And Farther Down the Rabbit Hole....

Phil Jayhan (who financed the first Loose Change movie) dares to think the unthinkable:

We have more then a few things we have discovered about Mr. William Rodriguez, alleged last man out of the world trade center on 9/11 which are extremely suspicious, but none as suspicious as when one draws a simple gracious time-line of William Rodriguez's very own tale of the events and compares it to probability verses possibility verses impossibility. . Unfortunately, no matter how one does the equation of William Rodriguez's tale of events of September the 11th, 2001, last man out, there is no available possibility that his story is true. There is literally no other possibility then that his tale of events is a staggering national hoax and at the crux of an international conspiracy.

Now I have been pretty critical of Willie's changing story over the years, and Mark Roberts compiled an excellent analysis of the evolution. So you might think that I'd applaud Jayhan for this piece. But he does not attack W-Rod from a standpoint of common sense; rather he does the typical paranoid nutbar routine:

8:30 Willie punches in - alleges 14 people in office with him; Did he count them all? The story gets off to a bad start with that. But lets continue.

And no kidding, the "timeline" part of the post continues like that, with Jayhan snarking all the way. But it gets much, much crazier:

It should be pointed out here that Willies story about Felipe David having 32% of his skin blown off his body from the explosion and then getting severely burned in the process, and THEN walking or taking the elevator up to the offices is a lie. He would have been unconcious and in shock. This is where Willies story simply starts falls apart. Look now for embellishments which make the super hero look even more heroic.

Of course, Jayhan apparently disagrees with Felipe David himself about the first part:

God answered Felipe David's prayer the morning of Sept. 11. The member of Transfiguration Lutheran Church, Bronx, N.Y., suffered severe burns to most of his body in the World Trade Center explosion.

When the first plane crashed, David was taking inventory of the vending machines in the center's basement. "I asked God to give me strength. And I was able to get up and run six blocks to find an exit," he says.

But it gets much, muck wackier:

2. Where are the 16 miles of staircase that you cleaned on a daily basis Willy? They are totally and completely absent from the debris pile. "Where did those 16 miles of missing staircases go to Willy? And why aren't those 16 miles of missing staircases at the world trade center part of your international crusade?

What? The staircases are all missing? Oh, but Jayhan has an explanation for that. Hold onto your hats:

9. The truth is you never once cleaned the stairwells at the world trade center and that your entire story is a fraud, and you are a total fraud Willy. There was no stairwells at the world trade center. 16 miles of missing staircase is an impossibility under every circumstance but one. That they were never there to begin with.

!!!! Now I think we can all agree on a scale of 1-10, Jayhan's nutbar-o-meter just hit 27. But... is he really any more crazy than Box Boy Richard Gage, who thinks that all the floors are missing?

Theirs is Not to Reason Why...

Theirs is not to reason at all:

Most glaring was the near-uniform method with which the speakers refused to answer the question, "Why?" Dr. Graeme MacQueen echoed this demurral in asking, "If Building 7 was brought down by a controlled demolition…we have to ask the question 'why?' Why have we been lied to for nine and a half years? Why did they do it? These are all valid questions, but I won't visit them today." Tune in next conference?! We took Amtrak and a shuttle all the way up here on a Saturday! The question of motive is a giant, underhand wiffle ball thrown to the folks who put the Pope on the grassy knoll, and forces demolition advocates to strain their own credibility to answer it. It's essential to their cause that it is at least discussed.

Continuing a long-running theme:

Is the personal toll that these beliefs have exacted on the faithful worth it? 9/11 family members spoke of the need to "save our anger," with one even tearfully stating how "my neighbors are scared to death of me...my wife and I don't go out anymore" before launching into a tirade in which he doubted that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was alive and stated unequivocally that "Muslims had nothing to do with 9/11." One architect cheerfully noted how "I lost my house and my wife...but it's worth it." That's right! You too can trade everything in this life that brings you joy for endless rehashing of senseless destruction and total ostracization. Oh, and a tote bag. Also, could you spot us $250?

Reading from left to right, Bob McIlvaine and Richard Gage? As usual, check the comments for the real hilarity.

April Gallop Back in Court?

I was a bit surprised to see this recent article, since I had thought that her previous suit was dismissed, with prejudice, but I am not a lawyer, so I suppose she could still appeal it. They get practically nothing right, including referring to a Specialist (E-4) as a career Army officer, while she is neither.

