I wouldn’t have thought ten years ago that I would be doing what I’m doing now, blogging the strange ins and outs (mostly outs) of the conspiracist mind. If you haven’t heard, it’s been a decade since the World Trade Center attack. The country has not yet fully recovered from that incomprehensible day. I remember groping for some semblance of a narrative to explain what was unfolding in front of my eyes, and I clearly remember the sense of watching the second tower collapsing with a sense of the unreal.
Eventually that narrative emerged, but there are, as always, holdouts against reality, and to these people I now turn. There may be some old stuff in here. The deluge of 9/11 conspiracist stuff I’ve gotten on Twitter this week includes a lot of rehashed, long debunked stuff, especially youtube videos.
- Truthers deny 9/11 anniversary.
- I’m going to need to see 9/11 Conspiracy Roadtrip. Anyone have a link? Some Australians, usually the most sensible part of the realm, take issue with the documentary and call it a “hit piece.”
- David Chandler: Reciting Newton’s laws does not mean you are good at science.
- The Digital Cuttlefish has a brief appraisal and is mostly right about the Truthers. His Cuttliness also links to a few Slate articles about the Truthers.
- There is currently a conference in Toronto of 9/11 conspiracy theorists. It seems that they, like so much of the 19th century conspiratorial rhetoric agains the Jesuits I have been reading lately, are framing their arguments as a jury trial or at least focusing on forensic deliberation, only without the defense.
- Here are hacktivists claiming to have hacked Toronto jumbotrons.
- Well, hell. Mabus was right. Usenet prophecies about 9/11.
- Who controlled the planes?
- Wow. I found something worse than Rebecca Black. It was through David Icke’s site. This greasy cheese-eating troll and his bopping idiot consort better never meet a family member or they’re going to get disemboweled:
- FederalJack reminds us of the Israeli Mossad connection to 9/11, but forgets to remind us that the original report was withdrawn within 20 minutes by the outfit that released the info about Jooos on a bridge.
- The Truthers have started a 9/11 petition at a White House petition website. Be prepared to be completely ignored, gents.
- The Onion has their take on the week. I remember a week or so after the attacks when the Onion’s headline was perhaps the most accurate one I had yet seen: “HOLY FUCKING SHIT!”
- They also ran: “9/11 Memorial Curators Decide Not To Display Swastika Formed By Twisted Girders Found At Ground Zero.”
- Perhaps my favorite classic Onion film. Al Qaeda refutes 9/11 conspiracy theories. “Talking to you is like talking to a goat.”
- NEW EVIDENCE! FROM 2009!!! AN IRREFUTABLE YEAR!11!
- German politician loses all respectability by doubting 9/11. This is as it should be.
- Preemptive blame on the government (read the last line) from Alex Jones. Screw reliable sources. They have a time machine!
- Speaking of Jones, he has a reporter ask people whose opinions are utterly worthless if WTC7 was demolition. Also, it seems clear they could not find a credentialed reporter to work for Jones.
- Here’s a link to the original nanothermite paper. One of the collaborators of this pay-to-play journal article opted to retire instead of letting his peers at BYU review his work.
- An augmented reality app allows you to share your story of 9/11.
- Here’s a vid about all the witnesses to 9/11 dying. It’s spelled “dying,” Kevin.
- Popeye and the Intel Hub are indignant about…everything as always.
- Hey, this is nauseating: Christians for 9/11 Truth: A Call to Action.
- Wired discusses the 9/11 Truther comic. If someone could send me a pdf of this, I’d appreciate it. I’m not paying a dime for this tripe.
- There is nothing scarier than clicking on a link and seeing crazy person Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) smiling at you. Don’t click on this. She’ll smile at you.
- The 10-year anniversary ad campaign about Building 7 is launched by AE911Truth. I found a poster outside of my IIG-Atlanta meeting this morning announcing it, the same poster that popped up in Sydney:
- Susan Lindauer–not competent to assist her own espionage defense–Truther superstar.
- New group starts up: World911Truth.org.
- On Point did a story on Truthers. It was quite good, if you have not yet heard it.
- Isn’t the fact that (some) Truthers plan to tone it down on 9/11 sort of admitting that they don’t really have enough evidence to take the stand they are crowing about? If there are any Truther protests, they will do immense damage to their movement. So get out there, guys! AE911Truth Austin is heading out.
- Explosives at the Pentagon too.
- The Memoirs of a 9/11 Truth Activist.
