I often post over at Unclaimed Territory, Glenn Greenwald's blog at Salon.com.Oftentimes, the subject of 9/11 Truth comes up. Glenn is not too keen on this as it is disruptive and generally "off topic". And as he says it quickly degenerates into a shouting match between the two opposing camps.
So today I offered to let people who want to discuss this in a more appropriate venue come here to Contumacious to discuss and of course YELL!
It's all good. Let the chips fall where they may.
My position is pretty clear, I don't buy the official story. I have no clear idea how they did it, as I am not privy to all the facts or the evidence, but I am sure that any good theory has to explain the facts, and my reading is that the official story fails to do this in many many ways.
So if anyone from Salon, or anywhere else for that matter, has something to say. Please feel free to say it here.
UPDATE
Some interesting links:
Operation Northwoods, the first draft for the 911 attack? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
Pilots for 911 Truth: http://pilotsfor911truth.org/
Prof. David Ray Griffin video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8797525979024486145&hl=en
Architects for 911 Truth: http://www.ae911truth.org/
UPDATE 2
OPERATION
Operation Northwoods, which had the written approval of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war." - James Bamford, Body of Secrets
A big objection to 911 being an "inside job" is the sheer size of the operation, and the ability of the conspirators to maintain secrecy after the fact. The truth is we don't know how many people had to be in on it, because we don't know exactly what happened. It is true that in the past we have things like the Manhattan Project that even Harry Truman knew nothing about until he became President.
Operation Northwoods is not a conspiracy theory, it happened but was rejected by President Kennedy. What this teaches us is that there were elements within the military, indeed the leadership of the military Admiral Leimnitzer was prepared to
1) Start rumors (many). Use clandestine radio.
(2) Land friendly Cubans in uniform "over-the-fence" to stage attack on base.
(3) Capture Cuban (friendly) saboteurs inside the base.
(4) Start riots near the base main gate (friendly Cubans).
(5) Blow up ammunition inside the base; start fires.
(6) Burn aircraft on air base (sabotage).
(7) Lob mortar shells from outside of base into base. Some damage to installations.
(8) Capture assault teams approaching from the sea or vicinity of Guantanamo City.
(9) Capture militia group which storms the base.
(10) Sabotage ship in harbor; large fires -- napthalene.
(11) Sink ship near harbor entrance. Conduct funerals for mock-victims (may be in lieu of (10)).
And this is just a partial list! If you want to read the whole story go here.
Did they think they could keep this a secret? Yes. Did they keep it a secret for almost 50 years? You bet.
The parallels between what happened and what was planned in America, by Americans, in 1962 are massive.javascript:void(0)
Update 2
Excellent video that documents the use of Thermate at the WTC.
H/T Frank!
562 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 400 of 562 Newer› Newest»This is very interesting. Steve Paikin just did a debate with Gage, Barry Zwicker, and Paul Zarembka on TVO (Canadian TV). I haven't even watched it myself yet, but that's a pretty good team. Zwicker is very good, don't miss his work on 911, it's first class.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSy8b-IiNL8
Paikin, the host, is a swine.
http://j.mp/kbbLjw
In a way I am more interested in the psychology of keeping secrets than in what they are. My neighbor lady friend, who is having trouble with her husband, dropped by earlier. I mentioned the fray at Greenwald Commons. Her response was from AA: you are as sick as your secrets. Some persons, and I believe Glenn is one of them, have an innate desire to keep certain things hidden. There is a certain power in secrets. Secret societies know this. There is the old expression "under the rose" and roses were painted on ceilings. This was to remind the diners to keep things under their hats. And then there is the expression sub rosa. Same thing. In Latin. The need to confide and keeping it in confidence or confidential. Obama is distressed with Manning and Assange for spilling the beans. Top secret material and Daniel Ellsberg. I would venture to say that currently in America nothing is more pertinent than secrets and a discussion of secrets. Glenn has Mars in Scorpio. Scorpio keeps secrets. Tell someone with Mars in Scorpio that you have a secret, and they will go berserk. Tell then they are secretive and they put on the most innocent look and say never in a million years. I suppose I had better test this soon. JFK's assassination is officially still that of the lone gunman. Poor Oswald--he was downstairs when it happened. But with 9/11 there is also too much paper now. Too many nerve cells aflame with the Lie. So I have rechanneled to the investigation of the SECRET. Whoever hold the biggest secret has the most power. Until his death it was GOD!
Oh, and thanks Frank for tipping me off to the TVO show. I am about half way through. It's not bad. At least they are being allowed to present their best case.
Now this I love: ‘A blog dedicated to the contrary view’.
Do you know that my whole life is dedicated to the ‘contrary view’? -
So what I always wanted to ask you -(and all these other dudes who believe so strongly in their stuff) –
How do you do it?
I mean - I was raised a Christian and even I don’t believe that strongly in ‘god’!
And I actually never had any ‘preferences’ about this 911 thing - and I probably would be thrilled if it would come out –(not in the National Enquierer) – but let’s say in… ‘National Geographic’, that Bush or Cheney had planned the whole damn thing.
But unless it hasn’t come out and I’m no expert in collapsing ‘Bauwerke’ I have to come back to my question: What makes grown men –(or women) believe in such ‘crazy’ stuff? (and I used the word ‘crazy’ just in the usual ‘common’ sense and I’m aware that somebodies ‘crazy’ can be another persons ‘normal’)
Because as you mentioned yourself so called ‘reasonable’ people don’t react very ‘positive’ to such ‘crazy’ talk and I also once pretended to be a ‘truther’
(just for the fun of it and because I’m dedicated to the ‘contrary view’) - and it nearly cost me a very good friend too. Her father works for Swiss Re - the company who had to ‘regulate’ the disaster and - perhaps you remember - that I once stated on UT that the ‘official version’ HAD to be true - or the Swiss never would have paid the Insurance money. And I never got a ‘coherent comment’ from a ‘real’ truther about that fact.
I mean - you can question the law of physics and all these other theories about 911 for ever - but you just can’t question Swiss Insurance Regulations.
There isn’t a case where they payed out Billions before they weren’t 100 percent sure they had to -(and especially to some Jewish American builder)
So what I ment to say was: Why don’t you look to the motto of your blog for a change: If everything you think you knew is wrong – you can’t be a ‘truther’ anymore!
Now this I love: ‘A blog dedicated to the contrary view’.
Do you know that my whole life is dedicated to the ‘contrary view’? -
So what I always wanted to ask you -(and all these other dudes who believe so strongly in their stuff) –
How do you do it?
I mean - I was raised a Christian and even I don’t believe that strongly in ‘god’!
And I actually never had any ‘preferences’ about this 911 thing - and I probably would be thrilled if it would come out –(not in the National Enquierer) – but let’s say in… ‘National Geographic’, that Bush or Cheney had planned the whole damn thing.
But unless it hasn’t come out and I’m no expert in collapsing ‘Bauwerke’ I have to come back to my question: What makes grown men –(or women) believe in such ‘crazy’ stuff? (and I used the word ‘crazy’ just in the usual ‘common’ sense and I’m aware that somebodies ‘crazy’ can be another persons ‘normal’)
Because as you mentioned yourself so called ‘reasonable’ people don’t react very ‘positive’ to such ‘crazy’ talk and I also once pretended to be a ‘truther’
(just for the fun of it and because I’m dedicated to the ‘contrary view’) - and it nearly cost me a very good friend too. Her father works for Swiss Re - the company who had to ‘regulate’ the disaster and - perhaps you remember - that I once stated on UT that the ‘official version’ HAD to be true - or the Swiss never would have paid the Insurance money. And I never got a ‘coherent comment’ from a ‘real’ truther about that fact.
I mean - you can question the law of physics and all these other theories about 911 for ever - but you just can’t question Swiss Insurance Regulations.
There isn’t a case where they payed out Billions before they weren’t 100 percent sure they had to -(and especially to some Jewish American builder)
So what I ment to say was: Why don’t you look to the motto of your blog for a change: If everything you think you knew is wrong – you can’t be a ‘truther’ anymore!
Suggestion.
Greenwald to his discredit is deleting posts that are well reasoned and intellectually sound.
Unfortunately this Sunstienian ploy breaks up any cross party dialogue as of of course it is intended to do.
I suggest that as soon as you press publish you then copy the whole of your post and time date and tread title as it appears in the comments section.
Then save it to a folder on your comp. Later you can republish it here.
This will have two benefits first we who are interested can read them and just as importantly we can then judge better the calibre of this man Greenwald by what it is that he is deleting.
Pre-venting: Boy, is Blogger screwed up!
It just ate a comment, probably because it was too long. Of course, it's like a deranged waiter who just yanks the tablecloth out from under you or kicks you out into the street without warning or explanation.
And it either sends e-mail notifications for comments that don't appear on the actual blog thread, or belatedly sends notifications for comments posted hours, even days, earlier!
Ai-yi-yi!
I don't have anything profound to say.
FWIW, I've at least temporarily abandoned Glenn and his comments threads. Even before the Bin Laden Caper, I was becoming tired of certain "Alpha" posters, e.g. Omooex, dominating the landscape and blotting out the horizon.
After the Caper, the influx of new trolls and especially what Alexander Cockburn calls the "hairy-chested" liberals taking Glenn to task for being insufficiently enthusiastic about the Caper finished me off.
I'm going to finish on still another "new" comment. Sorry about this, but I can't be bothered trying to guess just how much I can cram into one comment.
I gather from the "surge" of new comments here that Glenn's threads are in turmoil because of the resurgence of the "9/11 Truth" bugaboo.
I feel vindicated for abandoning ship there, though, because I don't think I could stand to pick through the insufferably supercilious and snarky Trutherphobes.
If it's true that Glenn is more aggressively deleting comments in order to maintain his de facto taboo, it's a shame.
We dastardly "Truthers" have tried to warn him that regardless of how unpleasant a tar baby it is, the Mystery of 9/11 simply can't be embalmed and entombed in a refrigerated Chomsky Bubble forever.
There's simply no way to address subsequent events like the Bin Laden Caper without hearkening back to that can of worms.
@Little Brother
Sorry, very sorry, to see you leave UT.
It does seem that GG is being more aggressive with the Truthers, so yes, that is the proximate cause of the little flurry of posts.
I really don't get that.
When I have a problem with an alpha, I tend to smack back just as hard as I got. Of course this assumes that you think it's worth the fight.
You're right about blogspot, it's not so great. I use WordPress to develop websites now, it's much better.
I try to get along with Omoo, I really do, I try to get along with most people, if they are at all reasonable and polite to me. Must be Canadian. I've seen the attacks though, and it ain't pretty. You, of all people certainly don't do anything to deserve being attacked.
At least we've got piece of cake!!
Without much research it becomes apparent that to bring down three gargantuan bldgs in such a fashion as to do minimal damage to nearby bldgs was a remarkable bit of engineering. I am sure demolition experts only reach that high plateau of expertise after years of practice. Then consider the equipment involved, and the materials. Computers of high quality. Software specific to the work. Very high explosives in huge amounts. And of course persons with the skills to place the charges without bungling. This was an engineering miracle. And someone had to do the organizing and arranging of entries into the buildings, acquisitions, etc. Finally the various defense systems needed to be disconnected. Whew. How much money would you need? How many high level connections? And then you will need to prevent any scrupulous investigations. I mean this was like putting men on the moon at least.
Hi LL here
pieceofcake decided to re post what she wrote a year back. In it she wrote:
"I mean - you can question the law of physics and all these other theories about 911 for ever"
No you can't. You never question basic physics laws you simply adhere to them. full stop.
"- but you just can’t question Swiss Insurance Regulations."
Only the seriously stupid could think Swiss Insurance Regulations are inviolate whereas the Laws of Gravity and The Law of the Conservation of Energy can be questioned.
@LL
That was hilarious. Perfect logic and perfectly funny.
POC, you'll have to do better than that. Of course the insurance companies paid, they would not want to be labelled crazy truthers.
Why don't we stick to facts?
@POC
About my motto. It's my motto, so I get to decide what it means. It refers to the "prevailing wisdom", like when everybody 'knew'the earth was flat.
And did you actually pretend to be a truther and almost lost your friend over it? Really?
And why do I believe? I followed the evidence. I did the analysis. I compared what I was told with what I know and found the story lacking -- in so very very many ways. I looked at history, this was NOT unprecedented. Many many other reasons. Just read my other posts.
MY TAKE ON GLENN --Nan Yar
It is obvious that Glenn is a very intelligent, well educated and accomplished man. He had a successful career as an attorney in a more humane aspect of the law. Whether that gave him a significant financial boost I do not know. Whether he makes much writing for Salon is also unknown to me. Finally his articles are those of a humanitarian.
Now to the recent rather upsetting event. I have for quite some time noticed a great reluctance on the part of known liberals to shy away from the 9/11 topic, especially anything to do with conspiracy. They clearly do not want to acquire the label "conspiracy theorist." To some extent journalists are actors and want to guard their reputations. So while is was very obvious that Glenn wished to give the appearance of being your regular guy when it came to 9/11 the degree of his reaction was a complete surprise to me. If he had written a comment in the same tone of voice as yours, Bill, then all would have been well. Okay, 1500 comments is probably a bit much. But,no, I would say Glenn lashed out. I had no idea there were taboo topics. Whether Berthe did, I do not know. I guess he threatened to kick her out even. So Glenn has a vulnerability. Invoking Noam Chomsky was a second mistake as it made them both look bad: Noam having seen no evidence. Evidently he has not looked which is very hard to believe. So it made them both look like liars. But only to us who do not count for much. Remember that. We are largely anonymous comments makers. This may be a weakness in Glenn's character. After all over a million persons (according to several surveys) have been killed because of the belief Al Qaeda did this. At least that was the needed excuse. This is not a little thing. There are many things that Glenn could believe or not believe that would not matter. But this is of major importance. This lie, and surely it is, has restructured America. What little good Noam and Glenn do by reinforcing and educating people may end up being annulled by their refusal to speak out on 9/11. I suppose both men really could be duped. They are not scientists that is for sure. Neither has written a long and detailed critique of the position presented by the Truthers. While I am sympathetic to both even if they are consciously lying, I do not commend their behavior. I can not. This definitely lowered my opinion of Glenn. Either he is lying which in this instance is not good, or he refuses to give the other side a real chance, and that is also a form of intellectual dishonesty. There is no way out of this for Glenn. He has lowered his esteem in my mind and probably the minds of a few others. Some people place the truth very high on their list. I do. I would rather be poor and live a humble life than compromise and lie. That is just how I was reared and educated. That is just me. I have compassion for liars but I will not give them a pass on certain things. In short, my intuition tells me that Glenn is lying and thinks he has a valid reason. I do not.
P.S. Perhaps I have slipped into a bit of self righteousness over this matter. I am so tired of people going on about conspiracy every time someone contradicts the government . . . What a great defense system.
@nanyar
Full disclosure here. I consider Glenn a friend and have corresponded with him privately, although not a lot. I have immense respect for him.
As for his position on 911, I do find it puzzling. But I refer to my "real" life. I have several friends that I consider good friends who are smart, educated, et al. Yet, despite nearly a decade of me sending them emails, pointing to articles, videos, etc. they just don't buy it. In fact one just got actually enraged at me when I was talking to him about 911 and how it wrong to kill bin Laden, especially as he probably had nothing to do with 911. Now I know these guys are not agents, not actors, and they are rational and intelligent. They just don't buy it. I think that there are many reasons for this, most of them psychological.
You are absolutely correct about the importance of this issue, it's going to been see as a huge historical tipping point, the day the world changed. "Who did it" is such an important question, that I would argue it was criminal to kill bin Laden on that basis alone. It would have been like executing Oswald before he got a chance to testify. Oh, wait, they did.
I look at the facts available and am mystified as to how an intelligent person with minimal analytical skills, would not laugh at the official version, which itself is a conspiracy theory, only a patently false one.
Whatever good Glenn does would be undone were he to "come out" as a Truther. There has been a massive, concentrated, pervasive, global, effort to discredit Truthers. And it worked. Say, "I don't think bin Laden did 911" at a party or a bar some night. Then run. No, if Glenn were to do that, it would not really help, there would be no headline in the NYT, it would not be like when Uncle Walty came out against the attack on Vietnam. It would NOT make a difference. What it would do though, is it would hand Glenn's many enemies a huge hammer to pummel him with. You know that every mention of him would begin with, "well known 911 Conspiracy Theorist, Glenn Greenwald..."
Is this a pragmatic/tactical decision on his part? What's with Chomsky? I don't know. I do know that I have never had cause to question the veracity of his statements. And as I said, there are intelligent people, of good faith, who simply don't believe in 911 Truth -- for whatever reason. Sans any evidence to the contrary, I will choose, and it is a choice, to take Glenn at his word.
I see your point, Bill , & I have given it some consideration--but I think in the long run Glenn is on a dangerous course. We need men of integrity. Sure Glenn might lose some fans and have to endure some ridicule, but he would gain in stature what he lost in popularity. Do we think less of Ray McGovern because he introduces "Loose Change"? I sure don't. Just the reverse. It endears him to me all the more. And in the meantime Glenn has to live with a lie--or as you suggest he just can not grasp the material of ae911truth and has no one to explicate it for him. Surely a man able to comprehend American law enough to defend civil rights cases can handle this material. And there is Dr David Ray Griffin--not so abstruse. So, while I understand your sympathy, don't let it stop you from being a best friend to Glenn. You know, only your best friends will tell you about your breath or whatever. P.S. I can't find my comment to which you are responding it seems. And remember, the Devil can quote scriptures!
Hi AI
I think normbreyfogle, Piece of Cake (coolio) Little Brother, cocktailhag, a few others, some people I don't know, they just showed up. Loretta was very good, wish she'd come back.
As for your deleted comments, I have no idea, I would think that if they deleted them, they are gone, gone, gone. They might have some backups, but that's not going to happen. I know that if I delete a comment here, I cannot retrieve it. What the hell did you say?
I had this vision come to me a while ago. Thought you might like it.
--It's late evening or really night in one of Washington D.C.'s finest neighborhoods. The house is luxurious. Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com is standing alone in a large room where it is evident a party has taken place. Due to some unexpected business Glenn has arrived late, and the host and hostess have had to go upstairs as their daughter has had a bad nightmare. He is on the verge of leaving when a man walks into the room. It takes a while for Glenn to recognize him. It's Ray McGovern who has walked immediately to a table with some food and drink left on it. A plate of sliced cheese, some fruit, mostly green grapes, some little sandwiches. Ray eats some and sticks a handful of grapes in one pocket and some of the sandwiches in another. As he turns to the room Glenn says hello.
--Hi, Ray.
--Oh, its you Glenn. How's it going.
Glenn is disconcerted. It has been a while since he has seen Ray; a while before he was arrested at the Hilary talk. But Ray looks quite disheveled. His shoes are kind of muddy and his clothes are wrinkled.
--Just fine, Ray. How about you?
--These little sandwiches are great. Oh, really rather good.
--So . . . er . . .is it true that you are a Truther, Ray.
--Sure, Glenn, all the good guys are Truthers now. What about you? Have you written any good articles on it? I have to use the library computer now and sometimes the line is really long. So not too often.
--Er . . . well, I haven't seen any evidence and neither has Noam.
--Oh, Chomsky's a real card. Don't believe a word he says. Linguist you know. Plays with words. Intolerable stuff. I better see if the guys at Loose Change will sent you a complimentary dvd. Give me your address.
Glenn is feeling awkward and yet paralyzed. He hands Ray a business card with his mailing address.
--Lost my pension. Say I forgot to fill out a form 20 years ago and then some typos or something. Could take years to fix.
--Er . . . a . . .
--All the good guys meet down by the Potomac at dusk. We build a fire and stay warm. Police have gotten used to us. Some pretty prominent bums now. Where have you been?
For some reason, Glenn says
--Brazil.
--Nice and warm there. Do you sleep on the beach?
--No. That would be dangerous.
Looks at watch. Looks at Ray.
--I've got to go Ray. An appointment. Good luck, Ray.
Ray smiles broadly. Like a man who has wondered beyond luck. As Glenn leaves Ray approaches the food again. Then leaves following Glenn. Shakes his head and laughs.
Outside the sky is full of stars even in this highly illuminated city. Just like when Washington and Jefferson and Madison were here. As he walks toward the Patomac Ray continues laughing at the funny world.
April 2001 - NORAD planned to practice a scenario in which a terrorist group hijacks a plane and crashes it into the Pentagon, but it was rejected by the Joint Chiefs of Staff as being too unrealistic.
"Five months before Sept. 11, 2001, the officers responsible for defending American airspace wanted to test their ability to prevent a hijacked airliner from being crashed into the Pentagon, but the scenario was rejected by the Joint Chiefs of Staff as impractical, a Joint Chiefs spokesman confirmed yesterday.
The disclosure was made after a government watchdog group released a leaked e-mail from a former official at the North American Air Defense Command. In the message, the official told colleagues a week after the attacks that in April 2001 NORAD requested that war games run by the Joint Chiefs include an ''event having a terrorist group hijack a commercial airline . . . and fly it into the Pentagon."
