Anyone for conspiracy theories?

Did President Bush arrange 9/11? Did Prince Phillip have Princess Diana murdered? Well if surely not, did at least Premier Blair have Dr. Kelly murdered then? The question is asked on a number of blogs, and nearly asked online by a few British tabloids, at the moment: http://www.atlargely.com/atlargely/2010/01/70year-gag-on-kelly-death-evidence-dr...

Actually, all of these conspiracy theories were begun and are sustained by a gigantic conspiracy. Their aim is to keep people diverted from the real conspiracy.

So much of the official explanation coming from the government loudspeakers consists of half truths, misdirection, special pleading, and outright nonense that its easy to see why conspiracy theories get going and keep rolling through thick and thin.

Most of the CTs though are so preposterous that it makes one wonder if they weren't planted by "them" (Aw, you know who they are) to as a foil to make the official story look sane in comparison.

EGADS!

When I started to post what became #3, it looked as if it would become #2. But I got distracted, and by the time I finished and posted, it became in fact #3, and lo! Doug had made essentially the same point in his #2.

Do you think that's a coincidence people?

> 4

Do you think that's a coincidence people?

Of course not. It's obvious that you and Doug1943 are part of a conspiracy to make us think there is an overarching conspiracy faking other conspiracies, when in fact it is those other conspiracies that are real!

I think. I may be confused. If so, it's likely that you are aiming rays at my head. Excuse me while I go get my aluminum foil helmet.

It is getting to the point that government malfeasance has become so blatant that the rational ones are becoming the irrational ones and the nuts are sounding more sane.

When someone presents me with a CT, I get really angry now. Because I don't like being taken for a gullible idiot.
Sometime last month the magazine "FOCUS-finanzen" (the finance spinoff of a major German magazine) published an article on their website chewing the cud of all the "facts" people had researched in support of their "theory". The moment I stopped reading was when they listed a "pyroclastic cloud" as proof of the blasting of the WTC and stated that 1000°C wouldn't melt steel (no, it wouldn't, but steel would lose about 50% of its mechanical strength at that temp!).
If I had been a subscriber I would have cancelled then and there. So I only left a comment to that effect (one of only two negative comments in 180! I would have liked to do an IP check for the messages, really.). I am not going to buy that magazine anytime soon again, and I will probably let my friends know as well.

Modal. We have been indiscreet. I've been called in for a "conference". They never do that unless They are displeased. I'm worried. Have They called you too?

ref #8

Modal Ursine Auto Bot
Your correspondence is important to us . Mr Bear is not available at the present time. He or a suitable proxy will answer as soon as he has attended to some unavoidable organizational issues. Thank you for your support.

This just in....

MU has been reported to have sailed away for a year and a day, to the land where the Bong tree grows in the company of a suspicious couple; an older gentleman and a most attractive younger female.

Uncomfirmed reports posit that the gentleman is Dr I.J. Matrix, and the young woman his half asian daughter Iva Toshiora.

7> Is it your belief that a plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, on 911, and then it and everything in it disintegrated into dust? I'm not challenging your beliefs. It is just curiosity that compelled me to ask.

>5 lilithcat:

Thanks for pointing out that study. It explains a lot. ;)

10: I suppose that Kelly Leverknight, Val McClatchey and Eric Patterson and the numerous other witnesses were lying when they said they saw the plane and the crash?

The site, which is accessible by the media at large, is described by all who were there close to the event as a debris field. Given that the plane struck the ground at an estimated 550 miles per hour, much of the debris was driven into the ground, requiring excavation.

http://www.dep.state.pa.us/dep/emergency/pictures/091201a.htm
http://www.debunk911myths.org/topics/United_Airlines_Flight_93

If you were going to manufacture a conspiracy, you'd have planted a plane that looked a lot more like an intact plane so conspiracy theorists with no actual knowledge of what they were looking at like you would be fooled. The fact that it looks like the actual results of a plane crash directly into the ground (as determined by, you know, actual experts in the field) and not what random internet yahoos think a plane crash should look like is strong evidence against a conspiracy. Your 9-11 conspiracy theory bullshit is just contrary to the facts.

To me, if it comes to presidential assassinations, conspiracy isn't a "theory"; it's a probability. that doesn't mean I could describe exactly the form the conspiracy took, or who were the principals in it.

The advocates of "some nut just came along and acted alone" have made just one good point: the more people involved in a conspiracy, the more likely it is that at least one member will blow the whistle on the others. (Some of the detailed scenarios of the "Conspiracy" side have helped the "Acted Alone" side out, just by their specificity.) Now there's a "theory!" But, to me, the "some nut, acting alone" scenario doesn't even deserve the name of theory.

But, to me, the "some nut, acting alone" scenario doesn't even deserve the name of theory.

Why not? All the evidence points that way. Why do you think it would have been impossible (which is essentially what you are asserting).

I believe that there is a Harvard University conspiracy with multiple sub-conspiracies.

The financial world is struggling in the wake of Harvard MBA manipulations (The Partnership).

The Supreme Court is controlled by Harvard law graduates (The Nine).

The Harvard law graduates also take over huge political interests for their own ends (The Shadow Elite).

I bet digging deeper we could find something global about Harvard humanities majors (The Education of Henry Adams or Democracy and Leadership).

Robert

15: I thought it was the Skull & Bones society that was running the world (that's a Yale organization by the way).

Graduates of Ivy League schools in general have disproportionate access to the levers of power because they were the big kids on the block for so long that they have built up networks of well-placed prior graduates who help their classmates. It isn't really a conspiracy, or even a secret.

16: Oh yeah? http://www.librarything.com/groups/hugotontheonbiquiffi

Robert

17: Them? Of course they run the world. But they aren't Ivy League guys at all, they are the real powers who want to steal our vital fluids.

Or maybe David Icke is correct.

" 'some nut acting alone' (SNAA) . . . all the evidence points that way" #14

What is your idea of "evidence"? Is evidence what Jack Ruby was asking for, when he asked Chief Justice Warren, "How soon was the route of the president's motorcade known?" ? If so, he didn't obtain it. Warren's answer was."Well, we don't have that information." A logical question, though, from someone who is known by eye-witnesses to have killed the alleged assassin. And Ruby was, according to his story convinced that Oswald was guilty! So, I can understand the question, but not the answer. {He also"had never met" Oswald, but he was able to correct the D.A. when he said that Oswald was " member of the Free Cuba Committee". Ruby said, correctly, "No, he is a member of the "Fair Play for Cuba Committee". Wouldn't the route of the motorcade, and public, if any, knowledge of it be one of the first things the Warren Commission would look into? Of course, it's possible that Warren's answer was just Warren's polite way of saying, "None of your business!"

What's hard to believe is that the Commission didn't "have that information", if they were seriously investigating the matters of opportunity and motivation.

Ruby even realized that his own alleged motivation for killing Oswald was hard to believe. He said, imploringly, " It DOES happen, Chief Justice Warren!" Does your argument boil down to "Stranger things have happened!" ?

Anyway, I didn't say any of the SNAA scenarios (and they don't all agree with eachother)was impossible; I said improbable.

19: No, you said "But, to me, the "some nut, acting alone" scenario doesn't even deserve the name of theory." That effectively means you are saying that it was impossible, because it doesn't even deserve to be called a theory.

In any event, the route was known by the public well in advance before the shooting. It was published in the Dallas newspapers three days before Kennedy was killed. That makes the whole stupid question silly. Oswald could have easily found out the president's route from either the Dallas Morning News or the Dallas Time-Herald. This sort of fact-checking takes minutes, yet conspiracy theorists like you run around spreading stupidity in your wake like it is something real.

".... the route WAS known by the public well in advance before the shooting."

In that case, all the more reason that the Chief Justice should have been able to answer it. I'm not sure if you mean Ruby's question was silly, or that I'm silly to think it has any relevance to the question of investigation -- which after all was what the Commission was supposed to be doing. It certainly wasn't silly from his point of view. He was probably trying to confirm that, as the media already claimed and many people believed, Oswald was guilty.

Remember Oswald got charged, but never tried; Ruby, at least didn't regard Oswarld as a lone nut; Ruby may have been sure of Oswald's involvement, but still thought that it required some confirmation. And he asked warren to confirm Oswald's involvement with a minor crime figure in New Orleans. He asked Warren, "Is there a Deutsch (sic) C. Muret?" -- the latter being "Dutz" Muret, the uncle of this Lee harvey Oswald whom Ruby "didn't know"! (My personal beleif is that Oswald was involved, and that he knew something which the other conspirators would not want to be brought out in a trial.)

In that case, all the more reason that the Chief Justice should have been able to answer it.

Off the top of his head? Warren was probably stating that he didn't have that information at hand and wasn't going to speculate in case he got the exact date wrong.

I'm not sure if you mean Ruby's question was silly, or that I'm silly to think it has any relevance to the question of investigation -- which after all was what the Commission was supposed to be doing. It certainly wasn't silly from his point of view. He was probably trying to confirm that, as the media already claimed and many people believed, Oswald was guilty.

I mean this is silly to wonder what Ruby meant and to spin a conspiracy theory out of Warren's reply. Really, given that we have independently verifiable public records that this information was generally available days prior to November 22, why does it matter what Ruby was asking or what Warren's response meant. It doesn't mean anything one way or the other to prove a conspiracy. Oswald didn't need any special knowledge to know exactly where the President's motorcade was going. Anyone in the U.S. who could get a Dallas newspaper knew well in advance.

Remember Oswald got charged, but never tried; Ruby, at least didn't regard Oswarld as a lone nut; Ruby may have thought that Oswald's guilt did require some confirmation. (My personal beleif is that Oswald was involved, and that he knew something which the other conspirators would not want to be brought out in a trial.)

And you base this on what evidence?

Like I said, all the evidence points towards the "lone nut" theory you discounted as effectively impossible. Your best shot so far is to cite an irrelevant exchange from the Warren Commission Report (which I doubt you have actually read, just seen cited by conspiracy theorist nutjobs), the supposedly dark and mysterious implications of which are debunked without any effort at all using public newspapers. Thus far, your attempts to demonstrate that any other theory holds up are basically mistatements of history and wild guesses.

"Is there a Deutsch (sic) C. Muret?" -- the latter being "Dutz" Muret, the uncle of this Lee harvey Oswald whom Ruby "didn't know"!

So, your evidence is that almost a year later (Ruby testified before the Warren Commission in June 1964, after his initial conviction for murder in March), after being intimately involved with his own defense for the murder of Oswald, that it would have been impossible for Ruby to know the name of Oswald's uncle? Your idea of "evidence" for a conspiracy seems to be a little bit on the strange side of the ledger. This line of thinking is even stranger when you look at Ruby's actual testimony before the Warren Commission in which he specifically denies any knowledge of any conspiracy and the fact that he didn't actually ask about Dutz Muret. He asks about Deutch I. Maylor, supposedly the head of the AFL in Texas. Actually reading the Warren Commission report clears up most of this silly garbage. The segment of Ruby's testimony where Maylor comes up, in context is as follows:

Mr. RUBY. A fellow whom I sort of idolized is of the Catholic faith, and a gambler. Naturally in my business you meet people of various backgrounds. And the thought came, we were very close, and I always thought a lot of him, and I knew that Kennedy, being Catholic, I knew how heartbroken he was, and even his picture of this Mr. McWillie flashed across me, because I have a great fondness for him. All that blended into the thing that, like a screwball, the way it turned out, that I thought that I would sacrifice myself for the few moments of saving Mrs. Kennedy the discomfiture-of coming back to trial. Now all these things of my background, I should have been the last person in the world to want to be a martyr. It happens, doesn't it, Chief Warren? I mean, for instance, I have been in the night club business, a burlesque house. It was a means of a livelihood. I knew persons of notorious backgrounds years ago in Chicago. I was with the union back in Chicago, and I left the union when I found out the notorious organization had moved in there. It was in 1940. Then recently, I had to make so many numerous calls that I am sure you know of. Am I right? Because of trying to survive in my business. My unfair competition had been running certain shows that we were restricted to run by regulation of the union, but they violated all the rules of the union, and I didn't violate it, and consequently I was becoming insolvent because of it. All those calls were made with only, in relation to seeing if they can help out, with the American Guild of Variety Artists. Does that confirm a lot of things you have heard? Every person I have called, and sometimes you may not even know a person intimately, you sort of tell them, well, you are stranded down here and you want some help--if they know of any official of the American Guild of Variety Artists to help me. Because my competitors were putting me out of business. I even flew to New York to see Joe Glazer, and he called Bobby Faye. He was the national president. That didn't help. He called Barney Ross and Joey Adams. All these phone calls were related not in anyway involved with the underworld, because I have been away from Chicago 17 years down in Dallas. As a matter of fact, I even called a Mr.--hold it before I say it--headed the American Federation of Labor--I can't think--in the State of Texas--Miller.

Chief Justice WARREN. I don't know.

Mr. RUBY. Is there a Deutsch I. Maylor? I called a Mr. Maylor here in Texas to see if he could help me out. I want to set you gentlemen straight on all the telephone calls I had. This was a long time prior to what has happend. And the only association I had with those calls, the only questions that I inquired about, was if they could help me with the American Guild of Variety Artists, to see that they abolished it, because it was unfair to professional talent, abolish them from putting on their shows in Dallas. That is the only reason I made those calls. Where do we go from there?

As one can see, first Ruby thinks the AFL representative he called was named Miller, then he corrects himself to Maylor. But he doesn't ever reference Oswald's uncle "Muret", and the reason he called Maylor is that he had links to the AGVA and thought there was unfair stuff going on with respect to acts at his nightclub.

And, just to point out that actually looking at the Warren Commission Report to get the actual testimony of people like Ruby clears up this sort of conspiracy theory bullshit, here is the section that you said Earl Warren says "Well, we don't have that information" in response to Ruby's question about how long before the 22nd anyone knew of the President's route. As anyone can see, it is not quite what you said it was:

Mr. Rankin: This Weissman and the rich oil man, did you ever have a conversation with them?

Mr. Ruby: There was only a few. Bill Rudman from the YMCA, and I haven't seen him in years. And there is a Bill Howard, but he is not a rich oil man. He owns the Stork Club now. He used to dabble in oil.

Chief Justice WARREN: This story was given by a lawyer by the name of Mark Lane, who is representing Mrs. Marguerite Oswald, the mother of Lee Harvey Oswald, and it was in the paper, so we subpenaed him, and he testified that someone had given him information to the effect that a week or two before President Kennedy was assassinated, that in your Carousel Club you and Weissman and Tippit, Officer Tippit, the one who was killed, and a rich oil man had an interview or conversation for an hour or two. And we asked him who it was that told him, and he said that it was confidential and he couldn't tell at the moment, but that he would find out for us if whether he could be released or not from his confidential relationship. He has never done it, and we have written him several letters asking him to disclose the name of that person, and he has never complied.

Mr. Ruby: Isn't that foolish? If a man is patriotic enough in the first place, who am I to be concerned if he wasn't an informer. I am incarcerated, nothing to be worried about anyone hurting me.

