PowerSwitch

Totally_Baffled wrote:I dont believe the US government anything to do with 9/11. Incompetence yes, direct involvement no.

Ooh, now this has got me going!

The proof of US government complicity in 9/11 is hard to make directly. However, the evidence that the event happened in the way the government told us it did is easy to disprove. The visual proof is enough to stand up on its own never mind all the other coincidences on that day. And if we have been lied to, then one could argue government involvement even without absolute evidence of it being the case.

I've said it before and I'll do so again. I have a couple of DVD's that I can copy (there is no copyright since the makers want the evidence distributed to the masses) which might just change your opinion on 9/11. If you or anyone wants some copies then please PM me and I'll send them out - no cost unless lots of you want them in which I might ask for the cost of the DVD + postage (a pound or so).

It might just change your whole view on the kind of people we are dealing with here i.e. the Bush's , Rumsfeld, Cheney and co.

Personally, I happen to think the exposure of truth surrounding 9/11 is very important since it has changed our whole world in the last few years and yet it was a Hollywood style stunt to make the case for promoting events such as Afghanistan, Iraq and now Iran.

Please don't remain ignorant about 9/11.

Bozzio wrote:

Totally_Baffled wrote:I dont believe the US government anything to do with 9/11. Incompetence yes, direct involvement no.

Ooh, now this has got me going!

The proof of US government complicity in 9/11 is hard to make directly. However, the evidence that the event happened in the way the government told us it did is easy to disprove. The visual proof is enough to stand up on its own never mind all the other coincidences on that day. And if we have been lied to, then one could argue government involvement even without absolute evidence of it being the case.

I've said it before and I'll do so again. I have a couple of DVD's that I can copy (there is no copyright since the makers want the evidence distributed to the masses) which might just change your opinion on 9/11. If you or anyone wants some copies then please PM me and I'll send them out - no cost unless lots of you want them in which I might ask for the cost of the DVD + postage (a pound or so).

It might just change your whole view on the kind of people we are dealing with here i.e. the Bush's , Rumsfeld, Cheney and co.

Personally, I happen to think the exposure of truth surrounding 9/11 is very important since it has changed our whole world in the last few years and yet it was a Hollywood style stunt to make the case for promoting events such as Afghanistan, Iraq and now Iran.

Please don't remain ignorant about 9/11.

I agree completely. There are simply to many unanswered questions and impossibilities in the whole thing. Speaking about that, the London bombings this summer seem to be in the same league. Not to speak about the failed bombings a week later. The only people who can do such things in the face of the London police without getting winded in are government agencies.

MacG wrote:

Bozzio wrote:

Totally_Baffled wrote:I dont believe the US government anything to do with 9/11. Incompetence yes, direct involvement no.

Ooh, now this has got me going!

[... snip craziness ...]

Personally, I happen to think the exposure of truth surrounding 9/11 is very important since it has changed our whole world in the last few years and yet it was a Hollywood style stunt to make the case for promoting events such as Afghanistan, Iraq and now Iran.

Please don't remain ignorant about 9/11.

I agree completely. [...snip more craziness ...]

Ummm... You're welcome to your views, but I'm worried that this sort of opinion can only damage the credence that the peak oil argument is now developing. Even if you're right, your views are still considered to be on the outer rim of sanity, and I certainly couldn't be seen to agree with you and still be taken seriously.

I agree completely. There are simply to many unanswered questions and impossibilities in the whole thing. Speaking about that, the London bombings this summer seem to be in the same league. Not to speak about the failed bombings a week later. The only people who can do such things in the face of the London police without getting winded in are government agencies.

Firstly, your comment about unanswered questions and impossibilities applies to both sides of the 9/11 argument. There are many many unanswered questions and holes in the "9/11 US government planned it " conspiracy as well.

As for the London bombings, your comment is simply plain wrong. May I remind you the IRA mortered downing street and got away with it, along with god knows how many other bombings on the main land over the last 30 years.

