Delusional Ventura Hosts Serial Predatory Skeptic

 "The Moral Arc"?  That's some extreme narcissist bollocks.

Scraping the bottom of the barrel there.

But what else do persons connected to trutherism have left but the fringe of the fringe?  Ventura isn't alone in using dubious associations to promote trutherism.

Manny Badillo was many "truthers" Facebook and Twitter friend in spite of his sex offender status


 

Manny at Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100009794138066

[For the record, when I first heard of these charges, it took repeated questions before people finally said, "Yeah, okay, he's probably guilty.".  To which my response was, "WTF? Then why is he still around?"
No good answers were forthcoming... ]

For instance, Bursill has Manny among his fwiends:

https://www.facebook.com/johnbursill/friends

As does Cindy Sheehan:

https://www.facebook.com/cindyleesheehan/friends

[Historical note: Bursill registered to Craig Lazo's defunct forum a couple days before it was deleted to promote an Aussy truth tour, months after starting a thread at truthaction.org claiming to be concerned about Lazo's 'Killtown' disinfo.  Evidence like that I don't publish, but I do keep to give to authorities the next time these sleazeballs push a con.]

Sex Offenders aren't just popular with two faced scammers or people taking photo ops with racists.   Richard Gage roped a guy called DiNatale into pushing his non profit AETruther scam, and either is so far gone he really doesn't see the problem  or believes even the worst publicity is good publicity.

So it's not too much of a shock Ventura doesn't see interviewing a man strongly suspected of sexual predation in the skeptic community as a problem.

What is slightly more surprising is a well known "skeptic" blog run by two fools found it newsworthy:

http://screwloosechange.blogspot.com/2015/12/jesse-ventura-and-michael-shermer.html

'Fools' might sound harsh, but they are either fools or scammers and opportunists if their activities over the years are any indication.  They stopped credible debunking ages ago,  really by early-mid 2007.  There after the blog was little more than copy pasta of other, credible debunkers, with the main course being an amplifier  for "truther" gossip.

The latest blog post is much in the same vein though not as irresponsible as some. JamesB logs in to write it, linking to a video:

"Jesse Ventura and Michael Shermer"

Only a bit on 9/11, but skeptic Michael Shermer and conspiracy theorist extraordinaire Jesse Ventura have what actually is a relatively amiable conversation.

Why this is even slightly newsworthy for skeptics is baffling to me.  As it was blogged 3 days after the interview, it clearly wasn't topical or urgent to anyone.  A search of  "Jesse Ventura and Michael Shermer"
show literally no English language blog besides SLC covered it, not even the usual conspiracy outlets(at least not with that title):

 And why is Shermer still relevant anyway? On Skeptics forum itself are threads detailing Shermer's suspicious relationship with conartist David Cole-stien, as well as the rape allegations.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=263429&page=118
https://skepchick.org/2015/08/ben-radford-has-threatened-to-sue-me/

What's even more baffling is the SLC bloggers had no problem calling out DiNatalie when  cjnewson pointed out Gage/AETruth's involvement with a sex predator.  They even blogged it.  But Shermer gets a pass.

Hmmm.

It might be because both DiNatale and Badillo were legally convicted as opposed to being convicted in the court of public opinion, which admittedly is very YMMV.  In Shermer's case one could say, well, he's not convicted so he's innocent.  But reading the history this is very unlikely.   Normal, non predatory people do not have a history going back years of predatory behavior.   So even if I don't expect SLC to denounce Shermer, I do expect ethical, responsible people to not give Shermer a platform or publicity.

And while the rape accusations may not be proved in court, Shermer's overly friendly association with Holocaust Denier David Cole is unquestionable thanks to photographic evidence.  Shermer has yet to explain their chumminess TTBOMK.

[This is all aside from another serious issue regarding the SLC blog:  like Mr. Lazo they log into their blog regularly, so, like Mr. Lazo, they have no reason not to clean their blog up.]

Whatever the SLC fools intentions claim to be, giving either Shermer or Ventura publicity isn't helping anyone...except the conspiracy industry they both profit from.

So, unless SLC has a dog in that race, it's an odd choice for an alleged debunking blog. At this point there is no point to discussing trutherism except to expose it--and report its frontmen--as a scam.

Life after "Loose Change"

It's nice to see Avery seems to be free of the "truther" octopus , though he is marked.   I don't know if the author intended this, but the title is a clue to the phoniness of the movement Avery and company were seduced into fronting.  No one rises that fast to fame on very few credentials or history without a backing interest.  And that interest may not have your best interests:

 https://www.vocativ.com/usa/us-politics/rapid-rise-fall-dylan-avery/

The Rapid Rise and Fall of Dylan Avery

With his 9/11 conspiracy doc "Loose Change," director Dylan Avery became an Internet sensation and a leader of a movement. Then the film grew into a monster that nearly ruined his life

 Highlights:

At 30 years old, Avery is still dealing with the aftershocks of his movie, which he released in December 2005 when he was just 21. In a matter of months, Loose Change had been viewed on the Internet more than 10 million times, by 20,000 people per day (All before YouTube was a household name). Suddenly, Avery became a youth icon and a kind of national celebrity, galvanizing the 9/11 Truth Movement—those who fervently believed the Sept. 11 attacks were coordinated by the U.S. government.
He was referred to as “a real hero” and earned praise from renowned artists like director David Lynch, who said of the film: “It’s not so much what they say, it’s the things that make you look at what you thought you saw in a different light.”

...

Even now, the second edition’s appeal is obvious. The presentation is rough and edgy, a compilation of stitched-together images culled from raw TV news coverage of 9/11, set against a backdrop of hypnotic hip-hop beats. For 80 minutes, Avery, in his distinctly skeptical post-adolescent voice—the sound of youthful arrogance—directs the viewer’s attention to suspicious activity, basically saying what to think.
Early on, for instance, there is a picture from the Department of Justice’s terrorism manual, released in 2000, that shows the World Trade Center set in crosshairs. Soon afterward, a sentence from “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” a 90-page report published that same year by a neoconservative think tank, pops up on the screen: “The process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.” (The quote’s context, describing a timetable for a technological makeover of the military, is conveniently left out of the narrative.)

Bold mine.  This was one of the many dishonest  and deceptive pieces of propaganda and Avery didn't start it.  He just fell for it.

Avery then points out that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are among the report’s authors, the setup for a key assertion that comes later in the film: The twin towers, made of steel, could not have been brought down solely by airliners, since steel melts at 2,750 degrees while jet fuel burns up at 1,500. We watch grainy footage of the structures collapsing, the nature of the destruction apparently consistent with that of a controlled demolition. Taken together, the sequence is enormously effective (though debunkers were quick to point out that steel loses half its strength at 1,200 degrees, enough to have brought down the towers).

So much for termites, er, thermite.

 “It came out when the 9/11 Truth Movement was at its peak,” says Jonathan Kay, author of Among the Truthers. “All this new technology was available. At the time, people were not used to grassroots activists making high-quality video propaganda. People assumed that if it had high production values, it was something to take seriously.

Kay, dense or oblivious about other connections in the "truth" movement, makes a very good point here that can be expanded into all sorts of promotions: T-shirts, webdesign, signage, etc.   It used to take a significant investment of resources and skills to create and print logos.  Now branding can be virtually instant and distinguishing a legitimate grassroots organization from conspiracy astroturf is almost impossible based on  production values alone.  [One of the more pathetic attempts to appear grassroots that's still used is crude signage in black felt or tape.  In the post digital world it just looks strange.]  

When the boys were 17, Rowe dropped out of high school and eventually enlisted in the Army, while Avery applied to film school, at SUNY Oneonta, but didn’t get in. After he graduated, in 2002, he took a job doing local construction and began to sketch out a screenplay. It was a fantastical caper about a couple of boys who, sensing something nefarious, decide to investigate 9/11, unearthing a vast conspiracy and becoming heroes in the process. “It was fun,” Avery explains. “About kids fucking shit up. The original script ended with a rally on the White House lawn, and then I think we all fake our own deaths.”
The plan was to splice the fictional story with real-life news footage, but then it turned into a documentary. “It was kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy,” he admits. “The feature script definitely paved the way for what was about to come.”

Hindsight being 20/20 it could also have been a flag for the psychological yearnings behind the fiction, yearnings that could be played.   

The next two years were a whirlwind. The boys toured the country, screening their film and attending Truth conferences, where they were the stars. They were courted by Alex Jones, the rabid conservative conspiracy theorist and radio host who, among other things, believes the MSG found in juice boxes and kettle chips is part of a “chemical warfare operation” to spread homosexuality. He was at the forefront of the Truth Movement and rubbed shoulders with celebrities like Charlie Sheen, who was a Truther himself and a big fan of Loose Change. In early fall 2006, Jones facilitated an introduction between Sheen and the boys, suggesting the actor might narrate the next version of the movie, which would, with his cache, lead to a theatrical release.

From here the rest is a foregone conclusion:  the rise, the heady feeling of self importance inflated by ego flattering "minders",   the attempts at manipulation, some successful, some not:

 Avery was tired and beginning to grow wary of both the Truth Movement and his place in it. “There were anti-Semites saying the Israeli intelligence agency pulled off 9/11,” he says. “They wanted me to put that stuff in my films.” In a bizarre twist, some in the movement accused him of working for the government, conducting a disinformation campaign to discredit Truthers.

This is one of the many signs Avery and others were drawn into a complex political fraud instigated by Holocaust deniers and White Power organizers.  that and the perennial lie there are "agents" in the movement.

Others, who disagreed with his ideas, berated him on a popular blog called Screw Loose Change, where commenters regularly said things like, “Jeez, fucking Hitler must be proud of Dylan.”

Ironically Screw Loose Change was one of the worst enablers of the "truther" fraud.  By refusing to distinguish between people inventing the theories and the people conned by them, they validated the con.  Calling everyone scammed by the "truth" movement a Nazi is not helpful and appears to confirm the false idea of "agents" spreading "disinfo".

“Loose Change happened because I wanted to make a film,” he said. “It was born out of the passion of wanting to be a filmmaker. And then Loose Change took over my life, and it’s almost like filmmaking is completely out of the question.”

 ...

Yet he’s excited about his new film, Black and Blue, especially because it’s grounded in fact-based stories, not theories, about people who have been abused by the police. And though questions still linger about 9/11, such as why, on Sept. 6, 2001, the daily average for put-options on United Airlines stock quadrupled, he no longer tortures himself with speculation. “In my truly angry times, in 2005 or 2006, if you asked if the Bush administration planned the attacks, I would have said, ‘Fuck yeah’.”
But now?
“I don’t think Bush could plan a bowl of cereal,” he says.

 ...

 Avery is silent for a moment. “It’s a dark, dangerous world, the world of conspiracy. You make a commitment and either stick with it to the very end, or you don’t. It’s easy to get sucked in, and really hard to get sucked back out.”

 I don't know.  The minute I knew a network of racist con artists were behind all the major "truther" talking points, it was really easy for me.

.....

My biggest criticism of the interview is  Vocative itself, a relatively new media outlet.  It's great Dylan is coming forth with his story, but try to chose a media platform with a history, like Huffo or Salon.  No offense to "vocative", but it's only a year old:

Vocativ is an online news website founded by Mati Kochavi.^[2] The site publishes trending worldwide stories and highly-produced, documentary-style videos for broadcast online and on television. Vocativ was launched in 2013 by Mati Kochavi. Vocativ has a team of about 80 news editors, writers and producers from publications like the New York Times, CNN and Reuters.^[3][4] Vocativ utilizes "Deep-web" technology to publish news articles. Kochavi is an entrepreneur owning a security firm AGT International and 3i-MIND, a data-mining outlet.^[5] In February, 2014, Vocativ announced a partnership with the NBCUniversal News Group to produce short video segments and prime time hours for the MSNBC cable network and other NBCUNG platforms. The New York Times reported that the chief executive of talent agency William Morris Endeavor, Ari Emmanuel, had taken a personal interest in Vocativ and that his company was negotiating for an equity stake.^[6]

Those who have broken free of the "truth" movement need to be on guard against unconsciously falling into old patterns. This has the marks of Avery shunning the "mainstream media".  If he thought about it a moment, the mainstream media wasn't responsible for most of the attacks; it was cowboy bloggers operating off deceptive information, usually obtained from con artists and social engineers.  And while MSM is not undeserving of criticism, they are far and away more responsible than cowboy bloggers with an ax to grind against the left.

Good luck, Dylan.

Michael Ruppert: R.I.P

I have mixed feelings about Ruppert. 

I think he was a victim of a very elaborate fraud, that entangled him in the "truth" movement net.   Some people observe much of his conspiracy material is repackaged Larouche propaganda;Ruppert even admitted to being impressed with Larouche, though clearly he'd never heard of the death of Jeremiah Duggan, or he'd be less impressed :

 http://www.thenation.com/blog/155983/september-11-x-files#

  On March 31 of last year, for instance, he published a report on an economic conference in Moscow where the opening speaker was a fellow who works for Lyndon LaRouche, the conspiracy-theorist/political cult leader. "I share a near universal respect of the LaRouche organization's detailed and precise research," Ruppert wrote. "I have not, however, always agreed with [its] conclusions."

Also, Ruppert had a girlfriend who he believed was a CIA agent:

 http://www.thenation.com/blog/155983/september-11-x-files#

The Ex-Cop Who Connects the Dot

By his own account, Ruppert has long been a purveyor of amazing tales. In 1981 he told the Los Angeles Herald Examiner a bizarre story about himself: While a cop in the 1970s, he fell in love with a mysterious woman who, he came to believe, was working with the mob and US intelligence. Only after she left him, Ruppert said, did he figure out that his girlfriend had been a CIA officer coordinating a deal in which organized crime thugs were transporting weapons to Kurdish counterrevolutionaries in Iran in exchange for heroin. In an interview with the newspaper, the woman denied Ruppert's account and questioned his mental stability.

Hmmm...the exact MO of a political or cult operation: when caught, accuse target of being "crazy".

After sifting through the sifting facts, I'm of the opinion Ruppert was socially engineered by frauds who wanted to convince him the CIA was after him; this would make him open to their conspiracy propaganda.  From there they could rely on Ruppert to mis-connect the dots, knowing full well the proof of CIA involvement with 9/11 or his personal life was non-existent. 

It never appeared Ruppert became suspicious a private group of  organized political conartists could just as easily explain his experiences as the "CIA".  Or perhaps he did become suspicious or even discovered it...and realized his life was wasted pushing a fabricated lie by some persons pretending to be his friends.


It looks like we'll never know for sure.   He's gone now:


http://www.collapsenet.com/free-resources/collapsenet-public-access/news-alerts/item/12454-collapsenets-founder-michael-c-ruppert-has-committed-suicide

Tuesday, 15 April 2014 04:56

CollapseNet's Founder, Michael C. Ruppert, Has Committed Suicide - UPDATE 04-16-2014: MCR's Suicidal Tendecies and the Note He Left

UPDATE 04-16-2014
Mike's Suicidal Tendencies
from Jenna Orkin
In response to the internet sages who have concluded, in the face of all known evidence from the people who were most intimately familiar with him as well as with the admittedly real dangers that had faced him over the course of his life as an investigative journalist, that Mike did not kill himself but was in fact murdered, his suicidal ideation goes back at least eight years.  As a small example, below are excerpts from a few of his emails sent from Venezuela in 2006.  In addition, he would call at any and all hours to be talked out of jumping from the roof or offing himself in some other way.
A foray into the seedier barrios of Caracas during a protest was one part journalistic adventure but one bigger part, courting danger.  For a hero's death was devoutly to be wished.  Failing that, he'd settle - as happened in the end - for death by any means available.  On one occasion, he confessed to having tied his necktie around his neck as part of an effort to hang himself - and you can be sure I would not put forth such an implausible notion if it were not true - from the shower fixture.  He said that he didn't go through with it because he wished to spare his roommate at the time, Carlos Ruiz, the trauma of finding him the next morning.
He finally left Venezuela in November, ending up, after a detour to Canada, at my apartment.  But his reprieve from the alien environment that had not welcomed him the way he had dreamed brought only brief respite.  For the next fourteen months, he contemplated suicide on an almost daily basis so that whenever I went to work or the grocery store, I made him promise not to kill himself before I came back.  His word - his "honor" - mattered to him more than anything so we took it one day at a time, a notion that was familiar to him from AA.
More on this period in due course.

To Jenna Orkin, 9-24-2006
...Every day I long for death because I just don´t see how this current limbo is ever going to end. I just keep waking up and going through motions. I wrote a new article today and start another tomorrow. I do miss the US and especially my loved ones but I know I can´t ever go home. That would betray my moral decision and put my life at greater risk than I feel it is here.
   I may wind up being the writer that no country wants. Then what?
   Sigh. I´ve been doing the anger thing, especially at those close to me who betrayed me so deeply. That´s what´s really taken the heart out of me...

To colleagues at Fromthewilderness.com,  9-26-2006
...I am flat out of energy, spirit and hope now...  
   I am ready to die and the only thing I want to know is that I am totally clean with all the people who are FTW.
   I saw a great documentary on Socrates last night. They made him drink hemlock because he kept throwing peoplés [sic] bullshit and sloppy thinking in their faces.
   Sounds a little familiar. I am not trying to torment or worry any of those who love me and care for me. I am hanging by a thread here.   best,  Mike

To colleagues regarding plans for dissolution of Fromthewilderness.com and Mike's possible return to the US, 10-19-2006 :
...anythng I do now will be out of the public eye. Guidance yes, but I need to get offstage for a good long while. That is both a pressure and a drug I need to detox from...
  With the push of a button [referring to the 'send' key] the world leaves my shoulders.
Recipients unrecorded, 10-19-2006 21:32
...The bridge is still calling. I say that not to threaten or pressure. I share it just to get it out of my head. I have had two close suicides and the breakup of an engagement in less than three years. Only now am I coming to grips with all of that and much more...

