Stupid 9/11 Conspiracy Theories

               
 

There was a strange email in my mailbox this morning. It took me a while to figure out that the writer was talking about my appearance last year on Penn and Teller's Showtime series, Bullshit. (I still have never seen the whole thing). A brief search came up with this clip from the show on ThatsJustStupid.com: Penn & Teller call BULLSHIT! on factually unsound 9/11 conspiracy claims.

I'll add that I wasn't paid to be on the show and that I am called a few times a year (on average, some years less, some more) to say something about conspiracy theory because I've written about it. I'm not a debunker of conspiracy theories but am more interested in the patterns and styles of conspiracy thinking, on the one side, and the perceived need by more mainstream or dominant sources to pathologize and demonize some ways of thinking as conspiratorial. So, I never say that conspiracy theorists are nut cases, but that their efforts are versions of much more widespread patterns of skepticism and the search for answers, a search that often prefers to find an answer that installs something like a big Other to accepting a harsher, less meaningful possibility. I also emphasize that conspiracy thinking is basic to the democratic public sphere (of which I am critical, but that's another topic)--it relies on questions, not answers.

Here's the email I received (slightly edited):

I do not wish to offend you. In fact all I wish to do is bring to light the shame you have brought to your name. We live in a world where people like you can use their position, status, or title to support the aforementioned production "Stupid 9/11 Conspiracies" in it's goal of quashing the process of full investigation. Please do not refer to the only available official investigation that your government offers, which mentions nothing of the new pertinent evidence brought to light. Those who lost children, friends or parents in the plane crashes or collapses have every right to launch an official complaint- they deserve the air time you had and are denied it.

I am not here to give you my opinion, I am here to make a complaint about your support of the evil men who committed this crime. The propaganda show you appeared on is enough to make your university ashamed, luckily enough this is small scale and you do not frequently speak out against "conspiracy theorists". "Conspiracy theory" is a bad term, 911 clearly needs all the sane and educated investigators possible. This kind of mindset is not paranoid, it is so when all the facts are available to the public, yet the Bush administration incriminated itself when the steel was shipped off and recycled without allowing samples to be taken for forensic investigation.

Before you respond, if you feel it is necessary, I ask kindly that you;

1) Check the following sources.

Professor Jones' homepage, containing a link to his paper.http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/

A presentation by Jones.
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=964034652002408586&q=stephen+jones

An interview with Jones.
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-2842384983834100001

A chilling transcript of phone calls from the victims inside the tower. (This is merely to set in your heart the guilt and empathy required to truly be a human). Listen to this man in his final moments, and feel his truly terrifying last moments when he saw the floor on which he stood give way.

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=8900908525076760048

Alex Jones July 25, 2001, showing you a recording of him warning of the attacks months before they had occurred.
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-8184253307321536024

A film by Alex Jones. "911 A road to Tyranny"...In this footage he sites a particular declassified document, calling for "A new Pearl Harbour...justification for US military intervention in Cuba".
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=2747735047465087513

Now look at what the patriot act is doing to your rights, it is against all the true patriots who demand and deserve a thorough investigation. Instead the steel is sent offshore for recycling without any permission for samples. This is because in the steel you will find Thermate, a variation of Thermite, which should not be there. What should be there are the contents of the building only, the contents of the planes, and the contents resulting from the combustion of the jet plane's fuel. Nature always knows the truth, behind it all she coordinated everything. As beings who normally interface with the world far above the nano, micro, molecular and mechanical realms, we cannot peer into this truth without scientifically advanced instruments. These instruments rely on quantum mechanical effects, namely "positron induced x-ray emission". Through this process all of the ingredients of THERMATE, were found. Thermate is a patented explosive mixture which "cuts through cold steel like a hot knife through butter", to quote Professor Jones.

