Boston Bombing Conspiracy Theories: Dave McGowan’s Staging Theory, Part 1
This post originally appeared on Houdini's Revenge
11/28/15: Via several search strings leading people to this entry, I learned Dave McGowan died on November 22, 2015. He was diagnosed in late spring with a very aggressive form of cancer and it sounds like he spent the last six months of his life suffering physically and financially. No matter how much I disagreed with him in some areas of research, this is all quite unpleasant to find out. He was an interesting man who influenced large swaths of alternative thought and this is sad news to all who have read his work, especially his very interesting works about Laurel Canyon. God speed, Dave.
6/6/13: Let’s keep McGowan’s pet name for me over on his site, ironic usage included. I want real discussion, not strange men cursing at me with such unoriginality they can only muster someone else’s anger. Seriously. If you must call me names, may I suggest you just stick your tongue out while yelling “Neener neener!” at your computer screen. Undignified to be sure but it’s not like discussing conspiracy theory is a particularly noble endeavor.
5/27/13 Please note: I appreciate the impassioned responses this entry has received and I like to reply to comments when applicable. I do, however, have other things to accomplish, like other entries in the Boston Bombing series, as well as discussions on my other site, and cannot continue to give comments the attention they deserve as it is eating up so much of my time. Even though I no longer have the time to engage on this topic – and that is my fault for I had no idea this would generate much in the way of a response – comments are still open. Follow my comment policy and I am only too happy to let commenters give their opinions. My lack of response is just due to time. True Believers may interpret this comment however they please.
(Note: I noticed yesterday that Dave McGowan’s site was throwing up “bandwidth exceeded” messages. If this is a chronic problem with his site, I may not continue on and discuss the rest of his entries because it’s hardly fair to readers not to be able to see the source I am analyzing, even as I quote liberally and use the exact pictures he uses. Upgrade, Dave! Even as I dislike this theory, your Laurel Canyon stuff is fascinating!)
A reader here, who is a conspiracy theorist whom I respect and enjoy talking with, directed me to Dave McGowan’s “Special Report on the Boston Marathon: The Curious Case of the Man Who Could Only Sit Down.” I read through it and immediately found a lot of problems I wanted to address.
I had spent three days writing my analysis of McGowan’s entire theory when my husband pointed out to me that McGowan had split his article up into three parts, adding large, new chunks of material at the end and adding smaller bits of new information in the parts I had already covered, specifically information about Christian Williams. I had been working out of the same, unclosed window for days and had not noticed these changes. Because accuracy matters, I changed my discussion to mirror McGowan’s work, and will be splitting my discussion into three parts. If anything I quote here appears to have changed since posting this debunk, let me know and I will post the screen shot of the entire entries I responded to. Please note that this analysis for Part One comes from the entry McGowan had posted as of 5/15/2013.
I don’t think I’ve ever encountered this sort of thing before. All bloggers I read indicate when they have edited content. I personally prefer to leave content as it stands and include an edit with the new information. You can see this at work in my entry on The Franklin Cover-Up. It’s important to have this sort of information integrity because otherwise you are forcing your readers to check back with your entry literally every day lest they be accused of misquoting you, which will definitely happen when discussing conspiracy theory. True Believers love to read ill-intent in the smallest of errors and had my husband not seen that McGowan had, in fact, added large sections to his work and split it up into three sections, I can’t imagine the attacks that would have been lobbed my way.
I have the original I initially responded to and checked to see if there was some manner in which McGowan communicated his new material. His font sizes change often in his work and I initially had hoped smaller font was indicative of edited material, but that did not prove to be the case as unedited material was also in smaller font. There was nothing in any of the three sections to show the reader that he had been adding to his original work, other than the obvious fact that he had broken his first entry into three smaller entries.
Very strange, but at least I noticed before I posted so no harm done.
I found myself in an odd position debunking McGowan’s theory. Though this is only the second entry in my Boston Bombing Theories series, I have several other entries in my drafts folder that need a bit more research or need to be edited before I post them. None of them have inspired in me the level of anger I experienced reading McGowan’s theory, but then again, it’s early days. Perhaps more of this is in store for me. Still, it was, at times, nauseating to read such a virulent lack of respect for the Boston Bombing victims. Throughout his articles, McGowan engages in a near Stalinist desire to unperson people who have suffered grave harm in order to prove a theory that involves more supposition on his part than it does actual proof. He insults the appearance of one victim, he demeans the dead and he outright mocks serious injuries because he claims it is clear victims were not wounded. He bases this opinion solely on his observations, which often appear strange as the pictures show gravely injured people. Or at least they do to those not pushing an agenda. It’s hard to maintain a tone of civility when one encounters such a shocking lack of basic human decency. I’m sure McGowan is a great man and thinker in many respects but his Boston Bombing Theory doesn’t necessarily reflect that.
Let me also repeat here that I don’t have a theory as to what happened at Boston. I am withholding judgement until the government makes a full case against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. It would be very nice to see the video the FBI claims shows Dzhokhar Tsarnaev placing the bomb and the letter he is said to have written on the wall of the boat where he hid after the Watertown shoot out, especially the latter as it just sounds so strange. There has been too much bad information about this case to have much faith in anything that the public cannot see with their own eyes.
Because this is the first long debunk I have posted, I need to explain why I am discussing his theory line by line. Lest it seem like I am beating up McGowan, I will likely need to examine every line of every conspiracy theory. Most, if not all, theorists will insist that if a debunker fails to address every single bit of minutia in their theory, then they haven’t debunked it. And if they put as much work into their theories that McGowan has put into his, perhaps they deserve that level of scrutiny. Having had people focus on one element of something I have to say rather than examine the whole of my argument, I understand how frustrating it is when people ignore large chunks of what I write.
I also need to tell you all that there is analysis of extremely bloody and graphic bomb scene photographs. If you are squeamish or find such content offensive, you will want to give this section a miss. So with all that out of the way, let’s start discussing “Special Report on the Boston Marathon, The Curious Case of the Man Who Could Only Sit Down, Part 1.” Like most conspiracy theories, McGowan’s theory about the Boston Bombing is muddled and at times I lost track of the point he was trying to make. Despite Jeff Bauman, Jr. being the ostensible focus of this article, as much time if not more is spent focusing on other victims. It was difficult to see the logical end to all his speculation.
He begins by explaining that the media really wanted us to see the carnage in Boston:
The Boston Marathon bombing incident produced an exceedingly bloody, gore-filled scene. We know that because virtually all avenues of the mainstream media, as was obvious from the very first reports, wanted us to know that. Never before can I recall seeing so many blood-soaked images being so prominently displayed. Newspapers and network and cable news broadcasts seemed to be on a mission to bring you the bloodiest, most graphic images they could come up with. The most disturbing of those images, by far, all involved a guy who had reportedly just had both of his legs blown off. The most heavily circulated and iconic of those images are of the legless guy being rolled away from the scene in a wheelchair, his unbelievably graphic wounds uncovered and on full display for the waiting cameras.
1) The media showed those images because they were what happened that day. Were the photographers and cameramen supposed to focus on broken windows and the property damage? It is, in my opinion, disingenuous to read much into the media showing us the blood because that was what happened – people were injured. I would be far more suspicious had the media pointed their cameras to their feet and showed nothing.
2) I’m not sure what media McGowan watches but the media I’ve seen cover terrible, bloody events all the time. I’m unsure how it is he can maintain such a stance because during every bombing wherein there is a large crime scene, we see a lot of terrible things. Anyone remember the fireman carrying a dead child from the Oklahoma City Bombings? Anyone recall the images of people jumping from the World Trade Centers? We don’t see a whole lot of nasty bombings like this in our country, bombings meant to cause harm to people rather than destroy symbols of the American infrastructure. This is the first mass bombing of people in the outdoors since the Atlanta Olympics bombing in 1996, and that bombing paled in comparison to what happened in Boston, so perhaps it is easy to lose sight of how the media handles terror on this scale. But if there’s a bloodbath, there will always be reporters trying to show us the bloodbath.
3) I am unsure how McGowan would have had medical personnel and bystanders get Jeff Bauman, Jr. to help without it being graphically visible to the cameras. Had he been strapped down on a gurney, the horror of his legs would still have been visible and still would have been all over our TVs. Moreover, the wheelchair is important because it shows that Arredondo and others on the scene recognized how terrible Bauman’s wounds were. Had they waited for a gurney Bauman might have bled out. But understand that there would have been little way for Bauman’s injuries to have been hidden regardless of how he had been transported to help.
McGowan goes on:
How crazy would it sound to suggest that that did not happen by accident — to suggest that not only were his injuries staged, but that they were specifically designed for that high-profile wheelchair ride? Pretty crazy … right? After all, I have in the past been rather critical of other researchers who have alleged that the victims of high-profile mass murders are actually actors. Nothing, it seems to me, could possibly serve to better alienate and offend the general public than attacking the victims as being part of the conspiracy. But what if the evidence is so overwhelming that it simply cannot be ignored?
1) It would be very crazy to suggest that this did not happen by accident. Keep reading, I’ll show you how crazy it would be.
2) Given how utterly alienating McGowan’s text will become, perhaps he should have kept in mind how critical he has been of others who engage in “it was all staged” arguments. Believe me, he alienates and offends in this article and has no real evidence at all, let alone anything so overwhelming it was worth demeaning the dead and mocking the wounded.
In fact, I assert all of his evidence is subject to criteria that only McGowan and similar false flaggers can see. As I will demonstrate, he often misidentifies the pictures he looks at, he inserts pictures out of sequence, he has no idea who was where in the pictures he presents and he has difficulty marrying different photographic perspectives into one coherent view. Moreover, he has a very special idea of what it is that happens to people during shock, he contradicts himself in his claims of what the “actors” were doing, and makes claims that are not even close to being borne out in the very photographic evidence he presents. All in all, he would have been far better off sticking to the notion that to deny the dead and mock the wounded is a bad course to take unless one really does have iron-clad, undeniable proof in the matter.
I need to be very clear here in stating that I am not arguing that no one was injured in the attack and that there was no real suffering. That undoubtedly was not the case. But the fact remains that the most high-profile of the victims, who also happened to be by far the most gruesomely injured of the victims, and the guy who purportedly provided the tip that allowed authorities to identify the alleged perpetrators, appears to have been a fake. And though we were told that there were numerous people who lost limbs that day, he is the only one the media chose to put in the spotlight that day.
Given that media outlets from The Huffington Post to the Atlantic Wire to mainstream television censored out Bauman’s injury when the public called them out for showing such gore, and that the gravity of the injury was made most public by non-mainstream media online venues like Reddit and 4chan, a large chunk of McGowan’s theory is down the drain. But the idea that Bauman “appears to have been a fake” is interesting. How does McGowan come to this conclusion? Well, he has a lot of supposition, most of which doesn’t offer any proof and a lot of it is outright incorrect.
McGowan then says we need to take a closer look at “Wheelchair Guy.”
To begin with, the guy’s name is supposedly Jeff Bauman. The posted photos of Bauman, however, do not really resemble the wheelchair guy.
What posted pictures? Citation needed. What pictures are McGowan saying don’t resemble “wheelchair guy?” No idea, but an image search on Bauman shows plenty of pictures of him that are clearly that of the “wheelchair guy” and they existed long before the attack. I know the conspiratorial mind will say that those pictures were planted in some manner but the pictures of Bauman online certainly resemble the Jeff Bauman, Jr. whose legs were blown off. And unless anyone can prove that Jeff Bauman, Jr. did not work at CostCo, did not go to college and have very real student loans, that he in fact never existed and that all the people who know him in real life are just part of the conspiracy, then any notion that information could be created to form a false existence is the sort of claim anyone could make about anyone on this planet.
If I were intellectually dishonest enough, I could deny the existence of every single person reading this entry via continually moving the goal posts and refusing to accept any evidence that refutes my depersoning. The burden of proof to say Jeff Bauman, Jr. is not who he says he is is on the side of those who make that claim. The common tactic is to engage in logical fallacy and force those who deny the claim to prove Bauman does in fact exist. When facts are brought forth, those who say Bauman did not exist or was not who he said he was will reject that evidence as being manufactured. Cool position, no? Engage in two logical fallacies – burden of proof and moving the goalposts, and then insist that no one can prove you wrong because all their evidence is manufactured or they are a part of the conspiracy.
In addition, the initial identification of Bauman came via an unverifiable Facebook post. In fact, virtually everything that has been reported about Bauman to this day seems to have come from unverified Facebook posts, though the info has been reported as fact.
McGowan’s verbiage here is vague, though I assume he means that people became aware of Jeff Bauman as bombing victim via a Facebook post, but really, his stepsister recognized him from the infamous photos and called his father in shock. If McGowan means that there was nothing that verified Jeff as a victim other than a Facebook page, I’m unsure what he wants as proof. A federal decree that mentions Jeff Bauman, Jr. as victim? Bauman’s father posted a Facebook announcement but it is decidedly untrue that everything reported about Bauman came from a Facebook page and much of the reporting in the media about Bauman definitely did not come from a Facebook page. Had McGowan sourced this information in some manner, it would have been easier to suss out what he means but alas, it’s just vague assertions.
Those posts have largely been credited to Jeff Bauman, Sr., though no reporters, as best I can determine, have actually located and spoken to the senior Bauman.
And? Had my legs been blown off, I can assure you Mama HRev would not have been available to reporters. That’s just how she is, and the decision to interact with the media or not to interact are both valid. Little can be derived from the decision to interact or not to interact. So why do we need the media to track down Bauman’s father and hold an interview with him in person? What difference could that make? But none of that matters because Bauman Sr gave an interview to the New York Timesthat includes a picture of him. The NYT interview is not obscure and it took me less than three seconds to find that article. McGowan’s assertion that no media has located or spoken to Bauman, Sr. is completely wrong.
Reports claim that Jeff, Jr. was supposedly waiting at the finish line for his girlfriend to cross, but that girlfriend has never been identified and has not come forward to speak to the press.
Again, why do we need to know the name of his girlfriend and why does she need to talk to the press? But more to the point, she has been identified. Her name is Erin Hurley and plenty is known about her, from the high school she attended to the name of the friend she ran the marathon with. Please note that the bulk of information about Erin Hurley was online before 5/7/13, the date McGowan posted part one of his three part article.
And Bauman himself, though healthy enough after just 19 days to attend a Boston Bruins hockey match, has not been sought out by or interviewed by anyone in the media.
1) How long does McGowan think a person needs to remain in the hospital after having their legs blown off? No idea because he doesn’t give any sort of guideline that he considers reasonable. However, a quick Google shows that the average stay in the hospital after an amputation is seven to ten days. Physical therapy is done on an outpatient basis. Bauman needed abdominal surgery the day after his amputations, which added to his stay, but his hospital stay was longer than the average stay and well within guidelines for recovery.
2) Bauman’s appearance at the Boston Bruins game was a media event. He was sought out by the media and he appeared.
3) Bauman has given an interview. A basic Google would have shown this – the interview pre-dates the post date of McGowan’s article.
McGowan at least does not get sucked into the Jeff Bauman, Jr. as Nick Vogt theory, but he is of the opinion that Jeff Bauman, Jr does not exist and only uses his name condescendingly for the purposes of the article.
I don’t pretend to know who the no-legs guy actually is, but I do know that the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that he did not lose his legs at the Boston Marathon. For the purposes of this post, we will refer to him as Jeff Bauman, though I am not at all convinced that that is his real name.
This is horrible. What level of proof does this injured man need to show he exists? Google is riddled with references to him before the attack, including pictures. We know where he went to college, where he worked. He has a Facebook with friends who know him in real life. Doctors operated on him. Friends and family rallied to his side. What more proof does he need to show he exists? Just as an example, my own husband is a quiet, private guy. He has a LinkedIn, he seldom uses Twitter, he has no Facebook, and few pictures of him exist outside of my Flickr account and those are not labeled with his full name. There is less online to prove he exists than there is Jeff Bauman, Jr. and I assure you he exists. Had he been injured in the attacks, I can’t imagine the field day conspiratologists would have with him, especially since he is ex-military. Jeff Bauman, Jr. is exactly who he says he is and those who claim he isn’t use the worst sorts of speculation and bad analysis to deperson him, a tactic one associates most commonly with dictatorial and tyrannical excesses. It’s vile. To deny a person his identity based on half-baked assertions is vile.
Here’s McGowan’s evidence for why Jeff Bauman, Jr was not injured or who he says he is and why large chunks of the first bomb scene were faked.
According to the official narrative, Bauman was all but straddling backpack bomb #1 when it went off. As reported by Bloomberg News, “Bauman was waiting among the crowd for his girlfriend to cross the finish line at the Boston Marathon. A man wearing a cap, sunglasses and a black jacket over a hooded sweatshirt looked at Jeff, 27, and dropped a bag at his feet, his brother, Chris Bauman, said in an interview. Two and a half minutes later, the bag exploded, tearing Jeff’s legs apart.” Curiously, that alleged brother has not been seen, photographed or spoken to by any other media outlet. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-19/boston-bombing-victim-in-iconic-photo-helped-identify-attackers.html
Bloomberg is hardly obscure. How many major media outlets does Chris Bauman need to speak with the satisfy McGowan? Two? 19? 175? He spoke to the media yet McGowan tosses out that interview as meaningless. Again, it seems very much like there is not enough proof for conspiratologists and they don’t mention a baseline of information that would soothe them (because often they engage in moving the goal posts, continually asking for more and more proof to the point that Bauman could have given a DNA swab in front of them, clutching his birth certificate, his drivers license and his Social Security card with 15 verifiable witnesses and it would not be enough).
I hope I am not seeming cruel to McGowan here, but he proceeds to deperson several other people simply on the basis that he doesn’t think their real names could possibly be their real names, notably Christian Williams and Nicole Gross. No proof other than that he just says it seems unlikely he is called Christian and she is called Nicole. Again, that’s vile. He calls the black woman who collapsed on top of Bauman “Redcoat.” Admittedly she was wearing a red jacket, but the traitorous implications of this nickname are clear. McGowan’s utter contempt for people who were gravely injured is startling.
McGowan then sets up his “cast of characters.” He begins with Arredondo, and if this all starts to get jumbled, please know I am just following McGowan’s lay out. McGowan lists several sources that explain Carlos Arredondo’s actions. I am quoting only one here, and lest I be accused of cherry picking, I am quoting the one McGowan thinks is the most detailed. Emphasis is mine, because we will come back to this after McGowan is finished demeaning the victims.
The Daily Beast provided one of the most detailed accounts of Arredondo’s heroics: “Carlos Arredondo was in the bleachers by the finish line of the Boston Marathon when the first bomb went off directly across the street … In the next moment, the 53-year old was vaulting a barricade and racing straight into the acrid cloud …” He immediately located and rushed to assist Bauman. “A second bomb went off 100 yards away. Arredondo kept his focus on the young man …” In other words, he had worked his way down from the bleachers, raced across the street, vaulted the barricade, located Bauman amidst the smoke and confusion, and already begun to assist him – all within less than 15 seconds! I think we can all agree that heroes of that magnitude aren’t born every day. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/16/carlos-arredondo-boston-marathon-hero-in-a-cowboy-hat-on-the-bombs.html
McGowan goes on:
Another guy we will be seeing a lot of in the images that follow is allegedly named Christian Williams, but we will refer to him as “the hoody guy” or just “hoody” because I seriously doubt that that is his real name. Hoody guy was right alongside Bauman at the time of the blast and, like Jeff, he sustained very serious, life-threatening wounds.
I will be referring to him as Christian Williams because that is his name. Since McGowan offers nothing to give any reason why he depersons Williams by referring to him by an article of clothing he wore, I see no reason to follow his example.
McGowan goes on to discuss information from a Go Fund Me page wherein friends of Christian Williams and Caroline Reinsch try to raise money for their expensive medical costs. This was one of the passages he added after I had completed my first version of this debunk, and he adds it because he thinks it shows Williams to be an actor. That is the sole reason to pay attention to this so it can remembered when McGowan looks at the pictures of Christian Williams and sees a man without a single injury.
According to a fundraising page put up by someone claiming to be a friend of hoody guy, he remains in the hospital and has endured numerous surgeries aimed at putting him back together. Here are a few (very poorly written) excerpts from the page: “[Christian] remembers quite vividly that a Boston Marathon runner who is also a surgeon, came to his rescue. He remembers the man was able to get people to help him apply tourniquet to each of his legs, he hollered out ‘if we can get this guy out on the next transport he has a chance, otherwise he’s going to die.’ That’s when he realized how serious his injuries were … Christian is indeed lucky that his legs will not have to be amputated … Here’s the latest update from Christian … ‘today I met a few of my saviors … Standing before me were the three members of the Boston EMS who were directly responsible for keeping me alive and getting me swiftly to the hospital. Apparently, they had been speculating about my outcome for two weeks and decided to surprise me with a visit, because I was by far the most seriously injured patient they treated that day, and that they had not expected me to make it. They had applied not one, not two, but three tourniquets to my left leg, yet still my blood poured down off the stretcher and onto the floor. Both of my femurs were exposed and they were applying pressure to keep them in place. My right leg was so badly wounded from top to bottom they thought for sure it was gone. My blood pressure was nowhere to be found, and they were calling ahead and alerting the trauma team that I had turned ashen.'” Elsewhere on the page, it says that, “Christian’s right hand was also partially ‘degloved’, meaning he has no skin left on his last three fingers.” http://www.gofundme.com/ChristianCarolineFund/
Seriously. He critiques the writing of people writing extemporaneously on a charity blog. For the love of sanity…
He continues with his depersoning:
Also right alongside Bauman at the time of the blast was a young woman allegedly named Nicole Gross, who was waiting at the finish line with her sister. We will be seeing quite a bit of Nicole as well. Also with her was her husband. According to an account in the Charlotte Observer, Nicole and her husband were taken to the hospital together. While her husband sustained only minor wounds, Nicole and her sister were far more gravely injured. Nicole’s injuries included two breaks in her left leg, a fracture in her right ankle, torn skin, and a severed Achilles tendon. Her sister fared even worse, losing her left leg below the knee and suffering a compound fracture in her right leg, a broken right ankle, and broken bones in her foot. While I seriously doubt that her name is really Nicole, I will play along and use that name for her in this post. http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/04/16/3985154/some-from-charlotte-are-among.html
Again, despite the fact that Nicole Gross has a long online presence proving exactly who she is, including details of her work life, McGowan just doesn’t think that could be her name. Also know I will be calling her husband and her sister by their names: Michael Grossman and Erika Brannock. Please make note of this injury list because McGowan will be using it to demean Nicole and to insinuate she wasn’t injured at all.
Then there’s this:
There is one more person we will be seeing a lot of, a black woman dressed in black pants, a white top and a red sweater. She was also in the grouping around Bauman when the first blast occurred, which means that according to the official version of events she was also nearly straddling the supposedly shrapnel-laden bomb. As best I can determine at this time, she has not been identified and so will here be referred to as “Redcoat.”
Already covered this above – I will not be calling her Redcoat. I will be referring to her as the black woman or the black lady because the notion of using a description that so clearly denotes the idea that she is somehow an enemy of America sickens me.
So after this, McGowan begins to set up his arguments, using pictures and what I consider to be very interesting interpretations of those pictures to prove his argument. I will be using the exact pictures he uses in the order he uses them. I skipped his picture he uses of Jeff Bauman at the hockey game as I didn’t see how it added to the analysis. I will label these pictures simply so I can compare them when needed, and not to make any comment on McGowan’s lay out.
McGowan Picture 1
So already, we have a bit of a problem with the Cowboy Hero’s version of events: he clearly did not immediately vault over the fence to get to victims and he just as clearly was not at Bauman’s side within “moments.”
Carlos Arredondo vaulted over the fence that surrounded the bleacher area where he was sitting. He did not vault over the fence on the side of the street where the bomb detonated and context shows that. Go back and read The Daily Beast discussion above of what he did. In order: he vaulted the barricade that surrounded the bleachers, he raced into the smoke on the other side of the street, and then began to tear down the fencing so he could reach injured people. He was indeed by Bauman’s side in moments because the fence was pulled apart enough to let people through in under two minutes and then completely pulled away. Even had Arredondo waited until the last picket was torn away, he still would have been by Bauman’s side in three minutes or so. A moment is a minute, not a second. McGowan has completely misunderstood the sequence of events, even as there was context to show him the correct order in which events occurred, and even as the events were laid out sequentially in the very quote he uses and then misunderstands.
McGowan next sets up his thesis – that part of the first bombing site was staged.
The fact that there were relatively few witnesses at the blast location, coupled with the fact that would-be rescuers were held at bay for the first few minutes by the temporary fencing, would have provided an ideal window of opportunity to stage the scene, if anyone had been inclined to do so.
It outright beggars belief that even the most talented stage make-up artist with a team of a dozen assistants could have raced in, applied all the prosthetics, make-up, injuries and blood in the few minutes of smoke. It’s all the more unbelievable because there are pictures of the horror within the smoke and clearly the only people there are the people who were injured. But that’s McGowan’s thesis, even as he produces pictures as proof that will give lie to his own speculations.
Admittedly, given the extraordinary number of errors already found in McGowan’s article, I was not hopeful as I read on. But I did read on and gave McGowan’s analysis as serious a consideration as I could. Emphasis mine:
Below is the first post-blast image of Bauman, taken from a surveillance video. He can be seen to the left, just in front of Redcoat. Just behind her is the hoody guy. Barely visible to the far left is Nicole Gross. Hoody, Nicole and Redcoat are all three huddled closely around Jeff’s freshly mangled legs. The smoke is still pretty thick in this image so we can’t discern much, but we can see that from the earliest moments after the explosion, both of Bauman’s stumps are at right angles to his body. And the lower leg on the longer stump, though it can’t be seen from this angle, is at a near perfect right-angle to the upper leg. Both of his stumps, in other words, are in a sitting position. And they will remain in that very same orientation, without even minor changes, throughout his ordeal. Also worth noting is that the shorter stump looks considerably different here than it does in later images.
McGowan Picture 2
It is a big deal to McGowan that Bauman kept his knees bent after his legs were blown off. I have no idea why because he never explains in part one and lots of research on my part revealed nothing odd about a man holding his legs bent at the knee when his shins have been blown off. Nothing. Nowhere. And McGowan himself never bothers to explain why this is important. Perhaps he brings it up in part two. Also note that he never compares the shorter stump to the pictures wherein he claims it is longer.
Additionally, these are not surveillance photos. They are zoom-ins and crops of the Ben Thorndike pictures and I suspect that McGowan did not crop them himself, but rather found them online after Redditors and 4chan had zoomed in and cropped them. I am a chronic insomniac and spent hours watching as Reddit pored over every new photo. I recognized the Ben Thorndike photos immediately. I am almost certain that McGowan did not know that he was using crops of the Thorndike pics but that is where the bulk of his photographic evidence in part one comes from. When the first bomb went off, Thorndike was in a building overlooking the carnage and began to take pictures. He hit the rapid-shutter and took many pictures in rapid succession, 25 in all.
However, I think that if McGowan had known to look for the full images, it might have shown him the sort of circle of carnage the bomb caused. There were arcs of damage that show a pattern of how people fell when the bomb debris hit them. The wide scope of the Thorndike images shows a completely different picture than the crops. Have a look at this full Thorndike image, uncropped and without closeup.
The blue circle shows the scope of the carnage that McGowan concentrates on in his theory. The yellow-green circle shows the entire area of the heavy carnage. This will be important later to show how it is that people could have appeared in pictures. McGowan seems to think they came out of nowhere, because using the crops to prove his case indeed makes it seem that way. But really, people missing limbs, on the ground, were there all the time, in some cases just a few feet away. They may have been moved by helpers (so many fell in clusters that first responders had to move them to give them aid) or they crawled to different places. But they certainly didn’t come out of nowhere.
Moving on to the second image, we can clearly see that the hoody guy, mere moments after the blast, is primarily concerned with donning his sunglasses. Some web posts and videos have claimed that this was to send a signal to Redcoat – which seems rather unlikely, I have to say, given that the two are obviously close enough to signal each other verbally. Far more likely is that hoody guy was mostly concerned with concealing his identity. He will remain in the hoody and shades for as long as he is on the set, even while receiving medical attention. We can also see more clearly here that Redcoat, Nicole (now visible) and hoody guy are all within inches of Jeff, with his freshly amputated limbs pointed directly at them. In fact, Jeff’s longer stump appears to be wedged in between Redcoat and Nicole. All three accomplices, nevertheless, will emerge from their ordeal without so much as a drop of Johnny’s blood on them. Also, none of the three appear to have received any significant injuries despite having been right alongside a guy who supposedly got both his legs blown off.
