Guest Editorial by Ernest A. Canning
“We killed the President that day. You could have been a part of it — you know, part of history. You should have stayed. It was safe. Everything was covered in advance. No arrests, no real newspaper investigation. It was all covered, very professional.” – Sworn deposition testimony provided in Hunt vs. Liberty Lobby, Inc. by Marita Lorenz, Fidel Castro’s former girlfriend and CIA asset, recounting what her CIA recruiter, convicted Watergate burglar Frank Sturgis, told her after the assassination of JFK.
Sibel Edmonds’ recent on-air revelation that, prior to 9/11, Osama bin Laden was relied upon by the Bush administration as a Central Asian asset, added one more disturbing piece to an incomplete puzzle, which, as could be expected, lent itself to a number of comments asking whether 9/11 was “an inside job.” These, in turn, were summarily dismissed in another comment as “conspiracy theory.”
Where does this concept of dismissing inquiry into momentous events as “conspiracy theory” come from?…
If a police officer undertook to investigate an unsolved murder, relying upon circumstantial evidence supporting the theory that a husband had hired a hit man to kill his wife, no one would dream of dismissing that investigation as a “conspiracy theory.” No one would suggest that the officer be fitted for a “tin foil hat.”
Yet, compelling evidence presented by Mark Lane, not only in his book, Plausible Denial, but in a federal courtroom — evidence which convinced a jury that the CIA killed JFK; a compelling statistical analysis provided by Steven Freeman, Ph.D. (and Joel Bleifuss), in Was the 2004 Election Stolen? augmented by the work of investigative journalists, including many pieces posted here at The BRAD BLOG, all of which raise the question as to whether the official count in the 2004 Presidential Election was the product of widespread irregularities and/or wholesale electronic vote-flipping, and scientific evidence which suggests that controlled demolition may provide a plausible explanation for the sudden (8.7 second) collapse of WTC-7 into its own footprint, are all swept aside with the mere utterance of the words “conspiracy theory.”
The word “theory” as a method of scientific study merely refers to “systematically organized knowledge applicable in a relatively wide variety of circumstances, especially a system of assumptions, accepted principles, and rules of procedure devised to analyze, predict, or otherwise explain the natural behavior of a specified set of phenomena.” (Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary).
As used by the corporate media, “conspiracy theorist” is a derogatory label exclusively intended to dismiss any and all who challenge “official reality.” It is applied not only to those who present evidence in support of a theory which challenges official reality but even to those who feel it appropriate to seek an investigation to test whether there is empirical data that supports the official reality.
Freeman’s Was the 2004 Election Stolen? provides a classic example.
On Election Day 2004, Freeman, a member of the teaching faculty of the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate Program of Organizational Dynamics, experienced a moment straight out of George Orwell’s 1984:
A funny thing happened after the polls closed and Kerry’s exit poll lead, in state after state, slid into the Bush column.
In a manner reminiscent to the incineration of inconvenient data placed in “memory holes” by the fictional Winston Smith in 1984’s Ministry of Truth, the pollsters “corrected” the exit polls in order to reconcile them with the official results. The original “uncorrected” exit poll numbers, which had been “available on CNN.com” but “never broadcast on TV” simply vanished, replaced by the “corrected” exit poll results.
While adjusting the exit polls to line up with election results has long been a standard, albeit questionable,* practice with such polls in the U.S., the initially leaked data certainly raised eyebrows. Fortunately, alert citizens had downloaded some of those original data, thereby permitting Freeman to offer a contrasting analysis of the widely disseminated explanation for Bush’s “win,” as advanced by The Nation magazine’s David Corn and by Michael Barone of U.S. News & World Report (and others), which argued the discrepancy could be explained away as a difference between early exit polls and late pro-Bush voting.
According to Freeman:
As observed by Republican pollster, Dick Morris:
Instead of citing the obvious — that the existence of vast discrepancies between exit polling and the official count suggests dishonesty in a U.S. Presidential election, just as those same discrepancies are seen by our government as prima facie evidence for dishonesty in Third World countries — Morris assumed that the pollsters had “screwed up” six separate exit polls which had been performed by corporate media-funded, reputable pollsters, including Warren Mitofski, whose experience dated back to the nation’s very first use of an exit poll taken during the 1964 California Republican Primary.
Morris then speculated that the exit polls were deliberately skewed “to dampen Bush turnout in the Central, Mountain, and Pacific time zones.” Barrone advanced an even wilder, and absurd, speculation about a Democratic “election day project” to slam the results — this despite the prompt capitulation by John “can’t-concede-fast-enough” Kerry.
Freeman’s approach, by contrast, was scientific.
While these stark disparities were not present in thousands of accurate Mitofsky-led exit polls conducted over the preceding four decades, Freeman acknowledges that, counting 2004, there were six occasions where significant discrepancies arose in U.S. Presidential elections, the previous five being the general elections of 1988 and 1992, along with the Florida 2000 vote, and in three Republican primaries.
Freeman’s analysis has essentially been ignored by corporate media which widely disseminated but, in large measure, failed to challenge the unscientific speculations advanced by Morris, Barrone, and Corn precisely because, unlike Freeman, their “conspiracy speculations” did not challenge “official reality.”
With the “correction” of the exit polls, the position of corporate media pundits became analogous to that of 1984’s Winston Smith as he was overwhelmed by the logic of his tormentor, the burley inner Party member, O’Brien, while tortured inside the Ministry of Love.
