A question for Killtown

[CFLarsen]

Killtown,

You have been very busy - in the most extreme sense of the word - arguing that there are all sorts of things that are dodgy, suspicious and questionable about the 9-11 attacks.

You have spent a lot of time on this, and thrown in a lot of energy, arguing your case.

What I want to ask you is this:

Are there any points/pieces of evidence/parts of government reports/"official story" that you do believe in?

Because it seems to me as if you doubt every single aspect of what happened on this day. You question everything, witnesses, official reports, actual findings, photos, any kind of evidence that supports a terrorist attack. It seems as if anyone is under suspicion, even those innocent bystanders who just happened to click their cameras, or record what happened with the camcorders.

Are you questioning, merely for the sake of questioning? What is driving you? No, don't say "a quest for the truth", because you are clearly not interested in the truth. You ignore evidence put before you, so that's not it. You have some kind of agenda, but I can't figure out just what it is.

Is it because you get attention, by spouting the most idiotic, ridiculous, insane claims? Or is there something else that we just haven't grasped yet?

[Crungy]

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn09092006.html

It's month old, but this particular bit seems to best describe our friend's modus operandi.


It’s the same pattern with the 9/11 nuts, who proffer what they demurely call “disturbing questions”, though they disdain all answers but their own. They seize on coincidences and force them into sequences they deem to be logical and significant. Like mad Inquisitors, they pounce on imagined clues in documents and photos, torturing the data –- as the old joke goes about economists -- till the data confess. Their treatment of eyewitness testimony and forensic evidence is whimsical. Apparent anomalies that seem to nourish their theories are brandished excitedly; testimony that undermines their theories – like witnesses of a large plane hitting the Pentagon -- is contemptuously brushed aside.

Anyone familiar with criminal, particularly death penalty defense – I had such an opportunity for a number of years – will know that there are always anomalies the prosecution cannot account for and that the defense teams can exploit, in hopes of swaying a jury either in the guilt or penalty phase of a trial. Time and again I would see the defense team spend days and weeks, even months, back-checking on a possibly vulnerable link in the evidentiary chain that could be attacked, at least to the all-important level of creating “reasonable doubt” in the mind of a juror. Expert witnesses would be imported at great expense –- unlike states such as Texas, the justice system of California is generous in the provision of money for death penalty defense -- to challenge the prosecution’s forensic evidence. Such challenges weren’t hard to mount. Contrary to prosecutorial claims, there is far less instrinsic certainty in forensic evaluation than is commonly supposed, as regards fingerprints, landing marks on bullets and so forth.

But minute focus of a death penalty defense team on one such weak link often leads to a distorted view of the whole case. I remember more than one case where, after weeks of interviewing witnesses at one particular crime scene, the defense’s investigator had collected enough witness reports to mount a decent attack on this aspect of the prosecution’s overall case. At least this is what I thought, hearing the daily bulletins of the investigator. But when, in such instances, the camera pulled back, so to speak, and I saw the prosecution’s whole case – chain of evidence, cumulative witness statements, accused’s own movements and subsequent statements – it became clear enough to me and, in that case to the juries , that the accused were incontestably guilty. But even then, such cases had a vigorous afterlife, with the defense trying to muster up grounds for an appeal, on the basis of testimony and evidence withheld by the prosecution, faulty rulings by the judge, a prejudiced jury member and so on. A seemingly “cut and dried case” is very rarely beyond challenge, even though in essence it actually may well be just that, “cut and dried”.

[Josh Redstone]

I'd bet on the fact that Killtown probably won't be posting in this thread, for obvious reasons.....

....but maybe he'll prove me wrong.

[Horatius]

I'd bet on the fact that Killtown probably won't be posting in this thread, for obvious reasons.....

....but maybe he'll prove me wrong.

Well, he's been banned now, so, no, no response will be forthcoming. Which in a way is sad, because I think the question raised is probably the most important one with regards to CTists.

There are enough real problems in the world to attack, why do they insist on making up new problems?

Is it just that they don't really believe they can do anything about real issues, and this is their way of making themselves feel better?

Could we start a "CT outreach" program, which attempts to re-direct them to actual issues, which they might actually be able to do something about?

I'm reminded of a Penn&Teller's BS episode, the one discussing "abductees". Penn made the point that a person shouldn't have to tell you they're married to an alien to get you to pay attention to them, that we should be willing to give our time to people just to be nice. Is there anyway we could act to bring these obviously deluded people back into the fold?

[Lisa Simpson]

I don't know that we can bring the extremists into the fold. For them, the conspiracy theory is as much of a belief system as any religion. To bring down their belief system is to bring down their whole world. I would like to think we can reach the people on the edges. The ones who aren't sure - they are our target audience.

