Talk:9/11 conspiracy theories/Archive 7

message: . . . is eminently qualified to render scientific opinions about the collapse of The Towers.  How dare any of you say otherwise!!!  Morton devonshire 00:39, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, of course, this is clear.  Anyone who can effectively play a lovable major-league pitcher with a heck of a fastball but a little trouble getting it over the plate is of course eminently qualified to give expert scientific opinion. --Deville (Talk) 00:43, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Charlie Sheen . . .

message: I'm not a regular editor here, but there are numerous references to brief news items from 2001 and 2002 without any follow-up.  Were any of the leads followed-up?  Or is this article full of investigatory dead-ends that never went anywhere? patsw 02:35, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: They never went anywhere because of pack journalism. Let’s say so and so newspaper reported in September 2001 as many did that a foreign government warned the U.S. of an impending attack. By 2004 the topics of the week were the 9/11 commission and Michael Moore, in 2005 it was Able Danger and by 2006 9/11 in general is fading into history. So the original reporting has long been forgotten. This does not mean the “old” topics as I stated above in my plea for a Bin Ladin/Bush family section are of less importance then the “controlled demolition” theory being discussed in such detail today.  01:54, 5 April 2006 (EK)
So the article is full of investigatory dead-ends that never went anywhere. patsw 16:19, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Just who is it that is suppressing this information?  Morton devonshire 01:26, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: guvmint. 198.207.168.65 01:56, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  It's 2006, some of this is now over four years old 

message: Week by week, like the death of a thousand cuts, the term "conspiracy theory" is relentlessly censored from the text on this page.  Not NPOV.--Cberlet 20:35, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Conspircy Theory

message: Here is an example of how an alternate theory page should look,...Kennedy assassination theories.
I think the Kennedy format looks pretty good and tidy. What do other people think? (and what's with those footnotes? thats crazy looking)SkeenaR 19:19, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, go for it.  Much better organization format, readability, coherance.  Morton devonshire 23:31, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  clean it up 

message: I'm the one who added the weasel tag. I didn't even get past the first parapraph, and it was crawling with them. Sorry this is my first edit, but I've been lurking on Wiki for quite a while and have played with Uncyclopedia. I'm going to register a name in a minute, probably some variation of "Anderson." I'll point out some of the more blatant weasel words I found. I can tell you the first ones are "A number of researchers..." 72.153.6.137 03:15, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Weasel words are used, frankly, because there's no reliable support for any of these theories -- it's all original search, with no reliable sources for any of it.  Morton devonshire 16:34, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Now Morton, that's just your opinion. It may be true but it's still just your opinion ;) DCAnderson 19:55, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Weasel words

message: Some theorists claim that government and military exercises being performed on the morning of 9-11 point to a cover-up . US Rep. Cynthia McKinney, economist Michel Chossudovsky, and publisher/editor Michael Ruppert of From the Wilderness are a few of the individuals who have questioned these exercises.
The way this is phrased is either bad or misleading.
Do the experts listed believe that this was part of a conspiracy, or did they just ask questions about it?
If they beleive it, it should be phrased 
US Rep. Cynthia McKinney, economist Michel Chossudovsky, and publisher/editor Michael Ruppert of From the Wilderness are a few of the individuals who have questioned these exercises.claim that government and military exercises being performed on the morning of 9-11 point to a cover-up . 
If they do not support these theories, it should be phrased so that it doesn't seem like they do.
DCAnderson 05:07, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wargames section 

message: I think some of the sub theories need to be split into their own articles, or deleted, because this sucker is loooooooooong.--DCAnderson 08:03, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Split into sub-articles 

message: Allright, as various other users have allready suggested, somebody needs to go through this thing and offer a rebuttal section for each claim.
A good place to start would be any of the links listed for "skeptical or debunking." The US State departments page on the subject is particularly excelent: 
I would do this myself, but I'm a lazy bastard, and I spent all last night converting this thing to NPOV.--DCAnderson 20:00, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What about making an article specifically about 9/11 misconceptions, listing the various urban legends and why they're wrong.  I suspect many people, not just the conspiracy nuts, would find it interesting. It would also separate out the plausible and implausible speculations. Peter Grey 22:58, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm afraid that would develop as a POV fork. Tom Harrison Talk 01:46, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request for Claim/Rebuttal Format 

