How to tell the difference between true and false conspiracy theories

Yitzhak Rabin

AnthonyHall sent me a long PM and I am now convinced it is indeed Prof. Anthony Hall, and not someone posting in his guise.

Also @ Dr. Shermer: Don't be shy! Say hello!

My name is URL

Dave! wrote: »

What do we think? I'll post my own thoughts when I get a chance

You still haven't posted your own thoughts. So what are they?

tbh this thread is a joke.. obviously it's supposed to be derisive of 'conspiracy theorists'.. and has turned into a platform for some randomer to continue his argument (which is unrelated to the subject of the thread) against Shermer.

All this thread shows is that 2 self-conceited people spend time searching for their own names on Google

Dave!

My name is URL wrote: »

You still haven't posted your own thoughts. So what are they?

Looks like pretty much common sense to me

If anyone is interested, here's a blog post by David Brin expanding on some of the points Shermer made.

My name is URL wrote: »

All this thread shows is that 2 self-conceited people spend time searching for their own names on Google

Or that they receive emails, etc., from people from time to time?

Yitzhak Rabin

My name is URL wrote: »

tbh this thread is a joke.. obviously it's supposed to be derisive of 'conspiracy theorists'...

The OP outlines a list of ways in which you can distinguish a true CT from a false one. Leaving aside whether or this particular list has merit, any toolset to help distinguish a real conspiracy from a false one is useful for those of us interested in CTs. I don't understand how it is a derisive of Conspiracy Theorists?

uprising2

Hello and Welcome Prof Hall, It's an honor to have you here.


This is a slightly different version of yekahs video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGXm__kqFzQ

Just to take a point from schermer's fail safe bullsh1t detector:
The conspiracy is complex, and its successful completion demands a large number of elements.
Similarly, the conspiracy involves large numbers of people who would all need to keep silent about their secrets. The more people involved, the less realistic it becomes.

Approximately 130,000 people were employed by the project at its peak, from laborers to Nobel Prize winners. The Manhattan Project was as much a triumph of engineering and industry as of science.
http://www.cfo.doe.gov/me70/manhattan/retrospect.htm


.......................and kept it secret, impossible!!!

(EDIT: Just to clarify, these 130,000 people involved/employed in the manhattan project didn't see or know the bigger picture, it only takes a select few to know everything and get it to work)

Or:

The conspiracy theorist refuses to consider alternative explanations, rejecting all disconfirming evidence and blatantly seeking only confirmatory evidence to support what he or she has a priori determined to be the truth.

Says the man who pretends to believe the official fairytale.

Your doing great work Prof Hall, keep it up, keep it real.
Don't hold your breath waiting for schermer to go head to head with you.

AnthonyHall

So TV performer Michael Shermer is present in this discussion after all.

So I'll ask Michael Shermer the question I put also to Fred Guterl, Executive Editor of Scientific American. Will I, Anthony J. Hall, be given comparable space and comparable positioning in Scientific American for my my right of reply to Michael Shermer who misquotes me and mischaracterizes my work in his December 2010 column in Scientific America?

meglome

uprising2 wrote: »

Just to take a point from schermer's fail safe bullsh1t detector:
The conspiracy is complex, and its successful completion demands a large number of elements.
Similarly, the conspiracy involves large numbers of people who would all need to keep silent about their secrets. The more people involved, the less realistic it becomes.

But that's just common sense. If one person knows a secret and you add one more person that is a 100% increase.

uprising2 wrote: »

Approximately 130,000 people were employed by the project at its peak, from laborers to Nobel Prize winners. The Manhattan Project was as much a triumph of engineering and industry as of science.
http://www.cfo.doe.gov/me70/manhattan/retrospect.htm
.......................and kept it secret, impossible!!!

(EDIT: Just to clarify, these 130,000 people involved/employed in the manhattan project didn't see or know the bigger picture, it only takes a select few to know everything and get it to work)

The Manhattan project was a very specific thing. It lasted 4 years during a world war and was run by the Army. Not only that is wasn't designed to kill Americans, it was designed to protect America from it's enemies.

911 is 9 years on and killed thousands of innocent Americans. People working on the Manhattan project would be happy to keep it secret. Whereas keeping thousands of people quiet on mass murder is quite another thing. You really think you can keep thousand quiet for all this time on mass murder? Where has this happened in the past?

uprising2 wrote: »

The conspiracy theorist refuses to consider alternative explanations, rejecting all disconfirming evidence and blatantly seeking only confirmatory evidence to support what he or she has a priori determined to be the truth.

Says the man who pretends to believe the official fairytale.

You mean the report with all the evidence backing it up and the consistent story. 9 years later and not one single cogent consistent alternative theory of what happened. And you call the official report a fairytale hehe.