Winston tried to cling to a furtive memory; information he once held in his hands — a photograph establishing the innocence of three high members of the Party who had been executed for treason — a photo that Winston, himself, had fed down a memory hole. O’Brien derided Winston; told him he was “mentally deranged”; that his very thought of the photo was a “delusion.” Winston would eventually succumb, ultimately accepting that there was no reality but what the Party said was real.
As the official results poured in, in 2004, they overwhelmed the unofficial exit polls, elevating the official count into the “official reality.” And therein lies the real power behind the corporate media’s use of the words “conspiracy theorist.” There is a chilling effect. Even otherwise honest journalists are inclined to avoid challenging the “official reality” pertaining to momentous events out of fear that they will be branded as “conspiracy theorists.”
Anyone who challenges official reality is a “conspiracy theorist.” Conspiracy theorists are “mentally deranged.”
Of course, if that is not enough to dissuade the desire to ferret out the truth, there’s always President Obama’s “we have to look forward and not back” — the excuse offered to evade the obligation to investigate the past administration’s war crimes. Those too, as time moves on, and if no accountability is brought, will no doubt become little more than easily-dismissed “conspiracy theories” in the parlance of the corporate media — utterly marginalized in contrast to the “official reality,” sure to set in for good as the “official” historical record.
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Unlike examples…in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, in the U.S. pollsters take the official count as inviolable. They describe exit-poll results that differ dramatically from the official count as ‘errors,’ and the adjusting of the exit-poll results to conform to the official count as ‘correcting.’ We believe such terminology is counterproductive. We speak of ‘disparity’ rather than ‘error’….
The disparity in exit poll methodology inside and outside the U.S. is itself quite telling. As Freeman/Bleifuss report:
Using exit polls to help expose fraud is so generally accepted that the Bush administration helped pay for them during the 2004 elections in the Ukraine.
The vast discrepancy in that election, according to Freeman/Bleifuss, sparked “international protests and a national uprising” leading to “a new election.” Here, vast discrepancies in the 2004 Presidential election produced “corrections” which sought to erase the disparity between the exit polls and the official count — “corrections” and a disparity that would have remained a closely guarded secret but for the downloading of the original raw data from a corporate media web site.
Exit polls are intended to provide an accurate prediction of electoral outcome after people vote but before the official count begins. To “correct,” “adjust” or otherwise alter exit poll data on the basis of an official count which does not begin until the polls close, especially when accompanied by a deletion of the original data, amounts to a rewriting of the historical record of a pivotal event in a manner strikingly similar to the methodology of Orwell’s fictional Oceania.
Epilogue Lest this opinion piece be misconstrued, my purpose is not to advance, as fact, any of the theories that provide the basis for this editorial. I have as much problem with self-described “truthers” who leap to a conclusion on the basis of incomplete factual data as I do with those who would shut the door on scientific inquiry of pivotal events through resort to the “conspiracy theorist” label. It is the essence of the scientific method that all theories, including the “official” version of an event, should be subjected to objective examination; modified or even abandoned if the results of that examination warrant an alteration of the original theory.
UPDATE, 8/04/09: While three separate “conspiracy theories” were used to present my central thesis — that the misuse of the words “conspiracy theory” as a means to dismiss any theory, whether supportive or destructive of official reality, is unscientific, only one of the three, the question of whether 9/11 was an “inside job,” touched a raw nerve, producing emotional reactions. It caused some to misconstrue a simple request that we not be dissuaded by the “conspiracy theorist” label from pursuing scientific inquiry into pivotal events into the assumption that the mere fact that someone like me prefers to keep an open mind pending an adequate investigation is the equivalent to acceptance of “official theory.”
This emotional reaction is understandable. It involves more than the fact that nearly 3,000 people lost their lives during that awful day. More than 18,000 of our fellow citizens have lost their lives in each of the past eight years as a result of a conspiracy that is still being carried out via $130 million in expenditures by the health insurance lobby in just this past quarter — monies expended not only on campaign contributions and lobbying, but monies used to shut down one of the oldest forms of democracy in these United States — the town hall meeting — through the ambit of a pseudo-grass roots protest made up of wing-nuts organized and funded by the insurance industry. Yet our corrupt, dysfunctional and deadly health care system does not engender such raw emotions.
The answer lies in Marshall McLuhan’s observation that television is a participatory medium that “enhances instant visual long-distance communication,” and in George Lakoff’s examination of the impact of that immediacy by way of visual metaphors which “frame” our understanding of what takes place on screen.
As Lakoff, himself, tells us, in witnessing 9/11 we did not merely see buildings falling to the ground and crumbling. We saw ourselves falling and crumbling to the ground. Fear of falling is primal. Survival is instinctual.
The raw emotional wound left many feeling vulnerable; in need of protection — the ideal matrix for America’s Orwellian sociopath, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, to seize the moment, parlaying that fear through a blindly obedient media into a smooth path for carrying out the right-wing agenda, including use of false links between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein as an excuse for imperial conquest.
As the reality of that cynical manipulation became known, many experienced a sense of betrayal — an emotional reaction that lends itself to assuming that anyone so cynical as to take advantage of our pain must have been behind the event to begin with. But truth is not realized by emotion. It is realized by unemotional, scientific investigation.
