REVIEWED SITESA selection of the best or most newsworthy, interesting, influential or popular 9/11 Skeptic sites.QUESTIONS QUESTIONS - BRIAN SALTER
www.questionsquestions.net/
Lucid presentation of the skeptical case. Broad and open-minded approachto the major issues. The site's current main feature presents a wealthof links and very strong arguments against the "anti-conspiratorialist"campaign now being waged by the self-appointed spin controllers of the liberal left:
"The Magic Bullet Dissidents"- must reading.
Many links to excellent articles not yet included here. Also a good collection of links to relevant news articles supporting the Skeptical case.
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS (A COALITION)
www.unansweredquestions.org
Finally, in recent weeks, a number of prominent 9/11 Skeptics haveunited in an ad hoc coalition, which held the "Unanswered Questions" pressconference at the National Press Club in Washington on Monday, June 10. Participants included Mary Schiavo, the former inspector general of the Transportation Department, who represents 32 Sept. 11 families, who spoke on the need for accountability in aviation disasters; C.A.Fitts, the former assistant secretary of housing in the first Bush administration, who later turned whistleblower on the plundering of the federal budget; Julie Sweeney, who lost family on Sept. 11 and wants to know the whole story of why; Michael Springman, a whistleblower from the State Department who was ordered to issue U.S. visas to CIA-backed fundamentalist mercenaries in Saudi Arabia in the 1980s; and investigative journalists Michael Ruppert, Tom Flocco, Kyle Hence, Richard Ochs, Jennifer Bergen and John Judge, among others. C-SPAN chose not to cover the event, prefering such important alternatives that day as a planning meeting on the renovation of the Pentagon! Several hundred people apparently attended, including journalists, so there's no doubt it created a buzz, if not yet any stories. These things take time to percolate. Meanwhile, most of us are stuck waiting for the group to put up a transcript.
As of June 17, the audio is available:
unansweredquestions.org/audio.php
So far I have only heard the first part, but very good work!
The biggest question here is where it will all lead. Let's hope this initiative turns into a big, inclusive, broad-based and influential movement to force disclosure.
PEACEFUL TOMORROWS -
ANTIWAR GROUP OF SEPT. 11 RELATIVES
peacefultomorrows.org/
Not necessarily skeptics - this is the site of an anti-war organization set up by relatives of the 9/11 victims. The group participated in the"Unanswered Questions" press conference of June 10, 2002, in Washington, DC.
GREG PALAST -
GREATEST INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER IN UNIVERSE
www.gregpalast.com/
Not a 9/11 Skeptic himself, Palast broke the story of how the Bush administration spiked FBI investigations into the Osama-Saudi connection immediately on taking power in January, 2001.
www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=103&row=0
Here is the transcript of Palast's Nov. 6 BBC Newsnight story, which asks:
"Has Someone Been Sitting on the FBI?"
news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/events/newsnight/newsid_1645000/1645527.stm
Palast writes for The Guardian/Independent and reports for BBC. He broke the story of how Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris stole Florida for George W. in advance of the 2000 election, by purging the voter registration rolls of up to 100,000 potential Democratic voters, mostly black people. Palast's findings were adopted by the Civil Rights Commission that investigated the 2000 election, but this got only minimal media coverage when it was reported, after Sept. 11.
He also broke several major stories on how governments, the IMF and World Bank collaborate with transnational corporations like Enron in intentionally eradicating the economic independence of third-world countries.
Anthony Lappe of the Guerilla News Network interviews Palast on the Racial Coup D'Etat, the spiking of the Binladin probe and Enron:
www.guerrillanews.com/counter_intelligence/doc233.htmlwww.guerrillanews.com/globalization/doc407.html
Alex Jones of Infowars.com interviews Palast:
"World Bank Secret Documents Consume Argentina"
www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=125&row=1
On Palast's main site, check out "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy,"his excellent book about the above and many other stories.
MAKE THEM ACCOUNTABLE - CAROLYN KAY
The "What Did they Know?" Page:
makethemaccountable.com/whatwhen/
Huge collection of links to "prior knowledge" news reports from mainstreammedia around the world.
Latest Updates to "What Did They Know?"
www.makethemaccountable.com/whatwhen/LatestAdds.htm
DEMANDING A CONGRESSIONAL INQUIRY ON 9/11 -
CAROL BROUILLET / "COMMUNITY CURRENCY"
www.communitycurrency.org/9-11.html
Excellent collection of questions and links.
Describes possibly the first-ever demonstration to demand a 9/11 inquiry, held on Jan. 8, 2002, in San Francisco:
"January 8th, 2002. People Gathered and Marched to Senator Feinstein's office. A delegation of people met with Senator Feinstein's and Senator Boxer's staff. These are some of the questions that I brought which were presented to our elected officials..."
Guess what? Seems Feinstein and Boxer did not dance with delight at the thought of challenging the official story.
The "Community Currency" site includes one of the most comprehensive treatments to date:
MALCONTENT X - "SEPT. 11: UNANSWERED QUESTIONS"
www.communitycurrency.org/MainIndexMX.html
Excellent and self-reflective, factual overview. Good discussion of evidentiary standards and the need for careful research. Points out the limits of the "who benefits" argument and the circumstantial case. The anonymous author eschews speculation (unlike me, but I label my speculations and do my best to be logical). He or she merely lays out reported facts and leaves the obvious questions to the reader.
"This website is dedicated to help discover the truthabout what occurred on Sept 11th, 2001. The emphasis here is on an exhaustive examination of fully-referenced fact, rather than speculation, circumstantial evidence, or "conspiracy-theory."
CONGRESSWOMAN CYNTHIA McKINNEY
A courageous woman, who has been subjected to vicious and ad hominemattacks.
www.house.gov/mckinney/
McKinney's Statement of April 12, 2002, the one that got the ball rolling:
"The need for an investigation of the events surrounding September 11 is as obvious as is the need for an investigation of the Enron debacle. Certainly, if the American people deserve answers about what went wrong with Enron and why (and we do), then we deserve to know what went wrong on September 11 and why..."
www.house.gov/mckinney/news/pr020412.htm
Statement of May 16, 2002, after the White House admitted it received early warnings of an imminent attack on aviation:
"Several weeks ago, I called for a congressional investigation into what warnings the Bush Administration received before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. I was derided by the White House, right wing talk radio, and spokespersons for the military-industrial complexas a conspiracy theorist..."
www.house.gov/mckinney/news/pr020516.htm
TWO OTHER POTENTIAL REBELS IN THE CONGRESS?
RON PAUL: Ron Paul's Weekly Column
www.house.gov/paul/tst/welcome.htm
Get out of Colombia. Stop bombing Iraq. Get out of the Middle East. End the Drug War. Get out of Saudi Arabia. Waco was a massacre. Reformer end the Federal Reserve.
Paul has said all of these things. And he is a Texas Republican!
DENNIS KUCINICH: "The Spirit of Freedom"
www.thespiritoffreedom.com/
"Let us pray that our nation will remember that the unfolding of the promise of democracy in our nation paralleled the striving for civil rights. That is why we must challenge the rationale of the Patriot Act. We must ask why should America put aside guarantees of constitutional justice? How can we justify in effect canceling the First Amendment and the right of free speech, the right to peaceably assemble?"
THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES (TENC) - JARED ISRAEL, ed.
emperors-clothes.com/index.html
EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES 9/11 PAGE:
emperors-clothes.com/indict/911page.htm
Jared Israel and Illarion Bykov make a compelling and oft-cited case that the failure to intercept the hijacked planes was possible only with collaboration from within the administration and/or high military command. They have actually gone as far as writing up an indictment of Bush, Rumsfeld and General Myers. The site includes many other well-reasoned and perceptive articles on the Bushladin-Carlyle business connection, Osama and the CIA, Qaeda in Kosovo alongside the CIA, history of causus belli, the imperial geostrategy of the U.S. power elites, history of the Afghanistan conflict, history of the CIA-Nazi connection, and lies during wartime. Meticulous in referencing fact and generally avoids speculation. TENC otherwise focuses mainly on Yugoslavia and the Milosevic kangaroo court. (I agree entirely with the criticism of NATO's criminal war in Kosovo, including the claims of how the causus belli was manufactured, but I do not endorse the authors' extreme pro-Milosevic position.)
Those who doubt the plausibility of an inside job should start with the article by Ken McCarthy of brasscheck.com, who asks how it would be possible for the government to let the attacks go ahead:
emperors-clothes.com/indict/coast.htm
ANIMATED VERSION OF THE FLIGHT ROUTES
www.usatoday.com/graphics/news/gra/gflightpath2/flash.htm
Why is the route of AA77 indicated by a dotted line?
UNITED FLIGHT 93 CRASH THEORY HOME PAGE
www.flight93crash.com/
Takes on the story of UA93 from every angle, considers the evidence on each scenario, and leaves little doubt that the plane broke up in the air. (This is not to denigrate the heroes; they became heroes the moment they started to resist.) Best site on the subject I'd like to ask all Skeptics:
Is this the right start in unravelling the official story for the American people, or is the subject too delicate? Or do you think the evidence is not conclusive?
9/11 SKEPTICISM HITS CANADIAN TV
The Great Deception - What Really happened on 9-11?
By Barry Zwicker, aired by Vision TV in Canada - for transcripts and links
www.visiontv.ca/programs/insight/mediafile_Jan21.htm
SF Lawyer Files 9/11 Suit Against Bush Administration
www.examiner.com/news/default.jsp?story=n.lawyer.0611w
A San Francisco Examiner article about Stanley Hilton, who filed suit June 3 against Bush and 10 top administration officials for $7 billion on behalf of victims' families, claiming the attacks were intentionally allowed to happen so as to advance the administration's agenda. Hilton was a staffer to Sen. Bob Dole in 1979-80, then dropped out to practice law and write books, including a nasty one about his erstwhile employer, "Senator for Sale." He says he has evidence Osama Binladin died of kidney failure years ago, and has been set up as a general scapegoat since. If true, then who exactly did Mullah Omar and the Taliban fight to defend? Why didn't they say Osama was dead, to save themselves?
PETER DALE SCOTT on Al-Qaeda, 9/11, Afghanistan, "War on Terror"
ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~pdscott/q.html
A great scholar. Scott leaves open the question of the attacks' true background in this absolutely recommended treatment of the history and politics behind Islamist terrorism and the War on Terror.
GORE VIDAL JOINS THE SKEPTICS IN SALON.COM INTERVIEW
www.salon.com/people/interview/2002/04/24/vidal/index_np.html
By Gary Kamiya, April 24:
"Congress should investigate how much the Bush "oil junta" knew in advance about Sept. 11. This and other bombshells from American literature's leading provocateur."
Latest Vidal interview on 9/11:
www.leftbusinessobserver.com/VidalTranscript.html
NARCONEWS - AL GIORDANO
REPORTING ON "WAR ON DRUGS" FROM LATIN AMERICA
www.narconews.com/
With millions of hits and unapolegetic, on-the-scene reporting on the insane Drug War, Al Giordano's site is the best evidence of an ongoing, Internet-based revolution against the corporate media. Last December NARCONEWS won a landmark legal case against Banamex, the state-owned Mexican bank, which had sued NARCONEWS for reporting that it is a drug-money laundromat. The ruling established that Internet news sites qualify as journalism, and are therefore entitled to the same extended First Amendment protections as the print press.
The site had its finest moment yet on April 11-13, during the failed military-media coup against the Venezuelan government. In the crucial first hours, NARCONEWS and VHEADLINE broke the English-language monopoly of the American press chorus, who were singing along with the Bush regime's story that Hugo Chavez (a democratically elected leader, unlike George W. Bush) had "resigned." Three days later, when the people of Venezuela flooded the streets and reclaimed their country, even the Washington Post and New York Times admitted the attempt to depose Chavez was a coup d'etat, heavily backed by the United States government. NARCONEWS continues to present the best available English-language coverage on Plan Colombia, Bolivia, the media revolution from below, and much more.
Almost every single item on NARCONEWS is worth reading, and usually contains information you will not find elsewhere. On September 2001, NARCONEWS published two key stories on 9/11:
STAN GOFF: "THE SO-CALLED EVIDENCE IS A FARCE"
narconews.com/goff1.html
CATHERINE AUSTIN FITTS: "CUI BONO?"
narconews.com/cuibono.html
See also an overview of drug war, money laundering and the impact on the economy by C.A. Fitts:
"NARCO-DOLLARS FOR BEGINNERS"
narconews.com/narcodollars1.html
MOSCOW TIMES
www.moscowtimes.ru/
Excellent English-language reports by a large crew of journalists from Moscow, has been running since the early 1990s. A hotbed of "exile" American straight-talkers and also Russian skeptics with regard to the suspiciousmanner in which President Putin came to power. Archives unfortunately by subscription.
See the latest column by Chris Floyd ("Hellraiser 2.0") who has been on top of the 9/11 issue from the start, talk about the NSA's tracking of Mohammed Atta for many months before 9/11:
www.tmtmetropolis.ru/stories/2002/06/14/120.html
"Terror works. Terror pays. Terror feeds the bulldog. It's the first principle of any violent criminal organization: scare the hell out of the people you're trying to control..."
Boris Kagalitsky, always with insightful and well-written views into Russian politics, and who has a bit of a global following thanks to Internet, very openly showed his 9/11 skepticism in an Sept.. 21, unfortunately no longer available except here on my private fairuse archive.
Sept. 18, 2001: "Bin Laden? Better Be Sure"
Oct. 30, 2001 "A Need for Honest Answers"
"The fear of new terrorist acts compels the American public to accept any course of treatment offered by the government. However, there will most probably not be any more large-scale acts of terrorism. Not because the administration's measures have been effective, but simply because those who blew up the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 -- who ever they were -- have already achieved their goal, just as those who blew up apartment blocks in Moscow in 1999 accomplished theirs. Terrorism is a means of changing the balance of political forces through violence. Such a change has already taken place. And the current war against terrorism is no solution, but rather is aggravating the problem."
Kagarlitsky's latest column:
www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2002/06/18/009.html
CENTER FOR RESEARCH ON GLOBALIZATION (CRG)
MICHEL CHOSSUDOVSKY, ed.
www.globalresearch.ca
Montreal-based scholarly site, in French and English, with large collectionof important articles on the Pakistani connection to 9/11, Osama as a CIAasset, Taliban and the oil lobby, 9/11-related insider trading, and muchmore.
Foreknowledge of 9/11 Page:
globalresearch.ca/articles/CRG204A.html
CHAIM KUPFERBERG:
"The Propaganda Preparation for 9/11," CRG, June 19:
globalresearch.ca/articles/KUP206A.html
Proceeds from "the mysterious death of John O'Neill" to a number ofsuspicious news stories in advance of Sept. 11 to a compelling stab atthe Big Picture.
Print publication of the CRG: YearZero Magazine - Home
www.yearzero.org/
MADCOW PRODUCTIONS - DANIEL HOPSICKER
www.madcowprod.com/
Investigative reporter Daniel Hopsicker is a former NBC producer whoditched the mainstream media so that he could cover stories that actuallymatter. He has concentrated on the trail of the alleged Sept. 11 hijackers,starting in Venice, Florida, where Mohamed Atta and his buddy Marwan al-Shehhiattended the flight schools run by the "Dutch Boys" Rudi Dekkers and ArneKruikhof. Hopsicker's work, in more than a dozen articles since Sept. 11,is the closest we have to a smoking gun leading the hijackers back to U.S.government connections. Among other stories, he has uncovered sources whoclaim to have seen Atta at U.S. military bases in the 1990s; local policewho say their records on the investigation were taken away by state policeand loaded on to an airplane with Jeb Bush waiting on board; and evidencethat the Dutch Boy flight schools are intelligence community fronts. SinceHopsicker is a footwork journalist who protects most of his informants, I don't know what to make of some of this, and I wish Hopsicker would not write in the style of a gossip columnist. The material is not available on any other site, and merits a full reading from the first article in the archives forward. Judge for yourselves. Hopsicker has produced a feature length treatment of his findings, "Mohamed Atta and the Venice Flying Circus," which this reviewer has yet to see.
GORDON THOMAS - INTEL ONLINE
www.gordonthomas.ie/briefs.htm
Self-proclaimed intelligence expert with long pedigree as spook journalist. Believes 9/11 was entirely the work of Qaeda. Claims in his current book, "Seeds of Fire," that China helped arm and prepare Osama Binladin's offensive on the United States, in the hope that terror attacks will serve to weaken the arrogant superpower in the long run. (I have not read the book but find this thesis highly implausible, since China is now a full, WTO-approved, enthusiastic member of the global capitalist club.)
Thomas seems to have good links to Mossad, and has been accused (without proof) of being their mouthpiece. In two very interesting recent articles citing Israeli sources, he claims the Israeli government has let on to the congressional investigators that Mossad gave the FBI and CIA specific pre-Sept. 11 warnings of an imminent Qaeda attack, including the names of some of the later hijackers.
"Bush ignored warning that will come to haunt him."
www.gordonthomas.ie/104.html
Did CIA and FBI fail to heed the Mossad warning of an imminent attack?
www.gordonthomas.ie/120.html
This information seems to have been gathered by an Israeli spy ring operating in the United States before Sept. 11. Gordon speculates these warnings were accurate and useful, and could have prevented the attacks, but says they were ignored, mainly because the American services mistrust the Mossad. Is this one of the items being discussed in the secret meetings of the congressional committee?
JOHN LOFTUS
www.john-loftus.com/
Author of "The Secret War Against the Jews," a best-selling history of collaboration between U.S. elites and the Nazis from the 1930s almost to the present day. A lawyer, Loftus is the head of the Florida Holocaust Museum and I shall note, as he does on his site: an Irish Catholic. He argues with conviction that the networks of Islamist terror lead back to Saudi Arabian financiers and that the Bush family had every incentive to cover this up, just as the Clinton administration did. Moving on to shakier ground, he says that the Bush decision to spike the FBI probe into Qaeda and Saudi was taken directly on behalf of the Bush regime's most active sponsor, the Enron corporation, which lobbied the Taliban for a pipeline along with other oil companies. This, Loftus says, caused the investigative blackout that allowed Qaeda to perpetrate the Sept. 11 attacks. He does not proceed to the next logical step of at least wondering whether the Bush administration had an incentive not just to spike the investigation, but to actually allow the attacks to go ahead. He argues instead that the responsible Saudi parties basically hoped to sabotage the Mideast peace process by staging an attack on America, which to me smells about as plausible as the idea that the Israelis staged the attacks to allow them to unleash a war on the Arabs. (Either goal could be accomplished with much simpler means, and without risking the wrath of the American leviathan.) Still, Loftus is a scholar with a very interesting site, if absurdly apologeticas to Israel's role in the Arab world.
COPVCIA - FROM THE WILDERNESS - MIKE RUPPERT
www.copvcia.com/
I don't know Ruppert, but there's something about him that makes you want to call him by first name. Mike strikes me as courageous and tireless. The site's extensive 9/11 coverage has picked up the trail of 9/11-related insider trading and focused on evidence of foreknowledge and the geopolitics of the conflict, among other issues. I highly recommend the video ofhis three-hour Portland lecture on "The Truth and Lies of 9/11."
www.fromthewilderness.com/store/index.html
No one can watch it and fail to see that the official story is a farce. Order it today. (This is not a commercial message.)
Most popular article: "Oh Lucy! - You Gotta Lotta 'Splainin To Do"
www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/02_11_02_lucy.html
"A TIMELINE SURROUNDING SEPTEMBER 11TH - IF CIA AND THE GOVERNMENTWEREN'T INVOLVED IN THE SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACKS WHAT WERE THEY DOING?"
On his 9/11 tour, Ruppert has packed the house for lectures of threeand four hours in New York, San Francisco, and across Canada. Because heis so persistent and outspoken, and because he has put himself on the linefor many years at great personal risk, he has become something akin tothe first hero of the 9/11 Skeptics movement. This is not to say he isperfect. I find it striking that when he makes factual errors, the sitealways issues immediate and complete corrections (including on one minormistake that I wrote him about). One searches in vain for a similar readinessto admit error among his detractors, who make plenty, or among 90 percentof journalists. Ruppert's biggest mistake so far was to ride the Mike Vreelandstory too uncritically. But his central point on Vreeland remains: a conman Vreeland certainly seems to be - which is not incompatible with beinga government spook - but how did he produce a written warning of the attacksin advance of Sept. 11?
In recent months, Ruppert has been assaulted regularly by various self-appointedguardians of Leftist propriety (=boredom and ineffectiveness), unfortunatelyincluding such medium-size names as Michael Albert, Norman Solomon andDavid Corn. None of them have addressed the facts Ruppert presents, orhad the courage to debate him in person. They have engaged instead in personaland ad hominem attacks, and tried to shut him out of the media. This isa typical fate for those who pursue analysis beyond sociology, and whostand up with the kind of specific evidence of government crime that liberalsare conditioned to denigrate as "conspiracy theory."
Ruppert's "From the Wilderness" newsletter and "Cop v. CIA" site havebroken more important stories about the Drug War and the gangsters whorule our country than 20 years worth of the New York Times. A former LAPDcop, Ruppert has focused mainly on the CIA-drug connection. He confrontedCIA Director John Deutch with evidence of the agency's drug dealing ata 1996 town meeting in South Central Los Angeles, which was broadcast onC- SPAN. That coup probably stopped Deutch's rise to a higher post, thoughit unfortunately has not made a difference with regard to government-sponsoreddrug dealing. (Interestingly, at the same time, David Corn, Ruppert's mostpersistent detractor, used The Nation to stage ad hominem and inaccurateattacks on Gary Webb's series about CIA-Contra drug dealing, which hassince been confirmed to the last significant detail. Does Corn have a functionother than being a "leftist" flak for official lies?)
Read what Ruppert writes about CIA-sponsored drug smuggling, the centralcrime in an age when a "Drug War" imprisons millions of noin-violent drugusers in private labor camps, claims thousands of victims on the streets,and levels whole countries. This is possibly the most obvious piece ofevidence that at least to some groups within the United States government,you ARE expendable.
DAVE McGOWAN:
"AMERICA THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS" (April 8, 2002)
Perhaps the most talented writer listed here!
McGowan launches a funny and irreverent broadside on 9/11 and the BigPicture:
www.swans.com/library/art8/dmg001.html
Published at SWANS, Gylles D'Aymery's biweekly e-zine:
www.swans.com/main.shtml
Also at SWANS:
Jon Phalen: "Let's Step Out Of The Box For A Moment, Shall We? A reply To The Anticonspiratorialists"
www.swans.com/library/art8/zig075.html
D'AYMERY'S "ANTI-CONSPIRACY" RESPONSE:
www.swans.com/library/art8/ga131.html
CENTER FOR AN INFORMED AMERICA - DAVE McGOWAN
www.davesweb.cnchost.com/
Dave McGowan's main site, with plenty of material and speculation on9/11.
"THE WAR ON FREEDOM"
A BOOK BY NAFEEZ MOSADDEQ AHMED
waronfreedom.mediamonitors.net/index.html
The biggest scholarly treatment of the circumstantial case for "insidejob" theory to date. The final chapter, which can be downloaded on site,is an excellent rendering of the "who benefits" argument.
