain.
Returning to Libya be goes into business, and like many Libyans essentially becomes a trader.
When issues develop with the West, he carves himself out a nice business breaking sanctions to keep the Libyan economy going, a job he's quite successful at.
It all goes wrong when the US accuses him of the Lockerbie bombing; his career in ruined and he is forced to Zeist.
Hint: Grand jury deliberations are almost always secret. An indictment is obtained by this curiously antique process (long ago abolished in the UK) and the indictment, when it is got as it invariably is, is allowed to lie silently on file until the accused falls into the hands of the prosecuting authority.
That both Fhimah and Magrahi were publicly named in November 1991, meant that at that time the US authorities were happy to lay charges against them, but never expected to bring them to a court process.
But three changes to US law, which would mean that Libya could be fined for M&F's activities made it essential to get a conviction from a court.
Were the judges ever told how embarrassing it would be for the US if Mr M were acquitted? Most likely to me.
I don't think anyone needed to tell them.
ReplyDeleteAnd I don't think anyone needed to tell them how embarrassing it would be for the UK as a whole and the Scottish justice system in particular, either
Just not as embarrasing as a kangaroo court and a show trial which flew in the face of the evidence, but they seemed to think they could deal with that.
Maybe they have, I suppose.
In the aftermath of the Zeist trial, a number of people like David ******* speculated on no evidence whatsoever, I might say, that the judges might have been got at. Certainly, for a group of men in full command of their senses, the way in which their lordships handed down their verdicts could be said that they looked shifty, as if they had been on trial and not M & F. Jim Swire, memorably blacked out.
ReplyDeleteAt 20 years remoteness you may well say my recollection is poor and my take on their performances false, but I concluded they were not happy bunnies at all.
All of them went into a much deserved retirement and have not bothered the world with their reminiscences.
Rather sensible, I'd say.
They have said they were placed under no pressure whatsoever to come to any particular verdict.
ReplyDeleteMandy Rice-Davies had a bon mot about that.
Magna est veritas et praevalet
ReplyDeleteDon't you mean, Magna est veritas et praevalebit? (joking - btw - Romanes Eunt Domus)
Cool! Prof Black has edited the post so it now reads in the future tense.
It always was in the future tense. The post has not been altered.
ReplyDeleteApologies RB.
ReplyDeleteSorry!
ReplyDeleteJohn Mortimer who was a judge as well as a novelist and much else, said it was very easy to make up in mind in court, as it was obvious where the truth lay.
ReplyDeleteI think, prvily, in their chambers at night th Zeist judges knew where the truth lay, but found themselves under some kind of obligation to find someone guilty.
That was poor MR M. Mr F, you will recall Bunntamas left the court a free man, and given that they could have found a verdict of "not proven" suggests they knew he had "nuttin to do with it"
It has to be one half of the curve, followed by some more emotional re-explaining of what it means that a miscarriage of justice like this occurred and hasn't been corrected.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that sounds promising. After all, if one bloke can be slapped in jail on feeble evidence then any Tom, Dick or Abdelbaset could be.
(Don't endorse this cynicism, naturally, but my prejudiced view of the film business suggests if one were to mention "integrity" to most producers they'd say, "Oh, yeah, that's Chrissie Nolan's latest, innit?")
This Bunntamas chap seems a bit bonkers.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I would say (& I know this will sound bad) that the optimum time to put pressure on the Scottish Parliament (NOT the Scottish govt, but the Parliament itself, because remember Holyrood isn't Westminster, it is minority govt or co-alition govt & thus requires a consensus) is when Megrahi dies.
Lord knows there are enough people in Scotland who believe that at the very least there are grounds for an inquiry (personally I do not know a single person who regards Megrahi as anything other than a patsy).
Megrahi will not live for much longer & when he dies the whole thing will be in the media spotlight again.
If I was a Lockerbie campaigner I would think up a strategy to make use of that moment now. But it shouldn't just place pressure on Salmond & McAskill, and let's face it there is a very good chance they won't be in government after next May.
It needs to be aimed at the whole Parliament.
If even an SNP government hides from the truth on this, what do you think the chances are of a Labour government doing anything different?
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying you're wrong, but I think Labour are an even worse bet than the SNP on that front.
I've no idea who Bunntamas is, and I think we should respect his privacy if he wants to remain anonymous.
ReplyDeleteI also have little idea why he seems to recoil from rational discussion about the case "like the devil from holy water". He's got what he wants - a guilty verdict and a dropped appeal, and anyway, there would have been no question of his having to repay the compensation money even if the conviction had been overturned. So why all the bluster?
He seems to have some deep emotional need not just to believe Megrahi guilty, but to challenge anyone who disagrees. That would be fine if he had a rational case to make, but he hasn't. His version of the Luqa story is a more preposterous conspiracy theory than what he's accusing us of peddling.
When I started looking into this, I was perfectly prepared to find that the evidence against Megrahi wasn't nearly as weak as the magazine articles I'd read had suggested. I've followed some of the 9/11 conspiracy theorising, and I wondered if this was in the same vein. I thought I'd look at the evidence and see which side I came down on.
At first I suspected that the articles I was reading were biassed, and telling only one side of the story. Even though there were extensive quotes from the court verdict which seemed, incomprehensibly, to support the thesis that Megrahi wasn't involved in the bombing. So I thought, there must be more to it than that.
And I read the court verdict. And the verdict of the first appeal. And then quite a lot of the primary evidence. (And thanks to Edwin for hosting so many facsimiles of original documentation too.)
It was actually worse. A common theme of many of the articles was that there had been fabrication of evidence by the investigating authorities. Quite well argued, but it's very hard to prove something like that. I did a lot of reading from the standpoint that if the timer fragment (for example) was genuine, that must prove or strongly imply Megrahi's guilt.
