This is really funny if you remember that Apple's former CEO, John Scully, was recruited from Pepsi by Steve Jobs, who asked him: "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life?"
Of all the processors out there, yes the x86 is common but it has to be one of the WORST instruction sets - one of the most difficult to work with.
And this is what made it so much fun! Where's the challenge when you have a large register file, where instructions can use any register they damn well please, and you don't have a stack based FPU thrown in for good measure?
The Pentium Classic was a fun CPU to optimize for. I recommend that anyone read Inner Loops, by Rick Booth, for a taste of what a capable programmer could do with this ugly architecture. If you can find a copy, of course.
I'm glad you asked. It was a horrible garbage disposer accident. Remember to always turn off the garbage disposer when reaching in to retrieve your light saber, kids!
Where does the name Darth Vader come from?
From the Akkadian root for "wooden performance".
How come he doesn't know about that Padme has twins?
For the same reason that Homer Simpson failed his fatherhood quiz.
You don't move to Montana for the broadband - you move to Montana to become a dental floss tycoon.
Re:Best examples of heresy I can think of
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Well, it sure seems to me that all of these reporters were intimidated this time around. Or don't you think the two events mentioned above warrant coverage?
I don't know what these events may have looked like to reporters back then, and I'm not willing to speculate. This is skirting the real issue, which is that TWA 800 wasn't an act of war against the US.
Aren't you admitting here then that somebody can control the coverage, even if it means keeping all these reporters quiet? It seems to me you can't have it both ways... either the capability exists, or it doesn't.
It's not black and white. You can, under some circumstances, and you can't under others. I'm saying that the circumstances of the two events are different, and that you can't infer from one to prove claims relating to the other.
One theory I've heard is that the reason they had to keep TWA 800 quiet was because the accident involved a test of a missile banned by international treaty.
Still, not the same thing. It's not an act of war on the US.
What's funny is that you can probably better support the TWA 800 hypothesis than the 9/11 Israeli connection hypothesis, which doesn't make sense.
I will point out that the link you gave disputing the stories in the Washington Post and Haaretz is to a post in a newsgroup!
Didn't you earlier chastise me for basing my opinions on the above two papers?
No. Check your facts.
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There's a style of debate that sees one side cherry-pick comments to respond to, while letting substantive comments go by. I fear that this is your style.
Maybe you see them as substantive, and I don't. I try to point out irrelevant comments as I see them, but given the volume of text involved and the amount of time I have, this is the best I can do at the moment.
the Washington Post reads as if it were a Mossad field office when it comes to stories about Israel...
So your reasoning goes something like:
Theorem A: Odigo employees were warned. Fact b: First Washington Post story claims A. Fact c: Second Washington Post story claims not(A).
Lemma D: Washington Post routinely lies to protect Israel.
Proof: b and c can't both be true => Washington Post lied, QED
Now, to prove theorem A, it is enough to use Lemma D and Fact c, and postulate that if the Washington Post said there was no warning, it must have done so to protect Israel, therefore there was a warning, QED.
Ok, let's try this again: This is the timeline of the reports about this, as far as I can tell:
Sometime prior to Sep 25th, Yuval Dror from Haaretz publishes the original story, which quotes Micha Macover, Odigo's CEO. Yuval Dror is (or at least was at the time) Haaretz's Internet and Technology reporter. Macover was quoted: "I have no idea why the message was sent to these two workers, who don't know the sender. It may just have been someone who was joking and turned out they accidentally got it right."
On Sept. 25, someone posted the Haaretz article to Usenet. On Sept. 27, Brian McWilliams, of Newsbytes, reports a similar story. From the wording ("Officials at instant-messaging firm Odigo confirmed today...") it is safe to assume that McWilliams got wind of the story from Usenet and called Odigo for confirmation. Alex Diamandis gives no substantial information in this story. On Sept. 28, McWilliams decides to earn his paycheck, and conduct a phone interview with Diamandis, and according to the report: "Diamandis today in a telephone interview also said the warning message did not identify the World Trade Center as the attack target". McWilliams also credits Haaretz now, and recycles a quote from Macover. Also on the 28th, Karen Gullo, an Associated Press Writer, reports a new tidbit, quoting Odigo's Avner Ronen as saying: "[the warning was] general, not specific".
Later, the story is reported by NewsFactor, and Diamandis is later quoted by the editor of TruthOut.com who said:
"I am the Editor of TruthOut.com. I just contacted Alex Diamandis of Odigo. Mr, Diamandis stated categorically that he had no information that any Odigo employee had any prior knowledge of the attacks. He characterized the NewFactor article's interpretation of his remarks as inaccurate. I contacted NewsFactor and they had no comment."
I'm not sure when that was said, excatly. There was at least one report I found references to, by CNN. That seems to be it.
So, this was first published in Haaretz, and the initial report makes Od
Re:Best examples of heresy I can think of
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It wasn't non-specific at all. Both the Washington Post and Haaretz report that the warning was that the WTC would be attacked.
From the followup story you linked to: "Diamandis today in a telephone interview also said the warning message did not identify the World Trade Center as the attack target." And the Washington Post article was changed, as you pointed out earlier.
Also, the timing of the warning is odd - two hours before the attack would be 6:15am, eastern time. The Odigo R&D offices are in Israel, not NYC. I'm guessing that the NYC offices is staffed with sales and marketing people, who weren't likely to be burning the midnight oil. The warning was delivered over Odigo's system, which is an instant messaging application, so broadcasting a message when no one's there to get it is pointless, no?
And how come only two employees were warned? You just really want to believe this, don't you?
This is a stereotype in reverse, isn't it?
No, this is a comment based on my experience and knowledge of Mossad hiring practices, the pool of people available to them, and their screening processes. I also have anecdotal evidence that the people they approach are far from idiots.
