Rooting for JREF

I don't often root for the skeptics at the James Randi Educational Foundation, but an email I just received from Winston Wu of SCEPCOP has, for once, put me squarely in the skeptics' corner.

Here's the complete, unedited email:

Upcoming 9/11 team debate on Coast to Coast on July 31, which I'm consulting on

Hi all,

Richard Gage of AE911Truth.org and a team of scientists are scheduled to debate a team of JREF debunkers on the Coast to Coast program. Gage has put me on the mailing list after reading my suggestions to him in how to debate the JREF crowd, as a consultant to his team.

Gage and his team of scientists, which include Kevin Ryan and Neils Harritt, will debate a team from the JREF. All we know is that Dave Thomas will be on the other side. We don't know who else they will have on their team.

The debate is scheduled on Coast to Coast for July 31 at this point. So mark that on your calendar. I think you can listen in either on your AM radio station or the coast to coast website. http://www.coasttocoastam.com/

I talked to Gage for an hour on the phone and gave him some insights and key strategies for exposing the JREFers and their kind, which are outlined on my SCEPCOP site: http://www.debunkingskeptics.com

I've also announced this debate in my SCEPCOP forum, which I will post further updates to:

http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=1220

Anyhow, if any of you have any tips or suggestions for Mr. Gage and his team, feel free to post them here, and I will forward them to him.

Should he cover a few strong undebunkable arguments, or try to cover all ten of the features of controlled demolition of the WTC? Which arguments should be emphasized most?

The debate will be primarily about the WTC and Building 7 collapse, not about the other issues surrounding 9/11.

Thanks,

Winston

For the record, I think the 9-11 "Truth" movement is literally insane. Tying this lunacy to the defense of serious parapsychological studies does infinitely more harm than good. 

I'm sure the JREF people will make mincemeat of the clueless conspiracy clowns who peddle this bilge. All of the supposedly "undebunkable" arguments for "controlled demolition" have been dismantled countless times. The best one-stop source for reasoned responses to these arrant claims is the now-famous Popular Mechanics article from 2005. 

Whatever value SCEPCOP might have had as a vehicle for informed criticism of skeptical positions has been nullified by the decision to side publicly with the "Truthers."

Good grief! When is "our side" ever going to stop shooting itself in the foot?

Comments

[Sandy]

What does the 911 conspiracy group have to do with parapsychology? Nothing! Bigfoot, the Lock Ness Monster and silly TV shows about hunting ghosts don't have anything to do with parapsychology either.

JREF already does it's best to lump legitimate researchers doing parapsychological work in with silly crap in order to diminish the reputations of such individuals. Please don't help them do that, Winston.

[Zetetic_chick]

A problem with many people who favor or is curious about unconventional matters like parapsychology is their tendency accept or be sympathetic to whatever "unorthodox" theories or claims are put forward. This is so illogical as to believe whatever is defended by the establisment.

My personal method is to make my own conclusions based upon a case-by-case basis. It's my personal evaluation of the evidence what counts for me.

Said that, I want to comment in the controversy about the 9-11. I haven't read in depth the books addressing this problem, and for that reason I'm agnostic.

I read a couple of books on this topic by David Ray Griffin (whom I consider a serious philosopher), and his arguments are reasonable. At least, they're worth reading.

In my view, Griffin has made his case for the view that the 9-11 story is not convincing. It's not to say that it's false, or that the demolition hypothesis is true. As I said, in this point I'm agnostic.

From my limited knowledge of this problem, I've learned several things:

1-The so-called "Truth Movement" is not an homogeneous group. So perhaps we shouldn't dismiss them altogether, without proper qualifications or distinctions.

2-There are reasons to suspect that some members of the so-called "truth movement" spread disinformation in order to discredit the critics of the official story.

3-Serious scholars and scientists have raised their skeptical voices about the official story. It should give us a pause before dismissing their position out of hand.

4-Many of the critics who belong to this "movement" present insane and demostrably false claims. I suspect this is an intentional strategy, created in order to discredit the critical voices about the official story.

5-As Michael correctly points out, the best one-stop source for reasoned responses to some of these skeptical claims is the Popular Mechanics article from 2005.

The problem is that that Popular Mechanics piece attacks the weakest positions and arguments of the best 9-11 skeptics. That magazine even attacks arguments that the best scholars defending alternative views have already rejected and refuted.

After I read Griffin's books (particularly his lastest one on this matter), I wasn't impressed at all with the Popular Mechanics article. In fact, I considered it a very weak and biased piece of criticism, which casts even more serious doubts about the tenability of official story.

A basic principle of scholarship is to address the best objections in their best form, or as actually defended by their best proponents. When one see articles attaking straw men, then one inmediately suspect the position being defended (in this case the official version of the 9-11) is weak or unsupported.

Online, the best and most credible point-by-point long reply to the Popular Mechanics article is this article by Jim Hoffman:

http://911review.com/pm/markup/index.html

Consult Griffin's books for a more documented and reasoned responses for these kind of popular arguments in defense of the official story.

I don't want to give the impression that I accept or believe in all the arguments of the 9-11 skeptics (again it is not an homoheneous group), or support the demolition hypothesis. I'm simply claiming that that controversy hasn't been settled by the Popular Mechanics article, because the evidence for the official story is not so convincing as the magazine pretends (even if the official story turns out to be true).

My current view is that it's still an open question.

[Markus Hesse]

When in doubt, defer to the opinion of the reputable and authoritative experts, the people that do this for a living, unlike David Ray Griffin.

What we essentially have here are people without the right qualifications telling us that the people with the right qualifications have it all wrong, kinda like Creationists vs Evolutionary Biologists.

Anyway, for a more humour-laden yet very effective debunking of the "Inside Job" theory go here, it uses sheer logic to demonstrate how unfeasible a grand conspiracy of that scale is.

[Zetetic_chick]

When in doubt, defer to the opinion of the reputable and authoritative experts, the people that do this for a living, unlike David Ray Griffin

Many of the critics of the official story are "reputable and authoritative experts" in fields relevant to this discussion. And some of them "do this for living"

What we essentially have here are people without the right qualifications telling us that the people with the right qualifications have it all wrong, kinda like Creationists vs Evolutionary Biologists

It's a misresentation of the critics.

There are people with high qualifications in standard academic disciplines who don't accept the official story. An example is physicist and archaometrist Steven Jones, a leading critic of the official 9-11 story:

http://wtc7.net/articles/stevenjones_b7.html

Many other scholars, scientists and people of Academia are members of organizations which challenge the official story. An example is this:

http://stj911.org/members/index.html

In any case, it's not a debate about qualifications, but about the evidence.

Anyway, for a more humour-laden yet very effective debunking of the "Inside Job" theory go here, it uses sheer logic to demonstrate how unfeasible a grand conspiracy of that scale is.

The humour-laden argumentation is a typical strategy used make look ridiculous the positions we disagree with.

Instead of using "humour" and other rhetorical strategies, it would be useful to engage rationally and critically with the best arguments of skeptics.

The article you referred to was written by David Wong (not his real name), and according to this website, his self-described background is: "I am the Editor of Cracked.com. Hi.

My real name is Jason Pargin, I wrote a horror novel called John Dies at the End. Available now in hardcover!

http://www.johndiesattheend.com

Before this I spent eight years as the creator and editor and webmaster and head writer for pointlesswasteoftime.com."

http://www.cracked.com/members/David%20Wong

It's interesting that you take that article seriously, when you previously complained that "we essentially have here are people without the right qualifications"

But is David Wong the kind of person with the right qualifications to settle this debate? Do you consider him a reliable source (a "reputable and authoritative expert") of information about the 9-11 controversy?

Instead of reading online caricatures and parodies, I'd suggest you to read carefully the scholarly articles published in the Journal of 9-11, where many scientists and scholars debate this question:

http://www.journalof911studies.com/

Again, I don't want to look as a defender of the 9-11 "inside job/demolition" thesis, because I'm remain largely agnostic about what exactly happened. But I confess that it bothers me when a more or less complex topic is misrepresented with "humour", caricatures, simplifications and bad arguments.

Perhaps the official story is true, who knows. But if it's the case, the use of humour, parodies, straw men and other logical fallacies is not going to help to make known the truth.

For the record: I agree that a grand scale conspiracy, as seemly required by the "demolition hypothesis" is unlikely. But this has to be balanced with the evidence for the official story, and I think the latter is wanting.

[Larry]

Zetetic chick, like Winston Wu you merely allude to discredited conspiracy bilge while at the same time pretending you are not a 9-11 conspiracy theorist. David Ray Griffin has been completely debunked, one of the best is the 'Screw Loose Change' blog, there are others but you can't be bothered to check what the 9-11 conspiracy debunkers are saying because of course that exposes your position as completely untenable. Griffin has been caught telling the most outrageous lies about 9-11 (see what he has to say on the Pentagon never mind the WTC towers) and has no credibility, unless of course you are a true believer. And no good arguing with true believers, they just need to be exposed to ridicule and called the loons that they are.

On this front just like Prescott I root for the JREF, and give kudos to them in this regard.

Wu has always been very open about his 9-11 idiocy, it's old news. It's front and center at his website after all. I am glad though to see Prescott call him out on this. I also think it behoves other prominent promoters of parapsychology to call out 'woo-woo' Wu on this and if they don't, well their silence or worse, if any endorse him and his 9-11 conspiracy views, then they should be subjected to like-minded ridicule and ostracisation. I don't care who they are.

We can all hold dear to oddball beliefs (of course what is oddball is in the eye of the beholder) but 9-11 conspiracy is simply odious and sinister. Sinister because look who believes in this kind of thing - a 9-11 conspiracy, Muslim extremists and neo-Nazis and the vicious radical Left. Hardly surprising that many of them are also Holocaust Revisionists. Look at the company 9-11 conspiracy theorists keep. In other words 9-11 woo-woo smacks of odious bigotry, you have to ask the question - why would anybody hold dear to a 9-11 conspiracy in the first place? What is the reasoning here? Ask the right questions and you get the right answers.

I'm actually surprised JREF and others have not used this 9-11 conspiracy nuttery from the likes of Wu against parapsychology itself to a far greater degree than they actually have. And I wouldn't blame 'em, in fact I would support them on this front. In fact I personally have noticed how fast asleep the JREF types are, including Michael Shermer here - we have presented them with a big 'kick me' sign on our backs (9-11 conspiracy) and they have hardly bothered. It's not just Wu here, there are other big fish on our side of the psi camp indulging in 9-11 woowoo and the skeptics of the Randi ilk have given them for the most part a free ride.

A sane intelligent commentator above points out that people who tend to believe in psi tend to go toward the extreme end of irrationality and believe in anything no matter how outrageous, there is no skepticism there whatsoever, no discretion, they cannot sort the wheat from the chaff whatsover. A lot of new-age types are like this. It doesn't make 9-11 woowoo any less sinister for all that, and delusional.

Brian Josephson himself, the Nobel Laureate physicist has given his support to Wu's website (ok just on the psi front, NOT the 9-11 nonsense) but my point is given Wu's lunacy, Josephson should come out on record as Prescott has calling out Wu for his 9-11 idiocy. My point is nobody has used Josephson's endorsement of Wu's site and writings against Josephson considering that Wu's 9-11 conspiracy crankery is well-known, even though it would be an unfair guilt by association argument, still it could be used to put Josephson on the spot. Nobody has thought of doing it! Not Randi, not Shermer, not Novella, not Joe Nickell, not anybody. This is what I mean by these guys being asleep at the wheel.

Prescott as far as I know is the first well-known respected proponent of psi to call out Wu on his 9-11 nuttery, if others don't follow all the worse for them. Actually Prescott it's all a lot worse among our own camp then I think you have so far realised....

[Aftrbrnr]

The problem I think with SCEPCOP is they attempt to try and unite everything paranormal together and defend it under one banner. One big problem with this is not all of it goes together, for example someone who believes in UFOs may not necessarily believe in spirituality, and vice versa. Another problem I see is SCEPCOP also defends things that make already fringe issues (NDEs, UFO, Bigfoot, etc) look normal, such as crazy conspiracy theories like 9/11.

I recall someone saying no wonder people have a hard time taking a subject like NDEs seriously when they're grouped in the same category as the Loch Ness Monster, I think you can see what I'm getting at with regards to SCEPCOP.

[Roger Knights]

I like what ZC has been saying. I think there are enough loose ends and oddities in the 9/11 event that another investigation is justified, to try to clarify matters as much as possible. Resistance to such a clarifying new investigation is annoyingly complacent and "top-down"-ish. And it's socially dangerous to dismiss and marginalize outsider-calls for another look-see on the basis that the matter is settled, when it isn't. It leads to social alienation and disintegration.

That's what happened when the calls for a thorough, better look at the JFK assassination were ignored. (The House committee investigation was inadequate and suffered from a headstrong, blinkered chief investigator. It failed to look into many aspects of the matter.)

I've always had the opinion that Oswald did it and there was no conspiracy. My desire for a new investigation was that it would help drain the toxins from society that arose from the stand-pat attitude of the defenders of the official line. And I wanted my curiosity satisfied about certain oddities. In recent years there have been some good debunking books published that have clarified many matters -- but their findings could have been made public decades ago if an officially backed and funded investigation had been set in motion.

The reason new investigations are resisted in matters like these, I suspect, is not that they would reveal some great crime, but rather several embarrassing misdemeanors and blunders – including some by the first investigation. And also, perhaps, that there are valid (possibly) raisons d'etat for not letting the full story out. But those should count less than legitimizing the current political system by providing fuller transparency on crucial matters like these. The desire to let sleeping dogs lie is inappropriate, because the dogs aren’t sleeping.

[Jeff Wagg, Communication and Outreach Coordinator, JREF]

Winston Wu makes another mistake... the JREF isn't involved in this at all. There may be some people who have joined the JREF's forum, but the organization has nothing to do with this debate.

[Breanainn]

It does seem the case that some people perhaps convinced of one controversial claim seem to give undue credence to all of them... It's not good for your credibility at all. Nasty evil sceptics might very well be wrong on some issues, but that doesn't mean they're wrong on all of them. Rememeber, the enemy of your enemy is not always your friend...

