The guy that built his career telling lies about Able Danger is trying to make a comeback by telling lies about the Administration. He says that the Obama Administration invented the Iranians suspected of plotting to assassinate the ambassadors of Israel and Saudi Arabia.
This same guy, who claims to be up to his eyeballs in "FBI informants," also claimed he was a key founding member on a secret project where his entire real contribution seemed to be carrying documents to meetings.
It goes without saying that he invented his claims whole cloth: The FBI was a key part of the the case. Robert Woloszyn, an FBI agent, filed the actual charges on behalf of the FBI team that lead the investigation. Shaffer's claims about what his "insiders" are saying reads like the unfounded speculation of a tabloid magazine. "Sources close to the victim say..." "The craziest thing happened to a friend of a friend..."
His claims would also imply some very interesting things about the U.S.-Iran relationship. Given that most conspiracy theorists believe the Administration is looking for an excuse to go to war, wouldn't the Presidents of Iran and the U.S. need to be pretty damn buddy-buddy for Ahmadinejad to come along and offer up a few of his elite special forces for a foiled terror plot that would result in retaliation against his own government? Come on, guys. Conspiracies have an end-stage, but they have a beginning, too, and this one doesn't quite pan out.
Shaffer is a career con who hits his conspiracy theorist mark every time. Everyone who has ever worked in the public sector is evil, but every two-bit half-wit with a rumor to peddle gets vaulted to the front stage. Impeccable logic, guys. Impeccable.
Showing posts with label Israel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Israel. Show all posts
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
The Norway Terrorist's Conspiracy Theorists
Someone 9/11 deniers are unlikely to agree with has posited a textbook conspiracy about the Norway terrorist attack. It is a piece posted on a young website called Right Side News, and the reason mold-cut deniers are unlikely to agree with the author is because her conspirator of choice is the monolithic, homogeneous group known as “Muslims.”
Right from its opening sentence, you know what’s going to be said:
And from there is heads straight to the classic conspiracy theorist move: the faux-careful scrutiny of the timeline:
Because given Norway’s long-running problem with domestic terrorism (/sarcasm), it is clearly “suspicious” that its ersatz SWAT teams had a hard time responding to this terrorist attack in particular.
Initial media reports that are of course 100% accurate:
This is wrong on two counts. One, the New York Times of all places was the first source I found initially attributing the attack to “Movement of the Global Jihad,” retracting the story only later. Two, so far reporting on the actual terrorist almost unanimously references the one source of insight into his psyche, his enormous anti-liberal screed posted online years ago. So there isn’t much original reporting going on, and media were exactly as quick to rush to blame as they’ve been so criticized for doing.
The author then begins to build the rather pathetic case that Norway is actually secretly target number one for religious extremists worldwide:
Metrics by which Denmark, the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. score much more highly on the “threat to fundamentalist Islam” list.
This is exactly as duplicitous, dishonest, and context-free as any conspiracy theorist claim about Israel or Donald Rumsfeld when it comes to 9/11. It operates along the exact same logic: weak induction, speculation, and obviously a pre-destined conclusion.
I’m no fan of Islam. This blog is equal-opportunity critical of extremists, however: it seems as reasonable to me that a fundamentalist, overtly-bigoted unstable person who happens to be from country X could be inspired to commit acts of violence as one from country Y. This author has provided no reason to believe her except by pivoting in a direction that will appeal to her audience.
My challenge to 9/11 deniers is thus. I suspect you are motivated not to believe that there is any such thing as Islamic terrorism, and are indeed motivated to find the NATO strings at the top of the Norwegian puppet. But why do you reject this conspiracy theory? What is it doing wrong? What’s the underlying logical fault with its reasoning that is absent from your own theories? I’m genuinely curious to hear what Eliana Benador is doing wrong, in your minds.
Right from its opening sentence, you know what’s going to be said:
"Speaking the Truth in Times of Universal Deceit is a Revolutionary Act." George Orwell
And from there is heads straight to the classic conspiracy theorist move: the faux-careful scrutiny of the timeline:
—3:26 p.m.: A car bomb explodes outside the prime minister's office in central Oslo.
[…]
—By 6 p.m.: The team arrives at the lake, but it struggles to find a boat to cross over.
—6:20 p.m.: The SWAT team arrives on the island.
So, basically it took 3 long hours for the Norwegian SWAT team to take control of the situation, after over 90 dead...?
Because given Norway’s long-running problem with domestic terrorism (/sarcasm), it is clearly “suspicious” that its ersatz SWAT teams had a hard time responding to this terrorist attack in particular.
Initial media reports that are of course 100% accurate:
However, despite the fact that supporters of the “Global Jihad” terror group had claimed responsibility for the act, authorities and media seemed reluctant to accept that and have rather come with unique information about the perpetrator:
This is wrong on two counts. One, the New York Times of all places was the first source I found initially attributing the attack to “Movement of the Global Jihad,” retracting the story only later. Two, so far reporting on the actual terrorist almost unanimously references the one source of insight into his psyche, his enormous anti-liberal screed posted online years ago. So there isn’t much original reporting going on, and media were exactly as quick to rush to blame as they’ve been so criticized for doing.
The author then begins to build the rather pathetic case that Norway is actually secretly target number one for religious extremists worldwide:
Other important issues touching a nerve within the Muslim world are the Oslo accords between Israel and Palestinians, signed in 1993.
