Sounds like a Joe Cannon tactic to me. Oh that's right, he just calls anyone who realizes the truth about 9/11 "trannies" and shuts down the comments feature on his blog, presumably so he will stop getting proved wrong and shown up for the C.I.A. stooge that he is. What a twat.

{Ed Note: This is your second warning, "Think". Unless you have information to back up your claim that Cannon is a "C.I.A. stooge", I consider your comment to be knowing disinformation, which is not allowed here. Do it again, and you're gone. Thank you. --- BF}

There is nothing strange about refusing to dialog with insane people. The conspiracy theorists have gone completely over the edge. Time is a valuable commodity, and it is only prudent to conserve it in some fashion. Conspiracy theorists will always move the discussion to the next implausible theory once their current theory is rebutted. If fact A completely refutes theory B, then they will advance theory C, etc.

Gosh Alan not everybody is like you who will suffer fools gladly, methinks I smell someone with an agenda, eh? I fail to see the problem with Chris having some asshole thrown out. Then again I'm just a radical and not a fifth columnist with an agenda for fascist propaganda!

For the record, I do not comment as to the efficacy of the man's claims regarding 9/11. Nor did I write or imply that I believe the government was or wasn't involved in 9/11. I merely stated what one person wrote about how the incident started.

Further, I did not know that it was a 9/11 question that set Hitchens off when I decided to post the video which I believed interesting regardless. As such, I would have posted it had I not been able to ascertain the cause or discovered the uproar was about the Tooth Fairy. Again, one cannot tell from the c-span broadcast what set Hitchens off. And, it was only after 10 minutes of searching when I was on the verge of giving up did I even find the Luke Ford post describing the incident.

Considering those facts, the comments above are very interesting.

Hitchens proves yet again that his narcissism is exceeded only by his contrarian, crackpot ideas. He proves to be so repellent that I can't help disagreeing with him even when, on some rare occasion, seems to make half-way sense. (Can't recall the last instance, however.)

I've despised Hitchens since the 1980s --- well before he joined the neocons. Circa 1989, I swore that I would never pay for one more issue of The Nation as long as that rag printed Hitchens or Cockburn.

But Hitchens, for once, is right: The trannies, as I have come to call them, ARE fascists. The word is not too strong, especially when one considers the backgrounds of Chris Bollyn, Jim Marrs and Eric Hufschmid.

In all my years of watching the American fringe, the trannies are the most disgusting people I have ever encountered. They are worse than fundamentalist Christians. Worse than the flying saucer spotters. Worse than the militia maniacs of the 1990s. Worse than the Clinton-haters. Worse than Scientologists. Worse than LaRouchies.

Hell, they are actually worse than...(dare I say it? Am I going too far?)...they are worse than the tweakers and rock musicians I have met.

There are so many genuine unanswered questions surrounding these events --- Bush's interactions with the Bin laden family, the escape of Al Qaeda personnel from Afghanistan, the coddling of Pakistan's ISI (which largely created Al Qaeda), and much more. But the trannies commandeer all 9/11 discussion with their pseudoscience. As a result, many writers and editors hesitate to address these topics, for fear of giving an opening to the pseudoscience zealots. The harm the trannies have done is incalculable.

I think the fist two comments in this thread provide an instructive comparison. Put yourself in a the position of a visitor from 1999 --- someone who can study these two examples from a truly objective standpoint. Look at the way those two missives are worded. Look at the quality of writing. Which author shows greater evidence of wordsmithing skill, of cognitive ability?

Last year, I spent a number of nights sparring with the trannies. The evidence is there to be seen on my blog, and is available via the intra-site search function. I never had to concede an inch --- the trannies were proven wrong on every occasion.

However, Mike is right: "There is nothing strange about refusing to dialog with insane people." Day after day, the trannies would repeat the same points, even after I had destroyed their arguments. They insisted that I write the equivalent of an entire book each night --- the SAME book every night, because they refused to read what had come before.

Because they could not offer a rational argument to counter anything I wrote, they resorted to childish insult and agent-baiting. Yes, I came up with a derisive nickname for their movement: I give as I get.

