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US Releasing 9/11 Flight 77 Pentagon Crash Tape
Robotron23 writes "The BBC is reporting that the US government has decided to release the videotape depicting the crash of Flight 77 into the Pentagon building, nearly five years after the 9/11 attacks. The government had previously withheld the tape due to 'ongoing investigations' into al-Qaeda's Zacarias Moussaoui. A government representative commented that they 'hope that this video will put to rest the conspiracy theories.'"
You can't put the conspiracy theories to rest. They already believe you're covering something up, so if you release a report that shows...
...the conspiracy theorists will just claim you've fabricated or altered the "new" evidence.
A government representative commented that they 'hope that this video will put to rest the conspiracy theories.'
The problem is that there is not a clear view of a 747 running into the pentagon. Just a streak and a fireball. Kinda like those UFO pictures and videos.
What is that saying? "I want to believe", right?
They did release it immediately. The Moussaoui trial just ended. It's common that the government and companies do not discuss details relating to a trial while it's in progress.
The fact is, the integrity of the tape will be questioned more because of what it is and who it's from than how long it took to release it. There would still be skeptics if it was released immediately
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
It's on Fox News's site, front page.
It doesn't show us anything new. It answers no questions. The frame rate of the camera was too low to catch the plane/missile/emu (take your pick) as it came in.
What would have been good would be a release of the other video tapes that were seized on 9/11. Even if their quality wasn't that good, I'd imagine at least ONE should have something vaguely resembling a plane in it.
It is a complete waste. It's like a George Lucas remake of the original camera that we have already seen over the last 4 1/2 years. And by "George Lucas" remake I mean it is 99% original material, but from new angles!
No plane can be seen and all you really see is a flash of light then an explosion.
I'm not one of those whack-job conspiracy theorists but for Judicial Watch to make claims of, "this will end all conspiracy theories" and then go on to release this load of steaming dog poo is poor judgement and will only continue to be fodder for the tin foil hatters the world over.
the US government has decided to release the videotape depicting the crash of Flight 77 into the Pentagon building, nearly five years after the 9/11 attacks
We should have had this on day 1. How did keeping this under wraps help the Moussaoui trial?
This kind of secretive attitude creates an environment where conspiracy theories flourish. If the Government wants to disprove these theories, they should release as much information as they safely can, instead of fighting tooth and nail to keep everything secret.
What's the ugliest part of your body? Some say your nose, some say your toes, but I think it's your mind. -Zappa
It's obviously all B.S., but it does make you think.
It makes me think that there way too many looney toons out there...
-h-
A government representative commented that they 'hope that this video will put to rest the conspiracy theories.'
Now, that's really stupid and pointless task. Every conspiracy theory is not falsifiable, so there's no point in disproving it.
In short, there's no proof that you can give to conspiracy theorist, that will convince him he is wrong. Just ask any of them, if there is anything in the world that would make him change his mind.
Robert
Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162
While I'm of the opinion that just because little of it can be seen doesn't imply that it must not have happened, I must still say that it's strange that this particular building isn't under better surveillance that they can barely catch an entire plane flying into it clearly.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I hope you realize that the story about 20 or so Arab men conspiring to hijack planes and fly them into various landmarks is a conspiracy theory, as well.
Excellent point AC. Most Conspiracy Theories can be dismissed easily because there probably wasn't even a consipracy to begin with. But 911 *was* a conspiracy, so by defintion any explaination is a conspiracy theory.
Note that even the official theory has all sort of bizarre aspects (James Bond-style mastermind villian in his secret underground bunker, for example).
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Yeah, but there's a big difference between a conspiracy between religious extremists to hijack planes and crash them into the buildings of their enemy and a conspiracy of a government to arrange for an attack on its own people. The latter is what people mean when they talk about a conspiracy in this context. The former, yeah, it's technically and legally a conspiracy, but it's not the kind of thing that you can protect against with tin foil.
it's dangerous to discount all conspiracy theories. The Tuskeegee Experiment was a real conspiracy. The Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish doctrine is a real conspiracy. When landlords get together and change a neighborhood's zoning laws, that's a conspiracy too.
