Saturday, May 31, 2008

Al Qaeda Unfair to Women?

Maybe this is the answer to defeating terrorism; sic the feminists on them?

In response to a female questioner, al-Qaida No. 2 leader Ayman Al-Zawahri said in April that the terrorist group does not have women. A woman's role, he said on the Internet audio recording, is limited to caring for the homes and children of al-Qaida fighters.

His remarks have since prompted an outcry from fundamentalist women, who are fighting or pleading for the right to be terrorists. The statements have also created some confusion, because in fact suicide bombings by women seem to be on the rise, at least within the Iraq branch of al-Qaida.


A reminder, in case one was needed, that the terrorists can be just as goofy as the Troofers.

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SF Truther Rally



If you'd told Dylan on September 11, 2006 that he'd be marching in San Francisco with what appears to be fewer than 100 people, he would have laughed in your face. And what an idiotic chant; it just goes on and on! Definitely not worth watching till the end; the first two minutes are more than adequate.

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So There Were Hijackers?

I was a bit surprised to see this post by Alex Floum on 911 Blogger:

The overwhelming majority of 9/11 skeptics believe that real planes were in fact hijacked, but that the U.S. government knew exactly what they were planning and when they were planning to do it, and that the U.S. air force was intentionally stood down so that the attacks could succeed. In other words, we're not saying that the rogue elements within the U.S. government which aided and abetted the attacks necessarily chose what country the hijackers were from


What the hell? Whatever happened to the remote controlled planes and the hijackers are still alive arguments? Are you now claiming that the last 4 versions (now 5) of Loose Change were wrong? Can you people make up your minds about anything?

Another poster on 911 Blogger hilariously takes issue with this claim, employing the David Ray Griffin scientific method.

A) It is always dangerous to try to "solve the case:" This allows so called "debunkers" to focus on the holes in our theories and draws attention away from their inadequate "solutions." Even the best hypothesis will leave loose ends and can be debatable in historical research.

Yeah, let's focus on what is really important, because it is not at all about trying to explain what actually happened, it is just about trying to keep the debunkers from making fun of you.

9-11 Truth Diet Results



According to the people with him, Blair is now down about 8 pounds, which you can see he does not have to spare. He needs a little less 9-11 Truth and a little more hamburgers and hotdogs. They also talk about how he feels "fantastic" which strikes me as the wrong note. Surely they want to express how hungry he is.

Tomorrow they are going to celebrate his first week. Of course, it will actually only be six days, since he started on Memorial Day, but then the Truthers never were good with calendars.

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Friday, May 30, 2008

Barrett Campaign Spokesman Mentally Diseased or Defective?

Kudos to Midnighter over at Truth Action for digging this one up:

Rolf Lindgren, vice chairman of the Libertarian Party of Wisconsin, was sentenced to five months in Dane County jail Friday following his fourth drunken driving offense.

Lindgren pleaded no contest in February to drunken driving, driving with a prohibited alcohol concentration and driving with a revoked license. But he also pleaded not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, prompting a jury trial that in November found he was not suffering from a mental disease when he was arrested in Middleton in 2003.


I suppose it should come as no surprise that Barrett's campaign staff is nutty; look at the candidate. But it's rare indeed to find somebody using their lunacy as a defense!

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Well That is a New Claim

Usually these guys are repetitive, but occasionally they come up with a new claim, not noticing that it contradicts their previous ones.



On Sept. 11 2001, Los Angeles filmmaker Paul Cross was doing post- production work in Washington DC when he heard about the "terrorist" attack. He visited the crash-site five hours after impact and could plainly see the official story was a lie.

"There was no passenger jet wreckage; the lawn wasn't scorched; lamp posts, fences and construction materials in the path of the jet were untouched." Cross told me. "If this was a hoax, then the attack on the World Trade Center was also a hoax."




The lampposts were untouched? Really?


Are We Seeing the Great Boomer Truther Reconvergence?

I have to wonder after seeing this absurd post over at 9-11 Blogger by the Waterboy Wonder himself, Kevin Ryan.

Received some new photos of the WTC destruction. More roasted cars are shown, and these have not been moved, but are pictured at the point of roasting – in the WTC parking complex.


Ryan specifies that he's ruling out star wars beams, but aside from that it sure looks like an attempt at pulling back the old Scholars together; this whole focus on "roasted cars" being a Judy Woods favorite. Note the hilarious comments as the Truthers try to fathom what their new marching orders are from the Jones/Ryan fragment:

the debunkers will say something about "the raging fires" or the "heat generated by the collapse".

How should we respond?


I'm going to guess that the split in the Truthers is going generational. I noted this about the 2007 anniversary blasts in New York; there was a distinct split between the We Are Change folks and the Les Jamieson crowd. Alex Jones was probably the oldest big name at the WAC fest, and he's still only what, 34? He just looks older. By contrast, almost all the names at the Jamieson shindig made me look youthful and hirsute.

I suspect what's happening is that all the older toads are getting together just as they are about to hibernate for awhile. As we have discussed, 9-11 Truth has once again failed to make millionaires out of anybody. The fantasy that it would (which has animated the Troofer researchers ever since the original Time Magazine claim that Thierry Meyssan was getting rich) deflated with the Loose Change Final Cut non-phenomenon.

It's one thing when a market is exploding like the Truthers were (admittedly) in 2005 and 2006. But when you can see the market is still small and no longer growing, it becomes quite another.

A round of applause for the debunkers who have battled against Jones and Ryan! I say it's surrender from the JONES crew, that they have acknowledged that they'd rather make common cause with their generational buddies, no matter how wacky the theories, than with the supposedly sensible Truthers at 9-11 Blogger, 9-11 Truth Action, etc. What happens to everybody who doesn't burrow under near somebody else during a long winter?

They freeze to death.

Microspheres Debunked

You can see why I love being at JREF; there are so many amazing people over there, like Crazy Chainsaw, whose tricks with the chainsaw have made Ripley's Believe It Or Not several times. Those killer microspheres turn out to be eminently explainable and indeed expected:

Brake pads on heavy equipment, especially cranes, and excavators produce micro spheres with silicon, Concrete cut off saws with Aluminum oxide and silicon binder do the same. Clutches and big truck brakes also. As well as some sand papers using silicon binders with aluminum oxide.
Iron fibers and Diatomaceous Earth are used in brake pads, on equipment and vehicles.


And:

Until site contamination is resolved the work of Dr. Steven E Jones and the other Scholars on the micro spheres is garbage Pseudo Science.


Wow.

And later:

Add 2 Cycle engines, lawn mowers, weed eaters anything with aluminum push rods and steel crank shafts to the list of micro sphere producers. During the break in cycle, and during rundown right before the engine blows they produce micro spheres from friction of the crank shaft against the piston rod.
Those spheres are thrown out the 2 cycles exhaust system.


Well, you know I'm sure nobody uses those archaic weed eaters with aluminum push rods and steel crank shafts. ;)

Great work. I always say we don't do the best debunking out there, we just know where it can be found!

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Richard Gage On Alex Jones

Troy mentioned there might be something worth listening to in old Foghorn's program today, so I thought I'd check it out. Hilariously, Gage is still citing Kevin McPadden's claim of the countdown and the explosions at the base of WTC 7, complete with the "Run for your life!" bit. But the fact remains that he also claims he was quite close to Amy Goodman, who did not have to run for her life. In my opionion, McPadden's one of the classic narcissists of the movement, who in the past have included Indira Singh and Richard Andrew Grove.

Gage talks about the growing numbers of A&E members. He mentions he'll be in Phoenix on June 28th (swell, I have to sit through the idiot's two-hour lecture in order to get in a line to ask him most likely one question). He also claims that thanks to Karen Johnson, he'll be giving a one-hour presentation to the other Republican state senators here. We'll see about that; I think I can make enough of a stink that he gets uninvited, or that at the very least the senators respectfully discover a more urgent appointment. Gage claims he plans to have 1000 Architects & Engineers on board by 9-11-08, which is dreaming; he has 395 according to his website and would need to add about six a day to get there.

Jones talks a bit about the crap he gets from debunkers. He says we have been making fun of the fact that Richard Gage's wife left him over his Trutherism. Actually as far as I know, that's the first I've heard that fact (excepting an hour or so ago when I read Troy mention it coming up on the show in the comments). Alex rants on how once they prove 9-11 was an inside job they're going to check the debunkers' bank accounts (privacy suddenly isn't important to Alex), and if we've taken money from the government, we're going to go to prison.