Top Secret Military Specialist April Gallop saw disturbing things up close that have not been reported in the media.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, she was ordered by her supervisor to go directly to work at the Pentagon, before dropping off her ten-week-old son Elisha at day care.

Amazingly, the infant was given immediate security clearance upon arrival.

The instant Gallop turned on her computer an enormous explosion blew her out of her chair, knocking her momentarily unconscious.

Escaping through the hole reportedly made by Flight 77, she saw no signs of an aircraft – no seats, luggage, metal, or human remains. Her watch (and other clocks nearby) had stopped at 9:30-9:31 a.m., seven minutes before the Pentagon was allegedly struck at 9:38 a.m.

The 9/11 Commission reported that "by no later than 9:18 a.m., FAA centers in Indianapolis, Cleveland, and Washington were aware that Flight 77 was missing and that two aircraft had struck the World Trade Center."

Why then were there no anti-aircraft defenses, Gallop asks, or alarm warnings inside the Pentagon?

In addition to such bizarre statements, such as how her infant child received a security clearance (at least the background check would be short) they claim they will present an abundant amount of evidence, but appeals courts decide matters of law, not of fact.

On April 5th, 2011, at 11 a.m., at the Federal Courthouse at 141 Church Street in New Haven, Connecticut, the case of Gallop v. Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Myers will be heard by the United States Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit.

Gallop's case relies on virtually all forms of evidence admissible in court, but significantly, on published scientific evidence that residues of these explosives were found in the rubble after the attacks. In its totality the proffered case establishes that the government hypothesis – that the buildings collapsed due to fire in combination with the airplane impacts – is scientifically untenable.

Perhaps someone more familiar with this legal process could weigh in?

Gold Admits He's a Crackpot

Jon Gold decided to tackle Matt Taibbi. The headline on the piece is about Taibbi admitting that we've been lied to about 9-11 (not exactly Earth-shattering news), but I find it more interesting that he managed to paint Gold into a corner where he started having to admit his crackpot ideas. Jon doesn't usually do that; he's Mr "all about the families and justice and accountability" without actually revealing anything about what he thinks happened on 9-11.

Matt Taibbi: The fact that the government failed to prevent a terrorist attack through incompetence and, on some level, corruption, is simply not high on my list of outrages, at least not compared to other things that have gone on.

It is a very different thing than causing the attacks to happen, or being part of their planning, which is what the 9/11 Truth movement continually asserts. Moreover, it continually does so in a supremely intellectually dishonest way, charging complicity and then retreating into these nebulous calls for answers to questions about the official story, when asked to produce evidence of said complicity.

But I take it you are conceding that there is no evidence of US complicity in these attacks. Can you answer that question directly?

Jon Gold: 9/11 was a crime, and elements within our Government and others have MORE THAN EARNED the title of suspect for that crime. That’s how I answer your question of complicity.

But hey Matt… thanks for admitting that “of course we’ve been lied to about 9/11.” I’ll remember that the next time you take a shot at the only movement that has been supportive of the families seeking justice, and the 9/11 First Responders seeking health care.

Matt Taibbi: Again, I would be completely on board with calls for more investigation into the official story, if the movement would only stop with these childish insinuations that Bush and Cheney were somehow behind 9/11. It’s asinine and an incredible distraction.

Moreover the government’s failure in 9/11 was, comparatively speaking, a rather small-scale screwup, compared to its intentional invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and its failure to police Wall Street. I’m with Noam Chomsky on this one. If you’re looking down the list of US Government outrages, 9/11 doesn’t crack the top 100.

Jon Gold: Childish insinuations? I don’t think it’s childish at all to point to suspects of a crime. Especially when there is MORE THAN ENOUGH reason to think so. What I think is childish is a no talent journalist who has no idea what he’s talking about attacking a movement that represents a cause he knows nothing about. I think it’s cowardly, immature, and irresponsible. For a “journalist.” Please.

As you can see, Jon is one of those people who believe in the awesome power of ALL CAPS to prove his point. That's because he doesn't have strong arguments. I gotta love the part where he challenges Taibbi to "read" his 9-11 Troof starter kit:

Here is the 9/11 Report. I suggest you read it, and ask others to read it to understand the “official account.”

