Yet Moron Rosie

Matt Jones covers the story well:

She makes numerous other idiotic statements, this is just one. She also challenges any physicist to come on and tell her something different. I REALLY hope someone takes her up on that offer. Until then, the fine folks at Popular Mechanics have offered up Rosie O’Donnell 9/11 Conspiracy Comments: Popular Mechanics Responds. There they shut her down.

Over at AOL, there's a poll on whether Rosie should be fired. Currently over 130,000 votes, 63% of whom voted to sack the lardbutt.

Surf Now, Apocalypse Later says:

So according to Rosie O'Donnell the British set up their own people to be kidnapped to incite another war. This nutty theory goes along with O'Donnell's contention that 9/11 was a conspiracy and that terrorists mean us no harm.

A poster over at My Pet Jawa points out that Rosie forgot about the diesel fuel tanks in WTC-7:

New York City's Emergency Control Center was located in WTC 7. The center required fuel for the emergency generators in the event of a power failure. Thus, huge fuel tanks were located on the second floor.

She also makes a point that I had not heard before:

The walkway between WTC 7 and the North Tower over Vessey street (second floor again) had huge steel trusses, about 80 feet long, that took over two weeks to put in. When the North Tower went down, these extremely heavy trusses were unsupported on one end, placing additional strain on the exterior steel columns around the second floor, which transferred the weight to the internal columns.

I'm pretty sure the pedestrian walkway just connected with the plaza level of the WTC complex; it certainly did not connect directly with the North Tower. It is however quite possible that the support on the south side of the walkway was demolished when WTC-1 collapsed and that the unsupported walkway then did put additional pressure on the building.

Best Loose Change Forum Post, Ever

Batmanchester over at the Looser Forums, goes into a bizarre rant about how "Chuck Sheen", a poster over there, is not really Charlie Sheen.

Any questions? I am sick and tired of supposed and untrue phonies claiming to speak for this movement. If Charlie Sheen were to post, which his agent has forbade, thanks for telling us DYlan, you'd know it, but chucksheen, despite what he leads you to believe, is not Chaelie Sheen, Furthermore............Anyone want me to continue?

Of course, the poster named Chuck Sheen has been around in the 9-11 Denier movement for a long time, has never (to my knowledge) claimed to be Charlie Sheen. The name is simply a tribute. And for the record, Batmanchester is not really Batman.

The guy goes off on anybody correcting him on this topic, which several, including Chuckles himself, do. Some of it is profane. Here's where he really gets mad:

Ok Neo_children. You just bit off the wrong person's nose. It is my intention to IP track every single move you make, and announce it to the world. Every move. I daresay you can'y claim the same. You do not want to press me children. I personally despise you for getting in the way of the movement, but if you want to make this a poisoned personal affair, I'll be more than happy to accomodate you. But why don't we take this to your playground, oh like say, oh, ummmm, the FBI's Home Site. Your home IP site. Get lost scumboys, do you truly think we can't track you?

He does get one thing right:

This is no longer a truth movement here. It's about who can suck Dylan's Tail longer and faster than anyone else, and maybe we can be famous also.

After about the tenth time somebody tells him that Chuck Sheen does not claim to be Charlie, it appears to penetrate through the gin:

So finally. Chucksheen admits he's not who he has pretended to be. Thank you. Oh, and by the company you keep, I can see why you'd want to be one of the elitists.

Predictably, once he recovers, he claims somebody else did it:

Obviously, some felt the same way, but regrettably, only knew the team password, and used it to go on and post whatever the Hades is posted on this and other threads. But of course, I will stand by my people, as would any of you, and ask again, Who's in charge here? Who allowed this nonsense by a bunch of children to turn into this mess?

But of course that attracts an admin:

Well, as I am seemingly one in charge here it occurs to me that if your account is being used by people other than yourself, your account is not safe to have active at this present time. I am sure that as a team leader you can appreciate the position that I am placed in.

For the safety of the forum, I am placing this account on a one week suspension which should give you ample opportunity to secure the access to your machine to prevent this utter madness from occuring again.

Descent Into Tyranny II : Anti-Military Paranoia

One of the central theses of Alex Jones and other conspiracy theorists is that the military consists of nothing more than a bunch of jackbooted thugs on the verge of taking over the country. Now as a member of the military, I am personally annoyed by this, but I also have the advantage of easily knowing when he is lying, which is pretty much all the time anyway. Here are just a few examples, from page 58:

Police chiefs went public about these bizarre military takeovers of American cities. These exercises were carried out not only by Army Special Operations from Fort Brag [sic], but included foreign troops. Czechoslovakian troops, on American soil, were terrorizing the public, running around firing automatic weapons. The operations were to condition the public, and to acclimatize them to accept the military-with foreign troops – working with our local police.

I am first of all amused by his inability to correctly spell Ft. Bragg, only the largest and quite possibly the most famous military post in the world. Jones own source, however, shows that this exercise had absolutely nothing to do with martial law, it was simply a helicopter assault exercise by special operations forces. Perhaps most amusing is the presence of Czechoslovakian troops in an exercise in 1999. The country of Czechoslovakia no longer existed beginning in 1993.

From page 94, he continues with his theme of imminent UN takeover:

A headline from the CBC on October 30, 2001 read [sic], “Military Favors a homeland Command: U.S. bill calls for continental security perimeter.” They want hundreds of thousands of foreign U.N. troops on our streets. And the shadow government wants 365,000-plus U.S. troops to “patrol the U.S.” (to patrol our highways, our neighborhoods, our communities in total violation of Posse Comitatus).

Anyone who has ever worked in multi-national operations of course would find this ludicrous. For starters, where are "hundreds of thousands of foreign U.N. troops" going to come from? The largest UN intervention ever, took place in 1995 when 60,000 IFOR troops occupied Bosnia. Out of that number though, nearly 20,000 were US forces, and this was only after 3 years of a bloody civil war.

He continues, from page 93:

In February of 2002, two Special Forces trainees were killed by a sheriff’s deputy. You ask why? They were trying to disarm him (Asheville Tribune, February 25, 2002, “Soldier killing ‘tragic’ error”). They were trying to take over local law enforcement. This is the new type of training our military are [sic] being given- to overthrow the civilian government, the elected government right here in the United States.

While he is partially correct about what happened, he is blatantly lying about why it happened. I actually remember when this occurred, and the circumstances were widely publicized, so Jones has no excuse for his dishonesty. From CNN:

ROBBINS, North Carolina (CNN) -- A sheriff's deputy mistakenly shot and killed a U.S. soldier and seriously wounded another taking part in a role-playing field training exercise, the Moore County Sheriff's Department said Sunday.

The names of the soldiers, both stationed at Fort Bragg, were being withheld until they families could be notified.

The exercise, dubbed "Robin Sage," was the final stage of the qualification course for the U.S. Special Forces, also known as the Green Berets. The drill is conducted four times a year and stretches over nine North Carolina counties.

The soldiers were on what U.S. Army officials described as a reconnaissance mission Saturday afternoon when Deputy Randall Butler pulled them over in a traffic stop near Robbins. The soldiers were driving in an unmarked vehicle and dressed in civilian clothing, the sheriff's department said.

Butler was unaware the exercise was underway, while the soldiers believed the deputy was part of the training exercise, according to the sheriff's department statement.

"One of the soldiers attempted to disarm the officer, as the other was attempting to get to a military weapon that the soldiers had in their possession," the statement said. "At the time of the incident, the deputy believed that the two individuals intended on killing him, resulting in the deputy shooting both of the suspects."

The Army, which is conducting its own investigation, concurred that Butler likely did not know the exercise was taking place.

Jones can't even get the most basic facts right, only one soldier was killed. The other, SGT Stephen Phelps, was shot but survived. The Army later took steps to prevent a recurrence of this tragedy.

Aussie Al-Qaeda Admits Guilt

And, perhaps in a sign of the times, David Hick will serve another nine months.

The sentencing followed a day of proceedings in the first case under a 2006 law that authorized military commissions to try some detainees designated as enemy combatants. Those proceedings included Mr. Hicks’s amplifying on his guilty plea, acknowledging that prosecutors had the evidence to prove that he had been a trainee of Al Qaeda who, armed with an AK-47, was prepared to fight Americans in the Afghanistan conflict of 2001.

During the hearing, the military judge disclosed an extraordinary series of concessions Mr. Hicks had made to his American captors in negotiations for the plea deal, in which he admitted material support to a terrorist organization.

