The Iraq Inquiry has taken us back again to that period where the government had engaged in a massive military build up ready to invade Iraq, and was desperately looking for evidence on WMD to trigger the invasion – an invasion on which the Washington neo-cons had pinned their entire hopes for the future of the Bush presidency.
Just at that crucial time, one of the UK’s foremost experts on Iraqi WMD had let slip to the BBC that the government’s claims did not stand up. As a result, he was found dead in a wood, while the BBC journalist, Andrew Gilligan, who correctly reported that there were no WMD, was fired for telling the truth.
The punishment of the BBC for failing to unquestioningly echo Blair lies went much further. The Chairman and Director General were forced out. All because the BBC said there may have been no WMD, when there were not.
It is almost incredible even now to state what New Labour have done. God know what future historians will make of it.
The BBC was traumatised, and went through an acceleration of cultural change that prized “managers” over journalists, and stopped criticising government. A foundation stone of democracy had been blasted away by Tony Blair.
Kelly’s death was extremely convenient for Blair, Cheney and a myriad of other ultra ruthless people. It paved the way for war. We should not forget how very crucial the WMD issue was in convincing enough reluctant New Labour MPs to go along. Without the UK there would have been no coalition – most of the other Europeans would have quickly dropped out too. It is by no means clear that, despite Cheney’s bluster, the Americans would have invaded Iraq alone.
So Kelly was the first man killed in the Iraq war. Hundreds of thousands of people died in Iraq after Kelly. Arms manufacturers, mercenary companies and the security industry made tens of billions in profit. That’s a powerful motive to remove an obstacle. The Western oil companies are getting back into Iraq.
We will never know if Kelly would have gone on to repeat his – perfectly correct – doubts about Iraqi WMD, or if he would have shut up, as ordered by Tony Blair through the MOD. I do know, as many doctors have attested, it is extremely unlikely to bleed to death by cutting a wrist. I do know that the paramedics who attended said there was very little blood at the scene. I do know that the painkillers he took were a tiny proportion of a fatal dose and were not an anticoagulant. I do know that a chemical weapons expert like Dr Kelly would know better ways to kill himself.
And I do know that the government is keeping the evidence hidden for seventy years.
soba: Reading my reply, I should clarify my first comment – yes, there is such a thing as a crank/conspiracy theorist. But every last crank/CT shouldn’t be confused with someone who disagrees on a particular point… it is intellectually dishonest to try to lump them all together in some underhand manner (as per Larry’s tedious M.O.)
Glenn,
Thanks for the generous reply and I will try to keep it civil.
The reason why I suggested Carl Sagan’s book is that, as well as many, many other things, it illustrates quite well the differences in METHODOLOGY between two groups of people who are trying to discover the “truth” about the same issue. In this case, extra-terrestrial life. Carl Sagan points out that while SETI (Search For Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) attempts to discover evidence of ET’s they are very vigourous in challenging any of their observations. No “interglactic transmission” will be assumed to be from aliens and, in fact, SETI won’t assume aliens even exist but each set of data will be pored over and every possible explanation for a particularly interesting “transmission” will be explored. Secondly, SETI has had positive results. I’m not sure if pulsars and quasars were discovered through the project but scientists’ understanding of them seem to have been enhanced through it.
In contrast Sagan points to UFOlogy which is interested in fiding aliens too but whose methodology is completely the reverse of SETI. For UFologists, the discovery of aliens tends to be the first conclusion that its practioners leap to instead of it being a last resort after all other possibilities are eliminated.
In this sense, this is one of the reasons why I use the word “Truther” in contrast to “skeptic” when talking about 9/11.
Another way in which Sagan bemoans the methodology of UFologists is that they use the strangest evidence and the strangest interpretations of that “evidence” in order to force their conclusions. For example, many of them that see strange lights or unusual objects while camped outside of a military base in the desert will write to the authorities requesting information about certain unusual activities. They can cite the Freedom of Information Act and will receive reams of documents on the subject of UFOs. To their amazement they’ll get many reports of the US military observing UFOs and recorded there in black and white. They cite that as evidence that the government knows of aliens. They’ll also find massive amounts of redacted lines which presumably describe the way that the aliens look (what colour they are, how many arms and legs, whatever). They don’t seek to question their own conclusions such as whether or not their are other national security issues involved or the fact that “UFOs” only literally means a flying object that wasn’t identified or, for that matter, why they would go to all the trouble of redacting so much information but leaving the words “UFO” remaining on the document.