McGowan Picture 3
The problems with this passage are near-legion.
1) “Hoody” didn’t do a very good job of hiding his identity because we know he is Christian Williams. And he remains in his hoodie jacket and sunglasses the entire time because he was wearing the hoodie when he fell and because he put on sunglasses. Putting on sunglasses is not that strange. And if he was trying to hide his identity, he sure blew it with that charity page with his name and his images.
2) People do all kinds of strange things but were I in the middle of a bomb site and there was smoke and debris, perhaps wearing sunglasses would help me protect my eyes. Or perhaps he was just in shock and just automatically returned the glasses to his face. There is an ocean of interpretations of why Williams put his glasses on that are far more amicable to the Law of Parsimony than a man putting on sunglasses because he is an actor in a stage bombing in a false flag attack.
3) Are you kidding me? No one else but Jeff received terrible injuries? Nicole’s sister, who is named Erika Brannock and who will come up later in this analysis of mine, lost a leg. She fell a few feet from her sister and to the right of Bauman as you look at the above picture. Nicole Gross suffered compound fractures, multiple soft-tissue injuries and a broken ankle. She has had four surgeries since the bombing. Christian Williams suffered soft tissue injuries and a partially de-gloved hand, which we will address soon. The black woman in the red jacket appeared to have head injuries, but we don’t know, and since we don’t know even her name, it is sheer speculation on McGowan’s part to say she had no serious injuries, though his own pictures will later prove this assertion wrong. I didn’t link to any specific sites here but should you decide to Google, you will find all this information is true and out there. It would appear that Bauman got the worst of it – in bombings it is not uncommon for a handful of people to be more injured than others – but it is an outright misrepresentation to say none of these people had significant injuries.
Do you see the woman in the blue shirt, the blonde woman near the wooden pickets? She’s screaming? Right above the lady in the pink vest? Take note of her. She will come up again in parts two and three. McGowan claims “two dead women” appeared out of nowhere to make the scene look more grim but they were in the frames of the very pictures McGowan uses and he didn’t seem to recognize them.
4) None of them had “Johnny’s” blood on them? How would you know this when they were all covered with blood of their own. But even so, the black woman’s shirt is covered with gore from Bauman’s legs. Covered in it.
It goes on, and this passage shows clearly that McGowan isn’t familiar enough with the pictures to comment on them accurately.
In this third image, we can now see the right-angle bend in Jeff’s remaining knee. We can also see that the bony stump is all but poking Redcoat in the head (which seems, even under the circumstances, kind of rude). And it is clearly pointing directly at both Redcoat and the hoody guy, both of whom remain remarkably blood-free. We can also see that no one else in this scene appears to be nearly as gravely injured as Jeff. Also, Redcoat and hoody guy seem rather calm relative to most of the others in the scene, many of whom are in full panic mode. Lastly, there is no sign of hoody’s wife, who was supposedly alongside him, or of Nicole’s husband and sister, both of whom were allegedly alongside her.
McGowan Picture 4, arrow insertion mine
1) Again, unless McGowan shows evidence of how one is supposed to hold one’s legs after they’ve been blown off blow the knee, who cares if Jeff’s legs are bent.
2) Not touching the rude comment.
3) Plenty of people are as bloody as Jeff. Christian bled into his dark jeans and onto the ground. Nicole’s shrapnel wounds produced less blood and her broken bones were likely caused by concussion waves, which don’t create bleeding. You can’t see all of the blood on many of these people because they bled into their clothing or out into the ground and their bodies are hiding the blood.
4) No one else is as injured as Jeff in this picture? Really? McGowan doesn’t know it, but off the top of my head, there are at least additional two leg amputations and one of the victims who died represented in his own picture. Yes, I think bleeding out and/or dying of a concussion brain injury is worse than losing one’s legs. See the girl in the blue shirt, the one I mentioned above? That’s Krystle Campbell, the second fatality.
5). I can’t see Caroline Reinsch (Christian Williams’ wife) or Michael Gross in this picture either but neither sustained injuries as bad as their spouses. Moreover, since McGowan quotes the charity site devoted to raising money for Caroline and Christian, he should know why it is Caroline is not in the picture. On the Go Fund Me page, it is explained that she was overwhelmed by fight or flight and ran from the scene. McGowan is also wrong that Nicole’s sister Erika is not in the picture. Taking the exact picture McGowan used, the arrow to the left is pointing out Nicole, the arrow to the right is pointing out Erika. If the sisters were standing close, where they ended up should show that just standing in proximity to someone doesn’t necessarily mean that you will fall down with them.
Continuing on:
Moments later, we can see that Jeff and Redcoat seem to both be giving the very same hand signal in the direction of approaching responders while making eye contact with one another. Both stumps continue to be in a sitting position and both continue to point directly at Redcoat. It doesn’t seem to have yet occurred to Jeff or anyone else to put pressure on his wounds. Hoody guy looks on passively while making no effort to offer assistance to Jeff. Indeed, neither Redcoat nor hoody guy ever make any effort to staunch the flow of Jeff’s blood, which is okay since there doesn’t appear to actually be any blood flowing. Meanwhile, Nicole has moved out of the shot.
McGowan Picture 4
1) Look hard at this photo McGowan uses to assert that Jeff and the black woman are giving each other hand signals. I don’t even know what to say. If you can look at this picture of two people trying to get their bearings after they were bombed and see malicious eye contact and significant gestures in their splayed fingers as they flail around, then you are looking at this scene in a manner that defies logic.
2) It hasn’t occurred to anyone to put pressure on Jeff’s wounds because this is seconds after the bomb went off. Literally seconds after the blast. I think it would take the average person who has been in a bomb blast and received injury a bit more time to respond. One also wonders how it is Jeff could tend to his wounds in a manner McGowan thinks fitting when his right leg, or what remains of it, is still pinned under the black woman. Only his left leg is liberated. So I think we can cut Christian and the black woman some slack – they were injured too, it was seconds after the blast, and Jeff’s right leg isn’t even visible. Moreover, it seems that in McGowan’s world no one ever suffers shock when they are injured in bomb blasts and immediately jump into action when they are victims of grave harm. (But then again, the Thorndike photo series begins with the man in the shredded pants who ran away from the scene immediately and he has been called the bomber by many who say reacting quickly means he must have been in on the blast in some manner, so really, in the eyes of conspiratologists, these victims are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.)
3) Jeff was bleeding profusely. The blood was under his body and hidden by those piled atop him, but later pictures show he was definitely bleeding. The ground was covered in his blood.
4) Nicole has not moved out of the shot. She’s just not in the crop of the Thorndike picture McGowan uses. In every picture wherein the smoke has cleared enough for her to be seen, Nicole remains in every shot. Don’t take my word for it. Don’t take my word for anything. I want you to research. Have a look a this slideshow of the Thorndike pictures. Get each picture and zoom in. You’ll see Nicole.
Let’s continue.
This next series of images captures the same scene from a slightly different vantage point and at a higher resolution, revealing that hoody guy, demonstrating a considerable amount of manual dexterity for a guy with a ‘degloved’ hand, began working diligently on Jeff’s stumps before the smoke even began to clear. And he did so without getting any blood on his hands.
Actually, McGowan is still using the Thorndike pictures, employing various crops of each of them. McGowan uses three pictures to illustrate his above points, McGowan Pictures 5-7. I will reproduce those pictures here in the order McGowan presented but be aware that my refutations apply to all three unless otherwise specified.
McGowan Picture 5
1) You can tell by the smoke in McGowan Picture 5 that McGowan is offering the first of these three pictures out of sequence. This picture was taken roughly a couple of seconds prior to the very first picture McGowan offers in his bomb scene analysis. Seriously, have a look at the picture I have labeled McGowan Picture 1. You can tell by the positioning of the people in the bomb scene (the woman being helped to her feet is just beginning to be lifted up in McGowan Picture 5 – compare that to her position in McGowan Picture 1) and the level of smoke. So this picture offers nothing in terms of the sequence of events and shows a certain lack of awareness McGowan has about the materials he uses to prove his own case.
McGowan Picture 6
2) I can see no evidence in any of these pictures that Christian Williams is trying to staunch anyone’s blood yet. That’s not a belt in his hand to be used as a tourniquet. Those are his sunglasses. It’s fascinating that McGowan earlier takes him to task for not helping when the smoke has cleared but thinks he was, indeed “working on Jeff’s stumps” before he accuses him of not helping. Which is it? Was Christian Williams “helping” or just lolling about as Bauman bled out? The black woman is still collapsed on top of Jeff – you can see her there pretty clearly. Christian is just stumbling around here. And I have not been able to find a single media source that says that Christian ever offered help to Bauman, as noble as that would be. Of course, McGowan’s setting this up for something else entirely (one assumes) but the facts are the facts.
Also note in this picture the arc of carnage I mentioned above. You can clearly see that there is a heavy line of injury that is roughly a circle, with the center empty. There is a whole other set of injured people below Bauman, Williams and Gross that can explain several of the scenes McGowan later will indicate were staged.
McGowan Picture 7
3) Even if we can accept that Christian Williams was helping Bauman, it was his right hand that was partially degloved. All we can see is his left hand. In none of these pictures do we see his right hand. One assumes he did not lose any dexterity in the hand that was not affected in the bombing.
We now change positions to look at the same scene just moments later from a different perspective, and this is where things really start to get interesting. All five of our key players (Carlos, Jeff, Hoody, Nicole, and Redcoat) are present and accounted for. Just about everyone else, which is to say all the non-actors, have fled the scene. Jeff is just behind Redcoat, though he is all but impossible to see. Everyone is ignoring him. In fact, with the notable exception of Arredondo, no one on the scene is even looking in his direction. Not a single person.
McGowan Picture 8
All the non-actors have fled the scene? You mean all the people still able to move under their own power left the scene. I also want to point out that there is a cluster of severely wounded people still on the ground near the woman in the pink vest. You can see them in the other views. Please check the picture I have above of the full scope of the carnage and the different groups of people who are gravely harmed. This group in the foreground is hardly the only group on the ground.
McGowan goes on:
And speaking of Arredondo, he is, mere moments after the blast and with the smoke still swirling, already inside the temporary fencing, which obviously would have been impossible had he initially been seated across the street in the bleachers. And it’s hard not to notice that he isn’t actually rushing to help anyone but is instead standing idly by, hat and flag in hand, though he is obviously aware of Jeff and appears to be looking right at him.
If Arredondo saw the blast, leapt up from his seat, vaulted the fence, and ran across the street, he could be there in seconds. It makes perfect sense. Moreover, since Arredondo himself thinks he reached Jeff moments after the blast, this smoky picture is within that time frame because Arredondo isn’t to him yet. He’s got his hat and flag in hand and he isn’t pulling the fence in this picture. I don’t know why and neither does McGowan but it could be that he was shocked by the carnage in front of him and he hesitated for a few seconds before acting. He lost a son in combat, a son to suicide and is himself a man with all kinds of trauma in his life. It seems likely he was stunned, but I have to say my belief that he is stunned is an assumption.
We go from the speculative to the super-speculative.
McGowan Picture 8
Next up is a more detailed view of Arredondo, cropped from a higher resolution version of the above image. He is indeed inside the fencing and leaning casually against it. He also is quite obviously pointing with his right hand while shielding the gesture with his hat, as though covertly sending a signal. And he is, as previously noted, looking at Bauman while doing so.
1) I can see Arredondo’s index finger but I can’t tell if he is pointing. He may just be moving his hand in a strange manner. When people point, they generally bring their hand into a fist with their index finger extended. To my eye Arredondo’s finger is curved, and his other fingers are not clasped to his palm. No idea what he was about to do but it seems as likely that he was moving his hand downward to grab something as much as point. This picture caught him in mid-movement.
2) It appears as if he may be looking at Jeff. God knows if I ran onto that scene I would be looking at Bauman to the exclusion of most others. But the implication of McGowan’s statement of the hand signal and focusing on Bauman is that in some way Arredondo was sending a signal to the “actors.” But, as McGowan himself notes, his hat is in the way and Bauman could not have seen the gesture, if that is what Arredondo was doing. Who on the other side of the fence could have seen it with the hat in the way? Almost doesn’t matter since not a single person on the other side of the fence is looking at him. If that was indeed a hand signal, no one saw it.
Below is a close-up of hoody guy, cropped from the same high-resolution image. Hoody is clearly knocking on death’s door here and we can bear witness to his exposed femurs, shredded and badly bleeding legs, and partially ‘degloved’ right hand. We can also see that he is very concerned about his missing wife. Ooops …. actually we can’t see any of that because none of it really happened. What we actually see is a guy comfortably reclining with a fully intact right hand and two perfectly fine legs. He hardly even has any blood on him, and what is visible was undoubtedly picked up from the pavement.
McGowan Picture 9
1) Not a debunk but I find McGowan’s sarcasm here beyond offensive. He’s mocking a man who indeed suffered great injuries. Williams was initially facing amputation but the doctors managed to save his legs. If you are going to mock a man who has suffered, you best have all your ducks in a row and McGowan isn’t even close to making even a prima facie case that the first bombing scene was staged. It’s disgusting and if my verbiage seems harsh, so be it, but then again, I’m not the one mocking people who could have died had it not been for the remarkable work of first responders.
2) It is clear on his right hand that he is missing the skin on middle and ring fingers. His pinky finger is not clear to me. I have no idea why McGowan saw fit to deny and mock this injury that can be seen with the naked eye.
3) If the shrapnel shredded Williams’ leg and his jeans cover the area – perfectly possible with the sort of shrapnel wounds reported from the doctors who cared for the bombing casualities – then McGowan can’t see it. Shrapnel tore through people’s clothing and embedded itself in their flesh and often the wounds were not immediately visible if their clothing was dark. The photographs from Williams’ charity page show exactly where the bone was exposed and all the results of surgeries to close the wound. Go have a look but here’s a picture of his leg after several surgeries (this picture does not appear on McGowan’s site and is my addition to this discussion). The shrapnel wounds to his legs were so bad that people applied tourniquets so he would not bleed out. He has had four surgeries and had to have skin grafts to cover the gaping gash wound on one of his legs. This picture above is of Williams’ right calf, which looks mangled to the naked eye in McGowan Picture 9. His feet do not even seem to be pointing in the correct direction. Look at how he is holding his right hand – he’s holding it up in a protective manner in the same manner one instinctively places one’s arm when injured, almost as if in a sling. He’s not touching anything, grabbing anything – he’s just holding that hand immobile and elevated.
Law of Parsimony people. We can believe that Williams is an actor; he faked his injuries; he laid languidly after the bombing, drawing attention to himself while trying to hide his identity; an entire hospital system was complicit in his ruse; and he participated in a well-known Go Fund Me page that further showed his identity while defrauding trusting people who felt bad for him and his wife.
Or we can believe Williams was wounded in the attack, was stunned into shock, almost lost his legs and has undergone multiple surgeries. One requires literally hundreds of people to be in on a complex ruse that could come undone at any moment. The other requires a bomb to have gone off and injured people.
Next up is a close-up of Recoat, lying in what is supposed to be Bauman’s pooled blood. She nevertheless has remarkably little blood on her, though she does have an alien growing out of her midsection. I have no idea if that is supposed to be blood on her otherwise white top, but it certainly doesn’t look like any kind of normal blood pattern. Overall, despite laying in a pool of blood and having been directly in the line of fire of Jeff’s femoral arteries, she has very little blood on her and doesn’t appear to have suffered any significant injuries.
McGowan Picture 10
1) She is lying in Bauman’s pooled blood. Earlier McGowan said Jeff hadn’t bled but now someone is lying in a pool of his blood. Again, which is it? She doesn’t have spatters on her front because of how she fell and how the parts of Bauman’s own ravaged legs deposited on her. Additionally, her pants are black and she is wearing a red jacket. Blood could be all over her.
2) That alien on her shirt is the gore from Bauman’s leg. See, that’s muscle and veins from Bauman’s shin And more to the point, given that this is how human bodies look like when they are blown up and it looks unbelievable to the eyes of those like McGowan, seems strange those who staged this would not have worked harder to make it more realistic to the American perception of such accidents. McGowan mentions several times that this looks like a movie set. If that was the goal, to recreate movie-style realism, then the perps certainly failed.
3) It certainly doesn’t look like any kind of normal blood pattern… Citation needed. If McGowan wants to assert something like this, he needs to have proof of what it should look like if a woman fell atop a man whose legs had been blown off.
4) She has no significant injuries? Given that so many of these people had severe shrapnel injuries wherein shrapnel tore small holes in their clothes and completely shredded their legs, I would love to know how McGowan came to this conclusion. But then again, he shouldn’t have to speculate. Look at her left leg (bent at the knee, I note). See the huge gash? See the blood dripping from it? That’s a significant injury. It’s like McGowan was looking at a different set of pictures and accidentally posted these instead.
The next image up for review is of Nicole, with her twice-broken left leg, fractured ankle and severed Achilles tendon. Luckily, those injuries haven’t hindered her mobility as she has clearly moved from her original position. Those are some excruciatingly painful injuries that she has, but she seems to be toughing it out okay. She has though been abandoned by her husband, who you would think would be tending to and comforting her, and her legless sister is nowhere to be seen. Her right arm got peppered with shrapnel, but luckily for her it was a special kind of shrapnel that shreds clothing fibers but doesn’t penetrate flesh.
McGowan Picture 11
1) McGowan’s mockery of Nicole sickens me. It should sicken you, too. Unless McGowan has any evidence that shows that a woman with these sort of injuries couldn’t scoot along her bottom, using her hands to propel her, which is exactly what it looks like from my point of view, his point doesn’t matter. Or maybe someone helped her move. Or maybe someone moved the injured away from her. McGowan has no proof of how she got to her location here. Again, citation needed. Nicole is a personal trainer. She is strong. She is fit. I have no doubt she could have scooted herself that far, if only because when I had reconstructive surgery on an ankle, I had to navigate stairs on my bottom, scooting up and down. And I didn’t have the benefit of shock or adrenaline post-explosion to veil the pain. AND I am not even close to being in the sort of excellent condition Nicole was in when she was hit in this explosion.
2) Look at Nicole’s legs. McGowan’s nauseating implication that she was not hurt is refuted by the amount of debris crammed into her legs. Her leg breaks could easily have been caused by shock waves. And I don’t know why her husband is not by her side and neither does McGowan. Speculating about him in this manner, that he callously abandoned his wife, is sickening.
3) Citation needed for how it is shrapnel cannot tear outer fabric without hitting the skin underneath. We also don’t know that it was shrapnel that did that to her sleeves. Those tears could have come from her being pushed to the ground and dragged in the fray. The sheer number of people that day with shredded clothing who were not bleeding because the shrapnel buried into their skin or veered away from their skin is staggering. Shrapnel is not a bullet – it’s not aerodynamic, and it does not travel in a straight line. You cannot predict a shrapnel arc. Until McGowan proves with evidence that this could not have happened to Nicole’s sleeve, his speculation is just that – guessing.
But then again, look closely at those holes in Nicole’s sleeves. Look to the right of them. See those dark stains next to them? It looks very much like the shrapnel tore her shirt, went underneath and hit her skin, causing small wounds. The blood was made less visible because her sleeves were red. To the naked eye, the shrapnel indeed made her bleed and yet again McGowan’s own photographic evidence doesn’t match what he is saying.
4) Her sister, Erika, only lost one leg. She isn’t legless. That is such a well-known fact that I have no idea what McGowan is up to anymore other than being pointlessly glib.
5) And since this photo he uses is of one small section of the carnage, this observation that Erika is not in the picture, the implication being that she somehow moved away, is nauseating at best, deliberately misleading at worst. Go back to McGowan Picture 8. That woman on the left, to the left of the black woman in the red jacket, is Erika. The blonde lady in the black and red top identical to the one Nicole is wearing. You can’t miss her but evidently McGowan did. Again, one very much gets the feeling that McGowan doesn’t understand the very information he’s presenting to make his bizarre case, and that’s the most positive spin I can put on it.
That was a relatively common phenomenon in Boston that day, with the guy in the following image, looking like he just walked off a film set, being a classic example.
McGowan Picture 12
We end Part One with this picture, and McGowan asserting that this man has shredded pants with no injuries. I see injuries on his right thigh and his left knee and shin. I also note that there are black smears on his skin – his clothes could be in tatters because he had been on fire. Many were on fire that day. His clothing could also have been shredded in a concussive wave. I have no idea what McGowan is trying to accomplish by making assertions that shrapnel bombs cannot do what they so clearly did because he offers no proof that what happened that day was impossible. Google shrapnel bombs and read for yourself that some shrapnel injuries do not bleed much. But even if shrapnel wounds bleed or don’t bleed, I do not know what it is he is trying to accomplish by stating that people don’t have injuries that are visible to the naked eye.
And again, if he wants to compare this to a Hollywood set, if some menacing power wanted to fake this, surely this man would have blood running down his legs. But that’s not how bombs work and it’s not how shrapnel bombs work and I don’t even have to prove how they work because McGowan, outside of cruel and sarcastic assumptions, makes no attempt to prove his case.
I love it. It’s a completely closed system. You can’t disprove the theory given the conditions above, so all you can do is confront whatever evidence is given of the conspiracy, thereby legitimizing the argument, and also creating whole new branches of closed arguments, ad infinitum.
It is definitely a closed system, an ouroboros of logical fallacy. It’s fascinating.
But I do know, deep down, that even the most intense analysis using logic and appeals to common sense will achieve little. How does one convince people utilizing a closed system that relies on logical fallacies and confirmation bias to change their minds? Back in the day, when the conspiracy theories involved Waco and Kennedy, people waited for evidence and then when the details seemed odd, went digging for further information. Old conspiracy theory seems positively sane compared to modern theories because the former was based on problems with official reports. The latter is based on immediate bias. No one called Boston a false flag because the evidence let them to it. False flag was called within an hour of the attacks and the evidence shoehorned to fit that theory, which makes it even more of a closed system because all terrorist attacks and shootings will be false flag attacks for those whose belief is set prior to events even taking place. (Alex Jones, the ruddy huckster, waited a whole 41 minutes before declaring Boston a false flag.)
Ultimately, I need to think of this as a hobby because I don’t think I will ever be able to change minds in situations like this.
Wow for someone who thinks it’s pointless to try to debunk a conspiracy theory you sure tried pretty hard… You also mention Dave’s name so many times you almost seem a little “obsessed” for someone who tries to seem “objective.” Too bad your “arguments” ignore some of the simple facts like the fact that there was NO blood on the ground in the first several shots of Bauman’s bone-(prostheses)/legs, the people in the photos do look very much like they might indeed actually be faking injury rather than actually being injured at all (perhaps not a certainty but no more of a certainty that they were, as you seem to accept at face value), the protocol of the “rescue” personnel does appear from the photos to have been totally bizarre, the level of gore the media tried to portray to the public in this case WAS odd and unusual (not at all like what was shown of 9-11 victims or OKC victims), oh yes and there is really no way from looking at the photos to confirm that 250 people were injured (are they counting all the people who broke a nail reaching for their i-phone to try to learn what just happened instead of just looking around?). There is really no reason to poke any more holes than that in what you are saying since it’s obviously not even rational.
I’m sorry I was unclear to you, Beth. I think it is a very good thing to debunk conspiracy theory. I think the problem comes in when one tries to have a reasonable dialogue with True Believers. I believe in the past I have described it as being akin to beating one’s head against a brick wall. Hope this cleared things up.
And while all of your argument is interesting to a point, the fact remains that unless one lies outright and misattributes the Thorndike pictures and lies about when they were taken, there is no way to get around the fact that the pictures show the scene seconds after the bomb went off and that they would have recorded anyone rushing in to pose as an injured person. Until you or anyone else can explain how any actor could had slunk onto the scene with Thorndike taking pictures seconds after the first bomb went off, the rest of the blood this and bone that and why is there no blood here is all just noise.
And if obsession is a bad thing, then maybe you should stop reading conspiracy theory. There is nothing more obsessive than the minds of True Believers. But perhaps I am obsessive. There are far worse things to be. Thanks for the comment, Beth.
Ugh, what a gross-out. You know I trust NO ONE, X-Files style, but this kind of crap is inexcusable. If the government did plan this, the people who were injured certainly are not somehow in on it. There is just no amount of red circles and attempts at body-language reading that will convince a sane person otherwise. Some people can’t deal with real life horror shows, and need conspiracy theorists to tell them it was all a big ruse, no one could ever be the victim of this violence in America.
I will always consider all sides of stories like this, but I cannot fathom spewing this kind of unfounded hate toward anyone without unwavering proof of fraud, let alone people who have suffered life-altering emotional and physical injuries. EW!!
It was pretty gross. I did my best to handle it politely but there was no way to get around how offensive some of it was. And I didn’t even really get to the worst parts of it, like his utterly callous and despicable insults of Karen Rand’s appearance after the bombing.
I trust few myself. Debunkers and skeptics by nature are picky people where their information is concerned. But this was pretty shocking even for someone who reads this stuff all day long.
How so? How will understanding his entire body of work explain why he unpersons people, mocks the wounded and dead and shows a complete lack of understanding of the sources and timing of the very pictures he uses as evidence. As much as I respect your interest in McGowan, unless his body of work is dedicated to creative misuse of the visual media I’m unsure what the entirety of his work will show me in regards to part one of his staging theory.
And it’s super unlikely I’ll read much else he has to offer in any regard. I’d only be reading it to discuss here and since I don’t want to feed what I perceive to be unchecked paranoia, why bother?
You don’t have a clue as to what you’re talking about. People were on fire? Show us the pictures. Shock waves break bones but don’t break skin? No they don’t. Bombing victims have asymmetrical wounds. These “actors” didn’t display that type of injury. Their clothes were cut up EXACTLY like the way we prepared them. I was on the moulage team in the Air Force, and I did the makeup for the disaster preparedness drills. The pictures available look EXACTLY like the wounds and injuries that I created. Also, I know what real bombing victims look like for I was awarded the USAF Outstanding Unit Award for triaging REAL bombing victims. Obviously you don’t. Stop speculating. Ed.
Ed, you need to read my comment policy before you leave another comment here. Please prove your case with actual citations and cut out the ad hominems because your comments are actually valuable to me and I don’t want to have to ban you for failing to adhere to my stated policy. Your anecdata, while interesting, isn’t enough proof for you to tell anyone they don’t know what they are talking about. You need to cite and give proof in order to do that. Okay?
There are multiple reports of people having their clothes set on fire that day, with people rushing over to put the fires in their clothes out. Here’s just one source – let me know if you need others.
From washingtonpost.com: Folkert saw smoke and sparks. His eardrums were ruptured, his lower legs were burned and bleeding, his black running pants shredded.
“I didn’t realize my clothes were still smoldering and on fire until I got across the street,” he said.
Shock waves break bones but don’t break skin? No they don’t.
I’ve read differently but I’ll concede your point. Perhaps I got it wrong. I’ll look into it more later because I may have misunderstood what I read. However, given how full of shrapnel Nicole Gross’ legs were, if I was incorrect that a blast wave could have caused her injury, then the secondary wave of shrapnel easily could have broken her legs and left little bleeding. Not all shrapnel wounds bleed profusely, especially extremely hot, sharp shrapnel, as I am sure you well know.
I can’t address your assertion about asymmetrical injuries because I have no idea what point you are trying to make. Please cite how it is that the “actors” didn’t display that sort of injury and that they would only have asymmetrical injuries and that those injuries were not present after the bombing.
I was on the moulage team in the Air Force, and I did the makeup for the disaster preparedness drills.
How long did it take to prepare the make-up for disaster preparedness drills? Because I have yet to read an account from anyone in such a profession who could explain how it was that dozens of people could received such authentic looking make-up in under five minutes, all the more strange given that there are pictures of these people just before the blast standing around, clothes unshredded, bodies perfectly sound. In fact, sources I have read from movie make-up artists have made it clear it takes hours to create a “set” like the one at Boston so I would love to hear how it was managed so stealthily in minutes with pictures being taken during the process.
Also, I know what real bombing victims look like for I was awarded the USAF Outstanding Unit Award for triaging REAL bombing victims.
