Oxford Union Society: "Was 911 a Conspiracy"

[xmasdale]

Oxford Union Society: "Was 911 a Conspiracy"

Today one of the world's most famous debating forums will consider the taboo
question at the heart of the war on terror. Is the official Washington story
of the 911 attacks correct, or is 911 a myth created by Washington's
military industrial complex to justify a generation of lucrative wars?

The Oxford Union has invited 911 sceptics David Shayler and Annie Machon,
both ex-MI5 officers, Ian Henshall co-author of non-fiction best-seller 911
Revealed, and risk analyst Bill Durodié to discuss whether the attacks
occurred in anything like the way the mainstream Washington news
organisations claim.

Ian Henshall said today:

After the WMD fiasco, newsrooms have so far been unwilling to ask whether
they were duped by their intelligence sources over 911 as well. So much
evidence has been seized by the US authorities and never made public that it
is impossible to say for sure how the 911 attacks happened. There are now
several versions of the official story which stand in open conflict with
each other. Many believe the attacks were manipulated or allowed to succeed
and quite a lot of evidence has leaked out to support this.


Notes

for more details of this evening's forum and the Oxford Union contact
details see

http://www.oxford-union.org/termcard.php?PHPSESSID=babb6829c6917b57309 4c3304cc68e2e

Ian Henshall can be contacted on 01273 326862 daytime. His book 911 revealed
co-authored with Rowland Morgan was given favourable reviews in the Daily
Mail and the Sunday Times, but although it is a non-fiction best-seller it
has so far been ignored by the mainstream broadcast media, despite their
legal obligation to due impartiality.

The official 911 story has never been tested in a court of law, while
crucial evidence has been seized by the FBI and ferociously withheld from
the media, and even from the families of the victims. The official 911
Commission whas been denounced even by pro-war Republican Senators after it
emerged last year that alleged 911 ringleader Mohammed Atta had been known
to the US authorities prior to 911, contrary to the assertions of the
Commission's final report. Recently Senator Barbara Boxer stated that the
truth of the 911 attacks must be pursued wherever it leads.

Since the 911 attacks internet sites, books and alternative news media have
criticised the official conspiracy theory which holds that the attacks were
carried out by a highly skilled terrist cell acting on the under the orders
of mastermind Osama Bin Laden. Some hold that the attacks were a Pentagon
organised hoax along the lines of the documented Pentagon 1960's plan
Operation Northwoods. This which would have used a drone aircraft to fake a
shootdown of a passenger airliner over Cuba and create the pretext for a US
invasion.

Most 911 sceptics however hold that elements in the US government took over
one of Osama Bin Laden's many half-baked plans, made sure it worked and
possibly embellished it by a fake attack on the Pentagon's only unoccupied
section or controlled demolitions of the three World Trade Centre buildings.
They cite the anthrax attacks purporting to be from Al Qaeda which
heightened the war panic in 2001. The anthrax terror, aimed at Senators who
were questioning the 911 war plans, was quickly forgotten after being traced
to US biowarfare laboratories.

911 sceptics say it is absolutely predictable that with war looming against
Iran and the Republicans facing meltdown in the midterms another fuzzy
audiotape should have emerged last week with new threats from Osama Bin
Laden, the man who US troops allowed to escape from Afghanistan. Even on CNN
commentators recently agreed that the language purporting to come from Bin
Laden is now quite different from his original statements. Software exists
which, given a sample of a voice, can generate new speech apparently spoken
by the same person.

[brian]

Just to back up your final sentence -

"Software exists which, given a sample of a voice, can generate new speech apparently spoken by the same person."

From the Washington Post

When Seeing and Hearing Isn't Believing



By William M. Arkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, Feb. 1, 1999

"Gentlemen! We have called you together to inform you that we are going to overthrow the United States government." So begins a statement being delivered by Gen. Carl W. Steiner, former Commander-in-chief, U.S. Special Operations Command.

At least the voice sounds amazingly like him.

But it is not Steiner. It is the result of voice "morphing" technology developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. ----

Full article - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/dotmil/arkin020199.htm

[sonic]

Yes. Very interesting that this technology which I believe is called "Voice Morphing" is clearly mentioned in the DVD "Loose Change".

Sonic

[xmasdale]

I believe there is totally convincing voice morphed footage of Marilyn Munro singing a song which was not written until years after she had died. Does anyone know where to get hold of it, or indeed any telling voice morphed footage?

It would be good to include a piece of such footage in any future DVDs we make.

Noel

[brian]

wokeman posted this link below last month -

“Video Research at MIT Puts Words into Mouths, with Startling Results”

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Marilyn Monroe died a generation before karaoke, digital animation and the pop singer Dido’s race onto Billboard’s Top Ten.
But in an eerie video clip created by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (news - web sites) researchers, the long-dead celluloid star croons the song "Hunter" by the very much alive performer.

http://cbcl.mit.edu/cbcl/news/files/assoc-press-article.pdf

Appears numerous articles on Monroe sings "Hunter" this but no footage readily available.

[Andrew Johnson]

Anyone got a report on this?

[xmasdale]

I spoke to David Shayler last night.

I understand the meeting at the Oxford Union was packed - 300-400 people. Some accused the speakers of being puerile conspiracy theorists. Some complained that the platform speakers had an unfair advantage over others present because they had researched their topic. Some who were dismissive revealed their ignorance of the facts by admitting they had never heard of building seven.

