UPDATE (July 2008): After over a year of inactivity, we've lately received some requests for this video. The DVD file is no longer on my computer from which to make duplicates, and therefore I am no longer able to honor this offer. I deeply apologize for any inconvenience.
If any reader of this blog would like a FREE DVD of "Loose Change: Second Edition," email me HERE with your name and address. These are high-quality DVD Rs that will play on just about any player, including old clunkers (unlike many newer commercial releases). I promise I will NOT spam you or pester you in any way. This offer is limited to US and Canadian addresses (NTSC system), one DVD per address. There are no other restrictions. Did I mention it was FREE? It's TOTALLY FREE.
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
From Loose Change to Thin Ice: Skirting the Tattered Fringes of the 9/11 Truth Movement, by Andy Senior
In one of my grander, more magnanimous philosophical moments (no doubt brought about by an infusion of too much pilsener) I opined, “There is only one way to look at an issue, and that is from all sides.” And indeed I have generally endeavored to do so. I have trod down each less-traveled path as long as it consisted of reasonably solid ground, and have turned around at the first sign of mud or quicksand; I have retreated if the visibility became too poor to proceed. I strive not to take anything at face value or on anyone’s sole authority. Hence the dictum “You are either with us or with the terrorists” begged the eventual question “Yes, but what if WE are the terrorists?” (I don’t get asked to many Republican fundraisers.) And relying on my intellect, my common sense compass, and my dollar-store bullshit detector, I’ve found a few scraps of truth that I’m willing to proclaim to the world under my own name. I am convinced that the attacks of September 11, 2001 were not carried out by nineteen mythological Islamic terrorists using boxcutters to hijack airplanes, but were an inside job, effected by rogue elements within our government and their corporate bedfellows. Herb Smith’s essays on this site flesh out the factual basis for this shared certainty.
That being said, I’ve had a slew of “yes, but” moments lately tromping in the vineyards of the 9/11 Truth movement. There are numerous activists who attempt to bundle this basic truth-seeking with other causes, some of which are not only not intrinsic to this endeavor, but which also may undermine the whole movement by driving off otherwise sympathetic people put off by 57 varieties of anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, racist rhetoric.
I’m not saying that people who may hold such opinions shouldn’t express them, though I admit I find them loathsome. I assert that such individual hobby-horses don’t belong in a movement where objective truth is paramount. Yet one of the most popular games among certain 9/11 truth types is “Pin the Blame on the Hebrew.” It’s true that the current government of Israel is not made up of the most congenial souls, but neither is our own. This fact of life is taken by a certain type of activist as the cue to start spewing all the anti-Jewish cliches learned at his mother’s jack-booted knee. The same types will then veer off on how the Jews “infiltrated” and “undermined” our culture. I’m sorry, but a culture without the Marx Brothers, Charlie Chaplin, Woody Allen, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Jerry Seinfeld, etc., seems rather joyless and not particularly worth having.
Full disclosure time: though I was raised in a Catholic/Episcopalian household and currently practice no religion, my great-grandfather was a tailor in Krakow. If that makes me a crypto-Jew (another favorite epithet of the 9/11 fringe) so be it. Just don’t wear your brown shirt to my 9/11 rally. Save it for the Bund meeting next week.
On a radio show last evening, I heard an otherwise credible 9/11 researcher/journalist allowing a caller to rhapsodize unchallenged about the “superiority of the White mind.” And then the caller brought H L Mencken in to back up his idiocy! I’d like to know what “White mind” could have equaled the achievements of Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, and Duke Ellington, to name but three. (Mencken didn’t like jazz. That was his blind spot, I’m afraid.)
Perhaps most disturbing are the tireless and valiant 9/11 truth crusaders who have tacked on a whole rag-bag of other issues to their spiel. While they have done amazing work on 9/11, they rant on every topic from Terry Schiavo’s “murder” to the “criminals” stealing across the border. There’s also a fair bit of Jew-baiting on their presentation, and carping about Cynthia McKinney who has spoken out on 9/11, but not enough to please them. They also demonstrate real outrage when others within the 9/11 truth community distance themselves and refuse to take up the cudgels for their causes, chief among which is a planned rally at Ground Zero this September.