But no. Even if that timer fragment proved Libyan culpability (which actually it didn't), why this Libyan? The only evidence accepted by the court that actually linked Megrahi himself to the bombing was the assumption that he was the purchaser of the clothes at Mary's House, and the assumption that entry B8849 on the Erac printout represented the bomb suitcase being routed to PA103A. Both of these were clearly mere assumptions which were nowhere close to being proved even on the balance of probabilities, never mind beyond reasonable doubt.
Then I saw what the judges had done. They decided that tray B8849 was the bomb bag (rather than just a coding anomaly) on the basis that Megrahi, the man who bought the clothes, was at Luqa where that tray seemed to have come from.
ReplyDeleteBut on the other hand, they decided that Megrahi was the man who bought the clothes, even though Tony Gauci said he wasn't, because he was at the airport (with his coded passport) at the time the bomb was introduced into the baggage system.
That is a classic logical fallacy, circular reasoning. Premise A is proved by assuming that premise B is already certain, then to prove premise B, it is asserted that premise A is already certain. You'd have thought a judicial bench would have known better than this.
After they'd done that, then then dredged up all the irrelevancies Bunntamas is so fond of. Yes, if he'd bought the clothes and B8849 had been the bomb suitcase, the coded passport and his dealings with Edwin Bollier and the rest of it would also have been relevant. But without any evidence linking him to the bombing, none of this was evidence of anything.
It's striking how many commentators remark that there's no need for complicated glosses on the arguments. Just read the court verdict. The judges explain exactly how the evidence says Megrahi didn't do it, then simply declare that they're going to convict him anyway. And that's the clear truth.
For some reason Kenny MacAskill and Alex Salmond don't want to acknowledge that. For some reason the mainstream media don't either, at the moment. I had hoped someone honestly taking the contrary view would be able to explain to me where I'd going wrong, and how the evidence can be interpreted to show Megrahi's conviction was sound.
Nothing from Bunntamas. Nothing but bluster and irrationality. Same from Frank Duggan.
I think there's nothing there. However, Bunntamas, if you'd like to go and fetch someone else in your group who's actually capable of making and responding to a reasoned argument, why not send him here and see if he can do any better?
Megrahi will not live for much longer & when he dies the whole thing will be in the media spotlight again.
ReplyDeleteAs a cancer doctor said to me: "Men die with prostate cancer not of prostate cancer".
Megrahi's disease is a very managable one. I don't think that the compassionate release was necessarily out of compassion for him - surely it was for those that would have egg on their face if the latest appeal would have run it's course?
Hi Observer. That's a very interesting post of yours. I think you're right actually. The issue is one which a Scottish Parliament should be confronted with and forced to address. It could be time for a complete re-think on tactics. Like you I don't know anyone who believes Megrahi was guilty.
ReplyDelete[This thread is the most diverse for sometime (surreal in places) and doesn't look like ending anytime soon]
ReplyDeleteRolfe:
Just been reading forum.randi.org and seeing the impressive work of yourself and others.
Q. Is your work not done, on Lockerbie?
You said a number of weeks back that it was partly an intellectual challenge - it seems from my observation that you have assimilated the whole thing from head to tail - including bones. So what's left to do? Fend off (for a bit of sport) the occasional transient naysayer, who blows in? It feels like the middle of the end at this point - with the end of the end, not really in the wit of any of the present investigators. From this point to the end seems one of politics, or a campaign (as Observer mentioned earlier).
What's next? Or am I missing the mission statement here?
I'd think the decision to convict one of the Libyans had been made before the trial within the confines of the Privy Council.
ReplyDeleteAs a cancer doctor said to me: "Men die with prostate cancer not of prostate cancer".
ReplyDeleteMegrahi's disease is a very managable one.
That's very much in the "it depends" bracket. The prevalence of slow-growing subclinical prostate cancer as an incidental finding at necropsy in older men is very high indeed. That's what your cancer doctor was talking about. It's a reassurance to those who have had such an "incidentaloma" diagnosed in life.
And then on the other hand there is the aggressive, fast-growing prostate cancer that kills people. That's what Megrahi was diagnosed with. My cousin's husband was diagnosed with the same thing, and it was in his bones before he even went to the doctor about it. I can assure you that he died OF prostate cancer, not very long afterwards, despite surgery and hormone treatment and chemotherapy and all the rest of it.
Megrahi has beaten the odds to some extent, but this isn't a long-term situation.
Ruth: I think Thatcher thought up the whole thing and then persuaded the US to make it a reality - but Reagan didn't need any persuading. She had plenty of reasons - like Gadaffi was mentioned on security briefs in about 1986 because he was trying to help the IRA kill her and her family - and then there was the Yvonne Fletcher murder etc. I think they decided to show Libya who was boss, and they did. [She was a bit mental - although I never hated her, and I paid my poll tax.]
ReplyDelete(personally I do not know a single person who regards Megrahi as anything other than a patsy)
ReplyDeleteLike you I don't know anyone who believes Megrahi was guilty.
Hmmm. I ask what is meant by a "patsy", and many people say, well he was a low-level operative. They think maybe he even put the bomb on the plane, but wasn't the mastermind, or he was involved in a minor capacity and left to carry the can. That's hardly not believing him guilty.
I don't know anyone who can support a belief that he's guilty with reasoned argument, but there are plenty people out there who simply haven't looked at the evidence. What with certain politicians saying they're in no doubt the conviction was sound, and that STV abortion, and the constant drip drip of "the Lockerbie bomber", I think there's a fair number of people just inclined to go with the verdict.
We need better education than anything that's been showcased so far. Less about forensic scientists fabricating evidence and more about circular reasoning and the absence of any evidence in the first place.
I think you're missing a great deal Blogiston.
ReplyDeleteRolfe does indeed have a lot to say on Lockerbie et al but there are many, many other people who have been doing something similar since the day it happened. I'm sure it isn't remotely over for them nor are their plans to fend off their critics for sport to pass the time until something else happens. In truth it probably hasn't stopped, ever, for them since 1988 nor will it until the truth is out. I would include of course in that group Dr Jim Swire, Matt and many others.