The deal included a statement by Mr. Hicks that he “has never been illegally treated” while a captive, despite claims of beatings he had made in the past. It also included a promise not to pursue suits over the treatment he received while in detention and “not to communicate in any way with the media” for a year.

Not entirely 9-11 related, but it speaks to our "al-CIA-duh" claimants.

PM Takes On Rosie

Kind of a weird situation, a magazine for technical enthusiasts takes on an obnoxious talk show host:

Alex Jones: Descent into Tyranny

I came across this copy of Alex Jones' book (and I use the term loosely) "Descent into Tyranny" on the Internet and decide to give it a perusal. Now I know debunking Alex Jones is low hanging fruit, shooting fish in a barrel, pick your cliche, but as long as he is a prominent member of the 9/11 denial movement, I will not feel guilty picking on this Texas blowhard, no matter how unsporting it may be.

I was not expecting a Putlizer level work, but even Jones managed to surprise me with his level of idiocy. The book does not appear to be a final published version, it only has notes for the publisher where the pictures will go, but even for a draft it is replete with errors, typos, illogical leaps, and outright lies. I am not going to debunk the whole book, mainly because I don't have a month to spare, but I will probably make a few posts.

This part especially annoyed me. I have heard Jones and others make repeated claims that Florida Governor Jeb Bush declared Martial Law (which Jones like many conspiracy theorists usually spells "Marshall") before 9/11. Now aside from the fact that this is pretty illogical, why would he risk giving away the plot with this entirely needless act, there is absolutely nothing to substantiate the claim. Here is the section from Descent into Tyranny, page 54:

Jeb Bush Declares Martial Law on September 7, 2001
On the homefront, President Bush’s brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush signed an unprecedented emergency State Executive Order (01-261) laying out new guidelines for setting up military rule (martial law) in Florida. Governor Jeb Bush signed his Executive Order on September 7, 2001 despite the fact that there were no major natural or man-made disasters at the time of its drafting.

“I hereby declare that a state of emergency exists in the state of Florida… The
Authority to suspend the effect of any statute or rule governing the conduct of state business, and further authority to suspend the effect of any order or rule of any government entity… The authority to seize and utilize any and all real or personal property as needed to meet this emergency… The authority to order the evacuation of any or all persons from any location in the State… The authority to regulate the return of the evacuees to their home communities… I hereby order the Adjutant General to activate the Florida National Guard for the duration of this emergency.” Florida Governor Jeb Bush, September 7, 2001. (Associated Press, September 9, 2001, State of Florida Website Listing State Executive Orders)

In this book most of his claims, no matter how obscure or outrageous, have no source, making it nearly impossible to check his claims, but this time he actually does actually give a source. Since he lists the number of the Florida State Executive Order, it is a simple matter of going to the state website to look it up. Unsurprisingly, it does not say what he claims it does.

EXECUTIVE ORDER NUMBER 01-261
WHEREAS, the Florida National Guard has the statutory responsibility to provide support to law-enforcement personnel and emergency-management personnel in the event of civil disturbances or natural disasters; and

WHEREAS, the Florida National Guard has the responsibility to provide training support to law-enforcement personnel and community-based organizations relating to counter drug operations; and

WHEREAS, the Florida National Guard must train to meet such responsibilities; and

WHEREAS, the Florida National Guard is funded for any such training by budgetary appropriation or grants before any such training; and

WHEREAS, the Florida National Guard must conduct such training in active service of the state, as defined by Section 250.27, Florida Statutes (also known as active military service and state active duty) for members of the Florida National Guard to be covered by Section 250.34, Florida Statutes; and

WHEREAS, as Governor, I may delegate the authority contained in Section 250.06(4), Florida Statutes, to order training to help respond to civil disturbances, natural disasters, and counter drug operations to The Adjutant General of the State of Florida; and

This executive order does not declare a state of emergency or martial law, it merely provides for the training of National Guardsman to prepare for the event of a disaster, a completely different thing. I have no idea where Jones got his version, it was probably passed on to him from a separate declaration of a state of emergency, and the fatman was too lazy to look it up. He lists the AP also as a source, but a Lexis/Nexis search shows the only AP article which even mentioned Jeb Bush from September 7th, to September 9th, 2001 was one titled, "Bush Orders Statewide Standards on Reading", which quite clearly has nothing to do with this.

Michael Savage Is An Idiot

We sometimes get criticized for attacking mostly far-left kooks like Rosie O'Donnell and others, but here's a chance to get in a few licks on a far-right kook named Michael Savage. I've never listened to his show, and if this is the kind of crap he spews, I'm not going to start.

On the March 27 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Michael Savage complained that Americans currently live in "post-Christian times" in which "[t]he churches are emptying out, the bathhouses are filling up, the sex-change operations are speeding up, the lesbian fertility clinics are increasing around the country." Savage went on to argue that God "orchestrated the rise of radical Islam" in order to counter the "spiritual collapse of the West." He continued: "It's becoming increasingly clear to me that God wants radical Islam on this planet at this time -- that it's not actually the scourge you think it is." He further claimed that God wants to show "you boys in Hollywood and you girls in New York City" that he does "exist" through acts of catastrophe like the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001: "Down came the World Trade Centers. That was God speaking."

Mr Savage, you are an idiot and a moron. You are trying to hijack 9-11 for your own purposes, just as much as Dylan Avery and Alex Jones are for theirs. God had nothing to do with 9-11, nor did gays in bathhouses or lesbian fertility clinics.

We're Going to Harvard!

I was watching video of "The View" posted here on Little Green Footballs, and cracked up at Rosie O'Donnell's ranting about getting a physics expert on the show to explain how WTC7 could not have collapsed without explosives.

Rosie: We are going to Harvard, we are going to Yale, and we are going to ask someone from physics to explain...

One of the other women, who not being a fan of the show, I cannot identify, interrupts, "Wait a second Bush went to Yale!", apparently indicating that he has tainted his alma mater.

To which the crowd cheers and Rosie answers, "We're going to Harvard!"

Hey geniuses, let me introduce you to George W. Bush, MBA, Harvard Business School, 1975

Update: To avoid potential confusion, this is also the same video Pat posted below.

Fred Thompson on 9/11 Conspiracy Theorists

Well the Truthers have Charlie Sheen and Rosie O'Donnell, but I will take former senator, and actor Fred Thompson over them any day:

It was an interesting coincidence that their announcements hit the news just as the military released Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s confession regarding his role in planning the 9/11 attacks — and a lot more.

Of course, we didn’t really need his confession, because his career has been so well documented. But sure enough, the terrorist’s admissions instantly drew sneers, and not just from the tin-foil hat crowd. Well-placed people acted like Mohammed’s smug confessions meant nothing.

A lot of people have at least a little in common with Sheen and O’Donnell. They just don’t like to think about how much our enemies actually hate us. It’s easier to escape down a rabbit hole to a land where our own government is tricking us into thinking the world is a dangerous place.

This would be the same government that can’t even keep our most secret surveillance programs out of the newspapers.

Of course he did play an overbearing Chief of Staff in "In the Line of Fire", so he must be New World Order...

On Fictitious Peer Review and Made Up Threats

Pat pointed out previously that one of the "Scholars" debunked their previous idiotic "Elephants"paper, nevermind that the Journal of 9/11 Debunking handled this job months ago. Now one of the original authors of the paper, Robert Moore Esq., writes a letter, basically admitting what a piece of crap the original paper was (yeah, that was some peer review process).

Not only that but Moore points out that Fetzer claimed the author of the paper was threatened, which at the time I was wondering about, considering this lame paper hardly presented a challenge to the New World Order deserving of any threats. Moore states, however, that despite his name being on the paper, he never received any threats.

Needless to say, I was quite shocked at Dr. Fetzer's response to the unsubtantiated claim, especially since my answering machine and email "inbox" remained silent. There were no threats. The whole matter sounded ridiculous.

Before the matter went to far out of hand, I sent off a letter to the founders of st911, which stated that, although I was listed by name at the bottom of the article, I had not received any threats. Moreover, the origin of the threats seemed questionable at best.

They once again demonstrate why you have to use quotes around the "Scholars" for 9/11 "Truth".

Correction: Robert Moore e-mails to point out that he was not listed as an "author" of the piece, but as an "advisor", my apologies if there was any confusion.

Is There No End to Rosie's Talents?

She's apparently an artist as well:



The sad thing? This hideous piece of "art" sold for $2,501 on ebay.

Yes, I know it has nothing to do with 9-11.

Rosie Continues the Woo!

