"This isn't the TRUTH movement, this is the "Controlled Demolition" movement, which I am not a part of."

Any minute now john Gold and DHS are gonna realize that, "hey, this is kinda wierd and all, but I just realized that you and I share the same brain, along with Nicholas and JohnA! Is there a glitch in the matrix program or is this for reals?"

What does he think killed the family members' family members? Does he think finding that out might be relevant to pursuing justice for them?

Moreover, I've had about enough of the family members, the vast majority of whom allowed their silence about any questions they might have had to be bought for a price. Bob McIlvaine is the only family member who seems to a) get it and b)be open about getting it. A few others give cryptic indications that their beliefs go past LIHOP, but cryptic indications are entirely inadequate.

This is why the truth movement so often gets dissed by the radical left, anyway, and I think it's a valid point. This is not about 3000 people killed in North America, it's about the million+ Arabs, Muslims, and Persians experiencing or about to experience genocide.

I thought about making this a blog, but this is a good place for it. These are particularly humorous posts from another 9/11 truth website -- and in fairness, I will say that some of the "usual suspects" with whom I frequently disagree about both analysis and message board policy make some good arguments against these posts -- to no avail. I'm keeping it anonymous because it's not about the personalities, it's about the ideas.

But you can probably figure it out. The conversation took place in a thread about The Shill Game.

[Edit: I can't help it -- I have to add some commentary.]

I read the book. The book has a lot of good info in it. It's far from perfect, but better than what I expected. It's definitely not what I would write. Perhaps it will reach a wide audience. Perhaps it will be snared by the large amount of junk on the Shell Game website (links to websites promoting false claims about 9/11). If I'd seen the website before the book, I would not have read the book.

[Me, too-- for diametrically opposed reasons.]

It does get the point that 9/11 was allowed to happen and provided technical assistance to ensure that it did happen, and points out the key role of the war games.

[Unabashed LIHOP-ism -- you don't see *that* everyday!]

It's one of the very few 9/11 anything efforts to tie together 9/11 and Peak Oil - something that most 9/11 truthers and most people aware of Peak Oil don't want to do. Deal with it, the connections are inseparable.

Ruppert's book is one of the very few that made any effort to do verifiable research - and it's why the peddlers of the scientology type claims attacked him so much (the empire wants to keep the 9/11 and the Peak Oil aware people separate and unaware of each other's best work).

Yes, the 9/11 Commission did mention (sort of) a war game, but they definitely did not mention them in any detail. No mention of the "plane into building" exercise. No mention of the suppressed investigations into flight schools. No mention of the multiple warnings from US allies about what, when, where the "attacks" would happen.

The most important part of the 9/11 story is not the buildings falling down after being smacked by a heavy object traveling close to the speed of sound,

[Oooh, make it sound like a freak occurrence that could never have been anticipated -- except that it was, by the buildings' designers. And does your cave not have internet access? Good lord, man, Building 7 wasn't HIT by a plane!]

but the decisions made to intentionally allow them to happen in order to justify wars to control the oil fields as we pass Peak Oil. It would be nice to see 9/11 "truth" play a role in social change, but given the massive media counterattack and association of "truth" with the nuttiest claims it seems unlikely that "truth" about 9/11 will lead to positive social change. And 9/11 was in the past, while Peak Oil will shape the future. They are inseparable, but perhaps it's best to understand what happened to the truth movement since similar tactics are being used against understanding environmental limits and problems.

[And genocide based on Islamophobia based on 9/11 is shaping the world right now -- and is also a factor in the response to Peak Oil.]

As for the criticism that the book avoids demolition theories, that is a plus in many ways, although the shell game website links to lots of websites promoting this. If there was truth to the demolition claim, it would be unlikely that the corporate (and alternative) media would claim that this was the key aspect to the 9/11 counter narrative.

[This is just logical fallacy, plain and simple.]

Arguing about this claim, however, is likely to be similar to the arguments for decades about ballistics in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963 - with the exact same result (the conspiracy people marginalized with little impact on the broader society).

It is interesting that there was never any real effort to peer review the demolition claims, even the best of them, and there are some serious problems with this perspective - but those problems are probably moot at this point.

[WTF? There was never any real effort to peer review the OCT claims.]

Summary: Shell Game is OK, not perfect, could use a much better website / promotional campaign. It's unfortunate that the best efforts in the 9/11 truth and the Peak Oil awareness efforts have been kept separate. The real goal is to use these awarenesses to figure out how we all - 6 and a half billion of us - can use the remaining oil for transformation to a peaceful civilization.

****

"It was the blowing up of the buildings that got me seriously questioning the official story, it does the trick with a lot of people."

It was the missing plane at the pentagon that got me seriously questioning the official story. but - over time i realized - i was misguided.

[Bless me, Vic and Jim, for I have sinned. Something about the crash scene at the Pentagon seemed very wrong, but I have seen the commercial jet, err, the light.]

personally - i find the CD faction of this movement to be highly insular. Many activists, like yourself, may feel the evidence is rock-solid. But, to those on the outside looking in - it remains the easiest aspect of 9/11 Truth to summarily dismiss as outlandish and improbable. It is just the nature of the claim.

[I agree that this is the crux of the mindfuck, but that is why, when someone can SEE that the Towers are being blown up and 7 neatly demolished, it is a transformative experience.]

i understand your frustration.

But - i find that many who adhere to the CD theory feel that it is THE definitive smoking gun - and therefore treat it as the center of their activism.

Unfortunately - in the eyes of the public - the opposite is true. To the jaded public who are resistant to considering evidence of government complicity (in whatever form), the CD theory exemplifies tin-foil-hat-ism. I know card carrying members of the 9/11 truth movement itself who still refuse to accept it - or are agnostic on the issue.

