I’ve only recently discovered the Butterflies and Wheels website, whose aims strike right at the heart of counterknowledge. It was founded to attack:
1. Pseudoscience that is ideologically and politically motivated.
2. Epistemic relativism in the humanities (for example, the idea that statements are only true or false relative to particular cultures, discourses or language-games).
3. Those disciplines or schools of thought whose truth claims are prompted by the political, ideological and moral commitments of their adherents, and the general tendency to judge the veracity of claims about the world in terms of such commitments.
The editors, Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom, specialise in tearing out the philosophical underpinnings of pseudoscience: they are both editors for The Philosopher’s Magazine.Max Dunbar has written a very kind and insightful review of Counterknowledge on the site. Here are the last few pars:
Thompson quotes the writer and editor Michael Shermer on the roots of counterknowledge: ‘I think the problem lies deeper than this. To get to it we must dig through the layers of culture and society into the individual human mind and heart.’ And indeed, people trying to explain the appeal of irrationalism will inevitably turn to psychological analysis.
Imagine being a 9/11 Truther or a believer in homeopathy. You have unearthed a vast, hidden conspiracy that most of the world has completely missed. Either it is the conspiracy of PNAC engineering the Twin Towers demolitions as a pretext to declare war against the Middle East, or a secret plan by the medical/scientific/pharmaceutical establishment to cover up the healing powers of alternative medicine so they can carry on selling useless drug treatments.
You can dismiss the testimony of most doctors, scientists, physicists or engineers because their very experience and qualifications show that they are part of the elite and therefore have an interest in covering up the scam. Indeed, any contradictory evidence can be ignored – it will have been planted. Your own lack of evidence doesn’t bother you; obviously, the conspirators are going to cover their tracks. The absence of proof is proof. Ignorance is the smoking gun.
Most people reject your explanations because they are brainwashed by the corporate media. Only you, and a handful of fellow Truthers, are smart enough to see through the lies. What a boost! And presumably, when the conspiracy is found out, your greater intelligence and heroism will be recognised and you will be given the power and rewards such qualities accord you.
Finally, I think that the conspiracy minded are people in need of reassurance. They can’t handle the random, the chaos of life, the disasters that can come out of a clear blue sky. It is more comforting to believe that George Bush destroyed the Twin Towers than Osama bin Laden. It’s more comforting because we can vote Bush out, and put him in jail. At the heart of conspiracism is a message of subliminal succour: don’t worry, your government is in control. Go to sleep. Sssshhh…
Purveyors of counterknowledge are not revolutionaries. They are reactionaries, seeking comfort and status from dark dreams.
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This should be in the “Cod Psychology” department of your website.
“Finally, I think that the conspiracy minded are people in need of reassurance. They can’t handle the random, the chaos of life, the disasters that can come out of a clear blue sky. It is more comforting to believe that George Bush destroyed the Twin Towers than Osama bin Laden.”
Dear Mr Thompson, some time ago I asked if you could provide me with one single piece of solid evidence which links Osama Bin Laden to 9/11.(See “I despair”)
Unfortunately, you didn’t reply to this simple request.
Maybe you just didn’t notice my question.
Given the intensity of your scorn for anyone who doubts the the official explanation of 9/11, I think it’s not unreasonable to ask you to produce some evidence.
I look forward to your reply.
In the meantime here’s another example of the “random chaos of life” that we “conspiracy minded” types find so difficult to handle.
Why would someone who funded the 9/11 hijackers be at a breakfast meeting at the Capitol with the chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, Senator Bob Graham and Representative Porter Goss ( a 10-year veteran of the CIA’s clandestine operations wing) on the morning of Sept 11th 2001?
“The FBI’s examination of the hard disk of the cellphone company Omar Sheikh had subscribed to led to the discovery of the “link” between him and the deposed chief of the Pakistani ISI, Gen. Mehmood Ahmed. And as the FBI investigators delved deep, sensational information surfaced with regard to the transfer of 100,000 dollars to Mohammed Atta, one of the Kamikaze pilots who flew his Boeing into the World Trade Centre. Gen. Mehmood Ahmed, the FBI investigators found, fully knew about the transfer of money to Atta.”
(Daily Excelsior)
http://www.dailyexcelsior.com/01oct18/news.htm#7
Daily Excelsior….News Page
“On the morning of Sept. 11, Goss and Graham were having breakfast with a Pakistani general named Mahmud Ahmed — the soon-to-be-sacked head of Pakistan’s intelligence service. Ahmed ran a spy agency notoriously close to Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.”
(The Washington Post, Saturday, May 18, 2002)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A36091-2002May17¬Found=true
A Cloak But No Dagger (washingtonpost.com)
As I have consistently pointed out, Fraser, Al Qaeda’s responsibility for 9/11 has been freely – and repeatedly – admitted by Bin Laden, Zawahiri and Khalid Sheikh Mohamed (who admitted responsibility well before his arrest and rendition in 2003):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/mar/04/alqaida.terrorism
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/mar/15/alqaida.terrorism
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/world/south_asia/1585636.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/world/middle_east/1598146.stm
http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2001/10/09/alqaeda_warn011009.html
‘[Suleiman Abu-Ghaith] issued a chilling warning to the U.S., saying there would be no peace until it stops supporting Israel and ends blockades against Iraq.
“The youths who did what they did and destroyed America, they have done a good deed,” he said. “The storm of airplanes will not stop. There are thousands of young people who look forward to death like the Americans look forward to living.”‘
http://www.mepc.org/journal_vol10/alqaeda.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/apr/16/september11.usa2
http://memri.org/bin/opener.cgi?Page=archives&ID=SP47603
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3047903.stm
Is that enough ‘evidence’ for you, numbnuts?
