Ready for a Laugh?

Guess who exposed himself as the peer-reviewer for Steven Jones' Active Thermitic Materials paper?

No, not Snoopy. That would be deserving of some respect. Instead it's that sack of fecal matter inhabiting the hockey jersey, David L. Griscom. Does that seem like a harsh assessment of such a kindly-looking old phart?

Well, Griscom has earned it and more. In a movement not exactly blessed with sensitivity, he came up with the single-most offensive theory put forth by the Truthers: All the passengers on the four doomed flights are alive and living it up in Tahiti.

I envision a similar 9/11 scheme, but one where the passengers boarded under their true names. Indeed, the seat occupancies on all four aircraft allegedly hijacked on 9/11 were very much lower that industry average (averaging 26% of capacity vis-à-vis 71% for all domestic flights in July 2001). So, here I extend my “all passengers survived” postulate to all four 9/11 “hijacked” flights on the notion that this small number of passengers might have been considered by conspirators as the minimum number for public credulity, while at the same time not exceeding the maximum number of “true believers in the cause” willing to accept long separations from their loved ones (sweetened by handsome Swiss bank accounts).

As I have pointed out in the past, the reason these retards believe that somebody could be persuaded to betray their friends, family and country, is because they themselves would jump at the opportunity, provided the Swiss bank account was handsome enough.

So yes, the guy who "peer-reviewed" Jones' paper is a Troofer moron himself. Professor Jones tries to put a smiley face on it:

The reviewer's name is Prof. David L. Griscom. Among his impressive credentials, Prof. Griscom is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a Fellow of the AAAS.

Well, he's certainly an AAAS-hole, Steven. But even the Troofers have their limits, and in the comments, loosenuke points out:

Does his promotion of theories, for which there's no actual evidence, such as 'all passengers survived' and 'the Pentagon was hit by a fighter jet', affect your opinion of his credibility- why or why not?

And JO911S published a letter by Griscom Feb 07; why didn't you mention this?

I think you previously mentioned that Bentam was given suggestions for reviewers; was Griscom one of the people suggested?

Jones does a little shuffle:

I do not think that Prof. Griscom's studies on 9/11 "compromise" him as a reviewer -- he critiqued the paper critically as a scientist, giving (as he said) the authors twelve pages of comments and questions. This scientific thoroughness is unusual in a review (from my experience) -- very unusual.

I do not know how the editors selected the reviewers, and I do not know the name of the other reviewer.

Never mind that he's a nut; his nuttiness wasn't evident in his review of our paper. And the second part is a dodge; loosenuke didn't ask him how the reviewer was chosen, just whether Jones recommended him. Given that Jones used to point out Griscom as an example of another physics professional for 9-11 "Truth", it's not hard for me to guess the answer to that question.

But it gets even better. Jones says he doesn't know who the second peer-reviewer was. Not to worry, the next commenter says:

I do know the name of the second Peer Reviewer, who obviously wants to stay anonymous yet. All I can say is that his reputation is undoubtable, too.

Yeah, I'm sure that if Sitting Bull knows him, he must indubitably be another fruitcake.

Troofer Moron of the Month: David L. Griscom

I have talked about this particular reptile before, but I note he is still active in the 9-11 Troof Movement, posting his support for the nanothermite nonsense over at OpEd News. As you can see, he looks a little like Andy Gump, but his mental ability is more like Forrest Gump.

Griscom holds the distinction of having the single-most offensive theory in 9-11 Troofy Troof. As he wrote:

I envision a similar 9/11 scheme, but one where the passengers boarded under their true names. Indeed, the seat occupancies on all four aircraft allegedly hijacked on 9/11 were very much lower that industry average (averaging 26% of capacity vis-à-vis 71% for all domestic flights in July 2001). So, here I extend my “all passengers survived” postulate to all four 9/11 “hijacked” flights on the notion that this small number of passengers might have been considered by conspirators as the minimum number for public credulity, while at the same time not exceeding the maximum number of “true believers in the cause” willing to accept long separations from their loved ones (sweetened by handsome Swiss bank accounts).

