Conspiracist
I heard a guy on the radio doing his best to debunk the 9-11 attacks as an internal psy-ops agenda perpetrated either by or in conjunction with our own government. He raised some pretty interesting points and might have some intriguing evidence regarding the way the buildings collapsed, the skill of the terrorist "pilots" and even the eagerness of the FBI to confiscate video surveillance tapes that might have captured the impact on the Pentagon.
Why? The proposal is that our government needed a reason to be in the region to secure the energy resources and to be close to Israel as they began their coup. In light of the sequence of events that has transpired, there's plenty of room for conspiracy theory here. This stuff plays out better than any mini-series or docu-drama that Hollywood could produce.
To me, it makes no difference. Whether terrorists or our own government decided that innocent people must die to prove some sort of point or to carry out some sort of maneuver is the issue. And, for the most part, the effect is the same regardless of the origin.
We have a more military state with the Department of Homeland Xenophobia in place whether that department was by design or in reaction to the attacks. We are not any safer than we were before 9-11; just ask someone from New Orleans. And, unless this is the biggest movie set ever conceived and executed, people have died in office buildings, mosques, and on their living room sofas for no good reason as a direct result of this aggression.
One more thing - I'm sick of hearing about how war is human nature. I don't believe it. Is oppression human nature?
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Most conspiracy theories fail my pass/fail test for one reason: No one could suppress a secret of this magnitude. Well, that and it's completely unnecessary - the same end could be attained with a staged event of considerable less magnitude overseas.
In this city; before a scandal erupts, everyone knows all about it way before it hits the media. To black-out this type of event you would have to have several dozen people in the loop. It just wouldn't work.
Oh, and oppression is human nature. The Stanford prison experiment proved that even a bunch of hippie college students are capable of atrocities if given enough power.
I'm still not buying it. I think environment (perception and circumstances) cause aggression and oppression - not human nature. I guess the argument is then that environment is unavoidable.
The reason the Stanford experiment was so startling is because you wouldn't have expected those behaviors from those kids. However, they were only kids and they were in very unnatural circumstances for the purpose of an experiment. Plus, they were acting under orders and expectations from supposed authorities - not based on their own individual wills.
If a group of farmers from central Illinois had acted the same way, I'd be surprised.
Farmers from central Illinois incited the Haymarket Square riot of 1886.
Does that count?
I'm not discounting your examples, but I'm saying that people didn't show up and start blowing up the square at random. The farmers were opposing oppression, no? And even that oppression was not a human nature issue - that was a corporate business decision.
Besides, each of these examples shows the lengths people will go to in fairly specific situations. I'm saying that the vast majority of the population wants to lead a life of "least resistance".
I gotta go with Josh on the competence necessary to pull of an operation on such a grand scale and keep it on the down low. In short, the guys in this administration don't have it. However...
Neocon nutbags like the http://newamericancentury.org crowd keep just enough distance from the executive branch and have the kind of cash necessary to recruit a bunch of islamic fundamentalist nutbags and bring 'em to the US to put them through flight school. Doing so would advance both nutbag agendas.
I'm not a conspiracy guy by nature (but, I did love the X-Files... that was mostly for Scully, though), but there are unholy bedfellows and nutbag agendas everywhere. Trust noone...
Good for you Chris B in refusing to concede that our nature is ultimately warlike and oppressive.
It may be something worth believing that we can somehow rise above our historical tendancies (over the past 3,000 years or so) to kick ass and oppress all willy nilly and the like.
I'd like to think that Thucyd did not have the last word in his History of the Pelop War re: the only real power calculation. This is the "famous" Melian dialogue. Have you noticed I'm not even trying to spell these things. But this part of the story offers the following maxim:
"The strong do what they will. The weak yield what they must."
But what does 3000 (plus), maybe 10,000 or more years of human on human violence mean...in a variety of different environments and under different "perceptions and circumstances"?
To quote the wise Steve Perry, "Don't stop believing ChrisB."
I'll get back to you when I have a little more to go on.
Thinking we knocked the towers down is just dumb.
However, I do think we probably shot down flight 93, which isn't really evil.
I'm not saying I buy into the conspiracy. One significant point they did not cover was that if there was not plane crash into the pentagon, what happened to all the people on that plane? Somebody would have seen something somewhere.
