Also, apparently some calls came in; I had to dash off to catch a ferry.

Anyway, that really is probably the last thing I’ll writing/saying about Gage and his particular version of the ‘Inside Job’ hypothesis for a while; I’m off on Monday for fives days at a conference and when I get back it’ll be time to start work on the final chapter proper of the thesis. December and January will be long months.

I’d just like to advise poiential commenters on this and the other 9/11 posts that:

a) I won’t have much internet access over the next week, so don’t expect prompt or long replies, and

b) the comments policy here is that I have to approve the first comment you make in any given post, so don’t think I’m censoring you or unable to respond to your comments (or anything similar) if it takes a while for your comment to appear publicly.

Related posts:

1. An Update on the Thesis
2. Postponement and a question
3. Back at work

1) I’m a glutton for punishment.

2) Apparently I’m one of the country’s top debunkers¹.

It’s hard to know where to start with Gage’s version of the ‘Inside Job’ thesis of 9/11. He certainly seems sincere in his belief, even when he was asking for money towards the end. It might just be my impoverished student state, but when a man complains that he’s only on half the income he had as a ‘prestigious’ architect that doesn’t really cry poverty to me.

Anyway, some thoughts, culled from both presentations.

1. The Truthers claim they are not a fringe group, but with only 960 architects and engineers in their group and 4,000 non-professional members, they certainly seem fringe-sized.

2. Gage’s 90% conversion rate seems to be fair. At the Wellington event there were 340 in the Soundings Lecture Theatre. 27 of us were supporters of the Official Story at the beginning, 97 were unsure and the remaining 216 were Truthers. By the end there were 3 of us Official Story supporters left and 67 unsure (including Hugh Young, of the New Zealand Skeptics, I might add). That meant that 270 people were Truthers by the end. Auckland was pretty similar; of the 125 people, 12 were supporters of the Official Story at the beginning; 2 were left at the end.

3. You could play ‘M(ain)S(tream)M(edia) Bingo’ based upon the number of times he says ‘Mainstream Media’ in a derogatory fashion.

4. Apparently, even given the MSM, the media attention here is much better than anything they’ve had in the States for years.

5. He really emphasises his love of the Scientific Method. Pity he gets it a bit backwards. He says we have to collect data before we decide on an hypothesis to test, but that gets it backwards. If you collect data you are already collecting data with respect to some hypothesis; he assumes the truth of his Controlled Demolition Thesis, essentially before he hypothesises it.

6. I would really like to see some work on the reliability of the eye-witness testimony he keeps referring to with regards to claims of heard explosions and the like. Psychologists will tell you that you have to take most of this stuff with a grain of salt; memories are being changed within minutes of the event happening and pre-conceptions get filtered in immediately; we expect explosive sounds to go with big events like collapses so people ‘read in’ that sound. Now, this doesn’t mean the testimony is actually unreliable, but it certainly is not beyond reasonable doubt.

7. Given a choice between someone being incompetent or someone being a liar, Gage goes with the liar thesis every time, it seems.

8. I don’t think he understands that the kind of analogies he uses don’t give him entailment (A is B) but rather, at best, strong suggestion (A is probably B). He argues by analogy a lot and always overstates the strength of the logical inference. Indeed, he’d have a half-decent thesis if he simply said ‘All I’m doing is arguing that controlled demolition might the case’ rather than insisting that it is.

9. Also, the low probability of an event seems to mean that the event cannot have occurred that way, which is also a problem for him. Low probability events happen all the time; they just aren’t as common as mid to high probability events.

10. Related: He really needs to stop asserting as fact controversial premises (such as the claim the jets of material preceding the collapsing floors are ‘squibs’ when, really, they could well be pressure exhausts². Controversial premises and overstated inferences a bad argument make.

11. He has to touch on the Official Story from time to time to make his, excuse the potential pun, thesis fly, but whenever he presents the Official Story of, say, the destruction of the Twin Towers he presents a simplified version. He talks about the fire but not the damage caused by the impact. It’s easy to make the Official Story sound implausible if you don’t mention all of its salient points.

12. For someone who claims he isn’t a Conspiracy Theorist he certainly advocates them. In his list of things caused by 9/11 he has ‘World Financial Meltdown.’ He also makes caged references to a link to the Oklahoma City Bombing.

13. Gage wants it both ways; he wants to merely argue that he thinks another investigation, based upon new evidence, is warranted, which is an admirably weak conclusion which might be worthy of discussion, but then he asserts it is an ‘Inside Job,’ which means he’s already prejudiced in regard to the outcome, which means he’s not open to an enquiry that might just confirm the Official Story (which, if we really are arguing what happened that day, might still be the case even if some of his points are taken on board).