She claims that "Nearly everyone in this administration is under indictment or suspicion." Of course, it would help if she actually had the name of one person. The people she does name, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, are not, to my knowledge, under indictment. About the only significant person in the administration who has actually been indicted is Scooter Libby.

Note as well, the BS about Rosie being against the War on Terror "because it makes people into evil and good." I am comfortably certainly Rosie herself "makes people into evil and good," and the dividing line is between Republicans and Democrats.

On the other hand, Elisabeth makes the mistake of letting Rosie get away with "did Iraq have anything to do with 'blowing up' the towers?" Sadly, Elisabeth then claims that Iraq had a part in 9-11, which is not true.

They Made Dylan's Original Film!

Looks like a snooze-fest and will undoubtedly be condemned as disinformation by half the movement. Consider this shot of the supposed core of the towers:



And this shot of the supposed flight path of Flight 77 into the Pentagon:



Even John Doh of the Pilots for 9-11 Denial isn't stupid enough to present that "evidence".

More Crappy Proof of the Troof

Jeez, how pathetic can they get?

To me, Tip-off #1 is a point that I earlier blogged: "It seems ridiculously implausible that the FBI tracked down 19 mug shots of 19 hijackers, and got that to the news media the same day as the attacks!

Ah, Sherlock indeed. In fact, the FBI did not get "mug shots" of the 19 hijackers on the air on September 11, 2001.

It gets worse:

Each airplane had more than five passengers. Full investigation took less than a day, and the FBI knew precisely who among the passengers was "in" and "out" of the conspiracy.

Well, just for fun, let's play hunt the hijacker, shall we? Here are the non-crew members of Flight 175; without racially profiling, let's see if you can figure out whodunnit:

Alona Avraham
Garnet "Ace" Bailey
Fayez Banihammad
Mark Bavis
Graham Berkeley
Touri Bolourchi
Klaus Bothe
Daniel Brandhorst
David Brandhorst
John Cahill
Christoffer Carstanjen
John Corcoran "Jay" Corcoran
Dorothy Dearaujo
Gloria Debarrera
Lisa Frost
Ronald Gamboa
Ahmed al-Ghamdi
Hamza al-Ghamdi
Lynn Goodchild
The Rev. Francis E. Grogan
Carl Hammond
Peter Hanson
Susan Hanson
Christine Hanson
Gerald Hardacre
Eric Hartono
James E. Hayden
Herbert Homer
Robert Jalbert
Ralph Kershaw
Heinrich Kimmig
Brian Kinney
Robert LeBlanc
Maclovio "Joe" Lopez Jr.
Marianne MacFarlane
Louis Neil Mariani
Juliana Valentine McCourt
Ruth McCourt
Wolfgang Menzel
Shawn Nassaney
Patrick Quigley
Frederick Rimmele
James M. Roux
Jesus Sanchez
Kathleen Shearer
Robert Shearer
Marwan al-Shehhi
Mohand al-Shehri
Jane Simpkin
Brian D. Sweeney
Timothy Ward
William Weems

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that you'd have to be blind or stupid not to see who the five hijackers might be in that list.

Tip-off #2 is a recent point. In late February, 2007, the 9/11 Truth Movement released BBC video from 9/11, in which the BBC reported that building seven had collapsed IN ADVANCE. That is to say that the building was still standing while the BBC reported the demise of the building. The timing of their story was off. Half an hour later, the building came down and "got on the page." It seems that Aaron Brown over at CNN made a similar report, that the building was toast before it was in fact toast. 9/11 was certainly a day of "on the ground" events happening. But Tip-offs #1 and #2 each strongly suggest that 9/11 was also a day of news being spoonfed by the media. The early report of building seven collapsing (at BBC and CNN) was not from eyewitnesses on the ground. The faulty information had to come from somewhere (A prepared plan? A press release?) other than eyeballs on the scene. Where did the media get this information, and who was spoonfeeding it to them?

It was Alex Jones, I swear! He was the one who knew about the attacks before they happened!

I guess this guy John Kusumi is somebody important, because breaking his silence about 9-11 is embarrassing--to the Truthers! At the bottom of the page we hear about his claim to fame:

John Kusumi, in 1984, was the independent "18-year-old" for U.S. President. Presidential politics has no earlier introduction of "the politics of practical idealism," which Kusumi championed with his "People Are Important" bumper stickers.

Apparently the politics of practical idealism didn't include reading the US Constitution, which provides that the president must be at least 35 years of age.

Anti-Semitism and Idiocy

I was reading this article on Rense.com on Dov Zakheim, I don't know what is more offensive, the blatant anti-Semitism and religious baiting, or the just plain idiocy:

As to Zakheim's hell-raiser lineage, Judicial Inc points out that Grandpa Zakheim was born in 1870, Julius Zakheim (Zhabinka), in the Ukraine, a Russian rabbi who married a relative of Karl Marx. He was a Menshevik/Bolshevik and played a leading role in the 1905 turmoil that paved the way for the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. The Bolshevik master plan called for the state of Israel, which was chosen for its proximity to the world's oil and an area of religious significance.

Dov's Father, Rabbi Jacob I. Zakheim was born in 1910 and reared in Poland's swarm of Zionist hard guys, read assassins and bombers. His Polish town, near Bilaystok, also brought us Yitzhak Shir, and family friends included Menachem Begin and Moshe Arens. Dov's father was an active member of Betar, formed in 1923 in Riga, Latvia. Its goal was to control the Middle East (and its oil). It was known that the Jewish people needed their own country and they chose Palestine and claimed it a Jewish state "on both sides of the Jordan."

OK, I may be a little behind in my Middle Eastern history, but exactly how important was Middle Eastern oil production in 1917?

According to Conspiracy News.net writers Shadow and 'Pax' in Dov Zakheim and the 9/11 Conspiracy, "According to the SPC website, a recent customer at that time was Eglin AFB, located in Florida. Eglin is very near another Air Force base in Florida, MacDill AFB, where Dov Zakheim contracted to send at least 32 Boeing 767 aircraft, as part of the Boeing /Pentagon tanker lease agreement.

This idiot manages to mention the Boeing 767 lease deal on at least three occasions, speculating that KC-767s where used on 9/11. Of course he fails to notice the fact that the contract was cancelled as a result of a bribery scandal, and to this day Boeing has not produced a single KC-767 for the US Air Force. Even if the deal had gone through, the first plane was not supposed to be delivered until well after 9/11. Considering he is obviously aware of the contract, how can he not be aware of this simple fact?

Idiots.

Screw Loose Change Video Mentioned In Dallas Morning News

James Raglan, apparently a local columnist for the DMN, notes:

Before I get started, let me say this column is not a critique of Loose Change, the independent Internet film that suggests some U.S. government officials may have staged the 9/11 attacks.

Nor is this about Screw Loose Change, an equally delightful documentary that responds to the conspiracy theories and speculation contained in the aforementioned flick. If nothing else, you've got to love the in-your-face title.

Heheh. I wish more people would get the double entendre of "screw loose" as much as they got the screw "Loose Change" part, but what the hey, it works.

This is pretty good:

For what it's worth, I don't consider Mr. Cuban a loose – make that looser – cannon for financing the distribution of the flick. I watched Loose Change, and its rival, on the Internet and found them both to be quite – how should I put this – amusing.

Both films address probing, provocative questions. The problem I have with Loose Change lies in its answers, many of which are based on loosely strung-together facts, speculations and inferences that, when mixed together, drive conspiracy theorists wild.

Cuban is loving this, because everybody is talking about Mark Cuban and what he's doing. But he's full of it when he says:

"I don't believe the movie. Not at all," Mr. Cuban explained. "But I do believe that lies in the shadows are far more dangerous than lies you can confront and refute. There probably will be a movie that responds to this one, and we would be more than happy to distribute it as well, for the very same reason."

Hey, Mark, James just mentioned a movie that responds to this one. Why don't you put it on the same DVD?

Possibly the Most Optimistic 9/11 Denial Group Ever

His use of the plural might be a bit of an overstatement, but you have to admire his optimism. Under "About Us" it simply reads, "Coming Soon".

Yeah, good luck with that membership drive...

Synthetic Terror Part II

The second chapter of the book is obviously the inspiration for a good part of Terrorstorm. Which is to say that it doesn't have a whole lot to do with 9-11, but a lot to do with "False Flag" operations and Operation Gladio and the like. But Tarpley is a little more cautious than Alex Jones. Note how he establishes the supposed link betwee the US and Operation Gladio:



"Information came into the public domain that...." That is a very curious and passive way of avoiding telling us who put that information into the public domain. But that's a research project for another time; for the moment it is sufficient that Operation Gladio does not tell us a lot about 9/11/01. That false flag attacks may have happened in the past does not mean that every attack is false flag, unless Tarpley wants us to believe that the French bombed Pearl Harbor.

