Hey Jon, Here is a Quarter, Buy a Clue.

Pat made a couple of posts earlier on the article in a Philadelphia paper profiling Jon Gold. The article wasn't that fascinating, however, the entertainment continues. Jon is now all upset because 911 Blogger, a site that he helped start, won't run the article in a blog post:

Cosmos, the founder of the "Eleventh Day of Every Month Until Justice" action, as well as one of the founders of www.911truthnews.com, posted the CityPaper's article to 911blogger.com. For some reason, the post has not been allowed through. Cosmos sent an email asking why, and has not heard anything from anyone.



It's ironic that an article that made the front page of Philadelphia's largest weekly newspaper, that just happens to mention me, a co-founder of 911blogger.com, is not allowed to be posted on 911blogger.com today.



I think the truth hurts.

Hey Jon, why are you surprised? This is what happens when you have a movement based not on reality, but on a paranoid ideology and emotional fervor. One of my professors once told me that the difference between conspiracy theory and science was that science allowed for good predictions, and guess what, this was entirely predictable. In fact if you want to know how the psychology of such movements go, people have been writing about it for centuries. I suggest reading up on the French Revolution for starters, or you can try one of my favorite books.

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David Ray Griffin: Stuck on Stupid

As I have mentioned in the past, Grifter has two new books coming out on 9-11; here's a snippet of the publisher's PR for one of them:

Turning next to debates within the 9/11 Truth Movement, Griffin reinforces his claim that the reported phone calls from the airliners were faked....

As I have pointed out in the past, Grifter knows that once you accept the phone calls as real, much of the conspiracy theory garbage becomes untenable.

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Open Thread

Comments allowed. Seen a good story you'd like us to cover? Want to engage in a bickerfest with Brian?

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Good News! They Did Have Chain of Custody on the Dust

So says Waterboy Kevin Ryan, and we all know he'd never lie:

Summers and Swann also state that well-sourced samples of World Trade Center dust, collected using completely appropriate chain of custody forms, are not good sources of information yet long-time propagandist, Gerald Posner, and Weekly Standard contributor, Thomas Joscelyn (who recently tried to link Iran to 9/11), are excellent sources.

Woot! They've even got completely appropriate chain of custody forms, no doubt filled out in triplicate and notarized. Just one question, Kevin: Have you got a 27-B Stroke 6?

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How 9-11 Could Have Been Caught

Over at Vanity Fair, which has published some excellent articles on 9-11 over the last few years. This one is about how inter-agency squabbling prevented the US from getting the chance to tap every call made from

Afghanistan:

Electronic eavesdropping clearly had potential in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. But in the years before 9/11, when bin Laden’s terror plot was first being discussed, that potential remained limited. The reason was simple: Afghanistan had no cell phones, no Internet, and only a rudimentary landline network, which did not work at all outside the country’s largest cities. This could be remedied, however. Indeed, by the end of 1999, the Taliban government had embraced a full-fledged American scheme to install a modern cell-phone-and-Internet system in Afghanistan. It could have been up and running within months. The Taliban had already granted an exclusive license to a U.S.-owned firm, the Afghan Wireless Communications Company.



More to the point, electronic modifications concealed within the circuitry would have allowed every call and every e-mail emanating from Afghanistan to be relayed without interference to N.S.A. headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland. “This project was a dream,” says one former senior F.B.I. counterterrorism specialist who knew about the scheme at the time. “To be able to wire up a country from ground level up—you don’t get too many opportunities like that.” No, you don’t. But at the critical moment, the Clinton administration put the project on hold, while rival U.S. agencies—the F.B.I., the N.S.A., and the C.I.A.—bickered over who should control it.

This highlights one of the central flaws in the Troofer view of the world. To them, the government is some kind of monolithic entity, while in reality it is dozens and dozens of mini-fiefdoms, each with its own chieftain. Indeed, even the individual entities have internal turf-battles:

Thus, while the C.I.A. was seeking overall control of the operation, there was also an inside fight over which of its sections—the Near East Division or the Counterterrorism Center—should take it over.

Kudos to commenter Paul W for pointing this one out.

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The Comedy Continues

At the Philly paper that did the write-up on Jon Gold. As usual, the comments section provides the most hilarity. David Chandler puts Jon Gold in the fringe section of the Troof Movement:

Every movement has its fringe elements. We are not a top-down organization. Some bring their expertise to the table. Others bring only their enthusiasm. It is shoddy journalism to poke fun at the fringes and ignore the solid core. (Jon ["f--k science"] Gold is not entirely on the fringe, but his comment that this is a balanced article is pretty far out there.)

Gold responds with something that I could have written, minus, of course, the profanity:

F*ck science that is sold to us as "peer reviewed," but published in a pay-to-play journal. F*ck science that is sold to us as "peer reviewed," but is partially peer reviewed by someone claiming the 9/11 victims are alive and well and living on a tropical island receiving a Government stipend. F*ck science that is originated by someone advocating man-made earthquakes and perpetual motion machines.

But even better is when Adam Syed fills in a piece of the puzzle. Chandler and Frank Legge have written an article debunking CIT's "North of the Citgo" claims for Flight 77. But they are reportedly having trouble getting it "peer-reviewed". Guess who Waterboy, editor of JONES, sent the paper to:

Kevin Ryan at the Journal of 9/11 Studies submitted the Chandler/Legge paper to the Pilots organization, and retired fighter pilot Lt. Col. Shelton Lankford reviewed the paper. Here is part of his conclusion:



"There is nothing wrong with this paper that a trip through a shredder, and a sincere apology to CIT and the 9/11 Truth community could not cure."

Oh, my, that is too rich for words. Kevin sent the paper to one of Rob Balsamo's rubber roommates at Pilots for 9-11 Troof?



Of course, being a paranoid nutter, Syed goes on:

How could Chandler do such good work on the WTC and such pseudo-scholarship on the Pentagon? Were they gotten to? Were they plants from the beginning whose job was to gain "credibility capital" by doing good work to gain the 9/11 research community's trust, in order to expend that capital later in an assignment to split and slow down the progress of the movement?

Yes, Adam, Chandler and Legge are on the payroll; Cass Sunstein suggested we hire them.

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The Reflecting Pool

I was flipping through movies on Netflix the other day and was amused to come across the Truther movie The Reflecting Pool. What can I say? What a piece of crap! Where do these idiots get this? Bad acting and screenplay aside, I could write a better 9/11 conspiracy plot than this. They can't even get even get the most basic truther memes correct, not to mention the actual facts of the story. The most blatant example being regarding the Pentagon crash, where they have flight 77 circling the Pentagon like a Blue Angel on amphetamines.



Anyway, the thing I always find so amusing in these fictional accounts of 9/11 conspiracies (although at their heart, all of their accounts are fictional) is they have the diligent investigator running around doing real investigating, calling up government officials, talking to witnesses to events and such. Now why can't these idiots do this in real life? Aside from the inane antics of the CIT goofballs and Kevin Barrett's vacation in Morocco, none of them have even made the most basic attempt at investigation. Why won't they call up all the firefighters and ask them about explosives? Why haven't any of them talked to these hijackers who are still alive? Why haven't they talked to the soldiers who supposedly trained with the hijackers at DLI or lived next door to them in Pensacola?



Is this too much to expect?

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