“You guys do realize that now that you are ‘in the know’, you will all be rounded up and ‘dealt with’. Like Goering’s minions who torched the Reichstag, you must be silenced.”
— Dale (aka Rusty Shackleford)
Gosh, a company was hired to simulate a terrorist attack at rush hour in London’s busiest tube stations. How amazing, it’s almost as if it was the most likely scenario or something.
[quote]Joe Daley wrote:
Gosh, a company was hired to simulate a terrorist attack at rush hour in London’s busiest tube stations. How amazing, it’s almost as if it was the most likely scenario or something.
[/quote]
“How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don’t think.”
-Adolf Hitler
JTF, to compare the governments ongoing task of generating revenue through traffic tickets to the government setting off bombs to kill its citizens to further its “control” is silly.
Your consipracies are good for entertainment value only. If you relly buy into this stuff I have a bridge to sell you.
If Coast to Coast were to go off the air, JTF would slit his wrists, or accuse the Feds of shutting them down in order to “keep more power”.
You have no proof of ANYTHING - just a bunch of stories that, when put in the hands of a spin-meister, become sordid tales of the Fed’s sinister plot to keep me from living my life in freedom.
Tell me what rights you have lost as a result of these gov’t inspired bombings. The rhetoric sounds great until you realize that we are still as free as we have been since the invention of the EPA, FDA, FCC, FTC etc.
If you want to talk about losing some freedoms - I’m all with you if you are referring to eliminating career bureaucrats. But why would we need to blow up the WTC, or London’s Subway to do this?
Nonetheless - you are just as free as you have ever been. Which begs the question - where is this newfound power that bush has aquired?
I’m not interested in debating whether or not there is one “unified conspiracy theory” that we can crack if we just get Stephen Hawking to help us (Hint: good conspiracies, by nature, can’t be proven). However, there is a good case to be made that the government/media is unnecessarily raising our anxiety levels through false or hyperbolic reporting. Here’s a cool article from that notorious conspiracy rag, Foreign Policy:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3079
I’ll even post some of my favorite parts to make it easier on you.
?All Americans Should Fear Terrorism?
That?s ridiculous. The odds of dying in a terrorist attack are minuscule. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the odds are about 1 in 88,000. The odds of dying from falling off a ladder are 1 in 10,010. Even in 2001, automobile crashes killed 15 times more Americans than terrorism. Heart disease, cancer, and strokes are the leading causes of death in the United States?not terrorism.
People overestimate risks they can picture and ignore those they cannot. Government warnings and 24?hour news networks make certain dangers, from shark attacks to terrorism, seem more prevalent than they really are. As a result, the United States squanders billions of dollars annually protecting states and locations that face no significant threat of terrorism. In 2003, Tulsa, Oklahoma, received $725,000 in port security funds. More than $4 million in 2005 federal antiterror funding will go to the Northern Mariana Islands. In 2003, Grand Forks County, North Dakota, received $1.5 million in federal funds to purchase trailers equipped to respond to nuclear attacks and more biochemical suits than it has police officers.
These small expenses add up. Federal spending on first responders grew from $616 million in 2001 to $3.4 billion in 2005, a 500 percent increase. Homeland security spending will approach $50 billion this year, not including missile defense?roughly equal to estimates of China?s defense spending. Yet pundits call for more. A 2003 Council on Foreign Relations report hyperbolically titled, Emergency Responders: Drastically Underfunded, Dangerously Unprepared, recommmends increasing spending on emergency responders to $25 billion per year. To his credit, the new secretary of homeland security, Michael Chertoff, wants to trim the pork from the department?s budget. But efforts in congress to link funding with risk have failed largely because haphazard spending is consonant with the current U.S. strategy that tells all Americans to be afraid.
It?s true that al Qaeda?s attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, may be a harbinger of a more destructive future. But it is also true that parts of the war on terrorism are working. Tighter U.S. entry requirements, more aggressive European policing, the destruction of al Qaeda?s Afghan sanctuary, and refined intelligence operations have crippled al Qaeda?s ability to strike the United States. Most of al Qaeda?s original leadership is dead or in prison. Few other Islamist terrorists?even the most wanted terrorist in Iraq, Abu Musab al?Zarqawi?are as capable or organized as al Qaeda once was.
?Al Qaeda Remains the Largest Threat to U.S. Homeland Security?
Wrong. The organization bin Laden continues to run from Afghanistan or Pakistan is on the ropes. Today, the main threat to the United States comes in the form of extremist entrepreneurs with only tenuous links to bin Laden and from other Sunni terrorist groups. These groups include Ansar al Islam, Egypt?s Jamaat al?Islamiyya and Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Southeast Asia?s Jemaah Islamiah, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Algeria?s Salifist Group for Preaching and War, the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, Zarqawi?s Tawhid and Jihad, and a host of others.
