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Analysis of the sophistry of Noam Chomsky on 9/11

By Petra Liverani

384954_noam-chomsky-fetzer
Gatekeeping is the term used to describe the process of deciding which information will go forward and which will not. It is to be expected that the mass media/corporate/government triumvirate are strict and vigilant gatekeepers but what is puzzling, to me at least, is that certain progressive intellectuals, who are generally very critical of that triumvirate and who are regarded as important voices in keeping its members to account, also practise gatekeeping but only on a few, though vitally important, issues.
A case in point is the truth about 9/11. The crimes of 9/11 involved a massive conspiracy, planned many years in advance, which have had severe and worsening repercussions; many of us despair and feel quite helpless about what can be done about the spreading of war and terror throughout the globe. However, there is one relatively straightforward action that can be taken, if only the gatekeepers will allow it:

“When the big lie regarding the 9/11 attacks is exposed and understood, the legitimacy of America’s military agenda falls like a house of cards.”
Michel Chossudovsky

One of the most prominent gatekeepers of 9/11 truth is Noam Chomsky. In this article I will analyse two videos of Chomsky speaking about 9/11. What can be observed is that Chomsky consistently avoids discussing hard evidence, exempting himself with the spurious claim that he has insufficient technical expertise to make a judgement, and takes refuge in fallacious argument which falls into two categories: strawman (arguing against a misstated or invented argument from the other side) and argumentum ad speculum (arguing an hypothesis after the fact which may well be contrary to the facts but, in any case, avoids dealing with the actual facts). At core, Chomsky is being dishonest.

Video 1 – “Chomsky dispels 9/11 conspiracies with sheer logic”


The video begins with a time-wasting two-minute strawman piece stating that the fact that the US government benefited from 9/11 doesn’t prove they did it. No one has made such an absurd claim as, by definition, a motive alone cannot prove guilt although, of course, a motive is very handy as a support to concrete evidence.
Chomsky then goes on to say he thinks that it would be extremely unlikely that they would plan such an operation as it’s certain that it would be leaked. The theory of plan leakage seems reasonable but does it stand up? The Manhattan Project involved a vast number of people but it was not leaked. Regardless, it’s a theory. In any case, however, there was obvious foreknowledge: Able Danger, Pentagon, collapse of WTC-7 and insider trading. No one has gone to gaol or even been charged over the implications of this foreknowledge – so far.
The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was a neoconservative think tank active from 1997 to 2006. Its 25 members included Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Their document Rebuilding America’s Defenses (2000) states that the transformation of American armed forces through “new technologies and operational concepts” was likely to be a long one “absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbour.”
Paul Wolfowitz was a student of the highly-influential Leo Strauss at the University of Chicago. A fellow student, Stanley Hilton reports that, under the supervision of Strauss, his senior thesis detailed a plan to establish a Presidential Dictatorship using a fabricated ‘Pearl Harbor-like incident’ as justification. He further states that he, Perle, Wolfowitz, and other students of Strauss discussed an array of different plots and incidents ‘like September 11th’ and ‘flying airplanes into buildings way back in the 60s’. See http://911hardfacts.weebly.com/iv-background-and-motive.html. This information does not prove there was a plan but it indicates that one might have been formulated.
His next hypothesis is that they wouldn’t do it because they couldn’t predict that the planes would hit the World Trade Centre. So the US government wouldn’t do it because they couldn’t be certain that the planes would hit the buildings but al-Qaeda took a wild punt with their barely-trained suicide hijackers to not only pull off the astounding stunt of hitting the buildings right on target but to first overcome the seemingly insurmountable hurdle of navigating the most restricted airspace in the world without being molested by a single fighter-interceptor? While Chomsky claims he does not have the technical expertise to have an opinion on how the buildings fell he is confident in his knowledge that the US government would not have had high-tech remote control capability or some other technology to be certain in pulling off the operation. But how does he deal with the surely much more implausible corollary that al-Qaeda was in such possession? He needs to do a little research.
According to this video, 9/11 Conspiracy Solved: Names, Connections, & Details Exposed!, by Jeremy Rys (who may have been trying to get into the Guinness Book of Records for fitting the most information into 43 minutes), at least one company within the very towers that were hit, possessed remote-control technology that one could easily believe capable of making certain that a plane could reliably hit not just a tower but specific floors within it. Planes into the towers (or the appearance of it) was the gleaming jewel in the conspiracy.
I will agree that in this case we can only speculate about what exactly happened. There are many different theories which, of course, suits the purposes of perpetrators. The video footage of the second plane seems to show it melting into the building which would defy natural laws. Is it almost-live video compositing? Is it a bomb exploding simultaneously creating a hole for the plane to slip in? Who knows? It was monstrously clever but we don’t need to explain the whole operation, just point out the anomalies that prove it couldn’t be as the official story states.
He next makes the unforgivably false statement, “Anyone who knows anything about the sciences would instantly discount the [supposed] evidence [presented by those who reject the official story].” This statement insults members of professional groups such as Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (A&E911Truth), Scholars for 9/11 Truth, Military Officers for 9/11 Truth and other thinking people in the 9/11 truth movement. He does not specify the evidence he alludes to but, rather bizarrely, refutes this unspecified evidence with the argument that, in life, there are plenty of coincidences that can’t be explained. There is only one word for this: nonsense.
He admits that he’s out on his own within those on the left, some of whom have come up with “all kinds of elaborate conspiracy theories.” He applies the tawdry epithet “conspiracy theories”, popularised by the CIA around the time of the JFK assassination to discredit those who had a problem with the ballistic anomalies in the “lone gunman theory”, and then to add insult to injury collocates it with good old “elaborate”. Professor Chomsky, shame on you!
But what “elaborate conspiracy theories” is he referring to? He doesn’t say. So let’s take a look at an “elaborate theory” the truth movement has come up with and contrast it with the “straightforward explanation” of the defenders of the official story.
WTC-7 was a building in the World Trade Centre, not hit by a plane but by the debris from the collapse of the twin towers, that collapsed in 6.5 seconds. That over two seconds of its fall was at free fall acceleration is, to use a favourite word of Chomsky, non-controversial, that is, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the government agency who produced a draft and a final report on WTC-7’s collapse agree with A&E911Truth on this point. This is momentous. When something is falling at free fall acceleration it means that there is nothing resisting its fall underneath – surely, this is not too technical for Chomsky? I, myself, have little understanding of physics but this is self-evident. The most likely explanation for a building falling without resistance is that explosives have removed what is underneath. Additionally, the manner in which WTC-7 came down was exactly that of a classic controlled demolition. On speaking about WTC-7, the evolutionary theorist, Lynn Margulis, stated that scientific method demands that you investigate the most obvious hypothesis first.
It wasn’t until 2005 that NIST produced a draft report on the collapse of WTC-7 followed in 2008 by the final report. Despite the very strong evidence of controlled demolition both reports ignored this hypothesis and no results of tests of dust for explosive material were included. In the draft report, NIST claimed the cause was diesel fires, structural damage and fire while in the final report it claimed it was only fires (see http://www.consensus911.org/the-911-consensus-points/#WTC71). Bear in mind that before and since 9/11 no other steel-frame high-rise building has fallen due to fires. What is your conclusion about which side of the argument is responsible for the “elaborate theory” and which side for the “straightforward explanation”?
His final pronouncement is “Who cares?” If it’s a question that makes you wonder, watch this poignant five-minute film, The REAL cost of the war on terror.

Video 2 – “Noam Chomsky on 9/11 Conspiracy Theories”


In this video Chomsky responds to a question asking how he can maintain his belief in the correctness of the 9/11 Commission Report when a peer-reviewed article in the online journal, The Open Chemical Physics Journal, indicates that nanothermite was found at the World Trade Centre and that nearly 1,000 architects and engineers have agreed on the controlled demolition hypothesis.
He begins by stating that the architects and engineers are “unknown people” and comments on the smallness of their number. He then states that he does not have the technical expertise to make a comment on nanothermite, that it would be a waste of his time to acquire the expertise and that “these people” should endeavour to get their work published, as others (such as those who believe in intelligent design) do, in scientific journals. He speaks as though scientific journals occupy some sacred world, independent of politics, where any earnest researcher will be published purely on the merit of their work. This is highly disingenuous. Everyone knows that getting papers on controversial topics published is not a simple matter. Happily, notwithstanding the hurdle of gatekeeping politics, A&E9/11Truth did get another paper published last month in Europhysics News, 15 years later: On the physics of high-rise building collapses.
Then he falls back on his trusty argumentum ad speculum although he claims virtual factual status for his hypothesis believing it to be so certain. He said that’s it’s not controversial that the attacks were attributed to Saudis so it follows that if it had actually been the Bush administration who had done it they obviously would have attributed it to Iraqis because they wanted to invade Iraq. He goes on to describe how easy it would have made it for them to invade Iraq if the perpetrators had been Iraqis and how the administration would have avoided ridicule for its made-up WMD pretext.
Perhaps Chomsky is getting his invasion-triggers a little mixed up. The US wanted to invade not only Iraq. On 7 October, not quite four weeks after 9/11, the US invaded Afghanistan on the basis that Afghanistan refused to give up Osama Bin Laden who they claimed Afghanistan was harbouring. Afghanistan had not said they would not give him up but first asked for proof Osama Bin Laden was, in fact, behind the 9/11 attacks, which the US, unsurprisingly, did not provide. You cannot get a more contrived reason to invade a country than that. And how was it that the US was all set to militarise in a country far away so soon after 9/11?
One pretext, at least, for going to war with Iraq was supposed to be the anthrax attacks which went from mid-September to early October 2001. However, that pretext collapsed because while initially Iraq was mooted as the source of the anthrax sent in crudely-worded letters, it became apparent that the source of the highly-sophisticated aerosolised and weaponised anthrax had to be a US military laboratory. No matter. The Bush administration happened to find that there was an Iraq / al-Qaeda connection. Wouldn’t you know it?
Apart from providing an excuse to invade Afghanistan, there were good reasons for blaming the Saudi terrorists. For one thing, they seemed to have had some kind of involvement, after all, there is evidence that al-Qaeda is, in fact, a CIA intelligence asset. The alleged hijackers were real people whose background indicated links to terrorist groups and they also received some pilot training on US soil, however token. The alleged hijackers could not just be completely made up people.
I don’t think embarrassment was a major concern of the Bush administration. If we were to assume that the official story is true, they seemed to suffer no embarrassment whatsoever at their half-trillion dollar defense system being unable to foil a band of terrorists or as Ronald D. Ray, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense under the Reagan Administration and a highly decorated Vietnam veteran and Colonel, has described it, “the dog that doesn’t hunt.”
But what about the plausibility of the official story? Let’s try an argumentum ad speculum from the other side.
If terrorists had hijacked a plane to fly it into the Pentagon why would they have chosen Wedge One on the opposite side of the building to the top brass? Flying into Wedge One required a 330 degree extremely skilful turn whereas flying into the roof would have been much easier, much more catastrophic and, when you consider the flying skills of Hani Hanjour, a much safer bet. Or, even better, why not target the top brass themselves? The top brass seemed remarkably unfazed when the Pentagon was struck and we see Donald Rumsfeld assisting in carrying in the wounded. Is that what a person in his position should be doing at such a time? Funnily enough, there’s a very good reason that elements within the government would haved wanted Wedge One targeted. The day before, on 10th September, Donald Rumsfeld announced that $2.3 trillion was missing from the Pentagon budget. Wedge One was where analysts from the Office of Naval Intelligence were about to start work tracking the missing money.
Let’s go back to Chomsky’s statement about being alone on the left among all the wacky conspiracy theorists. Who are these people and how can they, without being chemists or structural engineers, nevertheless feel entitled to go beyond hypotheses and make authoritative judgements about the events of 9/11 being at odds with the official story? There’s the renowned economist, Michel Chossudovsky, adviser to the UN and developing countries, whose book, The Globalisation of Poverty and the New World Order, Chomsky appraises thus: “Michel Chossudovsky’s valuable study addresses some of the most important issues of the current era.” So that gets his tick of approval but what would Chomsky make of another of Chossudovsky’s books, War and Globalisation: The Truth Behind September 11? Perhaps he considers it a work of fiction.
There’s also Professor of Philosophy of Theology and Religious Studies, David Ray Griffin, whose work on 9/11 truth garnered him a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize in both 2008 and 2009. He has written or co-written an impressive number of highly-praised books about 9/11 covering a range of areas, including: inconsistencies, contradictions and coverup in the official story, debunking of the debunkers, omissions and distortions in the 9/11 Commission Report, WTC-7 and others. His latest book, to be released in December is Bush & Cheney: How they ruined America and the World. While the first two parts discuss various ways in which 9/11 has ruined America and the world, the third part discusses a question that is generally avoided: Were the Bush-Cheney attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq really at the root of the ruination of America and the world in general, or did the original sin lie in 9/11 itself?
Another incorrigible conspiracist is Graeme MacQueen, Professor of Religious Studies, founding Director of the Centre for Peace Studies at McMaster University, and author of The 2001 Anthrax Deception: The Case for a Domestic Conspiracy. In this book, MacQueen examines the clear evidence showing that the anthrax used in the attacks just after 9/11, which the authorities initially suggested was probably from Iraq, was, in fact, a special strain of weaponised anthrax that could only have come from within the US and that the perpetrators of the attacks must be linked to the perpetrators of 9/11. MacQueen also collated a significant number of eyewitness testimonials of people in and around the World Trade Centre buildings on the morning of 9/11 who reported feeling, seeing and hearing explosions and explosives.
Getting the truth out about 9/11 beyond the internet is such hard work when you not only have the official gatekeepers but the leftist progressives to get past as well. I hope they start to get it soon.


