And Now... Will the Real Skeptic Please Stand Up?
The scenery of post-9/11 America has begun shifting dramatically. The nation
is awakening from the stunned, deluded, and mind-controlled stupor that
followed the trauma of the "terrorist" attacks. The puzzling questions and
dark allegations that started to arise shortly after the attack amongst the
maverick information underground have survived pompous dismissal and snide,
hyped up accusations of "conspiracy theory," only to become stronger with
time. Almost half a year has passed, and the official story of who
perpetrated 9/11, and how they slipped past the US security apparatus, has
never even come close to being proved, let alone credible. Alternative
internet news sources have reported a huge surge in readership in recent
weeks could it be that the great majority of the American people who
believe that the White House leadership are lying through their teeth about
Enron are now ready to rise above the atmosphere of groupthink and
intimidation and dare to consider that fundamental lies are also being told
about 9/11?
Michael Moore is riding high on the incredible wave of popularity crossing
political and ideological lines for his bestselling new book, Stupid White
Men, which is refreshinly uncowed in its criticism of President Bush and his
astonishingly corrupt administration. How can this be, with the President
still supposedly at 80% approval ratings, according to the polls? Meanwhile,
a respected, experienced investigator and whistleblower on the CIA has been
touring the nation speaking to overflowing audiences about the solid
evidence he and other investigators have uncovered pointing to the
disturbing likelihood that the 9/11 attack was the result of a secret covert
operation from somewhere within the US government. These rapt audiences have
stayed for hours-long question and answer sessions.
Where has all the flag-waving gone?
The criminally corrupt actions of the Administration are becoming more
transparent and offensive by the day, especially as holes in its 9/11
propaganda campaign multiply and expand. In this sense the government has
gone out of control, making it, like a wounded animal, all the more
dangerous to civil liberties and the welfare of the rest of the world. On
the other hand, the American people, and citizens of Canada, the UK and much
of Europe, are beginning to stir in their opposition to the lies of the
American government. In that sense, large segments of the population are
beginning to release themselves from control by the mass media and
government manipulated conditioning. Mike Ruppert, From the Wilderness
Newsletter, March 1, 2002
Amongst these remarkable developments, however, I have noticed something
else that is also remarkable. There seems to be a quite large number of
people who refuse to acknowledge that some of the alternate theories about
9/11 have developed to a point of being at least as credible than the
official story. In fact, an order of magnitude more credible. These people,
whether or not they agree with the government's policies, whether or not
they are pro-war or anti- war, nonethless choose to form their perceptions
and opinions of the "War on Terrorism" around the fundamental assumption
that the official version of events is correct. They insist on sidelining
the upstart alternative ideas, which they label as "conspiracy theories,"
and adhere either actively or tacitly to the official version. They do this,
they say, because they are "skeptical".
Really? Skeptical?
In what sense of the word?
I have always held the ideal of skepticism in the highest esteem. In my
mind, this is a term of honor that reflects a high standard of critical
analysis that a thinking person never abandons.
>From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary:
skeptic
\Skep"tic\, n. [Gr. skeptiko`s thoughtful, reflective, fr.
ske`ptesqai to look carefully or about, to view, consider: cf. L.
scepticus, F. sceptique. See Scope] [Written also sceptic.] 1. One who is
yet undecided as to what is true; one who is looking or inquiring for what
is true; an inquirer after facts or reasons.
The ancient classical definition of a skeptic is someone who believes that
absolute certainty in knowledge is unattainable. However, this is a rather
extreme philosophy when taken literally; in common usage a skeptic is
generally seen as someone who approaches an unresolved question or problem
without presumptions, who leaves bias and emotional reaction formations at
the door, and who proceeds to seek an answer utilizing purely empirical
evidence and logical deduction.
