Forum

TruthMove Forum

TruthMove Forum » TruthMove Main Forum

Mark Roberts goes after TruthMove (3 posts)

  1. truthmod
    Administrator

    Mark Roberts goes after TruthMove

    http://www.911blogger.com/node/5382?page=1

    I agree. The site looks good. Unfortunately the content is amateurishly inaccurate. You seem to have simply thrown the same old stuff together without checking any facts. Every part of your "Evidence" section contains numerous egregious errors and falsehoods.

    This is your "truth?" The same b.s. in a different package? Error after error after error?

    Well, I give you credit for at least believing that there were real hijackers who wanted to kill us.

    You guys are big on psychology. At Ground Zero you filmed me for a while, then edited to film to show me telling people that I HAD evidence, but you deleted all the parts in which I actually GAVE the evidence. What does that say about your approach to the "truth?"

    After observing and listening to me for a while, you criticized my approach – a valid criticism. When people lie egregiously at Ground Zero, fail to listen to corrections, and say they're proud of their ignorance, I'm not shy about letting them know it. But when I asked all three of you to name one thing I had said that was wrong, you couldn't. Please think about that.

    Here are brief comments on some of the site content.

    Today's headline is a quote from Christian fundamentalist Pat Robertson:

    Robertson predicts ‘mass killing’

    “I’m not necessarily saying it’s going to be nuclear,” he said during his news-and-talk television show “The 700 Club” on the Christian Broadcasting Network. “The Lord didn’t say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that.”

    Okay, what's that doing on a site that's supposedly devoted to the truth? Should I expect an Alex Jones quote tomorrow? Does Pat Robertson have a record of accurate predictions? You're into psychology. Tell us why your headline is a loon making claims of mass killing, "something like" "nuclear."

    In your 9/11 section, you list

    Eleven pieces of evidence you should know about:
    First of all, these are eleven claims. You do link to an evidence section, but I bring this up because much of what I do is point out how badly people in the truth movement blur the line – and sometimes aren't aware of the line at all – between claims, questions, evidence, and facts.

    For over an hour, NORAD air defense failed to intercept any of the hijacked aircraft. Fighter jets are commonly “scrambled” and reach out-of-contact or off-course aircraft within 10-20 minutes.

    You don't mention that the most notice NORAD had of any of th flights was 9 minutes. Two of the flights they didn't know about until after they had crashed. Please make that distinction. I know that you don't want to be misleading, right?

    Please provide your evidence that NORAD, prior to 9/11 "routinely reached out of contact or off course aircraft within 10-20 minutes. The only NORAD interception of such an aircraft over the CONUS (not an offshore ADIZ intercept) in the decade prior to 9/11 that I'm aware of is of Payne Stewart's plane, which took 81 minutes to reach. If you are not aware of others, please make that correction. And again, NORAD had no chance to intercept the planes on 9/11 because they didn't know where they were.

    Several war games were being conducted on 9/11, including mock-hijackings and plane crashes.

    This must be corrected. NEADS, which was responsible for the air defense of the northeast, was not running any exercises on 9/11. There was an exercise scheduled at 9:00, but it was canceled when the report of flight 11 came in.

    There were no hijacking drills conducted anywhere by NORAD anywhere in the U.S. or Canada on 9/11. None. Please do your homework and make that correction.

    The "plane crash" drill you refer to was not a "war game." It was a casualty and disaster-preparedness drill involving an imagined accidental crash of a small plane. Please make that correction. All this information is readily available to the public.

    There were multiple, specific warnings from foreign governments of impending attacks including potential targets and the names of several alleged 9/11 hijackers.

    Were there "multiple, specific warnings" about potential attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, (and other D.C. targets) that consisted of actionable intelligence? Credible threats? Warnings of imminent attacks using aircraft? Not that I've seen.

    As the 9/11 commission report points out, the U.S. did miss clues, such as doctored passports. We even gave a visa to KSM, although he was on the terrorist watch list (he didn't enter the US). If you want to show other negligence, though, you have to put any "warnings" into context with all the other intelligence being processed at the time. I don't excuse screw-ups. Neither do I excuse taking things out of context to try to support a claim.

    Nearly every member of the 9/11 Commission had a major conflict of interest.

    You'll need to define "conflict of interest," then provide evidence that such conflicts actually existed, rather than "looking funny" on paper. Remember, most of the investigating was done by law enforcement and intelligence agencies long before the commission was formed. After the commission was formed, most of the investigating was done by the commission staffers, not by the appointed members. You link to a site that lists the commissioners and their alleged conflicts, some of which consist of serving on House and Senate intelligence committees. Yeah, we wouldn't want people with that kind of experience involved in...an intelligence investigation. And Fred Fielder was "deep throat?" How many deep throats were there?

