Op-Ed News Sidelines Troofers

I had not seen this before, but apparently Rob Kall has gotten tired of the annoying and pesky "Truther" contingent at his site and is putting them into their own little portion of the sandbox, called "Edges". He explains (quoted in one of the comments):

Most progressive sites refuse to cover 911 truth and more exotic topics, like UFOs, NWO and conspiracy theories. OEN has covered them and it has brought some problems, particularly a crew of unpleasant, negative commenters who attack just about every article published, particularly ones by higher visibility writers. We've decided to clean things up, so we're cracking down on this crew, holding firmer to rules aganst spamming articles and personal attacks and name calling. The goal is to maintain our open forum for discourse-- a forum that this small group has effectively intimidated and turned off.

(Snip)

We plan to continue publishing solid, well documented and supported articles on all subjects. If the focus is on edgy topics like 911 Truth, UFOs, NWO, JFK or other conspiracy theories, the articles, upon passing the test of new material and documented claims, will be posted to our EDGES hot page.

Kall's site is apparently pretty successful (he mentions a write-up in the New York Times), and so it's not surprising that he's realizing the downside of allowing the Troofers unrestricted access to the site, just as Arianna Huffington, Democratic Underground and Kos learned years ago.

And before anybody moans that I'm approving censorship, let's remember that SLC is the only site dedicated to covering the "Truth" movement that allows virtually every comment posted here to stand on its own merits. And while we're on that topic, check out Michael Morrissey's post on OpEd News about how he got banned from the Scholars for 9-11 Truth and Justice, its forum, and his comments got put on moderation:

Shortly after I published my article "9/11 Aletheia" on OpEdNews, I was removed from the membership list of Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice, shortly after that from their forum, and on May 20 I was put on "probation" (the "moderation queue") at 911Blogger.com. I offer myself, therefore, as Exhibit A in my case against the closed-mindedness I criticized in my article.

I have been a member of Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice (STJ911.org) since its founding in 2006, when it split off from the original Scholars for 9/11 Truth (911scholars.org) founded by Jim Fetzer. I remained a member of both organizations, because I saw no reason not to. Both, it seemed to me, had their merits. I joined 911Blogger.com at about the same time, and since September 2006 I have made 62 postings to that site.

This history is important, because I am not a "no planer" or proponent of theories of video fakery or exotic weaponry, and I can prove it. My only, cardinal sin is this one recent article where I dared to defend the principle of free discussion.

Morrissey's original piece was inane, but it does point out the hypocrisy of the Troofers bitching about gatekeepers when they are gatekeeping themselves.

A Conspiracy Theorist Debunks

Why is it that conspiracy theorists only manage to use facts, logic and the scientific method when addressing their even kookier no-plane brethren. One of them actually does a pretty good job addressing the no-planers claim (UFO cultist John Lear specifically) that the planes which crashed into the twin towers could not have attained the speeds they did, by testing it in a simulator, and finds that it is actually quite easy.

The aircraft continued to increase speed until it reached .86 Mach (654mph), which is its rated airframe Mach speed limit. This makes complete sense, as the manufacturer does not want you to exceed this but wants you to have the maximum thrust available in case of emergency. At this air speed I was surprised at how easy it was to maintain my attitude once the aircraft was trimmed.

Originally thinking I was going to have to do a dive to attain the speeds of AA11 and UA175 due to the engines possibly struggling to make enough thrust, I thought it would be good to see what speed we could achieve in a shallow dive. We took the aircraft to 10,000ft and I commenced a 5 degree dive to 2,000ft and found that the aircraft attained and maintained a speed of .89 Mach (approaching 700mph) and was reasonably easy to control for a non-pilot. We did these tests a couple more times to be sure and then at about 3:45am I left the simulator.

For more entertainment value, check out Uncle Fetzer's response to this in the comments.

Whoops There Goes Neils Harritt

Barrett and Harritt, together again for the first time. How does it happen that the newest superstar of 9-11 Troof, whose name sits atop the "peer-reviewed paper" that the goofs have been pushing, finds himself sharing a stage with Holocaust Denier and No-Plane sympathizer Kevin Barrett?

How does it happen? Because Harritt himself is a kook as you can see from the brief segment of him shown in the trailer. BTW, in the long JFK speech aired, Kennedy is referring to the communists, although the kooks always claim it's the NWO.

Seriously, at this point I'm starting to feel like we're bullies on the beach, knocking down the sand castles of a bunch of special ed kids.

Hat Tip: BG, our original "Truther" commenter.

Proud To Be the Kookiest PBS Station in America--KBDI, Denver

Here's a presser on their upcoming presentation of Press For Truth.

For starters, they use a picture of the Jersey Girls, featuring Kristen Breitweiser in front:



Except that Breitweiser does not appear in the film except in old TV clips, and the other three widows are actually the stars of the show (in addition to Bob McIlvaine).

That photo was used on the DVD cover for PfT, which we covered back in the dog days of 2006, but at least they had the decency to remove Mrs Breitweiser:

Following the attacks of September 11th, a small group of grieving families waged a tenacious battle against those who sought to bury the truth about the event -- including, to their amazement, President Bush. In this documentary, six of them -- including three of the famous 9/11 widows known as the "Jersey Girls" -- tell the powerful story of how they took on the greatest powers in Washington, compelling lawmakers to launch an investigation that ultimately failed to answer most of their questions. The filmmakers collaborated with the media group Globalvision (WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception, Beyond JFK) to stitch together overlooked news clips, buried stories, and government press conferences, revealing a pattern of official lies, deception, and spin. As a result, a very different picture of 9/11 emerges -- one that raises new, and more pressing, questions.

And if you pledge $104 to these Rocky Mountain Oysters, you'll get a DVD of PfT plus In Their Own Words, all the crappy questions that they had to pull out of PfT because they were even more ridiculous and embarrassing than the ones they left in.

But wait, there's more! If you send another $50, we'll send you David Ray Grifter's The New Pearl Harbor! Oh, we can tell that KBDI is an exemplary PBS network, representing the Rocky Mountain spotted feverish contingent proudly.

And if you are delusional enough to part with 304 bones to the nutbar network, you could actually get 5 DVDs plus two books. The added DVDs are Blueprint for Truth by Box Boy Gage, Fabled Enemas by Bermas, and a DRG lecture from 2007. Why mention the added book (a Peter Dale Scott snoozer), nobody's going to read it.

What a sad, pathetic little station KBDI is.

Box Boy is Coming to Town!

In the greatest event to hit the beautiful Pacific Northwest since the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, Richard "Box Boy" Gage is scheduled to speak in Seattle next month:

City/State: Seattle, WA
Date: Sat, Jun 27, 2009
Time: 7 PM
Topic: 9/11: Blueprint for Truth – The Architecture of Destruction
Speaker: Richard Gage, AIA
Venue: Seattle Town Hall

Unfortunately, I have tickets to see Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood that night at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. What a dilemma.

US News and World Reports on Conspiracy Theorists

US News repeats the report on the psychological study that Pat mentioned earlier. I have to agree, I think the Grand Universal Conspiracy Theory is the Holy Grail for most conspiracists.

“Often, the proof offered as evidence for a conspiracy is not specific to one incident or issue, but is used to justify a general pattern of conspiracy ideas,” Swami says.

His conclusion echoes a 1994 proposal by sociologist Ted Goertzel of Rutgers–Camden in New Jersey. After conducting random telephone interviews of 347 New Jersey residents, Goertzel proposed that each of a person’s convictions about secret plots serves as evidence for other conspiracy beliefs, bypassing any need for confirming evidence.

What Color is Your Dot?

That's Officer Jack McLamb, not Officer Jack McSheeple.

Luke's Trial Postponed

According to a commenter, Luke left this message on his MySpace page:

I am so disappointed in people, went to court today madd early, pleaded not guilty and the trial begins on my birthday July 27th, 2009 which I share with my lawyer. f*cking crazy"

.

What, your lawyer didn't tell you that your trial wouldn't start right away if you pleaded not guilty? Luke, tell me you haven't got a Legal Aid lawyer!

Hat Tip: WAC Spy

NYCCAN: 40,000 Signatures

The latest 9-11 "Truth" fiasco moves closer to the pie-in-the-face ending. As I will never tire of pointing out, even if they get the measure on the ballot, and even if it is approved, they are just setting themselves up for an eventual fall as their assumption is that they will locate private funding of $50 million dollars to actually run their commission. Which puts their recent fundraising of $17,000 in a little perspective. All they have to do is raise 3,000 times that amount.

