I have a conflict of interest on this, working for a cable company. So I won't join in. But I will enjoy watching.
The new Holocaust deniers of 9/11
: There's a most disturbing trend in European media: giving attention -- and thus credence -- to the conspiracy crackpots, the moral equivalent of Holocaust deniers, who are trying to argue that 9/11 was not a terrorist attack but was, instead, some gigantic plot by the U.S. government, the Israeli government, the British government, and whoever else Europeans happen to dislike these days.
It's sick enough that these people exist. It's sicker still that they write books that get bought. It's sick beyond tolerance that once-credible media outlets give them attention.warcraft 3 maps pimp
: The latest: Der Spiegel's cover story this week puts the burning Twin Towers on their head with a cover story that asks: "Were the attacks on New York and Washington the biggest act of terrorism in history -- or a gigantic plot by the secret services? Conspiracy theorists are writing bestsellers with their alleged evidence, and already a fifth of Germans believe their half-truths."
As Eamonn Fitzgerald points out, this is a most cynical act: The editors of Der Spiegel cloak their story in doubt -- but if there's so much doubt, why is this a story, why is it a long story (14 pages of solid text on my printout), and why is it a cover story?
I couldn't bear to translate the whole thing but from what I read, it's enough to make me suggest that we all buy European tinfoil futures. Fitzgerald has more about the list of "authors" the magazine promotes:
And as Der Spiegel doesn't want to be left behind in this race to the bottom, it joins a growing list of charlatans doing a steady business pawning their fabrications to a credulous public. Leading the field is Thierry Meyssan, the crackpot French author of The Horrifying Fraud, which posits that a missile fired by the military itself hit the Pentagon on 9/11. His horrifying, but successful, fraud was the inspiration for Mathias Bröckers, who penned Conspiracies, conspiracy theories and the secrets of 11.9. Among its suggestions, is that the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington proved just as timely for George Bush as did the Reichstag fire for Adolf Hitler. The latest to join this bizarre list is Andreas von Bülow, a former SPD Minister of Research. His volume, which is doing brisk business, is entitled The CIA and the 11th of September: International Terror and the Roll of the Intelligence Agencies. It fingers the CIA and Mossad as the sponsors of 9/11 while sticking to the golden conspiracy-theory formula of offering supposition instead of evidence.
Add the numbers in the date 11.09.2001 together and what do you get? 23! Add four hijacked planes + nineteen terrorists and what do you get? 23! What's the secret number of the Illuminati? 23! It is to this level of craziness that Der Spiegel has descended. It should not be regarded as a serious magazine anymore.
: In my comments, below, Franco Alemán points to a Barcelona newspaper,
La Vanguardia, that publishes a crackpot story that says there were mysterious things glued onto the sides of of of the jets used in the attacks. It's translated
here. More wackjobs.
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: And, of course, there is the Guardian's shameful publication of Laborloonie Michael Meacher's rehashing of debunked Internet crackpot theories saying -- echoing Der Spiegel -- that the U.S. knowingly and willfully let the 9.11 attacks occur because it fit into a grander and more sinister U.S. effort to get oil. warcraft 3 maps pimp
: All we need is the Oliver Stone movie.warcraft 3 maps pimp
: There have always been conspiracy crackpots; nothing new there. They now have a new outlet in the Internet; saves them the cost of paper, crayons, and postage.
But what's new here is that once-respectable media outlets are also giving them ink.
And don't tell me that this is a matter of opinions and free speech. Crap.
I've worked in plenty of newspapers and had plenty of crazies walk in with insane theories about conspiracies and we did exactly what we should have done: We ignored them. We used our responsible editorial judgment to decide what should and should not be investigated and published. That's not to say that some of the theories were not entertaining; that's not even to say that the loonies could not find other loonies who agreed with them. But they were crackpots and they got the attention they merited: none.
Yet these "editors" are choosing not to shoo these nut jobs but instead to make them famous. They are choosing to pander to prejudices and suspicions that have no basis in fact. They are sacrificing their only asset: credibility. They are the shame of the news business.
The "editors" are more vile than the crackpots, for they should know better.warcraft 3 maps pimp
: UPDATE: More on Meacher here and here. warcraft 3 maps pimp
Do you feel safe yet?
: The Washington Post skewers the Department of Homeland Security:
Six months after it was established to protect the nation from terrorism, the Department of Homeland Security is hobbled by money woes, disorganization, turf battles and unsteady support from the White House, and has made only halting progress toward its goals, according to administration officials and independent experts.
The top two officials under Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge are stepping down amid criticism from some White House officials and elsewhere in the administration. So few people want to work at the department that more than 15 people declined requests to apply for the top post in its intelligence unit -- and many others turned down offers to run several other key offices, government officials said....
Efforts to organize the government's 10 or so disparate lists of potential terrorism suspects, secure airline cargo against terrorist plots and advise local police and firefighters on training and equipment have all foundered, the officials said.
"Not a lot is getting done at the top of the department, and nobody's making them focus on it," said a White House official who handles homeland security issues and who asked not to be identified. "Nobody's got the fortitude to say, 'Sit down and shut up.' . . . It's sad."
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