Al-Qaida to Ahmadinejad: enough with the 9/11 conspiracy theories

From the Guardian:

Al--Qaida has sent a message to the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, asking him to stop spreading conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks.

Iranian media on Wednesday reported quotes from what appears to be an article published in the latest issue of the al-Qaida English language magazine, Inspire, which described Ahmadinejad's remarks over the 11 September attacks as "ridiculous".

In his UN general assembly speech last week, Ahmadinejad cast doubt over the official version of the 2001 attacks.

"The Iranian government has professed on the tongue of its president Ahmadinejad that it does not believe that al-Qaida was behind 9/11 but rather, the US government," the article said, according to Iranian media. "So we may ask the question: why would Iran ascribe to such a ridiculous belief that stands in the face of all logic and evidence?"

Ahmadinejad said in New York that the "mysterious September 11 incident" had been used as a pretext to attack Afghanistan and Iraq. He had also previously expressed scepticism at the US version of events.

"By using their imperialistic media network which is under the influence of colonialism, they threaten anyone who questions the Holocaust and the September 11 event with sanctions and military actions," said Ahmadinejad.
The al-Qaida article insisted it had been behind the attacks and criticised the Iranian president for discrediting the terrorist group.

"For them, al-Qaida was a competitor for the hearts and minds of the disenfranchised Muslims around the world," said the article published in the Inspire magazine. "Al-Qaida … succeeded in what Iran couldn't. Therefore it was necessary for the Iranians to discredit 9/11 and what better way to do so? Conspiracy theories."

(Source: Al-Qaida calls on Ahmadinejad to end 9/11 conspiracy theories | World news | guardian.co.uk)

Jesse Ventura pushes bizarre 9/11 secret weapon claim

Ventura backs theories of Dr. Judy Wood

It's not news that Jesse Ventura is a 9/11 truther. It comes as something of a surprise to me that he is not only a part of that lunatic fringe of people who don't believe the World Trade Center towers were destroyed by the planes that crashed into them. He now says that he believes that the towers were also not destroyed by nano-thermite, controlled demolition, nuclear weapons, or any of the other "mainstream" truther theories. He says that he believes that the towers were destroyed by a secret weapon. In an interview on the Alex Jones radio show, Ventura made this extraordinarily odd claim.

Ventura: There was something else in play there Alex. There was something in play that day, that -- I don't even know what it is, but I can equate it to being like a microwave. You know how you can take a piece of chicken and put it on a paper plate and stick it in the microwave and the chicken will burn but the paper plate won't?

Jones: Yes.

Ventura: Well, something happened that day equivalent to a microwave. And by capturing bin Laden maybe we could have found out what weapon he really has. Because I just learned there were 1400 cars that day toasted on the streets of Manhattan.

Where does he get this bizarre theory from? He tells Jones that he got it from a book Where Did the Towers Go, by Judy Wood.

YouTube - Gov. Jesse Ventura talks about Dr. Judy Wood's work on The Alex Jones Show

Check out the below-embedded video interview with Judy Wood to get a sense of what Ventura believes. (The interview starts at about 4:00 of the video.)

Wood starts off that interview by saying that she believes that the fact that others don't share her beliefs is "bizarre". She goes on to say that moon landing never happened, but "you're not supposed to question it". She then reveals her motivation in seeking an odd explanation for 9/11. She says, apparently referring to JFK assassination cosnpiracy theories, that "grassy knoll is the unofficial official story", the one you're "supposed to believe". This she equates with the standard truther theories: controlled demolition, nano-thermite, etc.  She believes that the standard conspiracy theories are products of the same disinformation campaign as the official story is.  Her fellow truthers are either part of the conspiracy or are its unwitting dupes.  That is an extremely paranoid view of an extremely paranoid movement.

Wood goes on in the interview to claim that the falling towers "emitted no sound". Her proof is that she has seen videos where the sound is not audible. Additional proof? She has seen video where the plane crashes into the tower, and people below take a second or two to react. As should be readily obvious, the fact that they react at all indicates that they heard a noise. Moreover, Dr. Wood seems unaware that the speed of light exceeds the speed of sound. Of course it took a second or two for the sound to startle people who weren't looking up. That's when the sound reached ground level. This is the level of scientific evidence Dr. Judy Wood brings to the 9/11 truth party.

Check out her lecture to a 2006 truther conference below, to get a further sense of the sheer absurdity of the stuff that Ventura and Jones are pushing now.

Who on earth could believe this stuff? I mean other than Jesse Ventura and Alex Jones? How about the people at the Ron Paul Forums? (Read here.)  They say that "Dr. Judy Wood's book is finally here!" and "it's a book of vast importance".

I wish I could say that this is merely the work of harmless cranks, but considering how many credulous souls actually believe this stuff, I really don't think these cranks are all that harmless.

No accounting for taste: Glenn Greenwald supports conspiracy monger Alan Hart (...or does he? See comments.)

What does it mean to "like" someone on Facebook?  Salon Columnist Glenn Greenwald says that he is a fan of anti-Israel conspiracy theorist Alan Hart.  I wonder why.  (See screenshot from Hart's website above.  Hart's Facebook widget featuring Greenwald's image is located on the right side.)

Does Greenwald share Alan Hart's belief that, on 9/11, Israeli agents controlled the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center via remote control devices hidden in cell phones?  Does he agree with Hart that Israel has stolen nuclear weapons from a U.S. military base and intends to use them to destroy an American city? (Read my column documenting Hart's conspiracy theories here.)  In May, Hart not only made those bizarre assertions, he also claimed in radio/podcast interviews with conspiracy mongers Kevin Barrett and Alex Jones that he had proof that the World Trade towers were destroyed by controlled demolition, i.e. that explosives had been planted within the buildings and were detonated after the plane crashes to bring down the towers. (This implausible belief is an essential part of truther conspiracy theories.) Hart said in those interviews that his proof for this controlled demolition conspiracy, which he claimed came from a source within "one of the world's leading engineering firms", resided on a laptop to which he didn't then have access because he was away from home on a U.S. speaking tour. That was more than four months ago, and Hart has still not come forward with the computer file that, if it actually existed, would undoubtedly provide him with the biggest scoop of his career as a journalist.  Maybe Hart just hasn't gotten around to looking for it.

I don't believe that Greenwald shares Alan Hart's belief in these bizarre theories, but his "liking" Hart does raise the question: how crazy does an anti-Zionist have to be to be too crazy for Glenn to like?

(The Facebook widget featuring Greenwald's image was found here: Obama speaks at the UN… Goodbye to peace - Alan Hart)

Iranian regime marks 9/11 by promoting "9/11 truth" conspiracy theories

In honor of the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, PressTV, Iran's primary English language propaganda outlet, has published articles stating that "9/11 truth" conspiracy theories have exonerated Islamist terrorists for the attacks. These conspiracy theories, which allege that the World Trade Center was destroyed not by plane crashes but by explosives planted in the buildings by conspirators, were presented in a New York City press conference timed to coincide with 9/11 commemorations being held there. (Read here: PressTV - 'Evidence proves 9/11 story is a lie', and here, in an article concerning President Obama's 9/11 commemorative speech. 1/3 of that article is devoted to spurious claims by a group called Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth.) Here's a portion of the former article, which PressTV claims to prove the official story of 9/11 to be a lie:

A day before the ninth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth say evidence regarding the destruction of the World Trade Center towers has emerged that show pre-set explosives were used in the demolition of the buildings.

Gregg Roberts, who is a member of the non-profit organization disputing the results of official investigations into the September 11 attacks, says the “official story is a lie, it is a fraud.”

According to experts, the Twin Towers suffered total destruction within 10-14 seconds in near free fall accelerations which can only occur as a result of pre-set demolition explosives.

“There had to be explosives, there is no other way for the building to come symmetrically straight down... like a tree if you cut into the tree it falls to the side, that you cut,” said Steven Dusterwald, another member of the truth seeking organization.
The group also asserts that molten metal was found after the 9/11 inquiry.