Rolfe's writings on the issue are certainly impressive but there are others here in the same category not least the man whose blog space we occupy. Give them all credit equally. Many here have a more detailed knowledge than I of the intracacies of this matter and I have read all contributions with great interest. They do not always agree but I enjoy their debates and have learned plenty. I don't believe any one person can be singled out.
There is the other angle too Blogiston. This isn't just something to do or something to challenge. For some of us the real shock was this verdict, based on evidence that so didn't point in the direction the verdict went. The contradictions were huge and so were the implications for the Scottish Justice System. When a UN Observer can accuse the judiciary of one's country of engaging in conduct "tantamount to the obstruction of justice" people should be concerned, politicians should be concerned and so should parliaments. This wasn't some undeveloped wilderness they were speaking of: it was the Scottish Judiciary.
So it is possible to remain committed to this issue merely because one believes passionately in justice and that alone will not allow the matter to fade away.
Rolfe: I am aware of both types of cancer. Bottom line is who knows how long the man has? I can only hope he lives a long time and publishes lots of good books.
ReplyDeleteRolfe, well then perhaps its time the JFM group found someone to make that documentary about the entire trial to demonstrate publicly what a complete farce it was.
ReplyDeleteJo G: If you read what I said - but as usual you just shoot from the hip!!! - you'd see I was referring to two things (only), 1. forums.randi.org (which I believe you or RB et al don't contribute into) 2. There was a thread some weeks ago where Rolfe mentioned her interest was partly intellectual.
ReplyDeleteI am not on to thank everyone - coz it's not my place to do that, and everyone's effort is more than self evident. Neither am I ingratiating myself to Rolfe, was more asking the route ahead in her opinion, and acknowledging her prolific output in the other site....which I don't have an account on.
Hope this clears up, exactly in your mind, my comment.
Blogiston, I'm here to comment, I understand you don't like my contributions most of the time but I responded to what you wrote as best I could. I most certainly did read what you said.
ReplyDeleteAnd I rightly pointed out that by singling out Rolfe you do an injustice to some others. I also thought that your suggestion that something is "ending" on this issue was most odd. Why would people like Swire, for example, stop now? Or even Professor Black?
So no you didn't clear it up. You simply came back sniping at me for "shooting from the hip", which I didn't incidentally, I simply made a comment and wasn't nasty about it either.
1. Yes you did. You are a hip shooter.
ReplyDelete2. I have never criticised your comments - and if that is what you have taken from my comments then you are either paranoid or insecure.
I rightly pointed out that by singling out Rolfe you do an injustice to some others.
You are just repeating yourself - so do I just repeat myself - the automatic gainsaying of what you say?
Blogiston, I'm not sure what I've done to deserve such criticism.
ReplyDeleteMy earlier post attempted to show you there were other angles on Lockerbie - as an issue - for different people which would ensure they remained committed to it no matter what. I think I did that politely.
I fully explained in my original response what I was saying and your reaction to that is very disappointing. I'm not sure what you mean by "hip-shooter" but I give thought to what I post at all times. Nor am I paranoid or insecure.
Let's leave this now - we're both treading water.
ReplyDeleteI think Blogiston was really just addressing me, as a result of something I said on another thread. Was he obliged to write an entire essay addressing the motivations and committment of everyone involved? I don't think so.
ReplyDeleteI'll never be in the position of someone who lost family in the disaster. Yes I'm outraged about the legal aspects, but I've reached the point where I can present that case in my sleep. Intellectually, it could be time for me to park this and move on. It's a reasonable question.
It's just that there's so much more to it than I've explored as yet.
Q. Is your work not done, on Lockerbie?
ReplyDeleteYou said a number of weeks back that it was partly an intellectual challenge - it seems from my observation that you have assimilated the whole thing from head to tail - including bones. So what's left to do?
The end of the beginning?
I've got a fairly good grasp of the evidence and the case against Megrahi and what happened in court. Though I still keep tripping over interesting little factoids I wasn't aware of.
Thus far, it's a simple standard-issue police stitch-up. They need to get someone for this atrocity, and hey look there's a Libyan operative acting suspicious at an arport at a convenient time, he'll do. Sadly, it happens all the time. And sometimes evidence is even fabricated to support this sort of case - that's what Hayes and Thurman were into, career-wise.
However, I really think this one is different. I really do think there was a conspiracy here, and I think it started off much more as a determination not to implicate Heathrow airport and the PFLP-GC (probably separately to begin with, then maybe together) than to blame Libya as such.
The usual story that Libya only came into the frame in the run-up to the Gulf War is clearly wrong. The more you look at the evidence, the earlier the intent at least to have Libyan culpability in the back pocket if necessary can be seen. If that timer fragment was fabricated, it was done in spring/summer of 1989. If the radio manual page was fabricated, it was done in April 1989. I can't find any definite evidence that Megrahi's presence at Luqa airport was even known about until late 1990.
I think before the Gulf War, the main objective was that the PFLP-GC should not be brought to book. Libya was just a handy scapegoat, a misdirection, and one that was still not activated. Why?
Paul Foot said something very penetrating, when discussing the infamous Bush/Thatcher phone call of March 1989. "Just as likely [as Jack Anderson's theory] was the fear in both their minds that the Lockerbie bombing had exposed a gaping hole in their intelligence services which would, if the matter was fully aired, be proved to have been incompetent to stop a murderous plot they knew about."
I don't think this was a Make It Happen On Purpose, as Charles fantasises. I don't think either that it was Let It Happen On Purpose. However, I think it could well have been Let It Happen By Incompetence.
I think there was something going on at Frankfurt airport that probably involved the CIA, which led to an extensive cover-up being mounted there by the German police within days of the bombing. The appearance of the Erac printout out of this black hole baffles me utterly.