***********************************
From Wes:
It is my one affirmative goal in all of this mess to make sure that the truth be told, and that Mike’s death not be bastardized or be made the product of “conspiracy theory”, as had happened to his good friend, Gary Webb.
I can personally back what Jenna has said above. Mike threatened to kill himself on multiple occasions, verbally and in writing. As just one example, the following is an excerpt from an e-mail exchange I had with Mike on July 19, 2012:
“On 7/19/2012 7:14 PM, Mike Ruppert wrote:
You can just tell me how much came in and I can write myself a Collapsenet check for it.
I have been following very clear and specific spiritual direction since May. It could not have been more clear.
The weeks since have been, without exception, the happiest time and most growth-filled time of my life. All I did was farm and live with the land and pray. My leaving the company was essential so that you guys would have something to lean on. You have done well. You need the company. I don't.
48 hours ago I was well into planning suicide out back. I had nowhere to go.The crops are unbelievable. The corn is eight feet high. There will be 50 pounds of potatoes, watermleon, squash, pumpkins and we brought four trees back to producing that didn't do anything last year; peaches, plums, pears. It's wonderful.
Then Doug called and he had it all figured out, without even knowing how bad it was here. Mount Blanca is a sacred and very special place right now and I am being called there... no "ordered" there, with no more than what I can take in the Rav. I know this is true because I have already begun grieving for the loss of this place and the connection I have made here. Now I understand what it was like for the native people to lose their lands.
The objective is to save the crops and see them used lovingly and to get as straight as possible with the landlord and to get me to Colorado ASAP. Every time this has happened to me something even bigger has come from it. Every time.
There's a ton of shit in play right now on many, many levels.” (emphasis added)

But far more relevant than Mike’s past threats are the actual notes that he left before committing suicide - one for his friend who found him (Jack), and one for his life partner (Jesse). I have read them both, and can confirm that both are in Mike’s handwriting and both contain the same basic confession to suicide. His note to his friend, Jack, appears below. We will not publish the second note to Jesse, as it is personal to her and we want to respect her privacy as best we can.
This is MCR's note to Jack:
[image]

There is absolutely no doubt or question about it, Mike Ruppert took his own life.
Rest in Peace, my brother.
Wes
Wesley T. Miller
President & CEO
Collapse Network, Inc.
*******

04-15-2014
I have been informed that MCR has committed suicide. I am devastated, and very, very sad...

We'll report more as information becomes available.

PLEASE DO NOT SPREAD SPECULATION!

MCR was my friend, my client (I was his attorney) and business partner in CollapseNet. We will gather and report THE FACTS about MCR's death, and nothing else. On my honor, the truth of MCR's death WILL BE TOLD, and his memory will be honored.

Media inquiries should come right here, to me, via ceo@collapsenet.com.

Rest In Peace Mike. I am so sorry that you are gone. You fought the greatest of fights, you opened thousands of eyes and you have earned your place in history, and in our hearts.

Much more to come...

Wesley T. Miller
*****
04-15-2014
From Jenna Orkin:
A brief Comment on Mike Ruppert's Death:
We always knew it could come to this.
To write about Mike requires the tranquility of recollection but at the moment, all is turmoil.
Mike, you told us, "Evolve or perish."  Yet in Apocalypse Man you merged them, speaking of death as the ultimate evolution.  One day we'll all find out whether that is, in fact, the case but it's not the message you used to impart!
Among the emails that have tumbled in this evening is a wonderful link which is sorely needed at such a time: Hope and Courage http://www.oilempire.us/hope.html.  Accompanying it, the following quote from Thomas Keneally's Schindler's List:
"Where's the electric fence?" Clara asked the woman.  To her distraught mind, it was a reasonable question to ask, and Clara had no doubt that the friend, if she had any sisterly feeling, would point the exact way to the wires.   The answer the woman gave was just as crazed, but it was one that had a fixed point of view, a
balance, a perversely sane core.
"Don't kill yourself on the fence, Clara," the woman urged her.  "If you do that, you'll never know what happened to you."

It has always been the most powerful of answers to give to the intending suicide.   Kill yourself and you'll never find out how the plot ends.   Clara did not have any vivid interest in the plot.  But somehow the answer was adequate.  She turned around.  When she got back to her barracks, she felt more troubled than when she'd set out to look for the fence.  But her Cracow friend had -- by her reply -- somehow cut her off from suicide as an option.  http://www.amazon.com/Schindlers-List-Thomas-Keneally/dp/0671880314/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1397569391&sr=8-1&keywords=schindler%27s+keneally 
****
The hardest part of this, for me, is that everything I did with or for Mike was in an effort to prevent this day from ever happening.  CollapseNet was literally formed to provide a means for Mike to make a living. In doing so, he was brought back into a world of despair that he thought he had retired from. He absorbed the pain of the world on a daily basis until he could not take it any longer, and he left CollapseNet when it got to be too much. But that pain kept following him, and there is nothing that anyone could do about it for him.
He told me many times that Jenna saved his life after Venezuela. I reached out to him in 2009 to help resurrect his career and his honor, and help get him back on his feet again. I know his death is not on me, but I still can't help feeling, unlike his experience with Jenna, that I failed...or that by "helping" him, it merely brought him back on his path of self-destruction.
My grandfather once told me, "Never mourn the death of a fool," and suicide has always fit into that category to me. But not this time...this time, it just really fucking hurts.
I'm so sorry you're gone, Mike. I hope you are finally at peace, and one with Gaia.
Wes

Cue now for all the vultures to start exploiting Ruppert's corpse and legacy to promote the "truth" scam.

Michael Ruppert was a disillusioned idealist who thought he could help people. "Peak oil" spoke to the progressive left fed up with the West's oil dependence and apparently doing little to reduce it.

Unfortunately, he was manipulated and preyed on by a toxic malignant scam known as the "Truth" Movement.  Remember this with humility: anyone can be conned.

Rest in peace, Ruppert, you deserve it.

For more on Ruppert:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Ruppert

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748703932904574511942676683258

Repost of a devastating critique of the Revolutionary Communist Party front faux activist group World Can't Wait.  By their own reports, "truthers" Casseia and Aayers/"Ben Franklin" both attended WCW protest planning meetings, encouraged protesters to contact them, and gathered information on protestors.   They did this concurrently with their "truther" activities. Months afterward, Casseia would admit to knowing the RCP was behind WCW.  But she never admitted to participation in the planning and protests.  

WCW is another elaborate activist fraud like the "truth" movement.  This article was originally at 
 http://www.worldcantwake.org/  and  http://www.collectivereinventions.org/wcw.html
but is no longer online.

Let the peace activist beware....

The World Can't Wake

I

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people are in the city square, chanting slogans against the government and its war. Large numbers of riot police look on nervously. There is a kind of electricity in the air, which is also filled with the sound of drumming, giving the scene a carnivalesque aspect. The crowd roars as the effigy of a hated leader is pulled to the ground...

What is wrong with this picture? Nothing at all, in the abstract, but if one examines the particular canvas known as The World Can’t Wait a little more closely, a very different picture emerges, one that is more alarming than inspiring. Behind the WCW initiative lies not some innocuous, ad hoc coalition—as the generic anti-war message emanating from the WCW would suggest—but an authoritarian cult: the Revolutionary Communist Party, a Maoist organization headed by “Chairman Bob” Avakian. This is an organization with a very selective “conscience” and a very narrow spirit of iconoclasm. For the RCP, dead Iraqi civilians represent genocide, but the millions of Chinese (and Tibetan) workers and peasants who died under Mao represent merely the price of “progress” or, more simply, are not counted at all, disappearing in the airbrushed history lessons of the vanguard party. And as for toppling statues, the RCP may have knocked down one of Bush, but they genuflect before their idols Stalin and Mao, and would be quite prepared to erect a monument to Bob Avakian in Bush's place.

Wittingly or unwittingly, those who choose to march under the banners of The World Can’t Wait are feeding a vampire, thereby giving new life to a political corpse one thought interred forever: the bureaucratic left which brought the world such nightmares as Stalinism, the Cultural Revolution in China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, and the Shining Path movement of “President Gonzalo” (Abimael Guzmán) in Peru. To oppose the carnage in Iraq while marching under the auspices of those who espouse authoritarian dogma is a sign both of cognitive dissonance and ethical bankruptcy. And for those protesters who will splutter in righteous indignation at anyone who impugns their militancy, it is worth pointing out that the question of ends and means also includes the matter of whose cause one associates with, and not merely whose war one opposes.

The antiwar movement in the United States is rife with paradoxes and contradictions. Over the past three years of various “mass mobilizations,” the size of the protests have diminished even as the war itself has become increasingly unpopular. Not all of this decline can be attributed to the distorting lens of the mainstream media, which has recently adopted a more critical stance toward the war, or the effects of government propaganda seeking to anathematize dissent. The movement itself has been in crisis, failing to expand beyond its core constituency in terms of mobilizing numbers of people, and unable to adjust its strategy and tactics to respond to new developments.
Among the rank-and-file demonstrators who have come out into the streets against the war, there has been a growing sense of alienation from the official leadership of the anti-war movement. This has manifested itself specifically in a palpable dismay with the sclerotic politics of the International ANSWER coalition, at whose heart sits the Workers World Party, ideologically committed to the defense of North Korea and its Stalinist regime. The sober pacifists of the Peace and Justice Coalition have recently called it a day and broken off relations with International ANSWER. More simply, other protesters have voted with their feet, leaving antiwar rallies in droves even as the amplified, histrionic speeches from the main stage drone on. Unfortunately such disenchantment has not found its positive translation, and in the absence of a conscious search for a different kind of anti-war movement, there has only emerged apathy or a vague dissatisfaction with protest as usual. And it is in the latter waters that the instigators of the WCW have been fishing, with surprising success.
In a more perfect world, any appeal made by the RCP or its front organizations would have been met with scorn and laughter, or simply been ignored. It is a sign of the retrograde times we live in—an era which sees hypercapitalism consolidating itself as a truly global system—that the actions of a predatory and bellicose American state have revalorized the anachronistic and inconsistent politics of “anti-imperialism.” The Latin root of the word imperialism, imperium or power, is ignored in this kind of opposition to the reigning order. Brute power, as exemplified by the actions of the American empire, is denounced, while its arbitrary expressions elsewhere (whether in Castro's Cuba or in the zones controlled by the People's Liberation Army (PMA) of Nepal) are whitewashed or even acclaimed.

To be sure, the mastodons of the bureaucratic left who have been released from their frozen tombs have taken some care to disguise their age: in the case of the WCW, it is not the RCP of old that one sees immediately, but a softer, fuzzier version hiding behind populist sloganeering. Undoubtedly, most of those who will participate in the WCW action will not be RCP members or sympathizers, and many will not even be aware of whose orders they are marching to. Still, it is disheartening that so many have taken the bait and become de facto spear carriers for a wretched group of would be commissars.

II

“In war, truth is the first casualty”
—Aeschylus

In radical politics, ignorance is never an alibi. Moreover, opponents of the present world order self-consciously describe their activity as one of “speaking truth to power”. If this is so, then they must first speak the truth to and about themselves. Those who are oblivious of the RCP’s role in WCW are either obtuse, disingenuous, or both. The same people who have no difficulty in deciphering the links between the Bush Dynasty and the Carlyle Group or Halliburton are suddenly disarmed in the face of the 1930s-style popular front tactics now being used by the RCP. They claim not to know or care who is behind the WCW. The more cynical admit the RCP’s role, but assert that it doesn’t matter, that the only issue that counts is stopping Bush and his war. This kind of political expediency is, even on its own terms, counter-productive. Considered from the viewpoint of sheer pragmatism—and the goal of simply seeking a rapid end to the U.S. intervention in Iraq—allying with the RCP makes no sense, as it only alienates those who could be won over to the anti-war cause.
Even taken at face value, the slogans of the WCW are cretinous: Bush is supposed to “step down” and make way for… Cheney? And just where will Bush take “his program” (as if it were only his to begin with)? The entire thrust of the WCW's public message is a kind of empty posturing. No wonder that it has attracted the kind of celebrity endorsers (Hollywood stars, most prominently) who exercise their profession precisely in the art of posturing. It is disconcerting, however, to see others who seemingly should know better join this inglorious roster. A slew of writers (among them Gore Vidal, Kurt Vonnegut, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti), none of whose literary careers would have been possible in a Maoist state, have signed the WCW appeal. One has the sense of witnessing a kind of mass hallucination in which otherwise critical minds have turned to mush.

Such luminaries are either blind or too lazy to pick up a copy of one of the RCP's own publications and to see how the originators of the WCW talk among themselves. Here, the RCP doesn't mince words or hide behind airy slogans, but rather reveals its true, manipulative face. The January 15, 2006 issue of Revolution published a lengthy speech by Bob Avakian in which he is quite candid about how his organization created the WCW as a vehicle for its own ends. In his rambling style and delusions of grandeur, the megalomaniacal Avakian resembles nothing so much as a Maoist Lyndon LaRouche (at one point, Avakian bizarrely refers to himself as “our Chairman”, as though he were speaking of someone other than himself), but his words bear paying attention to. Avakian openly asserts that:

...we are very serious about and very dedicated to achieving the objectives of World Can't Wait, at the same time as we see and approach this as part of building toward our goals of revolution, socialism, and ultimately a communist world...

(“Polarization...Repolarization...and Revolution” in Revolution, 1/15/06) Of course, it does help to know that each of these goals (“revolution,” “socialism,” and “a communist world”) is tainted when it comes from the mouth of an Avakian, whose idea of a revolutionary society is that of a party-state monolith, with “our Chairman” at its apex. Even for those taken in by such slogans, there can be no mistaking how Avakian's cadres view the militants drawn to the WCW as mere cogs in their bureaucratic machine. The RCP's instrumentalization of the WCW is spelled out by in this same speech, where Avakian talks of:

...the need to pay attention to what has been called “harvesting”—reaping advances, not just in terms of broad and general political influence, but in terms of organization among the massses and organized ties with the masses—harvesting, in that sense, in relation to every significant political event or action. (ibid)

Those whom the RCP seeks to “harvest” might want to think about getting out of the way of the combine bearing down on them. For those opponents of the war whose goals are truly alternative—who seek not only an end to the war, but to the system which produces such wars—allying with the RCP is suicidal. This is an organization which can, at one and the same time, denounce “the police state detentions” of Bush and Cheney while glorifiying the despotism of Stalin and Chairman Mao, whose prison camps and mass executions make the torture chambers of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib look like the work of amateurs. This observation in no way minimizes the bloody deeds of the Bush administration, but it does point up the need for consistency in any perspective that pretends to oppose war and state repression. Exchanging one hypocrisy (“the free world”) for another (“the people’s republic”), one system of domination and exploitation for another, is to trade in illusions, and worse, in corpses.
The amnesia which pervades American culture also afflicts the avowed opponents of the dominant social order, who now seem doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. Some, perhaps with the best intentions, are going so far as to literally revive the past, as witness the announcement of a refounding of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Such an undertaking is likely to meet the same fate as the original SDS. In the 1960s, a New Left emerged in the US and elsewhere which at least in its initial stages contained emancipatory possibilities. By the end of the same decade, this movement would dissolve into competing sects all under the sway of different variants of Marxism-Leninism. (One of these sects, in fact, was none other than the RCP, then known as the Revolutionary Union (RU) and already headed by Avakian.) Meanwhile, the organized antiwar movement of today seems to have skipped the emancipatory phase entirely and gone straight to “the highest stage” of senile leftism: the authoritarian party-sect.

Of course, it always possible to make too much of phenomena such as the WCW, which will probably collapse under the weight of its own contradictions or simply fade away as fewer people show up for events that only repeat themselves. Many of those activists who glimpse the Stalinist core at the heart of the WCW enterprise will be repelled by what they find and how they are treated at the hands of the RCP. As for the rest of the world, it indeed can't and won't wait, and will have barely paused to notice the commotion of the WCW. However, there is always a chance of such actions giving more impetus to the authoritarian left, thereby allowing it to frame the choice before antiwar opponents as one of being either with “us” (the WCW and International ANSWER) or “them” (Bush and Cheney). Such a limiting of choice would be a false dichotomy, but in the absence of an alternative, and in the strange situation where a group such as the RCP can pass itself off as a bunch of civil libertarians, it might be persuasive. At the very least, the longer the WCW goes unexposed—and unopposed—the more the RCP will thrive and the more difficult it will be for a more vibrant and autonomous anti-war movement to emerge.

Despite the hyperbolic and overheated rhetoric of the WCW, we are not living in a “fascist” state. (If so, how could the WCW be running full page ads in the New York Times? How could it be receiving permits for its rallies?). This kind of demagoguery is as cheap as it is dangerous, impairing a clearer recognition by others (who see through the bombastic talk of “fascism”) that this is indeed a critical period, one in which many of the remaining social conquests of the past are being eroded or reversed. And if, under Bush and Cheney or their successors, a “state of exception”—a regime of drastically curtailed liberties—does emerge, it is all the more reason for opposition to the state to be itself exceptional: imaginative, creative, and embodying intellectual integrity, even as it acts out of a sense of urgency or, in the worst circumstances, emergency.

III

“The time is now when reality shows itself to be impossible and when the impossible wants to become reality.”
—Gustav Landauer (1914)

All that is required for monstrous enterprises to prosper is for thinking people to do nothing. This applies to the undertakings of Avakian as much as Rumsfeld. And it is not as if there haven't been people who have tried to think and act differently, who have rejected both Party and Pentagon, both “people's war” and capitalist war. Sadly, whether from a failure of nerve or imagination, such people have proved so far incapable of creating vibrant, dynamic, and horizontal spaces within the currents of opposition that have emerged in recent years. There have been “break away” marches that have been monochrome in dress (the “black blocs”) and monotone in message (a “no” repeated endlessly), and, more importantly, have remained mere appendages of larger marches organized by the authoritarian left. There have been a few independent “actions” against the war put on by anarchists, but many of these have seemed mimetic exercises trying to replicate “the Battle of Seattle,” events curiously detached from their surroundings (as were the march and rally in Palo Alto in May and June, 2005).