Now, I’d apply that to the David Kelly case. Why would the government murder him and fabricate a story that so many people so evidently find implausible? Why would they say that David Kelly severed his ulnar artery and swallowed an apparently low dose of co-proxamol? It seems odd that they would dangle such obvious “clues” as saying there were no fingerprints on the knife or referring to the investigation as Operation Mason. Besides, what purpose would it really have served the government? There’s been some specualation but not much else.
(Sagan also says, although this is more of a rhetorical point, that if the US government really knew of aliens and were keeping them hidden somewhere why wouldn’t they have used the same kind of iron-fenced security to keep nuclear secrets out of the hands of the Soviet Union?)
Sagan would also receive a lot of letters from people who said they were in contact with aliens and would tell him what the aliens’ advice was about how humans should behave on the planet. Aliens would apparently moralize at length about nuclear weapons, or AIDS or whatever political issues were in vogue at the time. He’d sometimes write back to them and ask if the aliens could assist him in discovering Fermat’s last theorem. The correspondence would stop. Apparently aliens with advanced knowledge of intergalactic space travel aren’t that smart at maths or other subjects Sagan was interested in such as physics or cosmology. But they were extremely happy to respond to questions about the latest social and moral concerns often expatiating on the subject of how to be good with conventional advice. They didn’t tend to give the heads up on possible future problems such as CFC use when the advice could have been useful but certainly did once everyone on Earth knew about their effects…etc…
I can’t help thinking of Norman Baker’s “contacts” here and that maybe Baker should have applied a little more skepticism to some of their claims. We know that there are UFOlogists out there who are more than happy to say they have met little green men.
In other words UFOlogy not only uses highly questionable methodology, it doesn’t even seem to be of any use. It’s also something that people clearly become heavily invested in, either by being deluded or purposely deluding others. One story is about a psychiatrist called Robert Lindner and his patient Kirk Allen, which is too long to go into here.
There’s a chapter in the book called “The Dragon in My Garage” which for me sums up how infuriating it is to debate with Truthers when they speak of the New World Order or the secret state or in fact many conspiracy theories in general. The “hypotheses” and “theories” such as they are are almost completely unprovable or unfalsifiable. This also applies, I think, to the controlled demolition theory. Nothing seems to be accepted as evidence against the theory as it is always tweaked and retweaked. First it is a classic demolition. Then it is one with thermite. Then with thermate, then nanothermite and then something so devilishly unusual that no one has ever seen it. If you Google it you should find the chapter online. It might give you an idea of what I mean and may help you understand why I finally get fed up and start hurling abuse.
Finally, there is a section towards the end titled, “Real Patriots Ask Questions”. In this he does say that people must press the government with questions and must hold them accountable for things. In this sense he would seem to agree with many people here. In fact, I have said that Craig Murray has done some great things and praised his exposing of torture in Uzbekistan. This, I think, is exactly the kind of thing the government should be questioned hard on. I would say that goes too for the Chilcot Inquiry. That Tony Blair absolutely should be grilled on what he knew. To what extent did he believe what he was saying and to what extent was he consciously being deceptive.
Sagan would agree with that approach, I am pretty sure. He does lament the state of science teaching in schools however, and finds that it is the lack of teaching of the scientific method and genuinely fascinating things about human perception of the world which is deplorable and, sadly which leads people to conjure up all kinds of weird explanations for things.
I can’t know this but I think Carl Sagan would be shocked at:
a) the Bush administration.
b) the 9/11 Truth Movement.
Also, while Larry can be caustic at times he did give some good advice. Sign up on the James Randi Educational Foundation Forums and test some of the theories there. While there are a number of people who may be openly hostile and abusive to 9/11 Truth, especially this far down the line, there are a lot of people who are very knowledgable on the subject and would be helpful if you are open about the fact that you have some genuine questions. (The one thing not to try is, “I’m not a Truther but a friend of mine is and he asked me a question that I can’t answer and I need to find out what it is…”).
Anyway, that’s really my summary of Sagan’s book and I do recommend it.
One more thing, thanks for the story about when you went to NASA and saw a landing craft. I once went to Shenzhen in China where there is a decommissioned Soviet aircraft carrier which is now a museum adn tourist attraction. One of the exhibits is a stuffed dog called Belka. This dog was one of the first animals in space, not long after Laika. I remember thinking, “Wow! They shot this dog into space in a tin can and it came back to Earth alive and gave birth to a litter of puppies?” Surely not!
It IS all but incredible that a man was landed on the Moon. It’s all but incredible that people and animals have even been into space. But they have.
Sagan’s book seems to be a good guide to how to apply skepticism usefully.
Anyway, I’ve waffled on a lot here, I hope to read your reply.
A few clarifications:
1) “In this sense, this is one of the reasons why I use the word “Truther” in contrast to “skeptic” when talking about 9/11. ”
What I mean by this is that Truthers have already reached their conclusion: “9/11 was an Inside Job” and then find their evidence. This is NOT skepticism.
2)”Finally, there is a section towards the end titled, “Real Patriots Ask Questions”. In this he does say that people must press the government with questions and must hold them accountable for things. In this sense he would seem to agree with many people here.”
What I mean by this is not that he’d agree with conspiracy theories but he’d agree with challenging the government on questions about what they did/didn’t know about WMD, etc…
@soba: Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World is currently out of print. Ironic reflection of our times?
“@soba: Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World is currently out of print. Ironic reflection of our times?”
That’s a shame. It could well be.
Here’s a part of “Dragon in my Garage”.
http://www.users.qwest.net/~jcosta3/article_dragon.htm
There are people who are ‘tinfoilers’; they wear tin foil on their heads to keep out radiation. They exist. Ruth, on the other hand, seems terrified of the security services. I guess laughing at fear is one way of dispersing it; jeering, I think, isn’t.
Glenn ”
soba wrote: “By the way, what do you think hit the Pentagon if it wasn’t a plane and where did the plane go?”
I’m not even going to speculate – what would be the point? I’d just like to see some photographic evidence that it was a plane that hit the Pentagon. Where did the plane go that hit that? There usual crash scene for a jumbo hitting it is missing. Every camera that would have captured it has the pictures missing. Where do you suppose all those pictures are, and why haven’t they been released – assuming they exist?”
Here are pictures:
http://www.911myths.com/index.php/American_Airlines_Flight_77
“There are people who are ‘tinfoilers’; they wear tin foil on their heads to keep out radiation. They exist. Ruth, on the other hand, seems terrified of the security services.”
Well, if that’s true who do you think is stoking it?
Do you think her fear is a reasonable one or do you think she’s been pulled further and further into these paranoid fantasies by a number of commenters here?
Someone on this thread asked the question “why when the security services whack a dissident don’t they do a better job of making it look like suicide or an accident?”
Usually the killing an individual dissident has several aims.
1/ To shut that dissident up;
2/ To punish that dissident;
3/ To discourage other potential dissidents.
Number 3 if often the most important purpose and for it there needs to be a significant level of public doubt in the suicide or accident cover story, not strong enough doubt to make the public force a proper inquiry. The level of ambivalence about Dr Kelly’s “suicide” is about right to achieve purpose number 3, lots of people including me, suspect that Kelly was murdered but the Hutton inquiry has forestalled a decent investigation and sealed the evidence for 70 years, but there will be plenty of civil servants privy to discreditable secrets that the UK Government would want to maintain that will look at Dr Kelly’s death and feel a chill down their spines and decide against whistle blowing.
The thing is that we in the anglosphere have an unrealistic belief that our governments and their agents are basically law abiding and lack the ruthlessness necessary for assassinating potential witnesses. I think we are naive, we should be no more surprised to find that our governments have people whacked than we are when the Russian or Chechynian States kill journalists and lawyers. Power attracts ruthless people and any state no matter how democratic it appears will have a proportion of psychopaths and believers in the end justifying the means at the upper levels. It is not necessary that Tony Blair actually ordered a hit, just someone at a lower level showing initiative.
Larissa Alexandrovna has a post relavannt to this topic at this url:-
http://www.atlargely.com/atlargely/2010/01/70year-gag-on-kelly-death-evidence-dr-david-kelly.html.
This daily mail article rightly castigates the Hutton Inquiry:-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1245626/NORMAN-BAKER-Hutton-farcical-feeble-amateurish–MUST-told-truth-week.html.
hemical ali is hanged when will war criminal tony blair will be put to gallows? include among those to eb doomed-after goign through abu gharibi style treatment-those companison of crime like BBC journalists, sky journalists and rupert murdocjh and ofocurse this criminal jack ripper straw. and let thse be judged not by kangaroo british court but by the iraqis and afgans who suffrerd fromt these animals.
some one wrote this about americans-this applies more to the british because atleast americans did nto really vote for fraudulent bush but the british did vote thrice for the war criminal tony blair harami-knwing fully well his crimes.
“And Americans are definitely at fault. Who do you think elects these people, the French?? Just how many French voted for Bush in 2000?? How about 2004??? Did the Swiss vote put Bush over the top then??? You guys are blind if you can’t see how the American people have gleefully baaaed their way into this morass happy to drive their wasteful Hummers and remain completely ignorant about the rest of the world.
When the world was saying that Saddam might not have WMDs, it was the US AND ONLY THE US (well, with the UK, Spain and Israel) that insisted on starting an illegal war. Americans were all for it. They were screaming in the streets for it. The rest of the world protested louder than ever before in 2003 AGAINST THE WAR and the US decided to go in anyway. If Americans weren’t behind Bush, there’s no way he would have been able to go against the entire world.
