War Is a Lie

Good summary of how even the 1st Iraq war (1st Gulf War) was based on pure lies.

White People Are Aliens...

23 minutes in...


I like how he says they are from another planet, since they aren't comfortable here and are so psychopathic in general. It's funny since this touches on the deep conspiracy angle of human origins, that maybe part of humans are indeed extra-terrestrial... and some have proposed the northern whites (Anglo-Saxons-Celtic-Nordic people) have more alien genes.

America-- Bad the the Bone

This would explain a fair amount of why this country is so messed up, and why we can't seem to shake horrible right-wing politics:

As the United States prepares to celebrate Independence Day, we look at why July 4 is not a cause for celebration for all. For Native Americans, it may be a bitter reminder of colonialism, which brought fatal diseases, cultural hegemony and genocide. Neither did the new republic’s promise of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" extend to African Americans. The colonists who declared their freedom from England did not share their newly founded liberation with the millions of Africans they had captured and forced into slavery. We speak with historian Gerald Horne, who argues the so-called Revolutionary War was actually a conservative effort by American colonists to protect their system of slavery. He is the author of two new books: "The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America"

Hurtful Blog Comments

Bwahahaha--

John Huppenthal, the Arizona Republican official who earlier this month confessed to being a prolific and nasty anonymous commenter on local politics blogs, apologized Wednesday for his bigoted online writings during an emotional press conference that ended with him walking out of the room in tears.

"I am here today to apologize for my blog comments," Huppenthal said at the start of the press conference. "There have been a lot of discussions in recent days, including today, on my blog comments. I don't mind getting beat up, I've been in elected office for a long time, it comes with the territory. That doesn't bother me. What does bother me, what really bothers me, is that my blog comments were hurtful. I'm here today because of those hurtful blog comments, my blog comments. I'm here today to repudiate those blog comments, I'm here to renounce those blog comments. They are not what is in my mind, they don't reflect the love that is in my heart, and they especially don't reflect the actions of myself and especially my employees in this agency over the preceding years."

Climate Change or Climate Hoax?

(see update)

I've debated this issue for a surprising number of years now on this site.

As I have posted before, I am open to all sorts of conspiracy theories, but they have to make some sense to me. In my mind, it is always worth reviewing reasons to be the "conspiracy" view versus the "official" viewpoint.

Now, just to tip you off where I'm going with this-- the bottom line is I don't trust people on either side of the argument completely. But my tendency is to support the pro-anthrogenic global warming/climate change/climate disruption (AGW/CC/CD) side.

Now let's look at who are skeptical of AGW/CC/CD:
most Republicans and conservatives
Oil and gas companies
right-wing conspiracy theorists

Who thinks AGW/CC/CD is real?
Most Democrats and liberals
The vast majority of climate scientists
NASA and "skeptic" types who go against conspiracy theories

So, imo, the anti-AGW/CC/CD side is made up of assholes and cranks-- people totally unsympathetic to me.

The pro-AGW/CC/CD side is made up of people I tend to sympathize with, but the ones that gives me pause are of course, NASA and the skeptic crowd.


Now, to be sure, the anti-AGW/CC/CD side is very clever about finding problems with the pro-anti-AGW/CC/CD arguments.

For instance:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/02/22/motherlode-part-iv/
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/06/23/noaanasa-dramatically-altered-us-temperatures-after-the-year-2000/

On the surface, these arguments are disturbing, and support the idea of a hoax. But of course, these arguments about climate data are very complex, and the fact is, I don't have time to delve into the nitty-gritty details here.

There are of course people who think AGW/CC/CD is the end of the world:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/near-term-human-extinction-a-conversation-with-guy-mcpherson/5373909

Others, like Al Gore, see a serious problem, but think there is hope:
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/24317-the-turning-point-new-hope-for-the-climate

Where I come down is this:
I see the continual burning of fuels extracted from under the ground as dirty and polluting energy. We're putting CO2 into the air that was trapped millions of years ago in plants or animals, and we're putting it into the air at a far greater rate than it was removed. I just can't see how this is a good thing in any sense. Plus, I find right-wing arguments are almost always flawed. I don't trust Republicans or their Big Oil cronies. I do think the impact of the increased C02 and methane is very complex and hard to predict, and it may not not result in the types of changes predicted. At the same time, the warnings are dire enough for some action. And in general, I think converting to renewable energy is the way of the future. So I just don't see the harm in trying to move away from a carbon-pollution society towards a more renewable one. I think people can do it, and as usual, right-wingers are being ridiculously reactionary and making things worse (as they usually do).

The one unsettling issue though, for me, is how someone can take a detail about the science and make the whole concept seem bad, much in the way that conspiracy theorists, who may not completely understand the science the way the experts do, cast doubt on the official government story. Much in the way, for instance, that I have tried to cast doubt on the official WTC collapse story. I'm not a mechanical engineer, yet I have tried to argue against engineers who support the official 9/11 story.

So, should we trust silly bloggers who take on the government narrative by finding little discrepancies here and there?

