Conspiraloonery
Ace piece by George Monbiot yesterday, ''9/11 fantasists pose a mortal danger to popular oppositional campaigns. These conspiracy idiots are a boon for Bush and Blair as they destroy the movements some of us have spent years building'' . See also Counterpunch ''The 9/11 Conspiracy Nuts''.
Monbiot's latest piece is following on from his look at Loose Change, and the BBC's The Conspiracy Files patient look at the 9/11 conspiracy myths, which was shown last Sunday.
(By the way, ''American Free Press'' funded Loose Change, the famous ''made by a kid on his laptop 9/11-was-a conspiracy'' internet hit movie. Here's some information about anti-semitic American Free Press. Nice. Hat-tip, urban 75, where a large forum thread is currently comprehensively debunking all the 9/11 conspiracy theories, with contributors who work as mechanics, civil engineers and architects joining in the fun.)
This is my favourite anti Loose Change site. It never fails to make me smile.
One of the reasons I am posting this is because I am annoyed. Some idiot or idiots keeps posting stupid conspiraloon DVDS, sent to my real name, and to my home address, which is not listed on the electoral role and which is entirely private, and which they can only have found by spending a great deal of time looking for it ( bit scary). The DVD sender includes letters urging me to ''embrace the truth''. I would like to urge that person to embrace reality, or failing that, to get lost, and I request now that they cease bothering me: if they continue to do so I shall report it.
Meanwhile, here is some reading for any Loose Change fans still here...
9/11 debunker , debunk911muths.org, 9/11myths, screwloosechange, lolloosechange, thedoc911
jnani.org, internet detectives, sawyerwhatilearned ...and please don't bother posting frantic rebuttals here because it is bum-bitingly boring and you have other places to argue about hologram planes and missile drone pods and all that baloney. I am not interested, okay? I have seen all the movies, read the sites, heard the theories about 9/11 and 7/7 and I think they are all load of cobblers and that you are missing the point wasting your time with this stuff. Get bothered about something important, intelligence failures, complacency, using 9/11 as an opportunity to launch an illegal war. Don't fart about with stupid theories like '' the planes were really holograms'' and ''the buildings were brought down by controlled demolition'', for heaven's sake.
Right, I'm officially done with this oddball stuff on this blog. It was when I read Jon Ronson meeting the ''British 9/11 Truth movement'', in ''We Rationalists are the oppressed minority'' that I realised the error of my ways. There is simply no point arguing with these people. It is a matter of blind faith with them, and they really want to be argued with so they can hurl a blizzard of dodgy internet links to sites like the hilarious prisonplanet and whatreallyhappened at you. They revel in the status of 'martyr to the truth' and they want you to 'have a go'. By engaging with them, you become as bad as they are, you waste your energy by falling into their black hole that sucks up brainpower and passion and reasoned debate.
It is a great shame, when there are so many important causes that could unite left and right - such as resistance to ID cards, preservation of civil liberties, ecological issues and anti-corruption platforms, that so much time and energy is wasted on these ludicrous canards.
So I am not going to bother thinking about 9/11 and 7/7 conspiracy theories anymore, because there are too many other far more important things to worry about.
Do I dare leave comment moderator off? Yes, I'm going to risk it. I am trusting that people who read this blog are well aware of my position on conspiracy theories and are not going to waste time with a load of proselytising in the comments section. Fingers crossed.
Monbiot's latest piece is following on from his look at Loose Change, and the BBC's The Conspiracy Files patient look at the 9/11 conspiracy myths, which was shown last Sunday.
I am glad that the mainstream media are fighting back and attempting to educate people about the extent of this virus of paranoia. ( Although, sadly one of the definitions of a conspiranoid is ''someone who believes nothing they read in the mainstream media and everything they read on the internet''.)
(By the way, ''American Free Press'' funded Loose Change, the famous ''made by a kid on his laptop 9/11-was-a conspiracy'' internet hit movie. Here's some information about anti-semitic American Free Press. Nice. Hat-tip, urban 75, where a large forum thread is currently comprehensively debunking all the 9/11 conspiracy theories, with contributors who work as mechanics, civil engineers and architects joining in the fun.)
This is my favourite anti Loose Change site. It never fails to make me smile.
One of the reasons I am posting this is because I am annoyed. Some idiot or idiots keeps posting stupid conspiraloon DVDS, sent to my real name, and to my home address, which is not listed on the electoral role and which is entirely private, and which they can only have found by spending a great deal of time looking for it ( bit scary). The DVD sender includes letters urging me to ''embrace the truth''. I would like to urge that person to embrace reality, or failing that, to get lost, and I request now that they cease bothering me: if they continue to do so I shall report it.
