Conspiracy of Conspiracy

[John Simkin]

Given the prohibition on ad hominem attacks here, I find this message very puzzling on several counts.

It calls Dr. Fetzer an irrational wide-eyed unscientific crackpot extremist who contaminates good research with

daft theories. I consider that a fine example of a personal attack. Let's count'em: daft, contaminates, crackpot,

irrational, unscientific wide-eyed extremist. Hmmmmmm? Shouldn't Dr. Fetzer be owed an apology...or should

the insults be reiterated by letting the words stand?

You have mixed up the comments that I made about the people on the BBC phone-in and Jim Fetzer. I stand by my comments that they were “crackpots” who severely damage the cause. They were supporters of David Icke and argued that the world is ruled by a secret group called the " Illuminati" (a race of reptilian humanoids known as the Babylonian Brotherhood, and that many prominent figures are reptilian, including George W. Bush, Queen Elizabeth II, Kris Kristofferson, and Boxcar Willie). Now I don’t think I am out of order describing such people as “crackpots” or in need of medical treatment.

[John Simkin]

As for suggesting that I am a "wide eyed extremist", that's just a blatant, unjustified smear. Nothing I said was remotely "extreme", so I wonder what's going on with the moderator of this forum? I am reluctant to speculate, but exaggerated criticism with no basis in fact is typical of those who have an agenda other than truth, especially in relation to complex and controversial cases like JFK and 9/11. Others can judge for themselves, but I am disappointed in John Simkin!

I am sorry if I offended you by calling you a “wide-eyed extremist”. That was my genuine impression of your performance. Of course the BBC wanted the audience to get this impression of you and no doubt by skilful editing they got what they wanted. You were set-up.

It is a common tactic by the media to suggest that the debate is between moderates on one hand and extremists on the other. I thought the BBC was very skilful with the way they allowed Dylan Avery (Loose Change) to make statements about what eyewitnesses said and then inter-cut them with interviews with the people concerned explaining what they really did say.

I am someone who believes that governments do conspire against the true interests of the people. We have plenty of examples of this (assassinations of JFK, MLK, RFK, Iran-Contra, etc.). However, there is a great danger of these researchers being undermined by the activities of those who seem to believe that every important event is a conspiracy.

The Bush government clearly covered-up certain aspects of 9/11. They also exploited the event to enable the development of an aggressive foreign policy. As that memo said, the needed “a Pearl Harbor incident”. However, to suggest that the Bush administration actually organized 9/11 is in my opinion so outlandish that it undermines the opposition to this very dangerous regime.

[Peter McKenna]

Given the prohibition on ad hominem attacks here, I find this message very puzzling on several counts.

It calls Dr. Fetzer an irrational wide-eyed unscientific crackpot extremist who contaminates good research with

daft theories. I consider that a fine example of a personal attack. Let's count'em: daft, contaminates, crackpot,

irrational, unscientific wide-eyed extremist. Hmmmmmm? Shouldn't Dr. Fetzer be owed an apology...or should

the insults be reiterated by letting the words stand?

You have mixed up the comments that I made about the people on the BBC phone-in and Jim Fetzer. I stand by my comments that they were “crackpots” who severely damage the cause. They were supporters of David Icke and argued that the world is ruled by a secret group called the " Illuminati" (a race of reptilian humanoids known as the Babylonian Brotherhood, and that many prominent figures are reptilian, including George W. Bush, Queen Elizabeth II, Kris Kristofferson, and Boxcar Willie). Now I don’t think I am out of order describing such people as “crackpots” or in need of medical treatment.

I am not a conspiracy theorist.

However, the impact of the events of 9/11 invokes a specific fear in me of conspiracy. The reason has to do with the events having been spun to the benefit of political agendas which are contrary to what I believe are essential to maintain the basic civil liberties which we enjoy (or should be enjoying).

Certain facts concerning the collapse of the buildings which have been hotly contested appear to me to be distracting from more important points of 9/11. For example, what exactly would be the point in staging a controlled demolition of the twin towers after we had live TV converage of one plane striking the towers and the aftermath of another. Would it be to drive up the casualty count? From what I have read and researched, a credible alternative to the official POV to explain the tower collapse has not been presented yet. I will not delve into the engineering. I would say that there seems to be an excess of time and effort spent in creating and debunking theories which, to me, only distract from the salient points of a possible conspiracy. But that is only my Point of View.

