It's Not a Bug, It's a Feature

The Truthers continue their usual backbiting, schisms, and mutual accusations of being government operatives. This is no surprise, when a movement does not have reality to give them a common foundation, these types of things happen. What is amusing though, is the complete lack of self-awareness on this point. A post on Truth Action makes this point:

In my opinion, the Truth Action forum is the most important 9/11 truth forum. Regular posters here are among the most thoughtful and broadly aware of those participating in 9/11 truth. To post here is to stand up to total scrutiny. We try to set the bar as high as the stakes. No time for wackiness.

But there's something missing. Certainly the elephant in the room.

I believe, based on a good deal of direct experience as well as an awareness of social movement history, that this movement has been heavily subverted by dishonest people.

But we don't talk about it much. Why?

He then goes on to list all the people who he thinks is dishonest. Of course what he fails to mention, is the people he lists make the same accusations about his faction.

And they are both right.

This type of dishonesty paired with paranoia is not incidental, it is an essential part of the movement, or any conspiracy theory for that matter. As we say in the software world, it's not a bug, it's a feature!

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All Quiet on the Saudi Article

I commented at the end of the post on the Vanity Fair article about possible Saudi involvement in financing 9-11 that it would be interesting to see how the Troofers reacted to it.

The answer, for the most part, is crickets. Over at 9-11 Flogger, Jeff (shure) Hill posted it, and there are a grand total of 9 comments. Seven of those are Jeff quoting large chunks of the article with no personal comments from him. The eighth is from "Sitting Bull" and says:

A good job by Vanity Fair even If we were years ahead with most of the infos, I welcome that!

The ninth is Jon Gold bitching that the piece doesn't mention the India Times' claim that the Pakistani ISI wired $100,000 to Atta the day before the attacks. I mean, seriously, Jon, what possible use would Atta have had for $100 large on 9-10? In fact, he was busy wiring back money to Al Qaeda that had not been spent.

These dolts aren't interested in anything that doesn't conclude that Bush and Cheney were behind the attacks.


Truth Action? Crickets, completely.

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Vanity Fair on the Saudis

Interesting article on the Saudi connection to 9-11. A lot of it is familiar; for example the Bayoumi/Al Midhar/Al Hazmi menage. On the other hand, it does explain some of the supposed warnings that the Saudis claim to have given:

As the months passed, leading Saudis would suggest publicly that their nation had been entirely open with the United States on the security front all along—even claim that they had alerted Washington in advance to possible calamity.

A year after 9/11, Prince Turki expounded at length on the relationship the G.I.D. had had with the C.I.A. From about 1996, he wrote, “at the instruction of the senior Saudi leadership, I shared all the intelligence we had collected on bin Laden and al-Qaeda with the C.I.A. And in 1997 the Saudi minister of defense, Prince Sultan, established a joint intelligence committee with the United States to share information on terrorism in general and on bin Laden (and al-Qaeda) in particular.”

(two paragraphs snipped)

Though there was no official U.S. reaction to that claim, Michael Scheuer, the former chief of the C.I.A.’s bin Laden unit, later dismissed it in his book Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq as a “fabrication.”

It will be interesting to see the reactions of the various factions of the Truther brigades; I assume that the "Muslims didn't do 9-11" crowd will hate the article.

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Grifter Keeps Recycling...

The greenest 9-11 Truther out there; he never comes up with new crap, it's always the same old crap:

Was the now widely unpopular war in Afghanistan ever justified? Why do many otherwise fact-driven journalist still endorse the official account of 9/11, despite the scientific improbability of several important details? Were some of the phone calls that reportedly came from the hijacked airliners faked? Have American Christians been largely blinded to the truth about 9/11 by accepting a nationalist version of faith?

(Bolding added for emphasis).

BTW, Jon Gold called me to task for not mentioning that he no longer endorses Grifter, despite the fact that he has only two reviews up on Amazon, one of which compares DRG to Gandhi and MLK. Well, gee, Jon, what about the folks who are relying on your review of Griffin's book; don't you think you should amend your review? Perhaps you could mention that Grifter will be mentioned in the same breath with Ponzi and Madoff?

And you know, you can't hide behind the idea that Griffin has just recently started acting like a flake; his earliest books are every bit as wacked out as his new stuff.

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Not Just Another in the Long Line

Remember Truth Burn, the fiasco where a giant sign was going to be demolished by thermite at Burning Man? Truthers raised $20,000 for that effort and what did they get? A video of some thermite being burned in a bucket.

