Friday, October 31, 2008

Lindorff Pans the Conspiracy Mongers

We've criticized Dave Lindorff in the past for promoting the conspiracy theories but he seems to have come to his senses:

What I am saying is that the grander conspiracies being concocted in the more fevered brains of some people on the Left do not hold up under careful and critical inspection. The biggest failings they share are two: first of all, conspiracies as grand as multi-state election thefts via electronic fraud, and the carrying out of a two-front, high-casualty mass terrorist act on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, require the cooperation of such large numbers of people that leaks, turncoats, informants and simple screw-ups are inevitable; and secondly, this administration in particular has shown itself to be phenomenally inept, intellectually stunted, and tactically clueless.


Lindorff still claims to have sources that tell him that the FBI recovered the black boxes from Flights 11 and 175, as he told Jon Gold recently:



Okay, so somebody lied to him, I suppose, because the government really has no reason to deny having those black boxes. But it is always good to see folks climbing back off the ledge.

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Thursday, October 30, 2008

Naomi Wolf Coddles the Troofers



She claims that the 9-11 Commission Members disavowed their own conclusions; this is a fruitcake misreading of the NY Times Op-Ed by Kean and Hamilton. In fact, Kean and Hamilton incorporated the criticism voiced in that OpEd, in the actual 9-11 Commission Report, as they noted:

As a result of this January meeting, the C.I.A. agreed to pose some of our questions to detainees and report back to us. The commission concluded this was all the administration could give us. But the commission never felt that its earlier questions had been satisfactorily answered. So the public would be aware of our concerns, we highlighted our caveats on page 146 in the commission report.


If Obama is indeed elected next Tuesday, I hope that everybody remembers afterwards that just last year, Naomi was claiming that fascism was coming to America.



You know, those fascist dictators that allow the opposition to win an election are pretty rare.

Carol Brouillet's Campaign Ad



Wonder Woman is running again for Congress on the 9-11 Troof platform; haven't heard anything about Bishop Bob Bowman's campaign this year.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Just The Facts, Ma'am


Jon Gold tries the Joe Friday approach:

That being said, we have not proven it beyond the shadow of doubt. We do not have documentation that shows they planned it. We do not have a signed confession from someone.


Well, I certainly agree with the first sentence there, and the second and the third. However, it isn't long before Jon goes off the rails:

If we could somehow download all of our knowledge to every person on the planet, this fight would be over tomorrow.


You download information from something; you upload to. But beyond that, note the presumption that if everybody just had access to the information that the Troofers have, everybody'd be a Troofer.

But Jon, being a rigorous internet prosecutor, decides to present a list of "facts" that nobody can deny which prove 9-11 was an inside job. The list is mostly familiar stuff. For example:

Dick Cheney was the CEO for a company called Halliburton. During his tenure there, he gave a speech at the Institute of Petroleum that said, "while many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies, even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow." On 10/11/2005, it was reported that the shares that Dick Cheney claimed he no longer had with Halliburton, rose 3281% in one year.


Well, the link under the claim that Halliburton shares rose 3281% goes to Gold's own website, where he links a story from the Carpetbagger Report (second only to the New York Times in credibility) that paints a slightly different picture:

...the value of Cheney's Halliburton stock options rose in value 3281% in one year.


Stock options, stock, it's all the same, right? But note also that bit about "Cheney claimed he no longer owned". In point of fact, Dick Cheney did own those stock options. But he had already pledged to donate any profits from those options to charity:

Democrats pointed out that Cheney receives deferred compensation from Halliburton under an arrangement he made in 1998, and also retains stock options. He has pledged to give after-tax proceeds of the stock options to charity.

Cheney's aides defended the assertion on NBC, saying the financial arrangements do not constitute a tie to the company's business performance. They pointed out that Cheney took out a $15,000 insurance policy so he would collect the deferred payments over five years whether or not Halliburton remains in business.


And in fact Cheney did donate the proceeds to charity, which caused a minor controversy itself:

It appears that the VP is a major beneficiary of the Hurricane Katrina tax relief act. In particular, he claimed $6.8 million of charitable deductions, which is 77% of his AGI -- well in excess of the 50% limitation that would have applied absent the Katrina legislation. The press release indicates that the charitable contribution reflects the amount of net proceeds from an independent administrator's exercise of the VP's Halliburton options -- apparently, the VP had agreed back in 2001 that he would donate the net proceeds from the options to charities once they were exercised.


Yep, the poster was complaining that Cheney donated too much to charity!

So what are we left with? Dick Cheney saying that there was a lot of oil in the Middle East. Stop the presses!

It isn't long before the "weasel words" appear:

Fact #8
On the morning of 9/11, there were several military exercises taking place, some of which allegedly mirrored the events taking place that day.


Fact #9
From the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC), Dick Cheney allegedly monitored Flight 77 from 50 miles outside of Washington D.C.


Fact #13
The heads of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11, Sen. Porter Goss, and Sen. Bob Graham, along with Sen. John Kyl, met with an alleged financier of the attacks on the day of 9/11.


Apparently, Lt. General Mahmood Ahmed, the head of the Pakistani ISI, someone who met with U.S. elected and appointed officials in the weeks before 9/11, on the day of 9/11, and in the days after 9/11, ordered possible MI6 Agent Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh to wire transfer $100,000 to Mohammad Atta.


Allegedly? Apparently? I thought this was just the "facts"?

The rest of the list is a hodgepodge of noncontroversial stuff like:

Fact #10
On the day of 9/11, Donald Rumsfeld started planning the Iraq War. DoD Staffer Stephen Cambone took down several notes with regards to what Rumsfeld was saying. "Best info fast... judge whether good enough [to] hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at same time - not only UBL [Usama Bin Laden]" [...] "Go massive... Sweep it all up. Things related and not." [...] "Hard to get a good case."


And:

Fact #11
Between 9:30pm and 10:00pm on 9/11/2001, Bush says, "this is a great opportunity. We have to think of this as an opportunity." He does so again during his State Of The Union speech on 1/29/2002. Karl Rove said, "sometimes history sends you things and 9/11 came our way."


Okay, so the administration took advantage of 9-11 to accomplish some things they already wanted to accomplish. If a guy takes the inheritance he received from his mother and goes out and buys the Ferrari he's always wanted, does that mean he killed her?

We get the stupid Troofer claim that Nicholas DeMasi and Michael Bellone located three of the four FDRs from Flights 11 and 175. Never mind that Bellone is a fraud, maybe DeMasi's reported claim (it appears only in a book and DeMasi has reportedly declined interview requests) is true.

And inevitably we get the dancing Jews:

Fact #21
On the morning of 9/11, a homemaker by the name of Maria will notice a group of people sitting on top of a white van. She says, "They seemed to be taking a movie" at the time of the first impact. She calls the police. At 3:31pm on 9/11, the FBI issues a BOLO (be on the lookout) that says, "White, 2000 Chevrolet van…with ‘Urban Moving Systems’ sign on back seen at Liberty State Park, Jersey City, NJ, at the time of first impact of jetliner into World Trade Center…. Three individuals with van were seen celebrating after initial impact and subsequent explosion. FBI Newark Field Office requests that, if the van is located, hold for prints and detain individuals." At 3:56pm on 9/11, these individuals are arrested. On 9/14/2001, the owner of Urban Moving Systems flees to Israel. Because of great pressure in late October 2001, the arrested men, allegedly Israeli spies, are released in November 2001. One of the men claims "our purpose was to document the event."