Last night, Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Commander Dan Hetlage confirmed the account, saying: ''That scenario was rejected because it would have become a whole exercise in and of itself. It wasn't looked on at the time as being practicable."
The NORAD proposal is the clearest sign yet that national security officials were worried before 9/11 about terrorists using hijacked airliners as missiles, despite testimony that senior leaders, including National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, didn't know of such concerns.
Peter Stockton, chief investigator for the Project on Government Oversight, said yesterday he was told by the source who provided the memo that a special forces officer attached to the NORAD command at the time had first proposed the Pentagon scenario be practiced.
Concerns that terrorists might use hijacked airliners as missiles dates back to the 1996 Olympic games in Atlanta, when jets were placed on patrol to guard against such a threat." - Boston Globe (04/14/04)
http://j.mp/l3jkqH
Bill,
Who are some of the Salonistas who've posted here besides cocktailhag and harpie?
Another question: the 9/11-related comments I posted that Greenwald deleted seem to also be missing from my archive at Salon.
Do you know whether or no those can be retrieved? I emailed Salon's IT people this morning, but haven't heard anything.
I'd also like to provide a link here to "The Top 40 Reasons to Doubt the Official Story of 9/11" for the benefit of your blog's other readers. It's a very good introductory compendium of problems with the official 19-Arabs conspiracy theory:
http://www.911truth.org/article_for_printing.php?story=20041221155307646
Bill Owen wrote:
Hi AI
I think normbreyfogle, Piece of Cake (coolio) Little Brother, cocktailhag, a few others, some people I don't know, they just showed up. Loretta was very good, wish she'd come back.
As for your deleted comments, I have no idea, I would think that if they deleted them, they are gone, gone, gone. They might have some backups, but that's not going to happen. I know that if I delete a comment here, I cannot retrieve it. What the hell did you say?
15 May, 2011 7:53:00 PM EDT
---
Hey, Bill
I posted my last comment on the Barsamian thread at first, not seeing the 9/11 one until now.
I thought that you or someone else here might know if the archived copies of comments at Salon might be retrievable. I should have, in retrospect made copies of my posts, but frankly it didn't occur to me that Greenwald would delete reasoned commentary with no argumentum ad hominem, let alone name calling or vulgarity.
To answer your question, he deleted several of my posts, including the ones in which I quoted him from his blog on Cass Sunstein's paper on "cognitive infiltration" in which, among other measures Sunstein said the government could take to disrupt the spread of "conspiracy theories", was to ban their discussion in public. GG had demolished Sunstein's proposal, of course, concluding in it that anyone who could calmly advocate the abolition of the 1st Amendment was unfit for any government office. I concluded one post by observing that Sunstein needn't worry about UT, as Greenwald had pre-emptively banned 9/11 theory from his blog's comment section.
For someone who has made a second career of belaboring the obvious hypocrisy of the US government and the corporate media, I thought his actually executing Sunstein's proposal where he had the power to do so (on his own blog, in which he had vehemently castigated Sunstein)called for at least an explanation.
Let's be clear that we're not talking about his coming out as a 9/11 truth-seeker, himself, or even declaring himself a 9/11 agnostic, but of his banning any discussion of problems in the official 9/11 conspiracy theory on his blog by others.
I also noted in one of them that the only reason I could think of for GG's adoption of Chomsky's incredibly dilettantish, airily dismissive posture toward the massive scientific and forensic evidence that has been arrayed against the Bush Administration's attempted con job, the 9/11 Commission Report, was a residual American exceptionalism that was keeping Greenwald from seriously examining the evidence.
I suggested that he might begin by reading Griffin's 2011 book, Cognitive Infiltration, in which Griffinn cited Greenwald's web essay on Sunstein eight times.
So, Greenwald has pretty much screwed the pooch as far as I'm concerned, with his, shall we charitably say, intellectual timidity vis a vis the Zelikow Report, which might as well have been the Kissinger Report, as Bush and Cheney originally had in mind.
He has not, shall we say, awed me with his intellectual integrity.
Change that last sentence in my last post to say, "He has not, shall we say, awed me with either his intellectual prowess or integrity."
Bill Owen wrote:
Hi AI
I think normbreyfogle, Piece of Cake (coolio) Little Brother, cocktailhag, a few others, some people I don't know, they just showed up. Loretta was very good, wish she'd come back.
As for your deleted comments, I have no idea, I would think that if they deleted them, they are gone, gone, gone. They might have some backups, but that's not going to happen. I know that if I delete a comment here, I cannot retrieve it. What the hell did you say?
15 May, 2011 7:53:00 PM EDT
---
Hey, Bill
I thought that you or someone else here might know if the archived copies of comments at Salon might be retrievable. I should have, in retrospect made copies of my posts, but frankly it didn't occur to me that Greenwald would delete reasoned commentary with no argumentum ad hominem, let alone name calling or vulgarity.
To answer your question, he deleted several of my posts, including the ones in which I quoted him from his blog on Cass Sunstein's paper on "cognitive infiltration" in which, among other measures Sunstein said the government could take to disrupt the spread of "conspiracy theories", was to ban their discussion in public. GG had demolished Sunstein's proposal, of course, concluding in it that anyone who could calmly advocate the abolition of the 1st Amendment was unfit for any government office. I concluded one post by observing that Sunstein needn't worry about UT, as Greenwald had pre-emptively banned 9/11 theory from his blog's comment section.
For someone who has made a second career of belaboring the obvious hypocrisy of the US government and the corporate media, I thought his actually executing Sunstein's proposal where he had the power to do so (on his own blog, in which he had vehemently castigated Sunstein)called for at least an explanation.
Let's be clear that we're not talking about his coming out as a 9/11 truth-seeker, himself, or even declaring himself a 9/11 agnostic, but of his banning any discussionby others in his blog's comment section, of problems in the official 9/11 conspiracy theory.
I also noted in one of them that the only reason I could think of for GG's adoption of Chomsky's incredibly dilettantish, airily dismissive posture toward the massive scientific and forensic evidence that has been arrayed against the Bush Administration's attempted con job, the 9/11 Commission Report, was a residual American exceptionalism that was keeping Greenwald from seriously examining the evidence.
I suggested that he might begin by reading Griffin's 2011 book, Cognitive Infiltration, in which Griffinn cited Greenwald's web essay on Sunstein eight times.
So, Greenwald has pretty much screwed the pooch as far as I'm concerned, with his, shall we charitably say, intellectual timidity vis a vis the Zelikow Report, which might as well have been the Kissinger Report, as Bush and Cheney originally had in mind.
"He has not, shall we say, awed me with either his intellectual prowess or integrity."
@AI
Are we sure that they are banned? I recall him saying that the standard was "disruptive"? And he appears not to be COMPLETELY closed to the idea.
What you say is true only if Glenn has real problems with the official version and yet chooses/pretends to believe the official fairy tale. Like I said to Nanyar, I believe that good people, smart people, can simply not believe, maybe for bad reasons, but there it is. How many of your friends and family agree with you? I have a friend who I did manage to turn around, but now his wife is very upset with him over his beliefs.
I have to admit to confusion at this point.
"Monday, May 9, 2011 05:55 PM ET
jmerrill
Glenn: Why don't you use the word 'alleged' when referring to UBL as the 9/11 attack leader?
The same reason I don't use the word "alleged" when I describe the lawbreaking of Bush, Cheney, the telecoms, etc: because the evidence has convinced me that they're guilty.
In all cases, they're entitled to a presumption of innocence from the state: not to be punished without being convicted. But that doesn't preclude my forming an opinion.
I'm not closed to other possibilities - I'd like to see the evidence presented in a real, adversarial tribunal - and I'm glad people are asking questions still. But I'm convinced by what I've seen (I'm not going into an exegesis on this).
As for Chomsky: he's saying the same thing he's always said. He's not saying he thinks OBL is innocent. He's saying that the US hasn't presented sufficient proof to justify killing him without any due process.
He's still every bit as disdainful of 9/11 truth theories as ever before. I know that because he brought it up when I talked to him at the FAIR event a couple weeks ago and said how he finds such theories to be wholly without evidence and utterly implausible. I'm not necessarily adopting that - just conveying that he thinks that - and it's totally consistent with what he's said many times over the years.
—GlennGreenwald
Read GlennGreenwald's other letters
Hi LL
testing, testing 123
[Note: I didn't get this posted for some reason having to do with my being new to the software here.]
Glenn Greenwald deleted several of my 9/11 posts at Salon, including the ones in which I quoted him from his blog on Cass Sunstein's paper on "cognitive infiltration" in which, among other measures Sunstein said the government could take to disrupt the spread of "conspiracy theories", was to ban their discussion in public. GG had demolished Sunstein's proposal, of course, concluding in it that anyone who could calmly advocate the abolition of the 1st Amendment was unfit for any government office.
I concluded one post by observing that Sunstein needn't worry about UT, as Greenwald had pre-emptively banned 9/11 theory from his blog's comment section.
For someone who has made a second career of belaboring the obvious hypocrisy of the US government and the corporate media, I thought his actually executing Sunstein's proposal where he had the power to do so (on his own blog, in which he had vehemently castigated Sunstein)called for at least an explanation.
Let's be clear that we're not talking about his coming out as a 9/11 truth-seeker, himself, or even declaring himself a 9/11 agnostic, but of his banning any discussionby otherson his blog of problems in the official 9/11 conspiracy theory
I also noted in one of them that the only reason I could think of for GG's adoption of Chomsky's incredibly dilettantish, airily dismissive posture toward the massive scientific and forensic evidence that has been arrayed against the Bush Administration's attempted con job, the 9/11 Commission Report, was a residual American exceptionalism that was keeping Greenwald from seriously examining the evidence.
I suggested that he might begin by reading Griffin's 2011 book, Cognitive Infiltration, in which Griffinn cited Greenwald's web essay on Sunstein eight times.
So, Greenwald has pretty much screwed the pooch as far as I'm concerned, with his, shall we charitably say, intellectual timidity vis a vis the Zelikow Report, which might as well have been the Kissinger Report, as Bush and Cheney originally had in mind.
He has not, in other words, awed me with either his intellectual prowess in examining evidence nor with his intellectual integrity.
Having a chance to reread Glenn's post was very useful. But to tell the truth I am a little shocked. On the very morning of 9/11 a friend called and I walked up the street and watched on his TV. I remember saying at the time, well, if they go down that easily they should not build skyscrapers. A few days later I listened to the main designer of the building who said it was designed to take multiple hits. And a few other joined in at that time. One structural engineer said it was like sticking a pencil through a window screen--referring to how the building was structured. At that time the professionals were not buying the official and very quickly put together tale. So the official account never got any traction with me. As time passed it became all too obvious that this was a cover up. The shorts on the airlines, the miraculously undamaged passport just turning up on the streets, the reports of serious bombs going off in the subbasements from a janitor . . . way too many anomalies . . . the whole story just became unbelievable. But I have not been a dedicated truther. I just have a mind that will not tolerate nonsense and fabulous explanations. Ockham's razor: choose the account which involves the fewest assumptions. The official account is bogged down in assumptions. Like you I have over the years tried a bit to convince others of what I believe happened; I have not been terribly successful. However, almost without exception, the person presents an emotional counter and not a real argument. Only a neighbor of mine has an alternative theory. Because Glenn is who he is, I do find it distressing. If one of his initial articles had been on the "no evidence" position I would never have bothered to read anymore. Repressions or concealing the truth--which is worse? I believe in either case it is a personal security issue. There is definitely a tone of anger in Glenn's e-mail. He definitely feel threatened. His appeal to Chomsky was a weak move which further undermined his position. No, he is wrong, and I think it knows it. But now it is too late to undo.
The American Judiciary is nothing to brag about--but let us be fair and admit that it could be worse. Now let us draw some parallels. There are any number of men now in prison who are innocent. DNA has certainly driven home that point. A good example of someone who has not been helped by DNA though is the native America activist Leonard Peltier. Despite overwhelming evidence of his innocence no President has seen fit to pardon him either. Imagine for a moment that you have a friend that you know to be innocent who is in prison. How will you feel when friends and relatives try to shut you up by saying that the legal system has simply done its job. That you are inventing things. I.e. you are behaving like a crazy person. Or what if you were that person? Now let us turn to 9/11. Is it really very different? You see in both instances it is very scary. In the former you friends do not at all like the idea of innocent people being in prison. It could be them. In the latter case it is very scary to contemplate one's own government being the terrorist behind the destruction. Fear is the answer here. The more one is dominated by fear the more elusive is the truth. While I hate to say that people who attack Truthers or Birthers are cowards, it does certainly seem that way.
Bill Owen: I have just had my privilege of posting revoked by Glenn. Not a single posting today ought to have been a problem. They were all very non-controversial. What I now suspect is that he read what I posted here and decided to get rid of me. I have also noticed that two of my posts here failed to show. I hope I am wrong and that this was not simply a way to eliminate me. In other words, you invite me here, and then Glenn is informed, reads my posts and dumps me. If so that would confirm my suspicions about him that he is not who he presents himself as. He can certainly request my e-mail and attack me if he so pleases, and I will respond. Obviously this is not okay. Since you correspond with him perhaps you could sort this out. Surely he is enough of a person to take this up in a more straight forward way. Sorry to implicate you but it is very strange to have my privileges revoked out of the blue. I will give you my e-mail if you request it so that you can pass it along.
@nanyar
Sorry to hear that. Very strange. You were posting about 911, but I thought you had stopped when Glenn made it clear that it was not wanted.
I'm not sure how I can help with this. The only email I have for Glenn is his public one. He has responded to many posters via email, I noticed in the thread that LL had some kind of conversation with him when he got banned.
I'd suggest emailing him yourself at this point. I am sure he will read it, be sure to flag the subject with your screen name in the subject so he'll spot it. I am sure he get a lot of mail. It might take several attempts.
I think I read all your posts in the last couple of days, I didn't see anything "bad".
It's possible that Glenn did read these posts. It is a public blog.
ggreenwald@salon.com
Nice on Nanyar. I enjoyed reading that. Ray McGovern is by far the better man than Glenn Greenwald is.
I'm even beginning to feel sorry for John Gross from NIST. He isso obviously lying and not liking it one little bit. I think the poor fellow has found himself stuck on a pin not of his own making. He probably wanted to do his honest best but was pressured and threatened into going down the dark path as the NIST investigation continued.
I'm beginning to ave more sympathy for him than I do for Greenwald. Greenwald keeps insulting and misrepresenting us as conspiract theorist and dismisses us too damned archly for my liking.
Anyway, he is on a hiding to nothing. Truthers are growing in number. Soon could come a time when you will seem well suspect or plain batty to believe the Official Story.
London Lad Calling
(Great album by the Clash wasn't it?)
No Bill, Greenwald never ever replied to any e mail I've sent him. The questions posed in them were to clear precise simple and hard. There was only a right or a wrong answer to them.
Not having the balls to give the right one but not wanting to look mad by giving the wrong one he simply ignored it as that lot always do.
Greenwald, I asked, Can a towers top fall though 4/5ths more of itself and reach the same free fall time as would a tower top that literally fell freely through empty air?
And no answer did there come.
@London
Sorry bout that, I inferred that. I was wrong. Thanks for correcting the record.
Say Bill, Nanyar and all others.
Immediately after posting that last comment of mine here The ChiHuaHua got banned.
From now on I'd bear that in mind. Greenwald is an active not passive gatekeeper and if one does sit down with him, sup with a long spoon.
Essentially he is just a careerist Diva in the Dissent industry.
Thanks again, Bill. Found the e-mail and wrote him. I suppose I can resend it now and then for a while. That zone was taking up a lot of time so I have mixed feeling about getting reinstated if that were possible. It is always hard to know whether bad luck is good luck or good luck is bad luck!:) A lot of the posts seem like wasting time. I should check out Ray McGovern's site more. In any case, people really get worked up it seems and over trivia. My concern is that while people are watching Rome burn, America will disappear down the drain. After all we have made so many enemies around the world since WWII that as karma goes we might end up a big pile of rubble and have to acknowledge the justice in that. Thanks.
So. Quite a group gathering: "The Niggers of Glenncommun" (nigger was a disparaging word used of all colored persons and others of worthlessnes, the outcasts)--but now Honorable Outcasts of Contumaciousness!:) Let's see: Paris, probably Berthe, next will be Morning's Minion probably, several Anonymous maybe, myself now. Is Glenn on a rampage? In the Soviet Union people disappeared all the time. Goes with autocratic situations. But for a civil rights attorney? Still I can see a point--but he needs to make it real clear and give persons a warning that is kind and seeks cooperation. He never directed one at me. Just deleted posts that were not about 9/11. Maybe it's the South American influences and the "disappeared' approach to dissidents--Communists in Argentina. I was going to suggest background music for the comments area--songs by Victor Jara for example. Should be possible. Am I correct. Have you looked into that, Bill. Emma Thompson was going to make a film about this great Chilean. Better to be an outcast than the IMF chief it looks like. He may claim it was temporary drug induced insanity. That would work if he was on anything potent--prescription.
@nanyar
If it's music you want, it's music you'll get. Gil Scott Heron, H/T London Lad.
http://eyestir.blogspot.com/2010/02/gil-scott-heron-extraordinary-new.html
Just open in a new tab.
Now I know how the Libyans in Benghazi feel ( a little bit that is) who are starting a newspaper. Never before in their lives have they had freedom of expression. So to 9/11. Here is what I have worked out over the past ten years. I believe at the very most about 100 persons know all the details --maybe 50 is closer to the truth. And they will never tell. A couple hundred more have some connection but will also never tell if they value the lives of their families or themselves. It is not a secret that is going to be revealed--and only the 100 or less could give ultimate confirmation. The principals are American: Bush, Cheney, some military, CIA, FBI and so on. A few in the Mossad. Some Saudis and others of that world. The persuasive argument goes like this: by sacrificing a few we will save the many. Unless we take out Saddam Hussein and do something about Afghanistan . . . of course the motives were not entirely pure. But Israel very much liked the idea and volunteered the Mossad's help. The Saudi's liked it also and helped. And so on. The three buildings were already on the White Elephant list and would be damned hard to bring down because of the huge mess it would create. So a mere 3000. Doing it on a Sunday or Holiday would not be sensational enough. Essentially Bush and Cheney were making this sacrifice of undertaking this terrible deed. Three cheers. Like Pearl Harbor and the Lusitania this event would forever change the world. For us little people this is hard to grasp--which is why we are the little people. But for the big people . . . well, it is our duty to humanity. Nonsense perhaps, but it worked. The event itself was almost self-disclosing. Only because it was so emotionally charged was the obvious not noticed. It takes normal intelligence and few considerations and the official story seem so improbable. But once it had become gospel the mass psychology prevented thinking about it in the obvious way. Just imagine the Al Qaeda putting a man on the moon. Fantastic? Well, 9/11 may have entailed something like that kind of planning and expertise and coordination. It was not easy by any means. Those persons who can not see the obvious have either a personal desire connected with 9/11 like do I ever hate Arabs or terrorists who are Arabs, or the idea of false flags is way too scary or because I am attached to Israel and see how it has benefied or something along those lines. Probably scary heads the list. The elimination of JFK ensured the Vietnam Conflict. I think it would be naive to imagine that the Power Elite, the big folks, would hesitate to do whatever it took to fulfill their plans. These are the makers of history. We won't likely read about the persons Greenwald kicked off his site or probably even Greenwald in history books but we will read about Bush. And of course that necessary and handy devil Osama!!
@Nanyar
Your analysis and mine are very similar. I don't think the "gubbmint" did it, but as the guy said in the Lone Gunmen Video I posted, "There you go again, blaming the whole damn government, factions within the government! Factions!"
The number of people required for an exercise like that would be limited, could be limited. Obviously it was not "thousands". Just a few key people here and there who could misdirect and flip "exercise" to "real world" at will.
People talk about how long and hard it would be to wire the towers. Yes, the old way. But these guys dd not really care if they toppled, not like normal controlled demo. And besides they could have used some new methods, the nanothermite, which which was scientifically proven to be there, is some of our best evidence.
And you are right about the psychology. There is a saying, "No one thinks they are an asshole." These guys were true believers, kill some to save the many. It's a hard job but someone has to do it. Look at Coventry. Jesus, look at WWI, the same kind of true believers would send 5000 men to their deaths as a DIVERSION. "They" are not like us. I feel bad about eating meat, so I eat as little as possible. Obama ordered a Predator strike on his 3rd day in office and killed 27 people, some of them women and children. And for what? Some abstract, weird, insane, idea about "winning" the war in Arfghanistan - whatever the hell "Winning" means. I still can't figure out why Afghanistan is such a priority, except to think it's a base for some grand plan to take over the entire region.
27 people here, 60 there, who's counting anyway? As Harry Lime said to his old friend Holly Martins in The Third Man, "You see those people down there? Just dots. What does it matter if some of those dots stop moving?"
I just find it incomprehensible that "they" would recoil from killing "their own people". "Uncontroversially" Buhs started a war on Iraq that killed 4000 of his "own people", and upwards of 1 million Iraqis, and this is a guy would blink at killing 3000? Why?
