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MUERTOS BLOG: Embracing Reason: A Former 9/11 Truther Abandons Conspiracy Theories.
Author: Clock
Date: Apr 03, 2013 at 10:26
****ATTENTION*****
I am not Muertos and I do not know him. I am simply reposting these articles because I had found them on the Internet Wayback Machine. Do not contact me when it comes to this blog, I am not its author and my views are not necessarily his. REPEAT: I AM NOT MUERTOS.
Enjoy.
-Clock
******************
In doing what I often do-debunking conspiracy theories-I often get a lot of hate mail. Conspiracy theories are a belief system held by many people every bit as deeply as religion, and attacking 9/11 Truth, chemtrails or New World Order theories is to a conspiracy theorist like attacking the concept of God is to someone who is devoutly religious. (My anti-conspiracy activities have even earned me a place on the enemies lists of two organizations committed to spreading conspiracy theories, the Desteni cult and the Zeitgeist Movement).
Therefore, it is rare, but extremely gratifying, to get some positive feedback for a change. Someone from Skeptic Project (formerly Conspiracy Science) forwarded me this email from a former 9/11 Truther who wished to thank the administrators of the site for helping him to swim out of the toxic soup of conspiracy thinking. I'm not active on Skeptic Project anymore, but I was when this person was there, and I addressed several arguments to him that evidently got through to him. I won't publish his name or identifying details, but his works speak for themselves.
People often ask me why I waste my time trying to debunk conspiracy theories, because the tinfoil hatters never listen. Well, people, this is why I do it. This email is a better thanks for all my effort against conspiracy theories than any other form of recognition. So here is proof positive that conspiracy nuts can be reformed, and with the use of logic, critical thinking and evidence we can combat the disingenuous lies and distortions of the conspiracy theorist crowd. Bravo to this ex-Truther for finally seeing the light.
Thanks for reading.
I am not Muertos and I do not know him. I am simply reposting these articles because I had found them on the Internet Wayback Machine. Do not contact me when it comes to this blog, I am not its author and my views are not necessarily his. REPEAT: I AM NOT MUERTOS.
Enjoy.
-Clock
******************
In doing what I often do-debunking conspiracy theories-I often get a lot of hate mail. Conspiracy theories are a belief system held by many people every bit as deeply as religion, and attacking 9/11 Truth, chemtrails or New World Order theories is to a conspiracy theorist like attacking the concept of God is to someone who is devoutly religious. (My anti-conspiracy activities have even earned me a place on the enemies lists of two organizations committed to spreading conspiracy theories, the Desteni cult and the Zeitgeist Movement).
Therefore, it is rare, but extremely gratifying, to get some positive feedback for a change. Someone from Skeptic Project (formerly Conspiracy Science) forwarded me this email from a former 9/11 Truther who wished to thank the administrators of the site for helping him to swim out of the toxic soup of conspiracy thinking. I'm not active on Skeptic Project anymore, but I was when this person was there, and I addressed several arguments to him that evidently got through to him. I won't publish his name or identifying details, but his works speak for themselves.
About, I'd say, a year now, I e mailed you guys after coming home early from a crappy wedding I was at. I e mailed you about your site and how I don't think you're all agents and that I just believe there are certain things about 9/11 that don't hold up. It was during the summer and I had really gotten into 9/11 and the whole conspiracy about it.
When college started again at the end of September, I had other things to study and stuff so drifted away from the 9/11 debate. I really did have believe it was an inside job, but there were certain things that weren't adding up. A couple of things from your site and others had planed seeds(as Jones would say) that made me question what the conspiracists were providing evidence about.
This may be a certain shock to you, but it was actually Ron Paul, yes, Ron Paul who turned me away from categorically saying "9/11 was an inside job". He lead me on to Michael Scheuer and I went from there and did a lot of reading about Bin Laden etc. That got me interested as reading his latest book about him by Scheuer, Osama Bin Laden I was confused as to why he said Bin Laden never wanted the Americans help. I thought about the Bin Laden Brzezinski clip. I tried looking for information about it and went to the satanic site 9/11 myths. They, with links and meticulous research, thoroughly debunked that picture. I'd always thought that it didn't look like Bin Lade, but guess I was blinded by the reality(I never would have said that writing an e-mail to you last year, on any subject).
After that, I decided that I wanted to get the full proof once. I was lucky enough to come across Mark Roberts. I saw him annihilate Jones in public. But that wasn't really it that made me want to look up his stuff more. It was the ease at which he did. His debunking of WTC7 was a smack in the face for me for two reasons: 1, it was so easy to explain. Nigro ordered the building to be evacuated 3 hours before it did and other stuff, no need to explain it all, just a quick example. 2, I had been lied to by Alex Jones and his gang.
I read a lot of his work, watched him debate on Hardfire and saw his video about WTC7 the towers and explosions, etc. I couldn't believe it.
Anyway, I may have said to you last time "Oh, you should just concentrate on other issues, Jones isn't doing anything." I was wrong. I'm no genius, but I and others would say I'm bright and I got really good grades in college as I'm sure a lot of other people who did or do believe it to be an inside job. But I was duped by Jones and others. The editing of footage, the exclusion of noises in videos. The madness of Jones, etc. All this was yield because they engaged in chicanery in their documentaries.
But I can't just blame them. I have myself to blame as well for not looking at both sides and applying common sense. Like the commissioners quotes. I should have known better then be putting my own context around them.
What's the point of this e-mail? It's a simple thank you. And also, going by your hate mail, I can see you receive a plethora of angry truthers' hate.
If you want, you can put this e-mail on your site. Hopefully others who have slight doubts will see that there is hope once you admit you were wrong(just don't put my e-mail up or name, don't want to be flooded with hate mail). Oh, and I never called myself a truther, never once, embarrassing term. I know the annoyance you feel too, I have been called an agent of Mossad for pointing out things about building 7 and I see where the aversions you guys have come from. You really can't get through to most of these people. Why they say "I wish it wasn't true" but can't accept the facts, are beyond me.
To sum up, I encourage you to flatten infowars.com and their nonsense. I fully understand why you and others have such antipathy towards Alex Jones and the rest. I picked up David Ray Griffin's new book and the lies and distortions are unbelievable, they really are.
So, to you guys, Mark Roberts, 9/11 myths and a guy from Canada on youtube(DSGLOP), thank you for tackling the chicanery and the distortions by "truthers."
People often ask me why I waste my time trying to debunk conspiracy theories, because the tinfoil hatters never listen. Well, people, this is why I do it. This email is a better thanks for all my effort against conspiracy theories than any other form of recognition. So here is proof positive that conspiracy nuts can be reformed, and with the use of logic, critical thinking and evidence we can combat the disingenuous lies and distortions of the conspiracy theorist crowd. Bravo to this ex-Truther for finally seeing the light.
Thanks for reading.
MUERTOS BLOG: Confessions of A Disinformation Agent, Part 2
Author: Clock
Date: Apr 02, 2013 at 18:26
****ATTENTION*****
I am not Muertos and I do not know him. I am simply reposting these articles because I had found them on the Internet Wayback Machine. Do not contact me when it comes to this blog, I am not its author and my views are not necessarily his. REPEAT: I AM NOT MUERTOS.
Enjoy.
-Clock
******************
Chapter II: From 9/11 to MySpace.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, I got up very early, five o'clock. I was working on a novel, and, as I was usually too tired to write when I got home, I started doing it in the early mornings before going to work. At this time I lived alone in apartment in the central city. I got up, showered, and spent about a half hour writing. At 6:45 AM--Pacific time--as I was making breakfast my phone rang. Instantly I knew it was bad news. No one ever calls at 6:45 AM with good news. I picked up. It was a friend of mine. (Not the same one who almost caught TWA 800). "Have you seen the news?" he said. I said no. He replied, "Someone tried to kill the President!" That was how it was reported to me. Oh, and there was the small detail of the World Trade Centers on fire after planes having been crashed into them.
I switched on the TV. This was about 9:45 AM, after both towers had been struck, but just before the first of them collapsed. Like almost everyone else in America, I watched in rapt horror. I'll never forget seeing the first of the towers collapse into a cloud of dust. I also remember seeing the little black specks of people jumping from the towers before they fell. That's one of the most horrifying sights I've ever seen--even on TV--and one that will stick with me forever. Mind you, I watched the 1986 Challenger explosion live, and I also witnessed the infamous Bud Dwyer suicide as it happened. Neither of those horrible events could touch September 11.
Very reluctantly, I went to my office. I then worked in a law firm headquartered in a downtown skyscraper. It was four blocks from the federal building. In those first hours of September 11, after we heard Flight 93 was hijacked and headed possibly for the White House, no one knew how extensive the attack was and where else the terrorists might strike. There was no business going on, and everyone was nervous about the security of high-rise buildings, so I decided to go home. I took my car and drove to my parents' house, which was in a suburb about 20 minutes away. I spent the rest of the day there, most of it watching the TV coverage of the attacks.
Years later Truthers would seize upon the collapse of World Trade Center 7 as "evidence" of conspiracy. I remember watching coverage of WTC7 all day long, from the start of the attacks until it collapsed about 5:30 in the afternoon. Every couple of minutes the news channels would have another update on the efforts to contain the blaze in that building. When it finally did collapse, absolutely nothing could have been less surprising. I remember thinking that, after watching the reports on the news, it was a wonder the building had managed to stay intact as long as it did. People were also worried that other buildings might collapse too, such as the American Express complex and the Marriott Hotel which were heavily damaged. WTC7 was entirely consistent, from the very beginning, with what had been happening all day.
In the years since September 11 I've tried to recall exactly what my assumptions were on the day-of, and why I came to them. That it was a terrorist attack by some type of foreign power was obvious. At first I thought it might have been Saddam Hussein. Then as the day wore on the media kept mentioning Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. In later years Truthers would claim that this was a telltale sign of some sort of cover story being put out. But it wasn't. Although not many Americans had heard of Al-Qaeda before September 11, the few who had harbored no doubt whatsoever that the attacks were the work of this group. It fit their modus operandi perfectly, and also they were the only terrorist group in the world even capable of mounting such an attack. In 2011, when I read Lawrence Wright's book The Looming Tower, about the history of Al-Qaeda and U.S. attempts to interdict them before 2001, it suddenly made sense why an Al-Qaeda connection was voiced instantly after the attacks. It was not a sense, in those first days, of a mystery--"Well, gee, who could have done this?" followed by an official government proclamation, "It was Osama!" It didn't happen like that at all. The fact that the attacks had occurred in the way they did was itself evidence of who had done it.
Then, over the next days and weeks, the grisly evidence mounted. I recall at least one suicide video came to light within days after the attacks. The hijackers whose names were on the passenger lists--yes, I say that deliberately, because the fact contradicts what Truthers would claim years later--were traced, many by media outlets in the Arab world, to Al-Qaeda and other jihadist roots. When the police found Mohammed Atta's car at the airport in Portland, Maine, loaded with evidence, it was simply another piece in the puzzle. Then came Al-Qaeda's veiled claims of responsibility. They did not claim responsibility unequivocally as previous terrorist groups usually did, but when the Taliban's spokesperson warned the U.S. that "the hail of planes will not stop," it was obvious to everyone they did it. The evidence came in from so many quarters--eyewitness reports, media reports, police, documentary evidence, the flight schools, rental car agencies, security cameras, etc.--that there simply wasn't any doubt. You couldn't fake it. There was no mystery to solve, no puzzle to piece together. It was very clear what had happened.
The anthrax powder attacks in October 2001 were very, very scary. In some ways they were more frightening than the original attacks. It had nothing to do with loss of life. It was psychological. Some sick bastard out there was toying with us, the whole country, trying to get us to shit our pants, and he did. I remember my law firm circulating a memo warning people to inspect their mail for telltale signs of anthrax contamination. I think the anthrax was scary because there was no real end to it. It could start up again at any time, and we had no real defense against it.
