Catch-9/11

It's a Catch-9/11

My newest "effort" is finished, and it turned out so awful that I've decided to post it elsewhere.

I hope you won't look at it, but here's the link anyway:

Catch-9/11

Seriously:

This is by far the worst thing I've ever written and that's why I'm so anxious to share it with YOU!

I hope you'll HATE it! And I hope you won't share it with either of your friends because I hope they'll hate it too!

A Hole Too Deep

As my regular readers both know, I've been reading (and commenting on) a three-part series called "The Twenty Year Shadow of 9/11", which has been published by CovertAction Magazine.

The series, by Ben Howard, Aaron Good and Peter Dale Scott, began with two installments which appear to have been written by all three authors working together, and ended with a three-part conclusion which was certainly written by the three authors separately. And that's why we have three different conclusions to assess.

This post examines the second conclusion in the third installment of the series. It's called "Cutting Through the Parapolitical Fog of 9/11" and it was written by Aaron Good. CovertAction says:

Aaron Good is Editor at Large for CovertAction Magazine.

His revised doctoral dissertation, American Exception: Empire and the Deep State, is to be published by Skyhorse in the spring of 2022.

You can follow Aaron on Twitter: @Aaron_Good_

The first conclusion, by Ben Howard, set the bar. Will the second conclusion will reach it? or surpass it? No other result seems possible.

One Out Of Three Ain't Good

The third installment of "The Twenty Year Shadow of 9/11", a three-part series by Ben Howard, Aaron Good, and Peter Dale Scott, has been posted at CovertAction Magazine, and it starts with a note from the editors:

[Because this series has been the result of a collaboration among three writers with extensive knowledge about 9/11, U.S. hegemony, and the commonly suppressed aspects of our system of governance, our authors decided to take a different approach with Part 3. Rather than present one consensus conclusion, they present here three separate concluding sections—one from each author. We hope this format takes full advantage of the unique perspectives that each have to offer.]

The series started out well, and I praised the first installment without any reservations. The second installment turned out to be surprisingly dismal, to be blunt, and it raised the question, "What's going on here?"

Now we have the answer.

The Trouble With Stupendia

In two recent posts, I've reviewed current articles by Jeremy Kuzmarov on one hand, and Ben Howard, Aaron Good, and Peter Dale Scott on the other. Regarding the latter, "Why Did Key U.S. Officials Protect the Alleged 9/11 Plotters?" (reviewed here), I wrote:

I'm sad to say I'm surprised by how shallow it is. ... the authors provide many indications that the "hijackers" were protected by members of "our" "security services" once they arrived in the U.S.

But they never give us any indication that they realize they're talking about patsies. They write as if the patsies had committed the crimes.

By this I meant, among other things, that the towers didn't "collapse" because of impact by airplanes, or fires, or both. They didn't collapse in any but the molecular sense.

For the most part, they turned to toxic dust. The larger (heavier) particles covered the city, several inches deep in places, the smaller (lighter) particles drifted away on the wind, and the mid-size particles hung in the air for days and caused untold death and suffering among first responders and others.

In my view, if we are to make any sense of 9/11 at all, we must accept at least this dollop of obvious-at-the-time (but now suppressed) truth.

Regarding The "Inconceivable" Idea That Many People Have No Trouble Imagining

Professor Graeme MacQueen

When I was younger and not quite so focused, I used to listen to hockey games on the radio. The local team's play-by-play announcer had some unique phrases which he used frequently, and which became known around town as signatures of his style. In particular, whenever an attacking player wove his way through a maze of defenders, he would say, "He was unable to be checked."

My friends and I always laughed at the way he reversed the "burden of skill", so to speak. In our view, the attacking player had been able to do whatever he wanted; the defenders had been unable to check him.

But much later, when the idea that the U.S. government had been complicit in the 9/11 attacks was presented to Noam Chomsky and most of the other "leading dissident intellectuals", and they used words like "inconceivable", I didn't find it very funny. I imagine I speak for most (or even all) 9/11 researchers when I say I felt a bit "betrayed".

But I shouldn't have taken it personally. Had I remembered those hockey broadcasts, and applied the same logic I used then, I would have realized that Chomsky wasn't saying anything about the idea. He was simply confessing his inability to imagine that it could possibly be correct.

Roger Waters, Two 9/11 Anniversaries, The War On Terror, And What Are You Going To Do About It?

In this YouTube clip, Roger Waters (of Pink Floyd), talking with Afshin Rattansi (of RT), reflects on two vital turning points in contemporary history, both of which occurred on the 11th of September. He speaks of not only the well-known 2001 attacks in the U.S. but also (and very movingly) about the lesser-known 1973 coup in Chile, which ushered in Augusto Pinochet and his reign of terror, to the horror of the whole world ... except of course for the American people, whose government sponsored the coup, and who live in a bubble which news of this sort cannot penetrate.

At the end of the interview, Waters mangles one of the least consequential details of the U.S. political system (how many states?), but still cuts to the heart of the matter:

We still need to hold on to the idea that we, the people, actually have the right to live in peace.

This endless war [bleep] ... is not working for any of us, except ... people invested in the military industrial complex, who are making ... trillions of dollars. It's a way of taxing ordinary people, because the money ... taken from the taxes of ordinary working people ... [is] divvied out amongst all the people who invest in defense. They protect them by spreading them out ... so every State in the Union has got a little bit of the war industry. And in consequence most of their representatives in Congress ... come under pressure from their little bits of the arms industry, not to cut military spending ... and in consequence a huge proportion of the tax revenue of the United States Government goes into perpetual war.

Thorough Research Demolishes A Revisionist Theory

At Global Research dot ca, Michel Chossudovsky continues his long-standing and extremely annoying habit of marking the anniversaries of important events by re-posting old news: articles pertaining to those events which have appeared previously, on his site or elsewhere.

When I say "extremely annoying", I'm looking at it from the point of view of those who don't want you to have any knowledge at all about these events, other than perhaps some vague impressions of the official narratives.

But it's anything but annoying to those of us who want to know the truth about important events, but missed these articles the first time -- or the first dozen times -- that they appeared.

Today's case in point is a fine piece of research and analysis by Graeme MacQueen, whose piece about anthrax attacks we were reading just a few days ago, and Ted Walter.

In 9/11 News Coverage: How 36 Reporters Brought Us the Twin Towers’ Explosive Demolition on 9/11 the authors report on their study, in which they collected the day's news reports pertaining to the attacks on the World Trade Center, from the major networks and the local NYC stations. The looked at reporting from ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC, WABC, WCBS, WNBC, and NY1, and examined the work of each individual reporter to determine how many of them reported the buildings having been brought down by explosives, and how many reported them having been brought down without explosives.

As they say:

The widely held belief that the Twin Towers collapsed as a result of the airplane impacts and the resulting fires is, unbeknownst to most people, a revisionist theory. Among individuals who witnessed the event firsthand, the more prevalent hypothesis was that the Twin Towers had been brought down by massive explosions.