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Colin Doran
Colin Doran
Apr 19, 2021 1:12 PM

I’d love to know how Noam Chomsky ‘gatekeeps’ anything. The 9/11 truth movement seems to have gotten along fine without Noam Chomsky having any effect on them. I would hazard a guess that most Americans had never even heard of Noam Chomsky before the 9/11 truth movement started to talk about him. And the fact is that the 9/11 truth movement are the people who have drawn attention to his views on 9/11. They interview him, or refer to interviews he has given, they write articles and make videos about his views about 9/11 and then tell everyone how Noam Chomsky is trying to influence people’s views about 9/11, views that they themselves have advertised.
The problem is that Noam Chomsky is intelligent and perceptive enough to recognise the distorted nonsense of the 9/11 truth movement and is honest enough to say so. This is of course a bad idea because people in the 9/11 truth movement can’t understand the idea that other people might disagree with them. Apparently if you call yourself the ‘truth’ movement then what you are promoting must be the truth. How could anyone disagree with ‘the truth’?

Terence G Byrne
Terence G Byrne
Oct 26, 2021 2:17 AM
Reply to  Colin Doran

I am surprised that you do not understand the meaning of gatekeeper, but let’s just give you a pass on that. More Important, since you make a claim to being the opposite of “truthers” that must mean you believe you advance the truth and nothing less.

How did the alleged perpetrators of this event, the Muslim hijackers, who created 1300F fires, per the usa official story, manage to melt [2800F] and boil [5000F] WTCs 1, 2 & 7 structural steel? You’re going to have to do some fancy math to explain that one. FEMA did a study of a piece of WTC7 melted/boiled steel. Then there is the USGS that found molten molybdenum [4735F], RJ Lee Group who noted boiled lead [3180F], also they found iron microspheres of 5.87% of WTC dust, normal is 0.04 percent. Interestingly, iron microspheres are the major byproduct of nanothermite/thermitic reactions. Even more interesting, US Livermore Labs mid 1990s nanothermite was found in WTC dust. What was a brand new, “a new generation of super explosives” [Randy Simpson – lead scientist] nano scale nanothermite doing in WTC dust? Had they been using the office closet as a storage units for this “new generation of super explosives”? That’s enough for now. Your serve.

Terence G Byrne
Terence G Byrne
Oct 26, 2021 2:23 AM
Reply to  Colin Doran

My apologies, Colin, I ought to have included a few links for you to see evidence for what I advanced. This one, below, addresses all the molten/boiled WTC metals, which by themselves totally sinks the USG Official 911 Conspiracy Fairy Tale. But there is much much more in many categories that show that none of the things advanced by the usa/911Omission Commission have any truth/validity to them.

Cheers.

Point TT-6: The Claim that There Was No Molten Steel or Iron in the WTCPoint TT-6Buildings

http://www.consensus911.org/point-tt-6/

Nixak
Nixak
May 5, 2018 8:47 AM

Noam Chomsky is an intellectual icon of the ‘left’, as such his opinions carry much weight w the ‘left’. And no doubt Chomsky’s quite knowledgeable re US politics & geopolitics; otherwise few would want to even know his opinion re matters like the ‘JFK Hit’ & the 9-11 ‘New Pearl Harbor’ Event.
IMO Chomsky began to ‘show his hand’ / “show a ‘tell’ ” so to speak circa 1992-93 w the release of Oliver Stone’s classic movie ‘JFK’. Chomsky responded by writing his ‘Rethinking Camelot’ which attempted to negate ‘JFK’s’ premise [from a so-called ‘left’ perspective] of motive for JFK’s death based on policy implications, w IMO Chomsky’s ‘Rethinking Camelot’ effectively working tandem Gerald Posner’s ‘JFK: Case Closed’ which attacked Stone’s ‘JFK’ by doubling-down on the legitimizing of the ‘Warren {c}Omission’s’ report’s ASSertion that LH.Oswald was JFK’s ‘lone ‘nut’ assassin’ [FYI: I’m not claiming Chomsky knowingly actively collaborated w Posner, but IMO that’s almost beside the point]. IMO it’s noteworthy that for 30 yrs prolific author Chomsky wrote &/or said practically ZIP about JFK publicly, especially considering he co-edited [along w Peter Dale Scott] his long time comrade’s Dan Ellsberg’s ‘Pentagon Papers’ [PP], which had an entire chapter on JFK’s plans to get out of Vietnam by the end of 1968 [many say by the end of 1965]. Yet Chomsky apparently had little to say publicly on the matter till Oliver Stone’s ‘JFK’ made it & the ‘JFK Hit’ such a hot topic. Then Chomsky writes ‘Rethinking Camelot’ which claimed that LBJ [& later Nixon] effectively carried out JFK’s policies in Vietnam to its so-called ‘logical’ conclusions- a LAME ASSertion that IMO is almost blatantly FALSE. Further one has to ask how can 2 intellectual heavy-weights of the ‘left’ [Chomsky & Peter Dale Scott] work together as co-editors of the same primary source info [Ellsberg’s PP], & yet somehow come to almost mutually exclusive conclusions- Chomsky: ‘JFK had NO firm plans to exit Vietnam & LBJ’s massive escalation was just an extension of JFK’s Vietnam policies -vs- Scott: JFK not only was planning to get out of Vietnam by the end of 1965 [IMO the PP say by the end of 1968], but JFK actually had begun to set that initial stages of his plan in motion by Oct 1963 via NSAM 263??!
– After Chomsky’s ‘Rethinking Camelot’ it has become ‘trendy’ by many ‘leftist’ thinkers / talking-heads to trash JFK & diss any significance re his assassination, in-fact belittling & actively discouraging any on the ‘left’ from examining any dissent from & counter evidence to the ‘Official Tale’ [= the US Govt’s version] of the JFK Hit- Dismissing such as a ‘waste of time’. Yet many of these same ‘leftist talking-heads’ are a bit equivocal re MLK’s assassination [the 50th anniversary was just a month ago]. Many ‘Chomskyites’ are seemingly a bit more open to the idea that elements of the US Govt [IE: the FBI, CIA, military intel, etc] were somehow behind MLK’s murder, yet still often ASSert: ‘James Earl Ray was certainly the shooter…’ Thus effectively undercutting the whole point -&- They seldom speak of the 1999 King Family vs Loyd Jower’s civil trial’s findings that MLK died due to a hi-level conspiracy involving US Govt intel agencies, elements of the Memphis PD & Mafia, etc.
– Chomsky has often said that every POTUS since FDR was/is a war criminal, & technically that may indeed be so -But- Chomsky has written only 1 book making such a case for just 1 POTUS in particular- That’s JFK in ‘Rethinking Camelot’. Prolific author Chomsky to the best of my knowledge, has NOT written a single book [nor even an extensive article] trashing any other post WWII POTUS, whether it be so-called ‘moderate’ Repug POTUS Ike Eisenhower [uhm, NO! JFK did NOT get the US into Vietnam- It was Ike along w his VP ‘Tricky Dick’ Nixon, & the Dulles Boys, who did], nor LBJ or Tricky Dick Nixon. Hell has Chomsky even bothered to write a book taking George Bush Jr to task for his regime’s Iraq Attack Pt2 based on LIES, ala ‘Rethinking Camelot’ re JFK & Vietnam??
– Note: IMO ‘Ole Ike’ Eisenhower has curiously gotten the ‘kid-glove’ treatment by most ‘leftist’ thinkers ala Chomsky. FYI: it was on Ike’s watch that the US got into Vietnam & SE.Asia; Ike built up the US nuke arsenal to insanely massive proportions; planned to Bay of Pigs; OKed the over-throw & then assassination of the Congo’s Patrice Lumumba, among other things. Yet to hear many Chomskyites tell it, one would think Ike had jack to do w these, they were all JFK’s doing. Maybe because ‘Ole Ike’ swan-song was his memorable ‘Beware of the Military Industrial Complex’ speech, some ‘leftists’ think Ike should get a ‘pass’.
One ‘might’ be inclined to dismiss Chomsky’s ‘JFK Blind-Spot’ as his disdain for the ‘liberal-left’s’ ‘misguided’ ‘saintification’ of a ‘Liberal Cold Warrior’ like JFK, who Chomsky likely dismisses as a typical ‘pampered rich kid’ of privilege’ who should NOT be admired by any ‘real-leftist’. But then came the 9-11 New Pearl Harbor’ event, & when Chomsky was asked about his opinion of the likelihood of 9-11 being an ‘inside job’, or at-least key elements both inside & [technically] ‘outside’ of the US Govt knowing in advance it was coming & deliberately stood-down to ‘let it happen’; Chomsky started spouting the same LAME WFT BS as he did re the ‘JFK Hit’!! And thus like he did re the ‘JFK Hit’, Chomsky effectively gives ‘left-cover’ for the ‘Official 9-11 Conspiracy Theory’ [= the Bush-Cheney Regime’s ‘tall-tale’]!! When someone of Chomsky’s astuteness does this once [re JFK], one might chalk it up to a ‘personal’ contemptuous blind-spot Chomsky has re JFK -But- When he did again re the 9-11 ‘New Pearl Harbor’ event, IMO he’s clearly showing a curiously disturbing pattern here, that can NOT easily be dismissed.

IMO like the ‘flag-ship’ program in the US for ‘progressive views’ is Amy.G’s DN! which has also been a favorite venue for Chomsky. Re the 9-11 issue I know of at least twice Amy.G & DN! featured debates between supporters vs dissenters of the official 9-11 ‘conspiracy theory’ [1X it featured the young guy of ‘9-11 Loose Change’ fame vs the editor of ‘Popular Mechanics’]. But IMO what’s most note-worthy re 9-11 & Amy.G is that despite the fact there’s film-evidence of Amy.G herself being in the crowd as a eye-witness to the sudden collapse of WTC7 [you may still be able to pull it up on YouTube], she has NEVER publicly acknowledged this fact & FAILED to even mention it during the 2 debates she & DN! had on the issue. IMO Amy.G that’s a CONveniently ‘curious’ oversight!!
– PS: A few yrs back TRNN w Paul Jay [which was kicked off w a plug from Chomsky] had a series of interviews w Dr Paul Craig Roberts. But at one point Dr Roberts apparently went ‘off script’ by just briefly mentioning the 9-11 Truth Movement & the impact it was having on public discourse- Yet he did NOT belabor the point, he just mentioned it. I can NOT help but notice that Paul Jay has NEVER had Dr Roberts back on TRNN for an interview since that little ‘incident’.

bill
bill
Feb 21, 2021 9:47 AM
Reply to  Nixak

really insightful and have copied for a deeper look….came here wondering if my concerns of Chomskys presence on Corbyns peace group were legitimate or not ,to refresh.I think you offer Ch many honorable escape routes from being managed opposition,like indeed the author here,but the jaws have closed around him,whilst we dont like to consider the Opposition as being that clever….. as someone else pointed out to me Vince Bugliosi also fitted the Ch bill being enabled to write a book that GHWB is a war criminal over Iraq with the sole purpose of building his credibility with the Left,to establish support for his coming doorstopper on JFK….

Marc Michelsen
Marc Michelsen
Jun 21, 2017 3:06 AM

Great article. Chomsky’s position seems too ridiculous for someone with his knowledge. I can’t help but wonder if he has been blackmailed by the deep state/CIA or something.

