STFU and have another sip Gypsy.
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.
Because it would mean that the US isn't the source of all evil in the world.
STFU and have another sip Gypsy.
"I would have went hysterical laughing. How can you not? Next time try a good laugh in the face of the ass; it will do you a world of good! :)"
I've tried that, it doesn't work. These idiots look at you as if you were some poor unenlightened soul that is too dumb to understand the truth.
That just pisses me off more.
I'd love to make a buck off of them, if I could just figure out a way to do it without causing the nation harm...
Thanks for your post, and the link. I have a feeling my Democrat family is going to be asking me about this, they are so gullible..
I heard the O&A segment.
Yeah, they tore him up, but it just didn't matter to him, that asshole is too fargone.
It really bothers me that people believe this. I can only imagine what would have happened if the Internet was around in the 40's. Holocaust, what holocaust? Couldn't have happened, its all a jewish plot... Hey, where are the Goldbergs? Oh, they must be on vacation somewhere.
Not that thats not happening now, but the holocaust is accepted fact. But just imagine if this shit was happening when people were just realizing what Hitler had done. I doubt the holocaust would be in any history books if these nuts had the internet and photoshop at their disposal back then. They'd claim it was all a plot to allow us to occupy Germany and put military bases there.
I have to look and listen to moonbats myself during the day. I tell myself that I am here to earn a living and go home to what really matters. Try that! :0)
"Here's a picture of a 757. Here's a picture of it physically flying into a building. Here's a picture of the building exploding. But, we still think that it was a gov't plot, involving a cruise missile."
You're going to love this one.
I'll try to be brief. Okay, here goes; flight 77 landed and all the passengers were transferred to flight 93 and then flight 93 was shot down by an American Air Force plane under orders from Vice President Cheney. They were not all that clear where they stashed the airplane.
I blame TV. People give the government waaaay too much credit.
I think that it's absolutely hilarious that the same people who give serious creedence to the 'fact' that Pres. Bush is funcionally illiterate, also think that he could mastermind, and coverup, a plot like this to kick off World War III with the AlQueda terrorists.
But, I expect that if you called them out on this particular dichotomy, their heads would explode.
I know a couple left-wingers that believe this crap. It shouldn't come as much of a surprise, considering that they also blame Republicans for Katrina and AIDS.
Perhaps, but I think I may have to call them on it, or at least make them choose: Which is it? Is George Bush a blithering idiot, or is he the greatest criminal mastermind in the history of the world? They'll probably argue that he's both.
Probably because they do not believe that the truth has been told.
I bet they would say that criminal masterminds own and operate a lot of blithering idiots.
It's been claimed that this crash would have been recorded on any number of video cameras in the area that day and some of which were pointed at the Pentagon...
The story goes that the FBI immediately after the crash went to the different locations (businesses, office buildings) and confiscated the videos...
An upbeat soundtrack? Then it must be true.
A Penn Gilette video completely debunking these kooks:
http://luckydawgnews.com/911conspiracybs.html
WARNING!!!! EXTREME PROFANITY!!!
This is true. There is very little picture evidence available on the internet--I've looked and even when I have found FR threads about the Pentagon the pictures are gone. You can find the video that was released by either ABC or NBC but the complaint is generally made that it does not show the plane--just some kind of streak and then the explosion. I came to an answer for that one day while I was driving and just letting random thoughts pass through my mind. I was thinking about my grandson and some pictures I had taken of him with my digital camera. I was thinking about being frustrated by the lag time on the shutter so that often by the time it clicks he has moved and there is no one in my picture. He's four and moves pretty fast at times but certainly nothing like an airplane traveling at hundreds of miles per hour. Since the camera that took the pictures of the plane also has a lag it is no wonder the plane cannot be seen.
As I was getting nearer to my home which is on a flight path to our downtown airport, a smaller commercial flight was in the sky parallel to the street I was driving on. It was landing and not very high up. It was also not going very fast so I could get a good look at it though I wouldn't have a clue as to what specific kind of plane it was. Since I was already thinking about Ft. 77, I tried to imagine my plane being a huge plane traveling at full speed that close to the ground and then trying to remember the details of what the plane actually looked like. I think it would have been a blur in my memory. The only time we ever see planes traveling that fast and that low is at air shows and those are air force jets. How much do you remember about the physical characteristics of those planes after they have passed? It's no wonder that several eye witnesses used the SIMILE "like a missile" when they were trying to describe what they saw.
Well as we have seen, the provision of videos over the major networks didn't convince anyone that the buildings weren't brought down by detonation, so I guess it wouldn't matter to these folks. I do have questions about other events, but this one is fairly cut and dried as far as I am concerned.
It's also evident that Flight 93 had hijackers of Middle-Eastern extraction. What's left to conjecture for these folks?
Charlie, wake the hell up!
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