Yep, you or I might consider Todd Beamer an American hero; but in Griscom's alleged mind, he's a co-conspirator living it up in Tahiti on his handsome Swiss bank account.

Apparently our railing about Griscom got through to somebody over at the Scholars for 9-11 Truth and Justice, as I see he is no longer listed on their membership rolls (Who says they don't have standards?). He remains one of the contributors to JONES, however, and of course he's still proudly listed at the buffoonish "Patriots Question 9-11" site; in fact he's the second professor listed (after AK Dewdney).

True to our dictum that idiots who believe in one nutty conspiracy theory believe in another, Griscom is a big proponent of one of the more unusual theories of the 2004 election: That Bush stole Arizona.

Having witnessed suspicious behaviors by poll workers at three of his four precincts, John Brakey launched a 1,000+ hour audit of the voting at precinct #324, and called on David Griscom for assistance in analyzing the voting records.

Eventually, the investigative duo uncovered a pattern of poll-worker fraud, and Griscom was able to use simple gambler’s odds to prove that the probability of seven different irregularities being committed exactly 11 times each, was less than one chance in 20 million if they were seven random accidents due to poll-worker incompetence.

Hooo-boy do the Troofers love that "one chance in 20 million" crap. Never mind that Bush won Arizona by ten percentage points as all the polls had predicted, and that Kerry did not campaign here significantly.

Griscom contributed a couple of comments to a Troofer article on OpEd News which is the reason he came onto my radar screen again.

David L. Griscom Wins A Debate--Against Himself!

Hosted by Holocaust Denier Kevin Barrett, and with a prize donated by... wait for that one.

Okay, so Barrett and Griscom, two of the slimiest toads in Trooferdom set up a debate challenge. 
Griscom, known mostly to us as the guy who posits that all or most of the passengers on the four doomed flights are living it up in Tahiti with handsome Swiss bank accounts, offered to debate anybody who had an a$$hole index of at least 50.

Since Griscom is the only person who has pinned the meter on that particular index, it turns out that nobody else qualified.

But it gets better, much better.  Griscom appeared on Barrett's radio program to accept his major award, during which he gave his physics evidence:



He's a typical drooling senile troofer; I particularly like that his strongest "evidence" wrt WTC-7 includes the fact that it came down into its own footprint (absurd I know) while his strongest evidence on the Twin Towers includes that "beams" (really columns) were ejected hundreds of feet outside their footprints.

Perhaps even better is that the debate offered a $1000 prize (to be donated to the charity of the winner's choice) .  Given that the judges were those buffoons who actually listen to Kevin Barrett's radio show, I have little hope that even if they had waived the a$$hole index requirement, that any debunker could win.

But better still is who put up the money.  It turns out to be ANETA, which stands for Association for 9-11 Truth Awareness, run by Rick Shaddock,  Looks like it's a serious lobbying firm, on K Street in DC no less, the address for major national lobbying firms.  But of course it's just some frigging drop box for letters.

Shaddock came to our attention about four years back; he was one of those experimenters who have provided us with much amusement.  His experiment was to drop a concrete block on another concrete block from five stories up to "prove" that the concrete could not have been pulverized on 9-11.

Shaddock appears to be a big-time phony himself, as pointed out by Muc at JREF. 

There is the Rick Shaddock we (barely) know who, according to his Linkedin profile, did a Master in Education at the "Maharishi University of Management" (with a thesis on "Critical Thinking, Open-Mindedness, and EEG Coherence in Meditating Students"), a BS in Computer Science at Colgate University and an "online course for developing and managing real estate" at Trump University.

Then there is (or better: was) a Dr. Rick Shaddock with a similar looking resume who, in 1984, also did a Ph.D. in Computer Science at the obscure "Central International University" in Los Angeles (dissertation: Relational database management training methodologies - not available anywhere). Actually the university is so obscure that you can only find it in a number of business listings, most of which point to a "Ste 530" (a PO Box, I guess) in an office building at Wilshire Blvd. It also has another address at 1000 University Manor, Fairfield, Iowa which - and now it's getting entertaining - is also the address of a PO Box of Rick Shaddock's CI Corp. What are the odds? I bet the telephone number of the university - if it still exists - leads to an answering service. At one point they even had a rather crappy and fake looking web site, which linked to an apparently never realized alumni site whose domain was coincidentally registered over Shaddock's "Cosmic Internet Registration".