You're talking at best 100 deaths. I'm talking upwards of a million, maybe more.
That's irrelevant in this discussion, because you're trying to argue that Al Qaeda's history somehow makes it less likely to have perpetrated 9/11 than Israel's, and everything you said about the US's actions can actually be used to argue that Al Qaeda was seeking revenge. You're being emotional, and it's not helping your argument.
Or I suppose I could appeal to your sense of logic and ask you how likely the official explanation is, that the center fuel tank spontaneously exploded, even though it's never happened before and hasn't happened since.
Look, TWA 800 is also irrelevant here. If what you're saying is true, it was an accident. I would argue that accidents are easier to cover up than the kind of scenario you're describing for 9/11. My claim wasn't that large organizations can't keep a secret at all - they obviously can. It was that large organizations can't keep a secret when the nature of the secret contradicts the goals of the organizations, because those goals are ingrained in the organizations through years of hiring practices and careful personnel screening. If you caught the recent Slashdot story about the NSA's psychological tests, that's the kind of screening I'm talking about. You typically end up with a whole lot of people who will take secrets to their grave in the name of national security - something that they truly believe in, but will be willing to call reporters and spill the beans if they thought they were being asked to become accomplices to treason against their country. The Israeli Art Student story is a good example of that, because the Salon.com reporter was in fact contacted by an insider who claimed to know about a coverup, and appeared to think that something evil was going on. The feeling I got from that article was that there was an order to keep quiet, and people really didn't like that.
At the root of the argument is the way people act in those situations, and how their actions affect the organization's behavior.
From glancing the links you pointed me to, however, it's clear that people were still talking. Seems like the secret is no secret
Reporters aren't stupid, they can see which way the wind is blowing.
Maybe I just met the wrong reporters, but the ones I did meet weren't easily intimidated, even when their phone was tapped and they got death threats. You want me to believe that thousands of reporters can be silenced? You'll have to come up with some impressive evidence.
I sometimes wish I had that gift myself.
I'm still here, so I guess I could wish for that, too.
Re:Best examples of heresy I can think of
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So foreknowledge of the event, as indicated by the Odigo story, counts for nothing?
There was no foreknowledge, as I tried to explain. I'm currently trying to get more information about this story to try to put it to rest, but this particular piece of evidence is very flimsy, and only looks like evidence in hindsight. You have two people who got a non specific warning about something - they haven't told the press what they were warned about (that's what I'm trying to find out), and the kicker is that there was no reason to warn them. They were not in any danger, because they were 6000 miles away when they were warned. Why warn them, and not the Israelis who traveled on those planes? I just don't buy it.
Cheering Israelis who appeared to be Mossad: To me, they appeared too stupid to be Mossad. Sorry - where I come from, undercover agents don't take pictures of each other and get arrested while dancing on their moving van. No way.
the Lavon affair
You do realize that everyone involved in that is either dead or in Depends by now, don't you? It's like speculating that the US is planning to declare war on Spain, because it had done that in the past. Yet, you're ignoring Al Qaeda's 1993 attempt to blow up the WTC. Why?
I'm afraid you have it backwards. The U.S. has a history of aggression towards the Arab world
1993: World Trade Center bombing 1996: Killing of 19 US soldiers in Saudi Arabia 1998: East African bombings 2000: Attack on USS Cole in Yemen
only that a person of Jewish faith is naturally going to be defensive of their perceived homeland.
In the face of a terror attack on their actual homeland? This is nonesense, and insulting nonesense at that. As I tried to explain, media owners couldn't put a lid on this story if it were true. The truth comes out.
And the media did publish those stories, and the stories just didn't hold up very well.
How else would you explain the almost fawning coverage this administration has received as it has waged war in Afghanistan and Iraq
Because after the 9/11 attacks, this nation was hyperventilating and seeing red. It's as simple as that. In the 40's, Bugs Bunny went to fight the Japanese, and now the media is cheering for the war. If it sells newspapers and gets you good rating, why not?
Just out of curiousity, where are you on TWA 800?
Nowhere, really. I'm guessing that you're going to tell me that TWA 800 was a coverup, and it was kept quiet, therefore proving that vast conspiracies can be concealed for long periods of time, and I'm going to answer that if it was kept so quiet, then maybe you're just imagining the conspiracy.
Have you read Foucault's Pendulum? Besides being a brilliant and entertaining work, it presents a taxonomy of bogus logic inference rules used in conspiracy theories. It's been years since I've read it, and I don't have a copy handy right now, but I think it specifically dealt with bogus inference used to prove foreknowledge, and gave a name to the kind of argument I think you're trying to use here with TWA 800. I think you'll like it.
In any case, I'm willing to wait for Lahr vs. NTSB.
I called an old friend of mine today and mentioned this conversation to her. She was surprised, and conveyed to me her opinion that I was wasting my time. She's a smart woman, and I'm beginning to wonder...
Re:Best examples of heresy I can think of
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Just to make one thing clear: I don't think you presented any evidence that implicates Israel in 9/11. The only interesting piece of information was the Israeli Art Students story, and that merely suggests that Israel may have spied on the DEA, or that Israeli drug dealers have tried to intimidate or probe DEA agents - something interesting happened there, at any rate, but there's no connection to 9/11 that I can see.
Israel has no reasonable motive, there's no evidence, and there's a much more likely suspect with a history of aggression towards the US. Still, you make it sound like it's a coin toss between blaming Al Qaeda and Israel in 9/11. It's not - not by a long shot. I find this odd.