A good forensic investigator might be an example of skepticism embodied in a
very concrete form their singular raison d'etre is just to follow the
evidence, regarless of where it might lead. Since 9/11 was obviously a
deliberate, premeditated criminal act, any explanation of it must satisfy
the rigorous standards of a forensic investigation.
One of these standards is a positive identification of the suspects. Do we
have this in the case of 9/11? Hardly. All we have are a couple sketchy,
mis-translated videotapes offered as "proof" of a confession, and a list of
hijackers amongst whom as many as seven have been found to be still alive
and yet the names are still being dutifully reported by the media! It's a
farce!
Another standard is a motive or more specifically, if the crime is clearly
planned and premeditated, who benefits the most from the result? In this
case, not bin Laden and al Qaeda. The winners are the oil industry, the Bush
Administration, and the National Security establishment which has been able
to ram through Congress a long coveted shopping list of Constitution-busting
expanded powers.
Yet another standard were the suspects actually capable of carrying out
the crime? Aviation experts have described the flying of the hijacked
airliners as displaying skills approaching that of military pilots
(particularly in the case of Flight 77 which hit the Pentagon). None of the
alleged pilots had anything close to this level of skill from their meager
simulator training. And concerning their ability to organize such a
sophisticated paramilitary operation and evade the vast $30-billion per year
US intelligence establishment? Divergent views on this point have been
thoroughly squelched in the US, but a number of experts in Europe have
spoken out. For instance, Eckehardt Werthebach, former head of Germany's
FBI, the Verfassungschutz, has stated that "the deathly precision" and
"magnitude" of the attacks would have required "years of planning" and "the
fixed frame" of a state intelligence organization.
A good forensic investigation would also involve piecing together an exact
timeline of the crime. Ruppert, among others, has created such a timeline,
and it implicates the US government far more than al Qaeda. Not only does it
show that US air defences fail to make even a minimal timely response to the
unprecedented quadruple hijacking, against all known regulations and
practices, but looking back it also shows that the invasion of Afghanistan
was planned months in advance.
How can this be? (hint: one cannot launch an invasion and occupation of a
foreign country without a provocation sufficient to justify it according to
norms of international law and diplomacy, not to mention gaining necessary
support at home. What was this stunning casus belli expected to be, if not
an already-anticipated terrorist attack? The "wacko conspiracy nuts" have a
logical explanation for this. The government does not).
So, how are our "skeptics" faring? Not very well. The points noted above are
only the tip of the iceberg of contradictions and implications in a steadily
increasing body of evidence, as any informed person knows by now. At this
point in time, the only ones who truly deserve the honor of being called
"skeptics" are those who are at least prepared to acknowledge that the US
government's explanation of 9/11 is pardon my French a steaming pile of
horse shit.
Those who think it is acceptable to continue to base their views around this
official story are not skeptics, but instead merely true believers.
Does this then prove by default that the alternate theories are true?
Of course not. One might argue that a purist skeptic would maintain an
absolutely agnostic stance right now, since neither side has a conclusive
case. But what exactly does that mean, when bombs are falling on Afghan
villages, the Middle East is threatening to explode into war, and the US is
step by step turning into a police state? Will all of this stop and wait for
us while we settle into our armchairs, stroke our chins in contemplation,
and wait for Perry Mason to stride in and provide us with a thrilling
courtroom finale?
It has been half a year, and the important questions haven't been answered.
The core evidence for the alternative covert / black ops inside job theory
of 9/11 has not been refuted, and although it is not yet proven with a
smoking gun and strikes many people as far- fetched, this theory is actually
more cohesive, more credible, and more logically and empirically supported
than the official story. It has only grown in strength with time, not
lessened. Unless there is a major turnaround, and US government comes clean
with believable and factually supported answers to the questions that have
been raised, what is a true skeptic to do?
