Paula Zahn on Anti-Semitism and 9/11 Conspiracy Theories

I hate to knock Pat's post off the top, so please, when you are done reading this, scroll down and read his last post, but since this is appropriate to the topic, I didn't want to wait anymore to post it. CNN's Paula Zahn recently interviewed some of the 9/11 deniers that we discuss here, including Chris Bollyn, and did a segment yesterday on it. The full transcript of the show, which also includes 9/11 denier personality Eric Hufschmid, can be found at CNN.com.

ZAHN: We have all heard some absolutely incredible 9/11 conspiracy theories. The web of course is full of them. But tonight we're bringing one out that feeds on racism out in the open. We were absolutely shocked by one recent poll that found out that one in every three Americans believe the terror attacks were not the work of America's enemies, but some sort of inside job. And Deborah Feyerick found a smaller percentage who believe an even uglier theory.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This 9/11 attack was not by 19 Arabs. It was not by Muslims.

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They talk about a Jewish plot.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everywhere you look you find a Zionist agent.

FEYERICK: A conspiracy by Zionist Israeli intelligence or by Zionist moles in the Bush administration allegedly calling the shots in the Middle East. Websites, magazines, documentaries, radio programs, dozens of them disputing the fact that al Qaeda was behind the 9/11 attacks.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was done by a group of Zionists.

FEYERICK: Are you suggesting that al Qaeda had nothing to do with it, that this was all part of a large conspiracy, Zionist or otherwise?

CHRISTOPHER BOLLYN, WRITER: Al Qaeda is in my opinion -- has been exploited. I question whether such a group even exists.

FEYERICK: Chicago writer Christopher Bollyn is one of the conspiracy theorists.

BOLLYN: I believe that there are Israeli elements that are connected to the Mossad, that are involved in this attack.

Holocaust Denier Hosting 9-11 Accountability Conference!

(Welcome Little Green Footballs, Hot Air, Solomonia, Damien Penny Dodgeblogium and Blogmeister USA readers)

Okay, it's finally time to take the wraps off this story, which is so big that it's being broken not only on Screw Loose Change, but at the New Times, a Phoenix arts and entertainment weekly that does the best investigative journalism in the State of Arizona.

The Deniers are holding a 9-11 Accountability Conference in Chandler, Arizona from February 23-25. Many of the biggest names in 9-11 crackpottery will be speaking at the conference, including Steven Jones, Kevin Barrett, the Loosers, Sofia of 9-11 Mysteries, Alex Jones, Robert Bowman, Webster Tarpley, and Dave Von Kleist. About the only Deniers who won't have a platform are the no-planers and Star Wars Beam weapons crew, like Judy Wood, Morgan Reynolds and Uncle Fetzer. The head of the local chapter of the ACLU, Alessandra Soler Meetze, is supposed to be on a panel with Barbara Honnegger; I don't envy her that honor.

Scores of lesser 9-11 Denier lights are also supposed to appear, including Luke Rudkowski, Les Jamieson, Jim Marrs and Jack Blood. Phoenix talk radio personality Charles Goyette, who sandbagged the Popular Mechanics guy on his show will also be in attendance.

And they're all going to look like buffoons, because they didn't check out the guy who's heading up the conference. The Conference Director is Eric D. Williams. And Mr Williams is, to put it mildly, a rather interesting gentleman.

He's written a couple of 9-11 Denial tracts (calling them books would be an exaggeration. He also recently completed a work of Holocaust Denial that is staggeringly awful. (Scroll down to The Puzzle of Auschwitz).

Note that he has recently added a "disclaimer" about his book, knowing that his Holocaust Revisionism was going to be highlighted in the New Times article:

Disclaimer about my The Puzzle of Auschwitz book:

Holocaust >noun 1. destruction or slaughter on a mass scale. 2. (the Holocaust) the mass murder of Jews under the German Nazi regime in World War II.

Deny >verb (denies, denied) 1. refuse to admit the truth or existence of. 2. refuse to give (something requested or desired) to.

First, and foremost, it is all well known fact that the numbers of the 6 million Jews said have been killed in Concentration Camps have come down to around 1 million. Does that make the people who have presented these numbers a Holocaust denier? NO. I agree that something horrible happened to many people in WWII, but not only to the Jews. But after my own visit to Auschwitz and my own research, how these people died must be questioned.

That is what this book is for. An open investigation into what did and what did not happen behind the doors of Germany’s Concentration Camps.

Let me also state, that I am not a holocaust denier. Again, I simply feel that there are serious questions that need to be addressed about what did and what didn't happen in the Concentration Camps.

If we accept that we have not been told the truth about 9/11, why do we only stop questioning the official story of 9/11? Days after the events of September 11, 2001, I have questioned everything, including the Holocaust. By questioning the official story of 9/11 does that make me a 9/11 denier? Of course not.

Actually it does, Eric. We call you kooks 9-11 Deniers all the time around here. Is Williams a Holocaust Denier? Well Nizkor.org, which keeps tabs on these kooks has a simple way to tell. They note that there are three main elements to the Holocaust:

the Number: the murder of six million Jews
the Plan: as a central act of state by the Nazis during the Second World War,
the Method: many in gas chambers.

It is not hard to see that Williams denies the number:

First, and foremost, it is all well known fact that the numbers of the 6 million Jews said have been killed in Concentration Camps have come down to around 1 million.

And in his book (which he has made available for free at his website) he also denies the plan and the method. That makes him three for three in the Holocaust Denier checklist.

Be sure to read the The Bird's article as well (the section on the 9-11 Accountability Conference starts about halfway down the page. Steve did an excellent job on this story.

Williams supports his Shoah-shirking claims by attacking and twisting accounts of survivors and legitimate historians, and by citing such discredited sources as the Institute for Historical Review and Fred A. Leuchter, Jr., a hero to neo-Nazis worldwide. Leuchter's shoddily produced "Leuchter Report" rejecting the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz is thoroughly trashed in Errol Morris' acclaimed documentary Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. Interestingly, when this tweeter caught up with Williams via phone, he said he was unaware of both the well-known Morris doc and subsequent scientific tests refuting Leuchter's findings about the use of the poison Zyklon-B at the camp. He also seemed strangely confused when confronted with the fact that he was essentially parroting what many neo-Nazis hold to be self-evident.

Note: The point here is not that some idiot Holocaust Denier is holding a conference. The point is that so many other people who imagine themselves to standing up for the "Truth" would care to be associated with such a character.

Update: Hot Air has the video of the Paula Zahn segment dealing with the convergence of 9-11 Denial and anti-Semitism. Great timing!

They're Still Just Movies, Or Cartoons

Sheesh, these Deniers see something of 9-11 in everything on TV and in the theatres. Here's a guy who's a big fan of the Star Wars series:

Parallels have often been drawn before between this tale that George Lucas wrote into his film saga and true history and even current world events. Lucas has even admitted history’s influence on his scripts. But I would like to point to a little more specific parallel that is not so apparent to us, particularly from a Christian point of view. I would like for you to consider that maybe the Church today is in that scene fighting with a Count Dooku, saber blow for saber blow, just like Anakin was. And like the fictional account, we are headed towards the point when we will have our saber and the enemy’s in our hands with him knelt before us in defeat or possibly the opposite. And like Skywalker, we might have the opportunity to behead him out of revenge instead of justice. But wait a minute, don’t get ahead of me. What about the entire back story involved? Does it apply to our real life situation as well? I propose that not only is it possible that this is the case, but there is great historic precedent that it is.

I think his point is that false-flag terrorism exists. But check out the comments on that post as well:

My first exposure to the concept of the false flag came from The Princess Bride.

And the capper:

Please don't tell me you never watch Scooby Doo cartoons

Every episode involved FFT

9-11 Not That Big a Deal, Says Prof

This extraordinarily stupid Op-Ed in the LA Times has attracted quite a bit of attention in the last few days.

IMAGINE THAT on 9/11, six hours after the assault on the twin towers and the Pentagon, terrorists had carried out a second wave of attacks on the United States, taking an additional 3,000 lives. Imagine that six hours after that, there had been yet another wave. Now imagine that the attacks had continued, every six hours, for another four years, until nearly 20 million Americans were dead. This is roughly what the Soviet Union suffered during World War II, and contemplating these numbers may help put in perspective what the United States has so far experienced during the war against terrorism.

