Loose Change has finally hit home. My town's library has flyers for a screening of LC:Final Cut with a discussion afterwards. It's being hosted by Rockland-Bergen for 9/11 Twoof (out of NY). I honestly feel violated. I know the library is obligated to hold public events without judgement but I'm still shocked.
Well I'm sick of it. Their movement has spread because of these viral videos. Anyone who knows anything about video editing knows how manipulative it can be. Text, audio, pictures, video, all edited in whatever order or juxtaposed however the editor chooses. But there's hope.
I'm announcing Conspiracies R Not Us is beginning preproduction for our own video. We're working on a documentary that will chronicle the beginning of 9/11 from Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation to the attacks on September 11th. It will be factual. We will not need to exaggerate, manipulate, or lie. History is history. And it repeats itself.
You will see the clear escalation of events leading up to 9/11 and how 19 men with boxcutters IS NOT a far fetched theory, but rather a grim reality. Stay tuned for further updates. If anyone is interested in helping to edit the piece and is versed in Final Cut Pro drop us an email.
And as side note, here's the first four minutes of the Kingdom. It very stylishly (but briefly) chronicles the path to 9/11 with particular focus on Saudi Arabia's oil trade with the US. It's an interesting watch.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=LKppKRnM7cU
-AM
Friday, December 28, 2007
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Dismantling Able Danger
Fig. 1-1: Never let a conspiracy theorist play connect-the-dots.
In October of 1999, US General Hugh Shelton asked US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) to come up with a novel way of gathering data about terrorists.(1) This new format of profiling is known in the intelligence community as “holistic” intelligence, defined as a process of “fusing and integrating previously unlinked platforms, technologies and resources”(2) – in English, getting as much intelligence as you can about as many suspects as you can, no matter how trivial.
In Shelton’s words, “It was just kind of an experiment.”(3)
Readers who aren’t familiar with Able Danger can get some more background on in the opening pages of the Department of Defense report on it, available here (also discussed below). The rest of you readers know where this is going. However, many of us are unfamiliar with what exactly Able Danger did. We all have a rough idea of its purpose. But did Able Danger complete its mission? Was it even capable of completing its supposed task?
The answer is no. The fact that the answer is no will help explain why the conspiracy theories surrounding Able Danger are just so much noise.
The research and categorization methods used by the Able Danger team involved a series of techniques bundled under the umbrella term “data mining.”
To data mine, analysts aggregate large laundry lists of possible parameters that could define a population.(4) In the case of Able Danger, the population would be “potential terrorists around the world,” and parameters would theoretically include simple quantitative questions like “how often does this person visit extremist website X?” or “how many times does this person visit radical mosques Y and Z?” (Bear in mind that I am postulating here as Able Danger’s content was entirely classified, but you get the idea). Then, because data mining should theoretically be useful in making predictions, these variables’ values are assigned certain risk factors and are used to predict the likelihood that someone will engage in terrorist activity.
Unfortunately for the conspiracy theorists, another key element of any data mining operation is having a large population to choose from. In the business world where data mining is a practical tool, often an entire “set of all consumers of X” are analyzed – potentially, millions of people.(5) Unfortunately for the Able Danger crew, their target population (extremists who rely on the Internet for dissemination of propaganda and for organizational coordination) had only had access to the Internet for about two and a half years, since 1996 when the Internet first exploded on the global stage.
A total of 1,269 terrorist attacks occurred worldwide between 1996 and 1999,(6) but it’s impossible to know how many people and organizations ultimately planned all of them. Prior to 2001, the State Department had named twenty-eight international cadres as terrorist organizations, and almost all of them conducted their activities in and against Israel and its border states, Basque Spain, Northern Africa, Turkey, and Iran. With the exception of four (Kach, a Jewish radical group; Aum Shinrikyo, a Japanese cult; 17 November, a Cyprus nationalist movement; and the Tamil Tighers, an ethnic group with Hindu underpinnings), all of these terrorist organizations were built on some permutation of Islam or Marxism - or, in the case of many Palestine-based organizations, a bastard child of the two.(7)
That means that most of these groups would follow similar patterns of recruitment and training; espouse similar doctrines; and even recruit from among the same populations – at least, this is how it would appear to a program with the extremely broad objective of extrapolating predictive patterns from the entire Internet. For those not catching my drift: the differences between these groups can only be seen under the microscope, and Able Danger was a birds’-eye view of a foggy digital landscape that had never been mapped or even fully comprehended until that point. Indeed, as the FBI report on Able Danger indicates, much of the impetus to try Able Danger at all rested on the fact that the government’s previous most powerful software, a similar method using software called Statistical Influence Assessment Module, couldn’t do the job either.(8)
Readers of this article with an eye towards legal studies will also have noticed a glaring flaw with the statistics-oriented foundation of Able Danger’s “data mining” methods: just because someone is likely to do something doesn’t mean that they will do something. No rational court of law would even pretend to have sound knowledge of a person’s activities based solely on what websites they visit (one shudders at how such a judge would come to view the typical American teenage male). As many of my skeptical friends know, in the course of debates we often end up having to peruse the same garbage websites that conspiracy theorists take as holy writ. The two most frequent viewers of Islamist propaganda material are holy warriors and CIA agents.
So Able Danger (once again, at least theoretically) has two fatal flaws: it seems obvious that such a program in 1999 could never develop sufficiently complex heuristics to predict the behavior of small terrorist cells, much less individuals in the vast and insane sea of the Internet; and no sound policy maker would even try to arrest, imprison, or even engage in costly monitoring of a suspect based solely on the evidence it could provide. Able Danger as a program was too shallow a system for too specific a subject, and its information was too cursory to be used as a solely preventative program.
