"9/11 Deniers"

The other day I received an e-mail asking me about skeptics’ use of the term “9/11 Denier,” which is synonymous with Truther, 9/11 CT, etc.:

My interpretation is that this is a blatant attempt to equate alternative 9/11 theories with Holocaust Denial. As I'm sure you are aware, Holocaust Denial is the belief that the Holocaust simply did not take place, that the event did not occur. You are also entirely aware that proponents of alternative 9/11 information are not stating that the event did not occur, they are instead questioning who was responsible, and bringing specific aspects of the event under scrutiny. In this context, then, might the term "9/11 Deniers" seem like something of a misnomer?

To be clear, I did not start using this term to equivocate between 9/11 Deniers and Holocaust Deniers.

I started using this term because virtually every 9/11 denier falls outside the criteria our e-mailer suggests. I have never had a conversation with a 9/11 denier who was devoid of his or her own theories about “who did it,” “why they did it,” and “how they did it.” In my experience the usual culprits are Israel, some variation on an Illuminati-esque elite cabal (itself often synonymous with Israel), and/or key figures in the Bush Administration – sometimes armed with an elite posse of anonymous government agents. But in no case have I met someone who denies that 9/11 happened the way the evidence indicates it did without at least an “inkling” of who they really wanted to blame. So no, virtually no 9/11 deniers are just “questioning who was responsible” – an activity our co-skeptics over at Screw Loose Change refer to as “JAQing off.” Whether a denier chooses to present their beliefs as merely taking shots at established theory is fine; read them on their own Facebook groups or listen to them at the bar after a debate and you get a very different picture.

Of course, if 9/11 deniers were actually interested in “Truth” this is how they would it to be, anyway. Approaching a true understanding of reality through un-biased scientific inquiry involves the proposal of competing hypotheses and testing their ability to explain the evidence. As a statsy guy I tend to add the caveat that these hypotheses should always be compared to a null hypothesis, even if that hypothesis is something as mundane and obvious as “there’s nothing going on,” but in the absence of reliable priors that needn’t necessarily be the case. Deniers reject the concept, anyway. However, if they were really interested in something more than selling Alex Jones DVDs, they would not shy away from the obvious need to advance positive theories.

And finally it is important to note that 9/11 deniers are denying key aspects of what happened on September 11th. After all, hundreds of people, dozens of books, and countless articles document the motivations, actions, plans and intentions of the people who actually carried out the attacks. 9/11 Deniers are required to believe in the impossibility of organic terrorism. They’re required to believe that religious and ethnic extremists who happen to be Arab or Muslim are either incapable or unwilling to act on their beliefs (and have been so for hundreds of years). The millions of people around the world who have interacted with, been affected by, or have been in al Qaeda either don’t exist or are in on it. Abrudahman Khadr, the boy from an impoverished family that grew up alongside bin Laden’s Afghanistan operations? Obviously a fiction. Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, whose name is on thousands of accounting documents for al Qaeda? Clearly a Zionist tool. Maha El-Samnah and Zaynab Khadr, whose son died as a suicide bomber – leaving them proud of his martyrdom, but ashamed of his affiliation with al Qaeda? Probably paid actors.

Organizations like al Qaeda leave their indelible mark wherever they go. 9/11 deniers are required to pretend that those marks are just Western operatives covering their own tracks – an obvious delusion to everyone who has seen it in action, knows its members, and knows those who are tempted by it and any other extremist organization. To me, this is the key – 9/11 deniers flatly deny virtually every relevant event in the lead-up to 9/11. They deny that centuries of geopolitical events ever occurred. To them, history begins at the Balfour Declaration, crescendos when Ronald Reagan begins supplying anti-Communist rebels in Afghanistan, and ends when George Bush plants bombs in the North Tower and scampers off in a black helicopter. Between these pockmarks on the historical landscape there are thousands of religious ideologues, millions of oppressed victims of colonialism, and countless strategic opportunists struggling to guide human affairs to their own ends. 9/11 denier history is the shallowest history of all, one that requires them to reject the needs, desires, machinations and schemes of billions of people across centuries. 9/11 denial is reality denial.

That’s why I call them 9/11 Deniers.

A “Free Fall” Piece? Really, Guys?

This week saw the appearance of a WTC 7 free-fall post over at AE911. The post contains prime examples of everything that is wrong with your average Truther post.

I’m surprised that skeptics have made less light of the incredibly mediocre nature of the average 9/11 denier’s screed. Tell me if the apparent flow of each such “big-claim” type article, each “final proof” disseminated from bobbing head to bobbing head is a mutually assured annoyance, or if I’m just crazy:

1. The meandering, banal prologue.

The post I’m griping about begins with the groan-inducing phrase, “Galileo was the first to describe the amazing fact that…” Does anything make you reach for the scroller faster? Does anything prompt more urgent zoning out of the eyes in desperate search of valuable keywords like “gravity,” “data,” or “the goddamn point of all this?”

This introduction reminds me of an epically bad blog post from the cargo-cult version of an academic organization, the Journal of 911 Studies. The post was as useless as one must come to expect from frauds like Frank Legge, and it managed to open with a

It has been said that the world is one continuous Rorschach inkblot test: we see what we expect to see based on our fears and desires.

The hinge on my laptop lid just rusted a little. Can’t we just get to the point? Can’t your evidence and your reasoning speak for itself?

It has been said that the world is one continuous Rorschach inkblot test: we see what we expect to see based on our fears and desires. All sides of the World Trade Centre (WTC) collapse issue can see definitive corroboration in the same photos and videos, the same laboratory tests and the same reports. In this way both authors of this paper initially accepted the official explanation for the collapse of the buildings, as set out in the technical report of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST),[2] but they now undeniably approach the report from a skeptical perspective.

So we first get a post-modern statement that everything is a mere matter of interpretation, then a passive assertion that the authors have got it all figured out. That is, after all, one of the apparent points of the droning intro:

2. The in-your-face appeal to authority.

We all recognize this. Not a post goes by these guys where it isn’t asserted with resolute failure to get the joke that the “authors have studied this issue for year.” They have “thought hard about the evidence.” They have “carefully considered all sides of the issue.” When making his shocking and novel claims about free-fall collapse speeds, the author of this post asserts in describing his methodology,

I used a video analysis tool to carefully measure the velocity profile of the falling building using CBS video footage from a fixed camera aimed almost squarely at the north wall. A video detailing this measurement is available at YouTube/user/ae911truth. I calibrated my measurements with the heights of two points in the building provided in the NIST Building 7 report released in August 2008, so I know the picture scale is good.

The “video analysis tool” is unnamed, the video is unidentified and relies on you to use a broken hyperlink, and the provision of the calibration points is completely unexplained. Which part did he rely on? Why did he use the wrong version of the report (the NIST Building 7 report has been updated multiple times – heck, updates to the report were released the very next day)? What’s worse is that this is one of the more “subtle” appeals to authority 9/11 deniers make – especially when they clothe themselves in the rank condescension of wannabe academic seriousness.

Make your point and be done with it. I don’t care where you worked for twenty years. I don’t care where you got your BS, your MD, your PhD. You don’t impress me.

3. The seemingly overt disrespect for the viewership.

This is the point that inspired this post in the first place: 9/11 deniers condescend to their readers and insult their intelligence. (And yes, it goes without saying, they lie to them as well – that’s a separate point) Why does David Chalmers just expect his readers to take his calibration method on faith? Why does he expect they will just believe him because he told them to do so? I think its because he really doesn’t give a shit about his audience anymore. He doesn’t expect to “convert” anyone anymore. He may very well understand that his cult has failed. Sloppy science is allowed because, well… because who cares?

