9-11 “Truther’s” Pentagon Rampage Ends in a Hail of Bullets

I always knew these “truthers” were totally nuts and had the potential to explode in a violent rage. Well, now it’s happened. John Patrick Bedell opened fire with two handguns at pre-screen area outside the Pentagon metro station and was subsequently shot and killed by security personnel.

The WSJ reports:

Officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Pentagon Force Protection Agency said Mr. Bedell emerged from the Pentagon subway station Thursday evening and made his way to a nearby guard post. When officers asked for his identification, Mr. Bedell, who was wearing a white button-down shirt and blazer, pulled out a pistol and started shooting.

The investigators said Mr. Bedell, who had studied physics and engineering, drove to Washington from his parents’ home in Hollister, Calif., in the days before the assault. Mr. Bedell’s 1998 green Toyota Avalon was recovered from a garage at the Pentagon City Mall hours after the attack. Additional ammunition was found in the car, authorities said.

Mr. Bedell’s parents reached out to law-enforcement officials after growing concerned about their son’s mental health. According to police in San Benito County, the Bedells filed a missing-persons report about their son on Jan. 4 after not hearing from him for several days…

On Jan. 11, Mr. Bedell’s mother told police her son had made a $600 purchase at a Sacramento-area gun range. The police don’t yet know if Mr. Bedell bought his guns there.

Concerns about the safety of U.S. military installations have been running high since a November shooting at Fort Hood in Texas killed 13 troops, and an earlier incident outside a Little Rock, Ark., recruiting station killed one soldier and badly wounded another. Authorities said both of those incidents were religiously motivated.

Mr. Bedell’s actions, by contrast, appear to have been prompted by his anger at the U.S. government, and belief that far-reaching conspiracies were behind events as big as the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

In a Nov. 25, 2006, podcast called “Directions to Freedom, Part Two,” Mr. Bedell said the “seizure of the United States government by an international criminal conspiracy” was a “long-established reality.” He criticized the military and intelligence services, which he said had become tools of an illegitimate regime. “This organization, like so many murderous governments throughout history, would see the sacrifice of thousands of its citizens, in an event such as the September 11 attacks, as a small cost in order to perpetuate its barbaric control,” he said.

Now it’s just a matter of time for liberal and conservative pundits to claim this guy was either a right-wing or left-wing extremist. Yet the “truthers” cut across the partisan divide and include kooks from both fringes. One thing they all share in common is a conspiratorial world view and an extreme apprehension of reality.

Speaking of which, expect the conspiracy sites to claim this was a CIA (or other government agency) psyops action intended to make the “truthers” appear violent and insane in order to turn the American public against them. I hate to break the news, but we did not require something like this to happen to know ya’all are nuts.

“Directions to Freedom, Part Two” is available here. Part One here.

Truthers Call for “Fact Based” Investigation

Here in NYC, truthers are trying to gather 30,000 signatures in support of their ballot initiative calling for a “fact based” investigation of the terrorist events on September 11, 2001. The investigation will be conducted by an independent “citizens commission” of luminaries including resident Pacifica radio pseudo-scholar Ralph Schoenman, LaRouche affiliate Karen Kwiatkowski, and perennial fellow traveler Ed Asner.

Will they gather the necessary signatures to get the initiative on the November ballot? Probably not. But even if the initiative manages to pass, what next? What impact will this have on policy? Like citizens tribunals and other manifestations of the political fringe, none. But it will allow conspiracy peddlers like Schoneman and Kwiatkowski to bolster their reputations in the truther cult.

The Best of Ron Paul Art

[h/t to Sultan Knish]

The Sultan writes:

Lately I’ve been getting emails and comment spam demanding that I revisit the failed candidacy of Ron Paul, which is somehow no longer a failed candidacy because of the attempted hijacking of the Nevada convention. And since it is late at night and no one is reading anyway, I’m happy to revisit it.

Behold.

In the far future, seconds from now, when historians will gather around their campfires and herd their yaks together to gaze back across the vast oasis of time at the great religious movements of history, they will no doubt cast their glance back at the great epochal tide of religious movements, Edisonism, Glaucology and of course the Ron Paul Campaign.

