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| Is alexander cockburn on CIA LSD? |
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capitolgangster
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 Posted: Sun Dec 31, 2006 4:58 pm Post subject: Alexander Cockburn opening his mouth again on 9-11 |
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| Quote: | Distractions from awful reality
Conspiracy disproved
By Alexander Cockburn http://mondediplo.com/2006/12/02dconspiracy
The conspiracy theory that the World Trade Centre towers were demolished by explosive charges previously placed within them is probably impossible.{impossible he says!}
Any demolitions expert concocting a plan to hit a tall building with a plane and then use pre-placed explosives to ensure the undetectable {we don't think its undetectable dumb ass} collapse of the building would never place the explosives 20, 30 and 60 floors below the impact point. He would put them on one or more floors as close as possible to the planned impact level. {this is all assuming the "pancake theory" is even possible}
It is inconceivable that our demolitions expert would time his surreptitious explosions to blow hours after the impact. He couldn’t be certain that the impact fires would even last an hour, {They didn't hence the black smoke and people in the gaping wounds on the front of the building} so to mask the booster explosions he would have to time them to follow right after the impact.
To collapse a major building needs sizable charges, large enough to do a lot more than emit the puffs of smoke cited as evidence for the hypothesis. I’ve seen both live and filmed explosive building demolitions. Each explosion is accompanied by a visible shower of heavy rubble and a dense cloud of smoke and dust. That alone makes the hypothesis untenable; no expert would be willing to promise his client that he could bring down a tall building with explosions indistinguishable from the effects of an aircraft impact.
{brace yourself for this one!}Herman Soifer, a retired structural engineer, explains the collapse of Buildings 1 and 2 succinctly. The towers were tubes, essentially hollow. Tubes can be efficient structures, strong and economical. The WTC tubes resisted vertical loads, wind loads and vibrations and could probably have done well against earthquakes. However, the thin skin of the hollow tube must be braced at intervals to prevent local buckling of the skin under loads, otherwise the tube can go out of shape and lose its strength.
For their interior bracing, the thin-walled tubes depended primarily on the interior floors being tied to the outer wall shells. These floor beam structures were open web joists, adequate for the floor loads normally expected. The joist ends rested on steel angle clips attached to the outer walls.
As the floors at the level of impact caught fire, the open web joists, which could not be expected to resist such heat, softened, sagged and pulled away from their attachments to the walls. Their weight, and the loads they carried, caused them to drop on to the floor below, which then carried double loads {that is false. one floor on another doesn't produce a "double load"} and was exposed to heat. {where is the extra heat coming from???} It collapsed; so it went on down. As the floors dropped, they no longer braced the main tubes. This loss of bracing permitted the walls to buckle outward in successive sections, hence the house of cards effect.{what the fuck??? This guy is officially an agent}
There was no other major bracing as in a more conventional structure, or as might have been introduced if there were a fear of potential loss of the floors. {THE ENTRAL COLUMNS WERE IMAGINED OR WHAT???}There were no stiff horizontal trusses in the perimeter to act as bracing ribs every few floors. There was no system of vertical trusses to provide integrity, nor anything that could be considered a frame or skeleton of columns and attached girders to keep the tube intact.
The conspiracists’ last accusation is the collapse of WTC building number 7 hours after the attacks. But here again the explanations offered by US government agencies (the National Institute of Standards and Technology and, for Building 7, Fema) are more than adequate. The blast of hot debris from Building 1 kindled fires in 7 and caused an emergency power system to feed the burning to the point of collapse.
One of the building’s major bridging supports was heated to exhaustion by the burning of an abundant store of diesel fuel, pumped from the sub-basement by the back-up system and spraying through a torn pipe into the fire next to two of the three major structural trusses. The types of steel in the WTC (plain carbon and vanadium) lose half their strength when heated to about 570C , and even more as temperatures rise, as they did in WTC 1 and 2, to 1,100C. Physicist Manuel Garcia Jr calculates that the fuel spraying at 75 gallons a minute in Building 7 released energy equivalent to an explosion of 367 tons of TNT.