Bush and Obama are clearly sociopaths, although I might allow that Obama is a malignant narcissist. I used to work in corrections, and I have met hundreds of those guys. Insects with a human face.
Bill Owen said...
"@AI
"Are we sure that they are banned? I recall him saying that the standard was "disruptive"? And he appears not to be COMPLETELY closed to the idea.
"What you say is true only if Glenn has real problems with the official version and yet chooses/pretends to believe the official fairy tale. Like I said to Nanyar, I believe that good people, smart people, can simply not believe, maybe for bad reasons, but there it is. How many of your friends and family agree with you? I have a friend who I did manage to turn around, but now his wife is very upset with him over his beliefs.
"I have to admit to confusion at this point."
---
Bill,
What, exactly, are you confused about?
To whom or what does "they" refer in your sentence, "Are we sure that they are banned?"
To what that I wrote are you referring when you say,"What you say is true only if..."?
Ken
@ AI
A: "What, exactly, are you confused about?"
Why the need to ban truthers in particular, and who is banned and why, and yes, what is up Glenn's nose on this issue. I see that Glenn just posted a comment on the bans, did you see it?
http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2011/05/16/whistleblowers/permalink/a5f067141e9056b9f0717a4a53c4af41.html
AI: To whom or what does "they" refer in your sentence, "Are we sure that they are banned?"
They meaning LL and Nanyar. (and now Qazi Khan apparently)
AI: To what that I wrote are you referring when you say,"What you say is true only if..."?
I mean that it's only true that Glenn is a gatekeeper or complicit in some way, if he really does have problems with the official version, yet chooses to ignore or worse, actively suppress it, despite those beliefs. My FEELING is that that is not the case here.
I am also confused because like you, I have trouble believing that Glenn (the anthrax story is bullshit Glenn) is not more skeptical of the story. But "having trouble" is not the same as saying I don't take him at his word. I have no evidence that he thinks 911 was an inside job. He says he basically agrees with the 911 report, and with Chomsky. As I have said several times, I have friends, many friends, who think I am nuts on this issue. Glenn, to me, is like my friends who believe the official story. I don't want to indict him on so little evidence. And to be frank, I genuinely like and admire the guy, so that's a conflict isn't it?
I do see his stance on this issue as a blind spot at the least.
I don't "know" the man, so I have very little to go on other that what he says. I do know he is doing good work on other issues and want to continue supporting that. Personally, I am prepared to overlook this, and put it in another drawer.
--To Bill and Others: Please let me know if I am getting on people's nerves with this stuff. Glenn did respond to me. Fairly briefly and in some way I am amazed by the whole rigamarole. Here it is:
[John - I was very clear in my request that people not use my comment section to debate 9/11. Several people, including you, decided to simply ignore my request and continue doing it anyway. I then had to spend substantial time on Saturday deleting those comments and policing the comment section.
I ban far fewer people than almost everyone who manages a comment section of a similar size, but once someone demonstrates that level of disrespect for my time and my requests, then I have no compunction about removing their posting privileges.
Glenn Greenwald]
Now here is my response:
{Glenn--Thanks for responding. I don't think I made comments about 9/11 very long after your request though I may have grumbled about the idea of censoring material for a while. Certainly yesterday I had completely stopped. But now of course you have deleted the evidence. I am not sure I entirely grasp the concept of asking for comments and then qualifying the kind of comments you are willing to accept. Since 9/11 is central not only to much you write but to a great deal that is now transpiring in America I see this as very important. While you claim there is no evidence for 9/11 not being as the official story has it, you nonetheless regard there being no evidence (according to the FBI after almost ten years) for Osama-Al Quaeda as a kind of evidence sufficient for you. This is really closer to my issue with you. Here we have not only perhaps the crime of the century (not counting war crimes and the like) but we also have to admit that it is to date a "perfect crime" . . . . As an attorney, though not one experienced I gather in criminal cases, your respect for evidence seems strange and even odd. I really think you owe it to your readers to give an account of all this. Am I terribly wrong? Please keep in mind that I have no experience with comments sections apart from yours and yours only briefly. I would think a better use of your time than policing your comments and banishing people would be to pursue what you do best which I don't believe is being a police man and censor. I hope you can bring yourself to read this and take it a little bit to heart. I don't think of you as a bad person but I do to be frank think you are a little misguided and perhaps influenced by people who are not as trustworthy as you imagine. Remember: your best friends can be your worst enemies; while your enemies can be your best friends. I believe you view me as an enemy who has entered your realm merely to cause you trouble which is very, very far from the truth. Well, I wish you well on your path. May the Higher Power guide you.}
"I ban far fewer people than almost everyone who manages a comment section of a similar size, but once someone demonstrates that level of disrespect for my time and my requests, then I have no compunction about removing their posting privileges." Glenn likes to support what he does by finding an authority,e.g. others who "manage a comment section of a similar size" as if I would know anything about any of this. Then there is the "that level of disrespect" as though I as a comment poster do not deserve some level of respect also. I know I am being a bit picky but I am attempting to grasp what it is like to be Glenn Greenwald and so far I find it kind of watery. So I merely think that Glenn could have gone about all this more gracefully but evidently he is supported by others who have to manage comments and needs to prove to the comments people that he is tough. My question is this: why waste time managing them at all. So it turns into a contentious mess. What is it that Glenn and Others are hoping to achieve with a neat, orderly and obedient collection of comments behind each article. Is this vanity, pride, delusion? They are doing the same thing the people they criticize are doing. Put spin on things, censoring, banishing, complaining about a lack of respect, etc. When goons grabbed Ray McGovern for standing with his back to the Secretary of State, roughed him up and arrested him, that was their exact attitude: they were demanding a certain level of respect for Hilary which Ray was failing to give. Now just for a moment let's imagine Washington--do you suppose he needed some goons to rough anyone up? Or James Madison? You see Glenn and Others want something that is not available without using power, and power is easily misused. Some people simply command respect by their bearing and others don't. Which is why as a father of four children I never got into punishing or demanding respect--but I generally got sufficient of the latter. And they were happier for not being beaten into submission! To hell I say with respect if you have to coerce it out of people.
Bill and Everyone,
I just attempted to post a quotation and link regarding Cornel West's deep sense of betrayal by Obama (West reportedly did 65 campaign appearances for the Great Black & White Hope), and when I attempted to log in to do so, was informed that my letter-writing privileges had been terminated.
Now, understand that throughout my 4-5 posts having anything to do with 9/11, I repeatedly asked for the reason that 9/11 posts were proscribed by GG, and all I got was "because Glenn says so." The link you provided in your last comment here does not, moreover, add any explanation whatsoever by GG for his censoring 9/11 comments.
I highly suspect that the reason Greenwald banned me from the comments section, in addition to deleting my 9/11-related comments, was because I had pointed out that he was doing exactly what Cass Sunstein had advocated in his paper on "Cognitive Infiltration", that the government might have to resort to banning discussions of alternate, non-official 9/11 conspiracy theories.
In pointing that out, I quoted from Greenwald's own UT essay in which he excoriated Sunstein for such advocacy, declaring Sunstein unfit for any government position as a result of that advocacy.
So, let's be clear about this: not only has Greenwald adopted Sunstein's proposed censorship of criticism of the official 9/11 conspiracy theory, he has banned from his blog several people from commenting about anything in his comments section.
And to be perfectly candid, I feel the same way about that as I'd feel about being banned from making comments on the White House website or Sunstein's blog.
It's one thing for Greenwald to implicitly admit his intellectual limitations by going along with the 9/11 Bush Administration Report, but it's quite another when he censors, where he has the power to do so, discussion by anyone else of the Official 9/11 Con Job for the Easily Duped.
And he did so in a thread in which he had asserted that bin Laden was guilty of orchestrating 9/11, and refused to answer requests from several of us for the evidence supporting that assertion. So he it was who had brought up 9/11 in the thread.
That's why I said in an earlier comment here that he has, as far as I'm concerned, really screwed the pooch on 9/11 and seriously diminished his stature, in my eyes, both cognitively and ethically.
I had long been aware that he is no deep thinker, compared with, for only two examples, Peter Dale Scott or David Ray Griffin, but Greenwald's poultry-droppings posture vis a vis 9/11 reveals cognitive and ethical limitations I had not hithherto suspected.
Bill,
What happened to my last post of a little earlier today? First, it was there, then it disappeared.
Ken
AI: To what that I wrote are you referring when you say,"What you say is true only if..."?
BO:I mean that it's only true that Glenn is a gatekeeper or complicit in some way, if he really does have problems with the official version, yet chooses to ignore or worse, actively suppress it, despite those beliefs. My FEELING is that that is not the case here.
---
I never suggested that Greenwald is a "gatekeeper" or "complicit." You're either confusing what I wrote with what someone else did, or are projectively interpreting me.
I think Greenwald simply lacks the intellectual integrity (which has a cognitive and an ethical component) to face the massive evidence arrayed against the 9/11 Commission Report, or even to read with comprehension something like Griffin's open letter to Chomsky and other 9/11 naifs.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25895.htm
I believe we are loading Glenn up with too many expectations. He is only 44 and has miles to go. It might be wiser to give Chris Hedges (54) some time over at Truthdig. He is older, more experienced and has a more philosophic-spiritual point of view. I myself have come to the point where I do not want to involve myself in a Glenn Greenwald reform project. Also the law has it limitations and beyond a certain point becomes extremely boring for non legal types like myself. So Glenn is doing his best. Two cheers for him. And now on to other horizons. Anis Shivani is another very interesting person.
@AI
You mean the post at May 17, 2:55, the one that began...
"Bill and Everyone,
I just attempted to post a quotation and link regarding Cornel West's deep sense of betrayal by Obama (West reportedly did 65 campaign appearances for the Great Black & White Hope), and when I attempted to log in to do so, was informed that my letter-writing privileges had been terminated.
Now, understand that throughout my 4-5 posts having anything to do with 9/11, I repeatedly asked for the reason that 9/11 posts were proscribed by GG, and all I got was "because Glenn says so." The link you provided in your last comment here does not, moreover, add any explanation whatsoever by GG for his censoring 9/11 comments."
When someone posts I get an email with a copy of the email. I did not delete your post, I said this was an open discussion and I meant that.
I can repost it if you want. I am not impressed with the way blogspot is performing. I have been out most of the afternoon, so am just getting to this now.
I'm actually glad I pulled away from Glenn's postings when I did. Just reading comments here about his ongoing reaction to the 9/11 issue is depressing and appalling enough.
It's disappointing, though predictable, that Glenn reacts to escalating challenge and rebelliousness by becoming increasingly defensive, self-righteous, and imperious. I expect he believes that he's above base "Trutherphobe" groupthink, but when he feels stung or put-upon, he resorts to the same kind of supercilious, sophomoric snark.
I don't know if he or Chomsky drink, but I can easily imagine the two of them at a bar commiserating over the pathetic but vexing scourge of "Truther" lunacy.
FWIW, this sorry episode relates to some comments I've recently made on the CommonDreams site (as "Obedient Servant") concerning Chomsky and Robert Fisk. But they apply equally to Glenn.
Here's an excerpt of one such comment, which argues that Glenn is indeed a "gatekeeper"; just substitute "Greenwald" for "Fisk":
_________________
Many of the comments in this thread, and not just this sub-thread, exhibit an understanding that well-regarded and arguably famous writers, critics, and scholars are subjected to pressures and influences that force them to consciously and deliberately make certain compromises, or operate upon them like an undertow or riptide current that pulls them into certain guarded or moderate positons.
So it's not a matter of facilely and scornfully denouncing or rejecting a journalist of Fisk's caliber as a "phony", "sellout", or "dupe" out of hand, in the manner of an idealistic, angry adolescent. (Admittedly, I was exactly that kind of "angry adolescent", and he'll never completely fade away.)
But one can still regret, and deplore, a respectable iconic public figure's tendency to "enforce" their private, personal, internal compromises by invalidating those who don't share or accept whatever limits and taboos they set for themselves.
I agree completely... that uncritically adopting and promulgating official accounts and "pernicious factoids" reinforces authoritarian government's control and manipulation of history. To the extent that a journalist, critic, or scholar does so, they are perforce functioning as a gatekeeper, willy-nilly.
@AI
You mean the post at May 17, 2:55, the one that began...
"Bill and Everyone,
I just attempted to post a quotation and link regarding Cornel West's deep sense of betrayal by Obama (West reportedly did 65 campaign appearances for the Great Black & White Hope), and when I attempted to log in to do so, was informed that my letter-writing privileges had been terminated.
Now, understand that throughout my 4-5 posts having anything to do with 9/11, I repeatedly asked for the reason that 9/11 posts were proscribed by GG, and all I got was "because Glenn says so." The link you provided in your last comment here does not, moreover, add any explanation whatsoever by GG for his censoring 9/11 comments."
When someone posts I get an email with a copy of the email. I did not delete your post, I said this was an open discussion and I meant that.
I can repost it if you want. I am not impressed with the way blogspot is performing. I have been out most of the afternoon, so am just getting to this now.
17 May, 2011 5:34:00 PM EDT
---
Yes, I'll appreciate it if you'll repost my comment at 2:55 in its entirety.
Since I posted that comment here at 2:55, two other things have come to my attention:
1) Not only have I been banned from commenting at UT, but from any comment section at Salon; and
2) In discovering the above, I noticed a comment posted today by one "Sheri Lynn", who had posted an essay the other day purporting to demonstrate David Ray Griffin's illogicality on several issues, which I proceeded to rebut.
So, apparently, it's okay as far as Greenwald is concerned to post comments at UT that support the official conspiracy theory, but not those that question it, as in this case when Greenwald asserted bin Laden's guilt in planning 9/11, and Sheri Lynn and I responded to that in the same thread.
Moreover, being insufficently respecful of Greenwald and his defense of the Bush-Cheney 9/11 Report is apparently a sufficiently heinous offense to get one banned from any comment section in Salon.
The other probably forbidden topic at Salon that I had hopped would be discussed is the one called Birther. There are two varieties of Birthers. One focuses on place of birth. The recently revealed long form birth certificate may not really mean much as you can not authenticate copies. To do this one would need original documents which could be subjected to forensic tests. I very much doubt this will or could ever be done. The second and I believe more serious variety focuses on the requirement of Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution: "natural born citizen". This is only an obscure phrase now but we can rest assured that James Madison was not given to sprinkling obscure phrases here and there in the Constitution. In all likelihood the notion was derived from THE LAW OF NATIONS which was a popular read in the 18th century. In short at that time citizenship was considered to be derived from the father regardless of birth place; however, Great Britain considered a birth on British soil sufficient to make one a British citizen and was impressing American sea men. So in addition to parentage the Founders wanted the person to have only American allegiance at birth and therefore to have been born in America. Strictly speaking McCain would also have been disqualified though in a far less serious way. The 14 Amendment does not address this matter in any fashion. A few jurists who are not of the timid type have written as above. The Supreme Court dreaded having to deal with this and used various tricks to avoid doing so. I am of the strong opinion that because his father was Kenyan and therefore available to British citizenship that Obama holds dual citizenship --just like Bradley Manning whose mother was Welsh. Obama is therefore a knowing usurper.
This is a repost of an earlier post by Associative Individualist. That post somehow disappeared. Bill Owen
Associative Individualist has left a new comment on the post "9/11 Truth, Lies @ Salon":
Bill and Everyone,
I just attempted to post a quotation and link regarding Cornel West's deep sense of betrayal by Obama (West reportedly did 65 campaign appearances for the Great Black & White Hope), and when I attempted to log in to do so, was informed that my letter-writing privileges had been terminated.
Now, understand that throughout my 4-5 posts having anything to do with 9/11, I repeatedly asked for the reason that 9/11 posts were proscribed by GG, and all I got was "because Glenn says so." The link you provided in your last comment here does not, moreover, add any explanation whatsoever by GG for his censoring 9/11 comments.
I highly suspect that the reason Greenwald banned me from the comments section, in addition to deleting my 9/11-related comments, was because I had pointed out that he was doing exactly what Cass Sunstein had advocated in his paper on "Cognitive Infiltration", that the government might have to resort to banning discussions of alternate, non-official 9/11 conspiracy theories.
In pointing that out, I quoted from Greenwald's own UT essay in which he excoriated Sunstein for such advocacy, declaring Sunstein unfit for any government position as a result of that advocacy.
So, let's be clear about this: not only has Greenwald adopted Sunstein's proposed censorship of criticism of the official 9/11 conspiracy theory, he has banned from his blog several people from commenting about anything in his comments section.
And to be perfectly candid, I feel the same way about that as I'd feel about being banned from making comments on the White House website or Sunstein's blog.
It's one thing for Greenwald to implicitly admit his intellectual limitations by going along with the 9/11 Bush Administration Report, but it's quite another when he censors, where he has the power to do so, discussion by anyone else of the Official 9/11 Con Job for the Easily Duped.
And he did so in a thread in which he had asserted that bin Laden was guilty of orchestrating 9/11, and refused to answer requests from several of us for the evidence supporting that assertion. So he it was who had brought up 9/11 in the thread.
That's why I said in an earlier comment here that he has, as far as I'm concerned, really screwed the pooch on 9/11 and seriously diminished his stature, in my eyes, both cognitively and ethically.
I had long been aware that he is no deep thinker, compared with, for only two examples, Peter Dale Scott or David Ray Griffin, but Greenwald's poultry-droppings posture vis a vis 9/11 reveals cognitive and ethical limitations I had not hithherto suspected.
@AI
You've been there for what, years? Your posts have always been thoughtful, polite and well reasoned. Now you are banned everywhere there, that seems extreme.
And Zorkna has impunity!
Zorkna once said that Salon supports him, I thought that ridiculous at the time.
And I was confusing you with others when I referred to gatekeepers and complicit ones. I see now your issue about "integrity". Got it.
@Little Brother
Good to see you!
Okay, so we know that Truther Talk seems to be the equivalent of pooping on the table at a fancy dinner. But why? I really don't get it. I keep going back to my friend who gets enraged when I bring it up.
That's pretty much the reaction I get everywhere. It either people get upset or you get treated like the guy on the corner with the end of the world sign!
Blogger Bill Owen said...
@AI
You've been there for what, years? Your posts have always been thoughtful, polite and well reasoned. Now you are banned everywhere there, that seems extreme.
And Zorkna has impunity!
Zorkna once said that Salon supports him, I thought that ridiculous at the time.
And I was confusing you with others when I referred to gatekeepers and complicit ones. I see now your issue about "integrity". Got it.
@Little Brother
Good to see you!
17 May, 2011 6:30:00 PM EDT
---
Bill,
Yes, I've been commenting there off and on since 2007, as I recall, but with several long hiatuses, because I had what I considered more important things to do.
Frankly, I returned to Salon (and UT) when I did, more for the commentary of people like Little Brother, coram nobis, you, and a few others, more than to read GG, who seldom wrote about anything or as well as many others, such as Chris Floyd, Arthur Silber, and Andy Worthington, to mention only three.
Then, too, of course, one had to plod through or past the plethora of sycophantic paeans to Greenwald and the mindlessly critical Obamabots and Republicans who think he is one of the Devil's own, not to mention the innumerable testmonials to the commenters' own shallowness of thought.
When I first started commenting at UT, Greenwald seemed to be a run-of-the-mill Democrat who articulated what I considered to be obvious criticisms of the more outrageous berhavior of Republicans, but had nowhere near, say, Nader's insight into the fact that the two major Amerikan parties are two wings of the same Financial-Military-Industrial-Corporate Complex.
He's come a long way in his thinking since then, which is reason, I suppose, to hold out hope for him that he will eventually stop genuflecting to his residual nationalism and to his mentor, Chomsky, and do some reading and thinking on his own regarding the rather important question of what transpired on 9/11.
As it is currently, he's content to refer his 9/11 questioners, when he deigns to answer them, to the video of Chomsky in which his master talks about the plane (singular) that hit the WTC, and how the Busheviks would have had to be "crazy" to orchestrate such a thing.
I probably should feel more sorry for both of them than I do, but the thought of their failure to call for a real investigation and their influence with their more impressionable followers holds me back in that respect.
Some persons are very identified with their intellects. Once this intellect forms it does not like to change. Men generally exhibit this problem more than women. And women who want their man to change run into a formidable challenge. Now Glenn at some point (perhaps when feeling a great deal of emotion since he lives in New York) began thinking for some reason or other maybe listening to Rumsfeld or Bush or some commentator that it must have been Osama and Al Qaeda; and in those early days no one challenged him on this and it became apart of his mind. Later on he was comfortable with his position and when alternatives came along he simply treated them with scorn. Many of the survivors were suspicious and pressed long and hard for an investigation and were terribly disappointed by what they eventually got. But Glenn steamed on and began treating alternatives as personal attacks on himself. "The official story is roughly true; and I identify with the official story." Many people did this. The unknown of the alternatives is a scary place where an abyss exists. If I go there I will fall into the realm of conspiracy and who knows what will become of me. Persons who are not so identified with their intellects can more easily change their minds and so are intrigued by alternatives. If you are one of the latter you are fortunate. If not then people like you are on guard against assaults from these Truthers and what have you. I think this is generally what the case is. By now Glenn is so involved in controlling his comments area that no one could get through to him. My position is that I got some good useful legal information and now there are other more useful writers to read. Because people so naturally argue and fight with each other it takes a strong charasmatic leader like Hitler to pull everyone together. And such people are rare. Perhaps Roosevelt and even Kennedy were such men. Since then the presidents have been sort of rascals.