After that, I suggest you ask people to watch “9/11: Press For Truth“…

Then I suggest you ask people to watch the companion DVD “In Their Own Words: The Untold Stories Of The 9/11 Families“…

Then I suggest ask people to you watch then former Rep. Cynthia McKinney chair the 9/11 Omission Hearings that took place not two months after the release of the 9/11 Report in New York City on 9/9/2004…

Then I suggest you ask people to watch then Rep. Cynthia McKinney’s 9/11 Congressional Briefing held in Washington D.C. on 7/22/2005…

Yep, of the first five things Gold wants Taibbi to "read", only the 9-11 Commission Report is actually written down; the rest are movies.

Still Moron Joshua Blakeney

Here's a YouTube video that Blakeney put together featuring his comments about Israel and 9-11. For some reason the twit felt compelled to add some music to the audio track which actually makes it harder to concentrate on the words (which may be the idea):

As you can see, Blakeney's "scholarship" consists of assembling the usual talking points of "the Zionists did 9-11" wing, with a little less subtlety than Kevin Barrett. Like I said in my previous post, it's a mixture of the Dancing Jews, Larry Silverstein's "pull it", the USS Liberty, etc.

He also speaks up for Holocaust Denier Barrett; those brave anti-Zionists have to stick together!

On the depth of Blakeney's research of 9-11, here's an article that he wrote a month ago on a Canadian website called Rabble:

As many involved in genuine 9/11 studies have noted, there were many reliable reports of the alleged hijackers engaging in un-Islamic activities prior to 9/11. Moreover, when the flight manifests were released indicating the names of the passengers on the four hijacked planes, none of the alleged hijackers' names were listed. Moreover, a number of the alleged hijackers turned up alive. The U.K.'s Telegraph made contact with two of the alleged hijackers and published interviews with them post-9/11.

If Mr. Kay wishes to propagate a theory about 19 conspiratorial adherents to "militant Islam" striking the United States he should demonstrate that such individuals were indeed Islamist militants and that they boarded the planes on 9/11. In his tenth 9/11-related book Cognitive Infiltration Professor David Ray Griffin opines: "Besides not being devout Muslims, the "hijackers" were evidently not even on the airliners [. . .] if the alleged hijackers had purchased tickets and boarded the flights, as the official story has it, their names would have been on the manifests."

That is some genuine 9-11 studies being funded by Canadian taxpayers, eh?

The article includes a picture of Blakeney wearing a Palestinian headscarf, which is as fashionable among the anti-Israel crowd these days as Che posters were among the Marxists back in 1960s dormitories.

Here's Blakeney and his advisor, Anthony J Hall, making buffoons of themselves at a lecture by Michael Shermer:

It May Be Hug a "Truther" Week....

But don't marry one, says a Slate columnist:

Q. Conspiracy Love: My fiance and I are about to be married. We are both very opposite when it comes to our philosophy. I have been involved with the government for over 20 years in one capacity or another. He has always worked for himself and has never really been on his own. (He still lives with his parents.) I see the world as "bad things sometimes happen to good people" or "bad things happen to bad people." He sees the world as if something bad happens, the U.S. government or some ruling family is behind it. For example, he believes that Charlie Sheen wasn't always crazy and that someone targeted him to make him look crazy because he said that 9/11 was an "inside job."

Yep, Charlie forgot to wear his tinfoil hat and so we scrambled his brains with microwaves. The advice?

A: Charlie Sheen is rich and famous, and crazy, but the rich and famous part helps explain why women keep marrying him. Your fiance isn't rich and famous. So you need to call off the wedding and figure out why you were planning to marry someone who is mentally ill.

Hat Tip: Commenter Mads

Update: A more dramatic solution to spousal Trutherism:

Joshua Blakeny: Israel Did It (Maybe)

Blakeney attracted some attention last year when he got a scholarship to study 9-11 Troof. In this video, prepared as a class for an upper level university course by his Masters advisor, Anthony J. Hall, we learn just what kind of a Troofer he is (starts about 9:00 in):



"I took sociology and came out an avid Marxist and any Marxist has to be a conspiracy theorist... I'm also very interested in the Israel-Palestine conflict... I helped to found a Solidarity for Palestine chapter at my university... Israel's fingerprints are all over 9-11 as well as elements in the United States..."

Well, that got him some negative attention from the commenters at 9-11 Flogger.

I have one bugbear - and that is the opening statement by grad student (Joshua if I'm not mistaken?). Anthony Hall handed over the opening statement to this guy (acknowledging he was junior to the others) and this young student proceeded to issue the following ill-advised speculative statement, unsupported by evidence: "Israel's fingerprints are all over 911".