For years now, the mantra of the anti-capitalist movement globally has been “another world is possible.” Today, such a world seems farther away than ever, as those pursuing the dream of a new world appear to have abandoned it in favor of refurbishing the old. Pathetically, the anti-globalization movement that once was inspired by the authentically new social movements of insurrectionary Argentina now trails after the populist caudillo in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. If the dream of difference is to be revived—and in dreary and dismal times, a visionary opposition to the status quo is needed more than ever—those who dream must be clear about their purpose. In the first instance, this means being clear about what differentiates this world view from that of the authoritarian left, but it also means proposing a different paradigm of social transformation. For too long, anti-authoritarians have themselves been stuck in time, seeking to “reappropriate” or “recapture” the world around them, implying that the world was once theirs (or belonged to some earlier, pristine humanity), thereby failing to realize that it is the re-creation of that social world that is at issue. There can be no minimizing how ambitious and daunting such a task is, in a time when Bush and Rumsfeld talk of a “long war” and pursue their own goal of a total surveillance society; when militant Islam and an equally obscurantist American fundamentalism do battle; and political troglodytes speak in the name of revolution.

The words of Gustav Landauer quoted above are all the more poignant in that they were written as the madness of Word War I began, and some 5 years before Landauer himself would die at the hands of proto-Nazis. His words regarding the state—understood in its most broadest sense, as encompassing the prevailing conditions of social life—remain pertinent:

The State is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of human behavior; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently toward one another.

It is in the here and now that we must act differently. This means in the first place recognizing that one cannot oppose one lie with another. But it also entails an understanding that one cannot speak in the name of Absolute Truth, either, but only on behalf of certain, and necessarily approximate, truths. Rather than proposing a blueprint of a radically different future—a preposterous idea if one believes that any more promising future must result from a process of collective invention and not unilateral imposition—we (who do not presume to speak in anyone's name other than our own, certainly not that of “the people,” who must speak for themselves) can only register a dissenting voice and paint a few insolent brushstrokes on an otherwise dreary landscape.

Reinventions

contact@collectivereinventions.org

Relevant quote that apply to the "truth" movement :

"Of course, it always possible to make too much of phenomena such as the WCW, which will probably collapse under the weight of its own contradictions or simply fade away as fewer people show up for events that only repeat themselves."

"Despite the hyperbolic and overheated rhetoric of the WCW, we are not living in a “fascist” state. (If so, how could the WCW be running full page ads in the New York Times? How could it be receiving permits for its rallies?)"

And my favorite:

"Those who are oblivious of the RCP’s role in WCW are either obtuse, disingenuous, or both. The same people who have no difficulty in deciphering the links between the Bush Dynasty and the Carlyle Group or Halliburton are suddenly disarmed in the face of the 1930s-style popular front tactics now being used by the RCP. They claim not to know or care who is behind the WCW."

Or, as I put it, they can't have it both ways:  "truthers" can't say, through their own research, they've exposed the conspiracy crime of the century and, at the same time, claim not notice all these theories originate and are endorsed by the racist fringe right.


It won't end well.

From Russia With Love

For the record, I have no strong opinion about Abby Martin's motives.  She could be what she appears: a naive idealist sucked into the conspiracy/Patriot movement honestly believing she's part of a progressive movement. This happened to a friend of mine; they(various Patriot sympathizing "truth" groups) pulled out all the stops to convince him he was "on to something".
However it doesn't speak well of Martin's judgement or investigative skills.  She can't have it both ways:  She can't claim to be so informed to have uncovered the government conspiracy of the century and, at the same time,  be completely oblivious that all the sources for this claim originate from fringe right propaganda.

In the wake of the Crimean situation, an Russia Today  journalist speaks out.  But are things what they seem?

Some quotes:

The New Republic:

"When Russia Today anchor Abby Martin ended a broadcast of her media analysis show “Breaking the Set” by looking sternly toward the camera and condemning Russian intervention in Crimea, many expressed amazement that this shiny-haired insurgent was bucking the Kremlin party line. Huffpo UK described the tirade as “spectacularly off-message.” Glenn Greenwald, to no one’s surprise, praised Martin’s bravery. And Martin’s speech did indeed sound quite remarkable, especially amid the blinkered unreality of RT’s overall coverage of Ukraine (which Newsweek has called a “Cold War theme park, without the breadlines.”) As her segment came to a close, Martin gravely said: “Just because I work here, for RT, doesn't mean I don't have editorial independence and I can’t stress enough how strongly I am against any state intervention in a sovereign nation’s affairs. What Russia did is wrong.”

The outburst was not exactly surprising. Martin has always been something of a rabble-rouser and a speaker of truth-to-power, though historically her specialty has been tearing down American political and cultural institutions. She grew up on the west coast and created a 9/11 truther group in San Diego. RT first found her through Occupy Oakland, when she was covering the crackdowns there as a citizen journalist. She worked for a bit as an Occupy correspondent, and then got called to DC to interview for an anchor job. (As she has described her initial reaction to the job interview: “There’s no fucking way in hell I’m moving to DC…lobbyist douchebag central.”) She has a stated affinity for psychedelic drugs. Things she has said on air since joining RT include “Fuck the media, fuck the candidates, fuck the corporatocracy,” and ads for her show feature her smashing a TV set with a sledgehammer. And it's also unsurprising, of course, to think that RT would have relished Martin’s Crimea comments as a neat little opportunity to point out its own openness to dissent."

"But the most telling part of Martin’s rant on Russia Today was its aftermath, during which RT’s image management seemed to go off the rails. The Telegraph reported that RT executives told the UK’s Channel 4 that Martin had been “misled by American media.” Meanwhile RT released a statement yesterday praising itself vis a vis Martin's behavior: “Contrary to the popular opinion, RT doesn’t beat its journalists into submission, and they are free to express their own opinions, not just in private but on the air.” The statement then added: “In her comment Ms. Martin also noted that she does not possess a deep knowledge of reality of the situation in Crimea. As such we'll be sending her to Crimea to give her an opportunity to make up her own mind from the epicenter of the story.” But alas Martin hadn't heard about her employer’s generous offer until the media reported it, and promptly replied on her Twitter feed that she would not in fact be going to Crimea. This whole murkiness of message helps explain why RT’s public perception as a Kremlin-managed monolith is off-base: much of RT's programming is less a well-oiled Russian propaganda machine than a defensive, shapeshifting retort to the Western media—less focused on a coherent foreign policy agenda than on asserting itself as an alternative to American cable news, its ideological chorus so miscellaneous that it somehow includes both Abby Martin and Larry King. "

Or reality is more complicated:

Tablet:

RT Anchor’s Riff Not as ‘Rogue’ As It Seems
How Abby Martin’s on-air jab at Russian intervention in Crimea helps Putin

By James Kirchick |March 4, 2014

 Yesterday, Abby Martin, a host on the Kremlin-funded television network RT (formerly known as Russia Today), used the end of her program to voice opposition to Russia’s occupation of Ukraine’s Crimea region. “Just because I work here at RT doesn’t mean I don’t have any editorial independence. I cannot express how strongly I am against any state intervention in a sovereign nation’s affairs,” Martin said. “What Russia did is wrong.”

"And so, on the face of it, Martin’s dissent from RT’s party line was a breath of fresh air, earning her plaudits across the internet. “For all the self-celebrating American journalists and political commentators: was there even a single U.S. television host who said anything comparable to this in the lead-up to, or the early stages of, the U.S. invasion of Iraq?” asked Glenn Greenwald, a frequent presence on the network. The Huffington Post praised Martin as “going spectacularly rogue.” Some have drawn comparisons to my own brief appearance on RT last August, when, invited to talk about the sentencing of Wikileaks leaker Chelsea Manning, I instead launched into a two-minute tirade against the Kremlin’s homophobic witch-hunt, which got me booted off air."

Highlighting mine.   Ask why wasn't Martin booted off the air.  The probable reasons can't be good.

But Martin’s comments, while certainly a departure from the stale Kremlin talking points offered 24/7 on RT, were hardly as rogue as they might initially seem. Martin couched her criticism of Russian policy by stating that “the coverage I’ve seen of Ukraine has been truly disappointing from all sides of the media spectrum, and ripe with disinformation,” implying that the objectively more accurate reporting of Western outlets are somehow on par with her own network’s blatantly skewed coverage.
“Above all my heart goes out to the Ukrainian people, who are now wedged as pawns in the middle of a global power chess game. They’re the real losers here,” she added. Again, this frames the Ukraine crisis as being equally the fault of Russia and the West, when, from the start, the situation has been instigated and inflamed solely by Moscow. There are no EU or NATO tanks occupying Ukrainian soil. 

 Highlighting mine.  Still wondering?

Those praising Martin would do well to acquaint themselves with the entirety of her work. Before being hired by RT, Martin was a prominent voice in the 9/11 conspiracy movement, which seems to be a job qualification for RT given the amount of airtime it gives to fringe views. In a 2008 video of a 9/11 Truth Movement protest, Martin can be seen stating that the attacks were an “inside job.” She knows this, she said, because, “I’ve researched it for three years and every single thing that I uncover solidifies my belief that it was an inside job and that our government was complicit in what happened.” On her program, she regularly gives air to outrageous conspiracy theories, including the notion that water fluoridation is a pernicious government plot to poison unsuspecting American citizens, an old bugbear of the extreme right-wing John Birch Society. She has also accused Israel of using “Hitler’s methods … to maintain a Jewish majority.”

 Last February, Martin devoted a segment to the history of American “false flag” operations. The term is a favorite of conspiracy theorists, who employ it to describe hostile acts carried out by rogue states and terrorists groups, which are, they claim, really the work democratic governments seeking a pretext for infringements on civil liberties, war, and other acts of imperialist aggression. Beginning with the 1898 sinking of the USS Maine, which ignited the Spanish-American War, up through the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, Martin, quoting from a website titled, “Israel Did 911,” characterized false-flags as “when a government uses an elite special forces operations cadre to attack that nation-state while falsely bearing the flag of another country or group.”

There is no excuse for a supposedly well informed journalist to be quoting the anti-Semite website Rediscover911.com as a credible source. The link is now a 404, but is still in wayback.  Screen with quote below:

This article, with the quote in question, was also posted by Holocaust denier Fetzer on his website:

http://jamesfetzer.blogspot.com/2010/05/real-reasons-nation-states-institute.html

Only two other blogs have it:

http:// conspiracy-theory-secrets.com/uncategorized/global-watch-weekly-report/

http://hatonn.blogspot.com/2012_09_01_archive.html

See, the 911 "truth" front is a very, very small club now the hordes of duped leftists have drifted away and the fringe right roots are exposed.  At this time it shouldn't take much investigation skills to realize the conspiracy is a fraud.  Either Martin read it herself and didn't notice the lunacy of her source, or, more likely, someone forwarded the quote and she used it without further investigation, which at the least is sloppy.  But then this is the same person who remains  in deep denial about Ron Paul writing his racists newletters and making money off them for years.

It would be wrong to conclude that, because it hasn’t publicly reprimanded or fired her for her recent comments, RT is proving itself to be an objective purveyor of credible news and information. “Contrary to the popular opinion, RT doesn’t beat its journalists into submission, and they are free to express their own opinions, not just in private but on the air,” the channel said in response to Martin’s broadcast. They should tell that to William Dunbar, a former RT journalist who resigned after he was prevented by the network’s management from reporting on the Russian military’s deliberate bombing of civilian targets during the 2008 Georgia War. “On any issue where there is a Kremlin line, RT is sure to toe it,” Dunbar said.

Indeed, far from damaging the propaganda efforts of the Russian government, Martin’s momentary act of nonconformity plays right into the Kremlin’s hands. RT will now be able to hold up her 60-second departure from the official script as evidence of its editorial independence, as further proof of its vital role as a “counter-hegemonic” news source in a world inundated by corrupt and corporate “Anglo-Saxon media.” Think of Martin as the puppet opposition in a dictatorship, created and sustained by the powers that be as a façade of democracy with which to dazzle credulous Western observers, a practice that Putin has himself perfected.

As a general observation, Russia Today was a match made in heaven between post Gorbachev cynical Russian power brokers and the collective of fringe interests represented by von Mises, Cato, Ron Paul and Larouche.  A foreign news outlet with apparent neutrality was a perfect platform to push conspiracy garbage with a veneer of credibility.   It's exactly the same schtick with PressTv, right down to targeting an English speaking audience.

Even FOX news won't host the Holocaust Denying Duo Fetzer and Barrett anymore, so it was inventive of the "consortium" to find a mainstream appearing megaphone, complete with their own photogenic bobble head.

Russian interests might be bankrolling some of these activities.  One website in particular, otherwise dead, has overwhelming Russian traffic:

    04:28:53    IE 9.0
Win7
    Russian Federation Flag    Saint Petersburg,
Saint Petersburg City,
Russian Federation    Net For Dedicated Client (31.184.238.21)
 wtc-xxxxxxxx.xxxxxxxx
        19:26:44    IE 9.0
Win7
    Russian Federation Flag    Saint Petersburg,
Saint Petersburg City,
Russian Federation    Net For Dedicated Client (31.184.238.21)
 wtcdemolition.xxxxxxx
        19:26:34    IE 9.0
Win7
    Russian Federation Flag    Saint Petersburg,
Saint Petersburg City,
Russian Federation    Net For Dedicated Client (31.184.238.21)
 wtc-xxxxxxxx.xxxxxxx
        16:21:02    IE 9.0
Win7
    Russian Federation Flag    Saint Petersburg,
Saint Petersburg City,
Russian Federation    Net For Dedicated Client (31.184.238.21)
 wtc-xxxxxxxx.xxxxxxx
       16:20:59    IE 9.0
Win7
    Russian Federation Flag    Saint Petersburg,
Saint Petersburg City,
Russian Federation    Net For Dedicated Client (31.184.238.21)
 wtcdemolition.xxxxxxx
        07:57:02    IE 9.0
Win7
    Russian Federation Flag    Russian Federation    Donekoservice Ltd (91.201.64.16)
 wtc-xxxxxxxx.xxxxxxx
        07:56:56    IE 9.0
Win7
    Russian Federation Flag    Russian Federation    Donekoservice Ltd (91.201.64.16)
 wtc-xxxxxxxx.xxxxxxx
        05:04:57    IE 9.0
Win7
    Russian Federation Flag    Saint Petersburg,
Saint Petersburg City,
Russian Federation    Net For Dedicated Client (31.184.238.21)
 wtc-xxxxxxxx.xxxxxxx
        05:04:53    IE 9.0
Win7
    Russian Federation Flag    Saint Petersburg,
Saint Petersburg City,
Russian Federation    Net For Dedicated Client (31.184.238.21)
 wtc-xxxxxxxx.xxxxxxx
        04:50:30    IE 9.0
Win7
    Russian Federation Flag    Saint Petersburg,
Saint Petersburg City,
Russian Federation    Net For Dedicated Client (31.184.238.11)
 wtc-xxxxxxxx.xxxxxxx

[And this is one of many reasons I know, not suspect, but know, it was all a scam.   INTERPOL won't be happy if it involves money.]

If, as I suspect, donations are drying up to support the "truther" con, and some parties are looking for foreign sources of funding, the "consortium" might be biting off more than it can chew.  Tarpley, Fetzer, David Duke, Ron Paul, etc and other fringe drama queens are amateurs compared to Russian politicians and the Russian mafia.  The only one of the scammers I'd lay money on to hold his own is Larouche, and that's just because he's nuts with an army of cultists at his back.   The rest are used to bluffing and blustering with bullshit, usually using the Internet. 

The Russians don't roll that way.  Anyone involved with Putin's propaganda machine, needs to think twice about what they're getting into:
 http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/09/mafia-state-luke-harding-review

As Luke Harding's book on his own years in Moscow captures well, life in Russia has not changed much: random inconveniences, bizarre coincidences and maddening interventions leave one confused. Did I really fail to lock the office? Why are there cigarette butts in my loo? Why does my phone battery go flat all the time? Am I going mad – or are they really out to get me?
The incidents mostly comprise petty vandalism, silly stunts (someone left a sex manual in his bedroom) and phones that play back your previous conversation.

[BTW?  This is the sort of rubbish the fringe "truther" creeps pull when they want someone to think "agents" are out to get them, to hide the fact it's a con.  But, unlike the Russian mafia, the creeps have no state protection. They just hope no one figures it out.  Oops. ]

More examples of journalists beaten in Russia:

Russian Journalists, Fighting Graft, Pay in Blood
Beaten Russian Editor Is Told to Say It’s His Fault

Martin is being played.

None of this can end well.

Managing a Scam 101: The Scholars for 9/11 Truth split

 The Scholars for 9/11 Truth "split" was one of the most successful scams perpetrated on people duped into the "truth".  It worked from it's inception in 2006 all the way up to when "Victronix the Hoax Slayer"  was caught turning a blind eye to Steven Jone's OverUnity scam.  Which is a hoax.  Complete with videos:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axBuLvzyClk

Those with knowledge of basic electronics will find their brains melting at the stupid.  More charitable souls will explain why this is rubbish:

Griwa2007

My guess: There is an inductor in the circuit and a capacitor. The initial voltage drop was instant due to the capacitor being filled up, when the charge was full, it began to stabilize.
For those who do not know much about electronics, imagine taking a large water tank filled with water(the battery), and attaching a second thin tank with a large opening on the bottom (capacitor). When the circuit is complete water will flow from one tank to the other. The momentum of the water (assisted by the inductor) will overfill the other tank. Then the natural effect of balance would come and the battery which has a a far smaller load on it now (3mA) to be exact.

Griwa2007
1 week ago
 It is also a similar effect of magnet motor, when one magnet is pulled to the other X amount of energy is exerted on the object... unfortunately it is the same X amount of energy which is required to break free (pull away). Thus creating an effect of speeding up then slowing down.
People get excited over things like this because it looks as if there is a gain from nothing.  

Thank you, Griwa.  I was stuck at Jone's incompetence at not knowing what a toroidal transformer was.   If he doesn't know his electronics, it's doubtful he's discovered anything new. 

Yet much effort has been put into building Jones up as a real scientist, one who isn't afraid to call his own out.  The Scholars "split" was instrumental in building this reputation.
 
