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Miltank posted:The trump card that I often see getting pulled has to do with the third WTC tower going down. Is there a black and white answer for that? I was at the US Merchant Marine Academy during 9/11. A large percentage of my class had been in the towers days before (it was just after the first parents weekend where the plebes get to leave campus for the first time). Several of our professors were NYC firefighters, several worked at the Port Authority (I think two of those died). Anyway I had classmates/upperclassmen in the city during the attack. Some were EMTs who helped out in the immediate aftermath. One had a camera and took lots of pictures. By circumstance he was briefly in that last WTC building helping get people out before it collapsed. There was pretty heavy damage to the building. I don't know if I still have the photos floating around. I'll look. It's bullshit like all the other Truther stuff.
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Sep 12, 2013 19:52
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It was asked earlier in the thread if the tower 7 stuff was bullshit and I mentioned I had a classmate who was in WT7 evacuating it before it collapsed and that he took some photos.  Sorry about a photo of a photo. I couldn't find the digital image and don't have a color scanner. This is well inside the building and if I remember right a floor up from ground. I seem to remember it being said that debris from the street was blown in and up several floors. I know this thread is more about the meta issue of truthers and not really about the events, but I figured it was relevant. Because I think a viable method of refuting truthers is pointing to individuals who actually participated in the events. I have four or five other photos that the distribution of was mostly limited to Kings Pointers and that aren't really out in circulation. If any wants them posted (again they be lovely photos of photos) just let me know.
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Sep 20, 2013 18:44
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Since there was interest, and again sorry about the lovely photo of photo quality, and yes these are from a photo album:     I also went back and looked at the journal I kept during all this. I think part of the conspiracy business with 9/11 was nobody knew what the gently caress was going on all the way up to the top. We got told the same day that our campus (apparently it was the largest federal property with water access close to Manhattan) was going to be used as a staging area for sorting bodies and that they were expecting 50,000 to 60,000. Obviously that was wrong. By Thursday, our Naval Science teachers (mix of aviators and intel guys) were talking about Afghanistan being something that was going to happen. Later (seem to remember it being the two month-ish point) there was a regimental dinner where we were all told that instead of a normal sea year ( USMMA students get sent out on US Merchant Marine vessel in pairs of two as cadets) that we would be used as unlicensed deck and engine ratings (and paid as such) to support the ensuing massive sea-lift needed to kick somebody rear end. I seem to remember that one coming from the CJCS, who was the guest for the dinner. That also never ended up happening. Conspiracy theories are often a coping mechanism in the face of a harsher reality. Even if we participate in an event we still don't know what the gently caress happened. Hell I don't know if I experienced the same event that the rest of you did. About the only thing I was able to watch as far as the television coverage goes was the President's speech. I didn't see a lot of that imagery until years afterwards. Most notably I don't think we had the "lack of control" thing going on that a lot of the general public did. Our waterfront people (the power squad, sailing people ,etc) were ferrying cops and firefighters to Manhattan and back. The training vessel had been set up in the sound sort of as a floating hotel/restaurant for firefighters. Most of us didn't get to do those things, but we got to deliver meals (mostly box lunches) and stand watches down on the water front supporting the ones that did. Bar Ran Dun fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Sep 25, 2013 |
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Sep 25, 2013 20:41
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duck monster posted:Yep. Exactly. A while ago there was a thread about 9/11 and constructed media images, the real, and post structuralist thought. I remember you posting in it, but I don't remember if you started it. I wrote a very long post for that thread (I have a very odd relationship with the symbols of 9/11, totally missed the media, saw the event but only on the horizon, and I'm actually wearing an image of the towers right now on my class ring) that I never posted. That was an incredible thread to read. Anyway, I would agree that we need more critical theory to respond to this stuff. But I think you should be careful. It seems to me that you are talking about an emancipation from narratives and story by asserting "the world is undirected" or that we should "kill the ecosystem." When you say that you imply that doing so would protect us from or deliver us from those narratives and story. In other-words there is an implied salvation. To imply a salvation, is to imply a narrative that fundamentally underlies. ("If there shall be salvation: there must be this concept of the Logos".) I got inoculated against interpreting the events of 9/11 with a simplistic narrative pretty early on. The Commandant gave the sermon the Sunday after and he went with Job. I've always thought it was a ballsy thing for him to tell several hundred people who saw the towers coming down on the horizon (with a few who had been in the city), who a large percentage of had been in them the weekend before, and who a moderate percentage of had parents in the air on planes flying home on 9/11, that there is no answer or explanation to be found.
