By Scott Creighton

The following is my response to Charlie Brooker’s yellow journalism piece from the Guardian. but first, a little background:

Charlie wrote this about the 2004 election “John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley, Jr. - where are you now that we need you?” Wiki. He admitted later it was in bad taste, after the Secret Service gave him a call, and the Guardian pulled the article and made him write an apology in which he went off on some rant about having intercourse with kids at a cocktail party (he seems to make that kind of joke quite often. I guess it’s for “shock value”).

Currently Charlie has a show on BBC 4, which is a show, about other shows, and is in it’s 4th season with the number of episodes for the coming year “TBA”. Considering the timing of his little article here, and how it correlates to the release of the deeply flawed BBC piece on building 7, it would seem that Charlie is letting someone know that he is a team player before contract renewal time (wink wink, eh Charlie?).

But this isn’t the first time someone noticed Charlies penchant for towing the company line: in response to an article where Charlie ripped into a popular artist who painted murals on the side of the Israeli built wall around the Palestinian lands…

”…maybe Charlie is too much of a moron/self-indulgent character to even know that a despicable wall is being built all around Israel). … As wikipedia said that Cahrlie (sic) worked for the BBC, it should not surprise anyone that he conforms nicely to what his masters want. Artists should be non-conforming; challenging us beyond what we consider as ‘normal’ and that is exactly what Banksy does. The criticism here is very petty…” here.

Petty indeed. But let’s get to his “piece” shall we.

Charlie Brooker
The Guardian,
Monday July 14, 2008

“I’ve got a theory - an untested, unprovable theory - that the more interesting your life is at any given point, the less lurid and spectacular your dreams will be. Think of it as a balancing procedure carried out by the brain to stop you getting bored to death.”

Translation: People seeking a more accurate story about 9/11 than “19 lucky cave-dwellers with box-cutters”, have no life.

Let’s see how that holds up to the smell test, shall we, genius?

Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth

Pilots for 9/11 Truth

Patriots for 9/11 Truth

Scholars for 9/11 Truth

Veterans for 9/11 Truth

Muslim-Christian-Jewish Alliance for 9/11 Truth

Marines for 9/11 Truth, just to name a few.

And some individuals that you might, or might not, recognize who call for a new investigation that certainly have had at least as “interesting” if not considerably MORE interesting, than you have had, Charlie (well, I don’t know. It’s hard to compete with a guy who wrote for PC Zone rating video games…):

George Carlin; Gore Vidal; Bob Bowman; Aarron Russo; David Ray Griffin; Steven Jones; Richard Gage; Sen. Karen Johnson; Sen. Lincoln Chafee; Major General Albert Stubblebine; Col. Ronald D. Ray; Col. George Nelson; Col. Ann Wright; Lt. Col. Shelton F. Lankford; Lt. Col. Karen U. Kwiatkowski; Lt. Col. Guy S. Razer; Commander Ralph Kolstad; Major Douglas Rokke; Capt. Daniel Davis; Barbara Honegger; Major Scott Ritter; Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer; Major Erik Kleinsmith; James D. Smith; Col. James R. Uhl; David L. Griscom, PhD; Larry L. Erickson, BS Aeronautical Eng, MS Aeronautical Eng, PhD Eng Mechanics; Lon J. Waters, PhD Mathematics… and the list goes on and on and on…

So we are just bored people making up stories to keep ourselves entertained? I don’t think so. That is simply a gross generalization of a very large subgroup of people all over the world who have enough common sense to know that the official story of 9/11 that you, Mr. Brookings, are peddling here, is beyond imposable; it’s impossible.

“If your waking life is mundane, it’ll inject some thrills into your night-time imaginings to maintain a healthy overall fun quotient. So if you work in a cardboard box factory, and your job is to stare at the side of each box as it passes along a conveyor belt, to ensure they’re all uniform and boxy enough - and you do this all day, every day, until your mind grows so dissociated and numb you can scarcely tell where the cardboard ends and your body begins - when your daily routine is THAT dull, chances are you’ll spend each night dreaming you’re the Emperor of Pluto, wrestling a 6ft green jaguar during a meteor storm in the desert just outside Vegas.”

In the other article I referenced by Brooker earlier, he again demeans working people by calling out the “mindless drones” of the 9 to 5 world.

“Take his political stuff. One featured that Vietnamese girl who had her clothes napalmed off. Ho-hum, a familiar image, you think. I’ll just be on my way to my 9 to 5 desk job, mindless drone that I am.Then, with an astonished lurch, you notice sly, subversive genius Banksy has stencilled Mickey Mouse and Ronald McDonald either side of her.” Brooker here.