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Ernest A. Canning has been an active member of the California State Bar since 1977 and has practiced in the fields of civil litigation and workers’ compensation at both the trial and appellate levels. He graduated cum laude from Southwestern University School of Law where he served as a student director of the clinical studies department and authored the Law Review Article, Executive Privilege: Myths & Realities. He received an MA in political science at Cal State University Northridge and a BA in political science from UCLA. He is also a Vietnam vet (4th Infantry, Central Highlands 1968).
This is what chimpy was refering to when he talked about having to say things “over and over” to “catapult the propaganda.”
What he left out, however, was that he (cheney, amdministration officials, and pundits) actually “catapult” the propaganda by picking up the endless repetitions as “facts”, creating an echo-chamber.
For the lives of most American’s today, dismissing anything other than Oswald did it alone is a “conspiracy theory” and the media dutifully “catapults” that propaganda with an endless series of dishonest books, “experts” and now computer simulations (animating lies).
The term is used to marginalize people, prevent an open dialog, and to lump the folks that believe in reptillian rulers into the same categories as those that question why thermite was found in the WTC dust.
Yet another example of the blatant lies from the mainstream media. Acknowledging that we get an endless stream of propaganda from newpapers, TV, and radio is important, but more important are the dialogs and truth that this propaganda is meant to silence.
And even when we do have a dialog about it, (which is extremely rare even in the self-proclaimed “liberal”/”progressive” bloggosphere, it means nothing without organized economic action.
The only vote we really can count on being counted accurately today are the dollars we spend.
Replace the Orwellian word “corrected” with the accurate word “changed”. Also replace “uncorrected” with “unchanged”.
Where is the “scientific method” which proves the government’s official 9/11 story? There are hundreds of unanswered questions about the “official government” 9/11 story. There was NOT “scientific method” used in proving the “official” story.
Where is it?
Dr. David Ray Griffin speaks of exactly what you are saying here, about the corporate media throwing around the term “conspiracy theory”, in part 1 of 9 of his speech:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...layer_embedded
Big Dan – you can’t prove a lie. Hense they have to rely on propaganda.
I don’t proclaim to have all the answers, but know when things don’t make any sense and can recognize the dishonest rhetoric that discourages or prevents discussion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lwBUXCMdSc
I hope everyone gives this a read.
http://www.911truth.org/article...90104025547844
Yeah, there’s no such thing as a “conspiracy”. The government is good. The government loves you.
What do you make of Operation Northwoods you dumbass, Ernest?
The charge “conspiracy theorist!” is invoked often whenever anybody begins to question orthodox, mainstream media (MSM) propaganda concerning major events that have significant political and economic ramifications. There are, of course, many irresponsible and lunatic speculations supported by little, if any evidence. These help to discredit the many responsible questioners of orthodoxy. (I think that they are sometimes deliberately propagated to more easily discredit the more well-founded and supported conspiracy theories.)
On the other hand, there are whistleblowers and insiders who have provided substantial circumstantial, and even some direct evidence, that flies in the face of the “official” story propagated (usually very vigorously) by the MSM surrounding momentous social/political events, such as assassinations and provocations to war.
Anyone who is aware of the history of crime in this country knows just how complex and sophisticated conspiracies can be perpetrated upon the public, even without much assistance from the MSM. (See investigative journalist Jonathan Kwitney’s book Vicious Circles, for instance.) If people were more aware of these very real and proven criminal conspiracies, the conspiracy theories proposed to explain the mysterious, politically significant events would not appear so far-fetched. The Mafia has created thriving rackets — corrupting public officials and law enforcement in the process — that render important sectors of our legit economy uncompetitive (“waste management,” trucking, the meat industry come immediately to mind), not to mention the illicit industries of narcotics, prostitution, child pornography, gambling, etc. In fact, there have been significant social connections among the Mafia/organized crime in this country and prominent public officials (elected and unelected) including law enforcement, and the executive management and major shareholders of large corporations (especially those doing business across national borders).
Another investigative journalist, James Bamford, uncovered the conspiracy and false flag plans of Gen. Lemnitzer and the our country’s top military planners working for the Joint Chiefs of Staff to create a phony pretext for an invasion of Cuba back in the early 1960’s, called Operation Northwoods. Fortunately, JFK dismissed the proposals that would have amounted to an “inside job” — proposals that ominously echo just the sort of mysterious operations we saw on 9/11/2001. See this Wikipedia entry about Operation Northwoods: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Op...ion_Northwoods
To Dan, and to the rest of the “truther” community:
I really don’t have a problem with criticism, but I think it would be of immense value if you actually read and digested what I wrote before blasting away.
1. The Orwellian “correction” of the 2004 exit polls did not come from me. It came from the pollsters who performed the exit polls. The pollsters said they “corrected” the data.
I’ve added a footnote so as to clear up any misconceptions.
2. I never suggested that I am convinced by the “official” accounts of any of these three historically pivotal events, but, especially with the “truther” thesis, I am also not satisfied that the evidence is sufficient to warrant the conclusion that 9/11 was an “inside job.”
My legal training and 31 years of legal practice have created what I believe is a healthy, scientific skepticism.
The “truther” movement has raised a great deal of, shall we say, “circumstantial” evidence which raises significant questions about that event — questions which warrant an open, impartial and full investigation. But it is a quantum leap to go from questions or suspicions, to a positive conclusion that 9/11 was, “in fact,” an “inside job.”
If my unwillingness to take a blind leap of faith into the realm of a potential false positive makes me a “dumbass” in your eyes — Well, so be it.