Tarpley goes on to tell us about patsies and moles and it seems pretty tangential to 9-11 but he does get back on track with the discussion of the Phoenix memo and the efforts by Minneapolis FBI to get a warrant to search Moussaoui's computer. But where most of us see the failure of that warrant to be issued as a sad mistake by an FBI paranoid about violating rights, Tarpley is convinced that the special agent who blocked the warrant must have been one of his "moles".

Sibel Edmonds gets a long mention; she has some interesting claims but she's the usual CT "whistleblower"; she blew the whistle after she was fired, so it's an open question as to what is sour grapes and what is legitimate. I have noted in the past that Edmonds' claims as revealed on 60 Minutes were relatively tame; it's only in recent years that she has embellished them to include supposed 9-11 foreknowledge (even though she herself was hired after 9-11).

Tarpley goes on to Operation Northwoods and at this point my eyes are glazing over. You can't imagine how tedious it is to wade through this all over again, in pursuit of a claim that the US government's willingness to create an incident in which no Americans would actually die indicates their willingness to create an incident in which thousands of Americans would die.

Tarpley does a few side jaunts into British government involvement in Northern Ireland terrorism, something I may be interested in looking at in the future and Israeli involvment in Al Qaeda in the Gaza Strip. Again, mildly interesting but not related to 9-11 except in the usual, "If X government would do A, then why wouldn't Y government do B?" sense.

Tarpley also dedicates an entire page to a rundown of the way the US oligarchy controlled all the presidents after FDR. Jimmy Carter, for example, supposedly had a nervous breakdown after "being ousted as Governor of Georgia." But in fact, Carter was prohibited from serving a second term; under his successor, George Busbee, Georgia amended its constitution to allow two consecutive terms.

General comments: As noted in the discussion of the prior chapter, Tarpley does not organize his thoughts well, so we get a mishmash of stuff that is probably recycled from Tarpley's writing for Executive Intelligence Review, Lyndon LaRouche's magazine. His main point in this section appears to be that there are no real outside terror groups or if there are, they are patsies for the governments they nominally oppose.

The Conspiracy Deepens

One week Mark Cuban is a hero for supporting Loose Change, the next week, he is part of the conspiracy himself! If only we could get to the depths of this treachery.

One thing I have to ask myself is this-- does mark [sic] Cuban stand to make money or lose money if 9/11 truth comes out?

If the stock market crashes, he would stand to lose millions and millions of dollars. If everyone is worrying about "False Flag" terror, not many people would be watching his HDTV. There will be less people going to basketball games if they are worried about surviving.

The question in all this is: Was Mark Cuban directly responsible for the banishment of Halifaxion from You Tube? Why was Halifaxion singled out? More importantly, if he was, was it a deliberate attempt to dismantle the 911 Truth Movement?

And the most important question of all-- what are Mark Cuban's plans for Loose Change Final Cut?

How Stuff Doesn't Work

Jeez, our buddy Sword of Truth pointed this one out over at JREF, and it's certainly worth a gander. The website, How Stuff Works, is generally considered reliable for science and hardware explanations. How Stuff Work's homepage has a page rank of eight, which is huge (Ford Motor Company's homepage is a seven, for example). It is the 30th most commonly cited webpage on the blogs according to Technorati. But...

When it comes to explaining how conspiracy theories work, Marshall Brain, who founded the site apparently buys this completely unscientific nonsense. Get this:

In the 21st century, one event reigns supreme in the catalog of conspiracy theories: the September 11, 2001 attack on the United States. This event is seared into the nation's consciousness and significantly affected the entire planet. It seems inevitable that people would cry "conspiracy" about any event with this much impact. However, the conspiracy theories around 9/11 have been strong and consistent.

There's a good compound word for that, and the first half is bull. Conspiracy theories around 9/11 have been marginal, easily debunked, and incredibly inconsistent.

The U.S. government has offered the terrorist explanation, and that is the story that many people believe. A large number of people, however, refuse to believe this "official story." They believe conspiracy theorists when they say that the U.S. government actually masterminded and executed the attack.

We could spend a great deal of time arguing one side or the other. Instead, we'll focus on the process. Isn't it fascinating that there can be two credible explanations for such a complex event, and that both explanations can be so diametrically opposed to one another?

But, as we shall see, Marshall's Brain really finds one explanation more credible than the other.

Brain provides a timeline, of which I thought these three datapoints were illustrative:

# 9:43 a.m. - Flight 77 hits the Pentagon.
# 10:05 a.m. - The South Tower falls.
# 10:10 a.m. - Flight 93 crashes in Pennsylvania.

As our buddy Gravy would say, they got that 100% wrong. Flight 77 hit the Pentagon at 9:37, the South Tower collapsed at 9:59 and Flight 93 crashed at 10:03 (or 10:06 according to some claims).

So for a conspiracy theory to get started, there has to be something that a conspiracy theorist can use, something that doesn't make sense. In some conspiracy theories, it's something very small. But in the case of 9/11, there are four big things that do not make much sense in the official story. These things include:

# Three skyscrapers collapsed. Never has a skyscraper ever collapsed because of fire. When the North and South Towers collapsed, that might have seemed believable because of the giant airplanes that crashed into them. But when WTC 7 collapsed, that was completely unprecedented.

# The way the President and his handlers acted when the second plane crashed into the South Tower. The reaction was strange. When the first plane crashed into the North Tower, it might be possible to excuse the behavior of the President's team because maybe nobody really knew what happened. However, by the time the second jet hit, everyone knew what was happening, so the fact that the President and his handlers did not respond immediately is certainly odd.

# The Pentagon could be hit by a big, lumbering passenger jet. On the face of it, that seems completely impossible. The Pentagon, after all, is the nerve center for the largest and most sophisticated military organization that the world has ever known. So it is reasonable to assume that there would be a defensive system in place, making the building invulnerable. Surely buildings like the Pentagon would be protected by surface-to-air missiles, wouldn't they? The attack on the Pentagon happened 58 minutes after the first plane crashed into the North Tower, which was plenty of time to scramble jets and protect Washington, D.C. even if there were no missiles on the ground.

# Not one of the four hijacked planes was shot down by fighters, even though fighter interception is fairly standard. This is also strange, especially in the case of the Pentagon. For example, when Payne Steward's Lear jet went off course in 1999, more than 10 planes intercepted it over the course of its flight, with the first interception happening within 20 minutes of flight controllers noticing a problem [ref]. So why was there an apparent lack of response to these four hijacked jets?

That is jam-packed with 9-11 Denial nonsense. The steel portion of the Windsor Towers did collapse, and like all Deniers, Marshall wants us to ignore the fact that WTC 1 and 2 were not solely on fire, but had also suffered serious structural damage from the impact of the planes, and that WTC 7 had suffered serious structural damage from the collapse of WTC 1. The bit about the President and his staff is clearly lame conjecture. As for the big, lumbering commercial jet, it crashed into the Pentagon at over 500 miles per hour. No, there are no surface-to-air missiles on the Pentagon, for the simple reason that there's an airport less than two miles away. It's not 58 minutes, but 55 minutes later, and oh, by the way Payne Stewart's plane was intercepted in 80 minutes, not 20.

It does not get any better.

By concluding that, however, the theorist has to explain everything else that happened on September 11. If WTC 7's demolition was pre-planned, then all of September 11 was pre-planned. The repercussions of that realization impact every part of the "official story." For example:

* There were no terrorists. Or if there were, their actions were coordinated by the government rather than Al Queda.
* Terrorists did not spontaneously fly the planes into the buildings -- the government did.
* The North and South Towers were also rigged with explosives ahead of time, like WTC 7, and their collapses were staged events that killed thousands of innocent people.
* The crash at the Pentagon was staged as well. Or, possibly, no passenger jet was involved at all. A missile may have struck the Pentagon instead of a jetliner.
* Flight 93 may have never actually happened as described in the official story. It might have been completely staged as well, or it may have been shot by a missile.

This conspiracy story is radically different from the official story. But is it believable?

If you are willing to move past the revulsion that this story elicits, this new story is not too difficult to believe. Secretly rigging three buildings for demolition is not hard to imagine. The government has known teams of people trained to do things like this (such as Navy SEALS), and it is logical to assume that there are secret teams as well. It is easy to imagine the government taking over, or even substituting, the jets that crashed into the North and South Towers. It is easy to imagine a cruise missile being fired at the Pentagon and hitting it in exactly the way that the building was hit.

