Cosmos Been Lyin'?

Color me not surprised at this news. Cosmos, a regular at Troof Action, and a founding editor of the new 9-11 Troof News, has claimed for years that an uncle of his, Mickey Rothenberg, was one of the heroes who died on Flight 93. Here he is making the claim in a video:

As pointed out by Adam Syed, the original bios at Troof News included this relationship:

Cosmos is an artist and musician whose uncle was murdered in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

But the current version is changed:

Cosmos is a survivor of Mark Rothenberg, a family friend who was murdered on September 11, 2001.

Cosmos explains:

Yes, Mark Rothenberg was known to me as "Uncle Mickey" when I was growing up. I don't speak about Mickey much, but usually when I do I'm careful to point out that he was a close family friend, not a blood relative - specifically for the purpose of heading off the kind of smear that Barrett is engaging in here. That's why I've never referred to myself as a "9/11 family member", despite the fact that Mickey was, for all intents and purposes, family.

That is BS. Cosmos has often mentioned his uncle Mickey (as in the video) and never (at least to my knowledge) carefully pointed out that he was a close family friend, not a blood relative. Syed has several examples of Cosmos talking about his "uncle" being murdered.

Note that I don't endorse the further idiocy of Syed, who speculates that perhaps Cosmos is a family member who supports the "official story", and who is working to undermine the Troof Movement. IMHO, Cosmos just used "Uncle" Mickey as a shield. How dare anybody question him; his uncle was murdered in the attacks!

Update: The kooks at Truth Action are now claiming that Kevin Barrett is paid to spread these scurrilous attacks:

Paid disinfo agent Kevin Barrett immediately scoops up anything and everything that can divide and discredit a legitimate movement. What else is there to say? Short of finding his paycheck stubs from the DIA or the State Department.

Anything to avoid admitting that he's just another nut.

Kevin Barrett Finally Wins Something

I have been on vacation, so I missed this, but Kevin "Hang em high" Barrett made the media again, with Rolling Stone journalist and frequent truther critic Matt Taibbi awarding him the Most Obnoxious Thing on the Internet This Month. Matt might be a little behind though, because he is usually the most obnoxious thing on the Internet any month.

The author is a Truther and former Fullbright scholar from Wisconsin named Kevin Barrett who at one point was a professor at UW but left amid controversy over his lunatic-ass views. (I love the fact that the last course he was scheduled to teach at Wisconsin was on The Canterbury Tales). Barrett starts out by pointing out the huge percentages of the worldwide Muslim population believe 9/11 was an inside job, then adds that the Mosque should be turned into a kind of museum of American treachery:

The best means of repentance and reparation, in my view, would be for the U.S. government to fund and build a new mosque at Ground Zero covering the entire World Trade Center site, with twin minarets looming above in memory of the Twin Towers’ destruction by genocidal Islamophobes. The minarets should be more than 700 feet in height, which would make the new structure the world’s tallest mosque.

Louis Farrakhan, 9-11 Truther

Pretty standard issue crackpottery here.

When Troofers Attack Their Own

All I can say is, I hope they all brought rusty knives. Donna Marsh O'Connor, who's been hanging out with the Troofer dolts for years, appeared on Keith Olbermann's show the other day in support of the Ground Zero mosque. But she had the temerity to mention the hijackers, and the "Truthers" went batcrap crazy:

The foundation for her entire argument can be heard at minute mark 4:34, where Ms. Connor says:

"...and I have to acknowledge that the pain I am feeling essentially comes from 19 individual criminals who murdered 3,000 people on our soil, and it has left us horrifically scared." [emphasis mine]

But, there is no proof that the FBI's list of ALLEGED hijackers were indeed guilty of the crimes and murders on 9/11/01. Or, indeed if they were even aboard the airplanes that day.

Don't you just love that "alleged" bit? The Troofers are happy to toss charges around willy-nilly, but when it comes time to talk about the actual criminals who were indeed responsible for 9-11 they act like Mohamed Atta is going to sue them for sullying his good name.

As usual, the really fruity stuff comes out in the comments:

She still perpetuates the myth that the 19 Muslim guys with box cutters are the perps. That is not a good thing.