Americans are some of the most ignorant, stupid people on the planet. They have one of the most corrupt medias anyway, know very little about what really goes on in the world, love to flaunt their ignorance as some sort of richer-than-thou trophy that they don’t need to know what’s going on, and then spout idiotic crackpot theories as if they were facts even in the face of reality.
“The Jews are the only ones to blame” is pure racism. It would be a lot closer to the truth to say that “Americans are the only ones to blame,” but even that is far from the truth. Morons vote for morons and then, morons become elected. The easier to control the herd with.”
About 9/11 truth.
In my opinion there is one and only one reason for suspecting that 9/11 was an inside job and that is the extent to which it helped advance an agenda of the neocons and the Bush administration that was already in existence.
However it is clear that the attack was actually carried out by 19 Saudi Arabians working for Osama Bin Laden, to doubt this is insane.
One can point out that Osama Bin Laden and his organization were fostered by the Americans to plague the soviets in Afghanistan, might not the US still had some control over this organization or at least some spies in it?
I can conceive of 9/11 having happened with no elements in the US government having prior knowledge but I can also conceive that some elements might have had knowledge and have welcomed it.
The thing is that 9/11 supported the agendas of both George Bush and Osama Bin Laden. Bush wanted a war in the middle east Bin Laden wanted to draw the USA into a warfare quagmire in the middle east. You can imagine the two of them getting together and plotting it, but you can also imagine that Bin Laden did it and knew that George W would take the bait.
The other reasons that 9/11 truthers give for their beliefs are in my view fallacies.
They are:-
1/ That the twin towers collapsed neatly in their own footprints as if in a perfectly done controlled demolition;
2/ That building 7 which was not hit also collapsed;
3/ That there was nothing left of the large aeroplane that hit the Pentagon and that the debris resembled that of a smaller plane.
4/ That it was physically impossible to fly an aeroplane into the Pentagon after clearing some obstacles that were in the way and were not damaged;
5/ That burning jet fuel is not hot enough to melt steel and cause a steel building to collapse.
The truth is the only way to prove or disprove these ideas is to rebuild the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon as they were and use remote piloted air liners to repeat the experiment.
On #1. The main objection I have to truther argument #1 is why bother? If you are going to carry out a false flag attack on your own buildings why arrange for such a neat implosion. Why care if lots of the building fall in the streets or on other buildings, why care if the building remains standing. An aeroplaning which did not actually bring down the towers would still be pretty spectacular.
On #2.
Tower 7 was close enough to be set on fire by the already burning towers. As I understand it water supply had been cut off due to the catastrophe and sprinklers in Building 7 could not have any effect.
On #3. When a big aeroplane hits a bigger building there is not going to be much left of the plane. Planes are rather fragile things really compared to buildings.
On #4. It might not be easy to do while respecting the control limits of the plane, but these guys did not need the plane afterwards and would not care if the overstrained it by suddenly initiating a steep dive after clearing the obstacle.
On #5,
There are steels that maintain their strength at high temperatures (used for making tools for machining) but they are not used in building construction. As steel is heated it loses strength and the stress under which it becomes ductile is lowered. One does not need to melt the steel in a buildings girders to weaken the girders enough for them to fail. In addition girders are normally protected by a heat resistant coating that should protect them long enough to get the fire under control, but the impact of 200 odd tonnes of aeroplane at more than 200 knots would be more than enough to shake it off. The WTC girders at the level of impact would have lost their thermal protection. In addition their would have been no water to fight the fire.
Truthers also overlook the extent to which the fire was fed by the aircraft fuel. these planes had taken off shortly beforehand and still had most of their fuel.
In my view before 9/11, anyone designing a building capable of withstanding the impact of a jet liner would have been crazy, I think the expectation that the WTC towers should have remained standing is crazy.
Hello Soba: Your reply in turn is appreciated.
I take your point about the term “Truther” compared with “sceptic”. When it comes to 9/11, people doubting the official story use “truther” because they wish to indicate their desire to get at the truth – this would apply to me, anyway, as one who wants to know the truth instead of believing myself to already be in full possession of it.
The point of Sagan’s that you illustrated can be found in all manner of things, particularly with religion and astrology, and Sagan did not have much respect for those either. Almost anything can be seen as a sign from God if one puts their religious goggles on… the phrase “I’d never have seen it if I hadn’t believed it” springs to mind. Astrology is so utterly ridiculous I’m amazed anyone could give it any time at all.
