Here's a conspiracy theory for you.

End of WWII, the US (new born CIA and those in the know) start to get their hands on what was known and is still known as Yamashita's gold, located in a multitude of locations in the Philippines. Up until the 80's Marcos was in on it too.

Eventually it became known as a giant horde of stolen riches known as the ‘Black Eagle Trust’ which was used to fund a shadow American empire tucked under the meme of anti-communism.

At the end of the Cold War, a large number of ‘off-balance sheet’ securities were issued by banks such as UBS and Deutsche Bank against this wealth and funnelled into the USSR.

In September 1991, George H. W. Bush and Alan Greenspan, both Pilgrims Society members, financed $240 billion in illegal bonds to economically decimate the Soviet Union and bring Soviet oil and gas resources under the control of Western investors, backed by the Black Eagle Trust and supported later by Putin who for the right price purged certain oligarchs.

After the Soviet Union fell, the cabal in possession of these resources made plans to cycle them into the legal economy and cover-up the dirty deeds that they were associated with. The original 10 year Brady bonds, set to mature in September 2001, were destroyed in the attack on the World Trade Centre. The firm that held the securities was Cantor Fitzgerald, which suffered catastrophic losses including the death of every employee and loss of all, repeat, all of its paperwork. How convenient.

Under a suspension of regular rules by the SEC, the illicit bonds were cleared by the Bank of New York and added to the capital reserves of banks holding ‘Black Eagle’ gold including Chase, Citibank, Credit Suisse, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, and UBS. To obfuscate its trail, the money was quickly shifted into the mortgage market, where the demand for subprime loans would rise by $246 billion.

Just adds to the mystery and the bold evidence that clearly shows 9/11 was a complete inside (US/Zionist/NWO) job.

Don't believe me, do some research.

WMtrevor.Putin's actual words."To imagine that the US intelligence services did it deliberately,with their own hands,is complete nonsense." Putin has left the door open to other hands.ie he wants the US establishment to have an out ,so he like Israel can use the old divide and conquer methods to separate Israel from the USA.Putin is not stupid.The fact remains as why the USA ignored Putin's and many other leader's warnings that the 911 attacks were immenent.Putin did not name Muslims as the attackers.

Putin also knows that Israel has strong connections to the likes of the Rothschilds,JP Morgan,Goldman Sachs etc and they create via the US Federal Reserve most of the money for the US Govt to function.

Putin sees Israel as the USA's achilles heel.The election of Obama has been a big blow to Israel since they poured millions into the Romney campaign for no result.

There is a change of allegiance within the US Govt and I suspect the Military, but that will not necessarily mean a return to democracy or their constitution.

Yes,I don't trust Putin either.

How about adding this one too.

In 2007 six nuclear warheads were stolen from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota. The moment they were stolen they disappeared from America’s nuclear inventory, these weapons were stolen, very little is more controlled, more secure, more restricted, more classified, than the nuclear arsenal of the US. Yet they remain missing to this day.

Recently key members of the military more loyal to Israel and Wall Street than the US, have been identified as planning a mutiny to take place after the 2012 presidential election.

Their task, upon seizing power, is to facilitate a massive terror attack inside the United States, possibly using a stolen nuclear weapon, declare martial law, and move troops into Iraq and to attack Iran with aid from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.

Turkey is to attack Syria with aid from Israel and civil war between the Kurdish regional government and the national government in Baghdad is to begin with the US brokering a peace and re-establishing what a newly appointed “Republican President” would describe as the “Status of Forces Agreement”.

This real intent is to re-occupy Iraq and attack Iran. In the process neutralise the nuclear capability of Pakistan.

Did Petraeus really resign? Did Admiral Gaouette who was sent home because the Secretary of Defence found him unfit for command, both timed prior to, and just after an election really do something wrong, perhaps a false flag event!

Gaouette commanded nearly one third of the Naval and air combat forces in the Persian Gulf region. The decision was made based on a conversation with the Secretary of Defence who, at the end of the talk, believed Gaouette was part of a group of military officers who have been under suspicion for planning a “Seven Days in May” type overthrow of the US government if President Obama was re-elected.