I was pretty surprised when I heard that statement as I watched this piece live. I could've sworn she was supportive of 9/11 truth and was aware of all the evidence against the OCT. I was disappointed. I was hoping she'd appeal to Kieth to look for the truth, not just perpetuate the myth.

NOONE has the right to be ignorant and agnostic as to the crimes committed on 9-11. I read her remarks as a rather clear endorsment of the official story. And that´s a grave betrayal of those slaughtered on 9-11-2001.

While it's polite to be sympathetic to those who lost family members, there's no excuse for Donna's non-factual public opinion - an opinion that hurts the whole movement.

Building Wut Unveils Ad

LOL! The usual bit about how "nobody knows that another building, which was not hit by a plane, collapsed that day." I have always said that Building 7 is a thin reed to build popular support for the Troof, for the simple reason that it takes too many logical leaps to get to the point where it fits in with the conspiracy theory.

Note as well that the Troofers have scaled back their fundraising objective without quite mentioning it. Let's do the math again. At 9-11 Flogger, we are exhorted to "watch the ad that one million New Yorkers will see," and reminded that each $750 donated will result in another 10,000 seeing the ad. So to get the one million viewers, they will need to air 100 ads. Times 750 is $75,000, which is roughly $15,000 per week, which they only missed by about 35% in the first week.

It is interesting to see more of a side view of the collapse (at about 16-17 seconds in), because it refutes Box Boy's claim that the collapse was symmetrical, and straight down through the path of most resistance.

WAC 9-11 Festivities Downplay Jones, Harrit and Ryan

Looks like there's a changing of the guard in the Troof Movement. The WAC-NY crew finally got off their butts and organized some festivities in NYC for the ninth anniversary celebration. But note who's highlighted at the top: Box Boy Gage, Cindy Sheehan, Cynthia McKinney, and Jason Bermas. And who comes down (faster than freefall) at the bottom: Waterboy Kevin Ryan, Steven Jones and Niels Harrit. In what they call "the big event", here are the featured speakers:

Colleen Rowely, Anthony Shaffer, Cynthia Mckinney, Cindy Sheehan, Richard Gage, First Responder Major Mike McCormick, Charlie Veitch, Jason Bermas, Gary Franchi, Bob Shulz, Christine Ebersole, Daniel Sunjata and many more from the Saturday and Sunday panels.

Yep, the ditzy blonde from Broadway (Ebersole) gets a star billing, while the chips are apparently down for the thermite triplets, who are featured only on a Sunday evening panel, when presumably most of the crackpots will have left for home.

One other odd note: Don Siegelman, the convicted former governor of Alabama will apparently be attending. I'm not sure who is hurt more by this association.

Gage-Thomas Debate, Part II

Enjoyed Dave Thomas' solo section quite a bit more than I did Box Boy's. I found it especially interesting that Thomas was able to use David Chandler's measurements to prove that there was some slight deceleration at each floor.

The real revelation though was when Niels Harrit got on the show. Lord knows, Richard Gage isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but compared to Harrit he's a genius. This guy is seriously a physics--correction, chemistry--professor? He says that he doesn't need any complicated models or experiments to prove that the WTC was a controlled demolition, just the evidence of his eyes? Niels, the evidence of our eyes tells us that the sun revolves around the Earth.

I haven't yet gotten to the point where Gage starts talking about the Lusitania getting us into World War I yet. The host does try to draw out Gage about who "they" are, but as usual, Box Boy is just hinting darkly at the conspiracy theory angle and sticking to his "evidence".

Glenn Zarmanov Exposes the Troof!

I'm beginning to enjoy this fruitcake. Wonder if his film will dare to expose the real truth behind the Simpsons episode: That there really was more than one bathroom in each WTC tower, and that there was no guy selling klulklash out in front of the towers?

Gage-Thomas Debate Analysis

I was unable to listen to it live, but I'm listening to an MP3 now thanks to JREF Forum member Sam.I.Am. I've heard the first half hour (all Box Boy) so far and here's the bingo card as I have it:



As predicted, Gage filled in the bulk of the card quickly. You could argue for "Never Before In History", although Gage's phrasing (about WTC-7) was "Third worst structural failure in history," so I'm leaving it open for now. And he skirts close to the missing pancakes, but just talks about pancaking collapse, so we'll give that one a pass so far as well.

