Posted on 04/28/2006 7:21:24 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
Gypsy Taub, a mother of three from Oakland, does not believe that 9/11 happened. At least not the way the government said it did.
A Russian émigré, Taub is one of a growing number of people in the USA who are using the Internet, college campuses and pamphleteering to get the word out.
"Oh yeah, absolutely. On the day it happened, I thought it was the government that did it," she said.
Taub is promoting one of the latest presentations of revisionist theories on the 2001 attacks by al-Qaeda terrorists, a film that says, among other things, that the Pentagon was hit by a cruise missile fired by the military as an excuse to go to war.
Called Loose Change, it is being downloaded from the Internet and shown in small screenings here and overseas. It is not alone in the genre, and it is not unusual in American history either to offer simplistic explanations or demonize opponents. Presidents from Andrew Jackson to Lyndon Johnson were accused by their contemporaries of massive government conspiracies.
The film appears especially popular among young people immersed in a Web culture brimming with sites that question the credibility of government. They see 9/11 as the defining moment of their lives.
"This is our generation's Vietnam, our generation's Kennedy assassination," says Korey Rowe, 23, the film's producer.
Professors and researchers of film and politics say the Internet is making it far easier to spread such theories because the traditional media are losing their hold on the news. The immense coverage of controversies and accusations surrounding the war on terror has created fertile ground for people who assign their own interpretations to photos, footage, eyewitnesses, investigations and newspaper accounts of what happened, they say.
"The information revolution now gives us access to too much information," says Jonathan Taplin, who teaches at the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Southern California. "Our problems are that we're just overwhelmed, so in some sense we just basically don't even know where to turn."
'It's all over the place'
Craig Smith, director of the Center for First Amendment Studies at California State University, Long Beach, cites the unusual nature of 9/11: four airliners simultaneously hijacked and no defenses stop them.
"You would say, come on, I can't even buy that as a movie script," Smith says. "All of this feeds this readiness for paranoia."
Made by Rowe and friend Dylan Avery, 22, from Oneonta, N.Y., on a laptop computer for less than $10,000, the film contrasts sharply with United 93, a film opening Friday that portrays the struggle for the jetliner that crashed in Shanksville, Pa.
Internet chat rooms are full of promos for screenings of Loose Change in such locales as the Santa Cruz Veterans Memorial Building in California; the Université de Sherbrooke, Quebec; Graz, Austria; and a theater in London's Soho district.
"It's been breaking like nobody's business the last two months," says Taub, 36, who is sponsoring a showing Tuesday night in Oakland. "It's all over the place."
'They aren't truth-tellers'
Most of what the film alleges is refuted by the evidence at hand. Anything not answered definitively by the government is interpreted by the film as proof of a coverup.
Among the assertions in Loose Change is that a missile hit the Pentagon even though eyewitnesses saw the jet, numerous pieces of wreckage were found including the flight recorder, and those on the flight and in its path at the Pentagon are dead.
There is also the claim that because jet fuel burns at up to 1,500 degrees and steel melts at 2,750 degrees, the World Trade Center's infrastructure could not have been brought down by the airliners. However, as reported by the Journal of the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society, steel loses 50% of its strength at 1,200 degrees, enough for a failure.
"The only thing they (the filmmakers) seem to have gotten right about the Sept. 11 attacks is the date when they occurred," says Debra Burlingame, whose brother was the pilot of American Flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon.
"They aren't truth-tellers looking to save the world," she says. "They're con artists hoping to sucker conspiracy-theory paranoids or anti-government malcontents into shelling out their hard-earned dollars."
Some college students who saw Loose Change and are promoting it say it's good to raise questions.
The film offers "at the very least suggests that we don't know the whole truth, and that some things are quite fishy," says Matt Latham, a freshman at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
'Students love it'
Christian Pecaut, 25, a Stanford graduate who is promoting the film at the University of California, Berkeley campus, said the film is "catchy, hip," with an "upbeat soundtrack."
Aaron Williams, a senior at Texas A&M University and president of the philosophy club, believes the film. "Government is corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely," he says.
Penelope Price, a documentary filmmaker and professor at Scottsdale Community College, said she brought the filmmakers to the campus to stimulate critical thinking.
"Students love it," she said. "These guys have done a great job of marketing on the Web, and that was another reason I wanted to bring them in."
Conservative writer David Horowitz, a former 1960s radical, says conspiratorial thinking can offer a world view that is somehow less scary than reality. "Conspiracy theories are a kind of secular religion," he says, adding that campus faculties sometimes encourage anti-government feelings. "People feel great anxiety ... by the thought that nobody's in control."