“Jet fuel and office fires cannot melt iron or steel. They don't even get half as hot as that and so something else was there, very energetic material that had to be placed throughout the buildings,” Roberts said.

“Once we take the blinders off, we can see. There are very few people in America who have taken the blinders off. So we are assisting people by showing them the evidence,” said founder of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth Richard Gage.

“The 600 architects I represent are most concerned about the freefall collapse of [World Trade Center] Building 7, the third skyscraper [that was] not hit by an airplane to fall on the afternoon of 9/11...the whole building is destroyed in 6.5 seconds,” the American Free Press quoted Gage as saying.

World Trade Center 7 reportedly collapsed about eight hours after the main World Trade Center towers fell.

The new evidence makes void the official story line that 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners and crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City.

The PressTV article fails to specify the "new evidence (that) makes void the official story" of 9/11, only citing the assertions made at this press conference concerning the impossibility for the towers to have collapsed in a downward direction unless they were helped along by planted explosives. I know from their organization's title that these people are architects and engineers, so I can't explain their confusion on this subject. In my experience, objects tend to fall in a downward direction, so the trajectory of the falling towers presents no mystery. Of course, in my experience, I have never seen a massive high-rise building "fall like a tree" as they have. While the truther architects and engineers have yet to cite examples of such tree-like high-rise building collapses, they continue to assert them to be typical. It seems that they know something that everyone else doesn't.

To be clear: as a rule, 9/11 truth conspiracy theories raise easily answered questions concerning how the towers were destroyed, claim that they are unanswered by "the official story", then offer easily refuted counter-theories as to what really happened. The assertions of this truther group and the credulous report by PressTV follow precisely this pattern.

Having thus exonerated al-Qaeda for 9/11, PressTV found an authority to quote on who actually was to blame. Mike Gravel, a quirky dark-horse presidential candidate in the 2008 Democratic primaries proclaims the truth of "9/11 truth", although he is neither an architect nor an engineer. Here's how PressTV quotes him:

“If there is a responsible party,” former US Senator Mike Gravel told Press TV, “it ends with [former US President George W.] Bush and it comes down to [Former Vice President Dick] Cheney and then it comes down to the military and the various bureaucracies. No question that this kind of activity goes to the very top.”

In reaching the conclusion that 9/11 was an inside job, PressTV, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth and Mike Gravel follow the pattern they see in the collapsing buildings. They have reached that conclusion more quickly and in a straighter line than mere reliance on the evidence can explain. This logical collapse must have been helped along by bias and bad faith.

Truther Conference Backs John Birch Society Anti-U.N. Conspiracy Theories

I wrote recently about a conference of 9/11 truthers scheduled to take place in New York over the next several days. (Read here.) This conference will feature several days of rallies, meetings, speeches and TV broadcasts timed to coincide with the ninth anniversary of the attacks.  It will also feature a demonstration at the World Trade Center site which, according to the conference webpage, may be planned to disrupt the reading of names of the victims by reading additional names they claim should, but are not, being honored.  Conspiracy fabulists such as Wayne Madsen, Cynthia McKinney, Paul Craig Roberts and Jason Bermas are scheduled to speak at conference events, as are former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, George Galloway, Mark Crispin Miller, Cindy Sheehan and Ray McGovern.

I've looked at the webpage set up by the conference sponsors, a group called "We Are Change", and was shocked to see the degree to which they promote anti-U.N. conspiracy theories which originated with the John Birch Society and other far-right groups of the cold war era.  The birchers and others on the far-right promoted a belief that the Rockefeller family, in concert with a global communist conspiracy, pushed the creation of the U.N. as part of a plan to create a "one world government" which they would lead.  Based on the list of participants in the conference, I assumed that "We Are Change" is essentially of the left, but I guess that I was wrong.   Here's an example of what can be found on the conference webpage, from a video promoting the group's 2009 9/11 conference in New York:

The speaker in that video, standing in front of the U.N., starts oddly by saying "as you see behind me, that building is sitting on land donated by the international globalist David Rockefeller."  I'm not sure how I'm supposed to see that, but, moving on, he gets into the really bad craziness.  The video claims that, after the failure of the League of Nations, "the elite" deliberately started World War II as part of a conspiracy to create an organization which, he says, was intended "to centralize power into a few hands".  Pointing ominously at the U.N. building, he goes on to claim that the United Nations is a sort of den of Satanists:

"They are highly into the New Age Movement.  There's a room in the back called the Meditation Room which has a black stone altar in it.  Very occultish (sic).  The people in here highly revere people such as Benjamin Creme, Helena Blavatsky and Alice Bailey, who formerly founded (the) Lucifer Trust, which is now known as the Lucis Trust. We are here today to let the world know that we are not down with the New World Order.  We are not happy with One World Government, and we are here to say we don't want that at all." 

This strange speech is followed on the video by scenes of a crowd of angry demonstrators chanting outside the office of Larry Silverstein, the developer of the World Trade Center site, whom they implicate in the conspiracy.  There are shots of angry faces chanting "pull it, Larry, pull it," a reference to a truther belief that Silverstein not only ordered the destruction of his building via controlled demolition, but that he also revealed this inadvertently in a contemporaneous television interview.  This is followed by the chant "we are change, we are change..."

These demonstrators, whether they know it or not, are very much the children of the birchers, as are the tea partiers and Glenn Beck supporters.  These are all divergent streams of the paranoid style of American politics.


Looking down the conference webpage we have the following addition to the truther group's mission statement:

This event will also focus on many issues including corporate-controlled Media, the private banking cartel, the military industrial complex, Climate Change/Gate, Big Pharma and the unwelcomed (sic) influx of GMO foods.

Which of these things is not like the other?  Am I wrong to read in that otherwise standard-issue conspiracy theory litany that We Are Change are climate change deniers?  (They may be change, but they are apparently not climate change.)

There's a lot more at the webpage.  Check it out here: 2010 - Our Lives After 9/11.  I wonder whether all the participants in this conference understand what it is and who their associates in this movement really are.

Truthers to mark 9/11 with NYC rallies, conspiracy theory conferences

New York 9/11 Memorial "9/11 Truth" Conference to Highlight Conspiracy Theories

Both anti-mosque fanatics and 9/11 conspiracy theory fanatics are targeting NYC for major rallies around 9/11. Nine years after the attacks there's been a shift in thinking about them. The city that was the main target of the attacks is now fair game for those who stand to gain politically from exploiting them.

It's bad enough that Pamela Geller is planning an anti-Muslim rally to commemorate and/or desecrate 9/11 in New York City this year. (Geller is campaigning to make Lower Manhattan a First Amendment-free zone.)  Now New York will also be subjected to a series of 9/11 truth conspiracy theory meetings and rallies to mark and/or mar the tragic anniversary, featuring a number of speakers associated with extreme anti-American and anti-Israel views verging on the paranoid. (Read here.) Under the aegis of a 9/11 truth group called WE ARE CHANGE, the scheduled speakers include a number of potentially offensive participants. Here's a partial list, highlighting some problematic participants:

• Jonathan Elinoff
• Cynthia McKinney 
• Wayne Madsen 
• Mike Gravel 
• George Galloway 
• Paul Craig Roberts 

Jonathan Elinoff is a conspiracy theorist who blogs with the makers of the most most popular truther video, Loose Change.  In 2009, Elinoff made his own video called In the Shadows, the first of an intended series called Core of Corruption.  He has devoted his career to promoting the idea that a small army of Israeli intelligence officers pretending to be art students infiltrated the United States and carried out the 9/11 attacks.  An example of his writing on this can be read here:  Israeli Art Students Had WTC Construction Passes.  Here's the trailer for his video:




Cynthia McKinney has in recent years gone from being a U.S. Congresswoman and Green Party presidential candidate, to devoting herself to campaigning against Israel and promoting absurd conspiracy theories, sometimes making common cause with the racist far-right to do so.  (Read here and here and here.)  She has, in recent years, argued that the United States government is completely under the control of "Zionist agents", and that it deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen.  She has also endorsed the conspiracy theories of Matthias Chang who claims that a conspiracy of Zionist "shadow money-lenders" is destabilizing the world both via false flags attacks and economic crashes in order to take it over.