Does this not gift people like journalist Jonathan Kay, who label us speculative or 'anti-Semitic'? This statement made our group cringe - I was watching with a couple of grad students. None of us is lucky enough to be on a $7700 scholarship, but we would never have presumed to make such a (non-scholarly) generalisation.

Blakeney stops by to elaborate:

If you had bothered to watch the rest of this video you would have seen that the next time I was provided with an opportunity to speak I began to elaborate on my irrefutable contention that the fingerprints of elements within the Israeli government are all over 9/11.

But later:

To say that someone's fingerprints are all over a crime is not to say they are definitely guilty of the crime. If I had said "Israel was behind 9/11" (as Prof. Truscello misinterpreted my words) I would have been implying that it had been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Israel did 9/11. I did not claim this. I think most astute readers would not conceive of the two statements cited as being at odds with each other. I think most lawyers and judges would be able to distinguish between someone being guilty of a crime and someone's fingerprints being all over a crime. Sometimes it is the case that the fingerprints are those of the criminal. On other occasions the fingerprints are not those of the criminal.

It makes perfect sense. Just because their fingerprints are all over the operation doesn't mean they did it. Blakeney starts with a hatred for Israel, and so he naturally culls all the usual evidence which confirms his bias (Odigo, the Dancing Jews, etc.,).

It kind of makes me picture the Justice League of America sitting around their conference table, trying to dope out the perpetrator of the latest nefarious scheme:

Superman: Well, I see Luthor's fingerprints all over this crime.
Batman: Luthor? Nah, it's gotta be the Joker.
Flash: Personally I think the Mirror Master is behind it all.
Atom: You're all wrong, it's obviously Chronos!

That Magical Thermite Stuff

Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth posted an article promoting the recent debate between Richard Gage and Chris Mohr, which Pat and I both covered. One thing stuck out in the article which I missed though. Oddly enough, they consider this a selling point for their whacky theories.

Further along in the debate, after Gage showed the WTC 7 collapse video adjacent to a known controlled demolition Chris Mohr, ignored the visual similarity and noted that “they sound completely different”.

Gage: Well, of course they do. One is using high-energy explosives, and the other thermate, an incendiary. This is, after all, a deceptive, controlled demolition.

Of course Gage fails to mention that he has repeatedly, including in this very debate, referred to massive explosions and explosives at World Trade Center 7. In fact a Google Search for World Trade Center 7 explosives on their site returns an astounding 12,300 hits, including their homepage. Including, but certainly not limited to:

WTC Building #7, a 47-story high-rise not hit by an airplane, exhibited all the characteristics of classic controlled demolition with explosives:

AE911Truth points in particular to the destruction of the third skyscraper, World Trade Center 7, a 47-story building which was not hit by an aircraft, yet came down in pure free-fall acceleration for at least 100 feet according to the official government engineering investigation (NIST), and in the exact manner of a classic controlled demolition. The implications are startling. The group bases its conclusions solely on forensic evidence and does not speculate as to who may have planted the explosives.

David Ray Griffin has provided a comprehensive dismantling of NIST's theory about WTC 7, according to which it suffered global collapse because of ordinary building fires. Besides showing that NIST committed massive scientific fraud, Griffin also points out that NIST was able to complete its theory only by affirming a miracle: a steel-framed high-rise building coming down in free fall even though explosives had not been used to remove its columns.

So the inescapable and disturbing conclusion is that the most scientific theory available for the WTC 7 collapse is that it was a controlled demolition, brought down with explosives.

In yet another key eyewitness testimonial, right before the building [WTC 7] fell, former Air Force medic Kevin McPadden reports hearing one end of a conversation, on a radio being held by a Red Cross worker, that has serious implications: “At the last few seconds he took his hand off [the radio] and you heard, ‘three, two, one…,’”

Do fires bring buildings down to countdowns? Soon after, McPadden described tremendous explosions boomed. He made it clear that these were explosions, that he was not confusing them with other loud sounds such as floors falling.

Of course, when asked about the lack of sounds, Gage always denies this and says that they used silent incendiaries, not explosives. Once again, trutherism is a mythology, not a science.

Alex Jones: No Tolerance for Anti-Semitism?

At least, that's what Rolling Stone assured its readers in its coverage of the Truther In Chief in the article James linked last week:

Unlike many of his conspiracy-minded predecessors — Henry Ford, the Ku Klux Klan, the militia movement — Jones has no tolerance for racism or anti-Semitism. "There is no globalist command center, and I never make it about certain groups," says Jones, whose wife is of Jewish descent and whose adopted sister Marley is Asian-American. "All humans do the same stuff. Class solidarity should transcend race and religion in the fight against the globalists. Everything they touch turns to mutated death."

