Brooker on 9/11 conspiracies

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
I'm just asking you what sort of conspiracy you're talking about.
Whichever one(s) did it. I'm pretty sure there was more than one person involved and I'm quite sure they kept quiet about it. That would be a conspiracy as I understand it.
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
Well that's not quite fair, because it's clear that you also have a issues with what Slothrop, Eden and I have been saying in this thread, and have at times sounded like you support one or other of the various 9/11 conspiracy theories in circulatoin.
I've responded to people apparently misconstruing what it is I object to about that article.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
OK, well Wiktionary defines a conspiracy as "act of two or more persons, conspirators, working in secret to obtain some goal, usually understood with negative connotations." So if we accept the official version of events, there was a conspiracy by al-Qa'eda, which ceased to be a conspiracy on 9/11, when it was put into effect. But if there was some involvement by other parties - the CIA, the Pakistani intelligence service, whatever - the fact that it's still hushed up (Loose Change notwithstanding) then there is *still* a conspiracy going on, by definition of the secrecy and denial necessary to keep it out of public knowledge.

So as tempting as it may be to call anyone who accepts the official version of events a 'conspiracy theorist' on a par with someone believing it was the CIA/Mossad/ZOG wot dunnit, I don't think that really holds water since the organisation popularly blamed for the attacks also took credit for it, so if this is true there's no longer any conspiracy at all.
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
That's fine - I just said there *was*, and there was. I didn't introduce the term here, my aim was to highlight a little bit about the way in which it has come to be used and the assumptions that now go along with it.
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
I really don't want to get into specifics of the events themselves or their aftermath here, it's not the place and I know where web discussions about this topic usually end up.

Either you think it's something worth looking at or you don't, apparently Brooker doesn't, but it's the suggestion that the discussion and investigation should stop that is really objectionable. For a newspaper like The Guardian (yeah yeah) to carry such an implicit message should in my view be considered unacceptable. That it isn't is telling and sad I think.
 
Either you think it's something worth looking at or you don't, apparently Brooker doesn't, but it's the suggestion that the discussion and investigation should stop that is really objectionable.

That's exactly what disappointed me about the article. Obviously it's Charlie Brooker, ripping the back out of cultural "memes" or whatever is what he does. but completely dismissing anything other than the extremely dodgy official story.. and labelling anyone who doesn't subsribe to it a "conspiracy theorist" (which has the wickest of connotations) is a bit blinkered. Plus it wasn't done wittily either.
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
It is proof that a little learning can be very dangerous. For example I am most amused at the number of people who now seem to claim to be experts in stuctural engineering because they have seen some rubbish on youtube about how the towers could only have fallen in a particular way if Dick Dastardly and Mutley had been racing around them shouting "stop the pigeon" or whatever.

...

All of these events produce doubt, which is a good thing. But they also seem to produce, in certain quarters, a fundamentalist certainty, which is a bad thing. It seems to me that 911 "truthers" spend far less time scrutinising their own theories for holes than they do the "official" version.
Yes John, sorry I missed this post and am mostly in full agreement with you here. I have spent time prodding some of this type of 'thinking' myself. However....you asked me what questions need asking and I hope you can understand why I'm reticent to get into it here, but there are questions, some of them very basic ones that should be asked with regard to any crime, let alone something of that magnitude. And there is indeed more, but perhaps it is something that people need to look into for themselves. I don't want to get into arguing over details.

Also, there is an Official version, that doesn't need scare quotes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_Commission_Report
 

luka

Well-known member
im in total agreement in noel emits here as it goes.... i hate aritcles like that and i hate attitudes like that.
 
Brooker is a dickhead in that article, his usual super sharp shooting just comes across as inverted cynicism. It is possible to carry out incredibly complex operations that mostly avoid detection. A notable case, helpfully involving a skyscraper, is the complete re-engineering of the Citicorp building - it was about to fall

"For the next three months, a construction crew welded two-inch-thick steel plates over each of the skyscraper's 200 bolted joints during the night, after each work day, almost unknown to the general public. Six weeks into the work, a major storm, Hurricane Ella, was off Cape Hatteras and heading for New York. With only half the reinforcement finished, New York City was hours away from emergency evacuation. Luckily, Ella turned eastward and veered out to sea, buying enough time for workers to permanently correct the problem.