Keep The Change, Luke

Well, well. Looks like the more things "change" the more they stay the same. Luke has mentioned a few times that he's facing a revolt from within the WAC group, and here's evidence that it's pretty serious:

Luke Rudkowski routed all donations totaling over $100,000 (according to the chip-in flash application gauge) to his PRIVATE BANK ACCOUNT (just like Les Jamison of NY911truth did). Luke Rudkowski has 100% control of donations that come to We are change. Luke Rudkowski has yet to give a real detailed financial report in two years which is supposed to be provided according to voted on bylaws.

Luke Rudkowski has made slanderous statements regarding the integrity and allegiance of myself and others and accused us of being cointelpro. And the only crime we committed was asking questions and demanding answers about the bank account. Luke Rudkowski’s false and slanderous accusations have given this movement a black eye. The punishment for asking questions to Luke Rudkowski is chapter deletion from main site without a democratic group vote. We will not allow Luke Rudkowski to become judge, jury and executioner in the case against devoted members.

Hat Tip: Troy's uncle (in the comments). Lotta discussion as to whether the amount claimed ($100,000) could possibly be true. I suspect not, but let's remember that WAC-Colorado claims to have over 500 members.

Incidentally, Luke is going to court tomorrow for the trespassing incident from a month or two ago, where his cameras were confiscated. Luke expresses a great deal of confidence that he will be declared not guilty; then again, so do most criminals before they are convicted.

The NY Times Reviews New World Order

I am not a huge fan of the Times, but at least they got this right.

“New World Order,” an unrelentingly tedious documentary by Luke Meyer and Andrew Neel, follows a group of considerably less glamorous truth-seekers. The most prominent of the filmmakers’ subjects, the radio host Alex Jones, who is based in Austin, Tex., rails against the powers that be — all of them — in a manner that reinforces every cliché of the conspiracy theorist loon: paranoid, megalomaniacal, delusional, sweaty. The documentary’s most action-packed scene finds Mr. Jones throwing a major hissy fit when his hotel fire alarm goes off, thereby proving, without a shadow of a doubt, that “they” are trying to suppress his revelations.

On the (somewhat) mellower side, Luke Rudowski, a 21-year-old New Yorker, spends all his free time distributing fliers and DVDs purporting to uncover the truth about 9/11. Seth Jackson, a relief worker in Louisiana, does his part by heckling Bill Clinton and other dark overlords. A retired police officer, Jack McLamb, meanwhile, has retreated to the safety of a separatist militia group.

There’s a movie to be made about the psychology of such men, their personal lives and private obsessions. “New World Order” merely gawks at them.

For further entertainment value you can watch Jones ranting on about the review.

Alex Jones and Sean Fitzgerald

Troy's latest. I have a hunch that the Alex Jones Deception is going to be a whole lot more truthful than the Obama Deception was.

Truthers Suspicious and Inquisitive

Not surprisingly, the conclusion of a new study:

A team led by psychologist Viren Swami of the University of Westminster in London identified several traits associated with subscribing to 9/11 conspiracies, at least among British citizens. These characteristics consist of backing one or more conspiracy theories unrelated to 9/11, frequently talking about 9/11 conspiracy beliefs with likeminded friends and others, taking a cynical stance toward politics, mistrusting authority, endorsing democratic practices, feeling generally suspicious toward others and displaying an inquisitive, imaginative outlook.

And:

Goertzel says the new study provides an intriguing but partial look at the inner workings of conspiracy thinking. Such convictions critically depend on what he calls “selective skepticism.” Conspiracy believers are highly doubtful about information from the government or other sources they consider suspect. But, without criticism, believers accept any source that supports their preconceived views, he says.

“Arguments advanced by conspiracy theorists tell you more about the believer than about the event,” Goertzel says.

Swami’s finding that 9/11 conspiracy believers frequently spoke with likeminded individuals supports the notion that “conspiracy thinkers constitute a community of believers,” remarks historian Robert Goldberg of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Goldberg has studied various conspiracy theories in the United States.

That's an interesting point; we have often noted the number of theologians among the Troofers. Also note the point about how they distrust the media, except when it provides a piece of acceptable "evidence".

Another Investigative Lead for the Troofers

I've mentioned this video several times in the past, but I am struck by the fact that none of the "Truthers" has ever followed up on the revelation made by Patty Casazza:

Sibel brought us many whistleblowers and I submitted them personally to Governor Kean, who was the chairman of the Commission, and I said, "These people are not being subpoenaed. They will not come before the Commission voluntarily unless they are subpoenaed." And he promised me to my face that every whistleblower would be indeed heard. And most were not heard. Sibel was only heard because we dragged her in to surprise the Commission on one of the days we were meeting with them, that we had her with us. We met other whistleblowers on the side of the road of Maryland, you know, to hear what they could tell us. None of them revealed state secrets to us, by the way. But they had information, and basically, the government knew, you know, other than the exact moment, they knew the date and the method of which the attacks were supposed to come. And none of this made it to the mainstream media.

This is the sort of stuff the Troofers should be digging at. Who were these "other whistle-blowers"? Surely Mrs Casazza can give the movement at least a description of these individuals, which would help greatly in any investigation. I mean, we see these "ambush videos" by 9-11 Troofers harassing individuals in the media who have no special knowledge, when are we going to see someone press Mrs Casazza for details on her mystery informant, someone who apparently has solid evidence that the government knew everything but the exact moment of the attacks?

Troofer Wars

Like any group of religious extremists, the troofers continue to have their schisms and excommunications. The newest heretic being Michael Morrissey:

I have been removed from the membership list at stj911.org, without a word of explanation, although I have been a member since the founding. I suspect it is because of my essay "9/11 Aletheia," which was published on OpEdNews.com (but rejected by 911blogger.com, also without explanation).

Is this any way for "Scholars" to behave? I can't say I'm surprised, but I was secretly hoping that I was wrong about the people who are obviously controlling things there. I was not.

The bit that apparently drew the wrath of the fundamentalists was this:

Since when did the suppression and demonization of ideas qualify as science? I am not a no-planer, but why shouldn't I be able to discuss it on the Scholars for Truth and Justice forum (of which Ashley is the moderator), and why shouldn't Congress be asked to investigate the claims of video fakery and directed energy weapons along with thermitic dust?

Another one bites the dust.

British 7/7 Report Released

At least it has apparently been released; all I can find are summaries online. The details are maddeningly undetailed:

What does this amount to?

Before 7/7, Khan's name had appeared on a number of occasions in different places and apparently unconnected incidents. There were pictures of an unidentified man, who we now know to be Khan, with a target. But MI5 insists there was no intelligence of a threat. There were lots of dots - but dots that were not joined up.

Why were they not joined up?

It was fragmentary evidence. In theory, had the resources been there, MI5 could have connected all the information - but it says that it would not have made a difference because there was still nothing to suggest he was a danger.

What specifics there are seem to indicate more that MI5 was overwhelmed by the amount of terrorist threats in Great Britain, to the point where a loose thread that could have lead to Siddique Khan, the ringleader of the 7/7 bombings, was not tugged at.

As always when we talk about 7/7, we turn to Rachel North:

Ordinary, boring police work could probably have stopped him. M15 watch and wait, and evaluate; they cannot stop everyone they are interested in. But the would-be murderer Khan - if an ordinary copper had been tipped off by the security services about his GBP20k fraud, back in spring 2005, that might well have been enough to get in his face and disrupt him, stop him mixing the chemicals in his bathtub that tore apart so many lives in the summer of 2005. We'll never know.

In November 2004 he went back to Pakistan, after saying goodbye to his baby daughter. A few days after arrival in Pakistan he had been given new orders; along with his friend Mutkar Said Ibrahim, who attacked on 21/7/2005 using the same M.O and same recipe, a fortnight after Khan detonated a hydrogen peroxide organic compound based IED on the tube. Again, he too was not stopped.

Ibrahim's bomb failed to detonate: perhaps he had not been paying as much attention as his friends to the lessons that were given the UK jihadi class of 93-94 that last winter before they set off back to the UK to die.

Jim's Daddy Done It!

Comedy classic!

P.S. I didn't know that Jerry Van Dyke had a radio show!

Good Article on Alter Net

Joshua Holland takes what we might call the Noam Chomsky/George Monbiot approach: That the conspiracy theories distract us from the very real issues, blah blah blah. The actual debunking in the piece is pretty solid, although I had to smile at this:

But asking those questions puts one at risk of being lumped in with a fringe movement, and the result is that we're less likely to get at the truth about what happened that day because of the 9/11 Truth movement, not despite its tireless efforts (a conspiracy theory as good as any other is that the whole 9/11 "Truth" movement is a government operation designed to prevent serious questioning of what led up to the events of that infamous day).

