Trapped in Suburbia…

On the morning of September 11, 2001 nineteen islamic terrorists associated with al-Qaeda hijacked four commercial jet liners crashing two into the World Trade Center in New York. The third plane was flown into the Pentagon. The fourth plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania after some passengers tried to retake the plane. All told, some 3,000 people, from over 90 different countries, died in the attacks.

Not long after the events of 9/11 conspiracy theorists began to spin those events, including fabricating stories that meshed with their twisted view, to suggest that the 9/11 attacks were actually a carefully orchestrated ‘inside job’ by elements of the US administration and or its military-industrial complex.

Frankly, this is something I’ve come to expect from the type of people that wear army surplus parkas and live in their parents’ basement.

However, it looks like Liberal candidate Lesley Hughes ( running in Kildonan–St. Paul ) also thinks the evil US government is really behind 9/11. The National Post reports:

[...] Lesley Hughes, mother, writer, Liberal candidate for Kildonan-St. Paul, conspiracy theorist. As noted by blogger Jay Currie (who got the story from Dr. Dawg, who grabbed it from Black Rod), Hughes has a lot of really interesting opinions on the Sept. 11 attacks — including her belief that there may have been “CIA foreknowledge and complicity of highly placed officials in the U.S. government around the attacks on the World Trade Center Sept. 11.” Riffing on the myth of the 4,000 Jews who didn’t show up to work on 9/11, she writes that “Israeli businesses, which had offices in the Towers, vacated the premises a week before the attacks, breaking their lease to do it.”

The Black Rod has more information on Lesley Hughes’ writings, and includes a link to an article by Hughes posted on ‘The Eyeopener’. Among her ramblings Lesley Hughes says,

More important to Canadians, the facts uncovered by Internet journalism suggest that the war in Afghanistan has little to do with the attacks of Sept.11; that it’s the result of lengthy failed negotiations between American businessmen and the Taliban over access to drugs and oil.

Many official sources are claiming to have warned the American intelligence community, which spends $30 billion a year gathering information, about the attacks on the twin towers on that heartbreaking day.

Using and sharing only published and sourced news stories from world media, and official documents of various governments either leaked or available under freedom of information acts, these journalists have assembled a disturbing picture, which suggests CIA foreknowledge and complicity of highly placed officials in the U.S. government around the attacks on the World Trade Center Sept. 11.

While these quotes are relatively benign, and evidence of little more than Ms. Hughes apparent lack of intelligence, the following quote – from the same article – perpetuates the false myth that ‘the Jews’ had something to do with the 9/11 attacks:

Israeli businesses, which had offices in the Towers, vacated the premises a week before the attacks, breaking their lease to do it. About 3000 Americans working there were not so lucky.

The claim that Jewish people were aware of the coming attacks, and did nothing to warn their fellow Americans choosing, instead, to save themselves is clearly anti-semetic. Jewish people did not call in sick nor did they break their leases. In fact, Jewish people showed up to work like everyone else. It is estimated that between 270 and 400 Jews died in the 9/11 attack. Five Israeli citizens died in the attack, including one who was killed fighting his airplane’s hijackers.

The claim that 9/11 is connected to a global Zionist conspiracy has not taken much root in Canada or the United States. However, these claims have been repeated enough times to force the Anti-Defemation League to publish a paper identifying claims and responding to them.

Returning to Lesley Hughes, she issued a non-apology appologizing that some people might perceive her writing as anti-semetic. As quoted in the National Post:

“I am a lifelong friend and supporter of the Jewish community in Winnipeg and I am deeply distressed by any suggestion to the contrary.

“I find any interpretation of my journalism as anti-Semitic personally offensive and I heartily apologize for that perception.”

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Bernie Farber – the CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress – is upset and wants a real apology. He’s quoted as saying:

“I think what she has to do is tell us ‘I wrote this, I shouldn’t have and I apologize.’ But this kind of obfuscation just digs her deeper into a hole”

Indeed. Ms. Hughes might as well say “I’m not anti-semetic, some of my best friends are Jewish.”

While I may not be Jewish, I find the notion that someone running for public office is willing to smear an identifiable group based on an internet-based conspiracy theory appalling.

Ms. Hughes doesn’t just need to apologize, she needs to apologize, be turfed as a candidate, and spend some time learning to discern reality from anti-semetic fiction.

I do have one question: What are Stephane Dion and the Liberal leadership doing about this?

This entry was posted on Friday, September 26th, 2008 at 9:11 am and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.