But Norway also has troops in Afghanistan -and because of that, Ayman al-Zawahiri made threats against Norway then.
Mullah Krekar, founder of the Al Qaeda-linked-terror-group Ansar al-Islam had issued death threats against Norwegians politicians if they chose to deport him.
To add one more ingredient to this melting pot: A Norwegian newspaper re-printed the infamous Propher Mohammad cartoons -those that were first published in Denmark.
I do not believe for a second, that Muslim extremists and Muslim terrorists who knew and planned the massacres of 9/11 in America, have stopped wanting to inflict serious damage to Western civilization.
While I have no tangible proof right now, there are symbols and signs that appear throughout the Oslo attacks, such as the use of an American “detail”: the Oklahoma City bombing style -used for the first part of the attack against the government building.
Metrics by which Denmark, the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. score much more highly on the “threat to fundamentalist Islam” list.
In the past, in Israel, some Muslim terrorist bomb attacks have been committed on some few occasions by Muslims disguised as Israeli policemen or as Orthodox Jews.
So, I am wondering what would stop the school of evil 9/11 planners to engineer an attack by a local man from Norway, to perform this massacre and give it enough appearance that it’s a Christian fundamentalist -when in reality it may all well have been as perfectly planned as those airplanes that hit the Twin Towers, the World Trade Center, 10 years ago.
This is exactly as duplicitous, dishonest, and context-free as any conspiracy theorist claim about Israel or Donald Rumsfeld when it comes to 9/11. It operates along the exact same logic: weak induction, speculation, and obviously a pre-destined conclusion.
I’m no fan of Islam. This blog is equal-opportunity critical of extremists, however: it seems as reasonable to me that a fundamentalist, overtly-bigoted unstable person who happens to be from country X could be inspired to commit acts of violence as one from country Y. This author has provided no reason to believe her except by pivoting in a direction that will appeal to her audience.
My challenge to 9/11 deniers is thus. I suspect you are motivated not to believe that there is any such thing as Islamic terrorism, and are indeed motivated to find the NATO strings at the top of the Norwegian puppet. But why do you reject this conspiracy theory? What is it doing wrong? What’s the underlying logical fault with its reasoning that is absent from your own theories? I’m genuinely curious to hear what Eliana Benador is doing wrong, in your minds.
Monday, February 28, 2011
AE911T's push for a "major LA PR firm"
They don't mention which firm, the length of the contract they're seeking, how they're going to get it, or what that firm could plausibly do to improve the public image of "The Movement," but AE911T appears to have successfully raised enough money to accomplish its stated goal of "hiring a major LA PR firm."
Meanwhile, skeptics will continue to go unpaid for their magazine articles, blog in their spare time, meet up just for fun to express their share interest in lower case-t truth, not try to rule by media blitz, and not live in constant wealth-extraction mode for want of the sorts of semi-slick ad campaigns 9/11 deniers seem to salivate. At the same time, said deniers will continue to accuse all skeptics of being paid agents of the U.S. and/or Israeli governments, Satan and the Sirusian space-lizards, Walt Disney and the Ninja Turtles. And they will keep forking over meager sums for meager ad campaigns that have nothing to do with intellectual argumentation because they do not get the joke.
Meanwhile, skeptics will continue to go unpaid for their magazine articles, blog in their spare time, meet up just for fun to express their share interest in lower case-t truth, not try to rule by media blitz, and not live in constant wealth-extraction mode for want of the sorts of semi-slick ad campaigns 9/11 deniers seem to salivate. At the same time, said deniers will continue to accuse all skeptics of being paid agents of the U.S. and/or Israeli governments, Satan and the Sirusian space-lizards, Walt Disney and the Ninja Turtles. And they will keep forking over meager sums for meager ad campaigns that have nothing to do with intellectual argumentation because they do not get the joke.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
"9/11 Deniers"
The other day I received an e-mail asking me about skeptics’ use of the term “9/11 Denier,” which is synonymous with Truther, 9/11 CT, etc.:
To be clear, I did not start using this term to equivocate between 9/11 Deniers and Holocaust Deniers.
I started using this term because virtually every 9/11 denier falls outside the criteria our e-mailer suggests. I have never had a conversation with a 9/11 denier who was devoid of his or her own theories about “who did it,” “why they did it,” and “how they did it.” In my experience the usual culprits are Israel, some variation on an Illuminati-esque elite cabal (itself often synonymous with Israel), and/or key figures in the Bush Administration – sometimes armed with an elite posse of anonymous government agents. But in no case have I met someone who denies that 9/11 happened the way the evidence indicates it did without at least an “inkling” of who they really wanted to blame. So no, virtually no 9/11 deniers are just “questioning who was responsible” – an activity our co-skeptics over at Screw Loose Change refer to as “JAQing off.” Whether a denier chooses to present their beliefs as merely taking shots at established theory is fine; read them on their own Facebook groups or listen to them at the bar after a debate and you get a very different picture.
Of course, if 9/11 deniers were actually interested in “Truth” this is how they would it to be, anyway. Approaching a true understanding of reality through un-biased scientific inquiry involves the proposal of competing hypotheses and testing their ability to explain the evidence. As a statsy guy I tend to add the caveat that these hypotheses should always be compared to a null hypothesis, even if that hypothesis is something as mundane and obvious as “there’s nothing going on,” but in the absence of reliable priors that needn’t necessarily be the case. Deniers reject the concept, anyway. However, if they were really interested in something more than selling Alex Jones DVDs, they would not shy away from the obvious need to advance positive theories.