This is a repeated gimmick of his, but it shows that apparently either Mr. Brookerhas an inferiority complex or a massively over-inflated sense of self worth. That’s not uncommon for college drop-outs to over-compensate for unresolved feelings of inadiquacyby attacking the “mundane” qualities of “normal” life. Either that or he’s just an ass on an ego trip. Either way, he had better suck up to the BBC, because if he looses this job, with his education, he will be at the box factory looking for work.

“All well and good in the world of dreams. But if you continue to believe you’re the Emperor of Pluto after you’ve woken up, and you go into work and start knocking the boxes around with a homemade sceptre while screaming about your birthright, you’re in trouble.”

I mention this because recently I’ve found myself bumping into people - intelligent, level-headed people - who are sincerely prepared to entertain the notion that there might be something in some of the less lurid 9/11 conspiracy theories doing the rounds. They mumble about the “controlled demolition” of WTC 7 (oft referred to as “the third tower”), or posit the notion that the Bush administration knew 9/11 was coming and let it happen anyway. I mean, you never know, right? Right? And did I tell you I’m the Emperor of Pluto?

The glaring problem - and it’s glaring in 6,000 watt neon, so vivid and intense you can see it from space with your eyes glued shut - is that with any 9/11 conspiracy theory you care to babble can be summed up in one word: paperwork.”

Why am I not surprized that Charlie’s entire argument comes down to “one word“?

“Imagine the paperwork. Imagine the level of planning, recruitment, coordination, control, and unbelievable nerve required to pull off a conspiracy of that magnitude. Really picture it in detail. At the very least you’re talking about hiring hundreds of civil servants cold-hearted enough to turn a blind eye to the murder of thousands of their fellow countrymen. If you were dealing with faultless, emotionless robots - maybe. But this almighty conspiracy was presumably hatched and executed by fallible humans. And if there’s one thing we know about humans, it’s that our inherent unreliability will always derail the simplest of schemes.”

Right! The old (1.)”fallible humans” and (2.)”sheer magnitude” arguments! Oldies but goodies. I guess it’s that massive brain power of your’sCharlie that dusted off these old chestnuts. (What? Couldn’t come up with the (3.) ”hundreds of tons of dynamite” one too? I’ll toss that one in just for the fun of it.)

1. “fallible humans” - Aside from the fact that this administration has gotton everything it wanted and wrote about BEFORE the 2000 election, including a pre-emptive war with Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the almost complete destruction of the constitution of the United States (done to profit some of the very companies and banks that the BBC has interests in on your side of the old pond)… aside from all of that, humans are remarkably capable of adapting to whatever the situation is, as long as their jobs and their lifestyles, and those of their offspring are on the line. Do you know what I mean there, Mr. Brooker? Or am I being to subtle?

2. “sheer magnitude” - yes it’s a big plan hatched over a long period of time. Check out some of the many sites that offer a glimpse into the evidence trails left by several key figures. I mean, you are a writer correct? You can do SOME research, right? I’ll GIVE you one and you find the rest: Journal of 9/11 Studies.

3. “hundreds of tons of dynamite” - That was an oldie too, till I found a listing by CDIfrom 1998 where they demoed a builidngof almost the exact same sq. ft. of Building 7 with 2,100 pounds of explosive (and most of that was det cord. just rolled into place).

“It’s hard enough to successfully operate a video shop with a staff of three, for Christ’s sake, let alone slaughter thousands and convince the world someone else was to blame.”

Really? At one time they “convinced” the world that Saddam was to blame. Remember the “coalition of the willing”. Tony Blair lost his job over that, now didn’t he? The FBI most wanted poster on bin Laden doesn’t list 9/11 as one of his crimes. The reason: not enough credible evidence. Do you remember the Downing Street Memo?

“That’s just one broad objection to all the bullshit theories. But try suggesting it to someone in the midst of a 9/11 fairytale reverie, and they’ll pull a face and say, “Yeah, but … ” and start banging on about some easily misinterpreted detail that “makes you think” (when it doesn’t) or “contradicts the official story” (when you misinterpret it). Like nutbag creationists, they fixate on thinly spread, cherry-picked nuggets of “evidence” and ignore the thundering mass of data pointing the other way.”

