Truther "Corrections"

In the comments of my recent Truther Math post one of the troofers posts indignantly that they have since corrected the source of the article and thus I should update my post. Like it is somehow my job to monitor their sites to keep up on all the changes.

And figured you would be interested to know that Janice Matthews has updated it with links to the right sources, after I brought this to her attention (I'm on the Advisory Board).

He added:

You'll find that researchers and activists who are sincerely interested in truth and justice for 9/11 (and anything else) will correct errors and clean up mistakes when they're pointed out.

Erik Larson

OK, Erik, well you are going to have to have them run another "correction" because they still got it wrong. Here is the original claim (emphasis added):

This story was reported in the Guardian, a UK newspaper, on Veterans Day, November 11th. Why, during Veterans Week, wasn't it anywhere to be found in US newspapers? Why did only the San Francisco Chronicle pick up the AP article reporting the stunning fact that 18 Iraq War veterans commit suicide every day. Yes, that's EVERY DAY.

And here is their correction:

A reader has kindly brought to my attention an error in my original introduction: The SFGate link provided here does not reflect the statistic, "18 veterans per day commit suicide." I apparently linked to the wrong article, so I extend my apologies for less than exacting journalism--please allow me to direct readers to the horse's mouth. Please refer to this story regarding an ongoing investigation by CBS News, wherein Dr. Ira Katz, the VA's head of Mental Health is quoted:

Last November when CBS News exposed an epidemic of more than 6,200 suicides in 2005 among those who had served in the military, Katz attacked our report."Their number is not, in fact, an accurate reflection of the rate," he said last November.But it turns out they were, as Katz admitted in this e-mail, just three days later.He wrote: there "are about 18 suicides per day among America's 25 million veterans."That works out to about 6,570 per year, which Katz admits in the same e-mail, "is supported by the CBS numbers."

The problem is not just the sourcing, but that it was being factually misrepresented. The ironic thing is, I did a blog post on this subject over a year ago. What these idiots are missing is that this statistic is among all veterans, it even says so in the article they cite, not just those from Iraq. There are nearly 25 million veterans in this country, only about 1% of them served in the recent Iraq War.

Former Army paratrooper Michael Fumento also points out some flaws in this report, in an editorial in the New York Post, notably, that they do not compare these figures with those of equivalent demographics. Others have also pointed out that elderly men, who are heavily represented in the 25 million number commit suicide at a much higher rate. Claiming that some sick elderly WWII vet is a victim of the Iraq War, is dishonest to say the least.

I am awaiting your latest correction.

9-11 Eyewitness Review Part 1

(Note important correction at the bottom.)

Our guest poster, BG, suggested that we all watch 9-11 Eyewitness.

I watched the first thirty minutes this morning. The first 16 minutes or so is pretty much historical footage that the filmmaker, Rick Siegel, shot with a video camera from across the Hudson River, in Hoboken, New Jersey. He also had the radio tuned to 1010 WINS, so you get the live news at the same time as the video footage. This is extremely effective and as history it's pretty good. Unfortunately he's on the wrong side to view the collapse of the south tower, and he gets chased from his spot by a cop so he missed the collapse of the north tower.

And it's not long before we wander into tinfoil hat land. Siegel (obviously in the editing room after filming) highlights every helicopter that flies into the area (see correction at bottom). Chopper #4 comes in for special attention at 5:49:



Mission accomplished, eh? Well, you can guess what happens next, the South Tower collapses.

Later we hear about "flashes" of light apparently where the helicopter is flying, although there's an obvious problem; you can't see the helicopter, and what is described as flashes looks a little phony to me.

At 22:30 he goes into how the helicopter was black, and I'm starting to think we've got a live one here. At 24:30 he remarks on how the building started to topple, but somehow it did not fall over, but instead crumbled to pieces. This is occasionally brought up by the CT crowd, as if controlled demolition could somehow have prevented the building from falling over once it started.

The film does highlight what certainly appear to be periodic explosions. This constitutes evidence (not necessarily evidence of controlled demolition, of course). But the focus on the helicopters seems bizarre. At 29:55, the film gets into some weird stuff:

Narrator: As chopper four emerges from the smoke above the north tower its white belly becomes visible from another camera angle near the church on the other side of the building. Is this a genuine New York Police Department Air/Sea Rescue chopper that simply decided not to rescue anyone? Or is it participating in the Tripod emergency war game exercise FEMA started running September 10th at the World Trade Center from the Port Authority headquarters Pier 92 and being ordered not to rescue anybody?

I'll take Door Number 3, Monty, that the helicopters couldn't get close enough to the building to rescue anybody. Note as well that now this is a black helicopter with a white belly.

I stopped the movie there; I may watch the rest of it at some later point. One thing with these 9-11 films is that you can appreciate the historical nature of the footage they provide while finding the conspiracy theory they propose completely loopy. That's definitely how I feel about 9-11 Eyewitness. The historical value of the first 16 minutes I'd rate a B plus. It's not the best angle but it's still memorable footage. I haven't figured out his conspiracy theory, but it seems pretty flaky from what I've seen so far. On the Screw Loose Change Nutbar-o-Meter I give it a:



Important Correction: I have been advised by Rick Siegel that his only involvement with this film was taping the initial historical footage and the brief interview bits which were filmed much later. Rick did not do the analysis that accompanies his historical footage. My apologies for assuming otherwise.