And conspiracy theorists expect us to believe that Able Danger had precisely predicted exactly who Mohammed Atta was; where he had been every day between 1999 and 2000, who he had spoken to, when, and about what; and what he was going to do in the future, down to how many times he would blink between waking up and dying on September 11, 2001.
The claims about Able Danger all center around this key impossibility: “Did Able Danger identify Mohamed Atta in January 2000? Yes” (The “Able Danger Blog”). “A US Army intelligence program called Able Danger identifies five al-Qaeda terrorist cells... includes 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta, and three other 9/11 hijackers” (“Cooperative Research;” a conspiracy site with the good graces to admit that this claim is based on shoddy evidence, as shown below). In short, thousands of conspiracy theorists believe that not only did Able Danger outperform to an impossible degree and precisely pinpoint the activities of the 9/11 hijackers, but that the CIA, the FBI, the DoD, the DoS, and your grandmother all willfully refused to act on those findings.
As should be evident by now, this claim is silly on its face. What’s even better is the home source of these claims.
Army Reserve Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer approached the Able Danger staff at a conference in January of 1999 with a nifty new gadget, some data mining software that a doctor friend of his has provided to him (whose name is still classified). Evidently, the big draw of this particular software, farmed out to the now-notorious Orion Scientific Systems, was that it could draw nifty, easy-to-read charts. The doctor herself was eventually let go because, in the words of one of the investigators, “they were not happy with her ability to get along well with others.” Shaffer stayed on, chiefly in the role of liaison to the CIA leadership.(9)
Exactly as one would predict from the above analysis, Able Danger was not the silver bullet Shaffer and his anonymous friend claimed it was. “It helped,” a one ‘MG Lambert’ told the DoD investigation, but “we didn’t get the mission accomplished... The final product was just a framework, you know[,] it was... just a template.” Another anonymous Captain said that, overall, by October 2000 the program “had made very little progress.” The “experiment” ended in January 2001, when it was decided that “its work product was limited to the development of a ‘Campaign Plan’ that formed the basis for follow-on intelligence gathering efforts.”(10)
In his career, LTC Anthony (“Tony”) Shaffer attended three Able Danger meetings and was largely considered a “negotiator;” he did an awful lot of “communicating” and “assisting Able Danger team members in receiving special authorization that enhanced their ability to access various World Wide Web Sites” and “coordinating…” but evidently very little concrete work on the project. One “key participant” on Able Danger said he was “basically a delivery boy.”(11)
That is why when, shortly after its termination, he announced that Able Danger had successfully identified Mohammed Atta and his sinister plans, he should have expected the claims against his credibility.
We must bear in mind that it was Shaffer who, along with “the female doctor” as some conspiracy theorists know her as, who first proposed using data mining. He came late to the experiment with a silver bullet, and after it was found to be nothing but empty promises, began crying conspiracy. But yes, it gets better: despite his numerous claims, he also admits he never saw any of his own supposed evidence himself.
As I wrote on the otherwise hopelessly conspiracy-leaning Wikipedia article about Able Danger, the DoD report on Able Danger revealed that Shaffer’s entire claims are based on hearsay. In his testimony, Shaffer says he heard the claim that Able Danger had positively identified Mohammed Atta from an anonymous Captain who says he viewed the charts “for four seconds, maybe five.” That Captain later added, "[LTC] Tony [Shaffer] was relying on my recollection, I think, 100 percent. I mean, I think a lot of people are.”(12)
During the hearings, Shaffer’s lawyer, Mark Zaid seemed eager to defend his clients by speaking on their behalf in a way that didn’t make them sound like the kooks we know Shaffer’s type to be. Early in his testimony, he made several points clear:
“• At no time did Able Danger identify Mohammed Atta as being physically present in the United States [contrary to Shaffer's claim].
”• No information obtained at the time would have led anyone to believe criminal activity had taken place or that any specific terrorist activities were being planned [also contrary to Shaffer]. Again, the identification of the four 9/11 hijackers was simply through associational activities. Those associations could have been completely innocuous or nefarious. It was impossible to tell which, and the unclassified work of Able Danger was not designed to address that question.”(13)
One imagines the pre-trial preparation for this testimony: “Okay, Tony, let me do all the talking so you don’t say anything stupid.” However, Zaid did point out that there were serious pre-9/11 communications problems between the CIA and independent information gatherers, and those complaints are discussed on the same Wikipedia page.
I don’t want to take up any more of your time. Able Danger lacked the ability to even grasp at its supposed objective; the source of its concomitant conspiracy theories had no personal knowledge of the information he garnered from someone else’s backwards glance at a picture that clearly didn’t exist at the time nor could even have theoretically existed at the time, given what we know about Able Danger. It is impossible in both theory and practice for Able Danger to have identified Mohammed Atta. There are about a dozen layers of conspiracy theory BS you have to swim through in order to get to the truth about Able Danger. Frankly, it was just an experiment.
Sources:
1. Office of the Deputy Inspector General for Investigations. Alleged Misconduct by Senior DoD Officials Concerning the Able Danger Program and Lieutenant Colonel Anthony A. Shaffer, U.S. Army Reserve. Washington: Office of the Inspector General, 2006. p. 12. Retrieved December 26, 2007 from http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/Able_Danger_report.pdf.
2. “Intelligence for the Twenty-First Century.” Dupont, Alan. In Wark, K. Twenty-First Century Intelligence. Routledge: 2004. p.28. Preview retrieved December 26, 2007 from http://books.google.com/bkshp?hl=en&tab=wp .
3. Rosen, James (2005, December 12). “General tells of pre-9/11 intel: Says he never heard Atta’s name.” Newsobserver.com.