Published by Media Monitors Network (MMN):
www.mediamonitors.net/index.html
GROUND ZERO - PRESENTED BY OurDNA.org - NICO HAUPT
www.lebensaspekte.de/
One of the largest stores of 9/11 Skeptic material, from a New Yorkerwho seems to have devoted his life since Sept. 11 to researching all possibleleads on the story. Incredibly detailed timelines of Sept. 11, the backgrounddating back to Operation Northwoods in 1962, and post-Sept. 11 events.Extreme but intelligent in running through every possible speculation onevery piece of evidence, without being inflexible in revising conclusionsthat prove not to fit. Somebody has to take on that role, but it meansGZ is best for those who have already immersed themselves in the details.Most of the material was originally posted on discussion boards, and sothe organization is a bit sloppy. This site needs an editor, but is wellworth exploring.
GZ's Forum on Democratic Underground:
www.democraticunderground.com/cgi
THE BUSH VIDEO ON "GROUND ZERO"
www.lebensaspekte.de/groundzero/bushschool.mov
If you can handle a 23 megabyte file, be sure to download GZ's copyof a 10-minute propaganda documentary (in Quicktime MOV format) about Bush'svisit to the Booker Elementary School in Sarasota on the morning of Sept.11. See the president's limousine arrive. See the president listen to schoolchildrenreading in chorus. See the president hear the news of the second attack.See the president remain seated as the children read the story of a girland her pet goat. I don't know what is scarier, the man's faked emotionsor the class itself, with its forced instruction by obedient repetition.(A showcase of the Bush brand of "education.") Hard to believe the filmproducers use this smoking-gun evidence of the Resident's total inactivityin the face of an ongoing "Attack on America" as an inspiring pro-Bushpiece, but clearly we live in Orwellian times. Ignorance is Strength.
GUERRILLA NEWS NETWORK (GNN)
www.guerrillanews.com/
An anti-media spin project. Excellent agit-prop videos, including "Crackthe CIA," a Sundance Festival winner, and "Surfing the Apocalypse," on9/11 in the media. Always interesting interviews and news items in the"Pick of the Day." Humorous approach.
GNN has a large active following, with continuous posts on its variousforums:
www.guerrillanews.com/cgi-bin/wwwthreads/wwwthreads.pl
The "Open Forum" tends to be as 9/11 heavy as the "9/11" and "Conspiracy"forums. The posters, who are almost uniformly against the Bush government,debate vigorously every side of the 9/11 question, from "Qaeda did it alone"to "Yes, it was Qaeda, but the government let it happen" to "It was a setupfrom the start."
THE HOME PAGE OF ORLIN J. GRABBE
orlingrabbe.org/homepage.html
Orlin Grabbe, happy butcher of sacred cows, is a money consultant witha sense of humor who presents links every day on the war, issues of "privacy,espionage, money laundering..." and a usually entertaining miscellany,with a special interest in speculative science and technology. The sitereliably links to most of the relevant 9/11 news stories of the day. Outspokenas a skeptic, Grabbe has openly propagated the "inside job" theory, provideda huge list of reports to establish the Bush-Binladin family link ("Moreevidence than for the Osama-WTC link") and reported on Michael Riconosciuto'srecollections of meeting Osama Binladin in the U.S. in 1986, when Osamawent on a weapons shopping tour under the pseudonym of "Tim Osman." Grabbeseems to live in Dubai at the moment. Maybe he could get to the botom ofthe French story about Osama's kidneys?
Devoted to a simplistic Randian libertarianism, Grabbe never minceswords or disguises what he thinks is the truth. He has no compunction aboutspringing obvious hoaxes and seeing who falls for it, which is mildly unsettlinggiven how outlandish 9/11 Skepticism already seems to most people. In hisday job, Grabbe is trying to establish some kind of new untraceable wayof trading dollars, euros and gold on the Internet known as DMT, the instructionsfor which are written in impenetrable tech-speak. (Sometimes he awards$100 DMT certificates to the first person who can register them. This motivatedme to download the software, but I wasn't fast enough to snag one, andwouldn't have known what to do with it if I did.) Whether or not you areon his political line, he sure knows his spook world. If you want an expert'sprimer on off-shore cash laundries, the mechanics of political payola,banking and finance, encryption and the like, this is it. You must delveinto the archives to see most of the WTC-related links.
WARNING: For some reason, Grabbe adds a soft-porn pic everyday - nannies beware. (NOTE TO PROF. GRABBE: Your taste in photosis pretty good, though I liked it better before you went topless.)
ANTIWAR.COM - JUSTIN RAIMONDO, ed.
antiwar.com/
Updated daily, usually has all the key war-related and 9/11 media newslinks. Indispensable for that reason. Principled antiwar stance, mainlyfrom a libertarian perspective, dating back to the site's establishmentduring the Kosovo war. Heterogenous group of writers, from Cockburn onthe left to (sigh) Buchanan on the right. Often brilliant regular columnsby a number of writers, including correspondants in Britain, Yugoslaviaand Israel.
The editor and popular columnist, Justin Raimondo, has perfected a funny,loudmouth style. He takes no prisoners among the neocon and imperial-liberalwar factions, exposing hypocrisy and cant without mercy. Unfortunately,he pushes the strange idea that Bush personally must be "a good man," whateverthe insanity of the dictatorship in the making. (And what if this was true?It's not like W is actually president, is it? Either de facto, or by election.)
Raimondo believes the attack was staged by Qaeda, but clearly doesnot think we have heard the real low-down. He is almost as bad as Rivero,below, in pushing the Israeli spy-ring story to the exclusion of all else,and he seriously dissed McKinney without bothering to address her argument.He clearly enjoys the attack, at which he is very talented, and often forgetsto do anything but. He also spends too much time considering ideologicallabels (left, right, liberal, conservative) that now obscure more thanthey illumininate.
After he published his eighth straight column suggesting the Israelisknew about the attacks in advance and did not warn the U.S. (untrue!),or possibly staged the whole thing (to what end?!), basing his belief intwo cryptic sentences from a FOXNEWS story (fer Chrissakes) and a leakedreport from the DEA (that fount of truth in investigation), I finally wrotehim a letter:
Dear Justin,
have you noticed that for months you have rehashed the exact samequotes and reports in a quixotic effort to show that the Israeli Art Studentswere the hidden masterminds of 9/11? It's wearing thin, especially sincethese same reports reveal that this Israeli spy ring must have been veryincompetent. I bother to point this out because otherwise, I hold yourwork and site in high regard. Change the record. Switch for a month tothe theory that elements of the domestic establishment were complicit inthe attacks, and must have had the commanding role, regardless of who elsewas involved. You will suddenly have material enough to cover several dozencolumns, without repeating yourself. As for the research, I'm sure youdon't need my pointers. You are well aware of the credible 9/11 Skeptics,some of whom have written for you in the past.
In amity...
Raimondo hasn't switched to the topic I suggested, but during the lastcouple of weeks he did finally return to subjects other than the Israeliart students. ONLINE JOURNAL - Larry Chin, Bev Conover, eds.
www.onlinejournal.com/
Recommended independent news and commentary site. A veritable nestof skeptics. Many writers contribute. Regularly updated.
BILL MOLSON: "SEPTEMBER 11 - THE CIRCUMSTANTIAL CASE" - FOUR PARTSERIES ON ONLINE JOURNAL:
onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/Molson041502/molson041502.html
www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/Molson041902/molson041902.html
www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/Molson042402/molson042402.html
www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/Molson043002/molson043002.html
Bev Conover: "Has the Establishment Left become a handmaiden ofthe Republican Right?"
www.onlinejournal.com/Media/Conover060402/conover060402.html
Takes on the left-liberal anti-conspiratorialists.
WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE (WSWS)
www.wsws.org/
Has featured excellent and well-researched coverage from thestart.
Recommended are any and all articles by Patrick Martin.
Patrick Martin: "Was the US government alerted to September 11 attack?"(4-part series)
wsws.org/articles/2002/jan2002/sept-j16.shtml
"It is not necessary to postulate an all-embracingconspiracy,
extending from the White House to the airline securitypersonnel
who let the armed hijackers board the planes, to believethat
there is much more to the story of the September 11attacks than
the American public has been told so far. Certainlythe least
likely and least credible explanation of that day'sevents
is that the vast US national security apparatus wasentirely unaware of the activities of the hijackers until the airlinersslammed into the World Trade Center and Pentagon..."
