A review of Steve Alten's The Shell Game (2007, Sweetwater Books)

The Shell Game is a story that, presented differently, would be almost completely unintelligible to anyone who has spent the last seven or so years watching exclusively Fox News for their information, or equivalently, living under a rock. Fortunately, the rest of us have the Internet. But from the point of view of the tragically misinformed public, Steve Alten makes his story accessible by wrapping it tightly around a thoroughly Hollywood-friendly plot.

The following is forwarded from the Dave Rovics mailing list:

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Hi folks,

During my recent ten-day vacation in Japan I managed to get some stuff done -- including responding to a fairly massive flood of overwhelmingly positive responses to my last essay. So below, here's another one. As with all of my essays, lyrics, music, etc., feel free to post, forward and distribute wherever you see fit.

Also, for those of you who live in the northwest, I've got a little mid-day gig at Washington State University on Thursday and a keynote address and concert at a conference in eastern Washington on Friday. Next week I'm off to the midwest and the southeast to do shows in Carbondale, IL, Louisville, KY, Whitwell, TN and Asheville, NC. The last three shows will include shows for kids in the afternoon and grownups in the evening, which will hopefully be becoming a regular pattern...

There is an ongoing Request for Comment on the proposed renaming of the Wikipedia article 9/11 conspiracy theories to '911 alternative theories.' Naturally the RFC is being spammed by the resident sophists and shills, so we need your help. Here is the latest comment:

"Strong support in favor of renaming. The title is objectively pejorative, as evinced by the fact that many editors who oppose the change have pointed out it accurately describes folklore and urban legend; however, these are not the subject of the article. Moreover it abuses the term 'theory,' by prescribing the colloquial meaning of that word while some of the contents address theories in the scientific sense. The term 'Conspiracy theories' excludes scientific theories, but accurately describes the plot that is the subject of the 9/11 attacks article. However, the term 'Alternative theories' potentially embraces both folkore and science, but like the article excludes the mainstream theory. Hence '9/11 alternative theories' is a more accurate title."

To anyone with a scientific mindset, truths are matters of fact which can be discovered by investigation into empirical reality. Unfortunately, although we would like to believe that we live in an age of reason, to most people the truth is a matter of religious edict. The 'truths' that most people cling to are actually stipulations of a shared belief system. There is an old adage that you will find exactly what you are looking for -- that your prior beliefs provide a framework for what you are willing to accept as evidence. It turns out that truth, as it is handled and conceptualized by the human mind, is a feature of social reality. If discovered 'truth' does not fit into ingrained social practices, it may be shunned or censored for hundreds of years before it is accepted. Nothing that people believe to be true has come into that status without a long history of lensing through the eyes of existing human authorities.

I got an idea from this article about a professor who has his students write Wikipedia articles; 9/11 Truthers have the power and the motivation and the means to take 9/11 truth to Wikipedia en masse. At seminars, in college classes, and in community groups, professors and others who are brave enough to spread 9/11 truth can share a wealth of information and sources by collectively updating Wikipedia with the best information and the latest sources. If this is an info war, why not recruit and train info warriors?

Fascism, under the guise of protecting copyright, is gaining power exponentially in the United States. If we, the people, do not do something to stop it, corporate powers will dissolve all nations and make all people everywhere into wage slaves. One crucial step in this process - the corporate control of the internet - is coming to a head, but if we are smart we may be able to do something about it.

The recent court decision, that making audio recordings available to be copied is a form of unauthorized distribution whether or not anyone actually copies them, spells the end of the internet as we know it, if that decision is upheld in higher courts. Why? Because the internet potentially devalues audio recordings, and the artificial monopoly of audio recordings is one currency of the legal copyright cartel. If that decision stands in the Supreme Court, the internet will be shut down because the basis of the internet is the free sharing of data between computers. In its place will be a corporate power sharing system which excludes any unauthorized connections. That is the logical extension of the current legal threats to peer to peer sharing.

The History Channel's mockumentary "9/11 Conspiracies -- Fact or Fiction?" puts me in the mind of the old Camp Chaos cartoon "MP3 Music -- Good or Goblin?" Somebody high up in the History Channel's chain of command was ordered to or decided that something had to be done to muddy the waters of debate or at least make a gesture of superiority toward the already maligned "conspiracy" movement. The condescending tone of the hit piece reflected a growing anxiety in the mainstream press about the fact that this old story won't go away quickly. ("For your amusement, here are some conspiracy wackos, followed by the opinions of experts who dismiss their claims.")