message: I changed the article back to after SkeenaR made the changes about "pull."
I will assume on good faith that "pull" is an industry term.
However Skeena R, as has been stated WIKIPEDIA IS NOT A SOAPBOX.
I have kept all the facts and points in the article. What I have removed are the rhetoric and weasel words.
If you want to make a seperate webpage where you present your case, that is fine, but Wikipedia is not the place for it.--DCAnderson 23:29, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I moved that from where it had been at the bottom of the page to the top of the page after DCAnderson's changes made it appropriate. I added the cite he reqested. Tom Harrison Talk 01:02, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

text: In section titles, only the first word should be upper-case, except proper nouns. Tom Harrison Talk 01:08, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've made a number of edits that I think SkeenaR will find acceptable - changing section titles to lower case, linking to the main article about flight 93, adding a citation, etc. The last such change has the edit summary 'cite Barkun'. If anyone wants to revert my subsequent work, please consider reverting to here. That way we can maybe make some progress. If we must have an edit war, we can at least have a well-mannered one. Tom Harrison Talk 01:42, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Besides the fact that me and a lot of other people don't like that Conspiracy theory article the way it is, one of the reasons I don't really like that new addition to the beginning of this article is because of just that...another edit war. The change may or may not be appropriate, but it is bound to stir up more controversy and we have already had an unbelievable amount of edits and sort of an edit war here for the last week or so. I wasn't really bothering to edit anything because it seems like the wind would have just blown it away. I was just thinking that right now it's possible the best thing we could do is tidy up this article really well and try to avoid too much dispute simply because I get the feeling that the community is kind of not digging this article because it is a mess. SkeenaR 01:53, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

text: I have no preference on the format. I do think DCAnderson's edits improved the article. I'll be restoring as many of them as I can, but at a slower pace. Tom Harrison Talk 01:56, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  <i>DISCUSS</i> major changes 

message: Well here was the version of the article I had going  before it got changed back.
I think a lot of the changes I made to it were for the best. Most of it involved deleting "fluff" sections which were not really stating main points, and restating the more weasely language.
I think it would be good if we reached some sort of happy medium on this, because I would at least like to think that the changes I made to the article were not a big waste of time.
And I don't want to start an edit war, so if anyone could help with this.--DCAnderson 01:57, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Changes I had made to the article 

message: This section is almost vestigial. Somebody either needs to put some meat on it, or delete it all together. In the interest of balance, probably the former.
Also, the Loose Change Video seems out of place in this section.
Maybe it should be replaced with a link in the "see also" section?--DCAnderson 01:14, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm cool with that --DCAnderson 02:00, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticisms and Loose Change section 

message: Who still wants the disputed tag up? Say something or I'll delete it. I don't think we need it, nobody will ever be perfectly happy with this article anyway. But I think there is progress happening here again. SkeenaR 02:55, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Neutrality

message: I was looking at the catergories this was listed under, and a lot of them seem like they are more relevant to the main 9/11 article.
In particular:
*Crimes
*Famous numbers
*Fires
*Airliner hijackings
*Al-Qaeda activities
*New York City disasters
*Terrorist incidents in 2001
*Terrorist incidents in the United States
I'm going to delete the first three, the others are up for debate.--DCAnderson 03:53, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Superfluous Categories 

message: Please, hold up on the tags a bit. Let's try figuring it out here first. SkeenaR 07:05, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Tags

message: "The FBI confiscated a video from a nearby gas station attended by Jose Velasquez, and from the Sheraton Hotel roof. These videos have not yet been released. [85]" The external link here only seems to support the confiscation of the gas station video. I can't find any reference to the Sheraton Hotel. Kernow 23:32, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pentagon Impact Video 

message: The section "Claims Related to Jews And Israel" contains a quote from Hezbollah, the terrorist organization, which claims no Israelis were even within the World Trade Center on September 11. A minister at the Israeli Consulate General in New York, however, is quoted by the U.S. Justice Department, in an article dated 14 Sept 2001 Article, as saying, "There might have been up to 100 Israeli citizens working in the World Trade Center. ... Two are known to be missing." 
 