And finally it is important to note that 9/11 deniers are denying key aspects of what happened on September 11th. After all, hundreds of people, dozens of books, and countless articles document the motivations, actions, plans and intentions of the people who actually carried out the attacks. 9/11 Deniers are required to believe in the impossibility of organic terrorism. They’re required to believe that religious and ethnic extremists who happen to be Arab or Muslim are either incapable or unwilling to act on their beliefs (and have been so for hundreds of years). The millions of people around the world who have interacted with, been affected by, or have been in al Qaeda either don’t exist or are in on it. Abrudahman Khadr, the boy from an impoverished family that grew up alongside bin Laden’s Afghanistan operations? Obviously a fiction. Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, whose name is on thousands of accounting documents for al Qaeda? Clearly a Zionist tool. Maha El-Samnah and Zaynab Khadr, whose son died as a suicide bomber – leaving them proud of his martyrdom, but ashamed of his affiliation with al Qaeda? Probably paid actors.
Organizations like al Qaeda leave their indelible mark wherever they go. 9/11 deniers are required to pretend that those marks are just Western operatives covering their own tracks – an obvious delusion to everyone who has seen it in action, knows its members, and knows those who are tempted by it and any other extremist organization. To me, this is the key – 9/11 deniers flatly deny virtually every relevant event in the lead-up to 9/11. They deny that centuries of geopolitical events ever occurred. To them, history begins at the Balfour Declaration, crescendos when Ronald Reagan begins supplying anti-Communist rebels in Afghanistan, and ends when George Bush plants bombs in the North Tower and scampers off in a black helicopter. Between these pockmarks on the historical landscape there are thousands of religious ideologues, millions of oppressed victims of colonialism, and countless strategic opportunists struggling to guide human affairs to their own ends. 9/11 denier history is the shallowest history of all, one that requires them to reject the needs, desires, machinations and schemes of billions of people across centuries. 9/11 denial is reality denial.
That’s why I call them 9/11 Deniers.
My interpretation is that this is a blatant attempt to equate alternative 9/11 theories with Holocaust Denial. As I'm sure you are aware, Holocaust Denial is the belief that the Holocaust simply did not take place, that the event did not occur. You are also entirely aware that proponents of alternative 9/11 information are not stating that the event did not occur, they are instead questioning who was responsible, and bringing specific aspects of the event under scrutiny. In this context, then, might the term "9/11 Deniers" seem like something of a misnomer?
To be clear, I did not start using this term to equivocate between 9/11 Deniers and Holocaust Deniers.
I started using this term because virtually every 9/11 denier falls outside the criteria our e-mailer suggests. I have never had a conversation with a 9/11 denier who was devoid of his or her own theories about “who did it,” “why they did it,” and “how they did it.” In my experience the usual culprits are Israel, some variation on an Illuminati-esque elite cabal (itself often synonymous with Israel), and/or key figures in the Bush Administration – sometimes armed with an elite posse of anonymous government agents. But in no case have I met someone who denies that 9/11 happened the way the evidence indicates it did without at least an “inkling” of who they really wanted to blame. So no, virtually no 9/11 deniers are just “questioning who was responsible” – an activity our co-skeptics over at Screw Loose Change refer to as “JAQing off.” Whether a denier chooses to present their beliefs as merely taking shots at established theory is fine; read them on their own Facebook groups or listen to them at the bar after a debate and you get a very different picture.
Of course, if 9/11 deniers were actually interested in “Truth” this is how they would it to be, anyway. Approaching a true understanding of reality through un-biased scientific inquiry involves the proposal of competing hypotheses and testing their ability to explain the evidence. As a statsy guy I tend to add the caveat that these hypotheses should always be compared to a null hypothesis, even if that hypothesis is something as mundane and obvious as “there’s nothing going on,” but in the absence of reliable priors that needn’t necessarily be the case. Deniers reject the concept, anyway. However, if they were really interested in something more than selling Alex Jones DVDs, they would not shy away from the obvious need to advance positive theories.
And finally it is important to note that 9/11 deniers are denying key aspects of what happened on September 11th. After all, hundreds of people, dozens of books, and countless articles document the motivations, actions, plans and intentions of the people who actually carried out the attacks. 9/11 Deniers are required to believe in the impossibility of organic terrorism. They’re required to believe that religious and ethnic extremists who happen to be Arab or Muslim are either incapable or unwilling to act on their beliefs (and have been so for hundreds of years). The millions of people around the world who have interacted with, been affected by, or have been in al Qaeda either don’t exist or are in on it. Abrudahman Khadr, the boy from an impoverished family that grew up alongside bin Laden’s Afghanistan operations? Obviously a fiction. Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, whose name is on thousands of accounting documents for al Qaeda? Clearly a Zionist tool. Maha El-Samnah and Zaynab Khadr, whose son died as a suicide bomber – leaving them proud of his martyrdom, but ashamed of his affiliation with al Qaeda? Probably paid actors.
