Now That's Just Lazy

When we don't have anything to update about (9/11 deniers don't have much going for them these days), we don't update. When PrisonPlanet doesn't have anything going on, it accuses Facebook of censoring stories. And steals stories from Redditors.

You know the story before they can even finish secreting it: They're saying Facebook "censors" stories from, say, conspiracy-minded blogs. Isn't that just somehow exhausting? I don't know, but my eyelids got dim at the mere suggestion.

Facebook is what they call a "network good:" it becomes higher-quality the more people use it, like telephones. One telephone user is useless. Six billion telephone users make a global network of semi-insant communication. The more content and clickthroughs Facebook can generate, the more useful it is as a site. Besides, aren't these the same people who bleet that Facebook is a "tool of the CIA?" Wouldn't they want users posting "subsersive" content so they know who to, I don't know, sic the dogs on?

By the by, check out the pathetic posting that these guys claim is being "censored:"



Because power shutdowns across North America and Europe are *exactly* what happened on Wednesday... Oy.

"9/11 Deniers"

The other day I received an e-mail asking me about skeptics’ use of the term “9/11 Denier,” which is synonymous with Truther, 9/11 CT, etc.:

My interpretation is that this is a blatant attempt to equate alternative 9/11 theories with Holocaust Denial. As I'm sure you are aware, Holocaust Denial is the belief that the Holocaust simply did not take place, that the event did not occur. You are also entirely aware that proponents of alternative 9/11 information are not stating that the event did not occur, they are instead questioning who was responsible, and bringing specific aspects of the event under scrutiny. In this context, then, might the term "9/11 Deniers" seem like something of a misnomer?

To be clear, I did not start using this term to equivocate between 9/11 Deniers and Holocaust Deniers.

I started using this term because virtually every 9/11 denier falls outside the criteria our e-mailer suggests. I have never had a conversation with a 9/11 denier who was devoid of his or her own theories about “who did it,” “why they did it,” and “how they did it.” In my experience the usual culprits are Israel, some variation on an Illuminati-esque elite cabal (itself often synonymous with Israel), and/or key figures in the Bush Administration – sometimes armed with an elite posse of anonymous government agents. But in no case have I met someone who denies that 9/11 happened the way the evidence indicates it did without at least an “inkling” of who they really wanted to blame. So no, virtually no 9/11 deniers are just “questioning who was responsible” – an activity our co-skeptics over at Screw Loose Change refer to as “JAQing off.” Whether a denier chooses to present their beliefs as merely taking shots at established theory is fine; read them on their own Facebook groups or listen to them at the bar after a debate and you get a very different picture.

Of course, if 9/11 deniers were actually interested in “Truth” this is how they would it to be, anyway. Approaching a true understanding of reality through un-biased scientific inquiry involves the proposal of competing hypotheses and testing their ability to explain the evidence. As a statsy guy I tend to add the caveat that these hypotheses should always be compared to a null hypothesis, even if that hypothesis is something as mundane and obvious as “there’s nothing going on,” but in the absence of reliable priors that needn’t necessarily be the case. Deniers reject the concept, anyway. However, if they were really interested in something more than selling Alex Jones DVDs, they would not shy away from the obvious need to advance positive theories.

And finally it is important to note that 9/11 deniers are denying key aspects of what happened on September 11th. After all, hundreds of people, dozens of books, and countless articles document the motivations, actions, plans and intentions of the people who actually carried out the attacks. 9/11 Deniers are required to believe in the impossibility of organic terrorism. They’re required to believe that religious and ethnic extremists who happen to be Arab or Muslim are either incapable or unwilling to act on their beliefs (and have been so for hundreds of years). The millions of people around the world who have interacted with, been affected by, or have been in al Qaeda either don’t exist or are in on it. Abrudahman Khadr, the boy from an impoverished family that grew up alongside bin Laden’s Afghanistan operations? Obviously a fiction. Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, whose name is on thousands of accounting documents for al Qaeda? Clearly a Zionist tool. Maha El-Samnah and Zaynab Khadr, whose son died as a suicide bomber – leaving them proud of his martyrdom, but ashamed of his affiliation with al Qaeda? Probably paid actors.