Remember Box Boy Gage collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations, and paying himself a salary of $75,000?

Remember NYC-CAN, where the Truthers raised a bunch of money in order to get an initiative on the ballot in New York City only to have their efforts laughed out of court?

Well, this isn't like those, apparently. This is a scam, according to the Troof Action dolts.

As of this date, it looks like a total scam and it is most unfortunate that Ken has gotten sucked into this and can't seem to see the real problems.

Part vaporware, part bait and switch. All "trust us." A classic con.

"This" is a new attempt to get an independent 9-11 Commission initiative on the ballot. Somewhere:

Building on the New York experience, I approached the Office of California Legislative Counsel in October 2010 for assistance in drafting a prospective law that would create a new investigative commission––independent of federal and state governments––but with the necessary powers to get to the facts (i.e., subpoena and oath taking). The vision of the commission would be to pursue an investigation wherever the evidence leads. No person would be immune from criminal implication, regardless of political station in or out of government (domestic or foreign).

But not California as it turns out:

We have since concluded that the initiative process in California is overly expensive and otherwise not ideal for a number of reasons, and that we should prioritize our work in three states: Oregon, Massachusetts, and Alaska. You will learn more about these considerations at our website, 9-11cc.org.

The people behind the effort include:

Mike Gravel, the former Senator from Alaska. Gravel's run for President in 2008 included this ad, possibly the greatest in the history of politics:

Byron "Urantia" Belitsos, one of the founders of 9-11 Truth dot org.

Ken Jenkins, 9-11 Truth's #1 psychologist.

And somebody named George Ripley, believe it or not.

One of the more endearing aspects about 9-11 Truthers is the way they can put a smiley face on all their fiascos. But they usually do it after getting the pie in the face; in this case they've already prepared for it:

If we are able to raise the necessary funds for this undertaking, I believe there is no possibility of failure even if no initiative is enacted into law.

Their donations page claims that the contributions are tax-deductible; sounds to me like the money is being laundered through Gage and his gaggle. The home pages notes them as a "sponsor". So far the effort claims to have fleeced, err, raised almost $4900.

Update: One of the members of the advisory board is Fred Burks:

Bat-crap crazy.

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Chris Mohr Begins his Gage Rebuttal

When Chris Mohr debated Richard Gage earlier, Gage's organization promised they were going to make a video presentation of the event, they even filmed it with 3 different cameras. After Gage's embarrassing performance though, they immediately decided against that and won't even release the unedited video of the event. Mohr has decided to release the first in what should be a long series of YouTube videos with his rebuttal though. Don't expect to hear anymore from Gage on this though.

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Paranioid Truther John Wright on Tulsa Radio

I had to love this show (6/30/11 episode downloadable in MP3 format at website). The segment with LeftWright starts about 75 minutes in. Wright makes a complete ass of himself, starting with his dedication, in which he manages to mention just about everybody but his dog.

He drones on and on, like the Ever-ready Bunny on crack. It's a classic Truther performance and eventually the two radio guys, who have treated him quite fairly, are reduced to talking about their lunch plans in the background while nutbar Wright filibusters frantically.

But not to worry, Troofers! He's doing it on purpose, because he "realized" that they were not having him on the show to treat him respectfully.

When the "hosts" confirmed my suspicion that they only invited me on the show to ridicule me and the movement, I made a tactical decision to filibuster as much as I could. I realize that my long introduction was a bit over the top, but that was a strategic decision to seize the high ground in three ways.

1) By mentioning that I am a United States Soccer Federation certified referee (going on 5 years now) at the outset, the listeners see a regular guy reffing soccer matches and authorized to do so by a national organization which is affiliated to a world governing body (FIFA). We referees are also trained to be impartial and objective, both qualities one wants from someone analyzing data and expressing informed conclusions.

Yep, he thought that mentioning that he's a soccer ref gave him credibility with the listeners.

Wright is of course a classic conspiracy nutbar, as this excerpt shows:

That said, my working hypothesis regarding the presence of individuals on the planes, who would later be identified as "hijackers", is that 19 men fitting their general description were on the planes under one of the following scenarios:

1) They thought they were part of an operation to hijack planes and fly them into targets.

2) They thought they were part of an operation to hijack planes for some other reason, perhaps to make a demand of some kind.

3) They thought were doing more reconnaissance flights to study airline security, etc.

4) They thought they were part of a red team/ blue team exercise of some kind.

Update: I see that James already covered this, but as our posts are substantially different I will leave this one up.

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