I think it just really depends on the big picture.

For me, there is a history of false-flag events being used for starting a war. So there is precedent for this sort of hoax. And there is huge power and money involved in war, so a major incentive to promote the 9/11 hoax.

The idea that AGW/CC/CD is a government or scientist-propagated complete hoax just has no real precedent and doesn't make much sense if you follow the money and the power. The money and power is with the Big Oil companies and elites. Scientists may be led astray at times, but there is no precedent that I know of, for them conspiring to invent a huge catastrophic event like AGW/CC/CD. On the other hand, clearly Big Oil companies and the elites benefit from casting doubt on AGW/CC/CD.

So it boils down to:
who do I trust?
what makes more sense?
what is the more likely conspiracy here?
who benefits?

For me the pro-AGW/CC/CD side tends to win out.

UPDATE 6/27/14:

What I left out, and what I often forget about when I think and write about this topic, is the likelihood that the climate is being manipulated by HAARP and "chemtrails". I suspect that this is going on, but there is so much secrecy and misinformation on this topic, it's really hard to sort out.

Weather manipulation could be done for several reasons--
1) to make AGW/CC/CD worse for obscure but ultimately evil reasons
2) to limit the effects of AGW/CC/CD in favored countries
3) to limit the effects of AGW/CC/CD in favored countries and make worse in non-favored countries
4) to mask the effects of AGW/CC/CD specifically in the US, to give the deniers more political power.
5) in a very selective way, to maximize political and economic power for those who control the weather manipulation technology

Another LAPD False Flag?

This is a bizarre case from last year-- and follows in the footsteps of the extremely bizarre Christopher Dorner incident. Basically, 2 LAPD officer went on a shooting rampage because they thought someone was shooting at them, but there is no evidence that anyone shot at them. Then they shut down a section of Venice on a manhunt for the suspect.

So what's going on here? Is it part of plan to prep the public for increasing martial law?

Earl of "Snowden"

Earl of Snowdon is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1961, together with the subsidiary title Viscount Linley, of Nymans in the County of Sussex, for Antony Armstrong-Jones,^[1] who was then the husband of Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon. Snowdon as a peerage title had previous royal associations; the title of Baron Snowdon had been conferred along with the Dukedom of Edinburgh on Prince Frederick Louis, grandson of George I and future Prince of Wales, in 1726.

I heard about this today. Of course, it is reminiscent of Edward Snowden... and I realized why that name was always so striking. It is the name of English royalty... Edward is the name of several English kings... the Earl of Snowdon was married into the royal family...

The main point being that "whistleblower extraordinaire" Edward Snowden (assuming that is his real name) is no ordinary joe. He is is likely descended from the English royal bloodline-- and this would make him one of the evil PTB.

Just another piece of the puzzle.

Benghazi Attack Leader Says It Was About the Anti-Muslim Video After All

Too funny.

This works on several levels.

If it actually is true, it is a brilliant vindication for the Obama administration against the asinine GOP attacks on Benghazi.

If it's not true, it's still brilliant propaganda for the Obama administration against the asinine GOP attacks on Benghazi.

It would be great irony if the administration or its allies used torture to get this "confession", thus showing how useful torture is for getting false confessions.

This kind of story also might be useful for getting the GOP and conservatives to realize how fungible and bogus these terrorist groups are. I wouldn't hold my breath on that, though.

Some Realism About Iraq and ISIS

As the Scriptures remind us, “Do not believe the hype.” The hype of the moment is ISIS, the Sunni militia that just drove the so-called Iraqi Army out of Mosul, Tikrit, and other Iraqi cities.

This is one of those dramatic military reverses that mean a lot less than meets the eye.

The “Iraqi Army” routed by ISIS wasn’t really a national army, and ISIS isn’t really a dominant military force. It was able to occupy those cities because they were vacuums, abandoned by a weak, sectarian force. Moving into vacuums like this is what ISIS is good at. And that’s the only thing ISIS is good at.

ISIS is a sectarian Sunni militia—that’s all. A big one, as militias go, with something like 10,000 fighters. Most of them are Iraqi, a few are Syrian, and a few hundred are those famous “European jihadis” who draw press attention out of all relation to their negligible combat value. The real strength of ISIS comes from its Chechen fighters, up to a thousand of them. A thousand Chechens is a serious force, and a terrifying one if they’re bearing down on your neighborhood. Chechens are the scariest fighters, pound-for-pound, in the world.

But we’re still talking about a conventional military force smaller than a division. That’s a real but very limited amount of combat power. What this means is that, no matter how many scare headlines you read, ISIS will never take Baghdad, let alone Shia cities to the south like Karbala. It won’t be able to dent the Kurds’ territory to the north, either. All it can do—all it has been doing, by moving into Sunni cities like Mosul and Tikrit—is to complete the partition of Iraq begun by our dear ex-president Bush in 2003. By crushing Saddam’s Sunni-led Iraq, the Americans made partition inevitable. In fact, Iraq has been partitioned ever since the invasion; it’s just been partitioned badly, into two parts instead of the natural three: the Kurdish north, and the remainder occupied by a weak sectarian Shia force going by the name of “The Iraqi Army.” The center of the country, the so-called “Sunni Triangle,” had no share in this partition and was under the inept, weak rule of the Shia army.

