In the Mahmoud

“Out of the mouths of babes...”, as the saying goes – or, in this case, of the president of Iran, who is fast becoming a kind of contrarian, underground hero for voicing opinions that are otherwise silenced on the world stage. His specialty seems to be bearding the lion in its den – in the present case the U.N., which is, despite all the huffing and puffing by the likes of John Bolton, basically a puppet theater set up on the east side of Manhattan by the U.S. Government for its own amusement. To all the calls to “get the U.S. out of the U.N.”, the reply should be, “but the U.N. _is_ the U.S. Without the U.S. the U.N. would not exist, nor would it need to.”

But setting aside that species of common sense for the time being, how about the latest salvo from Ahmadinejad, just blocks (OK, miles) from Ground Zero? According to an AP summary article, he provided three possible scenarios for the 9/11 attacks:

(1) A “powerful and complex terrorist group” penetrated U.S. intelligence and defenses. (This would be the official story, except for the “powerful and complex” part. Remember, these were guys with box cutters, right? And they didn't really "penetrate" anything; they just "slipped through". There's a big difference, don'tcha know.)

(2) “... some segments within the U.S. Government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East in order also to save the Zionist regime. The majority of the American people as well as other nations and politicians agree with this view.” (This is the point at which the U.S. delegation walked out in a huff – not on their own initiative, you may be assured, but by explicit instructions from the gnomes in the White House.)

(3) The attack was the work of “a terrorist group but the American government supported and took advantage of the situation.” (This is, of course, the leading scenario among “conspiracy theorists”, but certainly not the only one, and there are countless variations on each scenario.)

Well, of course walking out in a pout whenever we hear things we don't like is standard procedure at the U.N. Clearly, no one is worried that by doing so they might miss something – like a “key vote” of some sort. (And BTW, did the Israeli delegation walk out? Not that I'm aware. They hang tough.) But another interpretation is that Mahmoud hit a nerve. It's hard to say who's more “paranoid” these days – the conspiracy theorists or the anti-conspiracy theorists. Certainly the latter are more thin-skinned and easily offended – and what makes it remarkable is that we are dealing with an entirely different administration than the one that was in power at the time of 9/11. Or are we? That is, of course, another point I have dealt with exhaustively – that there is really only one Regime, and therefore only one administration, which just keeps rolling along no matter which party is nominally in power. So things that would have offended Bush & Co. are just as offensive to Obama & Co., because all are equally guilty and all have the same things to lose if the truth were ever to come out. This notion on the part of each party that the other party is “evil” is nothing more than playacting – it's a schoolyard game played by a bunch of pygmies who are all working for the same master, but who squabble over pathetic perks of power and fame. They are like piglets vying for the top teat when, in fact, all the teats provide the same nourishment – or, in this case, poison.

And needless to say, despite the juvenile exertions of the U.S. delegation, there are millions – perhaps tens of millions – of Americans who agree with Ahmadinejad on one or more points. To paraphrase H. L. Mencken, throw an apple core out any car window and you're going to hit someone who believes the U.S. Government was deeply involved in the attacks – not just in the aftermath but in the actual events. And this is not because Americans are natural-born conspiracy theorists; far from it. Americans are notorious the world over, and historically, for their touching, naïve belief in government as a source of not only security but of truth. So to generate this much skepticism, the official explanation of an event must have been at least as outrageous as the event itself... added to which, our system is showing much more rot and corruption on a daily basis than it did in November of 1963, for example. And in a funny kind of way, Americans are tougher now – at least tougher-minded. After the JFK assassination, we turned, as a nation, into infantile, quivering, fear-wracked blobs of protoplasm. All anyone wanted was an explanation – any explanation, no matter how wildly improbable – for what had happened, which was “unthinkable” in any case. And this is, of course, the time-honored technique of tyrannies down through history – do the unthinkable, tell the big lie, and sure enough, no one will think – everyone's brains will be short-circuited. So now we have an “economic crisis” that is barely “thinkable” if you accept the conventional wisdom... but unthinkable if you start really thinking about it. Which means that the “unthinkable” explanation – i.e. the real one – will never be seriously considered. Likewise, when it came to anything but the “lone nut with a gun” behind the JFK assassination, the public turned into that trio of monkeys... and when it came to 9/11, we developed a case of mass denial, which was just what the powers that be had in mind. So it takes a “clown” like Ahmadinejad to peek behind the curtain and point out that there is most definitely “a there there”. Actually, I would rather think of him as a court jester – you know, the guy who... well, really, the only guy who could tell the truth without getting his head cut off. This was a valuable commodity in days of old; too bad the position has remained vacant in Washington for way too long, and it's too bad it takes a scruffy little guy from halfway around the world to fill the position on a temporary basis -- and in a place of ill-repute like the U.N. to boot.