Note in particular that claim about how Maria said they were taking a movie at the time of the first impact. This would indeed be pretty strong evidence that they knew about the attacks in advance. But trace the story back to the original ABC News report and it's just a tad different:

Maria, who asked us not to use her last name, had a view of the World Trade Center from her New Jersey apartment building. She remembers a neighbor calling her shortly after the first plane hit the towers.

She grabbed her binoculars and watched the destruction unfolding in lower Manhattan. But as she watched the disaster, something else caught her eye.

Maria says she saw three young men kneeling on the roof of a white van in the parking lot of her apartment building. "They seemed to be taking a movie," Maria said.


So Maria looked out "shortly after" the first plane impact. She has no evidence that they were filming "at the time of the first impact", because she wasn't looking out the window then. Note also the curious timing of the FBI's BOLO. According to the ABC News report:

She found the behavior so suspicious that she wrote down the license plate number of the van and called the police. Before long, the FBI was also on the scene, and a statewide bulletin was issued on the van.
(Italics added for emphasis)

"...before long"? But the BOLO did not go out until 3:31 PM, over six and a half hours later. Once again, we seem to be dealing with a timing problem. When did Maria really see the dancing Jews? Was it almost immediately after the first plane impact, or was it awhile later? The question is crucial. According to this NY Times account, it certainly sounds like it was well after the impacts:

Besides the cash and the passports, one man had fresh pictures of the smoldering wreckage of the trade center in his camera, images he had captured by standing rather conspicuously on the roof of the van.


Smoldering wreckage? That sounds like after the collapses of the towers, which would fit better with the BOLO timing.

At any rate, read through the list for yourself and see if there's anything which really constitutes evidence of LIHOP or MIHOP. I don't see it, but maybe that's because Jon Gold has been unable to download his paranoid worldview to me.

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If A Truth Movement Falls in the Woods and Nobody is There To Hear It...



Does it make a sound?

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Al Gore Gets Truth-Squadded



Gore doesn't do much, but there is some pretty good entertainment value when the little twerp gets escorted off the property. Unfortunately not a taser in sight.

Uncle Fetzer Signs On With Holocaust Deniers?

Note the question mark at the end there. Fetzer's name is included as among the signers of a letter posted at Indy Media protesting the proposed deportation from England of Dr Fredrick Tobin, an Austrian Holocaust denier, to Germany to face charges over his nuttery.

Now you know how it is; I personally don't think kooks should face charges over their fruitcake theories. But the letter goes well beyond that, praising Tobin and other no-Holocaust nutjobs. Consider this part:

Rev. Ted Pike, a major American pro-First Amendment activist, states in “Toben Grabbed: International Hate Laws Bite Down”1 that “Every American, especially Christians, should protest this outrageous attack on freedom of speech. Although most Americans do not think like Dr. Toben, his arrest is just a taste of what will come—for Americans like you and your family—if we do not defend freedom now.”


Reverend Ted Pike? Yeah, he's a major American pro-First Amendment activist. He's also an anti-Semitic nutjob. I won't link his site, but among the useful bits of information he provides are these nuggets:

23 Oct 08 - Pedophilia: Thriving in Judaism's Right
ACLU Top Heavy with Jews
The Jews Behind Da Vinci Code


Note that he's not even hiding behind the usual "I'm talking about Zionists, not Jews" formulation that most anti-Semites use.

The letter also touts Toben's support for Captain Eric May's particular brand of lunacy:

Dr. Toben is a free thinker who has fearlessly explored other important issues besides Holocaust revisionism. He ran one of the first web sites to archive works by Capt. Eric May that exposed 9/11 as a likely CIA-Mossad inside job. May also suggested that petro-chemical explosions in the greater Houston area could be part of a dress rehearsal pattern for a repeated “9/11” terror event designed to justify war against Iran and domestic martial law.


May is crazy even by the standards of the Troofers; check out this bit of his numerology:

"A Beautiful Mind" was filmed before 911, in early 2001, but it was released after 911 - did the Hollywood Jews who made the movie know about 911 in advance, then brainwash us out of figuring it out? Come to think of it, was the whole attack a number game, in which the feds had spent years preparing us to call Big Brother in a national "911 call" in response to a "911 attack?” Is Hollywood part of a psychological operation?

The film was released on a very special date (and we've already seen how well dates can code): December 21st 2001. OK, try the number-code tricks I taught you above (see link, ed) and find the numeric sequence 12/21/21! The "Jewish" number 12, then 12 reversed - twice! It's all 12 permutations! Well, it's plenty tricky, but this has been a tricky infowar - at least to those of us (like Ghost Troop) with beautiful minds!


Or this:

Ninth paragraph:

"Since Nov. 1, wildfires have consumed more than 380,000 acres, destroyed 220 homes and businesses and killed two people."

This decodes to 111, then 11, then 22, then 2. Connect 22 with 2 and get 222; then reduce the 222 to 111. Now connect the date 111 with the acres 11 with the (modified) destroyed homes/people 111 to get 11111111.


11111111!

More from the letter:

The latest news on Dr. Toben’s case can be found at Lady Michele Renouf’s web site. Another hearing will likely be held Nov. 11. This gives us additional time to mobilize global protest against this international outrage.


Lady Michele Renouf? Yep, yet another Holocaust Denier:

Renouf has become increasingly known in recent years for her support of prominent Holocaust deniers. Her interest in World War II and the Holocaust began in 2000, when she read a newspaper article on David Irving's libel case against historian Deborah Lipstadt. She attended the hearing and became impressed with Irving's case, saying "I found on Irving's side of the courtroom a solitary person representing himself, backed up by enormous forensic research and tremendously capable debate based on substance and fact... On the other side of the courtroom I saw 21-25 people with laptops connected it seems to the Israeli government."

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Don't Sweat the Details, John

Jonathan Kay, a columnist for the (Canada) National Post admits that Truthers know the minutiae better than he does:

Since none of that has happened, I have never bothered schooling myself in the minutiae of 911-ology — the microscopic examination of photos and videos, the comparison of melting points and mechanical properties of this or that construction material, the second-by-second timetable of U.S. Air Force activity on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. I have never done so because it is tedious and time-consuming.


No kidding. The good news is that people have done it already, so there's not a lot of sense in recreating the wheel. Use the resources that are already out there, like Mike Wilson's (correction: Williams) 9-11 Myths, or Kate's Debunking 9-11 or Mark Robert's WTC 7 Lies page. Our archives contain a lot of material that you can find by using the search feature at the top left.

But you cannot catch up, as Jonathan suggests he's going to try to do:

How does a non-Truther reclaim his intellectual self-esteem amidst the Truther onslaught? The hard way: I’m going to slog through the 9/11 Commission Report — and maybe even some other texts besides. I don’t suppose this will earn me more than a draw in my arguments with Truthers. But at least I won’t have to pretend that I can’t hear them talking.


It's great that he's going to read the 9-11 Commission Report; it's excellently written and about 99% accurate, and an absolutely compelling read. But the idea that's going to put him on the plane of the Truthers about this stuff is silly. Look, I have dedicated thousands of hours to debunking and I will freely admit that in some ways, lots of Truthers know more about 9-11 than I do or ever will.

Of course, they're miles off in their conclusions and so in terms of the central fact about 9-11--who did it--I have them cold. And I can usually catch a Troofer in a lie or obvious error in about a minute or two, so maybe I'm selling myself short here.