The host had to press him on what he thought happened; as usual Gage would rather talk about "evidence" without quite connecting the dots himself. However, near the end of the segment, Box Boy does indicate that two companies that should be investigated are the security company and Ace Elevator, so he is being forced to elaborate on his conspiracy theory.

I'll post further thoughts as I listen to the rest of the show.

Huge Success for Building What Campaign!

What success, you ask? Well, this time they only fell short of their goal by 90%. By comparison with their other failures, that looks pretty good.

Dear Friends,
Thank you for helping us meet our target for the first week of the “BuildingWhat?” fundraising drive! We have $10,547 in the bank to air TV ads showing footage of Building 7 all over New York City. After expenses that’s enough to reach 100,000 people with 10 spots. Who wants to see enough raised for 500 spots? Every $750 we raise is enough for another spot to reach another 10,000 people, so please contribute generously and ask your friends to contribute too! Go to BuildingWhat.org.

Remember that they were hoping to get about $100,000 per week; seems to me that they missed the target by about $89,453. And note in particular that they seem to have had a lot of "expenses". Let's see, they raised $10,500, and it costs them $750 per ad, and they have enough to do 10 spots. Doesn't that indicate that their "expenses" were around $3,000? And what TV show could they be advertising on in New York City that they only reach 10,000 viewers?

Dave Thomas to Debate Box Boy Gage and Harrit on Coast to Coast

It's apparently going to be a four-hour extravaganza tomorrow (Saturday night) on the show best known for alien abductions and Bigfoot. Dave has already done an admirable job of debunking Gage in an impromptu debate and I am confident that he will shred Box Boy in this one, for which he's been prepping awhile. Check your local listings for the time and station. If you want to play a little drinking game, here's a bingo card:

Adventurous souls with strong livers could do a drink after completing either a row or column; I'd be very surprised if half that card isn't filled in in the first ten minutes.

Congressman Alan Grayson, Truther

Well, we have a new candidate for the Troofer with the highest office in the land: Congressman Alan Grayson of Florida comes out in favor of the LIHOP theory. He's a freshman, was swept into office with 52% of the vote in 2008. Expect him to be dragged out to sea with the tide in November, but in the meantime he's got some 'splainin' to do.

Eric Lawyer Debunked

Over at JREF, by triforcharity.

At: 39 seconds in, he asked for an investigation that follows the standards and has contempt and subpoena powers. The "Standards" he is referring to, is NFPA's guidelines. Well, as we have already established, NFPA is not a law enforcement agency, and makes no laws. See above.

At about: 40 seconds in, he says that “This should have been the most protected, preserved, over tested and thorough investigation in world history."

Well, you see it was. Fresh Kills rings a bell. The FDNY and NYPD could not logically say that nobody was to try to rescue anyone, or move anything, until this scene was completely documented. To ask that is asinine at best.

Yep. This is one of the more idiotic things that Troofers say. Remember, they claim to represent the first responders and the victims. But they would have called off all search and rescue operations and put up crime scene tape all over the site, rather than save the 17 or so people who were actually pulled out of the pile and survived.

Note as well, this post there (#3) by tfk, quoting one of the men involved in training of the canines involved in the search and rescue operation:

No explosives or incendiary devices were planted anywhere in that complex. None. Our dogs and the other EDD K9's would have alerted after the fact as well. It's what they are trained for. We staged for the two weeks we were there at the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island. This is where much of the structural steel was brought. Despite rumors to the contrary, chain of custody was maintained and virtually all of the steel was cataloged and vital pieces were inspected. Not a single dog ever alerted to the presence of either explosives or incendiary residue.
Not one.

8/17 Was an Inside Job!

Yesterday afternoon the 12 story building I worked in was rattled by a pair of massive explosions. Fellow employees filed into the hall asking anxiously what it was. I knew the answer of course, thermite. Soon reports filed in from all over the Puget Sound, people were calling 9/11 to the point that it shut down the system in Tacoma. The newspaper finally reported that what happened is a private plane got to close to Air Force One, which was parked for a visit by President Obama at Boeing Field. The Air National Guard down in Portland scrambled a pair of F-15s, and in their hurry to get up to Seattle they broke the sound barrier. Having been stuck on I-5 making that commute several times, I was very jealous.

