Ryan's Rant

A journalist named Robert Parry recently described the Troofer obsession as a "parlor game"; an apt description indeed. Predictably, Waterboy Kevin Ryan goes off on a rant about how for Parry and others in the media, the Troof Movement is a parlor game. All of that is very much pro forma and not terribly interesting.

But then Ryan, warming to his topic, veers into cloud-cuckoo land about Uncle Fetzer. Now, to us debunkers, Jim Fetzer is just a typical idiot Troofer, spouting off the usual BS just like Richard Gage, Steven Jones and David Ray Griffin. Yes, Fetzer's a crank, but the difference is only in degree, not in type. Ah, but to the Waterboy, he's much more:

Fetzer suddenly appeared on the 9/11 truth scene in late 2005, immediately after the publication of a paper by physicist Steven Jones. At that time, Fetzer wrote to many prominent truth advocates, saying – “Steve Jones and I would like to invite you to join us as members of a new society.” Having been known for some dubious contributions to the JFK assassination research community, Fetzer used this new association with Jones to thrust himself into a position of superficial leadership in the truth movement.

Less than one year later, just before the 5th anniversary of the attacks when mainstream media attention was at its peak, Fetzer began speaking publicly about space beams destroying the WTC and other such nonsense. He continued with grandiose claims about theories which had no evidentiary support, as this excerpt from one of his radio shows indicates.

See, to Ryan, Fetzer suddenly started acting like a crazy person when he endorsed Judy Woods' beam weapons from space. And this proves that Fetzer was not crazy, he was deliberately sabotaging the Troof Movement.

Of course, to the rest of us, Fetzer didn't suddenly start acting like a crazy person around the fifth anniversary. He was a crazy person right from the moment he joined the Troofers (and probably well before).

But what I love is the next bit:

What would cause a PhD to say that an unsubstantiated claim of space beams destroying the WTC was “the most fascinating development in the history of the study of 9/11” and that it was “huge?” Why was this claim more fascinating or huge than all the research previously published by the likes of Michael Ruppert, Daniel Hopsicker, David Ray Griffin, Steve Jones, Nafeez Ahmed, Don Paul and Michel Chossudovsky?

Now, you know how it is; on the crazy scale, Fetzer and Wood have pinned the meter. But the rest of those guys are certainly in the red zone. And Hopsicker and Griffin? Hopsicker is the one who got Amanda Keller on tape talking endlessly about "Mohamed" without quite ever getting her to admit that her Mohamed was not surnamed Atta. And Grifter... even the Troofers have caught onto the fact that he's a goofball. Note in particular that Ryan gripes about two claims that Parry highlights as central to 9-11 Troof:

* “Operatives working for President Bush wired 100-plus floors of the WTC towers” with explosives
* “Truthers insist that no plane hit the Pentagon; that Bush’s team attacked it with a missile.”

But on the first one Ryan can only quibble that he and Jones and others don't necessarily believe Bush was behind it. He ignores the second claim, but his respected researcher David Ray Griffin was still pushing that theory as late as 2007 (and will probably start pushing it again, the way he keeps recycling his debunked nonsense from years ago).

Richard Falk: I Was Just Asking Questions

Or as we fondly refer to it, JAQing off.

For anyone who read the blog post in its entirely it should be plain that the reference to the 9/11 issues is both restrained and tangential. What is stressed in the blog is the importance of carefully examining evidence before drawing conclusions about political and legal responsibility for highly sensitive public acts, and the importance for the serenity of the society of achieving closure in a responsible manner. I never endorsed doubts about the official version of 9/11 beyond indicating what anyone who has objectively examined the controversy knows– that there remain certain gaps in the official explanation that give rise to an array of conspiratorial explanations, and that the 9/11 Commission unfortunately did not put these concerns to rest. My plea was intended to encourage addressing these gaps in a credible manner, nothing more, nothing less. I certainly meant no disrespect toward the collective memory of 9/11 in the country and elsewhere. On the contrary, my intention was to encourage an investigation that might finally achieve closure with respect to doubts that remain prevalent among important sectors of the public, including among some 9/11 families.