Need a Ph.D.? Just make up your own university.

There's a third Dr. Shaddock who finished his Ph.D. in the same year as the above (1984) at the equally obscure California Technical University. Actually I can only find a high school by that name, and it appears to be defunct.

There also is another Shaddock who did his Ph.D. at "C.I.T.", which I guess is supposed to create the impression that the university was Caltech.

And there's the lab coat wearing computer scientist (Frede-)Rick Shaddock who did his Ph.D. at Westmar University in Iowa, also in 1984.

There's the 1997 version of Rick Shaddock who was a "PhD candidate in Computer Science" at an unnamed institution. The 1998 Shaddock who had finished his Ph.D. in Computer Science. The year 2001 Shaddock who was currently working on his "PhD dissertation in Computer Science" (title: Database management methodologies, and EEG brain wave correlates - not available anywhere). The 2002 Shaddock who finally had earned back his Ph.D. - institution still unknown. And the 2014 Shaddock who is currently working on a Ph.D ... again (see above quote).

Missing The Point

Arabesque finally notices that David L. Griscom is a slight embarrassment to the 9-11 "Truth" Movement.

Now granted, Arabesque is trying to clean up the more unsavory elements of the fruitcake brigade. But get this:

Now what's interesting is that within the same month that this article was published, we have SLC pointing it out... The article came from Griscom's homepage. So within two weeks, someone found the article and forwarded it to SLC and it was then ridiculed.

Yes, and for something like 17 months nobody did anything about it. I brought it up quite a few times. As for "somebody found the article and forwarded it to SLC", I don't recall how I came across Griscom's nutty paper, but my first guess is that I got it from Nico's news aggregator, which used to have a watch for 9-11 Conspiracy Theory tags. From the way Arabesque talks about it, this was some sort of operation that we planned to discredit the kooks.

We don't have to work at that part; they give us plenty of material without our having to expend significant effort. And the idea that Griscom's reputation can be rehabilitated by taking down the paper is silly; he's radioactive and so are the others who rely on him for crediblity, including Steven Jones:

David Griscom's Latest Hypothesis

You can tell David L. Griscom's a serious scientist, because he's careful to call it a hypothesis and not a theory.

Is he a CIT-head?

I have previously prepared a PowerPoint (available on request) based on eyewitness reports and the officially released Pentagon-security-camera frames that supports a hypothesis proposed by others that the Pentagon was struck on 9/11 by a smallish twin engine aircraft superficially resembling the a Boeing 737, 757, or 767. Most probably the specific aircraft type was Cold-War-era Navy A-3 converted to an unmanned air vehicle (UAV). UAVs are commonly referred to as “drones.” According to eyewitness reports, this second aircraft arrived at the Pentagon simultaneously with American Airlines Flight 77 (AA-77) but from a different quarter, at higher speed, and at lower altitude. Thus, most witnesses caught a glimpse of one or the other of the two planes, but not both. The expanding fireball of the A-3 impact then distracted everyone from noting (or correctly interpreting) the escape of the Boeing 757. In this analysis of the Pentagon attack, the passengers and crew of American Airlines Flight 77 (AA-77) would have escaped unscathed.

Is he a pod person?

So I reasoned that that both UA-175 (#N612UA) and AA-11 (#N334AA) took off on the morning of 11 September 2001 as unmodified Boeing 767s that had been continuously in the possession of their original owners. However, the plane that actually struck WTC2 was captured on film and digital video cameras by many dozens of individuals – and widely-published frames from these films (some even appearing on magazine covers) show the impacting aircraft to have unmistakable external modifications.

Or is he a bumbler?