For the past two days, several trannies conspired to post comments containing nothing but childish insults every few minutes on my blog. They appended such comments to posts which had nothing to do with 9/11. This was a coordinated attack --- cyber-harassment of the worst sort. Such an attack is inexcusable.

I therefore had to suspend comments --- temporarily, I hope. This situation is unfair to my regular readers, but what else can I do?

It is infuriating to be accused of censorship. In fact, the trannies who took part in this cyber-attack have censored ME --- or at least, they have censored the dialog which normally takes place on with my regular readers.

Nobody pays me to blog. Brad --- who has met me --- knows that I am poor. Why should I allow my site to be commandeered by people who insult me, by people whom I honestly consider both foolish and malign?

Would you barge into a stranger's home and insult whoever resided there? Would you refuse to leave after you were asked to leave? Of course not.

Then why do the trannies barge into my online "home"? If they consider me a "CIA stooge," why don't they just leave?

That's the reason for Hitchen's outburst. One simply cannot speak politely to zealots; they ignore all words below a certain decibel threshold. Fanatics delight in forcing decent people to lose their tempers.

I still cannot abide Hitchens. But in this one instance, he has my sympathy.

(I will neither read nor respond to any the calumnies that will no doubt follow. I have already spent far too much of my life trying to talk to people who are impervious to reason.)

I agree. Hitchens is probably just sick to death of questions from tin-hat loonies. The Truth Movement guys have no idea how stupid they look to normal people. Hitchens just has a short fuse, that's all.

I agree! It so totally is appalling how stupid truth looks to "normal" people.

Joseph Cannon #6

You are quite dismissive of Hitchens who is quite dismissive of 90+ Senior Military, Intelligence Service, Law Enforcement, and Government Officials, 120+ Professors, 100+ 9/11 Survivors and Family Members, 70+ Entertainment and Media Professionals, and Half of New Yorkers !!!

Shrill emotional rejection of an inquiry is reminiscent of the Bush administration while they resisted having any 911 Commission to take a look into the matters.

When the Attorney General makes "perplexing statements" about US Attorney firings, those who call for an investigation into the matter are not labeled "fascists" by reasonable people.

Reasonable people realize that members of congress are doing the investigation, and they are charged with doing so by American law. Very normal stuff.

So, by the same token, when members of the 911 Commission consider criminal charges because of "perplexing statements" made to them by government officials, they should not be called "fascists" because they want to find out why they were lied to:

"Fog of war could explain why some people were confused on the day of 9/11, but it could not explain why all of the after-action reports, accident investigations and public testimony by FAA and NORAD officials advanced an account of 9/11 that was untrue."

(Washington Post, quoting 911 Commission Chairman Thomas Kean and Vice-Chairman Lee Hamilton, emphasis added).

There is no reason to have a glandular reaction to an intellectual investigative situation. The mind is not a gland.

So just think about it instead, as a decent person would, but a glandular brained Chris Hitchens could not.

Hitchens calling someone a "crackpot" is kinda funny in itself. Why he is invited to a supposedly serious discussion on religion and culture is beyond me. Is it his aggressive hypocrisy and self-involvement/importance that snows people? I don't know.

Every point-of-view contains within its ranks of advocates illiterate, illogical people. Every serious protest has fools. What is necessary is to separate the chaff from the wheat, and there increasingly seems to be a difficulty of doing this in regard to the events of 9/11. Too bad. The points Dredd makes in his excellent post are worth considering.