I sense a passion bubbling to the surface now; I think there are many people
like myself who feel that there is enough of a case to come to a conclusion
and start dealing with the next step what action can we take to stop this
madness? I fully respect those who are not ready to choose one side or the
other, and want to see more information or proof emerge, but what I do not
respect and in fact deeply disdain are those who cannot let go of their
conditioning and preconceptions, who refuse to allow there to be two fair
sides to this debate, who have also sensed the change in the air and are
lashing out bitterly to try and silence what they do not want to hear.
Recently, David Corn, Washington editor of The Nation, released an debunking
piece which lambasted what he called the "X-files of 9/11," and specifically
attacked Mike Ruppert. Corn is of course entitled to his opinion about who
has the most credible explanation of 9/11, but outrageously, he grossly
misrepresented several elements of a story Ruppert published about the case
of Delmart "Mike" Vreeland, a US Naval Intelligence Officer who apparently
had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attack and attempted to get the information
out while he was jailed in Canada. Corn's article is here:
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12536
and Ruppert's rebuttal is here:
http://www.copvcia.com/free/ww3/030402_cornreply.html
Alternet, a left-leaning Internet news source, headlined Corn's "story." I
started a discussion thread on their online forum concerning Ruppert's
reply. I was encouraged to find that most respondents, even if they were not
convinced by the alternative 9/11 theories, felt that Corn indeed had
crossed the line and gone too far (by the way, Alternet has also posted
Ruppert's rebuttal). However, several posts highlighted a couple of facts
that I find troublesome.
First, that a great deal of the "skeptical" rebuttals to "conspiracy theory"
are based more on abstract assumptions and pompous emotionalism than real
factual debate. Secondly, that there is an entrenched, recalcitrant,
near-pathological antipathy towards anything perceived as "conspiracy
theory" amongst many on the Left.
Why?? This is of great concern to me, not because I strongly identify with
the Left (I used to, however now I might classify myself as an agnostic
libertarian with a few progressive leanings), but because the Left forms the
core of the anti-war movement, and I feel passionately that the anti-war
cause must succeed. So far, it has hardly made a dent, and I strongly doubt
that a broad-based anti-war platform can succeed without confronting the
questions of what really happened on 9/11, and in a larger sense, who is
really controlling world affairs.
A letter from one Stan Goff which circulated not long after 9/11 parallels
my own conviction, that the Left has actually inadvertently supported the
invasion of Afghanistan by expressing dissident views which obsessively
avoided any mention of 9/11 anomalies and gaps in the official story,
thereby supporting the government's position by tacit default and giving the
impression that there was nothing there worth any attention from dissenters.
. . .I have to say that the story we hear on the news and read in the
newspapers is simply not believable. The most cursory glance at the
verifiable facts, before, during, and after September 11th, does not support
the official line or conform to the current actions of the United States
government.
But the official line only works if they can get everyone to accept its
underlying premises. I'm not at all surprised about the Republican and
Democratic Parties repeating these premises. They are simply two factions
within a single dominant political class, and both are financed by the same
economic powerhouses. My biggest disappointment, as someone who identifies
himself with the left, has been the tacit acceptance of those premises by
others on the left, sometimes naively, and sometimes to score some morality
points. Those premises are twofold. One, there is the premise that what this
de facto administration is doing now is a "response" to September 11th.
Two, there is the premise that this attack on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon was done by people based in Afghanistan. In my opinion, neither of
these is sound.
. . .I say the left has missed the boat on this one, by allowing them to get
away with rushing past the question of who did what on September 11th. If
the official story is a lie, and I think the circumstantial case is strong
enough to stay with this question, then we really do need to know what
happened. And we need to understand concretely what the motives of this
administration are.
