A short while back I noted here that Gulnara Karimova, daughter and henchwoman of Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov, had recently hosted rock star Sting in Tashkent, the nation’s capital. Sting took in a fashion show and other events with Gulnara, whose father’s regime killed one prisoner by immersion in boiling water, and in 2005 slaughtered hundreds of protesters in the town of Andijan. “The scale of this killing was so extensive, and its nature was so indiscriminate and disproportionate, that it can best be described as a massacre,” Human Rights Watch said in a study of the events at Andijan.

I am referring to the readers' comments to a recent Raimondo column at antiwar.com, The Trial of the Century and the Long Shadow of 9/11

To view the comments, click on link above and go to the Raimondo article and then scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on where it says, "CLICK to DISCUSS THIS ARTICLE" in large text to see viewers comments or to leave comments of your own.

Another elderly gentleman, an architect from Williamsburg came by to express how stunned he was that the towers fell in the manner they did. But he said, anything can happen in those circumstances, considering the impacts, that no one can predict or possibly explain. I agreed with his general conjecture, to a point. I said there's a lot we would like to explain and some that we can't. I could tell that he had had some doubts but had convinced himself by means of the 'chaos' theory, that all was well. That is, certain things, like impacts of this nature, can foment unpredictable results. I was trying to point out the many characteristics similar to controlled demolition (our talking points). He looked behind me and said, "now that's controlled demolition." He was referring to the video of wtc7 collapsing alongside an actual demolition that we had running in back. I said, we think so, that's world-trade 7. He was taken aback. He said, "they took that one down", I replied, "no planes hit that one." As it dawned on him what he was looking at, why we paired it with the demolition demo and yet another inconsistency that seemed to have been withheld from him in this incredulous tale, his jaw dropped. He turned without saying another word and walked away. Was he unprepared to face the truth?

The new evidence was so powerful, including multiple corroborations of secret Republican meetings with Iranians behind Carter’s back, that task force chief counsel Lawrence Barcella saw no choice but to extend the investigation several months and to rethink the planned debunking.

Barcella told me later that he approached Rep. Lee Hamilton, a centrist Democrat who was chairman of the task force, with a request to give the investigators three more months to evaluate the new evidence.

But Hamilton, who prides himself in coming up with bipartisan answers to questions that otherwise might spur partisan conflict, said no. He ordered Barcella to wrap up the probe and to continue with the planned debunking.

In fact, in the same decade, three of the other most charismatic and effective leaders opposed to the US establishment also met violent deaths in suspicious circumstances that were never properly investigated - Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Robert F Kennedy.

In all cases, Noam Chomsky insisted that there was nothing suspicious. Almost certainly, because of the influence he wielded amongst progressive circles, many who would have otherwise followed the trail that would have led to the killers of JFK, Malcolm X, MLK and RFK were dissuaded from doing so.

Thus the left of the 1960's was decapitated and those responsible were never unmasked and brought to justice.

Shortly after the terrorist attack of 11 September 2001 Chomsky pronounced that Al Qaeda led by Osama bin Laden had indeed master-minded the attacks, just as George Bush had insisted. Those who questioned the official account and pointed to the glaring contradictions and absurdities of the official account of 9/11 were dismissed by Chomsky as conspiracy theorists.

MPs and aides contacted after the meeting have said they found the presentation impressive. Several one-on-one follow-up meetings are being arranged.

There were presentations from UK 9/11 victim Scott Forbes, nanotechnology expert Niels Harrit and 911 The New Evidence author Ian Henshall.

We now have a small base of solid support within the Palace of Westminster. Plans for a further meeting in the next few months are being developed. Other action points under discussion include asking the Iraq Inquiry to scrutinise the official 9/11 story, pressing publicly and through informal contacts for fair treatment in the media, and setting up a Parliamentary Group which could eventually hold hearings.

Former Brit ambsdr Craig Murray says UK and USA sent prisoners to Uzbek to be tortured

This is something you have not yet seen in any US media. French independent media La Télé Libre interviews two of the most prominent 9/11 truth activists, Cynthia McKinney and Niels Harrit. To understand the context of the interview, you need to know what is happening in France right now, because 9/11 is surely becoming a hot topic.

The service academies reinforce these unfortunate characteristics. Their schooling consists of four years of learning what to think, not how to think. There are hours of running in formation (“If I die on the Russian front….”), close-order drill, manual of arms (“Hen-spection…harms!”). Why? There is no military value in being able to shift your rifle from shoulder to shoulder crisply. Like the endless inspections of everything, all of this participation in the hive inculcates groupishness and a curious sense of safety in conformity.

The effects are remarkable and, from a standpoint of civilization, undesirable. Large authoritarian organizations make easier the compartmentalization of morality. A colonel typically will be a good neighbor, civic-minded, responsible, unlikely to steal your silverware or kick your dog. If the Pentagon tells him to bomb a city he has never heard of and has no reason to bomb, killing people who pose no threat to him, he will. He feels no individual responsibility for atrocious behavior ordered from above. “I vas only followink orders,” the Nuremberg defense, is the bedrock of military ethics, if any.