Wayne Madsen is an internet journalist and conspiracy fabulist who runs a website called the Wayne Madsen Report, where he promotes conspiracy theories blaming Israel, "neo-cons" and "Zionists" for 9/11.  Read here for examples.  He somehow connects his Mossad 9/11 conspiracy to everything from Israelis working at shopping mall kiosks (read here) to alleged Pakistani intelligence involvement in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto (read here) to the influence of "Jewish mobsters"  (read here).  Madsen routinely writes columns without any indication of sources, making outlandish and unsupportable claims without any provenance, such as that he made in a 2009 column alleging that Israel is secretly colonizing Iraq (read here and here).  The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan reported that Madsen's anti-Israel columns were translated into Arabic and published in Iraq and other Arab countries, where they actually had their desired effect (read here.)  Those who fail to take the lunatic fringe seriously should take note of this dangerous real world impact of throwing rumors into an already smoldering conflict.  On a more comical note, one of Madsen's most recent conspiracy theories claims that Obama is literally a "CIA creation".  Madsen writes that, not only was Obama groomed for the presidency by the CIA, but that this grooming started with his actual conception, which Madsen comically claims was a CIA covert op.  (Read here and view video below.)  (Warning: if you're not used to reading this sort of stuff, prepare yourself to laugh hysterically.)




Madsen, like Lyndon LaRouche, also implicates financier George Soros in a sort of unified field theory of conspiracies, writing that (read here):

Soros’ agents of disinformation and influence have moved in to “manage” the stories about jailed Alabama Democratic Governor Don Siegelman, the 2004 vote fraud in Ohio, the Turkish and Israeli intelligence penetration of the highest echelons of the U.S. government, the presence of Israeli spies among the accused 9/11 hijackers in the months prior to the terrorist attacks in 2001, and Russian-Israeli “Kosher Nostra” criminal activity from London to Kyiv and New York to Moscow.

Mike Gravel, a former U.S. Senator from Alaska and a quirky pro-peace candidate in the 2008 Democratic primaries, only made my list for one reason.  In 2003, he participated in a Holocaust denial conference featuring neo-Nazi participants.  (Read here.)  He subsequently claimed that he didn't notice the goose-stepping going on all around him.  He said that he thought that it was just a quirky pro-peace group.  That seems consistent with his attendance at the truthers' conference.

George Galloway, as readers here undoubtedly already know, is a former Member of Parliament who had extensive ties to Sadaam Hussein's Ba'athist regime, with whom he is said to have had a profitable business relationship, and to Hamas, to whom he has provided material support via his Viva Palestina group.  He currently works for PressTV, an English-language propaganda television station owned by the Islamic Republic of Iran, and under the control of the mullahs.  In a relatively brief period of time, Galloway seems to have gone from a 9/11 conspiracy theory doubter who warned the left not to discredit itself by associating with nuts (watch here) to a truther who is willing to throw at Israel and the U.S. any accusation his constituency will buy (listen here).

Paul Craig Roberts has had the most dramatic transformation of anyone on this list, having gone from being an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration and an editor at the Wall Street Journal to a being a far-right, conspiracy-bedeviled internet columnist with a penchant for prophecies which fail to come true.  His columns are widely posted on the websites of that fringe beyond the mainstream left and right, including the white supremacist website VDARE, Willis Carto's American Free Press, Pat Buchanan's American Conservative, Antiwar.com, Lew Rockwell, Information Clearing House and Counterpunch, -- places where resume gravitas is sometimes in short supply.  Roberts not only believes that 9/11 was an inside job, carried out with planted explosives, not planes (read here and here), in 2006, he also stated that George W. Bush was planning another such attack, a warning which was obviously not worth the bandwidth it was written on.  (Read here.)  That the extremely paleo-conservative Roberts' anti-Israel extremism is central to his world view can be gauged by his habit of referring to the U.S. government as a puppet of Israel (read here), and decrying Jewish influence on the news media (read here).  Roberts blames precisely that influence for concealing what he sees as the true story of 9/11.


Conclusion

In choosing New York City on 9/11 for their anti-freedom rallies, Pamela Geller and other anti-mosque activists desecrate the sacred ground they purport to defend.  Similarly, the 9/11 truthers, in choosing New York City on 9/11 to promote their paranoid world view, desecrate not only the site of that terrible crime against humanity, they desecrate the truth.

Glenn Beck forum: Israel did 9/11

The 9/12 Project, which is Glenn Beck's loose-knit political organization, is promoting Alan Hart's slanderous charges that Israel destroyed the World Trade Center on 9/11 using "controlled ground explosives" and airplanes steered by remote control devices hidden in cell phones. He claimed, first in an internet radio interview by Kevin Barrett, then in a radio interview with Alex Jones, that the world's foremost engineering firm has told him of the truth of this conspiracy. He claims that he is currently unable to provide any further information about this or to identify his sources because he doesn't have access to the computer in which that data is stored. He went on to claim that this story is "well documented". As implausible as his story is, Hart's tall tale has been repeated in a variety of forums, including Pat Buchanan's blog and the website of the Ron Paul campaign. (Previous posts about this are available here in the archives.)

Now the Glenn Beck crowd has joined in. Read here: Zionism: The Real Enemy of The Jews - The 9/12 Project (New York, NY) - Meetup.com

Here's what they've posted at Glenn Beck's 9/12 Project forum:

Greetings all,


Up until a couple of months ago I was always uncomfortable when someone criticized Zionist. I had mistakenly thought they were referring to all Jews and I try to avoid stereotyping. However, recently I have come to the understanding that Zionism deserves more criticism than anyone I know of has given it up until recently. Thanks to Mideast-expert, journalist-author Alan Hart, author of the book, Zionism: The Real Enemy of The Jews, the picture is now clear to me and the task ahead is also clear. We the people must take our government back.

Israel is much like the US in that the people, the Jews, do not control the government. Their government is controlled by the same Zionist criminals who control our government...they are better known here as neocons. I do not expect you to believe me, but if you have a yearning for the truth, spend a little time doing some real research away from the mainstream propaganda that we have been spoon fed. It appears to me that the Zionist are guiding us towards World War III.

This interview of Alan Hart by Kevin Barrett pulls back the curtains and exposes the lies we have been told: http://noliesradio.or... That statement is probably an oversimplification for those of you who have been prone to believe everything that comes from the government or their stool pigeons in mainstream media while discrediting everything from alternative sources. If you lack the truth seekers background research, you may need to read Alan's books to bring yourself up to speed.

Those of us who bother to look beyond the darkness of delusion into the light of truth are used to being thought of and sometimes even called conspiracy theorist or kooks. We have already dealt with the extreme discomfort that many will experience while listening to the above interview. Calling us names may make them feel better about the spoon fed ignorance they parrot, but the ignorance remains and the truth is all that really matters to us.

My original subject line was, It's Not the Arabs Stupid, but I decided that this subject matter is much too important to take the risk of offending anyone right up front and losing the chance for enlightenment. Our future is at stake, and it is not because of the Arabs, it is because of the Zionist. If you are as uncertain about what Zionism is as I was a mere few months ago, you could do much worse that spending some time at this site: http://nkusa.org/...

Here is a quick overview: http://www.nkusa.org/...

Scroll down at this site for an audio interview of Dr. Alan Sabrosky, under the title, 9/11 - The US Military Knows Israel Did It: http://www.informatio...

If you can deal with the discomfort, there is much truth that many of you have been unaware of up till now...excuses for staying in the darkness are just that, excuses.

Mike

Great minds think alike...