What is the goal of the 9/11 conspiracists? {Political revolution} They ask questions but never answer them; they never propose an overall scenario. Who do they expect to answer their questions? When answers are put forward, they are dismissed as fabrications or rebutted with another question. |
{I want to kill this guy. This is a second article, same day, same paper!}
| Quote: | Distractions from awful reality
US: the conspiracy that wasn’t
The left in the United States remains distracted by fantastic stories about conpiracies hatched by the Bush administration: in many of these, even the 9/11 attacks are believed to have been an inside job. Yet the chief, and most fearful, characteristic of the Bush administration has been its low level of practical management abroad and at home.
By Alexander Cockburn
Where was the American left in the recent campaign that ended in the recapture of both houses of Congress by the Democrats on 7 November? Was it in the streets fomenting opposition to the war in Iraq? No, the antiwar movement has been inert for months. When I was asked to give the keynote speech at a rare antiwar rally in my local town in October, three of my five fellow orators didn’t mention the war at all.
Instead they numbed the audience and sharply diminished its size with interminable dissections of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre towers and the Pentagon. Their aim was to argue that the attacks were an inside job organised by President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, or (a frequent variation on the theme) by darker powers for which Bush and Cheney are mere errand boys.
Five years after the attacks, 9/11 “conspiracism” has penetrated deep into the left in the US. It is also widespread on the libertarian and populist right, which is scarcely surprising since the United States populist right instinctively mistrusts government to a far greater degree than the left, and matches conspiracies to its demon of preference, whether the Internal Revenue Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the United Nations’ black helicopters (1) or the Jews.
These days a dwindling number of leftists learn their political economy from Marx. Into the theoretical and strategic void has crept a diffuse, peripatetic conspiracist view of the world that tends to locate ruling class devilry not in the crises of capital accumulation, the falling rate of profit, or inter-imperial competition, but in locale — the Bohemian Grove, Bilderberg, Ditchley, Davos (2) — or supposedly “rogue” agencies, with the CIA still at the head of the list. The 9/11 “conspiracy” is the summa of all this foolishness.
You trip over a fundamental idiocy of the 9/11 conspiracists in the first paragraph of a book by one of their high priests, David Ray Griffin: “In many respects,” Griffin writes, “the strongest evidence provided by critics of the official account involves the events of 9/11 itself . . . In light of standard procedures for dealing with hijacked airplanes . . . not one of these planes should have reached its target, let alone all three of them” (3).
A preposterous belief
The operative word here is “should”. A central characteristic of the conspiracists is that they have a devout, preposterous belief in US efficiency. Many of them start with the racist premise, frequently voiced in as many words in their writings, that “Arabs in caves” weren’t capable of the mission. They believe that military systems should work the way Pentagon press flacks and aerospace salesmen say they should work. They believe that at 8.14am, when AA flight 11 switched off its radio and transponder, an FAA flight controller should have called the National Military Command centre and Norad. To quote Griffin, they believe, citing reverently “the US Air Force’s own website”, that an F-15 could have intercepted AA flight 11 “by 8.24, and certainly no later than 8.30”.
They appear to have read no military history, which is too bad because if they had they would know that minutely planned operations, let alone by-the-book responses to an unprecedented emergency, screw up with monotonous regularity by reason of stupidity, cowardice, venality and all the other failings, including sudden changes in the weather.
According to the minutely prepared plans of the Strategic Air Command (SAC), an impending Soviet attack would have prompted missile silos in north Dakota to open, and their ICBMs to arc towards Moscow and kindred targets. However, the four test launches attempted all failed, whereupon the SAC gave up testing. Was it badly designed equipment, human incompetence, defence contractor venality or . . . conspiracy?
