A reply to Jim Fetzer's WND rebuttal

Click on Truth seekers, not Bush bashers For Fetzer's rebuttal.
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Jim Fetzer is grossly incompetent and has no basis for marketing himself as an expert on 9/11 in general and the collapses of the WTC buildings. Abusing words such as 'logic', 'objective', and 'scientific' do not transform baseless conspiracy theories into fact.

Fetzer has a history of attacking those that debunk his 'creative' theories. Josiah Thompson is the author of Six Seconds in Dallas. This book stands as one of the most important critical books regarding the Warren Report even after many decades. It stands in sharp contrast to malarkey such as The Great Zapruder Film Hoax in which Fetzer claims the Zapruder film to be little more than a manufactured cartoon with frames missing, frames combined, and details painted in. Josiah Thompson relayed the following during a Dallas 1998 presentation regarding Fetzer's pompous, psychotic reaction to those that take the time to correct his errors:

When earlier this year [1998], I had the temerity to disagree, I was told by the Professor that "...you have thereby discredited yourself as a commentator on these matters."
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On Fetzer's assassinationscience.com website, two prominent links in the upper-left corner of the main page promote the false theory that the moon landing was faked. He also hawks books and videos pushing his bizarre theory concerning the Zapruder film.

Moseley taking the time to respond to kooky allegations does not equal an obsession. If he ignored the conspiracy posts, the pseudo scholars would be crowing about Moseley being unable to respond. The fruitcakes cannot have it both ways.

Fetzer's mention of 'special' controlled demolitions is an invention designed to avoid the fact that buildings are not demolished from the top down. It is the only way he has of fitting the evidence around his theory.

Fetzer has uncritically accepted conspiracy 'facts' because they fit his theory.

1. No government report maintains that the plane impact alone caused the towers to collapse. The aircraft impacts that DeMartini and others mention were expected to be slower and lower on fuel. By the way, the towers WITHSTOOD the impact. The resultant damage + fire brought the towers down.

2. No government report maintains that fire melted the steel in the towers. This is a straw man tactic and something that a high school freshman would recognize. One would hope that someone would be able to recognize such a gross fallacy especially after 35 years of teaching logic, critical thinking and scientific reasoning. Perhaps not.

3. Fetzer is relying on Kevin Ryan for the claim that Underwriters' Laboratories certified the steel in the WTC. Ryan was a water tester. Fetzer again repeats the straw man fallacy regarding steel melting showing that teaching for 35 years does not make one immune to faulty reasoning. Regarding Kevin Ryan and certifying the WTC steel, Underwriters' Laboratories had the following to say:

Underwriters Laboratories denied that it ever certified the steel in the World Trade Center buildings and said Ryan wrote the letter "without UL's knowledge or authorization."

"UL does not certify structural steel, such as the beams, columns and trusses used in World Trade Center," said Paul M. Baker, a spokesman for the Northbrook, Ill.-based company.

Ryan was fired, Baker said, because he "expressed his own opinions as though they were institutional opinions and beliefs of UL."

"The contents of the argument itself are spurious at best, and frankly, they're just wrong," Baker said.
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Fetzer repeats the Internet canards of living hijackers, fake cell phone calls, and confuses lists of victims with flight manifests. He has refused, in the past, to view excellent sites such as 911myths.com because he claims the material in them is false. The same behavior from a skeptic toward a conspiracy site would be ranted about as proof of the soundness of the conspiracy theories.

Should a man that promotes the claim that the moon landings were faked, violates Jesus' admonition to not criticize others for something that you have a worse problem with, and can't recognize basic logical fallacies after 35 years of teaching be given free reign to promote vile theories regarding 9/11?

At the Dallas 1998 JFK assassination meeting, Josiah Thompson had the following to say at the end of his presentation:

You may wonder why I've taken the time to attack Professor Fetzer here. It is because he expresses a trend in assassination research which I find odious.

His emphasis on credentials and the cult of expertise (or alleged expertise) is demeaning to the tradition of inquiry we all share as a community. When the final history of this case is written it will be based on the canons of acute historical research. These canons have nothing to do with how many initials you can hang after your name or how often you're called "distinguished."

- Tom Stoneburner

Urgent appeal for funds to assist Mr Irving and his family

David Irving arrested at gunpoint in Austria

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Who is David Irving?