By occupying the Sunni cities, ISIS has simply made a more rational partition, adding a third part, putting the Sunni Triangle back under Sunni rule. The Shia troops who fled as soon as they heard that the ISIS was on the way seem to have anticipated that the Sunni would claim their own territory someday. That’s why they fled without giving even a pretense of battle.

So, Iraq is now partitioned on more natural, sensible lines, thanks to ISIS. It’s going to be a messy transition, as Iraqi transitions tend to be, with mass executions of collaborators like those already happening in Mosul and Tikrit.

But in the long run, ISIS has simply swept into a power vacuum, like it’s done from the start.

ISIS has always been good at generating scary stories about itself, like the notion that it was kicked out of Al Qaeda for being “too extreme.” It’s true that ISIS has a beef with Zawahiri, the nominal head of Al Qaeda, but the issue isn’t extremism. Their quarrel was a turf war about who would get the Al Qaeda franchise in Syria, and it just showed ISIS’s most pronounced characteristic in action: A real knack for moving in on vulnerable turf.
In fact, ISIS’s quarrel with Zawahiri was a lot like a corporate boardroom feud. It’s always worth remembering that Jihadis are just friggin’ people, and their disagreements tend to be about very ordinary organizational issues. Granted, it’s a little harder to see that when they solve those disagreements with public beheadings and overly-cinematic rituals, but at heart this is just standard human behavior—primates squabbling for rank and power, Game of Thrones with Islamic voiceover.

Even the name, “I.S.I.S.,” is the result of a series of policy disputes and turf wars. “I.S.I.S.” is an English-language acronym, standing for “The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shams [Greater Syria].” You may have seen people insist on calling it “I.S.I.L.,” because they translate “al-Shams” as “the Levant,” the old-fashioned term for the Eastern Mediterranean shore. Arabs don’t use either of these acronyms; the Arabic acronym for the group is “Daash,” as in this headline describing the aftermath of I.S.I.S.’s conquest of Mosul: “Daash Executed 12 Imam [sic] who refused to pledge allegiance.”

The most important thing about this name is that it’s clear about policy—“Islamic State”—and very flexible about territory. The Islamic State is supposed to cover the whole world, so it doesn’t matter very much which chunk of turf it starts on. None of the borders of the Arab Middle East—Iraq, Syria, Jordan—mean much if you believe in a Caliphate that should encompass the whole Ummah, every believer in the world. So I.S.I.S. has always been vague about territory. It’s a fluid group, moving away from pressure and toward chaos, toward regions where authority is weak and there’s room to expand. Think of I.S.I.S. as something between a liquid and a gas, always striving to fill a void.

A really good analysis, worth reading the whole thing...

Of course, it's important to note that at some level these guys are also supported by the US. Possibly through the CIA; certainly by the Saudis, who of course are supported by the US. And after defeating the Iraqi army, who had US arms and armor, ISIS now has US arms and armor.

Slate Columnist: Don't Share Bogus No-Planes Articles on Facebook

This is an odd piece all the way around.

It's good in a way, that people are passing around a no-planes video on Facebook, and good that Slate is advertising this too. It's a 2 minute "analysis" of the famous Hezarkhani "ghostplane" video that first mentions how the plane slices too easily through the building then focuses on the wing going behind a building when it should have gone it front according to the narrator. And of course, the whole point is that the no-planes "proof" shown in the video is stupid and easily debunkable, which is of course why Slate is publishing this article.

Naturally, Slate ignores the obvious other fakery shown in the video-- the cartoonish image and movement of the plane, the bogus entry into the building. They naturally laugh off the whole idea of no-planes, and are offended that people would "unquestioningly" share this on Facebook.

For Christ's sake, isn't it laudable that people are posting something interesting and of major significance, if true, on Facebook, rather than the usual trite and trivial crap?

Of course not, according to the shill author of the piece, Scott Huler.

At the same time, we need to have questions about who put together the original bogus no-planes video "proof", and wonder what their real agenda was. How did it get 2.5 million hits???

Also, what is this site "Tell Me Now" and when did it become so popular as to even get people to post no-planes stuff on Facebook 187,000 times?  That's a bit weird in its own right, though I guess once something gets on Facebook, it can take off easily. Plus, a lot of non-Americans may be more open to no-planes, and Facebook is all over the world. The TellMeNow site is an odd mix of things, never saw it before; I'm not sure what to make of it.

Parachuting from the WTC?

