"the movements some of us have spent a long time trying to build"

Yes, George, you've been so successful. The planet is toasting like a Pop Tart. Homophobia is so mainstream the ad company for Snickers thought it would make for a great Super Bowl campaign. Race relations are swimming (just ask the people of New Orleans). We have unprecedented corporate media consolidation. The current administration has legalized torture and revoked habeas corpus. America has over 700 military bases, and its elites continue to expand Empire.

What have you accomplished, George? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

"The 9/11 conspiracy theories are a displacement activity."

No. 9/11 skepticism attacks the heart of Empire's mythology. 9/11 is the myth on which all of Empire's murderous excesses are now based. And no matter how much you have to say about your pet problems, George, Empire will trump your concerns with one phrase: "9/11". The escalation of the bogus War on Terror will continue unabated until its foundational myth is destroyed.

"Popular Mechanics, which has ripped the demolition theories apart"

George, do you think for yourself? Ever? Here's Jim Hoffman's response to PM. There are others; but that would require that you do some research.

The problem, George, is not that 9/11 skeptics are "displacing" their energies from constructive activities. The problem is that people like you block our efforts and prevent real social change from happening.

"Because they are destroying the movements some of us have spent a long time trying to build."

And what, exactly, has your movement done Mr. Monbiot?

The last time I checked, globalization was proceeding just fine, while the the Left was busy sipping tea and munching crumpets at the Anarcho-Syndicalist Koffee Klatch.

You'd think that after a stream of decapitations of the Left in the U.S., starting with JFK, (ok, oligarchy-left), MLK, RFK, MalcolmX, the Black Panthers, that the oligarchy in the U.S. can and does whack people it doesn't like.

These events can, will, must be investigated by ordinary citizens who will not take the easy road of pooh-poohing these events as "conspiracy theories".

Here's what Chomsky once said about "conspiracy theories";

This is chronicled in the excellent book, "Towers of Deception" by Canadian Barrie Zwicker;

Zwicker present us with a question asked of Chomsky after a public meeting, “Would you consider your media analysis as a ‘conspiracy theory’ at all?”

Chomsky replied, “It’s precisely the opposite of conspiracy theory, actually … ‘conspiracy theory’ has become the intellectual equivalent of a four-letter word: it’s something people say when they don’t want you to think about what’s really going on.”

--------------------------

The fact of the matter is, deception by the government is commonplace, especially when it comes to covert operations.

The Bay of Pigs is a prime example;
http://tinyurl.com/2qdqen

Operation Northwoods (Kennedy axed this one);
http://tinyurl.com/32cp3

Operation Gladio is a prime example;
http://tinyurl.com/289ldj

What is the common denominator between the above three? General Lyman Lemnitzer. Lemnitzer as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff thought the invasion of Cuba, which included painting obsolete B26s as Cuban Air Force planes to attack the Cuban Air Force was a great idea! He thought faking the shoot down of a civilian airliner was a better idea! Lemnitzer was in charge of NATO when False Flag terror in Europe got its start in Grand Guignol fashion at the Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan in 1969.

I do agree with a certain, very narrow line of thought, the problem is systemic, but you won't even acknowledge the system which allows these horrors to maneuver, the Invisible Government;

"THERE ARE two governments in the United States today. One is visible. The other is invisible.

The first is the government that citizens read about in their newspapers and children study about in their civics books. The second is the interlocking, hidden machinery that carries out the policies of the United States in the Cold War.

This second, invisible government gathers intelligence, conducts espionage, and plans and executes secret operations all over the globe.

The Invisible Government is not a formal body. It is a loose, amorphous grouping of individuals and agencies drawn from many parts of the visible government. It is not limited to the Central Intelligence Agency, although the CIA is at its heart. Nor is it confined to the nine other agencies which comprise what is known as the intelligence community: the National Security Council, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, Army Intelligence, Navy Intelligence, Air Force Intelligence, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The Invisible Government includes, also, many other units and agencies, as well as individuals, that appear outwardly to be a normal part of the conventional government. It even encompasses business firms and institutions that are seemingly private.