RENSE.COM - JEFF RENSE SHOW
www.rense.com/
Unavoidable, another site with millions of hits. Jeff Rense is a talk-radiohost with a huge following, and is to be commended for openness to dissentingviews from across the political spectrum. Definitely open to 9/11 Skepticism,the site enjoys a great number of intelligent correspondents and plentyof more dubious ones, too. The daily collection of suppressed stories andimportant news is mixed in with items on metaphysics, UFOs, and "chemtrails."But I'm willing to entertain many notions until disproven. The importantreality to note here is that despite the frequent use of hearsay and theabundance of material too "magical" for the mainstream, Rense is dealingwith more significant issues, in a more honest fashion, than at least 90%of the mainstream press.
Two Recent Submissions:
"A Pilot Answers 911 Questions JCS General Myers Wouldn't"
rense.com/general26/pilo.htm
Demolishes the officialstory in about a page flat.
"Why? - An Extraordinary Series Of 911 Questions"
rense.com/general24/why.htm
Many of the extremely detailed lines of questioning set out here areindeed unusual and well-conceived, but this text needs editing and fact-checking.I don't know who wrote it. It doesn't help your credibility when you getthe name of the FBI director wrong in the very first headline. (He's RobertMueller 3, not Richard.)
Something for all skeptics to beware:
There is enough confusion and we are dealing witha majority who will automatically want to disbelieve our case. The lastthing we can afford is gaffes on names and other easily confirmable details!
ALWAYS DOUBLE-CHECK YOUR DETAILS!
End of lecture.
AL MARTIN RAW
www.almartinraw.com/
Intriguing and also generally very funny articles by a former Iran-Contraconspirator who claims many inside military and intel sources. Has gottenmillions of hits. Often extraordinary and convincing analysis of the bigpicture, but what to make of the various inside-source claims? Weare left with the usual question, with all sites: Do you trust a voicein text? Stored electronically? Because that is usually all you have togo on (including with newspapers, official sources, information wires,etc.) to begin with, and then you must judge whether that voice fits inwith what you see and remains reliable over time..
To be reviewed in detail soon.
Scams Away The Boom is Falling, May 22, 2002
www.almartinraw.com/column58.html
Citizen, Can I See Your I.D.?
www.almartinraw.com/column37.html
Imperial State Power in America
www.almartinraw.com/column53.html
DoJ Cover-Up Specialist Bobby Mueller Named FBI Chief
www.almartinraw.com/column27.html
DRUGWAR.COM
www.drugwar.com/index.shtm
Excellent site against the Drug War.
Includes an article and 9/11-related links on the following page:
PRESTON PEET: "Pre-September 11 Reports of Terrorist Threats, IncludingReferences to World Trade Center - Why Did it Take 8 Months?"
www.drugwar.com/pprewtcwarnings.shtm
HERMES PRESS
NORMAN LIVERGOOD & MICHELLE MAIRESSE
www.hermes-press.com/index.html
"The New Enlightenment - A Journal of Social and Metaphysical Inquiry"
Creative, thoughtful, humorous site. Among the many interesting articlessee:
"The Necessity for Enlightened Thinking"
http://www.hermes-press.com/etch1.htm
"Daring to Think the Unthinkable About Sept. 11"
www.hermes-press.com/unthinkable1.htm
Police State USA?
www.hermes-press.com/police_state.htm
BERNARD WEINER: "The Bush 9/11 Scandal for Dummies"
truthout.com/docs_02/06.03D.bw.911.dum.htm
Done in Q&A form, argues that the administration knew an attackwas coming and intentionally chose not to act, so as to gain carte blanchefor its political program. Important because the author argues from a standardliberal perspective, and even ends with a pitch to vote Democratic in 2002.Skepticism is taking hold in the mainstream.
Published on the TRUTHOUT NEWS & POLITICS site:
www.truthout.com/
XYMPHORA
xymphora.blogspot.com/
A well-written and prolific blog, has taken the jackhammer to manyofficial myths, including the inconsistencies in evidence surrounding thealleged 9/11 hijackers and the impossible contradictions in the variouslegends about Mohamed Atta and others. Updated constantly. If it's no longeron the front page, search for the hilarious mid-June deconstruction ofa Monty Python sketch on ABC NEWS, which starred a woman alleging to be"Johnelle Bryant," an "Agriculture Department" employee in "Florida" towhom "Atta" "applied for a loan to buy a cropduster," one month beforehe actually entered the United States in May 2000. And that's merely thelikeliest part of the story...
THE SMOKING GUN
CHERYL SEAL: "The Case Against G.W. Bush: a Preliminary "Hearing"in the Court of Common Sense"
web11.superb.net/www.nodomain.com/editorials/smoking_gun.html
Good timeline of the Sept. 11 attacks, strong argument that high officialswere complicit in allowing the attacks to go ahead. Excellent overviewof stories suggesting prior knowledge, with a few items not usually cited.Dubious-seeming theory about what happened at the Pentagon, but she doeshave one evidentiary item in its favor.
CHERYL SEAL'S REGULAR COLUMN:
www.unknownnews.net/cdd061202.html
BRASSCHECK - KEN McCARTHY
www.brasscheck.com/
Fine writing on the absurdity of the official 9/11 story, as well asthe Yugoslavia war, the agents provocateurs who set off the rioting atthe 1999 Seattle WTO protests, the War-by-Ritalin waged on American children,and more.
THE MOVEMENT - FRANK LEVI
www.movement.v21net.co.uk/index.htm
Another 9/11 Skeptic tries to draw a full picture of the attacks incontext. Well-argued. Various perspectives on what may have happened atthe Pentagon. Concludes with a plausible speculative model on how the attacksmay have occurred as a grand plot, but involving only a few dozen directcontrollers.
JAMES S. ADAM:
"TROUBLING QUESTIONS IN TROUBLING TIMES"
serendipity.magnet.ch/wot/adam.htm
Long treatment of the attacks, begins with detailed look at the originalWorld Trade Center bombing in 1993, deconstructing the official story inthat case. No conclusions as to what/who was really behind 9/11.
Max Kolskegg: "9/11: A Desperate Provocation By U.S. Capitalism"
www.indybay.org/news/2002/01/114281.php
A Marxist laments that the Left has failed to ask the relevant questionsabout 9/11, and merely accepted at face value the line presented by thegovernment, asking questions like "Why do THEY hate us?" without even botheringwith "What actually happened?" Kolskegg argues that an "inside job," regardlessof the exact line-up of perpetrators and accomplices, would necessarilyinvolve an element of desperation in the face of the now intractable globaleconomic and financial crisis of the American-centered system.
PROFESSIONAL PARANOID HOME PAGE - MICHAEL SWEENEY
www.proparanoid.com/
Must reading: "The 25 Rules of Disinformation."
www.proparanoid.com/truth.htm#t8
A worthy introduction to the mechanics of disinformation campaignsand media manipulation. Revealing analysis of various 9/11 sub-plots withregard to the Taliban and the oil pipelines, the pro-Taliban lobby in theU.S., etc. Interesting argument questioning the validity of the Le Figarostory about Osama meeting the CIA in Dubai in July 2001. (In the meantime,it turns out that Carlyle only owns 4% of Le Figaro and anyway, the storyactually originated with French radio, but Sweeney's points about curiositiesin the story itself are worth considering.)
Too simplistically focused on oil as the cause of the war. This sitecould use more updates and an editor.
CentrExNews.com - ALTERNATIVE NEWS / LINKS
www.centrexnews.com/
Links to news reports supporting the skeptical case as well as anti-statistand conspiracy articles of all stripes, from left to right. Site managersseem to believe in a version of the New World Order theory centered onthe United Nations, but always has interesting items, without politicalfilters.
