Happy Days

Militia-style paranoia and pessimism are rampant right now, at least in my neck of the woods.

Former MP Garth Turner has advised every Canadian to purchase firearms, flee to the countryside, and stock up on food.

According to information I've received, Weibo Ludwig is again reaching out to Christians, evidently hoping to add to the number of his followers. Ludwig long ago developed not just a seige mentality, but a remnant mentality: Once the world has been destroyed, his Trickle Creek compound will be the only thing remaining.

Kevin Barrett, as mentioned in my last post, has announced his intention to leave the U.S. permanently, because it is "owned by Zionists".

Alex Jones, Webster Tarpley, et. al. say Obama will be far worse than Bush. Many people I know share this opinion.
According to Jones, Obama has been selected and groomed to usher in the New World Order, which will commence with an unspecified event on January 21st or 22nd (see the vague-ass warnings from Biden and Colin Powell). Murders of political dissidents will begin immediately.

Many people I know also believe the economy was deliberately imploded to bring the U.S. and Canada to its knees. Wages will go down, more draconian laws will be passed, and the Constitution will be further defiled.

The gloom and doom has gotten to me. Yesterday I felt its weight all day. It's not that I believe in any of the dire forecasts; I'm just finding it very draining to be surrounded by such high volumes of pessimism and alarmism. My glumness only deepened when I watched part of Oprah (for the story on the Rosenblat Holocaust memoir hoax) and learned that some people will be celebrating Obama's inauguration. I realized that a lot of people are actually living their lives right now, in spite of the economy and in spite of Gaza and in spite of Iraq. They actually have hope for the future. It was a refreshing change.

When I brought this stuff up to RD, he assumed I was "dissing" his friends and called me a shallow, selfish bitch. Obama is a cunt. Fuck America. They've murdered a million Iraqis. I shouldn't be watching Lost like all the imperialists, I should be looking at photos of dead Palestinian children.

Somehow, this did not cheer me up.

But it's no one else's job to make me feel better. That's my job. I might just pop some popcorn and celebrate the inauguration all by myself.

An Offensive Opinion Piece on an Offensive Opinion Piece

Once again, Kevin Barrett can go fuck himself.

His latest work of art is a short essay entitled "Dead Babies and the Death of the American Dream" (originally published at The New American Dream, reposted at The Liberty Voice). In it, the failed Congressional candidate (who announced to RD that he would "probably win" hours before it was announced that he netted a whopping 3% of the vote) and alleged child-beater briefly waxes ineloquent about Israeli atrocities, then jumps straight into his real complaint: The "Zionist-controlled" media is censoring gory images from Gaza, and the full extent of the bloodbath is only available on Middle Eastern news programs. As these are freely available via satellite, I don't know what the problem is. I also don't know why it would be editorially sound to publish photos of dying children in U.S. newspapers. Sure, if might wake a few people up to the true horrors of war, but it would also decimate your circulation. No one wants to see dead children over their ham and eggs.

But even that's not Barrett's real issue. He goes on to complain more about the Zionist-controlled media, informing us (emphasis in original) that "THE ZIONISTS INTENTIONALLY SLAUGHTER PALESTINIAN CHILDREN AS A MATTER OF OFFICIAL POLICY." As evidence, he cites a comment made by Chris Hedges in his October 2001 Harper’s magazine article. Hedges had observed Israeli soldiers in the Occupied Territories luring children within range of their guns, then "gut-shooting them for sport" (as Barrett puts it). This has surely happened, but I see no reason to conclude that this is official policy.

Barrett also notes that Israeli actions in Gaza are limited to airstrikes because "Zionists are cowards." He goes on to "quote" Europeans who have told him that, "Zionist Jews, and to a lesser extent their Zionist Christian accomplices, control the U.S. media, the Anglo-American financial sector, and almost all American politicians.” His conclusion: "America...is now Zionist-occupied territory." Spoken like a true racial supremacist.