Organizations like al Qaeda leave their indelible mark wherever they go. 9/11 deniers are required to pretend that those marks are just Western operatives covering their own tracks – an obvious delusion to everyone who has seen it in action, knows its members, and knows those who are tempted by it and any other extremist organization. To me, this is the key – 9/11 deniers flatly deny virtually every relevant event in the lead-up to 9/11. They deny that centuries of geopolitical events ever occurred. To them, history begins at the Balfour Declaration, crescendos when Ronald Reagan begins supplying anti-Communist rebels in Afghanistan, and ends when George Bush plants bombs in the North Tower and scampers off in a black helicopter. Between these pockmarks on the historical landscape there are thousands of religious ideologues, millions of oppressed victims of colonialism, and countless strategic opportunists struggling to guide human affairs to their own ends. 9/11 denier history is the shallowest history of all, one that requires them to reject the needs, desires, machinations and schemes of billions of people across centuries. 9/11 denial is reality denial.
That’s why I call them 9/11 Deniers.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Diffusion of a Mission
One of the reasons that the 9/11 denier movement has essentially failed in its present form is because it has been unable to agree upon any sort of concrete policy proposals, focus on any particular type of concerted political action (street protests are technically not such), or even maintain coherence of mission. The ostensible goal of a "New 9/11 Commission" seems to have been lost in a cacophony of internal squabbling, absurd tangents (looking at you, Judy), and general disorganization.
This lack of focus is crippling to any movement seeking concrete change. After almost eight years of organizing attempts deniers have been unable to agree on what legislative arena they want to work in (courts? Popular votes on the state or Federal level? Agency lobbying?), how they want to get that work done (ballot initiatives? Arrests of the "perpetrators," whoever they are? Violent uprisings?), and how that's going to happen (consider the schizophrenic fundraising strategy of every such organization). The movement has produced no evidence that any of its donors or proponents should expect any forward progress whatsoever.
Deniers themselves have quickly diffused into other movements. They've moved on to other conspiracy theories, becoming anti-vaxxers, chemtrailers, birthers, etc.; other political movements, like the anti-Israel, right-libertarian, and peace movements, and so on. As evidence of this, consider a random screencap taken today of the only functional 9/11 denier Group on Facebook, the "9/11 Truth Library." This screencap is of the Group's Discussions page, which supposedly allows for more in-depth, long-form topics than appear on the Wall.
Anti-vax, environmentalism, chemtrails, anti-GE, 9/11ish, 9/11, anti-Israel, skepticism, black-ops theories, 9/11 - in that order. The "9/11 conspiracy theories" thread, like I said, was actually a thread started by a skeptic that has gone unaddressed for days. This movement is disaffected, bored, and unorganized. The 9/11 denier movement may rematerialize at some point in the future, but it can not succeed in its present form (consider that they wouldn't even be able to tell you what "succeed" means as regards their goals). Its financiers and proponents have no reason to expect any forward progress from its current leadership, organization or methodology. Might just be another "reset" year for the deniers.
This lack of focus is crippling to any movement seeking concrete change. After almost eight years of organizing attempts deniers have been unable to agree on what legislative arena they want to work in (courts? Popular votes on the state or Federal level? Agency lobbying?), how they want to get that work done (ballot initiatives? Arrests of the "perpetrators," whoever they are? Violent uprisings?), and how that's going to happen (consider the schizophrenic fundraising strategy of every such organization). The movement has produced no evidence that any of its donors or proponents should expect any forward progress whatsoever.
Deniers themselves have quickly diffused into other movements. They've moved on to other conspiracy theories, becoming anti-vaxxers, chemtrailers, birthers, etc.; other political movements, like the anti-Israel, right-libertarian, and peace movements, and so on. As evidence of this, consider a random screencap taken today of the only functional 9/11 denier Group on Facebook, the "9/11 Truth Library." This screencap is of the Group's Discussions page, which supposedly allows for more in-depth, long-form topics than appear on the Wall.
Anti-vax, environmentalism, chemtrails, anti-GE, 9/11ish, 9/11, anti-Israel, skepticism, black-ops theories, 9/11 - in that order. The "9/11 conspiracy theories" thread, like I said, was actually a thread started by a skeptic that has gone unaddressed for days. This movement is disaffected, bored, and unorganized. The 9/11 denier movement may rematerialize at some point in the future, but it can not succeed in its present form (consider that they wouldn't even be able to tell you what "succeed" means as regards their goals). Its financiers and proponents have no reason to expect any forward progress from its current leadership, organization or methodology. Might just be another "reset" year for the deniers.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Please, oh please...
Dear 9/11 deniers: Please, oh please, accuse the government of complicity in the recent Teabagger suicide martyrdom. First props goes out to Killtown, which provides trenchant insights such as, "people heard a loud noise," and "jee, I heard a sort of bomb-like boom when that plane hit!"
The quotes they pull include those from a dazed man in a CBS news story who initially said the plane impact "felt like a bomb went off;" FOX News' reporting that "several witnesses are reporting they first thought it was a bomb," and an Australian news organization owned by the notorious inside trader Conrad Black quoting a nearly-victim in saying that he also thought a bomb exploded.
Two points.
One, in the Muslim world, it is common knowledge that the American and Israeli governments are responsible for everything from 9/11 to the burned toast at breakfast. The Zionists are the reason someone can't get a job, why the price of gas is so high, why its so damn hot out. 9/11 deniers' ideological allies in violent Muslim organizations were evidently so shocked at the American response to 9/11 that many have actually begun promoting 9/11 as an inside job even as al Qaeda proudly claims responsibility for it. Though most Muslims believe violence in the name of Islam is justified, many appear so horrified at the logical conclusion of their beliefs that some Muslim leaders have decided it is easier to rewrite history than to face it.
