"The
September 11 X-Files"
"What's absurd about the pipeline theory is how thoroughly it discounts the obvious reason the United States set the bombers loose on Afghanistan: Terrorists headquartered in Afghanistan attacked America's financial and military centers, killing 4,000 people, and then took credit for it. Nope - must be the pipeline." (Seth Stevenson)
News and commentary on conspiracy theories regarding the September 11
attacks and the war on terror.
Part 1: 2001/09/17 - 2002/12/11
Part 2: 2003/01/15 -
December 2002
"Norman Mailer's Buchananite Theory" (Chris Weinkopf, FrontPageMagazine, 2002/12/11)
"Saudi Minister of Interior, Prince Nayef Ibn Abd Al-Aziz: 'Who Committed the Events of September 11… I Think They [the Zionists] are Behind these Events…'" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 446, 2002/12/03)November 2002
"David Duke due in Bahrain for lecture" (Gulf News, 2002/11/12)
"Protocols of Elder Named Gore Vidal: Wacko 9/11 Piece" (Ron Rosenbaum, The New York Observer, from the 2002/11/11 issue)October 2002
"'O, Heinous, Strong, and Bold Conspiracy!'" (Andrew Breitbart, National Review, 2002/10/30)
"Idiocy of the week" (Andrew Sullivan, Salon.com, 2002/10/30)
"The (possible) assassination of Paul Wellstone" (Ted Rall, Yahoo! News, 2002/10/30)
"Was Paul Wellstone Murdered?" (Michael I. Niman, AlterNet, 2002/10/28)
"Gore Vidal claims 'Bush junta' complicit in 9/11" (Sunder Katwala, The Observer, 2002/10/27)
"America in the dock - Myth II: America wants war with Saddam because of oil" (David Frum, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/10/22)
"America in the dock - Myth I: America is totally in hock to the Jewish lobby" (David Frum, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/10/21)
"Some Indonesians believe U.S. planned Bali bombings" (Andrew Browne and Jerry Norton, Reuters, 2002/10/15)
"Indonesian Muslim militants claim U.S. behind Bali explosions" (The Jakarta Post, 2002/10/15)
"Egypt's Cultural Revolution" (Martin Walker, UPI, 2002/10/13)
"UNC-CH Groups Resume Anti-War Events" (Jon Sanders, Carolina Journal, from the October 2002 issue)
"Crude" (Peter Beinart, The New Republic, 2002/10/01)
"Ted Rall and His Web of Half-Truths: A Critique" (John Giuffo, The Comics Journal, from the #247 issue)
"CAIR-less with the Truth" (Jake Tapper, The Weekly Standard, from the 2002/10/07 issue)September 2002
"New Jersey Laureate Refuses to Resign Over Poem" (Matthew Purdy, The New York Times, 2002/09/28)
"Time to get the facts right" (David Welch, New York Post, 2002/09/27)
"A domestic outlook on 9/11: Seeing through it all" (Al-Ahram Weekly, from the 12 - 18 September 2002 issue)
"Arabs still deny Qaida role in 9/11" (Sana Abdallah, UPI, 2002/09/13)
"The Events of September 11 and the Arab Media: The New Antisemitic Myth" (MEMRI, Special Report - No. 7, 2002/09/13)
"True Believers of False Rumors" (David Rohde, The New York Times, 2002/09/12)July 2002
"The September 11 That Never Was" (Marc Cooper, LA Weekly, from the July 19-25 issue)
"Sontag Award Nominee" (andrewsullivan.com, 2002/07/15)
"The value of conspiracy theories" (Dr Kai-Alexander Schlevogt, The Jordan Times, 2002/07/15)
June 2002
"Conspiracy Theory Grips French: Sept. 11 as Right-Wing U.S. Plot" (Alan Riding, The New York Times, 2002/06/22)
"Top Saudi imam sees conspiracy" (Paul Martin, The Washington Times, 2002/06/03)
May 2002
"The September 11 X-Files" (David Corn, The Nation, 2002/05/30)
"Palestinian Leader: Number of Jewish Victims in the Holocaust Might be "Even Less Than a Million..." Zionist Movement Collaborated with Nazis to "Expand the Mass Extermination" of the Jews" (MEMRI, Inquiry and Analysis Series - No. 95, 2002/05/29)
"Arab League Think Tank Hosts Event: U.S. Military behind September 11" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch No.383, 2002/05/23)
"Before dismissing the conspiracy theories" (Naseer Alomari, The Jordan Times, 2002/05/20)
"Spies, or students?" (Nathan Guttman, Haaretz, 2002/05/13)
April 2002
"Beneath the Planet of the Anti-War Libertarians" (BrinkLindsey.com, 2002/04/30)
"Democrat Implies Sept. 11 Administration Plot" (Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post, 2002/04/12)
"Muslim Anti-Semitism: A Clear and Present Danger" (Robert S. Wistrich, The American Jewish Committe, April 2002)
"9/11 Denial" (James S. Robbins, National Review, 2002/04/09)
"Brooklyn's 'Arab Street' - A hate rally, just minutes from Ground Zero" (Brendan Miniter, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/04/08)
"French lap up Pentagon crash 'fraud'" (BBC News, 2002/04/03)
"Rumors of War - The damage to the Pentagon on September 11 was caused by something other than a hijacked Boeing 757's being crashed into its side" (Urban Legends Reference Pages, 2002/04/01)
March 2002
"Awake, Voltaire" (Libération, 2002/03/30)
'"Hunt the Boeing' Answers" (Paul Boutin & Patrick Di Justo, Paul Boutin Weblogger, 2002/03/14)
February 2002
"Saudi Government Official: American Jews are 'Brothers of Apes and Pigs'" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch No. 343, 2002/02/08)
January 2002
"British Magazine Raising Specter of 'Zionist Lobby'" (Forward, 2002/01/18)
"Denial: A River in Egypt" (Daniel Pipes and Jonathan Schanzer, New York Post/danielpipes.org, 2002/01/14)
"A New Antisemitic Myth in the Arab Press: The September 11 Attacks Were Perpetrated by the Jews" (Special Report, MEMRI, 2002/01/08)
December 2001
"Saudi Government Daily: The Jews are Taking Over the World" (Special Dispatch No. 321, MEMRI, 2001/12/28)
"Pipe Dreams" (Seth Stevenson, Slate, 2001/12/06)
November 2001
"The new Islamic fascism" (Robert S. Wistrich, The Jerusalem Post, 2001/11/16)
"The New Black Panther Halloween Special" (Bo Crader, The Daily Standard, 2001/11/09)
October 2001
"Syrian defense minister blames WTC, Pentagon attacks on Israel" (Arieh O'Sullivan, The Jerusalem Post, 2001/10/19)
"The American attack against Afghanistan is terrorism…" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch No. 288, 2001/10/17)
"Half of Pakistanis believe Israel behind US terrorist attacks" (hindustantimes.com, 2001/10/14)
"At home with the Taliban" (Asra Q. Nomani, Salon.com, 2001/10/10)
"4,000 Jews, 1 Lie - Tracking an Internet hoax" (Bryan Curtis, Slate, 2001/10/05)
"Grand Illusion" (Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 2001/10/01)
September 2001
"Improbable theories have wide acceptance" (Colin Nickerson, Boston Globe, 2002/09/23)
"The perpetrators of the attacks are not Arabs or Muslims" (Special Dispatch No. 270, MEMRI, 2001/09/20)
"Nostradamus called it!" (Janelle Brown, Salon.com, 2001/09/17)
"Norman Mailer's Buchananite Theory" (Chris Weinkopf, FrontPageMagazine, 2002/12/11)
"But the most novel explanation to date comes from self-professed "left-conservative" Norman Mailer, the 79-year old, Pulitzer Prize-winning author who offers his explanation in the latest issue of Pat Buchanan's fortnightly misnomer, The American Conservative. According to Mailer, the war is all about - what else? - sex. ... "Behind the whole thing in Iraq is the desire to have a huge military presence in the near-East as a stepping stone for eventually taking over the world," Mailer says. The puritans in the White House believe that "if America becomes again a military machine that is huge in order to oversee all its new commitments, then American sexual freedom, willy-nilly, will have to go on the back burner. Commitment and dedication will become necessary national values (with all the hypocrisy attendant on that)." So a new Roman Empire (one, presumably, not given toward the sexual predilections and excesses of the first one), is the only way to make Britney Spears cover up her midriff. Who knew? ... Bush is such a dimwit, he doesn't even know he's plotting to take over the world, let alone why. In fact, Mailer explains, it's possible that no one knows - no one, that is, except for Mailer. "I don't know if the White House principals talk to one another in private about this," he says, adding that 'they may not even be wholly aware of it themselves, not all of them.'" (Note: Mailer's article is not available online. See also: "Norman Mailer declares: 'America is so vain'" (Matt Drudge, Drudge Report, 2002/09/06))"Saudi Minister of Interior, Prince Nayef Ibn Abd Al-Aziz: 'Who Committed the Events of September 11… I Think They [the Zionists] are Behind these Events…'" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 446, 2002/12/03)
From an interview with Saudi Minister of Interior Prince Nayef Ibn Abd Al-Aziz: "Prince Naif stressed that relations between the Saudi and U.S. governments are strong despite the Zionist-controlled media that manipulated the events of September 11 and turned the U.S. public opinion against Arabs and Islam. Prince Naif said, 'we put big question marks and ask who committed the events of September 11 and who benefited from them. Who benefited from events of 11/9? I think they [the Zionists] are behind these events.' ...