The whole UFO business is itself wrapped in some overblown hyperbole on both sides. “I saw a UFO” on the face of it isn’t much of a surprise – it’s simply something not identified. It doesn’t mean one is claiming “I saw the spacecraft of an alien race”. But to some individuals, of course, that is precisely what it is taken to mean. So I think we agree on all of that.
Heh – I didn’t know that about Sagan’s correspondence with people that hob-nob with aliens, that is most amusing. The trouble with people like that is that they seem to have a rather tenuous grip on reality. Why should aliens make the huge effort of visiting Earth, just to tell someone – unwitnessed – an insubstantial item before clearing off again? Rather like the faithful viewers of soap operas who have a hard time distinguishing between the story and real life, a substantial proportion of people simply accept things to be true without question. Denial is a survival mechanism, because without it we would find it hard to function, but it can and often is taken way too far.
But “truther” – in the terms we both agree is unhelpful – is not really what we are talking about when it comes to those who question the government side of an Official Truth. There are the most ridiculous claims around (they were laser projections, not real planes, hitting the twin towers etc.) which might well have been put about just to discredit the sceptics. I’m also shocked at some of the things the “9/11 truth movement” comes out with, and find it annoying to have to dismiss arguments people assume are my own.
There are, however, way too many oddities in the Official Story for me to be able to accept it. Although, initially, I didn’t think there was anything more to the whole thing that we’d been told. When the Truthers or Sceptics if you prefer started giving alternative explanations, my thought was – don’t be daft, that’s just so unlikely. For a start, the government would never do that to its own people. There’d have to be a vast number of people in on it, somebody would have talked by now. How could anyone commit murder on such a scale, commit treason, and consider it a job well done. The government (Bush, particularly) lacks the competence to eat a pretzel without beating himself up in the process, let alone pull off a job like that. And much the same process can be applied to the moon-landings – a cover-up involving so many would be impossible, somebody would have rumbled it, and so on.
It was painful for me to realise that the government is easily capable of massive deception, that it – or at least, elements within it – are capable of causing deliberate harm to its own citizens, often for very little gain. That they could be wantonly murderous if it suited them, that not many people really needed to be involved – just those sufficiently well placed. That any whistleblowers can be ridiculed, silenced, ignored with such ease. Or killed, bribed or threatened. Or that groups of people can be told they can only leave after signing an Official Secrets Act form obliging them never to reveal what they know.
(I’ve had to sign an Official Secrets Act form myself, a bit like the US’s NDA, as part of my job – the penalties for infringement are severe.)
There are so many flaws in the Official Story that if a “truther” had come up with it, he would have been laughed out of court. So I don’t believe it, but also don’t find myself obligated to come up with a watertight alternative theory. A parcel fails to arrive at my house, and I call the supplier. Suppose they said, “Well, you tell us exactly what happened to the parcel, provide proof of that, and then we’ll accept that it didn’t arrive.” It’s not up to me to say exactly what did happen, it’s sufficient to say I know what didn’t happen in that case. Likewise, I feel it’s safe to say what didn’t happen on 9/11 – that a rag-tag bunch of incompetent non-practicing Muslims managed to defeat the tightest airspace security in the world, that the government was unconcerned despite 53 separate specific warnings, that aerobatics requiring the abilities of stunt-pilots were performed, and so on.
I recall watching news reporters running around on the ground outside the twin towers stating they were being shaken by “bombs in the basement”, the concussions of which were on-going and obvious to the viewer, people contemporaneously saying the buildings had clearly been rigged with explosives, all of which were dropped in subsequent reports. Demolition experts saying immediately afterwards that this was clearly a controlled implosion. Despite attempts at labeling all truthers or sceptics as “loons” in some quarters, I find myself in good company. I was surprised to find it pretty much assumed to be an inside job among the Dutch when I was over there a couple of months back.
Anyway.
Finally, I have no doubt that people have been orbiting the Earth since the mid-1960’s, in case you wondered 🙂
On UFO’s.
I used to be under the impression that people who took UFOs seriously were fruit cakes until I bought a book by J Allen Hynek. I no longer have the book but it is probably this one or an earlier version of it:-
http://www.amazon.com/UFO-Experience-Scientific-Inquiry/dp/156924782X.
Hynek was an astronomer at North Western University in Illinois who was hired by the US Air Force Project Blue Book as a professional debunker of UFO sightings. He is famous for explaining one sighting as “swamp gas”. Hynek had access to all the Blue Book files and most, 95% of the reports in them he could explain as sightings of aircraft satellites, planets low on the horizon or meteorological effects. However the remaining 5% intrigued him as having no current scientific explanation. He selected a subclass of the blue book to study in detail where the phenomena had been seen multiple credible observers who were unknown to each other. Many UFO observers are credible, military pilots, civilian pilots, police, radar operators etc.