9/11 deniers must remain allied with religious extremists on this point to whatever end. They are ideologically forced, as are the Muslim fascists who rule daily life with the whip and the sword in most of the Muslim world, to concoct excuses for every indication that something bad has happened for which the West is not responsible. This is why, in large part, both have lost so much credibility so quickly (yes, sorry to cite my own work...what can I say?). It is to their own downfall to be forced into such a position, and for that us skeptics are glad.
Second: Everywhere else, your sources of information are supposedly actively working against you to suppress "the truth, remember? You guys think the media is engaged in a "blackout," remember? The mainstream media is being unfairly mean to every public official who believes evidence rather than conspiracy theories, aren't they? These insane claims against everyday journalists are yours to begin with. They're just trying to silence Rosie!
No, you can't have it both ways. Either your habitual quote-mining of the Zionist Media for ways to support your farcical worldview is valid, or everything professional journalists say is a lie. Your ridiculous personal slanders against everyone who disagrees with you can go un-punished because unlike the religious nutjobs to whom you are ideologically wed you live in a country that values free speech, but they don't go unnoticed.
Either everyone working in a media organization is a fraud, or your worldview is a fraud. Either there is no such thing as organic opposition to the United States, or your worldview is a fraud. Take your pick. This is why I'm glad the conspiracy theories have begun to burble: it brings 9/11 deniers one step closer to having to sit and ask themselves, "do I really believe this nonsense?"
The quotes they pull include those from a dazed man in a CBS news story who initially said the plane impact "felt like a bomb went off;" FOX News' reporting that "several witnesses are reporting they first thought it was a bomb," and an Australian news organization owned by the notorious inside trader Conrad Black quoting a nearly-victim in saying that he also thought a bomb exploded.
Two points.
One, in the Muslim world, it is common knowledge that the American and Israeli governments are responsible for everything from 9/11 to the burned toast at breakfast. The Zionists are the reason someone can't get a job, why the price of gas is so high, why its so damn hot out. 9/11 deniers' ideological allies in violent Muslim organizations were evidently so shocked at the American response to 9/11 that many have actually begun promoting 9/11 as an inside job even as al Qaeda proudly claims responsibility for it. Though most Muslims believe violence in the name of Islam is justified, many appear so horrified at the logical conclusion of their beliefs that some Muslim leaders have decided it is easier to rewrite history than to face it.
9/11 deniers must remain allied with religious extremists on this point to whatever end. They are ideologically forced, as are the Muslim fascists who rule daily life with the whip and the sword in most of the Muslim world, to concoct excuses for every indication that something bad has happened for which the West is not responsible. This is why, in large part, both have lost so much credibility so quickly (yes, sorry to cite my own work...what can I say?). It is to their own downfall to be forced into such a position, and for that us skeptics are glad.
Second: Everywhere else, your sources of information are supposedly actively working against you to suppress "the truth, remember? You guys think the media is engaged in a "blackout," remember? The mainstream media is being unfairly mean to every public official who believes evidence rather than conspiracy theories, aren't they? These insane claims against everyday journalists are yours to begin with. They're just trying to silence Rosie!
No, you can't have it both ways. Either your habitual quote-mining of the Zionist Media for ways to support your farcical worldview is valid, or everything professional journalists say is a lie. Your ridiculous personal slanders against everyone who disagrees with you can go un-punished because unlike the religious nutjobs to whom you are ideologically wed you live in a country that values free speech, but they don't go unnoticed.
Either everyone working in a media organization is a fraud, or your worldview is a fraud. Either there is no such thing as organic opposition to the United States, or your worldview is a fraud. Take your pick. This is why I'm glad the conspiracy theories have begun to burble: it brings 9/11 deniers one step closer to having to sit and ask themselves, "do I really believe this nonsense?"
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Out with the old, in with the - oh, right, its the same thing over and over again...
From a kid who posted on a blog called, I kid you not... jewishcrimenetworkdid911.
Its going to be a long year for 9/11 deniers. Also note that 911blogger has yet to actually post a new donations counter. Must be the dread effect.
Its going to be a long year for 9/11 deniers. Also note that 911blogger has yet to actually post a new donations counter. Must be the dread effect.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Israel is right, and Hamas (and, by extension, 9/11 deniers) is wrong
(This brief history of Israel terminates about 1/2 of the way down - to skip straight to the current conflict, find "(Now)" on this page)
In the Great War, the Ottoman Empire sided with Germany and lost. As a consequence, the Ottoman Empire was broken up in a series of "excessively punitive" treaties by the Allies, one of which prompted a revolution that resulted in the formation of Turkey and another few chunks of the British Empire being returned to indigenous rule. One of these chunks that had to be dealt with is an area that has been called Philistine, the Kingdon of Judah, Syria, Ieudea, lower Tiberias, Palestine Prima/Secunda/Tertia, Filastin, Damascus-Syria, Acre-Beirut-Nablus, the Jerusalem sanjak, and/or Palestine.
The League of Nations eventually managed to mandate some loosely organized area of another loosely organized area, Transjordan. This did not guarantee any sort of territorial stability, and the history of the ownership region remains in dispute. But one important part of this Mandate is relevant:
However, through the history of this mandate the French, the British, and neighboring Arab states all forced the Jews living there to relocate many times to appease the French and British's pet schemes for balancing the region between their respective empires. To repeat: The forced relocation of Jews was rampant in the region of Palestine throughout the first half of the 20th century.