    The Commission Report ommitted [sic] and altered evidence that contradicted the official story.

    You'll need to show that what you define as omissions are relevant and would have affected the outcome of the investigation. Mentioning Griffin's list won't do. Most of his "115" are laughably irrelevant or outright false. What evidence was altered?

    Insider trading (put options on American, United and other 9/11-affected companies) was never properly investigated. The SEC could trace who made these trades.

    Never properly investigated? According to whom? There was a huge investigation into these claims, and no suspicious activity was found at all. I recommend http://www.911myths.com/html/put_options.html for a brief examination of these issues. From the 9/11 commission report:

    "A single U.S.-based institutional investor with no conceivable ties to al Qaeda purchased 95 percent of the UAL puts on September 6 as part of a trading strategy that also included buying 115,000 shares of American on September 10...

    Similarly, much of the seemingly suspicious trading in American on September 10th was traced to a specific U.S.-based options trading newsletter, faxed to its subscribers on Sunday, September 9, which recommended these trades."

    Please make that correction.

    The deep involvement of Pakistani Intelligence (ISI) was never officially acknowledged or investigated.

    First, you'll have to prove ANY involvement of the ISI, much less "deep involvement." No one has done so. Please make that correction. How do you know the claims weren't investigated?

    Some prominent travelers such as San Francisco mayor Willie Brown and top Pentagon officials were warned not to fly on 9/11. Who warned them? What did they know?

    From 9/11myths:

    "Brown's warning: In the five years since 9/11, the question of how then-San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown got a warning about flying that day continues to live on in the blogosphere -- and conspiracy theories abound.

    "The latest version is that Condoleezza Rice alerted me personally,'' Brown said this week. "It's all part of the ongoing myth."

    The "myth" has its origins in the night before the attacks, when Brown called "my security people at the airport'' to check on his flight to New York the next morning.

    What the mayor got from his source was a warning that Americans should be concerned about traveling.

    Willie being Willie, he paid no attention -- and was actually waiting for his ride to the airport when he turned on the TV and, like millions of other Americans, watched as the World Trade Center crumbled.

    Exactly how the warning popped up remains a mystery to this day.

    It might have had something to do with a little-noticed State Department memo issued a week before that went out in a routine press briefing -- and that former Secretary of State George Shultz himself received -- warning that Americans may be the target of an attack from extremist groups "with links to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization."

    The warning, however, dealt primarily with U.S. military bases in Japan and South Korea -- clearly the wrong targets."
    http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2...

    On the Pentagon officials:
    http://www.911myths.com/html/pentagon_officials.ht...

    Please make those changes.

    Until 9/11/01, no steel frame building had ever collapsed due to fire.

    Absolutely false. See pages 72-77 of my paper 'WTC 7 and the Lies of the 9/11 Truth Movement' http://www.911myths.com/WTC7_Lies.doc (.doc file) or http://www.911myths.com/WTC7_Lies.pdf

    Then please make the correction. I shouldn't have to state this, but WTC 1, 2, and 7 were unusual buildings that sustained unusual damage and fires. If you want to make claims about them, you need to address what happened to THOSE buildings.

    With only moderate fires and no major structural damage, WTC Building 7 imploded at 5pm into a tidy pile of rubble.

    Outrageously false. See the entire paper listed above, and make the corrections. Why don't you give a damn?

    The collapse of the towers and WTC 7 all exhibited characteristics of CONTROLLED DEMOLITION.

    Not according to the experts on the scene, not according to the audiovisual and seismic recording devices, and not according to all the investigators. There is absolutely zero evidence for this contention. See the NIST report, and Protec's paper "A critical analysis of the collapse od WTC towers 1, 2, and 7 From an Explosives and Conventional Demolitional Industry viewpoint. http://www.jod911.com/WTC%20COLLAPSE%20STUDY%20BBl...

    Several FBI investigations which could have uncovered the 9/11 plot were squashed and sabotaged by key FBI officials.

    The "19 terrorists" list turned over by Mossad? One story in Die Zeit that was picked up by other papers. Was this ever confirmed?

    Robert Wright, who worked during the Clinton Administration, complained that investigations were prematurely shut down. What's your suggestion?

    You don't mention her by name, but Colleen Rowley referred to a climate of hesitancy among FBI officials in the wake of disasters such as Waco and Ruby Ridge. She does not claim that bad decisions fostered by this climate were the result of an attempt not to investigate terrorism.

    In September, 2000, Neo-Con think tank, “Project for the New American Century” (PNAC) acknowledged that their geostrategic goals to control the Middle-East would be long and difficult to achieve “absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.” PNAC members included Bush Administration insiders such as Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Libby and Perle.