For those who may point out that 2-in-100 is a very small proportion, the same article notes that 140,000 people would enter the World Trade Center on a given day. The accepted number of casualties there on 9/11 is less than 3,000. This is appoximately a 1-in-50 (or 2-in-100).
: Snopes.com has a few good articles on these claims; ,. OhNoitsJamieTalk 19:20, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hezbollah Claims About Israelis 

message: This article is much too long, and needs to be split. I propose that we break out the following sections into their own articles, leaving a stub section here for each topic:
* World Trade Center Towers
* WTC7
* Flight 93
* Pentagon
Any thoughts on this approach? -- MisterHand 14:07, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The article as it is relies far too heavily on primary sources, and is becoming a link farm for web site promoters. Rather than multiplying this problem by adding four more articles, and four more links to prisonplanet.com, et al., this one should be shortened and correctly sourced. Tom Harrison Talk 14:22, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I fully agree with Tom.  This article can definitely be trimmed by removing anything that is unsourced, or uses primary sources. -Aude (talk | contribs) 14:31, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Good luck with that. I agree with the approach, but I'm not keen on getting involved as an edit war will undoubtedly ensure. -- MisterHand 14:32, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

text: I too agree with the approach but I can see an edit war coming up soon because of this. --Siva1979Talk to me 17:36, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

text: All too often the purpose of 'cleaning-up' on here is to delete content wholesale.  I'll be glad to replace it on here as long as it takes, or we can all have discussion and debate and not wholesale removal of information. Bov 21:19, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, discuss. I'm going out, so excuse me if I don't reply promptly. Tom Harrison Talk 21:27, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Splitting the article 

message: "...but are gaining acceptance and being further developed by a growing minority of scientists, government officials, military experts and some in the intelligence community." To say that they "are gaining," and to refer to a "growing" minority is to make a prediction. We can only legitimately say what has happened. Tom Harrison Talk 21:46, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You are forecasting, when you say it "is growing" instead of "has grown" or (better yet) "grew from 10 in 2002 to 17 in 2005, according to Professor X." You hear this all the time in the context of investments. "3M is going up! Buy now!" Hog wash. 3M went up; Maybe it will go up. But nobody knows if it is now going up. Tom Harrison Talk 22:01, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Whether or not the movement is a growing child or a decaying mushroom (sorry, running out of metaphors) is the question. Saying it is growing because that is what seedlings do, and it is a seedling because it is growing, is unpersuasive. Tom Harrison Talk 22:14, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

text: I think he is saying that it is a peacock and/or weasel word. Which it is.--DCAnderson 22:08, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "once they hear the faulty logic used..." Heh heh. Tom Harrison Talk 22:14, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

text: "once they hear the faulty logic used..." to what? Justify POV? "Saying it is growing because that is what seedlings do, and it is a seedling because it is growing, is unpersuasive." SkeenaR 22:35, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

text: I doubt I could find one.  Thats why I didn't write "shrinking minority" in the article.  Not many news stories about .02% changing to .01%.--Bill 22:19, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Even if there are more today than yesterday, how do you know there will be more tomorrow? Tom Harrison Talk 23:04, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  No forecasting 

message: Okay, I've been looking at this bad-boy, and I think this should work if we're going to split this thing up.
The following sections:
*Government Foreknowledge
*World Trade Center Towers + 7 World Trade Center
*Flight 93
*Claims Related to Jews and Israel
need to be split into their own sub-articles and replaced with a summary and a link to the appropriate sub-article.
That should fix the length of the article and not constitute a POV fork.--DCAnderson 01:33, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As I said above, "The article as it is relies far too heavily on primary sources, and is becoming a link farm for web site promoters. Rather than multiplying this problem by adding four more articles, and four more links to prisonplanet.com, et al., this one should be shortened and correctly sourced." Tom Harrison Talk 01:40, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I oppose splitting this article and support editing using standard Wiki policies--which should cut 2/3 out of this entry.--Cberlet 02:16, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

text: No opinion on splitting, but I would point out that 'foreknowledge' can mean 1) the sum of available intelligence at the time, 2) knowledge that was available but ignored out of negligence, 3) specific knowledge that was deliberately concealed in collaboration with the attackers.  These are all substantially different topics. Peter Grey 04:49, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: DCAnderson, that New York Magazine article is a GREAT FIND! It's exactly the type of neutral source this article needs, not citing the primary sources. I am working on using it to replace much of what's in here. I too am opposed to dividing up the article.--Mmx1 03:15, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposal for new sub-articles 