And that's really the important thing. Nobody has to study this stuff terribly hard. When a Truther confronts you with six pieces of evidence, odds are that you can debunk two of them with Google, and three others using 9-11 Myths or Debunking 9-11, and so you should put the onus back on your Truther buddy: Why should you trust him on that last bit when you've been able to debunk 83.4% of his claimed evidence without even breaking a sweat?

Monday, October 27, 2008

Scratch a Truther....

David Ray Griffin is in Japan to promote his 9-11 kookery. Who's he appearing with?

David Ray Griffin
Yukihisa Fujita(Member of the Japanese Upper House)(Website is Japanese)
Akira Dojimaru(Author and Translator)(Websites are Japanese)
Benjamin Fulford(Journalist)
Muneo Narusawa(Weekly Friday Magazine Journalist)(Website is Japanese)


Benjamin Fulford's website is here, where you can learn a great deal. For example did you know that Anti-Semitism is anti-Satanism?

For millennia the ancient Babylonian secret slave driving cults have used the Jews like a matadors’ cape, to distract people from the real source of their anger. When the Jews are attacked, they are forced to huddle around the slave drivers for protection. Later, the cultists appeal to good heart of the people by making them feel guilty about their attacks on the Jews. In Europe and North America, humanity’s natural kindness has been used to brainwash us into a knee-jerk reaction against anything that is labeled Anti-Semitism. The way to remove this brainwash is to compile a database of everything that is called Anti-Semitic and remove from that database anything that is anti-Jew. The remaining body of knowledge can be renamed anti-Satanism. It will be useful in identifying the real villains and the things they are trying to hide.


What about Akira Dojimaru? According to a poster at JREF (I have not yet been able to confirm this independently):

At the Tokyo stop, he will be speaking alongside Dojimaru Akira (an anti-semite who describes Jews as parasitic elements of the ruling class)....


Backup here:

But who is Akira Dojimaru anyways? Did John Spiri bother to check? Maybe if he took a look at the man's Web site he would have found out that Akira is a plainly obvious anti-Semite. For example, see his article "Parasitism and Intellectual Conspiracies are Dangerous Elements among International Financiers and Traders" here: www.asyura2.com/2003/dispute8/msg/737.html where he states: "And if I may add to that, we can nearly describe these kinds of dangerous elements as the Jewish ruling class (moneyed class) from a racial values standpoint."

There is plenty of that on his site! In fact there is a whole section of the site devoted to Holocaust denial, one of the most disgusting efforts of the hard right to reverse the history of the Second World War. I'm guessing that Mr. Spiri does not care about researching who he is talking to, or what their motivations are. I also know by now that he is not a person who looks critically at what is placed in front of him. John Spiri, why are you quoting a person like this approvingly? Do you share these views? If so, I ask The Japan Times, why are you allowing a writer to Trojan-horse these reactionary views into your pages?


I'm shocked, shocked I tell you, to discover that David Ray Griffin is sharing a podium with anti-Semites and holocaust deniers.

Update: I should have mentioned that this information was uncovered by Adversity1, a poster at JREF. Great job!

Still Moron Richard Falk

The Troofer who was appointed by the UN to monitor the Israeli-Palestinian situation gets some attention from Front Page. Sounds like quite the "one-worlder":

Falk is a strong advocate for “world government” and “global law.” The United Nations General Assembly, in his view, does not have enough power to legislate and enforce its decisions. He suggests the possibility of forming a Global Parliament, either operating as a subsidiary organ of the UN General Assembly or taking some more autonomous character within the UN system.” He has recommended consideration of “allowing persons outside the United States to challenge policy affecting their wellbeing by way of binding referenda or even by casting votes in national elections held within the United States.”


Trooferism does indeed make strange bedfellows; what are the odds that Alex "National sovereignty will prevail" Jones and David Ray "Nation states are obsolete" Griffin would find themselves between the sheets together?

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Troy at Cincy Gage Presentation

Some profanity, but good entertainment value:

Skeptic Zone Interview with Mark (Gravy) Roberts



Our buddy and debunker non-pareil Mark Roberts gives a long-form interview. Watching it myself now; I will append my thoughts when done.

Hat Tip: Walter Ego

Update: Good interview; my only complaint is that at times it was hard to hear what the interviewer was saying. I loved the bit about how the Troofers were unable to look at his evidence binder of doom, like vampires confronted with the cross.

The Boxes Stay

One of the funniest things about the Troofers is that they have no instinct for when they are making fools of themselves. I suppose that's a survival trait for kookery; if you realize you're being buffoonish, you'll tend to stop. We roared at Sofia's "clunkity-clunk" analogy, and made it the quote of the year in 2006, but did that stop her from using it on the History Channel special in 2007?

Richard Gage has a new "researchers' edition" DVD of Blueprint for Truth, and apparently he's sticking with the cardboard boxes demonstration that sent us into gales of laughter when he attempted it on Hardfire. After all, it's an "objective, repeatable experiment". At about 57 seconds:



Kevin McPadden also makes an appearance with his ridiculous "run for your life" claim.

Update: Troy was at Gage's presentation in Cincinnati (with appropriate headgear) and witnessed the experiment that changed the world:

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Saturday, October 25, 2008

Another Defeat for the Troofers

Troofer attorney Phillip Berg had his lawsuit arguing that Barack Obama was not a US citizen thrown out. Judge must be another NWO stooge...


PHILADELPHIA (AP) - A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit challenging Barack Obama's qualifications to be president.

U.S. District Judge R. Barclay Surrick on Friday night rejected the suit by attorney Philip J. Berg, who alleged that Obama was not a U.S. citizen and therefore ineligible for the presidency. Berg claimed that Obama is either a citizen of his father's native Kenya or became a citizen of Indonesia after he moved there as a boy.

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Alex Jones on Screw Loose Change

I don't know which show this is from originally (if someone has the audio let me know) but Troy from WV, in his usual aggressive manner, takes Alex Jones to town for claiming that Screw Loose Change is coordinating with the no-planers in some sort of Pentagon run operation. This is especially ironic given that I barely coordinate with Pat, much less anyone else, as should be evident by the number of times we have cross-posted on the same subject. A profanity warning, but pretty funny.


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Friday, October 24, 2008

Help, Help, I'm Being Repressed!



A teenager discovers that his principal is part of the New World Order.

Crazy Canuck Jeff Hill Busted

Jeff "Pump it out" Hill has given us some amusing moments in Trutherism, especially his hilarious series of phone calls to the FBI's anti-terrorism task force in New York City, where he told them they had to watch this movie called Loose Change if they wanted to find out who was responsible for 9-11.

Hill went on to join the No-Planers; now he has joined a somewhat less-select group of Troofers; those who've been fingerprinted and mug-shotted.

Thirty-four-year-old Jeffrey Hill of 37 Princeton Drive was arrested on the 22nd of October at 12:37 a.m. on Pine Street and charged with one count of impaired driving, one count of consume over the legal limit, one count of possession of a controlled drug or substance, one count of dangerous operation of a motor vehicle and one count of flight from police.


We should be hearing more about other Troofers in the docket; Jason Robo's and Gary Talis' cases have to be coming up soon. Hill's date with the New World Order judge is November 24.