Sincerely,
Ernest A. Canning
Ernie, I think it was most manly and lucid of you to post this, but Truthers are not quite as out there on some of this as the lawyerly experience might be telling you. It has been established that a very fancy incendiary, not commercially available, was in the mountains of dust from the demolitions. Before that was shown, however, we have always had the videos and the speed with which all three WTC buildings were leveled. The laws of physics do not admit of any other conclusion but that the buildings were prepared in advance by demolition experts to perform as they did.
So there very obviously can be no realistic conclusion that doesn’t make it an inside job of some sort. It may not have been * and Fudd, or even any of their buddies, but it had to be people with very high level connections to get those materials and to get clandestine access to set the cutting charges and paint on the nanothermite… or however they applied it.
In fact, beside the awful “dancing Israelis” episode, some people feel it may have been people with high level connections in Israel, and who got access through the owner of the complex… just in order to think of how it might plausibly be that this was not totally a self-inflicted wound. The part that nixes that theory for me is the fact that they shot a missile into the Pentagon… and so I’m pretty sure if no one in DC was in on it, that couldn’t have happened.
It’s just not at all as outlandish as it seems if you are not conversant with the stuff that’s already been established as fact. Yes, we want it established by the authorities, but they won’t do that. So it has been left to men and women of good will to do the best we can with the evidence they left us.
It would have been optimal if they didn’t so swiftly destroy the crime scenes, but there has been plenty of evidence left extant anyway, and professionals are on it. We may never be able to get it investigated and adjudicated by the “authorities”, but Truthers are not all just maniacs going off half cocked.
People are plenty steamed and used to having to get vivid to get attention, so try not to take the insults personally. This has been more frustrating than most sane people can bear without blowing their lids… and most of them don’t have the decades’ experience in never blowing their lids like you do. So we may seem like wild animals, but, really, many or even most of us are just in a more natural state with the frustration management stuff than lawyers are.
Culture shock. I know. Yep. I so totally know. And thank you again for this post.
ernie – if they can fraudulently host an AWOL abusive alcoholic/cocaine addict into the white house (with full support of MSM) despite clear evidence of fraud (that you talk about), loot BILLIONS AND BILLIONS of dollars (literally, dude, no one can say where it went) from the federal treasury, commit treason, war crimes, and crimes against humanity with impunity…
Believe what you want about 9/11 – you obviously are not up on the “truther” movement nor are you aware that the term encompasses many diverse opinions and interests (some probably not on the level).
I won’t criticize you on whether or not you understand what you are talking about (in terms of 9/11), but will take a wack when you clearly don’t understand, want to make proclaimations that you do, and in the process put those that are more up on the facts down.
Fine – your “pet issue” is the exit polls, which are a direct result of the stolen election. That crime was only possible because there was going to be a great deal more to follow.
But close your eyes if you with – just don’t post the condescending stuff here please.
Oh, and, maybe the collapse of building seven speed has been revised up since I looked last, but I could swear that it was six point seven seconds…? Of course, there are slightly different times on these due to the pyroclastic flows at the bases obscuring the views for timing, and some didn’t bother to take the mean on the various videos, but even the very slowest allowable computation still is very far within the range where only resistance being exploded out from under can account for the speed.
There is absolutely no way jet fuel, or the combination of jet fuel and impact weakness, could have accomplished it. This is already known for certain… and has resided in physics textbooks for at least our whole lives….
Hey, Joe, do you ever drop out of attack mode?
If you tell Ernie what he can and can’t post here ever again, even if it isn’t in the rules, I’m going to go all “blog goddess” on you for real.
read again, queenie – just saying that he is totally misrepresenting the “truther” movement (in itself a fairly derogatory term, its the TRUTH movement).
I will point that out – I know, you think you are little miss manners, blah blah blah.
He is posting distortions about the hard work that many are doing to find out what happened on 9/11.
He is doing it with rhetoric and words that make it sound important – but it all shows ignorance.
Yup, he will hear from me and so would you.
Call it an attack if you like, shows your thinking. But go “bloggin’ goddess” on me. You haven’t shown anything that indicates you will be very good at it.
But now you can go back to what YOU do best – ATTACK! (gee, don’t really see much else from you, lady)
Just so we’re clear, you can have a cow about your take on his attitude — Brad allows commenters to wail on the bloggers here and public people — and so taking issue with it is okay, if you must, but if you want to set me off, start telling people what they’re allowed or not allowed to say, or tell somebody they don’t belong here, and that will do her the quickest of anything.
I want you to feel welcome here and at home, but I don’t stand for that stuff in the walking around world or online.
Gripe away… and, yes, I think I agree that I’m pretty good in attack mode, but it isn’t my main forte.
I didn’t know some of us were picky about the nomenclature!
When did we stop calling ourselves “Truthers”? Did I miss something? Or is it the gig where you think you’re being respectful when you call me “Native American” instead of good old “indian”? Are we demanding political-correctitude now?
Yeesh. That sucks.
Hey, Ernie, if I remember correctly, this is a pretty good episode of Guns and Butter, from about three years ago, before the definitive proof of the “thermitic material”, but I know about this stuff because I went through all the depositions known as “oral histories” once to pull out all the testimony relating to explosions and burning metal. That was what sucked me in so hard I could never swim back out again. They brought me directly back into the disaster… five years later. But after diving in for so many uninterrupted hours, I emerged with bodies splatting on the street next to me and caked with the toxic dust and clinging to strangers for dear life and being knocked down by the hot blasts at street level.