14. Apparently it would only require 100 people to be in the know to pull off the controlled demolition.

15. He hasn’t actually read the NIST report on 9/11. For someone who keeps telling people ‘Don’t believe what I tell you; research it for yourselves’ this seems a terrific oversight on his part.

16. There is a clever aspect to his argument, in that he argues by analogy that if WTC7 was destroyed by a controlled demolition, then the Twin Towers must have been as well. WTC7 is the little known third high-rise destroyed on the 11th of September; Gage focuses most of his efforts to persuade you that it was a planned destruction rather than mere gravitational collapse. Because so little is said about WTC7, he can argue more directly for a rival candidate explanation of the event and, once he has persuaded his audience, claim that the Twin Towers show the same features.

Now, to do the latter he has to make a particularly interesting claim. In the WTC7 case he argues that the buidlings started to collapse from the base, which he takes to be a sign of controlled demolition, but he can’t do the same with the Twin Towers because they, quite evidently, started to collapse from the point of the airliner impacts. To get around this obvious disimilarity he pulls a move that, really, is very clever and yet is also a quite significant weakness if you think about it. The point of impact is the base for the controlled demolition of the upper half of each building; once that starts ‘they’ then begin to set off the charges in the lower part of the building.

Which raises the question “How did they manage to get the planes to impact exactly where they wanted them to?”

Of course, that question can be answered, but it makes for a spectacularly complex plot on the part of the conspirators, one that almost beggars belief.

17. Penny Bright might be concerned about your water bills but she is a Climate Change Skeptic.

I haven’t even touched on the nano-thermite; I’ll try to collect my thoughts on that topic before the show this coming Sunday.

Notes

1. Or, at least, that is what Will Ryan, the organiser, believes.
2. His understanding of the way some windows pop when others do not is really remarkable primitive.

Related posts:

1. Sloping Burdens
2. Richard Gage and Wellington’s Architecture
3. Richard Gage III: The Dentith Files (95bFM)

Discuss.

Related posts:

1. The Slippery Slope of Conspiracy Theories – Skeptics 2009
2. Richard Gage II: Gouge Harder!
3. Richard Gage III: The Dentith Files (95bFM)

Or not. You can decide.

The most common sentiment I’ve received since the Herald on Sunday piece goes something like this:

Anyway perhaps you were misquoted or quoted out of context; if so I hope a correction can be published.

That was what lead me to writing my clarification.

Another correspondent asked:

Could you please tell me if you believe you were accurately quoted?

I ask this because I have no such feelings of anti-semitism. I am however anti – criminal behaviour and pro – truth

I’d like to think we are all pro-truth in some way. Actually, this correspondent ended up being the one person I had a productive e-mail exchange with. We ended up agreeing to disagree, with Dany admitting that I certainly did sound very sincere in my convictions.

Winner of the ‘Irony Award’ goes to this correspondent, who after asserting the ‘Inside Job’ hypothesis wrote:

I think that those who claim to know the truth (any truth) about 9/11, like you implied to do, are either conceited or highly naive.

It’s a great example of the Inadvertantly Self-referring Self-sealing Fallacy; how dare you call someone naive for thinking they have a handle on what went on in New York on 9/11. Only naive people, like myself, think they know one way or the other.

He also accused me of calling myself a scientist. The cad!

Several of my correspondents wanted to blame falling media standards on me:

Wow….and here I was thinking that anybody would care about the deterioration of mass-media or the replacement of actual problems with discussions on fashion and sports in the general public…

Admittedly, perhaps he was concerned with soundbite culture. But, let it be known, I would like all sports pages in all papers to be dismissed and never seen again.

I do sometimes look at the fashion pages, though…

Whilst many of the e-mails I received did the softly-softly tactic of trying to get me to admit I was wrong, some tried the hard sell:

Your cheap comment about Richard Gage , AIA and founder of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth is typical based on your cognitive dissonance level. … You are a joke and bring shame to anyone who has done a PHD!

When that didn’t work he challenged me to call him an anti-semite. Charming man.

A convert to the Truther Movement wrote:

If you are truly getting a PhD on conspiracy theories, and you make a statement that “all the 9/11 conspiracies collapse when prodded” you must get a refund on your entire education, and become involved in mindless labor. Because you must be entirely incapable of critical thought.

I’m also entirely incapable of bilocation, but I keep trying.

