My conspiracy theory is that "24" was funded by the CIA (etc.) to build public support for measures like the Patriot Act. "24" debuted 11 days after the Patriot Act became law, so they were being worked on at the same time.
Don't forget the X-Files spinoff The Lone Gunmen. During its pilot episode, first airing March 4th, 2001, members of the U.S. government remotely hijack an airliner and try to crash it into the World Trade Center, blaming anti-American terrorist groups in order to start a new global war on terrorism for the profit of defense industry contractors.
It may also have contributed a bit to the planning - HEAT (the movie) came out before the North Hollywood bank robbery and shootings, but clearly influenced them. I don’t think there is any plausible direct relationship, just zeitgeist/influence.
Then there are reports of FBI expelling from the USA some 100+ foreign art students after the attack.
There are a lot more dots to connect in this case, so it gets even easier but if people expect to be told the truth by a news anchor it can take 75+ years - that is the word we live in.
Both throwing airplanes at buildings and taking the World Trace Center down were pretty widespread "hidden" ideas at the time. It's not surprising that several people connected them.
Yeah; how many times in 24 hours can one vigilante commit acts of thinly-narratively-justified but actually-illegal torture without audiences clueing in?
It doesn’t even need to be secret or underhanded. The government can simply foster the media that drives their strategic goals. Same kind of idea as stochastic terror.
And just like stochaistic terror, it's a label you can apply to basically any media you don't like, that seems to support a political agenda you are opposed to.
Is that even a conspiracy? It's well documented how closely the military works with Hollywood -- of course government apparatuses are interested in funding media that aligns with their goals.
> On October 23, 2001, U.S. representative Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) introduced House bill H.R. 3162, which incorporated provisions from a previously-sponsored House bill, and a Senate bill introduced earlier in the month.[5] The next day, October 24, the Act passed the House by a vote of 357–66,[6] with Democrats comprising the overwhelming majority of "no"-votes.
> The bill, which removed most of the changes from the Senate version, passed Congress on March 2, 2006, and was signed by President Bush on March 9 and 10 of that year.
It’s a conspiracy theory in that there’s no evidence of funding, support, or even cooperation in the particular case of “24”.
The 24 pilot was filmed before 9/11. After 9/11, the show had to be modified because reality has become uncomfortably close to it. That included delaying the premiere and removing a scene involving an exploding passenger aircraft.
That article mentions that some of those shows relied on government consultation, with the CIA and FBI, to help with realism, etc. “24” was not one of them. “24” co-creator Joel Surnow is on record saying there was no government involvement.
Quote from the WP for context:
> Coming this fall [2001]: A new primetime drama series takes a close-up look at an elite federal agency and the dedicated men and women who hunt deadly terrorists and treacherous criminals.
> The new show's on CBS. It's also on NBC. And ABC. And Fox.
Some years it's twenty-something sitcoms. Sometimes it's doctors, or vermin-oriented "reality" shows. This fall, the trend is Fed TV: No fewer than five new network series depict the exploits of people with civil-service pay grades, shiny employee ID badges and very large guns.
But it was “24” that did the most to normalize the “torture the bad guys till they reveal the plot” and other such right-wing wet dreams.
How many of those same people are Republicans today, because of various shifts in the political positions the different American political parties take with respect to demographic groups such as men?
24 was one of the highest rated shows on television, won 20 Emmy awards and was nominated for 68. People just like torturing and killing terrorists. Not just Americans either—it’s a popular Bollywood trope as well.
Show me someone who "likes torturing" and I'll show you someone who's a social media algorithm away from being MAGA or the local equivalent. "Right wing" is the correct term.
Briefly checking your comment history, it's the correct term for you as well, so what's the issue? You don't want to admit it?
I’m happy to admit it. But I think that there’s lots of democrats who are fine with it too—folks who agree on how to handle terrorists, but just want more generous social welfare. I don’t think its a real dividing line in the electorate.
My opinion probably doesn't matter to the commenter before you (because I am also from the shudder US South), but I think a few things are true here
First, I agree that 24 did have mainstream appeal regardless of political ideology. Pretty much everyone I knew watched it.
Second, the appeal was not solely grounded in "Torture is good". I walked out or closed my eyes on a lot of those scenes, but watched the first few seasons because I liked Chloe's character and because the the format (every episode as one hour of the same day) was novel. Also because it was something I could talk about to friends and family - back when we all consumed the same media regularly.
