Former conspiracy believer here

[Sabrina]

This is a pretty good artricle, and here is a relevant passage.

"In December 1994, an al-Qaeda affiliate, the Algerian Armed Islamic Group, hijacked an Air France Airbus with 171 passengers aboard, intending to plunge it into the Eiffel Tower. None of the hijackers could fly the aircraft to its intended target, so, instead, the plane landed in Marseilles, where French police stormed it."

http://www.homelandsecurity.org/newjournal/articles/sinaiforecast.htm

Calcas, you rule.

 

[SpaceMonkeyZero]

Yeah there's nothign wrong with doing ecstasy... After all, no one's ever had any health complications due to ingesting cleaning products before. And no one's ever been non-physically addicted to any drug. And after all, tobacco's bad for you, but some methhead mixing up chemicals in his trailer? What could go wrong?

 

[SDC]

I'm saying read about it. Study. Then decide. Check out what I'm saying. Look at the pattern of engagement in the countries the WB and IMF "helped out." The demands for Structural Adjustment Policies. What you see is one smaller country after another, compelled to internally restructure to meet the criteria of the World Bank, absolutely regardless of the human cost.

It's like taking over some vast inefficient conglomerate and compelling it to move efficiently in one direction under the control of the Executive Directorship. You go around implenting policy in every department, rigorously enforcing it regardless of the short term cost. Eventually you have proper management and the company functions efficiently. But, theoretically, the world is not a company!


[Following refers to religion "not free of cost."]
It sure isn't in the States!

Nick

Nick, your comments are very cynical. You see a (possible) synarchic conspiracy of bankers... And who benefits, by the way? Are they doing this just for the heck of it? I seriously would like to know who, in your view, is behind this. I think I asked you this before but I don't recall an answer. (That said, I may just have missed it.) However, full disclosure: there is a group which always gets trotted out when banking conspiracies are mentioned. Is this a version of the IJC (International Jewish Conspiracy, pants pressed while-u-wait.)

I see, on the other hand, international expert bureaucracies which follow certain economic-based ideologies -- perhaps too far, but that's a matter for debate.

You seem to believe, and assume everyone believes, that there is no question that the IMF/ WB actions hurt the poor. That is by no means proved. Do not assume it. And your use of "absolutely regardless of the human cost" ... oh, come on! Skip the hyperbole. Provide facts, do not assume, and especially do not assume that hyperbole wins the day. This is cheap knock off standard Marxism which you are trying to apply. It doesn't work any more. It only seemed to work because of the power of the Soviet state.

Finally, I don't understand your reference to religion in the States as not free of cost. I don't get it. Do you mean that religion in the US is a money-making operation only? (You are in the UK... You have a state religion, right? Pfeh. I'm off to throw tea into the harbor.)

 

[rwguinn]

Anybody reall what we are supposed to be discussing here?
Steel and Fire?
Ecstacy?
Drugs?
or possibly what changed/es former believers?
You guys wanna br4eak those separate discussions off to new threaads (or better yet, merge them with the several months/years old discussions of the same da*n thing again?)

 

[beachnut]

I'm saying read about it. Study. Then decide. Check out what I'm saying. Look at the pattern of engagement in the countries the WB and IMF "helped out." The demands for Structural Adjustment Policies. What you see is one smaller country after another, compelled to internally restructure to meet the criteria of the World Bank, absolutely regardless of the human cost.

It's like taking over some vast inefficient conglomerate and compelling it to move efficiently in one direction under the control of the Executive Directorship. You go around implenting policy in every department, rigorously enforcing it regardless of the short term cost. Eventually you have proper management and the company functions efficiently. But, theoretically, the world is not a company!

It sure isn't in the States!

Nick

How do you get so good at being wrong? And off topic? When you have facts and evidence like the OP, you could be like the OP. When can we expect a breakthrough for you in the fact department? When will you make a thread like this one?

 

[SDC]

Junkies have authority trips. It's common as hell.

I can't totally corroborate it, no.

There's circumstantial evidence. Check in particular ibogaine.

I looked at the papers at the time. It was here we go to war, boys.

It's not just me, you know. A hell of a lot of people believe this CT version of history. It's not because there's hard evidence. As far as I know there isn't. It's because the patterns we're given to account for recent history no longer work for more and more people. They're ready for something else. Let's wait and see what happens.