The Interior Minister hinted that foreign powers might have provided support to terrorists who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks. 'I cannot still believe that 19 youths, including 15 Saudis, carried out the September 11 attacks with the support of bin Laden and his Al-Qa'ida organization. It's impossible. I will not believe that these people have the power to do so horrendous an attack.' However, Prince Naif Ibn Abdul Aziz reiterated the Kingdom's condemnation of the attack that destroyed the World Trade Center in New York and damaged the Pentagon outside Washington. He said the September 11 attacks had turned the world against Islam, Muslims and Arabs.""David Duke due in Bahrain for lecture" (Gulf News, 2002/11/12)
The former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan finds eager ears in the Arab world for his anti-Semitic rants. Via Little Green Footballs: "David Duke, who represented Louisiana in the U.S. Senate from 1989 to 1991 and ran unsuccessfully for governor the same year, "is a well-known critic of the Zionist lobby in the U.S. and its threat to the U.S. national security," said Mohammed Zuhair, manager of Discover Islam Centre. The centre, an educational institute serving mostly the non-Muslim community in Bahrain, is sponsoring Duke's four-day visit. "During his stay, he will deliver two lectures, 'Global Struggle against Zionism' and "Israeli Involvement in September 11 (attacks)'. Both will be open to the public and followed by a question and answer session," Zuhair said. ... He said Duke was not being invited because of his perceived anti-Jewish stand but because he has recently authored a book that 'exposes the Zionist agenda for world domination.'" (Note: As Charles Johnson points out, Duke was "a state senator, not a US senator". See also: "A radio broadcast on 'the world's most dangerous terrorist'" (David Duke, Arab News, 2002/05/14))"Protocols of Elder Named Gore Vidal: Wacko 9/11 Piece" (Ron Rosenbaum, The New York Observer, from the 2002/11/11 issue)
Rosenbaum on Gore Vidal's "The Enemy Within", in which he attempts to "prove - well, insinuate in a Nixonian way - that a secret cabal (the Bush/oil "junta") instigated the 9/11 mass murders in order to increase their profit margins": "But all of this previous silliness doesn't rise to the stupendous heights Mr. Vidal reserves for his final few thousand words. A finale that begins when he invokes Hitler: "Many commentators of a certain age have noted how Hitlerian our junta sounds as it threatens first one country for harbouring terrorists and then another." Our sage finds some merit in this wisdom: "It is true that Hitler liked to pretend to be the injured - or threatened - party before he struck." He seems to be saying that somehow the W.T.C. mass murder was an example of the U.S. "pretending" to be injured. This will be somewhat hard to sell to the survivors of the W.T.C. attacks, who, I guess, are "pretending" to have lost their children, fathers and mothers. Clearly our sage has lost track, in his frenzy, of one slight difference between the U.S. and Hitler's Reich: Hitler did pretend injury; he dressed up prisoners in Polish uniforms to stage an attack on a German radio station in order to provide a fig leaf for his 1939 attack on Poland, for instance. But we didn't pretend to be attacked by others on 9/11, although implicitly, metaphorically, sleazily, that is what our sage implies with his Hitler analogy. But it turns out we're actually a little worse than Hitler: " … something new has been added since the classic Roman Hitlerian mantra, 'they are threatening us, we must attack first.'" The new addition that makes us worse than Hitler: We are more open about it than Hitler - at least to the penetrating gaze of our seer - thus a little worse, in our shamelessness, than Hitler." (See also:"The Enemy Within" (Gore Vidal, The Observer/UQ Wire, 2002/10/27) and "Gore Vidal claims 'Bush junta' complicit in 9/11" (Sunder Katwala, The Observer, 2002/10/27))"'O, Heinous, Strong, and Bold Conspiracy!'" (Andrew Breitbart, National Review, 2002/10/30)
Breitbart on the era of Leftist conspiracy theorizing: "The instinct to go wacky is so reflexive in current progressive ranks that even before Paul Wellstone's body has been buried, his death has become the subject of a purported Republican plot. Yes: Bush and the evil cabal so feared the mighty Minnesota populist that they rigged his plane engine and knocked off seven innocents in the process. ... Indifferent to history's harsh judgment, self-proclaimed progressives continue to navigate the political map without a moral compass. The modern Left explains its political losses - both electoral and strategic - not by turning to self-reflection but by resorting to raw conspiracy-theorizing, emptied of reason. So preposterous is the average conspiracy allegation that it can only too clearly be seen to be motivated by cynicism - to say nothing of the scary possibility that the Democratic party believes their supporters are too gullible to challenge them. And notice that none of these plots are ever brought to a verifiable conclusion. Nor is there even an attempt at verifying or disproving them: After all, if they were to be proved wrong, the conspiracies couldn't hover above as a permanent fog with which to distract the electorate - over and over and over again.""Idiocy of the week" (Andrew Sullivan, Salon.com, 2002/10/30)
Sullivan on the conspiracy theory of the week - Michael I. Niman's and Ted Rall's "Wellstone-was-murdered"-columns: "Should the U.N. be called in to investigate whether the "president" of the United States ordered a hit job on a leading senator? This is looney tunes. It reminds me of the nut cases on the right who peddled the notion that Bill Clinton murdered Vince Foster. Niman isn't an outcast. He teaches at a state-funded university in New York state. He is way out there on the left, but so are most of the faculty members at mainstream colleges these days. ... In other words, Niman's bizarre conspiracy theory is perfectly within the orbit of respectable left-wing opinion. As if to prove that, the cartoonist Ted Rall, widely syndicated in the liberal media, has echoed the charge in his Universal Press Syndicate column. ... If this kind of speculation doesn't transgress essential American reasonableness, then what on earth does?" (See also: "The (possible) assassination of Paul Wellstone" (Ted Rall, Yahoo! News, 2002/10/30) and "Was Paul Wellstone Murdered?" (Michael I. Niman, AlterNet, 2002/10/28))"The (possible) assassination of Paul Wellstone" (Ted Rall, Yahoo! News, 2002/10/30)
Rall echoes Michael I. Niman's allegation that Bush might have ordered an assassination of Wellstone. Loony beyond imagination: "George W. Bush and his henchmen stole the presidency. They threw thousands of innocent people into prison without even charging them with a crime. ... Now some Democrats and progressive Americans are asking the unthinkable about an administration they increasingly believe to be ruled by thugs and renegades. Did government gangsters murder the United States' most liberal legislator? ... With Election Day looming on Nov. 5, many analysts were predicting a Wellstone victory and continued Democratic dominance of the Senate. Perhaps, the thinking goes, someone in the Bush regime decided Wellstone had to go. ... Asking mailmen to spy on ordinary Americans, creating military tribunals for anyone deemed an "enemy combatant," locking prisoners of war in dog cages, spending a decade's worth of savings in six months, allowing journalists to die rather than provide them with help in a war zone, smearing Democratic politicians as anti-American, invading sovereign nations without excuse - these are acts that transgress essential American reasonableness. A man capable of these things seems, by definition, capable of anything." (See also: "Was Paul Wellstone Murdered?" (Michael I. Niman, AlterNet, 2002/10/28) and "Ted Rall and His Web of Half-Truths: A Critique" (John Giuffo, The Comics Journal, from the #247 issue))"Was Paul Wellstone Murdered?" (Michael I. Niman, AlterNet, 2002/10/28)
Anti-Bush conspiracy theorizing gone insane. Found via Best of the Web Today: "Wellstone's popularity surged after he voted to oppose the Senate resolution authorizing George Bush to wage war in Iraq. ... Then he died. ... There is no indication today that Wellstone's death was the result of foul play. What we do know, however, is that Wellstone emerged as the most visible obstacle standing in the way of a draconian political agenda by an unelected government. And now he is conveniently gone. For our government to maintain its credibility at this time, we need an open and accountable independent investigation involving international participation into the death of Paul Wellstone. Hopefully we will find out, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that this was indeed an untimely accident. For the sake of our country, we need to know this.""Gore Vidal claims 'Bush junta' complicit in 9/11" (Sunder Katwala, The Observer, 2002/10/27)
Conspiracy theorizing à la Vidal: "Vidal's highly controversial 7000 word polemic titled 'The Enemy Within' - published in the print edition of The Observer today - argues that what he calls a 'Bush junta' used the terrorist attacks as a pretext to enact a pre-existing agenda to invade Afghanistan and crack down on civil liberties at home. Vidal writes: 'We still don't know by whom we were struck that infamous Tuesday, or for what true purpose. But it is fairly plain to many civil libertarians that 9/11 put paid not only to much of our fragile Bill of Rights but also to our once-envied system of government which had taken a mortal blow the previous year when the Supreme Court did a little dance in 5/4 time and replaced a popularly elected President with the oil and gas Bush-Cheney junta. ... Osama was chosen on aesthetic grounds to be the frightening logo for our long-contemplated invasion and conquest of Afghanistan ... [because] the administration is convinced that Americans are so simple-minded that they can deal with no scenario more complex than the venerable, lone, crazed killer (this time with zombie helpers) who does evil just for the fun of it 'cause he hates us because we're rich 'n free 'n he's not.'" (See also: "Gore Vidal Says Bush 'Wants War to Go on Forever'" (Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2002/09/09))"America in the dock - Myth II: America wants war with Saddam because of oil" (David Frum, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/10/22)
The second of a five-part series about British attitudes to America: "One Labour MP, Alan Simpson, phrased the accusation pungently in the Commons during the debate after Tony Blair presented the Government's dossier against Iraq. Saddam Hussein's "real crime", Mr Simpson said, "is his threat to negotiate oil contracts with Russia and France, not America". President George W Bush was like a drunk "who needs to satisfy his thirst for power and oil", and it was Mr Blair's duty "not to pass the bottle". ... Think for a minute about the logic of the claim that America wants to fight for oil. Does that mean "for access to oil"? America can already freely purchase all the oil it wants. There has not been a credible threat to access to oil supplies since the Arab embargo of 1973-74 and there is no credible threat to access today. Saddam wants to sell more oil, not less. And if conquest and occupation were necessary to obtain oil, why wouldn't America attack an easier target than Iraq - Angola, for example?" (See also: "America in the dock - Myth I: America is totally in hock to the Jewish lobby" (David Frum, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/10/21))"America in the dock - Myth I: America is totally in hock to the Jewish lobby" (David Frum, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/10/21)
The first of a five-part series about British attitudes to America: "Three weeks ago, I was standing in Piccadilly, watching the big anti-war march pass by. Two girls in Islamic headdress glanced my way, nudged each other, and then approached me. "Have we seen you on television?" one of them asked. I had appeared on a British television programme about Iraq shortly before, so I answered that yes, very possibly they had. "We knew it!" they exclaimed. Then they hissed: "You're part of the Jewish lobby, aren't you?" ... I wish I could say that those two girls had learnt their politics from some ranting mullah in a north London mosque. In fact, the certainty that American policy is controlled by what one British magazine called a "kosher conspiracy" was the single most widely held opinion I heard in the course of an eight-day visit to Britain. ... When Americans look at the Middle East, they see a democratic society inspired by the Bible and committed to human freedom, surrounded by murderous and tyrannical enemies. And when they look at the Palestinians, what do they see? Not the victims that Europeans perceive - but the people who danced with glee as New York and Washington burned. Americans see the inventors of the airplane hijacking and the exponents of suicide-murder. In short, they see people who inspired and sympathise with America's newest and deadliest enemies. ... And it is for that reason, and not because of some kosher conspiracy, that America stands by Israel and confronts Iraq.""Some Indonesians believe U.S. planned Bali bombings" (Andrew Browne and Jerry Norton, Reuters, 2002/10/15)
"Conspiracy theories that abounded in Indonesia after the September 11 attacks on the United States are resurfacing again, with stories in one widely read daily suggesting Washington planned the Bali bombings. Articles and commentaries in the newspaper "Republika", read by many professionals in the world's most populous Muslim nation, underline a deep undercurrent of anti-U.S. feeling in the country and help explain why authorities have been so reluctant to crack down on radical Islamic groups, according to diplomats and political analysts. In one article, an intelligence analyst commenting on the Saturday blasts that killed more than 180 people in Bali, is quoted as saying: "It's impossible that such as big plan was arranged by Malays. It can only be done by a superpower country." ... In another newspaper, a Muslim leader wrote in a column that suspicions "are strongly directed to foreign parties, in particular the U.S.". To explain why Washington would attempt to destabilise a country of great strategic interest, while it makes a difficult transition from authoritarian rule to democracy, he said the United States 'aims to create an opinion that it was true that Indonesia is a terrorist base and was a safe haven for these terrorists.'" (See also: "Indonesian Muslim militants claim U.S. behind Bali explosions" (The Jakarta Post, 2002/10/15))"Indonesian Muslim militants claim U.S. behind Bali explosions" (The Jakarta Post, 2002/10/15)
A new conspiracy theory, blaming the United States for the Bali terror attacks, is on the loose: "'We deplore and condemn the masterminds, fund raisers and whoever was involved in the bomb explosions in Bali,' said Habib Rizieq Shihab, leader of the Islam Defenders Front (FPI), a Muslim militant group best known for its frequent attacks on bars, and other nightspots in Jakarta. "The incident could be used as reason for the United States and its allies to justify their accusations that Indonesia is a terrorist network base," Shihab said as quoted by DPA. ... Many Indonesian Muslim clerics and academics on Monday were raising questions about who could be behind the Bali tragedy, which has seemingly justified a stronger government stance against terrorists and their sympathizers. "Such a car bomb blast could be linked to the work of foreigners, especially the U.S. in a bid to attack hard-line groups deemed as terrorists," said M. Budyatna, a noted political observer and former dean of social and political studies at the University of Indonesia. "The terrorist label is intentionally given to Muslims in Indonesia in a bid to justify its hypothesis and in the hope of stigmatizing Indonesia in the eyes of international community," said another political expert Nadjamuddin Muhammad Rasul." (See also: "Outrage at Bali Bombs, Fingers Pointed at Al Qaeda" (Reuters, 2002/10/13): "At a news conference on Sunday, Bashir blamed the United States for the attacks. "It would be impossible for Indonesians to do it," he said. "Indonesians don't have such powerful explosives." 'I think maybe the U.S. are behind the bombings because they always say Indonesia is part of a terrorist network.'")"Egypt's Cultural Revolution" (Martin Walker, UPI, 2002/10/13)
Here's a new twist to conspiracy theories regarding Bush's stance on Iraq - it's really about China and Europe: "Something important is happening in Egypt. It might be called the al-Jazeera effect, the way that the highly professional and popular Qatar-based satellite TV channel is starting to change the media culture of the Arab world. Less than a year ago, a new private satellite channel was launched in Egypt called Dream TV. ... The show that everyone watches is Al-Ustaz, the Professor, which features the grand old man of Egyptian journalism, Mohamed Heykal, former editor of Al-Ahram, adviser and close confidant to former President Nasser. So far he has done three shows, all discussing politics and world affairs, and they have all had a huge impact. His latest show, on Iraq and the Bush administration, has been re-broadcast three times already. Heikal did not give the standard Arab rant about Jewish influence in Washington and Arab victimhood, and ridiculed the idea that America's top priority was to crush Iraq and the Arab world in general. "It's all a sideshow. Iraq is just the battleground," Heykal said. 'What is about to happen in Iraq is about taming the rising international monsters, the big international competitors like China and Europe. Unfortunately, the Iraqi people will suffer and so will we all, but this is not about us. This is about international strategy.'""UNC-CH Groups Resume Anti-War Events" (Jon Sanders, Carolina Journal, from the October 2002 issue)
Sanders on a recent anti-war "teach-in": "[Stan] Goff's message is that the "military-petroleum regime" of the Bush administration planned before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to invade Afghanistan to tap oil reserves there and exert U.S. control over South Asia. "I can't help but conclude that the actions we are seeing put in motion now are part of a pre-September 11th agenda," Goff has written. "I'm absolutely sure of it, in fact... This administration is lying about this whole thing being a 'reaction' to September 11th." In October Goff told an audience at N.C. State that the U.S. was really in Afghanistan to build an oil pipeline from the Aral Sea to the Indian Ocean, and also because "the CIA needs the heroin from Afghanistan to fund its global operation." The hidden-economic-agenda-behind-the-war is a message Goff, a Marxist, has recycled since the U.S. intervened in Yugoslavia. As a member of the "International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosovic," Goff has put forth the notion that the well-documented July 1995 Srebenica massacre was a "giant hoax" orchestrated by the U.S. in order to wage "economic warfare" - that "Milosevic is no war criminal" nor "a dictator," and that there 'was never any coordinated campaign of genocide or ethnic cleansing by Serbs, no massacres at either Racek or Srebrenica, and never any such thing as Serbian 'rape camps.''" (See also: "Transcript of Sept. 23 UNC-Chapel Hill Teach-In" (Carolina Journal, from the October 2002 issue))"Crude" (Peter Beinart, The New Republic, 2002/10/01)
