Norwegian Police Confirm Drill Identical to Breivik’s Attack

[Drdeee]

Kinda like during 7/7 attack in London and 9/11 attack in NYC and DC.

The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten reports today police sources have confirmed that hours before Anders Behring Breivik launched his deadly attack at a political summer camp on Utøya island on July 22, police had conducted a drill for a “practically identical scenario.”

http://www.infowars.com/norwegian-police-confirm-drill-identical-to-breiviks-attack/

 

[joverby]

Weird... I'll check it out. I know for 9/11 they had the interceptor jets running a "drill" for the same exact scenario. Occupying them from actually intercepting a real threat. A threat that was warned from a FBI agent MANY times and he actually ended up resigning after. (I think we've all heard of these situations)

I can't believe people still buy the sh1t that it was a legit attack. Especially considering the buildings fell just like demo buildings. Not to mention they were designed to be able to withstand a 747.

Way too conveinent, especially considering how rich some people have been getting off of these wars due to the fact. Also some of "those people" had very close links to those in office at the time. i.e. **** Cheney Ex-CEO of Haliburton. Who's made ridiculous sums of money.

 

[Rogue]

joverby:
I can't believe people still buy the sh1t that it was a legit attack.

Conspiracies do happen, of course. Abraham Lincoln was the victim of an assassination conspiracy, as was Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand, gunned down by the Serbian secret society called Black Hand. The attack on Pearl Harbor was a Japanese conspiracy (although some conspiracists think Franklin Roosevelt was in on it). Watergate was a conspiracy (that Richard Nixon was in on). How can we tell the difference between information and disinformation? As Kurt Cobain, the rocker star of Nirvana, once growled in his grunge lyrics shortly before his death from a self-inflicted (or was it?) gunshot to the head, “Just because you’re paranoid don’t mean they’re not after you.”

But as former Nixon aide G. Gordon Liddy once told me (and he should know!), the problem with government conspiracies is that bureaucrats are incompetent and people can’t keep their mouths shut. Complex conspiracies are difficult to pull off, and so many people want their quarter hour of fame that even the Men in Black couldn’t squelch the squealers from spilling the beans. So there’s a good chance that the more elaborate a conspiracy theory is, and the more people that would need to be involved, the less likely it is true.

Why do people believe in highly improbable conspiracies? In previous columns I have provided partial answers, citing patternicity (the tendency to find meaningful patterns in random noise) and agenticity (the bent to believe the world is controlled by invisible intentional agents). Conspiracy theories connect the dots of random events into meaningful patterns and then infuse those patterns with intentional agency. Add to those propensities the confirmation bias (which seeks and finds confirmatory evidence for what we already believe) and the hindsight bias (which tailors after-the-fact explanations to what we already know happened), and we have the foundation for conspiratorial cognition.

Examples of these processes can be found in journalist Arthur Goldwag’s marvelous new book, Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies (Vintage, 2009), which covers everything from the Freemasons, the Illuminati and the Bilderberg Group to black helicopters and the New World Order. “When something momentous happens, everything leading up to and away from the event seems momentous, too. Even the most trivial detail seems to glow with significance,” Goldwag explains, noting the JFK assassination as a prime example. “Knowing what we know now... film footage of Dealey Plaza from November 22, 1963, seems pregnant with enigmas and ironies—from the oddly expectant expressions on the faces of the onlookers on the grassy knoll in the instants before the shots were fired (What were they thinking?) to the play of shadows in the background (Could that flash up there on the overpass have been a gun barrel gleaming in the sun?). Each odd excrescence, every random lump in the visual texture seems suspicious.” Add to these factors how compellingly a good narrative story can tie it all together—think of Oliver Stone’s JFK or Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons, both equally fictional.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-people-believe-in-conspiracies

In the words of Mark Twain, "Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead." Oh, but I must be a "blind sheep." Right.

 

[Ease]

In the words of Mark Twain, "Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead." Oh, but I must be a "blind sheep." Right.

I am a person raised in education of critical appraisal. All this 'debunking' you do is good and all, but what do you actually say about WTC 7?

Where do you stand on the matter of world trade centre 7, the building that fell for no conclusive reason?