Addressing Some of Our Critics

Over at a Loose Change Forum, we're getting some criticism. Let's address some of the points raised:

Here's one: "At around the 21 minute mark, Loose Change claims that an A3 Skywarrior hit the pentagon, instead of a Boeing 757. This is a change since most of the tinfoil hat crowd claim it was a cruise missile, or a C-130, or a bunker buster bomb, or a learjet, or a truck bomb, or all 5 at once! Conspiracy theories need no consistency or logic, that is what makes them fun."

That's not what Loose Change "claimed."

It offered a POSSIBLE alternate explanation of a cruise missle hitting the building.

In fact, one of the other commenters on that forum came up with the best rebuttal of that point:

So the fact that Loose Change offers completely conflicting propositions, at one point it "suggests" a cruise missile, at another point it suggests a small passenger plane, at another point it suggests an A3 Skyhawk--correction, Skywarrior, is somehow a defense of the integrity of the film? Why don't they add 4-5 other things it possibly might have been, think of how much better the movie would be!

(Later note: James informs me that he posted this comment himself on that forum.)

Let me just add that they did have one more possible cause: the cordite. Correction: There's still another theory mentioned in Loose Change: that it was a helicopter.

They apparently get the idea that one of the commenters on that thread is either James or I; that is not the case. CORRECTION: James tells me that he did indeed post on that forum; my bad for assuming otherwise.

You say April Gallop is now fighting against illegal immigration...how does this disprove anything in LC?

The film claims that April Gallop does not believe a plane hit the building. If that's the case, then why would April Gallop state that her reason for fighting illegal immigration is 9-11? Remember, several of the 9-11 hijackers had overstayed their visas and were illegal immigrants. If April did not believe in the official version of the story including the hijackers, then she would not have joined the anti-illegal immigration movement, right?

They talk about the coroner as well:

You talk about the coroner from flight 93 and how LC only took parts of his quotes to manipulate what he meant. Then you post his entire quote:

"Here's another quote from Miller that you won't see in the film:

All that debris, and the fact that only 8 percent of the human remains could be recovered, mean the site is, essentially, a cemetery, Miller says. "The real story is about what those people did, deciding to rush the [terrorists] and sell everyone else on the idea," says Miller, who spent weeks crawling around on his hands and knees searching for remains and would rather talk about anything else. "Where it landed is not what matters. The most important thing is that they be properly remembered."

This is typical of kook conspiracy theories; one quote by somebody will be highlighted, while other quotes that disprove the theory will be ignored."

How does that quote prove anything in your theory?
How does that show LC manipulating quotes?
I see this as exactly what Dylan pointed out. Miller saw nothing. He could have pulled "8%" out of his ass for all we know.

The quotes from Miller all are chosen to indicate that there were no dead bodies at the scene. But of course, that does not mean, as the film tries mightily to imply, that Miller thought nobody had died there. It just means that there were only bits and pieces of human remains.

Big Brass Nut

Well, another reasonably well-known liberal blog (See Correction Below) has gone a little nutter. Of course, he swears he's not a conspiracy theorist:

Nevertheless, although some within the various 9/11 conspiracy theory movements are genuinely off their rockers and have no point whatsoever, there remains a body of nearly compelling evidence, a great deal admittedly circumstantial and speculative, that the 9/11 Commission did not even so much as touch; and I can state without reservation that no future, official commission that might revisit the matter will ever go within light-years of a complete, thorough, and comprehensive investigation.

So he wants us to applaud him because he's not one of those off their rocker fruitcakes. What's his flavor?

Below is one of the better analyses of the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. The gentleman is Gordon Ross, a mechanical engineer. His presentation, which was done in London last year, is not slick and polished, yet he establishes a credibility about himself by the very way in which he walks a tightrope between technical explanations and appeal to those less knowledgeable in matters of skyscraper construction and demolition.

Yep, old Gordon Ross. I provided a link to Newton's Bit's decimation of Ross, with perhaps just a trace of acerbity, and told him not to misuse his soapbox to coerce people into a dead end.

Well, that'll teach me to go easy on him. The twit responded in the comments:

You swallow the line of the govenment hook, line, and sinker, then you come here to spew the same at me. Of course, there are plenty of reasons to believe that the events of September 11, 2001, occurred pretty much as the official story goes, but there are plenty of reasons to be suspicious; and bringing those suspicions, when they are soundly set forth, to light merits no ad hominem attack like you just leveled at me, especially when I am trying to make a larger point about a government that has lost all credibility and offer fuel for a decent discussion. I bent over backwards to try to set out why so much conspiracy theory is nonsense, and still you go on the attack. It's just like the filth the Right-wingers in their threatening e-mail messages cough up every time I lay out another facet of the case of why this Administration has literally ruined this country's future. You are in bad company when you come off spitting the same flavor of venom as all the other defenders of this awful President and his awful crew. It's also like the disgusting messages I got—and still get, once in a while—about my article on the USS Liberty incident.

Ah, so he's another one of those Israel-bashers? Not that the "Truth" Movement needs any more of those.

Notice also that, in my condescending attack on so much of conspiracy theory, I left out names of 9/11 crazies. Again, you went right to that kind of associative attack, which I had pointed out in the post as fallacious reasoning by conspiracy theorists, themselves; but there you were, going right to the heart of fallacy by association. Perhaps I should take that approach when I damn both Obama and Clinton for their thousands and thousands of fire-breathing, spinning-eyed cultist followers.

You don't get any points from me for not being one of those "crazies". There are no sane "Truthers"; just ones that aren't quite nutty enough to be locked up. Note as well that he gives no indication of having read the response from Newton's Bit. Of course, it does have complicated stuff like formulas and calculations, unlike Gordon's video.