Chief Justice WARREN: Mr. Ruby, I am not questioning your story at all. I wanted you to know the background of this thing, and to know that it was with us only hearsay. But I did feel that our record should show that we would ask you the question and that you would answer it, and you have answered it.

Mr. Ruby: How many days prior to the assassination was that?

Chief Justice WARREN. My recollection is that it was a week or two. Is that correct?

Mr. Ruby: Did anyone have any knowledge that their beloved President was going to visit here prior to that time, or what is the definite time that they knew he was coming to Dallas?

Chief Justice WARREN. Well, I don't know just what those dates are.

Mr. Ruby: I see.

Chief Justice WARREN. I just don't know. Well, we wanted to ask you that question, because this man had so testified, and we have been trying ever since to get him to give the source of his information, but he will not do it, so we will leave that matter as it is.

Mr. Ruby: No; I am as innocent regarding any conspiracy as any of you gentlemen in the room, and I don't want anything to be run over lightly.

Rather than "we don't have that information", Warren's answer was "I don't know just what those dates are", which he probably didn't at the time, during testimony, off the top of his head. Spinning this into some sort of conspiracy is a level of goofy thinking that simply eldues me.

Lee Harvey Oswald was deranged, and also a Marxist. (Cheap jokes, including those making reference to set theory, at the expense of those who are or were Marxists should be suppressed at this point, please.)

Kennedy was a liberal, and at that time Marxists and liberals (those in positions of power anyway) were enemies. Kennedy had tried to invade Cuba and overthrow a revolutionary government. He headed the Free World in opposition to Communism -- liberals made very different speeches in Berlin in those days.

Although orthodox Marxism does not approve of individual terrorism, Oswald was not an orthodox Marxist, but a lunatic who had absorbed bits and pieces of Marxist ideas.

His left-wing political beliefs, in my experience, have been airbrushed out of history. Had he been a conservative, it's the only thing you would know about him now.

It's not impossible that people who had a grudge against Kennedy and wanted him dead could have incorporated an unknowing Oswald into their plot, as the fall guy.

It seems unlikely though. The assassination of an American President is going to call down huge investigative resources to try to find the perpetrators, so it would be a great gamble for any established group -- even criminals -- to try to do it. And the possible motives seem weak. What groups were really hurting, because of Kennedy, who wouldn't hurt under his successor?

I think the idea of a bipartisan commission to solve the US debt problem is a conspiracy - the goal is to look busy on the problem in front of the voters, but not to take any action before the November elections.

My guess is that we will soon have a bipartisan commission to study health care - you know to look busy before November comes.

Lee Harvey Oswald was deranged, and also a Marxist.

Probably. I should point out that Ruby was probably deranged too. Reading his Warren Commission testimony gives one a picture of an almost incoherent, probably mentally ill man - he seems to have possibly been subject to paranoid delusions. He is confused as to who various members of the Commission are, even after it is explained to him. He is concerned that various people present are plotting against him, including his own lawyer, and insists that a variety of people present must leave the room before he can testify. He is convinced that Warren himself has been marked for death. He thinks the John Birch society is out to get him (although, to be fair, they may have been, but he thinks they are plotting to kill him, which they weren't).

He was very interested in getting a lie detector test (or to testify under "truth serum") so he can prove that he was not a member of a conspiracy to kill Kennedy and that he doesn't know anything about one (he later did take a polygraph, which, if I remember correctly, indicated he was telling the truth). He wanted this so that the people he thought would kill him or his family in retaliation for the Kennedy assassination if they thought he was part of a conspiracy to kill the President would leave him alone.

26: I don't know if you can call something that public a conspiracy. A sham maybe. A public spectacle perhaps. But not a conspiracy.

# 12: StormRaven
10: I suppose that Kelly Leverknight, Val McClatchey and Eric Patterson and the numerous other witnesses were lying when they said they saw the plane and the crash?

The site, which is accessible by the media at large, is described by all who were there close to the event as a debris field. Given that the plane struck the ground at an estimated 550 miles per hour, much of the debris was driven into the ground, requiring excavation.

Thank you, for explaining this for me (I was forcibly offline for the day).
There are photos available of the site and the excavations, there has been a seismic shock recorded at the time of impact, there have been eyewitnesses, etc. pp.
I am applying Occam's Razor here.

But then I am an engineer and don't believe all this is rocket science. Most of it is actually pretty basic.

Conspiracies exist, but they are rare. However, between the concept of the conspiracy, on the one hand, and open public debate, on the other, there is a spectrum of ways in which people with power can get things done without openly putting their ideas forward and announcing they are going to do it.

"Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?" was probably said with an exasperated shake of the head and a bitter laugh. (Gosh, I didn't actually mean you were supposed to go and butcher the fellow!)

Thousands of leftists "disappeared" in Latin America over two decades without the ruling authorities having to put an order in writing. It still happens in various countries.

(As an exception to the rule: Shirin Ebadi actually came across her name on a death squad hit list while carrying out permitted investigations into the paperwork of the bureaucracy of the Iranian Islamic Republic. All the names above hers were crossed out, and were of people whom the mullahs had had assassinated. Few of us will have an experience like this.)

And this sort of half-conspiracy isn't always bad.

Sometimes there are things that need to be done, but which violate the consensus we have evolved regarding the rule of law. People tend to assume these are always done against idealistic leftwing agitators and bomb-planters, and often they are.

But I reckon if you could learn the full truth of how the FBI destroyed the Ku Klux Klan as a serious force in the American South in the late 60s, you will find that things were done which were never written down, and for good reason. Tsk tsk tsk.

But then I am an engineer and don't believe all this is rocket science. Most of it is actually pretty basic.

Conspiracy theories aren't usually about facts. Most are directly contrary to the actual facts (which I think has been shown in this thread). They are about people wanting life to have symmetry: in the mind of a conspiracy theorist a big tragedy like the murder of a President, or the killing of a couple thousand people on a September morning shouldn't have obscure causes. They should have big causes. It just isn't fitting with a sense of rightness that a lone nut with a rifle could kill a President, or that 19 guys armed with boxcutters could hijack four planes and drive them into three buildings. So the conspiracy theorist looks for some "other" cause, and constructs a fantasy in which the world is fair and works according to their sense of what is properly proportional. The actual facts aren't that important to them at that point.

I think another aspect of conspiracy theories is this: life is messy.

If you have ever followed a contested criminal trial, you will see that things are often not absolutely black and white. There are always one or two witnesses who can be found to say that the defendant was elsewhere when the crime was committed; prosecution witnesses whose testimony has contradictions; evidence recorded sloppily by the police; shortcuts taken in police procedures. A good lawyer can always build a case of some sort.

I have followed the case of "Mumia Abu-Jamal", a Black militant who was found, wounded, next to a dead policeman -- who had been stopping Mumia's taxi-driver brother late at night -- with the policeman's bullets in Mumia and bullets from Mumia's gun in the policeman, and the gun lying on the ground nearby.

Sounds like an open and shut case, right? Not if you read all the material generated by the Left and their Useful Idiot dupes, (who actually believe Mumia is innocent even if he pulled the trigger). There are always some minor discrepancies in the human reconstruction of any past event.

But we have gotten used to Hollywood as the arbiter of reality. In Hollywood movies, things are usually simple.

The links provided in one comment, to show a plane crash in Pennsylvania, do not show the actual crash site, and do not show a tail section, engines, portions of the fuselage, etc, and all of the reporters are kept far from the site. This does not refute the suggestion that there was no crash on that site.

The coroner who was called to the site has stated, publicly, that there were no signs of bodies or luggage, much less any airplane parts.

There is no crash site in the history of aviation, where the tail section and fuselage disintegrated into ash. Not one, and you can check with the NTSB if you believe this to be incorrect. One NTSB official who investigates air disasters, stated during an interview, that he has never been to a crash site, where he did not find the tail section primarily identifiable. There is also no evidence of any crash of a passenger jet, where the fuselage was buried underground, with no portions of the fuselage exposed. Again, not one.

And, we could mention the Pentagon, where there was a huge hole, although not large enough for a passenger jet to go through, and the windows on either side of it are intact, although the wings supposedly went through the walls and disappeared into the building. Magic, I guess. There was no fuselage, no Rolls Royce engines and no tail section on the lawn, either. They, too, supposedly disintegrated into thin air, from the crash. The only two airplanes to completely disappear in a crash are these two passenger jets.

The engine on the Pentagon lawn was said to be from the jet, however, Rolls Royce, the makers of the engines on the jet, said that is was not one of theirs. They stated, publicly, that the engine on the lawn of the Pentagon was from a military fighter aircraft and not one of theirs.

There is also the testimony of several military personnel, who stated that the smell they experienced after the explosion, was the smell they associated with a missile, and not burning jet fuel.

And, folks wonder why many intelligent people have questions? Just a point of view, and new information is always welcome.

#10: Is it your belief that a plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, on 911, and then it and everything in it disintegrated into dust?

Like USAir Flight 427, or American Airlines Flight 191. The Wikipedia article for the later has a picture of the latter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AA191-crash-site.png . As you can see, when a plane files into the ground, nose pointed down, with a full load of fuel, it doesn't really leave all that much intact.

#12: If you were going to manufacture a conspiracy, you'd have planted a plane that looked a lot more like an intact plane

That's a hard one. At a certain point, arguing that conspiracies would be perfect is self-serving. Real conspiracies frequently make bone-head mistakes like anyone else.

#13: But, to me, the "some nut, acting alone" scenario doesn't even deserve the name of theory.

Why? Because you don't believe that a single committed person can change the world? Or you don't want to believe that?

#25: His left-wing political beliefs, in my experience, have been airbrushed out of history.

I don't know how you can claim that. If someone knows anything about Oswald, they know he was an American citizen who went to the Soviet Union and was denied citizenship there.

I suspect that a difference between certain plane crashes, is that generally the pilot is trying hard to survive and minimize the impact into the ground, plowing a jet airliner at full speed nose first into the ground is not going to leave a whole hell of a lot of recognizable debris, adding several thousands gallons of jet full and a fuselage made of aluminum...

33: Yet more bullshit.

I notice that you completely ignored the existence of multiple eyewitnesses who saw both the plane plunging to the ground and the crash. I also note that you say "the reporters were kept far from the site", ignoring the fact that the what was kept from the site were the press buses, but not the reporters, who had direct access to the site (do your damn research). There is evidence of a crash where the fuselage was buried underground - this one, in which the plane impacted at an almost vertical direction at approximately 550 miles per hour. Most of the plane was recovered as debris, including the fuselage and engine parts you seem to think don't exist. As a routine excercise, Pennsylvania State Trooper cadets go to the site and inspect it for debris, which they still find every year.

Seriously, if you were planning a conspiracy involing a crashed plane, don't you think that you'd make the site look like something a bozo on the internet would think was a plane crash as opposed to what crash experts have determined this sort of plane crash would actually look like (which is what they found).

And then, since your bullshit has been discredited with respect to the Pennsylvania site, you shift gears to further discredited bullshit about the Pentagon site. A Boeing 757 has a body that is about 13 by 13 feet. The hole in the Pentagon is easily large enough to accomodate that unless you imagine that a plane will punch a Wile E. Coyote type hole in a building (an idea made even sillier when you realize that ariplanes are built to be incredibly light aluminum tubes to make them fuel effiicient, and the Pentagon is built from steel reinforced concrete). One of the wings struck the ground before the plane reached the bulding, and was sheared off. You repeat the misinformation that the plane engine found wasn't a Rolls Royce engine, but one can easily see from pictures of the site that it is. Once again, you ignore the multiple eyewitnesses who asserted that they saw an airplane, and you ignore all the actual airplane debris found all over the site. The plane did not "disintegrate into thin air". Parts of the fuselage, engines, and tail were recovered, and numerous pictures of this have been shown repeatedly.

Try here, which should be more than enough to convince anyone who is not a wingut conspiracy theorist that is immune to evidence and reason.

#33: Rolls Royce, the makers of the engines on the jet, said that is was not one of theirs. They stated, publicly, that the engine on the lawn of the Pentagon was from a military fighter aircraft and not one of theirs.

Citation needed.

The problem with all this is that there's no coherent theory. All the evidence in the world against a theory does nothing if you can't produce a theory that fits better.

My biggest problem with the whole thing is why? You're going to pull off this whole plot, and not scatter 747 pieces in the right places? Do this huge performance art thing with this fake jet, complete with fake cell phone calls. and a fake crash spot? If you had to do it--in their contract?--why not drop it in a body of water where only the deep submersible can get to it? (They did this successfully for South African Airways Flight 295, for example.) If you're having trouble finding suicide hijackers, or are going to have to use explosives anyway, why not bomb the things and blame it on someone else? If you're going to have to blow up the buildings anyway, why use the 747s as cover?

Conspiracies make mistakes, but this is like blaming Mt. St. Helens on a government conspiracy. Whatever they wanted to achieve by this, this couldn't have been the easiest way.

#33: Whatever.

Citation needed.

The answer is simply that 9-11 conspiracy theorists are desperate, so they miscite John W. Brown of the Rolls Royce company. Some theorists stated that it wasn't a 757 that hit the Pentagon but rather a Global Hawk, a military aircraft. John Brown was responding to that question when he said that the engine wasn't one they used for that plane, his direct statement was that it wasn't an AE3007H. But the 757 doesn't use that model, it uses RB211-535E4B engines. Further, the engine part he was being asked about was a Honeywell auxiliary power plant, which is located in the tail of a 757 (and thus one of the most likely parts to survive intact) which, of course, Rolls Royce doesn't make, but which one would normally expect to find in a 757.

But conspiracy theorist quote mine this and take it out of context to say "Rolls Royce said the engine's weren't theirs". No, they didn't. They said that the engine wasn't an engine they make that is used in an entirely different type of aircraft than the 757.

36> Your link does not provide conclusive evidence, and I am not alone in arriving at this conclusion.

I would be inclined to continue sharing points of view in this thread, but your insistence on incorporating name-calling and labeling any disagreement as male-bovine excrement leads me to believe that common civility and mutual respect are not part of your make up. I thought you had learned your lesson the last time you reverted to this technique, with me.

I originally asked my questions of the post in #9 because I genuinely wanted to learn what information this party had that helped form his/her opinion about this event. I actually delve into the forums to share ideas, and learn from those with whom I may be in disagreement. It is from this process that I can learn. I have spent a few years looking at this issue from both sides and what I have come away with is a list of questions. It is somewhat reassuring to know that many intelligent, rational and reasonable military/professional men and women have some of the same questions on their lists. In my search for answers to my questions, I will rely on accredited professionals for my research, and not lawyers who believe they have a firm grasp on all facts about all things. After all, would I go to a structural engineer to create a financial trust? Now, that would be male-bovine excrement.

40: Well, stop posting easily discredited non-factual bullshit and you might not get called on it. Anyone who actually looks at the link who isn't a nutjob conspiracy theorist can easily see that your claims that there were no plane parts found is simply complete bullshit (there simply isn't a better word for what you are shoveling). There are dozens of photographs of plane parts at the site, which are easily found. There are dozens of eyewitnesses, a point you have never even acknowledged, since it completely disproves your theory about both the crash sites you've alleged were frame ups. Your disinformation on basic things, like the engines of the 757 at the Pentagon, and the supposedly too small hole has been thoroughly debunked, and yet you haven't bothered to acknowledge that.