Anyway, so as it turns out by the time the planes got there, the intruder, a seaplane no less, was gone and there was no intercept (alert David Ray Griffin). It turned away and landed up in Kenmore, where the pilot was later questioned by the Secret Service. Do they really expect us to believe that a seaplane, capable of maybe 80 knots, can outrun a pair of supersonic fighters? Please....

Box Boy to Launch Broadsheet

It's just another way of wringing more dough out of the rubes.

This September, the most important print item in the history of AE911Truth will make its debut. The “911 Investigator,” the first annual edition of our informative new color broadsheet newspaper, is now available for early order in our online store, and you’ll be able to get 100 copies shipped at low bulk prices and distribute them proudly in your local community.

What a shock, they didn't check carefully before naming their newspaper the 911 (sic) Investigator. As it happens, there is a 9-11 "Truther" posting under that name at JREF, and guess what? He's a Holocaust Denier:

My position on the bunnycaust is that I will believe that it happened if somebody can demonstrate it to me that it happened.

In Europe we hold the view that somebody is innocent until proven guilty very unlike jungles like the US (jungle, because the dudalbs, the dtuggs, the parkys and the finewines are in charge) where the rule is: 'listen pall, we're going to throw you in jail for 4 years. However, if you confess being guilty we'll reduce your sentence to 2 years' ('fleabargain').

So here is my request to the local Israel-Lobby here on this forum (dudalb, dtugg, parky, finewine and a few hundred more): demonstrate to me that 6 million people were gassed in WW2 under the Nazis.

Wait, I'll make it easy for you: prove that only one person was gassed.

What?

Trailer for a new film by the WAC jobs of New Jersey. This one just might set a new record for time to first lie or mistake; at about 21 seconds in they show an aerial view of the Pentagon smoldering, but it must be amateur hour CGI, as they show the wrong freaking side on fire.

All Quiet on the Anniversary Front

Looks like no Troofer festivities on September 11th this year:

Just wondering if there is much in the way of organized events in NYC on this September 11, the ninth anniversary of the attacks. I haven't seen much mentioned, but it seems like a golden opportunity to present to the public what we know and represent.

That was posted two days ago and there have been two responses; one from a French moron asking about Parisian celebrations, and one from the original poster:

I'm not complaining, or criticizing, as I don't have the time or knowledge base to bring off a big organized event. How can I throw stones?
But I see many events organized, in Australia, Denmark, etc, and wondering why ground zero isn't a worldwide destination for 9/11 truthers on this anniversary.

Here's a clue: There will be no events in NYC this year, because the promoters of these events have been losing money on them. Remember Luke in 2006 pleading with people to buy his cruddy 5th anniversary shirts? Remember the dueling celebrations held in 2008 and 2009? Both had terrible attendance, so bad that even if they'd held just a single event it would have lost money.

There are no sheep left to be shorn in the US; hence the smart operators like Box Boy Gage and David Ray Grifter are selling their snake oil to the rubes in Australia and Denmark. In the US, the "Truth Movement" is only standing up on its perch because it's nailed to it:

Speaking of Set Up to Fail...

The latest Truther fiasco started yesterday.

Today, the 11th of August 2010, we are pleased to announce the beginning of the worldwide “BuildingWhat?” campaign.

CONT.

For nearly nine years, the American people and the world have been kept in the dark about an event of monumental significance: the freefall collapse of World Trade Center Building 7, a 47-story skyscraper that was the third building to fall on September 11, 2001, even though it was not struck by a plane and suffered only minimal fire damage. Only a small minority of the public has seen footage of this collapse. But the vast majority of those who have seen the footage agree that the building was brought down intentionally, and they therefore support a new investigation of 9/11.

So what's the plan?

As the first step in a worldwide effort to spread awareness of the collapse of Building 7 to every corner of the globe, we have come together to cosponsor the “BuildingWhat?” Television Advertising Campaign in New York City. Our goal is to enlighten over 1 million New Yorkers with footage of Building 7’s freefall collapse. The plan is to blanket the New York City television market with our ad during the week of September 20, 2010.