4. Much better, more in-depth descriptions of these processes are available at Data Mining Techniques. 2006. Retrieved December 27, 2007 from http://www.statsoft.com/textbook/stdatmin.html .
5. Alexander, D. Data Mining. Retrieved December 27, 2007 from http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/10/ .
6. The Johnston Archives. Statistics on terrorism. Retrieved December 27, 2007 from http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/terrorism/intlterror.html .
7. U.S. Department of State. Background Information on Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Retrieved December 27, 2007 from http://www.state.gov/www/global/terrorism/fto_info_1999.html#ano .
8. Alleged Misconduct by Senior DoD Officials Concerning the Able Danger Program and Lieutenant Colonel Anthony A. Shaffer, U.S. Army Reserve. p. 13. Retrieved December 27, 2007 from http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/Able_Danger_report.pdf.
9. Ibidem, p. 13.
10. Ibid., p. 20.
11. Ibid., p. 21.
12. Ibid., p. 24.
13. Testimony of Zaid, M. in U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Testimony of Mark A. Zaid: Attorney at Law: September 21, 2005. Washington, 2005. Retrieved December 27, 2007 from http://judiciary.senate.gov/testimony.cfm?id=1606&wit_id=4668.
-By John Ray
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Excellent Article
This Article was originally published by Dr. Gwynne Dyer and I think it really sums up the feelings the authors of this blog feel concerning the 9/11 conspiracy movement. Please take the time to read the whole article and reflect on its contents.
Aaron
8 March 2007
Loose Screws
By Gwynne Dyer
The 9/11 conspiracy theory is back, in a much more virulent form,
and normally sane people are being taken in by it: I am getting half a
dozen earnest e-mails every day telling me I must see a film called "Loose
Change." It has been around in various versions for almost two years, but
it now seems to be gathering converts faster than ever
Well, I have seen it, and I concede that it is a much slicker, more
professional product than other 9/11 conspiracy films, and therefore more
seductive. But the argument is pure paranoid fantasy, and it is rotting
people's brains.
There have always been two versions of 9/11 conspiracy theory. The
lesser version held that the Bush administration had advance intelligence
of al-Qaeda's plans, but chose to ignore the warning because the attacks
suited its purposes. The greater version insisted that there was no
al-Qaeda involvement, and that the attacks were carried out by the US
government.
Until recently, the greater version was largely confined to the
Arab world, where many people are in complete denial about any Arab
involvement in the atrocity. Very few Americans took that version
seriously, though many wondered whether the intelligence lapses had really
been accidental.
Even the lesser conspiracy would have required the complicity of
half a dozen very senior people who received the intelligence and decided
to ignore it: the heads of the CIA and the FBI (George Tenet and Louis
Freeh), the national security adviser (Condoleezza Rice), the secretaries
of defence and state (Don Rumsfeld and Colin Powell), plus of course
Vice-President Cheney and perhaps President Bush. It would also have
required the permanent silence (or silencing) of a dozen lower-level
intelligence analysts who knew that the senior people had seen the
information.
I don't believe that happened because I don't think that Tenet,
Rice, Powell et al. would have deliberately plotted the deaths of thousands
of Americans. I don't believe even Dick Cheney would have done that. And I
note that there has been no inexplicable wave of sudden deaths among junior
intelligence analysts in Washington.
I do believe, however, that 9/11 served the purposes of the
neo-conservatives and their allies in the Bush administration. They were
already planning to attack Iraq, as part of a larger plan, dating back to
the late 1990s and the Project for a New American Century, to re-launch Pax
America and re-establish American hegemony in the 21st-century world. I
agree that they were adroit in seizing on 9/11 as a way of enlisting
popular support for their project. But that's all.
I cannot absolutely refute the lesser conspiracy theory, but I find
it extremely implausible. The greater conspiracy theory, on the other
hand, is just plain loony -- and yet more and more people are falling for
it in the West, where it was once the exclusive domain of people with
counter-rotating eyeballs and poor personal hygiene. You cannot overstate
the impact of a well-made film.
"Loose Change" confidently asserts that the twin towers were
brought down by carefully placed demolition charges, not by the fires
ignited by the planes that hit them; that the Pentagon was struck by a
cruise missile and not by a plane at all; and that the fourth "hijacked"
plane, Flight 93, did not crash in a field in Pennsylvania but landed at
Cleveland airport, where the passengers were taken into a NASA building and
never seen again.
What about all the calls that the passengers on Flight 93 made on
their phones? Their voices were cloned by the Los Alamos laboratories and
the calls to their relatives were faked. The FBI was in on it, the CIA was
in on it, the US Air Force was in on it (except, of course, those USAF
personnel who were killed at the Pentagon), and North American Aerospace
Defence Command was in on it (but they kept the Canadians in NORAD out of
the loop.)
The security companies guarding the World Trade Centre were in on
it, Mayor Rudy Giuliani was in on it, the Federal Aviation Administration
was in on it, NASA was in on it, and the Pentagon was in on it. At least
ten thousand people were in on it. They had to be, or it couldn't have
worked. And more than five years later, not one of them has talked.
Nobody has got drunk and spilled their guts. Nobody has told their
spouse, who then blabbed. Not one of these ten thousand accomplices to
mass murder has yielded to the temptation for instant fame and great wealth
if only they blow the whistle on the greatest conspiracy in history. Even
the Mafia code of silence is nothing compared to this.
In normal times you wouldn't waste breath arguing with people who
fall for this kind of rubbish, but the makers of "Loose Change" claim that
their film has already been seen by over 100 million people, and looking at
my e-mail in-tray I believe them. It is a real problem, because by linking
their fantasies about 9/11 to the Bush administration's deliberate
deception of the American people in order to gain support for the invasion
of Iraq, they bring discredit on the truth and the nonsense alike.
