How Has Your Autumnal Equinox Been?

I haven’t written in a few weeks. Wedding stuff and work has kept me pretty busy the last few weeks. Marriage courses continue. This week we discussed Sexuality. I discovered a few things: that the Catholic Church’s research into sexuality seems to stop with Johnson and Johnson survey’s done in the 50’s and 60’s and that natural family planning involves doing it when you’re wife is on her period. One of the questions, I poop you not, was whether you felt it was arousing or disgusting to have intercourse while menstruating.
Anyway, a few things that have been on my mind the last few weeks:

Let’s Blame Clinton:
The republican have obvious become more desperate then Madonna in an oversized- illuminated-cross store after they’ve sold out of oversized-illuminated crosses. 9/11 is now retroactively Clinton’s fault. I think there should be a rule in politics. After about a year or so in power you can no longer blame your predecessor. Even Harper has mostly given up blaming the Liberals for everything going wrong for his party. The recent 9/11 miniseries broadcast on CBS has been attacked for inaccuracies and dramatic license that all pointed to the Clinton administration being responsible for not capturing or killing Bin Laden. And yet like O.J., Bush assures us he’s still looking for the “real killers” on the golf courses of America.

Goths are Dangerous:
Kimveer Gill, Goth, walked into Dawson College in Montreal and kills a bunch of strangers. Why? We all ask? Well the press had some helpful hints. The Toronto Star tells us, helpfully, that Mr. Gill’s parents bought their home for $139,000. The Globe and Mail produced a handy little sidebar about the different types of Goths: Cyber, Punk etc yet omitted any tips on how to take down on of these Goths if attacked by one. Turn a hose on him and hope his leather trench coat hasn’t been weather proofed?

9/11 Conspiracies: Truth More Mudane and Scarier

I usually mark the Anniversary of Sept 11th by building a six-foot tall paper machete Osama Bin Laden and flying a remote controlled model airplane covered in American flags into his recently hardened crotch. (The beard is always the toughest bit to get right. I thought about using real hair but …) But then I heard about who was really responsible for the attacks of 9/11. I could barely stand to look at my creation. Turns out Osama was innocent! I ran out of time to finish my little Black Ops figures in time to fit them into the cockpit. I was going to whittle them out of the paper on which the lies about who was really responsible for the attacks of 9/11 are printed on.

If you want to believe that group of loosely connected religious extremists who had organized attacks against American interests in the past and who had already once tried to blow up the World Trade Center were responsible for the attacks as so many believe (including Bin Laden himself) then I have some land in Florida you might be interested in. Actually, it's really nice land. On the Atlantic side. I was down there last year and had a really great time…

The beautiful thing about conspiracy myths is that you don't need much evidence to support your claims. In fact, there is an inverse ratio to the amount of evidence you have to the believability of the claim. Of course there's no evidence, you say, it's a conspiracy! A typical discussion about conspiracy theories usually breaks down somewhere around the second rebuttal, the skeptic dismissed as a stooge or part of the machine covering up the truth. Conspiracy theories, like any strongly held belief, are impregnable by facts. Try convincing a biblical literalist that the world isn't six thousand years old and you will find yourself conveniently placed amongst the non-believers, your arguments summarily waved away as the ravings of a hell-bound heretic. You don't believe so how could you possibly understand. The inherent contradictions merely become another layer of defense to repel you. So if you believe the party line on 9/11 you're complicit in the Bush conspiracy.

Now I'm not saying there isn't anything dubious going on. The Bush administration lied its way into the war. But it's not like truth wasn't out there for anyone to find it if they cared to look. And well-connected corporations continue to make a killing off the killing in Iraq. The markups on the war effort are enough to make any retail executive wish all their customers worked for the United States government. The truth about 9/11 is far more mundane and far scarier.

At several stages the plot was close to being discovered. But it was human failings, not a grand conspiracy, that lead to 9/11. There are several accounts that tell of agents from different agencies all following the same trail but, wanting the collar all for themselves, failed to share intelligence what would have connected all the disparate trails. These are human failings and even with the changes made to many of the secuirty agencies, it only takes one pig-headed idiot (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld - fuck that's 3!) to undo all that work. And we've still had bombings in London, Madrid and India.

And let’s not forget we’re dealing here with religious extremists who don’t fear death, who believe God blesses their every hateful move, who believe in the end of the world and seem to want to bring it on sooner than later. And yes, that describes both sides of this mournful equation. But let’s not let Osama Bin Laden and his ilk off the hook because we’d like to see the Bushites pay for their hubris.

Below is a link to the Popular Mechanics article debunking many popular conspiracy theories about 9/11 attacks:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html