[Bell]

I don't know that we can bring the extremists into the fold. For them, the conspiracy theory is as much of a belief system as any religion. To bring down their belief system is to bring down their whole world. I would like to think we can reach the people on the edges. The ones who aren't sure - they are our target audience.

I've seen some members over here who realized that the troof wasn't actually the truth. GlennB, Stankeye and Usual Suspect spring to mind.

[Calcas]

I don't know that we can bring the extremists into the fold. For them, the conspiracy theory is as much of a belief system as any religion. To bring down their belief system is to bring down their whole world. I would like to think we can reach the people on the edges. The ones who aren't sure - they are our target audience.

Well said.

It's ironic because that is what the "other" sites say as well.

The difference is they don't tolerate dissent, alternate theories, or discussion. They are looking for the "truth" as they know it to be.

I think Randi said, "They don't believe because they want to believe, they believe because they NEED to believe..."

[Horatius]

I don't know that we can bring the extremists into the fold. For them, the conspiracy theory is as much of a belief system as any religion. To bring down their belief system is to bring down their whole world. I would like to think we can reach the people on the edges. The ones who aren't sure - they are our target audience.

This may be. I guess I just hold out the hope that someone who isn't actually clinically insane can be persuaded by rational discussion.

CTs, unlike religions, do deal with actual events, which can be measured and tested. This at least opens the possibility of convincing someone their ideas are wrong. I can understand someone being confused about things like the collapse of the Towers, or WTC7. After all, things like physics and structural engineering are difficult to understand. I just wonder why it's so hard to get them to accept reasonable explanations. Why do they prefer the CT junk?

Perhaps if we understood them better, we could find a more effective means of convincing them.....But there I go, being all scientific again!

[Pardalis]

Goodbye Killtown, we won't miss you.

:yahoo

[Lisa Simpson]

You would think so, but my experience with homeopaths tells me otherwise. Homeopathy is something can be measured, tested, quantified. Yet trying to convince a homeopath that they are drinking nothing but magic water is as impossible as convincing a fundy that there is no God.

[T.A.M.]

Don't get me started on Homeopathy please.

TAM

[TobiasTheViking]

So, how do you feel about Homeopathy?

From your statement i assume you are for it.

On that note i have a migraine. but luckily i also have some nice vibrating water. :)

[Pardalis]

From your statement i assume you are for it.

I wouldn't think so.

[T.A.M.]

I am a physician who practices real medicine...so no, I do not believe in it.

TAM

[TobiasTheViking]

ehm...

I guess i should have put in the <sarcasm> tag.

[Crungy]

http://killtown.911review.org/911smokingguns.html


Q: Connecting the dots. Where do they point?

A: To a psychiatrist!

[T.A.M.]

no harm no foul, but a topic I despise.

TAM:)

[Josh Redstone]

Well, he's been banned now, so, no, no response will be forthcoming. Which in a way is sad, because I think the question raised is probably the most important one with regards to CTists.


You're right, these questions are important, however I think the fact that CTers don't actually answer them says something about their real attitudes about the truth. That being said, I wonder if any other CTers will ever show up in here and answer these questions.

[fuelair]

I really do not think they are capable of understanding that quoting an idiot is not answering a request for real information. Obviously they were sleeping in class the day(s) the Scientific Method was covered.

[boloboffin]

From my experiences with Killtown over at Democratic Underground, he'll be back in a new guise.

[CFLarsen]

Guess we'll never know... (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=66750)

You would think so, but my experience with homeopaths tells me otherwise. Homeopathy is something can be measured, tested, quantified. Yet trying to convince a homeopath that they are drinking nothing but magic water is as impossible as convincing a fundy that there is no God.

Yes, but there is one difference: Homeopaths have now accepted that there are no molecules left in their concoctions, and so, they've had to come up with the (idiotic, granted) explanation of "memory".

Yes, their explanation increased the silliness of their belief, but they did admit to a fact.

You won't get Killtown and his ilk to admit even the slightest, most obvious fact. They are of quite a different brand of believers.

[NickUK]

I am a physician who practices real medicine...so no, I do not believe in it.

TAM

I dunno what the acceptance of homeopathy is within the mainstream of US medicine, but I work in an NHS mental health unit in the UK with an attatched (ie funded from the central budget) 'alternative' therapy department where accupuncture, aromatherapy and homeopathy are offered to some patients.

I once made the mistake of criticising it from a medical point of view to a couple of colleagues at a seminar. You'd have seriously thought I'd stomped on puppies, such was the reaction. It's quite a sore subject with their 'practicioners' apparently.

