Monday, October 16, 2006

More Popular Mechanics

James Meigs expands on an article he wrote a few weeks ago in the New York Post.

One of the chilling things about 9/11 denial is how blithely its adherents are able to accuse their fellow citizens of complicity in evil. They think nothing of suggesting that Romero would keep silent about an enormous crime, that hundreds of researchers involved in 9/11 investigations were participants in a cover-up, or that journalists from Popular Mechanics, The Nation, the New York Times and hundreds of other publications would willingly hide such a plot. Many critics of Popular Mechanics complained that some of the sources we quoted work for the U.S. government. The assumption—explicitly stated by many—was that anyone connected with the government should be seen as implicated. Point of reference: Not including the U.S. Post Office, the federal government has more than 1.9 million employees.


Those barricades are getting crowded. The documentary Loose Change, a messy grab bag of thinly sourced conspiracy claims, became a campus and Internet sensation in 2005. Conspiracy groups recently began hosting conventions where hundreds of like-minded “skeptics” gather to compare notes. And conspiracy literature has become commonplace at antiwar marches and other political events. Most of those embracing the conspiracist mindset probably believe they are espousing a left-wing view. But dig deep enough in the “9/11 Truth Movement” and you come to a place where left and right collide.

The movie Loose Change, for example, frequently cites the American Free Press (AFP) as a source. According to the watchdog group, Center for Media and Democracy, AFP has its roots in the now defunct Liberty Lobby, a group associated with racism, anti-Semitism, and Holocaust denial. (Its founder,Willis Carto, was once described as “America’s most successful professional anti-Semite and racist.”) The award-winning liberal news site www.alternet.org says “the ability of the right-wing media apparatus to dominate public discourse is at the expense of liberal and progressive values.”

The site’s mission statement concludes: “This is what we are fighting against.” Yet, when the Web site offers a roundup of conspiracy theories, it lists www.rense.com as a source.

20 Comments:

At 16 October, 2006 13:19, Anonymous Anonymous said...

popular mechanics are pathetic, the davin coburn radio fiasco says it all

brad reagan on the radio lied about the core columns and said they didnt exist

enough said

 
At 16 October, 2006 13:45, Blogger Jacob said...

enough said

For some reason I don't think you'll ever say enough. Physicists sure have a lot of time on there hands. Shouldn't you be looking for a UFT? What are you researching?

 
At 16 October, 2006 13:47, Blogger Jacob said...

there=their

 
At 16 October, 2006 13:50, Blogger tym said...

It's especially telling how the campaign against popular mechanics is so heavily reliant on invoking Hearse and yellow-print journalism. I found a link to Alex Jones' response to the article on his radio show a while ago on the LC forums and was amazed at how long he railed on this before he even got into a single sentence fragment of the argument.

After about 10 minutes, I pretty much gave up on it.

I don't care what idea it is that you believe. When you're so set and strong in your belief that you're incapable of objectively looking at anything that may challenge your own viewpoint, that's a sad and scary way to live your life.

I used to know Jack Blood before he moved out to Texas about 2 years ago or so and it was always kindof fascinating to see how immediately angry he'd get whenever his ideas were challenged. It was almost an unnatural anger that something that contradicted his view of how things work was brought up.

From reading numerous sites, blogs, forums, and watching videos like 9/11 mysteries, loose change, etc, it seems like this is actually a common thread among CTists who are so certain that they're right, they never really try to really challenge their own view and see if it holds up.

 
At 16 October, 2006 14:23, Blogger tym said...

Alex Jones on major media outlets is a beautiful trainwreck.

It's only depressing when you start to realize that people can see him go all looney tunes around the straights and still buy into him.

It's like the Stephen Colbert character without the intentional sense of irony that lets you know it's all a joke.

 
At 16 October, 2006 16:23, Blogger The Artistic Macrophage said...

wrt Alex Jones, and his followers, have you seen the video when he runs into Mark roberts down at GZ. You want to talk about a CTer at his "spinning" best. Every time Mark asks for evidence (whish is for the most part all the guys really asks for), Alex Changes the subject. You cannot keep AJ on a given part of the 9/11 attack fro more than 20 seconds. The minute you call him on a point, he shifts, in classic CT fashion, to another topic.

