I just submitted this review to Amazon. I'd like to submit it here; I'm not sure if there is a deliberate attempt to censor some damning reviews on Amazon, or just technical SNAFUs, but the last time I submitted a review there it never got published. It was a one-star review for "United 93," in which I accused the movie of being propaganda meant to reassure those who still believed the official story, and how NORAD has repeatedly changed its story, et cetera. Anyway, hopefully this review will show up there - and here!

Until reading DRG's latest book, I was not previously aware of the multiple stories put out by the Florida classroom teacher, Sandra Kay Daniels.

EDIT: My review is up on Amazon now. I guess I got past the neo-con censors this time. :D

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It just goes to show how strong some peoples' appeal to authority can be. People are still turning to Popular Mechanics for comfort in 2008. And the author goes on about how the Loose Change makers aren't "experts," as if Dylan and company sat in a room and dreamed up the 9/11 truth movement's arguments all by themselves, rather than drawing on other peoples' research - people who just never broke through to the mainstream like Loose Change. Caporaletti also charges that Loose Change and other truthers "ignore" the "answers" put forth by Popular Mechanics.

E-mail and add some comments!

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Column: Conspiracy theories are actually laughable myths

Jacob Caporaletti, CT regular columnist
Wednesday, February 27; 12:00 AM

It's all a conspiracy. The government, big business and the Freemasons are all out to get us. They want to use their influence to control world affairs. Scary, isn't it?

Hi everyone. There is a hot thread on the Amazon Politcs forum: The OP poster is tallying names on the OP in two colums: OCT believers and alternative theory supporters. So far we are ahead by three, but let's get more of an edge! Here is the OP as it stands thus far, and she intends to close the thread March 1.

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LAST EDITED TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2008. 33 to 26. Leap Year ~ 3 more days until the final verdict can be posted.

It should be evident by this 'unofficial poll' that there are a whole lot of people who question the official government's story -OGS- (soon to be called OGMyth) fraught with too many inconsistencies, plus the unwarranted destruction of our precious Constitution, plus the Patriot Acts, Surveillance, Gulag Camps, Middle East wars, etc. There needs to be more transparency by our Leaders. And an end to aggression for grabbing the lion's share of the oil which is theirs, to sell to whomever they want.

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=106135

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Hi, Folks.

This will be my last post in this subforum. I'll be posting in other subfora and will be getting involved in other skeptical pursuits, but will still be available for 9/11 questions, interviews, debates, etc. if need be, so don't hesitate to let me know if I can help.
...

Thanks for putting up with my aggressive style for all this time. I know it doesn't make for pleasant reading, but it's been important to me not to use kid gloves on these revelers in ignorance and these apologists for the terrorists who killed my neighbors.

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Here is Dylan Avery's response to that last statement:

"What a load of empty rhetoric. The Jersey Girls lost their HUSBANDS, and they're the principle driving force behind the existence of the Truth Movement. Stop playing the victim, Mark. Everybody lost their neighbors and their loved ones, and a majority of those family members are demanding answers just as much as we are. Just because you have an axe to grind doesn't grant you the right to play crusader and use the victims' pain and suffering as leverage, calling the Truth Movement 'apologists'"

As some of you know, I am well-known on Amazon. I choose that place because Amazon is one of the most heavily trafficked sites on the web. In addition, what could be a more non-partisan site, right? Good place to spread 9/11 truth to newbies, no? And their forums which are purely for discussion, such as the Amazon Politics Forum, (i.e. not attached to a specific product for purchase; Griffin's books have their own little Amazon subforums), are still fairly new, but with catching popularity.

I took the liberty of introducing to the Amazon Politics Forum community the breaking story of the Japanese Diet covering 9/11 Truth. While Amazon indeed used to be a rational place, it seems that these days they're on a par with JREF when it comes to not just the dogmatic blindness of OCT defenders, but the speed at which they reply. Virtually all you need to do these days is make a post, hit refresh, and someone's already come back with a post "debunking" you!

I just sent this as a private letter to Dr. Thomas Eagar at MIT. Upon reflection, it would be good to post here as an "open letter" to not just him but all official theory-supporting scientists. I'll be interested to see if he responds.