"Antiwar leftists say America shouldn't attack Iraq because American foreign policy shouldn't be dictated by oil. While the "this war is really about oil" thesis may be marginal in Washington, it's pervasive beyond America's shores. ... But this just raises another logical problem: If all the Bush administration wanted from Iraq were those six million daily barrels of crude - if all its talk about nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons was merely a smoke screen - why wouldn't the United States simply lift sanctions? Attacking Saddam, after all, entails huge financial costs, risks American lives, and could prompt civil war in precisely those parts of Iraq where oil companies want to drill. Lifting sanctions would far more easily produce the same result - since it is sanctions that have partially prevented Iraq from importing the equipment that it needs to boost oil production. ... Indeed, for their first nine months in office, Cheney and the Bush team didn't propose invading Iraq; they proposed scaling back the U.N. sanctions regime. The Bush administration changed its mind not because of oil but because of terrorism." (Note: For a recent example of the war for oil-thesis, see "The Sun Can't Set on This Empire Too Soon" (Robert Scheer, Los Angeles Times, 2002/10/01): "It sure smells like imperialism. That's the word historians use when powerful nations grab control of desired resources, be it the gold of the New World or the oil of the Middle East. Imperialist greed is what "regime change" in Iraq and "anticipatory self-defense" are all about, and all of the rest of the Bush administration's talk about security and democracy is a bunch of malarkey." And for a critique of Scheer, see "Scheer Deception: The Lies and Jargon of Robert Scheer" (Ben Fritz, Spinsanity, 2001/10/08): "In column after column, his favored tactics have been irrational criticism, distortion, and spin. ... For those concerned about the rise of irrational discourse in American politics, Robert Scheer stands out as one of the worst offenders." )"Ted Rall and His Web of Half-Truths: A Critique" (John Giuffo, The Comics Journal, from the #247 issue)
An in-depth critique of the works of the cartoonist and columnist Ted Rall. Found via Little Green Footballs: "In the ensuing months [after 9/11], his analysis of the war and its combatants has been thoroughly shot through with distortion, exaggeration and lies. ... Oct. 2 marks the first chance he gets to address the war in Afghanistan. His column from that day, knee-slappingly titled "Give Thought a Chance," is an attempt to explain why any military action in Afghanistan would be both a waste of time and "an escalation of genocide by trade sanction." ... Rall argues that oil is the real purpose of the war in his strip from Oct. 4 and his column on Oct. 12, when he connects the dots between a newly revived pipeline plan by energy company Unocal, and the Bush administration's notoriously close ties with Big Oil. Therefore, "... this ersatz war by a phony president is solely about getting the Unocal deal done without interference from annoying local middlemen." ... Seeing America - warts and all - is necessary. Seeing only America's warts is just stupid. But moreover, it means Rall's opinions - and the strips and columns those opinions inform - are fatally flawed. Factor in exaggeration, inaccuracy and outright lies, and what's left is an utterly worthless political cartoonist." (See also: Ted Rall Online.)"CAIR-less with the Truth" (Jake Tapper, The Weekly Standard, from the 2002/10/07 issue)
"Less than a week after the September 11 terrorist attacks, President Bush visited the Islamic Center in Washington to make it clear that Islam and Muslims in general should not be held responsible. There he met with, among others, Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), perhaps the most prominent Muslim advocacy group in the country. ... In a previously unnoticed interview conducted by Sanaa Al-Said, the executive director of CAIR says that Israel was responsible for the September 11 attacks. He goes on to say that he discussed this with President George W. Bush who, in Awad's version of events, allowed that this was a possibility. Perhaps needless to say, a White House official adamantly denies that such a conversation ever took place. ... What's more, Awad told El-Osboa, it was clear to him that no Muslim could have been responsible for the attacks because of "the big contradiction between what was said in the biographies of the suspects - that they were drinking alcohol and sleeping with women - and the behavioral biographies of bin Laden's group." To that, President Bush is said to have told Awad that "the door is open for speculations and there might be a conspiracy behind the conspiracy. This means that if those that carried out the attack were Arabs, then non-Arabs and non-Muslims could be behind them." A White House official calls Awad's tale of his conversation with the president absolutely "ridiculous." It simply "didn't happen," he said." (See also: "Islam's flawed spokesmen" (Jake Tapper, Salon.com, 2001/09/26))"New Jersey Laureate Refuses to Resign Over Poem" (Matthew Purdy, The New York Times, 2002/09/28)
"A month after Amiri Baraka became the poet laureate of New Jersey, Gov. James E. McGreevey asked the writer and political activist to resign yesterday because a poem he read at a recent poetry festival implies that Israel knew about the Sept. 11 attack in advance. ... "I'm not resigning," Mr. Baraka said at his home in Newark, vowing to fight removal. ... The governor asked for the resignation because of a poem titled "Somebody Blew Up America," which Mr. Baraka recited a week ago at the renowned Dodge Poetry Festival in Waterloo, N.J. ...
Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed
Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers
To stay home that day
Why did Sharon stay away?
Mr. Baraka's poem repeats a persistent yet widely discredited story that has circulated on the Internet since the terror attacks. "Everything said about Israel in the poem is easily researched," Mr. Baraka said. 'If you criticize Israel, they hide behind the religion and call you anti-Semitic.'" (See also: "The Events of September 11 and the Arab Media: The New Antisemitic Myth" (MEMRI, Special Report - No. 7, 2002/09/13) and "4,000 Jews, 1 Lie - Tracking an Internet hoax" (Bryan Curtis, Slate, 2001/10/05). UPDATE: FrontPageMagazine has posted the complete poem: "Somebody Blew Up America" (Amiri Baraka, FrontPageMagazine. 2002/10/04). Also, ADL has a compilation of anti-Semitic statements and writings of Baraka: "Amira Baraka: In His Own Words" (ADL, September 2002))
"Time to get the facts right" (David Welch, New York Post, 2002/09/27)
"This article by the U.S. Ambassador to Egypt ran in several Egyptian papers this month - and was widely condemned by leading Egyptian leftist intellectuals.": "Unfortunately, the anniversary also brought yet more media voices questioning who planned and committed the attacks, and positing incredible conspiracy theories without the slightest bit of evidence to back them up. Leading Egyptian newspapers and magazines in the past two weeks alone have published columns by senior columnists who suggested governments or groups other than al Qaeda were responsible. A leading Egyptian professor of sociology, in a public lecture on Sept. 11, 2002, spent nearly half an hour trying to cast doubt on al Qaeda's culpability and even went so far as to implicate the U.S. government by asserting that America had benefited from the attacks. ... Sadly, such disregard for the facts in such a serious matter can tarnish the reputation of the Egyptian media in the eyes of the world. I hope editors will keep this in mind and exercise their editorial judgment when reviewing articles or columns to print in their publications. If nothing else, responsible media should be dedicated to telling the truth, not spreading falsehood, and knowing the difference between the two." (See also: "U.S. Ambassador in Sept 11 Spat with Egypt Media" (Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2002/09/21): "A statement issued on Saturday by newspaper columnists, writers and cartoonists from state-owned and opposition papers said Welch should "go back to his country," accusing the U.S. media as "only seeing the region through Israeli eyes." "He talks as if he's addressing slaves or citizens of some banana republic. ... Whether he was the ambassador of America or Micronesia, it's odd that he should tell Egyptian journalists how to think and write," it said. "He made an unprecedented call for imposing new restrictions on articles and columns in the Egyptian press," the statement said.")
"A domestic outlook on 9/11: Seeing through it all" (Al-Ahram Weekly, from the 12 - 18 September 2002 issue)
Results from a poll made by the Egyptian magazine. Note the conspiracy theorizing inherent in the heading:
"QUESTION 1: How would you describe your feelings when you saw the destruction of New York's twin towers?
They deserved it: 52%
Sympathy for the victims: 35%
Afraid of the future: 24%
Admiration for the culprits: 28%
Anger at the culprits: 10%
QUESTION 2: Who do you think is responsible for the attacks?
Israeli intelligence/Mossad: 39%
We'll never know: 25%
Al-Qa'eda or other Islamic militants: 19%
Others: 19%
QUESTION 3: How do you view the American war on terror?