I thank you for your service to your country. I hate to temper praise with a “but,” but your experiences in this field, while fascinating I am sure, don’t really add enough to evidence to change my mind because there are plenty of former military who have seen real bomb wounds who think the Boston marathon bombing victims looked all too real. I am married to one, but his anecdata is equally subject to scrutiny. Unless you can explain how it is that you could have managed to create a scene like Boston in the time frame that was available, or point us to verifiable information that shows how it was done, it’s hard to give your hard-won experience the credence it deserves.
No offense meant, Ed. I do appreciate your service and experience. If you can direct me to a site or source that explains how such a “scene” can be set in minutes without anyone seeing it, direct me and I will read it.
Again, I look forward to you commenting here with any replies but they need to conform with my comment policy.
The “scene” wasn’t prepared in “5 minutes”. They came out of the building. Do some research and look at pictures of actual bombing victims. Then you’ll know what asymmetrical wounding is. If you believe “news accounts”, then I feel sorry for you. Dave Mcgowan is smarter than you’ll ever be. He’s written three books. You should read them. Go ahead and ban me. It will show what a control freak you are.
Glad to oblige you, Ed. I don’t tolerate insults on this site. There are so many places online for you to show your contempt that there’s no sense on you wasting it at the one place that doesn’t want it.
McGowan also doesn’t take into account adrenaline and shock – it’s amazing what you can get your body to do when your “fight or flight” system has been activated and you’re not yet aware of what just happed and what injuries you have. As for holes in a shirt not matching up with injuries, clothing shifts position as you move, especially lycra. All that the photo proves is that Nicole’s arm had been another position at the time of impact. Also, objects imbedded in the skin would probably hamper blood flow out of the wound; therefore you wouldn’t see as much blood as you might expect. In fact, one of the things they tell you in first aid is not to attempt to remove objects that have entered an injured person’s body; that the object may in fact be preventing the injured person from bleeding to death.
Michelle, you’re another one who doesn’t know what you’re talking about. Bombing victims bleed like crazy. I got hit in the face with arterial spray. “Probably” hamper blood flow? Sorry, but you’re wrong. The blood in the pictures is the same type of stage blood that I used. Get real. Ed.
Ed, I am still replying to your comment above so did not have a chance to say this to you yet but you need to read my comment policy before you leave another comment. Your anecdata is interesting but you don’t get demean to anyone on this site and you need to provide actual evidence that can be read and understood by others if you want to tell someone they don’t know what he or she is talking about. Do this again and I will edit insulting content out of your comment. Do it a second time and I have no choice but to ban you. I want to hear from you and opposing viewpoints are definitely needed here, so please tone it down and follow the few rules I have for people commenting on this site.
I read a few articles about how extremely sharp and hot shrapnel can enter the body and leave little bleeding. A medic manual on how to handle such shrapnel echo what you say here – no one should pull it out when rendering first aid lest the patient begin to bleed out. Here’s one of the sources, in case anyone reading this should want to check it out: Special considerations for gunshot wounds and shrapnel wounds
I had not considered how lycra or other stretchy fabric shifting position. Something definitely worth looking into. It seems like it would also be an issue with loose wovens, like baggy jeans. So much of what happened to Christian Williams’ legs was covered by his jeans because the holes didn’t seem to align with his wounds.
Most reasonable people who read McGowan’s article will be bothered by questions about this apparent bomb attack. I’m not necessarily endorsing his conclusions – I’m merely saying he addresses some frankly rather obvious problems with the official story of what happened that day. That’s his job, after all: he’s an investigative journalist. And you seem like a reasonable person to me, yet your page presents more of the clumsy ox swatting at the gadfly than the skilled debater arguing one side of a controversy.
Still, I’m disappointed you decided to discontinue your rambling denunciation of Dave’s piece: first, because you’ve probably only been drawing more attention to him with your criticism; and second, because I find myself wondering how long you can carry on an argument based entirely on sentiment and appeal to authority (i.e., “how dare he say that?” and, “I know he’s wrong because I saw it in the news”).
On the other hand, perhaps your purpose here is not really to engage in civil discourse, but rather to distract some readers from the nagging doubts Dave’s article may have stirred in them, and to try to lull them back into their mainstream media hypno-reverie.
Yours,
S. James Palmer, Esq.
P.S. What do you suppose filled those bombs, anyway? Since glass windows, brick walls, wooden fencing, and nylon banners and flags (not to mention flesh-and-blood people) only feet away were left totally undamaged, it must have been some kind of selective, heat-seeking, smart shrapnel I’ve never heard about. Check out CNN’s demonstration of the power of shrapnel from a pressure cooker bomb (which you would have seen had you continued reading Dave’s article): it caused deep pitting in a concrete blast bunker 1/4 mile away. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH5gHS_o_eA
Correction: the video showed no damage to the blast bunker, but those inside could feel the shock wave that far away. Notice in this video of the first bomb going off that exhausted runners passing by hardly seemed to feel it. Though many were passing within a few dozen feet of the blast, only one old man fell down, and even he got back up momentarily: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myfivKMhqyg
And you seem like a reasonable person to me, yet your page presents more of the clumsy ox swatting at the gadfly than the skilled debater arguing one side of a controversy.
You can’t please everyone, S. James Palmer, Esq. Would that I could…
first, because you’ve probably only been drawing more attention to him with your criticism
I find him interesting and entertaining so I didn’t mind sending traffic his way. I wanted people to read him or I would not have discussed him or linked to him and, in turn, his reaction sent readers my way. Looks like it worked out well for both of us. Sending traffic his way is in no way inimical to the purposes of this site.
second, because I find myself wondering how long you can carry on an argument based entirely on sentiment and appeal to authority (i.e., “how dare he say that?” and, “I know he’s wrong because I saw it in the news”).
McGowan expressed his disgust at wounded people and I expressed my disgust at his callousness. If that’s an appeal to sentiment in your book, I’ll take the criticism. I’ll bear it in mind in the future, though in some cases I can’t see that I will be able to avoid well-placed anger or annoyance. Sometimes disgust is the only valid response.
However, your appeal to authority accusation is without merit on several different levels. I admit I believe news reports about the wounds victims received because I have not been given reason to think the media is lying, but the media is definitely not an expert in this. I don’t think the experts on the wounds can legally speak about these matters. It’s a problem, to be sure. But linking to media when McGowan got something wrong is not an appeal to authority, which must involve the belief that the “authority” is a subject matter expert. I think you’ll find the bulk of the times I linked to outside media were in matters of objective truth – something happened or it didn’t. One does not need a subject matter expert in matters of observable, objective truth.
–McGowan claimed Bauman’s father had not given an interview. I proved he did by linking to the article. The article is not being appealed to as a subject matter authority – rather it’s just proof that something objectively happened. Same thing with his assertion no one knew who Erin Hurley was.
–Linking to news sources to show they edited the pictures McGowan said they reveled in is not an appeal to an authority. Just an objective truth.
–Linking to pictures of Arredondo as he tore down fences and began to help people is not an appeal to authority – again, just an objective fact.
–Perhaps you think linking to an amputee organization to get accurate data about amputation recovery time is an appeal to authority, but a fallacious one, but in this case had I just asked McGowan, my mother or the kid who bags my groceries how long it takes to heal from an amputation, that would have been a fallacious appeal to authority. In this case, the site is indeed a subject matter expert so the appeal to authority is appropriate.
–The only other place wherein I could have appealed to authority would be my own authority. At no time did I appeal to outside authority to debunk his interpretation of pictures and what was happening in them because I have more than enough information gleaned from untold hours of research. I know most of the pictures in the Boston case inside and out, no matter how much McGowan calls me a liar. I can look at any picture, any crop, and any zoom-in of a Thorndike picture and tell you it’s a Thorndike and given the time I can tell you which picture it is in the sequence. I am unsure what credentials one needs to be an expert or authority in the Boston pictures, but it was my own personal research that enabled me to tell that McGowan had no idea of the source, timing, original size and original scope of at least 8 pictures in part one. But even if you balk at calling me an expert, which is cool with me, the fact remains that my own research showed McGowan dead wrong several times where his own proof was concerned and I definitely did not appeal to potentially shaky outside authority to do it.
On the other hand, perhaps your purpose here is not really to engage in civil discourse, but rather to distract some readers from the nagging doubts Dave’s article may have stirred in them, and to try to lull them back into their mainstream media hypno-reverie.
My purpose here is stated in my About Me page. I also think you and some who respond here have very paranoid notions about the extent of my influence as this site isn’t even six weeks old yet. “Some readers” are folks who followed me over from my book blog and they are intelligent people who can think for themselves. My most frequent commenter is a friend in real life who believes in conspiracy theories. I am not an e-siren, luring men away from McGowan’s theory. I doubt most of my original readers knew who he was outside of Dave Holland. Other than him there were no opinions about McGowan to change.
Moreover, since your only exposure to my site seems to come from this one article, I guess your strange belief that I want to encourage mindless media obedience is understandable. But it’s untrue and it’s tiresome that the people drawn to this article from McGowan’s link keep lobbing that accusation. I think every article I have written thus far has a strong statement about how the bulk of the media reporting in this case has been a ridiculous mess and that I have questions about the manner in which the investigation has been carried out. I will be unable to debunk many rumors and conspiracy theories around Dzhokhar because the theories appear to be true in some cases. I’ve mentioned this several times No one says you have to read more of the articles on this site, but if you had, my position would have been clearer to you.
Hypno-reverie? Really? Distracting and lulling? It’s been brought up by McGowan that he thinks this is a fake site to debunk him and only him for reasons known only to him. I guess he thinks the Forces That Be are shivering in their boots lest McGowan show us all the truth and behold, the clouds will part and the warmth of the truth will shine down on us all, so debunk him they must. If y’all want to think me part of some nefarious plan to discredit McGowan beyond the fact that I found his theory to be poorly researched and full of bizarre invective and tyrannical unpersoning, knock yourselves out. There’s certainly little I can do to persuade such minds to see reason.
Thanks for the information about the bombs as well as the correction addendum. I cannot watch them now as I am completing this comment at 4:00 am during a time of insomnia, so I need a clearer mind when I watch them. I’ll let you know what I think when that happens.
I think I owe you and your followers an apology for my comment above, so let me say I’m sorry for pretending to care about your self-proclaimed expert opinions, and for filling your personal space with my silly, unpleasant disagreeability. (I’m also sorry for including the honorific “Esq.” at the end of my name. I don’t mean to mislead you that I’m a licensed attorney, or a member of the gentry in England ranking just below a knight, it’s just that the sterling caliber of debate on this page seems to demand such hifalutin airs.) And I’m sorry for masquerading my bear-bating as rational dialogue, when the truth is, I only wanted the cheap thrill I knew I would get from what was bound to be an over-the-top emotional reaction from you.
And you didn’t disappoint. I admit that reading your response to my comment was akin to being charged by a dangerous animal at the zoo, and, truth be told, I liked the adrenaline rush I got from it – I’m kind of a thrill seeker that way. And though I really shouldn’t rattle your cage any further, let me point out that you are not really arguing – you’re soapboxing. Hence you employ misrepresentation and emotional display in the place of logic and reasoning, and in such prodigious volume as to virtually overwhelm your reader (as well as your opponent). These are bully tactics, and not those of a truth-seeker.
In addition, when you are presented with irrebuttable evidence, such as the absence of shrapnel damage to people and things surrounding the site of the first explosion, you beg off with the excuse that you “cannot” discuss it “now.” That is evasion at best, and certainly not fair play. You present cherry-picked data and refute it as best you can, which is known in debate as the straw man fallacy.
To give but one example of your misrepresentation, McGowan never “expressed disgust at wounded people.” If, as I suggested above, you had bothered to read his entire article, it would be clear to you that McGowan believes the supposed victims of the Boston attack were actors playing parts in a psychological drama intended to fan the flames of mob mentality in the general public (whom he identifies as the only real victims). But if you adressed that point honestly you would find yourself with no target for your righteous indignation, and you’d have no excuse to accuse McGowan of “unpersoning” people, which appears to be the foundation of your entire invective.
While I am not calling you a psychopath, your argument displays the characteristics of the hysterical, win-at-all costs strategy employed by an amoral competitor encountering a superior opponent. I’m sure, however, that your intelligent readers, who can all think for themselves (except perhaps that friend of yours in real life who believes in conspiracy theories), see you as the megaphone of truth you believe you are.
Good luck,
SJP
SJP, it was almost 4:00 in the morning when I responded to you, and contrary to what conspiracy theorists think, those who interact with them are not there to be ordered about until we have answered every single question and engaged to your satisfaction. I will review materials when I have time. Conspiracy theory may be your life but it is not mine.
It is, interesting to note, that as you accuse me of not jumping to your tune, you are strangely silent on McGowan’s complete failure where his own source materials were concerned. Had he understood the timing, his staging theory would be dead in the water. Does watching your video mean he suddenly got all the pictures that he used to demean the victims correct? Is it the Magic Video Theory?
The only thing concrete to discuss in your comment is the notion of disgust because you, of course, when presented with actual refutation, don’t bother to respond. Believe me, I’m not surprised. As I said in my article, before one engages in depersoning, denying the dead, mocking the wounded and critiquing the appearance of a woman who lost a leg and whose best friend died right next to her, you need to prove a prima facie case that shows you are correct in your assertions. He didn’t come close to making such a case.
I maintain that showing disgust or perhaps contempt for victims and the only appropriate response is disgust. Being human and responding as a human is not a bad thing. It’s deeply sad you feel that it is. See! I did it again. I felt something! Curse these human hands!
Win at all costs? What a hyperbolic statement from a man who evidently dislikes reacting with emotion. How am I trying to win at all costs? By taking theories seriously enough to debunk them in depth and then responding to True Believers when they come over to yell, insult and condescend to me? It’s a website wherein I debunked a really badly researched conspiracy theory. Just the fact that you are able to leave comments here belies to that very concept that I am trying to “win” anything. I am beginning to think that had I said, about McGowan, “lol, wut an idiot!” it would have been the response he and those like him want. Is it that other people don’t take you guys seriously and you don’t know how to feel about it? Having “feels” is hard, SJP. I’m here to help you.
Because you are fellow verbose writer, I had hopes we’d be able to converse. I took you seriously, answered you seriously and you just engaged in Conspiracy Theorist Rebuttals 101. I will get to your video when I decide to get to it because this is Memorial Day and I have some flags to lay on graves. Feel free to continue commenting, however, and good luck to you, too.
Oh, and by the way, your characterization of my possibly near-psychopathy doesn’t come close to fitting enough of the actual characteristics of a psychopath, though I’m sure in your mind disagreeing with you or McGowan is the height of amorality.
You are pure comedy gold. Thanks for the reply, SJP.
I know I have nothing further to add to the conversation and am just dancing around like a trained circus pony. Please don’t ban me for being an annoying pain in your ample behind. I would surely die if I could not continue showing off for you.
Eternally yours,
SJP
(you’re being annoying SJP – if your next comment does not address the actual topic at hand – the Boston bombing, McGowan’s theory or specifics of my reaction to it, i’ll be forced to ban you. this is not your playground to act the fool.)
Anita, you are getting caught up in the minutia of details. The fact presented in the pictures on Mcgowans site simply contrast with what the media reported. Why no pictures of the second bomb area? Why NO BLOOD, then lots of “blood” on the ground with little on the victims? I don’t know why, but the pictures sure do not look like a scene described by the media. A physician with a long sleeve yellow shirt who assisted many people with major wounds, yet his shirt is virtually spotless? Read the following editions in this series, and explain all of the anomalies.
I wish there were views of the second bombing site because it would make things much easier but the only reason I can think of as to why there are no media images from the second bombing site is because the photographers were busy with the first site. There are amateur pictures of the second site, however, and some of the best pictures of the first site are amateur pictures. But it is unfortunate that there are so few media pictures from the second site, and it’s additionally very upsetting that the government has suppressed the evidence of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev dropping off the bomb at the second site.
The blood issue can be explained by timing. The first pictures McGowan uses, the Thorndike pictures, were started seconds after the first bomb went off and continued for 25 seconds. Those pictures show people on the ground and those people hide what blood is flowing from the victims. The next pictures that came from the media on the ground are taken a cool two or three minutes after the bombs went off. That’s plenty of time for blood to start flowing and to become visible, and those pictures are aided by the fact that they are at a completely different angle than the Thorndike pictures and show the blood behind the bodies, blood that was obscured from the angle Thorndike was at.
I cannot explain why anyone would or would not have blood on them. One assumes a doctor would be experienced in avoiding blood but I would need to examine the pictures in question to be sure.
I will be discussing more of McGowan’s take on Boston in the fullness of time. While his site was down I moved to other conspiracies and need to finish them first. But I will be discussing more of them in the future. ETA: No, I won’t be discussing more of his theories. McGowan’s too paranoid even for this site and it would be cruel to continue to incite his paranoia. Too bad because despite his sloppiness he take was interesting.
That there are no or almost no pictures of the second site is wholly unbelievable and incredible. In today’s surveillance state and also the smartphone era where nearly everyone has a digital camera in their pocket?
This requires a better answer than “oh gee golly whiz they must have been distracted with the other site”. Surely SOMEBODY would have found themselves closer to bomb site number two and would have started snapping pics and or video.
This is not something to gloss over and neither is the lack of video evidence of Dhokar dropping the bomb! They claimed they had this…. Well where is it? This is not a trivial issue and it also rings a bell from other of these mass causality real time media frenzy events – most recently aurora and sandy hook. Surely both the school and the movie theater had surveillance cameras. Well where’s the footage? In the case of aurora I even saw photos of security cameras covering the parking lot area where Holmes was arrested. I believe you can find it here where Scott Creighton does class A investigative journalism covering all of these events: http://willyloman.wordpress.com/
One thing you “debunkers” never seem the be able to explain is why we are never allowed to see much if any of the cold hard evidence against the supposed perpetrators of these crimes. Another is there is never a good explanation about why the “official stories” always shift, change and are so incompetently narrated in every case. Also why they always end up being so hard to believe.
You also frequently equate “false flag” with “uh oh, here come the nut jobs” while false flags are real, undisputed documented events throughout history.
The government has a clear cut and obvious reason to perpetrate and or fake these events – it’s exceptionally obvious to even the most dim witted individuals what with so much gun control and further erosion of our civil liberties constantly in the news.
Another thing, why the first responders aren’t bloody shouldn’t be glossed over either…
And it’s a shame you reject all of Dave’s work because it is outstanding, well researched, well reasoned and well cited. His boston work is probably the weakest of everything to date, ironically. But that doesn’t mean there is nothing of value contained therein.
The debunking of McGowan is mutually exclusive of a theory of media manipulation.
For example, what if the reports, interviews, first hand accounts, etc. were sensationalized or chosen based on their sensationalism?
There are many unanswered questions, and similarly as the author here, I will reserve my judgment until all the available information becomes available. But this will never wrap up in a neat package. Is there a narrative that fits the evidence, that subscribes to Occam’s razor without being naive?
It’s pretty funny to read McGowan, especially in light of your thorough debunking. I would call him brave or bold for linking directly here, if it weren’t for the disdain I possess for the general public’s ability to discern intellectual honesty. Obviously McGowan doesn’t think highly of his reader either.
Yet there are still those who ask for more, never satisfied with an enormous body of evidence you document and present clearly, proving McGowan disingenuous and therefore reducing the credibility of any theory he proposes… Or so it should seem.
So why is that, I ask myself, and what comes tSo I’ll ask you; what is the motivation of the “McGowan”s? Assuming he understands what a fallacy is, why is he being purposefully dishonest? I don’t see many ads on his site, it’s not to drive traffic? Is he then, an “agent of interest”. If so, which interest, with what motivation?
I look forward to your future articles . However, I think your dogged research ability, enhanced by insomnia, should be directed in to researching the motivations of those you know to be dishonest. Ill be disappointed to check back here only to discover you’ve explained a minor discrepancy like “index or ring” in your original post, to satisfy the hardline theorists or ‘shills’ who will nit pick you until you resign yourself to the Truth as a hobby.
Regards,
P
P. S. I’m on a mobile, please forgive/edit errors.
Eh, even though I am holding tight the reins on my comment policy, I am hard to offend. For the purposes of these entries, I’m cool with people using McGowan’s affectionate honorific for me. I’m sure I’ll be called worse by better and even worse by worse before this is all over.
I almost never see errors in comments or most extemporaneous writing, so no need to apologize.
There are so many reasons why people engage in conspiracy theory that it is often hard for me to pin down motivations. I have only read some of McGowan’s website and one of his books, so consider my opinion advisedly. I think he is one of the “unique” thinkers who engages in seeking patterns that confirm his world view. From what I can tell, he appears to begin with a theory, shoehorns information into the theory and hammers until it makes sense to him.
For example in his book, Programmed to Kill, I had to dogear the page when he finally stated his thesis because the entire book was Satanic Panic and They are training serial killers to do Their bidding because… I can’t remember. I’d literally have to go back and find the book and the page in question to tell you what he was getting at because he was writing to explain the patterns that make so much sense to him and other conspiratorial thinkers. The chapter on JonBenet Ramsey in particular shows this manner of thinking. A little girl dies in a strange manner and no one knows how it happened. Well, because in McGowan’s mind there are Satanist Cabals everywhere, he states very clearly that he thinks the Ramseys sacrificed their child. They went to a Christmas party at a friend’s house and both Satanic families ritually sacrificed her. This is based on nothing more than the patterns McGowan has in his head.
So I think that McGowan is a distrustful person who finds patterns and that is why he thinks as he does. Pattern seekers find what they are looking for and they believe that they have stumbled across a greater truth that we should be able to see. If he understands logical fallacy, it can never trump the patterns.
I think that is a good idea – determining the whys and wherefores of conspiracy theorists. Once I get more experience officially debunking, I may well give it a try. I won’t, however, be discussing McGowan anymore. Though I left this out of my reasoning as to why I will be ceasing discussing him, I genuinely feel like McGowan felt vindicated by my analysis and longs for more confrontation to feed his sense of being the Sanest Person his acolytes know. I got the feeling I was feeding his ego because finally someone was going after him. I must be a government plant. My whole site is about him. He’s finally facing the persecution he so sorely wants to prove to him that his thoughts have merit! There was something unsettling about him beyond just the obvious. His take on false flag staging is just one of many so why feed his paranoid ego? If my goal is to encourage sound thinking (hahahaha, like that will ever happen), there’s no sense in dealing with a dude like McGowan unless he is the sole source for a theory. I really do find him beneath contempt now and as a result don’t want to give the dude any interaction because I think he’s getting off on it.
I love conspiracy theory, hoaxes and the paranormal but there’s no love enough for an outre topic for me to take a middle road in discussing objective truth. There’s a lot in the Boston Marathon bombing that bothers me, mostly media reporting and the government being so reluctant to clear up basic details, which means that I can’t debunk some of the “Dzhokhar Was Framed” theories because the information is so completely muddled. But there is a vast difference between saying, “At this point I feel very uneasy about the whole note in the boat/getting a confession from a terribly injured kid after he got out of surgery” and saying, “He was framed and the government deliberately tried to kill him.” Sometimes the objective truth has to be uncertainty until we have enough information to pull the trigger and right now the gun pointed at Dzhokhar only has a bullet in one chamber.
But if you stick around and see me veering into middle ground to avoid the continual moving of goal posts and the myriad fallacies that wear a skeptic down, please speak up and encourage a course correction. I don’t see that happening but never say never. It’s hard to nitpick me. I live for the argument except for when I sense my love of debate is feeding a problematic ego.
Anita, glad to see your response. I think blown off limbs would produce immediate blood spurt of some distance. I do no understand this comment, “McGowan’s too paranoid even for this site”…
As far as I can tell this site is solely dedicated to addressing Crazy Old Dave. Dave is first an entertaining writer, if you are jaded like me, second a very thorough researcher. Not all of his theories I agree with, but he sure makes me think a lot, and laugh at the same time. He clearly bites back hard, based on his reaction to you.
I maintain that Bauman did spurt a lot of blood in the beginning. But bodies were piled on him and the angles in the Thorndike pictures do not show the angle necessary to see the blood. Once the fences were torn down and the actual media began to photograph people, the blood was thick on the ground. The Thorndike pictures started being taken around five seconds after the first bomb went off. That means that the Thorndike pictures END roughly 30 seconds after the first bomb went off. The pictures from the actual mass media did not start being taken until at least 30 seconds after that. I have no idea why people expect a near-pyrotechnic spurt of blood and a river of blood on the ground within 30 seconds of the accident and also expect to see the blood when bodies are still piled atop Bauman.
But should anyone have actual forensics that shows that legs that have been blown off spurt blood like Ashe in the Evil Dead, I will be only too happy to read and consider it. That may have sounded sarcastic but it really wasn’t. I’m always happy to read any evidence people give me from subject matter experts because even as I debunk, I am layperson debunking other laypeople based on what I see in photographs and know from trusted information sources. Experts are always helpful. Sadly, I have not been able to run anything to ground on my own aside from information about limb accidents in the Iraq war that lend nothing to this particular scenario.
McGowan accused me of creating a website in order to debunk him and debunk him solely. I have no idea why you also believe this because if you look at my site, there are three entries that mention or discuss him. I had wanted to discuss a book of his because a reader here is also a fan of McGowan and turned me onto his site during a discussion of the Franklin Scandal. Had a reader not directed me to him, I would not know his name. But wanting to discuss his book and debunking his staging theory hardly makes this site all about debunking McGowan.
But let’s lay it out, just to show what’s what:
4/21/13: Welcome to Houdini’s Revenge – A generic overview of why I began this site and the sorts of thinking I encountered from True Believers on my other site (I Read Odd Books). McGowan is not mentioned at all.
4/24/13: The Alex Jones-ification of the Mainstream Media – A discussion of how the MSM engaged in some of the worst, rumor-based reporting possible in the Boston Bombing case. McGowan is not mentioned at all.
5/8/13: Things to Come: Mentions what I have planned for this site. Dave McGowan is mentioned because of his book but note also I mention Dave’s fan, also named Dave, mentioned the book. If you look in the comments on that entry, you will see that fan Dave mentioned McGowan’s staging theory to me. I had not read it until it had been brought up to me and when I read it and saw the errors, I decided to discuss it here.
5/12/13: Biting off More Than I Can Chew – Admitting the Boston conspiracy theories cannot possibly fit into one entry. McGowan is not mentioned at all,
5/14/13: Boston Bombing Conspiracy Theories: An overview of what I plan to cover with the wide variety of conspiracy theories that the Boston Bombing has spawned. McGowan is not mentioned at all.
5/14/13: Boston Bombing Conspiracy Theories – The backpack analyses – Does what it says on the tin. McGowan is not mentioned at all.
5/17/13: Boston Bombing Conspiracy Theories: Dave McGowan’s Staging Theory, Part 1 – Discusses part one of McGowan’s staging theory.
5/22/13: Boston Bombing Conspiracies: The Naked Tamerlan Recording: Does what it says on the tin. McGowan is not mentioned at all.
5/22/13: Boston Marathon Bombing Conspiracy: Craft International, False Flag: Does what it says on the tin.
5/23/13: Wow! – Discusses McGowan’s bizarre response.
5/23/13: Oh, and hello! – Greetings to the new people who came from MetaFilter and McGowan’s hyperbolic response.
Even though this site is a month and two days old, there is plenty of content here that has zero to do with McGowan. A cursory read would have shown that. But there should be no worries because after reading McGowan’s absolutely vile response, I really do think he is far too paranoid for this site and I don’t want to contribute to any real paranoia he has. To see a new conspiracy theory site and make it all about you just because someone saw fit to analyze your work is utterly paranoid, verging into demented.
And though I also think McGowan is an interesting writer – as I mention in this entry itself his work on Laurel Canyon is fascinating – the best debunk, as I said before, to his demented paranoid notion that this site is all about him is never to mention him again. If you stick around and read anything else I write you won’t ever see McGowan’s name come up on this site again outside of the two entries that are about him specifically. I’m not a young woman, Dale. I don’t poke paranoiacs for fun. It’s unkind and it can only end badly. I’ve never seen such a hyperbolic response to a critique and I have run a fringe book site for five years. I’ve received death threats that were less unnerving than McGowan’s relentless unpersoning of all whom he dislikes. And it’s not like others don’t have similar theories – I don’t even need to focus on McGowan to discuss bad theory. So why bother with him?
So all I can do to combat your erroneous belief that this site is all about McGowan is to ask you to keep reading. See if Dave ever comes up again outside of the two places he is already mentioned.
