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).

Uncle Fetzer Supports Anti-Semitic Professor

Here's a long story about an anti-Semitic professor at Long Beach State.

From an office inside the bunker-like, six-story Psych building, a tall, thin, bespectacled MacDonald pumps out pages and pages of material on how Jews are genetically driven to destroy Western societies. According to MacDonald, who considers himself an evolutionary psychologist, Jews, who have typically been in the minority in countries around the world, are compelled by an evolutionary strategy that makes them push for liberal policies, like immigration and diversity, with the intent of weakening the power of the majority that rules them.

And who do we find supporting MacDonald? None other than Uncle Fetzer!

At around the same time, the Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES), of which MacDonald was then a board member, began an investigation into his work. A forum, to be held at the group's annual meeting, was organized by Dan Kriegman, founder of the Psychoanalytic Couple and Family Institute of New England and a faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis, that featured two other specialists in evolutionary psychology, one of them Pinker. Although the panel was critical of MacDonald's work, James Fetzer, a professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, at one point defended MacDonald with a call for academic free speech.

Academic free speech is one thing, but surely the other professors were engaging in academic free speech by organizing their panel?

Hat Tip: Commenter Edmund Standing

Let me be clear here. I don't think Jim Fetzer is an anti-Semite or a Holocaust Denier. To a certain extent, by protecting the other kooks he is protecting himself. And to be fair, he quite likely does believe strongly in academic freedom.

But I do find it interesting how much overlap there is here.

The "Scholars" at the Conference

Members of the various scholars groups appeared at the recent conference in Arizona. First Jim Fetzer hilariously narrows down the list of possibilities as to what destroyed the World Trade Center:

Speculation is the second stage of science, we have to consider the full range of alternative explanations. These can include natural causes like earthquake, hurricane, tornado, human causes, conventional, air crashes, dynamite, RDX, thermite, thermate. Human causes unconventional, mini-nukes, atomic, hydrogen, micro, directed energy weapons, HARP, lasers, masers, plasmoids. And then you need a catch-all hypothesis, maybe you haven't actually figured out the whole range of alternatives. So you need another H4, other alternatives not yet considered.

Gee Jim, you sure you didn't leave anything out? Does he really think we need to consider the possibility of a tornado?

Later on he gets downright offensive:

Look at the extent of the devastation, it was very selective. This was not the sort of thing a hurricane or tornado would bring about. It is as all or only the World Trade Center buildings were targeted.

Uhh genius, they were targeted. Even so, when looking at this, "selective" is not the first word that comes to mind of most people.















Later on Steven Jones actually does a fairly good job refuting Fetzer's arguments. Too bad he doesn't use such rigorous scientific thought regarding his own "research".

Before the Q & A session Kevin Barrett gives a short bit, in which he uses some Orwellian logic to explain how the scholar's schism is a good thing:

People have been pissing and moaning, or as we scholars saying "urinating and ululating" about the break-up of Scholars for 9/11 Truth. It is not a break-up, it is a split into two groups. People ask me, "Why did they split?" and I say, "because there are so many of us, one group can't hold us anymore. And that's actually the truth. This always happens to groups, when they get big they split off.

Yeah, sure Kev. With all those "scholars", you guys must have like... 20 PhD level structural engineers by now, in each group! I can understand how it must be difficult to get things done with all those MIT trained engineers tripping over each other...

In the Q & A, Fetzer humorously gets a bit testy:

Steve was exhibiting a kind of premature conclusion, because neither Judy, nor Morgan nor I are committed to a "space beam" hypothesis, in fact the very use of that phrase is so denigrating that it is inappropriate.

Uhh, Jim, have you taken a look at Judy Wood's website lately, where right there at the top it has Star Wars Beam Weapon? This is hardly something someone else has dreamed up.

They're Getting the Band Back Together!

No, not the Beatles, man. The Scholars! With all the sad news coming out of 9-11 Accountability, it would be easy to miss the joyous tidings that Uncle Fetzer is going to appear with Steven Jones and Kevin (Holocaust is a myth) Barrett on a panel called Scholars United!