At any rate, you can lead a horse's patootie to water, but you can't make him drink.

Correction: Apparently this is not that big a liberal blog; there is something called the "Big Brass Alliance" which is fairly major, and I confused the two.

Update: Get this comment from the poster, Dark Wraith (I'm sure he's a wicked RPG player):

The telling tale is not entirely in the words written, here, but as much in the oddities of detail: "Pat Curley," "Mark Roberts," "Dan K. Stanley," "B.J. Edwards."

Of almost 1900 threads here at this Weblog, this one has the highest ratio of commenters putting their "real" names to their comments. This is the same device used by some ad spammers: the FROM line carries a real name, thereby inducing the recipient to assign a level of credibility to what is otherwise just an advertisement. I am most certain that readers here have seen these types of e-mail messages. Here, the same method is being used. It has been done at other Websites, too.

Also, the consistent use of proxy services by these debunkers is indicative. (So, too, is the gaping back door on the particular anonymizers they keep using.)

What a fruitcake! We use our real names, therefor it must be fake. And because we used multiple real names, we must have been using proxy services.

Arabesque Admits Truthers Have Nothing

Update: The post is no longer at 9-11 Blogger. Embarrassment at the overall effort or just a correction of the point about Myers? You can read the post here.

My god, what a mess. Arabesque starts out reiterating a Mark Roberts challenge:

"The 9/11 "Truth" movement has made a few hundred significant claims in the past few years, none of which have been true. Don't believe me? Then name a significant claim that you get right, and prove it."

Of course, I always borrow Deb Burlingame's joke here; they seem to get the date of the attacks right and nothing else.

But that's not where Arabesque is going:

I'd like to take up this challenge. While it is true that 9/11 activists have not always promoted credible information, it is also true that the official story is obviously problematic. I could sit here all day poking holes in the official "conspiracy theory" as many have done, but I will just ask Mr. Roberts three easy questions:

Errr, I thought you were going to come up with a claim, which my dictionary defines in part as:

7.an assertion of something as a fact

He brings up the fact that NORAD offered three different explanations for what happened on 9-11, and that Richard Myers was promoted three days after the attacks. How could they promote Myers three days after the attacks when he came up with three different explanations?

Answer: Because he did not offer three different explanations in the first three days. It only emerged that NORAD had lied after Kean and Hamilton released their book on the 9-11 Commission, after Myers had retired. Correction: A commenter points out that Mark Dayton, a Senator from Minnesota, caught the lies in 2004, only three years after Myers was promoted. The point stands, and Arabesque completely blew the detail that Myers was in charge of NORAD; in fact General Ralph Eberhart was in charge on 9-11.

And of course, Arabesque implies that the planes should have been intercepted, which is ridiculous. Once again, the most warning that NORAD had that any of the planes had been hijacked was for Flight 11, in which instance they were warned only 9 minutes before the plane crashed.

This song sounds like it was written by the Troofers:

Wood Takes On NIST

Well I am back in the good old USA, albeit rather jet-lagged. Many thanks to Pat for keeping up on all the news while I was gone. Things went well, although we are still trying to decide whether to disperse our mind control drugs through the usual chemtrail method, or through Starbucks Coffee...

For those of you unfamiliar with this site, that is a joke, I don't want Starbucks lawyers calling me.

On to 9/11 denier news nuttery, well you know how the truthers are always demanding answers. Now former engineering prof Judy Wood is demanding that NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which has produced a series of reports on the collapse of the World Trade Centers, officially respond to her Star Wars Beam Weapon theory:

DATA QUALITY ACT (DQA) CHALLENGES HAVE BEEN FILED WITH NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY (NIST)

EVIDENCE FOR DIRECTED ENERGY WEAPONS PUT FORWARD IN A DQA REQUEST FOR CORRECTION

PERSONS WITH SUPPORTING INFORMATION ARE ASKED TO COME FORWARD AND BE HEARD

The DQA challenges are called "Requests for Correction" (RFC). Each one asserts that NIST's reporting on the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11/01 is lacking in quality, integrity. Some challenge NIST's conclusions and evasions as being fraudulent, misleading and deceptive.

These three RFCs are the first known to have been filed with NIST that challenge the validity of the official explanations of what caused the near instanteous destruction of the World Trade Center complex on September 11, 2001.

Oh yeah, this is going to help them find legitimacy in the scientific community.

Journal of 9-11 Studies Closes?

How else to interpret this announcement on their front page:

It is now our belief that the case for falsity of the official explanation is so well established and demonstrated by papers in this Journal that there is little to be gained from accepting more papers here. Instead we encourage all potential contributors to prepare papers suitable for the more established journals in which scientists might more readily place their trust.

They go on to say that they will continue to publish, but don't expect a quick response:

We will continue for the time being to provide a service for researchers who wish to present a new finding or a new point of view but who feel that their contribution would not be suitable for a mainstream journal. We will also be happy to receive sound, substantial work which has nevertheless been rejected by others. However, due to the volume of work, there may be substantial delays in publication here in the future. Thank you for your interest in careful research.

What "volume of work"? Since March, they have published one paper, a four-page article on probability. In March they published a 27-page paper on the economic impact of 9-11 that James caught several errors in, and which still contains floaters (see correction below) like this:



That's only off by three orders of magnitude; close enough for "Truther" work.

Correction: My bad, those numbers are correct. They did have them wrong before.

BYU Prof Steven Jones Not a Ph.D!

(Correction: I personally confirmed with Vanderbilt University on Monday, September 11, 2006 that Steven Earl Jones was awarded a PhD in Physics on 5/17/78. I am leaving the text of the post of as it was originally posted. I will also post a correction at the top of the blog.)

