"The
September 11 X-Files"
"One-third of Germans under age 30 believe the U.S. government may have sponsored the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, according to a poll published Wednesday." (Reuters)
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 -September 2003
"9/11? It Never Happened" (Stefan Theil, Newsweek, from the 2003/09/22 issue)
"A sad case of schadenfreude" (Andrew Gimson, The Spectator, from the 2003/09/13 issue)
"Has Meacher completely lost the plot?" (David Aaronovitch, The Guardian, 2003/09/09)
"Panoply of the Absurd" (Dominik Cziesche et al., Der Spiegel, 2003/09/08)
"Verschwörung 11.September" (Der Spiegel, 2003/09/08)
"The new Holocaust deniers of 9/11" (Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine, 2003/09/07)
"Moonbats: The Gathering" (Michele Catalano, A Small Victory, 2003/09/06)
"This war on terrorism is bogus" (Michael Meacher, The Guardian, 2003/09/07)
"Sept 11 theorists to meet in Berlin" (DPA/Expatica, 2003/09/05)
"Annals of Bush-Hating" (Byron York, National Review, 2003/09/04)
"Syrian Gov't Media: Israel Bombed Baghdad's U.N. Headquarters, Jordanian Embassy, Abu Gharib Prison and Water Main" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 565, 2003/09/04)
"The Neoconservative Cabal" (Joshua Muravchik, Commentary/AEI, 2003/09/02)
"Iranian Daily: 'Extremist Jews Plotting to Assassinate Chirac,' Mossad Agents Behind Najaf Blast" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 563, 2003/09/01)
"Egyptian Government Daily Al-Ahram: The U.S. is Behind the Najaf Bombing" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 562, 2003/09/01)August 2003
"Ignorance" (Ralph Peters, New York Post, 2003/08/18)
"The Leo-conservatives" (Gerhard Spörl, Der Spiegel, 2003/08/04)July 2003
"Poll: One-third of Germans believe US may have staged Sept. 11 attacks" (Reuters/Boston.com, 2003/07/23)June 2003
"The Think Tank of the Arab League: The Zayed International Centre for Coordination and Follow-Up - Part II" (Steven Stalinsky, MEMRI, 2003/06/11)
"America's Doubters in Beirut" (David Ignatius, The Washington Post, 2003/06/06)May 2003
"Message to the left: there is no all-powerful Jewish lobby" (David Aaronovitch, The Guardian, 2003/05/27)
"A shameful Panorama" (Stephen Pollard, stephenpollard.net, 2003/05/19)
"The Think Tank of the Arab League: The Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-Up (ZCCF)" (Steven Stalinsky, MEMRI, 2003/05/16)
"Tam is talking a lot of cabals about sinister controllers" (Mark Steyn, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/05/10)April 2003
"Protocols of the Elders of Neocons" (Hussein Shobokshi, Arab News, 2003/04/22 [?])
"Baghdad's Easy Fall Fuels Arab Conspiracy Theories" (Paul Taylor, Reuters, 2003/04/11)March 2003
"The Old Cabal and Chain" (James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, 2003/03/13)
"Eyes wide shut in an orgy of fallacy" (Miranda Devine, The Sydney Morning Herald, 2003/03/13)
"Still lost, still paranoid" (Peter Cuthbertson, Conservative Commentary, 2003/03/08)February 2003
"Toxic Talk on War" (Lawrence F. Kaplan, The Washington Post, 2003/02/18)
"Failure and Fantasy" (Lee Harris, Tech Central Station, 2003/02/11)January 2003
"The United States of America has gone mad" (John le Carré, The Times, 2003/01/15)"9/11? It Never Happened" (Stefan Theil, Newsweek, from the 2003/09/22 issue)
"To get a sense of how deep mistrust of the United States runs in Germany, take a look at the bookshelves. Two years after September 11, German bookstores are flooded with such works as "The CIA and September 11," in which a former government minister of Research and Technology, Andreas von Bulow, insinuates that the U.S. and Israeli intelligence services blew up the World Trade Center from the inside. The two Boeings, he claims, were flown in by remote control as a cover-up. The whole thing was a cynical plot by America's neoconservatives to take over the world. ...
Recently, more crackpot 9/11 theorists have gotten a kind of official blessing. In June, German government-run WDR television broadcast a "documentary" claiming that no airplane ever crashed in Pennsylvania.
Amid the antiwar fervor, conspiracy theories played a big role in many Germans' thinking. Indeed, some mainstream media virtually specialized in sinister plots. In suggestive cover stories titled blood for oil and warriors of god, the German newsweekly Der Spiegel described U.S. policy as a conspiracy to control the world — fomented and led by the oil industry one week and the Christian right the next. That kind of hysteria can't disappear overnight. ...
All around the globe, the Bush presidency has turned out to be "the most fertile period for conspiracy freaks since JFK was shot," says Jorg Lau, a Die Zeit reporter who's been tracking the phenomenon.""A sad case of schadenfreude" (Andrew Gimson, The Spectator, from the 2003/09/13 issue)
"Last Sunday I attended a very odd and unpleasant meeting at the Tempodrom in Berlin. The several hundred people who were present believe the American government is to blame for the attack on the World Trade Center, which it either carried out itself, or else allowed others to carry out, in order to have an excuse to invade Iraq and establish world domination. ...