But I'm not going to laugh at Gage because his wife left him. That's why we do this, so that more Richard Gages won't break up their families over this crap. I've now heard of at least 4-5 divorces over Trutherism; one Truther memorably expressed happiness that his ex-wife died in a car crash so that he got custody of his kids back. Remember the kid whose dad held a box-cutter to his throat to show him how funny it was? Or the guy who couldn't get anybody to hang out by the barbecue with him because they knew he'd start in with the "Those coals remind me that fire's not hot enough to melt steel." Or the guy--Lucus?--who broke up with his girlfriend because he knew the feds were going to be after him after he released his video on Google? Yeah it sounds funny, but these are real lives being wasted in pursuit of a big nothing.

Later Alex begs for the people to send him money, so he can sue debunkers, not to win money from us, but to make us hire lawyers. It's called a nuisance lawsuit, Alex, and judges frown on that, especially when you admit it over the air. Gage then takes advantage of the opportunity to beg for funds himself, looking for more "sustaining members" at $10 a month. Such a deal!

Gage goes into his spiel about "freefall speeds" and "pulverized concrete" and "molten metal" and I admit to thinking uncharitably that his wife made a sound decision. She doesn't have to listen to this nonsense anymore and I do.

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The Pentagon Fire

Marty Moss-Coane had an awesome interview (May 27, 2008 show in the archives) of one of the authors of Firefight: Inside the Battle to Save the Pentagon on 9-11. Very interesting program and fascinating to listen to Patrick Creed on the Pentagon fire. We don't talk as much about the Pentagon fire itself; most of the CT centers on whether Flight 77 or some other plane or missile hit the Pentagon. There is a great deal in here that the Pentagon no-planers will have troubles with, including discussion of body parts, the damage, etc. I'm impressed to learn that the main fire burned for three days, and that pockets lasted until a week later.

Excellent interview and I am sure that the book will pose a significant challenge to most of the conspiracy theories at the Pentagon.

Hat Tip: Torrent29

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Smooth Me!



Wow, nice to see that I really have lost weight since then! Now you see why I took up riding my bicycle everywhere that it was feasible (I do have to drive at times).

In answer to the question, as far as I know, Rick Siegel hasn't posted a comment here in a year or more. Nico posts comments quite frequently. Unlike Jenny, whose work this seems to be loosely based on, Nico has never made disgusting comments on our blog. He's never threatened me. He's never lied to me, which is so goddamn rare in the 9-11 "Truth" movement that Nico Haupt might as well be Diogenes' honest man.

Yes, the No-Planers are nuts. But the idea that there's some subset of Truthers that shouldn't be bouncing off the rubber walls is a non-starter, which is why unlike 9-11 Blogger we don't ban no-planers or even the CIT nutbars from posting their crap in the comments. It's called letting the truth come out, by exposing the arguments on both sides.

The Last Living Brain Cell

I have always considered chemtrails to be the last resort of the conspiracy theorist, the point at which all sense of reality has been lost, and paranoia has completely taken over. Well, apparently Steven Jones, on Hang em High Barrett's show last night, has reached this point.

Jones: There is more to this movement, than just 9/11 truth. The peace movement, if we could continue to work with people in the peace movement. I know Jim has tried to reach out, and I believe you have as well, to activists interested in the peace movement. And so I, in particular research... I'd loved to do... research for hard physical evidence one way or another on various questions and uh, Sofia got me looking at chemtrails for example. And I'm not ready to talk about that too much, I have actually made some observations. I have not (unintelligible) what's in those trails, but some of those do certainly last longer than others. And that's... I could go into that a little bit, but I think that that's a valid area and it's not 9/11 but it is truth. It still gets back to this question of what's happening in our society, and who is doing it to us. I guess I could put it that way, the question keeps coming up.

Barrett: It sure does, and in both cases 9/11 and possibly chemtrails it would appear that aspects of the military industrial complex and the national security state have seized control of our government.


I am looking forward to future peer-reviewed articles in the Journal of Chemtrail Studies.

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Scholar Schism Make-up?

I got this from an e-mail group, forwarded from Kevin "hang 'em high" Barrett. Apparently Steven Jones and Jim Fetzer, who had a rather public falling out which led them to split their "Scholars" group, are kissing and making up:

Jim Fetzer writes: "I have tremendous admiration for Steve's recent paper 'Fourteen Points of Agreement with Official Government Reports on the World Trade Center Destruction,' co-authored by Frank M. Legge, Kevin R. Ryan, Anthony F. Szamboti, and James R. Gourley: http://www.911blogger.com/node/15081 I think it is brilliant the way the authors made their points by 'agreeing' with NIST and FEMA. While I remain convinced that conventional explosives alone cannot account for the nature and extent of the damage to the World Trade Center, I also welcome Steve's ongoing research on thermite and thermate residues. Thermate and thermite may well have contributed to the destruction of the Twin Towers and even been used to bring down WTC-7. I have invited Steve to return to my show for another interview, assuring him that I will let Steve get in a word or two now and then. I would like to do whatever I can to acquire a united front for 9/11 research, including urging us to support those rarest of animals, 9/11 truth candidates who are running for office. Someone like Kevin could make a huge difference."


9/11 truth guru David Ray Griffin even chimes in, endorsing the work of Fetzer, and paranoid anti-semitic numerologist and former Army Reserve officer Eric May:

Here is David Ray Griffin's take, written in response to someone who had harshly criticized Jim Fetzer:

"Jim Fetzer has done a lot of good work and did much to build up the scholarly component of the 9/11 truth movement. "It is true that I ultimately dropped out of his organization (Scholars for 9/11 Truth) and instead, along with many others, joined Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice, which is associated with Steven Jones. But my leaving involved issues of style rather than substantive matters (although it's also true that Jim had used his position as head of Scholars inappropriately, I thought, to promote some controversial theories, rather than remaining publicly neutral while allowing Scholars to be a place where these theories could be debated in a scholarly manner; but these are matters of judgment, on which sincere people can
disagree).

"Part of the good work Jim has done is the article he co-authored with Captain May and two other military men."

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About Those 85 Videotapes...

This is pretty goofy even for the Troofers. We've heard over and over again that there were 85 videos of the Pentagon, but look at the affidavit filed by Jacqueline Maguire of the FBI, summarized by our old buddy Ref here:

So there are no 85 tapes from Pentagon. There are 85 tapes. Many of these videotapes do not have footage of the Pentagon at all. Instead, many have footage of the WTC, some are security video tapes taken from a Kinko's in Florida, etc. Some that show the Pentagon were taken days after the attacks, and some in the evening of 9/11/2001.


I would also note this helpful breakdown:

She determined that the FBI had 85 videotaptes that might be relevant. Of those, 56 "of these videotapes did not show either the Pentagon building, the Pentagon crash site, or the impact of Flight 77 into the Pentagon on September 11."
* Of the 29 remaining videotapes, 16 "did not show the Pentagon crash site and did not show the impact of Flight 77 into the Pentagon."
* Of the 13 remaining tapes which showed the Pentagon crash site, 12 "only showed after the impact of Flight 77."


Do the math, kiddies. That means one video is left that shows the crash site before the impact, and Special Agent Maguire is referring to the guard shack fisheye lens camera.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Old Conspiracy Theories Never Die

I am used to the nutters rehashing old long ago debunked theories, but even I was surprised to see this one, from a post on rense.com today:

But all of Lucky Larry's problems disappeared on Sept. 11, 2001. Silverstein filed TWO insurance claims for the maximum amount of the policy, based on two, in Silverstein's view, separate attacks. The total potential payout is $7.1 bn., more than enough to build a fabulous new complex and leave a hefty profit for the Silverstein Group, including Larry Silverstein himself. Lucky Larry would also miss his usual breakfast at the Windows on the World restaurant on the 107th floor of the North Tower and survive that fateful day together with 3,999 of 4,000 Israelis who normally were in the WTC, a statistical anomaly of huge proportions).

Claims of "strawman" in 5.. 4... 3.. 2...

The RakeOnRake Theory

Oh, my, it is seldom that we come across anything as perfectly formed as this bit of nuttery.

Think about it. The first requirement of crackpot claim is that the author acknowledge that others have laughed at him in the past:

Almost 18 months ago I shared these sketches, which didn't go over very well here.


Second, you must acknowledge your lack of formal training:

I'm not an engineer.


You must claim that you make up for that in real-world experience:

I've worked in construction and read lots of books on building....


Undercut by a dubious claim:

...and I operate a lot in the failure mode through taking on the repair of hopelessly broken stuff other people consider garbage, and when I'm building stuff for my own use I deliberately underbuild it to try to generate instructive failures.


A humorous anecdote about past mistakes helps establish you're human:

My first project was as a five-year-old--a chair that provided an interesting (and instant) shear failure when I sat on it.


Next comes the "someday I'll be famous for this" claim that is common to crackpots of all stripes:

I have reason to believe that one of these days you're going to see some diagrams from more authoritative sources that look something like these.