The Story we Hear on the News and Read in the Newspapers is Simply Not
Believable
by Stan Goff
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/GOF110A.html
(incidentally, www.globalresearch.ca is an excellent source of intelligent
analysis from members of the anti-globalist Left who buck the trend of
knee-jerk anti-conspiricism)
Another recent essay analyzing the dysfunctional response of the Left in the
wake of 9/11:
Four months after September 11, it appears that most of the Left is asleep
at the switch. Just about the only response has been the "anti- war
movement", which has been weak, especially in the U.S., where the propaganda
barrage has successfully marshalled the bulk of the population, including
many leftists, into lockstep with their masters' plans. In any case the
movement hasn't stopped the "war" in Afghanistan (really a one-sided attack
against an essentially defenseless target, not a war). Nor is there any
reason to imagine that it has frightened the Bush cabal from implementing
plans to unleash its death machine on any number of additional targets in
the future.
Most of the endless stream of "analysis" from the Left or "progressive" side
has centered on "terrorism", posing and answering questions such as "what is
terrorism?" or "why do they hate us?" For example, the "Marxist" Tariq Ali's
critique of events amounts to pointing out the ineffectiveness of the US
military assault as a method of eliminating terrorism. His main conclusion
seems to be that the US rulers are really dumb; anybody with half a brain
can see that the attack in Afghanistan will only breed more terrorists! It
never occurs to him that maybe they're not dumb, but have a different
purpose in mind; he takes their propaganda at face value. And so do most
other "critics" of the war. This is the wrong way to stamp out terrorism!
Wage peace instead! Dispense justice! Be nice! Then "they" won't hate "us"
anymore (and "we" can carry on with our relentless pursuit of money and
goodies like SUVs).
Evidently the Left, like everybody else, spends too much of its time
watching TV and reading the newspapers, i.e., absorbing propaganda. How else
to comprehend why almost everyone from "liberal" Democrats and
"progressives" to Marxists and anarchists has accepted the propaganda line
of the corporate media and psyops specialists in the US government: the
attacks on September 11 were planned and carried out by Islamic
Fundamentalist Terrorists, namely Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaida, and caught
the US national security apparatus completely offguard. The fact that no
proof has ever been produced doesn't seem to bother anyone. And when this
lack of proof is pointed out, and all the innumerable facts and
circumstances that cast very serious doubt on this story are brought up,
even "critics" of the war dismiss these persistent questions as lunatic
"conspiracy" mongering.
. . .
The failure to look hard facts in the face could be fatal, especially to the
Left, which, judging by its response to this point, doesn't seem to realize
that it is one of the principal targets of the coming global war. . . A huge
mass of evidence suggests that the events of September were planned and
carried out by the same team of "rogue" secret government planners and
operatives who have wrought so much murder and destruction worldwide for the
last 40+ years: the CIA, the Pentagon, the National Security Agency and
their contractees.
The article then goes on to provide a well written summary of evidence
related to 9/11, and some of the possible impending dangers of a police state.
The full text:
9/11 : A Desperate Provocation by US Capitalism by Max Kolskegg
It is difficult to deal with people who are stubbornly close-minded, but
almost insufferable when on top of that they insist that they represent the
"rational" and "reasonable" view while simultaneously subscribing to an
ingrained belief system of their own. It is worth noting that Corn's
supposed refutation of 9/11 conspiracy theory is largely based on two points
that are totally subjective, yet are presented as if they are solid facts.
These are:
1. The government couldn't have been involved because they simply aren't
evil enough to do something like that.
2. The terrorists got away with it because as everybody knows, the CIA and
FBI, like everyone in government, are just too bumbling and incompetent to
do their job.
A true skeptic would never accept an argument that hangs on assumptions like
this, but sadly, many people think that such facile, offhand
"rules-of-thumb" are the cat's meow of level-headed common sense. More
dilligent and canny researchers know that there are abundant precedents
refuting both of these assumptions, and that they are in fact two deeply
ingrained memes that have been heavily incorporated into mass-media thought
conditioning propaganda. The second in particular is a tried-and-true,
classic technique of disinformation; if these techniques are written down
somewhere in a government handbook, "claim incompetence and bungling"
certainly must be up near the top of the list, right after "deny, deny,
deny." It is laughably naive to accept government "admissions" of
incompetence without subjecting them to severe skepticism (and even a little
cynicism).