...oh, wait.
These are the kinds of conspiracies that occur without the protection of the federal government. What kinds of schemes might people think up if they're free from any oversight whatsoever?
I'm just saying that a little paranoia is a healthy thing. I'm not saying that our government hides aliens with guitar pick-shaped heads, or that they orchestrated the 9-11 attack, or that they conspired to fool everyone into thinking Iraq had nuclear...
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
Why don't they release the black box recordings of the inflight data?
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make install -not war
>And that strategy has worked exactly when in history?
Um, WWII ring any bells?
What happens when the people who release the evidence have been shown to have been lying about everything else important during that time period? Like cooperation between Saddam and Osama. Like Iraq WMD, including Iraq-bound Niger uranium, nuke-only centrifuges, mobile bioweapon labs - none of which existed. Like preparation for the collapsed Iraqi state we broke, and now own, said to be a nation of flower-throwers. Like finishing the Afhanistan war.
Like no one anticipating that someone would use planes as missiles into our tall buildings - or that levees would collapse in Katrina. Like no domestic calls being spied on. Like cheaper, more plentiful oil. Like cutting federal spending. Like securing our borders. Like increasing the integrity and dignity of the White House.
When lying liars lie about all those important activities, there's no reason to trust evidence they produce that merely protects another story they tell, which if exposed would have kept our country from going down the track to hell it's been on for the past 5 years.
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make install -not war
Well, there's also a big difference between "The government used hologram missiles and controlled demolition to blow up WTC" and "The government used certain bureaucratic mechanisms in order to increase the likelihood of that a known terrorist plot would be successful for ultra-cynical political gain."
Of course, most people in the Conspiracy Theory world don't really understand the difference and there's very much a "ends justify the means" attitude where any crazy idea is good if it will raise doubt on the official theory, and that approach tends to cast the whole lot in tinfoil.
And it still doesn't change the fact that an official conspiracy theory was put forward, and acted on, without a whole lot of evidence. (Not just "religious extremists", but the whole "Al Qaeda==Worldwide Terrorist Network", when the reality is that the conspiracy theory created Al Qaeda rather than visa-versa.)
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
In this case I'm inclined to apply Occam's razor and pick the simplest explanation given the available facts, which are :
- a plane took off
- bits of fuselage were photographed on the lawn of the Pentagon
- three other hijacked planes were seen crashing into other places
- several eyewitnesses reported seeing a plane
Come up with an alternative explanation if you wish - but you have to make it fit with the above facts. The existing conspiracy theories don't.
This is not as far out as it seems. What everybody seems to forget is that Bin Laden was a CIA agent for years and years when he was part of the mujahideen that were fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. He was our boy, on our payroll. We gave him cash, weapons, logistical support, equipment and god knows what else. So what I wanna know is this:
When exactly did Bin Laden quit the CIA?
That's all I wanna know. Well, that and how he did it. I just can't imagine that leaving the employ of the CIA is as easy as leaving, say, Sears. Do they hold you an office party where you're blindfolded the whole time or something? Do they just say, "Remember all that classified info you were privy to over the years? Can you, like, not say anything to anyone about that? K, thx, bye."
It all seems a little fishy. Can somebody point me to a document proving Bin Laden is no longer working for the CIA? Otherwise, don't we have to assume that he is still in their pocket?
Electric Monkey Pants
Even i remember witnesses saying things like car-bombs, truck bombs, and even missles. Which witness do we actually trust? The ones the government backs up?
Hmmm... Pie...
The release of this video is not about "disproving conspiracy theories". It's to remind the american people of what happened 5 years ago. Approval ratings are plummeting across the board, when were the president's approval ratings at their highest? right after 9/11. It's pretty clever, we havent had any other attacks to scare us into submission, why not bring the terrorist attacks of 9/11 back in the citizen's minds? Thats just my two cents
That video has been out for years. All the conspiracy sites show it. This is creapier than ever - the pentagon is rebranding an old video as 'cooperatively releasing sensative information that proves once and for all that a plane hit the pentagon'? Seriously?