Hat Tip to Troy for pointing this out to us.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Living the Zeitgeist Life

You may recall the original Zeitgeist film, which was a hilarious melange of "Jesus Christ is based on the pagan Gods, 9-11 was an inside job, and the international bankers suck the lifeblood of the working people conspiracy theories. Apparently there is a Zeitgeist Movement nowadays and it's competing with 9-11 Trutherism for converts, hence the Alex Jones and the Chipmunks video I posted the other day. Here's part of the Zeitgeist Addendum, where the creator (reportedly named Peter Joseph, although that may be a pseudonym) makes his pitch:



Okay, that's pretty creepy. Alex Jones and I don't agree on much, but this guy is pitching the same old woo that Lenin and Mao preached in the 20th Century. As a reminder, in the original Zeitgeist film, he was pronouncing "Colonel" as "cologne-el", so this is not some deep thinker except to drones.

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Troofer Wars

A while ago the troofers had a schism as Steven Jones' Scholars for Truth and Justice broke off from Jim Fetzer's Scholars group. Now apparently the same turmoil is happening again in Jones' group, as several members are promoting their "exotic weaponry" theory, claiming to be representative of the entire group. Get these people out of here, they are even crazier than I am!

Berkeley, CA, October 22, 2008 -- On October 18, 2008, an OpEdNews article titled, "8 House Members View Draft Bill on Independent Science/Tech Probe of WTC 1, 2, 7 Collapses," was published by four members of the group Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice (STJ911.org). The authors of the article and draft bill are not spokespersons for Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice, and therefore are individually responsible for it.


Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice does not endorse the draft bill due to the inclusion of numerous unscientific claims and misrepresentations, and condemns in the strongest of terms any associations between the organization and the claims presented by the authors of this bill. As stated at the front page of their website, Scholars for 9-11 Truth and Justice "take[s] care to present the strongest, most credible research available..."

While in agreement with the authors of this bill that a new investigation into the tragic events of September 11, 2001 is warranted, representatives of the Scholars group note that the draft bill and article lack basic scientific rigor and credibility, with statements such as, "the entire WTC [complex] was destroyed by directed energy weaponry (DEW)," and the ideas that "nuclear materials, missiles or DEW weapons were used." The sister publication of the Scholars group, The Journal of 9/11 Studies (www.JournalOf911Studies.com), has numerous peer-reviewed scientific articles refuting such claims.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Candidate's Reading Lists

I know our left-of-center readers will probably jump all over me for posting this, but I found this a rather interesting tidbit from an otherwise mundane interview of VP candidate Governor Sarah Palin.

What are you reading now?

SARAH: I am reading, heh-heh, a lot of briefing papers.

What about for fun?

SARAH: Do we consider The Looming Tower something just for fun? That's what I have been reading on the airplane. It's about 9/11. If I am going to read something, for the most part, it's something beneficial.

Well I am sure the troofers are sad that she isn't reading Debunking 9/11 Debunking, but I certainly can't fault her taste in books.

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Alex and the Chipmunks

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Cynthia McKinney, Nutbar Extraordinaire



Five thousand people "processed" by a bullet to the head and buried in a swamp? What a fruitcake!

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Comments Yet Again

I got an angry call on my voice mail about a death threat against Jon Gold in the comments section. It took awhile to find the actual comment, but it was there. The commenter was a new one on me, just "Todd". The IP involved has been banned.

Once more, our comments are open, but that does not mean "anything goes". It pains me to say this, but the comments section has been a sewer for a long time now, and some of the worst offenders are those who are supposedly on "our" side. If you wouldn't want your mother to read it, don't post it.

James and I provide the comments as a service to our readers, but we assume no responsibility for managing the comments section.

The Crazy Canadians Are In On It Too

Of course we all know the US media is secretly controlled out of my basement, but did you know that our friends to the north are too? Well, they did rank below the US in a survey of press freedom. In this case the National Post discovers that they are in on the plot also.

The spreading ripples of conspiracy to silence those dismissing the official version of what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, got one ring larger recently: this newspaper was dragged into the subterfuge when an article on 9/11 conspiracy theories in the federal election campaign was delayed due to space limitations.

It did not take long for the missing story to add to an already complicated plot for a number of 9/11 skeptics who had been contacted for the story -- and who were already deeply mistrustful of the mainstream media.

"Who got to you?" one wrote to the reporter after the story was not in the newspaper the next day. He then suggested the reporter was never really working on a story but rather gleaning information on the movement for some unspoken purpose.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Troofer Academic Standards

The troofers are all excited that the Journal of Engineering Mechanics published an exchange between structural engineering professor Zdenek Bazant and troofer lawyer James Gourley. No, that doesn't make sense to me either. I haven't read through it carefully yet, so I will reserve comments on the merit, although Bazan't disdain for the knowledge of his critic is quite clear, but even more hilarious are the comments of Steven Jones on this over at 9/11 Blogger.

Good work, James... Note that Bazant...
takes a swipe at me by name in his response paper (response to James Gourley) -- for example, he refers to Steven E. Jones as an "Associate Professor". If you look at my web pages at BYU (still available), you will note that I'm a Full Professor of Physics... (Moreover, I accepted early retirement as a Full Professor.)

Further, Bazant failed to reference the paper on 9/11 research he mentions as co-authored by Jones, so one has no opportunity to view what paper he is talking about... which should not have been allowed in a peer-reviewed paper.

Nor did he reference my work on "cold fusion", which he mentions without citation. Perhaps he meant my paper in Scientific American, July 1987, entitled "COLD NUCLEAR FUSION." Yes, Scientific American... you may wish to check it out.

These errors by Dr. Bazant in his latest paper in the Journal of Engineering Mechanics -- which I have specifically identified here-- should not appear in a scholarly paper and should be corrected.


Dude, you should be the last person complaining about the high standards of papers in "academic" journals.

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Friday, October 17, 2008

Simon Guildford Interview

James and I were interviewed by Simon regarding our debunking work and the Truth Movement in general. Some of this information will be familiar to our long-time readers, but Simon came up with some excellent questions that should provide insight even to those of you who've been with us since day one.

Highly recommended!

Dylan a No-Planer?

That's the latest claim from Jeff Hill (the Crazy Canuck) in this video:



Dylan says no:

Warren is a decent guy and was very hospitable towards jack and myself and i did not choose to get into an argument about theories with him. So i will now state for the record, as if this actually needs to be clarified, that i do not and will not ever support tv fakery or no wtc planes theories. Thanks for listening.


Of course, as I have discussed endlessly, all Truthers deny the planes to some extent or another; the only difference between Dylan and Nico Haupt is that Nico's a little more honest about it.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Troofer At LA City Council



Twenty-something? Check. Interesting facial hair? Check? Obsessed with Israel? Check.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Truthers Statistics and Press Freedom

I was quickly scanning through the list compiled by Jon Gold that one one of the troofers was spamming here. I can't post a response to this at the original location at 9/11 Blogger, because they immediately ban any dissension in the name of fighting fascism, but I found this an interesting enough point to deserve a post. In general this is just another example of argument by list, where a troofer relies on a long list of largely irrelevant, fallacious and disconnected factoids, knowing that nobody will ever go through them all, and thus he can declare himself intellectually victorious. In any case this one factoid deals with the press freedoms in the United States:

Fact #25

As I mentioned in the introduction, the Mainstream Media has not covered the questions concerning the 9/11 attacks as they should, and for the most part, with the exception of small town news, have attacked those that do. According to James Goodale, the founders of the United States "enacted the First Amendment to distinguish their new government from that of England, which had long censored the press and prosecuted persons who dared to criticize the British Crown." On 10/31/2005, Reporters Without Borders reported that the United States ranked 44th in the world for Freedom Of The Press "mainly because of the imprisonment of New York Times reporter Judith Miller and legal moves undermining the privacy of journalistic sources."