[michael duggan]

It's not just the 9-11 nutters we have to worry about. HIV denialism is another insidious movement that has allied itself in the frontier science corner. A couple of months ago I sent a highly charged email to Garrett Moddell, the then president of the Society for Scientific Exploration (an organisation of individuals who are open to investigating claims on the edge of science) complaining of it's support to Henry Bauer and his odious theory that HIV does not lead to AIDS. The current magazine even has this has its main topic (see here: http://www.scientificexploration.org/edgescience/). I know of at least two well known psi researchers (who shall remain anonymous) who are symphathetic to this crap. This can only do harm to parapsychology, and Michael P, I applaud your stance here.

[Michael Prescott]

"The reason new investigations are resisted in matters like these, I suspect, is not that they would reveal some great crime, but rather several embarrassing misdemeanors and blunders"

That may be true, but an official investigation would not accomplish very much anyway, since the conspiracy theorists would not believe anything the government says. And we already know about some of the oversights and miscommunications that contributed to the tragedy.

"the JREF isn't involved in this at all"

Thanks for the clarification. I was basing my remarks on Winston Wu's email.

"Wu has always been very open about his 9-11 idiocy, it's old news. It's front and center at his website after all."

I haven't looked at the SCEPCOP site in a long time. When it first came online, I glanced at it and thought it was worth mentioning, so I wrote a short post about it:

tiny.cc/zhftm

Since then, I did become aware that Winston is interested in "Trutherism," but I didn't know that SCEPCOP had adopted it as an official position.

"Actually Prescott it's all a lot worse among our own camp then I think you have so far realised...."

I sorta do realize it. Sometimes I think it would be so much easier to be a skeptic....

[Michael Prescott]

"The current magazine even has this has its main topic (see here: http://www.scientificexploration.org/edgescience/)."

Yes, I noticed that also, and found it dismaying, though I don't pretend to be an expert on HIV/AIDS.

"It does seem the case that some people perhaps convinced of one controversial claim seem to give undue credence to all of them..."

That's the trouble, I think. And it doesn't exclusively involve issues outside the scope of "the paranormal." People who accept ESP, PK, and some version of postmortem survival, all of which I think are substantiated to varying degrees by the evidence, may also embrace such dubious notions as astrology and numerology, which are supported by almost no evidence. (The only evidence for astrology that I'm aware of is the Gauquelin study, which has not been replicated.)

[Zetetic_chick]

Zetetic chick, like Winston Wu you merely allude to discredited conspiracy bilge while at the same time pretending you are not a 9-11 conspiracy theorist.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I have no theory at all about what really happenned in the 9-11.

I even don't know if the official story is true, which itself is a conspiracy theory (a conspiracy made by Al-Qaeda).

It's amazing that only the believers in alternative views about the 9/11 are called "conspiracy theorists", when the believers in the official story are suporting a conspiracy theory too: the theory that a Al-Qaeda's conspiracy was the cause of the 9/11 attacks.

It's clear that many have bought the mainstream rhetoric, without any critical and self-critical analysis.

Questions and doubts aren't allowed. You have to be a believer in the official story. Period.

David Ray Griffin has been completely debunked, one of the best is the 'Screw Loose Change' blog, there are others but you can't be bothered to check what the 9-11 conspiracy debunkers are saying because of course that exposes your position as completely untenable

I've read that blog and other similar to it. But I don't think they have refuted what Griffin said.

You make mere assertions and speculate about me being a "conspiracy theorist" or about not being "bothered to check what the 9-11 conspiracy debunkers are saying"

This is what I meant by using fallacies and bad arguments to defend the official story.

Simply reading Larry, you can see:

-Fallacy of proof by assertion (e.g. "Griffin has been debunked")

-Name-calling (e.g. "You're a conspiracy theorist")

-Ridicule and emotion-laden arguments (e.g. "no good arguing with true believers, they just need to be exposed to ridicule and called the loons that they are")

-Fallacy of guilt by association + ad hominem (e.g. " lot of new-age types are like this. It doesn't make 9-11 woowoo any less sinister for all that, and delusional)

Are these rational arguments? Is there any evidence-based argument in that rhetoric?

If these are the best "arguments" in support of the official story, you can see what I remain agnostic about it.

Clearly, people like Larry has an axe to grind in this topic, and this prevent any kind of rational dialogue or exchange with a person like that. He's in my ignore list.

That may be true, but an official investigation would not accomplish very much anyway, since the conspiracy theorists would not believe anything the government says

This is why an independent research is needed.

If the alternative views on 9-11 are true, then the US Goverment was implied in the 9-11. Hence, the data coming from that Goverment is under suspicion.

It's like to accepting a paranormal research by James Randi. Once you have reasons to doubt Randi's credibility, honesty or objectivity, any information coming from him regarding the paranormal is under suspicion or doubt (even if it turns out to be true)

The only solution to it would be an independent research.

HIV denialism is another insidious movement that has allied itself in the frontier science corner

Actually, what people like Bauer and others deny is the theory that HIV causes AIDS.

Even the discoverer of HIV, Luc Montanier, has recently casted doubts about some aspects of that theory, and now he believes that the body can cure itself from HIV spontaneously, as you can see in this short interview:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQoNW7lOnT4

Of course, people of Larry's extraordinary intelligence will cry "See, ZC is supporting AIDS denialism too. You're a conspiracy theorist!".

No, I simply make questions and try to avoid jumping to conclusions, specially when the topic is a complex one.

If the own discoverer of HIV casts doubs about some aspects of the AIDS theory, I have good reasons to hear him.

Name-calling and accusations about "conspiracy" are a red herring.

We want to know the truth.

But it seems that some topics are taboo for many people, and you cannot have doubts or pose questions.

Sorry, but I'm not that kind of dogmatist.

I agree with Dean Radin's open mind to research ANY topic and pose any kind of questions.

Commenting on the AIDS "denialism", Dean Radin wrote in his blog: "All data and interpretations are open to question, and there are some serious people asking serious questions about this particular correlation. I personally don't know enough about this topic to have an informed opinion. But I know people who do. E.g., here's one site:

http://failingsofhivaidstheory.homestead.com/

http://deanradin.blogspot.com/2010/04/psi-research-at-university-of-colorado.html?showComment=1270961562411#c1307856678937700892

And just by the way, see how name-calling are used in topics where people ask uncomfortable questions:

-If you question the Darwinian theory of evolution, you're a "creationist" (when actually you're not denying evolution, but the Darwinian account for it)

-If you question the AIDS theory, you're a "AIDS denialist" (when actually AIDS is not being denied, but the theory to account for it)

-If you question to official story about the 9/11, you're a "conspiracy theorist" (when the official story is a conspiracy too, which is silenced for rhetorical purposes)

Amazingly, many people buy such fallacies.

I don't.

[realpc]

"The current magazine even has this has its main topic (see here: http://www.scientificexploration.org/edgescience/)."

I never thought the 9/11 conspiracy theories made any sense, so I never believed them. I am not a conspiracy believer, in general. But Henry Bauer's ideas about AIDS are different. He does not think it's a conspiracy. He looks at the facts and evidence and shows that a lot of things do not add up. There are some HIV dissenters who should be heard. Instead, the majority consensus screams at them and calls them idiots.

The mainstream AIDS consensus is not a conspiracy. People have invested enormous time and resources in the theory ad they do not want to see it overturned.

9/11 truthers are not necessarily insane, but they certainly are irrational. It's part of the Bush Derangement Syndrome, where the former president was perceived as the source of all evil.

HIV dissenters, on the other hand, are sometimes very rational. They care enough about truth to risk their careers. Although they may express skepticism about the big drug companies, they don't think it's all an evil plot.

The scientific establishment often arrives at a mainstream consensus that it is unwilling to let go of, no matter what. It has decided against parapsychology, for example, and seldom even looks at the evidence. And that is what happened with the HIV AIDS theory.

At least look at some of what Henry Bauer, and others, are saying.

[dmduncan]

The 911 conspiracy stuff is garbage and a waste of time. I've looked at it, and I won't waste my time looking at it anymore. Every claim I've ever heard has been answered by multiple sources, experts here or there.

In reality you don't always get every question about every detail answered, because we don't have video cameras everywhere to record every detail of everything that happens, and that you may have an unanswered question here or there because everything is not absolutely clear is not an argument in favor of a conspiracy.

All the major questions I've heard asked have been answered without any need to resort to conspiracy.

Like MP, I will be rooting for JREF on this one.

Just because a claim is weird or nonstandard doesn't mean it's true.

[realpc]

The 9/11 conspiracies resulted from Bush Derangement Syndrome. It was a need to blame all the horrible things that happened on the "evil" Republicans, rather than those sweet innocent Muslim terrorists. I know some very normal and sane people who were absolutely sure Bush must have done it, and they would focus on every tiny unexplained detail. I thought they were nuts, because it was impossible to reason with them.

But now I think it was an intense tribal instinct that caused left-wingers to automatically blame Bush for everything. It started immediately after the attack. I heard some people say America got what it deserved, because we had treated the attackers badly somehow. And then others started finding "evidence" that the Bush-Cheney administration attacked us in its effort to take over the world.

Oh yeah? Well if Bush and Cheney were so clever, what happened to their plan to take over the world? And yet you will not see any of these people admitting maybe they were wrong.

I remember being told to look at the Downing Street Memo which contained incriminating evidence that the neo-cons had planned the whole thing. It was amusing to see how people can read anything at all into anything at all.

But I don't think the 9/11 truthers are insane. It's just normal human nature to be wildly irrational.

[Zetetic_chick]

One important aspect of this kind of debate, is that it shows the personality aspects of the debaters.

If the 9/11 official story is true or false, does it make any difference regarding our lives? Perhaps for people in USA it does, but people outside of USA (like me) won't.

My life is not going to change sensibly whether the official story is true or false, or if Griffin is right or wrong.

Suppose that the official story is true. So what? It would confirm that the Al-Qaeda and other terrorists are dangerous, and that human beings (e.g. the "truthers) are fallible and can defend false ideas.

Is it something new? All of us know that human beings can be like this.

For me, the debate about the 9/11 is simply a question about which I want to know the truth, not something that affects me directly or indirectly on the personal level.

In a personal level, if the official story is false, so what? If it's true, so what? But in an intellectual level, I want to know the TRUTH.

In contrast with other topics like afterlife or psi (which have implications for our lives), the debate about the 9/11 is certainly less important.

But it's amazing and dissapointing how some people defend such official story with so absolute certainty and strong emotional commitment, and even attack you if you are skeptic about it, or pose questions, or are critical of the official version.

This is the same kind of dogmatic reply that you receive in a skeptical blog if you talk about psi evidence, or in a conventional medicine blog if you talk about people like Bauer or the Perth Group, or in a leftist blog if you talk about Ludwig von Mises (or in a libertarian blog if you talk about Chomsky).

I'd suggest the commenters here to have a pause, and examine the positions on evidential grounds, reading the best literature defending both sides of the debate, and leaving aside their own emotions and prejudices, and keep an open and critical mind.

Accusations of "conspiracy theorists", "denialists" and similar (without adddresing the substantive arguments), are not going to help our mutual understanding.

They reveal more the prejudices of the debaters than an honest desire to know the truth.

And it's a shame for people who consider themselves to be "spiritually advanced".

Certainly, such dogmatism is not a sign of spiritual evolution.

[Michael Prescott]

"Certainly, such dogmatism is not a sign of spiritual evolution."

Maybe not, but I'm unapologetically dogmatic about certain things.

Nothing will convince me that the Earth is only 6,000 years old.

Nothing will convince me that the British royal family are shape-shifting lizards.

Nothing will convince me that the Holocaust is a myth.

Nothing will convince me that the moon landings were faked.

Nothing will convince me that 9-11 was an "inside job."

Certain positions are simply too stupid to take seriously. I realize some people could make the same statement about psi or an afterlife or whatever. But that's okay. We all draw our own lines of demarcation to determine what we're willing to invest time in. The above "theories" are (some of the) places where I personally draw the line.

Oh, and nothing will ever convince me that liver tastes good. Or that James Patterson is a good writer. Or that M. Night Shyamalan's "The Village" didn't suck.

:-)

"If the 9/11 official story is true or false, does it make any difference regarding our lives?"

It does to me. If the "Truther" nonsense were true, I would be living under a criminal government that murdered its own citizens by the thousands for some obscure, nefarious purpose. Not only the president but a large number of other officials would have been involved, right down to the level of local law enforcement. Images that I watched on live TV would have been a complicated work of fiction. I could never trust any source of information again. If a conspiracy along the lines of a 9-11 "inside job" could be pulled off by the authorities, then the authorities are essentially omnipotent, and ordinary citizens are helpless.

Moreover, the people who died on 9-11 were victims not of foreign nationals but of our own elected officials at the highest level. Like the son of a local couple -- an off-duty NYC firefighter who rushed to the WTC and died in the collapse. Like another local couple, who were on board Flight 93 and perished in a Pennsylvania field, and are now memorialized by a small plaque on a bench in town.

And the people who were there at the scene and witnessed the event and related it to me -- they're all liars. The stockbroker who watched both plane crashes from his office window; the engineer who was on his way to the court building in downtown Manhattan when he saw a crowd gathered around the Twin Towers, staring upward; my agent and her staff, who watched it all unfold from their offices a few blocks away.

Liars all. Trust no one. Don't trust even your own eyes. Just accept that you're living in the Matrix, and the all-powerful government can manipulate your reality in any way it likes.

Yes, it would make a difference if I believed such claims.

[Cyrus]

Wow, this comments thread is on fire. Too bad I jumped in late.

First of all, thanks Michael for bringing this to attention. This really, really, really is a problem. There should be a separate, crystal clear dividing line between the study of trans-local consciousness, and the support of general "fringe science", conspiracy theory, and paranormal subculture.

If trans-local consciousness is real, then the NDE is not paranormal. Remote viewing is not paranormal. Precognition is not paranormal. These subjects are not in the same genre, or the same universe, as bigfoot, 9/11 truthers, or whatever. So long as defenders of the former cling to the latter subjects, there will be no progress.

The truthers are totally insane. They are the flipside of the coin, and are even more unreasonable then the super-skeptics, if you can believe it. Debate one for 10 minutes and you'll want to run away screaming. In this instance, I do support organized skeptic movements. This is what they should be focusing their attention on.