Been there, got the South Park tee shirt.

Hat Tip: Baritone Woman (in the comments), who recommends the comments section on that story for some amusement.

Jesse the Fruitcake on Fox

Typical Ventura; he blows his very first point by claiming that the Gulf of Tonkin was staged. As I have gotten tired of pointing out, the Gulf of Tonkin incident is actually two separate incidents, one of which happened and one of which appears to have just been confusion.

On August 2, 1964, the destroyer USS Maddox (DD-731) engaged three North Vietnamese P-4 torpedo boats, resulting in damage to the three boats. Two days later the Maddox (having been joined by the destroyer USS Turner Joy (DD-951) reported a second engagement with North Vietnamese vessels. This second report was later claimed to be in error.

And why was the second report in error? Was it a lie to get us into war (like Johnson didn't have a mandate to do whatever he wanted after his landslide election), or was it CYA by some bureaucrats at the NSA?

In October, 2005 the New York Times reported that Robert J. Hanyok, a historian for the U.S. National Security Agency, had concluded that the NSA deliberately distorted the intelligence reports that it had passed on to policy-makers regarding the August 4 incident. He concluded that the motive was not political but was probably to cover up honest intelligence errors.

Hanyok's conclusions were initially published within the NSA in the Winter 2000/Spring 2001 Edition of Cryptologic Quarterly, about five years before they were revealed in the Times article. According to intelligence officials, the view of government historians that the report should become public was rebuffed by policymakers concerned that comparisons might be made to intelligence used to justify the Iraq War that commenced in 2003. Reviewing the NSA's archives, Mr. Hanyok concluded that the NSA had initially misinterpreted North Vietnamese intercepts, believing there was an attack on August 4. Midlevel NSA officials almost immediately discovered the error, he concluded, but covered it up by altering documents, so as to make it appear the second attack had happened.

Jesse "the Researcher" Ventura.

Kos Diarist Banned for Troofer Post

This is the post that got him banned.

But the greatest failure of Democrats and the progressive left in the last 8 years has been to allow the delusional ravings of a few to inoculate the Bush junta on 911. Just because some think that space beams destroyed the Twin Towers is no reason to believe the depiction of 911 presented by Bush/Cheney or the fraud that is the 911 Commission. There's nothing realistic about believing the Bush administration has lied about everything except 911.

He recommends that steaming pile, 9-11 Press for Troof, and outs himself as a LIHOI fruitcake:

I just want people to understand they let it happen. Because that is the proven truth, so far. Whether they let it happen on purpose is a legitimate line of investigation. But because of the left's phobia with 911, we can't even get the message out that Bushco let 911 happen through incompetence. And that pisses me off.

Now there's a movement to get him reinstated:

In light of Tocquedeville's many contributions to this site, and in light of the fact that the diary he was banned for is actually not a conspiracy theory diary, I am starting a petition to get him unbanned.

Currently the poll over there is running about 2-1 in favor of unbanning. I checked and apparently Tocquedeville is a fairly popular diarist over there, with some of his posts attracting 2500+ comments.

Was it a CT diary? I'd say it comes right up to the line. Press for Truth is a crackpot movie dressed up a bit to seem like it's "Just asking questions". But more important is that the post is advocating more discussion of 9-11 CTs without the nasty label of Conspiracy Theories. It seems obvious that if this post stands, then it's Katie bar the door.

Biden His Time

Moral of the story: Don't ask a multi-paragraph question that a politician can answer with a simple "Yes."

Science by Sarcasm

If there were any doubt that the Journal of 9/11 Studies was not a legitimate scientific journal, read this 2 1/2 page work by co-editor Frank Legge mocking an internet exchange with Frank Greening. Now I certainly have nothing against making fun of people on the Internet, but calling this a "peer-reviewed paper" is also worthy of a mocking itself. None dare call it science.

Not Much Out There...

I keep checking the usual suspects and there isn't much to talk about. The folks over at Truth Action noticed today that Reprehensor has apparently backtracked on his pledge not to let the CIT-heads darken 9-11 Blogger's door. Unfortunately I covered that story last week.

Steven Jones apparently sent out an email to his troops telling them that he's kicking some Dr Greening butt in their online debate over the "Active Thermitic Material" paper. In fact, if you've been reading here, you'll know that Dr Greening has been providing the boot in that exchange while Jones shouldn't be sitting down anytime soon.

New Eyewitness Surfaces

In Ottawa, of all places. And he's a Truther himself! He claims to have been working for Merrill Lynch in NYC on 9-11, and miracle of miracles, should have been in the North Tower when it was hit, making him yet another Troofer who should have died on 9-11 but didn't because they were running a little late that day. So David Long joins Richard Andrew Grove and Indira Singh in that fortunate group.

His story has some holes in it; for example, he says it was Building 2 that was hit first, and that there was lots of debris impeding his path along Fulton Street. But in fact, Building 1 was hit first and there would have not been a whole lot of debris on Fulton Street at that point as it was on the east side of WTC1, which was hit from north.

He appears to be taking something of a no-planer approach. He gets wrong the order of collapses, saying that the first tower hit was the first tower to collapse. He claims to have seen no damage to WTC-7 but from his position (north of City Hall), he could only see the north side of the building and probably not much of that.

Sean Fitzgerald Update

Next court date is June 23; some more details here:

The attorney for Sean Alden Fitzgerald, 37, has entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. Fitzgerald suffered head injuries when he was hit by a truck while bicycling in Thailand a few weeks before the slaying. The day before the slaying, his parents brought him to a neurosurgeon because they said he was having paranoid and suicidal thoughts.

Grifter, Part III

He gets into all the "experts" for 9-11 Troofiness. Hilariously, he starts off with SPINE (Scientific Panel Investigating Nine-Eleven). I suppose at some point I will get tired of pointing this out, but SPINE talks about the Zionists and at least implies that Israel was involved in the attacks:

Question 6. Are you saying the Jews are behind 911?

Answer: Certainly not. Although Israel is ostensibly a Jewish state, its actions in the middle east are in direct conflict with Jewish Law, ethics and morality. The European (Khazarite) Jews may be described as double victims, suffering not only from centuries of persecution after the fall of Muslim Spain, but from the deceptive practices adopted by the Zionist planners responsible for Israel. Myths such as “a land without people for a people without land” (both questionable propositions) misled thousands of settlers in the Jewish proto-state, followed by millions later.

As a general rule, zionist organizations in the west have only one tool with which to counter revelations of the myth-building exercise. Whoever makes such claims is labeled an “anti-semite,” a peculiarly ironic charge under the circumstances.

SPINE links directly to all sorts of questionable websites, like Killtown, Let's Roll 9-11 (Phil Jayhan's pod site), the Liberty Forum, which SPINE helpfully advises us:

Zionists behind 911, contains an extensive news story bibliography.

As well as Mujca, Barrett's site, an article by Holocaust Denier Nick Kollerstrom, CIT, rabid anti-Semite (and early "Truther") Carol Valentine, and 9-11 We Know (where you can buy the Ernst Zundel story). How freaking obvious is it that SPINE should be treated as poison by the movement? And yet Griffin endorses it here, and every single one of these "Mop-Pushers for 9-11 Troof" professional groups links it as well.

Moron David Ray Griffin in Boston

I listened to a bit more this evening while out for a bike ride. Grifter's theme is that suddenly there's new evidence that means you can no longer laugh off the Troofers; of course as we shall see, the new evidence is in fact much of the stuff we've been discussing here for years.



We get long bits of the "Zelikow was a Bush/Cheney insider", which is hardly a novelty. The Shenon book comes up without Grifter mentioning that Shenon laughed at the conspiracy theories. Oddly Griffin does the "air quotes" thing that Kevin Barrett used so often, but only with his right hand and not his left.

The part about NIST starting at 5:30 in is really offensive, and I would guess actionable at about 7:25:

"The authors, with their PhDs in physics and engineering, could not possibly believe the things they had written."

I have to question whether Griffin could possibly believe the things he has written and said. I'm still amazed that there hasn't been more of an effort from the movement to get him off the Pentagon and the cellphone/airfone calls. Yes, the phone calls get a long going over; the new evidence is the same old crap Grifter was selling in 2007 about how the Moussaoui trial evidence doesn't back up the Barbara Olsen phone calls.

Griffin also reveals that his next book will be on WTC 7; given that the evidence he cites in his lecture is mostly stuff like Barry Jennings we can hardly wait.

