As Seen in Vanity Fair's August 2006 Issue!
As Seen in US News & World Report's September 11 Fifth Anniversary Issue!
As Seen in Time Magazine's September 11, 2006 Issue!
As Seen in Phoenix New Times' August 9, 2007 Issue!
Monday, June 30, 2008
$100,000 Bounty on Truthers?
Alex Jones was on about this today, claiming that a YouTube video is out there offering a $100,000 bounty for killing Troofers. First, obviously, I want to condemn this. And second, jeez that's way too much money.
Alex being Alex, he ruins any sympathy for the Troofers by going on and on five minutes later about how we're going to have to run to Argentina or Costa Rica, and some of us are going to be charged as accessories to murder.
One confession. Alex talks about the little prank pulled by Unsecured Coins with the RFID chip story. He talks about how Jason pointed it out to him and sold him on the story because we linked it. I confess now that I did not know the story was fake when I posted it. I did learn about it shortly thereafter (like maybe half an hour), so I am culpable for leaving it up after knowing it was false. But it was so freaking funny when Alex started ranting about it on the air.
The fact that the Pentagon was not evacuated is critical. The White House WAS evacuated, so there are no excuses for the fact that this did not happen at the Pentagon. This is treason. You don't even have to agree about what happened at the Pentagon to understand this.
Well, let's go to the Terror Timeline to find out when the White House was evacuated:
(9:45 a.m.) September 11, 2001: White House Evacuated after Secret Service Learns of Plane en Route to Washington
The White House is evacuated after the Secret Service receives what the Associated Press describes as a credible threat of a terrorist attack against it. [Associated Press, 2001 pdf file; CNN, 9/11/2001; CNN, 9/12/2001] Minutes earlier, in the White House Situation Room, Secret Service Director Brian Stafford informed counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke that an aircraft was heading in their direction, and said he was going to order the evacuation of the White House (see (9:37 a.m.) September 11, 2001).
So the White House was evacuated after the Pentagon was hit. Now, in fairness, some evacuation of the White House was going on earlier, as noted:
In a 9:52 a.m. report, CNN White House correspondent John King will state that, “about 30 minutes ago,” the White House had begun slowly evacuating. This evacuation proceeds in an orderly fashion. But later on, around 9:45 a.m., those evacuating will be ordered to run (see (9:45 a.m.) September 11, 2001).
So I fail to see how this proves anything. Remember, it was quite easy to assume at 9:30 that morning that the WTC strikes were the entirety of the attacks. The WTC was the only building attacked in 1993 by Yousef. And the time is really indeterminate, because King is simply making an estimate of how much time went by. It could have been 15 minutes earlier instead of half an hour, which would fit with the 9:37 report of a plane headed back towards Washington.
And as John Albanese points out, if they had evacuated the Pentagon, they would have had a PR disaster on their hands as well:
Regarding the Pentagon - Arabesque indictates that their failure to evacuate the building indicates something - maybe even treason. I disagree. The Pentagon is the military command center. It is ridiculous to assume that the military would abandon its command center at a time of war when the USA is clearly under attack. This is akin to suggesting that soldiers abandon their posts. THAT is treason.
Can you IMAGINE the press associated with videos of Pentagon workers fleeing when america is under attack? LOL!!!
It is now our belief that the case for falsity of the official explanation is so well established and demonstrated by papers in this Journal that there is little to be gained from accepting more papers here. Instead we encourage all potential contributors to prepare papers suitable for the more established journals in which scientists might more readily place their trust.
They go on to say that they will continue to publish, but don't expect a quick response:
We will continue for the time being to provide a service for researchers who wish to present a new finding or a new point of view but who feel that their contribution would not be suitable for a mainstream journal. We will also be happy to receive sound, substantial work which has nevertheless been rejected by others. However, due to the volume of work, there may be substantial delays in publication here in the future. Thank you for your interest in careful research.
What "volume of work"? Since March, they have published one paper, a four-page article on probability. In March they published a 27-page paper on the economic impact of 9-11 that James caught several errors in, and which still contains floaters (see correction below) like this:
That's only off by three orders of magnitude; close enough for "Truther" work.
Correction: My bad, those numbers are correct. They did have them wrong before.
Jeez, if I were shedding pounds like 9-11 Blogger is shedding readers, I'd be able to fit into clothes I bought ten years ago, instead of five. I've commented about this several times in the past, but 9-11 Blogger is an excellent gauge of public interest in 9-11 conspiracy theories. It almost never gets an incoming link from a major blog, so anybody going over there is usually surfing directly to the site.
To give you an idea of how bad things are, this month, 9-11 Blogger will have about 160,000 visitors, as compared to 238,000 visitors a year earlier. In fact, June of 2008 is 9-11 Blogger's worst month for traffic since July of 2006. In June 2007, the site averaged about 7900 visitors per day; this month they did not even get 6500 visitors on their busiest day.
This marks the third consecutive month where traffic was off significantly (by a third or more) from the year earlier period. And yes, to answer the inevitable question, our traffic is off too. But I would be happy to see both our traffic counts decline; I'm not sure Reprehensor would take that deal.
Update: Alex Jones apparently wants the 9-11 Blogger guys on his show. Gee, wonder if old leatherlungs read my post this morning!
From Firefight, Page 425. This will be my last excerpt, although I will probably do one more review as a summary. Excellent book. Highly recommended.
The airplane had nearly disintegrated, but Dan Fitch's group found several huge cogs, bent and blackened, that weighed a couple hundred pounds each; it took a couple of workers to handle each one. Other objects nearby looked like large gears, and strips of metal that appeared to be fan blades. Workers realized that they were pulling apart the remnants of one of the aircraft's two engines. The aluminum cowling that had encased it all had been torn away, but the guts of the engine were there.
FEMA crews used a blowtorch to free the core of the motor from the column in which it was embedded. Then Fitch and several others used pieces of six-by-six to pry the motor loose from the column and push it off the pile. With the help of some Old Guard troops, they rolled the heavy piece of machinery onto a dolly and finally managed to push it outside. The whole effort took the better part of an entire shift.
For the first time, Regan's team saw something they had expected to see all along but had been scarce until then: recognizable airplane parts. They all thought they would find big pieces of the airliner laying everywhere, the way car parts end up strewn across a highway after a crash. But the physics of an airplane crash were obviously different: Mostly there was just tons of shredded metal and melted plastic.
Finally, they found several airplane seats, piled among the usual mounds of upturned office furniture and random wreckage. A couple of the seats still had bodies belted into them, which had already been found and marked for the FBI. Most of the workers inside were conscientious about not gawking, yet the seats attracted a lot of attention. They were the first objects the nonaviation experts had seen that unmistakably belonged to an airplane.
Richard Gage is on the radio with Jeff Farias. Most of it is the same stuff he says every time, but there is some new idiocy to point out. The most amusing thing about Gage is how he has this Maxwell Smart method of exaggerating claims, how much longer before he starts exclaiming, "Would you believe..." In this case he takes several claims, which have some, albeit minimal basis, and runs them all together:
In the case of the twin towers we have an extraordinarily explosive event where beams are hurled at 70 miles an hour laterally, landing over 600 feet away. Many of them 4 and 20 ton beams. The iron workers and the first responders discovered that the ends of these beams were dripping with molten metal and the molten metal appears to have the chemical evidence in it of thermate, a high tech incendiary used to cut through steel like a hot knife through butter.
"Would you believe, that molten beams were found in southern New Jersey? "
Later Gage claims he is following "Okzam's [sic] razor" in claiming that the buildings were brought down by thermite. Dude, I don't think that word means what you think it does.