And then comes the completely incomprehensible "theory", with no explanation:









When people respond predictably with cries of "What the hell is that supposed to be?", it helps to say that if you don't understand, something must be wrong with you:

If your co-workers have any questions, intelligent or otherwise, please forward them. That you were unable to intuit the obvious implications of rakeonrake suggests that, if they're anything like you, they won't have any at all.


Wow. Hat Tip to Willim Teach. Arrrrr!

PetGoat was one of our honorees for quote of the year in 2006, and I have no doubt he will be in the running this year.

Les Jamieson Making Promises He Can't Keep?

Les is apparently caught up in the NYC ballot initiative, which the Troofers, in their usual inimitable style, are going to screw up royally. They apparently need 30,000 valid signatures by June 30 to get the petition reviewed by the NY City Council, but in order to be sure they are aiming for 100,000 signatures so that any rejects don't cost them their place on the ballot. Of course, this is going to be a little tough, considering that so far they have 7500 signatures. DOH!

There will be a rally for the ballot initiative at St. Mark's Church, which is where the NY Truthers hold their regular meetings. But Les claims that John Feal is scheduled to be one of the speakers, and as you can see in the right sidebar at that site, he is listed. Quoting from an email Jamieson sent out:

Featured speakers include:

Wayne Madsen, investigative reporter, retired NSA analyst
John Feal, 9/11 first responder, Director of the Feal Good Foundation
William Rodriguez, 9/11 hero and last survivor of WTC1
Sander Hicks, 9/11 author/researcher, founder of Voxpop.net
Jesse Richard, founder of TVNewsLies.org
Karen Johnson, state senator from Arizona (by phone)


One problem. Nobody apparently told John Feal. Quoting from a private email:

I contacted Feal and he said he will not be speaking: that they contacted him, he didn't reply, and they added his name without permission. Scumbags.


Indeed. Kudos to the Gravy Meister, Mark Roberts, who despite reports to the contrary has not dropped out of the debunking community.

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Judy Does Seattle

The Keebler Elves lady will be appearing in James' neck of the woods on Thursday, May 29.

Apparently the no-planes contingent is strong in the Emerald City, but they know they're getting into trouble with the national movement:

NOTE:
Although acting as sponsor, Seattle911visibilityproject takes no position on the subject of DEW as a causative factor in the collapse of the WTC Towers on 9/11/2001. The event is posted as a courtesy to John Hutchison, and Dr. Judy Wood, in their ongoing studies.

Monday, May 26, 2008

No Highrise Ever Collapsed Because of Fire?

Wow, this is an impressive comp:



At the Delft University of Holland, Department of Architecture, there was a fire apparently in the last two weeks:

The Faculty of Architecture in Delft has burned down and collapsed. It was ‘the biggest disaster in Dutch university history’, as the Dutch minister of Education said. Fire escape plans worked perfect: students, professors and employees could all get out in time. But the 13 story building – about 40 years old – collapsed.


More discussion here:



Apparently a leak in a coffee machine caused the fire.

Hat Tip to jberryhill at the JREF Forums.

An Afternoon with the "Truthers"

I went down to Senator McCain's office to meet with the local conspiracy theorists. There was a pretty good-sized crowd there; I'm going to guess 25-30 people, maybe even 35. A fair number were kids, and I mean kids--there were easily eight children from 7-12 years old, and they were among the most enthusiastic, although we'll assume they haven't done a lot of research themselves and are just going along with what Mom and Dad were doing.

I located Blair Gadsby and introduced myself. My experience with Truthers has tended to be positive, and Blair didn't break the mold. Nice guy, very well-spoken, not angry in the slightest, but quite sincere in his belief about 9-11 "Truth". I talked to him enough to get his particular flavor of 9-11 conspiracy. He believes that the hijackers existed, is not sure they flew the planes into the buildings (he expressed some support for the remote-controlled theory), but that somebody--the government but maybe not Bush per se--made things worse by controlled demolition of the buildings.

This is the same kind of conspiracy theory that Rob Bishop described to me on his show; a kind of LIHOP plus CD. I haven't thought that one through, but it strikes me that there are some grave problems with this theory; how did they know what stories the planes would hit, for example? And how do you accept the hijackers, but then switch over to remote controlled planes?

I also talked with another pleasant guy named Craig, who hit me up with "eight hijackers are alive". Lord, I'll be hearing that one on on my deathbed. Craig also tried the "Flight Manifests didn't have the hijackers" routine. Karen Johnson, the State Senator Troofer, was there but unfortunately my digital camera chose today to go on the fritz, so I didn't bother to interview her.

I did bring out a couple of the signs. I had my "Let's Roll" shirt (authorized by the Todd Beamer Foundation), and I came up with a pretty good riff on that. On one side, I had "When Americans Say Let's Roll, They Mean:" with pictures of Todd Beamer, Jeremy Glick and Mark Bingham. On the reverse, I wrote, "When Truthers Say Let's Roll, They Mean:" with a picture of a guy smoking a joint.

At any rate, I enjoyed myself reasonably well. I was a little disturbed/disappointed at the number of cars honking as they passed the group. This is not a neighborhood that anybody would consider terribly "Truther-friendly". There were some people pushing other causes along the roadside, and at least some of the reaction could have been to the "Recall Mayor Gordon" woman. (Gordon is in a feud with County Sheriff Joe Arpaio over illegal immigrant roundups by the latter). But I'd have to say a fair number of people seemed to be reacting positively to the "Truthers" and nobody was angry or flipped them the bird while I was there.

I asked Blair about the general ground rules he was operating under. He said that he will drink water only, with no other liquid or solid food. He will remain at his post from early in the morning until late at night, but will go home to sleep. He did assure me that this might be a hunger strike, but it's not a starvation one. He's hoping to make it about two weeks or until the 11th of next month. I have to say, he's going to look pretty gaunt. If the guy's hiding five extra pounds on him it's lead weights in his pockets. He did say that one of the courses he's teaching at MCC is Islamic Studies. I did not think to ask if he himself is Islamic; not another Barrett!

His cause is nutty, but he's making a sacrifice without quite doing the Heaven's Gate routine. I can't find it in my heart to rag on the guy too much. I wish I could convince him it's all for nothing, but failing that I will continue to attempt to make sure that others who aren't as balanced don't fall into the same trap.

No photos because of the frazzled camera; I'll see if I can snatch some from one of the Truther's websites.

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Ideas for 9-11 Debunking Signs?

I'm going to the local fruitloop's starvation celebration tomorrow and I want to have some amusing signs. Ones that I've come up with:

"Fair Play for Al Qaeda Committee". Obviously stolen from Mark Roberts. On the back of that one I intend to have "9-11 Truthers: The Only Thing They Get Right Is the Date of the Attacks!"

Then, hitting on their penchant for "Google WTC 7", I'm planning "Google Evil Jewish Landlord Silverstein Jew". On the flip side, "Google Holocaust Deniers and 9-11 Truthers".

Any ideas? Short, punchy, funny is what I'm looking for.

The Ground Zeroes

(Lots of Profanity)



Been awhile since we've seen a long form video of what actually goes on at Ground Zero on a Saturday. Rosalee Grable holds court on the beam weapons, while a younger "Truther" talks about WTC 7 coming down in "freefall speed". Nico mentioned in the comments that at some point Paula Gloria shows up with a "Investigate Dan Wallace's Death" sign and gets some spittle from Sabrina Rivera for her efforts. I haven't hit that part yet.

Update: That part starts about 22 minutes in. It gets pretty good. For a woman who seems clearly deranged, the Web Fairy knows how to push the WAC-jobs' buttons. They should just ignore her. Rosalee shows the "Investigate Dan Wallace's Death" sign, but Paula gets hit by the spit.

LOL! At 31:25, one of the WAC-jobs comes up with the question we always ask the "Truthers", "Why don't you speak to a prosecutor? Why don't you get an attorney?"

Saturday, May 24, 2008

The Bird On Gadsby

Our longtime buddy Stephen Lemons has some thoughts on the 9-11 "Truth" Diet.

I for one hope that Gadsby is successful in his hunger strike. Nah, I don't want him to get any time with McCain. I want him to starve! And as he does so, I'd like to be there, noshing on some Chinese takeout. Plus if Gadsby keels over from lack of sustenance, maybe his students will get a replacement religion prof who has a PhD and is not a complete fruitcake. Hey, dare to dream, people.