So to say that only government agencies can get away with such stuff with the police getting wind of it isn't true at all.

I agree with Tess , 9/11 conspiracy detracts from the peak oil argument and is (IMO) complete BS.

Tess wrote:Ummm... You're welcome to your views, but I'm worried that this sort of opinion can only damage the credence that the peak oil argument is now developing. Even if you're right, your views are still considered to be on the outer rim of sanity, and I certainly couldn't be seen to agree with you and still be taken seriously.

I agree that it might be unwise to contaminate PO with other issues, but I ask for so little? How could that be insane? Beside, "they got me going"...

The British police have a well earned reputation for effectively solving nasty crimes, and the rest of the world envy them. Only the Swiss and maybe the Danish police have similar reputations. What I've seen from the recent bombings is somewhat out of style. It's just... nothing! They shot an Argentinan guy in the head several times, but he seem to have been innocent, and that's it.

Would a little answers be that dangerous?

The same with 9/11. There is a growing rift in the US society over a couple of very tricky issues in that mess, and it would be good for everyone to get those questions answered. Would help with the healing and all that.

Totally_Baffled wrote: Firstly, your comment about unanswered questions and impossibilities applies to both sides of the 9/11 argument. There are many many unanswered questions and holes in the "9/11 US government planned it " conspiracy as well.

As for the London bombings, your comment is simply plain wrong. May I remind you the IRA mortered downing street and got away with it, along with god knows how many other bombings on the main land over the last 30 years.

So to say that only government agencies can get away with such stuff with the police getting wind of it isn't true at all.

I agree with Tess , 9/11 conspiracy detracts from the peak oil argument and is (IMO) complete BS.

Oh yes, there is a significant mess out there, that's for sure, and a lot of people make a lot of insane claims. And as previously stated, I agree that it's unwise to mix PO with other issues. Sorry all. Wont happen again. But you got me going....

Last words: BBC made a wonderful miniseries on this theme a couple of years ago. Hosted on Google Video:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... nightmares

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... nightmares

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... nightmares

Tess & TB,

It was the connection between 9/11 and oil that led me to discover peak oil. I am free to discuss whatever I want to and I'm afraid that PO might just have a very strong connection with 9/11. What connection is there between PO and Iran? We are discussing it here, however, and no one is condemning that.

I take it you don't follow Matt Savinar or Mike Ruppert? Both believe the official story of 9/11 is BS and have written about it in their books. (Mike's 674 page book is totally about the connection between PO and 9/11 - 'Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil'). Even Heinberg makes reference to US government wrong doing over 9/11 in Powerdown. Still no connection?

All I can say is just look at what those who offer counter arguments say before you condemn it. Why don't you take up my offer and watch the DVD's? If you can't do that then you have no right to argue with me over this issue since you are in the dark about the events of 9/11. You might have seen the pictures on the TV but are you in receipt of all the photographs, video footage, TV reports, interviews and so on from that time? I doubt it. One of the DVD's is taken from a conference held in New York in front of an audience of thousands and presented by physicists, business men, engineers, environmentalists and others who look at the true evidence from that day. Are those genuine people crazy too?

If you want to believe the PTB then that is fine but I have to ask how you can possibly believe PO to be true and spread that message to others whilst condemning equally convincing counter arguments to other major stories like 9/11.

PO has very little evidence on the face of it. That is why it is so hard to tell others. A few graphs from Mr Campbell, that could just be crap for all I know. Now, the evidence for 9/11 is there for all to see yet people like yourselves don't want to know. Why? Because it means having to shift one's whole reality and for 99% of the population that is too difficult. It is exactly this fact that allows attrocities such as 9/11 to be staged by governments and accepted by the general public.

My offer remains open.