And no, I can not spot a 757 in that video. If I was a man in the desert for 50 years, and never heard of 9/11, then saw that video for the first time and was asked to describe what I saw, it would be: "a stream of smoke, a flash, a ball of flame".
Whatever. This news is an insult. A joke is being played here. Again.
It's fairly sensible to accept more sloppy language in something disputing an extraordinary claim than in something making the claim in the first place. If you think about it, you see it everywhere. It's the same reason Snopes is reasonably trusted -- debunking a claim doesn't take nearly the credibility it takes to make one. After a claim is made, the incentives shift, and parties previously uninvolved are brought in. The dialogue changes, but the debate also changes to be more fact-check-y and less initial-claim-make-y. This permits sloppier language to be taken more seriously.
But by all means -- and I say this without sarcasm -- take seriously anything you want using whatever credibility metrics work for you.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
It appears that those claims were false. For them to be considered lies, you need to demonstrate the intent to deceive. Feel free to give it a shot, because it may be true, but everything I've heard so far has been circumstantial.
Uhhhhhh, it's only a conspiracy theory if a false explanation is publicized while the real facts are kept quiet by a conspracy. What is the false explanation for the 20-1 hijackers and what are the real facts, and who are conspiring to keep them secret?
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
1 Bush is not a patsy. He is a member of the cabal who is perfectly happy to be seen as "too dumb to sin". Makes any future trial a LOT easier. But he is in it up to his neck for the same reason Cheney, Rice, and Rumsfeld are: he's an oil man. Nothing more and nothing less. Oil and oil shares are the only things he cares about and he's as happy as the rest of them to kill a few hundred or thousands (especially if they are foreigners) to get them. Iran is just sabre-rattling to boost the price of oil and their collective pension funds.
2. I think Bush simply ignored the warnings because he and his friends thought it was going to be a small attack like the van bomb. That would have been enough of a "Pearl Harbour" for the PNAC. He was genuinely shocked when the scale of it became clear. He must have been thinking about what would happen if the story of all the warnings he'd had came out before his friends in the media clamped the lid on it. He had a close shave but Fox et al came to the rescue and people like John O'Neil were literally buried in the bad news and shock.
Now the reality bit: all empires have been founded on economics. They have to be. It is only in the post-WWII era that governments have decided to pretend otherwise (around the time the War Department became the Defence Department). The reality is that America needs Iraq's oil and now it has it. And if they did not, the American economy would be in deep shit very soon. In the old days this would have been explained openly - proudly - and then the troops sent in. Britain did it all the time. Japan did it. Germany and Italy did it. The Romans did it (grain mostly rather than oil). It's a fact of life. What has changed is that an extra layer of hypocrisy has been added. But there's nothing unusual about invading a country with or without a pretext to seize its resources, even if it means letting someone attack you first when you could have stopped them. The alternative is to drastically change your way of life, a way of life that these guys at the top simply worship and can not even imagine changing just because a bunch of dirty foreign rag-heads object! The idea actually makes them feel ill; you can see it on their faces when they talk about countries that have oil and aren't being properly servile. They hate that. They are by their own definition the pinacle of human achievement and despise anyone who does not vocally agree with that assessment. Look at Bush's crack about the London anti-war protests. The rabble are not entitled to an opinion.
A hundred years ago Wolfowitz would have got a medal, now he gets a cushy job in the World Bank. He successfully defended the American Way of Life(tm). And if you read his speeches and letters about why a pretext for invading Iraq had to be found, I think you'll see that's what he thought all along.
Imperialists are all the same in every place and every time.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Let's crank up our imaginations here. When the front of the airplane hit the Pentagon, the back of the airplane was still moving at 500mph. What do you think happens to an airplane when one end is not moving and the other end is travelling at 500mph? Ever smooshed an aluminum can with your foot? Ever filled it up with kerosene and smooshed it with your foot? Ever do it with a propane torch running next to it at the same time?