[Cyrus]

Although as an FYI, my old buddy's uncle died on one of the planes. So in actuality, he was paid off by the government to lie about a relative dying, and he paid me some of the $$$ to support his claim. So I'm actually part of the conspiracy, and everything I write is an attempt to bring myself up in status with the global illumaniti / lizardman UFO conspiracy's chain of command, along with thousands of other people. We even have a facebook group, but it's private. In Arizona we also have a chapter bowling team, if anyone's interested

[Zetetic_chick]

Certain positions are simply too stupid to take seriously. I realize some people could make the same statement about psi or an afterlife or whatever. But that's okay. We all draw our own lines of demarcation to determine what we're willing to invest time in. The above "theories" are (some of the) places where I personally draw the line.

The problem is that such position makes any rational debate impossible.

Since each person decide their own standards for demarcation, to which non-personal objective standards are we going to appeal in order to decide what is true or false?

Your criteria is valid in order to decide in which topics you're spend your personal time; but it's not valid to decide which theory is true or false.

How are you going to debate a person who, using your own demarcation criteria, reject parapsychoogy and the afterlife studies as "bunk", stupid, ridiculous, or absurd?

It does to me. If the "Truther" nonsense were true, I would be living under a criminal government that murdered its own citizens by the thousands for some obscure, nefarious purpose. Not only the president but a large number of other officials would have been involved, right down to the level of local law enforcement. Images that I watched on live TV would have been a complicated work of fiction. I could never trust any source of information again. If a conspiracy along the lines of a 9-11 "inside job" could be pulled off by the authorities, then the authorities are essentially omnipotent, and ordinary citizens are helpless

I know it's important to you and (i suppose) for most Americans. This is why I said: "Perhaps for people in USA it does, but people outside of USA (like me) won't."

Since people outside USA is not under the control of the USA goverment (at least not directly), a conspiracy implying a supposedly criminal goverment doesn't affect people living outside USA.

Nothing will convince me that 9-11 was an "inside job."

Even if you see good evidence ("good" according to your standards) pointing out to such direction? Even if you have access to a classified documentation explaining the "inside job"? Even if you're told by a high representative of the gorvement that it was a internal conspiracy?

Nothing will convince me that the British royal family are shape-shifting lizards

Zerdini was convinced of the afterlife, in part because he could talk and touch materialized etherians.

Most of us we're convinced on the basis of less direct evidence.

Suppose that you, Michael, are invited to a dinner in the British royal family, and accidentally you enter a room, and see (with your own eyes), one of the members of the royal family becoming a "lizard" (and confirming Davick Icke's speculations)

The member realize that you're there and tell you "Hey Michael, you have discoveried our secret, if you makes this public, we'll get you"

I ask you Michael, that direct evidence would convince you that the British royal family are shape-shifting lizards? Or at least it would make you doubt about it?

Or would you still stick to the idea that "nothing" is going to change your opinion, regardless of the evidence?

If a conspiracy along the lines of a 9-11 "inside job" could be pulled off by the authorities, then the authorities are essentially omnipotent, and ordinary citizens are helpless."

Perhaps. But even if it's the case, how does it is supposed to refute the conspiracy claim?

If cannot refute the truth of a claim appealing to the fact that its consequences are unconfortable or incredible to me.

If the Christian God exists, then possibly some of us will be punished in the afterlife. Is it an argument against God's existence?

If a big meteorite is going arrive here tomorrow, the Earth will be destroyed. Certainly, we don't like that consequence. But is such negative consequence a reason to reject the truth of that claim?

The point is that we cannot reject a conspiracy claim only because we don't like its consequences.

We can only reject it if the evidence is insufficient, or if contrary evidence is sufficient. And this what the debate is all about. Appealing to the belief of the majority is not going to help us, since the same argument could be used against the afterlife or parapsychology.

The point is that we cannot be dogmatic about topics we don't like, and acept topics to which we're sympathetic. We should apply the same standard of critical examination (at least on the topics to which we pretend to have a rational opinion).

If it's replied that such consequences of the conspiracy are highly unlikely or improbable, then I agree (I do believe an "internal job" is improbable). But even in such case, it's not reason to say that "nothing" will convince you of it, since that even in the improbable sometimes occurs.

And the people who were there at the scene and witnessed the event and related it to me -- they're all liars.The stockbroker who watched both plane crashes from his office window; the engineer who was on his way to the court building in downtown Manhattan when he saw a crowd gathered around the Twin Towers, staring upward; my agent and her staff, who watched it all unfold from their offices a few blocks away.

I don't understand that. If the "truthers" are right, why should the people who were there at the scene to be liars?

As far I know, the best critics of the official story don't necessarily deny the testimony of "stockbroker who watched both plane crashes from his office window; the engineer who was on his way to the court building in downtown Manhattan when he saw a crowd gathered around the Twin Towers, staring upward; my agent and her staff, who watched it all unfold from their offices a few blocks away"

Only a few eccentric "truthers" (possibily, for disinformation purposes) have denied such facts.

[Vitor]

I realize some people could make the same statement about psi or an afterlife or whatever. But that's okay. We all draw our own lines of demarcation to determine what we're willing to invest time in. The above "theories" are (some of the) places where I personally draw the line.

I really don't think that's ok. For psi and afterlife we have at least some experimental support. Even the skeptic Carl Sagan wrote:

At the time of writing, there are three claims in the ESP field which, in my opinion, deserve serious study: (1) that by thought alone humans can (barely) affect random number generators in computers; (2) that people under mild sensory deprivation can receive thoughts or images "projected" at them; and (3) that young children sometimes report the details of a previous life, which upon checking turn out to be accurate and which they could not have known about in any other way than reincarnation. I pick these claims not because I think they’re likely to be valid (I don’t), but as examples of contentions that might be true. They have at least some, although still dubious, experimental support. Of course, I could be wrong.

You will not find experimental support to say that the Holocaust is a myth, or that the Earth is only 6,000 years old.

[dmduncan]

You know there's something seriously wrong with the conspiracy after all their initial claims are soundly refuted and rather than admitting the weakness of the theory, they go back and look for new ways to rescue it.

That's working backward from a conclusion to the premises. They have their conclusion. Then it's a matter of finding the premises that will withstand enough scrutiny to make the conclusion arguable, just so they continue blaming innocent people and holding blameless the guilty ones. It's an intellectual obscenity.

George Bush is an idiot....BUT, he was able to mastermind this plan whereby explosives were planted and set to go off after both buildings were hit with jets, and pin the whole thing on some poor innocent muslims, just so we could have an excuse to invade Iraq and steal their oil.

Everyone else is deluded except the really smart people who've managed to figure out the truth. Just like that imbecile cab driver who figured out the moon landings were all hoaxed and got a much deserved punch in the face by Buzz Aldrin.

[dmduncan]

And this George Bush who planned all this? This was the same guy who didn't have a plan about what to do after the invasion of Iraq.

Yeah, GW has a long history of thinking things through to their logical conclusions so well, that only a few left wing radicals will ever be smart enough to uncover the truth.

[Michael Prescott]

"But even if it's the case, how is it supposed to refute the conspiracy claim?"

I was responding to your statement that the conspiracy, even if proved, would not matter much to us on a personal level.

"How are you going to debate a person who, using your own demarcation criteria, rejects parapsychology and the afterlife studies as 'bunk', stupid, ridiculous, or absurd?"

I'm not going to debate with that person. It would be a waste of time for us both.

"If the 'truthers' are right, why should the people who were there at the scene be liars?"

Some "Truthers" claim that no planes hit the buildings.

"I ask you Michael, that direct evidence would convince you that the British royal family are shape-shifting lizards?"

Perhaps I should have said, "Nothing is going to persuade me that it's worth my time to look into the idea that the royal family are lizards, the Holocaust never happened, 9-11 was an inside job, etc." In the highly unlikely event that compelling evidence fell into my lap, I guess I would change my mind. However, I have zero expectation of ever being exposed to such evidence, and no intention of looking for it. I have to budget my time intelligently, and any time spent on these "theories" is overwhelmingly likely to be time wasted.

But the main point is that it's a mistake, purely from a tactical standpoint, to link what Cyrus calls "translocal consciousness" with paranoid conspiracy-mongering. It's a self-inflicted wound.

[realpc]

I try to be open-minded and make decisions based on evidence, rather than going along with some crowd. So I had read some of the truther stuff, and none of it seemed rational or scientific. Any tiny unexplained detail counts as evidence for them. And they will accept the most far-fetched nonsense, as long as it fits their theory. So I rejected the 9/11 truther ideas, after looking at them.

On the subject of parapsychology, I also tried to look at the facts. In that case, it seemed that some parapsychologists are very sane and rational and scientific. So I took their ideas seriously.

On the subject of HIV/AIDS, I also started out with an open mind. I didn't believe the mainstream simply because they had greater numbers of experts on their side. But I also didn't believe the dissenters simply because they are dissenters. I tried to consider the evidence objectively.

If you look carefully, very carefully, at the HIV/AIDS evidence, you will see that it is confusing, contradictory, and very weak. You will see that powerful groups had a lot to gain from the theory, and that desperate patients need to believe there are effective treatments.

[MIchael]

Now I am remembering why I had deleted this blog from my shortcuts, but thanks to ZC (one of the few here using reason rather than emotion, ridicule, and a host of other logical fallacies) for introducing me to her blog via her signature.

[Markus Hesse]

If you look carefully, very carefully, at the HIV/AIDS evidence, you will see that it is confusing, contradictory, and very weak. You will see that powerful groups had a lot to gain from the theory, and that desperate patients need to believe there are effective treatments.

There are effective treatments, thanks to the anti-retroviral cocktail that specifically targets HIV the infected are now able to lead relatively normal lives with an ever-increasing life expectancy.

Life expectancy of individuals on combination antiretroviral therapy in high-income countries: a collaborative analysis of 14 cohort studies

If HIV doesn't cause AIDS then these patients wouldn't be getting better, simple as that.

[Erich]

"Oh yeah? Well if Bush and Cheney were so clever, what happened to their plan to take over the world?"

maybe it ran head on into reality.

I, personally, believe that a bunch of crazed fanatics armed with box cutters took over four airplanes and crashed them the world trade towers, the pentagon and a field in PA.

However, I do think there could have been a conspiracy - from within the US gov't - to allow them to carry out their sinister plans. Especially when you have equally fanatical people in the US gov't, like say Richard Perle, stating shortly before the event, that the US needed a "new Pearl Harbor" to motivate us to sieze (what he and his neocon cromies saw as) the historic opportunity to become a unilateral power in the world; imposing a pax-americana through use of military force (well documented; google richard perle new pearl harbor neocons project for new american century).

I am with Z chick. Nothing of importance - absolutely nothing - should be beyond careful objective examination. Just some individual or some group of individuals saying "it can't be possible" should never be reason to rule it out (whatever it is).
It is really too bad that so many here who can be open minded on a cluster of unusual topics that they like can be so closed minded on other topics that are outside the group think.

[Erich]

oh, and I mentioned the PNAC because some of the skeptic comments upstream are asking what motivation there would be for the US gov't to participate in - to some extent - the attacks.

The motive was spelled out (again see Perle and other neocons; esp in the office of special plans).

Another motive, obvious, though unspoken, are the massiv"e military/industrial contracts that bloomed in the ridiculous War on Terror" that commenced subsequent to 9/11.

Motive and opportunity......regular components of an investigational focus. Even a flat foot cop that didn't follow those basics would be considered incompetent.

[Zetetic_chick]

I'd like to summarize some aspects of this exchange, and make explicit our points of agreement and disagreement:

1-As I commented above, people prone to unconventional matters tend to be skeptical of mainstream claims and be sympathetic to anything which is "frontier" or unorthodox.

I guess the only way to avoid that is to examine the evidence on a case-by-case basis.

2-My own current position regarding 9/11 controversy is agnosticism. It means that I don't have any opinion or theory to account for what happen there really.

So, contrary to Larry's silly accusations, it's impossible that I be a "conspiracy theorist" since I even don't accept the official conspiracy-by-Al Qaeda story about the 9/11.

I'm open to whatever the evidence leads.

3-It's possible that the evidence leads irrefutably to the official story and, given my ignorance of the matter, my agnosticism is unjustified.

Having read the official report of the 9/11, Griffin's critique of it, the Popular Mechanics article and the replies to it, and having heard some online videos and debates, I only can conclude the evidence doesn't convincently support the official story. (It doens't mean that the official story is false, because a truth claim can be defended with bad arguments or evidence. Hence, it doesn't prove any other alternative hypothesis either)

4-Like Michael P and others, I do believe the "inside job" is unlikely (more unlikely than the official story).

But it doesn't imply that I have to believe the official thesis. (It should be supported in its own merits, not in regards to alternative hypothesis)

5-What I found amazing (and this is amazing because it is not typical of this blog) is that some commenters would use pseudo-skeptical expressions, personal attacks, and emotionally charged replies to my agnosticism.

In other words, I felt like I HAVE to believe in the official story. Period. No argument was given, only name-calling, simplications, ridicule, condescendence, fallacies, ad hominem and straw men.

The same arguments and expressions used by pseudo-skeptical debunkers (paranormalists/survivalists are delusional, insane, irrational, credulous, stupid, etc. or "parapsychologists' claims have been refuted" or "parapsychologists have not convinced the majority of the scientists") were used in the context of my agnosticism about the official story.

Exactly the same appealing to authority or mainstream consensus, the same name-calling, the same ad hominem speculations about the scholars' qualifications, the same psychological speculations about the mental health of supporters of the alternative views, the same irrelevant comparisons with "creationism", etc. were used here.

And keep in mind that I was only expressing my AGNOSTICISM (not an active defense of any particular alternative hypothesis as the true one) based on what I've read on this matter.

Honestly, I was shocked by such replies.

It's really amazing.

For my part, the debate on this topic is closed. There is no point in trying to rationally discuss it in these conditions.

So I look forward for Michael's next post on parapsychology or the afterlife.

:-)

[Kris]

The only possible conspiracy one could possibly defend is that the Bush administration knew what was going to happen but did nothing in order to change US foreign policy. Anything beyond that is virtually impossible.

[Erich]

Kris, as an aside to you, I understand that you are in the service and have been deployed to Iraq and are likely to be again.

I will defend my assertion that the GWOT is a ridiculous costly scam, as well as my proposal that there should be a real investigation of the role of certain US actors in 9/11, but please know that I absolutely respect your service.