UPDATE #1 (May 30, 2010):  

Michael Eck, the Glenn Beck 9/12 Project forum member who posted this column, is a longtime, avid Ron Paul supporter. (Read here.) I guess that explains his avatar, a coin bearing the likeness of Ron Paul:

Ron Paul website promotes "Israel did 9/11" libel

The Ron Paul campaign (yes -- they stay in operation, presidential election year or not) is using one of its websites to promote crazy conspiracy theories blaming Israel for 9/11. In a post dated January 5, 2010, the Daily Paul website has the following posted currently on their blog. From what I infer, the writer refers to a storage space at New York's JFK airport, where, apparently, some of the 9/11 debris was stored, and which, apparently, had been used by a now-defunct airline which formerly flew to Israel. The Zim Corporation referred to apparently is an Israeli shipping firm which moved their U.S. offices from the World Trade Center to Norfolk, VA just before 9/11. Sounds like solid evidence of guilt to me.

...I would like to call your attention to ... the proprietorship of Hangar 17, where the only known 9/11 evidence still in existence is locked away from public scrutiny.

When viewed from a certain angle, Hangar 17 in JFK airport has a prominent, unfaded billboard that says ” Tower Air “. Tower Airlines was an * Israeli * airline that went bankrupt in 2000 . None other than Hangar 17 housed Tower Air’s then brand-new corporate headquarters.

Why does 9/11 evidentiary material that would provide clues such as the absence or presence of Super Thermite or other explosive material in the dust from the blasts sit for “safekeeping” in the former Executive Headquarters of a ten-year-defunct Israeli front organization that contracted heavily for the U.S. Defense Department and still has an unfaded sign hanging on the building?

Mike Ruppert reported that the Israeli container and freight-shipping corporation Zim , who occupied several floors in the Twin Towers and is widely known to do extensive operational support work for the Mossad, vacated all their offices days before the attacks – and they vacated in violation of their lease.

Read it here: More Israeli Mossad Connections to 9/11 | Ron Paul 2012 | Campaign for Liberty at the Daily Paul (UPDATE 8/1/2010:  The Daily Paul administrators have scrubbed this from public view, although it is still available to registered users of the site, and in cached form here and here, minus one page of comments.)

Of course, this is nothing new. Ron Paul has a history of promoting outrageous conspiracy theories blaming Israel for attacking the World Trade Center based on the flimsiest of evidence and logic. He did it in his newsletter, with reference to the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. According to the L.A. Jewish Journal:

A 1987 issue of Paul’s Investment Letter called Israel “an aggressive, national socialist state,” and a 1990 newsletter discussed the “tens of thousands of well-placed friends of Israel in all countries who are willing to wok [sic] for the Mossad in their area of expertise.” Of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, a newsletter said, “Whether it was a setup by the Israeli Mossad, as a Jewish friend of mine suspects, or was truly a retaliation by the Islamic fundamentalists, matters little.”

Read here.

Alan Sabrosky: "Large majority of U.S. Jews are traitors" and Israel did 9/11 attacks. So who the heck is Alan Sabrosky?

Sometimes, when an expert makes a serious charge but has no evidence to back it up, it's still newsworthy by dint of the provenance of the charge.  The reputation of a source can play a big role in determining when to believe unverifiable charges, or at least report them with a grain of salt.

Alan Sabrosky bills himself as the former Director of Studies at the U.S. Army War College.  He has made quite a name for himself in recent months by first declaring himself a military expert with high-level connections in the U.S. military hierarchy, then by outrageously claiming that Israel was responsible for 9/11 and that the U.S. military knows this and is concealing it.  While he offers no evidence for this, he claims that he should be trusted because of his expertise.  The truth of the matter -- with respect to both his background and his claims -- is quite different, of course.  Sabrosky has deliberately inflated his role in the military and has used that ruse to promote a hateful, fact-free conspiracy theory.  In fact, while he did work as an administrator at the U.S. Army War College, he was not, as his job title seems to indicate, the director or dean of the college.  Far from it.  According to the Press Office of the Army War College, in the mid-1980s, Sabrosky served as a civilian administrator at a research department of the college, supervising the publication of papers written within that department.  His job title was "Director of Studies" because he supervised publishing studies done within a department of the college.  He was a mid-level civilian manager at a military college, without access to the sort of highly classified material of the sort he now fraudulently claims to have.  Moreover, since his employment at that school was about 25 years ago, his employment there would provide him with no special insights with respect to 9/11.  How on earth could someone who worked on the level of a college librarian in the 1980s be privy to top secret information revealing a vast hidden conspiracy?  And how on earth could he be the only person to know about it or think it worth revealing?


An expert, privy to the highest levels of the military elite?

Over the past few years, Alan Sabrosky has become a fixture of anti-Israel media.  In numerous, articles, interviews and blog postings, he literally does only two things: promotes conspiracy theories and compares Israel to Nazi Germany.  As I mentioned above, most recently, he has taken this campaign to a new level of absurdity by claiming not only that Israel was responsible for carrying out the 9/11 attacks, but that most of the leadership of the U.S. military knows this and is keeping it secret in a vast conspiracy of silence.   I don't know how many of thousands of officers Sabrosky includes in this conspiracy of silence, but, considering that not a single officer has broken it, it would certainly go down as the most successful such conspiracy in history if true.  Only because of Sabrosky's impressive sounding resume, these reckless and baseless charges have been reposted and repeated countless times, albeit in biased and unreliable places.

Sabrosky originally published this conspiracy theory in a column called "Treason, Betrayal and Deceit: 9/11 and Beyond" which he published on the Information Clearinghouse website in September (read here).  That column was reposted verbatim on a number of far-right, pro-Palestinian, 9/11 truth and conspiracy-oriented websites (read here), including, of course, the 9/11 Jewish-Mossad False-Flag Archive.   In March, Sabrosky published his follow-up on Information Clearinghouse, featuring the audio of the interview embedded above. That he called "The Dark Face of Jewish Nationalism: 9/11 - The US Military Knows Israel Did It" (read here).

Based solely on Sabrosky's word, this absurd conspiracy theory has spread far and wide.  Googling the terms sabrosky +9/11 +israel gets about 28,000 hits at the time I'm writing this, reflecting the fact that an ersatz Jewish-American military official's charge that Israel did 9/11 has really gone viral.  (Read here.)  Those Google results include Sabrosky's original column, those quoting or citing Sabrosky's claims, and links to interviews with him.  Among the latter is the Ron Paul Forums website, which posts the above-embedded video  here and here, and touts it here.   The Ron Paul Forums also linked to a posting supporting Sabrosky on the anti-Semitic website TheInformationUnderground.  (Read here.)  More recently, anti-Zionist conspiracy nut Alan Hart and 9/11 conspiracy nut Kevin Barrett gave Sabrosky their seal of approval in a radio interview in which Hart made his own extreme and false charges concerning 9/11, as I wrote here.  Both Hart and Barrett spoke solemnly of their deep respect for Sabrosky and his expertise on Israel and the U.S. military.


Wrapping themselves in the false-flag

A website purportedly devoted to vererens' issues, but which in fact is frequently devoted to promoting conspiracy theories, has been part of the mainstreaming of Sabrosky's views.  Veterans Today (read here) describes Sabrosky's charges as accurate, (falsely) says of him that

What makes him unique is that we have a Jew who can hardly be called “self-hating” or “anti-Semitic” or against Israel.

then quotes Sabrosky that

Zionism is a real witches’ brew of xenophobia, racism, ultra-nationalism and militarism that places it way outside of a “mere” nationalist context...  and goes far beyond the misery for others professed by the Nazis...

Zionism undermines civic loyalty among its adherents in other countries in a way that other nationalist movements (and even ultra-nationalist movements like Nazism) did not.

The column quotes Sabrosky as saying that Zionists regard all non-Jews as "potential enemies".   That's the same column that claims Sabrosky can't be bigoted against Jews because he has some unspecified Jewish family members!

