Here's an article from La Vanguardia's Lack of Culture section on Wednesday. It's by Eduardo Martin de Pozuelo and the X-man, Xavier Mas de Xaxas, and is titled: "9-11: the conspiracy." These geniuses are the ones who floated a conspiracy theory in the Vangua a few months ago about supposed bulges in a photo of one of the planes that hit the WTC.

A conspiracy fever has taken hold in Europe and America. Thousands of citizens on both continents devour as much information as they can find about the possibility that the terrorist attacks committed in the United States on September 11, 2001, were not the work of Islamic extremism but part of an unprecedented internal conspiracy.

Books by a wide variety of authors have sold millions in Germany, France, and Spain, dealing with different aspects of an alleged plot, and fed by the lack of a solid official version. Books and dozens of websites analyze the attack against the WTC in New York or on the Pentagon to the smallest detail, and tell us that what we were shocked to see on television in September two years ago was the greatest plot of all time, which is already known as Operation Pearl.

"Have the Germans entered into a state of acute paranoia?" asked Le Monde upon discovering that their neighbor has succumbed before the thesis of a conspiracy and that Andreas von Bulow--ex-Secretary of State for Defense, es-minister of Research and Technology in Helmut Schmidt's cabinet, and an Social Democrat MP for 25 years--is now better-known for his book about the CIA and 9-11 than for his time in the front ranks of German politicians.

Even the German newsweeklies could not resist polling their compatriots. A surprising result: 31% of Germans under 30 years old do not exclude the possibility that the American government itself was behind those dramatic events. The figure "drops" to 19% when the whole German population is considered, without age classifications.

Von Bulow--who does not hide that since his time as a MP he has thought the worst of the secret services--has sold more than 100,000 copies of a book in which he analyzes from a very personal perspective the "non-credible" aspects, in his eyes, of 9-11, in order to conclude that it would have been impossible for the CIA not to have known about Al Qaeda's plans. His thesis connects with the fact, admitted by the Bush administration, that the CIA and FBI did not share all the information that they had about the danger of a major terrorist attack. Nevertheless, Von Bulow goes a little farther and implicates the Mossad in the conspiracy and speculates about the possibility that the airplanes that crashed were piloted by remote control.

Other authors who have sold well more than 100,000 copies who have ridden the great conspiracy wave. They include Matthias Brockers and Gerhard Wisnewski: the first, an old journalist from the Berlin daily Der Taz, and the second, a regular contributer on ZDF, the second-largest German television channel. Brockers claims that the suicide pilots on those planes are still alive, while Wisnewski, who enjoys greater credibility, questions the entire event of 9-11 and develops the theory that the WTC buildings were demolished with explosives placed in their interiors. Every time the subject comes up, the video of the collapse of building number 7--the second tower to collapse--is considered an undeniable proof of a controlled demolition by fans of intrigue.

Although Germany contains a potent squad of official unbelievers, France is the source of the books with the greatest world impact. The mentor is Thierry Meyssan, the founder of a virtual organization called the Voltaire Web which includes journalists, politicians, and professionals from various fields who are firm believers in the conspiracy and in the author of "The Great Imposture" and "Pentagate", in which he denies that a civilian airplane piloted by a suicide terrorist crashed into the Pentagon, in favor of the thesis of a missile. In Spain, Pilar Urbano in her book "Chief Atta" also shows incredulity at this aspect.

An analysis of the conspiracy theories shows that a substantial part of the matter is related to the airplanes hijacked by the Al Qaeda commandoes. Basically, either they deny that the airplanes that crashed were the same as those that were hijacked that morning--that is, there was a substitution of airplanes--or they affirm that there were explosives and military missiles involved.

Regarding the first plane that crashed, of which there are only two known films, both from a distance and imprecise, the authors question whether it was a Boeing and raise the idea of a missile or a smaller airplane. Regarding the second plane--the one that crashed into the south tower--a series of reports published in La Vanguardia has increased the doubts. On the Internet web sites that deal with the subject, it is already being called the "pregnant plane", in reference to the strange protuberances that appear on its fuselage and which this newspaper revealed.

The conspiracy theories reach their peak when they deal with the attack on the Pentagon and the case of the airplane that disintegrated in Pennsylvania. American Airlines flight 77 took off in Washington at 8:20 AM, destination Los Angeles. Half an hour later the air traffic controllers lost track of it, and almost forty minutes later the Air Force received orders to search for it. Half an hour ago the WTC had already been hit. At 9:38 AM on September 11, 2001, two minutes before the fighters arrived, AA 77 crashed into the Pentagon, opening a small hole, similar to one which could have been produced by a missile. The security cameras did not film the airplane and at that very moment incredulity began, the conspiracy theory was born, and the questions that Thierry Meyssan answers according to his own criteria flowered: If the pilots weren't experts, how could they have achieved such a tight turn? Why is there no wreckage of the Boeing in the photos? Why didn't the Pentagon's security cameras catch the airplane? Why is the damage so limited?...

The lack of a solid official version that can answer so many questions--there is a website that, playing with the date of the attack, poses 911 doubts--feeds conspiracy theories. Many of the unanswered questions asked by the cited authors may be the fruits of opportunism or the--possibly in good faith--imagination of the friends of the strange. However, the federal commission of investigation has criticized the secretism that the Bush Administration practices. The possibility exists that the American government may not have the answers that it is being asked for and also that some of the answers it knows are not being publicized in order not to make the memories of that day more painful. It is more than probable that this is the truth regarding the airplane that crashed in Pennsylvania, that Boeing from which several passengers managed to telephone their families before, according to the official story, in a heroic action, overpowering the hijackers and preventing the plane from crashing into the Capitol or the White House itself. However, diplomats from the United States and the European Union believe that the plane was really shot down in order to prevent it from crashing into the president's residence.

Perhaps the explanation for this publishing and media boom is that of Rudolf Stoiber, professor of communications at the German university of Bamberg, who considers 9-11 a totally irrational deed while we humans need a rational explanation and look for one for everything.

Oh boy. That was a good one. First, it's appalling how many "cultured and well-educated" Europeans are willing to believe this crap. That is the truly irrational. What's so hard to believe? Osama Bin Laden financed a group of Islamic fanatics who hijacked four airplanes and crashed three of them into significant buildings in the United States. Most of it's on film and the rest of the "official version" is backed up by thousands of pages of documentation. The case is airtight. Bin Laden himself proudly claimed responsibility.

What I imagine is that these Illustrated and Enlightened Europeans are incapable of believing that the evil nasty United States could ever possibly be in the right, so they have to make up imbecilic far-fetched wild guesses in order to convince themselves that the USA is really still bad and evil and that the poor Taliban and Al Qaeda are the innocent victims of another Yankee frameup which is backed by the Jews for the purpose of stealing the Arab nation's oil and humiliating the proud Muslims (and the French into the bargain) again.

Also, the Europeans tend to be Gnostics by nature, believing that there is some secret powerful person or organization that really controls everything like a puppetmaster. The United States, Israel, and the Jews (and their evil stooges like the CIA and the Mossad) fit perfectly into their Gnostic scheme as the secret powerful pullers of the strings. And the Europeans are not nearly as bad as the Middle Easterners can be.

Finally, let me point out that the authors of this article are responsible for floating two conspiracy theories, the one about the mysterious bulges appearing on the outside of the second plane that hit the WTC (this one they proudly brag about starting) and the one about the military shooting down the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania and then inventing the story about the passengers retaking the plane from the hijackers.