Both of my children, of whom I am very proud, are involved in operations in Afghanistan.

[Goonch]

I'm in agreement with Zetetic Chick for the most part. I do think the official story is almost certainly correct though. But I'm not absolutely certain.

I'm just surprised at the emotion on display about it. It presents an extraordinarily cynical view of authority and government, but beyond that I don't find it so far fetched to be beyond the realm of consideration.

[dmduncan]

If you want to know how the towers fell without explosives, consult the engineers, not the theologian-philosophers.

As someone who used to occasionally cut school and look out over NYC from the top of the WTC, I was enraged by their loss. Those towers were not abstract. The people who died horrible deaths in them were real people, not abstractions.

And when you don't put the blame where it belongs; when you instead put it someplace entirely different, then it's an insult to the memory of lives lost and to the severity of the tragedy. Because it was so severe, lies about it misdirecting blame are that much more evil.

The same with Holocaust denial, which is back in fashion in some places, and an intentional insult to the Jews to dismiss their awful suffering as inconsequential.

[Michael Duggan]

realpc, the evidence supporting the HIV/AIDS connection is overwhelming. The "evidence" supporting the dissenters is based on misinterpretation of old pre-HAART data.
Three Hundred Thousand South Africans died because Thabo Mbeki denied them life saving anti-retrovirals. Believing in garbage can impact on peoples lives.

[Roger Knights]

MP:

"but I'm unapologetically dogmatic about certain things.

Nothing will convince me that the Earth is only 6,000 years old.

Nothing will convince me that the British royal family are shape-shifting lizards.

Nothing will convince me that the Holocaust is a myth.

Nothing will convince me that the moon landings were faked.

Nothing will convince me that 9-11 was an "inside job.""

First, regarding "shape-shifting lizards": A week ago I had an idea (while looking at entries on the Listverse site about scary horror movies) for a subtle way to scare the pants off the viewer of a horror flick: Introduce a slightly disturbing, somehow "off" character whom everyone else trusts, and who is about to be entrusted with some key responsibility (like security aboard a spacecraft), and then, as the camera pans away from him/her, briefly show his/her tongue flicking out to rapidly lick its eye, like a lizard. (If Alex Jones had a picture of Prince Charles doing that, who'd really be surprised?) Or has this already been done and I’m unconsciously reinventing the idea?

I think we all have a "boggle threshold" (a term maybe MP introduced?) -- questions on which no amount of evidence will move us. I agree with MP on all the items in his list except the last. E.g., I refused outright to consider the evidence offered was the moon-landing-is-a-hoax claims. Americans couldn't have pulled something like that off and kept it under their hats. Anyway, we'd never have attempted something so audacious. And the Russians would have blown our cover if we'd tried. Etc.

But some of the evidence offered seemed hard to blow off, so I came up with a middle-of-the-road strategy that I now apply to other intractable problems of this sort. I try to find a third way to interpret (some of) the evidence as being the result of incompetence or bureaucratic butt-covering or some off-the-wall intersecting motive.

In the case of the moon-landing matter (which should now have been settled by the photos taken of the landing modules left on the moon), what I came up with were the following possibilities:

1. Some photos were taken in the US desert by NASA's PR department because they wanted to egg the pudding with better photos than the astronauts brought back. The agency was then too embarrassed to admit to such fibbing, which would have opened it to unending ribbing, and tried to brazen it out.

2. Some photos showed oddities on the moon or in space that would be seized upon, rightly or wrongly, by UFOlogists as evidence of spooky doings in space. NASA decided, perhaps under orders, or what it thought were orders (some directives are ambiguous), to forestall such clams by airbrushing such material out of photos, or to re-create those photos here on earth.

I interpret the Truther claims similarly. Some of them are hard to brush off, such as the composition and shape of tiny droplets retrieved from one of the secondary buildings, which seemingly can only be formed by Thermite-driven melting. My guess is that the secondary building was pre-wired for demolition in an emergency, because it contained much secret gov't. material, and that some panicked local chief-security guy thought the world was coming to an end and pulled the trigger too quickly.

Likewise, I don't think the evidence points to an "inside job," but to a blinkered and lazy refusal by higher-ups to respond appropriately to the warning signs that an attack was brewing. More speculatively, I think a few of those officials may have thought that Iran was becoming a deadly threat, and that a Pearl Harbor event would motivate use to act in time to defuse it.

I believe there's precedent for such patriotic "blind eye" behavior, because I think that that high officials were aware of the attack on Pearl Harbor beforehand, based on the "smoking gun" documentation presented in the paperback editions of Day of Deceit, and by the fishiness of our three carriers being out to sea that week. (However, this Machiavellian behavior was justified, IMO. Imagine the outcome if the US had not gotten involved at that point.)

I also apply this to the AIDS / HIV controversy. I don't think either the deniers or the believers are correct, but that there's possibly some complicated compromise that explains what's really going on. E.g., "intestinal dysbiosis [plus HIV] could explain much about HIV/AIDS." (Henry Bauer)

MP earlier wrote in response to my first post, “an official investigation would not accomplish very much anyway, since the conspiracy theorists would not believe anything the government says.” But that’s not the right way to look at the matter, because the “believers” encompasses a continuum from the “literally insane” through the wishy-washy half-convinced and on to the much larger number of the merely intrigued. The investigation would have a terrific impact on the more sensible segment of those who attend to Truther claims. The libel lawsuit in London against David Irving had a terrific deflationary impact on Holocaust denialism, because it addressed the bystanders and camp-followers, etc. MP himself wisely recommended this tactic of speaking to the “ideal reader” in his advice a few months ago to Keith Augustine. So should investigations. Just because they can’t please everyone is no reason to give up on them.

[Kris]

We have done a lot of good in Iraq, regardless of why we went. The Iraqis are better off without Saddam and more are alive now then if he had remained in power.

However part of me suspect the Bush administration knew something was up before 9-11. Just how much they knew will be for future historians to figure out.

[dmduncan]

http://www.csicop.org/sb/show/how_i_debated_a_9_11_truther_and_survived/

What's the saying? A lie can travel half way around the world before the truth has its pants on?

[dmduncan]

On thermite:

http://www.debunking911.com/thermite.htm

[Michael Prescott]

Thanks for the CSICOP link, dmduncan. The concluding passage got my attention:

"Finally, I offer this caution for readers: don’t smugly assume this conspiracy is confined to the lunatic fringe. After years of polishing and refinement, 9/11 'Truth' efforts have persuaded many citizens, including some of my relatives and close friends, to consider the attacks of 9/11 an 'inside job.'"

So it looks like I'm wrong to say that the people who believe in this stuff, or at least give it a respectful hearing, are necessarily crazy. Apparently "Trutherism" has gone mainstream, at least to a certain extent, and some otherwise well-adjusted people, like ZC, are willing to consider it as a viable possibility.

I find this very depressing.

"I'm just surprised at the emotion on display about it."

Maybe you don't know anybody who lost loved ones in the attacks. For some people, I guess it was just another TV show. For others, it hit a little closer to home.

Soon after the attacks, an op-ed writer (I forget who) opined that anyone who could view the attacks with equanimity was too "sophisticated" for civilized company.

Spock-like detachment is not always possible, or desirable.

"Now I am remembering why I had deleted this blog from my shortcuts"

Oh noes!!! I can haz bookmark? Pleez?!

( ... sheesh ... )

[Roger Knights]

@dmduncan:
Thanks for the link to the thermite-debunking page (one of a family of anti-Truther pages on the site). But I don't think the Twin Towers were sabotaged -- in my comments above I mentioned that I only had suspicions about what happened to the "secondary" building. (I forget its name -- it's the one where all the government offices were.) Also, the "thermite droplets" were -- I now realize from a bit of text on the site -- the result of what is called "nano-thermite" technology. I heard an interview on the radio with or about a couple of professors who'd published a paper (maybe in a refereed journal) making the case that such a device was used on the secondary building, because lots of these micro droplets, which couldn’t be formed any other way (they said) were found on that site.

The site has the following to say on the nano-thermite topic, whose logic I find hard to follow and which doesn't dispose of the topic for me. The interview I heard made it seem as though these state-of-the-art devices would have done the job on the secondary building. The question deserves investigation.:

"Nano-thermite has been talked about but its uses fall far short of cutting these massive columns. It's in its research stage. They include possible uses for welding molecular devices and possible use as a heat signature flare decoy. Then there is a patent of a device which has been brought up but as of yet, there is no evidence the idea went any further. Does it even work? Even if it did, they are "Ganged" together to make the cut. You would still need these boxes all over the columns. Once again the answer to this from the "scholars" is "rationalized technology". They need this technology to exist so it exists. There is some secret super thermite which can be placed in a canister which can survive 1,100 degree C so the primary charge doesn't go off. "Gee debunking, you're so dumb.""

[Erich]

"Spock-like detachment is not always possible, or desirable."

Yes it is, on both accounts.

Sticking with the our current subject as an example, the emotionalism surrounding the 9/11 attacks is precisely what got us into a "war of choice" in Iraq; a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.

Although all evidence that Saddam had wmd or had meaningful working relationships with al qaeda was debunked before the invasion jumped off (and was obviously flimsy at best from its first presentation) the American people supported a costly distraction from the mission against the real terrorists responsible for 9/11 because they were angry and afraid and wanted to release this emotional content by killing them some rag heads; any rag heads.

Even more grave, in this American's opinion, is that it was pretty obvious, pre-war, that the Bush admin. 1) was lying us into war 2) that the war was a foregone conclusion even before 9/11. 3) that we would not be greeted, generally, with "flowers and candy" by Iraqi citizens. 4) that there was no plan for stabilizing Iraq and then exiting, post invasion, save for a foolish reliance on the highly dubious figure of Ahmed Chalabi. 5) that the admin. was grossly understating the costs associated with the invasion, both in treasure and in blood.

This adds up to a direct assault on our way of life far more damaging than what terrorists could ever achieve. Yet the emotional sentiment of the time precluded any critique of the admin's handling of the build up to war.

To the larger point - and to avoid digression into a discussion of the Iraq war per se - the more serious the matter at hand, the more desirable cool rational analysis becomes.

That being said I do think some of the more flamboyant "truther" fantasies are pretty offensive to survivors of 9/11 victims.

but, with that being said, if I was a psyops kind of guy, I would propogate the wackier truther material so as to hide real involvement because, as is plain to see, most people, reacting emotionally, will throw the baby out with the bath water.

[Larry]

OK this post of mine is long but I have a lot to say and I hope Prescott doesn't mind too much (so I had to split it into seperate posts)..

Like I write above, it doesn't matter what you write, ie common sense on 9-11 (anybody seen Bill Maher's commentary on these nutters - funny), the conspiracy theorists who pretend they are not (Zetetic Chick for example and others above as well - they always pretend they are the rational ones engaging in cool analysis and that it's unfair to group them with the David Ickes of the world but then at the end of the day 9-11 conspiracy is conspiracy guff and it's still idiocy even if you don't think freemason alien lizards have anything to do with it. There is no such thing as reasonable 9-11 conspiracy, it's all nuts at bottom) don't care for facts and will continue to parrot a discredited liar like Griffin. And taking Griffin remotely seriously means you are totally nuts and not coming up with any rational objections at all. Such is the case with true believers, ever argued with a religious fanatic? Anything you say just "proves" that you are an agent of the devil. You can follow these 9-11 debates on the net, and it doesn't matter what those debunkers say exposing 9-11 idiocy, the conspiracy theorists just go on believing...

Plus the likes of ZC ignore the fact that I already mentioned (and all the debunking of Griffin by 'Screw Loose Change' and others, which they can't be bothered to investigate of course) that on 9-11 conspiracy they are on the same side as Muslim extremists, odious paleocons and other extreme right-wingers and the odious extreme Left - think that counts in your favour ZC and other 9-11 nutters?

Actually the funniest article I have read that exposes 9-11 lunacy for what it is remains Rolling Stones journalist Matt Tiabbi's article there on the 9-11 truthers entitled "I, Left Gatekeeper - Why the "9/11 Truth" movement makes the "Left Behind" sci-fi series read like Shakespeare" (he has written other articles on 9-11).

If you haven't read it, do - because for one it is screamingly funny, he gets straight to the heart of the issue - namely the 9-11 nutjobs cannot come up with a vaguely plausible affirmative conspiracy. In fact so good is it that I post some of the relevant portions below (PS I actually don't care for Tiabbi's journalism generally and there is a lot that he writes that I find distasteful but will give him credit where it is due, and at debunking 9-11 in a humorous style he has no equals).

Here are relevant portions pasted below:

Tiabbi writes:

"..it's bad enough that people in this country think Tim LaHaye is a prophet and Sean Hannity is an objective newsman. But if large numbers of people in this country can swallow 9/11 conspiracy theory without puking, all hope is lost. Our best hope is that the Japanese take pity on us and allow us to serve as industrial slaves in their future empire, farming sushi rice and assembling robot toys."

He then adds:

"I don't have the space here to address every single reason why 9/11 conspiracy theory is so shamefully stupid, so I'll have to be content with just one point: 9/11 Truth is the lowest form of conspiracy theory, because it doesn't offer an affirmative theory of the crime.

"... What is the theory of the crime, according to the 9/11 Truth movement?

"...the funny thing is, when you put together all of those disparate theories, you get the dumbest story since Roman Polanski's Pirates.

"The specifics vary, but the basic gist of what They Say Happened goes something like this:

"A group of power-hungry neocons, led by Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Bush and others and organizationally represented by groups like the Project for the New American Century, seeks to bring about a "Pearl-Harbor-like event" that would accelerate a rightist revolution, laying the political foundation for invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq."

[Larry]

Tiabbi then goes on with the hilarious totally implausible and ridiculous
'planning session' between Cheney, Bush and Rumsfeld in plotting 9-11. I cannot paste it all up here, Tiabbi's article can be read at plenty places on the web. Read the whole thing (if you are a 9-11 crazy don't even waste your time, nothing can penetrate your thick skulls). Of course to 9-11 nutters Tiabbi is a liar and all the rest of it, well they have to believe that of course. How else can they go on being 9-11 nutjobs?

To Prescott - you already are a skeptic in the true meaning of the word, you don't need to become one so to speak. On this front the JREF guys are speaking sense and doing good work, on other fronts (like psi) they tend toward pseudoskepticism, not genuine skepticism. Don't let the JREF guys have a handle on the term skepticism, language is everything as Orwell understood.

