Sunday, November 30, 2008

Troy's Phone Calls With Michael Wolsey and Fran Shure's Husband

I'm not going to put the YouTube version up here because in my opinion Troy does go way over the line, but I'll link it here (lots of profanity, definitely NSFW) because it does contain some new information; apparently Fran's husband (who's a Troofer himself) thinks that the murder of Sean Fitzgerald's dad was caused by the anti-psychotic medication Sean was taking.

I certainly don't endorse Troy's comments about how Truthers should commit suicide; maybe a week ago we could argue that was funny, but it's hard to laugh today.

Waterboy Turns Shrink

Kevin Ryan, not merely content with embarassing himself pretending to be a structural engineer, now plays at being a psychologist, with a long article trying to explain why most people think he is an idiot.

Sociopathy, and a similar condition called disinhibition, are also caused by damage to the orbitofrontal cortex, and also involve very little tension. In the national discussion on 9/11, we have seen a few people who act as if they are sociopaths, lying easily and with confidence but without regard for the harm caused to others, and apparently without regret. These are the people who aggressively promote and defend the US government’s explanations of what happened that day, even as those explanations change radically, often to the point of contradicting the previous position completely. These adamant defenders of the official story of 9/11 have no regard for the truth or falsity of their claims, or for the fact that they are propping up the one and only source of power for those behind the disastrous 9/11 Wars. Such people might be sociopaths, or they might simply be professional liars.

Gee, I hope my orbitofrontal cortex is OK.

As the title of the article indicates the focus is actually on the "two Naomi's" Naomi Klein and Naomi Wolf. The latter comes under some criticism in this part:

Wolf’s essay uses several other techniques used by those who seem to be experiencing tension over 9/11 truth. She degrades those questioning the official story by first putting them in quotes – “”The 9/11 Truth Movement””, thereby implying they are either not real, or are not legitimate. She then quickly adds that “conspiracy theories surface where people are poorly educated and a vigorous press is lacking.” Wolf goes on to explain why such a large and growing number of people are interested in learning the truth about 9/11, suggesting that such “conspiracy theories” are “psychologically more comforting.”

The truth, of course, is plainly the opposite. As a group, those questioning the official story of 9/11 are at least as well educated as those who accept the official story without question.



Anecdotal evidence aside, this is actually proven wrong by the truther's own poll. The Zogby poll that they commissioned last year that showed a scant 4.6% support for MIHOP. This poll showed that those without a highschool diploma were twice as likely to believe in MIHOP as those with a college degree. Admittedly this is still only 6% of the population, but the poll results consistently show a trend of stronger support for conspiracy theories among the younger and less educated.

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Saturday, November 29, 2008

YouTube Video of Sean Fitzgerald Story



Great job by Walter.

Truther Math

Now obviously by now I am hardly impressed by the intellectual capacity of the average truther, but even still I am a amazed by the fact that they can't get anything right, even stuff which is not related to 9/11. Here is an example from 9/11truth.org:

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

OK, nevermind that this works out to an astounding 6570 a year, or about 4% of our entire active duty force, the article doesn't even say this. Not even close. From the Chronicle article they cite:

According to the VA's research, 144 veterans committed suicide from the start of the war in Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001, through the end of 2005.


How that works out to 18 a day is beyond me.

Friday, November 28, 2008

The Conspiracy to Coverup the Murder of Edward Fitzgerald by a 9-11 Troofer

For a group that complains about the supposed coverup, here's a pretty good one. As we discussed earlier today, a 9-11 Truther named Sean Fitzgerald has admitted to killing his father. It's a sad little story that could (arguably) happen to anybody and hasn't happened with other Troofers as far as I'm aware, so I'd be very wary of ascribing it to 9-11 Trooferism.

But I did find it interesting to see that several of the websites who supposedly stand fast against the coverup of the murder of those killed on 9-11 suddenly are willing to coverup a murder themselves. 9-11 Blogger scrubbed its website of this story:



As you can see here, you get a missing page error there now, but they forgot about the Google cache of the page. What a shame! Memo to New World Order Higher Ups: Make sure to get our buddy Al Gore to delete the Google Caches!

Ditto for We Are Change Colorado:



It's not the crime that gets you, it's the coverup, WACC!

WAC-Job Truther Murders Own Father


Oh, my, just when you thought it couldn't get any worse for the We Are Change crowd, what with beating up girls in wheelchairs and European Members of Parliament and forcing the evacuation of a passenger plane, it just got a whole lot worse:

The son of a prominent Colorado Springs doctor, who's accused of stabbing his father to death, is under suicide watch. Dr. Edward Fitzgerald was killed in his own home early Thursday morning, and now more disturbing details about this shocking crime are coming to light.

The probable cause affidavit shows that 36-year-old Sean Fitzgerald told police he stabbed his dad to death while his mom slept in the same bed.


Here's a discussion of Sean Fitzgerald over at the Jack Blood Forums as of a few weeks ago:

In this impromptu episode of Visibility 9-11, Michael speaks with Sean Fitzgerald, an active member of Colorado 9/11 Visibility and We Are Change Colorado before he and his family moved to Thailand. Sean and his wife, Allyson, have been working in Mae Sot, Thailand. Allyson, Sean's wife works for the renowned Dr. Cynthia Clinic that provides free care for Burmese refugees, and Sean has been teaching Thai children to prepare them for college. They have a 6 year-old son, Cirian, for whom Sean is a most devoted father.

Sean has been outspoken in Thailand about 9/11 information that contradicts the official story. Lately, he has clearly noticed that he was being followed by people he thinks are Thai military intelligence. This morning as he was riding his bicycle, Sean was chased by at least two suspicious, official looking vehicles and in the process of trying to elude them, was hit head-on by a truck. He thinks that this incident was not accidental.

He is now being treated in the Mae Sot Hospital with a spinal injury. He is rational and thinking clearly. He thinks that at any moment, he could be arrested, as military intelligence personnel have been entering his room, observing him, and then leaving. This happened once during this interview.


I love that "rational and thinking clearly" bit. Update: Whoever wrote that Sean was rational and thinking clearly had not listened to that conversation (MP3 file) between Sean and Michael Wolsey. Sean drifts in and out of reality during that phone call. It's extremely disturbing, especially at the point where he says he's talking to his father about getting on the Alex Jones show.

A commenter who's a friend of Sean's pops into that thread with the bad news:

Sean was my friend for nearly 30 years. In the last few years he has become increasingly paranoid, constantly rambling on about some kind of conspiracy.

Shortly after this interview his father gathered him from Thailand. After he had been home for several days he burst into his sleeping parents' room late at night and fatally stabbed his father.

So you tell me what kind of conspiracy was going on here? Did the Thai police brainwash Sean and make him murder his dad? Or did he imagine the entire thing because he was delusional, paranoid and psychotic? What do you think is more likely?


Indeed. The We Are Change Colorado people had a post up about Sean's Thailand troubles; they've scrubbed it from their site, but Google still has it in cache.

Kudos to Troy for pointing this out; apparently Manny posted about it on the My Debate with Jon Gold comments, but I missed it among the many posts there.

We've pointed out in the past that We Are Change appears to be morphing into a criminal organization. It is now time to consider whether WAC is an organization for the criminally insane.

Update: More info here:

"We're all in shock, those of us who know him are in complete shock that this could've happened," said Fran Shure, who knows Sean Fitzgerald through Colorado 9/11 Visibility. Fitzgerald was active in the group, which believes the government's not telling the truth about what happened on 9/11.

"The only way that my mind can make any sense of this whatsoever is that his head injury.. has somehow caused a psychotic break, a complete psychotic break," Shure said. "That seems to be the only answer, for friends who knew him as an intelligent and sane person. He's the last person in the world, that any of us would have expected this kind of behavior from," said Shure.


Yeah, because he'd never seemed nutty to Fran the Fruitcake.

