Rooting for JREF

I don't often root for the skeptics at the James Randi Educational Foundation, but an email I just received from Winston Wu of SCEPCOP has, for once, put me squarely in the skeptics' corner.

Here's the complete, unedited email:

Upcoming 9/11 team debate on Coast to Coast on July 31, which I'm consulting on

Hi all,

Richard Gage of AE911Truth.org and a team of scientists are scheduled to debate a team of JREF debunkers on the Coast to Coast program. Gage has put me on the mailing list after reading my suggestions to him in how to debate the JREF crowd, as a consultant to his team.

Gage and his team of scientists, which include Kevin Ryan and Neils Harritt, will debate a team from the JREF. All we know is that Dave Thomas will be on the other side. We don't know who else they will have on their team.

The debate is scheduled on Coast to Coast for July 31 at this point. So mark that on your calendar. I think you can listen in either on your AM radio station or the coast to coast website. http://www.coasttocoastam.com/

I talked to Gage for an hour on the phone and gave him some insights and key strategies for exposing the JREFers and their kind, which are outlined on my SCEPCOP site: http://www.debunkingskeptics.com

I've also announced this debate in my SCEPCOP forum, which I will post further updates to:

http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=1220

Anyhow, if any of you have any tips or suggestions for Mr. Gage and his team, feel free to post them here, and I will forward them to him.

Should he cover a few strong undebunkable arguments, or try to cover all ten of the features of controlled demolition of the WTC? Which arguments should be emphasized most?

The debate will be primarily about the WTC and Building 7 collapse, not about the other issues surrounding 9/11.

Thanks,

Winston

For the record, I think the 9-11 "Truth" movement is literally insane. Tying this lunacy to the defense of serious parapsychological studies does infinitely more harm than good. 

I'm sure the JREF people will make mincemeat of the clueless conspiracy clowns who peddle this bilge. All of the supposedly "undebunkable" arguments for "controlled demolition" have been dismantled countless times. The best one-stop source for reasoned responses to these arrant claims is the now-famous Popular Mechanics article from 2005. 

Whatever value SCEPCOP might have had as a vehicle for informed criticism of skeptical positions has been nullified by the decision to side publicly with the "Truthers."

Good grief! When is "our side" ever going to stop shooting itself in the foot?

Comments

[realpc]

http://www.aidstruth.org/
http://www.thebody.com/content/art52090.html

I had read those web sites, of course. A lot of it is misleading propaganda. Notice the complete lack of uncertainty and the cheerleading attitude. That should make you skeptical right away.

[realpc]

"Thing is there are no short cuts here, just like with psi, there is a massive literature to pour through"

Yes that is true. It requires some patience. But once you start digging, it becomes fascinating (in a depressing sort of way). The confusion and chaos in the field are appalling. Well what is actually appalling is the way sites like aidstruth pretend there is no confusion whatsoever,

As I said, I don't necessarily agree with the dissenters' theories. I only agree with them when they say the HIV/AIDS mystery has not been solved. Not even close.

Some dissenters blame AIDS on lifestyle and certain drugs, but I don't know if they have enough evidence for that. I don't think anyone, mainstream or dissenter, has the answers.

I think AIDS is a real disease and that it often co-occurs with signs of HIV infection. I don't think HIV is necessarily the cause, or the only cause, of AIDS. Therefore, I don't think killing HIV should be the primary treatment goal.

And most of all I am skeptical about the drugs. They definitely have not be proven safe, and their effectiveness is also in doubt.

Sometimes AIDS patients respond well to HAART, but it could be simply because these chemicals are lethal to bacteria and fungus (and every other living thing).

There are probably less toxic ways to fight the opportunistic infections.

AIDS research started down the wrong path and refused to reconsider. The farther they go, the less willing they are to rethink.

[Winston]

Dear MP:

A few more things:

- This is not about theories or conspiracy theories. This is about EVIDENCE and FACTS, or conspiracy evidence/facts rather. And there is a LOT of EVIDENCE that contradicts the official version of 9/11, which was arrived at immediately after 9/11 as if it were prescripted in advance.

- Most people who believe in the paranormal also believe that SOME conspiracies exist. The reason they go hand in hand is because people who think outside the box and look at possibilities are open to both. Conspiracies have been with us throughout history. Julius Caesar was assassinated by a conspiracy even. So why do so many Americans like you believe that they don't exist?

- If you think only nutters doubt the official version of 9/11, think again. Here are lists of highly credible and professional experts who challenge and disbelieve the official 9/11 myth:

http://www.patriotsquestion911.com
http://www.pilotsfor911truth.org/core.html
http://www2.ae911truth.org/signpetition.php

Michael, see these two clips and answer the following questions:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-DtO00Jg6s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYLtBQexsiQ&NR=1

1. Ok so why did the FBI ignore numerous warnings from its own agents and leads just before 9/11 that terrorist attacks were imminent?

2. Why did the hijackers get visas into the US so easily? And why was the US consulate agent told not to talk about the visas given to the hijackers or report it?

3. And why was Bin Laden's family safely flown out of the US when OBL was public enemy number one?

This YouTuber put it eloquently:

"funny thing,Bush demands that all leaders of Al-Qaeda be handed over to the US
yet they have Bin Laden's family in the US,flown off after 9/11
the only way they could receive any info on Osama was by his family,yet they were flown out of the country,away from Surveillance.
instead of being under protected custody and Surveillance by the government,they are flown to safety overseas
wow,either the government is really stupid or they are hiding something"

How come the mainstream media is too chicken to cover all this?

Also check out this recent bombshell update:

Bombshell: Silverstein Wanted To Demolish Building 7 On 9/11
http://www.infowars.com/bombshell-silverstein-wanted-to-demolish-building-7-on-911/

To Aftrbrnr:

It is NOT true that SCEPCOP puts everything paranormal under one banner. On the home page of SCEPCOP, it says otherwise:

"Just to state for the record though, opposing pseudoskepticism does NOT mean that SCEPCOP endorses every crackpot claim, theory and fantasy out there. Not at all. We believe in applying equal skepticism to both sides, as well as the objective weighing of evidence, for as you might expect, some claims and phenomenon have a lot of solid evidence to back it up, while others have little or none."

Next time read before you jump to conclusions.

[Winston]

Markus Hesse:

Those are outdated arguments that have been debunked umpteenth times. We all know those arguments. They don't hold water.

There is no proof that the fires weakened the steel. Do your pots and pans weaken when you use them to cook over a gas stove? That is pure conjecture and assumption, and defies logic.

Even if the steel did weaken, where did all the force come from to pulverize the whole mass structure into dust at near FREE FALL speed? It simply isn't there. You can't explain it.

The military is the best expert in explosives. They have explosives that are quieter than that of demolition companies. Besides, thousands of people heard explosions at the BASE of the WTC. See this film for proof from witnesses:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3760797491142118919

There is a clip of an explosion in there too.

You can detonate explosives from the top down. It's possible if you rig it that way.

There are more holes in the official theory than in the controlled demolition hypothesis, therefore Occam's Razor is on our side, not yours.

Besides, Occam never meant for his theorem to apply in that manner. See my SCEPCOP treatise for a full explanation of that.

Watch Richard Gage's film. It'll answer all your questions and misconceptions:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4617650616903609314

[Michael Prescott]

I went away for a day, then came back. I can't believe anyone is still wasting time on this. For the record, I'll reply to Winston's questions.

"Simple question for you Michael: Have you ever cooked on a gas range with steel pots and pans? If so, did the flame from the gas stove melt your steel pots and pans?"

Try throwing your pots and pans into a raging inferno and see how they come out.

Or check out this news story:

tiny.cc/1x7jq

A truck fire caused the collapse of a freeway overpass. "Mr. Kempton said the heat from the fireball had most likely melted the steel girders and bolts that supported the concrete roadway." Yes, it was a gasoline-fueled fire ... but there was jet fuel to serve as an accelerant in the WTC.

But without an accelerant, can a building fire weaken steel? This source says yes:

tiny.cc/sqkem

"A modern grade S275 hot rolled structural steel section, subjected to fire conditions which raises its temperature above 600ºC [= 1100ºF], may suffer some deterioration in residual properties on cooling... Grade S355 hot rolled structural steel also suffers losses in residual yield and tensile strength when subjected to temperature over 600ºC in fire.... All materials weaken with increasing temperature and steel is no exception."

"Ok so why did the FBI ignore numerous warnings from its own agents and leads just before 9/11 that terrorist attacks were imminent?"

Incompetence. Miscommunication. Bureaucratic red tape. All the same stuff that's happening now in the Gulf of Mexico.

"Why did the hijackers get visas into the US so easily?"

Incompetence. The same way people on the no-fly list get onto planes.

"And why was the US consulate agent told not to talk about the visas given to the hijackers or report it?"

Bureaucratic CYA (cover-your-a$$) mode.

"And why was Bin Laden's family safely flown out of the US when OBL was public enemy number one?"

Bin Laden's family renounced him years ago. They are wealthy industrialists who despise him. He's the black sheep of the family. They're the last people he would confide in.

A good book on the subject of Bin Laden and 9-11 is "The Looming Tower," by Lawrence Wright. It shows clearly that there is no connection between Osama and the rest of his family; all family ties were severed decades ago. It also shows the long trail of bureaucratic missteps that led to 9-11.

Never explain by conspiracy what can be more readily explained by stupidity. The US government is, in many ways, a profoundly stupid beast.

Months ago, Winston, you sent me an email asking if SCEPCOP should bring up 9-11 as an example of dishonest or erroneous conventional wisdom. I said it would be a huge mistake to tie advocacy of the paranormal to "9-11 Trutherism" in any way. Of course you're free to ignore my advice, but you can hardly be surprised that I'm now saying in public what I previously said in private.

My position has been consistent all along. I think Trutherism is stupid. I'm sorry if this offends some people. I also think Young Earth Creationism is stupid, Holocaust denial is stupid, and M. Night Shyamalan's "The Village" was really stupid.

No doubt there are people who disagree with me on each of these things. Still, it's what I think. And guess what? This blog, for better or worse, is mainly about what I think. (The title, Michael Prescott's Blog, kind of gives it away.)

[felipe]

I personally found Winston Wu's original contribution to the online literary landscape - a groundbreaking treatise on picking up women abroad and the litany of lustful lessons therein, to be much more powerfully persuasive than his current project:

(plus he documents the former much better with pictures, too - which makes for better reading)

http://www.happierabroad.com/ebook/Collage.htm

[dmduncan]

There ain't no gopher down the 911 Truther hole.

[Bruce Siegel]

" I think Trutherism is stupid. I'm sorry if this offends some people. "

Michael, I'm with you on this. At the same time, I hope Winston replies to the points you just made.

If you're reading this, Winston, I know you from an article you wrote on psi, which I greatly enjoyed. Because of my enthusiasm for that essay, If you have persuasive rebuttals to what MP just said, I'm all ears.

[Vitor]

I think that even the article that Winston wrote about psi has many problems. I already pointed some of them.

Winston, you are really making Parapsychology looks ridiculous. You are no more helping us.

[Breanainn]

In this thread: castigate conspiracy theories as retarded while vociferously defending your own.

[Larry]

Winston 'the Woo' Wu himself! Griffin has never debunked anything, he has been totally exposed as a liar and fabricator, inventing the most preposterous tales to "explain" the conspiracy, like all 9-11 conspiracy believers.