Iowahawk, a very funny guy, took that Op-Ed and parodized it rather well:

Of course, the 9/11 attacks also conjured up the possibility of far deadlier attacks to come. Ooooohhh, booga booga booga. Despite the nightmarish fantasies of the post-9/11 era (e.g. the TV show "24’s" nuclear attack on Los Angeles), Islamist terrorists have not come close to deploying weapons other than boxcutters, knives, guns, conventional explosives, and maybe a little anthrax here and there. And despite the nightmarish fantasies of 1980s slasher movies, these lumbering, inept, under-armed Islamist Jasons and Freddy Krugers can be easily be avoided if we only remember two little rules: (a) do not split up in the woods, and (b) don’t go on a moonlight skinny-dip with the hot blonde chick. A war it may be, but does it really deserve comparison to an existential battle against a demonically-possessed ventriloquist doll?

Restoring My Faith in Higher Education

Earlier I gave modern college students a hard time for their sloppy research, but these students are starting to reaffirm my faith in America's youth (emphasis mine).

Their theory is that explosives planted throughout the World Trade Center - not the burning fuel from the jetliners that crashed into the buildings - brought the Twin Towers down on Sept. 11, 2001.

That proposition was intriguing enough that about 300 people showed up Sunday, some out of simple curiosity, at the Michigan Union in Ann Arbor to hear three speakers explain why they believe the U.S. government - not fanatical Muslim terrorists - was behind the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The crowd dwindled considerably during the three-hour panel discussion, "The War on Truth: 9/11 and Our Civil Rights,'' sponsored by Scholars for 9/11, a national group that says the government's version of the events surrounding the terrorist
attacks is "a pack of lies.''

The three speakers urged the audience to examine all the evidence and ask for an independent investigation of the events surrounding Sept. 11, 2001.

Before the discussion, about 10 University of Michigan student protesters, carrying signs and wearing tinfoil hats, milled about outside the Michigan ballroom, saying they represented a group called Young Americans for Freedom.

"We're here to make a point,'' said Ryan Fantuzzi, vice president of the group. "To show just how absurd these claims are.''

Open Thread

Nothing much interesting out there right now. We do have some pretty big news coming on Thursday, you'll definitely want to be reading then! Feel free to put some links in the comments; anything interesting enough I'll pull out to the front page.

Kook Kucinich On 9-11 Denial

Kucinich starts about 1:06 in with a call for reparations for the Iraqi people. But at 1:27 he dips his toes into the fetid swamp of "truth":

"And finally, our plan is to tell the truth about 9-11 and to tell the truth..."

Unfortunately the video fades out there to get to Eve Ensler and her vagina.

Video found at Age of Hooper.

9-11 Denial As Multi-Level Marketing?

Anybody remember those bumper stickers in the 1980s reading, "Lose Weight Now--Ask Me How!" Well, looks like some of the Deniers are using the same technique. Note the sign that the guy sitting down is partially obscuring? It looks like it reads, "9/11 was an inside job and I can prove it! Ask me how."

Finally a Denier Movie We Can All Enjoy--Maybe?

John Albanese, who put together the snooze-fest Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime is working on a movie that sounds like it won't be a substitute for Sominex.

Disinformation - misinformation - crazy theories - wacky websites - etc, etc, have always been a part of the 9/11 Truth movement, and I simply thought it would be fun to explore this topic - show some humor - and demonstrate our ability to laugh at ourselves.

But unfortunately, it doesn't sound like he's stuck with that approach:

The subject of Disinformation is a serious one. And, as I began to receive emails and support (in the form of leads and information) from many of the most high profile members of this movement - drawing my attention to all of the strange relationships and organized influences currently undermining our efforts - i began to realize just how serious this subject really is.

Because, you see, Uncle Fetzer and Judy Wood aren't just kooks--they're CIA pretending to be kooks!

Worse still, Albanese has another project in the works that sounds dreadful:

When I originally started working on this project i viewed it as a somewhat humorous aside to my more important project, which is the 3 hour revision of "Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime."

Just kill me now.

How To Win Friends and Influence People

I'd guess this guy hasn't read the book. He's upset that Daily Kos Diarists who post on 9-11 Denial get troll-rated and banned over there. But let's let him speak for himself, shall we?

I have even heard the buzz about your particular website, however, I never visited it until today after I heard of more blatant censorship there with regards to important 9-11 related information. I refer specifically to this article posted at 911blogger.com.

Telling somebody who's a big wheel in blogging that you haven't been to his site is not a good way to start. But Mike starts to redeem himself by standing up for Kos' property rights:

Certainly, you have the right to post what you like at your site.

You just know there's a butt-monkey coming, right?

However, at some point, and especially when sites become successful, as you boast about here, you have a duty to protect free speech on an open forum. Unless someone is "flaming" others or otherwise causing trouble, what makes you think that articulate sensible people shouldn't have the right to openly post a forum, which is there exactly for such purposes? You are exactly like those you pretend to loathe so much.

Telling folks they're just like the fascists works every time!

Especially considering the dire circumstances we find ourselves in here in America. When will people like you realize that everything that we despise about the Bush administration sprung forth from 9-11-01....none of it would have been possible if not for 9-11. And yet you continually keep the gate locked. You are either extremely naive, or part of a bought and paid for "controlled opposition".

Suggesting they're on the take will certainly make you new friends.

I urge you to begin by examining the issue of the 9-11 dust and then doing the right thing by giving this issue much needed exposure. Not one person in the country, not even Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, can point to this issue and shout "Conspiracy Theory!" This is conspiracy fact, all laid out in black and white, sometimes in the EPA's own words, and now, 5 1/2 years later, people are starting to die. I refer you to an article published just today in the New York Post.

The dust is a legitimate issue, but of course that's only the thin end of the wedgie that the Truthers have in mind for Kos.

Ain't It the Trooth

Peter Bagge, who did the terrific Hate Comics from the 1990s about a slacker named Buddy Bradley, is now over at Reason Magazine, a libertarian enclave. Here's his latest effort, which definitely concerns conspiracy theories. The part relevant to this blog:


(Click on pictures to see them larger)

Hate (the name appears to refer to the fact that everybody in the comic gets violently angry at times) #3 featured a conspirazoid roommate of Buddy's:



Hoo-boy does that sound familiar?

Truther Radio Wars Continue

It was appears to be the latest in a series of event, RBN "Paranoia" radio is off the air. Their website is down, replaced by a long message about host John Stadtmiller:

John Stadtmiller terrorizes RBN workers - (Menaces workers with firearm at staff meeting, and threatens to send police to workers' home)

I, Wes Perkins, am issuing this public affidavit as a warning to the public and as a protection to myself and my family from an individual who rules by intimidation, threats and fear.

"Don't listen to those crazy people, there's no danger to you here" retorts John and Sandra Stadtmiller as they try to explain away an incident in the summer of 2006 where John brings a gun into a staff meeting. Four eyewitnesses at the meeting verified that John brought a gun into a staff meeting after a short break, and set the gun down on the table, giving it a slight spin as he put it down. "I was startled to see the gun, and didn't know his intentions" states one of the eye witnesses. John and Sandra even blame the publicity of this event on, and continue to harass, a former employee who quit shortly after the incident, even though that employee wasn't even present in the room when this happened. That employee was recently told, "you better lay low". On a second occasion another eyewitness to a separate incident observed John showing off his handgun, and he accidentally dropped it. "That's how people get shot", said the witness.

Geez, when you can't trust your paranoid survivalist radio host, who can you trust?

Why The Hustler Stories?

That's what one blogger asks:

Hustler magazine's latest issue devotes its lead article ("Was 9/11 An Inside Job?") to "new scientific evidence" that the destruction of the WTC towers was an inside job. This evidence from university and industry scientists and engineers, while certainly not "new" in journalistic terms, suggests the towers were likely brought down by controlled demolition.

Hustler's effort comes almost exactly one year after Maxim's considerably longer and more indepth feature of March 2006, which asks "What Really Brought Down the Towers?"

What's going on here? Why has the most important media exposure for the 9/11 Truth Movement come from vehicles for male masturbatory fantasies, locker and bathroom humor, and Charlie Sheen?

It's pretty easy to understand, actually. Hustler is aimed squarely at young white males of below average intelligence. This, of course, is the overwhelming demographic making up the 9-11 Denial movement.

There's a Denier Born Every Minute

This one's particularly bad:

The facts....hmmm ok

The buildings fell at free fall speed after the planes crashed into them.
Each tower had a steel framework that cannot be melted by aviation fuel. It doesnt get hot enough

The first building to fall was from the second plane that crashed, how weird is that.

WTC 7 was demolished it could not have collapsed from the small fire that burnt in it.

