Ed Opperman, Trump, Epstein, Why Beliefs Don’t Change |399|

Thanks for the kind words and the reassurance that I won't be cracked for that glorious omelet - although Obama called me a "Bitter Clinger" and Hillary Clinton said I am "Deplorable" and Vortex and Steve seem to agree with these fearless leaders' assessments....so I wonder sometimes.

It is unfortunate to have come to fierce disagreement and at a personal level of vindictiveness with two regulars here; especially so early in my participation.

As I started off here saying, wars and all of that are NOT due to conspiracies - at least not as I would define a conspiracy. They are started by a foreign policy establishment that wants to make the world a better place and who are convinced that their ideology is superior and thus worthy of reigning over others - which is exactly the attitude that Vortex and Steve hold.

I am extremely leery of people that are not able to process grey areas or able to live within murky morality. I find such people to at best be dishonest hypocrites and, at worst, the kind of fanatical believers that are the ones who start the wars (for the greater good, of course). Such people always end up demonizing groups of people with certain ideologies and making saints out of others.

John Lennon wrote leftist/utopianist anthem "imagine" - all the while he was a multi-millionaire (1%er we'd call him these days), with an obscene collection of fur coats, a bad drinking habit and was a woman beater. Physician heal thyself. He'd fit in nicely with the Clintons. He is exactly the kind of person that sits in his office at the state dept and goes to cocktail parties to discuss which eggs need cracking. A classic example! Is it a conspiracy? Not in my opinion. It's right there in the open for the most part. The People just dupe themselves by denying their own eyes. The people want to believe in things that don't exist. They want good leaders so badly that they "find" them in the wrong people...looking for love in all the wrong places...

Yes, I did say that terrorists and their supporters should be hunted down and killed. Unfortunately, I was misrepresented as saying that all foreigners should be killed - or something like that - because I said that Iraqis and Afghanis are flunkies. To clarify, I think that these people should be left to being flunky tribes with flags (which is what they've always been) and to kill each other as often and as much as they desire; as long as they are not posing a threat to us. Vortex and Steve think that somehow the tribes' consciousness will be raised and they will be all sunshine and rainbows and signing happy songs in harmony with the rest of the world in addition to their neighbors. The problem starts when this little fantasy doesn't emerge. Then the do-gooders want to intervene, Then comes the "nation building" and all of that rot....I am a big fan of the humanities. They show us what humans are and that they have not changed a bit since they started writing down their stories. I despise the social sciences because they seek to create through programming a "new man". The Soviets tried this and are extreme, but logical outcome of this kind of thinking; that people will be changed so as to do what people have never done before.

I think all of that relates to some conspiracy theories - it goes like this, more or less; If not for predatory governments messing with the noble little people, the world would be living in harmony and equality. Who are these predators? How have they achieved their nefarious ends? Start concocting the theories. It can't be that 19 Muslim fanatics turned airplanes into missiles. No! That violates the larger conspiracy world view. It must be that the predatory US govt attacked its own people so as to further their evil plots for world domination. Once you have accepted that the US govt is that evil, then you can make yourself believe anything, even in the light of strong evidence to the contrary. Occam's razor goes right out the window.

Then you have people that know nothing about, say, explosives and structural engineering playing at amateur sleuth and selectively favoring "evidence" and media personalities that confirm their biases. There are a number of videos that can be watched that very plausibly (to me at least) show how building 7 came down due to the aftermath of two airplanes hitting the main buildings. The refutation of these arguments is refuted and that refutation is, in turn, is refuted...all on minutiae that none of us has the expertise to evaluate and that, in fact, even structural engineers aren't qualified to discuss unless they have detailed knowledge of the specifics of building 7's construction, full facts about the nature of the fires, etc.....it is idiotic for someone to declare that they "know" building 7 was a controlled demolition and I question why anyone would invest so much time and energy into nursing that perspective after all of these years - and must conclude that they are true believers in a world view that is not a good fit with the realities on the ground.
Most conspiracy theorists that I’ve followed tend to drift more and more into high contrast-black and white thinking as they progress down their particular rabbit hole. In real life, good and evil is seldom so clearly defined and absolute. Yet every expedition down the rabbit hole starts to begin with the presumption that absolute evil is somehow lurking behind everything. Hanlon's razor is a good adage in this instance: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Real intentional covert conspiracies are rare in my own experience, and are really hard to keep quiet depending on the number of conspirators. This is like the old Mob saying: Three can keep a secret, as long as two of them are dead. Far and away more common are the more overt conspiracies of willful ignorance, in which any number of otherwise decent people can choose to “look the other way” to ignore blatant corruption, for instance.