Conspiracy theories usually fail what I call the "Big Secret" test, which I outlined in my previous post in this thread. Anyone who served in a big organization, especially a military one, should have a good feel for the boundaries of secrecy - you can keep a secret if you limit the number of people who know about it, but once things start rolling, word gets out even under the best circumstances. This is especially true if the nature of the secret stands in contrast to the generally agreed-upon goals of the organization - if the CIA hatched a plot to facilitate a foreign invasion of the US, reporters would start getting anonymous calls, and information would start leaking out, because this is how people work.
Usually, a much better explanation for odd and dangerous behavior of military organizations is aggregate stupidity and cumulative ass covering. I've seen it in action, and it's ugly - things can go very wrong, but no one seems to be able to put his finger on who's responsible, or what exactly happened. Israel's treatment of Palestinian civilians is a good example of that - things have gone very wrong, but mostly as the result of a slow, mindless process, rather than an executive decision to make life in the West Bank a living hell.
As for your post being on topic - I realized that. Too bad some of the moderators didn't get the picture.
One last word on media follow-up: I believe the main reason there wasn't any was that nobody was able to uncover any new information, and the media, unlike conspiracy web sites, doesn't like to publish warmed over old stories.
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One other thing about dual citizenships: Normally, when a country doesn't allow dual citizenships, it means that a dual citizen is treated as a citizen of the country by law. In the US, for example, you'll have to use your US passport to enter and leave the US, and pay taxes as a US citizen, even if you live abroad. That does not mean that holding a foreign passport is strictly illegal - people do it all the time. They may not be able to give up their foreign citizenship that easily: I know that giving up an Israeli citizenship is not easy, and not done very often.
Re:Best examples of heresy I can think of
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I can't quote you the paragraph (IANAL), but you would almost certainly be in for trouble when you return to Germany.
So? The guy in question was also working in the US illegaly, he's obviously no stranger to immigration violations. Or he could have been less than 23 years old, and born in Germany to German parents. There are plausible ways he could have obtained a genuine German passport. Your assertion that his German passport was fake is just speculation.
I thought this would have been clear from the context, but for those a little slow in reading between the lines: This does, of course, only apply to israel citizens. I'm sure anyone looking remotely arab caught with a fake passport will be shot before any questions are asked. Twice, just to make sure.
More nonesense. If you're caught making or selling fake passports in Israel you'll be arrested and charged with forgery. If you're caught using a fake passport, you'll be arrested. In both cases I'm sure security forces would like to have a chat with you before you go to trial. Israeli law does not allow police to execute people based on what they look like - where do you get this stuff, anyway?
Re:Best examples of heresy I can think of
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Germany doesn't recognize double-passports. If you want to become a german, you have to drop whatever other statesmanship you have.
But you don't have to drop any other citizenship if you become an Israeli citizen, so you can get dual citizenship by getting your German citizenship first (by being born there, perhaps?) an then moving to Israel.
Better argument: Israel is known to take an extremely light, if not supportive, position on producers of fake passports.
This is complete and utter nonesense. Do you have any proof of that?
Let me state the obvious for a second: Terrorists can use fake passports to enter and leave a country using a false name, without being detected. Israel is a prime target for terrorists. Israel therefore can't reasonably take an "extremely light, if not supportive position" on fake passports.
Re:Best examples of heresy I can think of
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Did you consider that the Washington Post changed its story because it was simply wrong? Odigo's remarks made it clear that the warning was non specific. What probably happened was that the Washington Post reporter extrapolated from the information about a warning on that particular date, and concluded, wrongly, that the warning was about the attack on the World Trade Center.
In any case, the fact that the employees who got the warning worked in Israel, and not in New York, makes this theory look very unlikely. It was a coincidence, that's all.
What other attacks took place on 9/11?
According to Israeli police, about 10 attacks were stopped DAILY in Israel during that time. Considering that the employees who got the message were in Israel, and that suicide bombings are always a hot topic there, a prank message warning about a terror attack is quite plausible.
The lack of media followup to what you call facts isn't surprising, since those aren't facts, and the media had bigger fish to fry. What I think you're trying to say was that the Israeli government somehow pulled the strings through its puppets in the US government and got everyone to shut up about it or else.
Let's look at this, OK? This country has thousands of newspapers. You'd have to call each Jewish owner, and tell them to keep quiet about this story. The Jewish owner calls the editor, and tells her to knock it off with this WTC conspiracy story. The editor protests, saying that she's sitting on a story that's bigger that Watergate, Irangate and Monica Lewinsky put together. Once it is clear that her job is at stake, she gives up, and calls a couple of reporters working on the story. Same thing - protests, big story, blah blah blah, and the story is buried.
Except that now you have several thousands of people in the country who know that something stinks. Add to that the tousands of Israelis who were allegedly warned, the CIA employees who were hired to protect their country and are now asked to cover up the biggest act of treason in American history, the FBI employees who are in the same situation, their friends, their wives, the office workers at the newspapers and TV stations and radio stations and news web sites who may have heard something before the story was buried... How exactly do you keep someone from coming up with real, supportable evidence, a first hand account of pressure put on him to keep quiet - anything?
This is huge. This is the kind of scandal that no American can keep quiet about, the kind of scandal that could finally make it clear to people why they have the second amendment, and they just sit quietly and don't mention it to anybody? Thousands of people? If you had evidence - real, concrete evidence, that there was a coverup, for example, you got a visit in the middle of the night from the government explaining to you just how screwed up your life was going to get if you let anyone know what you could prove, would you just shut up? Would anyone you know do it?
History shows us what kind of big secrets you can keep, and for how long. The Manhattan project was huge, but people knew that something was going on. Thousands of people went off to the desert. Their relatives must have noticed. The reason this was kept as a secret was that the people who worked on the project did it for their country, and believed in the cause. They cooperated fully in the coverup, because they were motivated to do so.
So, I don't think what you're proposing is even technically possible, without taking this into consideration:
I mean c'mon, Al Qaeda had absolutely nothing to gain here, whereas Israel...