One speaker described at length how the airliners had been controlled by propeller-driven aircraft that appeared in the sky near them. A British student from East Anglia University, who had started to find out about these conspiracy theories on the Internet and had helped to put up posters for the conference, said in tones in which one might describe a religious conversion, 'This stuff is the truth, the real world.' ...
A venomous stream of anti-American and anti-Semitic resentment has burst forth in Germany during the Iraq crisis. ...
With every reverse, or seeming reverse, that the Americans suffer in Iraq, the schadenfreude in Germany reaches new heights, or depths. The Germans hope the Americans will fail in Iraq. They expected them to lose the war, and now they expect them to lose the peace." (See also: "Moonbats: The Gathering" (Michele Catalano, A Small Victory, 2003/09/06) and "Sept 11 theorists to meet in Berlin" (DPA/Expatica, 2003/09/05))"Has Meacher completely lost the plot?" (David Aaronovitch, The Guardian, 2003/09/09)
Aaronovitch on Michael Meacher's loony conspiracy theorizing in The Guardian: "Questioned on ITN on Saturday Meacher denied that he was a conspiracy theorist, citing the "I'm only raising questions" defence. His information, he said, "comes from the collection of data that I have been doing meticulously. It comes from websites across the world."
The ones that suggest that the American agencies wanted an attack, so deliberately ignored the activities of terrorists in the US, and stood down their own air defences, in order to allow the worst terrorist atrocity in history to take place - all to secure oil and gas supplies. This act of treachery was accomplished with the complicity of military people, politicians and civil servants of all ranks, some of whose family members were on the planes and in the buildings.
I grant that Iraq has made us all a little mad. On either side of the argument many of us struggle to maintain our composure. Even so, I do not know what is more depressing: that a former long-serving minister should repeat this bizarre nonsense without checking it; that, yesterday, twice as many readers should be published supporting this garbage as those criticising it; or that one letter should claim that Meacher has simply said what "many have always known". Ugh! To give credibility to this stuff is bad enough, to "know" it is truly scary." (See also: "This war on terrorism is bogus" (Michael Meacher, The Guardian, 2003/09/07))"Panoply of the Absurd" (Dominik Cziesche et al., Der Spiegel, 2003/09/08)
The English version of Der Spiegel's cover story about conspiracy theories regarding 9/11. It's a must-read, comprehensively presenting and debunking these crackpot theories: "The authors of these books conjecture that the "geopolitical chess masters" in the White House may have sacrificed "two castles" to achieve "global dominance." They claim to be uncovering "the lies and fabrications of the media and secret services," as well as illuminating the role played by the CIA in international terrorism.
At the core, their analyses of "irregularities" lead to an allegedly "convincing counter-model for operation 9/11." The obvious conclusion: The American administration either staged the terrorist attacks itself or at least knowingly allowed them to unfold.
In his book "Operation 9/1 - An Attack on the Globe," author Gerhard Wisnewski, an employee of the German television network ARD, presents supposed evidence to support the theory that the Pentagon was destroyed by US missiles and that an aircraft never crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Like-minded former German minister Andreas von Bülow ("The CIA and September 11th") suspects that the towers of the World Trade Center could have been exploded from within. Mathias Bröckers, a former journalist with "taz," sees George Bush Jr. as the "true reincarnation of Hitler," and for this reason believes him capable of virtually any dastardly deed.
These supposed exposés have been successful with the public. Wisnewski was permitted to bring his psychic speculations to the public in the form of a film broadcast on the German television network WDR. Bülow's book climbed to the number 3 slot on the SPIEGEL bestseller list within a few weeks, and more than 100,000 copies of Bröcker's first conspiracy book have been published, making it the biggest sales coup in years for publishing house Zweitausendeins Verlag." (See also: "Verschwörung 11.September" (Der Spiegel, 2003/09/08) and "The new Holocaust deniers of 9/11" (Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine, 2003/09/07))
"Verschwörung 11.September"
(Der Spiegel, 2003/09/08)"The new Holocaust deniers of 9/11" (Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine, 2003/09/07)
"The latest: Der Spiegel's cover story this week puts the burning Twin Towers on their head with a cover story that asks: "Were the attacks on New York and Washington the biggest act of terrorism in history - or a gigantic plot by the secret services? Conspiracy theorists are writing bestsellers with their alleged evidence, and already a fifth of Germans believe their half-truths."
As Eamonn Fitzgerald points out, this is a most cynical act: The editors of Der Spiegel cloak their story in doubt - but if there's so much doubt, why is this a story, why is it a long story (14 pages of solid text on my printout), and why is it a cover story?