I want to know where all that evidence really came from. Maybe it's impossible to guess who bought the clothes from Tony Gauci, but what on earth was the motivation for this conspicuous purchase of easily-traceable clothes only four weeks before the bombing? Where did the bits of Toshiba radio really come from? If the bomb trigger was a barometric device, what's the MST-13 all about? (OK, that's the easy bit.) How much of the bomb suitcase would really have been recoverable at all, if we believe Dr. Wyatt?
So that's where it's going for me. Having to stop every few days and explain to yet another clueless Yank that Megrahi not actually having done it and the bomb not actually ever having been anywhere near Malta is a given, is a bit of a distraction really.
And yes, it's conspiracy theorising. But just this once, I think there was a conspiracy.
I'm not remotely treading water Blogiston. I'm actually still stunned by your reaction but never mind. The comments are there to be seen and I'll stand by mine. I meant no offence whatsoever but I am at least now in no doubt what you think of my own contributions, given the "shooting from the hip as usual", description you've provided.
ReplyDeleteBut yes I'll leave it.
Rolfe, I suggest you read my comment too. It has been misunderstood quite clearly and as I have said, I meant no offence whatsoever.
ReplyDeleteRolfe, the trouble with not adopting the mihop approach is that you come into the argument too late. Anything other than mihop says "the IR-655 incident was an accident", but to point out to you and others again, it was not how the US assessed it that is important, it's how the Iranians saw it, and they were almost to a man incandescently angry.
ReplyDeleteThe prime division in the Iranian view was between the "official" position and the "populist".
The "official" position, which I reference in my little piece is that "we will get revenge in our own time", not may, or can, or able, or should, or could, but "will".
The populist position (roughly that represented by the party now in power in Iran is "revenge, now" and "from five to twelve aircraft in revenge".
Now, what would have happened if Iran had brought down those 5-12 aircraft, as I am sure they could have done.
It would have meant an all out US-Iran war in late 1988, the US confronting an committed and ideologically coherent enemy.
On the US side it may well have had to go nuclear; the Iranians did not have nuclear devices in 1988, the Khomeini government for nationalist reasons had shut down all nuclear developments.
It gives a powerful reason as to why the Iranian government is so keen on its nuclear programme today; not to destroy Israel, but to be able to outface the US.
Now I am trying to work out why the Vincennes was allowed to behave so aggressively in the Persian Gulf, and I have come to a provisional conclusion that certain parts of the US military wanted to provoke Iran beyond endurance.
With modern communications the admirals in the Pentagon, not the gunnery officer on the Vincennes had effective control of the Aegis missile system.
The "war party" in the Pentagon wanted a confrontation with Iran, successfully manufactured one, and poor old Dominic Brandone had to be sent to sort out Iran's revenge. The man is worthy of Nobel Peace Prize and electric chair at the same time.
Charles, some of this I of course agree with, but then you extend your argument into the realms of pure fantasy.
ReplyDeleteThis is not an appropriate venue for detailed discussion of this question. Your suspension at the JREF forum ends at tea-time tomorrow. All you have to do is use the quote function and stay acceptably civil, and we can have all the discussion you desire.
[Whilst waiting for simulations to complete..tum tee tum]
ReplyDeleteI've just been reading Chapter 1 of Rodney Stich's book about Loclerbie and other conspiracies
It is a bit Francovich in flavo(u)r. In fact, it says Francovich died whilst being 'interviewed' by an intelligence agency - is this true? If so, a conspiracy within a conspiracy.
[I really must do some work today but it makes an interesting diversion]
I have had enough of the Randi blog and I have copied all the pages on my bit to my computer. It runs to 95,000 words
ReplyDeleteI am annotating all these and I shall put the combined effort on my blogspot.
I have shaken the dust of the randi blog off my feet, it is full of uncivil, arrogant opinionated no-hopers who have nothing to offer but the so called opinions and life experiences.
It will take me several days to do, but really don't you fear for your sanity amongst all those angry goons.
Maybe you should go figure who it was got suspended twice for incivility. I've been a member there 7 years and have fewer infractions in that time than you clocked up in a week.
ReplyDeleteIf you can't take having your theory challenged, then that's your problem. You'd do better to drop the arrogance and the determination not to learn (whether it's about Lockerbie or how to format a quote in a post), and try opening your mind a crack.
Rolfie,
ReplyDeleteHaving my theory "challenged" by that bunch of no-hopers doesn't really matter to me. This matter will be won in the courts and the public inquiries. I was surpised though the amount of ignorant attention I garnered amounted to 95,000 words or 242 openoffice pages..
It will taken me a time to respond to it and put it on my blog.
I didn't really want to get involved with randi, which is crude and unthinking, unlike black, but you rather forced me onto it by posting about my theory.
Pity, no-one, but no-one actually read what I wrote, but only what they thought I wrote.
Now I shall have to go back to Wikipedia to get some refrence, however slight to uS?Iran theory, which isn't there even as a conspiracy theory.
Charles: I had heard Randi is the new Black...
ReplyDelete[That is a joke btw - for those lacking in irony (is that anaemia?)]
I really don't follow you blogiston. Randi is full of arrogant American loonies, Black of Scottish gents.
ReplyDeleteI am editing what was said on randi about my theory, but it is like editing a blockbuster novel.
Charles: America has 5X everything compared to the UK by virtue of the greater population. I think that gives a biased perception sometimes - albeit they are also more adversarial.
ReplyDeleteJust be grateful you're not publishing your conspiracy theory in Mandarin.
Btw - I think there are plenty non-Scots 'gents' on this blog too - and gentesses, both native and alien.
Well Charles, you can edit it all you like, but the original will remain available.
ReplyDeleteThe people you call "ignorant" were asking you questions about your theory, hoping and expecting that you would explain yourself. Instead you called them names and refused to answer even the most straightforward questions. You also refused to acknowledge when the facts you had assumed when dreaming up your fantasy were shown to be wrong.
It wasn't an impressive performance, Charles. And I'd caution against posting a "spun" version, or it might just start it all off again.