Their article is full of evidence of explosions, including transcripts of on-scene reporting and embedded YouTube videos. They've even made their video archive public, so we can download it and see for ourselves. (The archive is 13.6 GB, so it's not to be taken lightly, nor downloaded quickly. But I want a copy, because I don't trust YouTube to leave all these clips available forever.)

All defenders of the official story deny that anything important happened to the towers except that were struck by airplanes. And they all say, "There is no evidence of explosions in the towers."

This article, and the evidence associated with it, proves beyond any doubt that the defenders of the official story are lying. And it's not as if we didn't know that already, but this is still a very valuable addition to the "discussion", even if it only helps to keep the discussion alive, and presumably that's why Michel Chossudovsky has never broken this very annoying habit.

Of course I congratulate him on this.

Asked But Not Answered: "Why Did Key U.S. Officials Protect the Alleged 9/11 Plotters?"

The second part of the three-part series by Ben Howard, Aaron Good and Peter Dale Scott, "The Twenty Year Shadow of 9/11", has been posted at CovertAction Magazine, and I've been looking forward to it since I read the first part. But I'm sad to say I'm surprised by how shallow it is.

In this installment, "Why Did Key U.S. Officials Protect the Alleged 9/11 Plotters?", the authors provide many indications that the "hijackers" were protected by members of "our" "security services" once they arrived in the U.S.

But they never give us any indication that they realize they're talking about patsies. They write as if the patsies had committed the crimes.

Graeme MacQueen: The Anthrax Attacks Had All The Markings Of A False Flag Operation

I wish to draw your attention to an excellent piece by Graeme MacQueen which was published by Covert Action Magazine the day before yesterday.

It's called Anthrax Attacks Directed Against Public Officials Following 9/11 Had all the Markings of a False Flag Operation and I hope you'll read all of it.

I've long been an admirer of Professor MacQueen, although I have spelled his name "McQueen" in the past. And I've been critical of his work, even though I'm impressed with his research, just because his presentation has been so difficult to understand at times.

But since then he's found a good editor, and/or taken my words to heart (just kidding on that last one). As a result (of whatever it was), his new article is much easier to read than some of his earlier efforts.

The anthrax attacks played a vital role in the "Reign of Terror" which began under the Bush Administration and continues to this day. But the story behind the anthrax attacks was very flimsy, and it fell apart even more rapidly than the slightly less flimsy story about the attacks with hijacked airplanes.

Apparently realizing that the anthrax story contained (or was!) a flaw that could expose the whole sorry plot, the media let the story drop, for the most part. But Professor MacQueen has continued to research and write about it, and his contribution in this area has been profound, in my view.

In this article, he analyzes a couple of the "anthrax letters" in fine detail, and deduces (correctly) that

its real authors, who are entirely different from its implied authors, are domestic groups within the U.S. Military-Industrial-Intelligence-Complex ... the United States was subjected to a domestically produced two-part psychological operation of overwhelming importance in the fall of 2001.

Regarding the evidence indicating a False Flag operation, he concludes:

... the 2001 anthrax attacks remind us that a trail of monstrous breadcrumbs is effective in leading us to the perpetrators’ desired endpoint only as long as we are blockheads.

"Blockheads" indeed. We are, you know. But some of us have been developing rounded corners lately.

If you're willing to round off some of your corners, read the whole article, and maybe even MacQueen's book on the subject, "The 2001 Anthrax Deception: The Case for a Domestic Conspiracy"

Peter Dale Scott et al.: The Twenty Year Shadow of 9/11

I'm pleased to recommend an excellent article by Aaron Good, Ben Howard and Peter Dale Scott, published yesterday by CovertAction Magazine, called The Twenty Year Shadow of 9/11: U.S. Complicity in the Terror Spectacle and the Urgent Need to End It.

It's part of

a three-part re-evaluation of 9/11 in light of startling new evidence that may change many minds about the so-called “craziness” of those who have refused to accept the “official” government story of this traumatic and defining event

The authors describe the plan of the work as follows:

In this first installment, we examine how the U.S. for decades has utilized Islamic terrorists as assets for its own ends. In Part 2, we look at how CIA figures actively prevented other government agencies from exposing the al Qaeda presence in the U.S. prior to the attacks. In the third and final article, we explore the deep political and historical implications of the U.S. government’s “emergency” powers in order to offer some conclusions about 9/11.

After an overview of the ways in which 9/11 and its aftermath have changed the U.S. and the world, the authors provide a comprehensive history lesson on those "Islamic terrorist assets", starting in the early days, when they were used as pawns of U.S. foreign policy, and working up to the day of the attacks, when they were used as pawns of U.S. foreign policy.

It's a horrible story, but I can't wait for the next two installments. I urge you to click this link and learn this history. You simply can't make sense of anything that's going on in the world without this background.

It's tough enough with it!

Twenty Years Of Bad Luck

The following post appeared in this space on September 11, 2008, under the title "Seven Years Of Bad Luck".

I've updated the title to reflect the passage of 13 years -- oh look! another lucky number!

The lyric, of course, is by Stevie Wonder, and each line is a link to an article previously published here concerning the events of 9/11 and the Global War on Terror, as it was called at the time.

If you don't want to be reminded of how we got here, please don't click any of these links -- certainly not all of them!

Very superstitious / writings on the wall

Very superstitious / ladders 'bout to fall

Thirteen month old baby / broke the lookin' glass

Seven years of bad luck / the good things in your past

When you believe in things / that you don't understand / then you suffer

Superstition ain't the way

Even After 20 Years, The Facts About 9/11 Must Be Suppressed!

The towers didn't fall down.
They blew up.

Why The Facts About 9/11 Must Be Suppressed

(1) The official story of 9/11 has been used to justify drastic military actions by the United States and its allies, actions which have brought death, destruction, and chaos to Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, and many other countries.

(2) The same story has also been used to justify drastic changes in domestic policy, in the United States and in much of the world. These changes have resulted in the persecution, incarceration, torture, and death of many innocent people, not to mention the erosion of civil rights and the perversion of the democratic process in every nation that once enjoyed these things.

(3) If it were widely and clearly understood that the official story of 9/11 is not only obviously false but a carefully crafted fiction: the military actions described above would be seen as unjustified acts of mass murder, war crimes and crimes against humanity; the policy changes would be seen as acts of treason; the people responsible for these actions might be in danger of accountability; and the new policies themselves might even be in danger of reversal, in which case the people who benefit from these policies might need to find a new way to feed at the public trough.

(4) If the official story were true, the facts of 9/11 would support it, and independent research would confirm it. Therefore the facts would be widely publicized and independent researchers would be encouraged. But none of this is happening, and that's because the facts of 9/11 undermine the official story, and independent research destroys it.

(5) Therefore the facts and the independent researchers must both be suppressed. Otherwise the new policies would be in danger, the people who implemented them would be in danger, the people who profit from them would be slightly inconvenienced, and the perpetrators of 9/11 might actually be brought to justice.

9/11 @ 20: It Could Have Been So Much Worse!