You claim to rely upon "accredited professionals", and yet the professionals you rely on are nutjobs in their own field. Try looking at the peer reviewed literature which I have cited for you elsewhere, places like Structure magazine, which finds the single point of failure model to be perfectly consistent with the events of 9-11. You, on the other hand, cite "Engineers and Architects for 9-11 Truth", an organization that boasts professional membership equal to one-third of one percent of the American Society of Civil Engineers alone. Add in architects and other types of engineers, and the fraction that have joined the group you tout drops to an infinitesimal fraction. If they had actual information, they would be publishing in peer reviewed publications, not lurking about "turther" websites rehashing disproven material.

To "learn my lesson" I would have to see you actually post something that actually had merit. Thus far, all you've done is post and repost lies. Which is all the more pathetic given how easily disproven your lies are. When you say things like "no plane crash has ever looked like the U93 plane crash site" it turns out that you are simply lying. I'm not that concerned about offending your precious sensibilities. You've already proven yourself immune to logic and reason. Anyone who bothers to investigate the facts will figure that out for themselves once pointed to the actual evidence which you so desperately try to obscure.

(You know, one of the things lawyers routinely do is sift through piles of evidence to figure things out. I don't need to be an expert on, say, structural engineering to know how to evaluate material published by one, or assess the credibility of one set of engineers over another, or evaluate a dozen witness statements, or look at photographs of wreckage. The volume of evidence that supports the "official" version of events is so overhwelming that if one had that sort of evidence in a trial over something like this, the other side would crumple and fold instantly.)

41> You haven't shown me anything new, nor anything that changes the issues for me. You discredit professionals, without knowing anything about them or their work, as if all that mattered are the grandiose statements made by you. Surely, you can't be that self-absorbed, can you? I don't consider you an authority on all issues, and definitely not on this one, so we disagree. Deal with it and, preferably do so in adult mode.

As for 'lies,' perhaps you should refrain from stating that others are liars, when your departure from truth is so readily apparent in another thread. Should I provide a link, to show how you actually didn't allow truth to get in your way when recently making a statement about me, in another forum? Ah, what the hell. Here's the link, to refresh your memory: http://www.librarything.com/topic/79553 Post #121.

Since then, you have followed me in every thread, and commented negatively on everything I have said, no matter now middle of the road my comment may have been. This seems to be a personal issue with you, and I don't really care why. If it's your way of asking for a date, I have to tell you that you are going about it all wrong.

42: I haven't discredited your sources. They have discredited themselves. They have been discredited by other, better professionals working in their field, publishing actual peer reviewed articles backed by actual facts. Here's a hint: when your sources are guys lurking about the web with no peer reviewed publishing credentials on the subject, then you are dealing with someone who dosesn't actually have a hypothesis that will stand up to any kind of scrutiny.

On the other hand, I (and others) pretty much have discredited you. By showing that the sources you rely on are wrong and represent at best a wingnut fringe (500 out of 144,000 civil engineers, not counting architects remains oh so persuasive), and have been proven wrong by experts in their fields using the actual evidence. By showing that your silly claims like "no other plane has ever had a crash site that looked like U93", or "they never found the engine, and Rolls Royce said they didn't make the engine part that was found" are either falsehoods or misstatements (such as the fact that a Honeywell part, which wasn't even what the Rolls Royce guy was asked about, should have been on a 757). Basically, the one making grandiose statements is you. I've pointed out, say, actual facts, like the testimony of actual witnesses, the photographs of plane parts you claim don't exist, the actual dimensions of a 757, and stuff like that. Which you try to sweep under the rug so you can go back to wailing about government conspiracies.

If you think I'm "following you", then your ego is really pretty huge. Most of the time you pop up in threads in which I am already participating. I might also note that you appear to be gaining few converts. Maybe that should tell you something about how persuasive your arguments really are. I don't have to call you a wingnut. I"ll just let others decide for themselves. I'm guessing you are hitting a couple dozen "blocked" lists every time you trot out your bullshit.

#40: I originally asked my questions of the post in #9 because I genuinely wanted to learn what information this party had that helped form his/her opinion about this event.

That's at best a half truth. You asked Is it your belief that a plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, on 911, and then it and everything in it disintegrated into dust? Any question that has to be answered "no, of course not, but..." is a debating trick, not a serious attempt at communicating.

Just to take one issue, stepping back from the details, could anyone have in any way benefited from faking the Pennsylvania crash? No. Would it have been a bitch to fake? Yes. So I seriously doubt that it was faked. Given that your explanation requires many people lying, and the standard explanation doesn't, that further supports the standard explanation.

And the whole conspiracy theory rules are unreasonable. You talk about hundreds of people who agree with you, but they don't; they each have their own little theory about what happened. You keep tossing out questions, without any links or searchable content--"One NTSB official who investigates air disasters" is oh so helpful--but never a theory. Because if you said an AGM-65 Maverick made the hole in the Pentagon, then we could discuss whether that was really a better solution than the 737 impact, but if you're just asking questions, you don't have explain where the airplane parts came from or why everyone saw the 737 coming in.

44: And not only that, the question K.J. asked assumed facts that weren't true. The plane didn't disintegrate into dust, as photographs of recovered wreckage have shown time and again. Yes, it broke up into very small pieces, but those pieces have been largely recovered, are clearly the parts of an airplane, and have been shown to be parts of a 757.

K.J. is fond of saying he relies upon "experts" in the relevant fields. I challenge K.J. to locate a single article in Structure or any similar professional publication in the field of civil engineering, architecture, aeronautic engineering, or engineering in general that supports in its conclusion any of his bullshit theories about 9-11. And no, truther websites don't count. They have to be professional, peer-reviewed publications.

And if the crashes were faked, what happened to the planes and passengers? Are they hiding somewhere? And what did the conspirators use to blow up the pentagon and create the big hole in Pennsylvania?

And why?!? Did the guys who faked the moon landing and framed Lee Harvey Oswald decide that it was time for another Oliver Stone movie?

47: If a paper exposing some sort of 9-11 conspiracy had any actual merit, it would be published by a peer-reviewed publication. Journals would be jumping to get the document - it would make them famous to be the ones that cracked this massive government conspiracy. Woodward and Bernstein are famous because of their work on Watergate. Every person in journalism wishes they could be the editor who published something like this. Pretending otherwise is silly and a standard dodge used by conspircy theorists to explain why their patent bullshit has not been published. That's not why it hasn't been published. It hasn't been published because it is patent bullshit and the claims made are shredded by their peers in the editorial selection process.

I'll also note that I'm not the guy who said that he was backed up by a bunch of "experts". All I'm doing is asking the guy claiming "expert" backing to demonstrate the bona fides of his experts as actual experts and not crackpots.

While the full-fledged "Truther" view of 9/11 is clearly mad, there is a weaker version which has more plausibility, because it doesn't require large numbers of people doing lots of things.

The weaker version is this: 9/11 was a genuine Al Queda operation. Everything thatappeared to happen, happened. However, some people who were on our side as against Al Queda, knew that something was about to happen, but decided not to raise the alarm, since their interests -- a focussing of American attention against Islamist terrorism -- would be better served by a successful terrorist strike, as opposed to an intercepted one.

It requires us to believe that these people -- whoever they are, Americans and/or Israelis -- were willing to let this plot go forward. It doesn't require us to believe that they knew exactly what it would involve.

Since something broadly like this did happen before the Japanese struck us at Pearl Harbor, the weaker 9/11 Truther argument can't be dismissed out of hand.

I don't believe it, but my disbelief is of a weaker order than my disbelief in disappearing airplanes and planted explosives.

#47: You mean that peer-reviewed journals now ban all articles on the properties of large fires in skyscrapers? If a serious scholar wrote a good article on the subject I believe it would be published, even if it concluded that there were factor or factors unknown in the WTC fire that must have contributed to the fall, given the standard story of events. The problem is, they're like the creationists; they'll complain about censorship, but when pressed they have no papers that were offered to the journals.

#49: Sure. It's conceivable. But it looses the essence of this style of conspiracy theory: the "look at the pictures! Any idiot can see this is a big fake!" aspect.

It requires us to believe that these people -- whoever they are, Americans and/or Israelis -- were willing to let this plot go forward. It doesn't require us to believe that they knew exactly what it would involve.

It also requires us to believe that none of these people have had a crisis of conscience and come forward with the story or had a drunken breakdown and confessed their guilt to a friend or spouse, or any number of other ways this sort of story would leak out. Keeping everyone quiet about breaking into an office building to steal political papers proved impossible, keeping something like this quiet seems even more difficult than that.

If that were the case, StormRaven, then there would be no such thing as covert acts because all covert acts would eventually become compromised due to the occasional crisis of conscience of the covert agents. Israeli agents have a good track record of keeping their mouths shut during covert actions, like, say, when targeting Palestinian leadership or conducting a raid in some far off African country.

>51 StormRaven: How long did it take Robert McNamara to admit his culpability over Vietnam?

Most of the 9/11 conspiracy theories are complete nonsense. I do find it at least somewhat plausible that Dick Cheney would view the possibility of a terrorist strike favorably, both in terms of consolidation of presidential power and in terms of his own financial interests. He certainly used the 9/11 attacks to his benefit on both counts. However, I don't think that even Cheney would have ignored the fact that the system was blinking red if he had known the full scope of the attack being planned.

53: Most covert acts eventually do become compromised due to a crisis of conscience. Especially when those covert acts are things like the alleged "let it happen" type conspiracy theory.

In the latter case, a paper sympathetic to "creationism" was published in a mainstream journal.) The fellow responsible for publishing it was then denounced by other scientists for, among other things, abusing the peer-review process--he adamantly disputes this--was attacked for being a secret "creationist"--he denies this as well--and subsequently was denied renewal for a research position at the Smithsonian. (As might be expected, of course, people on both sides of the issues dispute the facts here.)

Sternberg was "denied renewal" of his unpaid research position at the Smithsonian by having it extended in 2006. The terrible reprisals he faced were that he kept his actual paying job at NIH and his position at the Smithsonian. He had resigned his position as an editor for the journal that published the paper in question (the paper was titled "The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories") six months prior to the paper being published, so there was no reprisal there. The whole "reprisal story" just doesn't match the facts.

On the other hand, Sternberg was criticized bacause the paper was badly written with poor science. And yet he still kept his job at NIH and research position. The criticism he suffered was to his judgment, which seems apt given the clearly identified deficiencies in the paper he vetted for publication. The problem with the paper was not that it espoused intelligent design, but rather that it was simply shoddy work. Had the paper challeneged conventional thinking and been written well with good science, then it would not have generated controversy. Papers like that are submitted on a regular basis (although not by IDers), and sometimes they change the way science looks at an issue. As usual, when you get to the facts at the root of this controversy, the conspiracy theory version just doesn't hold up.

57: And Sternberg's legal complaint was investigated and found to be baseless. Mostly because the Smithsonian is not a federal agency, and there was no law that applied, which makes the idea that his research position at the Smithsonian was renewed because of fear of a nonviable lawsuit pretty silly. There is no evidence that is position at NIH was threatened in any way. The whole hype surrounding this simply doesn't match the facts.

I'll point out that the link I provided did not criticism Sternberg for allowing a creationist paper, but rather for allowing a poorly done paper. And it didn't accuse him of being sympathetic to creationism, it pointed out his actual links to creationist organizations. On a side note, you keep saying it was a creationist paper. This is interesting, since the paper was, at best, an intelligent design advocacy peice. Are you stating that you believe intelligent design to merely be creationism dressed up in drag?

To quote Jenner, the problem with the paper was:

"I think that the only harm done to science is that PBSW published a paper that is evidently slipshod science, due to a flagrant failure of the reviewing process. However unfortunate that may be, it is nothing new, and it happens to the best. As a result, the only trophy that proponents of ID can really boast about at home is that ID is promoted in a paper that should never have passed the reviewing process, as was belatedly realized by the council of PBSW. In fact, that Meyer promotes ID in his article is, I think, largely beside the point."

"In my most favourable judgment, Meyer’s paper reads like a student report. He has evidently read a lot of papers, and he has the best intentions of providing a critical discussion of his chosen topic. And, considering what he has read, he does an OK job. I would let him pass, probably with a B. However, he would not get an A or A+ because the literature that he has selected is severely biased. Many readily available papers that depart significantly from his conclusions are omitted without excuse, and the logic of his arguments is not always as tight as it should be. On the most general level, Meyer doesn’t understand the bare-bones mechanics of natural selection acting on ‘random’ variation. He concludes that there are no “functional criteria”, or “goals,” that natural selection can use to guide evolutionary change. Meyer never even mentions the struggle for survival. Organisms exhibit heritable variation in their traits, and they compete for limited resources. Those with the most favourable traits in a given situation and environment, which, of course, they may help to create through their activities in niche construction, will on average have a better chance of surviving, and on average they will leave more surviving offspring that inherit their traits, in the next generation. There you have your “goal,” Dr Meyer. Evolution is about trying to achieve maximum representation of your genes in the next generation while competing with others. No teleological connotations necessary, the language notwithstanding. But, of course, Dr Meyer really knew this all along. He explicitly accepts the power of natural selection in shaping the adaptations of organisms to their environments, and he dutifully takes the customary Galapagos finches out of their dusty box. Here Meyer seems so close to solving his own problem, but, unfortunately, he doesn’t."

"Meyer doesn’t discuss adaptive landscapes, competition between organisms, or differential fitness of organisms. And in his discussions of the high improbability, if not impossibility of the evolution of organismic novelties, from genes and proteins to morphological structures, he never delves more than ankle deep into the corpus of accumulated knowledge. Because mutations of early acting genes often fatally disrupt embryonic development, he concludes that animal body plans must necessarily be locked in stone. Because experimental studies show that many amino acid changes can cause a protein to lose functionality, it must be virtually impossible to navigate protein morphospace to yield the diversity of proteins around us. And where did all the new genes and proteins that are necessary for the development of the first animals come from anyway? These, indeed, are tough questions to answer. But, they are not hopeless, as Meyer seems to imply. But in order to see that, Meyer should have studied a bit harder. The evolution of protein families would show him that structural and functional divergence of proteins is possible, and widespread. It would also show that many of the genes and proteins needed to make animals are already found outside the animals, and that many of the genes with essential roles in the development of complex bilaterians are increasingly identified in cnidarians, and even sponges. Never mind the incredible potential of altering phenotypes via regulatory evolution. Never mind redundancy, gene duplication, and functional divergence of proteins. Never mind the power of changing expression patterns of conserved developmental genes to modify morphology. Never mind that the invention of evolutionary novelties can be underpinned by genes known to be already present, and functional, in other contexts in the animal’s development. And never mind the potential for change inherent in the presence of large numbers of putative, but apparently unused, binding sites for developmental regulatory genes, throughout animal genomes. At one point Meyer concludes the insufficiency of natural selection as an evolutionary force acting on genetic variation, because not all of the phenotype is directly determined by genes. Well Dr Meyer, we have known for a very long time that organisms are rife with emergent properties above the level of the gene, and there are epigenetic factors with a role in morphogenesis as well. No surprise for any biologist. If Meyer had touched upon hierarchical selection theory here, he would see there is no real problem, or at least one much smaller than he sees. Haven’t some biologists argued that instead of acting strictly on genes, natural selection may also act on morphologies? Never mind all these important findings and ideas. You will not find any of these niceties in Meyer’s paper, and yet, he feels confident on the basis of his scanty literature review, that our current understanding of the working of evolutionary mechanisms is grossly insufficient to address in any meaningful way the problems of reconstructing animal deep history. I will not attempt to tackle Meyer’s defence of the compelling logic of ID. Suffice it to say that I disagree with his statement that “the possibility of design follows logically from a consideration of the deficiencies of neo-Darwinism and other current theories.""