When I recall October 2001 I remember, above all, the rumors. One of the most popular one was that Al-Qaeda was going to blow up a prominent shopping mall somewhere in the U.S. on Halloween. That turned out to be a hoax, but I only learned it was a hoax by checking it on the website snopes.com--my first exposure to that site. There were many rumors about the attacks that circulated that following month. You can still see them on snopes.com, under "Rumors of War." Imagine how frightening these were at the time.
October was about the time when I heard my first September 11 conspiracy theory. I posted on a message board at that time devoted to heavy metal music, but it had a "general" section where people could post about non-metal subjects. I remember somebody there, not a regular, posted the rumor that "4000 Jews didn't show up for work on 9/11." Snopes.com had already debunked this egregious anti-Semitic rumor, and the guy who posted it got hammered down for even mentioning it. The guy didn't assert that, because supposedly 4,000 Jews didn't show up for work, Mossad or the Israeli government must have done it. The early conspiracy theories weren't that developed. They hadn't yet morphed into the comprehensive mythology they would take on in later years. They were just this at first--rumors, very crude, and instantly recognizable as false. I don't think I heard or read the words "controlled demolition" until years later. These theories just didn't exist in October 2001.
After the "4,000 Jews" business, I really don't recall hearing any September 11 conspiracy theories for at least two years, possibly three. I suspect they were out there, but the conspiracy underground was then still in much the same form it was in the 1970s and 1980s, when conspiracy buffs traded crudely-copied zines and circulated their theories amongst themselves. During 2002, I know, Thierry Miessan published his book 9/11: The Big Lie, which was the first (so far as I know) real assertion of 9/11 conspiracy ideology. It's significant that the book was first published in France. I never heard about it at the time. It just didn't make a dent.
You must understand that during this time I was not a debunker. I didn't believe in conspiracy theories; by 2002 I'd even come to the conclusion, on JFK, that Oswald acted alone. My own experience with conspiracy theories notwithstanding, there just wasn't anything out there to debunk in the first few years after 9/11. Conspiracy theories and the people who believed them were still fringe nuts cowering in basements and analyzing JFK autopsy photos. It was a subculture totally invisible to the mainstream.
Then we went to war in Iraq. Looking back on it, I think Iraq was a game-changer. If Bush's bluff about Saddam's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction had paid off--meaning, if they had actually found the WMDs after the invasion--I seriously doubt 9/11 conspiracy theories would have taken off at all. But the WMD fiasco made any government lie, about anything, plausible. The 2004 election also reinforced the narrative that competence at the top didn't matter, and the evildoers could maintain control no matter what. Bush was extraordinarily lucky in 2004. He got re-elected just before people began to hate him in numbers that, just a few months prior, would have made his re-election impossible. I did hear conspiracy theories about the 2004 election--Rolling Stone, for instance, ran an article suggesting that Republicans stuffed ballot boxes in Ohio, which was the key state that made the difference between Bush and Kerry. I looked into it. There was nothing there. I don't think a whole lot of Americans liked Bush very much in 2004, but many of them voted for him more or less reluctantly. Kerry was a bad candidate--a really, really bad candidate. Galling as it was to admit it, Bush won more or less fairly, and the United States and the rest of the world paid the price for the next four years.
I think the pent-up national rage over Bush's re-election and the downward spiraling war in Iraq set the stage for the explosion of 9/11 conspiracy theories. But, as debunker Ryan Mackey points out in his recent paper The Great Internet Conspiracy: The Rise and Fall of the 9/11 Truth Movement, something else provided the fuel to the fire: the rise of social networking sites on the Internet.
By 2005, when I first signed on to a website called MySpace, I was on my way to becoming a debunker. I cut my teeth not on conspiracy theories, but urban legends. Remember that site that caught my eye after 9/11, Snopes.com? At the law firm I was known as the "rumor debunker." Every couple of weeks someone at my work would forward an email to the entire office, usually a hysterical email warning of some type of horror--like the "ankle slasher" hoax, that being, a supposed statement from a police department somewhere, warning women of a new trend in muggings where criminals armed with knives wait under the cars of single women parked in mall parking lots, then slash their ankles to disable them. There was the other famous hoax of the gang initiation ritual where gang members drive around without headlights at night, and if someone flashes their headlights at them, they shoot the person who did it. None of the rumors were true, and Snopes had articles debunking them all.
One morning, seeing the "ankle slasher" email forwarded to the entire office for the third or fourth time in a year, I got angry. I clicked "Reply To All" and debunked the hoax, including a link to the article on Snopes where it was investigated and declared false. Many people in the office responded to me privately thanking me. They were as tired of the hoax emails as I was. This happened several times.
I noticed that the vast majority of the people who fell for these email hoaxes and forwarded them fit the same profile: they were usually secretaries, women in their forties, often with children who were tweens or teenagers. What was really bizarre was that some of these women chose to argue with me even after the myths were debunked. They would claim that Snopes was biased, or that even if the "ankle slasher" himself wasn't real, the underlying message of the hoaxes--that women should be careful when getting into their cars--justified sending the emails around, which meant that by debunking the urban legends I was somehow being indifferent to violence against women. I realize these people were, for whatever reason, emotionally invested in the truth of these claims, just as I was emotionally invested in the TWA 800 conspiracy. It was exactly the same thing.
I got thinking: why did these people, with these specific characteristics, fall for the hoaxes? And why did some of them try to cling to the truth of the hoaxes, even after they were debunked? It had to be something psychological. I also started thinking about the people who started these rumors, whoever they were. What was their story? Why did they do it? Was it just for notoriety, the thrill of seeing something they created go viral and scare people? I began to become very interested in the pathology of deception on this level. Something about it fascinated me. I started reading about con artists, hoaxes and confidence tricks. This was the beginning of my interest in what I call "organized deception"--scams, cults and conspiracy theories.
I didn't join MySpace with the intention of using it as a debunking platform. I joined it in 2005, like most others did, to connect with my friends on the net, most of whom were in the heavy metal subculture. I don't need to tell you about MySpace. If you had America Online in 1995, you probably had a MySpace page in 2005. Yes, my name there was "Muertos." That had always been my handle on the net, since I first joined the heavy metal community online to promote a novel I self-published in 2000, called Fire, Metal, Blood and Money. The pseudonym I used to write that book was "Michael De Los Muertos," which was a joke. Fire, Metal, Blood and Money satirizes the Norwegian black metal subculture of the early 1990s, where musicians took bizarre and silly nicknames like "Count Grishnakh" and "Euronymous." My pseudonym, "Los Muertos," was a Spanish spoof of that--black metal silliness brought to the New World. My book was still moderately popular in 2005, so when I joined MySpace, I was, naturally, Muertos.
One thing I noticed people were doing on MySpace was writing blogs. I'm a writer, and I have a lot of opinions, so naturally I started a blog there. I covered all sorts of topics--history, politics, heavy metal, world travel, the Internet, lots of things. Nobody read my blogs, but I liked writing them. Then one day I wrote a blog post about UFOs and alien abduction. It was an early version of the blog series I later ran five years later, analyzing Whitley Strieber's Communion novels. For the first time I got a comment response. It happened to be from a conspiracy theorist, who believed that UFOs were secret test weapons being developed by the U.S. government.
When I responded, arguing that there was no evidence that this was true, and that logically this hypothesis doesn't make much sense given the fact that these secret flying saucer weapons never seem to get out of the testing phase, I had no idea that a new and very strange chapter of my life had just opened up.
Perhaps it wasn't my response that really did it. Maybe it was when I clicked on the profile of the person who commented--a fellow whose handle was "IgnoranceIsntBliss." As soon as I clicked, my screen filled instantly with so many species of crazy I couldn't keep up with it. This guy believed in everything--chemtrails, New World Order, Illuminati, RFID chips, FEMA camps, autism vaccines, Bilderberg, Trilateral Commission, Roswell, JFK. Everything. And, of course, 9/11. I could spend 20 years arguing with this guy and never hit all the conspiracy theories he believed in and posted liberally all over his MySpace page. I don't know why, but I just had to respond. It was a compulsion, like debunking the "ankle slasher" hoax. I knew I didn't stand a chance to convert this guy from his nutty ways, but I sure as hell could make sure that anyone who saw his page saw there was another side of the story.
My life as a debunker had begun.
I am not Muertos and I do not know him. I am simply reposting these articles because I had found them on the Internet Wayback Machine. Do not contact me when it comes to this blog, I am not its author and my views are not necessarily his. REPEAT: I AM NOT MUERTOS.
Enjoy.
-Clock
******************
Chapter II: From 9/11 to MySpace.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, I got up very early, five o'clock. I was working on a novel, and, as I was usually too tired to write when I got home, I started doing it in the early mornings before going to work. At this time I lived alone in apartment in the central city. I got up, showered, and spent about a half hour writing. At 6:45 AM--Pacific time--as I was making breakfast my phone rang. Instantly I knew it was bad news. No one ever calls at 6:45 AM with good news. I picked up. It was a friend of mine. (Not the same one who almost caught TWA 800). "Have you seen the news?" he said. I said no. He replied, "Someone tried to kill the President!" That was how it was reported to me. Oh, and there was the small detail of the World Trade Centers on fire after planes having been crashed into them.
I switched on the TV. This was about 9:45 AM, after both towers had been struck, but just before the first of them collapsed. Like almost everyone else in America, I watched in rapt horror. I'll never forget seeing the first of the towers collapse into a cloud of dust. I also remember seeing the little black specks of people jumping from the towers before they fell. That's one of the most horrifying sights I've ever seen--even on TV--and one that will stick with me forever. Mind you, I watched the 1986 Challenger explosion live, and I also witnessed the infamous Bud Dwyer suicide as it happened. Neither of those horrible events could touch September 11.
Very reluctantly, I went to my office. I then worked in a law firm headquartered in a downtown skyscraper. It was four blocks from the federal building. In those first hours of September 11, after we heard Flight 93 was hijacked and headed possibly for the White House, no one knew how extensive the attack was and where else the terrorists might strike. There was no business going on, and everyone was nervous about the security of high-rise buildings, so I decided to go home. I took my car and drove to my parents' house, which was in a suburb about 20 minutes away. I spent the rest of the day there, most of it watching the TV coverage of the attacks.
Years later Truthers would seize upon the collapse of World Trade Center 7 as "evidence" of conspiracy. I remember watching coverage of WTC7 all day long, from the start of the attacks until it collapsed about 5:30 in the afternoon. Every couple of minutes the news channels would have another update on the efforts to contain the blaze in that building. When it finally did collapse, absolutely nothing could have been less surprising. I remember thinking that, after watching the reports on the news, it was a wonder the building had managed to stay intact as long as it did. People were also worried that other buildings might collapse too, such as the American Express complex and the Marriott Hotel which were heavily damaged. WTC7 was entirely consistent, from the very beginning, with what had been happening all day.
In the years since September 11 I've tried to recall exactly what my assumptions were on the day-of, and why I came to them. That it was a terrorist attack by some type of foreign power was obvious. At first I thought it might have been Saddam Hussein. Then as the day wore on the media kept mentioning Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. In later years Truthers would claim that this was a telltale sign of some sort of cover story being put out. But it wasn't. Although not many Americans had heard of Al-Qaeda before September 11, the few who had harbored no doubt whatsoever that the attacks were the work of this group. It fit their modus operandi perfectly, and also they were the only terrorist group in the world even capable of mounting such an attack. In 2011, when I read Lawrence Wright's book The Looming Tower, about the history of Al-Qaeda and U.S. attempts to interdict them before 2001, it suddenly made sense why an Al-Qaeda connection was voiced instantly after the attacks. It was not a sense, in those first days, of a mystery--"Well, gee, who could have done this?" followed by an official government proclamation, "It was Osama!" It didn't happen like that at all. The fact that the attacks had occurred in the way they did was itself evidence of who had done it.