Hynek concluded that there is a real phenomena behind these sightings but avoids coming to the conclusion that they are spacecraft from somewhere. No one can actually study a UFO because no one has managed to obtain one, what Hynek studied are UFO reports.
There are other credible authors such as Jacques Vallee. He has come around to the view that UFOs can not be studied scientifically because what people see is a show that someone or something has put on for them. If we see spacecraft that is because someone has put on a show of a spacecraft. Vallee considers the UFO phenomenon and visions of fairies or the Virgin Mary to likely have the same cause. One of his books, Messengers Of Deception states this thesis.
http://www.amazon.com/Messengers-Deception-Ufo-Contacts-Cults/dp/0915904381.
Glenn writes:
“There are so many flaws in the Official Story that if a “truther” had come up with it, he would have been laughed out of court. So I don’t believe it, but also don’t find myself obligated to come up with a watertight alternative theory. A parcel fails to arrive at my house, and I call the supplier. Suppose they said, “Well, you tell us exactly what happened to the parcel, provide proof of that, and then we’ll accept that it didn’t arrive.” It’s not up to me to say exactly what did happen, it’s sufficient to say I know what didn’t happen in that case. Likewise, I feel it’s safe to say what didn’t happen on 9/11 – that a rag-tag bunch of incompetent non-practicing Muslims managed to defeat the tightest airspace security in the world, that the government was unconcerned despite 53 separate specific warnings, that aerobatics requiring the abilities of stunt-pilots were performed, and so on.
I recall watching news reporters running around on the ground outside the twin towers stating they were being shaken by “bombs in the basement”, the concussions of which were on-going and obvious to the viewer, people contemporaneously saying the buildings had clearly been rigged with explosives, all of which were dropped in subsequent reports. Demolition experts saying immediately afterwards that this was clearly a controlled implosion. Despite attempts at labeling all truthers or sceptics as “loons” in some quarters, I find myself in good company. I was surprised to find it pretty much assumed to be an inside job among the Dutch when I was over there a couple of months back.”
Two brief points:
1) An “official story” exists only in the minds of truthers (quite telling that you feel the need to capitalize) and
2) EVERY SINGLE CLAIM that you bring up has been answered. But the moment there is an answer, you’ll move on to one of the many other unsupported claims that your fellow conspiracy theorists have dreamed up.
Also, Glenn, what happens when you are presented with pictures “…From the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania crash sites…” Will you change your mind and acknowledge that planes actually did crash at both sites?
“a rag tag bunch”. Glenn, I think they were a very well-funded bunch, weren’t they?
Carlyle, great posts, thanks.
Tim B: Thanks for that reference, but frankly that looks like a very weak attempt at scattering around a few bits and pieces. It looks nothing like a genuine crash site.
“It looks nothing like a genuine crash site”
What WOULD a genuine crash site look like? What would it take to convince you?
Charles Manson swooned over Time Enough for Love, Tim McVeigh hugged tightly on the Turner Diaries, and now Angrysoba is entertaining us by waxing poetic about the Demon Haunted World as if Carl’s advice to us supported his pathetic pseudo-religion of anti-trutherism and supreme government truth cultism, which I would contend it does not.
Carl Sagan wouldn’t be shocked at Angrysoba’s attempt to gain credibility through association, but he probably wouldn’t be very unamused. After all, Carl was a Truther as well as a Sciencer in the same sense that the Pope is a Christer, Hugh Hefner is a Sexer, Steve Jobs is a Gadgeter and Jane Fonda is a Healther. That’s right, he was an evangelist for his subject.
In DHW, he writes about his scepticism about life after death: “Better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy.”
In Cosmos, he says: “We wish to find the truth, no matter where it lies. But to find the truth we need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact.”
Again, in DHW, he warns us about the perils of sheepledom: “If we can’t think for ourselves, if we’re unwilling to question authority, then we’re just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness.”
Angrysoba, as I’ve learned from witnessing his attempts to debate, didn’t learn much about the scientific method as a child, nor did he develop the sort of decency, humility or community spirit Carl was advocating. What he has learned is to cloak his most cherished beliefs in a dense thick of plausibility and to employ a Swiss Army knife of logical fallacies whenever somebody comes close to cutting through the thicket and showing him the awful T word. That’s where his obnoxiousness and his intense need to ridicule people whose opinions challenge his world view come from. He’s afraid that if he follows Carl’s advice and follows the scientific method to try to establish facts and rule out fictions that he will be faced with irrefutable evidence that his worldview is an untennable fantasy. And that, for Angrysoba, is a terrifying prospect.