A means of asserting the US's global dominance: 68%
A war against Arabs and Muslims: 51%
A justified response to the attacks: 15%""Arabs still deny Qaida role in 9/11" (Sana Abdallah, UPI, 2002/09/13)
"Television programs and confessions of senior al Qaida members claiming responsibility for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States have still failed to persuade many Arabs that other fellow Arabs and Muslims were behind the devastating attacks on New York and Washington. ... On the "al Jazeera Forum" call-in program after the video clips were aired, callers from around the Arab world went as far as accusing the channel of "a Zionist agenda" for blaming Arabs and Muslims for the Sept. 11 attacks. ... When one caller named Salah expressed his opinion that the U.S. administration and the "Zionists" were behind the attacks, the program's anchorwoman insisted: "We are now beyond who is responsible for the attacks and should focus on the repercussions of Sept. 11." Salah responded that, 'even if bin Laden, al Qaida and Arabs were involved in the attacks, they must have been used by the Zionists and their intelligence apparatus to achieve their goals of colonizing the Arabs and Muslims.'" (Also: "According to the Jordanian mass-circulation daily al-Dustur's Web site, the majority of online voters believed that Israel was the real party behind the attacks. The Web site showed Friday that 59 percent of a total of 2,582 voters were convinced of Israel's responsibility, while only 15 percent believed Arabs were behind the Sept. 11 attacks. In the online voting from Sept. 8 to 13, around 19 percent said they believed that "international intelligence" (meaning the CIA) was behind the attacks and 7 percent believed the "American right" was responsible.")"The Events of September 11 and the Arab Media: The New Antisemitic Myth" (MEMRI, Special Report - No. 7, 2002/09/13)
An updated report about conspiracy theories in Arab media, claiming that American and or Jewish/Israeli elements carried out the attacks: "The Saudi daily Al-Watan published an article by the Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy, in which he claimed that the September 11 attacks were an American conspiracy involving the cooperation of extremist Islamic groups formed in the days of the struggle against the Soviets. According to Garaudy, the planes could have been directed by technological means, with no real need for humans; the names that allegedly were those of the perpetrators were names of Islamic extremists known to the Americans who could easily be connected with the attacks. Like others, Garaudy also claimed that the attacks corresponded with the American strategy to take control of Central Asian oil reserves - a strategy led by the largely Jewish Pentagon hawks. Further proof, he said, was the absence of 4,000 Jews from their place of work at the World Trade Center on that day, as well as the Jews' profits from stock market deals made using their prior information on the attacks.""True Believers of False Rumors" (David Rohde, The New York Times, 2002/09/12)
A dispatch from Pakistan: "Raising his voice so people gathered around him on the train platform could hear, Sohail Kabir announced his reaction to the one-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. "The question we should ask is, 'Where were all the Jews in the World Trade Center?'" said Mr. Kabir, 47, property dealer. "They all left the World Trade Center. "It's in the newspaper," he added. "There was not a single Jew." Twelve months after the attacks, reports in two Urdu-language newspapers this morning continued to feed a belief here that Israeli or American intelligence agencies carried out the strikes to stoke hatred of Muslims. False rumors circulating on the Internet that Jews were given secret warnings of the attacks were also repeated in the articles. ... "I think Henry Kissinger is behind this whole plan," one elderly man announced. 'He has always been against Muslims and Pakistan.'""The September 11 That Never Was" (Marc Cooper, LA Weekly, from the July 19-25 issue)
"Because it seems, nowadays in Europe, that the further you move up on the informational food chain, the more humidly fetid the imagination turns when it comes to Things American. As I prepared to appear on a writers' roundtable on the hoity-toitiest of literature programs on Spanish National Television, the host told me he expected me to lay out the case in favor of a new Continental best-seller: The Frightening Fraud by French author Thierry Meyssan. Its more descriptive title in Spanish - The Plane That Didn't Exist - reveals that the real fraud is the book itself. Indeed, the cranky Parisian daily Libération called the book "The Frightening Confidence Trick ... a tissue of wild and irresponsible allegations, entirely without foundation." ... In the U.S., fortunately, this sort of dementia is adhered to by only tiny clusters of full-time paranoids who can channel KPFK through their top molars. But here in the Old World, from Rome to Paris to Madrid - and even out here in the provincial boonies near the Portuguese border - this excrement is being lapped up like one big creamy hot-fudge sundae. ... When faced with armed, religious fascists who vow your destruction, you better have something weightier to throw at them than a dog-eared copy of Thierry Meyssan's fantasy screed.""Sontag Award Nominee" (andrewsullivan.com, 2002/07/15)
Sullivan quotes a column by the British chomskyite John Pilger, combining the usual mix of topsy-turvy moral equivalence and conspiracy theorizing: "Having swept the Palestinians into the arms of the supreme terrorist Ariel Sharon, the Christian Right fundamentalists running the plutocracy in Washington, now replenish their arsenal in preparation for an attack on the 22 million suffering people of Iraq. Should anyone need reminding, Iraq is a nation held hostage to an American-led embargo every bit as barbaric as the dictatorship over which Iraqis have no control. Contrary to propaganda orchestrated from Washington and London, the coming attack has nothing to do with Saddam Hussein's 'weapons of mass destruction', if these exist at all. The reason is that America wants a more compliant thug to run the world's second greatest source of oil." (See also: "The great charade" (John Pilger, The Observer, 2002/07/14))"The value of conspiracy theories" (Dr Kai-Alexander Schlevogt, The Jordan Times, 2002/07/15)
While ostensibly a column analysing the significance of conspiracy theories, it turns out that Schlevogt is an adept scholar of conspiracy theorizing himself: "Yet, there is one common valuable feature of the theories that explain the attacks on America: the doubt in the official version. When witnessing the attacks on Sept. 11, I wondered how a government, only minutes after the events, could already attribute them to the "new Hitler", Ben Laden. And how could such a difficult operation be masterminded by one man in a cave, who directed atomised groups of fighters? ... Was it just chance that there were so many perfect shots of the attacks (including the first flight into one of the Twin Towers), reminding us of very similar scenes from Hollywood movies? Why did the reports very quickly shift away from the attacks on the Pentagon, only focusing on the attack on the World Trade Centre? ... The gains from zero hour are very asymmetric, shedding doubt on motifs to undertake such a dangerous mission. The alleged perpetrators have lost greatly, while the "victims" have significantly increased their power. The US president has received dictatorial powers to attack his self-chosen enemies anywhere in the world. ... Even if forces in the US government have not planned the attacks, they are free-riding on their fallout.""Conspiracy Theory Grips French: Sept. 11 as Right-Wing U.S. Plot" (Alan Riding, The New York Times, 2002/06/22)
"In the book, "L'Effroyable Imposture," or "The Horrifying Fraud," Thierry Meyssan challenges the entire official version of the Sept. 11 attacks. He claims the Pentagon was not hit by a plane, but by a guided missile fired on orders of far right-wingers inside the United States government. Further, he says, the planes that struck the World Trade Center were not flown by associates of Osama bin Laden, but were programmed by the same government people to fly into the twin towers. What really interests him, though, is what he sees as the conspiracy behind these actions. He contends that it was organized by right-wing elements inside the government who were planning a coup unless President Bush agreed to increase military spending and go to war against Afghanistan and Iraq to promote the conspirators' oil interests. To achieve their goals, the theory goes, they blamed Osama bin Laden for Sept. 11 and later broadened their targets to include the "axis of evil," centered on Iraq. ... Further, confident that this conspiracy theory will endure, Mr. Meyssan and Carnot have just published a 192-page annex, with new documents, photographs and theories. They call it 'Le Pentagate.'""Top Saudi imam sees conspiracy" (Paul Martin, The Washington Times, 2002/06/03)
"Saudi Arabia's top Muslim cleric has called on the Islamic world to unite against a worldwide conspiracy of Hindus, Christians, Jews and secularists threatening Islamic moral values. Muslims, he said, should cleanse themselves from creeping Western values and American-controlled "globalization." ... "The idol-worshipping Hindus indulge in their open hatred against our brothers and sanctities in Muslim Kashmir, threatening an imminent danger and a fierce war in the whole Indian subcontinent," [Sheik Abd-al-Rahman al-Sudays, the imam of the Mosque of Mecca] said in a live sermon heard throughout the Arab world via the official Saudi national television and satellite channel. ... Though he was particularly scornful of Jews, whom he said had been cursed and turned into "pigs and monkeys" by Allah, he turned his ire on Christians and capitalists as well. "Their course is supported by the advocates of credit and worshippers of the Cross," the imam asserted, 'as well as by those who are infatuated with them and influenced by their rotten ideas and poisonous culture among the advocates of secularism and Westernization.'""The September 11 X-Files" (David Corn, The Nation, 2002/05/30)
Corn on conspiracy theories about the September 11 attacks. More specifically he debunks Michael Ruppert and Delmart "Mike" Vreeland, who "runs a website that has cornered a large piece of the alternative-9/11 market" and the book "Bin Laden; the Forbidden Truth", by Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, "in which they maintain that the 9/11 attacks were the 'outcome' of 'private and risky discussions' between the United States and the Taliban 'concerning geostrategic oil interests.'": "An American who was jailed in Canada, Vreeland claims to be a US naval intelligence officer who tried to warn the authorities before the attacks. Ruppert cites Vreeland to back up his allegation that the CIA had "foreknowledge" of the 9/11 attacks and that there is a strong case for "criminal complicity on the part of the U.S. government in their execution." ... To believe Vreeland's scribbles mean anything, one must believe his claim to be a veteran intelligence operative sent to Moscow on an improbable top-secret, high-tech mission (change design documents to neutralize an entire technology) during which he stumbled upon documents (which he has not revealed) showing that 9/11 was going to happen. To believe that, one must believe he is a victim of a massive disinformation campaign, involving his family, law enforcement officers and defense lawyers across the country, two state corrections departments, county clerk offices in ten or so counties, the Canadian justice system and various parts of the US government. And one must believe that hundreds, if not thousands, of detailed court, county, prison and state records have been forged." (See also: and From the Wilderness, a site which focuses on Vreeland and Ruppert.)"Palestinian Leader: Number of Jewish Victims in the Holocaust Might be "Even Less Than a Million..." Zionist Movement Collaborated with Nazis to "Expand the Mass Extermination" of the Jews" (MEMRI, Inquiry and Analysis Series - No. 95, 2002/05/29)