Bozzio wrote:(Mike's 674 page book is totally about the connection between PO and 9/11 - 'Crossing the Rubicon

Strictly speaking that is not true. The book goes into a LOT more detail about the wider picture of drugs running and money laundering and how "dirty money" is good for the economy (and I have since heard something on Radio4 about "dirty money" in a similar vein). It's much more than a Peak Oil and 9/11 book. For instance I learnt how the Taliban were a "problem" because they outlawed the growing of poppies and hence reduced the heroin supply by 95%. Fox News, however, pedalled the story that the Taliban were "drug lords". Since the invasion, heroin production is at an all-time high. Something doesn't fit, and the Fox News story appears to be the most likely candidate.

To my mind the problem with conspiracy theorists is not so much about what Ruppert and Savinar say; they're at my "limit of believability". The problem lies with the likes of Alex Jones.

PNAC is the logical extension of the material in the book "The Grand Chessboard". I only got halfway through it, it's a very "chewy" read.

Is Perle thought of as one of "the crazies"?

Richard Perle is the AntiChrist. Period.

Bandidoz wrote:o my mind the problem with conspiracy theorists is not so much about what Ruppert and Savinar say; they're at my "limit of believability". The problem lies with the likes of Alex Jones.

I agree about Alex Jones. It's guys like him that give the whole conspiracy thing a bad name. He usually presents no evidence.

Can I just say that if you believe the official story of 9/11 then that makes you a conspiracy theorist too. The official story claims that Osama Bin Laden and a group of Middle Eastern men conspired to attack America on home soil. The official story is therefore a conspiracy theory. I say this because it bugs me when the phrase 'conspiracy theorists' is used. We can talk semantics if you like but this phrase usually implies that such people are weirdos. Now I believe in only one or two of the hundreds of conspiracy theories out there. Why? Because I have no proof. The official story of 9/11 however is easy to disprove. That doesn't make me a conspiracy theorist, just someone who has seen the full evidence and therefore can make a different connection to such an event.

You're right about Rupperts book. I stand corrected, although PO does feature prominently.

I take it you don't follow Matt Savinar or Mike Ruppert? Both believe the official story of 9/11 is BS and have written about it in their books. (Mike's 674 page book is totally about the connection between PO and 9/11 - 'Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil'). Even Heinberg makes reference to US government wrong doing over 9/11 in Powerdown. Still no connection?

I am familiar with arguments the for the US government being involved in 9/11 - it has been discussed ad infinitum on PO.com.

But I find the arguments weak.

I also think Ruppert is a total nutcase. This is the guy that predicted economic and social collapse in the UK this winter!

He also predicted economic and social collapse in the US last winter!

He makes inaccurate predictions all the time, and for me , if totally discredited.

I take my hat off to him for raising PO awareness, he must take credit for that. But unfortunately this isnt enough for me to take everything he says as gospel.

Also hasnt Deffeyes/Heinberg (one of the two that used to work with him on FTW) distanced himself from Ruppert because of extreme views and quacky conspiracy theories?

Matt Savinar is more credible, I like him a lot. However , he lets himself down by defending Ruppert to the hilt despite whatever bullshite he may come out with. Fair play though, Ruppert introduced MS to PO.

As for PNAC - this is the neocon right wing "think tank" yes? Is this official strategy then? Does that mean everything that comes out "think tanks" is official government strategy? The reason I ask is that, many think tanks come out with all sorts of wacky stuff - it doesnt mean it is official strategy. Remember that Chinese TT that was prepared to sacrifice half of Chinese cities in a nuclear war with the US -- is that official strategy - I say BS in both cases.

Wasn't PNAC where the "Axis of evil" speech come from? If so , I dont remember the yanks invading North Korea yet?

For christ sakes, the yanks couldnt even keep Monica Lewinskys blowing of Bill Clinton secret, let alone organising , silencing , training , sabotaging all of the people/equipment required for 9/11! Isnt it amazing we cannot find a single credible witness/official or anyone who will testify to anything dodgy as regard 9/11! Strange that!