Update II: The more I think about this, the more nauseated I get. Yet another "Truther" has demolished his family with his insanity.

Update III: This is too spooky. Apparently his dad did call in to Alex Jones about his son, on Alex's November 4, 2008 show, beginning of the second hour:

Alex: Ed in Colorado, go ahead sir.

Ed: (garbled) show and he's a big supporter of you, and he's in trouble. He's in Thailand.

Alex: Who's a big supporter?

Ed: My son, Sean Fitzgerald. He's a member of Colorado 9-11 Visionaries (sic) and We Are Change.

Alex: Yeah, they're great folks, what's up? What's happening?

Ed: He's in Thailand and he's been chased by paramilitary police and he's taken refuge in a medical clinic in My Sa (phonetic) Thailand and he called me and asked me to call you. He called me about an hour ago. I been on... I called you immediately--

Alex: Well, how are we going to help him in Thailand in a medical clinic?

Ed: He thought maybe there's some way you could call attention to his--

Alex: I've got a sneaking suspicion he was caught taking videotape of things in a country that isn't so free.

Ed: No, he's a stay-at-home dad with a son and his wife's--

Alex: No, I'm not saying your son's bad, I'm just--can't imagine why they're after him.

Ed: Is there anything that you can do?

Alex: Well, I mean, what's the specifics?

Ed: He said that last night he got chased by some paramilitaries and got injured and he was taken to the medical clinic where his wife works and now he's afraid to go out of there.

Alex: Yeah, he's being chased by the youth corps [Refers to Jones' nutty belief that Barack Obama is going to institute a youth corps in the United States that's going to be paramilitary in nature]. One of their local militia brigades.

Ed: I--

Alex: You want to tell people where the clinic is? Have you called the US embassy?

Ed: No, I haven't.

So they decide to have Ed call the US embassy. You can listen to this segment here, courtesy of Walter Ego. Later on, Fran the Fruitcake gets on with Alex.

Update IV: A commenter claims that Fitzgerald was never a member of We Are Change. Not so:



Update V: Local news video here, which notes prominently the 9-11 Troof connection (including the deleted page at 9-11 Flogger) without making the obvious connection that Fitzgerald was a paranoid nut.

Will this be the first case to raise the "9-11 Truther" defense, a la the famed "Twinkie Defense" that got off Dan White in San Francisco?

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Could You People Be More Full of Yourselves?

Jon Gold insists that troofers should not be compared to Holocaust revisionists, but those who resisted the Nazis:

If I were to compare the 9/11 Truth Movement to anything, it would be to the White Rose.

According to Wikipedia, the White Rose "was a non-violent resistance group in Nazi Germany, consisting of a number of students from the University of Munich and their philosophy professor. The group became known for an anonymous leaflet campaign, lasting from June 1942 until February 1943, that called for active opposition to German dictator Adolf Hitler's regime." [...] "Today, the members of the White Rose are honoured in Germany as some of its greatest heroes because they opposed the Third Reich in the face of almost certain death."


Uhh, but you do not face certain death. You don't even face unlikely death. At worst you face the prospects of someone making unfavorable comments on your YouTube, which you whine like a little child over. Please do not insult the memories of those who actually did give up their lives to fight a real evil, by comparing them with a bunch of people who at no risk to themselves chat pointlessly on Internet forums while tilting at windmills.

Update from Pat: Looks like Jon's cribbing his arguments from Uncle Fetzer:

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Kid Wins Right to Embarrass Himself in Yearbook



Although I gotta wonder about "This movement is the New World," comment. Is he hinting that it's part of the New World Order?

Troy's also had a success for 9-11 Troofy Troof with his bowling league:

Rosie Live Flops

What collapsed at faster than freefall speed? 9-11 Troofer Rosie O'Donnell's primetime variety show, according to all reviews:

Critics were not kind. The NY Times described it as "hokey comedy with an enemies list." TV Guide called it a "ghastly ego trip." And the LA Times asked, "Rosie, what on earth were you thinking?"


I did not watch it, but I did check out a clip of the show featuring Conan O'Brien and Alec Baldwin, which was painfully unfunny:



Conan looks like he's enjoying that about as much as the average teenager likes detention. No mention of her bringing up her 9-11 Troof nonsense in any of the accounts I've read.

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The Commission by Philip Shenon

The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9-11 Commission, by Philip Shenon, came out earlier this year. Shenon was a NY Times reporter assigned to the 9-11 Commission beat. The book does an excellent job discussing the creation and work of the 9-11 Commission.

Reading the book, I was struck by several observations:

1. Philip Zelikow was clearly the most qualified person to be the executive director of the 9-11 Commission. According to the book, there was nobody else in the same ballpark. Zelikow had been the executive director of a commission on the Florida election fiasco of 2000, where his work was praised by former Presidents Carter and Ford. Zelikow was a skilled writer and historian. He had pre-existing security clearances from his time at the NSA.

2. At the same time, his selection was probably a mistake politically, because his background and his association with the White House created potential conflicts of interest. Zelikow did pursue his work with diligence; Shenon recounts that at one point he threatened to quit if the Presidential Daily Briefs were not released to the Commission. However, Shenon also indicates that Zelikow tried to carry water for the administration in terms of pushing the Iraq/9-11 connection with the testimony of Laurie Mylroie. Update: Several members of the 9-11 Commission staff addressed this claim here:

It was not Zelikow, however, who invited Mylroie to participate in the hearing. It was Doug MacEachin, a former intelligence official who led the Commission’s team investigating the history of al-Qaeda and was very familiar with the arguments Mylroie had been propagating.


3. Max Cleland, who is frequently portrayed as a hero by the "Truthers", was a disaster as a commissioner. Cleland wanted the commission to look into the stated reasons for the Iraq War, which the rest of the commission felt was outside of its mandate. In addition, his frequent juvenile outbursts against the Bush Administration, which he blamed for his election defeat in 2002, were a distraction that made his exit from the Commission necessary.

4. Shenon mostly gives a fair accounting of the work of the commission, although he occasionally reveals bias. For example, he claims that Condoleezza Rice's description of the August 6, 2001 PDB as "historical in nature" was untrue. But in fact an analysis of the PDB does reveal it to be mostly focused on the past. Here's a transcript from CNN:

Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate bin Laden since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Laden implied in U.S. television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and "bring the fighting to America."

After U.S. missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, bin Laden told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to a -- -- service.

An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told - - service at the same time that bin Laden was planning to exploit the operative's access to the U.S. to mount a terrorist strike.

The millennium plotting in Canada in 1999 may have been part of bin Laden's first serious attempt to implement a terrorist strike in the U.S.

Convicted plotter Ahmed Ressam has told the FBI that he conceived the idea to attack Los Angeles International Airport himself, but that in ---, Laden lieutenant Abu Zubaydah encouraged him and helped facilitate the operation. Ressam also said that in 1998 Abu Zubaydah was planning his own U.S. attack.

Ressam says bin Laden was aware of the Los Angeles operation. Although Bin Laden has not succeeded, his attacks against the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 demonstrate that he prepares operations years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks. Bin Laden associates surveyed our embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam as early as 1993, and some members of the Nairobi cell planning the bombings were arrested and deported in 1997.

Al Qaeda members -- including some who are U.S. citizens -- have resided in or traveled to the U.S. for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks.

Two al-Qaeda members found guilty in the conspiracy to bomb our embassies in East Africa were U.S. citizens, and a senior EIJ member lived in California in the mid-1990s.

A clandestine source said in 1998 that a bin Laden cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks.

We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a ---- service in 1998 saying that Bin Laden wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Sheikh" Omar Abdel Rahman and other U.S.-held extremists.

Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full-field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers bin Laden-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group or bin Laden supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives.


The only parts in there that do not discuss historical threats are in the last two paragraphs, and those clearly do not presage 9-11. Federal buildings in New York were not attacked, and a group of bin Laden supporters in the U.S. did not attack with explosives.