This blog operates under the possibly naive premise that such technicalities are actually at the core of why conspiracy movements succeed or fail. The Internet has allowed arguments to play out rapidly and thoroughly, with near-instantaneous back-and-forths of links, citations, and back-up claims. The side with the most hyperlinks wins, and the other side has stopped bothering altogether. I think it goes beyond the mere fact that the 9/11 denier blogosphere is an echo chamber for people who already agree with its creators – because that’s true of every blogosphere to some extent (including the skeptical one). I think it goes to the fact that the 9/11 deniers are uniquely unequipped to handle serious refutations of their work – they fundamentally don’t know the science, and unless they’re the OPs, they can’t check the post or the author’s previous works for backup. In a world where everyone who disagrees with you is a CIA spook, your theories get little wiggle-room – it seems hard for 9/11 deniers to recalibrate their refuted ideas without making their audience raise their pitchforks and cry “heretic!” After all, in a world where Dylan Avery, Amy Goodman, Judy Wood, and Sibel Edmonds have all been variously accused of being “plants,” it is unlikely that people are going to be willing to leave their camps. The movement, as Faulkner once wrote, is fucked.

Oh and, just to be clear, the free-fall theory is bullshit – not that Chandler gives us a specific claim of any kind to refute.

How to Destroy the Peace Movement In One Easy Step

From the "oh, for the love of God" files.



In advance: You can realize that the War in Iraq was probably a bad idea and not believe 9/11 conspiracy theories. You can agree with the general consensus of foreign policy experts just fine and not be one of these lunatics.

John Patrick Bedell: 9/11 denier, fanatic, suicide martyr

The next in the line of bearded anti-American engineering students who become suicide attackers was a 9/11 conspiracy theorist. Shocking. His entire belief set was 100% compatible with those of your average Tea Partier, and the ideological right has already leaped to their own defense. Just because he bought every right-wing belief about the monetary system, Barack Obama, gun rights, drugs, and the American legal system doesn't mean he... well, the excuse-making is up to them.

Predictably, Stormfront has eagerly endorsed the violence in the name of traditional conservative values, while others have demanded that Bedell shouldn't be labeled as right-wing because he smoked pot. For the record, only one presidential candidate vocally favored marijuana legalization in the last election.

The particular brand of nutjobbery fostered and nurtured by the cult of 9/11 denial has inevitable consequences. Like virtually every die-hard acolyte we meet, these people are disconnected from their families, mistrustful of everyone around them, and in favor of violent retaliation of everyone who disagrees with them. Whether it's a Facebook troll promoting eugenics on public websites, or someone actually going out and making good on your beliefs as Bedell did, 9/11 deniers fall on the same continuum. After all, if you truly, honestly believed that the world was run by a secret sect of greedy, murderous overlords, waiting in the wings to destroy everything you love... why wouldn't you lash out against innocent people like this?

A telling argument

Great comment from reader angrysoba the other day:

I like this picture and coincidentally I was arguing with someone who insisted that the first plane that struck the towers may well have been "a small plane" because there had been numerous news reports that said so.

When I pointed out that there can be no doubt the second plane was a passenger jet, he agreed. I said, "what the Hell is the point of the first plane being faked and not the second?"

The answer: "Because it proves the official story's a lie!"

That's the weird world of Truthers!

Demonstrating once again that the Truthers are their own un-funny joke, being told over and over on a broken record. The picture is the famous webcomic xkcd, which regularly gets passed across the Internet, so I'm positive the picture is copyable.

Something you might want to ask this guy, angrysoba, is, "would an error in the 9/11 Commission Report count as a lie in your world?" I think the answer given his logic here would have to be yes.

A thought experiment for truthers

Question: How do you know this isn't the cover-up of a crashed, hijacked plane?

"Course all the neighbors ran out into the street. We didn't know what was going on," said Paul Williams, who heard the explosion.

Some people said they thought it was a plane crash, others, a house explosion.

It has everything 9/11 deniers need. Bystanders hearing the sounds of explosions. A quick attempt at a cover-up. Media shills - both with 'Eastern European'-sounding last names.

Truthers, spell out your line of reasoning about this and see if you get the joke.

XKCD: rarely funny, sometimes hilarious

Remarkably close to the beliefs of actual 9/11 deniers, many of whom admit that the United States really does have enemies abroad, but still insist that George Bush had to concoct the most elaborate hoax in history in order to invade a couple of third-world countries, such as the United States invades every couple of years or so.