If so, I want to stay far, far away from you, because you're a dangerous fool.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Yes, and two wing-shaped slots as well! Because as everyone knows from watching Bugs Bunny, when an object goes through a wall, it cuts out a perfect outline of itself in the wall.
In other words, everyone posting this crap learned their physics from Bugs Bunny.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
The word "pull" is used in the demolitions industry to indicate manual demolition through things like wrecking balls and, literally, pulling the structure over or down. When you talk about explosive demolition, you use the word "shoot".
There is no evidence "melted steel", especially at WTC7. Of course, steel doesn't have to melt in order to fail. I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that at half its melting point, steel has only 25% of its strength.
lol. Wow, awesome. You fell for that claptrap hook, line, and sinker. Did you know that the Windor building is a predominately concrete structure? Did you realize that the steel parts of the building exposed to the fire did fail?
Don't waste my time if you can't be bothered to do basic research.
My God... Why do you people keep insisting that fire was the only cause of these collapses? You only demonstrate severe ignorance and blindness when doing so. Have you forgotten about the two planes that impacted WTC1 and WTC2? How about the severe structural damage (evidence for which I linked to earlier) of WTC7? How many other steel building in history have been subjected to these conditions? You're conveniently ignoring all of this.
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
While your points are correct, I think it's safe to say they're only really significant in hindsight. One of the classic problems with conspiracy theory is that it retroactively highlights facts that, at the time, no one would necessarily have thought significant. Roosevelt may well have expected a Japanese attack of some sort; he almost certainly never imagined a defeat on the scale of Pearl Harbor and the loss of the Phillipines. Similarly, it's unlikely that anyone in the chain of command responsible for blowing the Tonkin incident out of proportion imagined what a quagmire Vietnam would turn into when we took over the war there and their motivations may have been much less grand than sparking a full-blown intervention anyway.
So I think it's a little off-base to say that anyone allowed disasters to happen. The chain of events leading up to them is always clear in retrospect, but another flaw in conspiracy theory is that it attributes such masterful vision and control to the conspiracists leading into the event, and then presumes such incompetence in handling and covering it up. In reality, no one has such complete control nor such prescience. Things become immensely confusing and fractious around such events, and no one who has ever been in the middle of such confusion could give much credence to these grand theories of shadowy orchestration. The Clausewitzian concept of "friction" is very real and works against such clockwork machinations as most concepts of conspiracy would have you believe.
No relation to Happy Monkey
Seen these?
1 51.stm
6 69.stm
. stm
BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Hijack 'suspects' alive and well
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1559
BBC News | MIDDLE EAST | Hijack 'suspect' alive in Morocco
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1558
BBC News | AMERICAS | FBI probes hijackers' identities
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1553754
So much for "facts" about your 19 hijackers.
And by the way, you speak of facts, but we have never been shown proof. You know, that thing that establishes facts as such. We were told it was Bin Laden within hours of the attack, and we were told proof was forthcoming. But it never, um, forthcame.
"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." - Marshall McLuhan
I hope this was intended funny --or-- OMG you are ignorant. Cell phones work on planes without a transponder or re-transmitter on the plane. You just are discouraged from using the cell phone while it is in flight. I used my cell phone just last week from inside a plane on the ground. Now it might be at certain altitudes and great distances from city center a cell phone wouldn't connect, but when a hijacking is in progress nobody is going to think "Oh, I can't use my cell phone, it's against FAA rules." They will just flip open and try, and if close enough to a cell tower(s) it will work.
This is exactly what I'm talking about with wish fulfillment. You assume you know something about how something works then assume it is an inviolate law of the universe, which completely upholds and supports your position, but mostly because it is what you want to believe. Perhaps the cell phones had poor connections or experienced frequent drop outs, but work they did. No doubt you will fire back with some other half backed urban nonsense to prove me wrong. But I won't bother responding to what would be a pointless debate the likes of which I've had dozens of other times with conspiracy nuts who believe in things like: crop circle (alien origin), Face on Mars, Faked Moon landings, and Creationism.
Letter To Iran
"One flaw in the "19 Arab taking out the towers" theory is the military precision required for an effort like this."