As I've pointed out in the past, WTC 7 is a foolish focus for the "Truthers", because it takes too long a chain of an argument:

Truther: WTC 7 proves 9-11 was an inside job.
Debunker: How so?
Truther: Because it came down in a controlled demolition.
Debunker: So what? The fear that the building would collapse was impeding rescue efforts in the towers, so maybe they brought down the building.
Truther: No, it takes months to rig a building for controlled demolition.
Debunker: So they couldn't have done it? Is that what you're saying?
Truther: No, I'm saying that they did do it. They set it up months in advance.
Debunker: And nobody noticed this? But let's grant your point for a second. What's the big deal? Nobody died in WTC 7, so what does it matter?
Truther: But if WTC 7 was a controlled demolition, then the towers must have been controlled demolitions too!
Debunker: Okay, so what you're really trying to prove is that the towers were controlled demolitions, and the reason you know this is that another building was a controlled demolition? Why do the collapses of the two towers look nothing like the collapse of WTC 7?
Truther: Because they were a different kind of controlled demolition!

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Griffin's Five (More Or Less) Points on the Pentagon

DRG was on Air America with Richard Greene last week on the show Clout. No surprise, Griffin took no questions from anybody other than the host, who is very Truther-friendly, even though Ron Wieck was on the line from New York. Griffin made five (or so) points on the Pentagon. Again, not surprisingly, after Griffin hung up, Ron was allowed to rebut one of the points. So I thought I'd take a more detailed look at the claims that Griffin made and the real truth:

1. Was there any evidence that it was a 757 that hit the Pentagon? Griffin says that there are 152 people who claimed to have seen the attack, but only 31 of them give "explicit, detailed descriptions. Many of them describe something very different." Out of the 31, 24 either worked for the Federal Government or the mainstream media, and in 21 of them there were substantial errors and contradictions.

2. Griffin claims that there is no evidence that the remains of the passengers that were identified came from the Pentagon rather than added to the remains at the Pentagon.

3. (Griffin says that this is second). Is there evidence that it was not a 757? He claims there was no detectable seismic signal. Griffin adds the claim that there was a seismic signal from Shanksville. Griffin adds a subsidiary point, that there was a lack of debris suggesting that a plane was there.

4. (Griffin says thirdly). If they wanted to prove a 757 hit the Pentagon, they could just release the videos. Griffin makes the usual retarded claim that there were 85 videos and that the Justice Department says these are exempt from disclosure, and that the two (really four) that were released show nothing.

5. (Griffin says fourthly). Griffin says something about "the time changes" but goes on to say that "Almost always, the NTSB when they do a report on a crash, give the serial number for the flight data recorder. Griffin says, "There was another case where they could prove."

6. (Griffin bizarrely now says he's on a third general point). Griffin talks about the phone calls from Barbara Olson. He mentions that the Moussaoui trial evidence only presented one call from Mrs Olson and that it lasted zero seconds.

7. Hole in the C ring. Griffin says that Rumsfeld claimed that the nose of the plane had gone all the way through the C ring and was still there, but that now everybody has disowned that claim.

8. (Griffin says fourth general point). Hani Hanjour couldn't fly, and "Everybody agrees that would have taken an expert pilot."

9. Wedge 1 would have been the least likely spot for a terrorist to attack because a) it's not where Rumsfeld and the top brass had their offices, b) it would have been physically impossible to hit because of obstacles.

10. (Griffin now thinks he's on his fifth point). The Pentagon should have been evacuated. Griffin now takes us to the next level on Mineta, that this indicates foreknowledge of the coming Pentagon attack and that because Mineta's testimony reveals Cheney knew of a plane that was 50 miles out, that the Pentagon should have been evacuated.

11. E-4B was flying over the White House at the time of the Pentagon strike.

Griffin hops off the phone, having now taken up 15 straight minutes with his blather. Ron Wieck is given one minute to respond and the host specifies, "one thing".

Ron does a good job talking about the numerous bits of debris from a 757 that were in fact found at the Pentagon.

But I think tactically he should have gone for the nuclear option, which is to use the "Argument from Increduly" (sic) as Craig Ranke put it a few days ago.

The argument from incredulity here is to quite simply point out that almost all Truthers agree that planes hit the World Trade Center. So, assuming for the moment that the government was indeed behind the attacks, as Professor Griffin clearly does (he often uses the movement's catchphrase "9-11 was an inside job") why would they have used planes at the WTC and not at the Pentagon? The answer of course is that there is no good reason, not with many busy freeways surrounding the Pentagon where somebody might see something else. So why do "Truthers" focus on this? Because they start with the assumption that the government was behind it, and inevitably factions form around each individual incident. Therefore, even though the idea is quite ridiculous to many in the "Truth" movement there is still a subset of Troofers that believes that Flight 77 didn't hit the Pentagon.

It's unsatisfying but rather than tackling one of 11 points, you've swatted the whole thing away.

Now, let's do what Greene did not allow Ron to do and answer all them:

1. No matter how you slice and dice the testimony of the witnesses there are still some left who quite plainly saw a large Boeing hit the Pentagon. According to the claims made by Griffin, seven witnesses with explicit, detailed descriptions did not work for the government or mainstream media. Ten witnesses who gave explicit, detailed descriptions did not make errors or contradictions.

2. This is of course an irrefutable point on the part of Griffin. None of us saw the body parts being tagged, rode along in the vehicle that brought them to the laboratory and saw the actual DNA testing being done and confirmed to our own satisfaction that the DNA matched what was being claimed. By this standard I do not know that the Earth rotates around the Sun, either, or that Queen Elizabeth isn't secretly a shape-shifting lizard.

3. On the seismic argument, Griffin has a point. The seismic reports do not show a signal for the Pentagon, but do for the plane in Shanksville (and for the World Trade Center). However, when you think about this for a moment, it becomes pretty obvious why that would happen. First, the Shanksville plane hit directly into the earth; the angle was not perpendicular but it was very steep. Of course that is going to result in something of a seismic event. Second, the WTC Towers were both anchored to bedrock because of their size and location. They were hit relatively high up, meaning that they would sway more than if hit lower, with all that movement eventually transferred to the ground. They also were fairly close (about 20 miles) to an earthquake observatory. Now consider the Pentagon by contrast. Although immense in size, it is actually a fairly small building in terms of height, with only five stories. Hence, while it certainly has footings and foundations, these do not extend deep into the earth, so the energy of an impact, especially an impact parallel to the ground, would only be transferred to the earth very inefficiently. The nearest observatory to the Pentagon was 39 miles away. Now, I won't deceive you, the nearest observatory to Shanksville was 57 miles. But again, all the energy of the crash at Shanksville was absorbed by the ground, whereas much of the energy of the crash at the Pentagon was dissipated by the building itself and not the ground.

Ron covered the issue of the actual debris rather well, but I would add that David Ray Griffin was the fact-checker for Loose Change Final Cut, which showed in quite interesting detail a large amount of evidence of a plane at the Pentagon. If he really believes there wasn't a lot of evidence of a plane, shouldn't he have corrected that film?

4. At least four videos have been released; the two fisheye camera shots from near the guard shack which are the only ones that show anything, the Doubletree Hotel video and the Citgo video. The 85 videos are just another example of how silly the Truthers are. Do they really imagine that there 85 cameras trained on anyplace in the world? Paris Hilton's butt doesn't have 85 cameras focused on it.

In all probability, Judicial Watch filed an overly broad FOIA request, asking for any videos pertaining to 9-11, the FBI said, that's too broad, we have 85 possible videos, what do you really want, and Judicial Watch said, okay, give us what you've got showing the Pentagon strike. At that point the fisheye videos from the guardshack comes out, which are the only videos that show anything, come out. JW goes back for the known cameras: the Doubletree and the Citgo. The idea that there's any more significant video of that attack is a myth.

5. Another goofy Sacred List argument! I'm going to argue from incredulity here: Does Dr Griffin really mean that if only the government had included the serial number from the black box that he'd accept that Flight 77 indeed crashed into the Pentagon? Of course not, so it's silly for him to claim otherwise.

6. Imagine the stupidity of this argument. The government, while framing Moussaoui for the terrorist attacks he did not have any knowledge of (according to the "Truthers") the FBI supposedly refused to lie about the Barbara Olson phone calls in that same trial. And in fact, as we have gotten tired of pointing out, there are four unattributed phone calls from Flight 77 in the Moussaoui trial evidence, two of which are almost certainly the two connected Barbara Olson phone calls.

7. I dunno, did Rummy really claim the nose went through? This is silly.

8. Although Hanjour was refused a rental airplane at Freeway Airport (as highlighted in Loose Change), he did manage to rent a small plane elsewhere and fly down to Maryland, so the notion that Griffin tries to sell, that Hanjour could not fly at all is obviously wrong. In fact Hanjour had been a pilot for longer than any of the other hijackers. And the idea that Hanjour's flight required some extraordinary skill is silly; a Dutch TV program gave a guy two hours training in a simulator (far less than Hanjour had), and he hit the Pentagon three times straight.