[This is claim is not grounded in any real research, but don't let that stop you from repeating it ad infinitum.]

You may not like hearing it - but - Jon Gold makes a good point when he demonstrates how often the mainstream media has used the CD theory to make us look bad.

There is a REASON why the media won't touch the Sibel Edmonds story. It is ACTIONABLE under the law. Testimony under oath - and supporting documents - could be demanded that potentially could shake the foundations of government.

CD - like the magic bullet - could be debated forever - with no resolution. Unless you have a whistleblower who claims he personally wired the building himself - you can be as rightiously indignant as you want - and claim the evidence is as rock-solid as you like - and it won't matter. The opposition can just trot out 'experts' who disagree.

recently the media has been exposing significant evidence of obstruction and destruction of evidence to the 911 Commission. therein lies an opportunity to demand hearings and investigations.

CD had its day. IT remains a very important part of the national dialogue. but - IMHO - i would not lead with CD at this point in the game.

****

And so we have returned to where this journey started. Ruppert making his argument why physical evidence alone isn't going to work, even if it's valid.

I'll judge myself, and ask if it applies to any of you: If the Zelikow-Rove-torture tape-Edmonds and related stories had made the corporate news reports in 2004, I would be treating them as a call to final battle, phone everyone I know including people who don't want to hear about 9/11 skepticism, and try to get the loudest biggest most colorful possible action happening at the Commission's gates, demanding their immediate resignation.

(Why didn't I then? Why didn't any of us? What collective spell were we all operating under?)

If it had come out in 2006, something similar - using a different symbol, since the Commission was defunct. I wouldn't be as optimistic about the outcome, but I imagine I'd be doing it.

But today, I don't know where to start. This movement has zero sense of how to win politically, among other problems including, I'm sorry, the earnest focus on "demolitions proof." (I am agnostic; I may be proven wrong on this. Perhaps renegades will appear from within the NIST panel. Maybe someone brings a few million dollars into it and finances an MIT study that concludes it was demolition.)

[Again, it's hard to take people seriously when they don't understand what is right in front of them and claim to remain 'agnostic.']

ACTIONABLE. If that word doesn't stand out for you, you should go ahead and do research, but don't pretend you're in a movement to expose the 9/11 plot, get justice and make sure it never happens again.

****

First of all, please don't employ evolutionary theory as a parallel. That's just what Shermer does! This is just abusing one of the most robust concepts ever developed by science. Evolutionary theory derives from millions of cases observed. The entire planet provides evidence, from the molecular biology to the billion-year fossil record. The mechanisms posited by Darwin have been observed historically and experimentally. Furthermore, the truth has won out, there are just a lot of religious folk who don't understand it.

With CD, we are talking about models for a single, discrete, unprecedented and almost certainly non-reproducible past event, of which most of the physical evidence has been lost. Okay? It's not science, it's crime scene forensics using science, but stuck with video and stills and a few dust samples as the remaining primary evidence.

[Three similar events, the official explanation for which violates high-school level principles of physics. Non-reproducible? Bldg 7 is reproduced in Vegas every other month -- and as for the Towers, this is just more indication of what a spectacularly successful sleight-of-hand maneuver crashing the planes was.]

Eventually the truth wins out. Sure. Hooray.

I don't want the truth in 30 years. I want the perpetrators, now. I want the secret state exposed and abolished.

[I'd like any private parties that might have been involved exposed also.]

What about developing an actionable case now aiming to bring specific charges, obtain the documents, open up all questions to investigation? Do you want to best the NIST team in a debate and get props from the "truthers," or do you want to force release of the remaining steel for examination by independent teams of scientists under international overview?

Demonstrating that the 9/11 Commission Report was a criminal fraud and that Bush officials were negligent or committed perjury and other crimes--however trivial these crimes may seem to you initially compared to 9/11 as a whole--might lead to the latter within a few months. "The truth winning out" might lead to it in 30 years. Do you understand the difference?

****

well - i would ask that you respect that others may simply not agree - in absolute terms - with your conclusions on CD.

to be perfectly fair - i do get the sense that CD has somehow been converted into a holy-relic of sorts that must not be touched and/or questioned. Good activists like Jon Gold have taken a ridiculous amount of 'heat' for declaring their doubts.

[Because they are causing us to doubt their cognitive capacity and connection to reality.]

I have seen the loyalty of activists questioned simply on the basis that they will not sign a blood-loyalty oath to the theory. I myself endured quite a bit of personal accusations from a group that has now been banned from TruthAction, who post voluminously about how Gold and myself are proven agents of Larry Silverstein. Other groups like WingTV and Les Jamieson became defacto spokesmen for the theory - and i can attest to the fact that it was the final straw that divided NY911Truth (at least as far as i was concerned).

[Wow -- what's up with all the spooky metaphors? Church of controlled demolition, holy grail, blood oath? Can someone give me a link to our voluminous material on his proven agenthood? And I'm sorry, but to attribute 'ownership' of destruction theories to Wingtv and les Jamieson is just fucked up.]

no one should be afraid or intimidated into stating that it is "a theory." It is simply NOT akin to the theory of evolution, and no amount of redundant declarative statements will elevate it to that level.

[Projection alert: continuing to pretend that there is not valid physical evidence to disprove the 'plane crash -- building go boom! all the way to the ground' theory will not make it so.]

If you read my one and only post on this thread - on the subject of CD (that someone else brought up) - i in no way impugned upon the veracity of the underlying science.

but - like everything else - the subject is fair game and still open to debate.

One of the moderators here asked if there was any value in debating it.

i would say 'yes.' Because - if we create "off limit" theories that must be accepted - without question - we become no different than 'other researchers' who have fractured the movement by created untouchable theories. and we know who THEY are.