Now, I don't approve of the current Israeli actions in Gaza one bit. Israel has a right to its homeland, but Palestinians have a right to theirs, too. However, I do not blame any of this decades-long turf war on "Zionist cowardice". And I do not believe the media is "Zionist-controlled". Rupert Murdoch is not a Jew and is not particularly Zionist. Ted Turner is definitely neither. The vast majority of America's high-circulation magazines and newspapers are not owned by Jews or Zionists. Yet the "Jewish liberal media" myth just won't go the fuck away, because assclowns like Barrett keep dredging it up.

My problem with Barrett's editorial is that he's being intellectually dishonest, as usual. He isn't upset that the American media is biased. He's upset that the American media doesn't share his bias. If anti-Semitic/anti-Zionist fucktards controlled the media, he would probably be A-OK with that and we'd never hear a peep out of him. And speaking of that... at the end of the essay, Barrett announces his intention to permanently decamp from the U.S.

Yay. Maybe now RD and I can go to Spring Green and see Taliesin instead of having to visit this pompous fuck.

"Its the Law" [sic] Part II

This Tim NcNiven thing is getting even stupider. Thankfully, everyone has realized now that he's just a little *off* and they're ignoring him, which of course just makes him angrier. He's convinced that whatever information he holds about airline emergency preparedness and 9/11 is invaluable, and that the Truth movement is deliberately suppressing it.

Anyway, below is an excerpt from an email he sent to RD today (in reply to RD's query about his affiliations). It kinda-sorta explains why he seems to think he's a federal agent:

"I Testified in US Federal Court that I am in fact a US Federal Agent. This was a Federal Felony even before the Patriot Act that the members of the 9-11 truth movement say turned America into a Political Police State like Nazi Germany. The fact that I wasnot Arrest for this Federal Felony is proof that my US Federal Court Testimony was true because if it wasnot I would have been Arrested for Impersonating a US Federal Agent..."

In other words:
1. He testified in court.
2. During his testimony, he made a statement that could be false, and if false would be illegal because it was presumably given under oath.
3. No one arrested him.
4. Therefore, what he said must be true.

If there is other, actual, evidence that McNiven was/is a "US Federal Agent", he seems unwilling to provide it. His whole schtick centers around some 1976 military study and this stupid lawsuit, which I believe was thrown out by the judge at some point.

"Its the Law" [sic].

Well, RD has lessened his Truth activities considerably, but of course he's still going to various rallies and town hall meetings and whatnot to spread the word. And he's still getting crazy-ass emails from associates and friends. Today RD woke me by announcing that one Truther aquaintance, Wayne in British Columbia, had just been informed that he will be arrested the next time he enters the U.S. How did he know this? A "federal agent", possibly a U.S. Marshal, had sent an email to John Boncourt (Splitting the Sky, formerly known as John Hill) to inform him, and STS had forwarded the email to RD and others. I was totally alarmed, of course.

But then the story got weirder and weirder as I listened to RD, and it completely unravelled when I read the email for myself. It turns out that whoever wrote this isn't *exactly* working in any official capacity. Following are some excerpts from the email, misspellings and funky capitaliziation intact. Supposedly this guy, who calls himself Tim McNiven, had set up a meeting with Wayne. But then he goes on to say the meeting would be illegal. The rest of the email in no way clarifies any of this nonsense; I don't know what the 1976 "Military Study" could be or why McNiven thinks he can have unofficial military and/or federal business with anyone, and frankly I'm not very interested. This whole situation is as silly and hoaxy as a freakin' Jackalope.