The e-mail flood has not just slowed to a trickle; it has dried up. Unless any further excitement happens at Monday’s event, I think I’m now safely out of the Truthers’ eyeline.

Wonder if the lawyer ever found Jeanette Fitzsimons e-mail address, the one that is publicly available on the internet?

Related posts:

1. Hello, Truthers!
2. Letter from a ‘Truth’ful Lawyer (and a reply)
3. Paper Post-mortem

Question time: I’m getting a lot of interesting e-mails and comments from Australians (which I’ll digest for the blog sometime this weekend). Any chance that the Australian promoter of the Richard Gage lecture circuit is encouraging his followers to get in contact? I admit, it sounds like a Conspiracy, but I’m willing to buy it for a dollar.

Related posts:

1. Truth in Wellington
2. Hello, Truthers!
3. Richard Gage III: The Dentith Files (95bFM)

I trust that I am addressing the correct Mr. Dentith, if not, full apologies to the recipient. (enjoy!)

With all respect Sir may I suggest that it is naive to believe the official “Bush believers conspiracy theory that 19 Arabs did 9/11 and fire brought down three steel high rise structures for the first time in history on the same site on the one day”.

Your comments would have some credibility if you stated that you have examined and considered the scientific analysis and evidence now available. As with Galileo’s findings, many did not accept them because they would not look through the telescope. I trust that for the benefit of your students, that in regard to the 9/11 matter, you will at least have a peak through the lens.

In considering your doctorate on conspiracy theories perhaps you would wish to include in your studies the following points:

Prosecutors on behalf of Her Majesty the Queen present conspiracy theories to juries in the criminal jurisdictions every day in commonwealth countries. Until such time as a jury convicts then it is a conspiracy theory.

Juries consider the evidence presented in a balanced and impartial objective manner, as is their duty, during their deliberations.

There are many theories that do not stand up considering the evidence and an acquittal should follow.

I have been studying the 9/11 event for over 5 years and have formed the opinion that the twin towers and building No 7 were destroyed with explosives.

I find it offensive for you to infer that I have been naive in studying the ‘9/11 mass murders’ and/or meeting with Mr. Gage, for example. Actually, I have not only had him in my home in Sydney, but also; Frank Legge, Professor Steven Jones, Lt. Col. (ret) Bob Bowman and Yuki Fujita from the Japanese Parliament. Yuki is now in government with his party. Perhaps if you spent some time with some of these honourable people you would moderate your accusations.

I find it extraordinary and offensive that you would infer that; by my studying 9/11 and forming an opinion on it, it would add ‘credibility to groups with fringe and anti-Semitic agendas’. The last aspect is most offensive. What has anti-Semitism have to do with scientific investigation of mass murders? As for fringe groups: it would appear that your expected doctorate studies should be updated with a Time magazine article reporting the 9/11 truth is not a fringe group, considering the hundreds of millions of people who question the Bush Administrations account of 9/11.

Sir, you reference to anti-Semitism is, may I suggest is an attempt to smear respected persons and is an unlearned comment intended to somehow deride thinking people.

I will be sending a copy of this to The Honourable Ms Fitzsimmons (when I find an e-mail address)and I wish to congratulate her on the manner in which she has the courage to diligently carry out her duties to the people of New Zealand. I take it that she will not give any credence to uninformed criticism inferred by your suggestion that she is lacking; ethical standards and lacks the ability to judge things with reason.

Further, Sir in regard to your claim that all the 9/11 conspiracy theories collapse when ‘prodded’. No doubt you will substantiate that inane statement with a balanced critique of Mr. Gage’s address. I take it that if one of your students said; “Well Sir, your theories just collapse with a bit of prodding”, you will pass the student with honours in the light of your standards. I

In regards to Building No 7 may i suggest David Ray Griffin’s latest book; “The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center(sic) &. Why the final report about 9/11 is unscientific and false”. [2009. Olive Press] May respectfully opine, that you are facing extreme embarrassment if you maintain your stated unsubstantiated opinion/s in front of those of your students who should happen to read Mr. Griffin’s book. (and the many other he has written on the subject) It will be in interesting to see you ‘prod’ Griffin’s book and see if his analysis collapses, try it!

There are many avenues for further study on 9.11. I suggest you start at http://www.patriotsquestion9/11.com and the architects and engineers site at AE911truth.org. Keep up to date by a few weekly peaks at 911.blogger.com.

I wish you well with your doctorate and trust that some of the above observations will make your thesis at least worth the outcome expected by you.