It turns out that Veterans Today isn't quite what it seems.  It's actually edited by another person with an amazingly impressive sounding resume and a penchant for promoting anti-Jewish conspiracy theories.  (Quite a coincidence!)  That man is Gordon Duff, who writes of himself (read here) that he

is a Marine Vietnam veteran, grunt and 100% disabled vet. He has been a featured commentator on TV and radio including Al Jazeera and his articles have been carried by news services around the world. He has been a UN Diplomat, defense contractor and is a widely published expert on military and defense issues. He is active in the financial industry and is a specialist on global trade. Gordon Duff acts as political and economic advisor to a number of governments in Africa and the Middle East. Gordon Duff is currently working on economic development projects in Pakistan and Afghanistan to counter the effects of poverty and global extremism.

I don't know for certain, but excuse me for thinking that Duff's resume sounds more than a bit fishy.


The conspiracy widens...

In a recent radio interview, Sabrosky further widened the dimensions of his conspiracy theory by declaring that "the large majority of U.S. Jews" are "traitors".  After introducing his subject by saying that it was the most important thing he could possibly talk about because loyalty to country is a paramount virtue, Sabrosky told his interviewer that

To my displeasure and my shame, because I have some Jewish relatives -- none of whom is Zionist -- a large majority of American Jews give their allegiance to a foreign country. They may have American citizenship, but their allegiance is to Israel. And as I said in the piece, this is a form of political bigamy that is every bit as dishonest as marital bigamy. And marital bigamy is -- you know -- I'm not married now, but when I was, loyalty to my spouse was absolute. It has to be there. I can look and say "Ah ha! There is Farah Fawcett." You know -- and I could admire someone out there, but I didn't give that person my allegiance. And there's a difference between admiring from a distance and giving allegiance to that thing, and it's the same with a country...

Some of my relatives are German, some are Irish. All of them have a measure of allegiance to those cultures, but it's not a political allegiance, it's a social allegiance. It's like - we're gonna stand up on St. Patty's Day or we're gonna stand up on Oktoberfest and we'll celebrate this, and we're proud of being German or Irish or whatever it happens to be. But none of us gives our allegiance to Ireland or Germany. Jews do.

I don't care if we're called anti-Semites or not. If we don't say "truth is truth -- their allegiance is to a foreign country -- they are traitors", then we're dishonest to ourselves...

I've had a bitter argument with one of my cousins who moved to Israel and kept his American citizenship. If someone loves another country enough to go there, more power to them. They go, and they're gone. But they keep the U.S. citizenship so they can continue to participate in our elections, stand in our offices. Look at Rahm Emanuel! I mean, he served in the Israeli armed forces, not the American armed forces! And he is easily the second most powerful person in the country. Easily. That's treason!"

[The audio of this is available at 4:20 of the below-embedded video.]

Opposition from truthers, support from anti-Zionists

Some in the 9/11 Truth movement have quite sensibly pointed out that Sabrosky's conspiracy theory is not only factually false and illogical,  but that's it's also bigoted.  (Read here.)  Amusingly, they deduce from this that Sabrosky must be an agent provocateur  working with a conspiracy to discredit the other, more sensible, conspiracy theorists.  They think that Sabrosky is a one-man false-flag operation!

But not everyone is as suspicious as the truthers.  For example, the anti-Zionist blog Mondoweiss not only cites Sabrosky as an expert on Israel, it actually published a column he authored at Philip Weiss' request!  In the column, which he wrote for Weiss in 2008 (read here), Sabrosky, after claiming some Jewish heritage by dint of having an unspecified Jewish family member and liking Jewish food, went on to call Benjamin Netanyahu a Nazi -- "Gauleiter in spirt" -- although he didn't bother to say why.  Considering the gravity of that charge, one would think it worthwhile to spell out the crimes that elicited it.  Then, citing those infamous drunken bigots in Max Blumenthal's "Feeling the Hate" video, Sabrosky went on to call Jewish Zionists "barabarians" and "evil", and to compare Zionism to Nazism.  In spite of Blumenthal's claim that his "Feeling the Hate" video wasn't meant to be taken as a reflection of all Zionists, Alan Sabrosky and Mondoweiss certainly saw it that way .  Mondoweiss' editors, while admitting in a column for Talking Points Memo (read here) that the interviews in the Blumenthal video were "cherry-picked", still somehow asserted that the video accurately showed that "Americans who are called to Israel ... don't especially believe in minority rights".  In this way, they illogically argue that cherry-picked facts can support an accurate conclusion.  That sort of logic appeals to those such as Sabrosky who generally operate in a fact-free environment.  They have in that video at least a bit of tangible evidence to support their biases.  Generally, Sabrosky doesn't have any.

Alan Sabrosky

Pat Buchanan website: Israel destroyed WTC via controlled demolition

Pat Buchanan's website (see note below) has published a column claiming that a major engineering firm has concluded that Israeli agents destroyed the World Trade Center via controlled demolition. (Read here. [11/03/2010: No longer available online.  Click here.]) This conspiracy theory is a recent product of a retired TV reporter named Alan Hart, and was the subject of an earlier post on this blog. (Read here. Another prior column on Hart is available here.) Hart claims that an unnamed engineering firm has concluded that the World Trade Center was destroyed not by fires resulting from planes crashes, but by explosives detonated in the buildings. He further claims that Israeli agents steered the planes which crashed into the World Trade Center using remote control devices in their cell phones. Hart also contends that Israel has stolen an American nuclear weapon which it intends to explode in a major American city. He stated in an interview that Israel intends to use this "false-flag operation" to start a war between the U.S. and Iran in order to conceal a planned genocide of Palestinians by Israel.

Hart, who has made a career of anti-Zionist campaigning in a series of barely-read books and a never-ending tour of public appearances, has thus far been unable or unwilling to name the engineering firm he referred to, or to cite his sources for any of his charges. He maintains that this information is stored on a computer which is currently unavailable to him.

UPDATE #1(May 29, 2010): 

An observant reader at Screw Loose Change, the great anti-truther blog, has pointed out (here) that the Pat Buchanan website, buchanan.org is, according to a notice buried on a FAQ page on the website (here), not edited or maintained by Pat Buchanan, but by the webmaster for his 2000 presidential campaign, Linda Mueller.  Hard to believe that Buchanan would be so irresponsible to allow a website -- which is named for him, filled with his image, columns and pitches for his books, and which completely buries the notice stating that he's not editing it -- to post material this offensive.  A lot of the other material, including links to Holocaust denial websites, is equally bad.

Buchanan needs to disavow this website or MSNBC needs to disavow him.

Alan Hart: Israel did 9/11 and may nuke the U.S.

In an interview with an internet radio talk show called "truthjihad.com", former television journalist Alan Hart has claimed that Israel was responsible for the 9/11 attacks and that it is planning a nuclear attack on the U.S. (Read here: truthjihad.com blog: Senior BBC Mideast Correspondent: "Here's what may have REALLY happened on 9/11"!) According to the interviewer, a former university instructor in Islamic studies named Kevin Barrett, Mr. Hart

said that he has been assured by a top-level demolitions/engineering expert who wishes to remain anonymous that the three World Trade Center skyscrapers were destroyed by controlled demolitions, not plane crashes and fires.

and

During the hour-long interview, Hart discussed Israel's record of engaging in outrageous attacks on friend and foe alike, and spreading even more outrageous lies to cover them up. (Around the midpoint of the show he explained the real reason Israel attacked the U.S.S. Liberty in 1967.)

Regarding 9/11, Hart suggested that while there may have been some original terrorist plot conceived by fellow-travelers of Osama Bin Laden, the Israeli Mossad, with its near-total penetration of Middle Eastern governments and terrorist groups alike, would have quickly detected and hijacked the operation to its own ends, orchestrating a spectacularly successful attack on America designed to be blamed on its Arab and Muslim enemies. Hart added that the Mossad operation that became 9/11 would have been aided and abetted by certain corrupt American leaders.