"I am a United States Federal Agent and you donot have the Legal Authority to conduct business in concerns to my US Military Mission; setting up this meeting with Wayne constitutes a Federal Felony and you must remember in the future that you have no say in anything that has to do with my US Federal Business, its the Law. At this time I have no US Federal Business with Wayne or the American 9-11 truthers; I am performing the Duties of my US Military Mission that I received the Non-Rescindable Orders for during the 1976 US Military Study which has top priority. After I have finished it, I can then begin Arresting those who have Sabotaged my Mission; it is a US Federal Felony to Sabotage a US Military Mission during a time of War and the Censorship of my information by Kevin Barrett, David Ray Griffin, Robin Hordon, Jim Fetzer, Kyle Hence, Les Jamison, Luke Rudkowski, Janice Matthews and the rest of the American 9-11 truthers constitutes Sabotage of a US Military Mission during a time of War; just because it is "my" US Military Mission doesnot mean it isnot governed under US Federal Law. The next US Federal Business I will be having with Wayne is issuing an Arrest Warrant for him as a Coconspirator to the Acts of Treason that Kevin Barrett and the other American 9-11 truthers have committed and to seek his extradition to America to stand Trial."

Then it actually gets weirder and even less coherent...

"Last year I had considered making a video of my US Military Study information to post online for "free" and contacted Robin Hordon since he was an old Air Traffic Controller to discuss the information the US Government gave to Civilians about the Air Security System and what the Government told us in the Military. During the Study we were told how the US Government could get around the Air Security System. Instead of answering my questions he sent me pages of his "personal" life philosophy. After two weeks of me trying to get a straight answer from him instead of more and more pages of his continued "personal" life philosophy he told me that he hadnot read any of the information I had sent him. He deliberately wasted my time and Sabotaged my US Military Mission which is the Federal Felony of Treason. I am a US Federal Agent whether Robin Hordon likes it or not and he is a Traitor according to US Federal Law for what he did. (What does being told about the love lives of the 9-11 truthers have to do with revealing the "truth" about the 9-11-01 Attacks?"

Now, Robin Hordon is a complete ass. He's just about the most paranoid fucktard I've ever met, and that's saying a lot. Earlier this year, when we visited him, he was all peace-and-granola friendly. Then, a few months later, RD gave an interview to the dreaded Mainstream Media which (surprise surprise) was transformed into a fluff/hit piece about the Truth movement in general, characterizing it as "cheap entertainment". Hordon was suddenly furious with RD, sending him so many hateful and bizarre emails that I pled with RD to block him. He accused RD of being "COINTELPRO". The real FBI COINTELPRO ended before I was even born, but Truthers and sundry other conspiranoids believe it's still going on. Hordon thinks everyone is COINTELPRO. He admitted to me that he won't work with any Truthers because every Truther in the Pacific Northwest, apparently, is COINTELPRO.
But is Hordon a Traitor for writing frivolous emails and wasting someone's time with them? Hell, I wish! Then I could declare myself a Federal Agent, announce that I'm on unofficial Military Business, and sue everyone who wastes my time with dumbass forwards about bears who adopt kittens.

Anyway, McNiven's main beef seems to be that Truthers are ignoring his own invaluable information: "In 2003 I provided US Federal Court Testimony about US Government 9-11-01 prior knowledge information and had that information proven to be true by the Official US Government Legal Decisions of US Federal Judge Rebreno and US Attorney General John Ashcroft; why have you and the 9-11 truth movement Censored this proven to be true in US Federal Court information?" Apparently, he testified for a RICO lawsuit brought by Ellen Mariani in 2003.

Mariani is a 9/11 widow and Truther who hired Philip J. Berg to represent her in her lawsuit against Bush, Cheney, et. al. Berg is the dude who announced, shortly before the U.S. election, that he would be releasing an audiotape of Obama's paternal grandmother revealing that her grandson was born in Kenya and is, indeed, not a U.S. citizen. So where's the tape? Well, there were, ah, technical difficulties.

McNiven IDs himself only as a "U.S. Federal Agent" in the letter, but on his website Codename Grillfire (which I haven't read in its entirety yet), he says he's a DoD Intelligence operative. Whatever.

