standard "9/11 truth" hit-piece on boing boing

[8bitagent]

"9/11 was an inside job! Larry Silverstein! Melting points! Look at the Pentagon hole...why Cheney just LOOKS GUILTY!"

"You do a disservice to real anti war liberals with this conspiracy garbage! Bush and Cheney might be evil liars, but they told the truth about 9/11"

"Sheeple!"

"Conspiracy nut!"

And round and round we go.

It's very simple. We know the liberals and right wingers bashing us for being "conspiracy nuts" are full of shit. And it aint "WTC7" that is the smoking gun...

It's the fact that by all accounts the 19 hijackers were being helped at every step by Saudi Arabian intelligence and financing, as well as secret liasons and helpers inside of America for 2 years.
There is no dispute, and the fact cops and FBI were forced to cover this up, as well as obstructed from stopping 9/11 shows 9/11 WAS A COVERUP/CONSPIRACY.

Set point match, checkmate. Game over. Hijackers had accomplices that cops were forced from going after. Gee, now why would that occur?
Theres your real smoking gun.

But perhaps the biggest question "Truthers" need to ask themselves...

Is NOT whether al Qaeda was "framed" in some "false flag" attack, which I believe is absolutely false(al Qaeda is ALL too willing)

The QUESTION is WHO and WHAT does global jihad serve?

To me 9/11 is a globalist job, given al Qaeda and virtually all Islamic terrorism is not some goddamn "blowback", but mere easily duped controlled proxies of the global elite system and the dark forces manipulating humanity.

In other words, both the US government and militant Islam got punk'd on 9/11[/b]

[8bitagent]

Other than Charlie Sheen. And AJ.

Yeah but when you have the public face of 9/11 Truth(tm) personalities and red herring talking points being Jim Fetzer, Loose Change, etc and all the focus on "Bush blew up the towers" and "Larry Silverstein pulled WTC7!"

...no wonder even the left who should be on our side hate us.

Meanwhile, Nafeez Ahmed, Michel michel chossudovsky, Paul Thompson, Kevin Fenton, Sander Hicks, Hopsicker, etc have for years been exposing the real investigations...but they arent popular or cool.

I personally can't even see how anyone can call themselves a truther or 9/11 researcher without becoming familiar with History Commons and the work of Paul Thompson and Kevin Fenton. To me thats real 9/11 truth, and if THAT and not the Loose Change and Alex Jones stuff was what people thought of when they hear of 9/11 skepticism...things would be different.

Histroy Commons proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that al Qaeda and global jihad is just a controlled and protected proxy of wider globalist forces, destroying the truther "its all a cia false flag" and the liberal "theyre angry and causing blowback" memes.

[thatsmystory]

Is NOT whether al Qaeda was "framed" in some "false flag" attack, which I believe is absolutely false(al Qaeda is ALL too willing)

The QUESTION is WHO and WHAT does global jihad serve?

To me 9/11 is a globalist job, given al Qaeda and virtually all Islamic terrorism is not some goddamn "blowback", but mere easily duped controlled proxies of the global elite system and the dark forces manipulating humanity.

In other words, both the US government and militant Islam got punk'd on 9/11[/b][/b]

How did the US government get punked when officials in US agencies were involved in obstructing al Qaeda investigations? Were they also punked in '93, '98 and 2000?

[8bitagent]

Is NOT whether al Qaeda was "framed" in some "false flag" attack, which I believe is absolutely false(al Qaeda is ALL too willing)

The QUESTION is WHO and WHAT does global jihad serve?

To me 9/11 is a globalist job, given al Qaeda and virtually all Islamic terrorism is not some goddamn "blowback", but mere easily duped controlled proxies of the global elite system and the dark forces manipulating humanity.

In other words, both the US government and militant Islam got punk'd on 9/11[/b][/b]

How did the US government get punked when officials in US agencies were involved in obstructing al Qaeda investigations? Were they also punked in '93, '98 and 2000?

Don't forget 1996, when Washington higher ups literally pulled FBI agents closing in on Khalid Sheikh Mohamed in 1996 as he was being safehoused by the leaders of Qatar(the same ones who'd go on to make millions on post 9/11 security with Rudy Guiliani)

I've poured through 1000 Years For Revenge and Triple Cross(sadly not the new revision though), as well as Terror Inc, Ghost Wars and The Looming Tower(and saw the videos on Robert Wright and John O'neil, and the new interview with Coleen Rowley)

You're right; clearly there were those who were intentionally obstructing plucky FBI agents from going after any aspect of the global jihad beast.
Stopped from going after Saudi terror financing, terror financing charities/mosques, the hijackers, mid range operatives, etc. Hell even all the chances they had to kill bin Laden pre and post 9/11 have been stood down. We even have top al Qaeda/9-11 operatives protected from arrest, like Mamoun Darkazanli in Hamberg.

Kevin Fenton recently wrote a great blog on pre 9/11 obstruction, asking this very question:
http://www.911blogger.com/node/21742

My question is, years of accusations and suspicious..."who" that was high in the US government can truly be accused of "being in on it"? Maybe I'm just missing something...just hard to see how those accused of being part of it truly even knew it was coming.