Organizations like al Qaeda leave their indelible mark wherever they go. 9/11 deniers are required to pretend that those marks are just Western operatives covering their own tracks – an obvious delusion to everyone who has seen it in action, knows its members, and knows those who are tempted by it and any other extremist organization. To me, this is the key – 9/11 deniers flatly deny virtually every relevant event in the lead-up to 9/11. They deny that centuries of geopolitical events ever occurred. To them, history begins at the Balfour Declaration, crescendos when Ronald Reagan begins supplying anti-Communist rebels in Afghanistan, and ends when George Bush plants bombs in the North Tower and scampers off in a black helicopter. Between these pockmarks on the historical landscape there are thousands of religious ideologues, millions of oppressed victims of colonialism, and countless strategic opportunists struggling to guide human affairs to their own ends. 9/11 denier history is the shallowest history of all, one that requires them to reject the needs, desires, machinations and schemes of billions of people across centuries. 9/11 denial is reality denial.

That’s why I call them 9/11 Deniers.

"Who Did It?"

One of the first big projects I did for our Facebook group was to sit down and watch Loose Change with my hand waiting on the spacebar, pausing to jot down details every time the movie explicitly laid blame on someone for the September 11th attacks – who they were, what group they were part of, and so on. In the end, I reached a conservative count of 578,212 people – politicians, policemen, engineers, academics, soldiers, firefighters… heck, everyone from every profession from President of the United States to voiceover artist. Americans, Brits, Saudis, Israelis, Chinese, citizens of Dubai… you get the idea.



Slowly but surely, it looks like 9/11 deniers are starting to wake up to the depths of absurdity their claims lead them to, such as my count was meant to illustrate. At least, that’s what the new site whodidit.org demonstrates. They’ve already got 103 people – and that number logically must mushroom enormously.

The site has nothing new to offer, nothing provocative or intellectually consequential in any way, but it does have the names of 103 people that would have to be at the “top” of the conspiracy. Keep that in mind: at the top. These are not the guys who designed the demolition regime; they didn’t put in the orders for the electronic equipment designed to fake air-phone calls or fool black boxes; they’re not the ones who bought the fake uniforms worn by the agents who planted the explosives, and so on. They’re just the leaders. Even super villians need interns, dontchaknow.

Not only does this site offer nothing in the way of new evidence, novel claims, etc., it is a site dripping with such pure absurdity that I would seek to promote it actively. No hardcore denier can look at this list without realizing their religious faith requires the concerted actions of hundreds of thousands of enemies, strangers, people with competing interests, language barriers, worldviews, and so on to coordinate in what would be the most dangerous, ill-formed, absurd conspiracy in history.

So tell your friends all about it!

Diffusion of a Mission

One of the reasons that the 9/11 denier movement has essentially failed in its present form is because it has been unable to agree upon any sort of concrete policy proposals, focus on any particular type of concerted political action (street protests are technically not such), or even maintain coherence of mission. The ostensible goal of a "New 9/11 Commission" seems to have been lost in a cacophony of internal squabbling, absurd tangents (looking at you, Judy), and general disorganization.

This lack of focus is crippling to any movement seeking concrete change. After almost eight years of organizing attempts deniers have been unable to agree on what legislative arena they want to work in (courts? Popular votes on the state or Federal level? Agency lobbying?), how they want to get that work done (ballot initiatives? Arrests of the "perpetrators," whoever they are? Violent uprisings?), and how that's going to happen (consider the schizophrenic fundraising strategy of every such organization). The movement has produced no evidence that any of its donors or proponents should expect any forward progress whatsoever.

Deniers themselves have quickly diffused into other movements. They've moved on to other conspiracy theories, becoming anti-vaxxers, chemtrailers, birthers, etc.; other political movements, like the anti-Israel, right-libertarian, and peace movements, and so on. As evidence of this, consider a random screencap taken today of the only functional 9/11 denier Group on Facebook, the "9/11 Truth Library." This screencap is of the Group's Discussions page, which supposedly allows for more in-depth, long-form topics than appear on the Wall.