There is so much evidence, search on google video, and instead of just listening to the government and believing the crap they come out with like sheep. Make up your own minds after seeing the facts.

Troofer Math

People, people who need calendars....

It has been just over 6 years since the tragic events of September 11, 2001.

Update: 9-11 Blogger took down the post.

Odd Bits

There's a new video over at 9-11 Blogger. The guy uses a lot of the posters from the antiwar book created by the "fake Ranger" himself, Micah Wright, along with some "hook 'em horns" photos of the Bushes and Clintons. But the best part is near the end, when the video's maker presents his heroes. First we get the Loose Change guys, and then comes this:



Hah! Lizard-boy, Son of God himself, David Icke! How nutty do you have to be to take him seriously? Alex Ansary is a new one on me, but it appears that he's a typical internet flake broadcaster; his website has gotten 55,000 hits since July 2005 which definitely marks him as small potatoes.

Meanwhile, I caught a bit of Jason Bermas' show today. He had a filmmaker on the show who had done a movie on the assassination of JFK (claiming, surprise, surprise that George H.W. Bush had done it), but the program ran off onto lots of lunacy. The guy claimed that a Rockefeller was cutting checks to the guards at Auschwitz, that there are no documents ordering the holocaust with Hitler's signature on them, and that's the saner stuff. He brings up the chemtrails issue (Jason interjects the Looser's claim that the government was spraying them over their house in Oneonta).

And in a third bit of quackery, Rick Siegel and Sofia of 9-11 Mysteries are engaged in a dust-up over her use of 9-11 Eyewitness footage in her flick. He seems especially bitter that it ended up as a piece of disinformation:

On this weekend I will show where Sophia cut my work up into disinfo segments. Where she has taken the sound of the North tower pre-collapse explosions and narrates over them over them saying they are the Sorth Tower pre collapse explosions and demolitions.

This of course is the ridiculous mistake in 9-11 Mysteries that I pointed out after watching the movie the first time; it still cracks me up that so many 9-11 Deniers think this is the best 9-11 CT flick with an absolute floater like that in it.

Old Deniers Never Die...

They just become less interesting to talk about. Killtown has a new myspace page that is kickin'. Well, maybe it isn't him, but whoever did it has a good sense of humor.

Meanwhile PDoherty is back in the land of the woo. Although he claimed just before Christmas to have dropped out of 9-11 Denial, it turned out that he was just teasing us, or as he puts it:

Ive always been total truther. My change to skeptic was a ruse to test the jrefers *rse licking abilities.

I guess he didn't get enough tongue from the JREFers? When he announced his dissolution from 9-11 Denial, there were a couple of suggestions that he should be allowed back into JREF. But most of us said no, he wasn't banned for being a conspiracy nutbar, he was banned for breaking the rules of the forum. Over here I still cited him in one of the quotes of the year for 2006, for which he complained.

Judy Wood, Anti-Gravity, and the Search for "Truth"

I found out Judy Wood was on Fetzer's radio show yesterday. Since those two are always good for a laugh I found an MP3 of it and gave it a listen. I was not disappointed. First of all, from a bit where Fetzer is quoting a letter he received from a woman concerning a History Channel documentary on building collapse:

Fetzer: “They had their experts, their structural design engineers and other kinds of engineers such as Mathis Leavy and Wiliam Baker giving their government shill commentary supporting the principles given as the governments official story as to why the towers fell. I have a feeling the same engineer shill experts are wheeled out and recycled for all the PBS and Discovery channel and History channel 9/11 disinformation. pieces“ She herself tries to avoid the words “fell” and “collapse” and “came down” because it certainly looked to her that the towers were blown or blown to kingdom come.

Wood: Yeah, the majority of the material went up rather than down.

Fetzer: Right, pulverization is taking place here.

I am not sure what more I can add to that part.

Later on, Fetzer gives his reason why their theory must be right:

Fetzer:Well Jack White, who is a legendary photoanalyst, who has done brilliant work, not only on JFK but on 9/11 and many other topics that are controversial has developed the principle that the more you are being attacked the more probably that you are right on the money, or getting very close to the truth. So there is like a direct correlation by the extent and severity to how close you are to the truth that they are trying to suppress. And by that yardstick I think that you and Morgan must be really close to being on the money here about the fact that some kind of directed energy had to be to take out the twin towers. There is no other way to account for the phenomena. Which means that we have to look at the possibility that HARP or solar energy or lasers or masers, or even plasmoids may have been employed here.

Wood: Correct.

OK, first of all, I am not sure what he means by "attack". The "Star Wars Death Beam" theory is hardly being attacked by any official sources, it is so silly that it hasn't even been mentioned outside of the conspiracy theory community. Not even Bill O'Reilly has had anyone on his show to discuss this.

The fact that their theories are too stupid for members of their own community, many of whom will believe almost anything to begin with, should hardly be held up as any type of proof. I have a proposal for Wood and Fetzer, why don't they propose the theory that the World Trade Centers were brought down by thousands of Keebler Elves with nail files. That will draw even more scorn and ridicule, proving that hypothesis even more truthier!

He's Baaa-aaack

As we have mentioned before, old conspiracy myths never die, no matter how many times they have been debunked. In a Loose Change Forum thread on the previously mentioned Irish Television cancelling of Loose Change (which they universally denounce as censorship) Mark Roberts asks for proof that NORAD carried out hijacking drills on September 11th. A poster immediately replies with:

CENTCOM whistleblower Sergeant Lauro "LJ" Chavez says "all" the exercises that day were "hijacks."

Oh brother. One more time, and pay attention this time. He is a fake.

It's A Great Day for the Irish!

They're not going to have Loose Change foisted on them!

Your email of 24 January has been forwarded to me. I am responsible for the Programme-Makers’ Guidelines, the complaints processes, etc. Thank you for the information you have provided about the programme “Loose Change”. Our Programmes Acquisitions people who purchased the rights to the programme were aware of the controversy that surrounds many of the claims made in the programme. Their view was that the screening of the film with a suitable introduction which would place the programme in context would be of interest to viewers and would contribute to the debate around the events of 9/11.

I know that you have not requested that the programme be censored or removed from the schedule. However having considered the additional programming that might be required to place “Loose Change” in context RTÉ has decided that these cannot be justified for a programme with a transmission at around midnight and which is likely to be viewed by a very small number of people.

We have decided therefore not to broadcast “Loose Change”.

Woot! Kudos all around especially to JREFer 8Den!

Loosers In the Guardian

In a rather oddball article which focuses on the film's marketing.

There's a futility to arguing with them that even they recognise. "You can't stop this, you can't hold us back," Jason says. "Many outlets have tried to ignore us, but in the end they are all forced to listen to us because their viewers are demanding it." He is right. The exponential growth of Loose Change is gradually forcing the film on the mainstream media. Though it began as an internet phenomenon, its biggest spikes have come, significantly, after the film gained airplay on old media platforms such as Air America and Pacifica radio stations, local Fox TV outlets and on stations around the world, including state outlets in Belgium, Ireland and Portugal. So far though, no British channel has been rash - or as the film-makers would see it, brave - enough to bite.

"This is unlike anything I have worked on," says Tim Sparke of MercuryMedia, which handles international distribution for the film. "It has forced millions of people to question whether they can trust big media, and by bypassing the broadcasters through internet distribution it has altered the media power balance profoundly. With a little money and passion, anyone can make an important film."

The final test for Avery and co is yet to come. They are putting together Loose Change: the Final Cut using an upgraded Power Mac G5 (price $5,000). They have filmed original interviews with Washington players, employed lawyers to iron out copyright issues with borrowed footage, commissioned 3D graphics from Germany, and recruited a theology professor to act as fact-checker and consultant. The end result, they hope, will be seen at Cannes and have a cinema release in America and across the world on the sixth anniversary of 9/11.

Of course there is the usual contradiction between "don't trust the media" and "look at this TV clip" that suffuses Loose Change and much of the 9-11 Denial Movement.

Celebrity Support

The truthers have been making a big deal about getting support from a mystery celebrity. He was supposed to come out of the truther closet today on Alex Jones' show. Well, after much anticipation we find out that it is eccentric director David Lynch.

There is just one problem with this, David Lynch came out as a truther over a month ago. Apparently they are so desperate for celebrity support, that they are having to reuse them. Any day now I am expecting an exciting announcement from Charlie Sheen...

Profiles in Debunking Courage: Counterpunch

We linked to Counterpunch's terrific series of articles debunking 9-11 Denial a couple of months ago.