I couldn't bear to translate the whole thing but from what I read, it's enough to make me suggest that we all buy European tinfoil futures. Fitzgerald has more about the list of "authors" the magazine promotes:And as Der Spiegel doesn't want to be left behind in this race to the bottom, it joins a growing list of charlatans doing a steady business pawning their fabrications to a credulous public. ... The latest to join this bizarre list is Andreas von Bülow, a former SPD Minister of Research. His volume, which is doing brisk business, is entitled The CIA and the 11th of September: International Terror and the Roll of the Intelligence Agencies. It fingers the CIA and Mossad as the sponsors of 9/11 while sticking to the golden conspiracy-theory formula of offering supposition instead of evidence.
Add the numbers in the date 11.09.2001 together and what do you get? 23! Add four hijacked planes + nineteen terrorists and what do you get? 23! What's the secret number of the Illuminati? 23! It is to this level of craziness that Der Spiegel has descended. It should not be regarded as a serious magazine anymore.Yet these "editors" are choosing not to shoo these nut jobs but instead to make them famous. They are choosing to pander to prejudices and suspicions that have not basis in fact. They are sacrificing their only asset: credibility. They are the shame of the news business.
The "editors" are more vile than the crackpots, for they should know better." (See also: "Der Spiegel sinks to all-time low" (Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day, 2003/09/06), "Moonbats: The Gathering" (Michele Catalano, A Small Victory, 2003/09/06) and "Sept 11 theorists to meet in Berlin" (DPA/Expatica, 2003/09/05). Also: "The September 11 X-Files" - News and commentary on conspiracy theories regarding the September 11 attacks and the war on terror.)"Moonbats: The Gathering" (Michele Catalano, A Small Victory, 2003/09/06)
"Hot on the heels of Michael Meacher's conspiracy theory laden piece on 9/11 in today's Guardian, comes word that the tin foil hat brigade will be gathering in Berlin on Sunday to discuss how Bush "facilitated" the attacks.
Among the speakers will be America's own Cynthia McKinney, who told a reporter, Who else knows ... why were the innocent people of New York not warned.
One of the organizers, Nicholas Levis from New York, said the conference was encouraged by the fact that a recent opinion poll showed 19 per cent of Germans believed the US government may have given the order for the September 11 attacks.
Want to know more about these wingnuts who call themselves the 9/11 Truth Alliance? They are the ones who believe that a plane never really crashed into the Pentagon. They are endorsed by fellow foil friends Unanswered Questions.
And they aren't the skeptics out there. There's 9/11 coverup. And there's Barbara Honegger, who claims that the U.S. set the date for the attacks. The endless theories about Flight 93.
Oh, in case you haven't heard, the movie 2001 not only predicted 9/11 but that prediction also led to the death of Stanley Kubrick.
There's all kinds out there. It's unfortunate that people like Cynthia McKinney, who once represented the U.S. government and Michael Meacher, who once represented Britian's government, give credence to all these theorists." (See also: "This war on terrorism is bogus" (Michael Meacher, The Guardian, 2003/09/07) and "Sept 11 theorists to meet in Berlin" (DPA/Expatica, 2003/09/05). Also: 9/11 Truth Alliance and Unanswered Questions.)"This war on terrorism is bogus" (Michael Meacher, The Guardian, 2003/09/07)
9/11 conspiracy theorizing is fast coalescing into The Protocols of the Elders of Zion Redux. That a former minister can believe this - and a major paper publish it - is an ominous sign of the times. Just imagine - the "Cabal" thought North Korea, Syria and Iran were dangerous regimes a year before 9/11!!!:
"We now know that a blueprint for the creation of a global Pax Americana was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), Jeb Bush (George Bush's younger brother) and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences, was written in September 2000 by the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC). ...
Finally - written a year before 9/11 - it pinpoints North Korea, Syria and Iran as dangerous regimes, and says their existence justifies the creation of a "worldwide command and control system". This is a blueprint for US world domination. But before it is dismissed as an agenda for rightwing fantasists, it is clear it provides a much better explanation of what actually happened before, during and after 9/11 than the global war on terrorism thesis. This can be seen in several ways.
First, it is clear the US authorities did little or nothing to pre-empt the events of 9/11. It is known that at least 11 countries provided advance warning to the US of the 9/11 attacks. Two senior Mossad experts were sent to Washington in August 2001 to alert the CIA and FBI to a cell of 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation (Daily Telegraph, September 16 2001). The list they provided included the names of four of the 9/11 hijackers, none of whom was arrested. ...
The conclusion of all this analysis must surely be that the "global war on terrorism" has the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda - the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project." (Note: Found via A Small Victory. See also: "Sept 11 theorists to meet in Berlin" (DPA/Expatica, 2003/09/05) and "The September 11 X-Files" - News and commentary on conspiracy theories regarding the September 11 attacks and the war on terror. Also: "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century" (Project for the New American Century, September 2000))"Sept 11 theorists to meet in Berlin" (DPA/Expatica, 2003/09/05)
"Sept 11 theorists"? Crackpot conspiracy theorists is more to the point. Found via A Small Victory: "Writers and activists who believe the United States government is hiding the truth about the September 11 attacks will hold a conference in Berlin this Sunday, organisers announced.
