Those Wonky "Truthers"

A perhaps overly-sympathetic article on the creeps:

At first glance, the scene outside last week's 9/11 Film festival resembled that of any other big, protest-oriented event. Truther organizations such as the Northern California 911 Truth Alliance and Project Censored crammed the lobby of Oakland's Grand Lake Theater, setting up tables with books; DVDs; "Wake Up and Smell the Fascism" bumper stickers; rubber stamps with the slogan "9/11 was an inside job;" pictures of Hendrix, John Lennon, and Mahatma Gandhi; and "Deception dollars." Middle-aged white guys with long hair and tie-dyed shirts milled around the room, greeting each other like old friends. It looked and felt like a typical crowd of rabble-rousers — at least until you listened in on their conversations.

Yep, the grey ponytail crowd was apparently out in force, with David Ray Griffin speaking and several dense films on the agenda. And one bit of lighter fare:

Wednesday night wound up being the cool, hip-hoppy half of the festival and Thursday the nerdy, academic half. The main draw on Wednesday was the world premiere of Loose Change 9/11: An American Coup, the latest of a series made by twenty-five-year-old director Dylan Avery. His films, which feature slick hip-hop soundtracks and VH1-style editing (the new one is narrated by actor Daniel Sunjata) mark the apex of popular success for 9-11 conspiracy-theory material. According to producer Korey Rowe, it is the most downloaded movie in the history of the Internet. During the post-screening discussion, no one challenged Avery's premise that 9-11 was planned and coordinated by the US government, or that the World Trade Center collapsed because of a controlled demolition, rather than a plane crash or fire damage. Instead, audience questions ranged from basic (i.e., "Why do you call the film Loose Change) to specific ("Why was Obama included in the closing of this film?"). Cleary, Rowe and Avery were preaching to the converted.

We also get a new theory:

"Dr. Griffin, regarding the reason for taking down World Trade Center 7: One theory is that it was an 'SCIF' — a Secure Controlled Intelligence Facility. This theory holds that the key CIA agents who were responsible for 9-11 were told to come to World Trade Center 7 for a debriefing that afternoon, and WTC 7 was taken down for the purpose of killing these CIA agents, thus covering up key evidence. What is your opinion of this theory?"

Actually, SCIF stands for Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, but otherwise the theory seems only to lack one little thing: evidence.