----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, February 18, 2007 9:26
AM
Subject: Re: The 9/11 conspiracy
virus
How about this as a strategy?
Put the burden of proof on the denialists. As Carl Sagan said
extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
Ask the ASLists (Anti-Science Leftists) Cambell/Cohen for a paper
representing the VERY best evidence they know of supporting an issue in
question...for example, the HIV virus not being the cause of AIDS. Have
them pick 1 figure or section of the paper. Send the paper around, let
them give a summary of what the section means, agree to ground rules and we'll
see the real deal.
The merits of their case will be displayed by
1. the paper they pick
2. the section they pick (no longer than the average post on the
list)
3. the summary they give (shorter than the section itself)
4. their defense of the data
The ground rules would have to be such that if so and so happens, ASLists
will agree that the best evidence lacks rigor or something. Further if
this and that happens the rest of us will have to agree that they have a
point.
IF so and so....the rest of us say that the ASLists have more credibility
than we gave them credit for
IF this and that happens...the ASLists will say that the best evidence
isn't very good.
Will this get us somewhere?
I've been giving a lot of thought to the
discussions here about proper list etiquette the past couple of days, which
were inspired largely by the three-way exchange between myself, Mitchel
Cohen and Jonathan Campbell. I think that this post from Phil raises the
kinds of issues that concern me, and which have prompted my perhaps overly
heated posts here (I should say that I think limiting posts each day is a
great idea, and pledge to honor that myself.)
To me, 9/11 conspiracy
theories, which are rampant among certain segments of the left and have
received considerable airing on Pacifica radio, are the political equivalent
of HIV-AIDs denial and its apparent latter-day form, HPV denial in regards
to cervical cancer (see especially Jonathan's post on this subject, but also
Mitchel's, in which it is suggested that HPV may have little or nothing to
do with this particular cancer.) That is, they represent a triumph of
ignorance and fantasy over facts and evidence, something the left needs to
avoid seriously if it is to be credible and get anywhere.
Faced with
posts of this kind, I see three alternatives:
1. Ignore them
entirely.
2. Refute point by point the arguments made.
3. Interpret
them politically.
The first is always a possibility, and in fact I
have chosen to do that recently in order to stick to the minimum posting
guidelines.
The second is not an option, not only because it is not
appropriate for this particular list, but because it would take time and
energy that could not be justified. Eg, if someone posted a Holocaust denial
article complete with a long list of arguments for why the gas chambers
never existed, would the appropriate response by list members be to refute
it point by point, digging deeply into historical resources? I doubt very
much that anyone here would do this.
The third alternative seems to
me the most appropriate on a list devoted to furthering left analysis and
progressive causes, although it also makes the poster who pursues this
avenue most vulnerable to accusations of ad hominem argumentation. But when
it comes to 9/11 conspiracies and AIDS conspiracies, in my personal view the
most important issue for leftists is to understand why these views are so
rampant, and yes, sometimes to parody and ridicule them, because parody and
ridicule are political tools and justifiable ones in many cases. I could
also give the example, in the scientific domain, of climate change
skepticism. If someone posts a contrarian view on that subject, would most
people here debate the scientific details with long posts about modeling and
satellite data or try to get behind the politics of the debate? (I give this
example with some hesitation, because I don't agree that leftists should be
telling the public that scientific truth is arrived at by majority vote or
even consensus.)
In sum, I will try to abide by the
guidelines that people here have urged, but I think it would be inhibiting
to political expression and analysis to give up the tools of parody and
ridicule entirely, even if they should be used in a gentle manner rather
than in a nasty way. I admit to fault on this score, and will try to do
better, but please don't expect me to entirely ignore some of the more
outrageous things that are posted here, especially when lives are at stake
as Carrol pointed out earlier.
best wishes, Michael
On 2/18/07, Phil Gasper <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,2006830,00.html
Comment
A 9/11 conspiracy virus is sweeping the world, but it has
no basis in fact
Loose Change is a sharp, slick film with an
authoritative voiceover, but it drowns the truth in an ocean of
nonsense
George Monbiot
Tuesday February 6, 2007
The
Guardian
There is a virus sweeping the world. It infects opponents
of the Bush government, sucks their brains out through their eyes and
turns them into gibbering idiots. First cultivated in a laboratory in the
US, the strain reached these shores a few months ago. In the past
fortnight, it has become an epidemic. Scarcely a day now passes without
someone possessed by this sickness, eyes rolling, lips flecked with foam,
trying to infect me.
Article continues
The disease is called
Loose Change. It is a film made by three young men that airs most of the
standard conspiracy theories about the attacks of September 11 2001. Unlike the other 9/11 conspiracy
films, Loose Change is sharp and swift, with a thumping soundtrack, slick
graphics and a calm and authoritative voiceover. Its makers claim that it
has now been watched by 100 million people.
The Pentagon, the film
maintains, was not hit by a commercial airliner. There was "no discernible
trace" of a plane found in the wreckage, and the entrance and exit holes
in the building were far too small. It was hit by a cruise missile. The
twin towers were brought down by means of "a carefully planned controlled
demolition". You can see the small puffs of smoke caused by explosives
just below the cascading sections. All other hypotheses are implausible:
the fire was not hot enough to melt steel and the towers fell too quickly.
