|
|
Hollywood and the federal government. |
Posted on 04/28/2006 7:21:24 AM PDT by 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.
Sorry, I have not been paying close attention to most of this stuff. Just been listening to what the other old fellows I know have to say about it. What conversations would that be and where could one hear them, assuming they were recorded.
It might be. They may have it archived at opieandanthony.com. BTW, that site is not work-friendly.
I am refering to the cell phone calls from Flight 93. I doubt there are recordings or transcripts. I thought that I had read that the terrorists were described by passengers as Middle-Eastern in appearance.
Agreed on that. I almost fear to send my family links debunking their myths. They generally react in a typical liberal manner.
When an event happens that completely undermines the legitimacy of one's political philosophy, the veracity of the event must be challenged...is that it? ;)
Is that possible? I went to the city once to meet an old friend who was flying in and I told him to call about half an hour before he landed and I would pick him up. He said he could not do that because his new fangled cell phone did not work until the plane was close to the ground.
I doubt there are recordings or transcripts.
You can't really blame some folks for wondering. There's just no evidence. No airport footage, not one identified body, nothing.
Are you saying that the cell phone calls on the Flight 93 transcribed cockpit recording could have been faked? Sorry, I do blame folks for wondering. The plane was real, the hijackers real, the crash was real. When you crash an airplane, inverted, into the ground at upwards of 500 mph, there just ain't a whole lot left to identify. And yet human remains were identified. There were many witnesses in Shanksville area that saw the plane go down. Next you will be telling me that 12 American astronauts never landed on the moon...
Several of the passengers who called their loved ones, on both cell phones (yes, they can be used in flight--this is discouraged only because it can interfere with ground to air and air to ground communication) and Airphones on the backs of the seats, described these hijackers as middle eastern looking (one said "Iranian looking"). They also described the killing of a first-class passenger, probably Mickey Rothenberg. This is the undeniable truth, unless you consider the passengers to be part of the "plot".
Then they are idiots who wouldn't know the truth if it came up and kicked them in the a##.
Hell, I have no idea. Don't get crazy on me. I'm just relating to you what some folks who have paid attention to this stuff were saying.
I just asked a simple question. There seems to be more questions than answers. You said above that there were cell phone calls on the transcribed cockpit recording, how is that possible?
Rememmber the term "let's role"? It came from a cell phone call on Flight 93.
Do some searches on the forum and I think you'll find mention of it.
Well, these are very old friends and I think, to them, the "idiots" are those who do not want to know the truth and will not even seek it by asking any questions.
Thanks, I'll get one of those guys at the home to do that, they've got nothing better to do and they are good at it.
Good deal. Later...
|
|
Hollywood and the federal government. |
One of those other guys at the home told me to look at this original news footage. Is this real?
I don't know what to say. Those old fellows just laugh their arses off at the prospect of anyone swallowing this stuff.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