So, the main criticism of the paper is that it is bad science, presents a skewed view of the reasrch in the subject area, and comes to unsupported conclusions. On the other hand, there's what he says about Sternberg (which seems to put the lie to the idea that Sternberg is some sort of innocent and open-minded guy who would never espouse rcreationism):

"PBSW’s former editor, Richard M. von Sternberg, PhD., PhD., has distanced himself from the council’s statement that Meyer’s paper should not have been published (see for Sternberg’s defence). He defends his decision to publish Meyer’s paper because it “set forth a reasoned view,” a decision furthermore supported by the referee reports of three alleged “experts” in evolution and molecular biology. After having read Meyer’s paper, I’m baffled why the combined erudition of Sternberg’s two PhDs, one in molecular evolution and one in systems theory and theoretical biology, and the judgment of the three external experts didn’t stop the publication of Meyer’s paper. It does indeed appear that the referee reports were supportive of the paper’s publication after revisions. The decision to publish leaves no doubt that Dr Dr Sternberg is an extraordinarily open-minded guy. I wish there were more people like him."

"But, wait, there is something wrong. Sternberg is not exactly a mainstream thinker. Although not supporting ID (see for information on ID), he calls himself a “process structuralist.” Whereas proponents of ID, such as Meyer, are “agnostic regarding the source of design and have no commitment to defending Genesis, the Bible or any other sacred text,” Sternberg adopts an intellectual position from which he contemplates the world in a general ahistorical, systems-oriented, and non-evolutionary way (not anti-evolutionary, I hasten to add). Compared to the worldviews of creationists, the necessary commitments of Meyer’s and Sternberg’s worldviews are minimal. Whereas Meyer is agnostic with respect to the character of the intelligent designer, Sternberg seems to be agnostic even with respect to the passage of time. I would not hesitate to nominate Sternberg’s outlook on life as a candidate for another juicy chapter in Michael Shermer’s delicious Why people believe weird things (1998), if only time’s arrow wouldn’t prevent me from doing this!"

"But it becomes much, much weirder if we allow Sternberg to be our admission ticket into a world of extreme bravery and shocking delusion: the world of the baraminologists. Sternberg’s outlook on the world may be construed as candidly open-minded, and nothing more. But this conclusion is stretched to its limits when we meet the fellows with whom Sternberg is hanging out. Sternberg is associated with the “Baraminology Study Group,” and he is on the editorial board of their “Occasional Papers of the Baraminology Study Group.” In many respects baraminology is phylogenetics from the dark side, the almost exact mirror image of systematic biology. It is the study of the taxonomy of “created kinds,” or “baramins.” The goal of baraminology (see ) is precisely antithetical to the goal of phylogenetics in biology. Baraminologists search for the discontinuities separating independently created groups of organisms. Using terminology eerily reminiscent of cladistics, baraminologists seek to identify “the unbridgeable chasms between body plans” upon the basis of which they erect holobaramins, monobaramins, polybaramins, and apobaramins. Discontinuities are located between “forms for which there is no empirical evidence that the character-state transformations ever occurred. The mere assumption that the transformation had to occur because cladistic analysis places it at a hypothetical ancestral node does not constitute empirical evidence.” Using a range of techniques, such as Analysis of Patterns (ANOPA), baraminologists try to map out the structure of creation. This generates some wonderful, and very brave stuff, especially because the investigations are couched in terms of science, such as “tests,” and because the papers endeavour to bring biblical Scripture and the findings of science into congruence with each other. I call this “brave” because the baraminologists first dispose of virtually all hard-won insights from the historical sciences, ranging from archaeology to astronomy. They discard over 99% of geological time by compressing the Earth’s history from more than four billion years to a mere couple of thousands of years, and then use scientific reasoning to reconstruct all that happened in this shortened period."

So, he's on the board of a group dedicated to proving that things were created and that time can be compressed into a few thousand years, but he's not a "creationist"? That's really not a very credible position. And still, he kept his job and his research position. So much for persecuting creationists. But that's not why Sternberg was criticized. He was ciriticized because the paper he put through the vetting process was a paper that was chock full of bad science that would likely have been at best adequate work for someone submitting an undergraduate biology paper.

I think conspiracy theories are an attempt to comfort oneself: They imply that someone, somewhere, is in control of events.

The "crisis of conscience" or "loose lips" criticisms of conspiracy theories really only apply to those conspiracy theories which posit an unreasonable amount of secrecy and cooperation between large, impersonal bureaucracies like the Department of Defense, State Department, the presidency, Congress, etc.

It's possible that a small group of people placed in positions of power could pull off a grand conspiracy, provided that all the members are oriented toward the same goal and that all of them recognize the gains from the conspiracy outweigh the consequences such that the gains ameliorate any moral objections.

That's not to say there are any conspiracy theories which meet that criteria, though. I'm just playing Devil's Advocate.

60: Ah yes, the whining of a creationist when their silliness is exposed. I linked to the entire discussion of Meyers' paper. The document I linked to links to Meyers' orignal paper and refutations thereof. That's certainly quote mining and claim mining. If you didn't want to say it was a creationist paper, then you shouldn't have referred to it as a creationist paper. If you want to backtrack now and say it was an intelligent design paper, I'd agree with you. And it did get published in a peer reviewed paper, and the peer review process tore it to shreds for being bad science. Complaining that the process worked seems to me to be extraordinarily silly. When it is shown that you are shoveling crap, your typical tactic is to engage in some dishonesty and accuse others of dishonesty. How very Christian of you.

The problem with Sternberg's "side" of the story is that it relies entirely upon his credibility as a witness, and he has shot his own credibility to hell by maintaining he's not a creationist despite serving on the board of an openly creationist publication. That is why most of the people pointing out that he is a creationist are doing so. When you call your own credibility into question like that, you are going to draw criticism that centers on the company you keep.

On the subject of K.J. and blocked lists, I'm just guessing which I said in my initial post about this. Its as well supported an idea as intelligent design, creationism, 9-11 "truther" claims and Kennedy assasination conspiracies. I'm surprised that you aren't willing to grant my claims complete credulity, as you appear to give similarly unsupported claims complete credulity. That's some double standard you apply there. If anyone wants to speak up on this subject (and it isn't against the TOS to do so), they are welcome to.

The "crisis of conscience" or "loose lips" criticisms of conspiracy theories really only apply to those conspiracy theories which posit an unreasonable amount of secrecy and cooperation between large, impersonal bureaucracies like the Department of Defense, State Department, the presidency, Congress, etc.

Well, doesn't this one require that? It assumes that the intelligence showed that there were attacks imminent, and political officials for their own reasons let them occur. Wouldn't the members of the intelligence and law enforcement agencies that generated this data have to be willing to help suppress this information?

What is wrong with you?

I can read?

You said it was a creationist paper. You put it in scare quotes, because you believed this would indicate you didn't think it was a creationist paper, but something else, yet you didn't announce this. Then when someone asked about it, you got all huffy and indignant. I said if you wanted to backtrack and say it was an intelligent design paper, I'd agree with you. Do you? If you don't want to be misunderstood, write more clearly the first time. Of course, your whole argument falls apart with this sort of thing:

The 9/11 truthers or the "creationists" may be wrong or they may be right (in my opinion, it's wrong in the first case, right in the second), they may be irrational or not, and so on.

So, are "creationists" actually creationists, or is that merely what others call them?

#52: In the latter case, a paper sympathetic to "creationism" was published in a mainstream journal. The fellow responsible for publishing it was then denounced by other scientists for, among other things, abusing the peer-review process

Why yes. If you as editor publish an article in a journal you edit that doesn't fit the subject of the journal without normal peer-reviewing, it will be considered an abuse of the peer-review process. You'll note that the one case where a creationist tried to publish in a peer-reviewed journal, they found an editor who would soft-ball it.

#53: Israeli agents have a good track record of keeping their mouths shut during covert actions

I'll tentatively accept that. But I think there are distinctions to be made; a conspiracy that has as its primary effect the destruction of property in the conspirator's homeland and the death of their compatriots is much more likely to leak, and leak quickly, than a conspiracy to act against malignant enemies of the homeland.

I did want to offer links for the information I have, yet I must admit to losing interest in the discussion, to a great extent. Quel surprise. I understand that there will be opposing ideas, and that is what pro and con is all about. I welcome this sort of discussion, in the hopes that there is something new for me to learn. Can anyone actually believe that someone would want the negatives implied in some of the theories floating about to be true? That is why some of us have questions, and I never said that I had answers.

What discussions like this are not about, to me, is beating someone over the head with my point of view and behaving as if I were in a barroom contretemps. For me, that is immature and not worthy of grown men and women, and a game for which I hold little interest.

60> Thank you for your kind comment, and would you happen to know anything about this 'blocking' that was mentioned? If it is a process whereby one can block out certain parties, I would be most interested to learn more about it.

#67, what do you have to say to the page linked, in message 36?

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread79655/pg1

I have no dog in this hunt, but that page pretty much wraps it up for me. You?

#60 I am curious as to

a) how pasting an entire article is "claim mining" and "quote mining".

b) whether, in fact, the Paleontological Association (the source) is, quote a "partisan internet source".

Also, in your defense, I think I understand your use of quotations around "creationist".
You were meaning to refer to the fact that the article was labeled as such by certain
people and organizations, but that you disagreed with the label. Do I have that correct?
And, if that is not the label, what would you label it? Alternative? ID? What?

Thanks.

#67: That is why some of us have questions, and I never said that I had answers.

That's mendacious, and part of the reason people hate arguing with conspiracy theorists. The only question you asked was of the "have you stopped beating your wife" sort. #33 was filled with uncited allegations all aimed at one point: that the plane crashes at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania were faked. The reasonable thing to do is to analyze the data and compare the theories. The conspiracy theory thing to do is frequently to dodge the issue.

I did want to offer links for the information I have, yet I must admit to losing interest in the discussion, to a great extent.

You mean, when you realized there was little interest in your fake theories and no one was going to join in a chorus of hallalujahs extolling your widsom, you decided that maybe posting more crap wasn't a good idea?

That is why some of us have questions, and I never said that I had answers.

Leading questions, that either assume facts not in evidence or assume that known facts are wrong (i.e. questions that ignore the existence of multiple eyewitnesses to the events). This is the desperate retreat of conspiracy theoriests everywhere "I was just asking questions", but they really ask questions so obnoxiously phrased as to be statements, because anyone who disagrees with the "correct" conspiracy theorist answer must be either stupid or in on the big conspiracy (the best way to counter this sort of question is to point out the actual facts, but that makes you part of the conspiracy).

Plus, your "just asking questions" stance is simply untrue. You have made numerous statements asserting alleged facts (which, when investigated have turned out to not be facts at all, just made up crap). Like this:

There is no crash site in the history of aviation, where the tail section and fuselage disintegrated into ash. Not one, and you can check with the NTSB if you believe this to be incorrect. One NTSB official who investigates air disasters, stated during an interview, that he has never been to a crash site, where he did not find the tail section primarily identifiable. There is also no evidence of any crash of a passenger jet, where the fuselage was buried underground, with no portions of the fuselage exposed. Again, not one.

Except there have been crash sites that look exactly like the U93 crash site, and links have been provided that show them. In other words, your claim that there has never been a similar crash site is simply false. If you were truly interested in asking questions and getting answers, this would have made an impression on you. But it didn't. You ignored this, and stepped right over to being offended and upset that people called you on your crap.

And, we could mention the Pentagon, where there was a huge hole, although not large enough for a passenger jet to go through, and the windows on either side of it are intact, although the wings supposedly went through the walls and disappeared into the building. Magic, I guess. There was no fuselage, no Rolls Royce engines and no tail section on the lawn, either. They, too, supposedly disintegrated into thin air, from the crash. The only two airplanes to completely disappear in a crash are these two passenger jets.

This too, is all false, as has been shown by the provided links (recently reposted in post #67). Once again, if you were actually interested in getting information, this would have made an impression on you. Instead, you dismiss it, ignore it, and then stomp forward to claiming to be offended and chiding everyone for not treating your foolishness seriously.

68> No, it doesn't answer my questions. One source that I would offer to counter the opinion offered on this link is the movie, Loose Change - Final Cut. It goes into great detail about this event. If I could upload it to a forum, I would happily do so. However, in another forum, I did offer to purchase and send a copy of the film, to the poster of that message, at my expense. My offer was summarily rejected as 'male-bovine excrement,' (hereinafter referred to as MBE) of course.

I also have no way of sharing a conversation I had with a pilot of the type of aircraft that was supposed to have hit the Pentagon, which supported the contention in the DVD that an inexperienced pilot could never have kept the aircraft in the air, during the moves described by the media and the official report. He said it would have fallen before it hit the building, but how do I share this, without uploading a film that some will disparage without even viewing it, and/or arranging a deposition for my friend's husband? In spite of some assertions, I am not a conjurer.

The debris path does not show me enough to convince me that this is a full aircraft, with seats, luggage, people, wings, fuselage, etc. My friend's husband was also puzzled by the lack of any more substantive evidence (debris), and of any damage to the building on either side of the hole, where the wings would have impacted. Again, more questions, and no concrete answers.

I have reviewed several of the presentations made by Richard Gage, of Architects and Engineers for Truth (http://www.ae911Truth.org, and they are 1025 members strong, not 400, as suggested) and he seems to be a very rational, intelligent man, asking many of the same questions that I have. In spite of one who summarily discounts the veracity of Mr. Gage and the other members of his organization without detailing why their point of view should be disregarded as MBE, I tend to smell some smoke and wonder what else there is to know about the situation. I have seen a building 'pulled,' and the professionals I have talked to have confirmed that it would be impossible to stage a controlled demolition that would pull a multi-story building down in its own footprint, with only a few hours to put it all together, which is what we are supposed to believe happened to building 7, at the WTC. This adds more questions, for me. (http://www.youtube.com/user/ae911truth)

Another supporting site with an index of questions and issues: http://911review.org/Wiki/index.html I am not saying I agree with every little point, and their questions do seem to parallel my own. So, do I just accept what a non-accredited person tells me in a forum on a book-related website regarding my questions, or do I look to people who have credentials, and substantive information regarding my questions? Each to their own, and I will look to those who can share a professional opinion with me, while continuing to look at both sides of the issue.

