Two Previews In One Day

How lucky can we get? First, and more important, are a couple of pages from the Rick Veitch Truther comic book.

The artwork looks pretty good, but the story... not so much. It looks like they're going for the full-on paranoid style with this one. See, the gal who comes back in time to save her husband at the WTC? Well, her hubby works for "Stephen" (strongly implied by the context of the discussion as Spielberg). And "Stephen is adamant that the collapsing skyscraper finale be a real building--not a model."

Not only that, but Stephen wants scenes shot in Iraq as well. So 9-11 was a Dreamworks job?

On the comedy front, Richard Gage has released the trailer for his new nutstravaganza:

I love that they got Lynn Margulis, National Medal of Science winner to tell us about the problems with NIST. She must have won her medal in structural engineering, right? Well, no, she won it for microbiology. Which, if we were talking about multiple prokaryotic organisms, would make her an expert. Unfortunately for her, we're discussing steel-framed skyscrapers, on which she's no more educated than your average cab driver.

We get the usual quote-mining of Danny Jowenko, RIP. The Troofers never mention that he debunked the supposed controlled demolition of the Twin Towers.

Update: Gage must have ordered them to pull the original version of the trailer; a revised version is above. Not sure what they changed, Margulis is still there, as is Jowenko.

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Yet Another Film The Truthers Think Is About Them

Close Encounters of the Truther Kind:

Richard Dreyfus' character in Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind, Roy Neary, struggles with an obsession to recreate a mountainous shape out of anything malleable he touches. During the movie he regularly interrupts some normal, everyday event by suddenly falling into an artistic obsession to represent a vision apparently burned into his brain. His struggle to bring meaning to his vision doesn't end until he completes a perfect model of the Devil's Tower in Wyoming, recognizes it for what it is, and then succeeds in reaching the tower in spite of cordons of troops and helicopters.

The real life version of that Close Encounters' moment, that instant when there is a perfect vision of what happened, is nearly here for 9/11.

There is something in the nature of fiction that requires that the obsessive and paranoid individual is always proven right in the end. I suppose it is simply that if the Richard Dreyfuss character was wrong, the whole subplot with him constructing representations of the Devil's Tower would simply be a red herring; an irrelevant bit that simply leads us astray.

Indeed, the only counter-example I can think of for this is A Beautiful Mind. There we learn eventually that Nash's zany conspiracy theorizing is simply a reflection of mental illness. And of course, that was based on a true story.

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About "They Hate Our Freedoms"

This is not a topic I generally cover, but I did think it was worth talking about. Former President Bush, in an address to a joint session of Congress, noted:

Americans are asking, why do they hate us? They hate what we see right here in this chamber -- a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.

It is safe to say that there are probably a fair number of non-conspiracy theorists who disagree with Bush's formulation. Over at Truth Action, in a fairly good post, JimD3100 says:

We were not attacked on 9-11 because some retards hated our freedom. They hated our government and what it does. They were also brainwashed by religion. Frankly whatever your reason is for wanting to park a passenger jet into a skyscraper---it aint good enough. There is no reason good enough to do that. But how about some reality? Israel was founded by terrorists. It worked. Israel itself is proof, to the terrorists, that terrorism might work. And Israel is proud of their terrorists past (and some say present).....

But gosh Jimd3100Stein you're starting to sound anti-Semitic! No I'm not calling for the destruction of Israel, what I'm saying is ground zero on "the war on terror" is not lower Manhattan it's the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and it's about time someone said so. We were not attacked because "they hate our freedoms" we were attacked because of our governments inference in the internal affairs of other countries and our governments unwavering support for Israel no matter what it does.

There are a lot of Truthers and even non-Truthers who would like to reduce the terrorism to nothing more than our support for Israel. But in the fatwa that Osama Bin Laden pronounced against the United States, support for Israel was only third on the list of grievances. The number one reason was the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia, where they had been since the first Persian Gulf War. Number two consisted of the sanctions against Iraq that had been in place following that war.

But I would like to return to the freedoms issue, because I think that is definitely a major key. Bush phrased it badly, with "They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other."

Those are the basic building blocks of our freedom, but let's talk about some more. Let's talk about the freedom of our women to participate freely in our society as equals with men. Maybe it's not perfect, maybe it was a lot less perfect in the past. But is there any real doubt that it's better than in, say, Saudi Arabia? Or in Afghanistan during the Taliban?

Remember, Mohamed Atta's will? Yeah, it was a bit goofy when he talked about how his genitals should be washed, but what about this part:

5. I don't want a pregnant woman or a person who is not clean to come and say good-bye to me because I don't approve it.

And:

11. I don't want any women to go to my grave at all during my funeral or on any occasion thereafter.

Remember that the type of rule the Islamo-fascists would like to institute everywhere already exists in one country: Iran. A country which, coincidentally, no doubt, leads the world in deaths by stoning:

Death by stoning came into use in Iran after the 1979 revolution.
Iranian protest outside Iran's embassy in Ankara, Turkey, 9 July The case has sparked an international outcry

Amnesty International says that at least eight people were stoned to death in 1986.