The application of conspiracy theory to 9/11 can be a rationalized due to the fear of losing our constitutional rights subsequent to the dismantling of the United States Constitution in the war on "Terror". The primary dissent to the Patriot Act is its potential role as a prelude to the dissolution of our civil rights and not in the contextual deprivation of those rights. That is what provided the bill its judicial momentum.

There are those who liken the current United States to the fall of Rome. Rome lasted another 400 years past the dissolution of the Roman Republic. However, to analogize the end of the Roman Republic to our times, probably the most significant parallel would be Julius Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon with a legion of the Roman Army (the site of Caesar’s famous quote “The Die is Cast”). This act crossed the barrier, in Roman politics, of using of the Roman army against the citizens of Rome for political gain, an act of gross treason. The Roman Publicans understood well that a sufficiently powerful individual, capable of using the army to enforce his policies, could make himself a king.

The current autonomy enjoyed by the Executive in the application of military force is certainly not consistent with “Emergency Powers” and should fall under the legislative body in keeping with the democratic division of governmental power. But this is hardly analogous to the use of the military on its own citizens. It is the logical, subsequent, potential sequence of events that is of concern.

Julius Caesar was not the first General to seek a throne in Rome. In fact Julius Caesar was assassinated before claiming the throne himself, but indeed, the die had been cast. The crossing of the Rubicon signified the end of the Roman Republic, as the subsequent civil wars and political chaos ended under the rule of the first Roman Emperor, Octavian Caesar. The Roman Army had then been utilized as a tool in political camaigns in the advancing the ambitions of men.

In an interview with Cigar Aficionado, General Tommy Franks stated bluntly, that if an attack occurs upon the United States (subsequent to 9/11), where a large loss of life results, as with WMD, then the US Constitution would likely be discarded for a military government.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2...20/185048.shtml

This is an important point and one which causes my fear of conspiracy concerning 9/11.

So this fear creates suspicion as to the facts of 9/11. Would the US government (or government official) use such an event to its advantage in obtaining and consolidating political power?

With a two term Presidency and the obvious time pressure incumbent upon any individual in seeking to become anything close to a monarch, this does not seem a likely motivation for such a conspiracy.

So what would the motive be for using such events for political advantage?

In terms of wealth and Capital, the creation of a Military State would only suppress the earning power of the majority of its citizens, and ultimately this would adversely affect the bottom line for businesses and industry where consumerism is the engine for their economic survival.

There would have to be a far darker agenda to explain such a conspiracy. Also the events of 9/11 would have to have been formulaic (“The simpler the explanation the more likely that it is true”). The real fear is not in any one individual or group planning a “takeover”, but the systematic loss of Democracy that the framers of the Constitution intended.

The motivation for such tactics do not seem consistent with the political ambitions of any individual or group within the US (unless in some larger picture), but in preparing for some cataclysmic event, such as the conjoining of nations under one government, or the preparation for global war (note that these are just examples, actually events seem to have fallen out favorably to cause a power shift within the US government, which could set the stage for some future conflict, that is NOT in the public’s interest). In this context then the events of 9/11 may be part of a larger conspiracy (otherwise I have a great deal of trouble seeing 9/11 for anything more than what it seems). Also, if this is true, it is important to maintain perspective.

The facts of the twin tower collapse can be explained rationally and with sound engineering supporting it. There has already been a tremendous amount of work done by the academic world as well as the NIST and others which support that the twin tower collapse was nothing more than what it seemed.

If there is a conspiracy and well intentioned research is to be performed to uncovers it, does bickering over points which will remain debatable, don't reveal an outright lie or disinformation and which donsn't affect an overall motive (who benefits and why?), means (how was it accomplished? How would you do it if it was up to you? If you wanted to recruit suicidal extremists to pilot aircraft into the WTC, would that really be that hard to accomplish?), and opportunity (which really has more to do with the opportunity to use the events) help to establish a valid conspiracy theory?. It seems to me that arguing over the collapse of the WTC could go on and nothing salient to a conspiracy will surface. But that is only my opinion. Take it or leave it.

When someone like General Tommy Franks warns that the events of 9/11 may be a prelude to the US heading into a military dictatorship, that should sure cause alarm bells to ring.

Edited February 20, 2007 by Peter McKenna

[Evan Burton]

Good post, Peter. I tend to agree. Any suggestions of 'no planes' or cruise missiles or controlled demolitions, are - IMO - just plain wrong.

