Conspiracy Film Rewrites Sept. 11 (Lunatic Alert!)

Yahooooooo! ^ | April 28, 2006 | William Welch

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Gypsy Taub, a mother of three from Oakland, does not believe that 9/11 happened. At least not the way the government said it did.

A Russian émigré, Taub is one of a growing number of people in the USA who are using the Internet, college campuses and pamphleteering to get the word out.

"Oh yeah, absolutely. On the day it happened, I thought it was the government that did it," she said.

Taub is promoting one of the latest presentations of revisionist theories on the 2001 attacks by al-Qaeda terrorists, a film that says, among other things, that the Pentagon was hit by a cruise missile fired by the military as an excuse to go to war.

Called Loose Change, it is being downloaded from the Internet and shown in small screenings here and overseas. It is not alone in the genre, and it is not unusual in American history either to offer simplistic explanations or demonize opponents. Presidents from Andrew Jackson to Lyndon Johnson were accused by their contemporaries of massive government conspiracies.

The film appears especially popular among young people immersed in a Web culture brimming with sites that question the credibility of government. They see 9/11 as the defining moment of their lives.

"This is our generation's Vietnam, our generation's Kennedy assassination," says Korey Rowe, 23, the film's producer.

Professors and researchers of film and politics say the Internet is making it far easier to spread such theories because the traditional media are losing their hold on the news. The immense coverage of controversies and accusations surrounding the war on terror has created fertile ground for people who assign their own interpretations to photos, footage, eyewitnesses, investigations and newspaper accounts of what happened, they say.

"The information revolution now gives us access to too much information," says Jonathan Taplin, who teaches at the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Southern California. "Our problems are that we're just overwhelmed, so in some sense we just basically don't even know where to turn."

'It's all over the place'

Craig Smith, director of the Center for First Amendment Studies at California State University, Long Beach, cites the unusual nature of 9/11: four airliners simultaneously hijacked and no defenses stop them.

"You would say, come on, I can't even buy that as a movie script," Smith says. "All of this feeds this readiness for paranoia."

Made by Rowe and friend Dylan Avery, 22, from Oneonta, N.Y., on a laptop computer for less than $10,000, the film contrasts sharply with United 93, a film opening Friday that portrays the struggle for the jetliner that crashed in Shanksville, Pa.

Internet chat rooms are full of promos for screenings of Loose Change in such locales as the Santa Cruz Veterans Memorial Building in California; the Université de Sherbrooke, Quebec; Graz, Austria; and a theater in London's Soho district.

"It's been breaking like nobody's business the last two months," says Taub, 36, who is sponsoring a showing Tuesday night in Oakland. "It's all over the place."

'They aren't truth-tellers'

Most of what the film alleges is refuted by the evidence at hand. Anything not answered definitively by the government is interpreted by the film as proof of a coverup.

Among the assertions in Loose Change is that a missile hit the Pentagon even though eyewitnesses saw the jet, numerous pieces of wreckage were found including the flight recorder, and those on the flight and in its path at the Pentagon are dead.

There is also the claim that because jet fuel burns at up to 1,500 degrees and steel melts at 2,750 degrees, the World Trade Center's infrastructure could not have been brought down by the airliners. However, as reported by the Journal of the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society, steel loses 50% of its strength at 1,200 degrees, enough for a failure.

"The only thing they (the filmmakers) seem to have gotten right about the Sept. 11 attacks is the date when they occurred," says Debra Burlingame, whose brother was the pilot of American Flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon.

"They aren't truth-tellers looking to save the world," she says. "They're con artists hoping to sucker conspiracy-theory paranoids or anti-government malcontents into shelling out their hard-earned dollars."

Some college students who saw Loose Change and are promoting it say it's good to raise questions.

The film offers "at the very least suggests that we don't know the whole truth, and that some things are quite fishy," says Matt Latham, a freshman at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

'Students love it'

Christian Pecaut, 25, a Stanford graduate who is promoting the film at the University of California, Berkeley campus, said the film is "catchy, hip," with an "upbeat soundtrack."

Aaron Williams, a senior at Texas A&M University and president of the philosophy club, believes the film. "Government is corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely," he says.

Penelope Price, a documentary filmmaker and professor at Scottsdale Community College, said she brought the filmmakers to the campus to stimulate critical thinking.

"Students love it," she said. "These guys have done a great job of marketing on the Web, and that was another reason I wanted to bring them in."

Conservative writer David Horowitz, a former 1960s radical, says conspiratorial thinking can offer a world view that is somehow less scary than reality. "Conspiracy theories are a kind of secular religion," he says, adding that campus faculties sometimes encourage anti-government feelings. "People feel great anxiety ... by the thought that nobody's in control."

