An orgy of woo-woo

"Woo-woo" is a term used frequenly by the famous Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcasters to describe belief in the paranormal or in conspiracy theories of any stripe. See, for example, the following paragraph, a one-shot put up at 911truth.org over the weekend that manages to make 9/11 deniers sound like utter morons on at least a half-dozen different levels:

This article is being posted at 911truth.org as a "service" to our readers, though not 9/11-specific, because many of us activists are connected almost exclusively through a variety of wireless devices. We need to be healthy and clear-thinking to do the grueling work we do, and the scientific and medical literature--especially from outside the US--is becoming more definitive in sounding alarms about dangers of EMF waves from all kinds of wireless devices. European countries are looking at bans on wireless modems in schools, for instance, and this link between cell phones and cancer is really quite undeniable now. Just last night I bought a replacement for my lost cell-phone earbud for about $6 (no, NOT at Walmart!). And really, while slightly less convenient than a wireless connection, the cost to run a cable from you router to your computer is equally negligible. I'll try to refrain from sounding like your mother here when it comes to the deadly effects of vaccinations and aspartame (PLEASE read about these anyway), but I do hope that each of us will look at what we need to do to take better care of ourselves so that we can continue to fight the good fight! We've still got an awful lot of work ahead of us. Janice
– Ed.

Underlined links provided by us to show why each one of these pop pseudoscientific phenomena are complete garbage. The second-to-last link is to Quackwatch.com, which is something of a one-stop shop for anyone interested in finding out about the latest health craze or "alternative-medicine" scams. Highly recommended site!

Lest any of us forget, we are not dealing with serious people. These aren't people who really care about "truth," or have genuine concerns of any kind that they can profess to believe on a fundamental level. They're die-hard, gullible dupes for any latest craze with a vaguely "anti-establishment" feel to it - the less science and the fewer facts, the better. They vacillate between being simply soft in the brain and willing to deliberately lie to push an agenda that they feel they have to believe as a matter of political necessity. And it's all complete garbage.

So bad, even 911truth is embarrassed of it!

Now that a museum guard has come forward six years after the fact to announce that he definitely saw Mohammed Atta at the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial five days before 9/11, we can say rest assured that the official story has been laid to rest.

By the way, this "revelation" - by a "guard" who is anonymous, as are all of the other "sources" in this circus of the bizarre that has an Oklahoma City Bombing conspiracy theorist stumbling upon DA TROOF OF 911 through a network of bizarre claims, nonsensical evidence, and open contradictions of reality that makes most of us want to either laugh or cry.

Here's what they say happened. Mohammed Atta and four guys walk into a bar and start a fight in Oklahoma - at the same time as all of the evidence puts them halfway across the country: for example, the trail of video and credit receipts that has him buying a utility knife from Wal-Mart on August 30th. The investigator decides these five guys starting a brawl (per the recollection of a couple of regular barflys, "released" almost a decade later) are Mohammed Atta and four of the other hijackers.

Then a couple of days after 9/11, of course, the investigator decides that these same people come back to a bar in Oklahoma later - because after being pawns in what would be the most elaborate conspiracy ever, of course, the best way to keep things under wraps is to go start another fight in a bar you had just previously visited. Also, of course, these same guys were all positively identified in the wreckage of 9/11.

So, no guys, you're wrong. Sorry. Two guys who may not even exist wait seven years to tell an investigator who for all intents and purposes has done absolutely no investigating of any kind that seven years ago they saw five tan guys in a bar that may or may not exist (the author calls it one "frequented by cops and spooks," because apparently Oklahoma is the espionage capitol of the world) who they think are the guys who had died two days prior to that event they recalled seven years later...

Or not.

Here's what happens next on 911truth.org: right after this piece is written, three complete puff pieces - one hollow pep talk, one glorified trackback from another Blog, and one block quote from an interview with Dennis Kucinich that they'd already covered a week earlier. Clearly, these guys are embarrassed of this piece. Clearly, they just wanted to get it out of the way. Here's to the enduring hilarity, incompetence, and general shooting-oneself-in-the-foot-iveness of the 9/11 truth movement and its fading capitol, 911truth.org.

911Truth.org now relying on "vague recollections" for survival

Check out the latest absolutely absurd post over at 911truth.org:

We are putting out a request for any of you who may know more about the following hearing to please contact us. It's quite important.