70> I have to admit, I am not very involved in any emotion about your opinion concerning my alleged 'mendacity.' If you 'hate' talking (I don't consider myself in an argument, but you can do as you wish) to a 'conspiracy theorist,' which I don't believe can apply to one who has yet to formulate a theory, then why talk to me? As for 'dodging the issue,' I'm just trying to dodge the MBE.

The reasonable thing to do is to analyze the data and compare the theories.

Have you yet to discover that this is exactly what I am doing? This is why I have no theory, to date. Only questions, or is that still too 'mendacious' of me?

Edited for typo.

71> I guess you didn't pick up on the hint that I have lost interest in discussing anything with you. Yet, here you are.

What has made an impression on me is that you're not interested in any opinion but your own, and dismiss everything else as...well, you know. Your reference links are 'Holy' and all others are...that word. Sorry, I don't subscribe to the Stormraven gospel. It's also become apparent to me that you can't seem to have a conversation without bashing the person to whom you are addressing your comments, when they are in disagreement with you. To quote Oakes, I have to ask: What is wrong with you? (Don't feel compelled to answer that question.)

#73: If you don't want to discuss things with him, then don't. Stop posting messages directed at him. He has no obligation not to respond to your message just because you don't want him to.

I guess you didn't pick up on the hint that I have lost interest in discussing anything with you.

Yes, I suppose the fact that you cannot expect your lies to find a receptive audience has dampened your ardor.

Really, a whole 1,000 members? Wow. That still puts it at less that 1% of a single relevant trade association like the ASCE. There are roughly 2 million engineers and architects working in the U.S. today, making the 1,000 you cite less than 0.05% of that group. Can you say "lunatic fringe"?

Why, if Gage's evidence is so compelling, has he not been published? Why do engineers that actually do publish dismiss his theories as silly and unfounded? Are they in on the big conspiracy too?

I'm still wondering when you will correct your statements that you made that have been shown to be false, things like "there has never been another crash site like that for U93" or when you will address the quote mining like "Rolls Royce said the engine part wasn't theirs" (when asked if it was an engine part for a completely different type fo aircraft than a 757) and so on. I wonder when you will cite actual sources as opposed to "an unnamed airline pilot".

One would think that if your position had any persuasive value, then maybe some of the posters to this thread might be voicing support for you. But the only person who has come to your defense (Oakes) has explicitly said that 9-11 theories are bunk, and appears to have made his argument only to advance his pet cause of anti-evolution creationism/intelligent design. Conversely, you've had numerous people express incredulity about your claims, ask why you aren't convinced by the pretty convincing evidence, and wonder why you persist in stating things that are simply lies.

Oh and Loose Change? Seen it. It's a pile of complete bullshit dressed up as a film. When you reference it, you just demonstrate that you are willing to buy anything, no matter how ridiculous.

#72: So now we bring in a "friend's husband" and the World Trade Center. Guess what; there's enough smoke over Yellowstone to indicate a major forest fire. Of course, it's one puff here, one puff a few miles away, but once we collect it all in one place, it actually looks like something.

If you were serious about analyzing the data, you wouldn't bring up the World Trade Center. You would constrain the discussion to a confined, single event. You would provide sources and clear citations. That's how you analyze data.

You're willing to keep tossing out arguments, but the simple fact is that a 757 hit the Pentagon is the standing theory. It doesn't do any good to toss out random perceived issues with that unless you have an alternative. Something had to make that hole, and if you can't provide a better theory, then "American Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon" must be the working theory. You tell me that you don't think a 757 would have left that hole; then what did? If there's no better fit, then the best explanation is that your understanding of what a 757 hole in the Pentagon would look like must be wrong.

And to pick on a minor point, of course there were no bodies at the crash of United Airlines Flight 93. Again, when USAir Flight 427 and American Airlines Flight 191 went down, there were no bodies at the crash site--there were jet fuel-soaked chunks of organic material. A minor flaw in the human structure means that bodies don't survive well at impacts at 0.7 times the speed of sound.

do I look to people who have credentials, and substantive information regarding my questions?

If that's what you claim to be doing, you must at least admit you're picking and choosing your authorities to fit your preconceptions.

And to pick on a minor point, of course there were no bodies at the crash of United Airlines Flight 93. Again, when USAir Flight 427 and American Airlines Flight 191 went down, there were no bodies at the crash site--there were jet fuel-soaked chunks of organic material. A minor flaw in the human structure means that bodies don't survive well at impacts at 0.7 times the speed of sound.

Just to point this out, human remains from U93 have been found. And most of those remains have been identified. As have human remains at the Pentagon crash site. Identifying the remains is obviously difficult, but has been done.

Of course, the newspapers are all in on the grand conspiracy, so this is just made up information.

If that's what you claim to be doing, you must at least admit you're picking and choosing your authorities to fit your preconceptions.

One wonders why K.J. doesn't ever look at the peer-reviewed literature. There have been numerous articles on the subject and other articles by experts in the field that conclude the "official" story is completely consistent with the facts. Yet they don't get any recognition, but a web guy like Gage is apparently the ultimate authority on the subject.

I saw Loose Change. I was unimpressed and the film did more to convince me that the conspiracy theories were a bunch of unconnected musings than any site like the one that I re-linked earlier. I literally got through that film and said to myself, "well, that wraps it up, these people got nuthin'".
Really!

I honestly walked away from the debate at that time and can't debate details and such here, nor am I interested in picking up the debate again. It's just, well, that film was the thing that made me conclude that "Truthers" were deluded.

I'm of the opinion (and it's just my opinion), that there's nothing wrong with "just asking questions", and that the questions in Loose Change should be asked, but that they've been answered satisfactorily and it's time to move on.

But that's just me, speaking for myself.

Loose Change has been thoroughly debunked by people who know what they are doing. Even people like Michael Green, who is a 9-11 truther, has derided the movie as being rife with innaccuracies. In general, almost every claim made by 9-11 truthers has been specifically debunked several times.

I didn't say the theories were bunk. I said the truthers were wrong.

So they are wrong but not bunk? That's an interestingly inherently contradictory position there.

There's a difference.

If you say so.

If you look at my Profile, you'll find that I am a member of the 9/11 Truth Group.

Then you may as well come out and say "I believe just about anything".

I didn't enter this thread to discuss my substantive views on evolution. Indeed, when it came to it, I declined the offer.

And yet the one example you came up with of "big science" keeping the little guy down was an intelligent design paper that was actually published in a scientific journal and the nonextant reprisals the editor allegedly suffered. And then tried to argue that said editor was not a creationist himself (based on nhis denials) despite his serving on the board of an openly creationist organization. And then when this was shown with extensive quotes, you accused me of "claim mining" and "quote mining" (a claim that seems to have been rejected by other commenters) and ran away. It seems interesting that you say you weren't pimping your views on intelligent design when that is the one thing you chose to highlight as an example. Sorry, your protestations simply don't match the facts.

Rather, I came on board because the argumentum ad populum--you're wrong because everyone/most people/the people that count disagree with you--irritates me, especially when, as it often is, it is used in an obnoxious way.

I note you didn't jump on K.J. for making that type of argument. You jumped on my request that he back up his claim that "experts" back him up. His alleged "experts" can't get anything published in the relevant trade literature. That's not my problem, that's K.J.'s, especially since his entire argument is an argumentum ad populum (which you profess irritates you, but apparently only when it is made by someone you disagree with). His argument has the added bonus that most of his "experts" are shadowy unnamed people like "a pilot I know" or "a friend's wife", and the only one he names is a guy who isn't even an engineer, but is rather an architect, and whose theories have been reviewed and rejected by dozens of actual engineers and actual experts in materials science (such as Zdenek Bazant).

You can twist all you want, but when you post Sternberg's denials without actually pointing out that those denials are entirely unsupportable, you are making the argument that he has a case to make. He doesn't. Your global warming example isn't even an example, just a "people somewhere have said bad things about global warming skeptics". The example you gave was an allegedly creationist paper. And the terrible thing that happened? The editor was criticized for putting though a badly written paper that contained bad science. He was additionally criticized that his motivation may have been his creationist leanings (which are documented). But in terms of actual reprisals, he suffered nothing, apoint you only conceded when it was pointed out to you, and attempted to defect by saying that maybe he didn't suffer reprisals for fear of a lawsuit. And it was pointed out that this is a spurious claim as any lawsuit would have been completely nonviable (and an investigation finding his claims legally untenable has been done), a point you have completely ignored.

And all this to "prove" that 9-11 truthers can't get their papers published. Its very amusing that the only actual example you gave (since the global warming reference isn't actually an example) was one in which a paper espousing the supposedly persecuted position was actually published (although the author probably would have benefitted if the paper had been sent back for revisions to make it stronger, if that would have been possible, as opposed to the apparently slipshod junk it seems to be). If someone in the 9-11 truther movement thinks that Zdenek's conclusions are wrong, and has an actual case to make, then I'm sure there would be plenty of journals more than willing to publish that paper. I seriously doubt Gage (or anyone else in his fringe group) has the ability to make such a case, which would be the simplest explanation for why they haven't.

Of course there's a difference between bunk--as in nonsense, an empty or unfounded claim, ridiculous, especially when it is "explicitly" labeled as such--and merely wrong. Since it was very important to you to persuade K.J. that he has no allies on this whatsoever--even I, (that weirdo creationist, or whatever) am not really an ally--you changed what I said.

Now you are arguing that something that is wrong is not also nonsense, empty, or unfounded? What sort of parallel universe do you live in? You are redefining words willy nilly, and I'm dishonest and nasty? Please. Get back to reality with the rest of humanity. Perhaps you need to get more than a passing familiarity with the truth. Perhaps if you held views that were compatible with the evidence at hand, you wouldn't have to twist, dodge, dissemble, and lie all the time.

(Yes, I said lie. Get offended and shriek. The entire 9-11 truther movement is based on lying. As is the creationist/ID movement.)

I also note you ignored the pure double standard I pointed out in your argument about appealing to the masses. Your claim to be lilly white showing up just to criticize argumentum ad populum falls flat in the face of the fact that I didn't make such an argument, K.J. did, and I asked him to back his claims up. Yet another example of your "honesty". Seriously, get a set of positions that don't require you to lie to support them. Your life will make much more sense then.

You can say whatever you want. But whatever else it shows about me, or people believe it shows about me, the fact that you have a problem with it is a badge of honor, I think.

Given the set of irrational beliefs you routinely espouse, I'm not sure how much I (or anyone else) should trust your judgment.

83> I guess I should be thankful that you have directed your vitriol at someone else, but I feel that it is partly my fault that you are doing so. After all, you are always angry at me, it seems, and now it has washed over the walls to another. I'll have to send Oakes a bottle of single malt to make up for the overflow.

Perhaps a logical look at the discourse we have had so far would be helpful?

A. You have provided links.
B. I have provided links.
C. I looked at your links and did not find the answers I was seeking. I did disagree with their findings, but I did not suggest that the information was crap.
D. You stated that you know all about my links and the movie I suggested, and discounted them as crap.
E. You say you have professional resources to back up your statements. I did not suggest that they were crap, although I did disagree with their points of view.
F. I have provided professional resources to back up my statements, and you said they were 'crap.'
G. You stated that I did not make any converts to my 'ideas.'
H. I'm not looking to convert anyone. I'm sharing a point of view and, unlike yourself, I do not expect everyone to agree with me. I'm just not that needy.
I. You have called me a liar, for stating what I have found and presented here.
J. You actually have lied about me, and the link for that is in this thread. (Here is a handy reminder: http://www.librarything.com/topic/79553 Post #121.) I notice that you sidestepped this reality, when it was presented earlier.
K. You call another contributor to the discussion a liar, because he does not share your beliefs.

If I were to follow the logic in this, I would come to the following conclusions:

1. You have concrete ideas about what is, from your viewpoint, and nobody can have an opposing point of view.

2. Evidence provided by others will not be accepted by you, unless the evidence comes from a source with whom you are in agreement.

3. If someone disagrees with you, you have no compunction about bashing them over the head with your rhetoric. Name-calling is one of the tools you employ on a regular basis, although I have yet to see anyone calling you anything - even those descriptions you may have earned from your interactions in this and other threads.

My conclusion: The only way to have a conversation with you, is to be in total agreement, at all levels. Sorry, I'm not made that way.

As for my pursuit of new information about 911 and the view of the masses, I don't live my life by consensus, and I think Jesse W.'s quote in #46715 from today says it best:

Message 51: Jesse_Wiedinmyer:

"Don't believe me, don't believe anybody, don't accept anything based on tradition. Don't believe anything based on the fact that your community believes this or your country believes this or the people that are around you believe this." -The Buddha

Could be serious stuff these conspiracy theories: David Aaronovitch, author of Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History says: "If you are to travel in Pakistan, for instance, you will find that a significant proportion of the educated Pakistanis believe that George Bush brought down the twin towers. And that makes dealing with the (Pakistani) Taliban difficult because they actually don't believe the fundamental premise on which the war against terror was waged."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123127032

76> If that's what you claim to be doing, you must at least admit you're picking and choosing your authorities to fit your preconceptions.

It might be said that it is you who have preconceptions, since you seem to discount everything I post. Here's a page that should satisfy anyone's desire for 'qualified professionals':

http://www.911summary.com/

In the words of Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan (Col. Ronald D. Ray) regarding the official story of 911: "the dog that doesn't hunt"

Leaving K.J. and Oakes to wallow in their own patently ridiculous theories for a while, one thing that is interesting is to compare the impetus behind facially ridiculous conspiracy theories like the 9-11 Truthers and stupid things like Creationism/Intelligent Design. Both are, at their heart, theological positions that hold an utter disregard for the facts. Despite K.J.'s protestations that he relies upon experts, the core beliefs of the 9-11 Truther movement were set forth by a theologian, and it was only after listening to him that Richard Gage, an architect came up with his explanation. In other words, the theory of how 9-11 happened was formulated by someone with no training in a relevant field at all, and then Gage went back to try to hammer the evidence to fit the conclusion he had already decided was correct. This is not a method of inquiry that is ever likely to be successful.

Similarly, the modern crerationism movement had at its heart not a scientist, but also a theologian, who also started with a conclusion and then worked backwards to try to find evidence for that conclusion. In this effort, creationism's theologian was aided by an engineer, who had the added bonus of being a nasty racist. In both 9-11 truther claims, and creationism advocacy, selective use of evidence is quite prevalent, which can be traced to this sort of backwards looking analysis which starts with a conclusion and then tries to prove it, as opposed to rational inquiry which starts with the evidence and works forward to try to see what conclusions can be drawn from it.

In both creationism and 9-11 conspiracy advocacy (and really, pretty much all conspiracy theory advocacy) you get a lot of similar arguments. One is this silly notion that K.J. has trotted out that all sides are equally deserving of credibility. His argument "you provided links and I provided links" seems reasonable, until one looks at the quality of the links and realizes that one side has lunatic theologicians and shadowy unnamed sources, and the other has respected, published materials science experts, eyewitnesses to the events, and photographs of things that the 9/1 truthers say don't exist. Both sides to the 9-11 debate are not equal, and just about anyone who isn't immune to evidence and reason figures that out pretty quickly. Similarly, creationists/intelligent design advocates (who can be lumped together as "cdesign proponentsists") try to make an equivalency between the validity of their theories and the accepted theory of evolution (and often try to merge evolution with abiogenesis, Big Bang theory, and stellar evolution), but as they do no actual science, and have never advanced a testable hypothesis, there simply is no equivalency.