Today, I listened to an interview with Counterpunch's co-editor where he mentioned that the magazine took some wounds from those articles. I was a little surprised and skeptical, until he said (about 3 minutes into the interview):

"Fifty percent, I would say, at least, of our readers believe to one degree or another, that the Bush Administration was responsible responsible for--orchestrated or was in some other way complicit in the 9-11 attacks."

Now, Counterpunch's readership is not exactly mainstream America; it's well Left of the Democratic Party. But it takes real courage for a newsletter to write so forcefully against a conspiracy theory that half of its readership believes.

More From the University of Minnesota

Adri Mehra, the University of Minnesota drama major, who last week pretended to be a Jenga wielding structural engineer, is back with the second in a series on 9/11. This one appears to be somewhat of a free association assignment from psych class:

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2006, I was dreaming that I was falling.

But this wasn't your easily psychoanalyzed, industry-standard flight of Freudian fancy. In this nightmare, I was plummeting to my death in Lower Manhattan in New York City, near Battery Park and the Financial District.

In this guilt-stricken incubus, I left the top floor of the first World Trade Tower behind and was now hurtling through crisp crosswinds in full freefall, hoping against hope that there would be a Federal Emergency Management Agency net to catch me before I hit the asphalt on Liberty Street.

It was one of the most terrifying feelings I'd ever had, conscious or not.

For a bit more lucid and fact filled article, read the rebuttal also published by the student newspaper:

With all this talk of 9-11 conspiracies and controlled demolitions, it may help to add a few more facts to this debate.

Some people have argued that no plane hit the Pentagon, mainly because of the lack of visible plane debris around the building. However, you have to completely neglect the fact that 89 people saw an object hit the Pentagon, and almost 30 of them specifically mentioned seeing an American Airlines jet. A generator in front of the building was gouged and knocked toward the Pentagon, meaning that something flying in the direction of the Pentagon must have hit it. The American Society of Civil Engineers has also written a thorough analysis of the attack and confirmed that the American Airlines jet is what hit the Pentagon.

As for the crash in Shanksville, if you believe that Flight 93 did not crash there, you'd be ignoring the flight data recorder graphs that show its erratic flight moments before crashing, the cockpit voice recorder (available on the Internet) that details the entire conversation in Flight 93's cockpit by the hijackers, the fact that 95 percent of the plane was recovered and the fact that the remains of all victims on the flight were positively identified.

Paranoia Strikes Deep

George Washington (aka Alex Floum) writes at 9-11 Blogger about us Debunkers:

If you're working for the government or one of its subcontractors to debunk the claim that the government had a hand in 9/11, you are probably young and a winner (If you're a gray-hair, you should read this also).

The "agency" doesn't hire losers. They look for promising young people with proven leadership, scholastic, interpersonal or technical skills. You don't just slouch your way into these kind of jobs. You've already proven yourself to be eager, talented, with alot of promise and potential.

Sheesh, he's got me pegged. You know, except for the young part. Not quite a gray hair, but that's coming.

If you already are open to the idea that 9/11 was aided or orchestrated by elements of the U.S. government, then you may sincerely believe that it HAD to be done for very good reasons.

No, we think that folks who believe 9/11 was aided or orchestrated by elements of the US Government are paranoid kooks who've watched The Matrix a couple times too often.

If you just don't care, because you're making good money or getting a big ego and adrenaline-rush covering up 9/11 truth (you might be getting praise for being smart and important), I don't know if there is any way I can reach you. You probably don't think you'll ever get old and regret what you've done . . . you may think you're immortal and will live forever, or that you could die any day. But believe me, even you are going to get old and have to face it some day and even you are going to look back and realize that you really messed things up by working for the wrong team.

Way, way off the mark. You know, the best debunker I know is a tour guide in New York City. Probably the second best is an occasional libertarian talk show host (not sure what he does for a daytime job).

Look, this is really quite simple, Alex. We're doing it not for the money (most of that seems to be on your side of the fence, with DVDs, books, radio shows and conferences), and not for the glory. We're doing it because you're wrong and we're right, and we're old fashioned enough not to want people to make decisions based on the wrong information.

Is there one congressman or senator who believes your kooky theories? Not as far as I know; Cynthia McKinney's out of office. Ron Paul, maybe. The lack of support among either party should give you a raging clue that maybe, just maybe, you're a kook. That may be painful for you to believe, but then again the Reverend Fred Phelps probably thinks the people opposing him are doing the devil's handiwork.

This essay is based on a series of uneducated guesses about 3 types of disinfo agents. If you have more understanding into government agents than I do, let me know how you think we can reach them. If you yourself are an agent, what would convince YOU to start working for the cause of 9/11 truth and justice?

Oh, you know, like evidence that you haven't pulled out of a bull's rear end. Your side does all the lying here, Alex, from trying to convince people that Wally Miller saw no evidence of a plane crash in Shanksville to claiming that the terrorists weren't on the flight manifests. I haven't seen yet a claim by the Deniers that couldn't be debunked in about ten minutes of poking around on the internet. This is a gigantic fantasy world you've concocted, but it's pure fiction.

And Now For Some "Science"

I finally got around to listening to Fetzer's recent interview of Steven Jones on his radio show. For the most part it is pretty inane, they spend a lot of time talking over each other and basically discussing whose argument less scientific. In this case I think they are both right. This part from Jones, who actually comes off relatively less kooky overall, left my jaw dropping:

Demolitions of buildings using thermite has been, as you pose it, has been done a number of times you see. This is now called thermite arson. And there are a number of buildings that have been destroyed, and it has been proven, that thermite was used to bring down to demolish (unintelligible).

Yeah, sure they have. So you should have no problems naming these buildings and the demolition firms involved.

He later goes on to claim incredibly:

Superthermite is an explosive, it is used routinely now.

Oh really? "Routinely"? Then why is it the only mention of superthermite you could find for your paper was about laboratory research in this area?

Researchers can greatly increase the power of weapons by adding materials known as superthermites that combine nanometals such as nanoaluminum with metal oxides such as iron oxide, according to Steven Son, a project leader in the
Explosives Science and Technology group at Los Alamos.

It later goes on to summarize:

However, researchers aren't permitted to discuss what practical military applications may come from this research.

If the use of this is "routine", one would think you could find an actual example of it existing outside of a laboratory experiment for your "peer reviewed" paper.

A New Theory on WTC 7?

I have to admit I hadn't heard this one before:

While in flight they were informed of the second hijacked plane heading toward New York City. In an interview with ABC News (9/11/2002) Duffy said they flew at supersonic speed. At this rate they could have flown the distance from Otis to New York City in 10 to 12 minutes -- in time to intercept Flight 175. A near interception of the second plane at 9:03 as it was crashing into the South Tower is the best explanation for what happened that day. The fighters fired their missiles -- seconds too late -- hitting the southern face of World Trade Center 7 and the open parking area northwest of the Twin Towers.

Of course this theory ignores that there was no authority to shoot down planes at the time, that nobody saw fighter planes in the vicinity, that nobody died from a missile being fired into WTC 7... you know, all the details that would support this loony conspiracy theory.

Room Temperature In an Igloo, Maybe

Perry Logan likes to say that the Deniers are a bunch of white guys with room-temperature IQs. That may be generous. Check out this thread at Democratic Underground, where yet another maroon brings up the supposed missing hijackers on the flights. When it was pointed out that this would indicate that the airlines were in on the coverup, the poster replies:

You're not making sense.

The lack of a hijacker list indicates that the Airlines are not in on any gov't-lead plot. If they were in on it, they would have concocted a manifest that included the names of all 19 hijackers aboard and promptly handed it over to the FBI. But to their credit, the airlines did no such thing. And the FBI is in possession of no such list.

They're simply being honest. The airlines can't confirm 9/11 hijackers were actually aboard any of the flights, because their records don't show that there were any.

Now let's follow the logic here. If the airlines released the manifest without the 19 hijackers on it, they either didn't notice that there were no hijackers or they did. I suppose it's possible to imagine that the airlines were Bizarro-stupid and said, "Me not see anything wrong with list."

But otherwise, they're at least in on the coverup, right? Oh, yeah, you could take the stance that they bravely released a list of passengers on the flight without including the hijackers in the hopes that somebody would ask about it, and unfortunately there were no stupid white guys in the press who noticed.

The International Man of Nuttery

David Shayler gets an oddball treatment in a Liverpool newspaper:

Talking to him was incredibly interesting – and not just because he reckons he could be bumped off by dark forces at any time, thereby becoming the UK’s own Alexander Litvinenko.

