Okay,
On a more serious note. I have been reading comments in response to the "9/11 Deniers Speak" video. Interesting points raised. I'd just like to offer my fair share of points.
Once, in order to speak out with any authority on a topic, one had to be an authority. The people who created works of scientific or investigative nature (originally "Books") these people could not get their works published unless they were recognised to be an authority.
The same is not true today. Anyone can be "published". PCs provide the tools for self-authorship. The internet provides a ready audience for self-publication.
Thus being "published", having created a work, does not promise status as an authority, the way it used to. As such, it is only just, and right, and responsible, that people who publish their works in this way present their credentials. Work that is not supported by authority should be rejected (Note, I am using "authority" in the scientific sense, not the government sense).
When people do not present their credentials, it is only just and right and proper that the market for these works seek those credentials independently.
And when people discover that the "authors" of works are not authorities, and have no credentials, it is the duty of those people to inform the rest of the audience of this fact.
Would any of us allow a doctor without qualifications to go unhindered? Would we leave a fake policeman unexposed? Would we look the other way while a con-man herbalist tricks cancer sufferers into handing over their money for false promises?
I would not. Never. I would expose those people for what they are, without remorse, without sympathy.
This is what MarkyX has done with the "Deniers Speak" video. He has drawn down the curtain and revealed the little weedy man behind the wizard. He has exposed the charlatans, who feast on human misery like some kind of ghoul.
I applaud his work, and I applaud the work of everyone else here who has worked tirelessly to battle this wave of ignorance.
May the whole world see these miserable peddlers in paranoia for what they truly are.
The consequences of the truth are the burden of these people, and they alone. May they reap what they sow.
-Andrew
ETA. Okay, I ranted a little... but the sentiment remains.
