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-Caveat Lector-
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/02/35/dissonance-cooper.php
JULY 19 - 25, 2002
Dissonance
The September 11 That Never Was
A summer of anti-American paranoia
by Marc Cooper
GIJON, SPAIN -- IT STARTED AS SOON AS I GOT IN THE
airport taxi on the way to this Spanish coastal city's
annual Semana Negra writers' festival. I was scheduled
to participate in a high-profile public panel
discussion billed as "The Hidden Truth Behind
September 11." And it seemed everyone in town had more
or less the same question ready to spring on me. "Come
on, what really happened on September 11?" my driver
probed as he lit up a piercingly pungent stick of
black tobacco, as though threatening to gas the truth
out of me if necessary. "Why was the audio missing
from the videotapes of the planes crashing into the
twin towers?"
The next afternoon, as I was being interviewed on a
local cable-TV show, the blond Twinkie host -- usually
concerned with matters no stickier than how to keep a
good paella valenciana fluffy -- boldly asked, "Do we
really know who flew those planes?"
At least these two admitted that we were talking about
planes. Because it seems, nowadays in Europe, that the
further you move up on the informational food chain,
the more humidly fetid the imagination turns when it
comes to Things American. As I prepared to appear on a
writers' roundtable on the hoity-toitiest of
literature programs on Spanish National Television,
the host told me he expected me to lay out the case in
favor of a new Continental best-seller: The
Frightening Fraud by French author Thierry Meyssan.
Its more descriptive title in Spanish -- The Plane
That Didn't Exist -- reveals that the real fraud is
the book itself. Indeed, the cranky Parisian daily
Libération called the book "The Frightening Confidence
Trick . . . a tissue of wild and irresponsible
allegations, entirely without foundation."
I politely told my TV host, gracias, but no gracias,
and wiped off my makeup. No way would I perfume this
untreated sewage squeezed between two covers, no
matter how many guaranteed close-ups. The conspiracy
laid out by Meyssan posits that American Airlines
Flight 77, which killed 189 people when it crashed
into the Pentagon on September 11, just plain didn't
exist. Never mind the hundreds of eyewitnesses, who
were all presumably beguiled by a CIA-projected
hologram. According to Meyssan, the hole in the
Pentagon wall was punched by a rocket fired by an
ultra-right-wing faction of the U.S. government
itself. The goal? A modern-day Reichstag, an excuse to
justify a police state.
(Not having read the book, I can only imagine how the
author disposes of the small detail of how the 200
passengers and the fuselage of the real Flight 77 were
clandestinely disposed of.)
In the U.S., fortunately, this sort of dementia is
adhered to by only tiny clusters of full-time
paranoids who can channel KPFK through their top
molars.
But here in the Old World, from Rome to Paris to
Madrid -- and even out here in the provincial boonies
near the Portuguese border -- this excrement is being
lapped up like one big creamy hot-fudge sundae. And it
has achieved real currency. While our local L.A.
conspiracy king -- Michael Ruppert -- is but a lowly
exLAPD cop currently commanding only his own Web
site, Mr. Meyssan is president of the Voltaire
Network, a respected French think tank whose
left-of-center research projects have, at least until
now, been considered serious and credible. And his
book, like a handful of similar works, is drawing
bigger audiences on the Left Bank than a Jerry Lewis
film festival.
MANY EXPLANATIONS ARE POSSIBLE FOR THIS MASS European
delusion. Any American who has experienced a week's
worth of abuse at the hands of Parisian café waiters
might think all this to be this summer's rendition of
the usual infantilist-European anti-Americanism. After
all, any collection of declining, postcolonial "middle
powers," so openly resentful of modern U.S. hegemony,
has to do something now and then to re-assert
superiority.
But for the most part, conspiracies lure those who
seek the comfort of simplicity -- whether the duped
reside in Van Nuys or Venezia. What are conspiracy
theories, really, other than one-size-fits-all
explanations for terribly complex and often
contradictory realities? And subscribing to any such
theory also avoids the discomfort of self-examination.
Having looted and pillaged the poorer half of the
world for 500 years, European dominance laid down the
boundaries of today's painfully unequal globe. And
today, Europe still richly benefits from that
inequality -- an imbalance maintained in good part by
unchallenged American economic and military firepower.
"We are just hypocrites," says an Italian publisher.
"We are like the policeman in Casablanca, shocked,
just shocked to find out our protective American NATO
allies are in reality imperialists and militarists.
Can you imagine?"
With every new revelation about FBI/CIA intelligence
failures around September 11, domestic conspiracy
hoaxes also get fresh rushes of oxygen. But the
psychological dynamic is the same. Slapping a "Bush
Knew" bumper sticker on the car might seem to some an
act of humorous subversion. But I think of it more as
taking an intellectual dive.
Ten months after the attack of September 11, frankly,
I wish I could take that same dive. But it's just too
dishonest. Instead, I am stuck, along with the rest of
you, wrestling with formidable contradictions.
Endorsing a U.S. military response to the Islamic
obscurantists (who this week publicly threatened
"Jewish targets" in the U.S.) carries with it the risk
of becoming complicit in Dubya's endless war, replete
with such atrocities as the death of dozens of Afghan
civilians in the latest botched bombing raid. But to
seek an alternative, such as a bumper-sticker
conspiracy theory, arguing that Bush knew, that the
CIA planned it all, that "this is just about oil" and
so on, seems an enormous and dangerous cop-out.
When faced with armed, religious fascists who vow your
destruction, you better have something weightier to
throw at them than a dog-eared copy of Thierry
Meyssan's fantasy screed.
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DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
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CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
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