This 9-11 nuttery is not about materialists and the like being sane and reasonable and using common sense and many psi believers/non-materialists losing their heads on this, the problem lies with a widespread political insanity in the West among the disaffected across the political spectrum (it's very notable among the Left and the paleocon Right). A lot of them are going to be believers in psi, a lot of them are not. A lot of the 9-11 nutjobs are atheists and materialists who think psi is bunk. It's neither here nor there as far as your personal philosophy is concerned, the problem lies with a sinister political madness across the West and perhaps in hindsight, one should have seen coming. This sinister political madness that has been burgeoning in the West over the last few decades and is now a kind of mind plague that encompasses cultural relativism, moral relativism, apologetics for the Muslim jihad and other sinister aspects. This is all now a mainstream phenomenon that plagues the Western universities, the media, government etc. It is no longer on the margins as it was circa 1970, it is mainstream. It is just one reason why I am an apolitical person.

So there is no reason to single out or focus exclusively on the psi camp when it comes to losing their heads on 9-11 (we just notice it in our own camp that's all, it just stands out to us) - it is a cultural phenomenon that is widespread. This kind of insanity was predicted in many ways by the Cassandra Allan Bloom, the late great prof of literature in his "The Closing of the American Mind" and others. Once upon a time progressives read genuinely progressive edifying texts, the great Ivan Illich, E F Schumacker, Richard Kostelanetz, Jean Francois Revel, Albert Camus and others (sure they had their flaws, their mistakes being human as do we all but there was a solid core of sense, intelligence, knowledge and compassion in their work). Nowadays what do you find in uh "progressive" bookstores, what are the college students reading now? - Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, Noami Klein (an apoligst for Sharia law), John Pilger and others equally odious and mendacious. Cultural and moral relativism is their idol and a lot of mendacity, it inevitably leads to things like 9-11 conspiracy. None of the people I mention above are 9-11 conspiracy theorists of course, just that their odious political philosophy and apologetics for Muslim extremism and the like inevitably leads to things like 9-11 nonsense. 9-11 nuttery follows in the wake of contemporary odious political philosophy (more truly anti-philosophy). It is an extension of their moral relativism, knee-jerk anti-Western mentality and apologetics for the Jihad - it all follows quite logically. That is the anti-logic of 9-11 conspiracy follows the anti-logic of contemporary beliefs in cultural and moral relativism and the like.

God help us. Camus's 'The Plague' needs to be updated for our own age. The more things change...

[Roger Knights]

I hope Larry & Erich don't include my posts among the conspiratists. As I mentioned, I don't think there was a conspiracy and I don't think the Twin Towers were sabotaged. I only suspect that a secondary building (I think it was called WTC #7) may have been demolished by a hasty, overly alarmed security chief.

That's one reason for having a new investigation -- to find out if that was true. It seems to me that that's the most plausible of the Truther claims. It may be embarrassing to the gov't. to admit that one of its operatives blundered, but it is more damaging to conceal the fact, because acting in a furtive fashion signals that it has something to hide, and this lends credibility to the conspiratorial thesis that it has LOTS of things to hide, which in turn erodes the legitimacy of the state.

A similar minor coverup may have happened in the events surrounding the bombing of the Murrah building in Oklahoma. There were indications that law enforcement agencies had advance word of the attack, because none of the dozen or so DEA employees at the site arrived for work that day, and because law enforcement types had been observed snooping around blocks surrounding the site for several hours before the attack. It's quite possible that law enforcement heard rumors, through its network of contacts in the demi-monde, that an attack was coming, and therefore it gave its buddies in the DEA a heads-up, etc. They were justified in not sealing off the building before workers arrived because most such rumors are untrue, as they were well aware.

After the attack, it would have been very embarrassing for the gov't. to admit "we goofed" (especially since they didn't really goof -- they just played the odds and luck was against them). So they didn't admit it. But that shifty behavior in turn lent legitimacy to the wilder suspicions that the attack was planned by the gov't. as a Reichstag-Fire event, which eroded the gov't's. credibility. It would have been better to have made a clean breast of the matter.

[Goonch]

"Maybe you don't know anybody who lost loved ones in the attacks. For some people, I guess it was just another TV show. For others, it hit a little closer to home."

I don't know anyone that died in those attacks. But I don't see why that would preclude certain possibilities about the event.

I also resent the accusation that you think I take it as 'just another TV show'.

You let your emotions take over on this one. Fine. But don't get pissed when some of the rest of us don't let that happen.

[Jimbo]

Thanks for this. It's funny - I believe in psi and life after death, question conventional Darwinian evolution, think animal fat and government deficits are good for you, and that Cold Fusion is real - but what gets people really rolling their eyes at me is stating that I believe that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, assassinated John F. Kennedy...

[Michael Prescott]

"I also resent the accusation that you think I take it as 'just another TV show'."

I don't know about you, but that *is* how the Truthers take it. After all, on TV it's never the most obvious suspect. There's always a twist, and what appeared to be a straightforward crime turns out to be complicated inside job -- which can be solved only by the diligent efforts of amateur sleuths.

The whole Truther movement is an exercise in narcissistic grandiosity fed by pop culture cliches.

It reminds me of a dialogue exchange on The Simpsons, when Homer is accused of a crime.

Lisa: Dad, all the evidence points to you.

Homer: Don't worry, honey, it's never the most obvious suspect.

Lisa: Actually, 99.7% of the time ... it is!

[Goonch]

I agree with that for the most part Michael. My only assertion through all of this is that its still okay to ask the question of whether it was an inside job or not. I don't think it was, but I don't assume the role of 'thought police' and ask that the question never be asked nor do I insinuate that the individuals asking the question are not 'well-adjusted' for doing so.

If they have anything of substance to present they can do so. I listen to coast to coast sometimes and I'll probably listen to that episode. That said, I agree with probably less than 30% of the material I hear on that show. But its still interesting to hear what people have to say about material that is outside the mainstream and I think they still deserve to be heard even if it seems preposterous at a base level.

[dmduncan]

Who's saying the question shouldn't be asked?

The Truthers are saying what they want, and other people, equally free to respond however they wish, are answering them.

Freedom of speech belongs to everybody, and it doesn't mean freedom from criticism, particularly when the opinions expressed are so very worthy of it.

[Michael Prescott]

"I don't assume the role of 'thought police' and ask that the question never be asked nor do I insinuate that the individuals asking the question are not 'well-adjusted' for doing so."

Let's say the topic was not 9-11 but another emotionally charged subject -- the claim that the Holocaust never happened.

Is it wrong to "assume the role of thought police" by saying that Holocaust deniers are out of touch with reality? Is it wrong to insinuate that Holocaust deniers are not "well-adjusted"?

The deniers might say they are only asking questions. But this is a dodge. They are trying to push a particular viewpoint. And they deserve to be called out on it.

Please note, I'm *not* saying the motives of the Truthers and the Holocaust deniers are at all similar. I'm not saying the Truthers are anti-Semites or proto-Nazis or anything like that.

But purely in terms of empirical substantiation, the two "theories" strike me as roughly comparable -- i.e., equally worthless.

It's not a question of being the "thought police." It's a question of holding people accountable for the positions they take. And they, in turn, are free to reject my positions if they choose.

[realpc]

"Life expectancy of individuals on combination antiretroviral therapy in high-income countries: a collaborative analysis of 14 cohort studies"

One problem with that kind of research (and yes I am familiar with a lot of it) is that HIV testing increased during that time period. More patients were diagnosed with HIV earlier, so of course they lived longer on average.

In the early days of HIV testing, people were not generally tested unless they were already sick.

The HIV/AIDS research is full of this kind of confounded correlational research, that is easy to misinterpret.

[realpc]

"the evidence supporting the HIV/AIDS connection is overwhelming"

That is what the propaganda websites are saying. I don't think the mainstream AIDS researchers are trying to deceive, but they do have some mental blocks. When you look carefully at the research, instead of accepting all the propaganda, you will see that all the so-called evidence is weak and correlational, and can be interpreted in different ways.

The field has degenerated into chaotic confusion. Now they can't seem to determine which symptoms are caused by AIDS and which are caused by the anti-retrovirals. They try to blame many horrible symptoms and diseases on HIV or age, and are reluctant to look at the role of the drugs.

A little self-education will show you that the drugs that make up HAART are highly toxic and some are known carcinogens. It would be incredible if these drugs did NOT cause serious and life-threatening problems.

[Goonch]

"The deniers might say they are only asking questions. But this is a dodge. They are trying to push a particular viewpoint. And they deserve to be called out on it."

This is where our paths diverge, Michael. Its best (imo) not to play arm-chair psychologist and throw out hidden motives instead of just letting them speak and examining their evidence.

Its the same reason most people throw out anything regarding an afterlife. They perceive those that believe in it to be weak-minded or at least using the concept of an afterlife as an emotional crutch. And from there no amount of evidence and talking will suffice, because they've already written you off by assuming your motives.

[Michael Duggan]

Realpc, You don't know what you're talking about. I'm not going to bother arguing about all the evidence in favour HIV being the causative factor in AIDS. Just to point out, I wouldn't be here now if it wasn't for my trustee Darunavir and Truvada pills. No side effects except life. Go figure.
I suppose it was the placebo effect that reduced my viral load to undetectable and pushed my CD4 count to normal in less than a few months...... only I didn't really believe they would work at the time.
Anyway, I've got more important things to do than argue with idiots, (like banging my head against a wall).
Sorry MP, for the inflammatory words, but it his response hit a nerve.

[tanabear]

Michael Prescott: "That may be true, but an official investigation would not accomplish very much anyway, since the conspiracy theorists would not believe anything the government says."

A real investigation would not require the government to say anything. The official story asserts that impact damage and fire can completely destroy three steel-framed high-rises. The government would only need to do experiments and tests that showed this to be possible.

Michael Prescott: "Apparently "Trutherism" has gone mainstream, at least to a certain extent, and some otherwise well-adjusted people, like ZC, are willing to consider it as a viable possibility. I find this very depressing."

I don't find the truth coming out about the greatest mass murder in US history to be depressing at all. In fact, it is quite encouraging.

Currently, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth has over 1,200 signatories demanding a real investigation into 9/11. The signatories are comprised of architects, structural engineers, civil engineers, mechanical engineers, aerospace engineers, electrical engineers, chemical engineers, industrial engineers, material engineers etc. Their membership also includes individuals who have expertise in specific areas, such as Scott Grainger, a forensic fire protection engineer.

How many equally credentialed people can you name who have gone on the record supporting the official explanation?

Zetetic_chick: "My life is not going to change sensibly whether the official story is true or false, or if Griffin is right or wrong."

Nihilism was never less eloquently expressed.

[Sam]

One thing that I think is good to keep in mind during this type of debate is that there's a big gap between arguing that the official story is inconsistent with the facts and that 9/11 was an inside job perpetrated by the US government in a mass conspiracy. There's lots of other variations on these two hyoptheses.

[realpc]

"I suppose it was the placebo effect that reduced my viral load to undetectable and pushed my CD4 count to normal in less than a few months"

Did your health status change, Those measurements don't correlate with health status. The anti-retrovivals may seem to work when they lower HIV and raise CD4, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are restoring health. And they might kill some opportunistic infections -- since they are toxic to all cells -- which might cause health to improve temporarily.

I would be very careful an very skeptical, especially if you are only HIV positive, with no AIDS symptoms. And long-term effects of HAART are not well known, and some long-term patients are starting to get terrible side effects.

[realpc]

And by the way I am not a doctor and I am not trying to give medical advice. Just saying be skeptical, look carefully at the evidence. It is possible for a majority consensus to be wrong. Remember when most MDS were giving hormone replacement therapy to most menopausal women, because the consensus was that it prevents cancer and other age-related diseases? This went on for many years, and it turned out to be all wrong.

[Larry]

OK getting back to 9-11 conspiracy kookery, there appear to be millions like tanabear in the West alone, where one of the most obviously ridiculous lies is seen as a great subversive truth.

Michael P it is extremely depressing as you write, and scary too.

Note how the likes of tanabear and ZC and whoever (Gage and Griffin included) ignore the point made by Tiabbi (along with all the debunking by others in its entirety since they can't be bothered with those little inconveniences called reason and logic and facts), they don't even pretend to come up with a plausible affirmative conspiracy, and they never will, because of course they can't.

Michael P I think you are way too soft on these 9-11 nutters, you write:
Please note, I'm *not* saying the motives of the Truthers and the Holocaust deniers are at all similar. I'm not saying the Truthers are anti-Semites or proto-Nazis or anything like that.

Many of the most prominent 9-11 Truthers are Holocaust Deniers. A little bit of research reveals as much. I point this out above. Whilst of course most 9-11 Truthers in the West are not nazis and Holocaust Deniers, like I write above, the motives of 9-11 Truthers are sinister and very dubious. That is their motives reek unequivocally of apologetics/whitewashing for Muslim extremism and the Muslim Jihad itself - in fact that is what 9-11 conspiracy is in principle! it is important not to lose sight of this, also an associated knee-jerk anti-Western masochism, and the soft prejudice of moral and cultural relativism.

Apologetics/whitewashing for and of Muslim fanaticism and Muslim radical terror itself is a kind of soft fascism. How is it not?

Trutherism also reveals the kind of failure in basic critical thinking that underlies the mindless mob mentality, the zombiness associated with any and every fascism. Of course the Truthers just project their zombiness onto the rest of us, we are the ones brainwashed by the media and the US govt blabla. So Michael P, I gott say that you are too soft on the Truthers.

[michael duggan]

realpc, I began to look gaunt, lost 3 stone (which i couldn't explain at the time). Got tested, my cd4 count was less than a hundred (very low) and tested positive according the gold standard Elisa test. Put on medication (no side effects, except strange dreams for a few weeks). Viral load went to undetectable and cd4 shot up to 400 (low but normal), and i put on the weight. I'm doing brilliantly now. If it wasn't for the meds I would have passed away within a few months. That's my story. You seem to be
under the illusion that the drugs are toxic. Not really, not these days. AZT and the older drugs certainly were moderatley toxic (nothing compared to having uncontrolled viral replication though) but these days there are hardly any side effects. I should know!

