When Al-Qaeda themselves claimed responsibility, even with overwhelming evidence aside? Why were so many people still reluctant, I was researching about this stuff and was shocked to see people who I respect a lot believe in this
Sometimes there’s enough ambiguity around an event that any attempted exact reconstruction will likely be wrong in some details. Some people can’t accept that ambiguity, and take the lack of a single, overwhelmingly-likely version as evidence that the “real” version was suppressed.
To quote Pearl from ‘Keep Beach City Weird’:
Humans just lead short, boring, insignificant lives, so they make up stories to feel like they’re a part of something bigger. They want to blame all the world’s problems on some single enemy they can fight, instead of a complex network of interrelated forces beyond anyone’s control.
Excellent quote but it also makes me sad, we are fighting so much evil and the worst one of them exist among us, or atleast I think
Apologies for the incoming wall of text, this is one of my special interests.
First fact, one I need to constantly remind myself of: We are living in the most peaceful era of human existence. This is a measurable fact. Violent crime is down almost everywhere, especially in previous hotspots like New York and Detroit. Even though we see constant conflict in the world it has always been there but our awareness has changed (more below). Fewer per-capita people die by violence of all kinds now than in any 40 year slice in human history.
I know it doesn’t feel that way, because nowadays instead of seeing foreign conflict in a relatively tame newspaper article, we get live video of the horrors of it right on our phones. This has change our awareness of war.
THAT SAID yes there are still very good reasons to fight against this and the other human caused atrocities like economic collapse and global warming.
THE REASON we have the luxury to worry about these abstract things is that SO FEW of us are worried about dying from simple diseases or in armed conflict, so we move on to the next tier.
Don’t get me wrong, I am so passionately an advocate that human-caused global warming is real and that we have the ability to reverse it, same with our world economic policies that is leading us to global Depression, and I have taken to the streets in the past to protest for reform of these things, and will in the future.
But the thing is, the world is currently controlled by the rich, and most rich people don’t give a shit about anything other than their own insatiable greed, so until their voices are made irrelevant, there will be no meaningful change as the climate and economy collapses.
Maybe then we will see an uptick in violent conflict, once the food riots start. I don’t think there is any way to avoid it.
A lot of it was shock and confusion. How could this happen? Why did this happen? People wanted answers and people got answers.
I was a truther right away, after 9/11. It’s embarrassing to say now. I fell for narratives like “jet fuel doesnt melt steal beams” and “only a controlled demolition collapses like that.”
Jet fuels softens steal beams, and they were holding up so much weight. And that’s exactly how a really tall building, surrounded by other tall buildings were attacked.
People were hot with emotion and it’s hard to be rational in that state of mind.
At this point, I believe some in the US government knew the attack was imminent but did not know when, and by the time it was happening, it was too late.
I can’t dismiss as out of hand the idea that Bush, Cheny, and some of their friends in Saudi Arabia (people who are now Donald Trump’s friends), wanted the attack to happen, specifically in order to justify wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which I do believe were just wars under a doctrine of irredentism.
Because the government was aware of two of the attackers prior to the event, it’s not a stretch that they allowed it to happen to use it as an excuse to invade the middle east.
https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/0506/chapter5.htm
Some wealthy persons clearly knew that 911 was going to happen because the stock market twitched hard just before.
-
It was unthinkable to millions of people that an attack on the USA could reach so far in as to hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in a single morning. We were the strongest military on earth and had fully operational radar, but failed to keep planes from absolutely demolishing the towers. A lot of people just can’t understand the complicated stuff like that.
-
The government has done a lot worse.
-
Because of the hard work done by American Patriots, Truth Seekers, and Researchers all over the globe. See for yourself.
Never trust a person that calls themselves a “patriot”.
I drove away from the WTC on the morning of 2001-09-11. I watched from a safe distance as the towers fell. It was a surreal day I shared with like 10 million people.
I still - I’m ashamed to admit - think something was SUPER-fishy about the pentagon strike. I believe it when they say the parts don’t add up, and I believe them when they say the surveillance tapes from a local gas station were taken, and I debated the significance of the lamp-posts being taken down in the days before where they magically didn’t get hit by the incoming plane.
