As Promised: 9/11 Truthers Attempting to Co-Opt Occupy Wall Street

If this happens, I'll be correct and Alex Jones might have to stop writing about Occupy Wall Street (see previous post). As with so many petition-based protest movements, 9/11 deniers are attempting to hijack the Occupy Wall Street protests to forcibly insert their beliefs. Evidently they couldn't be part of the movement organically - I have yet to see any sizeable contingent of deniers actually doing any of the legwork - so conspiracy theorists need to activate their entire activist network just to try to get on the leaderboard. Link to the petition here.

So far it doesn't seem to be going very well. As of 20:00est today it has one of the highest rejection rates, at just over 25%:



which is a pretty high rate for this particularly permissive (and, by no coincidence, as-yet ineffectual) protest. One grammatically nonexistent item simply marked "Office of the Citizen" without further description only has about a 16% rejection rate, and even the particularly insipid, useless non-item "restore true democracy to the government" (which is also a historical fail, as our Founding Fathers imagined less democratic practices when it came to most things, from the election of Senators to who wasn't property) only gets rejected by about 17% of these charmers.

I think the movement is fundamentally a good idea. Its core tenants are too banal to be anything but. And here is how it could easily be destroyed. Let's see if there be skeptics among them.

NYCCAN's Pathetic Claims

"NYCCAN" is the 9/11 denier front that has so far failed a number of times to convince members of one of America's most politically diverse cities (including its margins...) to support their vague, ill-defined notion of a "new 9/11 Commission." Considering that 911truth.org only raised about 20% of the $50,000 it needs last year and has failed to even reset its counter for 2010, NYCCAAN's claim that it can "self-fund" its fictive investigation is a laughable, transparent farce, considering their bleating that the last one was "underfunded," clocking in at $15 million. As last year saw another failure on their part to actually do what they said they would do, their latest message to the troops reads like a Lehman Brothers sales pitch, only with slightly more lies by omission.

December 31, 2009

Dear Friends and Fellow Advocates for Answers and Accountability,

As we look ahead to 2010, we at NYC CAN would like to offer our deepest thanks to everyone who contributed to a remarkable and historic [failed]campaign, and we would like to take a moment to celebrate the achievements that give us much to build upon in 2010.

2009 was a year of tremendous progress for our cause. Among a long list of successes, a peer-reviewed paper was published in a mainstream scientific journal documenting the discovery of active thermitic material in the World Trade Center dust [that forced that journal's editor to resign in shame when it was discovered that the paper wasn't reviewed and was a shoddy joke unfit for a Blog post]; the petition of architects and engineers calling for a new investigation into the WTC destruction has leaped to nearly 1,000 signatories [most of whom aren't actually architects or engineers]while founding member Richard Gage, AIA travels the world delivering his analysis of the buildings' demise to thousands of concerned citizens and leaders [at a massive financial net loss]. The increasing strength and credibility of our message is evidenced by the ever greater frequency of media breakthroughs casting a positive light on the questions we pose.

And it ends with the most pitiful attempt at a claim of "forward progression" I've ever heard:

Because only 25 signatures are required for the insertion of an article on New Hampshire town ballots, Vote For Answers New Hampshire has set an ambitious goal of placing its article on 40 town ballots across the state at local elections this spring. The article reads:

Shall New Hampshire's Congressional Delegation be instructed to pursue a new and independent investigation to address thoroughly all of the evidence and unanswered questions related to the events of September 11, 2001? (The record of the vote on this article shall be transmitted by the Town of ________ to New Hampshire's Congressional Delegation.)

Already, petitioning efforts are underway in 21 towns, and several Town Halls have confirmed the wording is appropriate to be placed on their ballot.

So they claim they were able to get 52,000 signatures in New York (almost certainly a lie), and now want to move forward by aiming for 1,000 signatures in one of America's most libertarian states? They've lied about their capacity to accomplish tasks thousands of unpopular causes have in the past, so lets see if they can summon the almighty pillar of science and engineering expertise in the New Hampshire State Legislator on their daffy beliefs.