Pat Curley of the Screw Loose Change blog posted a response to an article by 9/11 activist Jon Gold yesterday. Pat quotes the following from Gold which he says is intended to shame him:
Would you admit you were wrong? Would you apologize to all of the families you have disrespected? Would you apologize to all of the first responders you have disrespected? Would you apologize to all of the sincere members of the 9/11 Truth Movement you have slandered, harassed, and/or threatened? Either by directly taking part in these acts, or by promoting them? Would you apologize to the 9/11 Truth Movement for trying to paint us all as crazies by focusing on the fringiest of the fringe?Gold sums up Pat's response in a comment:
So Pat basically did what I said he does, and he also showed how dishonest he is. He focused "on the fringiest of the fringe," and tried "to paint us all as crazies." I never promoted half of what he said, and in every instance of what he said, I made a comment of disapproval long before he ever wrote this piece. He showed how dishonest he is by claiming that Patty Casazza and Bob McIlvaine are considered "fringe." First of all, they both lost someone that day. They're family members, not fringe. Secondly, both of them attended every 9/11 Commission Hearing, and Patty was partly responsible for its creation, as well as working with the staffers, and providing 100's of well researched questions for them to answer. She is anything but "fringe," and her story is about a whistleblower. One of MANY the 9/11 Commission ignored or censored.Although Pat asserts that truthers are the ones who have disrespected family members and first responders he ridicules many of them with his browbeating of anyone who fail to believe incompetence can adequately explain away red flag 9/11 issues such as foreknowledge of the attacks. Accordingly, those that disagree with Pat, people who have considered some level of conspiracy, reside in "conspiracy cuckoo land" and believe in something "every bit as crazy as TV fakery and voice-morphing." For Pat there is no middle ground, you either fully accept that 9/11 occurred due to mistakes and incompetence, a postulate that is not supported by evidence, or you are a nutter.
Being that Bill Doyle estimated in 2006 that half of the 7,000 members of his email communication network for 9/11 families thought the government was complicit in the attacks, anytime Pat makes such statements (and he makes them a lot) he is disrespecting a large amount of 9/11 family members.
He could just say he disagrees and present his case as to why without throwing around insults.
As I have recently pointed out, there is much corroborating evidence for the whistleblower's statment to Casazza that "the government knew the exact day, the type of attack, and the targets," whereas Pat is just brushing it aside based on his world view which dictates it had to be "some con man" she was speaking to.
Let's look further into this outrageous claim: Whom could she have meant by "the government?"
David Schippers, former Chief Investigative Counsel for the US House Judiciary Committee and head prosecutor responsible for conducting the impeachment against former president Bill Clinton, stated that at the behest of several FBI agents he had attempted multiple times to warn US Attorney John Ashcroft, along with other federal officials, of the impending attacks weeks before they occurred, only to be stalled and rebuffed in each attempt.
As summarized in the books The War on Freedom and The War on Truth by Nafeez Ahmed, who personally corresponded with Schippers, "According to Schippers, these agents knew, months before the 11th September attacks, the names of the hijackers, the targets of their attacks, the proposed dates, and the sources of their funding, along with other information."
The FBI command, however, cut short their investigations threatening the agents with prosecution under the National Security Act if they publicized this information.
Ahmed has stated, "In The War on Freedom, I merely laid out facts and lines of inquiry for an official investigation. The book was the first read by the Jersey Girls, informing their work with the 9/11 Family Steering Committee, and is part of the 9/11 Commission Collection at the US National Archives (a collection of 99 books, copies of which were provided to each Commissioner)."
Despite this fact, the account of David Shippers is nowhere to be found in The 9/11 Commission Report.
Jesse Ventura's book American Conspiracies recounts another similar warning passed along to John Ashcroft, Ventura writes:
Dr. Parke Godfrey, an associate professor of computer science at Toronto's York University, said under oath in a New York courtroom that a longtime associate of his, Susan Lindauer, warned him several times and as late as August 2001 "that we expected a major attack on the southern part of Manhattan, and that the attack would encompass the World Trade Center," an attack "that would involve airplanes and possibly a nuclear weapon." Lindauer, who says she was a CIA asset, claimed to have made an attemp to inform John Ashcroft at the Justice Department, who referred her to the Office of Counter-Terrorism.FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, in an open letter to the 9/11 Commission, reported that there was "specific information regarding a terrorist attack being planned by Osama bin Laden," that mentioned major cities, airplanes, approximate timeframe, and operatives already in place in the US. This was reported by FBI agents to Special Agent in Charge of Counterterrorism Thomas Frields at the FBI Washington Field Office, but was subsequently ignored.
Edmonds has recently reaffirmed these points as factual and provided the testimony of the agent who first raised them. As Debunking the Debunkers blog contributor Scootle Royale wrote, "Pat Curley is confident that if we were to ever see the unredacted testimony, it will bear no resemblance to what Sibel posted. Well, how about supporting the truth movement in a quest for a new investigation so we can maybe see it unredacted then? No? Didn't think so."
Back to the topic of disrespect, it is clear that Pat is feigning ignorance of the disrespect on his side of the debate. I don't think it gets anymore disrespectful than Troy Sexton telling Bob McIlvaine to put a bullet in his head. Did Troy making the first comment on your response to Gold where he said "Fuck Bob McIlvaine" not jog your memory on that one, Pat?
I know you decried this kind of tripe from Troy, but you know damn well this is the type of thing Gold was talking about and yet you divert the attention on members of the truth movement.
When Debunking the Debunkers blog contributor Stewart Bradley compiled various videos made by "debunkers" in an attempt to showcase their lack of eloquence, venomous nature, dependence on a priori objections and employment of other fallacious arguments, you hilariously didn't get it, stating that, "The best part is that the guy who put it together is a Troofer!" Of course "troofer," or "twoofer" is a derogatory term akin to calling someone a conspiracy nut, so right off the bat you had proven Stewart's point! But most importantly this was over a month after you had proclaimed that you didn't support Troy's calls for truthers to commit suicide, but yet the calls in the video for people to "put a bullet to their head" and "just kill yourself please" were not denounced. Instead, these people were apparently considered brethren of the highest order.
After being shown that his video had been posted on the Screw Loose Change blog Bradley noted that, "They don't even get that the video is mocking them! One guy even posted that I don't understand irony. Don't that beat all!"
So don't get all uppity about Jason Bermas supposedly taking back an apology for saying that the firefighters were paid off because, even if you are right, you are no better. That being said, it looks to me that he was clarifying in both instances that he didn't think they were paid off as in being involved, but rather some could not take legal action after accepting the victims' compensation fund. I don't think this is accurate because it doesn't seem to me that it would apply to them unless they lost a family member, but the bottom line is I think his apology and latter statement are consistent in that he was making clear that he did not think the firefighters were involved in the plot. And don't you think it would be pertinent to mention that Dylan Avery has also apologized for the statement you quoted him on and that you said you would "move on" from talking about it? Troy most obviously has not apologized and I see no clarion call that he does.
And by the way, you suggesting that the health problems of the first responders might just be another "Gulf War Syndrome" is probably perceived as pretty damn disrespectful to them and to the vets suffering from that illness, which has not been debunked.
None of this is to say that members of the 9/11 truth movement, or this blog, always conduct themselves in the most saintly of ways, but for anything we are guilty of you are guilty of at least tenfold.
Where does that leave us? With you having to debunk the debunkers! That means us buddy. We are not a misnamed blog. We are the ones taking back the title of skeptic. Go ahead, prove me wrong!