And the Jews in Palestine were many and numerous. Cities with Hebrew names like Netanya, Tel Aviv, Bat Yam, Rehovot, Ashdod, Nir Yizhyq, Elat, En Yahav, En-gedi, Shermesh, etc., and the vast swaths of irrigated farmland in the region did not arise in a vacuum. Hundreds of thousands of Jews lived in the area - indeed, the efforts of many of these Jews are almost solely responsible for making the region livable in the 20th century.
When the United Nations was formed, most of the "relevant players" in the Middle East eagerly signed on. Britain, France, the United Arab Republic (today Syria and Egypt), Lebanon, Iran, and Saudi Arabia joined, agreed to abide by its rules, work together on its laws and mandates, and build a global community together. At the time, Britain "officially" owned Palestine in the eyes of the world, but Britain agreed to cede the region to the United Nations so that the world could agree on a solution to what was then known as "the Jewish question."
That should immediately end any question of Israel's "legitimacy as a state." Each of these nations contractually obligated their governments to work with and agree to the laws of the United Nations.
On May 14th, 1948, David Ben-Gurion accepted the independence of the state of Israel as the result of a majority vote in the United Nations and announced this to his people. On May 15th, 1948, Azzam Pasha, Secretary-General of the Arab League, declared war.
---Azzam Pasha, <24 hours after the establishment of Israel
And since that day - since a democratic decision over a patch of land handed over to the United Nations by its legal owners with the intent of benefiting those who lived there, cultivated it, and did the work necessary to make the land livable was violated in an act of pure, genocidal ethnocentrism and greed by the Arab League in the explicit interest of wiping millions of people and the nation of Israel off the face of the earth - Israel has been the bad guy.
Just before this decision was made, Palestine had attempted to help Hitler implement the Final Solution in the Middle East. Just after Israel's formation (less than a day, in fact) several Arab governments announced the goal of genocide of the Israeli people - one of those early declarations was made by the man who would later found the "freedom-fighting" organization known as the PLO. On that same day, those same nations expelled 750,000 Jews from their borders and urged Arab Israelis (who were not expelled from their land by the formation of Israel) to flee so as to "not get in the way of the seven invading armies." In 1967, much of the Middle East launched another failed genocidal war against Israel, and another in 1973; in 2001, Osama bin Laden declared an "international struggle" against Israel. In each case, Israel ceded land, restored original borders, and refused to push campaigns further in the name of peace.
Over those same years, roughly 1,000 terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians occurred within Israel. In 2000, peace was almost achieved in Geneva - until the sick joke of an organization Fatah (now called, in another sick joke, "moderate" by the media today) simply walked out of the peace negotiations. The deal in question would have given Palestine 97% of the land it wanted, $30 billion in aid, and a security guarantee. Fatah didn't even offer a counter-deal - it just declared an Intifadah and went home, where it was in turn ousted by the Palestinian electorate for not doing enough in the name of the genocide of the people of Israel. Enter Hamas.
Well, not really "enter" - Hamas has been around in many forms and in many nations for awhile - but when the organization came to power, its first goal was to make it clear to its constituents that genocide was a number one priority. Thus, it should be unsurprising that the Hamas Constitution contains a legally binding mandate to drive for the extermination of Israel. As soon as possible, Hamas began firing homemade rockets towards Israeli civilian centers.
(Now)
It is a lie that only three Israeli civilians have been killed by the Qassam rockets. 59 civilians and counting have been killed since 2006 - women, children, the elderly, soldiers, Israelis, Italians, Americans, a French teenager, an Ecuadorian, and others have been literally ripped to shreds by Qassam and Russian-made/Iranian-provided Katyusha rockets. Thousands of rockets have been fired, with the deliberate intent to massacre the innocent.
There are only so many windows of ones' childrens' rooms blown out by rocket impacts one can handle. There are only so many innocent people reduced to piles of flesh by suicide bombs full of nails and bolts that won't provoke a massive response. The lives of everyone entrusted to you can be deliberately endangered by genocidal, theocratic maniacs for only so long before your patience runs out.
Any claims of Israeli "overreaction" are pure fraud. You have probably heard the brainless dupes of Muslim terrorism argue that Israel should engage in a "proportional" response to Hamas; that is, they should only be allowed to engage their mortal enemy with the same flimsy hand-me-downs that Hamas has been attempting to exterminate Israel with for the better part of this millennium. Their sense of scale is completely off. The last thing on earth these credulous, gullible supporters of genocide would want would be for Israel to engage in the kinds of "proportional response" they think they want to see. Israel's neighbors have called for nothing less than the systematic extermination of its entire population (including, in some cases, the Arabs in Israel who comprised about one-fourth of its population). If Israel were to engage in an "appropriately proportional response" to the acts and intents of the Arab world, there would be a swath of scorched earth from Cairo to Tehran, from Beirut to Medina.
If you are so stupid as to cheer on the innocent mass murderers-in-waiting in Palestine as they valiantly defend their right to slaughter Israeli children, at least be thankful that Israel has routinely chosen not to be proportionally responsive to the scale of murder that you zealously pine for. Thank whomever you so choose that the Israeli military is morally superior to you in at least this respect.