To an extent that is only beginning to be perceived, this shadow government is shaping the lives of 190,000,000 Americans. Major decisions involving peace or war are taking place out of public view. An informed citizen might come to suspect that the foreign policy of the United States often works publicly in one direction and secretly through the Invisible Government in just the opposite direction.

This Invisible Government is a relatively new institution. It came into being as a result of two related factors: the rise of the United States after World War II to a position of pre-eminent world power, and the challenge to that power by Soviet Communism." - David Wise & Thomas B. Ross, The Invisible Government, Chapter 1. (1964)

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"There exists a shadowy government with its own Air Force, its own navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of the national interest, free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself." – Senator Daniel K. Inouye during the Iran-contra scandal.

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An extra-governmental force that has been challenging and perplexing the global polity for decades. Please tell me how the Left has tackled this issue, because I guess I blinked and missed it.

All you have is feces to chuck, and plenty of it. You bore me.

With statements like...

9/11 fantasists pose a mortal danger to popular oppositional campaigns

Wow... Drink more kool-aide


These conspiracy idiots are a boon for Bush and Blair as they destroy the movements some of us have spent years building

What "movement" is that George ?

He sounds like he has totally "lost it"... cuckoooo... cuckoooo.... fruit-loop.... fruit-loop !!!!


Great blog Danse... Respect !!!

Carol Brouillet blew him away;

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2017006,00.html

I have been an activist since 1992 and have worked on a range of issues, including challenging corporate globalization. I tried to mobilize Americans to the first World Social Forum in January 2001. In fact, I was shocked by the surprising attacks upon me as a “Conspiracy Theorist” when I organized the first marches, rallies to demand a congressional investigation of 9/11.

When I went to protest the World Economic Forum in New York in January 2002, I urged the peace, justice, anti-corporate activists to look at the history of false flag operations, the evidence that 9/11 had all the fingerprints of a special operation, to help expose how most wars are engineered to serve powerful economic interests with great human, environmental costs. I want to bust the “war game” once and for all, that is the motivating force behind the 9/11 Truth Movement.

You are wrong to suggest that implying “9/11 was an inside job” suggests all sorts of magical powers of the Bush Regime; the reason there is a 9/11 Truth Movement is because it was a thoroughly botched job- which shows how incompetent, stupid, and evil these guys are.

Hardly a seemless, successful operation, despite the media blitz, the traumatic numbing of rational thought which stampeded the country and the world into embracing the bogus “war on terrorism” and the shredding of our rights and Constitution, 9/11 was a thoroughly botched job, the Achille’s heel of a crazy overreach for global dominance.

Indeed, I actually believe it was an act of fear, by a desperate elite who saw themselves losing power and legitimacy, and hoped to regain power and expand it using the classic techniques of terrorism and war, underestimating their ability to sell the Big Lie in our internet era.

Even the military admits in its documents that they have lost the ”message battle”- no matter how heavily they censor images, try to conceal the horror of war and their actions, reality cannot be obliterated by a media campaign.

They have feverishly tried to pass legislation to conceal as much as they can about their own actions while invading the public’s privacy, and intimidating everyone else with Big Brother surveillance technologies, but have only succeeded in feeding resistance and exposing the hollowness of all their lies.

We are part of Gandhi’s “Satyagraha” Movement, recognizing the power of truth to challenge the most threatening empire humanity has had to face. We are part of a global movement, and if we succeed, we will help every other movement that is also working for truth, peace, justice, accountability, on behalf of the oppressed, the threatened, the homeless, the poor… This is a time when “The power of love can trump the love of power and stop those who wage war for profit.”

Of course the 9/11 Truth Movement is under attack from military intelligence, Cointelpro, who hope to make us look bad, put forward nonsensical gibberish, cloud the irrefutable, hard questions that we have raised that the government cannot answer.