Did President Jimmy Carter’s April 1980 effort to rescue hostages taken in the US embassy in Tehran fail because a sandstorm disabled three of the eight helicopters or because the helicopters were poorly made or because agents of Ronald Reagan and the Republican National Committee (seven months before the US presidential elections) poured sugar into their gas tanks in a conspiracy? Does Mr Cohen in his store at the end of the block hike his prices because he wants to make a buck or because his rent went up or because the Jews want to take over the world?
Some photos of the impact of the “object” — the Boeing 757, flight 77, which hit the Pentagon — seem to show the sort of hole a missile might make. Ergo, 757 didn’t hit the Pentagon. A missile did. And in some photographs, that wasn’t smoke obscuring a larger rupture in the fortified Pentagon wall.
Chuck Spinney, now retired after years of brilliant government service exposing the Pentagon’s budgetary outrages, told me: “There are pictures taken of the plane hitting the Pentagon — they were taken by the surveillance cameras at Pentagon’s heliport, which was right next to impact point. I have seen them . . . both stills and moving pictures. I just missed seeing it personally, but the driver of the van I just got out of in South Parking saw it so closely that he could see the terrified faces of passengers in windows. I knew two people who were on the plane. One was ID’d by dental remains found in the Pentagon.”
Immune to reality checks
This won’t faze the conspiracists. They’re immune to any reality check: Spinney worked for the government, they switched the dental records, the Boeing 757 was flown to Nebraska for a rendezvous with Bush, who shot the passengers, burned the bodies on the tarmac and gave the teeth of Spinney’s friend to Dick Cheney to drop through a hole in his trousers amid the debris in the Pentagon.
Hundreds of people saw the plane, people who know the difference between a plane and a cruise missile. The wreckage of the plane was hauled from the site. Why does the obvious have to be proved? Would those who were wounded or who lost friends and colleagues that day assist in the cover up of a missile strike? Why risk using a missile, when you had a plane in the air and (to take the bizarre construct of the conspiracists) had successfully crashed by remote control into far more difficult targets, the WTC Towers?
What do we make of Osama bin Laden taking credit for the attacks? That he is still on the CIA payroll? And so it goes, on and on into the murk. But to what end? To prove that Bush and Cheney are capable of almost anything? Even though they haven’t shown the slightest degree of competence in anything? They couldn’t even manufacture “weapons of mass destruction” after US troops had invaded Iraq, when any box labelled WMD would have been happily photographed by the embedded press as conclusive testimony of the existence of WMDs.
The Democrats’ victory in the midterm US elections may help to remind the left that Bush and Cheney are not that much different from the politicians and overlords of US foreign policy who preceded them or will follow them. There was already a bipartisan consensus about Israel and Iraq. What the 9/11 conspiracists want us to believe is that the Bush/Cheney gang represent a new breed of evil, which might be the most dangerous deception of all, for it fosters the fantasy that a new administration, a Hillary Clinton or Al Gore administration, would pursue more humane policies.
The Twin Towers didn’t fall down because they were badly built as a consequence of corruption, incompetence, regulatory evasions by the Port Authority and because they had been struck by huge planes loaded with jet fuel. No, shout the conspiracists, they pancaked because scores of Cheney’s agents methodically planted demolition charges in the days preceding 9/11: a conspiracy of thousands, all of whom have held their tongues ever since, despite being party to mass murder.
Occam’s razor
If the evidence allows for several explanations to a given problem then the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions is most probably correct. This principle is called Occam’s Razor, after the 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar, William of Ockham. There is not the slightest need to postulate pre-placed explosive charges to explain why the towers collapsed at near free-fall speeds. Practical aspects of explosive demolitions make the explosive charge hypothesis improbable to the point of absurdity (see “Conspiracy disproved”).