Corn also uses a familiar old propagandistic saw that is often seen on the
Left claiming that giving any attention to "conspiracy theories" will
distract from the "real" crimes committed by the government. This argument
is fine if you accept the irrational, unthinking assumption that
"conspiracy theories" can be automatically considered erroneous in the first
place. But what if they happen to have substance? Ruppert notes in his
rebuttal that Corn mentions the CIA's associations with drug smugglers,
while strangely omitting mention that CIA operatives have been actively
involved in the smuggling itself on a vast scale! This is well-documented
and has in fact been admitted by the government in the case of the Iran-
Contra affair (Ruppert's site archives and recommended reading list contain
more than enough solid references to satisfy any responsible and thorough
inquiry on this subject).
So, using this as an example, why do so many on the Left persist in hastily
dismissing the charges of CIA drug smuggling as "conspiracy theory"? Is the
Left so whipped by years of marginalization, so eager in their current
pursuit of being accepted and welcomed back into the fold as the "loyal
opposition" that they are willing to leave these kinds of inconvenient
truths on the wayside, lest they be further punished and excluded as
"extremists"? And what about the hypocrisy of it the Liberal/Left elite
proudly claim to be the guardians of all the best interests of minority
communities, but how are they fulfilling this by denying the strong evidence
that the 80s crack "epidemic" was to a substantial extent the result of a
deliberate covert operation? Does not this knee-jerk rejection of
"conspiracy" perhapse serve in a backhanded way to reinforce middle
America's unspoken racist assumption that the bizarre extremes of
devastation and gang wars of that era were in some part brought by these
minoritiy communities upon themselves?
And who exactly are these pseudo-skeptics helping by building further upon
this foundation of denial, making the purely emotional, historically
untenable claim that the government is simply incapable of murdering its own
citizens?
Of course, there's no need to worry about the substance of conspiracy
theories if you can get away with bluster and evasiveness. I've been
astonished to meet a couple Leftist doubters of Ruppert who seem almost
proud of the fact that they have only given his work a glance- over or have
not studied his website at all. What can I say? I don't know whether to
laugh or to cry. Obviously, it's the old unfortunate achilles heel of the
Left ideology before reality. That said, there are plenty of
better-informed types on the Left who greatly appreciate and understand
Ruppert's work (by the way, Ruppert himself is very non-partisan in his
approach). So, where does the ideological response come from?
There must be some negative reaction formations on the Left towards
conspiracy theory because of history after all, there is a strong
reputation of conspiracy theory being the domain of the far right- wing,
harking back to the Communist conspiracy scares of the Cold War. This is an
outdated and unfortunate perception, given how far we are beyond the Cold
War. In recent years many on the Left have associated conspiracy theory with
unsavory types of right-wing extremist groups, without making the effort to
discover that these people sometimes subscribe to heavily distorted and
bigoted renditions of ideas that have been developed elsewhere on more
reasonable and rational terms. Extremists are, of course, perenially
convenient to hold up as "straw men" to discredit ideas that they may have
borrowed and claimed as their own.
The intellectually elitist leanings of the old school Left certainly must
play a factor as well, since in academic circles there is a prevailing
dominant orthodoxy against fully accepting the role of conspiracy in
history. Instead, the messy human factor is often ruled out in favor of a
comically abstract reductionist model which prefers to recognize only
general "objective forces" (are history and political science the last great
bastions of modernism?) Views which acknowledge conspiracy to an
unpermissible extent even if they are well-documented and well-argued
have often been dismissed and suppressed with sneering accusations of being
"reactionary" and "populist".
On more concrete terms, the more centrist, liberal members of the Left have
an intense mental block against considering conspiracy claims logically
because it offends their everlasting faith in centralized, big government
solutions to the world's problems. From Richard K. Moore of cyberjournal.org
: Liberals have a knee-jerk way of dismissing certain ideas, or evidence...