Of course Wu can never acknowledge what the 9-11 conspiracy debunkers *actually say* in response to the likes of Griffin and Gage, because Griffin is exposed as in fact not merely a liar, but a literally insane liar, just like you Wu (since you take him and Gage seriously). That's not name-calling, it's just an accurate description of what you are in this regard at least. I don't care for all this post-modernist crap about all political narratives being equally valid, and deserving of attention and everything being permitted and no judgmental standards to anything. This kind of non-thinking is associated with the moral and cultural relativist climate in our stultifying contemporary Western "intellectual" culture that I pour scorn on further up (and it has sinister aspects to it that I have barely begun to mention). It's a kind of deluded intellectual relativism, one maverick position against the status quo is as valid as another and they should all be equally considered. Bull.

According to such logic, Holocaust Revisionism should be considered as legitimate for consideration, since it is just as opposed to the official position as psi is to the mainstream consensus in science. In fact this is how Holocaust Revisionists defend themselves, they see themselves as these Galileo-like defenders of truth up against a bullying Inquisition.
Wu uses the same "logic" re 9-11 conspiracy.

Trev, I know - this is the most unbelievable and strange thread!

[Larry]

Prescott writes:.Of course you're free to ignore my advice, but you can hardly be surprised that I'm now saying in public what I previously said in private.

I only wish other prominent pro-psi proponents (academics, writers and scientists) like Brian Josephson (and we have no scientist more prestigious in the pro-psi camp than Josephson) would say the same thing as Prescott, go on public record and distance themselves from 'woo-woo' Wu. Josephson is actually under an obligation to do this since he has given his endorsement to SCEPCOP, and given his prestige, I think he should do the right thing here.

Prescott it's not just govt incompetence and stupidity that saw them screw-up big-time in allowing the hijackers to succeed. It's also pervasive Political Correctness and wilful blindness to the threat of Islamic fundamentalism under the Bush administration (also reflected in pre-9-11 airport security and in fact post 9-11 airport security given the pathetic PC procedures here - looking for bombs instead of looking for terrorists), which has if anything gotten worse under Obama's administration. The irony here is the 9-11 nutters share in this same wilful blindness to the threat of Islamism (thinking the real evil lies with the US govt, Republicans, conservative Christians, Jews etc) and the PC claptrap associated with this blindness, as the PC Bush administration they hated so much and think is complicit in 9-11.

[Markus Hesse]

Those are outdated arguments that have been debunked umpteenth times.

By which reputable and authoritative structural engineers? And in which peer-review journal did they publish their findings?

There is no proof that the fires weakened the steel.

The simple fact that the towers came down proves they did.

Do your pots and pans weaken when you use them to cook over a gas stove?

Are you kidding me?! My pots and pans were designed solely to cook food, not support tons and tons of concrete and office space. The point here is that heat wasn't the only factor the steel support beams had to contend with, the intense pressure from above was also just as critical, if not more so.

In other words, enough heat + sustained pressure eventually = SNAP!

Note the inward buckling of the south tower's east wall, which lead to it's collapse.

That is pure conjecture and assumption, and defies logic.

Really? I'd sooner call it "common sense."

where did all the force come from to pulverize the whole mass structure into dust

Uh, gravity? And show me these huge mounds of solid-free dust at Ground Zero please.

The military is the best expert in explosives. They have explosives that are quieter than that of demolition companies.

Are you seriously suggesting that explosions can be sufficiently "muffled" to the point they're effectively silent? On the basis of what acoustic principles?

Besides, thousands of people heard explosions at the BASE of the WTC.

Correction: they heard what they THOUGHT were explosions, and even if some were they were more likely to be caused by gas tanks of surrounding cars and the like blowing up. Besides, random, erratic explosions are NOT consistent with a controlled demolition - loud multi-sequential ones are.

You can detonate explosives from the top down. It's possible if you rig it that way.

Sure, but it'd be a damn stupid way to do it seeing as you'd have all that wiring and detonation charges sitting right smack in the middle of the impact zone, how could you guarantee the planes hitting, exploding and burning wouldn't destroy the entire set-up?

There are more holes in the official theory than in the controlled demolition hypothesis, therefore Occam's Razor is on our side, not yours.

If you seriously believe that then you're too far gone, no offence, lol.

Watch Richard Gage's film. It'll answer all your questions and misconceptions

Richard Gage is an architect, not a structural engineer.

[Larry]

Well put Markus Hesse. Although of course to Wu your debunking only proves that you either are a shill or unwitting pawn of the evil neo-cons and the military-industrial complex.

Actually re Prescott's replies to Wu here - 9-11 conspiracy is not just stupid, any more than Holocaust Revisionism is just stupid. Both are sinister beliefs. 9-11 conspiracy is crypto-fascist whereas Holocaust Revisionism is blatantly fasicst. YEC is just kinda stupid, but it's not at all fascist, it's just Biblical Literalism masquerading as science. So it's wrong to equate YEC with Holocaust Revisionism and 9-11 nuttery, since the former is just stupid, not evil and the latter two are sinister beliefs.

Why be sorry for offending people who hold dear to a sinister crypto-fascist conspiracy that is 9-11 conspiracy (I note that nobody but myself it appears has picked up on the bigotry in Erich and Wu's posts re 9-11 conspirators. although I haven't commentated on it at all and can't be bothered to do so here), and even soft-peddle it by not calling it sinister, just stupid?

By equating YECers with Holocaust Revisionists and 9-11 nutters (as Prescott does) you paint them with the same brush of bigotry. I know this is not intentional on Prescott's part, he doesn't intend this, nevertheless this is a mistake he makes so I bring it to his attention. My point is YEC is wrong and misguided, it's not a bigoted fascism. Ignoring the evidence of the age of the earth out of a religious conviction does not make people bigots or fascists, just stubborn, misguided and simple-minded (Biblical Literalism is simple-minded). So it's very unfair to paint them with the same brush and draw a moral equivalence with the nazis that are all Holcaust Revisionists in principle, never mind the undercurrent of fascism in 9-11 Trooferism.

Otherwise you are effectively implying that YECers are Nazis, which is ridiculous. You also minimize and soften considerably the immorality and bigotry that is Holocaust Revisionism by implying it's just stupid, like YEC, not evil and bigoted as Holocaust Revisionism clearly is; and that people who deny the extent of the Holocaust are simply misguided, stubborn and obtuse just like YECers, nothing more than that. When of course in principle Holocaust Revisionists are fascists.

Unless you are going to call YEC a fascist belief (which is ridiculous), you shouldn't equate it with a belief in fascist conspiracy thinking. Like I say to do so demeans and softens considerably the real evil that is Holocaust Revisionism and the crypto-fascism that is 9-11 nuttery. You imply a fascist belief like Holocaust Revisionism is essentially just stupid and misguided by so doing (equating it with YEC), not truly fascist or evil.

My point is YEC is neither here nor there as far as morality is concerned, whereas Holocaust Revisionism is morally repugnant. 9-11 conspiracy is by itself not as morally repugnant as Holocaust Revisionism but it is still morally repugnant because it is crypto-fascist for the reasons I give in one of my very early posts on this thread. Namely it whitewashes/downplays the crimes of Muslim Jihadism. Downplaying and minimizing/lessening the crimes of Muslim fascists is itself a kind of soft fascism as I wrote earlier.

Just give these things more thought is what I am saying.

[Larry]

OK getting back to HIV/AIDS!...(since I wrote all this below offline yesterday and think it worth bringing up since people are generally totally in the dark here and after having written it all...OK this is very very long but I think the importance of the topic warrants it)

Unless you really know a lot on the dark underbelly of medical science and its very chequered history, the group-think, its bloated beauracratic structure and inertia, the overspecialisation, orthodox medicine's intimidation and persecution of CAM practicioners, you really know nothing pertinent here. Fact is medicine these days is very much ruled by profits, careerism, a multi-billion dollar drug industry and a corrupt peer review process in the medical journals which is all about perpetuating the status quo (this is all the depressing reality - no idiotic conspiracy there. It's an open secret, the pervasive corruption of medical science - acknowledged by so many medical scientists and doctors themselves, even those firmly convinced that HIV causes AIDS).

Henry Bauer is a noted historian of science and a noted chemist, he knows more than a fair bit on genetics and virology. He knows more of the pertinent science than 99.9% of people (easily) and that includes the whole story of AIDS and its unfolding. So as realpc points out, at the very least read what Bauer has to say on this front instead of a mere knee-jerk dismissal. In other words be truly skeptical on HIV/AIDS in the true meaning of the word, not pseudoskeptical the way the Randis and Wisemans of the world are on parapsychology, with their minds already made up. Who could even bother reading the article of Bauer's in the latest issue of EdgeScience? (where Prescott himself has a piece amusingly entitled "The Gift of Doubt") If not why not? It is certainly an eye-opener. Bauer has his own blog dedicated solely to HIV/AIDS, check it out at http://hivskeptic.wordpress.com/

Bauer has also published a book which came out relatively recently, 'The Origin Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory'. There is even a recorded ten minute video talk he gave to the SSE on the topic. You can view it at the talks page at http://www.scientificexploration.org

Even from the orthodox perspective - the track record of the AIDS industry is simply a fiasco, and fiasco piled on fiasco. I mention just two here - firstly the HIVNET 012 Uganda drug trial (AZT and Nevirapine - both highly toxic RTIs were administered) with pregnant "HIV positive" women, from the late 90's. A terrible scandal in which several people died from the ARV drugs, there was an organised attempt at a hush-up from on high (UNAIDS and the US NIH was involved in approving, sanctioning and endorsing this trial). Thanks to Jonathan Fishbein's whistle-blowing, an official at the NIH, the truth got out. Fishbein has since been subjected to a campaign of vilification and demonisation but was vindicated by an internal review at the NIH.

This alone is heavy reading and the AIDS industry have done a lot of PR lying spin to try and dismiss all this as moutain out of molehill stuff (like at aidstruth and thebody where they just lie about what went down). The failure to follow standard protocols in the trial is just one of the minor problems with it (no non-treatment arm and a dropping of the placebo based control group). Just to know what happened here exactly, the time-line and fall-out is a lot of reading and this is just one minor peak in the Himalayan moutain chain of a fiasco that is HIV/AIDS. This particular scandal got a lot of publicity with the publication by AIDS dissident journalist Celia Farber's article "Out of Control" in Harpers. The AIDS industry responded in their predictable way, and then there was a counter-response by the dissidents. In fact it reads like the back and forth squabbling re psi between believers vs pseudoskeptics, and I think if one applies the same critical thinking skills to the debate over the HIVNET 012 Uganda trial alone as one does to the debate over psi, well the orthodoxy on HIV/AIDS just takes a beating, in fact a double whipping. One for the scandal in the first place and then for the denial and pretence that it was nothing to get worked up about after the whole mess went public, just minor little bumps, easily corrected and that in fact this Uganda trial is all hunky dory (just check thebody and aidstruth for their whitewashed version of this trial). Nothing to see here - just shoot the messengers like Farber and Duesberg. Deadly poisonous ARVS are life-saving after all, because you know uh... they are apparently. If you keep calling a deadly poison life-saving medication it is no less deadly for all that.

Another fiasco within the house of AIDS horrors - entirely from an orthodox perspective, HUGE - Bob Gallo's theft of the 'HIV' virus from the Pasteur Institute. Why do you think only Montagnier won the Nobel in 2008 for discovering HIV as the cause of AIDS and not Gallo? Oh of course how many people have the vaguest clue who these guys are? Gallo, one of the leading virologist at the NCI announced the discovery of a retrovirus as the cause of AIDS at a press conference in '84. All AIDS insiders know he stole the 'virus' despite being officially cleared after an NIH investigation that was a pathetic whitewash. In the first comprehensive orthodox popular history of AIDS, Randy Shilts's 'And the Band Played On', Shilts makes it clear Gallo stole the virus and everybody involved in AIDS research knew it and knows it. Investigative journalist and firm believer in the HIV orthodoxy John Crewdson's book 'Science Fictions' gives indisputable documentation of Gallo's crookedness and mendacity in great detail, his theft from the Pasteur Institute, a theft he tried to pass off as his own original discovery. Crewdson's book earning considerable kudos from the AIDS orthodoxy, even the orthodox medical journals and reviewers, never mind the dissidents. If you haven't even heard of these two AIDS related fiascos that I give merely vague and superficial references to, then you actually know less than nothing about AIDS and its history. Blunder and corruption is the norm here.

