First published in backofthebook.ca

By Frank Moher

The Prime Minister, in his role as Chief Scarifier, performed as expected on Thursday, once again using an atrocity for political gain, and to serve his government's agenda to reduce Canadians' civil liberties. No surprise there. What was surprising -- or, if not surprising, then wall-to-wall evident in the 24 hour news coverage of the shootings in Paris -- was the media's obliviousness to the likelihood that some intelligence agency was involved in the attacks.

Originally published in backofthebook.ca

AMONG THE TRUTHERS
By Jonathan Kay
Harper Collins
368 pages, $32.99 hardcover, $25.99 ebook

Reviewed by Frank Moher

On the evening of Saturday, June 26, 2010, Jonathan Kay headed out on his bike into the streets of Toronto to see what was up with the G20. What he saw, he wrote early the next morning in the National Post, convinced him of “”the extraordinary professionalism of the police patrolling Toronto this week.” The city was intact: tourists thronged Yonge Street, a band played on the corner. He toodled west along Queen, where he found a line of police staring down protestors. But: “There wasn’t any violence — at least none that I saw.”

Er, not so much.

We know now, of course, that the police were engaged in widespread brutality and violations of civil liberties all over Toronto that day. But Jonathan Kay didn’t see any of it and, so, of course, the police acted with “extraordinary professionalism.” Or perhaps he would argue that a little head-bashing and snatch-and-grabbery is not really violence, as in, you know, violence, and the police and state agree with him, and so that is that.

We don’t really know what Kay was thinking in the wake of the G20, as he didn’t blog much about it after that, except to call Toronto a “city of wimps.”

And so we come to Mr. Kay’s latest item of “reporting,” a book titled Among the Truthers: A Journey into the Growing Conspiracist Underground of 9/11 Truthers, Birthers, Armageddonites, Vaccine Hysterics, Hollywood Know-Nothings and Internet Addicts.

Originally published at http://backofthebook.ca/2010/11/22/our-911-honour-and-dishonour-roll-v-2-0/4233/

By Frank Moher

Time to update our 9/11 Honour and Dishonour Roll. Some fine qualifees have presented themselves in recent months.

The original idea of the list was to record for posterity those news organizations that have or haven't done their job in covering 9/11. You'll find that roster here. For this iteration, I'm expanding it to include individual media types -- columnists, hosts -- as they've been the busiest truthers or obscurantists of late.

As noted before, entrants may appear on both lists. And, as always, suggestions for additions are invited.

The 9/11 Media Honour Roll

From http://backofthebook.ca/2010/04/14/911-honour-and-dishonour/2445/

By Frank Moher

As it becomes increasingly clear that the official explanation of 9/11 is insupportable and won’t stand the test of time, I thought it might be apropos to establish a media “Honour” and “Dishonour” roll, recording those news organizations who have or haven’t done their job in reporting the story. The idea here is that, 10 or 15 years from now, when the great majority of people have cottoned-on to the fact that the government lied — just as the great majority now realize that about the Kennedy assassination — we’ll be able to look back and see which of them maintained the best traditions of journalism, and which were compliant or complicit.

Citizen Kos
From http://backofthebook.ca/media/2009/06/theres-hope-for-internet-yet.html

There's hope for the internet yet. When Michael Jackson died, the web was quickly flooded with hoax death upon hoax death (Jeff Goldblum, Britney Spears, Billy Mays -- oh wait, that one was true). But it just as quickly self-corrected. For every iteration of a false rumour came a fusillade of Twitter and Facebook replies beating it down.

That's the power of the crowd at its worst and best. It's something Markos Moulitsas, proprietor of the allegedly progressive group blog dailykos.com, needs to get a handle on right quick. Moulitsas, who styles himself a Democrat, runs his site with all the democratic instincts of an Iranian mullah. Odd behaviour for a guy who once write a book called Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics.

In Moulitsas' case, his tyrannical talents manifest themselves in his ban on discussion of 9/11 on his site. Correction: you can discuss 9/11, but only so long as it's within the parameters set out by Mr. Big:

Official archive page: http://www.americanfreedomradio.com/Blood_09.html
Interview MP3: http://www.americanfreedomradio.com/archive/Jack-Blood-32k-041609.mp3

By Jack Blood

www.wFUradio.com

www.deadlinelive.info

Yesterday, April 15th 2009 I was contacted by “Loose Change” director, and narrator Dylan Avery who said that he had recently begun investigating the death of Barry Jennings, and had found some new information relating to his death.

It seems that there is a very good possibility that Jennings’ death could have been due to foul play. Though the investigations are on going, initial findings are somewhat alarming. The conclusion is still forthcoming, but I was shocked by what I heard.

From http://backofthebook.ca/features/911-crusaders/

"As an international movement questioning the official story of 9/11 continues to grow, these Canadians are at the forefront." By R.D. Loyd

The subject of what really happened on 9/11 remains taboo in the mainstream media, particularly in the United States. 9/11 is too tragic an event; it is too close to home, an agonizing wound that still, literally, lies exposed in the center of lower Manhattan.

To question the Bush administration’s explanation of 9/11 in America, regardless of any glaring anomalies in the official story, is tantamount to heresy or treason in the established media arenas. For a long time now, anyone who publicly questions the official 9/11 investigation is more than likely labeled a conspiracy theorist, a lunatic, and a nut case. Yet slowly, over time, we are beginning to hear the voices of a few journalists on the American airwaves asking questions about the events of September 11, 2001.

From http://backofthebook.ca/media/2008/06/part-ii-we-do-not-talk-about-things.html

In my post of a few days ago, I asked some questions of CBC and Maclean's pundit Andrew Coyne, about his answers to a 9/11 Truther after a television taping. I said I'd e-mail him a link to the article (did) and advertise it on a few sites, including his own (did). I think I'll stop waiting for him to reply. He's still welcome to, of course; the Comment link is below.

Again, let's give Coyne credit for sticking around to engage his interlocutor, rather than making like Elvis and leaving the building, as Gregg and Hébert did. Still, his responses were vapid, and characteristic of what's wrong with the mainstream journalistic approach to 9/11.

From http://backofthebook.ca/media/2008/06/we-do-not-talk-about-things-that-we-do.html

(Part 1 of 2)

While researching my next-to-last post (and did you realize that "blogging" and "research" are not necessarily mutually exclusive?), I came across the following video:

In it, a very earnest and nervous woman confronts Alan Gregg, Chantal Hébert, and Andrew Coyne after a taping of the CBC political panel "At Issue," with a question about the media's handling of the events of 9/11:

"Why has the media failed to investigate the most glaring anomalies of 9/11, like the freefall collapse of the third tower, Building 7, or interview any of the high-ranking dissenters of the official 9/11 conspiracy theories --"

http://backofthebook.ca/media/2007/12/star-journalists-of-2007.html

The star journalists of 2007 didn't work for The New York Times or The Washington Post or The Globe and Mail. They didn't work for 60 Minutes or "W-5" or "The Fifth Estate." The real star journalists of 2007 were the dogged, artless, perseverant investigators and writers, mostly amateur, who continued to pursue the story of what really happened on 9/11, because the above-named big guys and their kind continued to ignore it.