The press often blithely refers to these groups as ?al Qaeda linked.? But the links refer to sympathy and personal contacts that date back years, not continuous communications, planning, or operational control. These groups can be referred to as a movement, but that does not mean that they are part of a unified organization. For instance, though communications between Zarqawi and bin Laden have reportedly been intercepted, their relationship is a loose alliance, not one that involves handing down orders or sharing finances.
Most of the large terrorist attacks carried out since September 11 have had little connection to al Qaeda?s leadership. The recent attacks in Bali, Turkey, and Spain were independent operations conducted by local extremists. Consider Madrid. The press still commonly calls the commuter train bombing there on March 11, 2004, an ?al Qaeda attack.? But most recent evidence indicates that it was carried out by local Muslims, mostly Moroccans, who had some contacts with the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, but little or no connection to bin Laden or Zarqawi. The Madrid attackers planned and executed their attack without training, orders, or material assistance from other terrorist groups.
Some experts and policymakers call this collage of al Qaeda fellow travelers and wannabes a network?and treat it as some form of higher organization. But the fact that this collection of fundamentalists is the primary national security threat to the United States should be cause for celebration. These groups are dangerous, but, thankfully, they lack the geographic reach and organizational capacity that al Qaeda had in 2001.
I agree the government, the media and many special interest groups are in the reprehensible business of fear-mongering.
I do not believe the government blew up the WTC or OKC.
Big difference.
Why is the government fear mongering? I understand why the media does it (fear = sales), but why the government? Pork barrel? Increased power that leads to more spending?
OKC occured under Clinton’s watch.
I am surprised the right wingnuts are not blaming Clinton.
[quote]battlelust wrote:
Why is the government fear mongering? I understand why the media does it (fear = sales), but why the government? Pork barrel? Increased power that leads to more spending? [/quote]
Exactly. It is all about the mighty dollar.
If the CDC comes out with a study that says something is bad for you what do they do? They get more funding and so do all the outside researchers.
That doesn’t mean they are wrong. It just means you have to view everything skeptically and not take things at face value.
[quote]Marmadogg wrote:
OKC occured under Clinton’s watch.
I am surprised the right wingnuts are not blaming Clinton.[/quote]
Many of them did. I remember the nutjobs that did when it happened.
Those that laid the blame on Clinton and Reno were nutjobs. I don’t see too many right wing nutjobs that post here, but they are out there. Way out there.
[quote]Marmadogg wrote:
OKC occured under Clinton’s watch.
I am surprised the right wingnuts are not blaming Clinton.[/quote]
Because - acts of terrorism like OKC, or the WTC are not the fault of the President, much to the chagrin of the ABB crowd.
At some point, partisan hackery should be cast aside and everyone work for a safer America. But when money, votes and power are on the line, selfishness is the rule of the day.
[quote]JustTheFacts wrote:
Joe Daley wrote:
Gosh, a company was hired to simulate a terrorist attack at rush hour in London’s busiest tube stations. How amazing, it’s almost as if it was the most likely scenario or something.
“How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don’t think.”
-Adolf Hitler[/quote]
Man, you quote hitler a lot. Is he your dad or something? Time to hit the shrink.
The best part about this thread is that George W. Bush won two terms. MAN, TWO TERMS! He got more votes than any president in American history. That is really something. To think, he can’t even finish a sentence, he choked on a pretzel, he fell off his bike, he benches double what you do, and he still won!
The democrats must REALLY be awful to lose to somebody like him.
JTF,
thanks for showing me your complete incompetence when expressing your theories!
the next time you say that the liberals are for freedom, and that property and gun seizure are bad i hope you realize that the liberals are the ones enforcing property and gun seizure.
Hmmm.
I once saw a vision of the PNAC plan to take over the world in my split-pea soup. Seriously.
I don’t think dismissing alot of this garbage out of hand is ‘blind faith’ in authority figures - it is a reliance on common sense.
For example, why would an elected executive that could serve no longer than eight years, and is subject to being yanked after four, attempt these screwy power grabs? For example, why would Clinton try to expand the powers of his administration, knowing that in 2000, he no longer enjoyed any of it?
This type of conspiracy garbage has to cut across ideological lines in a way that can’t be done.
Conspiracy junkies like JTF are just one more example of folks who will believe anything fed to them, so long as it makes them feel cool or interesting for doing something radical. Everyone wants to be a radical these days, taking on the ‘machine’.
Zzzzzzzzzz.
It’s not that conservatives or sensible liberals put too much faith in government - we invented imited government, remember - it’s that we tend not to believe anyone selling a bucket of horseshit when common sense will do.
[quote]rainjack wrote:
If Coast to Coast were to go off the air, JTF would slit his wrists, or accuse the Feds of shutting them down in order to “keep more power”.