Ah. Motive. Somehow you figure that a small country with an excellent relationship with the US is more likely to commit an act of war on the US than a terror organization that had already attacked US targets several times in the past? (The USS Cole, the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and, let's not forget, the attempt to blow up the WTC in 1993.) W
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Two things strike me as odd about the WTC Israeli angle theory.
First, the Odigo employees who were "warned" were in Israel. The warning was non-specific, and didn't mention the WTC. This could be no more serious than an e-mail warning of a kidney theft ring.
More seriously, the behavior of the alleged Israeli spies was odd, to say the least, to anyone who has ever had any contact with real members of Israeli intelligence agencies. I've seen such people who would duck for cover at the sight of someone pulling out a camera in a public place. I can't imagine spies who would dance conspiciously on top of a van. I would have to conclude that they were just ordinary idiots (they're plentiful in Israel, just as they are everywhere else), rather than spies.
The rest of the evidence against them is even less convincing. They had box cutters in their van - they worked as movers, a common occupation for young Israelis staying in the US illegally. One of them had two passports - he was a German citizen. The FBI held them for a long period of time - well, the FBI had their hands full around that time, don't you think? They held a lot of innocent people longer than they normally would.
really shows the author's knowledge of Soviet safety protocols.
Or his knowledge of the history of the Apollo program, for that matter. At least one astronaut, Jack Swigert, of the notoriously broken Apollo 13, died of cancer.
Note to self: Don't use conspiracy nuts as fact finders.
No, they don't. Unless you add the words "in some form, and under some circumstances". Most people *refuse* a state if not done with security.
So? Are you trying to prove that the Israeli population wants security? That's a given. There's no dispute over that, especially no in Israel. The fact remains that most Israelis don't give a shit about the settlements, would get rid of them if that would bring peace and security, and wouldn't mind if the Palestinians had a state of some form, as long as Israel's security could be guaranteed. Presenting the question in terms that basically mean "would you agree to the annihaliation of the state of Israel" and proudly pointing at the resounding "no" you get as an answer doesn't prove anything.
Merriment?? I'm calling your bluff.
I lived in Israel during that time, and Arutz 7 broke the news with some off color remarks about a "Purim present", or something like that. Go dig up the press reports from 10 years ago if you don't believe me. The incident was widely reported and scorned at the time.
Were blamed by who? By the same people who claim the "massacre" is Jenin?
Rabin's family, reporters, commentators. Again, this was widely discussed after the assasination. Israeli newspaper archives from that time aren't readily available online - go dig them up yourself if you're interested.
Of course they will! Any time people don't gets their way (right or left) they complain of complicity or worse.
Complacency, not complicity. The ovservation made was that the police were making a token effort every once in a while to stop Arutz 7, which seemed inconsistent with their degree of efficiency in other matters.
It just so happens that's A7 is law abiding
And that's why they go to prison now?
Since they couldn't do it within the law, they raided them anyway and have a left-wing court retroactively legalize the raid.
So now you're claiming complicity? Why? Because things didn't go your way?
Now, strangely enough, I don't think shutting down Arutz 7 would be an entirely good thing. I'm certainly not as "vehemently against" Arutz 7 as you seem to think. I do think that knowing and understanding bias in the media is important if you're trying to understand an issue. This may not seem relevant in the context of Slashdot, but I thought it was important enough to point out that the site linked to as "Israel National News" has a known and specific bias, so a reader who might peruse the rest of the content on the site is aware of that. This is no different than pointing out that a ZDNet site might have a pro Microsoft stance on certain matters, something that I've seen people do on Slashdot pretty much whenever the editors link to a ZDNet site. You'll also note that I didn't try to discredit the information regarding the deployment of OpenOffice, and I merely made the comment that it's an odd source for tech news.
I think we're going a bit off-topic. e-mail me (the address above should work) if you want to continue this discussion.
Actually, I'm sure that would surprise the hell out of Benjamin Netaniahu. He's about as far from socialist as you can be without living on another planet, and he's steering the Israeli economy right now.
I beg to differ, but you strike me as someone on whom words will be wasted. You could correct the impression, of course, but tossing insults around is easier and more fun, isn't it?
Because, contrary to the parent poster's assertion, Arutz 7 doesn't speak for the "majority voice of the people of Israel". Politically, it is in fact an extreme right wing organization, backed by right wing political parties and settlers' organizations. It's only a "majority" in the sense that the American Moral Majority is one.
To present just one data point, opinion polls consistently show that the Israeli population overwhelmingly supports the formation of a Palestinian state (around a 60% majority), an idea which is abhorrent to Arutz 7 and its backers.
Arutz 7's history is rife with controversy, from its announcers' miserable show of merriment when breaking the news of the massacre of 29 arabs in Hebron in 1994, to their infamous attacks on the late Israeli prime minister, Izhak Rabin, which were blamed as one of the factors that led to his assassination. To say that Arutz 7 was in any sense mainstream in its views is disingenuous.
Why would they clamp down on right-wing stations?
I would hardly describe allowing a pirate radio station to operate for over a decade as a clamp down. Left wing circles in Israel have repeatedly accused the government of complacency in their dealings with Arutz 7, and the amount of time it took to shut it down serves as evidence that they may have been right.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, you can. You'll have to compile your own copy, though.
White Box Enterprise Linux is doing just that.
Beware, though, that as I post, NASA TV is broadcasting some ghastly children's programme. You have been warned...
But I like NASA's children's programs! They're cool, in a dorky sort of way.
This is really funny if you remember that Apple's former CEO, John Scully, was recruited from Pepsi by Steve Jobs, who asked him: "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life?"
Of all the processors out there, yes the x86 is common but it has to be one of the WORST instruction sets - one of the most difficult to work with.