If you want to talk about who orchestrated 9/11, then that is a different matter. I don't think it was anything but some type of terrorist organisation, but there other theories which might be credible & deserve investigation / discussion.

The shift in accountability and adherence to the law is once again highlighted with the Extraordinary Rendition revelations. I can understand how a need for such an operation can be rationalised, but it has proven that without proper oversight the provisions will be abused / misused. It is much safer to operate within our legal systems and accept the shackles that those systems impose on us in dealing with terrorist organisations.

[George Monbiot]

'You did this hit piece because your corporate masters instructed you to. You are a controlled asset of the new world order ... bought and paid for." "Everyone has some skeleton in the cupboard. How else would MI5 and special branch recruit agents?" "Shill, traitor, sleeper", "leftwing gatekeeper", "accessory after the fact", "political whore of the biggest conspiracy of them all".

These are a few of the measured responses to my article, a fortnight ago, about the film Loose Change, which maintains that the United States government destroyed the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. Having spent years building up my leftwing credibility on behalf of my paymasters in MI5, I've blown it. I overplayed my hand, and have been exposed, like Bush and Cheney, by a bunch of kids with laptops. My handlers are furious.

I believe that George Bush is surrounded by some of the most scheming, devious, ruthless men to have found their way into government since the days of the Borgias. I believe that they were criminally negligent in failing to respond to intelligence about a potential attack by al-Qaida, and that they have sought to disguise their incompetence by classifying crucial documents.

I believe, too, that the Bush government seized the opportunity provided by the attacks to pursue a longstanding plan to invade Iraq and reshape the Middle East, knowing full well that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. Bush deliberately misled the American people about the links between 9/11 and Iraq and about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. He is responsible for the murder of many tens of thousands of Iraqis.

But none of this is sufficient. To qualify as a true opponent of the Bush regime, you must also now believe that it is capable of magic. It could blast the Pentagon with a cruise missile while persuading hundreds of onlookers that they saw a plane. It could wire every floor of the twin towers with explosives without attracting attention and prime the charges (though planes had ploughed through the middle of the sequence) to drop each tower in a perfectly timed collapse. It could make Flight 93 disappear into thin air, and somehow ensure that the relatives of the passengers collaborated with the deception. It could recruit tens of thousands of conspirators to participate in these great crimes and induce them all to have kept their mouths shut, for ever.

In other words, you must believe that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their pals are all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful, despite the fact that they were incapable of faking either weapons of mass destruction or any evidence at Ground Zero that Saddam Hussein was responsible. You must believe that the impression of cackhandedness and incompetence they have managed to project since taking office is a front. Otherwise you are a traitor and a spy.

Why do I bother with these morons? Because they are destroying the movements some of us have spent a long time trying to build. Those of us who believe that the crucial global issues - climate change, the Iraq war, nuclear proliferation, inequality - are insufficiently debated in parliament or congress, that corporate power stands too heavily on democracy, that war criminals, cheats and liars are not being held to account, have invested our efforts in movements outside the mainstream political process. These, we are now discovering, are peculiarly susceptible to this epidemic of gibberish.

The obvious corollorary to the belief that the Bush administration is all-powerful is that the rest of us are completely powerless. In fact it seems to me that the purpose of the "9/11 truth movement" is to be powerless. The omnipotence of the Bush regime is the coward's fantasy, an excuse for inaction used by those who don't have the stomach to engage in real political fights.

Let me give you an example. The column I wrote about Loose Change two weeks ago generated 777 posts on the Guardian Comment is Free website, which is almost a record. Most of them were furious. The response from a producer of the film, published last week, attracted 467. On the same day the Guardian published my article about a genuine, demonstrable conspiracy: a spy network feeding confidential information from an arms control campaign to Britain's biggest weapons manufacturer, BAE Systems. It drew 60 responses. The members of the 9/11 cult weren't interested. If they had been, they might have had to do something. The great virtue of a fake conspiracy is that it calls on you to do nothing.

The 9/11 conspiracy theories are a displacement activity. A displacement activity is something you do because you feel incapable of doing what you ought to do. A squirrel sees a larger squirrel stealing its horde of nuts. Instead of attacking its rival, it sinks its teeth into a tree and starts ripping it to pieces. Faced with the mountainous challenge of the real issues we must confront, the chickens in the "truth" movement focus instead on a fairytale, knowing that nothing they do or say will count, knowing that because the perpetrators don't exist, they can't fight back. They demonstrate their courage by repeatedly bayoneting a scarecrow.