And thanks for being civil with me. I appreciate it a lot. 🙂
I am curious why you choose to crit Dave’s work instead of just doing your own. He obviously spent some time making his posts. Why not just post your own content instead of “debunking” others’ work? At least Dave has enough courage to express his views. Your view seems to be “Eh, I haven’t decided yet.” I suppose I just answered my own question. Your view wouldn’t make for much of a read.
As I stated in the article itself, I discussed McGowan’s theory because it was brought to my attention by a reader of his site and my site and it seemed interesting. It was interesting. So that’s the whole of why I chose to “crit Dave’s work.” I will be analyzing other people’s works, hopefully many books once the Boston entries are finished, though sadly no more of McGowan’s work.
The rest of your comment is odd. I think this may be the first time anyone has ever asserted that critical analysis of someone else’s words should not happen, that people who spend time writing should not be challenged because everyone else should be writing their own original endeavor. If that had any validity, as you condemn my reactions and research, you will also need to condemn Amazon’s reviews, do away with sites like LibraryThing and Goodreads and ban all the book blogs because all of those sites allow people to offer their opinions of McGowan’s books. Simply creating an original work is not an automatic protection from criticism and an automatic condemnation of those who offer criticism.
Your comment is akin to telling a book critic not to discuss books because they should be writing a book instead. Or a movie critic not to review a film because they need to make their own films. That’s a weird stance.
You don’t know my opinion because you haven’t read anything than this entry, if you even read this. Stick around, you may be surprised what actual research can yield in terms of my opinion.
And what on earth makes you think I don’t do my own work? I’ve spent untold days researching the Boston bombing. To write that knowledge down would be odd, don’t you think? To say, “Well, in this series of pictures, people got blown up. In this series of pictures, the blown up people got help or they died. The end.” I don’t have a “theory” because I rely on objective fact and have studied the evidence available. That’s how I know McGowan completely missed the boat on the sources of his pictures or even what they showed when uncropped. That’s how I knew the layout of the bomb scene and the names of all the victims, including where they fell and how it is McGowan got so much wrong. I have done lots of work on the Boston case, enough to know when someone else is making completely erroneous assertions. Whether conspiracy theorists like it or not, people who look at their work have to do as much research as they did, if not more, to know if they are revealing an objective truth, making mistakes, pushing an agenda or outright lying.
And time really doesn’t matter. I know McGowan put a lot of time in his work and I respect that. Again, I address that in my article. I paid careful attention because his theory deserved it. But if time is all that matters, then I spend a lot of time working on my entries. I certain don’t expect that amount of time spent to make me immune from criticism.
And I will refrain from asking you why you are here, leaving this comment, instead of writing up your own work when I clearly spent a lot of time on this entry. I refrain from asking because your criticism, like mine, is valuable.
Like Dave McGowan, I’m so happy that you are eager to debunk evidence based research. Could you debunk the following claims too? I would be so grateful, since having an analytical mind is soo much hard work, especially a critically analytical mind.
Hi m@m.com, n@n.com, r@r.com. Since this comment pre-dates your perma-ban and is simply irritating and not in violation of site rules, I’m letting it through. Though god knows I don’t want to help you in your quest to troll, you may wanna vary your schtick. Predictability is the bane of the decent troll. Good luck to you in your endeavors and check back – I’ve already addressed plenty on your list o’ demands. Glad to help!
“I read a few articles about how extremely sharp and hot shrapnel can enter the body and leave little bleeding. ”
I think you need to do a lot more reading, or just ask any single person who has experience dealing with wounded humans, as I do. You are completely wrong in your repeating all the fake stuff about “auto-cauterized wounds” and “shock causing ateries to constrict” etc. This is complete fantasy.
Your “critique” does nothing to lessen Dave’s theories, in fact you actually prove one or more of them unintentionally.
I in no way want to diminish the experiences you have in treating wounded people, but anecdata online is not helpful in determining truth of statements, especially since what you are saying literally flies in the face of everything I have read. I know that conspiracy theorists LOATHE sharing the resources that helped them reach their conclusions but I cannot express to you how willing I am to read sources that prove what you say. The problem is that despite working very hard to find them, I can’t. I fully expect a reply snottily telling me to do my research, you don’t have to back up your statements, I’m stupid, etc., but the earnest offer remains. I cannot take your word because I do not know you and cannot quantify your experiences but if you can show where I can verify your statements, I will definitely do it.
I have read that initially grave shock such as the type caused in a bombing initially causes the blood vessels to constrict. Later, when adrenaline kicks in, the blood vessels can dilate. This explains why there was not enough blood on the ground to please conspiracy theorists seconds after the bombings, yet plenty of blood later.
And you are right, adrenaline does not prevent blood loss (edited “present” to “prevent”). But from what I have read, adrenaline can initially mask pain in people who have severe injuries, enabling them to move and to do things that spectators may think inconsistent with such a severe injury.
As for the self-cauterizing shrapnel wounds or sharp shrapnel wounds that do not bleed excessively, I have already sourced why I think this to be correct in some cases. But I’ll do it again and add some more links so that again you can see why this is not wholly as your stated experiences state it to be: http://medic.wikia.com/wiki/Special_considerations_for_gunshot_wounds_and_shrapnel_wounds http://magazine.nursing.jhu.edu/2011/03/in-the-field/ (this article described perfectly what was seen on Nicole Gross’ legs)
Daniel Keyes’ book Medical Response to Terrorism: Preparedness and Clinical Practice also states that shrapnel can become embedded deep into the tissue and prevent bleeding out.
I really appreciate your perspective but I did research before I ever wrote this reaction to McGowan’s work and if I proved any of his points correct, so be it, but I have been unable to find any proof that what happened to the victims was in any way unusual and that shrapnel wounds always bleed, auto-cauterization or not.
I followed Dave’s link to this on Friday and I have to admit I was pissed off at you. Then I read all you have to say and I decided to follow up on your accusations that Dave got the photos wrong.
I found the “Ben Thorndike” pictures and you’re right. Dave was using Ben Thorndike’s pictures and either didn’t know it or lied about it. He either cropped people out of pictures or didn’t know he was using cropped pictures.
I also found out Ben Thorndike is not a media photographer. He’s an amateur who just happened to be at the right place at the right time. He started taking pictures seconds after the first bomb went off. There’s no way it was staged. The Thorndike pictures showed everything as it happened.
I’m experiencing disappointment right now because it looks like Dave either doesn’t know what he’s talking about or he lied. I also am very sorry he called you names. I feel like an asshole myself for even believing people faked injuries. Thanks for writing this entry.
Wow. Given the nature of the bulk of the comments I have received, this is unexpected. Thanks for taking the time to look into the actual evidence I presented.
I don’t think anyone should think McGowan a liar. As I stated in my article, I don’t think he knew the sources and the timing of the pictures.
Nicely done. McGowan’s childish labeling of you has demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that you have struck a nerve and he is quite aware of the shoddy theorizing on which he has based his ideas. And I think it is quite possible McGowan is lying outright – just another crass exploiter whose only goal is to sell books to the credulous. A low-rent Glenn Beck. If he truly believed his black helicopter martial law nonsense he would confront the victims himself and accuse them to their face – something I doubt he has the cajones to ever do.
Since you aren’t demanding I explain myself again (and again and again), I actually have time to reply. Thanks for taking the time to leave this comment.
McGowan’s response to me was decidedly over-the-top and it does make me wonder about his motivations. I dislike speculating about someone’s intentions but his insults combined with his decision to double down on assertions that the pictures were taken minutes after the attack make it seem like McGowan may have been passing off information he knew was false. At this point, I’ve told him the source of his pictures and the timing of them and his response was to call me a liar and a foul name. Yep. Hard to see him as an unfocused True Believer anymore.
I wonder if Bauman or Karen Rand or Nicole Gross are aware of the disgusting theories people like McGowan are peddling at their expense. I’m glad McGowan lacks the balls to confront a victim. I hope they never know he exists.
Thanks again for this comment. I appreciate it, Doc!
I’m glad other sane people have told you what a good job you did dissecting Dave McGowan’s “theory.” Most of his claims are so easily proven false that I wonder about the intellect of those who actually believe him. I’m with the comment above me; I think Dave’s a seasoned liar with years of writing to prove it, and his name-calling shows how unaccustomed he is to thorough criticism. I hope you change your mind about debunking him more in the future. He’s a guy whose ideas cannot stand up to much scrutiny and it would be fun to watch his reaction.
Thanks for this comment, Steve. This has been a real education for me, learning how conspiracy peddlers and their acolytes respond to criticism. I can’t call McGowan a seasoned liar, but as I said above, his response to information that shows his analysis is wrong, information that anyone can see and investigate for themselves, doesn’t speak well of his motivations. Either he’s the most blind True Believer ever, or he’s passing off information he knows is false. It’s unfortunate.
I can’t see myself engaging with McGowan’s work anymore. His nasty response and accusations that I am here to debunk him and debunk him alone made me think him a mentally disturbed paranoiac. And I say that as an armchair psychologist – just basing it on interactions I have had with people who actually had difficulty engaging in reality. But the longer I look at it, the more I think there’s a strong chance he’s just a lying jerk who loved having the chance to grandstand. If this proves to be how all these conspiracy peddlers behave, I may reconsider. And then he’ll get to call me a liar again because in the land of the True Believer, no one ever changes their mind. They’re all just LIARS!
So never say never, she says after she said never.
Thanks so much for this comment. I really appreciate the support.
You do a lot of insulting Dave McGowan and a lot of rambling and few attempts to debunk some of his harder to believe assertions. You have precious few citations while at the same time you criticize Dave for not having any when in fact most of his works are pretty well cited including this one.
If you want to actually debunk him why don’t you answer some of the really serious questions like:
Where are all the tens of amputees and the legs and the gore?
How was it the casualties were so small if a bomb like this was planted in a crowd (http://youtu.be/aD_Ufn1ROw0) why weren’t the casualties WORSE?
Where was the shrapnel damage to inanimate objects like sidewalk, walls, banners, flags, temporary fencing, etc?
Your claims about the clothes that shred without underlying injuries are laughable and idiotic. Even more so is the claim that it happened by fire. Shredded clothes don’t look like burned clothes. Care to try again?
Why is it the worst injured seem to get the least attention from first responders?
Why do the first responders have so little blood on them?
What about the magic mangled bent then straight then mangled again leg of crystal (forget the last name)?
How was baumans blood flow stopped so effectively that he literally didn’t leave a drop behind him during his ill advised wheel chair ride when there where clearly gurneys available which were given to less injured people first?
Where is all the footage of either of the brothers dropping the bombs?
If people were “on fire” where is the photographs or videos showing that and the resulting serious burns?
Where are all the photos of the tens of other amputees that would have had to have been wheeled out via the same routes as our other stars?
Where are 200+ wounded people?
Why did cowboy man wait so long? Why is the photographic evidence so out of line with every story he’s given?
And on and on. Answer some hard questions. Go back and read parts 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.
I do agree it requires a large stretch of the imagination to go the staged route but you just do a lot of rambling, insult spewing and cherry picking of the low hanging fruit. You answer none of the really tough questions convincingly, you didn’t read the complete work either. You’re precious short on citations too. You seem like either a troll or an attention whore.
Do the real work and prove your case. There are a LOT of REALLY serious inconsistencies and questions raised by Dave and his peers about this whole thing and you have barely scratched the surface above.
I know the economy is bad so you had to take this contract project to pay your bills. Better ask the congress to fix the economy, impose wall street taxes, import duties on good, 0.75 loans for small businesses. Maybe then you would not have to degrade yourself as much.
KM, first and only warning. This is covered in my comment policy. You don’t get to make scurrilous assertions like that on my site, made all the stupider because this site has no ads and an Amazon Affiliate account that provides me with little more than the book giveaways I do on my other site. Prove I am on anyone’s payroll or never bring this up again on pain of being banned and of proving that you are a weak thinker who can only engage in character assassination when you have nothing else to say. Comments like this are moronic and surely even you can do better.
If all this hadn’t been 10 years ago Ms Dalton, I’d be concerned that you were disordered, jabbed, mind-controlled, price-tagged, an A.U.Chatbot or combination thereof.
What is more disturbing than your brain fog is that you are so far up your own arse that you actually believe that your banning threats have any value.
Who GAF?
Ms. Dalton: I think the last comment by M raises some very good questions, which you dismiss with one sweeping gesture, using — if you’ll pardon me — the very rhetorical tricks you criticize in others (“One of the most tiresome problems of dealing with conspiracy theorists… What True Believers don’t seem to understand is… the theory I debunked… proves him dead wrong… such shoddy research… his theory is spun from whole cloth…” etc.).
Why do you keep repeating how wrong he is and how right you are? Don’t you think your readers can decide that for themselves? If you believe you’ve truly debunked Dave McGowan with better evidence and arguments, then why not let the matter rest?
I do have one question, which I haven’t seen answered in your analysis above (and which I believe was raised by McGowan):
J.A., your comment got caught up because WordPress screens comments with more than one link in them – sorry about that.
I don’t mean to seem dismissive or glib in reciting the tiresome interactions I’ve had with True Believers but the fact of the matter remains that it is exhausting and an enormous time suck to deal with comments that demand (DEMAND) I explain myself over and over and over, with insults, insinuations based on nothing I have written and situations not applicable to the theory at hand. I have to keep repeating I am right and McGowan is wrong because people who have come over here to tell me I am wrong have missed the core of my argument – that McGowan’s sloppy research and how he used his visuals make it impossible for anyone who knows the timing and placement of the Ben Thorndike pictures and later media photos to believe in a staged attack. Since people keep coming over here and talking about bomb trajectories and how much blood there should be and how it is the media sucks and how awesome a journalist McGowan is, I have to keep repeating the core of my argument because it is what is debunking McGowan. Sure, anyone can have an opinion and should do their own research but it’s disingenuous to ask me not to defend my work when it is challenged. McGowan’s work was shoddy at best, used information he either did not understand or misrepresented and until anyone comes back and says, “Oh no, the Thorndike pictures were taken by the CIA as a misdirection and here’s concrete proof!” I will keep beating that drum and wondering why it doesn’t bother his acolytes. And believe me, I find it very interesting that none of McGowan’s believers have addressed the fact that he screwed up the Thorndike pictures to the point that it rendered his entire argument invalid. Very interesting.
Sadly, McGowan’s weird behavior means I don’t care to interact with his work anymore but I’ll answer your question. Yes, Bauman’s knees were still attached to his body when he was rushed to the hospital. So were the legs of several amputees when they made it to the ER. Just being there visually is not enough to limbs to be declared sound. The problem is that just because his knees were still there does not mean that they were not riddled with shrapnel or in other ways so damaged they could not be saved. We know nothing of the state of the ligaments and how the tissues presented when Jeff Bauman was taken to the hospital. Of course a surgeon would not remove more bone and tissue than necessary but unless one is a surgeon, which I am not, I would be loathe to look at a picture of a man whose shins who have been blown off and question the necessity of removing the leg above the knee. Laypeople don’t know what the surgeons were confronted with when they had Bauman’s legs under the knife. Moreover, the ragged state of Bauman’s skin may not have given surgeons enough healthy skin to close the amputation site. I’ve read some surgeons accounts that say that Bauman’s legs should have been handled differently but I note none of that comes from surgeons who were in the OR with Bauman. We simply don’t know and until we know, why create an entire staged theory that this man who gravely suffered is a fake?
To determine how much tissue to remove, the doctor will check for a pulse at a joint close to the site. Skin temperatures, color, and the presence of pain in the diseased limb will be compared with those in a healthy limb.
After the initial incision, it may be decided that more of the limb needs to be removed. The doctor will maintain as much of the functional stump length as possible. The doctor will also leave as much healthy skin as possible to cover the stump area.
When you bear in mind that surgery following a traumatic amputation will have more variables, it is not surprising at all that Bauman’s doctors may have had reason to take the legs off above the knee in order to leave a healthy stump. Just because his skin was hanging in rags doesn’t mean there was enough left to cover his knee and he may not have been a good candidate for the sort of amputation wherein the ends are left unclosed. But may I suggest that unless you know the state of the remaining tissue, the state of his knees and the viability of his skin, speculating on why medical professionals did what they did is useless because you don’t have a complete information set to draw conclusions? Just a thought…
Sweetie, I have no idea why you’re still letting these asshats comment here. Let me quote Merlin Mann from Back to Work:
Comments are a way to come in and pinch a loaf on somebody else’s couch.
…or more completely:
If you have comments about what I say here, post about it on your own blog. That’s what it’s there for, and it’s a place where owning your words will have gravity and, in most cases, will be associated with the name of a real person who doesn’t pinch loaves on his own couch.
You know, like a week ago, I would have been forced to ban my own husband for using the word “asshat” to insult commenters. But interestingly, my beloved, empirically asshattery has been proven here in certain circumstances so I’ll let it slide.
But I see your point and may consider it. Either that or I will be forced to stop responding all together. Which would suck but this current model is not really sustainable. And my couch is covered in turds. Poorly reasoned, insulting, very demanding, entitled turds. Turds that then manage to crap themselves, self-pinching loaves, as it were.
Thanks for helping define this problem via poop analogies.
Speaking as an old country boy who’s seen more than his share of farming and construction accidents, I can attest that just because a man has some of his leg or his arm left after getting it caught in a machine doesn’t mean the doc will let him keep it. I have to think the same is true in an explosion, so that wasn’t particularly noteworthy to me.
As for Ms. D dismissing M above, it seems to me that she’s explained herself ad nauseum and doesn’t want to do it again. So cut her a break.
And as for you, JA, what do you think happened? Got an opinion you can back up with facts, or are you just here to complain?
EGrise: No, I don’t have an opinion I can back up with facts. In fact, that’s why I came here — to find evidence and arguments to help me figure out what really happened, because I think serious questions have been raised — not just by McGowan, and not just about the bombing scene.
I’m keeping an open mind until I see more proof one way or the other, proof that will persuade me beyond a reasonable doubt. How about you? Let’s not get that odious label of “True Believer” slapped on either of us, OK?
Anita, thanks for your prompt and respectful reply. I fully understand about defending your work and admire you for it.
But may I ask: Would you continue to defend a position that’s later proven false? Please think about it outside the context of this discussion. It’s a very personal question, to be considered in the privacy of your own heart.
Of course, if you were honestly committed to discovering the truth, you’d have to say no. Ego and defense mechanisms be damned.
But if you dismiss it as ridiculous, because you’re already convinced that McGowan is 100% wrong and you’re 100% right, then both of you are being utterly dogmatic about it, with no middle ground possible. And the rest of us are forced to choose one camp or the other right now. End of discussion. Truth be damned.
May I point out that despite your early insistence “that I don’t have a theory as to what happened at Boston,” you charge ahead with no doubt that McGowan’s theory is bogus.
As you know, that’s called begging the question. You also inject emotion into the mix, unfairly I might add, much as I shared them with you at first. Let me quote that paragraph:
“None of them have inspired in me the level of anger I experienced reading McGowan’s theory…. Still, it was, at times, nauseating to read such a virulent lack of respect for the Boston Bombing victims. Throughout his articles, McGowan engages in a near Stalinist desire to unperson people who have suffered grave harm in order to prove a theory that involves more supposition on his part than it does actual proof. He insults the appearance of one victim, he demeans the dead and he outright mocks serious injuries because he claims it is clear victims were not wounded. He bases this opinion solely on his observations, which often appear strange as the pictures show gravely injured people. Or at least they do to those not pushing an agenda. It’s hard to maintain a tone of civility when one encounters such a shocking lack of basic human decency.”
Well, he doesn’t stand a chance, does he? If we start by assuming the photos are of real carnage, then anger and outrage at McGowan are perfectly appropriate responses.
But if we’re shown inconsistencies in the photos that raise the possibility of a staged event, then anger and outrage at the actor-victims would be just as appropriate.
Is it possible to hold both positions at the same time? I certainly can’t. Which leads to a see-saw ride, until one side has enough weight of evidence to prevent the bounce-back.
But right now, you reject the staged event scenario, and McGowan rejects the real carnage scenario. What to do?
As the first commenter (Edward Sung) put it so succinctly: “It’s a completely closed system.”
So I think I’ve gathered all I can from here. Thanks again for your time.
One last thing, about Jeff Bauman: The “below the knee” amputation was reported AFTER the surgeries: “Both of Bauman’s legs were amputated below the knee.” http://theweek.com/article/index/243181/meet-9-recovering-boston-explosion-victims
So, unless the surgeons went back in an removed more of his legs (I found no reports of that on his fundraising page, which I think would have been important to mention.)
“And then of course as you know, I was a trauma surgeon for many years, I was an orthopedic surgeon. And basically, I looked at that below knee amputation on the left side, and it was a well-healed below knee amputation stump, and certainly, the kind that I would’ve done. I did many, many times, so people could wear prostheses. And there was no tear in the skin, no blood, no nothing at all — just a bloody tibia sticking out of the end — and it looked like it had been attached to this stump. Why would they do something like that?…
“And you can see pictures of him — he’s waving a flag, and he has two above knee amputations. Above knee amputations. Now wait a minute, the Jeff Bauman we saw initially had a below knee amputation and this is an above knee amputation. … I believe that this young man was an actor.”
Hey, JA, thanks for coming back and leaving this comment. Hopefully this will make sense but it’s late so I’m not as hopeful as I would like to be about my coherence. I’ll just do my best to follow your comment’s order.
But may I ask: Would you continue to defend a position that’s later proven false? Please think about it outside the context of this discussion. It’s a very personal question, to be considered in the privacy of your own heart. Of course, if you were honestly committed to discovering the truth, you’d have to say no. Ego and defense mechanisms be damned.
Would I defend a position if it was later proven false? Of course not. And yes, it would be an ego blow but ultimately I’m just one person in the blogosphere, one fallible person. People make mistakes. It may be embarrassing but it is no shame. I know it’s hard to take anyone’s word on a topic like this, but I’ve got a large body of work on another site wherein I discussed books about conspiracy theory, among other odd books. I’ve been proven wrong several times over there and changed my articles to reflect it. I’m tired so it’s difficult to recall them all but the best example of my reaction to being taken to task and changing my data or admitting my mistake is my analysis on a book about the Franklin Scandal, which I link to in the body of the original article that spawned these comments.
But if you dismiss it as ridiculous, because you’re already convinced that McGowan is 100% wrong and you’re 100% right, then both of you are being utterly dogmatic about it, with no middle ground possible. And the rest of us are forced to choose one camp or the other right now. End of discussion. Truth be damned.
That’s how it worked, though. I dismissed it ridiculous after I read it, not before. I knew the Thorndike pictures extremely well when I entered into the McGowan debunk. All I knew going into it was that a person I like thought the theory interesting and accurate. I did not click that link expecting to find it wrong. But the knowledge that I had proved it wrong as I read.
This isn’t a truth be damned situation because within 2 pictures in, I knew he was wrong. It is 100%. The Thorndike pictures begin seconds after the bomb went off and the people who are called actors are on the ground, some screaming in agony, others stunned, and there is not a single stager in sight. No make-up person. No people rushing from the building to the left in the Thorndike pictures, already made up and ready to deceive the American people. The smoke began to clear enough for visual identification of the victims seven to eight pictures in and some are able to be seen even before that. With this information, it is 100% certain that any staging theory anyone posits about the first scene is bogus.
There is no middle ground. You either have to believe the Thorndike picture timing or you don’t. People can deflect with argumentative questions about how pressure cooker bombs really go off, with endless blood analysis and such but the Thorndike pictures show clearly no staging theory could have happened with the smoke covering the moving actors or incoming actors brought in before the Thorndike pictures began. So yeah, people have to go with one or the other. Not all theories can sport a middle ground.
May I point out that despite your early insistence “that I don’t have a theory as to what happened at Boston,” you charge ahead with no doubt that McGowan’s theory is bogus.
I don’t have a theory. Debunking a theory is not a de facto theory. The Thorndike pictures prove McGowan dead wrong about it being staged, but they do not tell me who planted the bombs, if one of the Tsarnaevs was coerced, if they were part of a cell, if they were patsies. It doesn’t tell me if the backpacks were planted before hand and the Tsarnaevs were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. They don’t tell me if the government paid the Tsarnaevs to do it and then double crossed them into a false flag. All the Thorndike pictures do is refute staging theories and show us how the wounded fell. So no questions were begged. I didn’t go in looking for evidence to fit my foregone conclusion. Rather, I had information about specific pictures and that knowledge was at work, not an agenda to prove the Dalton Theory.
You also inject emotion into the mix, unfairly I might add, much as I shared them with you at first. Let me quote that paragraph:
It’s only unfair if you don’t know the pictures are indeed pictures of genuine suffering. I did and perhaps McGowan didn’t. But his ignorance of his own source materials should not shelter him from the condemnation he justly deserves for insulting wounded people just because he couldn’t find accurate information before he misused pictures to spin his wild theory.
The fact of the matter is that I actually handled McGowan with kid gloves because a reader here likes him a lot. I complimented his Laurel Canyon series. I explained my anger and its motivations and didn’t try to be coy about. I eliminated profanity and I was careful to say that even as I found his demeaning of victims disgusting, I suspect this analysis of his was not indicative of a nasty nature.
But it has to be said I write angry. I write sad, happy, morose and furious. This isn’t a college dissertation – it’s a debunker site on the Internet. And as people have pointed out my anger at McGowan’s callousness, no one has mentioned the very real disgust – also an emotion – that he levied at victims in an article he could not be arsed to research properly. Even if he was right, his palpable disgust is an emotion, too. And I have no problem with emotions in writing – I just think people need to get their ducks in a row before using negative emotions to characterize and demean people.
But just in general I write with emotion. Always have, always will, some like it, some don’t and it’s unlikely to change.
Is it possible to hold both positions at the same time? I certainly can’t. Which leads to a see-saw ride, until one side has enough weight of evidence to prevent the bounce-back.
But right now, you reject the staged event scenario, and McGowan rejects the real carnage scenario. What to do?
Well, of course I know my work in McGowan’s theories effectively rendered his staging argument false. I don’t think most people could hold both ideas simultaneously. I think where staging is concerned you can safely climb off the seesaw because the evidence makes it impossible.
But I am less concerned with the quandary the reader is left in because I hope no one ever takes me at my word and instead researches what I say. I can’t control the way anyone absorbs information but if people with cognitive difficulties look at the Thorndike pictures and see a cast running in to take their places in a drama, that’s the decision they have to make. I may think I am right but I am no substitute for your own research and contemplation.
And maybe, just maybe, people can all avoid declaring what they think happened until all the facts are in. We can look at some things and know they did not happen but we do have to have patience and wait to see what information the trial and other sources bring up before we decide to marry our thoughts to a theory.
Now for Bauman’s legs:
–I’ve also seen news sources refer to him as having received an amputation under the knee and thought that the case myself before I saw the picture of him giving Celeste Corcoran a birthday gift. Even with a blanket it was clear, to me at least, that by April 24 he had lost both legs above the knee. I tend to think that this was yet another media failure. We’ve got a media who told us Dzhokhar was armed in the boat, then not armed, that he shot himself, oh but it must have been a knife, and oh yeah, he robbed the convenience store but then he didn’t. The media has made a hash out of this case. It’s easily very likely that the media screwed this one up, too.
–I read the transcript – I’m too tired for the video – but I have difficulty understanding the doctor. Is he saying that when he saw the tibia hanging from the “amputation” that he is referring to the traumatic amputation Bauman received when the bomb went off? Or is he saying that he thinks bloody skin and tibia were added to an already amputated leg, an amputation above the knee? If it is the latter and he thinks a prosthetic was applied to an already amputated and healed stump (which now occurs to me is exactly what he was saying since he peripherally invoked Nick Vogt), we can easily debunk that and return to the land of Parsimony. Bauman had a job standing up behind the deli counters at a Nashua CostCo. There are many pictures of him with legs before April 15. Unless all these people were in on a conspiracy to create a back story for Bauman, it’s more likely that all of his bosses and friends and family are telling the truth and he had legs, then lost them on April 15. It’s also far more likely Dr. Monteith is making some pretty hefty assumptions about a patient he never saw in person. That Dr. Monteith also does the whole, “Why was he out the hospital in 19 days” thing also makes him suspect because as I showed in my article, Bauman was actually in the hospital far longer than the average amputee, likely because of abdominal surgery he needed. His rehab is handled outpatient. Perhaps things have changed since Dr. Monteith did this kind of surgery but everything that has happened to Bauman is well within the guidelines the Amputee Coalition considers typical.