You almost wonder if they are secretly working for the Bush
administration.
Aaron
8 March 2007
Loose Screws
By Gwynne Dyer
The 9/11 conspiracy theory is back, in a much more virulent form,
and normally sane people are being taken in by it: I am getting half a
dozen earnest e-mails every day telling me I must see a film called "Loose
Change." It has been around in various versions for almost two years, but
it now seems to be gathering converts faster than ever
Well, I have seen it, and I concede that it is a much slicker, more
professional product than other 9/11 conspiracy films, and therefore more
seductive. But the argument is pure paranoid fantasy, and it is rotting
people's brains.
There have always been two versions of 9/11 conspiracy theory. The
lesser version held that the Bush administration had advance intelligence
of al-Qaeda's plans, but chose to ignore the warning because the attacks
suited its purposes. The greater version insisted that there was no
al-Qaeda involvement, and that the attacks were carried out by the US
government.
Until recently, the greater version was largely confined to the
Arab world, where many people are in complete denial about any Arab
involvement in the atrocity. Very few Americans took that version
seriously, though many wondered whether the intelligence lapses had really
been accidental.
Even the lesser conspiracy would have required the complicity of
half a dozen very senior people who received the intelligence and decided
to ignore it: the heads of the CIA and the FBI (George Tenet and Louis
Freeh), the national security adviser (Condoleezza Rice), the secretaries
of defence and state (Don Rumsfeld and Colin Powell), plus of course
Vice-President Cheney and perhaps President Bush. It would also have
required the permanent silence (or silencing) of a dozen lower-level
intelligence analysts who knew that the senior people had seen the
information.
I don't believe that happened because I don't think that Tenet,
Rice, Powell et al. would have deliberately plotted the deaths of thousands
of Americans. I don't believe even Dick Cheney would have done that. And I
note that there has been no inexplicable wave of sudden deaths among junior
intelligence analysts in Washington.
I do believe, however, that 9/11 served the purposes of the
neo-conservatives and their allies in the Bush administration. They were
already planning to attack Iraq, as part of a larger plan, dating back to
the late 1990s and the Project for a New American Century, to re-launch Pax
America and re-establish American hegemony in the 21st-century world. I
agree that they were adroit in seizing on 9/11 as a way of enlisting
popular support for their project. But that's all.
I cannot absolutely refute the lesser conspiracy theory, but I find
it extremely implausible. The greater conspiracy theory, on the other
hand, is just plain loony -- and yet more and more people are falling for
it in the West, where it was once the exclusive domain of people with
counter-rotating eyeballs and poor personal hygiene. You cannot overstate
the impact of a well-made film.
"Loose Change" confidently asserts that the twin towers were
brought down by carefully placed demolition charges, not by the fires
ignited by the planes that hit them; that the Pentagon was struck by a
cruise missile and not by a plane at all; and that the fourth "hijacked"
plane, Flight 93, did not crash in a field in Pennsylvania but landed at
Cleveland airport, where the passengers were taken into a NASA building and
never seen again.
What about all the calls that the passengers on Flight 93 made on
their phones? Their voices were cloned by the Los Alamos laboratories and
the calls to their relatives were faked. The FBI was in on it, the CIA was
in on it, the US Air Force was in on it (except, of course, those USAF
personnel who were killed at the Pentagon), and North American Aerospace
Defence Command was in on it (but they kept the Canadians in NORAD out of
the loop.)
The security companies guarding the World Trade Centre were in on
it, Mayor Rudy Giuliani was in on it, the Federal Aviation Administration
was in on it, NASA was in on it, and the Pentagon was in on it. At least
ten thousand people were in on it. They had to be, or it couldn't have
worked. And more than five years later, not one of them has talked.
Nobody has got drunk and spilled their guts. Nobody has told their
spouse, who then blabbed. Not one of these ten thousand accomplices to
mass murder has yielded to the temptation for instant fame and great wealth
if only they blow the whistle on the greatest conspiracy in history. Even
the Mafia code of silence is nothing compared to this.
In normal times you wouldn't waste breath arguing with people who
fall for this kind of rubbish, but the makers of "Loose Change" claim that
their film has already been seen by over 100 million people, and looking at
my e-mail in-tray I believe them. It is a real problem, because by linking
their fantasies about 9/11 to the Bush administration's deliberate
deception of the American people in order to gain support for the invasion
of Iraq, they bring discredit on the truth and the nonsense alike.
You almost wonder if they are secretly working for the Bush
administration.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Introduction
Greetings Readers,
I would like to use this post to introduce myself. My name is Aaron. Have a degree in Physics and Mathematics and I am currently working as a professional Physicist. I have previously worked at labs run by the Schlumberger corporation in Ridgefield, Houston and Princeton. I have also previously worked at Fermi National Accelerator lab(Fermilab.) I plan on starting my PhD in the fall of 2008.
I originally came across the facebook group that spawned this blog from a random search. After posting for a bit I took on a more official role and which has eventually lead me to this blog.
Because of my background and experiences with the sciences, I hope to contribute, analyze and argue technical aspects of 9/11 which are so hotly(yet unjustifiably) debated in the 9/11 conspiracy circles.
Additionally I hope to be able to contribute to the non-technical and “softer” aspects of the conspiracy movement.
I strongly believe that there is no internal conspiracy within any western governments surrounding the attacks on 9/11. Additional, I feel that the energy spent on “exposing” the truth on 9/11 could be better spent on domestic and international matters that are of much more importance.
It is essential that the 9/11 conspiracy movement is debunked and exposed for what it is. A poison that is peddled to people in the form of seductive filmmaking, incorrect scientific analysis and bombastic nonsensical banter. Only then can we all truly face the challenges that are presented to us in the post 9/11 world.