FOUR INTERESTING ARTICLES / GENERAL TREATMENTS:
RUSS KICK: "September 11, 2001: No Surprise"
www.loompanics.com/Articles/September11.html
Michael Rowbotham: "Written In Belief"
www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0110/S00021.htm
Jim Marrs: "Frameup"
groups.yahoo.com/group/frameup/message/410
"The Obscure Goat Story of 9-11"
209.123.142.199/lawgiver/911.asp
NOMOREFAKENEWS - JOHN RAPOPORT
nomorefakenews.com/
A one-man daily counter-analysis of everything you think you know.
A real mind trip. Just when you think you have him nailed down, he slips
out of your grasp. Often brilliant, sometimes exasperating. Wish he'd put
more beef on the site, instead of the pay-newsletter. But everyone's gotta
make a living.
NYC INDYMEDIA CENTER
nyc.indymedia.org/
This is the New York version of a network of "Independent Media" sites
that arose from the Seattle 1999 protests and the "anti-globalization"
movement. Definitely the place for news on demonstrations and organizing
against the summits of the global power elite, IMF, G-8, World Bank, Davos,
EU, etc. The links on the left lead to IMC sites around the world. The
most interesting stuff (along with a lot of pointless tirades) is usually
in the posts by readers, in the rightmost column, which allow responses.
The main articles of the IMC sites, in the center column, tend to be big
on left-liberation rhetoric and yet tepid in their conclusions. The ones
on domestic American politics that do not feature the rise of the new police
state (a villain we can all agree on) usually cater harmlessly to too many
political flavors, from liberal democrats to peace punks to the hard left.
Often very good articles about the rest of the world, but the "IMC" brand
name overstates the case. In the final analysis, this is a ring of sites
run mostly by individuals, just like almost all of the other sites listed
here.
Citizens for Legitimate Government, calls to action
www.legitgov.org/
Established after the 2000 election to "resist the Bush coup in all
of its manifestations." Another regularly updated site, well-done site
with many links to suspicious 9/11 and general panic stories, as well as
the various ongoing crimes of the administration. But who is this "President
Gore" they keep talking about? Do they mean the one whose resistance to
the Bush coup pre-Sept. 11 was to grow a beard and post-Sept. 11 amounted
to standing up and saying, "President Bush is my commander-in-chief"?
PETITION TO SENATE TO INVESTIGATE THE ODDITIES OF 9/11
www.petitiononline.com/11601TFS/petition.html
Perhaps should not allow people the option of including comments, as
this encourages trolls, rhetoric, and hate speeches. Up to 13,420
"signatures." Well-intentioned but honestly, I don't see what an online
petition accomplishes, since it's even easier to fake than a paper version
and the Senate won't heed it regardless. Also, no one who wants the true
story should think that they have done their part towards gaining disclosure
by clicking on the petition (or forwarding a chain e-mail). We need organization,
street protests, media, lobby work, legal work, creative propaganda...
When you take a petition to a street table, you are achiving profile among
those who buy the official story.
The group who began the Petition to the Senate to Investigate the
Oddities Involving 9/11 Terrorist Attacks has a website
http://falloutshelternews.com/
And a Yahoo group:
groups.yahoo.com/group/TheFalloutShelter
PRIOR KNOWLEDGE ARCHIVE - ANITA A. LITTLE
www.geocities.com/anitaalittle/archiveprior_knowledge.html
This has disappeared! I cannot find it on Google, either, but it was
the largest and most comprehensive collection of
"Hundreds of domestic, foreign, mainstream and alternative documents
confirming the US had prior knowledge, funded, trained, shepherded in and
protected the al-Qaeda network and allowed September 11th to happen."
Does anyone know where it went?
September 11, 2001 - 9 Unpopular Ideas - Robert Lederman
baltech.org/lederman/9-11-unpopular.html
Provocative theses and style.
"Chandra Levy Found Just in Time to Save George Bush"
baltech.org/lederman/Bush-Chandra-Levy-5-23-2002.html
Lederman, who waged a relentless crusade against Rudy Giuliani on diverse
issues such as the persecution of artists under his 8-year regime and the
spraying of pesticides over New York in reaction to West Nile virus, has
an otherwise interesting site on topics including the influential Manhattan
Institute, the doctrine of population control, and relationships between
American money elites and the Nazis.
baltech.org/lederman/
COUNTERPROPAGANDA AUDIO ARCHIVE
members.shaw.ca/revelation18/news.htm
LARGE archive of talk-radio clips by Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Mike
Ruppert, Tom Flocco, John Rapoport, Michael Springmann and many others.
The webmaster is unfortunately enamored of David Icke (the Alien Lizard
theorist).
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED - MICHAEL RIVERO
www.whatreallyhappened.com/
There is no avoiding this site, which now gets more hits than Newsweek.com.
Another milestone for the media revolution, since this is a one-man site,
though it is less impressive than it sounds: the main Newsweek mirror is
at MS-NBC. (Do the mainstream media even bother disguising their monopoly
structure anymore?)
Like it or not, "WhatReallyHappened" is probably the most visited of
all 9/11 Skeptic sites, with several million hits a week, and Rivero unapologetically
propagates the fake terror/inside job theory. He manages to update daily
and tracks down nearly every story backing the skeptical case.
Absolutely check out the quotes page.
The archives are impressive, especially the work on the CIA drug pipeline
into Mena Airport in Arkansas in the 1980s, a crime that implicates both
then Vice-President Bush and the governor who provided the cover,
Bill Clinton. Mena is a miniature of the lie at the heart of American politics:
that either major party is in any way serious. Also worth a long look are
the sections on Operation Mockingbird, about the history of CIA infiltration
among journalists and the media, and on the Vince Foster case. Rather weaker
is the section on the 2000 election, in which Rivero, who spent years going
after Clinton, claims Gore was the one who tried to steal the vote. Evidence?
Photos of election workers being too vigorous in shaking the chads. Give
me a break - Brother Jeb and Katherine Harris stole the show in advance
of the election. (See Palast review, above.)
As relentlessly as Rivero attacks and exposes the government spin of
the day, he has increasingly engaged in his own Daily Spin, not to mention
overkill on the patriotic rhetoric. In supporting his rant of the moment,
he constantly recycles old articles and puts them up with the current date,
and often fails to recall if a given story was refuted long ago. He has
no compunctions about taking the flimsiest evidence and adding overblown
statements, delivered with the finality of an angry Superman pounding the
table at the Justice League of America. Every day he will announce definitive
scoops on everything under the sun with headlines: "Aha! I told you John
Walker Lindh was a CIA plant!" I cite this example because I think it's
a very credible idea that Johnny Taliban was part of a psy-op with the
intent of producing a bogus "America searches for her soul" story that
would fill the media for a month (which it did, incredibly). But how the
hell does Rivero know that for sure? He is incapable of self-doubt, and
often contradicts yesterday's revelation with today's.
In recent months one target turned into his true obsession: the Jews.
I agree with his motto that "telling the truth is not hate speech," but
his generally justified criticisms of Israel and Zionism are pitched in
a way that panders to Jew-haters. I have seen plenty of people propagate
the Big Lie about "4,000 Jews did not go to work at the WTC on 9/11" (although
hundreds of Jewish New Yorkers died in the disaster) and then link to WhatReallyHappened
as their favorite news source. Before you scream "guilt by association,"
Rivero himself played on this theme by asking why a cited estimate of 130
possible Israeli national fatalities was revised down to only one, and
pretending this is evidence that Israelis in general received advance warnings.
(Because he is extremely well-informed, I am sure he is aware that the
original estimates of 400 British dead were revised to about 80, and the
cited 120 Japanese and 80 German fatalities were revised down to the single
digits.)