Though all the comments wear me down, this is the sort of discussion I wanted to have on this site. Ultimately I enjoy conspiracy theory or I would not read so much about it and talk about it so much but even amongst believers, I often have such interesting conversations. People just have to engage in good faith, like you have. Though I stayed up far too late again, I’m glad you left this comment and hope you continue to read here and comment again. I don’t want an echo chamber here and comments that ask questions about the matters at hand and engage in good faith even as they may disagree with me make me very happy. Thanks for this comment.
This is one of the single best take-downs I’ve ever read. Easily in the top ten. Good job and don’t let Dave McGowan’s oversized ego and little girl temper tantrum keep you from taking him on again in the future. He’s gotten away with lost of really questionable “research” for a long time and seldom gets properly challenged. His decision to resort to name-calling rather than respond to the concrete points you make tells anyone who is not one of his fanpoodles all they need to now about old Dave.
And lol to infinity at him thinking this site is all about him. Dave’s got an ego, that’s fo sho!
I bought Dave’s argument much more after his first installment. The first part is confusing, and (thanks to your analysis) possibly wrong. But then he does continue and in his later installments he makes me wonder how the doctors and aides can come off the bloody scene with such clean clothes. And then there is the odd media casuality count of 260 (290?) . And he lists many more anomalies which another commenter listed above. You provided a link to where I presume you adressed these but didn’t, or if I missed it, sorry. In any case, you have provided for me a point of view to look more carefully at his “research.”
But if debunking the “actor/fake bomb theory” is a goal you have your work cut out for. I watched a slowed down video of the explosion which the narrator explains (and I can sort of see??) how there is no one standing in the blast zone but then there are people moving toward the explosion. These are supposedly the actors.
First, I have no idea why this comment ended up in my spam folder but it did. You did nothing untoward to end up being censored or delayed so I apologize. I recently upgraded WordPress and I bet I borked something. I’ll have Mr HRev have look at it.
The media has consistently reported numbers all over the map in terms of casualities. Without much research, and know this response is from the hip, almost all of the reports from the media have grave errors. I’d take into account the incompetence of the media handling the case whenever you come across strange numbers like this.
I will be looking into lack of blood on first responders.
I only intend to discuss Dave’s first installment. I find his paranoia unsettling and his bizarre name calling beneath contempt, as well as his willingness to defame injured people on the basis of some really shoddy research. There are other actor/staged theories so I don’t need to focus on him.
I’m not sure I understand what you are referring to when you say I listed a link that didn’t explain other anomalies. If you clarify I will be happy to clarify on my end.
Would you mind sharing the link to the video of the slowed down explosion that shows people moving toward it because that defies the photographic record of the first bomb site and I would love to see it. Is it the second bomb site? Regardless, it sounds interesting. If it is the second bomb site I can’t really debunk it as the record of that explosion aftermath is so sparse (and again, I wish the UATG or FBI would release the surveillance footage of Dzhokhar leaving the bomb and failing to respond when it went off because it would go a long way to clearing up a lot of questions). The Thorndike photos being 5 or so seconds after the bomb went off. There is no one rushing in. The pics would have caught it if it happened. So if there is a video of another angle, I am most interested in seeing it.
Thanks again for the comment and I apologize again for you getting caught in spam – you apologized in your second comment but this was a software issue, not anything you did.
Aw, gee, I had a comment all written and it got bumped because I hadn’t yet read your comment policy. Oh well.
I had said you did a good job of debunking Dave’s first installment but he raises many more anomalies afterwards which in my mind are hard to deny like how bloodless the doctors’ and aides’ clothes are and how odd the media casualty counts are.
And I saw a video analysis which indicates no people standing in the blast zone but people moving toward the blast, the actors supposedly.
Cudos for questioning the conspiracy theory. If only our mainstream media did it as well. Or if Rachel Maddow were as polite as you. That said, if you continue to try and debunk the “actor/fake bomb theory you have your work cut out for you. Maybe your husband is right. Honey, come to bed!
Thanks for this kind comment, Jimbo. You are absolutely correct – the longer I look at this, the more anomalies I find and it’s becoming onerous to discuss them, but I will soldier on.
The blood on first responders’ clothing, or lack thereof, has come up several times. I will be sure to have a section on it because now I’m curious, too.
Debunking staging theories at the first bomb site is an easy A. Until those who spout this theory can explain away the Thorndike pictures with more than a “She’s lying, they were taken minutes after the bombs went off!” there’s probably little sense in continuing to debunk them.
Thanks again for this comment and sorry you got hung up in my spam folder.
Anita Dalton-
Leave the profane name-calling… but you liberally use, “conspiracy theorist??” The associations by the foolish with tin-hat-wearing paranoids, is, today, profane name-calling (also, by dictionary definition of the two words, ignorant).
Must I supply you with the entire passage from the CIA about what to call people who dare to question authorities like “the media” and the Warren Commission’s assertions that a lone madman (after all, you must be temporarily mad, at least, to take up arms against someone who has done no harm to your person or to those close to you), had a rifle and a revolver mailed to him (when he could have bought a rifle at almost any store at that time in U.S history), order the rifle under the name Alek James Hidell but have it sent to a P.O. Box address bearing his real name, go up to the 6th floor of his own place of work, not shoot at the president when he had a straight-on shot as he came up Houston St. toward him, but wait until he made an almost 90-degree turn onto Elm St., and fire shots under a traffic light stanchion, through trees at a car traveling AWAY from him down a curving road (when you stand in Dealey with photos of Dealey on 11.22.63 and days just previous and after, well let’s just say, “it’s ludicrous!”), and fire three shots – a bullet was removed, in the presence of DPD officers, from the grass just beyond a manhole and its cover – where the bullet mark made in the manhole cover remains to this day, automatically making for FOUR shots and not three; though the Altgens film clearly shows a crack in the front windshield just as JFK grabs his throat and necktie, which can ONLY mean he was shot from the front – making at least FIVE shots; that even the JFK limo driver and his accomplice, errr, front seat passenger, indicated there were a “hail of bullets” fired – which means, that unless Lee Harvey Oswald possessed and fired a fully-automatic weapon that day, which the Mannlicher-Carcano was certainly not? Oh shoot, that means it was impossible for Oswald to shoot the president, as told by those bastions of honesty, “the media” and the Warren Commission… only a person who would contrive a theory that Oswald conspired with himself, would believe he was the man who killed JFK.
Do the research yourself about the term, “conspiracy theorist.” since you find it so easy to toss pejoratives people’s way, it’s equally easy enough to find the root of the term and its intended use as negative propaganda ———– by “authorities.”
As to your response to Dave McGowan’s brilliant dissertation which elucidated the obvious fabrication that was the “Boston Bombing.” You “debunked” nothing. Really. You did nothing other than repeat information provided for you, primarily by news sources.
To use media sources, all of which are under the control of Project Mockingbird (and its successors), which was derived by Allen Dulles in 1946, a full year before the CIA was created by the National Security Act, is either an act of ignorance for any serious researcher or an act of purposeful obfuscation; and in 2013, when we have, at our fingertips, the most powerful research tool in modern history, ignorance is no longer an excuse not to know this fact of the state of our media.
So, let’s throw out the obvious lies told – that MUST be told – in the media and what are you left with? Your own eyes.
Put down the tools of propaganda provided you by people who care only that you think what they tell you to think, put away the hackneyed, knee-jerk, government-mandated, faux-emotional expressions of alleged empathy, and re-read McGowan’s writings on the Boston Bombings; look at the photos —– CLOSELY —- as they relate to the print; stop reading McGowan and search for yourself narrative scenes where massive amounts of blood have been let loose from human bodies and compare them with what you see in the Bombing photos; look at myriad photos illustrating the results of shrapnel – hint: as a kid, my friends and I reenacted political assassinations – D.C. private school imps with parents inside the govt., go figure – using plastic model cars. We’d sometimes use mini-plastic golf balls about 1″ in width, slice them in half, pack them with bent, small-head tacks and firecracker/m-80 flash powder, run a triple-length fuse from just inside the golf ball out to us, light that sucker in close proximity to the car’s path as it rolled down a hill toward the incendiary device, jump behind our metal trash cans and watch the result – a car in shreds, tacks in wooden garage doors and frames and every once in a while, punctures in those metal trash cans, if we packed tightly enough. Now, extrapolate that to the size of the alleged Boston Bombings and tell us again about the damage that you SHOULD see compared with what you do see.
In fact, be a kid for about 30 minutes and make one of those little shrapnel bombs yourself put it close to an object like a plastic model car. You’ll know as soon as the smoke and your ears clear who’s lying and who’s attempting to approach the truth of that Marathon event.
Sorry your comment got hung up. I don’t know what got it filtered but there was nothing in this comment that violates my comment policy and I apologize for the delay.
DK, I couldn’t care less about your opinions on the relative profanity of being called a conspiracy theorist versus being called a f*cktard. My site, my determination of what is profane and here on HRev, conspiracy theory is only a dirty word if YOU want it to be.
This comment is nothing more than the rants of a person who has not read anything on this site but what McGowan linked to, or you wouldn’t have left this ridiculous comment. Until McGowan addresses his deliberate mislabeling and misrepresentation of the Thorndike pictures and explains how it is actors managed to get on the scene and set it up when Ben Thorndike photographed the entire first bomb site and began taking pictures seconds after the first bomb went off, the rest is all so much noise. Bluster. A refusal to deal with the essential problem that one is presented with when one realizes that McGowan either misunderstood or outright lied about the Thorndike pictures doesn’t mean that his and almost all staging theories aren’t gutted. MY OWN EYES looked at the Thorndike pictures and MY OWN EYES realize that no staging theory can stand with that photographic evidence. Thorndike is not a member of the media. He is an amateur photographer. So basically I did exactly what you are telling me to do and realized that there is no way a staging theory can stand.
You can’t dismiss all media, DK. At some point we have to get our information from some place and analyze it. McGowan used the media to reach his conclusions and since I don’t believe, based on my own research and knowledge of the Thorndike pictures, that there were actors involved in the bombing, in my decision calculus it was safe to believe the extent of injuries as the media presented them. We are all reacting to the media, even those of us who reject the media’s narratives. It is specious to even approach this from the angle that one is not going to use the media to examine theories because all one can do is examine media and find the truth or lies. Just because you reject all media, as your comment leads me to assume, you are still using the media in the creation of your belief.
Since you throw so much garbage into your reply, tell me why you are lecturing me on the Kennedy assassination? Where did I ever explain my beliefs about the murder of JFK? Did the Houdini head lead you astray? Could it be that you have absolutely no idea what I think about that and about what theories have been debunked and what haven’t because you just blindly followed a link and assumed that because I dared debunk your precious McGowan then that means I suck at the teat of the mass media and believe every word authority utters. Since you’ve already dropped some paranoia over at IROB, you clearly are aware of the site. Check out my discussion of Gorightly’s The Prankster and the Conspiracy. Check out my discussions of Alex Constantine. Check out anything but the one thing that got McGowan butthurt and the single entry I link to within that long entry that left his behind so very, very chapped.
Your comment leaves me full of existential despair but at least this time you didn’t unperson me so I feel like perhaps, if you just back up and realize that disagreeing with McGowan is not the same as blindly accepting every official story as complete truth, then perhaps we could have a discussion worth having. As it stands now all you got is McGowan Is Right Because Evidently the Thorndike Pictures Don’t Exist and lots of completely inaccurate assumptions about this site, how I examine the media and what it is I believe.
Oops! Looks like you can’t come back and whargarbl at me some more because my husband, who is an admin on both sites, didn’t like you calling his step-father, a war hero, a liar. Rock on with your accusatory self, DK. Rock on.
Hahahaha! You’re agreeing with a dude who hasn’t read but one entry on this site, who has no idea why this site exists, who has no idea what he’s talking about in terms of my overall belief in conspiracy theory, who only came over here because McGowan sent him because his comprehension-level betrayed no deeper thought then “oh well, well I’ll tell her,” and whargarbled like he was getting paid. Well played, Jean Bush. Well played!
Oh dear, you’re on to me, Chris. This site is indeed pro-McGowan. Houdini’s Revenge is nothing but a false flag site meant to pump up McGowan’s image by pretending to think he’s a disingenuous purveyor of nonsense. I had no idea anyone would ever figure that out but how can I do anything but confess my perfidy in the face of your towering genius. And this comment is a perfect encapsulation of why it is that McGowan’s fans are so respected for their integrity and intellect. Go forth, Chris, and share your ideas, you mental giant amongst men!
(and because so many people who have interesting cognitive capacities evidently are OUTRAGED that I showed mcgowan to be a man not unfamiliar with untruths, i feel i need to state clearly that this is sarcasm. chris, i hope you and sj can hang out soon and thus the circle-jerk will be unbroken. send McGowan an email and let him know what a good little doggy you are! he may bless you with a reply!)
And you know Chris, I just feel like I want to say that even though this is sincerely one of the most idiotic comments I have ever read, the first couple of months here has been a real education for me. I genuinely had no idea how weird and unschooled are the brains of so many True Believers. I’ve been so blessed that in the course of running IROB for years and having run various blogs and contributed to other sites for almost two decades I seldom encountered the completely ludicrous levels of discourse I have encountered since I launched this site. So in a sense I really do thank you and all the others who have come here for giving me this trial by not-very-bright-fire. It’s given me a lot of food for thought and has helped me decide how I will handle comments and controversial entries in the future. So rock on, Chris! Thanks for your help.
Two weeks since last comment, I’ll see if this goes thru. Yes, I will be civil.
Found your writing and analysis very compelling — until I went back and read Dave’s work again. It was a fast read and look the first time, and I wanted to find out what some debunking looked like, and I was impressed by your tone and thoroughness. And, yes, Dave is awfully sarcastic.
That’s his style. I was impressed, too, that you had previously found “Laurel Canyon” at least interesting. How about his other work, on 9/11 and the moon landings? I just wonder….
I was so struck by his moon landing analyses, after I had viewed Jose Escamilla’s films, that I just had to post about it on the New Cafe, where I have been a member for over 15 years — which posting led to much derision.
Well, I’ve been posting there about Dave’s new series and haven’t gotten much response yet. I’m impressed with his work yet again. Sorry the rudeness bothers you so, but is it possible to break through the trance of the people without it?
I wonder at your apparent naivete? It’s touching, in a way. The way it combines with your drive to get somewhere with all this, which I share. And many have called me naive. I especially see your belief that the “investigations” of the authorities will produce real results in this case as naive. What real results did we see with the assassinations in the sixties, with Oklahoma, with 9/11, with so many many more suspicious events? Instead, we saw coverups.
The use of “patsies” in Boston was immediately obvious to me. And they “killed a cop,” too — just like Oswald. And it was announced as a drill — just like 9/11.
Do these patterns not eventually arouse suspicion?
Perhaps you will come to avoid phrases such as “true believers,” which only arouse the worst in your readers. “True non-believers” perhaps could work better?
Anyhow, thank you for contributing so much effort in this instance, and I hope you can catch up on your “real” sleep someday! “Perhaps to dream!” Aha!
That’s his style. I was impressed, too, that you had previously found “Laurel Canyon” at least interesting. How about his other work, on 9/11 and the moon landings? I just wonder….
His discussion of Laurel Canyon was very interesting. I haven’t read anything else he has written and don’t intend to.
I was so struck by his moon landing analyses, after I had viewed Jose Escamilla’s films, that I just had to post about it on the New Cafe, where I have been a member for over 15 years — which posting led to much derision.
I’m sorry you got derided. It happens though. I am unfamiliar with Jose Escamilla’s films, but I also have to be honest and say that the Moon Landing Was Faked theory never really resonated with me much outside of the Kubrick angle. Is Escamilla the “rods over New Mexico” guy?
While the moon landing theories hold little interest to me, the Lost Cosmonauts theories did hold a lot of interest. I’ve researched them inside and out and came across James Oberg’s masterful debunk of most of the Lost Cosmonaut theories and he handled the moon landing theories very well. Maybe Google him and read his POV as well. It may be interesting.
Well, I’ve been posting there about Dave’s new series and haven’t gotten much response yet. I’m impressed with his work yet again. Sorry the rudeness bothers you so, but is it possible to break through the trance of the people without it?
It’s interesting that you dislike the moniker True Believer but have no problem calling me naive and saying that people are in a trance. But to answer your question, McGowan isn’t the only way you can show that the official stories may be problematic. He’s a strange dude and if you really think you wanna hitch your wagon to that star, knock yourself out, but if you are asking me if McGowan is such a deep thinker that despite his provocative tone he is worth listening to, the answer is no. His research is sloppy. And again, his tone is not the problem. His tone invoked with such crappy research that it beggared belief is the problem. If you are going to mock the dead you best have your facts in order. He didn’t. I embrace sarcasm. If you’ve read much on my other site, I’m snarky at times and have been known to curse like a sailor on leave. I write without it here because I need this site to be earnest so McGowan’s sarcasm in and of itself is no problem. It’s his crappy approach to problem solving.
I wonder at your apparent naivete? It’s touching, in a way. The way it combines with your drive to get somewhere with all this, which I share. And many have called me naive. I especially see your belief that the “investigations” of the authorities will produce real results in this case as naive. What real results did we see with the assassinations in the sixties, with Oklahoma, with 9/11, with so many many more suspicious events? Instead, we saw coverups.
What naivete is that? Seriously? Because in my book calling shoddy research shoddy isn’t naive. It’s sensible. And where did you pick up any notion that I think the authorities will come to the correct conclusion? And where do you get the idea I’m cool with the government response to other events?
See, this is why it’s funny you dislike the term “True Believer.” True Believers are evidence resistant and they often fill in the blanks in interesting ways that defy what is actually happening because that’s just how their brains work. I’m not saying you are one, but I am saying this sort of reasoning is indicative of True Believing. Examples:
–Note that not a single person who came over here to yell at me and tell me how wrong I am addressed the lynch pin of my entire debunk: the Thorndike photos. McGowan himself had no idea he was using these pictures, he didn’t know when they were taken and he didn’t know who was in them. These pictures defy any notion that any staging happened in the two circles of carnage I indicated in my debunk. So of course, in the face of evidence that rendered all the rest of it meaningless, people spoke of how bombs went off, how people had no blood on their clothes, secret hand gestures and so on. But no one addressed the Thorndike pictures because True Believer exclude any evidence that can prove their pet theories wrong.
–You have zero idea what it is I think about anything but McGowan but you extrapolate debunking McGowan with being a party-line advocate for various assassinations, 9-11, etc. You don’t even seem to grok that I am very troubled by the way the Boston case is being handled by the media and the authorities. I outright say that John Miller’s presence in all of this is disturbing and that Carmen Ortiz is one of the most morally bankrupt attorneys ever to work for the US government and yet you seem to think that by debunking McGowan’s asinine theory that I am somehow hostile to the idea that conspiracies exist. That’s because you entered into this with a set idea of what a debunker does and you forced your conception of me to conform to that conception.
The use of “patsies” in Boston was immediately obvious to me. And they “killed a cop,” too — just like Oswald. And it was announced as a drill — just like 9/11.
Did you read what I had to say about Sean Collier’s murder? I don’t disagree that there is a chance the brothers could have been patsies, or on the CIA payroll and then disavowed. I am saying McGowan’s staging theory is wrong. And the rest of my work on this case, which now is so tiresome to me I can’t even finish, should show that.
Do these patterns not eventually arouse suspicion?
Yes, they do, and that’s why I mentioned WhoWhatWhy’s fascinating work on the slaying of Sean Collier as being worth a read.
Perhaps you will come to avoid phrases such as “true believers,” which only arouse the worst in your readers. “True non-believers” perhaps could work better?
I am largely uninterested in how people react to that term. I don’t label conspiracy theorists as all being wrong but people bristle at being called that, too. Not to seem callous but if the shoe fits…
Anyhow, thank you for contributing so much effort in this instance, and I hope you can catch up on your “real” sleep someday! “Perhaps to dream!” Aha!
Eh, it comes and goes, but thanks for the kind wishes. I’m course correcting, as I mentioned in my latest entry, and will be addressing books mostly, which was why I wanted to create this site in the first place. And if I mention websites again it will be because I find them very interesting. For example, have you ever encountered Pseudo Occult Media (http://www.pseudoccultmedia.net/)? I love, love, love that site. On some level, I can dismiss a lot of what the author has to say but at the same time it’s so very entertaining. And much of it is hard to debunk. Once reading him, I never looked at Alice in Wonderland, chess board and checker boards and Marilyn Monroe the same again.
Though I am somewhat argumentative in this reply, I hope you keep reading. I may be cranky today from lack of sleep. 😉 But hopefully I will discuss some books in the future that will interest you and I really want to discuss the Lost Cosmonauts soon. I may even look into Kubrick and the moon landing. So maybe there will be content here you may enjoy and may have a lot of expertise in. You never know. 🙂
Just a quick note, only one person (out of the tens of thousands present) claimed there were announcements of a ‘drill’ over the loudspeakers. Pretty ‘unbelievable’ that only one person heard these announcements.
Wow, surprised my comment posted so soon — and you answered so soon. So glad you liked Russ Baker’s piece on Sean Collier, I’m a great fan of Russ’ and I really owe my introduction (re-introduction really) to the “dark side” of modern politics to his book on the Bush Family.
Really I’m just a working stiff/businessman who enjoys times of relative free time to explore many subjects, and I’m always happy to write a letter and read someone’s answer. Sorry if I was a bit rude myself.
No time yet to look more into your “lynchpin” but I will.
Had not seen your “pseudo-occult” link but I bookmarked it. I have been stirred at various times by accounts of the “Illuminati.” “The Vigilant Citizen” I found a fascinating site. Also the work of Wes Penre, David Wilcock (especially his “Financial Tyranny” epic booklength posting). I am definitely NOT a true believer in anything but have enjoyed truly epic conversations with my grown stepkids over the years. “Alex, do you really believe men walked on the moon?” Well, I had to look at that one again, and learned a helluva lot along the way. (Yes, I do believe astronauts walked on the moon but did not arrive there in the manner pictured, and furthermore that NASA lied about what they saw there — but another story, right?)
Dropping names like crazy I guess, but I’m also a fan of Jesse Ventura, tho I sprinkle salt liberally. I think his best book was American Conspiracies. All of his last four co-authored by Dick Russell, an admired researcher of JFK’s killing and a correspondent of mine for over 25 years. We lived in the same commune in Boston in the sixties tho at different times!
Not sure why this comment got caught up, Apsmack. Sorry about that.
Name dropping is good because I am unfamiliar with Wes Penre and David Wilcock and will definitely look into their ideas.
There will be content up on this site soon, I promise. I accidentally launched a site to expose a serial scammer who has been defrauding the atheist and cult watchdog communities – I had no intention of falling so far down the rabbit hole but I did and when I landed I had to discuss it all. It’s interesting seeing how sometimes the skeptics are the most willing to believe the unbelievable. 🙁 But I will return this week with a small entry and will pick up things when I finally figure out how to discuss the whole of David Paulides’ works on missing people in National Parks. Hope you stick around. You’ve got interesting ideas and have read some fascinating things and disagreement is fun when people are polite. And learned. But polite also helps. 🙂
I’ve been researching this and many other similar issues for many years. The most important thing I’ve learned is that the internet is no substitute for ‘real’ investigations. Both sides sit atop their high horses shouting down at truth seekers that they’ve got the goods.
It’s a closed system no matter what side you’re on. I find the debunkers (you) and the conspiracy peddlers to be extremely condescending to their readers. You bully your readers into choosing one side or the other by belilttling them and suggesting that there’s some sort of pervasive sickness that infects anyone who just can’t see the Troof you’ve apparently discovered from the comfort of your investigative internet command center.
As for the boston bombing, it’s OBVIOUSLY some sort of psyop or, at the least, absolutely not what it has been portrayed by the authorities and media. If you take into account all the unpreceented actions, the inconsistancies and the medias assault on truth, it’s not rational to accept the basic theory we’ve been given.
1. not only are their unanswered questions…but the authorities and media ignore these questions & inconsistancies
2. Where’s the police dash-cam footage showing the brothers battling it out in the street with the brothers?
3. The FBI can go to Florida, interview Tamerlan’s friend, shoot hiim a few times (once in the back of the head) provide multiple anonymous explanations (all different)…and arrest the only witness in the house who is now awaiting deportation?
4. The FBI also claims that, before they shot the kid, he admitted that he and Tamerlan did the double homicide that occurred in Boston 2 years before the bombing
5. two FBI agents invovled with the arrest of the Dzhokhar died a month after the events
6. Dzhokhar scratched his confession on the inside of the boat? (suuure)
7. Dzhokhar & Tamerlan were reported to have robbed a 7-11 which turned out to be false
8. Dzhokhar & Tamerlan allegedly carjacked an anonymous victim and admitted to the crime while venting their hatred of Americans and love for Islam.
I realize you’re blog entry here is focussing on a specific theory and my points might not relate exactly to the ‘actors’ angle. However, I think readers who gravitate towards that theory do so by evaluating all the inconsistancies not just the digital internet evidence of the scene.
At the end of the day these two people are Americans and are innocent until proven otherwise. At least that’s how it goes in my mind. Apparently, the Vice President can do speaches only days after the bombing telling the entire country how guility the SUSPECTS are and doesn’t realize that he just shattered their constitutional rights to a fair trial.
But, as you say, it’s a closed system. I’m likely a “True Believer” as you say. If that’s the case, so be it. I have the sickness. It doesn’t bother me one bit though.
There’s a YouTube video called Boston bombings fake injuries 5, this shows a lady with clearly zero injuries after bomb blast on legs n face than photos later show impossible injuries from shaprnel cause of the vertical injuries on shins if she was standing at time of blast, this video if you can prove 1 fake injurie proves a false flag or pre knowledge!
I’m not sure which video you mean but if it’s the one I am thinking of, it’s the one that deals with the lady in the pink vest. Correct?
Here’s the thing: I can’t explain why she looked okay earlier and then was being rolled away with a head injury. Perhaps she fell later? Perhaps she faked it. Perhaps perhaps perhaps. But I can tell you this: her sudden injury after the fact doesn’t disprove the Thorndike pictures, which are the crux of my problem with McGowan’s theory. Those pictures, taken seconds after the first bomb went off, shows clearly that no mass organized staging attempt took place. Until anyone who believes in the staging theories addresses how the Thorndike pictures destroy the staging narrative as told by McGowan and others like him, the rest is all details, so to speak.
But if you check back, please leave me a link to the video. I’d be only too happy to watch it.
As I am in the process of reading ALL of the parts of McGowan’s Boston piece, I will only say that your garbled and meandering rejection of his proof of this false flag, speculative or otherwise, does not stand up to any scrutiny. If nothing else alone, the legless “victim” would have gone into immediate shock trauma from loss of arterial blood spraying from both legs. He would NOT have been awake and aware or moving around. Such a victim would have been transported immediately to a hospital, where he may or may not have lived. The fact that it took so long, according to documented photos and videos, for ANYONE to attend him is proof enough.
Also, whe would not have been upright and conscious while being run down the street in a wheelchair while LESS injured were transported via gurney.
As for Dr. Allan Panter, who stated he was 20 feet from the explosion, felt the waves and heat, yet was able to remain on his feet, shirt and pants UNTATTERED while dozens of surrounding “victims” lost limbs and “blood” belies the reality of this very OBVIOUS false flag.
I’m sure you will ban me, etc. which you do to commentors who try to point out the obvious to you.
1) It’s hilarious that you call my reaction to McGowan garbled and meandering because I responded to it in the exact order he laid it out. If it’s garbling and meandering, take it up with the mind who created the format, not me.
2) Respond to what I have written. I have not discussed anything but the staging section of McGowan’s that is presented here. If you want to discuss other elements of McGowan’s theory, do it on your own blog. Sequentially, before you can discuss arterial blood this and bombs react this way that, you need to explain how the hell a staging could have occurred when the Thorndike pictures, which started seconds after the first bomb went off, show nothing of the sort. We have the first 15-20 seconds of the first bombing recorded for us by an amateur photographer. There is no sign of anyone entering the scene to stage anything and there is no sign of any actors arranging themselves while on the ground. THAT NONE OF YOU WHO HAVE COME HERE TO TELL ME I AM WRONG AND TO IMPUGN MY CHARACTER CAN ADDRESS THE ESSENTIAL PROBLEM OF HOW IT IS THAT THE STAGING COULD HAPPEN WHEN THE THORNDIKE PICTURES SHOW NOTHING CLOSE TO STAGING SHOWS ME ALL I NEED TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR READING COMPREHENSION AND CAPACITY FOR THOUGHT OUTSIDE OF YOUR PET THEORIES. I put that in all caps in the hopes it might sink in. I can bold it as well. Let me know. I’m here to help.