 

[Alle_Gory]

I am a person raised in education of critical appraisal. All this 'debunking' you do is good and all, but what do you actually say about WTC 7?

Where do you stand on the matter of world trade centre 7, the building that fell for no conclusive reason?

#7 was supposed to be some super secret headquarters for some department. Maybe the NSA, CIA... etc. It's possible when the attack came that they set the building on fire to purge the contents and then "pulled it". Everyone survived #7 did they not?

 

[Rogue]

Ease:
All this 'debunking' you do is good and all, but what do you actually say about WTC 7?

Where do you stand on the matter of world trade centre 7, the building that fell for no conclusive reason?

Questions are not answers—an unanswered question is not positive evidence of an alternative explanation. Gaps in knowledge—arguments from ignorance—are negative evidence and you need positive evidence to support an explanation. Conspiracists, whether 9/11 or the Apollo moon landing, characteristically glide from detail to detail, moving the goalposts until they hit on something which is unknown. At that point, they say "Aha!," but proving nothing. Phil Plaitt writes (talking about the Apollo moon landing), "One thing that irritates me about these conspiracy theories is the tendency to get bogged down in details. But it generally pays to take a step back and look at the overview, see what the logical conclusion is to any given claim."

Popular Mechanics covered 9/11 in excruciating detail, but it's disregarded by conspiracists as a "hit piece" because it's a Hearst publication—but that argument is a fallacy called poisoning the well. The fact is Popular Mechanics, far from yellow journalism, is a highly respected engineering magazine. The National Institute of Standards and Technology conducted a six year investigation and concluded, with explanation of how the conclusions were derived, the WTC 7 was brought down by fire—but once again conspiracists poison the well. Conspiracists subsume dissent as perpetuation of the conspiracy. The journalist Jonathan Kay wrote a book called Among The Truthers: A Journey Through America's Growing Conspiracist Underground and said in an interview that his experience "totally destroyed my faith that rational discourse will prevail. The signature trait of conspiracy theorists is that they respond to contrary evidence by simply enlarging the conspiracy... That kind of argument is bulletproof. There was nothing I could say that could change their minds."

Steven Dutch of the University of Wisconsin (Green Bay) writes, in his essay "Nutty 9/11 Physics,"

Why Did WTC 7 Collapse?

Good question. The investigators were baffled. [ed: the essay was written in 2006, a year before the NIST findings.] But the conspiracy theory doesn't explain anything. Why bring down an empty building hours after the main attack?

Photos published to support the claim of a controlled demolition show puffs emerging from the top of the building. These could be explosives. Or they could be concrete suddenly failing, or windows shattering. But again we have the irritating question, why start a collapse from the top, completely at odds with the way all controlled demolitions are done, especially if you want the building to fall onto its own footprint?

If it was actually a controlled demolition by the Fire Department or the building owner, or both, as some people allege, so what? The remains of the World Trade Center itself were brought down in controlled demolitions after 9-11. What does that have to do with the collapse of the Twin Towers? It seems unlikely that a demolition crew would enter a burning building and install charges to bring down something 15 stories taller than any other recorded controlled demolition, all in the space of a few hours, but if the building was brought down by the owners or the Fire Department, what's the connection to the Twin Towers? How does a planned demolition of one building prove the Twin Towers were deliberately brought down?

I've gotten a fair amount of flak over this issue but I've yet to see anyone present a coherent explanation of what, exactly, the collapse of WTC-7 proves.

And, to refute the reasoning of Alle_Gory, from a previous 9/11 thread, in which he said, "The remains were hauled away very quickly and destroyed despite protests that there should be a proper investigation."

The Crime Scene Was Not Preserved

So what exactly were 52 FBI Evidence Recovery Teams, totaling more than 400 agents, doing on Staten Island for nine months?

This just in, the FAA doesn't leave the debris from plane crashes in place either; they take it to a hangar and lay it out for study.

Paired up with this question is why the cleanup trucks were so carefully monitored with GPS units. These days, trucks routinely have GPS units, so that's not particularly unusual, especially since a truck driver could probably sell a load of 9-11 steel for a tidy sum on the souvenir market. One driver who took a 1-1/2 hour lunch was fired, but that can get you fired lots of places.