Eddie
Eddie
Jun 17, 2017 11:04 PM

Chomsky’s outlived his usefulness, that is all there is to it. He needs to get with the program and open his eyes. Like someone(s) suggest he’s more worried about his reputation than speaking the truth.

Sorry, Not Buying It
Sorry, Not Buying It
May 1, 2017 11:49 PM

Much more important than Chomsky’s sophistry on these things is that he offers no concrete suggestions or analysis about how to overthrow capitalism. On this, he waffles incessantly and is the zenith of a bullshitter. He is fixated on non-violent struggle and “universal principles” (apparently winning concrete political power for the masses isn’t one of these principles. He prefers that the working class “work within the system” that exploits them to “see what it can deliver”. When that delivers the monstrous duality of a Clinton-Trump, he falls back on worshiping movements that are leaderless, have only a veneer of concrete class analysis, and inevitably dissipate). If it was left up to Chomsky, the world’s masses would be left to chase their own tails until the sun explodes. Despite casting himself as a radical-of-sorts, he constantly muddles things with idiocies such as “I consider myself a true conservative”. I respect Chomsky for his exposes of American imperialism, but he’s always been next to worthless when it comes to the task of arming the masses with the tools for eliminating the capitalist-imperialist system.

Tony
Tony
Mar 12, 2017 7:40 AM

Looking for conspiracies through any lense is the inforwars/alex jones crowd that also stakes a claim in the 9/11 false flag. Maybe Chomsky’s gatekeeping is a reaction against them. Even if so, it’s disingenuous of him to relegate a science-based scrutiny that’s obviously due.

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Mar 13, 2017 1:34 PM
Reply to  Tony

You don’t actually need science as even the scientists themselves say. WTC-7 obviously came down by controlled demolition and as Graeme MacQueen has said, there’s no room in the official story for controlled demolition. To prove it all you need to do is look at a video of the WTC-7 collapse and then try to describe its fall using the fire hypothesis. It can’t be done whereas if you use the controlled demolition hypothesis it’s very easy. https://www.quora.com/Using-videos-only-and-with-reference-to-the-cause-can-you-describe-in-your-own-words-the-process-of-collapse-of-WTC-7/answer/Petra-Liverani
They don’t call their operations psyops for nothing. What I’ve realised is that the truth is actually right out there in plain sight, it’s just the power of the propaganda that’s stopping you from seeing it. The conspiracy does not happen without the propaganda. I take my hat off to them. They’ve done a wonderful job of getting people to believe that conspiracies never occur in reality (except in the case of Muslim terrorists), only in theory and if you even look at the possibility of something being a conspiracy, you’re a tin-foil hat.

pavlovscat7
pavlovscat7
Jan 24, 2017 11:57 AM

Well Offguarders..the esoterica that was once strictly for blackbelt freemasons and the superannuants of the holy roman empire that still cruise the cloisters of the vatican looking for children to bless, are now in the public domain. A bit slow on the uptake though when you consider that Jane Standly of the BBC tumbled me as a conspiracy theorist a good twenty minutes before I stooped to conspire. Still..ever the contrarian, I decided to consult Americas’, and possibly the worlds’ most revered leftie dissident, Noam Chomsky. Noam was giving one of his dissertations of the bleeding obvious at the time but he did confirm that I couldn’t be a conspiracy theorist because the mainstream media would have reported it by now. He also said that sure the neocons were naughty boys but, “WHO CARES!” ….and if a man can’t trust a linguist with a stipend from the CIA, WHO CAN YA TRUST? It was right about then that I heard a whistle blow and blow me down who should step of the train to Damascus? Why it was non other than Julian Assange and Eddie Snowjob.. “What’s going on boys I asked?” and they whispered in my ear, “It’s raining”. Now these boys I was ready to believe because as they left to be cast in brass, I realized both my pockets were wet, warm and yellow. Still faced with nagging indecision over whether to Google gatekeepers and limited hangouts, or consult the immutable oracle of our epoch in quest of the truth… I plumped for the latter. And guess what patriots?…according to Wikilies, neither myself or Dr Judy Wood even exist……..don’t forget to vote!

rpsabq2014rpsabq
rpsabq2014rpsabq
Jan 23, 2017 11:06 AM

Ah, Noam. Yes he’s so smart isn’t he? People like him revel at being “the one” to go to “hear the truth” about the world. He’s on all the news shows on a regular basis. Treated like royalty at MIT and even gets to stand up at the United Nations to share his infinite wisdom. He’s obviously fearful of sacrificing that level of clout and prestige. As a result, every time he speaks there seems to be this elephant in the room and since most of his current topics can all be traced to or are as a result of 9/11, by never acknowledging such, to me he just comes off as a stupid old man – too much of a self-serving coward to speak of unpopular, inconvenient truths; choosing instead to save his own ass. A true shame.

DP
DP
Jan 23, 2017 4:00 PM

I really agree with your comment. However, I think it has more to do with his ego/arrogance as a scholar.
If he is not the instigator, if he is not “the one” as you say, then it does not count. His main argument regarding 9/11 is that he cannot scientifically verify all the claims (free falling buildings and so on) by himself. Therefore, it is just not receivable. During a lecture, someone brought to his knowledge that a thousand engineers and qualified professionals of the same sort had contested the official version on the base of scientific endeavors. “I cannot verify this” he said, “I would have to go back to school for a few years in order to do it, so it is just a waste of time. Moreover, inexplicable events happen all the time; and 9/11 seems to be one of them”.
As far as I am concerned, he really lost his credibility. He thinks he is some kind of god living among retards. This is what extreme power does in the academic world. Highly toxic in my opinion!

rpsabq2014rpsabq
rpsabq2014rpsabq
Jan 23, 2017 11:32 PM
Reply to  DP

agreed.

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Jan 24, 2017 1:44 AM
Reply to  DP

This is pointed out in the article.

DP
DP
Jan 24, 2017 3:47 AM
Reply to  flaxgirl

Thanks for the comment, you actually made me read the article (I had gone straight to the videos and comments!) It is really solid and it had to be read. Apologies to the author, I normally do the reading! Made me rethink my position regarding Chomsky, it is worst than I thought!

pavlovscat7
pavlovscat7
Jan 24, 2017 11:12 AM
Reply to  DP

The twelve tribes are, what the twelve tribes do..pity.

furiousmat
furiousmat
May 18, 2017 6:22 PM

“He’s on all the news shows on a regular basis.”
lol. Is he? I’d love you to spend a few minutes demonstrating what a wide media exposure Chomsky has.

Quinnjin Williams
Quinnjin Williams
Jul 6, 2018 6:09 AM

Rt and demo now. Hardly mainstream.

Benny
Benny
Nov 2, 2016 12:26 AM

The problem many people have (understandably) is they just can’t accept how stupid our leaders really are. That’s why they find it unbelievable that a bunch of Saudi Muslim terrorists could fly planes into the WTC. Lax security allowed them to do it. Now the pendulum has swung ridiculously the other way, with citizens being spied on, arrested, shot, for nothing. The US govt. has massively overreacted in an authoritarian manner, which causes people to think they were behind the attack – but that’s not necessarily the case. The govt. just thinks that if they can see what everyone is doing, they can control everyone (see ‘1984’).
Many conspiracy theories are true, but could it be that the twin towers really were hit by terrorists (even if those terrorists were indirectly created by the US (see Russia vs Mujahideen))?
The real PTB must be laughing at all this. It’s a good distraction from what’s really happening – ie they’re milking ever more of the planet’s resources for themselves, impoverishing billions, and creating a global police state.
Yeah, boo Chomsky, it’s all your fault!

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Nov 2, 2016 4:20 AM
Reply to  Benny

Benny, no, it couldn’t be that the twin towers were hit by suicide terrorists. If you have a single statement about the so-called terrorists’ participation in the day’s events on 9/11 that stands up to scrutiny I’d be curious to read it.

Benny
Benny
Nov 2, 2016 9:34 PM
Reply to  flaxgirl

Well, there’s footage of some of them walking through the airport (Mohammed Atta was one, IIRC), there’s evidence a few of them had flying lessons, and suicide is a frequent option for the modern terrorist.
Occam’s Razor can be usefully employed here. What’s more likely – that the US government devised an extremely risky plot to crash airliners into the WTC and no one who knew about the plot has ever come foward, OR Muslim terrorists hijacked some airliners and flew them into the WTC?
Let’s face it, it’s probably the second one.

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Nov 2, 2016 10:08 PM
Reply to  Benny

Benny, you gotta do better than that. That CCTV footage is not for the plane from Boston to NY, it’s the footage from Portland to Boston – the earlier plane Atta took (in fact, some even claim that is not real). And the question is why is there no footage?? A few flying lessons. Exactly! Not enough flying lessons to fly an airliner in a 330 degrees arc to come level with the ground and penetrate Wedge One of the Pentagon as Hani Hanjour was supposed to have done. It seems he was the weakest “pilot” of them all.
Occam’s Razor: WTC-7 looks as if it came down by classic controlled demolition. Everything about its fall is consistent with controlled demolition (except the lack of very loud noise but that can be explained by using particular materials such as nano-thermite to bring it down). There is nothing consistent with fire bringing the building down.

Benny
Benny
Nov 2, 2016 10:28 PM
Reply to  flaxgirl

A few lessons might have been all that was needed. It’s probably like a PC flight simulator. Wherever the plane hit the Pentagon, someone would say “why didn’t they hit such and such a bit, where X was?”.
O.R. says whatever is the simplest answer is the most likely (see prev. comment).
As far as it ‘looking like’ controlled demolition, well how do skyscrapers hit by airliners normally come down? There’s no other case of it happening. It may indeed look like controlled demolition, or it may be exactly what happens when jumbo jets are flown into very tall buildings.
The only way to really be sure would be to build copies of the WTC and fly a couple of airliners into them – but that is not likely to happen.

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Nov 3, 2016 1:53 AM
Reply to  Benny

WTC-7 was not hit by an airliner – WTC-1 and WTC-2 were the twin towers. When a classic controlled demolition happens everything at the bottom of the building (or section of building) gives way at exactly the same time and the building (or section) falls into its own footprint. For everything to give way at the same time there has to be symmetrical impact which can only be explained in the case of WTC-7 by controlled demolition, certainly not fires.

Benny
Benny
Nov 3, 2016 9:39 PM
Reply to  flaxgirl

(Forgive my ignorance about WTC-7 being hit).
If the conspiritors had gone to such extreme lengths to destroy these buildings (for whatever reason), going so far as to keep everyone involved completely silent, then surely they would have been able to rig the charges in a way that ensured the building did NOT collapse as if by controlled demolition, in order to cover their tracks?

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Nov 3, 2016 10:24 PM
Reply to  Benny

You’d think so, wouldn’t you? They did way too good a job, didn’t they? In the case of WTC-7 I don’t think they were anticipating youtube (2005) and the ability for people to watch the video over and over again. I think they thought that WTC-7 would just be buried and forgotten amid all the other consternation.
It’s an extraordinary case of the Emperor’s New Clothes and the Hitlerian Lie. Hitler said when you tell a lie make it a whopper because while people recognise small lies they can’t comprehend the audacity of massive lies. Hitler said that with massive lies there will always be traces of the lie but people will just brush them aside which is exactly what happened with 9/11. How could the 3 planes crash into the buildings without being intercepted by a single fighter-interceptor? (In fact, I remember, at the time, wondering why they didn’t get the second plane before it crashed let alone the Pentagon plane but it wasn’t till just a year ago that a video caught my eye quite randomly and I started to research.) How could Hani Hanjour, a non-pilot essentially, guide an airliner in such a manoeuvre into the Pentagon? Why was there no plane debris on the Pentagon lawn, etc, etc. People just explain it away.
It’s always best as much as possible to look at the actual evidence and not ask “Why would they do this or that?” This is what this article is all about! Also, if you didn’t know about WTC-7 it means you haven’t familiarised yourself very much with the events of the day and it seems haven’t read the article! Do a little more research before deciding what your opinion is.

Benny
Benny
Nov 4, 2016 2:38 PM
Reply to  Benny

(There was no ‘Reply’ option under your last comment, so I’ve had to reply to the next one up (mine)).
I did read the article but I must have missed the WTC-7 bit!
I take your point though, about the fact I didn’t already know about WTC-7. I will do more reasearch.

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Nov 5, 2016 3:03 AM
Reply to  Benny

Good on you, Benny. The 3.5 hour film that first got me started is From JFK to 9/11: Everything is a Rich Man’s Trick https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1Qt6a-vaNM. There’s only a small amount about 9/11 at the end but it’s a fascinating film and well worth watching to get a sense of how we got to 9/11. There are a few links in the article that are worth following up too.