Size of population is rarely worth anything Blogiston. England's greatest writer Shakespeare was from a country of about 3M pop, whether he was Bacon, Marlowe, Buckingham, the Earl of Soton, or even, as I foolishly believe, Mr WH, himself
ReplyDelete"Pity, no-one, but no-one actually read what I wrote, but only what they thought I wrote."
ReplyDeleteI can relate to that Charles. Awful isnt it?
Therefore, maybe it's time to fight fire with fire, and try to interest an independent film-maker to examine the case for Megrahi's innocence via the trial only.
ReplyDeleteIt strikes me that a useful webpage might be a kind of Lockerbie FAQ. I've seen so much great material by folks here and at JREF and it's shame it's all so --- staggered. I think a doc. along the lines that Blogiston suggested could be splendid. Clear, concise linkage: "The court relied on X, Y, Z. See here for X, here for Y and here for etc...."
[Rolfe:]It's striking how many commentators remark that there's no need for complicated glosses on the arguments. Just read the court verdict. The judges explain exactly how the evidence says Megrahi didn't do it, then simply declare that they're going to convict him anyway. And that's the clear truth.
ReplyDeletePaul Foot, Flight from justice:
'The judges concluded (para 39):
“If therefore the unaccompanied bag was launched from Luqa, the method by which it was done is not established and the Crown accepted that they could not point to any specific route by which the primary suitcase (with the bomb in it) could have been loaded. The absence of any explanation of the method by which the suitcase might have been placed on board KM 180 (the flight from Malta to Frankfurt) is a major difficulty for the Crown case.”
It was more than a “major difficulty”. For if the bomb suitcase did not go on the flight from Malta, then that was the end of the prosecution case.'
It is actually Jo G.
ReplyDeleteMISSION LOCKERBIE:
ReplyDeleteAttn. RicePuding,
"For if the bomb suitcase did not go on the flight from Malta, then that was the end of the prosecution case".
MEBO: Yes it will be the END !
Abdelbaset Al- Megrahi's book will be published soon, he says will clear his name.
New MEBO proofs confirm: Mr. Al-Megrahi have nothing to do with the PanAm 103 Tragedy, see in the context, the Air Malta Lie >>>
go to documents no. 848.rtf. and 855.rtf. on our Webpage.
In german language:
Die falsche Annahme, ein "Bomb-Bag" unter der Tray No. B-8849 sei von AirMalta Flug KM-180 auf PanAm PA-103/B transferiert worden, wurde durch Einfluss fragwürdiger BKA Untersuchungen im Flughafen Frankfurt "fabriziert" !
Bundeskriminalamt Untersuchungsbericht ST-33 - 068507/88 , Meckenheim, verantwortlicher Kommissar, Hans Jürgen Fuhl BKA.
02. 07. 1990, HR: 2327, Seite 19 (Prod. 0000025 Kamp van Zeist)
Résumé: Durch mangelhafte Ermittlungen des BKA wurde den fehlerhaften Bezeichnungen auf den Worksheets und anderenfragwürdigen Überschreibungen (Manipulationen) oder fehlenden Angaben auf den Gepäckdokumenten, zuwenig Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt !
Nur dadurch war es möglich falsch darzustellen, dass 1 "Bomb-Bag" von AirMalta KM-180 in Frankfurt auf PanAm, PA-103/B transferiert wurde.
by Edwin and Mahnaz Bollier, MEBO Ltd., Switzerland
URL: www.lockerbie.ch
"Pity, no-one, but no-one actually read what I wrote, but only what they thought I wrote."
ReplyDeleteI can relate to that Charles. Awful isnt it?
Jo, have you read Charles's "article"? And the ensuing JREF discussion? People have read exactly what he wrote, it's just that he doesn't take criticism or correction, and doesn't do re-thinks.
As far as not reading what people have written, you might go back and read the post by Blogiston which you criticised. He specifically addressed a question to me, explicitly about something I'd said several weeks ago. You promptly attacked him for not including other people in his post.
I don't think your attack was justified at all, based on what he'd written. If you wanted to widen the scope of what he'd said, it would have been easy to phrase your response postitively, as an add-on to his post. Instead you chose a confrontational and critical stance.
I don't want to have a row about this, because I enjoy and value your contributions, but I would certainly appreciate it if you phrased some of your responses in a more positive way, rather than attacking people for what you think they said, or what you think they should have said, instead of what they actually said.
RicePudding: You have put your finger on exactly the part of Paul Foot's article that made me sit up and realise there was a major scandal here. That, and the part where he explained how the judges hand-waved away the Bedford suitcase.
ReplyDeleteThe way the Frankfurt baggage evidence was spun to infer an unaccompanied bag having come off KM180, despite the solid evidence that no unaccompanied bag went on KM180 (and whatever was in that tray was x-rayed by Maier, who was aware of the Helsinki warning and the Autumn Leaves warning), is simply disgraceful.
It is simply terrifying that any court in our country is capable of convicting a man on evidence like that.
It strikes me that a useful webpage might be a kind of Lockerbie FAQ. I've seen so much great material by folks here and at JREF and it's shame it's all so --- staggered. I think a doc. along the lines that Blogiston suggested could be splendid. Clear, concise linkage: "The court relied on X, Y, Z. See here for X, here for Y and here for etc...."
ReplyDeleteThere was an attempt some months ago by a JREF poster (who has sadly dropped out of the discussion) to set up a wiki on Lockerbie. Unfortunately it never really got going properly, partly because nobody really had any experience of how to create the right sort of pages from scratch. Caustic Logic's site is good (and getting better), but the blog format isn't as flexible and interactive as a wiki, and it suffers from being one person's take, and from early errors that aren't corrected.
The wiki idea seems to me to be a good one in principle, in that people could add and clarify and correct things as time goes on, rather than anyone having to write the definitive page at one go. It's difficult to know how to go about it without opening it to sabotage by people like Bunntamas though.
Dear Rolfie,
ReplyDeleteDo you know why people criticise you? You have an enviable ability to argue your corner, but what that corner is is never quite certain.