Many of those who posted responses on Comment is Free contend that Loose Change (which was neatly demolished in the BBC's film The Conspiracy Files on Sunday night) is a poor representation of the conspiracists' case. They urge us instead to visit websites like 911truth.org, physics911.net and 911scholars.org, and to read articles by the theology professor David Ray Griffin and the physicist Steven E Jones.

Concerned that I might have missed something, I have now done all those things, and have come across exactly the same concatenation of ill-attested nonsense as I saw in Loose Change. In all these cases you will find wild supposition raised to the status of incontrovertible fact, rumour and confusion transformed into evidence, selective editing, the citation of fake experts, the dismissal of real ones. Doubtless I will now be told that these are not the true believers: I will need to dive into another vat of tripe to get to the heart of the conspiracy.

The 9/11 truthers remind me of nothing so much as the climate change deniers, cherry-picking their evidence, seizing any excuse for ignoring the arguments of their opponents. Witness the respondents to my Loose Change column who maintain that the magazine Popular Mechanics, which has ripped the demolition theories apart, is a government front. They know this because one of its editors, Benjamin Chertoff, is the brother/nephew/first cousin of the US homeland security secretary Michael Chertoff. (They are, as far as Benjamin can discover, unrelated, but what does he know?)

Like the millenarian fantasies which helped to destroy the Levellers as a political force in the mid-17th century, this crazy distraction presents a mortal danger to popular oppositional movements. If I were Bush or Blair, nothing would please me more than to see my opponents making idiots of themselves, while devoting their lives to chasing a phantom. But as a controlled asset of the new world order, I would say that, wouldn't I? It's all part of the plot.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/st...2017006,00.html

[Len Colby]

Is your stipend based on how many falsities you put in your posts, books, articles, interviews and presentations?

The impact of the planes cannot have caused enough damage to bring the buildings down, since the buildings were designed to withstand them (as Frank DeMartini, the project manager, has observed), the planes that hit were very similar to those they were designed to withstand, and they continued to stand after those impacts with negligible effects.

According to Leslie Robertson the lead structural engineer of the WTC said the studies they carried out were for planes travel at approach speed about 180 mph. The planes that hit the towers were estimated to have flying at 470 – 590 mph thus imparting far more force and kinetic energy than anticipated. In 1964 the Port Authority claimed studies had been carried showing the towers could survive 600 mph crashes but Robertson denied ever having seen such a study. Unfortunately no documentation has been found to say who was right. DeMartini was the onsite construction manager not the project manager.

Robertson they didn’t study the effects of fire on the structure. It is believed a combination of fire and structural damage is what caused the collapses.

The melting point of steel at 2,800*F is about 1,000*F higher than the maximum burning temperature of jet-fuel-based fires, which do not exceed 1,800*F under optimal conditions, so the fires cannot have caused the steel to melt, which means that melting steel did not bring the buildings down.

No one is claiming the steel melted

UL certified the steel in the buildings up to 2,000*F for three or four hours before it would even significantly weaken, where these fires burned too low and too briefly at an average temperature of around 500*F--about one hour in the South Tower and one and a half in the North--to have even caused the steel to weaken, much less melt.

Like Steve I’d like to see some evidence to back up this claim based on nothing more than the assertion of Kevin Ryan, a chemist who worked for a water testing company bought by UL a few months before 9-11 that his boss told him this.

If the steel had melted or weakened, the affected floors would have displayed completely different behavior, with some asymmetrical sagging and tilting, which would have been gradual and slow, not the complete, abrupt, and total demolition that was observed.

Please list the qualified structural engineers, fire engineers or metallurgists who agre with you on this.

William Rodriguez, the senior custodian in the North Tower and the last man to leave the building, has reported massive explosions in the subbasements that effected extensive destruction, including the demolition of a 50-ton hydraulic press and ripping the skin off a fellow worker, a report corroborated by the testimony of around three dozen other custodians.

Basement explosions are part of the “official story” they are believed to have been caused by fireballs and/or unignited jet fuel traveling down elevator and utility shafts. The destruction of the press was not reported by Rodriguez but by Mike Peccorato (sp?) another maintenance worker. Rodriguez was not the tower’s senior custodian, he swept the stairs.

”Willie reported that the explosion occurred prior to the airplane's impact, a claim that has now been substantiated in a new study by Craig Furlong and Gordon Ross, "Seismic Proof: 9/11 was an Inside Job", which demonstrates that these explosions actually took place as much as 14 and 17 seconds prior to the airplanes impacts.”