"That sounds like a conspiracy theory". With that, they consider the matter
settled, the ideas or evidence obviously refuted.
I've tried on more than one occasion to delve into this kind of non-
reasoning. One fellow articulated it rather well: "If such and such were
true, then it would eventually come out, we'd hear about it". I think what
he meant was that we'd hear about it in the mainstream media. The same kind
of non-reasoning which a kid might use: "I don't care what the evidence is,
if there were no Santa my mommy would tell me."
I call such thinking 'non-reasoning', not because there isn't a logic to it,
but because at the core we're talking about faith rather than reason. A
child was once asked by his pastor, "What is faith?". His answer: "Believing
what you know isn't true". The pastor chuckled at the innocence, but the kid
had hit the nail on the head. Just like the kid who pointed out that the
Emperor had no clothes.
Liberals have a faith that the system is fundamentally legitimate.
There may be corrupt officials, and irresponsible corporations, and
misleading media, but these are anomalies. With a bit more reform,
intelligent voting, public education, etc., such rough edges can be rounded
off and everything will be OK. They have a hard time getting their head
around the idea that the whole system was designed in the first place as a
deception - to enable rule by wealthy elites - and that the 'anomalies'
reflect precisely how the system is ~intended~ to function.
Do you still believe in the tooth fairy? by Richard K. Moore
This underscores what is really going on the stonewalling dismissal of
9/11 "conspiracy theory" is not really centered in logic and facts, because
purely on those terms the underdog is, at least at this point in time,
winning by a mile. It is instead about the collision of facts and belief,
and the reactions of many on the Left are in my opinion a prime example of
this dynamic. Coming to awareness about the fundamentally deceptive nature
of the system, and the conspiratorial nature of the wealthy elites who
administer the rapidly coalescing global serfdom under which we live, may be
a tough pill to swallow for those who pride themselves on being the
conscientious watchdogs of the system, and yet have been in denial of some
of the most heinous ways that it actually functions.
Staging the 9/11 attack was not a bizarre or unexplainable act on the part
of the ruling elites. Quite the contrary, it might be the perfect solution
to the two greatest crises that they face: first, the beginning of the
worldwide decline in petroleum production, which has made it necessary to
launch an all-out effort to seize control of the Central Asian reserves.
Second, the end of the growth potential of the current economic system which
augurs the arrival in the not too distant future of a worldwide depression,
accompanied by inevitable widespread social unrest.
The only way the elites can maintain control over this situation is by
instituting increasingly totalitarian rule and dismantling democratic
freedoms. So, taking a step back, why should the possibility of wider
conspiracy in 9/11 be considered unusual in the first place? If not 9/11,
"they" would have had to come up with something else like it.
We are at a crossroads, at a window of opportunity where the plans and
machinations of the elites have matured to the point that they are now
clearly revealing themselves. We can resist and change the system, but there
is an obstacle to overcome. An old clichι in the intelligence world holds
"if you want to keep something a secret, hide it in plain sight." Clever
tyrants have always understood this, and Hitler knew this explicitly when he
spelled out his theory of the Big Lie in Mein Kampf that the general
public would never be willing to believe that their government had committed
a crime if it was sufficiently audacious and horrifying.
Denial, fear, pride, ideology, or ego may prevent people from considering in
an open- minded way that the evidence sitting before us truly does point
where it is pointing. To be certain, there will to be an increasing level of
deception, disinformation, deliberately placed rumors, and acts by agent
provocateurs in attempts to discredit those who are questioning the official
story. There will also be people who will try and take the evidence and run
with it in a way that is counterproductive or unwise. The road ahead will be
messy, and caution will be important for all sides, but I believe the truth
will come out if the real skeptics take the lead.
Brian Salter
9 March 2002
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