If the evidence produced at the Zeist court by RARDE is demonstrably fraudulent, then we have a duty to make it know so that the criminals concerned can be brought to court and dealt with.
And if we can show everything from malfeasance, criminality and downright murder by the CIA, which I have done, and have a coherent thought out case in which I have spent hundreds of hours thinking of the possibilities of every step I can find, we need to work on that.
And to have simple naysayers like you or Sabre, who simply in half a sentence or less say, "where is your evidence", "I don't believe", and "answer my question" metaphorically stamping your foot when you don't get the reply you want (whatever that is), simply will not do.
You need to learn that argument is the rapier and not the bludgeon, that trying to understand what people are saying, when perhaps their skills are quite as well developed as yours, matters.
Stomping around on people's arguments like a fractious toddler, that you wish to present yourself as, will not do in adult reasoned discussion.
I don't want to bore you, as you have a very low attention span, any longer, I am not returning to the Randi site, for quite frankly it consists of w******* and I shall take my theory elsewhere.
Some version of my story will in the end become accepted as correct.
I had hoped it would be on the internet forums, but these people reveal themselves to be prejudiced poseurs who have already made their minds up.
..like a fractious toddler, that you wish to present yourself as, A jibe about ROLFE that made me ROFL!
ReplyDelete..as you have a very low attention span Is that not bludgeon-esque though?
Some version of my story will in the end become accepted as correct. Fuzzy logic can never be contradicted.
Ah Charles, and I was so much hoping that the high Google ranking of the JREF forum would attract you back to continue elevating your little Googlefight rating!
ReplyDeleteYou keep demanding that I should produce "my theory". I don't know what happened. I'd like to know what happened. (I know what didn't happen, and that was what the Zeist judges determined!)
So I look at theories produced by others, to see if I agree that that's what happened. You may remember my asking you to publish your theory, months ago, because I was keen to see if you had something credible.
You have a problem. You have produced an article that simply isn't credible. It makes huge leaps of inference on impossibly slender or non-existent premises. It's also demonstrably at odds with the known facts in a number of absolutely crucial respects.
It isn't going to get any better simply by you flouncing off in a huff from one set of critics. It's only going to get better if you take the criticisms on board and try to improve your presentation so that any moderately sceptical reader will follow your thesis and accept it.
- You need to know for sure which baggage container you think was sabotaged.
- You need to take on board that AVE4041 was initially loaded in the interline shed while the other containers originated from the baggage buildup shed.
- You need to acknowledge that it was not a container dedicated to first class luggage.
- You need to decide if John Bedford was following an SOP that required him to seek out and select AVE4041 rather than any convenient container that came to hand.
- You need to provide support for your assumptions about the re-use of baggage containers; indeed you need to state exactly what those assumptions are.
- When you state that AVE4041 was last used on a flight that landed at Heathrow mid-afternoon on 20th December, you have to state which flight that was, and particularly to realise that the aircraft involved could not possibly have been Maid of the Seas, which was in or heading into San Francisco at that time.
- You need to realise that the evidence you claim was "planted" does not correspond with what was actually recorded as being found on the ground.
And that's just the parts that relate to the baggage container. Other posters had equally factual criticisms relating to your assumptions about radar capabilities and suchlike.
Charles, if you're failing to get your point across, blaming your audience is not going to help. Improving your argument is going to help.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete- You need to know for sure which baggage container you think was sabotaged.
ReplyDelete== Almost certainly AVE4041 PA, but just possibly AVN7511 PA, but that makes the mechanics difficult, and I have disfficulty still exactly with the explosion pattern on AVE4041 PA.
- You need to take on board that AVE4041 was initially loaded in the interline shed while the other containers originated from the baggage buildup shed.
== No problem there.
- You need to acknowledge that it was not a container dedicated to first class luggage.
== No problem there.
- You need to decide if John Bedford was following an SOP that required him to seek out and select AVE4041 rather than any convenient container that came to hand.
== Bedford is an irrelevancy and he got the idea of 40/41 as his and his wife's ages not from selecting a container, but because he was presented with a container with such a number. A probabilistic model would say there was about a 1 in 2000 probability of being able to select such a container, but very much lower of identifying a 4 digit sequence with something important to him. It could have been sons ages, daughters weights, phone number, and such a recollection would have worked equally well.
- You need to provide support for your assumptions about the re-use of baggage containers; indeed you need to state exactly what those assumptions are.
== I believe a baggage plan is drawn up before every flight. Baggage containers are not selected at random from a pile.
- When you state that AVE4041 was last used on a flight that landed at Heathrow mid-afternoon on 20th December, you have to state which flight that was, and particularly to realise that the aircraft involved could not possibly have been Maid of the Seas, which was in or heading into San Francisco at that time.
== I don't know that, or I would have told you! Do some research for yourself, for once.
- You need to realise that the evidence you claim was "planted" does not correspond with what was actually recorded as being found on the ground.
== This is irrelevant to this part of the discussion, as it has moved away from H. airport.
== Almost certainly AVE4041 PA, but just possibly AVN7511 PA, but that makes the mechanics difficult, and I have disfficulty still exactly with the explosion pattern on AVE4041 PA.
ReplyDeleteHowever, since part of your thesis requires the container to be AVE4041 (being the container McKee's suitcase was almost certainly in), then you need to be sure about this before you can proceed. In particular, it's important because AVE4041 originated from a completely different area of the airport from AVN7511. You can't just say....
== No problem there.
== Bedford is an irrelevancy and he got the idea of 40/41 as his and his wife's ages not from selecting a container, but because he was presented with a container with such a number. A probabilistic model would say there was about a 1 in 2000 probability of being able to select such a container, but very much lower of identifying a 4 digit sequence with something important to him. It could have been sons ages, daughters weights, phone number, and such a recollection would have worked equally well.
