I've had the feeling that this guy was a clown ever since he introduced "the great Alex Jones" on a Fox program; this just confirms it.
Labels: Andrew Napolitano, Celebrity Kooks, Judge Napolitano
Labels: Andrew Napolitano, Celebrity Kooks, Judge Napolitano
Welcome, Mr Rational! Solid writing style, sensible conclusions, worth a regular visit.
So how can this notion be applied to the 9/11 truth movement? The following is a common example of special pleading (e.g., How can the govt. continue to conceal the conspiracy if literally thousands of people were involved? Special plead: you don’t understand the concept of compartmentalization within the government).Indeed. No matter how compartmentalized the work was, there would be a hell of a lot of people who would say, "You know, I wonder if those weird ceiling tiles I installed at the WTC had anything to do with the collapse."
This argument is special pleading because it avoids having to answer the real problem, namely that even with compartmentalization there still remain thousands of people who have to remain silent. Lets take the people who set up the demolition charges for instance. If they were only given instructions to set charges and nothing else, then I find it a little odd that not a single one of them has come forward with this information. The notion of compartmentalization fails when we realize that if one link in the chain fails, then the entire conspiracy fails.
Labels: Mr Rational, Other Debunkers
The headline may read like a spoof; but reality is frequently spookier and spoofier, than parody.
In speaking of wally world, as with the recent piece on the frothy mouthed, Uber Nut Alex Jones; another luminary schlemiel spruiked by conspiracy adherents is the hobbit shaped Dennis Kucinich.
Dennis recently and bitterly dropped out of the presidential "race" and apparently stamp his imprimatur on wannabe American pope of the pauletariat dictatorship, Ron Paul.
Yep! Behind that cheesy, beatific smile, the same ultra Rightist, bigoted, homophobic, race-for-profit exploiter Ron Paul; who penned those loathsome letters we reported recently, whilst Kucinich masquerades and markets himself as a "Progressive."
Not dissimilar to certain Catholics who see heavenly apparitions and sightings in moldy crusts of cheese and toast below, New Age chic Dennis Kucinich, admits to ogling a UFO.
He does not contest his pal New Ager Shirley MacLaine's biographical sketch; that Dennis was emotionally impacted and cerebrally influenced by the celestial apparition.
The "UFO" encounter was obviously not a mere sighting of something completely clinical, mechanistic, abstract, untenable, unutterable and inexplicable but rather, one where emotion and mind merged in a connective, religious-style epiphany.
Dennis, "found the encounter extremely moving ... felt a connection to [his] heart ... heard directions in [his] mind"
Shirley, also urged that Dennis contact her spiritual advisor; who instructed and, "helped her communicate with trees."
Unlike infrequent and episodic UFO seer and "triangular craft" mind-contactee Dennis Kucinich, his buddy Ron Paul apparently sees "God" everywhere and in everything.
Evidently, even where he or she, is not located. For instance, Ron Paul has asserted that "God" is found in he American Constitution?!
"the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, [are]both replete with references to God"
That is the illusory pope Paul spin version; so for those instructed by fact, reason and the rational, here is the complete text of the American Constitution to test pope Paul's claim --and upon examination, a completely weird claim at that.
Contrary to Ron Paul's assertion, a search reveals that "God" is non-existent; not even once does the word "God" appear in the text.
Let alone the mind-boggling fantasy that it is "replete" with the word. Neither claim is true; but one is surely more bizarrely untruthful than the other. Indeed, Ron Paul asserts a blatant falsehood.
A rational person might expect that a geriatric, political blow hard whose every rhetorical bloviate and slithery mantra is laced in feigned veneration of "the Constitution," might surely have bothered to read the document in entirety. Just once!
In considering potential rulers who make pious noises as representatives or seers of "God" or his modern substitutes; one is mindful of Aristotle's admonitory:
"A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side."
Our New Age seers of apparition and non-existent deity, oracle Dennis and pope Ron, do seem a cozy match made for the Truthling Zone. A melding of like "minds," a union consummated in the Psych Ward.
On the other hand, we rational folks would like to see politicians, at least remotely grounded in reality.
Conspiracy adherents are noted and notorious fabricators and hoaxers.
On the political spectrum; throughout history, there have been numerous conspiratorial-style fabrications and hoaxes produced by conspiracy peddlers to demonize real and frequently perceived enemies.
One of the most memorable and notorious conspiracy hoaxes is "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion."