[Horatius]

You're right, these questions are important, however I think the fact that CTers don't actually answer them says something about their real attitudes about the truth. That being said, I wonder if any other CTers will ever show up in here and answer these questions.

I'm seriously thinking about starting a thread just to talk to the CTists about anything other than CTs, just to get an idea of what they're like outside of their beliefs.

In one of my last posts to killtwon, I asked, mostly in jest, if he had conversations with his mother the way he did here. I'd seriously like an answer to that, as their apparent lack of normal conversational skills seems to be a major issue for them.

Take a look at this, from KT's website:

It's unclear when she came back home, but she never walked up the road beyond the horizon to see what she allegedly photographed. Instead, she just heard the sirens and went into the kitchen and put on a barbecue for the rescue crews as if she was anticipating the events. How was she able to cook for the crews with her electricity knocked out? Did it come back on by then? Did she just cook on a charcoal BBQ outside? How did she even think to start cooking for the rescue crews and how did the crews know she was even cooking for them? Did she bring the food down to the rescuers, or did they stop by her house? Wouldn't some official group, such as the Red-Cross, come and feed the crews instead?

Would any of you have been confused about how she was able to cook? He seems to thing that "she just heard the sirens and went into the kitchen and put on a barbecue for the rescue crews" means she was having a BBQ in her kitchen, while any normal person would be expected to fill in the details about her going outside first. This is just one example where he seems unable to understand the flow of a simple conversation.

I think if we were to talk to them about, say, their favourite movie, we might get some insight into their problems, which might let us understand how to interact with them better.

[defaultdotxbe]

Take a look at this, from KT's website:

It's unclear when she came back home, but she never walked up the road beyond the horizon to see what she allegedly photographed. Instead, she just heard the sirens and went into the kitchen and put on a barbecue for the rescue crews as if she was anticipating the events. How was she able to cook for the crews with her electricity knocked out? Did it come back on by then? Did she just cook on a charcoal BBQ outside? How did she even think to start cooking for the rescue crews and how did the crews know she was even cooking for them? Did she bring the food down to the rescuers, or did they stop by her house? Wouldn't some official group, such as the Red-Cross, come and feed the crews instead?

Would any of you have been confused about how she was able to cook? He seems to thing that "she just heard the sirens and went into the kitchen and put on a barbecue for the rescue crews" means she was having a BBQ in her kitchen, while any normal person would be expected to fill in the details about her going outside first. This is just one example where he seems unable to understand the flow of a simple conversation.

I think if we were to talk to them about, say, their favourite movie, we might get some insight into their problems, which might let us understand how to interact with them better.
thats something that came to mind about 3 weeks ago when a big storm knocked my power out, the electric company said it might be out for 3 days, so i fired up my grill and cooked everythign i had in my freezer and invited some friends over

why? better to eat it than let it spoil with the power out

[Crungy]

Take a look at this, from KT's website:

How was she able to cook for the crews with her electricity knocked out? Did it come back on by then? Did she just cook on a charcoal BBQ outside?



Would any of you have been confused about how she was able to cook?

I remember reading on a CT site (possibley KT's?), that the geographical area in and around Shanksville use natural gas in lieu of electricity. This is because winter storms cause a high rate of power outage.

Odd that master anomaly hunter KT never saw that his theories were encrusted with a wealth of much greater anomalies.

[Lisa Simpson]

My dad had his BBQ hooked up directly to his house's natural gas line. The plus side is, he never has to worry about buying another propane gas tank. The down side is, if there is an earthquake that knocks out both electicity and natural gas, he has no way to cook.

[defaultdotxbe]

also, im sure mr town lives in a dense urban area and wouldnt be familiar with the concept of a generator

[fuelair]

Guess we'll never know... (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=66750)



Yes, but there is one difference: Homeopaths have now accepted that there are no molecules left in their concoctions, and so, they've had to come up with the (idiotic, granted) explanation of "memory".

Yes, their explanation increased the silliness of their belief, but they did admit to a fact.

You won't get Killtown and his ilk to admit even the slightest, most obvious fact. They are of quite a different brand of believers.

A wondrous thing happened to me two days ago. A young lady (ex-student) was in my room telling me she had been accepted to an x-ray tech course and something she mentioned made me mention homeopathy. She said she had never heard of it and I explained (with, honest, no editorial comment) how homeopathic medicines were produced/administered. Her first response was "But then all they are getting is water." I love people who pay attention and learn real stuff!!!!!:) :) :) :)

[defaultdotxbe]

killtown appears to have ben reduced to posting back at my forum, http://screwloosechange.xbehome.com if you still want to ask him some questions