And this is what made it so much fun! Where's the challenge when you have a large register file, where instructions can use any register they damn well please, and you don't have a stack based FPU thrown in for good measure?
The Pentium Classic was a fun CPU to optimize for. I recommend that anyone read Inner Loops, by Rick Booth, for a taste of what a capable programmer could do with this ugly architecture. If you can find a copy, of course.
How does Anakin become Vader?
I'm glad you asked. It was a horrible garbage disposer accident. Remember to always turn off the garbage disposer when reaching in to retrieve your light saber, kids!
Where does the name Darth Vader come from?
From the Akkadian root for "wooden performance".
How come he doesn't know about that Padme has twins?
For the same reason that Homer Simpson failed his fatherhood quiz.
How does Palpatine gain total control?
That one's easy.
How do all the Jedi die?
They hold their breath for a very long time and go to doggy heaven.
What Jedi survive other than Yoda and Obiwan?
The ones who don't hold their breath when Palpatine asks them.
Will there be an answer to why Obiwan and Yoda fade away when they die, but the Jedi we've seen die in Episodes 1 & 2 don't?
No, but they'll finally explain why Klingons had ridged forheads, then lost them, then got them back. I bet you can't wait to find out!
You don't move to Montana for the broadband - you move to Montana to become a dental floss tycoon.
Well, it sure seems to me that all of these reporters were intimidated this time around. Or don't you think the two events mentioned above warrant coverage?
I don't know what these events may have looked like to reporters back then, and I'm not willing to speculate. This is skirting the real issue, which is that TWA 800 wasn't an act of war against the US.
Aren't you admitting here then that somebody can control the coverage, even if it means keeping all these reporters quiet? It seems to me you can't have it both ways... either the capability exists, or it doesn't.
It's not black and white. You can, under some circumstances, and you can't under others. I'm saying that the circumstances of the two events are different, and that you can't infer from one to prove claims relating to the other.
One theory I've heard is that the reason they had to keep TWA 800 quiet was because the accident involved a test of a missile banned by international treaty.
Still, not the same thing. It's not an act of war on the US.
What's funny is that you can probably better support the TWA 800 hypothesis than the 9/11 Israeli connection hypothesis, which doesn't make sense.
I will point out that the link you gave disputing the stories in the Washington Post and Haaretz is to a post in a newsgroup!
It's a verbatim quote from a post to a Yahoo discussion group. The original post is cached here. The author is Marc Ash, editor of truthout.com, and this is how much he likes Bush, in case you were wondering.
Didn't you earlier chastise me for basing my opinions on the above two papers?
No. Check your facts.
There's a style of debate that sees one side cherry-pick comments to respond to, while letting substantive comments go by. I fear that this is your style.
Maybe you see them as substantive, and I don't. I try to point out irrelevant comments as I see them, but given the volume of text involved and the amount of time I have, this is the best I can do at the moment.
the Washington Post reads as if it were a Mossad field office when it comes to stories about Israel...
So your reasoning goes something like:
Theorem A: Odigo employees were warned.
Fact b: First Washington Post story claims A.
Fact c: Second Washington Post story claims not(A).
Lemma D: Washington Post routinely lies to protect Israel.
Proof: b and c can't both be true => Washington Post lied, QED
Now, to prove theorem A, it is enough to use Lemma D and Fact c, and postulate that if the Washington Post said there was no warning, it must have done so to protect Israel, therefore there was a warning, QED.
Ok, let's try this again: This is the timeline of the reports about this, as far as I can tell:
Sometime prior to Sep 25th, Yuval Dror from Haaretz publishes the original story, which quotes Micha Macover, Odigo's CEO. Yuval Dror is (or at least was at the time) Haaretz's Internet and Technology reporter. Macover was quoted: "I have no idea why the message was sent to these two workers, who don't know the sender. It may just have been someone who was joking and turned out they accidentally got it right."
On Sept. 25, someone posted the Haaretz article to Usenet.
On Sept. 27, Brian McWilliams, of Newsbytes, reports a similar story. From the wording ("Officials at instant-messaging firm Odigo confirmed today...") it is safe to assume that McWilliams got wind of the story from Usenet and called Odigo for confirmation. Alex Diamandis gives no substantial information in this story.
On Sept. 28, McWilliams decides to earn his paycheck, and conduct a phone interview with Diamandis, and according to the report: "Diamandis
today in a telephone interview also said the warning message did not identify the World Trade Center as the attack target". McWilliams also credits Haaretz now, and recycles a quote from Macover.
Also on the 28th, Karen Gullo, an Associated Press Writer, reports a new tidbit, quoting Odigo's Avner Ronen as saying: "[the warning was] general, not specific".
Later, the story is reported by NewsFactor, and Diamandis is later quoted by the editor of TruthOut.com who
said:
"I am the Editor of TruthOut.com. I just contacted Alex Diamandis
of Odigo. Mr, Diamandis stated categorically that he had no
information that any Odigo employee had any prior knowledge of the
attacks. He characterized the NewFactor article's interpretation
of his remarks as inaccurate. I contacted NewsFactor and they had
no comment."
I'm not sure when that was said, excatly. There was at least one report I found references to, by CNN. That seems to be it.
So, this was first published in Haaretz, and the initial report makes Od
It wasn't non-specific at all. Both the Washington Post and Haaretz report that the warning was that the WTC would be attacked.
From the followup story you linked to: "Diamandis today in a telephone interview also said the warning message did not identify the World Trade Center as the attack target." And the Washington Post article was changed, as you pointed out earlier.
Also, the timing of the warning is odd - two hours before the attack would be 6:15am, eastern time. The Odigo R&D offices are in Israel, not NYC. I'm guessing that the NYC offices is staffed with sales and marketing people, who weren't likely to be burning the midnight oil. The warning was delivered over Odigo's system, which is an instant messaging application, so broadcasting a message when no one's there to get it is pointless, no?