But if you think back to the Bush years, it really wasn't until after the Iraq war, and Abu Ghraib in particular (2004), that democrats started to come out more vocally against Fox-news approved "enhanced interrogation". It wasn't that they were also pro-torture before, but I think it felt more theoretical to Americans on both sides back in 2001.
Later on anyone who was paying attention had to confront the reality of it. That's when the sides splintered and the Fox-news machine ramped up on normalizing/praising abuse and characterizing every individual ever captured as a blood-thirsty future Bin Laden. Relatedly, Gitmo was a huge deal to the dems back then, even Obama campaigned saying he would close it (it didn't close). He may not have won the nomination without that promise though.
So it was a real dividing line for a moment, but ever since the financial mess of 2008, the democratic voter base has been more engaged on economic and healthcare inadequacies, so when those took over the news, the party was grateful to not remind people about gitmo.
I will say there were pro-torture, war-hawk dems at the highest level. That's always been a problem for dems. But the tone on the ground was very consistently anti-Bush, anti-war, anti-torture (for a moment at least).
Only according the far left, in reality this is not true and shouldn’t even be entertained except to a laugh at people trying this hard to shift the Overton window in their favor
Indeed, it's absurd people still have this left/right standoff. Boggled my mind as a kid in history class that the Republicans somehow wanted to free slaves in the past but are all in on bombing the crap out of iraq. Well, guess there's no real code or manifesto to follow. It's almost like they're just saying whatever the heck they have to just to get elected, after that all bets are off.
> Boggled my mind as a kid in history class that the Republicans somehow wanted to free slaves in the past but are all in on bombing the crap out of iraq
It's Christian universalism in both cases. Your average person in the midwest--descendants of people who volunteered for the Union Army at disproportionate rates despite being fresh immigrants with no horse in the race--thought that Saddam Hussain was a comic book villain holding Iraqis hostage and that, if he was overthrown, Iraq would become a democracy like Iowa. They couldn't conceive of a society where a brutal secular dictator was a local optimum.
Then I guess America is just a really right wing country and I’m correct that most people were okay with Jack Bauer torturing terrorists for the greater good.
Highly doubt, perhaps you're just biased due to your own beliefs. Anyway the left/right divide is really silly -- it mixes economic and political orientation. National socialism would be left because socialism and so my god, Mr moustache man really liked beating bad guys. Alright you can argue about this, then what about the bad guys he hated most, most notably the other Mr moustache, Stalin? Communism surely is very left by today's standard, and guess what -- they enjoyed beating bad guys. Both sides of the spectrum literally call for violent revolution all the time.
Who doesn't like beating up bad people? It's in children's fairytale. Getting what you deserve is codified in human moral ideals since like probably cavemen times and movies today still have this theme.
>And Epstein friends Lutnick, Larry Silverstein, Sarah Ferguson and Michael Jackson all had appointments in the WTC on 9/11 and all canceled last minute.
I looked into this so I could call you out for spreading disinformation.
Except what I found was that this statement is factually accurate as far as I can tell. Each person had their own separate story as to why they didn't go that day.
What was their rate of last minute cancellations? I suspect people in that circle frequently change plans, sometimes at the last minute, so having changed plans on that day would be unremarkable had that day itself been unremarkable.
Not to mention the first plane hit at at 8:46 am. Looking at details, none of these seem remarkable, and wouldn't have been remembered or written about if they happened the day before...
Sarah Ferguson's meeting was scheduled fot 8:45, but she was delayed by traffic after coming from an interview. ... Morning traffic in New York on a business day is not unusual and busy people miss tightly scheduled meetings because of it.
Michael Jackson performed in a concert the day before and was reportedly up late talking on the phone. I didn't see a scheduled time for the meeting, but a missed meeting after a concert doesn't seem surprising to me. Concert started at 7:40 pm according to a ticket stub photo here [1]
Larry Silverstein was reportedly double booked and kept a dermetology appointment his wife had booked after he missed one a month prior. Stuff happens, your wife books medical appointments for you without checking your calendar and you don't miss them twice.
Lutnick took his eldest son to their first day of Kindergarten. Which is something you do if you can. I didn't see any indication that he had a meeting scheduled. I'm guessing there's no consipiracy or even reporting about him going to the first day of Kindergarten for his other three children, but he probably did.