It made it real. Way more real than as completely real as it already felt to me. Reading these depositions will take you there.
[Actually, they’re better called “oral histories” because that’s what they turned into. They started out as formal depositions, but turned into people pretty much just telling all they remembered while a court reporter was taking it down… just being stopped for the occasional question near the juicy bits….]
I already knew most of it, but those testimonies took me there, made me one of them. This stuff takes hours and hours and hours and weeks and months and maybe years to look into and satisfy yourself about the facts, and so just speaking in favor of an open investigation is Truther enough for most people.
And, yet again, thank you for this post.
Government and corporate interests have every interest in keeping public opinion in their favor (consider it a sociological mind-hack that group consensus trumps truth).
“The reality which is to be ignored: plutocrats run the show.”
From my On Conspiracies and Theories post of July 6th, 2008.
cui bono?
Muslims NOT !
Cheney ?
PNAC ?
Israel ?
Military Industrial Complex ?
“It would have been optimal if they didn’t so swiftly destroy the crime scenes”…
Amen, 99. We just thought we were bringing an impossible effort in under budget and in record time so we could all get back to living. Most of the 40,000 of us working in Lower Manhattan figured it out, but long after the evidence we had access to was scrapped…
Another Joe – used to be there was a time when asses like you (and just to be clear, I don’t always disagree with you but you are still an ass)were shouted down roundly by some of our sharpest, most sound rationals.
I ask on their behalf – stop being such a dick. Most of us already know the things you espouse and disseminate, and do not require your additional pomp and slap to drive it home.
Just because you like your megaphone here, doesn’t mean you are the only voice fit to pound and pile on.
Show some economy of word, or some decorum.
Take your pick.
99 – to settle us better (since our Iran/ Twitter conflict), if only I could’ve TWITTER’d from Ground Zero in 2001/ 2002…I would’ve tweeted everything that took us years to know. And you, being you, would have heard me.
Might’ve saved us years of unthinkable pain.
Might’ve.
Demolition
in TurkeyGoes WrongI would love to see someone try to prove that those 3 buildings collapsed in any other possible way except by controlled demolition.
They cant, they don’t even pretend to try because they know it would be like trying to prove the Earth isn’t a sphere.
The “scientific method” HAS been used in most 9/11 truth information.
I defy anybody to name even ONE thing that has been proven about the “Official Conspiracy Theory”.
8th grade physics is all it takes to prove those 3 buildings collapsed due to high explosives & Thermate.
When I started blogging in forums about this back in January of 2002 I was shouted down and banned constantly for even mentioning the possibility that 9/11 was an inside job.
Today it is those blinded by mainstream media lies and cover ups that are the ones shouted down, the tables have completely turned.
You put up a poll on virtually any site asking the question “Do you believe the US government was involved in the events of 9/11”? and it will always be over 85% YES unless you are on some wing nut site like Free Republic or DKos.
9/11 truth represents at least 50% of the population today and that mind you is with a total media black out of any valid information and an active propaganda campaign covering up the facts about the 9/11.
Just imagine if we had a real media.
In 1997 NORAD said they insure, “Aircraft flying over our air space are monitored seven days a week, 24 hours a day.”
In 2004 the Air Force contradictorily said, “Before 2001, 1st Air Force was charged with keeping an eye on the nation’s borders, usually looking for threats in the form of Russian aircraft skirting too close for comfort to the mainland. In those few hours, the command’s mission went from looking outward to looking inward.”
See the 5 articles on NORAD at http://www.DNotice.org
The “Conspiracy Theorist” name-calling phenomenon is a significant development in current US history and needs to be fully recognized and understood. Unlike other name-calling phenomenon of the past (n*gger, f*ggot, communist), this one is clearly being promoted primarily by the main stream media and, in my opinion, is an attempt to solidify their monopoly on “Truth” and to squash discussion and descent. It is therefore, an un-democratic phenomenon and needs to be attacked as such. In order for the forces of fascism to advance further into the United States, “Truth” must be controlled, something being made far more difficult by the internet. The “Conspiracy Theorist” slander at the moment is proving to be very effective. A counter-attack strategy is desperately needed.
JFFFISCHER – sadly, this establishment’s rules prohibit me from attacking you ad hominem.
[ed note: That comment got disappeared into my secret file… thought I’d mention it so you don’t look delusional… 😛 –99]
REAL PEOPLE – I hope no one forgets who was in charge of “security” at WTC (one of duhbaya’s siblings, I believe). And how did the owner of the lease have the foresight to wrap up those insurance deals, just in the nick? The Machine sure does have chutzpah, grant ’em that.
What I said, 99, was that “scientific evidence which suggests that controlled demolition may provide a plausible explanation for the sudden (8.7 second) collapse of WTC-7 into its own footprint” has been “swept aside with the mere utterance of the words ‘conspiracy theory.'”
That “scientific evidence” includes the presence of thermite, the speed and manner of the sudden collapse and the “depositions” you refer to, all of which represent “circumstantial” evidence that make controlled demolition a “plausible explanation.”
Circumstantial evidence can be powerful but it must be distinguished from “direct” evidence.
If one advanced the notion that planes struck WTC-1 & WTC-2 or that bullets struck JFK, there are films which provide “direct” evidence that those events occurred. But when you move on to either the question of whether the planes caused the towers to collapse or whether a bullet caused JFK’s death, additional scientific evidence is required.