Once we believe that absolute evil is active in the world, this automatically suggests the presence of an absolute good somewhere. In order to combat the presence of absolute evil, especially in human nature, we must make continual demands that humans improve to be “better people”. According today’s Cultural Marxists, this means demanding more and more inhuman perfection out of mere humans. Trotsky was the father of this process, which follows his insistence on never-ending continuous reform and revolution. Good will never be good enough for the new Secular Puritans.

Naturally, since the ends always justify means, the leaders of the continual Cultural Revolution need never practice what they preach, so hypocrisy is a tell-tale sign of this mindset. "The perfect is the enemy of the good" and most youngsters coming up today well realize that it is impossible to ever be "good enough" by these standards. Society’s (by "society" I mean the media used to influence the weak-minded) current standards are hypocritical at best, and downright insane at worst.
 
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Do you think sitting on the fence in an ever so slightly superior way will bring any resolution Michael? I’ve tried the ‘spiritual, non ego road’ and it smelled a tiny bit off. I’d rather that we wore our hearts on our sleeves, it’s more honest. It’s where we are, or rather where I am, at least.

Hi Steve. No. I do not advocating sitting on any fence, nor do I advocate the happy delusion of egolessness. For me the issue is that many situations are so complex none of the parties are 'right' to such a degree that their interpretation can stand alone in utter opposition to any conflicting point of view. In politics in particular we are manipulated to adopt or agree with very simplistic interpretations that support action calls that are offensive to others - often for equally shallow rationales. Real situations are invariably more complex than most people care to explore.

That's not a criticism or claim to some kind of intellectual elitism, just an assessment of how things seem to me to be.

I also would rather we 'wore our hearts on our sleeve'. I value authenticity. However I also value self-reflection and self-restraint as authentic expressions of one's character. The present popularity of emotional and sentimental expression may possibly be honest (but I often doubt it), but it is so lacking in control that that honesty may be only articulating anger, grief and confusion. And if that's the case, in terms of it being an honest expression of such sentiments, it is also misrepresented as reasoned argument.

There was an author, whose name I have forgotten, who remarked that in ages when our culture was dominated by religion the normal discourse used religious ideas and language. Now we live in a 'scientific' age the same thing is happening - leading us to imagine that the speakers are scientifically literate. The use of language does not match knowledge. We are now living in an age of opinion - and characteristic of that is a lack of civility, and a lack of knowledge. We get, as a result, authentic expressions sentiment that, beyond signalling angst loudly and clearly, do little else that is useful.

I don't sit on the fence I do not advocate doing so. But some times not taking sides in conformity with a debate, as it framed, is necessary - if it does not permit my authentic position to be expressed. If I can't influence reframing the debate silence becomes a best option.

I have recently finished Loretta Maldrano's Fearless Leadership: How to overcome behavioural blindspots and transform your organisation. I am discovering some of the best 'spiritual' books are on becoming a better manager and organisational change because they deal with real life situations where our limitations have serious measurable consequences. EQ has become big in business for very authentic reasons - it impacts the bottom line and it influences the ability to attract and retain talent. As a result I find more useful 'spiritual' guidance in a Harvard Business Review article or podcast than I do in overtly religious or spiritual texts. I am tempted to say that I find HBR and similar more grown up. I prefer the message that if you want to be a good an effective person in the world (at work and at home) you can evolve your character through putting in honest and effective effort - and no promises of rewards from gods or angels.

This is not a matter of abandoning 'the spiritual'- just updating my sources of guidance to ones that speak to my contemporary everyday reality.
 