This guy loves himself. Also labels. But not his friends.

Killtown's mad about being banned on TruTV's forums. I don't know the guy or why he was, but I find his post-ban griping quite amusing.

One, his post drips with ego, as his posts do generally. This is pretty much in line with the vast cranial expansion of most 9/11 deniers, who regard themselves as "the truth seekers" who are "going deeper" to ask questions that us "sheeple" wouldn't dare ponder. Of course, that they uncritically glean answers to said questions from shoddily-made YouTube videos full of Garage Band house beats and grainy Bitmaps posted by people lacking basic grammar and critical thinking skills is beside the point. The point is, we're sheep because we get our information from people who have fancy college degrees and stable sources of income, and they're privy to mystical sources of knowledge such as only CrystalSeeker99 can provide. Apparently he was banned from TruTV because he was spamming. The response he gives himself on his personal blog is that, well, his spamming was popular and it ain't spam if a lot of people click on it. Trolling is allowed when someone as smart as me is doing it. Right.

Two, he doesn't seem to get the joke when he refers to people who dare challenge his faith as "skeptics" in a derogatory fashion. Consider his passive-aggressive anger at us blasphemous interlopers in his post:

And what's really funny is right before they banned me, I just reported two posts from skeptic trolls for -- guess? -- that's right, them starting trouble (as to be expected from your average JREF skeptic troll).

Getting banned there is harsh. They delete all of your posts. Just ask skeptic troll "Deelite." =)

Three sentences. Three usages of the phrase "skeptic troll." Cute. So do 9/11 deniers just not bother calling themselves "skeptics" or "alternative theorists" anymore, at this point? Have they just admitted that they're a religion?

It pleases me to no end to see that "skepticism" has become a sin in the denier world. There is no better way to further reduce your cult to a broken record player repeating an un-funny joke than to take a synonym for "person who thinks a lot" and use it as an insult. Right on, Killtown. You tell your frontal lobe who's boss. "Starting trouble" will sow dissent amongst the proletariat.

Third, the denier infighting is about to reach ridiculous levels. Remember when they decided that Amy Goodman was a government spook? Remember when they decided that Dylan Avery was a government spook? If you decide to take a peek over at any of these hysterical dens of woo-woo known as a 9/11 forum, you'll see what I mean. Everyone is an enemy, and everyone is scared of everyone else. Its almost not funny. Almost.

Killtown: You go, girl. Fight the man/each other/your impulse to think critically.

"The government wants to make us THINK!"

As someone who works in behavioral econ and mathematical psychology I was pumped to see one of my intellectual heroes Cass Sunstein appointed to a post in the Obama Administration. His bibliography spans politics, economics, and psychology, and his work in the academic literature is required reading in most courses in behavioral studies. A true polymath of the social sciences, and a pretty nice guy to boot.

And 9/11 deniers have just started comparing him to Hitler.

Got Fascism? : Obama Advisor Promotes 'Cognitive Infiltration'
Cass Sunstein is President Obama's Harvard Law School friend, and recently appointed Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

In a recent scholarly article, he and coauthor Adrian Vermeule take up the question of "Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures." (J. Political Philosophy, 7 (2009), 202-227). This is a man with the president's ear. This is a man who would process information and regulate things. What does he here propose?

[W]e suggest a distinctive tactic for breaking up the hard core of extremists who supply conspiracy theories: cognitive infiltration of extremist groups, whereby government agents or their allies (acting either virtually or in real space, and either openly or anonymously) will undermine the crippled epistemology of believers by planting doubts about the theories and stylized facts that circulate within such groups, thereby introducing beneficial cognitive diversity. (Page 219.)

Read this paragraph again. Unpack it. Work your way through the language and the intent. Imagine the application. What do we learn?

Rarely does the failure to get the joke resound so epically.

People who oppose the government have legitimate concerns. During the Bush Administration, police and military organizations engaged in illegal or at least immoral infiltration of peaceful protest organizations. And it was wrong.