Returning to the proposed ruse, I asked myself: Would it have been possible to fool the radars into missing two aircraft swapping places? Actually, the answer might have been “No” ...were it not for one thing: AA-11 turned off its transponder at a convenient time to cover up its possible substitution for a drone not possessing a transponder. This switchoff was done at point and time D on Slides 2 and 3, respectively – i.e., just before the two aircraft would have met near point E in my scenario. An aircraft’s transponder sends high-strength signals (so-called “mode C returns”) back the radar installations with encoded data specifically identifying the aircraft in terms of a four-digit number assigned by the air traffic controllers and giving its precise altitude based on an on-board airpressure altimeter. The “primary returns” (small triangles in Slide 3) represent reflections of the radar pulses off the skin of the aircraft, which bounce back to the radar receiver as signals very much weaker than those from the aircraft’s transponder ...and carrying no information about the aircraft’s identity. These weak primary returns are susceptible to large statistical errors when an attempt is made to extract altitude data from them (note scatter in triangles in Slide 3).

Nevertheless, as suggested by the bold arrows that I have added in Slide 3, the NTSB primary-return data appear consistent with actual detection of an unknown aircraft climbing to 30,400 ft and there meeting AA-11, which in turn promptly begins to descend.

Well, actually he's all of the above, and more. Believe it or not, Steven Jones' favorite peer reviewer believes in a CIT-like hypothesis for Flight 175:

Specifically, what I see in this film is a super-fast aircraft much nearer the camera than to the WTC, which pulls out of a steep dive practically simultaneously with the 767 attacker seen striking WTC2, banks sharply to its right, and disappears going away from the camera (in the general direction of the WTC). The object I am describing here has been widely noted but is generally spoken of as being a bird. However, no bird known to man is capable of flying laterally into our field of view and then turning away and disappearing in the distance in a total elapsed time of less than a second! Yet this is exactly what we see in Slide 6! It seems quite possible that this may be the very same “bird” as the one captured flying west to east just north of the World Trade Center just 14 seconds later (see the following video and Slide 7):

Good news for the family members: Griscom no longer believes that all the passengers survived.

In earlier versions of this hypothesis, I supposed that all passengers were co-conspirators, who would have been sent on their separate ways to tropical islands or mountaintop retreats of their choices. Subsequently, it was suggested to me that the head conspirators might not have had complete trust in everyone privy to the conspiracy. Thus, while promising a cushy “witness protection program” to every co-conspirator ordered to board one of these flights on the morning of 9/11/01, it seems very possible that the leaders shunted aside and murdered those they considered less trustworthy. Moreover, on study of the occupations and travel priorities of some of the people on the passenger and cabincrew lists of the 9/11 “hijacked” jetliners, I now believe that a number of innocent people were allowed to board these flights as well ...and that all of these innocents were murdered.

(Italics in original)

Well, as you can see, David Griscom is a very serious and diligent researcher. I can readily believe that his 12 pages of comments and suggestions on the nanothermite paper improved it immeasurably. Note to commenters: Don't talk about the microspheres! I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it.

Pathetic, Dr. Jones

I have a lot of respect for Mormons. I live in Arizona where there are a fair amount of them, and one of my early bosses was a Mormon. I have a couple of Mormon clients right now. As with any other group that you come in contact with there are some that are bad people, but at least my impression is that the Mormons I have known have been above average in the Boy Scout virtues--trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly....etc.

And then there's Dr. Jones, who gets a bonus beyond that because he's a physics professor. Now as it happens I went to college intending to major in physics, and quite frankly I couldn't cut the upper level material in the subject and had to switch majors. So I have even more respect for physics professors.

And yet I have very little respect for Dr. Jones. Here's a very sad clip of him talking to somebody at the Vancouver conference, and he pulls the ultimate nutty professor routine of claiming he's got some real backing for his position. And whom does he show on his laptop?



Top left, David Griscom, introduced by Jones as a physicist. Griscom has managed to stake out the most offensive territory in 9-11 Truth, as we have discussed with his "no passengers" theory.

I envision a similar 9/11 scheme, but one where the passengers boarded under their true names. Indeed, the seat occupancies on all four aircraft allegedly hijacked on 9/11 were very much lower that industry average (averaging 26% of capacity vis-à-vis 71% for all domestic flights in July 2001). So, here I extend my “all passengers survived” postulate to all four 9/11 “hijacked” flights on the notion that this small number of passengers might have been considered by conspirators as the minimum number for public credulity, while at the same time not exceeding the maximum number of “true believers in the cause” willing to accept long separations from their loved ones (sweetened by handsome Swiss bank accounts).

