Screw Loose Change in College
I actually noticed this a while ago, but Pat talking about Loose Change being brought up in a high school course reminded me of it. Both Loose Change, and Screw Loose Change are being used in a college communication course at the Catholic University of America.
From the course syllabus:
Thursday, November 30:
September 11 conspiracy theories: Loose Change by Dylan Avery
Screw Loose Change website challenging Avery.
Website challenging the Naudet 9-11 documentary
Richard Hofstadter's 1964 article, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics"
Personally this seems like the responsible way to bring up these issues. I must admit, Loose Change is great propaganda, and this brings up interesting issues with the ways people view modern communication.
posted by James B. @ 4:35 PM
21 comments
21 Comments:
Sometimes I love my Alma Mater. I found this link through some of the related reading.
Believe it or not, this is my second blog that has been part of the required curriculum for a college course.
Believe it or not, this is my second blog that has been part of the required curriculum for a college course.
Good grief. What was the first one? Proving Fermat's Last Theorem? String Theory Made Easy?
I will probably get blasted for this, but I find the whole exercise quite ridiculous. Why are colleges spending time teaching a conspiracy theory with no supporting evidence, pushed by fruitcakes and lunatics, and the competing people who can argue that the theory is baloney? Wouldn't it be better if we teach things with actual truth behind them?
What next - that there really was a second killer on the Grassy Knoll?
"blindly accept the OS based on the 911 commission's finding seems too gullible"
Nobody here "blindly" accepts the OS based on the 911 commissions findings.
What an idiotic thing to say.
Wouldn't it be better if we teach things with actual truth behind them?
Yes lets teach the future how to blindly follow the state, no questions asked.
Better yet, lets do that so that it requires no critical thinking whatsoever. And when it is all said and done, line up to get your diploma and your brown shirts.
Sure LC is flawed in many aspects, however, since the professor is using a balanced approach (up to this point) as opposed to this is THE way it happened, I don't see what the problem is. Actually it is a great idea to critique both sides and then let the reader/viewer decide. Remember, history is written by the winners but that doesn't make history factual.
I will probably get blasted for this, but I find the whole exercise quite ridiculous.
I wouldn't teach this in a history class, because it has no historical basis. Teaching it in a communications class seems perfectly legit though, it is a modern form of communication. It is a bit analogous to a psychology class in deviant behavior, but there is no reason students should not learn critical thinking of the media.
Democrat whined...
"However, blindly accept the OS based on the 911 commission's finding seems too gullible,..."
That canard of the "official story" just shows your own gullibility, democrat, and your absolute desperation to avoid having to deal with real evidence.
BTW, how are your lessons going on progressive collapse mitigation?
I wouldn't teach this in a history class, because it has no historical basis.
Does that hold true for all conspiracies?
democrat wrote...
"I find the progressive collapse of the OS with the lapse of time very interesting,..."
Too bad there's no "official story", democrat, isn't it?.
"I expect to receive grade A at the end, but life is a long run."
At least you realize that "controlled demolition" is a crock and unsupportable.
When will you get around to realizing that the "9/11 Truth Movement" is a crock, too? That's the only way you won't flunk out, after all.
I wouldn't teach this in a history class, because it has no historical basis. Teaching it in a communications class seems perfectly legit though, it is a modern form of communication.
Crap like this should not be "taught."
After all, we could also teach that Hitler actually loved the Jews, and only killed 2,000 of them accidentally.*
*Which the Iranians, and their fellow American psycho David Duke, a 9/11 Troother, says is the truth.
This is what is taught. You object to the content, Simon.
----
This course, first in the Communication Technology and Culture honors sequence, considers notions of "text" in our "era of technological reproducibility." We analyze texts in many media: printed, digitized, photographed, filmed, recorded, designed, performed, built, and online. Technology relates to texts in at least three ways. All texts are technological because all come to us through media. Most texts show the influence of technology in structure, format, or style. And some texts address technology directly as a topic.
