http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7485331.stm

This has come up again & again, but I can't find any specific threads (maybe they vanished!)

Doesn't sound like an independent body to me!

Umm, and it was probably "the first and only steel skyscraper in the world to collapse" after having caught fire, but also just after two of the biggest buildings in the world collapsed and crashed down next to it.

Just a thought.

Did you see David Icke's standing against David Davis in the Haltemprice by-election?

Remember: you can't spell 'sinister' without NIST.

I've seen very little footage of this event, but if the building collapsed because it was on fire, then it put out copious amounts of smoke and flames and there has to be footage of it. A spy satellite would have caught the fire if no one on the ground did.

As me Uncle Noam Chomsky once said; "For people who feel a need to believe in conspiracies, here’s one sitting there waiting for them. Just imagine the CIA deciding, how can we undermine and destroy all of these popular movements? Let’s send them off on some crazy wild goose chase which is going to involve them in extremely detailed microanalysis and discussion of things that don’t matter. That’ll shut them up."

Feel free to carry on wibbling on ridiculously amongst yourselves...

Elvischomsky

I always wonder: if the CIA introduced LSD into the "counterculture" "of the USA as a biological-weapons experiment, as has been mooted by conspiracy theorists, why didn't they ever use it? Imagine the Axis Of Evil all trippin' their socks off!

I heard LSD was introduced onto the Berkeley university campus by the CIA to pacify the most politicised students. One year you had the most radical student generation of all time - the next year they were all sitting in a field with their faces painted, listening to Iron Butterfly.

Err, they did.
But to rather malign ends.

See Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: THE CIA, the Sixties and Beyond Martin A Lee and Bruce Shlain.

http://www.serendipity.li/cia/olson2.htm

Thankee Elvisc I will investigate

But they didn't do it to the Taliban, oh no! "Take them big frocks off and shake your buttocks to Inna Gadda Da Vida baby"...

Doesn't figure.

The "Summer of Love" was 1967.
1968 - They were fighting in the streets.
1969 - They got a war across the USA.

Bloody conspiracy theorists...

In a society made up of people who by habit lie to themselves and others, with a secret service that thinks being 'Honest' is a weakness, L.S.D, was a gift from above.

Is that line by Bob Dylan? :P

"The 'Man', you know he,ll lie to you"
"Advertising men, the secret service too"
"Where in this land can the truth Be"
"Gonna have to take me some L.S.Dee"

"Operation Northwoods",shades of.

It had been used in mental hospitals years before that. Ask arch-beatnik Ken Kesey.

When have the US govt EVER been pro-active about anything? It's a shallow democracy run by the lowest common denominator.

I really don't get why people see them as culturally or conspiratorially creative.

Yeah, but being from NYC I understand people (including my partner who worked across the street from WTC) who cannot understand why building 7 would come down like that when there were buildings much closer to the Twin Tower collapse that remained standing, including buildings 3, 4, 5 and 6.

I remember watching 7 come down live on tv with him sitting right next to me, and before any of this 'conspiracy' stuff came about, he was already saying: "What? That doesn't make sense!"

And then later they kept saying that other buildings were going to collapse, including the office building he worked in, but they never did. It seemed suspicious- sort of like a cover story.

Indeed the scholarly and masterful way he absolves the Khmer Rouge of their attrocities in the 'Distortions at Fourth Hand' makes him someone we should pay close attention to on such topics.

You mean this one, written in 1977?

http://www.chomsky.info/articles/19770625.htm

I sincerely hope that things I said or wrote in 1977 don't give me a red card in all discussions nowadays. :unsure:

And you'd be right to hope so. Though hopefully you'd have the gual to admit you were wrong.

My point was that he views all world events through a particular self lacerating and masochistic prism, therefore it's difficult to take him too seriously. :)

Why was chomsky wrong to question an article that had already been proven false in the images used?

I saw the programme on the BBC about this - at least I saw most of it having missed the beginning and nodding off before the end.

The whole conspiracy thing gets even more bizarre and convoluted. I've not heard any good reason yet why the twin towers should be demolished, and I can't quite work out how WTC7 could be part of the same conspiracy.

If the people involved in this conspiracy wanted WTC7 to be demolished, it seems a bit hopeful to attempt this by flying two planes into the towers. Anyway, footage clearly shows that smoke was pouring from the building for a good while before the collapse, and shows the building being twatted when the towers came down.

One curious thing - it showed several buildings that had been brought down deliberately by experts (not terrorist ones). None of these buildings actually fell in quite the same neat manner that WTC7 came down in.

(In case of confusion, I don't believe that there was a conspiracy).

I do have lots of time for Chomsky; in theory, at least... since I mostly find his books unreadable, in Swedish translations as well. (Which probably says more about me than about Chomsky.)