New World Order Film

This movie is getting some attention. It is a documentary about the 9-11 Truthers, apparently with heavy focus on Alex Jones and Luke Rudkowski. The directors themselves are not Truthers, so supposedly the film is balanced and even-handed. Quite a bit of discussion about the movie here:

Jones has turned his Infowars concept into a cottage industry. But the truly telling part of New World Order is its revealing depiction of the individuals who spend their spare time establishing alternative communities or burning DVDs to hand out at the World Trade Center site.

Alternately amusing and poignant, New World Order peels back a layer of mystery to show the conspiracy theorists’ strange world. Meyer and Neel set out to make an even-handed documentary that lets Jones and his people speak for themselves, and they’ve succeeded. It’s an interesting and compelling portrait of a thriving subculture.

Unfortunately some of the reviewers are quasi-kooks:

You’ll either shake your head in amazement at how some people can be so insane, paranoid and obsessed or, you’ll see that there are some pretty damned convincing arguments to be found about where our country is headed as well as the events surrounding the 9-11 attacks. Documentary filmmakers Luke Myer and Andrew Neel’s “New World Order” take us into the world of the “conspiracy theorists” in their outstanding new film, “New World Order.”

Better review:

Meyer and Neel succeed in doing exactly what any great documentarian should – never turn away, whatever the circumstances. Just when the viewer is becoming concerned that the film might have intentionally set out to be overly symapethic, there's a sequence where the extreme, almost unsettling presence of obsession becomes obvious. This is wonderfully illustrated by a few brief conversations with Jones which play up his humanity – and to a certain extent his believability – juxtaposed moments later by a radio interview in which Jones falls aggressively, uncomfortably into character, unleashing an impassioned rant in an almost hypnotic state of rage. And yet for every moment of relative "craziness," there's a softer, quieter moment where these characters are shown to be people, caring and loving and always with the best of intentions.

Dylan drops in and we can see that the Jones-Avery civil war is still simmering:

I'm not sure how I feel about Alex being represented as the leader of the 9/11 truth movement.

Or any of us, for that matter.

Ten Photos the Conspiracy Theorists Hate

Over at Lay Science, a British skeptics' blog. The only one I'd say is missing is this one of the fire in the North Tower:

Debate in Arkansas

If you needed confirmation that the Troofer Movement is dead, check out the video coverage of a debate at the University of Arkansas. All those people disguised as empty seats!

Unfortunately, the news clip of Adam Roberts, representing the rationalist side, got chewed up by the video gremlin, but we salute his efforts! I did a little Googling of Mr Roberts and found that he was selected by the Society of Professional Journalists as the second best in 2008 in Region 12 for "General Column Writing".

Adam's also a blogger and here are his thoughts on what he learned from the debate:

* Don't schedule events on Dead Day Eve. (Turnout wasn't as good as we hoped)
* No matter how many times you ask for "evidence, not storytelling," you're still going to get storytelling.
* An hour isn't near enough time to give these issues the treatment they deserve.
* People can look at you in the face and admit that the supposed bombs were apparently invisible, odorless, left no chemical trail and violated the laws of physics, but still must have existed, because the airlines didn't sell the regular amount of tickets for the hijacked flights.
* But, despite all this, common sense and a dose of facts can help at least a few people view those YouTube videos with a more skeptical eye.

One thing does trouble me, though. He apparently opposes the designated hitter. Oh, well, we can't all be perfect.

Bermas/Troy Smackdown Generates Some Interesting Comments

Over at Truth Action:

Yeah!! Smackdown!!! WWE and Nascar!!! Alex Jones has HUGE balls!!! Stick it to those NWO, bilderberger, CFR, Trilateral, Illuminati, shills. Macho agreession feels good. Let's hit the roids and do some squats. Then brewskis, skanks, and kicking some Mexican fag ass.

There are really very few sizable groups in the world that are more naive, aggressive, wasteful, neurotic, and damaging to the world, than middle American white men. Alex Jones exemplifies that group in my eyes.

Alex Jones is a huge problem for us. A different kind of problem than main stream society, but just the other side of the coin. Anti-conformity is not non-conformity. The system is well served by his kind of opposition. He promotes useless version of opposition that rallies naive white people into pointless concerns and away from doing anything at all useful.

And in the process, he and his followers, cheerleaders, and recruits, allow anyone trying to undermine our efforts to just sit back and let us screw ourselves.

Alex Jones is one of the most damaging things that this movement had dealt with. Not that Troy isn't a total ass. But if I didn't know who he was and tuned into that show, I would have though that Bermas was a lot more of an asshole than him.

Dem, I'm not really harping on you although you might be insulted. But this clip has absolutely nothing to do with 9/11 truth and including this kind of crap in the affairs of this movement doesn't help.

LOL. If ever there was a movement that was overrun with white guys, it's 9-11 Troof. Aside from Cynthia McKinney has anybody seen a black female "Truther"?

Gold Out At 9-11 Blogger?

He put up a post on on OpEd by Sibel Edmonds over at the Bradblog, and went off the deep end when it did not immediately get promoted to the front (news) page:

This is my last blog post to 911blogger. This isn't the Controlled Demolition Movement, and yet every other post is about exactly that. The "message" of 911Blogger.com no longer matches my own. I have asked repeatedly to be taken off moderated comments, and have been ignored. I co-founded this site with dz, and generated the content that built this site's popularity, and now I am ignored. I am done.

There are several "But we love you, Jon," posts. One guy notes that this is far from the first time Gold has done his tearful farewell. Significantly, no comment from Reprehensor begging him to stay.

Jason Bermas Insults Troy, Rejects Modern Medicine

Yeah, there is a reason you don't have to worry about dying from Polio or Smallpox anymore, genius.

Popular Mechanics Debunked Claims Reduced a Bit

Okay, I asked Stoo (sorry about the misspelling) and John-Michael to give us a hint as to what theories debunked in the Popular Mechanics article were completely bogus within the movement and therefore not worthy of our debunking time. I'm happy to hone in on the supposed best evidence at this point and eliminate the constant 7 hijackers are alive trash (although that will have to wait for another day). I'm happy to be civil in this debate, because as always I do feel I have the best information.

They recommended we check out Jim Hoffman's response to the Popular Mechanics piece. For ease of reference I have summarized the major theories that I certainly feel were debunked by PM:

1. Pod Theory
2. Stand Down order
3. Non-commercial airliners hit the towers.
4. Airforce scrambles & intercepts
5. WTC lobby and basement explosions
6. Fire can’t melt steel
7. Squibs
8. Seismographic evidence
9. WTC-7 a controlled demolition
10. Holes too small at the Pentagon
11. Pentagon windows not broken
12. No plane debris at the Pentagon
13. Flight 93 shot down
14. Flight 93 engine found too far from rest of plane.
15. Debris at Indian Lake too far away
16. Flight 93 shot down by Gibney

Let's hear what Hoffman has to say:

1. Pod Theory

The pod-plane idea has been used for over a year to discredit skepticism of the official story. It's not surprising that the article gives it top billing. See ERROR: A Pod Was Attached to the South Tower Plane. The article mentions the site LetsRoll911.org and the video In Plane Site, implying they are representative of the skeptics. Of course it makes no reference to skeptics' sites debunking these productions and the pod-plane idea they feature, such as this page on OilEmpire.us, or this page on QuestionsQuestions.net.

Okay, so the pod theory is officially dead.

2. Stand-Down Order:

Here, the article falsely implies that emperors-clothes.com and StandDown.net both claim that no jets were scrambled to pursue any of the four commandeered jets. It then attacks this straw man by relating some details of the Commission's timeline (without sourcing the Commission's Report) to suggest that interceptors were scrambled, but that ATC couldn't find the hijacked flights because there were too many radar blips. The article makes no mention of the many problems with NORAD's account of the failed intercepts, but relates the following incredible assertion by NORAD public affairs officer Maj. Douglas Martin that there was a hole in NORAD's radar coverage:

It was like a doughnut. There was no coverage in the middle.

This absurd idea that NORAD had no radar coverage over much of the continental US is distilled from the 9/11 Commission Report. Predictably, the article makes no mention of evidence that war games were planned for the day of 9/11/01. See Multiple War Games on 9/11/01 Helped to Disable Air Defense.

Lots of griping but no indication as to whether he believes that the Stand-Down Order is valid or not, so we'll leave this in the "Open to Debate" section.

3. Non-commercial airliners hit the towers (Hoffman gets the order of the Popular Mechanics piece wrong, but it's fixed by the next entry):

That the South Tower plane had no windows is one of several ludicrous claims made by the In Plane Site video, and, like the pod-planes claim, is dismissed by the simplest analysis. See The Windowless Plane.