And how come only two employees were warned? You just really want to believe this, don't you?
This is a stereotype in reverse, isn't it?
No, this is a comment based on my experience and knowledge of Mossad hiring practices, the pool of people available to them, and their screening processes. I also have anecdotal evidence that the people they approach are far from idiots.
You're talking at best 100 deaths. I'm talking upwards of a million, maybe more.
That's irrelevant in this discussion, because you're trying to argue that Al Qaeda's history somehow makes it less likely to have perpetrated 9/11 than Israel's, and everything you said about the US's actions can actually be used to argue that Al Qaeda was seeking revenge. You're being emotional, and it's not helping your argument.
Or I suppose I could appeal to your sense of logic and ask you how likely the official explanation is, that the center fuel tank spontaneously exploded, even though it's never happened before and hasn't happened since.
Look, TWA 800 is also irrelevant here. If what you're saying is true, it was an accident. I would argue that accidents are easier to cover up than the kind of scenario you're describing for 9/11. My claim wasn't that large organizations can't keep a secret at all - they obviously can. It was that large organizations can't keep a secret when the nature of the secret contradicts the goals of the organizations, because those goals are ingrained in the organizations through years of hiring practices and careful personnel screening. If you caught the recent Slashdot story about the NSA's psychological tests, that's the kind of screening I'm talking about. You typically end up with a whole lot of people who will take secrets to their grave in the name of national security - something that they truly believe in, but will be willing to call reporters and spill the beans if they thought they were being asked to become accomplices to treason against their country. The Israeli Art Student story is a good example of that, because the Salon.com reporter was in fact contacted by an insider who claimed to know about a coverup, and appeared to think that something evil was going on. The feeling I got from that article was that there was an order to keep quiet, and people really didn't like that.
At the root of the argument is the way people act in those situations, and how their actions affect the organization's behavior.
From glancing the links you pointed me to, however, it's clear that people were still talking. Seems like the secret is no secret
Reporters aren't stupid, they can see which way the wind is blowing.
Maybe I just met the wrong reporters, but the ones I did meet weren't easily intimidated, even when their phone was tapped and they got death threats. You want me to believe that thousands of reporters can be silenced? You'll have to come up with some impressive evidence.
I sometimes wish I had that gift myself.
I'm still here, so I guess I could wish for that, too.
So foreknowledge of the event, as indicated by the Odigo story, counts for nothing?
There was no foreknowledge, as I tried to explain. I'm currently trying to get more information about this story to try to put it to rest, but this particular piece of evidence is very flimsy, and only looks like evidence in hindsight. You have two people who got a non specific warning about something - they haven't told the press what they were warned about (that's what I'm trying to find out), and the kicker is that there was no reason to warn them. They were not in any danger, because they were 6000 miles away when they were warned. Why warn them, and not the Israelis who traveled on those planes? I just don't buy it.
Cheering Israelis who appeared to be Mossad: To me, they appeared too stupid to be Mossad. Sorry - where I come from, undercover agents don't take pictures of each other and get arrested while dancing on their moving van. No way.
the Lavon affair
You do realize that everyone involved in that is either dead or in Depends by now, don't you? It's like speculating that the US is planning to declare war on Spain, because it had done that in the past. Yet, you're ignoring Al Qaeda's 1993 attempt to blow up the WTC. Why?
I'm afraid you have it backwards. The U.S. has a history of aggression towards the Arab world
1993: World Trade Center bombing
1996: Killing of 19 US soldiers in Saudi Arabia
1998: East African bombings
2000: Attack on USS Cole in Yemen
only that a person of Jewish faith is naturally going to be defensive of their perceived homeland.
In the face of a terror attack on their actual homeland? This is nonesense, and insulting nonesense at that. As I tried to explain, media owners couldn't put a lid on this story if it were true. The truth comes out.
And the media did publish those stories, and the stories just didn't hold up very well.
How else would you explain the almost fawning coverage this administration has received as it has waged war in Afghanistan and Iraq
Because after the 9/11 attacks, this nation was hyperventilating and seeing red. It's as simple as that. In the 40's, Bugs Bunny went to fight the Japanese, and now the media is cheering for the war. If it sells newspapers and gets you good rating, why not?
Just out of curiousity, where are you on TWA 800?
Nowhere, really. I'm guessing that you're going to tell me that TWA 800 was a coverup, and it was kept quiet, therefore proving that vast conspiracies can be concealed for long periods of time, and I'm going to answer that if it was kept so quiet, then maybe you're just imagining the conspiracy.
Have you read Foucault's Pendulum? Besides being a brilliant and entertaining work, it presents a taxonomy of bogus logic inference rules used in conspiracy theories. It's been years since I've read it, and I don't have a copy handy right now, but I think it specifically dealt with bogus inference used to prove foreknowledge, and gave a name to the kind of argument I think you're trying to use here with TWA 800. I think you'll like it.
In any case, I'm willing to wait for Lahr vs. NTSB.
I called an old friend of mine today and mentioned this conversation to her. She was surprised, and conveyed to me her opinion that I was wasting my time. She's a smart woman, and I'm beginning to wonder...
Just to make one thing clear: I don't think you presented any evidence that implicates Israel in 9/11. The only interesting piece of information was the Israeli Art Students story, and that merely suggests that Israel may have spied on the DEA, or that Israeli drug dealers have tried to intimidate or probe DEA agents - something interesting happened there, at any rate, but there's no connection to 9/11 that I can see.
Israel has no reasonable motive, there's no evidence, and there's a much more likely suspect with a history of aggression towards the US. Still, you make it sound like it's a coin toss between blaming Al Qaeda and Israel in 9/11. It's not - not by a long shot. I find this odd.