Most conspiracy theorists that I’ve followed tend to drift more and more into high contrast-black and white thinking as they progress down their particular rabbit hole. In real life, good and evil is seldom so clearly defined and absolute. Yet every expedition down the rabbit hole starts to begin with the presumption that absolute evil is somehow lurking behind everything. Hanlon's razor is a good adage in this instance: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Real intentional covert conspiracies are rare in my own experience, and are really hard to keep quiet depending on the number of conspirators. This is like the old Mob saying: Three can keep a secret, as long as two of them are dead. Far and away more common are the more overt conspiracies of willful ignorance, in which any number of otherwise decent people can choose to “look the other way” to ignore blatant corruption, for instance. Sometimes I think that the Soviets planned a generational cultural attack on the US and Britain. The Soviets collapsed, but the attacked had long before jumped off and had gained an inertia of its own. That's what we are seeing today. Just an idea I entertain; not saying it is fact. I do know that the Soviets believed in would take a generation (minimum) to erode a culture and that they had set such an attack in motion during the 60s.

Once we believe that absolute evil is active in the world, this automatically suggests the presence of an absolute good somewhere. In order to combat the presence of absolute evil, especially in human nature, we must make continual demands that humans improve to be “better people”. According today’s Cultural Marxists, this means demanding more and more inhuman perfection out of mere humans. Trotsky was the father of this process, which follows his insistence on never-ending continuous reform and revolution. Good will never be good enough for the new Secular Puritans.

Naturally, since the ends always justify means, the leaders of the continual Cultural Revolution need never practice what they preach, so hypocrisy is a tell-tale sign of this mindset. "The perfect is the enemy of the good" and most youngsters coming up today well realize that it is impossible to ever be "good enough" by these standards. Society’s (by "society" I mean the media used to influence the ignorant) current standards are hypocritical at best, and downright insane at worst.

dually202,
Beautiful. 100% agree with all you say.

"Hanlon's razor" Yes! That's what I'm saying. I have seen it action and I have watched the conspiracy theories grow around those same actions. I want to shout "NO!".

""The perfect is the enemy of the good" and most youngsters coming up today well realize that it is impossible to ever be "good enough" by these standards" - Yes. That is how people are controlled by the neo-puritans/neo-Marxists. There is a perpetual fear of committing a thought crime, if not a behavioral crime.

If I were to believe in conspiracies (and I do cautiously see that sometimes there really is one to some extent), I would say that the neo-puritans/neo-Marxist take-over of our culture comes closest to fitting the bill. Alinsky wrote Rules for Radicals, for example, that is a playbook for Marxist cultural revolution. It was quite popular in the 60s and we know that Obama was a fan and, I believe, but could be mistaken, that Hillary Clinton was familiar with the work as well.

"Real intentional covert conspiracies are rare in my own experience, and are really hard to keep quiet depending on the number of conspirators." - Correct, of course. The idea that military personnel would wire the twin towers to explode and attack the Pentagon (of all targets for chrissakes) with a missile is so preposterous that ...well, I'm speechless.....let alone be able to keep it under wraps if they did do it. But, if you believe that the military is the pointy end of an purely evil spear (and Steve and Vortex appear to), and you're totally ignorant of all things military, then you could, I guess, come up with that kind of pure crap and believe it. Which is pretty much what you said.
 
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dually202,
Beautiful. 100% agree with all you say.

"Hanlon's razor" Yes! That's what I'm saying. I have seen it action and I have watched the conspiracy theories grow around those same actions. I want to shout "NO!".

""The perfect is the enemy of the good" and most youngsters coming up today well realize that it is impossible to ever be "good enough" by these standards" - Yes. That is how people are controlled by the neo-puritans/neo-Marxists. There is a perpetual fear of committing a thought crime, if not a behavioral crime.