Note that along the way that the site never gives any clue that this is complete nuttery; indeed, with the use of phrases like "not too difficult to believe", and "it is logical to assume" and "It is easy to imagine", Marshall guides the reader towards belief in this crackpottery.

The article does briefly mention debunkers, but in the "Lots More Information", there are 26 links, with exactly ONE going to a debunking site and 25 going to 9-11 Denial sites.

Phryngula, a science blog, caught onto How Stuff Doesn't Work awhile ago.

Knife Fights Over At the Looser Forum

I suppose I shouldn't enjoy these outbursts of nuttiness as much as I do, but one of the great things about debunking the Deniers is that we're not their worst enemies; it's the other people in the movement. As others have noted, this is like that scene in The Life of Brian, where the Popular Front for the Liberation of Judea announces that the only group they hate worse than the Romans is the People's Front for Judean Liberation.

The Deniers went for a good part of 2006 on the Unity Ticket, but since the end of the summer they have been engaged in a good deal of internecine warfare. This dustup starts over a claim that Rob Balsamo, the space cadet who heads up Pilots for 9-11 Denial, never was a pilot, and anyway, he died a year ago (cue spooky music).

BTW, TSA=Transportation Safety Administration.

Alex Jones on Screw Loose Change

I only caught this story in passing while it was happening, but now that I have more time I am going back and researching Pat's "betrayal" of Screw Loose Change. I found the March 15th broadcast by Alex Jones that Pat mentioned previously, and had a good laugh over the idiocy of the whole thing:

I am literally torn over an article that Paul Watson wrote. And I have been wanting to attack these people, I have been wanting to expose them. There is no debating it. It is obvious as a bump on a log as the nose on your face. Just I... I mean these people running around saying no planes hit tower 1 or 2, these people saying space lasers did it. These people come out, get cred for about a year, and then they show themselves. It is pretty obvious where some of these people worked, where they came from, but then just to have it confirmed. One of the Screw Loose Change top debunkers has gone public and said that they were told to go to conferences, to try and get people to talk about anti-Semitism, to try and tie it to Holocaust denial. We know that is a government program. To try and promote and push certain individuals we know are disinfo operatives.

And now one of them has gone public with it. I mean I already knew it. I could read this and tell you, this is the real deal. This is one of their own people going "look, you know, I can't be part of this." Again, I mean its like people saying, "If 9/11 was an inside job people go public". It usually takes 10 years folks, and then a lot of people get whacked. But this individual said he is going public, and he says it got scary at the end, and he hopes he is going to be OK. See, one of these little camp followers found out, this is a lot more serious than you thought, wasn't it?

This stuff's real OK! I've been in the smoky rooms where they offered me money to sell out to them! Folks this stuff's real OK! It's real, they killed those people! They'll probably kill me! I've put my family in danger, because I love this country, and I've got to stand up for other people, and I pray God protect me! But this stuff's real, and I want it to burn into your brain, just how real it is! Just how serious it is! Just how scary it is (voice cracking)!

Uhh, sorry Alex, it isn't.

By the way, how did we end up getting lumped in with the no-planers and laser beam types? We were making fun of Judy "Keebler Elves" Wood months before any of the 9/11 deniers started wondering what was up with her. But hey, at least he called us "top debunkers". Maybe we should put that in our list of endorsements?

Don't Tell Alex Jones This...

Luke Rudkowski and Tom "How many of you here have heard of the Federal Reserve?" Foti appear on what appears to be a public access TV talk show. Rudkowski is making a film (aren't they all) about his experiences with the NY 9-11 Denial crowd. I have not watched the entire clip (it runs about an hour), but my ears did prick up a bit at what Luke says at 2:10

Luke: This was just a film about me and Dan Wallace and the NY 9-11 Truth organization, about what we have been going through with the police harassing us, with police infiltration....

Police harassing 9-11 Truthers? But I could have sworn that Alex Jones has told us that almost all the NYC police he's met agree with the Truthers?

Documentary film maker and radio host Alex Jones, coordinating today's 9/11 truth movement events in downtown New York City, says that the atmosphere around ground zero has dramatically changed, with the majority of firefighters and police officers now sympathetic to the claim that 9/11 was an inside job.

Saying that the "entire atmosphere had changed," Alex explained how police support for protesters at ground zero had gone from 20% support two years ago to around 60% support now - with many willing to affirm that sentiment on camera and many knowledgeable about Alex Jones' work and the 9/11 truth movement.

"Police just saying 'keep your investigation going, we appreciate you' on video," said Jones.

"The firemen we've been talking to - a hundred per cent are on our side and have seen the documentary films....it is just incredible what's happened at the grass roots."

The host is quite a nutjob himself. Here's his website, where he courageously proclaims himself to be against slavery:

Slavery and generally any social, political, economic injustice anywhere is a direct threat aimed at the social justice, political and economic existence everywhere.

Way to take on those controversial issues, Harold!

Update: At about 36:50 we get to see a clip from Luke's film. It's much the same as the Looser films; lots of scenes of them walking around New York City, lots of nausea-inducing rotations of the camera. No kidding, there's about four minutes of tape where the camera is just looking at the ground while Foti tries to negotiate with the cops about where the NY guys can hold their "9-11 Was An Inside Job" banner. Hilariously, one of the cops tells them not to "unfurl" their banner near the truck, which Rudkowski subtitles as "unfrail" their banner.

Truther Sources

I am continously amused by the sources truthers will use for their stories, without even a hint of skepticism or analysis. My favorite example being when the Scholars for 9/11 Truth posted a story from Pravda, most famous for being the official mouthpiece of the Soviet Communist Party for 70 years, reporting that an armed coup had taken place on Capital Hill.

Now another story is going around, started by prominent truther Webster Tarpley, that the US is going to launch a "sneak attack" on Iran, on the rather precise date of 4 A.M. April 6th.

WASHINGTON DC, -- The long awaited US military attack on Iran is now on track for the first week of April, specifically for 4 am on April 6, the Good Friday opening of Easter weekend, writes the well-known Russian journalist Andrei Uglanov in the Moscow weekly “Argumenty Nedeli.” Uglanov cites Russian military experts close to the Russian General Staff for his account.

The attack is slated to last for 12 hours, according to Uglanov, from 4 am until 4 pm local time. Friday is the sabbath in Iran. In the course of the attack, code named Operation Bite, about 20 targets are marked for bombing; the list includes uranium enrichment facilities, research centers, and laboratories.

Tarpley later complains that this story has been ignored by the US media, although this may have to do with the fact that Novosti considered this story so important, that they didn't even bother to post it in either English or Russian. Tarpley links to 2 articles written only in French.

Tarpley's main source, Andrei Uglanov, is only cited secondhand, so with a little research, I found the original article, posted here, (Translation mine):

IRAN TO BE "BITTEN" AT 4 IN THE MORNING, APRIL 6TH

An anonymous source in the Kremlin warned Iranian authorities that Moscow refuses to support Tehran, if Iran does not answer the IAEA inquiry, it is responsible for itself. For us Iran with a nuclear bomb or the capacity to develop one is unacceptable. We will not play in these anti-American games with them.

Such a warning to Tehran would not have been possible if the Kremlin did not know about the true plans of the United States in regards to Iran. And if they knew, they did not want to be in the same boat with a violator of the UN Resolution.

To begin with, the Vice-President of the USA, D. Cheney admitted that his country "Is considering all solutions to the Iranian problem", including military.

Russian military experts believe that the planning of the military actions by the United States reached the point of no return on 20 February. In Vienna, inconclusive talks ended between the Iranians and the head of the IAEA M. Al Baradei.

According to our information, military action will take place in the first week of April, just before the Catholic and Orthodox Easter (this year the dates are the same), when the "Western public" will be on vacation. Maybe this will even happen even on Friday April 6th, a holiday in the Muslim world.

According to the American plan it will be a one-day strike, which will last 12 hours, from 4 am to 4 pm. The code name of the operation currently is "Bite", which translates to "ukus". The very name indicates that it won't be big massacre, of course, it would involve about 20 sites where they are carrying out secret work on the development of a nuclear program.

Of course in the typical truther manner, Tarpley plays a "telephone game", repeating a story, based on an anonymous source to begin with, from a second article in French which repeats it. Contrary to his claim that the news of the attack was based on "Russian military experts close to the Russian General Staff", the article only mentions "military analysts", which could mean anything. Additionally Tarpley morphs the speculation as to the date, into a known fact. These are the truther standards for the truth, where anonymous speculation becomes proven fact.

