'MAD CONSPIRACY THEORIES' - It doesn't help to have people speading

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'MAD CONSPIRACY THEORIES'

By Gerard Holmgren - Wed Feb 12, 2003

 

 

--- Don't let the title of this article deceive you ---

 

'MAD CONSPIRACY THEORIES'

 

By Gerard Holmgren - Wed Feb 12, 2003

debunker

http://maritimes.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=4086

 

 

It doesn't help to have people speading

silly conspiracy theories about Sept 11.

 

DEBUNKING CONSPIRACY THEORISTS

 

PARANOID FANTASIES ABOUT SEPT 11

DISTRACT FROM THE REAL ISSUES

 

By Gerard Holmgren debunker

Copyright Gerard Holmgren. Jan 2003.

 

This work may be freely copied and distributed without permission

as long as it not for commercial use. Please include the author's

name, the web address where you found it and the copyright notice.

 

 

Astute observers of history are aware that for every notable event

there will usually be at least one, often several wild conspiracy

theories which spring up around it. " The CIA killed Hendrix " " The Pope

had John Lennon murdered " , " Hitler was half Werewolf " , " Space aliens

replaced Nixon with a clone " etc, etc. The bigger the event, the more

ridiculous and more numerous are the fanciful rantings which circulate

in relation to it.

 

So its hardly surprising that the events of Sept 11 2001 have spawned

their fair share of these ludicrous fairy tales. And as always, there

is - sadly - a small but gullible percentage of the population eager

to lap up these tall tales, regardless of facts or rational analysis.

 

One of the wilder stories circulating about Sept 11, and one that has

attracted something of a cult following amongst conspiracy buffs is

that it was carried out by 19 fanatical Arab hijackers, masterminded

by an evil genius named Osama bin Laden, with no apparent motivation

other than that they " hate our freedoms. "

 

Never a group of people to be bothered by facts, the perpetrators of

this cartoon fantasy have constructed an elaborately woven web of

delusions and unsubstantiated hearsay in order to promote this garbage

across the internet and the media to the extent that a number of

otherwise rational people have actually fallen under its spell.

 

Normally I don't even bother debunking this kind of junk, but the

effect that this paranoid myth is beginning to have requires a little

rational analysis, in order to consign it to the same rubbish bin as

all such silly conspiracy theories.

 

These crackpots even contend that the extremist Bush regime was caught

unawares by the attacks, had no hand in organizing them, and actually

would have stopped them if it had been able. Blindly ignoring the

stand down of the US air-force, the insider trading on airline stocks

- linked to the CIA, the complicit behavior of Bush on the morning of

the attacks, the controlled demolition of the WTC, the firing of a

missile into the Pentagon and a host of other documented proofs that

the Bush regime was behind the attacks, the conspiracy theorists stick

doggedly to a silly story about 19 Arab hijackers somehow managing to

commandeer 4 planes simultaneously and fly them around US airspace for

nearly 2 hours, crashing them into important buildings, without the US

intelligence services having any idea that it was coming, and without

the Air Force knowing what to do.

 

The huge difficulties with such a stupid story force them to invent

even more preposturous stories to distract from its core silliness,

and thus the tale has escalated into a mythic fantasy of truly

gargantuan proportions.

 

It's difficult to apply rational analysis to such unmitigated

stupidity, but that is the task which I take on in this article.

However, it should be noted that one of the curious characteristics of

conspiracy theorists is that they effortlessly change their so called

evidence in response to each aspect which is debunked. As soon as one

delusion is unmasked, they simply invent another to replace it, and

deny that the first ever existed. Eventually, when they have turned

full circle through this endlessly changing fantasy fog , they then

re-invent the original delusion and deny that you ever debunked it,

thus beginning the circle once more. This technique is known as " the

fruit loop " and saves the conspiracy theorist from ever having to see

any of their ideas through to their (ill)logical conclusions.

 

According to the practitioners of the fruit loop, 19 Arabs took over

the 4 planes by subduing the passengers and crew through the use of

guns, knives, box cutters and gas, and then used electronic guidance

systems which they had smuggled on board to fly the planes to their

targets.