Meanwhile, here is some reading for any Loose Change fans still here...
9/11 debunker , debunk911muths.org, 9/11myths, screwloosechange, lolloosechange, thedoc911
jnani.org, internet detectives, sawyerwhatilearned ...and please don't bother posting frantic rebuttals here because it is bum-bitingly boring and you have other places to argue about hologram planes and missile drone pods and all that baloney. I am not interested, okay? I have seen all the movies, read the sites, heard the theories about 9/11 and 7/7 and I think they are all load of cobblers and that you are missing the point wasting your time with this stuff. Get bothered about something important, intelligence failures, complacency, using 9/11 as an opportunity to launch an illegal war. Don't fart about with stupid theories like '' the planes were really holograms'' and ''the buildings were brought down by controlled demolition'', for heaven's sake.
Right, I'm officially done with this oddball stuff on this blog. It was when I read Jon Ronson meeting the ''British 9/11 Truth movement'', in ''We Rationalists are the oppressed minority'' that I realised the error of my ways. There is simply no point arguing with these people. It is a matter of blind faith with them, and they really want to be argued with so they can hurl a blizzard of dodgy internet links to sites like the hilarious prisonplanet and whatreallyhappened at you. They revel in the status of 'martyr to the truth' and they want you to 'have a go'. By engaging with them, you become as bad as they are, you waste your energy by falling into their black hole that sucks up brainpower and passion and reasoned debate.
It is a great shame, when there are so many important causes that could unite left and right - such as resistance to ID cards, preservation of civil liberties, ecological issues and anti-corruption platforms, that so much time and energy is wasted on these ludicrous canards.
So I am not going to bother thinking about 9/11 and 7/7 conspiracy theories anymore, because there are too many other far more important things to worry about.
Do I dare leave comment moderator off? Yes, I'm going to risk it. I am trusting that people who read this blog are well aware of my position on conspiracy theories and are not going to waste time with a load of proselytising in the comments section. Fingers crossed.
Labels: 7/7, 9/11, conspiraloons, mental illness, truthseekers
posted by Rachel at 9:40 am
Hope everything calms down for you soon Rachel. You're still in my thoughts.
I take it you didn't watch C4's programme at the weekend...
Rx
Hang on - there are two of you called Rachel - one is a coincidence but two people named after my ex-wife?? I smell conspiracy!!!
I don't usually comment, but I have been reading your blog for some months, and with considerable admiration.
You are quite right not to worry. And there is no point answering the Conspiraloonies. They have no interest in enquiring after the truth, as they believe they have already discerned it. The seek, not discussion, but admission that their view is the truth, and the only truth
What a conicidence! I was just listening to a wannabe barrister going on and on about Loose Change.
I was fuming but it was not worth chipping in...
After numbnuts left, my gang agreed that all this is an insult to those who were murdered and injured in 9-11; and to top it off- they're all supposed to have been in on it?!
Believe me, I served in the military- and I can tell you there is no way on God's green earth that they could pull that off and yet fuck everything else up.
I really do despair.
There is simply no point arguing with these people.
Of course not. I've said a few times in various places that the one thing I've learned about the internet is that it's much harder to argue with an irrational belief than a rational one. This is because people hold irrational beliefs for deep-seated reasons, rather than because they're interested in the truth.
Having written the guide to conspiraloonery on Urban75, I think that says almost everything I need to say about them: except the close connection between conspiracist beliefs and religious beliefs. I don't mean that as a cheap shot, I mean it as a serious statement: the nature of conspiracist belief is essentially religious in nature, it sees the conspiracy everywhere just as the religious see God, its faith in the conspiracy is unshakeable.
Try googling conspiracy loon - the #1 hit is more than illuminating ;-)
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Googling for 'conspiraloon', 'conspiraloonies' and 'conspiranoid' all produce item 1 google hits. So at least one of these must become kosher OED words pretty soon.
In the same vein, look forward to seeing conspiratastic (not to mention conspiraloony and conspiralooniness) in the dictionarary too.
I offer conspiralooninesses (the collective garbage) and conspiranoidal (conspiranoid growths).
IainC
Why chase conspiracy people if you don't want them?
Predictably a few oh-so-bold 'truth hunters' turn up.With abuse. Right, I'm stopping anonymous comments for a bit, perhaps that will keep things sensible...
I am chasing them AWAY. And I pointed out that I put this messgae up as a warning to the conspiraloon who has taken to sending me unwanted DVDS posted to my home address: asking them to stop.
