Draft of pamphlet, part 2

I posted Part 1 earlier. Here is Part 2:

Draft of pamphlet, part 1, revised version

In response to some feedback I got in the Truth Action forum, here’s my revised version of Part 1 of the pamphlet:

About the warnings

The draft of my pamphlet mentions the Bush administration’s lack of response to the warnings. The standard “debunker” response to this point is to say that the warnings weren’t specific enough to be actionable.

Draft of pamphlet

Back in July, I had hoped to be able to spend lots of time researching 9/11 in time to write a well-researched pamphlet to distribute in the vicinity of this year’s major 9/11 anniversary events sponsored by local 9/11 Truth groups. Alas, I was then swamped with work and other things, so I did not have a chance to do the desired research. So, I’ll just have to write the pamphlet based on what I already know. Here’s my draft of the first half of the pamphlet. (I’ll post the second half later today or tomorrow.)

U.S. government foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks?

As I’ve said in the past two posts, what I personally find suspicious about 9/11 is not the story of the hijackers, but rather the claim that the attack could not have been prevented.

It seems to me that the FBI and the CIA had no good excuse not to have known about the plot in advance, in detail, given that the plot had been hatched way back in 1995 or so, and given that the FBI and the CIA had indeed been spying on al-Qaeda for lo these many years, except that the FBI sometimes refused, for no good reason, to follow up on obvious leads.

U.S. government sponsorship of Islamist terror

A topic I’ve been reading up on lately is the history of U.S. government sponsorship of Islamist terror.

I highly recommend the Cooperative Research site’s pages on The use of Islamist militants by American and Israeli militarists. (See especially the more recent stuff on page 2.) One caveat: Some items here are well-sourced, others aren’t. However, even if one confines one’s attention to the better-sourced items, the picture that emerges is still quite disturbing.

Common a priori objections by “debunkers,” including arguments from authority and the “someone would have talked” and “too many people” arguments

Every now and then I get a wave of “debunkers” visiting this blog. They’re welcome to post here; I’ve learned a lot from them. But, in the future, I would like to try to avoid certain repetitious arguments, or at least confine those particular arguments to relevant threads such as this one.

There are some a priori arguments they almost always bring up in an effort to prove that there could not have been any government complicity in the attacks of 9/11. In recent debates here, those arguments got jumbled together with other, meatier issues in comment threads.

To avoid such jumbling in the future, I’ve decided to devote this post to the more common a priori arguments. I’ll then add a rule to my comment policy requiring that, in the future, these and similar a priori arguments be discussed only in comments below this post (or other posts on these same topics), rather than jumbled together with other, more substantive discussions.

In this post I’ll also provide a brief review of my debates with “debunkers” in general, for the benefit of “debunkers” visiting this blog for the first time. Some of the discussions we’ve had here have been very worthwhile.

Loose Change Final Cut – section on WTC 7

I recently had an opportunity to view Loose Change Final Cut. I like it a lot better than the previous versions of Loose Change. But I wish it had been titled “Loose Change, Third Edition,” rather than “Final Cut.” It still contains quite a few errors that I hope will be corrected at some point in the future, plus a few other ways it could be improved. Although David Ray Griffin has done a lot for the 9/11 Truth movement, he is, alas, far from the world’s most thorough “fact checker,” especially on technical matters.

In this post I’ll review, in detail, the segment “Act II, Chapter IV, WTC 7.” The following is intended both as constructive criticism of LCFC itself and also to call attention to some of the issues that LCFC raises. It will also contain some notes to myself on matters I should research further.

“9/11: Press for Truth” – my response to an official-story defender’s comments

ref1 has asked me to comment on this review of “9/11: Press for Truth”:

Statements by Lorie Van Auken, Mindy Kleinberg, and Donna Marsh O’Connor

Thanks to YT for calling our attention, in the Truth Action forum, to the following statements by 9/11 family members.

The first is a letter by two of the famed “Jersey Girls,” Lorie Van Auken and Mindy Kleinberg, who, in 2002, successfully pressured Congress to create the 9/11 Commission. According to YT, their letter, below, was published in the New York Times on December 26, 2007:

Former Italian president Francesco Cossiga thinks 9/11 was an inside job?

Yesterday morning I got an email message calling my attention to the news story Ex-Italian President: Intel Agencies Know 9/11 An Inside Job by Paul Joseph Watson, Prison Planet, Tuesday, December 4, 2007. The former Italian president is Francesco Cossiga, described as the “Man who set up Operation Gladio.” (See the Wikipedia articles on Operation Gladio and False flag operations.)

“Stand down” evidence on the “Emperor’s Clothes” site, including FAA web pages

The website Emperor’s Clothes contains a fairly good, though outdated and incomplete, presentation of evidence for a NORAD stand down on 9/11 (or at least a de facto stand down, even if there wasn’t an explicit stand down order). It’s outdated because it does not take into account the 9/11 Commission Report, which put all the blame on the FAA for not contacting NORAD soon enough about all four planes. It’s also lacking some other pieces of information I still haven’t seen anywhere, but which would be needed in order to prove that either the FAA or NORAD was indeed responding slower than normal on 9/11.

