Yet More Griffin Transcribed

The United States of Amnesia continues to transcribe bits of Griffin's Debunking 9-11 Debunking.

Continuing the ploy of suggesting that all "experts" support the official account while only loony "conspiracy theorists" support the alternative theory, the PM authors, in introducing the controlled demolition claim, do not mention any of the physicists, engineers or philosophers of science who have made it.

Heheh, philosophers of science? I do believe that Uncle Fetzer fits in that category; I wonder what Griffin's many worshippers over at 9-11 Blogger will make of that passage. "Many engineers"? Whom does he have in mind; the only engineer I know of that has endorsed this crackpottery is a guy who spent his career designing oil rigs.

They then mention that the controlled demolition hypothesis is also endorsed by Morgan Reynolds, former chief economist at the Department of Labor... [and] continuing their effort to discredit their opposition, begin their next paragraph with these words: "Though Reynolds and a handful of other skeptics cite academic credentials to lend credence to their views..." Although I am not quite sure how many skeptics these authors can hold in one hand, "a handful" suggests merely a few, perhaps a dozen. However, the website "Professors Question 9/11" has well over a hundred names, and they, moreover, constitute only a fraction of the active members of the 9/11 truth movement having academic credentials.

Of course, Reynolds is one of the nuttiest of the nutbars, one who even wrote that fruitcake Spooked911 was one of the few researchers doing good work on 9-11. Like this work and this.

Of course, as that statement indicates, it is necessary for those who challenge the official conspiracy theory to be able to appeal to experts in fields relevant to the question of why the buildings collapsed, and one of those fields is physics. The 9/11 truth movement includes several people with advanced degrees in physics, one of whom, Steven Jones, is among the leading critics of the official theory. The movement also includes chemists, engineers, computer scientists, mathematicians, architects, pilots, former military officers, politicians, and people with expertise in political science and military intelligence, all of which are relevant to the question at hand. [see the Patriots Question 9/11 website]

Physics is only tangentially related to structural engineering which is the real relevant field to discussing the question of why the buildings collapsed and there are thousands of engineers on the side of the "official conspiracy theory" and only that oil rig guy on the side of the 9-11 kooks.

Moreover, if my 9/11 books are nutty, as Cockburn suggests, then people who endorse them must also be nuts. The list of nuts would hence include economist Michel Chossudovsky, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, British Minister of Parliament Michael Meacher, former Assistant Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of Housing Catherine Austin Fitts, journalists Wayne Madsen and Barrie Zwicker, Institute for Policy Studies co-founder Marcus Raskin, former diplomat Peter Dale Scott, international law professors Richard Falk Burns Weston, social philosopher John McMurtry, theologians John B. Cobb, Harvey Cox, Carter Heyward, Catherine Keller, and Rosemary Reuther, ethicists Joseph C. Hough and Douglas Sturm, writer A.L. Kennedy, media critic and professor of culture Mark Crispin Miller, attorney Garry Spence, historians Richard Horsley and Howard Zinn, and the late Rev. William Sloane Coffin, who, after a stint in the CIA, became one of the country's leading preachers and civil rights, anti-war, and anti-nuclear activists.

Yeah, I'd say they're all nuts, David. And I can tell because they endorsed your cruddy books. What's your point? Are we supposed to be impressed with their credentials? That may work with somebody looking at the book in Borders, but it cuts no ice here.