Then the lead agent pulled himself together. “Is this your?” he said, brandishing a beat-up spiral notebook. I admitted that it was.If he really thought the government was so evil that it committed the 9/11 attacks, would he play the smartass during a security check? Here's my conspiracy theory: the 9/11 conspiracy theory is a conspiracy to gain publicity.
“Do you know where we got it?”
“I must have forgotten it on the plane when I got off last Friday.”
“Why is there Arabic writing in it?”
I explained that I had grabbed an old notebook as I left the house with the intention of writing my New York speech on the plane. The old notebook happened to be one I had used during Arabic classes a decade ago....
I sheepishly remembered that it included some bizarre little cartoons I had drawn, along with a draft of an unfinished play about the death of Vincent Van Gogh, A Murder of Crows. An extract.....
[Extract excised for your comfort.]
After remarking on the suspicious stuff in the notebook, the agent changed tack. Gruffly, he announced that he was disturbed by some of my internet essays. I explained that I was just doing my patriotic duty to expose the 9/11 coup d'etat and re-establish constitutional rule. He asked whether I flew around the country saying these things. I said yes. He asked if anyone accompanied me on my travels. I said no, I usually travel alone to speaking engagements. He asked me where I had been staying in New York. I told him I stayed with fellow 9/11 activists. He said “We know you were at St. Mark's church.” Then he asked me point-blank: “Are you a terrorist?”
My response: “To answer that, we have to agree first on what terrorism is.....”
ADDED: You have to suspect that he purposely chose that particular notebook and deliberately left it on the earlier flight so he could get the government to pay more attention to him. What do you have to do around here to get the government to oppress you? He must be so jealous of Andrew Meyer. That's all you have to do to be the center of attention?
Posts
67 comments:
I'm surprised he didn't start yelling, "Help! Help me! Don't taze me, bro!"
As for me, I usually wear the "Larry Craig was an inside job" T-shirt when I go through airport security.
Matt - which begs the question, why didn't they taze him? Clearly there's a conspiracy to prevent the arrival of just desserts...
You know, someone could totally mess with one of these paranoid types. All you need is a group of tough-looking guys in black suits, a white unmarked van, a pair of handcuffs, a hood (or other blindfold), and a small room with a table, chair and a bright light pointing at the, ahem, interrogatee, to deposit him into. Hours of fun. See how long it takes him to twig by making the periodic interrogations ever more preposterously overacted, and if he still doesn't get it after you run through the interrogation scene from The Matrix word for word, put him back in the van and push him out somewhere near a journo from the Isthmus, they'll lap this up.
It reads like they only stopped him 'cause he left behind an arabic-filled notebook on an earlier flight. I wonder if that was intentional.
What a publicity hound.
"As you can see, Mr. Barrett, we've had our eye on you for some time now..."
The undeniable gap in truther logic seems to me to be:
If the government is both evil enough and competent enough to murder 3,000 folks to create a causus belli and get away with it, then why don't some of these truthers get "disappeared" or hit by cars, or mugged with a lead pipe?
If you can murder innocents on a mass scale, why not murder dangerous people on a retail scale?
What a publicity hound.
Which generally describes most conspiracy theorists.
The scary part for Ann must be:
The lead agent asked me about my teaching situation at the University of Wisconsin. I told him that I had been turned down for a tenure-track job at UW-Whitewater, even though I was the only qualified candidate, purely because of my political views. I added that I might be back at UW-Madison in the spring, but that it would be a tough choice for the university, given all the pressure they've been under.
Soon, very soon, dissenters Kevin Barrett and Sean Penn will visit Iran and Gaza wearing tees that say “The 12th Imam is Bush” and “Hollywood star here to boink Allah your women.”
The undeniable gap in truther logic seems to me to be:
Don't forget this was also pulled off by the dumbest man on the face of the earth. Never mind all the classified stuff leaked to the NY Times since his usurping power, 9/11 is the only one that has been kept under seal.
Truther logic is a lot like the Muslims who think the Israelis were behind 9/11 yet also think Osama was a hero for pulling it off giving Islam a great victory.
Hoosier,
The truther comeback to Bush the incompetent, and why it hasn't leaked seems to be:
Cheney outsourced it to the Mossad.
"Those evil, efficent and secretive jews did it"
Hurray for Barrett! He's doing his part as a lover of freedom. This is guerrilla libertarianism and I so approve!
I myself am writing a mail-client extension that will append random "terrorist" words at the end of all e-mails, after pages of whitespace, that will be spread unnoticed in replies and forwards.
