National Post: '9/11 Skeptics Resurface' and "Conspiracy Theories"

National Post: '9/11 Skeptics Resurface' and "Conspiracy Theories"

By Arabesque

I came across an October 20, 2008 article entitled '9/11 Skeptics Resurface' from a link posted by a user at 911blogger.com. In this article, Adrian Humphreys of the National Post writes:

While the 9/11 election scandals were short-lived, soon buried by the stock market meltdown, it served to ignite-- or perhaps reinvigorate -- a cross-country campaign to get 9/11 conspiracy theories on to the Canadian public's agenda. On newspapers' letters pages, on Web sites and in blogs, 9/11 skeptics burst out of the closet and urged others to follow suit, apparently convinced they formed a silenced majority.

I would like to ask the National Post: is it a "conspiracy theory" that not one single person within the FAA, NORAD, FBI, CIA, etc was fired or reprimanded after the events of 9/11? Is it a "conspiracy theory" that those most responsible for preventing the attacks were promoted? It is a "conspiracy theory" that investigations into the 9/11 attacks were blocked by the Bush administration for more than a year, or that evidence was destroyed or is being withheld? National Post, were the 9/11 war games involving hijacked airliners on 9/11 as reported by credible news sources a "conspiracy theory"? Shouldn't this information be something that the National Post should be educating their readers about? Is it also a "conspiracy theory" that NORAD intercepts aircraft hundreds of times a year, but on 9/11 we are told... well actually we were told three contradictory stories by NORAD! So when NORAD tells us three contradictory stories in an attempt to explain why they couldn't intercept any planes on 9/11, is that a "conspiracy theory" too? Senator Mark Dayton said in testimony during a Senate Governmental Affairs Committee hearing that NORAD officials "lied".



Clearly, we can dismiss this without examination as simply another one of those "conspiracy theories". Members of the 9/11 Commission told the Washington Post that, "Suspicion of wrongdoing ran so deep that the 10-member commission, in a secret meeting at the end of its tenure in summer 2004, debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation." Of course we know that instead, key officials were promoted and never charged. Clearly, it was just some of those nutty conspiracy theorists in the 9/11 commission.

Please tell me National Post: is it also a "conspiracy theory" that the Family Member Steering Committee got 30% out of hundreds questions answered by the 9/11 Commission?

The "esteemed" mainstream media continuously fails to report on any of these facts in any serious way; instead producing a copious number of vapid and insulting (to our intelligence) attack pieces that ridicule fringe claims while ignoring any serious and unanswered questions about 9/11, such as questions from the family members which never got answered. The bankrupt use of the phrase "conspiracy theory" clearly indicates bias and lack of honest examination into the facts of 9/11. In retrospect, the embarrassing and shameful coverage of 9/11 by the mainstream media will be judged harshly by history.

Michael Parenti: Conspiracy Phobia on the Left

From an article by Michael Parenti: THE JFK ASSASSINATION II: CONSPIRACY PHOBIA ON THE LEFT

It is an either-or world for those on the Left who harbor an aversion for
any kind of conspiracy investigation: either you are a structuralist in
your approach to politics or a "conspiracist" who reduces historical
developments to the machinations of secret cabals, thereby causing us
to lose sight of the larger systemic forces. As Chomsky notes: "However
unpleasant and difficult it may be, there is no escape from the need to confront
the reality of institutions and the policies and actions they largely shape." (Z
Magazine, 10/92).

I trust that one of the institutions he has in mind is
the CIA. In most of its operations, the CIA is by definition a
conspiracy, using covert actions and secret plans, many of which are of
the most unsavory kind. What are covert operations if not conspiracies? At the
same time, the CIA is an institution, a structural part of the national security
state. In sum, the agency is an institutionalized conspiracy.

... Left publications have given much attention to conspiracies
such as Watergate, the FBI Cointelpro, Iran-Contra, Iraq-gate, CIA
drugs-for-guns trade, BCCI, and savings-and-loans scandals. It is never
explained why these conspiracies are important while the FJK assassination is
not. Chip Berlet repeatedly denounces conspiracy investigations while himself
spending a good deal of time investigating Lyndon LaRouche's fraudulent
financial dealings, conspiracies for which LaRouche went to
prison. Berlet never explains why the LaRouche conspiracy is a subject
worthy of investigation but not the JFK conspiracy.

G. William Domhoff points out: "If 'conspiracy' means that these [ruling class] men are aware of their interests, know each other personally, meet together privately and off the record, and try to hammer out a consensus on how to anticipate and react to events and issues, then there is some conspiring that goes on in CFR [the Council for Foreign Relations], not to mention the Committee for Economic Development, the Business Council, the National Security Council, and the Central Intelligence Agency." After providing this useful description of institutional conspiracy, Domhoff then conjures up a caricature that often clouds the issue: "We all have a tremendous tendency to want to get caught up in believing that there's some secret evil cause for all of the obvious ills of the world." Conspiracy theories "encourage a belief that if we get rid of a few bad people, everything will be well in the world."

To this simplistic notion Peter Dale Scott responds: "I believe that a true understanding of the Kennedy assassination will lead not to a few bad people but to the institutional and parapolitical arrangements which constitute the way we are systematically governed." In sum, national security state conspiracies are components of our political structure, not deviations from it.