Please accept my apology for the tone of this, but I hate to see people aid in the creation of a willingly ignorant generation. Your show, targeted at young Americans, does this. If the democracy you have over in the states is to be fully effective in the prosperity of your nation, which the entire world benefits from, an informed public is a must. Informed voters are supremely useful voters, compared with highly emotional and uneducated ones. Why could you not have used your TV appearance, used your position of power, to help the future? The importance of historical contextualisation is something you will learn from Alex's film. Instead you have contributed to the degradation of the attention span of your nation's children towards so-called "conspiracy theories". We should instead encourage our children to seek the truth in all aspects of life.

The statements on your television appearance which frustrate me are the following;

 

"They want to keep going, and keep going, and then they find a more convincing explanation".

"And what makes a conspiracy theorist a little bit different, is they put the facts together in alternative ways which are tinged with paranoia"

 

"They would always rather see that, oh yes, there was always a system, there was always an over riding explanation that will let us make sense of the world"

 

In fact, these are perhaps all of the statements you made on the show, and the fact that all of them frustrate me justifies this letter.

 

"Convincing" should have been replaced with "credible". You imply that all investigators simply just want to prove a government conspiracy, or at least the show portrays this message. All I want is an explanation or analysis of the collapse, Prof. Jones offers what I think is the most credible to date. When this truth becomes commonly accepted, you will join the ring of evil men who are definitely going to suffer the scarring guilt and shame. As what you have done is support public relations for those who have something to gain from death. The same men who sell Depleted Uranium weapons, which are completely inhumane, against the Geneva convention and devastating to our Earth.

 

You completely ignore logical analysis of the situation at hand and are not dividing the problem up correctly. Are you a structural engineer? Are you a physicist? No, you are a wordsmith, feminist, supposed intellectual, and now criminal. The world perhaps needs people like you, but we don't need you polluting our media. You appear, through your work, to be capable of complex analysis. Yet your statements discourage others "making sense of the world", which is all that any true human wants to do.

 

What you have done is criminal, I wish you to take action in order to repent for your insult towards those who had lost lives on that tragic day.

In short: You are not worthy of making statements in relation to investigation of 911. Veterans fought and died for the freedom you have, and you are supporting the destruction of this...proof is in the successful passing of the Patriot Act, now your police stations are littered with flyers saying to report people repeatedly referencing or defending the bill of rights and US constitution.

If you disagree with this email, then I challenge you to successfully answer ALL of the following questions. With sufficiently detailed analysis!

 

1) Why did the buildings fall at free-fall speed? An effect only observed in controlled demolitions.

2) Why was molten steel seen in photographs of ground zero.

3) Why is there footage of molten steel pouring out of the building? The burning temperature of jet fuel is FAR below the melting point of steel.

4) Why does seismic data show distinct detonations before the buildings collapse.

5) Why did you agree to do that show? Was it anything but a personal gain? If not please point out what improvement to society you offered here?

Comments

[Craig]

Email: "Are you a structural engineer? Are you a physicist? No, you are a wordsmith, feminist, supposed intellectual, and now criminal. The world perhaps needs people like you, but we don't need you polluting our media."

What a strange passage.

[glen]

Virilio, with a whole bunch of architects, engineers, etc that did some show for french tv that would answer questions 1-4 above, re superheated steel.

In an interview with Lotringer, Virilio says he was amazed that 10 times the number of people weren't killed on 9/11. His point directly related to the issue of the steel and something else about the metal melting, and that larger scale would be the equivalent to the number of deaths of the atomic bomb or something.

This is all half remembered. I can't even remember wehre I read it. I think it was in an interview book with Lotringer. Maybe someone else read the same thing.

[Levi]

Interesting letter, Jodi. What stands out the most to me is the intensity of jouissance that speaks in the author's words. In speaking about conspiracy theories it's clear that you've touched on something fundamental for him that is experienced as very threatening to something else. What desire, I wonder, does the conspiracy theory allow one to maintain? What desire is undermined in undermining a conspiracy theory?