 

The suspension of disbelief required for this outrageous concoction is

only for the hard core conspiracy theorist. For a start, they

conveniently skip over the awkward fact that there weren't any Arabs

on the planes. If there were, one must speculate that they somehow got

on board without being filmed by any of the security cameras and

without being registered on the passenger lists. But the curly

question of how they are supposed to have got on board is all too

mundane for the exciting world of the conspiracy theorist. With vague

mumblings that they must have been using false ID ( but never

specifying which IDs they are alleged to have used, or how these were

traced to their real identities), they quickly bypass this problem, to

relate exciting and sinister tales about how some of the fictitious

fiends were actually searched before boarding because they looked

suspicious. However, as inevitably happens with any web of lies, this

simply paints them into an even more difficult corner. How are they

supposed to have got on board with all that stuff if they were

searched? And if they used gas in a confined space, they would have

been affected themselves unless they also had masks in their luggage.

 

" Excuse me sir, why do you have a boxcutter, a gun, a container of

gas, a gas mask and an electronic guidance unit in your luggage? " " A

present for your grandmother? Very well sir, on you get. " " Very

strange " , thinks the security officer. " That's the fourth Arabic man

without an Arabic name who just got on board with a knife, gun or

boxcutter and gas mask. And why does that security camera keep

flicking off every time one these characters shows up? Must be one of

those days I guess... "

 

Asking any of these basic questions to a conspiracy theorist is likely

to cause a sudden leap to the claim that we know that they were on

board because they left a credit card trail for the tickets they had

purchased and cars they had rented. So if they used credit cards that

identified them, how does that reconcile with the claim that they used

false IDs to get on to the plane? But by this time, the fruit loop is

in full swing, as the conspiracy theorist tries to stay one jump ahead

of this annoying and awkward rational analysis. They will allege that

the hijackers' passports were found at the crash scenes. " So there! "

they exalt triumphantly, their fanatical faces lighting up with that

deranged look of one who has just a revelation of questionable sanity.

 

Hmm? So they got on board with false IDs but took their real passports

with them? However, by this time the fruit loop has been completely

circumnavigated,and the conspiracy theorist exclaims impatiently, " Who

said anything about false IDs? We know what seats they were sitting

in! Their presence is well documented! " And so the whole loop starts

again. " Well, why aren't they on the passenger lists? " " You

numbskull! They assumed the identities of other passengers! " And so on...

 

Finally, out of sheer fascination with this circular method of

creative delusion, the rational sceptic will allow them to get away

with this loop, in order to move on to the next question, and see what

further delights await us in the unraveling of this marvelously stupid

story.

 

" Uh, how come their passports survived fiery crashes that completely

incinerated the planes and all the passengers? " The answer of course

is that its just one of those strange co-incidences, those little

quirks of fate that do happen from time to time. You know, like the

same person winning the lottery four weeks in a row. The odds are

astronomical, but these things do happen...

 

This is another favourite deductive method of the conspiracy theorist.

The " improbability drive " , in which they decide upon a conclusion

without any evidence whatsoever to support it, and then continually

speculate a series of wildly improbable events and unbelievable

co-incidences to support it, shrugging off the implausibility of each

event with the vague assertion that sometimes the impossible happens

(just about all the time in their world). There is a principle called

" Occam's razor " which suggests that in the absence of evidence to the

contrary, the simplest explanation is most likely to be correct.

Conspiracy theorists hate Occam's razor.

 

Having for the sake of amusement, allowed them to get away with with

the silly story of the 19 invisible Arabs, we move on to the question

of how they are supposed to have taken over the planes.

 

Hijacking a plane is not an easy thing to do. Hijacking it without the

pilot being able to alert ground control is near impossible. The pilot

has only to punch in a four digit code to alert ground control to a

hijacking. Unconcerned with the awkward question of plausibility, the

conspiracy buffs maintain that on that Sept 11, the invisible

hijackers took over the plane by the rather crude method of

threatening people with boxcutters and knives, and spraying gas (after

they had attached their masks, obviously), but somehow took control of

the plane without the crew first getting a chance to punch in the

hijacking code. Not just on one plane, but on all four. At this point

in the tale, the conspiracy theorist is again forced to call upon the

services of the improbability drive.

 

So now that our incredibly lucky hijackers have taken control of the

planes, all four pilots fly them with breath taking skill and

certainty to their fiery end, all four pilots unflinching in their

steely resolve for a swift meeting with Allah. Apart from their

psychotic hatred of " our freedoms " , it was their fanatical devotion to

Islam which enabled them to summon up the iron will to do this. Which

is strange, because according to another piece of hearsay peddled by

the conspiracy buffs, these guys actually went out drinking and

womanizing the night before their great martyrdom, even leaving their

Korans in the bar -really impeccable Islamic behavior - and then got

up at 5am the next morning to pull off the greatest covert operation

in history. This also requires us to believe that they were even clear

headed enough to learn how to fly the huge planes by reading flight

manuals in Arabic in the car on the way to the airport. We know this

because they supposedly left the flight manuals there for us to find.

