(Anti-) conspiracy theorists swarm at harmless blog

The numbers of visitors to this blog increased exponentially yesterday. A wave of sudden interest in my new collection of stories, to be published by Salt in October? (Pre-ordering facilities available here.) Well, no. Nothing so flattering, or wise.

The posts that get most attention generally have something more prurient to recommend them (although my story Nipples might be just what some of them are looking for. It's in my new collection of stories, to be published...). On David Isaak's advice I entitled one post Hot Sex in San Francisco, and a lot of people looking for naughtiness must have been disappointed by the image of a rather elegant Art Deco façade. I'm also used to the post showing Berlusconi as nature intended (apart from the hair transplant, face lift and liposuction) getting an inordinate amount of attention, and yesterday was no exception.

But what really pulled the punters in is a post I wrote ages ago about the third tower at the WTC site and the mystery surrounding its collapse. It was my only foray into conspiracy theory territory and I was soundly told off by someone who led me into a world in which Robert Fisk is regarded as a dangerous god-hating commie sodomitic lunatic, so clearly a man to be trusted (how transparent does irony need to be? I love Robert Fisk!).

What I'd like to know - because I'm really not that obsessed by 9/11 - is what happened yesterday to make so many people google third tower and end up on my blog. Any ideas?

Update: OK, now I know why. BBC2 is showing a documentary about the third tower tomorrow night, and my post comes up on the first page of Google searches. Living abroad, I can't download BBC stuff (and if anyone knows how this might be circumvented I'd be very interested to hear), so I won't be watching it.

The third tower

I've steered clear of 9/11 conspiracy theory until now, but an article by Robert Fisk in today's Independent admits that the 'facts' we have don't add up. With admirable reluctance, he says:

But – here we go. I am increasingly troubled at the inconsistencies in the official narrative of 9/11. It's not just the obvious non sequiturs: where are the aircraft parts (engines, etc) from the attack on the Pentagon? Why have the officials involved in the United 93 flight (which crashed in Pennsylvania) been muzzled? Why did flight 93's debris spread over miles when it was supposed to have crashed in one piece in a field? Again, I'm not talking about the crazed "research" of David Icke's Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster – which should send any sane man back to reading the telephone directory.

I am talking about scientific issues.

One of the things I've noticed most often when I've mentioned my own doubts about the official version, in passing, to friends (because I try not to let my natural scepticism towards government slip over into a farcical over-estimation of its ability - there lies crankdom) is how few people know about the collapse of the third tower, some nine hours later than the other two and without apparent external assistance.

Footnote to previous post

Just to give you an idea of the moral ambience within the Italian secret services, Pio Pompa (I just love writing it!) was second in command to Nicolò Pollari, ex-head of SISMI and now on trial with a bunch of CIA agents for his involvement in extraordinary rendition activities in Italy.

Watch out! There's a magistrate about!

If anyone needs to be reminded just how fragile supposedly democratic states can be, a story in yesterday’s Repubblica is exemplary. It describes the plans being drawn up by the Italian secret services soon after Berlusconi’s electoral victory in 2001 to protect the new prime minister and his government from the possibility of a coup. Nothing strange about that, of course; it’s what secret services are for.

But the coup from which the half-pint Duce needed protection had nothing to do with tanks or the seizure of means of communication. No marches on the Quirinale or shootings at dawn. This coup—according to documents found by Milanese magistrates in the offices of the wonderfully named Pio Pompa (Yes, Pious Pump or Pomp, as you prefer), an official at SISMI, Italy’s MI5—was going to be masterminded by magistrates scattered across Italy (Milan, Turin, Rome and Palermo), with the help of international organisations committed to the fight against fraud and corruption.

These magistrates were suspected of trying to besmirch the name of Italy’s new leader for subversive political motives. They would do this by investigating “aggressively” his financial dealings in Italy and abroad. Interestingly, the documents don’t suggest that these magistrates would need to invent anything; the evidence of Berlusconi’s corruption and fraud simply had to be found and made available for the reputation of the new PM, such as it was, to be reduced to tatters.

The documents also suggest that an eminence grise, ex magistrate and now politician on the centre-left, was the brain behind the coup, although the details are worryingly confused here, as they are on most points. The coup would be combated, if necessary, by what the documents refer to as “traumatic actions” on the part of the secret services, to be carried out before the middle of September 2001. "Traumatic actions" organised or condoned by SISMI in the past are believed to have included murders, bombings and terrorist attacks.

SISMI, in other words, was prepared to act—subversively—against magistrates conducting legitimate investigations into the business activities of a man who was already the subject of legitimate investigation in other European countries (France, Spain and the UK). A man whose entire career was—and remains—littered with unresolved questions concerning his ties with the Mafia, freemasonry and political corruption.

Maybe this shouldn't surprise us. A few days ago at the celebration of Republic Day in Rome, the disgraced Tax Police chief, Speciale, made a point of walking across to Berlusconi, saluting him and saying: "Agli ordini, Presidente".

Copernicus got it wrong...

...according to Warren Chisum, the chairman of the Texas House Appropriations Committee. He has hard evidence of, you guessed it, a Jewish conspiracy to undermine the Old Testament by inventing the absurd notion that the earth goes round the sun.

The mouthpiece of an organization called The Fair Education Foundation, Inc. (enjoy their Fixed Earth website here), Chisum has been distributing his memo to fellow legislators in an attempt to convince them that evolution and the Copernican revolution are hare-brained pie-in-the-sky faith-based hogwash. Projection?

It's rather like the Pope accusing lobbies of trying to influence the legislative process in Italy...