Hitler had a love/hate relationship with the Jews- Loved 'em as an expendable slave labor force and hated them for their ethnic and cultural background.
What facist dictator wouldn't love a huge slave-labor force?
I wouldn't have any problem with a university teaching about Nazi propaganda either, as long as it is presented as such, and not as historical fact. I did my senior thesis as an undergrad on the use of Soviet propaganda, that doesn't mean I believed it.
Off Topic here but---
Disgrunteled employee or Truther?Interview with former Boston Center Air Traffic Controller and pilotsfor911truth.org member Robin Hordon. Visit http://pilotsfor911truth.org for latest analysis into the events of Sept. 11, 2001.
A former Boston Center air traffic controller has gone public on his assertion that 9/11 was an inside job and that Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon tracked three of the four flights from the point of their hijacking to hitting their targets. In an astounding telephone interview, Robin Hordon claims air traffic controllers have been ignored or silenced to protect the true perpetrators of 9/11.
A recording of the phone conversation was posted on Google video late yesterday by the Pilots For 9/11 Truth organization.
After having acquired a background in aviation, Hordon underwent rigorous FAA training to become an air traffic controller and was posted to Boston Center where he worked for eleven years. He did not work at Boston Center when 9/11 occurred but still knows people that did who concur with his conclusions. In comparing the stand down of air defense on 9/11 and what should have occurred according to standard operating procedure, he quickly concluded on the very afternoon of the attacks that they could represent nothing other than an inside job.
"On September 11th I'm one of the few people who really within quite a few hours of the whole event taking place just simply knew that it was an inside job, and it wasn't because of the visuals, the collapses, whatever....I knew that it was an inside job I think within about four or five o'clock that afternoon and the reason that I knew is because when those aircraft did collide and then we got the news and information on where the aircraft were and where they went....if they knew where the aircraft were and were talking to them at a certain time then normal protocol is to get fighter jet aircraft up assist," said Hordon.
Hordon said that from personal experience he knew the system was always ready to immediately scramble intercepting fighters and that any reversal of that procedure would have been unprecedented and abnormal. He had also personally handled both real hijacking situations in his airspace and other emergency procedures.
"I know people who work there who confirmed to me that the FAA was not asleep and the controllers could do the job, they followed their own protocols," he stated.
Hordon said that the only way the airliners could have avoided being intercepted was if a massive electrical and communications failure had occurred which it didn't on that day, adding that there was "no way" the hijacked airliners could have reached their targets otherwise.
He highlighted the fact that only an emergency handling of aircraft protocol change on that day could have interrupted standard operating procedure and hijacking protocol. Hordon said it was unbelievable how far American Airlines Flight 11 was allowed to go off course without the appropriate action being taken on behalf of flight controllers.
G
"What you do is you don't wait for the judge, jury and executioner to prove it's an emergency, if things start to go wrong you have the authority to simply say I am going to treat this craft as if it is an emergency, because if everybody's wrong then fifteen minutes later no big thing."
Hordon emphasized that the debate has deliberately been channeled by NORAD and the government to focus on reactions to hijackings, when the real issue is the emergency condition of the aircraft well before a hijacking is even confirmed.
He went on to explain how as soon as the hijacking of Flight 11 was confirmed at around 8:24am, the entire system, from every FAA center coast to coast, to the Pentagon, to the President were informed and knew of the hijacking.
"The system now had to make some phone calls and call up Rummy's Pentagon and Rummy's Pentagon is the one that would then make the decision."
"Well, Rummy's Pentagon on American 11 didn't answer the phone, neither 175, didn't answer the phone and they didn't answer the phone until they were absolutely embarrassed into answering the phone somewhere along the flight of United 93 and American 77 - first formal contact was at this particular time," said Hordon.
"That is all distractionary, that is all designed to keep people off the focus - the real focus is what the air traffic controller did immediately upon seeing that American 11 was in trouble and what we do as air traffic controllers is we get eyes and ears on this flight."
