06-10-2009, 09:15 PM
Peter Presland Wrote:I have a slightly ambivalent view of NMA. He has complex roots in communities that have every reason to be suspicious of the UK State and the Western narrative of the world. He does impressive detailed research and much of his stuff is very useful as a sort of archive of all the detail missed or deliberately obfuscated by the MSM.
That said he is clearly determined not to burn his bridges with MSM and official sources, even if he does appear to be a thorn in their side at times. It is that side of him that makes me a bit wary. His 7/7 book is a case in point. Good solid research that mentions pretty well all the publicly known facts and fictions and gives them a time-line - but then fails to follow through and even hint at interpretations that he must surely accept as possibilities but which he also knows would be total anathema to officialdom.
His orthodox use of the words 'terrorism' and 'terrorist', his copious references to 'al-Qaeda' and the 'Taliban', in fact the entire semantic framework of most of his stuff is orthodox - and in my view his work suffers as a consequence.
His piece on the liquid bomb plot is useful though. I'm particularly impressed that Ola Tunander's work (that name again - thanks Peter L) gets serious attention because I regard it as hitting the bulls eye on US/UK dealings with the ISI and the Pakistan/Central Asia situation in general. I'd love to get my hands on that confidential report too. Maybe an email request to NMA or OT would work?
I'm half-way through his The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry (Duckworth, 2006), and would largely agree with the above. The phrase "licensed-jester" springs to mind. The publisher, incidentally, is tres spooky.