 

It gets better. Their practical training had allegedly been limited to

Cessnas and flight simulators, but this was no barrier to the

unflinching certainty with which they took over the planes and

skillfully guided them to their doom. If they are supposed to have

done their flight training with these tools, which would be available

just about anywhere in the world, its not clear why they would have

decided to risk blowing their cover to US intelligence services by

doing the training in Florida, rather than somewhere in the Middle

East, but such reasoning is foreign to the foggy world of the

conspiracy theorist, too trapped in the constant rotation of the

mental fruit loop to make their unsubstantiated fabrications seem even

semi-believable.

 

Having triumphantly established a circular delusion in support of the

mythical Arabs, the conspiracy theorist now confronts the difficult

question of why there's nothing left of the planes. Anybody who has

seen the endlessly replayed footage of the second plane going into the

WTC will realize that the plane was packed with explosives. Planes do

not and cannot blow up into nothing in that manner when they crash.

 

Did the mythical Arabs also haul a huge heap of explosives on board,

and mange to deploy them in such a manner that they went off in the

exact instant of the crash, completely vapourizing the plane? This is

a little difficult even for the conspiracy theorist, who at this point

decides that its easier to invent new laws of physics in order to keep

the delusion rolling along.

 

There weren't any explosives. It wasn't an inside job. The plane blew

up into nothing from its exploding fuel load! Remarkable! Sluggishly

combustible jet fuel which is basically kerosine, and which burns at a

maximum temperature of around 800 C has suddenly taken on the

qualities of a ferociously explosive demolition agent, vapourizing 65

tons of aircraft into a puff of smoke. Never mind that a plane of that

size contains around 15 tons of steel and titanium, of which even the

melting points are about double that of the maximum combustion

temperature of kerosine - let alone the boiling point - which is what

would be required to vapourize a plane. And then there's about 50 tons

of aluminium to be accounted for. In excess of 15lbs of metal for each

gallon of kerosine.

 

For the conspiracy theorist, such inconvenient facts are vaguely

dismissed as " mumbo jumbo " . This convenient little phrase is their

answer to just about anything factual or logical. Like a conjurer

pulling a rabbit out of a hat, they suddenly become fanatically

insistent about the devastating explosive qualities of kerosine,

something hitherto completely unknown to science, but just discovered

by them, this very minute. Blissfully ignoring the fact that never

before or since in aviation history has a plane vapourized into

nothing from an exploding fuel load, the conspiracy theorist relies

upon Hollywood images, where the effects are are always larger than

life, and certainly larger than the intellects of these cretins.

 

" Its a well known fact that planes blow up into nothing on impact. "

they state with pompous certainty. " Watch any Bruce Willis movie. "

" Care to provide any documented examples? If it's a well known fact,

then presumably this well known fact springs from some kind of

documentation - other than Bruce Willis movies? "

At this point the mad but cunning eyes of the conspiracy theorist will

narrow as they sense the corner that they have backed themselves into,

and plan their escape by means of another stunning backflip.

" Ah, but planes have never crashed into buildings before, so there's

no way of telling. " they counter with a sly grin.

Well, actually planes have crashed into buildings before and since,

and not vapourized into nothing.

" But not big planes, with that much fuel " , they shriek in hysterical

denial.

Or that much metal to vapourize.

" Yes but not hijacked planes! "

" Are you suggesting that whether the crash is deliberate or accidental

affects the combustion qualities of the fuel? "

" Now you're just being silly " .

 

Although collisions with buildings are rare, planes frequently crash

into mountains, streets, other aircraft, nosedive into the ground, or

have bombs planted aboard them, and don't vapourize into nothing.

What's so special about a tower that's mostly glass? But by now, the

conspiracy theorist has once again sailed happily around the fruit

loop. " Its a well documented fact that planes explode into nothing on

impact. "

 

Effortlessly weaving back and forth between the position that its a

" well known fact " and that " its never happened before, so we have

nothing to compare it to " , the conspiracy theorist has now convinced

themselves (if not too many other people) that the WTC plane was not

loaded with explosives, and that the instant vapourization of the

plane in a massive fireball was the same as any other plane crash you

might care to mention. Round and round the fruit loop...