Aaron
I would like to use this post to introduce myself. My name is Aaron. Have a degree in Physics and Mathematics and I am currently working as a professional Physicist. I have previously worked at labs run by the Schlumberger corporation in Ridgefield, Houston and Princeton. I have also previously worked at Fermi National Accelerator lab(Fermilab.) I plan on starting my PhD in the fall of 2008.
I originally came across the facebook group that spawned this blog from a random search. After posting for a bit I took on a more official role and which has eventually lead me to this blog.
Because of my background and experiences with the sciences, I hope to contribute, analyze and argue technical aspects of 9/11 which are so hotly(yet unjustifiably) debated in the 9/11 conspiracy circles.
Additionally I hope to be able to contribute to the non-technical and “softer” aspects of the conspiracy movement.
I strongly believe that there is no internal conspiracy within any western governments surrounding the attacks on 9/11. Additional, I feel that the energy spent on “exposing” the truth on 9/11 could be better spent on domestic and international matters that are of much more importance.
It is essential that the 9/11 conspiracy movement is debunked and exposed for what it is. A poison that is peddled to people in the form of seductive filmmaking, incorrect scientific analysis and bombastic nonsensical banter. Only then can we all truly face the challenges that are presented to us in the post 9/11 world.
Aaron
Why I jumped ship and why you, the conspiracy theorist, should too.
Now, as many on the JREF would know, I'm a former truther.
However, I wasn't as passionate as many of them are, but I was biased towards the conspiracy theory. The attacks of 9/11 happened when I was in grade 10, and while I swallowed the story, the conspiracy theory caught my attention.
Why did it catch my attention? Because it was very simple. The so-called "official theory" was too complicated and too long-winded. It was something that could be talked about for ages but when dumbed down to its essentials, it sounded stupid: 19 men with boxcutters board planes, take out the pilots and crash them into buildings. Very simple, and yet it got past the US Air Force, which was supposed to protect the very airspace that was violated.
Should the US government have been in charge of these attacks, it would have made much more "sense" simply because of how easy those planes got to their targets. What I didn't know as a "truther" was that maintaining the skies is more complicated than it looks, especially when the only "experience" you've had with radar was watching them in movies. With the education of Hollywood, I thought that was the way the world worked.
Sadly, that is the way that truthers see the world: As a Hollywood action movie.
As well, the conspiracies poison the minds of the young and impressionable. When doing a search on 9/11 and government today, 7 out of the 10 top results are for truther websites or "independent media", like Prison Planet (A site that likes to say that they do their research and respect the families of 9/11, but in the same breath say that a government employee sent his son to die on 9/11, as just one example of their "respect"); one is the Wikipedia page on 9/11 conspiracies, and the final two are from a university and the 9/11 commission website. When a young person is doing research on this issue, Google will be the first place that they go to and they will get the impression that this stuff is correct because it is on the first page. In school, I was taught that the first topic that came up when searched was usually the most credible. Young people will be thinking the same thing. Quite sad, isn't it?
I am not sure how to end my first entry here, but I would ask the conspiracy theorists to seriously consider taking off the goggles they use to view this world; as a giant game of chess with a faceless elite that controls our day-to-day actions; and to observe that reality isn't necessarily black and white. I hope that you think about this and realize that the world isn't the way Hollywood portrays it to be and that independence doesn't necessarily equate to credibility.
However, I wasn't as passionate as many of them are, but I was biased towards the conspiracy theory. The attacks of 9/11 happened when I was in grade 10, and while I swallowed the story, the conspiracy theory caught my attention.
Why did it catch my attention? Because it was very simple. The so-called "official theory" was too complicated and too long-winded. It was something that could be talked about for ages but when dumbed down to its essentials, it sounded stupid: 19 men with boxcutters board planes, take out the pilots and crash them into buildings. Very simple, and yet it got past the US Air Force, which was supposed to protect the very airspace that was violated.
Should the US government have been in charge of these attacks, it would have made much more "sense" simply because of how easy those planes got to their targets. What I didn't know as a "truther" was that maintaining the skies is more complicated than it looks, especially when the only "experience" you've had with radar was watching them in movies. With the education of Hollywood, I thought that was the way the world worked.
Sadly, that is the way that truthers see the world: As a Hollywood action movie.
As well, the conspiracies poison the minds of the young and impressionable. When doing a search on 9/11 and government today, 7 out of the 10 top results are for truther websites or "independent media", like Prison Planet (A site that likes to say that they do their research and respect the families of 9/11, but in the same breath say that a government employee sent his son to die on 9/11, as just one example of their "respect"); one is the Wikipedia page on 9/11 conspiracies, and the final two are from a university and the 9/11 commission website. When a young person is doing research on this issue, Google will be the first place that they go to and they will get the impression that this stuff is correct because it is on the first page. In school, I was taught that the first topic that came up when searched was usually the most credible. Young people will be thinking the same thing. Quite sad, isn't it?
I am not sure how to end my first entry here, but I would ask the conspiracy theorists to seriously consider taking off the goggles they use to view this world; as a giant game of chess with a faceless elite that controls our day-to-day actions; and to observe that reality isn't necessarily black and white. I hope that you think about this and realize that the world isn't the way Hollywood portrays it to be and that independence doesn't necessarily equate to credibility.
8,157 high-ranking American, British, and Pakistani officials are out to get you!
Are you Robert Mueller, Ari Fleischer, Mahmoud Ahmed, Bob Graham, Dick Armitage, Mark Grossman, Condoleezza Rice, George Tenet, Thomas Kean, Timothy Roemer, Slade Gordon, Arlen Specter, Dick Cheney, Donal Evans, or Carlos Gutierrez?