It seems to me, sir, that the only “bullshit” theory is the one based on personally derogatory remarks about those that share it; and nothing else. You have offered NOTHING by way of the ”thundering mass of data” you mention here. Nothing. I see none. So, which argument is based on reality based scientific fact and which is based on generalizations and slander?

“And when repeatedly pressed on that one, basic, overall point - that a conspiracy this huge would be impossible to pull off - they huff and whine and claim that unless you’ve sat through every nanosecond of Loose Change (the conspiracy flick du jour) and personally refuted every one of its carefully spun “findings” before their very eyes, using a spirit level and calculator, you have no right to an opinion on the subject.”

I’m not “huffing and whining”. Now, you might THINK a plan this big is “impossible to pull off” but that doesn’t make it so. For instance, let’s say, perhaps, oh, I don’t know, convincing a couple of democratic countries that they HAD to illegally invade a sovereign nation so that 4 oil companies could get their hand on their oil reserves. That’s kind of a big conspiracy, wouldn’t you say? And guess what? They pulled it off with the help of the 4th Estate or 5th Column (however you prefer, Mr. Brooker). Meaning; without the COLLUSION of the media, both here and in the UK, then that WAR-CRIME would not have been committed and a MILLION IRAQIS would not be dead and we wouldn’t be poised to do it all over again in IRAN.

Now, genius, tell me… which “conspiracy” is bigger? And were they successful?

“Oh yeah? So if my four-year-old nephew tells me there’s a magic leprechaun in the garden I have to spend a week meticulously peering underneath each individual blade of grass before I can tell him he’s wrong, do I?”

I won’t discuss your children only to say I hope for their sake that they are not being home-schooled.

“Look hard enough, and dementedly enough, and you can find “proof” that Kevin Bacon was responsible for 9/11 - or the 1987 Zeebrugge ferry disaster, come to that. It’d certainly make for a more interesting story, which is precisely why several thousand well-meaning people would go out of their way to believe it. Throughout my twenties I earnestly believed Oliver Stone’s account of the JFK assassination. Partly because of the compelling (albeit wildly selective) way the “evidence” was blended with fiction in his 1991 movie - but mainly because I WANTED to believe it. Believing it made me feel important.”

If somehow or another, you used the situation with JFK’s assassinationto feed your own ego, that is your business. It certainly falls right into line with what others write about you. But when you transfer your own shortcomings onto others to make yourself feel better, there’s a word for that… look it up, writer.

“Embrace a conspiracy theory and suddenly you’re part of a gang sharing privileged information; your sense of power and dignity rises a smidgen and this troublesome world makes more sense, for a time. You’ve seen through the matrix! At last you’re alive! You ARE the Emperor of Pluto after all!”

Except for the fact that we are not hiding the information. We are sharing it with as many people as possible hoping to start a real call for a new investigation into the officialaccount of 9/11. You see, that doesn’t make us “special”, that makes us ‘tired”. Tired of being ridiculed by people with almost no facts who are willing to support any idiotic story their bosses tell them to just to keep a paycheck and some supposed “status”.

“Except - ahem - you’re only deluding yourself, your majesty. Because to believe the “system” is trying to control you is to believe it considers you worth controlling in the first place. The reality - that “the man” is scarcely competent enough to control his own bowels, and doesn’t give a toss about you anyway - is depressing and emasculating; just another day in the cardboard box factory. And that’s no place for an imaginary emperor, now, is it?”

Since I have already dealt with the incompetent politicians theme I will let that pass.

But let me just say this; governments have to “control” their citizens, Charlie. That’s why we all agree to laws. Get it? Otherwise there is anarchy and they are overthrown and civilization crumbles into the sea.

They really have to control people that question their moronic 9/11 story for obvious reasons and they use babbling head sycophants to do it. People that like to think of themselves as special or elite or above average intelligence. You see, Charlie, they look for people like that; people that can be controlled with limited imaginations who are prone to think only as far as the talking point lets them. People who don’t really connect dots that well. you know what I mean Charlie?

So Charlie, you keep your show and more power to you. I hope in time you come to understand that getting that “leg up” doesn’t necessarily mean you have to kick everyone below you in the face. There’s nothing wrong or “is depressing and emasculating” about working in a “box factory”. And there is certainly nothing wrong with questioning the deeply flawed story of 9/11 when so much of our treasured democracy is on the line.

But Charlie, there is something wrong with selling out your fellow countrymen for a buck and lying and belittling their efforts to support your corporatist bosses. There’s a word for that too. Look it up, writer.