Then, over the next days and weeks, the grisly evidence mounted. I recall at least one suicide video came to light within days after the attacks. The hijackers whose names were on the passenger lists--yes, I say that deliberately, because the fact contradicts what Truthers would claim years later--were traced, many by media outlets in the Arab world, to Al-Qaeda and other jihadist roots. When the police found Mohammed Atta's car at the airport in Portland, Maine, loaded with evidence, it was simply another piece in the puzzle. Then came Al-Qaeda's veiled claims of responsibility. They did not claim responsibility unequivocally as previous terrorist groups usually did, but when the Taliban's spokesperson warned the U.S. that "the hail of planes will not stop," it was obvious to everyone they did it. The evidence came in from so many quarters--eyewitness reports, media reports, police, documentary evidence, the flight schools, rental car agencies, security cameras, etc.--that there simply wasn't any doubt. You couldn't fake it. There was no mystery to solve, no puzzle to piece together. It was very clear what had happened.
The anthrax powder attacks in October 2001 were very, very scary. In some ways they were more frightening than the original attacks. It had nothing to do with loss of life. It was psychological. Some sick bastard out there was toying with us, the whole country, trying to get us to shit our pants, and he did. I remember my law firm circulating a memo warning people to inspect their mail for telltale signs of anthrax contamination. I think the anthrax was scary because there was no real end to it. It could start up again at any time, and we had no real defense against it.
When I recall October 2001 I remember, above all, the rumors. One of the most popular one was that Al-Qaeda was going to blow up a prominent shopping mall somewhere in the U.S. on Halloween. That turned out to be a hoax, but I only learned it was a hoax by checking it on the website snopes.com--my first exposure to that site. There were many rumors about the attacks that circulated that following month. You can still see them on snopes.com, under "Rumors of War." Imagine how frightening these were at the time.
October was about the time when I heard my first September 11 conspiracy theory. I posted on a message board at that time devoted to heavy metal music, but it had a "general" section where people could post about non-metal subjects. I remember somebody there, not a regular, posted the rumor that "4000 Jews didn't show up for work on 9/11." Snopes.com had already debunked this egregious anti-Semitic rumor, and the guy who posted it got hammered down for even mentioning it. The guy didn't assert that, because supposedly 4,000 Jews didn't show up for work, Mossad or the Israeli government must have done it. The early conspiracy theories weren't that developed. They hadn't yet morphed into the comprehensive mythology they would take on in later years. They were just this at first--rumors, very crude, and instantly recognizable as false. I don't think I heard or read the words "controlled demolition" until years later. These theories just didn't exist in October 2001.
After the "4,000 Jews" business, I really don't recall hearing any September 11 conspiracy theories for at least two years, possibly three. I suspect they were out there, but the conspiracy underground was then still in much the same form it was in the 1970s and 1980s, when conspiracy buffs traded crudely-copied zines and circulated their theories amongst themselves. During 2002, I know, Thierry Miessan published his book 9/11: The Big Lie, which was the first (so far as I know) real assertion of 9/11 conspiracy ideology. It's significant that the book was first published in France. I never heard about it at the time. It just didn't make a dent.
You must understand that during this time I was not a debunker. I didn't believe in conspiracy theories; by 2002 I'd even come to the conclusion, on JFK, that Oswald acted alone. My own experience with conspiracy theories notwithstanding, there just wasn't anything out there to debunk in the first few years after 9/11. Conspiracy theories and the people who believed them were still fringe nuts cowering in basements and analyzing JFK autopsy photos. It was a subculture totally invisible to the mainstream.
Then we went to war in Iraq. Looking back on it, I think Iraq was a game-changer. If Bush's bluff about Saddam's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction had paid off--meaning, if they had actually found the WMDs after the invasion--I seriously doubt 9/11 conspiracy theories would have taken off at all. But the WMD fiasco made any government lie, about anything, plausible. The 2004 election also reinforced the narrative that competence at the top didn't matter, and the evildoers could maintain control no matter what. Bush was extraordinarily lucky in 2004. He got re-elected just before people began to hate him in numbers that, just a few months prior, would have made his re-election impossible. I did hear conspiracy theories about the 2004 election--Rolling Stone, for instance, ran an article suggesting that Republicans stuffed ballot boxes in Ohio, which was the key state that made the difference between Bush and Kerry. I looked into it. There was nothing there. I don't think a whole lot of Americans liked Bush very much in 2004, but many of them voted for him more or less reluctantly. Kerry was a bad candidate--a really, really bad candidate. Galling as it was to admit it, Bush won more or less fairly, and the United States and the rest of the world paid the price for the next four years.
I think the pent-up national rage over Bush's re-election and the downward spiraling war in Iraq set the stage for the explosion of 9/11 conspiracy theories. But, as debunker Ryan Mackey points out in his recent paper The Great Internet Conspiracy: The Rise and Fall of the 9/11 Truth Movement, something else provided the fuel to the fire: the rise of social networking sites on the Internet.
By 2005, when I first signed on to a website called MySpace, I was on my way to becoming a debunker. I cut my teeth not on conspiracy theories, but urban legends. Remember that site that caught my eye after 9/11, Snopes.com? At the law firm I was known as the "rumor debunker." Every couple of weeks someone at my work would forward an email to the entire office, usually a hysterical email warning of some type of horror--like the "ankle slasher" hoax, that being, a supposed statement from a police department somewhere, warning women of a new trend in muggings where criminals armed with knives wait under the cars of single women parked in mall parking lots, then slash their ankles to disable them. There was the other famous hoax of the gang initiation ritual where gang members drive around without headlights at night, and if someone flashes their headlights at them, they shoot the person who did it. None of the rumors were true, and Snopes had articles debunking them all.
One morning, seeing the "ankle slasher" email forwarded to the entire office for the third or fourth time in a year, I got angry. I clicked "Reply To All" and debunked the hoax, including a link to the article on Snopes where it was investigated and declared false. Many people in the office responded to me privately thanking me. They were as tired of the hoax emails as I was. This happened several times.
I noticed that the vast majority of the people who fell for these email hoaxes and forwarded them fit the same profile: they were usually secretaries, women in their forties, often with children who were tweens or teenagers. What was really bizarre was that some of these women chose to argue with me even after the myths were debunked. They would claim that Snopes was biased, or that even if the "ankle slasher" himself wasn't real, the underlying message of the hoaxes--that women should be careful when getting into their cars--justified sending the emails around, which meant that by debunking the urban legends I was somehow being indifferent to violence against women. I realize these people were, for whatever reason, emotionally invested in the truth of these claims, just as I was emotionally invested in the TWA 800 conspiracy. It was exactly the same thing.
I got thinking: why did these people, with these specific characteristics, fall for the hoaxes? And why did some of them try to cling to the truth of the hoaxes, even after they were debunked? It had to be something psychological. I also started thinking about the people who started these rumors, whoever they were. What was their story? Why did they do it? Was it just for notoriety, the thrill of seeing something they created go viral and scare people? I began to become very interested in the pathology of deception on this level. Something about it fascinated me. I started reading about con artists, hoaxes and confidence tricks. This was the beginning of my interest in what I call "organized deception"--scams, cults and conspiracy theories.
I didn't join MySpace with the intention of using it as a debunking platform. I joined it in 2005, like most others did, to connect with my friends on the net, most of whom were in the heavy metal subculture. I don't need to tell you about MySpace. If you had America Online in 1995, you probably had a MySpace page in 2005. Yes, my name there was "Muertos." That had always been my handle on the net, since I first joined the heavy metal community online to promote a novel I self-published in 2000, called Fire, Metal, Blood and Money. The pseudonym I used to write that book was "Michael De Los Muertos," which was a joke. Fire, Metal, Blood and Money satirizes the Norwegian black metal subculture of the early 1990s, where musicians took bizarre and silly nicknames like "Count Grishnakh" and "Euronymous." My pseudonym, "Los Muertos," was a Spanish spoof of that--black metal silliness brought to the New World. My book was still moderately popular in 2005, so when I joined MySpace, I was, naturally, Muertos.
One thing I noticed people were doing on MySpace was writing blogs. I'm a writer, and I have a lot of opinions, so naturally I started a blog there. I covered all sorts of topics--history, politics, heavy metal, world travel, the Internet, lots of things. Nobody read my blogs, but I liked writing them. Then one day I wrote a blog post about UFOs and alien abduction. It was an early version of the blog series I later ran five years later, analyzing Whitley Strieber's Communion novels. For the first time I got a comment response. It happened to be from a conspiracy theorist, who believed that UFOs were secret test weapons being developed by the U.S. government.
When I responded, arguing that there was no evidence that this was true, and that logically this hypothesis doesn't make much sense given the fact that these secret flying saucer weapons never seem to get out of the testing phase, I had no idea that a new and very strange chapter of my life had just opened up.
Perhaps it wasn't my response that really did it. Maybe it was when I clicked on the profile of the person who commented--a fellow whose handle was "IgnoranceIsntBliss." As soon as I clicked, my screen filled instantly with so many species of crazy I couldn't keep up with it. This guy believed in everything--chemtrails, New World Order, Illuminati, RFID chips, FEMA camps, autism vaccines, Bilderberg, Trilateral Commission, Roswell, JFK. Everything. And, of course, 9/11. I could spend 20 years arguing with this guy and never hit all the conspiracy theories he believed in and posted liberally all over his MySpace page. I don't know why, but I just had to respond. It was a compulsion, like debunking the "ankle slasher" hoax. I knew I didn't stand a chance to convert this guy from his nutty ways, but I sure as hell could make sure that anyone who saw his page saw there was another side of the story.
My life as a debunker had begun.
MUERTOS BLOG: Confessions of A Disinformation Agent, Intro and Part 1
Author: Clock
Date: Apr 02, 2013 at 18:14
****ATTENTION*****
I am not Muertos and I do not know him. I am simply reposting these articles because I had found them on the Internet Wayback Machine. Do not contact me when it comes to this blog, I am not its author and my views are not necessarily his. REPEAT: I AM NOT MUERTOS.
Enjoy.
-Clock
******************
By: Muertos
Introduction
The Internet is a strange and confusing place. It's a place where truth is not always self-evident, where facts are not always what they seem to be, and where, virtually by definition, the whole story is rarely told. It's also a place where people can pretend to be more important than they really are. Since that is, in some ways, the moral of this story, I thought that was as good a place as any to begin.
I am Muertos, and for seven years now I've been a debunker of conspiracy theories on the Internet. In my real life--my non-Internet life, that is--I am, among other things, a writer, and one of the rules that we writers have is, you probably shouldn't write about your own life, because most peoples' lives are boring. Well, in the true Internet spirit of pretending to be more important than you are, I'm ignoring that rule and writing this--a "memoir" of sorts--about my experiences and observations debunking conspiracy theories. Perhaps you may learn something, as I did, about knowledge, about belief, about human nature, and perhaps even a little about truth.
I hesitate even to use that word, truth. Thanks largely to conspiracy theorists, truth has become something of a charged term. Something you might learn from my story is that an attempt to find truth in today's world--especially on the Internet--is a fool's errand right out of Don Quixote. So let's not talk about truth. Let's settle for fact instead. I do think you can find fact in today's world, even, astonishing as it may sound, on the Internet. The problem is, you may not always know it when you see it. That was certainly my story in the early days, and in a way it's what led me to the whole subject of conspiracy theories.
