Alex Jones is wrong on London terror drill

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

In fact, Power's consultancy firm was running a small "corporate wargame" drill for the management team of a British company with 1,000 employees. Here's the BBC transcript of the interview Power gave :

POWER: "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, so I still have the hairs on the back of my neck standing up right now."

Clearly, the figure of 1,000 refers to the size of the company whose managers were being drilled - and not to the number of participants in the drill.

Furthermore, any savvy investigator knows that these types of private-sector "risk management" drills never use field staff. Neither do these low-level corporate drills have active involvement of police or other security forces.

(...)

The London corporate drill was just a glorified administration seminar where managers get to use security buzzwords --while seated around an office table guessing how they would respond to loss of available staff for call centers, power outages, or travel restrictions, etc..

http://wagnews.blogspot.com/2005/07/alex-jones-is-wrong-on-london-terror.html

[Walt Starr]

1. Well, well, well

YOU COINCIDENCE THEORISTS DRANK THE KOOLAID! KARL ROVE HAD THEM CHANGE THE STORY!!! BLAIR AND BUSH PLANNED THIS THING!!!

:sarcasm:

Don't go blowing a perfectly good conspiracy theory with facts, now!

:evilgrin:

[Anarcho-Socialist]

2. LOL

Those damn facts.

[TheGoodCitizen]

8. The OP was posted on blogspot.com

does that automatically make it a fact? I also check out the other website (breakfronts.com) too, It looked a little hooky to say the least.

[Walt Starr]

16. No, it doesn't autiomatically make it a fact

But Alex Jones taking a perfectly normal disaster recovery scenario and wrapping a conspiracy theory around it doesn't make Alex Jones factual, either.

The original quote is the factual bit. It was a priovate consulting firm conducting a disaster recovery scenario for a private company using those reference poiints as the places where a terror attack took place as the disaster in the drill.

It's commonplace and shouldn't be construed as anything other than what it was, but nutballs like Alex Jones just HAVE to have a conspiracy byt two governments wrapped around a terrorist attack.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

25. They're working backwards.

They start with the conclusion that it was a conspiracy, then cherry-pick and distort information to support their conclusion. A similar tactic was used by the Bush administration to "prove" that Iraq had WMDs. That tactic was replete with lies then, as it is now, regardless of who uses it.

[TheGoodCitizen]

32. HEY....

even the MSM the day of the London bombings (military precision) said that "these facts will change over time" so give the guy a break!

I'm sure this so called "company" will surly have their day in court and it will ALL come out in the wash, so to say... at that point when PROOF is provided, maybe then Jones will retract his story.

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

27. well ...

sometimes it takes a conspiracy theorist to debunk a conspiracy theorist!

[BreakForNews]

50. Everybody rise... Here come da Emperor...

This is how debate works. Cool.
Alex Jones is free to write. I am free to debunk him.
He is free to respond or issue a correction (waiting.......)

You are free to read it all and decide.
Or are you?

Banning conspiracy theories is a slippery slope.
It let's the Emperor march without that pesky kid pointing out his nakedness.

Brain cells atrophy unless you exercise 'em.
Very few picked up on this sentence in my analysis:
http://wagnews.blogspot.com/2005/07/alex-jones-is-wrong-on-london-terror.html

"Some of these skeptics will see this article
by Alex Jones as part of a deliberate setup to try destroy
the credibility of those who question the authorities."

Ummmm...

Fintan

[TheGoodCitizen]

52. Welcome.... hope you don't think I was too harsh with your site....

I do it to prove a point, that's all.

"Some of these skeptics will see this article
by Alex Jones as part of a deliberate setup to try destroy
the credibility of those who question the authorities."

This is a very profound quote and should be considered.

(edit: some DUers posting on this thread were earlier calling for CT'ers to be purged from DU and for new rules to be put into place... something I do not agree with)

[LSK]

31. here we go again

Show me any evidence, any evidence at all that it was done by Al Queda of Europe. Besides a posting on a website that any 12 year old could do.

[TheGoodCitizen]

33. That's where these rumors get started....

and please tell me ALL you know about Al Queda of Europe, where you very first heard of this group, their documented history, etc.

[LSK]

37. so to be clear

Discussing Al Queda of Europe, even thou there is no evidence or facts about them (except what the MSM tells us) is ok.

