Conspiraloons, Ravers and Peace Activists
Danny | 25.08.2007 13:35 | Analysis | Other Press | Terror War | Sheffield
With the possible exception of John Pilger, no world renowned journalist can take as much credit for consistently and credibly opposing US imperialist war-mongering as Robert Fisk. Today in the Independent he talks of his doubts about the official 911 story.
A standard argument used to silence 911 'conspiraloons' is that they are distracting from the peace movement. I take credit/blame for first using that argument here, but I'm afraid although I genuinely felt it at the time, it is a completely false argument. For a start, why mourn the loss of people you are prepared to smear 'conspiraloons' ? Surely if they are loons, any movement would be glad they were busy with their investigations ? It should be noted though that most of these smears come from people who contribute little of worth to the any movement yet self-promote as if they are hardcore activists. At best, there are as many loons on both sides of the argument. While it is shameful to censor, it is worse to censor others hypocritically.
The wikiscanner is a tool that identifies which organisations have been editing which wikipedia pages from their IP address. Of course the same organisations and employees who have been exposed propagandising could do so safetly anonymously or from home, but it is interesting what they have been caught lying about so far. When you identify propagandists you learn from what they propagandise about.
The sole exchange on IMUK so far is also intersting. Kurt Nimmo wrote about it in a blog reposted here prompting an interesting comment from 'citpecs'. [
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/08/378712.html
]
Kurt Nimmo > It would appear Wikipedia ... is indeed an intelligence front, yet another puzzle piece of a sprawling, comprehensive, long-term, and quite effective propaganda effort.
citpecs > So are you saying the CIA or other similar organisations should be banned from Wikipedia? First Amendment, Kurt.
Nimmo is wrong to describe wikipedia as an intelligence front. The proof it isn't is that wikipedia has always published the IP's of contributors in the hope that somebody would one day expose the changes made by the CIA and other nefarious organisations and corporations.
Rather it is a battlefront in the war between information and disinformation.
More importantly though, Citpecs response is telling - who could possibly defend CIA propaganda as being enshrined under the First Ammendment ? Surely only someone from the CIA or a sister organisation. The First Ammendment is intended to protect US citizens free speech and free press from the goverment. The CIA lies on wikipedia are a direct state contravention of both free-speech and free-press. Citpecs posts here have to be viewed with the same suspicion as any other defender of the CIA propagandists even if he is just a deluded right-winger. And if he is a just a deluded right-winger, this is an odd website to post. A quick Scroogle shows what Citpecs posts about - generally defaming 911ers along with a smattering of other pro-establishment causes.
If I am right about Citpecs, then the fact the security services are trying to discredit 911ers is perhaps the best evidence that the 911ers are onto something - or else why discredit them ? I don't think the exposed wikipedia edits tell us much except security services disinfo campaigns simply because I credit them with more intelligence than to expose themselves too much. So the fact the "9/11 conspiracy theories" wikipedia page was deleted by someone from US Homeland Security perhaps indicates less about that agencies PR than about the sort of people it employees who are stupid enough to engage in vandalism from their Departments PC. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=76993086
Perhaps - but would you give the same benefit of the doubt to the Turkish Treasury employee who deleted the article on the Armenian genocide ? Or the Diebold deletion of all criticism of Diebold ? Or the Exxon and the Union Carbide deletions of criticism of them ?
Certainly a CIA edit which claims that fewer people died in the US invasion of Panama cannot be explained as anything other than agency propaganda designed to violate the First Ammendment. And to invoke their right to do so under the First Ammendment is to imply states and corporations have equal rights to citizens. That such a scurrilous argument could be made on IM indicates the same organisations that propagandise on wikipedia also propagandise here.
So here is a crazy prediction for you. The same people who smear others as conspiraloons who distract from the peace movement are about to start smearing Robert Fisk simply for talking publicly about his doubts. In doing so they will be rubbishing one of the most credible and long standing anti-war journalistic bodies of work available to the peace movement. I still have no informed opinion about the truth of 911. I do know for a fact that the people who are about to smear Fisk will be proving themselves to be what they claim to condemn - a damaging distraction from the peace movement.