Conspiracy theories usually fail what I call the "Big Secret" test, which I outlined in my previous post in this thread. Anyone who served in a big organization, especially a military one, should have a good feel for the boundaries of secrecy - you can keep a secret if you limit the number of people who know about it, but once things start rolling, word gets out even under the best circumstances. This is especially true if the nature of the secret stands in contrast to the generally agreed-upon goals of the organization - if the CIA hatched a plot to facilitate a foreign invasion of the US, reporters would start getting anonymous calls, and information would start leaking out, because this is how people work.
Usually, a much better explanation for odd and dangerous behavior of military organizations is aggregate stupidity and cumulative ass covering. I've seen it in action, and it's ugly - things can go very wrong, but no one seems to be able to put his finger on who's responsible, or what exactly happened. Israel's treatment of Palestinian civilians is a good example of that - things have gone very wrong, but mostly as the result of a slow, mindless process, rather than an executive decision to make life in the West Bank a living hell.
As for your post being on topic - I realized that. Too bad some of the moderators didn't get the picture.
One last word on media follow-up: I believe the main reason there wasn't any was that nobody was able to uncover any new information, and the media, unlike conspiracy web sites, doesn't like to publish warmed over old stories.
One other thing about dual citizenships: Normally, when a country doesn't allow dual citizenships, it means that a dual citizen is treated as a citizen of the country by law. In the US, for example, you'll have to use your US passport to enter and leave the US, and pay taxes as a US citizen, even if you live abroad. That does not mean that holding a foreign passport is strictly illegal - people do it all the time. They may not be able to give up their foreign citizenship that easily: I know that giving up an Israeli citizenship is not easy, and not done very often.
I can't quote you the paragraph (IANAL), but you would almost certainly be in for trouble when you return to Germany.
So? The guy in question was also working in the US illegaly, he's obviously no stranger to immigration violations. Or he could have been less than 23 years old, and born in Germany to German parents. There are plausible ways he could have obtained a genuine German passport. Your assertion that his German passport was fake is just speculation.
I thought this would have been clear from the context, but for those a little slow in reading between the lines: This does, of course, only apply to israel citizens. I'm sure anyone looking remotely arab caught with a fake passport will be shot before any questions are asked. Twice, just to make sure.
More nonesense. If you're caught making or selling fake passports in Israel you'll be arrested and charged with forgery. If you're caught using a fake passport, you'll be arrested. In both cases I'm sure security forces would like to have a chat with you before you go to trial. Israeli law does not allow police to execute people based on what they look like - where do you get this stuff, anyway?
Germany doesn't recognize double-passports. If you want to become a german, you have to drop whatever other statesmanship you have.
But you don't have to drop any other citizenship if you become an Israeli citizen, so you can get dual citizenship by getting your German citizenship first (by being born there, perhaps?) an then moving to Israel.
Better argument: Israel is known to take an extremely light, if not supportive, position on producers of fake passports.
This is complete and utter nonesense. Do you have any proof of that?
Let me state the obvious for a second: Terrorists can use fake passports to enter and leave a country using a false name, without being detected. Israel is a prime target for terrorists. Israel therefore can't reasonably take an "extremely light, if not supportive position" on fake passports.
Did you consider that the Washington Post changed its story because it was simply wrong? Odigo's remarks made it clear that the warning was non specific. What probably happened was that the Washington Post reporter extrapolated from the information about a warning on that particular date, and concluded, wrongly, that the warning was about the attack on the World Trade Center.
In any case, the fact that the employees who got the warning worked in Israel, and not in New York, makes this theory look very unlikely. It was a coincidence, that's all.
What other attacks took place on 9/11?
According to Israeli police, about 10 attacks were stopped DAILY in Israel during that time. Considering that the employees who got the message were in Israel, and that suicide bombings are always a hot topic there, a prank message warning about a terror attack is quite plausible.
The lack of media followup to what you call facts isn't surprising, since those aren't facts, and the media had bigger fish to fry. What I think you're trying to say was that the Israeli government somehow pulled the strings through its puppets in the US government and got everyone to shut up about it or else.
Let's look at this, OK? This country has thousands of newspapers. You'd have to call each Jewish owner, and tell them to keep quiet about this story. The Jewish owner calls the editor, and tells her to knock it off with this WTC conspiracy story. The editor protests, saying that she's sitting on a story that's bigger that Watergate, Irangate and Monica Lewinsky put together. Once it is clear that her job is at stake, she gives up, and calls a couple of reporters working on the story. Same thing - protests, big story, blah blah blah, and the story is buried.
Except that now you have several thousands of people in the country who know that something stinks. Add to that the tousands of Israelis who were allegedly warned, the CIA employees who were hired to protect their country and are now asked to cover up the biggest act of treason in American history, the FBI employees who are in the same situation, their friends, their wives, the office workers at the newspapers and TV stations and radio stations and news web sites who may have heard something before the story was buried... How exactly do you keep someone from coming up with real, supportable evidence, a first hand account of pressure put on him to keep quiet - anything?
This is huge. This is the kind of scandal that no American can keep quiet about, the kind of scandal that could finally make it clear to people why they have the second amendment, and they just sit quietly and don't mention it to anybody? Thousands of people? If you had evidence - real, concrete evidence, that there was a coverup, for example, you got a visit in the middle of the night from the government explaining to you just how screwed up your life was going to get if you let anyone know what you could prove, would you just shut up? Would anyone you know do it?
History shows us what kind of big secrets you can keep, and for how long. The Manhattan project was huge, but people knew that something was going on. Thousands of people went off to the desert. Their relatives must have noticed. The reason this was kept as a secret was that the people who worked on the project did it for their country, and believed in the cause. They cooperated fully in the coverup, because they were motivated to do so.