I was thinking about the WTC jumpers, and wondering if any of them thought of trying to fashion an impromptu parachute from curtains or whatever material they might have, to try to float down rather than plunging to their doom. I know they would have been stressed, and not thinking clearly, and it was risky and might not work. But still, anything would have been better than jumping to certain death. It's still hard to comprehend the whole jumping thing. I know some think they were fake (I don't) or forced out by psychological methods (maybe), rather than people wanting to avoid getting burned to death.

Which reminds me of this old thread, where I asked why firemen never tried to use an airbag or anything like that to catch the jumpers. The shills were all over me for that.  I don't think it's such a crazy question, even if it wasn't practical.

Did anyone ever try to map out what floors the jumpers came from and how many total there were? Did they come from many places or a few?

So many unresolved questions about 9/11, still.

Gun Control Versus the Real Agenda

The common conspiracy belief these days is that the Sandy Hook shootings were a hoax to enact gun control, and I do think at this point, the evidence points to a massive hoax at Sandy Hook.

But was it really about gun control?

To me, that explanation just sounds too pat, too easy, too simple.

Yes, of course, the Obam administration and the Dems in Congress did try to enact gun control legislation after sandy Hook, and of course, it went nowhere. There were some new gun control measures enacted in various states. But the Federal legislation was really pretty mild, and nothing close to grabbing guns. So it hardly makes sense that Sandy Hook was about gun control at the Federal level. No one is seriously talking about taking away all guns, and that is simply not going to happen in the US. That fear is quite simply runaway paranoia from largely right-wing/libertarian gun owners.

Further, I still have not heard a good rebuttal to the argument that gun rights as a defense against tyranny are pretty worthless, when you are talking about an incredibly advanced US military that can just drop a bomb on you if they want to get rid of you.

I have posited here before, that maybe mass shooting events like Sandy Hook are actually staged for the benefit of 1) gun manufacturers, and 2) the mass media, both of whom do great business after these sorts of things. There may even be a cottage industry for the crisis actors making money from donations made in the aftermath of the event. And sure, even places like the United Way can benefit.

Still, I'm not convinced that this explanation makes sense for the US government to get involved in the hoax and/or coverup. So probably there is something deeper.

What I'm wondering then, is whether the goal of these events is actually to INDUCE right-wing gun paranoia, leading to more shootings and rebellions, that will eventually trigger some sort of uprising by the right-wing that can be squashed by brutal force by the US government. 

In other words, it's not so much about gun control as about making an enemy of the state, that the Feds can go after and use to restrict our liberties even more. Perhaps this is also about a reason to enact martial law.

Now, why they want martial law, I don't really know. They seem to want it. Maybe there are psychopaths in the military who really want that degree of control. Martial law certainly doesn't make sense economically, but there could be a deeper conspiracy reason I am unaware of, an end times-type reason...

No Mention of WTC7 at 9/11 Museum

The lack of WTC7 info at the museum is not too surprising, but still a good review of the museum here.

What is perhaps more interesting is the 9/11 memorial site, with the pools of water/fountains, where the WTC1 and 2 towers once stood.

Up close, as in the last picture here, you can see these fountains are deeply creepy. You can see how dark and deep they are. Certainly this last view gives me a feeling of loss and imminent death.

What's interesting is the way the bases of these once huge towers, are carved out, going downwards, as if they are still falling, with a central deeper portion, with the hole going out of site.

The towers of course were destroyed by nuclear demolition, and we have posited on this blog the idea of the WTC China Syndrome from the leftover fissionable materials from the nukes, that kept generating immense heat and even melting the ground below the towers.

Don't these fountains give the impression of the China Syndrome-- the nuclear materials burning holes deep through the earth? It's very eery, to me.

Further, the fact that they put fountains here gives the impression that the ground was still too mucked up to build on. They had to cover the sites with concrete and water, perhaps to keep the lingering radiation down from residual nuke material.

(thanks to J for the link)

Gun Lovers, Armed Revolt and the Encroaching Police State

So there has been a few recent armed attacks against authorities, besides the ongoing background of random shooting sprees and the open carry gun freak show in Texas. Most recent was this incident in Las Vegas.  Who the fuck knows how much of this is real versus scripted news, how much is synthetic violence versus organic.

Importantly, all this is going on in a nation where the local police are increasingly more aggressive, who are increasingly more militarized and who are increasingly more apt to shoot first and ask questions later, and the real gun lovers who are waving their guns around are not fucking helping.

The other disturbing trend is using relatively minor threats, such as the Boston bomber on the loose or some gunman on the loose (a few times in LA recently), to declare towns or parts of cities under the control of martial law. Clearly, this power is being abused and is making people more desensitized to living in a police state. And it's all very fucked up.

Now, we're in a vicious circle where there are huge numbers of paranoid gun owners and police forces on a hair trigger, and every incident publicized on the internet makes the other side more uptight and likely to use violence. And then we have an apparent conspiracy to develop a police state or have martial law.

My advice is everyone needs to chill the fuck out, for what it's worth.

But basically, it looks like this is not going to end well.

Man Shoots Self in Leg, Dies from Blood Loss

Clearly, he wasn't BostonStrong.

