The Alex Cox forum 7/7 discussion thread
The Alex Cox '7-7 our 9-11' Forum thread
By way of introduction to the Alex Cox forum archive, Alex Cox writes:
Until it was swamped by spammers, gamblers and pornographers there was a forum at my site, alexcox.com. The most active strand by far had nothing to do with feature films, but was a response to two pieces I wrote about the 7/7 atrocities. The posters vigorously debated the official version of these events. Some suggested that 1) there was some state supervision or involvement, as seems to have been the case on 9/11, and 2) a security exercise - Visor on 7/7, Vigilant Guardian on 9/11 - may have been penetrated by the terrorists, or used as cover for them by their handlers.
The posts are fascinating. Some are stupid (anyone disagreeing with conspiracy theory is accused of being a COINTELPRO agent) but most are intelligent and thoughtful. Many thanks to The Antagonist for rescuing them!
-- Alex Cox
The J7 / Alex Cox story
On Christmas Eve 2005, cult writer and film director Alex Cox -- he of BBC Moviedrome fame, the director of Sid and Nancy, Death & The Compass and the writer and director of Repo Man -- wrote and published an entry on his blog entitled 7/7 - OUR 9/11? The article discussed various perspectives on the events that occurred in London on July 7th 2005, following on as it did from Alex's reviews of three books on the subject of 9/11, and included reference to some leaflets Alex had picked up at a peace march in London on 24th September 2005. One of those flyers included an early incarnation of the J7 flyer.
Alex's article makes reference to a number of sources of information on the subject of July 7th, including the early original research and analysis of The Antagonist, one of the founder members of J7: The July 7th Truth Campaign -- the Internet-based research and campaigning group who have, since the day of 7/7, been proactively researching what happened on 7/7 and have discovered countless errors, anomalies and inconsistencies in the official story, as documented here on this web site, the J7 blog and the J7 forum.
Alex's article was published on his blog and on the sadly defunct Alex Cox forum where a debate ensued between Alex Cox, various J7 members and researchers -- including The Antagonist, Prole, Kier, Sinclair, numeral as well as Rachel "North" and other interested parties who joined the Alex Cox forum to participate in the discussion. Alex's original post is reproduced below and you can read the discussions that the article inspired using the links below the article.
7/7 - OUR 9/11?
by Alex Cox
Originally Posted: Sat Dec 24, 2005 2:36 am
Last week I reviewed three books about the 9/11 atrocities. Two of them suggested that the US Government let these events happen - or organised them - so as to have a pretext to seize the oil assets of the Middle East. One of them, by Webster Tarpley, claimed that terrorist conspiracies are invariably infiltrated by governments, and that terrorist acts or usually the work of government provocateurs seeking a clamp-down. He provides numerous examples of this.
Whenever I go on a peace march, or a march of almost any kind, there are always people handing out flyers. On the Peace March in London on 24 Sept, I was acquired a number of flyers - supposedly from dissenting Muslim or leftist groups - which claimed the 7/7 bombings in London were a secret government act.
So I'd like to briefly apply the same scepticism to the 7/7 events as American writers have done regarding 9/11.
One of the flyers, printed on pink paper - "7-7 - Case for the Defence" (www.julyseventh.co.uk) claims that a 'terror drill' was taking place for bomb attacks at the same times and locations as explosions. This was definitely the case on 9/11 and it would be interesting to know if the claim is (even partially) true in the case of London. Advance knowledge of a training exercise would be presumably be useful to terrorists. But, as Mr Blair and Mr Clarke reminded us last week, there is no need for an official enquiry.
Another flyer, on white paper, "7/7 - There Were No Suicide Bombers" (www.prisonplanet.com/archives/london.htm) makes the same claim, but also supports it, with the following quote:
At half past nine this morning we were actually running an
exercise for a company of over a thousand people in London
based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the
railway stations where it happened this morning.This is attributed to Peter Power, Managing Director of Visor Consultants and longtime associate of Sir Ian Blair, on BBC Radio 5, 2005/7/7. (There is much more about Power, Visor Consultants, and the 7/7 exercises on both websites. Apparently, the 7/7 "terror drill" tale is true.)
Both flyers, pink and white, refer to mainstream news reports of bomb explosions underneath the trains. Bruce Lait, a passenger on the Aldgate East train, and several passengers on the Edgeware Road train apparently reported this to the Cambridge Evening News and to the Guardian Online (both cite the website www.officialconfusion.com with the instruction 'click on Honigsbaum Audio.')
Both leaflets also claim that CCTV photos of the four suicide bombers outside Luton station were faked. The white leaflet also claims that one Haroon Aswat, the alleged 'mastermind of the failed 21/7 bombings' is an MI6 agent (citing Fox News Channel, 2005/7/29)
The pink leaflet has not much more info than the white one, though there are certainly some other bits of conspiracy stuff left dangling, such as:
7 ) WHY the power surge story, WHY was it changed,
WHY were Kings X workers told to come in early and
not talk to the press, and WHY to the authorities
still withhold the 3 Kings Cross tube departure times?
8 ) Many anomalies also surround the 30 bus which
exploded outside the BMA (Lancet article connection?)