Getting back to the main post, it is my fear that the public do mistake parapsychological (non-local consciousness research) with all this nonsense. This can only do irreparable harm to the field. Quite frankly I am bewildered with the number of commentators on this post that are sympathetic to all this hockum. Terrifying.

[realpc]

God bless you michael duggan and I hope you do well. I am only giving my opinion, and I would never try to advise or discourage an AIDS patient.

[michael duggan]

HIV postive not AIDS patient. That term is rather anachronistic these days!

[Cyrus]

Hey Duggan,

Congratulations on making such a great recovery. It really gives a lot of us hope, and I hope things stay on course,

I also agree with your last statement quite a bit. You see, there's a lot of people who buy into what I call the "conspiracy smorgasboard". They will incorporate almost anything any author writes, anywhere, into their worldview.

This is why people who believe 9/11 was staged also believe the holocaust was a myth, the royal family are lizard people, and that Bush is a cloned alien.

I was recently reading the mediumship of "Matthew", and his "teachings" delve into every possible conspiratorial angle you can imagine, stretching into the furthest reaches of the absurd.

I don't know what inspires people to become like this. But mediumship is the perfect excuse for this behavior. If you cannot rationalize why you believe these things, simply state you are getting your information from a higher authority or some spirit. Then it becomes acceptable as a testimony of faith.

There are kernels of truth to some of it. There is, indeed, a Bilderburger group, and presidents like Kennedy have, indeed, warned of conspiratorial societies that try to pull the strings. It's impossible to know what goes on behind closed doors, although the late Peter Jennings once attended a Bilderburger group, and since he knew he was probably going to die from cancer, if there was anything clandestine and evil happening, he'd have been the first to expose it to the world.

[Larry]

Duggan you tested HIV positive solely on an ELISA?? There is no 'gold standard' there, certainly not on an ELISA! It's an indirect assay, it's a fucking antibody test. It can aid diagnosis at best, but it is not a definitive assay, not even close to a 'gold standard'. Which country are you in, surely not the USA or Canada? Are you in England, South Africa, Latin America, Asia? I'm sorry but I'm really curious, also how long have you been on the ARVs?

Duggan I agree with you that the newer drugs are far safer than the older RT inhibitors like AZT (thank God) which btw is more than moderately toxic, but I digress. Still how long have you been on the ARVs if you don't mind me asking?

Duggan there are far better tests than an ELISA.. sheesh, but I fear you won't heed what I have to say here.

[michael duggan]

....and the Western Blot, including RNA tests to determine initial viral load. Live in Western Europe and been on arv's for 2 years.
Let's get back to the original post!

[Larry]

what was the original topic again?

Oh yeah 9-11 nuttery. Actually if you haven't seen it Michael P and others, check out the South Park episode (which can be viewed online) the 'mystery of the urinal deuce' making fun of 9-11 conspiracy nuttery. The SP guys pull no punches in ripping the 9-11 nutters to shreds - very funny episode. One of their best.

[realpc]

"HIV postive not AIDS patient. That term is rather anachronistic these days!"

There is a very big difference! It is well know and accepted by the mainstream that there can be a very long latency period between HIV infection and AIDS. Even decades. And now there is disagreement about whether an HIV infected person will inevitably get AIDS. And it is well known there are many false positive HIV tests.

There is much more controversy about this than you realize! Your only symptoms were weight loss and low CD4? That is NOT a sure sign that you were dying. Far from it.

But I don't want to get you upset or confuse you. Still, the mainstream consensus is NOWHERE NEAR as evidence-based as they claim! They won't admit any doubts at all, but the foundation of their theory is incredibly shaky.

The early research was shady, drugs were rushed to patients. The motivations were mostly good, I believe, because everyone involved wanted to save lives.

But, for example, the earliest drug was AZT and it was accepted based on very little experimental evidence. It did not show any improvement in survival beyond 2 years. Yet is was given to patients.

Later drugs, such as those used in HAART, were always compared to AZT, never to placebo alone. So if AZT was actually harmful (and it is not slightly toxic, it is a known carcinogen and toxin that damages many organ systems), then HAART was merely shown to be less harmful.

NOTHING long term and conclusive was done to show that AZT, or anti-retrovirals, do anyone any real good! Yes they can lower HIV and raise CD4 counts, but that doesn't necessarily correlate with improved health status!

Anyone can look into this mess. Even pro-mainstream websites can only give the weakest evidence that effective AIDS treatments have been found!

How do the mainstreamers win their arguments? Mostly by yelling and accusing dissenters of ignorance. They will tell you how many experts are on their side, vs how many are dissenters. What they won't do is give you good solid evidence.

[VegasJoe]

tanabear wrote:

"Currently, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth has over 1,200 signatories demanding a real investigation into 9/11. The signatories are comprised of architects, structural engineers, civil engineers, mechanical engineers, aerospace engineers, electrical engineers, chemical engineers, industrial engineers, material engineers etc. Their membership also includes individuals who have expertise in specific areas, such as Scott Grainger, a forensic fire protection engineer"

* * * * *

Tana, all of those 1200 professionals are lunatics. Didn't you know that?

Notice how nobody else delved into AE911 at all in this comment section? Little known fact: MP is a closet engineer/architect so he's able to dismiss those AE911 folks without actually speaking to them.

Something else you didn't know. MP knows every truther and has spoken to all of them. They all told him that they treat 9/11 like a tv show. Amazing how he knows that.

And when MP mentions that eyewitnesses saw planes fly into the towers and sarcastically calls them liars, it shows he really doesn't know much about the 9/11 theories. Do a few folks claim that planes didn't hit the towers? Yep. But they are in the extreme minority. Anybody who digs into the 9/11 stuff knows that.

BTW, there are plenty of family members of 9/11 victims who don't believe the official story either. They have lots of questions about a lot of things that went on related to 9/11. Are they insulting the memory of their loved ones by questioning things?

Pretty sad to see so many resort to the same debunker tactics that MP has written about on these blogs over the past few years. Actually, it's really pathetic. Didn't expect that on this blog. No wait, actually I did. I've seen it before from MP and I shouldn't really be surprised.

Was 9/11 an inside job? I have no idea. But I definitely have some doubts about the official story. The AE911 folks have done a great job and pointing out some of the problems with that story and I hope they keep it up until a new investigation is opened.

[tanabear]

Larry: "...where one of the most obviously ridiculous lies is seen as a great subversive truth."

Yes. As George Orwell said, "During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." Those who agree with the official story rarely defend the government's position based on the evidence. They are primarily concerned with attacking the motivations of the Truthers and dismissing them as psychology deranged.

Larry: "Note how the likes of tanabear and ZC and whoever (Gage and Griffin included) ignore the point made by Tiabbi (along with all the debunking..."

What debunking? Is Matt Taibbi an expert in demolishing steel-framed high-rises with fire? Is any other debunker? Can you give me their names?

Larry: "Many of the most prominent 9-11 Truthers are Holocaust Deniers. A little bit of research reveals as much. I point this out above."

So how many members of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth and Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice are Holocaust deniers? Can you give me their names?

VegasJoe: "there are plenty of family members of 9/11 victims who don't believe the official story either."

Yes. The Jersey Girls, who were instrumental in the creation of the 9/11 Commission, have come out in support for AE911Truth and Richard Gage.

"We must applaud Mr. Richard Gage and his colleagues, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, for their tenacity in seeking to answer lingering questions concerning the total destruction of the World Trade Center complex, in particular buildings 1, 2 and 7.

As with any scientific report, conclusions must be able to be replicated and verified by subsequent public peer reviews. Mr. Gage and his colleagues have attempted to do just that with NIST's Final Report of the Collapse of the WTC. There seem to be discrepancies and omissions in NIST's conclusions, which Mr. Gage and his colleagues have brought to light."
Patty Casazza
Lorie Van Auken
Mindy Kleinberg
Monica Gabrielle

[Michael Prescott]

"Pretty sad to see so many resort to the same debunker tactics that MP has written about on these blogs over the past few years. Actually, it's really pathetic. Didn't expect that on this blog. No wait, actually I did. I've seen it before from MP and I shouldn't really be surprised."

Well, if you don't like my approach, why are you reading this blog? Just to complain when I call you out for being an idiot?

Michael Duggan, I'm glad to hear your treatment has been so successful.

"it is my fear that the public do mistake parapsychological (non-local consciousness research) with all this nonsense. This can only do irreparable harm to the field. Quite frankly I am bewildered with the number of commentators on this post that are sympathetic to all this hockum. Terrifying."

Indeed it is. If I weren't already convinced of the reality of some paranormal phenomena after years of reading (and some personal experiences), I would certainly be inclined to skepticism after reading many of these comments.

"The official story asserts that impact damage and fire can completely destroy three steel-framed high-rises. The government would only need to do experiments and tests that showed this to be possible."

And the Truthers would accept the results of those tests? Really?

Let's get this straight. You're saying that a government that (supposedly) engineered 9-11 as an inside job, destroyed one or more of the WTC buildings via controlled demolition, disposed of 3,000 airline passengers, and is engaged in a system-wide ongoing cover-up ... can be trusted to carry out objective, reliable "experiments and tests"?

If the government were really as nefarious and omnipotent as the Truthers think it is, no test results it obtained could ever be trusted. Any test that absolved the government of blame would be just another facet of the cover-up.

Your position simply makes no sense at all, even on its own terms.

But I'm going to waste valuable pixels arguing about this anymore. Some things are just not worth the effort.

And I'm sorry if some of you find my tone harsh (though at least one person feels I haven't been harsh enough!). The simple fact is, I'm extremely intolerant of what I see as rank stupidity. Disagreements about paranormal phenomena are, to my mind, entirely different, since the phenomena in question are typically elusive, ambiguous, and (so far) inexplicable. Reasonable people can differ about things like that. But Trutherism? "Fire can't melt steel"? A government that is too incompetent to send clean-up vessels to the Gulf of Mexico can pull off the most elaborate conspiracy in history?

I mean, come on.

Eh, no more of this. I've said my piece, and I will let it go.

[Larry]

Like I said Michael P, it's arguing with true believers, cognitive dissonance comes into it. These troofers cannot be reasoned with, it doesn't matter what you write, they don't care for facts. It's like a new insane fundamentalist religion.

tanabear's moronic responses to me include the most obvious straw-man rubbish re Holocaust Deniers. tanabear ignores the point I made that he conveniently doesn't quote, that most 9-11 troofers are not Holocaust Deniers, just that 9-11 'Trutherism' is supported by many Holocaust Deniers and Revisionists in the West and in the Muslim world for that matter. This is the company they keep. Note how these troofers here like tanabear continue to ignore the point Tiabbi raises in the article of his I mention (and that I repeat), no remotely plausible affirmative conspiracy theory. Well of course!

The 9-11 troofers are like invasion of the body snatchers meets the zombies from the night of the living dead. No wonder zombie movies are so popular these days, it's a metaphorical reflection for the mentality and zeitgeist of our times.

[VegasJoe]

MP - "Well, if you don't like my approach, why are you reading this blog? Just to complain when I call you out for being an idiot?"

Because I enjoy your posts on Life After Death and the accompanying research. I think it's brilliant. But if I disagree with something you write about, I'll say so. Can you handle that without calling people names? Seriously. You're acting like a child who can't get the last word. I said so, so that's the way it is! You're all a bunch of stupid idiots! LOL.

Still waiting for you to go after the AE911 folks. Have you spoken to any of them? How about Gage? Even once?

[VegasJoe]

Interesting info. on controlled demolition from the AE911 page...

http://www.ae911truth.org/news/41-articles/315-explosive-evidence-at-wtc-cited-by-former-cdi-employee.html

[Larry]

I'm ignoring all the 9-11 troofer morons and I suggest others still compos mentis do likewise for the reasons I have already stated. Namely nothing you write is gonna make any difference to them whatsoever - they are true believers.

I do want to actually get back to HIV/AIDS. Here things are not so cut and dried and the consensus not so solid and scientific,
hardly. Seriously there are legitimate problems and very real scientific controversies and worse in the murky world of HIV/AIDS, that the general know-nothing public are in the dark about. Hysterics rules supreme here and there is a near-blanket censorship and a lot of vested interests. This has nothing to do with ridiculous political conspiracies ala 9-11 nuttery. realpc makes some legitimate points on AIDS and ARVs including HAART.

Prescott and Duggan make the point that if not for all the solid work and evidence for psi, the work done by prof scientists and academics in parapsychology and the like over the last century or more, given all the support psi receives from 9-11 nutters and fruitcakes of all stripes, they would otherwise dismiss psi as equally suspect just like the scientific materialists do. Ditto HIV/AIDS. If it wasn't for my own investigations into this house of horrors over the years and all the work done my prof scientists and others in pointing out the numerous holes in the HIV/AIDS edifice and inseperable from this - the house of horrors that has been Western medicine for centuries and its endless blunders, dead ends and fiascos and pervasive corruption which is worse now than ever. Given all the support AIDS dissent receives from 9-11 nutters and fruitcakes of all stripes I would likewise dismiss AIDS dissidents out of hand. if I didn't know more than a few things about modern medicine or what passes for it. I feel the same way about ZC and other psi believing 9-11 conspiracy theorists (even if they disingenuously pretend they are not conspiracy theorists) being AIDS dissidents as Prescott feels about ZC and other psi believers being
9-11 fruitloops. We all know what the 9-11 nutters are saying, and the more you hear of what the likes of Gage and Griffin have to say the more nuts you realise they actually are (if you are swayed by their 'arguments' you are nuts - it's an acid test really). With HIV/AIDS people don't know what the dissidents are saying (censorship and misrepresentation rules supreme here) nor who these dissidents are really. That's the difference between the two 'maverick' positions and this difference is crucial, it's everything. Also 9-11 conspiracy is motivated by odious political disaffection and the like, HIV/AIDS is a scientific controversy. There is no comparison, like comparing apples to anteaters. There is much that can be said here but I can't write a book (well not here) and it is draining of energy and time to argue both positions, that is the psychological dynamics that counts against 9-11 conspiracy and in favour of AIDS dissent at the same time! I do want to get into the murky world of HIV/AIDS (and what I write below is nothing)...