So not leaving the debris in place is evidence of a plot, and tracking it en route to make sure it gets where it's supposed to go is also evidence of a plot.

The people clearing the site and examining the debris were responsible for removing a continuing hazard, recovering human remains, and finding any evidence that might shed additional light on what the obvious visual record shows - that the buildings collapsed after being hit by aircraft. They were not responsible for doing an archeological dig to satisfy the objections of every conspiracy theorist on the planet. Don't like that? Too bad. Deal with it.

Conspiracists deploy the same cognitive tactics as Holocaust deniers. The comparison always ruffles feathers but it's the truth.

 

[Ninja Dude]

Rogue is right. You can't piece together a decent case using hyperbole and assumptions. Let's deal with pure facts here which at best calls into question foreknowledge of these attacks, and at worst full complicity

The Pentagon

For months there was a section of it that was under total reconstruction to be able to withstand a missile attack. The plane that flew into the building made a HUGE turn, going out of its way and performing an impressive maneuver just to hit that spot (which apparently was just book-keeping).

When asked about the events of that day Vice President **** Cheney said he arrived on the scene after the attack, but that is in direct conflict with the testimony of Norman Mineta, Secretary of Transportation - who stated that Cheney was there the whole time and knew about the approaching plane. In fact he was getting updates as to how far out it was. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDfdOwt2v3Y

Building 7

Was home of the Securities and Exchange Commission, contained in that building were thousands of documents/cases against high profile corporations. We are talking billions of dollars worth of settlements up in smoke. More than one corporate mogul secretly cheered that day. The only witness to what actually happened in that building was head of security Barry Jennings, who in countless interviews spoke on being stuck in the building and hearing multiple explosions and seeing dead bodies in the lobby. After being threatened to shut his mouth or else, he passed away mysteriously and no one has talked about how he died. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbbZE7c3a8Q

FBI deliberately thrown off bin Laden's trail

John O' Niell was the lead investigator on Al Qaeda. He quit his jobs after superiors stonewalled his investigation and told him to forget bin Laden. He was offered a job on 9/10 - at the WTC. He died the following day. PBS did an in-depth documentary on him: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/knew/

These are just a few aspects of that attack which should raise suspicion. When you couple this with the fact that our jet fighters were kept out of the skies because they were performing an exercise/drill (ironically one that included planes smashing into building), along with all the stocks sold off on both airlines just days beforehand, and you have some pretty serious questions which authorities must answer to.

Maybe it wasnt bombs in the buildings. Maybe Bush and friends didnt orchestrate the whole thing (I really question his ability to do so) But to say our leaders had no idea this was coming is just pure BS.

 

[Ease]

Questions are not answers—an unanswered question is not positive evidence of an alternative explanation. Gaps in knowledge—arguments from ignorance—are negative evidence and you need positive evidence to support an explanation. Conspiracists, whether 9/11 or the Apollo moon landing, characteristically glide from detail to detail, moving the goalposts until they hit on something which is unknown. At that point, they say "Aha!," but proving nothing. Phil Plaitt writes (talking about the Apollo moon landing), "One thing that irritates me about these conspiracy theories is the tendency to get bogged down in details. But it generally pays to take a step back and look at the overview, see what the logical conclusion is to any given claim."

Popular Mechanics covered 9/11 in excruciating detail, but it's disregarded by conspiracists as a "hit piece" because it's a Hearst publication—but that argument is a fallacy called poisoning the well. The fact is Popular Mechanics, far from yellow journalism, is a highly respected engineering magazine. The National Institute of Standards and Technology conducted a six year investigation and concluded, with explanation of how the conclusions were derived, the WTC 7 was brought down by fire—but once again conspiracists poison the well. Conspiracists subsume dissent as perpetuation of the conspiracy. The journalist Jonathan Kay wrote a book called Among The Truthers: A Journey Through America's Growing Conspiracist Underground and said in an interview that his experience "totally destroyed my faith that rational discourse will prevail. The signature trait of conspiracy theorists is that they respond to contrary evidence by simply enlarging the conspiracy... That kind of argument is bulletproof. There was nothing I could say that could change their minds."

