The Only Claim I Saw More Than Once During Our Hiatus

CrNU hasn't been updating for a few months as its authors all decided to enter the working world of adulthood all at once (and yet we've still held a better record than the "Journal of 9/11 Studies" blog). Now that we've started to settle into new jobs, schools, etc., we'll have more time to talk about ridiculous claims... like this one. Warning, link will cause crappy music to ensue, but that'll be the least of your headache.

The claim is thus: Someone interviewed on 9/11 by a Fox affiliate spoke really articulately, therefore the government did 9/11. No, really.



And so, because of the witness' precise claims - such as "the plane came from nowhere," and "the towers fell, one after the other" - 9/11 deniers engaged in a six-month search for the identity of this mystery man, dubbed "Harley Guy" by the deniers.

This claim bears a little thinking through. Someone at Fox News hired an actor to start spouting lines that mostly-kinda-sorta ended up accurately describing what happened; that actor was, in turn, somehow kept quiet, by someone, on behalf of Fox News and/or "The Government." As was the reporter. And the camera crew. And the person who hired the paid actor. And that person's secretary. And the secretary's friends. And so on.

One of the reasons why we've been remiss in updating this blog is because the 9/11 deniers never give us anything new to work with. My thoughts on this issue pertain entirely to the same type of analysis I provided for Loose Change:



This claim just adds a few dozen more people to this list.

The sheer bizarreness of the claim only dawned on me as I started on this post. The sole reasoning behind 9/11 deniers leaping in so typically gullible fashion onto this claim seems to be because the guy spoke clearly and articulately, even though he only said some pretty obvious things. The claim that a guy who speaks clearly and slowly must be a paid actor says more about the fantasy-world paranoia of 9/11 denial than any novel accusations I could level against them.

So it looks like their first official guess was that The Daily Show's Rob Riggle was, in fact, the "Harley Guy."

If any of you are familiar with the John Stewart show "The daily show" on that show named Rob Riggle.

I believe that is who this man is. A paid actor who in 2001 was unknown.

What an awkward IMDB profile that would be. Obviously did great things for his career. Sure, the guy is too short by about two feet, they sound nothing alike and any Daily Show actor would probably take the chance to bring down the Bush government after the fact, for God's sake, but it's probably better than who the kids finally settled on:

Actor Mark Humphrey. No, really. That's who they think it is. And how do they know? Well, allow me to demonstrate what appears to be the sole analysis done to date demonstrating the argument:





According to the blog where the claim broke, that's it. Come on, I can't be the only one thinking, "ummm... they look nothing alike..."

Apparently not, because debate has gotten started over whether this claim is correct. Truthaction disagrees, as do 9/11 Blogger and some ATS users. Here's the CrNU prediction: In six months, the people who believe the government recruits C-list television actors and trusts them with case-making tasks will have the same sort of obscurity as those in the faith who believe Judy Wood's theory about space laser beams. They'll be as "obscure" as one can be in a movement where refutation is impossible because science doesn't matter. None of these theories can actually be refuted because 9/11 deniers aren't in the habit of ruling out absurdities. However, they'll reach as close to that state as pseudo-scientists can imitate, and the faith will bleed a few more members.

Trolling as an official policy?

"I encourage people who post here to also post on the facebook group "9/11 conspiracy theories are BS." It takes only a second to join, post, and leave the group, but it will reach people who are in desperate need of real information."

Well, I guess it's easier for them to run away from their stated beliefs than defend them. Oh, well - guess this means they don't intend to be taken seriously?

And we think they're irrelevant: 9/11 deniers to hold OKC bombing event

Next: 9/11 deniers for U.S.S. Maine truth? From 911truth:

Well documented information contradicting the patently false, official account of the Oklahoma City bombing of April, 19, 1995 as offered by the U.S. Department of Justice and the F.B.I. will be reviewed. Why should any one of us be asked to remember the deaths of the Oklahoma City bombing victims in a lie?

Guest Speakers including Pat Shannan – Independent journalist with American Free Press, Washington, DC., Wendy Painting - Graduate student at NY University – Buffalo, V.Z. Lawton – OKC bombing survivor and several others will be in attendance.

Words fail to describe (or appear on) Pat Shannan's startlingly hideous website - an amalgam of broken links ostensibly assaulting your sense of grammatical correctness with titles like "Read more about FDNY Chief of Safety Reported Bombs in WTC/Planes" (link broken) and "New Article! Bush and Republicans Continue to Make 9/11 Probe Difficult" (link, alas, also broken). Real star-studded cast you've got there. "What if... what if we threw a party and the designer of the world's ugliest website, a grad student, a living appeal to emotion, and several others showed up?"

One of the nice things about the Internet for champions of unpopular causes is that websites are easier to paint a shiny veneer on more so than, say, an ill-attended event or marketing campaign designed on a shoestring budget. Though 9/11 denial has a lucrative DVD business associated with it, apparently its big conspiracy-rehashing parties can't get much behind them, even from their peers. Another day, another conference by greedy conspiracy theorists on one of their long-refuted tokens of faith.

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?

Please, oh please...

Dear 9/11 deniers: Please, oh please, accuse the government of complicity in the recent Teabagger suicide martyrdom. First props goes out to Killtown, which provides trenchant insights such as, "people heard a loud noise," and "jee, I heard a sort of bomb-like boom when that plane hit!"

The quotes they pull include those from a dazed man in a CBS news story who initially said the plane impact "felt like a bomb went off;" FOX News' reporting that "several witnesses are reporting they first thought it was a bomb," and an Australian news organization owned by the notorious inside trader Conrad Black quoting a nearly-victim in saying that he also thought a bomb exploded.

Two points.

One, in the Muslim world, it is common knowledge that the American and Israeli governments are responsible for everything from 9/11 to the burned toast at breakfast. The Zionists are the reason someone can't get a job, why the price of gas is so high, why its so damn hot out. 9/11 deniers' ideological allies in violent Muslim organizations were evidently so shocked at the American response to 9/11 that many have actually begun promoting 9/11 as an inside job even as al Qaeda proudly claims responsibility for it. Though most Muslims believe violence in the name of Islam is justified, many appear so horrified at the logical conclusion of their beliefs that some Muslim leaders have decided it is easier to rewrite history than to face it.

9/11 deniers must remain allied with religious extremists on this point to whatever end. They are ideologically forced, as are the Muslim fascists who rule daily life with the whip and the sword in most of the Muslim world, to concoct excuses for every indication that something bad has happened for which the West is not responsible. This is why, in large part, both have lost so much credibility so quickly (yes, sorry to cite my own work...what can I say?). It is to their own downfall to be forced into such a position, and for that us skeptics are glad.

Second: Everywhere else, your sources of information are supposedly actively working against you to suppress "the truth, remember? You guys think the media is engaged in a "blackout," remember? The mainstream media is being unfairly mean to every public official who believes evidence rather than conspiracy theories, aren't they? These insane claims against everyday journalists are yours to begin with. They're just trying to silence Rosie!

No, you can't have it both ways. Either your habitual quote-mining of the Zionist Media for ways to support your farcical worldview is valid, or everything professional journalists say is a lie. Your ridiculous personal slanders against everyone who disagrees with you can go un-punished because unlike the religious nutjobs to whom you are ideologically wed you live in a country that values free speech, but they don't go unnoticed.

Either everyone working in a media organization is a fraud, or your worldview is a fraud. Either there is no such thing as organic opposition to the United States, or your worldview is a fraud. Take your pick. This is why I'm glad the conspiracy theories have begun to burble: it brings 9/11 deniers one step closer to having to sit and ask themselves, "do I really believe this nonsense?"

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.