I had to dig a little further through the links, but we have made real progress here: Flight 175 is now acknowledged to have hit the South Tower:

There is no credible evidence that what crashed into the South Tower on 9/11/01 was anything other than Flight 175. The jet was seen by hundreds of people and recorded by scores of cameras as it flew over the Hudson River, approaching the World Trade Center from the southwest, and careened into the South Tower, erupting into a spectacular fireball.

4. Air Force Scrambles and Intercepts:

It is safe to assume that a significant fraction of scrambles lead to intercepts, so the fact that there were 67 scrambles in a 9-month period before 9/11/01 suggests that there are dozens of intercepts per year. To its assertion that there was only one intercept in a decade, the article adds that "rules in effect ... prohibited supersonic flight on intercepts," and the suggestion that there were no hotlines between ATCs and NORAD.

Clearly Hoffman considers #4 an appropriate topic for discussion, so we shall not mark it down on the accepted and debunked list.

5. WTC Lobby and basement explosions? Baseless says Jim:

The article's lead point in the World Trade Center topic is an obscure idea that explosives in the basements of the towers damaged the lobbies at about the time the planes hit. With only sparse evidence to support it, this contention is only mentioned by a few researchers. Indeed it is entirely distinct -- in both the support that exists for it, and the support that it provides for "conspiracy theories" -- from the contention that explosives brought down the towers (56 and 102 minutes after the plane crashes).

So bye, bye Willie Rodrigey-yi!

6. Fire can't melt steel.

The article implies that skeptics' criticism of the official account that fires weakened the towers' structures is based on the erroneous assumption that the official story requires that the fires melted the steel.

In fact the fire-melts-steel claim was first introduced by apologists for the official story on the day of the attack, by no less than a structural engineer. The more sophisticated column failure and truss failure theories, advanced in subsequent days and weeks, are the subject of detailed analysis and debunking here.

So we're at least past fire can't melt steel.

7. Seismographic evidence.

The idea that seismic spikes preceded the collapses of the towers is the subject of the page, ERROR: Seismic Spikes Preceded Collapses. Unfortunately a number of web sites seized upon this idea without critically evaluating it. The article takes advantage of this red herring by pointing out that PrisonPlanet.com and WhatReallyHappened.com support it, while ignoring the much larger bodies of valid evidence of demolition that these sites present.

Lamont-Doherty is off the witness list.

8. Squibs.

By titling this section "Puffs Of Dust," rather than "explosions of concrete," and by showing only a collapse photograph from early in the South Tower's destruction, the article minimizes the explosiveness of the event, but nonetheless goes to lengths to explain these "puffs."

Squibs not yet considered debunked.

9. WTC-7 Controlled Demolition. Of course Hoffman is not ready to concede this point, but I am surprised a bit at the evidence he presents; it's the basic "freefall speed into its own footprint:

* The building collapsed with precisely vertical fashion.
* The building collapsed at almost the rate of free-fall.
* The building collapsed into a tidy pile of rubble.

We'll give Hoffman a pass despite the obvious fact that his three factoids turn out to be wrong; the building fell south and east, took 18 seconds and did billions--yes billions--of dollars of damage to surrounding buildings when it collapsed. This is not yet the time for argument, just finding areas that we can take off the map.

10. Holes too small at the Pentagon.

Here the article cites the claim on reopen911.org that the hole in the Pentagon was "only 16ft. across," and mentions French author Thierry Meyssan, who helped to spawn the "no-757-crash theory", the subject of my earlier essay. The article again implies that this idea is gospel among 9/11 skeptics, giving no clue that there is controversy about the issue in 9/11 skeptics circles, and that many consider this claim that no jetliner hit the Pentagon a big distraction. The page ERROR: The Pentagon Attack Left Only a Small Impact Hole and others by 9/11 skeptics have long debunked Meyssan's wildly inaccurate description of a 16-foot-diameter entry hole.

We'll take the size of the entry and exit holes as no longer in doubt. Obviously Hoffman (here) is not yet ready to completely acknowledge that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon, but neither does he deny it.

11. Pentagon windows not broken,

Here the article misrepresents an argument by skeptics of the official account of Flight 77's crash by stating that the issue is intact windows "near the impact area," when the skeptics point to unbroken windows in the trajectory of portions of the Boeing 757.

Argggghhhh! Here I thought Hoffman was going to get us off the Pentagon once and for all and he's defending some research I never heard of about unbroken windows in the trajectory of portions of the Boeing 757.

12. No plane debris at the Pentagon.

Here the article drops a URL for Pentagon Strike a second time, in case the reader missed the first one. The lack of aircraft debris following the Pentagon crash has been noted by many people as suspicious, but it is not surprising, considering the nature of the crash. See ERROR: Aircraft Crashes Always Leave Large Debris

Consider the debris acknowledged.

13. Flight 93 Shot Down. Hoffman focuses on the White Jet which is not really the CT being expressed there, but we can see from other things that he's not opposed to the "shot-down" theory:

The far-flung debris field of the Flight 93 crash site along with the eyewitness accounts make a strong case that the plane was shot down.

14 Engine found too far away.

Hoffman clearly objects that this is still open to debate:

Michael K. Hynes, who investigated the crash of TWA Flight 800 in 1996, states parts could bounce that far "when you have high velocities, 500 mph or more." This theory is at odds with the eyewitness reports that the plane plummeted almost straight down, such as the following....

15. Debris at Indian Lake.

Hoffman is silent on his personal opinion here:

The article devotes this point to the confetti seen over Indian Lake, which is about two miles from the main crash site. It explains that this distance is "easily within range of debris blasted skyward by the heat of the explosion from the blast."

16. Flight 93 shot down by Gibney.

n the final point, the article takes on the allegation by retired Army Col. Donn de Grand-Pre that the pilot who shot down Flight 93 was Major Rick Gibney. The article states that Gibney was flying an F-16 that day, but it was not on an intercept mission; rather it was to pick up Ed Jacoby Jr., the director of the New York State's Emergency Management Office, and fly him from Montana to Albany, NY.

Again, Hoffman declines to opine, leaving the issue on the table.

Overall, I'm rather pleased with the progress we've made, while a little surprised at some of the issues that Hoffman was not ready to abandon in 2005; the Pentagon does not get completely ruled out and Hoffman obviously is dodging the question (as of this point) as to what happened with Flight 93.

So let's boil down the list to what's left as of Hoffman's Pop Mech page:

1. Stand Down order
2. Airforce scrambles & intercepts
3. Squibs
4. WTC-7 a controlled demolition
5. Pentagon windows not broken
6. Flight 93 shot down
7. Flight 93 engine found too far from rest of plane.
8. Debris at Indian Lake too far away
9. Flight 93 shot down by Gibney

Theories that we have now established have been dropped by the 9-11 Truth Movement:

1. Pod Theory
2. Non-commercial airliners hit the towers.
3. WTC lobby and basement explosions
4. Fire can’t melt steel
5. Seismographic evidence
6. Holes too small at the Pentagon
7. No plane debris at the Pentagon

This is progress; as I pointed out when I talked about all the theories, Lobby and Basement explosions come up commonly as does fire can't melt steel.

Note, this is not to deny that there are many more theories out there; those 7 may be debunked but there are probably 150 more that Hoffman will not acknowledge as BS. But I do want to start totting up the theories that are now considered moldy.

I don't know if Hoffman's still off on the Flight 93 stuff; this is just a snapshot as of when he wrote his rebuttal to Popular Mechanics. Again, I am not critiquing either Hoffman or Pop Mech in this post, just finding the remaining areas of disagreement.

A Response to Harrit, Jones, et.al. From Dr Greening

Copied from here, reproduced without permission in the interests of science:

I just sent this e-mail to the authors of the "Active Thermite" paper:

The "Active Thermite" debate, (if there ever was one!), has now sadly reached a state of stasis and stalemate. It basically boils down to this: do you believe Harrit and Jones or not. Or stated another way: Are the red/gray chips definitive evidence that "energetic" nanothermitic agents were pre-planted in the WTC or are these chips explainable in some other, less conspiratorial, way?