Another feature the two fringe theories share is that advocates repeat lies long after they have been discredited, apparently in the hope that no one will notice that they are spouting bullshit. K.J. repeats the line that "no plane crash site in the history of aviation looks like the U93 site", but falls strangely silent when it is pointed out that there are other plane crashes that do indeed look identical, and pictures are provided. He says that there is no plane at the Pentagon, but when pictures are provided showing a plane, he changes his tune to "there's not enough of a plane". Never mind that the remains of 184 people were identified from the crash site, there's not enough plane visible for him. He harps on claims about the wings of the plane not causing damage, when in fact one wing clipped an external generator and the damage done to the Pentagon is entirely consistent with the impact of a 757, which includes testimony from blast expert Allyn Kilsheimer, who was actually at the site on 9/11 and states unequivocally that it was a plane. He cites vague claims from an unnamed pilot that a plane could not have crashed into the Pentagon, while discounting actual eyewitnesses to the event. He cites Loose Change as authority, even though 9-11 truther advocates have called the film amatuerish and inaccurate. Its time to call what K.J. and others like him are doing by its proper name: lying.

Similarly, cdesign proponentsists love to repeat misinformation, like the idea that there are no transitional fossils, even though there are dozens. They also love to claim that there are no instances of macroevolution one can identify, even though there are, including instances of observed speciation. None of these things are secrets, and most of them are not new. One can perhaps accept that some cdesign proponentsists are merely ignorant, but many (including the public proponents of creationism and intelligent design) have no excuse. The only word that would seem to apply to what they are doing is "lying".

Another dodge both cdesign proponentsists and 9/11 truthers share is this rhetorical pose that they are "just asking questions", when in fact, their questions are leading, assume a conclusion, and assume facts that are either not in evidence, or are flatly contradicted by the actual, known facts (once again, I point to K.J.'s completely incorrect assertion that "no plane crash site has ever looked like the U93 site"). They will say things like "do you really believe . . . " or "how could it be possible that . . . " and similar rhetorical dodges to pretend they are asking questions when they are really engaged in advocacy with the supposedly safe harbour that if called on their crap they can then pretend to be innocent truth seekers, when in fact, they are merely spreading lies and disinformation.

I'm sure that K.J. (and Oakes) will accuse me of being closed minded. However, I'm not adhering to a dogmatic theory propounded by a theologian and supported by selectively discarding evidence and inventing stuff. Like people laugh at creationists (see Why Do People Laugh at Creationists, which currently runs through thirty-two parts) people should also laugh at 9/11 Truthers, for the same reasons. There is no reason to treat these people seriously, or take their thoroughly discredited claims as anything other than the lunatic fantasies of the deluded. It is also time to start calling them out for lying.

For the record, and because I think that anyone seeing it and comparing it to the various other evidence presented will come away wondering how in the world anyone can find it remotely persuasive, here is a link to Loose Change, which apparently, K.J. couldn't figure out how to link to despite his repeated protestations that he wanted to. Or maybe he was unwilling to link to it, and thus reveal the paucity of his sources.

87> Maybe you should have a go at the link in #86. I wait with great anticipation to see how you work over those guys, all of whom I am sure you will dismiss as MBE. I mean, pilots, military leaders, government leaders, CIA professionals, etc? Hmmmm, they must be wingnuts. And, those guys who were on the 911 Commission that don't buy it? They definitely must be wingnuts, after all, they got to see the stuff that we didn't get to see.

86: Oh please. That collection of quotes is quote mining in its purest form. This is the kind of selective use of evidence that demonstrates the complete lack of regard the 9/11 truther movement has for the actual truth.

For example, the quote mining site you linked to quotes Bob Kerrey as saying:

"There are ample reasons to suspect that there may be some alternative to what we outlined in our version . . . We didn't have access . . . ."

However, the complete quote from the Salon article was:

Kerrey was dismissive of the conspiracy theories as well. Asked about the possibility of a controlled demolition at the World Trade Center, he scoffed, "There's no evidence for that." But he also noted that, quite apart from what Avery and others in the "truth movement" have proposed, many legitimate mysteries still surround the events of that day. "There are ample reasons to suspect that there may be some alternative to what we outlined in our version," Kerrey said. The commission had limited time and limited resources to pursue its investigation, and its access to key documents and witnesses was fettered by the administration. "I didn't read a single PDB," Kerrey said, referring to the president's daily intelligence briefing reports. "We didn't have access to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed," the mastermind of the plot. "We accepted a compromise, submitting our questions to him through the CIA. Now, that's not the best way to go about getting your questions answered. So I'm 100 percent certain that {bin Laden} directed that attack, but am I completely comfortable saying there was no direct Saudi involvement, or that Saddam Hussein wasn't involved in some fashion, or that the Iranians weren't involved? I'm pretty close to 100 percent certain, but I'd be more comfortable if we'd interviewed Khalid Shaikh Mohammed."

That's quite a different story than the one your lurid 9/11 site tries to spin Kerry into saying. In general, this sort of quote mining can be called by its real name: lying. The other quotes on the page are similarly taken out of context. That the 9/11 truther movement feels the need to manufacture quotes with quote mining deception is simply pathetic.

U.S. Army Air Defense Officer and NORAD Tac Director, decorated with the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star and the Soldiers Medal (Capt. Daniel Davis) stated:

"there is no way that an aircraft . . . would not be intercepted when they deviate from their flight plan, turn off their transponders, or stop communication with Air Traffic Control ... Attempts to obscure facts by calling them a 'conspiracy Theory' does not change the truth. It seems, 'Something is rotten in the State.' "

Director of the U.S. "Star Wars" space defense program in both Republican and Democratic administrations, who was a senior air force colonel who flew 101 combat missions (Col. Robert Bowman) stated that 9/11 was an inside job. He also said:

"If our government had merely done nothing, and I say that as an old interceptor pilot—I know the drill, I know what it takes, I know how long it takes, I know what the procedures are, I know what they were, and I know what they’ve changed them to—if our government had merely done nothing, and allowed normal procedures to happen on that morning of 9/11, the Twin Towers would still be standing and thousands of dead Americans would still be alive. That is treason!"

President of the U.S. Air Force Accident Investigation Board, who also served as Pentagon Weapons Requirement Officer and as a member of the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review, and who was awarded Distinguished Flying Crosses for Heroism, four Air Medals, four Meritorious Service Medals, and nine Aerial Achievement Medals (Lt. Col. Jeff Latas) is a member of a group which doubts the government's version of 9/11

It is a conspiracy that Punxsutawney Phil always sees his gosh darn shadow on February 2nd (otherwise known as Groundhog Day). This is undoubtedly why Sarah Palin, while she was still Governor-Rogue, signed legislation designating February 2nd "Marmot Day" in Alaska.

90: There are currently, serving in the Air Force alone, more than 10,000 pilots. There are many times that number of retired pilots. And the best you can do is come up with random speculation by two? And that's persuasive?

We know what the pattern of events dealing with air traffic control was, since we have the recordings and the transcripts. I have to wonder what Bowman thinks should have happened when, on an otherwise unremarkable day, a couple planes did something unusual in different parts of the country while dealing with different air traffic control units. Until people started plunging planes into buildings, this would have been unusual but not necessarily alarming. Does he think we should have scrambled fighters and shot down the planes immediately? What if it was just a communications malfunction (which it might have been for all anyone knew). What if it was just pilot error? Even if you assumed the planes were hijacked, why assume they would engage in a suicide run (which was somewhat unprecedented for airplane hijackings, and not simply a "land and make demands" kind of hijacking? I'd like to see where in this chronology he (or Davis) thinks things deviated from the normal responses of several bureaucracies trying to coordinate with one another (and actually, given that it was less than an hour between the first crash and shutting down all U.S. airports, the response was really quite quick).

89> You say that Kerry is misquoted, and does not support the idea that things are not as they appear, and yet you then quote him saying:

But he also noted that, quite apart from what Avery and others in the "truth movement" have proposed, many legitimate mysteries still surround the events of that day. "There are ample reasons to suspect that there may be some alternative to what we outlined in our version," Kerrey said.

You can't have it both ways, SR, even though I know you will continue to attempt to do just that. Out of context, all of the statements on that page? Now, who's spreading barnyard sweetness on the field? You didn't mention the past head of the FBI's statement, nor the statements made by top military personnel, nor the past members of the CIA, etc. It was a bit overwhelming for you, wasn't it? Better to just deny their credibility with a broad sweep of the arm.

Like I said, unless we agree with your sources, we have nothing, right? Not even with these guys. LMAO. Although, I do like the reference to the site as being 'lurid.' I guess I missed the topless girl in the middle of the CIA agent's statement.

I still have questions, and you have not provided answers. Based on my experience of you, and my studying the details commented on by these men, I'm more inclined to listen to them than you. They have more knowledge, and more experience.

I understand why cdesign proponentists do what they do. They are Lying For Jesus. Even though it's lying, I understand it because they believe that they are advancing the cause on earth of the One True God and His Inerrant Book. So, fine, I get that. Souls are at stake--if you believe that, then you "do what it takes" to get the job done.

See what I'm saying--it's not right, but I understand how someone could justify Lying for Jesus. Ends justify the means.

What I don't understand is, what do 9/11 truthers have as their reason for lying? Nothing could be as important as your Immortal Soul, so, absent that, what could it be? Why? What do they hope to accomplish? A mass popular uprising? Do they want to be Mad Max when they grow up?

I like this web page, that shows all of the people that would have had to have been involved if there truly were a conspiracy. It's in the THOUSANDS. What's more likely, that a handful of deluded religious maniacs pulled off a cheap shot to get laid 72 times, or that thousands of people at all levels of civilian and military life, from many countries around the globe, collaborated (unknowingly, I'm sure, as cogs in a giant anonymous machine)?

http://www.debunking911.com/massivect.htm

K.J.--assume you're right. What would you have us do? Rise up with our hunting rifles and take back the world? Put all the NYC firefighters in prison?

What is the point of all this? (Beyond, 'just asking questions', because then we should move straight on to how many angels can sit on the head of a pin--I've always wanted to know that one).

I like this quote from Noam Chomsky (notable Anti-American commie socialist scumbag idiot intellectually bankrupt subversive should go frickin' live in Siberia and see if he likes it better there, among other credentials)

"...I am not persuaded by the assumption that much documentation and other evidence has been uncovered. To determine that, we'd have to investigate the alleged evidence. Take, say, the physical evidence. There are ways to assess that: submit it to specialists -- of whom there are thousands -- who have the requisite background in civil-mechanical engineering, materials science, building construction, etc., for review and analysis; and one cannot gain the required knowledge by surfing the internet. In fact, that's been done, by the professional association of civil engineers. Or, take the course pursued by anyone who thinks they have made a genuine discovery: submit it to a serious journal for peer review and publication. To my knowledge, there isn't a single submission."

"I think this reaches the heart of the matter. One of the major consequences of the 9/11 movement has been to draw enormous amounts of energy and effort away from activism directed to real and ongoing crimes of state, and their institutional background, crimes that are far more serious than blowing up the WTC would be, if there were any credibility to that thesis. That is, I suspect, why the 9/11 movement is treated far more tolerantly by centers of power than is the norm for serious critical and activist work. How do you personally set priorities? That's of course up to you. I've explained my priorities often, in print as well as elsewhere, but we have to make our own judgments."

"...I don't see any reason to accept the presuppositions. As for the consequences, in one of my first interviews after 9/11 I pointed out the obvious: every power system in the world was going to exploit it for its own interests: the Russians in Chechnya, China against the Uighurs, Israel in the occupied territories,... etc., and states would exploit the opportunity to control their own populations more fully through "prevention of terrorism acts" and the like. By the "who gains" argument, every power system in the world could be assigned responsibility for 9/11."

"I think the Bush administration would have had to be utterly insane to try anything like what is alleged, for their own narrow interests, and do not think that serious evidence has been provided to support claims about actions that would not only be outlandish, for their own interests, but that have no remote historical parallel. The effects, however, are all too clear, namely, what I just mentioned: diverting activism and commitment away from the very serious ongoing crimes of state."

93: And it is clear from context that Kerry is not saying "there was an inside job", which he specifically discounts. He's saying we don't have all the facts to be scertain that we know everything. And of course he would say that, because that's the case with just about any kind of investigation. He's clearly not saying "it was an inside job". he's saying "we don't know everything about KSM or OBL's organization". To try to spin his quote into some sort of lurid "he supports us!" claim is just moronic.

I note that you, even with the full quote laid out, try to engage in your own quote mining. But what is it that Kerry is uncertain about? Let's let him tell us:

"So I'm 100 percent certain that {bin Laden} directed that attack, but am I completely comfortable saying there was no direct Saudi involvement, or that Saddam Hussein wasn't involved in some fashion, or that the Iranians weren't involved? I'm pretty close to 100 percent certain, but I'd be more comfortable if we'd interviewed Khalid Shaikh Mohammed."

Hmm, that really doesn't seem to support what you are trying to quote him for now does it? But keep this up. The more you try to do ridiculous quote mining the sillier your arguments look. Like I said, the quotes are a collection of out of context quote mines. That I didn't want to waste everyone's time and go through and refute each and every one doesn't make them actually true. I picked one and pointed out the dishonesty and deception. The bulk of the other quotes are similarly dishonestly mined. Others can check by clicking through on the link and checking the actual sources if they are so inclined to doubt my assessment.

I like how you claim to "study the details commented on by these men", and yet the comments you cite are delibrately deceptive misquotes. That doesn't call your rationality into question at all.

By the way, have you figured out how to link videos yet? It took me thirty seconds to find Loose Change online and link to it. Was that too hard for you?

What I don't understand is, what do 9/11 truthers have as their reason for lying? Nothing could be as important as your Immortal Soul, so, absent that, what could it be? Why? What do they hope to accomplish? A mass popular uprising? Do they want to be Mad Max when they grow up?

9/11 Truthism isn't a rational belief system. It is religious in nature. That's why it parallels so closely with the way cdesign proponentists operate, right down to specific tactics. When you have a conclusion that you know must be true in your heart then you engage in a collection of deceptive practices to try to beat and whip the evidence into saying what you want it to say, what your belief system says it must say. The 9/11 Truther gets a feeling of being a special outsider from his stance - no one else knows the real truth like they do, they aren't one of those sheeple who go along with "the Man", they can fight the power by exposing "the truth" and so on. Like religious belief, the benefit that accrues to the Truther is entirely psychic in nature. Basically, being a Truther makes them feel good.

On a side note, it is interesting how many connections you find between theological thinking and 9/11 conspiracy darlings. Robert Bowman in addition to not being the former director of the Star Wars program is the Presiding Archbishop of the United Catholic Church, a splinter Catholic denomination. His son is a theologian and Christian apologist. Needless to say, Bowman (and Davis) have been discredited by the actual evidence which they apparently have only the most passing familiarity with.