Do I think the planes hit the towers? Yep. Do I think the jet fuel weakened the structure until it popped? Yep. But I can’t resolve the rumour that the basement was empty on that day of all days.
I don’t think there’s gonna be an alternate explanation to cover the weird concerns I have, and I can live with that; but I’m not gonna forget it.
That’s the way it is.
There is nothing to be ashamed about critically examining the evidence. Here is the video of the pentagon attack, if you ask me the object looks much smaller than a passenger plane.
Rebuttal: There were six frames showing the impact from a security camera, which were released after a FOIA request.[51] Furthermore, photographic evidence of wreckage on the scene and eyewitness accounts of plane wreckage and damage are consistent with a plane crash.[52] Essentially, the problem for no-planers is that the plane didn’t just hit the outside of the Pentagon, but actually penetrated some distance into the structure, some of which even collapsed on top of the plane. Numerous witnesses saw it approach, the plane’s wings took out several street lights on a nearby roadway on the way in, and plane components were scattered all over the Pentagon lawn.
Also, while inconclusive (and “personal commentary”), a photo was presented on a 9/11 truther website which claimed that the “round” debris observed possibly was not the wheel of the alleged jetliner. But it clearly was, albeit stripped of its outer edge.
Why would anyone expect a high-resolution video camera to be pointed at where the plane hit? The intrinsic improbability of such a circumstance would make it direct evidence of a conspiracy, and no self-respecting conspiracy would allow evidence of its existence to remain.
The Pentagon is a reinforced concrete building with blast-resistant windows. It was struck by an aluminum-skinned commercial aircraft that had already lost a wing before hitting the building: such an aircraft is mostly empty space, with voids in the wings for fuel and the fuselage for passengers; only the floor of the passenger compartment, the undercarriage, and the engine cores are particularly solid objects. The damage is consistent with this scenario: nobody but truthers would seriously expect a cartoony plane-shaped hole.[53]
Rebuttal from https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/9/11, which also debunks most other 9/11 truther nonsense.
Because the collapse of the towers looked like a controlled demolition. It wasn’t, but it looked like it.
Because critical thinking never intersects with conspiracy theories.
People are emotion driven. The idea of a conspiracy is somehow more soothing to them than a chaotic world where no one’s really in control. Also many people are, frankly, fragile cowards, and the idea of admitting they are wrong is too much for their ego to take.
People’s beliefs are social. Once they’re in a social group that believes something, they’re very unlikely to change. It’s not even wholly conscious. But if someone’s in conspiracy circles, abandoning the beliefs means losing all those friends. That feels like Danger to the brain, and most people will reject it.
Kitty History time!
RIP Trevor Moore
I think you need to reassess these people you respect a lot. Belief in 9-11 conspiracy theories is not common.
The Venn Diagram overlap between anti-vaxxers, 9-11 ‘truthers’, and flat earthers is nearly a circle
Some would call them “independent thinkers”
What’s more admirable, to conform and be right or to think independently and be wrong?
I think the weaponization of ignorance is a more nuanced subject than a binary choice.
There is no merit in pushing significantly disproven ‘theories’ like flat earthism.
No doubt. But dang, when they call themself right because they quote the most popular authority, I feel a strong impulse the play it wrong.
I mean, I’d push flat-eartherism just to highlight the absurdity of the popular epistemology. But that’s generally a pearls-before-swine situation.
Funny you mention that, there is a Flat Earth society that was started as a joke with members just arguing for fun.
They were mostly all replaced by true believers by the late 90s, I got to watch it happen.
And it plays out the same way in so many ‘ironic stupidity’ forums.
The true believers have more zip than the careful contemplators, unfortunately.
This is a flaw in human nature that needs to be resolved before we move forward as a species.
It is no longer a survival benefit to follow loud, angry people.
Because two planes hit two buildings (and the other one) and like 3-4 buildings imploded. It didn’t look real.
Im guessing engineers didn’t plan for planes to strike the building which is why they crumbled.
That was literally it. It was so odd a situation to our daily lives that parts of it didn’t seem real.