I strongly believe that truth, humanity, a hopeful future are on our side and that we will be able to rein in the criminal forces that have hijacked the US government and seek global domination. I hope you look more closely at the buried facts, help to cast some real light upon them, and join us someday.

Carol Brouillet
Publisher of the Deception Dollar
Organizer of the San Francisco International Inquiry into 9/11
Producer of Behind Every Terrorist – There is a Bush
Co-Founder of the Northern California 9/11 Truth Alliance
(Green Candidate for Congress in 2006 on a 9/11 Truth, Peace, Impeachment platform)
http://www.communitycurrency.org

Mr Monbiot.

It's quite astounding how emotive you are towards people that are inclined to doubt government stories and intelligence...

"The more evidence US intelligence presents...the less credible the story becomes.

"First there was the car. A man had informed the police, we were told, that he'd had a furious argument with some suspicious looking Moslems in the parking lot at Boston airport. He led the investigators to the car, in which they found a copy of the Koran and a flight manual in Arabic (Flight manuals are 'always' in English), showing that these were the fundamentalists who had hijacked the planes.

"Now flying an aeroplane is not one of these things you learn in the back of a car on the way to the airport. Either you know how to do it or you don't.
"Leaving the Koran unattended, a Moslem friend tells me, is considered sinful.

"And if you were about to perpetrate one of the biggest terrorist outrages the world has ever seen, would you draw attention to yourself by arguing over a parking place?

"Then there is the passport. The security services claim that a passport belonging to one of the hijackers was extracted from the rubble of the World Trade Centre. This definitive identification might help them to track the rest of the network.

"We are being asked to believe that a paper document from the cockpit of the first plane - the epicentre of an inferno which vapourised steel - survived the fireball and fell to the ground almost intact."When presented with material like this, I can't help suspecting that intelligence agents have assembled the theory first, then sought the facts required to fit it...

"I think WE MIGHT HAVE SOME CAUSE TO REGARD THE NEW EVIDENCE AGAINST BIN LADEN WITH A MEASURE OF SCEPTICISM."

That was an article you wrote back in 2001, I'm really wondering what evidence you have seen that has made you change your mind in the last 5 years or so.

Because as far as I'm concerned that all still sounds very fishy.
Put this together with some of the other FACTS of that day we now know:
Minetta's testimony to the 911 commission, which was Omitted: that Cheney was warned of the plane heading towards the pentagon 50miles out, 30miles out, and at 10miles was asked directly "does the order still stand , Sir?" - what order would that be?.... the only logical conclusion is NOTHING!!!!

These are perfectly legitimate questions to ask, because they do not make sense. But no - you were just being a Moron I suppose :)

I put it to you, that you are the moron, by limiting yourself and writing off a whole avenue of discussion...

You really think that protesting against nuclear disarmament is gonna save this planet, I commend anyone that does, but it is just a small part of the solution - like with anything if you want to resolve it, you need to go to the root cause. Nuclear proliferation is just one of the many heads of the beast.

The US and UK governments have shown that they will do whatever they want, once they decide what their "program" is - I mean look at Tony this week: a judge said that the consultation for nuclear power was inadequate, within hours Tony was on TV saying that policy was not gonna change.. so you have to tackle the root cause: the power mechanisms.

911 goes to the heart of this, as it shows that our government's rather than being there to protect us, and be our secretary (Lockean analogy for the doctrine of a democratic state).
It has become a way of control and manipulation: with events such as 911 being catalysts for psychological change - as stated in the PNAC document.
So if we wake the people up to what the agenda really is - who do you think allows BAE to operate the way they do; Blair was directly involved as he stated in his Monthly address. This sort of arrogance comes when nobody asks the hard questions.

We need an intellectual and political revolution - and people like you spitting out the same old tired hatred does nothing for any cause!