Perhaps more fundamentally, for me, how do we distinguish between a conspiracy theory and what is not a conspiracy theory. It seems to me that whenever we institute a master-signifier organizing the diversity of S2's we've already created something of a phantasmatic world. But if that's the case, then it would seem impossible to act at all without fantasy as a unifying schema. I write about this in terms of why I find Poltergeist disturbing, in comparison to other horror films, over at Larval Subjects. Unlike other horror films, we get almost no metanarrative as to why the poltergeists appear when they do. Rather, we just get a brute outbreak of the real. Is this what the world would look like if we gave up our unifying narratives?

[pebird]

E-mail was probably written by one of those CIA mind-controlled operatives tasked with countermeasures intended to head fake us so we avoid seeing the real truth of the Illuminati's master plan for universal dominance.

Not that I believe any of it.

Whatever happened to bird flu, BTW?

And does anyone have a good theory of the ruling class - they don't actually get together and talk, do they?

[Levi]

Peabird, I like your question about the ruling class. One of the features that attracts me to systems theory is the way that it is able to account for large scale social effects without having to resort to claims about backroom cartels in charge of everything, like the government in the X-Files that know everything going on with the aliens but are running disinformation with the people.

Stephenson gives a nice example of this in his book _Emergence_ when talking about Engles' encounter with Manchester during the industrial revolution. Manchester grew at an astonishing rate, multiplying its population a hundred-fold in the short space of a decade or so, without any central planning of the city. Nonetheless, there were wealthy portions of Manchester and poor portions of Manchester, and it was difficult to get from one part to another because the streets didn't easily connect these segregated spaces. Was there some wicked cartel of wealthy people who planned the city in this way so as to keep the poor out of sight? No. Rather, what we have here is a number of individual building decisions being made quite unrelated to keeping the poor in the slums, but based on business ties, family ties, religious ties, etc., that led to segregation as an emergent effect and which tended to reinforce income distributions (by virtue of limiting contacts necessary for improving one's economic conditions). Intentionality here becomes an effect, not a cause. The system functions to reinforce its organization without *teleologically* being directed to do so. The question then becomes one of how to impact these "headless" or "acephalous" feedback systems.

[pebird]

Levi:

While I agree that there are structural components that establish and systemize oppression, my guess is that until Marx and Engles made it explicit, capitalism was running unconsciously, so to speak.

To think that there are individuals with a fair amount of power at their disposal that do not deliberately know what they are up in regard to repressing fundamental change is - I think - a bit hard to believe.

The question for me is the interaction between conscious capital (e.g., actors that either know what they are doing, or adopt a ruling idelogy) and the repetitive system functions. When these come into serious conflict (I think the term used to be contradiction), then there is a possibility for change.

Back to conspiracy theories - I think this partially a reaction to the breakdown of the symbolic. The conspiracy acts as a "Real", the truth underlying daily existence. As you said re: Poltergeist - shit happens to good people with no warning. The Real really is real - it just emerges.

The conspiracy is what haunts these people (and I have to add myself occasionally); is it surprising that the conspirators are portrayed as the living dead? Child molesters, satan worshippers, cannibalism, nun murderers, assassination experts, Knights of Templar, Masons, Opus Dei, etc.

The jouissance of the conspiracy buff is very similar to the horror aficionado - is it the close encounter with / while avoiding the real?

What exactly does the conspiracy theorist want to accomplish - a longer and longer mental run down the rabbit hole? What is there to do beside despair of one's individual helplessness. Or is the feeling of being close to the evil, while avoiding responsiblity for change exciting?

[Jodi]

Well, obviously you guys are victims of mind control. Anyone who is awake knows full well that the Illuminati are behind everything. Yes, they have different factions and groups--Skull and Bones, Opus Dei, Freemasons, practioners of Kaballah (and, I read about this in detail yesterday in Paranoia magazine); these factions sometimes disagree, but they are still part of the same group of controlling Overloads.

Meeting together is not enough: they also use magic and symbols; the magic helps them connect with the demonic elements from another reality, elements they serve.