The implication being that because we don't have a free press, the media is controlled and haven't investigated 9/11, despite the fact that this was one of the most covered media events in history, and to this day books, documetaries and magazine articles continue to come out on the subject.

This is little more than cherry picking though. Why do they have to pick a survey from 2005, during the controversial Judith Miller event? Personally I don't think that is an example of "press freedom", she was jailed because she refused to help investigate the current government. Regardless of what you think of the whole Valarie Plame incident, independent investigations of governments are hardly a sign of fascism. So why don't they have a more current survey instead of this 3 year old outlier?

Well because it would not make their point. For example the current Freedom House Global Press Freedom 2008 survey shows the US at 21, just ahead of such tyrannical states as Canada, The UK and Australia. Even scoring in the 40s again in this survey would hardly be meaningful, that would put them in the company of such police states as France (40) and Spain (46). The category of "free" press doesn't even end until you reach Benin, at 73.

Now where do Venezuela, Russia and Iran, the 3 most truther friendly regimes rank? Well, at a less than stellar 161, 170, and 185, out of a 195 countries. That should tell you something.

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Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Mario Cuomo Truth Squadded



He gives mostly sensible answers to their questions.

They Foiled My Nefarious Plot

I did a post on my Amazon.com review of David Ray Griffin's new book, and was amused to see this reaction on 9/11 Blogger:

Call for Reviews and Ratings at Amazon.com
For the last couple of days there has been a flurry of negative (one-star) reviews, ratings and comments at the Amazon page for The New Pearl Harbor Revisited by David Ray Griffin, driving its overall rating down from 5 to 4 stars and piling up negative votes on favorable reviews of the book. James B of Screw Loose Change seems to be the leader of the operation to drag down the ratings. The common feature of all the negative commentary is that none of its authors seem to have actually read the book. Some have admitted as much, but Amazon has permitted their reviews to remain. Here at 911Blogger many people have in fact read the book. It would be very helpful to the future readership, and to the 9/11 truth movement, if everyone who has read it would go to Amazon and review it and rate the other reviews. To do so, go to http://www.amazon.com/New-Pearl-Harbor-Revisited-Cover-Up/dp/1566567297/....

OK, bunch of geniuses we got there. I am not the "leader of the operation" in that I never instructed anyone, nor even hinted to anyone to post reviews there. And this "Flurry of negative (one-star) reviews" was a grand total of one, other than my own. Of course the troofers strike out against all these people they claim are writing reviews of books they have never read, by posting, at last count 16 five-star reviews, mostly by people who have apparently never read the book either, including one which was nothing more than a cut-and-paste of DRG's Wikipedia entry. If you read the comments of my review, you will see Griffin's admission that I have shown his work to be poorly researched, so accusing me of not being familiar with his work is a bit bizarre.

With these brilliant minds in the truth movement, it is only a matter of time before the New World Order falls!

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Monday, October 13, 2008

David Ray Griffin, Paul Krugman and Screw Loose Change

Economist Paul Krugman, who won a Nobel Prize today, and our humble blog have more of a connection than just the fact that he was prominently cited in the preface to David Ray Griffin's new book (as well as last week's debate with Matt Taibbi). A Krugman article on the 2000 and 2004 election was how Pat and I first worked together in the blogging sense when I posted on it on my Chief Brief blog, and then Pat followed soon afterward with another part of the story on his Brainster blog. The story ended up actually requiring Krugman to run not one, but three different corrections, and got the both of us a mention in a book on blogging called Watching the Watchdog by Marshall University professor of Communications Stephen Cooper.

So congrats to Krugman, at least as far as his work on trade theory in the 80's goes, I will leave the subject of his columns in the New York Times to my other blog, and congrats to us for having succesfully debunked a Nobel Prize winner, and no, sorry troofers, I am not talking about David Ray Griffin.

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DRG Defends Himself, uhh... Sort Of

David Ray Griffin takes offense at the fact that I posted part of his e-mail in my review of his new book at Amazon. Well, OK, maybe I was being a bit mean, but if you make hundreds of thousands of dollars running around the world slandering your country, and the worst thing that happens is someone posts an embarassing admission about your work from your e-mail, you are getting off lightly.

In any case he posts the rest of the e-mail, in which I am even ruder. Hey, I never said I was a nice person. Then he tries to defend himself. Apparently it is not that he is dishonest, he just doesn't bother to check his sources. I am not kidding here!

My point, I thought I made clear, was that although I had not been "intentionally misleading," I had been careless. (I had quoted those statements from secondary sources---three of them from Thierry Meyssan's "Pentagate"---without looking them up for myself to read them in context. Also, when I wrote the passage 12 pages later about people "claiming to have seen a missile or small military plane," I failed to realize that the people I had quoted did not specifically claim to have "seen" such a thing but had merely said they thought---as I then falsely believed---that it was either a missile or a small plane.

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Sunday, October 12, 2008

David Ray Griffin Is Even Dumber Than I Thought

At this point, I didn't know it was even possible, but I have managed to be surprised by the idiocy of David Ray Griffin. I was at the bookstore this afternoon when I took another look through the chapter in The New Pearl Harbor Revisited on AA77 to see if there was anything significant I missed, and even I was stunned that he would propose this theory, although sadly he was not the first. I had to take a picture of it with my camera phone, as I thought nobody would believe me otherwise.



Still more evidence that Washington had its own defenses, rather than being dependant on the fighter jets at distant Langley is provided by the description of the "principal missions" of Davison Army Airfield:

[T]o operate a "Class A" Army Airfield on a 24 hour basis, maintain a readiness posture in support of contingency plans, provide aviation support for the White House, US government officials, Department of Defense, Department of the Army, and other government agencies...; and exercise operational control of the airspace.

Davison, which is about 12 miles south of the Pentagon, is equipped with both fixed-wing aircraft and UH-1 and UH-60 helicopters [Hueys and Black Hawks].

Words fail me...


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From the Responsible Troofers



Jon Gold, supposedly one of the "responsible" Troofers, presents his fantasy lineup for trial on cover-up charges. Remember, Jon supposedly doesn't engage in reckless accusations, unlike, say, David Ray Griffin. But, no surprise here, that's just a fig leaf. He's just as nutty as the rest of the fruitcakes, just a little more discreet about admitting it.

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Hey, Who Says Piling On Isn't Fair?

Well now that David Ray Griffin has basically admitted that much of his previous work is false, and members of his own movement are attacking him for promoting the Terminator 2 voice morphing hypothesis, why not continue to pile on? So on this note, I figured I would let potential book buyers are Amazon know what this guy is trying to sell them.

David Ray Griffin publishes what I think is his 7th book on the subject of 9/11 conspiracies, making him the most prolific writer, and quite possibly the publishing world's biggest profiteer off of this tragedy. Despite this volume of work though Mr. Griffin has yet failed to form even the vaguest narrative of what he thinks actually happened on this tragic day, and in fact has vociferously spoken out against anyone forming a theory, on the grounds (and correctly so) that if the conspiracy theorists actually form a theory, they will open themselves up to criticism for the weakness of their argument. There is also the fact that if he tried to put together all of his "evidence", full of contradictions, speculations and outright absurdities, it would form a sum total plot which would be laughed off as too fanciful for a comic book. Despite this though Griffin does bizarrely forward some "sub-theories" such as the voice morphing technology straight out of the SciFi movie Terminator 2, which he tries to pass off with a straight face as common everyday technology. This has opened him up for attacks even from the members of his own movement, people who hardly refrain from baseless speculation in general.