Again, I wonder if perhaps the "neocons who did 9/11"(according to many) were just as perplexed and scared on 9/11 as everyone else.
I know it's a controversial stance to take, as I don't think mihop/lihop/blowback/etc seems to explain all the oddness that went on.

[JackRiddler]

I wrote earlier (quoted below) of the ritual nature of these debunking pieces.

A standard of the oeuvre is the follow-up column, in which the poor rationalist moans about the shitstorm of nutty, wounded responses to the first article.

As a target of his new piece, Goldwag picked this thread and my last comment to him, which he still hasn't published.
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/09/91 ... he-pa.html

Target isn't the right word, more like the material from which he loosely derives more strawmen. He doesn't link back to this thread. We'll see if he finally publishes my comment, which I submitted again for the last time.

He quotes me in part, then attributes to me a string of qualities that he must have remotely viewed, some taken from a familiar lexicon of discredit ("strident," "furious"). He ironically grants me a fluency in the "jargon of physics," though I don't talk about the "physical evidence" issues here or in my comments on his blog.

The comments from readers provide more evidence for the effectiveness in particular of the bogus old LIHOP-MIHOP dichotomy. You may say the Bush regime committed treason so as to gain a pretext for bloody wars of conquest, as long as your condemnation of the "conspiracy theorists" is louder.

.

These pieces almost always have the same tone and are drawn from the same set of fallacies, generalizations, substitutions of part for whole, cherry pickings and misrepresentations focusing solely on the madness of "conspiracy theorists," rather than the events of September 11th or their possible relation to the deep state. Independent study of the events and their background almost never enters into it - as Chomsky said, who cares about 9/11? It's always a response to what someone said about 9/11.

In the early days, when to doubt that Americans felt a consensus about the meaning of 9/11 was semi-treasonous, publishing these was a specialty of those called to stem skepticism about the official story. Corn, Berlet, Michael Albert, these were firemen of a sort, reacting to Ruppert, Nafeez Ahmed and the original "physical evidence" claimants. By around 2006 and ever since, it became a ritual declaration, independent of actual provocation. It allows the initiate to demonstrate ideological purity, in a kind of farcical evocation of swearing you're not a Communist. It's not strictly required, but it's wise, trendy and thought to confer general career advantage, like a framed certificate on your wall.

One part of the ritual lies in writing as though you just reached your breaking point of exasperation with the "theories" and came up with your own original refutations independently. They're like break dancers copying and trying to add to each others' moves, except it's each others' sneers. If this crippled pursuit featured an MTV Award, I would think Taibbi's turn would have to be the favorite.

[thatsmystory]

Target isn't the right word, more like the material from which he loosely derives more strawmen. He doesn't link back to this thread. We'll see if he finally publishes my comment, which I submitted again for the last time.

He quotes me in part, then attributes to me a string of qualities that he must have remotely viewed, some taken from a familiar lexicon of discredit ("strident," "furious"). He ironically grants me a fluency in the "jargon of physics," though I don't talk about the "physical evidence" issues here or in my comments on his blog.

You appear to have gotten his attention. Instead of dealing with your argument he resorts to the tried and true one size fits all dismissal of 9/11 skepticism--it's just one big cult. In his next column he will explain that he was wrong to suggest everyone in the 9/11 truth movement is a rabid conspiracy nut. After all, some are only in it for the big bucks. There are two groups--true believers and scam artists who provide endless product, making a living exploiting the gullible and the memory of the victims.

One need not be a member of the 9/11 truth movement to question 9/11. There is no sign up sheet. One need not pledge to support Alex Jones or David Ray Griffin.

[§ê¢rꆧ]

§

Good going, Jack! At least perhaps you have him thinking a little bit, perhaps ruffling the feathers of complacent thought. I wish I had some of your energy and aptitude.

And you're operating with the handicap of unpublished comments - how telling that he is unable to face you in a fair debate.

[JackRiddler]

secrets, thatsmystory: thanks.

You appear to have gotten his attention.

Yes. Unfortunately, that means he got mine.

According to him, this began when he was sent an e-mail urging him to watch 911: Press for Truth. He didn't, but wrote those columns. Need anything else be said?

[MacCruiskeen]

According to him, this began when he was sent an e-mail urging him to watch 911: Press for Truth. He didn't, but wrote those columns. Need anything else be said?

Yes, but if he's deleting posts he can't cope with (and ignoring the entire point of posts he claims to be addressing), then there's little point in saying it to him over there.

Since Mr. Goldwag has been visiting this here thread at RI (how did he find out about it?) on cherry-picking missions, then I'd suggest you issue a polite challenge to him in a new thread right here. Call it something like "A Challenge to Arthur Goldwag: Discuss 911: Press for Truth Without Blowing Smoke". Boil it down to a few short questions raised by the film and see if he can address them honestly and without ever once digressing into cheapshots, irrelevancies, blanket generalizations, straw-man arguments, ad hominems (or ad feminems) and other invalid arguments & avoidance tactics. Promise him you won't ever insult him as long as he doesn't ignore or insult you. Tell him that honesty and politeness will be responded to honestly and politely.

