[Peace-discuss] Chomsky on 9/11 conspiracy theories

[E. Wayne Johnson]

Carl,
I agree totally with Chomsky's conceptualization that blowing up the WTC 
(if "they" did it) is a minor infraction
compared with killing 1,100,000 Iraqis, wiping out the middle class, 
neglecting the poor, hollowing
out the economy, etc...

But I think that "we" are trying to do something about the latter, 
aren't we?




On 9/22/2009 10:10 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> "...It’s one of the safest positions to take among those who are 
> critical of power ... it’s treated rather tolerantly by power centers 
> ... It’s diverting enormous amounts of energy away from the real 
> crimes of the administration, which are far more serious. Suppose they 
> did blow up the World Trade Center? By their standards, that’s a minor 
> crime. Increasing the threat of nuclear war and environmental disaster 
> is a far worse crime, which might lead to the extinction of the 
> species. Take the invasions of Iraq and Lebanon. Or look at what 
> they’re doing to working people in the United States ... They’re 
> committing real crimes, and there is very little protest about it ... 
> so much potential activist energy is directed into 9/11 discussions. 
> From the point of view of power centers, that’s great. We’ll give 
> these people exposure on C-SPAN and have their books right up front at 
> the local bookstores. A pretty tolerant reaction ... you don’t get the 
> kind of reaction you do when you really go after hard issues."
>
>     Noam Chomsky on 9/11 conspiracy theories:
>
> First of all, I don’t think much of those theories, but I am bombarded 
> with letters about this subject. It’s not only a huge industry but 
> it’s kind of a fanatic industry. Many other people think I ought to 
> change my priorities. But of the couple of hundred letters I’m getting 
> every day, the flood that’s really abusive, which says, “It’s your 
> responsibility to set this as your highest priority and to drop 
> everything else,” is coming from the “9/11 truth” people. It’s almost 
> a kind of religious fanaticism.
>
> There are some questions you have to ask. One has to do with the 
> physical evidence. There are the unexplained coincidences, personal 
> accounts, and so on, which don’t amount to much. That’s found in any 
> complex world event. With regard to the physical evidence, can you 
> become a highly qualified civil and mechanical engineer and expert in 
> the structure of buildings by spending a couple of hours on the 
> Internet? If you can, we can get rid of the civil and mechanical 
> engineering departments at MIT. Why go to the university? If you 
> really believe any of this evidence, then there is no easy way to 
> proceed. Go to specialists who can evaluate it. You may have found one 
> physicist somewhere, though as far as I know no one has been willing 
> to submit anything to a serious peer-reviewed journal. But that aside, 
> you can go to the civil and mechanical engineering departments. Maybe 
> the “9/11 truth movement” believes they’re all in on the conspiracy. 
> If it’s that vast, we may as well forget it. These people claim that 
> they’re afraid. There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s one of the 
> safest positions to take among those who are critical of power, as 
> anyone with experience in these matters knows. If fact, it’s treated 
> rather tolerantly by power centers.
>
> Which takes us to another question. Why is this discussion of 9/11 
> treated so tolerantly? I suspect people in positions of power like it. 
> It’s diverting enormous amounts of energy away from the real crimes of 
> the administration, which are far more serious. Suppose they did blow 
> up the World Trade Center? By their standards, that’s a minor crime. 
> Increasing the threat of nuclear war and environmental disaster is a 
> far worse crime, which might lead to the extinction of the species. 
> Take the invasions of Iraq and Lebanon. Or look at what they’re doing 
> to working people in the United States. We can go on and on. They’re 
> committing real crimes, and there is very little protest about it. One 
> of the reasons—not the only one, of course—is that so much potential 
> activist energy is directed into 9/11 discussions. From the point of 
> view of power centers, that’s great. We’ll give these people exposure 
> on C-SPAN and have their books right up front at the local bookstores. 
> A pretty tolerant reaction. We sort of say we think it’s a bad joke, 
> but you don’t get the kind of reaction you do when you really go after 
> hard issues.
>
> So yes, it’s a terrible drain of energy away from much more serious 
> problems. And I don’t think the evidence is serious. I don’t think the 
> people who are presenting the physical evidence are even in a position 
> to evaluate it. These are hard technical questions. What doesn’t seem 
> to be understood is that there’s a reason scientists do experiments. 
> They don’t just take a videotape of what’s happening out the window. 
> The reason is that what’s happening out the window involves so many 
> variable that you don’t understand what you’re getting in this complex 
> mess. You can find all kinds of unexplained coincidences, apparent 
> violations of the laws of nature. Even with controlled experiments, 
> there are plenty of problems. You read the letters column of the 
> science journals, you will find countless examples. So the fact that 
> you’re finding out this happened, that happened, and so on, doesn’t 
> mean anything.
>
> The “Who benefits from 9/11?” argument has little force. I think in my 
> first interview after 9/11, I made the not very brilliant prediction 
> that every power system in the world would immediately exploit this 
> for their own purposes. So Russia will step up its atrocities in 
> Chechnya, Israel will in the West Bank, Indonesia will in Aceh, China 
> in western China. In the United States, it was exploited, as we know, 
> but also in ways that weren’t very well advertised.
>
> Source: Noam Chomsky, What We Say Goes: Conversations on US Power in a 
> Changing World, (Metropolitan Books: New York, 2007), pp. 35-37.
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
>
>