I just hope they come up with a better name than "Operation Bite".

New Satirical Blog on 9-11 Denial

I like this guy's sense of humor.

"We do not know what to believe or whom to trust in the 9/11 Truth Movement," exclaims Sara Marshall of 911Blogger.com, a 9/11 Truth site specializing in 'alternative' 9/11 news. 'Trust, but Verify' no longer works for us. Neither does 'Impossible, but Plausible.' ... . We're fighting with every other 9/11 Truth group trying to protect 9/11 Truth from their lies and disinformation... There are even factions within 911Blogger.com fighting each other."

911Booger.com (not to be confused with 911Blogger.com) has received numerous complaints from 911Blogger.com members concerning the deletion of a link to yesterday's 911Booger.com breaking news about Steven Jones's appearance at a French climatology conference.

As Homer Simpson once remarked, it's funny because it's true!

The Blueprint Caper

I have to chuckle a bit at this one. Dylan Avery got copies of the blueprints to the World Trade Center (apparently Tower One only), and announced it by asking somebody to torrent and seed it, so folks could download it.

Dylan was just a tad giddy:

This is like Christmas, Thanksgiving, Birthdays and Valentine's Day wrapped into one.

It's something we've all wanted for a very, very long time...

As someone who has actually worked with blueprints professionally, I can tell you that the notion that the Loosers are going to discover some "smoking gun" is hilarious. Perhaps an inset which reads "place thermite auto-destruct mechanism here"?

Update: Batmanchester (I can't tell you how annoying that name is) claims to have found something:

The NIST report was a lie. Between 4 of us, we scoured over the prints, noting the fireproofing they said wasn't there, the thickness of the steel columns, the steel grid, compared it to Poopular Mechanics report, etc.

I'm going to take a wild guess here and assume that these guys don't know the difference between plans and specs, blueprints and as-built drawings.

Update: Alex points out in the comments that the AutoCad files include both temporary (i.e., useless) files and files that analyze the damage caused by the impacts of the planes. No doubt it is the latter that has them excited; now they can claim that they have "proof" that the towers could not have come down. Of course the analysis of the damage is necessarily incomplete; they didn't have a structural engineer up there checking what happened. But you know any difference between what NIST estimated will become the next piece of evidence.

Wood Takes On NIST

Well I am back in the good old USA, albeit rather jet-lagged. Many thanks to Pat for keeping up on all the news while I was gone. Things went well, although we are still trying to decide whether to disperse our mind control drugs through the usual chemtrail method, or through Starbucks Coffee...

For those of you unfamiliar with this site, that is a joke, I don't want Starbucks lawyers calling me.

On to 9/11 denier news nuttery, well you know how the truthers are always demanding answers. Now former engineering prof Judy Wood is demanding that NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which has produced a series of reports on the collapse of the World Trade Centers, officially respond to her Star Wars Beam Weapon theory:

DATA QUALITY ACT (DQA) CHALLENGES HAVE BEEN FILED WITH NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY (NIST)

EVIDENCE FOR DIRECTED ENERGY WEAPONS PUT FORWARD IN A DQA REQUEST FOR CORRECTION

PERSONS WITH SUPPORTING INFORMATION ARE ASKED TO COME FORWARD AND BE HEARD

The DQA challenges are called "Requests for Correction" (RFC). Each one asserts that NIST's reporting on the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11/01 is lacking in quality, integrity. Some challenge NIST's conclusions and evasions as being fraudulent, misleading and deceptive.

These three RFCs are the first known to have been filed with NIST that challenge the validity of the official explanations of what caused the near instanteous destruction of the World Trade Center complex on September 11, 2001.

Oh yeah, this is going to help them find legitimacy in the scientific community.

Andrea Shea-King Show Report

As always Andrea was a great hostess. People don't understand how much prep goes into a show like that; the two hours that you hear on the hour are backed up by lots of reading and thinking about the questions to ask.

I was thrilled that she mentioned Mark Roberts and I kick myself for not talking about him in more general terms (King of the Debunkers) and less in specifics about how he was a NYC tour guide who put together this early debunking of Loose Change. My bad, Gravy, I was actually caught by surprise by the question--Andrea does her research!

Earl Johnson was terrific; to hear someone describing what it was like to be caught in the North Tower was gripping. Remember, his book is called Stairwell to Heaven. Earl has the right message and a compelling story to tell. Heads up to James B, he's from your neck of the woods!

In the chatroom afterwards, Killtown and some shill of his from Pittsburgh peppered me with questions about Shanksville. But they were the usual arguments from incredulity and amounted to "Why is the crater only 80 feet wide when the plane's wings were 125 feet? Why didn't the tail section do more damage?" They thought they pwned me, and of course I didn't have any real answers for their questions other than "That's what happens when a 757 crashes into a filled-in strip mine."

But Shanksville is such a minor issue. Killtown thinks that if he can just prove this photo is off a hair, that will prove Shanksville is bogus, and then the whole 9-11 conspiracy will come tumbling down like a house of cards. It's the same argument every other sect in the 9-11 religion raises.

Screw Loose Change on the Radio!

(This post will remain pinned to the top until Sunday night. Scroll down for newer content.)

I will be on the radio Sunday night (March 25) with my good friend Andrea Shea-King on her eponymous show out of Orlando. If you're not fortunate enough to live in the WDBO area, you can listen in live on the internet. You can also participate in the live chatroom for the show by going here and typing in your nickname, city & state and clicking "Submit Query". Our segment will be broadcast at about 9:30 PM Eastern Time, 6:30 on the West Coast. We hope to be joined by Earl Johnson, a WTC 9-11 survivor who has recently lectured at the University of Wisconsin on his experiences on that fateful day and about the nuttery of Kevin Barrett. Earl has written a book about his experience, called "Stairwell to Heaven".

“It came in about 43 stories over my head,” Johnson said. “You could feel the steel in that building reverberate through the soles of your shoes. We took off running down the stairs but only made it down seven or eight flights before we came to a complete stop.”

After about 45 minutes of waiting in the stairwell and having already heard the second plane hit the south tower, Johnson said he and those around him were still only halfway down.

However, amid the fear and panic during those agonizing moments, Johnson said he remembered the incredible way in which people reached out to help one another.

“What I’m most proud to talk about is how I watched complete strangers reach out to the people next to them to help beat that fear back,” Johnson said. “Nobody asked for anything; it was just given.”

Welcome to the Nuthouse, Mr Cuban

If you ever wonder why the 9-11 Denial movement seems to be one step up and two steps back, just check out the paranoia that is greeting the news that Mark Cuban's talking about distributing Loose Change.

As usual, it starts with a little news item.

Once again, copyright holders are trying to unmask who uploaded a potentially infringing video clip to YouTube.

This time it's Magnolia Pictures, a film distributor owned by Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner, the billionaire co-founders of Broadcast.com. Magnolia released the Academy Award-nominated documentary Enron: Smartest Guys in the Room, which has a bad habit of appearing on video-sharing sites.

Hence the subpoena to Google, which a federal court in Texas issued on Tuesday. It asks for information on how to identify the person who uploaded three videos (two on Google Video and one on YouTube).

On YouTube, at least, the username of the uploader is "halifaxion," who seems to focus on uploading video clips airing alternative explanations of what happened to the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

Over at the Looser Forum, this has caused an endless round of finger-pointing.

i for one will lose alot of respect for you guys should this happen. i'll also be a lot more likely to beleive the allegations of being disinfo and also that you're in it for the money now. your response to this would be appreciated.

As usual, they believe that Dylan's got a lot of negotiating power with Cuban:

And as some people have pointed out, if you get US (we are all in this together) a wide theatrical release and a prominent place on DVD rental shelves, and allow us the ability to legally make copies of the DVD, then I say that would be a good trade off to a poor quality Google Video on the Internet. In fact, keeping it OFF Google Video will be helpful to the release. But in purchasing the DVD, people I think need to be given the legal right to make copies for wider dissemination.. Mark Cuban's firm of course would be opposed to that. By playing them off of someone else who's interested, you'll get what you want, and be able to close the deal, and as you realize, a deal needs to be closed ASAP now.

do you do your job better informed or ignorant? last i checked you were pro information. does it not bother you at all that magnolia had halifaxion run off google and youtube and ifilm? cuban claims it was done as an exercise in seeing how the system works, if so, couldn't a different target be chosen? it would take you just as long to address the questions as it does to dismiss them.