 From the 2006 website:

Scholars for 9/11 Truth   

Exposing Falsehoods and Revealing Truths

For more 9/11 events, visit 911Blogger.com

For more news, visit Citizens For Legitimate Government

 "Splitting" and playing people off each other helps con artists manage their pet "sheeple" in many ways:

- multiplies branding
- creates their own managed competition 
-helps isolate groups/individuals that might cause trouble

There is no limit to the lies scammers will tell to keep someone involved in a group or subgroup.  For instance, say a member finds out the group is promoting UFOs.  They in all innocence point out correctly that promoting UFOs doesn't help the public take them seriously(remember: the group's front identity is a legitimate activist group).   The group has the assigned "friend" and maybe a couple others, vocally agree with the member, saying they also don't believe UFOs should be promoted.  But they'll also argue that the group should be too hard on the UFOers.   This is an attempt to exploit the anti-war member's sense of tolerance.  It's also a time wasting/exhaustion technique.    These groups aren't intelligent enough to have a real plan(as far as is known) for dealing with "dissidents" or people who are not going to be brainwashed into pushing Nazi propaganda.  Their first way to handle the member is to passive-aggressively drive them away with a combination of delay tactics, rudeness, and circular arguments.  If none of this convinces the member to drop the matter and it fails to drive them off, the group may stage manage a "split".

This is almost certainly what happened with the Scholars group: once the idea of space beams and holograms started to be considered, the members who were not in on the scam objected and something needed to be done to manage it.  It's even possible  the scammers positions had been pre arranged.

Some will find this hard to believe: not the scam, but that the "split" could be coldbloodedly prepared in advance.  But we know that in 2002 the "space beam/ray theory" was discussed in a private convention by Nazi and white power organizers.  The details of that meeting are sketchy(not just dodgy), but the idea might have been floated as a manipulation tool or test.   As stupid as these people have proven themselves to be, they had to have known pushing the idea of space rays while pretending to be serious scientists would have produced objections.  So, at least in the Scholars case, it was almost certainly considered when the group was formed by James Fetzer.

The first website was http://st911.org.  Oldest archives available date from Feb 6, 2006. 

It had a listing of supposedly peer-reviewed papers:

Peer-reviewed papers
 Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse?
by Steven E. Jones, Ph.D.
The Destruction of the World Trade Center: Why the Official Account Cannot Be True
by David Ray Griffin, Ph.D.
Thinking about "Conspiracy Theories": 9/11 and JFK
by James H. Fetzer, Ph.D.

The last hosted on Fetzer's mirrored website

http://www.scholarsfor911truth.org/fetzerexpandedx.htm

It's also critiqued by Jim Hoffman, at about the same time it wasn't quite published:
 http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/st911/fetzer.html


A Critical Review of James Fetzer's   Thinking about "Conspiracy Theories": 9/11 and JFK

by
Jim Hoffman

Version 1.0, Feb. 6, 2006  
But then Fetzer did invite criticism :

This is the new penultimate draft of a chapter that will appear in THE 9/11 CONSPIRACY (Chicago, IL: Catfeet Press/Open Court, forthcoming), which I am editing.  Comments and criticism are welcome.  Email jfetzer@d.umn.edu. 

There's no evidence any of these papers were peer reviewed.  That's the first con.

But we're drifting. We already know Fetzer, Jones and Griffin are scammers.  It's how they handle the suspicion they're scammers with a split:

 https://web.archive.org/web/20070309134555/http://www.scholarsfor911truth.org/OpenLetterToJones.html

An Open Letter about Steven Jones

by James H. Fetzer

19 November 2006
Friends and Colleagues:
When I founded Scholars for 9/11 Truth, I invited Steve Jones to serve as co-chair. He has responsibility for co-editing our journal, which he originally founded with Judy Wood as co-editor and me as managing editor, and runs our members' forum, while I maintain our web site at st911.org. He is now planning to take control of the web site from me.
I have raised objections on moral, legal and intellectual grounds and I am categorically opposed to it. But he appears to be persisting in what might be described as a "hostile take over" to control Scholars. Because this is going on behind the scenes and you would otherwise be unaware of this scheme, I am publishing this open letter on st911.org.
The background to this move concerns new research about what happened at the World Trade Center involving hypotheses that differ from those Steve has been investigating and promoting for more than a year now. On 11 November 2006, Judy Wood was my guest on "Non-Random Thoughts" and we discussed new research she and Morgan Reynolds were doing on possible causes of the destruction of the World Trade Center, which involves the use of high-tech, directed energy-weaponry. I put up links to their research, which are available on our web site under "Events" for that date. Right or wrong, this is fascinating stuff, which I even discussed during lectures in Tucson the next two days:
Dr. James Fetzer: Did Classified Weaponry Destroy the Twin Towers?
On 15 November 2006, I invited Steve to come on a new program that I will be hosting on gcnlive.com with Kevin Barrett. "The Dynamic Duo" will be broadcast from 3-5 PM/CT. Kevin will host on M/F and I will host on T/W/Th. This new approach is so fascinating that I wanted Judy, Morgan and Steve to be my guests 28, 29, and 30 November 2006 with consecutive appearances on those days. Judy and Morgan agreed, but Steve has not, and, in a series of email exchanges, he began to raise questions about my management of the web site, where he seems to think any new idea that is controversial requires some kind of counterbalancing opinion. These are new views, of course, and the purpose of inviting him onto the program was for that very purpose!
Steve appears to be committing the blunder of supposing that the web site, like the journal, should include only finished research reports, which are fully referenced and formally presented. That is all wrong, because the web site and the journal have entirely different functions. The journal is for peer-reviewed studies. The web site is for current events and recent developments to keep the public informed about what is going on within the research community in its exploratory stages, including mini-nukes and high-tech weapons, which may or may not "pan out" and reach stages of development suitable for journal publication.
What is ironic about his attitude toward "unfinished research" is that he repeatedly characterizes his own studies of the use of thermite (in a sulfur-enhanced version known as "thermate") as both preliminary and incomplete. If that is the case, then by his own standard, there is a serious question whether his own research is ready for prime time! It is also worth mention that he has revised his basic paper on numerous occasions, which, to the best of my knowledge, have not been subject to additional peer review. If we only mention or discuss finished research on st911.org, there is a serious question whether Steve's work properly qualifies for inclusion in the journal he edits, much less the web site.
The hardest part of scientific inquiry is the stage of speculation in coming up with alternative hypotheses as possible explanations for the phenomena under consideration. Here we are talking about the complete destruction of two 500,000-ton buildings and five other structures the demolition of which is seldom mentioned in public discourse. Judy and Morgan have discovered the WTC was constructed in an enormous "bathtub" to create a barrier to protect the site from overflow of water from the Hudson River, which would have flooded PATH TRAIN tunnels and subways throughout Manhattan. To avoid this catastrophe, it appears to have been indispensable to turn 4/5 of the towers to dust and demolish just 1/5 by more conventional means, such as those Steve Jones has advanced.
Critics seem to be deriving a lot of mileage from my having described this new research as "Fascinating!" What I meant by that--as I think anyone who listens to the program can discern--is that the importance of the bathtub and the completeness of the destruction of the World Trade Center, where it looks as though every building with a "WTC" designation was targeted for devastation, greatly expands the scope of the evidence regarding what has to be explained (in philosophical language, it broadens and redefines the explanandum for any potential explanans, where the explanandum describes what is to be explained and the explanans offers the initial conditions and laws advanced to explain them). This is an enormous advance and is truly fascinating!
11 November 2006
Interview: Judy Wood will be the guest on "Non-Random Thoughts" with host Jim Fetzer
Related: The Star Wars Beam Weapon
http://janedoe0911.tripod.com/StarWarsBeam1.html
http://janedoe0911.tripod.com/StarWarsBeam2.html
http://janedoe0911.tripod.com/StarWarsBeam3.html
http://janedoe0911.tripod.com/StarWarsBeam4.html
http://janedoe0911.tripod.com/StarWarsBeam5.html
http://janedoe0911.tripod.com/StarWarsBeam6.html
http://rbnlive.com
You don't have to be a philosopher of science to understand that, in a scientific investigation of the events of 9/11, the range of alternative explanations that might possibly explain the explanandum must include not only (a) jet-plane-impacts/jet-fuel-fire/pancake collapse hypotheses and (b) classic controlled demolition from the bottom up hypotheses but (c) non-classic controlled demolition from the top-down hypotheses. It should be clear that these, in turn, can be refined in terms of (c-1) non-classic controlled demolition from the top-down using thermate and other conventional explosives, (c-2) non-classic controlled demolition from the top-down using mini-nukes, and (c-3) non-classic controlled demolition from the top-down using directed energy weapons. All of these deserve consideration and, to the the best of my knowledge, none of (c-1) to (c-3) has been refuted at this stage of scientific inquiry.
During the course of her interview with me, Judy suggested that the source of the energy required might possibly have been based in space. This is not as fanciful as it might sound, insofar as the US has been pursuing "full spectrum dominance" (of air, sea, land and space!) for some period of time. The very idea of space-based weapons strikes many people as a stretch, if not absurd. But they are trotting out a lot of the same kinds of ridicule and sarcasm as apologists for the official government's account have been advancing to attack those of use who are critics of what we have been told, which is supposed to be "completely ridiculous"! Just listen to O'Reilly or Hannity & Colmes! If we don't consider the full range of possible alternative explanans, we may arrive at false conclusions by eliminating the true hypothesis from serious consideration because it seems farfetched or even absurd.
Cutting-steel using thermate and disintegration-of-steel via directed energy weapons, of course, are different kinds of causal mechanisms, where we have visual evidence of disintegration at work, which may be found on Judy's site and is included in the 16-minute segment from my second lecture in Tucson, a link to which I have given above. Indeed, Judy appears to have done far more to develop her "proof of concept" than has Steve. Some of these research preliminaries are archived:
http://janedoe0911.tripod.com/StarWarsAppendix1.html#Possibilities
Indeed, prototypes have been built and tested, beginning as long ago as 1991! Videos and links to other videos demonstrating the use of Ground Based Lasers (GBLs) may also be found at several links here:
http://janedoe0911.tripod.com/StarWarsBeam6.html#possible
http://janedoe0911.tripod.com/StarWarsAppendix2.html
http://janedoe0911.tripod.com/StarWarsAppendix3.html
Appendix2, for example, includes this about Space Based Lasers (SBLs):
"Talon Gold achieved performance levels equivalent to that needed for the SBL. In 1991, the space-borne Relay Mirror Experiment (RME), relayed a low-power laser beam from a ground site to low-earth orbit and back down to a scoring target board at another location with greater pointing accuracy and beam stability than needed by SBL."
The specific weapons used to destroy the WTC could have been ground based or space based. Judy tends to believe that, whether it was the use of a mirror to reflect an energy beam from Earth or a space-based energy source, it came from above. (My own opinion is that WTC-7 may have played a crucial role here.) If someone suggests that this sounds "loony" or "far out" to them, then I would ask, "How do you know that she's wrong?" It would be scientifically irresponsible not to consider an hypothesis that poses such an intriguing alternative to account for demolishing the WTC, especially given all the evidence she has adduced.
His desire to keep discussion of new, controversial approaches from the public appears to have motivated his attempt to take-over the web site. Personally, I find this rather odd, since all of our research on the events of 9/11 qualifies as "controversial" and the public is entitled to know about new research at the cutting edge. As I have explained in email exchanges, especially, "An Open Letter to Steve Jones", his attempt to take over the site is morally, legally, and intellectually objectionable on many grounds, including that it qualifies as taking something that does not belong to him. I created st911.org and have maintained it from scratch. Because this would affect everyone with a serious interest in Scholars for 9/11 Truth, I am exposing it here.
To the best of my knowledge, Steve has found support among perhaps ten or twelve members of Scholars who are active on the forum. Since our current membership approximates 400, this does not appear to be the majority view. Splinter groups often form when dealing with complex and controversial issues, especially when they have ramifications of a political kind. Everyone who has joined Scholars has joined with the current web site and management of st911.org. If he thinks that he can do better, then I encourage him to resign from Scholars and create his own site. But he should not attempt to take control of a site that I created and maintain, which would display the virtues of theft over honest toil. Those who have opinions they want to express about all this can email hardevidence@gmail.com or jfetzer@d.umn.edu.
James H. Fetzer
Founder and Co-Chair
Scholars for 9/11 Truth
..........
https://web.archive.org/web/20090722115036/http://www.scholarsfor911truth.org/JonesResponse.html

My Response to"An Open Letter"

by Steven E. Jones

20 November 2006
Jim:
You wrote, "He is now planning to take control of the web site from me. I have raised objections on moral, legal and intellectual grounds and I am categorically opposed to it. But he appears to be persisting in what might be described as a "hostile take over" to control Scholars." "...his attempt to take over the site is morally, legally, and intellectually objectionable on many grounds, including that it qualifies as taking something that does not belong to him."
What nonsense. As I have written to you privately (e.g., appendix below), Jim, I have no interest at all "to take over the site." My work is research, and I have no interest to "control the Scholars." (Would you explain what that means to you?). Even if we agree by vote of all the members to have an elected committee to provide direction or oversight to the website, as we have discussed privately and on our Forum, I have clearly stated that I would not be on that committee. Period. So your accusation that I attempt "to take over the site" is not only unfounded, it is bizarre.
Further, I stated that I do not intend to continue much longer to work with you as co-chair of this group, for obvious reasons, but I wish to see civility restored here so I will continue on a while longer. If there is a vote on the idea of having a committee to oversee the st911 website, the vote will go to ALL members, and the option of having you continue as the sole manager of the website will be included as an option of course. All this is being discussed on our Forum, and we urge you to participate directly in that discussion. I posted our initial email exchanges on this subject on our Forum per your request. I am confident that if you would PERSONALLY visit the st911 Forum, you would find your statements above untenable.
Your "Open Letter" was posted on the st911 website yesterday without giving me the courtesy of preparing a simultaneous post. This constitutes a prime example of why there needs to be an elected committee to oversee the website, IMO. If an elected committee had approved of your open letter (even without simultaneous post from me) there would have been no hard feelings. There are other examples of course, and I and Dr. Legge and others find that you have been unresponsive to our requests for changes on the very cluttered website. Hopefully you will see the value of an elected editorial board for the organization's web page, should the membership choose that route. I urge the members of this group to not "jump ship" (as some have told me they are going to do) until after we have a chance for a vote on this issue -- and any other issue the members wish to see resolved. The society belongs to all the Scholars. We do not belong to you, Jim.
I sent to you scientific arguments against the notion that you promoted in Tucson, that some kind of energy-beam was directed from WTC 7 to bring down the Towers. (Interested folks may wish to watch Jim Fetzer's presentation here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=646337772656177512&q=Jim+Fetzer ) I'm very disappointed that you did not respond to my scientific arguments, but instead launched into this public diatribe, the ad-hominem tone of which is reminiscent of Judy Wood and Morgan Reynolds as many will recognize. Are you teamed up with them?
As I noted in my reply to the attack piece by Reynolds and Wood, "I would like to emphasize at the outset that Reynolds and Wood and I ...unitedly disagree with the official "conspiracy theory" that nineteen hijackers managed to get through the multi-trillion-dollar air defense system, and managed also to completely bring down these skyscrapers on 9/11. The details, HOW this was actually done, we disagree on.
"I will also observe that there is a group of 9/11 researchers, including Reynolds, Wood, Haupt and Holmgren, who take the approach of personalized attacks on any other researcher who dares to suggest that real planes hit the Towers. Really - they support the "no-planes-hit-Towers" notion so strongly that they resort to personal attacks on anyone who challenges their pet theory. As I have done."
The current "pet theory" that I have challenged is one now supported by you and (not surprisingly) Wood and Reynolds - the idea that "space beams" or "energy beams" were directed at the Towers to bring them down. But why must you take on the uncivil approach of ad hominem attacks rather than scientific discussion? I don't understand it, Jim. I thought the role of the Scholars group was to avoid the ad-hominem style and use the scientific method instead.
I will re-iterate below the scientific arguments I offered to you a few days ago. But first, let me state that I am willing to participate on your radio program, when the conditions I emailed to you five days ago are met:

November 15, 2006 Jim, A few things need to be straightened out first. 1. Is the directed-beams hypothesis a SCIENTIFIC hypothesis? Let the proponents delineate crucial experiments which will permit testing the hypothesis, and which have the potential of proving the hypothesis wrong. If an hypothesis is not falsifiable by experiments, it is not scientific. 2. Judy Wood and Morgan R have made unsubstantiated statements which need to be supported with facts or withdrawn before a civilized discourse could take place. For example, Morgan Reynolds wrote on 8/24/06: "The SJ-phenom kept building and building but it was headed for a big crash because of its obvious infirmities. Some argue that this behavior can be traced to the perps. Regardless, on hindsight it would have been better to have taken out this bilge months ago, Judy has been trying for six months in private. But SJ is incorrigible and a serial liar. We've got to clean up our own backyard mess before his implosion takes nearly all 9/11 skeptics down with him." (Morgan Reynolds) Please then substantiate this claim that "SJ is incorrigible and a serial liar" with delineated facts (Morgan should do this). Also, explain how Morgan R. and Judy W. plan to take "out this bilge", so that we may be assured that no foul play is planned for the proposed debate. Sincerely, Steven Jones"

The email sent by Morgan R. (above) is quite revealing, isn't it? Have you bought into this program, Jim? But wait - if you and they will respond to my two conditions above, then yes, I will be happy to participate on your radio show once again. (You already invited Morgan Reynolds and Judy Wood...)
And if you or Judy or Morgan have arguments against the thermate hypothesis, please be sure to explain the independent observations of high concentrations of finely powdered zinc, barium, manganese and sulfur in the WTC dust. I discussed these data and the chain of custody question thoroughly in my talks at UC-Berkeley, Univ. Denver, UC-Boulder and Sonoma State Univ. recently (videos are available). I find that rather than addressing my scientific arguments, you have attacked me personally. Further, recall that the beginnings of the Scholars group go back to Prof. Marcus Ford, who organized a nucleus of nearly 50 scholars during the spring/summer of 2005, long before you and I agreed to co-chair a more "formal" Scholars for 9/11 Truth.
Finally, I find that your latest letter and the divisiveness it engenders detract from the mission of the Scholars society. This is most disheartening. There is plenty of evidence now to enable us to join with other groups, to unitedly call for an investigation of certain "rogue" officials regarding 9/11 anomalies and the 9/11 wars.
We need solid leadership, not attacks on those who share the same overall goals.
Sincerely,
Steven E. Jones