If you support the majority-elected government of Hamas, you are a fool. If you think Israel shouldn't "overreact" to a half-century of provocation and attempted genocide, you have never had the life of a friend or loved one endangered - or are at least too sociopathic in nature to be taken seriously for being unable to empathize with such a situation. If you think it is somehow "Israel's fault" that every Palestinian government has either walked out on or outright violated any and every terms of peace in their history; that the rest of the Middle East won't pick up the tab for their fellow Arabs in Palestine but rather leave that to Israel and the U.N.; that the government of Palestine has proudly announced its use of human shields in every conflict thus far; you are a willing foot soldier in an army on the wrong side of morality, and clearly so to everyone who does not have a cult-like faith in everything opposed to civilization to defend.
Every Western supporter of Hamas must explain what is so ethical about using human beings as body armor and using civilian areas as firing points. You must explain why democratically-made decisions are inferior to authoritarian ones, why genocidal intent should be rewarded in the court of world opinion, and what exactly is so great about this particular version of fascistic theocracy (except the fact that you shall never have to live under it or experience the world it wants to bring to you). You must explain why the slaughter of civilians should be rewarded, why the violation of peace treaties and the deliberate refusal to engage in peace talks should be rewarded, and why murder should carry the great incentives you want to give to Hamas and every future Palestinian government - for you are not just wishing death upon millions now, but are wishing death upon countless more in the future by supporting the precedent of government-mandated genocide by Palestinians, for Palestinians (and, in the case of the human shields, of them).
Once you realize why you can't explain any of these things to those around you who are smarter than you, sit down and try to think about why you can not successfully convince yourself of these (as you must in order support the side you have been convinced to choose).
9/11 truthers take support for Hamas as a matter of faith: they must, they must, or they are "Zionists," as everyone who is smarter than them and knows more about the situation than they is a "Zionist." This, again, is pure fraud. None of us here at CRNU are "Zionists" in the true sense of that word. None of us think Israel is perfect - Israel is not perfect. None of us think that imminent action on behalf of saving Palestinian lives is unnecessary (especially considering those lives are currently in the hands of a government that would place them squarely into the laser sights). Everyone agrees that there is a better way. Neither Hamas, Fatah, nor Palestinian rejectionism as a political strategy represent that way.
In the Great War, the Ottoman Empire sided with Germany and lost. As a consequence, the Ottoman Empire was broken up in a series of "excessively punitive" treaties by the Allies, one of which prompted a revolution that resulted in the formation of Turkey and another few chunks of the British Empire being returned to indigenous rule. One of these chunks that had to be dealt with is an area that has been called Philistine, the Kingdon of Judah, Syria, Ieudea, lower Tiberias, Palestine Prima/Secunda/Tertia, Filastin, Damascus-Syria, Acre-Beirut-Nablus, the Jerusalem sanjak, and/or Palestine.
The League of Nations eventually managed to mandate some loosely organized area of another loosely organized area, Transjordan. This did not guarantee any sort of territorial stability, and the history of the ownership region remains in dispute. But one important part of this Mandate is relevant:
ART. 2.
The Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home, as laid down in the preamble, and the development of self-governing institutions, and also for safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion.
However, through the history of this mandate the French, the British, and neighboring Arab states all forced the Jews living there to relocate many times to appease the French and British's pet schemes for balancing the region between their respective empires. To repeat: The forced relocation of Jews was rampant in the region of Palestine throughout the first half of the 20th century.
And the Jews in Palestine were many and numerous. Cities with Hebrew names like Netanya, Tel Aviv, Bat Yam, Rehovot, Ashdod, Nir Yizhyq, Elat, En Yahav, En-gedi, Shermesh, etc., and the vast swaths of irrigated farmland in the region did not arise in a vacuum. Hundreds of thousands of Jews lived in the area - indeed, the efforts of many of these Jews are almost solely responsible for making the region livable in the 20th century.
When the United Nations was formed, most of the "relevant players" in the Middle East eagerly signed on. Britain, France, the United Arab Republic (today Syria and Egypt), Lebanon, Iran, and Saudi Arabia joined, agreed to abide by its rules, work together on its laws and mandates, and build a global community together. At the time, Britain "officially" owned Palestine in the eyes of the world, but Britain agreed to cede the region to the United Nations so that the world could agree on a solution to what was then known as "the Jewish question."
That should immediately end any question of Israel's "legitimacy as a state." Each of these nations contractually obligated their governments to work with and agree to the laws of the United Nations.
On May 14th, 1948, David Ben-Gurion accepted the independence of the state of Israel as the result of a majority vote in the United Nations and announced this to his people. On May 15th, 1948, Azzam Pasha, Secretary-General of the Arab League, declared war.
This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.
---Azzam Pasha, <24 hours after the establishment of Israel
And since that day - since a democratic decision over a patch of land handed over to the United Nations by its legal owners with the intent of benefiting those who lived there, cultivated it, and did the work necessary to make the land livable was violated in an act of pure, genocidal ethnocentrism and greed by the Arab League in the explicit interest of wiping millions of people and the nation of Israel off the face of the earth - Israel has been the bad guy.