Then, in his bizarrely enthusiastic way he promises, not once but 3 times, that they will have 1,000 architects and engineers by September 11th, 2008, less than 3 months away. OK, 2 weeks ago today you had 403, today you have 401. Better pick up the pace there Rich.
Then to finalize this idiocy, a caller asks Gage about the pod theory, that a missile was fired by a military plane, instead of a civilian airliner, Gage replies to that "All of these things are certainly possible."
The new film-flam from Alex Jones. I like the comment from the guy on the bullhorn, who says "The day that we stop asking questions is the day that we have allowed the seeds of despotism to grow at our own door, a great tree that blinds us from the truth."
That's heavy, man. As for the film, it looks like it's nothing more than a repackaging of the We Are Change "truth squad" actions.
I have been pointing out how truthers are avoiding addressing the book "Firefight", and now one of the truthers (sort of) discusses it at 911 Blogger, but in the most bizarre way:
hit pieces in Canada.com and The Financial Times, books like Touching History and Firefight: Inside the Battle to Save the Pentagon, etc. all in advance of the NIST WTC7 report; is this what they call a "surge"? Usual tired ad hom/strawman BS, good points in the Brinkman quotes, though.
What? Touching History and Firefight are not about you. They are about what happened on one of the most significant days in American history, they are not about the delusions of a bunch of egocentric nutjobs.
The Troofers are all expressing astonishment at Senator John McCain's response to a question about Blair Gadsby's hunger strike for 9-11 Troof.
"I appreciate this opportunity, Mr. McCain, to ask you a question," said a man attending the town hall meeting at Xavier University in Ohio. "Part one is in regards to the articles of impeachment brought up by Kucinich for Bush. What your stance is on that as far as manipulated intelligence to form the policy. And then the second is Professor Gatsby from Arizona was outside your office for sixteen days and didn't eat solid foods. I was wondering if you agreed to meet with him for the two hours he requested or does he have to be a corporate owner with multi-million dollars to meet with you."
McCain said he did not agree with impeachment, and as to Gadsby:
"I did not" meet with him, McCain said. "Because I don't take well to threats."
The nutbars wonder how a non-violent thing like a hunger strike could be considered a "threat". But of course what is a threat? It's when somebody makes a demand of you (in this case two hours of McCain's obviously valuable time), accompanied by an "or else" (in this case "or else I will continue my hunger strike in front of your office").
Lepacek and Gary Talis from We Are Assaulting Girls In Wheelchairs Harass Democrats
Latest update on Talis' legal problems stemming from his assault on Maureen Lovetro is here.
Gary is charged with Assault, Resisting arrest, and attempted assault. His next appearance is August 13th.
The good news is that he has secured "council" for his defense. No word on whether Lionel Hutz himself will be handling the case, or one of his junior associates.
Little Green Footballs has a post on Troofer Diaries at MyBarackObama.com. Some samples of the "thinking" going on:
Days after the bombing of the WTC, Bin Laden released a letter to the press stating that he had nothing to do with the attacks on 9/11, and wondered why the US was blamming him for it. Especially when they just visited him at the hospital. And in the so called confession tape of Bin Laden, there was evidence that it really wasnt Bin Laden recorded on that tape? Or maybe it is the fact that Condoleezza Rice called then Mayor of San Fran. Willie Brown, the day before the bombing of the WTC, warning him not to fly the next day? Or is it the fact that Marvin Bush, the brother of president Bush, made unanounced visits to the WTC, under the company name Securicom, and evacuated both buildings while there where drilling, or some sort of comstruction of some type, being performed to the under levels of both buildings. Then, days before the bombings, had bomb sniffing dogs removed from both buildings!! Or is it the fact that 100 billion dollars in gold, is still missing from the vaults of the WTC?
I am not going to criticize Obama for this; it's the downside of allowing people to post unmoderated over there. But I just saw that Team Obama erased a blog entry by a former Weatherman radical (no, not Bill Ayers). Okay, if you can take care of that, you can take care of this. Kos bans Troofer Diaries, and so should Obama.
Kevin Ryan Accuses NIST Scientists of Involvement in 9/11 Attacks
Earlier this week I talked about how the troofers like to keep things on an abstract level, accusing "elements within the government" rather than addressing their accusations against the actual people they are talking about. Well Kevin Ryan, who appeared on Alex Jones' radio show yesterday, along with Richard Gage, has pretty much broken that taboo. No wonder he got fired.
Ryan: What we do know is that thermite materials were found at the World Trade Center. Thermite materials are what we call pyrotechnics, or energetic materials, kind of like gunpowder where the fuel and the oxidizer are mixed together in one component. Much like that except it is more powerful. And as we learn more from the dust, we start analyzing the dust in the laboratories that are participating in this we’re finding just what kind of thermite was used. And so I have done some of that laboratory work, and we seem to be finding that interestingly the materials that were present there are linked to a good number of people who participated in the cover-up, NIST people and people who participated in the NIST report all have links to these energetic materials.
Jones: And people who help destroy building too.
Ryan: Absolutely, people who cleaned up the events, Mark Loizeaux, Loizeaux’s company, but also companies that are interested in what are called energetic nanocomposites. So, uhh…
Jones: Wow it just so happens that you got all the documents on that and Professor Steven Jones has talked about it. It just so happens with the scientific method you backtrack all of this and then lo and behold the very few groups involved in these materials are the very people cleaning up the mess and the very people who were charged with cleaning it up. Buy, that really sounds like a whodunit.
Ryan: It really is, and I tell you what, the more we look at this, along with a parallel investigation which is who possibly could have had access to these kinds of materials and just looking into the connections and so forth we find that given who we know had access to the buildings the Kroll Company and the Securacom Company and Marshall McClellan, you know companies that either established the security for the building or were tenants in the particular areas that had failures, and we also look at who had access to the types of materials we’re finding in the World Trade Center dust we’re able to start patching together some really plausible explanations. Not exact yet, but small series of possibilities, so companies like Scientific Applications Incorporated right, they were the company, you know, I am sure you know that company.
Jones: Oh… For our listeners go over it.
Ryan: This was the company that supplied the largest contingent of investigators to the NIST World Trade Center investigation outside of the government.
Ryan and Gage are on there to ostensibly discuss the "leaked NIST report", which they portray as claiming that the fires were virtually out, save for the "suspicious jet of flame" shooting out. Of course they fail to note that, except for in the movies, neither conventional explosives nor thermite causes huge jets of flame.
It gets even more bizarre beyond that, Ryan comes up with a "spray on explosives" theory that the explosives were unwittingly sprayed on the floors during a renovation in the towers years earlier. Jones, meanwhile rants on about "the debunkers" every 30 seconds. Apparently Mark Roberts is a bigger concern to him than Dick Cheney. What an honor.
And Jones by the way, still doesn't know how to pronounce Uzbekistan properly. Could one of you troofers do me a favor and explain this to him? I have a hard enough time listening to this idiot as it is.
A reader pointed me towards this video on critical thinking, created by the writer of the Skeptoid website. Only part of is about 9/11, but worth a watch.
If there's one thing I've learned in my years of delving into pseudoscience, quackery, and alternative medicine is that conspiracy theories are just like Lays potato chips; cranks can't eat just one. No, they have to stick their hand in the bag and pull out a huge, heaping handful and snarf it all down. Believers in "alternative medicine" quackery often also believe in New Age woo or other bizarre unscientific beliefs. Scratch a "9/11 Truther" and you'll often also find a Holocaust denier. One of my fellow ScienceBloggers, Mark Hoofnagle, has a great term for how cranks seem unable to be cranks in just one area, crank magnetism, complete with examples. Indeed, I've covered examples of just this phenomenon over the three and a half years this blog has been in existence.