Nico checked out the crowd at 9-11 Blogger and found much the same:

Submitted by LUCUS on Sat, 03/24/2007:
"...I don't know if I trust this guy and he may be trying to steal the copy license so he can limit the exposure to the film.
REMEMBER MARK CUBAN JUST HAD HALIFAXION SUED FOR UPLOADING 9/11 VIDEOS ON YOUTUBE..."

Submitted by JJJames on Sat, 03/24/2007
"...You do have a point.... If Mark Cuban does get the distribution rights he can keep this off of the internet..."

Submitted by Jon Gold on Sat, 03/24/2007
"...If Mark Cuban funds a debunking movie by Popular Mechanics, than Bill O'Reilly should fund a new investigation...."

Submitted by waitew on Sat, 03/24/2007
"...This Mark Cuban guy has sued the most prolithic 911 truther on YouTube & now hundreds of 911 truth videos that were there aren't,and you're wondering if we can trust him!!.."

Submitted by CattleRustler on Sat, 03/24/2007
"...There is valid reason to NOT trust Cuban in this deal...."

Submitted by Mike Anti-Neo-Con on Sat, 03/24/2007
"...I do approach Mark Cuban with skepticism..."

Submitted by Danse on Sat, 03/24/2007
"...listening to Cuban on O'Reilly he sounds like a complete shill. He bends over backwards for the official story...."

Submitted by Phaedrus on Sat, 03/24/2007
"...Let's hope the financing has nothing to do with distribution. My head hurts. Being stoopid is so much easier..."

Yes indeed, it is.

New WTC 7 Video Surfaces

I am doing my first international SLC post, as I am stuck waiting for a plane in Seoul. If you would like a break from the Charlie Sheen nuttery, go on over to Debunking 911, where a video has surfaced showing the damage to the south side of building 7. Scroll about halfway down the page.

Except for the 20 story gash taken out of the building, and the smoke pouring out just about of every floor, it was hardly damaged at all. Nothing a little paint and spackle couldn't take care of...

If You Want to Know the Real Story Behind Mark Cuban and Loose Change

Read here. There will be a test afterwards.

Worse yet, while the nation is distracted by the spectacular trials of George Bush and Dick Cheney, the Zionists may quietly get rid of their enemies, such as Christopher Bollyn, Eric Hufschmid, Daryl Bradford Smith, and whoever else is not under their control.

What Else Do Rosie & James Brolin Have In Common?

They both promote websites that oppose much of what they stand for.

Screw Loose Change Video Mentioned on Page Six!

Kudos to Markyx for getting noticed in the gossip section! Any truth to the rumors about you and Britney?

Journal of 9-11 Studies Boldly Debunks Nutty Theory

That was originally presented in, you guessed it, the Journal of 9-11 Studies. Jim Hoffman takes apart the "elephant plane". Of course, the Journal of Debunking 9-11 Studies took on this ridiculous claim ages ago, but it's nice to see that even JONES admits that one of the first articles published in their journal was a bunch of hogwash.

Reaction to Sheen and O'Donnell

Wonkette summarizes the situation rather well, I thought:

Washed-Up Whoremonger To Lend Credibility To YouTube Nut

Right Wing News says he needs a haircut. And a shave from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, perhaps?

Allah says Rosie's getting a bad rap.

We know she’s a Truther, but a Looser? That’s the word from Access Hollywood in this link that people keep sending me, but as much as I hate to say it, I think big Ro’s the victim of a smear here. AH cites Page Six for news that Rosie’s involved in a new version of “Loose Change” bankrolled by Mark Cuban and narrated by Charlie Sheen.

Yes, I can't imagine that Rosie's going to have any real involvement in Loose Change other than pimping it on The View and her blog.

Can Sheen Come Back from Loose Change?

Since O'Reilly raises the point (over at 9-11 Blogger they're claiming that it was a threat) here's a little topic for discussion. My take? A lot of it depends on Loose Change. If it is retooled (and I don't really believe that they're just going to have Chuckles redo the voice-over for the latest version) significantly, the question is where they will come down on the bigger picture. They've already said they're dropping the morphing of the phone calls and the Cleveland Airport Mystery. But those were the two most forcefully stated parts in the original picture. Are they going to be reduced to a Jack Webb film (just asking questions, Ma'am)? Are they going to conclude "negligence"? If that's the case, Sheen will probably come out of it okay. But the more the film alleges MIHOP, the worse he will be viewed.

At any rate, it gives us all the more reason to root against Mark Cuban's Dallas Mavericks in the NBA this year!

NY Denier Group Fracture Continues

Yesterday's birthday party for Rosie O'Donnell may have marked the changing of the guard at the NY Denier group. Luke Rudkowski got on the phone with Alex Jones and claimed that Rosie was going to address the Deniers, but of course that never happened.

Over at 9-11 Blogger, there are comments from John Albanese indicating that Les Jamieson has finally gotten the axe over the URANTIA connection. The idea that Tom "How many of you here have heard of the Federal Reserve?" Foti is now leading the NY group amuses me greatly. Granted, it's probably better that they aren't being run by a cultist, but it's also really the difference between Tweedledum and Tweedleduh. Here's what Albanese had to say:

It appears that Tom Foti is the new organizer in NYC since Les Jamieson was deposed.

As some of you may remember Nico Haupt was video-taped disrupting an event at St Marks church in NYC. Many people who viewed that tape asked why Tom Foto (sic) appeared to be enabling and appeasing Haupt during that incident - as opposed to simply asking him to leave (once the obscenities started to fly).

Mr Jamieson and Father Frank Morales have now both publicly stated that they view Tom Foti as part of an organized disruption campaign - as well as claiming that Foti appears to be working in concert with Haupt.

Meanwhile, Rudkowski has broken some news over at a new blog.

I feel extremely reluctant to discuss the current situation with NY 9/11 Truth, but it needs to be addressed if we are going to move forward in this movement. This situation has been extremely divisive, and I hope we can all come to a resolution in a civil and honest manner. It should be known that I've tried to deal with this in an private setting, hoping to shield the rest of the movement from this unnecessary drama. However, Les Jamison has put me in a position where that is no longer possible. It should be also noted that Les Jamison that over the past few months, the following has occurred:

1. Les Jamison with out any reason took me (Luke Rudkowski) off the main NY911Truth list serve, preventing me from emailing the 1,093 members of NY911Truth with updates and announcements related to upcoming events. Les Jamison also publicly stated that I, Luke Rudkowski, have started my own organization, which he sees as a separate entity from NY911Truth. This is false. I started the CHANGE organization in the hopes that it would represent the younger members of NY 9/11 Truth and offer them an outlet they otherwise may not have. Les Jamison owns 100% of the NY 9/11 Truth web site and the e mail list. In fact.all donations to NY911Truth go through Les Jamison’s private bank account. It should be noted I recently planned a big event to support show support for Rosie O'Donnell. But I wasn't able to get the word out effectively, because I found myself locked out of the e-mail account. This only hurts the movement.

2. Les Jamison has confiscated all funds related to NY911Truth. Les Jamison routed all donations totaling over $5,800 to his private bank account, confiscated DVD duplicators, estimated at about $1,000 and the film projector ,estimated $1,000 which was bought with donations.

Note in particular that although the group claims over 1,000 members, only about 15 show up at the regular meetings.

No New Loose Change?

Buried in an article about Charlie Sheen and Rosie O'Donnell being nutbars is this nugget:

Sources say Sheen - whose father, Martin Sheen, has been arrested 63 times protesting on behalf of various leftist causes - is in talks with Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban's Magnolia Pictures to distribute "Loose Change." Sheen has called for a new independent probe of the attack, telling Alex Jones' radio show: "It seems to me like 19 amateurs with box cutters taking over four commercial airliners and hitting 75 percent of their targets, that feels like a conspiracy theory. It raises a lot of questions."

Sheen's rep confirmed his participation. Cuban e-mailed us: "We are having discussions about distributing the existing video with Charlie's involvement as a narrator, not in making a new feature. We are also looking for productions with an opposing viewpoint. We like controversial subjects, but we are agnostic to which side the controversy comes from."

It's of course interesting that Cuban is talking about distributing a "documentary" which even its creator admits does contain errors, and comes to conclusions that are not 100% backed up by the facts.

Update: Bill writes a few open letters here.

Rosie O'Donnell Harassed by 9-11 Deniers?