There are plenty of real conspiracies in the US. Why make up fake ones? Every few years, property tsars and the city government in New York conspire to withhold fire company responses so that enough of a neighbourhood burns down for the poor to quit and profitable gentrification to ensue. That is a conspiracy to commit ethnic cleansing, and also murder. It is happening today in Brooklyn, even as similar ethnic cleansing and gentrification is scheduled in San Francisco, where Bayview Hunters Point is the last large black community in the Bay Area, sitting on beautiful waterfront property: so now is the time to move the black folks out.
The conspiracy virus is not new. Let me recall. The Russians couldn’t possibly have built an A-bomb without Commie traitors. Hitler was a victim of treachery, otherwise he couldn’t have been defeated by the Red Army marching across eastern Europe and half Germany. JFK couldn’t have been shot by Lee Harvey Oswald, it had to be the CIA. There is no end to examples seeking to prove that Russians, Arabs, Viet Cong, Japanese, whoever, couldn’t possibly match the brilliance and cunning of secret cabals of white Christians.
Some discover a silver lining in 9/11 conspiracism. A politically sophisticated leftist in Washington DC wrote to me agreeing with my ridicule of the inside job scenarios but adding: “To me the most interesting thing (in the US) is how many people are willing to believe that Bush either masterminded it [the 9/11 attacks] or knew in advance and let it happen. If that number or anything close to that is true, that’s a huge base of people that are more than deeply cynical about their elected officials. That would be the real news story that the media is missing, and it’s a big one.”
“I’m not sure I see the silver lining about cynicism re government,” I answered. “It seems to demobilise people from useful political activity.” For the conspiracism stems from despair and political infantilism. There’s no worthwhile energy to transfer from such kookery.
Richard Aldrich’s book on British intelligence (4) describes how a report for the Pentagon on declassification recommended that “interesting declassified material” such as information about the JFK assassination “could be released and even posted on the internet, as a diversion” and used to “reduce the unrestrained public appetite for secrets by providing good faith distraction material”. He added: “If investigative journalists and contemporary historians were absorbed with the vexatious, but rather tired, debates over the grassy knoll, they would not be busy probing into areas where they were unwelcome.”
I am therefore sure that the Bush gang, and all the real conspirators of Washington, are delighted at the obsessions of the 9/11 conspiracists. It’s a distraction from the 1,001 real plots of capitalism that demand exposure and political challenge. As Theodore Adorno wrote: “The tendency to occultism is a symptom of regression in consciousness” (5).
http://www.ocnus.net/artman/publish/article_27075.shtml |
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Ormond
Joined: 14 Apr 2006
Posts: 1556
Location: Belly of the Beast, Texas
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| Posted: Mon Jan 01, 2007 3:39 pm Post subject: |
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Welll....the poll question's a bit skewed. I know what you mean, though.
I'm going to go ahead and assume that the question is, really,
Is Alexander Cockburn a CIA plant, a knowing schill of the fake 'left' they set up to keep thinking people spinning their wheels in the mud of disinformation....then the answer would be, YES.
We know now that setting up a phony 'opposition' leaders, organizations, media is standard government counterintelligence procedure.
I was dumb enough to follow CounterPunch and TruthOut for 'reliable' news for a few years. That approach worked at keeping a lot of people following their noses during the 80's and 90's.
But domestic psywar and state terror operations have become so blantant and numerous since 2001, there's too many incidents for the intellectual mouthpieces like Cockburn and Chomsky to flick off. They prefer not to be asked over and over about 911, and the more they're asked, the more they sound like State Department spokesmen. Which it now appears they really are.
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capitolgangster
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| Posted: Mon Jan 01, 2007 5:47 pm Post subject: |
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| i see what you are saying.... it is a bit skewed. Is he willingly taking the acid is better... but it is just so fucking scary knowing that a lot of these guys have paychecks from Langley. Like actualy paychecks that they cash. You never know who to trust. Sadly, once you have taken the red pill there aint no turning back! |
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Ormond
Joined: 14 Apr 2006
Posts: 1556
Location: Belly of the Beast, Texas
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| Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 12:11 am Post subject: |
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The paychecks don't come from Langley with a big CIA seal on them with these guys. They come from 'respectable' big non-profit foundations. And 'generous benefactors'.