Sounding a chilling note, Hart added that the U.S. is in grave danger of an Israeli-instigated false-flag nuclear attack, perhaps using an American nuclear weapon stolen from Minot Air Force Base during the "loose nukes" rogue operation of August, 2007. The motive would be to trigger a U.S. war with Iran, and perhaps to finish the ethnic cleansing of Palestine under cover of war--which Hart is convinced the Zionists are planning to do as soon as the opportunity presents itself.

I've had an opportunity to listen to the interview. Hart offers a novel explanation of the attack on the U.S.S. Liberty, asserting (at about 33:00 of the mp3 of the interview) that the Liberty was monitoring Israeli actions to make certain that Israel did not "take land" from Jordan and Syria. This, according to Hart, was the condition of a deal Israel had with the Johnson administration for its permission to go to war with Egypt. Hart offers no evidence to support this apparently implausible motive. The program's host asks Hart why Israel would go to the trouble of sinking the Liberty to conceal territorial gains which were readily apparent. Hart, after several digressions, asserts that he finds it "highly likely" that President Johnson would have called the Israeli leadership and instructed them to immediately retreat from territorial gains against Syria and Jordan if the Liberty had not been sunk.

Hart then calls the Liberty incident a war crime, and says (at 35:50 of the mp3):

The lesson of the cold-blooded attack on the Liberty was that there is nothing that the Zionist state might not do to its friends as well as its enemies to get its own way.

Hart concludes this pseudo-history by defining Zionism as a war by Jews against the rest of humanity. This explains, he says, the mindset behind a deliberate attack on an ally.

In response, Kevin Barrett, the program's host, states (at 40:45 of the mp3):

This actually lends some credibility to the people who argue that 9/11 -- whatever happened on 9/11 -- that it wasn't what we've been told. That whoever ordered the controlled demolition of the World Trade Center -- there are those who argue that Israel, its Mossad and its U.S. allies could have done it, and that it was essentially a Mossad operation. And there are others who say "that's ridiculous. How could a little country like Israel do something like that?" Well ... if you look at the Liberty incident ... it's not clear that there's really any limit to what the Israeli hawks think they can get away with in terms of attacking America.

Hart replies:

I'm going to break a rule now. I mean, you mentioned 9/11. Basically, in public, I don't talk about it because it makes you such a target for abuse and false charges of anti-Semitism and everything, doesn't it?

Barrett breaks in to heartily agree. Hart continues:

Hart: So basically, I've stayed away from it because it give them the focus to take the attention away from your main message. But, since you've mentioned it, I'll tell you what I honestly believe. I think it probably started out as an all Muslim operation, okay? But I think it would be very quickly penetrated by Mossad agents. I detail it in my book. From almost the moment Israel was born, it had its agents penetrating every Arab government, every Arab military organization, and every Arab terrorist group, whatever. So they certainly would have penetrated this. And at some point they said to the bad guys in the CIA, "this is running, what should we do with it?" And the neo-cons said "let's use it".

The twin towers were brought down by a controlled ground explosion, not the planes. Now I'm going to tell you in passing that one of my friends is a consultant for one of the world's leading engineering firms. I'm not going to name him. They've studied the films and they've found that there's no doubt whatsoever that the planes were brought down... sorry, that the towers were brought down by controlled ground explosion. And then we have the film of the -- what is sometimes called the five dancing Israelis. Are you aware of that Kevin?

Barrett: I certainly am. They were celebrating the attacks. They had set up to film before the attacks and they were high-fiving and flicking cigarette lighters in front of the twin towers.

Hart: That's right. But the point is that they all had mobile phones. Right?

Barrett: Right.

Hart: Now they were initially reported as being Muslims. Are you aware of that?

Barrett: Um... Middle-easterners.

Hart: (Impatiently) Alright, middle-easterners. But the impression was that they were Muslims -- they were the bad guys.

Barrett: Right.

Hart: So the FBI gave chase, and these five guys, they tried to avoid being arrested. But they were eventually caught, and they were arrested. And guess what. They were all Mossad agents.

Barrett: That was confirmed by the Forward.

Hart: That's right. It's established fact. It suggests that they knew that it was going to happen. It was possible, and this is Alan Hart speaking, that the planes were fitted with transponders, and these guys were calling in the planes to the targets. It's not impossible.

Barrett: I suppose not. These are many possibilities, but the possibility of remotely-guided planes is a good one, being that, if one had planned a very complex demolition of three skyscrapers which would have been the three largest buildings taken down in history by controlled demolition, one would have to make sure that they were hit in order to justify that.

Hart: And isn't it the case, Kevin, that quite a lot of your top pilots have said that it would have been a bloody difficult job to drive those planes into those buildings.

Barrett: Well, that's right. I've had a number of pilots who are members of Pilots for 9/11 Truth come on my show, and they said that the clocked speed of the aircraft, when it hit the South Tower, was nearly 600 miles per hour at sea level. And that's a speed that, well, some of them say that these 767 aircraft couldn't possibly reach that speed at ground level. They would be torn apart at substantially lower speeds than that by the air pressure of the much thicker air at sea level. But, in any case, that nobody in their right mind could claim that it would be possible to guide a plane at that speed at sea level and hit those targets in the way they were hit.

Hart: So the speculation is that were fitted with some kind of transponder and they were called to the target electronically is not totally irrational?

Barrett: Uh... well no it's not, and in fact, it's even somewhat questionable whether normal passenger aircraft would be able to do that consistently at that kind of speed. In any case, it seems very doubtful that pilots who couldn't even solo in a Cessna would be performing these amazing stunts to hit their targets.

Hart: Well, that and two other things Kevin. We know as a fact that at least six and maybe nine of the alleged hijackers who died are in fact alive and living in...

Barrett (interrupting): Well, that's right. And that's confirmed in Jay Kolar's article "What we now know about the 9/11 hijackers", which was published, actually, in a volume by Europe's top scholarly outfit (inaudible). It's amazing that the scholarly literature is all so one-sided. There's no scholarly counter-literature except for...

Hart (interrupting): Except for "how dare you be so anti-Semitic". That's the only counter-literature.

Barrett: Right, right. And then there's Cass Sunstein's counter-literature published in the Harvard Law Review. He's that Harvard guy who's advising Obama...

After Barrett discusses Cass Sunstein's article on how to counter conspiracy theories, Hart spends several minutes detailing how Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle were likely conspirators in planning a Pearl Harbor-like attack (i.e. 9/11) designed to involve the U.S. in a war with Iraq. After discounting the threat posed by a nuclear-armed Iran, Hart claims that

The reason why the Israelis are hyping up Iran is to take attention away from the continuing Zionist colonization and genocide in Palestine.

Barrett replies by citing anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists Gordon Duff and Alan Sabrosky to the effect that the Mossad carried out 9/11 and that many in the U.S. military establishment know this to be so. Hart responds by saying that he knows Sabrosky and respects him. Then he drops the big one, so to speak. He unleashes a conspiracy theory for the ages, claiming that Israel has been covertly supplied with a nuclear weapon by Dick Cheney, who Hart calls "Dr. Strangelove". Hart speculates that this nuke is still in the United States and the Israelis intend to detonate it here as a "false flag" operation designed to implicate Iran.

Barrett: Do you have any sources where we could follow up on this?

Hart: I would have to dig deeply into my computers to find this, but it's been very well documented.

With that dismissive statement, Hart leaves the listener to either wonder in amazement at the audacity of such an undocumented claim, or to cower in fear that his tin-foil hat will fail to protect him.

The interview can be heard via a player embedded on Hart's website here or at a website called noliesradio.org. A direct link to an mp3 of the interview is available here.

By the way, in the course of the interview, Hart makes several less sensational if equally false arguments, including claims that Israel's existence has never been threatened by its enemies ("not in 1948, not in 1967, not even in 1973") and that the 1967 war "was a war of Israeli choice and aggression". These run-of-the-mill, doctrinaire falsehoods are hardly surprising coming from a man who believes that the World Trade Center attack was accomplished by Mossad-operated remote control planes and planned demolitions and Israel will soon be nuking the U.S. to cover up a genocide in Palestine, but I thought it worth mentioning if only to show that, however extreme his current conspiracy theories may be, Hart is nothing if not a monomaniacally consistent ideologue. The facts, and even a desire to maintain a semblance of sanity, has never interfered with his spinning a good anti-Zionist yarn.