You have no proof of ANYTHING - just a bunch of stories that, when put in the hands of a spin-meister, become sordid tales of the Fed’s sinister plot to keep me from living my life in freedom.
[/quote]
No proof of ANYTHING!? Are you seriously admitting you SEE and HEAR nothing that makes you question what happened at OKC? If you are, your almost proving beyond a shadow of a doubt you have a serious disconnect with reality.
When I tell you WHY I think it was done, that’s my opinion - call me crazy if you want. But the official story that all America knows is that Tim McVeigh parked a SINGLE, Ryder truck in front of the Murrah building, walked away, and it blew up.
When confronted with MULTIPLE, live news stories of the day stating federal authorities have now confirmed a SECOND bomb, a THIRD bomb, a FOURTH bomb, INSIDE the Murrah building - you suddenly become “Sgt. Shultz”.
Being the expert “spin-meister” that I am, I craftily tried to convince you that FOUR is greater than ONE - completely forgetting that you were in fact an accountant, hence would never fall for such trickery. Of course in the world of accounting, we all know FOUR and ONE are interchangeable - sometimes FOUR is even LESS than ONE.
Yet, I had another Ace up my sleeve - but it was a long shot. I would SOMEHOW try and convince you that (Ret.) Brigadier Gen. Benton R. Partin USAF, with the following resume:
[i]"Thirty one years active duty in the Air Force. Progressively responsible executive, scientific and technical assignments directing organizations engaged in research, development, testing, analysis, requirements generation and acquisition management of weapons systems. Assignments from laboratory to the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Personal contributions made in the fields of research and development management, weapon system concepts, guided weapons technology, target acquisition aids, focused energy weapons, operations research and joint service harmonization of requirements. Retired as a Brigadier General.
White House appointed Special Assistant to the Administrator, Federal Aviation Administration. Personally designated to prepare the White Paper on the Federal Aviation Administration for the 1989 Presidential Transition Team. This included development of policy initiatives on FAA/USAF joint use of the Global Positioning System (GPS), operational life for commercial aircraft, antiterrorism, airport and airway capacity, requirements in the FAA acquisition process and FAA leadership and management development.
Military Command Pilot and Command Missleman with 4000 hours (37 combat.)
Education: B.S. Chemical Engineering; M.S. Aeronautical Engineering; Ph.D. Candidate, Operations Research & Statistics (Academics Completed.)"[/i]
was in some minuet way, a credible authority on the subject.
The Eglin Blast Effects Study
A new study (led by Brigadier General Benton K. Partin (USAF, ret.), former director of the Air Force Armament Technology Laboratory and one of the world’s premier explosives and ordnance authorities) analyzing explosive tests conducted by the U.S. Air Force against a reinforced concrete structure may provide an important key to understanding the April 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, which took 168 lives.
The study concludes:
It is impossible to ascribe the damage that occurred on April 19, 1995 to a single truck bomb containing 4,800 lbs. of ANFO. In fact, the maximum predicted damage to the floor panels of the Murrah Federal Building is equal to approximately 1% of the total floor area of the building.
http://tinyurl.com/cqomo
But you rain, were not so easily fooled. You easily saw right through this nincompoop and his study, for almost immediately you noticed that Partin was not an actual authority on “Ryder trucks” at all.
Yet still the kooks keep coming:
“An impressive and growing array of experts supports the general’s conclusions. Renowned physicist Samuel Cohen, the inventor of the “neutron bomb,” is one of them. One of the last remaining scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project, the original U.S. atomic bomb program, Dr. Cohen has spent more than half a century deeply involved in scientific work on weapons systems and analysis for the U.S. government and private industry. "I believe that demolition charges in the building placed inside at certain key concrete columns did the primary damage to the Murrah Federal Building,” Cohen stated in June 1995. “It would have been absolutely impossible and against the laws of nature for a truck full of fertilizer and fuel oil – no matter how much was used – to bring the building down.” Contacted this year shortly after the third anniversary of the bombing, Dr. Cohen said he was even more convinced of the truth of that statement. “I have not been following the case closely,” he told THE NEW AMERICAN, “but it seems to me that the evidence has gotten much stronger in favor of internal charges, while the ammonium nitrate bomb theory has fallen apart.”
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/1998/vo14no15/vo14no15_bombs.htm
[quote]Tell me what rights you have lost as a result of these gov’t inspired bombings. The rhetoric sounds great until you realize that we are still as free as we have been since the invention of the EPA, FDA, FCC, FTC etc.
If you want to talk about losing some freedoms - I’m all with you if you are referring to eliminating career bureaucrats. But why would we need to blow up the WTC, or London’s Subway to do this?
