By Craig McKee
Is standing up for what you believe worth losing friends over?
Sometimes those friends don’t give you a choice. Other times, you can decide to stay away from certain subjects with certain people.
Recently I parted ways with two people I’ve known for more than a quarter of a century. Admittedly, we haven’t hung out for some time, but we do have a history. I don’t think we’re going to be adding to it, though.
In fact, there are five people I connected with on Facebook who are no longer among my online friends. The short version of the story is that they don’t much like my opinion that 9/11 was an inside job and a Continue reading
Power and the illusion of freedom: simple truth from George Carlin
The limits of debate are established in this country before the debate even begins. Everybody else is marginalized, made to seem like Communists or some other disloyal person. Kook, there’s a word! Now it’s conspiracy. They’ve made that something that can’t even be entertained for a minute – that powerful people might get together and have a plan? Doesn’t happen! You’re a kook, you’re a conspiracy buff! – George Carlin
By Craig McKee
George Carlin made it so clear and so simple. That was his genius.
With humour that we could all relate to, he told us the truth about how our world works and how most of us are cattle for the super rich. How we are conned into believing in the very people who enslave us, how we are conned into believing in the illusion of freedom.
He knew and he told us. We laughed, but did we really listen?
Carlin passed away in 2008. At the time I thought it was sad – just like it’s sad when any beloved entertainer dies. But looking back on it, we lost something unique and irreplaceable when Carlin left us. Continue reading
Breaking the back of the official story: 9/11 Consensus Panel can’t be timid
Barrie Zwicker on the 9/11 Consensus Panel: truth is more important than unity.
By Craig McKee
There’s no going back now.
The recently announced 9/11 Consensus Panel has raised the stakes for the Truth movement. The panel cannot afford to fail because many of the most highly respected members of the Truth movement have lent their reputations to the effort – and none more than panel co-founder David Ray Griffin.
They simply have to get it right. And while a cautious start has been made, with 13 points achieving the required 85% support among the 22 voting members of the panel, this is only Continue reading
Truth and consensus: jury still out on Griffin's new 9/11 expert panel
By Craig McKee
Maybe we should start calling it the 9/11 Consensus Movement.
Recent developments in the struggle to widely expose the truth about the fake “terrorist attacks” of Sept. 11, 2001 have focused on apparent efforts to overcome divisions between different factions in the movement. Ironically, these attempts at consensus have themselves been highly controversial.
The latest, and possibly most consequential, move towards consensus is the creation of a collection of experts in a panel called “Consensus 911: The 9/11 Best Evidence Panel.”
The group, announced in September, was put together by prolific 9/11 researcher and author David Ray Continue reading
Journalists would be thrilled to break 9/11 'inside job' story, if there was one: Kay
Jonathan Kay would suggest that this man is delusional and has too much time on his hands.
By Craig McKee
Jonathan Kay lives in a truly wonderful world.
In this world, journalists are just dying to break any story that would show that 9/11 is an inside job. And any who did would surely be rewarded with wealth, fame, and maybe a Pulitzer Prize.
Too bad for them there isn’t a shred of evidence for this ridiculous “conspiracy theory.” If there were, we’d have hundreds of ambitious scribes fighting and scratching to find out who could get that April Gallop interview first. Somebody heard bombs going off in the towers before the planes hit? 60 Minutes would have been there. A big plane got sucked into an impossibly tiny Continue reading
Teach kids conspiracy theories are ‘bad for society’: an interview with Jonathan Kay
By Craig McKee
It’s a challenge to interview someone you’d rather be debating. That was the case when I interviewed Canadian writer and journalist Jonathan Kay this week. Kay, an editor with the National Post, is the author of Among the Truthers, which attempts to examine and explain the world of conspiracy theorists. Why do these otherwise intelligent people believe the “bullshit” that they do, he wonders? He sees the 9/11 Truth movement as being ridiculous and based on arguments that “even an eight-year-old” would see through. I chose to try and cover as much ground in 45 minutes as I could rather than getting into an in-depth debate on any one point. I did find things in his arguments that cry out for further argument , and I will offer my analysis of his remarks in a subsequent post. I encourage readers to offer their own comments at the end of this article.