No, of course he never endorsed doubts about the "official version of 9/11"; he just endorsed "devoted scholars of high integrity" like, heh, David Ray Griffin.

David Ray Griffin, who believes "9-11 was an inside job by the US government"? Here's Grifter in 2006:

Specifically, Griffin believes that the U.S. government orchestrated the attacks.... When asked what the most compelling facts are to make the case that the U.S. government was complicit in the attacks, Griffin names three things. The behavior of Bush at the schoolhouse in Florida ("Secret Service should have whisked him out immediately if we're under attack but he stayed over 30 minutes. ... It's pretty clear evidence that they knew they wouldn't be attacked"), the strange pyrotechnics that brought down the World Trade Center ("fire has never brought down a steel high-rise building") and the poorly planned targeting of the West Wing of the Pentagon ("all the important people are in the East Wing -- it doesn't make any sense").

Griffin believes in all the nuttiest stuff in the 9-11 Troof Movement: that the cellphone/Airfone calls were faked via voice-morphing, that the hijackers are alive, that a missile hit the Pentagon, etc.

Korey Rowe Busted for Heroin Dealing

Wow, sad news.

"Loose Change" filmmaker Korey Rowe, 27, of Oneonta, was arrested Thursday by Oneonta police and charged with sale of heroin.

According to a media release from the police, Rowe was arrested with 19-year-old Daniel Marte Jr. of the Bronx after the two men sold seven packets of heroin to an undercover police officer.

I know that some folks will have a hard time believing this, but I really didn't dislike the Loose Change boys and don't wish them ill at all. Assuming this is true, Korey's going to be serving some pretty hard time.

Jon Gold to Risk Life and Liberty

A couple of weeks ago, I would have laughed this off as a silly publicity stunt:

9/11 Justice activist and researcher Jon Gold has announced his intention to chain himself to the White House fence this coming Monday, January 31.

But that was before the media and law enforcement had an opportunity to see what 9-11 justice activists could do:

We know that Jon's harmless, but do they know it?

Update: The video:

Karen Johnson--Still a Kook

You may recall Arizona State Senator Karen Johnson, who briefly became the Troofer with the highest elected office in America before retiring. Turns out that she's had plenty of time to think about the important issues facing America today.

One of these issues took her on a recent trip back to the state capital to try to bring the subject of chemtrails and geoengineering to her former colleagues, including Governor Jan Brewer and Senator Sylvia Allen who is from Snowflake.

Nutbar conspiracy theories are like potato chips: If you eat one, you'll probably eat the whole bag.

UN Secretary General to Troofers: Falk You

Well done. Falk's future rests with the Human Rights Council, a subsidiary group of 47 nations inside the UN umbrella.

Richard Falk Continues His Truther Nuttiness

We have discussed this anti-Israeli UN representative before, but he continues his nuttiness:

The arguments swirling around the 9/11 attacks are emblematic of these issues [around the rush to judgment in Tucson]. What fuels suspicions of conspiracy is the reluctance to address the sort of awkward gaps and contradictions in the official explanations that David Ray Griffin (and other devoted scholars of high integrity) have been documenting in book after book ever since his authoritative The New Pearl Harbor in 2004 (updated in 2008). What may be more distressing than the apparent cover up is the eerie silence of the mainstream media, unwilling to acknowledge the well-evidenced doubts about the official version of the events: an al Qaeda operation with no foreknowledge by government officials. Is this silence a manifestation of fear or cooperation, or part of an equally disturbing filter of self-censorship? Whatever it is, the result is the withering away of a participatory citizenry and the erosion of legitimate constitutional government. The forms persist, but the content is missing.

