Why be a critic?

[Busker]

I'd be interested to know why critics hang around and spend their time of 9/11 forums.

It would be a bit like me arguing how nonsense football is and spending hours trying to convince football fans they were wasting their lives.

So genuinely, why are critics here? What's your motivation?

[Alex_V]

That's a question I regularly ask myself - I'm currently 'considering my position'.

Motivations...

- I have a good friend who is a truther, and I don't think it would be morally right for me to just wash my hands of a topic which he passionately believes in. I see it as a duty to him to engage him and show an interest, even if it means vehemently disagreeing with him.

- I am genuinely concerned that truthers may turn into violent extremists. I believe to some small extent that I am doing a good turn in trying to expose flaws in their reasoning.

- I think the other reason I retain an interest, is that I have a genuine interest in finding a conspiracy. I'm waiting for the conspiracy theorists to get something right, and they only have to be right once for a whole can of worms to be opened. (I must admit I'm losing faith in this happening)

[SHERITON HOTEL]

No-one knows the definitive 9/11 truth, except the 9/11 guilty, and the US authorities won't have a proper enquiry, so how do these truth critics pontificate from a position of (it appears) 'the official narrative is gospel' certainty? Like the threads' author says, they expend sooo much energy on people they consider loons!! what did the bard say?...me thinks she/they (i'm paraphrasing) doth protest too much!

[paul wright]

[SHERITON HOTEL]

'Critics' seem to be proportionately far too large a percentage on internet forums than opinion polls on 9/11 suggest they should be, if any were proven to be in the pay of the government, what would this say?

[Alex_V]

[Alex_V]

[pepik]

I debunk because truthers are apologists for mass murdering terrorists, and their truther views are often the tip of a very big and ugly iceberg.

[paul wright]

Oh yes. We are the guilty ones. Apologists for mass killings. We ought to out these critics from here. This is another time I've seen it. We've been accused of being future violent extremists. These critics are really getting in the mode They're trying to accuse us of future crimes
Seriously. They've revealed the mode of thought to condemn us on the part of authority
Get them out of here, Tony, or I will
They've transgressed

[Alex_V]

[Busker]

[pepik]

[Alex_V]

[SHERITON HOTEL]

Are the critics not concerned that with so many 9/11 questions unanswered,they may have been propping up treasonous mass murderers of the worst kind and keeping them from justice? How do they sleep at night?

[Dogsmilk]

[A Sharp Major]

Most if not all the answers from officialdom, fire department professionals, the majority of witnesses and more distant professional observers (those with peer reviewed technical papers on the subjects) are not acceptable to the truthiness movement. The truthiness movement has shown that it isn't qualified to critique NIST et.al. In an adjacent thread one truther has shown that he or she doesn't understand how a gas cutting torch works (ask a welder)* but rabbits on elsewhere about heat transfer as if he/she is Lord Kelvin. * Par for the course.

Even the odd truther claiming an engineering degree posts evidence that they may have passed exams but don't understand the application. Jones and Wood included. Six years plus of truthiness and no alternative theories supported by peer reviewed calculations of what should have happened in truther world. If truthers really believe that 'nine eleven was an inside job' they haven't been very successful in putting their alternative 'theory' across. Do they even go to NIST's public progress meetings to view the engineering science for themselves and challenge the in house and contracted experts' theories and calculations? No, they wait for publication and get some non technical professors to 'demand' amendments in 'open letters'.

* Cue google frenzy by truthers 'educating' themselves.

[Dogsmilk]

I am sorry but your failure to appreciate Stockhausen undermines everything you write.

[SHERITON HOTEL]

Wait a minute, didn't I see a film of a NIST official (sweating profusely)in denial about molten metal below WTC 1, 2 AND 7 months post 9/11 and requesting the person who suggested it send him the satellite thermal images for WTC hotspots...then refuse to give contact details? have the critics had a suspicion by-pass?

[pepik]

[SHERITON HOTEL]

Apologist for mass murder and treason is pretty consistent with working in the square mile.

"bet, you'd sell your mother, you could buy another!" ref.10cc Wall Street Shuffle.

[A Sharp Major]

[Alex_V]

[Dogsmilk]

[SHERITON HOTEL]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcqf5tL887o

This youtube doesn't include the perspiring NIST engineer refusing contact details, I'll have to do a search.

[Stefan]

[quote="Alex_V"]

[Dogsmilk]

[Dogsmilk]

[pepik]

Masked man enters, attacks Bohemian Grove
'Phantom' expected armed resistance

Peter Fimrite, Chronicle Staff Writer

A bumbling, hooded commando calling himself the "Phantom Patriot" invaded the fabled grounds of the Bohemian Grove during the weekend hoping for a shootout.