Fortunately, the collapse of the twin towers
was "an ordinary thing to have happened".
If it were unusual for skyscrapers to
collapse in this way, some troubling
questions might have been raised.

For those who were alive on September 11th, 2001, the events of the day seemed horrible beyond measure. But with the sober perspective that comes from two decades of hindsight, we're bound to admit that things could have turned out much worse, in countless ways.

For instance, even though only two of the seven buildings that made up the World Trade Center complex were hit by airplanes, all seven suffered heavily. Early media attention focused on the "collapse" of Buildings 1 and 2. And later we learned that Building 7 had also "collapsed". But until recently, only a few dedicated researchers were aware that Buildings 3, 4, 5, and 6 were also destroyed on the same day. Nowadays, thanks to the exceedingly free flow of information that we currently enjoy, most people know all about this.

And in light of these facts, we must accept an unpleasant truth: Rogue airliners can do infinitely more damage than we previously thought. To be honest, we ought to be grateful that the impacts of those two airplanes hitting those two buildings didn't destroy all of Wall Street, or most of Manhattan, or half of New York State, or a significant portion of the Eastern Seaboard. We're lucky that none of these things happened, because clearly if they had, we would be in much worse shape than we are now.

Why Obama Had To Veto JASTA

[source: politico]

As you probably know, late last Friday afternoon President Obama vetoed a bill which had passed both houses of Congress unanimously, and Congress is now trying to work out whether it has enough clout to override the veto.

I don't think it does. Behind Obama's veto lie very powerful reasons, and behind those reasons stand very powerful people.

JASTA, the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, would have allowed families of 9/11 victims to sue the government of Saudi Arabia for alleged complicity in the terrorist attacks if Obama had signed it. This could not, and cannot, be allowed to happen.

Therefore, at the behest of the Pentagon and a bipartisan group of national security heavyweights, including

Stephen Hadley, a national security adviser to President George W. Bush; Michael Mukasey, a US attorney general under Bush; William Cohen, a secretary of defense under President Bill Clinton; and Richard Clarke, a national security aide to Bush and Clinton

Obama expressed "deep sympathy" for the families and vetoed the bill.

According to the maintstream media, the families don't understand why JASTA had to be deep-sixed.

"The president's rationales to veto JASTA don't hold weight. They are 100% wrong," said Terry Strada, whose husband Tom Strada died in World Trade Center collapse. "For us, the 9/11 families and survivors, all we are asking for is an opportunity to have our case heard in a courtroom. Denying us justice is un-American."

Well, perhaps "the president's rationales" weren't the real reasons. Perhaps politicians don't always say what they mean. And perhaps the mainstream "journalists" can't tell the difference. But then, neither can the "dissident" journalists.

So the job of explaining it falls to the humblest of bloggers. In other words, the water in this case is so heavy that it can only be carried by a volunteer porter. Nobody who gets paid for carrying water will tell you this:

There are three very good reasons why JASTA cannot become law, but two of them cannot be discussed in public, lest the discussion jeopardize national security and undermine the war on terror.

What goes on behind closed doors is another matter, and the entire House of Representatives is up for re-election in November. We can be sure they will feel all the pressure the bipartisan national security heavyweights can muster, as they consider the ramifications of a vote to override the Presidential veto.

How many of them will stand their ground? I won't be surprised if we can count them without taking off our socks. But we shall see.

~~~

[1]

The bipartisan national security heavyweights are protesting that JASTA might motivate foreign countries to sue the American government for acts of terrorism committed by Americans against their own citizens on their own soil.

And this would be very bad for America, they say, because it could lead to "spurious lawsuits" against our men and women in and out of uniform, requiring them to take "a less forceful approach in dealing with state sponsors of terrorism" and thereby hindering them from keeping you and your children safe.

According to the New York Times:

“We continue to make a forceful case to members of Congress that overriding the president’s veto means that this country will start pursuing a less forceful approach in dealing with state sponsors of terrorism and potentially opens up U.S. service members, and diplomats and even companies to spurious lawsuits in kangaroo courts around the world,” Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said before Mr. Obama vetoed the measure.

What does he mean by "spurious lawsuits"?

Suppose a drone operator made a mistake and accidentally dropped a bomb in the wrong place, killing half a dozen innocent people.

Should he be held responsible for his actions in a foreign court? Should the American government be liable for reparations?

"Of course not!" say the bipartisan national security heavyweights. This is the realm of International Law, after all, where the guiding principle is "Sovereign Immunity."

If you are new to International Law, you might assume Sovereign Immunity would mean citizens of a sovereign state are immune to violent attacks from foreign powers. But that would be an error.

Sovereign Immunity actually means a sovereign state can do whatever it wants to the citizens of another state, with no legal repercussions whatsoever.

Sovereign Immunity means big fish can eat little fish whenever they get hungry. And the bipartisan national security heavyweights like it this way. So they don't want JASTA to threaten it.

To the 9/11 families, this is not a problem. The say JASTA is specifically worded to include only acts of terrorism sponsored by foreigners against American citizens on American soil.

But clearly they don't understand the power of precedent. And precedent here could be devastating...

... because suppose it wasn't a drone operator, but an administration. And suppose it wasn't a mistake, but a deliberate act of aggression. And suppose it wasn't a bomb dropped in the wrong place, but the invasion, occupation, and destruction of a whole country. And suppose it wasn't half a dozen innocent victims, but half a million. And suppose it didn't happen just once, but over and over and over, for decade after decade...

What if there were a means for victims to seek reparations? What if there were a legal precedent for this? And what if the precedent were set by the United States?

Do you see the problem?

That's not the only problem. It's a big one, but it's not the biggest. I think it's the third biggest; clearly it's the one that the bipartisan national security heavyweights are least unwilling to talk about in public -- even if they only hint at it.

The other two reasons are even darker.

~~~

[2]

Aside from the question of Sovereign Immunity, there's another question, which is finessed more often than it's answered, and for good reason.

What is terrorism? Or more precisely, Who defines terrorism?

Allowing the definition of terrorism to become a matter for the courts would undermine the war on terrorism, according to the terror warriors themselves, but they only say this when they don't think anyone else is paying attention.

But Stars and Stripes reports:

The White House [...] argued the classification of terrorism should remain an executive authority, not become a question for the courts.

Stars and Stripes also quotes Lt. Col. Pat Testerman, a retired Air Force commander:

“What we define as acts of terrorism or acts of war is up to interpretation,” Testerman said. “And we open ourselves up to significant danger with this.”

Of course they would prefer to keep this fact as quiet as possible, since it's far too easy for people to put two and two together when they realize that the entire global war on terror is predicated on the notion that the President will both define terrorism and command the world's response to it.

This may strike you as similar to the popular notion:

"If we do it, it's Good. If our enemies do it, it's Evil."