9. The hijackers were smart and organized. They knew they had to execute their attacks rapidly before the US had time to respond. The side of the Pentagon that the hijackers hit was the closest side to where they were coming from. They did not go past the Pentagon and then turn around; it is not hard to imagine why. I don't know why they think the Pentagon was unhittable from that side, and if Rob Balsamo is giving the explanation I'm not sure it's worth the effort.

10. Griffin is (as usual) wrong. We know from the Vanity Fair tapes when NEADS found out about each hijacked plane on 9-11 and the answer in the case of Flight 77 was about 3 minutes before it collided with the Pentagon. In order for that plane to have been 50 miles out and there to have been that short a warning, the plane would have had to have been flying at about 1000 miles per hour.

11. This is that White Plane that the Troofers obsess about. Again, read the Vanity Fair tapes story and you'll realize that even if an E-4B was in the skies over DC that day, that it could not have prevented the attack on the Pentagon.

Friday, May 23, 2008

Moron the Local Fruitcakes



Sounds like Blair is another crazy Canuck, just like Jeff Hill. I'll be down there on Monday, but you know the irony of the situation is that McCain's office will certainly be closed on Memorial Day, which may not have occurred to these clowns. I'm not going to do the barbecue idea, but I'll certainly enjoy a sub sandwich in Blair's honor.

A Note to Troy and Walter

Knock it off. I don't care what dirt you guys think you can dig up on each other; it has nothing to do with the focus of this blog. Troy does seem to be getting a little close to the edge of harassment with his phone calls, but if he goes over the line I'm sure he'll hear about it.

Walter says in one post:

I was also promised a video statement from 15 year-old [name deleted] about Troy’s call to his house and what exactly happened between Troy, the boy and his parents.


First, let's not mention the names of minors on this blog. Second, assuming Walter does get that video statement, what exactly will it prove? That a 15-year-old accuses Troy of harassment. We're all skeptics on this bus; accusations are not evidence, or Bush, Cheney, James and I would be up on Kevin Barrett's oft-fantasized scaffold. Take your claims and counterclaims elsewhere; I'm not going to referee this fight, and if I see further arguments between you two I'm going to start banning IP addresses.

Kevin Barrett, Promise Keeper

I have to chuckle at the opening paragraph of this screed from the Hangman:

I have decided to go ahead and post my recent email correspondence with Noam Chomsky, without his permission, and against his wishes, despite his claim that by doing so I am violating his privacy, and despite my earlier statement to him that I would respect his privacy.


Well, so much for that pledge. The best thing about this exchange is that it takes place on his campaign website. I can't think of another time that a political candidate has broken a promise and then highlighted his reneging on his own website.

You can skim through the emails. It starts out very friendly, with Barrett rhapsodizing on the twittering of the birds and the smell of the melted earth, but it isn't long before Chomsky realizes he's dealing with a lunatic. It's hard to pick a favorite bit, but I had to chortle at this claim from Barrett:

I have respected your wishes for confidentiality thus far, and am taking a lot of flak for it.


Chomsky reaches the obvious conclusion:

If you have indeed kept confidentiality of correspondence, then no one but you or me knows anything whatsover about what you allege (wrongly) to be a false claim. So there is no one who can even know that there is anything to judge. We therefore are left with the following: either you violated confidence and circulated private correspondence, contrary to what you now claim; or this letter is simply a pretext for breaking confidentiality.

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Dylan Avery: The All-Seeing Eye


We always knew Do-Over had delusions of grandeur but this is a bit much:

Also, Jason and Korey have been hard at work on Fabled Enemies. Obviously I'm only involved from an omniscient standpoint, but from what I've seen earlier this morning, it's shaping up to be a decent production.


I'm baffled by what he meant by omniscient. And how about calling his best friends' movie a "decent" production? Et tu, Dylan?

Dylan's doing some sort of online TV gig with Abby of the San Diego Troothers. Here they are in San Francisco at a really pathetic-looking rally:



Abby's talking about how organic the movement is and Dylan's twirling the sign; seems like one of them knows it's over.

Here's the video for their joint project, which looks quite a bit like public access TV but not actually on TV:



They got Bill O'Reilly freaking out! I'm absolutely amazed, here I thought he was this mellow guy. The next thing you know, they'll have that peacenik Kevin Barrett fantasizing about hanging people! Or, amazing as it sounds, Alex Jones sounding like he might be a bit mentally imbalanced.

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Thursday, May 22, 2008

John Feal On the Truthers



I'm liking this guy more and more. Served his country in the military and on the pile after 9-11, donated a kidney to a stranger, and has started up a charity for the first responders. What's not to like? As I said back in August, the man's a certified hero.

Kudos to Troy for pointing this out.

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No One Can Convince Me...

That Jon Gold doesn't believe in "Protecting and rewarding those who may have been involved in the attacks", and "That trying to hold those accountable for possible criminality is the wrong thing to do".



Here he posts (without comment but clearly approvingly) an article about how terribly hard it is going to be for their lawyers to defend (i.e., protect) KSM and Binalshibh at their trials. Jon Gold does not want them to be held accountable for possible criminality.

Here he post a Newsweek article which bemoans the treatment KSM received:

But the CIA admits Mohammed was waterboarded, rendering his confession unreliable and any conviction a sham.


Even though that treatment prevented several terrorist attacks and captured those responsible for earlier attacks:

KSM's revelations helped authorities arrest at least six major terrorists:

* Ohio-based trucker Iyman Faris pleaded guilty May 1, 2003, to providing material support to terrorists. He secured 2,000 sleeping bags for al Qaeda and delivered cash, cell phones and airline tickets to its men. He also conspired to derail a train near Washington, D.C., and use acetylene torches to sever the Brooklyn Bridge's cables, plunging it into the East River.

* Jemaah Islamiya (JI) agent Rusman "Gun Gun" Gunawan was convicted of transferring money to bomb Jakarta's Marriott Hotel, killing 12 and injuring 150.

* Hambali, Gunawan's brother and ring-leader of JI's October 2002 Bali nightclub blasts, killed 202 and wounded 209.


And Apparently Gold (and Newsweek have forgotten that KSM admitted his involvement in 9-11 well before any waterboarding incident.

"I am the head of the al Qaeda military committee," he told Al Jazeera in April 2002. "And yes, we did it." KSM wired money to his nephew, Ramzi Yousef, who masterminded the February 1993 World Trade Center blast that killed six and wounded 1,040. KSM and Yousef planned Operation Bojinka, a foiled 1995 scheme to explode 12 American jetliners above the Pacific. While some doubt his claim, KSM reportedly said, "I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl in the City of Karachi, Pakistan."


Jon Gold loves to hide behind the family members, but he wants to free those guilty of the attacks against their loved ones.

Paranoids Team up With Communist One Worlders

The World Prout Assembly is holding a conference, starting today called the "Building a New World" Conference. Their political views are apparent from this statement on their home page:

PROUT stands for PROgressive UTilization Theory. It means, the progressive utilization and rational distribution of all the earth's natural resources. PROUT advocates another type of revolution called "nuclear revolution." In nuclear revolution, every aspect of collective life - social, economic, political, cultural, psychic and spiritual - is completely transformed. New moral and spiritual values arise in society which provide the impetus for accelerated social progress. The old era is replaced by a new era - one collective psychology is replaced by another. This type of revolution results in all-round development and social progress.


OK, so we have this weird, new-age, collectivist socialist organization. Kind of strange, but they got some second rate truthers to show up.

4:00 pm – 5:45 pm
9/11 TRUTH
Cook 107

Keynote: William Woodward

Moderator: Meria Heller

Panelists: Steve Alten, Jesse Johnson, Jim Fetzer

Where is Alex Jones amidst all this? Fight the New World Order!

Troofer Wars

I was reading the blog Arabesque, amused by the internal politics of the paranoid. First the author attacks Kevin Barrett:

Kevin Barrett is a prominent 9/11 activist. While he has significantly contributed awareness for the 9/11 truth movement, he has also damaged its credibility with damaging associations, discrediting theories, and controversial statements.

Can't argue with that much. Then the author posts an attack from the CIT guys in the form of a photo, of whom he is quite critical:

"Arabesque, I found a photo of you at a 9/11 conference... Oh yeah...by the way[...] the plane approached on the north side of the Citgo."

Then somehow we are thrown into the fray:

Personal attacks are a diversion and distraction similarly exploited by FOX propaganda specialists like Bill O'Reilly and Michelle Malkin. Likewise, the 9/11 truth "debunker" site "Screw Loose Change" strongly emphasizes personal attacks against 9/11 truth advocates instead of debate.