I think it's time we quit giving such shills as Cockburn and Chomsky the benefit of the doubt. They were bred in the think tanks. They aren't naive.
They know who they're working for, and they're in these positions precisely because they're psyops experts.
The proof is in the frequency of the selective denial. During the Reagan Era, much was still covert. Since 2001, there have been so many blatant, obvious ops going on that psyops schills just can't talk about, since their real job is distraction away from things like 911. They simply can no longer keep up with the lies. So they're 'busted'. Covers are more easily blown now.
Here's a good source interview on how CIA covertly taps, employes, and pays off qualified Intelligencia.
JOHN PERKINS: Well, I was initially recruited while I was in business school back in the late sixties by the National Security Agency...
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capitolgangster
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| Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 2:42 pm Post subject: |
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| I heard the Perkins interview when it aired and was amazed. Then I wasn't sure what to think about him. Once his "detractors" started in on him I think I believe him now. I understand the money doesn't come from Langley, I was saying just what you were. It is getting more and more obvious with these guys now that the lies are getting bigger and bigger. |
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Ormond
Joined: 14 Apr 2006
Posts: 1556
Location: Belly of the Beast, Texas
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| Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 3:42 pm Post subject: |
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I'm always cautious with 'former' gov assets revealing their secrets too. We have to be.
But I concluded that Perkins is telling it accurately. When you think about it, he's not really given away any classified information. That the CIA uses dummy front companies, and engages in international intrigue has been public knowledge all along, the standard stuff of John Clancy novels and movies, and television dramas (and comedies). He names names and events that were long public knowledge anyway--such as Kissenger's involvement with Pinochet, and refrains from naming names which are still classified. The benefit of his information is that it confirms what we knew, and there's no dinsinfo in his recounting as far as I could tell.
In terms of distraction, it may be in the form of letting people thing we've heard the full story, so we'll accept it and not inquire further. I mean, I'm under the impression that they've upgraded their modus operandi since 2001, so the information he gives is allowed, because it's obsolete. Things have changed drastically in the world since 2001. For one, the day of the propped up puppet regime dictators seems to have gone out with Saddam Hussein. They don't need them anymore. Economic control is pretty well wrapped up everywhere in the world--everybody is a member of the World Bank system now, with the exception of North Korea, Cuba, and I think, Syria. Did I leave out Iran? Venezuela? I'll have to look up the latest roster.
It now appears that they're going to have no trouble reigning in Cuba now that Fidel Castro's on his death bed. MSM handling of Cuba now is in line with an expectation that the deal's been struck. Cuba's not going to be a problem.
Similarly, Cockburn, Chomsky, and others perpetuate belief that the world works according to the pre-2000 paradigm. East and West, Nations and Ideologies in opposition. Possibly it never did really work like that except on the surface. Their 'rap' doesn't suffice to explain things any longer.
The shattering of the illusions beneath their premises has also exposed them as that 'man behind the curtain' that the Wizard of Oz told Dorothy not to pay attention to....
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foo
Joined: 18 Nov 2006
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| Posted: Wed Jan 03, 2007 12:26 am Post subject: |
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Alexander Cockburn is even worse than others have already alluded to. For the weekend edition of September 9/10, 2006, he posted the following article:
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn09092006.html
In addition to referring to people who question the official 9/11 fairy tale as members of a coven, he continued with this gem:
"...But in my view, the Warren Commission, as confirmed in almost all essentials by the House Committee on Assassinations in the late 1970s, had it right and Oswald fired the fatal shots from the Schoolbook Depository..."
Perhaps he isn't a paid agent. Maybe, like so many other old-guard commies, he's just totally clueless.
Martin |
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