Until November 2001, the site had a broad and open-minded approach
to 9/11. Since the story about the Israeli spy ring operating inside the
United States broke that month, however, Rivero has focused on rants against
Israel, almost to the exclusion of all else. No matter what new 9/11 story
breaks, Rivero is sure to announce that the U.S. government has arranged
it as yet another "planned distraction" from the story of the Israeli spy
ring. He even claimed this of the Enron scandal and the White House 9/11
foreknowledge revelations! Rivero quotes the same sentence from FOXNEWS
reporter Carl Cameron, about how information on the Israeli spy ring is
classified, literally 15 times on his front page. When he's "proving" 9/11
must have been an Israeli job, he makes the case just as totally (and simplistically)
as when he "proves" that it was a cabal within the U.S. government. So
what do you really believe, Michael Rivero?
Rivero regularly accuses others of spreading misinformation and has
naturally been attacked as a misinformation artist himself, but I think
he is at least as genuine as the New York Post, to which he often links.
His site is the angry tabloid of the 9/11 Skeptics movement. But the single
note of righteous outrage, however justified, has worn thin. I wish he
would learn the important arts of self-reflection and self-restraint.
INFOWARS - ALEX JONES
Big prior knowledge page, recommended:
infowars.com/resources.html
The rest of the INFOWARS site mixes the solid with the dubious. Jones
is a talk-radio patriot host in a rage about the Bohemian Grove, UN forces
in black helicopters, the coming required implantation of microchips in
all citizens, etc., unfortunately combined with an anti-immigrant stance
that he mixes into a highly streamlined version of the New World Order
as internationalist plot.
Jones has produced a documentary video, "911: The Road to Tyranny,"
which can be downloaded in its entirety here:
www.infowars.com/video_clips.html
His position on Sept. 11 is unequivocal:
"My friends, the government just didn't have prior
knowledge of the September 11th al Qaeda attacks. They actually funded,
trained, protected, coddled, and shepherded al Qaeda into this country.
Trained many of the terrorists at Pensacola Naval Air Station, U.S.A.,
threatened F.B.I. and defense intelligence officers who tried to stop al
Qaeda, threatened them with arrest. Bush signed now public document W199I
two months before September 11, threatening them with arrest if they tried
to stop al Qaeda."
We can argue or make excuses about what the motivations may have been
at each step; yet these statements are each true. Why shouldn't we combine
them into a big picture, as Jones does, rather than always assume government
incoherence?
www.hermes-press.com/unthinkable1.htm
I have watched the first part of the video, which reduces the history
of the last century, including the world wars, to manipulations designed
to justify world government. Most of the facts he presents are true in
themselves, but too boldly strung together and often far too simply rendered.
The logical development of a system that always required the selective
use of totalitarian means as the solution for its inevitable self-generated
crises plays no role in his understanding of history; it's always a unified
set of top-level controllers driving all events in the long term. (Don't
they ever fight among themselves? Apparently not, because they are "Satanists.")
The problem is that, despite his delivery in the style of the Great
Kreskin, Jones is right about the present move towards the establishment
of a dehumanized tyranny. His angry, preachy style will not be reaching
the urban/suburban mainstream, but then again the mainstream is in for
a lot of ugly surprises that will make them wish they had felt more reason
to be enraged long ago. He is brave, having infiltrated the Bohemian Grove
with a hidden camera, and confronted at public events Janet Reno about
the Waco massacre and George W. Bush (then governor) about the Federal
Reserve. He seems honest in his opposition to the whole establishment.
He loudly opposes the rise of a domestic police state, yet seems to see
the sources of it in an anonymous, quasi-foreign power. (How does he propose
to control immigration without a police state?) But since the U.S. government
really IS establishing a dictatorship, complete with prison camps already
in action, and since the possibilities of microchip implantation and enforced
vaccinations really have been raised, I can agree with anyone on the primary
defense of upholding the Bill of Rights and the Constitution as the highest
and absolute laws of the land.
Alex Jones is reaching an audience largely immune to complex theory,
and warning them to fight the rise of a tyranny that a more sophisticated
analysis suggests is coming as a logical consequence of systemic crisis
anyway. What comes of it - how Jones's potential audience (or should I
say following?) reacts when the crisis really hits - is an open question.
SCHIPPERS / KLAYMAN / JUDICIAL WATCH
www.judicialwatch.org/
David Schippers claims government ignored specific advance warnings
in interview by Alex Jones:
www.infowars.com/transcript_schippers.html
Transcript of May 30th Schippers/Judicial Watch press conference
with FBI Special Agent Robert Wright, broadcast on C-SPAN:
http://www.infowars.com/jw_transcript.htm
Schippers became known to Americans as the prosecutor in the Clinton
impeachment. For many people, this may fail to inspire trust. As a conservative
source (but registered Democrat), in the Jones interview Schippers claims
he was privy to specific FBI warnings that an attack was coming, that it
would involve hijacked airliners and the obvious targets in Lower Manhattan
and Washington. He says he called a number of officials about the warnings
weeks in advance, including his former friend John Ashcroft, but was blown
off. Investigations that could have prevented the attacks were obstructed
or delayed, Schippers says.
As of October 2001, Schippers was representing a number of unnamed
FBI agents who reportedly claim they could have nailed the hijackers before
Sept. 11, if they had been allowed:
www.judicialwatch.org/1075.shtml
Of Schippers' clients, so far Special Agent Robert Wright in Chicago
has been brought forward in an action staged together with Judicial Watch.
Wright spoke at the May 30 press conference, linked above.
Judicial Watch also claims that the administration is withholding
information on advance knowledge of the anthrax attacks, noting that White
House staff was fed Cipro immediately after Sept. 11, as the White House
has admitted.
www.judicialwatch.org/1062.shtml
But this particular press release, which has been up without revision
since October, strains to make the untenable link between the anthrax attacks
and Iraq, precisely the accusation raised by the likes of James Woolsey,
Richard Butler and others who seize on any excuse to level Iraq, preferably
yesterday. JW cites as credible their whole-cloth speculation that Mohamed
Atta may have received anthrax from an Iraqi agent in Prague, and even
suggests that the Bush administration is covering this up out of a reluctance
to strike Iraq. (This will come as news to Pentagon planners who are preparing
the upcoming strike on Iraq.) In the meantime, the anthrax has been traced
to U.S. government stockpiles and the Czech authorities have admitted they
never saw Atta meeting the Iraqi agent. Is JW going to issue a correction?
Most recently (June 7) JW sued the government to release evidence
on the anthrax attack:
"Judicial Watch Wants to Know Why White House Went
on Cipro Beginning September 11th: What Was Known and When?"
A commendable and necessary action, but the group remains dubious.
Given the gravity of JW's accusations with regard to 9/11 and anthrax,
it is disturbing to see that the JW web site at the moment (June 18) is
filled mainly with news about a defamation of character suit against Clinton
and James Carville on behalf of petulant Robert Barr, a well-known expert
in the arts of innuendo and defamation. Where is the sense of proportion?
How serious is Judicial Watch about its 9/11 cases?
Schippers, who is not directly affiliated with JW, is slippery about
what he really knows or thinks. In the interview with Jones, he wobbles
vaguely between implying the attacks were intentionally allowed to go ahead
and the thesis of investigative failure due to bureaucratic obstruction.
At times he seems to suggest the failure was caused by a politically correct,
ideological unwillingness to go after Arabs. The interview veers off into
extraneous apocrypha in the same vein, for example about secret signals
in the Binladin videos.
A sample: Schippers: "I just heard about the young man whose sister
was injured in the World Trade Center and he put up an American flag and
some American slogans on his locker at school. They gave him a ten-day
suspension because they said it might be offensive to some of the Arab
students." Uh huh. So he heard. No school, city or source is actually
mentioned. To which Jones responds sarcastically, "Let's stop the evil
American flag from being flown at your business or at your university,
but let's leave the Hamas people alone." For what it is worth, I
challenge Schippers to demonstrate that this incident really happened as
described.
The role of Schippers and Klayman is suspicious because they seem to
withhold much of their information, suggesting treasonous activities on
the part of the government and yet invariably concluding that the agencies
of this same government must be given greater police powers to get at perpetrators
unspecified. In effect, their most recent efforts are aiding the "controlled-burn"
propaganda campaign to limit and spin 9/11 revelations in a fashion that
supports the development of a police state, and they have so far avoided
calling for disclosure of what happened on Sept. 11 itself.