Indeed, it would be hard for me to come up with a major 9-11 fruitcake who doesn't believe in some other batch of nuttiness as well. David Ray Griffin famously wrote a book about parapsychology (mediums, resurrection, remote viewing, etc.) before he went on to become the guru of the 9-11 "Truth" Movement. Steven Jones indulged himself in the Burrows Cave nonsense before he ever heard of thermite. Uncle Fetzer wrote three books about the JFK assassination, and another one about Paul Wellstone's plane crash.
Indeed, one time Rob Breakenridge asked me a question that I still kick myself for not getting right. He asked why the Troofers supported Ron Paul even though he'd specifically disassociated himself with the "Inside Job" theories. I should have noted that while he may disagree with them on controlled demolition at the WTC, he agrees with them on lots of their other conspiracy theories, like the North American Union, or the evils of the Federal Reserve.
Anyway, I like the concept, but somehow crank magnetism (coined by our buddy Mark Hoofnagle) doesn't cut it as a phrase. There's gotta be something better. The Unified Crank Theory? Conspiracy Theory Collectors? Or is there something terse that captures "If you're stupid enough to fall for x, you'll probably fall for y as well?"
Truthers like to accuse abstract entities, like the "government" or "New World Order" of crimes, while pretending that they are not slandering real people. So in this excerpt from my continued reading of Firefight, I would like to point out the real people, the heroes, that they are accusing of covering up mass murder. From page 267:
Special Agent Tara Bloesch was assigned to set up the morgue. She had all the right experience- before joining the FBI, she'd worked as a forensic investigator near Philadelphia and as a parole officer in the city itself. With the FBI, Bloesch had helped run morgue operations in Kosovo and Serbia, documenting war crimes and mass graves, after NATO troops intervened in the war there in 1999. Her colleagues knew her as an articulate, tough Philly girl who didn't blanch at difficult jobs. She would keep the morgue under tight control.
O'Connor needed other people to work with her. He gathered several dozen agents on the lawn, near the helipad, to sort out who would deal with remains, evidence, and other aspects of the huge job. "Obviously we'll be doing a lot of human remains and body recovery," he announced to the crowd. "If you're comfortable doing that step over here. If you're not, that's okay, because I need people doing other things too." More than half the group moved to the spot he had indicated. Then he added, "This is not a normal event. If anybody needs to talk to someone, nobody's going to think any less of you."
Thanks to the heroic efforts of the investigators, all but one of the victims were identified. There were 5 sets of unmatched DNA, including a pair of brothers.
Jason Bermas, Korey Rowe and Alex Jones are collaborating on this film. Here's a clip:
Jennings is, of course, just plain wrong about the time. The Office of Emergency Management was not evacuated until 9:30. If a bomb had exploded in WTC 7 shortly after 9:00, why is Jennings the only person who describes it. There were many people in WTC-7 after 9:00, as described by the firefighters and EMS people like John Peruggia.
What he describes as an explosion is simply the collapse of the North Tower. The Terror Timeline gets this one right:
Among them are Barry Jennings, a City Housing Authority worker, and Mike Hess, New York’s chief lawyer who is also a longtime friend of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. The two had gone up to the 23rd floor headquarters of the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management some time before 10 a.m., but found it empty. (It was evacuated at 9:30 a.m.; see (9:30 a.m.) September 11, 2001.) They headed downstairs but became trapped around the sixth floor by smoke and debris that filled the staircase as a result of the North Tower collapsing at 10:28 a.m.
Note the editing; there are several places where the film clearly jumps. Note as well that Bermas claims they were "trapped there for the rest of the afternoon". Obviously this is incorrect; the Terror Timeline notes they were rescued between 12:10 and 12:15 PM; had they been trapped there all afternoon they would have died when the building collapsed.
Jason says he hopes to have the movie ready by September 1. Of course if you go to the website, it says "Coming in June", so they've already missed one deadline.
Earlier I discussed how, while reading Firefight, I was trying to look at it from an historical viewpoint, and not a conspiracy theorists viewpoint. While I have tried to it is still impossible not to notice things.
On this note, I have come to the conclusion that we need to change the way we view the truthers. Earlier I have stated that the people who don't believe a plane crashed into the Pentagon were almost as stupid as those who believe that no plane crashed into the Twin Towers, the infamous "no-planers". I take that back. I was wrong.
It is now my belief that those who do not believe a plane crashed into the Pentagon are even more idiotic than the original no-planers, because there is actually more evidence of a plane crashing into the Pentagon, if only because the less extensive, albeit still horrific damage at the Pentagon, allowed for more witnesses and an easier collection of evidence.
The evidence is in fact overwhelming, and beyond question. Dozens, if not hundreds of people who saw the plane crash, witnesses to the wreckage, pieces of shredded aluminum that covered the lawn, firefights who smelled, and fought the jet fuel fires, pictures of the fuselage, engines, landing gear, and black box. Not to mention the bodies of the passengers.
So for now on, I am just going to lump in all those who question whether a plane hit the Pentagon as "no-planers", so to that list we add such illustrious figures as David Ray Griffin, Thierry Meyssan, Webster Tarpley, Dylan Avery, and even Steven Jones and Richard Gage. Jones and Gage, as far as I know have remained officially agnostic on the subject, but I will include them anyway, just for being unprincipled wusses.
On this note, I also thought this quote from Firefight was interesting, in response to the idiots who claim that no investigation was done, from page 182:
[Special Agent] McKenzie gathered a dozen photographers on the lawn for a briefing. "We don't need to photograph all the plane parts," he told them, "only unique airplane parts or something specific. Like the pilot's yoke, or anything with part of a serial number on it. If we have to prove what king of plane this was, the serial numbers will be what we need" One of the debris pieces McKenzie photographed himself was a piece of aluminum with the American Airlines twin-A logo on it."
Kevin Barrett, in his running for Congress e-mail, endorses his allies in the Taliban:
In war crimes news, the criminal invasion and occupation of Afghanistan - the worst war crime since Hitler invaded Poland - is not going well for the invaders and occupiers. According to a recent article in The Guardian, the patriotic people of Pakistan and Afghanistan are joining together to resist occupation: "The Pakistani Frontier Corps has been heavily infiltrated and influenced by Taliban militants, sometimes joining in attacks on coalition forces, according to classified US 'after-action' reports compiled following clashes on the border." The so-called "Taliban militants," of course, are simply patriotic citizens of Afghanistan and Pakistan, who, like the citizens of any other country, do not want to live under foreign military occupation.
As I have long maintained, 9/11 conspiracy views do not live in a bubble, they are connected to all sorts of bizarre economics, political and social views. No better example of this than this post on 9/11 Blogger, calling for a new "post9/11 world". A few key excerpts:
3 - Population Based Limitations of Government
No body of government should have executive power over a population of more than 10 million people.
The average Chinese citizen is one in 1.4 billion and has zero chance of influencing its government or even having his or her voice heard. The average American, who is one voice in only 300 million, still little or no chance to be heard by their government, but has more of an opportunity than his or her Chinese counterpart to make an individual difference. Canada, with a population of only one tenth of the United States, has much more opportunity at the federal level for the average citizen to be heard. The smaller the population, the more controllable the government becomes, and the more influential its population becomes. This, needless to say, is desirable. I believe it is desirable for Canada to be split into 3 separate entities. America into thirty. Furthermore, smaller nations have smaller opportunities to dominate other nations, and even smaller opportunities to dominate globally. Global domination is of course one of the largest quagmires we are facing today.
Yeah, and North Korea (23 million people), Cuba, (11 million people)and Zimbabwe (12 million people) have even less voice in their government than Canada. Interesting theory. Yugoslavia breaking up into 5 parts really made the region peaceful and content.