If so, you've been paying attention.

~~~

[3]

The third and officially unspeakable reason why JASTA must get shafted ... is an old sweet song, which only conspiracy theorists can sing. And it goes like this:

The official story of 9/11 is not only false but obviously false, indefensible, ludicrous, absurd. It cannot stand serious scrutiny of any kind, and it most certainly cannot stand up in a court of law.

In a courtroom, as opposed to a press briefing room, witnesses are bound to tell the truth, and subject to cross-examination. There is no sure way to control the questions a lawyer might ask, or the answers a witness might give, or the direction in which a cross-examination might go.

In a nation raised on television, in love with litigation and addicted to infotainment, the trial of a former football player accused of killing two people was enough to stop millions in their tracks for weeks.

A generation later, to a population shocked out of its wits with terror, a 9/11 trial would be the spectacle of the century. Daily coverage would be inevitable. Hundreds of millions, maybe billions of people would be paying close attention. And just one question, or one answer, could be enough to bring the rickety official story crashing down on top of the people who built it.

It would only take one sharp defense attorney. But I'd sooner see two.

The first one would say:

PROVE IT!

PROVE the 4 planes in question were scheduled to fly on 9/11.
PROVE the 19 alleged hijackers were in the airports on that day.
PROVE the 19 men boarded the 4 planes.
PROVE they forced their way into the cockpits.
PROVE they took control of the aircraft.
PROVE they flew those incredible flight paths.
PROVE they crashed the planes into the buildings,
and
PROVE the buildings disintegrated because they were hit by airplanes!

THEN we can talk about who was responsible.

This attorney would be very scary, of course, because the government cannot prove any of these things, let alone all of them.

But his partner would be absolutely terrifying, because he would say:

WHY?

Everybody talks about what the Saudis did, but nobody wants to talk about why. Well, I'll tell you why. They did what they did because they were asked to do it.

This is how things work. Friends do favors for each other. Requests are made. Requests are granted. And operatives don't ask questions.

They had no idea that the people they were helping were going to be used as patsies. They were just following instructions. They didn't even know they were working for an ally, rather than for the kingdom directly. And it didn't matter. They only knew what they were supposed to do. This is how things work.

Did the Bush administration know about it? Of course they did. Who do you think requested the favor? Who else could request such a favor?

Why do you think President Bush and Prince Bandar were so close? Why do you think the White House shut down every investigation that ever started looking into anything connected to Saudi Arabia?

Why do you think so many important Saudi families were allowed to leave the USA immediately after 9/11? Why do you think they got so much help?

Why do you think the 28 pages were classified for so long? Why do you think the mainstream media keeps trying to make this story go away?

And why do you think the government is so intent on keeping all this quiet that they will do absolutely anything to keep it out of court?

Connect the dots. The 28 pages describe the cutouts who set up the patsies. The "hijackers" are just one part of the story -- the part we call "the legend."

Now: Who created the legend? That's part of the story, too.

And: What really happened? That's another part of the story.

What would it take to expose the fraud? Maybe just one court case?

Aha! Now you understand why Obama had to veto JASTA.

Facebook Deliberately Misled Its Users About 9/11

[source: ABC 7 NY dot Com]

On September 9, Facebook users were given the false impression that the Topic "September 11th Anniversary" was Trending because so many people were interested in photos of sunlight reflecting off One World Trade Center.

[source: Daily Star]

The Topic was actually Trending on the strength of an article in the UK's Daily Star, describing why scientists and engineers believe the Twin Towers were destroyed by explosives.

Thanks to Abby Ohlheiser of the Washington Post, we know that this was not a mistake. Facebook deliberately misled its users.

We also know how and why it happened.

Interlude: Three Encouraging Successes

Series: Accessories After The Fact Go Splat!!
Previous: Pathetic Fail #2: Abby Ohlheiser, the Washington Post, and Facebook
Next: ... to be continued ...

The 15th anniversary of 9/11 wasn't completely dominated by pathetic failures. There were a few encouraging successes, points of light amid the gathering darkness, if you will.

Before we proceed with our countdown, I wish to present [drum roll] [cymbals!]

Encouraging Success #1:

Steven Jones
[source: Visibility 9-11 dot org]

Four authors promoting 9/11 Truth wrote a good article and got it published in a very respectable publication!

The article is called: "15 Years Later: On The Physics Of High-Rise Building Collapses."

It's short, clear, and to the point, and it demolishes the official story very neatly. I encourage you to read it if you haven't already done so, and to share it with all your friends, if you still have any friends who believe the official story.

I don't always agree with Steven Jones (I don't always agree with anybody), but the article comes as a big surprise and a welcome one, and I encourage you to join me in offering...

Congratulations and thanks to the authors: Steven Jones, Robert Korol, Anthony Szamboti and Ted Walter! [hooray]

Congratulations and thanks to the publisher: Europhysics News! [hooray]

[thank you. thank you very much]

Encouraging Success #2:

Rachel O'Donoghue
[source: Twitter dot Com]

An article about this paper reached a worldwide audience!

This article is poorly written and packaged with some very annoying videos. But it still comes as a big surprise and a welcome one, and I encourage you to join me in offering...

Congratulations and thanks to the author: Rachel O'Donoghue! [hooray]

Congratulations and thanks to the publisher, the Daily Star! [hooray]

[thank you. thanks again. and finally...]

Encouraging Success #3:

Melissa Ennen
[source: nonabrooklyn.com]

The proprietor of a Brooklyn cafe brushed off intense pressure from local religious groups and refused to cancel a scheduled appearance by an independent 9/11 researcher!

Instead she wrote a letter explaining her decision and posted it on the cafe's website. It's no longer available there, but The Wayback Machine remembers.

Some of the letter strikes me as eminently reasonable, but the rest seems very questionable; I wish she had left it where the search engines could find it; and I'm sorry to say she declined my invitation to comment on the story. So the applause could have been much warmer. But her decision not to cancel the event came as a big surprise and a welcome one, and I encourage you to join me in offering...

Congratulations and thanks to Melissa Ennen, of the Brooklyn Commons!

The event she refused to cancel featured Christopher Bollyn, and I don't agree with everything he says, but I do support his right to say it in public. I also support the same right for everybody else who has something to say, whether I agree with them or not -- especially if they're speaking about a pivotal event in world history, the facts of which must be suppressed.

Series: Accessories After The Fact Go Splat!!
Previous: Pathetic Fail #2: Abby Ohlheiser, the Washington Post, and Facebook
Next: ... to be continued ...

Pathetic Fail #2: Abby Ohlheiser, the Washington Post, and Facebook

Series: Accessories After The Fact Go Splat!!
Previous: Pathetic Fail #3: Sam Kestenbaum, Naomi Dann, and the Forward
Next: Interlude: Three Encouraging Successes

Abby Ohlheiser,
Accessory after the Fact
[source: Washington Post]

Number 2 : Abby Ohlheiser, the Washington Post, and Facebook, for "Facebook’s trending topics promoted an article ‘truthering’ the Sept. 11 attacks"

ON the 15th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, experts are sensationally claiming it is impossible that the towers were brought down by planes.

Instead, leading engineers believe the Twin Towers may have collapsed due to a "controlled demolition" – something it is claimed there is video evidence to support.

They disagree with the investigation done by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) that was launched in August 2002.