Banned Fer Life

RD was offended and bummed out that 911Blogger wouldn't publicize the conference; was he being blacklisted for some reason? I didn't think so. I knew that Barrett bad been removed from the 911Blogger blogroll back in May of this year, so I suspected this involved only Barrett.

And I was right. The administrator, "Reprehensor" (who, it turns out, met RD at the Vancouver conference a couple years ago), phoned RD today to explain that three people have been permanently blacklisted from 911Blogger:

1. Bill Deagle. For being an all-around whackjob. Talks about bioplasmatic astral entities, micronukes bringing down the World Trade Center towers, and modified attack baboons. Claims he's one of the two witnesses described in the book of Revelation, and that Pindar the Reptilian Overlord asked him to be his understudy on three occasions.
2. Alfred Webre. For believing in ultra-weird sh** like "time travel whistleblowers" and the "black nobility" (Danish and Belgian Satanists who secretly control almost everything). I asked him to clarify his definition of the Black Nobility in Vancouver, and he just mumbled something like, "Well, um, they're Danish. And they're Satanists." Later he called me an "accessory after the fact to war crimes" because I questioned his contention that chemtrails are designed to make people more suggestible. (He told us at the conference that Vancouver had been sprayed heavily in the days leading up to the conference. Never mind that wind patterns and ever-changing atmospheric conditions wouldn't make such controlled spraying easy or at all practical.)
3. Kevin Barrett. For dissing the site on at least one occasion, co-hosting a radio show with Professor Jim "Holographic Airplanes" Fetzer, and having guests like John Lear and Laura Knight-Jadczyk (an alleged alien contactee/cult leader/scam artist) on his shows.

RD was surprised by the inclusion of Webre, because he was actually quite impressed by Webre's plan to set up a Citizen's 9/11 Tribunal. Nothing has come of that concept so far, however, and when I told RD more about Webre's beliefs in the Black Nobility, "walk-ins" (people who are possessed by aliens), time-travel whistleblowers, children who can kill with the power of their minds, etc., he finally decided it would be best to remove the dude from his Facebook list.

Raining on the Parade

I'd forgotten how difficult it can be to take an ethical stance when everyone around you either doesn't want to address the issues, or doesn't give a shit about them. It makes me wonder why I even bother. It won't change anything, and I'll just be branded a meddlesome bitch who's trying to undermine everyone's hard work.

Barrett sent an email to RD yesterday in which he insisted that nearly everything in his Wikipedia entry (aside from his birthdate) is incorrect, and that he didn't write the infamous Holocaust letter. But then he went on to say that when he referred to the Holocaust as a "myth", he meant "myth" in the scholarly, academic sense, just as 9/11 is a myth. But wait. Didn't he say he didn't write the letter?! So where and when did he refer to Holocaust education as a "myth"?! And he's a Truther, so clearly he believes that the conventional knowledge of 9/11 is a real myth, right? I'm more confused than ever.

I'm also more disturbed about Holocaust denialism and anti-semitism within the Truth movement. My digging yesterday unearthed more examples:

- Eric D. Williams was the original organizer of the 2007 9/11 Accountability conference in Chandler, AZ, until controversy over his book The Puzzle of Auschwitz surfaced. But he still attended the conference, and panelists fiercely defended him against charges of denialism, demanding that a journalist who asked questions about his involvement in the conference be removed. This, despite the fact that Sander Hicks spotted a swastika on his laptop screensaver. While he doesn't want to be called a denier, Williams believes Treblinka and two other camps never existed and that Auschwitz was a comfy place complete with a swimming pool for prisoners (it was actually for guards). On the Meria radio show, he asked the usual revisionist questions: Why was the plaque at Auschwitz changed from 1.1 million to 6 million? How could the ovens have cremated so many bodies?
Is his book a scholarly examination of the Holocaust, though? You decide. It references Institute for Historical Review material and David Icke.

- Truth activist Don Harkins of Idaho defended David Duke for attending a denial conference in Tehran in 2006.

