Category: Streamingvideo

The Observer | Review | Chaos and cock-up always trump conspiracy
Alongside Hurricane Katrina, the tragedy of 9/11 is providing fertile ground for conspiracy theorists and the film industry. But this should hardly be surprising, says Mark Kermode. After all, conspiracies are comforting.

A worrying number of people still believe that the Apollo missions were faked.

Most of what the public knows about the Kennedy assassination is based on a string of excitably dramatic movies, from David Miller’s Executive Action (1973) to Oliver Stone’s JFK (1991), which viewers have mistaken for verifiable truth. (Debunked here)
In his new Movie on Katrina, Spike Lee will present that the levees were deliberately detonated, by the government.

In the ongoing tradition, the video 9/11 Loose Change helped force the release of another Pentagon tape of the Pentagon crash (Click on picture to view). 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.

A quick search of Wikipedia, produces a slew of carefully researched debunkings including a scene-by-scene Word document and whole web-site (9/11 Myths) devoted to different theories. The Loose Change Web-site tries to counter “the Government did it”arguments. The majority of the Muslim world blames the jews for 9/11 . Andyou can still see Fahrenheit 9/11 to add to your paranoid. But few will take the time to read the patient research. Instead we will be passively entertained by videos.

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.”

Update –majority of young people believe conspiracy theory. Thanks Daily Show & the Internet?

Search for 9/11 on this site for more links, such as:

www.snopes.com

The Urban Legends Reference Pages, containing entries about conspiracy claims such as the put options, the alleged early arrival of FEMA and the Pentagon attack. The forum also contains some intelligent discussion of conspiracy theories.

www.loosechangeguide.com

This is a viewer’s guide to the documentary “Loose Change,” which contains many of the conspiracy claims discussed in this article.

www.911myths.com

A great general source for all manner of conspiracy claims.