5. Shenon also gives a little too much credibility to Richard Clarke, whose self-serving accounts of his actions on 9-11 and before conflict with other evidence. For example, Clarke claims to have participated in a teleconference with Rumsfeld and Myers on 9-11, but it is clear that neither of them were there. Although the NORAD lies get highlighted, Clarke's misstatements get swept under the rug. Shenon also repeats Clarke's claim that the last time he had voted in a primary election (in Virginia in 2000) that he asked for a Republican ballot. But as I noted years ago, Clarke could not have asked for a Democratic ballot in 2000; the Democrats did not have a primary in Virginia that year.

6. There is very little in the book that the "Truthers" can use, other than the information about Zelikow's conflicts of interest. The much-ballyhooed Sibel Edmonds is not mentioned at all in the book. Shenon dismisses the most common conspiracy theories on page 118:

But by the time the 9/11 Commission opened its doors in 2003, many of the most outrageous, if well-circulated, of the theories--that the attacks were an inside job by the Bush Administration, that the Twin Towers were brought down by preplaced explosives, that the Pentagon was hit by a missile and not a plane--had been well debunked.


7. Shenon does provide evidence that debunks at least one major "Truther" claim; the supposed "stand-down" order. On the topic of the actual shoot-down order, Shenon indicates that Cheney probably made the decision on his own that any hijacked aircraft approaching DC should be engaged, without getting clearance from President Bush. Shenon notes that this is probably unconstitutional, although of course it would have been recognized by all as a responsible decision. But get this note from Scooter Libby at 10:15-10:18 that morning:

Aircraft 60 miles out, confirmed as hijack--engage? VP? Yes. JB [Joshua Bolten]: Get President and confirm engage order.


So now the, "Do the orders still stand?" question makes a bit more sense.

Overall, my judgment of the book is that it's generally good as history, a little less strong on analysis. It's pretty obvious that Shenon is a Democrat; when talking about the Democratic members of the commission it's all about how smart and qualified they are; when talking about the Republican members, the focus is on whether or not they were carrying water for the Bush Administration. Compare and contrast:

(Pg 284) Slate Gorton was up next in the questioning. His tone, as usual, was less partisan than that of some of the other Republicans....

Richard Ben-Veniste opened his questioning with praise for Clarke's apology...

Then it was Jim Thompson's turn for questions, The mood in the room chilled instantly....

(Pg 285) There was another series of attacks from John Lehman, another Republican commissioner.


But if you adjust for the writer's bias, the book is a very readable account of the 9-11 Commission. I recommend also (for balance) Kean and Hamilton's Without Precedent.

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Tuesday, November 25, 2008

My Debate with Jon Gold



Unfortunately the audio on Jon's end comes out pretty low, so you may need to adjust the volume up or down depending on who's speaking.

Part II:



Part III:



I don't know what Jon is holding in his hands. I didn't think to dedicate my debate to somebody, but if I had, it would have been to Deb and Wendy Burlingame.

Justin and Eric treated me fairly, and they did not interject their own opinions into the mix. They did a professional job on this production, and I appreciate and applaud their efforts. Jon represented his side well.

Monday, November 24, 2008

The al Qaeda Guesthouses

The article on a whole is on the more political question of what to do with the Guantanamo detainees, but I thought this was an interesting footnote on the hijackers. The troofers like to pretend that they existed separate from any connection to Islamic fundamentalists. That is not at all true.

Of the 242 current detainees identified by the Times, our review found that at least 146 (60 percent) are alleged to have either operated or stayed in an al Qaeda or Taliban guesthouse.

Two guesthouse operators still in custody at Guantánamo warrant special scrutiny. The Rabbani brothers, Abu Rahman and Mohammed, operated a series of guesthouses for al Qaeda. The 9/11 Commission report says that the hijackers responsible for securing the planes on 9/11 stayed at a guesthouse that KSM requested Abu Rahman to secure in Karachi, Pakistan. They were then deployed to the United States. Other 9/11 hijackers stayed at the Karachi guesthouse as well. One Guantánamo file notes that Abu Rahman "identified 17 of the September 11, 2001, hijackers" as having stayed at his guesthouse. He was also able to identify several of the terrorists responsible for the August 7, 1998, embassy bombings as men he had assisted. Mohammed Rabbani, according to the Guantánamo files, assisted the retreat of 50 to 60 al Qaeda fighters from Afghanistan in December 2001.

Stupid 911 Blogger Comment O' the Day

OK, I am not normally expecting to be impressed by the towering intellects over there, what few people actually comment after they banned everyone, but this idiocy by one of their regulars in response to the recent Ziad Jarrah video, surprised even me.

NBC makes it seem that all that was needed was just a little additional peer pressure, to turn the disco dancing, beer drinking ladies man Jarrah into a suicide pilot.

Jarah apparently could not keep a straight face. The recording apparently felt like a Saturday Night Live skit for him.

Meanwhile, there is not one witness, fingerprint or confession placing Jarrah behind the controls of UA 93.


They crashed the plane into the ground at 500 MPH killing everyone on board, exactly how many witnesses, fingerprints or confessions are they expecting to get?

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Jon Gold Wins!



LOL! Okay, I'm geeky enough to enjoy that. We'll see what the reviews say for the debate itself.

Lizard People Pop Up In Election Coverage

Only tangentially related to what we usually cover around here, David Icke's lizard people theory (as to who's behind it all) comes up in a discussion of the recount between Norm Coleman and Al Franken:

"I don't know if you've heard the conspiracy theory about the Lizard Men," said Davenport. "A friend of mine, we didn't like the candidates, so we were at first going to write in revolution, because we thought that was good and to the point. And then, we thought the Lizard People would be even funnier, and there was kind of a running inside gag between some friends and I."

Lizard People refers to the conspiracy theory there's a race of shape shifting lizards masquerading as humans who rule the world, but Davenport doesn't consider himself a believer.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

More From the Suicide Tapes

NBC news has more from the suicide tape of Ziad Jarrah, the hijacker pilot of United 93. How many of these have to come out before it occurs to the troofers that their whole "no hijacker" theory is a bit suspect?


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David Ray Is Coming To Town

Well I missed Judy Wood's seminal visit to Seattle in 2006, when she transformed from the leading academic in the troofer community to a paid CIA operative, but now David Ray Grifter... err... Griffin is coming to nearby Olympia.


The Building Revolution by Increasing Community Knowledge (BRICK), student organization from SPSCC is proud to announce a free presentation by David Ray Griffin at the Capitol Theater, Dec 3rd at 7pm. His talk entitled "The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, The Cover-up and the Exposé," will discuss new evidence that has come to light regarding 9/11 since the 2004 publication of his now classic book "The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9-11."

There should be plenty of room at least, according to their Meetup page:



29 Yes / 0 Maybe
743 spots left

This may be a bit optimistic if you look at their track record though.




I don't think 1 person technically counts as a "meetup"...

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Saturday, November 22, 2008

My Debate With Jon Gold

I haven't announced this but since it's been on 9-11 Blogger and JREF I'll confirm it. I will be on a debate against Jon Gold with Justin Martell and Eric Jackman as moderators Monday afternoon/evening. As far as I know the program will only be broadcast live to a college campus, which is why I haven't mentioned it. But Justin has promised to upload the 1/2 hour show in segments to YouTube after recording, and I will upload it to SLC when they have posted it, presumably sometime Tuesday/Wednesday.

The topics will not be the usual Troofer fare of controlled demolition or north of the Citgo; we will debate whether there are unanswered questions about 9-11 and was the 9-11 Commission a legitimate investigation. I expect a lot more discussion of Philip Zelikow than Mohamed Atta, in other words.

Simon Shack: The Collapse Videos Are Fake, Too!