UN Ambassador Susan Rice responds:

Mr. Falk’s comments are despicable and deeply offensive, and I condemn them in the strongest terms. I have registered a strong protest with the UN on behalf of the United States. The United States has in the past been critical of Mr. Falk’s one-sided and politicized approach to his work for the UN, including his failure to condemn deliberate human rights abuses by Hamas, but these blog comments are in another category altogether.

Chandler and Bursill

I just got around to listening to this interview today. Some thoughts:

1. The last half of the interview is all "We're not the no-plane at the Pentagon" movement, although Bursill admits at one point that over half the 9-11 Truthers believe just that. Bursill also rails against speculation, but gives his assent when Chandler speculates that none of the planes on 9-11 were actually flown by the hijackers. Why, Bursill (who apparently works in aircraft maintenance) states, there are thousands of ways to fly those planes. Really, John? Then why aren't you detailing that part of the conspiracy?

2. Got a chuckle when Chandler gripes a bit about Richard Gage getting all the face time in Architects and Engineers. Looks like more than a few people are starting to catch onto the fact that Gage's motives are not altruistic.

3. Bursill or Chander (can't remember which) prevaricates a bit when they talk about Gage's endorsement of National Security Alert, claiming that all he really meant to say was "these are some young kids who've done a lot of hard work, and it would be great if the rest of us were as dedicated," but that has been misused. Once again, what Gage said about National Security Alert:

"The exhaustive effort by Craig Ranke and Aldo Marquis of Citizen Investigation Team to contact, record, document, and analyze numerous first-hand eyewitness accounts of the actual flight path of the airliner at the Pentagon on 9/11 has been long overdue, but worth waiting for. The evidence they have uncovered and compiled in their DVD "National Security Alert" deserves serious attention - particularly in light of what we now know about the explosive destruction of the three World Trade Center high-rises that day."

4. Bursill and Chandler decry the "If X then Y" nature of the CIT theories, where X is "the plane flew north of the Citgo" and Y is "then Flight 77 didn't hit the Pentagon". But Chandler does the same thing (and Bursill gushes that this is the most incontrovertible evidence he's ever found) when he says, "If Building 7 fell at freefall then it must have been a controlled demolition."

5. Chandler is an obvious right-winger. I mean, active in the sanctuary movement in the 1980s, talks about chickens coming home to roost, wonders where the monument to all the people we killed in Vietnam is. It's pretty apparent that he's somewhere to the starboard of Attila the Hun. Either that or he has some friends who are.

Jim Corr Memorizes His Lines

It's a collection of talking points on WTC-7:
1. Three buildings, two planes
2. Freefall speed into its own footprint
3. Accounts of explosions (note that Corr fails to mention the firefighters who talk about the "roaring" fires in WTC-7)
4. 9-11 Commission didn't mention its collapse

Typical horsecrap from a horse's ass.

Who Says Actors Are Airheads?

Mark Ruffalo, asked to provide the most compelling evidence about 9-11 Truth, mumbles something about how the 9-11 Commission didn't do anything before the attacks. Brilliant!

Note that this is not a case of him suddenly coming out as a Troofer; according to his Wikipedia page he's been vocal about his nutbar beliefs since 2007:

In October 2007, Ruffalo criticized the 9/11 Commission Report as "completely illegitimate" and called for re-opening the investigation. He said: "I saw the way they all came down and I am baffled. My first reaction is that buildings don't fall down like that."

And yes, he is an obvious right-winger:

On October 4, 2006, he appeared on Democracy Now!, a daily news program. He spoke against the War in Iraq, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, torture, and the Bush Administration. He also announced he would speak at The World Can't Wait Protest in New York City on October 5, 2006. Ruffalo contributed to the campaign of former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel for the 2008 Democratic Party nomination for President.

He's playing the mindless brute the Incredible Hulk in an upcoming film of The Avengers. Talk about being typecast!