Yours Sincerely,

B Antcliffe.
Member: Lawyers for 911 truth. Political Leaders for 9/11 truth.

PS: John¹, Cannot locate Fitzsimons or NZ Herald, e-mail perhaps when this goes round someone will send it on, Ta.

–

Thank you for your interesting but just a little disjointed e-mail. A few points:

In considering your doctorate on conspiracy theories perhaps you would wish to include in your studies the following points:

Prosecutors on behalf of Her Majesty the Queen present conspiracy theories to juries in the criminal jurisdictions every day in commonwealth countries. Until such time as a jury convicts then it is a conspiracy theory.

Juries consider the evidence presented in a balanced and impartial objective manner, as is their duty, during their deliberations.

There are many theories that do not stand up considering the evidence and an acquittal should follow.

I am well aware of charges, as well as successful convictions, for Criminal Conspiracies. Everyone knows that Conspiracies occur; the question, certainly salient here, is whether the charge of Conspiracy is true in this particular case.

I find it offensive for you to infer that I have been naive in studying the ‘9/11 mass murders’ and/or meeting with Mr. Gage, for example.

Actually, you are inferring that. I merely said Jeanette Fitzsimmons was naive in her endorsement.

Actually, I have not only had him in my home in Sydney, but also; Frank Legge, Professor Steven Jones, Lt. Col. (ret) Bob Bowman and Yuki Fujita from the Japanese Parliament. Yuki is now in government with his party. Perhaps if you spent some time with some of these honourable people you would moderate your accusations.

As an epistemologist I am concerned with whether people hold beliefs formed due to reliable processes; it matters not one whit whether they are good, honourable, et cetera; if they hold specious beliefs, then they can be called to account on that.

Sir, you reference to anti-Semitism is, may I suggest is an attempt to smear respected persons and is an unlearned comment intended to somehow deride thinking people.

As a lawyer I would expect you to read documents carefully and notice what is a direct quote, what is an associated comment and what is an inference. You have taken an associated comment and missed its relevance to the rest of the article.

Matthew

Notes

1. John Bursill, the organiser of the Richard Gage tour in Australia and New Zealand.

Related posts:

1. Digestible Truth (the sanitised version)
2. Hello, Truthers!
3. Paper Post-mortem

So I’d like to offer a few clarifications.

I hope that clears everything up for you. Expect to here my thought on the presentation on next week’s ‘The Dentith Files.’

Related posts:

1. Quick note about the 9/11 Truth Movement
2. Letter from a ‘Truth’ful Lawyer (and a reply)
3. Digestible Truth (the sanitised version)

The presentation is a free event at Te Papa, the nation’s national museum. Now, it seems anyone can book a room at Te Papa and that someone is the person or persons who run the NZ911Truth website¹.

I’m not sure what to think about the talk; I suspect I’d have less issue with it if it weren’t occurring at the national museum. Museums are meant to be (even though sometimes they are not) repositories of facts² and if they are to play host to talks or presentations challenging the status quo then I’d like that challenge to be something that survives even the most casual scrutiny.

I suspect the problem, for me at least, is that the moral and intellectual responsibility that should be associated with such talks, which are often defended under the rubric of “the freedom of speech,” is in the process of being eroded away. It isn’t enough to say “We have the right to be heard!;” there is an associated duty of dealing with the consequences of what is said.

Now, I realise that a lot of the 9/11 Truthers really do think there are serious issues with the official theory of 9/11 and that they feel the need to air these issues in public; they feel they have a moral responsibility to act³. However moral imperative isn’t warranted when you consider the epistemic duties holders of alternative theories must shoulder when presenting such hypotheses to the public. These alternative explanations of the events of the 11th of September, 2001, are elaborate houses of cards (I use the plural here because there isn’t a consistent counter-narrative to 9/11), built on the shakiest of foundations. You cannot just assert these theories on the basis of “Well, I think they’re plausible” if they do not survive scrutiny.

So… I’m angling to get some funding to travel down and attend the talk. I’m also curious as to how the interview with Kim Hill has been set up; who set it up, who is advising her, and so forth. I’ll keep my weather eye open on this, although I am somewhat swamped with paper writing duties, which is, curiously enough, all about defending mere politically endorsed theories when they are contrasted with mere Conspiracy Theories.

More news as it comes to hand.