- Here is a fair example of why I believe that we are not going to see the end of Trutherism in my lifetime. The two sides don’t speak the same language. And
- Allen L. Roland writes the worst, most exploitive thing ever.
- Veteran’s Today stunningly gets it right in their title: “I Can’t Even Begin to Understand.”
- From some bronie: “Oliver Stone: 9/11 Whitewasher and Sellout.”
- Rosie O’Donnell is still not clever. Twitter proves this.
- A 9/11 coloring book has been released. Released in the sense of anthrax, not in terms of publishing.
- David Icke and Luke Rudkowski: two bad things that go worse together.
- And speaking of the perpetual embarrassment machine, Luke managed to retrieve another not-a-story from the chairman of the 9/11 commission, while raising awareness of the uninstitutionalized mentally ill.
- Truth Davis (California) comes up with a deeply flawed statement of purpose. They aren’t even sure that a plane hit the Pentagon. How could ANYTHING they have to say be worth hearing?
- AE911Truth’s guide to exploiting the anniversary.
- Conspiracists: “After 10 Years, 75% of New Yorkers Never Saw Footage of WTC Building 7.” No. All you can say is that 75% don’t remember seeing it. I remember seeing it, and I was in St. Louis. What a strange cover-up.
- An older vid: Bill Cooper’s 9/11 Illuminati Satanic Ritual.
And that’s all. We’ll have double dose next week, as there is a lot of stuff I could not get to, like, all the non-9/11 conspiracy theories.
Update: A few weeks ago the archive.org put up a collection of 9/11 related news from the day of the attacks and other materials. I am told (below) that it is a woo-free zone.
RJB
Skeptical Humanities 
http://www.archive.org/details/911 is a nice site docuemnting a good chuck of the news footage of the week of 9/11/01. Worth a link.
I watched only some of the coverage of the 9/11 anniversary. Thankfully it was free of “Truther” disinformation. I remembered what I was doing that day and frankly it is amazing just how vivid my memories were. The worst was recalling how I felt when I saw the South and later North Towers collapse. I recall the terrible soul crushing experience of realizing that I am watching thousands of people die. So yesterday I did something I rarely do I cried for those that were lost and those that were and still are bereaved.
Updated. Thanks, folks!
RJB
Jet fuel burns at a maximum temperature of 500- 599 degrees F. Cremation of human remains occurs at 1400 to 1800 degrees. F. No trace of about half of those that purportedly died in the World Trade Centers has ever been recovered
So?
Perhaps I’m too morose or pessimistic (too much Saturn), but I always imagined the ultimate source of the mid-April thing was Hitler’s birthday falling on April 20.
After posting that I read you SI piece–and they jump right into anti-Semitism.
I know, that was completely unexpected. But they somehow think that they are not being antisemitic, which is…very very skillful compartmentalization.
RJB
Pacal, I was out of touch, buried in a library archive, when the attack started. I watched the old Today Show coverage two nights ago. That was upsetting. I had not seen it unfold in real time before.
One thing that always fascinates me about the Truthers is how many of them are willing to entertain essentially contradictory ideas i their heads simultaneously. The Rebecca Black video is a really good example. Part of the video implies that the Secret Service was in on the conspiracy and another part implies that the Mossad did it as a false flag operation. The difficulty with reconciling these claims should be obvious.
Allen L. Roland quoted Carl Sagan… so much anger is bubbling within me.
I just had to comment on the David Chandler video.
You have got to be kidding that this guy has any formal education in simple physics. I think most high school students would be able to find the error in 30 sec or less.
First off you do not need a lot of formula to figure out that when earths gravity is 1g and an object is accelerating at 2/3g there must be a force equal to 1/3g braking the objects fall.
So far so good.
Now the variation of Newton’s law he is using where forces are equal and opposite applies to objects that are in constant motion (or standstill) and does not have any acceleration. So the mumbling about the bottom structure only supporting 1/3 of the weight is all a bunch of B^&S. This applies to to the period where the top section is falling.
Now do the math 1 sec before the top section starts falling.
Here the bottom structure is fully supporting the top section (it is not yet falling) so upwards force is mg = downward force of mg.
What happened when the top starting falling – the supports started breaking. That is fully explained in the official reports.
The two things proven in the video are:
1) The top section is accelerating at 2/3g and hence the bottom structure is supporting by 1/3g to slow down the fall. (correct)
2) David Chandler has not concept of simple physics. (correct)
Forex Online Trading Systems…
[…]This Week in Conspiracy 9/11/11 « Skeptical Humanities[…]…