[Larry]

Continuing...
The obvious reason why the general public don't know about these kind of fiascos (and so much more that I haven't even hinted at) - censorship plain and simple. Why else don't you know? The statistics on African AIDS deaths are highly dubious (I can easily prove this) and the corruption of medical science (not just AIDS science) is pervasive. All this begs a lot of questions, namely why the censorship? and this is not conspiracy woowoo. There really has been and remains intensive near-blanket censorship in the science journals, media etc on what these AIDS dissidents are ACTUALLY SAYING and even often enough WHO THEY ARE exactly - they are virologists, biophysicists, pathologists, geneticists, immunologists and the like from around the world. They include two Nobel Laureates in the sciences. Why the censorship? Nowhere and I mean nowhere have I ever come across a single AIDS orthodox proponent whether he/she be a scientist or a journalist or whoever actually acknowledge what AIDS dissidents are actually saying *in their own words*, across the board and on all aspects of HIV and AIDS. NOWHERE.

In debating (the orthodoxy appear to have learned not to debate dissidents because the dissidents so easily expose them and whip them), misrepresenting and vilifying AIDS dissidents as nazis, nowhere have I seen AIDS dissidents even begin to be refuted, not even close. The reason for this is simple - the truth is not with the status quo. If you are going to refute somebody you first have to acknowledge what your opponent is saying, and then refute them if you can. Nowhere do the AIDS orthodoxy come close to doing this, without gross misrepresentation and gross oversimplifications of what AIDS dissidents are actually saying (at best they knock down straw-men), and worse. The AIDS orthodoxy routinely lie, it's autonomic. Proving this is like shooting fish in a barrel - thebody and aidstruth are so easy to expose as full of bunk. They make James Randi and the old CISCOP seem like a paragon of virtue, honesty and transparency by comparison. I can give so many examples, this ain't no bluff. Using critical thinking skills, one has to ask (at the risk of repeating myself) - in any heated antagonistic and deep-seated disagreements, if the one side can't even acknowledge what
the other side is saying and censor and misrepresent the other side's viewpoints so blatantly that the general public are basically in the dark here, well this begs the question -WHY?

The AIDS orthodoxy are protected from exposure by censorship as well as the near-universal ignorance and trust in scientists by the know-nothing public and know-nothing doctors who are effectively de facto drugsales people at the bottom of the BigPharma food chain. Cognitive dissonance rules supreme with the AIDS 'experts' and AIDS activists. No conspiracy in the usual understanding of the term, unless one calls vested interests of BigPharma and careerism in medicine and reputations on the line in that regard a conspiracy. More signficantly there are cultural and psychological/sociological factors behind this fiasco which is a whole other thing...

We all know what 9-11 nutters are saying, it is untenable and gives one a headache (to the Troofers I'm not paying you mind really). We all know what Holocaust Deniers are saying and it is likewise untenable and of course motivated by anti-Semitism. But what are AIDS dissidents saying? Very very few people know. Think about this - what if the AIDS dissidents are right? Imagine if it became common knowledge that they were right and the HIV/AIDS orthodoxy were wrong. What would the consequences be for the FDA and NIH? Could they even admit a blunder here?

Think about the consequences, and what about the med journals who promoted the HIVAIDS sell, BigPharma, medical institutions and university depts and med faculties doing AIDS research, the pliant credulous mainstream media, the thousands of jobs, the reputations, the NGOs active in promoting HIV/AIDS, the trust in Western modern medicine? What of the political and financial consequences here? Think about it. The professional consequences alone would be too great. The class action suits would be unprecedented. Let me repeat that - the class action suits would be UNPRECEDENTED IN HISTORY. It would be publicly recognised as arguably the greatest scientific scandal OF ALL TIME. Western medicine would probably never recover from such an outrage.

If the AIDS dissidents are right, then the HIV/AIDS fiasco (and that's what it would be if they are right) is not just!! a scientific scandal so great that it arguably dwarfs any scientific scandal in history by comparison, but a CULTURAL scandal that would have repercussions way beyond the medical profession, the BigPharma industry and the doctor's office. Its cultural and sociological shockwaves would be felt everywhere and across society. The AIDS orthodoxy thus cannot afford to admit their blunder if the dissidents are right, not even to themselves. No political conspiracy nuttery here - just massive vested interests, including psychological and cultural that would be pummelled and even undercut entirely, toppled over by the truth. A political, social/cultural, financial and scientific earthquake whose shockwaves would echo for decades and longer. It would be entirely unprecedented. Of course all this only IF AIDS dissent coincides with the truth. So this begs the question then - what are these AIDS dissidents saying exactly then and WHO are they exactly?

[Larry]

Continuing - last post here I promise..

Aside from the Bauer article and Bauer published several of his AIDS disssent articles when he was an editor at the JSE, and not only from him, but mainly from him. The JSE was one of very very few journals that consistently published AIDS dissident papers. Many of Bauer's AIDS papers are thus available online through the JSE. EdgeScience is a publication of the SSE which publishes the JSE, so then no real surprise that they have given Bauer a platform there.

One of the most well-known comprehensive websites on AIDS dissent is this one
http://www.virusmyth.com/
and there is a lot of stuff there, including video doccies.

Also here http://www.rethinkingaids.com/Home/tabid/36/Default.aspx

So many others - David Crowe is a well-known Canadian AIDS dissident. His site is here http://aras.ab.ca/index.php

There are plenty of documentaries on AIDS dissent available for viewing on the web, audio podcasts. This one is a notable one "The Other Side of AIDS', Robin Scovill's film,
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-266890172132861595#

You can even download the transcript at the official film website
http://www.theothersideofaids.com/images/OSATranscript.pdf

And a new doccie causing a lot of waves, 'House of Numbers' (not viewable on the web as far as I know).

From this documentary, 'House of Numbers', Luc Montagnier himself was interviewed by filmmaker Brendan Leung and Montagnier had this to say, “We can be exposed to HIV many times without being chronically infected. Our immune system will get rid of the virus within a few weeks.”

Yup that's right, no kidding. That's the same Montagnier who won the Nobel prize in Medicine in 2008 for discovering 'HIV' as the cause of AIDS.

Welcome to the world of AIDS.

The AIDS orthodoxy went into PR damage control after that one got out - Motagnier was taken out of context, he didn't really say what he said, shut up you AIDS denier Nazis with your quote mining blabla.

So the "leading" AIDS "expert" in the US, Bob Gallo the pioneer so-called, the man who announced to the world he had discovered the virus causing AIDS/GRID is a thieving crook and the man who really did discover 'HIV' at the Pasteur Institue and won the Nobel for it in 2008 says “We can be exposed to HIV many times without being chronically infected. Our immune system will get rid of the virus within a few weeks"

Oh yeah by the by, the most sophisticated and expensive assay employed in the lab to detect HIV is the PCR (polymerase chain reaction) - a dual primer DNA amplification technique, recognised as far more accurate and reliable than say a p24 antigen assay, Western Blot and the ELISA. It's invention in the early 80's, notably by the American biochemist Kary Mullis revolutionised microbiology and genetic research, medical diagnostics, forensics and molecular paleantology. It won him the Nobel in chemistry in 1993. In fact the patent was sold by Cetus (the company Mullis worked for) to Hoffman-La Roche in 1991 for 300 million US dollars. No no typo - that is three hundred million dollars. Thing is Mullis himself says you can't use PCR to detect HIV, it's essentially bogus to use PCR for HIV diagnostics for a number of reasons. Then again Mullis is an AIDS dissident, based on his own investigations into HIV/AIDS, described briefly in his book 'Dancing Naked in the Mind Field'.

Then again Roche itself (formerly Hoffman La Roche) agrees clearly, asserting the type of PCR used to routinely diagnose HIV infection (including in the HIVNET Uganda trial) "is not intended to be used as a screening test for HIV-1 or as a diagnostic test to confirm the presence of HIV-1 infection in anyone." There is a similar unambiguous disclaimer on the Abbot Labs test kits for ELISAs re HIV testing.

The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. Actually the left hand doesn't know or care what the left hand is doing.

Welcome to the world of AIDS.

You thought I was exaggerating when I said the facts on HIV/AIDS are eye-opening? This is just for openers, this is nothing, it all gets much much worse than this. I haven't even opened up with the heavy artillery (no don't worry I won't)...It's all there in the evergrowing and comprehensive AIDS dissident literature. Why repeat what's already there after all and accessible on the web? If anybody is so interested they can check the dissident websites/books etc themsevles, if not well then that can't be helped. You can take the horse to water but you can't make it drink.

Robert Anton Wilson as many of you know wrote a book in the 80's entitled 'The New Inquisition', about the tactics of CSICOP and the like in misrepresenting, censoring and trying to bully parapsychology out of the arena of science. The NIH and BigPharma and UNAIDS and the like and for that matter the medical industry as a whole make the old CSICOP and their successors look like a bunch of amateur fourth grade crybabies by comparison. New Inquisition puleeeze, Anton Wilson had no idea. The AIDS industry is nothing less than an AIDS Inquisition that has killed and maimed tens of thousands of people in the name of health care and saving lives and marches ever onward and relentlessly, especially now in Africa where the poorest of the poor must pay the highest price (pregnant women and babes too) so the AIDS industry can thrive. In the name of science and health care.

Duggan thinks the AIDS Inquisition is on his side even as they have killed and maimed quite literally tens of thousands of people with 'life-saving' medication, and scientists like Bauer, Mullis and Duesberg and so so many others are trying to save his life and the lives of other victims of a fiasco unprecedented in the history of medicine and arguably science itself, and they are subjected to ridicule, ostracisation, bullying,intimidation, threats to their careers and jobs (Duesberg very very recently), loss of funding and the like from their own colleagues.

Parapsychologists and scientists interested in parapsychology have no REAL idea what intimidation, misrepresentation, ostracisation, bullying and censorship is, they just think they do. They have it easy compared to AIDS dissident scientists and academics and there is so so much more at stake - people's lives. BTW there is a lot I could say about the psychology of the victim of the AIDS Inquisition, including notably the gay male victim and his entirely unconscious, but vocal, forceful, conspicuous and cruelly ironic complicity with the AIDS industry, but that's a whole other thing (and it's there in the dissident literature). On that alone there is a considerable dissident literature, on that ALONE. Complex psychology and sociology is involved (including destructive group-think), no conspiracy by the usual understanding of the term, just deep-seated, complex and thus unconscious destructive psychological/sociological factors.

[Erich]

Larry,

For the record I said that I believe the buildings were destroyed in their entirety by the airplanes crashed into them which were flown by members of a fanatical islamic faction.

I did say that I thought it was too damn coincidental that certain fanatical factions within the US gov't were wishing for a "new Pearl Harbor", just before this happened, to stimulate a change in US foreign policy and that this merits serious investigation.

I also said that our invasion of Iraq was based on flimsy evidence at best and that - and this is also important - it was an unfortunate distraction from the hunt for the real perpetrators of 9/11; meaning Bin Laden and his crew. Where Larry are the Iraqi WMD? Where is Bin Laden?

