Josh Marshall is not familiar with Alex Jones, are you?
I just listened to Josh Marshall on CSPAN and he got a call from a person who asked him whether he knew about Alex Jones and Infowars.com and then went into a semi-coherenet conspiracy rant about the media. Josh said he was not familiar with Alex Jones. I was a little surprised, but I guess that's because I'm from Austin and he is sort of an all-intrusive figure here. It made me curious to find out how well known he is outside of Austin.
Alex Jones is an Austin cable TV/radio/internet personality and I've always believed he was the driving force behind Ron Paul's popularity among young and impressionable types, Paul being the most frequent guest on Jones' radio show. I never listen to him, so I'm not an expert on the guy, but he deals entirely in conspiracy theories. He got his start in the Clinton era, talking about the jack-booted government thugs of the ATF, but unlike Rush and others, he stayed anti-government during the Bush era, just transfering his venom to the Bush administration. He is a 9-11 "Truther," who believes September 11 was an inside job. In fact, I would say he is one of the main Truther's out there, having directed and produced several of the 9-11 conspiracy movies.
His main claim to fame is that he and someone from his staff snuck into the Bohemian Grove and videotaped the mock human sacrifice ritual that occurs in the opening ceremony. That and the Skull and Bones thing helped fuel his belief that Democrats and Republicans are both conspiring to submit the united states to the will of the UN (or something like that). His paranoid rants focus on "One World Government" conspiracies, CIA mind control, Sept 11, the second ammendment under threat, etc. But he also frequently showed up at Austin City Council meetings to complain about some local sign of the apocalypse. Fellow Austinite Richard Linklater cast Jones to play himself in "Scanner Darkly" and in "Slacker," in both cases spewing his conspiracies into a megaphone (in "Scanner Darkly" a black van pulls up next to Jones ranting on the street corner; some special ops types jump out; and they drag him, struggling, into the van before peeling away).
Like I said, I never listen to him, but back when I had cable, I used to stop and watch briefly, fascinated, whenever I happened to flip to his show. I know a statistically aberrant number of bipolar people, but I have never seen someone so consistently hypomanic, every time I saw him, always just on the edge of fullblown mania. He obviously a bright guy, who does do real research, gathers real information which is often scary just on its face, and interprets it in the most paranoid fashion possible, taking it far beyond credibility. Unlike Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly and even Ron Paul, I think Alex Jones really believes his own theories.
Anyway, I guess I thought Jones was more famous than he is, or maybe Josh Marshall just has better things to do than learn about 9-11 truthers, but I just wanted to take an informal poll and see who out in TPM-land had heard of him.
Not that it really means anything, but never heard of him. FYI located in NH.
December 26, 2008 3:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oops. I was wrong...Alex Jones wasn't in "Slacker" he was another animated Linklater movie "Waking Life." Here's the video of that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfEuSNejejY
December 26, 2008 3:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nah, I've been directed to his site, but I still never heard of him.
(cluckling)
December 26, 2008 4:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Who? And by the way, who are you?
December 26, 2008 4:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Who am I? Put it this way: I would be much more shocked to learn that Josh Marshall WAS familiar with me (even by my tpm name) than I was that he hadn't heard of Alex Jones.
December 26, 2008 7:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
boo who? er, hoo?
December 26, 2008 8:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think Alex is fairly well known around the country, but I think some fellow liberals who come across him sort of cringe at his style. It's a cultural difference that prevents otherwise intelligent people from hearing Alex out, which is unfortunate.
Alex cites real evidence, and I think progressives are becoming more and more receptive to his "both parties are run by the same people, who don't care about our wellbeing" message.
Here are some quotes everybody should be aware of before dismissing the notion that One World Government is a long desired solution in search of a problem:
"In the next century, nations as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. National sovereignty wasn't such a great idea after all." Strobe Talbot, President Clinton's Deputy Secretary of State, as quoted in Time, July 20th, l992.
Here's one of Alex's several interesting documentaries:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8136133221213939183&ei=lU9VSd-XCY-YrAL1_t2HBQ&q=terrorstorm+final+cut
"We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries."