More on Zeitgeist

In general we try to avoid politics, but conservative columnist Byron York makes enough good points about Jared Loughner and the pan-conspiracy movie Zeitgeist that I thought it deserved a post.

In the end, "Zeitgeist" tells us we must break free of the slavery. "If the people ever realize the truth," the narrator says, "the entire manufactured zeitgeist ... will collapse like a house of cards."

Is all this left or right? Parts of "Zeitgeist," complete with depictions of Fox News as a government propaganda organ, resemble some paranoid, far-left, anti-Bush tracts of 2004-2007. Other parts resemble far-right paranoia from many years ago. But the more important question is what effect the picture had on Jared Loughner.

At a time when Loughner was increasingly unable to control his own mind, he apparently welcomed "Zeitgeist's" message that there were sinister forces out there trying to control it for him. The meaning of "Zeitgeist's" role in the Tucson violence is not that Loughner's motive was political. It's that the movie's insane incoherence proved to be an awful stimulant for one dangerously incoherent mind.

Free Gaza Movement Troofers

Check out this twit, errr, twitter, errr, tweet:

I liked a YouTube video -- NEW PROOF 9 11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB! Richard Gage. Architects a... http://youtu.be/KSideg_ORbk?a

I checked and that is indeed the twitter account for the Free Gaza Movement. You may recall them from last spring, when their boat running the Gaza Blockade was boarded by Israeli commandos. In the ensuing skirmish at least nine people were killed. Minor correction: The Free Gaza Movement is part of a coalition of groups that organized the flotilla.

It's no particular surprise that these folks have signed onto the Troof banner; Cynthia McNinney, the 2008 Truther/Green Party Candidate has sailed on their ships.

Give that Man a Cigar!

CIT's pretty much burned up all their credibility with the "responsible" wing of the Truthers. JONES, David Chandler, and others have officially denounced the flyover theory as the nuttiness that it is.

So the question now becomes, when does Richard Gage rowback his endorsement of CIT's video, National Security Alert? Remember, that's the video that Gage gushed about:

"The exhaustive effort by Craig Ranke and Aldo Marquis of Citizen Investigation Team to contact, record, document, and analyze numerous first-hand eyewitness accounts of the actual flight path of the airliner at the Pentagon on 9/11 has been long overdue, but worth waiting for. The evidence they have uncovered and compiled in their DVD "National Security Alert" deserves serious attention - particularly in light of what we now know about the explosive destruction of the three World Trade Center high-rises that day."

Over at Truth Action, speculation is running as to why Gage has not rescinded those statements. My money is on this guess:

So here's my opinion on what I think I "know" to be true...

You don't want to alienate a portion of your audience and potentially jeopardize AE911Truths steady and lucrative income streams.

Yup. Box Boy, like Griffin before him, is a big tent kind of guy; he wants everybody inside his tent as sustaining members.

It is Dustification!

This is so bizarre I almost wonder if it is a parody. Some middle-aged guy in a suit buys two concrete blocks at Home Depot, drops it off his 5th floor balcony, and then proclaims (surprise!) that 9/11 must be a conspiracy because it wasn't pound into dust. Of course possibly if he had dropped an acre-sized 4 inch thick concrete slab out the window, and then 100,000 tons of structural steel on top of it, he might have had different results? Anyway, this is one of those theories that is so silly, because even if they are correct, it is meaningless, as supermagiconanothermite would not cause a different effect, unless somehow we are to believe that the conspirators, for no particular reason not only rigged the supporting structure of two 110 story buildings and WTC 7 with explosives, but also went to the point of rigging the floors, just to pound the concrete into finer pieces. And the reason they would do this exactly is....

Yet Another Truther Goes Off the Rails

This one wasn't living in Mom's basement.

The FBI has arrested the head of an asset management firm for allegedly threatening 47 government officials with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission.

Trutherism from his website:

As a twice survivor of the WTC bombings, Mr. McCrudden knows all too well what the Government can do in the "name of public interest".