 

But the hurdles which confront the conspiracy theorist are many, and

they are now forced to implement even more creative uses for the newly

discovered shockingly destructive qualities of kerosine. They have to

explain how the Arabs also engineered the elegant veritcal collapse of

both the WTC towers, and for this awkward fact the easiest counter is

to simply deny that it was a controlled demolition, and claim that the

buildings collapsed from fire caused by the burning kerosine.

 

For this, its necessary to sweep aside the second law of

thermodynamics and propose kerosine which is not only impossibly

destructive, but also recycles itself for a second burning in

violation of the law of degradation of energy. You see, it not only

consumed itself in a sudden catastrophic fireball, vapourizing a 65

ton plane into nothing, but then came back for a second go, burning at

2000C for another hour at the impact point, melting the skyscraper's

steel like butter. And while it was doing all this it also poured down

the elevator shafts, starting fires all through the building. When I

was at school there was a little thing called the entropy law which

suggests that a given portion of fuel can only burn once, something

which is readily observable in the real world, even for those who

didn't make it to junior high school science. But this is no problem

for the conspiracy theorist. Gleefully, they claim that a few thousand

gallons of kerosine is enough to

: completely vapourize a 65 ton aircraft

: have enough left over to burn ferociously enough for over an hour at

the impact point to melt steel (melting point about double the maximum

combustion temperature of the fuel)

: still have enough left over to pour down the elevator shafts and

start similarly destructive fires all through the building.

 

This kerosine really is remarkable stuff! How chilling to realize that

those kerosine heaters we had in the house when I was a kid were

deadly bombs, just waiting to go off. One false move and the entire

street might have been vapourized. And never again will I take

kerosine lamps out camping. One moment you're there innocently holding

the lamp - the next - kapow! Vapourized into nothing along with with

the rest of the camp site, and still leaving enough of the deadly

stuff to start a massive forest fire.

 

These whackos are actually claiming that the raging inferno allegedly

created by the miraculously recycling, and impossibly hot burning

kerosine melted or at least softened the steel supports of the

skyscraper. Oblivious to the fact that the smoke coming from the WTC

was black, which indicates an oxygen starved fire - therefore, not

particularly hot, they trumpet an alleged temperature in the building

of 2000 C , without a shred of evidence to support this curious

suspension of the laws of physics.

 

Not content with this ludicrous garbage, they then contend that as the

steel frames softened, they came straight down instead of buckling and

twisting and falling sideways.

 

Since they're already re-engineered the combustion qualities of jet

fuel, violated the second law of thermodynamics, and re-defined the

structural properties of steel, why let a little thing like the laws

of gravity get in the way?

 

The tower fell in a time almost identical to that of a free falling

object, dropped from that height, meaning that its physically

impossible for it to have collapsed by the method of the top floors

smashing through the lower floors. But according to the conspiracy

theorists, the laws of gravity were temporarily suspended on the

morning of Sept 11. It appears that the evil psychic power of those

dreadful Arabs knew no bounds. Even after they were dead, they were

able, by the power of their evil spirits, to force down the tower at a

speed physically impossible under the laws of gravity, had it been

meeting any resistance from fireproofed steel structures originally

designed to resist many tons of hurricane force wind as well as the

impact of a Boeing passenger jet straying off course.

 

Clearly, these conspiracy nuts never did their science homework at

school, but did become extremely adept at inventing tall tales for why.

" Muslim terrorists stole my notes, sir "

" No miss, the kerosine heater blew up and vapourized everything in the

street, except for my passport. "

" You see sir, the schoolbus was hijacked by Arabs who destroyed my

homework because they hate our freedoms. "

 

Or perhaps they misunderstood the term " creative science " and

mistakenly thought that coming up with such rubbish was in fact, their

science homework.

 

The ferocious heat generated by this ghastly kerosine was, according

to the conspiracy theorists, the reason why so many of the WTC victims

can't be identified. DNA is destroyed by heat. (Although 2000 C isn't

really required, 100C will generally do the job). This is quite

remarkable, because according to the conspiracy theorist, the nature

of DNA suddenly changes if you go to a different city.

 

That's right! If you are killed by an Arab terrorist in NY, your DNA

will be destroyed by such temperatures. But if you are killed by an

Arab terrorist in Washington DC, your DNA will be so robust that it

can survive temperatures which completely vapourize a 65 ton aircraft.