Cass Sunstein is advocating showing up to a group of people and asking them to explain why they believe what they believe. This is what every group should voluntarily be seeking, anyway. To their cries of "got fascism?" I ask, "got group-think?" If your beliefs are true, Sunstein's argument that the government should seek open debate with you should be a blessing. You should be looking forward to having hordes of converts.

Instead, what do they fear?

Put into English, what Sunstein is proposing is government infiltration of groups opposing prevailing policy. Palestinian Liberation? 9/11 Truth? Anti-nuclear power? Stop the wars? End the Fed? Support Nader? Eat the Rich?

It's easy to destroy groups with "cognitive diversity." You just take up meeting time with arguments to the point where people don't come back. You make protest signs which alienate 90% of colleagues. You demand revolutionary violence from pacifist groups.

Only one of those things Sunstein lists is a conspiracy theory, making this blogger's paranoia look more than a little silly - and to that second paragraph, its not like 9/11 deniers, you know, already do all of that themselves.

Never has a group ever so resolutely opposed such a banal policy that would be beneficial in the long run to any group that wasn't fundamentally afraid of having its beliefs challenged.

Other 9/11 deniers trying to jump in on flight 253 conspiracy theories

911blogger imported its post from dissidentvoice.org attempted to join the "GOV DID 253" bandwagon and, I have to say, it is quite a lark. They have absolutely nothing that wasn't reported in that "mainstream media" they love to hate... they just use it to come to the conclusion that there's no such thing as terrorism and Britain (or possibly America or Yemen) did the flight 253 hijacking.

Let’s take a look at those informational “snippets” and summarize what is quickly emerging as growing evidence of U.S. foreknowledge of an imminent attack on an American passenger plane:

* May: the British government withdrew its student visa for Abdulmutallab, a graduate of the prestigious University College London and placed him on a watchlist, barring his entry into the UK. MI5, and presumably their MI6 military intelligence colleagues in Yemen, compiled a dossier on the would-be bomber, citing his “political involvement” with “extremist networks” that have enjoyed on-again, off-again ties with NATO military intelligence organizations across the decades. This information, as Brown government spokesperson Simon Lewis, who let the cat out of the proverbial bag, was shared with their American counterparts.

* August: U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA and NSA, intercepted cell- and satellite phone traffic which revealed that a Yemeni affiliate of the Afghan-Arab database of disposable Western intelligence assets, also known as al-Qaeda, were finalizing preparations for an operation that would utilize a “Nigerian.”

* October: Newsweek revealed in their January 11 issue, that the dodgy cleric, the American-born Anwar al-Awlaki, who communicated extensively with the disturbed Ft. Hood shooter, Maj. Malik Nadal Hasan, posted “a provocative message on his English-language Web site: ‘COULD YEMEN BE THE NEXT SURPRISE OF THE SEASON?’” According to Newsweek, “Al-Awlaki seemed to hint at an upcoming attack that would make Yemen ‘the single most important front of jihad in the world’.” The Washington Post reported in 2008 that al-Awlaki had extensive contacts with 9/11 hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi, Khalid Almihdhar, and Hani Hanjour and was suspected of having assisted the 9/11 plot. According to the Post, “three of the hijackers had spent time at his mosques in California and Falls Church.” Despite, or possibly because, of these dubious connections “he was allowed to leave the country in 2002.” According to the History Commons, it is only in 2008 that the U.S. government concludes that the shady imam “is linked to al-Qaeda attacks.” However, Al-Awlaki’s provenance as a new “terrorist mastermind” should be viewed with suspicion, given well-documented links known to have existed amongst the 9/11 hijackers and American, Saudi and Pakistani secret state agencies.

* October: the same month Al-Awlaki was hinting at a “surprise,” Newsweek revealed that John O. Brennan “received an alarming briefing at the White House from Muhammad bin Nayef, Brennan’s Saudi counterpart. Nayef had just survived an assassination attempt by a Qaeda operative using a novel method: the operative had flown in from the Saudi-Yemeni border region with a bomb hidden in his underwear. The Saudi was concerned because he ‘didn’t think [U.S. officials] were paying enough attention’ to the growing threat.” A familiar trope we’ve heard in the aftermath of other terrorist strikes.

