9/11 Conspiracy Theory--yes, but what are you going to do about it?

People always ask, “where were you when it happened?” On September 11, 2001, the so-called Kennedy Assassination of our day, I was in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Sorry, that’s all I got. I don’t remember the exact moment right off the top of my head. I was probably at home, goofing off on the computer, and someone probably called me to tell me something about airplanes and skyscrapers and terrorists. It was probably my dad who called.

I have to admit my first thoughts upon “seeing the towers fall,” as they say of that moment that has so defined world politics since, was that it sure looked like a controlled demolition. I also remember thinking that the cell phone calls from airline passengers were suspicious seeing as how you couldn’t make a clear cell phone call from an airplane back in 2001. All the people on TV that day and shortly after (I remember watching CNN in an East Side Mario’s restaurant in Halifax after running my first university cross-country meet in two years—no, the meet wasn’t cancelled.) said they thought they saw a helicopter around the Pentagon, and thought they heard an explosion, like a missile. I put all this together and I thought, yeah, sounds like a government-planned “terrorist event” designed to consolidate a neo-conservative agenda.

In the days that followed, the media’s focus shifted, and I, like most others, were convinced that an evil little man named Osama had masterminded all of this. So, what is more likely? My story above—a government conspiracy—or that it was all the doing of one man, organised from a hospital bed in the far reaches of the world, as a bit of revenge for the big, bad American culture blitz in oil country?

Dylan Avery, in his movie Loose Change, proposes that it is more likely an inside job. In fact, I didn’t really think all of those things on September 11th, or even on the 12th or 13th. They all come from his film, a very credible and believable documentary that zeros in on certain claims the U.S. government has made, and tries to expose them as false. He does a good job. I’m convinced.

But then again, I’m a conspiracy buff, and I wanted to be convinced. A better test would a sceptic, someone who normally scoffs at such things. If you have been scoffing up to now, that person is you. Watch the movie. See what you think. This is not a Michael Moore-esque rant. This is no personality attached, looking for the truth, investigative reporting at it's best. Avery's blog chronicles the fallout from the film. Researchers have been killed. Seriously.

A friend of mine, upon my telling her about this theory, refused to believe that the American government would do such a horrible thing. People aren’t really that bad, she said. Here’s the thing. Someone did it. Someone had those planes (either filled with people or military drones, it doesn’t matter) flown into the two biggest buildings in the biggest city in the world. Why is it so much more believable that Osama could be so evil, but Dick Cheney could not? Let me suggest a reason: it is easier to think Osama did it because Osama is a brown man.

Clearly the status of Arabs in North American media has deteriorated since 9/11, but even before then, a systemic racism existed in the U.S.A. (and Canada, let’s not kid ourselves). I’m not going to trot out any stats to prove this racism. If you don’t believe it, you are naïve. If you are not white, you know it. If you are white, ask any friend who isn’t. Ask ten of them and see how many say, no, man, I get treated just like you, the colour of my skin don’t mean shit, yo! Ok, tongue-in-cheek there, but also, case-in-point.

It is the easiest sell the American government ever had to make. “The butler did it” is so Victorian. Welcome to the 21st century: the brown man did it, in the air, with a plane.