h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Wow, she did? I thought I *knew* all this kinda stuff.

>>As far as sacrificing 3000 people for the cause: The administration has since demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice tens of thousands of people for the cause. I don't think they would have blinked at killing 3000 in New York. Perhaps they might have hesitated over the financial losses incurred. . .<<
Sad, but true, anhaga!

As my son once said when he was 3 "This is ruddy marbellous!" No, really, that's a scary statement - come on, Americans, start getting your 3 year olds ready!

So Pear Harbour was a conspiracy too just like Kennedy's murder?

"Life is random, get used to it."
Nope.
I don't accept that, God does *so* not throw dice!

Hi, Oetz. Kennedy's murder was obviously a conspiracy. Pearl Harbour probably not... Read the book 'Debunking History', Sutton Publishing, London 2002 by Ed Rayner and Ron Stapley.

Yes Della but all the geographers need a hook to hang their nugget theories on.

Correct or not?

Monday blues on this shift. Been on the razzle over weekend or what?

"God does not throw dice"
Della, I very much want to agree with you, but there's a bit of me just can't accept the 'God's Divine Will/"it's the freemasons"/or whoever behind it' arguement that we just don't have all the available facts, and if we did we'd see the logic to the illogical. The truth isn't neccessarily out there at all.

Good and bad stuff happens to good and bad people. There isn't actually a pattern to it. It's how we react to it is important. We impose justice onto situations because nature doesn't do it by itself, we don't enforce the laws of gravity or motion. We want to feel that virtue is rewarded, and "sin" (for want of a better term) is punished.

I don't know what kind of Christian it makes me, as I consider myself Christian in religion & moral outlook, but the supernatural stuff I tend to ignore. I don't believe in Heaven or Hell, but I do believe in the general moral outlook.

Got to agree with that

I think what I was getting at, is that I am not comfortably with randomness - I think there's a good deal less of it about than people might think. Sometimes things *do* happen for no reason, but that's rarer than it might seem.
I don't refer to Sept 11th in saying this. That happened for a reason - it's just that people disagree what that reason is!

That's the hook a lot of academics are fumbling for. In my book they have a lot to answer about 9/11. Chaos theory is a good decoy.

Nibbs, do you ever find yourself unable to justify your morality? I tend to have an outlook which genreally leads me to do 'good' things (though this is subjective) but do not belive I will be rewarded for this in some sort of afterlife or by some sort of karmic influence. I'd ask why you do the things that you do, but I couldn't answer that question myself. Hmm.

Sorry to butt in folks, but I posed a question on Ask h2g2 (the thread's called What Do You Think About The U.S.?) that you might be interested in. My intent (an article about world citizens' views on America) is explained in detail in the first posting.
I just posed a sub-question about Bush and conspiracy theories, so if you're feeling saucy, feel free to pop on over there and deposit your two cents.


-rs

Anhaga suggested I post this here.....

Perhaps Bush has more personal reasons for obfuscating the issues regarding who is to blame for 9-11, and diverting attention from his portion of the blame....

According to something I heard on the CBC this morning, Bush (or one of his rperesentatives) had a meeting with bin Laden's brothers on the morning of 9-11. I will try and track that down later. (I am at work and really should be working...)

"Nov. 2, 2001, 12:00 PST -- On Oct. 31 the French daily Le Figaro dropped a bombshell. While in a Dubai hospital receiving treatment for a chronic kidney infection last July, Osama bin Laden met with a top CIA official -- presumably the chief of station. The meeting, held in bin Laden's private suite, took place at the American hospital in Dubai at a time when he was a wanted fugitive for the bombings of two U.S. embassies and last year's attack on the USS Cole. Bin Laden was eligible for execution according to a 2000 intelligence finding issued by President Bill Clinton before leaving office in January. Yet on July 14, 2001 he was allowed to leave Dubai on a private jet, and there were no Navy fighters waiting to force him down."