Holy smoke, how did we all miss this one? I noticed a new 9-11 Debunking blog in our referrers, surfed over there and just about freaked out when I saw this post:

Steven E. Jones does not have a doctorate degree, so Implosion World changed the text to refer to him as “Professor Jones”

Sure enough, I checked the linked PDF from Implosion World, and they had amended their article (at the back):



But interestingly, the Scholars for 9-11 Truth, which Jones co-founded, mentions him on the front page of their website, third article down from the left, as a Ph.D., as does BYU in a response to a press request from the Deseret Morning News, which broke the story of Jones' suspension.

"BYU has repeatedly said that it does not endorse assertions made by individual faculty," the statement said. "We are, however, concerned about the increasingly speculative and accusatory nature of these statements by Dr. Jones."

Jones & Company Beclown the Europhysics News

In terms of our usual metric, TTFLMO (time to first lie, mistake or omission) this one actually does pretty well; it is almost three paragraphs into the article.  Talking about why high-rise buildings usually do not collapse due to fires, they write:

2) Most high-rises have fire suppression systems (water sprinklers), which further prevent a fire from releasing sufficient energy to heat the steel to a critical failure state;

True enough as far as it goes, but it omits one critical detail: when WTC-2 (the South Tower) collapsed, it took the water mains with it, and thus there were no sprinklers running in WTC-1 and WTC-7 to prevent the fires from spreading.  As a practical matter, I suspect that the sprinklers in WTC-1 and WTC-2 were already not functioning after the plane impacts, but even if they were they would have been insufficient to put out the massive fires in those two buildings.

But after that, the errors and omissions abound.  Next paragraph:

3) Structural members are protected by fireproofing materials, which are designed to prevent them from reaching failure temperatures within specified time periods; and

Ignores the obvious, which is that the impact of the plane debris stripped away a good deal of the fireproofing.  This is the usual Truther nonsense of focusing solely on the fires and not considering the enormous energy released by the two 757s (correction: 767s) when they hit the two towers.

4) Steel-framed high-rises are designed to be highly redundant structural systems. Thus, if a localized failure occurs, it does not result in a disproportionate collapse of the entire structure.

Which ignores the unusual tube-in-tube design of the towers, which were not as capable of shifting the enormous loads they encountered on 9-11 as conventional skyscrapers.

The total collapse of WTC 7 at 5:20 PM on 9/11, shown in Fig. 2, is remarkable because it exemplified all the signature features of an implosion: The building dropped in absolute free fall for the first 2.25 seconds of its descent over a distance of 32 meters or eight stories [3]. Its transition from stasis to free fall was sudden, occurring in approximately one-half second. It fell symmetrically straight down. Its steel frame was almost entirely dismembered and deposited mostly inside the building’s footprint, while most of its concrete was pulverized into tiny particles. Finally, the collapse was rapid, occurring in less than seven seconds.

All the signature features of an implosion?  Sorry, Dr Jones, but I have watched quite a few controlled demolition implosions of buildings before and there were several missing from WTC-7's collapse on 9-11:

1. No deafening explosions of the shaped charges which (Jones admits) are usually used in controlled demolitions.

2. No prior removal of the glass and other materials which might impede the collapse (not to mention the belongings inside the buiding.

3. No miles of detonation cord as is commonly used to ensure the simultaneous (or nearly) loss of load-bearing supports to the building.

And of course, when it comes to the towers, the usual focus on why the NIST report didn't go past the moment that collapse became inevitable:

Whereas NIST did attempt to analyze and model the collapse of WTC 7, it did not do so in the case of the Twin Towers. In NIST’s own words, “The focus of the investigation was on the sequence of events from the instant of aircraft impact to the initiation of collapse for each tower....this sequence is referred to as the ‘probable collapsesequence,’ although it includes little analysis of the structural behaviour of the tower after the conditions for collapse initiation were reached and collapse became inevitable.”[5]

Gee, I don't know, maybe it's because the collapse became, you know, inevitable?  After that, there are too many variables to really measure, but it doesn't really matter.

Thus, the definitive report on the collapse of the Twin Towers contains no analysis of why the lower sections failed to arrest or even slow the descent of the upper sections—which NIST acknowledges “came down essentially in free fall” [5-6]—nor does it explain the various other phenomena observed during the collapses. When a group of petitioners filed a formal Request for Correction asking NIST to perform such analysis, NIST replied thatit was “unable to provide a full explanation of the total collapse” because “the computer models [were] not able to converge on a solution.”

 If NIST really acknowledges that the Twin Towers came down "essentially in free fall" then bad on them.  As for why the lower sections failed to arrest (they did slow) the descent of the upper floors, it is blindingly obvious: The floors were connected to the exterior and central columns of the building.  As the weight from above collapsed on each floor, it pulled in on the connections until they snapped on the exterior.  Very quickly the exterior portions of the building peeled away from the floors, leaving nothing to support them.  This is why you can see, in aerial photographs of the devastation, large sections of the exterior walls virtually intact.

The references section contains four footnotes from JONES, and one from the ridiculous Bentham paper.  I hope that there will be some vigorous pushback on this article from the magazine's subscribers.

Confronting David Ray Griffin in Osaka

Note: This is a guest post from a JREF debunker who attended a DRG event in Osaka, Japan. As most of you probably know, Griffin generally does not allow himself to get in settings where he will be challenged by people who understand and can debunk the minutiae that the Troofers use to make their flimsy case. I think Mark (Gravy) Roberts, James B, and I would love to get a chance to debunk Griffin in person, but he's smart enough not to get into that situation. So big kudos to Adversity1, who lived the dream. Here's his report, verbatim:

Hey folks.