Nonetheless - you are just as free as you have ever been. Which begs the question - where is this newfound power that bush has aquired?[/quote]
The problem is your mind doesn’t waver 1mm off the thought that this war is nothing but absolutely necessary. When you ask WHY they would do this does it ever occur to you that the people who decide our foreign policy are raking in money by the truckloads over this war on terrorism? That’s a serious conflict of interest, my friend. Your applying your own moral filter to the corporate elite thinking they would NEVER kill for profit.
Well guess what Rain? Al Qaeda’s got nothin’ on Enron. I don’t see a call to arms over their terrorist act. Enron shut down power grids, caused rolling blackouts, left millions without power, manipulated the energy markets and emptied CA treasury of $11 BILLION. Energy prices went up almost $6 billion in a few months. (Ken Lay called any claims of market manipulation “conspiracy theories”)
How many people do you think died or had major accidents? Or suffered hardships because of their energy bills? The execs didn’t seem all that concerned really - just wanted that cash. http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/37/8796 These are the people W and Cheney hang with - if Cheney and Lay worked out they’d be lifting partners for cryin’ out loud.
How many degrees of separation are there between Ken Lay and bin Laden do you think? What do you suppose Enron’s final body count was?
See, what we should have done was went to war with Enron to liberate the West Coast : o
But if you talk about loosing freedoms because of terrorism, look at the shit they’re doing in London after this last attack.
Body scan machines to be used on Tube passengers
TUBE passengers are to have their bodies scanned by machines that see through clothing in an attempt to prevent further terrorist attacks. The millimetre wave imagers will be used to carry out random checks as people enter stations after services resume today.
Police and transport officials are also considering installing the equipment permanently at stations across the network.
You wouldn’t mind if they do that to your wife and daughters - it’s just for their own safety.
Email spying ‘could have stopped killers’
Millions of personal email and mobile phone records could be stored and shared with police and intelligence officials across Europe to help thwart terrorist attacks.
Yep, if they could have just read everyone’s email this might not have happened.
JTF,
Partin is a bit of a nut. He thinks Iran shot down TWA800.
Regarding Cohen,Here is his statement again:
“It would have been absolutely impossible and against the laws of nature for a truck full of fertilizer and fuel oil – no matter how much was used – to bring the building down.” Contacted this year shortly after the third anniversary of the bombing, Dr. Cohen said he was even more convinced of the truth of that statement. “I have not been following the case closely,” he told THE NEW AMERICAN, “but it seems to me that the evidence has gotten much stronger in favor of internal charges, while the ammonium nitrate bomb theory has fallen apart.”
I see 2 things that jump out at me. The first is the FACT that the building was not brought down! The explosion blew the face off of the building, it DID NOT KNOCK IT DOWN!
So his first statement is clearly hot air as it does not apply in the least to this case.
His second statement indicates he has not even followed the case.
How can you possibly consider this evidence???
The one thing that always casts doubt on conspiracy theories like this is that for this to truly be a conspiracy all the involved parties would have to work together, have the same story, not leak the info, essentially do everything right and consistently.
So what you have to believe to be a conspiracy person is that while the US government makes all kind of screw-ups and errors in almost all areas it manages, when it comes to this particular issue, they are flawless, perfect, working in unison.
I’m sorry, but it is not reasonable to believe that the US government, with all the people and agencies involved, could all be in on this bombing. And for this to be pulled off they would all have to be part of it. Then, not only part of it, but they would have to all go along with the story, make not mistakes, everything in unison.
So the biggest flaw in this and all government conspiracy theories is the fact that they involve so many people who have to perform so perfectly for it to work. That is just not real life.
Everyone screws up and the more people involved the more the chance for screw-ups. That means that if this were true there is no way they could keep it from coming out.
Lorisco,
With a sensible post like that, you are on your way to being named as one of my multiple personalities.
Welcome to my head!!!
JeffR
[quote]Lorisco wrote:
The one thing that always casts doubt on conspiracy theories like this is that for this to truly be a conspiracy all the involved parties would have to work together, have the same story, not leak the info, essentially do everything right and consistently.
So what you have to believe to be a conspiracy person is that while the US government makes all kind of screw-ups and errors in almost all areas it manages, when it comes to this particular issue, they are flawless, perfect, working in unison.
I’m sorry, but it is not reasonable to believe that the US government, with all the people and agencies involved, could all be in on this bombing. And for this to be pulled off they would all have to be part of it. Then, not only part of it, but they would have to all go along with the story, make not mistakes, everything in unison.
So the biggest flaw in this and all government conspiracy theories is the fact that they involve so many people who have to perform so perfectly for it to work. That is just not real life.
Everyone screws up and the more people involved the more the chance for screw-ups. That means that if this were true there is no way they could keep it from coming out.
[/quote]
TA-DAAA!