9/11 Conspiracies
denialism | April 5, 2013And it may even be more when one considers that there is likely non-overlap between many of these conspiracies. It really is unfortunate that their isn't more social pushback against those that express conspiratorial views. Given both the historical and modern tendency of some conspiracy theories being used direct hate towards one group or another (scratch a 9/11 truther and guess what's underneath), and that they're basically an admission of one's own defective reasoning, why is it socially acceptable to espouse conspiracy theories? They add nothing to discussion, and instead hijack…
denialism | December 18, 2008Please check out this week's skeptics' circle at Happy Jihad's House of Pancakes.
Of note, I liked Dr Austs' post on the human toll of HIV/AIDS denialism, it is stirring. I also found the Skeptic's field guide particularly interesting. I would have two suggestions. One would be to prioritize by frequency of use or rhetorical appeal rather than alphabetical, and second would be to include a section on conspiracy (like the ones the Lay Scientist and Dubito Ergo Sum describe in this issue ), which I believe is the hallmark of all denialist arguments. If you need a non-parsimonious conspiracy…
denialism | April 24, 2008Here's one of the more amusing news stories I've seen. Apparently Al Qaeda is irritated with Ahmadinejad's 9/11 conspiracy theories. It turns out the people who committed the atrocity are quite proud of it, and don't want people to forget it.
Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader issued a new audiotape Tuesday accusing Shiite Iran of spreading a conspiracy theory about who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks to discredit the power of the Sunni terrorist network.
Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden's deputy, has stepped up his denunciations of Iran in recent messages in part to depict al-Qaida as the Arabs'…
denialism | April 18, 2008Yes, that's right, the Holocaust denier who brought us the international meeting of Holocaust deniers has slipped naturally into trooferism.
Earlier Wednesday, Ahmadinejad called the 9/11 attacks a "suspect event" in a speech at a public rally in the holy city of Qom.
"Four or five years ago a suspect event took place in New York," Ahmadinejad said, in an address carried live on state television.
"A building collapsed and they said that 3,000 people had been killed, whose names were never published."
"Under this pretext they (the United States) attacked Afghanistan and Iraq and since then a…
denialism | October 26, 2007I think I'm going to have to add a new behavior to the crank HOWTO based on the latest campaign by troofers to get attention by disruption.
First it was Bill Maher:
Who I think handled it right.
Now Bill Clin-ton.
Bill also does a pretty good job with the kooks. But it has me thinking that part of the crank HOWTO is going to have to be go to talks and shows that have nothing to do with your topic and start screaming. If you get tased, congratulations, you've been persecuted. Act like it was a victory too, and complain about being manhandled after you've disrupted a live television…
denialism | October 17, 2007Pat at Screw loose change brings us the latest dishonesty (or carefully reinforced self-delusion) from the 9/11 troofers.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology released this letter (PDF) in response to the troofers, but failed to realize that the troofers will stoop to pretty pathetic lows to misrepresent what they say.
I'll present this as a quiz. Here's the full section from letter, guess which sentence the troofers quoted out of context to suggest that NIST failed to explain the collapse of the buildings.
The final section of your request asserts that the WTC Report's…
denialism | October 12, 2007One of the latest discussions going on at the 9/11 conspiracy sites is the big question of who are the 9/11 disinformation agents being paid by the government to spread lies and confusion about the events of 9/11. George Washington gives the simple 5 d's of disinformation to help you figure out who the splitters are:
* Distracting, disrupting, or derailing 9/11 truth efforts;
* Dividing the truth movement; or
* Discrediting leading 9/11 activists
What inflated egos they have to tihnk the government is actually afraid of them or cares enough about their crankery to pay money to influence…
denialism | September 13, 2007At Unscrewing the Inscrutable Brent Rasmussen brings us the 69th skeptics circle with a fun, old west feel.
One of the first entries was particularly interesting to me as an example of crank magnetism. The Socratic Gadfly found Lynn Marguilis embracing 9/11 conspiracies, which shouldn't be surprising given her HIV/AIDS denial - also requiring a conspiratorial world view.
It would be interesting to study this problem systematically, and see how many times a crank adopts more than one crank belief. I suspect given that it takes a certain kind of broken mind to believe this nonsense that…
denialism | August 28, 2007Sounds like Fisk had a stroke and started buying into Troofer nonsense this week. I'll get right to the relevant passage and in honor of Mr. Fisk I think we'll Fisk it.
But - here we go. I am increasingly troubled at the inconsistencies in the official narrative of 9/11. It's not just the obvious non sequiturs: where are the aircraft parts (engines, etc) from the attack on the Pentagon?
It's so embarrassing when journalists just don't look before they leap. No airplane parts at the pentagon? Really? This is still a question for him? The no plane nonsense is so silly that even the…
denialism | August 22, 2007From the "my god these people are dumb files" is this clip from last night's History Channel documentary 9/11 conspiracies.
Ha! Good stuff. Don't worry, they're replaying it Saturday night in case you missed it, but it apparently has the troofers up in arms.
In more 9/11 troof news, Popular mechanics has an update to their original 9/11 debunking piece. Between the two, it's a good summary of 9/11 debunking and well-researched as always.
denialism | July 16, 2007The troofers seem to think so and based on the interview they have a video of after a screening they may be right.
Here's his reasoning for why we need to investigate 9/11 more.
"I've filmed there before down at the Pentagon-- before 9/11-- there's got to be at least 100 cameras, ringing that building, in the trees, everywhere. They've got that plane coming in with 100 angles. How come with haven't seen the straight-- I'm not talking about stop-action photos, I'm talking about the video. I want to see the video; I want to see 100 videos that exist of this," Moore said.
"Why don't they want us…
denialism | May 30, 2007You remember when that creationist thought a can of peanut butter disproved evolution?
If you thought that was funny, you got to start watching some troofer videos. Screw Loose Change found this wonderful entry:
I realize this is low hanging fruit. But it was too funny to ignore.
denialism | May 21, 2007Has anyone else seen that Al Jazeera's mainpage has a section devoted to conspiracy theories? It prominently features 9/11 conspiracy garbage about WTC7 which has been debunked.
This is something that is neglected about 9/11 conspiracy mongering. When 9/11 denialists like William Rodriguez encourage anti-American sentiments in foreign countries by suggesting Islamic radicals weren't behind the attacks it doesn't do anyone any good. I'm not supportive of the US occupation of Iraq, but that doesn't mean that we should allow the religious radicals that attacked us off the hook. It is…
denialism | May 16, 2007You know the most obnoxious thing about 9/11 conspiracy theorists? They make idiots like Jonah Goldberg look right about something.
Goldberg, who as far as I can tell has never made an accurate prediction, finally has figured out a great way to make Democrats look bad rather than just embarrass himself and the Republicans. He writes for the LA Times "Just How Crazy are the Dems?", and sadly, he's got a point. The Democrats, their candidates, and sites like Daily Kos have failed miserably to quash support for conspiratorial thinking about 9/11. And it makes them look, really, really bad.…