4 - Banishing of Arms
In a Post 9/11 World, I suggest all nations abolish all weaponry and decommission all armed forces. A working you-drop-your-gun-and-I’ll-drop-mine scenario seems like a tall order, but it is something worth striving for nonetheless. I consider all military budgets to be a sever misallocation of tax payers money, not only because killing is wrong, but also because there are other realms that it could be used for.
Good luck pushing that one through the UN security council...
6 - Limitations on Personal and Corporate Wealth
Capitalism is not our enemy. It has brought us great economic prosperity and has allowed us to advance human civilization like no other economic system ever has. One only needs to look at the history of various other economic structures to see why we need to have a visionary realist’s attitude when brainstorming the restructuring our economy. However, capitalism indeed has serious flaws that we should look at fixing. In my opinion, capitalisms largest flaw has to do with the accumulation of wealth by the elite. The elite’s desire to accumulate wealth is what has caused owners to underpay workers, lower the quality of production, and so on. This desire is also what has put a Wal-Mart and a McDonalds in nearly every city in the first and developing world. What if governments put a limit on personal wealth? What it no man or woman was able to accumulate more that $100 million dollars? What if no business could employ more than 1000 people or no business could produce a net income of more than $200 million dollars? Not only would this begin to rebalance the distribution of money and shrink the gaps between the rich and the poor, it would also allow re-diversification of the world, and revive cultures that are giving way to western qualities. No longer would Bangalore, Paris, Shanghai, and New York all look alike.
What if no company could employ over 1000 people? Well, say good bye to most technology products such as CPUs, which employ tens of thousands to build, not to mention automobiles, planes, life saving medicines etc.
7 - No IPR
Intellectual Property rights have no place in a civil society. We are constantly told that they are needed to allow musicians to protect their songs from plagiarism or so Microsoft can protect it’s OS systems in order to raise money for research and development so they can bring us even greater desktop capabilities. What we are not told, is that IPR prevents vaccines or medicine from getting to those who need it most, or that it prevents alternative energy sources from becoming profitable.
Well the last one made this pretty much a moot point. Lets end technological development entirely.
8 - No Usury
The charging of interest is the number one reason why people and governments alike are in debt. Banks charge an interest to accumulate wealth, not for survival. Furthermore, usury is a fundamental no-no in all 3 Abrahamic faiths:
News of the tautological.
Geez, when you thought these people couldn't possibly appear any stupider.
News Flash: People Who Work At Pentagon Religious, Study Finds
A Troofer looks into the backgrounds of some of the people killed in the Pentagon attacks and is shocked to learn that they believed in God. Or some of their family members believed in God, or mentioned that their faith gave them strength following the loss of their father/son/daughter/mother/husband/wife.
Breathtakingly stupid "research", probably headed for David Ray Griffin's next book.
The soap opera just got a little more operatic. Our commenter Patrick pointed out this mind-boggling discussion of the NYC Ballot Initiative fiasco waiting to happen over at Truth Action Forums. It's a delight, but I do have to wonder; don't these folks read Screw Loose Change? There is so much that we were pointing out months and years ago that suddenly seems blindingly obvious to the geniuses over there.
Much of the discussion is over whether Les Jamieson is a good person to be running the initiative, and as to whether he'd control the purse-strings of any commission. There is much moaning and gnashing of teeth, as if Jamieson's initiative had any chance of getting enough signatures to begin with, and then passing.
Les' split with the We Are Change boys comes up, and Arabesque is startled to hear that Luke Rudkowski and Tom Foti don't have any money to do their street actions. Of course, this was the case back in February 2007, when the missive he refers to was written.
Jon Gold checks in and says if you New York guys don't like Les, ease him out of the picture. Easier said than done, replies Albanese (which is true). So Gold writes an email to Jamieson suggesting that he step down in favor of somebody named Jules. But Jules demurs, saying he doesn't want the job. LOL! Gold's point is established; Les is only running the show because everybody else stepped backwards when they asked for volunteers.
My favorite comment may be this one, by somebody who attended one of the St. Mark's "organizational" meetings:
It's useful to read the different perspectives of this ballot initiative. I've been curious to what is really at work here. It sounds like a good idea, but there seems to be little support behind it. With a basic grasp of the background info, I went to the 9/11 Ballot Initiative meeting at St Marks last month to witness first hand the dynamic. It was strange. There were only about 70 people (attendees/organizers), and mostly very old. Several people spoke, but the actual plan was never discussed. Two older women helping were both German, maybe irrelevant, but interesting.
Paula Gloria and Webfairy were there. Paula got kicked out after bothering William Rodriguez while both were in the audience (asking him to be on her show). There was a big commotion about that lasting nearly 10 minutes. It almost seemed staged, but that's probably disinfo paranoia affecting my perspective. It's just that the doorman could have handled it better, it seemed like he was being louder than needed and not taking it outside right away.
Les seems robotic, like a droid. I know that is subjective, but it stood out. No charisma or genuine enthusiasm. The event had a sense of going thru the motions, but lacked a sense of purpose or spirit.
As we discussed, the split in New York was generational; hence all the young people are in WAC and all the older people are with Les.
The Chandler conference comes up again, and somebody (Albanese I think) makes the claim that Eric Williams released his book of Holocaust Denial "literally days" before the conference. Not true; for one thing, Stephen Lemons and I broke the story on February 1, 2007, three weeks before the conference. And I picked up the story two weeks before that. And the copyright date on Eric Williams' book was several months before that.
Jon Gold chips in that he threw Stephen Lemons out of the press conference; actually he made the suggestion that Stephen be thrown out, but it wasn't until hotel security arrived that he agreed to leave (and was allowed back in five minutes later by Phil Berg).
At any rate, it's a hilarious discussion. Great find, Patrick!
This video does an excellent job of debunking some early bits of September Clues. A few things I would add:
At about 4:08 in this video, the narrator notes that September Clues claims that an on-site reporter's microphone picks up no sound of the impact. This appears to be true, but what is more important is that it also picks up no sound of whatever it is that the No-Planers think happened. Shack highlights the word "explosion" from the reporter but we don't hear the explosion either. This indicates that the microphone simply wasn't sensitive enough to catch the impact/explosion.
The deception exposed at 4:50 with regard to Theresa Renaud's discussion with Bryant Gumbel is quite telling. Shack has carefully snipped out Renaud's mention that her building is the tallest in the area and has a good view south to the World Trade Center. This is so that his argument from incredulity that she could not have heard the impact or seen the second plane crash into the South Tower may seem a little more credible. But of course this is simply intellectual dishonesty and is a very strong warning that the film is fraudulent.
On the "Nose-In, Nose-Out" issue, the part that amuses me is the way the No-Planers explain this. The "Fade to Black" was done because somebody producing the fakery saw the "Nose-Out" appearing and quickly "faded" so they could remove the fake plane. Of course, this is undercut by all the video of the South Tower attack that does not fade to black. Note as well, that local media as well as national media are apparently in on the plot.
Obviously I don't agree with the ending of the video, where Anthony Lawson blathers on about how the No-Planes theory "has tainted the mainstream 9-11 Truth Movement". That's silly. All "Truthers" are "No-Planers" at heart. The idea that "September Clues" is any different from "Loose Change" or your average David Ray Griffin lecture in this regard is ridiculous.
Note: This is not my debunking of September Clues. I am going to go through the video myself to cover the parts that Lawson left out; where I think he explained things adequately I will simply refer to this picture. But I thought this was a good intro to the ways in which September Clues is deceptive.
She posts a photo of the Windsor Towers fire, then compares it to the North Tower picture of Edna Cintron, making the case that the North Tower Fire wasn't that bad. Here you go, Sheila:
Reading from left to right, the West Face and the South Face of the North Tower. When Flight 11 hit the North Face of the Tower (the side Edna was photographed on), the plane, debris, and jetfuel piled up at the south end of the building, where the fires were most intense. And, as we seldom tire of pointing out, the steel portion of the Windsor Towers did collapse (as the after photo shows). It was only the concrete core of the building that remained standing.
