In article <bjslrl$5nj$1@pencil.math.missouri.edu>, President, USA Exile Govt.
says...

Forwarded with Compliments of Government of the USA in Exile (GUSAE):

Free Americans Resisting the Fourth Reich on Behalf of All Species.

NOTE:  Thanks to Brian Salter for this; the last half of this piece
is rubbish but the first half is quite quite helpful.   --  kl, pp

http://iafrica.com/news/worldnews/268874.htm

9/11 conspiracy theories gain ground Ralf Isermann Posted Mon, 08
Sep 2003

Conspiracy theories on the September 11 attacks are gaining ground
in Germany two years on, with books claiming that the US government
was behind the atrocities climbing bestseller lists.

Thanks to a handful of new "non-fiction" works in bookstores, wild
accusations have gradually become part of public debate amid a
sizeable minority in Germany, home to the so-called Hamburg cell
that in 2001 produced three of the suicide hijackers.

Although each book has a different take on the events of that day,
they share the premise that the government of US President George
W.

Bush planned the kamikaze jet attacks or allowed them to happen to
advance a radical foreign policy agenda.

Frankfurt-based publishing house Zweitausendeins (2001) boasts the
runaway success of Mathias Broecker's book 'Conspiracies, Conspiracy
Theories and the Secrets of September 11' on its website, with more
than 105 000 copies sold in 10 months. A follow-up volume has just
hit  bookstores.

Broecker, a former journalist with the leftist daily Tageszeitung,
argues that dozens of "unanswered questions" about the attacks point
to a spectacular cover-up on the part of the US administration.

More than 70 000 Germans have also bought 'The CIA and September
11' by former federal research minister Andreas von Buelow, in which
he argues the planes were piloted into targets in New York and
Washington not by Islamic extremists but rather by remote control.

A third work, 'Operation 9/11' by public television reporter Gerhard
Wisnewski, claims that the twin towers of the World Trade Centre
were wired with explosives, has already secured a fourth print-run
after three weeks in stores.

France's Thierry Meysson has found success at home and in Germany
with '9/11: The Big Lie', which argues that the attack on the
Pentagon was an attempted coup d'etat by US military officials to
justify future wars.

Influential news weekly Der Spiegel tackled the  phenomenon of
crackpot theories in the cover story of its edition released on
Monday, before this week's second anniversary of the attacks.

The article meticulously knocks down the most popular conspiracy
theories making the rounds and attributes their popularity in Germany
in part to the deep unpopularity here of the conservative US
administration.

Social psychologist Heiner Keupp told AFP that conspiracy theories
served a basic human need, leading to the remarkable success of
such books.

"People have the feeling after reading them that they understand
something about this complicated and inscrutable world," Keupp said,
adding that a healthy dose of paranoia was also usually part of the
equation.

Mass communications expert Rudolf Stoeber said that the shock of
the September 11 attacks made the search for simple answers to
complex events particularly tempting.

He said he found it particularly striking that young people appeared
most susceptible to such  arguments.

A survey produced by the respected Forsa institute and published
in the weekly Die Zeit in July found that 31 percent of Germans
under the age of 30 believed the US government was directly involved
in the September 11 attacks.

Amid all age groups, the rate was "only" 19 percent.

"September 11 was so irrational. We are raised that there has to
be a rational solution and that is why we look for one," said
Stoeber.

He also saw cultural ignorance as a factor in explaining why Germany
has given fertile ground to theories that seem unthinkable to most.

"We don't understand Islam and have no idea about the lives of the
attackers. That is why we prefer to look in our own cultural circles
for possible causes for the incomprehensible," he said.

AFP