If I were to believe in conspiracies (and I do cautiously see that sometimes there really is one to some extent), I would say that the neo-puritans/neo-Marxist take-over of our culture comes closest to fitting the bill. Alinsky wrote Rules for Radicals, for example, that is a playbook for Marxist cultural revolution. It was quite popular in the 60s and we know that Obama was a fan and, I believe, but could be mistaken, that Hillary Clinton was familiar with the work as well.
"neo-puritans/neo-Marxist" It really is a secular religion. This is because it is easy to exploit the separation of church and state in the media. The church is excluded from ever defending itself in the secular forum, and can easily be portrayed in any derogatory manner. This despite the fact that the underlying belief of absolute good and evil in the universe is borrowed from the original Judeo-Christian belief set. I think that this lack of balance accounts for the extreme shift in values portrayed in the media in the past few decades.

Just being normal has been demonized, so many normal youngsters feel that they must affect the behavior of someone completely different from who they are: a different race or ethnicity, or pretend to be gay, or otherwise some kind of victim-status – just to try to fit in. Straight young white men and boys are a specialty target for the 1%er's media hit machine. For kids with no social support, this alienation can lead to drug addiction – and an early death.
 
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I don't totally disagree with you guys (though I draw the line at Vortex's venomous perspective)

Where we differ is that I believe that it is the job of the USG to promote its own interests - just as it is the job of any other govt to promote the interests of its country. I don't understand how doing so can be viewed as a sin.
I'd like to reach a world where countries were a little more self-sufficient, and didn't depend on forcing their way on other nations. I suppose the thing is, that a lot of what the US has done promoted the interests of a privileged few - it certainly didn't promote the interests of people who serve in the military!
More fundamentally, I think you guys are underestimating the horribleness that govts around the world impose on their own people and that they do (or would, if they could) impose on other people. You only focus on the USA as the bad guy in all this because it is the biggest and most powerful.
The thing is, I don't believe US policy is much concerned with how bad a regime is - just whether it is "on the US side". Think of 'our' staunch allie - Saudi Arabia. They cut off women's heads in public for adultery! God knows what happens to gays - I mean they are a truly terrible regime.
In retrospect, the Vietnam War was a mistake and was poorly managed by the US military. But let's not kid ourselves, communism is an awful system that has killed 100s of millions of very people it was supposed to save. The "Domino Theory" certainly made sense from the perspective of the CIA in 1962.
Well it is amazing how frequently the US manages to attack a country and then achieve nothing tangible for those who live there. As in Libya, they seem to attack and then lose interest in what follows.
The VN communists killed a huge number of its intellectuals, teachers, business owners, successful farmers, etc. Ditto the Chicoms and, of course, Ditto the Soviets. The Chicoms and Soviets were arming and supporting the VN communists, as they have armed and supported communists all over the world.

Then there's life under Sharia in places like Iran. They still stone women to death for showing a little leg or dancing to western music. Ditto Afghanistan, ditto Saudi Arabia.
Yes but Saudi Arabia is an allie of the US! The US also helped to put the Taleban into power back in the 1980's by arming the most fundamentalist extremists in Pakistan to attack Afghanistan to oust the Soviets. The Soviets at least provided education to girls!
There's still slave trade in Africa. There have been - and still are - civil wars in Africa where all manner of bloody mass murder happens; including routine cannibalism.

America as exceptional bad guy only makes sense if you put on some very thick rose colored glasses and willfully ignore what the rest of the world is like. Humanity is barbaric. Most people are still living under very primitive and savage systems.

I'm going to drop off this thread. I've been here before. Invariably I find that people interested in spiritual topics have unrealistic outlooks concerning fighting/warring and the nature of humanity. I know I won't convince anyone of anything and I have by now hopefully explained my own perspective. Nothing more to add.

I don't think anyone would deny that there are some brutal regimes around the World, but the US hasn't seemed remotely interested in the welfare of people in other countries - except as an excuse for the next war! Can you possibly argue that Libya needed to be attacked, or that the people there are better off for what the US (and sadly the UK) did?

I do hope you stay for the non-political discussions, which is what I am most interested in - despite the fact that I, like you, also have political views. Skeptiko is really about something far more fundamental than these political squabbles.