The meeting of US and European activists will compile a list of questions and demands for documents to be submitted to the US and German governments as well as the European Union on the second anniversary of the attacks.
"I take the position that the (US President George W) Bush administration had absolute fore-knowledge of the attacks," said Michael Ruppert, who is one of the organisers, adding that he believed Bush had "facilitated" the attacks.
A former member of the US Congress, Cynthia McKinney, who is also due to address the conference, told reporters: "Who else knows ... why were the innocent people of New York not warned."
Another organiser, Nicholas Levis from New York, said the conference was encouraged by the fact that a recent opinion poll showed 19 per cent of Germans believed the US government may have given the order for the September 11 attacks.""Annals of Bush-Hating" (Byron York, National Review, 2003/09/04)
York on Bush haters, with links to some truly loony sites: "A staple of Bush-hating is the portrayal of the president as a Nazi. That has, of course, been a prominent part of other attacks against other presidents, but today it seems to be deployed with particular aggressiveness against Bush. There are thousands of references, across the vastness of the Internet, linking Bush to Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. ...
And it's not just doctored photos. There is a lot of writing, much of it quite serious, claiming similarities between Bush and Hitler. "It's going a bit far to compare the Bush of 2003 to the Hitler of 1933," writes Dave Lindorff in "Bush and Hitler: The Strategy of Fear," which appeared in February on the far-left site Counterpunch.org. "Bush simply is not the orator that Hitler was. But comparisons of the Bush administration's fear-mongering tactics to those practiced so successfully and with such terrible results by Hitler and Goebbels . . . are not at all out of line." ...
The day before Lindorff's article appeared, another author, Wayne Madsen, wrote that Bush is "borrowing liberally from Hitler's play book." The Führer, Lindorff said, "would be proud that an American president is emulating him in so many ways." ...
One antiwar site, Takebackthemedia.com, which attracted some attention in the press during the run-up to war in Iraq, features a variety of anti-Bush "flash movies." One, entitled "Bush is not a Nazi, so stop saying that," begins with ominous music and the warning: "The media will not tell you of the Bush family Nazi association." The movie goes on to accuse the Bushes of first financing the Third Reich — and then coming up with a clever plan to conceal their treason..." (See also: "Bush and Hitler: The Stategy [sic] of Fear" (Dave Lindorff, CounterPunch, 2003/02/01))"Syrian Gov't Media: Israel Bombed Baghdad's U.N. Headquarters, Jordanian Embassy, Abu Gharib Prison and Water Main" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 565, 2003/09/04)
Blame the Jews II: "An editorial in the Syrian government daily Teshreen accused Israel in explicit terms: ... "Who can say that what happened at the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad was not by the hands of the Zionist gangs, represented by the Israeli occupation army, and by the intelligence apparatuses headed by the Mossad, which has committed similar crimes against countries, governments, and international figures in the past?" ...
Another Teshreen editorial blamed Israel for other recent terrorist acts in Iraq: '…The first act was the bombing of the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad using the familiar Israeli method of a booby-trapped car… The second act was the bombing of the Abu Gharib prison, in which dozens of prisoners were killed and wounded. The third act was two motorcyclists' bombing of the Baghdad water main…
Such acts have one aim: to prove that the resistance is sowing destruction among the Iraqi people and against the Arab brethren and the U.N…
There is no doubt that Israel faces security dangers from Hizbullah in Lebanon and from resistance factions in the West Bank and Gaza. To prove the validity of his claims, Sharon has complicated the situation, thus also providing a cover for the aerial bridge that brought Mossad members and equipment to Baghdad. This Zionist unit hastened to act, beginning with the bombing of the Jordanian embassy.'""The Neoconservative Cabal" (Joshua Muravchik, Commentary/AEI, 2003/09/02)
A must-read essay on the "demonized neoconservatives": "There is, however, one thing that Strauss and Trotsky did have in common, and that one thing may get us closer to the real reason their names have been so readily invoked. Both were Jews. The neoconservatives, it turns out, are also in large proportion Jewish - and this, to their detractors, constitutes evidence of the ulterior motives that lurk behind the policies they espouse.
Lind, for example, writes that neocons "call their revolutionary ideology 'Wilsonianism' . . ., but it is really Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution mingled with the far-right Likud strain of Zionism." ...
More explicit, and more egregious, was the hard-Left historian Paul Buhle, who wrote in Tikkun that "It is almost as if the anti-Semitic Protocols of Zion, successfully fought for a century, have suddenly returned with an industrial-sized grain of truth" - that "truth" being, of course, that the hawkish policies of the neoconservatives are indeed tailored for Israel's benefit.
Perhaps the most dramatic effort to expose the hidden Jewish interest underlying neocon ideas was the BBC-TV special on America's "war party." It was aired on the program Panorama, which touts itself as the British equivalent of CBS'S 60 Minutes, and the lead-in announced: "Tonight: Will America's Superhawks Drag Us into More Wars against Their Enemies?" It did not take long for the meaning of the phrase "their enemies" to become apparent. First, however, viewers were introduced to a rogues' gallery of neoconservative interviewees, each of them filmed at an unusually close angle with the head filling the entire screen for an eerie, repulsive effect. ...