Often misconstrued as a purely "anti-Semitic" fabrication, it was in fact far more a reactionary, monarchist, royalist and theocon Rightist propaganda against the progressive, liberalizing, emancipationist movements which emerged since the Protestant Revolution and the Enlightenment.
Like modern conspiracy hustlers, the "Protocols" similarly peddle the noxious fable of a "world conspiracy" and other than the conspiracy's name being altered, not a great deal has redacted in this fable.
The radical far Right refer to it as the "NWO Conspiracy," whilst the hyper frantic Left euphemize it as "Globalization."
Neither fanatical side provides rational discourse. Nor, the pros and cons of globalization, or the proposition of a more "united" people, society and planet; but haphazardly use such phrases, often in a derogatory fashion, to demonize perceived enemies often, quite fictitious ones at that.
An arch-lunatic amongst the nutbar conspiracy rubes is attention scavenger, hate monger, fear peddler and snake oil salesman Alex Jones.
The maniacal, ego-bloated Jones, disgorges a sludge of manic conspiracy bloviate through his various WWW "fronts" such as the warped and convoluted ravings located on his "prisonplanet" prattler.
The articles on the site are allegedly concocted by a devoted Alex Jones lackey, Paul Joseph Watson who obsequiously spins for Jones with all the vertigo of "Meniere's Disease" sufferer.
Although Alex Jones professes to be some sort of far Right Wing "Christian" fundamentalist, or in sane people speak; a religious nutcase, the "prisonplanet" front is curiously named after a Scientology cult concept:
"Earth was subsequently abandoned ... and remains a pariah "prison planet" to this day"
Alex Jones has promoted a Scientologist and apologetically raved in defense of Tom Cruise; making the crazy Cruise into a hero and victim, rather than a Scientology cult advocate, anti-rational and anti-science crusader, with Jones claiming "Cruise is right on point on every issue raised."
This raises a few questions:
(a) Did Jones plagiarize the Scientology concept?
(b) Is the nutty Alex Jones an actual Xenu devotee that is, a quasi-closeted Scientologist?
(c) But more importantly; which one is crazier, Tom Cruise or Alex Jones?
With these background notes in mind, we move to the core topic.
Guzzling the conspiracy Kook Aid, the Jones conspiracy junkies recently promoted and popularized the hoax that "Ex-Italian President: Intel Agencies Know 9/11 An Inside Job"
A truly false blab operation, which asserted an ex-Italian PM supported their "9/11 Inside Job" chimera.
Common characteristics amongst conspiracy devotees is their habitual hyper-exaggeration and colossal inconsistencies.
For instance, they will incessantly whine and demonize the so-called "elite" and "mainstream media" yet, immediately the elite or mainstream offer them the time of day, they will grovel and prostrate in adulation; to "sup with the devil" then becomes high-art.
Thus, inconsistent as ever, when the "mainstream" or an "elite," in this case even appears to squawk to their adenoidal, castrati choir, they change their tune pronto. The hitherto sources of demonized disinformation, magically morph into sources of truth.
To debunk the Alex Jones Francesco Cossiga "9/11 Inside Job" hoax, we refer rational readers to the James Randi Foundation, [JRF] forums:
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=100367
"In Brief: This claim is based on a story published in an Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera. But has the former Italian president really joined the truth movement? Not according to this translation:
“As I’ve been told, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow (interview appeared on 30 november 07) the most important chain of newspaper of our country should give the proof, with an exceptional scoop, that the video (which in reality is an audio tape, NdR) in which appear Osama, leader of “the great and powerful movement of islamic revenge Al Quaeda” - God bless him! - and in which are formulated threats to our ex president Berlusconi, is nothing more than a fake realized inside Mediaset studios (the huge television group owned by Berlusconi) in Milan and sent to arabic television Al Jazeera.
The trap was organized to create solidarity for Berlusconi, which is having lot of problem related for the tangle between RAI and Mediaset. From sources near to Palazzo Chigi, the nevralgic center of italian intelligence, we know that the video is fake because Osama admits that he was the mind behind the attacks against the twin towers, while all the democratic parties in Europe and USA know very well that the attack was organised by CIA and Mossad, whit the help of sionistic world, just to accuse arab countries and induce occident to intervein both in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is why nobody in parlament gave solidarity to Berlusconi, which is the author of the fake video" "
It's apparent that Cossiga was being sarcastic about the perceived tendency of the fevered Italian Left to blame everything on Berlusconi, Americans and so-called "Zionist" bogeymen.
But, Cossiga himself admits he is not a conspiracy theorist, see this article published in the Italian newspaper La Stampa.