Update: Our buddy Henry62 points out this later image of Edna:
So apparently Edna had not reached a place of comfort, despite Sheila's claims. Yeesh, I despise these fruitcakes.
Taken from here. Warning: Extremely disturbing images at that site.
Nutter paranoia at its finest. The army is apparently doing some exercises in Denver, which involve the use of helicopters, although they are technically not black, the nutters are having a good time running around with their videcams proclaiming the onset of martial law. Yeah, the army is going to take over the entire Denver metropolitan area with 2 helicopters. More likely the 10th Special Forces Group down the street in Colorado Springs is getting some training in.
Mike Gravel, who finished eighth in a seven man field for the Democratic Presidential nomination, has picked up the cause.
The petition drive needs at least 30,000 residents to give their signatures in order to place a potential amendment to the city charter on the November ballot. The former Alaska senator and lifelong political loose cannon threw his weight behind the effort to establish a second, privately funded investigation into the events of September 11th, in response to what he called a fatally flawed 9/11 Commission report.
But get this:
Petition drive leaders say their efforts began in February, and thus far have gathered around 10,000 signatures in support of the ballot initiative.
Heheh. Over three weeks ago, I noted that Les Jamieson reported that they had 7,500 signatures, so they've only gotten 2,500 signatures since then. The newspaper article claims they have until September to get them but Jamieson's own page says otherwise:
Here's the plan. We must get 30,000 valid petition signatures of registered New York City voters as quickly as possible. To ensure we reach this goal, we are aiming for 100,000 signatures. Our target date is June 30th. At that time our petition will be reviewed by New York City Council. On July 1st we'll begin gathering another 15,000 signatures which will override City Council if they decide to reject our proposal.
Wow, they were aiming for 100,000 signatures and they're less than two weeks away from their own target date, and they've got 1/10th of what they need? Even if we assume the September deadline is correct, they aren't going to get there. They might have a shot at September 2010 at the rate they're going.
Oh, and even if they get the proposition on the ballot and it passes, there's still another hurdle:
The commission would rely on private financing, with a budget of $10 million a year.
Look these dorks can't even hire some signature-gatherers. Where in the world do they think they're going to come up with $10 million a year?
This will be what, the 27th consecutive fiasco for the 9-11 "Truthers"? It's Truth Week, Truth Burn, Final Cut and Jones' ridiculous peer-reviewed paper all over again.
And claims that David Ray Griffin "doesn't take a so-called conspiracy view".
In 2004, Falk wrote the forward to “The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11,” a book written by David Ray Griffin, a Sept. 11 conspiracy theorist.
Griffin’s book argues that the Twin Towers may have been brought down by a “controlled demolition” — not by two airliners hijacked by Al Qaeda operatives — and that the Pentagon may not have been hit by a plane at all.
Griffin “doesn’t take a so-called conspiracy view and he raises questions that haven’t been answered,” Falk told FOXNews.com. “I think [the book] deserved to be published and I have no regrets about that.”
Falk said that while he supports alternative theories behind the World Trade Center attack, he doesn't claim the U.S. government was responsible.
“I’m an agnostic on the issue,” he said.
Yes, and I would like to say for the record that I don't claim Richard Falk is an alcoholic who dresses up in women's clothing and hangs around in bars trying to pick up drunken sailors. I'm an agnostic on the issue.
WAC-Job Truther Gets David Frum Charged With Battery?
Haven't seen confirmation of this elsewhere, but according to this post on the UK Troofer Forum:
A letter sent to Stewart Howe of We Are Change L.A. by the L.A. Office of the City Attorney announcing a scheduled court date for Section P242 battery against David Frum.
It stems from this incident in April at a book-signing:
The alleged "assault" occurs at about 5:28 into the video. I don't see anything that could remotely be called assault (or battery), but the Troofers may have one factor on their side:
In a recent email sent to Mr. Dykes, Howe said his attorney, a former Marine, informed him that the L.A. City Attorneys Office is “heavily laden” with “liberal left leaning” staff and are interested in proceeding with assault charges against Frum. “He has also informed me that it may become a case transcending assault/battery and enter in no small way into the area of Frum, along with event security/UCLA conspiring to deprive a citizen journalist of First Amendment Rights.” Howe indicated, however, that his attorney has “limited experience in such matters.”
No kidding. We'll see what happens about this. I could locate no online reference for "Section P242 Battery"; in fact the only page Google came up with for this is the original post at Infowars.
We talked about this excellent UK discussion of the 9-11 conspiracy theories a couple days ago. A better quality podcast of the show is now available. Highly recommended!
Now I am not a fan of the average truther's intellect, but even I was surprised by this. This is from a video of a new troofer (to me at least) named Jesse Johnson speaking at the Prout conference, preceeded by Jim Fetzer of all people. I am dying to know what his claim to fame is. From 48 minutes in.
Everyone can say we went to war for freedom in Iraq, and yeah there is also the oil too, but let's look at the same thing in Afghanistan. And the buster bunking bombs. See I come from West Virginia, and I see a buster bunking bomb and I know the ties between the energy industry, and the military, because I know it was just recently that we were able to stop these used ordinance from being given to the coal companies to explode to blow up the mountains. Incredibly toxic explosives. See, because munitions have to be decommissioned. And they have to be disposed of properly, it is very costly. So usually there is two things happening, one we take these munitions and we take them just offshore and we just dumb them in the ocean causing giant fish kills etc. Which never get reported. Drives environmentalists crazy and they come back and are screaming in your ear, and then you want to blame the environmentalists because you are hearing them react. Or we go dump them on some country. And in the case of Afghanistan, since they were wanting to put in the Caspian pipeline into the basin, it is really interesting that you can go over and drop these bombs, these new bunker busting bombs to obliterate the Urals so that it makes the job much easier for the companies that intend to go over there and lay that pipe eventually anyway.
What the %$^#?
Hey idiot, do you have any maps at your house?
Update: In the second hour Steve Alten comes on and starts whining about how the "Week of Troof" only managed to sell 800 books, despite the fact that he shelled out $5,000 to put the book on the front displays at Barnes and Noble. Pretty hilarious if you ask me.
Traffic Numbers Continue to Decline at 9-11 Flogger
Maybe it's all the people that Reprehensor is banning, like yours truly, that is resulting in the steady drop in traffic that is obvious over there. I remarked a few months ago, that February 2008 was one of the first times that I can recall that traffic over there declined on a year over year basis. Well, it's become quite common. During March the sitemeter was disconnected for much of the month, but it was working again by the end of that month. In April, they had 194,000 visitors; that was off an incredible 125,000 visitors from the year earlier period, or a 39% decline. In May 2008 they had 190,000 visitors, off from the year earlier's 301,000 by 37%. June looks likely to be all the way down to 166,000, which would be the lowest month since July of 2006.
The tide is turning, folks!
Update: In answer to the questions in the comments, yes our traffic is off too. Basically our traffic has been somewhere between 1/5th and 1/6th of 9-11 Blogger's for the last year. But (as you may have noticed) we don't carry advertising, so our traffic decline doesn't cost any money. 9-11 Blogger has scads of advertising and I am sure their revenues are hurting. Nothing would make me happier than to see both our traffic and 9-11 Blogger's decline even further.
The Journal of 9/11 Studies, has not been very prolific lately, with up until now only that single atrocious economics paper since January. I am starting to think that they aren't even trying though, with the most recent post being yet another "paper" by Frank Legge.
If one could actually call it a paper. It is only 4 pages long, and is put together with such bizarre logic and scholarship, that I really am speechless.