Benny
Benny
Nov 6, 2016 8:21 AM
Reply to  Benny

Thanks I’ll check it out, all the best

DP
DP
Jan 13, 2017 3:47 AM
Reply to  flaxgirl

Regarding the point you made in your next comment about YouTube being launched in 2005: I TOTALLY agree with you, Believe it or not, it is something that hit me only very recently, but it is so obvious.
IF it was an inside job, that would definitely be THE unforeseen would-be unexpected flaw of the plan.
You are so right (“ability to watch over and over again”). Nowadays, YouTube is so widely spread, it is such a big part of our life… but back in the late 90’s… (I didn’t even have an email!).
Chomsky has a point: How could a part of the State plan such a mad thing? … that is to say, If YouTube had been launched in the late 90’s! But it didn’t exist then, so the risks in case of failure of some sort were not that high, even if there had been a leak.
Without YouTube, the Truth movement would never have been able to appear and grow, and I wouldn’t be commenting on your comment.
In this respect, YouTube is revolutionary

pavlovscat7
pavlovscat7
Feb 1, 2017 5:07 AM
Reply to  DP

All contingencies are catered for DP..they WANT you to know they did 9/11… Pre-Columbian neocons threw the beating hearts of their victims down the steps of their truncated pyramids to flaunt internecine terrorism in the faces of a citizenry that had lost its nerve. They threw the beating hearts of the jumpers in the dissociated buildings in our faces and we reported for duty so we wouldn’t have to deal with our loss of nerve.. They flaunt the truncated, myopic pyramid with its remote and unaccountable capstone ( imaged on your quid) in your face. They are flipping the bird to we who piss into the wind over these realities of murderous dominion…..It is no secret or pending revelation.. All contingencies are catered for…They want us to know!:

pavlovscat7
pavlovscat7
Feb 1, 2017 4:35 AM
Reply to  flaxgirl

NOT, “classic” controlled demolition at all. Use your eyes. The material of the twin towers effervesced up and cascaded out and down and the huge building elements turned to dust in mid air….. thermite shermite. Were the toasted cars controlled demolition as well?

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Feb 2, 2017 5:14 AM
Reply to  pavlovscat7

Not talking about the twin towers, talking about WTC-7. OK, it made much less noise I think than a normal classic controlled demolition but I believe other than that it collapsed in the manner typical of a controlled demolition.

pavlovscat7
pavlovscat7
Feb 1, 2017 4:28 AM
Reply to  flaxgirl

Or anything consistent with nano-thermite bringing the building down. . .Go back and look and believe your eyes this time.. look to the disassociation constant,,,and the Hutchison effect….its real.

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Feb 2, 2017 5:16 AM
Reply to  pavlovscat7

I mean in the manner typical of a classic controlled demolition.

Quinnjin Williams
Quinnjin Williams
Jul 6, 2018 6:22 AM
Reply to  Benny

Occams razor. Did 3 buildings collapse in the manner of a controlled demo from fire and structural damage alone for the forst time in history or was it just a controlled demo. Obviously the latter is more likely.
Proceed from their.
Did middle eastern terrorists who could barely fly sesnas succesfully get training in the US and then hijack planes and perform incredible actobatic feats and not get brought down on the most heavily defended air space on earth or was their path cleared.
Was it just a coincidence tha allof this perfectly dove tailed with neocon administration who had cheated elections to gain power or did the organise the whole fucking thong in collusion with foreign agenvies using assets they had already worked with in the past ? Did larry silverstein tjusthe owner of the building happen to not turn up that morning, ulike every other morning… or was he simply warned ? Did he increase his insurance coincidentally also in the preceeding weeks or …. was he warned ?
Occams gillete mk 4 does not support the argiment you make. Neither does any other razor for that matter.

pavlovscat7
pavlovscat7
Jan 24, 2017 11:14 AM
Reply to  Benny

THE DISSOCIATION CONSTANT……..no planes?…..or no $%&##@ brains.?

Greg Rzesniowiecki
Greg Rzesniowiecki
Aug 31, 2017 1:32 PM
Reply to  pavlovscat7

Disassociation is the key observation, the buildings were pulverised in mid air.
US Geological Survey chart for elements found in the WTC dust throughout New York. Note the samples were taken a few days later so the super radioactive components were breaking down in their half-lives:
https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2001/ofr-01-0429/chem1/
Have a look at the chart in the link. Rare toxic elements; Barium, Strontium, Thorium, Cerium, Lanthanum, Yttrium including radioactive isotopes.
Disassociation would not have recombined the spheroids in the WTC dust with a mixture of elements.
None of the zillion health impact reports on Responders or ground zero workers investigates the level of radiation poisoning of the workers and people in the New York area. They call it asbestos related the liars… well asbestos diseases take multiple decades to manifest, 20-25+ years
http://www.newsweek.com/2016/09/16/9-11-death-toll-rising-496214.html
Thermite doesn’t melt guns, nor does disassociation, extract from the Newsweek article;
Gerasimczyk, the retired cop, vividly recalls standing feet away from the south tower when it fell. “We were right by St. Paul’s Chapel when the first building came down,” he says. “A nightmare. I thought, We’re already dead.” He had been dispatched downtown as soon as the planes hit. One of his supervisors, Timmy Roy, an NYPD sergeant, was radioing for help from the base of the towers. In the days that followed, Gerasimczyk and his colleagues searched the rubble for Roy and put him on the list of the missing. “We never saw Timmy again,” he says. “They found some bones. And they found his gun. It had melted.”
Another on cancers amongst ground zero workers;
http://nypost.com/2014/07/27/cancers-among-ground-zero-workers-skyrocketing/
And you know that ground zero used to mean the place on the globe above or below or point of a nuclear explosion – in plain sight people – kaboom!
Brilliant article on Chomsky and the other gatekeepers.

jack
jack
Oct 28, 2016 4:50 AM

john Pilger is another gatekeeper, and his good mate julian assange, who says that he is annoyed by anyone who doesnt agree with the official account of 9/11

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Oct 29, 2016 3:32 AM
Reply to  jack

Yes, I do find that strange. This is a very interesting article by Michel Chossudovsky where he talks about “manufacturing dissent”. So true. Are those people really concerned with truth (a depressingly, it seems, small number) just speaking in the wind? Will the truth ever out or will it always be suppressed by the enormous number of middle-gatekeepers as well as those at the top.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/who-is-behind-wikileaks-2/22389

jaques
jaques
Nov 2, 2016 5:32 AM
Reply to  jack

John Pilger is no gate keeper- the man is a legend- and has expressed doubts over the official account of 9/11. He was also witness to the assassination of Robert Kennedy and says he believes he heard more shots fired than Sirhan’s weapon contained… As for Assange- his comments about 9/11 truth are unfortunate- if vague- but ask Hillary today if Assange is a ‘gatekeeper’ friend of hers…. Just look at his situation. Personally: I think he is a sincere enemy of the ‘PTB’ and that they sincerely want him silenced.

pavlovscat7
pavlovscat7
Jan 24, 2017 11:20 AM
Reply to  jaques

Pilger is broadcaster of the bleeding obvious…on the matter of 9/11 he will stay schtumm on the real 9/11 story till someone else has the wontons…tell us what we already know John..oh revelation!, oh joy! He is no gatekeeper per se ….just an actor and a coward.

jack
jack
Apr 4, 2017 1:39 AM
Reply to  jaques

John Pilger IS a gatekeeper.
he says, not verbatim, but youll get the gist.. that he thinks, re 9/11, that the most plausible thing is, they, ie; the US Government, “let it happen”
the let it happen theory, doesnt gel when you understand that the only way building 7 could have come down the way it did, is via controlled demolition. it takes months of meticulous planning to bring down a building like that, that is not something you let happen, that is something you plan and execute.
if the PTB wanted him dead, he would bloody well be dead. that is how it works.

psic88
psic88
May 10, 2017 9:40 PM
Reply to  jack

‘Let it happen’? Of course they could. Mossad could have set it up easily, and looking official too, as it must have done.

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
May 11, 2017 2:00 PM
Reply to  psic88

Mossad no doubt set up the demolitions but there’s the rest of the operation to consider and it all had to be coordinated.

Fredrich
Fredrich
Oct 30, 2016 3:20 PM
Reply to  lolathecur

Eh yeah..nice waste of time. Thanks.

MHB Administrator
MHB Administrator
Oct 15, 2016 1:20 AM

Reblogged this on Scoop Feed.

joekano76
joekano76
Oct 14, 2016 11:57 PM

Reblogged this on TheFlippinTruth.

stuartbramhall
stuartbramhall
Oct 14, 2016 9:03 PM

Reblogged this on The Most Revolutionary Act and commented:
*
*
Liverani exposes the establishment’s most prominent 911 gatekeeper – with explicit analysis of Chomsky’s ludicrous irrationality.

Alessandro
Alessandro
Oct 12, 2016 5:45 PM

I can understand why people would be disappointed in Chomsky for his position on 9/11, but remember that Chomsky has never been afraid to take up positions that have been unpopular even among others on the left. He’s long been critical of the US’s close connection to the Saudis and isn’t the only one on the left who was more inclined to blame Saudi oil oligarchs, with their long history of sponsoring terrorism, for 9/11.
And frankly, some of the wackier stuff – like the comments about numerology in other comments below – unfortunately prevents a lot of people who would otherwise be open-minded from seriously considering the actual evidence that 9/11 could have been an inside job. It’s a bit like not liking a team because their fans are annoying – because some (or a lot) of the people who question the official narrative of 9/11 are into fluffy un-scientific fringe theories, in many people’s eyes it discredits the whole thing.

johnny
johnny
Oct 12, 2016 7:50 PM
Reply to  Alessandro

Re numbers, we are often expected to believe in the long list of coincidences in “official versions” so why is it so weird that others can put store in the coincidences of how the numbers fall? Anyway, scientific investigation is never immune from this type of thing, Newton ”chose” seven colours in the spectrum because seven had, he thought, metaphysical and esoteric connotations. Also the belief structures we are left with in modern society, as in everything we are told, have become in effect religions so why shouldn’t the people in charge of it all have similar notions guiding them?

pavlovscat7
pavlovscat7
Feb 1, 2017 4:45 AM
Reply to  johnny

The sum is one……pons asinorum.

Jen
Jen
Oct 13, 2016 1:22 AM
Reply to  Alessandro

While he was British Prime Minister, Tony Blair and his wife Cherie dabbled in quite a lot of New Age practices and rituals. Nick Cohen even wrote an article for The Guardian on the Blairs’ New Age beliefs:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/dec/08/cherieblair.labour1
While reading Cohen’s article, bear in mind that Cherie Booth Blair is a QC with her own legal consulting firm Omnia Strategy and that both Blairs are also practising Roman Catholics.
The Blairs may not even be all anomalous in their eclectic beliefs and worldview. Most of us have personal superstitions that we may or may not use to guide us in our decision-making (like flipping coins). The Powers That (Shouldn’t) Be also have their personal superstitions and beliefs that they may or may not use to make decisions and those decisions may have momentous consequences for many of us. Some of those elites may be believers in numerology or know it (but not believe it) sufficiently enough to use that knowledge and the symbolism behind its concepts and beliefs in ways that transmit messages or signs which the rest of us won’t be aware of, because we don’t know numerology and if we have heard of it, we deride it.
The actual numerical coincidences aren’t necessarily important, it’s what the numbers represent and the messages the representations carry that are important. The layer upon layer of symbols and their meanings and connections is needed to put the general public off the scent. What better way to put people off than to use symbols from belief systems ridiculed by the public to carry esoteric messages.
There has been speculation past and present that 20th-century British occultist Aleister Crowley pursued his ideas, beliefs and practices, developing them into the system of Thelema, as a cover for his espionage work for the British government.

pavlovscat7
pavlovscat7
Feb 1, 2017 4:39 AM
Reply to  Jen

Tony Blairs’ new age beliefs extended to bird dogging Rupert Murdochs’ misses… Coalition of the willing indeed.

rpsabq2014rpsabq
rpsabq2014rpsabq
Jan 24, 2017 12:12 AM
Reply to  Alessandro

Yes, because Chomsky has always been so bold in his positions surrounding such issues makes his unwillingness to the do the same about 9/11 all the more mind boggling. My eyes were opened to 9/11 after I took a fresh look at the evidence. After 10+ years I enjoyed forgetting about it. But after a friend made it clear to me that my addiction to CNN was causing my world view to be incredibly naive and misinformed, he challenged me to do the research. I took him up on the challenge and spent a few months catching up. Painful to watch, indeed, but totally necessary. Then after being called a nutjob by my family, I finally convinced my mother to do the same. To my surprise, she approached me after a few days in a state of shock and speechlessness. If she could be convinced at the ripe age of 80, I knew then that those who insist on calling people “Twoofers” or “conspiracy theorists” do so because they are just simply uninformed, lacking in critical thinking skills and/or do not possess the ability to use common sense. Research into 9/11 requires time, good judgement and the ability to distinguish between the bullshit and the cold hard facts. Then and only then does anyone have any authority whatsoever on the matter. As time goes on, those who discredit people who question and challenge the official story of 9/11 will soon become the nutjobs. We are just now getting there with JFK and then, hopefully, the Moon Landing (remember, evidence along with common sense, folks…. common sense…..). Not only is my mother now convinced that of course we did not land on the moon, she is now challenging ME about Sandy Hook. The jury for me is still out, but from what I’ve already read and seen all I can say is – holy shit! If we as a society don’t start turning on our brains when coming into contact with information regarding events both domestic and global, our demise will be our own doing.