Discussing LIHOP or MIHOP is not ok, even thou theres much established historical basis for it(Operation Northwoods, Reichstag fire, etc).

Is that the gist of it?

[TheGoodCitizen]

42. I DO strongly believe that's what's been established here.

Nothing to see here... Now go off to work like the Good Citizens that you are.


* The dangers of delinquency
* The importance of playing fair
* A good citizen eats plenty of meat
* The benefits of cheerfulness
* Code of the Junior Rifleman
* Good citizenship in your neighborhood
* Outdoor activities for family fun
* A good little boy never talks back
* Tips to ensure that work doesn't dominate your life
* Why it's never right to poison the neighbor's dog
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:h30J9DbJT-wJ:www.gunlaws.com/books5.htm+%22The+Good+Citizen%27s+Handbook%22+%22Penmanship+counts%22&hl=en

[Walt Starr]

40. The investigation is ongoing

but to state that the United States and United Kingdom governments conspired to commit these atrocities goes beyond the ludicrous.

We'll know soon enough who it actually was. From all appearances, the proper law enforcement officials are closing in on the perpetrators.

[LSK]

43. and the investigation is ongoing into what you call ludicrous n/t

[Walt Starr]

57. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA

The U.K. Police surrounded a house in connection to the bombing incident.

The address was NOT 10 Downing Street, London, nor was it 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Again, present some evidence or bizarre claims about widespread conspiracies between two world governments remain ludicrous!

[TheGoodCitizen]

58. POLICE MAKE ARRESTS IN N.ENGLAND IN HUNT FOR LONDON BOMBERS -SKY TV

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L12537069.htm

...more to come? :shrug:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1621116

[Walt Starr]

59. So far, the arrests remain unconfirmed

But notice, blair is not being arrested which PROVES he's in on it...

:sarcasm:

[GoBlue]

44. Ludicrous?...

"but to state that the United States and United Kingdom governments conspired to commit these atrocities goes beyond the ludicrous."

Have you heard about the ludicrous and atrocious war on Iraq committed by the United States and United Kingdom governments? eom

[Walt Starr]

56. What does one have to do with the other?

Nothing, so far as governmental involvement goes.

If you're going to make the claim, I'm going to demand the evidence to back up the claim.

Present it, or the claim remains ludicrous.

[OKNancy]

3. I noticed a few DUers trying to get

this point out, but unfortunately they get drowned out sometimes.

[rman]

39. Yeah, poor coincidence theorists.

I guess that's why this thread is not being moved to the basement (911 forum), even though it already is well known that PP is not accepted as a reliable source on DU (never mind the PP audio clip of the actual BBC 5 interview...)

It's interesting that discrediting PP is apparently more newsworthy than mr Power's statements.

[lockdown]

63. Or locked out.

A poster (pretty sure it was muriel_volestrangler) made these very points in a relevant thread a couple of days ago, but the thread was annoyingly locked just after she posted, so few saw it. That's a good argument against trying to supress such discussions imho, regardless of any other objections it can be counter productive to the presumed intentions. As such stories arise, give them air and let people evaluate what's there for themselves.

That said, I have to add my gratitude for the work the mods do, it's a thankless task. :)

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

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[Walt Starr]

6. Oh good gravy!

Look, this was a PRIVATE company hoilding a PRIVATE disaster recovery scenario drill.

Stop woith the tinfoil shit. It doesn't fly.

[TheGoodCitizen]

14. BINGO...

Hey buddy, I also check out the blogspot.com OP... you should REALLY go to the breakfornews.com link on the OP. Here I'll just give it to you here:

http://www.breakfornews.com

Take a look at their other "news" headlines on the left, the site looks a little hooky!

Looks like a bunch of tinfoilers! :sarcasm:

[rman]

5. The number of employees/people involved is hardly the core of the issue

And what PP has to say on the matter does not diminish what mr Power has said in interviews on BBC radio, ITV and CBC.

Namely that a terror exersize was taking place in London on the morning of 7-7 that was almost identical to the actual attacks that took place at that time.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

7. And...?

Do you know the London tube system? Do you understand the layout of the City of London? I'm guessing you don't. It's not as if there are a million places to chose from, and some of them (like Kings Cross) are incredibly obvious choices, due to their difficulty for evacuation and congestion. If I were to formulate a scenario for a terrorst attack on central London's transit system, I'm sure I'd probably come up with something similar, too. And OMG it was at the SAME TIME as the scenario. It was morning fucking rush hour! When do you expect them to attack? 8:30PM on Sunday? Good lord some people will believe anything.