That not what “Willie” said on 9/11 nor when he filled his lawsuit, in fact he seems to have trouble keeping his story straight (more on this to come). No one else backs this claim. Neither Furlong or Ross have any qualifications in seismic analysis. Their theory is little more than a mountain out of a molehill.

“Heavy steel construction buildings like the Twin Towers, built with more than 100,000 tons of steel, are not even capable of "pancake collapse", which normally only occurs with concrete structures of "lift slab" construction and could not occur in "redundant" welded-steel buildings, such as the towers, unless every supporting column were removed at the same time, as Charles Pegelow has pointed out to me.”

Pegelow, one of only about 2 or 3 structural engineers to state publicly he thinks the towers were brought down with explosives, spent his entire career except for about a year as an intern in the early 70’s working on deep sea oil platforms thus one must wonder what his competency is to say how a building should have performed. There is no evidence he studied the types of welds and bolts etc used to join the various parts of the tower together. Numerous engineers with expertise in building construction disagree with him.

“The destruction of the South and North Towers in about 10 seconds apiece is even faster than free fall with only air resistance, which would have taken at least 12 seconds, which, as Judy Wood has emphasized, is an astounding result that would have been impossible without extremely powerful explosives.”

Free fall time in a vacuum would have been about 9 seconds, I’ve never seen a study indicating how much time air resistance would add. The collapses probably took 12 – 16 seconds.

“The towers are exploding from the top, not collapsing to the ground, where the floors do not move, a phenomenon that Judy Wood has likened to two gigantic trees turning to sawdust from the top down, which, like the pulverization of the concrete, the official account cannot possibly explain.”

Judy Wood’s area of expertise is dental fillings. The towers were 80 – 90 % air and made from small (compared to the towers themselves) pieces. Thus they were nothing like trees (or dental fillings).

No studies have shown how much of the concrete was pulverized or to what degree. The KE released by the collapses was enormous.

“WTC-7 came down in a classic controlled demolition at 5:20 PM/ET after Larry Silverstein suggested the best thing to do might be to "pull it", displaying all the characteristics of classic controlled demolitions, including a complete, abrupt, and total collapse into its own footprint, where the floors are all falling at the same time, and so forth, an event so embarrassing to the official account that it is not even mentioned in THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT” .

The it Silverstein was referring to probably was the fire fighting – search and rescue operation around the building. Pull a building means to pull it down with cables. The building collapsed a bit to the side numerous firefighters said the building seem ready to collapses for hours before it did.

The “pull it” theory implicates the NYFD in the demolition. No reasonable explaination as to why Silverstein would admit to insurance fraud (and probably murder) has been given

“The hit point at the Pentagon was too small to accommodate a 100-ton airliner with a 125-foot wingspan and a tail that stands 44 feet above the ground; the kind and quantity of debris was wrong for a Boeing 757: no wings, no fuselage, no seats, no bodies, no luggage, no tail! Which means that the building was not hit by a Boeing 757!”

Complete BS the hole was about 100 feet wide IIRC presumanbly the bomb proof wall was stronger than the planes aluminum wings. Numerous 757 parts were recovered as were numerous body PARTS as obviously complete bodies would have been unlikely to have survived such an impact.

“The Pentagon's own videotape does not show a Boeing 757 hitting the building, as even Bill O'Reilly admitted when it was shown on "The Factor"; but at 155 feet, the plane was more than twice as long as the 71-foot Pentagon is high and should have been present and visible; it was not, which means that the building was not hit by a Boeing 757!”

The Pentagon tapes are low frame rate low resolution and shoot from several hundred feet away. All they show is a blur. There is no way to tell what they show. Odd that if there was a conspiracy after havin the tapes in their possession the “plotters” didn’t alter the tape.

“The aerodynamics of flight would have made the official trajectory--flying at high speed barely above ground level--physically impossible; and if it had come it at an angle instead, it would have created a massive crater; but there is no crater and the government has no way out, which means that the building was not hit by a Boeing 757!”

This claim is only supported by one (ex) airline pilot who also happens to be a political extremist and someone who claims to be an aeronautical engineer. The supposed engineer claimed he was a pilot but isn’t listed in the FAA database and AFAIK has yet to say in which state he holds his engineering license so that claim can be verified. Numerous aeronautical engineers and pilots have said the trajectory is possible.