". . . a British historian, David Irving, perhaps the greatest living authority on the Nazi era . . ." Stephen Spender, New York Times Review of Books [full text]

"SUCH PEOPLE AS David Irving have an indispensable part in the historical enterprise, and we dare not disregard their views." Professor Gordon C Craig, The New York Review of Books, September 19, 1996.

"ES IST EIN GLÜCK für uns . . . einen Irving zu haben, der den Historikern zumindest neue Anstöße gibt." Professor Hans Mommsen, Ruhr-Univ. Bochum, 1978: now see his panic! Charakterschweine gibt es ja überall.

"FOR BETTER or for worse . . . the best known historians of the Nazi era are now [Daniel] Goldhagen and the British writer David Irving."-- Holocaust and Genocide Studies, vol. 11, no. 3 (Oxford University Press, in association with U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum).

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Prison authorities are holding back Mr. Irving's mail and they are electronically blocking all his phone calls to his London home and office, despite a Judge's order. It is now known that the trial be held before an 8-man jury and three judges (President : Dr Peter Liebetreu) on Feburary 20 (9am) and 21 at the Large Criminal Court, Vienna, Wichenburg gasse 22. Mr Irving has been charged under section 3g of the Verbotsgesetz, Austria's equivalent of Germany's law for the suppression of free speech. This unique law provides for sentences of 1-20 years. Mr Irving is accused of having expressed an illegal opinion during two lectures in Austria in November 1989, 16 years ago. He has visited Austria on more than one occasion since then. Any sentence handed down by the Court will immediately be appealed to the European Court of Human Rights by Mr Irving's well-known and formidable lawyer Dr Elmar Kresbach.

Urgent appeal for funds to assist Mr Irving and his family: Click this link to donate or mail to PO Box 18812, London SW7 4WD

ANOTHER example of Mike Rivero's shoddy Internet 'analysis'

Mike Rivero just won't stop with the out-of-context quotes and hallucinating extra meaning into news reports.

UK says Saudi attacks in 'final stages' of planning
"There are credible reports that terrorists are in the final stages of planning attacks," said an updated advisory posted on the Web site of the British embassy in the capital Riyadh. Earlier, Britain cited "credible reports" that militants were planning attacks in the near future.

Mike Rivero: "But the attacks in London couldn't be foreseen even though we had a double agent in charge of the attacks"

Folks, this is another set-up. Why would anyone in the Saudi government attack the US embassies there? If Saudi Arabia wants to hurt the US, all it has to do is yank their investment from the US (which they appear to be doing even now). This is perfectly legal for them to do. An attack just gives the US the excuse to freeze the Saudi assets inside the US. So, who benefits from an attack? The Saudis, or the US?

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Folks, the 'Saudi attacks' article says NOTHING about the Saudi government. Where in the blue blazes did Rivero get that part from? Also, the article Mike cites regarding a double agent has the 'double agent' working AGAINST the British. Mike tries to give the impression that the informant helped cause the London bombings FOR the British.

Shameful, simply shameful.

OPEN LETTER TO JESSE OF TVNEWSLIES.ORG

Jesse,

You promote 'In Plane Site' which is easily the worst video on 9/11. vonKleist is an imbecile at best or a con artist at worst. Your explanation of two camps comes off as good vs evil. Blindly accepting conspiracy malarkey as you have done is no better than the blind refusal to examine that you condemn in 'DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: ALMOST PERFECT ABOUT 9/11!' This is hypocrisy.

Have you bothered to investigate the garbage in Plane Site or are you just sitting back waiting for others to do the work for you? A high school student taking a class on photography or video editing could point out the tremendous errors in the video.

Heck, here is something simple to check out for yourself. Paste the following link:

http://archives.cnn.com/2001/CAREER/trends/09/11/witnesses/index.html

The fifth audio box down on the right of the page under 'It was just sheer terror' contains the audio recording of Mike Walter's statement. This is the famous statement that has been abused and twisted by conspiracy clowns to have Walter claiming he saw a cruise missile at the Pentagon! Listen to the FULL recording and read the corresponding text to the left.

Also, you are pushing one of the worst conspiracy theories on the Internet by lying about what Silverstein actually said. Silverstein, to anyone not challenged by the complexities of basic English, was referring to the firefighting effort when he said "...maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it."

"I remember getting a call from the, er, fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, 'We've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.' And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse."

How hard is that to understand? Yes, 'pull' can mean 'implode' in demolition work. However, other fields give the term different meanings. 'Pull' in firefighting can mean 'stop a losing effort against a fire.'

What did Jesus say about complaining about the toothpick in someone else's eye while ignoring the 2x4 in your own eye?