I append several scientific arguments against the directed-beam notion espoused and promoted by Wood and Fetzer and Reynolds, based on my email to Jim Fetzer a few days ago:
Nov. 18, 2006
Jim,
It's about 2 am, but I woke up and care about you sufficiently to endeavor to reason with you.
I believe you have accepted and are presented arguments which are not only ill-founded, they are embarassingly wrong. (Tucson lecture http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=646337772656177512&q=Jim+Fetzer)
And I'd like to reason with you, Jim. Let's reason between ourselves, shall we?
1. You start out with the grand piano falling in over 30 seconds, from the height of a Tower. This is wrong. I teach the physics of air drag forces and concomitant terminal velocity -- and the terminal velocity depends very much on the mass (or weight/g) of the object.
Ask Judy to provide her calculation in writing, showing the area she has assumed and the mass, the density of air and the terminal velocity she calculates. Then let me or an independent physicist if you wish check this for you.
Consider a small parachute the size/area of a grand piano, with a man on it. He would fall quite fast. Now replace his mass with that of a grand piano (but in a ball of say lead). Surely you have enough horse-sense to see that the latter case will fall MUCH faster. And that's what the equations say also. A parachute the size of a grand piano acting on a large mass just doesn't slow it much. But let her show her calculations!!
Added: As Alfons showed on the Forum, the terminal velocity can be calculated with the help of a NASA web-site:
http://exploration.grc.nasa.gov/education/rocket/termvr.html . Alfons used a Yamaha grand piano,
o Length: 161cm (5'3")
o Width: 149cm -
o Height: 101cm
o Weight: 628 pounds (m = 285kg)
The drag coefficient depends on the attitude of the piano to the velocity vector as it falls; we take a maximum-drag orientation and therefore take a large drag coeff;
Mass = 285 kg
Cross Section = 2.3989 sq. meters
Drag Coefficient = 1.28 (Flat Object CD = 1.28
exploration.grc.nasa.gov/...aped.html)
Altitude = 417 meters = 1368 ft
Terminal Velocity = 40 m per second
Then the total fall time is 11 seconds (+or-). Which is just about the time the Towers took to collapse! Your example in your Tucson talk backfires on you... gives ammo to those who would debunk everything you say.
Jim, ask Judy to give you the equations, her calculations -- with numbers. And lets check her work.
2. You and Judy say that the bathtub was not damaged. Have you checked this out? I just wish you would read the research offered freely on our Forum. but let me quote from there, which in turn is quoting from an engineering journal:
"Half of WTC 'Bathtub' Basement Damaged By Twin Towers' Fall
(enr.com 10/8/01)
"Visual surveys indicate roughly 50% of the seven-level basement structure of the World Trade Center is now rubble as a result of the impact of the collapse of the twin 110-story towers. Outside the tower footprints, the section of greatest concern within the so-called 1,000 x 500-ft bathtub is along its south side. There, a 200 x 30-ft hole from 40 to 70 ft deep sits between the tub's perimeter slurry wall and the remains of Two WTC.
"A significant part of the south tower fell in and collapsed everything," says Joel L. Volterra, an engineer with Mueser Rutledge Consulting Engineers, the city's local engineer on the bathtub.
"Engineers are busy drawing up emergency tieback, bracing and shoring schemes so that contractors can start mobilizing tieback rigs this week or next to anchor the south perimeter of the 70-ft-deep slurry wall.
"Roughly 40% of the bathtub's reinforced concrete diaphragm slabs and steel columns are in "pretty good shape," says George J. Tamaro, the Mueser Rutledge engineer leading the foundation repair team."
SO -- the engineers say only about 40% of the bathtub was in pretty good shape, the rest being significantly damaged. Water was only about 1 foot below the damaged area, in another report -- and pumps were brought in. The report does not say whether the pumps were needed or not, but that doesn't matter does it? The damage to the bathtub in PUBLISHED engineering reports says the damage to the bathtub was extensive.
Jim, someone is giving you erroneous information -- and you're swallowing it. Read the engineering reports for yourself.

3. I'm NOT seeking to wrest control of st911 -- but I do hope that you will listen to the MEMBERS about how they want the web site handled. We're hoping for ideas on how to handle the website, as many of us are not satisfied. Will you listen to the voice of the members, or is such a vote -taking idea just futile? You should read the discussion on the forum to know where I and others stand -- not just a few extracted and out of context quotes of me or others. I DO NOT seek power here, but a better web-site. Indeed, I've said that I want to end my co-chair status after one year, after we decide what to do about the web site, which is losing visitors the data clearly show.
We need to do something...
4. The generators in WTC 7 -- how many gallons of diesel fuel do you suppose they might burn in 10 seconds (Tower fall time, approx)?
Perhaps 20-30 gallons in 10 seconds? That would be 120-180 gallons
per minute -- and that seems high to me. I'm here paraphrasing an
argument by a PhD chemist on the Forum -- the power which the WTC 7 generators can deliver in 10 seconds is NOWHERE NEAR enough to vaporize steel and pulverize concrete. We know that explosives (like superthermite and RDX explosives) can do the pulverizing, because they store energy in small packages. But diesel fuel running generators (which are not even 50 % efficient ) simply cannot deliver the necessary energy in 10 seconds time. Can you see this? It's a conservation of energy argument which is very strong and I hope easy
to grasp when it is laid out like this. And the steel was thrown out
of the footprint area, much of it -- but not vaporized.
5. An energy beam with enough energy to pulverize concrete and vaporize steel -- what would this do to human flesh, Jim? Wouldn't flesh be charred? If not, why not? Yet body pieces -- not charred - were found all over GZ.
Jim, you're being sold a bill of goods by these people and I beg of you to consider sound arguments instead. It's now nearly 3 am and I'm going back to bed, sleep I hope. It really concerns me that you are being so easily led by the nose my friend by these ideas of Judy's or whoever. Ask for numbers, calculations. Insist on these so you can do some checking before you go telling people that a grand piano takes 21 seconds over the time of the tower's fall. What a bunch of obvious garbage, Jim. You're going to be laughed at by anyone who knows how to calculate terminal velocity, which is mass-dependent!
Will you listen to reason?
Steve

I'm bored already...

https://web.archive.org/web/20090722115036/http://www.scholarsfor911truth.org/ModestProposal.html

A Modest Proposal For ST911.ORG

by James H. Fetzer

20 November 2006
Steve and I (with a short list of recipients) had discussions about all of this from the 15th to the 17th of last week, which culminated in an earlier "Open Letter to Steven Jones", copied below. He believes I am allowing discussion of unproven theories about 9/11 on st911.org, which include questions about the possible use of mini-nukes and high-tech, directed energy weapons, some of which may possibly involve the use of space technology. That is clearly the case, since I have a box devoted to questions about mini-nukes and, relative to my 11 November interview with Judy Wood, I included links to her research web site, something I would do for any student of 9/11 whose work was going to be discussed. How else is anyone supposed to know what we are talking about? Looking at alternative possibilities that have not yet been "shaken down" is a large part of what real science is all about. It is chock-full of real but uncertain possibilities. It is the most exciting stage of inquiry!
As I point out in my new "Open Letter", Steve seems to be committing the blunder of supposing that the web site, like the journal, should include only finished research reports, which are fully referenced and formally presented. That is all wrong, because the web site and the journal have entirely different functions. The journal is for peer-reviewed studies. The web site is for current events and recent developments to keep the public informed about what is going on within the research community in its exploratory stage, including mini-nukes and high-tech weapons, which may or may not "pan out" and reach the stage of development suitable for journal publication. If that were the right policy for the web site, I doubt we would even be able to include Steve's work, which he describes as "preliminary" and "incomplete" and which he is constantly revising. My view is that the public should be allowed to "peek inside" and see the nature of real, living science, where there are intense arguments and profound disagreements, even over points thought to be "settled".
My opinion is that it is possible to be "too conservative" about what we are doing in the research community. The truth does not leap out at us like Athena from the forehead of Zeus! We have to struggle to establish what is the case, piece by piece, little by little, and at certain junctures we may have to abandon what we previously thought was the case because of the advent of new evidence or new alternative hypotheses. Their emergence ought to be a cause for celebration, not the occasion for anguish! When I began to fully appreciate the total and complete devastation of the WTC as a consequence of Judy's work-- which made it for me inescapable!--it became apparent that there is no way an explanation of how the Twin Towers were destroyed could possibly be adequate to explain the destruction of the other buildings in the WTC. That, combined with learning about the "bathtub", was for me an epiphany, because until then I had not begun to appreciate the full dimensions of the problem or why so much of our effort was not good enough! In my view, super-thermate cannot explain this devastation!
For that reason, I described what I was learning as "Fascinating!", an adjective I continue to use. I was not thereby endoring the idea that the source of energy might have come from a location in space, but the reasons she adduces for entertaining that possibility are fascinating, too! Science requires imagination and courage, which does not appear to be widely distributed among the members of the 9/11 community. The evidential situation demands rigor in reasoning and exactitude in the process of thinking things through. It is actually well encapsulated in Conan Doyle's observation, "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever reamains, however improbable, must be the truth!" We must be willing to abandon our most prized conclusions if they turn out to be incompatible with new evidence. And we must not ignore any hypothesis that might provide us with novel and unexpected access to the truth. I have no idea if Judy's conjectures will pan out, but they deserve to be explored. There is too much that we have not explained to ignore them.
So is there something wrong with even DISCUSSING alternatives that may be controversial? Frankly, EVERYTHING connected with 9/11 falls into that category, so I have found it fascinating that critics of Judy and me who have neither listened to our interview nor viewed the segment of my Monday lecture in Tucson are so willing to trash us in no uncertain terms! Well, science requires more mental discipline than is found on 911blogger. Steve has announced that he is planning to step down as co-chair for many different reasons. He has said that he doesn't like the co-chair arrangement in any case. I am not stepping down as founder of Scholars, which would be an historical impossibility, and I intend to continue to manage our web site. But I am perfectly willing to listen to our steering committee, which has been a source of advice about the direction we take as a society. It is probably true that the steering committee has not been very active in recent times. I can revive it.
That does not mean ignoring the exploratory stages of 9/11 inquiries. I think a lot of the critics simply do not understand that investigating an hypothesis is not the same thing as accepting it. Indeed, there is a fundamental distinction between a PREFERABLE HYPOTHESIS, which confers a higher probability upon the evidence than any available alternative, and an ACCEPTABLE HYPOTHESIS, which is what the preferable hypothesis becomes when the evidence has "settled down" and all points in the same direction. The evidence that refutes the official account has settled down. We have proven that it cannot be sustained in any major respect and that, indeed, on certain key issues, it is not only provably false but not even physically possible because its truth would violate laws of physics, engineering, and aerodynamics that cannot be violated and cannot be changed. That we have accomplished already, without doubt! But explaining exactly how it was done is another, more difficult task, where, in my judgment, we are only just beginning. We not only do not have acceptable hypotheses but we don't even know which are preferable!
That's where much of the controversy sets it. Each of us harbors his/her own conception of how the evidence fits together with alternative possible explanations and we tend to be uncharitable and abrupt with those whom we think disagree with us! It doesn't even matter if they actually do. Just the suspicion tends to be enough to set us off on a rampage impugning the intelligence and the integrity of those whom we SUSPECT of disagreeing with us! Part of the challenge, therefore, is to preserve a certain degree of decorum in discussion and debate, an admirable objective but not as important as discovering the truth. I am quite sure that I have been less "decorous" from time to time than those with whom I have engaged in conversation might prefer. Well, we are all human, and I don't hold emotion against anyone, as long as they are still affected by logic and evidence in drawing conclusions on the basis of the appropriate principles of reasoning, which are such that, given the same evidence and set of alternative explanations, we should, in principle, accept, reject, and hold in suspense the same hypotheses.
Steve wants a committee of five to serve an overview function. In some of his posts, he suggests they should vote on what is posted and what is not. I think this is a recipe for mediocrity, insofar as inevitably the product of collective decison making by committee will be publication of pieces that satisfy the lowest common denominator, stuff that everyone can agree upon and that is safe and boring. What's the point of that? We are embarked upon one of the greatest investigative tasks in history by attempting to figure out how 9/11 was carried out. We have made some stunning discoveries that, in my judgment, conclusively disprove what we have been told by our government. I have summarized those I take to be sufficiently well-established that they are very unlikely to be found to be mistaken in "Why doubt 9/11?" All conclusions in science, of course, and tentative and fallible, but these look very secure to me from the perspective of logic, evidence, and principles of scientific reasoning.
In deference to Steve, I am willing to conduct an experiment. Let him put together a committee of five, by whatever method he determines to be appropriate, for the purpose of designing and managing an alternative web site. I will provide a page on st911.org for that purpose. This committee can post what it regards as appropriate to create a contrast with my management. If it produces a superior result, I suspect that will become apparent to everyone, including me. Moreover, I reiterate my invitation for Steve to come on my new program next week in order to discuss Judy's work and his reservations about the hypotheses that she has advances as possible alternatives to jet-plane-impacts/jet-fuel- based fires/pancake collapses, thermite/thermate demolitions, mini- nukes and the rest. The show is on T/W/Th and he can pick his day to insure that he has the last word, if he would like. I reinvite him!
One of the virtues of science, of course, especially when it relies on mathematics, is that false claims are more easily exposed. Judy had advised me that the 30 second calculation for a grand piano had been done by a friend and that she had yet to verify it. According to the new calculation, the piano would have hit the ground in 11 seconds. I dare say that confirms my basic point, since the 9/11 Commission and NIST have assigned times of destruction for the towers of 10 seconds and 9 seconds apiece. So even though the calculation was flawed, the key point remains. The Twin Towers were demolished in less time than free fall through air! That is simply astonishing and establishes a crucial parameter for any explanation of their destruction to qualify as adequate. Consider the alternatives and their ramifications with respect to the complete and total devastation of the WTC, including WTC-3, WTC-4, WTC-5, and WTC-6 in addition to WTC-1, WTC-2, and, of course, WTC-7! There is a lot here to explain that the government cannot account for. Let us dedicate ourselves to figuring it out!