How do these statements make me a facist or put me in league with Wu? Sheesh.....

[Michael Duggan]

Larry you know a lot about the history of the epidemic. I wonder why you appear to be fixated on this issue? I have to disagree with you that Nevirapine is toxic. This belongs to the NNRTI class and it has a fairly good safety record apart from use in pregnant women and those who start treatment with a relatively high CD4 count. You know, we could argue all day. It would be fun to thrash out these ideas elsewhere and free up this blogpost. I have the feeling that whatever I say, will not impact on your belief system. I am evidence driven, I see the evidence all the time with my friends and me. People go on treatment, their viral load reduces to undetectable and their CD4 count shoots up. They feel better, more energy, and if they had an opportunistic disease at the time, this vanishes as their immune system recovers. This is not some abstract notion, but reality for me and lots of others I know. Larry are you aware of the SMART study (see here: http://www.aidsmap.com/cms1044580.aspx). This quite clearly showed the harm stopping treatment and allowing the virus to return did on those people who were randomised to an interuption in treatment. You appear to be arguing from flawed early data from the pre-HAART days. Sure, the early NRTI Zidovudine (AZT) was toxic, especially as it was the only one available until 1992 - 1993 when other NRTI's became available (D4T, DDI, DDC) and had to be used in high quantities (1200 mg a day). Nowadays we have a smorgasboard of anti-retrovirals, from several different classes. These have EXCELLENT safety profiles. 96 week data from Raltegravir (an integrase inhibitor) show barely any side effects, for example. Darunavir, which I am taking, also has hardly any side effects. These days it is easy to assemble a powerful triple cocktail to suppress the virus and live a normal life as I do. This is the day to day reality for millions of people. I read what you say, and you come across as highly intelligent, but the essence of what you say is utter blancmange. No, I haven't fallen for the conventional line, but my own experience, and as Michael Prescott has said on this blog before, there is nothing as powerful as personal experience!
On a more serious note, this stuff is dangerous, especially when peddled by people who are articulate and influential (Duesberg, Bauer, et al). nearly half a million people were denied medication because Thabo Mbeki (the former president of South Africa) listened to the arguments of the denialists. This is tragic beyond words and makes me angry at denialists in particular but this whole conspiracy field in general. ...... and MP, thanks for bringing this poison to the forefront.

[dmduncan]

There WERE explosions heard and flashes of light were seen. Of course, the 911 Truthers can't imagine any explanation for them except controlled demolitions, which explains why they are as deluded as they are.

http://www.debunking911.com/explosions.htm

Repeat: There is NO evidence of controlled demolition, there are NO witnesses to controlled demolition. None.

The hard heads who think there is just can't seem to distinguish the sound of an explosion from the theory which accounts for it which is in their minds ALWAYS and ONLY due to controlled demolition perpetrated by some evildoing member of a government conspiracy.

[dmduncan]

And what is it that one clown wrote, that not all 911 Truthers are Bush haters?

You mean you can actually LIKE Bush and seriously believe he had something to do with 911?

Which 911 Truthers are PRO Bush?

[realpc]

"96 week data from Raltegravir (an integrase inhibitor) show barely any side effects"

The drugs are taken for life, not for 96 weeks.

"I see the evidence all the time with my friends and me. People go on treatment, their viral load reduces to undetectable and their CD4 count shoots up. They feel better, more energy, and if they had an opportunistic disease at the time, this vanishes as their immune system recovers."

The assumption is that the drugs kill HIV, which was suppressing the CD4. The immune system is then allowed to recover and health is restored. Because that assumption seems reasonable on the surface, it has not been questioned by aidstruth, etc.

It's hard to know if your story is true, since your evidence is anecdotal and there is not controlled research comparing HIV drugs vs no drugs. You also don't say how long the benefit lasted for the patients you know.

Some of the HIV skeptics would say that health was not really restored. The toxic chemicals may have killed the opportunistic infections (since they are toxic they kill everything).

The mainstream story goes: kill the HIV and the immune system is able to recover, and it is able to kill the opportunistic infections.

These 2 stories can both explain the "evidence" you have observed, and we would need controlled research to know which is true.

[Leo]

I just found this article saying that neuroscientists have used FMRI machines to decode from brain activity complex memories. Fmri machines have also been used to decode thoughts which very good predictably. Of course it's no surprise Fmris are able to do this and that is does prove the mind is produced or an emergent property of matter or that that the brain is a receiver or filter of the mind/consciousness. What do you think?

http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2010/03/brain_scans_read_memories.php

[kris]

it would work for either Leo

[Michael Prescott]

"My point is YEC is neither here nor there as far as morality is concerned, whereas Holocaust Revisionism is morally repugnant."

True. I shouldn't have listed them together. I was just trying to think of outlandish claims that I would categorically reject. I have nothing personal against Young Earth Creationists; I just think their point of view is impossible to take seriously. On the other hand, Holocaust deniers are generally trying to whitewash Nazism, paint Hitler in a favorable light, and spread anti-Semitic libels.

[Michael Duggan]

"there is not controlled research comparing HIV drugs vs no drugs" - pay attention! This was tested in the SMART study and it quite clearly showed a massive decline in health for people randomised to the placebo interuption arm.

"Some of the HIV skeptics would say that health was not really restored. The toxic chemicals may have killed the opportunistic infections (since they are toxic they kill everything)" - As I've said before, anti virals today are not toxic and have no anti fungal / bacterial ability. They are anti-virals (the clue's in the name) and ONLY target HIV enzymes / entry receptors. Your explanation is beyond ridiculous.

Here are few prominent denialists who refused treatment and died prematurely:

Ken Anderlini
Michael Bellefontaine
Sophie Brassard
Ronnie Burk
Jerry Colinard
Sylvie Cousseau
Boyd Graves
Mark Griffiths
Robert Johnston
John Kirkham
Kelly Landis
Jack Levine
Christine Maggiore
Casper Schmidt
Jody Wells
Scott Zanetti
.........................

[realpc]

I never said people can be cured of AIDS with no treatment. I said there is no treatment that has been proven safe and effective, over periods longer than 2 years.

The SMART study did not compare drug to no drug, it compared continuous to interrupted. And it only lasted 2 years.

[Winston]

Siding with JREF is like siding with The Legion of Doom against the Super Friends. You are siding with evil, not good. And that is an insult to the victims' families who did not get their questions answered and didn't get a real investigation.

Michael, despite your emotional closed minded dismissal, there is hard evidence too, like the molten metal, WTC basement explosions, etc. that are NOT explainable by the official version. See the film "9/11 Mysteries" on YouTube, or "9/11 Blueprint for Truth". The evidence IS THERE. The problem is your emotional psychological block against objectivity on this issue.

[Winston]

dmduncan,
In the film "9/11 Mysteries" you can see a clip of the WTC collapse. Just before the collapse, the camera shakes, and you can hear the explosion, which comes BEFORE the collapse, not after it! The ground shaking is what you would expect from an explosion before the collapse.

The basement explosions means that there were bombs down there too. Plus the molten metal, thermite, etc.

Denying the HARD EVIDENCE doesn't make it go away.

You fundamentalists need to be objective and accept reality.

[Winston]

[i]I only wish other prominent pro-psi proponents (academics, writers and scientists) like Brian Josephson (and we have no scientist more prestigious in the pro-psi camp than Josephson) would say the same thing as Prescott, go on public record and distance themselves from 'woo-woo' Wu. Josephson is actually under an obligation to do this since he has given his endorsement to SCEPCOP, and given his prestige, I think he should do the right thing here.[/i]

Stop taking cheap shots here. SCEPCOP has nothing to do with this. SCEPCOP is merely against pseudoskepticism, it is not pro-conspiracy or anything.

There are my personal objective opinions. No need to bring Brian Josephson into this. Most parapsychologists do not wish to touch this subject. They don't need the controversy.

Again, you are using ad hominem attacks rather than discussing the OBJECTIVE EVIDENCE. You are being emotional, not logical.

[Winston]

Michael,

First, the people here trying to connect 9/11 Truth to Holocaust Revisionism is inappropriate, unfounded and a low level tactic of desperate people to discredit something.

Anyhow Michael, I still don't think you did any research on 9/11. You should do at least SOME first, before commenting and drawing conclusions. Watch those three films I recommended above.

But if you want to be closed minded, it's up to you.

Btw, the WTC fires were NOT a raging inferno. You are WRONG about that. Do some research and you will see. Open air fires can only go up to 1200 F. That's not a raging inferno. It's not enough to soften steel either. Plus the smoke from the fires showed an oxygen starved fire, meaning the fires were almost out. Also, people at some point went down the WTC THROUGH the collision point and reported that the fires were small and almost out.

So much evidence Michael.

How do you explain the subbasement explosions, molten metal, thermite, etc.? All of that is HARD EVIDENCE, not theory or conjecture. So there is a valid basis here for doubt.

Why would so many structural engineers doubt the official version? I posted a link to hundreds of them.

If you see Gage's film, you'll see a chart showing all TEN FEATURES of the collapse fitting that of a controlled demolition, and NOT ONE fitting that of a fire collapse.

Finally, on a personal note, you should be glad that people are still posting on this page. It raises the page in the search engine. You should monetize your site with Adsense or something.

[Winston]

Read what this structural engineer said:

http://crimesofthestate.blogspot.com/2007/03/structural-engineering-professor-comes.html

Check out the kind of credible experts that dispute the official story:

http://www.ae911truth.org/profile.php?uid=998501

Name: Claude Robert Briscoe
Title: P.E.
License #: Civil Engineer C17546 -- California
Degree: BS Engineering, UCLA
City: Santa Rosa
State: CA
Country: USA
Category: Engineers (Degreed & Licensed - Active & Retired)
Discipline: Engineering
Status: Degreed and Licensed
Bio:

45+ years in civil and structural engineering design and construction with project work in bridges, buildings, foundations, earth retaining structures, roads, highways, and various commercial, industrial and public works facilities.

Personal 9/11 Statement:

The collapse of the three WTC buildings would seem to defy the laws of mechanics, conservation of energy and known structural failure behavior. The case for the destruction of the three WTC buildings by means of "controlled demolition" is overwhelming.

Verification Status: Verified

-------------------------

L. Alan Pyeatt
P.E.
Lic: C56857 CA (Civil Engineer)
B.S.C.E.
Malibu, CA

Engineering — Degreed and Licensed

• Bio:

Over 25 years experience in civil engineering and construction (mostly public works). Project Manager for Federal Demonstration Project and two APWA/Southern California award-winning projects in West Hollywood, California. Also served as Project Manager for a fire sprinkler subcontractor on building projects in Houston, Texas (including high-rise buildings in Houston and San Antonio).

• Personal 9/11 Statement:

The fact that both towers collapsed in their footprints, without any toppling of the upper floors, clearly indicates controlled demolition as the cause of the buildings' collapse, rather than structural failure. In my opinion, the collapse of the south tower (WTC 2) illustrates this idea most clearly. The airplane which hit this tower entered the south wall, and wreckage can be seen in the videos exiting the east wall. As a result, one would expect the damage to be worse near the southeast corner of the building, and any structural collapse should have occurred first at this corner. This should have resulted in the upper floors toppling toward the southeast. However, videos of the building's collapse clearly show it failing in a more or less symmetrical manner.

In contrast, the north tower (WTC 1) was hit by the first airplane in the north wall, at almost a perpendicular angle to the north wall. And yet, the upper floors of this building leaned toward the south as the building collapsed.