Perhaps the writer, Alexander Zaitchik, just took Old Leatherlungs' word for it? Because emailer Jonathan Leman just pointed out to me that Jones sure seems to tolerate some anti-Semitic nonsense on his site. Like this:

The other subtext is that Jews (and Israelis), who are prominent in the banker-run New World Order, are special people, incapable of wrongdoing and immune to criticism. Anyone who opposes their political agenda is a Nazi.

And this:

Jews think Israel was created as a refuge from anti Semitism. In fact, the Jewish holocaust was engineered to induce Jews to build Israel, intended as the capital of the New World Order.

"Inside Zionism", Chapter One of Jewish historian Alfred Lilienthal's The Other Side of the Coin (1965) documents how Zionists had no use for their fellow Jews except as Israelis. Zionists vetoed plans to rescue people like Hana Brady. For example, FDR had a plan to rescue 500,000 Jews but said: "We can't put it over because the Zionist movement won't stand for it."

The same author previously wrote an article for Jones' site on how the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was not a forgery.

We are told that The Protocols of Zion is a hoax, a "proven forgery" concocted by the Tsarist Political Police (the Okhrana) to incite anti Semitism and discredit revolutionaries.

But the "proof" is far from convincing.

With Jewish bankers coming up, can the Jewish-run media be far behind? Nope:

As Jewish-dominated media increasingly persuades the public and government to agree with this stereotype, it will become easier to pass Christian-restricting hate crime laws. All who adhere to the Bible on homosexuality or Jewish complicity in Christ’s death could be subject to state-sponsored prosecution.

None of these articles were written by Alex himself. But they are clearly tolerated on his website. Several of them were written by Henry Makow, who is third on the list of Independent Contributors to Prison Planet, after Alex himself and top flunky Paul Watson.

Hug a Truther

Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi has another humorous, but sad, observation of the truthers.

I look back now and I’m actually a little embarrassed that Truthers used to get under my skin so much. Now I really just feel badly for them; the whole phenomenon is really sad. One of my friends has a really sweet dog that was a completely normal, healthy puppy until this past summer, at which point it suddenly started getting obsessed with its shadow – it sits there studying it and then every ten seconds or so it’ll jump on it with both paws. Then it backs up, waits another ten seconds, and tries again. This goes on for hours and hours. The dog is only a couple of years old, and this brain-freeze situation is only getting worse. Every time I see her, it makes me want to cry. That’s kind of how I feel about Truthers now. I used to get upset whenever they sent me those 14,000-word letters, but now I just wish someone would give them a hug or something.

The Secret Service Timeline--Updated

Over at JREF, Blue Collar Republican (aka John Farmer--see end for note) posts a graphic of a 9-11 Commission staffer's notes on a Secret Service Log of events on 9-11. This is the applicable portion:

And notes that this tends to support Mineta's testimony about the young man who told Cheney that the plane (which Mineta has consistently assumed was Flight 77, which hit the Pentagon) was 50 miles out, then 30 miles out, then 10 miles out.

Except, as pointed out by Gumboot in that thread, that the log entry does not start at 50 miles out. There are other problems with tying Mineta to those log entries, starting with the fact that Mineta's times are off for many events. For example, Mineta describes the scene at the White House when he arrives as chaotic, with people hurrying out of the building in panic. But this frantic evacuation of the White House did not happen when Mineta says it did (prior to 9:20). It happened at about 9:40, when word came of the Pentagon strike.


Mineta also said (during questioning by Tim Roemer) that the President was en route from Florida to Louisiana when he met with VP Cheney. But Bush did not leave Booker Elementary until 9:35 and was in the air at 9:55 (or 9:57 as other sources claim). And, as we shall see, those times become very significant when we look at the rest of the transcribed log:

Okay, so the Secret Service thought Bush left Booker at 10:05, and arrived at Sarasota Bradenton (airport) at 10:15? That's not correct, and it's not even close.

I wonder if this was some sort of attempt at constructing a timeline based on various accounts. I do note that the Washington Post's timeline, while getting Bush's departure time from Sarasota Bradenton correct, has both the Flight 77 discussion and the Flight 93 discussion involving planes that are X miles out and then X-20 miles out.