Moon Rock Idiocy

Sweet Jesus, how pathetic is this reporting?

Researchers have found evidence of the world that crashed into the Earth billions of years ago to form the Moon. Analysis of lunar rock brought back by Apollo astronauts shows traces of the "planet" called Theia. The researchers claim that their discovery confirms the theory that the Moon was created by just such a cataclysmic collision. The study has been published in the journal Science.

The accepted theory since the 1980s is that the Moon arose as a result of a collision between the Earth and Theia 4.5bn years ago. Theia was named after a goddess in Greek mythology who was said to be the mother Selene the goddess of the Moon. It is thought to have disintegrated on impact with the resulting debris mingling with that from the Earth and coalescing into the Moon. It is the simplest explanation, and fits in well with computer simulations. The main drawback with the theory is that no one had found any evidence of Theia in lunar rock samples.

Earlier analyses had shown Moon rock to have originated entirely from the Earth whereas computer simulations had shown that the Moon ought to have been mostly derived from Theia.

Go figure!!! Why on earth would moon rock look like earth rock? Hmmm....

Now a more refined analysis of Moon rock has found evidence of material thought to have an alien origin. According to the lead researcher, Dr Daniel Herwartz, from the University of Goettingen, no one has found definitive evidence for the collision theory, until now. "It was getting to the stage where some people were suggesting that the collision had not taken place," he told BBC News.

What about the idea that the moon rocks were fake!?!?

"But we have now discovered small differences between the Earth and the Moon. This confirms the giant impact hypothesis." But the difference, some say, could be explained by material absorbed by the Earth after the Moon formed. And Prof Alex Halliday of Oxford University, is among many scientists who are surprised at the difference between the Theian material found in the Moon rock and the Earth is so small. "What you are looking for is a much bigger difference, because that is what the rest of the Solar System looks like based on meteorite measurements," he said.

 What a joke!

Dr Herwartz measured the difference in what is called the isotopic composition of the oxygen contained in rocks on Earth and Moon rock. This is the ratio of different forms of oxygen. Studies of meteorites from Mars and the outer solar system show that these ratios are markedly different -rather like a fingerprint. So Prof Halliday and others are puzzled by the fact that the fingerprints of Earth and Theia seem almost identical.

So puzzling!!!

One possibility is that Theia was formed very close [sic] the Earth and so had a similar composition. If that was the case it raises the possibility that the assumption that each planet in the current Solar System has a markedly different fingerprint that needs to be revisited, according to Prof Halliday.

"It raises the question of how well the meteorites from Mars and the asteroid belt in the outer Solar System is representative of the inner Solar System? We do not have samples from Mercury or Venus. "They may well be similar to the Earth. If that is the case then all the arguments over the similarities of the Earth and the Moon fall away," he told BBC News. Dr Dr Mahesh Anand from The Open University described the research as "exciting" but noted that the data was from just three lunar rock samples.

"We have to be cautious about representativeness of these rocks of the entire Moon, and so further analysis of a variety of lunar rocks is required for further confirmation," he said. Other theories have been proposed to explain why the composition of the Earth and Moon are so similar: one is that the Earth spun much faster before impact, another is that Theia was much larger than current models suggest. An alternative, controversial, theory proposed by Prof Rob de Meijer of Groningen University in the Netherlands was that the Earth's crust and mantle was blown into space by an accumulation of nuclear material 2,900km (1,800 miles) below the surface. It was this debris that clumped together to form the Moon.

 Yes, either that, or the rocks are not from the moon but are fake moon rocks from the earth. And there's already evidence for this, that was in mainstream news a few years back.

Evil Powers That Be -- Using Racism for War

John Judge Is Dead

He was supposedly a good guy, a respected conspiracy researcher.

So RIP.

However, I really only knew of Judge from some of his writings on 9/11, and particularly the Pentagon.  And his story of the flight attendant he knew, who proved the official flight 77-Pentagon story, pretty much completely tainted Judge forever, in my eyes.

McGowan really lays out the bogusness here:

John Judge is one name that immediately comes to mind here. Judge is, as most readers are probably aware, a veteran researcher who is revered in many 'conspiracy' circles. He is not only a current resident of the nation's capitol, but a native son as well. In fact, he literally grew up in the Pentagon, as he is fond of telling people. If any alternative journalist knows his way around the Pentagon, it is John Judge.

Perhaps more so than anyone else, John Judge was in a position to serve as a whistleblower. But John Judge was also ideally positioned to fill another role: upholder of the official story within the so-called 'truth movement,' and denouncer of anyone who dared to question the veracity of that official story. Ever since questions first began to arise about what really happened at the Pentagon, John Judge has filled the latter role.

Judge is smart enough to realize that he can't possibly come out on the winning end of any arguments over the merits of the available evidence, so he has, for some three years now, studiously avoided debating the actual evidence. Instead, he quickly created an apparently fictional entity, in the form of an unidentified, but supposedly dear friend of his who just happens to be a flight attendant for American Airlines, and just happens to regularly fly the route flown by Flight 77 that fateful day, but just happened to have taken that particular day off so that she survived and now has insider information, unavailable to anyone else, that Flight 77 really did crash into the Pentagon that day.