CM: What is the difference between a conspiracy theorist and someone who does legitimate research to unearth a real conspiracy?
JK: I define according to the method of argumentation of the people who advance the theory in question. I give the example of Iran/Contra, Teapot Dome, the Sponsorship Scandal or Watergate, which of course were real historical conspiracies. If you’re advancing something like this, one person will advance evidence and the other person will refute it, and by that method you Continue reading
Griffin challenged for ‘weak logic’, ignoring evidence on 9/11 'calls'
By Craig McKee
David Ray Griffin’s newest book is receiving criticism not so much from believers in the government’s official story as from his usual supporters within the 9/11 Truth movement.
In a new essay, Paul Zarembka – an economics professor, 9/11 researcher, and editor of The Hidden History of 9-11 – offers a critique of Griffin’s analysis of the subject of whether phone calls from the four allegedly hijacked airliners on Sept. 11, 2001 were faked. Zarembka challenges the conclusions reached in chapter five of Griffin’s new book, 9/11 Ten Years Later: When State Crimes Against Democracy Succeed.
“The internal logic of Griffin’s chapter rather surprised me for its weakness,” Zarembka writes in the Continue reading
CIT would likely have said no to ‘fixed’ Toronto 9/11 hearings: Ranke
By Craig McKee
Citizen Investigation Team would almost certainly not have participated in the Toronto 9/11 hearings last month even if invited, CIT’s Craig Ranke said in an interview.
“We knew they weren’t going to give us a fair hearing, even in the unlikely event that some of our evidence was addressed,” Ranke says.
“If we had been invited, it would have been foolish for us to automatically accept knowing that we’d be walking into a rigged situation where all aspects of the discussion, and even the final report, were controlled by our detractors and their associates.”
Ranke says it’s apparent to him that one of the major goals of the hearings all along was to marginalize CIT’s evidence that a large plane approached, but did not hit, the Pentagon Continue reading
Conflict, consensus and 9/11 truth: an interview with David Ray Griffin
Griffin now focuses on al-Qaeda not flying a 757 into the Pentagon.
I met David Ray Griffin at the recent Toronto 9/11 Hearings, and heard his presentation on the anomalies of flights 77 and 93. In his talk, Griffin introduced us to his new “consensus approach” to exposing the official lies of 9/11. I did a brief interview with Griffin following his presentation, but we agreed to do a more substantial interview by email once the hearings were over. What follows is that interview. I decided against my earlier inclination, which was to write back with follow-up questions before publishing. I chose instead to present my original questions and his answers.– Craig McKee
CM: In your new book, what did you most want people to understand about the fight to expose the 9/11 inside job?
DRG: I think that the main purpose was essentially the same as previous books – laying out various types of evidence that the official story is false – plus the new aim: seeing 9/11 as an example of – indeed, the preeminent example of – a SCAD (a state crime against democracy).
CM: How has your level of optimism/pessimism changed in recent years?
DRG: I don’t know that it has changed much. I like Gramsci’s motto, combining “pessimism of the intellect” with “optimism of the will.” Intellectual pessimism about the emergence of the truth about 9/11 in the public sphere is Continue reading
Griffin’s ‘no 757’ Pentagon stance eclipses ‘consensus approach’
Griffin offers overwhelming evidence that no 757 hit the Pentagon.
By Craig McKee
The best argument I’ve found against David Ray Griffin’s new “consensus approach” to the Pentagon comes from a very reliable source – David Ray Griffin.
In his new book, 9/11 Ten Years After: When State Crimes Against Democracy Succeed, the dean of 9/11 Truth makes the strongest case yet that the U.S. government faked a plane crash at the Pentagon to deceive the world. He shows us that the strongest evidence by far shows Continue reading