So I tell you what Jean – you explain how a staging could have taken place under the watchful camera lens of Ben Thorndike and make a sensible case for it, I’ll look into what could happen when people’s legs are blown off. But since the dude whose lead you are following in this had no idea he was looking at Thorndike pictures, crops of Thorndike pictures, had no idea when they were taken and used them out of sequence, I’m frankly not hopeful for what you may bring to the table. Still willing to listen, though.
So address Thorndike and the complete failure to understand the importance of his picture and how they prove no staging took place and once we’ve established a staging could have taken place, I’ll discuss arterial blood, how long sudden amputations have before they bleed out, why certain people were killed and certain people weren’t, AND I’ll even source cite what I discuss. Until you guys can make a prima facie case that a staging occurred, I have no need to discuss the rest. And after realizing the complete lack of integrity McGowan has in his dealings online as well as his information he shares, that you have read most of his entries carries very little weight with me.
3) Jean, I only ban people who violate my comment policy. My husband banned DK because he saw fit to call my late father-in-law, a war hero and patriot who had done more for his country in a day than most people will ever accomplish in their lives, a liar. That you bring up my ban policy at all shows you are looking for a fight not based on fact because I ban only trolls (as defined as people who come here, repeatedly engaging in disruptive behaviors), people who engage in relentless insulting, and similar. Most of the people who have commented on this page have the capacity to still comment if they like and I state outright when people have been banned. And what’s it to you if I ban people who are inimical to the purpose of this site? Your sense of comment entitlement means nothing to me, all the more hilarious since no one can comment on McGowan’s site at all. If you can read the policy and obey it you can stay. Act like moron and I’ll ban you because I have lost all patience for presumptuous, ignorant comments and the complete lack of cognitive reasoning behind them. So it’s up to you whether or not you stay.
Have you read Jean Bush’s website? With friends like that, who needs enemies. Dave McGowan’s a name-calling bottom feeder who has anti-Semites defending his pathetic theories. I bet he feels good about it, too.
Edited by Anita: LocalHero, your comment was filled with insult and added nothing to the conversation. Either talk about what you know of the Boston bombing or be silent. Leave another comment devoid of content other than insult and I’ll ban you. You can flex your strange ego somewhere else, if that’s all you can do.
“My husband banned DK because he saw fit to call my late father-in-law, a war hero and patriot who had done more for his country in a day than most people will ever accomplish in their lives…”
Could you expound on this? Particularly the war hero aspect.
Sutter, I prefer not to discuss my late father-in-law in any regard on my sites any longer but if you feel you really need the details, contact me at anita@houdinisrevenge.com.
I was directed to a couple of SOTT articles that dealt with the staging/false flag theories via incoming links from comments on the site. This one is excellent – thanks for linking to it.
What’s wrong with James Randi? I like James Randi. 🙂
One of my relatives was at the Marathon and saw the bombs go off and was slightly injured. She was near enough to the first explosion to see what happened and saw a lot of blood and carnage which left her somewhat traumatized for a while.
As for Jeff. He was photographed by the New York Times having his sutures removed and doing physiotherapy. No doubt someone could analyze when the photos were taken if they are under the impression that Jeff was paid to pretend to loose his legs at the Marathon.
Also his home was made suitable for a wheel chair well after the event. Numerous people evidently know him and therefore would having to be all paid or something to never reveal that he lost his legs before the Marathon.
You would have to stop people saying it was a false somehow. How?
Hi Anita,
A little late in the posting I know….
BUT, I must point out that you refused to address a question that was asked more than once. How come the poster paper and banners were COMPLETELY intact despite the fact that people’s legs were blown 20 feet away? I mean… REALLY??
Thanks for your time, I must admit you pointed out some flaws that I didn’t happen to notice.
No worries about lateness, Douglas. I tell you what: You explain to me why I need to worry about the percussive effects of a pressure cooker bomb on surrounding papers and posters when we have the Thorndike pictures to show us that there was no bomb plant, that a bomb indeed exploded, and that the injured and dead were shown seconds after the bomb went off, on the ground, bleeding and dying, and I’ll research the effects of improvised IEDs on paper when detonated in a group of people. If you can make a compelling case for why such analysis is even needed when Thorndike caught the entire aftermath of the bombs, almost in a video format because he took so many pictures in such rapid succession, and I’ll do it. Deal?
Edited by Anita: You don’t get to unperson me on my own site. Post your weird ideas over on McGowan’s site when he permits such commenting. Until then, it’s Mrs Clark, Pflugervillian Housewife to you.
The 7th photo in the Thorndyke series shows the race clock. Thus we can see that 5 seconds after the blast, Christian Williams is reaching for something he’s going to try to tie around Jeff’s (fake) right leg. Christian is said to have life threatening injuries requiring multiple surgeries. He had to reach past Mery Daniel to do it. Do you find that believable?
People with life threatening injuries can still do heroic (or stupid or irrational or inexplicable) things. A person in shock has that burst of adrenaline nature gives us all in extremis that masks pain and enables us to flee or fight. Leaning over to try to find something to help save the life of someone even worse injured is hardly something so strange it needs to be debunked. I can give you examples if need be.
Also, my site has been plaguing me lately. I can’t seem to upload picture seven at the moment but will return shortly to upload it so people can see what we’re talking about. If you have close-ups that better illustrate what you mean, please post them in reply. (Edit: Pictures have been uploaded and I wonder now if you are using picture seven as a starting place and want to look seconds past it because I can’t see that Christian is leaning over anyone in this picture. Let me know if I got it wrong and I’ll happily look at whatever pic you meant.)
But even so, if Christian was so injured that in this instance it is strange or suspicious he would help Bauman, how does this minutia explain the whole of what happened? Thorndike captured it. These people had seconds to get into position, arrange their clothing, produce visual effects that it would take experts like Tom Savini and Greg Nicotero hours to set up to create a realistic scene of gore and they did it all without anyone rushing into or out of the scene. That is what the crisis actor conspiratists want us to believe. People died and were maimed for life and worrying over the way one person helped another is losing the forest for the trees.
Closer look at the scene with Christian Williams and Jeff Bauman.
Also, here’s 2 photos that prove Jeff’s leg is fake. In one, he’s lying on his side and his right stump is covered in a black ‘sock’ of some kind. The thigh is several inches shorter than the left. Then in the 2nd (wheelchair) pic, his right thigh is suddenly as long as the left. Clear proof he was an amputee actor. http://www.nwosolutions.com/viewtopic.php?p=40&sid=a8b8652126062c5eb33fecda35acb174#p40
To All You Honest Readers (i.e., any of you who aren’t professional liars like Anita),
Don’t bother trying to reason with this fool – if she’s not a committee in Langley, she’s just a paid shill whose sole job is to divert you from seeing the evidence right before your eyes. Do yourself a favor and ignore her from now on. You’ll feel a lot better if you do.
Mr Palmer, are you leaving me this comment because you disagree with my interpretation of the character of Eleanor in Slaves of New York? Or is it because you find my analysis of Mirbeau so irresistible that you are engaging in school yard hijinks trying to get me to notice you? It has to be that some new content is upsetting you. It can’t possibly be that you are still spinning your wheels over this entry. It’s been over three years since you peed on the floor here like some inbred, yapping dog, overexcited to be permitted among people.
I also thank you for this comment because I’ve had issues with comment notification. Because life is cruel, your comment got through to me in my in-box but Jon’s didn’t. Clicking on the link to your comment brought that to my attention. So let me see what Jon had to say because from the looks of it he’s contributing to a larger conversation and not just insulting or unpersoning me.
Please don’t come back, S. James Palmer, formerly Esquire. You bring nothing but tiresome comments and unless you have something to add to this other than strangely flattering me by insinuating that this entry is so influential to the Boston Bombing Case you think that it must be the work of a covert operative and not that of a housewife hobbyist. We both already know from your previous incursions that you will be unable to control yourself but hope springs eternal. If you comment again you’ll join the eleven others who were unable to control themselves over the last nine years I’ve run this site and you’ll be banned. You may have already been banned but I’ve updated software since then and it’s been years since your last visit so I don’t really recall. It doesn’t matter though. It’s easily rectified either way.
And since all comments left on this site are the property of this site, if you do come back I’ll edit your comment in a manner amusing to me. That really upset you the last time I did this to you. You sent me a blustering series of e-mails full of demands and didn’t stop until I told you’d I publish the whining and threatening messages you were sending. So please go away. I’d rather spend time seeing what Jon has to say than to deal with your nonsense.
Oh god, you are a weird little dude, S. James Palmer. I just found the search string “anita houdini mcgowan palmer” you used to find your years-old comments on this entry. Using Google no less. Dude, you best pray your paranoiac exaggerations of me working for the feds is incorrect because a ten year old kid covers his tracks better than you. To be safe you should get a burner phone, check your car for hidden GPS units and move to a new place under the cover of darkness. From there seek a new identity – I suggest P.S. James IV – and possibly even sex reassignment surgery. Good luck and god speed.
If those were the only two pictures available of Jeff Bauman’s leg I would be more inclined to give this point of view credence but even then I could explain what you are seeing.
But there are other photos that show the length of Bauman’s remaining tibia is much longer than the one you link to and that the length of gore dripping down the side of his leg while he was in the wheel chair was there all along (actually you can see that overhang of skin in the photo you use to show how short the tibia was – it’s tucked up and to the left and part of his fibula is still in there). Foreshortening was at play in the photo you use for proof. Look at Bauman below.
Here Bauman is, still on his side with his knees bent toward his chest, but the photographer is at a different angle and shows how long the remaining part of his tibia is.
Those two photos you link to don’t prove to me Bauman was a crisis actor. Sorry, Jon. 🙁
I came here from Dave McGowan’s site. I wanted to see if anybody could produce something of any value in the face of Dave’s tour de force.
This article never gets going, starting with,
“Perhaps more of this is in store for me. Still, it was, at times, nauseating to read such a virulent lack of respect for the Boston Bombing victims”.
Just a hopeless incitement to mock anger straight off the bat.
I could not read further because I know that if your argument starts with emotion then I think it is fair to assume that more of this kind of emotion conjuring is going to be used throughout. Nauseating tactic as an opener. I want to read it, but alas I cannot. It reads like the Daily Mail, if not worse.
The whole premise of debunking is showing where the errors and omissions are. It is not necessary or in your remit to establish the depravity or character flaws or poor behaviour of the ‘opponent’. Just get to the facts. Get to the point.
Tidy up the messy start, tidy up the superfluous emotional battle cry and get your shit together.
Howard, I am an author who uses emotion in her writing and it is either your cup of tea or it isn’t but it isn’t an issue that requires me to “get my shit together.” This is a site devoted to extemporaneous writing on a variety of topics, and my emotional reactions and at times bombastic pronouncements are part of my style. If you want just-the-facts sort of writing, read trad-journalism or scholarly papers – not a blog called “Odd Things Considered.”
But let me engage in a different battle cry (though not one I consider superfluous): I’d rather have a passionate writer like McGowan call me nasty names than ever engage in the bloodless writing you seem to require on this topic. I infinitely prefer my messy starts and emotional reactions – my entire oeuvre discussing odd books, cinema, history and conspiracy theory shows this – and it’s baffling you would instruct a stranger with a decade of successful work behind her and suggest that she follow a set of pedantic instructions from someone who didn’t even bother to read the article he’s commenting upon. Dave’s tour-de-force is such because he wrote with passion, anger, contempt and married them with research. May have been ultimately flawed research but his passion was part of his genius. He was interesting and persuasive in a way that pedantic advice like this would diminish had he followed it.
Unfortunately, when you see a gross lie in the first few minutes of reading you have no choice but to discount the entire article.
Point 3- “Moreover, the wheelchair is important because it shows that Arredondo and others on the scene recognized how terrible Bauman’s wounds were. Had they waited for a gurney Bauman might have bled out.”
But the photo evidence refutes these points. In most of the pictures Bauman is actually all but ignored while everyone else with seemingly less intense injuries are attended to. Explain the “hoodie guy” hovering over Bauman in multiple pictures in direct aim of where Bauman’s severed femoral artery (you can’t rip off someone’s leg without severing the artery) was pointing? In the least he should be showered and covered in Bauman’s blood (he’s not), and then changes location all the while ‘looking cool’ in his unremoveable hood and shades?
As a broken leg sufferer I can attest to the fact Bauman is for the most part in a seemingly awkward if not completely irrational and unnatural posture through most of the pictures including his journey in the wheelchair. I traumatically broke my leg and the last thing you sznt to do is sit up and look at it, you lay back and wait for help (I’m in the medical field but seeing your own foot pointing the wrong way would make anyone squeamish)
The good Doctors pristine yellow shirt combined with Arrendondos past seals the deal- I would make no testament to Dave’s conclusions- bug he makes enough obvious ponits to makd you realize- Something Is Rotten In Boston And The “official” Narrative!
Case closed you discounted yourself and your article.
******——- FILED AS DISINFO——-*******
Big Daddy, thanks for sharing the story of your broken leg. I too suffered a broken leg that required reconstructive surgery and a miserable recovery and rehab. I sympathize with what you went through and understand why you are equating your experience with a traumatic leg break with a traumatic double amputation.
But the fact remains that neither of us lost both legs under the knees from a pressure cooker bomb blast. I am not one to completely throw out anecdata and piously invoke the anecdata fallacy – there is a pattern in human behavior that in some cases can be predicted, a common reaction expected. But this particular argument is maddening because it attempts to equate two superficially similar ideas in the abstract – traumatic leg injury – that are vastly different in the specific.
Bauman was thrown to the ground by a bomb blast. The scene was chaotic, loud, and confusing. He was in such an instant state of shock that the pain of losing both legs didn’t register immediately. His reaction to his injuries was wholly different than an expected reaction to even the worst leg break.
Traumatic double amputation due to bomb blast is rare enough that I could not find any evidence that anyone anywhere has determined a typical method of how one holds one’s legs when they get blown off below the knee. Even among people who suffered very similar trauma there does not appear to be an exemplar of body posture. If another traumatic double amputee decided to weigh in on how Bauman held his legs, that itself would not be enough to call Bauman a fake but it would be worth far more than either of our experiences.
As for the rest of your comment: I tell you what, you explain to me how in under 30 seconds while being photographed in a series of more than two dozen photos Williams and Bauman removed Bauman’s legs and hid them from sight, set up the blood and gore, set up the blood flow to cover the ground around Jeff and then took their places without anyone coming into the scene to help them.
You’re in a bind, Big Daddy. You use Thorndike’s pictures to help you see something nefarious in Christian William’s behavior, but the very pictures you tell me to look at show there simply was not enough time for even a seasoned Hollywood special effects man to construct such a scene and that no one entered or exited the scene during the bombing. Explain how all that happened under the watchful Thorndike lens and then I’ll explain how human shock can manifest as blase faux coolness (his sunglasses really annoy conspiracy theorists, as if people haven’t done far stranger things while in a state of shock) and how it is that Williams was thrown atop Bauman and the poor woman in the red coat when the bomb went off without it being proof he was engaging in crisis actor theater.
Until then the evidence you use to make your case, when taken in sequence and not cropped out or zoomed in or deliberately misused in an attempt to prove that the powers that be staged this, disproves you. The only disinfo here comes from people who STILL come to this entry and try to use Thorndike to prove their case when they know, know, know his series of photos show them that a bomb went off and people were gravely injured, some fatally. Once you’ve managed to explain how this was staged when your own evidence shows otherwise, I’ll get right on explaining all you request.
How does anyone reading this site know that, if they answer your burning Thorndike question, the answer will even be published? Seems odd that no one has said anything yet, even though the answer is straightforward and not difficult to explain when you’ve researched. Additionally, I’m observing multiple posts that are simply silly mockeries of those who originally posted something different, so you’ve established that this is your site, what you don’t like does not get posted.
I wanted to like this. I read your piece on the Pearls, who were nearly biblically revered in my childhood. I read this, made sense. Followed the link to McGowan, and he made a whole lot more sense. Returned and began reading your replies. That’s where you lost me, that’s where I’m at.
Are you insinuating that given the number of scathing comments left on this entry that I must delete anyone who debunked the timing, order and significance of the Thorndike pics? That I would sift through the lunacy I receive on this entry and delete that which may make sense? This isn’t an either/or situation. I’m not married to any specific outcome as long as it uses the data we know is valid, like visual evidence.
I wish someone had written such a comment. If they can prove the Thorndike photos support the false flag scenario, I would almost be tempted to kiss the ground if their research held water. McGowan’s more deranged fans have been a thorn in my ass for years now. To be given well-researched, verifiable proof against the Thorndike pics would be a Christmas gift because I would be able to agree with the excellent research and show how the false flag happened, and leave this entry in the online junk heap.
But that has never happened, never ever never. All the deleted or written over comments came from serial harassers who spent their comment insulting me, other commenters or members of my family, posting data that if kept on my site could cause me legal problems, and who engaged in aggressive posting in an attempt to skew the site’s SEO. If you want to believe those comments contained groundbreaking approaches to the Thorndike pics, there is little I can do other than dig up the originals and even then you could say I altered them before showing you the evidence.
Best way you can see for yourself if anyone had attempted to reconcile the Thorndike photos with the false flag/ crisis actor scenario at the Jeff Bauman bombing location is to look. You won’t find one. You’ll just see the same people using the same out of sequence close crops of the same photos with zero awareness of what their proof means.
But here’s an offer: even though I know you won’t find it, if you do, bring it back here and comment. I’d love to see what you find and if it indeed invalidates my work I’ll keep it posted with a link in the original entry.
Thanks for letting me know you read about the Pearls. I am very sorry to know they had any influence in your life as a child. Much love for you, especially if his teachings affected your family life.
And if you find an excellent debunk of the usefulness of the Thorndike pics, please post it here. You may be surprised how welcome such info would be and how long the comment lasts.
Actually, Angel there’s more to say to your comment and I hope others read what I have to say before they think they need to make such, frankly, stupid and paranoiac statements. I’m not entirely sure why your comment has annoyed me so much but there you are – conspiracy theory makes us all irrational sometimes.
Want to know why Dave McGowan’s site did not permit comments even when he was alive? Purely speculation on my part but I reckon it’s because he had better things to do with his time than deal with the sorts of comments his research generated. I sense I am correct because there is no way one person can defend against the onslaught of this sort of online bullshit unless they occasionally delete or “kill with kittens” the worst of the comments they receive and ban the people who do it. His decisions regarding conspiracy were often baffling to me but in refusing to permit comments he makes perfect sense and was completely on the mark. If I decided to deal with every loathsome commenter who came here solely to disrupt I would have done nothing but deal with those people for months and months after posting this article. No books would have been read or discussed, no meals cooked, no cats brushed, and I would have been called a coward, a traitor or worse every time I went to bed and didn’t answer some keyboard tyrant the moment he demanded I dance for him or her.
You wanna know what were in the comments I kittened or deleted? Here’s a sample, Angel:
–Slander against my late father-in-law, who was a genuine hero and served his country with honor.
–Accusations that I am a government agent on the payroll of various nefarious organizations. Some of the more mellow of such accusations are still up, so let your imagination ponder the sorts of accusations I felt went too far.
–Screenshots of my home as shown on ground view on Google maps.
–Detailed instructions on how to make bombs and guns, all info that could get this site shut down if left online.
–Insults the likes of which you would not believe even if you read them – in fact, given the shittiness of this topic I’m sure I’d be accused of planting them myself in an e-false flag had I not removed them.
–Evil comments wherein some piece of garbage beneath contempt of all sane and good people managed to find out details about the death of a young member of my family and posted the sickening and heartbreaking details on this entry because in his mind it showed that somehow I am part of a cabal of people out to deceive the US public because my family member had the terrible luck to be shot to death. The amount of research that went into linking me to that relative is shocking – it would have taken days, required access to decades old marriage records, and more to find out that I had any link to that young man, let alone the actual relationship.
I try to remain aboveboard, I let people know when I deleted or edited comments, and I do so despite owing no one any such consideration because this is, indeed my fucking site, as you astutely noticed. So in order to make it seem like I am not blocking information that doesn’t exist, in order to please all the Angels in the world, I need to leave up comments calling me names so vile that even I, an inveterate foul mouth, find too much. I need to endure lies about my name and job, leave up comments that outright defame dead members of my family, and information that if followed could end up sending me to jail, to make sure you feel okay after reading comments on this site. Does that seem reasonable to you?
Moreover, if the straightforward information is so easy to find and assemble, do it. Find it, assemble it, create fucking website devoted to it, leave a comment here and I’ll leave it up forever if you promise not to say anything terrible about my family or include information that may be illegal in Texas or California, and I’ll create an entire entry dedicated to your discovery if it checks out. Hell, I’ll leave a link to it even if it doesn’t. I’ll be only too happy to direct the paranoid, lunatic, cruel misery cases that still dog this entry over to see what you have to say on the subject. If you do any of this, which you won’t because commenters like you never do a fucking thing with all the evidence you think you have, do follow this piece of advice: don’t leave your comments open. If you do, if you last as long as I have – years with comments open on an entry where people smugly insult me, defame my family and mock the dead while bringing nothing to the table – I’ll apologize then for being harsh in this comment. Until then realize that your capacity to say anything here at all speaks to an openness you get in precious few single-operator websites that dare discuss conspiracy theory online.
This comment may be one of the best arguments against fundamentalism in all religion – even if you escape the yoke of blind faith, your thinking is forever limited.
Think about it. What you are saying, effectively, is that the reason no theorist of the McGowan variety has been able to marry a staged scene with the Thorndike pictures is because when Anita prevents people from insulting her family that it results in removing every comment disproving her rebuttal on every site online. Surely the reason why I’ve never seen such analysis – and frankly neither have you – isn’t because it doesn’t exist. It has to be because Anita occasionally enforcing what she considers proper on her site is really a one-woman information throttle that affects every information outlet in the world.
So, Anita, what else is hidden behind the curtain?
So, Anita, what else is hidden behind the curtain?
A tattered map marking Jimmy Hoffa’s body, a document proving that steel cannot melt, $20 from DB Cooper’s stash and Obama’s Kenyan birth certificate. And cat hair. Lots and lots of cat hair.
Anita, I have reviewed photographs/video footage and have come to the same conclusion as Dave McGowan.I’d like to leave a link to Aaron Tang’s photographs – https://www.flickr.com/photos/hahatango/8654021280/in/album-72157633252445135/ – I left a comment and I’d appreciate (when you have the time) it if you’d give me your opinion.
Basically it is a short series of pictures showing the actions of an unidentified man in a red tee shirt, whose actions I find to be very strange.
Thank you.
Wow, this is something I would like to study closely but the next few days are tight for me. I’ll revisit this early next week so I can look closely at the pictures and look for the red-t-shirt guy/shirtless guy and see if I see what you do and also see if I can cross reference him in other pics of the scene.
If you’re still reading as I leave this comment, do Tang’s photos show how crisis actors could have staged the scene or do they show the results of such a staging without showing how it was assembled and executed? I’m assuming the red t-shirt guy is part of a staging theory? Let me know if you see this comment before I have time to give you a proper reply. This looks quite interesting – thanks for sharing the link and I’ll get back with you early next week.
Hey Chris, just looked over the pics and your reaction to the shirtless guy. I echo your bafflement that this man with no shirt who appears to have other peoples’ blood on him was handling injuries. It is not ideal in any situation to have a shirtless civilian potentially passing blood-borne illness through panicked handling of injured people.
If we have to choose between staged attack with crisis actors or people under great stress not doing the right thing, I tend to lean toward the latter. For me, your analysis of the shirtless guy points more to medical personnel not doing well in a chaotic situation and bystanders potentially doing more harm than good than an indication that this is a false flag. It’s not so much that “an ordinary citizen” got “to handle somebody’s bloody badly injured limb” while himself covered in blood than it was that no one prevented him from doing so, which can happen in chaotic situations like this. I would hope that if a first responder saw such things that he or she would intervene and tell the bystander to stand down, cease potentially causing infection or further injury and to let personnel do their jobs without interference and that clearly didn’t happen here. This is indeed disturbing and unsettling and, frankly, rather gross, but doesn’t step over into the realm of staging for me.
You have a sharp eye to have caught this – thanks for sharing your observations.
Fucktard,
you are a freaken troll CIA patsy. I can see no one has been here in a while and I wanted to remind you what a jackass you are. Anyone who supports the multiple false flags conspired against this country and our sovereignty in an open forum deserves tar and feathers or swinging from a tree without due process, just as you wish upon us. Please tell your handlers that the constitution and declaration of independence are alive and well and we will never allow your efforts to come to fruition. As you like to say, God speed, your day of judgement will not go well for you fucktard
Rob, could you do a favor for me? I’m very close to reaching Conspiracy Theory Bingo and can fill my card if you just mention the Trilateral Commission or something about Prescott Bush.
My dude, this entry is over eight years old. Very few blog entries get much attention after a couple of years. But don’t let that stop you from coming back over and over. Just don’t expect much interaction from anyone but me because few are interested in the ins and outs of the Boston Bombing in 2021. I don’t really have much interest now either but I like to be a good hostess.
Do you ever feel weird leaving comments that imply that believing Jeff Bauman’s legs got blown up is somehow a violation of the law of the land? Does it ever keep you up at night, wondering if your ideas might be dumb?
Do you ever consider that the “we” you speak of who want to see bad things happen to me because I dared disagree with them about the Boston Bombing might not be the defense of democracy you hope they are? Is there a chance that they are actually keyboard warriors who would shit their pants and sob if they received any IRL pushback, like the soft-bottomed patriots of January 6? Just curious.
And to wrap this up, I can never state this enough: if I am a federal asset, why on earth are you using a real email traceable to you, with nary a VPN to be seen. Aren’t you afraid I will send the Powers that Be straight to your home to do whatever it is they do to conspiracy theorists? I sense that you’re just posturing, that you don’t think I am actually a purveyor of black propaganda and instead just have trouble when people challenge your sacred cows. You aren’t alone if that is the case. But if you genuinely believe what you say, you need to be more careful online lest the next alt cultural blogger you come across really is a federal asset and not, say, a suburban housewife who has an interest in weird and extreme content. Be well, be smart, and maybe consider being quiet.
However, I think that if McGowan had known to look for the full images, it might have shown him the sort of circle of carnage the bomb caused. There were arcs of damage that show a pattern of how people fell when the bomb debris hit them. The wide scope of the Thorndike images shows a completely different picture than the crops. Have a look at this full Thorndike image, uncropped and without closeup.
The shrapnel wounds to his legs were so bad that people applied tourniquets so he would not bleed out. He has had four surgeries and had to have skin grafts to cover the gaping gash wound on one of his legs. This picture above is of Williams’ right calf, which looks mangled to the naked eye in McGowan Picture 9. His feet do not even seem to be pointing in the correct direction. Look at how he is holding his right hand – he’s holding it up in a protective manner in the same manner one instinctively places one’s arm when injured, almost as if in a sling. He’s not touching anything, grabbing anything – he’s just holding that hand immobile and elevated.
So:
Absence of evidence disproving conspiracy = evidence of conspiracy
Evidence disproving conspiracy = unreliable, probably faked
I love it. It’s a completely closed system. You can’t disprove the theory given the conditions above, so all you can do is confront whatever evidence is given of the conspiracy, thereby legitimizing the argument, and also creating whole new branches of closed arguments, ad infinitum.
It is definitely a closed system, an ouroboros of logical fallacy. It’s fascinating.
But I do know, deep down, that even the most intense analysis using logic and appeals to common sense will achieve little. How does one convince people utilizing a closed system that relies on logical fallacies and confirmation bias to change their minds? Back in the day, when the conspiracy theories involved Waco and Kennedy, people waited for evidence and then when the details seemed odd, went digging for further information. Old conspiracy theory seems positively sane compared to modern theories because the former was based on problems with official reports. The latter is based on immediate bias. No one called Boston a false flag because the evidence let them to it. False flag was called within an hour of the attacks and the evidence shoehorned to fit that theory, which makes it even more of a closed system because all terrorist attacks and shootings will be false flag attacks for those whose belief is set prior to events even taking place. (Alex Jones, the ruddy huckster, waited a whole 41 minutes before declaring Boston a false flag.)