Have you or anyone you know ever worked for the Government Printing Office, the CIA, the ISI, the White House press secretariat, the Monterey Defense Language Institute, the FBI, Orion Systems, Underwriter’s Laboratories, the National Archives, the NIST, the BBC, and/or CNN?
Did you ever work in an airport in an urban or rural area, been a lawyer for any of the organizations above or in a firm that worked for any of the organizations above, the SEC, any successful media organization? Have you taught at a military school or training base between 1993 and 2001, or participated in any military exercise between 1968 and 2001, knowingly or not?
Thus sayeth Dylan Avery, and his word his holy writ.
Considering that “Loose Change” either directly or indirectly implicates the upper echelons of the FBI, CIA, SEC, USAF, the Bush administration, the Department of Defense, the Pakistani ISI, the US Senate, the 9/11 Commission; much of the Army and Navy (namely, anyone who works at Pensacola Naval Station, Maxwell Air Force Base, San Antonio, the Monterey Defense Language Institute and failed to come forward about teaching or training the terrorists themselves; or any of the thousands of people who took part in routine exercises like Vigilant Guardian and Northern Vigilance and failed to report that they were too paralyzed to help save the day on 9/11, which no one has ever come forward to say honestly), one is left to wonder:
Well, who wasn’t involved?
The following table is an endeavor to answer that question. By watching LCFC, we here at conspiraciesrnotus.blogspot.com until our brains fell out and recording the who, what, where, and when of every single person and organization involved in causing 9/11, in the world of the conspiracy theorists.
Here’s how the table works.
The first column contains the name of the person or organization.
The second column shows where they are first identified in “Loose Change: Final Cut” as being at least implicitly involved in causing 9/11. In part, the second column is provided so that, if you don’t believe me, you can go into the video and easily check yourself.
The third column explains why Dylan Avery thinks that person or people is/are suspicious, in a couple of words.
The fourth column gives the size of the organization accused as it was before September 11th (for example, the FBI’s counter-terrorism field force was roughly 1/30th the size before 9/11 and as such it was important to get accurate pre-9/11 information). This generally represents the entire organization, or all possible people involved.
The fifth column is the most important because it provides a realistic number of people involved in “the conspiracy,” shaving off the improbable extraneous bits from the fourth column and relying on a “top-2%” doctrine for groups that are known. Every specific number is cited, and wherever information simply wasn’t available or was classified, so this should be as accurate as one can get.
Bear in mind that these are not our numbers. Conspiracytheoriesrnotus.blogspot.com is not speculating as to who would’ve been “required” to perpetrate 9/11. We are quoting “Loose Change: Final Cut.” This is not our version of events; we are not unfairly conflating any supposed 9/11 denier position; we are taking what they give us and simply doing the same math they presumably are. We are compacting their information.
With that said…lets go to the charts!
Fig. 1.1-1.6: The chart. You might have to ask us for a copy sent via e-mail (conspiraciesrnotus@gmail.com) because Blogger limits the size of pictures you can upload. None of this information is copyrighted and citations are provided at the end of this article. Feel free to redistribute in its original format so long as none of its content is changed. "(!)" indicates that the highlighted row is essentially imaginary – no such group exists. Red text indicates that the group or individual did not return any results on any search engine used by the author. Groups with classified or unknown complement are not added to the final tally but are still given for your consideration.
Fig. 2: Do you live near any of the conspirators? Yes, working in at least three countries over the course of decades, thousands upon thousands of people have been, according to the conspiracy theorists, plotting your doom.
According to Dylan Avery, at least 8,157 people were required to perpetrate 9/11. Almost all of these people were public figures who live under constant scrutiny, surrounded by the media and personal armies of lawyers, accountants, all the way down to chauffeurs. Each of them probably has a spouse and 2.1 children, a circle of drinking buddies, pay taxes and credit card bills, and have documented, public lives.
That’s right folks, what we have here is a modest-sized city of conspirators.
And it could be in fact a very large city. Bear in mind that 8,157 is, as tallied above, the MINIMUM. The other end, about 300,000, could also only be the tip of the iceberg. As noted, each of these individuals have social networks that could or would be at least partially privy to the details of what would have to be one of the most elaborate hoaxes in world history.
Up to 1,000,000 Americans, Europeans, Asians, and Middle Easterners, working in tandem for several decades, may have been responsible for 9/11, say the conspiracy theorists.
And this isn’t even counting the upper echelons of Pensacola Naval Station, Maxwell Air Force Base, Brooks Air Force Base; the planners of "Amalgam Virgo" and "Vigilant Guardian;" and most of the relevant FBI field staff, who Dylan Avery directly accuses of involvement but whose staff sizes are either unknown or classified (see Fig. 1).
Even still, even if everyone on earth could keep a perfect secret, even if nobody ever let words slip while drunk, or murmured something in someone’s ear, or sold a story to someone else for money, or left a memo un-crumpled or an e-mail undeleted or a personal expense record unchanged or a passerby un-silenced, the whole thing would fall apart – even if merely 8,157 people lived in perfect anonymity, totally escaped the scrutiny of 21st-century life, and never told anyone anything, we still would not be scratching the surface of Loose Change’s paranoid delusions. There would still have to be herds of lawyers and accountants to bury the money trail. Young pilots with families to be permanently silenced. Decades of public records to be clandestinely destroyed by people who are themselves perfectly anonymous.
In other words, folks, we would be living in a fantasy of a fantasy of a fantasy of a fantasy, where impossible people in impossible situations do impossible things under impossible conditions.
Even in 2001 there was no such thing as anonymity. Someone would’ve sold out, or slipped up, or otherwise blew the lid on the biggest act of treason in the history of the republic. It is our hope on this site that conspiracy theorists will take a look at the mere plausibility of their claims based on this stark presentation and come to realize, even at the very outset, why their position is so untenable.