Or, as his Troofer "debunker" (reportedly Ace Baker) says, the "demolition" videos. Or, as I say:

Friday, November 21, 2008

Final WTC 7 Report Out

The final NIST report on WTC7 is out. Nothing spectacular from a technical standpoint, although they posted all the feedback they received, both from serious sources, and the troofers. Kevin Ryan wins hands down for the pithiest, and least scientific, comments.

Comment: You have disgraced my country and the human race. Additionally, you are now personally responsible for the ongoing death and destruction resulting from the 9/11 Wars. The story of your dishonor will be repeated endlessly.

Reason for comment: Your deceptive reports are malevolent and revolting.


I take it he isn't on-board with David Ray Griffin's whole "truth and reconciliation commission" idea...

Just a tip, don't read Judy Wood's comments, all 121 pages, unless you are on some serious mind altering drugs first.

Griffin Suggests Forgiveness for 9-11

These people will say anything to get their precious "second" investigation of 9-11:

David Ray Griffin, author of seven books on 9-11, including his latest, "A New Pearl Harbor Revisited," all of which are critical of the government's 9-11 investigations, said on the Alex Jones radio program today that he believed the administration of incoming U.S. President Barack Obama will be more open to the establishment of such a commission. "With a new administration...there is really a chance" that there could be a new 9-11 investigation, Griffin said. Griffin described Obama as "very bright," with a strong moral compass and an appreciation of the U.S. constitution. "He and his people will be open to evidence" that contradicts government accounts, Griffin said. He also said that Obama was likely to embrace the idea of forgiveness that would be essential for a truth and reconciliation commission. "He's willing to let bygones be bygones," said Griffin.


A Troof and Reconciliation Commission? With no scaffolds? I've got a hunch that Kevin Barrett won't be willing to go along with that!

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Flight Attendant Helps Land Plane

In a bit of strange news a flight attendant helped land an Air Canada flight after the original co-pilot lost it.

Air crew had to forcibly remove the pilot of a plane carrying 155 passengers when he suffered a breakdown mid-flight over the Atlantic. An air steward then had to help pilot the jet in an emergency landing at Shannon.

Another steward was hurt as the crew forced the co-pilot out of the cockpit. Yesterday, the Dublin-based Air Accident Investigation Unit released a report into the Air Canada Boeing 767 drama.


Well it is a good thing that she didn't have to crash the plane, because I hear that is exceedingly difficult for a novice pilot.

The co-pilot had some sort of mental breakdown.

“The First Officers behaviour then became belligerent and uncooperative which convinced the Commander he was now dealing with a crew member who was effectively incapacitated.”

“The Commander called the Incharge Flight Attendant 4 to the Flight deck to witness what was occurring and told him that he was now of the opinion that he was dealing with a flight crew incapacitation.

“The First Officer was informed by the Commander that he was to secure his seat belt and become co-operative or he would have to consider him incapacitated and with the resulting repercussions. The First Officer was unresponsive to this communication.


Apparently they first realized he was having a mental breakdown when be began repeatedly yelling "It was north of the Citgo!"

Why Conspiracy Theorists Are Always Right

With oil dipping below $50 a barrel today a video is making the rounds among the conspiracy theorists, where a guest on Alex Jones radio show predicted that the price of oil would drop below $50.



Alex Jones "Now, to be clear: They are imploding the price of oil to bankrupt the Arabs and to bankrupt the whole world while the big central banks are energized with cash and liquidity . . . They can then go buy up the entire world economy when it collapses and build that New World Order banking system . . ."

Lindsey Williams: "That is exactly right. Alex, you could not have put it in any better words. . . . They'll own all the banks in America, they'll own all the airlines. They will own basically most of the houses in the United States of America because of the collapse of thereal estate market. And by the time they get through, the elite are basically going to own everything. The people will be slaves in their hands."

OK, well this didn't require a Nostradamus. I wrote about how we were in an asset bubble on my personal blog way back in March, and I don't have any particular insight. What makes this most hilarious though, is that others connected with Alex Jones were predicting that the global elites were doing the exact opposite. From Alex Jones' Prison Planet website:

Goldman Sachs: Bilderberg Target Of $200 Dollar Oil Nears

Price of crude soars precisely as Bilderberg Group planned, but media still claims they have no influence over world affairs

A report by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. forecasts that oil prices will reach $150 to $200 dollars a barrel within 2 years, a figure in line with the ultra-elite Bilderberg's plans to squeeze the middle class and lower the living standards of westerners.


Well, if you make enough predictions, one way or another, you will be right.

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A Brilliant Grasp of the Obvious

I caught the Alex Jones interview of David Ray Griffin and Steven Jones (dumb, dumber, and dumberer) on MP3 last night, and although most of it was rather boring, I was amused by this exchange:

David Ray Griffin: You are talking about extremely high temperatures. Steven, what temperatures would you need to oxidize steel?

Steven Jones: Well, uhh, umm, well of course steel can rust.

That's it ladies and gentlemen! They have discovered rust, the New World Order doesn't stand a chance.

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Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Al Qaeda Number 2 Taunts President-Elect

For some reason, while the troofers like to go on about Osama bin Laden being fake and/or dead, they almost never mention Ayman al-Zawahiri. Today he released an audio mocking, insulting and taunting President-Elect Obama. The honeymoon is over.

And my fifth message is to all the world's weak and oppressed. I tell them: America has put on a new face, but its heart full of hate, mind drowning in greed, and spirit which spreads evil, murder, repression and despotism continue to be the same as always. And the Mujahideen of Islam, by the grace of Allah, continue to be the spearhead of the resistance against it to restrain it from injustice, aggression and arrogance.

As for my final message, it is to the American people. I tell it: you incurred defeat and losses from the foolish actions of Bush and his gang, and at the same time, Shaykh Usama bin Ladin (may Allah preserve him) sent you a message to withdraw from the lands of the Muslims and refrain from stealing their treasures and interfering in their affairs. So choose for yourself whatever you like, and bear the consequences of your choice, and as you judge, you will be judged.


Surprisingly he once again failed to bring up the fact that al Qaeda is being unfairly blamed for the 9/11 attacks.

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Trooferism Lite

Juan Cole indulges himself in a new form of Trooferism:

So, the rumour was right: French soldiers trapped Usamah Bin-Ladin, but were not allowed by the Americans to arrest the apparent fugitive leader of Al-Qa`idah. A Bin-Ladin documentary just released by French documentary cinema examines this issue, an issue which has led to heated debate in the French media.


Just one problem: Seems these reports came out two years ago and the French government denied them at the time.

Ministry spokesman Jean-Francois Bureau said there was "no foundation of truth" to the claim, which was reported on France-Info radio.


But you know how it is with Cole; any negative claim against the USA is right up his alley.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Troofernomics

Bob Bowman, who mysteriously didn't run for president this year, now writes an open letter to Barack Obama, explaining to him the "truth". Unfortunately for him, I think he is about as welcome as a potential advisor as Bill Ayers. Regardless, he repeats his bizarre truther spin on economics, the first part of which I covered a long time ago, now adding a new twist.

Productivity in this country has doubled over and over again since the 1950s. Yet wages are a fraction of what they were then! In real terms, family income is about where it was in the 1950s, but the number of hours worked per family has tripled! This means that real wages per hour worked are roughly a third of what they were in the 1950s. If workers today got the same portion of the wealth they create with their labor as we did who entered the work force in the 1950s, they could support their families with one job … working two days a week!

This claim is completely bizarre of course, they have no more an understanding of economics than they do of engineering. The number of hours per week worked has actually come down significantly over the last 100 years, peaking during WWII for obvious reasons, but about even since the 1950s. Yes, more women work, the number has moved from around 20% to 60%, but the number of men working has actually decreased as a percentage. Additionally the size of the average household has decreased, so the number of hours worked per capita would have to increase even more. So unless there is some hidden surge in child labor, amounting to about 150% of the adult working population, that we don't know about, Bishop Bob is just making this crap up.