Ultimately, I need to think of this as a hobby because I don’t think I will ever be able to change minds in situations like this.
Wow for someone who thinks it’s pointless to try to debunk a conspiracy theory you sure tried pretty hard… You also mention Dave’s name so many times you almost seem a little “obsessed” for someone who tries to seem “objective.” Too bad your “arguments” ignore some of the simple facts like the fact that there was NO blood on the ground in the first several shots of Bauman’s bone-(prostheses)/legs, the people in the photos do look very much like they might indeed actually be faking injury rather than actually being injured at all (perhaps not a certainty but no more of a certainty that they were, as you seem to accept at face value), the protocol of the “rescue” personnel does appear from the photos to have been totally bizarre, the level of gore the media tried to portray to the public in this case WAS odd and unusual (not at all like what was shown of 9-11 victims or OKC victims), oh yes and there is really no way from looking at the photos to confirm that 250 people were injured (are they counting all the people who broke a nail reaching for their i-phone to try to learn what just happened instead of just looking around?). There is really no reason to poke any more holes than that in what you are saying since it’s obviously not even rational.
I’m sorry I was unclear to you, Beth. I think it is a very good thing to debunk conspiracy theory. I think the problem comes in when one tries to have a reasonable dialogue with True Believers. I believe in the past I have described it as being akin to beating one’s head against a brick wall. Hope this cleared things up.
And while all of your argument is interesting to a point, the fact remains that unless one lies outright and misattributes the Thorndike pictures and lies about when they were taken, there is no way to get around the fact that the pictures show the scene seconds after the bomb went off and that they would have recorded anyone rushing in to pose as an injured person. Until you or anyone else can explain how any actor could had slunk onto the scene with Thorndike taking pictures seconds after the first bomb went off, the rest of the blood this and bone that and why is there no blood here is all just noise.
And if obsession is a bad thing, then maybe you should stop reading conspiracy theory. There is nothing more obsessive than the minds of True Believers. But perhaps I am obsessive. There are far worse things to be. Thanks for the comment, Beth.
Ugh, what a gross-out. You know I trust NO ONE, X-Files style, but this kind of crap is inexcusable. If the government did plan this, the people who were injured certainly are not somehow in on it. There is just no amount of red circles and attempts at body-language reading that will convince a sane person otherwise. Some people can’t deal with real life horror shows, and need conspiracy theorists to tell them it was all a big ruse, no one could ever be the victim of this violence in America.
I will always consider all sides of stories like this, but I cannot fathom spewing this kind of unfounded hate toward anyone without unwavering proof of fraud, let alone people who have suffered life-altering emotional and physical injuries. EW!!
It was pretty gross. I did my best to handle it politely but there was no way to get around how offensive some of it was. And I didn’t even really get to the worst parts of it, like his utterly callous and despicable insults of Karen Rand’s appearance after the bombing.
I trust few myself. Debunkers and skeptics by nature are picky people where their information is concerned. But this was pretty shocking even for someone who reads this stuff all day long.
You need to read McGowan’s entire body of work before you can understand the view he takes in this particular piece.
How so? How will understanding his entire body of work explain why he unpersons people, mocks the wounded and dead and shows a complete lack of understanding of the sources and timing of the very pictures he uses as evidence. As much as I respect your interest in McGowan, unless his body of work is dedicated to creative misuse of the visual media I’m unsure what the entirety of his work will show me in regards to part one of his staging theory.
And it’s super unlikely I’ll read much else he has to offer in any regard. I’d only be reading it to discuss here and since I don’t want to feed what I perceive to be unchecked paranoia, why bother?
You don’t have a clue as to what you’re talking about. People were on fire? Show us the pictures. Shock waves break bones but don’t break skin? No they don’t. Bombing victims have asymmetrical wounds. These “actors” didn’t display that type of injury. Their clothes were cut up EXACTLY like the way we prepared them. I was on the moulage team in the Air Force, and I did the makeup for the disaster preparedness drills. The pictures available look EXACTLY like the wounds and injuries that I created. Also, I know what real bombing victims look like for I was awarded the USAF Outstanding Unit Award for triaging REAL bombing victims. Obviously you don’t. Stop speculating. Ed.
Ed, you need to read my comment policy before you leave another comment here. Please prove your case with actual citations and cut out the ad hominems because your comments are actually valuable to me and I don’t want to have to ban you for failing to adhere to my stated policy. Your anecdata, while interesting, isn’t enough proof for you to tell anyone they don’t know what they are talking about. You need to cite and give proof in order to do that. Okay?
There are multiple reports of people having their clothes set on fire that day, with people rushing over to put the fires in their clothes out. Here’s just one source – let me know if you need others.
From washingtonpost.com:
Folkert saw smoke and sparks. His eardrums were ruptured, his lower legs were burned and bleeding, his black running pants shredded.
“I didn’t realize my clothes were still smoldering and on fire until I got across the street,” he said.
Shock waves break bones but don’t break skin? No they don’t.
I’ve read differently but I’ll concede your point. Perhaps I got it wrong. I’ll look into it more later because I may have misunderstood what I read. However, given how full of shrapnel Nicole Gross’ legs were, if I was incorrect that a blast wave could have caused her injury, then the secondary wave of shrapnel easily could have broken her legs and left little bleeding. Not all shrapnel wounds bleed profusely, especially extremely hot, sharp shrapnel, as I am sure you well know.
I can’t address your assertion about asymmetrical injuries because I have no idea what point you are trying to make. Please cite how it is that the “actors” didn’t display that sort of injury and that they would only have asymmetrical injuries and that those injuries were not present after the bombing.
I was on the moulage team in the Air Force, and I did the makeup for the disaster preparedness drills.
How long did it take to prepare the make-up for disaster preparedness drills? Because I have yet to read an account from anyone in such a profession who could explain how it was that dozens of people could received such authentic looking make-up in under five minutes, all the more strange given that there are pictures of these people just before the blast standing around, clothes unshredded, bodies perfectly sound. In fact, sources I have read from movie make-up artists have made it clear it takes hours to create a “set” like the one at Boston so I would love to hear how it was managed so stealthily in minutes with pictures being taken during the process.
Also, I know what real bombing victims look like for I was awarded the USAF Outstanding Unit Award for triaging REAL bombing victims.
I thank you for your service to your country. I hate to temper praise with a “but,” but your experiences in this field, while fascinating I am sure, don’t really add enough to evidence to change my mind because there are plenty of former military who have seen real bomb wounds who think the Boston marathon bombing victims looked all too real. I am married to one, but his anecdata is equally subject to scrutiny. Unless you can explain how it is that you could have managed to create a scene like Boston in the time frame that was available, or point us to verifiable information that shows how it was done, it’s hard to give your hard-won experience the credence it deserves.
No offense meant, Ed. I do appreciate your service and experience. If you can direct me to a site or source that explains how such a “scene” can be set in minutes without anyone seeing it, direct me and I will read it.
Again, I look forward to you commenting here with any replies but they need to conform with my comment policy.
The “scene” wasn’t prepared in “5 minutes”. They came out of the building. Do some research and look at pictures of actual bombing victims. Then you’ll know what asymmetrical wounding is. If you believe “news accounts”, then I feel sorry for you. Dave Mcgowan is smarter than you’ll ever be. He’s written three books. You should read them. Go ahead and ban me. It will show what a control freak you are.
Glad to oblige you, Ed. I don’t tolerate insults on this site. There are so many places online for you to show your contempt that there’s no sense on you wasting it at the one place that doesn’t want it.
I think your right Ed. The game is afoot!
Sadly, Ed can’t reply. In 12 years of blogging, he’s the second person I ever had to ban. 🙁
Yes, because he made you look like a desperate fool
McGowan also doesn’t take into account adrenaline and shock – it’s amazing what you can get your body to do when your “fight or flight” system has been activated and you’re not yet aware of what just happed and what injuries you have. As for holes in a shirt not matching up with injuries, clothing shifts position as you move, especially lycra. All that the photo proves is that Nicole’s arm had been another position at the time of impact. Also, objects imbedded in the skin would probably hamper blood flow out of the wound; therefore you wouldn’t see as much blood as you might expect. In fact, one of the things they tell you in first aid is not to attempt to remove objects that have entered an injured person’s body; that the object may in fact be preventing the injured person from bleeding to death.
Michelle, you’re another one who doesn’t know what you’re talking about. Bombing victims bleed like crazy. I got hit in the face with arterial spray. “Probably” hamper blood flow? Sorry, but you’re wrong. The blood in the pictures is the same type of stage blood that I used. Get real. Ed.
Ed, I am still replying to your comment above so did not have a chance to say this to you yet but you need to read my comment policy before you leave another comment. Your anecdata is interesting but you don’t get demean to anyone on this site and you need to provide actual evidence that can be read and understood by others if you want to tell someone they don’t know what he or she is talking about. Do this again and I will edit insulting content out of your comment. Do it a second time and I have no choice but to ban you. I want to hear from you and opposing viewpoints are definitely needed here, so please tone it down and follow the few rules I have for people commenting on this site.
I read a few articles about how extremely sharp and hot shrapnel can enter the body and leave little bleeding. A medic manual on how to handle such shrapnel echo what you say here – no one should pull it out when rendering first aid lest the patient begin to bleed out. Here’s one of the sources, in case anyone reading this should want to check it out: Special considerations for gunshot wounds and shrapnel wounds
I had not considered how lycra or other stretchy fabric shifting position. Something definitely worth looking into. It seems like it would also be an issue with loose wovens, like baggy jeans. So much of what happened to Christian Williams’ legs was covered by his jeans because the holes didn’t seem to align with his wounds.
I appreciate your comment.
Dear Anita,
Most reasonable people who read McGowan’s article will be bothered by questions about this apparent bomb attack. I’m not necessarily endorsing his conclusions – I’m merely saying he addresses some frankly rather obvious problems with the official story of what happened that day. That’s his job, after all: he’s an investigative journalist. And you seem like a reasonable person to me, yet your page presents more of the clumsy ox swatting at the gadfly than the skilled debater arguing one side of a controversy.
Still, I’m disappointed you decided to discontinue your rambling denunciation of Dave’s piece: first, because you’ve probably only been drawing more attention to him with your criticism; and second, because I find myself wondering how long you can carry on an argument based entirely on sentiment and appeal to authority (i.e., “how dare he say that?” and, “I know he’s wrong because I saw it in the news”).
On the other hand, perhaps your purpose here is not really to engage in civil discourse, but rather to distract some readers from the nagging doubts Dave’s article may have stirred in them, and to try to lull them back into their mainstream media hypno-reverie.
Yours,
S. James Palmer, Esq.
P.S. What do you suppose filled those bombs, anyway? Since glass windows, brick walls, wooden fencing, and nylon banners and flags (not to mention flesh-and-blood people) only feet away were left totally undamaged, it must have been some kind of selective, heat-seeking, smart shrapnel I’ve never heard about. Check out CNN’s demonstration of the power of shrapnel from a pressure cooker bomb (which you would have seen had you continued reading Dave’s article): it caused deep pitting in a concrete blast bunker 1/4 mile away. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH5gHS_o_eA
Correction: the video showed no damage to the blast bunker, but those inside could feel the shock wave that far away. Notice in this video of the first bomb going off that exhausted runners passing by hardly seemed to feel it. Though many were passing within a few dozen feet of the blast, only one old man fell down, and even he got back up momentarily: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myfivKMhqyg
And you seem like a reasonable person to me, yet your page presents more of the clumsy ox swatting at the gadfly than the skilled debater arguing one side of a controversy.
You can’t please everyone, S. James Palmer, Esq. Would that I could…
first, because you’ve probably only been drawing more attention to him with your criticism
I find him interesting and entertaining so I didn’t mind sending traffic his way. I wanted people to read him or I would not have discussed him or linked to him and, in turn, his reaction sent readers my way. Looks like it worked out well for both of us. Sending traffic his way is in no way inimical to the purposes of this site.
second, because I find myself wondering how long you can carry on an argument based entirely on sentiment and appeal to authority (i.e., “how dare he say that?” and, “I know he’s wrong because I saw it in the news”).
McGowan expressed his disgust at wounded people and I expressed my disgust at his callousness. If that’s an appeal to sentiment in your book, I’ll take the criticism. I’ll bear it in mind in the future, though in some cases I can’t see that I will be able to avoid well-placed anger or annoyance. Sometimes disgust is the only valid response.
However, your appeal to authority accusation is without merit on several different levels. I admit I believe news reports about the wounds victims received because I have not been given reason to think the media is lying, but the media is definitely not an expert in this. I don’t think the experts on the wounds can legally speak about these matters. It’s a problem, to be sure. But linking to media when McGowan got something wrong is not an appeal to authority, which must involve the belief that the “authority” is a subject matter expert. I think you’ll find the bulk of the times I linked to outside media were in matters of objective truth – something happened or it didn’t. One does not need a subject matter expert in matters of observable, objective truth.
–McGowan claimed Bauman’s father had not given an interview. I proved he did by linking to the article. The article is not being appealed to as a subject matter authority – rather it’s just proof that something objectively happened. Same thing with his assertion no one knew who Erin Hurley was.
–Linking to news sources to show they edited the pictures McGowan said they reveled in is not an appeal to an authority. Just an objective truth.
–Linking to pictures of Arredondo as he tore down fences and began to help people is not an appeal to authority – again, just an objective fact.
–Perhaps you think linking to an amputee organization to get accurate data about amputation recovery time is an appeal to authority, but a fallacious one, but in this case had I just asked McGowan, my mother or the kid who bags my groceries how long it takes to heal from an amputation, that would have been a fallacious appeal to authority. In this case, the site is indeed a subject matter expert so the appeal to authority is appropriate.
–The only other place wherein I could have appealed to authority would be my own authority. At no time did I appeal to outside authority to debunk his interpretation of pictures and what was happening in them because I have more than enough information gleaned from untold hours of research. I know most of the pictures in the Boston case inside and out, no matter how much McGowan calls me a liar. I can look at any picture, any crop, and any zoom-in of a Thorndike picture and tell you it’s a Thorndike and given the time I can tell you which picture it is in the sequence. I am unsure what credentials one needs to be an expert or authority in the Boston pictures, but it was my own personal research that enabled me to tell that McGowan had no idea of the source, timing, original size and original scope of at least 8 pictures in part one. But even if you balk at calling me an expert, which is cool with me, the fact remains that my own research showed McGowan dead wrong several times where his own proof was concerned and I definitely did not appeal to potentially shaky outside authority to do it.
On the other hand, perhaps your purpose here is not really to engage in civil discourse, but rather to distract some readers from the nagging doubts Dave’s article may have stirred in them, and to try to lull them back into their mainstream media hypno-reverie.
My purpose here is stated in my About Me page. I also think you and some who respond here have very paranoid notions about the extent of my influence as this site isn’t even six weeks old yet. “Some readers” are folks who followed me over from my book blog and they are intelligent people who can think for themselves. My most frequent commenter is a friend in real life who believes in conspiracy theories. I am not an e-siren, luring men away from McGowan’s theory. I doubt most of my original readers knew who he was outside of Dave Holland. Other than him there were no opinions about McGowan to change.
Moreover, since your only exposure to my site seems to come from this one article, I guess your strange belief that I want to encourage mindless media obedience is understandable. But it’s untrue and it’s tiresome that the people drawn to this article from McGowan’s link keep lobbing that accusation. I think every article I have written thus far has a strong statement about how the bulk of the media reporting in this case has been a ridiculous mess and that I have questions about the manner in which the investigation has been carried out. I will be unable to debunk many rumors and conspiracy theories around Dzhokhar because the theories appear to be true in some cases. I’ve mentioned this several times No one says you have to read more of the articles on this site, but if you had, my position would have been clearer to you.
Hypno-reverie? Really? Distracting and lulling? It’s been brought up by McGowan that he thinks this is a fake site to debunk him and only him for reasons known only to him. I guess he thinks the Forces That Be are shivering in their boots lest McGowan show us all the truth and behold, the clouds will part and the warmth of the truth will shine down on us all, so debunk him they must. If y’all want to think me part of some nefarious plan to discredit McGowan beyond the fact that I found his theory to be poorly researched and full of bizarre invective and tyrannical unpersoning, knock yourselves out. There’s certainly little I can do to persuade such minds to see reason.
Thanks for the information about the bombs as well as the correction addendum. I cannot watch them now as I am completing this comment at 4:00 am during a time of insomnia, so I need a clearer mind when I watch them. I’ll let you know what I think when that happens.
Thanks for the comment S. J. Palmer, Esq.
Dear Anita,
I think I owe you and your followers an apology for my comment above, so let me say I’m sorry for pretending to care about your self-proclaimed expert opinions, and for filling your personal space with my silly, unpleasant disagreeability. (I’m also sorry for including the honorific “Esq.” at the end of my name. I don’t mean to mislead you that I’m a licensed attorney, or a member of the gentry in England ranking just below a knight, it’s just that the sterling caliber of debate on this page seems to demand such hifalutin airs.) And I’m sorry for masquerading my bear-bating as rational dialogue, when the truth is, I only wanted the cheap thrill I knew I would get from what was bound to be an over-the-top emotional reaction from you.
And you didn’t disappoint. I admit that reading your response to my comment was akin to being charged by a dangerous animal at the zoo, and, truth be told, I liked the adrenaline rush I got from it – I’m kind of a thrill seeker that way. And though I really shouldn’t rattle your cage any further, let me point out that you are not really arguing – you’re soapboxing. Hence you employ misrepresentation and emotional display in the place of logic and reasoning, and in such prodigious volume as to virtually overwhelm your reader (as well as your opponent). These are bully tactics, and not those of a truth-seeker.
In addition, when you are presented with irrebuttable evidence, such as the absence of shrapnel damage to people and things surrounding the site of the first explosion, you beg off with the excuse that you “cannot” discuss it “now.” That is evasion at best, and certainly not fair play. You present cherry-picked data and refute it as best you can, which is known in debate as the straw man fallacy.
To give but one example of your misrepresentation, McGowan never “expressed disgust at wounded people.” If, as I suggested above, you had bothered to read his entire article, it would be clear to you that McGowan believes the supposed victims of the Boston attack were actors playing parts in a psychological drama intended to fan the flames of mob mentality in the general public (whom he identifies as the only real victims). But if you adressed that point honestly you would find yourself with no target for your righteous indignation, and you’d have no excuse to accuse McGowan of “unpersoning” people, which appears to be the foundation of your entire invective.
While I am not calling you a psychopath, your argument displays the characteristics of the hysterical, win-at-all costs strategy employed by an amoral competitor encountering a superior opponent. I’m sure, however, that your intelligent readers, who can all think for themselves (except perhaps that friend of yours in real life who believes in conspiracy theories), see you as the megaphone of truth you believe you are.
Good luck,
SJP
SJP, it was almost 4:00 in the morning when I responded to you, and contrary to what conspiracy theorists think, those who interact with them are not there to be ordered about until we have answered every single question and engaged to your satisfaction. I will review materials when I have time. Conspiracy theory may be your life but it is not mine.
It is, interesting to note, that as you accuse me of not jumping to your tune, you are strangely silent on McGowan’s complete failure where his own source materials were concerned. Had he understood the timing, his staging theory would be dead in the water. Does watching your video mean he suddenly got all the pictures that he used to demean the victims correct? Is it the Magic Video Theory?
The only thing concrete to discuss in your comment is the notion of disgust because you, of course, when presented with actual refutation, don’t bother to respond. Believe me, I’m not surprised. As I said in my article, before one engages in depersoning, denying the dead, mocking the wounded and critiquing the appearance of a woman who lost a leg and whose best friend died right next to her, you need to prove a prima facie case that shows you are correct in your assertions. He didn’t come close to making such a case.
I maintain that showing disgust or perhaps contempt for victims and the only appropriate response is disgust. Being human and responding as a human is not a bad thing. It’s deeply sad you feel that it is. See! I did it again. I felt something! Curse these human hands!
Win at all costs? What a hyperbolic statement from a man who evidently dislikes reacting with emotion. How am I trying to win at all costs? By taking theories seriously enough to debunk them in depth and then responding to True Believers when they come over to yell, insult and condescend to me? It’s a website wherein I debunked a really badly researched conspiracy theory. Just the fact that you are able to leave comments here belies to that very concept that I am trying to “win” anything. I am beginning to think that had I said, about McGowan, “lol, wut an idiot!” it would have been the response he and those like him want. Is it that other people don’t take you guys seriously and you don’t know how to feel about it? Having “feels” is hard, SJP. I’m here to help you.
Because you are fellow verbose writer, I had hopes we’d be able to converse. I took you seriously, answered you seriously and you just engaged in Conspiracy Theorist Rebuttals 101. I will get to your video when I decide to get to it because this is Memorial Day and I have some flags to lay on graves. Feel free to continue commenting, however, and good luck to you, too.
Oh, and by the way, your characterization of my possibly near-psychopathy doesn’t come close to fitting enough of the actual characteristics of a psychopath, though I’m sure in your mind disagreeing with you or McGowan is the height of amorality.
You are pure comedy gold. Thanks for the reply, SJP.
Dude:
http://cheezburger.com/5909075456
If you *are* trolling, my hat’s off to you!
comment edited for my amusement
Dear Anita,
I know I have nothing further to add to the conversation and am just dancing around like a trained circus pony. Please don’t ban me for being an annoying pain in your ample behind. I would surely die if I could not continue showing off for you.
Eternally yours,
SJP
(you’re being annoying SJP – if your next comment does not address the actual topic at hand – the Boston bombing, McGowan’s theory or specifics of my reaction to it, i’ll be forced to ban you. this is not your playground to act the fool.)
Anita, you are getting caught up in the minutia of details. The fact presented in the pictures on Mcgowans site simply contrast with what the media reported. Why no pictures of the second bomb area? Why NO BLOOD, then lots of “blood” on the ground with little on the victims? I don’t know why, but the pictures sure do not look like a scene described by the media. A physician with a long sleeve yellow shirt who assisted many people with major wounds, yet his shirt is virtually spotless? Read the following editions in this series, and explain all of the anomalies.
Hi, Dale.
I wish there were views of the second bombing site because it would make things much easier but the only reason I can think of as to why there are no media images from the second bombing site is because the photographers were busy with the first site. There are amateur pictures of the second site, however, and some of the best pictures of the first site are amateur pictures. But it is unfortunate that there are so few media pictures from the second site, and it’s additionally very upsetting that the government has suppressed the evidence of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev dropping off the bomb at the second site.
The blood issue can be explained by timing. The first pictures McGowan uses, the Thorndike pictures, were started seconds after the first bomb went off and continued for 25 seconds. Those pictures show people on the ground and those people hide what blood is flowing from the victims. The next pictures that came from the media on the ground are taken a cool two or three minutes after the bombs went off. That’s plenty of time for blood to start flowing and to become visible, and those pictures are aided by the fact that they are at a completely different angle than the Thorndike pictures and show the blood behind the bodies, blood that was obscured from the angle Thorndike was at.
I cannot explain why anyone would or would not have blood on them. One assumes a doctor would be experienced in avoiding blood but I would need to examine the pictures in question to be sure.
I will be discussing more of McGowan’s take on Boston in the fullness of time. While his site was down I moved to other conspiracies and need to finish them first. But I will be discussing more of them in the future. ETA: No, I won’t be discussing more of his theories. McGowan’s too paranoid even for this site and it would be cruel to continue to incite his paranoia. Too bad because despite his sloppiness he take was interesting.
Thanks for your comment, Dale!
That there are no or almost no pictures of the second site is wholly unbelievable and incredible. In today’s surveillance state and also the smartphone era where nearly everyone has a digital camera in their pocket?
This requires a better answer than “oh gee golly whiz they must have been distracted with the other site”. Surely SOMEBODY would have found themselves closer to bomb site number two and would have started snapping pics and or video.
This is not something to gloss over and neither is the lack of video evidence of Dhokar dropping the bomb! They claimed they had this…. Well where is it? This is not a trivial issue and it also rings a bell from other of these mass causality real time media frenzy events – most recently aurora and sandy hook. Surely both the school and the movie theater had surveillance cameras. Well where’s the footage? In the case of aurora I even saw photos of security cameras covering the parking lot area where Holmes was arrested. I believe you can find it here where Scott Creighton does class A investigative journalism covering all of these events: http://willyloman.wordpress.com/
One thing you “debunkers” never seem the be able to explain is why we are never allowed to see much if any of the cold hard evidence against the supposed perpetrators of these crimes. Another is there is never a good explanation about why the “official stories” always shift, change and are so incompetently narrated in every case. Also why they always end up being so hard to believe.
You also frequently equate “false flag” with “uh oh, here come the nut jobs” while false flags are real, undisputed documented events throughout history.
The government has a clear cut and obvious reason to perpetrate and or fake these events – it’s exceptionally obvious to even the most dim witted individuals what with so much gun control and further erosion of our civil liberties constantly in the news.
Please see this reply to one of your dozen comments: http://houdinisrevenge.com/boston-bombing-conspiracy-theories-the-backpack-analyses/#comment-188
Another thing, why the first responders aren’t bloody shouldn’t be glossed over either…
And it’s a shame you reject all of Dave’s work because it is outstanding, well researched, well reasoned and well cited. His boston work is probably the weakest of everything to date, ironically. But that doesn’t mean there is nothing of value contained therein.
Please see this reply to one of your dozen comments: http://houdinisrevenge.com/boston-bombing-conspiracy-theories-the-backpack-analyses/#comment-188
The debunking of McGowan is mutually exclusive of a theory of media manipulation.
For example, what if the reports, interviews, first hand accounts, etc. were sensationalized or chosen based on their sensationalism?
There are many unanswered questions, and similarly as the author here, I will reserve my judgment until all the available information becomes available. But this will never wrap up in a neat package. Is there a narrative that fits the evidence, that subscribes to Occam’s razor without being naive?
Not that I have found but I sure would like to hear what people think is the closest example….
Hi F*ckface,
First time poster.
It’s pretty funny to read McGowan, especially in light of your thorough debunking. I would call him brave or bold for linking directly here, if it weren’t for the disdain I possess for the general public’s ability to discern intellectual honesty. Obviously McGowan doesn’t think highly of his reader either.
Yet there are still those who ask for more, never satisfied with an enormous body of evidence you document and present clearly, proving McGowan disingenuous and therefore reducing the credibility of any theory he proposes… Or so it should seem.
So why is that, I ask myself, and what comes tSo I’ll ask you; what is the motivation of the “McGowan”s? Assuming he understands what a fallacy is, why is he being purposefully dishonest? I don’t see many ads on his site, it’s not to drive traffic? Is he then, an “agent of interest”. If so, which interest, with what motivation?
I look forward to your future articles . However, I think your dogged research ability, enhanced by insomnia, should be directed in to researching the motivations of those you know to be dishonest. Ill be disappointed to check back here only to discover you’ve explained a minor discrepancy like “index or ring” in your original post, to satisfy the hardline theorists or ‘shills’ who will nit pick you until you resign yourself to the Truth as a hobby.
Regards,
P
P. S. I’m on a mobile, please forgive/edit errors.
My previous salutation should have been f*cktard, not fuckface, and was part example, and part levity.
I apologize if my error caused you to think differently.
P
Eh, even though I am holding tight the reins on my comment policy, I am hard to offend. For the purposes of these entries, I’m cool with people using McGowan’s affectionate honorific for me. I’m sure I’ll be called worse by better and even worse by worse before this is all over.
I almost never see errors in comments or most extemporaneous writing, so no need to apologize.
There are so many reasons why people engage in conspiracy theory that it is often hard for me to pin down motivations. I have only read some of McGowan’s website and one of his books, so consider my opinion advisedly. I think he is one of the “unique” thinkers who engages in seeking patterns that confirm his world view. From what I can tell, he appears to begin with a theory, shoehorns information into the theory and hammers until it makes sense to him.
For example in his book, Programmed to Kill, I had to dogear the page when he finally stated his thesis because the entire book was Satanic Panic and They are training serial killers to do Their bidding because… I can’t remember. I’d literally have to go back and find the book and the page in question to tell you what he was getting at because he was writing to explain the patterns that make so much sense to him and other conspiratorial thinkers. The chapter on JonBenet Ramsey in particular shows this manner of thinking. A little girl dies in a strange manner and no one knows how it happened. Well, because in McGowan’s mind there are Satanist Cabals everywhere, he states very clearly that he thinks the Ramseys sacrificed their child. They went to a Christmas party at a friend’s house and both Satanic families ritually sacrificed her. This is based on nothing more than the patterns McGowan has in his head.
