the greycat blog

As everyone who has more than a passing acquaintance with CafePress knows, most of the stuff that is sold there is rubbish. Occasionally, however, decent designs and clever concepts appear through the mire of mediocrity, and in ‘t-shirt of the week’ it’s my intention to highlight the good ones that come to my notice. CafePress sells a lot of different product lines these days, but t-shirts are what most people are interested in, so it’s ‘t-shirt of the week’ rather than ‘CafePress product of the week’ (which is less snappy as a title anyway).

First up: the AD/79 Truth shop sells a nice line in Pompeii truther-wear. ‘Pompeii was an inside job, impeach Emperor Titus’, etc. Guaranteed to appeal to volcanologists and truth-seekers everywhere.

The unhinged ravings of the 9/11 conspiracy theorists may be contemptible by any standard of rational and moral human conduct, but they nonetheless constitute a serious and disturbing phenomenon and need serious study. Dr Richard Landes, eminent historian of millennialism, has made a start.

9-11 Conspiracy constitutes the most powerful conspiracy theory in the brief history of the internet age. Within hours of the attacks, accusations that the Israeli Mossad had planned and executed the attacks while “4000 Jews stayed at home,” appeared, particularly in the Arab world, a textbook case of internet conspiracy mongering. In the Muslim world these theories became the dominant public voice. There, traditional conspiracy operated: We are innocent, our enemies are guilty.

[…]

Many Americans still prefer not to even discuss this matter: the owl’s first line of defense is to ignore the roosters. The necessary disproofs, including a new, peer-reviewed Journal of Debunking 911 Conspiracy Theories (2006-) — are available online for all to consult; what more need be said? That, as in so many cases of conspiracism, reasoning takes a back seat to desire? That people can visit a site with good evidence for a plane crash, and still believe the conspiracy. That the consequences of not thinking clearly about this may be very serious?

An excellent piece of work. Read the whole thing at Professor Landes’s blog, Augean Stables.

[Found via Screw Loose Change.]

The grasp of history shown by 9/11 conspiracy idiots is every bit as firm as their grasp of, say, rational debate or the laws of physics. While browsing all the dreadful 9/11 stuff that is sold through CafePress I came across a range of shirts making use of the ‘World Trade Center was Bush’s Reichstag’ motif. Brilliantly, they illustrate this idea with a design in which President Bush’s face is superimposed onto a picture of … Benito Mussolini.

I keenly await the next design in the series, in which the attack on the Pentagon is likened to Adolf Hitler’s surprise assault on Pearl Harbor.