Went to the David Ray Griffin tour in Osaka today. Something like 50-60 people there. What was interesting here was that the event in Osaka was hosted by the 'people's newspaper', a new left newspaper that has been around since the 1960s. Because of this, the plain anti-semitism of the Tokyo conference could not be so easily put on display. In fact in the book sale area, there was typical anti-war literature and 'vanilla' 9/11 truth literature.

So yeah, I was invited to speak on stage after Griffin made his speech and critique him. Griffin was also critiqued by a left activist previously, which was rather brutal. He was repeatedly shown pictures of airplane parts in the Pentagon, to which he could only double down and claim that 'well if you're going to commit false flag terrorism, you would leave some evidence behind'. So yeah, that's his answer to the Pentagon stuff, that the government planted it. People in the audience were looking at each other like 'whaaaat?' It was awful. So I started yelling out 'what about the body parts??' To which Griffin said that he would get to later. Eventually he did, after skipping over it in one of his uselessly long monologues. His reasoning about all the body parts the coroner found? Well those appeared at the pathology center and there were [U]never any bodies from the plane found in the wreckage[/U]. To which I laughed out loud, quickly opened up my copy of Firefight, found the page where it mentioned BODIES STRAPPED TO SEATS and interrupted again. 'Um, just a brief correction to what you're saying there.' But no, Griffin wouldn't have it. He claimed he had to move on because there was no time. 'Yeah you want to move on because you're lying. SCUMBAG.' To which he had no reply and the whole auditorium got really quiet lol.

So the left activist had already pretty much torn the dude up when he got his chance to speak. He spent his time mostly on the 9/11 comission report, the chairman, Norman Mineta, timeline contradictions etc. I didn't think he was going to get into any real woo, but yeah he did. Claimed again no plane at the Pentagon, then brought up the voice synthesizers. I loled. I think he'd really lost people at this point.

Oh by the way he made his debut at the end of this speech as a Pearl Harbor conspiracy theorist, stating something like the President knew the attack was coming or something. Very political to do in a nationalist Japan where this sort of conspiracy theory is used by the right to imagine away their war of aggression. But this is David Ray Griffin, the most disgusting apologist I've ever personally witnessed.

After his presentation, which was quite accurately translated by Kikuchi Yumi, the so-called 'peace activist' who had invited Griffin to Japan. By the time that I was called up to stage to critique his arguments, however, she suddenly [B]refused to interpret[/B] for Griffin and I. She claimed that she had heard I spoke really good Japanese, so it shouldn't be a problem, and dashed off to the bathroom. Um, well yes I am a professional translator. But there is a huge difference in the field that I translate for (electronics) and the specialist terms that I would need to translate anything about the WTC collapses. Nevertheless, these were the circumstances given to me and I went ahead with my critique, in Japanese.

I opened with the statement that I do believe that there was something called the 9/11 truth movement, and that this included the 9/11 families who helped initiate the 9/11 commission report, writers like Lynn Spencer, Patrick Creed, Rick Newman and others. However, what we are dealing with here in Osaka today is not a truth movement. It does not seek out objective truth. Next, I decided to follow up on the question that Griffin had avoided earlier, pulling out my copy of Firefight and reading the passage on page 373 about not only airplane parts being found, but [B]bodies strapped to seats[/B]. After I read my question in Japanese, I said it to Griffin and he looked at me dumbfounded for like 10 seconds. There was laughter in the audience. It was a really odd moment. Um, so then he responded and said something about how well these are only the accounts of two people and how can you trust that, and if you were going to commit false flag terrorism then you would have to plant some evidence to make it look realistic. I think most people in the audience got the point that he was just ********ting. I was then asked to make all my criticisms and then Griffin would address them later. So I moved onto his point about the 'faked' calls to victims, and quoted from George Papcun, the creator of voice-morphing technology who states emphatically that what Griffin claims is simply not technically possible. Then I talked about how Michael Hess, one of the two witnesses to 'explosions' in WTC7, about whom Griffin had earlier claimed that along with Barry Jennings, 'these two men witnessed the event, and therefore there is no way that they can be lying', had clarified in the new version of the BBC's 'the Third Tower' that what he thought was an explosion was in fact the impact of the WTC tower on the south side of the building. Then I brought up the final statement of the 9/11 Family Steering Commitee which accepted the findings of the 9/11 commission, and then the Jersey Girl's acceptance of the building 7 NIST report (thanks JihadJane!). I believe these were the only points I was able to make in such a short amount of time due to the limits of my Japanese and the need to interpret everything back to Griffin. In response to all of my points, Griffin essentially waffled. He spent something like 5 minutes of his reply on completely random subject matter including claiming that the conspiracy that the truthers allege is equivocal to the 'government's allegations' of an Al Queda conspiracy (even though he refuses to put together a hypothesis of his own!). At least some people in the audience were annoyed by this obvious ********ting and one guy started cat-calling "HEY, you're repeating yourself!" in Japanese, which led to Griffin eventually trying to address my points. Re: Hess, well he's a friend of Giuliani's. Re: the Jersey Girls and the 9/11 Family Steering Committee documents, well one of the Jersey Girls endorsed my book. LOL

So that was about it...it was obvious by this point that even the activists with the 'people's newspaper' who had put the event on, just wanted to put an end to this event and move on. I could tell that at least some of them were by the end extremely critical of what they heard. A few came up to me shaking their heads and laughing afterwards, and those who were already critical felt clearly vindicated.

