Ivor Tossell put out an article today in the Globe & Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ ... echnology/
The film is an interesting object lesson on how conspiracy theories get to be so popular. (In 2006, one poll suggested that a full third of Americans thought their government was complicit in the 9/11 attacks.) It's a driven, if uneven, piece of propaganda, a marvel of tight editing and fuzzy thinking. Its on-camera sources are mostly conspiracy theorists, co-mingled with selective eyewitness accounts, drawn from archival footage and often taken out of context.
It derides the media as a pawn of the International Bankers, but produces media reports for credibility when it suits it. It ignores expert opinion, except the handful of experts who agree with it. And yet, it's compelling. It shamelessly ploughs forward, connecting dots with an earnest certainty that makes you want to give it an A for effort.
The funny thing about this stuff is that it's all been thoroughly debunked for years. Everyone from Scientific American to Popular Mechanics have produced reports puncturing the central claims of the 9/11 theory, and when you look gullible next to Popular Mechanics, you know you're in trouble.
Ivor Tossell then goes on to say....
What troubles me the most is that, for all the talk of skepticism, conspiracy counterculture is really an anti-intellectual, populist movement — much like Intelligent Design. For all their absurdity, conspiracy theorists try to drag everything back to the level of common sense.
you can check out readers comments here:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ ... echnology/[/url]
