When the events that came to be collectively known as 9/11 occurred in the United States it was late night in Asia.* That night I made a phone call to my brother in China to arrange a forthcoming trip to visit him. When he answered the phone, I asked how his evening had been. He said: "We had a great night in a bar, some Chinese guy was trying to convince us that some terrorists had flown planes into the World Trade Center and that the twin towers had fallen down!"
"It's true." I said.
And since that day, pretty much the only thing that everyone agrees on is the fact that it happened. The who, what, how and why of that day however, have given rise to a much broader range of ideas.
As far as I know,* there is no-one claiming that the twin towers didn't fall down that day, and they are, in fact still there. But every other piece of information about that day has been lifted high or torn apart, worked upon and bolted together again, in a fascinating variety of ways to form a construction of ideas so tall and mighty as to rival the original Tower of Babel.
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| Background: The Tower. Foreground: The Confusion. |
The internet would be fertile ground for those who wished to push their own particular ideas. Let's have a closer look at some of those ideas:
Idea 1. There were no planes.
Some people insist that no planes crashed into buildings on that day. The usual reasons given are collusion by the T.V. networks (using computer generated images) and/or holographic technology. The natural questions that arise from this theory are: If there were no planes, what about the passengers? Are their grieving families simply crisis actors? Are the witnesses who saw the planes also crisis actors? What about the airline employees?
Basically, any explanation that raises more questions than it can answer is not a good explanation. But putting that idea to one side, here's John Lear (son of the inventor of the Lear jet plane) to tell us his own ideas-
This is presumably the real John Lear, rather than a hologram.
Idea 2. There were no hijackers.
This scenario is based on the idea that the planes were not taken over by hijackers but were in fact flown into their targets by remote control. A lot of theorising takes place about the suspected role of the defense contractor Raytheon. As with a lot of conspiracy theories, some juicy bait is dangled in the form of interesting information that demands people to snap at it. For example:
Early in 2001 five senior Raytheon employees were seconded from their normal work and their close relatives say that they refused to discuss what their new duties were. They regularly flew to the West coast for days at a time in the months prior to 9/11.
On 9/11 all five of those seconded employees were passengers on three of the highjacked planes and died. On flight 11 were Peter Gray ( VP Ops electronics ), Ken Waldie ( Sen Qual control electronics), and David Kovalian ( Sen Mech eng electronics ). On flight 175 was Herbert Homes ( Exec seconded to DOD ). On flight 77 were Stanley Hall (Director of project management-Electronics warfare) and Charles Falkenberg ( GPS expert working on the Global Hawk project) Raytheon had offices on the 91st floor of WTC2.
(Original post here.)
Of course, we are presented with no sources for the basic story of the employees "new duties". There is also no checking of connected ideas such as: Was it unusual for these people to be on these flights? What actual evidence is there that remote-control flights like this were possible at the time?
Furthermore, if there are no hijackers, were they on the planes, or not?
But of course, there is no need for questions when you are fully convinced that you are stating the obvious:-
When will people wake up?**
Idea 3. The buildings were demolished by explosives.
When I watched the second tower collapse live I had a couple of thoughts that were in no way unusual: that looks like it does when they demolish a building , and why did they fall down like that?
The official explanation of why and how the towers collapsed the way they did can be read here. It is important to note that conspiracists are united in their dismissal of it. Without having even bothered to read it.
All communication works as INFO ---------> IDEA. If you don't want your precious ideas to change you must ignore information that offers different ideas and you must attempt to collate only that information that supports your ideas.
And so, if you go hunting for evidence of controlled demolition, you can be sure to find information that sure sounds good. And if you can't find that, just resort to speculation and inference: Imagine what bombs the shadow government has... here's a big bomb, so big bombs exist, so.... people heard explosions, so there must have been bombs (because nothing else causes explosions, right?) All of this and more in this fascinating lecture which explains how they EASILY (in big letters) rigged the towers for demolition.
"How more obvious can a cover-up be?" ***
Idea 4. The buildings were demolished by secret weapons.
The main proponent of the idea that the towers were pulverised by secret weapons is Dr Judy Wood. Her basic theory is that the amount of debris produced by the collapse of the towers was too small when compared to the material contained in the towers. Her own explanation for this is that some kind of directed-energy weapon was used to achieve the necessary pounding of the materials to turn a lot of it to dust. Why the top floors all collapsing down on the floors below, as is stated in the official story, does not offer an adequate explanation for massive pulverisation is not clearly addressed by Dr Wood.
Nor does she offer any explanations as to how these weapons were employed, or even what they are.
Idea 5. It was the American Government behind the attacks.
As the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the Patriot Act, were easily facilitated by the events of September 11, it is a simple step to the idea that the government must have conspired to produce said events.
Further questions, such as: "How is government being defined here?" Bush/ Cheney? C.I.A.? F.B.I? FEMA? All of them? are notable by their absence.
As all communication is INFO--------> IDEA, the less questions you ask, the stronger your idea will remain. You don't have to explain anything. Also, having an ill-defined idea of top-level malfeasance allows you to feel the moral satisfaction of being superior to them without the grind of having to do anything about them.