From the truthjihad website:

UPDATE #1 (May 28, 2010):

Bloggers at a truther website called 9/11blogger.com have picked up on this interview and on my reaction to it (read here).  They are for the most part supportive of Hart and Barrett, although a few raise questions as to why Hart would make such explosive charges (so to speak) without having any supportive documentation or even being better identify his sources or, for that matter, cite any evidence.  One blogger at that website points out that, as with Alan Sabrosky, it is the news that someone with the appearance of an impressive resume is making that charge that makes the charge notable.  I would point out to them that, both in the case of Hart and Sabrosky, this veneer of expertise is hardly sufficient to cover the paranoia and bigotry underlying their fraudulent conspiracy theories.  As I intend to write here within the next few days, Sabrosky has been dining out on his having worked at the Army War College in the 1980s and his allegedly having a Jewish grandparent, hardly enough to compensate for his promoting without any evidence whatsoever the charge that most of the military elite in the U.S. believe the Mossad responsible for 9/11, a charge with is patently false.  Similarly, Hart unintentionally reveals just how foolish and reckless he is by making his extreme charges without any documentation -- and even asking his interviewer if the charges seem plausible -- all the while falling back on his having been a TV reporter many moons ago in order to lend some credence to his drivel.

For the most part, however, those at 911blogger.com support Hart's charges.  They link to a conspiracy theory website called propagandamatrix.com where a blogger called Paul Joseph Watson has posted an article which swallows Hart's charges hook, line and sinker.  His headline: "Top Construction Firm: WTC Destrtoyed by Controlled Demolition".  Watson describes Hart as "Respected Middle East expert and former BBC presenter".  He goes on to write:

Given his biography and standing, Hart's comments are not to be taken lightly. Hart is a former Middle East Chief Correspondent for ITN News and has also presented for BBC Panorama specializing in the Middle East. He was also a war reporter in Vietnam and the first journalist to reach Suez Canal with the Israeli army in 1967. Over the decades, Hart has developed close relationships with numerous high profile political figures, including the Shah of Iran, Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres.  Hart has been a successful author for years and has no reason to fabricate the fact that a top construction firm told him point blank that the towers were brought down in a controlled demolition.

On of the bloggers at 911blogger points out that the cartoon posted above, which I found on Kevin Barrett's website, was authored and originally published by a Nazi website.  I haven't verified this.  Any readers with information about the source of that cartoon should feel free to comment here.


UPDATE #2 (May 28, 2010): 

Pat Buchanan's website has signed onto this conspiracy theory.  Read here.

9/11 Truthers work to free convicted 9/11 conspirator

We already know that the 9/11 truth movement promotes a through the looking glass version of 9/11 featuring missiles, pilotless drone planes, controlled demolition, dancing Mossad agents and massive covert conspiracies involving financial and political leaders. They've arduously promoted their strange brew of fantasy, pseudo-science and political extremism for the past eight years. The indefatigable folks at Screw Loose Change have been reporting on the truthers and countering their madness -- and they do a great job at it. I stopped by their blog this morning and was shocked to learn that the truthers have stepped up their activism, which up to now has largely centered on pushing for investigations. Now the truthers are actually pushing to have freed from prison a 9/11 conspirator who was convicted for the attacks, and they are providing material assistance to his cause.

Screw Loose Change reports (here and here) that the truthers, led by David Ray Griffin, have set up a website and started a petition drive on behalf of Mounir El Motassadeq, who lived with Mohammed Atta and several other 9/11 perpetrators in Hamburg during the time when Atta was planning for 9/11. Motassadeq conspired with Atta and several of the other hijackers, visited al-Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan in 2000, and funneled money to Atta in Florida to help carry out the 9/11 attacks. The truthers have set up a website called "Free Mounir" (read here). To the truthers, this guy merits first-name-only status. That sort of unsubtle public relations technique to humanize this mass murderer is especially offensive.

The website, referring to three of the hijackers with whom "Mounir" carried out the 9/11 attacks, says

"In the light of the absence of hard evidence that Mounir's friends – Atta, Alshehhi, and Jarrah – actually planned and committed mass murder, Mounir El Motassadeq must be considered as having been wrongly punished."

It's bad enough for truthers to campaign for investigations with a veil of half-truths and absolute falsehoods. That campaign has already done tremendous damage by clouding the minds of those extremely credulous people who are vulnerable to such appeals, and by providing a means by which the cynical can manipulate those people. It is bad enough for truthers to portray the perpetrators as victims, even martyrs. It is something much more sinister, however, for Griffin and his truthers to intervene in the legal process and provide assistance to someone convicted for committing mass murder.

This outrageous campaign to free "Mounir" cries out for investigation. I would like to know if the campaign is raising funds on behalf of "Mounir" under tax exemptions which forbid using those funds in this manner. The truthers have a first amendment right to promote their mad views, but I question whether they can raise money as tax exempt charities and use that money to help free mass murderers.

Whether or not they raise money with tax exempt status, they need to inform their donors just what they're up to. It's one thing to con people into giving money to investigate phantom conspiracies, but it's quite another to then use that money to help free murderers.

David Ray Griffin

By the way, if you'd like a sense of the madness behind the truther movement, check out Griffin's debate with Chip Berlet here. Berlet confronts Griffin with a number of serious flaws in Griffin's facts and analysis -- flaws which Griffin summarily dismisses without counterargument. Since that debate, Griffin has continued to promote several of the falsehoods debunked for him by Berlet. Griffin's lack of concern with the actual truth of his statements about 9/11 is, well, screwy.

Why doesn't Ron Paul come out as a truther? Too busy, and can't handle the controversy

Is Ron Paul coming out as a truther? The "9/11 truth" group called "We Are Change LA" asked Ron Paul why he doesn't "come out about the truth about 9/11?". The ambush interview apparently caught him off guard. He answered that he hasn't done this "(b)ecause I can't handle the controversy ... I just have too much to do."

The interview can be viewed below, although the audio is of poor quality.

A transcript of the brief interview is available here: WeAreChangeLA questions Ron Paul about the IMF and why he won't come out about 9-11 Truth | 911Blogger.com

More McKinney Mishugas: Cynthia McKinney Headlines Extremist Hate Website

Former U.S. Representative Cynthia McKinney's image and a link to an extensive interview with her now headline the extremist hate propaganda website iamthewitness.com (aka "The French Connection"). Along with McKinney, the website's homepage includes tributes to William Dudley Pelley, Henry Ford, Father Charles Coughlin, Nesta Webster, and Elizabeth Dilling. It also contains an extensive archive of their writings and speeches.

In a brief walk down this veritable memory lane of hate agitprop, I found the following gem:

"We Jews continue to be amazed with the ease by which Christian Americans have fallen into our hands. While the naive Americans wait for Khrushchev to bury them, we have taught them to submit to our every demand."

With respect to current heroes, the website includes tributes to the Holocaust denying SSPX Bishop Richard Williamson, Andrew Carrington Hitchcock (author of Synagogue of Satan), and McKinney associate David Pidcock (read here). (It also features images of Naturei Karta burning Israeli flags, a number of pages devoted to what it calls the "ZioSwineLab Flu", a number of pages devoted to red-baiting Jews and the usual "9/11 truth" stuff.)

In spite of this fascist and racist content, the website claims to disavow political extremism, although it does so with the following paranoid language:

The French Connection disavows any contact with Nazis, Fascists or Racists in any form. More than likely, all of these new groups are Government Psy-Ops.

McKinney has not yet explained her recent connection to the far-right. It appears to have its roots in her dealings with far-right conspiracy theorist Matthias Chang. McKinney has participated in several conferences organized by Chang, and has devoted articles to promoting Chang's books and conspiracy theories. His books are published by Willis Carto's fascist publishing house Barnes Review/American Free Press. (Read here.)