Which is pretty ironic since I just proposed a debate with David Ray Griffin, only to receive a string of insults from Kevin Barrett.

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Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Alex Jones Unhinged

Crazy people can be entertaining. I swear, he considers himself some sort of low grade superhero, channeling a professional wrestler.


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Less Than Zero

The Troofers have a new film coming out called Zero. I believe (but am not sure) that it has already been released in Italian (the original language of the filmmakers), but that the English version is not available yet. There is a video of the first fifteen minutes.

The filmmakers choose an especially grisly opening; the 911 phone call of a woman on the 83rd floor of one of the towers, who is obviously about to die. We've talked about 9-11 videos being porno for paranoids; this one starts out like a snuff film.

The first bit of "evidence" is that old favorite of Troofers, "Osama ain't wanted for 9-11." This is the Sacred List BS that we have talked about ad infinitum. Elements at the very top level of the US government were involved in 9-11, and yet they can't change the freaking Wanted Poster? What do they think is going on? Is there a rogue band of "Truthers" in the FBI who just happen to control what goes on the Wanted Posters, and they're sending this signal to their allies in the 9-11 Goofball community?

In fact, of course, the FBI's Most Wanted Posters list people and the crimes for which they have been indicted or convicted. The FBI already has plenty of indictments to arrest Osama, and thus there is no current need to indict or convict in absentia Osama bin Laden for his crimes on 9-11. In the unlikely event he is captured while living, there will be plenty of new charges added to his rap sheet.

And of course the Troofer idiots always miss that KSM and four other 9-11 plotters are in fact about to go on trial for their part in the crime. How come the FBI isn't raising a stink about that? The FBI has no hard evidence connecting bin Laden to 9-11, but they do have hard evidence on KSM, Bin-al-shibh and the others?

They present the story of two of the few men to make it down out of the South Tower above the impact zone; Stanley Prainmath and Brian Clark. As best I can figure, the reason for including this is so that they can mention the ominous fact that there was an announcement in the South Tower that there was no need to evacuate that building (after the first plane had hit but before the second).

Then we get Nobel Prize Winner Dario Fo explaining that the WTC was constructed to take the impact of a plane. And of course I'm thinking, wow, a Nobel Prize winner! But it turns out he's a playwright and his Nobel Prize was in Literature. He sounds PC to the max:

Following the performance of Dario Fo's anti-Iraq war play 'Peace Mom' featuring Frances de la Tour as mother Cindy Sheehan, United Kingdom theatre has seen a revival of political satire in the form of farce (particularly in the Edinburgh Festival). This farce generally aims to alert all social classes to political oppression and exploitation rather than specifically targeting the working classes.


So, okay, they got a lefty playwright to explain structural engineering to us. But he sure looks impressive standing in front of a couple of blueprints.

They show some quotes, like this one from Frank De Martini:



That's not even a quote mine; that's a quote creation, taken rather loosely from here:



So our first outright lie comes about 6:40 into the film. That's actually pretty good by Troofer standards, usually there's been several by that point.

Steven Jones compares the buildings to "a (sic) tree". He claims that the fibers in a tree can handle that motion. I'm thinking maybe we're about to get the Keebler Elves comparison, but no such luck. We get the collapse of the South Tower, then some more snuff bits of the jumpers. Then the North Tower collapses. But it's amateur hour. After correctly showing the initiation of the North Tower collapse, they cut to a street-level scene of the South Tower collapse.



See that big building at the left? It's the North Tower. DOH! At this point I'm thinking maybe I should hire myself out as a fact-checker for these crappy films.

Next we get a quote from Morgan "One-Planer" Reynolds. Heheh! I'm starting to enjoy this and according to a review posted earlier on 9-11 Blogger by Reprehensor, there's more entertainment to come, with Munchkin Barbara Honegger and the man who walks through walls (unsuccessfully), Maj. Gen. Albert Stubblebine.

Next we get the lefty playwright in front of the blueprints again. What, they couldn't afford Richard Gage? Then they show once again, the phony quote from De Martini.

Then Urantia and 9-11 Nut Les Jamieson gets his moment in the spotlight, to tell us never before... steel frame... yadda yadda. The lefty playwright talks about the Windsor Towers. As usual, they show the collapsed steel portion of the skyscraper and marvel that it did not collapse completely. He points out that it was still under construction (not noticing that means it had a much lighter load than an occupied building would have, with all the furniture, filing cabinets, computers, people, etc). He sure looks jovial while telling us this, with a big grin on his face.

Jones tells us that the fires in the WTC were oxygen-starved. I am so sick of that claim:



Does that fire look like it's having difficulty breathing to you? And at this point they zoom in on the lefty playwright and we can actually see those "blueprints" he's been standing in front of:



And it's somebody's crayon drawing of the Towers? Wow, it's easy to see where they spent the $1.5 million budget that is reported for this crockumentary! Throughout this part, Fo is smiling and jovial, like some old man telling a silly joke to his three-year-old grandson. Weird.

Then he claims there's some mystery about how anybody got down from the South Tower above the impact zone (Prainmath and Clark are two of the very few). Of course it is well known that one stairwell in the South Tower was clear because of the off-center hit by Flight 175. The purpose of that segment of the film seems to be so that Clark can mention that the fire wasn't very strong at the 78th floor (he helpfully suggests "oxygen-starved") and that the building was quite normal from the 74th floor down. All I can figure is they're trying to claim that because it was cool on the 74th floor, the fire could not have been very hot.

As further evidence they show poor Edna Cintron standing in the entrance hole of the North Tower, once again ignoring the fact that where she was standing was the spot farthest away from the fires. So far we've heard the voice of one doomed women, seen three jumpers and now doomed Edna. Beyond the errors and phony quotes, this is the most disturbing aspect of the film. I have a hunch we're going to see the body parts photos from the Pentagon before it's over. That's where the opening segment leaves off.

The film is already on some of the BitTorrent sites so I may watch the rest of it for Honegger and Stubblebine, easily two of the zaniest characters in Kookdom. It also features Gore Vidal, which means I can't resist posting Bill Buckley's smackdown of him at the 1968 DNC:



It's another craptacular production from the 9-11 Troof Movement, who've made more lousy movies than Uwe Boll. Negative One Stars.

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Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Richard Gage and Troofer Logic

The main reason I am interested in conspiracy theorists, is not for the subjects they discuss, personally I could go for the rest of my life without having to hear about Marvin Bush being the head of WTC security, but that I was interested in how they come up with their conclusions. Yes, some are just insane, people who look in the clouds and see secret messages, but others just follow certain irrational ways of looking at things. They take certain facts which are at least partially based in reality, mutate them a bit, tie them together with some stretched logic, and proudly proclaim a completely false conclusion.

The latest example of this is Richard Gage on Kevin Barrett's radio show Tuesday night. Barrett actually asked me to be on over the weekend, but I refused and was replaced by someone much more entertaining, if not exactly equal in logical thought.

Anyway, about half way through the first hour Gage argues:


But back to this molten metal found, not only at the base of building 7, but the twin towers, tons of it, seen by the first responders and the demolition workers, flowing like lava, they say.


There is only one person who made the lava comparison, but they did not say "tons of it" Gage, added that part.




And afterwards, months afterwards, it took months to cool, they would bring up these multi-ton chunks of this previously molten substance which turned out to be iron, its not even structural steel, because it doesn't have chromium in it and it has manganese, it has fluorine.




Here is he merging two claims. First, the "chunks" which are on display in an aircraft hanger along with other debris recovered from ground zero. It is not a "previously molten substance" though but compressed concrete and other debris. The testing for chromium is probably referring to a separate claim that Steven Jones made about the dust he collected from New York. Jones certainly did not test this chunk of concrete, in fact he commented to me in an e-mail that he still needed to in order to figure out what it was.














Gage continues after a break for commercials:



Barrett: Now you said it was molten iron, not molten steel. What explains that?

Gage: Exactly there is no explanation for molten iron in any of the official accounts of the story.


I'll skip ahead for a minute, past where he quotes from that mighty
scientific source, Wikipedia...



So what produced all this molten metal and this incredible heat that sent pyroclastic dust clouds down the street at 35 MPH in every direction, away from building 7.

It was a volcano!


Gage: Well, it turns out, in the previously molten metal chunks, Dr. Steven Jones, this physicist, formerly from Brigham Young University, finds the chemical evidence... including iron mostly, and aluminum, manganese, flourine, potassium, and sulfur. These form the chemical ingredients of the classic signature of thermite. A high tech incendiary used to cut through steel like a hot knife through butter. This is the smoking gun of building 7, which is the smoking gun of 9/11.