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Is the New World Order Out to Get Mark Cuban?

For "financing" Loose Change? As you may know, Cuban has been served with a civil complaint by the SEC alleging that he engaged in insider trading. However, according to a New York Times blog (it must be true!), one of the lawyers for the SEC noted Cuban's proposed financing of Loose Change Final Cut:

Mark:
If this upsets you, I wonder how George Bush feels. I assume that Mr. Cox would view your involvement with “Loose Change” much as I do. After all, he served his country as a Republican Congressman from Orange County for nearly 20 years and was appointed by President Bush. If you feel like sharing my thoughts with Chairman Cox, be my guest.


The time frame fits, although the NY Times' blogger apparently is unaware that Cuban did not end up financing the film (or distributing it, which I believe was the deal being discussed at the time). Note also the way he describes the film:

This e-mail message seems to have been sent after an exchange in which Mr. Norris complained that Mr. Cuban had financed a movie called “Loose Change” that discusses the president’s actions relating to Sept. 11.


Yeah, and Fahrenheit 9-11 discusses kite-flying in Iraq.

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Richard Gage's New Engineer

Well, after celebrating their oil rig engineer and their golf course engineer, now they've picked up a swimming pool engineer. Or, rather, a guy who used to be a swimming pool engineer until his license to be a Professional Engineer was revoked by the State of New Jersey.

Donald C. Meserlian is the latest nut in the Blue Diamond warehouse that is A & E 9-11 Troof and even by their high standards he merits a rubber room all his own.

He is using the "Oath of Office" that all officials take: "To uphold and defend the U.S. and state Constitutions," and the Wikepedia definition of "Oath of Office" to charge all officials who do not respond to the petition with treason. If North Caldwell continues to disregard his first amendmendment (sic) "Right to Petition" and its inherent "Obligation to Respond" he plans to prosecute the mayor, council and police chief of N. Caldwell for treason.


Yep, he's planning on using the Wikipedia definition of Oath of Office to charge his local officials with treason. I am quite certain that their conviction and death by firing squad are mere formalities at this point.

He points to the seismic evidence in his statement joining Box Boy Gage's gaggle:

Seismographic evidence proved pre-planted explosives destroyed WTC 1, 2 and building 7 before the planes struck buildings 1 & 2.


9-11 Myths has devoted quite a bit of effort to determining the precise times of impact, and Mike's conclusion is that the seismic jolts recorded are indeed the impacts of the planes into the towers.

Here he introduces a crowd to Richard Gage's Blueprint for Destruction movie:



As you can see, he claims to be a forensic engineer; "This is what I do." Of course, that will be news to the owner of Monarch Pools and Spas, who writes:

I have personally dealt with Don Meserlian for over 25 years.

We have used his engineering services for everything from scaling our swimming pool blueprints to speaking with town inspectors to physically inspecting sites and providing written reports to topographical surveys.


Of course, that didn't work out terribly well; Meserlian was forced to surrender his engineering license by the State of New Jersey because he wasn't using a licensed surveyor in his work.

True to form, Meserlian is not just a crank about 9-11; he spreads his nuttery around. He's a believer in RFK Jr's theory that vaccines cause autism and is also a crusader against aspartame.

He's also got a blueprint for the world:

"Humanistic Capitalism" requires that both manufacturers and governments be accountable and responsible for the effects of their products and actions on the health and safety of people and the environment. Democratic governments, as representatives of people and stewards of the environment, must insure that "Humanistic Capitalism" replaces capitalism. All present so-called democracies are in fact 'demockeries' which only represent powerful special interests at the expense of their citizens (see below for the definition of demockery). To use capitalism's 'bottom-line', governments and corporations are being forced by VOSI to obey the US National Standards Strategy (USNSS) and the National Technology Transfer and Advancement Act of 1995 (NTTAA) and use standards which benefit the health and safety of people and the environment.


And if they don't he'll probably use the Wikipedia definition of democracy to prosecute them for treason.

Monday, November 17, 2008

Does Max Keiser Have Crucial 9-11 Evidence?

A friend of mine sent me this video of Max Keiser, a fruitcake who has apparently appeared on many shows as a financial expert.



But get his comments at about 1:00 in:

"Remember, these bankers in New York are deranged. You know I was talking to several brokers working in the Twin Towers about two weeks prior to 9-11. And some of them had actually heard the rumors of planes into the Twin Towers, and that they were still speculating by buying puts on airline stocks. That's the mentality we're dealing with on the global banking stage right now."

That's very interesting information. I would suggest that if the 9-11 Troof Movement wanted to get to the bottom of things, they should contact Mr Keiser who certainly appears to have information that could be very valuable in proving that 9-11 was an inside job. Who were these brokers? Why did Mr Keiser not inform the authorities that he had heard of a plot to crash planes into the Twin Towers two weeks before it happened?

I publish this as a service to the 9-11 "Truth" Movement.

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Well, Well, Howard Zinn Disappoints the Troofers



Zinn of course wrote a cover blurb for David Ray Griffin's the New Pearl Harbor, in which he gushed:

"David Ray Griffin has done admirable and painstaking research in reviewing the mysteries surrounding the 9-11 attacks. It is the most persuasive argument I have seen for further investigation of the Bush administration's relationship to that historic and troubling event."
— Howard Zinn


But here he takes the (more) sensible approach that Monbiot and Chomsky have, that Trooferism is a distraction from the real work the Left has to do.

Buddy Moore, the Troofer asking the question, apparently ran for US Senate as a "Write-In" candidate; the Rocky Mountain News shows four candidates who received a significant number of votes in that election; Buddy Moore is not one of them.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Rosie Returns

Well, looks like some of the celeb Troofers are being allowed back into polite society again, or at least TV. I've seen Charlie Sheen recently with Michael Jordan in a TV commercial for Hanes (crappy underwear, buy Fruit of the Loom), and tonight I saw an ad for a Rosie O'Donnell special that is apparently going to air the night before Thanksgiving on NBC (what a lousy excuse for a network).

British Fascists and 9-11 Troof

Wow. Edmund Standing has put together a magnificent post on the intersection of the Brownshirts and the Blackshirts.

The reason '9/11 Truth' attracts anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers, neo-Nazis, and other assorted sociopaths is precisely because the paranoid, conspiracy-based worldview it is based around is a sanitised version of the same conspiracy theory they believe in. The reason that Alex Jones attracts neo-Nazis is that they listen to his drivel about a 'global elite' and nod and wink to each other, assuming he really means 'the Jews'. Why would they assume this? Because the 'global elite' trope is directly lifted from the 'World Jewish Conspiracy' ideas they promote. And why do 'truthers' who start out claiming to oppose a 'Zionist conspiracy' sometimes slip over into full-blown anti-Semitism? Because the 'World Zionist Conspiracy' material is basically the same old 'World Jewish Conspiracy' material, with a few modern tweaks and additions, such as claims about 9/11, and the word 'Jew' replaced with 'Zionist'.


One of the oddball things about 9-11 "Truth" is that everybody seems to adapt it to their own paranoid fantasies. David Icke says the Reptilians did it. Christopher Bollyn point to the Zionists, or the Jews. Alex Jones says it's the Bilderbergers. Jon Gold thinks it's Dick Cheney and the Republicans. It's kind of like that song from A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum: Something for Everyone!

Awesome post, Edmund!

Lloyd England Not Responsible for 9-11



About the only sane thing that Craig Ranke says in this video. Of course, Lyte Trip still thinks Lloyd was in on it, just, you know, he didn't actually perform the flyover. Note the manic way he discusses his "evidence" that Lloyd's story was untrue. We joke about these folks being insane, but most of them are just a little unbalanced. Ranke's off his rocker. He's non compos mentis. He's got a screw loose. He's a candidate for the loony bin.