Steven Dutch of the University of Wisconsin (Green Bay) writes, in his essay "Nutty 9/11 Physics," And, to refute the reasoning of Alle_Gory, from a previous 9/11 thread, in which he said, "The remains were hauled away very quickly and destroyed despite protests that there should be a proper investigation."Conspiracists deploy the same cognitive tactics as Holocaust deniers. The comparison always ruffles feathers but it's the truth.

I see a lot of words here but nothing to answer my question. Which is the answer I was unfortunately expecting from you. That was extremely irrelevant.

It is as easy to 'debunk' something as to invent a conspiracy about it. It is foolish to not be suspicious about this.

 

[Rogue]

Thank you guys for proving me right. There is a solid reason why I take a psychological approach: I am equally unsurprised of unsinkable rubber ducks.

As for discrepancies of memories:

What are we to make of this? Are we obliged to believe that the President is smart enough to carry out a horrific conspiracy to attack America, but dumb enough to reveal it — twice? Should we instead believe that the President lied about what happened — twice but not three times — even though he had much to lose and nothing to gain from such a lie? Or should we believe something else entirely? Fortunately, scientific studies of memory can offer a more benign explanation. We don’t need to posit irrational lies or a massive conspiracy imperfectly hidden from the eyes of everyday citizens. Instead, we need only consider the frailties of human memory.

http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/10-06-16/#feature

9/11 was an intelligence failure. The clues of warning signs were there but, looking at the whole picture, it was drops of water in an ocean of information. It's easy to connect the dots in hindsight bias, far easier than before an event occurs. This, combined with the intrinsic incompetencies and stonewalling of bureaucracies and red tape—I've worked in a bureaucracy, so I know—and this combined with an enemy which studied and penetrated its target, lead to disaster. To err is human.

Conspiracists are not dumb, but I always can't help but be reminded of how smart people are the most prone to cognitive distortions. Any good magician will agree the best crowd to perform in front of is an audience of Harvard and Oxford professors, because smart people try to figure out the trick and are deceived by red herrings. 9/11, both in technical details and governmental responses, is extraordinarily complex; the more details, the more complexities, the more distractions of red herrings, the easier you can shoehorn events into an alternative pattern. Intelligence has an orthogonal relationship to belief and is no buffer from misguided thinking.

I'm 31, and so I'm older than most of you. I remember hearing for years of all the al Qaeda plots which were foiled by the FBI. Just like picking up chicks, if you keep trying you'll eventually succeed.

 

[Ninja Dude]

Shoe-horning? Red herrings?

Did you even bother to watch Mineta's testimony? That is smoking gun proof Cheney at least knew about the Pentagon getting hit. No hypothetical questions there. This is sworn testimony from someone who has been a fixture in the White House since the Reagan years. He saw Cheney get frequent updates on the plane's whereabouts before impact, yet nobody evacuated the building. That's seriously fuct!

I don't get you Rogue - you are the resident skeptic here and I am really perplexed by your insistance on believing the official story, especially when so many leaps of faith are required to patch the holes together into anything remotely plausible

 

[Ease]

Thank you guys for proving me right. There is a solid reason why I take a psychological approach: I am equally unsurprised of unsinkable rubber ducks.

As for discrepancies of memories:9/11 was an intelligence failure. The clues of warning signs were there but, looking at the whole picture, it was drops of water in an ocean of information. It's easy to connect the dots in hindsight bias, far easier than before an event occurs. This, combined with the intrinsic incompetencies and stonewalling of bureaucracies and red tape—I've worked in a bureaucracy, so I know—and this combined with an enemy which studied and penetrated its target, lead to disaster. To err is human.

Conspiracists are not dumb, but I always can't help but be reminded of how smart people are the most prone to cognitive distortions. Any good magician will agree the best crowd to perform in front of is an audience of Harvard and Oxford professors, because smart people try to figure out the trick and are deceived by red herrings. 9/11, both in technical details and governmental responses, is extraordinarily complex; the more details, the more complexities, the more distractions of red herrings, the easier you can shoehorn events into an alternative pattern. Intelligence has an orthogonal relationship to belief and is no buffer from misguided thinking.