Flight 77:

Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta, summoned by the White House to the bunker, was on an open line to the Federal Aviation Administration operations center, monitoring Flight 77 as it hurtled toward Washington, with radar tracks coming every seven seconds. Reports came that the plane was 50 miles out, 30 miles out, 10 miles out-until word reached the bunker that there had been an explosion at the Pentagon.

And Flight 93:

In the White House bunker, a military aide approached the vice president.

"There is a plane 80 miles out," he said. "There is a fighter in the area. Should we engage?"

"Yes," Cheney replied without hesitation.

Around the vice president, Rice, deputy White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, tensed as the military aide repeated the question, this time with even more urgency. The plane was now 60 miles out. "Should we engage?" Cheney was asked.

"Yes," he replied again.

As the plane came closer, the aide repeated the question. Does the order still stand?

"Of course it does," Cheney snapped.

But of course that latter incident sounds nearly exactly like what Mineta described later for the 9-11 Commission. One can understand why when compiling an initial timeline, Mineta's account was given credibility. He has no reason to lie, and indeed, I don't believe he is lying. He's just mistaken about the time, and because he's mistaken about the time he thinks the plane being referred to was Flight 77 and not Flight 93.

But the Commission was able to sift through dozens of accounts, logbooks and other data from that day and compile a more accurate timeline that contradicts Mineta's, and, I suspect, contradicts this timeline which appears to have been assembled after the fact by the Secret Service and transcribed by a 9-11 Commission staffer.

BTW, to make clear, John Farmer is not the same John Farmer who was a counsel to the 9-11 Commission.

Update: See the blog post of Miles Kara, the Commission staffer who wrote the notes. Here's a very interesting speculation on why Mineta's times were wrong:

There is just one question at issue. Why did Norman Mineta testify to a precise time that was inaccurate. We may never know the answer. For anyone that has worked in an operations or command center with world-wide responsibilities there is a logical explanation. He looked at the wrong clock; Central Time.

Can You Imagine Anything More Insane?

She's got me there.

9-11 Blogger Now Posting No-Planer Stuff?

We haven't heard much from this segment of the Troof in awhile.

The Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) originally did not show American Airlines Flights 11 and 77 as having been scheduled or having taken off on September 11, 2001.

The late researcher Gerard Holmgren identified this fact and made it public on November 13, 2003.

By 2004, the BTS records showed something completely different about these flights. The new explanation said the following:

" On September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight #11 and #77 and United Airlines #93 and #175 were hijacked by terrorists. Therefore, these flights are not included in the on-time summary statistics."

As a public employee, I can safely assert that doctoring an official record is a serious matter. Public employees (and probably private ones, too) may be fired for engaging in this conduct. It seems someone up high did not want the public to see the original records.

It's amusing to see the "sacred list" argument stated so blatantly. Apparently the author (Dean Hartwell) believes that the government would willingly engage in the murder of thousands of people, but change a list somewhere? That's a firing offense!

Hartwell apparently isn't quite a no-planer (although Holmgren was). Instead he falls into that offensive, David L. Griscom category of a "no-passenger" theorist. Loonier than a Canadian dollar, in other words.

Update: Reader Len reviewed Hartwell's "book" (really a tract) at his blog.

One thing that potential buyers should be aware of is that this not really a 144 page book because it is set in extra-large type. It is just over 15,000 words (i.e. a little more than 5x longer than this review), if normal size type had been used the “book” would be only ¼ - 1/3 as long. So for $10 plus shipping you’ll get a 40 or so page essay that the author had to self-publish, by contrast 350 – 700 page commercially published books by Griffin, Tarpley and Ruppert (which I think are crappy too) go for $12 - $18.

But as Len notes, it's not as if Hartwell leaves you wishing his book was longer.

Update II: Well, that got results; the post is now gone from 9-11 Blogger.

Richard Gage Opposed to NIST Safety Regulations

Usually I just make fun of these idiots, but the recent debate between Richard Gage and Chris Mohr shows just how scary these people can be. I suppose we should be thankful that Gage is now a full time nutter and not an actual working architect anymore. Based just on this exchange regarding the NIST World Trade Center 7 report, he should have his license pulled. From around 1:52 into the debate.

Mohr: Do you also oppose the fire and safety regulations that NIST has proposed in these reports?

Host: Well we have one minute now for Richard to discuss that, perhaps Richard would like to…

Gage: In fact I do, there are billions of dollars that are spent needlessly as a result of the recommendations that NIST forced, that were forced on several other building codes.