[rman]

9. Maybe. But that has nothing to do with PP

So why does the OP start by dragging PP into this?

Also, this "coincidence" was enough to make mr Power's neck hair stand on end.
But maybe you know things that the managing director of the corporation that conducted the exersize doesn't know.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

12. Because they're liars.

Because they intentionally distorted the facts, then those distortions were picked up here and repeated ad nauseum on DU as "evidence" to support... You know, I still can't figure out exactly what the hell the conspiracy is supposed to be here, but in any case people were using it to say that there was somethng somehow suspicious about all of this.

The OP is simply pointing out that people here are being misled into spreading LIES and that spreading lies is stupid and wrong. I fail to see why that's a controversial point.

[rman]

18. What could PP have gained by "distorting the facts"?

Some parts of what mr Power said in the BBC interview are a bit hard to make out. It's understandable a transcript of it would not be 100% accurate.
What's the big difference between a terror exersize involving 1000 people, or a terror exersize being conducted for a company having a 1000 employees?
It has no bearing on the relevant facts as revealed by mr Power. And what would PP gain from this "distortion"?

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

24. Publicity.

"What could PP have gained by "distorting the facts"?"

Would we be here talking about them and generating hits on their website otherwise?

:)

[rman]

34. negative publicity by distorting an irrelevant detail.

oh sure. :)

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

35. Excuse me?

That's the Fox News / Newsmax / Drudge business plan, in a nutshell!

Lord knows NOBODY (cough, National Enquirer, cough, Murdoch) gets rich off lies and distortions.

[TheGoodCitizen]

38. Maybe same could be said of this...

http://www.breakfornews.com site? :shrug: Just a though!

[Name removed]

46. Deleted message

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[TheGoodCitizen]

48. excellent point

[goclark]

60. Silly question - I have been trying to follow the tread

Please don't beat me up but,"What's with the PRIVATE FIRMS?"

Are they something like Halliburton? Are they empowering themselves to do the work that the government should be doing? Are they able to gain "classified" information about the Tubes of London?

Are these private firms like Rudy G.'s "Security FIRM?"

If they are, I will put my tin hat on!

I don't like Halliburton nor RudyTheChum of Bush.They are all about making money and gaining CONTROL. These kind of "consulting firms" have taken over our government and I don't like it.

[rman]

64. well,

The corporation that performed the exercise in London on 7-7 is a private firm, that works for both the private and the public sector (http://www.visorconsultants.com/aboutvisor.html).
It stands to reason that they do have access to all sorts of information about all sorts of things. I don't think they could do their job otherwise. Any such private firm may not be one of the bad guys, but we have nothing but their word to go on.

I do not know anything about the connections that the people at Visor Consultants have, other then managing director Peter Power being a former Scotland Yard senior employee.

One thing i've started wondering lately is - just how many snitches/leakers/traitors (agents/operatives) would you need within an organization, as to make it work for you (if only on occasions).

[goclark]

65. What kind of clearance do they have to have

as PRIVATE Consultants?

One of them could be working for OSM and we would never know.

At least if they were with the government, we have to clear them first, these organizations scare me.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

22. Alex Jones = Prison Planet.

Did I miss something?

[Name removed]

45. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Walt Starr]

10. The same holds true in Chicago

If they were to plan and execute such an attack in Chicago, they'd hit the Metra Rail stations (Union Station, Northwestern, and Randolph) and MAYBE a couple of "L" subway stations. Those platforms that are elevated in the Loop wouldn't be noteworthy targets.

So a private company which is conducting a disaster recovery drill for a private company would by virtue of the nature of the business, utilize those reference points for such a scenario.

In fact, if the consultants DIDN'T use those stations as reference for the disaster, they would be demonstrating incompetence in the job they were contracted to perform!

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

13. LOL.

In fact, if the consultants DIDN'T use those stations as reference for the disaster, they would be demonstrating incompetence in the job they were contracted to perform!

Brilliant.

[Walt Starr]

17. There are mutliple disasters that can be drilled for

Using a terrorist attack scenario for a disaster drill requires it perform as an actual terrorist attack would.