Building 7 was destroyed by the same means a few hours
later.
Flight 93 did not crash, but was redirected to Cleveland
airport, where the passengers were taken into a Nasa building and never
seen again. Their voices had been cloned by the Los Alamos laboratories
and used to make fake calls to their relatives. The footage of Osama bin
Laden, claiming responsibility for the attacks, was faked. The US
government carried out this great crime for four reasons: to help Larry
Silverstein, who leased the towers, to collect his insurance money; to
assist insider traders betting on falling airline stocks; to steal the
gold in the basement; and to grant George Bush new executive powers, so
that he could carry out his plans for world domination.
Even if you
have seen or read no other accounts of 9/11, and your brain has not yet
been liquidised, a few problems must occur to you. The first is the
complete absence of scientific advice. At one point, the presenter asks:
"So what brought down the twin towers? Let's ask the experts." But they
don't ask the experts. The film-makers take some old quotes, edit them to
remove any contradictions, then denounce all subsequent retractions as
further evidence of conspiracy.
The only people they interview are
a janitor, a group of firemen, and a flight instructor. They let the
janitor speak at length, but cut the firemen off in mid-sentence. The
flight instructor speaks in short clips, which give the impression that
his pupil, the hijacker Hani Hanjour, was incapable of hitting the
Pentagon. Elsewhere he has said the opposite: he had "no doubt" that
Hanjour could have done it.
Where are the structural engineers, the
materials scientists, the specialists in ballistics, explosives or fire?
The film-makers now say that the third edition of the film will be
fact-checked by an expert, but he turns out to be "a theology professor".
They don't name him, but I would bet that it's David Ray Griffin, who also
happens to be the high priest of the 9/11 conspiracists.
The next evident flaw is that the plot they propose must
have involved tens of thousands of people. It could not have been executed
without the help of demolition experts, the security firms guarding the
World Trade Centre, Mayor Giuliani (who hastily disposed of the remains),
much of the US air force, the Federal Aviation Administration and the
North American Aerospace Defence Command, the relatives of the people
"killed" in the plane crashes, the rest of the Pentagon's staff, the Los
Alamos laboratories, the FBI, the CIA, and the investigators who picked
through the rubble.
If there is one universal American characteristic, it is a
confessional culture that permits no one with a good story to keep his
mouth shut. People appear on the Jerry Springer Show to admit to carnal
relations with their tractors. Yet none of the participants in this
monumental crime has sought to blow the whistle - before, during or after
the attacks. No one has volunteered to tell the greatest story ever
told.
Read some conflicting accounts, and Loose Change's case
crumbles faster than the twin towers. Hundreds of people saw a plane hit
the Pentagon. Because it collided with one of the world's best-defended
buildings at full speed, the plane was pulverised - even so, plane parts
and body parts were in fact recovered. The wings and tail disintegrated
when they hit the wall, which is why the holes weren't bigger.
The
failure of the twin towers has been exhaustively documented by the
National Institute of Standards and Technology. Far from being impossible,
the collapse turns out to have been inevitable. The planes cut some of the
support columns and ignited fires sufficient to weaken (but not melt) the
remaining steel structures. As the perimeter columns buckled, the weight
of the collapsing top stories generated a momentum the rest of the
building could not arrest. Puffs of smoke were blown out of the structure
by compression as the building fell.
Counterpunch, the radical
leftwing magazine, commissioned its own expert - an aerospace and
mechanical engineer - to test the official findings. He shows that the
institute must have been right. He also demonstrates how Building 7
collapsed. Burning debris falling from the twin towers ruptured the oil
pipes feeding its emergency generators. The reduction in pressure
triggered the automatic pumping system, which poured thousands of gallons
of diesel on to the fire. The support trusses weakened and buckled, and
the building imploded. Popular Mechanics magazine polled 300 experts and
came to the same conclusions.
So the critics - even Counterpunch -
are labelled co-conspirators, and the plot expands until it comes to
involve a substantial part of the world's population. There is no
reasoning with this madness. People believe Loose Change because it
proposes a closed world: comprehensible, controllable, small. Despite the
great evil that runs it, it is more companionable than the chaos that
really governs our lives, a world without destination or purpose. This
neat story draws campaigners away from real issues - global warming, the
Iraq war, nuclear weapons, privatisation, inequality - while permanently
wrecking their credibility. Bush did capitalise on the attacks, and he did
follow a pre-existing agenda, spelt out, as Loose Change says, by the
Project for the New American Century. But by drowning this truth in an
ocean of nonsense, the conspiracists ensure that it can never again be
taken seriously.
The film's greatest flaw is this: the men who made
it are still alive. If the US government is running an all-knowing,
all-encompassing conspiracy, why did it not snuff them out long ago? There
is only one possible explanation. They are in fact agents of the Bush
regime, employed to distract people from its real abuses of power. This,
if you are inclined to believe such stories, is surely a more plausible
theory than the one proposed in Loose Change.
www.monbiot.com
--
www.michaelbalter.com
******************************************
Michael
Balter
Contributing Correspondent, Science
[log in to unmask]
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Jose
Morales Ph.D.