“If Flight 93 had come down as advertised, then there would have been a debris field of about a city block in size, but in fact the debris is distributed over an area of about eight square miles, which would be explainable if the plane had been shot down in the air but not if it had crashed as required by the government's official scenario.”

As already show on this forum the far-flung debris was all light weight items found beyond the planes flight path. The only exception was an engine part found 1000 - 2000 feet downhill from the crash site and like the rest beyond its flight path. There no reports of debris along the planes flight path. A few crash investigators say such dispersal in normal.

“There are more, especially about the alleged hijackers, including that they were not competent to fly the planes;”

This is only possibly true with Hanjour. All three pilots who hit their targets held commercial pilot’s licenses. Hitting tall buildings 50% wider than a runway would not have been mush of a challenge. No one who was actually familiar with Hajour’s piloting skill said he would not have been able to hit the Pentagon one even said he would have had “no trouble” doing so.

“ their names were not on any passenger manifest;”

BS they were on the manifests published by the Boston Globe of the Logan flights (11 and 175) a few days after the attacks and the manifests released after the Moussaui trial.

“they were not subject to any autopsy;”

They were autopsied as “John Does” because the medical examineer didn’t have DNA samples from their families.

“several have turned up alive and well;”

BS different people with the same name were located.

“the cell phone calls appear to have been impossible”

The flaws of the so called study carried out far from the flight paths has been pointed out elsewhere on this forum. Many of the calls were placed on AirPhones.

[Guest John Gillespie]

Last week BBC Radio held a debate on the possibility of a 9/11 conspiracy. The reason for this was to publicize a series of BBC television documentaries (the first one on 9/11 is on tonight).

The opening debate was between former MI5 agent, David Shayler, and left-wing journalist, Brendon O'Neill. Shayler, a believer in a 9/11 conspiracy was brilliant and exposed O'Neill as someone who knew very little about the case.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Shayler

This debate was followed by a phone-in. Unfortunately, most of those who supported Shayler, sounded like they needed urgent medical treatment. They went on about how 9/11 was part of a 1,000 year conspiracy, etc.

Clearly the BBC selected these people very carefully. They wanted to redress the balance after Shayler's clear victory. Then I got to thinking "maybe these callers were MI5 plants". Maybe the ruling class use conspiracists against conspiracy theory. Then I started thinking about some of the strange posts we get on this forum. Is it possible that…

EXACTLY, John!!!

Jack

Make that two for Exactly so, John!.....that is their main 'leverage' in their propaganda against their own [real] conspiracy! The other manifold types of propaganda and disinformation are secondary.

___________________________

Il fait trois exactments (mon Francais, she is rouge)...

Edited February 20, 2007 by John Gillespie

[John Dolva]

"But none of this is sufficient. To qualify as a true opponent of the Bush regime, you must also now believe that it is capable of magic. It could blast the Pentagon with a cruise missile while persuading hundreds of onlookers that they saw a plane. It could wire every floor of the twin towers with explosives without attracting attention and prime the charges (though planes had ploughed through the middle of the sequence) to drop each tower in a perfectly timed collapse. It could make Flight 93 disappear into thin air, and somehow ensure that the relatives of the passengers collaborated with the deception. It could recruit tens of thousands of conspirators to participate in these great crimes and induce them all to have kept their mouths shut, for ever.

In other words, you must believe that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their pals are all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful, despite the fact that they were incapable of faking either weapons of mass destruction or any evidence at Ground Zero that Saddam Hussein was responsible. You must believe that the impression of cackhandedness and incompetence they have managed to project since taking office is a front. Otherwise you are a traitor and a spy.

The obvious corollorary to the belief that the Bush administration is all-powerful is that the rest of us are completely powerless. In fact it seems to me that the purpose of the "9/11 truth movement" is to be powerless. The omnipotence of the Bush regime is the coward's fantasy, an excuse for inaction used by those who don't have the stomach to engage in real political fights."

George, I only quoted this particular segment because I find it a particularly pithy and timely message. There is a layer in society that does hear loud and clear. Good on you, and all who do carry on the good fight.

[Jack White]

As for suggesting that I am a "wide eyed extremist", that's just a blatant, unjustified smear. Nothing I said was remotely "extreme", so I wonder what's going on with the moderator of this forum? I am reluctant to speculate, but exaggerated criticism with no basis in fact is typical of those who have an agenda other than truth, especially in relation to complex and controversial cases like JFK and 9/11. Others can judge for themselves, but I am disappointed in John Simkin!