We spoke on the ‘phone because, well, you can’t be too careful. I certainly wouldn’t fancy getting in a car with him – he says he has suffered three suspicious, potentially-fatal road accidents, in 1997 (driver fell asleep), 2002 (rear tyre exploded) and 2005 (dodgy brakes).

Asked about the no-planes quote, he at first denies it:

He has even been quoted (out of context, he protests) in a magazine saying: “Yes, I believe no planes were involved in 9/11 . . . The only explanation is that they were missiles surrounded by holograms made to look like planes . . . Watch the footage frame by frame and you will see a cigar-shaped missile hitting the World Trade Centre.”

And in the next breath endorses it:

“What I am still saying is go onto the internet and look at the footage . . . people have had a go at me saying there were no planes but there is little evidence to show that jets went into the buildings. I’m entitled to say they didn’t and something else did . . . You can make some accurate calculations from Newton’s laws of motion.”

The reporter makes a pretty good joke about Loose Change:

Short Changed, a documentary about 9/11 made by a group of Americans, will be shown at the Casa and then followed by talks by Shayler and Machon on state terrorism and the aims of the 9/11 Truth Movement.

Well even if it's not intended as a joke, it still cracked me up.

And humble? Let me tell you Uriah Heep's got nothing on David Shayler:

Shayler, who worked in MI5’s political and counter-terrorism departments in the early 1990s, says: “I’m not trying to blow my own trumpet but the credibility I add to the movement is enormous.”

Snicker! Snort! Shayler's MI5 background will be a plus to those on his side; the rest will of course assume he's an infiltrator and denounce him.

David Shayler is 41. But will he reach 42? He says: “I believe in a higher power. I have no fear of death” – which may be just as well, as he claims: “There have been three attempts on my life in car crashes – two when I was an atheist” (he now practices Kabbalah, described as the world’s oldest body of spiritual wisdom).

Yet Another Offshoot of Scholars for 9/11 Truth?

I saw this on 9/11 Blogger, so I assume it is not a parody, but sometimes it is hard to tell...

Wheel In the Sky

Ningen, a budding no-planer, thinks he's got proof that one of Flight 11's wheels and the columns from WTC 1 could not have ended up where they supposedly ended up, which is on Cedar Street, approximately 500 feet from the tower.

He (I assume) goes into great detail but essentially the argument boils down to "I don't believe it." So I thought I'd do a little rough calculation.

We'll assume that the wheel hit on the lowest level impacted by Flight 11, which according to Wikipedia is floor 93, which we'll estimate at approximately 1,189 feet above the ground. Therefore, we know that the freefall time to the ground would be about 8.6 seconds. How fast would the wheel and the steel columns have to be going to end up 500 feet away?

Well, about 58 (500/8.6) feet per second, which works out to 40 miles per hour. This seems to be a pretty trivial calculation. Yeah, maybe with air resistance it might have to be a little faster, but nothing that seems impossible on its face.

In an update Ningen gives credit to Spooked for showing that 40 mph is all that is required. Of course, I did it a day before at JREF.

Is There Any Conspiracy Theory They Won't Believe?

I listened to Bermas' radio show from last Saturday to hear his reaction from the Food is Not Love interview. He is not a happy camper. The more I listen to these guys, the more I realize that this isn't really about 9/11 to them, it is about their Grand Unified Conspiracy Theory, involving the New World Order/Bilderbergs/Rothschilds/North American Union/Bohemian Grove/Federal Reserve etc. In this segment they take on the Clintons involvement in this:

Bermas: There is definitely some wacky information out there about her [Hillary Clinton] and her husband. I mean you don’t have to dig that deep to see a snuff list of people who knew the Clintons, were in business with the Clintons and had an early retirement per se. Eh Disco?

Avery: Uhh Yeah

Bermas: And by early retirement I mean they were mysteriously dead. That’s the early retirement when you get involved with these, you know, puppets of the elite. These power arms of the corporate interests. Basically.

Bermas actually promotes Ron Paul as the truther candidate. The show is pretty boring overall, they don't take any callers so Avery and Bermas spend most of the time talking to each other and complaining that the "haters" and "skeptics" don't call in.

Update: Bermas later proves my thesis with this statement:

A lot of good people were needlessly slaughtered in our country, in the name of globalism. And a lot of people have not gotten around to the fact that that is what this is about. This is not just about you know, money, oil, power, empire. It is really a game to come together under one cause, and bring about global government. And I really hope that this country and this world gets hip to these tricks.

To them 9/11 is just an means to an end, this is all about their paranoid fear of globalism. Seattle WTO 1999 on meth. Maybe we should just all chip in and buy him a subscription to the Financial Times?

Conservatives Knock D'Souza on 9-11 Theory

This isn't typical 9-11 Denial, but it's tangentially related.

So let me get this straight in my non-Ivy League-educated little brain: Islamist radicals in a Wahhabist terrorist organization led by a madman who claimed he attacked America for daring to occupy Saudi soil kill 2,977 Americans, and D'Souza blames Hollywood and NPR?

Methinks the 9/11 hijackers had something more relevant in common than a loathing for porn: a religion which glorifies people who ram civilian airliners into civilian buildings while shouting the name of their god.

Exactly. One of the reasons we fight the 9-11 Deniers is that they effectively want to hijack 9-11 for their own purposes, whether it's to combat the war, repeal the Patriot Act, or to impeach President Bush.

These Irish Eyes Aren't Smiling

At the news that Loose Change 2 is reportedly scheduled to air in Ireland in the next couple of weeks. What is RTE thinking?

Let's remember that this is the "documentary" that even Dylan Avery admits (at 7:00) contains "errors" and "dubious claims" and "conclusions that are not 100% backed up by the facts":



Here are two terrific Irish blogs that I have read in the past, Richard Delevan and Slugger O'Toole. I've sent emails to the bloggers at each, hoping that we can get some kind of an uproar against the airing of this ridiculous film.

Bermas Gets Hammered!

No, not the usual Saturday night in Oneonta. Jason appeared on a radio show/podcast called Food Is Not Love and basically got crushed by the host. Bermas griped about this interview on his own show this weekend. Warning: Strong language! But it's great listening as well!

The 9-11 Denial Party

Nico Haupt (I think) put up this parody of a political website. Pretty amusing stuff, although there's one gross bit near the bottom.

9/11 Victim Family Member Comments On Kevin Barrett

Kevin Barrett is starting to replace Jim Fetzer on my list of people to despise. From an article in the Leader-Telegram on one of his appearances:

Barrett, who had some state politicians calling for his firing last year after his government conspiracy theories gained national attention while he was teaching a course on Islam at UW-Madison, shared his controversial opinions Friday evening in a speech at Altoona Public Library.

Vince Statz, a Chippewa Falls man whose 41-year-old daughter, Patty, was killed in the attack on the Pentagon, said Barrett's wacky ideas are an insult to the memory of those who died on Sept. 11.'He's an idiot,' Statz said. 'I don't know why people even give him the time of day.'

It continues later:

'Debunking 9/11 Myths,' however, offers the most irrefutable evidence of all that Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon by pointing out that all but five of the 189 people who died on the aircraft or in the Pentagon were identified through DNA testing.

Barrett's suggestion that a passenger plane didn't strike the Pentagon that day is ludicrous, said Vince Statz, the father of Patty Statz, a Chippewa Falls native and 1979 McDonell High School graduate who worked at the Pentagon.

Her body was identified three weeks after the attack.'That plane came in right where Patty's office was,' Statz said. 'They found pieces of the plane in the Pentagon.'

Wait a Minute! I'm Confused!

We keep hearing about how only 16% of the people believe the government's "story" about 9-11. Indeed, the Deniers use this constantly in debating Debunkers, ridiculing us as being part of the 16%.

But then you read about how Deniers try to bring up the subject of 9-11 with their friends and family, and a different story emerges.

If you start telling someone about 9-11, there are three possibilities. Of course, it depends on which version you are talking about. For those of us who have tried to explain that 9-11 is more than the official story, we get to sentence number two, if we are lucky.
- NO WAY!! Are you totally out of your mind?!”
- But why do you think that…
- No! I don’t want to hear about it. It`s sick.
- Have you seen 9-11…
- Yes. I have seen it, read about it and I know what happened.
- …Press For Truth, I ment
- What is that?
- It’s a film about 9-11 and…
- Yeah, right! Conspiracy sh*t.

And that’s usually the end of discussion. The next possibility is a softer experience, but maybe more demoralizing.
- Oh, really? You think so? (looks confused and raising an eyebrow)
- Well, listen……………………….