We are seeking to raise $500,000 between August 11 and September 11, 2010 to cover the costs of this effort. Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth is now a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization, and so every dollar that is donated to this campaign will be fully tax-deductible!

Half a million dollars? Are you kidding me? My guess is they will be lucky to raise $10,000. But if their projections on the revenue side are high, you can bet the expense side of the ledger is absurdly low:

At an average cost of $750 per 30-second ad, and an average viewership of 10,000 people per ad, $500,000 minus expenses will allow for approximately 5.5 million individual views. The number of people who would see the ad at least once would be around 1 million.

$750? In New York City? What are they talking about, 3:00 AM?

Comments Settings Changed

No more anonymous posting for now; let's see if our site louse has the nerve to continue posting the vile stuff he has been doing now that his name will be on the record. It should also help us out a bit with the comment spammers who have really been bugging me lately.

A Little Assistance

I occasionally mock the folks over at Truth Action as the "responsible" wing of the Troofers, but here's an occasion where they deserve the adjective without the scare quotes.

To set the stage, it's a post about a woman who witnessed the Pentagon crash on 9-11. She was interviewed by CIT, but they have not seen fit to include her testimony in any of their films. Indeed, Aldo and Craig have misrepresented her viewpoint and discounted her testimony about the impact.

The thread was originally posted in January of this year and quickly died down, but it was resurrected recently by a CIT-head named Thetan1974. Among the points he raises is this:

Sure, the victims could have been on it, but the "hijackers'" DNA was never found and FBI only "believes" Hani Hanjour did it. No proof at all.

And what follows is a terrific job of debunking.

Arcterus:

Yeah, that's right. The FBI just "believes" it. They pulled a hijacker out from a hat and said "I have a gut feeling about this!" Then they consorted their FBI Bibles which stated Hanjour was the pilot, thus confirming their beliefs, and so started the Church of the FBI.

Back in reality, it would be obvious that Hanjour would be the pilot since he was the only one of the five Pentagon hijackers who had any flight training.

And:

Well, we know he was on the plane, and we know that he was the only hijacker with any flight training. Is there any other reason? Maybe, I don't know. Probably. I don't have an exhaustive list of the evidence for that off the top of my head. But it's so obvious it would have been him, if anyone, that I don't really know why you're even asking. I mean, even if it wasn't him, so what? It was a different hijacker. What difference would that make? It's like you're being the devil's advocate. You know, that or a troll.

You have the DNA of everyone on the flight except for 5 unidentified strands which just happen to be the same as the number of hijackers on board. Plot twist?

Let me give Arcterus a hand on the DNA. Not only were there five unidentified strands which just happen to be the same as the number of hijackers on board, but two of the strands were definitely proven to be from brothers. And two of the hijackers (Nawaf al-Hazmi and Salem al-Hazmi) on board Flight 77 were in fact siblings.

Sander's Song

Sander Hicks has released a new single which is zooming up the Conspiracy Theory chats, called "No Conspiracy Theory". It sounds rotten. And no, I don't mean Johnny Rotten.

Lyrics here if you want to save your ears.

How did those Towers fall?
Were there bombs in the walls?

What melted all that steel?

Former ISI Chief Still a Kook

Hamid Gul, who used to be one of the Troofer's suspects (remember the whole bit about the $100,000 wire transfer to Atta?) is now their big buddy because he endorses the nuttery:

The attacks of September 11 were a pretext to a war already under consideration, Gul said. "I think some of the neocons, who were very close to President [George W.] Bush, they wanted that he could embark on a universal adventure of Pax Americana, and they thought that the world was lying prostrate in front of them," he said. The 2001 terrorist attacks helped win the public support for the neocon plans, he said.

There was no legitimate reason for the United States to attack Afghanistan, Gul said, because the FBI had no solid evidence that Osama bin Laden was involved in the attacks on New York and Washington. "Why has not a single individual connected to 9/11 been caught in America so far, and why hasn't Osama bin Laden been charged?" With no evidence anyone in Afghanistan was involved, there is no way to legitimize the U.S. occupation, Gul said.

Errr, Zacharias Moussaoui was caught in America. And the goofiness about Osama not being charged is so stupid only a Truther could believe it. Gul also blurs the line between the US support for the Afghan resistance in the 1980s and the Taliban (which arose much later).