* Early November: Newsweek published an exclusive report January 4, that two U.S. “intelligence agencies and the Department of Homeland Security circulated a paper within the government last fall that examined in some detail the threats that bombs secreted in clothing–or inside someone’s body cavities–might pose to aviation security.” According to information leaked to the newsmagazine by anonymous “national-security officials,” the report “was prepared by the National Counterterrorism Center in conjunction with Homeland Security and the CIA,” and that “one principal point of discussion in the document was whether the detonation of a bomb hidden in clothing on an airliner would have a different explosive effect than the detonation of a bomb secreted in a body cavity under similar circumstances.” (emphasis added) This chilling report, prepared in the wake of intelligence information provided U.S. security agencies by Saudi Arabia’s counterterrorism czar, should raise provocative questions. No other media outlet however, has followed the trail.

* November 19: Abdulmutallab’s father, a prominent Nigerian banker and former high state official, visits the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, telling State Department and CIA officials he believes his son is a threat. A cousin tells The New York Times that the father told U.S. officials, “Look at the texts he’s sending. He’s a security threat.” Although Embassy personnel promise “to look into it,” the cousin told the Times that “they didn’t take him seriously.”

* November 20: the CIA prepares and files a report on Abdulmutallab that is sent to agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia “but not disseminated to other intelligence agencies,” unnamed “officials” tell the Times. Embassy staff also wrote and sent a cable known as a “Visa Viper,” to the State Department and National Counterterrorism Center and a security file is opened on the suspect.

* December 9-24: Abdulmutallab travels to Ghana from Ethiopia and pays cash, $2,831 to be precise, for a ticket on a Northwest Airlines flight from Lagos through Amsterdam to Detroit, landing on Christmas Day. “It is now known” The Independent on Sunday reported January 10, “that the Ghanaian hotel he listed on his immigration form was not the one where he was actually staying.” According to IoS, although the FBI “has officers on the ground in Ghana and believe it is likely the terrorist may well have had his final al-Qa’ida briefing, and supplied with equipment and explosives, there,” no steps are taken to apprehend the suspect. “All this” IoS comments, “was more than a month after his father, a wealthy Nigerian banker, had met officials at the US embassy in Abuja to share concerns about his son.”

* December 22: during a White House Situation Room briefing Newsweek reports that “a document presented to the president titled ‘Key Homeland Threats’ did not mention Yemen, according to a senior administration official.”

* December 25: Abdulmutallab boards Flight 253 in Amsterdam with only a carry-on bag for his international flight; the would-be lap bomber holds a 2-year entry visa into the United States. As is standard procedure, the Department of Homeland Security is notified an hour prior to departure that he is a passenger on the plane.

* December 25: the Los Angeles Times disclosed January 7 that “U.S. border security officials learned of the alleged extremist links of the suspect in the Christmas Day jetliner bombing attempt as he was airborne from Amsterdam to Detroit and had decided to question him when he landed.” Homeland Security officials “declined to discuss what information reached the U.S. border officials in Amsterdam on Christmas Day.” Despite suspicions by Customs and Border Protection agents, who had accessed NCTC’s TIDE database, the flight crew is not notified of Abdulmutallab’s presence aboard the airliner and additional security precautions therefore, are not made.

Once you lop off the daffy leap of faith required to next assert that "therefore, Barack Obama wanted Flight 253 to be hijacked," nothing more elegantly makes my point that the United States has many enemies, tracking all of them is hard, coordination amongst interdepartmental and international intelligence agencies is hard too, and many but not all terrorist plots are foiled.

That's some fine work, boys. Even disregarding that almost their entire case is built on political hearsay, if you haven't drunken the Truther Kool-Aid you actually have quite elegant proof of the fact that the government did not hijack this flight right here.

More on the unbearable lightness of being a denier

This blog is simply a gold mine for news about terrorism in Africa, reporting today about a man who was caught in Mogadishu trying to board a plane with a syringe and various powdered and liquid chemicals.

"We don't know whether he's linked with al-Qaida or other foreign organizations, but his actions were the acts of a terrorist. We caught him red-handed," said Barise.