In the case of JFK, that evidence came by way of an autopsy, though the actual findings remain, to this day, a matter of controversy. The handwritten report from a physician from Parkland Memorial, which was still posted on a wall when I visited Dealy Plaza a couple of years ago, suggests an entry wound to the forehead.
For 9/11, there was no immediate, post-event inspection by relevant experts that would have been the engineering equivalent to an autopsy. We are left with competing theories.
It is one thing to say that either the Warren Commission report, with its pristine bullet, or the 9/11 Commission Report, which had relied upon evidence obtained by torture, were fatally flawed; quite another to jump from that position to a conclusion that (a) the CIA killed JFK or (b) 9/11 was an “inside job.”
In the case of JFK, I do believe that Mark Lane made out a very compelling case — a case that included the sworn testimony of Marita Lorenz. Lorenz testified that she, Sturgis and a number of other specifically named individuals, which included Orlando Bosch*, traveled in a two-car caravan, loaded with weapons, from Miami to a Dallas motel in November 1963 where they met up with E. Howard Hunt who handed Sturgis an envelope filled with cash. About a half hour after Hunt left, a second visitor arrived — Jack Ruby!
Lorenz testified she did not know the details of the operation; only that it was “big” and that she was to act as a decoy. She got cold feet; persuaded Sturgis to drive to the airport; then flew back to Miami. Her testimony about the Sturgis “We killed the President” statement came only when Hunt’s lawyer made the rookie mistake of asking a question without any idea of what the answer would be — he challenged her by asking whether she spoke to Sturgis after the assassination.
Lane’s thesis was bolstered by his blistering cross-examination of Hunt, which demolished Hunt’s claim that he was in Washington DC at the time of the assassination — a fact later confirmed by Hunt’s death bed confession.
Of course, while unlikely, it is possible that both the Lorenz testimony and the Hunt death bed confession were made up.
To my knowledge, the “truther” movement does not possess an “insider” account analogous to either the Lorenz testimony or the Hunt death bed confession.
The fact that I have yet to accept the “inside job” 9/11 “theory” as an established “fact” does not mean that I have rejected it.
The point — the only point — I had intended to convey is that a summary dismissal of “any” theory as “conspiracy theory” is unscientific.
_______
“¢ Bosch, whose CORU network had been linked to the Contra supply operation in the 1980s, openly took credit for the bombing of a Cuban civilian airliner. (See, P. Scott & J. Marshall, Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies & the CIA in Central America (Univ. of CA Press) (1991). According to Ricardo Alarcon, President of the Cuban National Assembly, declassified State Department documents implicate Bosch in the assassination of Orlando Lettelier. Today, thanks to a presidential pardon from George H.W. Bush, Bosch walks the streets of Miami, a free man. (Noam Chomsky, Failed States.
Ernie:
Well, I know what you said and what your point was, and it was great by me.
I guess my point is that the videos of the towers exploding and powderizing is in reality the same kind of evidence as the video of JFK being shot. The unthinkableness of it seems to have paralyzed the gray matter of most of the people who can immediately recognize that and whenever the shock wore off, it seems, they found it better to stay off the subject or go into denial. This is maybe the biggest component of the frustration level for Truthers and may have something to do with why you are being attacked, even when taking such a laudable position on this stuff.
Jeannie:
Might’ve… but… probably not. Big as Twitter is, nobody thought the explosions would be controversial at the time. No one thought any of it would be covered up, or that the government would raze the crime scenes before full investigations and forensics were done. All the stuff we have left of the communication is the original news coverage and if it’s this ignorable, Twitter would be too…. Or Twitter would have taken the tweets of 9/11 off their servers “out of respect for the families” or some such nonsense.
Very soon after we — the bloggers who were investigating it — uncovered ground zero for the swine flu pandemic, all the sites with the evidence went blank or the pertinent page links broken. The internet is just NOT going to be good for nailing this stuff down, unless everybody can have enough memory to automatically store the content of every page we visit.
But, yes, I definitely would have gotten it, and it would have been a good adjunct to the horrors playing out on our TVs. It may even be that the memory of the accounts of the day in more people would have gotten more people screaming earlier… maybe… might’ve….
The thing that I never could understand about 9/11 was the vice president doing war games so that all of NORAD went in the opposite direction of NYC. I think you have to be a nut to believe that one.
bush and cheney calling then majority leader Tom Daschule and asking for no investigation.
On the bright side the repubs went too far with bush and the party died.But then the country took a beating too.
COMMENT #10 [Permalink]
… cann4ing said on 8/2/2009 @ 7:36 pm PT…
2. I never suggested that I am convinced by the “official” accounts of any of these three historically pivotal events, but, especially with the “truther” thesis, I am also not satisfied that the evidence is sufficient to warrant the conclusion that 9/11 was an “inside job.”
BUT…what is the EVIDENCE to warrant the conclusion that the government’s official story is true?
You (and others) always say that same statement, but it seems to me that you are contradicting YOURSELF by, on the other hand, believing the government’s story which has no sufficient evidence!
That is a contradiction!
Please respond……..
Unless I’m reading you wrong, and you are ALSO saying there is not sufficient evidence to support the official government story, too.
But, I personally feel there is sufficient evidence to debunk the official government 9/11 story. And there was never an independent investigation. If you call a commission run by Zelikow, who had ties to Condi Rice and the Republicans, “independent”, well then…….