He affirms, "I refuse the conspiracy theory, which is a smart and sometimes sincere contrafaction of reality caused by the fear of that (reality)".
And also: "Rembering how "open" american society is, I think it's very unlikely, I may say impossible, that 9/11 was an inside job".
The conclusions are apparent and obvious:
(1) Francesco Cossiga has a sense of humor
(2) He like ourselves, enjoys taking pokes at unhinged, nutbar conspiracy cranks
(3) Francesco Cossiga by his own empathic admission, definitely does not believe 9/11 was that tiresome cliche, "an inside job"
(4) The hoax peddled by the Alex Jones front [site] is a deliberate, Yellow Journalistic, sensationalistic, Tabloid fabrication
(5) Truther cultists are daft, lack a sense of humor; are ignorant and have no idea when they are being sent up, scorned, ridiculed and mocked
(6) Ignorant conspiracy devotees frequently poleaxe themselves by not fact-checking and posting articles which, far from supporting their crazy conspiracy schemes, make fun of or, completely demolish their irrational fantasies
In short, "hoax busted!" and another conspiracy fabrication bites the dust.
Truthlings have a notorious habit of stalking those who remotely disagree with their paranoid-delusional fantasies.
Skeptic Mike Shermer is irate and clearly fed up with these noxious nutjobs seeking ego-gratification and self-publicity at his expense.
Bill Maher recently had to forcibly denounce and then physically evict the proselytizing 9/11 Kookers attempting to crash his TV program.
According to the Associated Press:
"after the instigators were ejected, Maher told his panelists -- MSNBC's Chris Matthews, Los Angeles Times columnist Joel Stein and Congresswoman Sheila Jackson -- that they often linger outside his studio to share 9/11 conspiracy theories with him and try to get into the show."
“Ever since Skeptic magazine published an investigative article on the 9/11 "Truth Movement" and analyzed their claims, which were found wanting, I have been hounded by the so-called 9/11 "truthers" ...”
A core modus operandi or tactical technique of conspiracy zealots is to use the pretence of “questioning” which is nothing more than a rhetorical rouse, permitting them to make dogmatic assertions as if incontrovertible.
By Victor Chabala in: FHK
Conspiracy theorists often claim that no steel-framed building ever collapsed due to fire before 9-11. However, this is a complete lie and here are some examples of steel-framed buildings thatcollapsed due to fire before 9-11-01: The Kader Toy Factory fire, which occurred on May 10, 1993. Buildings 1, 2, and 3 all collapsed as a result of that fire (see Kader Toy FactoryFire).
On Jan 16, 1967, the steel roof of the McCormick Place in Chicago collapsed due to fire (refer to McCormick Fire).
As we see here, in January of 1997 (just over four years BEFORE 9-11 occurred), the $15 million dollar Sight and Sound Theater in Lancaster County, Pa collapsed due to fire.
Go here, and you’ll find a list of steel-framed buildings that collapsed due to fire as the following quote from the above link says,
Another quote from fpemag.com states,"Two large department store fires in Athens, Greece, in 1980 are documented in the paper by Kyriakos Papaioannoa, 1986.4 These fires began at 3 a.m. on Dec.19, 1980, with arson being suspected as the cause. The Katrantzos Sport Department Store was an 8-story reinforced concrete building. Its fire started at the 7th floor and rapidly spread throughout the building, due to lack ofvertical or horizontal compartmentation and the absence of sprinklers. Collectedevidence indicated that the fire temperatures reached 1000°C over the 2- to3-hour fire duration, and the firefighters concentrated on containing the firespread to the adjacent buildings. Upon termination of these fires, it wasdiscovered that a major part of the 5th to 8th floors had collapsed. Variousother floor and column failures throughout the Katrantzos Building were alsoobserved (see Figure 1).The cause of these failures was considered to be restraint of the differential thermal expansion of the structure that overloaded its specific elements or connections. On May 21, 1987, Sao Paulo had one of the biggest fires in Brazil, which precipitated a substantial partial collapse of the central core of the tall CESP Building 2."
"A fire-initiated full collapse of a textile factory occurred in Alexandria, Egypt, on July 19, 2000.This 6-story building was built of reinforced concrete, and its fire started at about 9 a.m. in the storage room at the ground floor. Fire extinguishers were nonfunctional, and the fire spread quickly before the firefighters could arrive. An electrical short-circuit accelerated the fire spread. At about 6 p.m., ninehours after the start of the fire, when the blaze seemingly was under controland subsiding, the building suddenly collapsed, killing 27 people. Figure 3 shows a photograph of this collapse."As you can see, the statement that no steel-framed building ever collapsed due to fire before 9-11 is a blatant lie that the 9-11 “Truth” Movement should be ashamed of.
