Some very absurd thoughts on 9/11 coming from science fiction author William Gibson. See the interview in "The Tyee": http://thetyee.ca/Books/2007/10/18/WillGibson/

I have never read any of William Gibson's science fiction. After this, I have even less interest in it.

You can register here to post comments: http://thetyee.ca/register.

Comments on the site would be more useful than comments here. For talking points, see the excellent material on the Gatecreepers site on debunking conspiracy debunking: http://www.gatecreepers.com/entries/exclusive-debunking-myths-on-conspiracy-theorie/

The Tyee is a popular Canadian on-line magazine. I have not paid it too much attention, but I believe it to be mainstream progressive. I would probably also call it a left-gatekeeper site, if I were to include a link to it on my blog.

From the interview:

On whether he enjoys conspiracy theories

"Conspiracy theories are popular because no matter what they posit, they are all actually comforting, because they all are models of radical simplicity. I think they appeal to the infantile part of us that likes to know what's going on."

On whether he believes 9-11 might have been an inside job

"Absolutely not. It makes no sense. I mean how could incompetents, particularly incompetent at keeping secrets, have done this? But that's a perfect example. People want to believe a simple version, a radically simplified, actually imbecilic version of complex and largely incomprehensible reality."

On whether some new terrorist attack will make 9-11 look small

"Eventually, I would say it's almost inevitable. Not immediately, because there is no need. The last one is still working. In some strange way, [for terrorists] anything that was less than 9-11 won't do. Anything less spectacular just won't do.

"How terrorism works in the broadest sense really is the inversion of the psychology of the lottery. The paradigms of asymmetrical warfare are such that one of the defining and unchanging characteristics of the terrorist is that he has very, very little in the way of stuff to work with. He can't really do much. He can kill a few people. He can knock down a few buildings in New York. But if he does it in a terroristically effective way, and if the society he does it to responds in what to the terrorist is the optimal way, everybody in society feels threatened. In spite of the fact that the odds of any given individual being done in by a terrorist's bomb are about the same odds of that individual winning the lottery.

"Terrorism is a con game. It doesn't always work. It depends on the society you are playing it on. It certainly has worked with the United States."

On why the 9-11 attacks 'worked'

"I think that if I were Osama Bin Laden, I can't really imagine what more I could ask for. The strafing of Mecca, possibly. But we've done everything we could wrong. It's not only America. It's like Thomas Kuhn's thinking on the structure of scientific revolutions, how we have these deeply held cultural paradigms, for instance about what we do when we are attacked. And we have these huge structures, armies and air forces and all of that, and they can be triggered by an event. But in this case, the event they were triggered by was a criminal act. It wasn't a military invasion of the island of Manhattan.

"But emotionally, I think it caused an understandable infantilization of society. Not just American society. I think there was a bubble right after 9-11 when the whole world seemed quite labile. Myself included. As we moved through that, all these existing mechanisms in our various societies moved forward to do what they believed they were there to do. Things that we sort of have in our immediate cultural mindset. What do we do when we are attacked? We invade countries. What do we do to countries that won't do what we want them to do? We use air power.

"Invade countries. Use air power. Well, it turns out, those are the two things not to do. The old paradigm is the wrong paradigm."