People believe in conspiracy theories because the truth "is either too simple or too remote," says sociologist Clifton Bryant of Virginia Tech University, who has made a study of "deviant logic" and behavior.

"We're always ready to believe something about which we know nothing," he says.

[eskimo]

No problem, they won't, and it isn't.

You have to read and understand those laws before you can make a comment like that and expect anyone to believe it is honest.

[GunRunner]

I don't care what some liberal journalist tells me what to do

So George Will is a liberal, huh. Good one. I'm surpried Reagan would hire a liberal to help him prepare for the Carter debates, but you obviously know more than I do. ROFL!!

And FYI, a percentage of the profits from United 93 will go to fund the Flight 93 memorial in Shanksville.

Good to see you've done your homework.

[knuthom]

One of the things they say about the Pentagon is that the hole is not as wide as the wingspread of the plane. But if the plane did not go in perfectly level, it wouldn't be. In fact, some of the witnesses noted that it was tilting.

It was tilting its wings up and down like it was trying to balance. It hit some lampposts on the way in.'" - "Pentagon Eyewitness Accounts." The Guardian, 12 Sep 2001

I watched in horror as the plane flew at treetop level, banked slightly to the left, drug it's wing along the ground and slammed into the west wall of the Pentagon exploding into a giant orange fireball. Then black smoke. Then white smoke." - Steve Anderson, Director of Communications, USA Today

[Constantine XIII]

Ok, here's an idea:

Walk around outside the place where they are showing the film with an EMF meter.

Someone asks "What is that"

You say "an EMF meter"

They say "What are you doing?"

You say "Measuring the magnetic field here"

They say "Oh, why"

You say "There's a dumb*** magnet around here, someplace, and I think I'm very close"

[silverleaf]

The plane hit the part of the Pentagon that had just been reinforced to withstand an explosion attack from outside (using lessons learned form incidents such as KhobarTowers and the embassy bombings in Africa) which were devastated by car bombs)...We were "lucky" in that regard. There are other approaches to the Pentagon that would have done more damage and killed more people.

Hitting the reinforced section of the Pentagon limited the spread of the damage and helped to "compartment it".

One expecting a cookie cutter impact site in the shape of a 757 (like the "George Bush conspiracy vets" in the "home" ..... which is more likely the bar of the VFW) have assumed that the wings of an aircraft going nearly the speed of sound would slice/penetrate into several layers of a reinforced structure, resembling a fortress. The wing of an aircraft is actually rather fragile to striking anything (much less reinforced structure) under the best of conditions. I don't think anyone who hasn't seen the aftermath can comprehend such a large machine containing so many souls...to nearly disintegrate in an instant. The gash was several stories high. I did go down there several days after the attack to see it for myself.

It was heroic that the responders (firefighters and medical crews from various municipalities in the metro area, who along with many staff of USA Today enroute to work who witnessed the attack..who the conspiracists also assume were ALL totally snookered...sarc)....were able to tenderly recover the DNA of virtually everyone killed so the families could have burials. I remember accounts of the funeral for Babara Olsen, wife of Ted Olsen, White House General Counsel, a passenger on the doomed flight who called and talked to the White House Situation Room as the plane was being hijacked. Very sad.

[Tribune7]

Called Loose Change,

I saw it. It's not very effective propaganda. The only people who believe will be the ones who had already made up their minds to do so.

[Blzbba]

"And FYI, a percentage of the profits from United 93 will go to fund the Flight 93 memorial in Shanksville. "


And a larger %age will go into Hollyweird pockets.

But none of my money will.

[Paradox]

Actually, I was trained in those laws, but thanks for your input.

[eskimo]

Sorry, I was not able to tell.

[GunRunner]

The filmmakers had the cooperation of all the families of the passengers who died on the flight. Many agreed to participate because they felt that previous attempts to document the crash focused on just the few passengers who had been able to make calls to their family members.

link

Yep, sounds like a Hollywood hack job to me. < /sarcasm>

[Blzbba]

Again, sorry you need a movie to remember. I don't.

I didn't bother clicking whatever link you sent.

[1Old Pro]

These kooks really are hilarious.

[GunRunner]

I never said I needed a movie to REMIND me of anything.

You stated that the film was some kind of shameless marketing promo, and I accurately pointed out that every Flight 93 family gave their seal of approval to the film, which makes your claim completely dubious.

[Blzbba]

"You stated that the film was some kind of shameless marketing promo, and I accurately pointed out that every Flight 93 family gave their seal of approval to the film, which makes your claim completely dubious."


How so? Are no profits being collected? Is noone involved with the film making any money off this tragedy?

[GunRunner]

Jeez,

The same goes for Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List, The Passion, Titanic; of course films make profit, otherwise no one would make them.

The idea that you should never make a movie based on a historical event is absurd.

[Blzbba]

Ok - you can have the last word.