But before I left the stage, I had a present for Dr. Griffin. I had printed out all 300 pages of Ryan Mackey's critique of his work, gave a brief description of the paper plus an introduction to Ryan Mackey to all assembled before handing it over to a disgruntled Griffin.

With that, the 'people's newspaper' folks ended with a Chomsky quote against the conspiracy theory and closed the event. As people were walking out, I handed attendees copies of a review that a socialist newspaper had done of Hideji Okina's 'The Trap of Conspiracy Theories' which is a pretty concise statement of how these theories are linked to anti-semitism and irrational fear of authority (I should state for the record that I am on the radical left and as such completely opposed to anti-semitism/anti-Zionism). The reception of the article was awesome, people came up and thanked me directly, told me I had done a great job despite being forced to speak in Japanese and I had several longer conversations with people. One person even asked where to download the Mackey paper lol. I think the truth movement suffered a defeat here in Osaka and it's thanks to the (belated) critical inquiry of some of the 'people's newspaper' staff, Griffin and Kikuchi's own complete incompetence, and my limited contribution.

So after this disastrous performance, I went onto stage to confront Griffin one more time. I asked him about his personal correspondence with Hufschmid and Bollyn and other holocaust deniers. He claimed that he had taken Hufschmid's references out of the new edition of his book, but that Bollyn 'is different' and does not deny the holocaust. This is either willful ignorance or a blatant lie. He also mentioned that Hufschmid lives about a mile from him, and that he had been over to his house several times!! 'And he didn't mention anything to you about holocaust denial at those times??' 'No, no he didn't.' Wow. So they are closer than perhaps people here knew.

Anyways over the next week I'm going to try to get video of the event for people to see. I would also like to turn this into a post on Screw Loose Change if possible and call out Kikuchi Yumi for what she is, a smiling face knowingly making excuses for some of the worst reactionaries both abroad and at home.

Endnote from Pat: Great job, Adversity1!

Update from Pat: Jon Gold claims that the Jersey Girls (presumably minus Breitweiser), issued a cleverly worded endorsement of the NIST report on WTC-7 that really was them mocking the report, but unfortunately I cannot confirm this because the Zionist New World Order has blocked my access to 9-11 Flogger. This is important because Patty Casazza and Mindy Kleinberg are clearly the foremost experts in structural engineering in the world and if they're not on board with the NIST report, then it is clear that 9-11 was an inside job.

AE 9-11 Troofer Conference Call

I logged on precisely at 11:00 and found myself hearing that I was the only person on the call. WTF? So I redialed to make sure I hadn't got it wrong and this time I heard that there was one other person in the room. There was a boop, and another Troofer came on from Vegas, the two of them started talking about how much they loved being Troofers. The guy from Vegas claimed he was a Troofer as soon as the second plane hit, but another guy topped it by saying that he was a Troofer from the moment the explosions went off in the basement.

Gage didn't get on for like 10 minutes, and so the lines were open for general conversation. Troy was on and a couple other debunkers were on as well. Troy led with "How many of the hijackers are still alive", and one of the lunatics said that he thought they all were; after all, he's never seen a flight manifest with them on it. Troy or another one asked why they haven't taken their evidence to the cops, and it really got hilarious. One guy said he had, but he got put away for a year, and was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. I remarked dryly, "Imagine that!" and it got even funnier as the Troofers all commiserated with the guy, seemingly indicating that such diagnoses are not uncommon.

Gage got on, and Troy or a guy in Chicago started shouting over him. (Correction, it was the guy in Chicago, not Troy). Gage suggested to a gal that she get on as a moderator and mute all the other callers. Then he realized that would mute him as well, and that he would have to be the moderator. This took some time and there was general chatter.

So we're a good 15 minutes or so into this fiasco, and I decided to call back and see what the current number of people was on this "massive" conference call. There were 23 participants at that point, of which at least four were not sympathetic to Gage and his kooks, and two were Gage and the gal working with him. So out of the entire country, 17 Troofers had called in to lend their support.

Gage claimed to have over 100 architects and engineers "in queue", waiting to have their credentials checked. After that he started launching into his spiel and it got old pretty quickly.

Jersey Girl Falls for Con Man

The Troofers are all excited over Patty Casazza's recent appearance at a Troofer rally where she revealed that some unnamed "whistleblower" met with the Jersey Girls at the side of a road in Maryland and revealed that the government had known all about the 9-11 attacks.



I am amused that Jon Gold, who trumpets endlessly his support for the families, introduces her as Patty Casava. Correction: It is pointed out in the comments that the person introducing Patty is not Jon Gold. Looking at the video, it sure looks like him, but it does not sound like him, so my mistake.

She starts out talking about how the planes should have been intercepted immediately as soon as the transponders were turned off. But later:

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.

The sad thing is that some con man probably did tell them this. Which gives me a renewed distaste for Sibel Edmonds

Screw Loose Change On Calgary Radio

This post will remain pinned to the top today; scroll down for newer content.

I will be on the radio again with my old buddy Rob Breakenridge tonight at 7:00 PM Pacific Time, 10:00 Eastern, to discuss Jesse Ventura's conversion to Trooferism and the ongoing disintegration of the movement. I've been on something like 20 talk shows so far, and Rob is by far the most knowledgeable host that I've discussed the "Truthers" with.