Mohr: That would scare me.

Gage: It is needless, and architects and engineers, 1400 of us are crying for a new investigation.

Debate Between Box Boy Gage and Chris Mohr

Audio here. It is unfortunate that a lot of the debate seems to revolve around video and photographs, which we will have to wait for, but Mohr (a former investigative journalist) does a good job in the part that I have heard so far. I especially appreciated him asking Gage why they apply fireproofing to steel in high-rise construction; Gage's response was that fireproofing made them indestructible (!) in fires.

Box Boy is the usual dope. He denies significant fires in the towers, especially the South Tower. He brings up Chief Orio Palmer. He brings up "set up to fail", Max Cleland and John Farmer; I thought the idea was to discuss the towers collapse and not the freaking commission.

I do love the way he tries to frame things so he's the winner; either Mohr must explain X, Y or Z, or the debate is over. JAQ-off Jon Gold has a similar idea of what a debate consists of:

Here's a good topic for debate... should there be real justice for what happened on 9/11, and have we been denied that? Yes. I win.

Justice has not yet been brought to Osama Bin Laden, but I doubt that's what Gold is nattering on about.

Stupid Troofers

In the wake of a controlled demolition, a couple of the dolts ask the Georgia Tech president to sanction a debate between Box Boy and a member of the engineering faculty at Tech.

But what gets me about this video is that the Troofers never seem to notice the ear-splitting explosions that precede the demolition. The explosions are so loud that had they been present on 9-11 they would have been mentioned by every newscaster and heard by every TV viewer. Yes, the firemen heard explosions, but had they heard these types of explosions in a confined area, they would be deaf.

The Most Paranoid Man in America

Rolling Stone magazine has a rather in-depth profile of Alex Jones in this month's issue. I have to admit. The drawing of him is pretty good.

It's just past 9 a.m. when Alex Jones pulls his Dodge Charger into a desolate parking lot in Austin. From the outside, the squat, single-story office complex that Jones calls his "command center" resembles a moon base surrounded by fields of dying grass. But inside, blinking banks of high-tech recording gear fill the studio where he broadcasts The Alex Jones Show, a daily talk show that airs on 63 stations nationwide. Jones draws a bigger audience online than Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck combined — and his conspiracy-laced rants make the two hosts sound like tea-sipping NPR hosts on Zoloft.

Firedog Flake

Another Troofer diary from the Firedogs:

As former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds subsequently reported, the US maintained ‘intimate relations’ with Bin Laden, and the Taliban, right up to “that day of September 11.” These ‘intimate relations’ included using Bin Laden for ‘operations’ in Central Asia, including Xinjiang, China, and involved using al Qaeda and the Taliban in the same manner “as we did during the Afghan and Soviet conflict,” that is, fighting ‘enemies’ via proxies.

Amazing how Lawrence Wright missed all those intimate relations in The Looming Tower.

It's the usual: PNAC, Operation Northwoods, how long it took to establish the commission, less money than they spent on Monica Lewinsky....

The Brilliance of Cass Sunstein

What's the best way to destroy a conspiracy theory movement?

Answer: Suggest that some of the members might be government agents.

This is almost too funny for words. Cass Sunstein, a former Harvard professor and current member of the Obama Administration, suggested in a paper that the government consider "cognitive infiltration" of conspiracy theory groups, with the idea that "Government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action."

Well, to a bunch of paranoids, everybody looks like a government agent. Consider the comments over at Flogger on the thread concerning Alex Jones' appearance on The View. There are some over there who consider Jones an imperfect vessel for the "Truthers" to pour their hopes and aspirations into:

Sorry folks, hate to break the news to you, but AJ getting this publicity is BAD NEWS for the truth movement. One visit to infowars and you are immersed in conspiratorial theories, mixed in with facts, so that while some of the facts are true, there are so many theories and mis-info linked, that the media will only use it to rip us apart. Try going on there and simply find basic facts about 9/11. It's rather difficult and takes some sifting. They will paint all people who are seeking justice being just like Alex Jones, and in case you didn't know...
That's a bad thing.

Well, how dare anybody diss AJ?

Hello , Cass Sunstein.

Jon Gold, one of the "responsible" Troofers, rachets the paranoia up a notch:

"This movement was infiltrated and manipulated LONG before Cass Sunstein made his suggestion about doing so. When he wrote his piece, the first thing that popped into my mind was, "where the hell have you been?"