We've talked about this in the past; many of the Deniers express despair when talking about their attempts to discuss 9-11 Denial with friends and family. Here's a classic example from the old Looser Forum.

I've tried and I've tried to approach this subject (again -- 9/11, and what really happened) from what I consider to be a series of intelligent segways (sic), cautious as to when the time seems otherwise appropriate to make it the subject of conversation, watching body language and facial expressions of the listeners when striving to express the mass of obvious contradictions in what we have been led to believe by our government. Nothing seems to work folks, not really.

Dueling Letters to the Editor at the U of M

The University of Minnesota student newspaper published a pair of letters on the previously mentioned 9/11 conspiracy theory editorial. I love the juxaposition of "Fifth-year civil engineering student" with "self-employed".

9-11 is not a toy

When I read Adri Mehra's Thursday column, it reminded me of a column he had previously written that mentioned the U.S. government's involvement in 9-11. At the time I was unsure if he actually believed this himself.

It seemed more likely that it was simply an attempt, on his part, to attack his political enemies in the United States. The Bush administration perhaps?

After reading his latest column, I am starting to think that he might actually believe some of this stuff. While some of his explanations may make some sense to the average person, an engineer knows better. The following is not directed toward Mehra because he has already made up his mind and I doubt any amount of evidence will bring him back to reality. For the rest of you, I would like to point out that a Jenga tower does not have even one thing in common with the World Trade Center structures. His comparison, therefore, has no meaning whatsoever.

Second, the controlled demolition of a building takes months of planning - the building must be gutted, support columns must be partially cut, hundreds of charges must be carefully placed and miles of fuse must be laid. Finally, if there was any real evidence of the U.S. government's involvement, the Democrats surely would have used it to get rid of Bush a long time ago. Then again, maybe the Democrats were involved too.

Nick W. Pratt
Fifth-year civil engineering student

The truth about 9-11

It really doesn't take too much research to see the lies regarding 9-11. I started with a couple books by David Griffin and that was all I needed. Then I went to the Internet. Thank God for the Internet and the free press - without them we wouldn't know very much.

It's true the big media has also played a big role in the cover-up/propaganda, a very important part of the lie. If you can control what people think, you control a lot. This is what has happened. I believed CNN and all the rest at first, then I began reading books, not what was in the local paper. We do need a new, real investigation. The Kean/Hamilton Commission failed terribly. The WTC complex was blown up by controlled demolition that had been planned for years, most likely. There's plenty of proof of this. WTC 7, insider trading, Able Danger, NORAD has changed their timeline seven times.

What a bunch of bull-honk. And we're supposed to believe this nonsense? There was no 757 at the Pentagon or Shanksville. The biggest lie/hoax/fraud and cover-up of all time. This "war on terror" is also a complete fraud, based on the 9-11 myth.

I think the real terrorists wear business suits and decorated military uniforms. The big media/propaganda machine, or the few that control them, should be tried for treason.

Chris Noth

self-employed

A Rare Moment of (Almost) Honesty Among the Loosers

Occasionally we get a few words of honesty, intentionally or not, from the Loose Change creators. Korey Rowe:

ROWE: What I encourage people to do is go out and research it themselves. We don't ever come out and say that everything we say is 100 percent. We know there are errors in the documentary, and we've actually left them in there so that people
discredit us and do the research for themselves -- the B52 (remarked to have flown into the Empire State Building), the use of Wikipedia, things like that. We left them in there so people will want to discredit us and go out and research the events yourself and come up with your own conclusions.

Dylan Avery:

Avery: We made that film essentially as a bunch a kids. That’s, that’s the reality of the situation. We’re a bunch of kids tackling a subject far beyond the scope of any one documentary. I will be the first to admit our film definitely contained errors, it still does contain some dubious claims, and it definitely does come to some conclusions that are not 100 percent backed up by the facts.

Now, from the aforementioned Bermas' radio show:

Avery: The thing is, some people can be like, oh we are taking eyewitnesses out of context. Maybe some of them. Maybe some of them we might be taking out of context, but I mean, there’s the woman that I uhh, I didn’t exactly open the montage with, but one of the first people in the explosions montage in the second edition recut, the woman clearly specifies, no there were two explosions in the same building and one was lower.

Bermas: The black news anchor?

Avery: Uhh no, she wasn’t a news anchor, she was just an eyewitness.

OK, for the benefit of your audience could you let us know which eyewitnesses you might be taking out of context? Maybe you could have those little pop-ups like they have on music videos?

The Perils of Context-Sensitive Advertising

Can be seen over at my (conservative) politics blog, Brainster's. Pajamas Media puts advertisements on my blog, and today there was an Amazon ad for books that must have been based on my recent posts ripping Ron Paul for his comments on a new 9-11 investigation, and my Blogging 101 posts, because earlier today, check out the suggestions from Amazon:



Note: Click on picture for readable version.

In Case This Ever Shows Up On Trivial Pursuit

Since so many of the truther arguments seem to be based on the idea that anyone named Mohammed is a 9/11 hijacker, I found this little bit interesting:

There is only one strictly Muslim entry in the Top 100 commonly chosen names for baby boys in 2005 and it appears three times in the list: Mohammed (22nd), Muhammad (44th) and Mohammad (72nd).

The name given in honour of the Prophet Muhammad, the seventh-century founder of the Islamic faith, has become one of the most popular names for male babies in the United Kingdom. It first entered the Top 30 in 2000 and, according to data from the Office for National Statistics, it is now ranked 23rd.

“There are many different variations of spelling, but if a standard spelling existed it would probably have been top of the list,” says Sheikh Ibrahim Mogra, an imam from Leicester and member of the Muslim Council of Britain.

The popularity of the Mohammed variant of the name is a result of over-usage by the media, he says. “The most accurate spelling is Muhammad and comes from replacing the Arabic script with its closest Latin equivalent.”

Muhammad, which means “one who is praiseworthy”, is often given to boys as an honorary prefix by parents and followed by the name by which they are commonly known. It is also regularly cited as the most common name in the world, though there is no concrete evidence for this.

Where Do They Come Up With This Stuff?

As I mentioned previously, I am not going to get up at 7 AM to listen to Bermas’ radio show (despite his repeated appeals for callers), but I did get around to downloading an MP3 of his January 13th show from GCN, and unfortunately the quality of his thought process did not improve with the switch of radio networks.

First of all it is apparent that he is getting bored of talking about 9/11, since he managed to bring in just about every conspiracy theory out there. Bermas (Avery joined him) seemed to talk about the imminent New World Order take over, NAFTA, and the mythical North American Union more than 9/11. Once again his theme is that the NWO is going to devalue the dollar and replace with with the “Amero”, for a yet unexplained purpose. Considering that Avery managed to flunk high school economics, and Bermas’ claim to fame seems to be working the night shift at Pizza Hut, I am not sure how much credit I should give them on their analysis of currency policy…

Anyway, they did get around to discussing 9/11 in this bizarre exchange which started by discussing the recent Able Danger reports, where it was revealed that Mohammed Atta was not identified before 9/11.

Bermas: We already know Atta was trained in a Montgomery Alabama Air Force Base. I mean, that is not debatable, Maxwell. We know that some of the other hijackers were trained in Montgomery [sic] California. In fact we had the Vice Chancellor of the Defense Language School [sic] go public, Steven Butler and say that he personally knew and was in contact with one of the supposed hijackers and had trained others. And these are mainstream reports, and in fact I believe Steve Butler went as far as to say that Bush knew about the attacks and did nothing to stop them on purpose. Correct Dylan?

Avery: Yeah, yeah, definitely.

I don't think "not debatable" means what he thinks it does. This entire "Mohammed Atta training with the military" story goes back to a single story by the Gannett News Service on September 21, 2001 which reads as follows:

A Pentagon spokesman, Col. Ken McClellan, said a man named Mohamed Atta had once attended the International Officer's School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala.

But Atta is a fairly common surname in the Middle East and the suspected hijacker's first name is "probably the No. 1 name that is given to babies, in honor of the prophet Mohamed," said Alquatami.

Popular names

Other last names attached to the hijackers -- Alghamdi, Alomari, Al-Midhar, Alhamzi and Alshehri -- are also very popular.

This is their idea of "not debatable"? A single statement that someone with an extremely common name had attended a school at some time, and not a single piece of collaborating evidence in the subsequent 5 years. Wow, what cutting edge investigative reporting. It should also be pointed out that Mohammed Atta has turned up in more locations that Elvis.