Only bus diverted that morning, it had a poster with
'Absolute Terror - Bold and Brilliant' on its side, etc.
On page two of the pink leaflet we are directed to the CIA and the global scope of things ("The two SAS reconnaissance men arrested in Basra almost certainly had bombs in their car"), and - whoa! - we're advised, for further study (sic) to read Webster Tarpley's book 9/11 - SYTHETIC TERRORISM and another book also recommended by Tarpley and LaRouche's "research agency."Is one of these two leaflets put out by the Lyndon LaRouche org? It may be so. Perhaps many strange orgs latch onto disasters with parapolitcal overtones, and publish conspiracy books, and hand out leaflets.
LaRouche's dodgy politics might discredit the pink leaflet. But does the pink leaflet therefore discredit the white one?
Not necessarily. In the United States, there are three theories about the 9/11 atrocities: ACCIDENT, LIHOP, and MIHOP is what I think they are called. ACCIDENT is the official theory, the one promoted by the White House, the major media, and the Kean Commision: Bin Laden did it, we were unaware and unprepared. LIHOP is Let It Happen On Purpose: bad people within the US Government reduced America's security deliberately, so that Bin Laden's wicked but useful provocation could go ahead. Bin Laden doesn't feature much in MIHOP - Make It Happen On Purpose - where he is reduced to a minor patsy, like Lee Harvey Oswald' s landlady. MIHOP theorists believe elements within the US gov/mil/biz complex did it all.
ACCIDENT is the theory which the British state and media have applied to 7/7. We've heard little about the simultaneous 'terror exercises.' Links between the alleged suicide bombers and Al Qaeda have been simply assumed; links between them and the security services have not been seriously pursued. Yet there were such contacts. All this is updated, via the two websites, and their links.
A particularly interesting link is to the blog of The Antagonist, who has clearly devoted a lot of thought and analysis to 7/7. He cites early reports - including an announcement by MetroNet, and a subsequent press release - that a catastrophic power surge had caused the three Tube explosions. This leads to speculation that the 'Al Qaeda' story is but a cover-up by MetroNet and the Blair government to avoid a massive corporate manslaughter rap -
http://antagonise.blogspot.com/2005/08/london-77-lest-we-forget.htmlSurely, from a terrorist's viewpoint, the timing of the London atrocities was all wrong. If you were really suicide bombers, with serious, attainable goals - a British withdrawal from Iraq, say - why would you wait till after the General Election? Instead, the alleged bombers struck after the Election and after the Olympic Committee's decision - losing another opportunity to damage British prestige.
Indeed, the alleged bombers waited till the Election and the Olympic decision were in the bag, and, as Private Eye pointed out, timed their atrocities to coincide with BBC2's The New Al Qaeda, and Channel 4's The Cult of the Suicide Bomber. Both The Eye and The Guardian treated the 7/7 attacks as proof that The Power of Nightmares was wrong, in some way.
I have no idea what went on on 7/7, but based even on a couple of flyers and these websites, I wouldn't pick ACCIDENT as the most likely explanation. Clarke's decision to do so, and his rejection of a public enquiry into 7/7, seem par for the New Labour course, and deeply corrupt.
In the end, the 7/7 horrors served to validate the corporate flacks and gangsters gathering for the G8 meeting in Edinburgh. The media strove to make these crooks look 'statesmanlike,' and ended its brief focus on the massive 'Make Poverty History' campaign. In the same way, 9/11 validated the struggling, unelected G.W. Bush presidency, and ended all media focus on the massive Third World Conference on Slavery, which had taken place in South Africa, and demanded the First World pay reparations, the week before.
If anyone doubts the existence of political conspiracies, let them consider the following conspiracies to pervert the course of justice, ongoing in England, Ireland, and the USA:
1) the choice and use of 'Lord' Butler and previous noble 'Lords' - by the politicians under investigation - to investigate serious political crimes, including war crimes,
2) the choice of judges in the Shannon Airport Ploughshares anti-war case (two judges, supposedly selected by the Irish judicial system for their impartiality, have been forced to remove themselves - the second one for undeclared personal & political links to GW Bush),
3) the US judicial system's choice of one Reggie Walton - another GW Bush crony - to decide the Valerie Plame and Sibol Edmonds cases. Walton has twice been 'randomly' assigned to judge Edmonds' whistleblower cases.
All the above may happen randomly. Yet, strangely, they all benefit the same handful of powerfully-connected individuals. If the choice of judge wasn't random, it was criminal. And, if more than one individual was involved in the decision to commit the crime, then it was - by the definition of the word - a conspiracy.
Merry Xmas!Source: The Alex Cox Blog
Since the publication of the article above Alex has also commented on J7's uncovering of a little more detail about the CV of Peter Power in Off With Their Heads! Another of Alex's articles, Why I Oppose Freedom, references the execution of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Operation Overt terror raids and urges readers to sign the J7 petition.
Alex Cox Forum archive
The forum navigation links on the archive pages linked below do not work. You will have to hit the 'back' button in your web browser to return to this index page and navigate pages of the forum archive.