Cannon, have you even watched the video footage of the WTC # 7 "collapse"? If so, please explain the obvious neat parallel rows of squibs (jets of dust or smoke from explosions) proceeding up the face of the building nearest the camara JUST before the elegant "collapse". Now what do you think those are?
http://www.wtc7.net/
Are you aware that the only "official" "explanation" for the collapse of WTC # 7 that has been offerred so far, the one briefly mentioned in the 9/11 whitewash commission handbook, they THEMSELVES even admit (in an endnote buried at the back of the book) that the only theory they can come up with for its "collapse" has an infinitesimally small chance of actually happening? Or is that one of the inconvenient facts you overlook? And why do you continue to use tired discredited "logic" like saying on your blog "See how they didn't fall at freefall rate? The beams are falling faster than the building", obtusely ignoring the fact that when debris is propelled by an explosion it has rather more than the force of gravity acting upon it. This is common sense. The 9/11 commission even admits to a 10 second "collapse" time for one of the Towers, the only one that it mentions a "collapse" time for. How do you account for a "natural" collapse of a 110-story skyscraper in that short amount of time? Are you aware that we are talking about the uppermost floors crashing into and THROUGH the remainder of the building about the same speed as falling through air, meaning something had to have reduced the vast majority of the building to a state of offering basically no more resistance than air? How is this even remotely possible? How do you account for the video footage of the "collapses" of the Twin Towers showing localized squibs of dust shooting out of windows? How do you account for the pyroclastic cloud of dust that an instant before was solid concrete? What generates that much energy to turn concrete to dust while simultaneously "collapsing" at freefall rate? How do you explain the "hot spots" of molten metal found to be still hot weeks later under the rubble? What else is going to do that but thermite? You're an obvious disinfo agent. You fool nobody worth fooling.

And to Brad, I call it as I see it. If someone is clinging to an easily disproven fairy tale like the "jet fuel collapses" in spite of a mountain of evidence against it, they are obvious disinfo and getting paid by somebody, and the C.I.A. would have to top the list of the possible "somebodies". And yes, being a puppet of the establishment whose job is spreading disinformation to falsely discredit the 9/11 Truth movement would make him a stooge. Time will prove me correct Brad. If Cannon is your friend it doesn't speak that highly of you anyway. Compound your error by banning me from your little blog and you will end up on the wrong side of history when eventually the truth about 9/11 becomes common knowledge, your choice.

Didn't Hitchens participate in that ridiculous, hypertensive movie about 911 which blamed the whole thing on Clinton. Shouldn't he expect heated questions from people who want to throw tomatoes at him instead.

Hitchins is THE crackpot and will take his place at the helm of crackpotdom.

I can understand why someone would not want to have their blogs become a world wrestling smackdown of 911 conspiracies all the time, but it's not fair to call anyone who questions it silly names. That is an old, worn tactic.

Cannon and Hitchens are just not very up to date on the expansive spread of the investigations and the sheer number of people involved in this movement.

Virgin Atlantic Airlines is showing Loose Change 2, a 9/11 documentary as one choice of movies during flight:

Everyone's talking about it so we thought you'd like to see the film that started out as a home movie and became one of the most downloaded documentaries of all time. Was 9/11 a government set up? Were the twin towers brought down in a controlled explosion for an insurance payday? These questions and more are posed in this controversial film, seen by millions, derided by many. Now it's your chance to make up your own mind.

(Virgin Atlantic, emphasis added). Not too many people would be willing to call the highly successful billionaire entrepreneur a "fascist tranny".

Many professional pilots, some of which have flown the actual aircraft that crashed on 9/11, are also skeptical of the government's conspiracy theory:

Pilots for 9/11 Truth is an organization of aviation professionals and pilots throughout the globe that have gathered together for one purpose. We are commited to seeking the truth surrounding the events of the 11th of September 2001. Our main focus concentrates on the four flights, maneuvers performed and the reported pilots. We do not offer theory or point blame. However, we are focused on determining the truth of that fateful day since the United States Government doesn't seem to be very forthcoming with answers.

(Pilots For 9/11 Truth, emphasis added). So it seems time to drop the emotional and glandular reactions, and mature into the use of professional investigative techniques instead.

It is time to think, and to stop fretting.

Christopher Hitchens has been a patron in my bar in NYC. On one occassion i chatted with him about his Kissinger film. He was happy about that. He even managed to move the conversation on to the next topic which he was excited about, some meeting where the debates about the Iraq war were to begin. I replied to him that there is no debate, no WMD, no debate, immoral war of aggression. He didn't like that. I also asked him if he could explain Bush pre-911 presidential order ordering FBI agents to back off from preventing the 911 attacks. He wanted to know how I heard about the order. He was quite upset that I knew of it and tried to switch to a new topic, something about his busy schedule. I also asked him if he could explain how the collapse of three skyscrapers can defy the laws of gravity by coming down at free fall speed? I was polite about it and sincere, no accusation. He was immediately furious and stormed out. I was simply asking a question. I haven't seen him since.

Wow unbelievable to see so many Reich wing lunatics posting on Brad Blog what the hell happened here?

