Archives for September 11th, 2007

A phone call from inside the WTC on September 11, 2001.

In spring of 2001, I was working at One World Financial Center in downtown Manhattan. One day, while out for lunch with a colleague, we passed the Twin Towers and I remarked on how odd it was that someone thought they could actually knock them down. It seemed undoable. A few weeks later I was in Slovenia, and a few weeks after that, someone managed to pulverize both of them.

The question of who that “someone” was continues to rage on, despite all signs pointing to a band of al Qaeda jerk offs. Upon reading the latest Osama bin Laden transcript, I thought how odd it must be for him; he presumably masterminded the most lethal attack on the continental United States in its history — doing more damage than Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union combined — and yet Europeans think the CIA did it, Middle Easterners think the Jews did it, and Americans think Saddam Hussein did it.

This is the tragedy of our times: More information only seems to cause more ignorance. And, frankly, the 9/11 conspiracies are as dumb as they come. As Matt Taibbi brilliantly wrote last year:

“None of this stuff makes any sense at all. If you just need an excuse to assume authoritarian powers, why fake a plane crash in Shanksville? What the hell does that accomplish? If you’re using bombs, why fake a hijacking, why use remote-control planes? If the entire government apparatus is in on the scam, then why bother going to all this murderous trouble at all — only to go to war a year later with a country no one even bothered to falsely blame for the attacks? You won’t see any of this explored in 9/11 Truth lore, because the “conspiracy” they’re describing is impossible everywhere outside a Zucker brothers movie — unbelievably stupid in its conception, pointlessly baroque and excessive in its particulars, but flawless in its execution, with no concrete evidence left behind and tens of thousands keeping their roles a secret forever.”

That’s from the article The Hopeless Stupidity of 9/11 Conspiracies, which is like a great bulwark against the rising wave of paranoia — even if it won’t change your mind one way or the other. It’s still a spectacular read.

But that’s the mysterious thing. No matter how many respected and esteemed scientists come out and debunk the nonsense pitched forth by amateurs, nothing changes. Experts are either dismissed as being “in on it” or stupid sheeple and when arguing on the Internet, it’s the loudest people that win.

Not that the Internet is solely responsible. The fact that otherwise respectable television stations like Austria’s ORF actually broadcast shit like 9/11 Mysteries is just depressing beyond words.

That said, one of the few good things to come from all the conspiracy theories are the parodies; stuff like this page, which looks at the truth behind the Titanic, or the short film Tight Dollars.

Note: I know that most of the Slovenes are now itching to get to the comments and tell me that I’m a brainwashed sheep and that there’s proof Bush chopped down both towers with an axe made from Kennedy’s skull and femurs. But while I do love free speech, I don’t love crazy and I will prune out comments if I get the feeling that Carniola is turning into some oasis of nutters. Just sayin’ is all.