Nick

Your last comments are simply the good old "50 million Frenchmen can't be wrong" argument. As for your statement that existing explanatory patterns (buddy, can you paradigm, as we sang long ago) "no longer work for more and more people," well young sprat, Prove It. You are making an assumption without a factual basis that I (at least) accept, and I dispute your assertion. I see a world, in contrast to your arguments, in which more people than when I was a kid are living better, in more democratic conditions. I was a young whippersnapper, sure that I was going to help change things and that I was on the side of the God of History, as well. I learned.

But back to the drug stuff. (Flashback! Flashback!! Whoops, sorry, I'm better now.) It's interesting to follow the "governments created or disseminated or allowed drugs" conspiracy argument, over the decades. It has often turned up in connection with African American communities. (I'm not familiar with the arguments in other countries, but I'd suppose that similar or analogous arguments appear.) Likewise with Aids, and I believe other plagues, medical, social, or a mix. Is that your take?

It probably turned up with marijuana and syphillis centuries ago.

 

[holycanoli]

holy: I believe gumboot and others have addressed this fairly well, but I'll add what I know to the situation as well. As I stated, I work within the intelligence community (hereafter abbreviated IC) and have brought up the question of reactions and foreknowledge to many intel professionals. I've even spoken directly with people who were high up in the FAA heirarchy that day and are now working for TSA or other agencies. All of them, when asked about what they thought THEN (as opposed to now) stated unanimously that the idea of planes being flown into buildings was, to them, a ludicrous theory. Up until that point, nearly every hijacked aircraft had landed safely, and the hijackers nearly always intended to use the passengers as hostages for some monetary or political gain (i.e. a large ransom payoff or the release of a political prisoner). There were a few small isolated examples of hijackers smuggling explosives on board and blowing up the plane, and I believe one foiled attempt to hijack an aircraft heading to Paris in order to ram the Eiffel Tower with it (I'll have to see if I can locate the source on that though; I'm probably remembering it wrong. If anyone can help, please do so! My google-fu is not so good), but no strong indications (PRE-9/11 that is; POST-9/11 it was pretty obvious that some things people had dismissed as unlikely were clear indications of the plot to take place) that hijackers intended to turn planes into missiles and attack buildings. Taking that into account, can you understand why the actions you are positing did NOT take place then, but would if such an event were to occur again? 9/11 exposed a HUGE, GINORMOUS fault in our security, and we've been attempting to fix it since. As gumboot stated, should something similar happen now, the ideas you've posited would happen, or at least similar ones would, and it is much more likely that any such attempt would fail (although there's always a chance it would succeed, as no system is perfect). Do you understand what we mean now?

And by the way, if I came across as condescending or rude, please know that was not my intent; I simply want to address your concerns and hopefully mitigate them, but I recognize that the written word does not always convey the emotions intended properly.

No rudeness detected. "Google-fu"--classic!

I understood what Gummy and you meant--the pre 9/11 mindset vs the current mindset.

Again though,

• No hi-jackings since 1980 or so originating in the US.
• A plane hits the North Tower 3 minutes after Norad gets the report of a hi-jacking
• And what I said all along...what would it have hurt.

If I'm in the room, I'm urging people to launch the birds. A little parinoia is a great thing.

If you say that it was thought to be a ridiculous notion, okay. I can believe it. What you said on the previous post about complacency is also valid.

 

[holycanoli]

To me, this whole line of argument is just like Fetzer's claim that he would have beaten the hijackers with his luggage.

From the first report of a hijacking at about 9:40 to the last plane being crashed in Shanksville at about 10:07, only an hour and a half elapsed. There was no protocol in place for an attack of this sort. Who, specifically, should have had the insight, authority, and organizational flexibility to respond decisively in such short order?

CNN said NORAD was infomed at 8:43 AM.

 

[holycanoli]

Why not ? Why can you and not I ?



Don't believe me ? Why would we want a police state that prevents everybody from boarding a plane unless they undergo a strip search ?

Western civilisation has become more and more permissive, with reason. The flip side of this is increased vulnerability.



Arguments from faith are no better than those from incredulity.

You've got issues.

 

[beachnut]

No rudeness detected. "Google-fu"--classic!