He does see the world through a prism of his own, yes, but how you would like to describe that prism is individual, I guess. Thing is, a sound debate needs reasonable* people using different prisms. The fact that his is not the most common one, and that he insists on his points of view even when the wind goes against him, makes him even more important, I think. (Although there's often a feeling that you already know what his point of view will be beforehand... but aren't we all more or less predictable in many regards? I'm not surprised about your view on Chomsky, for example.) ;)


* i.e. willing to discuss with arguments, source references and so on

Like wise, spiring, likewise. ;)


What I would say is that there are far more flexible thinkers around who can critique American foreign policy from a left perspective. I'd put it to you that apart from conspiracy loons, Chomsky is little more than a bad joke. And like conspiracy loons easy to caricature as a loon, so even when he has something worthwhile to say it is disregarded.

His work on linguistics on the other hand is world class.

Surely his work on linguistics is the basis for his later work.

Translation = people who don't swallow the ideological worldview of the dominant political and economic model wholesale.

"A left perspective"? Nick Cohen? Don't make me laugh.

Interesting rhetorical device. You conjure up a name and then ridicule me for using it. :confused:


Michael Lind wpould be a good place for you to start looking.

If people are all predictable, once you,ve taken a 'Sounding' of their personality, you dont need them anymore, surely?
I mean everyones views on life are made up of a collection of attitudes, so once you have a persons psychological "Signature" they become obsolete.
In fact in a rational scientists reductionising world, even people have 'Built in obsolescence".

Oh come on. You constantly hold up this bitter little man as a paragon of the "true" left. I just see Melanie Phillips with a bald patch.

You reserve the right to ride your hobbyhorse into battle at the drop of a hat, I reserve the right to take a swipe at it, because I will not accept your contention that the true leftist should condone the export of parliamentary democracy at gunpoint.

Not at all, I think his analysis is often off kilter.


I will credit him with one thing however, he still holds that if their are progressive values, they are universal values. I'm sure you'd agree with him there?

I don't mean "all predictable"; I wrote "more or less", and meant that as well. "In many regards" leaves some space for exceptions, too.

I don't agree that a person's "views of life" are made up once and for all, and is then used unchanged. You don't need to change your basic attitude, to still be able to adjust your "view of life" continuously. I'm certainly not the same person, with the same opinions, as whan I was 20; still, somewhere, I'm the same.

I don't agree that you don't "need" a person whose opinions you can predict, either. There are many subjects I know a little about, a few I know more about, and a vast majority of subjects I don't know anything about. Knowing a certain historian's perspective on things, for example, means that I can read him/her and learn a lot, even if I know that my conclusions would be different. Or let's say that there's a very skilled scientist, he makes lots of interesting studies and experiments - but he's religious and interprets everything from that perspective. Does this mean that no atheist will gain anything from studying his work? Of course not. And I learn more about my own opinions, and how to put them into words, by reading political "enemies" than someone who rubs me the right way. And so on.

I agree with you entirely.
My post was half ironic, putting forward what I see as the 'Literalist/ scientific/ reductionist viewpoint.
What little Ive seen of Chomsky,s work is outstanding for its straightforward 'common sense'.

The US govt knew of the 911 plots, and allowed them to proceed.To escalate the war on terror / intervention in the Middle East.

The damage caused to the WTC went beyond their expectations, though... previous skyscraper fires never resulting in such devastation.

"I knew something was going to happen, but holy cow"
Must keep a straight face.

I think the problem i have with most conspiracy theorists and theories is that they they are too belligerent - they've reached their conclusions BEFORE being presented with the full evidence, regardless of whether or not that evidence is even available.

now, i'm not saying there aren't some intriguing anomalies here and there, but the conspiracy theories are so elastic - they just warp and expand as time goes on, creating assumption after assumption, and relying on conjecture and subjectivity.

the scale of conspiracy required to accomodate some of the claims about 9/11 is so massive as to be impossible to carry out without someone finding out. ridiculous. and yet the smallest anomaly can somehow be proof of a massive conspiracy which would have to involve tens of thousands of people.

some of the claims about wtc7 are intriguing, intriguing enough for some pretty impressive people to get involved and start asking questions, and yet the sheer magnitude of the coverup required almost negates the theories before they even get off the ground.

the conspiracy theorists have the advantage of having their conclusions already - they just create a collage of theory to fit what they already think has happened. the investigative authorities have the benefit of sifting through evidence to find their conclusions, which is the way it should be.

