Saturday, June 18, 2005

9/11 Conspiracy Theories

There's so much 9/11 conspiracy stuff to be found out there, and so much of it is bunk that pretty much all of it starts to seem suspect, as do conspiracy theories in general (click here for an interesting analysis of why conspiracy theories aren't that useful as a means of interpreting the world). The stuff that gets under my skin, which I believe originates with that French fellow who put the Flash stuff online questioning whether a plane really hit the Pentagon (an interesting presentation, debunked elsewhere, though who knows how valid that debunking is, either) are the various "facts" offered in support of the theory that the collapse of the WTC had to have been a controlled demolition. The problem is that I don't know if anyone who is repeating these "facts" is actually taking time to verify them, or if they're just directly regurgitating someone else's assertions, which may not be facts at all; given how often the main source of the news is other news, I could easily imagine that these arguments can be and have been successfully contradicted elsewhere, but continue to swim around the net anyhow. Even former members of the Bush government are being swayed by some of this stuff, but that doesn't make it more credible... Still, it gets under my skin, a little. And seems to stay there.

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