King Mob

uprising2 wrote: »

(EDIT: Just to clarify, these 130,000 people involved/employed in the manhattan project didn't see or know the bigger picture, it only takes a select few to know everything and get it to work)

Except the demolition crews working in the building would have known what they are doing. That's hundreds if not thousands of honest workers, working in secret, feet away from the people they knew full well they where going to kill.
And it's been nearly ten years after this heinous crime has been committed not a single one of them had a pang of guilt and blown the cover on the entire thing...
Sorry, that excuse doesn't hold water.

squod

King Mob wrote: »

E That's hundreds if not thousands....... working in secret

Ever heard of wikileaks? There's shed loads of people who work in secret in every country all over the world. That argument isn't worth the time it took to write.

Brown Bomber

Michael Shermer debunks the "19 hijackers" conspiracy theory!

As Anthony Hall says, Michael Shermer isn't a real economics professor - he just plays one on TV. But that doesn't mean he's always wrong. In a recent Scientific American article, Shermer gives us many reasons to think that the Official Conspiracy Theory of 9/11 is "likely to be untrue." Below is Shermer's list of the characteristics of probably-untrue conspiracy theories. My comments are in italics.

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Shermer writes:


Nevertheless, we cannot just dismiss all such theories out of hand, because real conspiracies do sometimes happen. Instead we should look for signs that indicate a conspiracy theory is likely to be untrue. The more that it manifests the following characteristics, the less probable that the theory is grounded in reality:


1. Proof of the conspiracy supposedly emerges from a pattern of “connecting the dots” between events that need not be causally connected. When no evidence supports these connections except the allegation of the conspiracy or when the evidence fits equally well to other causal connections—or to randomness—the conspiracy theory is likely to be false.


Good point, Michael! Example: The government's 169 "overt acts" allegedly showing a conspiracy by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and five co-defendents to pull off 9/11 in fact show no such thing. The 169 acts consist of innocent actions like starting bank accounts and purchasing Swiss Army knives. Only a paranoid, hyper-imaginative lunatic could connect these 169 dots and see a plot to pull off 9/11. The government has essentially admitted that there is no convincing evidence against these defendants, by withdrawing plans to try the defendants for these crimes. Likewise, the FBI and the Justice Department have admitted that there is "no hard evidence" connecting Osama Bin Laden to 9/11. That means that the popular conspiracy theory that 19 guys conspired with KSM, OBL and five co-defendants is, in your words, "likely to be false."


2. The agents behind the pattern of the conspiracy would need nearly superhuman power to pull it off. People are usually not nearly so powerful as we think they are.


Another good point! How could four groups of four and five 5-foot-tall 150-pound Arabs - all on the same day - succeed in taking planes away from brawny military-vet pilots, when no US hijackings had succeeded in more than two decades? How could they prevent the pilots from squawking the hijack code - a simple action that takes at most a few seconds - on all four of the planes? How could three of four hijacker pilots - the best of whom was so incompetent he was prohibited from soloing in a Cessna training aircraft - succeed at hitting extremely difficult targets at sea-level speeds that probably exceed the capability of the aircraft? How could they avoid all of America's military defenses and fly around unmolested for more than an hour and a half? How could they take down three skyscrapers with two planes? Compare these guys - who looked like the most pathetic, bumbling, booze-and-drug-addled incompetents imaginable during the run-up to 9/11, yet allegedly morphed into superheroes on 9/11 - to the shoe bomber, the underwear bomber, the Times Square bomber, and the Christmas tree bomber.. Why did the pathetic 9/11 patsies - but none of the other pathetic terror patsies - suddenly develop superhuman powers?

3. The conspiracy is complex, and its successful completion demands a large number of elements.


9/11 was a complex crime no matter who did it. Intelligence agencies, and the private entities they work with (top-tier organized crime outfits, high-tech military contractors) would obviously be more capable of pulling off such an intricate operation than a ragtag bunch of lowlifes.


'Eckehardt Werthebach, former president of Germany's domestic intelligence service, Verfassungsschutz, told AFP that "the deathly precision" and "the magnitude of planning" behind the attacks of September 11 would have needed "years of planning." Such a sophisticated operation, Werthebach said, would require the "fixed frame" of a state intelligence organization, something not found in a "loose group" of terrorists like the one allegedly led by Mohammed Atta while he studied in Hamburg. Many people would have been involved in the planning of such an operation and Werthebach pointed to the absence of leaks as further indication that the attacks were "state organized actions."' http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BOL403A.html


4. Similarly, the conspiracy involves large numbers of people who would all need to keep silent about their secrets. The more people involved, the less realistic it becomes.


Intelligence agencies, and to a lesser extent organized crime outfits, have a proven capability to keep secrets; ordinary people, like the nineteen 9/11 patsies and the people they allegedly conspired with, do not. (Anyone who thinks governments cannot keep secrets ought to study the Manhattan Project and Operation Northwoods.)


5. The conspiracy encompasses a grand ambition for control over a nation, economy or political system. If it suggests world domination, the theory is even less likely to be true.


What do political and economic elites ever do but conspire for control over nations, economies, and political systems? What do empires ever do but conspire in pursuit of world domination? What in the world was Shermer smoking when he wrote this?


6. The conspiracy theory ratchets up from small events that might be true to much larger, much less probable events.


Like ratcheting up from Arabs starting bank accounts and buying Swiss army knives to pulling off superhuman feats and defying the laws of physics.