David Rockefeller Baden-Baden, Germany 1991
"Today, America would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order [referring to the 1991 LA Riot]. Tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told that there were an outside threat from beyond [i.e., an "extraterrestrial" invasion], whether real or *promulgated* [emphasis mine], that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this *scenario*, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by the World Government." Dr. Henry Kissinger, Bilderberger Conference, Evians, France, 1991
December 26, 2008 4:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bill,
Where do you live? I know Alex Jones frequently talks about how famous he is, but I don't know that many people outside of Texas have heard of him.
I disagree that it's a "cultural difference" with his style that makes people disregard him; I think it's that he takes every theory beyond the point of basic credibility and he's also clearly moderately unhinged. Keith Olberman has a "style" that turns some people off but his style is schtick. Alex Jones can't control it.
Likewise, lots of people don't like Michael Moore, and he may sometimes extend his premises beyond what the facts support, but even he doesn't conclude that because the 9-11 buildings collapsed in a surprising way, that proves that George Bush conspired with a jewish real estate mogul and Osama Bin Laden--and managed to coopt thousands of federal, state, and local authorities into their conspiracy of silence--in order to commit insurance fraud, or whatever the premise is. THAT is delusional.
Likewise, those three quotes with no context do even come close to convincing me that there is any "danger" of a one-world government.
I remember once seeing commedian Joe Rogan on the Bill Hicks show hanging out with Alex Jones and listening to him rant. Finally Joe Rogan said to him, "You know what I think? I think YOU are actually a CIA plant. And what you're doing is describing real CIA and government programs that the government doesn't want us to know about but then you throw in all this batshit crazy stuff that no same person would believe so that people will conclude that it's ALL crazy."
And the funny thing is that Alex Jones got really indignant and defensive--not that he was being called batshit crazy, but that he was being accused of working for the CIA.
December 26, 2008 6:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
boo,
I'm sure you'd acknowledge that we were lied into war with Iraq, which cost thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi lives. You also might be aware that the air at Ground Zero was deemed to be safe by Christine Todd Whitman and the EPA after White House intervention, most likely because they wanted the stock exchange re-open as soon as possible. This has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Ground Zero first responders, and the future death of hundreds more, from the toxic air that was known to be toxic.
Do you doubt 9/11 was allowed/caused because Cheney, Rumsfield etc couldn't be evil enough to do it, or because you don't think they could get away with it?
It only would have taken a few dozen people to be in the know, including the generals who scheduled more Air Force exercises that morning than any other day in history, despite the system blinking red, as Tenet later put it.
Remember JFK, which happened 45 years ago.
At the very least, you should be somewhat skeptical. Kean of The 9/11 Commission said that they were set up to fail.
If one person knew about the attacks and let it happen, that is one of the greatest crimes in American History. Nobody has even been fired, and never underestimate what fear for personal and family safety can do to silence a would be whistle blower.
I don't think you'd deny that Building 7 was pulled intentionally, since Silverstein admitted it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WYdAJQV100
I don't know if you've studied the flight path of the plane that supposedly hit the Pentagon, or the pictures of the wreckage, but that entire situation is incredibly sketchy, to say the least.
And let me know if you've seen a convincing photo of an intact plane crash site at Shanksville.
At the very least, they lied about Building 7 being accidental, and lied about not shooting down Flight 93.
Watch Press For Truth, a documentary about 4 widows trying find out what happened to their husbands at the WTC, and at the very least you will have some of the same serious questions I do:)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3979568779414136481&ei=wH1VSd-YOY6cqALgsdX2Cw&q=press+for+truth
December 26, 2008 7:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with every word. It is too easy to call people "crazy conspiracy theorists." Did Bush say, "Now you've covered your ass" as he went out to play golf, in response to the CIA man who warned him -- another warning -- about 911? Did Bush sit, unmoving and unprotected in that elementary school just after the second plane hit? How did they know he was not in danger? The unanswered questions exceed the faked answers over and over again.
I just read what Pseudoscience said below. To say "I generally don't subscribe to conspiracy theories" allows people to get away with murder sometimes. Some of these theories (like we never landed on the moon) deserve to be put aside, but to say that all conspiracies are bogus is extremely naive, and it is exactly what powerful criminals count on.
December 27, 2008 12:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's easy to call them that when that is exactly what they are. Every grain of truth in Jones rantings is surrounded by a ton of horseshit, which effectively blocks any rational inquiries from going forward.