This mythical person has served Judge well for the past three years, enabling him to sidestep any and all substantive questions concerning the evidence anomalies with a pat answer that goes something like this: "Well, you know, there were hundreds of witnesses, and my friend says that it really did happen the way the government says, so it must be true."

Judge's phantom friend, it should be noted, is not your average flight attendant. In a post dated February 21, 2004, Judge told the latest fanciful, and unintentionally hilarious, version of his friend's story, which has grown more and more elaborate, and more and more ridiculous, over the past three years:

A dear friend and fellow researcher had been working as a flight attendant for American for many years, and that was her regular route, several times a week ... As it turned out, my friend had not been on Flight 77, having taken the day off work to care for her sick father ... When questions arose about Flight 77, I contacted her to raise the issues that concerned me and the speculation of others who denied the plane hit the Pentagon. She was adamant in saying it had, and told me she had been to the crash site and had seen parts of the plane. I asked her about the speculation that the plane would have made a larger hole due to the wingspan. She informed me that the fuel was stored in the wings and that they would have exploded and broken off, as the fuselage slammed through the building walls.

Already we see that not only is this person a flight attendant, but also a fellow researcher and, apparently, an expert on airplane crashes. As we return to the story, Judge's mystery friend has been "approached by another flight attendant to assist in support work for the rescue crews at the site." Let's see what happens next:

The Pentagon was seeking people with security clearances that they could trust to be near the site and all the airline attendants qualified for that level of clearance ... [My friend] and her mother signed up for an overnight shift on Friday, September 21st. She and her mother spent the entire night continuously providing drinks to rescuers ... At the end of her shift on Saturday morning, September 22nd, she was approached along with other attendants to visit the crash site. One declined, but she and two others took a van driven by the Salvation Army to the area.

I have to interrupt here briefly to ask a couple of silly questions that come to mind. First, how is it that someone who is supposedly a conspiracy researcher, and a dear friend of a very well known conspiracy researcher, obtains a security clearance that allows them to roam about the Pentagon? And second, if the mystery friend had just spent the entire night tending to the rescue teams working at the Pentagon crash site, why did she then have to be driven to the crash site? Where did that Salvation Army van take her -- across the Pentagon lawn?

Memo to John Judge: lying isn't as easy as it may appear to be. If you're going to completely fabricate a story, you have to be careful that that story is consistent. And with that out of the way, let's get back to the story, which is about to veer off into bizarro world:

The area was covered with rescue equipment, fire trucks, small carts, and ambulances. They were still hoping to find survivors. Small jeeps with wagons attached were being used to transport workers and others at the site. One flight attendant was driving one of these around the site. Once inside the fence, she was unable to clearly discern where the original wall had been. There was just a gaping hole. She got off the van and walked inside the crash site. The other attendants broke down crying once they were inside. But my friend went in further than the others and kept her emotions in check as she has been trained to do and usually does in emergency situations.

How do I even begin to dissect out all the absurdities present in this one brief passage? I suppose I could begin by pointing out that the mystery friend couldn't possibly have seen a "gaping hole" since any entry hole was buried in rubble shortly after the alleged crash, when the Pentagon was afflicted with that curious September 11 malady known as Collapsing Building Syndrome. I also have to point out how extremely unlikely it is that a group of flight attendants would be invited to freely tour a site that was: (1) one of the world's most secure military installations; (2) ground zero of an investigation into what was supposedly the deadliest act of 'terrorism' ever on American soil; and (3) a badly damaged, unsafe, partially-collapsed structure that obviously would have been off-limits to anyone who didn't need to be in there.

I was also going to comment on the scenario of the unnamed flight attendant cruising around the site in a jeep-and-wagon set-up, but, to be perfectly honest, every time the visual flashes through my mind I find myself too convulsed with laughter to think of anything to say.

At this point, you are probably wondering what the phantom stewardess/researcher/crash expert/rescue worker saw when she entered the building. Quite a bit, as it turns out. Certainly far more evidence of a plane crash than anyone else has ever claimed to have seen. And much of what she saw, believe it or not, was wreckage that could be positively identified as wreckage of an American Airlines Boeing 757, which she was, of course, an expert at identifying

She saw parts of the fuselage of an American Airlines plane, a Boeing 757 plane. She identified the charred wreckage in several ways. She recognized the polished aluminum outer shell ... and the red and blue trim that is used to decorate the fuselage. She saw parts of the inside of the plane ... The soft carpeting and padding of the inner walls had a cloud design and color she recognized ... The blue coloring of the drapes and carpet were also specific to the 757 or 767 larger planes ... Seating upholstery also matched the AA 757 planes ... She saw other parts of the plane and engine parts at a distance but they were familiar to her ... One area of fuselage had remaining window sections and the shape of the windows ... was also distinct to the 757's she had flown. She also saw parts with the A/A logo, including parts of the tail of the plane. Smaller A/A logos and "American" logos are also on the planes and she saw parts of those.

