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Monday, September 25, 2006

GOOD GOD, SOMEONE PLEASE SHOW SOME DISCRETION

It seems they’re really hurting for Letters to the Editor at the Cedar Rapids Gazette. The Bush-bashing ones are kinda funny, so I don’t mind those so much…but are there any controls at all on what gets published? The rules plainly state:

All material is subject to editing and cannot be returned to you.

That doesn’t explain this one that slipped by the smell tester…and it’s bothered me for quite a while. I’ve done some research on it and my response is below.

From a Thursday, September 14th Letter to the Editor in the CR Gazette...

September 11th, 2001 was a day that was engrained in every person’s mind – or was it? Here are some facts many have forgotten and have not seen or heard
since:
**Live on-scene reports documented that tremendous explosions occurred at the World Trade Center before and after the plane impacts and before and during collapse.
**Eyewitness testimony of explosions at the World Trade Center was withheld by the city of New York until forcibly released by the New York Supreme Court. Also documented were explosions occurring within the World Trade Center.
**Seismic evidence shows that 2.1 and 2.3 scale earthquakes occurred seconds before (not after) the collapses of the Twin Towers began.
**No steel-frame high-rise had ever collapsed from fire before or after 9/11. (Greg note: None have ever been hit by a 767 at 400mph before either...duh.)
**New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani was warned in World Trade Center 7 beforehand that World Trade Center 2 was going to collapse. (Greg note: I would hope so)
**World Trade Center Towers and World Trade Center 7 collapsed at free-fall speed (their supporting structures gave no resistance). (Greg note: That kinda happens when 90 floors collapse on each other)
**World Trade Center 7 was never hit by a plane and had minimal fires.
**Larry Silverstein received nearly $3 billion after leasing the Twin Towers in July 2001, knowing that they had an asbestos cleanup estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
**World Trade Center debris was hauled with trucks using global positioning systems to track their position, and cleanup occurred prior to crime scene evaluation. Drivers were fired who strayed from their required route or were delayed during
their trips.
**No photographic evidence of a 757 hitting the Pentagon has ever been released despite FBI confiscations of three videotapes from Virginia Department of Transportation, a gas station and hotel. (Greg note: see below...besides, it's kinda hard to get a full motion video from security cameras when a plane is traveling 500 mph)
**No wreckage from Flight 93 has ever been seen at the crash site, but confetti debris was spread over eight square miles.
Qui bono?

Russ and Bonnie Gerst, Cedar
Rapids

Just three days after the 5th “anniversary” (still the only word I can think of) of September 11th. It’s upsetting to me, because I’ve been there…at Ground Zero, I mean. I was there on September 11th 2002. I was on the air when it happened. And when goofballs like Russ and Bonnie (who are of my generation according to the information I found) spout off freely without an accompanying response, it can be dangerous.

Most of this delusional thinking comes from the publication and distribution of a video tape that has been hawked to virtually every email address (including mine). It’s called, Loose Change.

The film is a rapid-fire collection of video clips set to techno music, attempting to prove that no plane hit the Pentagon - it was a cruise missile; the hijacked planes didn't bring down the World Trade Center, the buildings were wired with explosives ahead of time; and Flight 93 didn't crash in Pennsylvania and in fact landed safely elsewhere. The passengers were in on the conspiracy.

They've sold more than 100,000 copies of this thing on DVD. It's been downloaded millions of times.

Created by a teenager by the name of Dylan Avery, it was originally a fictional screenplay submitted as a movie proposal. But, nutty as he was, he couldn’t get a director gig or a studio to buy the idea. So, he did the next best thing…he tried to make it himself.

Since he had no money to film his own movie, he started cutting together video and photos off the internet, creatively editing them to make them scary and ominous, cutting the visuals to fit the story, making a fake documentary. Like Spinal Tap, only about mass murder.

So, for instance, in his screenplay, the Pentagon was hit with a missile and then was covered up for the public as a plane crash. Avery sifted through photo after photo of the Pentagon attack, all showing hunks of airplane scattered everywhere...

Actually showing 757 debri in the background with American Airlines logo...

All these pictures blink across Dylan Avery's monitor until FINALLY he finds a shot that doesn't show any wreckage. He saves it, puts it in the video, and writes voiceover that says NO PLANE HIT THE PENTAGON and NO PHOTOS SHOW ANY EVIDENCE OF A PLANE.

Now obviously, hundreds of people were in the Pentagon that day, dozens of witnesses saw a plane crash, hundreds of people cleaned up airplane parts and charred bodies, air traffic controllers saw the plane fly in on radar, pairs of light poles more than 20 feet apart were knocked over when the massive wings of the airliner mowed them down like grass. But that's okay. He's just making a fictional movie, it's all in fun.

Along comes Phillip Jayhan, who offers the teen some money to complete his project…only not as fiction, but as the evidence of a government conspiracy that he hopes will prove to the world that the US government was in on it…like they were with JFK, Area 51, Waco, and a whole mess of black-helicopter big brother type lunacy. Phillip Jayhan is part of a group that operates The American Free Press, a neo-Nazi supremacy organization.

The possible attention, allure, fame, and money is too much for Dylan Avery to resist, so he begins selling it as a “documentary” and starts hawking the theory – er, proof – to people like Time, Salon, CNN, and others. He’s been interviewed dozens of times and works with a PR firm (along with a couple of other dudes who are in on it) and happily provides the DVD…and people buy it…and begin believing it.

So…to Russ and Bonnie Gerst…and anyone else who believes this bullshit…I have only a few TRUE facts to suggest:

1. The time and effort (apparently un-noticed by anyone who worked at the World Trade Center) required to wire it to collapse as it did would take months – with thousands of workers. None of them talked? No leaks of the secret wiring of buildings in the financial section of the biggest city in the US? Geez, we can’t even conduct wiretapping of phones from overseas terrorists without the NY Times squawking about it and I’m supposed to believe they did this without a peep?

2. Where are the passengers that did in fact get on those planes that day? If Flight 93 doesn’t exist, where’s Todd Beamer? How come he doesn’t call home to his wife? Paid off? Enough to never want to talk to his newborn?

For more detailed debunking of the moronic theories, read Popular Mechanics from March of 2005. But there’s a simpler way to debunk these boneheads…

Dylan Avery and Phillip Jayhan are alive...

The government had apparently no qualms about ending the lives of 3,000 people in a spectacular display of genius, planning, and secrecy played out LIVE on every television network in the world…but when they heard that someone was going to expose “the truth” of the plot complete with video tape, DVD, and public speeches…they couldn’t whack a teenager and a white supremist and confiscate the video tape?

Now, THAT’s hard to believe.

Not that I want to cause ole Russ and Bonnie Gerst any pain, but someone should write to them and CC a copy to the Gazette. I’m not in on any conspiracy…I just know how to do a ZabaSearch. Here’s their address and phone number: