It's hard to imagine how much intestinal fortitude Monbiot had to work up to
dare take on the mighty internet documentary,
Loose Change.
Ok, it's not. Actually, it's pretty easy. The truth be told, picking a fight with
Loose Change is passé. Monbiot should have saved his load for the theatrical release. But he just couldn't help himself. On February 6,
The Guardian published his commentary,
"A 9/11 conspiracy virus is sweeping the world, but it has no basis in fact".
However, Monbiot, like other Left personalities with a soapbox and a bias against "conspiracy theories" in general, fails the public when he reaches for easy insults like "gibbering idiots", reducing the discourse to kindergarten-level verbal barbs. Monbiot is (was?) an intelligent man. By using
ad hominem abusives like "gibbering idiots", he reduces himself, and tacks heavily toward Jerry Springer rather than charting a course through dialectical reasoning.
So, in the same way that conservative D'Souza
fails his audience, Monbiot offers a hot cup of tea and some biscuits to his audience, but how much of what Monbiot is saying in
The Guardian a bunch of bollocks?
INSIDER TRADING - FOLLOW THE MONEY
Monbiot breezes past insider trading just as quick as can be,
"The US government carried out this great crime for four reasons: to help Larry Silverstein, who leased the towers, to collect his insurance money; to assist insider traders betting on falling airline stocks; to steal the gold in the basement; and to grant George Bush new executive powers, so that he could carry out his plans for world domination." By squeezing
"insider traders betting on falling airline stocks" between two "reasons" that
"The US government carried out this great crime", Monbiot creates absurd strawmen himself that blur the reality of insider trading prior to 9/11. This is the first time I've heard that the US government did 9/11 to enrich Silverstein. It's also the first time I've heard that the US government did 9/11 to steal the gold in the basement of the WTC. So, if you hear someone rattling off these absurd theories, blame George Monbiot.
What Monbiot is doing, is exactly what he accuses the
Loose Change crew of doing.
What Monbiot says;
"by drowning this truth in an ocean of nonsense, the conspiracists ensure that it can never again be taken seriously."
What Monbiot does;
"by drowning this truth in an ocean of nonsense, (Monbiot) ensure(s) that it can never again be taken seriously."
It's not surprising that there is no in-depth discussion of insider trading by Monbiot, because it's not something he can pass off on
"someone possessed by this sickness, eyes rolling, lips flecked with foam, trying to infect me." Rather, he would have to turn his attention to a serious analysis of the anomaly, such as the very valuable examination of insider trading claims by Paul Zarembka, Professor of Economics at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and Allen Poteshman, Associate Professor of Finance, College of Business, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
The
9/11 Commission tells us,
"Exhaustive investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission, FBI, and other agencies have uncovered no evidence that anyone with advance knowledge of the attacks profited through securities transactions..."and in the accompanying footnote;
"Highly publicized allegations of insider trading in advance of 9/11 generally rest on reports of unusual pre-9/11 trading activity in companies whose stock plummeted after the attacks.
Some unusual trading did in fact occur, but each such trade proved to have an innocuous explanation. For example, the volume of put options – investments that pay off only when a stock drops in price – surged in the parent companies of United Airlines on September 6 and American Airlines on September 10 – highly suspicious trading on its face. Yet, further investigation has revealed that the trading had no connection with 9/11. A
single U.S.-based institutional investor with no conceivable ties to al-Qaeda purchased 95 percent of the UAL puts on September 6 as part of a trading strategy that also included buying 115,000 shares of American on September 10. Similarly, much of the seemingly suspicious trading in American on September 10 was traced to a specific U.S.-based options trading newsletter, faxed to its subscribers on Sunday, September 9, which recommended these trades. These examples typify the evidence examined by the investigation. The SEC and the FBI, aided by other agencies and the securities industry, devoted enormous resources to investigating this issue, including securing the cooperation of many foreign governments. These investigators have found that the apparently suspicious consistently proved innocuous."
Zarembka comments in
The Hidden History of 9-11-2001;
"This footnote downgrades the problem to be investigated as to be only "some unusual trading".
Analyzing the Commission’s representation,
Griffin explains logical problems with the footnote, noting also the delimitation to the sole question as to whether al-Qaeda was involved, i.e., the Commission’s reference to a "single U.S.-based institutional investor with no conceivable ties to al-Qaeda".
Suppose this investor were an insider to the events to follow, but was not connected to al-Qaeda?...
...One issue so far left unexplored is put-option volumes relative to call option volumes,
calls providing the right to buy a stock during the term of a contract for a specified price. We could discuss this but there is no need, as we can more fruitfully skip to an important academic study on AMR and UAL option volumes and what that evidence suggests about insider trading before 9-11. It is based upon the relation of put to call volumes as well as upon simple put volumes. The peer-reviewed study in the Journal of Business by Allen Poteshman (2006), "Unusual Option Market Activity and the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001", trumps casual news remarks about whether the stock market, and/or airline stocks, were going down before 9-11 as an explanation for rising put-option purchases. It trumps whether this or that newsletter suggested one or another market strategy. In other words,
it goes beyond anecdotal comments and compares option behavior in specific stocks (or stock indexes) to measures of the historical patterns in these options. The study offers more general research into identifying insider trading, while also exploring the specific case of AMR and UAL stocks for 9-11." - (pp. 69-71)
In the conclusion of
his study, Poteshman says;
"The option market volume ratios considered do not provide evidence of unusual option market trading in the days leading up to September 11. The volume ratios, however, are constructed out of long and short put volume and long and short call volume; simply buying puts would have been the most straightforward way for someone to have traded in the option market on foreknowledge of the attacks. A measure of abnormal long put volume was also examined and seen to be at abnormally high levels in the days leading up to the attacks. Consequently, the paper concludes that there is evidence of unusual option market activity in the days leading up to September 11 that is consistent with investors trading on advance knowledge of the attacks."
Studies like this take time. Reviewing these studies also takes time. A lot more time than say... writing a 9/11 hit piece.
IT MUST HAVE INVOLVED THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE!
"The next evident flaw is that the plot they propose must have involved tens of thousands of people."Yet, Monbiot buys the plot with 19 hijackers, Asbestos/Teflon/Fireball-proof passports and headbands. Funny, that.
COUNTERPUNCH SAYS SO!
"Counterpunch, the radical leftwing magazine, commissioned its own expert - an aerospace and mechanical engineer - to test the official findings."Oh
yeah? UL
whistleblower Kevin Ryan critiqued that piece, by the "aerospace and mechanical engineer" and found it wanting. I highly recommend reading it;
Manuel Garcia Sees Physics That Don’t ExistSO THERE!
Monbiot's critique is silly. By focusing on the elements he can derive the maximum caricature value from, he remains smug in his assurance that everything is hunky-dory, "these aren't the droids you're looking for".
It reminds me of Noam Chomsky, who Canadian media critic Barrie Zwicker examines in his book
Towers of Deception.
Zwicker present us with a question asked of Chomsky after a public meeting, “Would you consider your media analysis as a ‘conspiracy theory’ at all?”
Chomsky replied, “It’s precisely the opposite of conspiracy theory, actually … ‘conspiracy theory’ has become the intellectual equivalent of a four-letter word:
it’s something people say when they don’t want you to think about what’s really going on.”Later, on a different occasion, in conversation with Zwicker, Chomsky had this to say about 9/11 official story skepticism,
“Look, this is just conspiracy theory.”Et tu, Monbiot?