I hope this helps to get you to educate yourself. Yes, there are strange things concerning 9/11. Throwing mounds of crap at the wall and waiting for others to do the work of seeing what, if anything, is worth further investigation is the wrong way to go about this. Just as Popular Mechanics shredded many of the supposed 'proofs' cited by kookburger theorists, Scientific American is set to destroy what is left of the fake 'research' cited by whackos.

If you can dish it out in your articles, please be willing to accept it (evidence was included with this, so don't fly off the handle) when it is passed your way.

Take care,

Tom Stoneburner

P.S. Do you really think Silverstein would have been stupid enough to blab a mega-secret about 9/11 during a scheduled interview that he had prepared for? He could have edited the video or asked for another take if he intended the false meaning attributed by shoddy Internet researchers.

The Holocaust never happened because Israel is greedy?

Mike Rivero, swirling in the whirlpool of conspiracy theory, has another gem on his letter page today.

WRH: The strongest single reason to doubt the official story of the holocaust is that Israel does not behave like they are grateful for all the blood and money we spent to stop Hitler. Israel makes a great stink about reparations for lives ruined by the Nazis, but what about all those millions of American families who were ruined by the death or crippling of a principle earner? Where is their reparations? An honorable people would work to repay the nations that halted Hitler's plans, not keep demanding more and more money.

Note the lack of capitalization regarding the Holocaust. This was a mistake on Rivero's part showing his anti-Jewish bias. You may argue about the significance of 'a' holocaust, but capitalization is the only thing that makes sense when referring to THE Holocaust.

What 'official story' is he referring to? Is it the Nuremberg record, individual survivor accounts, consensus of historians, Nazi records, television specials, and/or movies? By not defining what he refers to as 'the official story,' he leaves the door wide open for the accounts of con artists such as Benjamin Wilkomirski to be considered part of 'the official story' and discredit by association otherwise valid information.

Rivero uses circular reasoning to support his anti-Holocaust bias. Using a claimed lack of monetary gratitude from Israel toward the nations responsible for defeating Nazi Germany as a reason to doubt Rivero's hazy version of 'the offical story' only works if you FIRST ASSUME the Holocaust did not happen! His basic reasoning boils down to: 'Israel is greedy.' 'Because Israel (2005) is greedy, the Holocaust (1940's) did not happen.' This 'reasoning' is on par with a bad 'Dilbert' cartoon strip.

Sadly, Rivero has been on a downhill course after contracting conspiranoia. Will he ever awaken from his self-imposed conspiracy prison?

Mike Rivero - conspiracy theorist and proven liar

Wacky conspiracy theorist Mike Rivero posted a gem on his site today:

The "Authorities" have a problem. They have been exposed as lying about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, the supposed link from Iraq to Al Qaeda and the supposed link between Iraq and 9-11, all of which turned out not to exist. We've seen a plethora of forged documents including the Niger "Yellowcake" documents, and the document that smeared George Galloway.
So now we're supposed to take the "authorities" word now?

I don't.

I don't believe anything either the government of the UK or the government of the US says now. Prudence demands outright dismissal of official statements by "authorities" as total junk until proven beyond a shadow of doubt by an independent third party investigation.

Having been stung by Popular Mechanics exposure of his shoddy 'research' regarding seismographs and the WTC collapse, Rivero has been in a slobbering rage against anyone and anything that contradicts him even if a better case is presented.

Common among conspiracy theorists is the use of double standards. Note in the quote at the top of this post that Rivero demands absolute proof, not 'beyond a reasonable doubt' or simply a better case, for anything contradicting his theories and blindly accepts faulty material that supports his theories.

Regarding the PM issue on 9/11 conspiracy theories linked to above, Mike Rivero is a proven liar. He claimed that PM stated that the steel MELTED causing the collapse of the WTC towers. PM actually said the exact opposite!

They SPECIFICALLY said that the steel in the towers DID NOT melt and they offered an explanation as to how they believed the towers collapsed. At best, Mike guessed and made a statement regarding an article he NEVER read. At worst, He is a stonehearted liar that will do anything to sell his theories to the public. Of course, there is always the possibility that Mike has difficulty understanding english.

The mainstream media has savagely attacked serious researchers, in part, because of fodder provided by those like Mike Rivero. E-mails to him correcting his mistakes are ignored or met with more conspiracy theories on totally different subjects. Use his site for the great daily collection of news links, but beware of the material he produces.