Sources for chart:
1. http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d02865t.pdf
2. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/administration/whbriefing/2004stafflistb.html
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-Services_Intelligence#Organizational_structure
4. https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/faqs/index.html#employeenumbers
5. http://www.thecapitol.net/FAQ/payandperqs.htm
6. http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2004/0723governance_light.aspx
7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Air_Station_Pensacola
8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_University_%28United_States%29
9. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2004_Jan_30/ai_112727713
10. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/usaf/513acg.htm
11. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Yorktown_(CV-10)#1975_.E2.80.93_Present
12. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/vigilant-guardian.htm
13. http://www.fas.org/main/content.jsp?formAction=297&contentId=220
14. http://www.militarynewcomers.com/BARKSDALE/index.htm
15. http://physics911.net/olmsted
16. http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/general2.htm
17. http://www.nist.gov/director/contact.htm
18. http://books.google.com/books?id=sPVj4zx_VzkC&pg=PA73&lpg=PA73&dq=underwriters+laboratories+total+staff+employees&source=web&ots=UPwpJ-QFup&sig=mYrracGeuUSYCWMm_-RrvNACWR0
19. http://www.mesothel.com/pages/nycosh_Jan24.htm
20. http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/news/970609/detail.html
21. http://finance.google.com/finance?cid=5051169
22. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_Commission#Members
-By John Ray, special thanks to Andrew Mitchell for all his work in getting this blog started
Have you or anyone you know ever worked for the Government Printing Office, the CIA, the ISI, the White House press secretariat, the Monterey Defense Language Institute, the FBI, Orion Systems, Underwriter’s Laboratories, the National Archives, the NIST, the BBC, and/or CNN?
Did you ever work in an airport in an urban or rural area, been a lawyer for any of the organizations above or in a firm that worked for any of the organizations above, the SEC, any successful media organization? Have you taught at a military school or training base between 1993 and 2001, or participated in any military exercise between 1968 and 2001, knowingly or not?
Thus sayeth Dylan Avery, and his word his holy writ.
Considering that “Loose Change” either directly or indirectly implicates the upper echelons of the FBI, CIA, SEC, USAF, the Bush administration, the Department of Defense, the Pakistani ISI, the US Senate, the 9/11 Commission; much of the Army and Navy (namely, anyone who works at Pensacola Naval Station, Maxwell Air Force Base, San Antonio, the Monterey Defense Language Institute and failed to come forward about teaching or training the terrorists themselves; or any of the thousands of people who took part in routine exercises like Vigilant Guardian and Northern Vigilance and failed to report that they were too paralyzed to help save the day on 9/11, which no one has ever come forward to say honestly), one is left to wonder:
Well, who wasn’t involved?
The following table is an endeavor to answer that question. By watching LCFC, we here at conspiraciesrnotus.blogspot.com until our brains fell out and recording the who, what, where, and when of every single person and organization involved in causing 9/11, in the world of the conspiracy theorists.
Here’s how the table works.
The first column contains the name of the person or organization.
The second column shows where they are first identified in “Loose Change: Final Cut” as being at least implicitly involved in causing 9/11. In part, the second column is provided so that, if you don’t believe me, you can go into the video and easily check yourself.
The third column explains why Dylan Avery thinks that person or people is/are suspicious, in a couple of words.
The fourth column gives the size of the organization accused as it was before September 11th (for example, the FBI’s counter-terrorism field force was roughly 1/30th the size before 9/11 and as such it was important to get accurate pre-9/11 information). This generally represents the entire organization, or all possible people involved.
The fifth column is the most important because it provides a realistic number of people involved in “the conspiracy,” shaving off the improbable extraneous bits from the fourth column and relying on a “top-2%” doctrine for groups that are known. Every specific number is cited, and wherever information simply wasn’t available or was classified, so this should be as accurate as one can get.
Bear in mind that these are not our numbers. Conspiracytheoriesrnotus.blogspot.com is not speculating as to who would’ve been “required” to perpetrate 9/11. We are quoting “Loose Change: Final Cut.” This is not our version of events; we are not unfairly conflating any supposed 9/11 denier position; we are taking what they give us and simply doing the same math they presumably are. We are compacting their information.
With that said…lets go to the charts!
Fig. 1.1-1.6: The chart. You might have to ask us for a copy sent via e-mail (conspiraciesrnotus@gmail.com) because Blogger limits the size of pictures you can upload. None of this information is copyrighted and citations are provided at the end of this article. Feel free to redistribute in its original format so long as none of its content is changed. "(!)" indicates that the highlighted row is essentially imaginary – no such group exists. Red text indicates that the group or individual did not return any results on any search engine used by the author. Groups with classified or unknown complement are not added to the final tally but are still given for your consideration.
Fig. 2: Do you live near any of the conspirators? Yes, working in at least three countries over the course of decades, thousands upon thousands of people have been, according to the conspiracy theorists, plotting your doom.
According to Dylan Avery, at least 8,157 people were required to perpetrate 9/11. Almost all of these people were public figures who live under constant scrutiny, surrounded by the media and personal armies of lawyers, accountants, all the way down to chauffeurs. Each of them probably has a spouse and 2.1 children, a circle of drinking buddies, pay taxes and credit card bills, and have documented, public lives.
That’s right folks, what we have here is a modest-sized city of conspirators.
And it could be in fact a very large city. Bear in mind that 8,157 is, as tallied above, the MINIMUM. The other end, about 300,000, could also only be the tip of the iceberg. As noted, each of these individuals have social networks that could or would be at least partially privy to the details of what would have to be one of the most elaborate hoaxes in world history.