Moron McCrudden here:

Before he was arrested, he posted this rant on his website:

"Go buy a gun and let's get to work in taking back our country from these criminals. I will be the first to lead by example."

According to NBC, a few days later, his website offered a $100,000 reward for home addresses, phone numbers, and background information on a list of what he called "corrupt Government people."

Sounds like another Loughner waiting to happen.

Glenn Beck's Guest Host Is Dangerous

There's been a lot of talk the last few days about whether political rhetoric from the right in this country led to the shootings in Tucson the other day. Was Loughner a lefty, as some have maintained? Or was he a conservative? In a sense, this is natural. Everybody wants to believe that Jared Loughner was on the other side of the fence from them.

And, for most of us, anyway, he was, if istead of left or right you place the fence on the dividing line between sane and insane. I assume most of you have a pretty good idea that Loughner was non compos.

Glenn Beck apparently commented yesterday:

Now I think we'd all agree that Truthers are somewhat dangerous, moon hoax believers quite a bit less so, and big government folks not very dangerous at all, at least in the "likely to commit mass murder" sense. But, as Charles Johnson points out gleefully, doesn't that mean that frequent Glenn Beck guest host, Andrew Napolitano, is dangerous?

Loughner Heavily Influenced by Zeitgeist

After finding out that the Tucson shooter Jared Loughner was a paranoid 9/11 conspiracy theorist, it should come as no surprise that he was a fan of the completely incoherent paranoid pan-conspiracy theory movie Zeitgeist. As reported by ABC News:

The Troofers Have Their Candidate

I love that she's running as the "Nut Farm and Green Tea Party" candidate. It will be interesting to see what the anti-Zionist "Truthers" have to say about her running for Israeli Prime Minister at the same time.

She definitely has the "simple" solution to all the problems facing America today.

Truther Body Count

Who's murdered more Americans in the last 9 years, the Truthers or Al Qaeda?

At least inside the United States, it isn't even a contest. Consider:

Jared Loughner: Murdered six people in a shooting spree in Tucson and wounded at least 13 others. Victims: Federal judge John Roll, 63; Christina Green, 9; Gabe Zimmerman, 30; Dorothy Murray, 76; Dorwin Stoddard, 76; and Phyllis Scheck, 79.

Sean Fitzgerald: Murdered his father after voices in his head told him Edward Fitzgerald was the devil.

Curtiss Maynard: Murdered his wife, Melissa Meza, 34, before killing himself.


James W. Von Brunn: Murdered Holocaust Museum security guard Stephen Tyrone Johns, 39.

Kurt Sonnenfeld: Allegedly murdered his wife, Nancy Sonnenfeld, 36.

That's twelve confirmed kills so far, and that's not including Richard Poplawski, an Alex Jones fan who killed three Pittsburgh cops. I'm not sure if he's a Truther in addition to the other nutty stuff he believes. It also doesn't include Pentagon shooter John Patrick Bedell, who is indeed a Truther but who was killed after wounding two police officers, or Byron Williams, who shot it out with the California Highway Patrol but failed to kill anyone.

Now, I don't think being a Truther makes you more likely to become a murderer. Rather I think that both are symptoms stemming from a similar cause: mental illness. Paranoid schizophrenics are probably more likely to become Truthers than the general population, and probably more likely to have voices in their heads telling them to kill someone.

Tucson 9/11 Truth Movement Targeted Congresswoman Giffords

Now I am not saying that this was the reason he committed this atrocity, but they certainly have more a connection to the incident than Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachman. Hat tip to Alien Entity on JREF.

Tucson Shooter a Truther

Not really a surprise, but more evidence for the Willy Nelson Hypothesis.

The Loughner they met when he was a freshman at Mountain View High School may have been socially awkward, but he was generally happy and fun to be around. The crew smoked marijuana everyday, and when they weren't going to concerts or watching movies they talked about the meaning of life and dabbled in conspiracy theories.

