THE CONSPIRACY TO USE MAY 1st TO BRING CLOSURE TO SEPTEMBER 11th
Regular followers of the blog know that I’m much more interested in dots than I am in numbers.
But the connections of the calendar are powerful (See THE CONSPIRACY OF THE LONG COUNT), and I am aware that yearly anniversaries of major, or personal events bring back a flood of vivid memories.
My father has often told me how vivid his boyhood recollection was of the events of December 7th, 1941. I’ve heard and read the same thing from scores of folks about November 22nd, 1963, July 20th, 1969, and August 9th, 1974.
I even have one of these strong memories from my own youth. I am sure many of you will do a quick Google search on before saying, “Oh yeah” to my mention of this date:
Where were you on May 25th 1986?
Almost everyone has similar where were you when that happened... stories.
Anniversaries of these widely shared experiences often bring retrospectives and re-examinations.
Some, like what happened at Dealey Plaza on November 22nd, 1963, are endlessly fodder for conspiracy theorists like Jeff. Each and e
Sometimes these anniversaries also bring about the opening old wounds, sometimes they inspire others to no good.
Like August 20th.
It is a painful to recall that the one hundred and tenth anniversary of the birth of Adolph Hitler inspired two high school students to go on a shooting rampage in Colorado on August 20th, 1999.
It Was Once A Calm High School -
It is also painful to have to connect the dots between the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Courthouse and the siege on the Branch Davidian compound in Texas, exactly one year earlier.
The Courthouse Aftermath –
The Compound Aftermath –
Such is the power of the calendar.
Which brings me to Jeff’s latest conspiracy theory.
Or should I say, "Mayday! Mayday!"
Here’s how it all went down this morning:
Jeff: You don’t think the date has some significance. They chose it on purpose.
Me: They? The same they who killed Kennedy? Or the same they who faked the moon landing?
Jeff: Sam, telling the world that they had captured and killed Bin Laden on May 1st… He was already dead and they picked that day as symbolic.
O.K. The symbolism of May 1st is not lost on me.
Nor am I surprised that conspiracy theories would circle around bin Laden’s demise like the currents of the very sea that now hold his lifeless body.
Even as crowds gathered outside the White House and at Ground Zero to celebrate and remember lost loved ones, conspiracy-minded theorists like Jeff were busy speculating as to the true nature of this announcement and the circumstances surrounding it the timing.
Like Jeff, many conspiracy theorists believe that bin Laden was long dead.
Many government officials agreed with them as well. Former CIA case officer Robert Baer said of bin Laden in 2008, "Of course he’s dead." FBI counterterrorism chief Dale Watson thought he was "probably" dead. Former U.S. foreign intelligence officer and Boston University professor Angelo M. Codevilla went even further: " All the evidence suggests Elvis Presley is more alive today than Osama bin Laden."
Still more questions have been raised with the publication of a book called Osama Bin Laden: Dead or Alive? Written by political analyst and philosopher Professor David Ray Griffin, former Emeritus Professor at California's Claremont School of Theology, the book goes into far more detail about his supposed death and suggests there has been a cover-up by the West.
The book claims that Bin Laden died of kidney failure on December 13, 2001, while living in Afghanistan's Tora Bora mountains close to the border with Waziristan.
His burial took place within 24 hours, in line with Muslim religious rules, and in an unmarked grave, which is a Wahhabi custom.
Rather than a burial at sea? This is the basis of a whole different conspiracy theory which I know Jeff will hit me with at some point.
The author insists that the many Bin Laden tapes made since that date have been concocted by the West to make the world believe Bin Laden is alive.
Jeff’s theory is that United States intelligence forces have longed faked various recordings and videos to keep the threat alive to justify foreign adventures such as Iraq and stoke the fears of a country rapidly losing enthusiasm for the war in Afghanistan. He’s been kept on ice all this time.
The fact that the death announcement came eight years to the day from former-President George W. Bush’s Mission Accomplished speech.
On The Intrepid -
It’s also the anniversary of the announcement to the world of the death of Adolph Hitler in 1945. It was also the one-year anniversary of the Times Square bomb.
Curiously, it is also the fifty-year anniversary of the very first airplane hijacking.
Now I am not going to bother with any sort of debunking of the theory that bin Laden was being kept on ice, even though I certainly agree that a man who is said to have needed kidney dialysis should be easier to find than he seems to have been.
Nor am I going to deal with any of the other swirling theories, like he is still alive and being tortured, or that he never had anything to do with the terrorist attacks of September 11th at all.
But the choice of the date and the specific timing and significance of the announcement seems like an easy one to debunk.
Was the day and time of the announcement picked for another significance other than the fact that Celebrity Apprentice was in the midst of airing in the Eastern and Central time zones?
Plus May 1st may have significance, but of all the days in the year it seems to have lesser value than ones that feel way more obvious choices…
Think about other days of significance:
Like the one that falls each year on the first Tuesday after the first Monday each November.
Election Day.
Thee terrorist attack of September 11th happened on the day of the New York primary. That may have saved a lot of lives.
Think back to the mid-term elections last November. The Democrats took a "shellacking" at the polls. Would it not have been helpful to have this happen on the Sunday night before Election Day?
Think ahead to the 2012 election? What away to secure a landslide victory…
Of course, the tenth anniversary of the attacks on the towers and The Pentagon is coming up. Rebuilding has begun. It’s a time for closure.
But if the date was meant to give closure and have a greater symbolic meaning, it eludes me. Despite hijackings, speeches, deaths of dictators, the public does not celebrate any one of those, nor are they burned into the public conscience.
The fact is, whatever day bin Laden is killed, or his death is announced opens up to yearly commemorations. Or yearly opportunities for crazies to try something like what the Time Square bomber tried one year earlier.
Rather than bringing closure, it could be a new anniversary... not unlike April 20.
Whether it’s May 1st, or September 11th, or any one of three hundred and sixty four other days it is very likely going to be more likely the cause of future events, not the balancing out ot those of the past.
I find it hard to believe that, in The White House situation room, there is a coven of witches, or team of astrologers, who decides what is the proper date to take out someone who runs a terrorist organization.
Unless maybe with Nancy Reagan involved.
Visits From The Astrologer -
Or, unless, of course, it was really all about interrupting or pre-empting Celebrity Apprentice. Trump did really seem to have gotten under Obama’s skin about the birth certificate.
On August 4th The President is going to be 50 years old. Maybe he just couldn’t wait three months to give himself a birthday present
You can send me presents, emails and comments at any time.
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