Well from the pictures I've recently seen, it looks like all of #7[?] was burning and according to NYFD personnel, 20 stories of this building were damaged by parts of one of the twin towers that fell on it. The Fire Dept cancelled its order to enter #7 and apply water because of the buildings instabilty as perceived by experienced Fire Dept supervisors.
None of the above addresses whether or not there was prior knowledge on the part of the USA regime. I only recently had heard of this contoversy and know nothing about it except what I've read in the past couple of days on the internet.
I was impressed by the photo of the building in question involved in flame.

Some people settle for whatever level of conspiracy they feel doesn't stretch credibility over a breaking point. Each individual's breaking-point is different.

I think it is a credible possibility that a renegade neocon element within the Project For A New American Century truly meant what they wrote when they wrote that they required a "new Pearl Harbor" in order to reach their goal of invading and occupying Iraq. It does not seem to me to be too great a leap to then go to the fact that when Dr. Rice handed Bush the document entitled "Osama Bin Laden Determined To Strike Within The United States" which clearly and unabiguously spoke of impending airline hijakings, that could've been seen a 'neocon' motive not to issue any sort of public warning in hopes that whatever attack might happen could somehow be a politlical benefit in making the case for an invasion. Mickey Herskowitz reported that even before Bush was president he was talking about his hopes for a "chance to invade" Iraq. No matter how one envisions the outcome of a war, that is an awfully suspect way of speaking about war. I think it is within the area of possibility that even the Bush Neocon cabal may have been shocked and caught-off-guard by just how devestating an attack they allowed to happen could actually be. Nevertheless, I think they revealed themselves to be willing to permit such an attack, by the mere fact that no warning was uttered by the administration after handed a report that said "Bin Laden Determined To Stike Within The United States." I cannot see a credible reason to ignore such a document and issue no warning when presented with it. Such a warning would have put travellers on alert, and enabled them to decide for themselves whether or not they would want to risk flying in the months folllowing Summer 2001. It also could even have possibly been a deterrant that signalled to the hijakers that they should probably abort the plot, since they'd then be aware that the Government was alert to them.

Conspiracy theory observers tend to dump consiracy theorists into two camps. Camp A is the "They Let It Happen" group and Camp B is the "They Made It Happen" group. The "Made It Happen" group are the ones who have risen to the top of the heap with their views about controlled demolitions of the WTC, and U.S. missles shooting into the Pentagon and knocking airliners out of the sky. It is my point of view that only these Camp B conspiracies require a massive scale of conspiracy involving hundreds of people, which is beyond what would be reasonable to believe. But Camp A conspiracies would really only require a very, very miniscule number of sick, sick people in high-levels of Government. (Something not entirely implausible--- or even unprecidented.) Nevertheless the Camp A conspiracy theorists have been pushed aside and the more outlandish Camp B theorists dominate. Ironically, even some in the Camp B group are sometimes cited as "Government moles" and proof of Camp A's theory because the fact the outrageous claims of the Camp B crowd get more media attention would play into the hands of the conspirators, who surely would have motive to present ALL conspiracy theorists as freaky 'Tin Foil Hat' kooks.

Nevertheless facts remain: Bin Laden is still free. Bush did indeed state: "I don't know where he is, I just don't spend that much time on him to be honest. I'll repeat what I said I'm truly not that concerned about him." and that is not the statement of someone who sounds like he is interested in justice, much less someone who swore an oath to protect the USA! The Anthrax murderer has never been caught either. One might reasonably ask where are Bush's priorities. The only thing Bush seems determined to do is keep the US occupation of Iraq going, even as evidence mounts that the true terrorism problem remains on the Afghan/Pakistan border where it remained, and where it has always been. So why this detrmination to remain in Iraq at all costs? I think it's fair to ask the question.

It is a fact that on 9/12 about the only airplace allowed in USA airspace was the plane taking members of the bin Laden family home to safety in Saudi Arabia

I think this is spot on. Also it rather overestimates the competence of the state bureaucracies to carry out such an audacious stunt. On the whole the one thing liberal democracies fear is terrorist attacks, it hits deep financially and with the general public mood of safety and general happiness. Remeber the political fall out after Madrid?



I suppose some conspiracies are true but they always let Governments off the hook. They are often rather barmy and take a very lax view of what constitutes reliable evidence and a sound argument and are therefore easily dismissed.


There is so many ways the Bush administration can be critised but they take thought and perseverance. I also think that given the awful human cost, people who kick these theories around should perhaps have some regard to those that suffered and still suffer now.

You do a fantastic job of totally ignoring Anonyarena,s breaking the topic into 2 recognisable camps.
ie, the crackpots and those that believe a massive 'Neglect' can itself constitute a form of conspiracy.
As was pointed out, an 'Oath' is taken to Serve and Protect.

Thanks for the praise twinz2z, but I must confess it wasn't that fantastic as I'd not read his comments.