Video evidence – which was made by people with a similar theory – has been posted online and seeks to offer proof.

Seriously? This is Abby Ohlheiser?

No, sorry. This is Rachel O'Donoghue, writing for UK readers in the Daily Star, under the headline:

September 11: The footage that 'proves bombs were planted in Twin Towers'.

[source: Daily Star]

Rachel O'Donoghue needs a good copy editor; I've fixed her spelling errors, but I haven't changed any of her words. She continues:

That six-year analysis of what caused the collapse also looked at the lesser known World Trade Centre 7 building, a third building that sat right next to the towers and fell at 5.20pm on the afternoon of September 11 – more than six hours after the two skyscrapers tumbled to the ground.

Its conclusion was that the “WTC Towers and WTC 7 [were] the only known cases of total structural collapse in high-rise buildings where fires played a significant role.”

The fires were apparently sparked by jet fuel that caused huge fires to engulf the upper floors after American Airlines Flights 11 and 175 smashed into the structures in a series of coordinated attacks on the morning of September 11, 2001.

But since the NIST investigation concluded, it has been pointed out that buildings like the World Trade Centre were specifically designed to withstand a fire and huge impacts like a plane hitting them.

What does this have to do with Abby Ohlheiser? Therein lies an interesting tale...

As you may know, Facebook has built its success on a foundation of really good ideas, and one of those ideas was to give their users an easy way to "feel the pulse" of the Internet, so to speak.

The idea is: With a bit of research, one could answer questions such as: What subjects are people talking about? and What are they reading?

The answers to these questions could be used to create a list of links, and that list could appear on the user's sidebar, under the heading "Trending Topics."

It was a fantastic idea, and they hired some people to do it, and it worked out great! But there was a problem.

The problem was not in making the list but in keeping it up to date. That was difficult and expensive and required a large staff working more or less continuously, and wasn't this the sort of thing that could be done by software?

Well, of course it could. But they didn't have the software, so the software had to be developed, and now it's ready, or at least it's ready enough to be deployed. So Facebook has replaced the people who used to maintain "Trending Topics" with a computer program.

Presumably because this software has only recently been developed, it's still a little bit naive, so to speak.

That is to say, it was probably written to do what it was supposed to do. Stories like this come up frequently, and they illustrate both the strength and the weakness of doing things by computer. A computer does what it's told: quickly, cheaply, precisely, and reliably. If it does the wrong thing, it usually means it was following the wrong instructions. And there's the rub. A computer is "smart enough" to follow instructions, but it's not smart enough to know when its instructions are wrong!

You would be surprised (or maybe you wouldn't) at how often newly developed software is perceived as "faulty" because it was designed according to specifications which did not accurately reflect the needs of the people who had commissioned it. This has happened so often to me personally that I have come to expect it.

In the current instance, the case of Facebook's "Trending Topics," the programmers apparently designed the code to search and sort, building its lists according to the criteria I described above, and giving no attention to certain "hidden assumptions" which human editors take for granted.

In particular, the software didn't know that the facts of 9/11 must be suppressed.

Rachel O'Donoghue's piece appeared on Tuesday, September 6, and within a few days it attracted so much attention that Facebook's software noticed it. But the software failed to perceive that the headline, "September 11: The footage that 'proves bombs were planted in Twin Towers'" could potentially be politically volatile.

Needless to say, this is an error that no human editor would ever make, but the software was just too dumb to pick up on the implications of the headline, or to read the article and find out what it said. And nobody was supervising it. The software was "flying solo."

And it came to pass that early on Friday, September 9, Facebook users found "September 11th Anniversary" on their sidebar, and if they hovered over the topic, they saw this:

click to enlarge [source: Facebook via Abby Ohlheiser]

If they clicked on it, they saw this:

click to enlarge [source: Facebook via Abby Ohlheiser]

And if they clicked on this, they could read Rachel O'Donoghue!

When Abby Ohlheiser found out, she was most unimpressed. As she wrote:

Facebook users looking for more context on why the Sept. 11 terrorist attack anniversary was trending on the platform on Friday were, for a time, directed to a tabloid article claiming that “experts” had footage that “proves bombs were planted in Twin Towers.”

The Daily Star piece promoted by Facebook repeats a lot of common claims from 9/11 “trutherism,” a conspiracy theory based on an idea (unsupported by any actual evidence) that the World Trade Center must have collapsed in 2001 because of a “controlled demolition” and not from the damage caused by the airliner crashes.

This photo shows material being ejected from
the South Tower, well below the impact zone
and before the collapse of the building. It is
prima facie evidence of explosives and therefore
must be suppressed. [source: Daily Star]

Is this correct? Well, no!

Unfortunately for Abby Ohlheiser, the Daily Star piece by Rachel O'Donoghue documents "actual evidence" of explosives in the towers, the existence of which Abby Ohlheiser flatly denies!

Engineers Steven Jones, Robert Korol, Anthony Szamboti and Ted Walter are part of the growing community of experts who say evidence indicates the towers were brought down in a controlled demolition.

They wrote a paper for Europhysics News highlighting four important pieces of evidence pointing to this conclusion.

These were:

– Fires are not normally hot enough to heat a massive steel structure enough for it to collapse

– The majority of high rise buildings have sprinkler systems that prevent a fire from getting hot enough to heat steel to a critical level

– Skyscrapers are protected using flame-proof materials

– And they are designed so that if compromised, they do not collapse.

They go on to point out that the towers were actually designed to stay standing in the event of seismic activity, such as earthquakes, and incredibly high winds.

Abby Ohlheiser tells us what happened when she found out Facebook was linking to this article:

Shortly after The Intersect [i.e. Abby Ohlheiser] reached out to Facebook for a comment on the matter, the article disappeared from Facebook’s page for the topic. The lead article switched to a local news piece about a photograph showing beams of light bouncing off One World Trade Center.

“We’re aware a hoax article showed up there,” a Facebook spokeswoman said in a statement on Friday, “and as a temporary step to resolving this we’ve removed the topic.”

The misstep comes weeks after the company removed the human editors who used to describe and curate the site’s trending topics, leaving the task of providing context for those topics to an algorithmically selected article from another site. As this most recent example illustrates, the algorithms haven’t always been up to the task.

"Algorithm" is a fancy name for a set of instructions. And one question which suggests itself is: Have the algorithms really failed in their task?

I can't help thinking the answer depends on how the task is defined. If the task is to promote the topics that the greatest number of people want to read about, and the articles that the greatest number of people are reading, that's one thing. If the task is to prefer relatively safe topics and politically acceptable articles, even if fewer people are reading them ... well, that's different.

And I humbly suggest that this difference was the cause of Abby Ohlheiser's discomfort.

In an alternate universe where we had a free press and free social media, "trending" would mean "trending," just as "topic" means "topic." The most popular article under each topic would appear on the sidebar. And if people started learning about facts that the supporters of an absurd and murderous story wanted to suppress, that would be just too bad for them.