Military precision? I'm confused. How much "military precision" does one need to book tickets on four different airline flights that will be taking off at about the same time? And then say, "Okay, twenty minutes into the flight, get up and..."
I once arranged flights for people leaving from NY, San Diego, Indy, and Chicago to go skiing in Denver. We all ARRIVED within 30 minutes of one another, gathered up our gear, headed out to the waiting rental car, and took off to the prearranged condo.
I guess I must be ex-military...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Yep. That makes sense. Of course, you probably need ex-military pilots willing to commit suicide as they'd need that skill to hit both towers on the exact levels where sufficient high-explosives were pre-positioned to pancake the structure.
Or is video footage of the towers collapse beginning at the same floors where the planes struck them coincidence? Or did demolition experts also willing to commit suicide and wearing fireproof suits run into the building and onto those floors and, in the middle of a raging inferno, place high explosives in the exact spots need to "pull" the building?
Yeah, I can see how that kind of "theory" is more plausible...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
It's quite simple, actually: the tape will last a lot longer if you shoot it at only one frame per one or two seconds. If you're trying to find out at what time did a car enter or exit the compound (which the cameras the footage was taken from seem to be there for, judging from their position), this will just about suffice; with any luck, you'll even see a blurry picture of the driver. You can see a police car in the videos; this is something the camera was meant to take pictures of. You cannot see the plane, but it's hardly surprising as a plane can move a lot faster than a car.
Hell is not other people; it is yourself. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
Well, I guess that's my cue.
Since I was on an on-site call for much of yesterday, this is the first opportunity I've had to post here. Sorry for the delay.
Well, I've looked very carefully at the newly released video (as I'm sure everyone else in the nation has by now), and like most others, I'm rather disappointed. I was really hoping for some sort of conclusive evidence (one way or another) so we might finally put one of the 9/11 controversies to bed.
Unfortunately, the newly released video shows nothing conclusive...quite the contrary. There is only one frame that contains new information...the alleged 'nose cone'. However, this nose cone certainly does not look like it belongs to a 757, although it is understandable that at the speeds this object was travelling (450-500 mph), there will be a certain amount of blurring.
It's a real shame that the only frame in video 1 that seems to show any of the aircraft has the aircraft hidden behind that yellow column, while the only frame in video 2 that seems to show any of the aircraft shows only a tiny bit of the nose. I realize that these are CCTV cameras whose framerate is not high, but while it's unfortunate that video 1 contains no useful information about the aircraft, the fact that video 2 has no useful info either can only be described as unfortunate squared. How unlucky can you get?
From the BBC article: Exactly how is a blurry, indistinct shot of a nose cone that doesn't seem to belong to a 757 going to 'put to rest' the conspiracy theories? All this video can do is fan the flames.
This video was not released to attempt to put the conspiracy theories to rest...it was released for one purpose only...to forcefully remind the general public of 9/11. Bush' numbers at the polls are abyssmal, and beating his breast over 9/11 hs been proven to help them. After all, the link to the video on Fox News is titled 'Timely reminder of a clear and present danger'. Timely, indeed.
If the government was truly interested in ending the controversy, why not release the several other videos that were shot that day? Neil Cavuto of Fox News said that 'the other videos didn't pan out', but if that's the case, why does the government need to deny access to them at all? Why can't we see them? It's not like the don't exist.
Another quote from Fox News' Neil Cavuto: No, Neil, it's not 'odd' at all. It's what we've come to expect from a President who shamelessly uses the horror of 9/11 to further his own political ends.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
What would we gain? We would know more about terrorist techniques than we know now. Maybe the terrorists somehow smuggled fuel or explosives into the planes to make their impact more destructive. The only evidence that we have for exactly what went on during the hijacking is the remains of the planes themselves. Why would you want to ignore this very important information when you're waging a war on terror?
When there is a crime, there needs to be a complete investigation of the physical evidence. That's standard procedure for all crime scene investigations. You don't just march in, declare what happened, and throw all the evidence in the trash. If, however, you do decide to violate these age-old procedures, it makes you look extremely suspicious.
