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i got this out of the paper today i think its fitting
American astronauts didn't land on the moon -- the whole thing was faked in a studio. The U.S. military is suppressing evidence of UFOs. Lady Di's death wasn't an accident -- she was rubbed out by rogue members of the British secret service. And the Columbia space shuttle disaster was staged -- possibly with the help of Israeli astronaut Col. Ilan Ramon, who was really a spy collecting information on Iraq -- to distract attention from events in the Middle East.
Oh -- and Elvis lives.
Many might dismiss such tales. But as the world careens toward chaos, more and more people are lending more and more credence to the gossip of the global village -- conspiracy theories.
And one Londoner is leading the way. According to retired University of Western Ontario professor A. K. Dewdney -- who's quick to call his research a "scenario construction" rather than a conspiracy theory -- we've been hoodwinked about the events of Sept. 11.
Dewdney, who left his teaching position with UWO's computer science department seven years ago but who still holds a part-time position at the University of Waterloo, has devoted countless hours to debunking what he calls "the Bush scenario" -- that the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon were the work of Muslim terrorists.
Dewdney cites "anomalies" that, he says, cast doubt on the accepted version of that tragedy. He poses the following questions: (1) Why were the doomed flights not intercepted by military jets? (2) Why did the names of the alleged terrorists not appear on published passenger lists? (3) Why was only one black box recovered? (4) Why do his measurements show the aircraft that hit the WTC's north tower and the Pentagon were small corporate jets? (5) How did authorities track down connected terrorists so quickly? (6) How did passengers make outgoing calls when cellphones are virtually useless from aircraft at cruising altitude?
Dewdney published his first theory -- entitled Ghost Riders in the Sky -- on the Internet (feralnews.com). It suggested small canisters of sarin, a fast-acting lethal nerve gas, were hidden in the aircraft and then triggered by a timer or radio signal, killing all aboard. The planes were then diverted to their targets by an implanted guidance system.
Now Dewdney suggests that after takeoff, the four doomed aircraft were ordered to land at a nearby deserted base.
Following the landing, officials herded passengers off the planes and told them the aircraft were being searched for explosives.
Dewdney says while the aircraft were supposedly being searched, officials installed guidance modules. All passengers and crew were put aboard United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania, thereby eliminating all witnesses.
He says the three aircraft that struck the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon were empty, controlled from afar by implanted guidance systems.
"This explains everything," says Dewdney.
This past Saturday, Dewdney spiralled aloft above London in a rented Cessna to test the crucial wedge of his theory -- that cellphones become virtually useless at cruising altitude.
Dewdney says the frantic calls from passengers aboard the doomed aircraft were fake. The voices, he says, belonged to trained operators.
"If you see this as a horrendous crime carried out by the intelligence arm of a foreign country with whom the United States has extremely close ties, it does actually make a lot of sense," he says.
Dewdney says he suspects Israel's spy agency Mossad as the perpetrators. The motive, he says, was to justify America's anti-Arab stance in the Mideast "so that the U.S. gets its oil and the territorial control that it wants."
Dewdney is a Muslim, but he says that's an irrelevant fact that merely muddies the waters.
Some people may agree with Dewdney's scenario. Some may say his theory is ludicrous and insulting.
But I think Dewdney is a symptom of our times. If the U.S. government says it must invade Iraq to uncover weapons of mass destruction and then -- at least, so far -- finds no such weapons, many people will reasonably conclude that they've been lied to.
And if they lied about that, maybe they're lying about other things, too.
What's certain is that lies abound, rumours persist and truth evades us.
And some will always seek solace in answers that defy common sense.
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long live the hud
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