If we compare these two explanations for the collapse of the towers it is immediately apparent that they are different in a particularly significant way: the fire based official explanation is a series of events,21 like links in a chain, while the explosive based explanation is a parallel set of scientific studies of evidence. When challenged they behave in very different ways:
If an explanation is in the form of a chain it is only necessary to prove one link wrong todestroy the case. In contrast, with a parallel set of explanations it is only necessary to prove one explanation correct to establish the case. What do we find?
It has already been pointed out that links 2 to 6 of the official explanation are incorrect and link 1, about the fireproofing, has been strongly disputed
Bizarrely though, despite being so short, Legge can't even keep consistent. For example, on page 2 he argues that the steel was not hot enough.
NIST reports that very few samples of steel showed evidence of having been at temperatures higher than 250oC. 3 For collapse to become a possibility the steel would have to be over 650oC and at that temperature it would be red-hot,11 yet no red-hot steel was observed prior to collapse.
By page 3 though, it was.
It was observed that localized heating to temperatures far higher than can be achieved by the burning of jet fuel and office materials occurred in the south tower. Incendiary materials are implicated.
Elias Davidsson, who has been mentioned a lot by David Ray Griffin lately, publishes an article on 9/11 Blogger regarding how there is no evidence of hijackers on the 9/11 flights. Of course in typical troofer fashion, he then goes and lists all the evidence:
The 9/11Commission noted, for example, that a passport of one of the alleged hijackers was found near the World Trade Center where a ‘passer-by picked it up and gave it to a NYPD detective shortly before the ...towers collapsed.
The lack of falsifiability is, of course, a hallmark of troofer logic.
This allegation is perhaps the most offensive, because the "drops of blood" of all the passengers were found at the scene. This bizarre thing is, the exhibits of the Moussaoui trial, which he cites on several occasions in this essay, show pictures of the wreckage of UA 93, so he has to know that he is lying when he alleges that no wreckage was seen there.
A number of documents purporting to identify the suspects of flight UA93 were reportedly found at that flight’s crash site, though no aircraft wreckage was seen there and no drop of blood.
The author then has to come up with a plausible explanation for all this:
Some people may wonder why the U.S. government has not simply faked all necessary evidence, such as “authentic passenger lists”, fake testimonies and fake boarding passes, in order to prove its allegations. One can only conjecture why this has not been done. Perhaps the U.S. government found that involving a larger number of individuals in fraudulent activities by manufacturing fake evidence would be riskier than simply avoid mentioning these issues in the first place: Until now the U.S. government could rely on mass media to ask no questions about the lack of evidence.
Of course he is already alleging that hundreds of FBI agents and other officials are part of the scheme, not to mention all the journalists who did investigate the hijackers, including several who wrote books on them.
I've covered this before, but some of the people listed on Patriots Question 9-11 are not 9-11 "Truthers". Frank DeMartini is listed. DeMartini died on 9-11 so the idea that he's a conspiracy nutbar is crazy. He's listed because of his opinion stated in early 2001 that the World Trade Center could withstand multiple impacts of planes. DeMartini is also one of the signal heroes of that day, rescuing many people trapped in elevators.
We get more ridiculous nonsense with Jamie McIntyre. McIntyre's alive today and disputes the idiot Troofers as you can here in this clip (at about 1:05):
But hey, he still questions 9-11, right?
It's pretty much the same for the rest of the site. If somebody mentioned an explosion, he's a "Truther".
Which of these famed 9-11 researchers was mentioned in both David Ray Griffin's The New Pearl Harbor and Webster Tarpley's Synthetic Terror?
A. Steven Earl Jones B. Richard Gage C. Nico Haupt
The answer, of course is C, Nico Haupt. Haupt is credited with coining the most famous acronyms in 9-11 theories, LIHOP and MIHOP. Haupt is what we call around here a 0-Day "Truther" (that is to say that he suspected 9-11 was an inside job the day it happened), but unlike many others he immediately started organizing and researching.
There are not five people in the 9-11 "Truth" Movement who have been more significant than Nico Haupt. You can make an argument for David Ray Griffin, but Griffin is not a researcher. He synthesizes the work of others. Maybe Thierry Meyssan, who was the man who showed the Troofers a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Certainly not Eric Hufschmid, even though Hufschmid was the first to market a book and a movie on the conspiracy theory in the United States.
For the record, in my opinion, Nico Haupt is neither a flake, nor a neo-phyte, simply a stark raving madman and idiot savant researcher extraordinaire.
This is not exceptional in a movement that includes Uncle Fetzer as an elder statesman, Alex Jones as its most prominent face, Charlie Sheen as its big celebrity and Luke Rudkowski as a young superstar.
So why is Haupt on the outs with much of the movement he helped to found? Well, as I have pointed out in the past, it is the nature of the 9-11 "Truth" movement that it dissolves into factions over time. Haupt has come to represent what many feel is the most extreme faction of the 9-11 Truth Movement: The No-Planers.
The No-Planers are dedicated to the proposition that planes were not used on 9-11. It's a ludicrous position, but as I have pointed out in the past, almost all flavors of 9-11 "Truth" boil down to denying the planes in one fashion or another. The No-Planers in this regard are at least more honest about it.
Anyway, the No-Planers make up a significant portion of many of the more famous and early researchers in the 9-11 "Truth" Movement:
Nico Haupt Gerard Holmgren Rosalee Grable aka the Web Fairy Killtown
All of those names were prominent in the 9-11 "Truth" movement in its early years. One of the more amusing parts of watching the "Truthers" over the last few years is seeing what happens when a prominent person in the movement like Jim Fetzer or Judy Wood or Morgan Reynolds or David Shayler has suddenly gone "No-Planer". At first the assumption is that they just suddenly went insane (nope, they were marked as insane the moment they became "Truthers"). But then the more interesting and paranoid explanation emerged; that they were cointelpro operatives, hired by the government and seeking to discredit the movement.
Of course, this is absurd; if Nico Haupt is a government agent, then I'm a Playboy bunny. Haupt and his fellow no-planers are just like every other segment of the "Truth" movement, convinced that they and they alone have the evidence to prove 9-11 was an inside job, and that every other group is leading the movement astray. As we shall see when we talk about the CIT guys, or the Directed Energy Weapons folks.
Here's Dylan and Nico arguing at Ground Zero on the Sixth Anniversary:
There are a couple of "No-Planer" videos that I will be discussing over the next couple of weeks:
1. September Clues 2. 9/11 Octopus 3. 9-11 Taboo
If anybody knows of any more of these films, please let me know in the comments. Also, any other researchers whose work I should be aware of. I know about Morgan Reynolds and Rick Rajter.
A truther over on 911 Blogger lists some recent books discussing 9/11 (no surprise that Firefight is not on that list).
For pure bizareness though, check out this reference:
2. "The Great Derangement" - by Matt Taibbi - Chapter Eight: Conspiracy Interlude I, or 9/11 and the Derangement of Truth, pg 148 - Reading in between the lines, I think Matt may be questioning 9/11 now and is subtly apologizing to 9/11 truthers . . .
I haven't read the whole book, but I have read those two chapters, and anyone who thinks that Taibbi is apologizing to truthers is high. No, they are not laughing with you, they are really laughing at you.
As I mentioned previously, I am reading the book Firefight: Inside the Battle to Save the Pentagon on 9/11 (shameless plug), and I am about 120 pages in. As I am reading, all of the "debunking" evidence is going through my head, the firefighters standing on the lawn who nearly got hit by the plane as it was coming in, the first responders who noticed all the pieces of shredded aluminum from the fuselage or even shoes strewn about from the luggage, and the former pilot who talked about the stench of jet fuel that overwhelmed the scene.
