On Questioning Authority

The disinformation hangs thick around him, and he certainly wanders way off the trail, but sometimes he hits the mark. For your consideration, Jeff Wells with some links I've added:

...An appeal to authority is a strong attractor, even to many who profess to question it. The "9/11 Movement" has largely been lost to this crippling way of thought that perpetuates the myth of our own inadequacies. What we need, it's been said for years now, is someone on the inside to blow this wide open. And the Inside has happily obliged, providing a stream of dubious "whistleblowers" to muddy clear waters with sensational scoops and who soon vanish, leaving only confusion behind. The Inside has even gifted 9/11 with leadership: pied pipers who have shifted the focus towards the sexiest and least substantial arguments, and who are embraced and elevated according to the depths of their insider bona fides. Former Bush advisors, Republican bagmen and CIA operatives all speak with the seducing voice of authority, and when they say Nevermind that; look over here, too many of us look. (The rise to prominence of "Scholars for 9/11 Truth" is another example of our too-easily exploited deference to authority, even when the authority addresses issues unrelated to its field of expertise.)

And what do we mean by Inside? Many who push 9/11 as an "inside job" seem to want to push Osama right out of the picture, but bin Laden is himself inside the security-narcotics-terror nexus, composed of factions that interpenetrate one another, which sometimes compete and sometimes strike strategic alliances depending upon what advantages they believe they can gain and how best they can outplay the other. Look at al Qaeda, NATO's silent partner in Bosnia. Look at the ISI, al Qaeda's patron and the CIA's proxy. Look at the drug trafficking common to all, and double agents such as Omar Saeed Sheik. But the fact they're all inside to a certain degree doesn't mean they act as one, without self interest or competing agendas. Inside, there can be a convergence of interests, even at cross purposes.

The pull of authority holds for other subjects that have been pushed even farther to the margins, for which established authority does not even exist... So without authority to explain it, most choose not to see it.

But we don't need to get inside, and we shouldn't want to. Inside is a compartmentalized labyrinth that even insiders with the best of intentions would be unable to negotiate. Outside, and from a distance, is perspective. What we need is better Outside intel.

It's like Shystee says, any complex of human interaction develops characteristics of chaotic systems.

An observer can't help but interact with something being observed, but there are multiple levels of interaction, and some are far more interested in outcomes than others.

Certainly the Islamofascists are a real and present danger. But then, so are the TheoCons. And the narcotic/ human trafficking underworld. And the complacency of those who believe in a bipolar world.

The NeoCons might look like puppets of the Cheneyburton cabal. But you can't be sure who's manipulating whom. The lines of control and influence are nothing like linear.