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Governments admit to faking terrorism: a list

ritholtz.com

61–70 of 138 posts

Re: Governments admit to faking terrorism: a list

#61

Considering things in this perspective, is it so far-fetched to at least consider the possibility that 9/11 was a false-flag attack?

> Considering things in this perspective, is it so far-fetched to at least consider the possibility that 9/11 was a false-flag attack?

Yes, it would be completely far fetched and cretinous. You would have to completely ignore the history of bin Laden's interactions with American and the CIA, the attack on the USS Cole the year before, and the 1993 World Trade Center bombings.

Re: Governments admit to faking terrorism: a list

#62
This list is quite confused and several of the examples are not false flag operations. As Wikipedia's definition says, it has to be carried out with the purpose of pinning blame on another group and tarnishing their reputation.

> Although the FBI now admits that the 2001 anthrax attacks were carried out by one or more U.S. government scientists, a senior FBI official says that the FBI was actually told to blame the Anthrax attacks on Al Qaeda by White House officials.

Is the author suggesting that the US government in fact organized the anthrax letters? That's a long stretch from the evidence that the letters were sent by a government employee. It's unfortunate that the government would try to blame al Qaeda, but it's just opportunistic dishonesty since they didn't plan the attack.

> Former Department of Justice lawyer John Yoo suggested in 2005 that the US should go on the offensive against al-Qaeda, having “our intelligence agencies create a false terrorist organization."

This seems to be taken from an op-ed, which is a pretty terrible place to plan a false flag operation if you think about it. Yoo seems to be suggesting disrupting al Qaeda through disinformation, but I guess the name leads people to assume that something more evil must be going on.

> U.S. intelligence officers are reporting that some of the insurgents in Iraq are using recent-model Beretta 92 pistols, but the pistols seem to have had their serial numbers erased. ... Analysts speculate that agent provocateurs may be using the untraceable weapons even as U.S. authorities use insurgent attacks against civilians as evidence of the illegitimacy of the resistance.

Pretty speculative and doesn't fall under the category of "government admissions." In any case, even if true, it's questionable whether it's qualifies as a false flag operation.

> A Colombian army colonel has admitted that his unit murdered 57 civilians, then dressed them in uniforms and claimed they were rebels killed in combat

War crime, followed by cover-up. Not false flag.

> U.S. soldiers have admitted that if they kill innocent Iraqis and Afghanis, they then “drop” automatic weapons near their body so they can pretend they were militants.

Same as previous.

> The highly-respected writer for the Telegraph Ambrose Evans-Pritchard says that the head of Saudi intelligence – Prince Bandar – admitted last the Saudi government controls “Chechen” terrorists.

I don't even understand how this could be confused with a false flag. Just a threat of using a proxy force, and who knows if it's true.

Then to further confuse things the author defines "false flag terrorism" as "a government attacking its own people, then blaming others in order to justify going to war against the people it blames." I don't know why the author includes "its own people" and that the purpose must be to start a war, because neither of those appears in the Wikipedia definition and each is violated by several of his examples. But it just goes to show the sloppy thinking that went into putting together this list.

Look, many of these incidents were despicable and those responsible deserve to be called out, but the list is such a mixed bag of actual violence, planned violence, or speculation of planned violence, sometimes by the military, sometimes by police forces, sometimes by radicals. I don't see what the message is supposed to be by listing all of these together.

