Wow, they're really going for it

Skeptics shouldn’t ruin the fun when it comes to bin Laden’s “Deathers”

Prisonplanet returned to the 9/11 denial world today after a protracted silence on the issue, posting a couple of clips of people claiming the American raid on Abottabad was ‘botched.’ Of course those claims are contradictory, nonsensical and so far appear to be essentially baseless, which makes them right at home on PP.

According to a close neighbor who watched the alleged US raid on Osama Bin Laden’s compound from his rooftop, the operation was almost immediately aborted because of a helicopter crash that killed several people, eyewitness testimony that completely contradicts the official narrative put out by the White House.

Mohammad Bashir lives a stone’s throw away from the purported Bin Laden compound that was raided on May 1. In an astounding interview with Pakistani news channel Samaa TV, Bashir describes how he watched men land in the helicopter and enter the compound. However, in contrast to the official story, Bashir then claims the helicopter exploded and killed the men as they were re-entering the chopper to leave.

The fraud is obvious – was the raid “immediately aborted,” or did the helicopter explode “as they were preparing… to leave?” – and of course editorial content to this effect is entirely absent in the post itself. A couple of the commenters seem suspicious, but the hivemind shouts them down, as always. The author of that post gets extra props for adding in a fourteen minute clip of a news report with no translation and no context whatsoever. From the first clip, the author blindly parrots its narrator: “now if Osama was in that helicopter he must have died and got burnt in that helicopter too, then how they took him?”

So far we’ve gotten a few e-mails asking why we haven’t “bothered” with The Next Big Thing in 9/11 denial: bin Laden death denial (Deatherism?). We’re not getting into it for the same reasons we didn’t get involved in the Judy Wood nonsense about laser beams from space blowing up the World Trade Center. If merely writing out your belief induces a giggle, you’re probably not doing the conspiracy movement with which you’re associated any good.

“Osama bin Laden is alive and well… he’s just not interested in showing it.” “He was killed years ago, Obama was just waiting for a completely random time way too far before his election and way too far after the disastrous midterms to show it.” “He’s a fiction of the New World Order. You can tell because his death so far seems to be presaging the expulsion of American forces from Pakistan.”

Unfortunately for deniers they’re apparently stuck with Deatherism. It is the only way out of the logical trap bin Laden’s death imposes on them. His death was clearly not politically timed. It is not being used to advance American interests – indeed, it is fueling claims that it’s time to leave Afghanistan and Pakistan. It proves that America is interested in hunting and killing terrorists. It demonstrates that there is a genuine war on terrorists, with concrete and achievable objectives. It’s not going perfectly, but it is going.

I’m not interested in refuting the obvious lunacy that Deathers are spewing. Heck, I want them to shout it from the rooftops – and I want skeptics to point out that all 9/11 deniers are logically obligated to agree with them! At this point, few things could help kill the movement faster.

Alex Jones’ hysterical lunacy

Forget world-class liar. Alex Jones is just an idiot

I started watching a tragicomically predictable new Alex Jones video heralding bin Laden’s death as “Another Gov’t Lie” expecting some good meat for a post. Turns out I didn’t even make it that far. The video begins with what skeptics call a “Gish Gallop:” a debate tactic that involves making a series of statements so inane and obviously false that your opponent simply saps his/her allotted time in refuting them. I’m not accusing Jones of that level of cleverness; rather, I think he is both so stupid and so visibly intoxicated on the Kool-Aid that he just can’t help himself. As always Jones would rather float stupid statements rather than make evidence-based claims, and here they come:

-Initial media reports about Jessica were the doing of “the government.”

Except that it was The Pentagon that first spoke out against the initial, farcical Washington Post story that began the firestorm. And whose investigation was finally reported by WaPo in their self-praise-showered retraction. So this is just Jones being stupid about the who’s who: he’s confused “the government” with “the media,” one journalist from some sort of black ops media whiteout operation, and one shitty newspaper with a fictional government fraud campaign.

-…And those reports were scripted by Jerry Bruckheimer.

Okay, this one is clearly a lie on Jones’ part, so I guess there’s room for that, too. He outright says that Bruckheimer was “called in to script the story” about Lynch’s rescue. The admittedly hype-happy Guardian clarifies:

Back in 2001, the man behind Black Hawk Down, Jerry Bruckheimer, had visited the Pentagon to pitch an idea. Bruckheimer and fellow producer Bertram van Munster, who masterminded the reality show Cops, suggested Profiles from the Front Line, a primetime television series following US forces in Afghanistan. They were after human stories told through the eyes of the soldiers. Van Munster's aim was to get close and personal. He said: "You can only get accepted by these people through chemistry. You have to have a bond with somebody. Only then will they let you in. What these guys are doing out there, these men and women, is just extraordinary. If you're a cheerleader of our point of view - that we deserve peace and that we deal with human dignity - then these guys are really going out on a limb and risking their own lives."

It was perfect reality TV, made with the active cooperation of Donald Rumsfeld and aired just before the Iraqi war. The Pentagon liked what it saw. "What Profiles does is given another in depth look at what forces are doing from the ground," says Whitman. "It provides a very human look at challenges that are presented when you are dealing in these very difficult situations." That approached was taken on and developed on the field of battle in Iraq.

The Pentagon has none of the British misgivings about its media operation. It is convinced that what worked with Jessica Lynch and with other episodes of this war will work even better in the future.

So Jones’ timeline is backwards, his claim seems to be lifted from a metaphor being made in a Guardian piece and – oh, forget it. He wasn’t stupid here; he was dishonest.

