Israel/Palestine (to Patrick S. McNally)

To Patrick S. McNally:

I’m now trying to learn about the Israel/Palestine conflict. I don’t yet have a definite opinion about it, except that I mistrust the propaganda of both sides, and I’m wary of both sides’ tendency to dismiss the concerns of the other side.

Since you’ve studied this subject more than I have, I figure you might be a good person to give me a reality check on some Zionist talking points. (I would also appreciate comments from anyone else knowledgeable who happens to be reading this.)

9/11 Truth movement goals and strategy?

In a comment here, in reply to my post U.S. government foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks, realitydesign wrote:

Many of the these warnings and subsequent lies are so well documented that it demonstrates how powerless/sloth we really are against/within this system. … As far as I’m concerned foreknowledge has been adaquately demonstrated. Paul Thompson and others have already done this work.

It would be a lot more ’shocking’ to prove CD or as the pilots are doing- impossible flight paths with respect to their reported trajectories- things like this would cause more of a reaction imo- to those oceans of people that are still asleep.

U.S. government foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks?

As I’ve said in the past two posts, what I personally find suspicious about 9/11 is not the story of the hijackers, but rather the claim that the attack could not have been prevented.

It seems to me that the FBI and the CIA had no good excuse not to have known about the plot in advance, in detail, given that the plot had been hatched way back in 1995 or so, and given that the FBI and the CIA had indeed been spying on al-Qaeda for lo these many years, except that the FBI sometimes refused, for no good reason, to follow up on obvious leads.

No-hijacker theories (to realitydesign)

In my recent post My current views on 9/11 – brief summary, I wrote:

I’m an activist against religion-based bigotry, but I strongly disagree with the idea that, in order to oppose anti-Muslim bigotry, one must deny that there were any live human hijackers on 9/11. There is not enough evidence for the pure “MIHOP” view (see What is your HOP level? Ten 9/11 paradigms by Nicholas Levis), whereas there is, alas, plenty of evidence that there were indeed live human hijackers on 9/11, although one may legitimately question some of the specifics.

We then got into a discussion about Hani Hanjour’s flying skills or lack thereof. In this comment, I also pointed out that there are some difficulties with the remote-controlled planes idea.

My current views on 9/11 – brief summary

Since July of last year, I’ve spent quite a bit of time studying various arguments and counterarguments about what happened on 9/11. Below is a brief summary of my current thoughts.

U.S. government sponsorship of Islamist terror

A topic I’ve been reading up on lately is the history of U.S. government sponsorship of Islamist terror.

I highly recommend the Cooperative Research site’s pages on The use of Islamist militants by American and Israeli militarists. (See especially the more recent stuff on page 2.) One caveat: Some items here are well-sourced, others aren’t. However, even if one confines one’s attention to the better-sourced items, the picture that emerges is still quite disturbing.