The official story maybe bull. But has it occured to you Bozzio, is that when government make mistakes, they try and cover up! This therefore gives everyone cause to go "they are lying it must be a conspiracy!!"

Also the implications of what you suggest raise all sorts of other questions:

1. If 9/11 was a pre text to Iraq - Tony Blair must be in on it , and be PO aware, in which case he is behaving strangely. Why has cut back our armed forces, why have we allowed ourselves to be reduced to 1 aircraft carrier. Not the actions of a nation expecting continous resource wars!

Sorry 9/11 and US government planned is total fantasy, and quite frankly I wouldnt be suprised to find the theory and the definition of "Gullible" in the next edition of the Oxford dictionary! It is up there with all those that think the US faked the moon landings yadeyadeyada!!


Dont believe everything you read , just because its in a book , doesnt make it correct.

Totally_Baffled wrote:For christ sakes, the yanks couldnt even keep Monica Lewinskys blowing of Bill Clinton secret, let alone organising , silencing , training , sabotaging all of the people/equipment required for 9/11!

You forget that it was politically expedient for that "secret" to get out.

Isn't it odd that no-one who was on watch on 9/11 or in the months leading up to it has been sacked? In fact, most of them have been promoted. And what about "sabotaging of evidence"; all of the wreckage got scrapped.

How many hundreds of people worked on the Manhattan project? Or drafted Operation Northwoods? Or the bilateral withdrawal of Russia out of Cuba and America out of Turkey, that was presented to the world as a unilateral one?

How is it that News organisations now openly state that Iran is "awash in oil" so don't need Nuclear power, when Iran peaked in 1974?

TB,

Most of the answers to your questions can be found in the free DVD's I'm offering. The visual evidence is quite stunning - certainly raises a lot of questions which one cannot deny run counter to the story we've been told. There's lots of stuff in those documentaries that you won't even know exists, unless you watch them. It includes accounts by many witnesses talking about their involvement but who have been silenced by law.

Totally_Baffled wrote:Dont believe everything you read , just because its in a book , doesnt make it correct.

I agree. So tell me, how did you find out about PO? Did someone tell you or did you read a book, or both I wonder? Can you believe everything you've read about PO because many people will knock PO theory as being BS. Who is right, you or them? How do you convince others that PO is real - show them a copy of The End of Suburbia or give them a book such as The Party's Over? Are these to be believed or should we only accept what the PTB tells us? If it's the latter case then PO doesn't exist. Has Bush stated it to be true. Has Blair? Get my point?

I'm sorry I've angered you so much. I accept that you are defending yourself. I'd just ask that you listen a little more to what people like me have to say about events such as 9/11. It is important. If everyone did that then we might not be at war with Iraq right now and we might not be witnessing the political wrangling that is happening over Iran.

I guess we'll just have to agree to differ. Thanks for at least showing some passion.

B

9/11 is a real mindfuck. I can appreciate why many people (such as the folks at The Oil Drum), in their struggle for legitimacy and credibility hate the association of Peak Oil and conspiracy theory. After all, conspiracy theory has been so utterly discredited in the public imagination that you might as well paint yourself blue or set yourself on fire as bring up conspiracy theory when attempting to convince someone of the reality of an apparently unrelated subject, such as oil depletion.

Now people in the UK don't have much difficulty believing that the Iraq war had something to do with oil rather than being 'a new front in the War on Terror' as Messrs Bush and Blair would have it.
Getting them to accept that the US government was complicit in the murder of 3000 of its own citizens? And that our media was more or less complicit in the ensuing coverup? That's just so far outside of most people's comfort zones you might as well forget it.

This is where The Big Lie gets its power from: our willingness to deceive ourselves; to refuse to believe, or even contemplate, what we would prefer not to be true. Thus it doesn't matter how glaring the inconsistencies, or how cogent the evidence, if the evidence is ignored because it's 'conspiracy rubbish' its quality is entirely irrelevant.

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored" Aldous Huxley.