To begin to answer this question we need to consider just how unusual, (or not!) these red/gray chips really are. Harrit et al. believe that the red/gray chips are indeed very remarkable - so much so that these authors insist that these chips simply could not be found in dust produced by a "natural" collapse of the Twin Towers. Harrit et al. make this claim mainly because of two characteristics of the chips:

(i) Their alleged engineered "nano-scale" structure

(ii) Their alleged "highly energetic" pyrotechnic properties

With regard to the first of these points it is quite evident that Harrit et al. have based their characterization of the WTC red/gray chips almost entirely by copying the work of scientists at Texas Tech University and the Lawrence Livermore National Labs who have made and patented nano-structured energy-dense materials for use as detonators and pyrotechnic agents. (See the papers and reports of authors such as M. L. Pantoya, T. M. Tillotson, R. L. Simpson, B. J. Clapsaddle and A. E. Gash, as well as Chapter 7 of the book "Energetic Materials" by U. Teipel) It is therefore very significant that these nano-technology materials scientists consistently and repeatedly make use of scanning electron microscopy, X-ray analysis, and DSC to characterize their samples - precisely the techniques used by Harrit et al to characterize their red/gray chips. But in spite of this obvious attempt to convince the scientific community that the WTC red/gray chips are indeed the high-tech creations of dedicated "nano-engineers" toiling away in some clandestine weapons laboratory, these chips are in reality quite low-tech and decidedly micro, as opposed to nano, in scale and structure.

With regard to point (ii) above, Harrit asserts that the chips are fragments of an "energetic material". This claim is mostly based on DSC measurements, but we need to consider: is it supported by experimental evidence? The Harrit paper reports the energy content of the red chips to be in the range 1.5 - 7.5 kJ/g. This is in fact not very "energetic" at all when you consider that common organic materials such as simple hydrocarbons or oxygenated hydrocarbons contain far more energy per gram than the red chips. Thus gasoline releases about 48 kJ/g, and stearic acid, found in plant and animal fats, releases about 40 kJ/g upon combustion. Since carbon, in some as yet unknown chemical state, is also found in the red chips, it is certain that some of the energy content of the red chips is accounted for by this non-thermitic ingredient. In fact, if the chips contained a mere 10 % of graphitic carbon it would account for more than half of their energy content!

Nevertheless, on page 28 of their paper, Harrit et al. offer another reason to believe that the red chips are a highly energetic thermitic material:

". the DSC tests demonstrate the release of high enthalpy, actually exceeding that of pure thermite. Furthermore, the energy is released over a short period of time, shown by the narrowness of the peak in Figure 29."

This statement, also repeated in the Abstract to the paper, is simply not correct and shows a complete lack of understanding of DSC by the authors of the paper. Why do I say this? Well, Figure 29 is the DSC trace of a red chip heated from 20 deg C to 700 deg C at 10 deg C/ min and shows an exothermic peak extending from approximately 420 - 470 deg C. Now, as someone who has run many DSC analyses on a wide variety of materials, I know that the height and width of a DSC peak depends on many factors such as the sample-holder, the furnace atmosphere, the sample packing density, etc, but most of all, DSC peak widths depend on the heating rate. Given that the DSC trace of Harrit et al. was acquired at 10 deg C/min and has a FWHM ~ 25 deg C, one can be certain that a different peak width would have been obtained if a different heating rate had been used. Thus DSC peak widths are not indicative of reaction rates. This is amply illustrated by many of the DSC traces and the discussion given in Chapter 5 of the well-known chemistry textbook "Thermal Analysis" by W. Wendlandt.

Finally, I should add that DSC is most effectively used to study reaction rates if it is carried out in isothermal mode using the Avrami-Erofeev equations to analyse the data. This experimental approach allows a rate constant and an activation energy to be calculated for the reaction responsible for an exothermic peak. I am surprised that a Chemistry Professor at a well-respected University appears to be unaware of this simple fact ....

Yes indeed Prof. Harrit, you had the temerity to tell me to take my time and not waste yours, when perhaps I should be telling you to take your time, but not waste mine!

The thread over there is pretty interesting to read. You can see quite clearly that only Greening (Dr G) speaks with confidence and authority; the Truther posters are mostly "Well, what about this, and what about that?" I don't want to knock them, because I get the sense that Metamars, in particular, is making an honest attempt to discuss the issues but clearly doesn't know the science (and let me add that I don't know it either; I can only judge by the way the discussion flows).

I am a bit surprised to learn that Steven Jones swears in his emails; it just seems out of character for someone who is generally soft-spoken and genial.

Note also this key point:

I've already done a calculation, (see my post from a few days ago), of how much heat energy a layer of nano-thermite (such as the one allegedly found by Jones et al) could generate. And, by the way, you have not commented on this calculation as you said you would. Nevertheless, my conclusion was that Jones' chips would do no more than slightly warm a WTC column!

Faced with this, what did Jones claim?

So when I bounced my calculations and conclusions off Jones et al, all he could come up with was the suggestion that there were probably other explosives used in the WTC and the nanothermite chips were maybe just fuses!

Thus, after all the fuss about high-tech nano-thermites, we are back to good-old "bombs in the buildings" as the answer to how the buildings were destroyed.

No kidding; after all that fuss, Jones is claiming that sooper-nano-thermite was just a fuse!

CIT-Heads Prove that Memories Are Vague After 7-1/2 Years

A laughable attempt by the CIT heads to claim that Lloyde admitted being in on the plot. Lloyde does seem to be a little off his rocker (like everybody else in the film); let's remember that in one of the videos, Craig and Aldo found a copy of a David Icke book in his cab.

Can we get some help from Stew or John-Michael on this one? Is this one of the crazy theories or is this something legitimate that requires debunking. I don't want to put any effort into this if our "rebunkers" are just going to say it's disinformation.

Update: Well, well. It turns out this got posted over at 9-11 Blogger despite Reprehensor's supposed ban on CIT theories and the response has been very positive. Perhaps it is time to remind Reprehensor why he initially banned CIT in the first place? It was comments like these from CIT groupie Domenic Dimaggio:

"Your support of government agent John Farmer and toilet scrubber Adam Larson and some obsessed clown named Arabesque exposes you for the gatekeeper you are Reprehensor. Let me guess you're just another anonymous clown in the gatekeeping world. Perhaps one of Randi's kids from the JREF Forum posing as a truther."

Was Popular Mechanics Fair?

This is something that Stew and John Michael brought up in the interview with Michael Woolsey that I linked to the other day, and it's a common enough claim that I thought it would be worth talking about.

I'm going to suggest a rating system for the claims that Popular Mechanics debunked. I will grade the claims on a 1-10 scale on how common they are in the Truth Movement back then or today. 1-2 points means barely mentioned, 3-4 means mentioned by some, 5-6 means fairly commonly mentioned, 7-8 means very commonly mentioned, and 9-10 means virtual 100% agreement within the 9-11 "Truthers".

There is a problem, of course; if the claims were common in the past and yet have since been dropped, the argument of course is that Popular Mechanics did such a good job of debunking that claim that even the packrat Truthers have abandoned. So I will look to see if the claim appeared in Loose Change, or in DRG's 115 things he thought the 9-11 Commission got wrong.

Claim: Photographs and video footage shot just before United Airlines Flight 175 hit the South Tower of the World Trade Center (WTC) show an object underneath the fuselage at the base of the right wing. The film "911 In Plane Site" and the Web site LetsRoll911.org claim that no such object is found on a stock Boeing 767. They speculate that this "military pod" is a missile, a bomb or a piece of equipment on an air-refueling tanker. LetsRoll911.org points to this as evidence that the attacks were an "inside job" sanctioned by "President George Bush, who planned and engineered 9/11."

This is the pod theory, and of course right away we get into the problem that I noted at the top, which is that the theory is dead now, but it is very hard to argue that it was dead in 2005, when the piece came out. Indeed, the original version of Loose Change opened with the Pod theory, and while it's tempting to congratulate Dylan for dropping it from the second edition, the fact is that in one of the Loose Change Vanity videos, Dylan announced that they dropped it because they didn't have room, not because they changed their mind on the issue. It was also featured in Dave Von Kleist's In Plane Site. But Griffin does not mention it. So on current relevance I'd give it a 1, but on past relevance I'd put it at no less than a 5.

Claim: No fighter jets were scrambled from any of the 28 Air Force bases within close range of the four hijacked flights. "On 11 September Andrews had two squadrons of fighter jets with the job of protecting the skies over Washington D.C.," says the Web site emperors-clothes.com. "They failed to do their job." "There is only one explanation for this," writes Mark R. Elsis of StandDown.net. "Our Air Force was ordered to Stand Down on 9/11."

The stand down order is a staple of the conspiracy theorists. David Ray Griffin pushes it to this day, as does everyone who mentions Norm Mineta. Dylan Avery acknowledged that there was no stand-down order a couple years ago, but he's very much in the minority on this issue, even among the LIHOP crowd. I have to give this one a 9 on current relevance and 10 on the past.