She may be beginning to see the downside of associating herself with these wackjobs:

A 9/11 truth organization supporting and attempting to speak with Rosie O'Donnell about her recent comments regarding the September 11 attacks outside the ABC studios were harassed and intimidated by New York City police, a scene that caused O'Donnell to prematurely leave.

O'Donnell has been attacked by Neo-Con webzines over the last few days but completely ignored by the corporate media for controversial comments questioning the official 9/11 story.

Police were out in force to harass a group of about twenty 9/11 truth movement activists, led by Luke Rudkowski of We Are Change, telling them to take down signs, turn off video cameras and cell phones, checking ID's and taking information - despite the fact that they were simply news gathering and exercising their first amendment.

Nico has more on the bizarre scene:

After a few unsuccessful attempts at the lobby entries on opposite sides of the building, finally at around 11:30 AM, 911tvfakery.net was able to get a DVD with 100 of the best 9/11 Video MashUps (incl. evidence on 9/11 TV Fakery) personally delivered to O'Donnell with help of "Freddie", a flower delivery guy, who sticked the DVD and a leaflet into a flower buquet present for Rosie and promised to hand it over...

The only thing that could make this better is if Rosie becomes a no-planer!

911tvfakery.net arrived at 9:00 AM and tried already to hand out leaflets to the waiting audience, with mixed reactions. At around 9:30 AM the local ny911 activist group around Luke Rudkowski, R Rod and Tom Foti arrived at the spot and started to deliver their leaflest and DVDS as well (911bloglines reported).

The group incl. NY911Truth and CHANGE members also tried to deliver a DVD, leaflets and a T-Shirt Birthday Present to Rosie O'Donell, but got rejected several times by security.

At around 10:00 AM ABC7 decided to call the police. 3 cars then joined the peaceful protest group, always switching between two doors of the lobbies.

Apprx. 30-40 Protestors chanted "9/11 was an Inside Job", "Stop the 9/11 Cover-Up- join Rosie's View" or sang "Happy Birthday to you, Rosie". The protest was succesfully organized withy enough leaflets, banners and DVDs.

Update: Stephen Lemons has more thoughts on Rosie.

Update II: Greg Gutfeld checks in here. Damien Penny has some good news for Ro.

Update III: Ron (Pomeroo) Wieck was there and reports (in the comments):

I made the mistake of attending the gathering of tinfoil-hatters who celebrated Rosie O'Donnell's birthday and her second coming-out-of-the-closet, this time as a 911 fantasist.

Nico Haupt was there. I asked him if he was himself or one of his impersonators. He is pretty affable and was kind enough to sort out the various factions that have emerged in Twooferdom. Somewhat ungraciously, I had made a remark about "no-planer no-brainers," and was reminded that he does not believe that commercial airliners struck the WTC, the images seared into the memories of milllions of viewers being examples of "video fakery." Again displaying my characteristic tactlessness, I commented that the thousands of New Yorkers who actually watched the second plane hit from the street and their office windows know that he isn't telling the truth. He muttered something about conflicting eyewitness accounts and liars, at which point our conversation trailed off.

The rest of the small crowd (twenty or so) contained the usual loons. These strange people cling tenaciously to their thoroughly debunked factoids, each having his or her particular favorite. One guy swallows Fetzer's nonsensical fable about the "missing" 2.3 trillions dollars. I tried explaining that there's nothing to debate: he could simply read Rumsfeld's speech for himself. But he didn't want to be confused. An attractive young woman is firmly convinced that Osama continues to deny any involvement in the attacks of 9/11. Another guy said that the suspicious trading in airline stocks proves that it was an inside job. Several believe that demolition experts are incapable of recognizing a top-down demolition. And two or three of them went on and on about the molten "steel."

Mark Roberts has made it his mission to hurl facts at some of the hardest heads since the heyday of Jake LaMotta. He has more stamina than I. The whole phenomenon is amazing--and very sad.

If I Were the Evil Genius...

R Mackey starts from that premise and proves that 9-11 was not, in fact, done by the evil geniuses at the White House, the Mossad, PNAC, the CFR, or any of the dozens of other suspects.

4. WTC 7 Collapsed, But Wasn't Hit By A Plane6

If WTC 7's demise was a requirement, an Evil Genius would have made certain that it withstood crippling damage rather than relying upon chance dispersal of flaming wreckage. A fifth plane would be the obvious solution. If one can hijack four, why not five?

Similarly, WTC 7 absolutely would not have contained explosives, for similar reasons to 1. and 2. above. There is no reason to plan for a two-stage attack when a single stage can do the job just as well, and without any risk of discovery.

Indeed, this is one of the key fallacies of the 9-11 Denial Movement; that everything that happened was meant to happen. WTC 7 collapsed not because it was hit by flaming debris from the collapse of WTC 1, but because it was meant to happen. The dumbest form this argument takes is when somebody says "What are the odds that they would hit three out of their four targets?" As if that was the objective, not to hit four targets.

Highly recommended!

Celebrity Deniers List

Okay, I thought it might be a good idea to start compiling a list of the buffoonish celebrities who have come out in favor of 9-11 Denial. The kooks picked up a new one today, Daniel Sunjata, who has been in a few movies and apparently is a regular on "Rescue Me", one of the many TV shows I have never watched. Here's the list as I have it:

Rosie O'Donnell
James Brolin
Charlie Sheen
David Lynch
Daniel Sunjata
Christine Ebersole
Ed Asner
Ed Begley, Jr.

Any others?

Deconstructing the Scholars

Kudos to commenter Debunking911 for pointing this one out. Here's a pretty good dissection of the "Scholars".

Proclaiming fellow 911 conspiracy kooks and their claims to be part of a "disinformation" campaign is one way to attempt to try to distance oneself from the people and claims. Additionally pretending that the "opposition" feels it necessary to instigate a "disinformation" campaign to flood the conspiracy camps with ever-increasingly outrageous and insane notions makes the conspiracy believers feel important and noticed by their enemies.

I don't agree with everything he has to say. For example, he claims:

Atta had been a CIA asset for many years, a man who worked for the United States government even before the Bush regime hijacked the 2000 Presidential Election.

He also says that the Bush Administration is a fascist regime, which is risible. But overall, his analysis of the 9-11 kooks is right on the money.

Field Guide to 9-11 Truthlings

I've probably linked to this before, but it came across my screen this afternoon and provided a few smiles. Nico can be merciless with his scorn for the 9-11 Truthlings. Just for fun, I thought I'd check what categories I fall into:

Blogger, boxcutter, butterhead, candidate, conspiracy theorist, Naudent Brother, passport, cave jerk, flagwaver, planehugger, Popular Mechanic... and I ain't even a "Truther"!

Being a Little Bit MIHOP Is Like Being a Little Bit Pregnant

Terrific point made by JREFer Horatius:

I'd suggest that there's one important difference between LIHOP and MIHOP: You can be just "a little LIHOP", but you can't be "just a little MIHOP".

LIHOP is based mostly on believing that some people in positions of power are more interested in their own gain than in their responsibilities. As such, it doesn't require much in the way of woo thinking, except when the question comes up of how many people would be needed to "let it happen" without others catching on.

MIHOP, however, requires a qualitative difference: you must have people taking an active role: Planting explosives, or whatever. And once you postulate an active role, there really is no limit to what you must start claiming.

I'll explain.

You suggest there was something untoward about WTC7. Let's assume you mean it was a CD, made to look like a result of fire and impact damage.

Well, then, you need to make sure that there was some fire and impact damage, right? Where does that come from? From the collapse of WTC1&2. So we'd better make sure they collapse. Since we can't just assume the planes alone will do the job, we'll have to help them along.

Superb point, well-illustrated. Read the whole post!

Giuliani's Performance on 9-11

Here's what looks like a solid job of debunking some of the criticisms of Rudy Giuliani:

No one can deny that any executive must delegate the execution of many details to subordinates. Rudy had a team of deputy mayors, as well as fire and police commissioners and their subordinates to assist him. Barrett at no time says that Rudy did anything unethical personally involving the purchase of the radios from Motorola. Barrett mentions explicitly the person responsible, the unnamed “pivotal person at the city’s information agency.” But yet the blame falls to Mayor Giuliani who should have stopped juggling the responsibilities of managing the most dynamic city in the world to get down to the warehouse to inspect the new radios, or perhaps become a radio expert himself and personally select the radios.

Bernie Kerik addressed this issue in his testimony to the 9/11 commission stating, “Show me one radio that they will guarantee you this radio will go through that metal, it will go through the debris, it will go through the dust, and you will have 100% communication 100% of the time-there is none.”

He does not get into the kooky stuff.