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THE PROBLEM WITH ALEX JONES by Gerard Holmgren Page 1 of 3. Go to page 2 3 Copyright: Sept 27 2006.This article or any part of it may not be reproduced without the express permission of the author in writing. This prohibition excludes the reasonable quotation of the article for the purpose of analysis or criticism of the article itself - providing that the article is linked to in association with any such analysis. If you go to Alex Jones’ website “Prison Planet”, you could be forgiven for initially thinking that it was dedicated to exposing the lies of the US Govt and mainstream media. You’ll see lots of pictures of a guy shouting at you through a megaphone to buy his video “Terrorstorm” which claims to be “ a history of Govt sponsored terrorism”. But as with most sites like this, if you look behind the scenes, you’ll see what Alex Jones is really about. For whatever reason, Alex gets a fellow named Paul Joseph Watson to do a lot of the writing for Prison Planet. I wont dignify these writings with the word “research”. This article deconstructs one of Paul Joseph Watson’s articles, Norad Tapes Only Intensify Implausibility of Official 9/11 Story.“ August 2 , 2006. As you can see from the title, the rhetoric of the article purports to accuse the Govt of orchestrating Sept 11, but if you dig beneath the word salad, you’ll find it actually attempting to whitewash almost all of the evidence for an inside job. Firstly, lets make a list of which aspects of the official story are directly supported by Watson in this article. 1) That the flight AA 77 actually existed that day, even though official flight logs from the US Bureau of Transportation say that it did not. 2) That the dubious Flight 77 hit the pentagon, when it clearly did not, even if the flight actually existed. 3) That the flight AA 11 actually existed that day, even though official flight logs from the US Bureau of Transportation say that it did not. 4) That the dubious Flight 11 actually hit the North Tower when it clearly did not did not, even if the flight actually existed. 5) That fighter jets were scrambled before the Pentagon was hit, when it is documented that they were not. 6) That United airlines flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania when it clearly did not. Here are the relevant quotes from Watson’s article. In relation to points 1and 2 : [[The tapes betray the fact that NORAD's attention to the fact that Flight 77 was heading towards Washington are virtually non-existent...at one point after Flight 77 has hit the Pentagon, they even intercept their own aircraft...During the time that the airplane was coming in to the Pentagon...]] In relation to points 3 and 4: [[American Airlines 11 which controllers weren't aware had already crashed into the World Trade Center north tower...]] In relation to point 5: [[...the very people mandated to defend the skies of America scrambled desperately to make sense of the chaos and get fighters in the positions they needed to be]] In relation to point 6: [[those shoot down orders never arrived, even after United 93 had crashed in Pennsylvania.]] In summary, we can see that Watson supports the very core of the official story—that the four flights as told to us by the media were all hijacked and crashed where they told us, and that air defence systems were trying very hard to get fighters into the air as quickly as possible. So exactly what is Watson’s beef with the official story ? Perhaps he at least agrees that the Arab hijacker story is bunkum and claims that his imaginary crashing planes were remote controlled ? Apparently not. Here’s what Watson has to say about the mythical Arab hijackers. He seems convinced that they were “hijackers”. The opening sentence of the Watson article. [["These guys are smart," statement completely inconsistent with flight instructors description of hijacker's skills]] and continues [[How did the admittedly incompetent pilot hijackers turn off the transponders of all the aircraft?... ...In one portion of the tapes, NORAD personnel are heard to marvel at the excellence of the hijacker's strategy. 9:23:15 These guys are smart? Contrast this statement with those of the flight instructors when describing the skills of the alleged hijackers. Mohammed Atta: "His attention span was zero." Khalid Al-Mihdhar: "We didn't kick him out, but he didn't live up to our standards." Marwan Al-Shehhi: “He was dropped because of his limited English and incompetence at the controls.” Salem Al-Hazmi: "We advised him to quit after two lessons.”.. …Nothing is mentioned of the six tapes of air traffic control communications with the hijacked airliners that were deliberately destroyed by FAA managers.]] So Watson makes it clear that he believes in both hijacked planes and Arab hijackers. He does make one feeble attempt at ambiguity to try to play both sides by at one point using the word “alleged” in relation to them and also: [[Do the descriptions afforded to these men square with the chaos that their skills in evading detection brought to the NORAD control room? Or were the planes being controlled by some other means than morons who could barely get single engine Cessna's off the ground - but who apparently ran the world's most sophisticated air defense ragged for hours?]] With the above statement Watson indicates that he might be prepared to consider the possibility that the planes were actually remote controlled. He leaves himself room to claim that this is his position or to claim it’s not his position. This is called playing both sides. And which ever side he chooses to play at any particular time, he also leaves ambiguous the question of whether he claims that there were patsy hijackers on the planes who were over-ridden by remote control, or whether there simply weren't any hijackers at all. Given the importance that Watson attaches to the hijackers as apparently real entities, he seems to be leaning more toward the former view—to the extent that he’s making any tentative suggestion at all that remote control might have been used. The fact we are forced to weave our way through such ambiguities to try to guess what Watson is telling us to believe, itself demonstrates that this article is nothing but a meaningless word salad. A reader shouldn't have to try to guess what position the writer is putting forward. In response, Watson is likely to exploit this ambiguity to claim that I have misrepresented his position. To which I can only say that it would be helpful if he would clearly state that position. To the extent that his article puts forward any coherent view at all, it is in basic agreement with the official story of what happened that day. But there’s one more issue in need of examination. The lack of air force response to Watson’s imaginary hijacked planes. Perhaps he is at least alleging that the air force was stood down to allow his imaginary planes to reach their targets ? Alas, as we pull apart this section of Watson’s word salad we also find nothing to support such a view. It appears that incompetence was basically the explanation for the failure of the air force to take any action. But even before we get to Watson’s cover story for the Government in this regard we need to define what we mean by “action” from the air force. Because in the best tradition of those who support the official story, Watson uses the same tactic that Vice President Cheney used in a Sept 16 2001 press conference, in deliberately confusing the issue of interception with that of shooting down, in order to throw smoke at the question of the inaction of the air force. In order to explain this, lets leave Watson for the moment and see where Watson copied his disinformation techniques from. The very person whom he attempts to make it look as if he is pointing the finger at. Cheney. |
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GERARD HOLMGREN’S SEPT 11 WRITING AND RESEARCH |