from the wilderness

May 17, 2003 4:18 PM

This unusual $20,000 full-page political add (pdf) ran on May 16th in The Washington Post. Read the fascinating story how this unusual add came to happen, the powerful people supporting it, the independent news site From The Wilderness behind the Add and the video The Truth and Lies of 9-11 that started it all.
posted by stbalbach (37 comments total)

ad me to the list of those who support this add.
posted by quonsar at 4:31 PM on May 17, 2003

Quonsar beat me to itt.
posted by sharksandwich at 4:33 PM on May 17, 2003

I can't seem too get any of these links to work in Mozilla. ;)
No really, only the WaPo link seems to work for me, I even tried Opera
posted by elwoodwiles at 4:49 PM on May 17, 2003

Yeah, I can't seem to open the goddammed PDF file...why in the HELL do people even put PDF on the web?

BTW, twice tried to open the PDF via my IE browser -- froze up. Tried right-clicking, downloading, and then opening -- froze up. WTF?
posted by davidmsc at 5:05 PM on May 17, 2003

OK - got it open finally. Quick perusal of the ad...check the claims against common sense...oops, ran into a problem...the ad is full of horseshi*t!

It's the same tired old crap trotted out by the "left" and/or radical "right" (liberals, tinfoilers, whatever you call 'em)...Bush & Co "knew" about 9/11, it's all about the OIIIIIILLLLLLLL, all of our rights & civil liberties have been ripped away from us, blah blah blah.

As a source, the ad cites former Rep. Cynthia McKinney. Haw-haw -- good joke.
posted by davidmsc at 5:10 PM on May 17, 2003

OK - got it open finally. Quick perusal of the ad...check the claims against common sense...oops, ran into a problem...the ad is full of horseshi*t!

Great, well, it didn't pass davidmsc's common sense testing mechanism. Better just ignore it.

Did you find anything in particular erroneous? Anything verifiably wrong?
posted by Hildago at 5:22 PM on May 17, 2003

IE bit someone in the ass?! wtf!!
try this
</edumacate>

FTW is a bit iffy but then so is the current administration. go fig.
posted by dorian at 5:23 PM on May 17, 2003

agree with dorian. iffy is an understatement for both.
posted by chaz at 5:24 PM on May 17, 2003

In the fall, I saw Michael Ruppert give his lecture about the Truth and Lies of 9/11. Basically, he said that people in the government knew the exact flights that were going to be hijacked and everything. I mean, I'm no fan of Bush but anyone who claims that is just crazy. And I'm not the only one who thought that. At least 3/4 of the audience left in the middle because his ideas are so out there. I only stayed to see how far he could actually take it. He took it all the way to some people in the government meeting with the terrorists like a month before the attacks. It was such a crock of shit.

That said, Ruppert does do a good Kissinger impression.
posted by rift2001 at 5:28 PM on May 17, 2003

dorian: The PDF works fine for me, but that Adobe conversion tool produced gibberish.
posted by Zurishaddai at 5:36 PM on May 17, 2003

I'm not impressed by that ad. On the other hand, I am impressed by this upcoming campaign that addresses the problems of blowback:

Who are we arming now?
posted by homunculus at 5:40 PM on May 17, 2003

davidmsc: Care to point out which parts of the ad are horseshi*t? I don't follow most political news too closely, but I do remember reading about several of the topics they mention. It does go a little off the deep end on a few topics though.

Peak Oil section: Seem like mostly statistics. Are the statistics wrong? Ignoring the last paragraph of course.
ACLU section: What's wrong here?
Economy section: Seem ok too.
Drug section: Hadn't heard there were no poppies before we invaded. Is this one a lie too?
Taxpayer money: Another new one on me. Is CBS not a trustworthy news source?
High Crimes: Of course none of these have been proved yet. There are several accusations though. Which ones are left wing lies?
911: Yup, that one seems a bit out there. I've also known many of the people in those agencies. It would have taken an order from very high up for them to not follow procedures. (I was in STRATCOM on 9/11, the same place the president went. I dealt with ICBMs, not planes, so I'm not very familiar with their procedures.)

I'm not going to bother with the editorials at the bottom. I take every editorial with a grain of salt, no matter who writes it.
posted by klaruz at 5:40 PM on May 17, 2003

Zurishaddai: hehe sorry, I know it screws up. I was hoping that the world's 2nd best candidate for passing the anti turing test would try it and then froth at the mouth...
posted by dorian at 5:52 PM on May 17, 2003

They had me until the 'full foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks' - Bushco is pure evil, of course, but I'm not yet willing to slide over the brink into believing they're that evil, at least not without more compelling evidence than conspiracy nuts seem able to provide.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:47 PM on May 17, 2003

[poindexter smiles]
P: "that's the beauty of it, dick. it's so fucking crazy that anyone who suggests we're capable of such a thing will be immediately labeled a nutcase."

