Hiroshima For The Truthers
I have not seen the History Channel special that, by all reports, totally and systematically demolishes the so-called 9/11 "truthers". But after reading some of the reviews, you couldn't pay me not to watch it as soon as I can. Pat Curley calls it "Hiroshima for the truthers." Rick Moran explains:
Prominently featured were historians like David Brinkley, Editor in Chief of Popular Mechanics James Meigs, and structural engineers, explosives experts, and a host of scientists, military experts, and eyewitnesses to the disaster. The cumulative effect of the testimony of the anti-conspiracists was absolutely devastating. The show left little doubt of the unhinged nature of the truthers, showing many of them – including radio host Alex Jones who has given vast amounts of air time to every kook, crazy, and nutcase with a theory on 9/11 – looking like the anti-intellectual fruitcakes they truly are.
The format was perfect. A truther would lay out a conspiracy theory which was then immediately debunked by 2 or 3 experts. Over two hours, a couple of dozen myths associated with 9/11 were laid to rest permanently including the “missile” that hit the Pentagon, the shoot down of Flight 93, the “implosion” of the towers,” and other theories not based on fact.
The implosion theory was debunked several times over. First, by the best forensic structural engineer in the country who, with the help of some excellent graphics and animation, showed exactly how the planes caused the towers to fall. An explosives expert (a young guy who was flabbergasted at the ignorance of the truthers regarding demolition) pointed out it would have taken weeks to rig the buildings for implosion and would have involved stripping drywall and ripping out walls. The nail in the coffin was supplied by one of the engineers who prepared the final report (working for the independent American Society of Civil Engineers) who showed how the collapse of the towers accounted for such things as the puffs of smoke seen in lower floors as the collapse was occurring as well as the speed of the collapse.
What is - and always has been - the real indication of how thoroughly stupid the 9/11 conspiracy nuts are is the almost total lack of any real scientists or engineers who sign on to their lunacy. One metallurgist and one failed engineering professor are all I am aware of. The rest of the "scientists" they claim are in, at best, the soft sciences, not the physical sciences.
UPDATE: Thanks to Pajamas Media for the link. Several others have weighed in on this: The Van Der Galiën Gazette, Macsmind, The Jawa Report, Captain's Quarters for starters. But Jimmie from The Sundries Shack commenting at Michael Van Der Galien's site has an absolutely world class, solid gold insult. This one should be taught at the college level:
There’s a difference between having an open mind and one that’s so ventilated that a stiff breeze makes it whistle.
That is a classic.
Other Links to this Post
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Pajamas Media — Tuesday, 21 August , 2007 @ 2:15 pm
By zlaya, Tuesday, 21 August , 2007 @ 2:16 pm
- The program makers pulled out all the stops to hire nationally renowned NBC news anchor Lester Holt (pictured) to narrate the show, a trusted voice that was utilized to brutally debunk 9/11 truth representatives.
- The debunkers, people like James Meigs whose scientific expertise stretches as far as being the editor of Video Review and Entertainment Weekly , were labeled as experts while real experts like Physicist Professor Steven Jones were stripped of any such description.
- The debunkers’ interviews were pristinely shot and framed, with beautiful backdrops and highly sympathetic camera angles and filters, whereas the truthers were shot from bizarre positions, their images were deliberately distorted and even the color filter of the shot had been manipulated to make their appearance look tainted, blurred and contorted. This was an intentional ploy and a crude act of manipulation to detract credibility from the truthers and violates all known ethical standards of journalism.
- The producers of the show failed to offer the proviso that Hearst Publishing, the owner of Popular Mechanics, also holds a controlling stake in the History Channel (via its stake in the A & E Television Network), therefore concealing from the viewer a blatant conflict of interest that negated the neutrality of the show before it had even begun.
- The debunkers were afforded far more time on camera while the truthers were sidelined.
- The narrator of the show would dismiss the questions and evidence raised by the truthers as unproven or debunked in an ad hominem manner without providing any evidence to justify the assertion.
- The truthers were edited so that only hesitant responses to questions were broadcast, casting doubt on the veracity of their claims in the mind of the unsuspecting viewer.