On approximately March 11-12, 2003 a hearing was held for which we're trying to find video or a transcript. The info is a little sketchy, but here's what we have that's pretty solid: It was at one point broadcast on CSpan (no, I can't find it in their archives now); was chaired/participated in by Senator Max Baucus; Michael Chertoff was present; apparently the Army spokesperson at the hearing represented that 17 soldiers verified Mohammed Atta was never present in the United States prior to 9/11; at one point during the two-day hearing, this frustrated Senator (Baucus?) said, essentially, "I know what the other 17 soldiers have said. Where's the 18th soldier who was supposed to testify? I want to hear what he has to report. Why can't he be found?" in reference to a military intelligence unit, possibly led by Stephen Reed.

What we don't have is: What committee chaired the hearings, the specific focus or title of the hearings, location of a video or transcript, role Michael Chertoff played in the hearing. If any of you recall seeing that on CSpan, or have any other info about it that could help us find it, please email janice (at) 911truth.org. Even details of your "vague recollection" would be helpful. Thanks so much.

Have you ever tried to have a debate but all your opponent says is, “well, I don’t have the information in front of me… but trust me it totally proves you wrong so you could just believe me?” Perfect example right here.

First of all, regular soldiers are not going to be privy to information about the whereabouts of the hijackers prior to 9/11, basically as a point of fact. Second of all, asking your cohorts (who are notoriously incapable of being honest about anything) to rely on their “vague memories” of a public information channel that clearly none of them watch is just begging to be lied to, frankly. They are begging for someone to come along, someone so desperate to defend the crumbling farce that is the 9/11 denier movement that they will either deliberately lie or willfully open their memories to complete flights of fancy for this “cause,” that they’ll just secrete some fanciful story to confirm this already clearly made-up instance.

Akin to putting “allegedly” before any outlandish claim to let it go into print without worry, they’re going to put “this is just my memory, but…” Of course, these are the same people who believe that everyone in “the government” has a perfect memory, never has a slip of the tongue or can’t properly recall the minutia of some fleeting memo or meeting – so we’re going to be watching and waiting. Every claim that comes up, we’re going to cross-check and double-check against every available source on the record. So if – and when – the 9/11 deniers respond to this absurd demand for fraudulent information, and we prove them either outlandishly wrong or wildly inaccurate, they’re going to have to explain how the existence of faulty, false, or obfuscated memories is consistent with their belief that everyone (else) in the world can remember everything with perfect accuracy. Oops, guys, you just issued the wrong call!

Dennis Kucinich's conference call with some Twoofers...

It was with some horror that us here at CRNU learned that Dennis Kucinich actually entertained 9/11 deniers on a conference call yesterday. Kucinich is basically the poster child of harebrained leftist causes, but people who have worked in politics know that he is actually well-respected and well-liked on Capitol Hill even by his lifelong opponents; he’s energetic, honest, and intelligent.

Regardless of what 911truth.org’s wannabe association with him would have us believe.

That’s why it was with some relief that I actually listened to the call. Kucinich did throw out a few idiotic buzzwords like “empire” and “take back our government” and other things you usually only hear from Ron Paul supporters and, ironically, the far-right fringe, but overall, it sounded like the Twoofers walked away disappointed.

First, he sounded bored. He made it clear that he “could only stay ten, fifteen minutes,” and deliberately shut down any conversation about “9/11 truth” – ostensibly, the only reason this bunch wanted him on the call. Second, he was boring – he offered a few shallow paeans to grassroots organization in the vague, bigger-picture sense...and then he was out.

Some large-sounding truther angrily demanded to know why Kucinich hadn’t “followed through” on a demand posed to him a year and a half ago by another twoofer about investigating the fraudulent stock options snafu. Kucinich basically made it clear that he didn’t remember what he was talking about, didn’t care, and wasn’t into launching investigations over, um, really, really stupid ideas. He actively shut down a question about whether Bush had (and this was a serious question) “taken away all of Congress’s power.”