What does the conspiracy theorist (particularly the one who follows these paths) achieve? Perhaps a kind of power through knowledge, a sense of control, or, better, of not being controlled by the overlords, of having a space of freedom bought through knowledge.

Additionally, there is something that is not false about tracing connections among elites: many of the rich and powerful do go to the same few schools, share memberships on interlocking boards, belong to the same clubs, etc. From the standpoint of those excluded from these circles, the old boy network looks just like a conspiracy.

[Scott W.]

Drugs, Mofia, CIA, FBI, corporate owned governance (FASCISM) oh yea, it's all true.

Ptech, never heard of it, have you?

Operation Iraq Freedom, yea right.

http://www.911busters.com/911-Commission.html

Michael Ruppert: Cheney Command and Control

MP3
http://www.911busters.com/audio/MP3/CC13_Michael_Rupert_Cheney_Morning_911.html

WMV
http://www.911busters.com/video/WMV/CC13_Michael_Rupert_Cheney_Morning_911.wmv

ASX
http://www.911busters.com/video/WMV/CC13_Michael_Rupert_Cheney_Morning_911.asx

MOV
http://www.911busters.com/video/MOV/CC13_Michael_Rupert_Cheney_Morning_911.html

Michael Ruppert Introduction

MP3
http://www.911busters.com/audio/MP3/CC12_Audience_%26_Rupert_Intro.html

WMV
http://www.911busters.com/video/WMV/CC12_Audience_%26_Rupert_Intro.wmv

ASX
http://www.911busters.com/video/WMV/CC12_Audience_%26_Rupert_Intro.asx

MOV
http://www.911busters.com/video/MOV/CC12_Audience_%26_Rupert_Intro.html

CIA and FBI actually worked toegther at higher levels
Mofia, drugs, hmmmmmmm

http://www.911busters.com/video/MOV/CC16_Indira_Singh_Q%26A_w_Rupert.html

"She stumbled on to it."

I'm sorry Jodi, but I believe the government is responsible for those people dying on 9-11. Until the Pentagon releases all of the unadultered video of the plane crashing into the Pentagon, I'll continue to believe they are responsible. And, that may not be enough in and of itself. I lost some friends that day.

IBEW Local 3 Will Never Forget

Thks,
Scott W.
Mobile, AL and missing Chicago, IL

[Sarah]

i did not believe all the information going round about 9/11, until my friend one day sat me down to watch a video - 9/11 in plane site - now, i believe it is. i am not one of those people that look for theories such as this - however many videos ARE based on fact, testimony from firefighters there at the time, people there, and actual video recordings etc. and if it is not fake please, tell me - how did the bbc broadcast that the 7th building had fallen down, over half an hour before it actually did? things like this should make you wonder... and again, none of what i have told you is fake, all true... think about it with an open mind before you dismiss it, or completly believe it... an open mind is all it takes :-)

[Seb]

The one question I can't help but ask myself everything anyone starts using the word "Truth" in connection with 9/11 is...

"Haven't these people seen Rashomon?"

Amazing how it never occurs to people that, maybe we have so much trouble processing the information about the event because we'd never faced such a cataclysmic event in the information age. It was the first major happening since the advent of the internet - a metatechnology that people are still learning to navigate & use.

It was also the first major observation of certain phenomena, such as the collapse of a skyscraper in circumstances other than controlled demolition. As wisened, jaded, and experienced as we fancy ourselves... there's still a first time for everything. Accept it.

Besides, if we want to indict this administration for being directly & illegally responsible for the deaths of thousands of its own citizens, how about we try pulling their asses into the Hague for, oh, I don't know... the war?

It also doesn't help that people try to personalize 9/11 so much, as though any one person's pain is somehow more special or legitimate than another's. ("You lost a friend in 9/11? Hey, at least you don't live in Darfur or Kabul! So shut up!")

[Alex Jones]

I rarely do not comment on blogs but yours I had to stop and say Great article!!