Steve Alten's Other Theory

You may remember this guy for his novel, The Shell Game, which the Troofers pushed during the infamous "Week of Truth" last year. Turns out Alten (who's appearing at Sander Hicks' 9-11 Festival) has another interesting theory:

In March of 2005, two University students from the mid-western U.S. traveled to the United Kingdom on Spring Break. On their last day at Loch Ness, they
hired a local to take them around by boat, where they discovered a half-eaten
deer carcass...and the 4-inch barbed palate tooth of the water predator that had
attacked and ravaged the deer! Their discovery flies in the face of the
legendary creature the Scottish Highlanders have proclaimed to be a plesiosaur, and
confirms the theories generated by author Steve Alten's amazing new thriller,
The LOCH!

Shell Game Battles

I've kind of been enjoying the way the "Truthers" have been pushing Steve Alten's new book, The Shell Game. At least, enjoying it more than I have actually reading it, which is quite a struggle. Kevin Barrett has been pushing it as a way to reach more people, even though he admits that (for him) it's Islamophobic and cringe-worthy in parts.

He had Wendy Campbell, a nutty anti-Israel kook on one of his many radio shows after her post about how the book is "Just Another Zionist Scam to Stop 9/11 Investigation of Israel". You can get a flavor for the piece from this bit of rambling:

I became suspicious that this book was just another misleading Arab-bashing, Israel-pleasing work which only points fingers at the Zionist-approved list of “usual subjects” including the puppet king Bush. Many of us have come to the realization that Israel has played a major role in 9-11 (PNAC, dancing Israeli spies, Odigo, Wolfowitz Doctrine, The Clean Break, Netanyahu and Silverstein phone buddies, Israeli security in charge of US airports, Marvin Bush in charge of security of WTC at time of attacks, implosions, explosions, Silverstein said on video “they decided to pull it” with regards to WTC building 7 which was not even hit by a jet, and it takes weeks to set up an implosion, the resulting “war on terror” based on false info provided by Israel’s Mossad, and so on and so forth....

This is how she talks as well. She seems to have memorized the phrase "apartheid, racist, Jewish-supremacist Israel," because she can never just say "Israel". It's all about the Zionist warmongers at PNAC, and Larry Silverstein, etc. At points Kevin almost seems like the reasonable person on the show, but then he manages to reassert himself as a kook of the first water by trying to convince Wendy that "Hey, he mentions neocons, and what are neocons?"

At one point, Sofia from 9-11 Mysteries gets on the line, and while she agrees with much of the criticism of the book, she approaches it from the standpoint of how does it work as fiction. She talks about how the book is far too layered to succeed as fiction, with excerpts from some future book interspersed with the "real" fiction. She also notes that the book contains far too much speechifying.

And here I have to agree. I have read about five chapters of the book, and don't intend to read any further. The book opens with a hearing before Congress with the lead character delivering a lecture to the senators on Peak Oil. It's dull and tedious and you can almost sense the parts where the spectators are supposed to cheer for the heroism of the guy speaking Troof to power.

You can download the interview here; it's the 2-12-08 show, second hour. Wendy has an incredibly irritating voice, aside from the disgusting things she says.

Shell Game: The Trailer

Steve Alten (do I have to call him doctor because of his PhD in physical education?) has now posted a trailer for Shell Game. Actually probably not a bad idea given that a large percentage of his target demographic for this book are functionally illiterate. The trailer indicates that he is a proponent of LIHOP, both for Pearl Harbor and 9/11, but he will doubtless be embraced by the troof movement on the theory that LIHOP is the gateway drug to full blown trooferism. Well, except for those who have already denounced him as COINTELPRO. Well, when you play with the pigs, you are going to get dirty.

Incidentally Alten defended himself in the comments of my previous post by claiming that what I reviewed was an unedited draft. He did send me the first chapter of his edited book via e-mail though, and other than a few corrected misspellings, none of the mistakes had been changed, so it make no difference. He then sent me another section of the book, and it was even worse. Including this jaw dropping ahistorical claim:

In July of 1979, President Carter had begun a secret campaign to provide military aid to the Mujahideen – Afghan rebels who were fighting the Soviets in Kabul. The Soviets took the bait and crossed the border into Afghanistan, and suddenly the USSR had its own Vietnam War. The House of Saud embraced this guerilla action, for it supported both Islam and the West against the atheist Soviets. When the Reagan Administration took office, the White House increased aid to these “freedom fighters,” causing the Soviets to expend even more resources into the conflict.

The leader of these Afghan rebels? Osama bin Laden.

Osama bin Laden of course, was not the leader of the Afghan rebels. For obvious reasons, he is not even Afghan. In fact there was not even a leader of the Afghan rebels, but several tribal leaders instead, Hekmatyar, Massoud, Dostum and Khan, among others. Bin Laden, who once again WAS NOT AN AFGHAN did not really even become a prominent figure among the Arab fighters until the mid-80s (in 1979 when the war started he was a college student), and then only because he was a member of a prominent family, who was a significant fundraiser and motivator for the cause. His entire reputation as a fighter is really only based off of one battle, the Battle of Jaji in 1987.