On the show itself, Perle was introduced as "the neocons' political godfather," a suggestive term whose implication was reinforced by a question put separately to him and another guest: "Are you a Mafia?" As the camera panned over the building that houses AEI and the other arms of this "mafia," we heard from the announcer that here was where the 'future is being plotted.'""Iranian Daily: 'Extremist Jews Plotting to Assassinate Chirac,' Mossad Agents Behind Najaf Blast" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 563, 2003/09/01)
Blame it on the Jews: "The September 1, 2003 edition of the Tehran Times released two articles - one stating that extremist Jews are plotting to assassinate French President Jacques Chirac, and the other implicating Israeli agents for the blast in Najaf on Friday. ... 'An Iraqi analyst said traces of Mossad agents were found at the Najaf blast site where Ayatollah Seyed Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Assembly for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI), and more than 80 others were martyred on Friday. The analyst, who requested anonymity, told the Mehr News Agency that Zionist intelligence agents have made great efforts to infiltrate Iraqi groups in order to thwart efforts to create national unity.'""Egyptian Government Daily Al-Ahram: The U.S. is Behind the Najaf Bombing" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 562, 2003/09/01)
Blame it on America: "The Egyptian government daily Al-Ahram's editorial of August 31, 2003, was titled "The Najaf Massacre and the National Unity Required in Iraq." ... 'It is strange that the occupation forces, which are considered to have the most to gain from the incident, have as usual blamed Islamic terrorists. This is propaganda aimed at causing world-wide damage to Muslims, especially since no one denies that some of the Islamic extremists who carry out terrorist acts flourished under and were financed by some Western apparatuses during the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan . In other words, responsibility for this very act of terrorism is Western responsibility – and, more specifically, American.'""Ignorance" (Ralph Peters, New York Post, 2003/08/18)
"We take for granted the ability to separate fact from fiction, to identify that which looks, feels and smells reasonably like the truth. Yet the long Western struggle to view the world objectively is culturally unique. Especially in the Arab world, myth, comforting lies and cynical rumors trump facts that seem undeniable to us.
It makes things tough for our soldiers, who come from a Joe Friday, "just the facts, ma'am" civilization, yet must bring order to an Alice In Wonderland culture in which nothing is quite what it seems and things just grow "curiouser and curiouser."
Even in relatively "Western" countries, such as Russia or Greece, I've been astonished at the patently lunatic conspiracy theories to which even elites subscribe. Indeed, one of the many politically incorrect questions that needs to be asked is simply this: Is there a direct correlation between our appetite for accurate data and the success of American civilization? The answer seems obvious, but don't try raising that question at Columbia. ...
The Middle East is the "Through the Looking-glass" version of our society. In the United States, we expect that the surface reflects what lies beneath. In the Arab world, surfaces are constructed to deceive, to deflect, to shield. The first story is never the real story. Promises are empty. And conspiracy theories overpower facts.""The Leo-conservatives" (Gerhard Spörl, Der Spiegel, 2003/08/04)
An article on Leo Strauss and his alleged influence on the Bush administration: "A conspiracy theory is developing in which Strauss is portrayed as the puppet master and the Bush administration as his puppets. The anti-Semitic overtones of this theory are obvious - Strauss as a "Nazi Jew" -, particularly as many of his students bear Jewish names: Paul Wolfowitz, Abram Shulsky, Harvey Mansfield, William Kristol. ...
However, these two neocons are students of a different professor, also with a German name and also a professor at Chicago, although he arrived there shortly before Strauss' retirement: Albert Wohlstetter, born in New York, taught the theory of security policy and made a lasting impression on Wolfowitz (who attended only two of Strauss' courses) and Perle. Aggressiveness instead of passiveness in foreign policy, the will to change instead of the old status quo way of thinking; these are ideas that can be attributed to Wohlstetter, and represent the conditions of the new Pax Americana." (Note: Thanks to Barry Kaplovitz for the pointer.)"Poll: One-third of Germans believe US may have staged Sept. 11 attacks" (Reuters/Boston.com, 2003/07/23)
This is really creepy: "One-third of Germans under age 30 believe the U.S. government may have sponsored the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, according to a poll published Wednesday.
And about 20 percent of Germans in all age groups hold this view, according to a survey of 1,000 people conducted for the weekly Die Zeit.
The poll also said 68 percent of all Germans felt the media had not reported the full truth behind the attacks, in which some 3,000 people were killed when hijacked planes were crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. ...
Asked whether they believed the U.S. government could have ordered the Sept. 11 attacks, 31 percent of those surveyed under the age of 30 answered "yes," while 19 percent overall gave the same answer.
Die Zeit said widespread disbelief about the reasons given by the United States for going to war in Iraq and suspicion about media coverage of the conflict had fostered a climate in which conspiracy theories flourished.