After a while though, I got thinking, "this is stupid". One of the reasons I got involved in writing a blog on these issues was that I was upset that a handful of morons were trying to steal and corrupt our history, and here I am letting them do it. This book is about the heroism and professionalism of the first responders, not a rebuttal to a bunch of irrational idiots. I don't read a book on the D-Day invasion with the intent that it should be rebutting people who think that D-Day never happened, so why should I let these idiots frame how I see this book? Screw them.
AE 9-11 Troof Structural Engineer: Nukes in the Towers
Charles Pegelow expounds on his own particular flavor of "Truth". Troy does a great job with a very simple formula: Ask over and over again what is the best piece of evidence.
Update: The host and producer stop by in the comments section. They are planning to make the show available at their website. Kudos to Neil and Matthew for a job well done. Go Wanderers!
BTW, I am still planning on focusing on the No-Planers and CIT in the next couple of weeks, but it's the sort of thing that requires a little bit of research, so have patience.
A few days ago I was speculating that Richard Gage and his argument from authority organization Architects and Engineers for 9/11 truth was peaking. In one sense at least, I may have been right. On their front page they have a counter for the numbers of "architects and engineers" who have signed their petition, with the goal of 1,000 by September 11th. Previously it was stuck at 403, now it is... down to 401. Going the wrong way there Rich.
On a related note, their bogus and unscientific lists on the front page regarding the features of controlled demolition have always bugged me, and I have posted on it before. But anyone notice the list regarding WTC7:
And exhibited none of the characteristics of destruction by fire, i.e.
Now for the moment I will ignore the first 3 items, all false of course, but look at #4.
1. Slow onset with large visible deformations 2. Asymmetrical collapse which follows the path of least resistance (laws of conservation of momentum would cause a falling, to the side most damaged by the fires) 3. Evidence of fire temperatures capable of softening steel
4. High-rise buildings with much larger, hotter, and longer lasting fires have never “collapsed”.
That's doesn't even fit the category of the list! What kind of genius engineers are incapable of making a list consisting of 4 items properly?
Alex Jones is all in a tizzy over some things radio host Michael Reagan said about the idiot formerly known as John Conner:
Excuse me folks, I’m going to say this. We ought to find the people who are doing this, take them out and shoot them. Really. You take them out, they are traitors to this country, and shoot them. You have a problem with that? Deal with it. You shoot them. You call them traitors, that’s what they are, and you shoot them dead. I’ll pay for the bullets.
Dice and Jones are threatening to sue, demanding he be arrested, and is trying to get people to urge the FCC to take action. Geez, you would think someone who names himself after a character in the movie "The Terminator" would toughen up a little. Now I don't think Reagan should have said this, if only because it gives the whack jobs even more publicity, but I don't recall them having conniptions when Kevin Barrett called for the execution of thousands of members of the mainstream media for treason, on numerous occasions.
We Are Change is starting to show all the hallmarks of a criminal organization. We've talked in the past about how their members beat girls in wheelchairs, assault their fellow "Truthers", even members of the European Parliament. Now comes word from Denver that they've engaged in trespassing and peddling without a permit.
As I was giving a DVD to an interested person, this officer who gave me the ticket (I can’t quite make out his name) came up to me and told me that what we were doing was “peddling” and that we would all have to stop immediately. I said “I thought peddling was selling stuff” in an earnest question and inquiry into the law. I was not rude about it. He did not like being challenged and said again that we were peddling. I made it clear to him several times that we were not selling anything, but giving away the information for free. I asked him if he would be willing to say that we were peddling on tape and he told me he would not. I again asked him the question and he had had enough and told me to put my hands behind my back. I said “I’m being arrested?” and they slapped the cuffs on me. After he cuffed me and pulled me to the side off of the mall property. I have since researched the Denver Code 47-35:(Peddlers license required) and found that it does in fact apply only to people who are vendors or are selling things, as I thought.
There's a video of them dealing with the cops at the link; it's the usual "Well, I thought the constitution says..." crap from kids who've probably never read the constitution.
Well, this is news! I can see them banning me commenting; that's pretty typical for "Truther" sites, and I've actually been surprised that they allowed me to comment this long at 9-11 Blogger. But they won't even let me see their site!
Of course, there are ways around this, but I wonder if this isn't sending a message that the marginalized theories discussed over at 9-11 Blogger aren't worth exploring. Maybe it is time for me to focus more on the mainstream truthers: the no-planers, the CIT guys, the directed energy weapons crew. We spend far too much time on goofballs like Richard Gage and Steven Jones when there are serious researchers like Ace Baker and Judy Woods and Aldo Marquis whom nobody dares dispute their work.
Well, that no longer applies; consider me the Flagwaver Shill Planehugger Supreme. Coming up: Meet the No-Planers.
I have discussed the book Firefight: Inside the Battle to Save the Pentagon on 9/11 several times, mostly because I am still trying to get a troofer to address the subject. Ballantine Books though was nice enough to send me a copy to review, so I will be posting a more in-depth review shortly. I read through the first 4 chapters last night, and all I can say so far is that anyone who reads this book, and still thinks that a plane didn't crash into the Pentagon needs to immediately check themselves into the nearest mental health facility. Of course, this will pretty much guarantee that no troofers read the book.
OK, he is not technically a truther, but he has the awareness of one.
So says Texas Rep. Ron Paul, is officially ending his presidential campaign today and launching a nationwide effort to elect like-minded, limited-government proponents.
"The presidential campaign was Phase One," said Jesse Benton, Paul's spokesman. He said Paul is forming a non-profit organization that will tap into the activism and fundraising energy that was created by the Ron Paul Revolution during his bid for the Republican nomination.
Gee, you just now figured out you weren't going to win?
Now personally, I disagree with today's decision, I agreed more with Justice Robert's and Scalia's scathing dissent, and I am not sure yet how exactly this will affect the upcoming trials of Khalid SheikhMohammed and his 4 cohorts, but as far as conspiracy theorists go, there is another interesting aspect to this. We are told, that 9/11 is part of some long begun plot, to scare the country, put the neocons into power, and enact a police state dictatorship. But look at the reality, President Bush is extremely unpopular, leaving office in just over 7 months, both houses of Congress and the presidency are likely to be going to the opposition party, which has hampered just about every piece of legislation he has proposed as of late, and in this case, he can't even get a congressionally approved plan to handle enemy combatants past the Supremes.
And what does the NWO do in response to these repeated defeats? Well, nothing.
ROME (AP) - President Bush on Thursday strongly disagreed with a Supreme Court ruling that clears foreign terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts. Bush suggested new legislation may now be needed to keep the American people safe.
"We'll abide by the court's decision," Bush said during a news conference in Rome. "That doesn't mean I have to agree with it." The court's decision was sure to be popular in Europe, where many leaders have called for the closing of of Guantanamo.
In its third rebuke of the Bush administration's treatment of prisoners, the court ruled 5-4 that the government is violating the rights of prisoners being held indefinitely and without charges at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. The court's liberal justices were in the majority.
I want my Illuminati dues back if they don't start doing better than this.
Lol! Our old buddy Unsecured Coins from the JREF forum got on Alex Jones to rib him about the RFID chip claim. This came up a couple weeks ago. Unsecured had some official military paperwork with the acronym "RFID" featured on it prominently:
I'm getting chipped. I got selected for the 1% of combat troops in my Division to get one to monitor "stress patterns" for the upcoming deployment. I get to go to DACH next week for a simple 30 minute procedure to have this damn chip put in my right arm. So I have a date when it goes in, but no date when it comes out. I don't wanna say that is is for nefarious purposes but I don't see a reason to monitor my stress levels prior to a deployment I'm not going on until another 9-10 months.