- Eric Hufschmid wrote one of the first books on 9/11 Truth, Painful Questions. Hufschmid refuses to self-identify as a Holocaust denier, but his other work speaks for itself. Most disturbingly, Truthers still reference and defend Painful Questions and set aside the issue of Hufschmid's other opinions as "irrelevant". One such Truther is Kevin Barrett. As late as last year, he asked Amy Goodman to sign his copy of the book (she politely declined, but told him she supports a new investigation into 9/11). This was right before he said she should be convicted of war crimes and publicly hung (he later apologized for the hyperbole, but not the statements themselves).

- Captain Eric May writes on "the Jewish problem" and the "Zionist-controlled media". He also regularly issues false flag operation warnings that turn out to be bunk. May insists he's not anti-semitic (are you noticing a pattern here?), because he's referring to a minority of Jews and also criticizes Christian Zionists.

All of these people are still embraced by the majority of Truthers. I'm getting the feeling that when Barrett's attendance at this conference is put to a vote this weekend, I'll forever after be known not as the person who took a stand against what I know to be wrong (affiliation with anti-semitism and Holocaust denial, questioning the reality of the Holocaust), but as the bitch who ruined this wonderful conference and tried to silence the voice of Truth. Even RD argued that he doesn't know anything about Hufschmid, so why should it matter what else he believes? Why shouldn't his work be held in esteem alongside David Ray Griffin's? He argued that nearly every Truther holds some aberrant belief that others could find objectionable (Mormonism, UFOs, God-like powers in the case of David Shayler, etc.), so why should someone be ignored on the basis of their beliefs or questions about the Holocaust?

I don't know. They just should. When it comes to Holocaust denial, racism, hate, etc., all bets are off for me. I have a line in the sand. Barrett, to my mind, has crossed it. I want nothing to do with him. Period.

I'm Out

The Truth conference here is just 3 weeks away, and as of today I have completely removed myself from every aspect of it. I was going to help out where needed on the day of the conference, despite my distaste for some of the comments made by Kevin Barrett about Amy Goodman and others (he hopes to see them tried for war crimes and publicly hung). But looking deeper into his thoughts on the Holocaust, I am sickened. I was already aware of the email in which he referred to Holocaust education as a "destructive myth" and said he could "not dismiss the claims of Green, Irving, even Zundel". That was bad enough. Now I have learned that, when he was still head of the Muslim Jewish Christian Alliance, he regularly posted the boy-who-cried-wolf "false flag operation" warnings of Captain Eric May... a guy who writes about "the Jewish problem" and the "Zionist-controlled media".
He also (in a Feb. 2007 newsletter) referenced Bin Laden's denial of 9/11 involvement via public-action.com and Carol A. Valentine. This website is full of Holocaust revisionist links (Barnes Review, IHR, Zundelsite, etc.) and features a page on "The American Coup d'Etat and the War for Jewish Supremacy". The most disturbing aspect of this is that Barrett could have gotten the same info from a number of non-revisionist sites, including Prison Planet and 911Review.com.

An anti-Truther in the area has already contacted the conference venue to warn them that a "Holocaust Denier" will be in attendance, and he reports (truthfully?) that the venue owners will halt the conference if any Holocaust-related statements are uttered. This has caused some stress to R. and the other promoters, who hired Barrett strictly for his 9/11 expertise. R. points out to me, correctly, that Barrett is scheduled to speak about covert operations in relation to 9/11, not WWII or anything related to it. That's true. It is also true that Barrett founded and headed the MUJCA as an interfaith organization, that he denies being anti-Semitic and has even expressed disdain for anti-Semitism.
But I am deeply, deeply disturbed by the number of connections between Barrett and the revisionist/denialist movement. I want no part of this conference and will not be attending or supporting it in any way from this day forward. Whatever R. and the other organizers decide to do about this is their own business; R. is planning to call an emergency meeting and put Barrett's participation in the conference to a vote.

My decision is made.