The wikiscanner is a tool that identifies which organisations have been editing which wikipedia pages from their IP address. Of course the same organisations and employees who have been exposed propagandising could do so safetly anonymously or from home, but it is interesting what they have been caught lying about so far. When you identify propagandists you learn from what they propagandise about.
The sole exchange on IMUK so far is also intersting. Kurt Nimmo wrote about it in a blog reposted here prompting an interesting comment from 'citpecs'. [
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/08/378712.html ]
Kurt Nimmo > It would appear Wikipedia ... is indeed an intelligence front, yet another puzzle piece of a sprawling, comprehensive, long-term, and quite effective propaganda effort.
citpecs > So are you saying the CIA or other similar organisations should be banned from Wikipedia? First Amendment, Kurt.
Nimmo is wrong to describe wikipedia as an intelligence front. The proof it isn't is that wikipedia has always published the IP's of contributors in the hope that somebody would one day expose the changes made by the CIA and other nefarious organisations and corporations.
Rather it is a battlefront in the war between information and disinformation.
More importantly though, Citpecs response is telling - who could possibly defend CIA propaganda as being enshrined under the First Ammendment ? Surely only someone from the CIA or a sister organisation. The First Ammendment is intended to protect US citizens free speech and free press from the goverment. The CIA lies on wikipedia are a direct state contravention of both free-speech and free-press. Citpecs posts here have to be viewed with the same suspicion as any other defender of the CIA propagandists even if he is just a deluded right-winger. And if he is a just a deluded right-winger, this is an odd website to post. A quick Scroogle shows what Citpecs posts about - generally defaming 911ers along with a smattering of other pro-establishment causes.
If I am right about Citpecs, then the fact the security services are trying to discredit 911ers is perhaps the best evidence that the 911ers are onto something - or else why discredit them ? I don't think the exposed wikipedia edits tell us much except security services disinfo campaigns simply because I credit them with more intelligence than to expose themselves too much. So the fact the "9/11 conspiracy theories" wikipedia page was deleted by someone from US Homeland Security perhaps indicates less about that agencies PR than about the sort of people it employees who are stupid enough to engage in vandalism from their Departments PC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=76993086 Perhaps - but would you give the same benefit of the doubt to the Turkish Treasury employee who deleted the article on the Armenian genocide ? Or the Diebold deletion of all criticism of Diebold ? Or the Exxon and the Union Carbide deletions of criticism of them ?
Certainly a CIA edit which claims that fewer people died in the US invasion of Panama cannot be explained as anything other than agency propaganda designed to violate the First Ammendment. And to invoke their right to do so under the First Ammendment is to imply states and corporations have equal rights to citizens. That such a scurrilous argument could be made on IM indicates the same organisations that propagandise on wikipedia also propagandise here.
So here is a crazy prediction for you. The same people who smear others as conspiraloons who distract from the peace movement are about to start smearing Robert Fisk simply for talking publicly about his doubts. In doing so they will be rubbishing one of the most credible and long standing anti-war journalistic bodies of work available to the peace movement. I still have no informed opinion about the truth of 911. I do know for a fact that the people who are about to smear Fisk will be proving themselves to be what they claim to condemn - a damaging distraction from the peace movement.
Danny
Homepage:
http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article2893860.ece
Additions
Even I question the 'truth' about 9/11
25.08.2007 22:13
I am increasingly troubled at the inconsistencies in the official narrative of 9/11. It's not just the obvious non sequiturs: where are the aircraft parts (engines, etc) from the attack on the Pentagon? Why have the officials involved in the United 93 flight (which crashed in Pennsylvania) been muzzled? Why did flight 93's debris spread over miles when it was supposed to have crashed in one piece in a field? Again, I'm not talking about the crazed "research" of David Icke's Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster – which should send any sane man back to reading the telephone directory.
I am talking about scientific issues. If it is true, for example, that kerosene burns at 820C under optimum conditions, how come the steel beams of the twin towers – whose melting point is supposed to be about 1,480C – would snap through at the same time? (They collapsed in 8.1 and 10 seconds.) What about the third tower – the so-called World Trade Centre Building 7 (or the Salmon Brothers Building) – which collapsed in 6.6 seconds in its own footprint at 5.20pm on 11 September? Why did it so neatly fall to the ground when no aircraft had hit it? The American National Institute of Standards and Technology was instructed to analyse the cause of the destruction of all three buildings. They have not yet reported on WTC 7. Two prominent American professors of mechanical engineering – very definitely not in the "raver" bracket – are now legally challenging the terms of reference of this final report on the grounds that it could be "fraudulent or deceptive".