David
 
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"Real intentional covert conspiracies are rare in my own experience, and are really hard to keep quiet depending on the number of conspirators." - Correct, of course. The idea that military personnel would wire the twin towers to explode and attack the Pentagon (of all targets for chrissakes) with a missile is so preposterous that ...well, I'm speechless.....let alone be able to keep it under wraps if they did do it. But, if you believe that the military is the pointy end of an purely evil spear (and Steve and Vortex appear to), and you're totally ignorant of all things military, then you could, I guess, come up with that kind of pure crap and believe it.
I am inclined to agree - though I think the true story of 9/11 isn't exactly as advertised.

The basic problem with conspiracy theories is that the more people who need to know, the less likely it is to remain secret.

David
 
I'd like to reach a world where countries were a little more self-sufficient, and didn't depend on forcing their way on other nations. I suppose the thing is, that a lot of what the US has done promoted the interests of a privileged few - it certainly didn't promote the interests of people who serve in the military!

The thing is, I don't believe US policy is much concerned with how bad a regime is - just whether it is "on the US side". Think of 'our' staunch allie - Saudi Arabia. They cut off women's heads in public for adultery! God knows what happens to gays - I mean they are a truly terrible regime.

Well it is amazing how frequently the US manages to attack a country and then achieve nothing tangible for those who live there. As in Libya, they seem to attack and then lose interest in what follows.

Yes but Saudi Arabia is an allie of the US! The US also helped to put the Taleban into power back in the 1980's by arming the most fundamentalist extremists in Pakistan to attack Afghanistan to oust the Soviets. The Soviets at least provided education to girls!


I don't think anyone would deny that there are some brutal regimes around the World, but the US hasn't seemed remotely interested in the welfare of people in other countries - except as an excuse for the next war! Can you possibly argue that Libya needed to be attacked, or that the people there are better off for what the US (and sadly the UK) did?

I do hope you stay for the non-political discussions, which is what I am most interested in - despite the fact that I, like you, also have political views. Skeptiko is really about something far more fundamental than these political squabbles.

David
David,
I have been trying to explain that the social science types that run US FP and the think tanks are fantasy prone idiots from Ivy League schools. The failures of US policy are based on their silly notions and magical thinking. A lot of people do not want to accept that because, I think, it is too scary too accept. Regardless, it is as I say. There is a remarkable lack of understanding f what people in other cultures are like because of the ideology that all people are the same and, given the opportunity, will revert to the mean; which is American-like. Get rid of the dictator (who is deemed responsible for all of the malfunctions) and the people will be like American colonists circa 1776. The FP elite is that stupid. Seriously. Do you recall the "Arab Spring"? I told people that it would end in head choppings and crucifixions and I was rebuked as a racist. Well.......

Meanwhile, these FP idiots are manipulated by various profiteers and psychopaths who recognize the prevailing idiocy and use it to their advantage. Which explains the rest of your observations.

You want to believe that adults are in charge. Well, you're wrong. Again, yes, it's downright frightening.

The Saudis shrewdly got their business inextricably intertwined with that of our elites and politicians back when we still needed their oil. Now we are stuck with them. they are scum of the first order, but so are our politicians. So of course the Saudis got a break on 911 as they continue to do so.

I will most definitely stick around for paranormal discussions because that's why I have been following this forum for years. That work interests me and I have a lot to say about it. See you around and best wishes in the meanwhile.
 
David,
I have been trying to explain that the social science types that run US FP and the think tanks are fantasy prone idiots from Ivy League schools. The failures of US policy are based on their silly notions and magical thinking. A lot of people do not want to accept that because, I think, it is too scary too accept. Regardless, it is as I say. There is a remarkable lack of understanding f what people in other cultures are like because of the ideology that all people are the same and, given the opportunity, will revert to the mean; which is American-like. Get rid of the dictator (who is deemed responsible for all of the malfunctions) and the people will be like American colonists circa 1776. The FP elite is that stupid. Seriously. Do you recall the "Arab Spring"? I told people that it would end in head choppings and crucifixions and I was rebuked as a racist. Well.......