A Nairobi-based diplomat said the incident in Somalia is similar to the attempted attack on the Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day in that the Somali man had a syringe, a bag of powdered chemicals and liquid — tools similar to those used in the Detroit attack. The diplomat spoke on condition he not be identified because he isn't authorized to release the information.

Barigye Bahoku, the spokesman for the African Union military force in Mogadishu, said the chemicals from the Somali suspect could have caused an explosion that would have caused air decompression inside the plane.

This is nothing major, but its always worth pointing out the degree to which 9/11 deniers have to shut themselves out to reality. There is daily proof that there is organic, home-grown terrorist sentiment out there, people all over the world who are willing to do the open society harm.

Either you believe that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and every twit like him on earth is secretly a Zionist agent, or you've come to grips with reality.

The government did 12/25?

Because 9/11 denial requires that there be no such thing as genuine terrorism, you can bet that places like PrisonPlanet is having a field day. 911truth.org is tellingly silent. No word yet from our Facebook friends!

For those living under a rock on Mars 3,000 years in the past, yesterday aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 over Detroit, MI Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab was disarmed by two passengers, neither of whom were apparently flight marshals. The nature of the explosive he brought and assembled on board is still being investigated.

So, 9/11 deniers? There's no such thing as terrorism, right? Obama orchestrated this because he's slightly more popular at the end of his first calendar year than Reagan was at the same time and that means he's in electoral danger, right? He needs to help justify sending more troops to Afghanistan which he already did a month ago, right?

Lets see what kind of malarkey has already surfaced out of this one. Taken straight from the comments at prisonplanet's articles, each more pathetically vaguely implicative than the next (the terrorist seemed strangely 'stunned,' mumbles one). Plenty of readers of Alex Jones' personal money shed are happy to chime in on his behalf:


yo Says:
December 26th, 2009 at 7:46 am

manchurian candidate 10000000000000%

Huggles Reply:
December 26th, 2009 at 9:54 am

Probably not a manchurian candidate but some guy quietly sitting on his chair and something been thrown on him that ignited.

Aidan Monaghan reply:
December 26th, 2009 at 2:50 am

The first in a series of stage-setting events before the next major false flag event? (like the interantional bombings that preceded 9/11)

Or just a carefully timed holiday “reminder” of a western-manufactured threat (Al Qaeda) with a guaranteed large audience of at-home holiday celebrants watching TV, tens of millions of whom will be “re-reminded” at more scrutinized airport security screening points upon their return flights.

“Attacking” the aviation industry is a fabulous means of conditioning tens of millions of the public to the presence of the “Big Brother” apparatus at your conveniently located local airport.

Charles Reply:
December 26th, 2009 at 6:08 am

Isn’t it funny that the man is claiming the device its from Yemen, only now as the offensive of the war on terror is moving to Yemen?

candleinthecave Reply:
December 26th, 2009 at 7:26 am

Or more likely he could be a Manchurian candidate type brainwashed patsy.

Mike Adkison Says:
December 25th, 2009 at 7:55 pm

NO ONE can come forward and claim to work for Al Queda, because Al Queda is a term invented by counter terrorism coordinator Richard Clark. It means “the base”, coming from a data base aquired that had names of perceived terrorists. There is no organization, per se, named Al Queda. This story is totally hokey, same goes for the arms bound for Iran story. Their lies are becoming totally transparent. They are fooling no one but the fools. Are they quite proud of themselves for that?

MIKE Says:
December 25th, 2009 at 10:16 pm

ABSOLUTE BULLs---….This is another false flag..to get the amerikan sheeple yet again..to be driven to the pavement like pigs as they now must endure demonic searches of their person at the airp[orts during this holiday season..THEY MAY EXPLODE…WHICH WILL CAUSE MARTIAL LAW…YOU HEARD IT HERE..mj ssg usa ret

BA911Truth Says:
December 26th, 2009 at 5:35 am

IT’S ALL STAGED BY THE CIA! WE ALL KNOW THAT! AL-QAEDA EXISTS ONLY IN THE MINDS OF BILDERBERGERS LIKE ZBIGNIEW BRZENSKI!