Likewise, there are two failure phenomena which cannot be explained by the "pancake collapse" theory. First, video of the collapse of the north tower shows the upper floors (approx. 10 stories) toppling toward the south. Yet, instead of falling to the ground relatively intact (as they should have done with no structure supporting them from beneath at that point, and nothing pressing down on them from above), they mysteriously disintegrated in mid-air. What forces (other than explosives) could have caused this?

Second, a video exists which shows part of the inner core of the north tower still standing prior to the south tower's collapse. And yet, with only minor debris falling on it from the south tower, the remaining core structure disintegrates. Unless the video is faked (and I have seen no evidence of this), what would have caused the remaining core structure to collapse?

[tanabear]

Erich: "For the record I said that I believe the buildings were destroyed in their entirety by the airplanes crashed into them which were flown by members of a fanatical islamic faction."

So what happened to WTC7?

dmduncan: "Which 911 Truthers are PRO Bush?"

I did vote for Bush in the 2000 election and supported him until the Iraq invasion in 2003. However, it was difficult to continue to support someone who lied us into a war. If you think there are good reasons why a patriotic American should have support Bush throughout his entire Presidency, then I'm all ears.

Winston: there is hard evidence too, like the molten metal, WTC basement explosions, etc. that are NOT explainable by the official version."

None of the evidence can be explained by the official version. However, all of it can be explained by the demolition hypothesis. You must remember that people believe the official story for personal, political or psychological reasons. Nobody believes in the official story for intellectual reasons(i.e based on the evidence alone.

There is no proof that the fires weakened the steel.

Markus Hesse: "The simple fact that the towers came down proves they did."

You are reasoning backwards. You are starting with a conclusion then assuming there must be evidence to support it. This is not how criminal investigations are done and it is not a reliable method for discovering the truth.

What did NIST(The National Institute of Standards and Technology) find in their investigation. Regarding the perimeter columns, they found that only 2% of the areas tested showed temperatures that exceeded 250C(482F) and none of the core columns showed temperatures that high.

The simplest is explanation is demolition.

[Hopi]

Winston/Tanabear,
I've never heard of this "inside job" hypothesis. Can you say what % of US citizens believes this to be so?

[Michael Duggan]

"I never said people can be cured of AIDS with no treatment. I said there is no treatment that has been proven safe and effective, over periods longer than 2 years." - this is not true Realpc. Somne people have been successfully supressed for ovr a decade with limited effects from the drugs (maybe lipodystrophy from the ealrier thymydine analogues).

"The SMART study did not compare drug to no drug, it compared continuous to interrupted. And it only lasted 2 years."- This is true, but when the treatment is interupted and they are compared to those in the continuous arm, then this is the same as doing a drug no drug comparison, and that clearly showed a huge benefit from meds.

[tanabear]

Hopi: "I've never heard of this "inside job" hypothesis. Can you say what % of US citizens believes this to be so?"

The 9/11 Truth community itself is not of one mind on most issues surrounding 9/11. So it is difficult to discern who believes what, but there have been a few polls taken on the matter.

"Thirty-six percent of respondents overall said it is "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that federal officials either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or took no action to stop them "because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East...The poll also found that 16 percent of Americans speculate that secretly planted explosives, not burning passenger jets, were the real reason the massive twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed."
Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll 2006

If you wish to become more informed on the matter the best websites to start at are:

http://www.ae911truth.org/
http://911research.wtc7.net/

Books:
The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-Up, and the Exposé by David Ray Griffin

9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press by David Ray Griffin

Youtube:
WTC7: NIST finally admits free-fall Parts I, II, III by David Chandler
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDvNS9iMjzA&feature=related -

[Hopi]

Mental disorders are common in the United States and internationally. An estimated 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and older — about one in four adults — suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year.

So the 16% you cite could in theory all be from the mentally ill fraternity.

[dmduncan]

"I did vote for Bush in the 2000 election and supported him until the Iraq invasion in 2003. However, it was difficult to continue to support someone who lied us into a war. If you think there are good reasons why a patriotic American should have support Bush throughout his entire Presidency, then I'm all ears."

1. If you read my question carefully, which you did not, you would find that I asked which Truthers ARE pro Bush. I didn’t ask which ones WERE. At some point you got suckered into Trutherism and turned anti Bush. Or turned anti Bush and then got suckered into Trutherism.

Which Truthers ARE PRO Bush? Not WERE, prior to their conversion, but ARE?

2. I can't defend the Bush presidency. He was too unconsciously progressive, advised by neo cons with disastrous foreign policy objectives and beliefs.

I am ANTI Bush and ANTI Obama The Fabian — which doesn't make me PRO Truther.

3. I think Bush and Co. just KNEW the WMDs were in Iraq in much the same way that you Truthers just KNOW 911 was an inside job.

Both of you groups, neo cons and Truthers, look at the evidence for your views and can see it ONLY ONE WAY. Remember Powell’s excellent presentation at the UN? So you are really not that much different in the reasonableness of your judgments regarding evidence. You should all get together and have a few beers, trade notes. You use the same techniques.

I think Bush, like you, was a True Believer, who fully expected to be exonerated and proven right by what they’d find in Iraq.

And here’s the truly hilarious part. The administration can mastermind the demolition of a skyscraper in NYC, the most populous city in the country, without being obvious about it — but they CAN’T plant WMDs in the deserts of Iraq and then say “Oh, loooky what we found HEEEERE! See? We TOLD you Saddam was stockpiling WMDs!!!”

No. They would rather be remembered for one of the biggest blunders in recent history rather than saving themselves all the grief and trouble by faking the discovery of WMDs in Iraq.

Oh wait...that was part of the conspiracy too, wasn’t it? They were deliberately trying to look incompetent regarding Iraq so that nobody would suspect them for 911!

To paraphrase Johnny Cochrane: If it does not fit, you must omit!

[dmduncan]

"Winston/Tanabear, I've never heard of this 'inside job' hypothesis. Can you say what % of US citizens believes this to be so?"

Oh how I envy you, Hopi. But where the heck have you been all these years?

[Vitor]

Winston Wu,

your reputation is over. You are now only a problem to us. In fact, you are dishonest. I have pointed to you many erros in your article "debunking the skeptics" and you never changed! Examples:

01 - "In Flim Flam, he gives something like 28 debunking points, if my memory serves me correctly. I had the opportunity to confront Randi at a Parapsychology Association conference with proof in hand, and in tape-recorded interaction he admitted he was wrong on all the points. He even said he would correct them for the upcoming paperback being published by the CSICOP group. (He did not.)"

***Wrong. Puthoff lied. The tape never existed.

02 - "Just recently some famous mediums were tested under controlled conditions by Dr. Gary Schwartz of the Human Energy Systems Laboratory at the University of Arizona, which revealed some astonishing results."

*** Gary Schwartz's studies have many flaws! You KNOW there are refutations!

[kris]

vitor would you like to provide actually evidence for your allegations?

[Markus Hesse]

Another obvious issue to be had with the controlled demolition theory is how in hell did "they" manage to rig 2 giant and heavily trafficked towers with explosives without literally anybody ever noticing anything?

If you've ever watched footage of such rigging you'll have seen just how very LOUD it gets with all the cutting and ripping off of panels, the drilling of holes for the detonation charges and then the endless wiring up and synchronization testing.

And yet "they" managed it all without a peep. I expect they used portable Cones of Silence, you know the NSA must have them!!!!

Oh yeah, and another thing: why brazenly commit the crime of the millennium with dozens of cameras focused right on the target and with half the world watching in real time? So much to potentially go wrong and blow your cover yet it's deemed an acceptable risk? Really? "Gee, I hope it won't look too much like a controlled demolition, people might start asking questions."

It seems to me that Truthers have a flawed sense of deconstructive logic, they simply take it as a given that the towers were rigged for demolition without actually stopping to consider just how implausible the notion is.

[Vitor]

kris,

we already discussed this here:

http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/michael_prescotts_blog/2009/05/combat.html

[realpc]

The controlled demolition theory makes absolutely no sense. If the Bush administration wanted to create an apparent terrorist attack, they could have simply planted explosives and blamed it on terrorists. Then the story -- that the buildings were destroyed by explosives -- and the facts, would all add up and make sense.

WHY would they add the airplanes??? WHY would they think up such a convoluted plan that could so easily go wrong? All the airplane hijackings would have to be coordinated with the controlled demolition. FOR WHAT REASON?

Then you'll say the airplanes were added to make it more realistic. But WHY bother?

[realpc]

Michael Duggan,

If it's true that many AIDS patients had their health restored, to some extent, by HAART, then the HIV skeptics should try to explain why that would be the case. I searched and searched and could not find a single controlled study showing what you are claiming. All I could find were studies showing decreased HIV and increased CD4, comparing one kind of drug to another.

There was NOTHING, not even on AIDS Truth, showing what you are claiming.

[dmduncan]

Not only did the evildoers have cones of silence, but they also had cloaking devices as evidenced by the fact that none of them were ever seen planting explosives.

[tanabear]

Hopi: ""So the 16% you cite could in theory all be from the mentally ill fraternity."

So believing that explosive charges can blow-up buildings and other structures is a sign of mental illness?

dmduncan: "Which Truthers ARE PRO Bush? Not WERE, prior to their conversion, but ARE?"

I'm not sure if there are many or any truthers who are also pro-Bush. I'm not sure why that matters either. The 9/11 Truth community is very broad in their political view points, from strongly conservative to hard core leftists and everything in between and outside. Richard Gage, the founder of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, is a Reagan conservative, while David Ray Griffin is your standard liberal college professor. Ultimately, those in the 9/11 Truth community care about uncovering the truth about 9/11.

dmduncan: "think Bush and Co. just KNEW the WMDs were in Iraq in much the same way that you Truthers just KNOW 911 was an inside job."

No, we are asking for an actual investigation into the massacre of innocents on 9/11. Are you against this? Bush and his not-so-merry band of neo-con crazies weren't interested in the truth. They propagandizing to start a war. The Iraq Attaq, which was premised on several conspiracy theories, has led to the deaths of thousands of American soldiers, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and trillions of wasted dollars. I doubt an investigation into 9/11 would be so destructive.

dmduncan: "I think Bush, like you, was a True Believer, who fully expected to be exonerated and proven right by what they’d find in Iraq."

Bush was a neo-con puppet. The neo-cons didn't care if there were or weren't WMD's in Iraq. They wanted a war and that is what they got. So from their standpoint they were quite successful.

dmduncan: "The administration can mastermind the demolition of a skyscraper in NYC..."

Who said the administration masterminded the 9/11 attacks?

dmduncan: "Oh how I envy you, Hopi. But where the heck have you been all these years?"

Ignorance is bliss.

Markus Hesse: "Another obvious issue to be had with the controlled demolition theory is how in hell did "they" manage to rig 2 giant and heavily trafficked towers with explosives without literally anybody ever noticing anything?"

What would they have noticed? It could have been done at night and on the weekends when the occupancy was down. Plus, the explosive charges would have been placed in and around the core and perimeter columns which were accessible from the elevator shafts. This is not where regular workers would have had access. Obviously, it was a clandestine operation and they would have taken precautions to stay out of sight. An investigation could answer these questions though.

Markus Hesse: "Gee, I hope it won't look too much like a controlled demolition, people might start asking questions."

It did look just like a demolition and many people have been asking questions. But they counted on America having enough brain-dead zombies to keep anything from happening.

[Michael Duggan]

realpc, this is utter crap. There are countless examples of people who were on the verge of death who made amazing recovery after starting combination therapy.

see here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/aids-the-lazarus-effect-518783.html

and here:
http://arkarthick.com/2010/06/04/the-lazarus-effect-hiv-aids-campaign-documentary/

and here:
http://www.hbo.com/documentaries/the-lazarus-effect/index.html

here:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/07/lazarus200707

and here:
http://www.thebody.com/content/art32372.html

It's called the Lazarus effect. Most cases (like mine) are not as dramatic as these, but still, there is a huge improvement in health.