Anti-vax, environmentalism, chemtrails, anti-GE, 9/11ish, 9/11, anti-Israel, skepticism, black-ops theories, 9/11 - in that order. The "9/11 conspiracy theories" thread, like I said, was actually a thread started by a skeptic that has gone unaddressed for days. This movement is disaffected, bored, and unorganized. The 9/11 denier movement may rematerialize at some point in the future, but it can not succeed in its present form (consider that they wouldn't even be able to tell you what "succeed" means as regards their goals). Its financiers and proponents have no reason to expect any forward progress from its current leadership, organization or methodology. Might just be another "reset" year for the deniers.

Trollfeed, The Blog Post

The Facebook group recently got a post showing a "whistleblower's" talk about how the United States used, and continues to use, depleted uranium in combat zones. I found the talk rather interesting and I've re-posted it below.



Here's why I put "whistleblower" in quotes: I didn't know this was an unknown issue in 2010. I thought it was more or less common knowledge, at least among people who follow news about America's adventures abroad, that depleted uranium was part of the American arsenal. Bushflash did a few videos about it many years ago. It never occurred to me that people could hear phrases like "bunker buster" every day and not wonder what made bunker busters such effective busting devices.

Here's the thing that I think a lot of visitors to our group and this blog from "the other side" don't understand:

Not being a 9/11 denier =/= Support for the actions of any particular politician.

This point is often understated by skeptics, because I think we lack the gene for seeing issues in black and white that 9/11 deniers rely on to make their assumptions about the way the world works. Anyone who has been having the argument for long enough knows that words like "shill" and "spook" are the adjectives of choice 9/11 deniers use for those who refute their ideas. On their planet, it seems, they are part of a golden Crusade, where everyone around them is the unwashed masses, the political sheep who need only be anointed in the homeopathic magic-water of their grainy YouTube videos and fatuous echo chamber of a blogosphere. On their planet, you are either with the 9/11 deniers or you are a die-hard defender of the status quo, 100% copacetic with the proclamations of America's majority party du jour.

The similarities with religious fanaticism have already written themselves in your mind, I'm guessing.

To this video all I can say is, Yep, sounds like depleted uranium is a horrific weapon. 9/11 deniers have to live in a world where it isn't common knowledge that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake (an opinion that at least half this blog's authors have shared since 2003, by the way), for example. No, empirical evidence should not get balled up with your politics. No, not everyone who has a substantive disagreement with you is your enemy on 100% of fronts. I feel this has to get addressed every time I see a 9/11 denier or two hijacking a peace protest or something, but they keep doing it and not getting the un-funny joke they have been spinning this whole time.

"Depleted uranium is a horrific weapon, therefore the government committed 9/11" is a non sequitur. They're unrelated issues, at best part of some epic tu quo que fallacy, spanning decades and continents in some desperately contradictory effort to indict all on all things for an evil utterly unrelated to the debate at hand. The person who posted this video has, at best, conducted a logical fallacy. At worst, he is committing implicit intellectual fraud against his "opponents."

Let's kick this off...

Hey there,
My name's Andrew Mitchell. I stumbled upon a Facebook group entitled "There is no 9/11 conspiracy you morons" after a friend of mine posted his ravings about the conspiracy laden film Zeitgeist. I joined the group but was frustrated at the lack of activity and, honestly, stupidity of the content being uploaded (mostly America, Fuck Yeah! and other redneck banter). Noticing the admin slot was empty, I took it over, managed and retooled some things, and in the months that have followed, the group has nearly tripled in its size and the contributing content is first rate.

The group has been a wonderful place for debate and the spreading of information from various sources. Myself and three of the more prominent members of the group have formed this blog as a way to post our own articles and highlight some of the activities in the group.

Let's face it, it's college kids and high schoolers who are the main demographic of the "Truth Movement". That's why I believe Facebook is an integral part of ensuring no more kids get caught up in this mess. Our group, and by extension this blog, is a safe haven for those who feel surrounded by these wild theories and a place for conspiracy theorists to test their beliefs.

I encourage you, whether a conspiracy theorist, or avid debunker, join us in civil debate. We'll share our credible information with you, you share yours. But please, let's stay away from the youtube videos. If you can't prove a point without the aid of some stranger's iMovie, you're lost.

Check back often, we've got some really great articles on their way and lots of fun stuff to report from the group. Happy holidays and be safe,

-AM