Anything goes in this war to distract the snoops from our wallets and bedrooms!
box cutter, crack, Chavez, Koran, virgins
The government should dole out everyone's fifteen minutes, but require self-immolation for a second fifteen minutes.
JimBino,
انت صانع المتاعب ولكن انت مضحك
Hey, this is kind of fun:
في قلب الحرية هي حق الفرد في تحديد مفهوم وجود ، معنى ، من الكون
، وسر الحياة البشريه.
"At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." God, it even looks like pompous gibberish in Arabic.
Ann says: "That's all you have to do to be the center of attention?"
Well, there is one other detail: others have to be willing to pay attention. With a buffoon like this (he's hardly the only one running around trying to attract attention), why bother?
Hmmm--has anyone seen Kevin Barrett and Andrew Meyer together?
You hit the nail on the head Ann, the 9-11 truth movement has nothing to do with the truth or 9-11 and everythign to do with its adherents desire to be noticed and to be in on "the real truth" that the rest of us are too stupid to know. It is the same reason people join cults. People want to feel special and feel like they are spending their lives doing something of value over and above the average person. Think about it, who hasn't fantasized about being the French resistance or some such at some point in their lvies? Normal people can keep their fantasies and desires from interfering with their perception of reality. Truthers like cult members can't do that. The temptation to be a part of a special group that knows the truth when the rest of the world denies it is too great for them.
The Drill SGT said...
The undeniable gap in truther logic seems to me to be:
I think you're overlooking the most obvious.
"If the government is both evil enough and competent enough to murder 3,000 folks to create a causus belli and get away with it" then why do they need a causus belli?
> the 9/11 conspiracy theory is a conspiracy to gain publicity
No Ann, you are wrong. The South PArk guys figured it out -- the 9/11 conspiracy is itself a government conspiracy.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/1009_in_custody.jpg/200px-1009_in_custody.jpg
I used to think Kevin Barrett was just a lunatic. Because if he is correct about the government, he would have been dead long ago.
But I think he is merely using the 9/11 truther conspiracy crowd in order to advance the agenda of Islam in the US. By engendering distrust of the government, he makes it easier for actual terrorists to succeed.
I do not think him a harmless thing, no mere celebrity-seeker.
slow news day.
"Life is hard; it's harder if you're stupid.” John Wayne
Here's my conspiracy theory: the 9/11 conspiracy theory is a conspiracy to gain publicity.
It sure seems to be working at Althouse.
Some people never stop being 15.
hoosier daddy:
Don't forget this was also pulled off by the dumbest man on the face of the earth.
Let's see, Bush: Yale, Harvard, elected Governor of Texas and President of the United States, twice.
Hoosier Daddy: spends his day repeatedly hitting F5 and F11 on Althouse's blog, in hopes that he can find an opportunity to spew insults. Rubs self frequently to reassure himself that he's alive.
Paul, I am pretty sure hoosier daddy was being sarcastic.
Although that rubbing trick sounds pretty handy. Might have to give that a whirl.
well.
Never mind then.
Try it with lube, E Core. Crisco doesn't dry out.
Just be sure to keep the plastic cover over the keyboard, it's kinda embarrassing to explain to the Dell repairman why the keys are all stuck together....Yeah, yeah I spilled a Coke on it..that's the ticket.
Ditto on the rubbing.
I mean, from a scientific perspective only.
If you master this one handed commentator technique as you comment on so many diverse and sundry topics found on the Althouse blog, you might eventually win the coveted title of jack of all trades and master bater for fun.
She was standing at the load-in
When the trucks rolled up
She was sniffing all around
Like a half grown female pup
She wasn't hard to talk to
Looked like she had nowhere to go
So I gave her my pass
So she could get in and see the show
Well I sat her down right next to me
And I got her a beer
While I mixed that sound on stage
So the band could hear
The more I watched her watch them play
The less I could think of to say
And when they walked off stage
The drummer swept that girl away
But Rosie you're all right - you wear my ring
When you hold me tight - Rosie that's my thing
When you turn out the light - I've got to hand it to me
Looks like it's me and you again tonight Rosie
Well I guess I might have known from the start
She'd come for a star
Might have told my imagination not to run too far
Of all the times that I've been burned
By now you'd think I'd have learned
That it's who you look like
Not who you are
But Rosie you're all right - you wear my ring
When you hold me tight - Rosie that's my thing
When you turn out the light - I've got to hand it to me
Looks like it's me and you again tonight Rosie
(Jackson Browne & Donald Miller)
Barrett is a wuss. He doesn't have the balls to risk tazing. He should move to a country where he can really be oppressed. I hear the PRC has some expertise in this area.
Simon... When do the just desserts arive? I'm famished. I hope they're cakey and chocolatey.
Peter Hoh... the "Larry Craig loves Boises" is a good shirt too.
Paul said: Hoosier Daddy: spends his day repeatedly hitting F5 and F11 on Althouse's blog, in hopes that he can find an opportunity to spew insults.
Paul, my dumb comment was tongue in cheek to demonstrate the bi-polar logic that afflicts the left and the truthers who contend that: 1) Bush is dumb cause he can't pronounce nuclear 2) yet was diabolically cunning enough to pull off 9/11.
Rubs self frequently to reassure himself that he's alive.
Actually I had to stop doing that as I kept setting the bed on fire and trying to repeatedly explain it to the fire department was becoming embarrasing.
Hey, we are all entitled to have hobbies.
Ralph: Try it with lube, E Core. Crisco doesn't dry out.
But dude, Crisco is shortening!
it was only a matter of time before pogo posted about the dread islamic menace coming to our shores through which all scandals and controversies much be analyzed
Let's see: Pogo vs. The Exalted...
Somebody has a heightened, less humorous sense of self.
Ha! I love your postscript--spot on. These people are so juvenile it's pathetic. They should spend a day with real victims of real oppression, like those who lived under tyrants in Romania or Vietnam. They need serious deprogramming and perhaps medication.
The Drill SGT: The undeniable gap in truther logic seems to me to be:
Which is the same gap in logic the Bush=Hitler folks have. If Bush really was a fascist, wouldn't just the act of stating so, publicly, win you an all expense paid trip to Gitmo?
Hell, we recently had thousands or so lefties doing just that during a march on a major road in Washington D.C., and the worst abuse they suffered was someone singing to them, “All we are saaaying, is give soap a chance.”
Even if soap is the tool of the bourgeois capitalist pig oppressors, as fascism goes, that's some pretty weak tea.
I usually wear the 9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB t-shirt Alex Jones gave me when I go through airport security."
When I'm not wearing my "Pay attention to meeeeeeeeeeeee" tee shirt.
The Missus used to work with a Truther. Once, she got fed up and confronted the truther.
She asked the truther, if you really believe that Bush was behind 9/11, then why are you just talking about it? If this government is killing citizens for profit, shouldn't you be out, you know, fighting it? Instead of working in this retail shop listening to NPR and complaining?
It really shut the truther up. They like to feel like big, brave people because they "know the truth." But if you point out that their beliefs require them to actually do something and make personal sacrifices, they shut up.
Be careful who you try it on, though. If they're particularly deranged they might end up going out and joining Al Qaeda, and it will be your fault.
Exalted:
I was attempting to be more ridiculous than usual about Barrett.
I actually think he's sorta cuddly, and would love for him to speak forth on Islam whilst I ever-so-gently tase him at random intervals. You know, performance art.
My T-shirt says "I was an inside job". And yes, I do blame me mum.
Michael, you made me snort. But I have plenty to spare.
"Which is the same gap in logic the Bush=Hitler folks have. If Bush really was a fascist, wouldn't just the act of stating so, publicly, win you an all expense paid trip to Gitmo?"
Except that Bush is too stupid to realize that he would get away with it. Or something like that.
What an incredible whiner. My children got "harassed" by TSA agents worse than this when flying home from Abu Dhabi this summer. They handled it more maturely too ;)
Ralph: Michael, you made me snort. But I have plenty to spare.
Then snort away.
You know, it's easy to just make fun of Barrett - hell, I know I do it, he's so easy a target - but at times I step back and think about the trivialization of the man. And I realize that maybe the comic impulse is obscuring the aspect of him that demonstrates that really holds some horrendous views. At his core, he's really a terrible man, not simply a comic figure. Think past the particular idiocy with the airport security guys and on to his death threats. He's actually talked about people hanging from the gallows or otherwise facing death for being "complicit in war crimes", those people being targets for the mere act of not agreeing with his illogical and disproven worldview. Sure, it's mere rhetoric, just the annoyed rantings of a marginal figure. But that doesn't mean he himself doesn't take what he says seriously. He's said some truly hateful things towards people who disagree with him.
Poster Stellafane at the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) posting boards commented on this:
"I've been thinking a bit more about Barrett's comments about executions... I'm concerned about the mindset capable of producing such a remark.
Barrett says he wants people like me to die. Wants me to die! And for what? Because I believe what logic and reason compel me to believe, what all the experts who have carefully examined the evidence first-hand unanimously agree is the truth. Against this, I have chosen not to accept at face value the CTist claims, since they appear to contradict common sense and rationality, indeed the laws of science itself. I have asked for proof of these claims, and been given nothing but uninformed opinion and paranoid delusion. When I ask the very questions that, if properly answered, would instantly convert me to their cause, CTists respond with dismissive sarcasm or simply run away.
For this, Barrett would have me killed.
... I ask anyone sympathetic to the 9/11 CTist cause, anyone who may look to Barrett as a leader or role model: Examine the face shown in my avatar. It is the face of a common person, someone whom you see in the street every day, someone just trying to get by as best I can. I could be your neighbor, teacher, even a relative... Barrett would like to snuff all that out, reduce me to nothingness, make me suffer a fate so terrifyingly final that many of us hesitate to inflict it on even the most despicable vermin society can spew up. All because I don't think and say and do as he wants me to."
Source.
Like I said, it's easy to poke fun at Barrett, but in the end, he's really a horrid little man. Get past the narcissism and you have the core of a man who hates. And while derisive humor is a valid defense against the malice that such a man inflicts with his views, I still have to remember that the humor isn't about some comic figure, but of an honestly hateful human being. A human being who's illogical activities are not driven by eccentricity or narcissism - the latter of which is merely one of the two outputs of his psyche - but of hatred of those who do not subscribe to his delusional takes on the world.
I don't think we should lose sight of that when thinking about Barrett. And I think we're all lucky he's not in any real position of power; could someone imagine a person like him being a military officer or government official in a small country without the respect for law and society we have here? This is exactly the sort of person that enables the Pol Pots and Idi Amins of the world.
Okay, rant over. I've taken too much space. I just thank God he's merely in a position to be labeled a whiner or kook in this country. I shudder to think what sorts of excesses the man would commit if he in power, say for example in my birth country the Philippines. We wouldn't be laughing then.
"I've taken too much space."
Don't sweat it. Luckyoldson does the same, every single minute of every day.
Ah. Leftist Contrarianism at it's finest. That's all these mental liliputians are.
We should have never let in those darned.............Irish.
Shorter: "Please taze me, bro."
When people behave this way, I'm always (yes, always) reminded of a line from Kennan's Mr. X article.
It is an undeniable privilege of every man to prove himself right in the thesis that the world is his enemy; for if he reiterates it frequently enough and makes it the background of his conduct he is bound eventually to be right.
SMG
If I leave a copy of my weblog posts in an airplane will I get more visitors?
Trooper York: I like your style.
Tibore said...
but of hatred of those who do not subscribe to his delusional takes on the world.
That more or less is another descriptive characterization of most leftists in this country if not the world over. How many more illustrations are needed to peg these malignant delusional narcissists for what they are, hateful, bigoted zealots that ascribe to a way of thinking and an ideology that is bankrupt and dangerous and has been proven so time and time again.
Even the Pope thinks they suck:
Pope Benedict XVI refused a recent request by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to discuss the Middle East and Iraq, Vatican sources say.
The Pope refused a request for an audience during the August holidays.
Senior Vatican sources told the BBC the Pope does not normally receive politicians on his annual holiday at the Castelgandolfo residence near Rome.
But one leading Italian newspaper said it was an evident snub by the Vatican towards the Bush administration.
LOS(7:28 PM commment) - An Italian Newspaper says it was a snub, yet the Vatican says otherwise. Well, of course, how would the Vatican know! But let's say we're skeptical: if the newspaper is correct, all they have to do is tell us who was the last politician the pop received "on his annual holiday at the Castelgandolfo residence near Rome" and when this took place.
Paul, my dumb comment was tongue in cheek to demonstrate the bi-polar logic that afflicts the left and the truthers who contend that: 1) Bush is dumb cause he can't pronounce nuclear 2) yet was diabolically cunning enough to pull off 9/11.
Sorry Jack. Bush IS clearly dumb. No one "the left" seriously thinks Bush is capable of anything with the word "plan" in it. But I agree it was a dumb comment!
Just when you thought Barrett had gone away for good, he does some other dumb thing for the media.
Of course, O.J. Simpson just one-upped him, as he could does people who rely on a media circus to keep their name out.
Even the Pope thinks they suck:
Lucky, in all fairness, since when did you care what the Pope or any of those Christianists think?
I mean, this guy was in the Hitler Youth after all, right?
Yeah, I can't say that I consider the opposition of the Catholic Church to be a strike against my side.
Even the Pope thinks war is bad. Man, what is this world coming to? Next thing you know, the Baptists will start condemning having children out of wedlock.
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