But, you know, despite his theory being utterly offensive, Jones has to point him out top left, because Griscom is the only other physics professor dumb enough to embrace the 9-11 nuttery.

Bottom right, but introduced first is Graeme McQueen.

Like Stuart Rees, Canadian academic and peace activist Graeme MacQueen has also been a pioneer of peace studies.

Okay, one of the hard scientists of the 9-11 Scholars for Truth, Justice, and the American--errr, sorry, he is a Canadian, right? And actually McQueen does not belong to either of the Scholars groups, which is one of his greatest qualifications.

The token female is a grad student named Laurie Manwell, who published the risible psychological study of why people resist embracing 9-11 Denial (big hint: because it's retarded) that James took on. That said, from the brief video evidence presented by Jones, she is clearly so far Miss January-December 9-11 Truth so far.

Greg Jenkins caught our eye before as the physics PhD who faced off against Judy Wood a few months ago, and whose contribution to JONES so far consists of a paper against her Star Wars Beam Weapon from space. Once again, I'm impressed with the degree but gotta wonder what he's doing here.

Kevin Ryan--chuckle--I mean, nobody out there has not made up their minds on The Waterboy to the point where I can change them, right? He's a joke, but he's one of the supposed whistleblowers, so they can't abandon him completely.

And David Ray Griffin, whose major qualification is that he's actually written five terrible books on 9-11, and whose minor qualification is writing a terrible book on reincarnation, apparitions and mediums.

Troofers Are Not Nuts!

So says nutbar Alex Floum. As evidence, he points to some famous people who are "Truthers", including:

Lt. Colonel Guy S. Razer, who lives in a tent and gets HBO.

Major General Albert Stubbelbine (actually Stubblebine), the man who tried to walk through walls (unsuccessfully of course) by concentrating his mind.

Dr David L. Griscom, who thinks the passengers on board the four planes were all paid off and are living in Tahiti, drinking Pina Coladas.

So don't call them nuts! They're nutbars!

NIST WTC 7 Reactions

Popular Mechanics, who've been at this longer than we have:

World Trade Center 7 Report Puts 9/11 Conspiracy Theory to Rest

I wish! Unfortunately the kooks will find one word in the 1000 pages of discussion and calculations to continue their irrational belief in controlled demolition.

Mike (Tofu)Berger of 911truth.org lives down to my expectations:

"Their explanation simply isn't sufficient. We're being lied to."

Translation: "Nobody will buy my crappy Improbable Collapse video!"

Alex Floum shows that a law degree doesn't necessarily indicate brilliance:

NIST said that WTC 7 fell at 40% slower than freefall speed. But it collapsed alot faster than it would have if the structural supports were not all blown away at the same instant. 40% slower isn't very impressive -- that's like arguing that a rock falling through concrete 40% slower than a rock falling through the air is perfectly normal.

Never mind that for the last seven years, Troofers have been talking about how the building fell faster than freefall speed (sic). Alex even cites nutbar supreme David L. (The Passengers are living it up in Tahiti) Griscom.

A Troofer encoded the press conference and you can watch it all here.

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.

Zwicker Endorses CIT

Gee, if a Steering Committee Member of 9-11 Troof dot org supports it, maybe there's something to this CIT nonsense. Or maybe the fruitcakes at 9-11 Troof dot org are just as nutty as the fruitcakes at CIT?

Update: Troy joins CIT!


I mean, if they can convince Troy, that's it! I'm getting my Ameros and heading to Tahiti to drink mai-tais with David L. Griscom!