So I'm gonna mention a few things. Duggan tells us what drugs he's on - no surprises really - Truvada and Duranavir which is a protease inhibitor. This does have serious side effects, it's not AZT but..man it can cause serious health problems, including hepatoxicity (chemical damage to the liver) and kidney failure, hyperglycemia and
ketoacidosis (associated with diabetes mellitus and potentially fatal), high blood pressure, a lot else and the Truvada likewise has serious side effects. Truvada is a combination of emtricitabine and tenofovir as anybody can check of course. Of course how many people would know the first thing about RTIs?! These RTIs and emtricitabine is like AZT an NRTI drug (alarm bells ring if you know the first real thing about AZT/ziduvodine) but more similar to lamivudine, another NRTI. For crying out loud these drugs inhibit reverse transcription, RNA to DNA transcription!

Or at least they are supposed to in theory if they are going to work at all, but then that's what one needs to be afraid of! Why? Because there is such a thing as endogenous reverse transcription going on in your cells, and increasingly over the last two decades or so, more and more is being discovered about endogenous reverse transcription and its multiple roles in genomic functioning which was never suspected or known about decades ago.

In other words RTI "treatment" for HIV positives is a lot like chemotherapy for cancer patients. It is indiscriminate in its 'targeting'. The RTIs (all of the different types, including the NTRI and NtRTI that makes up Truvada that Duggan is taking) can potentially disrupt natural necessary endogenous reverse transcription in cells, and not just this! I really expect over time this newish drug (emtricitabine and in combination with tenofovir) to reveal itself as causing multiple adverse toxic effects with long-term usage, that will begin to be recognised over the coming years. This has indeed been the case with other NRTIs (and RTIs in general), the most infamous one of
course being AZT. This is one of the most terrible poisons ever prescribed by the medical profession (mildly toxic my ass Duggan. This is like calling a man being defenceless in a den of starved lions a mildly dangerous situation) and that's saying a lot! The medical profession used to prescribe mercury as a panacea not that long ago, among other poisons too numerous to mention. Nothing has changed. Tenofovir another kind of RTI (a nucleotide analogue)can cause hepatoxicity and complications resulting in kidney failure (as far as I know this is very rare but it's not disputed), plenty other side effects. There are further adverse knock-on effects from all of these adverse side effects, including damage to the functioning of the vascular system, this translates to damage to blood cells including immune cells (remember these drugs are supposed to be boosting your immune system, albeit indirectly) and from all this general organ damage (including cardiac damage and increased risk of cardiac arrest and heart failure) and numerous metabolic disorders with all the resulting potentially fatal consequences.

[Larry]

OK continuing..

Duggan I can't tell you what to do (plus you won't listen to what anybody tells you, no matter what scientific evidence they bring to the table, you have made an impassioned psychological commitment on this front and I don't care if you call me an idiot, it's water off a duck's back. You are the victim here after all but you don't know it. All is topsy-turvy in the world of HIV/AIDS, things are not what they seem), but in the long-term these drugs' toxicity may well begin to kick in (to put it mildly), it is cumulative. Also when their cumulative toxicity overwhelms the body's natural defences, it can be very sudden, no warning signs, or very few... And there is no hard evidence these drugs are truly efficacious whatsoever (the protease inhibitors may be less toxic than AZT but they are still toxic). When one digs a lot deeper than often very dubious studies (as realpc points out, there is a lack of placebo controlled double blind studies with HAART and this is very telling, it should set off alarm bells) and the lack of independent (from drug companies) long-term studies with raw data made available, the lack of real transparency here is obvious.

There is no hard evidence whatsoever that any type of ARV works at all, but then again all this crap about 'life-saving' ARVs and the drug trials themselves are predicated on so many dubious assumptions that are taken as a given and never questioned. This gets into HIV testing and HIV isolation, a whole other horror that I don't even mention on this post (I can't, it's simply so massive and complex and involves very difficult technicalities) . Incompetence doesn't begin to cover it, there is corruption, wishful thinking, careerism, reputations, pervasive self-deception etc. Just something very briefly on HIV testing - it's not just ELISAs where the problems lie, although it's arguably most obvious why ELISAs are so problematic. Duggan you don't know despite your personal impassioned convictions that you do know and you don't really want to know at all. However if you are going to 'dish it out' on a public forum, I'm sorry (no I'm not sorry!) but I am going to set the record straight somewhat.

Depends on the time I have available for this and of course this is Prescott's blog and he sets the rules as he is entitled to.

I will say this - your doctors can potentially kill you Duggan, they are already seriously harming your health in the long-term (despite how well you may be feeling now). Doctors have a long track record in killing and maiming their patients and nowhere is this more obvious than with the AIDS industry (no no conspiracy at all, just incompetence, wishful thinking and BigPharma profiteering, careerism and reputations and a few other things besides including complex sociological factors, hysteria being just one of them) where tens of thousands have died either from the ARVs or inspite of them, that is in the latter case from AIDS but they were on ARVs that didn't do them any good and in fact in many cases have certainly been a co-factor in hastening AIDS patients to the grave.

To Michael P - you don't know HIV/AIDS as you yourself write, you haven't investigated it and you don't know the relevant science here even in outline. You just assume the status quos is all hunky dory. What I write above is nothing, it's not even an intro, it's barely an intro to the intro. The above commentary of mine is just froth on a very deep, murky, muddied and polluted ocean. I don't want this to degenerate into flaming, I won't flame anybody on the AIDS front no matter how provoked and feel nothing but a terrible sympathy for Duggan even if he thinks I am deluded on this front and don't know what I am talking about. This is a crucially important subject and I have studied it seriously for years. Michael seriously you have no idea...you want to talk about a Pandora's Box, you want to talk about arguably the greatest scandal and fiasco in the history of modern science, never mind medical science...You want to talk EYE-OPENING, take-your-breath-away-shock-to-the-system New Inquistion of our times, beause that's what we are dealing with here with HIV/AIDS. Nothing less than an Inquisition with a capital I and sharing more than a few common psychological and sociological dynamics with the witch-hunters of the past.

[Larry]

I know that the 9-11 fruitloops like ZC will think I am contradicting myself, that I am holding one set of rules for the 'official' story on 9-11 and another set of rules for the 'official' story on AIDS. LOL ROFL yuck yuck would be the response of these troofers.

There is no contradiction (even though it may seem that way at first glance), in fact I am being consistent on both heatedly debated topics. The crucial difference is that the more you hear 9-11 Troofers tell you about what they think happened re the WTC towers, the Pentagon, the crash in the Penn forest, the conspirators behind the scenes the more mega-stupid they reveal themselves to be (well to those of us compos mentis). As Tiabbi writes let them come with a plausible affirmative conspiracy.

With AIDS dissent, people don't know what the dissidents are saying (we know what 9-11 troofers say, it's why I laugh at them and call them the morons they are) and they don't know who they are really. When one hears what AIDS dissidents are ACTUALLY saying in detail *in their own words* - on HIV testing, HIV isolation, the alternative explanations for AIDS diseases from GRID to haemophiliacs to drug addicts to African AIDS, on the fraud and blunder in the AIDS industry recognised and acknowledged by the AIDS orthodoxy itself! the adverse and potentially fatal toxicity of many of the ARVs as acknowledged by the AIDS orthodoxy itself (FDA and NIH included)! and so much much more - well it's a VERY different story to paranoid political conspiracies. Comparing a SCIENTIFIC controversy like HIV/AIDS to any kind of paranoid POLITICAL nonsense is comparing apples to frogs. Yes even though many AIDS dissidents also embrace 9-11 conspiracy and vice versa (think of that fruitcake David Icke), it's the same kind of thing with many psi believers (in remote viewing and the like for example - think Jim Marrs) embracing 9-11 nonsense and vice versa.

OK I gotta get back to work!

[Tharpa]

I think that none of us really knows what happened on 9/11. Period. It's not black and white, (and in my opinion parts of the government allowed it to take place- they didn't engineer it.) Motive is clear.

All the name calling is ridiculous- reasonable people can disagree on this one.

[realpc]

The AIDS drugs, either AZT or the newer drugs used in HAART, all follow the same principle as chemotherapy for cancer, as Larry points out. Chemo drugs are poison and the goal is to kill the cancer cells without killing the patient. Chemotherapy for cancer is only meant to continue for a limited time. Antibiotics for bacterial infections are also similar in that they are used only for a limited time.

When AZT was first used to treat AIDS it was assumed it would eradicate all the HIV and result in a cure. That did not happen, supposedly because HIV mutates. AZT, and/or the anti-retrovirals and other AIDS drugs, must be continued indefinitely.

The long-term effects of taking highly toxic chemotherapy were not studied, naturally enough, because it would take too long. Now that some AIDS patients have been medicated for a long time, horrible disabling effects are becoming obvious. There was even a recent NY Times article about it.

The AIDS mainstreamers say these horrible effects are merely the result of living with HIV for a long time, and because the patients are aging. No, it couldn't be the wonderful life-saving, health-restoring chemicals!

As Larry, explained, the various types of AIDS drugs interfere with the natural life processes going on in every cell. Not just in HIV infected cells, but all the cells of the body. How can that be any good, over the long term?

If the AIDS drugs really did restore health and prolong life, then it would be worth it. If an HIV infected patient could be sure of getting AIDS and dying, then most likely they would choose the treatment, however dangerous.

But we really do not know the relationship between HIV and AIDS. We don't know if lowering the level of HIV improves health or prevents AIDS. They just don't have the research that would show that. There are correlational studies, but they only show that HIV positive patients are living longer.

That might be simply because more people are tested and diagnosed with HIV, resulting in "over-diagnosis." Over-diagnosis happens when people are diagnosed with a condition that never would have made them sick. This often happens with cancer, because many types of apparent cancer would never have spread or harm the patient, if left untreated.

This is well known in cancer research, but it seems that mainstream AIDS researchers choose to ignore it.

There are many open questions on the subject of AIDS research, but the mainstreamers have put up walls. They want their chemicals to work, and they believe they work. They insist on fighting HIV, and will not question whether signs of HIV might be something that often goes along with AIDS, rather than being a primary cause.

[felipe]

Michael - What this most recent post has MOST illuminated to me, is that a significant percentage of your readership.....even the ones who seem strangely (and ironically) placid, friendly and benevolent on the PSI front are at HEART, conspiracy theorists and counter culture afficionados through and through who are open to ANYTHING, no matter how obviously erroneous, wrong headed or laughably loony.

YES we DO know what happened on 9-11 - and it had absolutely NOTHING to do with the US government - anyone who thinks it did is simply living in a fantasy world of finger pointing foolishness....and yes it DOES, in my humble opinion, diminish any credibility, or credence your OTHER beliefs, i.e. - the paranormal stuff we discuss here, to the very core.

(and I find that disheartening....especially when I see that folks I really thought were pretty level headed and bright, seem to be sympathetic to the possibility that 9-11 was a manufactured event, OR - even the dope who suggested some city executive pulled a switch and brought one of the secondary buildings down.

This post - if nothing else - will be used by folks who stop by here to gawk and goof on "us".....and illuminate what they suspected all along. Nutty people believe nutty things.

Because there is a pathology to some of the above points of view that could be lifted out of a textbook on delusionary thinking and self aggrandizement that's scary....and silly at the very same time.

I have no problem believing that there were people, at think tanks - or government offices, or otherwise, who theorized about the advantages of a terroristic attack on our soil, and the benefits therein, and even actively crossed their fingers and clicked their heels with hope. (and whose fingers are still crossed for an encore)

But to think that there was an organized, orchestrated effort to make that happen, carry it out and hide it thereafter, is mind numbingly nutty....and while some of the screen-names above aren't suprisingly on that side, others i have to admit, I'm SADLY surprised to see sympathizing with that point of view....or even the possibility that there is some complex conspiracy at the underbelly of it all.

[Ronnie Lee]

Christ, I've never seen so much emotional arguing and name-calling around these parts here before. This is why I don't get involved with most conspiracy theories.

[VegasJoe]

I've discussed 9/11 on another board and with friends. In both instances, there were those who disagreed with me that questions remain about what happened on that day. But rarely did it sink to name calling. I gotta love the folks on here using the "True Believer" label. Is this the JREF forum? Geez, talk about hypocrites.

Until I see proof otherwise, the official story is the correct one. But I still have questions and I think the AE911 group makes some really good points.

Larry: "Seriously there are legitimate problems and very real scientific controversies and worse in the murky world of HIV/AIDS."

And you call us fruitloops? LOL. Thanks for the laugh.

[Goonch]

Why so much concern about how this reflects on 'our' side? There is no 'our' side.

If we have a 'side' that implies we are a group. If we are a group we'll get the same old groupthink and political correctness as all groups do.

Sorry but I'd rather not see there be a 'Skeptics' counterpart. They'd be equally as phony with the only purpose of making a pill easier for conservative mainstream science to swallow.

Convincing others of parapsychological validity is only desirable because it means more funding and more interest. But if they never come to believe it I wouldn't be sweating. Its not about convincing others and the number of people worldwide that believe in a phenomenon doesn't make that phenomenon more or less true.

Its ridiculous to ask other people to curtail their public beliefs for the sake of a group's 'credibility'. If there is one thing I've come to love about many that roam these same fields, its the individuality and 'lack of shame' for their beliefs and perceptions outside the mainstream.

[Larry]

VegasJoe writes:
"And you call us fruitloops? LOL. Thanks for the laugh."

I already predicted that EXACT response from the very predictable likes of you, writing above:

I know that the 9-11 fruitloops like ZC will think I am contradicting myself, that I am holding one set of rules for the 'official' story on 9-11 and another set of rules for the 'official' story on AIDS. LOL ROFL yuck yuck would be the response of these troofers.

I do realise VegasJoe that was just way way over your head. VegasJoe I'm actually glad that as a 9-11 troofer you don't care for AIDS dissent (unlike ZC), seriously.

[Bruce Siegel]

"And you call us fruitloops? LOL. Thanks for the laugh."

VegasJoe, please correct me if I'm wrong here, but it seems to me you just did the following: Complained about intolerance and name-calling, then ridiculed Larry's viewpoint and called him a name.

Did I misinterpret what you wrote?

[Michael Duggan]

I am flabbergasted and depressed that highly intelligent people (realpc, Larry, ZC) sre sympathetic to outlandishly preposterous ideas. I can't comprehend this totally. Maybe I should have done a Ph.D in psychology not engineering!
Great post though MP. :-)

[dmduncan]

"Pretty sad to see so many resort to the same debunker tactics that MP has written about on these blogs over the past few years. Actually, it's really pathetic. Didn't expect that on this blog. No wait, actually I did. I've seen it before from MP and I shouldn't really be surprised."