@AI
Thanks! That's very true about Glenn. I remember when he used to tell people to "write your congress critter". He does not do that anymore. He's come a long way. And if you look at his Lannan video, he explicitly states that corporations and friends run America.
I have never spoken to him about 911 since it is such a sensitive issue with him, and I have pretty much given up trying to change people's minds. To go back to my friends again, one guy just admitted to me that he thinks the official story makes sense to him, he thinks at most, they might have let it happen. He'd basically been "humouring" me! Jesus!
I absolutely refuse to be marginalized that way. It's NOT CRAZY to think that elements in the US government, probably with held from the Mossad, do things like this. How can Chomsky look at the Northwoods plan, which was real, and then say that a false flag attack is crazy cause it's too risky. They lied to start a war with Iraq. Wasn't that "risky"? Wasn't confronting the Russkies over Cuba, "risky"? The guys who run the show are often sociopaths. I know from sociopaths. Risk is not a word they even understand. It's always a bad bad mistake to evaluate others based on YOUR psychology. People like Cheney don't think like your boss at work, they think more like Hitler. Human life means NOTHING to Bush, Cheney, and now, Obama. I swear the guy is a sociopath or an extreme narcissist.
I think Glenn is moving on this, albeit very slowly. His last post on this had some qualifications I had not seen before. I don't know, I have a strong ego, but if my bud was freaking Chomsky, and he's telling me, "Bill, 911 Truth is nonsense.", I think it might give me pause, but for sure I'd challenge him on it. Chomsky or no.
I'd love to ask Chomsky just a few questions. Ideally, I would like to see him debate Griffin, who is probably the best out there.
I go back to psychology. Some truths are just unbearable. What if someone told you your father was a pedophile, it would take massive massive proof to convince you. If it was my father, I would pretty much have to hear it from him to really believe. Otherwise, I would probably use every defence mechanism in the book to avoid that particular "truth". It's like that with America to most Americans I think. Hell, look at them. The President kills kids almost every week now in Predator strikes. No one blinks. They just don't see it. It doesn't register somehow. The way I put it to people is like this. What if you found out your friend from work had once killed a little girl? Would go to lunch with him, would you let him in your house? What if you found out your co-worker was still killing them? I am not a pacifist.
Frankly, I am getting tired of banging my head on the WTC. When I can't even convince my friends... Sometimes I say our only hope is for Cheney to confess on his deathbed, but that would not do it either would it? They'd say he was on drugs, delusional, yada yada; the truth needle might move a little bit, but then it would be back to watching football. People feel utterly powerless too. So I am not hopeful not at all.
One ray of light is the way that Truthers are attacked so hard. That would not happen if they were not worried. They should be.
@Nanyar
What you said about some identifying with their intellect is very true.
Decades ago I was arguing with a friend about something, I don't know. He asked me why I was upset. I replied, "Because you are attacking me!". He replied,"No, I am not. You are not your ideas.".
It's true.
Once we identify ourselves with our ideas, which almost certainly are not even OUR ideas, well...
On another note, I am kind of surprised that you haven't tried the comments thing before. It can be a lot of fun. I've learned a lot, and not just facts, but how to relate to other people and to observe all the various ids unleashed. I work at home too, so it helps keep me sharp.
Re: 17 May, 2011 7:13:00 PM EDT
Associative Individualist
______________
I don't mean to harp on it, but the fact that Blogger's e-mail notifications seem to be in "shuffle" mode is challenging at best.
I trust that Bill doesn't mind indulging commenters with stray "off-topic" responses.
I feel compelled to not only thank you for your passing compliment, but to note that I'm both amused and moved by your description of Glenn's threads.
I could've written it myself; it comports with my experience on every point.
I mentioned previously that I'd become worn out, or burned out, by certain "Alpha" posters. But apart from that, I've always found Glenn's "praetorian guard" of comments commissars grating.
I'm reluctant to Name Names, but Kitt comes to mind as a representative type. Even though I'm generally simpatico with "his" (?) perspective, "his" compulsion to suck up to and defend Glenn against any perceived slight or irregularity is appalling.
There are several other regulars who share this MO, always flying in like an overprotective parent or older sibling to hector anyone they feel is insufficiently respectful.
IMO, the resident Trutherphobes are a militant subset of the sycophants. Just to squeeze in one final "name": it really, really bothered me when RR Heard belatedly became one of the most virulent Trutherphobes.
He always had a Jekyll/Hyde persona, but watching him indulge his jeering, thuggish side to censor "Trutherish" commenters became truly painful to me.
Anyway, thanks for your gratifying comments!
@Little Brother
Post on what you like... no probs!
On the very, very slim possibility that anyone is interested in reading the full version of the CommonDreams comments thread exchange I excerpted previously, here are the references.
They speak to the general dilemma of persons like Chomsky and Greenwald establishing boundaries and taboos on their discourse.
It might require registering and tediously scrolling down their primitive comments platform to read them.
The articles are worth reading in their own right, BTW!
NB: I used to be "Little Brother" at CommonDreams until that ID was banned along with dozens of others without explanation or notice a day or two after Obama was elected in November, 2008.
The only common denominator was that the "purged" commenters were all skeptical of Obama, and pushed back against the liberal-lite tide of Obamamaniacal support.
"Don't Piss Off the Host" seems to trump lofty civil liberties ideals, even on "progressive" sites, eh?
Many of us returned with new nyms; I chose the ironic "Obedient Servant".
The Corporate State Wins Again by Chris Hedges
Comments by Obedient Servant Apr 25 2011 @ 1:35pm, 2:03pm
Why No Outcry over These Torturing Tyrants? by Robert Fisk
Comments by Obedient Servant May 15 2011 @ 1:30pm, 3:38pm
@ all
Frank sent me this a while ago, it's an interview with a demolitions expert talking about WTC 7. It's very good. Facts and evidence aside I found him very rational, smart, and convincing.
http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20110401045101917
Why don't people understand what "free fall" means?
I've even seen people arguing that the building "actually" fell in 17 seconds, or whatever. I tell them, Jesus man, just use your watch! What does it take?
Did you all see this?
Monday, May 9, 2011 06:44 PM ET
Original article: Bin Laden's death doesn't end his fear-mongering value
9/11 theories
I've allowed them to flow unabated over the last week because they're obviously so relevant to the bin Laden killing and what's being discussed. But I'm getting to the point where I'm going to return to the standard practice, which is:
I don't ban or delete 9/11 posts per se, but this blog is not the place to debate them. If that's your primary interest, this is not the place to air it.
This debate has taken place many, many times here, and my problem with it is that those who subscribe to those views tend to view it as the Most Important Issue, which means they are virtually single-minded in their devotion to it, which in turns drowns all other discussions here (because invariably it prompts a few people who disagree to start arguing as well, and then we're off the the races).
There are a lot of places on the Internet devoted to 9/11 discussions. This is not one of those places. Glenn Greenwald
Bill: On another note, I am kind of surprised that you haven't tried the comments thing before. It can be a lot of fun. I've learned a lot, and not just facts, but how to relate to other people and to observe all the various ids unleashed. I work at home too, so it helps keep me sharp.
Some good points. I never really realized what a vast world lay behind those simple words-"Leave a comment". Like the wardrobe in THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE! But I am having to work at not overdoing. As it is I have one friend who is a retired army colonel and who does not mind arguments. We make a joke out of disagreements. Other people get too bothered and distressed. So I have a backlog of thoughts and feelings collected over the years that now want to leap out and stretch their legs . . . . I think you are correct in your assessment of relating to people by watching their moves and language and so forth. The colonel is a good guy but says things like Gingrich and Palin would make a good candidate pair. He is not a reader and watches Glenn Beck and so on. At the same time is completly into esoterics, spirits, native America ideas, astrology, omens . . . strange assortment of things. He is happy enough if we leave Bush out of it, so I say given Bush's expression on 9/11 maybe Cheney just said something big will happen and don't worry. I think Cheney kind of bullied him at times. No wonder he often looked bewildered. So that is about it. Some women agree with me but then later on go back to the official story . . . then I remind them of the "truth" and they smile and remember. More humor. So it is hopeless. I think at this point 9/11 is so deeply etched into the collective mind that we really need another fresher mess to expose. The escapade in Pakistan where it may be that they just killed some innocent people. Have you watched the excellent TV series "Lie to Me"? It is all about micro-expression and bodily moves that reveal lying, etc. When Obama announced the great kill, I am sure he was lying. His facial tension and a few other things. Take another look and see what you make of it. And then we needed the experts from "Bones" to go over the body.:)
Bill writes:
"I think Glenn is moving on this, albeit very slowly. His last post on this had some qualifications I had not seen before. I don't know, I have a strong ego, but if my bud was freaking Chomsky, and he's telling me, 'Bill, 911 Truth is nonsense.', I think it might give me pause, but for sure I'd challenge him on it. Chomsky or no.
"I'd love to ask Chomsky just a few questions. Ideally, I would like to see him debate Griffin, who is probably the best out there.
"I go back to psychology. Some truths are just unbearable. What if someone told you your father was a pedophile, it would take massive massive proof to convince you."
---
Bill,
When was GG's last post to which you refer? I want to read it.
I'm afraid that Greenwald's admiration of Chomsky borders on idolatry. I once criticized Chomsky (I think re 9/11, but I'm not sure)in a UT comment and Greenwald came after me hammer and tong in a very emotional way, setting up in the process what I characterized at the time as enough straw men to choke a horse. I told him that while I admired Chomsky's work, that didn't blind me to defective positions on his part, nor inhibit me from calling Chomsky out on them, and I produced more than enough evidence to legitimize my criticism. Greenwald didn't explicitly concede the point, but he had nothing more to say, either.
Regarding the psychology of 9/11 denial, earlier this evening it occurred to me that a good metaphor for many, many Americans, especially those who are militantly nationalist and exceptionalist (Amerikans), is that even considering seriously the possibility of a false- flag op on 9/11 is like peering into the Abyss. And the old Abyss tends to horrify folks.
They will energetically resist being asked to even peek over the edge. That's why you see all these otherwise intelligent people refusing to even seriously examine the evidence against the Con Job Report.
Just as at one time GG's political paradigm didn't permit his seriously examining Nader's evidence for the two-headed MIC Party, I think a residual nationalism and exceptionalism on his part keep him from seriously examining the 9/11 evidence.
I see that Nan Yar used the same metaphor of the Abyss in the post just before yours. I think what Nan Yar really means, however, is that many people, especially men, identify with their paradigms, rather than with their intellects, as in Kuhn's sense in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Regarding your analogy of being told that your father is a pedophile, I think a more apt one is being told by someone that your father is the murderer of several neighbors whom, the authorities have concluded, had been killed by members of the Hell's Angels during a home invasion.
Neither Our Protectors in DC nor our own father could possibly do such a thing.
Why, they'd have to be insane.
Our "friend" Sheri Lynn from Salon, posted this link earlier. The author attempts to take down Griffin and Meysann in a very systemic way.
http://www.publiceye.org/conspire/Post911/dubious_claims.html
I notice that in her many jousts with LL, she never actually engages him, or anyone, on the merits, but resorts to ridicule and derision -- always a tell that the authour ain't got nothin.
Bill posted:
"Monday, May 9, 2011 06:44 PM ET
Original article: Bin Laden's death doesn't end his fear-mongering value
9/11 theories
"I've allowed them to flow unabated over the last week because they're obviously so relevant to the bin Laden killing and what's being discussed. But I'm getting to the point where I'm going to return to the standard practice, which is:
"I don't ban or delete 9/11 posts per se, but this blog is not the place to debate them."
[Emphasis added]
---
The above was worth a hearty chuckle.
He must have also meant, "Unless you point out the close similarity of my position to that of Cass Sunstein or point out 9/11 evidence that threatens to disturb my identification with Amerika."
Blogger Bill Owen said...
Our "friend" Sheri Lynn from Salon, posted this link earlier. The author [Chip Berlet] attempts to take down Griffin and Meysann in a very systemic way.
http://www.publiceye.org/conspire/Post911/dubious_claims.html
I notice that in her many jousts with LL, she never actually engages him, or anyone, on the merits, but resorts to ridicule and derision -- always a tell that the authour ain't got nothin.
17 May, 2011 10:42:00 PM EDT
---
This is the Sheri Lynn I referred to in my earlier post whom I noticed had not been banned for posting 9/11 comments. That may be purely coincidental with the fact that she is critical of alternate 9/11 theories, not Greenwald's and Chomsky's. Or not.
She is also the one who had nothing to say to me after I posted Griffin's point-by-point rebuttal of Berlet, with which Griffin concludes:
"In sum, although Berlet asserts that The New Pearl Harbor is marred by serious flaws of various sorts, I cannot see that he has supported this assertion. I cannot see, therefore, that he has shown that Richard Falk, Rosemary Ruether, and Howard Zinn should be embarrassed by having lent their names to the book."
Perhaps everyone here already knows this, but according to Richard Falk, David Griffin underwent back surgery some time recently, acquired a nosocomial staph infection, and had a minor stroke.
I'm in the process of finding his address, in order to send him get- well-soon wishes.
Little Brother wrote:
"Anyway, thanks for your gratifying comments!"
17 May, 2011 9:15:00 PM EDT
---
As someone whose writing I've admired and enjoyed for a long time, you're very welcome. In point of fact, I was recently moved to write, in response to one of your recent posts at UT, "Truer words were never written."
Seeing that you were posting here was one of the reasons I came on over with my keyboard to Bill's place.
Speaking of which, Bill, I see that two more of my very recent posts seem to have been eaten by the blogspot demon. When one puts time and energy into carefully articulating in writing one's thoughts, and they just disappear... Well, you know.
Is blogspot the only game in town? I know nothing about blogging software, but surely...
I'm on EST. So am off for the night. Just finished reading Obedient Servant's most excellent comments over at Hedges'.
"Obedient Servant". Lol. Contumacious Bastard more like it ;)
Hi AI
Still up
I see the one one Glenn's post, Griffin's stroke, and Sheri Lyn
They are here...
And I second and third your comment on LB. I once told him I wished that I could write even fractionally as well.
@AI
Yes, there are other alternatives like WordPress. I have never had trouble before, but never have had this many comments!
Blogger is a Google product too. It's extremely easy to build a blog, and I have never had that slightest problem before.
@AI
Might be a cookie problem
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/blogger/thread?tid=546fcf728bbd2af4&hl=en
Bill,
When you get time, will you please re-post my most recently disappeared comment that begins,
"I'm afraid that Greenwald's admiration of Chomsky borders on idolatry. I once criticized Chomsky (I think re 9/11, but I'm not sure)in a UT comment and Greenwald came after me hammer and tong in a very emotional way, setting up in the process what I characterized at the time as enough straw men to choke a horse. I told him that while I admired Chomsky's work, that didn't blind me to defective positions on his part, nor inhibit me from calling Chomsky out on them, and I produced more than enough evidence to legitimize my criticism. Greenwald didn't explicitly concede the point, but he had nothing more to say, either."?
I see that Little Brother has had similar problems with Blogger/blogspot/whatever, and that we all lost out on a lengthy comment he wrote because of this, what's the technical term, oh, yes, lame-and/or-feeble-assed software. :^)
If it can't, as you say, handle this many comments, two solutions suggest themselves: 1) get different software, or 2) get fewer comments.
What do you say, my Canadian brutha?
LL here.
Bill Owen asks:
"Why don't people understand what "free fall" means?"
They fucking well would if I could give 'em an upper cut to the chin.
@AI
This is terrible. Your post that began, "I'm afraid that Greenwald's admiration of Chomsky borders on idolatry.", is gone. I never even got an email copy as I did before. I am sorry.
What can I say? For now, could you keep a copy and try again if it fails?
I read up on this "known issue" last night, and there does not seem to be a solution from Google yet. The number of posts is NOT the issue, I was just troubleshooting out loud.
I am seriously thinking about moving everything to WordPress. I read that it is "easy". I always cringe when I read that! Easy, didn't they say that about Iraq?
Bill writes:
"I think Glenn is moving on this, albeit very slowly. His last post on this had some qualifications I had not seen before. I don't know, I have a strong ego, but if my bud was freaking Chomsky, and he's telling me, 'Bill, 911 Truth is nonsense.', I think it might give me pause, but for sure I'd challenge him on it. Chomsky or no.
"I'd love to ask Chomsky just a few questions. Ideally, I would like to see him debate Griffin, who is probably the best out there.
"I go back to psychology. Some truths are just unbearable. What if someone told you your father was a pedophile, it would take massive massive proof to convince you."
---
Bill,
I'm afraid that Greenwald's admiration of Chomsky borders on idolatry. I once criticized Chomsky (I think re 9/11, but I'm not sure)in a UT comment and Greenwald came after me hammer and tong in a very emotional way, setting up in the process what I characterized at the time as enough straw men to choke a horse. I told him that while I admired Chomsky's work, that didn't blind me to defective positions on his part, nor inhibit me from calling Chomsky out on them, and I produced more than enough evidence to validate my criticism. Greenwald didn't explicitly concede the point, but he had nothing more to say, either.
Regarding the psychology of 9/11 denial, earlier this evening it occurred to me that a good metaphor for very many Americans, especially those who are militantly nationalist and exceptionalist (Amerikans), is that even considering seriously the possibility of a false- flag op on 9/11 is like peering into the Abyss. And the old Abyss tends to terrify folks.
Just before reading your latest post, I read Nan Yar's, who used the same metaphor. I think what he really means, however, is that many people, especially men, identify with their paradigms, rather than with their intellects, as in Kuhn's sense in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.>
Regarding your analogy of being told that your father is a pedophile, I think a more apt one is being told that your father is the murderer of several neighbors whom the authorities had concluded were killed by members of the Hell's Angels during a home invasion.
How could Our Protectors in DC or our protector at home do such a thing?!
Why, that is simply insane.
Bill,
I didn't set it up, but I have worked on (modified) a website utilizing Wordpress, and it was, in fact, quite easy for me, a semi-computer literate to work with.
What do think of setting up a parallel (to Blogger) blog using Wordpress to see how it goes, without jettisoning Blogger until you're sure it's going to work better?
Ken
@AI
I am seriously thinking about it. WP gives a lot more control too.
I developed www.dangardner.ca Joomla and www.irvinwaller.org using WP. Never used it before, it's a very good framework for developing.
Associative Individual --paradigm vs intellect . . . .I would say that a paradigm is a particular structure within the intellect,e.g. the Copernican model as opposed to the Ptolemaic model. I think for the psychology of Glenn, et alia we might draw on Plato's allegory of the cave. Maybe Chomsky and Glenn got free of the chains and are wandering about in the cave but have no intention of leaving it! So braver souls who have gotten outside and come back in to "enlighten" their fellow man are getting the reputation of trouble makers . . . especially when they approach those in chains and say, hey, you should get up and go outside--it's amazing! This might bring up in their minds stories about people who took LSD and destroyed their DNA and became psychotics! Has Glenn ever tried psychedelics? Puffed and inhaled? There does seem to be a divide between those who have read things like the HOLOTROPIC MIND by Stanislav Grof and those who have abstained from these other worldly adventures. What has Chomsky to say about drugs? He was at MIT during the '60s and surely encountered students who were high in his class rooms. And Bill--this site definitely has a more friendly atmosphere. I guess you won't be on NPR this week? There is definitely a Symposium quality such that people might learn a great deal dropping by now and then for a chat. Glenn's place is like a refrectory with a thousand voices contending for attention and the proctor yelling now and then for silence and respect!:)
Jesus, this is embarrassing. Check the spam folder Bill. Check the spam folder! Are you stupid?
There were 11 comments in the spam folder. They have now been restored!
@Nan Yar
You may want to read this and see if it supports my suggestion that 9/11 denial is much more a function of one's paradigms than of one's intellect as a whole:
Kuhnian paradigm shifts
Kuhn used the duck-rabbit optical illusion to demonstrate the way in which a paradigm shift could cause one to see the same information in an entirely different way.
An epistemological paradigm shift was called a scientific revolution by epistemologist and historian of science Thomas Kuhn in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
A scientific revolution occurs, according to Kuhn, when scientists encounter anomalies which cannot be explained by the universally accepted paradigm within which scientific progress has thereto been made. The paradigm, in Kuhn's view, is not simply the current theory, but the entire worldview in which it exists, and all of the implications which come with it. It is based on features of landscape of knowledge that scientists can identify around them. There are anomalies for all paradigms, Kuhn maintained, that are brushed away as acceptable levels of error, or simply ignored and not dealt with (a principal argument Kuhn uses to reject Karl Popper's model of falsifiability as the key force involved in scientific change). Rather, according to Kuhn, anomalies have various levels of significance to the practitioners of science at the time. To put it in the context of early 20th century physics, some scientists found the problems with calculating Mercury's perihelion more troubling than the Michelson-Morley experiment results, and some the other way around. Kuhn's model of scientific change differs here, and in many places, from that of the logical positivists in that it puts an enhanced emphasis on the individual humans involved as scientists, rather than abstracting science into a purely logical or philosophical venture.