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Fabled Enemies Part VII



We start out with James Woods, the actor who famously observed several Arabs behaving suspiciously on his flight from Boston to LA a few weeks before 9-11. Bermas follows with a non-sequitur, claiming that this is more evidence that the hijackers had intelligence ties. What?

Bermas follows with stuff about other targets. Apparently the governor of Maryland reported a phoned-in threat about other facilites in his state. Then we get "Angel is next", a claim that Air Force One was targeted. Never mind that this would explain the supposed mystery of why Bush stayed at Booker Elementary. And never mind that there is no evidence, seven years later that there were other targets other than (obviously) the Capitol Building, which was the most likely target of Flight 93 before it crashed.

We get the usual kook websites; World Net Daily is cited as a source for the terrorist threat against Air Force One. It's a step up from American Free Press, but only a small step. The E-4B gets mentioned again, as if there is some big mystery why the government would have a plane over Washington at 10:00 AM that day.

Then we get the mystery plane at the WTC. Of course this is the same one that the Journal of 9-11 Studies called the Flying Elephant in their first issue; they later had to retract the story.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Fabled Enemies Part VI



This section seems largely concerned with warnings. We get the mention of the Filipino government warning about Ramzi Yousef's plan to crash planes into buildings; what goes unmentioned is that this happened six years prior to 9-11, and that in fact that Yousef's main plot was to blow the airplanes up over the Pacific.

Bermas confuses the Phoenix Memo with the 8/6/01 PDB about Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US. The Phoenix Memo was an alert from an FBI agent about Arabs taking flight lessons in the US. It is indeed tragic that this was not followed up on, but it is easy to see the warnings we should have been paying attention to with hindsight. What we don't see or hear about is all the other warnings that turned out to be meaningless.

Dennis Kookcinich comes on to talk about the PDB; he mentions that it noted a plot by Osama Bin Laden to hijack an aircraft. What Frodo fails to mention is that the plot was to use the hijacked plane and its passengers for ransom to win the release of prisoners.

"We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a [redacted] service in 1998 saying that bin Laden wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft to secure the release of 'Blind Sheikh' Omar Abdel Rahman and other U.S.-held extremists," the memo says in part.


Peter Jennings reports on a USA Today article on a drill run that included a plane into the World Trade Center. The article is here. Note in particular that the drills took place two years prior to 9-11 (i.e., during the Clinton Administration), and that the scenario was different from 9-11:

The exercises differed from the Sept. 11 attacks in one important respect: The planes in the simulation were coming from a foreign country.

Until Sept. 11, NORAD was expected to defend the United States and Canada from aircraft based elsewhere. After the attacks, that responsibility broadened to include flights that originated in the two countries.

But there were exceptions in the early drills, including one operation, planned in July 2001 and conducted later, that involved planes from airports in Utah and Washington state that were "hijacked." Those planes were escorted by U.S. and Canadian aircraft to airfields in British Columbia and Alaska.

NORAD officials have acknowledged that "scriptwriters" for the drills included the idea of hijacked aircraft being used as weapons.

"Threats of killing hostages or crashing were left to the scriptwriters to invoke creativity and broaden the required response," Maj. Gen. Craig McKinley, a NORAD official, told the 9/11 commission. No exercise matched the specific events of Sept. 11, NORAD said.

"We have planned and executed numerous scenarios over the years to include aircraft originating from foreign airports penetrating our sovereign airspace," Gen. Ralph Eberhart, NORAD commander, told USA TODAY. "Regrettably, the tragic events of 9/11 were never anticipated or exercised."


Jason goes to another drill, called Amalgam Virgo. As described by Bermas, Amalgam Virgo included a hijacker taking control of a commercial aircraft and slamming it into the Capitol. This does not appear to be correct:

Amalgam Virgo is a joint-service, cruise-missile defense exercise at Tyndall AFB.

Fast, low-flying cruise missiles are hard to detect. To practice their part in defending the U.S. from these missiles, members of the 513th Air Control Group deployed to Florida for the "Amalgam Virgo" cruise missile defense exercise. The multi-service exercise tested the defense and response capabilities to a cruise missile attack on Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla., June 1-4, 2001.


No discussion of a hijacked plane there.

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Thursday, November 13, 2008

Paranoia On the Rise

Say experts.

The post-Sept. 11 atmosphere and the war on terror have also increased levels of paranoia in the West, some experts said.

"We are bombarded with information about our alert status and we're told to report suspicious-looking characters," Penn said. "That primes people to be more paranoid."

Traumatic events can make people more vulnerable to having paranoid thoughts. Since the attacks, Penn said Americans have been conditioned to be more vigilant of anything out of the ordinary.


Plus, of course, you have the kooks who think the government was behind it.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Delmart "Mike" Vreeland: 9-11 Troofer and Kiddie Porn Producer

Well, well, one of the "warnings" that 9-11 Troofers like to highlight concerns Delmart "Mike" Vreeland. Sander Hicks highlighted Vreeland in his 9-11 Denial book, The Big Wedding. While imprisoned in Canada shortly before 9-11, Vreeland wrote something that could be interpreted as implying foreknowledge of the attacks on the World Trade Center. Vreeland became an early celebrity among the fruitcakes.

Turns out Vreeland has some other hobbies as well:

A Douglas County man has been sentenced to 336 years to life in prison after he was convicted of luring two boys into performing sex acts and making child pornography by giving them drugs and money and promising them a drum set.

Forty-two-year-old Delmart Vreeland was convicted in 2006 of 13 felony charges, including inducement of child prostitution, sexual assault, sexual exploitation of children and distribution of cocaine. Earlier this year, he was convicted of six habitual criminal counts.


Countdown to Troofers claiming that the government framed this sleazeball....

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Poll Vault

Our buddy Edmund Standing takes a look at the Troofers abuse of polls. He does get one thing wrong; most of the airheads who quote that NY Times poll say that 84% (not 81%) of Americans agree with them; the fruitcakes even include the 3% who were not sure.

There's an old joke about how if you torture the statistics enough, they will confess to anything. All I can say is that I wish more Troofers played poker, because their understanding of odds and statistics is fundamentally flawed. Kind of like their understanding of everything else.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Whither the Truth Movement?

Or perhaps that should be "wither". Where do the "Truthers" go from here, with Bush out of office and a Democrat headed for the White House?

I used to think that this would be the end of the 9-11 crackpottery, but that was also when I thought that they would remain fairly strong during the election campaign. As we have seen, that didn't happen; the race actually ended up sapping them especially when liberals started turning against them for their hecklivism of Bill Clinton, John Kerry and other top Democrats.

What's left, however, is pretty hardcore. I don't think we're going to see much further decline over at 9-11 Blogger; but not much growth either, at least in the United States. Overseas will be the growth market for Trooferism. Note particularly that Richard Gage and David Ray Griffin have recently started peddling their snakeoil to the foreign rubes. Griffin in particular seemed to regress in time to the 2004 theories, even recycling that old chestnut that seven of the hijackers were reported to be still alive. Anti-Americanism always sells well in Europe, and while there will be a brief honeymoon for Obama, inevitably it will rear its ugly head again.

So basically the growth phase ended in 2006, the decay phase probably ended last Tuesday. The Troofers will settle in now like the Kennedy Assassination theorists. Periodically there will be a hubbub as Tom Cruise or some similar Hollywood airhead mutters that fire can't melt steel, but it will die down quickly. Alex Jones will continue to talk about it, but he'll weave in new fantasies. I hear that he's been talking mostly about the financial bailout which fits perfectly into the "international bankster" focus that Zeitgeist promotes.

Monday, November 10, 2008

The Origins of 9-11

Edmund Standing has a very interesting and informative post on the background that led to Al Qaeda and 9-11.

It is precisely this narrow definition of 'legitimate targets' that led to al-Qa'eda moving from terrorist attacks on Arab governments supportive of the West to attacks on Western troops and officials in 'Muslim countries', and finally to terrorist attacks against civilian targets in America on 9/11. The kind of idiotic claims made by 9/11 troofers about there being 'no reason' to think that followers of bin Laden and Zawahiri would have carried out 9/11 ignores this evolution into advocating direct attacks on Westerners that occurred in the '90s.