Up to 1,000,000 Americans, Europeans, Asians, and Middle Easterners, working in tandem for several decades, may have been responsible for 9/11, say the conspiracy theorists.
And this isn’t even counting the upper echelons of Pensacola Naval Station, Maxwell Air Force Base, Brooks Air Force Base; the planners of "Amalgam Virgo" and "Vigilant Guardian;" and most of the relevant FBI field staff, who Dylan Avery directly accuses of involvement but whose staff sizes are either unknown or classified (see Fig. 1).
Even still, even if everyone on earth could keep a perfect secret, even if nobody ever let words slip while drunk, or murmured something in someone’s ear, or sold a story to someone else for money, or left a memo un-crumpled or an e-mail undeleted or a personal expense record unchanged or a passerby un-silenced, the whole thing would fall apart – even if merely 8,157 people lived in perfect anonymity, totally escaped the scrutiny of 21st-century life, and never told anyone anything, we still would not be scratching the surface of Loose Change’s paranoid delusions. There would still have to be herds of lawyers and accountants to bury the money trail. Young pilots with families to be permanently silenced. Decades of public records to be clandestinely destroyed by people who are themselves perfectly anonymous.
In other words, folks, we would be living in a fantasy of a fantasy of a fantasy of a fantasy, where impossible people in impossible situations do impossible things under impossible conditions.
Even in 2001 there was no such thing as anonymity. Someone would’ve sold out, or slipped up, or otherwise blew the lid on the biggest act of treason in the history of the republic. It is our hope on this site that conspiracy theorists will take a look at the mere plausibility of their claims based on this stark presentation and come to realize, even at the very outset, why their position is so untenable.
Sources for chart:
1. http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d02865t.pdf
2. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/administration/whbriefing/2004stafflistb.html
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-Services_Intelligence#Organizational_structure
4. https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/faqs/index.html#employeenumbers
5. http://www.thecapitol.net/FAQ/payandperqs.htm
6. http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2004/0723governance_light.aspx
7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Air_Station_Pensacola
8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_University_%28United_States%29
9. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2004_Jan_30/ai_112727713
10. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/usaf/513acg.htm
11. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Yorktown_(CV-10)#1975_.E2.80.93_Present
12. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/vigilant-guardian.htm
13. http://www.fas.org/main/content.jsp?formAction=297&contentId=220
14. http://www.militarynewcomers.com/BARKSDALE/index.htm
15. http://physics911.net/olmsted
16. http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/general2.htm
17. http://www.nist.gov/director/contact.htm
18. http://books.google.com/books?id=sPVj4zx_VzkC&pg=PA73&lpg=PA73&dq=underwriters+laboratories+total+staff+employees&source=web&ots=UPwpJ-QFup&sig=mYrracGeuUSYCWMm_-RrvNACWR0
19. http://www.mesothel.com/pages/nycosh_Jan24.htm
20. http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/news/970609/detail.html
21. http://finance.google.com/finance?cid=5051169
22. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_Commission#Members
-By John Ray, special thanks to Andrew Mitchell for all his work in getting this blog started
Friday, December 21, 2007
Let's kick this off...
Hey there,
My name's Andrew Mitchell. I stumbled upon a Facebook group entitled "There is no 9/11 conspiracy you morons" after a friend of mine posted his ravings about the conspiracy laden film Zeitgeist. I joined the group but was frustrated at the lack of activity and, honestly, stupidity of the content being uploaded (mostly America, Fuck Yeah! and other redneck banter). Noticing the admin slot was empty, I took it over, managed and retooled some things, and in the months that have followed, the group has nearly tripled in its size and the contributing content is first rate.
The group has been a wonderful place for debate and the spreading of information from various sources. Myself and three of the more prominent members of the group have formed this blog as a way to post our own articles and highlight some of the activities in the group.
Let's face it, it's college kids and high schoolers who are the main demographic of the "Truth Movement". That's why I believe Facebook is an integral part of ensuring no more kids get caught up in this mess. Our group, and by extension this blog, is a safe haven for those who feel surrounded by these wild theories and a place for conspiracy theorists to test their beliefs.
I encourage you, whether a conspiracy theorist, or avid debunker, join us in civil debate. We'll share our credible information with you, you share yours. But please, let's stay away from the youtube videos. If you can't prove a point without the aid of some stranger's iMovie, you're lost.
Check back often, we've got some really great articles on their way and lots of fun stuff to report from the group. Happy holidays and be safe,
-AM
My name's Andrew Mitchell. I stumbled upon a Facebook group entitled "There is no 9/11 conspiracy you morons" after a friend of mine posted his ravings about the conspiracy laden film Zeitgeist. I joined the group but was frustrated at the lack of activity and, honestly, stupidity of the content being uploaded (mostly America, Fuck Yeah! and other redneck banter). Noticing the admin slot was empty, I took it over, managed and retooled some things, and in the months that have followed, the group has nearly tripled in its size and the contributing content is first rate.
The group has been a wonderful place for debate and the spreading of information from various sources. Myself and three of the more prominent members of the group have formed this blog as a way to post our own articles and highlight some of the activities in the group.
Let's face it, it's college kids and high schoolers who are the main demographic of the "Truth Movement". That's why I believe Facebook is an integral part of ensuring no more kids get caught up in this mess. Our group, and by extension this blog, is a safe haven for those who feel surrounded by these wild theories and a place for conspiracy theorists to test their beliefs.
I encourage you, whether a conspiracy theorist, or avid debunker, join us in civil debate. We'll share our credible information with you, you share yours. But please, let's stay away from the youtube videos. If you can't prove a point without the aid of some stranger's iMovie, you're lost.
Check back often, we've got some really great articles on their way and lots of fun stuff to report from the group. Happy holidays and be safe,
-AM
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)