7. The conspiracy theory assigns portentous, sinister meanings to what are most likely innocuous, insignificant events.


Swiss army knives and bank accounts.


8. The theory tends to commingle facts and speculations without distinguishing between the two and without assigning degrees of probability or of factuality.


Facts: Swiss army knives and bank accounts. Speculations: two planes destroy three buildings.


9. The theorist is indiscriminately suspicious of all government agencies or private groups, which suggests an inability to nuance differences between true and false conspiracies.


I have never heard of anyone being "indiscriminately suspicious of all government agencies or private groups." Nobody has ever accused, say, the Social Security Administration or the Rotary Club of involvement with 9/11. This one is a straw man.


10. The conspiracy theorist refuses to consider alternative explanations, rejecting all disconfirming evidence and blatantly seeking only confirmatory evidence to support what he or she has a priori determined to be the truth.


This is exactly what the 9/11 Commission did, as David Ray Griffin explains in The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions. (Short version here.)

To sum up: Many, though not all, of Shermer's points are at least partially valid. But they must be applied evenhandedly to all theories about any given historical event. And it should be added that if a crime is complex, or required the keeping of secrets, it should probably be attributed to those organizations that specialize in complex operations and the keeping of secrets.
http://truthjihad.blogspot.com/2010/12/michael-shermer-debunks-19-hijackers.html

sponsoredwalk

Prof Hall I don't think you can even address the many reasons why
I don't think you deserve to waste anyone's time in Scientific American,
which include a refutation of this claim of yours that you're being
mischaracterized, so I just fail to see the logic as to why you deserve to
waste anyone elses time with this nonsense, especially in a magazine...

AnthonyHall

Thanks Uprising 2. I appreciate those supportive comments

I point to NORAD on 9/11 in addressing the question about the number of people who would have had to be involved. The several war games exercises scheduled for 9/11 confused and disoriented the staff of North America's Air Defense Apparatus. Was the planning of all those exercises just a coincidence or was it done with the design of preventing hundreds of government employees from doing their job? One or two people giving orders can disable the effectiveness of hundreds or thousands of subordinates in the chain of command.

And if it was a great big failure of intelligence, counterintelligence, preparedness, immigration, steel frame building construction etc. etc., why was no one fired for the malfeasance? Why did no one resign? And why won't Michael Shermer address such obvious questions?

I think Shermer sounds equally ridiculous and uninformed when he addresses the Kennedy assassinations. What with the enormous mass of investigative work on the subject, what serious and well read person accepts any longer the sole gunman theory? I think most reputable scholars of history accept that the killing did involve Cuba and the the double backing of a US plan, that Bobbie Kennedy was trying to direct, to assassinate Castro when traveling in an open car.

I think Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann do a credible job in Legacy of Secrecy of presenting an overview from the findings of the vast primary and secondary literature on the subject. Rather than Shermer pointing his predictable smears on this subject at me, let's see him make a reasoned response to the arguments and evidence outlined in Legacy of Secrecy. Let's see him deal with the actual arguments outlined in Professor David Ray Griffin's ten books on myriad aspects of 9/11. Shermer's first rule of performance seems to be, never engage the evidence, just ridicule individuals calling attention to the relevant literature.

After engaging the relevant literature on the JFK assassination I think it very difficult to deny that there was indeed involvement from the mafia. In 1963 the mafia was still reeling from being expelled from from its bastion in Cuba and from Bobbie's commitment to hold racketeers such as Jimmy Hoffa accountable for their criminal activities. The mafia had every motive to eliminate the top man in the Kennedy regime.

Shermer eases over the complexities of the Kennedy assassination like he is writing a child's cartoon. Its becoming increasing clear to me that Shermer thinks of his audience as being stupid as he plays to the lowest possible level of discourse. He has an aversion to dealing with the nuances of evidence. He seems to get most of his info from television rather than from wide reading.

I propose that Michael Shermer leave the cloistered comfort of his gated community on Facebook to step out into this venue and others for a proper exchange on why he and his fellow pseudo-skeptics believe such weird things like, say, the faith-based system of neuroeconomics

sponsoredwalk

Brown Bomber wrote: »

How could four groups of four and five 5-foot-tall 150-pound Arabs - all on the same day - succeed in taking planes away from brawny military-vet pilots, when no US hijackings had succeeded in more than two decades? How could they prevent the pilots from squawking the hijack code - a simple action that takes at most a few seconds - on all four of the planes? How could three of four hijacker pilots - the best of whom was so incompetent he was prohibited from soloing in a Cessna training aircraft - succeed at hitting extremely difficult targets at sea-level speeds that probably exceed the capability of the aircraft?