It is only willfully ignorant people like you who dispute this, in the same way that you dispute the vast mass of evidence which disproves your canards about 9/11 being an inside job. On the latest admission of responsibility, read this:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/06/02/080602fa_fact_wright
‘In presenting Al Qaeda’s defense [against critics like Dr Fadl], Zawahiri clearly displays the moral relativism that has taken over the organization. “Keep in mind that we have the right to do to the infidels what they have done to us,” he writes. “We bomb them as they bomb us, even if we kill someone who is not permitted to be killed.” He compares 9/11 to the 1998 American bombing of a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, in retaliation for Al Qaeda’s destruction of two American embassies in East Africa. (The U.S. mistakenly believed that the plant was producing chemical weapons.) “I see no difference between the two operations, except that the money used to build the factory was Muslim money and the workers who died in the factory’s rubble”—actually, a single night watchman—“were Muslims, while the money that was spent on the buildings that those hijackers destroyed was infidel money and the people who died in the explosion were infidels.” …
Zawahiri makes some telling psychological points; for instance, he says that the imprisoned Fadl is projecting his own weakness on the mujahideen, who have grown stronger since Fadl deserted them, fifteen years earlier. “The Islamic mujahid movement was not defeated, by the grace of God; indeed, because of its patience, steadfastness, and thoughtfulness, it is headed toward victory,” he writes. He cites the strikes on 9/11 and the ongoing battles in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia, which he says are wearing America down…
As for 9/11, Zawahiri writes, “The mujahideen didn’t attack the West in its home country with suicide attacks in order to break treaties, or out of a desire to spill blood, or because they were half-mad, or because they suffer from frustration and failure, as many imagine. They attacked it because they were forced to defend their community and their sacred religion from centuries of aggression. They had no means other than suicide attacks to defend themselves.”’
As for General Ahmed’s links with the Taliban (as of those of the ISI), this has been public knowledge for a long time, but these do not automatically translate into links with AQ. The two movements were allied and interlinked, but they were not (and are not) one and the same. And in any case, the ‘evidence’ on Ahmad’s supposed links with AQ come from Indian sources, and if you’re going to take these for granted, then I don’t know what to say except ‘Take your head out of your arse, and stop wasting our time’.
Ahmed Rashid’s book ‘Descent into Chaos’ makes it clear why Ahmed was invited to Washington in September 2001 – it was because US officials wanted to coerce the Pakistani military into breaking their ties with the Taliban (something which Washington had consistently tried, but failed, to do). The fact that Ahmed was in Washington on the morning of 9/11 was a conincidence, and one which gave American demands to break off ties with Mullah Omar additional force (see pp.24-33). But as Rashid shows, the ‘military-mullah’ alliance that has existed in Pakistan since Zia’s time has continued to endure:
Anyway, I suggest that you might actually want to read Rashid’s book. In fact, you might actually want to read books, rather than the hooky websites you seem to spend too much of your life on.
WHY waste your time with loony tunes like this “Fraser”? It is obiviovs he would not know what a fact is even were it a sharp pointed cactus he had sat on while naked. THere has been far more
than sufficent evidence which rational and even a semi-intelligent people would accept as proof bin laden was the one responsible for 9-11 since not long after it happened.
Neil C. Reinhardt
I’ve only recently discovered the Butterflies and Wheels website, whose aims strike right at the heart of counterknowledge. It was founded to attack:
1. Pseudoscience that is ideologically and politically motivated.
2. Epistemic relativism in the humanities (for example, the idea that statements are only true or false relative to particular cultures, discourses or language-games).
3. Those disciplines or schools of thought whose truth claims are prompted by the political, ideological and moral commitments of their adherents, and the general tendency to judge the veracity of claims about the world in terms of such commitments.
The editors, Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom, specialise in tearing out the philosophical underpinnings of pseudoscience: they are both editors for The Philosopher’s Magazine.Max Dunbar has written a very kind and insightful review of Counterknowledge on the site. Here are the last few pars:
Thompson quotes the writer and editor Michael Shermer on the roots of counterknowledge: ‘I think the problem lies deeper than this. To get to it we must dig through the layers of culture and society into the individual human mind and heart.’ And indeed, people trying to explain the appeal of irrationalism will inevitably turn to psychological analysis.
Imagine being a 9/11 Truther or a believer in homeopathy. You have unearthed a vast, hidden conspiracy that most of the world has completely missed. Either it is the conspiracy of PNAC engineering the Twin Towers demolitions as a pretext to declare war against the Middle East, or a secret plan by the medical/scientific/pharmaceutical establishment to cover up the healing powers of alternative medicine so they can carry on selling useless drug treatments.
You can dismiss the testimony of most doctors, scientists, physicists or engineers because their very experience and qualifications show that they are part of the elite and therefore have an interest in covering up the scam. Indeed, any contradictory evidence can be ignored – it will have been planted. Your own lack of evidence doesn’t bother you; obviously, the conspirators are going to cover their tracks. The absence of proof is proof. Ignorance is the smoking gun.
Most people reject your explanations because they are brainwashed by the corporate media. Only you, and a handful of fellow Truthers, are smart enough to see through the lies. What a boost! And presumably, when the conspiracy is found out, your greater intelligence and heroism will be recognised and you will be given the power and rewards such qualities accord you.
Finally, I think that the conspiracy minded are people in need of reassurance. They can’t handle the random, the chaos of life, the disasters that can come out of a clear blue sky. It is more comforting to believe that George Bush destroyed the Twin Towers than Osama bin Laden. It’s more comforting because we can vote Bush out, and put him in jail. At the heart of conspiracism is a message of subliminal succour: don’t worry, your government is in control. Go to sleep. Sssshhh…
Purveyors of counterknowledge are not revolutionaries. They are reactionaries, seeking comfort and status from dark dreams.
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