----- Forwarded message from jfetzer@d.umn.edu ----- Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2006 20:58:18 -0600 From: jfetzer@d.umn.edu Reply-To: jfetzer@d.umn.edu Subject: An Open Letter to Steven Jones To: Steve Jones <hardevidence@gmail.com, jfetzer@d.umn.edu Steve, I have been struck by a recent post on the forum with the subject line, " Re: Control of st911 website and st911.org", in which you attack Judy Wood, Morgan Reynolds, and me for having ideas at variance with your own regarding what may have been the cause of the destruction of the Twin Towers, which I have included below. You notice "The weaknesses of the hypothesis have been exposed as we considered the evidences -- including significant damage to the WTC 'bathtub' and the energy/power needed for such a hypothetical beam, and where it would originate from, etc.", without acknowledging that their research addresses these issues and that I have offered an alternative related to WTC-7, which you know because I spelled it out in email that I asked you to post on the forum! You ignore my point about the ambiguity of the phrase, "damage to the bathtub", which was not substantial because it did not leak! That is the crucial consideration, where leakage would have led to flooding the subways and PATH train tunnels and created multi-billion dollar damage that would have taken years to clean up. This is not honest science, Steve, even though you like to tout it. If they are making mistakes, then surely you ought to want to participate in correcting them. One nice opportunity would be to appear on my new radio show, where I am having them as guests on consecutive days and have invited you to participate as well, each of you on the program separate days. Moreover, you act as though your views on this matter have to be taken definitive. I, however, have challenged you to offer evidence that any variation on the hypothesis you prefer has the capacity to produce the gross effects of blowing beams outward and even upward, pulverizing the buildings, and bringing them down in 10 and 9 seconds. A necessary condition is that the destruction of these 500,000 ton buildings cannot seriously damage the bathtub. Given the evidence that Judy and Morgan have advanced, it is ridiculous to characterize their work as "wildly speculative". They are proposing novel hypotheses, which is the most difficult part of science. Perhaps you have not posted the emails that I sent you because you don't want to disclose to the members of the forum that you do not have a response to the challenge that I have posed. If you do, then by all means come on my radio program and let us discuss it. I now discover that you appear to be proceeding along a path that leads to denying me control of the society that I founded. The conception of an organization of this kind was mine. I invited you to serve as my co-chair. I have supervised the site from its conception. I have been devoting as much as eight to ten hours a day processing email related to the society and locating posts appropriate for the web site. While Alex has control of the location where it is stored, that is not the same as its content or the society itself, which was my creation. I have been the principal author of all of our press releases and all of our policy statements, which may be found published across the top of our masthead. In addition, to the best of my knowledge, I have paid for publication of all but one of our press releases (at $120 apiece); I have the one and only bank account in the name of "Scholars for 9/11 Truth"; and I have been the person who, initially, admitted every member to the society, until it became practically impossible to continue. Alex, by the way, receives the storage space for free as a bonus for having another site. My contributions to creating and maintaining the society overwhelmingly exceed yours. If you are no longer content to run the journal and to supervise the forum but want to wrest control of the web site from me, that appears to be a blatant power play, not based on science but upon improper motives that appear to be highly personal and self-serving. I offered five steps, the first of which, to the best of my knowledge, has not been taken. Please correct me if I am wrong, because this has created a situation in which you have been able to filter information in a fashion highly prejudicial to me, which violates basic canons of rational debate and moral conduct. My impression is that much of the concerns that have bothered you have resulted from my willingness to consider alternatives to thermate as possible causes of the destruction of the Twin Towers. There are excellent reasons for questioning whether thermate could possibly have been responsible for their devastation, a matter that I discussed during two lectures in Tucson. Part of Monday's in which I discussed alternatives may be found in this 16-minute clip: Dr. James Fetzer: Did Classified Weaponry Destroy the Twin Towers? http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=646337772656177512&q=Jim+Fetzer If anyone thinks that discussions of this kind turn the society into " a laughing stock", then they need to have their heads examined. It is offensive to me--as it should be to every member of this list--to discover that you are plotting to take control of the web site from me. If you are dissatisfied with my leadership, you are entitled to create a society of your own. You are not entitled to mine. If Alex wants to use his storage space for a new society, that is fine. I can find other storage space for this one. On moral, legal, and intellectual grounds, the name, the content, and the policies of Scholars for 9/11 Truth are not yours to take. If you wants a new society, then work to create one, just as I have worked to create this one. Is that clear? I am especially offended that you would make this power play after my sustained efforts to defend you from the start. I spent hours upon hours composing memoranda to fend off vicious attacks upon you and I have continued to do that to this day. That I find your research on thermate inadequate to explain the phenomena has nothing to do with the high regard in which I have held you in the past. That includes defending you in multiple fora and writing a letter to the President of BYU in your defense on behalf of the society. If you have lifted your least digit in my defense, I am grateful for that, but I am not aware of that ever having happened. In a situation like this one in which rationality demands considering the evidence concerning what I have said on the possibility that directed-energy weapons could have been used to take out the towers, you have only joined in the fray! An honorable resolution of this situation, as I see it, would be for you to resign and undertake the creation of a society of your own. I will be glad to find new storage space for Scholars for 9/11 Truth if Alex would prefer to donate his to a new venture of that kind. What I cannot abide is the very idea that you would attempt to steal what is not yours. This is a form of plagiarism that every member of the society has to understand. Of course, every author of articles and studies archived on st911.org retains the right to their contents as their creations. But the same obtains for the web site and Scholars for 9/11 Truth, which I created and which you can take from me only by committing a gross act of intellectual theft and moral cowardice. You are not entitled to something you have not earned: st911.org. James H. Fetzer Founder and Co-Chair Scholars for 9/11 Truth http://p073.ezboard.com/fancientlosttreasuresfrm157.showMessageRange? topicID=165.topic&start=41&stop=55 _______________________________________________________ sovereign soul Registered User Posts: 110 (11/17/06 10:36 am) Reply Re: Control of st911 website and st911.org ____________________________________ It also bears mentioning that Jim Fetzer is in a difficult position. We all rely on our own opinions until convinced otherwise, and assuredly all of us have mistakenly relied on "facts" concerning 911 that weren't true or otherwise jumped to conclusions about 911 at one time or another. Our blunders occur in a relatively private setting, whereas his blunders are public and effect his credibility and that of 911 Truth. It is not an altogether enviable position. Hopefully Mr. Fetzer will continue to be encouraged to participate in forums, where exposure to contrary ideas can only serve to help clarify his thinking and work out errors in private. HardEvidence Registered User Posts: 1874 (11/17/06 10:50 am) Reply Re: Control of st911 website and st911.org ____________________________________ I am in agreement with the well-thought-out comments of Chris above, and all these recent comments. Personally I lean towards a " democracy" -- this will allow the web site to belong to the members (I hope!) and this will encourage participation in the Forum as a place for proposing what should be on the web site, and how categorized. Or perhaps members could add to the site directly in a " wiki" mode, as Vic suggested... I don't know how that works, but something to consider. OTOH, a 5-member panel seems a good idea too... But with one-member-one-vote. And I will not continue in any case to be a co-chair (after we re-organize st911) which tends to great inequality-- I'd personally like to see the co-chair system abolished for st911. In response to a query, Jim does not have the power to shut down this Forum -- and the web site does not "belong" to him either. It is Lori Price who is currently making changes to the web site, at Jim's direction, I understand. But the site itself can be "reclaimed" by its owner (not me, but a solid long-time member of Scholars 911 T, who set it up and paid for it long ago). There is a means to do polling/voting here on ezboard. So with Whyte Eagle's help, there is now a "911Poll" on the issue at hand, for a straw poll (not binding). The wording is not perfect and I invite both: 1. Your vote (you only get one vote) 2. Comments on this thread about the wording, as this poll will likely go out to all members via email. I've asked WE to make this 911Poll "visible" to all of you ASAP -- so watch for it, and vote! Note that if a republic is chosen, I personally decline to be on the committee for the first year. I think the current leadership has had its "one-year stint" and we need to have others now step forward -- in such a 5-man committee, or in the proposed democracy. However, Jim F may well wish to be a member of such a committee, and that's fine if a majority agree in the voting. He is certainly well known. I suppose we could incorporate the "one-year stint" notion right away, as part of the vote. So this first "poll" is mainly a straw poll, to see how we on this Forum feel about things -- a "real" vote will have to go out via email to ALL members. Victronix Registered User Posts: 373 (11/17/06 12:20 pm) Reply Re: Control of st911 website and st911.org ____________________________________ Very clear. We do what we say we'd like. We do a mock website board along the lines we'd like to see. This means five volunteers (+ or -) who are dead serious. Create a streamlined website model, new categories that make clear these are speculative items, these others have consensus. Etc. Take up Jim's challege to do it better than he does. I agree with this and will be glad to participate. Unfortunately I will be travelling for all of next week for Thanksgiving and will also be away for a week over Christmas Probably the fact that people have the holidays / exams coming up should be considered in the voting process anyway. HardEvidence Registered User Posts: 1879 (11/17/06 1:16 pm) Reply Re: Control of st911 website and st911.org _______________________________ Well said, Vic. Here we discuss "wildly speculative" ideas rather freely. Recently, we have considered the " energy-beams-brought-down-Towers" notion of Morgan Reynolds, Judy Wood and Jim Fetzer. The weaknesses of the hypothesis have been exposed as we considered the evidences -- including significant damage to the WTC "bathtub" and the energy/power needed for such a hypothetical beam, and where it would originate from, etc. This is a good place to discuss such things. But to highlight such ideas on the st911.org website WITHOUT consulting the members and without a balancing statement or paper is to me unacceptable. Quoting jfetzer@d.umn.edu: This just showed up in my email. It looks relevant, so I send it along: The Global Network's "War from Space?" video produced by Eric Herter is now available on-line. Click on link below: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6515526620862018423 Quoting jfetzer@d.umn.edu: I included Judy and Morgan on this list because our discussion originated over an invitation to appear on "The Dynamic Duo" with them on consecutive days. I also included them because we are discussing their research. I want to explore the kinds of issues and objections you raise on the air. I included them because they have been members of the debate team for The National 9/11 Debate and deserve to know what's going on. If you have a set of great arguments to present that defeats their proposal, then why are you so reluctant to come onto the program and explain them? You were coy and then sent this onslaught about the web site. I don't see any way that it can be current and relevant when managed by a committee! You and others have always had the opportunity to send me suggestions and criticism about the site, which consumes a huge amount of my time. Do you even acknowledge that we have been ranked #1 much of the year and that we only complete with 911blogger.com? How can we be succeeding with the public if the site is a disaster? I sense petty rivalries and jealousies are affecting all this, including you. If you want to do this by committee, then show me how it can be done! I have given you a blueprint (a) through (e), starting with posting my emails on the forum. Have you done that? No? Why not? And loneagle is George Nelson, Colonel (USAF, retired), a member of Scholars and an expert on air crash investigations and a member of the debate panel. Did you even bother to read my responses at the bottom of my last email? Your rebuttal about damage to the bathtub is juvenile: it didn't leak! And forum members are not necessarily representative of the members of the society for a host of reasons. I have not rejected the idea that we might manage the web site differently. I have asked how it would be done. Why does it have to be purged of ideas that you, Steve Jones, don't like? Your understanding of the nature of science is not superior to mine. So far I have had no response at all from you. Simply because some members think they could do better does not mean that they could. And I just may know more about doing this insofar as I have been doing it from scratch. Why don't you work on improving the journal and running the forum and let me maintain the web site? You have yet to give me a good reason for not leaving things alone--except that some members want to intervene. What makes you think they could do a better job? You don't have to take over the whole society! Try to do your part better, I'll do the same for mine. Quoting Steve Jones <hardevidence@gmail.com: No, Jim, what you wrote is incorrect: "Now Steve, of all people, wants to completely change our modus operandi because some members, including him, do not want to acknowledge alternative possible explanations of 9/11. " Of course I acknowledge the POSSIBILITY of alternative explanations, including yours that high-energy beams from WTC 7 brought down the Towers. However, in the context of the scientific method, you will need to accomodate/explain ALL the data, including the observation of high concentrations of zinc, manganese, barium and sulfur in the WTC-collapse residues -- in the molten-metal slag and in the DUST -- and you will need to propose EXPERIMENTS that can be done to TEST your hypothesis. I'm doing all this with the thermate/aluminothermics hypothesis. Can you say the same for your 'star-wars beam' hypothesis? Have you thought of an experiment in which you will direct a high-energy beam at concrete and steel to see what happens? (At what frequency? what are the basics of this beam?) How much energy is required to 'disintegrate' the steel in large quantities as you say? How much energy, at what frequency, is needed to bring down a Tower, top-down? Have you checked the references discussed at length in our Forum that show that the WTC bathtub was in fact highly damaged -- contrary to your statements ? There is a strong sense from the Forum that members want to see more democratic control of the web page, rather than having it under one person. I agree with that sentiment. And yes, each member of the society is important and deserves to be a part of the direction of the group and the web site. I am surprised that you have included Judy Wood and Morgan Reynolds in this email list of yours, since they are not even members of st911 -- why did you do this? And who is loneagle, in your list? Steve On 11/16/06, jfetzer@d.umn.edu <jfetzer@d.umn.edu wrote: I had thought we were doing pretty well, having often attained #1 ranking among all 9/11 sites. The lastest New York Times/CBS poll has 53% of the public skeptical of government's account of 9/11 and another 28% rejecting it outright, with only 16% accepting it. Now Steve, of all people, wants to completely change our modus operandi because some members, including him, do not want to acknowledge alternative possible explanations of 9/11. This in my opinion is to impose a kind of ideological litmus test on st911.org, which I regard as inappropriate, but perhaps I am wrong. I invite you to give me your best advice about how to proceed. I find this very troubling. ----- Forwarded message from jfetzer@d.umn.edu ----- Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 08:43:29 -0600 From: jfetzer@d.umn.edu Reply-To: jfetzer@d.umn.edu Subject: Re: Discontent To: Steve Jones <hardevidence@gmail.com Steve, First, science requires consideration of every possible alternative explanation, where their appraisal is conducted on the basis of logic and evidence. The best supported hypothesis is the one that confers the highest likelihood on that alternative, given the evidence. Second, likelihoods are measured by the probability of the evidence if the alternative were true, which entails treating each alternative as though it were a cause in relation to the evidence as an effect. Third, the discussion of mini-nukes is present not because I think it is true but because there is a lot of interest in the possibility that it might be true, which deserves public discussion, lest we be viewed as suppressing possible alternatives. Fourth, an objective appraisal, I submit, would demonstrate that some source of massive energy was required to bring about the complete and total demolition of the WTC, as I explained in my Tucson lectures. Fifth, you do not acknowledge, even remotely, the potential power of the WTC-7 (not "space") based alternative I sketch there, which most members of Scholars have never even heard articulated, an attitude that is, in my opinion, highly unscientific and extremely biased. Sixth, this means that you are promoting a political decision being made in the context you described in which some, possibly many, members think I have made a serious blunder without even knowing my position, which, even if you can't see it, would be grossly unfair. Seventh, the function of the web site differs from the journal, where its purpose is exposing something like the full range of issues that are at stake here, including political ramifications via "Headlines" and "Foreign Perspectives", without trying to present some kind of a popular version of the journal, which you seem to favor. Eighth, have you actually thought through the consequences of having a committee (how many members? how chosen?) decide what to post or not post, when the issues that are involved here are complex, convoluted and politically charged? Have you already forgotten how committees work? Ninth, as an exercise, why don't you form a committee to review the contents of our web site and tell me what it would change, one that has several members (how will you choose them?) and renders decisions (how will they be made?) and offers samples of its procedings for a day or two (presuming that "Headlines", for example, is kept current)? Tenth, I created Scholars and invited you to join me. I have stood by you through thick and thin. I cannot believe that you are seriously suggesting what amounts to the deconstruction of the society and this causes me serious concern. You have said nothing at all as to my hypothesis, which ties WTC-1, WTC-2, and WTC-7 into an inter-related causal scheme of destruction taking advantage of the massive source of energy available at WTC-7. That you should not even acknowledge this as a novel and potentially powerful alternative explanation deserving exploration speaks volumes. Frankly, I do not see how thermite, thermate, or super-thermate could possibly bring about the massive destruction that occurred on 9/11 at the WTC, especially in the brief time-spans we are confronting here. Your demonstrations that it has the capacity to cut through an engine block most assuredly does not accomplish that task. I challenge you to offer evidence that any variation on the hypothesis you prefer has the capacity to produce the gross effects of blowing beams outward and even upward, pulverizing the buildings, and bringing them down in 10 and 9 seconds. A necessary condition is that the destruction of these 500,000 ton buildings cannot seriously damage the bathtub. That would impress me. Otherwise, it appears to me you are adopting a political posture to protect your hypothesis when an alternative that deserves thorough consideration has emerged, which is completely unscientific. If you are going to discuss this on the forum, then I request you post the three emails I have sent to you, which is indispensable if others are to have even the faintest inkling of my position. Tell me how you propose to proceed with this business related to the web site. I long ago observed that you had not put together a suitable editorial board and had squeezed me out from involvement with the journal. I think it was a mistake, considering that I have vastly more experience than any member of the board, including you, as my history of editing reflects. You have good members, but the balance is not right for a scientific journal, which could be improved by adding a dozen hard-science types. You know this is how I see it because I have shared it with you before. To the best of my knowledge, you have done little or nothing to correct it. In my opinion, your management in creating a board that lacked as much expertise as could easily have been recruited, especially from the members of SPINE, has left the society in a position vulnerable to the kinds of criticism that other sites have from time to time advanced. I am not interested in condoning a similar diminution of the quality of our web site and, until I am convinced that some kind of committee is a viable option for making decisions here, I am not going to relinquish control of the web site, which would be a highly irresponsible action. So (a) post the three emails I have sent on the forum, (b) discuss how your proposal would be implemented, (c) create a mock committee and set it to work reviewing what is posted on st911.org, (d) send me a list of how it would be changed by this modus operandi with a mock alternative, and (e) explain to me exactly how decisions would be made from day to day about the items that would appear in its different categories, including "Headlines". I will be fascinated to learn just how this should be done. In the meanwhile, your handling of the journal with regard to composing its editorial board does not inspire me with confidence. Having created Scholars, I am not about to allow it to be deconstructed by dissembling. Finally, if I had not been confident that I could create and manage the society, I would not have founded it. I hold a Ph.D. in the history and philosophy of science, have published around 150 articles and reviews as well as 27 books, created an international journal, an international book series, and an international society, have extensive experience dealing with conspiracy theories based upon past (published) research on JFK and Wellstone, have 35 years of experience teaching logic, critical thinking and scientific reasoning, and have dealt with disinformation efforts for more than a decade. I agree that my decisions may not always be perfect, but why would a committee be expected to do any better? Indeed, in my experience, there is every reason to expect that it would do much worse. Let me say that one area where I have felt handicapped is the "Events" category, where I would like to have more presentations by more members be listed in a timely fashion. I would like to encourage members who are planning to give lectures, participate in workshops, and the like, to send relevant information to me. 911blogger.com, of course, does a great job of this, where I have viewed our sites as complementary, ours providing an introduction to the issues, theirs to current events. The search for truth is not a popularity contest and we are not always going to agree. The question is whether the web site, by and large, succeeds in introducing visitors to the full range of issues involved here in a comprehensive and accessible manner. I welcome suggestions for making improvements, but I have some doubts about the proposal you are floating. So do (a) through (e) and get back to me. I appreciate hearing from you. Jim P.S. I have added my comments to the issues you previously raised below. Quoting Steve Jones <hardevidence@gmail.com>: Jim -- First, I do appreciate and acknowledge your efforts through the past months. And I see no reason why we should not be able to remain friends while we pursue our divergent hypotheses. Second, it is clear to me that our scientific hypotheses are so divergent that it may very well result in some sort of schism, or at least a change in the control of the web site to insure that fair scientific balance and reason is achieved. Our divergent hypotheses should both be pursued, and I hope we can do this in a gentemanly and scientific way, without ad hominems. It could be a bit of a horse race, and that's welcome as long as we stay in the scientific realm and avoid personalized attacks. That is my resolve, for my part, particularly as you maintain civility also. Let the race to 9/11 truth commence in earnest then. I welcome a scientific challenge. As for how the web site will be run, I suggest a vote among members -- e.g., 1. Status quo 2. Election of a web-site board who will decide on the contents of the web site. Also, I suggest that we yield our co-chair status as part of option 2. 'I welcome your suggestions, and i expect this will be discussed on the Forum. Best wishes, my friend, as we pursue finally a common goal of truth and justice (which will ultimately prevail). Steve Steve On 11/15/06, jfetzer@d.umn.edu <jfetzer@d.umn.edu> wrote: Well, Steve, managing the web site has proven so time-consuming--on the order of 8 to 10 hours a day, when you include sorting through email-- that I would welcome assistance. My experience with committees tells me that it is not unlikely that very little will be agreed upon in a timely fashion, but I am willing to consider proposals. As I explained in Tucson, the weapon did not have to be in space and there just happens to have been a convenient source of massive quantities of electical power in the immediate vicinity, namely, it WTC-7, which was constructed over an enormous electical generator (actually, a power transformer with a huge back-up generator) that could have been the source of power right at the scene. I conjecture that the weapons could have been situated in WTC-7 itself. I appreciate all of my critics who don't know my thoughts about all of this, which I laid out in two lectures in Tucson that will become available soon. So if an hypothesis that actually ties together what we know about the destruction of WTC-1 and WTC=2 with the classic demolition of WTC-7 makes us "a laughing stock", then that's remarkable, because I have seen nothing from you that would come close to providing a unified explanation that ties the demolition of these three buildings together. So, since we are speaking frankly, I think you and yours are far off-base and don't know what they are talking about, principally because I only figured it out on Sunday after reading a post from Ralph Omholt that pointed out the immense quantity of electricity necessary to produce the effects--which caused a light bulb to go off in my head. I explained it in Tucson but haven't had the chance to share it with you. For someone who has spent enormous quantities of time and effort in the effort to defend you from unwarranted attacks, I am very disappointed. And that will be compounded, if you are unwilling to discuss all this. Jim Quoting Steve Jones <hardevidence@gmail.com>: Jim -- There is considerable discontent among many of those Scholars who write me and those on the Forum. 1. There is a sense that the web page reflects the views of Jim Fetzer but not a majority view. We have seen email along these lines. It has been strongly suggested that there be an editorial board to review the web-page content, and I think this suggestion has merit. Well, let's get specific. Pursue (a) through (e). There are scientists who find some kind of mini-nuke possibility plausible, even if you do not. And I know some members still worry that the Pentagon is going to produce a new video of a Boeing 757 coming toward the building, when they have already provided one showing that, whatever hit the Pentagon, it was not a 757. I hope that the concerns behind this exchange are more substantial than that 2. In particular, there is discontent over the prominent displaying of mini-nukes and star-wars-beams notions on the st911 web page. The former has been falsified with several direct evidences; the latter has been discussed on the Forum at some length and it has been asked: There is a section on mini-nukes that is "prominent" because lots of people are curious about it. I thought that you had presented your views well. Do you think that, by being exposed to other ideas, the force of your rebuttals will be compromised? Should this issue be hidden from public view, which would invite the criticism that we are not even discussing it? And as for "star wars" notions, I have Judy's web pages related to her recent interview, something I would do for other interviews if it were appropriate. Is that giving them too much "promience"? Do I sense censorship raising its ugly head? Are we afraid of discussing alternative possible explanations? Is our web site supposed to be pure and ignore the excitement of real, ongoing scientific inquiry, which involves conflict between ideas? A. Why does Judy (and Morgan) say that the bath-tub was hardly damaged when it was significantly damaged? (Photos and newspaper articles.) This is childish word-play. The bathtub was not damaged to such an extent that it ceased to serve its function. If it had been cracked, water would have flooded the PATH trains and the subways beneath the city of lower Manhattan and who knows how much more. When I said it would have "flooded lower Manhattan", I should have said "flooded under Manhattan" to make it clear that I did not mean to imply you would have been able to kayak down Wall Street. So if the misuse of a phrase on Sunday makes a different, then you've got me! If we care about the real threat cracking the bathtub posed, then you haven't. B. The energy source for such a building demolishing beam would be truly enormous -- that's the problem with space-beam-weapons in fact. A platform moving in space is not a likely source of a building-destroying beam which goes through miles of atmosphere to hit a skyscraper on earth. Many of these satellites are geo-stationary, as I supposed you knew. The source of energy is a real issue, although a mirror for directing energy would be an unexplored alternative. My conjecture, which you have yet to acknowledge, is not space-basd but that the energy source may have been the massive generators beneath WTC-7 and that the weapons may have been situated there, which offers a potential explanation of why WTC-7 had to be destroyed. The loss of cell phone usage, moreover, appears to be related to the presence of a massive electromagnetic field, which could result from a mini-nuke but might also be explained by means of this hypothesis. When we first encounter a new alternative, it can take a while to sort out all of its ramifications, but the suggestion that it be dismissed without a hearing is not an option in science. I am concerned that you are reluctant to consider alternatives to thermate. C. Much of the steel was thrown outside the footprint, yes -- but it was NOT disintegrated as Judy alleges. (Indeed, where are her supporting data?). You had better take another look. Some of the footage on her site shows steel being disintegrated. And you had told me during one of our previous discussions that the destruction of the 30 floors of WTC-2 had stunned you insofar as it simply "disappeared" on its way down. I hope you haven't forgotten that discussion, but the phenomena related to disintegration is powerful. Take another look at her site, which you may have viewed at an earlier stage of construction. I even took the most striking clip (video) about disintegration at WTC-1 and used it in my Tucson lectures. Just watch either of them and you'll see it. D. The damage to cars' steel with less damage to plastic is consistent with the effects of thermate dropping from above. Maybe it is, but maybe it is also consistent with other hypotheses. Moreover, the use of a directed energy weapon to destroy 805 of the buildings is consistent with the use of thermate (or super-thermate) to bring down the other 20%, in case you have not thought about this. E. Is the hypothesis falsifiable? If so, what crucial experiments can be done? The proponents should explain. If there are no effects from the use of a directed energy weapon as opposed to other possible causes, such as mini-nukes and thermate, then that would undermine the hypothesis. I don't quite understand why you are rushing the cadence when a novel hypothesis has just been placed before us? Are we guilty of some kind of political offense if we simply consider non-thermate or thermate-plus alternatives? Too much of your attitude appears to be rooted in supreme confidence that you have uncovered the key to the destruction of the towers by means of thermate. Well, I challenge you to offer proof that any variation on the hypothesis you prefer has the capacity to produce the gross effects of blowing beams outward and even upward, pulverizing the buildings, and bringing them down in 10 and 9 seconds. A necessary condition is that the destruction of these 500,000 ton buildings cannot seriously damage the bathtub. If you are right, it will all come out in the wash. In the meanwhile, let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater, which, fortunately, did not flood beneath lower Manhattan! One posted that you said on the radio last week: "Judy, This is the most fascinating development in the history of the study of 911!" Many disagree with your assessment. So what? How many disagreed with Galileo or with Kepler or Newton or Einstein? Are you measuring truth on the basis of popularity? Because a lot of persons find causal indeterminism a difficult idea to accept, should we abandon quantum mechanics? It is embarrassing that you are endorsing such an attitude. I was learning about the bathtub and viewing some of the evidence for the disintegration of steel--which you appear to have missed completely!--for the first time. I stand by my statement and especially appreciate that it has brought me to a new level of understanding of the evidence that has to be explained an to a new hypothesis involving the role of WTC-7. I could care less that "many disagree with my assessment". So what? One member (not me) wrote: "Jim Fetzer, has successfully turned ST9-11 into both a laughing stock - and a totally discredited organization - by his inexplicable public 'cozying up' to Judy Wood and the scientifically unproven theories that she co-endorses with Morgan Reynolds." As I have observed above, if an hypothesis that actually ties together what we know about the destruction of WTC-1 and WTC=2 with the classic demolition of WTC-7 makes us "a laughing stock", then that's remarkable, because I have seen nothing from you that would come close to providing a unified explanation that ties the demolition of these three buildings together. They could not use the same method of demolition, if what I am proposing is right, because they were destroying the very means by which the destruction of the other buildings had been affected. Just because the preliminary discussion of new alternatives has a potential for ridicule and sarcasm does not make them false! I offer Galileo as an illustration once again. I cannot be responsible for the learning curves of some of our members. And are we to compound the fallacy of special pleading (based upon partial understanding of my position) and straw-man (characterizing it as a "star wars" beam weapon) with attacks on sources (it must be false because Morgan and Judy proposed it)? Am I dealing with children here? It doesn't matter where an hypothesis originates; what matters is its capacity to cope with the evidence. And every new hypothesis is originally scientifically unproven, which is the point and purpose of undertaking its systematic evalution. (I would be interested in Bob Bowman's assessment of this approach. My impression is you may have forgotten about the "Star Wars" research program for destroying ICBMs and such, which might easily have spawned offspring such as directed energy weapons of the kind I am considering. 3. There is a growing sentiment that the st911 web site no longer represents the widely shared reliance on sound investigation using the scientific method, but instead favors wild ideas. Many have expressed that they no longer point people to the st911 web site. The use of the phrase, "wild ideas", sounds like what we as critics of the government's official account have been accused of. What is wrong with exploring alternative hypotheses? Are we supposed to be afraid of ideas? This complaint appears to be one that would purify the site of discussion of any idea on which there is complete or at least general agreement AS CONCLUSIONS when this site is intended to stimulate interest and reflect the current state of controversy about a whole host of issues. Personally, I don't have any doubt about the issues that are more or less settled and those that are not when I review our web site. It not only displays what we have found but invites consideration of issues that remain unsettled and, in some cases, are controversial and complex. But that is the nature of the beast. It is far easier to demonstrate that the official account is false than it is to figure out what actually brought the towers down. It would be a blunder to cut off promising lines of inquiry because some members may have a feeble grasp of science and the stages of inquiry. Coming up with new ideas is the most difficult part. If these hypotheses are wrong, that will become clear with more inquiry. I hope you will consider these serious concerns, Jim. It's time to make a few changes, I believe we can do these in a way that will be both amicable and best for the pursuit of 9/11 truth. I have already responded to the proposals you have advanced above. Please post the three emails I have sent on the forum. Were I to visit, I would inevitably be drawn into extended discussions and debate, which would probably adversely affect my attitude toward some members--one, in particular--I would rather hold in esteem. So if you could kindly post them for me, I would be in your debt. Steve PS -- you wrote that you invited Judy Wood to be on the "debate" panel -- but on which side? This is an embarrassing and offensive ad hominem. In my opinion, her contributions to the study of 9/11, including her time studies and her "trees turning to sawdust" metaphor, have been as important as your own and, if I may say so, might even prove to be of more enduring value by focusing on the totality of the destruction and massive energy deficit. I have experienced others stabbing me in the back before and I do not buy all her criticism of you, but this is unacceptable coming from you.