He was killed on September 11, 2001, when the airplane he was flying,
American Airlines Flight 11 was hijacked and crashed into the World Trade
Center.[4] It is believed that he was stabbed or his throat was slit before
the plane had crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.[5]
Before dying, he managed to engage the aircraft's radio system to allow
air traffic control to listen to the terrorists' conversations in the aircraft's
cabin.[5] His body was never found.[6]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ogonowski

From the links on the wiki page:

THE pilot of the first aircraft to hit New York's World Trade Centre was
told that he was "not going to get hurt" as Arab hijackers stabbed air
stewardesses at the rear of the plane to lure him out of the cockpit.
Capt John Ogonowski, 50, a Vietnam veteran, had the presence of mind
to activate a "push-to-talk" button intermittently so that the authorities
on the ground could listen to the horrific events unfolding on board
American Airlines Flight 11.

The surreptitious transmissions by the former US Air Force officer enabled
two F16 fighter jets to be scrambled from Otis Air Force Base in Cape Cod,
Massachusetts.

But by the time they were airborne they had only six minutes before
impact - not enough to intercept the kamikaze aircraft.
"We have more planes, we have other planes," one of the hijackers said
in heavily-accented English moments before the Boeing 767 plunged into
the World Trade Centre's North Tower at 8.45am, some 40 minutes after
a routine take-off from Boston's Logan Airport.
According to the Christian Science Monitor, air traffic controllers listened
from a concrete bunker in New Hampshire as Capt Ogonowski was told:

"Don't do anything foolish. You're not going to get killed."
But even as this was happening, the pilot and his co-pilot, Tom
McGuinness, knew that their stewardesses were being attacked with
knives at the back of the aircraft.
The pilots are believed to have been pulled away from the controls -
possibly after they were stabbed or had their throats slit - to allow a
hijacker to take over and set the 757 on a course towards carnage.
The terrorists, who included at least one trained pilot, then flicked off
the plane's transponder so that its position would not be beamed to
ground control.
A stewardess was able to make a call and reported that several
passengers had been hurt. Peter Hanson, a businessman, used his
mobile phone to contact his father, Lee, in Easton, Connecticut.
A flight attendant had been stabbed, he said, before the line went dead.
Then he called a second time to say that the plane was "going down".
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1340429/Hijackers-reassured-pilot-while-they-stabbed-stewardesses.html

So there's your answer in one case, I'm sure I can easily find the other
situations but the point is that your description is thoroughally misleading
& very sly.

Brown Bomber wrote: »

'Eckehardt Werthebach, former president of Germany's domestic intelligence service, Verfassungsschutz, told AFP that "the deathly precision" and "the magnitude of planning" behind the attacks of September 11 would have needed "years of planning." Such a sophisticated operation, Werthebach said, would require the "fixed frame" of a state intelligence organization, something not found in a "loose group" of terrorists like the one allegedly led by Mohammed Atta while he studied in Hamburg. Many people would have been involved in the planning of such an operation and Werthebach pointed to the absence of leaks as further indication that the attacks were "state organized actions."' http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BOL403A.html

Background

The 2001 attacks were preceded by the less well known Bojinka plot which
was planned in the Philippines by Ramzi Yousef of the 1993 World Trade
Center bombing and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to blow up twelve airliners[1]
and their approximately 4,000 passengers as they flew from Asia to the
United States. The plan included crashing a plane into the CIA
headquarters, leading credence that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed evolved this
plot into the September 11 attacks[2] The plot was disrupted in January
1995 after a chemical fire drew Filipino police attention, resulting in the
arrest of one terrorist and seizure of a laptop containing the plans. One
person was killed in the course of the plot — a Japanese passenger seated
near a nitroglycerin bomb on Philippine Airlines Flight 434. The money
handed down to the plotters originated from Al-Qaeda, the international
Islamic jihadi organization then based in Sudan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijackers_in_the_September_11_attacks

:eek: What's that? Years of planning for which actual evidence exists? :eek:
As for this heavily complex operation, are you serious? The preparation
involved in pulling off this operation was flight training & a study of
Western culture, hardly rocket science, nobody has claimed superhuman
powers except your strawman. Furthermore an attack on the US was
never kept secret Bin Laden spoke openly about his war on America &
Clinton knew all about it, & hold on don't many 911 people constantly
claim that the US knew an attack was coming but did nothing about it?
As for the Manhattan project not only was it not secret there were spies
working in the facility :rolleyes: Nice strawman there. Richard Feynman even
took the spies car to see his wife or lent the spy his car, I forget which...

This is all that I can see is wrong with your response just by browsing
& not actually checking out all of your claims but still, hopefully someone
else will further analyse what you've said that I haven't checked.

King Mob

squod wrote: »

Ever heard of wikileaks? There's shed loads of people who work in secret in every country all over the world. That argument isn't worth the time it took to write.

So they work every day in secret and with full knowledge to plant explosives that are intended to kill thousands of innocent people who they probably pass in the hall on the way to their secret work?
And not only that but have all remained totally silent when they see the murders they committed used to deceive they entire world?

So no, Wikileaks don't compare.
And aren't they a CIA front?

sponsoredwalk

King Mob wrote: »

And aren't they a CIA front?

Are you saying this or is that the claim of people on this forum?

King Mob

sponsoredwalk wrote: »

Are you saying this or is that the claim of people on this forum?