"A 1982 doctoral dissertation by Secretary-General of the PLO Executive Committee Mahmoud Abbas, a.k.a. Abu Mazen, who is considered second to Yasser Arafat, discussed "the secret ties between the Nazis and the Zionist movement leadership." Two years later, a study by Abu Mazen based on his dissertation for Moscow's Oriental College was published in Arabic by Dar Ibn Rushd publishers in Amman, Jordan. In the introduction to his 1984 study, Abu Mazen referred to well-known Holocaust deniers, raised doubts that gas chambers were used for extermination of Jews, and claimed that the number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust might be "even less than a million." ... The central claim Abu Mazen sought to prove is that the Zionist movement, with all its factions, conspired against the Jewish people and collaborated with the Nazis to annihilate it, because the movement considered "Palestine" the only appropriate destination for Jewish emigration. ... Abu Mazen added, 'the Zionist movement led a broad campaign of incitement against the Jews living under Nazi rule, in order to arouse the government's hatred of them, to fuel vengeance against them, and to expand the mass extermination.'""Arab League Think Tank Hosts Event: U.S. Military behind September 11" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch No.383, 2002/05/23)
Not surprisingly Meyssan's theories are taken seriously by the Arab League think tank: "On April 8, an Arab League think tank - The Zayed Center for Coordination and Follow Up (ZCCF) - hosted a lecture titled "Who masterminded the attacks of September 11th?" The guest speaker, Thierry Meyssan, was described by the center as "the famous French author and writer." The event served partly to promote Meyssan's book, "The Appalling Fraud," in which he accuses the U.S. military of being behind September 11. ... The Zayed Center for Coordination and Follow Up was established by the Arab League in 1999. Notable speakers at the center this year include former vice president Al Gore, former secretary of state James Baker, Professor Shebley Telhami of the University of Maryland and President George W. Bush's brother, Neil Bush. ... The ZCCF's summary detailed Meyssan's argument as follows: Both Congress and the U.S. media covered up the truth by not investigating events. ... Bin Laden's involvement: 'this myth, also does not stand analysis," since he was a previous CIA agent who was visited by the head of the CIA in a Dubai hospital in July.'""Before dismissing the conspiracy theories" (Naseer Alomari, The Jordan Times, 2002/05/20)
A rather telling defence of Arab conspiracy theorizing, which is based on the belief in a conspiracy theory: "The conspiracy is in the way the major American media outlets pick and choose what the American public can hear. On May 13, Fox News reported that the police pulled over two Israeli nationals who were driving a truck "near the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station and found to have traces of TNT on the gearshift and traces of RDX plastic explosive on the steering wheel". ... Could this be part of a bigger plot that aims to tarnish the image of the Arab and Muslim minorities in the United States and link Arab governments to terrorism? We will never know because the American media chose not to follow up. ... The most perceptive and open-minded Arab is left with no choice but to question the dubious relationship between the American media and the invisible hands of the Israeli government on what news items are reported to the American public. ... Israeli loyalists in the United States have tightened their grip on what the American people can hear. They strive to pit the American public against the Arabs, they aim to manufacture a military confrontation between America and the Arab world, and they spare no effort to keep the American public in darkness vis-ý-vis the suspicious activities of the Israeli government on American soil. Does that not make a conspiracy?""Spies, or students?" (Nathan Guttman, Haaretz, 2002/05/13)
Haven't posted this story before as it seems to be in the same league as the "4,000 Jews"-hoax or the "Hunt the Boeing"-allegations: "It could be the biggest espionage scandal of the century, or the greatest journalistic non-starter in many a decade, but it's clear that the story of the Israeli art students in New York - dozens of alleged spies living in the United States - refuses to die down. ... According to reports of the scandal, around 120 young Israeli citizens, posing as art students and selling paintings door-to-door, have been arrested and deported from the United States. The door-to-door sale of art works, it is claimed, was a front for a sophisticated spy ring... ... According to some speculations, the Israelis' intelligence work enabled the spy ring to know in advance of the planned terror attack on September 11, without lifting a finger to prevent it. ... There is one source for all these stories and it is not an unreliable one. The source is the 60-page draft of an internal report by the intelligence division of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). ... According to the report's author, whose identity has never been published, DEA officials identified an increase in the number of incidents in which young Israelis, claiming to be art students, tried to sell them works of art. "It is entirely possible," said the report, 'that this is an organized intelligence-gathering activity.'""Beneath the Planet of the Anti-War Libertarians" (BrinkLindsey.com, 2002/04/30)
Lindsey has read the transcript of the recent anti-war event staged by the Independent Institute and found these remarks by the event's headliner, "the parody-proof" Gore Vidal: "These people are for the most part rip-off artists. Notice that they're all gas and oil men from Cheney, to the two Bushes; I think Rumsfeld also. And what this is really about is oil, and it's Central Asian oil, which is what we've got our eye on. We do have practical motives every now and then. It's not just for the sheer glory that we get into a war like the Afghanistan. Afghanistan is the entranceway to Central Asia and five republics that used to belong to the Soviet Union that are now the largest suppliers of gas, natural gas, and oil. He who gets his hands on that will really control the world for a while. ... It's a weird world. A mercenary army that is not to be hurt, blowing up innocent countries, relatively innocent, like Afghanistan. But we do it." (See also: "Understanding America's Terrorist Crises: What Should be Done?" (The Independent Institute, 2002/04/18) and "Pipe Dreams" (Seth Stevenson, Slate, 2001/12/06): "What's absurd about the pipeline theory is how thoroughly it discounts the obvious reason the United States set the bombers loose on Afghanistan: Terrorists headquartered in Afghanistan attacked America's financial and military centers, killing 4,000 people, and then took credit for it. Nope - must be the pipeline.")"Democrat Implies Sept. 11 Administration Plot" (Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post, 2002/04/12)
InstaPundit appropriately files this one under "Bizarro Conspiracy Theories": "Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) is calling for an investigation into whether President Bush and other government officials had advance notice of terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 but did nothing to prevent them. She added that "persons close to this administration are poised to make huge profits off America's new war." ... "What did this administration know and when did it know it, about the events of September 11th? Who else knew, and why did they not warn the innocent people of New York who were needlessly murdered? . . . What do they have to hide?" ... Bush spokesman Scott McLellan dismissed McKinney's comments. "The American people know the facts, and they dismiss such ludicrous, baseless views," he said. 'The fact that she questions the president's legitimacy shows a partisan mind-set beyond all reason.'" (See also: "Cynthia McKinney: Today's Hanoi Jane" (Debbie Schlussel, WorldNetDaily, 2001/10/19) and "Cynthia McKinney Must Go" (Bruce Bialosky, FrontPageMagazine, 2001/10/19))"Muslim Anti-Semitism: A Clear and Present Danger" (Robert S. Wistrich, The American Jewish Committe, April 2002)
A must-read report on Muslim anti-Semitism: "Moreover, the present tidal wave of anti-Semitism has for a number of years been crystallizing into a genuinely mass phenomenon. ... The Jews are portrayed in Arab cartoons as demons and murderers, as a hateful, loathsome people to be feared and avoided. They are invariably seen as the origin of all evil and corruption, authors of a dark, unrelenting conspiracy to infiltrate and destroy Muslim society in order eventually to take over the world. ... Anti-Semitism has indeed become an integral and organic part of this Arab-Muslim culture of hatred - a potent instrument of incitement, terror, and political manipulation. ... The Western media, as is its custom, has been extremely reluctant to relate the current terrorist war against Israel and the West to its ideological roots in Islam or to the sources and meaning of jihad. It is equally averse to connecting terrorism with the anti-Jewish obsessions that currently animate millions of Muslims. Amazingly little attention has been paid to the sheer abundance, energy, and viciousness of contemporary Muslim anti-Semitism from Cairo and Gaza to Damascus, Baghdad, Tehran, and Lahore. The seemingly endless parade of grotesque falsehoods exhibited in Arab and Muslim defamation of Jews and the Jewish state scarcely seems to impinge on Western consciousness. At most it is perceived as a footnote to the raging storm of anti-Americanism or as a form of "political opposition" to Israeli actions.""9/11 Denial" (James S. Robbins, National Review, 2002/04/09)