With any luck, Griffin will soon go the way of Jim Fetzer, Judy Wood and Kevin Barrett before him.

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Fabled Enemies, Part 5



Joe Biden, who will probably be our next vice president, gets truth-squadded by Luke Rudkowski. Luke is relying on that one, un-sourced article in the Times of India, that claims Mahmoud Ahmed financed the hijackers. Biden uses the occasion to remember some tough talking he laid on Ahmed.

Jason does a review of what "we have just learned":

Hijackers had ties to US military installations (false).
Israel and Pakistan have classified roles in 9-11 (almost certainly false in the case of the former).

Then Bermas does a sideline into the comic book version of the 9-11 Commission Report. I don't know why he added that part; perhaps to imply that the original report was of comic book quality? We hear that NORAD lied to the 9-11 Commission (this is true, unfortunately), but we don't hear what they lied about. They lied and claimed that they knew about the hijacking of Flight 93 well before they actually did know about it. Of course, this doesn't fit in with the kooky conspiracy theories in any way, shape or form, but it's an admitted lie so the fruitcakes can't let go of it.

Max Cleland's resignation from the 9-11 Commission is brought up; again unmentioned is that Cleland resigned because he wanted the commission to look into the pre-Iraq War intelligence, which was well outside the commission's mandate. Also ignored is that Cleland was later nominated to the Ex-Im Bank by President Bush. Cleland is on Wolf Blitzer talking about the deal the administration cut to allow only certain members (one Republican and one Democrat) to review classified information. This strikes me as a reasonable compromise between national security and the right of the people to know.

Cynthia McNinney gets trotted out to say her usual convoluted stuff:

"So how can you start with a document that you know is false, and and take that to the American people, as a document by which Congress' accomplishment should be measured?"

Dennis Kookcinich's articles of impeachment are mentioned. Bermas notes that it took Kucinich hours to read the articles into the congressional record; listening to his slow, halting delivery it's easy to see that he could turn The Cat In the Hat into a tedious stemwinder.

Coming up next: Warnings and War Games.

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Saturday, October 11, 2008

David Ray Griffin in the Crosshairs

Looks like the Troofers are waking up to the Great God Griffin's promotion of "marginal" theories (as compared to legitimate "proof") like the voice-morphed phone calls. Some (deservedly) harsh discussion here:

WHY did DRG BEGIN with voice cloning? He basically walloped T. in the ensuing debate but why mention, let alone BEGIN WITH one of the most exotic and improbable theories in the 911 literature?


David Ray Griffin has made very important contributions to the 9/11 truth movement and I value his work greatly in many respects but his judgment should be questioned for putting cell phone voice morphing in a DEBATE situation. In a venue where we should be making new converts to the truth movement? We should be using this opportunity to grow the movement by presenting the best case that we have. I no longer have faith in DRG to put the "best foot forward" for the 9/11 truth movement, and I say this with great disappointment.


My simple question is this: who else in the 9/11 truth movement starts their debate by creating a story involving the use of voice morphing? In an attempt to make a point about "conspiracy theories" being plausible?

To say I am pissed off by this is an understatement.

And what's more telling is that this is not the FIRST time that voice morphing promoted as a primary idea--for example in radio interviews and elsewhere. It won't be the last I'm afraid to assume.


when and if DRG returns to sanity - i will give him the benefit of the doubt. but - for now - i can neither endorse nor support his advocacy for 9/11 Truth.


Its kinda sad. I feel like we've got the strongest case possible, thanks to the research of people who are now discredited.

What does that say for the research then? Are we back to square one? Literally everyone who brought me slowly into this movement has been discredited in some way.

Alex Jones, Webster Tarpley, Mike Ruppert, David Ray Griffin, etc.

It feels like the truth movement is slowly unraveling and that weve hit some sort of wall. How do we demand a new investigation when the loudest voices are kooks?


Good question.

Apparently TruthMove has reacted:

i am very happy to see that TruthMove.org has announced a hardline position on this - deciding to pull their endorsements of DRG's work from their website.


Further discussion here:

Unless there are any legitimate objections, I plan to remove general recommendations of David Ray Griffin's books from the TruthMove site...


Of course, this being the Troofers, it's not as if they're being particularly sane themselves:

i agree with Arabesque - so - is it entirely inappropriate to ask if this behavior is intentional?

isn't this the central question associated with all of the weak research and misinformation out there? is this stuff being pushed to the forefront intentionally?


And hilariously:

If the planes were remote drones, then the calls need to be accounted for. It's as simple as that.

Are you so sure they were not remote drones?


Which earns this response:

Completely different issue. I have no problem with the remote guidance theory and indeed think it more probable than not.


Zat guy over zere is a nut! I, Napoleon Bonaparte, can tell he is not really George Washington!

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Thursday, October 09, 2008

The Dishonesty of David Ray Griffin

As I have mentioned before, David Ray Griffin, although he is touted as the leading academic of the increasingly inaccurately named 9/11 truth movement, does not subject himself to debate often, which is why I was so surprised that he made an exception and subjected himself to ridicule by Matt Taibbi last week.

A couple of years ago I made a post regarding a particularly egregious violation of the laws of logic and academic honesty in Griffin's book the New Pearl Harbor, and subsequently tried to get Griffin to defend this bit on an on-line forum, to no avail. But now, I have managed to obtain Dr. Griffin's e-mail after it was leaked to me by my good friend Scooter Libby. OK, that part I made up, but the rest is true. So I sent this question off to Griffin and eagerly awaited his ignoring me, or his ignorance, whichever came first.

The question went as follows:

Why do you write in your book, The New Pearl Harbor on page 37...

But if what hit the Pentagon had been a Boeing 757, it would be very surprising to have reports of people-especially people with trained eyes and ears--claiming to have seen a missile or small military plane. These reports of having seen a missile or a small military plane must, accordingly, be given more weight. Properly interpreted, then, the eyewitness testimony does not contradict, but instead supports, the missile theory.despite the fact that you do not actually cite in this section, or even the entire book, a single person having seen a "missile or small military plane" at the Pentagon, much less multiple "reports of people"?

Given the lack of even a single witness, how can this then be used to "support the missile theory". Was this simply an oversight on your part, or were you being intentionally misleading?


To my surprise, he actually responded, with this citation from the New Pearl Harbor:

Danielle O’Brien, one of the air traffic controllers at Dulles who reported seeing the aircraft at 9:25, said: “The speed, the maneuverability, the way that he turned, we all thought in the radar room, all of us experienced air traffic controllers, that that was a military plane.”[1] Another witness, seeing the plane from a 14th floor apartment in Pentagon City, said that it “seemed to be able to hold eight or twelve persons” and “made a shrill noise like a fighter plane.”[2] Lon Rains, editor at Space News, said: “I was convinced it was a missile. It came in so fast it sounded nothing like an airplane.”[3] Still another witness, who saw it from his automobile, was reported as saying that it “was like a cruise missile with wings.”[4

OK, well I got an answer, the problem is that it neither answers my question, nor is it accurate. So I replied:

1. An air traffic controller cannot "see" airplanes. They do not have little video screens of the planes in front of them. She based that observation on the unsafe way the plane was flying. You left out the last part of the quote, ""You don't fly a 757 in that manner. It's unsafe."