To be honest, I'm not too interested carrying on this discussion. You've obviously made up your mind to belive utter nonsense for whatever emotional reason you have. For me, this has the intellectual flavour of arguing that Santa Claus exists.

[Markus Hesse]

What would they have noticed?
You're really asking that? How about the noise? Or the dust and debris? Or maybe the miles of precision wiring snaking around the entire structure? Perchance the teams of faceless men in black carrying around equipment and explosives?

It could have been done at night and on the weekends when the occupancy was down.

So the security guards and off-hours employees were all in on it, huh? Do you think your house could be rigged for demolition without you ever noticing a thing? Maybe it already has been.....:o

Plus, the explosive charges would have been placed in and around the core and perimeter columns which were accessible from the elevator shafts. This is not where regular workers would have had access.

Yet all it would take is one single solitary non-conspirator to unexpectedly stumble across the operation and the entire jig would be up. What kind of evil genius goes into action with that hanging over their heads?

Oh, and you're forgetting the miles of synchronized wiring that would be necessary to detonate the charges sequentially, let me guess, in the ventilation shafts?

Obviously, it was a clandestine operation and they would have taken precautions to stay out of sight.

Just like the Watergate burglars did, right?

It did look just like a demolition and many people have been asking questions.

So you too believe in the existence of silent explosives?

But seriously, here's a question for ya:

How much money would it take to get you to kill 3,000 random, innocent Americans? Or, say you stumbled upon somebody else's plan to kill 3,000 innocent Americans. How much would it take to get you to stay silent afterward?

[realpc]

"There are countless examples of people who were on the verge of death who made amazing recovery after starting combination therapy."

HIV skeptics know about the Lazarus effect. They believe it's because the drugs kill some of the infections. I don't know if they're right. I know I could not find any controlled research showing that lowering HIV and raising CD4 correlates with improved health.

And it would be important to know how long the Lazarus effect usually lasts. If it's temporary then health was not restored.

[Michael Duggan]

They believe it's because the drugs kill some of the infections - no no no. These are anti-virals. They have no effect against opportunistics.

I know I could not find any controlled research showing that lowering HIV and raising CD4 correlates with improved health. - well lowering CD4 count certainly correlates with bad health! The obvious corrolary of this is that improving CD4 count improves health. This is observed countless times in the clinic and in clinical trials.

From what I've read, the Lazarus effect remains as long as combination therapy is adhered to.

Right that's it.

No more!

M.

[kris]

Vitor

We had this conversation earlier about Wu's article. We have no proof of lying on Puthoff parts and frankly with Csicop if they told me grass was green I would step outside to verify it. Trust factor zero with that crowd.

[Vitor]

The proof is that Puthoff never showed the tape and Randi knew that Puthoff couldn't show the tape. How Randi could know this? The most probable explanation is that he knew that Puthoff was tolding a lie. Another explanation is that Puthoff is crazy and alucinated all the events. In any case, Puthoff is not a person we can trust.

[kris]

where do we know that Randi demanded the tape?

[Vitor]

See here:

http://michaelprescott.freeservers.com/FlimFlam.htm

In closing, I quote Prescott: "There is no way for me to verify Puthoff's statement that he tape-recorded Randi's concession of defeat 'on all the points.'" Oh yes there is, Prescott. Contact Puthoff and ask for a copy of that tape-recording. Hal Puthoff is still alive, and he's a liar. No such conversation ever took place, I did not make such a statement, and Puthoff has no evidence to support his outright lie, because there is none.

James Randi

And...

Now for the alleged tape recording made by Puthoff ... Taking Randi's advice, I did manage to contact Hal Puthoff by e-mail. He replied promptly, but said that after having relocated several times over the past three decades, and having put many of his belongings in storage, he no longer knows where to find the tape.

Puthoff wrote: "Of course, having got caught, Randi would have to call me a liar, and count on the fact that I would be unlikely after all these years to put my hands on the tape. You can quote me in saying that I say that Randi is a liar when he calls me a liar. My profession is as a scientist dedicated to reality and truth, his is as a charlatan dedicated to misdirection and tomfoolery to gain the moment. Let the audience figure out who is more likely to be lying!"

Much as I respect Puthoff, I must reiterate what I said in my essay: Without hearing the tape, neither I nor anyone else can confirm that the encounter took place.

Randi could not know that Puthoff had "lost" the tape, if Puthoff was telling the true. It's clear that Puthoff is lying.

[kris]

seems like your right Vitor, that needs to be removed from Wu's essay.

[Roger Knights]

Here are a few observations on these topics:

MP wrote:

"On the other hand, Holocaust deniers are generally trying to whitewash Nazism, paint Hitler in a favorable light, and spread anti-Semitic libels."

I think there's a secondary motivation in the case of a few deniers: an after-the-fact attempt to justify the isolationist position before the US entered WW2. In the years before the Institute for Historical Review got mixed up in this denialism (before the mid-70s or so), I occasionally got bulk-mail flyers from them. The main point they were pushing then was that the US was tricked into entering WW2 by an administration that deliberately failed to prepare for the attack on Pearl Harbor, and that therefore pre-war isolationists like Harry Elmer Barnes were correct. I suspect they seized on Holocaust denialism to buttress their isolationism by reducing the moral justification for the war, not because of anti-semitism. (But I'm reasoning based on a very small, purely impressionistic peephole into the matter. I could be completely wrong.)

Isolationism is or was often associated with libertarianism, and the two logically fit together in seeking to minimize the role of the state and of collective activities like war. It's awkward for pure libertarianism that isolationism can't be justified.

=========

One snippet about the WTC: On C2C a few years back I heard a guest make an offhand comment that he was talking to the guy in the seat next to him about them as their plane left NYC (before their collapse) and this passenger said he was an architect and that the Towers were liable to collapse if stressed, because they were built using an unusual technique that relied on the outer skin for part of its structural integrity. This is why their pancake behavior could be natural (for them).

=========

The commonsense objections to the buildings being sabotaged (given above by others) outweigh the suspicious indications of sabotage, IMO. It's hard to keep ones head when trying to sort out matters, or "weigh probabilities," like this. One thing that helps is to recall all the evidence that pointed away from the official verdict about the JFK Assassination, and then bear in mind that these awkward items tended also to conflict with one another just as much, and that a lot of them didn't stand up to recent checkups the books like Case Closed. (Not that that book wasn't without its own flaws.) Therefore, suspicious evidence may not be as strong as it seems.

And also to recall that the impression of there being a coverup was partly the result of the official investigation's desire to avoid embarrassing the CIA, FBI, Secret Service, Kennedy's, etc., in conjunction with the desire of those entities to avoid embarrassment for bureaucratic sloth, obtuseness, timidity, buck-passing, etc. Those "benign" coverup behaviors are likely at work here too.

On the third hand, I don't think that people who are only moderately suspicious and are mostly calling for answers to their questions, like ZC, are in the same category as hyper-exited "Truthers," and they shouldn't be conflated with them.

=========

Vitor wrote:

Randi could not know that Puthoff had "lost" the tape, if Puthoff was telling the true. It's clear that Puthoff is lying.

I think Puthoff's statement looks fishy in context, and that the ODDS are that Vitor is right. But that doesn't mean that WU is lying too. I think his position of preferring the word of Puthoff to Randi in a he-said/she-said conflict is not outrageously indefensible, as Vitor implies.

=========

My feeling about this HIV/AIDS business is that somehow the truth lies in between, although on the surface, and even several layers down, it looks like a black/white scientific matter. I forget where I read it, but somewhere I came across a theory of how there could be a co-factor that enables HIV to become deadly. I wish this possibility were given more weight by the opponents in the debate, especially the orthodoxy.

I hadn't been aware until now of the prominent role Bauer had taken in this controversy. I tend to trust him, because I was so favorably impressed by his book in defense of "anomalistics," Science or Pseudoscience?

[Michael Prescott]

"So the security guards and off-hours employees were all in on it, huh? Do you think your house could be rigged for demolition without you ever noticing a thing? Maybe it already has been.....:o"

That made me laugh! But it also raises a serious point (or as serious as anything can be in the context of Trutherism): If the government really did carry out this plot, kill thousands, terrorize the country, and cover it all up ... then wouldn't it be extremely dangerous to speak out against it? Wouldn't the Truthers be placing themselves at grave risk, a risk comparable to publicly criticizing Stalin in the USSR in the 1930s?

You would think that people who believe they are facing a powerful and murderous conspiracy of top-level officials would take pains to conceal their identities in order to safeguard themselves and their families. After all, a government that could orchestrate the 9-11 attacks could easily make an inconvenient Truther disappear.

Yet I see no sign that the Truthers are the least bit scared of retribution. They go on any TV or radio show that will have them, write letters to the editor, run blogs and other websites, and do it all openly, using their own names and sometimes listing their professional affiliations.

Evidently they are not worried about being taken away in the dark of night by Men in Black.

All of which leads me to think that they are not entirely serious about the theories they spin. It is, I think, a kind of role-playing game for them, though perhaps it has reached the point where they cannot separate themselves from the drama they are acting out.

George Hansen noticed a similar phenomenon in the UFO community, where people would talk darkly about malevolent government conspiracies, yet seemed to have no absolutely no fear for their own safety, even though (if their speculations were true) they would surely be the prime targets of the conspirators!

I wrote about Hansen's article here:

tiny.cc/5vnm6

[Roger Knights]

Hey, MP, that reminds me of one of the top-10, you-must-buy-this book titles ever, They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers (1956), about the MIB and the related mysterious disappearances of certain Ufologists. They don't make 'em like that anymore. (Nor do they have the gloriously lurid covers of 50's paperbacks anymore.)

[Ben]

"...a kind of role-playing game for them, though perhaps it has reached the point where they cannot separate themselves from the drama they are acting out." -MP

Ah, yes. Imagination is both weird and wonderful. And the matrix of our reality is so full of glitches that the truth is not actually out there.

[Larry]

Roger, Gray Barker's book (Barker what a character he was) is wonderfully weird and kooky, and a trickster and teller of tall tales like Barker embodies as much as any other the trickster aspect to the UFO phenomenon that Hansen mentions. Same with so many others like Frank Scully who really told so many whoppers and so many contactees of course. But Barker, Scully, Richard Shaver as well stand out in many ways as embodying the Trickster aspects central to ufology.

Today Steve Greer stands out as much as anybody as a supreme trickster in the mess that is ufology. Thing is his tricksterism is basically all negative and destructive (his lies are simply tiresome, unfunny, unoriginal and derivative in the extreme). At least Scully and Barker embodied some of the positive aspects of the Trickster, they were original, humorous and daring. I guess the slide from positive to negative tricksterism is just one sad thing about the terrible state of ufology these days.

[Paul]

Having read the debate, I put my toe into the conversation somewhat gingerly howerver...Perhaps there is safety in numbers MP. If there is some great conspiracy and a number of people speak out about it rather than just one or two, I would think it might be safer for them. Would it not look very suspicious indeed if the main protagonists suddenly disappeared? :)

Having said that, it didn't stop Stalin.

[Larry]

And on the subject of tricksters and jokers - what a bizarre thread! Randi vs Puthoff argumentation, 9-11 nutjobs blabbering on regardless of logic and facts, ufology, HIV/AIDS controversy...