Not really helping your cause there Steve. Might want to go back to writing about fish.

Update: I don't think there is any humanly way I could get around to pointing out all the factual errors in the chapter posted on-line, much less the book, but here is another idiotic one. From the section titled "Washington, DC November 23, 2007".

Ryan Gessaman, a rugged man in his forties, wearing a dark suit and matching bow tie, is a senior assistant to Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Board. Perle, known around Washington power circles as the "Prince of Darkness," is himself a close personal advisor to former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld and a major investor in a number of defense companies.

Just one problem though, Perle resigned from this position, over 4 years earlier.

Shell Game: The Next Messiah

It appears the troofers are all excited over the imminent publication of a novel by Steve Alten titled "The Shell Game", as it builds a fictional plot around 9/11 conspiracy theories. Several prominent troofers have even taken the bizarre step of signing a letter of support saying that people should buy it. This apparently is going to be the medium that will finally deliver the promised land of 9/11 truth. Not that I can blame them for supporting yet one more Messiah, after the complete bomb that is Loose Change: The Final Cut. I have been rather busy lately and haven't had much of a chance to blog, but fortunately, there hasn't been much to blog about. This movie has been the biggest flop since Gigli. I swear, Korey Rowe was out in public more when he was in the stockade for desertion, than the Three Stooges are now. A Google News search for "Loose Change Final Cut" turns up just 7 mentions, and that is only if you include Prison Planet, which just happens to be run by Alex Jones, the Executive Producer. Not a single mention is from any major news source. Looking at the page hits for loosechange911.com in Alexa shows the same story.

Anyway, so this brings us back to the original subject, which is the expectation that "The Shell Game" will somehow save the day. Indicative of this is one of several posts on this subject on 911 Blogger, reposted from OpEdNews, this one ironically titled "Why Would REAL 9/11 Truth Activists Advocate a Work of FICTION?". Uhh, because most of what they advocate is fiction to begin with?

Alten at least, is an established writer, or as he titles himself at every opportunity, a "New York Times Best-selling author", so they at least won't have to read horribly bad prose like in American Truth, which only seems to manage a high rating on Amazon through the author repeatedly voting for himself. You can actually download the first chapter here, and it is not as badly written (although one hopes they will correct all the misspellings in the published version) it has the normal fact-checking and accuracy that one would expect from a truther. That is, he is horrible at both.

Some examples, he didn't manage to get through the prologue before rehashing the same anti-military rumors started during the Vietnam War about how soldiers drop out of society in mass.

It is a Federal budget that invests billions into weapons of mass destruction and pennies into its fighting soldiers, hiding the grim reality that one in three adult homeless males are combat vets, that one in four veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan suffer mental health problems – that our nation’s warriors have been left behind by an Administration that wraps itself in the stars and stripes but refuses to provide adequate funding for our soldiers’ needs.

It only takes a few minutes to find out where he mutated this claim from, an advocacy group called the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, here reported by FoxNews:

U.S. veterans face a greater chance of becoming homeless than the general population, say experts. According to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans , a study released in 1999 found that while veterans count for 9 percent of the entire population, they are nearly 23 percent of the homeless population and 33 percent of the adult male homeless population.

If you read it carefully though, you notice it states that 1 in 3 adult males are "veterans", not combat veterans. Given the relatively high percentage of adult males who have served in the military, this is not that far out of their statistical likelihood for their demographic. You can read more about these studies in this excellent article by Michael Fumento, or read the equally fine Stolen Valor by B.G. Burkett.

When you get into the narrative it also becomes apparent that Mr. Alten has not even done the most basic research into the military. He evidently has been getting his military history from Korey Rowe, from just the second page.

“Since the beginning. I started in Afghanistan with the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team, the ‘Rakkasans.’ We were the first boots on the ground. Same for Iraq. Ne Desit Virtus--”

The 187th, part of the 101st Airborne Division, was not the first unit into Afghanistan, as I pointed out over a year ago when Loose Change producer Korey Rowe, who served in that unit, made the same claim. Alten then continues:

“–let valor not fail.” The woman translates. “When did Military Intelligence recruit you?”

“The day Psy Ops found out I spoke fluent Arabic.”

“So you were with M.I. two years, then Counterintelligence. Looks like you were quite busy. . . over one hundred interrogations.” The woman’s eyes narrow. “Tell me, Colonel, what’s the most interesting thing you ever learned from these ‘sessions.’?”

I can count at least 2 errors just in that exchange. First of all, Psy Ops is not part of military intelligence, it is part of the Special Operations branch. Secondly, Counterintelligence actually is part of military intelligence, so you could not transfer out of MI into it.

I could go on, but I think you get the point. Somehow, I don't see this bringing about revolution either. Next...