Well, of course, it was all just a gag. RFID in this case means "Returned for Identification". He wasn't getting a microchip put in his arm. But I posted a link to the story and mentioned that while it was a little creepy it didn't surprise me entirely. Apparently Jason Bermas noticed our post and pointed it out to Alex Jones. As it happened, I was listening live to Alex that morning and just about fell out of my chair laughing. Jones noted that on the JREF thread, everybody was initially shocked, but then within a couple posts, we began to say, well, the military probably knows best, and it's probably just for Unsecured's benefit. Of course, that was part of the gag, because we knew it would fit Alex Jones' personal confirmation bias that we're all just sheeple who go along with what the government tells us.
Well, apparently Jones and Bermas have continued to talk about this story, and Unsecured has continued to set the hook more firmly. He posted a picture of his arm after the chip insertion:
So today Unsecured Coins called (see episode 11) into Alex's show to talk to him about his chip. Jones tries to ramble on about how UC doesn't believe that 9-11 was an inside job, that the marines didn't throw that puppy off a cliff, etc. Eventually he gets stopped dead in his tracks by a question from Unsecured.
"What I want to know is why you get worked up over something I made up?"
Jones sputters a bit about how Unsecured is a liar, just like his father, the Devil, and about how this was all a psy-op. Yeah, Alex, this was a psychological operation that took advantage of your nutty paranoia. And it worked like a charm!
Kudos to Unsecured Coins and everybody else that participated in the gag, especially JREF forum member Sabrina, who I believe originally came up with the idea. Great job by all concerned!
The thin man sitting outside the office of a U.S. senator isn't simply raising questions about 9/11, he's raising a question about us.
By fasting for all those days in public he is, by example, asking this question : For what cause or belief would you go hungry, risk your livelihood, your health, your reputation?
What bugs us and causes many of us to treat someone like Gadsby with disdain is that we have no good answer to that question.
To which I reply that several members of the Heaven's Gate Cult castrated themselves. For what cause or belief would E.J. Montini be willing to castrate himself? What bugs us and causes many of us to treat somebody like Marshall Applewhite with disdain is that we have no good answer to that question.
Day 17 of Blair's hunger strike for 9/11 Truth came and went with dozens of citizens stopping by to give Blair their thanks and appreciation for a selfless act dedicated to the Truth about 9/11. Alex Jones interviewed Blair and Senator Johnson today as well as Mike Rivero of Whatreallyhappened.com and Jeff Farias from Nova M radio. Blair decided Day 17 would be his last day fasting for truth. His weight has dropped to 124 lbs from a normal of 155 lbs. Given the amount of press coverage, good or bad, generated from his hunger strike, the fantastic speech by Senator Johnson on the floor of the Arizona Senate and the apparent lack of concern by Senator McCain. Blair has decided that 17 days was enough. What better day than the 11th of the month?
The 4.6% set still holds on to the fantasy that they represent some sort of secret majority.
Email came from all over the country and globe. The people know about 9/11. The spell is wearing off. We may still be a silent majority, but we know. If anything is learned from this, it is the historical fact that one individual can make a difference and a contribution to better their city, their state and their world. Don't let anyone tell you differently.
Oh please, in the photo accompanying the article there are 18 people. And this is the largest truther media event in years. There are over 4 million people in the Phoenix area alone, and some of these people came up from Tucson.
This is a bit off topic, but since the truthers continue to have full body sexual responses to Kucinich's tilting at windmills, I should point out that it was thrown into a committee to die. This bill was such a threat, that it was actually the Republicans who wanted to bring it immediately to a vote:
Democratic aides widely suggested those gauging the bill's prospects look to a precedent: the impeachment articles against Vice President Dick Cheney, which were sent to Conyers' committee in November. There's no evidence they will be considered before the Bush administration leaves office in January.
Those were Kucinich's, too. Republicans, seeing a chance to force Democrats into an embarrassing debate, voted to bring up the resolution. Democrats countered by pushing through a motion to scuttle the bill from the floor.
I confess, I was optimistic the other day when I said he'd be in a wheelchair in two weeks:
To answer the obvious question, no I do not have the phone number of the gal at the far left. And to answer the second obvious question, no We Are Change members were around to beat Blair up.
All the truther celebrities go through an arc of fame worthy of a teen pop star. Remember when Jim Fetzer and Judy Wood were the face of the movement? Dylan Avery once was profiled in several national magazines, now he can barely get anyone to watch his movie for free on Google video. Richard Gage, his house in hock and his wife having left him, has been the hot property lately, with an impressive 19 appearances in the last 3 months according to his website.
What does the future bode though? Well it looks like he is cooling off, with just a pair of appearances (venue TBD) over the next three months.
Well at least he can visit with Pat in Phoenix.
His recruiting isn't going as well either. Despite claims that everyone who hears his lecture is convinced, and despite adding every electrical and software engineer he can get his hands on his list of "engineers" is stuck at 403, with only 3 months, to the day, to go until September 11th to get to his promised 1000.
JREF Forum member and pilot Reheat takes a look at the CIT's claim of a "North of the Citgo, South Parking Lot Flyover", compares that with the flight path as indicated by two other CIT witnesses, and shows the aerial maneuvers that would have been required and the G forces and stress that the plane would have encountered (and been unable to handle without stalling).
How the mighty have fallen. Griffin appears to be addressing a crowd of about 20-30 people. In Los Angeles, one of the biggest cities in the country. This appears to be an abbreviated lecture, but Griffin claims inside job status for Pearl Harbor.
She introduced Blair Gadsby to the AZ State Senate today. Then she gave a speech on 9-11 "Truth". Apparently she gave them copies of Mike Berger's Improbable Collapse as well; jeez it's been ages since I saw that movie mentioned anywhere. In her speech, she focused on the pulverized concrete issue, which is simply retarded. The concrete in the building was in the floors only. Even if the building had been a controlled demolition, how would they have pulverized the concrete? This is where "beam weapons from space" come into the equation.
A group of 3,000 political activists is planning to send letters to American soldiers in Iraq, telling them that the U.S. is to blame for the 9/11 terror attacks.
Mark Dice, founder of the international media watchdog group known as The Resistance, says, "We... want them to know the real reason they have put themselves in harm's way."
I frequently see the 3,000 members claim for The Resistance; anybody have any idea what the reality is? Is that the number of people who bought his book?
A bunch of our commenters have been clamoring for us to cover this non-story.
An Ohio Democratic lawmaker and former presidential candidate has presented articles of impeachment against President George W. Bush to Congress.
Thirty-five articles were presented by Rep. Dennis Kucinich to the House of Representatives late Monday evening, airing live on C-SPAN.
I haven't seen the actual charges themselves, but Jon Gold says:
Dennis Kucinich just introduced 35 articles of impeachment. Number 33 had to do with criminal negligence with regard to 9/11. Number 34 had to do with obstruction of justice with regard to 9/11. Number 35 had to do with how this administration has treated the 9/11 First Responders.
You know how it is, the Troofers believe the government pulled off 9-11. Negligence implies that the government did not pull it off. But they'll take it anyway.
The idea that this is going anywhere is a fantasy. Remember, Kucinich has introduced impeachment resolutions in the past:
Kucinich, a 2004 and 2008 Democratic candidate for the White House, abandoned a prior attempt to begin impeachment proceedings against Bush in January of this year.
In April of 2007, Kucinich presented impeachment articles against Vice President Dick Cheney, but the effort went nowhere. Kucinich exclaimed that "impeachment may well be the only remedy which remains to stop a war of aggression against Iran."
Before leaving office in January 2007, then-Democratic Rep. Cynthia McKinney--currently a Green Party presidential candidate--introduced articles of impeachment against President Bush as her last act in Congress, but that effort also was fruitless.
Keep digging, "Truthers"! There's a pony in there somewhere!