When enough significant anomalies have accrued against a current paradigm, the scientific discipline is thrown into a state of crisis, according to Kuhn. During this crisis, new ideas, perhaps ones previously discarded, are tried. Eventually a new paradigm is formed, which gains its own new followers, and an intellectual "battle" takes place between the followers of the new paradigm and the hold-outs of the old paradigm. Again, for early 20th century physics, the transition between the Maxwellian electromagnetic worldview and the Einsteinian Relativistic worldview was neither instantaneous nor calm, and instead involved a protracted set of "attacks," both with empirical data as well as rhetorical or philosophical arguments, by both sides, with the Einsteinian theory winning out in the long-run. Again, the weighing of evidence and importance of new data was fit through the human sieve: some scientists found the simplicity of Einstein's equations to be most compelling, while some found them more complicated than the notion of Maxwell's aether which they banished. Some found Eddington's photographs of light bending around the sun to be compelling, some questioned their accuracy and meaning. Sometimes the convincing force is just time itself and the human toll it takes, Kuhn said, using a quote from Max Planck: "a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."[1]
After a given discipline has changed from one paradigm to another, this is called, in Kuhn's terminology, a scientific revolution or a paradigm shift. It is often this final conclusion, the result of the long process, that is meant when the term paradigm shift is used colloquially: simply the (often radical) change of worldview, without reference to the specificities of Kuhn's historical argument.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm_shift
Bill---Here is Word Press blog which I have visited numerous times and even left a comment on once. Very interesting material. I have a good impression of Word Press. http://naturalborncitizen.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/bon-appetite-birth-certificate/#comments
Associative Individual--I was not disagreeing with you but just giving you my definition of intellect which would be the totality of thoughts of an individual plus the capacity for acquiring or creating more. I do think that some persons think(!) they are their intellect. Since the intellect is a kind of body it is quite natural. Consider college professors. People who are so identified can become outraged when disagreed with. Those persons who have a rather deeper identity can handle dispute better though they may still make a strong case for being right. In my "paradigm" or model of a person I have a physical body, an emotional body or make up, an intellectual body or aspect, and then at least in my experience something which stands behind all these in an observing capacity so that I can watch myself think, emote or act physically. Perhaps this is what Wordsworth called the feeling intellect. In any case it allows me to both get disturbed when my commenting privilege got revoked & at the same time realize that it was far from the end of the world though it took me some time before all the emotion was discharged. Actually now I see the end of Salon as a gift! It was too time consuming and much like an endless argument with out hope of accomplishing anything. I hope this makes sense as paradigm is a very useful concept. Perhaps if we think of the intellect as based on concepts which then become a multitude of thoughts which we can use to create various things like turing machine(a conceptual structure) to computer to Internet. So for Glenn the thought "the official story is basically true" has serious survival value and is very worth defending!! Maybe Glenn is still in chains in the cave and watching the shadowy shapes on the cave wall.
TIME FOR DUCT TAPE---Here is what I think we are dealing with. Five or six hundred years ago individuals like Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Leibniz brought in the Modern Age which as an age functioned well until the end of the 19th century. Recall Planck's constant. Quantum physics and other developments ended the Modern Age by the middle of the last century. At this time the High Middle Ages began reasserting itself and absorbing the Modern Age. Strange bed fellows. Suddenly people are studying Eastern Religion and Philosophy though Schrodinger and Bohr and Heisenberg were already there years before sounding like adherents of Vedanta. And psychedelics seem to affirm the weirdest things. But the outer skin of social mores and especially politics are still back in the Enlightenment. Tinkering with concepts that no longer work. This opens the door to the shyster politicians who play with laws and the language. Think Harvard and Yale and Stanford. These are people of another paradigm fiddling with the new ideas and creating chaos and misery for the many. Their intellects are current but their emotional makeup belongs to the dark ages. Obama, Bush, Cheney and the other troglodytes. We need to treat the environment better becomes a way for Al Gore to get richer. We need a better energy source becomes another con. Etc. These heavy types keep stealing the important ideas and using them for personal profit. They are like scared wolves. And in the meantime science is getting degraded by the hacks. This is the transition period. It could last for centuries of nightmarish turmoil. So a paradigm shift has occured but the mass of people are back there in the old one and frightened. 9/11 is a little like Panck's constant for the political world--a signal that things no longer fit together. Time for duct tape!:)
London Lad here
Nanyar,
those who deny the laws of gravity and refuse to acknowledge the lies told by NIST, have no right to later criticize Creationism.
London Lad--"Nanyar,
those who deny the laws of gravity and refuse to acknowledge the lies told by NIST, have no right to later criticize Creationism."
Let's see, where did this come from? I am not in any ordinary sense promoting creationism nor am I denying the laws of gravity as such. The fact that I embrace a rather extreme form of Vedanta/Buddhism does not imply either of the above. My position is that Consciousness is primary and what we are accustomed to call mater is an illusion. Paul Davie: "It would appear that the universe is structured nothingness" if you prefer. And I have not bought the official 9/11 story since about 9/16 or so . . . I was an early bird on that one. Are you also one who was booted out of Glenncommun? Speaking of both creationism and gravity, I think we have over simplified versions of them anyway. Perhaps if we begin to consider that even electrons have minimal sentience & it might be bliss since no bills or debts nor relationship troubles as far as I can discern. But undoubtedly desire. Perhaps the key motive power in the universe is desire. What do electrons desire? To be a part of an atom? Do we enslave or enserf them in our gadgets? See we tossed out animism at one point without quite knowing why. Now I suggest we re-examine that heedless act. What is the place you live like if you begin considering that it is sentient? How we as a society abuse the minerals! And then gravity becomes the desire between things like the "love of three oranges'?
LL wrote:
London Lad here
Nanyar,
those who deny the laws of gravity and refuse to acknowledge the lies told by NIST, have no right to later criticize Creationism.
18 May, 2011 3:59:00 PM EDT
---
No one I have ever run across or can even imagine, who has been duped by the Bush-Cheney 9/11 Report, denies the laws of gravity, for shitsake.
Moreover, your repeatedly making ham-handed assertions of that nature does not, I suggest, incline people to reconsider the evidence that you purportedly wish them to acknowledge.
On the contrary, it gives them an excuse to write you off as a wild-eyed, knuckle-dragging "Truther."
I'll cite Sheri Lynn over in the comments section at Salon, as an example.
What made her think, or at least shut her down, if only temporarily, was my posting Griffin's rebuttal of Chip Berlet which she had posted to mock Griffin.
I recommend your considering that styling your effort as a military operation to win converts to the truth about 9/11 is extremely counterproductive.
You don't get people to think by bludgeoning them, even if only mentally.
Obama's long form birth certificate: it has been clearly demonstrated that the recently released certificate contains "kerning" a technical commuter word for a certain type of letter placement. This does not happen with typewriters but is a program for word processing. This in addition to other findings strongly suggests that this birth certificate is a fraud. Now add this to the Federal prosecution of Thomas Drake about which Democracy Now has a good presentation this morning. This prosecution so outrageously contradicts what is good government and a good judiciary that it reminds one of what often happened in Latin American countries with the usual dictators. This the world of the Godfather! Marlin Brando should be playing the president--too bad he is dead. Obama is the Mafia transformed into the Executive Branch. Where is the difference?
Obama and his origins: http://www.prisonplanet.com/birther-bombshell-corsi-to-release-evidence-proving-obama-certificate-a-fraudulent-composite.html
I just listened to this audio. I believe this is a truthful presentation of facts. Also on Democracy Now a good presentation of the case of Thomas Drake. This seems to be Godfather Three. Or Four. I can see no essential difference between the Executive Branch and the Mafia as portrayed over the years in films.
@AI
Regarding your analogy of being told that your father is a pedophile, I think a more apt one is being told that your father is the murderer of several neighbors whom the authorities had concluded were killed by members of the Hell's Angels during a home invasion. AI
I like your analogy much better, can I steal it?
@nanyar
Yes, teh internet, and it's capacity for meeting interesting people, networking, talking, promoting, lots more, has changed everything.
I've talked to B1 Pilots, a Marine base commander, Russian journalists, people from many nationalities. My tweets are now being followed by a TV station in Japan, god knows why. I actually make my living on the internets. Sometimes, Google sends me money.
And I do this while sitting at home with my wife and cats. Never mind how many cats. I will tell you that two of them are black, and neither had anything to do with 911.
Some days, I feel like I went through a time machine, this ain't Kansas anymore. I'll say it again, the internets are amazing.
@b
" it has been clearly demonstrated that the recently released certificate contains "kerning" a technical commuter word for a certain type of letter placement."
These people aren't stupid, I remember kerfuffle over kerning with Rather, they would too.
Bottom line? If the "gubbmint" who had faked that document, there would be no difficulty with the kerning or anything else, it would be perfect. Pure. No mistakes. The work of artists. Count on it.
I personally don't care about that so called issue. It is irresolvable either way. And in the end nothing would change. Compared to 911 Truth Obama, a mere employee, is of no consequence.
The Thing about Documents
Obama's birth certificate is a document.
Documents are real, or not real, as a matter of opinion -- or of provenance. They are not like a substance which either is X or it is not. There is nothing provable here. Not like 911, where there is evidence, witnesses, video, a mass of evidence that can be evaluated. And I do think that there is enough that the day will come when there will some kind of truth arrived at, for us all, and by us all.
Arguments over Obama's birth place can never be resolved to the level where there is mass consensus that he was actually born in Minsk, or wherever it is that he is s'posed to have been born.
Bill--we have a container which we wish to get into. The devise designed for the purpose is broken. You have suggested we use something call Truther; I agree. But there is no guarantee. So since there are plenty of us we should also give both Birther devices a go: one is place of birth; the other is "natural born citizen" --interestingly almost all legal scholars if pushed would have to agree it involves both place of birth and citizen parents. So lets have a go with all three. The most straight forward is "natural born citizen". Nothing to dig up or discover. It is right out there and accepted in the 19th century. Too many scholars were liberals and did not care enough. However, this depends on courts which sometimes do not work well. But only one person gets axed. With 9/11 it extremely complex. What do we say to Iraq and Afghanistan. Sorry, guys? Our mistake. It is hard to believe that even an honest president would willingly ungo that ordeal.
Bill Owen said...
@AI
Regarding your analogy of being told that your father is a pedophile, I think a more apt one is being told that your father is the murderer of several neighbors whom the authorities had concluded were killed by members of the Hell's Angels during a home invasion. AI
I like your analogy much better, can I steal it?
---
Bill,
By all means feel free to use it wherever and whenever you see fit.
Ken
@ Nanyar
Someone once said, it's not enough to be smart, you have to be clever.
Tactically, birtherism is poison. This is how anything about 911 gets smeared. It may be all true. It may be that Mr. Obama does not meet some esoteric definition under your very fine Constitution. What matter? Bush committed any number of impeachable offences and nothing happened. This is Chomskian uncontroversial. Besides, even he is not, that is not some huge historic crime. Who cares? Impeach maybe.
911 was a crime of historic proportions. We need a new investigation. Anything else is a distraction and will be used to detract what for me at least, is the main goal. A new investigation into what happened on Tuesday, September 11th, 2001.
For good or bad birtherism is a tar baby.
This is some good detective work, guys. So for many even considering that 9/11 was an inside job is equivalent to some terrible information about someone close to one. These are then people very attached to the current regime. What is that like? I suppose it would be healthy to examine the sorts of thoughts, events, informations that would lever one into the abyss at least for a while. (The Buddhist have something called the 9 Contemplations where you imagine yourself dead and then your body in various stage of decay. One also does that for loved ones and enemies.) These are quite ignorant people because governments have bad reputations. Certainly the Founders were not under any illusions. By the time of his death Madison was already considering that the experiment was failing. And that was around 1820.
Bill: no, just one Supreme Court ruling that came down on the side of the original meaning which is easy to come by, and Obama would be gone. No impeachments or ceremonies. MacCain would be in no doubt. However, I am surprised that the two can not co-exist. I agree about a new investigation. In the 1970's we finally had a new investigation of the Kennedy assassination. An unusual number of witnesses started dying. Or had already died. Some deaths were a bit strange and unexpected. But let us say there is one, and it turns out Al Qaeda could not have done it for obvious reasons. That would be the ideal outcome. But now ten years later the trail is rather cold and the Power Elite still controls most of the levers. Could this ever lead back to Bush without an explosion that would permanently damage this county's reputation? Would the Elites ever allow this? No, I do not think so. I regard a revolution as almost certain and necessary. But in the aftermath of that all things would change. Perhaps at that point.
Hi Bill,
LL here, about the birth cert you wrote:
"Bottom line? If the "gubbmint" who had faked that document, there would be no difficulty with the kerning or anything else, it would be perfect. Pure. No mistakes. The work of artists. Count on it."
What, perfect like a NIST report? They blatantly tell us that the tops crushed the lower buildings. But if you go and watch the vids you see no tops at all. And the absence of tops is blatant.
As it happens I don't thin k kerning is the problem it is rather that the entity on the White House site is in layers which it wouldn't be if it was a scan of a paper document. If you have Illustrator or Photoshop and you import it it tells you how many layers it is made up of.
Me, I downloaded it and merely looked at in in Windows default Fax/Photo App. When you zoom in or out in the brief time it takes to resize you can sometimes catch white patches on the doc as the app resizes the image layer by layer.
Why on earth it isn't perfect god only knows. One would have thought that they would have flattened the whole thing before release. But whatever reason they didn't. as a consquence what is shown on the White House site has the status of a "false instrument." (Can't quite say it is a forgery because we don't know whether the info on it is false. But they are "passing off" the one thing pretending it to be another thing.
London Lad here.
Nanyar & Associative Individual. When I said that those who believe a towers top could fall to the ground through the line of mast resistance at the same rate and in the same time as a top falling through empty air, had no right to criticize Creationists I was not having a poke at anyone here.
I'm just saying about the believers that if they deny Newton how can they criticise anyone who denies Darwin?
Truthers of course don't have that problem.
C'mon lad. Faking a document is just a little easier than explaining how a controlled demo was actually a "first time in history" collapse of a steel framed high rise due to fire. It's really easy these days for a skilled operator to fake up a document. Organizations like the CIA have warehouses full of old paper and documents from all over the world. Faking identities, hence documents, is their stock in trade. I find it very hard to believe that they could not do a perfect job, if job it was.
As I said in my last post, if you can prove that Obama was really born in Kenya, all that would happen is that he'll be impeached, or have to resign, to be replaced by someone just like him.
OTOH, if it can be demonstrated that 911 was a false flag op; wars (some at least) will end, we'll see some well known sallow faces on the gallows, (or peering out their Lexan® windows at the gathering mob), and American society will, no doubt, be violently restructured.
Did you watch the discussion on TVO? I was disappointed. The host was actually pretty good, he did let them talk. Unfortunately, the whole premise of the show, was a bit of a trap to force them to restrict the discussion to conspiracy theories per se. It's still good to see them not being treated as absolute loons as they would be on American TV. Zwicker was one of those who was very respected as a journo before he stuck his nose in the truther world.
Bill---Again no one can prove where Obama was born. All that needs be done is for the Supreme Court to declare the meaning of "natural born citizen". No impeachment; presidents are impeached, not pretenders. It is the Supreme Court's job to clarify laws. Very simple. It would be extremely difficult for the Supreme Court to get away with falsifying the actual meaning which is why they have avoided the matter thus far.
LL here,
Hi Bill,
I'm not saying Obama was born in Kenya and never have said Obama was born in Kenya.
I only go by the evidence that I can get my hands on. So forget any speculation about how well or otherwise you suppose the CIA could forge docs.
It is absolutely immaterial. Just go and download Obama's birth cert from the White House and process it through illustrator or Photoshop. Then you for yourself can see that the entity is made up of layers.
And that means that they are passing off that thing on the WH site as being a scanned copy of a paper cert WHICH IT IS NOT.
Leaving aside any other issues, here we have a case of the White House using deception to fool the people.
Why are they doing this?
I have no idea, but that they are doing so is easily shown.
Truthers: The good new is that 90% of the re-investigation of 9/11 has already been done and done well by Richard Gage and his group, David Ray Griffin, Stephen Jones, the Danish chemist, Loose Change and others! The remaining 10% of hidden videos, documents, wreckage from planes, could be done by a sincere investigation of the FBI in a month or two and added to the existing material. The total work would then need to be presented to an AUTHORITATIVE BODY,i.e The United States Congress or the Executive. But here is the rub. So far the President has clearly demonstrated his unwillingness to abide by the law unless it suits his fancy. "Looking forward, not backward" in itself represented a high crime. Federal Law as well as International Treaty requires the prosecution of suspected torturers. His declaration of having a right to execute American citizens without judicial review is another instance of his arrogant attitude. And Congress has to date been feckless. So only the true Sovereign can accomplish the work. Namely the American citizenry. That means a revolution. Who are the revolutionaries at this time? It would not have to be violent.
LL here.
Nan Yar.
You forgot to credit the real master Newton.
Laws of gravity and the Law of the Conservation of Energy give the lie to it all.
Which is why I love Newton the most.
NOBODY has any excuse to believe the false story. If they do believe it it is because they are pushing the truth away.
Greenwald seems to be losing it. Some poster called Obamania suggested GG didn't question US/Israel relations enough. Glenn quoted him:
Obamania
"Versus the silence on our much more damaging policies vis a vie Israel."
After which GG wrote:
"If you think I've been supportive of - or even silent about - U.S. policy toward Israel, you're either stupid, dishonest, or mentally ill. There is no other option."
Of course there is another option - Obamania just may not have seen or read any articles of Greenwald crittiing Israel.
Its also debatable as to whether the columnist himself should be levelling charges of stupidity, dishonesty and mental illness towards one of his readers. Poster v Poster yes but not the Columnist.
But this here takes the biscuit. this is him commenting about 9/11:
Saturday, May 14, 2011 09:52 AM ET
"Nobody has argued more vociferously than I that OBL should have been given a trial and the government forced to present its evidence to the world in a orderly adversarial proceeding."
At which fucking point the entire Truth Movement must have made a sharp intake of breath. That man Greenwald continuely described Osama as guilty even though many of us had presented a link for him to the now famous Ed Haas piece about the FBI having no evidence.
Yet he has the gall to claim the right to have called for a trial more than anyone else.
Anonymous: Newton, yes, but Newton was a cruel man. And something of a crank. Personally I am not fond of him though his science and mathematics were definitely monumental. So . . . we all agree here about 9/11. Now what? At Truthdig there is an excellent article by Cornell West. And how Obama betrayed West and his following. According to West who is black Obama prefers the company of white, upper middle class Jews--and I would add who possess a shallow brilliance(Dershwitz not Finkelstein). But Obama is a hungry ghost, a lost soul, rootless and amoral. As the preacher said: the black Anti-Christ.
LL here.
Nan Yar said:
"Newton, yes, but Newton was a cruel man."
And he'd be a fucking lot crueller still if he could see all the cretins ignoring his laws when it suits them to do so.
Anyone denying to themselves how the fucking world works is like spitting in the eye of the Lord. (and I'm not even religious)
And for that crime banishment from the garden and sent into the wilderness of Fascism is the right and fitting punishment.
Like Titonwan my patience for those who work at believing a false story has finally run out.
Anonymous: I have the impression now that Glenn's comment section tends to stir people up without much being thereby accomplished. The persons who can not take in the truth about 9/11 have some kind of attachments which get threatened by Truthers. I don't see much point in scaring them more. It is said that only 3% of Americans during the Revolution were actively supporting it. So if perhaps 9 million Americans actively support a rebirth of America's original values, then we are on our way. Most of the rest will follow when it is safe. If I assume you are a man then you have probably noticed that American men are not especially brave. If a woman you may already have given up on American men. Presently I do not think the Powers will review 9/11. As 2012 draws near though persons can make it an issue. The candidates feel weak at that time and eager to please. Maybe a significant number can be drawn into promoting a 9/11 review like the Tea Partiers did with the money area. The Truthers need though to take on a few other related issues like the precipitous entries into conflicts without declarations of war which is very much a part of 9/11.
LL wrote:
London Lad here.
Nanyar & Associative Individual. When I said that those who believe a towers top could fall to the ground through the line of mast resistance at the same rate and in the same time as a top falling through empty air, had no right to criticize Creationists I was not having a poke at anyone here.
I'm just saying about the believers that if they deny Newton how can they criticise anyone who denies Darwin?
Truthers of course don't have that problem.
----
LL,
First of all, thanks for sharing your thoughts and experimentation regarding Obamassiah's long-form birth certificate. May the issues raised by you and others cause him and his spin-doctors a thousand migraine headaches.