Whether the current administration is held accountable for mass murder during its tenure, or the public wakes up too late or fears them too much to bring them to justice, sooner or later the truth of 9/11 will be widely acknowledged. If at that time we do not live in a post-nuclear wasteland and if we still have the benefit of modern technology, barring any plausible doomsday scenarios, what will happen next? Who in a 9/11 truth world will be willing to take the place of people who were so despicable and soulless? Who will trust anyone in a position of power; who would want to have that power; or, alternatively, who would be able to dismantle the machinery of deceit and murder before another group of equally evil people rejuvenate it? As Douglas Adams aptly pointed out in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," nobody who wants to have power should be in power. What will become of us, when we achieve our goal and the curtain is lifted from the ugly chain of false-flag-initiated wars of the past several thousand years?

There is a new disinfo "documentary" titled "Screw 911 Mysteries" which you may wish to look into. The author goes on about one sentence in "9/11 Mysteries" that "110 storeys hurled Earthward, pulverizing into dust" and he attacks the straw man argument that steel was pulverized in the WTC collapse, which clearly "9/11 Mysteries" does not argue. I don't know if it's worth paying attention to, it's clearly crap. But so far the discussion forum has not provided a cogent rebuttal (which would require actually watching the whole video) and the author is still trumpeting his doc as a "debunking." Somehow the "debunking" movement still powers itself by demanding 9/11 truthers bear the burden of proof when the official theory does not prove its case. But the public is still very confused about this issue. So, how should we respond to stuff like this? Point-by-point refutation which barely anybody will read?

Sadly, the most vocal of the truth activists are probably also the most likely people to be targeted when the next false-flag operation or next "natural" disaster strikes. An open society is easy to control by decapitation -- "killing the future," as Barrie Zwicker writes in Towers of Deception. That is possibly why the perpetrators of 9/11 do not try too hard to censor the vocal activists, and dismiss them as "conspiracy theorists." Right now most people are not paying attention to them. But just when the masses might start paying attention they will be killed in cold blood and then their message will become obscure because the public will be distracted by something new. Anybody who tries to take their place runs the same risk. Of course now, with the internet, a thousand people could take the place of one of them, like the many-headed hydra, and we can't all be eliminated, can we? That may be true, but the people who would do the eliminating may not know this and therefore go ahead with their plans; or they may not care how many people they have to kill. Meanwhile, a few murders of vocal activsts may serve to silence those who would take their place.

Perhaps 9/11Truthers should think seriously about starting their own political party and nominating a candidate for President for 2008. There are enough of us. Perhaps even mainstream and disenfranchised voters might be persuaded to vote for a 9/11Truth prez candidate on the basis of a campaign to get a real 9/11 investigation going.

There is an obvious systematic bias in the use of the term 'conspiracy theory' on Wikipedia which should be embarrassing to anyone who values a neutral point of view. Witness the articles Conspiracy theory which devotes its content to a condescending analysis of various examples of Conspiracism; List of alleged conspiracy theories (only just retitled 'list of conspiracy theories' since this criticism was leveled at it) which conflates alleged conspiracies with conspiracy theories but does not include alleged conspiracies which have been proven true; and Conspiracy (crime) which does not mention specific conspiracy allegations. The allegation of conspiracy is presented as 'theory' on Wikipedia. But 'conspiracy theory' is presented as wild speculation. On the other hand 'conspiracy' is presented as a legal standard with no case history.

I have had the following discussion with Zdenek P. Bazant, co-author of
the 9/11 Twin Towers collapse theory article titled "Why did the Twin
Towers Collapse -- Simple Analysis." Unfortunately he has not answered
all of my questions regarding his model of the collapse, probably just
because he is busy or not inclined to do so. I am sure it is not
because he is unqualified to answer my questions or because he is
involved in deliberately misleading the public about the nature of the
WTC destruction as part of some conspiracy or something. So, I am
asking any physicists or engineers if they can shed light on this
subject. I would like to be able to understand how Dr. Bazant's theory
explains the utter destruction of the Twin Towers in the manner recorded
and witnessed on September 11, 2001.

MY FIRST MESSAGE:

> Date: Friday, May 4, 2007
> Subject: Re: Regarding your WTC collapse hypothesis
> Dear Professor Bazant,
>
> I have read with interest your 2001 paper entitled "Why Did
> the World Trade Center Collapse?—Simple Analysis". I wonder
> if you might take some time out of your busy schedule to
> satisfy my curiosity.
>

For anyone who is skeptical that the official conspiracy theory of 911 is not true, I invite you to study the existing evidence, the videos of the collapse. Every official theory of the destruction contends that gravity alone brought the towers down at nearly free fall speed because that was what everyone saw and that is what is in the video. I am personally skeptical of other claims such as that the airplanes were video forgery, but time will tell. However, it is impossible that any building could collapse in the manner that is described; nor does the description provided fit the observations. You must also wonder why the wreckage was disposed of before a thorough investigation. The perpetrators of this crime were monsters with no human conscience and the most likely people to have the ability to pull this off were the people in charge of the Federal government. Muslim hijackers could not have evaded NORAD all by themselves, if indeed the hijackers even existed.