This story is going to be a history of my experiences with conspiracy theories, including the time when I used to believe them myself. I'll explain what got me into them, why they fascinated me, and eventually why I became a debunker. I have a very strange and complicated relationship with debunking. Sometimes I love it and look forward to it; at other times it's something I hate and want to be finished with forever. Therefore, this piece is a very personal journey.
Before we get on with it let me tell you what this story is not. I am a debunker, but this is not a debunking. This is not an attempt to refute any of the individual bits of stinking offal that bob along in the tidal wave of idiocy that's drowning our world--everything from "9/11 was an inside job" to delusions of fake moon landings, global warming denial to the New World Order, from Barack Obama Birthers to Osama bin Laden Deathers. This is not a laundry list of conspiracy nutjobbery followed by the appropriate antidotes of facts that refute them, like pharmaceutical prescriptions. Nor is it a handbook on how to debunk the silly crap that people believe in. After being at this for seven years now I'm not even sure I can persuade anyone to believe anything. No; this is a personal journey, a personal story. If it interests or enlightens you, great. If not, I really couldn't care less.
So don't waste your time sending me emails or posting angry comments telling me that I'm a shill or a sheeple, that I've been brainwashed by fluoride or aspartame, that I swallow unquestioningly everything the government tells me or that I must love the deaths of billions. What, you think after doing this for seven years that I haven't heard all of that before--multiple times? And yes, as the title suggests, many people over the years have accused me of being a "paid disinformation agent." As soon as you put a toe into these waters, that's what you're signing up for. It just goes with the territory.
Let's get on with it, shall we?
Chapter I: In The Beginning: JFK and TWA.
My story begins in the year 1991. Twenty-two years ago I was in college, studying history at a large state university. I'd been interested in politics and history since my early teens. In 1991 I was very politically aware. Mostly I was aware that I really hated George Bush--that's George Bush the First. To me, everything wrong with the world was the fault of George Bush. I thought he was without a doubt the worst president in the history of the United States. If you'd told me that ten years later his son would turn out to be so bad that he'd make Bush the First look like FDR by comparison, I probably would have hanged myself right then and there.
Two things happened to me in 1991 that are relevant to this story. The first was that one day I happened to read a book that my roommate left lying around. It was called The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries, by Colin and Damon Wilson. It was full of fascinating short articles on everything from the Yeti to the Loch Ness Monster, UFOs, the Bermuda Triangle, and doubts about the authorship of the plays of Shakespeare. I found myself intrigued most by the historical mysteries, such as the women who pretended to be Anastasia, the murdered daughter of Czar Nicholas II, and the Money Pit, a supposed pirate treasure hoard buried on a remote island in Nova Scotia. I later bought my own copy of this book, and I still have it. I love it, even though I know now that its assertions are very shaky and its authors are not known for their rock-solid scholarship. When I was nineteen I didn't know better. I accepted most of what was in this book as fact.
The second thing that happened in 1991 was the release of this movie--Oliver Stone's JFK. Today's generation of Internet-reared conspiracy theorists can't really understand the impact that this movie had at the time of its release. JFK is a three-hour epic about the investigation of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison into the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The movie is wildly inaccurate--several high-profile conspiracy theorists, including Jim Marrs, collaborated on the script--but it presented what I thought at the time was a slam-dunk case that there was a massive conspiracy in the assassination of Kennedy. In fact, I walked out of the theater convinced that Oliver Stone had solved the JFK case. How could people be so gullible to believe the Warren Commission? Thus, JFK was my very first conspiracy theory.
The dark days of the early 90s had a happy ending for me. The next year, Bill Clinton defeated the hated George Bush. To me, Bill Clinton was the second coming of Christ. I didn't appreciate at the time that he won because of a spoiler vote, the third-party candidacy of big-eared Texas oil guy Ross Perot. For those of you who weren't around in 1992, Ross Perot was sort of like a less ferocious Ron Paul. Except with bigger ears.
Fast-forward four years. In the summer of 1996, I was working my way through law school. On cable that summer--I believe it may even have been the History Channel--I was enthralled by a multi-part British documentary called The Men Who Killed Kennedy, directed by Nigel Turner. The series was made in the late 80s but didn't reach the U.S. until years later. This documentary spun a number of inconsistent and self-contradictory conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination. The most high-profile one, and the one I remember being utterly convinced by, was the theory that Kennedy had been taken out by a team of Corsican mafia snipers, hired by the Chicago mob. One of the snipers was himself interviewed for the show. Very much like the Stone movie, I thought this was a slam-dunk. It didn't even bother me that the conspiracy theories in The Men Who Killed Kennedy, which I eagerly believed, were different than, and inconsistent with, the conspiracy theories in JFK, which I also believed. After all, the plot to kill JFK must have been a very tangled web. Was there anyone alive who could understand it all?
I certainly believed in the JFK conspiracy, but it was very dry and dusty. After all, it was 33 years in the past. Later that summer, though, conspiracy theories got some very personal hooks into me.
On July 17, 1996, a Boeing 747 designated TWA Flight 800 exploded shortly after takeoff from JFK International Airport in New York. 230 people were killed, some of their remains washing up on the shore of the Long Island beach community called East Moriches. This disaster hit home for me. One of my best friends was almost on it. That very same day, July 17, my friend was flying to Europe to see a mutual friend of ours who was living in Paris. My friend reached JFK Airport on July 17, and found his flight to Paris was canceled. He was put on another flight at the last minute. For several hours we--my friend's family, my family, and me--thought there was a very good chance that he'd been transferred to TWA 800, which was headed to Rome after a stopover in Paris. The fact that my friend did not resurface for nearly twelve hours after the disaster only heightened our fears. That was a grim and sleepless night for me, imagining my friend burning up in that inferno. In the morning we received good news. My friend had called his mother from Paris. He hadn't been on TWA 800. In fact he hadn't even heard of the disaster until after he reached France. I was relieved, but the incident shook me deeply.
What shook me worse were the media reports that several witnesses in East Moriches reported seeing a streak of light ascending into the sky shortly before TWA 800 exploded. The speculation was that it had been a missile of some type. I remember seeing on cable news lots of reports of rumors about military exercises being conducted off Long Island that night. Had the U.S. Navy shot down TWA 800? I remembered vividly the day when a U.S. Navy vessel in the Strait of Hormuz accidentally shot down an Iranian airliner in 1988. Conspiracy theories about TWA 800 were rampant at the time, and they seemed to gain some credence when the NTSB and the FBI investigated foul play as a potential cause of the TWA 800 explosion--which seemed inexplicable by any other means. After all, 747s just don't blow up in midair for no reason at all.
By 1996, I was already well-versed in using the Internet. When I went back to school in the fall I had free use of the computers in the office where the Law Review was published, and I used the Internet to keep up with the TWA 800 investigation religiously. The web was pretty primitive in 1996--and it's easy to forget that from the vantage point of 15 years later. Over the course of my own following of the case, I found many examples of stone-age websites that espoused TWA 800 conspiracy theories. The central feature of all of the theories was the witness testimony of the ascending streak of light. The fact that there was no evidence the military was conducting maneuvers, or had any presence at all, in the vicinity of East Moriches didn't bother me. It was clearly a cover-up. The whole thing was very certain in my mind. The U.S. Navy had shot down TWA 800 accidentally, in the course of a training exercise; then, fearing exposure and embarrassment, they covered up all traces of the military maneuvers and hoped the NTSB would conclude that the plane just blew up spontaneously. This was the theory of Pierre Salinger, a former White House press secretary, who called a press conference in November 1996 to say he had seen a secret document that proved it. What did this secret document turn out to be? An email chain that somebody forwarded him. There was no evidence at all.
I remained a believer in the TWA 800 conspiracy theory for several more years. In the late summer of 2000, the NTSB released its final report. Its conclusion: the 747's central fuel tank blew up in midair as a result of a short circuit igniting an unusually rich mixture of air and fuel. The plane had had problems with short circuits of this nature before. What about those witnesses who said they saw a missile? It turned out they were observing the actual break-up of the plane after the explosion. In fact, the NTSB conducted test firings of missiles in the same vicinity to see if a real missile launch could match what the witnesses said they saw. They couldn't. There was simply no evidence of a missile--no explosive traces, no wreckage consistent with a missile strike, no military maneuvers. The idea that TWA 800 had been felled by a terrorist bomb had slightly more to commend it than the missile hypothesis, but there was scant evidence of it, and what evidence there was turned out to be explainable by other means.
I read the NTSB report on the Internet. When I read it, I remember feeling something I did not expect: disappointment. I was actually disappointed that the crash wasn't some sort of conspiracy. This was a frightening moment for me. I realized I had become emotionally invested in the conclusion of conspiracy in the case of TWA 800. My friend could have died on that flight, and here I was feeling disappointed that the people who really did die on that flight had not been murdered. What sort of a monster was I? This made me question not only my conclusions, which I had lived with comfortably for the last four years, but why they meant so much to me.
You may ask: why did I choose to believe the NTSB report in the first place? After all, why didn't I do what most conspiracy theorists would have done in that situation--denounce the report as a fraud, as "disinformation," and in fact cite it as evidence that the government was indeed covering something up?
The answer is that by 2000 I was already seriously questioning other conspiracy theories. Namely, JFK. In fact, my recovery from conspiracy theories began with that very same movie I'd been watching the summer TWA 800 crashed, The Men Who Killed Kennedy.
I was still a firm believer in a JFK conspiracy. I wasn't an activist, mind you--I didn't subscribe to newsletters or anything of that sort, and I didn't read conspiracy books. But when I heard The Men Who Killed Kennedy series was available on video, I rented it. I guess part of me was ready to begin questioning my assumptions about JFK. That second time I saw it, several years after the first, I watched it with more of an open mind. And guess what? I learned something.
The clincher came in a segment of the show where a pathologist was talking about the wounds to JFK's head. I wish I could show you the clip, but I don't want to get sued for copyright infringement, so I'll just have to describe it as best I can. The doctor--I do not believe he was present at the autopsy in 1963, but I don't know for sure--claimed that he saw the lower right quarter of Kennedy's head all mangled and destroyed, inconsistent with a shot from behind, where Oswald was supposed to be. However, the diagram that he held up on-screen--a diagram he was supposedly using to illustrate his point--did not match what he was saying. The diagram showed a wound to the top of Kennedy's head, not the lower right quarter. This puzzled me so much I went back, rewound the tape and freeze-framed it. My eyes hadn't deceived me. The diagram on-screen told a different story than the doctor's words.
This got me thinking: this guy doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. Did the director of this movie, Nigel Turner, not realize that the doctor's diagram didn't support his story? If you're making a so-called factual documentary, how could you let something like that slide? I began to wonder what else the movie got wrong.
This was the key point in my transformation from a conspiracy theorist to a skeptic. Can you guess what happened next? Yes--I went to the Internet.
This was before Google, so I don't remember what search engine I used. It might have been HotBot. Does anybody remember HotBot? No matter--anyway, in a few minutes--I remember, this was very late on a Wednesday or Thursday night, in the summer I think--I had brought up several web pages that told a very different story about The Men Who Killed Kennedy than I had believed.
For one thing, the doctor had no credibility. He wasn't there, and he wasn't even a pathologist. Oh, and all that jazz about the Corsican hit-men? Totally made up. Several independent investigations determined that the hit men all had alibis. Even the French mafia kingpin that the movie said was the source of the whole story denounced it. There was such a furor over The Men Who Killed Kennedy when it was shown on TV in England that the British censors refused to run the movie without a disclaimer proclaiming that it was false. Naturally, that disclaimer didn't appear in the versions of the film sold to the History Channel. In short, The Men Who Killed Kennedy was garbage.