Meanwhile, these FP idiots are manipulated by various profiteers and psychopaths who recognize the prevailing idiocy and use it to their advantage. Which explains the rest of your observations.

You want to believe that adults are in charge. Well, you're wrong. Again, yes, it's downright frightening.
I totally agree with all of that - I am not sure why we deemed to disagree for a while! Incidentally, I would blame the UK as well. I think we could have encouraged a more rational response - with a lot less military action.

I will most definitely stick around for paranormal discussions because that's why I have been following this forum for years. That work interests me and I have a lot to say about it. See you around and best wishes in the meanwhile.

Again we agree - Skeptiko manages to explore so much without getting drawn into dogmatism.

David
 
Again we agree - Skeptiko manages to explore so much without getting drawn into dogmatism.

David
My final word for anyone who doubts me and wants to believe conspiracies are behind most of this stuff is that, at Yale, they have put tampon dispensers in the men's restroom because "not only women have periods". Think about that. These people are into some really weird group think/mass delusions. Keep that in mind and then read material from their social sciences curriculum as well as any that has to do with international relations. The media types are from this same hive mind. They aren't conspiring. They're just being what they are.
 
My final word for anyone who doubts me and wants to believe conspiracies are behind most of this stuff is that, at Yale, they have put tampon dispensers in the men's restroom because "not only women have periods". Think about that. These people are into some really weird group think/mass delusions. Keep that in mind and then read material from their social sciences curriculum as well as any that has to do with international relations. The media types are from this same hive mind. They aren't conspiring. They're just being what they are.
The awful part is that that sort of madness has a terrible side to it too. In the UK, kids are asked if they feel they are in the wrong body, and then offered puberty blocking drugs to stop them developing before they can be operated on!

Nobody really knows the long term consequences of using these drugs, and people who change sex probably only discover later that very few people want to date them.

David
 
Eric, curious for your reaction to the proposed Operation Northwoods false flag proposal. As a general conspiracy doubter for many of the same reasons you've listed; I found Northwoods to be quite troubling. I'll caveat my question by conceding I have not done any deep research on Northwoods beyond reading the released doc and a few editorials on the topic.
 
Eric, curious for your reaction to the proposed Operation Northwoods false flag proposal. As a general conspiracy doubter for many of the same reasons you've listed; I found Northwoods to be quite troubling. I'll caveat my question by conceding I have not done any deep research on Northwoods beyond reading the released doc and a few editorials on the topic.

Hi Silence, Please note that Northwoods (as far as I know and I'm no expert on that topic) was merely a proposal and it was NOT approved for further development. In fact, there was a demotion for the head of the team that proposed it. The DoD, CIA,DIA etc are always war gaming, creating scenarios and running simulations, brain storming, offering proposals for consideration. It's all part of exploring what-ifs. Probably good exercises overall to keep the thinking from stagnating and preparedness at a high level. IMO, more of it should be done.

Northwoods went too far and a price was paid for even suggesting such a thing. That should have served as an object lesson to the brass culture for several years; and I'm sure it did. There will always be crazies, hard core ideologues that will propose things that we would never do. Sometimes these things get explored on a what-if basis. When that leaks out, the conspiracy theorists seize upon it out of context.
 
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Oh BS. The government is not some singularly aimed well coordinated machine. MK Ultra was a fringe development project that crossed some serious ethical lines. But only a few people would have known what was happening there. Once you get to top secret clearance there is only compartmentalization. Ultra would be the compartment. Only those with a need to know would have access. That's a handful of people with a limited budget and limited resources. So no big conspiracy. Just a fringe group working on a fringe project that got shut down when excesses were exposed.

Gulf of Tonkin was a white lie that was used to gently nudge an already accepting public and media to where things were already heading; war in VN. I don't approve, but it isn't the big deal you want it to be. Americans were ready to go to war against communist expansion for all the reason I have already mentioned.

Thin gruel and a far cry from blowing up the Pentagon and killing thousands of Americans on US soil.
 
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You can believe whatever you want when you have the basic facts all wrong, have a strong bias against the alleged conspirator to start with, ignore contradictory reality and listen to smart asses who are equally as ignorant and biased.