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Sep 26, 2013 18:21
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Now that's really interesting, no free from. I might have to read more about that. I think I would end up arguing that rules are a narrative, but this isn't the thread for it. Edit: I think I misunderstood you. No freedom from narrative and no freedom from narrative are very different things and I don't know which you intended. Bar Ran Dun fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Sep 27, 2013 |
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Sep 26, 2013 19:07
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Berke Negri posted:American libertarianism is all born out of crypto-Jim Crow support and paleo-southern strategy bullshit. Goldwater, in his heart, may have been a dupe with good intentions (if you want to believe that) but the Taft precursor to the conservativism movement of the 60s was crush poors kill labor and the 60s movement was more or less "who are we to stop segregation?" The current version of American Libertarianism is the stuff too crazy for Goldwater. It's the stuff so nuts that William F. Buckley looked at and thought we need to kick the these people the gently caress out. Conservationism and the southern strategy are relatively tame relatively sane things in comparison to current Libertarianism. Behind the Tea Party are the children of the John Birchers and Dominionists. They are significantly more crazy than the Goldwater / Reagan mold of conservationism, which they are in the process of hollowing out and wearing like a skin. Edit: Reagan Bar Ran Dun fucked around with this message at 14:45 on Mar 12, 2014 |
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Mar 12, 2014 14:23
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Helsing posted:I mean there were some moderate Republicans, like Rockefeller (the guy who Goldwater and his followers had to defeat when the conservative activists were taking over the GOP) and Eisenhower doesn't seem that bad from a domestic standpoint (the actions of people under him, like the Dulles brothers, tempers that assessment though) but trying to hold up Reagan, Goldwater or the loving southern strategy as being more reasonable than the contemporary GOP is ridiculous. In some ways they were honestly quite a bit worse. Oh yeah Buckley is a awful person and a dick, Goldwater might have started WWIII if he'd been elected, the southern strategy is terrible, etc, etc. All that is true. I'm just saying the ideas behind the tea party are so nuts that even these people looked at them and said, this poo poo is crazy. The birchers were so crazy that conservative movement (which was itself pretty crazy) drove them out. Somebody like Reagan is radical in the sense of he wanted the concept of what government should or can do to radically change. The Birchers and the Dominionists are more radical than that. They're rocking: our idea is the truth itself and that gives us power over you if you don't believe in it. They're rocking if we speak the words in a certain way we'll reorganize peoples minds so that they'll just naturally conclude what we want them to conclude. If somebody like Reagan is successful the result is more limited government. And lets face it he was successful. If the Kochs or somebody like Ted Cruz are successful that's a different beast, it's not fascism but it's very much like fascism. They want to radically change all of us as human beings and that's way more threatening than just changing the nature of government. And they are trying to co-opt the conservative movement's successes in changing government for that end.
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Mar 13, 2014 15:16
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Helsing, I think we're mostly on the same page too. But I really do think something has changed and it's related to this "at least had to be able to talk with someone who didn't share all his beliefs". I think they've become more absolutist and dualistic. Ever see Gran Torino. That's kind of how I see the older conservatives, racist, nasty, even outright bastards but if they were pushed to the very brink some of them would eventually see the humanity in the other side. Take somebody like George Wallace. Eventually he gets to this point: "I was wrong. Those days are over, and they ought to be over." I don't know that the new crop, the Cruz and Koch types, can ever make that type of personal change because of their absolutism combined with what I think is a dualism. G.W. Paul Ryan and the Pauls, yeah, you're probably right they're probably more in/ not significantly different from the Reagan/Goldwater/Buckley line of thought. But the crazies, the ones talking about lizard people, FEMA signs, calling in Coast to Coast, I think they are very often more in the Koch/Cruz line of thought. And that the structure of that line of thought has something to do with the crazy conspiracy talk. Bar Ran Dun fucked around with this message at 14:25 on Mar 14, 2014 |
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Mar 13, 2014 20:15
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Well the Christian Reconstructionists (of which the Dominionists are a subset) seem to have bought into the "freedom to" of the libertarians as God's law. And the gun nuts have managed to make their personal/individual right to bear arms (and to use them on others) the highest category or expression of libertarian freedom. I wish I were speculating there. They had the gun raffle church pastor on NPR recently. And that's what they guy said almost word for word, the right to bear arms as the highest expression of freedom from God. So when they use that "denying rights" language in a "Cross talk" context, they're outright asserting that the highest right given to them by God is being taken away from them by an evil power ("Dictatorship" and "Socialist") opposed to God and it's implied (and they probably don't realize this) that this is like the crucifixion of Jesus. Which is the opposite of reality. And then they interpret all this only in a literal way. Unrelated, has anyone else noticed that the right wing Christian talk radio stations like to bookend NPR stations? Is there a reason for that (like a certain section of the frequencies being better for talk or cheaper, etc)?