Just before this decision was made, Palestine had attempted to help Hitler implement the Final Solution in the Middle East. Just after Israel's formation (less than a day, in fact) several Arab governments announced the goal of genocide of the Israeli people - one of those early declarations was made by the man who would later found the "freedom-fighting" organization known as the PLO. On that same day, those same nations expelled 750,000 Jews from their borders and urged Arab Israelis (who were not expelled from their land by the formation of Israel) to flee so as to "not get in the way of the seven invading armies." In 1967, much of the Middle East launched another failed genocidal war against Israel, and another in 1973; in 2001, Osama bin Laden declared an "international struggle" against Israel. In each case, Israel ceded land, restored original borders, and refused to push campaigns further in the name of peace.
Over those same years, roughly 1,000 terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians occurred within Israel. In 2000, peace was almost achieved in Geneva - until the sick joke of an organization Fatah (now called, in another sick joke, "moderate" by the media today) simply walked out of the peace negotiations. The deal in question would have given Palestine 97% of the land it wanted, $30 billion in aid, and a security guarantee. Fatah didn't even offer a counter-deal - it just declared an Intifadah and went home, where it was in turn ousted by the Palestinian electorate for not doing enough in the name of the genocide of the people of Israel. Enter Hamas.
Well, not really "enter" - Hamas has been around in many forms and in many nations for awhile - but when the organization came to power, its first goal was to make it clear to its constituents that genocide was a number one priority. Thus, it should be unsurprising that the Hamas Constitution contains a legally binding mandate to drive for the extermination of Israel. As soon as possible, Hamas began firing homemade rockets towards Israeli civilian centers.
(Now)
It is a lie that only three Israeli civilians have been killed by the Qassam rockets. 59 civilians and counting have been killed since 2006 - women, children, the elderly, soldiers, Israelis, Italians, Americans, a French teenager, an Ecuadorian, and others have been literally ripped to shreds by Qassam and Russian-made/Iranian-provided Katyusha rockets. Thousands of rockets have been fired, with the deliberate intent to massacre the innocent.
There are only so many windows of ones' childrens' rooms blown out by rocket impacts one can handle. There are only so many innocent people reduced to piles of flesh by suicide bombs full of nails and bolts that won't provoke a massive response. The lives of everyone entrusted to you can be deliberately endangered by genocidal, theocratic maniacs for only so long before your patience runs out.
Any claims of Israeli "overreaction" are pure fraud. You have probably heard the brainless dupes of Muslim terrorism argue that Israel should engage in a "proportional" response to Hamas; that is, they should only be allowed to engage their mortal enemy with the same flimsy hand-me-downs that Hamas has been attempting to exterminate Israel with for the better part of this millennium. Their sense of scale is completely off. The last thing on earth these credulous, gullible supporters of genocide would want would be for Israel to engage in the kinds of "proportional response" they think they want to see. Israel's neighbors have called for nothing less than the systematic extermination of its entire population (including, in some cases, the Arabs in Israel who comprised about one-fourth of its population). If Israel were to engage in an "appropriately proportional response" to the acts and intents of the Arab world, there would be a swath of scorched earth from Cairo to Tehran, from Beirut to Medina.
If you are so stupid as to cheer on the innocent mass murderers-in-waiting in Palestine as they valiantly defend their right to slaughter Israeli children, at least be thankful that Israel has routinely chosen not to be proportionally responsive to the scale of murder that you zealously pine for. Thank whomever you so choose that the Israeli military is morally superior to you in at least this respect.
If you support the majority-elected government of Hamas, you are a fool. If you think Israel shouldn't "overreact" to a half-century of provocation and attempted genocide, you have never had the life of a friend or loved one endangered - or are at least too sociopathic in nature to be taken seriously for being unable to empathize with such a situation. If you think it is somehow "Israel's fault" that every Palestinian government has either walked out on or outright violated any and every terms of peace in their history; that the rest of the Middle East won't pick up the tab for their fellow Arabs in Palestine but rather leave that to Israel and the U.N.; that the government of Palestine has proudly announced its use of human shields in every conflict thus far; you are a willing foot soldier in an army on the wrong side of morality, and clearly so to everyone who does not have a cult-like faith in everything opposed to civilization to defend.
Every Western supporter of Hamas must explain what is so ethical about using human beings as body armor and using civilian areas as firing points. You must explain why democratically-made decisions are inferior to authoritarian ones, why genocidal intent should be rewarded in the court of world opinion, and what exactly is so great about this particular version of fascistic theocracy (except the fact that you shall never have to live under it or experience the world it wants to bring to you). You must explain why the slaughter of civilians should be rewarded, why the violation of peace treaties and the deliberate refusal to engage in peace talks should be rewarded, and why murder should carry the great incentives you want to give to Hamas and every future Palestinian government - for you are not just wishing death upon millions now, but are wishing death upon countless more in the future by supporting the precedent of government-mandated genocide by Palestinians, for Palestinians (and, in the case of the human shields, of them).
Once you realize why you can't explain any of these things to those around you who are smarter than you, sit down and try to think about why you can not successfully convince yourself of these (as you must in order support the side you have been convinced to choose).
9/11 truthers take support for Hamas as a matter of faith: they must, they must, or they are "Zionists," as everyone who is smarter than them and knows more about the situation than they is a "Zionist." This, again, is pure fraud. None of us here at CRNU are "Zionists" in the true sense of that word. None of us think Israel is perfect - Israel is not perfect. None of us think that imminent action on behalf of saving Palestinian lives is unnecessary (especially considering those lives are currently in the hands of a government that would place them squarely into the laser sights). Everyone agrees that there is a better way. Neither Hamas, Fatah, nor Palestinian rejectionism as a political strategy represent that way.
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