Correction: Gul headed the ISI before Mahmoud Ahmed, who is the guy suspected of wiring the money to Atta, according to one article in the Times of India. Gul was on the Alex Jones show a year or two and denied the charges against Ahmed.

Zwicker Reactions

I gotta roll my eyes sometimes. The folks over at Truth Action are appalled at
Zwicker's "endorsation" of CIT, and angry that he has accused them of being agents:

Zwicker has openly accused TruthAction of being run by ‘infiltrators.’

So how do they respond? If you guessed with paranoia and accusations, score five points:

Remember all the energy that was being put into relentlessly pushing Space Beams and TV Fakery?

Remember how that just kind of stopped right around when CIT came onto the scene?

yeah - right after the election

and:

this was always the thing that caught my eye - how they seemed to work in concert and had talking points that they pushed in seperate yet suspiciously coordinated ways.

Zwicker Endorses CIT

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

Update: Troy joins CIT!


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

Bruno Update II--L.A.'s Dopest Attorney On the Case

Bruno Bruhwhiler, from the LA branch of the kooks, has an update on his terrorist threat trial:

We have some EXCELLENT NEWS to share!!! One of WeAreChangeLA’s most active and committed members, Laurie Pershall, recommended Harvard Law School graduate Allison Margolin, daughter of famed Bruce Margolin- author of the California Medical Marijuana Laws. Bruno met with Allison and her team and has retained her services. Allison comes from a family of progressive lawyers. She is ready to take this case through trial if necessary. She’s a winner and we are thrilled to have her.

Allison has her own blog here (last updated in 2007), where she bills herself as "LA's Dopest Attorney". It appears evident that she mostly handles pot possession cases.

On the financial front, it certainly appears that Bruno's "involuntary" facial expressions will turn out to be quite expensive:

Thank you for all of your support and for every financial contribution. Every dollar counts! At this point we do not have the donations needed to go to trial. All that has been Chipped In up to date has gone to retain attorneys and to pay filing fees and some of the bail. So far we have spent $19,200 plus, ($9,500 for the bail bonds [non-refundable], $500 for the continuance lawyer, $1,200 for the last Lawyer who didn’t work out, $7,500 to retain the new Defense Attorney, Allison Margolin, for pre trial, and $500 in filing fees and notary charges as well as the several hundred dollars that CHIP IN has taken for their cut). You all have donated over $11 Thousand Dollars through the “CHIP IN”!!! THANK YOU!!! We are still in the red and will need the projected $18,000 plus on the “CHIP IN” if we can avoid trial. If we go to trial the total costs to Free Bruno will be over $27 Thousand dollars.

Izzat You Under that Rug, Dick?

Sure looks like Box Boy covering up the truth, taken from this page at AE 9-11 Troof.

Truther Party Gathering Coming Up

This sounds like an event not to be missed:

A conference, a gathering, a be-in, & teach-in. A communal vacation from stress and the economy, a big open mike.

Sounds like 1967 all over again!

Save the Country. Change the World.

Wait a minute! I thought it was save the cheerleader, save the world?

Confirmed speakers include Sander Hicks, Box Boy Gage, and Luke Rudkowski. Raphael Diaz will facilitate "early morning movement" sessions. I assume that means he will be directing traffic to the toilet.

CIT for the Prosecution

Arcterus, one of the more intelligent Truthers, writes about the problems CIT would experience if they were running the case for the prosecution.

Let's start with their own witnesses being cross-examined with each other. CIT's own witnesses state that the plane impacted the building. Their case for claiming the physical evidence was faked revolves around the testimony that the flight path as on the north side of CITGO. They would HAVE to find some way to convince the jury that part of the testimony was right and another part was wrong without directly saying so. Now even if they made this possible, invalidating a witness discredits their ENTIRE testimony. Even if you're only arguing against part of it, it only makes the entire testimony look bad. It's so unlikely it might as well be said to be impossible that an entire jury would accept a testimony to be PARTIALLY accurate. They would almost definitely disregard it. Even if, by some miracle, each and every one of them thought in this way, that would go out the window upon cross-examination. Take, for example, Sergeant Lagasse. CIT says that Sergeant Lagasse giving irrefutably wrong locations of the taxi cab and light poles actually supports their theory. Well, that's all fine and dandy, but back in the realm of reality, all it means is that he's WRONG. And if he's wrong, it means the entire testimony could be wrong. That and, of course, they wouldn't be allowed to say why they think it supports their conclusion. They can not speculate.