Homosexuals? Although Iran's President and 9-11 Truther Ahmadinejad claimed there are none in Iran, they do exist and their situation is even more dire:

Sodomy (lavat) is a crime for which both partners can be punished by death. If the participants are adults, of sound mind and consenting; the method of execution is for the judge to decide. If one person is non-consenting (ex. a rape), the punishment would only apply to the rapist. A non-adult who engages in consensual sodomy is subject to a punishment of 74 lashes.

So maybe Bush phrased it poorly. But do they hate us for our freedoms? Yep.

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Backyard Nanothermite

Mostly interesting for that little auto-stirring doohickey, which is pretty cool. Obvious question for the Waterboy: Did the nanothermite burn for weeks, creating large pools of molten iron?

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The 7/22 Truth Movement

Will probably turn out much like the 9/11 Truth Movement, riddled with Jew-bashers, Israel haters, and Holocaust Deniers. The 9/11 Oz forums get things going:

Conspicuously absent from the mainstream coverage of these twin attacks is this Israeli connection with the bomber clearly being a pro-Israel supporter.

One must also take note of the fact that Norway has officially backed a Palestinian bid for statehood in the United Nations, something which made Israel quite unhappy.

Norway has also said they will pull out of the bombing campaign in Libya, all of which will undoubtedly irk the banking and industrial defense contracting interests that fund and profit from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Libyan bombing campaign, and the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen.

This is just the beginning; the coincidences here, if they are coincidences and nothing more, are uncanny.

Webster Tarpley sees another false-flag attack, only he sees NATO as the culprit:

The tragic terror attacks in Norway display a number of the telltale signs of a false flag provocation. It is reported that, although the world media are attempting to focus on Anders Behring Breivik as a lone assassin in the tradition of Lee Harvey Oswald, many eyewitnesses agree that a second shooter was active in the massacre at the Utøya summer youth camp outside of Oslo. It has also come to light that a special police unit had conducted drills or exercises near the opera house in downtown Oslo which involved the detonation of bombs during 2010– exactly what caused the bloodshed a few hundred meters away this Friday. Further research reveals that United States intelligence agencies had been conducting a large-scale program of recruiting retired Norwegian police officers with the alleged purpose of conducting surveillance inside the country. This program, known as SIMAS Surveillance Detection Units, provided a perfect vehicle for the penetration and subversion of the Norwegian police by NATO.

This is typical conspiracy theory thinking; initial, rushed reports were correct, and the subsequent corrections when all the facts are in are evidence of the coverup.

Note as well that the "false-flag" aspect is bogus; as far as I know, Breivik wasn't flying any flag at all during his rampage.

Hat Tip: Paul W, in the comments.

Update: Should have guessed that Kevin Barrett would be quick to hop aboard the Blame Israel First bandwagon:

Israelis have a long history of dressing up as Arabs, or fabricating Arab patsies, to take the blame for their mayhem. Just about all of the most notorious "Arab terrorist attacks" in history have been revealed as Mossad operations, often by former Mossad officers themselves.

Err, except that the Norway attacks weren't pulled off by someone dressed up as an Arab. Not to worry that doesn't change Barrett's conclusion:

So if Israel was responsible for the terrorist attacks in Norway, as many credible observers suspect, why didn't they set up the usual Muslim patsy to take the fall? Why use a guy whose background pointed straight to the Zionists themselves?

Maybe they wanted to send a message.

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Notice That There is No Time to Read It

Matt Naus branches out from his annual book-burning.

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Chapter from Fenton Book Available Online

It mostly concerns the CIA's failure to notify the FBI that al-Hazmi and al-Midhar were in the United States, and goes over in some detail George Tenet's inconsistent responses to inquiries about the same. It's all familiar stuff, gone over in detail in Shenon's The Commission. Fenton's main addition to the story is his implication that the failures of the CIA were intentional and not simply mistakes or incompetence as here:

Some of these errors, such as the failure to pick up surveillance at the airport, may seem genuine errors of the sort made by all complex organizations. However, Bangkok station’s behavior when being queried about the cable is highly suspicious. Why claim it did not have the departure information and would have difficulty obtaining it, when it probably already had it or could get it easily? And why omit Almihdhar’s name from the March 5 cable?

Philip Zelikow, generally portrayed by the Truthers as one of the villains, actually comes off pretty well in this chapter:

Philip Zelikow, one of the staffers who interviewed Tenet, later said there was no one “a-ha moment” when they realized Tenet was not telling them the full truth, but his constant failure to remember key aspects disturbed them, and in the end “we just didn’t believe him.” After the meeting, Zelikow allegedly reported to the Commissioners that Tenet perjured himself. The staff and most of the Commissioners came to believe that Tenet was “at best, loose with the facts,” and at worst “flirting with a perjury charge.” It seems that even Commission Chairman Tom Kean came to believe that Tenet was a witness who would “fudge everything.”

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