I am sorry if I offended you by calling you a “wide-eyed extremist”. That was my genuine impression of your performance. Of course the BBC wanted the audience to get this impression of you and no doubt by skilful editing they got what they wanted. You were set-up.

It is a common tactic by the media to suggest that the debate is between moderates on one hand and extremists on the other. I thought the BBC was very skilful with the way they allowed Dylan Avery (Loose Change) to make statements about what eyewitnesses said and then inter-cut them with interviews with the people concerned explaining what they really did say.

I am someone who believes that governments do conspire against the true interests of the people. We have plenty of examples of this (assassinations of JFK, MLK, RFK, Iran-Contra, etc.). However, there is a great danger of these researchers being undermined by the activities of those who seem to believe that every important event is a conspiracy.

The Bush government clearly covered-up certain aspects of 9/11. They also exploited the event to enable the development of an aggressive foreign policy. As that memo said, the needed “a Pearl Harbor incident”. However, to suggest that the Bush administration actually organized 9/11 is in my opinion so outlandish that it undermines the opposition to this very dangerous regime.

If you plead innocent to implying that Dr. Fetzer is an irrational wide-eyed unscientific crackpot extremist

who contaminates good research with daft theories, then you should plead guilty to poor writing and

inability to communicate clearly. His was the only name you connected with those descriptions.

Jack

[John Simkin]

If you plead innocent to implying that Dr. Fetzer is an irrational wide-eyed unscientific crackpot extremist

who contaminates good research with daft theories, then you should plead guilty to poor writing and

inability to communicate clearly. His was the only name you connected with those descriptions.

Last week BBC Radio held a debate on the possibility of a 9/11 conspiracy. The reason for this was to publicize a series of BBC television documentaries (the first one on 9/11 is on tonight).

The opening debate was between former MI5 agent, David Shayler, and left-wing journalist, Brendon O’Neill. Shayler, a believer in a 9/11 conspiracy was brilliant and exposed O’Neill as someone who knew very little about the case.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Shayler

This debate was followed by a phone-in. Unfortunately, most of those who supported Shayler, sounded like they needed urgent medical treatment. They went on about how 9/11 was part of a 1,000 year conspiracy, etc.

Clearly the BBC selected these people very carefully. They wanted to redress the balance after Shayler’s clear victory. Then I got to thinking “maybe these callers were MI5 plants”. Maybe the ruling class use conspiracists against conspiracy theory. Then I started thinking about some of the strange posts we get on this forum. Is it possible that…

Like Jack you seem to think I was referring to the anti-conspiracists on the forum. I was not. My comments were aimed at those conspiracy theorists who contaminate the good name of good researchers by developing what I consider to be daft theories.

I was not suggesting that the BBC lined-up nut-cases to support Shayler. All they did is to let the crackpots speak. The BBC always appears to be very fair by matching one supporter with one opponent phone-caller. The cheating comes with who they select to speak.

As you can see, I never called Jim Fetzer a "crackpot".

[John Geraghty]

May I interject with a brief statement?

Jim Fetzer has alleged that researcher John Judge is an agent of the government due to the fact that he does believe a plane hit the pentagon and that it was the two planes that hit the twin towers. This is similar to the attacks levelled against George Monbiot and other critics of the methods of elements of the 9/11 truth movement. Jack White feels that John was duped by an elaborate planted story.

I wonder if Mr.Fetzer would like to comment on why he feels that John Judge is an agent of the government and if has any proof to back up his assertions.

All my best and happy debating,

John Geraghty

[Duane Daman]

I haven't researched the 9/11 attacks as much as I have the Apollo hoax evidence , but from what I have read about this subject so far , it does appear that the official version of the events are not true .

There was clearly no plane wreckage found at the Shanksville, Pa. site , and not enough wreckage found at the Pentagon either , for a jumbo jet to have hit the building .... And to me, this is the most alarming physical evidence that the government is hiding something and not telling the truth. ...Several eyewitness accounts at Shanksville also claimed that Flight 93 was shot down by a military jet which had been circling it after it went out of control ....

I have also read on several 9/11 forums where Dick Cheney had ordered over 20 hijacking games to take place that morning , which sent the majority of the NORAD jets to Langley, Va. , thus placing them out of interception range for NY .... and also phoned the head of NORAD with orders to stand down if anyone from the FAA called them about hijacked planes ...