It is apparent to me that very few "Truthers" have read anything on the backgrounds of militant Islam. This is an excellent, if abbreviated version; if you want the full thing, I recommend the Looming Tower.

Is Trutherism Biological?

One of the books I am currently reading is The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, on the subject of probability and the human tendency to attach meanings to things which are are entirely random. I found this little bit on page 67 interesting:

In addition to the story of the left-brain interpreter, we have more physiological evidence of our ingrained pattern seeking, thanks to our growing knowledge of the role of neurotransmitters, the chemicals that are assumed to transport signals between different parts of the brain. It appears that pattern perception increases along with the concentration in the brain of the chemical dopamine. Dopamine also regulates moods and supplies an internal reward system in the brain (not surprisingly, it is found in slightly higher concentrations in the left side of the brains of right-handed persons than on the right side). A higher concentration of dopamine appears to lower skepticism and result in greater vulnerability to pattern detection; an injection of L-dopa, a substance used to treat patients with Parkinson's disease, seems to increase such activity and lowers one's suspension of belief. The person becomes vulnerable to all manner of fads, such as astrology, superstitions, economics and tarot-card reading.


That's it. I want Jon Gold tested.

Fabled Enemies Part IV

I skipped this part previously so here goes:



More on the Israel connection, from Fox News. J. Michael Springmann presents his considered opinion that most of the problems that the US is facing around the world are a direct result of our relationship with Israel. That may be his opinion; it does not happen to be mine.

Sibel Edmonds gets dredged up once again. Once again, she was a low-level translator for the FBI translating Turkish who joined the feds shortly after 9-11; how she got all the incredible information she claims to have about 9-11 is not explained.

Bermas repeats the $100,000 wire transfer story from ISI chief Mahmoud Ahmed to Mohamed Atta, claiming that this came immediately before the attacks. But it shouldn't take more than a moment to realize that makes no sense at all. What use would Atta have had for $100,000 in the last few days before the attacks?

That Pakistan was close with the Taliban (not Al Qaeda) is undeniable. So a lot of the saber-rattling that Bermas shows from Colin Powell and Joe Biden is completely unsurprising. Again, Bermas seems to think that Biden and Powell made these statements on TV and nobody noticed them. Ditto with the hecklivism by Luke Rudkowski; they are trying to confuse the issue of whether the ISI funded the Taliban (true) with whether they funded Mohamed Atta (almost certainly false).

FBI Releases More Videos

As I predicted long ago, there are no 85 videos of the Pentagon strike; rather there were 85 videos in total that were collected of 9-11, most of which (so far) capture the attack of Flight 175 into the South Tower, and some of which are simply videos of the buildings collapsing.

Kudos to Penttbom.com for obtaining these under an FOIA request.

Richard Falk: Still A Crackpot

And still a Princeton professor and a UN appointee. He's just published a new article on his 9-11 nuttery:

From this perspective, and given the dark cloud of doubt that lingers over the official 9/11 narrative, why was the issue not even discussed during the many months of presidential campaigning? As far as I know it was never mentioned. And the explanation is not the urgency associated with the widening economic crisis or the tactical interest of the Democrats to avoid offending Republicans in their search for support across party lines. The truth is deeper, and far more disturbing.

As far as I can tell, the real explanation is a widely shared fear of what sinister forces might lay beneath the unturned stones of a full and honest investigation of 9/11. Ever since the assassinations in the 1960s of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X there has been waged a powerful campaign against “conspiracy theory” that has made anyone who dares question the official story to be branded as a kook or some kind of unhinged troublemaker. In this climate of opinion, any political candidate for high office who dared raise doubts about the official version of 9/11 would immediately be branded as unfit, and would lose all political credibility. It is impossible to compete in any public arena in the United States if a person comes across as a “9/11 doubter.”


Actually it did come up during the campaign on several occasions, Richard. Remember, Ron Paul being asked about the Truthers during a Republican debate?



It also came up indirectly when Bill Clinton was campaigning for his wife and got interrupted by the fruitcakes. Remember that one, Richard?



I am not Bill Clinton's biggest fan, but that was a moment that I stood up and cheered for him.

As for Falk, if the UN were capable of being embarrassed by their endorsement of idiots like him, they'd thank him for his service, give him a gold watch, and hustle him off the stage. But it is the UN, after all.

Update: I thought I'd take another couple whacks at the Falk pinata, and by extension, David Ray Griffin. Falk notes in his introduction that:

David Ray Griffin and others have analyzed and assessed these discrepancies in such an objective and compelling fashion that only wilful ignorance can maintain that the 9/11 narrative should be treated as a closed book, and that the public should move on to address the problems of the day.


But he also claims:

What has not been established by the “9/11 Truth Movement” is a convincing counter-narrative – that is, an alternate version of the events that clears up to what degree, if at all, the attacks resulted from incompetence, deliberate inaction, and outright complicity.


Ah, but here Falk is not up to date. Griffin has assembled a counter-narrative (convincing or not). Griffin clearly believes in outright complicity, not deliberate inaction. For example, consider his continued insistence that the phone calls from the planes were faked. If Griffin believed in LIHOP (deliberate inaction), he would not deny the phone calls, because the phone calls do not disprove LIHOP. LIHOP assumes that the hijackers were Arab terrorists, but that the government knew about their planned attacks ahead of time and allowed them to go forward. It is only MIHOP proponents who have trouble with the phone calls.

Griffin also believes in the vast conspiracy; this is not some small operation. As James pointed out last week, he apparently believes that the bodies of the passengers of Flight 77 "could have been transferred to that middle building from somewhere else and to the people at the pathology institute they would assume they all came from the Pentagon."

I'm starting to think we should assemble a list of all the wacky things that David Ray Griffin believes. He's such a slippery customer that it's easy to forget that he endorses some of the nuttiest stuff in 9-11 Denial.

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Sunday, November 09, 2008

Another Shot In the Arm for the Fruitcakes

Well, Gordon Brown, celebrating the Obama victory, gives the game away:

The international financial crisis has given world leaders a unique opportunity to create a truly global society, Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown will say in a keynote foreign policy speech on Monday.

In his annual speech at the Lord Mayor's Banquet, Brown -- who has spearheaded calls for the reform of international financial institutions -- will say Britain, the United States and Europe are key to forging a new world order.


Ixnay on the ew-nay orld-way order-ay! The sheeple will wake up!

Seriously, this is a dumb idea, and if he actually uses the New World Order phrase the kooks will go absolutely bananas.

Update: Jay in the comments points out that Brown has used at least part of the phrase in the past:

To bring an end to the culture of irresponsibility, “we must now build a new global financial order founded on transparency, not opacity; rewarding success, not excess; responsibility, not impunity; and which is global, not national.”

He proposed five key principles for all nations to abide by: transparency and improved accounting standards; sound banking practices and more effective regulation; increased responsibility to be taken by senior management; integrity; and oversight of global capital flows.


Much of that sounds okay in principle, although the oversight of global capital flows is troubling given that Brown is a proponent of tax "harmonization"; that is, increasing tax rates in countries like the US and Ireland so that capital doesn't flee high tax rates for those shores.

New Blog from an Old Buddy

Edmund Standing is back with blog called I Kid You Not. It's a generalized skeptic blog, covering 9-11 nuttery as well as faith-healing and New Age crappola. Edmund has a solid post on the continuing anti-semitism that is associated with 9-11 Troof, focusing on Texe Marrs and on Jason Bermas' Fabled Enemies (which I should get back to watching, I suppose).

Florida Fruitcakes



The usual vapidity from the Troofers: One of the first audible comments is "Thermite is commonly used in controlled demolitions." Later on, we learn that "Thermate is a military explosive." "It's science; architects and engineers. It is, Dude!"