I particularly like this part:

In short, this means "Every contact leaves a trace." Are the implications of this clear? Physical evidence is always correct, because it can not be wrong. IF the physical evidence was faked, then there'd be some sign, some EVIDENCE that it was faked. Does everyone understand? You can only trump physical evidence with PHYSICAL EVIDENCE.

Were the light poles blown away by explosives? Then there should be some explosive residue. Was that segment of the Pentagon blown up? Then like all bombs, there must have been some shrapnel. Were the plane parts planted? Then it should be clear to forensic examiners that the locations of the plane parts are all wrong, that they flew in the wrong trajectory, that they weren't traveling at the right velocity, anything to suggest that they didn't originate from a high-speed plane crash. Did the examiners miss all of this? If so, it doesn't matter. It means CIT has no case here. If the evidence was missed by those examining the scene, there's nothing that can be done about that. It still means there's no documented, verifiable physical evidence with which to suggest that the whole scene was set up.

Indeed. Of course, if we try to suppose that Professor Jones is in the witness chair, and Arcterus the prosecutor, I'd love to hear this part:

Arcterus: Did you obtain confirmation that the red-gray chips were thermite?

Jones: Well, we sent them to a guy in France, who confirmed the existence of the chips, although not in the quantity we found them, and he discovered they had been deactivated...

Arcterus: Do you have any evidence that they had been deactivated?

Jones: Errr, well, that is to say....

Still More Zadroga

You may have heard that the The James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2009 was voted down the other day. I still take no position on whether the air quality at Ground Zero has contributed significantly to health problems of the workers on the pile. I'll leave that to the epidemiologists. We'll know one way or another whether this is another "Gulf War Syndrome" or not.

But the odd thing is that the Democrats insisted on keeping Zadroga's name associated with the bill. I hadn't looked him up in awhile, but here's a very good article on his death at that well-known neocon site, the New Yorker.

The type of material found in Zadroga’s lungs was also significant. Talc and cellulose are widely used pharmaceutical ingredients, Hirsch noted, but neither was considered a major respiratory hazard at Ground Zero: talc because it wasn’t found in the air in abundance; cellulose because it is not considered particularly hazardous. (The molecules are too large to pass through the elaborate filtering apparatus of the upper airway.) The absence of needle marks Hirsch deemed insignificant, because clean needles cause less scarring.

And:

The truth of this is hard to gauge. Four months after meeting with Joe, I wrote to the Zadrogas’ lawyer, who agreed to fax me a copy of the results of James’s 2003 biopsy, the one that Joe had said showed extensive lung damage. The document that arrived was eight pages long: a comprehensive report on the various tests and their findings. But its import was unequivocal. The lungs had only minor abnormalities and showed no evidence of talc or cellulose. When I contacted a pathologist unconnected with the case to ask whether this could have been an oversight, he scoffed, explaining that, under the polarized light that labs use to spot foreign particulate matter, such particles shine out like stars in the night sky. Had the material Breton found in Zadroga’s lungs in 2006 been there in 2003, it would have lit up the lab.

Note as well that Zadroga's wife, who did not work on the pile, died suddenly. The cause is not known, but this is very suggestive:

In Florida, however, events took a strange turn. About a year after the move, Ronda died, suddenly, at the age of twenty-nine. The news came as a surprise to Joe. “We didn’t even know she was sick!” he told me. When I asked what could have killed Ronda so abruptly, Joe suggested that it was stress—the burden of looking after a young child and an invalid husband. “It was just too much for her,” he said. Reached by phone, Ronda’s mother would not talk about her daughter’s death. A family friend, however, said that the actual cause was blood poisoning, brought on by intravenous drug use, adding that “everybody down here knew what was going on.” A local investigation noted that, according to the Medical Examiner’s Office, Ronda’s lethal infection could not be conclusively determined to be the result of intravenous drug use. But track marks and multiple needle punctures were found on the body, and a toxicology report revealed non-toxic levels of drugs, including methadone.