December 27, 2008 1:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jan, look again at my new comments. I do not just wantonly call people crazy. You cannot use reason against a true believer. It's doesn't matter whether they believe that 911 was pre-planned by our government, or the greatest lie ever told:
(why isn't Joeseph thre patorn saint of the gullible?)True believers will not face their own inconsistencies. Bush's "you've covered you ass", response to a CIA briefer is not evidence he had prior knowledge of 911, but instead evidence of his arrogant lack of concern about potential terrorist threats to America. He derisively referred to Clinton's attempt to take bin Laden out with cruise missiles something to the effect of "shooting $50 million missiles up a camel's butt". Bush's reading of "My Pet Goat" is an indication that he was unable to comprehend the implications of the 911 attacks. Once it got through his thick skull, in an act of abject cowardice, he went up in Air Force One, and started circling Kansas for several hours. Bush was derelict in his duty to defend America on 911. This is not evidence of a conspiracy, it is evidence he is an intelligence failure driven by ideology.
What seems like breaks in the clouds exposing a conspiracy is instead breaks in the after the fact cover their asses smokescreens.
December 27, 2008 8:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Two words. Operation Northwoods
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
December 27, 2008 8:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wait, you're claiming that a Strangelovian proposal created by a fanatical anti-commie Pentagon Staff General, which there is absolutely zero proof was ever acted on, is evidence of a vast global conspiracy?
Hi Ho Conniver!
The Lone Gunman Rides Again!
December 27, 2008 11:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
9/11 and the push for central control of the world are two different, though probably not completely unrelated things.
I don't know exactly what happened on 9/11, and who was really stupid, who did nothing intentionally to let it happen, and who actively planned the attack.
I have a lot of questions, as any rational person might when digging into the evidence, and the whitewash that was the 9/11 Commission.
I do envy your certitude that nobody in government knew the specifics of the attacks and consciously refused to do what they could to stop it.
And Operation Northwoods was only stopped because JFK rejected it. You know JFK, the guy who was shot in the face by a lone gunman situated behind him?
It's okay to have unanswered questions, and it doesn't mean such people consider their selves superior to everybody else. I believed the gist of the official story for years.
December 28, 2008 12:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
OK, I was trying to be diplomatic. Your Strobe Talbot quote is falsely attributed, and paraphrased all to hell in an contextual distortion to make it fit within your conspiracy world-view.
First, in 1992, Talbot was not a Clinton anything. He was instead an editor at Time Magazine, who was finishing up a 21 year career in which he'd progressed from reporting on Eastern Europe, the State Department and the White House, then to D.C. bureau chief, and finally an editor-at-large and foreign affairs columnist. The sliced and dice quote is mangled from a July 20, 1992 Op/Ed Talbot wrote, over three months before Clinton was even elected, and close to a year before he was appointed by Clinton as an Ambassador at large, representing the US in the new forming states that were then breaking away from the former Soviet. His appointment as Deputy Secretary of State wasn't until 2004. Very twisted attribution for the citation. Here let me fix it for you:
Anyone who actually reads the Op/Ed by Talbot would not come away thinking he was opining for a One World government, but was instead proposing a federation of nations, whose representatives were elected in democratic processes. He was proposing the American framework as a governmental model for the world, stating that would lead to less factionalism and violence by giving everyone representation. Oooh, that evil Bilgeburger Talbot...
Now I realise that you have probably never made any effort to check the veracity of this citation, and instead just copied/pasted it from another source. Still, given the way it twists in the wind, is there any rational reason why I should believe that any citation your proffer is accurate?
December 27, 2008 3:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
I've heard of jim and jennifer, but not alex.
December 26, 2008 4:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
I live in Texas and have family in Austin that I visit on occasion. Never heard of him.
December 26, 2008 4:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
never heard of em.
But this does explain a lot about Texas.
December 26, 2008 6:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
I've heard of Alex Jones, and have a little familiarity with him. I generally do not subscribe to conspiracy theories; while Alex Jones senses them under every rock, and attempts to paint the whole world as being driven from behind the scenes, by unseen master classes.
Skull and Bones is not an overlord cabal, it is an old influential fraternity whose membership includes sons of former members and students picked for their potential to hold powerful positions in the future. Members in fraternities often create lifelong bonds, and it is not evidence of some vast conspiracy that many well-known and/or extremely wealthy Yale alumni were members in it.