But Wikipedia has a list of notable people who died [1]. David Angel, an Emmy winning TV writer and producer. Garnet Bailey, an acomplished hockey player. Carolyn Beug who directed the award winning music video for Van Halen's Right Now. William E. Caswell, a prominent physicist. Charles Edward Jones, an astronaut. Daniel Lewin, co-founder of Akamai. Etc. You can read the list and come to your own conclusions.
No it wouldn't. Parents accompanying children to their first day of school is pretty normal and sometimes required, especially for the fancy private schools someone like Lutnick probably sent his kids to.
Usually the wife in a rich Jewish family in 2001 would bring the kids to school not the husband. Today no as much. Doesn't mean everyone but it is strange.
Usually it would be the wife because women usually work less and get paid less so they have more time. However, 2001 was about the high point for female labor force participation (https://www.bls.gov/cps/demographics/women-labor-force.htm), and a wealthy man like Lutnick is much more likely to have an educated, and thus seriously employed, wife, so much more likely to have scheduling issues that lead to him taking the children to school on that day.
I feel like it's just a statistical fact that many people used to visit and cancel visits there every day, but it's hard to say how unlikely this was without numbers.
Seth MacFarlane and Mark Wahlberg were famously supposed to be on American Airlines Flight 11, and Jackie Chan was supposed to start filming a movie at the World Trade Center that very morning. I’m sure more near-brushes exist.
Looking at the total set of people who cancelled last minute appears to be the correct start. Then you'd have to find all subsets who had any common friend like Epstein in this case.
I'm sure you can find more such subsets. The problem with the Epstein subset is that 100% of his friends survived (Lutnick's brother mentioned above wasn't one) and that Epstein was far from a normal person who had already been involved in Iran Contra and Angola CIA affairs. How to take that into account statistically?
It isn't just a matter of being statistically illiterate.
Perhaps we should compare how many famous people died, and how many near missed. I'm not great at stats but I'm guessing if it was all near misses that would be pretty insane, suggesting somehow they all got the idea to cancel on that day whereas regular Joes didn't get the memo. Whereas if it was like 80% then yea probably attributable to "a busy schedule".
George Herbert Walker Bush and Richard Nixon were both in Dallas on November 22, 1963, the day that Kennedy was assassinated. What should rational people make of that? Nothing, other than that people have very poor statistical intuitions ... see the work of Kahneman and Tversky.
Really? What is the actual probability attached to that word "likely", and what is the data is support of a Bayesian calculation to reach that conclusion?
I refer again to rational people. Bush was president of the Zapata Off-Shore Drilling Company and chairman of the Harris County Republican Party, and was meeting with local Texans to build support for his run for the U.S. Senate in 1964. His presence had nothing to do with Kennedy. At the moment of the assassination he was in Tyler, 100 miles away.
Even if, contrary to all reason, Bush was involved in the assassination of Kennedy, there would not have been any reason for him to personally be in Dallas that day.
I don't know if that is a conspiracy theory; it probably is a bit unlikely to have a direct connection to the CIA. But what is definitely not a conspiracy theory is that the USA uses taxpayer's money to fund propaganda, e. g. a pro-war image. There are numerous examples for this, also for directors who refused to accept such deals since that heavily ruined movies. The movies with bribes from the US military are often incredibly dumb and simplistic. Propaganda often works in such a way that it dumbs down everything. Then again, movie quality also declined a LOT in the last some 20 years or even 30 years now. With AI movies upcoming, the slop spam section has finally won. People are not going to pay money for awful AI slop.
Except people love torture anyway. Even people who say they're opposed to torture usually do so in terms of "it's bad to torture people, but like, it would totally work". It is a ludicrously common sentiment.
The actual conspiracy was the CIA told the Zero Dark Thirty producers that the Intel to find bin Laden came from torturing a detainee, which was a straight up lie (namely: under standard interrogation he provided the intelligence they needed...then they waterboarded him over 100 more times which provided absolutely nothing).
Why do you need the detour through the CIA? Our de jure Constitutional government is merely part of a much larger de facto government formed by large corporations and the billionaire (oligarch) class. The same group of people who funded the lobbyists that had the "Patriot" Act ready and waiting on September 10th also funded "24", the politicians and think tanks behind the Iraq War, and so on. The main difference is that production of "24" was a direct bona fide business expense for tax purposes.
