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Conspiracy theories are an oddly resilient part of our culture. In the past weeks, the death of Osama Bin Laden provided a great deal of new material for dedicated theorists - whereas the moon landing, Roswell and the Kennedy assassination have proven irrestible to these observers in the past, they’ve grown stale. Bin Laden’s death could prove to be a real shot in the arm for people like this.

Of course, the mainstream media treated the rumours that Bin Laden was alive with very little credence. Even The Washington Post, a serious publication, noted the proximity of the terrorist leader’s death to Zombie Awareness Month. But even the seemingly decisive report following Bin Laden’s death proved to be riddled with inaccuracies - a careful spin on the truth of the situation by the US military and the White House press team. Why, many people argued, would the truth need to be treated?

Accusations of cover-ups and conspiracies have dogged the American government since the very beginning of the War on Terror. Two films from the past decade explored the facts and theories surrounding the 9/11 attacks with a keen eye for detail and a wilful disregard for the US government’s official story. Loose Change 9/11: An American Coup, the big-budget successor to the wildly popular Youtube hit Loose Change, explored the aftermath from a forensic angle. Through careful scientific analysis, the film argues that the World Trade Center’s collapse could only have been the result of a controlled demolition - a thesis which the presence of thermite dust at Ground Zero heavily supports. The film has attained enormous success and mainstream notoriety.

Zero: An Investigation Into 9/11 is another film exploring the WTC collapse. Unlike Loose Change, Zero examines the global political ripples caused by 9/11 - including the coalition invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq - and raises a number of questions about how the United States could have profited from engineering the attacks (or allowing them to happen).  Both eyewitnesses and academics (including Nobel-winner Dario Fo and novelist Gore Vidal) pick apart the alleged facts of September 11th in fascinating detail. Both films are available to view on Joining the Docs right now.