So, I don't think what you're proposing is even technically possible, without taking this into consideration:
I mean c'mon, Al Qaeda had absolutely nothing to gain here, whereas Israel...
Ah. Motive. Somehow you figure that a small country with an excellent relationship with the US is more likely to commit an act of war on the US than a terror organization that had already attacked US targets several times in the past? (The USS Cole, the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and, let's not forget, the attempt to blow up the WTC in 1993.) W
Two things strike me as odd about the WTC Israeli angle theory.
First, the Odigo employees who were "warned" were in Israel. The warning was non-specific, and didn't mention the WTC. This could be no more serious than an e-mail warning of a kidney theft ring.
More seriously, the behavior of the alleged Israeli spies was odd, to say the least, to anyone who has ever had any contact with real members of Israeli intelligence agencies. I've seen such people who would duck for cover at the sight of someone pulling out a camera in a public place. I can't imagine spies who would dance conspiciously on top of a van. I would have to conclude that they were just ordinary idiots (they're plentiful in Israel, just as they are everywhere else), rather than spies.
The rest of the evidence against them is even less convincing. They had box cutters in their van - they worked as movers, a common occupation for young Israelis staying in the US illegally. One of them had two passports - he was a German citizen. The FBI held them for a long period of time - well, the FBI had their hands full around that time, don't you think? They held a lot of innocent people longer than they normally would.
I'm not that flexible.
That's one thing I never needed help in finding.
Do you think if we put a carbon fiber hood and an aluminum wing on light it would go even faster?
Don't be silly. You'll need a Type R sticker for that.
really shows the author's knowledge of Soviet safety protocols.
Or his knowledge of the history of the Apollo program, for that matter. At least one astronaut, Jack Swigert, of the notoriously broken Apollo 13, died of cancer.
Note to self: Don't use conspiracy nuts as fact finders.
Congratulations on finding an excuse not to listen to me.
No, they don't. Unless you add the words "in some form, and under some circumstances". Most people *refuse* a state if not done with security.
So? Are you trying to prove that the Israeli population wants security? That's a given. There's no dispute over that, especially no in Israel. The fact remains that most Israelis don't give a shit about the settlements, would get rid of them if that would bring peace and security, and wouldn't mind if the Palestinians had a state of some form, as long as Israel's security could be guaranteed. Presenting the question in terms that basically mean "would you agree to the annihaliation of the state of Israel" and proudly pointing at the resounding "no" you get as an answer doesn't prove anything.
Merriment?? I'm calling your bluff.
I lived in Israel during that time, and Arutz 7 broke the news with some off color remarks about a "Purim present", or something like that. Go dig up the press reports from 10 years ago if you don't believe me. The incident was widely reported and scorned at the time.
Were blamed by who? By the same people who claim the "massacre" is Jenin?
Rabin's family, reporters, commentators. Again, this was widely discussed after the assasination. Israeli newspaper archives from that time aren't readily available online - go dig them up yourself if you're interested.
Of course they will! Any time people don't gets their way (right or left) they complain of complicity or worse.
Complacency, not complicity. The ovservation made was that the police were making a token effort every once in a while to stop Arutz 7, which seemed inconsistent with their degree of efficiency in other matters.
It just so happens that's A7 is law abiding
And that's why they go to prison now?
Since they couldn't do it within the law, they raided them anyway and have a left-wing court retroactively legalize the raid.
So now you're claiming complicity? Why? Because things didn't go your way?
Now, strangely enough, I don't think shutting down Arutz 7 would be an entirely good thing. I'm certainly not as "vehemently against" Arutz 7 as you seem to think. I do think that knowing and understanding bias in the media is important if you're trying to understand an issue. This may not seem relevant in the context of Slashdot, but I thought it was important enough to point out that the site linked to as "Israel National News" has a known and specific bias, so a reader who might peruse the rest of the content on the site is aware of that. This is no different than pointing out that a ZDNet site might have a pro Microsoft stance on certain matters, something that I've seen people do on Slashdot pretty much whenever the editors link to a ZDNet site. You'll also note that I didn't try to discredit the information regarding the deployment of OpenOffice, and I merely made the comment that it's an odd source for tech news.
I think we're going a bit off-topic. e-mail me (the address above should work) if you want to continue this discussion.
Actually, I'm sure that would surprise the hell out of Benjamin Netaniahu. He's about as far from socialist as you can be without living on another planet, and he's steering the Israeli economy right now.
Israel == SCARY THEO-FASCISTS.
I beg to differ, but you strike me as someone on whom words will be wasted. You could correct the impression, of course, but tossing insults around is easier and more fun, isn't it?
Because, contrary to the parent poster's assertion, Arutz 7 doesn't speak for the "majority voice of the people of Israel". Politically, it is in fact an extreme right wing organization, backed by right wing political parties and settlers' organizations. It's only a "majority" in the sense that the American Moral Majority is one.
To present just one data point, opinion polls consistently show that the Israeli population overwhelmingly supports the formation of a Palestinian state (around a 60% majority), an idea which is abhorrent to Arutz 7 and its backers.
Arutz 7's history is rife with controversy, from its announcers' miserable show of merriment when breaking the news of the massacre of 29 arabs in Hebron in 1994, to their infamous attacks on the late Israeli prime minister, Izhak Rabin, which were blamed as one of the factors that led to his assassination. To say that Arutz 7 was in any sense mainstream in its views is disingenuous.
Why would they clamp down on right-wing stations?
I would hardly describe allowing a pirate radio station to operate for over a decade as a clamp down. Left wing circles in Israel have repeatedly accused the government of complacency in their dealings with Arutz 7, and the amount of time it took to shut it down serves as evidence that they may have been right.