> 95

One of the major consequences of the 9/11 movement has been to draw enormous amounts of energy and effort away from activism directed to real and ongoing crimes of state, and their institutional background . . .

Aha! The 9/11 truthers are clearly part of the conspiracy themselves!

#98, well, yeah, I thought that was amusing. But there is a point there, that all that "civic duty" energy could be put to some actual transformational activity instead of playing an online game of DaVinci Code.

The 9/11 nonsense falls of its own weight. But when people like Noam Chomsky say it's nonsense, then you can be pretty sure it is: no one in the world hates the American government like Chomsky.

Another testimony-against-interest source is Alexander Cockburn, similar to Chomsky in his politics although more consistently fond of police-states. He observes:

"Paul Krassner writes , I once asked a true believer, “If the Pentagon was really hit by a missile and not a plane, then what happened to all the people who were on the plane that didn’t hit the Pentagon?”

I answered this many years ago. The people on that plane had been kidnapped at an earlier stage in the operation, and flown to an airbase in Louisiana – the very self-same airbase where George Bush briefly touched down in his erratic flight from Florida on 9/11/2001. George Bush then personally executed the captives.

Diid I really believe this when I wrote it? No. It was a satirical sally. But I did receive serious letters from people troubled by the lack of detail.Where had he shot them? With what type of weapon? A summary burst from a machine gun, or a .22 bullet behind each ear?

For all too many on the left, the so-called 9/11 conspiracy has become the magic key. If it can be turned, then history at its present impasse will be unlocked and we can move on. "

Hollywood should take a lot of the blame for the prevalence of this sort of stuff. They regularly make movies where the CIA does things as equally terrible against their fellow-citizens, with an indefinite but not small number of people executing perfectly-timed, never-detected Black Ops.

(In fact, I blame Hollywood and their ridiculous omnipotent CIA/James Bond movies for addling the brains of those fools who tried to bug that Democratic senator's office.)

>>Hollywood should take a lot of the blame for the prevalence of this sort of stuff.

I keep waiting for Jack Bauer to be chasing down a transitional fossil, but it never happens. Probably because there aren't any. :D

#86: So what you're claiming is that there are no authorities against you? You even have people like Jim Hoffman, who's co-produced 9/11 Guilt: The Proof is in Your Hands, who consider the concept that Pentagon was hit by other than a 757 to be absurd. You can't credibly claim that most authorities are on your side.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense ... pilots, military leaders, government leaders, CIA professionals

What the fuck do any of these people know? If they want to tell me about how a description of an military operation was inaccurate, then it would be worth contemplating, but they don't know the first thing about structural engineering.

you seem to discount everything I post.

I've spent of a lot of time responding to your statements about the crash of United Airlines Flight 93, because airplane crashes is something I have a bit of knowledge on. I've pointed out that USAir Flight 427 and American Airlines Flight 191 had similar crashes, as did ValuJet Flight 592. Planes, human bodies and luggage don't survive 500 mph impacts with the ground. Instead of responding to this, you start talking about WTC.

I don't see any way to discuss this with you. You won't discuss disagreements about the facts or the points, you won't limit yourself to a single discussable event, and you won't provide theories, claiming to just be asking questions. (Never mind that dismissing the official story of 9/11 as the dog that doesn't hunt goes vastly beyond questions.)

In the words of Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan (Col. Ronald D. Ray) regarding the official story of 911:

In the words of the Buddha: "Don't believe me, don't believe anybody, don't accept anything based on tradition. Don't believe anything based on the fact that your community believes this or your country believes this or the people that are around you believe this."

http://www.911summary.com/ is exactly the sort of crap that makes this frustrating. Long above, in #50, I conceded that there certainly could be previous knowledge that parts of 9/11 were going to happen. The fact that other people are convinced that there was fore knowledge does nothing to support your claims that the WTC was a controlled demolition, that the Pentagon wasn't hit by a 757, and the crash site in Pennsylvania is a fake. When Jim Hoffman and others argue that the WTC was a controlled demolition, it does nothing to support your claims that the Pentagon wasn't hit by a 757, etc.; in fact, Jim Hoffman has specifically complained about those claims as making the whole Truther movement a target of mockery.

Let me tear apart just one comment:

U.S. Army Air Defense Officer and NORAD Tac Director, decorated with the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star and the Soldiers Medal (Capt. Daniel Davis) stated:

Do any of those awards mean anything here? Does getting shot by Viet Cong bullets really provide air traffic knowledge?

"there is no way that an aircraft . . . would not be intercepted when they deviate from their flight plan, turn off their transponders, or stop communication with Air Traffic Control

Right. As a matter of fact, in 2009, Northwest Flight 188 in the US flew 150 miles past its destination, losing contact with ATC for more than an hour.* The Air Force never launched their jets, though they were notified. This is after 2001, when hijacked jets became a concern and communications between the FAA and Air Force became strengthened.

* http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,569308,00.html

#100: The people on that plane had been kidnapped at an earlier stage in the operation, and flown to an airbase in Louisiana – the very self-same airbase where George Bush briefly touched down in his erratic flight from Florida on 9/11/2001. George Bush then personally executed the captives.

Oh. Well then, that's plausible.

Hollywood should take a lot of the blame for the prevalence of this sort of stuff.

The CIA and friends should also take a lot of the blame for the prevalence of this sort of stuff. Operation Northwoods, anyone? Iran Contra affair? the Gulf of Tonkin? Operation Ajax? How many wars have we started hearing that Hussein was throwing babies out of incubators and Panama was spontaneously revolting from Columbia and Hussein had WMDs?

Just to put a cap on the whole value of the "Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth" thing (and to continue to draw the parallel between the 9/11 Truth guys and the cdesign proponentists), the Discovery Institute, a couple years back put out a list of 500 "scientists" who "are skeptical of the claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life." Upon investigation, this didn't seem to prove to be very convincing.

Now, the National Center for Science Education pointed out the silliness of this sort of list, but to poke fun at it, they created a list of their own. Their list was unified around three things. The first was this statement:

Evolution is a vital, well-supported, unifying principle of the biological sciences, and the scientific evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the idea that all living things share a common ancestry. Although there are legitimate debates about the patterns and processes of evolution, there is no serious scientific doubt that evolution occurred or that natural selection is a major mechanism in its occurrence. It is scientifically inappropriate and pedagogically irresponsible for creationist pseudoscience, including but not limited to "intelligent design," to be introduced into the science curricula of our nation's public schools.

The second is that everyone who signed up for the list had to be a trained in a field related directly to biology. The third is that everyone on the list had to be named "Steve". The list, dubbed "Project Steve" is now at over 1,100 names. When K.J. touts his random "1,000 A&E for 9/11 Truth" guys, make sure to ask how many "Steve's" are on it.

This is getting weird, guys.

Those who spend their time investigating conspiracy theories are a help to the government. Because there have been some real conspiricies. Lincoln, for example. Robert Lincoln, burning the last of his father's papers, his reason, it is said is "Because some of the people my father trusted might have been tainted." This is not the exact quote, it was from a biography of Mary Todd Lincoln, I don't remember the author. But l50 years later, there are still unanswered questions about that event.

MacNamara's disclosures about VietNam. Just enough to rouse curiosity.

The British acknowledgement that they had informed Washington that when they broke the Japanese code, they heard plans of an attack on a US Naval Base in the Pacifice area that would take place between Nov. 1941 & 1 Jan. 1942.

Deathbed, or conversion confessions to smaller acts of controversy.

New information from formerly sealed documents on the sinking of the US Battleship Maine in Havanna Harbor that was used as a reason to declare war on Spain.

Numerous examples of differing "spin" on conflicts between US forces & Native American Nations.

Those who promote theories that can be proven false, help the government or however was in charge to continue covering up those incidents which are still debated & which the disclosure of their truth would not be "in the best interest of the People."

The British acknowledgement that they had informed Washington that when they broke the Japanese code, they heard plans of an attack on a US Naval Base in the Pacifice area that would take place between Nov. 1941 & 1 Jan. 1942.

I'm not sure how much of a conspiracy this proves. The U.S. Navy had more than one base in the Pacific, and the reasonable assumption (for the time) was made that the Japanese were likely to strike at the Phillippines. Heck, the U.S. codebreakers knew the Japanese were up to something for the first week of December, they just didn't know exactly when or where they would act.

The Robert Lincoln allegation seems interesting, but I haven't seen any reference to it in any of the history I have read. I'm also not entirely sure what the quote might mean, as it could mean something ranging from "my father's friends were complicit in his death" to "my father's friends engaged in some minor improprieties". Also, if the allegation came from Mary Todd herself, then I'm not sure how reliable a source she'd be, since she appears to have held substantial personal animosity towards her son, probably resulting from a deteriorating mental state. He obtained an insanity hearing for her, and testified against her in the proceeding, she accused him of being after her money and so on. There is a fair amount of evidence that she was, in fact, mentally ill, all of which calls into question her reliability.

The other theories I have not researched.

Of course governments engage in dirty tricks, lying, etc.

And we can call some of these "conspiracies" if we want.

It's perfectly conceivable that the CIA would organize the overthrow of a foreign government, on orders from the White House, and that then the government would lie about it. It's happened. It's also conceivable that the FBI would engage in potentially-lethal dirty tricks against domestic enemies of the state. It's happened.

What is harder to believe is that the CIA or FBI would deliberately kill ordinary Americans (as opposed to Communists, Klansmen, Black Panthers), in order to further someone's political aims. There have been a number of Hollywood movies to this effect -- aiming to undermine Americans' belief in their own country -- but I am skeptical that such a conspiracy could remain hidden forever.

It's this sort of conspiracy -- where innocent Americans, as opposed to foreigners or Americans seen as subversive or criminal by the authorities -- are killed, which is the kind of conspiracy that is implausible.

It's not impossible to believe ... I suspect that the Russian secret police did something like this a few years ago to whip up anti-Chechen feeling. But the burden of proof is on the conspiracy theorists.

#107
About the Lincoln quote, I don't believe that is supposed to be an exact quote. As far as I can remember, there were no references cited for it.

Any thoughts on "Project Bluebook", the USAF's research into UFOs?

To get things started, I have some anectdotal information about what happened when the airplane that was carrying the materials recovered from the Roswell, NM site, landed at Fort Worth AAFB, Texas.

Security on the flight line was stepped up at Fort Worth, prior to the landing of the Roswell airplane, approaching what we would call now, a lockdown.

My father, who happened to be present at Fort Worth, on the flight line, that day in July, 1947, made only one observation.

"Whatever was on board that B-29, it was likely not a busted weather balloon." He would never explain himself any further. As an Air Force brat,I have always wondered about that one.

It all depends on what you consider a conspiracy to be I guess. It is pretty well known that we conspired with the Viet Minh to ship them arms while the french were still ruling what was then called Indochina. Now that sounds a bit like a conspiracy. As far as the 9-11 wingnuts go, let's cease giving these guys a podium. They are certifiable.

And just to back up an earlier point that Stormraven made, when you look at actual conspiracies involving military units, invariably someone (or several someones) spill their guts...it always happens.

Any thoughts on "Project Bluebook", the USAF's research into UFOs?

I don't see any real reason to think it was anything other than what it purported to be. I'd be willing to be convinced, but I'm decidedly in the skeptical that aliens have ever actually visited us category - the energy and time requirements to cross interstellar space are simply astronomically prohibitve to expect that any race has done so. To expect them to have done so than then spent their time hiding (or that they could navigate their way across the vastness of space and crash land) seems quite simply implausible.

To get things started, I have some anectdotal information about what happened when the airplane that was carrying the materials recovered from the Roswell, NM site, landed at Fort Worth AAFB, Texas.

Security on the flight line was stepped up at Fort Worth, prior to the landing of the Roswell airplane, approaching what we would call now, a lockdown.

My father, who happened to be present at Fort Worth, on the flight line, that day in July, 1947, made only one observation.

"Whatever was on board that B-29, it was likely not a busted weather balloon." He would never explain himself any further. As an Air Force brat,I have always wondered about that one.

The best speculative guess I have heard is that it was a classified experimental aircraft that crashed. I don't have anything concrete, but it is the explanation I find most plausible.

I attempted to watch the film Loose Change linked above, but had to give it up after the first 15 minutes. Several members posting here have provided links to credible sources on air traffic control, air crashes, etc. I have no expertise in those areas, but I do know something about fire science, and found a number of the film’s allegations in that area to be total nonsense.

Regarding the Pentagon and the “impossibility” of jet fuel burning at temperatures above 1100 degrees, both the plane and the Pentagon were full of plastic. The fuselage of a Boeing aircraft is a graphite composite material containing high percentages of plastic. The fuel is carried in the wings, which are compartmentalized to minimize sloshing (just like a waterbed).

Modern offices are full of plastic, and burn quite nicely even without the addition of jet fuel. Here’s a video showing a fire test in a typical open plan office, and another showing 4 workstations (rather Spartan workstations at that; no padded chairs, piles of paper, etc.).

I don’t find it at all surprising that secondary explosions occurred. Airplanes also have other combustible liquids under pressure (hydraulic fluid, etc.). And the Pentagon undoubtedly had fuel sources (natural gas for HVAC, flammable solvents in print shops and maintenance areas, etc.) that may have become involved as the fire spread.

Then we have the statement that the twin towers were the first steel-framed buildings ever to collapse in a fire. Are you kidding me? Take a steel framed (not steel reinforced concrete) office building, fill it with plastic (chairs, partitions, computers, printers, 3-ring binders, etc.). Ram it with a jet aircraft, spill all of the fuel, and ignite. How long do you think it would take for the steel to reach the point of structural failure? About as long as it took for the towers to collapse. I was actually participating in a fire code meeting on 9/11. Someone brought in a TV and as we watched the fires, we were speculating about the temperatures inside the towers, and how long the buildings could stand if they didn’t get those fires extinguished.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) spent 3 years investigating the structural failure of the twin towers and WTC 7. Those who are interested can review their reports and fire models here. Of course, for conspiracy theorists, NIST is part of the federal government and therefore in on the conspiracy.

Edited to fix a link

A good discussion of the “first collapse” issue can be found here.

Conspiracy Theorists bring up the fact that the towers were the first steel high rises to fall from fire in history. The fact is the towers had other firsts that day they never seem to include.

There were a lot of firsts for the WTC. In all the history of high-rise fires, not one has ever been hit with a plane traveling 500 miles an hour and had its fire proofing removed from its trusses. In all the history of high-rise fires, not one has ever had its steel columns which hold lateral load sheared off by a 767. In all the history of high-rise fires, not one has ever been a building which had its vertical load bearing columns in its core removed by an airliner. For Building 7, in all the history of high-rise fires, not one has ever been left for 6-7 hours with its bottom floors on fire with structural damage from another building collapse. Not the Madrid/Windsor tower did not have almost 40 stories of load on its supports after being hit by another building which left a 20 story gash. The Madrid tower lost portions of its steel frame from the fire. Windsor's central core was steel reinforced concrete. In all the history of high-rise fires, not one has ever been without some fire fighters fighting the fires.. . .