Still, anonymous commenters don't seem to be much cop at reading posts,in my experience, which is why I'm not letting them through for a while.
Bye!
Oops. It turns out that George Monbiot was once a conspiraloon:
"If we are to preserve the progress, pluralism, tolerance and freedom which President Bush claims to be defending, then we must question everything we see and hear. Though we know that governments lie to us in wartime, most people seem to believe that this universal rule applies to every conflict except the current one. Many of those who now accept that babies were not thrown out of incubators in Kuwait, and that the Belgrano was fleeing when it was hit, are also prepared to believe everything we are being told about Afghanistan and terrorism in the US.
There are plenty of reasons to be sceptical. The magical appearance of the terrorists' luggage, passports and flight manual looks rather too good to be true. The dossier of "evidence" purporting to establish Bin Laden's guilt consists largely of supposition and conjecture. The ration packs being dropped on Afghanistan have no conceivable purpose other than to create the false impression that starving people are being fed. Even the anthrax scare looks suspiciously convenient. Just as the hawks in Washington were losing the public argument about extending the war to other countries, journalists start receiving envelopes full of bacteria, which might as well have been labelled "a gift from Iraq". This could indeed be the work of terrorists, who may have their own reasons for widening the conflict, but there are plenty of other ruthless operators who would benefit from a shift in public opinion."
Guardian
Luckily he no longer lists the article on his website.
There was a glorious moment in the BBC mockumentary on Sunday. One of their debunkers, Barry Lichty, Mayor of Indian Lake said "92 or 93% of the remains of the aircraft and the people are still in that hole"
Fruitloopery of the first order.
Rachel said:
Ace piece by George Monbiot yesterday, ''9/11 fantasists pose a mortal danger to popular oppositional campaigns. These conspiracy idiots are a boon for Bush and Blair as they destroy the movements some of us have spent years building
OK folks, let us take this very slowly. How is it even remotely possible that "9/11 fantasists", like George Monbiot in 2001, could do this? GM is an utter fruitloop.
Oh ffs, Numeral, you are a 7/7 conspiracy theorist.
Give it, and me, a rest.
Please.
Hi Rachel
All I am saying is who isn't fruitloop? Everybody seems to be one.
So George Bush and Dick Cheney aren't fruitloops? I understand your frustration with this, Rachel, and I love your writing, I really do, but please try not to dismiss the idea out of hand just because some of the subscribers are a few sandwiches short of a picnic.
As I said in my own blog, it is possible to find inconsistencies in either argument, but the point that strikes me is that the official
line has to hold up completely, whereas if any of the doubters'
claims turns out to be true, then you know someone in authority is lying. And once you start...
The awkward fact is that skyscrapers are designed to withstand aircraft strikes and the way the buildings collapsed was not consistent with such an impact. And if you can explain how Trade Centre Building 7 managed to fall down without being hit by anything, I'd love to know.
You say there are "far more important things to worry about" but that's only true if the official explanation holds up. If it doesn't, and the US administration was complicit in the deaths of nearly 3000 of its own civilian citizens, then I can't think of much that is more important.
Rachel
We disagree but over the past year or so I have come to know you and even love you. You are a brave soul and I could not ever match you.
The thing that always puzzles me about these conspiracy theories is why, given that we know governments are normally pretty incompetent at doing things, they're so good at organising massive conspiracies and then doing a reasonable job of covering them up. Possibly, I suppose, all the able people are so busy with the conspiracies and cover-ups they don't have time to get on with making a half-decent fist of occupying Iraq or anything else.
It also rather puzzles me that, of all the people who must have been involved in so monstrous a plot, not one of them has gone public. Possibly they've all been nobbled or terrorised into keeping quiet but that still leave us with the question of why, having not hesitated to murder so many people, the guys behind the plot are too squeamish to silence those few who've managed to rumble them.
This whole farce is a good example of the problem of knowledge as such. In an ever more complex world verification becomes an ever more difficult task. I try to keep my opinions focused on those issues that I can understand to my own empirical satisfaction. I am not an engineer so I have no clue as to how buildings fall down. Governments lie and are corrupt which gives plenty of space for speculation. Where I mostly agree with you though, Rachel, is that the whole 9/11 conspiracy tale is a huge distraction and waste of time and energy.
Hi Rachel,
It is good to see someone like you putting the Great back into Britain.
I too have seen most of the films and websites etc etc but there is one that might strike a chord with you?
I would like to know whether you have any comments regarding the "Jersey Girls" and their film?
http://www.911pressfortruth.com/families
I apologise if you have already commented on this somewhere else in your blog and I have missed it.
Keep up the good work.
Richard