Despite the fact that nothing happened as a result of the engineering gaffe, the crisis was kept hidden from the public for almost 20 years. It was publicized in a lengthy article in The New Yorker in 1995.[1] LeMessurier was criticized for insufficient oversight leading to bolted rather than welded joints, for misleading the public about the extent of the danger during the reinforcement process, and for keeping the engineering insights from his peers for two decades.[2] "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citigroup_Center#Engineering_crisis_of_1978

And as for the argument that it can't have been a conspiracy because it would be impossible to keep secret - it's not secrecy that they're concerned with, it's plausible deniability.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
Yes John, sorry I missed this post and am mostly in full agreement with you here. I have spent time prodding some of this type of 'thinking' myself. However....you asked me what questions need asking and I hope you can understand why I'm reticent to get into it here, but there are questions, some of them very basic ones that should be asked with regard to any crime, let alone something of that magnitude. And there is indeed more, but perhaps it is something that people need to look into for themselves. I don't want to get into arguing over details.

Also, there is an Official version, that doesn't need scare quotes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_Commission_Report

I get you (finally!). Best done over a pint some time...
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
Chomsky making some good points, here:

Obviously we should listen to this guy, but Chomsky is simply applying his usual models, which of course are extremely valuable as far as they go. Yet he just has no way of accommodating or parsing high level conspiracy at all. He makes no provision for it because he would consider it an irrelevant aberration in terms of his systems theory. This is a bit of a problem and leads to statements like, 'Even if it were true, who cares?'

He says it is highly unlikely and would have been impossible to keep secret. Well apart from the fact that it wasn't necessarily kept secret, it's still too important to discount out of hand because it doesn't fit a preconceived notion of what is possible or what is worth paying attention to. Of course it doesn't, that's how a conjuring trick is done.

He says it has no significance and is a distraction but if you have reason to think there is evidence of (deep)state involvement, perhaps most blatantly in a cover up, then it is obviously of huge significance, for one thing because it offers an opportunity to get a wedge in there and prize the mechanism open a bit. Which is not, as some interests would have you believe, all that impossible and overwhelming. Some lines of enquiry do lead to real names and real describable crimes. He has a similar line about JFK as you can see in that clip - it's irrelevant because 'people get killed all the time'? But these aren't just about isolated events, however dramatic.

But regardless of being merely a distraction, it is a crime that has not been investigated properly. It's not down to Noam Chomsky or the BBC or Michael Meecher to prosecute. The official investigation has shown little interest in finding out and providing proper evidence for who funded the operation, who carried it out (yes - identities of hijackers), and how (no response from NORAD for nearly two hours). Etc.

Tell me I'm wrong but I don't think Chomsky is saying much about this.
 
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noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
I wouldn't have been so annoyed about the Charlie Booker piece if it's timing hadn't obviously been prompted by the recent BBC '3rd Tower' program which was also pretty useless and distorted as a piece of journalism.

The main part of the program was based around the testimony of 'key witness' Barry Jennings who was trapped in WTC7 for 3 hours that morning. Part of his story includes claims that there were large explosions in the building before either of the other towers had collapsed. In fact one of those explosions caused a stairwell he was standing on while trying to leave the building to collapse. He was eventually rescued by the fire service.

What the program didn't once mention was that Barry Jennings was not alone in the building or indeed on that collapsed stairwell during that time. With him was New York City's Corporate Council, top lawyer and close associate of then Mayor Rudolph Guiliani*, Michael Hess. In fact the program went to such lengths so as not to mention Hess's name that in his interview as it is edited, Jennings' mysteriously goes from being 'I' to talking about 'we' with no explanation whatsoever.

The 47 story building was otherwise empty of occupants that morning as it had already been completely evacuated just before Jennings and Hess had arrived at around 9.00am.** Evacuated, despite the fact that this was the building that housed, among other interesting features, the reinforced bunker-like Office of Emergency Management designed to coordinate response to events such as terrorist attacks in New York City. Evacuated, unlike the two larger towers where many hundreds of people were still being advised to remain in their offices, until as we know it was too late.

So why wasn't this other key witness interviewed, or even mentioned? One thing that can be said about Michael Hess is that he isn't really one for media freedom. In an earlier life back in 1971 as Chief of the Civil Division of the United States Attorneys Office, he had opposed in court the New York Times' publication of what became know as The Pentagon Papers. Interesting guy. But yes I know, just another irrelevant detail.

* According to Jennings, Hess was there to meet with Giuliani who had been there earlier that morning.
** They were themselves telephoned by an unidentified party and told to leave shortly after arriving at the OEM on the 23rd floor.
 