People believe in conspiracy theories because the truth "is either too simple or too remote," says sociologist Clifton Bryant of Virginia Tech University, who has made a study of "deviant logic" and behavior.
"We're always ready to believe something about which we know nothing," he says.
Then they need to go pay tribute to those patriots at the site, for themselves, and talk to the locals who man it.
Your old buddies share the same world perspective as ignorant people all over the world, like the muslims who ululate in the streets when Jewish or American children die.
BTW, my brother hangs out with guys like those you mention at "the home"...he is an EMT in western PA and HAAAAATES Pres Bush. If anyone knew there was some kind of conspiracy it would be the EMT's and it would surely be guys like my brother.
He did not respond to the crash scene but had friends who saw the plane flying low and erratically about 15 minutes before it went over the first crest of the Laurel mountains and then drilled into the ground at about the 3000 foot elevation, probably because as evidence shows, the hijackers tried futilely to use aircraft motion to throw the passengers off their feet and then pushed up the throttle as the plane went down...inverted, at 560 kts.
That is an extremely emotional and disgusting thing to say about proven American patriots. You should be experiencing extreme shame.
>>That is an extremely emotional and disgusting thing to say about proven American patriots. You should be experiencing extreme shame.
<<
You mock the deaths of patriotic Americans and say it never happened. You are no patriot. You are an ignorant, arrogant POS.
Then when you are challenged, you hide behind the skirts or those senile old retards you hang out with. You are a disgusting piece of garbage.
Very emotional and shameless.
I thought Jim purged all the Michael Rivero nutcases long ago.
No, they are still here believing that huge jets crash into the ground and leave only a 10 by 15 foot divot and debris spread over three miles with no pieces larger than a phone book.
>>Probably because they do not believe that the truth has been told.<<
What is your version? You have refused to answer. What conspiracy do you believe?
Are you too much of a coward to answer? Yes, in fact, you are.
I already told you, I do not have a "version". I merely indicated the version we have does not seem to fit the evidence that is known.
What discrepancies are there?
You can't be referring to the movie, since you haven't seen it. You think the flight 93 crash was a hoax?
See #106 for a start.
Let me guess. You saw "Loose Change" and believe yourself to be enlightened.
Chew on these facts a while:
http://ourworld-top.cs.com/mikegriffith1/refute.htm
I've been forwarded on that link. To which I provided a lengthy rebuttal. It's quite frustrating the amount of ignorance that "movie" promotes.
Not at all. We do not need any more works of fiction or creative guesses concerning this matter. There are enough questions based on news footage and eyewitness accounts to be asked and discussed.
It amazes me that loons like Eskimo exist. I guess it was a missile or a pickup truck or perhaps even a yugo that went down in that field in PA.
I'm not amazed that you exist either.
A mother who can raise her children anywhere near that degenerate cesspool known as SF lacks, in my opinion, any credibility on the matter, even more so than the credibility of the average mother of three in the critical assessment of an event such as the one she criticizes here.
Bush did it! It's the government's fault! If these are the first things running through her mind as planes hit WTC one has to wonder what garbage she's been consuming (intellectual garbage, that is).
Some people just really are stupid.
I've dealt with idjits like you before. You'll parse words, make innocuous statements that suggest further conspiracy.
The fact remains, you'll ignore the mountain while pointing at the pebble.
Flight 93 went down in Shanksville PA. That you refuse it says more about you than it does about me despite the method by which you'll parse my words.
I'll bet; probably everyone who does not think exactly as you do.
Flight 93 went down in Shanksville PA. That you refuse it...
LOL! Where did I do that. I merely indicated there are many unanswered questions. You make hysterical assumptions quicky followed by a lot of childish innuendo.
following the script.
I say one thing, you pick apart the details.
Speaking of childish scripts, you're right on point. Go for it homey. I've dealt with you nutters enough to know EXACTLY how you'll behave.
You simply won't agree to any point. You just want questions answered. Ok, ask the question then. You won't. You're a fargin nutter. That's the bottom line.
You are a MIHOP who won't commit. Because when you do and admit it in front of 10k freepers it's a de facto admission that you need committed.
I know you your answer already.
"I am not a mihop, I want to know why planes weren't scrambled, just simple answers."
When you get the answer to that, you'll move the goal post. Again, I'm not a newb on dealing with nutters like you. It's mental illness on your part that you refuse to deal with.
Russian émigré Taub apparently believes that it says on the Statue of Liberty, "Give me your tired,your poor and your trash." We need immigrants like her like we need the bubonic plague. We should have a national house cleaning of all ungrateful maggots like her. Sweep them back to the hellholes from which they came.
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