Apparently, although the movie Face the Facts had been shown prior to the meeting, many had not seen it, which the speaker panel did not at first realise.

On the whole it appears to have been a successful meeting in terms of for the first time acquainting many at Oxford with the facts of the 9/11 attacks.

Noel

[paul wright]

Are you saying it was a bit of a shambles, Noel?
And that these so-called brightest and best haven't had some exposure to the evidence previously?
Why then was the subject raised?
Its rather that the scam is common knowledge amongst so many with an iota of intelligence, but with so many in denial for whatever personal interest

[ian neal]

This report from Ian Henshall on the debate

26.Jan 2003

Report on Oxford Union 911 Meeting

The speakers were Annie Machon, David Shayler, ex-MI5 agents who were pretty sure 911 was an inside job, Ian Henshall co-author of 911 Revealed who gave a survey of the various theories and the missing evidence, and lecturer Bill Durodié in support of the official story.

[This report has not been checked with the other participants it is for background use in response for numerous requests for some material on this very popular and successful meeting. It is circulated in haste to 911 Truth Campaigners and the media, many of whom have been asking for transcripts. The meeting was filmed and the Oxford Union would consider providing the material to interested news organisations (full transcripts likewise but the cost would be approximately £200 for secretarial fees)]

The meeting took the form not of a traditional debate but of a forum, partly because the US Embassy had refused to send a speaker. It attracted a turnout of over 300, vastly more than similar events. Oxford Union President Sapona Agrawal said afterwards that she had had many messages congratulating the Union on holding the debate.

Annie Machon said that from her personal knowledge of how the spy world works it was absolutely possible that 911 was an inside job, the influence of MI5 in Fleet Street was far greater than most people realised and the penetration of the political world, particularly left wing groups, was very thorough. This might explain why the media and most political leaders had been convinced the official 911 story was true.

David Shayler said that it was certain that MI6 had worked with Al Qaeda and that many individuals in the intelligence agencies had a complete contempt for the law. He focused on details of the collapse of the Twin Towers and the supposed airliner attack on the Pentagon as clear instances of why the official story of 911 could not be right.

Ian Henshall said there were three main approaches, the official story (in which he included gross incompetence by officials), the notion that the attacks were deliberately allowed to happen and thirdly that they were engineered, in an update of the Pentagon's documented Operation Northwoods plot to fake a plane shootdown over Cuba. He said that the striking thing in working on his book was that most of the issues could be cleared up if only the US authorities had not seized vital evidence and refused to reveal it. Moreover there was a pattern of intimidation of witnesses and dishonesty by the 911 Commission. There was a strong likelihood at least of complicity, even add-ons to an Al Qaeda plot, and until the evidence was produced an Operation Northwoods type hoax could not be ruled out. It is agreed the anthrax attacks with US weapons grade anthrax were indeed an add-on to the 911 attacks, he said.

Bill Durodie expounded the view known to sociologists as conspiracism. This holds that with no real mainstream politics any more, disenfranchised people are believing in "infantile" conspiracy theories because there is nothing else. His department had counted over sixty rumours about the 911 attacks. He had little to say about the 911 attacks themselves. He drew little distinction between different conspiracy theories. He said the media would be only too keen to report 911 conspiracy theories if there was anything in them.

During the subsequent discussion a number of questioners supported Durodie's line, one said that many Democrats hated Bush and would certainly have raised the alarm if they were suspicious. Shayler and Machon said that their experience with the media was the living proof that when really important issues come up the media is easily cowed by the state. Henshall said most Washington Democrats were not a serious opposition as their continued support, in defiance of their supporters, for the Iraq war showed, and that Durodie seemed to be using the expression conspiracy theory as a term of abuse against anyone who believed the government was lying.

A similar number of questioners were well-informed 911 sceptics asking detailed questions about the collapse of the Towers and the Pentagon and recommending various informational web sites and dvds.

There was no vote taken.


Note on Conspiracism

Conspiracism contains veiled appeals to the traditional Left but originates in Durkheim's theory of anomie, generally regarded as a right wing response to the sociology of Karl Marx. It was promoted by supporters of the official story on the Kennedy assassination (long debunked by the House Committee on Assassinations): uneducted lower class disenfranchised "white trash" were believing wild stories becasue they had nothing else to believe. The message from Durodie was that conspiracy theories are "dangerous", which could be taken as a covert hint to media editors that they should be censored. I have heard that leading 911 sceptic David Ray Griffin was attacked in similar terms on Amy Goodman's west coast programme Democracy Now. In the UK this analysis is associated with a group originally around Living Marxism magazine but who are generally regarded with suspicion by most on the left. They get generous access to the mainstream media, making sound points on media distortions of eg health scares, but more often attacking Greenpeace and the anti-globalisation movement.

[xmasdale]

[Pikey]

£200 for a copy that appears to be Illuminati daylight robbery to me (will it be edited to suit? I am afraid I wont be able to answer that one!)

It really is time we tool control and started filming and recording our 911 truth events for record purposes and in compiling a professional presenatation of what our movement is about. The Jimmy Walter Manchester Town Hall event last year was filmed throughout by a professional team commissioned by Jimmy. So where can we view it?
I did camcord some of the event as I did the Green Party conference at Lancaster when David Shayler spoke but only bits as I wanted to concentrate on the speakers, especially witnesses of the event, re the janitor Rodrigez. We do have professional resources and skills to do filming amongst our registered forum members so why are we not these limited resources not being tapped into?

Ian Neal reports:-