Claim: On Sept. 11, FOX News broadcast a live phone interview with FOX employee Marc Birnbach. 911inplanesite.com states that "Bernback" saw the plane "crash into the South Tower." "It definitely did not look like a commercial plane," Birnbach said on air. "I didn't see any windows on the sides."

This is not something that is commonly mentioned anymore but it did appear in Loose Change both I and II. Griffin does not mention it in his list. I'll knock it down to 2 currently with a 6 at the time.

Claim: "It has been standard operating procedures for decades to immediately intercept off-course planes that do not respond to communications from air traffic controllers," says the Web site oilempire.us. "When the Air Force 'scrambles' a fighter plane to intercept, they usually reach the plane in question in minutes."

If this one isn't a 10 both now and then, I don't know what is. This claim is made in LC I and II, and by Griffin:

67. The claim that the Payne Stewart interception did not show NORAD's response time to Flight 11 to be extraordinarily slow

Claim: The first hijacked plane crashed through the 94th to the 98th floors of the World Trade Center's 110-story North Tower; the second jet slammed into the 78th to the 84th floors of the 110-story South Tower. The impact and ensuing fires disrupted elevator service in both buildings. Plus, the lobbies of both buildings were visibly damaged before the towers collapsed. "There is NO WAY the impact of the jet caused such widespread damage 80 stories below," claims a posting on the San Diego Independent Media Center Web site (sandiego.indymedia.org). "It is OBVIOUS and irrefutable that OTHER EXPLOSIVES (... such as concussion bombs) HAD ALREADY BEEN DETONATED in the lower levels of tower one at the same time as the plane crash."

This is an extremely common claim. Willie Rodriguez made his claim about an explosion in the basement in Loose Change II, and would have done the same in LCFC if Dylan had given him enough money. DRG does not mention it in his list of 115 things wrong, but I believe that was put together before W-Rod went Troofer. I'd put the explosions in the basement at 9 today, maybe 7 before.

Claim: "We have been lied to," announces the Web site AttackOnAmerica.net. "The first lie was that the load of fuel from the aircraft was the cause of structural failure. No kerosene fire can burn hot enough to melt steel." The posting is entitled "Proof Of Controlled Demolition At The WTC."

Fire can't melt steel? Wasn't that Rosie's claim? Clearly this is very common in the movement; Loose Change I and II both made that claim as did Griffin in a slightly different form:

. The omission of the fact that fire has never, before or after 9/11, caused steel-frame buildings to collapse (25).

I'd give that one a 9 then and a 9 today. Certainly Gage talks about how fire can't melt steel all the time.

Claim: As each tower collapsed, clearly visible puffs of dust and debris were ejected from the sides of the buildings. An advertisement in The New York Times for the book Painful Questions: An Analysis Of The September 11th Attack made this claim: "The concrete clouds shooting out of the buildings are not possible from a mere collapse. They do occur from explosions." Numerous conspiracy theorists cite Van Romero, an explosives expert and vice president of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, who was quoted on 9/11 by the Albuquerque Journal as saying "there were some explosive devices inside the buildings that caused the towers to collapse." The article continues, "Romero said the collapse of the structures resembled those of controlled implosions used to demolish old structures."

The infamous squibs. Cited by Dylan in both Loose Change I and II. Not cited by DRG in his list of 115 omissions and distortions, but something I hear quite often. I'd give it a 7 both now and then.

Claim: Seismographs at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y., 21 miles north of the WTC, recorded the events of 9/11. "The strongest jolts were all registered at the beginning of the collapses, well before falling debris struck the earth," reports the Web site WhatReallyHappened.com.

I don't think this made it into Loose Change, or into DRG's manifesto. I certainly have heard it but it's not all that common; I'd give it a 3 now and then. If you argue that this is about the "missing jolt" of Tony Szamboti, then clearly it's more relevant than I am saying.

Claim: Seven hours after the two towers fell, the 47-story WTC 7 collapsed. According to 911review.org: "The video clearly shows that it was not a collapse subsequent to a fire, but rather a controlled demolition: amongst the Internet investigators, the jury is in on this one."

WTC 7 as controlled demolition is about as common as they come, but there are some who still say the movement is not about controlled demolition, so I'm going to be generous and say this one's an 8 now and then.

Claim: Two holes were visible in the Pentagon immediately after the attack: a 75-ft.-wide entry hole in the building's exterior wall, and a 16-ft.-wide hole in Ring C, the Pentagon's middle ring. Conspiracy theorists claim both holes are far too small to have been made by a Boeing 757. "How does a plane 125 ft. wide and 155 ft. long fit into a hole which is only 16 ft. across?" asks reopen911.org, a Web site "dedicated to discovering the bottom line truth to what really occurred on September 11, 2001."

These claims were made in both Loose Change I and II, and also on Griffin's list:

18. The omission of the fact that there are photos showing that the west wing's façade did not collapse until 30 minutes after the strike and also that the entrance hole appears too small for a Boeing 757 to have entered (34).

However, I'm again going to be generous to the "Truthers" and say that this theory was an 8 before, and is now down to a 5. I don't think there's any doubt that "no-plane at the Pentagon" is becoming less popular.

Claim: Many Pentagon windows remained in one piece — even those just above the point of impact from the Boeing 757 passenger plane. Pentagonstrike.co.uk, an online animation widely circulated in the United States and Europe, claims that photographs showing "intact windows" directly above the crash site prove "a missile" or "a craft much smaller than a 757" struck the Pentagon.

This fits in with the prior one, although I'd knock it down to 7 before and 4 now; just a little bit less commonly brought up than the size of the entry and exit holes.

Claim: Conspiracy theorists insist there was no plane wreckage at the Pentagon. "In reality, a Boeing 757 was never found," claims pentagonstrike.co.uk, which asks the question, "What hit the Pentagon on 9/11?"

In Loose Change I and II, and also mentioned by Griffin:

19. The omission of all testimony that has been used to cast doubt on whether remains of a Boeing 757 were visible either inside or outside the Pentagon (34-36).

The amusing thing is that Loose Change Final Cut did a 180 on this issue noting many pieces of debris. LCFC was supposedly fact-checked by David Ray Griffin. And yet Griffin still claims that not a lot of airplane debris was found at the Pentagon. Again, since the no-planes at the Pentagon theory seem to be disappearing rapidly except for Griffin even though they were popular at one point, I'll give this a 7 then and a 4 now.

Claim: At least six eyewitnesses say they saw a small white jet flying low over the crash area almost immediately after Flight 93 went down. BlogD.com theorizes that the aircraft was downed by "either a missile fired from an Air Force jet, or via an electronic assault made by a U.S. Customs airplane reported to have been seen near the site minutes after Flight 93 crashed." WorldNetDaily.com weighs in: "Witnesses to this low-flying jet ... told their story to journalists. Shortly thereafter, the FBI began to attack the witnesses with perhaps the most inane disinformation ever — alleging the witnesses actually observed a private jet at 34,000 ft. The FBI says the jet was asked to come down to 5000 ft. and try to find the crash site. This would require about 20 minutes to descend."

The shoot-down of Flight 93 is such a common conspiracy theory that even people who aren't "Truthers" tell me that they secretly suspect it. The white plane is very commonly mentioned, although not always as the shooter. I'll score this as 8 then and 9 now (since Loose Change Final Cut went towards the shoot-down theory rather than the Cleveland Airport Mystery. Grifter, of course endorses shoot down:

7. The omission of all the evidence indicating that Flight 93 was shot down by a military plane (238-39, 252-53).

Claim: One of Flight 93's engines was found "at a considerable distance from the crash site," according to Lyle Szupinka, a state police officer on the scene who was quoted in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Offering no evidence, a posting on Rense.com claimed: "The main body of the engine ... was found miles away from the main wreckage site with damage comparable to that which a heat-seeking missile would do to an airliner."

Mentioned in at least one of the Loose Change films, but not in DRG's 115 points. I still hear it but I wouldn't say it's common; give it a 3 and a 3.

Claim: "Residents and workers at businesses outside Shanksville, Somerset County, reported discovering clothing, books, papers and what appeared to be human remains," states a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article dated Sept. 13, 2001. "Others reported what appeared to be crash debris floating in Indian Lake, nearly 6 miles from the immediate crash scene." Commenting on reports that Indian Lake residents collected debris, Think AndAsk.com speculates: "On Sept. 10, 2001, a strong cold front pushed through the area, and behind it — winds blew northerly. Since Flight 93 crashed west-southwest of Indian Lake, it was impossible for debris to fly perpendicular to wind direction. ... The FBI lied." And the significance of widespread debris? Theorists claim the plane was breaking up before it crashed. TheForbiddenKnowledge.com states bluntly: "Without a doubt, Flight 93 was shot down."