This crew gets a lot of play on spook-oriented and overtly pro-Bush
news sources like NEWSMAX, which is busy with its usual Clinton-obsessed
jeremiad and trying to spin all 9/11 evidence to implicate the infinitely
corrupt Clinton and exonerate the innocent (but too easily duped) Bush.
They may be genuine, they may be bought, or they may merely be looking
for a new line of work against the sitting administration, now that their
favorite bogeyman has left Washington. But these lawyers manage to combine
strict ideology with more than a dash of opportunism, and they seem unlikely
to entertain theses that do not fit their agenda of the moment, no matter
what evidence comes up.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK
http://www.skolnicksreport.com/
Skolnick, who began his career as a legal crusader by successfully
exposing corrupt judges in the 1960s, still runs an investigative office
and hosts a cable TV show in Chicago. Since the attacks, he has espoused
his version of an "inside job" theory in a continuing series of articles
called "The Overthrow of the American Republic."
The most astonishing items Skolnick presents, he claims derive from
his own research and protected sources, quite possibly his imagination.
One must concede his point that the manipulators of high power don't generally
leave a documentary record around for anyone to find, but how does Skolnick
always end up geting the full inside dope? To me, his hidden histories
of the last 30 years are too complete and detailed to be all true, though
they contain much valid information, and he is too facile in delivering
instantaneous assessments of every event that comes along.
At the opposite extreme from solemn ideologue leftists like Michael
Albert of Z-Magazine - the man who refuses to look at events and empirical
evidence (or even engage in debate) because he thinks a set of abstract
categories invented by Methuselah already tells him everything he will
ever need to know - Skolnick is incapable of seeing anything in history
but the Big Plot. He at least describes a world in which the actions of
the powerful are attributable to the realistic motive of securing power
and wealth.
There is a whiff of a naive patriot's hope for benevelont tyranny in
his description of a military conspiracy of "flag officers," whom he says
intended to arrest Clinton (the bastard son of a Rockefeller, if we believe
Skolnick) as the first step in restoring the American Republic to its original
constitutional form. These secret White Hats are still waiting for their
moment against Bush, though Skolnick identifies a number of them as officers
who have been killed (or assassinated) in plane crashes. Bad as government
by the well-connected mobsters of both major parties and their sponsors
has been, it's impossible to see how this particular "solution" would bring
anything but bottomless disaster and fascism or civil war.
Skolnick seems to have never met a conspiracy theory he didn't like,
and I am reluctant to cite him on anything without independent confirmation.
Which is no reason not to use his material as a springboard to further
research. His series on the death of a group of inconvenient witnesses
during the Watergate scandal, in the crash of United Airlines Flight
UA533 in 1973 ("The Secret History of Plane Sabotage") is quite interesting.
The most explosive potential finding he brings up concerns the following:
www.skolnicksreport.com/pkem.html
After the Gulf War, several thousand anti-Saddam Iraqi prisoners of
war were allowed into the United States as asylum-seekers and resettled
in a number of towns, including a couple of thousand in Oklahoma City and
Lincoln, Nebraska. Skolnick says members of this group were organized by
U.S. intelligence services as a hidden mercenary force and used in black
ops by both the Bush and Clinton administrations. These are trained military
or intelligence officers, and Skolnick expects one of them is the Arab
"John Doe No. 2" tied by many to Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City
bombing. As usual citing his own exclusive intelligence sources, Skolnick
says this group provided the actual foot-soldiers of the Sept. 11 attacks,
which were allowed to go ahead in full foreknowledge by a cornered Bush
administration as "America's Reichstag Fire." Let us note also that if
U.S. covert operators recruited among this group, then they would have
excellent Arabic-speaking agents for infiltrating Qaeda. Of course, genuine
Qaeda operatives might themselvesview these anti-Saddam Iraqis as a perfect
pool of potentials recruits. The question then becomes: who is a double,
who is a triple agent?
JOE VIALLS
"The Mother of All Lies About Sept. 11"
www.geocities.com/subliminalsuggestion/olson.html
"Electronic Hijack"
geocities.com/mknemesis/homerun.html
"The First 9/11" (White House Kamikaze, Sept. 11, 1994)
geocities.com/roboplanes/cessna.html
I hesitate to link to Vialls, a British engineer who in other articles
cannot stop jabbering in truly vicious and inhuman fashion about the nasty,
all-powerful Jews or the treacherous French, and whose reasoning frequently
seems to derail into the outlandish. But these three articles in particular
engage in limited speculation, and have been influential among certain
skeptics, so I include them here. The first questions the story of whether
Barbara Olson really called anyone from Flight 77, and is difficult to
argue with. The next two lay out a possible version of how the planes may
have been hijacked by remote control, using a pre-installed system designed
to allow control from the ground. But once the planes were taken over by
remote, even if the pilots could not override the system, what kept them
from making radio contact about their dilemma?
AMERICAN PATRIOT FAX (or FRIENDS) NETWORK
www.apfn.org/
Militia-oriented anti-government site, dates back to Ruby Ridge. Rather
disturbing mission statement holds that, "A Patriot is one who loves
God, Family and Country... We believe Patriots should rule America."
The site is full of kitsch.
The APFN network was originally a chain-fax group galvanized by two
genuine domestic atrocities of the government: Ruby Ridge and Waco. They
believe the Oklahoma City bombing and the Sept. 11 attacks continue in
the same vein, as acts of a federal government looking for pretexts to
overthrow the Constitution. I wish they could get past their limited perspective,
for example by acknowledging that the fury of the state is not limited
to "Patriots." After all, an earlier version of Waco occurred with the
bombing of the MOVE house in Philadelphia in 1985 - but oh my God, those
were black radicals! The self-idenfitied members of the Patriots' movement
are simply incapable of accepting that the government they fight is genuinely
American (albeit unconstitutional and war-generating) and so they
assume the real enemy lies in a foreign force (the NWO, Israel, or some
form of Socialism) that has secretly corrupted or taken over the government.
That being said, dissidents on the left and the right now face the same
emerging dictatorship, and leftists themselves need to acknowledge that
Waco, the seminal event in the right-wing militia mind-set, was a bona-fide
massacre by the U.S. government. Is there a way anti-statists on the left
and right can transcend their differences so as to defend and expand democratic
rights? It would help if APFN were more circumspect about the symbols and
meaning of patriotism, and willing to tolerate its many different expressions.
It would help if they see that America is a word with many different meanings.
The "America" I love is not a flag, a song, or a myth of the Founding Fathers
- it is a people with good and bad among them, like any other.
WHAT MATTERS? - WIGLAF BOUDEWIJN, SWEDEN www.whatmatters.nu/wmemails/wmemailsindex.html
This newsletter, which aims to devise a non-exploitative finance system,
has declared 9/11 a "grand plot" to transform the world in the service
of ruling elites.
CovertAction Quarterly
www.covertaction.org/writers_main.htm
Unfortunately this important magazine's site has not been updated this
century. This is not a review, it is a plea.
DRUDGE REPORT - MATT DRUDGE
www.drudgereport.com/
.
Behind the FOXy Facade
Is Matthew Drudge a Hidden 9/11 Skeptic?
What the hell, it sounds like the kind of story he would "break." I
include his site because Drudge is the Zeitgeist. This is what we
must deal with. If you want to know what the Dilbert Majority are talking
about in their cubicles, Drudge's trash sheet is reliable for accurately
gauging the Media Hysteria of the Day, whatever it is. Plus he has links
to the entire American Punditocracy and half the major news sites in the
world. Drudge is basically a self-made gossip columnist who, like Rivero,
gets more hits than Newsweek. Who the hell said the Media Revolution would
be progressive?
...developing
.
REUTERS | Breaking News from Around the Globe
www.reuters.com/
Not yet.