Secondly, I didn't think that you were aiming your assertion that those who question Newtonian Mechanics are in no position to question Creationism at anyone here, but were just offering it for general consideration, and my remarks to you were completely unrelated to your post re NM and Creationism.
I was alluding to your many posts at Salon in which you mounted brutal personal attacks on people who have been duped by the Obama-Cheney 9/11 Report, which attacks not only were not persuasive to their victims, but to uncommited observers, as well.
As I've shared with you several times over the years, we're in very basic agreement regarding the predations of the Amerikan Empire, including the (at best) stand-down on 9/11.
My suggestion to abandon the personal attacks was and is intended only to encourage more, rather than fewer, awakening responses with your interlocutors.
Best regards,
AI
London Lad here.
Nan Yar said:
"The persons who can not take in the truth about 9/11 have some kind of attachments which get threatened by Truthers.
"
Yeah, they are attached to a fucking lie. And that fucking lie leads to more fucking lies that people abroad are paying for with their lives. If they feel threatened by Truthers they damned well should do. The Truth Movement isn't the fucking Social Services. We are nor here to mollycoddle them. Its down to them to wake up like we woke up. Why on earth are you sympathetic to them?
Never minding politics and wars, they are denying to themselves the laws that govern the physical world fer Kerrists sake!
As fot the Truth Movement covering other stuff they do. And its the same water front as Greenwalds without Greenwalds suspect attitude to 9/11.
http://911blogger.com/
http://www.911truth.org/
Anonymous: Well, I tend to be sympathetic towards the weak--and these people are weak. In any case why waste good energy and time on these 9/11 Deniers. Yes, my area is filled with Deniers. But they shall have their reward!:( Think of all the threatening remarks made about sinners who do not repent in the New Testament. In this secular time they apply well to the selfish and the willfully ignorant. Given GG's position on 9/11 I now mistrust his other writing sensing that there is a hidden undercurrent that I should not trust. What about you?
Nan Yar
The weak are enabling the strong liars just by being weak and "believing" them.
Anyone who wont answer the question about tops, one falling through empty air, one through dense material, both reaching same fall time, are not answering with the wrong answer because it would make them look fools. They know the right answer but wont give it because they want to believe, or say they believe, the official story.
Therefore, they are not only weak but self deluding and dishonest with it.
Excuse me if I don't have sympathy with such people. Their weakness and dishonesty is the cause of 10's of thousands of lives being lost.
Fasists can't rule unless they ave a fascist compliant public.
A hall mark of a fascist compliant pop is weakness and self delusion.
I'm not here to gently lead them to the light, even if I were so presumptuous and wanted to.
THAT IS NOT WHERE THEY WANT TO GO.
Anonymous: So no sympathy for the Untruthers! Because you do not have presidential powers you can not summarily execute these persons or place them in indefinite detention. And they are on a long list miscreants: TSA, Homeland Security, The Patriot Act supporters; the pharmaceutical companies, the purveyors of bad food, water and air. The oil spillers, the Wall Street bankers and mortgage companies; the universities who put out third rate education--even those we call premier. The swat teams and the police that brutalize; the judges and legislators who create bad laws and fill prisons; the owners of private prisons; the supporters of the drug war and the other wars. The looters and despoilers of this country and many others. The plotters and planners of spreading democracy. And the list seems endless. In short all those vicious persons who have helped bring America to a condition and ruin and desolation. However, some who dwell in Denial have simply not encountered a Truther who will set them right. So there is a constructive project. Go forth and create missions of Truth.
Two aspects of 9/11: For almost ten years now I have been occasionally interjecting a discordant note into people's lives about 9/11 with very little success. Probably several people have swung around. If I had had the funds to buy DVDs that would have helped. Maybe a lot. However, recently I have been focusing on the fact that 9/11 has two distinct aspects: one is technical and has no appeal to those who are math and science phobes--and they are legion! The other is easy to grasp by anyone who has ever watched a detective film or TV series. It is the latter which is most easily presented and most persuasive. For example, let's say that Mike Brown has been found murdered. We know that Joe Smith was not fond of him. It is certainly okay for the police to question him--but if he says he knows about it and there is not a shred of evidence connecting him to the murder . . . well, there is no case. He can not be arrested. But this is exactly the situation with 9/11 and bin Laden. And this is easy to comprehend. Now why would they go to the trouble of the airplanes? Why not just blow the buildings up. And still blame bin Laden. I can tell you easily. Only an idiot would buy that one. First of all where does one get the nano thermite in huge quantities to bring down three massive buildings? And the access, etc. This conclusion would easily lead back to the perpetrators. And there you have it. So where does one in 2001 come by large amounts of nano thermite? Anyone pursue this lead? I don't know where to start. Something unrelated--checked over at Salon. You know one can spend a lot of unproductive time over there complaining. Nothing that goes on there is going to change anything. But 9/11 might. So unless the nano thermite has been pursued, that would be a good place to look. I believe there are only a few places, and they would notice if nano thermite in that quantity had been bought, stolen, or removed by authority. How much would it take? A demolition expert would know. Who to ask?
9/11--part II: The WTC area was never properly treated as a crime scene. NIST never looked for explosives though there were many reports of those, some even before the planes appeared. Probably some time after Bush's Inauguration a significant quantity of nano-thermite was procured somewhere and taken to a secure area where it was used to make hundreds of slant charges; these were then boxed and transferred to New York where they were placed on the supporting columns. Since elevator remodeling was in progress it was an easy access to these columns. Probably the detonators were keyed to a remote control computer. After all if the planes failed to arrive, it would be awkward to have three buildings come down for no reason. As it was the plane destined for building 7 never arrived and as the lessor of the building said, we had to pull it!! It is possible that the preparatory work of getting the nano thermite and the manufacture of the slant charges was done by persons who had no idea of what they would be used for--and still may not!! So only a small team of expert demolition experts were in the know. 50 or 20? To the best of my knowledge no one has really pursued the source of this thermite. Or have they? If they do it will lead to the culprits. The FBI could follow this lead in very short order--if they were really asked to. So the solution to this problem is easily at hand. The planes were a red herring. A ruse.
Hy'all London Lad here
Nan Yar wrote:
"To the best of my knowledge no one has really pursued the source of this thermite. Or have they? If they do it will lead to the culprits. The FBI could follow this lead in very short order--if they were really asked to. So the solution to this problem is easily at hand."
The feds have already been asked to investigate. They said they were sympathetic but then did fuck all.
Here is a letter from the FBI to Harold Saive of the Florida group "Gators for 9/11 Truth"
http://gators911truth.org/PDF/FBI-Response.pdf
So two small steps, either of which would bring the government down: either the Supreme Court makes an honest decision regarding "natural born citizen" or a genuine investigation taking very little time and money looks again at 9/11.
I believe that Christopher Bolyn is correct in his analysis implicating the Zionist element. We have to go back to the Nazis to find such a dedicated group. Two branches of the same consciousness. So the barrier has to do with Jews. Not all Jews, not all Israelis. But a special, very dedicated cadre. And who wants to be called anti-Semitic? Given the vast number of films. The vast number of articles and books. The museums. The considerable mass psychological programming. Interesting that the Rabbis of Central Europe were dead set against these characters who got along fine with Hitler. How many Jews owed to their death to the Zionists? And Obama is one of theirs. So between 9/11 and justice stand the Zionist cabal. And any effort to eliminate them even by Jews( the self haters) will be met with a vicious counter attack. A lot of black karma now rests with Israel and the Zionists. At some point it will begin to devour them. In the meantime, can anything constructive be done?
Excerpts from Chomsky's expanded remarks on OBL's murder:
http://www.zcommunications.org/my-reaction-to-osama-bin-laden-s-death-by-noam-chomsky[21]./
NC: "There has never been any reason to doubt what the FBI believed in mid-2002, but that leaves us far from the proof of guilt required in civilized societies and whatever the evidence might be, it does not warrant murdering a suspect who could, it seems, have been easily apprehended and brought to trial. Much the same is true of evidence provided since. Thus the 9/11 Commission provided extensive circumstantial evidence of bin Laden's role in 9/11, based primarily on what it had been told about confessions by prisoners in Guantanamo."(sic!) AI: Chomsky's ignorance of 9/11 phenomena is, well, phenomenal. In addition to his attributing credence to the farcical 9/11 Commission's Report, written and/or edited in its entirety by Philip Zelikow, a member of the Bush Administration who was Bush's and Cheney's second choice to engineer The 9/11 Whitewash, after Kissinger proved a little too controversial, there're also little things like the statement of FBI spokesman Rex Tomb:
"On June 5, 2006, the Muckraker Report contacted the FBI Headquarters, (202) 324-3000, to learn why Bin Laden’s Most Wanted poster did not indicate that Usama was also wanted in connection with 9/11. The Muckraker Report spoke with Rex Tomb, Chief of Investigative Publicity for the FBI. When asked why there is no mention of 9/11 on Bin Laden’s Most Wanted web page, Tomb said, 'The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Usama Bin Laden’s Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.'
"Surprised by the ease in which this FBI spokesman made such an astonishing statement, I asked, 'How this was possible?' Tomb continued, 'Bin Laden has not been formally charged in connection to 9/11.' I asked, 'How does that work?' Tomb continued, 'The FBI gathers evidence. Once evidence is gathered, it is turned over to the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice than decides whether it has enough evidence to present to a federal grand jury. In the case of the 1998 United States Embassies being bombed, Bin Laden has been formally indicted and charged by a grand jury. He has not been formally indicted and charged in connection with 9/11 because the FBI has no hard evidence connected Bin Laden to 9/11.'”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=2623
AI: With regard to the circumstantial evidence of OBL's guilt re 9/11 adduced by the 9/11 Commission, the CIA force-fed Hamilton and Keane what the CIA wanted them to believe. Hamilton and Keane, by their own admission, not only were refused access to KSM and other detainees, they weren't even allowed to observe their interrogation, which the CIA admitted (boasted?) involved waterboarding KSM 183 times. If Chomsky had actually read the 9/11 Commission's Report, he'd have known this. "Extensive circumstantial evidence of bin Laden's role in 9/11", indeed. This is the kind of ignorance on his part that explains why I've previously characterized Chomsky as a "9/11 naif." Having now read this, I think that characterization was too charitable: here we have not just manifest ignorance, but incredibly superficial thinking and sloppy analysis.
AI: Chomsky's belief that the attack on 9/11 was carried out at bin Laden's behest by 19 Arabs with box cutters and some jet fuel, with which they were able to pulverize the two 110-story WTC Towers, as well as the 47-story WTC Building 7 virtually defies belief.
I mean, I know al-Qaeda is evil, Noam, but are they THAT good?
http://www.plaguepuppy.net/public_html/collapse%20update/
Christopher Bollyn published the last two chapters of his book yesterday. If you haven't looked at it yet, do. It is another outstanding addition to the 9/11 investigations. You know Americans have lived happily for generations with a criminal government. Some may have speculated that the current depression would force changes. But I have my doubt. The change is slow enough that people are adjusting and making do. Eventually it will be a country with 80% of the population living near or below the poverty line. And spending most of their time just getting by. I don't see a rebellion under these circumstances. In the meantime the delusion of political parties and future Obama's promising change will keep every one mesmerized. For one thing does this large population of guilty by-standers really deserve anything better than those Latin American countries, those Middle Eastern countries, which it has exploited?
Chomsky's expanded remarks on OBL's murder were also published at CommonDreams.
I do think Chomsky's analysis, as usual, is trenchant and generally on target.
But Chomsky is a skeptic and contrarian who is comfortable accepting and promulgating official reports, sources, and accounts to the extent that they support his narrative.
He's not the only one who does this-- for instance, ostensibly independent investigative journalists like Seymour Hersch and Jeremy Scahill rely heavily on contacts and informants who provide "inside information".
That's a slippery slope; Establishment journalists like the tarnished Judith Miller and her former New York Times colleague Michael Gordon demonstrate the danger of winding up in the abyss at the bottom of that slope, leaving slime trails that are the envy of snails.
I don't mean to equate the latter with the aforementioned independent journalists and iconic scholars like Chomsky. I'm just noting the common denominator of their inclination to only selectively openly challege, distrust, doubt, and deconstruct official accounts.
They obviously are convinced that "picking" too readily or assiduously at generally-accepted scenarios would foul up their work, and ultimately their reputation.
Personally, I begrudge Chomsky on this proclivity more than the others-- not just because he is an icon, but because it's hard for me to reconcile his relative complacency with his advancement of the seminal concept of "Manufacturing Consent". I would feel better if he consistently acknowledged the problematic epistemological issues involved when relying upon official accounts in analysis and discussion.
As I cautiously commented on the "CommonDreams" thread, where even the mildest criticism of Chomsky can be excoriated, "I've found that it's essential to keep this characteristic in mind, because it's easy to forget it when perusing brilliant analysis. Even the finest tequila is better taken with salt."
LL here
Little Brother I found Chomsky to be odd.
He will still insist that there must have been some evidence against Osama even though he must have known that the FBI had none and hadn't charged him. So why Chomsky should call for a 9/11 trial for Osama defies logic.
Then he tries without citing source that Osama admitted it. But we know such tapes were false because had they been genuine the FBI would have used them to get an indictment out for Osama for 9/11.
But Chomsky's oddity doesn't stop there. He describes the tape/vid whatever of Osama admitting it as an empty "boast".
Which would then suggest that Chomsky is himself saying that Osama DIDN'T do it only boasted that he had.
His additional comments to his first statement are a confused sort of roll back/re affirmation of what he said.
The man needs to get his head sorted on this one. We are descending into tyranny and Chomsky bears a singular responsibility for not long ago sounding the alarm on the one matter that means the most.
LL here
In a radio interview at this site:
http://davidraygriffin.com/
Griffin says that one of the reasons they murdered this "Osama" was so that he wasn't alive to say that the vids/tapes of him admitting it were all false.
Griffin is by far the better "go to" man on this one than Chomsky ever is.
Noam Chomsky is I believe a decent man and well intentioned; however, he does at times get things wrong. I can think of one occasion in a book of his I read a few years back (sorry I can not now remember the title) where his information was second and third hand and quite inaccurate and misleading. The fact is though that Chomsky has had a very fortune life being a professor at a premier university none of whose professors of engineering or science apparently found anything amiss in the NIST report. So the academic world can be a barrier to understanding. How could Chomsky a linguist fault the NIST report when all his science colleagues seemly approved it. MIT? Well, those individuals are seeking grants and can not afford to ruffle corporations or the government. That is how it works. No, the re-investigation of 9/11 by private groups and individuals is quite conclusive. But it would take people like Chomsky and his colleagues at MIT and other top schools to wake up Congress. I don't see that happening. After all look at the Palestinians. Look at Israel and what it gets away with. The USA and Irael regularly demonstrate that might makes right. So Israe's right to exist is dependent on their might and nothing else. Likewise a thief has a right to the stuff he stole until someone with more might takes it away.
LL:
Upon further reflection, and after reading some more comments at the CommonDreams site, I think that my original reaction was too kind to
Chomsky.
You're right to take issue with Chomsky's equivocal discussion about bin Laden's guilt or culpability, especially his bald assertion that "There has never been any reason to doubt what the FBI believed in mid-2002", i.e. that "that 'investigators believe the idea of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon came from al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan, the actual plotting was done in Germany, and the financing came through the United Arab Emirates from sources in Afghanistan.... We think the masterminds of it were in Afghanistan, high in the al Qaeda leadership.'"
Chomsky goes on to note that "the 9/11 Commission provided extensive circumstantial evidence of bin Laden’s role in 9/11"-- but promptly correctly clarifies that this evidence is quite dodgy and unreliable.
Then, for good measure, Chomsky asserts "It is worth adding that bin Laden’s responsibility was recognized in much of the Muslim world, and condemned."
He seems to be arguing that all of the above is "uncontroversial", by way of offering the even-handed judgement that if Osama's likely guilt or involvement in the events of 9/11 is "uncontroversial", so too is it uncontroversial that both the Bush and Obama administrations have promulgated policies and authorized operations contrary to international law.
Unlike the Establishment "star reporters" I mentioned in my previous comment, Chomsky is not an odious self-serving careerist.
But I still think that Chomsky's radicalism is tempered with a certain moderation that preserves his security, and allows him to live to a ripe old age in a role or niche: the Establishment's "house radical".
And he isn't beyond manufacturing a little consent of his own in service of his position.
Point of order:
Bill, I know that you and AI have been wrestling with the curious non-appearance of AI's comments on this blog.
I haven't been keeping up with the trouble-shooting, but I posted a comment @ 2:09:00 PM EDT after receiving an e-mail notification @ 12:07 PM that "Associative Individualist has left a new comment on the post '9/11 Truth, Lies @ Salon':
Excerpts from Chomsky's expanded remarks on OBL's murder..."
My comments are posting fairly promptly, but I still don't see the AI comment that prompted my 2:09 response. I've deleted the long string of recent e-mails, but I think that AI's comments are coming to my e-mail but not showing up in the blog thread! I don't see them, anyway.
If AI is perusing this thread, I'd like to add that I should've paid closer attention to your criticisms in that comment. At the risk of compounding the confusion, I just now posted a response to London Lad that belatedly echoes some of the points you made in that 12:07 PM comment.
@ Little Brother and all
I've been out all day, just getting back. It's been a long winter in Ottawa, and the last couple of days have been the first two "shorts" weather days. So I've been out! Building a deck today. Great fun, the cats are NO help though.
Little Brother, I found AI's comment in my "spam" folder. Blogger does that. It explains the missing posts earlier.
A good discussion I see going on.
If Christopher Bollyn's latest book is correct, then Israel was deeply involved in the perpetration of 9/11.
And Chomsky is Jewish. Perhaps unconsciously he is trying to fend off this thought. Still a man with his connections probably KNOWS what happened as well as anyone not in the inner circles of power. If Chomsky approached the Palestine/Israel conflict with the same logic he approaches 9/11 he would be chanting about Israel's right to exist. Simply look at what happened to Goldstone. Is Greenwald Jewish? Ostracism can be frightening. Devout members of the American Civil Religion(and there are plenty of these at Salon)have real difficulty accepting criticism of America.
Bill Owen said...
@ Little Brother and all
I've been out all day, just getting back. It's been a long winter in Ottawa, and the last couple of days have been the first two "shorts" weather days. So I've been out! Building a deck today. Great fun, the cats are NO help though.
Little Brother, I found AI's comment in my "spam" folder. Blogger does that. It explains the missing posts earlier.
A good discussion I see going on.
21 May, 2011 9:17:00 PM EDT
---
Bill,
My posts' being in your spam folder explains why they weren't in your inbox, but not why they didn't appear in the blog thread.
And in my last post, I ran into the same thing that Little Brother had run into, namely, having to continually reduce the length of my post until it was acceptably short, no more than 4036 characters or thereabouts, but without being able to tell, as I was reducing it, how much more I needed to do so.
In other words, I may have eliminated sentences or even paragraphs unnecessarily, because the software doesn't tell you how long your current revision is. At Salon, the ware tells you how many words you have left to redact to meet the 1,000-word maximum, but here, you're flying in the dark in that respect.
I've continued trying to cope with the vagaries of "Blogger" so far because I want to discuss things with LB, LL, you, Anon, Nan Yar, and others, but not everyone who visits here may be as motivated as I am to persist through the difficulties posed by this inadequate software.
Have you given any more thought to switching to something better, such as Wordpress?
@Little Brother, 21 May, 2011 9:01:00 PM EDT:
If AI is perusing this thread, I'd like to add that I should've paid closer attention to your criticisms in that comment. At the risk of compounding the confusion, I just now posted a response to London Lad that belatedly echoes some of the points you made in that 12:07 PM comment.
---
I'm glad to see you write that, because those lapses on Chomsky's part that I pointed out strike me as being far from trivial.
I've started considering the possibility that these egregious lapses on his part regarding 9/11, including his infamous, "Even if it were true, which is extremely unlikely, who cares?" may be evidence that Chomsky is manifesting signs of aging.
In addition to the carelessness of his remarks that I noted in my earlier post that you reference, what he says in this video regarding both 9/11 and the assassination of JFK is why I started seriously wondering about his mental acuity:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIOA8Cyc4_Y
Hi AI
I'd like to do that. Sorry to hear about the trouble.
According to Blogger there should be no limits on post sizes.
There are two options, I can host it on WordPress or I can host it on my own site. I think I will go with my site. Bit of a job though, have to find the time. It's a good idea though. I will let you know what progress I am making. I was reading I can export the whole site should I choose. Hate to lose this group. If I do move I can post a link here so returning visitors can find the new location.
Good idea!
Bill
Bill Owen said...
Hi AI
I'd like to do that. Sorry to hear about the trouble.
According to Blogger there should be no limits on post sizes.
There are two options, I can host it on WordPress or I can host it on my own site. I think I will go with my site. Bit of a job though, have to find the time. It's a good idea though. I will let you know what progress I am making. I was reading I can export the whole site should I choose. Hate to lose this group. If I do move I can post a link here so returning visitors can find the new location.
Good idea!
Bill
---
Thanks for the timely and encouraging response to my last comment regarding Blogger.