In such a universe, when Abby Ohlheiser "reached out" for a comment, the Facebook spokeswoman would say, "We are in the business of facilitating -- not impeding -- connections between our users and the rest of the world. We will not bow to pressure from politicians, nor from journalists, nor from anybody else. And you will just have to grow up and accept the fact that 'trending' means 'trending,' which is not always the same as 'trending and pleasing to you.' We thank you for your understanding, and we hope that in the future you will not waste any more of your time on similar complaints."

But of course we live in the real universe, so Facebook declared Rachel O'Donoghue's piece a "hoax" and removed the link.

Later, according the the spokeswoman, Facebook removed the whole "September 11th Anniversary" topic, which, as you can see in the screenshot preserved by Abby Ohlheiser, was at the time the most popular topic on the list by far, leading an NFL player who had not stood during the national anthem the previous evening by a margin of 340K to 28K.

This photo, which allegedly shows the
beginning of a gravity-driven collapse, looks
more like a volcano erupting, and therefore
must be suppressed. [source: Daily Star]

Hoax? What hoax? The official story is a hoax!

As Rachel O'Donoghue notes:

John Skilling, the chief structural engineer of the World Trade Centre, even admitted in 1993 – eight years before the disaster – they were made to specifically withstand the force of a jet hitting them.

In an interview with the Seattle Times he said: "Our analysis indicated the biggest problem would be the fact that all the fuel (from the airplane) would dump into the building. There would be a horrendous fire. A lot of people would be killed [but] the building structure would still be there."

He then commented that in his view, the only thing that could bring them down would be explosives of some sort.

Eyewitness accounts describing the aftermath of the attacks supports the theory explosives were planted inside the towers.

Shortly after the planes hit, numerous interviews were recorded in which people who had been inside the World Trade Centre said that when they ran down from the upper floors they found the lobby had been completely destroyed.

Some also described finding people who had not been upstairs with "their faces blown off".

Eyewitnesses who describe the lobby as completely destroyed, and statements about people who had "their faces blown off" despite not having been upstairs, pose a grave danger to Abby Ohlheiser and her contention that the "conspiracy theory" is "unsupported by any actual evidence" and threaten Facebook's assertion that Rachel Donoghue's article is a hoax.

But all these bits of suppressed evidence certainly corroborate the story Bob McIlvaine tells about his son Bobby.

Had Abby Ohlheiser not made such a big stink about Rachel O'Donoghue's piece, I probably would not have seen it, and I wouldn't be able to share the details with you here. But this is Abby Ohlheiser's game, apparently -- monitoring other "reporters" and complaining if they happen to cross one of her invisible lines.

Fortunately, if she can bend them to her will, she's not content to let the matter rest. She uses her platform to tell everyone what has happened, even if it means bringing attention to the very thing she is trying to suppress.

On September 9, Facebook users were given
the false impression that the "Topic"
"September 11th Anniversary" was
"Trending" because of these photos. Thanks
to Abby Ohlheiser, we now know how and why
this happened. [source: ABC 7 NY dot Com]

So, even if we stipulate that Abby Ohlheiser prevented a very large number of people from reading Rachel O'Donoghue's piece, she still qualifies as a fail in my book for two reasons.

First, she gave the world a screenshot showing Rachel O'Donoghue's headline and the name of her paper, so that everyone could see what had been published and where to find it. Now all her readers -- and both of mine -- know all about it.

Second, she has shown us very clearly how easily Facebook can be manipulated into suppressing vital evidence in a case of mass murder, and who she is and what she wants, and the same about the Washington Post, and the same about Facebook -- which may be important if anyone is still in doubt.

Had Facebook not turned tail and fled, its users would have found it easier to maintain the illusion that they have a free press and free social media. But they might have learned a thing or two as well, and no doubt here lies the perceived danger.

Certainly Facebook's part in this story proves one thing: Even if you can't please everybody, you can certainly displease everybody. Those who aren't angry at Facebook for linking to Rachel O'Donoghue are angry at Facebook for taking down the link and calling the truth a "hoax". Or at least they should be.

Had Rachel O'Donoghue not mentioned her source, I might not have found the article she was writing about.

It's from Europhysics News, it was written by Steven Jones, Robert Korol, Anthony Szamboti and Ted Walter. It's called "15 Years Later: On The Physics Of High-Rise Building Collapses," and it includes:

- a short explanation of why steel-framed buildings don't normally collapse, even after long hot fires,

- a short history of building demolition techniques, including the most modern ones,

- an overview of the reasons why they believe the towers were destroyed by modern demolition techniques and not by fires,

- a review of the official investigations, showing how far they were willing to deviate from the normal logical and physical constraints, and how little scrutiny their conclusions can bear, and

- a summary of the eyewitness evidence concerning explosives in the buildings, concluding this way:

Some 156 witnesses, including 135 first responders, have been documented as saying that they saw, heard, and/or felt explosions prior to and/or during the collapses. That the Twin Towers were brought down with explosives appears to have been the initial prevailing view among most first responders. “I thought it was exploding, actually,” said John Coyle, a fire marshal. “Everyone I think at that point still thought these things were blown up”.

When John Coyle says, "Everyone I think at that point still thought these things were blown up," the words "at that point" and "still" indicate the power of the propaganda machine behind the official story. Even though they lived through it, many of the first responders became convinced in the aftermath that their perceptions of the day's events had been wrong!

And yet! Popular support for 9/11 Truth endures, even after 15 years of relentless and powerful propaganda, partially because so many people know about the evidence that the perpetrators and their accessories after the fact are trying to suppress.

We can see what they're trying to do. We can figure out why. And we're not going away anytime soon.

Sorry, Abby! You lose! And so does your sad excuse for a newspaper.

Sorry, Washington Post! If you don't tell the truth about something important soon, I may quit letting you use my initials!

Sorry, Facebook, You lose, too! Everyone can see where you stand and why. "Oh, my!"

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present: three pathetic losers on the wrong side of a bloody red line marked "mass murder for profit!"

As I've been saying:

The facts must be suppressed, and the people who are trying to gather and disseminate those facts must be suppressed, and that is the one and only thing that matters to these people. And why? Why would you hide the crime unless you were trying to protect the criminals?

Series: Accessories After The Fact Go Splat!!
Previous: Pathetic Fail #3: Sam Kestenbaum, Naomi Dann, and the Forward
Next: Interlude: Three Encouraging Successes

Pathetic Fail #3: Sam Kestenbaum, Naomi Dann, and the Forward

Series: Accessories After The Fact Go Splat!!
Previous: Pathetic Fail #4: Matt Kwong and the CBC
Next: Pathetic Fail #2: Abby Ohlheiser, the Washington Post, and Facebook

Sam Kestenbaum,
Accessory after the Fact
[source: The Forward]

Number 3 : Sam Kestenbaum, Naomi Dann, and the Forward, for "Progressive Brooklyn Space Won’t Dump ‘Anti-Semitic 9/11 Conspiracy Nut’," "9/11 Anniversary Sparks New Wave of Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories," "The Jewish Left Needs To Call Out Real Anti-Semites Like Christopher Bollyn," and "9/11 Conspiracy Theorist Chris Bollyn Blames Terror Attack on ‘Zionist War Agenda’ in Brooklyn Speech"