    I'm no fan of Neo-Cons, but if you think that's what the PNAC report says, you clearly haven't read it. It's not very long. Please read it and make your corrections

    There are many historical precedents of “false flag” and state sponsored terrorism. Operation Northwoods was a top secret U.S. plan in the 1960s to carry out a campaign of terror, including blowing up airplanes, and blame it on Cuba as a pretext to invade and overthrow Castro.

    You're using Northwoods, a memo of which part was approved by the Joint Chiefs, and which did NOT call for the killing of U.S. civilians, and which was summarily rejected by the government, as an example that the government would kill thousands of its own people? Please explain your logic. Better yet, just think about it and make the corrections. At bare minimum, don't imply that Northwoods was a plan to murder Americans, and note that it was neither conceived, promoted nor approved by the civilian administration.

    Is Northwoods, then, your best example of the USG 's supposed will to attack its own people? Is that it? Really?

    I didn't look at much more of your site, but I did notice under "Assassinations" a comment that you think the crash of Paul Wellstone's plane was suspicious. It always baffles me that the same people who clamor that the NTSB should have been more involved in the 9/11 investigations, say that the NTSB investigation of Wellstone's crash is a sham.

    You have some good flickr photos, but some of the captions are very inaccurate.

    Finally, you said about me, "We've heard his story now, and we just don't get it."

    It's very simple: I don't like it when people lie about 9/11, when they exonerate the terrorists, falsely accuse others of mass-murder, say the FDNY was in on it and fail to read any of the reports they claim to dispute.

    I really don't like it when they do that at Ground Zero. Got it?

    I'll check in with you in a week to see how you're progressing with your research and corrections. You're welcome to contact me at nyctours@gmail.com

    Posted 17 years ago #
  2. truthmover
    Administrator

    Mark's behavior

    Well, I've got to hand it to Mark. He spent a while of this message, and it wasn't all wasted. I will read the message, and seriously consider his comments, if for no other reason than he apparently took some time to look at the site. I'm not sure who else is going to read his message from top to bottom.

    I'm actually starting to get more familiar with his arguments. And more importantly, his intent is becoming more clear.


    Is this constructive criticism? In essence the message is a critique of our project, which we welcome. Accurate or not, we appreciate any attempt to help us get our facts straight. And there are a couple of recommendations Mark has made that we may seriously consider. I'm sure we'll find at least one constructive change we can make in the site as a result, and that positive contribution is appreciated.

    However, Mark's criticisms, while demonstrating some degree of narrow logical savvy, also demonstrates either a surprising lack of social savvy or simply outright negative intent. This all comes down to effective methods of argumentation. If you want to convince someone to modify their thinking or behavior, you can't be seen by them as an adversary. While he has stated that he is there to keep us in check, signifying an interest in communication, Mark's approach is decidedly uncooperative. For this simple reason, I have come to seriously doubt that Mark is interested in the 911 truth movement doing a better job. In fact, he has made it perfectly clear on many occasions that he takes the official story at face value, and has a critical response to every single piece of evidence that we rely upon. He will in no way validate anything we address.

    Sadly, a number of the insights that he has gained about the movement, in his quest to debunk it, could actually be quite beneficial to many in the movement. He's good at catching us mis-quoting or over-extending the facts. And if he had an interest in the logical development of this movement, he might be able to provide positive recommendations for responsible community promotion. Unfortunately, his approach has alienated him from everyone in the movement. People just won't listen to him anymore.

    While I'd like to assume that Mark just isn't savvy, having seen him in action on many occations, I'm affraid this is not the case. His behavior makes it clear that he is present not to critique our work, but for the impact he has upon public perception of our movement. He has told me that he feels, very much like us, that it is his duty to inform the public. But he feels responsible to inform the public that we are wrong. This is entirely clear when you see him interacting with 9/11 truth folks and the public. He constantly interrupts conversations we are having with people, and always draws conversations away from the big picture, toward details that he can dispute. He provides an easy out for people on the fence.

    And as everyone knows by now, he provides a bit of spectacle that draws people's attention and essentially benefits our promotional efforts. But only when we aren't baited to frustration by him. He does succeed in making us look bad from time to time, but as often his approach makes people more sympathetic to our concerns, recognizing Mark's tone to be reactionary, and non-discursive.

    Mark and others like him are going to keep this up. So let's be aware of them, not be baited or intimidated by them, and remember that what we are doing is bigger than any of us.

    Posted 17 years ago #
  3. truthmod
    Administrator

    yes, we should use this productively

    we would be pretty hypocritical if we refused to hear mark out (as long as he's being respectful and honest).

    while he specifically chose our summarized list of evidence to debunk, i certainly think we should take his critiques seriously and correct ourselves on any valid points.

    Posted 17 years ago #

Reply

You must log in to post.