Although partially based on conjecture, dozens of key officers face firing; hundreds are under investigation, all with direct ties to extremist elements in the Republican Party and the Israeli lobby.

Let history be the judge of what comes next?

Geoff of Perth.All these plays are based on power and nothing to do with allegiance to the US people or morality.Zibigniew Brezezinski is still a powerful force within US foreign policy decisions and he has been warning against an attack on Iran for a long time.

I think the Western Oligarchs are having a re-think and are trying to buy time so they can rebuild their economies.Their choice is stark.Either they follow Israel into oblivion via a nuke war or pull back from the edge and choose life.

That is completely spooky, James O'Neill.

>>Pericles: you manifestly live within your own fact free bubble that rational discussion with you is impossible. You clearly believe what you want to believe and regardless of what I or anybody else that relies on the evidence actually says does not make any difference.<<

That is almost word for word the advice I was going to give you! How weird is that?

There is however a substantial difference between evidence and conjecture. If the red particles had been nanothermite, for example, they would have been evidence. All the rest, however, remains purest conjecture.

9/11 conspiracy theories are a lot like religion. Just as Christians require a presupposition that there is a God, conspiracy theorists require a presupposition that there is a conspiracy, otherwise nothing fits. Once you have made that assumption, you are free to conjecture anything you like - Israel's involvement, rapacious landlords who demolish their own buildings for money, governments who want an excuse to go to war - absolutely anything stands for a motive, depending upon your socio-political leanings.

One of the biggest logical flaws in the 9/11 alternative scenarios, apart from the fact that that there are so many of them, is that they lack an identifiable, real-world motive. Even when you have settled upon your chosen motive - Israel/landlords/warmonger government etc. - the sheer scale of the operation that you have imagined simply cannot come together plausibly, in either means or opportunity. The logistics simply don't work.

The conspiracy theorist's cop-out is to call for another enquiry.

Problem is, they wouldn't believe that one either.

By definition, if it doesn't meet their pet theory, they will simply cry "cover-up", and start all over again.

Incidentally, you haven't mentioned which of the alternate-universe scenarios you subscribe to. Care to share?

And Arjay, this is an indication of how bereft of ideas you have become:

>>James O'Neill I suspect Pericles and his followers are of a Jewish background<<

Facts remain the same, Arjay, whatever the religion of the observer. We are not in the realms of quantum mechanics here.

I've read the article three times now, over several days. Apart from it being a whinge about the signal-to-noise ratio in the public space that is the internet, I am struggling to see the author's point. He resents seeing rumour and gossip on an equal footing with constructive and informative posts, but "... [doesn't] wish for any voices to be silenced.". Is there something else going on here?

Could it be that he is challenged by the very existence of what he is pleased to call 'conspiracy theory'? Challenged by the opportunity the internet gives for other minds and world-views to question evidence and reasoning leading to 'official versions' as to anything requiring public explanation? Given that he has substantially occupied his stage with such a large one (the 9/11 one), is it that he is challenged by the scale of questioning of what he has seen as the established order of things that is implicit in even entertaining some of the speculations surrounding this event?

By way of partial analogy, one of the slowly-emerging surprises as to the Nazi era extermination program and related war crimes was that as to how few, rather than how many, could be ultimately held as culpable, notwithstanding the numbers of victims that had been involved.

This very claimed conspiracy theory was accused of somehow defiling the memory of the victims of the 9/11 events in an OLO article discussion thread earlier this year. See: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=13784#238619 . That claim looked to me to be some sort of a defence mechanism against questioning the official line. I never got an answer as to how questioning what really happened defiled the memory of victims.

One of the great things about the internet as we have known it, has been the potential it offers the ordinary interested citizen for following the electronic paper trail that may later come to be shown as relevant to any event. For example: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=11353#192294 . Perhaps that makes things difficult for those who might erstwhile have expected to 'control the message'.