Re: Governments admit to faking terrorism: a list

#65
post #36

loving the fake Hitler quote

More info:

"Hitler on Terrorism

"Hitler has often been quoted as saying: "Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death." This quote is based on two invented remarks in Hermann Rauschning's mendacious book, The Voice of Destruction."

http://www.ihr.org/other/weber2011fakequotations.html

Re: Governments admit to faking terrorism: a list

#66
post #62

This list is quite confused and several of the examples are not false flag operations. As Wikipedia's definition says, it has to be carried out with the purpose of pinning blame on another group and tarnishing their reputation. > Although the FBI now admits that the 2001 anthrax attacks were carried out by one or more U.S. government scientists, a senior FBI official says that the FBI was actually told to blame the A…

And you missed including these items:

  As admitted by the U.S. government, recently declassified 
  documents show that in the 1960′s, the American Joint 
  Chiefs of Staff signed off on a plan to blow up AMERICAN 
  airplanes (using an elaborate plan involving the 
  switching of airplanes), and also to commit terrorist 
  acts on American soil, and then to blame it on the Cubans 
  in order to justify an invasion of Cuba. See the 
  following ABC news report; the official documents; and 
  watch this interview with the former Washington 
  Investigative Producer for ABC’s World News Tonight with 
  Peter Jennings.

  2 years before, American Senator George Smathers had 
  suggested that the U.S. make “a false attack made on 
  Guantanamo Bay which would give us the excuse of actually 
  fomenting a fight which would then give us the excuse to 
  go in and [overthrow Castro]“.

  And Official State Department documents show that – only 
  nine months before the Joint Chiefs of Staff plan was 
  proposed – the head of the Joint Chiefs and other high-
  level officials discussed blowing up a consulate in the 
  Dominican Republic in order to justify an invasion of 
  that country. The 3 plans were not carried out, but they 
  were all discussed as serious proposals
While he included the disclaimer at the end "the 3 plans were not carried out", he mixes this in with a list of actual false flag operations, and if you didn't know better when reading these items, you may believe that these were actually carried out by the US government.

Mixing real false-flag operations with things that were at some point discussed as possible options is fairly misleading at best; couple with all of the other examples you quote, I would call this post downright dishonest.

Between the paranoia about "false flag", and the line "People are slowly waking up to this whole con job by governments who want to justify war", this is veering dangerously close to "wake up sheeple!" territory.

Re: Governments admit to faking terrorism: a list

#67

I generally find this blogger too alarmist, but much of the list here appears accurate, and shocking to me. Faked terrorism seems much more common than I would guess. Of course, the more liberal/democratic the country, and the more recent, the more weak/stetched the case is. but still, the lesson to me is that this sort of "conspiracy" is not at all implausible, even in a country like Canada....

In general, I thinking its reasonable to say that regardless of whether or not the accusation turns out to be true, the initial evidence is always weak. It takes time and a drip drip effect until the case becomes true, or not.

Re: Governments admit to faking terrorism: a list

#68

Considering things in this perspective, is it so far-fetched to at least consider the possibility that 9/11 was a false-flag attack?

Considering things in what perspective? Everything listed here about the US was either just a proposal that never came to fruition, or not actually a false flag attack (a grunt trying to cover up civilian casualties by planting weapons on them, as reprehensible as it is, is a far cry from a false-flag terror attack on your own people).

Re: Governments admit to faking terrorism: a list

#69
post #46

So frustrating this site is unreadable on the iPhone.

use a different browser? (if this is allowed)

Using a different browser (technically, a different rendering engine) is not allowed on the iPhone. There are alternative browsers like Chrome, but they use the iPhone Safari rendering engine and serve merely to sync your bookmarks and whatnot with your other Chrome bookmarks and provide a slightly different UI.

Re: Governments admit to faking terrorism: a list

#70
post #55
post #30

It is actually incredibly easy to see how smart people tasked with solving complicated societal problems arrive at false flag operations as a viable solution: Imagine you have a credible imminent threat to your society posted by a danger to which the society is not familiar enough with to fully grasp and take seriously. Do you wait for the threat to play out and take your chances with the society sufficiently changin…

Imagine you were a US intelligence officer with an extremely in-depth knowledge of socioeconomic momentum around the world. You are aware that oil is a relatively irreplaceable dependency and that most oil is controlled by foreign regimes that are not allies of the US. You realize that if things keep going this way, those in control of oil will have huge advantages in the future. You have the ability to recognize tha…

Yep.
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