"The news is controlled," 17-year-old Kenny Donaubaur was quoted as saying. 'You could see that in the Iraq war. It doesn't seem to me that you get the full truth.'""The Think Tank of the Arab League: The Zayed International Centre for Coordination and Follow-Up - Part II" (Steven Stalinsky, MEMRI, 2003/06/11)
More on the crackpot Arab Think Tank: "Conspiracy theories involving the U.S. and Jews are commonly discussed at the Zayed Centre, including recently developed theories regarding the SARS virus. On May 16, 2003, the Centre released a report titled "SARS Virus: The Terror Coming from the East." According to the Zayed Centre's website, 'The study aims at acquainting Arab readers with the war being fought against this disease… The study gives answers, from a scientific perspective, about the suspicions regarding the possibility that [the] SARS virus could constitute a biological war launched against China in an attempt to weaken it economically, or it could be a product of an American war against the world…'" (See also: "The Think Tank of the Arab League: The Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-Up (ZCCF)" (Steven Stalinsky, MEMRI, 2003/05/16))"America's Doubters in Beirut" (David Ignatius, The Washington Post, 2003/06/06)
A report from the American University of Beirut: "The degree of cynicism among students is frightening. We began talking about the 9/11 terrorist attacks, for example, and nearly every student expressed doubt that Osama bin Laden's suicide bombers had really toppled the twin towers. "It was a play to make it look like the Arabs did it," said a young woman named Natalia.
When I asked the students how they could believe such conspiratorial nonsense even though they had seen the buildings collapse on television, they shouted out alternative theories. "The tape was altered," said one. "Technically those two buildings couldn't have collapsed unless there were bombs set at the bottom," insisted another. "How could someone in a cave in Afghanistan have done all that?" asked a third.
"It's your fault!" argued one young woman in a ponytail. 'Your movies have taught us that any image can be manipulated.'""Message to the left: there is no all-powerful Jewish lobby" (David Aaronovitch, The Guardian, 2003/05/27)
"This month J Hall suggested to me that the infamous Galloway documents could have been the work of "the Jewish lobby". A Medialens regular, David Bracewell, posts this week to criticise "Israeli fascism" and adds, "if ever there was an inflammatory, racist, insidiously exclusive term, 'anti-Semitism' is it. It baffles me why the supposed victims of racism would want a term all for themselves." Supposed? And not one of the assembled lefties took him up on it. ...
Too many leftwingers and liberals are crossing the magic line right now. Let me spell it out for you. There is no all-powerful Jewish lobby. There is no secret convocation. Most journalists with Jewish names do not write the things they do because of loyalty to their race or religion. Nor can you simply change the word "Jewish" to "Zionist" and somehow be exempt from the charge of low-level racism. And it's no good wiffling on about your Jewish friends or trying to slip your prejudices past the guards by boldly proclaiming your refusal to be intimidated. There are no Elders and there are no Protocols.""A shameful Panorama" (Stephen Pollard, stephenpollard.net, 2003/05/19)
"Truly awful Panorama last night 'investigating' the neocon conspiracy. The neocon mafia (yes, that's how they were continually described) have, it seems, first befuddled poor, dimwitted George Bush, then forced him to impose freedom on the Iraqis. ...
Second, when it interviewed opponents, it chose those who happily lie about what neocons believe and what they - we, I should say - want to see happen: the Deputy Syrian Ambassador and a spokesman from the Islam Institute, for instance, who clearly have no axe to grind in such matters. ...
Not content with its warped, biased reporting of the war, and the run up to the war, the BBC is now hell bent on pumping out more dirty propaganda, and feeeding the most vile anti-semitic claims. What a lovely thought that my license fee is paying for this crap." (See also: "The War Party" (BBC News/Panorama, 2003/05/18))"The Think Tank of the Arab League: The Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-Up (ZCCF)" (Steven Stalinsky, MEMRI, 2003/05/16)
An interesting report on the Arab League's "think tank", which since its founding in 1999 "has dealt with the September 11th attacks, arguing that they were perpetrated by Americans and Israelis. It has discussed "[The] Factual Protocols of the Elders of Zion," and has hosted Holocaust deniers. Dr. Umayma Al-Jalahma, known for her article explaining how Jews use the blood of non-Jews for pastries for the Jewish holiday of Purim, was a recent lecturer at the Centre. A report today suggested that the SARS virus could be a product of 'an American war against the world.'"
Oh, and it has hosted "notable personalities such as former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, and French President Jacques Chirac" as well:
"On October 11, 2001, the Zayed Centre released a report titled "The Zionist Movement and Its Animosity to Jews." A summary of the report stated: "This book deals with the activities of the Zionist Movement and its role during the Nazi regime in killing and terrorizing Jews in Europe to force them to immigrate to Israel. In the first chapter, the book enumerates the similarities between Nazism and Zionism. The second chapter discusses the cooperation between Nazism and Zionism… The third chapter deals with the role of Zionists in sending Jews to Nazi concentration camps. The fourth chapter explains that the killing of Jews is the passport to premiership in Israel. The fifth chapter proves that Zionists were the people who killed the Jews in Europe to lure them into immigrating to Israel.""Tam is talking a lot of cabals about sinister controllers" (Mark Steyn, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/05/10)
"Meanwhile, my colleague Boris Johnson has uncovered an even more artful cabal. The other day in these pages, he suggested that the President, if only in terms of the fine art and antiquities section of his brain, was being secretly controlled by a lobby group called the American Council for Cultural Policy, who'd leant on Bush to facilitate the looting of the Baghdad Museum in order to deliver the Iraqi people's birthright to "the guest washrooms of Floridian real estate kings".