In fact, Rob recently wrote a blog post that I highly recommend about Ventura's appearance on Hannity & Colmes. It attracted the attention of Alex Jones' junior flunky, Paul Watson, so there are around 100 comments from the fruitcakes on that post. Bring your shotgun; plenty of fish in the barrel there.

For those not lucky enough to live in the frozen tundra of Calgary, you can listen to the show here. We will be taking calls after the introductory segment, and Truthers (and Jesse in particular) are specifically invited to call in and challenge Rob and me on any points you like. The call in numbers are 403-974-8255 or toll free, 800-563-7770.

Update: As always when I'm on a radio show, the time seemed to fly by. Rob, as always, was well-prepared and we had a stimulating discussion with the callers, including our old buddy, Troy from WV.

One correction: As the first caller noted, I did blow a detail about Alex Jones. I stated that he believes that the New World Order wants to kill 80% of us so that there will be enough oil to go around. That's Peak Oil, which is believed in by Michael Ruppert. Alex Jones believes the New World Order wants to kill 80% of us because... well, I'm having a tough time figuring that out. It has something to do with enslaving the rest of us, so apparently the 80% who will die are the lucky ones.

Update II: Doh-P in the comments:

Pat why did you lie about the nasa temperatures and say they were up to 1300 degrees?

Cheney in the comments:

As much I think of pat as an idiot, I don't think he was lying. Its most likely he was refering to celcius, like most canadiens do, which is equilivent to almost 2400 degree fahrenheit which was the offical temperature of molton pool detected by nasa.

Here's the 9-11 Research page where you can see the following thermal image and the temperatures:



Wrong again, Doh-P!

The Crackpot Index

Heheh. I didn't know this was around, and it's more geared to physics crackpots, but some of it still applies and it's pretty amusing:

5. 5 points for each such statement that is adhered to despite careful correction.

How many times has Jason Bermas been told that the President's brother didn't have anything to do with security at the WTC? But he can't let it go, because it's such a "Woo!" inducing claim.

35. 40 points for comparing yourself to Galileo, suggesting that a modern-day Inquisition is hard at work on your case, and so on.

Of course, Alex is off the charts on this scale; in an average show he probably cracks 1000 on the index without even breaking a sweat.

36. 40 points for claiming that when your theory is finally appreciated, present-day science will be seen for the sham it truly is. (30 more points for fantasizing about show trials in which scientists who mocked your theories will be forced to recant.)

Kevin Barrett, come on down!

I Question the Timing

Just as the sheeple were waking up to the Alex Jones Deception, this happens:

Troy Palmer Sexton, 36, of Summit Ridge Road, Hurricane, is facing domestic battery charges after carrying his 6-year-old son across a field by one ankle and allowing the child's helmeted head to hit the ground "more than once," according to a criminal complaint filed in Putnam Magistrate Court.

Okay, so I don't really question the timing; that would be doing like the idiot troofers do. I am very disappointed in Troy; given the incident at Riverfront Stadium (Correction: Great American Ballpark), and some of the phone calls he's made, he's clearly got anger management issues. I'm not going to judge him guilty or innocent; let's let the legal system handle it.

In other news, NYC-CAN claims to have found about 7,000 additional signatures; since they only needed about 4,000 more, I'm a little confused about why they asked for an extension of time. Oh, yeah, maybe this has something to do with it:

"First, the federal government has jurisdiction over an investigation into the attacks that took place on September 11 as well as the causes of those attacks. Establishing a local commission to conduct an investigation far exceeds the proper scope and purpose of the petition process of the MHRL (Municipal Home Rule Law). Second, the petition fails to provide an adequate financing plan for the Commission as required by section 37 of the MHRL. Third, the petition's method of designating Commissioners conflicts with state laws relating to the election or appointment of public officers and the residency of public officers, Fourth, the petition overreaches in its attempt to confer a range of law enforcement and prosecutorial powers on the Commission."

On Fictitious Peer Review and Made Up Threats

Pat pointed out previously that one of the "Scholars" debunked their previous idiotic "Elephants"paper, nevermind that the Journal of 9/11 Debunking handled this job months ago. Now one of the original authors of the paper, Robert Moore Esq., writes a letter, basically admitting what a piece of crap the original paper was (yeah, that was some peer review process).

Not only that but Moore points out that Fetzer claimed the author of the paper was threatened, which at the time I was wondering about, considering this lame paper hardly presented a challenge to the New World Order deserving of any threats. Moore states, however, that despite his name being on the paper, he never received any threats.

Needless to say, I was quite shocked at Dr. Fetzer's response to the unsubtantiated claim, especially since my answering machine and email "inbox" remained silent. There were no threats. The whole matter sounded ridiculous.

Before the matter went to far out of hand, I sent off a letter to the founders of st911, which stated that, although I was listed by name at the bottom of the article, I had not received any threats. Moreover, the origin of the threats seemed questionable at best.

They once again demonstrate why you have to use quotes around the "Scholars" for 9/11 "Truth".

Correction: Robert Moore e-mails to point out that he was not listed as an "author" of the piece, but as an "advisor", my apologies if there was any confusion.

Yet Another Researcher

This was taking place at an impromptu memorial where the Marines (correction, Army) recruiter was shot a week or so ago. Watch through to the end; she's a freaking Alex Jones fan jihadi. Note also the part about how "Jooos" own the New York Times.

Nico & Siegel Hit The Post

For their (Correction: See update below) research into Ellen Mariani and her husband, who was one of the passengers on Flight 175. Or should I say "alleged" passengers on "alleged" Flight 175?

How could a retired, 58-year-old deliveryman help plan the destruction of the Twin Towers? The proof, presented as a kind of "gotcha!" smoking gun, is strikingly shallow.