It's the claim made by some on the forum.
Also the likely excuse for teh fact that none of the stuff leaked has anything to support the paranoid conspiracy theories like 9/11 or chemtrails etc.

squod

King Mob wrote: »

So they work every day in secret and with full knowledge to plant explosives that are intended to kill thousands of innocent people........

Is this where I put up some kind of facepalm picture?

King Mob wrote: »

And not only that but have all remained totally silent when they see the murders they committed used to deceive they entire world?

Of course murderous maniacs should always be obvious to those around them. They should appear exactly like the bloke in this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkG7FGVWsLA

Edit; King Mob added to the ignore list, reading his rantings is obviously a complete waste of time.

King Mob

squod wrote: »

Is this where I put up some kind of facepalm picture?

You may as well, cause you are unable to actually counter the point.

squod wrote: »

Of course murderous maniacs should always be obvious to those around them. They should appear exactly like the bloke in this video.

Yup, that's the exact type of person I'd hire to perform a secret and highly complex demolition operation. Amazing how they can find so many people like that to not only get the job done but then stay completely quiet afterwards. It must be a common trait in the few professionals who have the expertise to work in the demolition of skyscrapers.

squod wrote: »

Edit; King Mob added to the ignore list, reading his rantings is obviously a complete waste of time.

Heaven forbid you read something you don't agree with, and heaven forbid people not know about how you bravely ignore any points against your worldview.
Wasn't there something on Shermer's list about ignoring points?

Brown Bomber

sponsoredwalk wrote: »

From the links on the wiki page:

No point in being anything but honest straight off the bat. I haven't and won't be reading your posts until whatever way your text is alligned is like everyone else's. Nothing personal.

sponsoredwalk

Brown Bomber wrote: »

No point in being anything but honest straight off the bat. I haven't and won't be reading your posts until whatever way your text is alligned is like everyone else's. Nothing personal.

You don't get to tell me how to write my posts, if you are going to resort
to the tactics of squod & resort to some trivial excuse not to respond to me
like (s)he did to King Mob then I doubt you had anything worthwhile to say
anyway. Honestly, could you not self-criticise yourself in such a way as to
realise how rude, ignorant & bossy you sound admonishing me for writing my
posts differently & demanding conformity of me before you recognise the
substance of them?

My name is URL

yekahs wrote: »

The OP outlines a list of ways in which you can distinguish a true CT from a false one. Leaving aside whether or this particular list has merit, any toolset to help distinguish a real conspiracy from a false one is useful for those of us interested in CTs. I don't understand how it is a derisive of Conspiracy Theorists?

The premise of the thread is fine. I'm probably just cynical but I doubt the reason for starting the thread here was because the OP has an interest in CTs. He has an interest in skepticism.

It's derisive of conspiracy theorists because it glaringly alludes to the fact that a skeptical view should be held for all theories. I don't disagree with that, but this is a CT forum is it not? Outlandish, unprovable and downright absurd stuff is always going to be present here. Maybe there needs to be a Raison d'être drawn up to define what exactly the place is about. If it's about taking a skeptical approach to CTs then it's not a forum for CTs.

The reason I said the thread is a joke is not because of the OP, it's because it has turned into a soapbox for some professor who just happens to have an axe to grind with the person mentioned in the OP. And it's being linked to by Shermer who speaks negatively about those posts

sponsoredwalk

My name is URL wrote: »

The premise of the thread is fine. I'm probably just cynical but I doubt the reason for starting the thread here was because the OP has an interest in CTs. He has an interest in skepticism.

It's derisive of conspiracy theorists because it glaringly alludes to the fact that a skeptical view should be held for all theories. I don't disagree with that, but this is a CT forum is it not? Outlandish, unprovable and downright absurd stuff is always going to be present here. Maybe there needs to be a Raison d'être drawn up to define what exactly the place is about. If it's about taking a skeptical approach to CTs then it's not a forum for CTs.

The reason I said the thread is a joke is not because of the OP, it's because it has turned into a soapbox for some professor who just happens to have an axe to grind with the person mentioned in the OP. And it's being linked to by Shermer who speaks negatively about those posts

The premise of a conspiracy theory is to garner evidence in support of
the claims for which you think a conspiracy is suppressing, is it not?
Honestly I think what you've said is more insulting, no offense ,
because the perspective of those advocating CT's always have evidence
to back up their claims & reasons for purporting X. They don't see it as
crazy. You have to analyze the evidence they bring & judge it,
that is the goal of skepticism. Most of their evidence is just curiousity
leading nowhere, or an overactive confirmation bias or just plain mistakes
which can be highlighted by just examining their statements & the
quality/objectivity of their material. The problem is that people start
going nuts insulting everyone who disagrees with them when they do their
own research into the evidence, such as Shermer being labelled X, Y & Z in
this thread for the crime of doing his own research & disagreeing with Prof
Hall. The particularly interesting thing about 911 is that all the
"gatekeepers of the left" are similarly harassed & admonished for their
own personal skepticism as if they are supposed to believe everything
that is political and anti-authoritarian.

