Richard Falk: Still A Crackpot

And still a Princeton professor and a UN appointee. He's just published a new article on his 9-11 nuttery:

From this perspective, and given the dark cloud of doubt that lingers over the official 9/11 narrative, why was the issue not even discussed during the many months of presidential campaigning? As far as I know it was never mentioned. And the explanation is not the urgency associated with the widening economic crisis or the tactical interest of the Democrats to avoid offending Republicans in their search for support across party lines. The truth is deeper, and far more disturbing.

As far as I can tell, the real explanation is a widely shared fear of what sinister forces might lay beneath the unturned stones of a full and honest investigation of 9/11. Ever since the assassinations in the 1960s of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X there has been waged a powerful campaign against “conspiracy theory” that has made anyone who dares question the official story to be branded as a kook or some kind of unhinged troublemaker. In this climate of opinion, any political candidate for high office who dared raise doubts about the official version of 9/11 would immediately be branded as unfit, and would lose all political credibility. It is impossible to compete in any public arena in the United States if a person comes across as a “9/11 doubter.”

Actually it did come up during the campaign on several occasions, Richard. Remember, Ron Paul being asked about the Truthers during a Republican debate?



It also came up indirectly when Bill Clinton was campaigning for his wife and got interrupted by the fruitcakes. Remember that one, Richard?



I am not Bill Clinton's biggest fan, but that was a moment that I stood up and cheered for him.

As for Falk, if the UN were capable of being embarrassed by their endorsement of idiots like him, they'd thank him for his service, give him a gold watch, and hustle him off the stage. But it is the UN, after all.

Update: I thought I'd take another couple whacks at the Falk pinata, and by extension, David Ray Griffin. Falk notes in his introduction that:

David Ray Griffin and others have analyzed and assessed these discrepancies in such an objective and compelling fashion that only wilful ignorance can maintain that the 9/11 narrative should be treated as a closed book, and that the public should move on to address the problems of the day.

But he also claims:

What has not been established by the “9/11 Truth Movement” is a convincing counter-narrative – that is, an alternate version of the events that clears up to what degree, if at all, the attacks resulted from incompetence, deliberate inaction, and outright complicity.

Ah, but here Falk is not up to date. Griffin has assembled a counter-narrative (convincing or not). Griffin clearly believes in outright complicity, not deliberate inaction. For example, consider his continued insistence that the phone calls from the planes were faked. If Griffin believed in LIHOP (deliberate inaction), he would not deny the phone calls, because the phone calls do not disprove LIHOP. LIHOP assumes that the hijackers were Arab terrorists, but that the government knew about their planned attacks ahead of time and allowed them to go forward. It is only MIHOP proponents who have trouble with the phone calls.

Griffin also believes in the vast conspiracy; this is not some small operation. As James pointed out last week, he apparently believes that the bodies of the passengers of Flight 77 "could have been transferred to that middle building from somewhere else and to the people at the pathology institute they would assume they all came from the Pentagon."

I'm starting to think we should assemble a list of all the wacky things that David Ray Griffin believes. He's such a slippery customer that it's easy to forget that he endorses some of the nuttiest stuff in 9-11 Denial.