An article on Meyssan's book "L'Effroyable Imposture", which maintains that no Boeing 757 was involved in the September 11 Pentagon attack: "Meyssan's purpose is to uncover a much deeper plot of the United States against the world. He reveals other interesting facts, like bin Laden was an agent of the U.S. who was used by President Bush to destroy secret CIA offices in the World Trade Towers. ... Today is Yom Hashoah, the Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust, and Meyssan's theory fits neatly with those of the Holocaust deniers. In both cases, the premises of their originators are indefensible, which forces them into a position where they have to throw the facts overboard to sustain their arguments. But notions like this are kept alive by people who have a predisposition to believe them, those who have pre-existing grudges and will engage in whatever reality-denying behavior justifies their baseline prejudices.""Brooklyn's 'Arab Street' - A hate rally, just minutes from Ground Zero" (Brendan Miniter, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/04/08)
"A few minutes from Ground Zero, the Arab street came out on Friday. A few hundred Muslims marched up Atlantic Avenue and rallied in front of Borough Hall. They said they meant to pressure President Bush and other officials to force Israel to stand down. But it looked more like a pro-terror hate rally. Protesters held signs reading "Israel Occupation = Terrorism," "Occupation = Violence" and "Declare Jahad [sic]," among others. More than one held a sign with the Star of David, an equal sign and a swastika. Yasser Arafat, their signs made clear, is their "hero." ... The second sheet was even more bizarre. ... It claimed Israel is engaging in a comprehensive conspiracy that involves listening to nearly every phone call made inside the U.S. The Israelis, it explains, are using this information to blackmail all federal officials in high office and the national media. ... In short, because Americans are so depraved, the Jews are able to control them.""French lap up Pentagon crash 'fraud'" (BBC News, 2002/04/03)
"A book which argues that American Airlines flight 77 did not crash into the Pentagon on 11 September has become an immediate bestseller in France. Thierry Meyssan's book L'Effroyable Imposture (The Appalling Fraud) alleges the attack on the building, which houses the US defence department, was staged by none other than the American Government. "No plane crashed into the Pentagon," he said in a recent interview on France 2 television. "I believe the government is lying." ... The book is currently the top of Amazon France's bestseller list and has made it to second place in the Livres Hebdo's list. ... News weekly Le Nouvel Observateur denounced the book as revisionism. 'This theory suits everyone - there are no Islamic extremists... everyone is happy. It eliminates reality.'""Rumors of War - The damage to the Pentagon on September 11 was caused by something other than a hijacked Boeing 757's being crashed into its side" (Urban Legends Reference Pages, 2002/04/01)
A debunking of the myth that no Boeing was involved in the Pentagon attack on September 11: "The notion that the Pentagon was not damaged by terrorists who hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 (a Boeing 757) and crashed it into the military office complex, but that the whole affair was staged by the U.S. government, has been promulgated by French author Thierry Meyssan in his book, The Frightening Fraud. Meyssan offers no real explanation for what did cause the extensive damage to the Pentagon, asserting only that Flight 77 did not exist, no plane crashed into the Pentagon, and that "the American government is lying." Unfortunately, the appeal of conspiracy theories has resulted in widespread dissemination of Meyssan's "theory" in France and the USA, particularly in web sites that mirror his work.""Awake, Voltaire" (Libération, 2002/03/30)
[Note: Translation from French made with BabelFish] Thierry Meyssan's book "L'effroyable imposture" ("The Appalling Imposture") has become an immediate success in France, selling more than 100,000 copies in one week. In the book Meyssan implies that the American Government was behind the September 11 terror attacks. His "proof" is the allegation that there was no Boeing aircraft involved in the attack against Pentagon. Libération deals with Meyssans conspiracy theory in three articles: "Just as their anti-semitism clings to any "detail" of the history of the camps of death to dodge the scientific work most serious and the results best established, in the same way the pseudo-theories of Appalling Imposture feed with the paranoiac anti-Americanism which is one of the most constant components of the French political cauldron. The responsibility for the evil can be only American. And, of the blow, the compassion which one can feel for the victims of September the 11 is turned over against the United States."'"Hunt the Boeing' Answers" (Paul Boutin & Patrick Di Justo, Paul Boutin Weblogger, 2002/03/14)
A thourogh debunking of the myth that no Boeing aircraft was involved in the terror attack on Pentagon on September 11: "As lifelong propellerheads who firmly believe in asking questions, we found Hunt the Boeing an engaging puzzle, despite its tragic subject matter, but one full of obvious errors and misleading questions. Since many of our friends continue to ask us if we've seen the site, we decided to document our answers to it, which we wrote separately. As might be expected, Patrick focused on the math and science (you may remember his widely circulated napkin math on the WTC attack), while Paul picked apart the wording of the questions." (See also: "Hunt the Boeing! And test your perceptions!" (Asile.org))"Saudi Government Official: American Jews are 'Brothers of Apes and Pigs'" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch No. 343, 2002/02/08)
"The popular Al-Jazeera talk show, "The Opposite Direction," recently addressed the issue of whether Osama bin Laden has served the cause of Islam, or damaged it. ... However, [the Saudi preacher from the Ministry of Islamic Affairs in Saudi
Arabia] Al-Haddal stood firmly in defense of bin Laden. In his comments he also fiercely attacked American Jewry. Following are excerpts of Al-Haddal's statements: 'I don't believe that the attack on America [on September 11th] was perpetrated by bin Laden or the Muslims. I think differently. I believe it was a scheme. What is happening now is a continuation of an ancient attack. It is a continuation of the Jewish deception and the Jewish-Zionist wickedness which infiltrates the U.S. ... I am surprised that the Christian U.S. allows the 'brothers of apes and pigs' [meaning the Jews] to corrupt it. ... [The Jews] are the most despicable people who walked the land and are the worms of the entire world. They are all evil. And why? Because they are deceiving and plotting aggressors...'""British Magazine Raising Specter of 'Zionist Lobby'" (Forward, 2002/01/18)
"In what some see as a pattern since September 11, a leading British weekly has raised the specter of Jewish control over the media and government. The cover story of the January 14 edition of the New Statesman, a respected liberal weekly, is headlined "A Kosher Conspiracy?" and features a gold Star of David appearing to pierce a Union Jack. The story purports to investigate whether there is a "Zionist" plan to sway the British press to the side of Israel and to minimize Palestinian grievances. It also assesses the extent to which Jews influence British politics. "That there is a Zionist lobby and that it is rich, potent, and effective goes largely unquestioned on the left," writes Dennis Sewell. "Big Jewry, like big tobacco, is seen as one of life's givens." Journalists who dare to speak out against the "Zionist lobby," Mr. Sewell adds, are harassed, threatened and eventually muted. ... The New Statesman article is only the latest example of what some say has become a wide expression of anti-Semitism in Britain since September 11." (See also: "A kosher conspiracy?" (Dennis Sewell, The New Statesman, from the 2002/01/14 issue))"Denial: A River in Egypt" (Daniel Pipes and Jonathan Schanzer, New York Post/danielpipes.org, 2002/01/14)
"But the Middle East media knows better. "The story of the arms ship is but a licensed fabrication by Israel," announces the editor-in-chief of the Egyptian government's daily, Al-Akhbar. Saudi media agree that the episode was a hoax, with Arab News calling it "an elaborate trap" and Ar-Riyadh alleging that it "was necessary to fabricate the ship story" to implicate other Arab and Muslim countries as sponsors of terrorism. Qatar's Ash-Sharq interpreted it as an Israeli "pretext for more oppression and terrorism against the Palestinians" and a story that "no sane person can believe." ... This pattern of avoiding unpleasant facts offers an insight into the problems of Muslim society. Turning defeat into victory, evidence into forgery, and terrorism into an "inside job" creates an alternate and more hospitable world. But this denial avoids problems rather than dealing with them. Not acknowledging who carried out the 9/11 atrocities, for example, means ignoring its many causes, from a radicalized school curriculum to the use of Islamic "charities" for money-laundering. Part of the U.S. war on terrorism, therefore, has to be working with Muslim governments and pressing them to face reality. This will not be easy, but so long as they remain in denial, the stage is set for fresh disasters.""A New Antisemitic Myth in the Arab Press: The September 11 Attacks Were Perpetrated by the Jews" (Special Report, MEMRI, 2002/01/08)
"Since September 11, the Arab media have claimed that Jews perpetrated the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. Promoting this new myth are high-ranking public officials and columnists in the government and non-government press in Arab countries. In an attempt to deflect blame from the Arab-Muslim suspects in the attacks, the media have floated a number of ideas on the identities of the perpetrators. According to Arab perceptions, the attacks were carried out by those who stood to gain the most from them. Also examined was the question of who had the capability to carry out such an operation. In the articles reviewed in this report, the conclusions point directly at the Jews. These conclusions are supported by various forms of evidence, further buttressed by timeworn, long-"substantiated" antisemitic myths. Thus, the papers posit guilt, substantiate their accusations, convict, and, in one case, hand down a sentence – annihilation 'as Hitler did.'""Saudi Government Daily: The Jews are Taking Over the World" (Special Dispatch No. 321, MEMRI, 2001/12/28)
Translation of an anti-Semitic article from the Saudi daily Al-Watan by Abdallah Aal Malhi entitled "The Jewish organizations are implementing their strategic hellish plan to take over the world.": "At the end of the last century, the Jewish organizations consolidated a hellish plan to take over the world by sparking revolutions or taking control of the keys to governments in various countries, first and foremost the US and Russia. ... The arrogance and tyranny of the Jews, who manage to hide it from the Western public, has reached such proportions that anyone who talks about them, their hegemony, and their racism knows that he will pay a high price. ... So as to prove our words, we will not address Jewish control of the media in Western countries, primarily in the US… but we will give an example of the Jews' infiltration and control of the top positions in the American administration. This control aroused astonishment in the days of the Clinton administration…: Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, FBI chief George Tenet, Defense Secretary William Cohen, Clinton's national security advisor Sandy Berger – all Jews. Through this infiltration of the various American administrations, and through controlling the media and money, the Jews impose their agenda on the other peoples, and the Jewish sense of superiority, whose aim is to recruit the peoples and their resources for the good of Jewish interests and their racist state Israel, remain unchanged.""Pipe Dreams" (Seth Stevenson, Slate, 2001/12/06)
