Friday, August 10, 2007

All Hail Pat Curley, Defender Of The Real Truth About 9/11

The Phoenix New Times has an excellent new article on Pat Curley, the major figure behind the fantastic blog, Screw Loose Change.

The piece, by Stephen Lemons, rips the lunatic heart out of the 9/11 truth movement, with some awesome straw-man and ad-hominem attacks, augmented by brilliant use of advanced investigative techniques, such as guilt by association.

In short, it may be the finest piece of 9/11-related journalism I have ever seen.

Excerpts from The Yoda of 9/11
Pat Curley slices through the loony conspiracy theories at his influential "Screw Loose Change" Web site
...

Along with co-blogger James Bennett of Seattle and SLC allies such as New York City's Mark "Gravy" Roberts, author of the painstakingly detailed Loose Change Second Edition Viewer Guide, Curley patrols a veritable Mos Eisley cantina of conspiracy mavens, kooky celebs, Holocaust deniers, nutty academics, anti-Semites, aged hippies, delusional twentysomethings, and cynical, Elmer Gantry-like opportunists, all of whom are united in their opposition to the official version of what transpired on September 11, 2001: that 19 al-Qaeda members armed with box-cutters and knives pulled off the most daring and destructive surprise attack on American soil in history.

Initially conceived as a rebuttal to the popular Internet documentary Loose Change, which, after its release in April 2005, helped disseminate these paranoid conspiracy fantasies to their largest audience yet, Screw Loose Change has since become the way station for everyone who is seeking sanity when faced with the wild distortions, half-truths, and outright lies of the 9/11 truth movement.
...

Fox News talking head Michelle Malkin has called SLC "the single best clearinghouse on the Net for fighting the tinfoil-hat brigade."
...

"I'm offended that these people slander our country," [James] Bennett notes. "Whether you like Bush and the administration or not, you still don't like people saying false things about them. History is history. I don't like people trying to alter history for their own egotistical motives, their own fears and motivations. It's something that we all share in common; it's not something someone should just be able to hijack."
...

The 9/11 Commission Report and the 43 volumes of the study into the collapse of the World Trade Center by National Institute of Standards and Technology are considered to be worthless whitewash by the troofers. The institute is studying the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7, which is often cited by troofers as proof that their claims are correct. But who are we kidding? No amount of evidence to the contrary will make them relinquish their core beliefs: 9/11 was an inside job; the Pentagon was hit by a missile or a drone plane; the collapse of the Twin Towers and WTC 7 were the product of controlled demolitions, and United Flight 93 was a colossal hoax.

The troofers don't really have any "evidence" on their side. They have arguments, anomalies, beliefs.
If you really want the truth, says Lemons,
Read Popular Mechanics' Debunking 9/11 Myths or watch the BBC episode of its series The Conspiracy Files, which takes on the 9/11 conspiracy theories and thoroughly trashes them. Or just tune in Monday, August 20 as The History Channel takes on the troofers with a new doc, The 9/11 Conspiracies.
I think you should read the whole thing. I really do.

The comments are instructive too. There's one from a deluded troofer who says "Actually WTC7 fell a little faster than the speed of gravity." As a subsequent comment from a right-thinking defender of the official story makes clear, gravity is not a speed, and "you only need recall your high school physics to remember that gravity is a form of ACCELERATION."

My, how things change. When I took physics in high school and again as an undergrad, and even later when I taught physics in college, we used to consider gravity a FORCE.

I guess we must have been wrong all this time. Just call me kooky and delusional.

As another commenter explains:
"Whats the point of calling people kooky and delusional with these ad hominen attacks."

Well, that'd be because Troooothers are kooky and delusional, and, well, pretty much insane.

I believe the correct description is "nuttier than squirrel poop."
I'd write more ... but I just saw an acorn go by!