How long you can live on dialysis without getting a kidney transplant? OBL was still alive years later when he was found and killed. He was never on dialysis. Dialysis was some fool's guess; not an official conclusion.

Corbett mocks cave dwellers, but those same cave dwellers defeated the Soviets and have kept the US military at a stalemate.

Do you remember when a crazy guy with a little one man whirly bird landed on the White House lawn? And that was after 911. Prior to 911 there was no shoot down order for commercial jet hijackings because no one imaged they could be used as missiles......hey I know...maybe someone like me in the govt put the little one man helo on the WH lawn just so I could come to forums like this and use it counter-evidence against The Truth (that we blew up our own buildings and people on 911)...yeah that's it.....we're very clever like that.....and I had a tuna salad sandwich today and, you know what? they serve tuna salad sandwiches at café at Langely.....

The 19 hijackers had trained extensively in martial arts for this mission and probably rapidly assaulted the cabins and killed the pilots in total surprise. I didn't know that pilots are trained in hand to hand combat, but, hey if Corbett says so, it must be true. But even a martial arts expert can't defend against a sucker punch (or sucker throat slash). Again, because no one had ever conceived of commercial jets being used as missiles, the belief was that they were like all previous hijackers and were looking for the same outcomes. At that time the policy was to play it cool and fly the hijackers to their destination, listen to their demands after landing for re-fuel what have you and the send in a team. BTW, once people realized that these were not standard hijackings, they reacted, and the passengers fought the hijackers and caused one of the jets to crash before reaching its target.

I know you're going to believe whatever nonsense you want to, pathetic as that is.... this is actually a fascinating study (for me) in who believes this stuff and how they do so.
 
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I know you're going to believe whatever nonsense you want to, pathetic as that is.... enjoy your delusions!

Where have I said that I believe any of it? Have you perhaps considered the fact that it appears to be you who have made up your mind about this - not me?

Retaining the right to ask questions is all I want to preserve, and there are loads of questions around 9/11 that haven’t been answered to many peoples satisfaction.
 
Gulf of Tonkin was a white lie that was used to gently nudge an already accepting public and media to where things were already heading; war in VN...

I promised to give up on Eric... yet... one last time, a small correction of Eric's latest "gem" (to call it so): for many Vietnamese AND Americans, this lie was not so white at all. It was painted with the mixture of red, yellow, brown, orange, grey and black: red bleeding, yellow petulent wounds, brown dirt, orange flames, grey smoke and black sorrow of broken and wasted lives.

Much like all other lies of the imperial propaganda machine.

Well, now I'm truly out of this thread.
 
I promised to give up on Eric... yet... one last time, a small correction of Eric's latest "gem" (to call it so): for many Vietnamese AND Americans, this lie was not so white at all. It was painted with the mixture of red, yellow, brown, orange, grey and black: red bleeding, yellow petulent wounds, brown dirt, orange flames, grey smoke and black sorrow of broken and wasted lives.

Much like all other lies of the imperial propaganda machine.

Well, now I'm truly out of this thread.

Sorry, but you're being obtuse in the extreme. Your outrage hinges on the notion that we wouldn't have been at war in VN if not for the Gulf Tonkin. You're wrong. We already had advisors there and were already going to ramp up to full combat troops. That is an historic fact. We were going to do this on ideological grounds.

The Gulf of Tonkin, whatever the truth of it, was a minor selling point; pretty much an afterthought. The main selling point, which was more than sufficient to rally congress and the US populace, was that the US had intervened successfully in two world wars and had stopped the communist take-over of South Korea and we were going to be the global police and savior once again in VN - and probably in the larger region (see domino theory). Many young men volunteered for combat duty in VN on that premise. In the first few years of the war, the majority in combat were volunteers.

BTW - How many Vietnamese were killed by their own people of the communist persuasion? How many of the bullets fired into them came from the Soviet Bloc? And you Russians slaughtered more of your own between 1917 and 1990 than America has killed of any kind in its entire history - save your revisionist propaganda for random 17 year old fools you meet on the internet.
 
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