 

You see, these loonies have somehow concocted the idea that the

missile which hit the pentagon was not a missile at all, but one of

the hijacked planes. And to prove this unlikely premise, they point to

a propaganda statement from the Bush regime, which rather stupidly

claims that all but one of the people aboard the plane were identified

from the site by DNA testing, even though nothing remains of the

plane. The plane was vapourized by the fuel tank explosion maintain

these space loonies, but the people inside it were all but one

identified by DNA testing.

 

So there we have it. The qualities of DNA are different, depending

upon which city you're in, or perhaps depending upon which fairy story

you're trying to sell at any particular time.

 

This concoction about one of the hijacked planes hitting the Pentagon

really is a howler. For those not familiar with the layout of the

Pentagon, it consists of 5 rings of building, each with a space

inbetween. Each ring of building is about 30 to 35 ft deep, with a

similar amount of open space between it and the next ring. The object

which penetrated the Pentagon went in at about a 45 degree angle,

punching a neat circular hole of about a 12 ft diameter through three

rings ( six walls).A little later a section of wall about 65 ft wide

collapsed in the outer ring. Since the plane which the conspiracy

theorists claim to be responsible for the impact had a wing span of

125 ft and a length of 155 ft, and there was no wreckage of the plane,

either inside or outside the building, and the lawns outside were

still smooth and green enough to play golf on, this crazy delusion is

clearly physically impossible.

 

But hey, we've already disregarded the combustion qualities of jet

fuel, the normal properties of common building materials, the

properties of DNA, the laws of gravity and the second law of

thermodynamics, so what the hell - why not throw in a little spatial

impossibility as well ? I would have thought that the observation that

a solid object cannot pass through another solid object without

leaving a hole at least as big as itself is reasonably sound science.

But to the conspiracy theorist, this is " mumbo jumbo " . It conflicts

with the delusion that they're hooked on, so it " must be wrong "

although trying to get them to explain exactly how it could be wrong

is a futile endeavour.

 

Conspiracy theorists fly into a curious panic whenever the Pentagon

missile is mentioned. They nervously maintain that the plane was

vapourized by it's exploding fuel load and point to the WTC crash as

evidence of this behavior. (That's a wonderful fruit loop.) Like an

insect which has just been sprayed, running back and forth in its last

mad death throes, they first argue that the reason the hole is so

small is that the plane never entered the wall, having blown up

outside, and then suddenly backflip to explain the 250 ft deep missile

hole by saying that the plane disappeared all the way into the

building, and then blew up inside the building (even though the

building shows no sign of such damage). As for what happened to the

wings - here's where they get really creative. The wings snapped off

and folded into the fuselage which then carried them into the

building, which then closed up behind the plane like a piece of meat.

 

When it suits them, they'll also claim that the plane slid in on its

belly, (ignoring the undamaged lawn) while at the same time citing

alleged witnesses to the plane diving steeply into the building from

an " irrecoverable angle. " How they reconcile these two scenarios as

being compatible is truly a study in stupidity.

 

Once they get desperate enough, you can be sure that the UFO

conspiracy stuff will make an appearance. The Arabs are in league with

the Martians. Space aliens snatched the remains of the Pentagon plane

and fixed most of the hole in the wall, just to confuse people. They

gave the Arabs invisibility pills to help get them onto the planes.

Little green men were seen talking to Bin Laden a few weeks prior to

the attacks.

 

As the nation gears up to impeach the traitor Bush, and stop his

perpetual oil war, it's not helpful to have these idiots distracting

from the process by spreading silly conspiracy theories about mythical

Arabs, stories which do nothing but play into the hands of the

extremist Bush regime.

 

At a less serious time, we might tolerate such crackpots with amused

detachment, but they need to understand that the treachery that was

perpetrated on Sept 11, and the subsequent war crimes committed in

" retaliation " are far too serious for us to allow such frivolous self

indulgence to go unchallenged.

 

Those who are truly addicted to conspiracy delusions should find a

more appropriate outlet for their paranoia.

 

Its time to stop loony conspiracy theories about Sept 11.

 

 

http://maritimes.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=4086

 

 

 

 

http://www.world-action.co.uk/conspiracy.html

Statement by the author:

Copyright Gerard Holmgren. Jan 2003.

This work may be freely copied and distributed without permission

as long as it not for commercial use. Please include the author's

name, the web address where you found it and the copyright notice.

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