And is it correct, that the free fall demolition style implosion of WTC-7 was not mentioned in the official 9/11 commission report? Is that correct, anybody?
If so, isn’t that suspicious, not to mention that a 47 story building fell? There’s about 500 more points like that, btw…
They [NIST] addressed the WTC 7 collapse by saying the only thing they can think of is that the fires caused it, but mentioning that there is a very low probability of that being the cause. Heh. “Very low”!!! Priceless! “Vanishingly low” would have been a better choice of words, and, of course, “absolutely no” would have been the perfect choice of words… but… well… that would mean they’d have to investigate further….
Big Dan wrote:
“Unless I’m reading you wrong, and you are ALSO saying there is not sufficient evidence to support the official government story, too.”
________________
Precisely!
Danny! Yer a genius!
Ernie! You gotta answer him! I think he nailed you! 😛
Good timing…..
The weak point of disparaging 9/11 conspiracy theorists is that the official story for 9/11 is a conspiracy.
9/11 was never investigated. If it had been, there would have been volumes of information on Marvin Bush, who actually was never even investigated. He was part owner of a Kuwaiti company that ran security at Dulles, and he was involved at a high level with a security company for WTC7 and on the board of the insurance company for WTC1 and 2. If a cop was investigating a murder and didn’t investigate someone with that many ties to a murder, the cop would be thrown out on the street.
That doesn’t mean Marvin was guilty of anything or that 9/11 was an inside job. What it means is there was no investigation into 9/11.
As far as the Kennedy assasination, one of the most interesting bits of footage I have ever seen involved footage of the secret service escorting Kennedy on the day he was killed, and one agent OBVIOUSLY distressed when he was told to not ride with or run close to Kennedy’s car. He gives a giant shrug like “wtf?!” after being told to ‘stand down’. Its eerie, because you never expect body language that obvious from secret service guys.
There’s also common sense things you don’t have to be a genius to realize: if there was enough heat to melt the steel in the WTC’s, how in this same heat were they able to obtain DNA to identify the bodies and Mohammed Atta’s unscathed VISA?
It’s the old “you can’t have your cake and eat it, too” argument.
You don’t have to be a “conspiracy theorist” to say: “Hey! BOTH these things can’t be true, only one or the other can be true”.
Bush stonewalled an investigation into 9/11, remember? Who would stonewall an investigation into the biggest crime in American history? Then, his first pick, when he had his arm twisted for an investigation, was for Henry Kissinger to run it. That independent bastion of truth, Henry Kissinger.
Here’s the vid of the secret service being told to ‘stand down’ before Kennedy’s assasination.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY02Qkuc_f8
The one agent who would have been the one to possibly shield Kennedy is VERY exasperated.
Here’s an intelligent, rational professor asking very general questions about 9/11:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z907S0MutcA
Election Fraud is Endemic
This analysis proves it.
http://www.geocities.com/electi...qMatch7208.htm
Let’s look at voter turnout in the U.S. presidential elections since 1972.
One thing that’s always bothered me about the controlled-demolition theory is, why did the buildings need to fall? I mean, I would think a group of hijackers capturing four planes and killing all those on board, as well as crashing three of them into buildings, would have been enough to allow little Georgie to fulfill whatever war-president fantasies were percolating in his demented brain (apart from, you know, winning a war).
Jon, the buildings had to come down because there were mandatory code improvements to cost billions… way more than the entire complex was worth. So the controlled demolition would have to have been paid for if they didn’t do it this way. Nobody would have paid to bring the WTC up to code when dropping it and starting over would be more cost-effective. This way it was exponentially better than merely cost-effective. Silverstein [the owner] made billions of dollars off it.
BD (#39)
Not that Atta’s I.D. wasn’t a plant, probably was imo – but that is actually one of the (only)lines in the official story that could check out. The testing done by Prof. Steve Jones, as I understand it, explains how the presence of thermite (in combination with other chemicals) could pulvarize steel and concrete, but leave paper completely untouched.
I remember being especially struck by that info, as that was one of the questions we were all asking for months. Couldn’t wrap our brains around the amount of paper blowing all over the boroughs. Scraps of Dean Whittier portfolios carried into my backyard in Brooklyn over 2 miles away.
To Big Dan, 99 et al:
If there is still a question as to where I am coming from, I hope the update I posted will dispel it.
Dan wrote:
“You don’t have to be a ‘conspiracy theorist’ to say: ‘Hey! BOTH these things can’t be true, only one or the other can be true’.”
____________________
Think of the official theory as criminal defendant and yourself as a member of a jury. Do you really think it appropriate to arrive at a hard-and-fast guilty verdict before all the evidence is in?
Ernest,
The one fault, at least for now and maybe you’re not consciously aware of it, that I find in your article is this:
Concerning your description of the 2004 election you “define it” by citing the excellent investigative work by Freeman, Brad and others and the scientific nature of the evidence.
YET in the case of 9/11 you “define it” by emotions and your label of the people who don’t believe the official theory as “truthers”.
I know you don’t believe the official story as you said BUT you seem to be of the mindset that it is people who have deep emotions of the day that explains the reasons for believing that 9/11 was an “inside job”. That type of attitude seems like a dismissal of arguments contrary to the official theory even though I don’t think you’re doing it intentionally.