Just some further points about HIV/AIDS because I think it so vital and important to know (at the risk of boring those not interested, if not interested, just ignore and skip) - Duggan does not address remotely anything pointed out by AIDS dissident scientists, never mind refute them, not on HIV testing, not on HIV isolation, not on ARV toxicity, not on AIDS diseases, not on African AIDS, not on AIDS stats etc. In fact I bet he doesn't even know what they are saying, and doesn't want to know naturally. I mention above that nowhere do the AIDS orthodoxy acknowledge properly what the AIDS dissidents are saying, Duggan proves the point. He does not acknowledge what AIDS dissidents are *actually* saying, well he can't, to acknowledge what dissidents are actually saying across the board and in detail re HIV/AIDS is to undermine his own position too severely. In fact it is to destroy his position like a hurricane destroys a wooden shack.

Most AIDS dissidents among the general public themselves don't know too much about what AIDS dissident scientists are saying! in detail re the multiple etiologies of gay AIDS for example (GRID) and the very technical and difficult details re the controversy of HIV isolation and the 'gold standard' here (this involves very very difficult microbiology) and its application to HIV testing, as well as other complexities and controversies re HIV/AIDS, including the different types of ARVS and their differing toxicities and related. One really has to read up heavily on the dissident literature written by the leading AIDS dissident scientists, no short cuts here.

It's kind of like new-age types who believe in telepathy and remote viewing but can't be bothered to research anything in detail here, and don't know too much as a result. They just believe and often enough lack enough skepticism. They don't really know much. Most AIDS dissidents among the general public are very similar, their knowledge on AIDS is usually very superficial and they can't be bothered with really getting to grips with the subject.

Duggan spoke of the mild toxicity of AZT (mild toxicity!! like the two world wars were minor skirmishes), the gold standard of ELISAs (both of these assertions by Duggan are so easy to refute), and the three hundred thousand or so preventable AIDS related deaths in South Africa apparently caused by former president Mbeki's intransigience in not greenlighting ARVs to HIV positives in South Africa. This latter claim from researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health that Duggan takes as gospel truth http://www.aids.harvard.edu/Lost_Benefits.pdf
is not just a Big Lie, it's 'not even wrong'. There are so many big lies just on this claim alone (and such cruel ironies) that to do it justice one needs to write a monograph, on this alone. It is there in the dissident literature, if one is interested in finding out the facts in this regard. In fact this disgraceful horrific lie put out by the HSPH alone (and repeated ad nauseum by the know-nothing media and the AIDS status quo, you will find it all over the web) forever blackens the name of that institution, but one has to know the facts to realise just how shameful and horrific it all is. Just a few brief things here though - if one knows the actual facts re the actual stats on deaths in South Africa over the last two decades (little-known even by most run-of-the-mill AIDS dissidents), this alone discredits the Harvard "study". It is also important to note that the Harvard team's "findings" (more truly a disgraceful farce) refer to and include AZT and Nevirapine as the life-saving drugs here (not even the newer HAART drugs). The evidence that AZT and Nevirapine are adversely toxic and have a history of high numbers of fatalities to their name (esp AZT) is blatant, extensive and overwhelmingly clear. The drugs' horrific effects on pregnant women and their babies is a whole other thing. The Harvard paper emphatically and explicitly endorsed the provision of these ARVs as 'life-saving' drugs to pregnant women. On this alone they are guilty of unpardonable fraud and worse.

To refute the AIDS orthodoxy across the board is far far easier than showing that pseudoskeptics re psi are wrong about such controversial topics as telepathy, PK, remote viewing. Often enough some skeptics at least have raised valid objections against at least some of the studies in all these claims of psi abilities and the conclusions drawn from them and other related controversies (like non-ordinary healing for example). With AIDS, the AIDS orthodoxy have nothing but huge blatant lies and blunder and corruption on their side, and worse - they are guilty of iatrogenic manslaughter - worse murder - on a scale probably unprecedented in modern medical history. It is a fraud and an Inquisition of murder and maiming that continues relentlessly - pregnant women and newborns in Africa may well pay the biggest price here. Harvard and the US NIH promoting the killing and maiming of the poor in Africa (never mind their sanctioning of iatrogenic maiming and murder Stateside) for drug company profits, careers and reputations and deluded self-reinforcing group-think and calling it saving lives and health care. Naturally enough. Ain't that something? You think you know irony? Unless you really know the facts on AIDS, you don't begin to know...

[Michael Duggan]

Vitor, this is pretty serious if we are claiming Putoff lied in this tape (tapegate?)case, given his involvement in setting up the remote viewing paradigm in the seventies.
Integrity is EVERYTHING in parapsychology.

[Stephen]

Hi Michael,

A bit late in the day for me to add a comment, but I just wanted to add my voice in support of your article - things like 911 'truthism', HIV=AIDS denial, Climate Skepticism and miracle cancer curing diets/herbs have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Consciousness research/parapsychology.

What I do find rather ironic though is that you have written an article bemoaning Wu's support of the 911 truth movement within a matter of days of Massimo Pigliucci's interview on Skeptiko saying:

"Several skeptics, including surprisingly James Randi himself, as well as most famously Penn and Teller, are skeptical of the notion of climate change and global warming. Well, I’m sorry but that’s not their place. They’re not climate scientists; they know nothing about climate science."

My point here is that opinions about everything from vaccines to who shot JFK don't always overlap with opinions about the nature of consciousness. (After all, the skeptics are in the middle of a civil war about whether or not a theist can ever really be a true skeptic.)

I don't think you can ever really hope to change things. A lot of the unknown skeptic foot soldiers are nutty as fruit bats just as a lot of ardent believers in psi are.

Consider, some ardent materialistic skeptics over on the JREF forum believe not only that thermostats think "too hot, too cold and just right" but also that cock and ball toilet cisterns think "too much water, too little water and just the right amount of water".

Whether or not that's more bonkers than those who claim the British Royal Family are shape-shifting lizards really is a matter of opinion.

But when it comes to actual organisations that are trying to win public attention (and, therefore, by necessity the "middle ground") Wu's support of 911 truthism does indeed damage the image of his skepcop group.

[dmduncan]

The idea that the evildoers could've rigged the towers on weekends is hilarious to me.

People who haven't been there don't realize how MASSIVE each of those towers were. They weren't just tall. They were FAT all the way up. They were MASSIVE buildings.

Of course, if they had cloaking devices, and were careful not to bump into anyone...

[Vitor]

Duggan,

Integrity is EVERYTHING in parapsychology.

Sure. And that's why I don't believe in anything coming from Puthoff. His remote viewing's studies have many flaws too, and he always had a strange behavior, denying access to other scientists to see the data. See the criticisms by David Marks and Christopher Scott in Nature July 1982 and February 1986.

a) http://www.4shared.com/document/hBciuMtG/
10-_No_remote_viewing_July_198.html

b) http://www.4shared.com/document/Xq-pqHvp/
11-_Remote_viewing_exposed_Feb.html

[Michael Duggan]

the remote viewing paradigm is fairly well established now anyway (discounting Putoff's involvement) even still, this is worrying.

[Ben]

"Consider, some ardent materialistic skeptics over on the JREF forum believe not only that thermostats think "too hot, too cold and just right" but also that cock and ball toilet cisterns think "too much water, too little water and just the right amount of water".

Whether or not that's more bonkers than those who claim the British Royal Family are shape-shifting lizards really is a matter of opinion." - Stephen.

Stephen, I think I’m bonkers. The idea of cisterns and thermostats thinking makes sense to me. (The shape-shifting royal family is interesting too, but why stick to royals and reptiles? If you can shape-shift, you could be an angel or a god!)

Of course, cisterns and thermostats don't have many decisions to make. But even atoms make decisions. I’m no physicist, but a physicist once described the process to me: atoms encounter photons of various energies, but will react only to very specific photons. When the right photon strikes an atom, it absorbs the photon and its electron will move to a higher orbit. This event is brief and the atom then releases that exact amount of energy in the form of another photon. Anyway, atoms make choices as to which photons they will accept/reject.

If it is true that only mind makes choices, then atoms must be mental constructs.

Mind with the quality of atoms must be found in atoms and every thing above atoms. The properties of a subclass are adopted by the parent class. Mind begins with the atom, not the human or the reptile. Actually, most human choices are perfectly predictable and are reducible to binary logic. Unfortunately!

[Paul]

Hi Ben

The question is perhaps whether atoms make a 'choice' to accept a photon or whether there is some underlying principle which is predictable and which influences which are rejected and which are not.Does a sieve 'decide' what passes through it and what doesn't? :)

[realpc]

Larry,

I agree with you that the HIV drugs are toxic and deadly in the long term. I agree that, probably, HIv is not the primary cause of AIDS. However the emotionality of your tirades is not going to convince anyone. Sure there is corruption in the medical industry, but you can find corruption anywhere.

You seem to think this is all about drug company profits, and that's about as plausible as the 9/11 conspiracies. Don't you think ANY of the AIDS researchers are honest or well-intentioned?

AIDS research is confusing and the data is ambiguous and hard to interpret, and reading the reports requires specialized technical knowledge. And no matter how knowledgeable an expert might be, they still won't be able to understand.

Some diseases, and types of diseases, are just not understood.

They are fighting AIDS as if it were an infectious disease, but maybe it isn't. Or maybe infection is not the central cause. I think the medical industry wants to find effective treatments and vaccines but they can't because the problem is beyond current medical science.

AIDS is a real and deadly disease (or group of diseases). Patients are scared and they depend on the medical industry for hope. The medical industry wants to help them. Sure they want to make profits (who doesn't?) but they also want to sell something that works.

Now why do so many people believe HAART works? Duggan says he and his friends all experienced greatly improved health from taking it. I wonder why they think that. If an MD has been treating AIDS for decades, he must have a sense of whether or not certain drugs are effective. It can't all be placebo.

So I would like to know what's really going on, and it's almost impossible to find out. The HIV dissidents can be as irrational as the believers. I think the problem is there is a deadly disease that no one understands. They want to think it's infectious and they want to think it can be cured by eliminating the infection.

The drugs result in lowered HIV and raised CD4. Why is that? From what I read these markers are unrelated to health status. Duggan says they are related. Well Duggan is obviously very biased so I don't trust his opinion.

But I would like to understand this better. And Larry you could help us more by providing some clear and simple scientific facts, without the emotion. Yes I know the subject is not simple. But if you can't simplify it and boil it down to the essential points, no one is going to really listen.

[Ben]

The sieve is a good example, Paul; you could say that whoever made it “put their mind into it”, and made it capable of making this choice in the material world.
The question is:
If instinct is the mind of God made flesh,
Is technology the mind of man made mesh?
;-)

[Paul]

LOL. Ben you're too quick for me.

[Michael Duggan]

realpc,

When CD4 count is lowered you get opportunisitc disease. Arguing against this is like arguing against the sun rising in the morning. When you raise CD4 count, you get improved health and opportunistic disease disappears.

Where is the controversy here?

Your position is quite strange when you deny the link between health status and CD4 count. This is the BASIS of starting treatment around CD4 350 today.

As for Larry, I'm not even going to try and engage with this one!

[Ben]

"LOL. Ben you're too quick for me."

It's just pretend, Paul. Actually, I have a mind like a sieve.

[Paul]

Oh very good.

[realpc]

"When CD4 count is lowered you get opportunisitc disease."

Sure that's why AIDS Truth says, and what all the believers believe. But it's a correlation at best. We would need to see experimental research showing that HIV infection CAUSES lowered CD4, and lowered CD4 CAUSES an increase in OIs.

The directions of causality have not been determined.

You would need to show that HAART results in health benefits, AND that these benefits result ONLY because HAART lowers HIV, which allows the immune system to recover.