The towers and building 7 were essentially bolted together like an erector set. No concrete was used to create a ridged block or protect the columns. The steel webbing was pushed to the outer walls.

A challenge to conspiracy theorists:
1) Find a steel frame building at least 40 stories high
2) Which takes up a whole city block
3) And is a "Tube in a tube" design
4) Which came off its core columns at the bottom floors (Earthquake, fire, whatever - WTC 7)
5) Which was struck by another building or airliner and had structural damage as a result.
6) And weakened by fire for over 6 hours
7) And had trusses that were bolted on with two 5/8" bolts.

And which, after all seven tests are met, the building does not fall down. Anyone dissecting this into 7 separate events is lying to you.

Anything less than meeting these seven tests is dishonest because it's not comparing apples with apples. Showing a much lighter 4, 5 or even 15 story building which doesn't even take up a city block, and has an old style steel web design leaves out the massive weight the 47 story WTC 7 had bearing down on its south face columns. Yes, this is "moving the bar", back to where it should have started.

It is an absurdity to expect these buildings to perform the same during a collapse. This is why it's the first time in history these buildings fell as they did. It's the first time in history buildings constructed like this collapsed….

Edited to add spaces between paragraphs

Too bad this thread has gone dormant.

I suspect the Bilderbergers.

The 2009 Bilderberger meeting participants in Greece included: Greek prime minister Kostas Karamanlis; Finnish prime minister Matti Vanhanen; Sweden foreign minister Carl Bildt; U.S. State Department number two James Steinberg; U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner; World Bank president Robert Zoellick; European Commission head José Manuel Barroso; Queen Sofia of Spain; and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands...
Two queens only and no Hollywood stars? Nah, I doubt they need be given much attention.

This Bruce Schneier blog post from 2007 is still interesting and probably relevant.

----

Conspiracy Theories

Fascinating New Scientist article (for subscribers only, but there's a copy here) on conspiracy theories, and why we believe them:

{quote from New Scientist article}
So what kind of thought processes contribute to belief in conspiracy theories? A study I carried out in 2002 explored a way of thinking sometimes called "major event - major cause" reasoning. Essentially, people often assume that an event with substantial, significant or wide-ranging consequences is likely to have been caused by something substantial, significant or wide-ranging.

I gave volunteers variations of a newspaper story describing an assassination attempt on a fictitious president. Those who were given the version where the president died were significantly more likely to attribute the event to a conspiracy than those who read the one where the president survived, even though all other aspects of the story were equivalent.

To appreciate why this form of reasoning is seductive, consider the alternative: major events having minor or mundane causes -- for example, the assassination of a president by a single, possibly mentally unstable, gunman, or the death of a princess because of a drunk driver. This presents us with a rather chaotic and unpredictable relationship between cause and effect. Instability makes most of us uncomfortable; we prefer to imagine we live in a predictable, safe world, so in a strange way, some conspiracy theories offer us accounts of events that allow us to retain a sense of safety and predictability.

Other research has examined how the way we search for and evaluate evidence affects our belief systems. Numerous studies have shown that in general, people give greater attention to information that fits with their existing beliefs, a tendency called "confirmation bias." Reasoning about conspiracy theories follows this pattern, as shown by research I carried out with Marco Cinnirella at the Royal Holloway University of London, which we presented at the British Psychological Society conference in 2005.

The study, which again involved giving volunteers fictional accounts of an assassination attempt, showed that conspiracy believers found new information to be more plausible if it was consistent with their beliefs. Moreover, believers considered that ambiguous or neutral information fitted better with the conspiracy explanation, while non-believers felt it fitted better with the non-conspiracy account. The same piece of evidence can be used by different people to support very different accounts of events.

This fits with the observation that conspiracy theories often mutate over time in light of new or contradicting evidence. So, for instance, if some new information appears to undermine a conspiracy theory, either the plot is changed to make it consistent with the new information, or the theorists question the legitimacy of the new information. Theorists often argue that those who present such information are themselves embroiled in the conspiracy. In fact, because of my research, I have been accused of being secretly in the pay of various western intelligence services (I promise, I haven't seen a penny).
{end of quote from New Scientist article}

Lots of good stuff in the article, including instructions on how to create your own conspiracy theory.

Oh and here is a tidbit about another homegrown Texas lunatic...

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/The-Vote/2010/0211/Debra-Medina-self-destr...

Come again?

As a Texan, this is more than I can bear.

It is getting out of control. This woman wants to be governor!

>119 BOB81:

I can see how that would look like a conspiracy to the Poles, but I can't believe they didn't have some kind of continuity of government program. Load numerous top level officials onto a single plane, and send them off into questionable weather? Not a good idea, conspiracy or no.

Among the victims I noticed Ryszard Kaczorowski, the last president of the Polish Government in Exile, which lasted from 1939 until it was finally dissolved upon the election of Walesa. Kaczorowski held the post for less than year.

What an interesting historical footnote, and a sad way to end it.

From the link, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, rushing to the scene of the crash, announced that he would personally head the inquiry.

Whatever the truth is, I think plenty of reasonable people can be less than reassured when sensitive information is in his hands. None of the press accounts in English that I've read seem to acknowledge that this is exactly the sort of thing that many Poles would rather not hear at such a horrible time.

Also not reported is the disagreement about the fog on the ground. Watching a Polish television channel yesterday showing the airport area about an hour or an hour and ten minutes after the crash, I could see, and a commentator observed, that it wasn't very foggy. Visibility didn't appear to be that bad. There could be plenty of benign explanations for this apparent discrepancy, of course, but it is only natural that Poles should wonder about it.

Yo! Just came across a great one, but unfortunately I lost the link.

The crux of it is (and there's an actual published book setting forth the deal) is that the looting of museums and general cultural destruction taking place in Iraq at the time of the US invasion (circa 2003) was "No accident", but part of "the plan", by neoconservatives this time, to drop Iraq's past into the memory hole in order to rebuild a new model democracy in the middle east.

Some commentators on the blog discussing the book were smooth enough (grump!) to point out that its all the fault of the Jews (what else is new?). In fairness, other commentators told them to take a long walk on a short pier, its still interesting how much traction "The Jews did it" can still get.

Memories of deaths in questionable air disasters:

Ramon Franco Spanish Right Wing politician, brother of the fascist leader who took over Spain in 1939; and General Nola, one of F. Francoʻs 3 major military allies.

Hale Boggs (D LA), dissenting member of the Warren Commission

Zia ul-Haq, the dictator (nominally president) of Pakistan -- his regime followed that of Zulkifar Ali Bhutto whom he ousted and executed.

Senators Heinz (R, PA) and Tower (R TX)
in separate accidents, but within a week of
each other.

Dag Hammarskjold, 2nd Sec. general
of the U.N., 1961

Wiley Post, pilot and Will Rogers, celebrity in the same accident.

Several C & W singers, celebrities, in separate accidents--private planes.

None of these prove the existence of a "Conspiracy"; but certainly are far from DIS-proving one.

#124: People who fly a lot tend to be the ones who end up in crashes. Famous people dieing in plane crashes does go towards disproving a conspiracy, since only a conspiracy could make sure that only non-famous people die in plane crashes. This is the type of conspiracy mongering that's the most annoying, the posting of lists of random people with no connection as if there were a pattern in the noise. Even on a single incident level, there's no disproving anything; the best investigation in the world, like the one into Ron Brown's crash, just gets shrugged off.

#125: 3. Republican Congressman Larry McDonald on KAL 007. (That it was shot down is not really at issue, but some alleged that the plane was targeted because Mcdonald was on the plane.)

Not anyone reputable in the 21st century. In 1992-3, as a good-faith gesture, Boris Yeltsin handed over a wealth of data, including ground communications that showed the authorities on hand confused, with the man who called the shot being absolutely sure this was a spy plane.

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God, you people are so naive. Here's the truth.

Conspiracy theories are about envy and personal failure. If there really is a conspiracy then it is better to join it than scoff at it or pretend it is evil. My example would be Skull and Bones and other secret fraternities on college campuses. They are selective and only take the cream of the crop, not failures and people that would embarass their organization.

Hitler wanted to be an artist. His work was deemed terrible by the Viennese Art Academy. He suffered through homelessness and poverty. Instead of blaming himself for being a bad painter he blamed the Jews for conspiring against him. The title of his autobiography:My Struggle, reflects his belief in his adversity and poverty is a result of a conspiracy. Mein Kampf sold well in the 1920s because Hitler was able to connect his own story of adversity with the economic problems of Germans. Instead of blaming the Depression on the stock market crash on Wall Street Hitler attributed it to a cabal of Jews, liberals and Marxists. If only the Viennese Art Academy had accepted Hitler's paintings and not turned their collective noses up at them. Hitler could have been a successful and productive artist and stopped worrying about Jewish people and German patriotism.

Conspiracy theorists blame some murky group like the Illuminati and the Free Masons for their own failures (or society's own failures) rather than thinking of how weak or stupid they or society's institutions are.

#131: If there really is a conspiracy then it is better to join it than scoff at it or pretend it is evil.

No, it actually is evil to try and control the world for the personal profit of you and your cronies.

My example would be Skull and Bones and other secret fraternities on college campuses. They are selective and only take the cream of the crop,

They're selective, yes; they take elitists and pure-bloods who want to look down upon the average person. The students who are going to get a 4.0 have better things to do than hang out with the Skull and Bones.

“Why the hell haven't they taken over the world by now, if they're all that powerful?” George asked.

Hagbard replied, “There are five reasons. First, there are organizations like the Discordians which are almost as powerful and which know almost as much as the Illuminati and which are able to thwart them. Second, the Illuminati are too small a group to enjoy the creative cross-fertilization necessary to progress of any kind, and they have been unable to advance much beyond the technological level they reached thirty thousand years ago. Like Chinese Mandarins. Third, the Illuminati are hamstrung in their actions by the superstitious beliefs that set them apart from the other Atlanteans. As I told you, they're the world's first religion. Fourth, the Illuminati are too sophisticated, ruthless and decadent to want to take over the world - it amuses them to play with world. Fifth, the Illuminati do rule the world and everything that happens, happens by their sufferance."

"Those reasons contradict each other," said George.

- An (edited) excerpt from the Illuminatus trilogy.

Is it evil to rule the world? Is it not what every man wants? To ascend to the Throne of God?

Seriously, who wants to rule the world? How much detail-oriented micromanaging crap are you willing to put up with? Sim City is fun because you can stop when you get bored.

#134: If it is not evil to take over the world, which would involve murder, theft, bearing false witness, coveting (you know, the classic sins), enslavement, deception, and genocide (the modern evils) at unprecedented levels, I'm not sure what evil would cover?

No, actually I think a desire to rule the world or ascend to the Throne of God is pretty darn aberrant and indicative of deep mental problems.

#135: Yeah. And in the real world, you can't just start over if you screw up, and there's always people to complain about how you're running things, and some places just don't want to get along...

Are you saying God is Evil? Why should we be productive and smart if not to extend our prestige and power? American culture is based on freedom. Freedom to and freedom from. Why go into business except to make money and what is money besides power?

I would like to add on about another great American freedom--freedom from patriotism. One of the great things about America is there is no conscription. If I don't want to fight a stupid war I don't have to. There is always someone willing to take my place at the frontline in our voluntary professional army's war on terror. If the government wastes my money on a stupid war that is one thing. If the government wastes my life on a stupid war that is quite a different story.

War is about money. They do suck equally. I won't fight. I am not going to defend a government controlled by Wall Street swine. If Wall Street wants to defend their interests they should raise their own mercenary army with their own cash--don't ask me to waste my life on their greedy schemes.

There are no non professionals are either side. Everyone has something to gain and it is not glory or freedom.

If you are willing to die for something, die for something good, not for a goddamn flag or goddamn oil or whatever some lying politician tells you. My hero is Good Soldier Schweik. If war is a power struggle that never ends it is a pretty good idea not to get involved.

If you ask me about Islam--what is the difference? The Christian Taliban wants to take over the country--can Osama bin Ladin be any worse than Pat Robertson and Sarah Palin? No. Let the Christians and the Muslims duke it out with each other.

So enough of this garbage about "defending freedom". If you want to fight go right ahead. It ain't popular what I'm saying but it is true.

can Osama bin Ladin be any worse than Pat Robertson and Sarah Palin? No. Let the Christians and the Muslims duke it out with each other.

Yes, he most certainly can, and probably is. Palin and Robertson are puffed up blowhards, but that's about as dangerous as they will get.

Not from my perspective--they and the "purified" GOP is as bad bin Ladin. Ron Paul wants to ban abortion and abolish Social Security. He is a nutjob just like his son named for the biggest Capitalist nutjob of all Ayn Rand. Government is taking over our lives so let Wall Street take over our lives. If Obama fails he and the other nutjobs of the "purified" GOP will run this country into a hole so big it will never get out.

Just to show you I am not a coward, I will sign up for the War on Capitalism and the State that supports the institution of Capitalism. That is a war I can get behind. I'll be first in line to fight that war.

144: And you wonder why no one takes you seriously.

Because that's the point.

147: Ah, everyone is a fool but you? Isn't that sort of the hallmark of conspiracy theory thinking?

You're being played, StormRaven.

I am just taking your selfishness theories to their logical extent. People love their governments when times are good. 1960s radicalism was based in the fact that America was losing the Vietnam War. The youth, men who were being drafted to go and fight in Vietnam, realized the Vietnam War could not be won. It was in their self interest not to fight it. That is why the Baby Boomers are considered selfish while "the Greatest Generation" that fought World War II is considered selfless. So is war selfless or selfish? It depends on your perspective.

If I am a Muslim it would be in my best interests for America to lose the War on Terror. The victory of Islam in America would put me in charge politically and economically. If you were a German-American in the 1930s it would be in your best interests for Germany to win World War II. In a Hitler ruled America German-Americans would be put in charge of everything and would benefit economically and politically. Some Americans felt this way (the Bund movement in the 1930s) and some of them went to Germany to fight for Hitler. Their actions, treasonous as they are, are justified from your point of view that selfishness is good.

So why is selfishness wrong politically but right economically I do not understand. The Russian Revolution was based in military mutinies. They were being thrown into World War I--a war Russia could not win. So they decided what the heck--Lenin will end the war so I will join him and fight the Czar, the officers and eventually the provisional government. Russians rebelled against Communism for blue jeans and rock and roll music. The popularity of blue jeans and rock and roll are a result, ironically, of 1960s radicalism. The Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix were counterculture rebels--antiwar and anticapitalist McGoverniks if you will.

William F Buckley was a staunch conservative but no libertarian. In his book, God and Man at Yale he argues that atheists should be fired from the Yale faculty. Atheism is unamerican he argued and should be discouraged by the government and American academic institutions. So much for Ayn Rand and Penn Jillette.

A GOP victory in 2012 will be a victory for conservative Christians and will further the Christianizing of America. Abortion, outlawed. Contraceptives, outlawed. Homosexuality, outlawed. Think of that when you go to the ballot box to cast your anti-big government rage vote.