reduced and recycled

I was browzing through Google video’s selection of uploads, looking specifically for Stephen Colbert’s roasting of U.S. President Bush during the White House Correspondents Association dinner on 29th April 2006. I downloaded the transcript from the Daily Kos, but watching it was just both cringe-worthy and fantastically funny.

A bit more browsing and I came across an interesting video clip from Google video’s Top 100 clips, “9/11: Loose Change 2nd Edition“. I’ve been watching it for about half-an-hour now and all I can say is, for those who’ve believed that the events of Sept 11th 2001 were staged, this video was made for you.

I won’t go too much into the findings of the video, since what it says is self-evident: that the 9/11 attacks were staged, that the demolition of the Twin Towers was staged, as was the attack on the Pentagon. As with all versions of truth, there are disagreements; this video examination of the “truth” is no different.

I did a little googling and found a website providing a comprehensive “blow-by-blow” rebuttal of the events described by Loose Changes’ take on the “events that shook the world”. Both, however, agree on one thing: that there was sufficient evidence that a number of events was staged.

I suppose history will decide who’s right on that question. What struck me was how, even amongst conspiracy theorists, there existed disagreements with conclusions drawn, and arguments put forward. I will admit, as I was watching Loose Change’s documentary, I was struck by the exclusion of verifiable conclusions, replaced by questions.

In logic, we learn very early on that arguments resting on premises which are themselves questions should be avoided at all costs; the word for them is “rhetoric”, as in, “rhetorical”. After watching 40 minutes of the video, I found myself levelling that charge against the folks at Loose Change. And that struck me: why all the speculation?

Obviously because the facts were not available. But why not available? Either because these facts are controlled/hidden or if they exist they do not support speculative conclusions, or they simply don’t exist. In other words: they exist but are controlled, they don’t exist, or we simply don’t know.

Of the above, only one can be proven, and that is that these facts (if they do exist) are controlled - and that’s the point when speculation becomes paranoia. Of course the government is hiding things from you - for your own good. Whether there is any truth to that, an intractable and silent government only fuels the conspiracy, and so it goes, without end.

Strangely enough, the above pattern follows exactly the route taken by Richard Leigh and Michael Baigent, whose works inspired Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code madness. If existing facts, it appears, are linked creatively with other tangentially related facts, then a tapestry of facts can be established, and this tapestry can hint - depending on creative interpretation, no doubt - at other “facts” (whether they exist or not; it doesn’t matter), or at least provide a conclusion. But it must be said: this tapestry of facts are held together by subjective, speculative interconnections which have no basis other than the merest relations.

Look, this method isn’t new, and I try explaining it to Da Vinci code fans who haven’t encountered Umberto Eco’s “Foucault’s Pendulum” wherein the author pretty much explains how the characters in his book do it: create card files of topics, rearrange them according to some random order, and then with a bit of creativity, come up with relations between little facts:

Was Charlse I a Rosicrucian? Well, probably, since Cromwell, a parliamentarian, was deep in Freemason mysteries, because, you see, both were waging a secret war against each other for the right to possess clues, known only by Templars, to controlling a massive power left behind by the Masters of the World who, as we all know, are decendents of that ancient, sunken land of Mu. The Templars of course possessed these secrets because they were imparted to them by Hasidim mystics they befriended whilst defending Acre from Saracen insurgents.

It’s all bullshit with enough tantalizing hints.

(Leonardo da Vinci, eyes failing whilst painting Christ’s Last Supper, making little slips and errors, would never have imagined how his little excursions would provide suddenly a basis for an international bestseller. Poor fellow, he deserves a share of that unintended profit.)

Did the same happen in the Loose Change video? After viewing it, and after taking into account the multitude of rhetorical questions posed, I can only conclude that some parts of the video’s reconstruction have as little basis as does a mere “maybe”. Whether this is sufficient to skew opinion is something that relies on factors within and beyond the control of the film-makers, of course. It’s certainly worked for Dan Brown.