"...why would they invest that kind of time and resources?"
Look, they have to clean up the sites. They are going to encounter plane parts in the debris. How much extra time and effort is it to gather all the plane debris into a hangar? Very little.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
I just don't see a part of our government having what it would take to pull off such a massive undertaking, and be able to not only successively pull it off, but, keep the evidence of their involvement covered up.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I am pointing at contradictions in their stories with the list (few posts above) of facts that are reasonally well documented. I am not making a story up, I don't have enough facts for that. All I know is that I don't know what happened on 9/11/2001 and that the official version doesn't hold.
This administration has been seen telling a big lie (Iras has WMD) and getting along with that without even a word of excuse.
It then told another big lie (Iraq-Al Quaeda ties). What is so unbelievable in the fact that they could have lied on another intelligence report ?
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Every aspect of every conspiracy theory about 9/11 has been systematically debunked somewhere or another. Since the WTC was structurally unique, comparisons to other buildings really don't have much bearing in the matter, and while they anticipated the impact of a 707, they did not take into account the combined effect of impact and a full load of fuel; all of this, of course, assumes that the designers were correct when saying that the building could withstand a 707. Timelines show that jets were scrambled in a timely manner when the situation was understood (within minutes of realizing the planes were hijacked and pinpointing their locations.) The dissenting expert opinions are not unusual in science; all scientific fields have their share of wing nuts, but these are fringe opinions usually based upon a single, simplistic, and inconclusive study. There were also people who speculated openly in the early days, and have since come to regret it. In the course of normal science these come out in the wash, but conspiracy theorists cherry pick these and run with them--in some cases, long after the original proponent has disowned and attempted to kill the theory attributed to him. There are pseudo-scientific theories that persist decades after they have been debunked.
The most frustrating thing about conspiracy theories is not the individual factoids that comprise them, but the profound ignorance of human nature, and the obessively magical thinking, that underlie them. As Ben Franklin said, three may keep a secret if two of them are dead. 9/11 conspiracy theories require thousands of conspirators--think of just what would be required to run drone planes into buildings, dispose of all the passengers, rig the buildings, fake everything so that the airlines wouldn't notice, and on, and on, and on. Even the mafia can't keep a secret when the boss tells one guy to whack another, and that's a conspiracy of two, protected by the Omerta!
Only a true fanatic can keep secrets like these, and then, only for a short time, provided he is kept relatively isolated. The Al Queda plan was remarkeably low tech with few moving parts and carried out by a small group of fanatics, most of whom did not arrive in America until a couple days beforehand. Even so, it almost got discovered beforehand. In the aftermath, there is almost no detail of how it was done that we don't know. Compare this with conspiracy theories, which remain isolated pinpoints of data organized by a unifying myth. The Al Queda plan left a big footprint. A government conspiracy would have left an even bigger one.
Conspiracy theories are the new secular religion, supported by the same cognitive errors which support religion, and serving the same purpose. To the conspiracy theorist, the dark cabals which run the world are both stupid and supernaturally brilliant, fools who are somehow capable of godlike prescience, omiscience, and control. The conspiracy theorist himself is a figure on the same mythical scale: he has pierced the veil of the illuminati, seen what few have seen--he is the great challenger to this omnipotent cabal. By following his warnings, we shall overcome the evil presence which has corrupted our world from within, and restore all to goodness and innocence. It's all good, because the solution is so simple.
You'll never convince him otherwise, because his entire conception of self is wound up in the idea that he is the rare visionary, the one who cannot be fooled. To admit that he is wrong would require him to admit that he is profoundly wrong, not just gulled, but gullible. This would be a fall of luciferian proportion, from grand visier to court fool. Conspiracy theorists tend to be marginal and disenfranchised. The fall from mythic heights to the harsh reality of their lives is very hard indeed.
The reality, of course, is that there may actually be no one in control, that both the leaders and the conspiracy theorists can't tell their assholes from a gopher hole, and that this has been the situation for nearly all of hum