Conspiracy? Whose conspiracy?

Anticant is an instinctive sceptic, and a reluctant conspiracy theorist. But for the past six-plus years, ever since the 9/11 Twin Towers business, he has felt growingly uneasy and unconvinced by the official US and UK government explanations of what is happening and why.

When I first came across the notion that 9/11 could have been an 'inside job', it seemed too incredible to deserve a moment's consideration. But the more I read about the construction of the Twin Towers, the undoubted fact that they imploded almost instantaneously when they had been built to withstand stresses far greater than that caused by crashing aircraft, and - even more inexplicably - that a third tower which was not directly hit had also collapsed, the more I wondered.

Then I discovered Yankee Doodle's blog. At first I wrote him off as a one-sided extremist. But the more I read his obviously deeply researched and minutely detailed posts, the greater became my conviction that this guy is on to something big.

What he is on to is the almost total collapse of the moral compass of the West, as well as the near-universal venality and sporadic religious fanaticism of the East.

Have a look at his latest post, and judge for yourselves.

Crooked cobwebs of mental moonshine

Jose says [comment on previous post ‘Hear, Hear!’]: “It's hard for me to understand how it is possible that man having been able to land on the moon isn't able to seek the terrorist heads out and do away with the problem?”

This mystifies me, too. With all the stupendous surveillance technology at our disposal, why are we – the West – unable to pinpoint and eliminate our ideological enemies?

It is now 5½ years since the Twin Towers outrage of 9/11. Yet Osama bin Laden and his leading henchmen have still not been apprehended, and their whereabouts are apparently unknown to US and British intelligence.

Frankly, I find this quite incomprehensible, and indeed unbelievable. I vividly remember the somewhat ludicrous spectacle of President Bush – when he had regained his speech after being struck dumb while reading ‘My Pet Goat’ – donning his metaphorical Stetson, cocking his best six-shooter wild west rhetoric, and histrionically proclaiming that “They can run, but they can’t hide. We’ll smoke ‘em out, track ‘em down, cut off their financial bases” – or words to that effect.

And has any of this happened? Not a smidgeon. Despite all the space satellite technology, the lavish international on-the-ground intelligence resources, the boasted “pinpoint weaponry” – which in action on the ground in Iraq seems as scatter-prone as an 18^th century blunderbuss – bin Laden and Co. remain unearthed from their presumably quite comfortable, if not luxurious, hideaways “somewhere on the Pakistan/Afghan border” [why is this assumed? Aren’t they more likely to be hiding out in Riyadh, Cairo or Brick Lane?] and reputed to be richer than ever.

I find this extremely odd. And not only odd – positively sinister. For what have we – the US and UK citizenry – been landed with as a consequence? The absurdly mis-named ‘war on terror’, with all its paraphernalia of illegal, mismanaged and futile foreign wars, repulsive obscenities such as what Naomi Wolf accurately dubs “Bush’s gulag” at Guantanamo Bay, constantly drummed-up fears of domestic acts of terrorism – which on the few occasions when they do occur appear to be the work of a handful of deranged and inadequate misfits – and the wholesale binning of our centuries-old civil liberties so cherished and hard-fought for by previous generations [including mine who grew up through World War Two] but seemingly meaningless to the young people of the Bush/Blair years, obsessed as they are with cosy consumerism and unnecessarily elaborate fancy gadgets such as i-pods.

Those of us who are appalled by the unconscionable and incompetent behaviour of our rulers in defence of what they choose to term our “free” way of life can grumble away as much as we like on the internet – for now, anyway: I wonder whether we shall be allowed that old-fashioned luxury for very much longer, the way things are going? [See Naomi Wolf again.] But in political terms, our complaints fall on deaf ears. In Britain, mainstream politics has been in the doldrums since our Dear Leader turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to over a million people marching against the illegal invasion of Iraq and his rentamob of spineless “New Labour” MPs failed to call him to account for his contempt of the people’s loudly articulated will. From then on, a sense of electoral impotence has grown, first as a feeling of resigned helplessness, then sullen acquiescence, and now dangerously verging on futile despair. This feeling of impotence is a big component, in my view, of the pervasive depression that is nowadays so widespread.

When will the tide turn? A new politics of mass protest and active democracy is overdue in both Britain and the United States, if we in the West are to regain our political health and spiritual integrity as the standard bearers of true freedom and moral front-runners for humanity in this so far nightmarish century.

Why bother blogging?

Jose – of all people! – says he is withdrawing from anticant’s arena because he is not prepared to consider the views of another blogger, Yankee Doodle, whose comments, he says, are lacking in “respect” to him. Untypically for such an even-tempered person, Jose seems to be offended by having a cherished point of view contradicted. But is it logical to state one’s beliefs, as Jose frequently and properly does, with a qualifying “only in my opinion”, and then to take umbrage when someone questions them?

Surely, if we adopt this attitude, we shall close ourselves off from new information and different perspectives, so that political blogging becomes a pointless exercise. I blog in order to discover what others are thinking, and to identify new sources of insight into what is going on in this increasingly disturbing and uneasily dangerous world. We all of us have our preconceptions and preferences – largely drawn from reading and reflection rather than from direct experience – and the great virtue of the internet is that there are all shades of opinion, and a great deal of expertise, out there to be consulted, considered, and – sometimes – rejected.

I do not expect to agree with, or to receive deference from, everyone whose blog I peruse or exchange comments with. All I ask is that people keep a civilised standard of politeness and good humour, and in the end agree to disagree if there is nothing further to be gained from the exchanges.

In this instance, however, I find it hard to believe that there is nothing to be gained from studying such well-informed posts as those of Yankee Doodle, who is obviously engaged on much thorough hard-working research. He says things which are alarming and even distasteful, but which we need to know and evaluate. To ignore the implications of his material would, I believe, be very negligent. In a comment I posted on the thread which has upset Jose, I asked: “Do you think there is a mephistophelian hook-up between the Bush, bin Laden and Saudi families to screw America? Interesting thought....” On reflection, I would substitute “Western civilisation and democracy” for “America”. Yankee Doodle is building up a series of pointers to an extremely disturbing answer to my question, and so I for one shall continue to read his blog with great interest and concern.