And, of course, the most trenchant insights thus far:

wolf56 Reply:
December 25th, 2009 at 10:01 pm

Charlie Sheen getting arrested sounds like a setup!

fromtheoutsidein Reply:
December 26th, 2009 at 4:45 am

SET-UP!!!

See? I'm not kidding when I say that 9/11 deniers are forced to argue that there's literally no such thing as terrorism to support their religion.

Oh, those poor voices of reason

First of all, happy holidays to all our readers from CRNU! Too many holidays to go around, but, whichever one(s) you're celebrating... enjoy!

Second, check out what happens when someone curious member of "the movement" dares ask why most 9/11 deniers are obsessed with promoting blind bigotry than that whole, you know, capital-T Truth business. This is from one of the few remaining 9/11 denier Facebook groups.



"Hey guys... every stupid thing you have to say about Jewish people is embarrassing and has been debunked since 2003."
"Oh yeah, shill? What about all these nonsensical claims from 2002?"
"She's one of them!"

Present as always is one of our former regular trolls, who lists as his "home page" this unbelievable website, who hails as one of its heroes the openly racist, post-successful Henry Ford. Pleading its readers to "please hear what he had to say" in his screed The International Jew, iamthewitness demonstrates Ford buying everything from the fraudulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion to the belief that Jews caused alcoholism.

Demonstrating that, between 1921 and 2009, nothing has changed about how rabid bigots see the world. All that has changed are their excuses.

A real boon year for 9/11 deniers

An amazing turnout in New Zealand, thousands of dollars made in Australia... closing the doors on their online business, falling short by 75% of their needed annual donations...





Our friends at JREF found that the international tour is a money sink, and this quick peek at the main hub of denier self-congratulatory falsehoods helps push the point. (Link courtesy of our friends at the always fantastic SLC)

For being generally comprised of the craziest subset of libertarians, these guys apparently don't make for very good capitalists.

Why I jumped ship and why you, the conspiracy theorist, should too.

Now, as many on the JREF would know, I'm a former truther.

However, I wasn't as passionate as many of them are, but I was biased towards the conspiracy theory. The attacks of 9/11 happened when I was in grade 10, and while I swallowed the story, the conspiracy theory caught my attention.

Why did it catch my attention? Because it was very simple. The so-called "official theory" was too complicated and too long-winded. It was something that could be talked about for ages but when dumbed down to its essentials, it sounded stupid: 19 men with boxcutters board planes, take out the pilots and crash them into buildings. Very simple, and yet it got past the US Air Force, which was supposed to protect the very airspace that was violated.

Should the US government have been in charge of these attacks, it would have made much more "sense" simply because of how easy those planes got to their targets. What I didn't know as a "truther" was that maintaining the skies is more complicated than it looks, especially when the only "experience" you've had with radar was watching them in movies. With the education of Hollywood, I thought that was the way the world worked.

Sadly, that is the way that truthers see the world: As a Hollywood action movie.

As well, the conspiracies poison the minds of the young and impressionable. When doing a search on 9/11 and government today, 7 out of the 10 top results are for truther websites or "independent media", like Prison Planet (A site that likes to say that they do their research and respect the families of 9/11, but in the same breath say that a government employee sent his son to die on 9/11, as just one example of their "respect"); one is the Wikipedia page on 9/11 conspiracies, and the final two are from a university and the 9/11 commission website. When a young person is doing research on this issue, Google will be the first place that they go to and they will get the impression that this stuff is correct because it is on the first page. In school, I was taught that the first topic that came up when searched was usually the most credible. Young people will be thinking the same thing. Quite sad, isn't it?

I am not sure how to end my first entry here, but I would ask the conspiracy theorists to seriously consider taking off the goggles they use to view this world; as a giant game of chess with a faceless elite that controls our day-to-day actions; and to observe that reality isn't necessarily black and white. I hope that you think about this and realize that the world isn't the way Hollywood portrays it to be and that independence doesn't necessarily equate to credibility.