After months of listening to their diatribes (as well as their excellent, fact-based programs), I can understand the reluctance of some to associate themselves with them. Some of the resentment against them is petty, but their relentless complaining and taking others to task begins to grate on the ears. They alienate people, and then beg for unity–right before they alienate them again. Tireless, but ultimately tiresome.
I haven’t mentioned any names, out of the perhaps naive hope that unity is possible on the real common ground that we must share in our quest to bring the real criminals of September 11, 2001 to justice. Those criminals would prefer that we stay out on the fringes with the White Supremacists and Jew-baiters, and thus taint and marginalize our efforts. Our cause is more than just–it is imperative; our convictions are more than theories–they are provable through the laws of physics and chemistry. If we persist in mixing crank politics and racism with our science, the absurd, impossible Official Story will continue to seem reasonable and correct–and those who prosper under it will go unpunished.
That being said, I’ve had a slew of “yes, but” moments lately tromping in the vineyards of the 9/11 Truth movement. There are numerous activists who attempt to bundle this basic truth-seeking with other causes, some of which are not only not intrinsic to this endeavor, but which also may undermine the whole movement by driving off otherwise sympathetic people put off by 57 varieties of anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, racist rhetoric.
I’m not saying that people who may hold such opinions shouldn’t express them, though I admit I find them loathsome. I assert that such individual hobby-horses don’t belong in a movement where objective truth is paramount. Yet one of the most popular games among certain 9/11 truth types is “Pin the Blame on the Hebrew.” It’s true that the current government of Israel is not made up of the most congenial souls, but neither is our own. This fact of life is taken by a certain type of activist as the cue to start spewing all the anti-Jewish cliches learned at his mother’s jack-booted knee. The same types will then veer off on how the Jews “infiltrated” and “undermined” our culture. I’m sorry, but a culture without the Marx Brothers, Charlie Chaplin, Woody Allen, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Jerry Seinfeld, etc., seems rather joyless and not particularly worth having.
Full disclosure time: though I was raised in a Catholic/Episcopalian household and currently practice no religion, my great-grandfather was a tailor in Krakow. If that makes me a crypto-Jew (another favorite epithet of the 9/11 fringe) so be it. Just don’t wear your brown shirt to my 9/11 rally. Save it for the Bund meeting next week.
On a radio show last evening, I heard an otherwise credible 9/11 researcher/journalist allowing a caller to rhapsodize unchallenged about the “superiority of the White mind.” And then the caller brought H L Mencken in to back up his idiocy! I’d like to know what “White mind” could have equaled the achievements of Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, and Duke Ellington, to name but three. (Mencken didn’t like jazz. That was his blind spot, I’m afraid.)
Perhaps most disturbing are the tireless and valiant 9/11 truth crusaders who have tacked on a whole rag-bag of other issues to their spiel. While they have done amazing work on 9/11, they rant on every topic from Terry Schiavo’s “murder” to the “criminals” stealing across the border. There’s also a fair bit of Jew-baiting on their presentation, and carping about Cynthia McKinney who has spoken out on 9/11, but not enough to please them. They also demonstrate real outrage when others within the 9/11 truth community distance themselves and refuse to take up the cudgels for their causes, chief among which is a planned rally at Ground Zero this September.
After months of listening to their diatribes (as well as their excellent, fact-based programs), I can understand the reluctance of some to associate themselves with them. Some of the resentment against them is petty, but their relentless complaining and taking others to task begins to grate on the ears. They alienate people, and then beg for unity–right before they alienate them again. Tireless, but ultimately tiresome.
I haven’t mentioned any names, out of the perhaps naive hope that unity is possible on the real common ground that we must share in our quest to bring the real criminals of September 11, 2001 to justice. Those criminals would prefer that we stay out on the fringes with the White Supremacists and Jew-baiters, and thus taint and marginalize our efforts. Our cause is more than just–it is imperative; our convictions are more than theories–they are provable through the laws of physics and chemistry. If we persist in mixing crank politics and racism with our science, the absurd, impossible Official Story will continue to seem reasonable and correct–and those who prosper under it will go unpunished.
Sunday, April 09, 2006
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