This was my moment of awakening. In about five or ten minutes of searching on the Internet, I had debunked the movie that had me believing for years that three Corsican hit-men had rubbed out the President. Not long after that, when I began to look into claims in Oliver Stone's JFK movie, I found that many of those were false too. A pattern was emerging: people, like Nigel Turner, Oliver Stone, and Pierre Salinger, were pushing sensational allegations--conspiracy theories--on the basis of very flimsy evidence. The telltale signs of these flimsy claims were becoming more and more apparent to me. Every time I checked a conspiracy theory against the facts, I found two things. First, the facts held up very well. And second, the conspiracy theories all hung together on very slender reeds. If those supports were questioned, the whole theory collapsed like a house of cards.
This is why I recognized the NTSB report on TWA 800 as truth--reluctantly--when I read it. Having analyzed my own thinking, I realized that the entire conspiracy theory hung on one tiny hook: the assumption that what those witnesses off Long Island saw was in fact a missile headed upwards to strike the plane. If what they were in fact seeing was something else, the whole theory collapsed. The NTSB report explained what the witnesses actually saw, and how what they saw differed from what they would have seen if there had been a missile fired that night. Once I got past this, all the other evidence--the radar evidence, the maintenance problems with the fuel tank, the lack of evidence of military maneuvers, everything--fell instantly into place.
Thus I knew that, astounding as it seemed, as reluctant as I was to believe it, TWA 800 went down because its center fuel tank spontaneously exploded in midair. I know, it sounds crazy. It sounds impossible. But if you look at the evidence--and I encourage you to do so--you will see that it is the truth. I no longer believed in a TWA 800 conspiracy. And I was rapidly beginning to question my virtually lifelong certainty that Oswald was part of a conspiracy to kill JFK.
Then came 9/11.
I am not Muertos and I do not know him. I am simply reposting these articles because I had found them on the Internet Wayback Machine. Do not contact me when it comes to this blog, I am not its author and my views are not necessarily his. REPEAT: I AM NOT MUERTOS.
Enjoy.
-Clock
******************
By: Muertos
Introduction
The Internet is a strange and confusing place. It's a place where truth is not always self-evident, where facts are not always what they seem to be, and where, virtually by definition, the whole story is rarely told. It's also a place where people can pretend to be more important than they really are. Since that is, in some ways, the moral of this story, I thought that was as good a place as any to begin.
I am Muertos, and for seven years now I've been a debunker of conspiracy theories on the Internet. In my real life--my non-Internet life, that is--I am, among other things, a writer, and one of the rules that we writers have is, you probably shouldn't write about your own life, because most peoples' lives are boring. Well, in the true Internet spirit of pretending to be more important than you are, I'm ignoring that rule and writing this--a "memoir" of sorts--about my experiences and observations debunking conspiracy theories. Perhaps you may learn something, as I did, about knowledge, about belief, about human nature, and perhaps even a little about truth.
I hesitate even to use that word, truth. Thanks largely to conspiracy theorists, truth has become something of a charged term. Something you might learn from my story is that an attempt to find truth in today's world--especially on the Internet--is a fool's errand right out of Don Quixote. So let's not talk about truth. Let's settle for fact instead. I do think you can find fact in today's world, even, astonishing as it may sound, on the Internet. The problem is, you may not always know it when you see it. That was certainly my story in the early days, and in a way it's what led me to the whole subject of conspiracy theories.
This story is going to be a history of my experiences with conspiracy theories, including the time when I used to believe them myself. I'll explain what got me into them, why they fascinated me, and eventually why I became a debunker. I have a very strange and complicated relationship with debunking. Sometimes I love it and look forward to it; at other times it's something I hate and want to be finished with forever. Therefore, this piece is a very personal journey.
Before we get on with it let me tell you what this story is not. I am a debunker, but this is not a debunking. This is not an attempt to refute any of the individual bits of stinking offal that bob along in the tidal wave of idiocy that's drowning our world--everything from "9/11 was an inside job" to delusions of fake moon landings, global warming denial to the New World Order, from Barack Obama Birthers to Osama bin Laden Deathers. This is not a laundry list of conspiracy nutjobbery followed by the appropriate antidotes of facts that refute them, like pharmaceutical prescriptions. Nor is it a handbook on how to debunk the silly crap that people believe in. After being at this for seven years now I'm not even sure I can persuade anyone to believe anything. No; this is a personal journey, a personal story. If it interests or enlightens you, great. If not, I really couldn't care less.
So don't waste your time sending me emails or posting angry comments telling me that I'm a shill or a sheeple, that I've been brainwashed by fluoride or aspartame, that I swallow unquestioningly everything the government tells me or that I must love the deaths of billions. What, you think after doing this for seven years that I haven't heard all of that before--multiple times? And yes, as the title suggests, many people over the years have accused me of being a "paid disinformation agent." As soon as you put a toe into these waters, that's what you're signing up for. It just goes with the territory.
Let's get on with it, shall we?
Chapter I: In The Beginning: JFK and TWA.
My story begins in the year 1991. Twenty-two years ago I was in college, studying history at a large state university. I'd been interested in politics and history since my early teens. In 1991 I was very politically aware. Mostly I was aware that I really hated George Bush--that's George Bush the First. To me, everything wrong with the world was the fault of George Bush. I thought he was without a doubt the worst president in the history of the United States. If you'd told me that ten years later his son would turn out to be so bad that he'd make Bush the First look like FDR by comparison, I probably would have hanged myself right then and there.
Two things happened to me in 1991 that are relevant to this story. The first was that one day I happened to read a book that my roommate left lying around. It was called The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries, by Colin and Damon Wilson. It was full of fascinating short articles on everything from the Yeti to the Loch Ness Monster, UFOs, the Bermuda Triangle, and doubts about the authorship of the plays of Shakespeare. I found myself intrigued most by the historical mysteries, such as the women who pretended to be Anastasia, the murdered daughter of Czar Nicholas II, and the Money Pit, a supposed pirate treasure hoard buried on a remote island in Nova Scotia. I later bought my own copy of this book, and I still have it. I love it, even though I know now that its assertions are very shaky and its authors are not known for their rock-solid scholarship. When I was nineteen I didn't know better. I accepted most of what was in this book as fact.
The second thing that happened in 1991 was the release of this movie--Oliver Stone's JFK. Today's generation of Internet-reared conspiracy theorists can't really understand the impact that this movie had at the time of its release. JFK is a three-hour epic about the investigation of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison into the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The movie is wildly inaccurate--several high-profile conspiracy theorists, including Jim Marrs, collaborated on the script--but it presented what I thought at the time was a slam-dunk case that there was a massive conspiracy in the assassination of Kennedy. In fact, I walked out of the theater convinced that Oliver Stone had solved the JFK case. How could people be so gullible to believe the Warren Commission? Thus, JFK was my very first conspiracy theory.
The dark days of the early 90s had a happy ending for me. The next year, Bill Clinton defeated the hated George Bush. To me, Bill Clinton was the second coming of Christ. I didn't appreciate at the time that he won because of a spoiler vote, the third-party candidacy of big-eared Texas oil guy Ross Perot. For those of you who weren't around in 1992, Ross Perot was sort of like a less ferocious Ron Paul. Except with bigger ears.
Fast-forward four years. In the summer of 1996, I was working my way through law school. On cable that summer--I believe it may even have been the History Channel--I was enthralled by a multi-part British documentary called The Men Who Killed Kennedy, directed by Nigel Turner. The series was made in the late 80s but didn't reach the U.S. until years later. This documentary spun a number of inconsistent and self-contradictory conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination. The most high-profile one, and the one I remember being utterly convinced by, was the theory that Kennedy had been taken out by a team of Corsican mafia snipers, hired by the Chicago mob. One of the snipers was himself interviewed for the show. Very much like the Stone movie, I thought this was a slam-dunk. It didn't even bother me that the conspiracy theories in The Men Who Killed Kennedy, which I eagerly believed, were different than, and inconsistent with, the conspiracy theories in JFK, which I also believed. After all, the plot to kill JFK must have been a very tangled web. Was there anyone alive who could understand it all?
I certainly believed in the JFK conspiracy, but it was very dry and dusty. After all, it was 33 years in the past. Later that summer, though, conspiracy theories got some very personal hooks into me.
On July 17, 1996, a Boeing 747 designated TWA Flight 800 exploded shortly after takeoff from JFK International Airport in New York. 230 people were killed, some of their remains washing up on the shore of the Long Island beach community called East Moriches. This disaster hit home for me. One of my best friends was almost on it. That very same day, July 17, my friend was flying to Europe to see a mutual friend of ours who was living in Paris. My friend reached JFK Airport on July 17, and found his flight to Paris was canceled. He was put on another flight at the last minute. For several hours we--my friend's family, my family, and me--thought there was a very good chance that he'd been transferred to TWA 800, which was headed to Rome after a stopover in Paris. The fact that my friend did not resurface for nearly twelve hours after the disaster only heightened our fears. That was a grim and sleepless night for me, imagining my friend burning up in that inferno. In the morning we received good news. My friend had called his mother from Paris. He hadn't been on TWA 800. In fact he hadn't even heard of the disaster until after he reached France. I was relieved, but the incident shook me deeply.
What shook me worse were the media reports that several witnesses in East Moriches reported seeing a streak of light ascending into the sky shortly before TWA 800 exploded. The speculation was that it had been a missile of some type. I remember seeing on cable news lots of reports of rumors about military exercises being conducted off Long Island that night. Had the U.S. Navy shot down TWA 800? I remembered vividly the day when a U.S. Navy vessel in the Strait of Hormuz accidentally shot down an Iranian airliner in 1988. Conspiracy theories about TWA 800 were rampant at the time, and they seemed to gain some credence when the NTSB and the FBI investigated foul play as a potential cause of the TWA 800 explosion--which seemed inexplicable by any other means. After all, 747s just don't blow up in midair for no reason at all.
By 1996, I was already well-versed in using the Internet. When I went back to school in the fall I had free use of the computers in the office where the Law Review was published, and I used the Internet to keep up with the TWA 800 investigation religiously. The web was pretty primitive in 1996--and it's easy to forget that from the vantage point of 15 years later. Over the course of my own following of the case, I found many examples of stone-age websites that espoused TWA 800 conspiracy theories. The central feature of all of the theories was the witness testimony of the ascending streak of light. The fact that there was no evidence the military was conducting maneuvers, or had any presence at all, in the vicinity of East Moriches didn't bother me. It was clearly a cover-up. The whole thing was very certain in my mind. The U.S. Navy had shot down TWA 800 accidentally, in the course of a training exercise; then, fearing exposure and embarrassment, they covered up all traces of the military maneuvers and hoped the NTSB would conclude that the plane just blew up spontaneously. This was the theory of Pierre Salinger, a former White House press secretary, who called a press conference in November 1996 to say he had seen a secret document that proved it. What did this secret document turn out to be? An email chain that somebody forwarded him. There was no evidence at all.
I remained a believer in the TWA 800 conspiracy theory for several more years. In the late summer of 2000, the NTSB released its final report. Its conclusion: the 747's central fuel tank blew up in midair as a result of a short circuit igniting an unusually rich mixture of air and fuel. The plane had had problems with short circuits of this nature before. What about those witnesses who said they saw a missile? It turned out they were observing the actual break-up of the plane after the explosion. In fact, the NTSB conducted test firings of missiles in the same vicinity to see if a real missile launch could match what the witnesses said they saw. They couldn't. There was simply no evidence of a missile--no explosive traces, no wreckage consistent with a missile strike, no military maneuvers. The idea that TWA 800 had been felled by a terrorist bomb had slightly more to commend it than the missile hypothesis, but there was scant evidence of it, and what evidence there was turned out to be explainable by other means.