Conspiracy theories usually posit as an essential point at their foundation, an irrational level of competence from the product of group though, that has a probability of existence in the real world, that can be properly expressed statistically, as nil.
C'mon, do you really believe that Neocons and the Bush Administration are competent enough to have planned 911? Of course they are not, but they did attempt to hide their own culpability for it happening, and were willing to exploit it as a means to advance their own personal goals. What Jones perceives to be evidence of an unseen omnipotent hand briefly exposed to the light, I perceive to be a break in a poorly implemented smokescreen of mendacity wafting up from the bare backsides of intelligence failures.
Here's my depiction of a Bush conspiracy theory
December 27, 2008 1:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
There's no way people might be smarter than PseudoCyAnts. That would be an irrational suggestion, and offensive to Pseudo's vanity.
Tricking the majority of the US into a multi-trillion dollar disaster in Iraq is child's play. Pseudo could do that in his sleep.
But preventing hijacked airliners from being intercepted, by scheduling an unprecedented number of Air Force training exercises? That's pure genius that nobody could have possibly thought of. Because Pseudo would have thought of it first, or at least recognized exactly what happened the second he heard about the first tower being hit.
No way Henry Kissinger and Dick Cheney are smarter than Pseudo.
"Today, America would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order [referring to the 1991 LA Riot]. Tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told that there were an outside threat from beyond [i.e., an "extraterrestrial" invasion], whether real or *promulgated* [emphasis mine], that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this *scenario*, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by the World Government." Dr. Henry Kissinger, Bilderberger Conference, Evians, France, 1991
December 27, 2008 10:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, the sludge in the u-pipe of my drain is smarter than either. Look what they did to the country. All they had to do was leave it alone. Stupid and arrogant, a quality which your preceding appears to share with them.
Look, I agree they "pulled building 7." I'd even say the reason they haven't been forthcoming about it is because there were CIA records there that were no longer secure, and it was in the administrations best interest to let the crazies gain a foothold to distract from other, legitimate and awkward questions.
It is no more or less than that. Mundane and hardly as exciting, but then the truth rarely is. Good job for helping to shield any rational enquiries with your sophomoric and overly-dramatic nonsense. Jones probably gets a stipend from the GOP.
You can choose to behave rationally, or to get your ire up over every half-baked bit of nonsense thrown in your path. Jones has a compelling reson to act like a suspicious father with a beautiful teenaged daughter who see lies and innuendo everywhere: he makes a good living out of it.
Jones is a contemporary bunkshooter skilled at creating mountains out of molehills and faking that elusive quality, sincerity. Your contempt for the majority of your fellow citizens, (who are all dumber than you--right?) is obvious and pitiful.
Get a grip son. Come out of your cave.
December 27, 2008 1:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
I even have trouble with "pull building 7".
The 911 truthers' claims about it have properly debunked. Note the part about Alex Jones' artful editing. The most likely meaning of "pull WTC 7" is not an order to detonate it, but an order to evacuate emergency workers.
Also, I highly recommend an piece written by one of the few full-fledged lefty journos that I respect for his integrity (POV is of course, another matter):
Alexander Cockburn, "A Regression in Consciousness: Flying Saucers and the Decline of the Left", Counterpunch, September 25, 2006
I believe that Cockburn's political worldview blinds him to the real underlying cause though. That John Bircher styled insanity now affects both-ends of the political bipolarity is not so much evidence of the left's decline, as it is evidence of linear political models' inapplicability. Politics can no longer be properly mapped to an either/or scale. Even the two-dimensional scale that is touted by libertarians fails. The problem with adding enough dimensions into a political model for a proper representation is that far too few humans are able to comprehend anything greater than 4: the 3 dimensions of normal space, along a time line. The concept of arrays needs to be well taught as a part of HS curriculum.
December 27, 2008 8:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
have you done this?
http://www.politicalcompass.org/
I will read and digest Mr. Cockburn. I haven't read him for awhile. His name always got caught in the filter at CSPAN.