Who knew there was so much identifiable aircraft wreckage? Wreckage that was apparently never photographed and never shown to anyone other than John Judge's friend? Am I the only one here who is wondering whether Mr. Judge has maybe been watching too many reruns of old Saturday Night Live skits featuring Jon Lovitz. "Yeah, John, that's it ... that's the ticket."

The anonymous friend "also saw," we are to believe, "charred human bones but not any flesh or full body parts." So the bodies were apparently reduced to charred bones, but the upholstery, carpet and drapes were, of course, still looking factory fresh.

In an earlier version of the flight attendant story, posted on October 30, 2002, Judge claimed that his friend was also "shown autopsy photos of her fellow crew members, including the severed arm of her best friend at work, which she recognized from the bracelet she wore." I have to confess here that I never realized how much access flight attendants have. I now find myself wondering what kind of access commercial pilots must have. I'm guessing they could probably sit in on the President's morning briefings if they really wanted to.

Anyhow, getting back to the story, we aren't quite through yet being subjected to outlandish claims. The next one goes something like this:

The crew of Flight 77 who died in the crash included her personal friend Renee May. She had spoken to Renee's mother after the crash, and Renee had used a cell phone to call her mother during the hijacking.

It sounds like the phantom stewardess has this case all wrapped up. She has, single-handedly, gathered more evidence that AA Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon than the entire federal government and all of its media mouthpieces combined. I, for one, am impressed. She has seen and positively identified wreckage of Flight 77. She has seen and positively identified the remains of actual humans who were supposed to be on the flight. She has seen the gaping entry wound. She has spoken to someone who can personally vouch for the hijacking story.

And that's not all! Judge has other phantom witnesses as well, and they can verify other portions of the official fairy tale:

Other American ground crew workers saw some of the suspects board American Airlines Flight 77 and recognized them from published photos ... My attendant friend knows and has put me in touch with other American Airlines employees and pilots who were at the site and took photographs. We are busy locating these, as well as another attendant who was at the site with her that day.

Well, you keep working on that, John. Let us know just as soon as you can produce a single one of these alleged witnesses, or any of their alleged photographs. But, really, there's no rush. We understand that these things take time, and you've only had three-and-a-half years to locate these witnesses that you claim to have already been in touch with.

By the way, what were they all doing stomping around the Pentagon crash site? Was it open to all American Airlines employees? How about United Airlines employees? Were Boeing employees allowed to tour the site as well? How about employees of Dulles International Airport? How about employees of the company that catered the meals for Flight 77? Did the baggage handlers get to take a peek? I don't mean to sound snide here; I'm really just trying to determine what the criteria were for deciding who was allowed to tour this very sensitive site, because, truth be told, I would have liked to take a look for myself, but my invite must have gotten lost in the mail or something.

Moving on, it's time for Mr. Judge to abruptly segue into the conclusion of his formidable case:

My friend is therefore a credible and very knowledgeable eyewitness to the fact that American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. She has been vilified by those who refuse to believe the obvious ... My friend is herself a researcher for many years into government misdeeds and cover-ups. If she did not see the parts, she would say so. She has no reason to lie about it. Nor is she confused about what she saw. She is a professional and is used to looking at evidence.

Let it never be said that I participated in the vilification of a nonexistent person. That just wouldn't be right. For the record, the argument here is not that Judge's friend is a liar. No, the argument here is that John Judge is a liar. And not a particularly good one -- but certainly a very ambitious one. Lest there be any lingering doubt about that, Judge saves his best for last. In the final paragraph of his missive, he actually makes the following claim:

One employee saw the nose of the plane crash through her office wall.

No shit? I hope she didn't receive any serious injuries.

In that same paragraph, Judge claims that Flight 77 "flew dangerously close to the ground, skidding into the ground floor of the Pentagon." In yet another Pentagon rant, this one from October 23, 2002, Judge made a similar claim: "the plane bottomed out just short of contact with the building and bounced into it." That scenario, of course, was long ago discredited, owing to the fact that it is quite apparent that there was no damage to the Pentagon lawn consistent with an airplane crash. And yet, more than three years after the events of September 11, Judge is still hawking the same story.

The bottom line here is that Judge has quite obviously fabricated an elaborate tale - allegedly, but not actually, based on the testimony of unnamed witnesses - and he has used that story to shield himself from having to deal with the very real evidence anomalies uncovered by legitimate researchers. For three years, he has asked that we take him at his word, because he is, after all, the great John Judge. And that, my friends, is what legend building is all about.

After reviewing Judge's various Pentagon rants, I have a few final questions for the Tattoo theorists: why did the 'powers that be' feel the need to call on the services of an established 'conspiracy theorist' to further gild this lily? Why is John Judge so obviously lying? Or, if he is isn't lying, then why do all you Tattoo theorists shy away from referencing his 'work'? After all, he has obviously presented more evidence in support of your Tattoo theories than anyone else. Isn't the fact that you choose to ignore his contributions a tacit admission that you know full well that he is lying his ass off?