Crazy people may come onto this forum purporting X but this is not just
some black hole into which they can get sucked & relinquish their
paranoia. I think you'll read most posters here giving personal opinions &
trying to use evidence to back it up. That doesn't mean a lot of it isn't
bat-**** crazy Stuff about censorship of Zeitgeist et al should not
be in this forum because it's not a conspiracy, that kind of stuff is
blatant and open for which evidence clearly & unequivocally exists.
In the zeitgeist example you have the anti-semitism links which may
or may not be justified, I mean I don't know if people on that forum
were posting NWO Jewry nonsense but if they weren't then the
owners of the site had every right to show them how they were wrong,
garner evidence in support of that & shame the owners. Still, attributing
malice or ulterior motives to a business that equally could just have
wanted to avoid all slanderous connotations that may have occurred is
equally likely, but the overactive confirmation bias wont allow that :pac:

A good point of comparison is amazon censoring wikileaks. Yeah it's
fair to say that amazon did something similar, avoiding anything to do
with wikileaks because they see them as dangerous and breaking amazons
rules. But the fact that homeland security were pressuring amazon the
day before, (could be wrong on the details here), and that amazon never
did it in the months beforehand when similar things were going on is
good evidence in support of the conclusion. With zeitgeist there are
too many holes in the story.

My name is URL

I agree with pretty much all of what you have said. Things should be questioned on an ad-hoc basis. The problem with this forum is that there are 2 disparate groups of people who will never see eye to eye, but instead remain entrenched on whichever side of the fence they are on.

This thread is a perfect example of it (look at how it has become a 9-11 topic!), and there are many many more which end in a similar fashion. Where any actual discussion becomes dominated by those who make generalisations and throw up other threads/subjects in order to score points and discredit the thing currently being discussed, which may be utterly unrelated other than who is saying what. It really is a clusterfcuk of a forum.. and I don't blame any mod, CTer or Skeptic for it.. nature of the beast and all that. I just think it should stop trying to be all things for all people.

My name is URL

Dave! wrote: »

Hey folks,

What do we think? I'll post my own thoughts when I get a chance

[...]

Dave! wrote: »

Looks like pretty much common sense to me

Jesus.. I wouldn't like to see a watered down version of that deep insight :rolleyes:

Or that they receive emails, etc., from people from time to time?

And in your superior skeptical opinion this is what happened is it?

uprising2

meglome wrote: »

But that's just common sense. If one person knows a secret and you add one more person that is a 100% increase.



The Manhattan project was a very specific thing. It lasted 4 years during a world war and was run by the Army. Not only that is wasn't designed to kill Americans, it was designed to protect America from it's enemies..

It was still a massive operation, and at the time the employee's didn't know what they were a small part of, each did a small part of the big thing, without realising.
All military work in a "Yes Sir" enviroment, they're not paid to think, ONLY follow orders and ask no questions.

meglome wrote: »

911 is 9 years on and killed thousands of innocent Americans. People working on the Manhattan project would be happy to keep it secret. Whereas keeping thousands of people quiet on mass murder is quite another thing. You really think you can keep thousand quiet for all this time on mass murder? Where has this happened in the past?.

But the employee's who planted the explosive's/thermite/whatever in the WTC maybe thought they were installing some kind of sensors or whatever, the installers didn't need to know what exactly they were installing to install it.
If the planes were global hawk'd or similar, a US remote pilot controlling the plane maybe thought he was playing in the war games, maybe.
What I'm saying is that people need not be fully aware of what they are doing while or after they do it.
I had a job to do before, I needed to turn new copper on a building to a weathered green in a couple of days, a man told me the best thing for it is piss/urine, me and a friend who was working with me got a few beer's in the off licence and drank them on the job, each of us pissing into gallon drums for 2 days.
I gave a young lad a call to see if he wanted a couple of days work, he did.
I gave him the job of dipping a sponge into the special chemicals and rubbing it into the copper, he did what was required, got paid and was happy, he never suspected that the special chemicals was our piss.

meglome wrote: »

You mean the report with all the evidence backing it up and the consistent story. 9 years later and not one single cogent consistent alternative theory of what happened. And you call the official report a fairytale hehe.

No I mean the fairtale that is lies promoted as truth, even the commissioners involved don't believe it, yet you and others do?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/opinion/02kean.html

http://www.serendipity.li/wot/571-page-lie.htm

King Mob wrote: »

Except the demolition crews working in the building would have known what they are doing. That's hundreds if not thousands of honest workers, working in secret, feet away from the people they knew full well they where going to kill.
And it's been nearly ten years after this heinous crime has been committed not a single one of them had a pang of guilt and blown the cover on the entire thing...
Sorry, that excuse doesn't hold water.

