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If the left spends its time on this, that's the end of the left, in my opinion: the mainstream would be utterly delighted. It is highly likely that nothing significant will be found. And if -- which I very greatly doubt -- something is found that would quickly send everyone in Washington to the death chamber, the left is unlikely to emerge triumphant.
www.rense.com...
Since the 1960's, Chomsky has acted as the premier Left gatekeeper, using his elevated status to cover up the major crimes of the global elite.
www.rense.com...
Whether NORAD followed SOP, I have no idea, not having investigated the matter. I think the case is very weak, and diverts people from the really serious issues.
www.rense.com...
In the spring of 2002, when some of the material documenting official foreknowledge of 9/11 began to surface in the corporate media, The Nation, Z and Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting attacked independent investigators who are piecing together the evidence, instead of helping those who have done the best work.
www.911review.com...
The World Trade Center was not destroyed by planes, but by explosives
The planes were not hijacked, but commandeered by NORAD (the North American Aerospace Defense Command)
The hijackers were actually working for the U.S. government
U.S. intelligence knew about the plot, but did nothing so as to cause massive deaths and thereby mobilize public support for a war on terrorism that would benefit the government
The plot was organized by the Mossad
The Mossad knew about the plot, but did nothing, hoping that the massive deaths would mobilize public support for Israel’s war on the Palestinians
www.zmag.org...
Originally posted by ConspiracyNut23
He then raises a few good questions.
Why no leaks? Why has no one involved in the actual planning of the attacks come forward yet?
Nature is essentially chaotic. Even in scientifically controlled environment, there are always anomalies that cannot be explained.
He has further defined himself as a Zionist; although, he notes that his definition of Zionism is considered by most to be anti-Zionism these days, the result of what he perceives to have been a shift (since the 1940s) in the meaning of Zionism (Chomsky Reader)
en.wikipedia.org...
I was a Zionist activist in my youth. For me, Zionism meant opposition to a Jewish state. The Zionist movement did not come out officially in favor of a Jewish state until 1942. Before this it was merely the intent of the Zionist leadership. The Zionist movement for a long time stood against the establishment of a Jewish state because such a state would be discriminatory and racist.
www.chomsky.info...
But there is no way around it, 9-11 needs to be understood
It affects research, strikingly. I’m sure you see it here, but at a research institution like where I am, MIT, you see it pretty clearly. As funding shifts from public entities, including, incidentally, the Pentagon, in fact, primarily the Pentagon, which has long understood that its domestic role is to be a cover for transferring public funds into private profit.
www.zmag.org...
None of the “conspiracies” being talked about strike us as remotely interesting, much less plausible. Neither of us would ordinarily have spent even five minutes exploring conspiracy claims because they fly in the face of our broad understanding of how the world works. But such theories seem to have some popularity among progressives, so they must be addressed.
The most common definition of a conspiracy is two or more people secretly planning a criminal act. Examples of conspiracy theories include the belief that: (1) JFK was assassinated by rogue CIA elements attempting to ward off unwanted liberalism; (2) negotiations between the United States government and Iran to release American hostages in then-President Carter’s last year failed because Reagan’s aides secretly struck a deal with Iran to hold the hostages until after the election; (3) 9-11 was a plot by a rogue CIA/Mossad team cunningly engineering rightward alignments in the United States and/or Israel.
A broader definition of conspiracy includes misleading, but still legal acts. For example, even if the U.S. president and his top aides could legally perpetrate the secret 9-11 attacks, doing so would still be a conspiracy.
Legal assassination disguised as an accident or secretly pinned on someone else might also fit the second definition because it’s not just secret, but actively deceptive. But no definition of conspiracy, however broad, includes everything secret.
People often secretly get together and use their power to achieve some result. But if this is a conspiracy, then virtually everything is a conspiracy... Every business decision, every editorial decision, every university department closed session would be a conspiracy. Conspiracy would be ubiquitous and, therefore, vacuous. Even in the broadest definition, there must be some significant deviation from normal operations. No one would call all the secret acts of national security agencies conspiracies, as they are sufficiently normal and expected.
Conspiracies do happen. But a conspiracy theorist is not someone who simply accepts the truth of some specific conspiracies. Rather, a conspiracy theorist is someone with a certain general methodological approach and set of priorities.