MUCH MORE ON THIS HERE...


from the iamthewitness website:

Cynthia McKinney Interviewed on Far-Right Racist Radio Program

Continuing to increase her political connections with the extreme far right (as I documented here and here), former U.S. Representative and 2008 Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney has appeared on a far-right, anti-Semitic internet radio program.  On April 30, she was interviewed for over an hour on the "The Information Underground" by the program's host, who calls himself "Ognir".  

A cached version of the program's archive is available here.  Previous broadcasts of the show have titles such as "Jewish Domination and the World as we know it", "Crimes of the Zionists", "the Zionist Criminal Network", "Jewish takeover of Christianity", "Eugenocide", "The International Jews Bankers" (sic), "Jewish Worldwide Propaganda System", "Jews Behind Every Rock", and "Jews Israel and 9/11".  The program has featured guests such as Brother NathanaelKapner of "Real Jew News" (read here.  Kapner's website has recently changed its "Real Jew News" logo to read "Real Zionist News".  Nice touch.  Now about that URL.), racist internet radio host Michael Delaney, aka Prothink (read here and here), hate rapper/blogger Khanverse (readhere and here), Israel Shamir (read here), Michele Renouf (read here), and fascist blogger Daryl Bradford Smith of iamthewitness.com (read here).

An mp3 of the interview is available here.  Here's an excerpt from the transcript of the McKinney interview from the show's website where McKinney blames a spy for defeating her reelection to Congress (read here):

Q: I called Washington the “District of Criminals,” a “viper pit.” Now, you’vesurvived, Congresswoman, six terms there. Can you give us some detail of, which is quite obvious if you look into it, you have an open-mind, that Washington is under a state, that Washington, DC, is under a state of siege by a very powerful group. You named them a pro-Israel group. Can you give me some more details about theharrassment (sic) that over your twelve years you suffered?

McKinney: Well if I were to give an accounting I would think I would use up ALL of your time that you have allotted; I think that what I’ll do is I’ll pick one story that could be illustrative of some of the things that happened. During the 2002 re-election campaign, there was a gentleman who was in my campaign headquarters, who identified himself as an observer, a political observer of our campaign, and he would sit in a rocking chair with my father at the campaign headquarters and they would share stories about the campaign, the state of politics, and that sort of thing. Thisgentelman (sic) be-friended (sic) my FATHER; well, after the election was over and all kinds of things happened, like the loss of the keys to the vans that would transport people, to the loss of the phones from the phone-banking room that was an off-site place that no one was supposed to know the location of, this particular gentleman who had identified himself as a stateless Palestinian went on the television and announced himself as the Southern Regional Buraeu (sic) Chief for one of the pro-Israel organizations. So our campaign was disrupted and TOTALLY disrupted, particularly on election day, and that was the link; we didn’t know until election but then this particular volunteer showed-up on television…

Q: Can you put a name to this guy; is this guy still around?...

McKinney: I don’t know if he’s still around, but he ended-up being a member of the Anti-Defamation League. There are MANY pro-Israel organizations that have a political impact and conduct political business, and the Anti-Defamation League is one of them, you have the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee is another one of them, and those are among the better known politcal (sic) organizations."

At about 39:40 in the mp3 of the broadcast, the host begins a rambling discourse on the question "who is more powerful in Washington, D.C. than the president?"  Here's a portion of the Q and A:

Q: I have the name of a guy who joined the army in 1991 during the first Gulf War.  I have reviewed several videos (of?) the former PR guy for the Democrats, Dick Morris.  Morris said that Bill Clinton was afraid of only one guy and it was this guy.  He's got Jew nationality and Jew loyalties.  The name "Megef" (?) comes to mind when I talk about this guy, Rahm Emanuel.  Is there somebody giving more instructions to Rahm Emanuel or am I completely way off?

McKinney: I think that what you're talking about is who controls the U.S. government.  There are people in the front and the American people go through the exercise of electing their representatives on every level, including congressional and the presidency.  But who really calls the shots?  And I think one could look at my career, honestly, and say "well, maybe it's not Congress who are making the policy".    And you can just look at the monied interests . . . the special interests.  The special interests basically rule.  And the people take a back seat to the special interests.  

The job of the two political parties that are captives of the special interests is to trick the people into believing that they represent the values of the various political spectra (sic) in the population, when, in actuality, they don't.  That's why I walked away from the Democratic Party.   

At about 54:10 of the interview, McKinney says the following:

McKinney: Osama bin Laden is not wanted by the FBI.  If you know the relationship of former administrations to the bin Laden family, this just begs for independent investigation.

At 56:04 of the interview, the interlocutor poses a rambling question about 9/11:

Q: Late in the evening (of 9/11), early morning, you're presented a 572 page document that is prepared well in advance based on certain manipulations and certain directions of Benjamin Netanyahu.  What were the congressmen saying?  They handed you a bill and said "sign this to protect ourselves" (sic) ...  What happens in the few hours leading up to the passage of the Patriot Act?

McKinney's extensive response in no way disabuses the questioner of his notion that the Patriot Act was passed within hours of the 9/11 attacks, or that it was in some way brought about by Benjamin Netanyahu.  At about 59:45 of the mp3, her response gets to this:

McKinney:  (The) people are marginalized, left out, and alienated, and lied to, (by) all the forces of division -- the balkanization of the American electorate, to allow a smaller group of people able to eventually control the politics of the whole.  

McKinney then launches into her version of Matthias Chang's theory that an elite group (which Chang openly identifies as Jewish) is deliberately destablizing the world economy to create an oligarchy in the U.S equivalent to that of early post-Soviet Russia.

The interviewer then asks a question concerning McKinney's assertions that George Bush knew of the 9/11 attacks before they occurred.  He outlines a byzantine 9/11 conspiracy theory involving the Bush administration, CIA and Pakistani ISI -- the names Jack Abramoff, George Tenet, Porter Goss, John Kyl, John Kerry, Joe Biden and Lindsay Graham enter into it.  He claims that they were all in on a Pakistani plot to give funds to Mohammed Atta.  McKinney does not disagree.   

McKinney: Well there are a lot of unanswered questions. And the family members of the direct victims of the tragedies have unanswered questions.  I think that these covert activities that the United States  is engaged in should not be covert.  And I would argue that we don't need to engage in this kind of behavior.

McKinney and her host go on to a discussion of the international drug trade.  The host outlines the drugs coming into the U.S. from various countries, then outlines the nations involved in combat overseas.  Then he gets to his point:

Q: It seems to be that they are intent on seeing that they're there to make sure that there's no breakage in the supply of drugs to the rest of the youngsters of the world -- that they're going to be infected with this sickness of heroin and cocaine . . . Our young people are severely under attack via these political Zionistic attitudes towards the rest of the world.  There is no humanity to these people.  This is obvious when we apply this to Washington.  You said it yourself: (there is) 1% -- if you're lucky -- of honest American politicians actually fighting for the American people that they're supposed to be representing.  And we have this overall infection of control by external sources.  You can call them lobbyists and special interests.    

 Again, as usual, McKinney does not disagree.

This interview follows what has become McKinney's usual method of endorsing outrageous anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.  She does this by allowing her interviewer or the authors of books she endorses to outline these theories for her.  Her responses are supportive of these views, but visibly so only in the context of the interview or by reference to the books she touts.  Outside of these contexts, she presents, to the inattentive, a simulacrum of political normality.

The interview is part of what appears to be a new far-right strategy for McKinney, coming fresh on the heels of her recent endorsement of the Matthias Chang's trilogy of fascist conspiracy theory books called the FastForward Trilogy, her participation in several of Chang's anti-Israel conferences and her endorsement of the bizarre anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist David Pidcock, formerly an Islamist politician who referred to himself as "The Leader".  

McKinney has not publicly addressed her connections to the far right.