As for the nature of mankind, I can feel the red rage in my blood on occasion but even when I get to the boiling point, I'm aware that that is a state of being brought about by a series of events. My nature is to cool down and solve the problem, not kill whoever cut me off on the freeway.
EdP, despite my deftness with bringing down PS2 aliens and robots, perhaps my nature puts me in the "weak" category. Next time you're over, pick out what you want...
...er "no plane crash".
P-Dawg - Here's the inside line on flight 93.
On 9/11 my little brother was working at the White House in Cheney's office. After they evacuated, some of the VP staff re-located to my office, so we had full-access to everything going on.
The jets had the go-ahead to intercept flight 93. The initial report was that it was shot down, but that was corrected shortly after. When the plane went down there were no military jets in the vicinity. The consensus at the time was that the hijackers had detonated a bomb.
With any of these scenarios, the outcome is exactly the same. I'm content with the official explanation, but if I hadn't been there I'd have had my doubts.
i'm just thankful that oliver stone made a movie about it starring nicholas cage.
fuck those guys.
the real thing to watch, and i think it was talked about before, is the Lone Gunman episode that pre-dates and predicts the attack.. it's pretty creepy.
I picked up the Lone Gunmen boxset a few months ago. It's not too hard to find it for sale at a drastically reduced price. Shop around, and you should be able to find a new DVD set for under $20 (shipped).
It's worth it just for the pilot episode.
"With any of these scenarios, the outcome is exactly the same."
Exactly. Right or wrong - inside job or terrorists - it IS evil.
What is this Lone Gunmen DVD of which you speak?
The Lone Gunmen (X-Files spin-off) pilot episode centered around a military plot to crash an airliner into the World Trade Center to spark a war in the middle-east in order to inflate the DOD budget (or some such shit).
It aired in 2000. Ever since 9/11 all of the conspiracy theory nut-jobs have been cribbing the plot line wholesale and passing it off as fact.
Chris, I think there is an argument from the point of view of human evolution that suggests that reciprocol altruism may have been selected for. In other words there may be something in "human nature" or our make up that reinforces cooperation.
But I also think the capacity to organize...and organize both in terms of defensive and offensive capacity may be selected for for human beings as well.
All I was saying is it might go to far to simply reject the tendancies for conflict and oppression and say we we're taught this or resort to this because of X, Y, and Z.
The capacity for wickedness is a mystery...but history suggests that wickedness is everywhere.
The peacemakers tend to be exceptions - - - - how long has it been since we've had a Ghandi?
Socrates wasn't a historical peacemaker despite what bad teachers say about Socrates and pacifism.
Neither was Jesus. He blessed the peacemakers but he said he came to divide men and the sword would follow this division.
He (or some of those who have called themselves followers of Jesus) have done a damned good job of that.
Maybe all the criticism I did earlier against you and DC Liar's position re: morality being in flux was misguided on my part.
There are a lot of people that believe like you that somehow we can overcome our propensity for violence. Maybe circumstances will become such that large scale...and other types of conflict become untennable and the altruism "genes" (not the right word) will win out over the "aggressive gene" (more of a sign of my ignorance.
I don't want to subject you or anyone to my tyranny. I can barely rule myself. Your stuff is safe.
I do think that there is something worth believing in your position. But I just wonder what gives you the conviction to profess it when there is a lot of evidence suggesting otherwise.
Can we be the Lone Gunmen?
A Vanity Fair Article on the NORAD transcripts from 9/11 just hit the inter-web. I just read it, and would suggest that EVERYONE do the same.
You can find the article here:
http://www.vanityfair.com/features/general/060801fege01
If you can't get it to work - go to Boing Boing for the link.
Ed,
I'm not denying that there's an abundance of wickedness in the world and throughout history. Also, I don't take anything said in this forum as an attack.
My point is not that good shall eventually overcome evil or that we'll eventually have some sort of utopia. My point is a more basic one. I believe that, devoid of extenuating circumstances, people would rather get what they need/want and be on their merry way. I do NOT believe that the majority of humanity would prefer, devoid of extenuating cercumstances, to do harm.
Clearly, there is a percentage (I'd have no guess as to an actual number) that bucks my theory, but I want to believe that is the minority.
I also believe that the modern news exposes and exploits this minority of negativity for ratings; history retains it for the warning/lesson.
Maybe I'm just crazy. I should go back to putting up videos of psycho monkeys.
More monkeys, more monkeys, more monkeys!!!!
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