Apparently when the FAA called NORAD to report the hijacking of Flight 11 , they asked if it was real world or games ... and refused to scramble their jets for the hijacked planes heading for NYC ....

Does anyone discussing this know if this information is correct or not ? .... Because if so , this would be the most convincing evidence proving US government involvment .

[Len Colby]

If you plead innocent to implying that Dr. Fetzer is an irrational wide-eyed unscientific crackpot extremist

who contaminates good research with daft theories, then you should plead guilty to poor writing and

inability to communicate clearly. His was the only name you connected with those descriptions.

Last week BBC Radio held a debate on the possibility of a 9/11 conspiracy. The reason for this was to publicize a series of BBC television documentaries (the first one on 9/11 is on tonight).

The opening debate was between former MI5 agent, David Shayler, and left-wing journalist, Brendon O’Neill. Shayler, a believer in a 9/11 conspiracy was brilliant and exposed O’Neill as someone who knew very little about the case.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Shayler

This debate was followed by a phone-in. Unfortunately, most of those who supported Shayler, sounded like they needed urgent medical treatment. They went on about how 9/11 was part of a 1,000 year conspiracy, etc.

Clearly the BBC selected these people very carefully. They wanted to redress the balance after Shayler’s clear victory. Then I got to thinking “maybe these callers were MI5 plants”. Maybe the ruling class use conspiracists against conspiracy theory. Then I started thinking about some of the strange posts we get on this forum. Is it possible that…

Like Jack you seem to think I was referring to the anti-conspiracists on the forum. I was not. My comments were aimed at those conspiracy theorists who contaminate the good name of good researchers by developing what I consider to be daft theories.

I was not suggesting that the BBC lined-up nut-cases to support Shayler. All they did is to let the crackpots speak. The BBC always appears to be very fair by matching one supporter with one opponent phone-caller. The cheating comes with who they select to speak.

As you can see, I never called Jim Fetzer a "crackpot".

Once again Jack demonstrates a problem understanding what he reads.

[Len Colby]

Make that two for Exactly so, John!.....that is their main 'leverage' in their propaganda against their own [real] conspiracy! The other manifold types of propaganda and disinformation are secondary.

___________________________

Il fait trois exactments (mon Francais, she is rouge)...

What are you concuring with John (Gillespie)? John Simkin's contention that many 9/11 CTists (including some on this forum) appear to be lunatics and this makes other conspiracists look bad or Jack and Peter's misinterpritation, apperently thinkin he was saying the conspiracy skepticks were disinfo agents?

Edited February 20, 2007 by Len Colby

[Len Colby]

As for suggesting that I am a "wide eyed extremist", that's just a blatant, unjustified smear. Nothing I said was remotely "extreme", so I wonder what's going on with the moderator of this forum? I am reluctant to speculate, but exaggerated criticism with no basis in fact is typical of those who have an agenda other than truth, especially in relation to complex and controversial cases like JFK and 9/11. Others can judge for themselves, but I am disappointed in John Simkin!

I am sorry if I offended you by calling you a “wide-eyed extremist”. That was my genuine impression of your performance. Of course the BBC wanted the audience to get this impression of you and no doubt by skilful editing they got what they wanted. You were set-up.

It is normal for newscasters, film makers etc to shoot more footage than they use. I don't think there is any evidence Fetzr was "set up" even in the "truth movement" he is seen as an extremist Jones and Ryan and most of the other scientists left his group after he started backing “the towers were destroyed by ‘star wars’ beams” and other, in the word of the ex-members "unscientic theories".

http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2006/...rs-for-911.html

http://stj911.org/faq.html

http://stj911.org/scholars_for_911_truth.html

I thought the BBC was very skilful with the way they allowed Dylan Avery (Loose Change) to make statements about what eyewitnesses said and then inter-cut them with interviews with the people concerned explaining what they really did say. !

I don’t understand why you think this was deceptive if Avery was deceptive he deserves to be ‘unmasked’.

The Bush government clearly covered-up certain aspects of 9/11. They also exploited the event to enable the development of an aggressive foreign policy. As that memo said, the needed “a Pearl Harbor incident”. However, to suggest that the Bush administration actually organized 9/11 is in my opinion so outlandish that it undermines the opposition to this very dangerous regime.

Quite true however the "Pearl Harbor" has been taken out of context. It came from a section of a report calling for modernizing telecommunications systems and stated barring such an incident it would take many years for this to happen. Edited February 20, 2007 by Len Colby