I know i bash Dr. Chomsky some; but that's just because i'm a political economist in grubby dungarees and he's a linguist deconstructing his way into tweed-clad anarchy. We're like clowns and mimes. His analysis of the dialectic between industry media and the citizenry of "democratic" nations is fairly spot-on, and his grip of modern history is solid.
Perhaps the least talked about aspect of American history is our fickle relationship with France. This may be a result of the perspective one is forced to take if one regards France's role in our "Revolution" with the weight it actually has.
See, the United States never would have had a chance if it had not been for France's involvement in the aristocratic coup'd'tat we like to think of as our Revolutionary War. Our ruling locals (ie Jefferson, Hamilton, Allen, Franklin, Morris, Webster et al) had no seats with votes in the British Parliament, thus thier lands were subject to taxes as per the Crown's charter agreements with the respective colonial bodies but not eligible for the same sort of representation that thier percieved peerage had. We could further interpret this as sour grapes on the part of our Founders resulting from the fact that they WEREN'T members of the peerage and thus weren't reeping the benifits of Enclosure; but that's too hard to explain right now. Let's just take it as writ; Taxation without Representation drove the aristocratic polis to whip up a "grassroots" movement for separation from the Crown. There is no way, repeat NO CHANCE IN HELL that a sparsly armed group of dissenting colonials representing perhaps 40% of the population would be able to withstand the reluctant assault of the British regulars, and if things got hot it was well known that the Hessians would be called in (as they were). Thus, the cabal orchestrating the coup knew at the penning of the Declaration that they had French naval support.
The 100 years War, the Franco/Anglo war of Succession over the Aquitain Possession, had been going for over 400 years by 1776. The last 300 had been hit-and-run via proxy, both sides using the kind of cold-war tactics the US and USSR emulated in the 20th century. The East Indies had been the fun zone for centuries, but during the 1700's the French-Indian Wars had proven most lucretive bloodshed for the privateers involved. France's ability to establish a lasting foothold on the New World had been fairly well curtailed by the British, and now the endgame was beginning. At least the French could spoil the booty for King George by encouraging, arming and lending naval support to the colonial "freedom fighters."
So they did. An overconfident British contingent was caught in a classic harbour pincher, and we celebrated Independance with our French compatriots. A few years later, the popular myth of a rag-tag group of Enlightenment liberatines had fueled the ergot-laced stew of mismanagement and peasant outrage at the starvation tactics of Enclosure into an ACTUAL revolutionary movement in France. In the first real grassroots uprising since Magna Carta the populace rose up and marched against thier monarchial oppressors and the aristocracy that supported them. They recognized the network of land owners and capitalists who had been profiting off of their disenfranchisement, and invented a quick, efficient and humane method of removing these greedy, sadistic elitists from the gene pool.
The American aristocracy called them monsters, rejecting the guillotine justice of the French revolution as "anarchy".
France was stunned. Surely the Americans would understand what it meant to the common man to be under the yoke of an undemocratic ruling class? They had been of like minds once, no?
No. The French allied with the US were of the same aristocratic class as our Founding Fathers, and did so for strategic purposes. The people's revolution in France was a different thing entirely, and the US joined the rest of the Western World in condemning it and aiding the Monarchists in acts of incursion, issolationism and terrorism against the fledgling republic.
We betrayed the French people, but stayed loyal to the internationalist class of landed aristocrats who have ALWAYS ruled us.
Later, the French gave us the Statue of Liberty.
Since we helped the Nazis gain power, our role in the 20th century liberation of the Continent is a net null; we merely belatedly helped neutralize a problem we created.
So we still owe France at least one (1) world-class Wonder.
Candidate's comment to Popular Mechanics: I think Canada did it to take our attentions away from their assumption of Bechtel's bid-list; and although i would like to believe that Pop Mechanics' armchair CSI is plausible as much as i would the standard Truther™ fable (that Dubya and his Illuminati freinds used alien C4), niether get my timeslice. I require hard lab forensics, and you both have missed the option for an actual inquiry by years.
All the evidence is gone.
So, only speculative sleuthing is left.
Start with motive. I'd put Kaliph S Moha' as prime suspect at this point; he's the one with a stated threat AND a prior attempt. 9-11 would have been a successful life's work for him. However, his cabal wasn't particularly good at IT (International Terrorism), being moled out in the 90's; he's no Jackal.
Ideologues are the exception among criminal masterminds, though. Most are just greedy. Thus the next most likely suspect is a profile familiar in New York; an inspecific slumlord, one who has a partner who's into development and another in demolitions, maybe another in industrial scrap. Remember, the bullion in the basements was moved out too. Next would be Haliburton, for real; even a 5th grader could see by the time tower 2 came down that we were going to war with Iraq, and that meant a cash payoff for our usual suspects in war profiteering.
I'm sure a couple more cabals could be reasonably suspected prior to adding our Sunni allies in Afganistan to the list of criminally motivated, and without a money trail i really don't see them motivated enough to spend as much as was required to train, inject and house the agents here who pulled it off.
First, follow the money. Who benifits? The benificiary or Bin Laden? How much cash is being/has been spread around as opposed to lump-sum dropped on particular companies involved in the properties affected?
I mean, IF you want to get at an answer. If you just want to bitch about a bitch's demand for a real investigation and give the rest of us no real meat from EITHER camp, do by all means keep playing the 9-11 Truth™ Game with the conspiracy crowd.
I know I sure love it. It's refreshing to have so many people in the country around me dance around the real issues and throw shit at each other.
No wonder we still have the electoral college embarassment...
/C_j's comment
Oh, do let's all jump on the lesbian for actually talking about a politically pertainant issue.
The Dems will put a woman or a black up. This will give you a Republican president in 2008, even if the popular vote disagrees. Congress will allow Dubya's agenda to play out, since that's what Congress does is facilitate the ruling cabal's agenda.
Given: Value is an abstract quantifification of a quality inheirant in a good or service. Given: The inheirant quality(ies) of a good or service that give rise to valuation exist as a result of actions taken upon raw materials. Given: Action is Labor. Thus; Value equals Labor.
There are certain definitional truths like the above that are not open to debate, as much as we humans do love trying to debate them. The fact that the world is experiencing a warming trend, the fact that we are simians, the fact that the earth revolves around the sun, and the fact that Labor is the means by which objects and ideas are transmuted into articles of Value- these are observable facts.
The further specific observation is that the field of social science avoids this fact like the plague. I submit this question to any and all "Leftists" out there: When was the last time you heard Noam Chomsky talk about the labor theory of value?