No, Charles, you're not getting it. It has nothing to do with his reason for recalling the number of the container. Your thesis only works in this respect if he was working from an SOP which required him to find and use that container and no other. If he merely chose the nearest convenient container, your theory crashes and burns. Because it would not have been possible for your hypothetical "Iranian gent" to have reliably selected at midnight the container he would pick the following afternoon.
== I believe a baggage plan is drawn up before every flight. Baggage containers are not selected at random from a pile.
You say you believe Bedford was working from an SOP that required him to select that particular container. Remember, that was the only container in the interline shed that was loaded on PA103. All the other containers on the plane came from the baggage build-up shed.
You also believe that the allocation of that particular container for that purpose would have been made prior to midnight, that is some time the previous day.
I'm sorry if you don't like it, but there is precisely zero evidence to support this belief. You are merely making the assumption because it supports your fantasy-theory.
== I don't know that, or I would have told you! Do some research for yourself, for once.
Charles, I think I have done more "research" than you have on this matter. You have stated that baggage container AVE4041 flew into Heathrow from New York on a flight that landed mid-afternoon on 20th December. I have repeatedly asked you for your evidence to substantiate this, and you have repeatedly ignored me.
I have now pointed out to you that if this was the case, whatever plane that was, it wasn't Maid of the Seas. Because Maid of the Seas was flying into San Francisco at that time.
So please. This is your assertion about the wanderings of container AVE4041, it's up to you to explain where you're getting this from.
== This is irrelevant to this part of the discussion, as it has moved away from H. airport.
Charles, face it. Conspirators do not carefully plant evidence, and then spirit it all away again leaving no trace behind. You persistently describe items as being "planted" which were not recovered on the ground. Deal with it.
Now this is the last time I'm going to debate this with you on this blog. It's not an appropriate forum for this sort of discussion. Your suspension at the JREF forum has now expired. It is not hard to debate there without being censured - I've managed it for seven years and counting.
Running away from one group of critics won't help you improve your article. Talking on board what they're saying, just might.
I'm not going to bother to answer this Rolfe, until you being to think about the nonsense you've written
ReplyDeleteSuit yourself.
ReplyDeleteDear Rolfe,
ReplyDeleteI logged into the randi blog looked at many silly messages created by automatic software that do not tell you anything.
Since I have left there has been nothing posted, and it is not my intention to waste my time blogging to a lot of silly American loonies with nothing better to do but kill time between the last big bag full o' Pretzels and the daily trip down to the drive in shooting range (prize for the biggest number of lousy muslim mutant rag head terrorororists killed in an hour - a huge bucket of Jello for your cakehole)
So having been as rude as I could to the appalling Lisa Simpson, I shook the randi dust from off my feet and left.
The thread has died without my support it seems.
Since you were suspended on 3rd September, Charles, there have been well over 30 posts to the thread about your theory. This link goes to the first one. The last one was posted on 7th September, although I just bumped the thread in case you were having trouble finding it. There have also been numerous posts to other threads discussing Lockerbie.
ReplyDeleteYou have failed utterly to explain yourself in such a way that anyone accepts your thesis. Running away isn't going to alter that.
Sending rude messages to Lisa (who is a very sweet person actually) is what is known as "suicide by mod". That is, deliberately getting yourself banned so that you can never return to the forum. There is at present no sign that you have been successful in this, so I hope you will return, which you are at present entirely free to do.
If you can't put your case over in such a way that others can understand you, then you're never going to get anywhere I'm afraid.
I tried to click on the bit where you said click on this link in blue, which is how it came up in my browser, but it was not a clickable link.
ReplyDeleteIf you are referring to the 12 messages I have found on randi they are all simply uninteresting., mainly rambling on about the wrong use of the quote function whatever that is.
My theory stands as it is. I may put some of my more detailed work on adifferentviewonlockerbie, like the statistical argument that Heathrow was the point of ingestion (that curious alimentary phrase of the FAI) and not Frankfurt or Luqa, but if the stuff in the 30 messages you say there are for me are similar to the 12 I found or the tosh that passes from original thought there, I'll not bother, thank you.
Ambrosia was about the only one to show any intelligence. Did s/he also blog as ricepudding - such jolly commercials, but there I show my age!
The link isn't clicking for me either, I don't know why. I bumped the thread back on the front page of the CT forum for you, so you should be able to find it again. It's the second on the list at the moment I think.
ReplyDeleteHere's the link in clear so you can copy it into your browser's address bar.
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=6295247
I think the messages you're talking about must be private messages, sent to you to try to help you with the quote function you were having so much trouble with. I sent you one myself.
There are about 35 more posts in the thread about your article, since you were suspended. As I said, look on the first page now, or copy the link I gave.
If you're having trouble understanding how the forum works, ask someone! And try to understand when people explain it to you. Simply ignoring things like private messages and the quote function because you're too superior to learn anything isn't going to get you anywhere.
And there are other threads on Lockerbie you know, and threads on all sorts of other things in the various forum areas, including a Community area for just hanging out if that's what you want. It doesn't take much effort to learn how to use it.
You won't improve your thesis or its presentation by running away from honest criticism. You're likely simply to find some more honest criticism. You have had quite a number of facts explained to you which pretty much blow your theory out of the water as it stands. Unless you try to deal with them and modify your thesis accordingly, I'm afraid it's a dead duck.
Rolfe, it only reproduces page 7 of the randi blog (my Lockerbie bit) which I have downloaded and am working on but there is still a huge way to go. I will post the result on adifferentviewonlockerbie, but you won't like it, though you are quite a decent arguer. But do I go back to randi. Nothing has changed in the last three days.
ReplyDeleteCharles, you seem to confuse me with someone who gives a damn about your "different view of Lockerbie". However, if it makes you happy....
ReplyDeleteIf you don't have the capacity to learn the difference between a forum and a blog, or to find out the very basics of how a forum operates, I'm sorry for you. If you can't explain your theory to people who ask sensible questions about it, and won't re-think it to accommodate new facts people have explained to you, then you're just navel-gazing.