"A theory making the rounds on the Internet, on the airwaves, and in the press claims that the bombing of the Taliban has nothing to do with a "war on terrorism" but everything to do with the oil pipeline the West wants to build through Afghanistan. ... Why does the bombing-for-pipelines theory hold such appeal? For the same reason the supporting-the-Taliban-for-pipelines theory attracted so many: There's evidence that points in that direction. Unocal did want to build a pipeline through Afghanistan and did cozy up to the Taliban. Bush and Cheney do have ties to big oil. But theories like these are ridiculously reductionist. Their authors don't try to argue conclusions from evidence- they decide on conclusions first, then hunt for justification. ... What's absurd about the pipeline theory is how thoroughly it discounts the obvious reason the United States set the bombers loose on Afghanistan: Terrorists headquartered in Afghanistan attacked America's financial and military centers, killing 4,000 people, and then took credit for it. Nope - must be the pipeline.""The new Islamic fascism" (Robert S. Wistrich, The Jerusalem Post, 2001/11/16)
"There is something apocalyptic about the sheer scale and seismic shock effect of the Twin Towers massacre in New York. The Islamic terrorist perpetrators of this act, like the Nazis and fascists 60 years ago, speak a language of unquenchable hatred for the Jewish people, for America and the West, indeed for civilization itself. They, too, enjoy - at least in the Muslim world - the acclamation of significant sectors of the population. ... The conspiracy theory at its heart, which links plutocratic capitalism, international freemasonry, Zionism, and Marxist Communism, is almost identical with the mythical structure of Nazi anti-Semitism. For contemporary jihadists, a "Judaized" America and Israel, together with heretical, secular Muslim regimes are the godless spearhead of these dark occult forces that seek to destroy Islam and undermine the cultural identity of Muslim believers." (UPDATE: The link is down, but the article can be found here, via the Wayback Machine.)"The New Black Panther Halloween Special" (Bo Crader, The Daily Standard, 2001/11/09)
"Some Halloween specials are funnier than others. Take, for instance, the New Black Panther Party's "Emergency Town Hall Meeting," at the National Press Club which was broadcast on C-SPAN as a "Forum on U.S. Anti-Terrorism Efforts & Muslims" on October 31. ... Imaam Abdul Alim Musa, an ex-con and former cocaine dealer, began the meeting by pledging to get to the bottom of the "raggedy truth and dressed-up lies" of September 11. He suggested the 19 terrorist hijackers deserve praise for rising "to the level of martyrdom, which is the highest level in Islam." Yet, moments later, he declared the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks a conspiracy by the United States. They "sunk their own battleship, the Maine," to start the Spanish-American War, staged the Gulf of Tonkin incident to start the Vietnam War, and perpetrated the September 11 attacks, Musa claimed, in order to justify a war on Islam. ... Marilyn Killingham of the Republic of New Africa, described as a "Human Rights Activist," euphemized the September 11 mass-murder as "the politics of visibility": 'Sometimes you have to do something when people ignore your suffering, you have to use the politics of visibility . . . that was nine-eleven-oh-one, the politics of visibility.'" (See also: "More Muslim enemies from within" (Michelle Malkin, TownHall, 2001/11/02)"Syrian defense minister blames WTC, Pentagon attacks on Israel" (Arieh O'Sullivan, The Jerusalem Post, 2001/10/19)
"Syrian Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass has blamed the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center on Israel. At a meeting in Damascus last week with a delegation from the British Royal College of Defense Studies, Tlass said the Mossad planned the ramming of two hijacked airliners into the WTC's towers as part of a Jewish conspiracy. He also told the British visitors that the Mossad had given thousands of Jewish employees of the WTC advance warning not to go to work that day. ... Historian Richard Levy, an expert on anti-Semitism at the University of Illinois in Chicago, said such conspiracy theories have flourished after years during which Arab governments have encouraged crude Jewish conspiracy theories. "They have encouraged their peoples to explain politics and history by means of myth, lie, and fear. This sort of demagogy will come back to bite them," he said." (See also: "The American attack against Afghanistan is terrorism…" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch No. 288, 2001/10/17), "Half of Pakistanis believe Israel behind US terrorist attacks" (hindustantimes.com, 2001/10/14) and "4,000 Jews, 1 Lie - Tracking an Internet hoax" (Bryan Curtis, Slate, 2001/10/05))"The American attack against Afghanistan is terrorism…" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch No. 288, 2001/10/17)
An interview with the Egyptian Sheikh Muhammad Al-Gamei'a, the Al-Azhar University representative in the U.S. and Imam of the Islamic Cultural Center and Mosque of New York City, who returned to Egypt after September 11. Keep in mind that he is one of the leading Muslim leaders in the United States while reading his virulent antisemitic and anti-American ramblings: "During my conversations with this group, it became clear to me that they knew very well that the Jews were behind these ugly acts, while we, the Arabs, were innocent, and that someone from among their people was disseminating corruption in the land. Although the Americans suspect that the Zionists are behind the act, none has the courage to talk about it in public. ... You see these people (i.e. the Jews) all the time, everywhere, disseminating corruption, heresy, homosexuality, alcoholism, and drugs. [Because of them] there are strip clubs, homosexuals, and lesbians everywhere. They do this to impose their hegemony and colonialism on the world.""Half of Pakistanis believe Israel behind US terrorist attacks" (hindustantimes.com, 2001/10/14)
An article on the results of a poll by Gallup commissioned by Newsweek: "The poll showed 48 percent of Pakistanis believe Israel carried out the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon near Washington, compared to 12 percent who blame Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden. It said 25 percent of people polled believe a US group carried out the attacks, which killed more than 5,000 people, while five percent blame the Palestinians. ... Only three percent sympathised with the United States in the conflict, compared to 87 percent with Afghanistan's Taliban Islamic militia, and 75 percent opposed the use of Pakistani airfields by US forces. Bin Laden, the Afghanistan-based Islamic militant accused by the United States of masterminding the September 11 attacks, is viewed by 82 percent as a "mujahid" or freedom fighter, while just six percent consider him a terrorist. ... A Newsweek statement said Gallup Pakistan polled 978 adults across the country on October 11 and 12. It said the survey had a margin of error of three to four percentage points.""At home with the Taliban" (Asra Q. Nomani, Salon.com, 2001/10/10)
An interesting report from inside the Taliban "White House" in Pakistan: "I ask what [Shaheen] thinks about bin Laden, and his alleged involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks. "If he is involved, then many of the Taliban will not accept him," he says. ... He wonders aloud about the "Yahudhi" conspiracy, the Jewish conspiracy, that underlies the doubts of many Muslims about bin Laden's guilt. In Urdu, he says he prays to find the aslee mujrim, the culprit behind the Sept. 11 transformation of reality. He rattles off as fact a rumor that has taken strong hold over here: That 4,000 Jews didn't report to work at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11." (See also "4,000 Jews, 1 Lie - Tracking an Internet hoax" (Bryan Curtis, Slate, 2001/10/05))"4,000 Jews, 1 Lie - Tracking an Internet hoax" (Bryan Curtis, Slate, 2001/10/05)
"It is an article of faith in many Muslim countries that Israel was behind the attack on the World Trade Center, with many citing as their evidence a "news report" that 4,000 Israelis called in sick from their jobs at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. The allegation has now appeared on scores of Web sites and bulletin boards, has been reproduced in e-mails too numerous to count, and has run as fact in newspapers and news broadcasts in the Middle East. Where did this charge originate, and what path did it take around the world? ... According to Nexis and the Google search engine, the first mention of Israeli involvement in the attacks came in a Sept. 17 report on Lebanon's Al-Manar Television. The Los Angeles Times reports that the terrorist group Hezbollah has free access to Al-Manar's airwaves, and the station's Web site claims that the station exists to 'stage an effective psychological warfare with the Zionist enemy.'" (Note: Here's an early example of this "news report": "4000 Israeli employees in WTC escape" (paknews.com, 2001/09/19))"Grand Illusion" (Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 2001/10/01)
A report from France about anti-American sentiments: "An academic at the prestigious National Center for Scientific Research, in Paris, Marie-José Mondzain, wrote a piece for Le Monde called 'I Don't Feel American.' 'As in any murder screenplay,' she wrote, 'the investigator asks: who profits from the crime? The Palestinians? Of course not. The Afghans? ... The poor? The oppressed? Of course not. ... Those who come out more arrogant and stronger than ever are Bush, Putin, and Sharon. What a success!'""Improbable theories have wide acceptance" (Colin Nickerson, Boston Globe, 2002/09/23)
A report from Pakistan: "In these dangerous days in a desperate land, rumors are flying thick, fast, and outlandish. Except they are believed deeply and widely across the Islamic world. Nowhere more so than in this South Asian nation caught in the whirlwind of Western outrage at the suicide attacks in New York and Washington. Take the tale of ''the 4,000,'' reported even in the mainstream Pakistani press as a theory at least as plausible as the notion of murderous hijackings orchestrated by an exiled Saudi Arabian multimillionaire on the lam in Afghanistan, which lies next door to Pakistan. Just before dawn on Sept. 11, so the story goes, 4,000 Jews working in the World Trade Center literally got a wake-up call from agents of Mossad, the Israeli spy agency. Or maybe it was the CIA. Or perhaps some shadowy cabal of international bankers and American arms manufacturers. ... But why on earth would Israel want to hijack airliners flying the skies of its close ally, destroy the Wor