Except Jones did not test these concrete chunks. He claims he tested other debris, and Gage is just running the two claims together. This could not be the "smoking gun of building 7" even if it were true, because the chunks were from the towers, not building 7.

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Can These People Get Anything Right?

Richard Greene, the Air America host who is promoting the truth movement on his show, posts this short bit bragging about the reach of his show:

We have fans in Oregon! George Rede, Sunday Opinion Editor for The Oregonian, Portland, OR's largest daily, gave Clout! a nice mention in his recent piece, "Seeking Out the Truth."

Just one problem, if you actually read the blog piece all the way to the end, you see the tagline:

-- Niranjan Ramakrishnan


Boy, must be all those critical thinking skills at work there.

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9/11 Conspirator Trials Tidbit

An editorial in the Wall Street Journal today drew my attention to a part of this court case that I didn't realize before.

Meanwhile, the press has distorted another recent Guantanamo decision. Susan Crawford, the former civilian judge who is supervising the military tribunals, dismissed the capital charges last week against one of the six al Qaeda 9/11 conspirators. Mohammed al-Qahtani was allegedly going to be the 20th
hijacker on 9/11 had he been admitted to the U.S. He was captured in late 2001.

Echoing defense attorneys, the press is calling Judge Crawford's decision a setback for the tribunals and is reporting the now-routine claim he was tortured under interrogation. But those attorneys haven't seen Judge Crawford's ruling, which is under seal. We're told the judge separated al-Qahtani on grounds that he was less central to the conspiracy than were the likes of KSM, and that being tried with the five others might have prejudiced the death-penalty case against him. In other words, her ruling shows how independent Judge Crawford and the tribunals are from Pentagon pressure.


You mean the judge can dismiss charges if they don't believe the case is strong enough? What kind of a show trial are we running here?

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You Can't Parody This Stuff

A "Truther" comes up with a new theory about Satam al Suqami's passport:

The Ingenious Whistleblower Theory

Somebody involved at some level is watching 9/11 unfold. She has realized that the safety drills and military exercises scheduled for 9/11 will be used to facilitate the WTC and Pentagon attacks. She recognizes the coming events for what they are: an American coup d’etat.

Instead of blowing the whistle and surely being silenced by those who also control the Main Stream Media, she comes up with a better idea: she will plant the most implausible and absurd piece of 9/11 evidence possible.

This evidence is unexpected and unrecognized at first, so it will initially get covered by the media before it can be censored. The magic passport will, by its very existence, denote planted evidence. And because planted evidence of such a nature requires preparation, it will be a beacon of proof to any American who can put two and two together that there was foreknowledge of the events that occurred on that horrible day.


Because she knew that one of the passengers on the plane was named Satam al-Suqami, and she just happened to have a passport in that name.

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She's Baaa--aack!

Judy Wood checks in with a page on ties between a hurricane and 9-11.

The development of “supercell” storms is examined and a comparison of their structure to that of a Tesla Coil is considered. It is therefore suggested that the electrical properties of large storm systems may have some similarities to Tesla coils and there is a possibility that technology exists to utilise or manipulate the energy in these storm systems for “secondary” purposes.


Countdown to "Truthers" saying we should concentrate solely on the sane members of their little club....

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I Take it That is a 'No'

Well I got a response from Kevin Barrett, but all I really found out is that he is nutty as a fruitcake and truthers still do not understandt he meaning of the term "ad hominem", which admittedly is not much of a revelation:

Here's my take.

Kevin
On May 19, 2008, at 12:41 PM, Kevin Barrett wrote:

These rude, no-credentials, ad-hominem-spewing people seem to have a very high opinion of themselves. Though I guess Mark "I may know more about 9/11 than anyone else in the world" Roberts apparently does have a tour guide license.

"I demand that Griffin and only Griffin show up at X time for Y format blah blah blah."

Sheesh!! If these are the best people the other side can muster, I rest my case.
Kevin


When I pointed out that we had demanded nothing, merely made a proposal, he continued:

James,
Since ad hominem is the only language you folks undertand, I'll serve you straight up.

Griffin's Ph.D. involves advanced training in critical thinking. You guys need potty training first, and then a whole lot of academic training second. You wouldn't know critical thinking if it took a bite out of your malodorous buttocks.

Find us somebody with a Ph.D and 30 published books - heck, even 20 - and David will debate him. Find an accomplished pilot who isn't too big a coward to use his real name and Rob will debate him. Find me ANYBODY who isn't a no-show coward like you - they don't need to have four advanced degrees like I do, I'll settle for a pompous hack with a tour guide license - and I'll happily stoop to debate them on my shows.

Otherwise, bugger off and get a life.


Ahh yes, being told to get a life from a failed college professor who dresses up in a Guy Fawkes mask and stands on street corners. And now we have apparently established that the untimate credential for studying the events of 9/11, is a theology PhD. Explain that one.

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Monday, May 19, 2008

Paula Gloria & Co on Howard Stern

Paula does an early hour with Stern and his crew, then returns with Nico Hitler, Web Fairy and others. I was amused at Stern's talking about how Paula has a "decent body" at 9:15 (definitely NSFW):



But even more odd is Paula's claim about 3:00 that she doesn't think the government is behind 9-11 and that we should support our government. I have to admit, that puts her in the extreme minority of 9-11 "Truthers".

You can see the complete YouTube set of Paula's appearance here.

The later show with Nico Hitler, and the Web Fairy is here; the debunker is somebody who disagrees with the 9-11 no-planer theories but likes the video mashups. Insert amazed smiley here.

In the second video, one of the no-planers talks about how the witnesses to the second plane strike saw the "fly-by" (2:45). Shades of CIT!

More Gandhi-Like Behavior from We Are Change

For supposedly peaceful activists, they sure get in a lot of scuffles:

Later, Logulo told North that he would send him the information on the camps, but at this point, police surrounded the WeAreChange members. At which point the officers told the members to shut off their cameras. Adam Covington from Kentuckiana Change asked an officer, “Why can’t I record this when I have a press pass, and this is a second and first amendment venue?” Despite the lack of explanation from the police, the members shut off their devices and proceeded to walk out of the building.

While escorted out, a plainclothes officer yelled “Give me your camera,” and tried to snatch Logulo's camera from behind. Four officers tackled Logulo, and drove him to the ground. One officer put Logulo into a headlock.

“Easy, easy, easy!” Logulo exclaimed. “I’m not resisting.”

As Logulo was being assaulted, Deeds was filming his fellow WeAreChange member in order to record the abuse. He was told stop filming at which point he didnt comply and continued filming anyway.

“Get him!” yelled a plainclothes officer as he ran at Deeds. Three officers took Deeds down to his knees as they ripped the camera out of his hand. Deeds tried to take the memory stick out of his camera, and was accused of “tampering with evidence” a Class D felony according to officer Rehm. Deeds later explained, “The footage was my only defense.”

Air America Debate Proposal

A few minutes ago I e-mailed the following to Kevin Barrett and radio host Richard Greene. We will see if we ever get a response.

An Open Challenge to David Ray Griffin and the 9/11 Truth Movement

Dear Sirs:

I do not have the E-mail address of David Ray Griffin, but I am sure you both know how to contact him, so I will address this to you. There have been many ongoing discussions in connection to Air America Radio’s Richard Greene and his “Month of Truth” in regards to having “debunkers” on to provide the opposing viewpoint to the “9/11 Truth Movement”. Many debunkers, including Mark Roberts and my blogging partner Pat Curley, openly refused to come on last week’s show, for various reasons, but mostly revolving around the fact that Kevin Barrett and the guys from CIT were so controversial within their own movement, that engaging them would be pointless, and your time would be much better spent interviewing witnesses, and possibly even others within the truth movement who opposed them.

We were surprised however to see, not Kevin Barrett, but David Ray Griffin appearing on the show. As opposed to being a member of a faction within the movement Dr. Griffin is in fact widely considered the most prominent spokesman of the movement, and has authored 5 books and spoken widely on the subject. Even Mr. Greene praised him, calling him “The guru of the 9/11 truth movement “ and his work The New Pearl Harbor a “classic”.

Despite his prominence in the movement though, Griffin has largely avoided his critics. While such figures as Kevin Barrett, Steven Jones and Jim Fetzer may be controversial, even among other truthers, they at least have had the courage to advance and defend their own hypotheses, and engage critics, something which is normally done by academics in controversial areas. Dr. Griffin, however, has openly opposed advancing any but the vaguest theories, and has carefully avoided any situation where he would have to address any criticism, despite giving a plethora of speeches and radio interviews. As mentioned on last week’s show, NASA engineer Ryan Mackey prepared a detailed 200 page criticism of Dr. Griffin’s work, which to the best of my knowledge he has avoided even acknowledging, much less answering.