Though this blog version is an open letter to not just Eagar, but also Bazant and others, I'll keep the text as I originally wrote it (in which I address Dr. Eagar directly, in the second person).

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Dear Dr. Eagar,

Over the past couple years I have studied very closely the research community known as the 9/11 truth movement. I have an observation and a question.

My observation: When Steven Jones published his essay in favor of the demolition hypothesis, you said that "These people (in the 9/11 truth movement) use the 'reverse scientific method.' They determine what happened, throw out all the data that doesn't fit their conclusion, and then hail their findings as the only possible conclusion." This quote of yours is featured on Wikipedia in refutation to the demolition hypothesis.

Well, folks, in addition to being targeted by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Ae911truth.org now has inspired the "debunker" side to do an evil twin: ae911truth.info, apparently run by a guy named Joseph Nobles. It is under construction but the core of the site consists of attempted rebuttals to Richard Gage's powerpoint presentation.

Just the first page of this is pretty infuriating to read:

"This is the home page of AE911Truth.info, a site dedicated to exposing the lies and mistakes of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. AE911Truth claims to be an advocacy group for engineers and architects who question what they call the "official story" of the 9/11 attacks, but it's really just a front organization that's being used for PR purposes. They pretend to be spreading real and valuable information. Actually their website and presentations are filled with misinformation and lies.

Somebody should stop them, and I take great pleasure in being able to do my part in stopping them. The events of 9/11 are too important to be lied about, and AE911Truth do this again and again.

Hi all.

I finally figured this might be newsworthy enough to submit here. In October, a reviewer on Amazon gave David Ray Griffin's "Debunking 9/11 Debunking" a five-star review. In this review, Allen Rosenzweig said the following:

"I have been studying 9/11 data since the day it occurred due to the loss of my brother who was a passenger on AA FLT 11. I truly believe 9/11 was an inside job and since I didn't receive any money to keep my mouth shut like my brother's wife did, I have no agenda except to receive the truth. I believe the evidence shows we Americans were lied to by an extremely corrupt government. I hope one day, ALL of the players responsible for this will be punished."

This is the first I have heard of this man; I did a google on "Rosenzweig flight 11" and there was indeed a Philip Rosenzweig who died on AA 11. Does anyone in the movement know Allen, or know how we can reach him? I've tried inviting him to be my Amazon friend but no response yet.

http://www.amazon.com/review/product/156656686X/ref=cm_cr_pr_recent?%5Fencoding=UTF8&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending

Hi all.

Much to my surprise, Mark Weitzman answered my e-mail from a few days ago. I posted that e-mail in the comments section of the previous SWC thread (Not the ae911truth one, but the one several days before). Today, I received a response. I don't know it's a form response he's writing to all his 9/11 related letters, so I'll be interested to hear if Weitzman has written any of you all. I'll post my e-mail to him first, followed by his response:

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Hello.

I am writing to protest the SWC's conflation of 9/11 truth and
research sites to digital terrorism, hate, and anti-Semitism. Calling us "9/11
deniers" is extremely insulting to the millions of concerned American
(and world) citizens with legitimate questions about what really happened
on 9/11.

To question the true identity of the perpetrators is NOT analogous to
holocaust denial. While a small minority of 9/11 activists openly mix
holocaust revisionism with 9/11 skepticism, this only represents a
tiny fraction of the 9/11 movement at large, and as a violinist who studied

Hi all. I stumbled upon this video a few days ago, and I don't even remember the original web traffic route I used to get there. Today, it actually took me a few hours to find this video again.

I've never seen this particular issue discussed on 911blogger or any other site for that matter. With so much focus on William Rodriguez and countless others who reported explosions in the basement and on other lower floors, it seems that discussion of explosions on the upper floors - especially at roof level, has not been given much attention. I, for one, had never noticed the specific explosive puffs documented in this video.

Though the music is a bit sensationalist, this 3 minute clip makes an interesting point: The smoke from the airplane crashes serves, literally, as a smokescreen for roof-level explosions just prior to when the North Tower's antenna begins to drop. Thanks to the jet fuel smoke, these roof-level explosions are extremely camouflaged; like I said, this particular point never struck me until a few days ago, after over 2 years of intense 9/11 research and activism.

