Emmanuel Goldstein is back, his beard darker than before. Just in time before the memorial of 911 yet another Osama Bin Laden video appeared somewhere in cyberspace, reminding us to be afraid.

The internets are dangerous, full of child abusers, cyber criminals and terrorists. Pedophiles, perverts and crooks hide in dark corners of the tubes that build the web, which we cannot trust. Just when the official evil mastermind of terror(tm) uses the web, it is automagically an authentic threat.

Terrorism makes stupid. Fear and rational thought are hardly compatible, and since 911 the word terror and its variations works as perfect trigger in most minds to switch off thinking.

A good example for this short-cut in reasoning is provided by Alex Doherty's "Britain's 9/11 "Truth Movement": Who's Responsible?" piece.

Doherty describes the 911 truth movement as a coherent group which agrees on a specific variant of possible explanations of the 911 events, just to assume generously that "there is no serious evidence that contradicts the standard account of what occurred on September 11."

He ignores the strongest argument of the 911 truth movement, that the official account is incomplete, contradictory and physically impossible, and simply fails to acknowledge that there is no serious evidence that supports the standard account, which is the 911 commission report.

Doherty then constructs a guilty by association argument. 911 truth is just like the JFK, Moon landing hoax or Bilderberg conspiracy theories, so just give them all a tin foil hat and get back to sleep. However, at least the Bilderberg group exists, which raises the first suspicion that Doherty's research was a bit oblique.

Doherty elegantly circumvents the cui bono question, and fails to give any rationale of Osama Bin Laden's benefit of the attacks. Instead, he gives further evidence how other governments like Russia's and China abused their fear paralysed populations.

Doherty's individual selection of topic of various theories leads then to "common sense" rebuttals, like the idea of how to keep governmental involvement secret. The easiest way to big secrets like this comes with group think. If you think that it is impossible for the earth to circle the sun, it remains the centre of the universe. If you assume that governments would never harm their populations, all related mechanism that would enable it become "impossible".

The final point of Doherty's argumentation compares then 911 and 7/7 theories to geniously concludes: 'The various 9/11 and 7/7 conspiracies are so ludicrously devoid of sense that one has to consider a "psychological explanation".' Now that's what I would call an elaborate way to construct a compelling ad hominem attack.

Well, I would call it devoid of sense to ignore that a 47 floor highriser fell neatly in about 7 seconds in its footprint. Dozens if not hundreds of cctv cameras could have seen a Boeing smashing into the Pentagon, it is devoid of sense to accept that this simple proof has not been provided yet. Of course, admitting that explosives brought down the Salomon Brothers Building, or that the object flying into the Pentagon didn't look like a passenger plane, opens an ugly can of worms.

However, a terrorist act is basically a crime with a special motivation. Killing people, blowing up things is illegal, like many other things that have nothing to do with terrorism. No kind of crime has ever been prevented by law, so what do we gain by introducing special laws for terrorism?

That depends on the "we" you count yourself to. As member of the ruling class you gain an easy way to suppress and punish dissent, and to protect your undeserved privileges. As regular citizen you gain exposure to fear-raising propaganda, and tax raises to finance the storage of your personal information.

The permanent talking point is presented with the notion "somebody's gotta do something about terrorism", which offers a perfect disguise for the abolition of civil rights, called anti-terror legislation.

The government cannot protect us from terror. It cannot protect us from drunk drivers. It cannot protect us from suicide. The government can punish drunk drivers and terrorists, and it can do so as good without special laws that turn citizens into slaves.

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