I don't know what Boris has against Florida estate agents - possibly he was on the wrong end of some timeshare deal - but his Dalyell-like conjuring of a cabal of sinister Sunshine State realtors all singing Rosemary Clooney's classic "Cabal-a My House" is so delightful it seems a shame to point out that the great sack of Baghdad is as mythical as the great Jenin massacre of exactly a year ago. The number of missing Baghdad antiquities has now been revised down from 170,000 to somewhere between 25 and 38 - in other words, between 169,962 and 169,975 less than was originally claimed. Are the media being secretly controlled by a cabal of Jews who enjoy making 'em look like idiots every spring?" (See also: "Why are we allowing the rape of Iraq?" (Boris Johnson, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/04/17))"Protocols of the Elders of Neocons" (Hussein Shobokshi, Arab News, 2003/04/22 [?])
Found via Charles Johnson, who points out that Shobokshi "probably thought the title for his latest disgusting anti-Semitic rant was terribly witty", but it's of course rather just very revealing: "In this weekly telephone report Paul Wolfowitz expressed his anxiety to Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister about the situation in the Middle East. "How are you doing?" asked Wolfowitz. "OK, OK," answered Sharon, "but you must go to Syria." Wolfowitz pondered, "this will be tougher to get the president's okay on." Sharon could not help but scream, "He does not know Damascus from Des Moines, Iowa. Move it Paul. You can always tell him that this man of peace thinks it’s kosher," concluded Sharon with a hysterical laugh.""Baghdad's Easy Fall Fuels Arab Conspiracy Theories" (Paul Taylor, Reuters, 2003/04/11)
"Lebanese Parliament speaker Nabih Berri was among the first to air such rumors of a covert arrangement to bundle Saddam out of Iraq in exchange for an end to the bloodshed.
As U.S. tanks swept almost unopposed into Baghdad on Wednesday, Berri suggested Saddam might have taken refuge in the Russian embassy, prompting an immediate denial from Moscow. ...
An aide to Berri joined the dots, saying his boss meant to suggest Saddam had been granted sanctuary in a U.S.-Russian deal in return for an end to Republican Guard resistance. ...
The respected London-based, pan-Arab daily al-Hayat spoke in a front-page banner headline on Friday of a purported "deal" that brought about the collapse of Iraqi resistance.
"Informed Iraqi sources said the absence of an effective role of the Republican Guard over the past three weeks of the war can be attributed to contacts between the 'allies' and some leaders of these units, during which they gave assurances not to harm them," al-Hayat said.""The Old Cabal and Chain" (James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, 2003/03/13)
"On the paranoid fringes of both the isolationist right and the anti-American left, a new conspiracy theory has taken hold to explain the dreaded (by these folks) impending liberation of Iraq. As Pat Buchanan puts it in his inaptly named magazine, The American Conservative, "a cabal of polemicists and public officials" are "colluding with Israel" to "ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America's interests."
Echoing Buchanan is Edward Said, a literature professor at Columbia who by varying accounts is either Egyptian or Palestinian. "An immensely wealthy and powerful republic has been hijacked by a small cabal of individuals," Said writes on the crackpot-left site Counterpunch.org. "Wherever you look in the Congress there are the tell-tale signs either of the Zionist lobby, the right-wing Christians, or the military-industrial complex, three inordinately influential minority groups who share hostility to the Arab world, unbridled support for extremist Zionism, and an insensate conviction that they are on the side of the angels." ...
There's a logical contradiction at the heart of the "Zionist cabal" complaint. ... If Buchanan and Said are right in their predictions of disaster - if the result of Saddam's overthrow turns out to be, as Said puts it, "increasing the world's already ample stores of anti-Americanism" and provoking rather than preventing terrorism, how is this in Israel's interest?" (See also: "Whose War?" (Patrick J. Buchanan, The American Conservative, from the 2003/03/27 issue), "Who's In Charge? - A Tiny, Unelected Group, Backed by Powerful Unrepresentative Interests" (Edward Said, CounterPunch, 2003/03/08) and "A Democrat Speaks Out" (James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, 2003/03/11))"Eyes wide shut in an orgy of fallacy" (Miranda Devine, The Sydney Morning Herald, 2003/03/13)
Devine on the "dangerously fashionable anti-Bush and anti-Howardism", found via Tim Blair: "C.S. Lewis, in a 1943 essay, The Abolition of Man, wrote of the dangers of extreme cynicism. "You cannot go on 'seeing through' things forever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To 'see through' all things is the same as not to see."