It is amazing to watch...like a car wreck.

TAM

 
At 16 October, 2006 16:45, Blogger Yatesey said...

Not surprisingly, Doherty is claiming on his hugely viewed and wildly popular blog that he set this whole thing up to prove that we are his pets. Let's se, it took Alex 2 minutes to write an email to an address Doherty provided. Wow.

 
At 16 October, 2006 17:01, Blogger Unknown said...

So when a claim is given and we look into it were "pets?" Investigation is the major difference between a truther and a debunker. The fact remains that Pdoh dodges every question given to him and he is an outright liar. He can try to spin that all he wants but it won't work. I wonder when he had a chance to work with explosives while he was busy researching relativity and working on his masters? Perhaps he can tell us what explosives were used if he is so certain that they were used in the towers.

 
At 16 October, 2006 17:03, Blogger pomeroo said...

So much for the myth of British civility. I keep asking Pdoherty76 to show me a few errors--one error--in any topic on 911myths.com. He has stated that he has "reviewed the evidence," so my request should be easy to comply with. C'mon, now: tell us what you've got. Apart from your emotional need to blame America, what makes you think that the jihadists who rejoice in their triumph really had nothing to do with the attacks of 9/11. Don't be rude.

 
At 16 October, 2006 17:12, Blogger Unknown said...

There were well over 300 experts in various fields. Now they say the National Geographic, Popular Mechanics and Scientific American who have been around for a hunderd years or so and have been some of the primere publications for decades, all of a sudden are liers as well as the NIST, the society of civil engineers.
The toofers are so pathetic it is funny. I have yet to see any one of them provide a point by point rebuttle to PM
This whole 9/11 debate is an even bigger mismatch than the Six Day War.

 
At 16 October, 2006 17:28, Blogger shawn said...

Lol @ google and pm.

He laughs at Popular Mechanics and then says a moronic conspiracy site is good.

God, you're fucking dumb. I hope you never breed.

Because to them, 9/ 11 is a very dangerous issue that could take down the whole government if exposed.

Yeah it'd be real dangerous for the truth to come out about 9/11. Oh wait, it came out years ago and all you folks in denial can't stand that the "official story" happens to be the historical truth.

 
At 16 October, 2006 17:28, Blogger pomeroo said...

Kindly tell us what theories promoted by the conspiracy liars are NOT outlandish. We know what the really ridiculous, absurd, moronic, and preposterous ones are. What are the plausible ones? What do you think the NIST researchers and the Popular Mechanics experts are hiding?

 
At 16 October, 2006 17:29, Blogger Unknown said...

So I guess that's why CNN is so liberal huh? All those negative toned reports towards the Bush administration is just a CIA technique to make the administration look good ehh?

 
At 16 October, 2006 17:54, Blogger Unknown said...

The whaks never cease to amaze me

The Internet has done some wonderful things, but in making information so readily available, it has also made it cheap. Before, if you wanted to learn something, you actually had to go out and find a book and read it, or seek out someone who was an expert in the area, and ask them about it. Now you just do a quick google search and the information appears right before you. No need to think about it, or analyze it, the truth is instantly in front of you, it is in a video, it must be true!

What happens then though is you get information without wisdom, it becomes nothing more than a number of unrelated points superficially connected. The movie Loose Change is the perfect example of that. A trio of uneducated 20-somethings make a movie based off of screencaptures of conspiracy websites, and suddenly they are seen as speaking from authority. They never had to do the hard work to turn this information into wisdom, and thus it has no value. If they would have been required to have had more years of experience in order to accomplish this, if they had to exert more effort into compiling what went into their movie, then perhaps they would have paid more attention to the validity of their claims. Instead, they just wallow in their own arrogance, and declare themselves the bearers of the truth.

