It’s tough being a skeptic in Byron Bay. In a walk through town I’ll see tarot card readers, palm readers, ‘healing’ sessions, GMO misinformation, ‘aura’ photographers and, lately, christian messages written in chalk on rubbish bins. I’ve encountered people who claim that western medicine/GPs are just in it for the money, only then to boast about spending $150 on something as thoroughly debunked as reiki massage. I generally turn the other cheek and don’t comment unless my opinion is asked, or if someone is stating something as fact when it’s simply not the case. However, this week I found two letters that your newspaper deemed fit to publish in 2013, citing two of the most comprehensively debunked myths, one being 9/11 being an inside job/False flag, the other, a relic from McCarthy-era politics, water fluoridation. We live in an age where our new PM doesn’t even accept anthropomorphic climate change, despite a 99 per cent consensus among climatologists. We have a conspiracy theorist at the head of our country; the last thing we need is your average tin-foil nut job given any sort of credence.
Extensive debunks of 9/11 can be found simply by googling or youtubing ‘9/11 debunked’ or by visiting debunking911.com, which contains a plethora of sourced, cited, peer-reviewed material which breaks down every myth, and exposes the quote mining, red herrings, leaps of faith and outright lies of the 9/11 ‘truth’ movement, or any of the many other sites dedicated to exposing the lies of CTs, such as rationalwiki, 911myths, or rkowens4’s YouTube channel. The myth is far too huge and ridiculously elaborate to attempt to debunk via a LTTE. As for water fluoridation, which was rated as the ninth-greatest medical achievement of the 20th century, the US Centers for Disease Control, is in far too low a concentration for the thirsty labourers Mr Sawyer is worried about; they would die of drinking too much water long before they received any ill effects of fluoride. If you eat enough bananas the potassium will kill you as well.
The Harvard study that is popular among the anti-fluoride crowd, who cite it as a source for their claims, fails to mention that the study focuses on residents in China and India living in areas with naturally occurring high levels of fluoride owing to the geological makeup of the area, not fluoridated drinking water or fluoride in toothpaste. These were people receiving mega-doses of fluoride, many, many times higher than that found in our tap water. In fact the areas with the highest IQ were those around the CD dental optimum of 0.7 mg/L. Fluoride is found naturally in water, soil and fruits and vegetables like spinach, tea leaves, cucumbers, carrots, beetroots, corn and many many others. This was a myth debunked decades ago and it’s an embarrassment to today’s society for something like this, which can actually affect the health and wellbeing of society, to rear its ugly, misinformed, fear-mongering head. Don’t even get me started on the anti-vaccination movement.
This week, scientists reversed Down syndrome in infant mice with a single injection; trials are starting for the first HIV vaccines; the lifetime of yeast was substantially extended which could then be used to extend human life; trials were started on therapeutic vaccines for melanoma; a new method of solar panel construction was discovered that increases efficiency by 3–10 times; a method of making DNA glue sticks that will repair and self-assemble internal organs was accomplished; and a device was unveiled that can potentially clear the plastic debris in the Pacific Ocean in around five years’ time. That’s just a few from this week alone. This is a time when we should be embracing scientific endeavour, particularly medicinal, and yet we still have people focusing on methods which have, time and time again, been shown to be have nothing beneficial besides a mild placebo effect, or people responding to fear, or getting their information alone from groups like the AVN or fluoride Australia without actually checking the facts first. I’m increasingly seeing a mistrust of science wrongly correlated with a mistrust of authority. It’s a shame and a pity in this day and age.
Dane Jago, Byron Bay
• In case you are searching for it, the 9/11 conspiracy theory letter was not published in Echonetdaily, only in the Byron Shire Echo. – Ed
Dane’s claim that “9/11 being an inside job/False flag” is a “comprehensively debunked myth” simply exposes his ignorance of the issue. The “comprehensively debunked myth” is the official “conspiracy theory”, which asserts that three steel frame sky-scrapers were completely destroyed by two hijacked aircraft. The official explanation for the collapse of WTC7 admits that the building fell suddenly and symmetrically at gravitational acceleration for 2.25 seconds. The only way this could happen is if all the support columns were severed at the same instant. There is no way a few scattered office fires could cause the sudden and simultaneous failure of all 83 steel columns.
Dane mentions “peer-reviewed material which breaks down every myth” about 9/11, but he doesn’t provide any references. The “peer-reviewed material which breaks down every myth” can be found at the Journalof911Studies.com, where peer-reviewed studies expose the numerous discrepancies and scientific inadequacies of the official 9/11 myth.
To my mind, Dane is either a paid agent of the criminal overworld, or just another one of the clueless and incurious, the naive and gullible, whose starry-eyed innocence and child-like credulity bring sympathetic smiles to the lips of those who have looked into the issue and seen through the lies and propaganda that spew forth from corporate controlled media platforms, the lies and propaganda spewed out by politicians and media pundits as they attempt to justify criminal aggression abroad and the evisceration of civil liberties and human rights at home.