Close, But No Cigar

Troy from WV actually gets in my suggested question to David Ray Griffin, but needless to say Kevin Barrett immediately cuts him off and Griffin ignores the question. Oh well. I found an MP3 of the show, and the most significant thing coming out of it is Barrett announcing that he is taking a break from his fruitcake radio shows and politics to work on his family situation. Gee, think that might help there? For pure entertainment value the call from "Mike", who I believe is the truther who was put in a mental facility for making threats against the president and showing off his gun at work, saying that they need to hold a "Truthstock" and it would be great if they could get the Rolling Stones, Jackson Brown and U2 to show up.

Yeah, I am thinking of booking David Gilmour for my birthday party next year too...


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Sherry Clark Intros Richard Gage



Hilariously, she credits the breakthrough of Kevin Barrett as part of why she became a fruitcake. Doesn't she know that Kevin Barrett is disinfo?

Blessed are the Truthers?

Also, note the boxes in the background. Gage must think we laugh at it because we know it's effective.

Clark is another sad case of Trooferism breaking up a family.

Sherry Clark can relate. When the raven-haired, Delaware, Ohio-born mother of two—a self-described Republican “trophy wife” who voted for George W. Bush twice—was converted to the cause last year, she was told by friends and relatives to seek mental help. The Presbyterian church she helped create, she said, suddenly wanted nothing to do with her or her activities. And she’s currently divorcing her husband, to whom she became an embarrassment and social liability.


So she has something in common with Kevin Barrett. And Richard Gage, for that matter.

Hat tip: metalstorm in the comments section.

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Saturday, November 08, 2008

The Color Twerple

Alice Walker, while imploring President-Elect Obama not to kill Bin Laden, slips into Troofer mode:

We live in a country with a not too distant custom of lynching, particularly in the South. For those of us who are forever aware of this reality, something rises in us whenever there is a manhunt (in my case, even an animal hunt) to demand decent treatment of whoever is captured, and a fair trial. To the surprise of both Mr McCain and Mr Obama, apparently, millions of people in the world don't believe that Osama bin Laden bombed the twin towers and the Pentagon.


Yep, and most of them took the short bus to school.

Hat tip: suomynonA in the comments and Hurry Up Harry.

Troofers and Zelikow



Good lord, what a bunch of fruitcakes. Do they really believe "The FBI doesn't want Bin Laden for 9-11" and several of the hijackers are still alive?

Friday, November 07, 2008

Nope, No Holocaust Deniers Here

A 9-11 Denier posts a little screed on how unfair it is that they are associated with Holocaust Deniers. Nothing could be further from the truth, says he:

Thirdly, I’ve never met a single truther that actually denied the Holocaust. Maybe some exist, but I haven’t found running any of the thousands of websites I’ve personally visited in trying to develop my own understanding of the events that took place on 9/11.


Well, let's take a look at the link between Holocaust Denial and 9-11 Denial, shall we? Eric Hufschmid was the first American to publish a book about 9-11 Troof, called Painful Questions, which was released in 2002. Eric might be called the godfather of the American 9-11 Truth Movement. And Eric is a Holocaust Denier.

We are told that the blue stains are proof that human beings were killed in this room by cyanide.

However, photos do not prove that people were killed in the room, or how many people, who which people, or why they were killed. Actually, photos do not prove the blue stains are from cyanide!

Even if the blue stains are from cyanide, there is no evidence that human beings were killed in that room. It may have been a disinfection chamber. Or maybe the room held chemicals, and the blue stains are due to splattering or leaky containers.


Eric Hufschmid's work was cited by David Ray Griffin in the New Pearl Harbor, and by Sofia Shafquat and Brad Waddell in 9-11 Mysteries. We shall return to Sofia later.

What about American Free Press? AFP was the single most-cited source in Loose Change 2nd Edition. From Wikipedia:

The American Free Press (AFP) is a weekly newspaper published in the United States. According to one former correspondent, the AFP's direct ancestor was the neo-nazi publication The Spotlight, which ceased publication in 2001 when its parent company, Liberty Lobby, was forced into bankruptcy.


The Liberty Lobby was founded by Willis Carto, who also founded the Institute for Historical Review.

Founded in 1979 by Liberty Lobby leader Willis Carto, the Institute for Historical Review (IHR) has spearheaded the international movement to deny the reality of the Holocaust. Though it broke with Carto and the Liberty Lobby network in 1993, to its own financial detriment, IHR remains the world's single most important outlet for Holocaust-denial propaganda.


One of the chief writers for American Free Press was Christopher Bollyn, currently a fugitive from justice. Bollyn, when asked about the Holocaust, wrote the following:

As I said, I have not seen at these three former camps any evidence of any large oven in which hundreds of people could be gassed or burned. Nor, have I seen any photographs or physical evidence of such an oven. I don't see how this could make me a denier of anything. One can only deny by refusing to acknowledge something that one has seen the evidence of. I have looked for the evidence of these huge gas chambers and crematoria and not found it in the places they are said to have existed. That does not make me a holocaust denier.


Bollyn's work is cited in several of David Ray Griffin's books, including Debunking 9-11 Debunking. Here's Bollyn collaborating with Professor Steven Jones:



One of the most famous 9-11 "Truthers" is Kevin Barrett, who was the first professor to incorporate 9-11 nuttery into a college-level course on Islam. Barrett wrote an email in which he slipped into Holocaust Denial:

As a rational person who is not a specialist in the subject of WWII, but who has studied the history of Zionist Big Lies vis-a-vis Palestine, I cannot possibly dismiss the arguments of people like Green, Irving, and even Zundel. And even if the 6-million-deliberately-murdered-for-purely-ethnic-reasons figure is correct--which it very well may be; I have grown agnostic on that after studying the Big Lies of Zionism-- I would still have to characterize the Holocaust as it is taught in the US as a hideously destructive myth.


I talked earlier about Sofia Shafquat. Her movie, 9-11 Mysteries: Demolitions, is probably the second biggest hit flick among the Troofers, surpassed only by Loose Change. Sofia's buddy Brad Waddell narrates the beginning to 9-11 Mysteries and cites Eric Hufschmid as the person who turned him into a 9-11 Troofer. Sofia's website is currently marketing the DVD and Book of the Ernst Zundel Story. Ernst Zundel is a major figure in Holocaust Denial.

Note that this is before we talk about relatively minor figures in the 9-11 Troofy Troof Movement, like Eric D. Williams, or Nick Kollerstrom.

Hat Tip: You Might Know Who (in the comments)

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Super-duper-uber-magico-nano-therm*te

Since the truthers cannot explain most of their theories, they have to create speculative technologies as some sort of deus ex machina for their stupidity, be it real time large scale voice morphing, Klingon cloaking technologies or Star War Death Beams. Like most science fiction they have at least some basis in reality, but are taken to ridiculous extremes far beyond proven science. The biggest example of this is the variations of thermite, a real substance, that they create and attach any properties that they want to for use in demolishing buildings, even though thermite has never been used to demolish a building. Here is a perfect example, from David Ray Griffin's aforementioned speech, 58 minutes in:

With regard to planting explosives, a new technology has developed, known as nano-technology and it has completely changed the nature of discussion about explosives. So thermate, thermite is a very common incendiary, than you had sulfur to it, and it is called thermate because the sulfur added to it greatly lowers the temperature at which steel melts.

But if they used ultra-fine-grained particles then it increases the strength of this many many times, super-thermate is, uhh I don't know 10 times more powerful, something like that. Compared to ordinary thermate. (grumbling in crowd).

It is an incendiary, it is an explosive, it removes tough stains! It can do anything! Call now 1-800-SCAM-SCIENCE to place your order now.

Incidentally the Grifter is supposed to be on Kevin Barrett's radio show this afternoon. I have to work, but if anyone wants to call in and ask him a few tough questions...

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