I read the NTSB report on the Internet. When I read it, I remember feeling something I did not expect: disappointment. I was actually disappointed that the crash wasn't some sort of conspiracy. This was a frightening moment for me. I realized I had become emotionally invested in the conclusion of conspiracy in the case of TWA 800. My friend could have died on that flight, and here I was feeling disappointed that the people who really did die on that flight had not been murdered. What sort of a monster was I? This made me question not only my conclusions, which I had lived with comfortably for the last four years, but why they meant so much to me.
You may ask: why did I choose to believe the NTSB report in the first place? After all, why didn't I do what most conspiracy theorists would have done in that situation--denounce the report as a fraud, as "disinformation," and in fact cite it as evidence that the government was indeed covering something up?
The answer is that by 2000 I was already seriously questioning other conspiracy theories. Namely, JFK. In fact, my recovery from conspiracy theories began with that very same movie I'd been watching the summer TWA 800 crashed, The Men Who Killed Kennedy.
I was still a firm believer in a JFK conspiracy. I wasn't an activist, mind you--I didn't subscribe to newsletters or anything of that sort, and I didn't read conspiracy books. But when I heard The Men Who Killed Kennedy series was available on video, I rented it. I guess part of me was ready to begin questioning my assumptions about JFK. That second time I saw it, several years after the first, I watched it with more of an open mind. And guess what? I learned something.
The clincher came in a segment of the show where a pathologist was talking about the wounds to JFK's head. I wish I could show you the clip, but I don't want to get sued for copyright infringement, so I'll just have to describe it as best I can. The doctor--I do not believe he was present at the autopsy in 1963, but I don't know for sure--claimed that he saw the lower right quarter of Kennedy's head all mangled and destroyed, inconsistent with a shot from behind, where Oswald was supposed to be. However, the diagram that he held up on-screen--a diagram he was supposedly using to illustrate his point--did not match what he was saying. The diagram showed a wound to the top of Kennedy's head, not the lower right quarter. This puzzled me so much I went back, rewound the tape and freeze-framed it. My eyes hadn't deceived me. The diagram on-screen told a different story than the doctor's words.
This got me thinking: this guy doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. Did the director of this movie, Nigel Turner, not realize that the doctor's diagram didn't support his story? If you're making a so-called factual documentary, how could you let something like that slide? I began to wonder what else the movie got wrong.
This was the key point in my transformation from a conspiracy theorist to a skeptic. Can you guess what happened next? Yes--I went to the Internet.
This was before Google, so I don't remember what search engine I used. It might have been HotBot. Does anybody remember HotBot? No matter--anyway, in a few minutes--I remember, this was very late on a Wednesday or Thursday night, in the summer I think--I had brought up several web pages that told a very different story about The Men Who Killed Kennedy than I had believed.
For one thing, the doctor had no credibility. He wasn't there, and he wasn't even a pathologist. Oh, and all that jazz about the Corsican hit-men? Totally made up. Several independent investigations determined that the hit men all had alibis. Even the French mafia kingpin that the movie said was the source of the whole story denounced it. There was such a furor over The Men Who Killed Kennedy when it was shown on TV in England that the British censors refused to run the movie without a disclaimer proclaiming that it was false. Naturally, that disclaimer didn't appear in the versions of the film sold to the History Channel. In short, The Men Who Killed Kennedy was garbage.
This was my moment of awakening. In about five or ten minutes of searching on the Internet, I had debunked the movie that had me believing for years that three Corsican hit-men had rubbed out the President. Not long after that, when I began to look into claims in Oliver Stone's JFK movie, I found that many of those were false too. A pattern was emerging: people, like Nigel Turner, Oliver Stone, and Pierre Salinger, were pushing sensational allegations--conspiracy theories--on the basis of very flimsy evidence. The telltale signs of these flimsy claims were becoming more and more apparent to me. Every time I checked a conspiracy theory against the facts, I found two things. First, the facts held up very well. And second, the conspiracy theories all hung together on very slender reeds. If those supports were questioned, the whole theory collapsed like a house of cards.
This is why I recognized the NTSB report on TWA 800 as truth--reluctantly--when I read it. Having analyzed my own thinking, I realized that the entire conspiracy theory hung on one tiny hook: the assumption that what those witnesses off Long Island saw was in fact a missile headed upwards to strike the plane. If what they were in fact seeing was something else, the whole theory collapsed. The NTSB report explained what the witnesses actually saw, and how what they saw differed from what they would have seen if there had been a missile fired that night. Once I got past this, all the other evidence--the radar evidence, the maintenance problems with the fuel tank, the lack of evidence of military maneuvers, everything--fell instantly into place.
Thus I knew that, astounding as it seemed, as reluctant as I was to believe it, TWA 800 went down because its center fuel tank spontaneously exploded in midair. I know, it sounds crazy. It sounds impossible. But if you look at the evidence--and I encourage you to do so--you will see that it is the truth. I no longer believed in a TWA 800 conspiracy. And I was rapidly beginning to question my virtually lifelong certainty that Oswald was part of a conspiracy to kill JFK.
Then came 9/11.
AUSTISTIC SKEPTIC: Most Famous comments from youtubers. (AT responds to youtube comments)
Author: Clock
Date: Apr 02, 2013 at 09:53
******IMPORTANT*********
BY AUTISTIC SKEPTIC
I am Clock, I am not the author of this article, I am simply reposting it as the authors blog went down.
Repeat, I am not Autistic Skeptic
Please enjoy,
Clock
****************************************
By: Autistic Skeptic
2013 Corrections By: Clock
Here are some famous comments from deluded youtubers.
How does a YouTube video prove anything??? Not that it's important.
By the way , Operation Barbarossa failed because of the Russian Winter .
Okay, You are Using a Non sequitr. Saying ."After 9/11 , the whole world went on paranoid alert . Therefore , anyone who pops their head up , is liable to get it shot off !" is like saying, After I tried to commit suicide, The family went on paranoid alert, Therefore, Anyone who makes fun of me is liable to get expelled!" Then you move on to another irrelevant point by saying 'People in power , all secret societies , religious groups , banks and governments , are under constant scrutiny . Anyone who steps out of line or does anything suspicious , will be brought to justice and punished accordingly ' Well, How come so many 'whistle-blowers' Are doing JUST THAT??? That part of the comment had nothing to do with my statement WHATSOEVER! Then, You throw in a THIRD irrelevant point:'The Nazionists ARE preparing for the 3rd Reich . The New Jerusalem !' 'Nazionism' had nothing to do with anything I stated. Throwing in a red herring will NOT work, My friend. Better luck next time. Why would you associate Nazis with Jews when they HATED eachother, Does not look logical to me.
This one goes.
[ctquote]LOL what did you do copy and paste that from your favorite propaganda site? good job!!! now remind me you wrote this to me in a few days when i actually have the time and actually give a fuck to respond to it.
from briefly looking over your post, i can already say this.
you make a hell of a lot of assumptions!!! (like usual) [/ctquote]
like i said remind me in a few days, and i will gladly clean this mess up and prove point for point why you are wrong, but right now i need to tend to my business.
[later...]
[ctquote]Only people who want to believe this garbage do so. Youtube videos are not a form of research. They are cooked propaganda films. The only Sheeple are the believers of this FEMA conspiracy crap. It's all paranoid right wing anti United Nations propaganda from Neo Nazi groups created in the 70′s. There are many books about it. There have been authors like William Guy Carr and others who have been accused of fabricating grand conspiracy ideas throughout the last 30 years. It's all anti Zionist propaganda dealing with banking families being in control of everyone behind the curtain. Sure there are powerful people who control politics, the Kotch brothers are a prime example and the banking families have had their spots of influence and power but there is not a particular race of humans who are satanic hell bent on creating totalitarian world communism. The Illuminati is not in control of president Obama anymore than the royal families of Europe are reptilian shape shifters controlling us.
Ps these right wing conspiracy theory's are my favorite hobby. They are a fairytale created by paranoid delusional sociopaths.
WHY AMERICA IS NOT A POLICE STATE![/ctquote]
A. Lack of meaningful access to the courts. I would have to say this is the #1 characteristic of a repressive society, as well as the top thing you can point to that proves we aren't there yet. Every single day, someone in America sues the government (whether federal or state). Every single day, somewhere in America, a court rules against the government and in favor of a private citizen. Government agencies are often enjoined from taking actions, or forced to pay damages, or otherwise compelled to take actions by independent courts at various levels. This would NEVER happen in a true police state. If you look at true police states such as Nazi Germany, USSR, North Korea, etc., you will see that their court systems are very weak and pathetic and don't do very much. By contrast, American courtrooms are full all the time, and I'm not just talking about criminal cases where the government prosecutes an individual citizen.
B. Repressive actions are routinely experienced by ordinary people in the normal course of their lives and are not out of the ordinary. I like to ask conspiracy theorists, how many people they personally know have been detailed without trial in America? How many people do they personally know who have been prosecuted under the PATRIOT Act? How many people do they personally know who have been executed or forcibly relocated? In a true police state you wouldn't read about repression and persecution on the Internet. It would happen to you, to your husband or wife, to your kids, to your friends. You could rattle off the names of people personally known to you who have been personally harmed by the government (and not just traffic tickets or TSA searches). Read the accounts of anyone who lived in Nazi Germany or the USSR and you will instantly see that the repressive presence was everywhere all the time. If you don't personally know someone who has been detained without trial, you don't live in a police state.
C. People want to stop you from leaving the country. This is another question I like to ask conspiracy theorists-how many people are desperately trying to flee the United States, and how much trouble are they encountering in doing it? Answer: virtually no one, and not very much. A characteristic of police states is that people want to get out and they'll do anything to accomplish it. That was why the Berlin Wall got built, but it didn't help much-people were willing to cross barbed wire under machine guns to get out of East Berlin. Conversely, unless you're a fugitive from justice, no one will care if you want to leave the US. In a true police state, ordinary people would have a very hard time leaving the country. This is simply not true of the US. You can walk across the border at El Paso or San Ysidro into Mexico and literally not a single officer will stop you. This would absolutely not happen in a police state.
D. No free media. Conspiracy theorists have no idea what media repression really is. The fact that Alex Jones and his fans can say whatever the hell they want, whenever they want, proves we don't live in a police state. If we did, you'd have to take extreme measures just to find a website that isn't government run. SOPA, PIPA and the other Internet acts that were recently proposed (and NOT passed, I might add!) would not have even come close to creating the type of media censorship that you would see in a real police state. In a real police state, there would be like 2 or 3 channels on TV and it would be illegal to access more. Not only would the web be behind a central firewall, but probably individual computers would have to be licensed by the government. (In the USSR and Soviet bloc, typewriters had to be licensed by the government, so the secret police could trace the source of subversive literature. It's much easier to license and trace a computer than it is a typewriter).
E. Major shortages of consumer goods. This sounds trivial but it's not. When was the last time you went to the store and had a hard time buying meat? When was the last time you had to stand in line for a specific consumer good, like shoes or toilet paper? Is there a black market for "good" stuff that is ordinarily hard to get? I'm not aware of a single example of a real police state where there weren't severe shortages, black market economies, etc. This is partly because most police states tend to control their economies centrally, but also because makers of top notch products don't want to to business directly in countries like these. One trip to Costco should be able to convince anyone that America is not a police state. This isn't likely to make sense to conspiracy theorists, but history shows us it's mostly true. (This will be in my debunking blog later)
[ctquote]LOL what did you do copy and paste that from your favorite propaganda site? good job!!! now remind me you wrote this to me in a few days when i actually have the time and actually give a fuck to respond to it [/ctquote]
First off, Did I curse at you? No, I just sent you a comment. You went in and cursed at me, and do you think that anything else than what you believe is propaganda? more importantly do you even QUESTION your beliefs? No. did you even research what I said researching both sides? No. you just called me out over pure facts.