Ann Druyan is said to have said of Carl Sagan that “He didn’t want to believe. He wanted to know.” She also said that on his deathtbed he didn’t convert to a religious view. “For Carl, what mattered most was what was true, not merely what would make us feel better.”
If you care about whether your views on what is probable or certain regarding a given subject are being influenced by an emotional bias, a good way of checking might be to try to determin what would make you feel better. Carl would have been happier if there were life after death and aliens were communicating with humanity, but he found no convincing evidence that either was the case.
Ask yourself whether you would be happier to discover that David Kelly was murdered or that he committed suicide, and take account of any bias you discover. Personally, I’d be much happier to discover he had been murdered, and rather disappointed to find it was suicide, just as I suspect Angrysoba was a bit out of sorts to have learned that Hugo Chavez didn’t say on TV what he was reported to have said about the US causing the Haiti quake.
“Ask yourself whether you would be happier to discover that David Kelly was murdered or that he committed suicide, and take account of any bias you discover. Personally, I’d be much happier to discover he had been murdered, and rather disappointed to find it was suicide”
Happier? Happier? Are you mad?
Tim, take a look at those who now carry the legacy of Carl Sagan. They laugh at your conspiracies. Visit the JREF sometime.
And you trying to turn Sagan into a truther is like the religious trying to turn Einstein and Darwin into believers. But you’re much worse, actually.
Sorry, Tim, perhaps you were just being extremely honest, in which case, thank you. Still, I do not see this situation as a cause of ‘happiness’, relative or otherwise, in any event.
Glenn, thanks for your post. I’ll need a little bit of time to write up a reply, but please bear with me.
Carlyle Moulton, thanks. I’ll get round to responding to yours as well.
technciolour: They were a rag-tag bunch if you want to consider the mission they were apparently on. Muslims who ate pork, drank whiskey and attended lap-dance bars. Terrorists who were really bad about keeping a low profile. Pilots were were worryingly incompetent. Well funded – very possibly, and that money came from Germany. So why didn’t the US start bombing Hamburg, where the plan had apparently all started, and Pakistan, from whence the money had come?
At least one senior member of the intelligence community is prepared to go public on the issue.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/022504shrimptontranscript.html
Carlyle Moulton: Nice list, but are you confident you have not just set up 5 straw men for yourself? I’ll list the 5, with your answers paraphrased and a reply :
1/ That the twin towers collapsed neatly in their own footprints as if in a perfectly done controlled demolition;
Your answer: Why bother / spectacular enough as it was.
My answer: Limit the damage, given how much it would be already. Only the Twin Towers were the real white elephants after all, sparsely occupied and a very positive advantage gained in losing them. Silverstein was a very lucky guy, insuring them only weeks before they came down.
*
2/ That building 7 which was not hit also collapsed;
Your answer: It was close enough to be set on fire.
My answer: Lots of steel-framed buildings have caught on fire. Yet this one came down in near freefall speed, in a perfect demolition. Never happened before or after that day. You could also have added the random damage from the twin towers, but building 3 was far more badly damaged but didn’t spontaneously collapse.
*
3/ That there was nothing left of the large aeroplane that hit the Pentagon and that the debris resembled that of a smaller plane.
Your answer: When a big aeroplane hits a bigger building there is not going to be much left of the plane. Planes are rather fragile things really compared to buildings.
My answer: You should always expect to see lots of wreckage (it would not vapourise), seats, luggage, and dead passengers. We saw a few randomly strewn little bits of metal. Same with the Pennsylvania crash. Strange too that the fragile plane – your term – punched such a hole through reinforced concrete like that. Was the nosecone solid iron, maybe?
*
4/ That it was physically impossible to fly an aeroplane into the Pentagon after clearing some obstacles that were in the way and were not damaged;
Your answer: It might not be easy to do while respecting the control limits of the plane, but these guys did not need the plane afterwards and would not care if the overstrained it by suddenly initiating a steep dive after clearing the obstacle.
My answer: “It might not be easy” – you don’t say! Ask any real pilot just how probable it is a guy barely competent to fly a 1-engined Cessna pulled that stunt off. Try this: http://pilotsfor911truth.org/pentagon.html
I find it hard to take your answer seriously, in all fairness. I can just imagine the planning:
Ahmed: It’ll never take that kind of maneuver, even if we have a skilled enough pilot! In the name of the Prophet, please – just crash the thing into the centre of the Pentagon, that will do surely!
B. Laden: No. It must hit that precise point, and the plane might be all knackered the moment after it’s finished performing that tremendous stunt, but we don’t care about that! Ha ha ha ha ha!
*
5/ That burning jet fuel is not hot enough to melt steel and cause a steel building to collapse.