No, the people who packed the explosives into the the boxes didn't know where, when, how or why, they did it and were paid, went home and watched the game.
The people who installed the boxes to the building didn't know it was explosives, they thought it was a moisture sensor, part of a new security system, a gas detector, whatever, not explosives, they did it, got the job done, went home and watched the game.
The assumption that everybody needed for the logistics also needs to know all the details is rubbish, if a postman delivers a parcel bomb to you, does that make him and his fellow postal workers who handled your parcel part of the plot against you?.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USnxe7hxP4I

Divorce Referendum

uprising2 wrote: »

But the employee's who planted the explosive's/thermite/whatever in the WTC maybe thought they were installing some kind of sensors or whatever, the installers didn't need to know what exactly they were installing to install it.
If the planes were global hawk'd or similar, a US remote pilot controlling the plane maybe thought he was playing in the war games, maybe.
What I'm saying is that people need not be fully aware of what they are doing while or after they do it.
I had a job to do before, I needed to turn new copper on a building to a weathered green in a couple of days, a man told me the best thing for it is piss/urine, me and a friend who was working with me got a few beer's in the off licence and drank them on the job, each of us pissing into gallon drums for 2 days.
I gave a young lad a call to see if he wanted a couple of days work, he did.
I gave him the job of dipping a sponge into the special chemicals and rubbing it into the copper, he did what was required, got paid and was happy, he never suspected that the special chemicals was our piss.

Nice story pity it isnt true....

King Mob

uprising2 wrote: »

No, the people who packed the explosives into the the boxes didn't know where, when, how or why, they did it and were paid, went home and watched the game.
The people who installed the boxes to the building didn't know it was explosives, they thought it was a moisture sensor, part of a new security system, a gas detector, whatever, not explosives, they did it, got the job done, went home and watched the game.
The assumption that everybody needed for the logistics also needs to know all the details is rubbish, if a postman delivers a parcel bomb to you, does that make him and his fellow postal workers who handled your parcel part of the plot against you?.

Wow it's that easy to plant demolition charges?
So why in real demolitions do they spend months planting and weakening the structure? Seems it's just unnecessary if you can get maintenance guys to do it so casually.
And I would have thought maintenance people would know that it's a bit odd to be putting this stuff in on the supports of the building, and that this detector doesn't seem to work as a detector, and is packed with explosives....

And it's a good thing that none of these things went off while the maintenance guy, who would have no explosives handling training at all, where installing them. I mean all those precautions and safety measures they take with the explosives at actual demolitions are totally to make their jobs some cooler.

And how come not one of them ever thought "hrmm... that time I put this odd looking detector thing in a really odd place in the twin towers, was a bit suspicious...." and then mentioned it, or made the connection?

meglome

squod wrote: »

Edit; King Mob added to the ignore list, reading his rantings is obviously a complete waste of time.

King Mob wrote: »

Heaven forbid you read something you don't agree with, and heaven forbid people not know about how you bravely ignore any points against your worldview.
Wasn't there something on Shermer's list about ignoring points?

Shermer makes that exact point...

The conspiracy theorist refuses to consider alternative explanations, rejecting all disconfirming evidence and blatantly seeking only confirmatory evidence to support what he or she has a priori determined to be the truth.

uprising2 wrote: »

It was still a massive operation, and at the time the employee's didn't know what they were a small part of, each did a small part of the big thing, without realising.
All military work in a "Yes Sir" enviroment, they're not paid to think, ONLY follow orders and ask no questions.

Sure it was a massive operation. It lasted 4 years during a world war. And it's unlikely the guys pouring the concrete knew what they were building at the time. But I'd guess the scientists had a very good idea what was going on or could guess. So I agree in this operation people would follow orders for the most part and keep the secret, at the time. However asking people to go plant explosives in an occupied building is another thing altogether, a building full of thousands of their own fellow citizens. Then getting thousands of other people to cover up numerous aspects of the case, when they knew people had been murdered by their own government. Can you give me an example of where it has been possible to keep an operation like this secret for over 9 years?

uprising2 wrote: »

But the employee's who planted the explosive's/thermite/whatever in the WTC maybe thought they were installing some kind of sensors or whatever, the installers didn't need to know what exactly they were installing to install it.

You'd think we were talking about a few small packages. We would be talking about truck load of explosives or thermite. In the experiments no one has even shown that termite could even cut large beams like this. Holes being cut into walls to get at the supports. Wiring all over the place, or some sort of remote control mechanism. All in a full building of 20 thousand people. They manage to place the charges exactly where the planes hit. A spark could set off explosives or thermite, but somehow they didn't go off in the plane impact explosion and fire. Should I believe in fairy's too?

uprising2 wrote: »

If the planes were global hawk'd or similar, a US remote pilot controlling the plane maybe thought he was playing in the war games, maybe.
What I'm saying is that people need not be fully aware of what they are doing while or after they do it.

But what about all the people who clearly saw the planes? What about the planes parts? What about the personal effects and body parts? Sure if we ignore all the evidence we can suppose anything.

uprising2 wrote: »

I had a job to do before, I needed to turn new copper on a building to a weathered green in a couple of days, a man told me the best thing for it is piss/urine, me and a friend who was working with me got a few beer's in the off licence and drank them on the job, each of us pissing into gallon drums for 2 days.
I gave a young lad a call to see if he wanted a couple of days work, he did.
I gave him the job of dipping a sponge into the special chemicals and rubbing it into the copper, he did what was required, got paid and was happy, he never suspected that the special chemicals was our piss.