In the three previous installments, we have seen examples of accessories after the fact trying to attack 9/11 Truth by addition, so to speak. They have been adding their voices (and their nonsense) to the public arena, using different tactical approaches:

Robert Bridge wrote as if the official story of 9/11 were obviously true and had never been seriously challenged, for readers who know better, and got called on it, repeatedly.

Jack Holmes attacked 9/11 Truth on the evidence, claiming to "disprove" the "conspiracy theories," but proving only that he had nothing credible to offer.

Matt Kwong tried to explain why so many people are still concerned about 9/11 Truth without even considering the possibility that the official story might be false. Since this required him to ignore significant and relevant evidence, including some which he himself presented, the result was unconvincing, to put it mildly.

Now we turn to accessories after the fact using a different strategy, attacking 9/11 Truth by subtraction. Rather than adding their voices to the discussion, they're using their voices to try and prevent other voices from speaking. Or: they can't compete with 9/11 Truth, so they're trying to suppress it.

In this installment, we will consider an attack which was intended to prevent an independent researcher from speaking in a public space, by inciting so much opposition that the space hosting the event would be forced to cancel it.

The space is called Brooklyn Commons, the researcher is Christopher Bollyn, and the accessories after the fact were connected with the Jewish newspaper, "The Forward."

On September 7, Sam Kestenbaum wrote:

A progressive gathering space in Brooklyn is sticking by its decision, despite widespread condemnation, to host a talk by a conspiracy theorist who has blamed Israel and Jews for the 9-11 attacks on their 15th anniversary.

Melissa Ennen, founder of Brooklyn Commons, wrote in a statement released Tuesday afternoon that the Commons was not “designed to be a cozy cocoon for intramural debate among leftists. From the beginning my goal has been to foster discussion among disparate groups across a wide political spectrum.”

Ennen noted that since launching in 2010, the Commons has rented space to Tea Partiers, anti-union corporations and elected officials who supported wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. While “progressive organizations dominate the calendar,” Ennen wrote, “the Commons is available for rental by other groups.”

In case you're not aware, Christopher Bollyn is not only "a conspiracy theorist who has blamed Israel and Jews for the 9-11 attacks." He's also been identified by the Anti-Defamation League as a "prominent voice in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories," and described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as "a raging anti-Semite."

Poster advertising Bollyn in NYC, 2016
[source: Twitter via Noah Shachtman]

Why are Bollyn and his conspiracy theories anti-Semitic? Because he alleges

a “Zionist Jewish” plot to induce America into the War on Terror so that their “cabal” can expand its global power

according to Daniel Sieradsky of jewschool.com.

On what evidence does Bollyn base his allegations? That's what all these people were trying to prevent him from talking about!

The first attempt didn't produce the desired result, so Sam Kestenbaum tried again the next day with "9/11 Anniversary Sparks New Wave of Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories," which follows the pattern of ad-hominem attack established in the previous article, but packages it in a more concise way.

Meanwhile, Naomi Dann chipped in with "The Jewish Left Needs To Call Out Real Anti-Semites Like Christopher Bollyn," in which she writes

It’s heartening that there have been so many calls from progressive organizations and leaders calling for the cancellation of the event, and extremely disappointing to see that the Commons has refused to cancel it.

Having said this, she goes on to explain how we can tell the difference between "anti-Zionism," which the Jewish Left allegedly tolerates, and "real anti-Semitism," which Jews of all political leanings are urged to fight at every turn.

The distinction, according to Naomi Dann, can be understood this way:

There should be a clear line between criticizing the policies, actions and even ideology of the state of Israel, and criticizing the Jewish people or religion.

Thus: One may criticize Israel's policies, the actions that flow from those policies, and the ideology that gives rise to both, because such criticism is merely "anti-Zionism."

But no one may criticize the people who promote that ideology, establish those policies, or carry out those actions; nor may anyone criticize the religion that gives rise to the ideology behind the policies, because such criticism is "real anti-Semitism."

If this is not immediately clear to you, then you're probably reading it correctly. I think it means I can say the Palestinians are being viciously abused, provided that I don't identify the abusers or mention the grounds on which the abusers attempt to justify their vicious behavior.

Naomi Dann,
Accessory after the Fact
[Source: Jewish Voice of Peace]

If I have that wrong, perhaps the Jewish Left needs to work harder to change the narrative being imposed from above, as it were. Naomi Dann explains:

For us to expect others to understand that distinction, our communal leaders also have to stop acting as if any criticism of the state is an attack on our people.

because

It does not help us fight truly dangerous anti-Semitic narratives when the state of Israel claims to represent all of us Jews, nor when American Jewish organizations use the power that they have to silence criticism of the state.

I am impressed by the depth to which Naomi Dann seems unaware of the contradiction: she's complaining about what happens "when American Jewish organizations use the power that they have to silence criticism of the state" of Israel, while urging American Jewish organizations to use their power for that very purpose. So in effect Naomi Dann is saying, "It doesn't help us when we do what we're trying to do, but it's essential that we do it anyway."

Perhaps I could help Naomi Dann to find a way out of her self-imposed maze, by suggesting that when "the state of Israel claims to represent all Jews," it may not be especially motivated by a desire to "help" the American Jewish Left "fight truly dangerous anti-Semitic narratives."

To me it seems more likely that the state of Israel claims to represent all Jews because in this way it can coerce the American Jewish Left into fighting against anti-Zionist narratives.

In other words, as I see it, many Jews who claim to oppose Israel's policies and actions are nonetheless pressed into service as human shields, and active shields at that, trying to stifle anything -- a news report, a opinion piece, a public speaking engagement, or whatever -- that might reflect badly on Israel, for fear that the anger that might be generated by widespread knowledge of Israel's policies and actions might fuel a wave of general anti-Semitism. I believe this because they keep saying it. And I think this coercion comes about precisely because "the state of Israel claims to represent all Jews."

To make a long, pathetic story short: They didn't manage to get the event in Brooklyn canceled, although similar pressure did result in the cancellation of Bollyn's invitation to speak at Busboys and Poets Café in Washington, according to Daniel Sieradsky.

As it turned out, Bollyn's presentation at Brooklyn Commons was attended by only about two dozen people, some of whom came to disrupt the event, as Sam Kestenbaum was pleased to report from the scene.

So one must ask: How many people did the Forward and its friends scare away? Any? And what would they have accomplished had they managed to get the event canceled, other than depriving two dozen people of the opportunity to listen to Bollyn for a couple of hours?

Instead, Sam Kestenbaum and the Forward gave Bollyn publicity he could not have bought, linked to an online PDF of his book, "Solving 9/11: The Deception That Changed The World," and provided a platform for his assertion that

“The ‘false flag’ terrorism of 9–11 is a monstrous Jewish-Zionist crime of our time [...] The true culprits of this heinous crime are clearly being protected by a gang of like-minded Jewish Zionists in the highest positions of the U.S. government.”