Why They're 9-11 Deniers

Terrific post by Neighborhood Rationalist:

Organizations like al Qaeda leave their indelible mark wherever they go. 9/11 deniers are required to pretend that those marks are just Western operatives covering their own tracks – an obvious delusion to everyone who has seen it in action, knows its members, and knows those who are tempted by it and any other extremist organization. To me, this is the key – 9/11 deniers flatly deny virtually every relevant event in the lead-up to 9/11. They deny that centuries of geopolitical events ever occurred. To them, history begins at the Balfour Declaration, crescendos when Ronald Reagan begins supplying anti-Communist rebels in Afghanistan, and ends when George Bush plants bombs in the North Tower and scampers off in a black helicopter. Between these pockmarks on the historical landscape there are thousands of religious ideologues, millions of oppressed victims of colonialism, and countless strategic opportunists struggling to guide human affairs to their own ends. 9/11 denier history is the shallowest history of all, one that requires them to reject the needs, desires, machinations and schemes of billions of people across centuries. 9/11 denial is reality denial.

I would just add that his emailer said this:

As I'm sure you are aware, Holocaust Denial is the belief that the Holocaust simply did not take place, that the event did not occur.

Actually Nizkor notes that there are three main elements of Holocaust Denial:

1. Deny the number (five to six million Jews exterminated).
2. Deny the plan (Nazi attempt to destroy the Jews)
3. Deny the method (many by gassing, although plenty were shot or died of starvation/privation).

Now, impose that template on 9-11. Some Truthers deny the number (for example, David L. Griscom with his "all the passengers survived" hypothesis). Almost all of them deny the method (collapse of the buildings caused by fire and structural damage), and the plan (Al Qaeda and 19 hijackers).

Yes, You Are Wrong

The Troofers try to shame me:

Would you admit you were wrong? Would you apologize to all of the families you have disrespected? Would you apologize to all of the first responders you have disrespected? Would you apologize to all of the sincere members of the 9/11 Truth Movement you have slandered, harassed, and/or threatened? Either by directly taking part in these acts, or by promoting them? Would you apologize to the 9/11 Truth Movement for trying to paint us all as crazies by focusing on the fringiest of the fringe?

The families we have disrespected? You must have us confused with David L. Griscom, who believes that many of the passengers on the four flights are still alive and living it up, courtesy of a fat Swiss bank account. Or perhaps David Ray Griffin, who still cannot let go of "Mom, this is Mark Bingham?" Or Dylan Avery, who talked about how one of the parents of a Flight 77 victim "sent his son off to die?" Or Cosmos, who doesn't believe that his "Uncle" Mickey was a hero on a hero flight?

The first responders we have disrespected? Maybe he's talking about Jason Bermas, who said, "Absolutely the firemen have been paid off?" Maybe he's talking about the new Ed Asner motion picture "Confession of a 9-11 Conspirator", which opens with a (fictional) fire chief confessing that he helped cover up the controlled demolition at the World Trade Center?

The fringiest of the fringe? Let's see, is he talking about Patty Casazza, who thinks that the government knew the time, date and targets of the attacks?


Is he talking about Bob McIlvaine, who thinks his son was blown up before the planes hit the World Trade Center? (Start about 7:10):


Is he talking about David Ray Griffin, the "guru" of the 9-11 Troof Movement, who believes that the families of the victims on Flight 93 were duped by voice-morphed actors playing their loved ones? Is he talking about Troof Movement superstar Richard Gage, who believes Muslims had nothing to do with 9-11? Is he talking about Jim Hoffman, who thinks the thermite was located inside the ceiling tiles?

The problem here is the notion that once you strip away all the nonsense, that there's anything really worth arguing about. If you accept that the hijackers were 19 pissed-off Muslims under the command of Khalid Sheikh Mohamed and Osama Bin Laden, and that there was no controlled demolition and that Flight 93 was not shot down, what's left to debate? If you want to argue that the warnings should have been sufficient and that the attacks could have been prevented but weren't because of incompetence, go right ahead. I disagree, as does Lawrence Wright and virtually everybody else who's looked hard at the evidence, but it's not a completely "fringe" position.

Ah, but there's the rub. Even the supposed reasonable "Truthers" don't believe that; it's just a bit of camouflage. They want to argue incompetence so they can turn around and argue that nobody could be that incompetent, and therefore the government had to know and so we're right back in conspiracy cuckoo land. Pardon me for not accepting your premise; in my opinion that's every bit as crazy as TV fakery and voice-morphing.