Conspiracy theorists begin their quest for understanding events by looking for groups acting secretly either in a rogue fashion, or to fool the public. Conspiracy theorists focus on conspirators’ methods, motives, and effects. Personalities, personal timetables, secret meetings, and conspirators’ joint actions claim priority attention. Institutional relations largely drop from view. Thus, rather than seeking a basic understanding of U.S. foreign policy, conspiracy theorists ask, “Did Clinton launch missiles at Sudan in 1998 in order to divert attention from his Monica troubles?” Rather than examining the shared policies of Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson vis-à-vis Southeast Asia, as an examination of institutions would emphasize, they ask, “Did a group within the CIA kill Kennedy to prevent his withdrawing from Vietnam?”
This establishes two points: one, conspiracy theorists have incorrect understanding of the structural nature of things, and two, because of that, they get all personal about stuff and look for evidence to support their wackjob theories.
There are, of course, complicating borderline cases. A person trying to discover a possible CIA role in 9-11 could be trying to verify a larger (incorrect) institutional theory—that the U.S. government is run by the CIA.
In a famous study in the 1950s, researcher Leon Festinger wanted to find out how a religious sect would react when its prophecy that “the Earth was going to come to an end” failed to come true on the predicted date. When the fateful date arrived and nothing happened, did the believers cease to be believers? No. Instead they asserted that God had given humankind one more chance and they maintained the rest of their belief system intact.
...To the conspiratorial mind, if evidence emerges contradicting a claimed conspiracy, it was planted. If further evidence shows that the first evidence was authentic, then that, too, was planted.
On the contrary, if events were as carefully choreographed as the conspiracy theorists claim, the conspirators would have been better at coordinating their stories.
Prominent conspiracy theorists Illarion Bykov and Jared Israel say: “It appears that Cheney may have blurted out the crucial fact that the Secret Service had an open line to the FAA, then realized he was talking too much and stopped before completing his sentence. But if he did indeed talk too much, he also stopped talking too late.”
So we’re to believe that Vice President Cheney, having just successfully plotted to incinerate thousands of Americans, didn’t prepare his cover story well enough to avoid blurting out “too much.”
Conspiracy theorists often endow their enemies (whether the CIA or capitalists or Jews or Freemasons) with immense powers and near infallibility. To them, nothing is accidental or unintended. Since Bush and Co. must have received evidence of an impending terror strike, say the conspiracy theorists, and would not have overlooked such evidence if they didn’t want such a strike to occur, then they must have been in on it. But consider these indications of less than infallible perception: (1) The INS sent a student visa to two of the hijackers six months after 9-11. (2) Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, was allowed on a plane despite his suspicious behavior and an FAA advisory to watch for shoe bombs. (3) Reporters tested security at airports post-9-11 and were able to get weapons past checkpoints. Incompetence does occur.
Consider first those variations that have Bush pulling the attacks off alone, with perhaps a few trusted aides.
First, conspiracy theories reveal evidence that can identify actual events needing other explanation.
Second, conspiracy theories have manageable implications. They imply that all was once well and that it can be okay again if only the conspirators can be removed.
Much of the public finds conspiracy theories loony
Too many people take conspiracy theories seriously.
Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
"The Pet Goat" is the story of a girl's pet goat which eats everything in its path. The girl's parents want to get rid of the goat, but she defends it. In the end, the goat becomes a hero when it butts a car robber into submission. A sample passage:
A girl got a pet goat. She liked to go running with her pet goat. She played with her goat in her house. She played with her goat in her yard. But the goat did some things that made the girl's dad mad. The goat ate things. He ate cans and he ate canes. He ate pans and he ate panes. He even ate capes and caps.
Spoilers end here.
en.wikipedia.org...
ZNet Sustainer: Considering the long history of false flag operations to wrongly justify wars, our most recent precedent being WMD in Iraq, The Gulf of Tonkin in Vietnam, going back much further to Pearl Harbor (FDR knowingly allowing the Japanese to bomb Pearl Harbor – which is different from false flag operations), to the 1898 Spanish-American War, to the 1846 Mexican-American War, to Andrew Jackson’s seizing of Seminole land in 1812 (aka Florida).
Noam Chomsky: The concept of "false flag operation" is not a very serious one, in my opinion. None of the examples you describe, or any other in history, has even a remote resemblance to the alleged 9/11 conspiracy. I'd suggest that you look at each of them carefully.
blogs.zmag.org...
ZNet Sustainer: Considering that in the US there are stage-managed elections, public relations propaganda wars, and a military-industrial-education-prison-etc. complex, does something like this sound far-fetched?
Noam Chomsky: I think that's the wrong way to look at it. Everything you mention goes back far before 9/11, and hasn't changed that much since. More evidence that the 9/11 movement is diverting energy and attention away from far more serious crimes -- and in this case crimes that are quite real and easily demonstrated.