So, again I must ask: if the evidence of the crash of Flight 77 is so persuasive, then why is John Judge gilding the lily?

Military Intelligence in the Hollywood Hills; Dave McGowan and the 60s Laurel Canyon Story

OK, so as interesting as this story is (and this recent Fetzer interview is worth a listen though there are better ones that go deeper into the story), I don't know that one aspect of this has really been touched on:

Why did these musicians who were sons and daughters of the military and intelligence elite end up in the Hollywood Hills?

I haven't heard a good explanation for this, though there may be one out there... and may even be a similar one to this I am going to propose here.

Now note, that I have not read McGowan's book on the Laurel Canyon yet, though I plan to at some point. Maybe he puts it together more in the book.

What I have heard from McGowan in an older interview is that the whole 60's hippie/counter-culture/music scene may have been an intel op, to discredit/taint the anti-war movement.

There certainly was some weird presence of the military and intel community in the Hollywood Hills of LA, for instance the secret Lookout Mountain film studio and the mysterious Nazi base in Rustic canyon.

And from a purely military strategy point of view, it would make sense to have a military presence in the Hollywood Hills, and they are centrally located and command the LA region, and are also a very knotty secluded set of hills that would be easy to hide in and conduct secret activities. And LA was vulnerable to a Japanese attack during WWII.

So my hypothesis is this:

1) before/during WWII, the military sets up active and secret bases in the Hills
2) after the war, these bases stay on secretly, and military intel types staff them
3) during the Cold War and with the rise of UFOs in the 40s and 50s, then the start of the Vietnma war and the JFK assassination, things got very weird. Intel types started thinking up ways to control the population, to distract them from the war, from communism, from what the government was doing. They started experimenting with drugs and music as methods of psychological control.
4) kids from senior military and intel officers came from families who had more money, could travel to LA as a fun experience or for education (the Doors members all were UCLA students).
5) Here's the key-- these kids who became Hippie musicians were given names by their fathers of intel and military types who lived in the Hills, maybe even this was done innocently by the fathers, who thought they were setting up their kids with a support network.
6) Once the military/intel types started meeting these kids in LA, they recognized their potential, to be developed into young new Hippie rock stars, and to use them for their music/drug psy-op

The drug angle is particularly interesting -- McGowan says that many of these people were involved in serious drug trafficking. This fits perfectly with the influence of the intel community-- and also why for the most part, this community avoided any trouble from the law.

So, it should be interesting when I read McGowan's Laurel Canyon book, how much he goes into these ideas. I hope the book just isn't a cavalcade of names and hippie musician escapades, and that it goes deeper into the secret intel establishment.

Bizarrely Sloppy Article on Arrest of Sandy Hook Truther

(Reuters) – A Virginia man who claims the massacre of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook School in Connecticut never took place has been arrested after stolen memorial signs for two 7-year-old victims were found in his home, police said. A sign honoring victim Chase Kowalski had been removed from a playground in Mantoloking, New Jersey, and another, in memory of Grace McDonnell, was taken from a playground in Mystic, Connecticut.

Both signs were found on Friday at the Herndon, Virginia, residence of Andrew David Truelove, 28, and he was arrested on a charge of receiving stolen property, Herndon Police Chief Maggie DeBoard told reporters.

She said police tracked down Truelove after he emailed a reporter who had written about the thefts and the journalist passed along information to investigators. Grand theft charges for removing the memorial signs are pending in Connecticut and New Jersey, DeBoard said.

Truelove told police he is one of the so-called “truthers” who do not believe the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook School actually happened. In the incident, one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history, gunman Adam Lanza, 20, a former student at the elementary campus, killed 20 children and six adults before taking his own life.

Truelove did not give police a specific reason for taking the two signs, DeBoard said.
“We know Sandy Hook occurred. Obviously there are a lot of victims in that case. So I can’t explain the why, but we do know that this subject has a troubled past. He has an extensive criminal history. He has a criminal history tied to kids,” DeBoard said at a news conference.

DeBoard is being held in a Fairfax County jail, police said. It was not immediately clear if he had an attorney. DeBoard’s father, Alan Truelove, told a local television station his son is innocent, and indicated that someone else stole the signs. “They’re chasing the wrong fella,” the elder Truelove told a reporter with NBC4 Washington.

Bill Lavin, organizer of an effort to build 26 playgrounds to commemorate all the victims of Sandy Hook, said earlier this month that a man had recently phoned Lynn McDonnell, Grace’s mother, to tell her he took the sign honoring her daughter because “it was all a hoax.” DeBoard confirmed Andrew Truelove contacted the family of at least one of the Sandy Hook victims.

It's this story real at all? I love how they mix up the name of the "police chief" and the "suspect".

And the suspect's father says  “They’re chasing the wrong fella”... heh.