December 27, 2008 8:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, I take the survey every now and again. I'll do it now, and let you know the score. I tend strongly towards libertarianism (no surprise, eh?), but less strongly in economic matters. this stems from my belief that there is a very limited subset property rights, which can properly be defined as "Natural Rights". The Natural right to property extends out only as far as property is directly utilised by an individual in their day to day life. All else is the grant of a state, therefore, not preexistent nor preeminent to the state. These state granted property rights include all forms of absentee ownership (landlord, undeveloped land, etc.), as well as all intellectual property, and most forms of heritable legacies. I did not come up with this idea myself, but was pointed to this by my favorite con.founder: See: T. Jefferson, Letter to Isaac Mcpherson, Monticello, August 13, 1813; Paragraph 5.
Also, I have a bone to pick with politicalcompass.org's question 12 on their iconochasms quiz. It is a distortion of fact. The citation refers to Jefferson's part in the codification of Virginia law from its disparate use of a multiplicity of texts into one reference work, in which it had been decided that his work on criminal law would only restate what was then the Virginia custom and/or common law precedence. He was simply restating English common law, and had noted he believed that many of the criminal punishments then meted out, were offensive, and extreme. But hey, why let a detailed contextual analysis of a quote get in the way of a cheap shot in the interests of giant slaying?
December 27, 2008 9:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Some might call this radical. it seems so far thinking though. It would be nice if we all worked for the betterment of society.
December 27, 2008 10:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
The second link didn't work for me.
I tend to agree with Cockburn regarding the ironically named 'truthers.'
There are some questions I'd like answered, like the air quality bogus report. (Every single dog that assisted died within 2 years--I got this from one of the trainers who knew all the other dog owners, personally).
That is a "why" I need to hear an explanation about.
December 27, 2008 10:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
My fault; not double checking my text edited html anchors. Try this.
December 27, 2008 10:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
I got most of them wrong, but it was an eye-opener. Thanks!
December 27, 2008 11:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
That really is beautiful cite.
December 27, 2008 10:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, hello Dickday
December 27, 2008 10:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Economic Left/Right: -3.12
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.54
Strongly libertarian with a moderately left tilt. I do not know the methodology used in determining the scoring for each question, but as a rule, most tests such as these do not properly score a belief that corporations are collectivist entities as being pure libertarianism, which likely accounts for a significant part of the left drift. These tests also tend to score anarchist tendencies more left than right, instead of being neutral along the Left/Right axis, and at the bottom of the Libertarian/Authoritarian axis. In other words, it probably suffers from a biased understanding of what should naturally flow from an uncompromised belief in pure libertarian theory.
December 27, 2008 10:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Your political compass
Economic Left/Right: -5.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.26
:)
I'm by Ghandi. My score changes every few years, a bunch of us were tracking our scores for a few years. Bushie drove me left.
December 27, 2008 10:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
In case you'd miss it; here's my most recent defense of libertarianism against right-tarded poseur's defamation of it. I am familiar with Dondero from other places on the net, BTW.
December 28, 2008 12:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for keeping up your dissection of Dondero's diatribe PCA. I abandoned that thread when it began to feel like we had invited a couple of Mormon missionaries into the house and weren't gonna be able to get them out.
December 28, 2008 1:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
Every time I take it, I sit right in the Dalai Lama's lap, (so to speak).
December 28, 2008 3:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Or perhaps exercises that are planned months and years in advance were used as the day because they were scheduled?
I don't disagree that Silverstein likely rigged the WTC buildings to blow that morning, that perhaps even may have even had a hand in orchestrating much or the operation through whatever means. There are too many unknowns to even come close to understanding who was responsible.
That is the problem with approaching the argument as if you already know the answers to very complex questions. That tends to end debate before it even begins for most people and raising one's voice doesn't help. Jones may in fact know everything there is to know and his delivery will ensure most Americans don't listen.
If fact, most Americans will never even know who he is.
December 27, 2008 2:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is an alleged quote supposedly transcribed from a tape made by some unnamed swedish journalist at a secret society meeting at some place in France in 1991. Supposedly.
It is not an official quote by any means, and you are misleading other people by presenting it as one.
Can you spell gullible? At some point you need to slap away the fingers leading you around by the nose.
December 27, 2008 3:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Cut it out, you're slaying me! It's not "Bilderberger", it's Bilderberg.
Look at the list of American attendees to Bilderberg conferences. How could you possibly assert that they are all part of a vast world conspiracy?