James H. Fetzer....

 Is it over yet?  No.....

https://web.archive.org/web/20090722115216/http://www.scholarsfor911truth.org/ModestProposalReply.html

A Reply to Jim's Modest Proposal

by Steven E. Jones

22 November 2006
From the membership of the Scholars group, via our Forum and emails,
has come a vigorous discussion recently of what to do about the
web-stie which purportedly represents the Scholars. A member (W.E.)
put a straw poll on the Forum, with results of the straw-poll vote
shown:
Republic: 5-person committee of elected members serves as a board (1-year stints) and does the sorting/approval work for st911 web site. 60.0%
Democracy: all st911 members can vote via this Forum regarding articles etc. for the st911 web site. 32.0%
Retain the status quo, with Jim Fetzer in sole control of the web site. 8.0%
NOTE: Options "REPUBLIC" and "DEMOCRACY" would also include ending the co-chair system.
This is a great group of people, many of whom clearly want a greater say in the directions of the web site and the Scholars group. And they have every right to do so - they have stood up for the cooperative pursuit of truth. My experience is that nearly all prefer to see civility in the pursuit of common goals. I will be glad to continue to associate with this group. Jim has suggested another option in which HE would create or appoint a committee to advise him on the content of the web site.
The options, including Jim's latest suggestion, will soon be sent out via email to the entire membership (to the best of the membership secretaries' abilities) for a vote of the members.
That is what I wanted to add. But after reading Jim's latest in reply to me, I need to note the following lest I appear to acquiesce in further nonsense... Jim wrote: "Judy had advised me that the 30 second calculation for a grand piano had been done by a friend and that she had yet to verify it. According to the new calculation, the piano would have hit the ground in 11 seconds. I dare say that confirms my basic point, since the 9/11 Commission and NIST have assigned times of destruction for the towers of 10 seconds and 9 seconds apiece. So even though the calculation was flawed, the key point remains. The Twin Towers were demolished in less time than free fall through air! That is simply astonishing..."
What is astonishing is the proportion of errors that can be made in so few words -- I just want to emphasize that Jim's latest AGAIN shows the need for an independent elected committee to assure that ill-supported arguments are not presented on OUR web site. My detailed reply to the errors in Jim's statement will be posted on our Forum (where such matters should be discussed!), and Jim is welcomed to join in that discussion.

No one who did not know this was a con could read much less follow all that rubbish without being put to sleep.  That's the point: to obscure the nature of the group(a scammy front) by "splitting".  A clue comes next with the most crazy making "paper": after  all this back and forth, Fetzer wants to hold hands for the "cause".  This is manipulating people's(especially leftists) value of tolerance and sense of fair play.  It's also a handy historical note on when "Scholars" was founded:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090722115237/http://www.scholarsfor911truth.org/ScholarsAnniversary.html

SCHOLARS: ON ITS FIRST ANNIVERSARY

Incorporating the Society as a Non-Profit Corporation by James H. Fetzer 25 November 2006


Friends and Colleagues:
As we approach the first anniversary of the founding of Scholars for 9/11 Truth on 15 December 2005, it may be appropriate to share some reflections on what we have accomplished and where we go from here. Scholars was conceived as a non-partisan society representing a loose affiliation between students, experts, and scholars dedicated to exposing falsehoods and revealing the truth about the events of 9/11, while "letting the chips fall where they may". Let’s start at the beginning.
According to The 9/11 Commission Report, 19 Islamic fundamentalists hijacked four commercial airliners, outfoxed the most sophisticated air defense systems in the world, and perpetrated these dastardly acts under the control of a man in a cave in Afghanistan. There is an abundance of evidence, however, archived on our web site at st911.org, that calls into question every major aspect of the government’s official account.
We have established beyond reasonable doubt that the Twin Towers were destroyed by a novel form of controlled demolition from the top down, that WTC-7 was brought down by a classic form of controlled demolition from the bottom up, and that, whatever may have hit the Pentagon, multiple lines of argument support the conclusion that it was not a Boeing 757. What happened in Shanksville remains a mystery shrouded in mist.
We have also had considerable success in communicating our discoveries to the American public. The most recent New York Times/CBS poll, for example, shows that 53% of the public is skeptical about and 28% strongly rejects the "official account" of 9/11. Only 16% accept what we have been told by our own government about those events. That this is the case even though the government refuses to discuss the case and much of the media follows its lead is all the more significant and striking.
Many of the findings that we have publicized were originally established by independent researchers who were troubled by the events of 9/11. Building upon the work of those who have gone before, we have benefited from the very idea of a SOCIETY OF SCHOLARS who share the belief that the government has been deceiving us. We have created an influential web site, an active discussion forum, and a Journal for 9/11 Studies! These are contributions that have accelerated access to information about these historic events.
Attacks on Scholars
Indeed, Scholars has fared better than some scholars in academic settings. From William Woodward in New Hampshire to Judy Wood in South Carolina, Kevin Barrett in Wisconsin and even Steve Jones in Utah, politicians have been unable to resist scoring cheap points by attacking "loony" intellectuals who hold views at variance with those of the government. Their attacks, however, are not merely misguided but based upon massive ignorance.
Even according to President George W. Bush, 9/11 was "the pivotal event" of this century. Colleges and universities are the institutions that study significant historical events. It is therefore entirely appropriate that faculty and students should study the events of 9/11. Moreover, since it only takes collaboration between two or more persons to commit an illegal act to qualify as a "conspiracy", the official account is itself a conspiracy theory! You cannot study "the pivotal event" of the 21^st Century without studying conspiracies.
When we who are critics of the government’s version of those events are assailed as "conspiracy theorists", we know that something is wrong. Since the government itself has advanced a conspiracy theory that is not only false but provably false and, in some of its most important aspects, not even physically possible, it is not difficult to identify the most "outrageous" of conspiracy theories: it is the account endorsed by this administration! But its apologists are not constrained by concern for logic, evidence, or truth.
Moreover, their rhetorical advantages are strengthened by widespread misunderstanding of the principles of scientific reasoning. "Occam’s Razor" is often invoked in support of the simplest theory, which, in this case, is alleged to be the official government account. But the simplest theory is preferable only when it can account for all the available relevant evidence. Picking and choosing--selecting evidence that supports your theory and eliminating the rest–violates basic requirements of scientific reasoning.
Properly defining the problem to be explained–the puzzling phenomenon that triggers off scientific inquiry–can pose a non-trivial task. During a recent interview with Judy Wood, who has degrees in civil engineering, engineering mechanics and materials engineering science–I was fascinated to confront the full dimensions of the problem we have to explain, which goes far beyond the Twin Towers and WTC-7 but also includes WTC-3, WTC-4, WTC-5, and WTC-6, not to mention the lack of serious damage to the "bathtub".
Science and Politics
Because Judy’s credentials are among the most imposing of any student of 9/11. I was also fascinated by her suggestion that some sort of high-tech weapons of the directed energy kind may have been involved in bringing about the massive, complete, and total devastation of the World Trade Center. Although she did not commit herself to that specific hypothesis, she also suggested that directed energy could have come from above, such as from a space-based satellite using a mirror to direct energy. That has led to a veritable propaganda blitz attacking us both for considering "space beam" weaponry!
The hardest part of scientific research–which includes stages of puzzlement, speculation, adaptation, and explanation–is coming up with the full range of possible explanations for the phenomena you want to explain. Otherwise, the process of adaptation–calculating the probabilities of the effects given different conjectures about their possible causes and comparing them–can afford misleading comparisons and yield a false outcome precisely because the true hypothesis was not given appropriate consideration.
Even though space-based weapons have a history of actual experimental success dating at least from 1991–as Judy Wood, who specializes in optics in relation to mechanics, has observed--several kinds of fallacies can be combined to create enormous confusion in the mind of the public. Selective use of evidence ("special pleading") and personal attacks ("ad hominem") are especially effective against a background of widely held beliefs that may in fact be false ("popular sentiments"). The US has long been pursuing "full spectrum dominance" of air, land, sea, and space and aggressively developing high-tech weapons.
Of course, it doesn’t help if I commit a mistake by using the wrong number for the time of free fall in an example intended to demonstrate that the towers cannot possibly have come down in free fall! Although I have often made this point by observing that a grand piano would take at least 12-13 seconds to reach the ground, a time of 30 seconds turns out to be a special case. (In fact, Steve has made a big deal out of this and then defended his criticism with a mistaken calculation!) My recent use of that figure has left me vulnerable to attacks over a minor point, while the major point–that the towers could not possibly have COLLAPSED in the official times of 10 and 9 seconds, respectively–was simply overwhelmed!
The potential to shift focus from devastating criticisms to comparative trivialities places apologists at a considerable rhetorical advantage. It is easy to lie and it can be difficult–even very difficult!–to explain why a deliberate falsehood is untrue. That is why our all too infrequent appearances on "Hannity & Colmes", "Scarborough Country", and even "The Factor" with Bill O’Reilly have become occasions for rejoicing or cringing. We run risks by appearing on some of these programs, but those risks are unavoidable if we are to reach out to their audience, which is an important segment of the American community.
The Future of the Society
The mix of science and politics is fraught with hazards. Those of us who are strongest in scientific research may not be adept at handling the media. Those who are best able to present our case in clear and convincing language may sometimes commit mistakes. My opinion is that we are succeeding in spite of difficulties like these, but it has led some of the society’s supporters to question whether new hypotheses, which many consider to be "far out", should receive acknowledgement on the home page of st911.org and whether a more formal arrangement of the society might function better.
Scholars is an unusual society in that, while it has members–currently, some 400 who fall into four different categories–it is not a "membership society" in the sense of being a society that is run by its members. Indeed, that would be completely inappropriate, not least because science is not a matter of popularity. The society must be controlled by those who are best positioned to assess the state of current research and present it to the public. But a dictatorship may be no less undesirable than a democracy!
After considerable reflection, I believe that turning Scholars into a non-profit corporation and relinquishing control of the society to a board of directors who would determine the management of the web site, the moderation of our forum, and the editing of our journal, provides the best solution and greatest promise for our future. The board of directors, in my view, should include a wide range of perspectives about possible causes of destruction at the WTC, encompassing perspectives as diverse as those of David Ray Griffin, Morgan Reynolds, Rick Siegel, and Judy Wood.
I believe that the board of directors should have from nine to eleven members and that their decisions should require 2/3 majority votes. They should have the responsibility to appoint a manger for the web site, moderators for our member’s forum, and editors for The Journal of 9/11 Studies. They should also have the ability to add or remove members from the board itself. The initial appointments to the board are therefore extremely important, and I welcome suggestions and recommendations about its composition via email, the society’s forum, and 911blogger.com, where discussion of these issues will take place.
When I founded Scholars for 9/11 Truth, I asked Dr. Steven E. Jones to join me as Co-Chair. Steve has recently expressed disenchantment with the co-chair arrangement and, in the new non-profit corporation, the positions of co-chairs will no longer exist. Steve and I will both belong to the initial Board of Directors, however, and continue to influence the future course of the society. If the directors should decide that I should continue to manage the web site or Steve co-edit the journal, I am sure we would both comply.
Co-Chair Conflicts
As many of you are aware, Steve Jones and I have recently had some minor and not-so-minor disputes and disagreements. Disagreements occur in any high-profile organization, and Scholars is no different from others in this respect. However, the stakes are much higher in this case. Our research, our science, and our publications have the potential to expose the truth about 9/11 events, to bring the prime 9/11 perpetrators to justice, and to help to remedy the wrong turns that our country and the world have taken since 9/11.
Petty disputes and disagreements have no place in Scholars. A more formal -- but still minimalist — set of procedures for a governing structure, membership criteria, scholarly publication, and public website is indispensable to accomplish our shared goals and objectives. Among the tensions between us have been differences over the use of the forum and the web site and the range of perspectives to be represented there.
When Steve was nudged into "early retirement", I invited him to supervise our members’ forum as well as continue to co-edit the society’s journal, which he co-founded with Judy Wood as co-editor. I had become aware of his strenuous objections to having "star wars beam weapons" hypotheses mentioned on our home page. (Judy’s use of "star wars" was a subtle intimation of its probable origins, but Steve has used "space beams" in order to denigrate it!) But I was acutely distressed when members of the forum were cut off from access to the forum abruptly and without notice.
It is the case that policies are in place for conduct on the forum, which members have been known to violate. In this case, however, the members who were banned–one of whom , Rick Siegel of "9/11 Eyewitness" and "9/11 Eyewitness — Hoboken", was in the middle of posting criticism of Steve when he was cut off in mid-post–appeared to me to have been denied access on political grounds, which is completely unacceptable.
For this reason and other actions and communications between us, I have temporarily removed Steve Jones as Co-Chair of Scholars for 9/11 Truth. I took this action because I had concluded that Steve’s conduct was undermining the objectives of the society, as the policies of the society state:

"Membership is a privilege, not a right. Should either of the chairs conclude that an individual's participation tends to undermine the objectives of the society, that person's membership may be suspended and she may no longer access the forum or be identified with Scholars of 9/11 Truth."

The fact that I could do such a thing as founder of Scholars, however, no doubt qualifies as another reason for the need for the society to incorporate and attain more formal structure. I took this step to correct what I perceived to be improper conduct in the management of the forum, but others may view what I have done as improper conduct in the management of the society! Having a board of directors to supervise both should resolve such conflicts.
Suppression of Research
The "other actions and communications" may be even more important but also more subtle than terminating access to the forum in these cases. As anyone who has read the "Open Letters" exchange posted on st911.org will be aware, it is my position that a wide range of alternative approaches toward understanding what happened on 9/11 deserve serious consideration. But I have not always implemented that policy consistently. Steve has attained enormous popularity among students of 9/11 for his studies of the destruction of the Twin Towers and how they may have been taken out. Somewhat surprisingly, his research was accepted almost immediately, without question or searching evaluation.
While I have been keenly interested in Steve’s research, I have become convinced that the complete and comprehensive devastation of the World Trade Center–including WTC-3, WTC-4, WTC-5, and WTC-6 as well as WTC-7–is very unlikely to be explainable on the basis of his hypothesis. It may well be that thermate was used to destroy some of these buildings. In fact, Judy Wood has suggested that the last 20 floors of the towers may have been demolished using thermate and other explosives. Alternative hypotheses deserve to be explored, not condemned. Many advances in science first encountered ridicule!
We need to remember that the 9/11 truth movement itself has had to cope with mountains of ridicule. We should not abandon our commitment to the principles of science and to the primacy of logic and evidence in the appraisal of possible explanations. I have therefore been dismayed at the dawning realization that even I may have been an accomplice to the constraint of research in several cases by removing at least two articles that were critical of Steve’s work, which I now believe deserve more objective scientific consideration, namely:
Aluminum Glows
1 Mar 2006, janedoe0911, Judy Wood and Michael Zebuhr
http://janedoe0911.tripod.com/Aluminum_Glows.html

Why Indeed did the WTC Buildings Disintegrate?
18 Sep 2006, janedoe0911, Morgan Reynolds and Judy Wood, v. 1.02
http://janedoe0911.tripod.com/why_indeed.html

Because these studies are critical of his research and because I have sought to keep the level of tension within the society relatively minimal, I am quite certain that I allowed myself to be influenced by pressure from supporters and friends of Steve–and they are legion–to have them taken down. Even if a desire to reduce tensions over differences has led me to constrain debate in the past, in the case of Judy’s directed-energy hypothesis, I do not want this to deteriorate into the suppression of evidence and the obstruction of research. I am therefore drawing a line where I believe it has to be drawn. I am only disappointed that the importance of unfettered discussion has not always been foremost in my mind.
Morgan and Judy, I am sure, believed that they were not free to pursue their research on 9/11 without having to compromise for political purposes. I am now convinced that they were right and that, as the manager of st911.org, I should have found a way to make their research available to the public, perhaps by creating a new section of the site devoted to theories and to criticism of theories about how the towers were destroyed. I even believe that Steve would agree with that; indeed, it seems to me that he may even have suggested as much. Sometimes even the best advice falls on deaf ears. I would like to think that the proposals I have offered for reorganizing and revitalizing Scholars will matter here, too!
The Future of Scholars
Steve and I may or may not reconcile our differences. If we do not, then Steve may want to form his own organization. If Steve were to pursue that option, then it could be a good thing in fostering competition in the search for truth. But there really is--or can be--unity in our diversity. A good, healthy, scholarly competition for 9/11 truth MIGHT serve us better than for us to try to manage our differences within one organization. Competition for the truth is the American way! I think we are stronger working together, but that is an option.
In the interim, I would ask that Alex Floum, a founding member, assign and transfer all rights in st911.org and our journal’s website as intellectual properties to Scholars for 9/11 Truth, with the understanding that Scholars for 9/11 Truth is going to incorporate as a non-profit organization. Alex has been exceedingly generous in securing domain names for Scholars at my and Steve’s direction and hosting our web sites. I am overwhelmingly in his debt for doing so. At this juncture, a more formal structure suggests that different arrangements would be more appropriate.
My intention is that, once Scholars has been established as a non-profit organization, I will take steps to secure it 501(c)(3) status, which will enable supporters to have tax-exempt status for contributions in support of the society. We have been doing what we have been doing with no budget, no funding, and no source of income. In the past, I considered that a strength of Scholars, but I readily concede that we need to be able to finance research, sponsor lectures, arrange conferences, and publicize our discoveries.
Like many of you, I have suggestions for strengthening the society, including having more "hard-science" types added to the journal’s editorial board, publishing articles on a wider-range of possible explanations for the phenomena we are trying to explain, shifting the discussion of theories about how it was actually done–including thermite/thermate, the use of mini-nukes, and high-tech, directed energy weapons–from the home page to a new section of the web site devoted to "theories", and having the home page emphasize proofs that the official account cannot possibly be true. Others, no doubt, will have more.
Regardless of what Steve Jones and I choose to do regarding Scholars for 9/11 Truth, I would hope and expect that Steve will join me in Washington, D.C., on 10 January 2007 to speak at The National Press Club. The controversy surrounding our recent disputes will almost certainly increase media attention for this event. Although there may be some negative fall out from these differences, Steve and I agree on overwhelmingly more about 9/11 than we disagree. Please join us in reorganizing and revitalizing Scholars.
James H. Fetzer
Founder
Scholars for 9/11 Truth

Interesting Fetzer claims himself as the founder.  Not co-founder.

After this there was much useful drama over the Scholars split.  This can convince people there's a great "to-do" afoot.  People take the conflict at face value, assume the difference of opinion is real.

There is no difference of opinion.  It's imperative people looking at the scam understand the theories are irrelevant. The only thing they care about are keeping/controlling members. They don't care how many "split" groups they need to do it.    Crazy or not, theories are just a tool to scam and draw people into the 9/11 groups.  That's why they change and morph, that's why alliances are constantly shifting:  it's a control tactic to keep up the front for their "sheeple".(I do love stealing that from David Icke.  Serves them all right.)  As the "sheeple" change, so do the theories and alliances.

For instance, one individual known as "Casseia" made quite a nuisance of herself at DailyKos trolling for "truth" with the Scholar's founder Jumbo Fetzer.   She was eventually banned.

This is an article by "Vesa", a Finnish "truther" who I remember best as trying to get me to unblock "casseia's" email after it was clear she was a liar.

[As soon as this is read, they'll be a demand to know which lies, which is another tactic for trying to manipulate information out of people. These should suffice as a sample:

-claiming to think Craig"Killtown" Lazo being in the same city and state she was "strange"....when she knew he was in Portland from his brief time at wtcdemolition(the website she moderates) before he was banned.
-claiming to not know Jennifer Wynhausen went to the DRG event she organized when she was emailed Jennifer's confirmation.
-making statements online pretending to be ignorant of the activities of a couple of individuals...who were current members of a yahoo group she owned.
-working an ongoing confidence scam with a man pretending to be unmarried.  Casseia would dogsit for his wife and is still Facebook friends with her, even after a supposed online "falling out". "Casseia" is an old hand at the "split" con.]

Back to Vesa...

I'm agnostic on whether Vesa is a scammer or dupe.   Either could be true.  What's relevant is Casseia's posts on the thread and users responses:

 'Civil Disobedience' at Daily Kos? (10+ / 1-)

I had heard on the Mike Malloy show that Daily Kos was pretty hardcore about not allowing people to post alternative viewpoints on this topic, but what's interesting is that the polls that go along with Vesa's diaries always reflect a large population of dissenters, who evidently feel silenced by the threat of being banned.
I realize that Kos is privately owned bandwidth, but in this case, I don't think property rights trump freedom of speech.
I also applaud Vesa for taking an interest in American politics and offering a Finnish perspective.  That's what's so cool about sites like Daily Kos -- that you can have a conversation with someone in Finland, from your sofa in Portland.
I was a wild child protester in the eighties, and participated in a number of sit-ins, all with the aim of bringing attention to subjects that simply may not be ignored by moral human beings.  Dissatisfaction with the official account of 9/11 events has become such a subject.  If Vesa wants to sit down at Daily Kos and defy the policy of silence because it is simply immoral not to do so, then I feel like taking a seat next to him/her.

by casseia on Wed Jul 05, 2006 at 12:54:12 PM PDT

 Bullshit (13+ / 0-)

There is a big difference between not believing everything in the official account (which the polls measure) and believe the conspiracy crap.  If anything, serial liars like Vesa actually help Bush by discrediting the left and impeding investigation in to Bush's real crimes.  

Tämä Mia Dolan on ihan hirveä (That Mia Dolan is just awful)

by Mia Dolan on Wed Jul 05, 2006 at 01:00:32 PM PDT

So it's not forbidden... (3+ / 0-)

to talk about not believing the official account?  Just to talk about why you disbelieve it?

by casseia on Wed Jul 05, 2006 at 01:19:44 PM PDT

Pretty Much (7+ / 0-)

The problem with Vesa and the other "truth" advocates is that the sources they cite are even less reliable than anything the Bush administration puts out there.  The rule used to be "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" but that was to subtle for the dimwits who post the 9-11 conspiracy diaries.  So they just got banned altogether.
If there was some new credible evidence, I don't think anyone would mind discussing it here.  But Vesa has posted garbage theories that have been discussed and debunked literally hundreds, if not thousands, of times on DailyKos.

Tämä Mia Dolan on ihan hirveä (That Mia Dolan is just awful)

by Mia Dolan on Wed Jul 05, 2006 at 01:45:48 PM PDT

So, I missed it (2+ / 0-)

How did you all debunk FBI translator Sibel Edmonds?
"I can tell that once, and if, and when this issue gets to be, under real terms, investigated, you will be seeing certain people that we know from this country standing trial; and they will be prosecuted criminally."
and
"There is direct evidence involving no more than ten American names that I recognized."
Her website
Interview

by casseia on Wed Jul 05, 2006 at 04:53:00 PM PDT

Sibel Edmonds (2+ / 1-)

I don't want to mock Sibel Edmonds, because I think whistleblowers should be taken seriously, and I do want to hear what she has to say.  But that's pretty big talk for a low level translator.  If you really had some good shit, you'd figure out a way to get it out.  The fact that the Democrats aren't too interested in helping her out says a lot about her credibility.
The thing I don't get is how the Sibel Edmonds secret information someone becomes evidence of fake planes and controlled demolition.   I accept that Bush is a liar and a criminal, and is covering things up re: 9-11.  But its a huge leap to get to controlled demolition and fake planes.
I see that you are recommending comments by Monsieur le Prof, who is Jim Fetzer, the head of "Scholars" for 9-11 "truth."  Here is a link to the website of Eric Hufshmid, one of the members of the "scholars"
http://www.erichufschmid.net/...
Read down to the parts about the gas chambers and then see if you want to be sticking up for these guys.

Tämä Mia Dolan on ihan hirveä (That Mia Dolan is just awful or This Mia Dolan is made of Moose )

by Mia Dolan on Wed Jul 05, 2006 at 07:01:48 PM PDT

This can be seen http://www.dailykos.com/comments/224787/6562716#c221?mode=alone;showrate=1#c221

 Patience is a virtue (2+ / 1-)

Recommended by:

nhwriter, casseia

Hidden by:

Sleeps in Trees

So then by that logic, we can no longer talk about Clinton, or Pelosi, or Cunningham, or Iraq. There have been multiple diaries on those subjects too.
This diary was about the article published in a major Norwiegan newspaper outlining the (very extensive) evidence that 9-11 was an inside job.
Given the gravity of the subject, it is apparent why you are uncomfortable with it.
If you were truly sick of it, you wouldn't be wasting your time commenting here.

by Monsieur le Prof on Wed Jul 05, 2006 at 04:00:32 PM PDT

Soon after being called out by Mia, "Casseia" was telling 911blogger users she was "done" with the site and hopes Fetzer, er, the Monsieur can carry on without her:

 http://911blogger.com/news/2006-07-06/i-am-angry-susan-fassanella#comment-47255

 Hey Vesa,I hope that

Hey Vesa,
I hope that perhaps Monsieur le Prof can add those other things -- I'm just DONE with Daily Kos. I think it speaks tremendously poorly for them that they allow the kind of discourse that shows up following your diaries. It's just utterlessly without merit and about as civilized as "primates screeching" as someone said over at that Wizbang blog on Kevin Barrett.
I was also amused that some dude who had already tried to intimidate me by indicating that he had seen my "secret info" about my up-rating posts and so forth and was encouraging others to troll-rate me, assumed I am a man. Try Queen Bitch, buddy.
Have a nice summer holiday!

casseia (not verified) on Thu, 07/06/2006 - 4:09pm.

She was actually banned, as her profile, with a skull and crossbones, indicates:
 http://www.dailykos.com/user/uid:92963

 And users might have had something to do with it:

Any TU's have a troll rating left for Casseia? (3+ / 0-)

He has been playing concern troll throughout this CT diary. He has recommended this conspiracy theory diary. He has been recommending CT comments. He has been repeatedly uprating troll rated comments by TU's and thus wasting 0's that might be needed elsewhere. He has blatantly violated the site rules. All in all a pretty irresponsible new member who should be troll rated and banned from the site. Has anyone contacted the admins about this person yet?

"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." ~ Diderot

by Bouwerie Boy on Wed Jul 05, 2006 at 07:42:09 PM PDT

[ Parent ]

•  Yep I gave one (2+ / 0-)

  Unfortunately though, due to Monsieur le Asshat, it will take 3 more TR's to do anything.
  I'm simply posting this to any comment continuing this bullshit.  Is there really anything else that needs to be added to that comment?  I mean, doesnt it say it all?  God.

  te amo, aja

  ..::::THE IMPEACH PROJECT::::..
  

  by tlh lib on Wed Jul 05, 2006 at 10:31:21 PM PDT

It's also probably why, when she was banned by Jon Gold from his site in 2007, she claimed it was the first time she'd been banned anywhere: she wanted to downplay that she'd ever supported Fetzer.  Because by late 2006 and early 2007 she claimed vocally on her 9/11 group list she would have nothing to do with an event if Fetzer was involved.

"Casseia" was also probably a Fetzer source for a lot of information that she shouldn't have been trading in.  But then, being an amoral con artist, what can you expect?

We'll end this post with a roll call of the Scholars members, that can be read here:
 http://jennyquarx.blogspot.com/2014/01/scholars-for-911-truth-2006-members-list.html

Anyone who has left the organization and the "truth" movement and all related scams(teabaggers, birthers, hookers, racist,  militia weirdness, etc,) can email to have their name removed.