And we're off to the races. What's nuttier than believing that some of the Troofers are secretly working for the government? Well, believing that Cass Sunstein is secretly a "Truther" probably qualifies:

a lot of people in the TM are unaware that DRG has esoterically decoded Cass Sunstein's words in the book Cognitive Infiltration I read it and i think CS could well be a closet one of us who doesn't want to get fired there are indicators in his footnotes where he deliberately contradicts himself if you replace "the 9/11 conspiracy theory" with "the bush/cheney 9/11 conspiracy theory" then suddenly CS's theses ring true including the notion that the OCT leads to violence whereas it would be preposterous to say that the 9/11 TM is leading to violence

The rabbit hole always goes deeper; there's always another red pill to take!

Meanwhile, John Parulis, last seen orchestrating the Troofer Burn fiasco in 2007, where he was supposed to cut through some steel beams holding up a "Truth" sculpture to demonstrate how nanothermite brought down the towers, before he got cold feet and instead burned some thermite in a pail, checks in with a discussion of the cognitive infiltration he's witnessed in the movement:

Due to sloppy vetting procedures, two individuals were allowed into the group and one became a board member of Architects and Engineers. This guy started floating ideas out about changing the emphasis of our mission away from “controlled demolition” into something he called “engineered destruction”.

So it was a semantic shift but a very important one, because words have power and AE911Truth was founded on the very strong evidence of controlled demolition in the three World Trade Towers, that’s a theme that Richard Gage harps on constantly and continuously and…

Then he had an associate in there and they started attacking the authors of the nanothermite paper, in fact at one point calling them amateur investigators.

Sloppy vetting procedures? Mike Rotch will no doubt be shocked to hear that! But it gets better, much better. They go into the recent paper over at Flogger on David Ray Griffin's BS voice-morphing claims:

And I think it’s a barometer of what’s going on at 911blogger, that that kind of hateful posting about one of the premier researchers of 9/11 Truth, in fact the man, who is personally responsible for turning Richard Gage on to 9/11 Truth, David Ray Griffin, would be so abused in this thread.

Now I did break the rules of 911blogger, I named names, and I called out some of the people on…. were making these types of posts. And I asked them to be accountable for the past ten or twenty years of their lives. That’s one thing that I ran into as a roadblock with one of the people I mentioned at the AE911Truth controversy.

I talked to this guy on the phone and I said you know I’ve been looking for you on the internet, I can’t see anything. I, I said: “Why don’t you tell me about yourself, you know, what i… what’s your educational background, where have you spent the past ten or fifteen years of your life and he said: “I’m not talking about that…”

I cannot imagine why a paranoid fruitcake would not be willing to disclose that information, can you? And you gotta love this part:

I think there were some legitimate concerns about the fake phonecall study of Dr. Griffin. I think that’s not one of his strong points, I think, perhaps there are some problems with the analysis, but… one of the things that we had decided in the AE911Truth internal conflict we had a year ago was to keep our problem inhouse and not discuss it in public or let it go out there.

Erm, until now, I suppose? DOH!

Some Updates

Jim Duensing, the idiot Troofer who got himself shot by Las Vegas police a couple years back, has announced his candidacy for the Libertarian Party nomination for president in 2012.

Jeremy Rothe-Kushel, claims to have been beaten by Bill Maher's security guards when he interrupted a taping of Maher's show in February.

Jeremy Rothe-Kushel of WeAreChangeLA was just beaten bloody and arrested for interrupting a live broadcast of the Real Time with Bill Maher television show. Video from the live broadcast clearly shows Jeremy screaming “That’s Battery! If you ask me to leave, I will leave on my own accord” There is no reason for his battery and illegal arrest.

Pretty good entertainment value there.

While we're on the topic of WACLA, there has been a curious silence from that quarter on Bruno Bruhwiler's case. As you may recall, Bruno got his sorry ass kicked out of a courtroom for making "involuntary facial expressions" at the trial of another idiot Troofer, then was arrested for making a terrorist threat to one of the officers who removed him from the premises. The website that was set up, Free-Bruno, is now blank and has been for a couple of months now. Could it possibly be that terrorist threats from a Troofer are no longer considered a source of amusement in the wake of Jared Loughner's shooting of Congressman Gabrielle Giffords and others in January? Hey, I'm just asking questions.

Alex Jones on the View

It is bad enough he shows up on FoxNews from time to time, now he is on the View defending Charlie Sheen and promoting the troof.