- The show included a clip of Alex Jones’ appearance at the University of Texas, at which around 500 people packed the lecture hall to hear his speech, but deliberately and maliciously edited the footage to include shots taken during recess, so as to make it appear that the lecture hall was mostly empty. In addition, lingering shots of empty chairs were included to further deceive the viewer into thinking few had attended the speech. This is journalistic fraud of the worse kind - a blatant misrepresentation and deliberate skewing of actual events.
- In a similar vein, footage from 9/11 truth protests was broadcast but the angle of the shot was always tight, so as to make out that few people had attended the demonstration, when in fact thousands were present.
- Davin Coburn of Popular Mechanics, mirroring a dirty trick that was also employed in the BBC hit piece , maliciously lied and smeared Alex Jones and others in the program by claiming that most of the 9/11 families hate them and that they are responsible for causing the families more pain. Coburn and the show’s producers know this is an outright lie and that the majority of the family members are asking the same questions as Alex Jones and others. Bill Doyle, representative of the largest group of 9/11 family members told the Alex Jones Show directly that over half of the family members have questions about the official story. Alex Jones and the Loose Change crew offered contact details for numerous 9/11 first responders, firefighters and family members that were asking questions of the official version, but absolutely none were interviewed by Brad Davis and the rest of the show’s producers.
- The producers of the show tried to make out that Loose Change had recanted their position on the issue of controlled demolition, when in fact Dylan Avery and the other members of the crew were merely using their Final Cut version to focus on other topics, having already covered controlled demolition at length in previous versions. This trick was used to claim that evidence for bombs and controlled demolition, which is attested to by scores of firefighters and first responders, none of which were interviewed by the producers, had been debunked.
- Articles and text from 9/11 truth websites were shown, but the actual URL addresses of the sites were blurred out, with the History Channel obviously frightened that people might actually visit such websites and find out that the program was a pack of lies.
- The debunkers attempted to wriggle out of Secretary Norman Mineta’s bombshell testimony about Cheney’s actions in the Emergency Operations Center, by claiming that Mineta was talking about Flight 93 and not the plane that hit the Pentagon. In reality, Mineta makes it clear in his testimony that he is talking about Flight 77, “the airplane coming in to the Pentagon,” and this is then confirmed by Commissioner Lee Hamilton.
- The debunkers admitted that temperatures inside the twin towers were not hot enough to melt steel, but claimed that they were hot enough to weaken steel and cause the collapse. The debunkers uniformly failed to address the fact that firefighters and first responders described witnessing molten steel beneath the rubble of the towers and they also ignored Professor Steven Jones’ scientific analysis of the iron-rich microspheres found in the rubble. In a website posting last night , Professor Jones stated that he emphatically pushed the dust analysis during his interview with the producers, but the topic was completely overlooked. The New York Times reported that the molten steel was “perhaps the deepest mystery uncovered” but the History Channel, mirroring NIST, failed to address the issue.
- The debunkers mentioned WTC 7 only in passing and completely failed to address why the building, which wasn’t hit by a plane, collapsed in 7 seconds into its own footprint after suffering only limited fire damage from falling debris. They also failed to mention why news outlets were reporting the collapse of Building 7 over an hour before it actually fell.
- The wargames that dovetailed 9/11 and deliberately confused NORAD personnel so as to slow response to the real attack were completely excluded.
- The Able Danger program and how the hijackers were discovered before 9/11 was completely excluded.
- The fact that the money man behind the hijackers, Pakistan’s ISI Chief Mahmoud Ahmad, was meeting with U.S. government and intelligence officials before and on the morning of 9/11 , was completely excluded.
- William Rodriguez’ first-hand testimony of explosions prior to the impact of the planes was completely excluded, as was the testimony of numerous firefighters who attested to bombs and explosions.
- NBC reporter Pat Dawson claimed that FDNY Chief of Safety Albert Turi had only described explosions, not bombs, going off, contradicting Dawson’s own report at the time which stated , “Reports of a secondary device, that is another ‘bomb’ going off.”
By Gaius, Tuesday, 21 August , 2007 @ 2:33 pm
Yeah, right.
By jpg, Tuesday, 21 August , 2007 @ 2:48 pm
zlaya has found another conspiracy. jpg
By Gaius, Tuesday, 21 August , 2007 @ 3:02 pm
It’s like a seven-layer dip of conspiracy.
By Jimmie, Tuesday, 21 August , 2007 @ 5:58 pm
And the deeper you dig with your Nacho Chip of Truth, the more nuts you find.