Oh, and if you publish your own spun version of your interaction with the JREF forum without a link to the original, you will be rightly branded dishonest.
I really don't see the difference. If Black's is a blog and Randi's is a forum, we are at least nicer to each other in a a blog than a forum.
ReplyDeleteA forum, it seems to me is a blog with knobs on, that wants to give itself airs, graces, immoderate moderators to which it really is not entitled and elevates mere mortals with elevated titles such "Pope", "acknowledged authority", "distinguished contributor" all really rather pathetic when these same people are hiding behind pseudonyms, which I like Black, choose not to do, Rolfe.
Yours
Charles Norrie
I use exactly the same intellectual apparatus, weak though it may be to blog and to forum. Black's blog is composed of fairly nice people who write articulately, which considering were self-selecting and the Professor doesn't seem to have a heavy hand is good.
ReplyDeleteBut the Randi forum is full of angry shouting bloggers, and I did not choose to go there and Rolfe co-opted me so to speak. I found it full of shouting bullies who said things like "Guilty", or "show me the evidence", when I had at length told them the reasons why the evidence wasn't there and until it was made public we'd have to do with the best inference. So I shall post around 95000 words of comment from the 8 pages from Randi with my comments on my website, and Randi, silly name to a Brit, can go hang.
A the nice differences between blog and forum I don't care, as there is an malicious intention not to understand in that so-called forum.
In presumably 20 years effort, I have got much further than it, whether or not contributors are qualified air mechanics as one boasted to me.
This is a test. Two contributors have reported that recent attempts to comment on this thread have failed.
ReplyDeleteHighly mysterious. I now have evidence that comments from three contributors have not appeared. I can't see anything in the tools supplied by blogspot that would enable me to do something about this.
ReplyDeleteI know I've had problems with Professor Black's blog before. For instance I have caused multiple posts which seem to happen when I don't get what I think is a proper response from the posting engine.
ReplyDeleteProfessor Black, is there any similarity of material that isn't being posted? Is a name, for example, or an allegation, not appearing? If we analyse the failures the better we may be to inform ourselves! Currently I'm getting quite a lot of 503s
I've lost a couple of posts recently because of software glitches. And a post I managed to add successfully at the third or fourth try has vanished again - although judging by Charles's last comment, he read it before it went.
ReplyDeleteCharles, you've been banned at the JREF forum for sending an abusive message to Lisa. Presumably that was what you wanted.
The only person being gratuitously rude in that thread was you. You couldn't hack it when people asked you to clarify things you'd simply invented and couldn't support. So you insulted them instead. The evidence is all there to see, in perpetuity, so you can spin all you like.
I suspect it may be something to do with length of posts. The post I keep losing was longer than any of these. I'll try it in bits.
ReplyDeleteCharles, I can't believe you don't know these basics. "Blog" is short for "web log", and it belongs to a particular person, the blogger, in this case Professor Black. Blog posts can only be made by the blogger, and they always remain filed by the day they were created. Blogs often have comments sections, where anyone else can leave a comment on the blog post.
Blog comments are quite restrictive. They're supposed to be about the subject of the blog post, and the format is usually limited. Recently-commented posts don't rise to the top, so the only way to find new comments is to scroll back down and open the old posts. Commentators can't communicate with each other privately. And a blog will die if the owner doesn't participate actively by creating new posts.
Rolfe,
ReplyDeleteYou got me into the randi forum. I never wanted to go there.
Of course I don't want to be banned, but I acn always rereister under a different bname.
I don't really care what Lady Simpson does to me - she should have approached me personally in the first place and said what I was doing wrong.
So the ****** **** can **** *** for all I care, Please don't mention the stupid ignorant pile of carp you call a forum again, please.
Charles, if you can't keep your temper, please stop posting comments.
ReplyDeleteDear Professor Black, Those stars were for effect only, and I'll translate them for you if you want, but they aren't what you think they might be.
ReplyDeleteI have had a bellyful of the Randi forum, and its unpleasant ways, and Rolfe seems to think that I should find it important, and keeps on saying so and I don't.
Please don't miss the irony. I don't think you could stop me blogging unless you decided to close the blog down by the way.
On another matter I have done the most minimal possible change to a Wikipedia entry about Lockerbie to see how long it lasts before the forces of darkness descend on it.
Isn't that odd? The first half of the vanishing post stayed there but the second half vanished again. It must be the length, I think. Here's the first half of the second half again, to be followed by the second half!
ReplyDeleteIn contrast a forum is much more flexible [than a blog]. Any member can start a new thread on whatever takes their fancy. Threads with new posts added will be returned to the top of the list so you can always see which are the active threads. Forum posts usually have a much more flexible format with quotes, images, video clips and so on. Forums allow members to communicate with each other privately.
Although the JREF forum is hosted on James Randi's web site, he hardly ever goes near it. He hasn't posted in years, I believe. He doesn't direct the topics of discussion in any way. He does have a blog section as well, where members can comment on articles he has written, so the distinction is important. The forum is the playground of the members.
ReplyDeleteThe type of discussion you are trying to have here is more suited to a forum format than comments on someone else's blog. It would be more flexible, and not dependent on someone else starting topics. If you're so dim you can't even understand the definitions, never mind how to take advantage of the software, and too arrogant to admit you might have something to learn, then that's your loss.
Rolfe,
ReplyDeleteYou got me into the randi forum. I never wanted to go there.
Wrong. Charles, you're re-writing history. You joined of your own free will, butting into an existing thread with a post promoting your article, just after you published it.
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=6277277
Because of that, I started a separate thread on your theory, to avoid that thread being derailed. That's how forums work.
Don't go on with your obsession of forums over blogs, Rolfe.
ReplyDeleteThe point is your Randi forum, probably suffering a severe case of infection by the CIA over Lockerbie, cannot think straight.
Now I've gone, you've tried to start it again, but I don't think you've got a hope in hell of doing so.
So why not stop going on about it. I have the right to blame you over my fate on Randi.