Tell me I'm wrong but I don't think Chomsky is saying much about this.

well he's avowedly saying nothing about it. i can see his frustration that this issue has effected the kind of grassroots groundswell he's spent most of his life trying to mobilise. this issue is particularly potent of course because it comes down to initiates vs. non initiates. it's virtually taken on the character of a faith at this point. i think how you feel about that clip is decided by how you already feel about chomsky, as some of his reasoning is vague and wooly (if it was, who cares?) so effectively his main- only- point is these energies would be better spent elsewhere.
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
fokse vektaire xeven said:
well he's avowedly saying nothing about it. i can see his frustration that this issue has effected the kind of grassroots groundswell he's spent most of his life trying to mobilise.
Yes I can understand that, and I can understand why he doesn't even want to get into it at this stage in his career. I still think it's a bit of a blind spot.
fokse vektaire xeven said:
this issue is particularly potent of course because it comes down to initiates vs. non initiates
Do you really want to say that's what it all comes down to? You could say that about anything where people are trying to get information out about something they think is important. To dismiss the discussion as that just because of how it is loudly treated in some quarters is a mistake I think.
fokse vektaire xeven said:
it's virtually taken on the character of a faith at this point.
Yes in places, but again this is the case with many protest or political issues, especially when they become 'movements'. Strong belief / faith, there's not much difference. And I think there's more than one aspect to the origins of this.
  • The dramatic and horrifying events themselves have produced a certain amount of emotional PTSD type reactions which can lead to obsession.
  • Having strong suspicions that there are lies coming from official sources around this and feeling embattled by those who would argue it's not at all worth looking at or questioning.
  • And then there's a good chance that some of the more whacked-out ideas that have been attached to it have come either from clumsy cointelpro type operations (Shayler?), or political activists looking to discredit the whole area because like Chomsky they believe it is distracting from other important business. A lot of effort is seemingly put into muddying the waters.
Any which way it's unfortunate but difficult to avoid.
fokse vektaire xeven said:
i think how you feel about that clip is decided by how you already feel about chomsky, as some of his reasoning is vague and wooly (if it was, who cares?)
He's not vague and woolly on most other issues. How I feel about what he says here is, 'OK it's Chomsky, I'm thinking about what he has to say, but I'm a bit disappointed because there's nothing there.' But fair enough, it's not his bag.
 
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noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
fokse vektaire xeven said:
so effectively his main- only- point is these energies would be better spent elsewhere.
I think I can understand him wanting to forget about the whole thing. I do wonder if he isn't (deliberately) missing the full significance though, or if his models just tell him that the system will grind on regardless.

On another note, there was a response piece in the Guardian yesterday from Dan Hind.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/17/september11
 
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vimothy

yurp
From Hind's piece:
You have learned to live without magic.

Wrong, thanks all the same. Just because I think 9/11 troofers are generally wackos and I don't read RAW books anymore, doesn't mean I've learned to "live without magic".

The true authorship of the attacks is as difficult to establish as anything else about the world of international terrorism and espionage.

Who is Daniel Hind and what makes him an expert on international terrorism and espionage? Being a "thirty year old columnist"? Writing in the Guardian? Working for a book publisher?

The most important conspiracy theory about 9/11 rarely gets mentioned by writers like Brooker and Phillips. In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq the White House made every effort to link Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida. Far from being a production of what commentators like to call the tinfoil hat brigade, this particular paranoid fantasy emerged from the work of a highly focused and skilled group of people.

Just another writer unable to distinguish outcome from intent, trying to convince me of their own watered down version of reality. Next!
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
The intent was to go into Iraq and oust Saddam Hussein's regime. Linking Hussein to Al Qaeda, fraudulently, deliberately, was an opportune way of doing that at an emotionally charged time. The outcome was going into Iraq and getting rid of Saddam Hussein. How are these things not linked?

I don't know anything about Dan Hind either, and that might be simplistic but is it really controversial at this point? Maybe I'm misunderstanding you but I don't think you can always divorce outcome from intent.

Maybe it's a bit of a facile point he makes, but this was a deliberately manufactured 'conspiracy theory.'
 
Yes I can understand that, and I can understand why he doesn't even want to get into it at this stage in his career. I still think it's a bit of a blind spot.

Do you really want to say that's what it all comes down to? You could say that about anything where people are trying to get information out about something they think is important. To dismiss the discussion as that just because of how it is loudly treated in some quarters is a mistake I think.

Yes in places, but again this is the case with many protest or political issues, especially when they become 'movements'. Strong belief / faith, there's not much difference. And I think there's more than one aspect to the origins of this.

I think we're pretty much in concurrence noel- i don't mean to be dismissive of anything you've said in this thread. nonetheless a single issue movement like this is easier for people to get a handle on- and the symbolic potency of the visual side of it, it could be fashioned into a pendant, it's got monotheistic appeal, whereas chomsky's ideas are more complex, and i can see why he's frustrated that he doesn't speak to or mobilise the kind of grassroots mass audience that 9/11 conspiracies seem to. i don't think what he said here was of much interest at all, but as you say it ain't his bag. i was kind of surprised at the "who cares/ so what" remarks tho...



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