As far as I can tell, nobody is trying to refute Bollyn's allegations, though many are trying to prevent his voice from being heard. And it's clear that refuting his allegations would be more convincing than trying to prevent him from speaking. So we can infer that they would refute him if they could, and they're trying to prevent him from telling us what he knows because they can't dispute what he has to say.

It's a logical conclusion, and easy to reach, so I wouldn't be surprised if at least two dozen readers, finding the Forward's coverage on the Internet and intrigued by the hallmarks of a coverup, did a bit of exploring, downloaded Bollyn's book, and did some reading at his website, to which Naomi Dann linked.

So what is the net gain to the Forward? to Sam Kestenbaum? To Naomi Dann?

On one hand, they've demonstrated to their "communal leaders" that they can be trusted to stand and fight on command.

On the other hand, they've demonstrated to the rest of us that (1) they're highly motivated by fear of a hypothetical future in which some of the consequences of 9/11 might be borne by innocent people who happen to share the same religion as the perpetrators, but (2) they have no problem with a real present in which the horrible actual consequences of 9/11 are borne by innocent people who happen to share the same religion as the scapegoats!

Christopher Bollyn [source: The Forward]

I recall a presentation several years ago in which Christopher Bollyn said he never had a problem with Israel, even lived there for a while; and never had a problem with Jews either, until he started investigating explosions in the WTC, at which point he started getting pressure from Jewish groups. At first he wondered why Jewish groups, in particular, would try to keep him from looking into the destruction of the towers. But the more he dug, the more Israeli connections he found, and the less he wondered.

That's Bollyn's story, as I remember it, and you may choose to believe it or not. It sounds loopy, but I had a similar experience. I never had any problem with Jews either, until I started blogging about evidence of explosions in the WTC, at which point I started getting pressure from other bloggers and readers who identified themselves as Jewish. It was this pressure which prompted me to entertain, for the first time, the possibility that the people who were talking about Israeli complicity in 9/11 might know what they were talking about.

So it seems to me that if they're trying to suppress the facts, drawing attention to the people who are trying to disseminate those facts is a losing strategy. On the other hand, they can't very well anger their "communal leaders" by not trying it.

In any case, it was a total fail. They didn't get the event canceled, they gave a "raging anti-Semite" a moment in the anti-Semitic sun, and they revealed themselves and their followers to be transparent hypocrites.

Sorry, Sam! You lose! Your pathetic attack failed, and you wound up using your platform to publicize the very allegations you were trying to suppress.

Sorry, Naomi! You lose, too! You're trapped behind the imaginary line you're trying to draw, but so caught up in your own contradictions that you don't even realize it.

And sorry, Forward! You're the biggest loser in the story, and the most hypocritical, too. As an alert reader pointed out in a comment:

The Dancing Israeli stories is a curious side bar to 911, turns out they were Mossad agents working for a Mossad front, Urban Moving Systems of Weehawken, N.J. The details of which can be found in a Forward article dated March 15 2002 written by Marc Perelman

There's boundless irony here, as the paper is busted on the strength of its own reporting. Shockingly, the piece referred to in the comment is no longer available at the Forward website, but the Wayback Machine hasn't forgotten that Marc Perelman wrote, and the Forward published, the following:

Spy Rumors Fly on Gusts of Truth
Americans Probing Reports of Israeli Espionage

By MARC PERELMAN
FORWARD STAFF

Despite angry denials by Israel and its American supporters, reports that Israel was conducting spying activities in the United States may have a grain of truth, the Forward has learned. [...]

In particular, a group of five Israelis arrested in New Jersey shortly after the September 11 attacks and held for more than two months was subjected to an unusual number of polygraph tests and interrogated by a series of government agencies including the FBI's counterintelligence division, which by some reports remains convinced that Israel was conducting an intelligence operation. The five Israelis worked for a moving company with few discernable assets that closed up shop immediately afterward and whose owner fled to Israel. [...]

According to one former high-ranking American intelligence official, who asked not to be named, the FBI came to the conclusion at the end of its investigation that the five Israelis arrested in New Jersey last September were conducting a Mossad surveillance mission and that their employer, Urban Moving Systems of Weehawken, N.J., served as a front.

After their arrest, the men were held in detention for two-and-a-half months and were deported at the end of November, officially for visa violations.

However, a counterintelligence investigation by the FBI concluded that at least two of them were in fact Mossad operatives, according to the former American official, who said he was regularly briefed on the investigation by two separate law enforcement officials.

"The assessment was that Urban Moving Systems was a front for the Mossad and operatives employed by it," he said. "The conclusion of the FBI was that they were spying on local Arabs but that they could leave because they did not know anything about 9/11." [...]

Spokesmen for the FBI, the Justice Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service refused to discuss the case. Israeli officials flatly dismissed the allegations as untrue.

However, the former American official said that after American authorities confronted Jerusalem on the issue at the end of last year, the Israeli government acknowledged the operation and apologized for not coordinating it with Washington.

The five men — Sivan and Paul Kurzberg, Oded Ellner, Omer Marmari and Yaron Shmuel — were arrested eight hours after the attacks by the Bergen County, N.J., police while driving in an Urban Moving Systems van. The police acted on an FBI alert after the men allegedly were seen acting strangely while watching the events from the roof of their warehouse and the roof of their van.

In addition to their strange behavior and their Middle Eastern looks, the suspicions were compounded when a box cutter and $4,000 in cash were found in the van. Moreover, one man carried two passports and another had fresh pictures of the men standing with the smoldering wreckage of the World Trade Center in the background.

And so on. I've omitted Marc Perelman's most obvious attempts to spin the story in an innocent direction, just as Marc Perelman described the men as "acting strangely" rather than admitting that they attracted attention to themselves by dancing, exchanging high-fives, flicking their lighters, and photographing one another against the backdrop of the burning towers.

Marc Perelman's story hints that the behavior of these five men was probably innocent and misinterpreted, and he repeated the same claim in a subsequent interview. But if that were true, they would never have been noticed, let alone arrested. Plenty of people were acting strangely that day. But the others weren't dancing, high-fiving, flicking their lighters, or taking souvenir photos.

Another reader remembered that after being released on the pretense that they knew nothing about the 9/11 attacks,

Your freaking Mossad agents went on Israel live TV and said "our purpose was to document the event" wtf is everyone suppose to think of that?

wtf indeed! If you think he's kidding, watch this short video.

Here's what I think of it:

The story of the five dancing Israelis is the tip of the iceberg called "Israeli complicity."

You can click here to read about that iceberg. But I can't tell you any more about it myself -- because, as I've been saying:

The facts must be suppressed, and the people who are trying to gather and disseminate those facts must be suppressed, and that is the one and only thing that matters to these people. And why? Why would you hide the crime unless you were trying to protect the criminals?

Series: Accessories After The Fact Go Splat!!
Previous: Pathetic Fail #4: Matt Kwong and the CBC
Next: Pathetic Fail #2: Abby Ohlheiser, the Washington Post, and Facebook