I'm 31, and so I'm older than most of you. I remember hearing for years of all the al Qaeda plots which were foiled by the FBI. Just like picking up chicks, if you keep trying you'll eventually succeed.

I dont doubt the facts you give us.

However my main suspicions arise not from 'unanswered questions' or small pieces of evidence, but the nature of intelligence organisations. Anyone reading the history of CIA and Mossad knows that this type of foul play is right up their street. They are not bound by laws of any kind. This coupled with geopolitical plans and problems faced by america, which 9/11 gave the perfect casus-belli at the ideal time. The unanswered questions are just an icing on the cake to joke about.

This is the basis of my suspicion that any attack expected by america was purposefully 'under-investigated' for lack of a better word.

Now you can keep preaching to us like we are fools, or oxford graduates who are trying to figure out the trick. But pay attention when i say that it is foolish to not be suspicious.


Now as far as the word 'conspiracy' goes, we could say that Weapons of Mass Destruction was a conspiracy contrived by american intelligence organisations and so called 'experts' that were payed to say what was needed in their reports. Or the current situation in Libya in which the UN, NATO, western media and all sorts of organisations play a joint effort in bringing down Gaddafi for what is ultimately for the benefit of oil companies and business interests.

 

[Rogue]

Ninja Dude:

When 9/11 hit, I knew conspiracy theorists would jump on the bandwagon, for the reason that almost every major event in history is followed by a wake of conspiracy theories. In my own memory, I think it only took about two weeks for the bandwagon to arrive. In the words of Christopher Hitchens, conspiracy theories are the "exhaust fumes of democracy," the unavoidable result of a large amount of information circulating amongst a large number of people.

I'm the resident "skeptic" but skepticism is a philosophical methodology rather than a position on an issue. There are times to be skeptical of skeptics. The 9/11 conspiracy theory is incoherent and just doesn't jive with common sense with how reality works. The government attacking its own people to start a war for oil when it would've been much simpler, much cheaper, more humane, to buy it?

There was enough of a conspiracy—al Qaeda. People have a psychological tendency to think big events must have equally complex explanations, but the truth is historically the opposite: a drive towards simplicity.

Ninja Dude:
Did you even bother to watch Mineta's testimony?

I watched some of it a long time ago. I certainly won't waste my time now.

He was mistaken. His story is chock full of errors, inconsistencies, anomalies, which is consistent with scientific research which shows the accounts of eyewitnesses are unreliable and extremely susceptible to distortions. The frailties of memory are a viable explanation. Memory isn't like a videotape. I suggest you read the essay I cited above about "flashbulb memories."

The key issue here is whether Mineta's story is true, or false. We believe information already in the public domain shows his story is inaccurate. Figuring out why it's inaccurate is another question entirely. We could speculate, research examples showing the fallibility of memory and how unreliable witnesses can be, but that wouldn't prove anything. The "why" question simply isn't one that long-distance Internet researchers can usefully address.

Of course there is an explanation commonly used by 9/11 researchers, when they spot an apparent anomaly in someone's story: they say that individual is lying. However you'll only rarely hear that in connection with Mineta. His story is defended to the end, with all anomalies excused, and we believe for one reason only: it's required to implicate Cheney.

...The reality is that Mineta's account doesn't make sense. Not because the 9/11 Commission says so; his own retelling of events gives us the information we need to say he was mistaken, and arrived at the White House long after 9:20. And that's why, with the current information, we believe the simpler explanation is more likely to be true: Cheney arrived in the shelter preceding the PEOC at 9:37, Mineta came later, and the conversation he overheard did not refer to Flight 77.

http://www.911myths.com/index.php/Norman_Mineta

 

[Ninja Dude]

Much of this conspiracy talk is pure nonsense for sure, but I am at a total loss how you can maintain a supposedly objective position while swallowing the government's version, which has just as many holes in it.