9/11 is without any doubt whatsoever an inside job, all the evidence shows this quite clearly.
I have a hard time believing that an Atheist (Hitchens) is so delusional as to swallow the pathetic Official Conspiracy Theory. Something doesn't add up with that.

BTW at least 50% of this country and far more than 50% of the rest of the planet KNOWS that 9/11 was an inside job, time to WTFU people, you Official Conspiracy Theory nuts are in the minority.

Greenback:

He was immediately furious and stormed out.

That's how right wingers communicate. With body language.

The government is getting feedback from the general public as to the public's take on the official government conspiracy theory for the 9/11 events.

It is not going the way it was expected to go:

Many potential jurors in the Jose Padilla terrorism-support case say they aren't sure who directed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks because they don't trust reporters or the federal government.

(Lexington Herald Leader). The current regime does not seem to get that the public's general opinion is that lies are this regime's main form of communicating with the people of the United States.

Or that this reality means that the public generally would also not trust the government's official conspiracy theory that 19 arabs led by bin Laden from caves in Afghanistan conspired to trick the FAA and NORAD and yadda yadda yadda.

"Cannon" may not be a "CIA Stooge" but one thing he certainly is as everyone can clearly see in his drivel he just spewed here, he is a complete nut bag that has no clue what he is talking about.
He suffers severe cognitive dissonance, refuses to acknowledge the myriad of facts that show irrefutably that this administration planned & executed the false flag attack on 9/11.
I guarantee that you did not refute anything said by the 9/11 Truth Movement not in reality at least, maybe in your delusional psychosis that you reside in you may think you did but that just means you need psychiatric care not that you have proven anyone wrong.

I feel sorry for nuts like you I really do.

If any of you care to know, Hitchens' reaction to the gentleman was due to prior contact. In other videos posted to the web, the same guy appears at book discussions, lectures, etc., and always launches into a tirade--as if Hitch himself was a policy maker. I'm not saying you have to agree with Hitchens, but the guy is clearly a pest and a stalker. In another video, I've seen, Hitchens quite calmly comments, after the moderator has given the guy the boot, something to the effect of, "this guy follows me to all of my readings and wastes everyone's time, refuses to ask questions or get off the mike."

So, apparently he just lost it over this episode. And honestly, folks, even if you don't care for Hitchens'logic, could you at least admit that he's one of the more engaging public commentators? Clearly, he riles people to the point of urination, and I wouldn't doubt if he does it sometimes just because he can.

Well that makes sense.
Hitchens is dead on when it comes to Religious insanity but for some unbelievable reason he gets his undies all wadded up about the overwhelming evidence about 9/11.
Unusual for an Atheist to be so irrational.

I noticed that the documentary list mentioned in my post #14 has changed. Virgin Atlantic may no longer show the documentary. They periodically change the list after a while to keep it dynamic.

I also asked him if he could explain how the collapse of three skyscrapers can defy the laws of gravity by coming down at free fall speed?

He should have told you that they didn't. And he'd be correct!

One of the more famous anti-conspiracy reports which held that one shooter had done the Kennedy assasination was based upon a forensic practice that:

After retiring, he attracted national attention by questioning the FBI science used in prosecutions for decades to match bullets to crime suspects through their lead content. The questions he and others raised prompted a National Academy of Sciences review that in 2003 concluded that the FBI's bullet lead analysis was flawed. The FBI agreed and generally ended the use of that type of analysis.

They found that the scientific and statistical assumptions Guinn used --- and the government accepted at the time --- to conclude that the fragments came from just two bullets fired from Oswald's gun were wrong.

(Washington Post 5/17/07, emphasis added). Notice that it is some 40 years ago that flawed analysis was used for the Kennedy investigation. What about 9/11 40 years from now?

I often find myself in agreement with many of Hitchens comments, though his slide to the right looks like it could we be his complete undoing eventually..

I only just finished watching his oratory in Canada on Free Speech...where he says even Holocaust deniers have the right to be heard...but here he is in this clip demonstrating why he is more bluster than substance..extremely disappointing..no wonder he is looking foolish over Iraq..he is starting to believe his own BS, and that kind of delusional confidence results in fatal mistakes..