Sourced:-
http://forthardknox.com/2008/01/25/steel-buildings-that-collapsed-due-to-fire-before-9-11/
Apart from taking a haymaker swing at a Capitol Hill cop and beyond her solicitation of $10 million in social contributions from a Saudi prince, she was one of the first high-profile adherents of the official wack-job “9/11 Truth” movement, directly implicating the U.S. government in the staging of the attack on the Twin Towers. She made the charge — surprise, surprise — on Berkeley’s Pacifica Radio station, and then repeated it during a 2002 speech to the Congressional Black Caucus. After winning back her congressional seat in 2004, she put her signature on a “call for immediate inquiry into evidence that suggests high-level government officials may have deliberately allowed the September 11th attacks to occur.”
The conspiracy charge hardly came out of the blue, as the McKinney family has established a rich tradition of public scapegoating. In the immediate aftermath of her defeat in the 2002 primary, her dad told reporters: “Jews have bought everybody... J-E-W-S.” Somehow she was re-elected to office in 2004, but was finally defeated again in 2006 by Hank Thompson, an African-American county commissioner who ran on a platform of, well, sanity.
So now the publicity-hungry McKinney is back, all dressed up as a presidential candidate, albeit of a third party, and being trundled around by the likes of Cindy Sheehan and other activists who have clearly gone ’round the bend. Anyone with even vaguely progressive inclinations ought to toss tomatoes at a charlatan like McKinney rather than applaud her. She’s an embarrassment and a fraud.
http://www.laweekly.com/news/dissonance/green-party-rip/17889/
You have to laugh at the monumental insanities peddled by truthlings.
Their cult-brained conspiracy fantasies are not only blatantly ridiculous and bereft of hard evidence, but as they consistently berate one another, their foolish delusions are frequently mutually exclusive with the fables of other crazed conspiracy parrots.
Like narcotic addicts; they've needed ever stronger "hits" of conspiracy crack to keep the illusions viable until, even the most bizarre has now become boring and mundane and they are imploding, falling into depression and often sound suicidal.
Marc Awodey has an Interesting editorial at Op-Ed News.
But “daylight is the best antiseptic” and the 9/11 “truth” fad is a victim of its own internet success. Practically everyone on the planet has heard conspiracist rants on U-tube, in blogs, forums, books, and videos, and found such claims to lack veracity. Thus hot air is rapidly seeping out of the “truth” balloon. One reason is because of the oxymoron that there are so many claims on the truth. No planes “theories,” artificial voice recordings from air phones, laser beams, flight 93 passengers killed in Cleveland - you name it, and it’s a “theory.”
A few weeks into the fall of 2001, a friend called me from France and urged me to be the first American journalist to report the "truth" about the Sept. 11 attacks. He then sent me French newspaper stories "proving" that no airplane ever crashed into the Pentagon. While it is true that my French isn't what it used to be, I wasn't convinced.http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/articles/2008/01/14/
The French have not monopolized this version of events. Not infrequently, I receive e-mails with subject lines like, "Yes, the Bush/Cheney regime deliberately let 9/11 happen." "The Pentagon was struck by a 'hijacked' airliner 45 minutes after two other 'hijacked' airliners struck the WTC," this recent missive continued, "without the airliner being intercepted, approached, chased, or even seen by our air defenses? The Gov't still refuses to release clear video of whatever happened at the Pentagon to this day, six years later??? Why???"
I don't think Dick Cheney, or the titans of capital, or the agents of the Apocalypse, blew up the World Trade Center and killed 3,000 people to further some dark cause. I think the plot was hatched right where we think it was, in the faraway, hot sands of anti-American hatred.
I doubt the truth is out there. I think it is already here.
We have been criticized for linking presidential candidate Ron Paul to 9/11 conspiracy theorists, tax protestors and other assorted nuts like Alex Jones, but now The New Republic has found some of Mr. Paul's old newsletters, and provides not just a connection, but an endorsement of extremist views. Some choice examples:
While bashing King, the newsletters had kind words for the former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke. In a passage titled "The Duke's Victory," a newsletter celebrated Duke's 44 percent showing in the 1990 Louisiana Republican Senate primary. "Duke lost the election," it said, "but he scared the blazes out of the Establishment." In 1991, a newsletter asked, "Is David Duke's new prominence, despite his losing the gubernatorial election, good for anti-big government forces?"
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."