I wonder if Mr. Goldwag is up to that simple challenge. I wonder if he has the elementary moral and intellectual decency to face it. I very much doubt that he has. Was I wrong to call him a dishonest pusillanimous wee shite? Were you wrong to call him a cowardly wanker? We'll see. If anything I said about him turns out to be ultimately untrue, then I won't hesitate to apologise to him.

-- PS As I've just pointed out in the Chomsky thread, NC adopted precisely the same tactic when Jon Gold twice politely drew his attention to 911: Press for Truth: he simply ignored it and fled into generalizations. (But at least he didn't fawningly "salute" the Jersey Girls while blocking his ears to everything they actually say. Arthur Goldwag did, because that's his style, or at least it has been so far. I suspect it's his substance too. Time will tell.)

[MacCruiskeen]

What's he up to here? Three guesses.

Reading through all that commentary, I thought of how misguided missionaries sometimes try to evangelize Jews by calling their attention to passages from the New Testament--a scripture that by definition carries no weight with Jews at all.

It's a pressure cooker -- turn up the temperature and you get sectarianism and schisms, higher still and you get witch hunts, show trials, Cultural Revolutions, and Nuremberg laws.

("Witch hunts, show trials, Cultural Revolutions, and Nuremberg laws" - in that order? Why the altered chronology?)

Just as the missionary can't understand how the Jew can contemplate the prospect of his eternal damnation with such unnatural equanimity, the Truther can't fathom why the rest of us would rather look at the forest than the trees.

So, according to Arthur Goldwag, it's "The Truthers" (sic) versus "The Jews" (sic). (Try telling that to Jon Gold, Jamey Hecht, Thomas Immanuel Steinberg, Elias Davidsson or Mark Robinowitz, to name but five.)

But of course he'll say he was only making an analogy. Yeah, like hell. The analogy is, in any case, bullshit. It's just a contemptible performance, and no less contemptible for being so skilfully disingenuous. On the contrary.

[JackRiddler]

At this point it would be disappointing if Goldwag did publish the comments or links to the threads he quotes for straw, and makes anyone think he's got a shred of integrity.

I enjoyed this comment, from "chandler":

Cocktail Recipe for Gasbaggery.

Start with a heaping tablespoon of forced gravitas via a sweeping Hofstadter quote (which, like a horoscope reading, can apply to almost anyone it's aimed at. EFF? Check. Eisenhower during his MIC speech? Check. JFK? Check. People who suspected there were no WMDs in Iraq? Check. Al Gore? Check. Amnesty? Check.).

Add 2 cups of awkward condescension (awkward because there's no "there there" in this article, no actual platform from which to look down on the subjects being analyzed. Author seems like a peer of those he is mocking, inflating his own position via hamhanded association with Hofstadter and Chomsky rather than through an original idea or perspective).

Top up with random analogies (Maria Callas?)

Add a dash of false guilt by association (not everyone who challenges the official version listens to Alex Jones, and most of the comparisons are either ridiculous or offensive or both.)

Strain of ingredients which might change the desired flavor, such as the opinions of insiders and experts which don't toe the line with the official narrative.

Conclude, blithely confident that something profound has been stated.

Name of cocktail: the Ad Hominem

I also take perverse enjoyment in seeing this senile canard put out for the billionth time, in bold no less:

Daedalus | #84 | 07:52 on Tue, Nov.10 | Reply
Report

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Never think when a platitude can do it for you!

It's not like in our daily human experience we ever encountered situations and people in which stupidity and malice go together. It's not like one is the breeding ground for the other. They're mutually exclusive!

[8bitagent]

So what do all these smarmy lefty gate keeping windbags or their Fox News compatriots not get through their thick heads?

The 9/11 hijackers had layer upon layer of financial and material support from protected persons inside the US and by deep elements inside Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, with the FBI from 1996-2001 forced to backoff from any and all investigations and pursuits of al Qaeda suspects and terror financiers.

And that's the scary stuff we DO know, that is not refutable(unlike the "Loose Change" stuff)

These liberal wonks think KSM did 9/11? When KSM is treated like a king at Gitmo now days, and most of the other 9/11 patsies are protected and free?

[Searcher08]

Jack, I just wanted to say thank you for this thread. I know you have had "Why am I doing this?!" moments, but your clarity, patience and humour have made me feel proud to be a member here. This is RI at it's best. <buys JR a beer>

[JackRiddler]

Thank you for your kind words, Searcher08.

For the thread itself, of course, credit to justdrew
comrade in arms, searcher himself, must accrue.

[justdrew]

Thank you for your kind words, Searcher08.

For the thread itself, of course, credit to justdrew
comrade in arms, searcher himself, must accrue.

given the venue, it seemed worth defending the honor of the 911 Rather Serious Questions Movement. I knew I wouldn't be able to muster more than a couple posts (I did get his attention with my first), and don't have the same level of experience at it as others. Probably some eyes were opened.