Therefore after his appearance on last week’s show, in which he once again dropped off the air before any questions could be asked of him by critics, we began discussing the fact that Dr. Griffin has avoided defending his arguments, despite the fact that the truth movement is constantly calling for an open and vigorous discussion of these events. Why then, does Dr. Griffin constantly refuse to engage in a discussion with anyone who disagrees with him? Does he believe that his work is beyond reproach? We believe that if he is so confident in his years of research, which have allowed him to sell many tens of thousands of books, that he should have no problem discussing it with an intellectual opponent.

So in this spirit we would like to propose a debate between David Ray Griffin and Mark Roberts on a subsequent episode of Richard Greene’s radio show, with Pat Curley and myself as possible co-guests if desired by the host. We understand that the host is biased, and accept that, but we just call on him to be fair, and fully expect that he would be so, and propose the following ground rules:

1) Roughly equal time for each participant to speak.

2) Discuss one – and only one – claim at a time. No long lists of claims (from either side) followed by, "In our limited time, which of those would you like to respond to?"

3) Be able to speak directly to each other with the host moving things along if the discussion bogs down.

4) Focus on discussing what Griffin thinks is the very strongest evidence in each area, so as not to get bogged down in minutiae. Griffin and Greene may pick the topics if they wish.

Given the open taunts by members of the movements when debunkers refused to come on the show earlier, I do not see how Dr. Griffin can in good spirit refuse to engage in this very debate you all have been calling for. Such an acclaimed academic, who is widely regarded as the foremost scholar of your movement should have no problem wiping the floor with any opponent, especially with the advantage of a friendly host and being able to choose the subjects, and I call upon the truth movement to encourage him and Mr. Greene to participate.

You both have my e-mail along with Mark Robert’s, please contact either Mark or I with any questions. We are open to any reasonable accommodations in scheduling and format to ensure that this event goes off.

Sincerely,

James
http://screwloosechange.blogspot.com

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Sunday, May 18, 2008

9-11 Taboo Review

I don't know that I will cover the whole film here, but since Genghis6199 asked for it, and since he has been polite in several emails with me, I am willing to look at his work. I know I will inevitably face criticism from the "responsible researchers" who generally act as if the No-Planers are somehow more insane than the "No-Planers at the Pentagon" or the "Controlled Demolition at the WTC" crowd. Sorry folks, but you're all rubber roomers to me.

Here's the link to the Genghis' page at Live Video; click on the video labeled 911taboo v1 [cut14b] part 1/3.

The good: Very high production values; Genghis clearly knows his way around video and audio editing. It's somewhere between 9-11 Press for Truth and 9-11 Mysteries in terms of actual production quality. I hated those films, but I am quite willing to say that they were (relatively) well-made.

The bad: The video is very much "inside baseball"; if you are not familiar with No-Planer theories and evidence this is not the place to start. It's somewhat like an Alan Moore comic book; those who are already in the know may find it terrific; those who are not will likely get lost and confused. The music is annoying in places, but then I'm an old fart who's not in the target demographic.

The evidence: Genghis does not present his evidence in a straightforward fashion, unlike, say, Loose Change, so you almost have to deduce the claims. In the early part of the film his point appears to be that among those who personally witnessed the attack (as compared to those watching TV or studio monitors), few described it as a plane; most discussed hearing an explosion, and a few compared it to a missile.

Of course, it is not hard to discover onlookers who described it as a plane; consider this video, where the call of a plane is immediate. Genghis seems to expect (this becomes clear near the end of this segment) that somebody would say "Oh my God, here comes another plane! And it's going to attack the other tower!"

I had to chuckle at the reporter who described "some kind of vehicle, an aircraft" being included in this section; does Genghis really think it's important that he said "vehicle"?

Next, Genghis goes into the "Let's overlay two pieces of video and show that the plane is in different places in different videos. Well, duh! You cannot overlay video from two different sources from different distances and different angles and adjust it so that background images are in the same place. It's not going to happen, and efforts to do so are just so much video masturbation. I can believe it's effective in terms of convincing people of funny business, but anybody with any experience in three-dimensional vector plotting and the effects of zoom lenses will recognize this as a buffoonish attempt to avoid doing the incredibly hard work of mapping the actual trajectory of the plane in three dimensions.

Indeed, this was my original thought about the no-planers; that they had actually mapped the flight trajectory out three-dimensionally and proved that it couldn't be there. That does not appear to be the case. After watching a few no-planer videos, it appears that their impossible plane is mostly an artifact of this type of overlay fascination. Look, this is elementary-level physics. If you video a building from one angle, and that same building from a different angle, any object in the background will appear to be in different places, even if you adjust the building size and overlay the images so the building looks reasonably the same. This is especially the case if any kind of zoom lens is used. Zoom lenses are neat and beautiful and they lie, beautifully. They give you a view that is not reality.

It is certainly true that at some camera angles the plane appears to be diving as it hits the building and in others it appears to come level at the building. It would be interesting to see some real analysis of this phenomenon. I have no doubt it is explainable in terms of the position of the observer. But there is no attempt at that here.

Genghis does show the clear imprint of a Boeing in the South Tower entrance hole with about 2:05 left in the first part of the video. I assume he thinks he's doing the opposite, since he points to the left wingtip and the vertical stablizer and engines, apparently to show that they created too little damage. It's close enough; despite the No-Planers claims to the contrary, I'm sure that parts of Flight 11 didn't make it into the North Tower and ditto for small bits of Flight 175 into the South Tower.

He says most of the live shots of Flight 175 have no plane sounds; I'll accept that as true. But some do, as does the one which he closes out this segment with (although it does not show the plane itself).

Overall, Genghis does a good job of selling some pretty bad theories. The difference between me and the "mainstream" "Truthers" is that I recognize that's no different from David Ray Griffin. I have not decided as to whether to tackle the rest of the film (the second segment features some fine investigative work by Jeff "Crazy Canuck" Hill). The film is very watchable, so it may be worth the time and effort.

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Saturday, May 17, 2008

More Mocking the Victims

Once again, these guys are seriously pissing me off. On 911 Blogger they recently posted this video of a conference in Canada with some truther nutters. The part I have watched thus far is AK Dewdney, famous for trying to use his cell phone on a Cessna. It is bad enough they mock the dead, but could they at least get the most basic facts straight?



I just want to point out that flight 175. It has just been admitted by the FBI that they discovered that Ted Olson was lying about his wife Barbara Olson phoning him from flight 175, so we can reduce that by one.
She was on flight 77 you moron.



On the basis of what I have learned about cell phone technology on the ground and in the air, I am ready to conclude, that those calls never happened. Oh well, if it never happened, who were all those people calling their relatives who were calling their friends. "Mark? Mom, is that you mom, yeah this is Mark Brigham."
It is Mark Bingham you complete waste of oxygen.

He continues a minute later.



The fakery, how to fake a cell phone call, if you are a fairly modern intelligence organization, you have access to the passenger lists, well before the flight. You have access to the phone numbers and you also have an easy ability to gain a wiretap if you need intel, so you can listen into those conversations days in advance, you can make recordings and finally there is a significant little piece of equipment called a voice modulator which has been on the market for almost twenty years which by changing no more than 3 settings you can imitate the timber, frequency and other key speech qualities of the human voice.

Oh really.



Mark Bingham was last to board the plane, having arrived late and nearly missed the flight. Bingham intrigues because he does not fit the image of the all-American hero quite as neatly as Todd Beamer, a family man from rural New Jersey with a Lord's Prayer bookmark in the Tom Clancy novel he had onboard.



A third of the passengers and crew were there by the slimmest of chances. Dahl had rescheduled to get home to Colorado to pick up his wife and take her to London for their wedding anniversary. Deborah Welsh had been a flight attendant for 25 years and hated early flights, but had agreed to trade shifts to oblige a colleague.

From MSNBC:

Jeremy Glick was supposed to have been on Flight 93 a day earlier, but missed the Monday flight after getting stuck in traffic on his way to Newark Airport.

Words cannot describe how disgusting these people are.

Update: Later this blithering idiot tries to explain the flight data recorder of United 93:

It looks like the flight data recorder was carried by another aircraft. Well, that's the question, was there another aircraft in the area? Yeah, there was a mysterious white twin engine jet aircraft which we have identified as an A-3 Thunderbolt, which is designed, described by Susan McElway (phonetic) and residents of the area as all white, it had two rear mounted engines it had a tailplane with two vertical rudders on either end of it and that is likely the aircraft that was carrying the flight data recorder.

An A-3 Thunderbolt? WTF? And even if this aircraft were there, why is he claiming the FDR came from it, did the pilot plunge his plane into the ground so it would have the appropriate information on it? Is he on crack?

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