Increasingly just about any time anything tragic happens there will be some number of people who will immediately jump to the conclusion that the government did it. 9/11? An inside job. Newtown school shooting? A government plot to take our guns. Boston Bombing? A false flag operation. The most recent one that spurred this post is the killing of Ibragim Todashev, a Chechen immigrant whom the FBI chose to question as part of its investigation of the Boston Bombing. He was questioned by an FBI agent and two state troopers. The FBI says that Todashev attacked their agent, presenting an imminent threat to that agent’s life, and as a result the agent chose to shoot him. Corroborating the FBI’s account, the agent was hospitalised with injuries. Regardless, the FBI is investigating the incident.Yet, despite this, some people think that the FBI just went into Todashev’s home and killed him for some reason, or no reason, and that this incident suggests that our government is totalitarian and just goes around shooting people all the time. Why do people believe these conspiracy theories?
Tag: 9/11
The TSA: Mass Murderers
I happened upon an old article by the sage of Brooklyn himself, Nate Silver, about what Silver calls the hidden costs of airport security. Silver references a study out of Cornell University that indicates that the there were significant consequences to the increase in airport security post-9/11 that went unreported and unnoticed. These consequences were not merely financial–people died.
9/11, Chris Stevens, and Proportionate Response
Late last night in Benghazi, US ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens was killed by a mob angered by a film called Innocence of Muslims, promoted by the famous American pastor Terry Jones, notorious for his burning of the Quran, the Muslim holy book. The film mocks Islam and Muhammad. Having viewed the trailer, it is clear that the film is not only quite intellectually vacuous, but the acting and production values are all very poor. It is the sort of piece that reflects more poorly on its creators than it does on those it cricitises. Yet, for all this, an embassy was stormed and an American ambassador killed, and on the anniversary of the September 11th attacks, of all days. There is a lesson in all of this–proportionality. That is today’s topic.
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Benjamin Studebaker 