Let's say this is true for a moment. This is one guy dong one thing where the building didn't mysteriously fall down afterwards. This isn't bringing in truck loads of unknown substances and fitting it while making sure no one sees you.

uprising2 wrote: »

No I mean the fairtale that is lies promoted as truth, even the commissioners involved don't believe it, yet you and others do?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/opinion/02kean.html

http://www.serendipity.li/wot/571-page-lie.htm

This covers it I believe...

Boo Radley wrote: »

So, here's how I see it. The 9/11 CT has it that the report is completely fabricated etc. because the shadowy figures in the government colluded to cause the attacks on NY and pentagon etc. The report in this case is supposed to cover up this master plan.

So, along comes another CT as highlighted in the OP. This says the authors of the report covered up the extent to which the agencies involved messed up, were incompetent and how badly they communicated. This is a very different cover up to that proposed by the first CT above.

If the second CT cover up is true, it would discredit the first CT cover up because it would prove that in fact the events of 9/11 were caused by incompetence - since the degree of incompetence is what is being covered up - among agencies and NOT caused by people colluding to create the attack.

Therefore, a cover up (the second) CAN disprove another cover up theory (the first).

uprising2 wrote: »

No, the people who packed the explosives into the the boxes didn't know where, when, how or why, they did it and were paid, went home and watched the game.
The people who installed the boxes to the building didn't know it was explosives, they thought it was a moisture sensor, part of a new security system, a gas detector, whatever, not explosives, they did it, got the job done, went home and watched the game.

Again this is so easy to say. But getting truck loads of material fitted into walls on a number of floors is not easy. It's takes months to prep large buildings for demo. So doing this in a building with more than 20 thousand people working in it is for all intents and purposes impossible. Remember not one person saw a thing. Not one person has come forward.

uprising2 wrote: »

The assumption that everybody needed for the logistics also needs to know all the details is rubbish, if a postman delivers a parcel bomb to you, does that make him and his fellow postal workers who handled your parcel part of the plot against you?.

This isn't accidentally delivering a letter bomb. This is planting large quantities of explosive materials into a building. And that's just one aspect of what would need to be covered up. The list of people involved would be in the thousands. There has never been a cover-up like this is recorded history as far as I can see. The truth always outs but somehow with 911 we should believe it hasn't, which along with the official reports lead me to believe we already know most of the truth.

uprising2

Divorce Referendum wrote: »

Nice story pity it isnt true....

What do you mean it isn't true?, you have a hard time distinguishing whats real from what's not, my story is real, the commission's story is false.

King Mob wrote: »

Wow it's that easy to plant demolition charges?
So why in real demolitions do they spend months planting and weakening the structure? Seems it's just unnecessary if you can get maintenance guys to do it so casually.
And I would have thought maintenance people would know that it's a bit odd to be putting this stuff in on the supports of the building, and that this detector doesn't seem to work as a detector, and is packed with explosives....

And it's a good thing that none of these things went off while the maintenance guy, who would have no explosives handling training at all, where installing them. I mean all those precautions and safety measures they take with the explosives at actual demolitions are totally to make their jobs some cooler.

And how come not one of them ever thought "hrmm... that time I put this odd looking detector thing in a really odd place in the twin towers, was a bit suspicious...." and then mentioned it, or made the connection?

In case your not aware, there are many types of explosive, there are many type of device's/alarms/sensors/monitors/warning systems in all area's of buildings, there is no "odd" place, you really dont have a clue, again 130,000 people working on the manhattan project and 99.999% hadn't a notion what they were working on.
People get paid from the neck down, they're not paid to think.

Plastic explosives can be shaped, molded and disguised/hidden in almost anything with a bit of mass.

LARGE SCALE LIFESPAN MONITORING OF HIGH-RISE

BUILDINGS USING LONG-GAUGE FIBER OPTIC SENSORS
http://www.roctest-group.com/~rtgroup/sites/default/files/bibliography/pdf/c173.pdf

Building maintanence would be an ongoing operation, with different crews coming and going, some jobs lasting months, some a few hours, some doing plumbing, electrical, stress tests, steel maintanence, structural maintanence, elevator maintanence, checks, tests, inspections, drills, fault finding, etc.
One contractor does stage one, another stage 2, another stage 3, none any the wiser, or maybe they knew exactly what they were doing, I don't really know.

Your asking "why did nobody say anything", yet time and again, when shown people "saying something" that doesn't fit the official lie that you believe/swallow you dismiss it, its swings and roundabouts/pissing into the wind and a waste of time and energy engaging you in any way.

Dave!

My name is URL wrote: »

Jesus.. I wouldn't like to see a watered down version of that deep insight :rolleyes:

I didn't say I'd offer "deep insight". The article wasn't as interesting as I thought it would be.

My name is URL wrote: »

And in your superior skeptical opinion this is what happened is it?

Rawrrrrr, retract those claws ma boy! You'll take an eye out

Yes in my opinion Shermer would have been told via Facebook, Twitter, email, word of mouth, one of his students, [insert other medium here], etc.

Just my opinion, clearly you have your own