Dane is preaching to the choir and will never win accolades for intellectual honesty or critical thinking. The fact is that not even the corrupt governments of the world, with all their power and resources, can maintain the official 9/11 fiction. Every day, millions of people are waking up to the truth and it’s a one way street. No one is moving the opposite direction, simply because the science comprehensively disproves the official theory, as anyone who has studied the issue knows all too well. So good luck Dane, with your efforts to help the government deceive the people, but I don’t much fancy your chances of success.
Heh Dane…
Granted there are a lot of very good beneficial advances due to science… sadly there are a lot of unsavoury ones also.
You seem to think “all” science is great… that is a very lazy and dangerous place to find yourself.
I noticed that you are very dismissive of pretty much anything that wasn’t mainstream… a narrow minded view again dangerous and lazy thinking.
I’m not a supporter of conspiracy theories – I don’t believe any organisation is so efficient they could pull off world and economic domination without someone leaking!
I’m more worried about Dane’s claim that the increasing mis-trust in science is wrongly correlated into a mis-trust of authority.
With Tony Abbott in charge of the farm and an equally sceptic Dennis Jensen vying for the position of Science Minister – any sane, reasonable person should feel deeply mis-trustful of the new Government “authority” because of the correlation with the MP’s mis-trust in science.
If Pollies don’t trust science, should we trust them with the big decisions?
Michele says, “I’m not a supporter of conspiracy theories – I don’t believe any organisation is so efficient they could pull off world and economic domination without someone leaking” I think Michele implies that if someone leaked something that exposed criminality in high places, the mainstream media and government officials would dutifully report the fact and investigate the implications. Of course, anyone who has looked into the history of political controversies knows this is not how the system works. It is unfortunate that the overwhelming majority of citizens in the West are grossly misinformed by mainstream media, and incredibly gullible and naive when it comes to accepting the official narrative on most issues. This habit of blind faith in official pronouncements is certainly not consistent with the meaning of the word “skeptic”, or the practice of critical thinking.
Michele says, “I’m not a supporter of conspiracy theories – I don’t believe any organisation is so efficient they could pull off world and economic domination without someone leaking” Michele’s comment betrays an ignorance of the structure and function of covert agencies and covert operations.
One might argue that a colossal crime such as 9/11 would involve so many people, that the plot could not be kept secret. According to this argument someone, among the many participants, would have long ago ‘spilled the beans’. This argument fails on several fronts.
First, it should be clarified that government conspiracies do not always remain secret. They are often exposed by scholars and historians. But as long as such exposure is limited to scholarly books and suppressed by the corporate media, these plots remain – for the general public – ‘conspiracy theories’.
For example, in 1967, the US and Israel conspired in attempting to sink the spy ship USS Liberty off the coast of Egypt. The US Navy personnel who survived the attack attempted to raise public knowledge about this conspiracy but failed. The facts are known to those who wish to know, but are kept suppressed from the wider public.
Another example, Operation Gladio refers to a campaign of terror secretly engineered by the intelligence services in Italy, Belgium, Greece, Turkey and Germany during the Cold War. These acts were staged to appear as terrorism by leftist groups. The operation was kept secret for 40 years in Western Europe with no one blowing the whistle. Those unaware of this operation will be tempted to call it a ‘conspiracy theory’.
In addition to media reluctance to report government conspiracies, the modus operandi of covert operations needs also to be considered. Covert operations carried out by the military are always organized according to the ‘need to know’ principle.
From the Manhattan Project to the Stealth fighter, the US government has successfully kept secrets involving thousands of people. In order to execute a conspiracy of the complexity of 9/11, it is not necessary for thousands of people to know the whole picture. The success of the US in maintaining the secrecy around the atom bomb, or any classified operation, lies in compartmentalization.
Many people believe that a government employee aware of illegal practices by his agency or his superiors will immediately report to the police or speak to a journalist. This belief is not justified. Exposing high state crime requires extraordinary personal courage and entails risks to ones career, security or even life.
At the highest level, conspirators are kept silent not least by the knowledge that their careers, reputations, liberty and even their own lives and those of their families are all vulnerable to any exposure of the truth.
Gravitational acceleration at 2.25 seconds?
Don’t you even understand basic physics?
http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/pseudosc/911nutphysics.htm
Hippie maths.
Hippie science.
Hippie kids dying of measles with rotten teeth.
“Gravitational acceleration FOR 2.25 seconds”, not AT! It might help if you actually read what I wrote, instead of jumping to erroneous assumptions and launching adolescent insults.
Dane Jago max respect for your opinion and because you come from Byron Bay, it must be no easy to live sorrounded by so many hippies cospiracy fuckers! Have a good one mate!