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Mar 14, 2014 18:00
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I'm not trolling. And I'm not wrong. They call them "Second Amendment Celebrations". http://www.gbctroyny.com/nysafe http://www.theblaze.com/stories/201...t-celebrations/ They say things like this: "I personally believe there is a big disconnect between our society today and the Word of God and, to a lesser extent, the U.S. Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights." and this “Our nation’s founders provided for our freedom to worship as we choose and our freedom to protect and provide for ourselves and our families,” the description reads. “The Second Amendment Celebration (formerly Beast Feast) recognizes the rights and responsibilities of those freedoms while celebrating both through appreciation of the outdoors and God’s provisions with the purpose to point people to Christ.” It's really the best example of theses things merging together.
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Mar 17, 2014 18:48
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Has anyone read this: http://www.ourrepubliconline.com/Article/21 That's Robert Welch. In that he says this: "(g) the creation of riots and the semblance of revolution under the guise and excuse of promoting "civil rights" (h) developing this "Negro Revolutionary Movement," as the Communists describe it, into a broader "proletarian revolution" of the "have-nots" against the "haves"; " Just to be clear here what he is saying is that the civil rights movement is communist conspiracy. That means he's implying that it (civil rights) are fundamentally opposed to Liberty. Republican, Tea Party, and Libertarian talk railing against "communism", "socialism" or "collectivism" it has this element of racism hidden in it. It might not be the only thing, but it's not something that can be ignored and it's not something different from the 47% type talk. Just so it's clear Atwater's comments are in the context of talking about appealing to people who think like Robert Welch. Also lot's of relevant conspiracy stuff in there, Illuminati, Communists, Woodrow Wilson, you name it. Bar Ran Dun fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Sep 10, 2014 |
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Sep 10, 2014 19:57
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Ah the Nation of Islam, If you're ever in Chicago, drive down the Stoney Island, when you stop at the light under the ramp in the center of the road that goes up to 90, there will usually be Nation of Islam proselytizers in suits there. Mosque Maryam is right on the stoney island, one can't miss it. Anyway depending on the time of year they'll be handing out pamphlets, or might selling a Nation of Islam newspaper, or might even if you are very, very, lucky, just might, be selling pies to raise money. The pie was quite good. But I'm not sure what they made of me buying one, I am very white, was basically dressed like a bearded hobo at the time, in a vehicle that looked like it had just driven through a crowd (iron ore dripped off a conveyor belt onto a vehicle can look like copious dried blood splatter.) Edit: They're also responsible for the phenomenon of south-side turkeyque, which also worth trying. Bar Ran Dun fucked around with this message at 19:26 on Sep 23, 2014 |
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Sep 23, 2014 19:20
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Shbobdb posted:"My Nation's capital is in Chicago" and the like. When I lived in NYC and Indianapolis, the proselytizers wouldn't talk to white people but here in Oakland they talk to everybody. I think they only talked to me because they recognized my vehicle, I used to drive the stoney island from end to end like four - five times a day and between the iron, coal, and half flat tires from scrapyards it was memorable looking. The security around Mosque Maryam is serious, cameras, big walls, automated metal gates, etc. Huh, I never saw them in Oakland, I knew they had a presence there, but I must have just never gone down the right street. I've literally walked everything from the RRF ships in Alameda to downtown Oakland too.
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Sep 23, 2014 19:51
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