Notes

1. The website doesn’t have much in the way of useful or informative content (aside from linkage), although the Says who page has an interesting quote from the leader of the Greens, Jeanette Fitzsimons. I suspect that it might be unfair to make much of it without seeing the actual question she was asked, but still…
2. I’m tempted to put that word in quotes.
3. Although some of those actions, including the hounding of the family members of the victims of 9/11, are clearly immoral.

Related posts:

1. Richard Gage III: The Dentith Files (95bFM)
2. Truth
3. He’s back with (New) Zeal – Part 1

It is interesting that both the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks occurred at times when the political leader of the nation was suffering in public opinion, and that both these attacks have enabled the governments involved to introduce draconian measures in the name of “security”. Whilst I do not actually believe that the governments were directly involved in either of these attacks (or at least I pray they were not), I am not so sure that they did not consciously ignore critical intelligence and thus allow the events to come to pass.
Bryan Wallbridge, Boston, Lincolnshire

is fried gold (it’s the variation on the so-called ‘Conventry Excuse’ (my terminology)), but the one I like the most is:

Well, I’m not into conspiracy theories but it happens to be completely true that the security services in both New York on 9/11 and London on 7/7 were running mock terrorist attack exercises. Make of that what you will.
Mike, Corby

Which is just fantastic. It’s a little like my ‘favourite’ tactic of a certain class of people who go ‘I’m not a racist, but…’ where what follows after the ‘but’ is almost always racist¹. “I’m not a Conspiracy Theorist,” says Mike, “but…”

You’re not fooling anyone.

9/11 Cult watch has reviewed the documentary here. I am endeavouring to obtain a copy for my archives.

Notes

1. I sometimes like to say at parties something along the lines of ‘I’m not a racist, but I do enjoy watching ‘Lost’.’ It tends to confuse.

Related posts:

1. It’s New ‘Who’ and it’s possibly better than ‘Great!’
2. Doctor Who – The Sontaran Stratagem
3. Cost/Benefit Analysis

Suskind quotes Inkster (who liaised with key Iraqi defector Tahir Habbush, head of intelligence no less) as saying, quite clearly, that both the Bush and Blair regimes knew, before the invasion, that Iraq had no WMDs. Again, no surprise here, and backs up a point we at 9/11 cultwatch have long made, that the fabrication of WMD evidence leading to a spurious war is in itself a sufficient reason, if you are so inclined, for both Blair & Bush to be arraigned as ‘war criminals’–you don’t need imaginary fairytales about 9/11, the War in Iraq is sufficient to make them (metaphorically) swing from the yard arm.

This is, of course, a Conspiracy Theory (it, at least, presents a rival to the received view that the UK and USA administrations went into Iraq believing there were WMDs being produced and stored by Saddam Hussein’s regime), but because it’s a widely held Conspiracy Theory we’ve begun to treat the official account as the epistemically dubious one and, and this seems important, we don’t like other (epistemically dubious?) Conspiracy Theories to detract from the one we all seem to agree upon.

I’m sure there’s more to be said about this but now is not the time; I have to get ready to teach the last lecture in my `Conspiracy Theories’ course.

Related posts:

1. I’m on the Case
2. Query
3. Compare and Contrast

Well, this all fits in nicely with my recent paper (which is a tad awkward in that I’ve had this article for ages and only just got around to reading it). Knight’s thesis in ‘Conspiracy Theories about 9/11′ is that, at least with respect to 9/11, Official Views and Conspiracy Theories are highly similar in relevant ways and that this is especially true when it comes to the attribution of the notion of the agents behind the event(s) being explained.

Knight uses Hofstadter’s term ‘demonological’ in respect to these agents and argues that both sides of the debate feature demonised agents. Now, we can interpret this in two ways. They are demonic ala godlike or demonic ala evil and manipulative.

The first interpretation would act as a possible criticism of my paper; sometimes people do intend to present godlike conspirators because that is what they believe in. I think my replies probably still stand, however.

The second interpretation acts as support, in a way, to my paper. These agents are presented as demonological; evil and manipulative. This is rhetoric, however. It is the result of a particular way of presenting material politically. Now maybe the myth of the American system seems widely believed in, but I suspect it is believed in much the same way as the omnigod thesis.

Knight’s article works, I think, precisely because of its tight and narrow scope. Come the revision of the paper into the introduction of the thesis I shall incorporate my comments upon his paper into it.

Related posts:

1. Episteme Review #1 – God as the Ultimate Conspiracy Theory – Brian L. Keeley
2. Post-mortem – Presenting the Conspirators in the Conspiracy (Theory)
3. Episteme Review #7 – Conspiracy Theories and the Conventional Wisdom – Charles R. Pigden