They can't explain their whak theories and the the investigation did not go the way they wanted so now they claim all they want is an independent investigation. I wonder who they could get that is more qualified than those who did the first? They do not have the ability to understand the first so how could they understand another. Maybe AJ and his band of bafoons could give them what they want?
Now it's tempting to sigh and say, okay, let's have another investigation. But you know what the problem is with that? It's that no investigation will be accepted by the Truthers that doesn't conclude that the WTC was brought down by controlled demolition by Bushitler and his cronies.

Who would they get to do the investigations that are more qualified than those who did the first? An economist? A philosopher or perhaps a cell phone engineer? Maybe the HR lady could give us a technical explanation.

 
At 16 October, 2006 21:15, Blogger James B. said...

I'd like to ask you yanks how does it feel
to be in a minority (16% CNN/NYT stat).


That poll asks whether the government has hiding something or not about warnings of terrorist attacks. Knowing how badly they screwed up, I would not be surprised if they are hiding something. I would probably answer that on the poll too.

I am confused though, the CTs claim there is no terrorist threat, and then point to a poll showing that people think the administration ignored the terrorist threat as supporting them. Shouldn't you be criticizing the 84% of the American public who foolishly think that terrorists attacked us on 9/11? Don't they know it was really our goverment? The sheeple...

 
At 16 October, 2006 21:34, Blogger Bubbers said...

"wrt Alex Jones, and his followers, have you seen the video when he runs into Mark roberts down at GZ.The minute you call him on a point, he shifts, in classic CT fashion, to another topic."



Excellent point Tam. I could not believe what I was seeing. Every time Mr. Roberts knocks down his bullshit, he changes the subject and starts rambling on about how we all know the truth, without providing any solid evidence to back up what he says. Pathetic that the Ctists follow a person who thinks that acting like a two year old is sufficient "proof". He did have one good point, however. We all do know the truth.The only problem for him is that he's a retard, and the "truth" he has in his head is way different from the truth that the people with brains know.

 
At 16 October, 2006 22:03, Blogger Bubbers said...

Man I love this fucking site. Especially the paranoia that can be seen from the Ctists. How delusional do you have to be to think that everyone who disagrees with your bullshit theories is either working for the government or is a sheep or a robot or a shill or can't think for themselves,etc.,etc. It's hilarious some of the things that they say. They formulate these ridiculous assumptions in their heads, and act like everything they say is fact. I know that I don't work for the government, because, well, I DON'T WORK FOR THE GOVERNMENT. That's what they think everyone of us does. And we all know amongst each other that the government doesn't have MILLIONS(literally a couple hundred million) of people walking around, hiding this from the Ctists. It's fascinating how stupid they are. And they need to stop talking about how we all just LOVE the government and the Bush Administration(I think it's safe to say that not too many of us are too fond of Bush). I don't like, nor do I trust the government. Look at Clinton. It was over something that really is trivial, but the guy LIED UNDER OATH. There is no integrity at all in politics. Get over it. The government has a lot of power. It's natural that this would be the case seeing as how we are the most powerful country on Earth. Get over it. And get over yourselves. Nobody here loves the government, or Bush for that matter. And as bad as our government is, we still have it better than 99% of other countries.So stop bitching. You people sound pathetic. And stop calling everyone else robots and sheep and stop talking about thinking for yourself. Obviously we don't watch a movie filled with assumptions and factual lies, and believe every bit of it. The ones who need to think for themselves are you idiot CTists. I've never seen a more gullible group of morons in my life.

 
At 17 October, 2006 02:53, Blogger Bubbers said...

Yes it really is. It's beyond sad. No words could even describe how absolutely pathetic these people are.

 
At 17 October, 2006 06:27, Blogger Unknown said...

After 5 years you would think that the toofers would have filed charges by now, just think what that would do for their cause but they have not so how can any body take them seriously except the whaks themselves. It is the leaders who are benifitting by sucking in these mindless fools in and makeing money off these fools, this is really what this socalled truth movement is all about, nothing more.

 
At 21 October, 2006 16:09, Blogger Alex said...

What the hell is wrong with you? There's no pipelines in Afghanistan, and no 655,000 dead Iraqis. You're insane.

 

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