I think it's much more sad to see so many people hold beliefs for which there is no evidence at all.

The 911 Truthers actually bear more resemblance to the skeptics who a priori dismiss paranormal events of the type discussed on this blog than they resemble people who have reasonable doubts that the materialist narrative is the straight scoop.

People have firsthand experiences with the paranormal. I myself have had experiences that I can only explain that way.

Now you can choose to believe those witnesses or not. That is up to you. But the fact is that those firsthand direct witnesses exist, and they exist in large numbers. They exist all over the world. And the stories they tell are the same.

The 911 Truthers have NO credible witnesses demonstrating administration collusion on an "inside job," and absolutely NO evidence that doesn't work better for the accepted explanation.

In the link I posted involving Gage, he embarrassingly demonstrates his ignorance of physics. It wasn't because he didn't have Winston Wu's debating advice that he lost that debate. It was his own ignorance of physics that made him look stupid. Here's a clue to Gage: You cannot make up in sophistry what you lack in knowledge of physics.

The 911 Truthers are not about facts and they are not about truth. They've made up their minds and all it's ever been about for them is twisting facts until they fit what they already believe. They've proven it. Each time one of their points is refuted they do not admit defeat; nope, they look for ways around the conclusion to keep their already established beliefs alive.

Hmmm. Why does that sound so familiar? Oh yeah, because that's exactly what DOGMATIC SKEPTICS do whenever they are presented with evidence that, if they were at least reasonably open to the possibility, they would be intrigued by.

911 Truthers are stamped from the same intransigent material that dogmatic skeptics, Creationists and moon hoaxers are.

Last night while eating dinner I happened to catch a portion of America's Got Talent, which provided a lesson on foolish skepticism, which is really the same thing as foolish belief (because if your skepticism about some event is foolish, then whatever beliefs you have that reinforce that foolish skepticism are ALSO foolish). It was very entertaining.

A strong man comes out and rolls a frying pan up into "doobie." Judge Piers is unimpressed. "That could've been some soft metal." he says. The other judges challenge Piers to UNroll it if he doesn't believe. Piers accepts and struggles to unroll the pan with all his might. He can't do it!

But rather than admit he's wrong, he's still skeptical and immediately produces an explanation for why HE couldn't unroll it WHILE MAINTAINING that the pan was still some soft metal and that the trick of rolling it up was unimpressive. "It's harder to UNroll than to ROLL up," he says!

He then challenges the contestant to unroll it. "I'll feel better if you can't unroll it either," Piers says.

The contestant picks up the pan and quite EASILY begins to unroll it until it looks like a frying pan again.

Piers now is the laughingstock of the audience. When it comes time to vote whether to send him on or disqualify him, and we get to Piers, he says "I guess I have to vote yes now, don't I?"

Well at least Piers realized he was wrong.

For these people, so long as there is any way to challenge any response to their evidence and keep their beliefs alive, they will do so.

[Kris]

http://lifestyle.msn.com/your-life/just-dreaming/article.aspx?cp-documentid=24690540

very sweet article

[realpc]

Michael Duggan,

It may seem impossible that a mainstream scientific consensus can be wrong, as Larry and I are claiming. However the mainstream scientific consensus also says that belief in ghosts and spirits are just primitive superstitions.

Science is not infallible and it often goes wrong. The consensus of the moment is always powerful because dissenters are ostracized. Human nature is tribal.

The AIDS consensus is also related to money, because so much of the research is drug company funded, and the drug companies stand to make every bigger fortunes from it.

It is also fueled by fear and the desire to believe there are good treatments and soon will be cures.

The evidence is ambiguous and hard to interpret. Controlled experiments can't be done because that would require depriving dying patients of a treatment that is "known" to be effective.

And by the way I disagree with a lot of things some of the HIV dissenters say. I agree with some and I disagree with some. I decide based on evidence, not on who said what.

I am the kind of person who questions authority, and that is how I came to look at the evidence for the paranormal. I didn't care that the mainstream said it's impossible.

When I heard about the 9/11 conspiracy theories, the seemed crazy right from the beginning. For one thing, everyone who believed them was a Bush-hater, so they were biased.

Still I read the 9/11 conspiracy theories and, sure enough, they were all completely nuts and none were objective. Of course there are many things still not explained! It was an enormous unprecedented event and it would not be possible to explain it all.

I generally am skeptical of authorities and experts. But after I consider the evidence, I may end up agreeing with them. I don't doubt things just because the majority believes them.

The consensus AIDS theory is full of holes and contradictions, and it's whole history is very shady. And I read both sides, not just the dissenters' side.

[Erich]

Kris,

Agreed, that is a sweet article. Thanks for passing it on.

[Michael Duggan]

http://www.aidstruth.org/
http://www.thebody.com/content/art52090.html

among other sites.

Compare and contrast with the hysterical disjointed outpourings from the denialist sites. It's quite an exercise!

[VegasJoe]

Great lecture from the AE911 folks from 5/7/10

http://enlightenedfilms.com/archives/138

Lots of eyewitnesses on video and interviewed for the record. They feature folks in the buildings and first responders, including firefighters. In that lecture, there is no claim that 9/11 was an inside job. They just stick to the evidence that doesn't fit with the official story. And there's plenty of it. Continue to paint every one of these folks as truthers and folks who are Bush haters. Just shows your ignorance.

Lots of families of victims are also part of these events. They're all crazy because they disagree with you guys! You can say it as many times as you want. It doesn't make it a fact. Physicists, architects, structural engineers, demolition experts and others, have a different opinion than the message board skeptics over here. I'm more apt to listen to what these guys have to say than a bunch of posters who constantly repeat the same disparaging words because they can't make their point any other way.

[dmduncan]

"You can say it as many times as you want. It doesn't make it a fact."

Yeah, learn to take your own advice before dispensing it to others, genius. Because repetition of this nonsense to yourself is the only thing you have.

[Roger Knights]

I'd like to back away from something I wrote earlier:

"Likewise, I don't think the evidence points to an "inside job," but to a blinkered and lazy refusal by higher-ups to respond appropriately to the warning signs that an attack was brewing. More speculatively, I think a few of those officials may have thought that Iran was becoming a deadly threat, and that a Pearl Harbor event would motivate use to act in time to defuse it. I believe there's precedent for such patriotic "blind eye" behavior, ..."

Upon reflection, I don't think that any high official would have turned a blind eye to an an airline attack on the WTC. That's "unthinkable." But what if such an official thought that only a set of hijackings was in the works? (And, before it happened, it would have been only one rumored attack of dozens of prior false alarms, so he would have been de-sensitized to their threat.) What else could it have been seen as? (The FBI wasn't sharing its awareness of the flight training that the plotters had taken.) There would hardly be any downside in that event, except a small ransom and a few days of negotiation. The upside would have been the passage of the Patriot Act, etc. That's thinkable.

Of course, after the event, it would have been impossible to admit to allowing it to go forward with the excuse that it couldn't have been foreseen that the hijackers didn’t follow the script envisaged for them. I doubt that it could ever be admitted, even 50 years later. So that area should be ruled off-limits to an investigation.

But I think the truth could be allowed to emerge about a peripheral matter like the collapse of WT7, where a miscalculation would be excusable. And also about another peripheral matter, the downing of the plane in Pennsylvania, if it was shot down (for which there is some evidence) rather than brought down by passengers during a struggle in the cockpit. It would be understandable why the gov't. initially preferred the second version to be accepted, especially after it was widely embraced and had become a unifying theme.

[Larry]

Duggan writes
I am flabbergasted and depressed that highly intelligent people (realpc, Larry, ZC) sre sympathetic to outlandishly preposterous ideas

Duggan not half as depressed as I am.

Since I know NOTHING that I write or reference on HIV/AIDS would ever see you entertain the remotest doubts about the status quo. I would beg Duggan to consider going for repeat HIV testing (and ALL the different tests, PCR included) at different clinics over several months, not letting the clinicians in on your "HIV status" at all (give the impression you don't know what your HIV status is, that you have never been tested). Of course Duggan could only do all this if he lives in a big city or if not is prepared to travel to one for this reason, where there are a number of clinics (and they don't know who he is) and their suspicions won't be aroused. If he were to follow my recommendations and go for multiple repeat Western Blot testing and multiple repeat PCR testing (weeks and months apart) at different clinics (if he lives in a big metropolis) there is a chance that on one or more of the tests he would turn out to be HIV negative. This is because HIV testing is Russian roulette, it is the modern day equivalent of looking for witch marks. But of course Duggan would never do this, even if he could easily do this. He is as certain he has HIV as he is certain that he is a man. It's not something to ever question, that would be in his own words, preposterous. It's truly tragic.

Cognitive dissonance.

Psychology indeed.

[Larry]

If I had all the time in the world...

I do recommend that (to those whose curisoity is piqued re AIDS controversies and I hope there are a few) as in any controversial debate, you read BOTH sides of the debate. In fact I would insist on it. Duggan makes mention of thebody and the aidstruth website. I know them both (very well), nowhere do they acknowledge the first real thing about HIV/AIDS dissent whatsoever, not in any way. None of the "debunkers" ever do. They are exercises in straw-man bashing and outright lying and blatant lying at that. They make the SI and the old CSCICOP appear to be straight-up transparent, rigorous, fair and impartial, anti-censorship re psi by comparison.

The 'forum' at thebody is a joke (heavy heavy censorship, it's not a real forum at all, what forum really, there isn't a proper one at all, go ahead take a look) - certain questions are not allowed/ they won't let them through and you can't respond to the "expert's" answer to any AIDS dissent related question they choose to let through since it exposes them for the mugs they are. At aidstruth they at least don't even pretend to have a forum where they would so easily be exposed for their duplicity. Censorship rules supreme with these guys. It has to, there is no other way they could get away with their crap.

If one actually reads the AIDS dissident literature, it bears no resemblance to the likes of thebody and aidstruth's (well what else are they going to call themselves) "representation" of AIDS dissent whatsoever (and other AIDS orthodox 'debunking' websites). Not even close. Their so-called debunking of AIDS dissidents is so poor, amateurish and unintentionally laughable. Then again it would be since all the status quo has on its side are lies and blunder.

Duggan writes Compare and contrast with the hysterical disjointed outpourings from the denialist sites. It's quite an exercise!

I couldn't think of a better example of pure projection if I tried. Indeed compare and contrast the likes of thebody and aidstruth with dissident (not denialist) websites (coming up..). It is indeed quite an exercise. Use the same critical thinking skills in science exemplified by the likes of Robert Merton and Robert Thouless and even Carl Sagan's 'baloney detector' (of course Sagan didn't always follow his own advice) and I think it fairly obvious just who is full of crap.

Thing is there are no short cuts here, just like with psi, there is a massive literature to pour through, podcasts, documentaries. If you are prepared to wade through so much of it (from both sides), well like I write above, being alert through critical thinking to just who uses illogical and irrational argumentation and who isn't, I think it very clear where the truth lies, and it's not with the status quo.

[Trev.]

Phew !
Anyone fancy a little chat about NDE's ? No ?

[Winston]

Michael Prescott:

How much time have you spent researching 9/11? No one can claim that the full truth is known 100 percent. There are hundreds of unanswered questions and discrepancies and scientific impossibilities with the official story. Even you can see that surely?

Michael, just because the JREFers SAY that something is debunked does NOT prove that something is debunked. You as a critical thinker should know that.

FYI, the official fire collapse theory of the WTC has NEVER EVER been proven. Office fires burn at around 1000F while steel melts or softens at 2700F. JREF has NEVER been able to debunk that, neither has Popular Mechanics. They assume many things without proof.

Simple question for you Michael: Have you ever cooked on a gas range with steel pots and pans? If so, did the flame from the gas stove melt your steel pots and pans? If not, why do you buy the official story that the fires weakened the steel and pulverized it to dust at free fall speed? Use your head please.

And the collapse of Building 7, which was NOT even hit by an airplane, yet fell at 6 seconds, near free fall speed, has NEVER EVER been explained. All cop out attempts have failed.

David Ray Griffin has already debunked Popular Mechanics in his book "Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and the defenders of the official conspiracy theory". Please read that before concluding the Popular Mechanics is the final authority.

You should do your research Michael before jumping to conclusions. Just because you and JREF says that the controlled demolition hypothesis has been debunked does not mean that they have been debunked. Surely you must have higher standards than that?

It's strange that you predict that JREF will win. They've lost almost every debate in the past. In the last debate between Richard Gage and Ron Craig, Gage definitely won. The audience agreed overwhelmingly. You can listen to that debate on YouTube.

Anyway, for an intelligent writer, you seem to dismiss the whole 9/11 thing offhand without doing some serious research. Many have an emotional block to this issue for some reason. Do you see that you are being emotional, not rational or objective? Look at the evidence on both sides first, before jumping to conclusions.

Ask yourself this Michael: Why does nearly everyone in the US, Russia and Europe who has investigated or researched this, conclude that the official story was a farce or cover up? There must be valid reasons right?

I invite you to watch these compelling films. I promise that if you watch them with even a 20 percent UNBIASED objective mindset, you will agree that "something stinks to high heaven".

9/11 Blueprint for Truth:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4617650616903609314

Zero An Investigation into 9/11:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2296490368603788739

9/11 Revisited: Were explosives used?
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3760797491142118919

Please examine the evidence with an objective mind, rather than a closed minded dismissal.

We are not making claims or accusations. Just asking that the ignored evidence be exposed so that the truth can be known. That's all. If you are a genuine truth seeker, you would want that too.

Thanks,
Winston

[Markus Hesse]

The fires didn't "melt" anything, they merely heated and thus weakened the steel to the point it could no longer support the immense weight on top of it and gravity did the rest.

And as for the controlled demolition thing, show me some 9/11 WTC footage that sounds like this.

No deafening multi-sequential detonations = no controlled demolition. Unless they used silenced explosives, of course.

And since when are controlled demolitions done from the top-down? And how come the impact, explosion and subsequent fires the planes triggered didn't damage the delicate wiring of the detonation charges that clearly had to be there since the structure collapses started right there at the impact site?

Occam's Razor says no controlled demolition, the lessons of Watergate and Iran-Contra say no conspiracy.