Your answer: Untreated steel might not melt, but it would lose the necessary strength (paraphrasing quite a bit).
My answer: Many thousands of tons of interconnected steel acts as an enormous heatsink. Most of the fuel burned off in the first few seconds (in the case of the second crash, outside of the building in a huge fireball). A dirty flame will not produce enough heat to appreciably weaken even a small amount of detached steel, let alone bring a vast structure up to the temperatures required to initiate a collapse.
Planes are not fueled to capacity when taking domestic flights, that would be a huge weight burden. They take not much more than they need, plus a reasonable safety margin.
*
You conclude: “In my view before 9/11, anyone designing a building capable of withstanding the impact of a jet liner would have been crazy, I think the expectation that the WTC towers should have remained standing is crazy.”
As it happens, the designers allowed for _multiple crashes_ of the heaviest airliners at that time. Don’t forget the Empire State Building was hit by a B-25 bomber and is still standing.
Like it or not, the case it not cut and dried, and anyone who calls doubters/ sceptics “crazy” for not finding the Official Story obvious has clearly not looked into it that hard.
Adrian Peirson,
Michael Shrimpton appears to be a bit of a fantasist. He came up with a theory about how David Kelly was “murdered” which came from a Tom Clancy novel.
It’s unclear what his intelligence credentials are but he refers to himself as an expert on these matters and he claims to get phone calls from Henry Kissinger and Dick Cheney:
This is from the BBC’s Conspiracy Files:
“Michael Shrimpton. He has made his own investigation at
Harrowdown Hill.
Michael Shrimpton:
Harrowdown Hill, I’ve visited the murder site, it’s ideal.
I’m known as a national security lawyer and it’s known that I have links with
the intelligence communities in the United Kingdom and in-throughout the
western world.
I was contacted within about twenty four hours by somebody working with
David Kelly in the intelligence community and he said he’d been murdered
and I wasn’t particularly surprised at that and given the source I had no
doubts whatsoever that he’d been murdered from that time.
Michael Shrimpton believes he has found clues on Harrowdown Hill
that others have missed.
Michael Shrimpton:
You could a hide a platoon or a company of men over the brow of that hill
and you wouldn? know if they kept quiet until you were right on top of them.
As a place for an ambush it? just frankly ideal. He was clearly assassinated
to keep him quiet there was no other motive.
Michael Shrimpton believes that the co-proxamol pain-killers found
near the body were simply a cover used by assassins
Michael Shrimpton:
The plan is to leave coproxamol by the side of the body. So they?e trying to
get co-proxamol into the stomach and they?e trying to shove co-proxamol
down into poor David Kelly he dies on them too quickly. As they?e shoving
the tablet down him, probably the first tablet, there? vomit, and that? the
end then he dies. And that? the end of tablets.
Michael Shrimpton also believes that the cut wrist was really to hide
the injection marks created by a different method of death, an
injection of a fatal substance
Michael Shrimpton:
Succynol choline is still very much the favoured means of killing him
because it is so easily disguised. The wrist slash is clearly in my view
designed not just to create the impression of suicide but it? a perfect
means of disguising the puncture wounds.
Michael Shrimpton says he knows that Dr Kelly was assassinated
because of his extensive intelligence contacts.
Michael Shrimpton:
That is the red phone if that phone goes it could be anyone from the White
House to President? administration in Russia to the CIA to whoever. It? not
usual for me to pick up the phone and have Henry Kissinger on the other
end but that has happened. He actually has that number but he doesn?
have that number. That gives me a direct line through to Vice President
Dick Cheney? Office.
Michael Shrimpton is also a fan of espionage fiction from Frederick
Forsyth to Tom Clancy
Michael Shrimpton:
He? one of my favourite authors
One of Tom Clancy? books, The Teeth of the Tiger concerns an ?ff
the books?team of US Government assassins who avoid detection by
killing their victims with succynol choline
Michael Shrimpton:
Now yes there is a reference to Succynol Choline in this book and I think
that follows the assassination of David Kelly. Tom Clancy has very good
contacts in the intelligence community.
It may be that Tom Clancy picked up a loopback from the Kelly
assassination. But if the suggestion is that I got succynol choline from a
Tom Clancy novel then sorry that won? wash. ”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/programmes/if/transcripts/david_kelly.txt
Glenn, why do you continue to write such crap? Once again you’re recycling crackpot right-wing conspiracy theories from 2004 or so. These silly claims have been thoroughly debunked; see the JREF forums if you have any questions.
Craig has already told you what he thinks of such blather; please stop posting this.
Larry – for once, and probably the last time, I’ll reply:
…sorry son – you’re finished here.