Linked to the Web site is a copy of a deed transferring her husband's real property to Ellen. He took it out on July 26, 2001, 47 days before the trade center was destroyed.

As further "proof" that Louis Mariani - who went by his middle name, Neil - was involved, the Web site posts the lease transferring management rights of the World Trade Center to Larry Silverstein. The lease was taken out two days before Louis Mariani put his property in Ellen's name. Aha!

Yes, I certainly agree that's rather thin "proof" of anything. But I can't feel too sorry for Mrs Mariani; she's a 9-11 "Truther" herself:

The odd thing is that the loonies are picking on Ellen. She has been outspoken in insisting that the government knows more about the attacks than it is admitting. But a source familiar with the groups says they tend to target people who fall short of their extreme anti-Semitic, anti-everything views.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but Haupt and Siegel (who are mentioned by name in the piece) have never displayed any anti-Semitism that I can recall. Indeed, Siegel's name sounds Jewish, although I don't know or care whether he was raised in that faith.

Since it's come up again in the comments, let me reiterate my thoughts on the no-planers. I disagree with them entirely on their views on 9-11. Where I agree with them is that their theories are no more wacky than those of Webster Tarpley, David Ray Griffin, and Dylan Avery. There seems to be this oddball notion among the "mainstream" 9-11 Denial Movement that no planes at the WTC is going to discredit the "roboplanes at the WTC" and "no plane at the Pentagon or Shanksville" theories. As I've said before, that strikes me as quite similar to the man dressed up as Napoleon at the loony bin telling you that the guy pretending to be George Washington over there is off his rocker.

Hat Tip (in the comments): BJ Edwards.

Update: BG (posting as Woo Woo) informs us that neither Siegel nor Haupt wrote the post in question; he's got a copy of the post here. Nico states that the article incorrectly claims that he's been contacting 9-11 victims.

About That Molten Metal Dripping from the South Tower

As we know, Steven Jones considers this a very significant event. Paolo Attivissimo, a terrific Italian debunker, looked into the matter and discovered something very significant. (Correction, Paolo drops by in the comments and notes that he translated the piece, credit goes to Henry62 who co-blogs with Paolo here).

Given these facts, it is very likely that the flow was due to light-alloy aluminum but also to the lead of the batteries, combined with other materials originating from the contents of the 81st floor. This combination of materials, after the failure of the floor, poured onto the 80th floor and from there flowed out from the building face. In my opinion, the weight of the batteries and the weakening caused by the fire on the 80th floor (which compromised the structural capacity of the overlying floor trusses) had an important role in the failure of the 81st floor.

Terrific job of research and analysis by Paolo's buddy Henry62! Highly, highly recommended!

Hat Tip: Ron (Pomeroo) Wieck.

Dylan Eggs On Person Making Death Threats

Was it only yesterday that Dylan wrote these immortal words to Killtown:

Start being a responsible person and researcher.

Because today, one of the more unbalanced 9-11 Denier members issues a threat to Mark Roberts, aka Gravy over at JREF:

Posting on forums is one thing but when you try to break up my family then it crosses the line so here is what I intend to do, I am visiting NYC in the next few months and will be actively seeking out gravy who seems to be the spiritual leader of these loons.

Mark…. I know you read this forum so bear this in mind, one day whilst you are showing people around the city you will see lots of pairs of eyes but one day you will look into a pair of eyes that will be mine and you know instantly that you will never forget my eyes because they will be the last thing you see.

Well, you can probably imagine what happened next, right? Some "responsible person and researcher" probably stepped in and told Jack Chit to cool it down, that death threats on the Loose Change forum were not appropriate, etc. Right?

Uh, no. Dylan said:

He's at Ground Zero, every Saturday.

Yep, they've got a maniac over at the Looser Forum making wild death threats, and Dylan's telling him where he can find his proposed victim.

Now, by way of background, we pointed out a couple weeks ago that JackChit had made an extremely callous and bizarre comment about his ex-wife's death:

I had the exact same problem with my wife, she was always going on about my 911 obsession, I tried to reason with her and to a certain degree she agreed there was something wrong with the official version of events,

She however was not able to comprehend the importance of being active in exposing the truth, it was a bone of contention as she claimed i gave her and the kids no attention which was not true then she left me when i told her that this issue was more important than her insecurities and I was fighting with others to ensure a better life and world for our children.

She took my kids away which broke my heart but luckily (i'm not being callous and would never repeat this to my children) she was killed in a road accident in August last year so i have my kids back and carry on unhindered.

Now, some folks in this thread at JREF suggested calling Child Protective Services or the British equivalent, and apparently somebody actually did it:

Today I had a knock at the door from social services, 2 nice ladies told me that they were acting on an anonymous (cowardly) tip off that my children were in danger, they were not too specific but told me they had to act on all tips so could they come meet my kids. I told them they were more than welcome and after a brief conversation they met with Emmy (9) and Daniel (14).
To cut a long story short they left with the knowledge that we are a happy family with no reason for concern as my kids are happy, well looked after and very healthy.

I said over at the time that there was no reason for that, that it was an overreaction, but apparently it's escalated. I'm pretty sure that JackChit's blowing smoke about doing anything to Mark (who, by the way, is a VERY big man).

Way to be a responsible person and researcher, Dylan!

Update: Perhaps this is not all that surprising from Dylan who has this as his avatar on that forum:



The man who gets shot bears a striking resemblance to Mr Roberts. Correction; as several commenters point out the man is not shot, rather he starts hitting himself.