message: Right away this section is in trouble because you are quoting from a person associated with the 9/11 truth movement.  "The received Bushian line: Osama, nineteen freedom-haters with box cutters, etc.” 'The received Bushian line' and 'nineteen freedom haters' has a negative connotation. As a whole this line is not understandable. This should something along the lines of nineteen members of Al Qaeda hijacked four planes then used them as missiles in a suicide bombing terrorist attack against four targets etc.  The motivations behind these attacks were the spread of Fundamentalist Islam and hatred of Western values such as democracy and freedom of religion. The collapse of the Towers One and Two were a direct result of the plane crashes and the collapse of tower seven were the result fires stated by falling debris from towers one and two.
‘This line was advanced, with much ass-covering compensation, in the 9/11 Commission Report’. First of all a curse word is completely unnecessary.  The other point is that the 9/11 Commission findings are the official or mainstream theory these days. The “We had no warning” could better be described as “The original official theory” or “mainstream belief in the months following the attacks”
The main problem was the attempt to take out Original research and Uncited Material.  While a good idea in general this is a summary section. For this type of section trying to cite everything is counterproductive.  01:20 28 April 2006 (EK)
I put that quote in, because it helps clarify what the 9/11 conspiracy theorists believe. The quote is somewhat biased (that's why there are the big blue quotation marks around it) but it really helps the reader's understanding of the article.
--DCAnderson 06:15, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: (Why don't you sign?) My point is that the main problem of this article is the POV title "Conspiracy theories" (an expression that has "negative implications" according to "Conspiracy theory" and according to everybody in this talk page). This is the first thing to change to the article in order to make it have a NPOV!! It makes no sense to debate about the Neutrality of the content given the title!!--Pokipsy76 09:53, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Extreme POV in Main Categorizations Section 

message: There was a bit in the Flight 93 section which claimed that Most 9/11 researchers believe that Flight 93 was shot down.  If this is indeed true, it is important to find a poll describing this.
I suspect that what was meant was that Most 9/11 researchers critical of the official story of the fate of Flight 93 believe that the plane was shot down.
I cannot be sure if the use of the word most is warranted without more research, but I chose to keep it intact rather than make unresearched changes.
Even if the majority of 9/11 researchers (including those who support the official story) believe that Flight 93 was shot down, it may be less controversial and more in keeping with NPOV to retain the distinction that those who believe that Flight 93 was shot down are those who do not believe the official story.
Please comment, and feel free to alter the statement to conform to proper standards of terminology.
Superluser 18:04, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That quote has a reference cited, but after looking at the reference I think the quote should be changed to "One blogger believes that Flight 93 was shot down..."--Bill 20:28, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hey, at least that statement has a citation. That's better than a lot of the statements on this page.--DCAnderson 02:34, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It seems if this were any other topic then people editing would do a simple google search and not just deride the page as it stands.  A google search for "Flight 93" and "shot down" returns thousands of entries, many conspiracy sites ,,,www.prisonplanet.com/articles/april2004/042104flight93.htm],,and some mainstream stories .  I'd say most conspiracy sites agree on this point. Bov 04:35, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Most 9/11 researchers 

message: To maintain consistency, we need to remove the OR in the section. Here is a link  where links can be found to sites that debunk it as secondary sources.
I might work on it later, but I need to take a nap.--DCAnderson 21:49, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Jews and Israel Debunking info is full of OR 

message: Personally I think the way this article is written is wrong, and the constant adding of all kind of weird theories is making it less and less readable. Instead of focusing on what could have happened, it should focus on a point by point list of what doesn't work in the official story, from the cell phones, towers collapse, pentagon hole, etc and then add what could have happened.
Also I find it very sad that some people keep trying to present every alternate theory as crazy talk and put the major focus of the article on the official story, when this isn't what the article is about. For example, link 29 is used to prove that a study was done and concluded that there was no sign of other explosions to bring down the towers. But if you follow the link, it's an Al-zajeera page which actually claims that the planes were robot planes with a minimal crew and that the US Gov was behind the attacks. The whole article is a spin in favor of the official story. Elfguy 19:13, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Rewriting

message: Here is a link  to all the articles about Conspiracy Theories on AlJazeera.com
And since AlJazeera is an actual news source, we will be a step above the whole "some crap that somebody said on their blog" level of journalistic integrity that most of these theories have.--DCAnderson 19:56, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That looks useful. There may also be some stuff at Google Scholar, but I haven't been able to muster the will to dig through it yet. Tom Harrison Talk 02:01, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Goldmine of Secondary Sources on Conspiracy Theories on AlJazeera.com