Mistrust of government was his defining conviction, the friends said. He believed the government was behind 9/11, and worried that governments were maneuvering to create a unified monetary system ("a New World Order currency" one friend said) so that social elites and bureaucrats could control the rest of the world.

J.O.N.E.S. Back from the Dead

The Journal of 9/11 Studies, which at one time announced that it was no longer going to publish, since truthers supposedly had made so many inroads to mainstream scientific journals that it had worked itself out of a job, has posted its first paper in 9 months. This paper, brace yourself, argues that AA77 hit the Pentagon. Gasp. Leave it up to the truthers to take 9 years to come up with the conclusion that everyone else figured out within about 20 minutes of the event. Next up on the horizon, a scientific study concluding that water is wet, and the Pope is Catholic....

All kidding aside though, I am not one for predictions, but I will predict that the next year or two in the nutjob community will evolve into a Civil War between the no-planer CIT, Rob Balsamo Pilots, David Ray Griffin, Loose Change crowd and the Planer Journal and 911 Blogger crowd, with the reality agnostics like Gage's group switching sides like a fickle Afghan warlord whenever the balance of power suits them.

Hey, at least schisms are entertaining. These guys have been pretty boring lately.

Update: I suppose I should also point out, since troofers will inevitably argue that Legge is one of the rational scientific fact-based members of the truth movement, that in a previous paper he, among other things, argued for those magical invisible GI Joe anti-aircraft systems hidden in the roof of the Pentagon. The paper has since changed of course, since even after passing "peer review", the paper underwent 7 rounds of revision.

Real Science?

As we point out constantly, truthers split into all sorts of little groups, some of which pretend to greater standards than others, but all of whom share the same basic crackpot ideas. Richard Gage's Architects and Engineers pretend to be a group of professionals, but yet they still belong to a fringe movement. An example of this is their recent announcement on their website that they will be delivering a presentation at the Conscious Life Expo.

In February AE911Truth will be joining other speakers at the Conscious Life Expo on Feb. 12 from 8-10pm in LA.

I had never heard of this, so I figured, well this must be some sort of scientific conference of building professionals or something, in order for such a distinguished organization to show up there.

Uhh, OK. Not really. But if you want to attend you can also see lectures on such fascinating scientific subjects as "Alien Timelines: Their Effect on Us", "2012: A Vibrational Choice", and my personal favorite, "The Ark of the Covenant, an Extraterrerestrial Machine?".

Ask And You Will Be Answered

My answers to the questions:

1. No
2. No
3. Accountability for what?

For the Paranoid Nutjob Who Has Everything

I was rather amused to find out that Alex Jones has his own i-Phone app. Wait until Alex's fans find out that we have installed a hack that tracks all of the users through their GPS and forwards the data in real time to the black helicopters at the FEMA death camps....

I'm Okay, You're a Government Disinfo Plant

Or, the continuing paranoia of the "responsible" Troofers. Fruitcake David Chandler writes about the CIT-heads:

Why, then, the strenuous push to focus the attention of the Truth Movement onto the Pentagon? Does it sound too cynical to suggest that we are being intentionally set up? We must remember that we are in a situation where nearly 3000 people were murdered in a day not counting the thousands who have died since, and millions killed in the resulting wars. If agencies of the US government really are complicit, which the evidence shows to be the case, then the people who really know what happened are playing for keeps. Any movement with real potential for arriving at incriminating truth will certainly be highly infiltrated. This is not paranoia: it is a simple fact. The 9/11 Truth Movement must respond by policing itself and holding itself to the highest standards of intellectual rigor.

A bit late for that, and of course Chandler is hardly an exemplar of the highest standards of intellectual rigor.

Note as well that Chandler goes after the easy target in CIT. There's no mention of the guru of the 9-11 Troof Movement, David Ray Griffin. Grifter routinely gives credence to the "what hit the Pentagon" nutbars. How is that any different from CIT?