[ctquote]"from briefly looking over your post, i can already say this.
you make a hell of a lot of assumptions!!! (like usual) [/ctquote]
Yes and No, My assumptions are not entirely unrooted in fact. If you look up your history (not just the history that agrees with you), you might actually learn something. Note Briefly, You did not look over my post thoroughly enough and then made the claim:" LOL what did you do copy and paste that from your favorite propaganda site? good job!!! " You did not read it thoroughly enough to see what I was actually trying to say. if you read it more carefully than you did, you might see my point.
[ctquote]like i said remind me in a few days, and i will gladly clean this mess up and prove point for point why you are wrong, [/ctquote]
Yeah, NOT going to bother... You'll just give me regurgitations of common truther theories.
BY AUTISTIC SKEPTIC
I am Clock, I am not the author of this article, I am simply reposting it as the authors blog went down.
Repeat, I am not Autistic Skeptic
Please enjoy,
Clock
****************************************
By: Autistic Skeptic
2013 Corrections By: Clock
Here are some famous comments from deluded youtubers.
My friend I watched the Bin Laden 'confession' video. You don't even get to hear his original speech in Arabic. What you get is a translator 'translating' him. Its like putting a voice to a dummy, Osama could have been talking about ANYTHING at that time and they dubbed the translator's voice over since you can't hear the original Arabic that confession is worthless. BBC admits that CIA created Al Queda in their documentary here -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QGhY6oY3O0911 = inside job
"How does a YouTube video prove anything??? Not that it's important.
"After 9/11 , the whole world went on paranoid alert . Therefore , anyone who pops their head up , is liable to get it shot off ! People in power , all secret societies , religious groups , banks and governments , are under constant scrutiny . Anyone who steps out of line or does anything suspicious , will be brought to justice and punished accordingly.
By the way , Operation Barbarossa failed because of the Russian Winter .
The Nazionists ARE preparing for the 3rd Reich . The New Jerusalem !"
[Okay, You are Using a Non sequitr. Saying ."After 9/11 , the whole world went on paranoid alert . Therefore , anyone who pops their head up , is liable to get it shot off !" is like saying, After I tried to commit suicide, The family went on paranoid alert, Therefore, Anyone who makes fun of me is liable to get expelled!" Then you move on to another irrelevant point by saying 'People in power , all secret societies , religious groups , banks and governments , are under constant scrutiny . Anyone who steps out of line or does anything suspicious , will be brought to justice and punished accordingly ' Well, How come so many 'whistle-blowers' Are doing JUST THAT??? That part of the comment had nothing to do with my statement WHATSOEVER! Then, You throw in a THIRD irrelevant point:'The Nazionists ARE preparing for the 3rd Reich . The New Jerusalem !' 'Nazionism' had nothing to do with anything I stated. Throwing in a red herring will NOT work, My friend. Better luck next time. Why would you associate Nazis with Jews when they HATED eachother, Does not look logical to me.
This one goes.
[ctquote]LOL what did you do copy and paste that from your favorite propaganda site? good job!!! now remind me you wrote this to me in a few days when i actually have the time and actually give a fuck to respond to it.
from briefly looking over your post, i can already say this.
you make a hell of a lot of assumptions!!! (like usual) [/ctquote]
like i said remind me in a few days, and i will gladly clean this mess up and prove point for point why you are wrong, but right now i need to tend to my business.
[later...]
[ctquote]Only people who want to believe this garbage do so. Youtube videos are not a form of research. They are cooked propaganda films. The only Sheeple are the believers of this FEMA conspiracy crap. It's all paranoid right wing anti United Nations propaganda from Neo Nazi groups created in the 70′s. There are many books about it. There have been authors like William Guy Carr and others who have been accused of fabricating grand conspiracy ideas throughout the last 30 years. It's all anti Zionist propaganda dealing with banking families being in control of everyone behind the curtain. Sure there are powerful people who control politics, the Kotch brothers are a prime example and the banking families have had their spots of influence and power but there is not a particular race of humans who are satanic hell bent on creating totalitarian world communism. The Illuminati is not in control of president Obama anymore than the royal families of Europe are reptilian shape shifters controlling us.
Ps these right wing conspiracy theory's are my favorite hobby. They are a fairytale created by paranoid delusional sociopaths.
WHY AMERICA IS NOT A POLICE STATE![/ctquote]
A. Lack of meaningful access to the courts. I would have to say this is the #1 characteristic of a repressive society, as well as the top thing you can point to that proves we aren't there yet. Every single day, someone in America sues the government (whether federal or state). Every single day, somewhere in America, a court rules against the government and in favor of a private citizen. Government agencies are often enjoined from taking actions, or forced to pay damages, or otherwise compelled to take actions by independent courts at various levels. This would NEVER happen in a true police state. If you look at true police states such as Nazi Germany, USSR, North Korea, etc., you will see that their court systems are very weak and pathetic and don't do very much. By contrast, American courtrooms are full all the time, and I'm not just talking about criminal cases where the government prosecutes an individual citizen.
B. Repressive actions are routinely experienced by ordinary people in the normal course of their lives and are not out of the ordinary. I like to ask conspiracy theorists, how many people they personally know have been detailed without trial in America? How many people do they personally know who have been prosecuted under the PATRIOT Act? How many people do they personally know who have been executed or forcibly relocated? In a true police state you wouldn't read about repression and persecution on the Internet. It would happen to you, to your husband or wife, to your kids, to your friends. You could rattle off the names of people personally known to you who have been personally harmed by the government (and not just traffic tickets or TSA searches). Read the accounts of anyone who lived in Nazi Germany or the USSR and you will instantly see that the repressive presence was everywhere all the time. If you don't personally know someone who has been detained without trial, you don't live in a police state.
C. People want to stop you from leaving the country. This is another question I like to ask conspiracy theorists-how many people are desperately trying to flee the United States, and how much trouble are they encountering in doing it? Answer: virtually no one, and not very much. A characteristic of police states is that people want to get out and they'll do anything to accomplish it. That was why the Berlin Wall got built, but it didn't help much-people were willing to cross barbed wire under machine guns to get out of East Berlin. Conversely, unless you're a fugitive from justice, no one will care if you want to leave the US. In a true police state, ordinary people would have a very hard time leaving the country. This is simply not true of the US. You can walk across the border at El Paso or San Ysidro into Mexico and literally not a single officer will stop you. This would absolutely not happen in a police state.
D. No free media. Conspiracy theorists have no idea what media repression really is. The fact that Alex Jones and his fans can say whatever the hell they want, whenever they want, proves we don't live in a police state. If we did, you'd have to take extreme measures just to find a website that isn't government run. SOPA, PIPA and the other Internet acts that were recently proposed (and NOT passed, I might add!) would not have even come close to creating the type of media censorship that you would see in a real police state. In a real police state, there would be like 2 or 3 channels on TV and it would be illegal to access more. Not only would the web be behind a central firewall, but probably individual computers would have to be licensed by the government. (In the USSR and Soviet bloc, typewriters had to be licensed by the government, so the secret police could trace the source of subversive literature. It's much easier to license and trace a computer than it is a typewriter).
E. Major shortages of consumer goods. This sounds trivial but it's not. When was the last time you went to the store and had a hard time buying meat? When was the last time you had to stand in line for a specific consumer good, like shoes or toilet paper? Is there a black market for "good" stuff that is ordinarily hard to get? I'm not aware of a single example of a real police state where there weren't severe shortages, black market economies, etc. This is partly because most police states tend to control their economies centrally, but also because makers of top notch products don't want to to business directly in countries like these. One trip to Costco should be able to convince anyone that America is not a police state. This isn't likely to make sense to conspiracy theorists, but history shows us it's mostly true. (This will be in my debunking blog later)
[ctquote]LOL what did you do copy and paste that from your favorite propaganda site? good job!!! now remind me you wrote this to me in a few days when i actually have the time and actually give a fuck to respond to it [/ctquote]
First off, Did I curse at you? No, I just sent you a comment. You went in and cursed at me, and do you think that anything else than what you believe is propaganda? more importantly do you even QUESTION your beliefs? No. did you even research what I said researching both sides? No. you just called me out over pure facts.
[ctquote]"from briefly looking over your post, i can already say this.
you make a hell of a lot of assumptions!!! (like usual) [/ctquote]
Yes and No, My assumptions are not entirely unrooted in fact. If you look up your history (not just the history that agrees with you), you might actually learn something. Note Briefly, You did not look over my post thoroughly enough and then made the claim:" LOL what did you do copy and paste that from your favorite propaganda site? good job!!! " You did not read it thoroughly enough to see what I was actually trying to say. if you read it more carefully than you did, you might see my point.
[ctquote]like i said remind me in a few days, and i will gladly clean this mess up and prove point for point why you are wrong, [/ctquote]
Yeah, NOT going to bother... You'll just give me regurgitations of common truther theories.
Debunking New World Order Index by Wake Up America (WORK IN PROGRESS)
Author: Clock
Date: Mar 30, 2013 at 12:46
This article is incomplete. Be aware of the information that you take from here!
Article that I debunked is here : [1]
Claim:
Here is the full quote, thanks to Wikiquote :
Of course, the people at the website of Wake Up America have to quote mine and make the statement fit their view. What Bush Senior was talking about was a world where countries can cooperate with each other and not constantly have to face war. Scroll down and read muertos' article about it here.
Claim:
This is a made up quote. In a quick Wikiquote search, I have found no statements of Bush Senior ever saying this, heck, it is not even considered to be missatributed. [2] A quick search on Google led me to nothing but directories to his website or other conspiracy-minded places.[3] As a result, it is fake.
Then they explain what the New World Order is. Not much bunk here except for the fact that there is a lack of evidence to prove the existence of this theory. [4]+[5]
Claim:
Clock: Something many conspiracy theorists never answer is why does it take many generations to make a plan for this NWO. I mean, how long does it actually take? If the government is so smart in 'slowly but surely' making these secret plans, why are there so many people who know about it? Also, where is this guy getting all of this information? He surely must be part of it all! Yeah there is that whole thing about David Rockefeller and his internationalist ideas like that has been debunked and explained already [6]. It's also important to know that there are some quotes of David actually saying that a one world government is not necessary. [7] Also, how the hell does one combine Capitalism and Communism together? They are 2 completly different political ideologies, that absolutely do not go hand in hand. Capitalism is an economic system in which resources and production are privately made on someone's own terms, and the prices are all based on the competition of free market. [7] Communism refers to everything related to the economy to be owned by a single political party. If Capitalism is about doing anything to make some money privately without the intrusion of the government, and communism being about everything controlled by a government, that is hypocritical and does not work. Also, the Trilateral commision does not have that much power in government, and it certainly not capable of starting a war by sending troops to a certain area.
Claim:
Clock: Again, no reference of him saying anything like this. There have been only 1 or 2 times where Bush Senior has actually said the phrase New World Order.
Claim:
Clock: When has Congress ever said that they wanted to make a NWO? The author here provides no evidence of this, just talk. Of course, if he is talking about George Bush Sr. speech about maknig a "New World Order", Then I strongly suggest to read the whole speech here, to get a clear idea of what it is talking about. Also, what is taking so long for the government to create such plans? They developed many plans in the past in secret such as the Manhattan Project, why can't they suddenly become an Totalitarian government, or create an Orwellian world? Are they waiting for the proper opportunity? They could have easily have executed the plans during the great depression, or in 2008 when the economy was on its knees. Or are they waiting for the completion of FEMA Camps? Well we know that the FEMA camp theory has existed for a very long time now, or maybe they are waiting for all of the burial coffins to be completed? (Not that is is practical)
Also, the only proof that the author of this website seems to be using that would somehow prove NWO to be possible is because people of high power have used the phrase. That's like if a Marine Biologist would talk a lot about Megaladons (an ancient extinct shark creature that precedes the Great White Shark.) would somehow prove that he knows they exist but that he is hiding them from us for some shady purposes.