Everybody's On Their Side

Commenter Greg wanted us to look at this new site by George Washington (aka Alex Floum). It's just "Patriots Question 9-11" with some of the more questionable people removed. But you know how it is, the fruitcakes interpret anybody with questions about anything from air quality to the NORAD response to supposed warnings missed, as being part of their team.

Floum starts with several of the actual 9-11 Commissioners. We get the usual quote from the Kean/Hamilton book about how the commission was set up to fail (without any acknowledgment that those men do not believe that the commission did in fact fail). Max Cleland's resignation is brought up for the dozenth time, without any recognition that Cleland's concern was that the commission was not looking into the stated reasons for the Iraq War.

Stop it. Just plain stop it. These people are, for the most part, not on your side. They may feel, as Lee Hamilton has stated, that they didn't get everything 100% correct. But that is a far cry from believing that they got it 100% wrong. Floum cites Ron Paul as supporting a new investigation; in fact what he favored in the linked video was reopening the old commission. I assume that would not satisfy the Troofers. And he specifically says he does not believe that the government did it:



The Troofers always conflate legitimate issues (like the generals who lied about when they knew about the hijacking of Flight 93) with their nutty agenda. Here's a classic example:

The head of all U.S. intelligence, the Director of National Intelligence (Mike McConnel) said "9/11 should have and could have been prevented."

But when you follow the link, what do you find?

Director of National Intelligence acknowledged that the terror attacks of Sept. 11, which he invoked to justify expanding US spy powers, "could have been prevented" under existing laws if intelligence agencies had "connected the dots" in analyzing intelligence.

The "Truthers" are like packrats, collecting anything shiny that seems to support their clamor for a new investigation, even when it's contradictory to their beliefs. Let me ask you, Alex and Greg, do you believe that 9-11 "could have been prevented under existing laws if intelligence agencies had connected the dots in analyzing intelligence"? Because if you do, you cannot believe in MIHOP. It's like the numerous warnings that the government supposedly received; how exactly do they fit the narrative that 9-11 was an inside job? Answer: They don't. At worst, if you believe the warnings were real and specific, they indicate LIHOP.

And inevitably, towards the bottom of the list, Alex sneaks in the real fruitcakes, like Bishop Bob Bowman, Walk Through Walls Albert Stubblebine, The Passengers are Living in Tahiti David L. Griscom, etc.

The Most Insulting CT Yet?

Lord knows, I thought Dylan was insensitive, but this guy makes him look like Richard Simmons. David L. Griscom, a retired research physicist, has come up with his own rather unique theory.

An underlying postulate, or working hypothesis, of my earlier Pentagon model was that the passengers on AA-77 volunteered to feign their deaths in return for cushy “witness protection” programs. This concept is not original to me. It was explored by the CIA in the early 60s as a component of a scheme to fake the shoot-down of an American airliner over international waters as a justification for invading Castro’s Cuba. “The plan [Project Northwoods] was to replace said aircraft with an identical drone, flown by remote control, and land the original plane at an [Air Force] base where passengers, boarded under prepared aliases, would be evacuated. The drone would then fly the route and when over Cuba, emit a distress signal before being destroyed by radio signal.”

I envision a similar 9/11 scheme, but one where the passengers boarded under their true names. Indeed, the seat occupancies on all four aircraft allegedly hijacked on 9/11 were very much lower that industry average (averaging 26% of capacity vis-à-vis 71% for all domestic flights in July 2001). So, here I extend my “all passengers survived” postulate to all four 9/11 “hijacked” flights on the notion that this small number of passengers might have been considered by conspirators as the minimum number for public credulity, while at the same time not exceeding the maximum number of “true believers in the cause” willing to accept long separations from their loved ones (sweetened by handsome Swiss bank accounts).

Yep, that's right, this toad believes that all the passengers were paid off. Todd Beamer and Jeremy Glick are probably sipping Pina Coladas on Tahiti right now. Simply disgusting!