As far as the hilariously bad Vice Chancellor at the "Defense Language School" in "Montgomery, California", here is the true story:

An officer in the United States Air Force has been relieved of his current duties for writing a letter to a local newspaper describing President George W Bush as a "joke".

Lieutenant Colonel Steve Butler said the president knew about the 11 September attacks on America and did nothing to warn the American people.

His suspension comes under a law dating back to the American War of Independence which forbids insults directed by military officers against the president or other political leaders.

Colonel Butler was serving as vice chancellor for student affairs at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, when he wrote the letter, published in the Monterey County Herald.

He did not say that he trained the hijackers, he just wrote a letter to the editor saying that Bush knew about the attacks.

This whole "hijacker training at DLI" myth, ironically, goes back to the same Gannett News Service report.

Also, a man having the same name as one of the suspected hijackers on the plane that crashed in western Pennsylvania, Saeed Alghamdi, attended California's Defense Language Institute in Presidio of Monterey, Calif.

Once again, not a single other piece of corroborating evidence in 5 years. The thing that always cracks me up is, what would a potential hijacker be doing studying at DLI anyway, working on his Korean?

Geez, Bermas has been "researching" this stuff for 5 years, and he can't even get the most basic facts right. Are we really to believe that in Loose Change v 4.0, they will finally get their story straight?

Proper Procedure?

9-11 Deniers love to claim that if the proper procedures have been followed, all four planes would have been shot down before they reached their targets. Of course, this would still have resulted in a 9-11 "Truth" Movement, just with different charges:

The airliners were shot down so that Ted Olsen could get out of his marriage! Todd Beamer had discovered something in the Oracle databases that indicated the Florida 2000 election should have been won by Gore!

Ad nauseum. But I've never really looked into the question of shooting down aircraft by the military. As it happens, there is a procedure, and the procedure as of June 2001 said that the military may not shoot down planes:

3. Procedures

a. General. Military personel will provide the following types of support: intercept, surveillance, lift, equipment and communications. Military personnel may not participate in a search, seizure, arrest or similar activity. This restriction would include the apprehension of aircraft hijackers or use of military aircraft (fixed-wing or helicopter) or other vehicles as platforms for gunfire or the use of other weapons against suspected hijackers.

Of course there could be a shoot-down order, because the Commander in Chief could supersede these standing orders. But the notion that shooting down the planes should have been automatic procedure is nonsense, like most of the other stuff the 9-11 Deniers say.

A Reason to Root for Hillary?

Our buddy Nico Haupt says that her win in 2008 would be a setback for 9-11 Denial:

Thanks to Orwellan CyberFascists like multiple Cultist David Ray "One World Government" Griffin, Steven "Los Alamos" Jones, Bob "StarWars" Bowman, U.S. Government Front 911blogger.com, Alex "Scientology" Jones + Co., who are covering up the truth on 9/11 TV Fakery, the use of ExoW on 9/11 and the Infiltration at the TOP of this movement, a win of Hillary Clinton could mean 8 years more delay of any "9/11 Truth" plus WW4/5 between U.S., Russia and China...

Daniel Hopsicker Hanging Out With David Irving

Turns out that Hopsicker was a featured speaker at a "Real History, USA" conference hosted by Holocaust Revisionist Supreme, David Irving. Michael Ruppert of From the Wilderness was scheduled to speak at this conference, but apparently came to his senses in time.

I'm reading Hopsicker's Welcome to Terrorland right now; you can read it here. It relies heavily on Amanda Keller, who has admitted that she was not Atta's girlfriend. And the FBI agrees:

But the former Venice stripper now says her boyfriend was another flight student not connected to 9/11. And, for the first time, federal investigators say she's right.

"There's nothing there to corroborate the relationship between the two," a New York-based FBI counterterrorism agent said recently after reviewing 9/11 case files.

Of course, to conspiracy theorists, that's just evidence that the FBI is in on the plot. But to the rest of us, it says that the relationship was looked into by the FBI and they concluded it was a bunch of BS.

As I read the book, I see lots of evidence that the Mohammed that Amanda was dating was not Atta. For example, in Chapter Five:

Mohamed had used a check to bail her out of jail, Amanda will tell us. She knew him as Mohamed Arajaki, which was also the name on the check. "The FBI told me they found bank accounts of his all over in numerous different names," Keller stated.

And I suspect that this is the book's central trick. Hopsicker assumes Atta is Arajaki, and therefore, when his witnesses call him Mohamed he dutifully quotes them, but then adds some side commentary about how "Atta sure doesn't sound like a devout Muslim to me!"

For example:

"The two girls were introduced to two men from Germany that they said were Mohamed's friends," Tony LaConca continued. "I thought it was strange, because Mohamed didn't appear to be French-Canadian or German."

Atta was meeting "two men from Germany" in Key West, who we will later learn flew in solely to meet him. This is the first hint we have gotten that all of Mohamed Atta's associates don't face East five times every day.

People who refer to him as Atta associated with Amanda Keller:

Stephanie Fredrickson, neighbor:

"Amanda said to me, 'I'd like you to meet my friend Mohamed Atta. He's from France.' I looked at her to see if she was joking, but I guess she wasn't," stated Frederickson.

Fredrickson refers to him as Atta several times. But what about the point up above about how Amanda "knew him as Mohamed Arajaki"? See the problem?

Apartment Manager Charlie Grapentine:

"Atta always carried a fanny pack around his waist," Grapentine said. "I remember Amanda once telling him that she needed some new clothes, and he reached in and peeled off a few hundreds from a thick roll of cash he had stuffed inside the fanny pack."

The FBI did not receive apartment manager Grapentine's recollections any more warmly than they had those of Stephanie Frederickson.

In fact, says Grapentine, the FBI was positively frosty, especially on the subject of talking to reporters.

"They called me a liar, and told me to keep my mouth shut," states the ex-marine grimly. "Nobody likes to hear that; that they didn't see something they know they saw."

There's also quite a bit of evidence of BS in Amanda's tale as well. For example, she claims:

"I helped him move from a house in North Port, and he asked me to talk to the landlady, because he didn't like American women, and she (Vonnie) happened to be the one renting the apartment," Amanda said.

"'How can you like me if you don't like American women?' I asked him. 'I'm as American as it gets!"'

Mohamed replied that he didn't 'translate' well with American women.

"So I talked to the landlady for him," Amanda said. "He was curt and rude with her, so she told him when it was time to pay the rent just to stick it (the check) in the freezer, so she wouldn't have to deal with him."

Stick the check in the freezer? Wouldn't it be simpler and involve less interaction with Mohammed to say "Stick the check in the mail?" Would a terrorist agree to an arrangement where his landlady could come into his apartment pick up the check? It doesn't pass the reasonability test. It's a nonsense story, unless of course the boyfriend was not a terrorist. Even then it sounds dubious. Do landladies often rent to people who are curt and rude with them?

I haven't finished the book, so these are preliminary impressions.

Yet More Honegger!

I know, this blog seems to be becoming all Honegger, all the time, but I could not pass up these articles which were emailed to me by a reader named William. I have condensed the articles and bolded the relevant portions:

ROBERT G. KAISER CIRCUS From 'Nightline' To Obscurity the Washington Way
2654 words
24 June 1984
The Washington Post
English
(Copyright 1984)