The conference doesn't release transcripts, so please to be explaining to me, how these citations were brought to light. Kissinger is a bastard, and he has done many reprehensible things as a foreign US representative, not the least of which were green-lighting the takeover of South Vietnam, and murderous repression by a Chilean Junta. He's not a mastermind. Chou En Lai once laughably recounted how easily Kissinger was punked with a simple application of Peking Duck to mouth.
Cheney was opposed to the Nixon/Kissinger strategy of opening up western manufactured goods and playing China off of the USSR. Guys like Cheney called it "appeasement", and still spread the myth that it was Reagan who caused the fall of the Soviet, not Pepsi Co. and Burger Kings built inside the Iron Curtain. Nixon was dark evil, but he at least had enough faith in America, and a sense of realism, to use the free-market as a weapon, and was a pure ballbuster who took dark delight while squeezing the Kremlin's state-owned family jewels in a vise, when his policy necessitated it.
Neocons are so dim-witted, they didn't even realise the Cardboard Bear was falling, until after it had come crashing down, and after it had imploded, during the Admin of Papa Bush, Cheney was working out his mastermind one world gov conspiracy by assuring crony-corporate buds got more than their share of the "Peace Dividend" as he began to cut-back on military funding, and was such a moron, got caught with his pants down when Saddam moved into Kuwait. During the Clinton admin, Cheny, as CEO of Halliburton, almost took it down with his 1998 acquisition of of Dresser Industries that came loaded up with asbestos liabilities. Cheney made the deal during a quail hunt. The man who cannot shoot straight.
Reagancomics are a legends only in their own minds. They are criminal, and wanton violators of the US Constitution, but they can't see farther than the end of their noses. They aren't part of a global conspiracy, but instead a criminal conspiracy, and there is a vast difference between the two.
December 27, 2008 3:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Weren't the Twin Towers a big chunk of that Dresser Industries asbestos problem?
December 27, 2008 4:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Whoops, quick change the subject! Asbestos claims that were a potential liability to Halliburton were from products manufactured by a former Dresser subsidiary, which they had spun-off in an attempt to doge liability for. What has never been reported that I'm aware of, but was happening about the same time was a Republican initiative in Congress for the government to step in and bail-out manufacturers facing asbestos lawsuits, because it had bankrupted several corporation already. The legislation fell-through.
Buildings do not sue for asbestos exposure. Persons or relations of persons who believe they have suffered irreparable health problems because of exposure do. If Dresser was facing lawsuits for asbestos exposure from some used in the construction of the WTC, the lawsuits did not disappear when the buildings collapsed and in fact may have greatly increased from persons or their relations who believe they were harmed from asbestos released in the WTC collapse.
A conspiracy theory awaits under every rock.
December 27, 2008 6:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh c'mon Pseudo, you are trying to mislead those who know the truth, the light and the way about the new world order and the black helicopters. But the truth and the light and the way is a powerful tool, the truthy keep it handy and it's easily explained why people like John Edwards, Dianne Feinstein, Mark Warner, Bill Richardson, both Clintons, and Obama's soon-to-be top economic adviser, Lawrence Summers are Bilderbergers (heh)-- they are all in on the plot, show their real selves at the secret conferences, and put on fake personas the rest of the year. Cognitive dissonance problem solved! The problem yet to be solved--how to save Obama from the evil Bilderberg net being set for him! Oops, a quick google shows we may have already lost him!
December 27, 2008 11:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bwak, I'm not 100% sure the quote is real. The David Rockefeller quote is from his autobiography. And despite Pseudo's alternate interpretations, it's pretty clear to me what he was saying:
"a union of separate states that allocate certain powers to a central government while retaining many others for themselves." Does that sound fun to you? What powers might we keep?
Here's a recent op-ed from the Financial Times:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7a03e5b6-c541-11dd-b516-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1
As far as 9/11, you're saying it's okay to believe that Building 7 was taken down intentionally to destroy some CIA files, but asking other questions is absurd.
I think this is a healthy discussion. Is it possible there is another element of the official 9/11 cavemen-with-boxcutters conspiracy that doesn't quite add up as well?