That the government may be not entirely made up of evil geniuses but rather the exact caliber of people we work and live with ourselves is, of course, a scenario too chilling to contemplate.......
Idea 6. It was Mossad behind the attacks.
This idea is built on the fact that 5 Israeli men were arrested on 9/11 after a witness reported seeing three men on top of a van filming the events and seemingly "happy."Although an attack on the U.S. by Moslem radicals was indirectly a good thing for Israeli policy, it is a leap of faith to suggest that Israel was behind the attacks.
Although they could, of course, have had fore-knowledge of the hijackers plans and refrained from letting U.S. authorities know.... And Aliens could have used their energy weapons....****
And then there's this van .......
Idea 7. Building 7. (Building 7!)
It is indeed interesting to note that people are generally unaware that WTC 7- a 47 story building- also collapsed on the afternoon of 9/11. That a major occurrence of one of the best documented news events in history should pass most people by itself suggests the often vague relationship that human beings have with information. Of course, if the information is vague, then the ideas the follow have little chance of clarity.
Better information ----------> Better ideas. But people do instinctively appreciate this, so you naturally present information in order to dazzle the audience-
BBC reports collapse of WTC 7. 20 minutes before it actually happened.
It is natural to be surprised by this kind of information. It's unusual, it's strange. What needs to happen in order to have a better idea is to ask some questions in order to get better information: How could this happen? Has this kind of thing happened before? What was the situation at the time?
The conspiracy argument is that the BBC had fore-knowledge of the controlled demolition of WTC 7. On the surface, it is an attractive idea. But disturb the surface with questions, and the clear image dissolves: So the U.S. government (or Mossad) told the BBC of their plans? Or Did one of the conspirators, who did such a fantastic job otherwise, make the error of telling the press of the collapse of WTC7 before someone had pushed the button?
On the other hand, as the fire department was aware that the building would collapse, couldn't that information have become has collapsed, in all the confusion?
News report of concern about WTC7 collapsing+
Idea 8. It was the Saudi government.
The U.S. government inquiry into Intelligence activities before and after September 11 contained 28 redacted pages that are suspected to contain information relating to links between the Saudi government and the hijackers.
As reported here, by March 2003 45% of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was personally involved with the 9/11 attacks, an impression that the Bush administration was happy to encourage. However, this deliberate misdirection on the part of the government would lead some to suspect that the Saudis were being deliberately kept out of the spotlight. Which in turn suggests the idea that, not only were the Saudi government behind 9/11, but also that the Bush administration knew this and were covering up for them. Of course, the simple fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens does nothing to dampen this particular idea.
Idea 9. The U.S. government knew what was going on and let it happen.
This concept is similar to the Pearl Harbour advance-knowledge conspiracy theory. It is interesting to consider that with this theory, the government is still in control. That the world's most heavily armed nation is not at the mercy of raggle-taggle terrorists with box-cutters, has an obvious appeal to anyone whose comfort zone has experienced total collapse while witnessing the terrors of 9/11.
And it is here that we can ascertain an important human motive behind choosing to accept any particular idea or explanation.
They make us feel good.
If you are to accept any of the ideas above, then these ideas themselves become, in their turn, information that leads on to other ideas. One of the most basic of which is that the powerful forces behind 9/11 are such super-human magicians that any attempt to go against them is purest folly. Consequently, we can put our feet up and drink beer and enjoy our audio-visual entertainment; because there is simply nothing we can do.
All of the basic information within the theories outlined above offer the same basic idea: someone's in control. To accept the official narrative, that a group of foreign hijackers out-witted the most expensive defense on earth is to accept that no-one is really in control, and that any promise of a better future relies on the efforts of people in general.
You, me, representatives of Illinois' law enforcement community.......everybody.
To breathe in conspiracy theory as oxygen is to abrogate one's own responsibility and ignore one's own power. The power to change things by ourselves, our birth-right as human magicians. The warm embrace of the conspiracy allows us a regression to child-hood, to be able to put aside struggle and surrender to unseen and all-powerful forces.
And then maybe.....maybe the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was actually to convince people that they didn't exist.
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The truth about 9/11 is that you can take any idea you want from it. You can believe it was the U.S. government or Mossad or the Illuminati. It can be a Rorschach test to confirm your deepest prejudices, or it can be an opportunity for your ego to bask in the warm glow of self-righteousness. You can even believe the fantastic idea that the grinding plates of history spat out a group of people who went half-way round the world to murder people they didn't know.
But like anything else, better information gives better ideas. We get better information by asking and checking while looking for better describing and explaining.
Alternatively, we can just choose the idea that makes us feel good and switch off.
But when we do that, it makes it a whole lot easier to fly planes full of people into office buildings.
Or tacitly support sending people half-way round the world to kill people they don't know.
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* On 9/12 I went to the travel agent to book my flight to China. They were surprised to see me and said: "You do know what happened yesterday, don't you?"
** And be more like me, because I'm right.
*** The final commentators just about sum the whole video up.
**** With Israeli assistance.
++ Whatever that is.
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