The debris at Indian Lake also appeared in at least one Loose Change movie, but is not mentioned by DRG. I'd give this a 3 and a 3.

Claim: In February 2004, retired Army Col. Donn de Grand-Pre said on "The Alex Jones Show," a radio talk show broadcast on 42 stations: "It [Flight 93] was taken out by the North Dakota Air Guard. I know the pilot who fired those two missiles to take down 93." LetsRoll911.org, citing de Grand-Pre, identifies the pilot: "Major Rick Gibney fired two Sidewinder missiles at the aircraft and destroyed it in midflight at precisely 0958."

Grand-Pre doesn't get mentioned much anymore although I saw the Gibney claim earlier today somewhere. I'd give it a 3 and a 2.

Overall, I'd say that Popular Mechanics did a pretty good job. Most of the theories they discussed are quite common in the movement, and the less common ones were mostly at the end. Are there common theories in the movement that were not discussed? Sure, thermite and thermate, which were not common at the time; Jones published the first version of his paper in late 2005.

But here's a deal for Stew and John-Michael; if you think that the theories that were discussed are much less popular in the movement than I've indicated, please, let us know in the comments or on your own blog. We would be very happy to tell the next person who claims that there was a stand-down order than nobody responsible in the movement believes this. So please, feel free to tell us which theories are laughable and a diversion from the "Truth".

UK Times Covers 9/11, 7/7 "Truthers"

In an excerpt from a new book, Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History by David Aaronovitch.

There were either no hijackers or the ones on board were patsies, and two of the planes were guided remotely into the World Trade Centre. What brought the towers down, however was a “controlled demolition” using explosives planted there at some earlier time. The same devices also brought down the structure called World Trade Centre 7, though no plane flew into that building. The Pentagon was not hit by an airliner but by a guided missile. The fourth airliner, United 93, possibly heading for the capital, was either shot down because the passengers threatened to land it successfully thus exposing the plot, or else it was never found. Various ruses, including faked mobile phone calls and fraudulent claims of such calls were used to disguise the true nature of the crime.

Of course, the "responsible" wing of the "Truthers" is up in arms over that characterization of their movement.

Only a few paragraphs in and he's using the classic disinfo technique of discrediting by association.

The Pentagon was not hit by an airliner but by a guided missile. Various ruses, including faked mobile phone calls and fraudulent claims of such calls were used to disguise the true nature of the crime.

He almost gives himself some excuse with "different people in the Truth movement might agree or disagree with various parts of it." but at the end of that same paragraph, he re-iterates the supposedly mysterious disappearance of Flight 77.

Except of course that the movement's high priest, David Ray Griffin does indeed believe that Flight 77 didn't hit the Pentagon, and frequently claims that the phone calls were faked. Just last week:



Arcterus also gripes that the article is not up to date on the latest Loose Change theory on Flight 93, which he claims is the more sensible "shoot down" theory rather than the famed Cleveland Airport Mystery.

An Easy Prediction

The "Truthers" will ignore this whole brouhaha because it doesn't fit their worldview of Philip Zelikow as a tool of the Bush Administration:

On April 21, Philip Zelikow, who was counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during the Bush administration, revealed on Foreign Policy's "Shadow Government" blog that he wrote a memo in 2005 disputing the conclusions of Bush Justice Department lawyers that torture was legal. The existence of such a memo was a surprise. But Zelikow also disclosed that the "White House attempted to collect and destroy all copies of my memo."

I actually read the original blog post when it came out, and have been somewhat surprised that the Troofers haven't noticed Zelikow's blog, since the post got picked up on Memeorandum and was much-commented upon. If nothing else you'd think one of the kooks would screech about the title of the blog: Shadow Government is one of Alex Jones catchphrases.

Rebunking the Debunking

Heheh, I got a laugh out of that comment in this interview (MP3) between Michael Woolsey of 9-11 Visibility and the two guys over at the Debunking the Debunkers blog. Sounds like they need to research the word "Bunk":

noun Informal.
humbug; nonsense.

Origin:
1895–1900, Americanism; short for bunkum

Synonyms:
baloney, rot, hogwash, applesauce, bull, hooey.

So rebunking would be putting the baloney back in, which is accurate, if not exactly what I think they intend to admit.

I have not listened to it all as yet, but they say that they are not interested in hearing debunking of Steven Jones' latest paper (Active Thermitic Material...). Nope, if we are going to debunk that laughable attempt to claim that bits of red paint and rust amount to Thermite we have to do it with a peer-reviewed paper.

He also mentions the PDB (he calls it a PDF) of August 6, 2001 and claims it is not talking about history. Just for fun, I will reproduce here the memo, with the parts that are a history lesson in red and the parts that are talking about possible future plots in green:

Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate bin Laden since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Laden implied in U.S. television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and "bring the fighting to America."

After U.S. missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, bin Laden told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to a -- -- service.

An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told - - service at the same time that bin Laden was planning to exploit the operative's access to the U.S. to mount a terrorist strike.

The millennium plotting in Canada in 1999 may have been part of bin Laden's first serious attempt to implement a terrorist strike in the U.S.

Convicted plotter Ahmed Ressam has told the FBI that he conceived the idea to attack Los Angeles International Airport himself, but that in ---, Laden lieutenant Abu Zubaydah encouraged him and helped facilitate the operation. Ressam also said that in 1998 Abu Zubaydah was planning his own U.S. attack.

Ressam says bin Laden was aware of the Los Angeles operation. Although Bin Laden has not succeeded, his attacks against the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 demonstrate that he prepares operations years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks. Bin Laden associates surveyed our embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam as early as 1993, and some members of the Nairobi cell planning the bombings were arrested and deported in 1997.

Al Qaeda members -- including some who are U.S. citizens -- have resided in or traveled to the U.S. for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks.

Two al-Qaeda members found guilty in the conspiracy to bomb our embassies in East Africa were U.S. citizens, and a senior EIJ member lived in California in the mid-1990s.

A clandestine source said in 1998 that a bin Laden cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks.

We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a ---- service in 1998 saying that Bin Laden wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Sheikh" Omar Abdel Rahman and other U.S.-held extremists.

Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full-field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers bin Laden-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group or bin Laden supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives.

Note in particular that the two paragraphs which do not appear historical in nature are also not very accurate in predicting 9-11; federal buildings in New York were not attacked and the attacks were not done with explosives. Note as well that these are the last two paragraphs; every writer knows to put the important information at the beginning of a memo. It's also remarkable that there is no mention of the USS Cole; did they not know that was an Al Qaeda operation at the time?

I'll append further thoughts if I listen to the end of the show.

Update: Stew mentions that he did a "documentary" called "The Proof" a few years ago on 9-11. As I have never heard of this particular movie, I searched for it on Google Video. And on YouTube. Turns out it's only available via snail mail for $10, and it sounds more like a "docudrama":

Shot in Lancaster city, this full length digital movie is part documentary, and part campy action thriller. It was produced without any budget or any professional actors but with hopes of sounding an urgent wake up call to the American people!

I also like that his company is called Bradley Infotainment; at least he's honest that he's just giving the rubes a show.

Here's the trailer, which I'd say is a single-wide:

Crockumentary "Press For Truth" to Be Shown On Denver PBS Station

This is the same idiot station that ran Freedom to Fascism and offered Alex Jones' Endgame to contributors; one assumes that they will not be offering Alex's Obama Deception.

Boos to KBDI, which apparently has no standards.

Moron the Air

An exceptionally persistent Troofer named Debunker's Debunker has continued to insist against all reason that the EPA said the air was safe to breathe at Ground Zero.

Sorry, Charlie:

What is being done to control the dust in the WTC restricted area and protect the rescue and cleanup workers?
EPA and OSHA are advising rescue and cleanup workers on dust control measures, such as wetting down the debris to keep dust from getting into the air. EPA also is operating 10 high efficiency vacuum trucks to remove dust in residential and business areas near the WTC. EPA has advised the workers in the restricted area to wear respirators to protect themselves from the dust and any asbestos it may contain.

Bolding added for emphasis. The claim that the EPA said it was safe to breathe on the pile is a typical bit of Troofer line-blurring. They take the fact that the EPA rushed to reassure New Yorkers that the air in Manhattan (and Brooklyn) was safe to breathe before all the data was in, and then stretch it to say that the EPA said the air was safe to breathe on the pile. It's dishonesty, pure and simple, the sort of casual intellectual fraud that we are so accustomed to seeing from the 9-11 "Truth" Movement.

Richard Gage at the AIA

I love that he uses "shills".