2. "I was convinced it was a missile. It came in so fast it sounded nothing like an airplane.

Once again you are confused about the concept of "seeing something." Yes, I am sure it sounded like a missile. I have never been near a building which got hit by a jetliner travelling 500MPH, but I am sure it would sound just like a missile. What exactly would you think it would sound like, a paper airplane?

3. Another witness, seeing the plane from a 14th floor apartment in Pentagon City, said that it "seemed to be able to hold eight or twelve persons"

He said he thought it was a commuter plane, which would qualify it neither as a missile or a small military plane, which you claimed. Besides, this was someone miles away, not at the Pentagon, which was the whole basis for your statement, "people with trained eyes and ears--claiming to have seen a missile or small military plane. These reports of having seen a missile or a small military plane must, accordingly, be given more weight." Unless we are to believe that random people miles away from the Pentagon somehow merit extra weight in their testimony.

4. Still another witness, who saw it from his automobile, was reported as saying that it "was like a cruise missile with wings."

This is perhaps the most dishonest distortion in the history of trutherdom. The witness specifically said he saw a jet, not just that, but an "American Airlines" jet. But that it was acting "like a cruise missile with wings". Did they teach you the concept of metaphors at theology school, or were you gone that week?

"I was sitting in the northbound on 27 and the traffic was, you know, typical rush-hour -- it had ground to a standstill. I looked out my window and I saw this plane, this jet, an American Airlines jet, coming. And I thought, 'This doesn't add up, it's really low.' And I saw it. I mean it was like a cruise missile with wings. It went right there and slammed right into the Pentagon. Huge explosion, great ball of fire, smoke started billowing out."


I was expecting some sort of hedging admission that he possibly could have worded this better, instead I got a rather bizarre exclamation that... well I am not really sure what his point is. Just read it.

Your question was about my state of mind when I wrote that chapter---("Why do you write in your book, The New Pearl Harbor on page 37...Was this simply an oversight on your part, or were you being intentionally misleading?")---not about whether what I said was correct or well supported.

I said lots of things in NPH that I would not say today and that I did not repeat in NPHR, where I specifically corrected at least some of the errors I had made in that earlier book, written 5 years ago.


OK, well I guess he is technically correct in that I asked why he wrote that, but I presumed that he would at least be smart enough to figure out that in doing this I was also questioning whether it was correct or well supported. I guess what do I expect from someone who has trouble understanding the concept of a metaphor.

So I asked the next logical question. Do you then admit that this statement that multiple witnesses "saw a small military plane or a missile" hit the Pentagon was in error?

Apparently that isn't the kind of question you ask Dr. Griffin, because he got a little upset.

I am stunned that you do not understand the difference between my quoting what I wrote in 2003, in response to your question of what I was thinking then, and citing it today. I have not cited it for many years. And it sounds like you have not yet read NPHR. If you want to know what I do and do not say today, you'll need to read it.

This gets even weirder though, because I stopped by the bookstore today and went through the chapter on AA77, and he does not retract the missile theory. In fact just earlier this week in talking with Matt Taibbi he repeats this assertion.

The list to which I referred, which was compiled by Eric Bart, contains 152 people who were regarded as "witnesses" in some sense or another to what happened at the Pentagon. But in a statement that you simply ignored, I pointed out that "only some of them claim to have seen an airliner hit the Pentagon." Some of the other people gave quite different reports, with six of them speaking of a small or mid-sized aircraft, perhaps a commuter jet or even a missile.

He has repeatedly stated that the New Pearl Harbor Revisited should be viewed as a continuation of his first work, not a replacement, and he has retracted none of his previous statements, so why won't he answer a simple question as to whether he still believes what he wrote or not? And why exactly should his understanding of those 4 points change? There have been no new witnesses to these events, he is ignoring all the previous witnesses, what has changed in the last 5 years to affect his understanding? If he could not understand the concept of a metaphor in 2003, has there been some new development in metaphor technology that I am not aware of that has changed its meaning?

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Wednesday, October 08, 2008

The Incomplete 9/11 Timeline

Some of our truther visitors have asked in the past why we don't talk about the "Complete 9/11 Timeline" more often, arguing that we "are afraid to debunk it". It is not that, it is just that I have never seen much point in posting about a site which has very little original content, but is just a bunch of links to other sites. Seems rather derivative if you ask me, not really much to talk about.

I noticed an interesting aspect to this though in a recent post on 9/11 Blogger which points to the aforementioned Timeline. Using it as a source, it points out that the book Firefight, which I have mentioned numerous times, has a bit in it about a mysterious assistant who helped during the cleanup:

"Johnny" - Arlington firefighter Bob Gray is introduced by his colleague Bobby Beer to a man wearing a hard hat. Beer introduces the man only as "Johnny," and adds, "He's our go-between with PenRen [the Pentagon Renovation Program], and he knows some of the military guys too." Although "Johnny" is not wearing any identifying badge or ID, he seems knowledgeable, appears "taut and serious, with a purposeful military stance," and even introduces Gray and Beer to a couple of friends of his who say they work for Special Forces. Johnny says if Gray and Beer need anything from the military, he can help. As a security perimeter has now been set up around the crash site, Gray assumes Johnny must be there officially. [Creed and Newman, 2008, pp. 367-368]

The implication being that they were there to plant evidence or for some other nefarious reason. There are, of course, numerous other more plausible reasons, but I don't even want to get into that silliness for now, the more interesting aspect is that they are citing Firefight, and at numerous parts of the book, indicating one of the truthers actually read it.

So given this, and the fact that "truthers" claim that they are pursuing "truth", this is called the "complete" 9/11 Timeline after all, then one would logically expect to find dozens of other references from this 500+ page work, which involved the interview of over 150 first responders, and had scores of bits of information indicating a plane hit the Pentagon, including descriptions of bodies still belted into their seats and airplane engines embedded in concrete columns. All items which all but the most hard core fantasist would have to admit is evidence beyond the capability of even several "fake firemen".

But alas, I was disappointed, none of this was there. Other than the bits on the fake fireman the only reference to the book was the discussion of when they found the black box, and then only in the context of arguing that there were some discrepancies as to who found it.

So much for being "honest truthseekers".

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The Ultimate 9/11 'Truth' Showdown: David Ray Griffin vs. Matt Taibbi -- Part III

Yesterday I mentioned that there was a part II to this interview, there are actually 3 parts, for those of you who never got through Griffin's long and winding answers. Just reading Taibbi's hilarious questions is worth another post.

In the end it all comes down to what you believe. If you believe that events in life tend to have simple explanations, then you're not going to be very impressed by Griffin's arguments. If on the other hand you think that the people running this country spend their days plotting to create phantom civilian jet-liner flights, disappearing whole fuselages full of passengers, and then shooting missiles into the Pentagon in broad daylight in order to cover up embezzlement schemes if you think, in other words, that our government is run by the same people who cook up second-rate French spy movies or your mind instantly produces the word "crossbow" when asked to produce A MURDER WEAPON by a Mad Libs script well, then, you're probably going to enjoy Griffin's books.