This is part of a larger body of evidence in favor of what virtually everybody but 911Truth.org’s headmasters knows clearly: politicians are embarrassed of you. Dennis Kucinich is embarrassed of you. Liberals in general are embarrassed of you [the introduction to "Debunking" makes this point well, and Jim Meagues and David Dunbar both made this point clear in the debate where they owned the Loose Change boys]. The Libertarian Party is embarrassed of you. Even Ron Paul is at least slightly embarrassed of you (even though he realized you were about 99% of his fan base). And, of course, the 95% of people between the far left and the far right don’t want to have anything to do with you. You guys are so bizarre, so absurd, and so flatly wrong that you poison everything you touch. You turned Ron Paul’s campaign into a circus. You’re turning Dennis Kucinich into much the same.

Never mind the inherent contradiction here. You guys don’t even know what you want. Ron Paul wanted to dismantle most central government programs, shrink the budget, turn over more power to the states, and either cripple or outright destroy most of our oldest Federal institutions. Dennis Kucinich wants to increase the strength of the Federal government, use the government to help fight problems like global warming, engage the U.N., N.A.T.O., etc. in helping repair America’s image abroad, and so on. The two could not be more different – except that they’re both being followed around by a hoard of babbling, chunky sign-wavers.

Look, guys, let’s be straight for a moment. No political cause wants you. Nobody wants your stupid ideas around. You lost the arguments about the facts – all of them – years ago. You’re not only wrong, you’re crazy, you’re bullies, you’re a confederacy of dunces. If you want to be tinfoil-hat-wearing, basement-dwelling whiners who think about as coherently and consistently as a palsic ground slug traveling uphill, that’s your business. Don’t pretend its anybody else’s.

The last forty years of history kind of cause problems to 9/11 deniers

Because it’s both summer time and the Fourth of July, when many of us get together with our friends and collectively relax, it feels right to offer a small, enjoyable reading list to both our friends and our opponents in the 9/11 denier movement.





Both of these books speak about what happened on 9/11 than any single little Blog could. Because many of our readers are college students on vacation, these two books, though both dense in their content and complex in their message, feel appropriate for both skeptics and people generally interested in the history of the events that led up to 9/11.

The first one – Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower – is quite straightforward. It builds a clear narrative and works with a few of the “characters’” life stories’ to illustrate what exactly happened between the rise of the Soviet Union and the fall of the World Trade Center towers. At around five hundred pages, it looks intimidating, but can easily be read in a week. It’s that well-written.

The second one – Steve Coll’s Ghost Wars – is actually a challenge. Often esoteric and difficult to read, this book includes many long opinionated analyses of the inner workings of the CIA and the Pentagon. Though about three hundred pages longer than The Looming Tower, it has roughly the same amount of actual content, but doesn't include too much of Tower’s content, and gives you together with the first one a clear and thorough picture of more or less what actually caused 9/11.

To anticipate the complaints of the 9/11 deniers who actually go out of their way to inform themselves: yes, neither of these books are completely neutral. Ghost Wars is distractingly soft on Ronald Reagan and almost absurdly harsh on Bill Clinton. If it were written as one, long Wikipedia article, the phrase “weasel word” would appear throughout. The short shrift given to Bill Clinton is annoying to say the least, and the gentleness Ronald Reagan is treated to is openly irking – for a little while. Then you figure it out, and you realize when and where the author’s opinion is being worked in, and you end up getting a lot out of the book. But underneath the conservative political commentary is a mountain of truth. If you can put up with the author’s running commentary, you will learn volumes from this book.

The Looming Tower doesn’t have a noticeable anti-Reagan or even liberal-leaning bias, but it does appear to oversimplify matters. That should surprise no one – 9/11 is the result of some of the most complex forces in history, and no single book could hope to cover every layer. Both of these books are Pulitzer Prize winners. Reading these books – not necessarily simultaneously, it’s okay – will indeed help you figure out what had happened between 1960 and 2001.

They also provide among the strongest possible challenges to 9/11 denier dogma. None have ever explained how any of the last forty years or so makes sense – the pronouncements and plannings of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden in attacking the United States, the tragic inability of the CIA and the Pentagon with which it quarreled incessantly to catch every possible threat in its nets, the social and cultural context in which Islamic violence has arisen time and time again – and none will ever be able to do so, for obvious reasons.

These and any other books read in conjunction will prove beyond all doubt what really happened on 9/11. Happy Fourth, everyone!