Didn't Cheney, Rumsfield, Wolfowitz, Feith, Perle, and several others write the PNAC document "Rebuilding America's Defenses," in 2000? Didn't that document lay out a plan to dominate the Middle East, including the invasion of Iraq, Iran, and Syria? Didn't the document also state that the public would never go along with such a (fcked up) plan barring some catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor?
Didn't all of the above mentioned names get appointed to top government positions, where they might be in position to (at the very least) let a new Pearl Harbor happen on purpose?
Didn't the FBI leadership stop investigations into several of the hijackers before 9/11? Didn't the head of the Bin Laden division at the FBI quit in disgust?
Wasn't the Patriot Act written before 9/11?
Didn't Bush have the Afganistan invasion plans on his desk on 9/10?
Wasn't there a suspiciously high number of Air Force training exercises scheduled for the morning of 9/11? Wasn't a FEMA team in place at the WTC on 9/11?
Are you convinced that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon?
Have you seen any good wreckage photos? Why did it circle around the building and hit a section under construction, when it was supposedly piloted by a terrible pilot who would have been better off crashing into the roof of Rumsfied's side of the building, which was a better, bigger, and easier target? Why was Rumsfield outside coming the wreckage 5 minutes after the crash, instead of in a command center? Why wasn't the building evacuated when the plane was approaching, and why wasn't it shot down?
It's healthy to ask questions, and healthy to have investigations that are not described by their chairmen as having been set up to fail.
December 27, 2008 4:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
You have of course, read the Rockefeller autobiography you attribute the quote to.
A Google Book search using: "grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years" as the search string returns 21 records, none of which are a Rockefeller autobiography
Google does have records of David Rockefeller's autobiography, "Memoirs", published by Random House. They have 1st printing (2002) and 2nd printing (2003) versions. I guess Google is indeed doing evil, and is part of these Global Conspiracies.
Funny thing about that Rockefeller attribution though. If you check the Google Book search I linked to, it first appears in publication from the early '90s, a decade before Rockefeller's autobiobraphy had even been published.
December 27, 2008 7:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry Pseudo, I get my mind bogglingly evil David Rockefeller quotes mixed up. This one if from his Memoirs, page 405:
"For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one world, if you will.
If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it."
He sounds like Strobe Talbot, although he's more than a minion.
Google JFK assassination also. It turns out there may not have been a magic bullet involved after all, as crazy as it sounds.
December 27, 2008 7:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
yeah, i know that it is an exercise in futility arguing with someone who believes a conspiracy theory, This is the first 911 truther thread i ever remembering encountering at TPM Cafe. It only facilitates missing the salient points. 911 was a dereliction of GW's duty to defend the United States, and was subsequently used dishonestly a cause for War Upon Iraq, through intimations that Saddam had something to do with it.
They used a dastardly terrorist attack implemented by 20 determined men, who much to this Nation's great misfortune, timed it to occur during a presidential administration so arrogant, ignorant and derelict, that it failed to read the portents, and see it coming.
As I said, this is evidence of a criminal conspiracy, not some vast unseen global conspiracy.
December 27, 2008 11:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
"i know that it is an exercise in futility arguing with someone who believes a conspiracy theory"
I'm fully capable of an open minded argument about 9/11. Like I said, I have a lot of questions. It seems to be you who is incapable of having the argument. I'd love to discuss all of the specifics of that day that don't add up. You seem to want to ignore all of the questions and write it all off to Bush's dereliction of duty, without addressing any of the specifics.
Who's incapable of a debate here? And Bwak believes that Building 7 was pulled to destroy CIA documents. Is he incapable of reason and incapable of argument as well? And what about his questioning why the White House intervened and instructed Christine Todd Whitman and the EPA to declare the air safe to breath? Since hundreds of first responders have died from the toxic air, what does that say about the White House and their respect for life of Americans working at the WTC?
If you're not too closed minded, here's yet another question- Why did the Secretary of Transportation, Norman Minetta, describe to the 9/11 Commission what appears to be a stand down order from Cheney as Flight 77 or it's replacement approached the Pentagon? And why was this testimony omitted from the final report? It might explain why the plane/missile was never intercepted or shot down from the anti-aircraft Stinger missles that surround the Pentagon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO-9LQDFE2Y
I look forward to discussing this clip in an open-minded fashion.
December 28, 2008 11:43 AM | Reply | Permalink