-…And members of her unit who “blabbed” were killed by the government

Oh, did I mention that it was an active-duty deputy commander at CentCom who first called out the media on their story? Jones seems to be basing this point on the notion that members of Lynch’s unit began “dying in car crashes” and “getting shot in the head.” You know, classic government black ops. This seems to be Jones simply being stupid about statistics, as he fails to realize that returning veterans tend to have a higher young-life death rate than the general population. It may also be him being stupid about history, as many of those “outspoken” members of her unit were showered in awards and accolades by the military, even as they were speaking out about the media treatment of Lynch. This could also involve Jones being stupid about simple logic: Not only did members of her unit seem to pass away with no correlation to their speaking to the media, but they seemed to do so well after “the damage” was already done (again, “damage” direct at the media, not the military).

-…And “the government” told Lynch to lie about her story.

And it obviously didn’t work, due to, you know, that time she called out both the media for their horrific reporting and the military for later promoting the rescue operation, not the reports about Lynch herself. Oh, also that memoir she wrote.

-…Just like Pat Tillman, who “they” killed because he “was about to go home and speak out against the war.”

And without even giving Jones time to further raise my blood pressure on this one, let’s just make sure to point out that Tillman was an active and vocal critic of Iraq before he died. Hell, Jones had to have known that one – he had to lift Tillman’s own anti-Iraq invasion quotes from somewhere. And hell, afterwards, “the government” was pretty terrible at taking out the members of Tillman’s unit, the friends of Tillman, and Tillman’s family members who actively spoke out about what really happened to him. To say nothing about how bad “the government” is at covering up cases for which it dutifully hands out self-damning evidence. Okay, there’s little room for Jones’s defense there. I guess he’s a liar, too.

Jones is not known for subtlety; neither are his fellow stupid people. I think if he were pressed to discuss the obvious fraud he spews on a daily basis he would admit that he has no interest in reality, for he has already spun his own. It is one in which everyone who doesn't follow him religiously is his enemy, everyone who disagrees with his politics is a Satanic monster and there is no room for facts in a war of volume. This is a small blog representing a small community of dedicated skeptics; Alex Jones is a loud, aggressive blowhard with a horde of gullible followers at his back. It's time to stop pretending that all nonsense is equally worth serious inquiry. Jones's viewers are stupid enough to believe him, and that's their own fault. Until they start making an actual case that goes somewhere, they have given the rest of us nothing to address.

"International Hearings on the Events of September 11, 2001"

For what may be the third or fourth consecutive year the denier movement won’t be able to get enough attention in America to host a full-scale event and so is hosting its big conference in Toronto. I cut my teeth in Toronto at a CFI event debating AE911truther Doug Plumb. Toronto is the hub of 9/11 denial, and it makes sense in a lot of ways. The movement is driven by a handful of obscure postmodern academics – the staple of Canadian academia’s history departments.

This one looks to be pretty dull. The usual round of faces will headline the event – David Chandler, Richard Gage, Steven Jones… No new “whistleblowers” or fresh faces, unless you count the shockingly lame 9/11 newcomer du jour Niels Harrit.

In case you couldn't tell, this event won't actually include "hearings," in the technical sense of the word (though technical accuracy was never the movement's strong suit). Judging by the lineup its going to be yet another PowerPoint parade that takes itself far too seriously and accomplishes far too little except in terms of repeating the same hashed-out arguments about shoddy thermite research and since-refuted attacks on NIST and "the American government" (whoever that is) in general.

I base my cynicism purely on the event’s thus-far announced objectives, which read like a how-to guide for creating an echo chamber:

(1) To present evidence that the U.S. government’s official investigation into the events of September 11, 2001, as pursued by various government and government-appointed agencies, is seriously flawed and has failed to describe and account for the 9/11 events.
(2) To single out the most weighty evidence of the inadequacy of the U.S. government’s investigation; to organize and classify that evidence; to preserve that evidence; to make that evidence widely known to the public and to governmental, non-governmental and inter-governmental organizations.
(3) To submit a record and a summary of the Hearings, together with signed Statutory Declarations by witnesses, to relevant governments, groups and international agencies with the request that a full and impartial investigation be launched into the events of September 11, 2001, which have been used to initiate military invasions and to restrict the rights of citizens.
(4) To engage the attention of the public and media through witness testimony as well as through public talks and media events during the four day event.

Guesses: The event is going to be well-attended but not sold out. We will hear at least one presentation about “molten steel.” The movement will continue not to recognize its complete failure to gain a foothold in the mainstream. No one will present a case for bin Laden’s innocence. It will go largely unnoticed.

Ahem...

One: We're not going to say anything about the death of bin Laden. You have news sources that say much more than we could. You can already draw the necessary inferences about how the mere circumstances of the chase for bin Laden itself prove his role in global terrorism. To go on about bin Laden's death would be to reach for the low-hanging fruit of skeptical inquiry.

Two: Speaking of low-hanging fruit...

The author of the blog Killtown has announced "a challenge" to 911myths.com concerning some of his claims about Shanksville. He doesn't specify which - his link to his "challenge" is simply a link to his "Shanksville"-tagged posts - and says he'll settle for "anyone" addressing "any" of this claims.

This is odd, because we not only demonstrated the fallacious thinking in the very first post that comes up in his "Shanksville" list, but we commented to that effect on the post itself - it has since been deleted.

Killtown, that challenge was accepted weeks ago. Why are you destroying the evidence?