Like any great religious movement the Ron Paul campaign has produced no shortage of great art and it is our manifest destiny here to present them in all their glory.

[read it all]

[Ron Paul Revolution Liberty Goat]

Richard Falk: UN Bureaucrat for 9-11 “Truth”

[H/t to Contentious Centrist, CAMERA on Campus, and the New York Sun ]

Just when you thought the personnel at the United Nations could not get worse, Eli Lake writes, “a new Human Rights Council official assigned to monitor Israel is calling for an official commission to study the role neoconservatives may have played in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.” Apparently it is not enough to claim that the “neoconservatives” led us into war in Iraq (as opposed to the actions of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, or the decisions of President Bush), now some liberal leftists feel the need join the 9-11 “truth” bandwagon.

The NY Sun article continues:

Mr. Falk’s selection to the post of rapporteur has already prompted the government of Israel formally to request that Mr. Falk is not sent to the country. The Israeli press has reported that he may even be barred from entering the country…One reason the Israelis are concerned about his appointment is that Mr. Falk has compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinian Arabs to the Nazi treatment of Jews in the holocaust.

In a review of the factually deprived documentary, “Occupation 101,” CAMERA on Campus (Vol. 18, No. 1. Spring 2008 ) reports:

Richard Falk, who makes appearances throughout the film, is an emeritus professor at Princeton University with a long record of backing the wrong causes. In February [16] 1979, he published a piece in the New York Times titled “Trusting Khomeini,” extolling Ayatollah Khomeini, and ridiculing the notion that the Ayatollah was a religious reactionary.

I had a difficult time finding a copy of the article on the web. It is referenced in quite a few places but there are no links to the text. You can read Falk’s NYT article here but you’ll need a subscription.

Ron Paul and the Paulistas: The Power of Hot Air

I couldn’t resist this one. The Paulistas have identified another sure-fire way to raise the visibility of their chosen one, a rented hot air balloon. I must admit it is a pretty good idea to make use of a natural resource the campaign has an abundance of…hot air.

Read more here, here and here.

Is Ron Paul the Republican Ralph Nader?

I hear Nader is considering running. Is a Nader-Paul ticket in the works? If Buchanan and Nader were able to work together I see nothing preventing Nader and Paul allying against the evil forces of “corporatism.”

[From the New York Sun]

Ron Paul could be the Ralph Nader of 2008. Only this time, a third-party candidacy could hurt the Republicans, not the Democrats.

For now, Mr. Paul’s campaign is dismissing talk of a run as anything other than a Republican, and the candidate himself is focused on the primaries. “Ron’s committed to running for the Republican nomination or nothing,” a spokesman for Mr. Paul, Jesse Benton, said. Mr. Paul, who ran as a Libertarian presidential candidate in 1988, said the same to the Wall Street Journal last month. Nevertheless, the relative success the Texas congressman is having on the campaign trail has political observers envisioning how a Paul third-party candidacy would shake out.

The possibility of a candidacy by Mr. Paul on the Libertarian ticket began being discussed in earnest after last month’s Republican debate in Michigan, when Chris Matthews of MSNBC asked him if he promised to back the Republican nominee. “Not right now I don’t,” he said, adding, “Not unless they’re willing to end the war and bring our troops home, not unless they’re willing to look at excessive spending.” In an election that pitted, say, Mayor Giuliani against Senator Clinton, at whom the anti-war movement has bristled, Mr. Paul might find a rationale for a candidacy. And given Mr. Paul’s strong fund-raising numbers during the third quarter of 2007, his campaign having garnered $5.2 million and possessing $5.4 million of cash on hand, he has outperformed expectations.

“Would he hurt the Republicans? The answer is yes. Could he hurt them somewhat in the Deep South?” a Democratic strategist, Hank Sheinkopf, said. “Could he do to them what Ralph Nader did to the Democrats in 2000? The answer is yes.”