Looking back almost a year later, a great many participants in the Honegger episode are a little sheepish about it (not Honegger herself, however -- more on her views presently). "It was really rather tragic," said Mary Crisp, former co-chairman of the Republican National Committee, who advised Honegger last June, when she first decided to make public her denunciations of the administration's policies on women. "It was like getting into a pretty lake and finding out it was a swamp with a yucky bottom," said Felicity Barringer, a Washington Post reporter who covered the episode. "Well, we certainly all tried to exploit her, I'll tell you that -- poor woman," said Jill Buckley, a Democratic political consultant who briefly tried to help Honegger deal more effectively with the news media.
Remarks like these stemmed from the discovery, made within the first few days of Honegger's big week, that she was, well, odd. She heard voices, which guided her behavior. She had a masters degree in parapsychology. "She turned out, in my estimation, to be a flake," said Sam Donaldson of ABC news.
Donaldson was the substitute host when Honegger appeared on "Nightline" and told the country: "I honestly believe that in the last number of years, certainly since Ronald Reagan gained the presidency, that I am ... the only individual who saw the whole picture."
Earlier in the week she had told Betty Cuniberti of The Los Angeles Times that "a source" using her own voice had told her in January 1980 that Reagan would win the presidency, and that she would work for him on women's issues. "This is hard to believe that it really happened," Honegger said, describing the revelations to her as "channeled information ... as if it were from the future."
Crisp referred Honegger to Rosalie Grattaroti, a publicist who does promotion and marketing work for design firms. Grattaroti thought an op-ed piece in The Post would be ideal, since it would do so much for Honegger's credibility. Sarah McClendon volunteered to make the first contact with Meg Greenfield, editor of The Post's editorial page, and Greenfield expressed interest.
Honegger's first draft was "very operatic," Greenfield recalled, and required a lot of editing. At the same time, Greenfield undertook to confirm that Honegger was indeed who she said she was -- author of the president's executive order setting up a Justice Department review of laws and regulations discriminating against women, then head of the review itself. After a verification process that went on for three weeks, Greenfield satisfied herself that Honegger was as advertised, and that her accusations were well founded.
During those weeks before publication of the article, Greenfield was exposed to Honegger's eccentricities. Some aspects of her behavior reminded Greenfield of other whistle blowers, even of Daniel Ellsberg, the man who provided the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times and The Post. "They are driven, almost messianic, and they greatly overestimate the importance of what they are revealing," Greenfield said of such people. As she came to realize that Honegger was something of an oddball, Greenfield said, she confronted "the most interesting journalistic dilemma I ever faced."
Was a legitimate criticism of a government policy, written by a person undeniably in a position to know the truth, its accuracy independently confirmed, somehow illegitimate because its author was a little strange? After much consideration, Greenfield decided the answer was no -- the article was legitimate and newsworthy. "If she was a kook," Greenfield said, "she was the Reagan administration's kook -- she was their problem."
But the mood quickly changed as Honegger's own personal limitations became clear. "Even some old pros" would have had trouble dealing with the pressure and attention Honegger got, said Martin Anderson, President Reagan's former chief domestic adviser and Honegger's friend and patron. (Anderson had brought her to Washington, and still speaks warmly of her intelligence and ability.) In any event, she did not handle it well, and the image of Honegger as kook quickly bloomed.
A key moment came on Thursday, Aug. 25, when Honegger was invited to join a press conference being staged by the National Organization for Women. It would have been a routine and sparsely attended event, said Dale Russakoff, the Post reporter assigned to cover it, until Honegger's participation was announced. Then a dozen television crews and "a mob" of reporters turned out.
That press conference dismayed and infuriated many of Honegger's friends and helpers, and more than a few of the reporters present. After Honegger gave a meandering, sometimes bewildering performance, "Judy Goldsmith cut her off," Russakoff recalled, and NOW women spirited her to their offices seven floors above.
Mary Berry, a member of the Civil Rights Commission and feminist activist who took part in that Aug. 25 press conference, agrees with Honegger. "If you take a longer view," she said, you see that the administration was "stunned" by the Honegger episode, and changed its ways because of it, appointing more women to top jobs and taking other new initiatives. "We sort of seize upon things that are flamboyant and can be emphasized to advance things politically," she said. "That's standard here in town."
Kathy Wilson of the National Women's Political Caucus -- another participant in that press conference -- sees it differently. She agrees that Honegger's message was powerful, but in the end the episode "fell into the category of Reagan luck," she said. In other words, when the messenger was discredited, Reagan avoided much of the impact of the message.
"Unfortunately," added Mary Crisp, "no one remembers the content, the seriousness" of Honegger's charges.

Hoo-boy, where have we heard that before?

Science Desk; C
PENTAGON IS SAID TO FOCUS ON ESP FOR WARTIME USE
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
1859 words
10 January 1984
The New York Times
Late City Final Edition
English
Copyright 1984 The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved.

In ''Mind Wars,'' to be published this spring by St. Martin's Press, Ronald M. McRae contends that psychic research was used to evaluate the MX missile ''shell-game'' mode, a $40 billion or so basing scheme in which each MX missile would be secretly shifted among a bevy of concrete bunkers so that Soviet planners would never know which shelter to aim at in a first strike.
Quoting a former White House aide as his source, Mr. McRae says the Pentagon set up experiments in which psychics guessed the position of targets, and that results were positive enough to suggest increased MX vulnerability. The former aide, Barbara Honegger, who holds a degree in parapsychology and left the Reagan Administration this fall, confirmed in a telephone interview that the experiments had been done. But she said she did not know whether the psychic findings had any bearing on the Reagan Administration's decision to scrap the shell-game mode.

National Desk; A
FRIENDS SAY FEMINIST HEROINE IS SINCERE IF ECCENTRIC
By JUDITH CUMMINGS
1152 words
30 August 1983
The New York Times
Late City Final Edition
English
Copyright 1983 The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved.
LOS ANGELES, Aug. 29 -- When Barbara Honegger denounced President Reagan's commitment to equal rights for women as a ''sham'' and resigned from the Justice Department last week, she became an instant heroine to some women's rights groups.
But some of her new allies have winced as Miss Honegger has linked her beliefs about women's rights to her beliefs about the occult and the supernatural.
As passionately as she has been a student of politics, Miss Honegger is also a dedicated student of the occult, her friends say. She was widely quoted last week as having said that supernatural influences had guided her course, marking her as destined to have an impact on the Reagan Administration and on women's rights. One of these influences, according to an article in The Los Angeles Times, was ''a source'' using her voice that told her that she would become a defender of women's rights in the Reagan Administration. Another article said she had written of ''omens of power'' in Mr. Reagan's ascension.
Miss Honegger denied these accounts and said she never referred to ''a source'' or to ''omens.'' But while making these denials, she also said that she was indeed influenced by an unusual spiritual dynamic.
''I feel like a catalyst,'' she said in a recent interview. ''I am honored to have been used by the Force, if you will, with a capital F, like in 'Star Wars.' That's how I feel. You know, the Zeitgeist of history.''
Miss Honegger also was outspoken about her interest in parapsychology and coincidences. She earned a reputation in the White House as being ''somewhat odd,'' according to Mr. Bandow. As an example, he said, she wrote a manuscript discussing the significance of a particular grouping of three stars on events in the campaign. Mr. Bandow said this ''eccentricity'' did not appear to diminish people's regard for her work.

Reading between the lines here, it's not hard to see that people were happy to use Honegger for their own political agenda, but ended up being embarrassed when they realized that she was nuttier than a Blue Diamond warehouse.

More Signs of the Failure of our System of Higher Education

A writer for the student newspaper at the University of Minnesota, in what is supposed to be the first of a series, writes about his exposure to the 9/11 "truth" movement, by comparing it to... wait for it... Jenga.

Jenga is a popular Hasbro game from the 1980s.

It's a game of skill in which small hardwood blocks are stacked in a tower formation - 54 blocks arranged in 18 stories - and players remove one lower block at a time from the body of the building and place it on the top of the tower. The player who causes the tower to collapse loses the game.

The idea of the structural integrity of tall buildings is well represented.

But even if a Jenga tower does indeed fall, it will topple over and to the side - it will NOT neatly collapse straight down without resistance into its own placement, and in a beautifully symmetrical fashion, like a certain cluster of humanity's finest feats of structural engineering in Lower Manhattan were somehow wont to do on a crisp, clear morning nearly five and a half years ago.

Then to make it worse, he continues this silly metaphor to to completely misrepresent the events of 9/11.

It was clear that mere moments before their respective virtual implosions - nine to 10 seconds before in each case, actually - the 110-story steel structures had shown no signs of imminent collapse, such as characteristic sagging or tilting.

There were relatively sequestered fires visible in the crash impact zones - between the 78th and 84th floors of the South Tower, and between the 93rd and 98th floors of the North Tower, according to USA Today - but the towers stood stalwart as ever, with no worrisome leaning or shaking.

Uhh, excuse me?

No sagging or tilting?

To quote the NIST report summary:

At 10:06 AM, an NYPD aviation unit advised that WTC1 would come down and that all emergency vehicles should be moved away from it. At 10:20 a.m. observers in NYPD helicopters said that the top of the building was leaning; and at 10:21 a.m. they said that WTC1 was buckling on the southwest corner and leaning to the south.

Maybe he should spend more time reading the scientific study of the collapse, and less time playing children''s games?

The author writes about his reaction to the events of that day:

September 11 was my second Tuesday in college, and I can remember standing with at least a hundred fellow students in front of a hastily arranged TV projection in a classroom in Murphy Hall, completely disoriented by the nauseating pictures I was seeing.

Hmm, maybe we should read something into the fact that he still has not graduated, nearly 5 and a half years later....

Update: Since some people were asking what his major was after my admittedly snarky "5 1/2 years" comment, according to his myspace page, it is theater arts. I am not going to say anything...