Claim:
Clock: That is just silly. Again, no evidence of Bush actually saying this but on conspiracy websites. I'm also noticing that this website is very anti-Bush Sr. Not that I particularly care about him (i'm not American) it reminds me a lot of Alex Jones, who jumps from president to president by each calling them the anti-Christ or the destroyers of America.
The "Evil" New World Order "Map"
A section of the website contains an article talking about a so called NWO map, developed in 1941 or 1942. There is a picture of the map from their website here:
I was curious about this map, and I did a bit of research, and I've managed to find the real map itself in high quality, thanks to wikipedia: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Gomberg_map.jpg Now that we can analyse the proper map, things are starting to make a lot more sense. The map was developed by Maurice Gomberg. It was a proposal of how the world should be distributed following the ending of World War 2, assuming that the Nazi party would fall. The proposal is to "assume[s] world leadership for the establishment of a New Moral Order, for permanent peace, order, justice, security and world reconstruction." It is not to create a huge idea that will unleash hell upon humanity. It does really have a nice message, butt unfortunately it hasn't aged to well, mainly because it completely ignores what would happen following WW2 (the cold war) and contains alot of American ass kissing, such as this new world of peace to be primarily controlled by the USA, to rename Europe as the United States of Europe, South America as the United States of South America, which means that in no means can it be taken seriously. CTers mainly jump on this map because it is approved by the Library of Congress as an Official map, despite the fact that Maurice Gomberg had made it as a personal project and released it independently[11]. Just like George Orwell's 1984, it was more of an idea than fact. Many conspiracy theorists believe that this is proof for a New World Order. However, let's look at this rationally. If the governments of the world were really working on such a map of world domination, would they really release this? Especially at the price they were releasing this (1$)? The only reason this has caught on in the eyes of conspiracy theorists is because that it contains the words "New Moral Order".
********
Sources
[1]: http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/newworldindex.htm
[2]: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_H._W._Bush
[3]: https://www.google.ca/search?q=%22Nations+should+develop+and+train+military+units+for+possible+U.N.+peacekeeping+operations.+...+If+multinational+units+are+to+work+together%2C+they+must+train+together.+...+Effective+multinational+action+will+also+require+coordinated+command+%26+control+and+inter-operability+of+both+equipment+and+communications.%22+&rlz=1C1CHWA_enCA511CA511&aq=f&oq=%22Nations+should+develop+and+train+military+units+for+possible+U.N.+peacekeeping+operations.+...+If+multinational+units+are+to+work+together%2C+
[4]: http://thrivedebunked.wordpress.com/2011/11/24/global-domination-agenda-debunked/
[5]: http://thrivedebunked.wordpress.com/2012/08/16/world-domination-conspiracies-debunked/
[6]: http://metabunk.org/threads/431-Anyone-care-to-debunk-these-quotes
[7]: http://www.wordcentral.com/cgi-bin/student?book=Student&va=capitalism
[8]: http://www.wordcentral.com/cgi-bin/student?book=Student&va=communism
[9]: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Rockefeller
[10]:http://millercenter.org/president/speeches/detail/3430
[11]:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/Gomberg_ad.png
Article that I debunked is here : [1]
Claim:
President George Bush in a speech to Congress on SEPTEMBER 11, (9/11) 1990, SAID THIS: "[The war in Iraq is] a rare opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Out of these troubled times...a New World Order can emerge."
Here is the full quote, thanks to Wikiquote :
"Clearly, no longer can a dictator count on East-West confrontation to stymie concerted United Nations action against aggression. A new partnership of nations has begun. And we stand today at a unique and extraordinary moment. The crisis in the Persian Gulf, as grave as it is, also offers a rare opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Out of these troubled times, our fifth objective -- a new world order -- can emerge: a new era, freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace. An era in which the nations of the world, east and west, north and south, can prosper and live in harmony."George H. W. Bush
Of course, the people at the website of Wake Up America have to quote mine and make the statement fit their view. What Bush Senior was talking about was a world where countries can cooperate with each other and not constantly have to face war. Scroll down and read muertos' article about it here.
Claim:
In his September 21, 1992 speech to the United Nations, President George Bush announced that foreign troops, would occupy America and train for a New World Order Army. He stated:
"Nations should develop and train military units for possible U.N. peacekeeping operations. ... If multinational units are to work together, they must train together. ... Effective multinational action will also require coordinated command & control and inter-operability of both equipment and communications." New World Order and E.L.F. Psychotronic Tyranny!
This is a made up quote. In a quick Wikiquote search, I have found no statements of Bush Senior ever saying this, heck, it is not even considered to be missatributed. [2] A quick search on Google led me to nothing but directories to his website or other conspiracy-minded places.[3] As a result, it is fake.
Then they explain what the New World Order is. Not much bunk here except for the fact that there is a lack of evidence to prove the existence of this theory. [4]+[5]
Claim:
The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government combining super-capitalism and Communism under the same tent, all under their control...Do I mean conspiracy? Yes I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent. (Congressman Larry P. McDonald, 1976) In 1981 Congressmen McDonald calls for comprehensive congressional investigation of the CFR and Trilateral Commission. Congress is urged to investigate these organizations. Congressman McDonald was killed in the Korean Airlines 747 that was shot down by the Soviets in 1983
Clock: Something many conspiracy theorists never answer is why does it take many generations to make a plan for this NWO. I mean, how long does it actually take? If the government is so smart in 'slowly but surely' making these secret plans, why are there so many people who know about it? Also, where is this guy getting all of this information? He surely must be part of it all! Yeah there is that whole thing about David Rockefeller and his internationalist ideas like that has been debunked and explained already [6]. It's also important to know that there are some quotes of David actually saying that a one world government is not necessary. [7] Also, how the hell does one combine Capitalism and Communism together? They are 2 completly different political ideologies, that absolutely do not go hand in hand. Capitalism is an economic system in which resources and production are privately made on someone's own terms, and the prices are all based on the competition of free market. [7] Communism refers to everything related to the economy to be owned by a single political party. If Capitalism is about doing anything to make some money privately without the intrusion of the government, and communism being about everything controlled by a government, that is hypocritical and does not work. Also, the Trilateral commision does not have that much power in government, and it certainly not capable of starting a war by sending troops to a certain area.
Claim:
"If we do not follow the dictates of our inner moral compass and stand up for human life, then his lawlessness will threaten the peace and democracy of the emerging new world order we now see, this long dreamed-of vision we've all worked toward for so long." -- President George Bush (January 1991)
Clock: Again, no reference of him saying anything like this. There have been only 1 or 2 times where Bush Senior has actually said the phrase New World Order.
Claim:
The New World Order program has been on the drawing board for many decades, despite denials and smears from the proponents, the insidious world domination and control preparations continue being set in place, the secretive terms of One World, New World Order, New International Economic Order etc have now been replaced with the more public term of Globalization.
In hundreds of books, articles, and speeches in the 20th century, many influential and powerful people, including many in Congress, have called for a New World Order, and the surrender of U.S. sovereignty and individual freedoms to a one world government, usually involving the U.N. military and the transfer of it to a one world U.N. army.
Clock: When has Congress ever said that they wanted to make a NWO? The author here provides no evidence of this, just talk. Of course, if he is talking about George Bush Sr. speech about maknig a "New World Order", Then I strongly suggest to read the whole speech here, to get a clear idea of what it is talking about. Also, what is taking so long for the government to create such plans? They developed many plans in the past in secret such as the Manhattan Project, why can't they suddenly become an Totalitarian government, or create an Orwellian world? Are they waiting for the proper opportunity? They could have easily have executed the plans during the great depression, or in 2008 when the economy was on its knees. Or are they waiting for the completion of FEMA Camps? Well we know that the FEMA camp theory has existed for a very long time now, or maybe they are waiting for all of the burial coffins to be completed? (Not that is is practical)
Also, the only proof that the author of this website seems to be using that would somehow prove NWO to be possible is because people of high power have used the phrase. That's like if a Marine Biologist would talk a lot about Megaladons (an ancient extinct shark creature that precedes the Great White Shark.) would somehow prove that he knows they exist but that he is hiding them from us for some shady purposes.
Claim:
"Lets forgive the Nazi war criminals" (George Bush, New York Times, April, 14, 1990)
Clock: That is just silly. Again, no evidence of Bush actually saying this but on conspiracy websites. I'm also noticing that this website is very anti-Bush Sr. Not that I particularly care about him (i'm not American) it reminds me a lot of Alex Jones, who jumps from president to president by each calling them the anti-Christ or the destroyers of America.
The "Evil" New World Order "Map"
A section of the website contains an article talking about a so called NWO map, developed in 1941 or 1942. There is a picture of the map from their website here:
I was curious about this map, and I did a bit of research, and I've managed to find the real map itself in high quality, thanks to wikipedia: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Gomberg_map.jpg Now that we can analyse the proper map, things are starting to make a lot more sense. The map was developed by Maurice Gomberg. It was a proposal of how the world should be distributed following the ending of World War 2, assuming that the Nazi party would fall. The proposal is to "assume[s] world leadership for the establishment of a New Moral Order, for permanent peace, order, justice, security and world reconstruction." It is not to create a huge idea that will unleash hell upon humanity. It does really have a nice message, butt unfortunately it hasn't aged to well, mainly because it completely ignores what would happen following WW2 (the cold war) and contains alot of American ass kissing, such as this new world of peace to be primarily controlled by the USA, to rename Europe as the United States of Europe, South America as the United States of South America, which means that in no means can it be taken seriously. CTers mainly jump on this map because it is approved by the Library of Congress as an Official map, despite the fact that Maurice Gomberg had made it as a personal project and released it independently[11]. Just like George Orwell's 1984, it was more of an idea than fact. Many conspiracy theorists believe that this is proof for a New World Order. However, let's look at this rationally. If the governments of the world were really working on such a map of world domination, would they really release this? Especially at the price they were releasing this (1$)? The only reason this has caught on in the eyes of conspiracy theorists is because that it contains the words "New Moral Order".
********
Sources
[1]: http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/newworldindex.htm
[2]: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_H._W._Bush
[3]: https://www.google.ca/search?q=%22Nations+should+develop+and+train+military+units+for+possible+U.N.+peacekeeping+operations.+...+If+multinational+units+are+to+work+together%2C+they+must+train+together.+...+Effective+multinational+action+will+also+require+coordinated+command+%26+control+and+inter-operability+of+both+equipment+and+communications.%22+&rlz=1C1CHWA_enCA511CA511&aq=f&oq=%22Nations+should+develop+and+train+military+units+for+possible+U.N.+peacekeeping+operations.+...+If+multinational+units+are+to+work+together%2C+
[4]: http://thrivedebunked.wordpress.com/2011/11/24/global-domination-agenda-debunked/
[5]: http://thrivedebunked.wordpress.com/2012/08/16/world-domination-conspiracies-debunked/
[6]: http://metabunk.org/threads/431-Anyone-care-to-debunk-these-quotes
[7]: http://www.wordcentral.com/cgi-bin/student?book=Student&va=capitalism
[8]: http://www.wordcentral.com/cgi-bin/student?book=Student&va=communism
[9]: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Rockefeller
[10]:http://millercenter.org/president/speeches/detail/3430
[11]:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/Gomberg_ad.png