They actually did design the buildings to survive such incidents, which is one of the many reasons that makes it all a bit fishy
The buildings were designed to withstand a small or medium sized aircraft at a relatively low speed with low fuel, similar to the incident with the Empire State Building. It’s not uncommon for other buildings to be built to similar standards, so I don’t see how this would be fishy. It’s a pair of skyscrapers, the threat of a plane hitting them accidentally during bad weather was a possibility. They were not designed to withstand a modern airliner travelling at an incredibly high speed with a full load of fuel. The fact they survived as long as they did is miraculous.
They designed the buildings to implode because on the 60s and 70s there was a worry that buildings would topple over onto neighbouring buildings if damaged or compromised, and was a legitimate concern as architects were putting forth designs using less reinforcement because they didn’t need as much half a century earlier to build things like the empire state building thanks to better building techniques and materials.
They did exactly what they were designed to do when their integrity was compromised to the point to failure, which is impressive feet. Just ask any engineer what happens when a small but dense and fast moving object slams into the end of a second class lever.
My guess is that if you repeat BS enough, people will sooner or later start believing it.
Also the usual pattern (seen in many countries/empires, not just USA) - since civil war war-profiting (closely related to the two parties & why the switch happened) the industry was always hungry and in need of a good loosing-ish war (or - only short periods without a war).
It always follows the same pattern --> need for profits/power expenditure rises --> if public is (fuded) on board, great, if not, we need a terrorist-like attack, seemingly unpreventable yet utterly publicly show before it happened.
Like in WWII, USA had stakes on both sides, but also not ‘as big’ of a military budget as they could have. The problem was that the public was super against entering the conflict (80~90% against, this is the time when the civil war was well within lining memory with soldiers and widows on proper military pensionsv still alive, regular parades, etc). So for the first time ever they decide to put all their ship-eggs in one Pearl-basket & advertise that move a lott, how they did that, where they did that (how much time they are gonna wait there, lul), and what defenses are there, how the seamen were sent home etc. All under the disguise of showing their military power to Japan (that’s like exposing your balls to an enemy that is already attacking you). Ofc the attack successfully happened, propaganda machine spun up (still today we get movies about that, ‘the horror’), the public option switched over night and politicians could hike the military budget substantially. (Movies that we don’t get is about what/how USA did to japan - like how they killed more civilians with regular carpet bombing per day compared to the killed in blasts of atomic bombs - the most destructive single air attack in human history … and USA dropped about 4× as much bombs total in Vietnam)
The same with 9-11, public is anti war, you have the two towers and movies detailing how easy it would be to crash a plane into specifically the towers. Or Vietnam proxy war, which lasted for so long that the public turned back against it (hippies) and government had to demonize them (the ridiculous anti weed laws/enforcement, “satanism”, etc).
Funding and assisting a foreign terrorist group for profit is shockingly common. Sometimes you even have to manufacture a new group because the existing don’t suit your needs.
Oh, and the atrocities compared are always like x killed in domestic attack, xxxxxx killed in the foreign bombarding campaign. When public opinion isn’t that big of an issue a smaller trigger point is needed - usually USA sends literal military personnel into sovereign foreign countries & when the invaded county returns fire in the invading force USA counts that as an act of war (huh, I guess technically that is correct).
Sort of like how Israel has been funding Hamas?
I’d be willing to entertain the 9/11 theory of the US funding Al-Qaeda except for two facts:
- Al-Qaeda was sufficiently well-funded and supported without US involvement
- I saw that video of Bush hearing the news and sitting, indecisively and in shock. The man was not that good an actor; he was pretty obviously at a complete loss about how to react.
It requires more suspension of disbelief that the head of state would be utterly unaware of such a program or plan, and if he was aware, he’d certainly have a better photo-op reaction planned than sitting there like a stunned cow for several minutes.
Al-Qaeda was absolutely a product of US intelligence agencies, but not to this end. We created them to cause grief for the Russians, and once spawned, they grew their own agendas, some of which were turned against their creators. I doubt any US agency had any knowing involvement with 9/11. What we did have is indirect involvement, and a shit-ton of hubris.
They do have a lot of rules in supplying aid to Hamas if you actually look into it, most the criticism of them proping up Hamas come from ultra right wing criticism of providing aid and medical support to Palestine.
If you believe all Palestine is Hamas it makes sense and you’d have to say allowing aid in is bad but I don’t think you want that.