Regardless of what Blogger states about post lengths, I spent an extra 25 minutes on my next-to-last post repeatedly excising one part of it after another until it was accepted for publication as being some 4,000 characters.
If there's anything I can do to help facilitate the transition to your own site, please let me know.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/is-the-us-driving-the-world-towards-world-war-iii-osamas-alleged-compound-how-many-seals-die
Above is an excellent summary article on 9/11 though the article's title does not reveal that but focuses on the bin Laden raid. Paul Craig Roberts is probably one of the very best allies for people like ourselves. Highly educated (PhD), one time assistant Secretary of Treasure, editor for Wall Street Journal, NYT, etc. and as conspiratorial as any of us. He is in his 70's. Very likeable man. I can't think of any area where I disagree with him. And he has plenty of courage. Maybe best to substitute Roberts for Chomsky. I would not want to underestimate Chomsky's Jewish background . . .Israel was a major player in 9/11. He may feel like he is too old to take on the American Jewish community. And he would be!!
Bill: Speaking of cat: the griffin (not David Ray Griffin yet) could be said to be part cat and part bird--I was thinking about my cat mating with a bird--a dangerous beast emerged. Cats would love to have wings. More seriously I believe a full disclosure regarding 9/11 would precipitate a revolution. It is hard to imagine the epic scandal that would result in the revelation that the CIA and Mossad were instrumental in the criminal deed. Of course I think the heads of state around the world knew or found out soon after the event. On the other hand, a revolution starting over something else, the economy, would lead to the disclosure. This would be such a threat to the Powers that they might resort to a new false flag which might be nuclear in nature. For all the above reasons this is a very touchy subject. There are cracks in the control structure everywhere. So soon we will either have to face a new disaster or find America in some real trans-formative condition. By the way I am used to writing less than 4000 so have only once had to edit. I have tried doing a part I and then a part II on longer runs of thought. And that works well in the meantime.
@AI
Yes, I really like Craig Paul Roberts. It's a testament to the power of media marginalization that smart, experienced people, are viewed as such "nuts".
Right now, I would say that it is the power of stigma that is the main obstacle to 911 truth.
One night, a few of years ago I was talking to Michael Enright a very well known and respected journalist. Enright could fairly be called a liberal or a progressive, he is certainly very smart. I was talking to him about doing a show on 911 and he said he was looking into it, had read Prof. Griffin, etc. Then his producer, Bob Khardi(sp) came over, all friendly like, Michael introduced me, but the second he figured out what we were talking about, he barked, "Bah!!", threw up his hands and stalked off.
Not surprisingly, Enright never did the show.
When the words 911 truth, equate to "nuts", how does one proceed?
Bill: We are seeing the power of the media in shaping the collective consciousness-- once a certain shape has been achieved it literally becomes very hard to think otherwise or act otherwise. Like a primary school class room controlled by the strict teacher (well, years ago). Something else now. The Palestine/Israel conflict: how often have you heard the expression Israel's right to exist. It is quite interesting to take the word right and follow it. For example, because I am a citizen of my small town I have a right to use the library. I can check out books once I verify my identity and as long as I abide by the rules. Simple. The right is conferred on me by the town and honored by the library. The line between privilege and right is vague. Now Israel to the extent that it has a right to exist derives that right from initially Great Britain in 1916 and the USA in 1948. The UN laid out boundaries which Israel has ignored and violated. Now let us turn to Israel--the Israelis use the word with a hidden metaphysical meaning which is not uncommon among other persons. "God given rights." Though also conferred, in this case by God. However, the Zionists were atheists and regarded Abraham as a mythical figure. When they demand that Hamas recognize their right to exist they are making a reference to the metaphysical aspect. It is quite confusing. It is like the thief who steals jewels and then demands the rightful owner to honor the thief's right to the jewels. But by covertly using right in the second sense it has a certain hidden value. Strictly speaking at most Israel was to be given a homeland within Palestine ( and we can question the right of Britain to be giving away land in Palestine). Clearly Israel has abused the opportunity. And then Hamas or the PLO becomes a terrorist organization whereas the real terrorists are Israeli Zionists. Obviously right and might are connected.
An excellent book for understanding the psychology of now is THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY by Peter Berger. I am amazed how Monday's event with all the possibilities it has of being mis-characterized becomes Tuesday's fact. By Wednesday anyone who doubts it is crazy. And by Thursday the incredulous are ranked as conspiracy theorists. Quite a process. If as many of us believe, the Mossad played a major role in 9/11 then the Israel government is going to pressure the (in many instances) Jewish controlled American media to avoid areas of doubt regarding 9/11. How simple. One's picture of the world is make up out of among other things these news repetitions. Over the years it becomes one's this is the world in pictures, words and emotions. Rarely doubted but often filled with erroneous information and often complete fallacies of every sort. And then because so much suppression and repression is needed to maintain this fantasy world, it is time for psychiatric medication.
LL here:
"Reason to Laugh Manically."
Read an engrossing article about life in a US forces mortuary team working in one of the theatres of Cheney's wars.
The kids get little training and no preparation before being sent out there to deal with stuff worse than any nightmare. Works as hard as in a Chicago meat packing plant. But though the meat's human, with corpses coming in from all directions in all sorts of conditions there is no time for reflection let alone tears.
They keep 'em busy so that there is no time for having nervous breakdowns - until of course one happens.
Part of the processing of the bods before the FEDX of Death back to Dover is the collection of personal belongings.
In the pocket of one young & dead soldier they found a sonogram picture of its un born kid.
A Poem:
Unnamed
Corpse in uniform on the table , a
sonogram of life not
yet born inside the pocket
Not even like ships in
the rough night of existence will
they ever pass each other.
More now like souls crying
in the fastness of the void
Where is my son?
Where is my father?
@Nanyar
22 May, 2011 12:03:00 PM EDT
You raise so many excellent points, I don't know where to start.
Do you really think that other world leaders really were informed or somehow knew?
I know we had the former German cabinet minister who said early on in 02 that official story was a "fraud". It's likely that any functioning and reliable intelligence service like say the FSB or MI6 would have been of the opinion it was a false flag op.
Von Bülow said that "the official story is so wrong, it must be an inside job."
Von Bülow discussed the special software programs that allow the CIA to track suspicious stock market movements in real time. Record put options placed on United and American Airlines in the week before 9/11, a speculation that the stock would crash, clearly indicated inside foreknowledge of the impending attack.
"If the stock market has very strange movements immediately they take care of this and they had a lot of tapes and the lawyers told the people destroy these tapes."
"I would hope that one 'new Pearl Harbor' is enough," said Von Bülow, "but I cannot be sure."
Von Bülow also touched upon the implausible collapse of the buildings.
"The towers came down in the velocity of free fall which is totally impossible, they fall down in 8, 9, or 10 seconds, the pancake theory is ridiculous," he said.
Von Bülow also highlighted the fact that there were 67 successful intercepts of errant aircraft in the year of 2001 before 9/11 and yet four planes were allowed to veer wildly off course without any being intercepted on that one day.
When asked precisely which parties carried out the attack Von Bülow said it must have been a "very small group" within the CIA with the help of Saudi Arabian and Pakistani secret service intelligence.
http://j.mp/jFtELx
*technical note to anyone having publishing problems.
A little trick I use everywhere is this. Just before I hit publish on a comment, I key cntrl A to select everything, then cntrl C to copy it into memory. That way, even if your comment goes south somehow, you can try to post again and simply paste the text into the new comment box.
Saved my life many times.
Bill--Well, it would be hard to believe that Tony Blair was left in the dark. And I imagine the French had hints . . . Maybe others before hand or soon after. Remember this was presented as sacrifice a little now in order to save many later. Also I think the gap between our fellow man and the type of person who is tough enough to acquire real power is greater than we realize. I have spent quite a bit of time studying psychopathy. Hannibal Lector is a very extreme type and misleading generally. Some psychopaths have no interest in becoming serial killers; instead they become doctors, professors, lawyers, politicians, etc. They marry and have children. They lack in varying degrees the sense of empathy which prevents some of us from even killing spiders. And certainly not abusing cats, dogs, etc. These persons have to learn about feelings. Like a color blind person. Take the NPR daily "Talk of the Nation". Neil Conan is very artful as a presenter of the news. He is very good at deflecting adverse comment from callers. His voice is great at achieving just the right tone for soothing and so on. Not that he is a psychopath, but his sort of journalism can protect our kind of government from the excessively curious listener. It keeps us naive. What is the mentality of someone who almost daily sends drones into Pakistan and kills numerous civilians? Not someone you would want for a next door neighbor. So when the USA has some scheme up its sleeve, it can count on a knowing type of person in say Pakistan or Britain or Italy. These various heads of state may object but they are not shocked nor do they go to the news with guess what George Bush has suggested. They have plenty of their own dirty underwear. It is like a used car salesman convention. Trading tricks of the trade. This is the only way I can account for world happenings. All powerful persons have skeletons in their closets which if they get out of line will be brought forth by the "law biding" officials who want to get rid of them!! I wish I were wrong.
*technical note to anyone having publishing problems.
A little trick I use everywhere is this. Just before I hit publish on a comment, I key cntrl A to select everything, then cntrl C to copy it into memory. That way, even if your comment goes south somehow, you can try to post again and simply paste the text into the new comment box.
Saved my life many times.
Government Official Who Makes Perfectly Valid, Well-Reasoned Point Against Israel Forced To Resign
MAY 20, 2011 | ISSUE 47•20
http://www.theonion.com/articles/government-official-who-makes-perfectly-valid-well,20499/
LL Here:
Couple of articles perhaps shedding a different and more credible light on the Osama raid.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28110.htm
http://www.vdare.com/roberts/110517_seals.htm
LL
And I've just found this in The Washington Post no less.
Steven Jones being quoted without being sneered at.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/report-of-bin-ladens-death-spurs-questions-from-conspiracy-theorists/2011/05/02/AF90ZjbF_story.html
"7/7 Ripple Effect" ---this treats a nice toned down version of 9/11. The author speculates that it was planned and executed--just as we surmise was the case with 9/11. Presumably Tony Blair had some of that same interest in doing a little now to save the multitudes of the future. {http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8756795263359807776#} Could it be that our normal distaste for lies causes us to naturally doubt that persons holding high offices could be liars? Of course those psychologists whose specialty is studying the mass collective mind and groups would know this and would be able to provide government and corporations with all sorts of information on how to deceive people. The recent involvement of psychologists in the torture programs show these individuals to be quite happy to share what they know. We do know that government is in the business of control; and this sort of mind control is certainly cheaper than what the Soviet Union engaged in. There everyone knew the government was lying--but feared the police state apparatus. And they were unarmed. In any case it is amazing some of the parallels between 7/07/05 and 9/11 like the mock drills carried out. The video is excellent!
So: considering both 9/11 and 7/7, I speculate that should there be any sort of resistance in the USA or Great Britain to continued military action or spending, we could expect another of these actually fairly crudely done false flags. Given the extensive power of the government it also seems like any overt attempt to stop them in any way would be met with violence. Therefore, it seems to me like the only way and perhaps the best way after all is to gain a very thorough grasp of what makes them tick. What is motivating these persons? At times like this one begins to feel some sympathy for persons who imagine that they are aliens!! Or perhaps less fantastic members of some cult or cabal that has persuaded itself that it has some other worldly mission. Currently I certainly don't know. But it seems insane really. There must be some historical precedents, some mad kings or rulers in the past who became possessed by megalomaniac ideas.
Bill,
I just wanted to mention that washingtonsblog.com has some interesting articles, with many internal links, regarding 9/11. The author also does a really good job of covering the banking issues and things like fukushima and the BP oil spill. Great blog.
Yesterday, he wrote a new post on the ease with which anyone could access the buildings to wire them with explosives.
See here:
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/05/no-it-wouldnt-have-been-impossible-to.html
Check his archive for other articles.
Best,
Teri
LL Here:
teri49. This is what needs noting from the link you provided. All the elevator mechanics got out.Funny that eh?
Elevator mechanics left the buildings.
"Eighty elevator mechanics were on duty in the towers that morning, many just a few steps from people who needed rescue. However, the mechanics, fearing for their safety, evacuated on their own initiative when the south tower was struck at 9:03 a.m. A supervisor from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owned the World Trade Center, radioed the mechanics about 45 minutes later to say firefighters needed their help. The south tower collapsed as two supervisors were on their way back."
7/07/05 clearly used the same template as 9/11 but may be easier to sort as we are not English. It is so obvious that the Mossad were big players and that in each instance the investigation was abominable. Can anyone imagine what it would take to get a real investigation going? Can we guess just how many key witnesses would mysterious die? But you know the truth slowly diffuses in the subconscious of the society and after a while no one believes the official story, often without knowing how they came to hold that position. This happened with the Kennedy assassination and to some extent with his brother's and Martin Luther King's. So in that sense the fine research is already having a profound effect. But whether it can surface is another question. The current regime is so corrupt that it is starting to make some rather blatant mistakes like the phony birth certificate and the questionable Pakistan raid. Again I think election time is when politicians are most vulnerable, so I would say between now and November 2012 will be the best time for years to come.
Here is an excellent article by Chris Hedges who is clearly one of the good guys: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/why_prophets_like_cornel_west_make_liberal_sell-outs_attack_20110523/
Really answers the question as to why the liberals do nothing.
@nanyar
Chris Hedges is very good. I just read his book "War is a force that gives us meaning". I read all his his articles and have watched him on the youtube.
This quote from the article, Why Liberals attack Cornel West, could just as easily be talking about 911 truth issues. As to accept the fact rather than the myth is to give up pretty much everything that the average American believes about the power and the glory of his nation.
To accept that Obama is, as West said, a mascot for Wall Street means having to challenge some frightening monoliths of power and give up the comfortable illusion that the Democratic Party or liberal institutions can be instruments for genuine reform. It means having to step outside the mainstream. It means a new radicalism. It means recognizing that there is no hope for a correction or a reversal within the formal systems of power. It means defying traditional systems of power. And liberals, who have become courtiers to the corporate state, must attempt to silence all those who condemn the ruthlessness and mendacity of these systems of destruction. Their denunciation of all who rebel is a matter of self-preservation. For once the callous heart of the corporate state is exposed, so is the callous heart of the liberal class.javascript:void(0)
@London Lad
I had not seen that bit about the elevator mechanics. That's very interesting. There was a lot happening in those elevators. Remember the huge fireball that blew up the lobby? There is also the testimony from William Rodrigues about massive explosions in the basement prior to the collapse. In a sane world, someone like Rodrigues would be considered a mensch. He was a 20 year responsible employee, someone with real integrity, normally someone like him would a golden witness --unimpeachable. But in the our topsy turvy "mainstream" world, he's a nut, a freak, a liar, a publicity hound. Makes me sick.
Maybe 911 is like one of those trick pictures with the hidden images, you can't see it till you see it, but once you do, you can never unsee it.
http://www.spfzero.net/illusions/hiddenfigure.htm
Hi Teri
Thanks for that link, I will check it out. Nice to see you here!
Clifton Stewart dead at 91.
So who is Clifton Stewart? Former electrician and volunteer firefighter in Charlottetown PEI, that's who!
Oh, and a spy for the OSS during WWII, a communications specialist. A man who knew things, and a man who knew how to keep his mouth shut.
What did he know? Inter alia that "we" knew ahead of time about Pearl Harbor but "let it happen" to get America into the war. You know, all that stuff, that "could never happen" in teh real world, cause, as Chomsky says, it would be "too risky".
Very interesting guy, listen to the whole interview with him by CBC, by clicking on the link to the audio file at the top left of the page. Like a good doggie, the interviewer just slides right past the Pearl Harbor story. Why not? It's only one of the biggest deep politics stories of the last century. And now 's dead.
http://j.mp/lRW8bO
Bill--very interesting interview. And the interviewer was both sweet and funny!!:) Most Americans are still in the dark about Pearl Harbor. Interesting contrast between Canadians and Americans. The Lusitania was also a false flag. The British were flying American flags on their ships. The German Embassy warned potential travelers about the Lusitania but of all the newspapers they sent warning to only one in Iowa published it. Churchill was head of the Admiralty at the time and was keen on America's entry into WWI. I suppose if we knew all the dirty stuff that has gone on we would have no patriotism, no use for our leaders and feel rather despairing about life on this planet. So persons take as much as they can and go into denial. In America that happens quite soon. A touch of darkness and the TV goes on, the beer is opened and pro sports saves the American male!
LL Here
"Eighty elevator mechanics were on duty in the towers that morning, many just a few steps from people who needed rescue. However, the mechanics, fearing for their safety, evacuated on their own initiative when the south tower was struck at 9:03 a.m."
Funny how none of any of these "engineers" were up above the impact point when the plane crashed wasn't it? Inspecting the upper most wheel house I'd have thought would be part of routine early morning business.
Think I'll try and check whether the "engineers" in the N Tower were so fortunate as well.
Bill,
Hi, back! Re: washingtonsblog.com (be sure to note the "s" - it's washingtons, not washington). I have no time these days to be adding much to any discussion, but I really, really recommend that website as a good source of information and thoughtful articles. His archives are chock full of 9/11 information, and he writes about it frequently enough that you may want to add him to your blogroll.
I also wanted to point out something about the NIST report. NIST is frequently given assignments much in the same fashion that the Congressional Budget Office is; to write a report based on certain perameters. In other words, the perameters are a given and the research cannot stray from them, even if, in some cases, the perameters make no sense. This is how the CBO comes up with silly reports like they did on ObamaCare - they were told, pretend that insurance premiums stay the same forever and unemployment doesn't rise above its current levels...- well, you see how that would skew the numbers.
In a similar fashion, NIST farms out the hypothetical problem piecemeal, one department working on only one part of the experiment and another department working on something else related to it, with the whole then put together as a "report" by somebody way up on the food chain. I am sure there are some NIST scientists who are completely baffled to find out what the finished report looks like.
I know that back in the 50's and 60's, the US was trying to figure out ways to make a "better" (i.e., more destructive) bomb than the one we dropped on Hiroshima. The inherent problems with building such a thing were given to disparate departments, who each had no idea what the whole would be used for until each piece of the puzzle was finally brought together to result in the massive nukes we have today. A few scientists in the physics department, for instance, had only been told that the government needed a metal which could withstand certain temperatures. That was all they were told, and so they worked away at this theoretical problem until they came up with something.
It's not a defense of NIST, just a note of interest. I don't know how much of this farming out was done in the 9/11 report, but I do know it is common practice.
-Teri
@Nanyar, yes, that was a very interesting interview and well done. I am a big CBC fan. Unfortunately they too have been co-opted in many ways. They are NOT the "old" CBC. Like so many things, the changes started on a certain day...
I mentioned the article for 2 reasons. It has a highly credible (imo) source who flatly states that Pearl was LIHOP. (Like Coventry!) So, it's a good, fairly recent, example of how our shadowy masters will decide, in their wisdom and mastery, to let a few of the herd die to save the many. Because that's what I think happened here, the people who did this thought that they were acting in America's best interests. That's irony, the 911 op was done for the finest reasons I am sure, these were super-patriots; whose only fault is that they see more clearly than us.
The other thing of interest for me, was how Stewart kept his mouth, kept it shut good.
None of the people involved in 911 thinks that they did anything wrong. You can bet on that. Men like that, weird versions of Stewart, don't talk.
One question to which I have been pursuing the answer for some time is: do the script writers for films and TV series have an agenda of their own which they often slip by the producers? For example, some time ago there was an excellent Canadian TV series called "Intelligence". Really one of the very best. And then it vanished. It turns out that it was too accurate of current behind the scene events. So political pressure was brought to bear. The series had a lot to do with corrupt business and equally corrupt American and Canadian government agencies. There have been others. In many cases the "fiction" is closer to the truth than our normal news sources. A long time ago the famous author Joseph Conrad wrote two very political novels: THE SECRET AGENT and UNDER WESTERN EYES. These were as much based on imagination and intuition as anything and were remarkably accurate portrayals. Writers have often very keen minds and see things most miss. It is not surprising that when they go to write a script or a novel that they will end up spilling the beans in a fictional context. Writing is the least expensive art form. It is also the one most detested by tyrants. There are many great stories of writers slipping around dictatorial walls and keeping subversives inspired. In any case it is interesting to view films that lay out very clearly the deep corruption of the USA. But then it is fiction so what can be done--besides dropping the series, though by then it is a bit too late. What do you think?
@Nanyar. Two of my favourite spy novels, right up there with Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers.
Do you remember the anarchist character who constantly walked around wired to explode? I can't recall his name.
Big news.
Boston Patriot has issued Glenn a challenge on 911.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/05/what-glenn-greenwald-will-be-interested.html
H/T the indefatigable Frank1
Bill--too many years have passed. The one thing I remember from one of the novels, I think UNDER WESTERN EYES, was the fellow losing his hearing when someone clapped both his ears. Broke the ear drums. Another some what related novel is MAN'S FATE by Malraux which came to mind regarding assassination. There is one at the beginning of that novel which impressed me greatly--but even that has faded to just an impression. I read a great deal and later on I have these feeling impression. I suppose it is a kind of storage idea--but then if I wait a while details come back slowly over time. So it is all still there if I really need it.