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Jan 24, 2017 8:50 PM

Sandy Hook was soooo obviously a staged event, I’m just amazed they keep getting away with it as was Boston bombing and many others in both the US and in other parts of the world. Actually, these staged events have been going on forever I believe. I have to say, despite the anomalies, I still believe we went to the moon mainly because I think all the hours of dialogue of the astronauts simply couldn’t be faked – but knowing how many events have been faked now I’m not certain about anything.
I’ve created a page http://www.laverite.weebly.com which gives a context to all the recent mass shootings and their hallmarks.
How about the Challenger disaster? Short version – google for longer versions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxqhU6nEy6c. Where the YouTuber states that two of the astronauts claim to be their twin brother I’m not sure that’s true. I think it’s simply brother. The two Judith Resniks seem to have very different backgrounds according to Wikipedia, but of course so many things are fakeable. Carl McNair seems to have a gap between his front teeth while his astronaut brother Ron didn’t but there again – can be engineered. It does my head in.
Ultimately, though what’s all the fakery really about? Is it just people playing games, enjoying duping the public? Enjoying taunting those that can see the truth but are forced to simply bang their heads against a brick wall because they’re impotent in getting the truth out. Pavlovs Cat said it well on their comment on this article https://off-guardian.org/2016/09/15/911-how-it-costs-you-friends/
‘Truth’, these days, is exponent-driven before it is subjective. It is a rank generalization of course but, there are basically three types of citizens. Those that have never known and never will know. And let’s admit we sometimes envy their bliss that abides with its eternal companion. Then there are those that know but, go along to get along ….the shareholder..the serpents’ teeth. Their silence is their complicity, but a sling to charity now and again has them sleeping the sleep of the just. Then companions…there is we. We who piss into the wind over these things. We who are the laughing stock of the people who did these deeds and will continue to do so. They want us to know what they have done and are flipping us the bird and saying to us..”in light of the other two demographics; “what are you going to do about it you numpties?”

rpsabq2014rpsabq
rpsabq2014rpsabq
Jan 25, 2017 10:28 AM
Reply to  flaxgirl

HAHA! I see i’ve found some of my people. I will check out your links, thanks! I actually believe the Space shuttle deaths really happened. About the moon, we did everything but travel from Earth’s orbit and actually go to the moon. They just simply did not have the technology or the GAS! We’re talking 200,000+ miles here – one way. Also, as NASA easily admits in its education videos meant for young school children, they haven’t figured out a way to get past the Van Allen Radiation Belts and the moon is way past that. We were scared to death that Russia was going to launch nuclear bombs from space. In their minds in context with the times of 1969, a) we had no choice and b) they honestly thought they would get to the moon very very soon – so all of the prep, etc was for real. They just staged the actual moon part. Also JFK challenged them to do it before the end of the decade. JFK was loved by all and society had very high expectations for NASA to come through. NASA was under immense pressure. Neil Armstrong all but admitted it in a speech at a White House anniversary dinner in the late 90’s (“once you overcome Truth’s protective layers”…). Shortly after the mission, he resigned from NASA and gave zero interviews thereafter. The guilt made drunks out of all them. (did you see Buzz Aldrin’s appearance on Colbert recently?) The press conference right after they returned says it all…. see you at the other links!

pavlovscat7
pavlovscat7
Feb 1, 2017 4:42 AM

Giant Steps are what you take…walking on the moon.

Colleen Adams
Colleen Adams
Dec 9, 2017 9:20 AM

I once saw a short video clip of Putin talking to a group of students who I guessed were aerospace engineering students. The clip was short, and he said, words to the effect :” as we all know there has not been a landing on the moon” No matter what anyone thinks of Putin, I do not believe that he would lie about that.

Admin
Admin
Dec 9, 2017 11:21 AM
Reply to  Colleen Adams

We’ve just had – VERY lengthy – “debate” about the Apollo project, so let’s not revive the corpse quite yet. If Putin did say such a thing, he was probably joking.

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Dec 9, 2017 11:34 AM
Reply to  Admin

Sure. Just want to give a link to this video on why Russia didn’t make it which I came across a couple of days ago – and there’s a fascinating little twist at the end. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vi6fjs_8Yx8

Sonja
Sonja
Jul 31, 2019 9:16 PM
Reply to  Admin

Admin, I am disappointed with your comment. I would like to see the video of Putin, even though I would not believe that he knows the answer.

pavlovscat7
pavlovscat7
Jan 24, 2017 11:26 AM
Reply to  Alessandro

Considering all contingencies is still difficult isn’t it? Noams’ job is to make you feel someone brave is on the job. He merely confirms what we already know..or should know about imperial hegemony. And his ” WHO CARES” deposition. should be proof enough of his position in the hierachy. John Philger and Phillip Adams play similar roles.

johnny
johnny
Oct 12, 2016 12:34 PM

A home-grown “cover-up” example of this is Bletchley Park and Ultra which employed thousands (I think) of people many of whom were “normal” people recruited from everyday life i.e. without previous security connections. These all apparently kept quiet for 30 years when old ladies could tell their kids “Oh by the way I was a WW11 codebreaker” and the world found out about advances in technology and theoretical thinking that were hitherto not known about. I doubt many of these would fear for their lives or consider the existence of a “deep state” which might harm them, physically or career-wise. That deep state, if it exists, has had many years to perfect its methods of operation and selection processes and now has infiltrated (a compliant) media to such an extent that they can literally get away with murder.

Zorg
Zorg
Oct 11, 2016 9:18 PM

A long reply (interesting but in french) from ReOpen911 to Noam Chomsky about his positions on the subject :
http://www.reopen911.info/11-septembre/2154/

BigB
BigB
Oct 11, 2016 7:44 PM

The paradox of Chomsky on 9/11 is that he did take an incredibly unpopular stance over this – his long held view that America was the worlds leading terrorist state didn’t curry him much favour in the post 9/11 jingoistic xenophobic backlash. As I remember it, he was right up there with bin Laden and Hussein as Americas Most Wanted. That he didn’t get into it – given his predeliction for poring over declassified documents relating to COINTELPRO or CIA death squads (to which he must have dedicated years of his life) – is contradictory to say the least. If its not his cause, fair enough, but to actively discourage others from dedicating years of their lives to uncover the truth smacks of intellectual hypocrisy.
Having said that, the author seems to have unwittingly created his own strawman argument – conflating the theory of the plan leakage of 9/11 with the Manhattan Project – details of which did get out. Not only were there some 1500 ‘loose talk’ investigations – the entire project was infiltrated by the Soviets to the top level. This espionage allowed the Soviets – with little independant research – to build and explode their first bomb in 1949. Klaus Fuchs gave them a functional blueprint. Other prominent nuclear spies included the Rosenbergs (who were executed) and possibly even Julius Oppenheimer – who was implicated (though not proven) through being mentioned in the Venona Transcripts – and had his security clearance revoked. If 9/11 had been similarily watertight – Cheney and Rumsfeld et al would have been shot by now.

jaques
jaques
Oct 12, 2016 4:24 AM
Reply to  BigB

that’s interesting. I just watched that teleseries ‘Manahattan’ and some of that espionage was covered in it. Great little series BTW.
Even given the porous security at the manhattan project- there is still the oft repeated ‘proof’ offered in support of the official 9/11 narrative, that ‘ someone would have blabbed’. Of course this is not ‘proof’ at all- and is merely an opinion about human nature. There is a great deal of evidence that proves that humans can keep secrets- and that no one necessarily ‘blabs.
In the case of 9/11 it would be fair to assume that the plotters were all people who had first been vetted, who were know quantities, who likely had a long history that bought them to the table- and who understood very well- that there would never be ANY ‘blabbing’.

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Oct 12, 2016 12:39 PM
Reply to  BigB

As I know next to nothing about the Manhattan Project but vaguely heard that it wasn’t leaked I shouldn’t have used it. Thanks for pointing out the error. I think though that the evidence about 9/11 (not necessarily through leakage) is so damn obvious that Cheney and Rumsfeld should be in gaol. It’s not a case of lack of evidence, it’s that they have too much power and they’re all in it together. It’s the biggest case of the Emperor’s New Clothes in history.

dahoit
dahoit
Oct 22, 2016 6:22 PM
Reply to  BigB

No,Chomsky wasn’t attacked by the MSM,he is a gatekeeper who tells partial truths to keep some thinking he is non aligned,when any damn fool knows he’s a zionist mole traitor.
By deception they rule.
But not for long.
On Nov.8,Donald Trump will upset their pushcart of lies.

joe
joe
Oct 28, 2016 6:04 AM
Reply to  BigB

The whistle blower question is basically an none starter considering our current media environment where a few giant corporations own and control all the “vetted” media providers. Cheney himself could come out and claim he managed the entire operation and dollars to donuts he would be lambasted as nuts in the MSM. There have been many whistle blowers in the case of 911 and they have been systematically denigrated and ignored. Additionally the practice of compartmentalization allows complicated schemes to be undertaken with many of the players involved not knowing what they are working on.

Hertog Jan
Hertog Jan
Oct 11, 2016 6:23 PM

Chomsky obviously fears what would happen if Americans understood who really attacked them on 9/11.

jaques
jaques
Oct 12, 2016 4:56 AM
Reply to  Hertog Jan

which is perhaps understandable: can you imagine what might happen if the truth were ever to be accepted by the mainstream? They would need trials like Nuremburg to deal with it- and one assumes- in the USA- that the criminals would face the death penalty for such treasonous and murderous crimes. Hard to imagine Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitx, Perle, Meyers, Bush (plural) and all the others facing the death penalty. Such things have never happened. I often wonder just how seismic the affects of the truth about 9/11 would actually be. At this late stage- some 15 years after the fact- I also wonder if the mainstream will ever face up to the truth. Ignorance is a type of bliss apparently- but as MLK said:
““Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

BigB
BigB
Oct 12, 2016 12:27 PM
Reply to  jaques

The State protects its own via Sovereign Immunity – or should that be impunity – the neocons that you mention will never be tried because of it. Lower hanging fruit – such as ‘moderate Republican’ Christie Todd Whitman (former head of the EPA) – was found to be at fault for telling Manhattans that the air was safe to breathe. But that was overturned on appeal so as to avoid setting ‘a dangerous legal precedent.’ She recently apologised. I’m sure all the surviving first responders that had their lungs burnt out are feeling reassured as they lie on their deathbeds!
This is cogent, as you probably know AE911 are preparing to go legal – and public interest lawyer Daniel Sheehan has advised that picking the right defendant (and plaintiff[s]) is crucial to the case even being allowed to proceed. Aim too high and it will be stopped dead. Also, the case will have to be watertight from the outset (ie compiled from evidence already in the public domain) as ‘discovery’ and ‘disclosure’ will be resisted. Personally, as much as I want the perpeTraitors brought to justice, I’m not holding much hope. Judges in the States are political appointees – any traction a class action may get in the lower courts would soon be overruled.
I think that the most we are going to see is the ‘Oliver North of 9/11’ offered up sacrificially – perhaps with a network of old retired buddies – as the ‘rogue element’ working without the full knowledge of their superiors. Meanwhile, expect the State to continue to commit crimes against democracy – with impunity.

johnny
johnny
Oct 17, 2016 8:52 PM
Reply to  Hertog Jan

HI Hertog Jan, are you from ‘s-Hertogenbosch?