Mr. Paul’s presence is currently making itself felt on the Internet, where he is raising almost 80% of his money, and on the ground in New Hampshire, where his sign-holding supporters are a frequent sight on the campaign trail. In New Hampshire, Mr. Paul’s campaign has distributed a direct mail piece and produced radio and television ads giving informed Republicans the sense that he may finish as high as third place in the Granite State, which Patrick Buchanan won in 1996 with a somewhat similar, though not identical, angry outsider message.

[continue reading]

John Podhoretz writes on this topic here. He is much kinder to Paul and the Paulistas than I was in previous posts. I disagree with Podhoretz that much of Paul’s support is coming from the loony-left. Instead, the Paulistas are an amalgam of paranoid populists, loony Libertarians, isolationist nativists, and a hodgepodge of conspiracy theorists ranging from anti-Federal Reserve “sound money” types to 9-11 “truthers.” A big tent, for sure. But will it hold together? I suspect not. Especially after his supporters realize how pitiful Paul’s support is in the real world, i.e. off the Internet. However, if the Paulistas somehow convince a sizable chunk of the social conservative movement to support Paul, they could emerge as a force to be reckoned with. Without their support, Paul will likely continue to poll single digits nationally.

“Anti-War” Rally in San Francisco

Zombietime’s coverage of the October 27 “Anti-War” rally in San Francisco is not to be missed.

Here is one image:

9/11 “Truth” March in San Francisco, Anti-War Protest in Washington D.C., Anti-War “Soldier” Busted in Seattle

As a former resident of San Francisco I know the city attracts a lot of kooks and misfits. And the kookiest of kooks these days are the truthers. Zombietime has some nice photographs of their recent march and demonstration in S.F. If any city would be friendly to these nuts, it is S.F. However, as you can tell by the photos, besides a few smelly hippies, a couple of superheroes and a gaggle of Paulistas, the gathering was pretty slim.

The truthers marched down Haight Street to the Power to the Peaceful demonstration, which was quite large and well attended. Then again, any gathering in Golden Gate Park is bound to attract the remnants of the summer of love and the leftover left. As far as these folks being peaceful, I don’t buy it and neither should you. In fact, many of the groups that sponsored the rally—a smattering of Maoists, Leninists, and Stalinists—support the overthrow of the government of the United States.

Similar groups of miscreants marched in Washington, D.C. last weekend at The World Can’t Wait demonstration. Too bad Zombie doesn’t have contacts on the East Coast. I’d like to see some photos that give a clear indication of who these people are. Zombie’s photos do an excellent job of that. One look at his pics and the lunacy of these individuals is made patently clear.

Meanwhile the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that a man pretending to be an army veteran, who took credit for “crimes” in Iraq that never actually occurred, has been sentenced to five months in prison:

Jesse MacBeth never was an Army Ranger, much less a corporal, never received a Purple Heart for wounds inflicted by a foreign foe, and neither saw nor participated in war crimes with fellow U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, claims for which he became a poster boy for the anti-war movement…

MacBeth’s is the latest case to be sentenced under “Operation Stolen Valor,” which uses the new Stolen Valor Act to go after people posing as veterans, who often festoon themselves with awards and invent tales of long-term injuries, often to fraudulently acquire veterans benefits…

A thin man who sat quietly looking down through most of the hearing, MacBeth apologized for snookering anti-war groups with his claims of killing unarmed, helpless civilians in Iraq — which were translated into Arabic and posted on the Internet — and also to U.S. soldiers whom he defamed.

MacBeth said he felt bad for what he did.

“I’m sorry not only for lying about everything and discrediting anti-war groups, but also for defaming the real heroes, the soldiers out there sacrificing for their country,” MacBeth said. “I was trying to pull a fast one, to make money to get off the streets.”

MacBeth fooled peace groups and alternative media to become something of an anti-war star over the past four years.

He claimed he witnessed and participated in war crimes in Iraq with other Rangers, slaughtering hundreds of unarmed men, women and children.

In a widely distributed Internet video translated into Arabic, Macbeth said. “We would burn their bodies … hang their bodies from the rafters in the mosque.”

Political Cults: Truthers and NATLFED

[Highway Interchange in Oakland, California Collapses After Fire]

Thanks to Bob from Brockley and Shagya Blog for the link to 9/11 Cult Watch in the U.K. Know of similar websites or blogs in the U.S. and elsewhere? Please let me know! Political and religious cults are a personal interest and the truthers are among the nuttiest these days. But at least they are not violent.

Back in April there was a major accident on a freeway in Oakland, California that resulted in an overpass collapsing. Remember the fatuous truther claim that fire cannot cause steel to collapse. Well, here are some of their responses to the incident in Oakland.

Expect more posts on truthers in the weeks ahead.

Another cult I’ll be writing about in the future is the National Labor Federation (NATLFED), aka the Provisional Communist Party or the Formation. NATLFED is much more centralized than the truther movement, operating through a network of “mutual benefit associations” or “entities” including the Eastern Farmworkers Association, Western Service Workers Assocation, the Commemoration Committee for the Black Panther Party (CCBPP) and numerous other front groups.

Unfortunately, some useful idiots naive college students are routinely duped into thinking NATLFED is connected with just about every revolutionary movement from the Sandinistas in Nicaragua to the Black Panther Party in the U.S. For example, Salon magazine’s Novella Carpenter (a graduate student in the department of journalism at UC Berkeley) recently penned an article, “Why I pick lettuce for the Panthers” which repeats one myth of the cult:

At Alcatraz, I turn east for half a block, and I’ve arrived. A gold embossed sign above the door reads: “The Commemorator.” A quarterly published by the Commemoration Committee for the Black Panther Party, the newspaper has a circulation of 10,000 and specializes in stories for the black community. It was started in 1990, a year after founding Panther Huey Newton was shot in Oakland in August 1989. The remaining members of the party feared the positive legacy of the Panthers would be lost.

None of the individuals who started the CCBPP were ever members of the Black Panther Party. It was started as front for NATLFED. You would think a graduate student of journalism would spend at least a bit of time doing some preliminary research for this piece. After all, there are actual Panthers living in the San Francisco Bay Area including David Hilliard. In addition to Mr. Hilliard and other Panthers, the author could have contacted The Huey P. Newton Foundation, made use of libraries, archives and yes even the Internet. More worrying than the author’s lack of basic research is that Salon.com ran this factually flawed and dangerous article.

For the perspective of one ex-NATLFED member please have a look at The Truth About NATLFED via archive.org:

 

Hot news after its NYC headquarters was raided by police in November 1996, NATLFED actually has been active for 27 years in dozens of small fronts across the country. NATLFED fronts, using innocent names like “Western Service Workers Association,” “Eastern Farm Workers Association,” “Coalition of Concerned Medical Professionals,” and “Women’s Press Collective,” lure liberal volunteers from communities and colleges into brainwashed separation from their families, jobs, and friends.

Discovered this thread about NATLFED at Libcom.org.

NATLFED’s FBI file is available here.

Recommended reading on the general subject of political cults:

Dennis Tourish. Ideological Intransigence, Democratic Centralism and Cultism: A Case Study from the Political Left. Cultic Studies Journal. Vol. 15., No. 1. 1998.

Abstract:

There is a dearth of literature documenting the existence of cults in the political sphere. This paper suggests that some left wing organizations share a number of ideological underpinnings and organizational practices which inherently inclines them to the adoption of cultic practices. In particular, it is argued that doctrines of ‘catastrophism’ and democratic centralist modes of organization normally found among Trotskyist groupings are implicated in such phenomenon. A case history is offered of a comparatively influential Trotskyist grouping in Britain, which split in 1992, where it is suggested that an analysis of the organization in terms of cultic norms is particularly fruitful. This is not intended to imply that a radical critique of society is necessarily inappropriate. Rather, it is to argue that political movements frequently adopt organizational forms, coupled with ‘black and white’ political programmes, which facilitate the exercise of undue social influence. This stifles genuinely creative political thought. Issues which this analysis suggests are particularly pertinent for those involved in radical politics are considered.

 

[Raid on NATLFED HQ: NYC, 1996]