"January 2001 - The Bush Administration orders the FBI and intelligence agencies to "back off" investigations involving the bin Laden family, including two of Osama bin Laden's relatives (Abdullah and Omar) who were living in Falls Church, Va. -- right next to CIA headquarters. This followed previous orders dating back to 1996 that frustrated efforts to investigate the bin Laden family. [Source: BBC Newsnight, Correspondent Gregg Palast, Nov. 7, 2001]" http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/02_11_02_lucy.html


"On 9-9-01 - just two days before Osama Bin Laden's attack on the US - the NY Times published a lengthy and chilling article about Osama Bin Laden by reporter John Burns. Some time after 9-11, the Times SCRUBBED this article, replacing it with a completely different article that Burns wrote on 9-12..... We believe it demonstrates the GROSS NEGLIGENCE of the CIA, NSA, Justice Department, and the White House in the events leading to 9-11. These agencies had MANY warnings, but the people at the top IGNORED them, at a cost of over 3,000 lives and billions of dollars." http://www.rense.com/general20/toprotectAL.htm

"Abdullah (bin Laden) and another brother, Omar, also an FBI suspect. It's conveniently close to WAMY. The World Assembly of Muslim Youth is in this building, in a little room in the basement at 5613 Leesburg Pike. And here, just a couple blocks down the road at 5913 Leesburg, is where four of the hijackers that attacked New York and Washington are listed as having lived.

The US Treasury has not frozen WAMY's assets, and when we talked to them, they insisted they are a charity. Yet, just weeks ago, Pakistan expelled WAMY operatives. And India claimed that WAMY was funding an organisation linked to bombings in Kashmir. And the Philippines military has accused WAMY of funding Muslim insurgency. The FBI did look into WAMY, but, for some reason, agents were pulled off the trail."

"The FBI wanted to investigate these guys. This is not something that they didn't want to do - they wanted to, they weren't permitted to."
http://www.rense.com/general16/conn.htm

"Mahfouz’s past also includes business dealings with George W. Bush, having invested $50,000 in the younger Bush’s first company, Arbusto Energy, through his U.S. representative James R. Bath, an aircraft broker and friend of Mr. Bush from their days together in the Texas Air National Guard." http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0208/S00148.htm

"The Caryle Group (the nation's 11th largest defense contractor) and Barrick Gold, on whose boards Daddy Bush serves -- the first company does business with the Bin Laden Group...." http://www.counterpunch.org/madsen0722.html

"Bin Mahfouz is suspected to have funnelled millions of dollars to the Al Qaeda network.

Now, "by sheer coincidence", former New Jersey governor Thomas Kean, the man chosen by President Bush to lead the 9/11 commission also has business ties with bin Mahfouz and Al-Amoudi." (According to a 1998 Senate testimony of former CIA director James Woolsey, powerful financier Khalid bin Mahfouz' younger sister is married to Osama bin Laden). http://www.rense.com/general33/chair.htm

Hi Della, yes it shocked me when I heard that. It made me think in ways that I didn't want to. I know the US government is pretty dreadful, just look at all the medical experimentation that they did on educationally challenged etc. I never wanted to think they could sacrifice so many for a political cause, but if you look back on everything else they have done, then it becomes to look possible.

Regarding these claims about bin Laden meeting the CIA etc.

It's worth remembering that Bush stood on a platform of "no more nation building" and reversing the Clintonite interventionalism that grassroots conservatives hate (see their reaction to the UN-lead US intervention in Somalia (ironically started by Bush Sr) for details). This is just speculation on my part, but it *is* possible that Bush naively thought he could "do a deal" with the terrorists and arrange a way for US forces to leave Saudi Arabia thus "placating" bin Laden et al. Of course, this would not be an official agreement, instead the USA would simply claim it felt it needed to "scale down" operations in Saudi and use Turkey as a base for the regular bombing of Iraq to "contain Saddam" that would undoubtably have been Bush's policy. Thus, Bush thought he could end terrorist violence against US troops, declare his policy a success and scold the Democrats for initiating actions that had cost American lives.

What happened next is unclear. bin Laden may have taken Bush as a "soft touch" and used the opportunity to hit *or* the 9/11 attacks may have been organised by an Islamic "cell" not connected to Al Quaida. We still don't know. What does seem to be the case is that a President who thought he could turn his back on the terrorist threat was quickly spun into a tough action-man who took them more seriously than anyone.

"Caryle Group (the nation's 11th largest defense contractor) and Barrick Gold, on whose boards Daddy Bush serves -- the first company does business with the Bin Laden Group...."

Anything like this is deliberately misleading. The bin Laden family have numerous business interests in the West. What people conveniently leave out is that Osama bin Laden is a parraih to the bin Laden family and no longer has any real connections with them. He is an extremely wealthy man, but from what I can gather he makes his money through the stock-market and has no connection to bin Laden family businesses. If there was any hint that their "black sheep" was involved in their business dealings, the bin Ladens would find their stock dropping extremely rapidly.

Agree with that