@Nanyar,
The Secret Agent, "The professor"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Agent
Funny, it was the deliberate deafening of the police spy that stuck with me too.
LL here
Interesting article challenging Greenwald there Bill. However it is far too wordy.
Greenwald needs only be asked whether he really believes that a towers top can "fall" down on that below crushing it into fine dust at a rough rate of ten floors per second and still arrive on the deck in a free fall time of 10 seconds.
If he said yes he would be shown to be mad. If he answeed correctly and said no he would instantly be a truther.
But Greenwald never will answer that question. And he wont answer it because he damned well knows what the right answer to it is but doesn't want to give it because he has decided for whatever seamy reason not to side with the Truthers.
That's a bad long term miscal by him. History is not on his and Chomsky's side.
So when critical mass happens and he finally decides to declare himself it will be too late. No one by then will be interested and will in fact have contempt for him for only changing when the band wagon came around.
He'll have shown himself not to have done what he all along should have. He should have lead from the front.
Liberals in the United States are a funny bunch. After a while it is easy to predict their responses. Still I was disappointed to see Alexander Cockburn (Counterpunch.org) joining the herd in criticizing Cornell West. Much like Joan Walsh at Salon. So I have to go to Truthdig and persons like Chris Hedges to get away from these strange and distorted characters. Cockburn and the Counterpunchers also buy into the New Age Physics. I really am not sure what they are up to. In many ways they are the counterparts to the stuff coming from the Right. Amazing and deluded ideas about Islam, Israel, healthcare, etc. Some are military and very happy for their pensions, health care situation and so on. At a distance it is not easy to tell whether it is an American liberal or conservative. They remind me of the two helpers that attach themselves to K the surveyor in Kafka's THE CASTLE. I can handle the man or woman on the street who thinks 9/11 was as the Elite say it was; but when someone who has a big site goes that way, I lose respect for him or her. It is like driving on a decent highway and then with no warning one hits a vast hole.
If anyone cares to look: http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/2008/GhostWTC.pdf
Looks mighty suspicious to me.
Frank McElroy
Perhaps Glenn Greenwald's problem and that of many other liberals is simply this: "Ambition is the last infirmity of noble minds.”
A good quote in any case. For some reason I thought it was Milton but apparently not.
"At the end of World War II, an unprecedented shifting of populations took place in eastern parts of central Europe, as Germans became pawns shuttled to and fro at the whims of the victors and their deal-making. But the people fleeing the Red Army were unaware that the Allies had already agreed with the Polish government-in-exile to hand over large parts of eastern Germany to Poland and resettle the Germans who were living there.
All those who didn't manage to escape in time fell victim to the frenzied expulsions that were carried out until July 1945. The organized resettlement of Germans and ethnic Germans from Germany's former eastern areas and the Sudetenland began in January 1946. In all, some 14 million Germans lost their homes."
--One of those vast events swallowed up by time and national amnesia. So it is little wonder that a few thousands people and three buildings hardly register in the collective unconscious. --
"A woman from Heiligenbeil (today's Mamonovo) remembers freight trains packed with refugees from Masuria in what is now northeastern Poland, all of whom had had to stand for days on end. "Pregnant women who had given birth had frozen to the floor. The dead were thrown out of the windows." There were equally horrific scenes out on the streets: Families with horse-drawn carts, handcarts or just their suitcases in their hands dragged themselves through blowing snow and icy winds, far too weak to move out of the way if a Russian T-34 tank rolled into their convoy, as they sometimes did." --from Spiegel Online by Christian Habbe
To imagine Americans to be any more humane would be a great mistake. Whoever was behind 9/11 probably lost no sleep . . .
SPIEGEL ONLINE: A Time of Retribution
Paying with Life and Limb for the Crimes of Nazi Germany--http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,759737-5,00.html
After WWII intellectuals in America, England, etc. did their best to make a case for atrocities being an ethnic capacity unknown to the Allies; well, at least Britain, America, etc. A great deal of what went on during and after the war was hidden from the public in North America--and soldiers were rather silent. The reason I regard the above article as so important is that it points out just how violent, cruel, and inhumane people can be and on a grand scale. We know that but tend to forget understandably. Of course now we have had Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan . . . Given this rather readily available resort to the unthinkable, the current drift to tyranny in America is something to fear and take action regarding. Though I am not sure what kind of action.
9/11: after reading the excellent article "We've gone from a Nation of Laws to a Nation of Powerful Men Making Secret Laws" at Washington's Blogg, it is all too easy to see why there was no investigation of 9/11 and why what did occur was just for show and to shut the survivors in New York up! The author of these articles is an admirer of Greenwald's but clearly not someone that Greenwald would want to chat with. Could Glenn be protecting someone? And Chomsky?
@nanyar
That's a very good point about what "we" did to the Germans AFTER the war. The idea that Cheney, intelligence elements within the CIA/Mossad and the PNACer's would recoil at a few thousand peasant deaths is absurd.
The Nazi's are typically allowed to be portrayed as some kind of unique evil, when of course they were just run of the mill powerful, power mad, humans. As is well documented, the use of collective punishment, targeted killings, torture and massive domestic surveillance were all hallmarks of the Nazis. Which leaves us with the mass murder of the Jews vs the mass murder of the Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians and then, later, South and Central Americans and now of course, Arabs by the trainload.
There used to be a commercial on TV, it was two twin guys looking at a shirt washed in the leading brand vs their brand. The first twin would say, looking at the shirt, "I don't see a difference, do you see difference?".
I look at the Nazi white shirt and the American one washed in exceptionalism, and I don't see the difference either. They both came out braun.
Then there were the "other losses" ... http://j.mp/jZvhNA
OTHER LOSSES - James M. Bacque
Mr. Bacque is to be congratulated for publishing this book which describes the fate German soldiers who had surrendered to General Eisenhower's forces at the end of WWII. They had expected to be treated according to the Geneva convention governing the conduct of armies in regard to captured enemy personnel. This was not to be the case. As Mr. Bacque points out an entire new category of "Disarmed Enemy Forces", DEF, was created. Its only purpose was to avoid having to feed and house these millions of ex-soldiers and thereby bypass the Geneva convention to which America was a signatory. One may argue about the precise numbers of ex-soldiers who died in these "temporary enclosures" but the fact that inhuman treatment did exist cannot be denied. Neither can the fact that a considerable percentage of them was subsequently given to the French for what is called today "slave labor," albeit this term refers nowadays only to non-German nationals.
Bill--Here is an outstanding Canadian doctor at Democracy Now today. http://www.democracynow.org/2011/5/30/dr_gabor_mat_on_the_stress
Dr. Gabor Maté on the Stress-Disease Connection, Addiction, Attention Deficit Disorder and the Destruction of American Childhood
This may be one of the things lying at the bottom of the global crisis. I believe the problem he addresses began during the Vietnam War--or rather got a strong new surge of energy. I believe you and others here would find this an interesting asset in analyzing the political scene.
Memorial Day: Boulder County, Colorado. One of the best places in America to weather through the depression and political chaos. But still . . . so this morning I go out to buy a few groceries. I see my neighbor who quit alcohol a year ago. He has put about 30 lbs on an already solid body. Now days he only waves at me. He used to want to talk to me. He has been a mortician, a bar tender, and now an electrician. He has ADHD. Goes to a mega church and loves pro football. Votes Republican and fears terrorists. He could never accept Bush as an accomplice of 9/11. He is fairly typical. He is middle aged and like many American men of his generation. When he was young he took psychedelics. He's okay with astrology and psychic phenomenon. But he will not join any revolution. America is fine absent the Democrats. He is an ideal citizen!! He is just what the ruling class has been after. I used to kid him about what we would do in the concentration camp. He likes to gamble. I think those sorts of remarks by me troubled him some. And there are the Democratic versions of my neighbor. Actually someone like Glenn Greenwald would probably get along better with him than with me. A lot of American men sort of wasted their youth: drugs, alcohol, womanizing, various jobs, skiing, rock climbing, started families and divorced. They stayed on a fairly worldly level and lived the American dream. I talk to their women. The women are angry and have given up on them. And of course there are the richer more educated versions as well. But the inner differences are not so great. What they would all like is more power and money. There is a kind of logic then about the wars; they satisfy some deep need to do something with the anger.
@nanyar
Thanks for all the great comments. Sorry I haven't been able to address them all, I will!
I did find something today which I found interesting and it may offer some insight into the mind of a "true believer". It was in an interview with one of the men who killed Trujillo.
In a letter to his State Department superior in October 1960, Henry Dearborn, de facto CIA station chief in the Dominican Republic, wrote: "If I were a Dominican, which thank heaven I am not," I would favour destroying Trujillo as being the first necessary step in the salvation of my country and I would regard this, in fact, as my Christian duty."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-13560512
I wonder what the Station Chief at NORAD thought his "Christian duty" was on September 11th, 2001?
@Teri
Nice to see you here!
I agree about NIST. One of the biggest problems facing an alternative hypothesis for 911 -- is the number of people involved. As that number goes up, the likelihood that it was an inside job goes down. And then, when people start saying things like "NIST was in on it", the whole inside job argument gets even weaker.
It's likely what you said; the problem would be broken down, segmented, and sent out in pieces for various small groups to work on. Each of them would be given certain parameters to work under. No need for them all to know how mendaciously their managed research data would be misused to explain the unexplainable. Large organizations, especially government ones, are like that anyway. Where I used to work, we had a "research section", run by a Phd of course, whose job it was was to research the efficacy of various programs. Well, guess what, they were all "wonderful" -- even when they weren't! I imagine the 'good' scientists at NIST don't need a weatherman to see which way the wind is blowing either.
'New charges' for 9/11 suspects held at Guantanamo
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was sent to the Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba in 2006
Guantanamo trial for 9/11 accused
US military prosecutors have filed new charges against self-described 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators held at Guantanamo Bay, reports say.
The charges are expected to be formally unveiled later on Tuesday.
All five defendants had previously been charged at Guantanamo over the attacks.
But the charges were set aside as the Obama administration tried to move the trial into US civilian courts, a move which was reversed in April.
Each of the five suspects will be handed at least eight charges, which include murder in violation of the law of war, attacking civilians, hijacking aircraft and terrorism, according to a letter notifying families of 9/11 victims quoted by news agency AFP.
The defendants will be arraigned within 30 days, after a judge has been assigned to the case and officers are selected to form the tribunal, AFP reported.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13609163
Bill-- Interesting development. A good question now is this: are these men being tried as criminals? Soldiers who have committed war crimes? What is the difference between a criminal and a terrorist? Between a soldier and a terrorist? Given the current kill ratio of 1 combatant to 9 civilians, by some estimates the US Military has killed at least one hundred thousand Iraqi civilians. But no one is talking war crimes. And your example of Gen. Eisenhower changing the designation of German soldiers so that he could avoid the Geneva Conventions -- well, Geo W. pulled something similar at Gitmo. This is a word game. Perhaps the instigators of 9/11 worked a few Arabs into the plot so that there would be guilty parties later on--or the potential for that. It is hard for me to believe these characters had anything to do with the crime. Or was it the war event of 9/11? Finally we are forced to say that might which the USA has determines what will be called just.
Speaking of crime and criminals, the other day park police arrested some people for dancing at the Jefferson Memorial. Watching the video it is easy to see that a crime was committed--by the police. They invented a crime and that gave them an opportunity to express some brutality and further degrade themselves. But that's typical American behavior. Read some articles or watch a video at Al Jazeera and one sees all sorts of crimes committed by the President and Congress in other parts of the world. Killing civilians can't be viewed any other way. Casual crimes of the United States government. We are so used to high public officials perpetrating crimes that we take it for granted. The way of the world. What do you say to some one who informs you that the Mafia is a criminal organization?
Legal theft: something that we perceive and after reflection conclude is theft--but we then discover that it is legal. A great deal of this goes on and has gone on in America for a very long time. During times of prosperity the contented citizen ignores these things unless they directly touch on his affairs. When the good times depart, then legal theft becomes a reason to protest. We are just approaching that point in a big way in America now. The drug war has made many a person wealthy while leaving the raison d'etre of the war much like it was. Banking is another vast instance.
New research on 9/11--THE BLACK EAGLE TRUST FUND: http://www.wanttoknow.info/911/black_eagle_trust_fund
This is a very detailed account. It goes back to the Reagan Administration. Another major benefit bestowed by 9/11.
Note: For what may be the most powerful single piece of evidence corroborating this theory, click here to read the Reuters news service article on the massive volume of electronic financial transactions conducted from inside the WTC just before the towers collapsed. Yet the investigation results are being kept secret.
9/11---here is a good current 6 minute summary: http://www.prisonplanet.com/alex-responds-to-911-questions-from-bbc.html
BBC interview . . . I wonder if they ran it?
Noticing Greenwald's writing today & the social disease he writes of daily--Shigehisa Kuriyama says, “But there was an era when the body represented something quite different from the entity that we imagine now -- a discrete given, an independent and isolated object. Once upon a time, all reflection on what we call the body was inseparable from inquiry into places and directions, seasons and winds. Once upon a time, human being was being embedded in a world. The decline of this awareness is a long and complex tale.” (THE EXPRESSIVENESS OF THE BODY, p. 262.) The tale may be complex and long-winded, but the principle involved is elegant simplicity itself: the human species lost the capacity for differential relaxation in midst of the activities of daily life. Quite simply, by whatever means of yoga, meditation, contemplation, or martial art one might employ to achieve the state, zero action-potential of the extra-ocular and pharyngeal muscles is the fundamental physiologic pre-requisite of unlearning IBEs. The human species, through mastery of differential relaxation, once continually moved on the razor’s edge between OBE and IBE status: thus is animistic identity-transparency maintained in ongoing awareness. The buffalo boy sleeping on his ambling water ox, so relaxed he never falls off: there is no distinction to be made in awareness between boy-leg and oxen-flank. The yoganini adept teaching her consort how to sexually move on the OBE-IBE interface. Learn to stop at the interface! What does your Plexiglas separation separate? --from http://www.lanna-website-promotion.com/moonhoabinh/chatter.html (IBE = in body experience)
http://therealnews.com/t2/component/seyret/?task=videodirectlink&id=10083
Wonderful documentary film--"Lifting the Veil". Long but worth the time.
Great speech at the end by Chris Hedges!
9/11 ---superb article on media and 9/11; mentions Greenwald. The best writing so far on the both main stream and alternative media treatment of 9/11!!!!!!
http://www.prisonplanet.com/pentagon-papers-whistleblower-daniel-ellsberg-says-that-the-government-has-ordered-the-media-not-to-cover-911.html
Semolina-Pilchard was banned from Salon.
One has by now to begin to wonder if Greenwald like Chomsky is part of the problem rather than its solution.
"Managing Dissent" with those two seems to be the order of the day.
The two of them act like storm drains attracting dissent then helping flush it away harmlessly not before the Feds have clocked their ip locations.
The Truth Movement needs a breakout moment. It would be of great help to the health of the media to expose the false friends that are about, of which Greenwald must be considered one.
Anonymous: why was this person kicked out? In my comment just above yours the issue of the press and 9/11 is analyzed quite well and mentions Glenn. With the passage of time and some reflection I believe that Glenn went after me for some special reason. Perhaps because I mentioned Milton's famous essay on censorship. If you check the rules for comments at Truthdig they are excellent and courteous. I recommended that Glenn have something like this also. I wonder if Salon made some demand that he stay off the 9/11 subject? And perhaps the birther one as well. I will interested in be your response.
Nan Yar,
Greenwald no doubt banned the Pilchard because it took the piss out of him as you can see from the last two letters in Semolina-Pilchard's letter archive.
As time passes I notice that Greenwald is both getting more full of himself as he is also becoming more thin skinned.
The sob caused my eyes to pop open when he dared say that no one more than he had called for an investigation into Osama's guilt.
I think the pressure needs to be kept up and truthers encouraged to enrol as posters.
They wouldn't need to bring up the subject. Just give themselves names like "The Nano Thermite Kid," "Building 7" "Twin Towers Apoppin'" and such like to get really under that fucks gate keeping skin.
Anonymous--When I was eliminated so was my letter archive. I don't believe there is any way for me to read those letters. Glenn is a good legal scholar. In the article I mentioned the press was threatened by the Bush Administration. Glenn probably feels very cautious because of his partner. Apart from that I do not know why he is skittish about 9/11. He may actually have aspirations to someday rise to heights in the legal profession. If so, he wants a clean bill of journalistic health. Again, just speculation on my part. While I respect his legal acumen I do fault him for a kind of small mindedness in dealing with some topics. I am sure there is a way that 9/11 could be addressed by him.
Nan Yar,
that's absolutely disgraceful that you were banned. You didn't do any harm.
Its all very well Bill thinking well of Greenwald but you don't see him banning people who insult truthers, only truthers themselves.
Its an old rule: That that they don't want you talking is that that needs talking about.
Your archive might have diappeared because it was small. The Pichard's hasn't. Here are his last two:
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O/T
Latest shocking jaw dropping, eye popping remarks from Larry Silverstein.
"I was sitting there with the chief architect both of us gawping at the empty ground. We both agreed there had been such a terrible loss of profit these passed ten years.
So a decision was taken to "Put one up", then we sat there and watched a building going up."
Silverstein: Why New WTC Buildings Much More Costly
http://911blogger.com/news/2011-06-15/silverstein-why-new-wtc-buildings-much-more-costly
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Titonwan adressing Greenwald
"You don't think this empire would knowingly kill Americans? Innocent people? Just checkin'."
Yes he apparently does believe that. But only some Americans with Anthrax during the desert course that followed the entree.
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Anonymous--Thanks. You have an excellent idea. Create some new e-mail accounts. Names like: nanothermite, insidejob, plentyofevidence . . . or subtler ones like: controlledemolition!:) I am sure some inventive types out and about can find some great ones. Well, Glenn has several Achilles' heels. Speaking of which there is a fine recent book called: THE WAR THAT KILLED ACHILLES.
Have a look at this blatant contradiction by NIST:
From a Twin Tower fact sheet of 2006 we have this:
[6. How could the WTC towers collapse in only 11 seconds (WTC 1) and 9 seconds (WTC 2)—speeds that approximate that of a ball dropped from similar height in a vacuum (with no air resistance)?
Since the stories below the level of collapse initiation provided little resistance to the tremendous energy released by the falling building mass, the building section above came down essentially in free fall, as seen in videos.
http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm]
Now look at this from one in 2007:
[1. Was there enough gravitational energy present in the World Trade Center Towers to cause the collapse of the intact floors below the impact floors? Why was the collapse of WTC 1 and 2 not arrested by the intact structure below the floors where columns first began to buckle?
Yes, there was more than enough gravitational load to cause the collapse of the floors below the level of collapse initiation in both WTC Towers.
http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/factsheet/faqs12007.cfm]
So which the fuck is it?
Did the lower floors offer no resistance or did the gravitational energy in the top overcome the ability of the lower floors to resist it?
Scrub that last post.
Even though it is of course still all bollox the first statement doesn't in fact contradict the bollox in the second.
Sorry about that
9/11---of course there is the little problem of a huge amount of steel used to support the building.
At the time I thought, well skyscrapers are definitely a mistake if they come down this easily. The man who designed and engineered the building remarked that it was capable of sustaining multiple hits. Of course it is all a hoax. NIST is science degraded and perverted as so much of it is now.
Hi all
Been busy and summer is here, it's only 6 weeks long in Canada, so I gotta move! lol
Just found this, a quite good list of false flag operations. Very telling.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/06/american-officials-admit-that-us.html
Domestic surveillance began BEFORE 911.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2007/10/nsa-asked-for-p/
Did the NSA’s massive call records database program pre-date the terrorist attacks of 9/11?
That startling allegation is in court documents released this week which show that former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio — the head of the only company known to have turned down the NSA’s requests for Americans’ phone records — tried, unsuccessfully, to argue just that in his defense against insider trading charges.
Nacchio was sentenced to 6 years in prison in 2007 after being found guilty of illegally selling shares based on insider information that the company’s fortunes were declining. Nacchio unsuccessfully attempted to defend himself by arguing that he actually expected Qwest’s 2001 earnings to be higher because of secret NSA contracts, which, he contends, were denied by the NSA after he declined in a February 27, 2001 meeting to give the NSA customer calling records, court documents released this week show.
Greenwald seems to be cutting his cloth according to which audience he speaks to. Here is an edited clip from a post by IraqVet on the Libya thread:
[@GlennGreenwald
Just watched your interview on Democracy Now. You asserted that the Obama Administration was different from the Bush Administration because this regime doesn't torture.
...Glenn, your interview on that point seems to contradict many of your own past articles.]
Was Greenwald currying favour with Obama fans one wonders?
I think Greenwald is trustworthy when he discusses the law. When he discusses politics, less so. Law is his area of expertise. He would have a very hard time misrepresenting that material. But otherwise like most he can slip and slid and fudge. I appreciate his legal critiques--but there is something about him that troubles me. So far I have not been able to pin it down.
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