There are reputable and highly intelligent people who studied 9/11 and arguments for and against the official theory yet you chose to “define” the opposition to the official theory as something non-experts believe. Why is that? And I’m not saying you did it on purpose. On the contrary I think it’s an unconscious action because thinking that it was an “inside job” is to horrible to think.
Highly intelligent and reputable people present very good arguments as to why the official theory is not correct. I don’t know all the answers but those people ask some damn good questions and there is no one that’s defending the “official theory” that’s answering them. I would like to see both sides provide scientific answers whether for or against official theory, aka something like “peer review”.
Here is just one example from
the Journal of 9/11 Studies
section: Letters to the Journal of 911 Studies
at http://www.journalof911studies.com/letters.html
The letter is
“David Chandler Responds to Frank Greening”
http://www.journalof911studies....ToGreening.pdf
The accompanying video is:
“Downward Acceleration of the North Tower”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xG2y50Wyys4
Konstantin: I sincerely appreciate your analysis, which is amongst the most thoughtful I have seen.
If you go back to the language from my original piece, I did say that the evidence suggesting that “controlled demolition” provides a plausible explanation for the sudden collapse of WTC-7 was “scientific.”
It was not my intent to suggest that everyone who subscribes to the “insider” 9/11 theory does so solely on emotion or that there have not been academics with a background in structural engineering and the like — a field and expertise that far exceeds my own — who have offered a good deal of data and conclusions in support of the insider theory.
But there are also academics with equally impressive credentials on the other side of the equation who take an opposing position.
However, even those with the relevant scientific background must guard against an undue influence of the emotional impact of such a traumatic event in seeking to ascertain the truth — irrespective of whether they lean towards the official or unofficial theories.
The word “truther” is not one I invented, but instead is a word of “self-description” use solely by those who are convinced that 9/11 was an “inside job.” Like “conspiracy theorist,” the word “truther” is not an objective term. It implies that those who do not fully agree with the core thesis (inside job), and especially those academics who dispute the inside job thesis, are not concerned with truth.
You state:
On that, I wholeheartedly concur.
As an addendum to my last comment, Konstantin, let me add something I’d hope had been made clear in the epilogue.
It was not my intent, by this piece, to prove any of the three “theories” — Did the CIA kill JFK? Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? Was 9/11 an inside job? These three theories were included for illustrative purposes, only.
As I earlier informed 99,
While it was not my intent to suggest that everyone who subscribes to the “insider” theory leaps to conclusions sans an adequate data base to support it, I do appreciate that imprecision on on my part with respect to the words included within the epilogue contributed to that erroneous perception.
Ernest A. Canning
Ernest,
I understand your point and your intentions about the article. Still I think you as well as others subconsciously dismiss theories contrary to the official 9/11 theory even though you don’t intend to or realize it and it shows by the language you use to define the contrary views. At least that’s the impression I get and it’s not meant as a personal attack at all.
For example, don’t you notice the difference in language you use when you describe the election results or the JFK assassination analysis and the language you use describing “truthers” (I know you didn’t invent the term). In the case of 9/11 you use terms like “emotions” but in the case of the other two subject you use terms like “statistical analysis” and “investigative journalists”. Again I know you didn’t do it intentionally or are aware of it and physics is beyond your area of expertise and you’re not the only writer that does it.
I hope my post pointed out that the real scientific evidence about 9/11 alternatives to the official theory is not based on emotions but on science.
By the way, I think you are not approaching the 9/11 inquiry correctly. Science has to explain the areas of contentions and differences. This is not like a political debate where opponents score points or like a boxing match in which there is a winner and a loser neither like a police investigation where evidence is gathered and then a suspect is charged.
As they say the numbers have to add up and the scientifically valid questions asked have to be answered no matter who asks them whether for or against the official theory.
The point is not to answer whether it was an inside job or not but the point is to have a consistent theory and explanation which is scientifically valid and explanatory and plausible.
Thank you, Mr. Canning, for initiating this very useful discussion regarding the topic of conspiracy theories.
One thing that seems to be significant to note is how effectively the term ‘conspiracy theorist’ has been established as a means to delegitimize anyone who brings forth criticism of official myth regarding such history-altering events. I wonder if it would be instructive to examine the history of this development. In my own experience, having been an early doubter regarding the official version of the Kennedy assassination, it seems that it got its start during that long effort to get a second investigation (which, of course, was another coverup effort). Ever since then, it has become easier each time for our government and media to divert public demand for examination if these events simply by crying Conspiracy Theorist.
Also, by establishing a pattern of emphasizing our need to move on from these traumatic events, we never get to the root of the patterns that might be exposed if any of these events were fully examined, and the truth fully established. So, the next major event simply erases the previous ones from meaningful efforts to do such investigations, and cements our tendency to accept the official version. For example, if 9/11 is never independently investigated, if a follow-up event happens (such as a nuclear event in one of our cities), the official version will be even more likely to gain broad acceptance, and critics will be even easier to marginalize. I dread to think what then might be possible regarding the squelching of all opposition to whatever responses they might choose to impose.
By the way, does anyone know if the effort to place an initiative on the ballot in NY City in November is likely to produce any results towards a new investigation? I see that have gathered over 70,000 signatures calling for it to be put to a vote.
you got to wacth this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29C_KNZ7RNs
Has anybody been watching the 9/11 shows on National Geographic? The shows that try to debunk David Ray Griffin’s view on 9/11 which I believe is closer to the truth than what NatGeo, The History Channel is putting out. Are the people who make this stuff scared of what the real truth behind 9/11 is?