I understood what Gummy and you meant--the pre 9/11 mindset vs the current mindset.

Again though,

• No hi-jackings since 1980 or so originating in the US.
• A plane hits the North Tower 3 minutes after Norad gets the report of a hi-jacking
• And what I said all along...what would it have hurt.

If I'm in the room, I'm urging people to launch the birds. A little parinoia is a great thing.

If you say that it was thought to be a ridiculous notion, okay. I can believe it. What you said on the previous post about complacency is also valid.

Does this mean you agree with the OP, and the entire truth movement is junk?
You are missing the SUV with a family and a big bomb trying to blow up your next big event. You are fighting the last war; cutting pilots throats and flying planes into buildings will need a new twist before it becomes possible again. You need to think up what they can do next; Ideas? Now what if they buy their own planes? But the terrorist can not get better at killing themselves and others, there is no way to improve your suicide and kill tomorrow.

The OP; do you agree the truth movement is so full of junk, as soon as you gain enough knowledge you are cured and not a drone for 9/11 truth? And when will you be completely cured?

 

[chipmunk stew]

CNN said NORAD was infomed at 8:43 AM.

Sorry. Typo.

Who, specifically, wasn't doing enough during that hour and a half? How do you respond to Gumboot's accounts of people who did react with the urgency you say you would have?

 

[gumboot]

Why would you put the Windsor fire on your list when I asked for bldgs that collapsed, specificially, total collapse like WTC 7? From your link:

"Despite a complete burn-out, the strength provided by a technical concrete floor, plus the passive fire resistance of the building's concrete core and frame, prevented the building from collapse. "

Because the Windsor tower's steel structure suffered total collapse. Thus the Windsor Tower fire is evidence that steel structures will collapse in a fire.

-Gumboot

 

[holycanoli]

I think you need to come to grips with the fact that the US is not as all-powerful as you thought it was. We would like to think the govt is in control of our safety and their abilities to provide this are unparalleled. Alas, it is a dream.

Lurker

Already there.
Our reach apparently exceeds our grasp more than I thought though.

 

[gumboot]

You're not actually suggesting that the frame that is still standing in that picture is concrete, are you?

Yes, it is. The Windsor Tower had a concrete core with a concrete and steel structure. The structure (outside the core) above the 17th Floor was entirely steel, and it suffered total collapse, as your photograph shows excellently.

-Gumboot

 

[funk de fino]

1989 First UK media-reported death from Ecstasy, of an underage girl, Claire Leighton, in the Haçienda club in Manchester.

1989 - After what now seem curiously ambivalent or even positive media coverage of the rave phenomenon initially, the rave drug of choice begins to be vilified in the media and by the police. There is widespread misunderstanding about its effects, and a bias towards describing the stimulant effects over the empathogenic effects persists today. The few fatalities are used as a rallying point to question the potential threat to traditional values from the rave lifestyle.

1995 - MDMA-related deaths of Anna Wood (NZ) and Leah Betts (UK) within weeks of each other.

Jan and Paul Betts help devise the 'Sorted' anti-ecstasy campaign, allowing an image of Leah on her deathbed to be used.

2000 - Publication of the Police Foundation report on the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, chaired by Dame Ruth Runciman (often referred to as 'the Runciman Report').

The report is a comprehensive analysis of the failings of UK drug policy, making a series of pragmatic short term recommendations, including calls for cannabis to be reclassified from Class B to Class C, and MDMA from A to B. The aim is to restore some credibility to drug law enforcement by moving away from a scaremongering educational model portraying 'drugs' as a homogenous, uniformly harmful entity.

2002 - Given its criticisms of the Government's drug strategy, the recommendations of the report were disappointingly timid. The report considered (and rejected) outright decriminalisation (although left the door open if conditions chhange in the future), but supported the reclassification of cannabis to Class C and the Police Foundation recommendations that MDMA should be made Class B, while maintaining a firm 'deterrent' line on drug education and refusing to lower penalties for 'social supply'

2006 - Previously a controlled drug under the Medicines Act, but not technically illegal to posess, ketamine is now a Class C drug, illegal to possess or supply.

http://http://www.tdpf.org.uk/Policy_Timeline.htm

You have no idea what you are talking about Nick. Many years ago one of my friends got 4 years for having a few E tablets on him, nowadays you do not go to jail and usually get away with a fine and some community service.