Update: PDoh in the comments: Hey if someone offered me 10 million quid to disappear to some tropical paradise and relax on a beach all day with fit women I would take it.

Perhaps you are missing what they would really have been given the 10 million pounds for; complicity in the murder of thousands of people. Then again, maybe this is why the "Truthers" are so easily convinced? After all they'd take the money if it were offered to them.

He's also a 2004 Election kook, which confirms my already low opinion of Fitrakis, Freeman and their ilk.

Steven Jones' Latest Latest Research

Apparently his discussion of earthquake machines is off for now, being not quite half-baked. Instead, he's focusing his efforts on "free energy"; the crackpottery formerly known as perpetual motion. Get his breathless regurgitation of a fruitcake claiming to have stopped his studies of a new device after being visited by the men in black:

This last week was a nightmare for me, you have no idea under what pressure I have been and how many people contacted me, warnings that I should keep quiet... and in the end, yesterday, I had a personal visit after leaving my day to day job.

I had the impression that I live in a free country but it was demonstrated that anything is possible, we will never move forward.

Of course that is a very vague discussion that could mean anything. But another Truther has more on the miracle machine:

Romero had seemed very sincere and open about his device. It was also a hard slap in the face to everyone who had been preparing to replicate the setup. Forum members had invested their time getting ready to replicate, sacrificed materials in order to fabricate rotors/stators, and even spent their hard earned money purchasing components. As Romero stated in one of his posts, the device was not cheap to build. He expected the cost of a slightly larger scale version of the device to cost around one thousand dollars.

Yes, you heard that right, ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS!

The same guy posts a link to this very entertaining film:


I love the guy who created the monster wheel. Like a ten-foot wheel wouldn't have been enough to demonstrate the concept. If you look carefully, you'll see it's just an extension of this:

The idea is based on a child's see-saw or teeter-totter. I'm sure most of us remember that if two children of the same weight got on one of those, but one moved closer to the middle while the other sat out at the end, that the former would be lifted in the air. So it makes sense that if you have extended weights on one side of a wheel, and the weights move in after they reach the bottom, that the wheel would turn. But the diagram above also shows the design problem; as you can see there are only four weights doing the work on the right side, while there are 8 weights being pulled upwards on the left.

Note as well that although the story ends with the wheel still spinning, there is no mention of it doing any practical work, like generating electricity.

In fairness to Jones, the one he's pushing seems more like the guy who charges batteries and then uses them to run the motor which charges more batteries....

But of course I don't want to spend the whole post on perpetual motion, as fruity as it is. No, we're still on 9-11 Truther idiocy around here, so check out the post on Jones at Troof Action. Our own Brian Good starts out well:

With four months to go before the anniversary, does he really think this is the best strategy for bringing good publicity to nanothermite?

I wouldn't be surprised if there are hairy hominids running around in British Columbia, but I don't think they're the best use of my time right now.

Note as usual the focus on PR, not the actual topic at hand. It's not whether perpetual motion or earthquake machines are nutty, it's whether they will make the Truthers look nutty.

But being Brian Good, it's only a few pages more before he indulges his inner lunatic:

Dr. Jones is certainly entitled to look at anything he wants to on his own time.

Frankly I wish he would look at the possibility that high-tech secret weapons were used on the twin towers, because I've never been able to see how gravity, conventional explosives, thermite, or nano-thermite could have pulverized the concrete floors of the twin towers in mid-air. I can't help wondering if Dr. Wood's incompetent assertions about exotic weapons was intended to make the whole field unpopular.

Yep, as we have noted in the past, Richard Gage is every bit as crazy as Judy when it comes to the "missing floors" and "pulverized concrete", and PetGoat Good isn't about to abandon Box Boy.

And Victronix isn't about to abandon Jones:

Even if Steve were investigating the idea that politicians might be reptiles from another planet, he is ultimately a scientist -- has been for his entire career -- and he would conduct an experiment and discover that the hypothesis had no basis, and move on. He doesn't just make fantastic assumptions and then publish them on a blog and say "it must be that way!" (ala David Griscom). Steve conducts research.

But isn't that the problem with reptilian theories--that there's really no way to test it?