Journalistically, there were many odd things about 9/11. Initial reports of reporters that they heard "explosions" in the towers – which could well have been the beams cracking – are easy to dismiss. Less so the report that the body of a female air crew member was found in a Manhattan street with her hands bound. OK, so let's claim that was just hearsay reporting at the time, just as the CIA's list of Arab suicide-hijackers, which included three men who were – and still are – very much alive and living in the Middle East, was an initial intelligence error.
But what about the weird letter allegedly written by Mohamed Atta, the Egyptian hijacker-murderer with the spooky face, whose "Islamic" advice to his gruesome comrades – released by the CIA – mystified every Muslim friend I know in the Middle East? Atta mentioned his family – which no Muslim, however ill-taught, would be likely to include in such a prayer. He reminds his comrades-in-murder to say the first Muslim prayer of the day and then goes on to quote from it. But no Muslim would need such a reminder – let alone expect the text of the "Fajr" prayer to be included in Atta's letter.
Let me repeat. I am not a conspiracy theorist. Spare me the ravers. Spare me the plots. But like everyone else, I would like to know the full story of 9/11, not least because it was the trigger for the whole lunatic, meretricious "war on terror" which has led us to disaster in Iraq and Afghanistan and in much of the Middle East. Bush's happily departed adviser Karl Rove once said that "we're an empire now – we create our own reality". True? At least tell us. It would stop people kicking over chairs.
I am talking about scientific issues. If it is true, for example, that kerosene burns at 820C under optimum conditions, how come the steel beams of the twin towers – whose melting point is supposed to be about 1,480C – would snap through at the same time? (They collapsed in 8.1 and 10 seconds.) What about the third tower – the so-called World Trade Centre Building 7 (or the Salmon Brothers Building) – which collapsed in 6.6 seconds in its own footprint at 5.20pm on 11 September? Why did it so neatly fall to the ground when no aircraft had hit it? The American National Institute of Standards and Technology was instructed to analyse the cause of the destruction of all three buildings. They have not yet reported on WTC 7. Two prominent American professors of mechanical engineering – very definitely not in the "raver" bracket – are now legally challenging the terms of reference of this final report on the grounds that it could be "fraudulent or deceptive".
Journalistically, there were many odd things about 9/11. Initial reports of reporters that they heard "explosions" in the towers – which could well have been the beams cracking – are easy to dismiss. Less so the report that the body of a female air crew member was found in a Manhattan street with her hands bound. OK, so let's claim that was just hearsay reporting at the time, just as the CIA's list of Arab suicide-hijackers, which included three men who were – and still are – very much alive and living in the Middle East, was an initial intelligence error.
But what about the weird letter allegedly written by Mohamed Atta, the Egyptian hijacker-murderer with the spooky face, whose "Islamic" advice to his gruesome comrades – released by the CIA – mystified every Muslim friend I know in the Middle East? Atta mentioned his family – which no Muslim, however ill-taught, would be likely to include in such a prayer. He reminds his comrades-in-murder to say the first Muslim prayer of the day and then goes on to quote from it. But no Muslim would need such a reminder – let alone expect the text of the "Fajr" prayer to be included in Atta's letter.
Let me repeat. I am not a conspiracy theorist. Spare me the ravers. Spare me the plots. But like everyone else, I would like to know the full story of 9/11, not least because it was the trigger for the whole lunatic, meretricious "war on terror" which has led us to disaster in Iraq and Afghanistan and in much of the Middle East. Bush's happily departed adviser Karl Rove once said that "we're an empire now – we create our own reality". True? At least tell us. It would stop people kicking over chairs.
Robert Fisk
Homepage:
http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article2893860.ece
Previous article on Fisk and 9/11
26.08.2007 21:53
Interesting background reading: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/07/376994.html?c=on
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/07/376994.html?c=on
Searcher
Homepage:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/07/376994.html?c=on
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