Hordon underscored the fact that after the confirmed hijacking of Flight 11, the entire FAA system would have been on full alert and obsessively watching the skies for any unusual activity, and that such activity as the hijacking of Flight 77 would have been immediately reported to supervisors instantaneously, as well as being continually tracked.
"If the air traffic controller were going by emergency procedures which he is trained to do, he would have reached out directly to ADC (NORAD) and say what do you see?" said Hordon.
(SD-which to highlight that point above, happens routinely when pilots encouter UFO's. Source-documentary on Discovery Channel or Sci-Fi. Easy to find. They actually played the recordings on the docu.)
This highlights the absurdity of Dulles controllers mistaking Flight 77 for a fighter jet as it approached Washington as was reported, and the plane's over 40 minute uninterrupted journey to the Pentagon after a hijack was confirmed.
Hordon debunked the recent Vanity Fair piece that whitewashed NORAD's response as a consequence of confusion and the supposition that NORAD needs exact flight coordinates to enact any kind of response, and that the planes were supposedly invisible to radar and couldn't be tracked properly.
"It's very clear now through testimony and documents given to us by the federal government that indeed....the Boston Center actually tracked American 11 as a primary target after it lost its radar, after it lost its transponder, all the way to World Trade Center," he said.
"Further information indicates later the NORAD radars had it tracked....the bottom line of the story is that all of those aircraft were always tracked all the time by the FAA air traffic control centers," said Hordon, pointing out that information showing air traffic controllers tried insistently to alert military command structures is being locked down because it points to finger of responsibility to Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon, who were also tracking all the aircraft from the point of hijacking to the impact on their targets.
This is the reason why, as Hordon stated, that we don't have complete access to flight data recorders and FAA tapes, which in the case of a conversation between six New York Air Route Traffic Control Center controllers was ordered to be shredded , because if studies of that evidence were undertaken it would become very clear as to who was really behind the attack.
"What they did is they cherry picked transmissions, communications and statements made all on these four flights that were able to paint and write a story that the public would look at and so ooh wow, this really happened - but it wasn't factual, it was a story and it tell not tell anything other than what the high perps wanted the public to hear - they cherry picked this information," said Hordon.
Hordon ended by saying that only with the testimony from the dozens of flight controllers who have been silenced or ignored would the true story about who carried out 9/11 begin to emerge.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9147890225218338952&hl=en
14 December, 2006 11:28
Does that hold true for all conspiracies?
Here you confuse conspiracy theory and conspiracy (don't worry, lots of the folks in your movement seem to lack the ability to understand the difference in English terms).
A conspiracy is an event supported by evidence and historically shown to have occured (Operation Himmler, Gunpowder Plot, and so on).
A conspiracy theory is an event, a fantasy really, with no evidence but coincidence, red herring, and invented "facts" (JFK assassination, 9/11 inside job, and so on).
After all, we could also teach that Hitler actually loved the Jews, and only killed 2,000 of them accidentally.*
Nesnyc must be at that conference. He kept saying Hitler was a Zionist.
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Shawn, I have no confusion issues as you will read below
This is exactly what I meant as supported by the following:
conspiracies
plural -cies.
1. the act of conspiring.
2. an evil, unlawful, treacherous, or surreptitious plan formulated in secret by two or more persons; plot.
3. a combination of persons for a secret, unlawful, or evil purpose: He joined the conspiracy to overthrow the government.
4. Law. an agreement by two or more persons to commit a crime, fraud, or other wrongful act.
www.dictionary.com
Don't worry Shawn, folks like you lack the ability to understand the definition of conspiracies in the English language.
And please don't confuse the term with your own definition of what you thought I was thinking about.
14 December, 2006 18:19
And please don't confuse the term with your own definition of what you thought I was thinking about.
I got your point exactly. You think your bullshit inside job is as historically accurate as actual conspiracies.
Unfortunately for you, your thinking is mistaken.
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