For more than 3 years after 9/11 I refused to even contemplate the possibility of foul play by TPTB. I didn't buy the story about flight 93, and I permitted myself to research this one aspect of the story to my satisfaction, but I did not permit myself to look at the conspiracy theories surrounding the rest of the day's events.

The thing about conspiracy theory is that it's extremely hazardous to the health of your Weltanshauung. Nobody wants to be a crank, and even if the evidence is there, what good will it do you?

But once you dip your toe in it's easier to return a second time, and in time, in spite of my apprehensions, I did. I've always prided myself as being a relatively free thinker; to be able to distinguish truth from reality, propaganda from fact.

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it." Aristotle

Nonetheless I was afraid of what I would find, or what I might lead myself to believe, when I started looking into the other inconsistencies surrounding 9/11. Once you go down this road, there's no going back. The facts are there. Once you look at them, substantiate and corroborate them, there's no more defending your original worldview on essentially aesthetic grounds, such as Occam's Razor (AKA Keep It Simple Stupid) or 'I prefer to cockup theory of history to the conspiracy version' (AKA the false dichotomy).
But there it is, the aesthetic objection will remain, as it must. After all, openly discussing the possibility of complicity of one's own government in the murder of its own citizens is just not possible in a still functioning society, and it probably never has been or will be. The Internet doesn't count. Here our opinions are all equally irrelevant.

Most people will say that in the past where it is now acknowledged such crimes occurred it was made possible thanks only to totalitarianism. That's simply not true. Far more powerful is people's need to believe that the establishment (BBC, CNN, Pravda or whatever) view of the world, while obviously biased can't actually be that wrong, can it?

Incidentally Dale Allen Pfeiffer was the Peak Oil reporter from FTW that chose to distance himself from Ruppert. As for Ruppert's credibility, it's true that his willingness to stick his neck out has made him look a fool more than once, and there's certainly no shortage of people who seem to be offended by his very existence. That said, wisely or unwisely both Richard Heinberg and Colin Campbell have supported his point of view in their recent books, and for myself, I've read Crossing the Rubicon, and I think Ruppert makes a strong case.

I have to say I've a lot of sympathy for Jim Kunstler's 'allergy' to conspiracy theory. It's a very healthy reaction in public discourse if you want people to keep listening.

However, when it comes to talking geopolitics, there's no getting away from some fundamental truths - blood will almost certainly be shed over the rest of the oil, and we will continue to be lied to.

Iran is just the next chapter in this saga, and it remains to be seen whether the US is bold enough to expand the War on Terror. I hope there will be no more than some covert action or maybe some Israeli bombing. It might escalate from there, but who knows? What we are dealing with here is not one nation's nuclear ambitions, but the unfolding of events so crucial to the future of our way of life that nothing is off the table, no stratagem can be ruled out, because the stakes have never been higher. In the years to come, as Kunstler predicts, I believe there will be progressively more 'psychosis' in politics. The question is, have we already lost touch with reality? Most of the US still accepts the fundamental pretext for The War on Terror, because it's repeated to them every day in every newspaper and on every TV network. We are at War. Our way of life is under threat. We must confront The Evildoers.

Bozzio wrote: It is important. If everyone did that then we might not be at war with Iraq right now

Sorry but that is naive. In a way, the Iraq war was good in so far as it made a "soon" Global Peak Oil a whole lot more believable to many people. Energy policy on display to the world.

Bandidoz wrote:Sorry but that is naive. In a way, the Iraq war was good in so far as it made a "soon" Global Peak Oil a whole lot more believable to many people. Energy policy on display to the world.

How can the killing of tens of thousands of innocent children, women and men not to mention 3000+ soldiers be a good thing? Assuming the scenario was the other way around I would hate to see my children blown to pieces just so that another country can take our resources.

That's a very poor way of promoting or marketing Peak Oil theory. I prefer to stick to facts and figures in books and on the internet. Much more peaceful.

No one should ever say that war is a good thing! That's naive.