Clubofinfo
Clubofinfo
Oct 11, 2016 3:41 PM

If you are struggling to “get past” Chomsky, maybe stop trying to pimp him to join the “truther” cause?
Consider he would never have made any “statement” if the 9/11 truthers had not gone to events with the purpose of recruiting him. Writing redfaced comments condemning Chomsky, Snowden, Assange and even Putin as CIA assets for not mentioning truthers’ 9/11 conspiracies is making the truther movement look nuts.

marc
marc
Oct 11, 2016 5:01 PM
Reply to  Clubofinfo

@clubofinfo – no one here is talking about “Snowden, Assange and Putin” … Off-topic.
No one needs Chomsky to join any cause.
People are asking if he would rather not actively denigrate a cause, without due diligence, given his prominence as ‘the world’s leading intellectual’.
He said what he said, of his own volition. No-one forced him to say anything: he’s a grown man.

clubof.info
clubof.info
Oct 12, 2016 3:05 PM
Reply to  marc

No, they tried to pimp him to join their cause. He responded out of politeness. Stop bullying a great man for not joining your cult.

jaques
jaques
Oct 15, 2016 2:04 PM
Reply to  clubof.info

stop defending your idol- you do him no service- he is no saint beyond criticism. Also he sets a high standard- I think I do him honor by holding him to it:
“It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies.”
― Noam Chomsky
“How it is we have so much information, but know so little?”
― Noam Chomsky
“Responsibility I believe accrues through privilege. People like you and me have an unbelievable amount of privilege and therefore we have a huge amount of responsibility. We live in free societies where we are not afraid of the police; we have extraordinary wealth available to us by global standards. If you have those things, then you have the kind of responsibility that a person does not have if he or she is slaving seventy hours a week to put food on the table; a responsibility at the very least to inform yourself about power. Beyond that, it is a question of whether you believe in moral certainties or not.”
― Noam Chomsky
“Consider he would never have made any “statement” if the 9/11 truthers had not gone to events with the purpose of recruiting him… they tried to pimp him to join their cause. He responded out of politeness. Stop bullying a great man for not joining your cult.”
you are suggesting Chomsky has no power- that ‘truthers’ forced him to make the statement he has made. This is to say he is merely a reactionary- and has no agency. No one ‘forced’ or ‘pimped’ Chomsky- at least not from the truth movement… Chomsky denigrates the truth movement in his comments- giving his reasons: do they then have they no right to deconstruct his flawed arguments and intellectual laziness over this issue? Or do you agree with Noam ‘the Historian’ when he says so contemptuously:
‘even if their was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy… even if 9/11 was an inside job… who cares, so what?’

johnny
johnny
Oct 11, 2016 2:33 PM

When he comments on “the smallness of their number..” one has to consider that many academics and professionals would be afraid to add to that number; fear of damage to their reputations, fear of damage to their earning potential, fear of “backlegging” or even worse. Maybe Mr Chomsky shares one of these fears (or even worse)

marc
marc
Oct 11, 2016 2:47 PM
Reply to  johnny

johnny, are you saying the fearless, peerless Chomsky would wimp out?

johnny
johnny
Oct 12, 2016 2:03 PM
Reply to  marc

even worse!

mog
mog
Oct 11, 2016 1:33 PM

Chomsky on JFK :

jaques
jaques
Oct 11, 2016 2:52 PM
Reply to  mog

wow- his arguments against the JFK assassination are almost word for word identical to what he says about 9/11 – just shows how he came to 9/11 with a jaundiced reflexive view. Again he says ‘who cares?’ as if these world changing events don’t matter? Or rather what causes them doesn’t matter. I care about the causes Noam. I care about the truth.

jaques
jaques
Oct 11, 2016 2:57 PM
Reply to  jaques

and DOUBLE WOW for Michael Perenti! Man he kicks Chomsky’s intellectually lazy ass! thanks for that link.

deschutes
deschutes
Oct 11, 2016 7:08 PM
Reply to  jaques

Perenti RAWKS.

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Oct 12, 2016 1:08 PM
Reply to  mog

It’s interesting where Parenti says that the public are unwilling to be gullible about the JFK assassination. One of my favourite quotes is “It’s easier to deceive the people that convince them they’ve been fooled”.

Moriarty's Left Sock
Moriarty's Left Sock
Oct 11, 2016 12:14 PM

It’s particularly deplorable that Chomsky derides Truthers for taking up a “risk-free” position, when so many of the leading Truth campaigners have paid so dearly for their bravery. Kevin Ryan was fired from Underwriters.. Steve Jones was fired from BYU. James Tracey was fired from the University of Florida, and these are just three. Has Chomsky been fired for taking up his position?

jaques
jaques
Oct 12, 2016 5:41 AM

yes- that is one of the most pathetic things he does. There are many, many names you could add to your list- people who have paid dearly for having the temerity of questioning 9/11. For Chomsky to say 9/11 truth is ‘lazy’ and risk free’ is 100% the opposite of reality.
there are those that lost their jobs- but there is also some indication of more far more deadly consequences. Barry Jennings, Danny Jowenko, Beverly Eckert, William Cooper, Michael H. Doran, Christopher Landis, Paul Smith, Major General David Wherley, Salvatore Princiotta, David Graham, Wendy Burlingame, Katherine Smith, Daniel Pearl all come to mind.
none of which Chomsky would ever question of course. Even if one of those deaths was the result of a 9/11 coverup- it is a huge story. As is that’s a lot of ‘suicides, plane and train and car crashes, heart attacks and murders’….
and just what was the CIA/Brennan story that Michael Hasting’s said, “I’m onto a big story: and I need to go under the radar” hours before he died in a fiery car crash, a crash that was reported as an accident- but about which fmr. Bush State Dept. advisor Richard Clarke said, was “consistent with a car cyberattack”?

Boo Radley
Boo Radley
Oct 11, 2016 11:50 AM

However you feel about his conclusions, Miles Mathis has certainly complied some interesting evidence in his open source investigation of Chomsky:
http://mileswmathis.com/chom.pdf

marc
marc
Oct 11, 2016 2:45 PM
Reply to  Boo Radley

Boo, that ‘Miles Mathis’ stuff is stuff and nonsense.
Chomsky deserves our respect, we’ve all learned hugely from his intellect and prodigious output.
The issue here is that Chomsky – rather than maintaining intellectual balance around the ’11-9′ issue (as Pilger, Parenti, Blum and others have done) – has inserted himself into the discourse (see publication of his “911” book in 2001) and actively denigrated those who scrutinise the ’11-9′ event.
This is what has annoyed many people.
Not only has he denigrated independent scrutiny, he has also actively told people ‘not to waste their time on it’. On this issue, his utterances have damaged civil inquiry and have supported state narrative, upon which resource wars are predicated.
This will impact Chomsky’s legacy, going forward. Does he care, do his followers care about his legacy?

Boo Radley
Boo Radley
Oct 12, 2016 1:42 PM
Reply to  marc

Marc, Not reading something because you have pre-judged it isn’t a great way to analyse. Everything he references is from open sources (mostly wikipedia and geneology sites). His conclusions are far-out, but the information is a compilation of facts based on his career.
Everything that you wrote above does nothing whatsoever to argue with Mathis’ conclusion.

Admin
Admin
Oct 12, 2016 1:22 PM
Reply to  Boo Radley

We love Miles Mathis. According to him just about everyone who ever died faked their own death. Paul McCartney being the exception – he’s actually dead and pretending to be alive 😀
In fairness Mathis actually writes very well, and his stuff is very entertaining, sometimes even insightful, but he is swimming further and further out to sea every day.

michaelk
michaelk
Oct 11, 2016 11:38 AM

Getting into this entire 9/11 debate is… problematic. Immediately one is attacked and condemned if one dares to step to one side or the other. It all becomes incredibly and unhelpfully, partisan and the emotions released are formidable. It’s almost like a religeous schism or a sectarian battle among leftwing factions.
I think the article is… ‘hysterical’, I was gonna say ‘hysterically funny’, but I’ll stick with ‘hysterical.’ It’s violently critical of Chomsky because he doesn’t accept that the attacks were an ‘inside job’ and part of a massively murderous and complex conspiracy. A ‘new Pearl Harbour’, only this time carried out by the Americans themselves and not the Japanese military. Please, let’s not get into the debate about whether Pearl Harbour was an inside job too!
Certainly there a lots of ‘perculiarities’ linked to 9/11 as it was a unique event in so many ways, but those ‘problems’ don’t mean that the answers are clearly linked to a massive state-sponsered conspiracy.
What seems to characterize our era is many people seek logical answers when dramatic and seemingly unexplainable events occur which hit us with massive emotional impact. For example the death of Princess Diana. What is the ‘explanation’ for such a shocking event? If the answers aren’t there, we have a tendency to ‘find them’ and rebalance, or make the world comprehensible again, when, unfortunately, it may not actually be comprehensible in the sense that the answers ‘fit’ the way we think the world should be or how we understand it.
Comparing the conspiracy of 9/11, the inside job theory, with the secret project to produce an atomic bomb, is a tempting, but false comparison, which is only possible because we know the project was real and the result was made public and the secrecy vanished. That was reality. 9/11, on the other hand, the huge secret conspiracy, is still a fantasy.
So much in life, is a mess and full of mistakes and huge contradictions. Even the investigation into 9/11 after the event proves this unfortunately and unsatisfactory truth. Uselessness and incompetence aren’t proof of conspiracy, they are, if anything, the opposite. It’s only because so many people concentrate so much time and energy on 9/11, studying the details to an extraordinary degree, that 9/11 looks different from other major and dramatic events. I would contend that 9/11 and its aftermath are really the ‘norm’ and not special at all.

jaques
jaques
Oct 11, 2016 12:02 PM
Reply to  michaelk

“Uselessness and incompetence aren’t proof of conspiracy”
of course they aren’t- but the physics of 9/11 ARE proof of a conspiracy. The official story is simply not possible- and cannot explain what people observed, what cameras documented and what is otherwise known beyond doubt to have occurred in NYC.
When you add to that the supposed systemic ‘incompetence’ that saw a 100% failure of airport security for 4 planes, a 100% failure of NORAD to intercept any aircraft, the 100% failure of intelligence agencies (FBI, CIA, NSA, etc) to foil the plot (despite innumerable detailed warnings), 100% failure of any pilot to emit the hijack ‘squawk’ code, etc- and then you add the 100% structural failure of not Two but Three high rise buildings in NYC (all owned by the same man- what a coincidence!)? You look at the strange hole in that field in Pennsylvania- the complete lack of meaningful footage of whatever hit the Pentagon… Then you consider the documented insider trading, the known prior intent of the Bush regime to attack both Afghanistan and Iraq- the chillingly prescient PNAC document and Operation Northwoods before it- the multiple advanced warnings of the 9/11 attacks given to the US by multiple foreign states… then you look at the guilty demeanor of the Bush regime, and the refusal to have an investigation for over 400 days after the event, then the Anthrax ‘attacks’ who was targeted and where the anthrax came from, then the Saudi Connections to the Bush’s, Cheney and Rumsfeld. You look at the omissions of the 9/11 cOmmission report- and the fabrications, the ‘evidence’ extracted under torture- you take all of this information- and much more besides- and at the end of the day the answer is quite clear: ON EVERY FRONT the official story IS BULLSHIT- pure and simple. The Coincidence and Incompetence Theories cannot explain it all.
This video from years ago is a good one for looking into the really innumerable number of bizarre ‘coincidences’ one must accept as in order for one to accept the the 9/11 story is true:

I challenge you to watch it and remain convinced that 19 terrorists pulled the wool over the eyes of the largest military and intelligence apparatus the world has ever seen in the manner we were told. To believe in the official story is to give the ‘terrorists’ WAY WAY too much credit…
“A certain man once lost a diamond cuff-link in the wide blue sea, and twenty years later, on the exact day, a Friday apparently, he was eating a large fish – but there was no diamond inside. That’s what I like about coincidence.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Laughter in the Dark

jaques
jaques
Oct 11, 2016 2:44 PM
Reply to  jaques

I’ll add something completely off tangent- concerning coincidences- something which possibly doesn’t mean anything but is nevertheless interesting:
9/11:
9+1+1 =11
09/11/2001 254th day of the year 2+5+4 =11
09/11/2001 111 days until the end of the year
Twin Towers 111 floors tall (if you count the ground floor)
Twin Towers = Giant Number 11
first struck by flight 11 American Airlines A=1st letter of alphabet AA = 11
92 passengers including 11 crew 9+2 =11
September was once the 7th month of the year…
7 x 11 = 77
The Pentagon is 77 feet tall
The Pentagon Stone Laying Ceremony was on SEPTEMBER 11, 1941 – 60 years to the day prior to 9/11
It was (allegedly) struck by flight 77
george bush snr: 77 yrs old on 9/11
george bush snr. has ship named after him: USS George H.W. Bush CVN-77
george Bsh Snr gave his famous speech where he first used phrase “a New Word Order” on SEPTEMBER 11, 1991 -10 years to the day before 9/11
Flight 93 ‘crashed into a field) (?): Flight 175 + Flight 11 = 186
186 divided by 2 =’s (Flight) 93?
haha

jaques
jaques
Oct 11, 2016 2:45 PM
Reply to  jaques

oh- and the Madrid Bombings? 911 days after 9/11… and London? 7/7 of course…

marc
marc
Oct 11, 2016 2:59 PM
Reply to  jaques

I don’t rate numerology at all and i think it weakens your other good arguments, Jaques. Just saying…..
Thing is, one can torture numbers any which way in numerology. That is what your critics will say to you – smearing your other work by association.
NIST tried to torture the numbers in their report.
You can’t do that with physics.
Let’s stick to hard facts and hard physics.

jaques
jaques
Oct 11, 2016 5:50 PM
Reply to  marc

I don’t rate numerology either- and as I said- maybe it means nothing. Generally I avoid any discussion of it- and I probably shouldn’t have bothered here. I don’t believe in angels, the occult, etc. However- in the case of 9/11- there is a lot of symbolism and very odd coincidences. The pattern of 11’s and it’s multiples is interesting to me, and I think you would be hard pressed to find a similar pattern out of nowhere in any given event.
Whilst we may not believe in gematria- I think there is some tentative evidence that certain elite groups place a fair store in it. Perhaps the neocons have their own’ shamans’ who they consult to give kabbalistic advice and offer propitious dates to undertake operations? A ha. But this is a peccadillo side interest of mine- and small potatoes compared to the main meal: the hard science and solid evidence that proves the 9/11 lie.
So I agree with you- with 9/11 truth there is no need for numerology: or particle beams, hollow towers, holograms, no-planes, suitcase nukes, pancake affects, ink toner micro-spheres, chimney affects, freefall gravity ‘collapses’, office fire induced total implosions: or any other pseudo-scientific claptrap! 😉

Jen
Jen
Oct 12, 2016 12:02 AM
Reply to  jaques

The patterns of 7 and 11 that keep occurring are interesting in themselves. You’d want to know what esoteric belief systems emphasise 7 and 11. In the esoteric versions of astrology and numerology at least, 7 is associated with the planet Saturn which represents completeness or restriction and 11 (in numerology, the first of the Master numbers) may be associated with Uranus (the next planet in the solar system after Saturn) which represents rebellion and the breaking of boundaries.
I am sure you are right when you say certain elites place a fair store in gematria and on 7 and 11 particularly, among their other superstitions and hodgepodge occult ideas drawn from ancient Egyptian, Babylonian and Hebrew belief systems.

jaques
jaques
Oct 12, 2016 4:06 AM
Reply to  Jen

Although I haven’t read up on it much- apparently the numbers 11 and 77 were both of great interest to Alistair Crowley. He published a little infamous magik ‘treatise’ called Liber 77 (book 77) – Crowley knew Pauline Pierce- who was actually Georg Bush Jnr’s Grandmother… it’s a small world, eh?
“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”
Crowley also knew Jack Parsons of JPL Jet Propulsion- later NASA.
as for elite peccadilloes, numerology- and the number 7- we have this from Madame Legarde:

perhaps I should submit an off-guardian article- where we can take an off topic excursion – a flight of fancy- into this strange world of numbers… It’s interesting you mention Saturn- there was a rare SATURN/PLUTO opposition on 9/11…
Just to be clear: I don’t actually believe in astrology, numerology or magik. I am agnostic.

Jen
Jen
Oct 12, 2016 6:48 AM
Reply to  jaques

And Jack Parsons knew L Ron Hubbard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Parsons_(rocket_engineer)
You are right, it’s a very small world indeed.

joe
joe
Oct 28, 2016 6:21 AM
Reply to  jaques

Or, if you consider them prime suspects, you might say the alphabet “intelligence” agencies were a 100% successful.

Jen
Jen
Oct 12, 2016 12:50 AM
Reply to  michaelk

Michael K, you missed the point of Petra Liverani’s article. The issue is that bringing the truth about certain incidents and events into the public arena can be and is very hard when the Western MSM is constantly running interference for The Powers That Be against it.
When certain individuals like Noam Chomsky who have made a name for themselves as dissidents against government propaganda and speaking truth to power take it upon themselves to denigrate and marginalise others who are also trying to fight propaganda and lies, then finding and knowing the truth becomes so much more difficult. What’s even more inexplicable is when those same individuals go out of their way to deny alternative explanations of the events that occurred on September 11, 2001, waste their time and energy beating down those explanations and the people proposing them, and in doing this risk ruining their own reputations and the values and principles they claim to stand for.
All Chomsky has to do, if he disagrees with the Truther movement, is simply say that he accepts the official explanation of what occurred and that he is prepared to keep an open mind and call for more investigations and discussions.
If we were to follow the logic of the rest of your comment, forensic science wouldn’t exist. Police departments would be aghast to know that whenever strange deaths occur inside people’s houses and apartments, they should not treat the victims’ relatives and/or partners as possible murder suspects.

damien
damien
Oct 11, 2016 9:05 AM

Chomsky has done sterling work over a life time in unmasking US empire crimes. So now, in his old age, he finds a new empire outrage on his doorstep. Having suffered public ridicule from the Right over decades he probably feels that he doesn’t want the hassle of this new, vile crime dumped on him. Yes, he’s shirking the issue but so what? He’s done enough. Give the guy a break. It’s not like he’s out there grabbing media air time to attack 911 critics. He just wants his retirement. Let him have it, I say. Let somebody else take up the struggle.

jaques
jaques
Oct 11, 2016 9:21 AM
Reply to  damien

NO: Chomsky isn’t merely shirking the issue: he has published a book called “9-11 Was There an Alternative?” he has spoken publicly AGAINST the truth movement (as demonstrated in the videos above). In other words he has injected himself into the debate- on the side of the official lie. Considering that 9/11 was a crime against humanity that is no small thing. And presumably Chomsky has directly profited from his book- and from his lectures. This goes well beyond mere ‘shirking’. The fact that he did such great work in the past unmasking US hegemony over the years arguably makes this lapse all the more perplexing and all the more unforgivable. Given his stature and influence his defense of the official 9/11 narrative has a great deal of sway- I have heard many people say, “Chomsky says 9/11 wasn’t an inside job…’. as if that was proof positive that Bin Laden and Atta did it..
Chomsky is guilty of either wilful ignorance or far far worse. Personally I find that very disappointing indeed: as he used to be a kind of hero of mine.

deschutes
deschutes
Oct 11, 2016 9:58 AM
Reply to  jaques

Awesome post! Kudos 🙂

Moriarty's Left Sock
Moriarty's Left Sock
Oct 11, 2016 12:16 PM
Reply to  jaques

Well said Jaques

Phil
Phil
Nov 22, 2016 11:03 PM
Reply to  jaques

Yes a hero of mine too sad really wonder if he is scared for his family and loved ones when no longer here being English I never thought 9/11 was anything but a Saudi fanatical attack for America building military base in Saudi Chomsky said this so I naturally went along with it heard all the stories detonators inside job etc just thought more JFK parlour games you make a great case but why do I feel like I did when I found out there was no father Christmas can’t believe he is a Zionist or a gate keeper whatever that is. His 9/11 book he says America has committed far worse atrocities and he lists many a collective conscience of truth is needed and Chomsky has been a great truth seeker he should be rightly criticised sorry I know none of the above like this world makes any
sense

deschutes
deschutes
Oct 11, 2016 9:56 AM
Reply to  damien

What are you talking about? ‘Let him have his retirement’? He’s still teaching at MIT, still writing numerous articles, still writing books, still doing countless interviews, etc. I get the impression he still wants to be active, to contribute. So I think you’re a bit misinformed about his current situation. I think the author of this article is right to question Chomsky on this issue, as Chomsky certainly could have done more to question the official bogus narrative of 9-11. Be careful giving Chomsky a free pass on this….just because ‘Chomsky®™ said so. Logical fallacy of appeal to authority makes an unconvincing argument.

mog
mog
Oct 11, 2016 1:12 PM
Reply to  damien

Why can’t Chomsky (and other contemporaries who voice similar opinions) simply endorse a call for new investigations? They can make clear that they do not endorse any theory whatsoever, rather that there is a strong case that the official reports are incomplete, inaccurate and contradicted by the public record.
This is what is so infuriating about Chomsky’s position to me, that he has expressly sided with those who are determined to stop critical inquiry into the 911 events. This is intellectually and morally reprehensible.

jaques
jaques
Oct 11, 2016 6:05 PM
Reply to  mog

exactly so- I can kind of understand why high profile people would be wary indeed of talking openly about 9/11 truth. Look what happened to Kevin Ryan, Steven Jones, Jessie Ventura and Charlie Sheen, etc. The fact is anyone who does so virtually commits career suicide: and (therefore?) very few do.
As Upton Sinclair brilliantly put it: ““It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” ”
It is no wonder many of the more prominent academics in the 9/11 truth movement are retired. It may be weak to put your livelihood and career over the truth- but it is human- and understandable. These people have families, lives, etc.
It is one thing to stay quiet- but quite another to come out and attack those that do seek the truth. The you become complicit in the crime.
I find Glenn Greenwald an interesting case- he sits right on the fence as far as I can tell. He wrote about the Anthrax attacks so knows very well all the lies that were told by the US Government and the FBI concerning them- he knows about the abuses of power following 9/11, the illegal wars, the mass surveillance. Yet as far as I can tell he has never publicly commented about 9/11 truth one war or the other- depsite the fact that so much of his work exists in a post 9/11 orbit. I find this odd: I am giving him the benefit of the doubt- he knows the truth but has decided perhaps it’s not his fight. At least I haven’t seen him attack the 9/11 truth movement (unlike Chomsky).

dahoit
dahoit
Oct 22, 2016 7:28 PM
Reply to  jaques

Well as of 2 days ago,he offered a very milquetoast defense of Assange and wikileaks by having Naomi Klein critique the assault on privacy?of Assange with the verifiable truth about the HRC campaigns fixing of the American POTUS election,in primaries,and now the general.
All one can say to this BS,by said GG,NK and NC,is the common thread between they and of course the ZionistNewsNetwork,and the actual real possibility it isn’t America they are covering for so much,but Israel.
And the ZNN is scared shiteless,witness the hyperbolic attempts to call the election over,when all evidence really points to her campaign being d-e-d dead.Hysterical zionist propaganda,with the Graun at the head of the pack.What a terrible mockery of journalism and democracy.They,the MSM,will pay for this,one way or the other.
The evidence being her disastrous, warmongering, truth evading ,porcelain phony robotic Chucky doll evil smirk debate the other night.where Trump destroyed her,and the wikileaks which all prove she is a no good zionist dupe, liar,crook and traitor.
And hurting unit Kaine is MIA.Another great example of her genius.
Impossible American patriots are outnumbered by America haters ,yet.

kevin morris
kevin morris
Oct 11, 2016 8:48 AM

I think it is important that I set out my credentials here and state very emphatically that I am also a 9/11 truther.
That said, this article is facile. So Noam Chomsky disagrees with us. SO WHAT? He has offered so much intellectual backbone to us on so many issues for something like forty years that the man is a giant and attempts to denigrate him because he happens to have different views on 9.11 is pathetic.

jaques
jaques
Oct 11, 2016 12:13 PM
Reply to  kevin morris

it is Chomsky who denigrates those that question the official story- just look at his own comments in the videos posted above. Chomsky belittles, marginalizes and ‘poo poos’ the (many) academics who have question 9/11 riding them all off as an irrelevant ‘very small’ group- and suggesting they have not published scientific articles- when if fact they have- or have lost their jobs for trying. He also says they are ‘lazy’ and that it ‘costs nothing’ to question 9/11. Nothing could be further from the truth. No: Chomsky gets no free pass from me.
If Chomsky was merely silent on the issue (like Glenn Greenwald) we could give him a little leeway. But he isn’t- he speaks out in favor of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, Perle, Wolfowitz, Scooter and Zakheim’s explanation for 9/11.