[cheney nods]
C: "the texas turnip will have to be kept clueless about it."

[poindexter nods]
P: "when has that ever been a problem?"

[cheney laughs]
[poindexter laughs]
[phantom of the opera organ theme]
posted by quonsar at 7:00 PM on May 17, 2003

the ad says that between 1999 and 2001, the pentagon "lost" more than 3.3 TRILLION dollars. According to this, in 2000, the military spent 313.3 billion. If you assume that 1999 and 2001 spent about the same amount, thats 939.9 billion. Where did the other 2.3 trillion go?
posted by stupidcomputernickname at 7:06 PM on May 17, 2003

Read Homonucleus' link. The ads are great. What I don't get is why anyone would pay to run these in democratic cities like NYC, SF, and Chicago. The elitist label comes pretty close to home when the left can't condescend to place an ad in USA Today, where it might actually change a mind that votes in a place that makes a difference.
posted by tellmenow at 8:35 PM on May 17, 2003

If we did know precisely what was going to be hijacked, we couldn't have known that the buildings were going to go down. A couple hundreds lives would be lost -- not several thousand, along with billions in damages.

It would have been an acceptable loss, to finally generate the political capital to stop a potential nuclear strike. At least, that's the thinking.

We could have known precisely what was going to happen on 9/11, and still not have been able to have done anything in Afghanistan. The Republicans should know; when Clinton lobbed Tomahawks in 1996 at that country, they shredded him for not paying attention to what really mattered -- his own personal failings.

*sighs*

--Dan
posted by effugas at 9:11 PM on May 17, 2003

Prior thread about Pentagon accounting errors. First, you have to realize they're not talking about "lost money", they're talking about capital assets and inventory that do not have a fully defined audit trail, which isn't nearly the same thing. They may "lose" a tank moving it between one brigade to the next, but that doesn't mean the tank itself went missing. It probably only means that the first brigade removed the tank from its books (anything from Quicken to Excel to something custom: there hasn't been a single Pentagon-wide asset management system, ever) and the second brigade failed to add it.

Linking their ad to the long-expected resignation of Secretary White is just one more example of their reaching and publicity-whoring. White has been under constant fire since his appointment. The Enron scandal broke and looked as if it might sink him until September 11 seemed to save his job for the moment -- but White crossed Rumsfeld on the Crusader artillery, going behind his back to drum up a Congressional claque to save it, and it has been clear for months that he was going to be dropped at the first politically opportune moment -- in this case, immediately following the Iraq war.

NZ's Scoop has a pretty good backgrounder that shows his gradual loss of political cover. Enron had a lot to do with it, of course, but this ad? Please.
posted by dhartung at 9:13 PM on May 17, 2003

There's a point buried in there in the 'peak oil' section. Energy production per capita planet-wide peaked sometime in the 1970s, and has been declining ever since.

That's a disturbing thought. The trend since the 16th century has been increasing energy production per capita, particularly since the beginning of the Industrial Age.

Of course, this can mean two things: either the decline marks the point where Western Industrial civilization began to collapse, or it marks the point where Western Industrial civilization began to transform into something else.

I hope it's the latter, but the former gives me the heebie-jeebies.
posted by Cerebus at 9:49 PM on May 17, 2003

Cerebus - Or that energy efficiency improved. Not too hard to believe when you think about 70's autos versus current, even with SUVs dragging the average down.

tellmenow - You're on the right track. The "fascinating story" in the third link is no more than them slapping each other on the back proclaiming how much they rawk, dude. Pure wanking.
posted by NortonDC at 11:36 PM on May 17, 2003

I have tried several times to acces the pdf, to no avail. Would anyone care to summarize it please?
posted by hama7 at 4:43 AM on May 18, 2003

Don't worry about it, hama7, it's nothing Ann Coulter would approve of.
posted by goethean at 8:01 AM on May 18, 2003

they're not talking about "lost money", they're talking about capital assets and inventory that do not have a fully defined audit trail

quonsar to IRS: "i paid my taxes in full that year. it's not my problem that your audit trail is not fully defined."

quonsar to parole board: "i have to stay another 5 years because WHAT isn't fully defined????"
posted by quonsar at 8:12 AM on May 18, 2003

even with SUVs dragging the average down

Tired old argument. As we all know, it's how much gas you burn total. So even if your driving a clean car if your driving 100 miles per day back and forth to work your worse than the SUV driver who drives 10 miles a day to work. If your going to rag on someone, rag on the people who drives a lot. If you want to complain about averages, complain about the average number of miles being driven by Americans as being too high because that is much more significant than the fraction of SUV owners which is a sub-set of that average.
posted by stbalbach at 8:57 AM on May 18, 2003

First of all, stbalbach, I didn't go looking for the fight you're picking. I didn't "rag" on anyone. I stated the fact that SUV's are pulling down automobile fuel economy averages. That's a fact, but it's not part of any attack on anybody.