We are all guilty of sometimes choosing sides based on personalities. But so many of those who rail against Bush are so busy "seeing through" his motives, which they imagine are oil, or some Freudian cowboy urge to avenge his father, that the act of "seeing through" has become more important than what there is to see, as C.S. Lewis would say.""Still lost, still paranoid" (Peter Cuthbertson, Conservative Commentary, 2003/03/08)
Cuthbertson on leftist criticism of the right-of-centre US think tank Project for the New American Century, found via Stephen Pollard: "Here's one of their more articulate spokesman making the case: ...It is worth noting that we are talking here about a pretty small clique of extremist neo-conservatives. There might be no more than 20 who have real power - the core group would certainly not be any bigger than Al Qaeda's. In many ways the comparison with Al Qaeda is valid because both have world domination as their agenda and both are willing to use force to achieve it. The difference is that Al Qaeda are a bunch of fanatics with a few billion dollars at their disposal and some paper knives. The neo-con PNAC mob have trillions of dollars and biggest arsenal the world has ever seen at their disposal.
I know which one frightens me the most.The parallels are exact, aren't they? I mean the fact that PNAC is made up of democratic politicians and foreign policy analysts who bury their malevolent plans for world domination in rhetoric like "encourage the spread of free institions and democracy" - as opposed to declaring them to be the will of Allah for which all must work or die - counts for nothing. More's the point, it really is just nitpicking to note that none of the PNAC fanatics have yet found time to establish terrorist training camps, plant bombs in Australasian night-clubs or pilot jet-liners into skyscrapers full of civilians. Really, when you put it like that, it's impossible not to feel threatened. Forget Al-Qaida, folks. Francis Fukayama and Dan Quayle pose the real threat to your life and liberty, and if you don't also consider them to be as dangerous as Osama Bin Laden, then you jolly well ought to!" (See also: "Do You Brits Know What PNAC is?" (BabcockPoom, The Guardian, 2003/03/07) and Project for the New American Century))
"Toxic Talk on War" (Lawrence F. Kaplan, The Washington Post, 2003/02/18)
Kaplan on the "contention that Israel and a powerful "cabal" of its American supporters have manufactured the present crisis with Iraq": "Seconding this appraisal, conservative writer Georgie Anne Geyer, whose column appears weekly in the Washington Times, reveals how "the fanatic neoconservatives around the administration, the rabid Israel supporters in the White House and the Pentagon," plan to wage war in Iraq and then to "democratize the entire Middle East, including Syria and Saudi Arabia, if necessary by military means, in order to secure Ariel Sharon's Israel." ...
But the real problem with claims such as these is not just that they are untrue. The problem is that they are toxic. Invoking the specter of dual loyalty to quiet criticism and debate amounts to more than the everyday pollution of public discourse. It is the nullification of public discourse, for how can one refute accusations grounded in ethnicity? The charges are, ipso facto, impossible to disprove. And so they are meant to be.""Failure and Fantasy" (Lee Harris, Tech Central Station, 2003/02/11)
Harris on scapegoating and fantasy ideology, found via Occam's Toothbrush: "But, tragically, the Arab world seems to be united in wishing to choose the same balm that the Germans chose after the Great War, the indispensable fantasy of those who refuse to face up to reality, "It was all someone else's fault."
This is simply not our tradition in the United States. We blame ourselves, and at our best universities there are professors who are paid quite nicely to find as much fault with our society as it is humanly possible to do. An insane policy by any standard you might wish to chose, except that of pure pragmatic success - the most self-critical nation in human history is also the first nation to achieve absolute superiority over all the other nations of the world; and perhaps, by some dialectic irony, it is more through the efforts of men like Noam Chomsky than Rush Limbaugh that we possess supreme military might. ...
But it is this peculiar penchant for self-criticism that explains why Americans have trouble even acknowledging the fantasy ideology of so much of the Arab world today. It is because we are not fond of shifting our blame to others. We do not seek out bad guys to explain our faults and failures. Hence, when we are attacked, our first response is often the classic line, "Why do they hate us so?"
In fact, they hate us because we are the bad guys in the black hats that the Arab world so desperately needs to comfort themselves for their own failures and defeats." (See also: "Al Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology" (Lee Harris, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/08/13))"The United States of America has gone mad" (John le Carré, The Times, 2003/01/15)
The Lunatic Who Came in from the Cold. John le Carré tries to outdo Gore Vidal, Harold Pinter and Norman Mailer in apocalyptic anti-Americanism. That might seem an impossible task, considering the fierce competition, but he certainly is a main contender: "America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War. The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. ... But the American public is not merely being misled. It is being browbeaten and kept in a state of ignorance and fear. The carefully orchestrated neurosis should carry Bush and his fellow conspirators nicely into the next election. ...
What is at stake is not an Axis of Evil — but oil, money and people's lives. Saddam's misfortune is to sit on the second biggest oilfield in the world. Bush wants it, and who helps him get it will receive a piece of the cake. And who doesn’t, won't. If Saddam didn't have the oil, he could torture his citizens to his heart’s content. Other leaders do it every day — think Saudi Arabia, think Pakistan, think Turkey, think Syria, think Egypt."
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