The govt have admitted they should be concentrating on Crack, heroin and cocaine and wasting less resources on E, Acid and cannabis (the so called social drugs). E is an accepted part of growing up in the UK now and millions take it every weekend and there is no stigma attached to it like heroin and crack and the govt here do not seem to have a hard on for it at all.

 

[holycanoli]

Sorry. Typo.

Who, specifically, wasn't doing enough during that hour and a half? How do you respond to Gumboot's accounts of people who did react with the urgency you say you would have?

Gumboot set me straight pretty much.

The thing is that if I'm in the room and hear "hi jack" I act a bit more quickly and would love to have egg on my face if they get up there and find nothing. If something is afoot, the defense (such as it is) is in position.

But as Sabrina pointed out...it illustrated a weakness that we are apparently trying to fix.

Maybe that was the best we could do. But if that was success, boy, I'd hate to see failure.

So I respond by saying, "thank you" to Gumboot and Sabrina.

As for who wasn't doing enough, interesting question.

Wasn't it Richard Clarke who was working for Condi Rice and presumably briefing her that the "system was flashing red" in the summer of 2001? Then we have a report of a hi-jacking. Then we have a plane hit a building. Then another.

It's a parlor game to point out that someone should have called someone when the world was turning upside down I suppose. Again, if this is an example of the system working perfectly, I'd hate to see what happens when one of the pieces malfunctions.

If I'd have to point out one person, I'd say the National Security Advisor who knows about a flashing red sytem, planes being hi-jacked, and buildings being hit by planes and no action--to the best of my knowledge--of her intervening and telling SECDEF or whomever that this is the other shoe dropping.
I think it would be more correct to say the national security apparatus but you asked for specifics.

Is it fair to lay all of it on Condi Rice's shoulders? I'm not so sure it is. But you asked me to pick a specific person who "wasn't doing enough during that hour and a half." That is my answer.

 

[Sabrina]

No rudeness detected. "Google-fu"--classic!

I understood what Gummy and you meant--the pre 9/11 mindset vs the current mindset.

Again though,

• No hi-jackings since 1980 or so originating in the US.
• A plane hits the North Tower 3 minutes after Norad gets the report of a hi-jacking
• And what I said all along...what would it have hurt.

If I'm in the room, I'm urging people to launch the birds. A little parinoia is a great thing.

If you say that it was thought to be a ridiculous notion, okay. I can believe it. What you said on the previous post about complacency is also valid.

Google-fu is better than Google-seppuku, although I'm not good at either, and can't take credit for the terms. No idea who coined them either, unfortunately. Although I'd hazard a guess that the last one might have been coined by a webcomic artist I know of.

As for your point regarding "paranoia", I understand, and even agree with you to some extent, but I have to ask if you think you would have felt that way PRIOR to 9/11? Be honest here; do you REALLY think that you would have said the exact same thing prior to 9/11? The problem is that 9/11 totally changed our mindset in so many ways; things that we couldn't have conceived of prior to then are now commonly thought of and ways to prevent them posited. I'm not saying that you don't make a good point as regards the security of this country; you absolutely do. But I have to qualify that endorsement by once again stressing the fact that a different mindset existed back then, one that couldn't conceive of "wasting money, time, and assets" on a threat that may or may not have materialized. Nowadays we can; back then, not so likely. Literally in the space of two hours we had it shoved forcefully into our consciousness that we weren't as invincible as we honestly thought we were. That's a pretty small amount of time as changing beliefs goes. Like I said, I do believe you have a point, and I truly feel that what you propose would likely happen were another plane to be hijacked domestically nowadays; I just don't feel it's a realistic expectation to have had BACK THEN.

 

[holycanoli]

Does this mean you agree with the OP, and the entire truth movement is junk?
You are missing the SUV with a family and a big bomb trying to blow up your next big event. You are fighting the last war; cutting pilots throats and flying planes into buildings will need a new twist before it becomes possible again. You need to think up what they can do next; Ideas? Now what if they buy their own planes? But the terrorist can not get better at killing themselves and others, there is no way to improve your suicide and kill tomorrow.

The OP; do you agree the truth movement is so full of junk, as soon as you gain enough knowledge you are cured and not a drone for 9/11 truth? And when will you be completely cured?