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Tuesday, October 07, 2008

The Ultimate 9/11 'Truth' Showdown: David Ray Griffin vs. Matt Taibbi -- Part II

Amid all of Griffin's long, droning, circuitous answers I didn't even notice that there was a part II to this interview. I disagree with Taibbi on about everything political, but there is no question he has got this right.

Secondly: what the f***? What kind of lunatic comes up with this as his "illustrative example"? Your simplifying parable is more fantastic and complicated than the actual story! At first I thought you were kidding, then I had to go back and read it to believe it -- astounding! It should tell the readers of this debate quite a bit that this is your idea of a good way to start an argument: "Say for example that your best friend is killed in broad daylight with a crossbow, and the government frames you for the crime using advanced morphing technology"

Uh, okay. I can say it, sure. It's stupid, but I can say it. Does the story end with my wife in bed with a cow in a spacesuit? I mean really. I don't mean to take a gratuitous swipe here, but your fictional example says a lot about how your mind works.

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Monday, October 06, 2008

Matt Taibbi Takes on David Ray Griffin

David Ray Griffin, who is known for ducking any form of debate, locks horns with Rolling Stone journalist and frequent troofer critic Matt Taibbi. A typical question from Taibbi:

Exactly what do you believe is the significance of Hani Hanjour's record of poor piloting? Do you believe someone else was flying the plane? Do you believe it wasn't a plane at all? Why don't you just come out and say what you think? Because we know this much: somebody piloted a jet liner into the Pentagon, and that somebody did a pretty good job of it. What does it matter if the ostensible pilot had a poor flying record? Who cares? Because unless you've got hard evidence that something else happened that day, that it wasn't Muslim hijackers but some other fanatical suicidal terrorist (for whoever it was was a fanatical suicidal terrorist) the detail is irrelevant. But you don't even have a theory about that day. Or do you? (Note: I fully expect you to respond by saying, "It's not our job to reveal what happened, it's only our job to raise questions." Which is a very convenient way of saying one of two things: either your evidence doesn't add up to any kind of coherent story, or you don't have the nerve to say in public what you really think the evidence suggests. Please, please disappoint me!).

Griffin of course, dodges the question.

Once again the high priest of the 9/11 truth movement insults the victims:

With regard to Ted Olson, your argument is based on the assumption that his wife, Barbara Olson, really died, and that he truly loved her. Both of those things may well be true. But I certainly do not know that they are, and I suspect that you do not, either.

If Deena Burnett was tricked, then it's possible that Ted Olson was, too. My own hunch, however, is that he simply invented the story. For one thing, he was very much an insider in the Bush-Cheney administration, being the attorney who successfully argued before the Supreme Court that the Florida recount in 2000 should be stopped (thereby making Bush president) and that Cheney did not have to reveal the participants at his secret energy-policy meeting in 2001. Also, if the calls really came to the Department of Justice, Olson could have provided evidence of this fact when the veracity of his story was challenged, but he never did.

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Sunday, October 05, 2008

Back in the USSR

Cathy Young has an article on the latest growth spot for 9-11 Troof: Russia. Soviet TV aired the ridiculous mockumentary Zero and had an after-showing panel:

But the lunatics, for the most part, were running the asylum. The discussion was heavily dominated by several pro-conspiracy panelists who dismissed the "official story" of "19 Arabs directed by Osama bin Laden in a cave" as self-evidently absurd. (The repeated gibes about "19 Arabs" prompted a sarcastic query from one of the dissenters, Middle East expert Irina Zvyagelskaya: Would 25 or 50 have been more believable?) Chiesa, who is fluent in Russian, argued that the bin Laden videotapes aired on TV "obviously" featured several different bin Laden impersonators.


I have not mentioned this in the past, but while I fully expect the 9-11 Troof Movement to continue to rot here in the US, it would not surprise me to see continued growth around the globe. There is always a market for America-bashing overseas.

Friday, October 03, 2008

Ron Wieck Interviews the Troofers

An entertaining job by Ron and Gary Popkin:



Note in particular that my observation about the "Truthers", that they are mostly 20-somethings with interesting facial hair is correct as usual.

Happy Anniversary

It is traditional for interest in the 9-11 conspiracy theories to peak during the month of September. For example, in August of 2006, traffic at 9-11 Blogger was 240,000 "uniques"; the next month they did about 320,000, an increase of about 33%. In August 2007 they hit 250,000, while in September they managed 337,000, again roughly a 33% uptick from the month before.

This year? August was 168,000, while September hit 187,000, so there was only about an 11% increase for the anniversary month. And even that doesn't tell the whole story. In September of 2007, they hit 11,000 visits per day. In September of 2008, they did not beat the average for the prior year on any day with the exception of the anniversary, when they reached 13,774 visitors. Overall, the year/year traffic decline was a breathtaking 47%.

I'm afraid this parrot is not just pining for the fjords; it had ceased to be. It has shuffled off the mortal coil and gone to meet its master. It is an ex-parrot.

Thursday, October 02, 2008

More on McKinney

Foxnews catches up to a story your humble blogger covered two days ago. I would be remiss though in not pointing out this quote.

A Defense Department spokesman dismissed McKinney's accusation.

"The claim is outrageous on the very face of it and doesn't merit any further consideration," said Lt. Col. Les' Melnyk. "It would be inconceivable that 5,000 people would go missing in America without anyone noticing it prior to this."

Psychologists and psychology professors contacted by FOXNews.com wouldn't comment on McKinney's mental condition, but they expressed shock at her assertion.

"Wow! What a conspiracy theory," one professor exclaimed before declining comment and hanging up the phone.

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Everything is a Conspiracy Theory

Troofers, in order avoid having to take responsibility for their dumb theories have been trying to distort the meaning of "conspiracy theory" just as they have tried to create a new meaning for the verb "pull". Alex Jones, here interviewing Jesse "The Idiot" Ventura, takes this to a new level.

That is what I am trying to say. That is what co-conspiracy theory is that the mainstream media and the dominant culture anytime you say, "Hey, I think this bailout might not be a good idea" They have been calling that a conspiracy theory. Or I think that we need to question government more or have more checks and balances. There might be some corruption in government. They call that a conspiracy theory. So basically anybody questioning the official paradigm is called a conspiracy theorist.

Huh? I don't know how the bailout bill somehow got into the realm of conspiracy theories. Opposition was so widespread that not only was it throughout the media, but the House of Representatives itself voted it down. Sorry Alex, you are not just a conspiracy theorist, you are an idiot.

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Wednesday, October 01, 2008

There is No Such Thing as a Stupid Question?

When your grade school teacher told you that there was no such thing as a stupid question, he had obviously never met a truther. From another pseudo-academic post on 9/11 Blogger (complete with footnotes and everything!) emphasis mine.

HELICOPTER PILOTS WERE AWAY FOR WEAPONS TRAINING

According to the military newspaper Pentagram, Davison Army Airfield's principal missions include maintaining "a readiness posture in support of contingency plans," exercising "operational control" of the local airspace, and providing "aviation support for the White House, U.S. government officials, Department of Defense, Department of the Army, and other government agencies." [8] Stationed at the airfield is the 12th Aviation Battalion, which is the aviation support unit for the Military District of Washington. The battalion operates UH-1 "Huey" and UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters. [9]

This raises two key questions: Could 12th Aviation Battalion helicopters have helped protect the Pentagon on September 11, and, if they could, why didn't they?


OK, well I can see a couple of problems with this...