Kevin Morris
Kevin Morris
Oct 12, 2016 10:17 PM
Reply to  jaques

I recall that last week at the Tory conference, our new PM tried to claim that Labour was the nasty party. Did I agree with her? Most certainly not. Did I think she might have a point? Well sadly yes.
You don’t know why Chomsky has taken up the position he has on 9/11, nor does the writer of this article, but I do deplore this tendency of some on the left to pour invective and bile on the head of those who have the audacity to take a position that runs contrary to the latest position.
And frankly, all this purple prose with references to Jesus and to pedophiles -note the correct spelling of the word is ‘paedophile’ the ‘a’ and ‘e’ being a diphthong- in the context of a great man who simply has taken up a view that runs counter to yours is- as I said earlier, pathetic.

jaques
jaques
Oct 15, 2016 2:24 PM
Reply to  Kevin Morris

from my perspective when you argue in favor of the official 9/11 narrative- you argue in defense of murderers. If you do this in ignorance it is forgivable but unfortunate. Wilful ignorance is unforgivable- and this is what Noam has done- he has refused to look at evidence presented to him claiming ignorance: but then he has declared that HE KNOWS what the truth is. He then proceeds to lecture everyone of the ‘facts’ according to him. His ‘facts’ are nothing of the sort- they are opinions. This is not some polite academic debate.
I regret my pedophile (screw your fancy hoighty toighty spelling) analogy- but I think it is apt- if crude. If you read every single defense of Noam Chomsky in the comment thread they all boil down to one thing: give the man a break. You have deified Chomsky. This does no one any favors- including Chomsky. If you think the comments he made concerning 9/11 are correct (the subject of this article)- and the criticisms of him here incorrect: then say why. Give your reasons.

johnny
johnny
Oct 15, 2016 4:48 PM
Reply to  jaques

Well put, and don’t worry about being picked up on your spelling (especially in the case of a f****ing diphthong) it’s a typical Guardianista/gatekeeper tactic – “you’re not as clever as me so I can tell you how to think”

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Oct 15, 2016 9:51 PM
Reply to  jaques

Yes, well put and no regret needed, Jaques, about your perfectly correct spelling. Pedophile is the way it’s spelt in US English and even, I notice, on Australian websites it is sometimes spelt pedophile (we normally following British spelling). Also, many people, including myself, don’t pronounce the word with the diphthong (peedophile), but with the short ‘e’ pronounciation as in pedal. Correcting spelling (especially incorrectly) in this context is only a reflection on the corrector not the ostensible misspeller.

kevin morris
kevin morris
Oct 20, 2016 9:03 PM
Reply to  flaxgirl

It seems that the self righteous are out in force all over this article. Not to worry, we can all be sure that something new will be along soon enough for you all to get even more self righteous about. It might be my age but frankly, it’s not an edifying sight whether it comes from left, right, centre or even Daesh. Give me the measured tones of Chomsky any day!
And on a point of information, paedophile with the diphthong is not pronounced ‘peedophile’. Only members of the lower orders resort to such undignified speech.

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Oct 21, 2016 3:18 AM
Reply to  kevin morris

Point taken about self-righteousness but whether tone is self-righteous or measured, substance trumps style. He may have a measured tone but in neither of the two videos does Chomsky say a word of substance about the events of 9/11 – not a word. Is that not significant?

jaques
jaques
Oct 11, 2016 12:15 PM
Reply to  kevin morris

If you found out Jesus was a pedophile would you give him a green card?

Arrby
Arrby
Oct 11, 2016 1:34 PM
Reply to  kevin morris

Looking at the style of the writing of the article (which is going to mean more to me than content, solely because I don’t know science and I’m not terribly up on all the details re 9/11), I’m not impressed with the author’s smear job. I’m not convinced this represents a fail by Chomsky. Not at all. Is Chomsky perfect? No. But, aside from his pragmatic approach to politics, which I don’t care for, he has been a terrific educator. I’ve learned, and continue to learn, so much from him. And I’m reading Aviva Chomsky right now. She’s no slouch either.

jaques
jaques
Oct 11, 2016 2:11 PM
Reply to  Arrby

the problem is- as long as you ‘don’t know the science’ and are ‘not up on the details’ of 9/11′ you won’t be able whether this article is a ‘smear’ or an ‘indictment’. In the videos above Chomsky actually says what you said- he claims he hasn’t looked into the science- and isn’t interested in the minute details. But then he differs drastically from what you did: he takes a strong side. He then offers his arguments for his position: and they have been found wanting. They are not convincing- and are in the form of opinions- about what he thinks ‘they would and wouldn’t’ do.
No matter how good his books are- and all the good work he has done educating people- when he says : ‘even if it was an inside job: who cares?’ you cannot let him off the hook so easily. Millions of dead Afghans, Iraqis, Libyans etc- and thousands of dead and many more injured in NYC, Washington, Pennsylvania call out for justice. Not to mention blanket mass surveillance, the patriot act, the militarization of the police and endless contracts for the military industrial/security complex. Exactly the world Chomsky has spent so many years exposing so brilliantly.

jaques
jaques
Oct 11, 2016 2:12 PM
Reply to  jaques

edit:
” you won’t be able to Know whether this article is a ‘smear’ or an ‘indictment’”…

Arrby
Arrby
Oct 11, 2016 9:30 PM
Reply to  jaques

I’m resisting. I just don’t want to get dragged into this mud wrestling match. There’s lots wrong with this author’s poorly written smear job. And all you’ve done is make an assertion. You assert what I can and cannot do. How do you know what I can and cannot do? Wait till I perform. I have only so far offered an opinion.

Jen
Jen
Oct 12, 2016 12:25 AM
Reply to  Arrby

At the very least you can watch the videos that Petra Liverani has linked to in her article and see and hear Chomsky hoist himself with his own petard.
You can watch this Youtube clip of Chomsky answering a question on World Trade Center Building 7 if you think that Liverani had a hand in creating those videos:

jaques
jaques
Oct 12, 2016 9:08 AM
Reply to  Arrby

actually all you have done is make assertions- if there is ‘lots wrong’ with the article: by all mean point something out… lets see how you perform:

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Oct 12, 2016 12:54 PM
Reply to  kevin morris

You might be interested in James Corbett’s video on Chomsky. https://www.corbettreport.com/meet-noam-chomsky-academic-gatekeeper-video/
Also, in the comments section he poses this question:
Who is the more effective gatekeeper? One who is:
a) wrong about almost everything
or
b) right about almost everything?
It’s not about different views, it’s about the power of those views. He is disingenuous, he uses fallacious argument, he’s not being honest (even if it’s not really at a conscious level).

michaelk
michaelk
Oct 11, 2016 8:26 AM

I think this article is… hysterical.

jaques
jaques
Oct 11, 2016 9:24 AM
Reply to  michaelk

care to elaborate on your ‘hater micro-review’? Point out a demonstrable error? Offer an alternate opinion? Anything? No?

jaques
jaques
Oct 11, 2016 5:02 AM

Great Article- can I ask- were you inspired to write it after reading my comment about Chomsky under the Kevin Ryan article the other day? I’d like to think so.
The Chomsky- 9/11 paradox is interesting to ponder. I haven’t gone so far as to label him ‘controlled opposition’ or a ‘gatekeeper’ to date- though the evidence suggests it’s a definite possibility. For instance: for decades he has enjoyed a tenure at a prestigious University that has strong ties to the Military- and reaps all the financial benefits that go with that. But there is no absolute proof that I have seen to say for certain he is a conscious and willing ‘agent’. However the only other explanation is that Chomsky has been ‘duped’ by the 9/11 official narrative. If that’s actually true- it’s very sad and deeply ironic: that Chomsky is a victim of the same process of ‘brainwashing under freedom’ that he identified himself in his (really) great book “Third World Fascism and the Washington Connection”.
“For those who stubbornly seek freedom, there can be no more urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination. These are easy to perceive in the totalitarian societies, much less so in the system of ‘brainwashing under freedom’ to which we are subjected and which all too often we serve as willing or unwitting instruments.”
― Noam Chomsky
What resonance that quote has today in regards to 9/11??? Noam: are you Willing or Unwitting?? Either way you are guilty- as if you are unwitting your ignorance is willful.
However sad it might be for Chomsky- it is a huge loss to the cause of 9/11 truth. Many on the left reflexively look to Noam as a firm buttress to their belief systems. Chomsky is left wing Gospel. Many millions of left wingers around the world may potentially have been fooled by Chomsky’s comments defending the official 9/11 narrative – such is his influence. Just look at the title of the youtube video you linked above to see what I mean: ““Chomsky dispels 9/11 conspiracies with sheer logic”. The fact is he does no such thing- if anything the weakness of his supposedly ‘logical’ arguments only serves to further display the overall weakness of the official 9/11 narrative. Chomsky cannot counter the arguments of AE9/11 and other accredited experts- instead he simply evades the issue by feigning academic ignorance of engineering, etc and belittling the credentials and number of academics that have spoken out against the official story. This is intellectually unforgivable and lazy. In this manner he is as weak an apologist for the official story as internet trolls like Carrol, or large scale cover up agents like NIST, Popular Mechanics, Metabunk, the BBC, etc.
there is another point I want to make about Chomsky’s comments concerning the use of Saudi Nationals for the 9/11 attack: Chomsky claims absurdly that this is some kind of ‘proof’ that the attack as ‘not an inside job’. Of course it is no such thing. In fact it is arguably yet more circumstantial evidence that the plot originated in Washington and not some cave in Afghanistan! The vast majority of the 19 9/11 patsies were all issued ‘student’ visas (despite many of them being on multiple ‘terror watch’ lists) from the very same Saudi US consulate that had historically been used by the CIA to provide travel documents for the mujaheddin jihadists (Bin Laden et al) Washington employed in it’s multi-billion dollar covert war against Russia in Afghanistan back in the 1980’s. A covert war that Chomsky would be well aware of- and that many of the key 9/11 Bush Regime actors were also heavily involved in. Here is the US Saudi consulate whistle-blower Mike Springman talking on this issue:

J. Garbo
J. Garbo
Oct 11, 2016 5:41 AM
Reply to  jaques

It’s sadly simple, given the evidence. Chomsky’s either a liar and coward or a fool, and so does not warrant any respect or even attention.

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Oct 12, 2016 9:42 AM
Reply to  jaques

Hi Jaques,
No it wasn’t your comment that inspired me as I’ve only just read it now but I can certainly see why you might think that. It’s interesting how our criticisms of Chomsky’s method of argument coincide. You obviously know a lot and write loads of comments – why don’t you write some articles – or perhaps you already have?
It was a comment on Harvey Burgess’s article, 9/11: How it Costs you Friends https://off-guardian.org/2016/09/15/911-how-it-costs-you-friends/. The comment had a link to the first Chomsky video with a few words which seemed to suggest, “This is what the great man has to say”. I’d already seen the video before but it made me mad watching it again and this inspired me to try to write an article about it.
I only discovered that the article was published just now when it came up in a google search. I submitted the article a little over a week ago but kept sending revised versions. Yesterday, a friend tore it to shreds (in a nice way) and I was going to submit it again with the sarcasm removed and various other improvements but there it is. She recommended I put it into the Hemingway editor app. It coloured most of the sentences red which means “very hard to read” so I feel a little exposed that it’s out there but I’m glad you liked it.

jaques
jaques
Oct 15, 2016 2:46 PM
Reply to  flaxgirl

well then: it must be synchronicity. Thankyou for the detailed response.
I just then watched that condescending reply he gave to the earnest truth advocate at that lecture- it made so angry all over again.
Forget that Hemingway app: of course it finds things ‘hard to read’: it is a simpleton AI that probably can’t tell Steven King from Ernest Hemingway. When I was in university and I used to let Word ‘spell check’ for me- it would select long paragraphs and mark them in red- telling me ‘too long: consider revising’. I would worry- then pick up a good book- look and see all those great long paragraphs- and hand the paper in. My long paragraphs did just fine being ‘spell checked’ by humans 😉
I can imagine it would be nigh impossible to watch that Chomsky interview above and write a critique of his comments with resorting to sarcasm; his comments are simply appalling: spoken with such lofty self certainty- yet absolutely lacking any factual basis. He ridicules people who’s arguments he admits he hasn’t ever even bothered to examine. The hypocrisy of his lecturing about the ‘academic method’ and how things ‘should be done’ when he has been so lazy in offering his opinions as self evident ‘facts’ is stomach churning.

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Oct 16, 2016 12:12 AM
Reply to  jaques

Yep. It would have been good to put have had some of the Chomsky quotes you’ve cited in your comments in the article to highlight the irony.