But now that you've picked this fight, it's time to say that you're completely wrong because that "fraction" you're describing is the fraction we call "half." Light trucks, the automobile category that includes pickups, minivans and good ol' SUVs now account for approximately half of all new car sales. Because of this, average fuel economy for all new passenger cars has declined to the lowest since 1980.

So, shockingly enough, this tells us that current automobiles are more efficient than those of the '70's, "even with SUVs dragging the average down."
posted by NortonDC at 9:55 AM on May 18, 2003

now boys, don't fight. i have a small SUV and drive 25,000 miles per year. i live 6 miles from work. see, it's me. i use gasoline like a rich republican paper mill CEO. i'm personally exhausting the resources of the planet. mu-ha ha. ha ha.
posted by quonsar at 10:31 AM on May 18, 2003

Ok I see your point NortonDC your talking purely vehicle MPG efficiency.

But that is only part of the efficiency story, what really matters is how much is driven number one, and MPG efficiency number two. A commuter Toyota that drives 80k miles a year back and forth to the burbs is not helping anyone while the SUV owner who moves close to work is making a big difference.

It's like when talking bandwidth, latency is just as important as bandwidth for the end result. A 128k satellite is entirely different from a 128K T1 because of latency. How efficient a vehicle is only important because of how far it travels.

So what we should look at is the average number of miles driven per person per year and ask what we can do to cut down on those miles first then second what can we do to improve the vehicle we are driving. That would take into account the overall efficiency, not just the type of vehicle, because we do have control over how far we drive it is not a fixed constant.
posted by stbalbach at 11:35 AM on May 18, 2003

If we did know precisely what was going to be hijacked, we couldn't have known that the buildings were going to go down.

You're right. They could not have known that a few thousands gallons of jet fuel would melt the support structure of the towers. That is why they also used explosives, to be sure.

And, about the opium production in Afghanistan; this is something that's been openly discussed and is by no means a disputed fact. It's an "open secret," because while the media will acknowledge it, they will also change the topic ASAP. The only thing to question is whether this was done intentionally, and whether it was in fact an objective of the military action in Afghanistan.

Why is it called "looney" to believe that while your boss and doctor could be criminals, so too could the President be a criminal? Bush comes from a tradition of government officials being criminals. IMHO, it would be impossible for him to not be a criminal, because he would feel he was neglecting his duty as President. It's only a question of how far down the rabbit hole this conspiracy goes.
posted by son_of_minya at 1:57 PM on May 18, 2003

Cool, now I know exactly how much credibility to grant son_of_minya.
posted by NortonDC at 6:06 PM on May 18, 2003

NortonDC:

Good. I'm glad you can recognize perfectly reasonable statements when you read them. With all the credibility you'll be granting my statements from now on, I should feel honored; and I do.

How exactly is my credibility influenced by saying the President is a criminal and that opium is flowing out of Afghanistan? These are perfectly true statements, and I happen to believe it's okay for the President to be a criminal. The only thing wrong with these statements is that they're not supposed to be spoken outloud, and I am sorry for bruising your fragile utopian worldview.

Do you not agree that to a Neo-Conservative, lying to Congress is a point of honor?

The line about explosives being used in the WTC explosion (pun intended) was a little extreme, but there are perfectly reasonable people who point to scientific evidence and historical documents, making that exact same statement. It was too extreme because I do not actually believe that myself, though I wouldn't be surprised, and it is an extremely common belief both in conspiracy circles and overseas.

The reason why I wrote that, was to point out that effugas was being timid in his paranoid logic. Who is any of us to say that the small piece of the puzzle we can see is all there is?
posted by son_of_minya at 6:36 PM on May 18, 2003

You know, son_of_minya, the text of that comment was completely neutral. Your interpretation seems a little... paranoid.
posted by NortonDC at 6:48 PM on May 18, 2003

NortonDC: Is that supposed to be an apology?
posted by son_of_minya at 7:03 PM on May 18, 2003

the first brigade removed the tank from its books ..., and the second brigade failed to add it.

Then it was shipped to some third world despot in exchange for first dibs on valuable natural resources.
posted by mischief at 1:37 AM on May 19, 2003

Thanks.
posted by hama7 at 11:02 PM on May 19, 2003

Concerning the peak of oil, again, (maybe it's the third time I say this in Metafilter), check this site: Simmons & Company International, specially the papers and speeches of its president, Matthew R. Simmons, a texans republican that it is not afraid to shout wolf...
posted by samelborp at 11:32 PM on May 19, 2003

If there's anything more tiresome than explaining humor, it's explaining humor in writing.

And, no.
posted by NortonDC at 3:35 PM on May 31, 2003