I have no idea what you meant in your first paragraph. Sorry but you've lost me. SUV with a family and a big bomb? Huh?

I'm not a drone for anything man. Sorry but my thoughts are ones I come up with on my own. Silly as they are, they are from my own keyboard.

Full of junk? I think the people at Loosechange911.com (the site owners) are
full of prunes. Alex Jones is a moron. I think the "truth" movement--those who believe the government either MIHOP or LIHOP--are wrong; know they are wrong and don't care and are just being contrarian. I have not heard a specific charge about where the 9/|| Commission blundered the investigation to my satisifaction.

But the larger question, I believe, is whether Al Queda was responsible for 9/11 attacks. I'll say yes and that It happened without any assistance of any kind from domestic public sector or military sources. That having been said, if someone wanted to play the conspiracy card, I have only one type of conspiracy in mind that makes any sense whatsoever.

I'll sound like a kook here and thats okay. I'm pulling an OJ and saying that if there was a conspriacy, here is the way it would have come down.

An oil man, lets call him Oscar Wyatt for argument sake, through intermediaries contacts Osama Bin Laden and asks him to stage something that will drive the price of oil up. Nobody can seriously say that the tension since 2001 in the middle east has not been good for the oil companies. He doesn't know what, he doesn't know when, he doesn't know how but he knows that he transferred a bunch of money that ened up in the hands of OBL. The result was the 19 hi-jackers.

It is sort of a win-win. Oscar gets what he wants, OBL gets what he wants. The reaction wasn't all that hard to predict; cowboy/president loads his guns and begins firing wildly at the usual suspects. First Afghanistan then Saddam. Now Iran.

That is just a theory but it satisfies the first requirement of a conspiracy...limit the number of actors. It also prevents OBL from spilling the beans about who funded him since he doesn't know. Oscar, if it happens, stands to make a lot of money. If it doesn't happen, he's out a few million--no big deal to him. The only person to finger him is his intermediary and we can assume that he was well compensated for his silence. The brutality of the attacks may surprise Oscar but it isn't any skin off of his nose. The attacks are carried out for pennies compared to the dollars they cost--what is the phrase; unbalanced warfare. OBL probably pocketed several of the millions Oscar sent him.

Loosechange and others seems to want to field a conspiracy dream team where the only people who didn't know it was going to happen were on the planes. It's pure nonsense.

Anyway, I hope I answered your questions and if you want to elaborate on the first paragraph, feel free to. It needs an explanation.

 

[holycanoli]

Google-fu is better than Google-seppuku, although I'm not good at either, and can't take credit for the terms. No idea who coined them either, unfortunately. Although I'd hazard a guess that the last one might have been coined by a webcomic artist I know of.

As for your point regarding "paranoia", I understand, and even agree with you to some extent, but I have to ask if you think you would have felt that way PRIOR to 9/11? Be honest here; do you REALLY think that you would have said the exact same thing prior to 9/11? The problem is that 9/11 totally changed our mindset in so many ways; things that we couldn't have conceived of prior to then are now commonly thought of and ways to prevent them posited. I'm not saying that you don't make a good point as regards the security of this country; you absolutely do. But I have to qualify that endorsement by once again stressing the fact that a different mindset existed back then, one that couldn't conceive of "wasting money, time, and assets" on a threat that may or may not have materialized. Nowadays we can; back then, not so likely. Literally in the space of two hours we had it shoved forcefully into our consciousness that we weren't as invincible as we honestly thought we were. That's a pretty small amount of time as changing beliefs goes. Like I said, I do believe you have a point, and I truly feel that what you propose would likely happen were another plane to be hijacked domestically nowadays; I just don't feel it's a realistic expectation to have had BACK THEN.

In all modesty and honesty, I can say that if I'm in the room, I am urging people to launch whatever we can the moment I hear the word hi-jacking and Boston. I would have been looked at like I was missing some 9's and queens I'm sure and the urging would have been discounted, I'm certain. If I'm in charge, the planes are going to be over washington at the earliest possible moment. What good they would have done? Another matter, all together.

But yes, I would have reacted that way. I can say that in all honesty.

 

[Belz...]

You've got issues.

That's neat. Issues with what. What specific part of my post do you disagree with ?