Hi all,

I checked out JREF for the first time in awhile today, and finally their own Ryan Mackey has offered an answer to David Ray Griffin's latest book - at least the NIST chapter. It's an MS Word document totaling 198 pages.

I've read the first several pages where he gives a general overview. I don't have the time or energy to get into it in depth tonight (or for that matter this whole weekend). I would like to read it all, but perhaps some of you can beat me to it. I am open to all sides of an argument and this would indeed be the first lengthy critique to any aspect of Griffin's book. That being said, much of what I've read so far isn't impressive; he basically says, (in a long-winded way designed to fill up space), that "YOU are claiming controlled demolition, so the burden of proof is on YOU, not on NIST."

Anyone out there want to help me out? I'm interested in what people think are the paper's strong points and flaws. I think it's important that Truthers and Debunkers put their strongest stuff out in the open to be examined objectively.

I hadn't visited this site in a little while, but just last night, as I checked out the status of Jimmy Walter's reopen911.org, I found this on the home page: He is giving up 9/11 activism and his million-dollar-challenge to prove explosives were not used is now no longer active. I guess he feels exhausted, probably the way Cindy Sheehan felt when she said she had had enough.

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Welcome to 1984!

This is a timely, excellent response to the 'debunkers' of the 9/11 Truth Movement.

The 'debunkers,' of course, are the ones who are on the 9/11 research scene to say: "Everything the 9/11 Truth Movement says about government complicity is wrong. The official story is indeed correct, so please get back to whatever you were doing in your life before you ever heard of these absurd theories."

This is Griffin's thickest technical volume on 9/11. There are four lengthy chapters, totaling 322 pages of text, after which there are 62 pages of endnotes. The fourth chapter, about 100 pages in length, deals exclusively with rebutting the Popular Mechanics book "Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts." The first three chapters deal with other publications that emerged in 2006, as the 9/11 Truth Movement was gaining ground. These publications include Michael Broenner's Vanity Fair article "9/11 Live: The Norad Tapes," Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton's "Without Precedent," and finally the NIST report and its attempt to debunk the controlled demolition hypothesis.

I've been toying for awhile about what kind of review to write. If I give an in-depth review of the content for each chapter of this book, the review will be so long people won't want to read it! Several other in-depth reviews have focused on the problems with the NORAD tapes. So I will focus primarily on the Popular Mechanics chapter, since PM is most often cited as the knockout punch which refutes all the movement's claims.

Continued after the jump.

Hi all,

First off, this Steve Farrell guy is a 'dedicated' skeptic, but without the hate of the SLC and JREF crowd. However, in previous threads he's said such as things as "Hani Hanjour's poor flying skills aren't evidence of anything, kameelyun." He has also rigorously defended NORAD's 'incompetence,' as well as waving away all of the controlled demolition evidence. He has handwaved away Dutch demolitionist Danny Jowenko. He has even waved away the fact that a phone call to Controlled Demolition revealed that "pull it" IS a demolition term. So I'm a bit weary about how productive the thread would actually be... Should we take this guy's bait or not? There are those here who are more knowledgeable than I, and have read more books. (I still have yet to read Ruppert or Tarpley because those books are so huge.)

Having said all that, here's how Steve opens this new thread:

"All the attention so far has been paid to the flaws in the official theory of 9/11, the Al Qaeda hijacker scenario. But any alternative theory has to stand on its own. What if we abandoned the conventional scenario for good? What should we believe actually happened on 9/11?

By CHIP DE NURE | La Crosse

Harold Kubisiak’s letter knocking “Twin Towers conspiracy nuts” just reinforces for me the real reason why Rosie O’Donnell won’t be seen on “The View” when her contract expires. Though I didn’t see it, Rosie apparently had the temerity to mention some 9/11 anomalies that cast doubt on the official version.

Great Caesar’s ghost! Can you imagine the absolute panic felt by the executives at ABC? Rosie was disturbing the 9/11 fantasy endorsed by the entire political establishment, and she was doing it on national TV. No wonder she had to go, even though she had single-handedly raised that program’s ratings by 15 percent.

By the by, Mr. Kubisiak, I know that fire can melt steel, but the temperatures in the towers weren’t hot enough to do that. In fact, firefighter audio tapes have revealed that the fires were under control in one of the towers.