The Post-Partisan Emporium

  Israel Did 9/11 W.M. Peterson Table of Contents Cui Bono? Events Leading up to September 11, 2001 Privatization Foreknowledge and Preparation Airport 'Security' The Coverup Interpretation The Legacy Conclusion On September 11, 2004, the  New York Times  published an opinion piece commemorating the third anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks. The article began by acknowledging that key facts about what happened that day continued to be withheld by government agencies:   “In the three years since 9/11, we’ve begun to understand that it’s possible to know what happened without knowing what happened. It’s the difference between knowledge that is both private and communal. . . and knowledge that is truly public. Some of what we need to know publicly has been provided by the report of the 9/11 commission. Other answers are lacking.” These are extraordinary words from our nation’s newspaper of record. The suggestion that the American people should passively accept being ...

  PATRICK LAWRENCE: ‘Vote Joy’ — a Delusion of Nostalgia Those populating the vice president’s joy-and-vibes crowd can pretend to celebrate a state of elation while acquiescing to their candidate’s approval of mass murder. Balloons fall after Vice President Kamala Harris’ speech at the Democratic National Convention last month.  (Chris Bentley, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) By  Patrick Lawrence M any commentators have attempted to describe the astonishing devolution of Democratic Party politics into sheer marketing:  Kamala Harris as product, “new and improved” like a laundry detergent or a frozen dinner. Vanessa Beeley calls it “cartoon theatrics,” and it’s as good as I’ve seen. In two words the British journalist captures from a useful distance the infantilism of the Harris-for-president campaign and the Hollywoodization of American politics. I thought I’d seen everything in this line until a few days ago, but in this, the most unserious political season of my lifetime,...

  Gymnastics on the Front Bench From one extreme to another Sophia Barnes In his 1957 work  Mythologies , the French philosopher Roland Barthes explored the role of ‘euphoria’ in creating the myths by which we make sense of experience. Questionable links between ideas become, by the magic of ideology, self-evident. We construct narratives that suit us and harmonise contradictions in the process. No one dares to deny these myths. A clear example of such ideological gymnastics can be found in the Labour Party’s proclaimed intentions concerning misogyny. In the wake of the recent unrest across the UK, the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced plans to identify, tackle, and reduce online radicalisation. This includes treating  ‘extreme misogyny’  as a form of extremism. It will be interesting to see how the Government copes with the cognitive dissonance of declaring misogyny to be extremism while continuing with plans to protect Islam by law and criminalise ‘Islamophobi...