But the “Emperor’s Clothes” website does contain quite a few relevant links to the FAA site, useful in analyzing whether the newest version of the official story is credible, and also very useful (though not sufficient) on the more general issue of whether Flight 77 could have been intercepted (and then either forced down or shot down) before it hit the Pentagon. These links are all broken, but I was able to find all the referenced pages on the Internet Archive site. Links to the archived FAA pages, and some other relevant archived pages, will be provided further down on this page. These pages are a vital piece of evidence, filling one of the gaps I complained about in War games, etc.: A preliminary overview of some of Mark Robinowitz’s evidence about 9/11.

Identifying disinformation agents?

The online 911 Truth movement seems to have gotten caught up in an orgy of agent-baiting, with people on both sides of various divides either outright calling each other “disinformation agents” or, at the very least, insinuating that the leaders of the other side are probably disinformation agents.

The main divide is between what I think of as the saner and wackier branches of the movement. Admittedly my terminology is far from objective and makes clear where I stand.

By the wackier branches, I mean advocates of things like no-planes theories (especially WTC no-planes theories), video fakery, Star Wars beams, etc,. Many (though not all) of these folks also advocate claims about some vast, generations-old conspiracy that controls and micromanages the entire world, usually “the Illuminati.” (See The recent growth of anti-Illuminism: Dreadful ideology about the dreaded Illuminati and More about anti-Illuminism.) Some of their claims are blatant physical impossibilities. For example, a “Star Wars beam” powerful enough to “dustify” the towers would probably also ionize the air, causing the beam itself to glow like a lightning bolt. Obviously we didn’t see anything like that on 9/11.

By the saner branches, I mean those who (at least for the most part) reject stuff like the above, and who recognize the need for critical thinking and careful research.

But even some people in the saner branches seem to me to be way, way, way too quick to think of people on the other side as “disinformation agents.”

Now, it is indeed likely that there are government agents of various kinds among us, given the past history of COINTELPRO, and given more recent legislation such as the PATRIOT act. But, it seems to me, some of the kinds of behaviors that have been identified as “agent-like” behaviors are very commonplace among other people too, with other, more commonplace motives. So, it seems to me, these behaviors are far from a reliable way to spot an agent, although many of them are bad behaviors in their own right.

War games, etc.: A preliminary overview of some of Mark Robinowitz’s evidence about 9/11

In a comment on my post about Chip Berlet and “Conspiracism”, charlienneb has asked me to recommend an assertion of Mark Robinowitz’s for him to take a look at. So, I’ll now try to present what Robinowitz has said is some of his best evidence. I cannot vouch for everything he says, because he deals with a lot of matters I personally have not yet researched in depth.

For me personally, regarding 9/11, the smoking gun is the straight-down vertical, almost-symmetrical collapse of WTC 7, plus all the subsequent hampering and fudging of investigations. I’ve also spent quite a bit of time studying arguments for and against the idea that WTC 1 and 2 too were demolished with explosives and/or thermite/thermate, and I’m inclined to think it’s highly likely that they were.

But Robinowitz, on the other hand, prefers not to rely on demolition theories, or on physical-evidence arguments of any kind. He has made some good arguments against relying on physical evidence. Most people have almost no scientific background whatsoever and hence are not in a good position to evaluate physical evidence on their own. Although I’m no expert either, I personally do have a strong general scientific and engineering background, including two years of physics in college, which, I believe, is enough background for me to evaluate most (though not all) of the scientific arguments that have been made on both sides. But most people don’t share my background, so it would behoove me to see if I can build a solid case for government complicity in the 9/11 attacks (at least LIHOP, if not MIHOP) without any reference to demolition, either in the direct physical evidence or in the evidence of a coverup.

Chip Berlet and “Conspiracism”

Chip Berlet is a leftist writer who opposes the 9/11 Truth movement. In my opinion, he raises valid objections to what he calls “conspiracism” (which he distinguishes from the kinds of conspiracies that are actually likely to exist). But he wrongly classifies, as full-blown “conspiracism,” the idea that 9/11 was an inside job. Thus he echoes what seems to be a key propaganda ploy on the part of those covering up major crimes by high-level people within the U.S. government, namely lumping the evidence for such crimes together with some truly wacky (and truly dangerous) ideas to create the stereotype of the nutty “conspiracy theorist.” Berlet also, apparently, either ignores or has not yet looked at some of the better evidence for government complicity in the attacks of 9/11. On the other hand, I also think that what Berlet calls “conspiracism” is a genuine and dangerous trap which too many people in both the 9/11 Truth movement and the anti-war movement have fallen into, and it would be wise to pay attention to critiques of same.