You would also need to show that these improvements last more than 2 years. AND that the damage caused by HAART is not worse than the disease.

It is misleading when the AIDS mainstream blames the high levels of cancer, heart disease, and dementia found in older AIDS patients on age. Yes, these do happen to be age-related diseases, but that does NOT mean they can't ALSO be caused by prolonged use of HAART.

People do not usually get serious age-related diseases unless there is something wrong with their lifestyle (smoking, inactivity, fast food diet, etc.)

AIDS patients are getting these serous diseases at relatively young ages, and it could be that every cell in their body is exposed to chemicals that interfere with basic life processes.

AIDS drugs do NOT target HIV infected cells. They damage all cells. They are like chemotherapy for cancer, damaging and weakening the entire body.

There are many important unanswered questions. I think the HIV drugs may seem to work sometimes, but not for the reasons you believe. And I think the drugs are extremely harmful and it is crazy to give them to everyone with positive HIV test.

[Michael Duggan]

Thanks for answering, but I disagree with most (no, all of them) of your points.

Let me explain;

you say "We would need to see experimental research showing that HIV infection CAUSES lowered CD4, and lowered CD4 CAUSES an increase in OIs." This would be unethical in humans but it has been done in monkeys using the simian equivalent SIV. It has been done in humanised mice as well. We have this evidence. (If I have time, I will get the references).

You say "You would also need to show that these improvements last more than 2 years. AND that the damage caused by HAART is not worse than the disease" - some pople have been on HAART for 14 years and they are doing fine, thank you very much. Yes, all drugs have side effects but the ones today are very tolerable, (I should know). I cycle 25 miles a day and gym train religiously. Without meds I would have died quite horribly. This is my experience.

You say "AIDS patients are getting these serous diseases at relatively young ages, and it could be that every cell in their body is exposed to chemicals that interfere with basic life processes" - There is evidence to suggest accelerated aging amonng HIVers. This could be due to the drugs, or it could be the result of infection. My intuition is that the older thymidine analogues (AZT, D4T, DDI, DDC) are responsible for this, not the newer drugs.

You say "AIDS drugs do NOT target HIV infected cells. They damage all cells. They are like chemotherapy for cancer, damaging and weakening the entire body" - This is not true. Modern anti-virals are specifically engineered to target viral proteins and disrupt the machinery HIV uses to reproduce. They do not affect celluar processes. The older drugs do affect fat metobolism, but not other cells. This is NOT chemotherapy!

There is no controversy realpc. The interest lies in understanding what motivates people to ignore the mass of evidence and focus on the slight irregularites (if they exist). This reminds me of skeptics who cling to the materialist viewpoint by obsessing about unimportant weaknesses in psi research.

[realpc]

"There is evidence to suggest accelerated aging amonng HIVers. This could be due to the drugs, or it could be the result of infection. My intuition is that the older thymidine analogues (AZT, D4T, DDI, DDC) are responsible for this, not the newer drugs."

Your intuition does not count as scientific evidence. And you have not linked any references. Who says the newer drugs do not damage normal cells? That isn't even possible.

And every time you say you're doing fine, you forget to mention how long you have been HIV positive and how long you have been on HAART.

[Chris]

Some conspiracy theories I think may have merit.

Rothschild/central/NWO has lots of persuasive stuff.

There's even a fair amount of material in regards to UFOs coverups which is I find highly convincing.

I do not think the same is true however with "Trutherism" or "Royal Family are Shape Shifting Reptiles" theories.

[Larry]

re the anti-Semitic maroon Chris above - Chris go back to reading your favourite book the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, adults are trying to use this forum..

realpc I note that you write way above "that the emotion of my tirades is not going to convince anyone" of the validity of AIDS dissent. There is no emotion to my tirades, you see what you want to see or you don't realise how bad things actually are or you haven't been personally affected by this AIDS fiasco. I have seen up close and personal the disastrous consequences of AIDS hysteria and pseudoscience, more so than you realpc ever would, that's for sure. I know people who have died from these ARVs, I have seen the horrific stressful and emotionally hellish consequences to the witch-mark HIV testing (which I know about a lot better than you realpc) on more than a few people, many of them are among the most already marginilised in society. I have seen whole families destroyed emotionally and financially by this insanity when one of their breadwinner's lives are ruined by the AIDS industry, so don't you lecture me about "emotional tirades". You remind me of a person who has never been shot at lecturing a combat veteran that he is being too "emotional" in recounting his war experiences and that it couldn't have been that bad.

I also know things that are not on public record re HIV/AIDS anywhere, relating to certain controversial events and happenings among AIDS dissidents themselves and even 'cutting-edge' science related opinions/theories among leading dissidents not on public record. I am certainly not going to mention them here (that's for sure!) nor how I know all this, it's nothing you know about realpc or could even begin to guess at.

I know HIV/AIDS science a lot lot better than you realpc (I think that fairly obvious actually), you seem fairly confused about a few things (and Duggan who doesn't know anything at all but mistakes bluff for knowledge and ignores every point I raise and allude to but goes on repeating his mantras like the true believer that he is. Naturally enough).

Hey Duggan, why don't you see if you can tell us what AIDS dissidents are saying about the multiple complex causes of gay AIDS/GRID and why they say what they do? I bet you don't even begin to know, since nowhere do the AIDS orthodoxy acknowledge what dissidents are *actually saying* here at all (just on GRID alone), not even close. I'll be waiting for hell to freeze over before that happens.

real pc writes I think AIDS is a real disease and that it often co-occurs with signs of HIV infection. I don't think HIV is necessarily the cause, or the only cause, of AIDS. Therefore, I don't think killing HIV should be the primary treatment goal.

realpc, what you write here is simply confused. AIDS is not a disease, so much as a syndrome/umbrella term for a number of diseases, this isn't even controversial. Of course there are AIDS diseases (not disease), the question and controversy is what is their cause/s? In fact it is the sheer number of AIDS diseases and the very different AIDS diseases themselves that begs several questions... Also how can you kill HIV exactly considering the actual facts about all kinds of HIV testing and the issues surrounding HIV isolation as written about by the leading AIDS dissident scientists? Talk about missing the whole central point to AIDS dissent, sheesh.

realpc - here is a challenge for you. Why was the conference last year on 'AIDS Denial' organised at Harvard a complete unfunny joke and only shows up the AIDS orthodoxy as a bunch of lying know-nothings? Just give me a couple of obvious reasons why, given the fact that the speakers "debunking" the dissidents were Seth Kalichman, the South African economist Natalie Nattrass and Chigwedere the Harvard Zimbabwean-born prof and given what they actually spoke about (all their video talks can be seen online if you haven't seen them). Why do all these speakers have no credibility for one? Do you even know realpc?

realpc - I am the only one (not you) who pointed out the relevant pertinent facts re Gallo and Montagnier (ZC re Montagnier as well to be fair) and Mullis re PCR. If you are going to convince anybody to even look at considering AIDS dissent as possibly valid science, these facts re Gallo, Montagnier and Mullis need to be mentioned. It also is important to actually put up links to dissident websites (if people are interested they can thus read what AIDS dissident scientists are saying in their own words and see who they are exactly. If people are not interested, then they are not interested). This obvious very easy thing to do (put up the urls/links to dissident websites) didn't seem to occur to you, realpc, so I did it. Important not to overlook the easy-to-do obvious stuff.

[Larry]

realpc you also wrote:
You seem to think this is all about drug company profits, and that's about as plausible as the 9/11 conspiracies. Don't you think ANY of the AIDS researchers are honest or well-intentioned?

I clearly wrote in plain English somewhere above that it is NOT only about drug company profits, that careers, reputations, delusional group-think comes into it, as do cultural/psychological/sociological and ideological factors. In fact I consider these cultural factors PRIMARY and the profit motives of drug companies very much secondary in promoting this horror that is HIV/AIDS. There are however big profits for drug companies involved, this is very easy to understand - what on earth does that have to do with any absurd conspiracy??

Yes I certainly think the vast majority of AIDS researchers are well-intentioned, as are many religious fanatics. That's why these AIDS researchers are so scary - the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Try read and take note of what I actually write realpc, that way you can avoid knocking down straw-men.

realpc - do you even know what many of these cultural (and by that I mean psychological and ideological and the like) factors contributing to AIDS hysteria even are? I find it wryly ironic you indulge in staw-man bashing here, since I have always been critical of AIDS dissidents for overemphasising the drug companies role in the HIV/AIDS horror and neglecting the role of cultural and psychological factors, not that the role of BigPharma is not significant, just that it is secondary to the cultural factors.

[Michael Duggan]

Larry, please have a cold shower, maybe some drinking chocolate and don't forget to take your medication.

Thanks.
M.

[Dan]

Hey all, This is off topic but I was just reading an article on Dying in a Readers Digest Magazine and this is what it said.

"No-one knows what it's like to die but an International collaberation of scientists and doctors is studying what happens to a person after they are determined "clinically dead".

Researchers say that death is not a specific moment: it's a process that begins when the heart stops beating, the lungs stop working and the brain stops functioning. They have discovered that thoughts may continue for up to an hour after clinical death.

Studies have shown that 10-20% of people who recover after a cardiac arrest and clinical death report lucid thoughts, reasoning and memories of the time during which they were clinically dead."

My own thoughts on this is that it seems to me although I have not read a lot of Reader Digest magazines is that they seem very biased towards mainstream science views.

What studies are these 10-20% statistics based on exactly? what do others think?

[michael duggan]

Dan, This 10 - 20 % figure is from Pim Van Lommels 2001 Lancet study.

The current research they refer to is the AWARE study.

[Winston]

Michael and all ridiculers here:

One new stunning argument I read from a researcher on my SCEPCOP forum where he debunked Dave Thomas' 6 points, which I hadn't thought of before, is this:

- If a few office fires burning for a few hours can bring down a whole steel skyscraper and pulverize it, why would control demolition companies need to spend MONTHS setting up rigged explosives around the core columns, when they could accomplish their task by burning jet fuel (ala WTC1+2) or gas (ala WTC7) for just a few hours? In other words, why spend months doing what you can accomplish in a few hours, which even a teenager could do? It doesn't make sense! The demolition companies would be out of business if that was true!

Likewise:

- If the failure of a single column can cause a 47 story building to implode and land mostly in it's own footprint, as NIST claims, then why do demolition companies rig and blow all the columns to accomplish the same thing?

See poster image below. I think I have a new business idea :)

http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/two-men-and-a-match-new-1.jpg

[Winston]

Michael,
Check out this interview with Richard Gage and Kevin Ryan on the Alex Jones Show. They make a very airtight case. And in another show, Gage is even compared to Galileo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5RXnwbPJOA

Also, check out this 7 minute interview of Richard Gage on KMPH Fox in Fresno. It's very pleasant and informative. Gage gets a lot of info in during the 7 minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oO2yT0uBQbM

The case looks pretty solid. So don't blame us.

And again, see the poster I linked above. If you're right, then I am in business :)

[Michael Prescott]

The WTC was designed to pancake in the event of a collapse. Most buildings aren't.

You don't know the first thing about this subject, Winston.

[Vitor]

Winston, and my allegations that you are a dishonest person, with my proofs about it?

Will you not answer?

[Larry]

At one skeptic forum (at least), as you would expect, it has been pointed out that Wu's surname is appropriate given his 9-11 trooferism. It's one thing I can heartily agree with the extreme psi skeptics on. From now on Winston should be called Winston 'WooWoo' Wu, or maybe just Winston Woo.

No Vitor, woowoo Wu will not answer, at least not remotely coherently. It's basic cognitive dissonance here.