What he got was a good night's sleep in a cot reserved for one of the club's captains of industry and a date with a prison psychologist.

Richard McCaslin, 37, of Carson City, Nev., pleaded not guilty in Sonoma County Superior Court yesterday to five felony counts including arson, burglary and brandishing a weapon at a peace officer after he allegedly sneaked into the exclusive Russian River encampment carrying an arsenal of weapons.

He told The Chronicle during a jailhouse interview that he went to the Monte Rio retreat Saturday night intent on exposing child abuse and human sacrifice and punishing the perpetrators.

"I was expecting armed resistance and I would have fired back if I was fired upon," he said.

The bizarre episode is the latest brouhaha involving San Francisco's Bohemian Club, which for years has provided fodder for conspiracy theorists and been attacked by women's groups.

Club representatives insist that the nonprofit organization -- founded in 1872 by five newspapermen, a Shakespearean actor, a vintner and a local merchant -- is dedicated to the simple enjoyment of music, literature and drama.

"We're very concerned and disturbed by the fact that this individual would trespass on our property armed as he was with the intent of doing harm," said Matt Oggero, general manager of the Bohemian Club. "His allegations . . . are totally irresponsible, highly offensive and grossly false."

But the well-spoken and seemingly lucid McCaslin is convinced that there are hidden torture chambers and other horrors at the club. He told how he was inspired by Austin, Texas, radio personality Alex Jones. Jones says he has seen "bizarre, Luciferian ceremonies" at the idyllic 2,000-acre redwood grove during the club's annual two-week summer encampment, which draws U.S. presidents and other luminaries.

Jones' Web site has dark, spooky-looking but completely indistinct pictures of the club's "Cremation of Care Ceremony."

Horrified by the images, McCaslin said he spent a year collecting weapons, staking out the grove and planning the commando-style operation.

"I was acting on reports that inside the Bohemian Club were incidents of child abuse and human sacrifice," McCaslin said. "I felt if physical damage was inflicted upon them and it got enough attention, the American people would rise up."

McCaslin was wearing a bulletproof vest, blue fatigues with "Phantom Patriot" spelled out in red letters across the chest and a rubber skeleton mask when he crept into the grove.

He quickly found himself hopelessly lost and bouncing off the trees in the pitch dark after his flashlight went out. Feeling "almost silly," he said he felt his way into a cabin, flopped down on a cot and went to sleep.

The next morning, McCaslin said, he discovered the club's giant owl "idol" and would have blown it up if he had explosives. Instead he placed an Old Testament verse from Leviticus at the base of the statue. Alone, with no enemy or anybody else in sight, McCaslin decided to set fire to the camp's mess hall, but sprinklers extinguished the flames.

He was soon confronted by Sonoma County sheriff's deputies. He said he was expecting resistance but gave up quietly when he realized the deputies were "legitimate officers of the law."

Sheriff's Lt. Bruce Rochester said that besides the outlandish costume, McCaslin was armed with a double-barreled shotgun/assault rifle hybrid, a 2- foot-long sword, a .45-caliber pistol, a crossbow, a knife and a hand-made bomb launcher.

"We've had protesters and stuff at the Bohemian Grove, but I've been here 24 years and I've never seen -- and I don't think any of us will ever again see -- a guy come here dressed like that in our careers," Rochester said. "Nobody's laughing. The deputies were scared and we're all still scratching our heads."

McCaslin is being held on $500,000 bail in the Sonoma County Jail mental health ward and is being evaluated by psychologists. A preliminary hearing is scheduled on Feb. 5.

[Dogsmilk]

And the relevance of this is?

Are you attempting to assert truthers are notably more likely to lose it by citing a newspaper article regarding a single individual whose ultimate diagnostic status is not noted? And yet you criticise the way truthers evidence their claims...?

Kevin Barrett killed someone because he had voices in his head telling him to do it. There is no evidence he believed in conspiracy theories. There is no evidence he was a truther.

Though if he firmly believed he believed in the OT, this must be clear evidence OT believers are potentially dangerous.

Heh - come to think of it, now I think I remember a guy storming out of an appointment with an Asian psychiatrist shouting that the psych was in Al Qaeda. Maybe the OT is dangerous!

[pepik]

Hmmm... what is the relevance of someone incited to go on a killing spree by conspiracy theories? You can't think of any?

Its clear some truthers are turning into stalkers. Ask the woman who photographed the Pennsylvania crash. And a recently a 7/7 victim has spoken out against harassment. Even former astronauts get harassed by moon landing hoax conspiracy theorists.

Its also clear that only firm rules keep the holocaust deniers out of this site - they are clearly attracted to it - although other conspiracy theories about jews are allowed (see my tag). You can't see how that could go wrong?