[ 21:51 thursday 4 october – piscita, isola di stromboli ]

i begin to smell a big huge rat…

allegation 1 – financial links between bush and bin laden families i’m told that the uk daily mail ran a story last week along similar lines to the il manifesto article relayed in my despatch of 28 september. the daily mail is about as mainstream as the british press gets, so why is this incredible story not causing a humungous outrage? caroline : does the financial times have anything on it?

allegation 2 – fore-knowledge of the attack in the us stock market a financial-sector source has claimed there was an unusual level of trading in options relating to airlines and insurance firms in the period immediately prior to the attack, taking the position that these stocks were about to nose-dive. several interpretations are possible of such fore-knowledge, most of them rather chilling. christian, roberto, leon, donald : are you able to confirm that such trading did indeed take place?

allegation 3 – global media fabrication of islamic jubilation a bbc source claims that the footage of jubilant palistinians broadcast by cnn and others in the aftermath of the attack (referred to in my despatch of 11 september) was in fact shot in 1991, during iraq’s invasion of kuwait, and that no such celebrations occurred in the hours following the attack. if this is true it suggests that a massive and deliberate manipulation of public sentiment has been carried out.

some headlines from the bbc news website this evening: “blair in terror talks with putin… to build a global coalition against terrorism”, “rowdy anti-war protests torment greece”, “the coalition: will it stick together once military action starts?”, “adopted son: how new york came to love george bush”, “mental illness: one in four world-wide will suffer”, “eu to freeze terror assets”, “doctors call for bio-terror action”, “soldier’s song: geri halliwell to perform for troops in oman”, “man arrested in london on two charges under terrorism act”, “us u-turn: official consumer group drops plans for online privacy laws”.

are we perhaps witnessing the end-game in a long-developed strategy to consolidate a global oligarchy? will this “war against terrorism” turn out, in fact, to be a war against freedom and democracy? when i see those planes flying into those towers i cannot help thinking of the blazing reichstag in 1933. we would do well to ponder the historical resonances.

orwell recognised in the 1940s that repressive states function best in a condition of war, and speculated that the governments of such societies would in future find ways to maintain such a condition on a permanent basis. but even he did not have the genius to see that this could best be effected by waging war not on a tangible enemy but on an abstract concept. a concept like “terrorism”.

you might as well declare war on “ugliness” or “stupidity”.

you know, i sit here in this idyllic place, typing by the light of a candle with the star-strewn sky above, and i wonder for how much longer i will be at liberty to express such dissenting thoughts. the important thing with repression is not to bend to it at the beginning. as soon as you permit fear to halt your tongue, as soon as you begin to exercise self-censorship, you forge the first link of your own shackles. as link follows link it becomes ever harder to throw them off, until eventually you can scarcely recognise your own slavery.

so, my friends, let us voice our thoughts without hindrance. and when fear bids us be silent, let us shout all the louder.

: cH