The fact that a private consulting firm would conduct such a drill is perfectly normal, especially for London which encountered terrorist attacks on a regular basis as a matter of course for years.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

26. I find it telling that the it's the Americans...

...and not the Brits who are obsessed with this conspiratorial thinking. I haven't seen many of my fellow ex-pat DUers or UK natives engaging in this nonsense.

[Walt Starr]

28. That is very telling!

Thanks for the input!

It could have something to do with the political climate in the U.S. as well as the history of events, such as the Kennedy assassination.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

30. That's part of it.

Another part is that people in the UK have experienced terrorist attacks before. They aren't deluded into thinking that they are invulnerable. The prevailing view amongst the conspiracy nutcases seems to be that the US could only be vulnerable to attack if it were an inside job. I see it as another manifestation of the American-centric mindset we often accuse Bush of having. I dunno, maybe I see this differently since I'm in the UK now. It's certainly weird having an outside perspective on the US reaction to an event that happened in my relatively new neck of the woods.

[TheGoodCitizen]

47. Discussion and conspiratorial thinking not good?

Maybe you could go look up the word conspiracy for me.... and don't pick out two or three words out that definition that suit your way of thinking and discredit the rest of the definition.

(edit: You said- "I haven't seen many of my fellow ex-pat DUers or UK natives engaging in this nonsense." UKers do it in the Parliament nearly everyday, unlike American Politicians)

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

61. Sorry, I haven't heard any MPs suggest...

...that this was some kind of setup by the government.

[bicentennial_baby]

11. Alex is often wrong...

but then again, he's a nut :silly:

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

15. He's a liar.

He spreads lies to get attention. It's sad.

[TheGoodCitizen]

19. The OP comes from....

http://www.breakfornews.com

You should go to their website and read the "PsyOp America – From 9/11 to Guantanamo to Berg" article on their homepage, scroll down and it's right before the "Spot the REAL Saddam" article. Are all the opinions on that site fact?

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

20. that's why I chose it

it's a contrarian view but one which indulges in tinfoil speculation itself --- as the article goes on to say:

"There is much to indicate that the official version of the London bombings is not the real story"

[TheGoodCitizen]

49. It would be interesting to do some serious research on this company...

maybe it is a front group of some sort?

[damnthetorpedoes]

21. Jones is a Tinfoil Hat Special

And always was. He was a friend of the anti-Clinton radical right before he conveniently joined the MIHOP brigades and seems to have been forgiven by the wackier sort of "progressives" who believe his bull. He's wrong on almost everything, and a very poor choice of fellow traveler for any progressive with an intention to help the left actually govern again. He's a very good example of what some of us mean by losing credibility over wild charges and conspiracy theories that can't be proven and that are delivered with foaming mouth and saucer eyes. Pathetic that his name gets mentioned with any respect, or at all, on DU.

[Frederik]

29. Yes, Jones can't be trusted

As you say, he used to belong to the "IRS is out to get me" Right during the Clinton years, and he tends to twist everything to fit into his peculiar world view (Kofi Annan is one of his chief villains). I think he may be partly responsible for traditionally right-wing ideas about the NWO, Illuminati etc percolating into the left-wing since Bush took office ("Oh please God, don't let the globalists win..." - direct quote from his radio show :-))

Poor choice for fellow traveller, but I must admit that I find his radio show and his videos wildly entertaining at times. And sometimes, he does a real scoop. His clandestinely taped video from the Bohemian Grove is priceless.

[Name removed]

23. Deleted message

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[Just Me]

36. Curious. I wonder if the company has some recalcitrant employees,...

,...who utilized the info from the exercise to carry out the actual bombings. It's just too coinky dink that the exercise included precisely the same simultaneous bombing in the same stations that actually occured.

[TheGoodCitizen]

51. Maybe their brains were messed with or they had chips implanted?

Who knows.... maybe it's a front group (The Company)?

[rman]

41. Dead horse, beat.

Keep at it.

[1932]

53. If I had a company that did corp security, I might lie on TV and say my...

company had practically predicted the terrorist attack.

BTW.

[NoPasaran]

54. Alex Jones can't take a dump

Without spinning it into part of some conspiracy theory.

[helderheid]

55. here's a video interview with Power about the drill

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=4070512&mesg_id=4070512

[Endangered Specie]

62. Jones makes matt Drudge look sane

and that takes alot :crazy: :tinfoilhat:

Its a same all his looney theories dont drive him to just live in an unconnected concrete bunker the rest of his life.... alas, I can dream.