We can argue semantics of Mineta's testimony but I do not buy that Wiki pages's assertion that he was referring to Flight 93. He was consistent through all his interviews about Cheney's updates (20 miles out, 10 miles out, etc) and if you look at Flight 93's path it never came within less than 60 miles of the Pentagon. *shrug*

Hey maybe you are right and the disaster itself distorted his memory, or simply misunderstood what he saw. That still doesn't pardon or excuse the fact that the lead man on the bin Laden case was completely stonewalled to the point where he had to quit his job. He was the most informed person on Al Qaeda's activity and knew exactly what was going to happen. Watch that documentary - its a PBS production and not some Loose Change bullsh-t

Someone should have to answer to such criminal oversight, but in true American fashion, no one is ever held accountable. We'd much rather go after the scapegoats wearing turbans and screaming JIHAD. To take things deeper we don't really look at their motives for this crime. We are told that it's simply because they hate our freedom, completely ignoring the predatory foreign policy which turns their neighborhoods into warzones, while aligning ourselves with sworn enemies like Israel (who are also famous for their atrocities.. but its ok because they are Jewish)

As far as your comment on "just paying for the oil" it clearly shows you do not understand the economic dynamics of war. It's not just oil which profits here but the military industry itself. Weapons are our primary export and despite the current recession business is booming. Read your history - war is the ultimate tool for relocating the wealth of the poor and middle class to the pockets of the uber rich. It's not just a battle on terror - it is a war on the common man's standard of living.

Anyways I don't want to ramble on too much. I can see it's wasted dialogue because nothing can change a mind so completely made up. I just hope you are at least aware of your own particular coloring of history to fit your world view.

 

[joverby]

Right Rogue. The answer to why it fell is "What would they have to gain by making it fall?" Fair enough question but not an answer.

I'm sure there were plenty of people just like you for the Gulf of Tonkin and Pearl Harbor. Or when the Reichstag burned down in Germany. It's not that far fetched to believe that the government may stage or allow something to happen because there is a lot at stake. (Lots of money / resources / power). It's no secret that kind of act rallies HUGE support / blind patriotisim.

Because Haliburton(D1ck Cheney was CEO of), Blackwater(w/e they call themselves now) and some contractors.(Some of which they would force soilders to visit a certain laundry mat. Which was garbage and they would have to wash their clothes by themselves anyways after.)

 

[Ninja Dude]

Joverby dont forget about the Carlyle Group which has made billions in defense contracts and included both Bush Sr and bin Ladens kin among its investors. (or the fact that the ONLY plane allowed to fly on 9/11 was bin Laden's family)

As for the idea that our government would never attack its own citizens, you can pretty much discount that here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods

Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on that order, essentially a plan to kill American citizens on their home turf in order to invade Cuba.

But nawwww we would never do such a thing. America's leaders have proven time and time again they always have the best interests of the people at heart and would lay down their own lives to save us

 

[joverby]

Ya, there were definitely other companies / people I didn't mention w/ links. Most all contracts were uncontested as well.

Operation North Woods .....Wow. Never heard of that one but I know why now.

Thank goodness our government would never pull any wool over our eyes to pursue a hidden agenda. We are so blessed and should never question anything they say, ever.

 

[Rogue]

Ninja_Dude:
As for the idea that our government would never attack its own citizens, you can pretty much discount that here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods

I am aware of that, but those incidents didn't involve the murder of over 3,000 civilians. There have been legitimate (real) conspiracies throughout history but it's fallacious to use historical legitimate conspiracies to support illegitimate (imaginary) conspiracies; you need to draw a distinction. It certainly adds to distrust but it's not a good logical argument; it can be used to turn anything into a conspiracy. People use that argument for UFOs.

 

[Ninja Dude]

I understand Rogue, and was not submitting that as "proof" per se. Just a counter argument for people who insist that the government would not dream of doing something so heinous. They dream alright, and are guilty of far worse than 3,000 civilian deaths in their dealings abroad. Genocide has been our specialty since our inception

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Rlqjxst6xU

FWIW, I do respect your opinion because unlike most you actually do your homework and you force me to think outside my own paradigms. I would say it's a pleasure to cross swords but that just sounds gay, so I will exit this thread with a bow and a "touché"

One for the road:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaS2bRGS86c