So I think that McGowan is a distrustful person who finds patterns and that is why he thinks as he does. Pattern seekers find what they are looking for and they believe that they have stumbled across a greater truth that we should be able to see. If he understands logical fallacy, it can never trump the patterns.
I think that is a good idea – determining the whys and wherefores of conspiracy theorists. Once I get more experience officially debunking, I may well give it a try. I won’t, however, be discussing McGowan anymore. Though I left this out of my reasoning as to why I will be ceasing discussing him, I genuinely feel like McGowan felt vindicated by my analysis and longs for more confrontation to feed his sense of being the Sanest Person his acolytes know. I got the feeling I was feeding his ego because finally someone was going after him. I must be a government plant. My whole site is about him. He’s finally facing the persecution he so sorely wants to prove to him that his thoughts have merit! There was something unsettling about him beyond just the obvious. His take on false flag staging is just one of many so why feed his paranoid ego? If my goal is to encourage sound thinking (hahahaha, like that will ever happen), there’s no sense in dealing with a dude like McGowan unless he is the sole source for a theory. I really do find him beneath contempt now and as a result don’t want to give the dude any interaction because I think he’s getting off on it.
I love conspiracy theory, hoaxes and the paranormal but there’s no love enough for an outre topic for me to take a middle road in discussing objective truth. There’s a lot in the Boston Marathon bombing that bothers me, mostly media reporting and the government being so reluctant to clear up basic details, which means that I can’t debunk some of the “Dzhokhar Was Framed” theories because the information is so completely muddled. But there is a vast difference between saying, “At this point I feel very uneasy about the whole note in the boat/getting a confession from a terribly injured kid after he got out of surgery” and saying, “He was framed and the government deliberately tried to kill him.” Sometimes the objective truth has to be uncertainty until we have enough information to pull the trigger and right now the gun pointed at Dzhokhar only has a bullet in one chamber.
But if you stick around and see me veering into middle ground to avoid the continual moving of goal posts and the myriad fallacies that wear a skeptic down, please speak up and encourage a course correction. I don’t see that happening but never say never. It’s hard to nitpick me. I live for the argument except for when I sense my love of debate is feeding a problematic ego.
Anita, glad to see your response. I think blown off limbs would produce immediate blood spurt of some distance. I do no understand this comment, “McGowan’s too paranoid even for this site”…
As far as I can tell this site is solely dedicated to addressing Crazy Old Dave. Dave is first an entertaining writer, if you are jaded like me, second a very thorough researcher. Not all of his theories I agree with, but he sure makes me think a lot, and laugh at the same time. He clearly bites back hard, based on his reaction to you.
Hey Dale, good to see you again.
I maintain that Bauman did spurt a lot of blood in the beginning. But bodies were piled on him and the angles in the Thorndike pictures do not show the angle necessary to see the blood. Once the fences were torn down and the actual media began to photograph people, the blood was thick on the ground. The Thorndike pictures started being taken around five seconds after the first bomb went off. That means that the Thorndike pictures END roughly 30 seconds after the first bomb went off. The pictures from the actual mass media did not start being taken until at least 30 seconds after that. I have no idea why people expect a near-pyrotechnic spurt of blood and a river of blood on the ground within 30 seconds of the accident and also expect to see the blood when bodies are still piled atop Bauman.
But should anyone have actual forensics that shows that legs that have been blown off spurt blood like Ashe in the Evil Dead, I will be only too happy to read and consider it. That may have sounded sarcastic but it really wasn’t. I’m always happy to read any evidence people give me from subject matter experts because even as I debunk, I am layperson debunking other laypeople based on what I see in photographs and know from trusted information sources. Experts are always helpful. Sadly, I have not been able to run anything to ground on my own aside from information about limb accidents in the Iraq war that lend nothing to this particular scenario.
McGowan accused me of creating a website in order to debunk him and debunk him solely. I have no idea why you also believe this because if you look at my site, there are three entries that mention or discuss him. I had wanted to discuss a book of his because a reader here is also a fan of McGowan and turned me onto his site during a discussion of the Franklin Scandal. Had a reader not directed me to him, I would not know his name. But wanting to discuss his book and debunking his staging theory hardly makes this site all about debunking McGowan.
But let’s lay it out, just to show what’s what:
4/21/13: Welcome to Houdini’s Revenge – A generic overview of why I began this site and the sorts of thinking I encountered from True Believers on my other site (I Read Odd Books). McGowan is not mentioned at all.
4/24/13: The Alex Jones-ification of the Mainstream Media – A discussion of how the MSM engaged in some of the worst, rumor-based reporting possible in the Boston Bombing case. McGowan is not mentioned at all.
5/8/13: Things to Come: Mentions what I have planned for this site. Dave McGowan is mentioned because of his book but note also I mention Dave’s fan, also named Dave, mentioned the book. If you look in the comments on that entry, you will see that fan Dave mentioned McGowan’s staging theory to me. I had not read it until it had been brought up to me and when I read it and saw the errors, I decided to discuss it here.
5/12/13: Biting off More Than I Can Chew – Admitting the Boston conspiracy theories cannot possibly fit into one entry. McGowan is not mentioned at all,
5/14/13: Boston Bombing Conspiracy Theories: An overview of what I plan to cover with the wide variety of conspiracy theories that the Boston Bombing has spawned. McGowan is not mentioned at all.
5/14/13: Boston Bombing Conspiracy Theories – The backpack analyses – Does what it says on the tin. McGowan is not mentioned at all.
5/17/13: Boston Bombing Conspiracy Theories: Dave McGowan’s Staging Theory, Part 1 – Discusses part one of McGowan’s staging theory.
5/22/13: Boston Bombing Conspiracies: The Naked Tamerlan Recording: Does what it says on the tin. McGowan is not mentioned at all.
5/22/13: Boston Marathon Bombing Conspiracy: Craft International, False Flag: Does what it says on the tin.
5/23/13: Wow! – Discusses McGowan’s bizarre response.
5/23/13: Oh, and hello! – Greetings to the new people who came from MetaFilter and McGowan’s hyperbolic response.
Even though this site is a month and two days old, there is plenty of content here that has zero to do with McGowan. A cursory read would have shown that. But there should be no worries because after reading McGowan’s absolutely vile response, I really do think he is far too paranoid for this site and I don’t want to contribute to any real paranoia he has. To see a new conspiracy theory site and make it all about you just because someone saw fit to analyze your work is utterly paranoid, verging into demented.
And though I also think McGowan is an interesting writer – as I mention in this entry itself his work on Laurel Canyon is fascinating – the best debunk, as I said before, to his demented paranoid notion that this site is all about him is never to mention him again. If you stick around and read anything else I write you won’t ever see McGowan’s name come up on this site again outside of the two entries that are about him specifically. I’m not a young woman, Dale. I don’t poke paranoiacs for fun. It’s unkind and it can only end badly. I’ve never seen such a hyperbolic response to a critique and I have run a fringe book site for five years. I’ve received death threats that were less unnerving than McGowan’s relentless unpersoning of all whom he dislikes. And it’s not like others don’t have similar theories – I don’t even need to focus on McGowan to discuss bad theory. So why bother with him?
So all I can do to combat your erroneous belief that this site is all about McGowan is to ask you to keep reading. See if Dave ever comes up again outside of the two places he is already mentioned.
And thanks for being civil with me. I appreciate it a lot. 🙂
I am curious why you choose to crit Dave’s work instead of just doing your own. He obviously spent some time making his posts. Why not just post your own content instead of “debunking” others’ work? At least Dave has enough courage to express his views. Your view seems to be “Eh, I haven’t decided yet.” I suppose I just answered my own question. Your view wouldn’t make for much of a read.
Thanks for commenting, Aaron.
As I stated in the article itself, I discussed McGowan’s theory because it was brought to my attention by a reader of his site and my site and it seemed interesting. It was interesting. So that’s the whole of why I chose to “crit Dave’s work.” I will be analyzing other people’s works, hopefully many books once the Boston entries are finished, though sadly no more of McGowan’s work.
The rest of your comment is odd. I think this may be the first time anyone has ever asserted that critical analysis of someone else’s words should not happen, that people who spend time writing should not be challenged because everyone else should be writing their own original endeavor. If that had any validity, as you condemn my reactions and research, you will also need to condemn Amazon’s reviews, do away with sites like LibraryThing and Goodreads and ban all the book blogs because all of those sites allow people to offer their opinions of McGowan’s books. Simply creating an original work is not an automatic protection from criticism and an automatic condemnation of those who offer criticism.
Your comment is akin to telling a book critic not to discuss books because they should be writing a book instead. Or a movie critic not to review a film because they need to make their own films. That’s a weird stance.
You don’t know my opinion because you haven’t read anything than this entry, if you even read this. Stick around, you may be surprised what actual research can yield in terms of my opinion.
And what on earth makes you think I don’t do my own work? I’ve spent untold days researching the Boston bombing. To write that knowledge down would be odd, don’t you think? To say, “Well, in this series of pictures, people got blown up. In this series of pictures, the blown up people got help or they died. The end.” I don’t have a “theory” because I rely on objective fact and have studied the evidence available. That’s how I know McGowan completely missed the boat on the sources of his pictures or even what they showed when uncropped. That’s how I knew the layout of the bomb scene and the names of all the victims, including where they fell and how it is McGowan got so much wrong. I have done lots of work on the Boston case, enough to know when someone else is making completely erroneous assertions. Whether conspiracy theorists like it or not, people who look at their work have to do as much research as they did, if not more, to know if they are revealing an objective truth, making mistakes, pushing an agenda or outright lying.
And time really doesn’t matter. I know McGowan put a lot of time in his work and I respect that. Again, I address that in my article. I paid careful attention because his theory deserved it. But if time is all that matters, then I spend a lot of time working on my entries. I certain don’t expect that amount of time spent to make me immune from criticism.
And I will refrain from asking you why you are here, leaving this comment, instead of writing up your own work when I clearly spent a lot of time on this entry. I refrain from asking because your criticism, like mine, is valuable.
Like Dave McGowan, I’m so happy that you are eager to debunk evidence based research. Could you debunk the following claims too? I would be so grateful, since having an analytical mind is soo much hard work, especially a critically analytical mind.
Boston Bombing: Did You Notice This? (Video) | Conspiracy Theories http://beforeitsnews.com/conspiracy-theories/2013/04/boston-bombing-did-you-notice-this-video-2450272.html
The Man Behind The Curtain Is NOT In Boston | B’Man’s Revolt http://buelahman.wordpress.com/2013/04/16/the-man-behind-the-curtain-is-not-in-boston/#comments
MANHUNT IN BOSTON; CITY IN LOCKDOWN | Crooks and Liars http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/manhunt-boston-city-lockdown
It’s just a drill announced BEFORE Boston bombing: – Bodybuilding.com Forums http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=153475731&s=6d0f63b301df73a8a09bb49c48d81758
Witnessing Boston’s Mass Casualty Event « Memory Hole http://memoryholeblog.com/2013/04/22/witnessing-bostons-mass-casualty-event/
Boston Bombing Archives | NODISINFO http://nodisinfo.com/Home/category/boston-bombing/
/Home/did-liveleek-com-identify-the-boston-marathon-bombing-trigger-man/ http://nodisinfo.com/Home/did-liveleek-com-identify-the-boston-marathon-bombing-trigger-man/
Did liveleek.com identify the Boston Marathon bombing trigger man? http://nodisinfo.com/Home/what-is-this-finding-by-liveleak-com/
Boston Bombing Actor http://www.bbmisc.com/tempor/showthread.php?20697-Boston-Bombing-Actor
Video: Boston Globe Tweets About Controlled Explosion Before It Happens | Collective-Evolution http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/04/20/video-boston-globe-tweets-about-controlled-explosion-before-it-happens/
/boston-marathon-bombing-false-flag-attack-by-jewish-government/ http://www.jewishterrorism.com/boston-marathon-bombing-false-flag-attack-by-jewish-government/
Boston’s Prelude To Martial Law | Real Jew News http://www.realjewnews.com/?p=814
UPDATE: Naked man arrested in Watertown, MA related to boston bombing – YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nIEfEN1jVA
Another media coincidence before a tragic event – Family Guy – Boston Marathon – YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WJDCzRKx4g
4/16/2013 Boston marathon Sandy Hoax Update – YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72rr3W2gU8c
The Family Guy/Boston Marathon Clip is NOT a Hoax – YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WQeqE943Uo
False Flag : Bomb Sniffing Dogs Spotters on Roof at Boston Marathon before Explosions (Apr 15, 2013) – YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FJq0-FmPww
Boston explosions – YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AniXaMPzl_k
Navy Seals Soldiers Bomb Boston Marathon 2013 – YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqSnVDrchdA
PROOF! Boston Marathon Bombing is Staged Terror Attack – YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axQtAFtmtVA
Why Was Boston Suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev Walking Handcuffed Then Announced Dead Hours Later? – YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVi5hIgcoYc
Boston Marathon Bombing False Flag Hoax – Media Exposed – YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtO_ZFdoanY
Family Guy Episode Predicted Boston Marathon Attack – YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmGNtasS_3Q
Who Is This Guy? When/Why/Where Was He Arrested? Naked Man Boston Bombing – YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkr4mEIKPe0#at=15
Disappearing guts and gore on mainstream news – Boston marathon bombing – YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-k1vIde6aQ
BOSTONGATE!!! – MUST SEE! 100% PROOF IT WAS A STAGED EVENT – YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaYw3UyPq18
Live explosion – Boston Marathon 2013 (Pray, pray, pray) – YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFq770nO6Qc
Navy SEALs Spotted at Boston Marathon [Chris Kyle] – YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOgNABFdsE0
Boston Crisis Actors- Trained Players and Actors Making It Real? You decide !!!! – YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1klqYOfQTU
Fake Blood Evidence on Boston Marathon EXPOSED !!! – YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_rTePaktHI
BOSTON BOMBING – Did you notice this? – YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaqUJyUBozI
Facebook Memorial Page Made BEFORE Boston Bombing – YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpZcELZSlRw
Boston Marathon Explosion ‘Was a Drill’ – YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmXRMojzuIk
URGENT – Family Guy Episode Predicted Boston Bombing (2 Different Clips.. Same Episode) – YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7pQO35-a1A
Disappearing guts and gore on mainstream news – Boston marathon bombing – YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-k1vIde6aQ
Boston Marathon False Flag Hoax – Man Missing Legs No Blood or Blood Trail – YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VankHCfOov4
Facebook Memorial Page Made BEFORE Boston Bombing – YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpZcELZSlRw
Hi m@m.com, n@n.com, r@r.com. Since this comment pre-dates your perma-ban and is simply irritating and not in violation of site rules, I’m letting it through. Though god knows I don’t want to help you in your quest to troll, you may wanna vary your schtick. Predictability is the bane of the decent troll. Good luck to you in your endeavors and check back – I’ve already addressed plenty on your list o’ demands. Glad to help!
“I read a few articles about how extremely sharp and hot shrapnel can enter the body and leave little bleeding. ”
I think you need to do a lot more reading, or just ask any single person who has experience dealing with wounded humans, as I do. You are completely wrong in your repeating all the fake stuff about “auto-cauterized wounds” and “shock causing ateries to constrict” etc. This is complete fantasy.
Your “critique” does nothing to lessen Dave’s theories, in fact you actually prove one or more of them unintentionally.
Thanks for this comment, Jon.
I in no way want to diminish the experiences you have in treating wounded people, but anecdata online is not helpful in determining truth of statements, especially since what you are saying literally flies in the face of everything I have read. I know that conspiracy theorists LOATHE sharing the resources that helped them reach their conclusions but I cannot express to you how willing I am to read sources that prove what you say. The problem is that despite working very hard to find them, I can’t. I fully expect a reply snottily telling me to do my research, you don’t have to back up your statements, I’m stupid, etc., but the earnest offer remains. I cannot take your word because I do not know you and cannot quantify your experiences but if you can show where I can verify your statements, I will definitely do it.
I have read that initially grave shock such as the type caused in a bombing initially causes the blood vessels to constrict. Later, when adrenaline kicks in, the blood vessels can dilate. This explains why there was not enough blood on the ground to please conspiracy theorists seconds after the bombings, yet plenty of blood later.
Since I can’t verify your claims with a single thing I have read,, here are all the sources that show that shock does indeed cause blood vessels to constrict immediately and that depending on the sort of shock, adrenaline may cause the blood vessels to dilate. More specifically, hypovolemic shock more or less resembles what we saw happen, blood-wise, amongst people who lost limbs in Boston once they began to bleed in earnest:
http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Shock
http://www.cvphysiology.com/Blood%20Pressure/BP031.htm
http://www.medtrng.com/blackboard/treat_for_shock.htm
https://www.inkling.com/read/textbook-of-medical-physiology-guyton-hall-12th/chapter-24/shock-caused-by-hypovolemiahemor
I don’t expect you to read anything I link to above but I am simply letting you know that the matter is not as open and closed as you think.
And you are right, adrenaline does not prevent blood loss (edited “present” to “prevent”). But from what I have read, adrenaline can initially mask pain in people who have severe injuries, enabling them to move and to do things that spectators may think inconsistent with such a severe injury.
As for the self-cauterizing shrapnel wounds or sharp shrapnel wounds that do not bleed excessively, I have already sourced why I think this to be correct in some cases. But I’ll do it again and add some more links so that again you can see why this is not wholly as your stated experiences state it to be:
http://medic.wikia.com/wiki/Special_considerations_for_gunshot_wounds_and_shrapnel_wounds
http://magazine.nursing.jhu.edu/2011/03/in-the-field/ (this article described perfectly what was seen on Nicole Gross’ legs)
Daniel Keyes’ book Medical Response to Terrorism: Preparedness and Clinical Practice also states that shrapnel can become embedded deep into the tissue and prevent bleeding out.
I really appreciate your perspective but I did research before I ever wrote this reaction to McGowan’s work and if I proved any of his points correct, so be it, but I have been unable to find any proof that what happened to the victims was in any way unusual and that shrapnel wounds always bleed, auto-cauterization or not.
I followed Dave’s link to this on Friday and I have to admit I was pissed off at you. Then I read all you have to say and I decided to follow up on your accusations that Dave got the photos wrong.
I found the “Ben Thorndike” pictures and you’re right. Dave was using Ben Thorndike’s pictures and either didn’t know it or lied about it. He either cropped people out of pictures or didn’t know he was using cropped pictures.
I also found out Ben Thorndike is not a media photographer. He’s an amateur who just happened to be at the right place at the right time. He started taking pictures seconds after the first bomb went off. There’s no way it was staged. The Thorndike pictures showed everything as it happened.
I’m experiencing disappointment right now because it looks like Dave either doesn’t know what he’s talking about or he lied. I also am very sorry he called you names. I feel like an asshole myself for even believing people faked injuries. Thanks for writing this entry.
Wow. Given the nature of the bulk of the comments I have received, this is unexpected. Thanks for taking the time to look into the actual evidence I presented.
I don’t think anyone should think McGowan a liar. As I stated in my article, I don’t think he knew the sources and the timing of the pictures.
Tim doesn’t exist.
You already knew that before writing his comment though.
Nicely done. McGowan’s childish labeling of you has demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that you have struck a nerve and he is quite aware of the shoddy theorizing on which he has based his ideas. And I think it is quite possible McGowan is lying outright – just another crass exploiter whose only goal is to sell books to the credulous. A low-rent Glenn Beck. If he truly believed his black helicopter martial law nonsense he would confront the victims himself and accuse them to their face – something I doubt he has the cajones to ever do.
Since you aren’t demanding I explain myself again (and again and again), I actually have time to reply. Thanks for taking the time to leave this comment.
McGowan’s response to me was decidedly over-the-top and it does make me wonder about his motivations. I dislike speculating about someone’s intentions but his insults combined with his decision to double down on assertions that the pictures were taken minutes after the attack make it seem like McGowan may have been passing off information he knew was false. At this point, I’ve told him the source of his pictures and the timing of them and his response was to call me a liar and a foul name. Yep. Hard to see him as an unfocused True Believer anymore.
I wonder if Bauman or Karen Rand or Nicole Gross are aware of the disgusting theories people like McGowan are peddling at their expense. I’m glad McGowan lacks the balls to confront a victim. I hope they never know he exists.
Thanks again for this comment. I appreciate it, Doc!
….and another one.
Anita Doth Protest Too Much
Yawn
You can protest too much without fabricating support y’know.
I’m glad other sane people have told you what a good job you did dissecting Dave McGowan’s “theory.” Most of his claims are so easily proven false that I wonder about the intellect of those who actually believe him. I’m with the comment above me; I think Dave’s a seasoned liar with years of writing to prove it, and his name-calling shows how unaccustomed he is to thorough criticism. I hope you change your mind about debunking him more in the future. He’s a guy whose ideas cannot stand up to much scrutiny and it would be fun to watch his reaction.
Thanks for this comment, Steve. This has been a real education for me, learning how conspiracy peddlers and their acolytes respond to criticism. I can’t call McGowan a seasoned liar, but as I said above, his response to information that shows his analysis is wrong, information that anyone can see and investigate for themselves, doesn’t speak well of his motivations. Either he’s the most blind True Believer ever, or he’s passing off information he knows is false. It’s unfortunate.
I can’t see myself engaging with McGowan’s work anymore. His nasty response and accusations that I am here to debunk him and debunk him alone made me think him a mentally disturbed paranoiac. And I say that as an armchair psychologist – just basing it on interactions I have had with people who actually had difficulty engaging in reality. But the longer I look at it, the more I think there’s a strong chance he’s just a lying jerk who loved having the chance to grandstand. If this proves to be how all these conspiracy peddlers behave, I may reconsider. And then he’ll get to call me a liar again because in the land of the True Believer, no one ever changes their mind. They’re all just LIARS!
So never say never, she says after she said never.
Thanks so much for this comment. I really appreciate the support.
You do a lot of insulting Dave McGowan and a lot of rambling and few attempts to debunk some of his harder to believe assertions. You have precious few citations while at the same time you criticize Dave for not having any when in fact most of his works are pretty well cited including this one.
If you want to actually debunk him why don’t you answer some of the really serious questions like:
Where are all the tens of amputees and the legs and the gore?
How was it the casualties were so small if a bomb like this was planted in a crowd (http://youtu.be/aD_Ufn1ROw0) why weren’t the casualties WORSE?
Where was the shrapnel damage to inanimate objects like sidewalk, walls, banners, flags, temporary fencing, etc?
Your claims about the clothes that shred without underlying injuries are laughable and idiotic. Even more so is the claim that it happened by fire. Shredded clothes don’t look like burned clothes. Care to try again?
Why is it the worst injured seem to get the least attention from first responders?
Why do the first responders have so little blood on them?
What about the magic mangled bent then straight then mangled again leg of crystal (forget the last name)?
How was baumans blood flow stopped so effectively that he literally didn’t leave a drop behind him during his ill advised wheel chair ride when there where clearly gurneys available which were given to less injured people first?
Where is all the footage of either of the brothers dropping the bombs?
If people were “on fire” where is the photographs or videos showing that and the resulting serious burns?
Where are all the photos of the tens of other amputees that would have had to have been wheeled out via the same routes as our other stars?
Where are 200+ wounded people?
Why did cowboy man wait so long? Why is the photographic evidence so out of line with every story he’s given?
And on and on. Answer some hard questions. Go back and read parts 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.
I do agree it requires a large stretch of the imagination to go the staged route but you just do a lot of rambling, insult spewing and cherry picking of the low hanging fruit. You answer none of the really tough questions convincingly, you didn’t read the complete work either. You’re precious short on citations too. You seem like either a troll or an attention whore.
Do the real work and prove your case. There are a LOT of REALLY serious inconsistencies and questions raised by Dave and his peers about this whole thing and you have barely scratched the surface above.
Less words, more answers!
Please see this reply to one of your dozen comments: http://houdinisrevenge.com/boston-bombing-conspiracy-theories-the-backpack-analyses/#comment-188
I know the economy is bad so you had to take this contract project to pay your bills. Better ask the congress to fix the economy, impose wall street taxes, import duties on good, 0.75 loans for small businesses. Maybe then you would not have to degrade yourself as much.
KM, first and only warning. This is covered in my comment policy. You don’t get to make scurrilous assertions like that on my site, made all the stupider because this site has no ads and an Amazon Affiliate account that provides me with little more than the book giveaways I do on my other site. Prove I am on anyone’s payroll or never bring this up again on pain of being banned and of proving that you are a weak thinker who can only engage in character assassination when you have nothing else to say. Comments like this are moronic and surely even you can do better.
If all this hadn’t been 10 years ago Ms Dalton, I’d be concerned that you were disordered, jabbed, mind-controlled, price-tagged, an A.U.Chatbot or combination thereof.
What is more disturbing than your brain fog is that you are so far up your own arse that you actually believe that your banning threats have any value.
Who GAF?
Ms. Dalton: I think the last comment by M raises some very good questions, which you dismiss with one sweeping gesture, using — if you’ll pardon me — the very rhetorical tricks you criticize in others (“One of the most tiresome problems of dealing with conspiracy theorists… What True Believers don’t seem to understand is… the theory I debunked… proves him dead wrong… such shoddy research… his theory is spun from whole cloth…” etc.).
Why do you keep repeating how wrong he is and how right you are? Don’t you think your readers can decide that for themselves? If you believe you’ve truly debunked Dave McGowan with better evidence and arguments, then why not let the matter rest?
I do have one question, which I haven’t seen answered in your analysis above (and which I believe was raised by McGowan):
Why do the latest photos of Jeff Bauman show his legs missing at mid-thigh (see his fundraising page, http://www.gofundme.com/BucksforBauman ), when they were clearly reported as having been amputated either “below the knee” http://theweek.com/article/index/243181/meet-9-recovering-boston-explosion-victims or “at the knee” http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/17/us/in-grisly-image-a-father-sees-his-son.html . The wheelchair photo also show his left leg missing well below the knee. Would surgeons remove more tissue and bone than necessary?
Thanks for your time.
J.A., your comment got caught up because WordPress screens comments with more than one link in them – sorry about that.
I don’t mean to seem dismissive or glib in reciting the tiresome interactions I’ve had with True Believers but the fact of the matter remains that it is exhausting and an enormous time suck to deal with comments that demand (DEMAND) I explain myself over and over and over, with insults, insinuations based on nothing I have written and situations not applicable to the theory at hand. I have to keep repeating I am right and McGowan is wrong because people who have come over here to tell me I am wrong have missed the core of my argument – that McGowan’s sloppy research and how he used his visuals make it impossible for anyone who knows the timing and placement of the Ben Thorndike pictures and later media photos to believe in a staged attack. Since people keep coming over here and talking about bomb trajectories and how much blood there should be and how it is the media sucks and how awesome a journalist McGowan is, I have to keep repeating the core of my argument because it is what is debunking McGowan. Sure, anyone can have an opinion and should do their own research but it’s disingenuous to ask me not to defend my work when it is challenged. McGowan’s work was shoddy at best, used information he either did not understand or misrepresented and until anyone comes back and says, “Oh no, the Thorndike pictures were taken by the CIA as a misdirection and here’s concrete proof!” I will keep beating that drum and wondering why it doesn’t bother his acolytes. And believe me, I find it very interesting that none of McGowan’s believers have addressed the fact that he screwed up the Thorndike pictures to the point that it rendered his entire argument invalid. Very interesting.
Sadly, McGowan’s weird behavior means I don’t care to interact with his work anymore but I’ll answer your question. Yes, Bauman’s knees were still attached to his body when he was rushed to the hospital. So were the legs of several amputees when they made it to the ER. Just being there visually is not enough to limbs to be declared sound. The problem is that just because his knees were still there does not mean that they were not riddled with shrapnel or in other ways so damaged they could not be saved. We know nothing of the state of the ligaments and how the tissues presented when Jeff Bauman was taken to the hospital. Of course a surgeon would not remove more bone and tissue than necessary but unless one is a surgeon, which I am not, I would be loathe to look at a picture of a man whose shins who have been blown off and question the necessity of removing the leg above the knee. Laypeople don’t know what the surgeons were confronted with when they had Bauman’s legs under the knife. Moreover, the ragged state of Bauman’s skin may not have given surgeons enough healthy skin to close the amputation site. I’ve read some surgeons accounts that say that Bauman’s legs should have been handled differently but I note none of that comes from surgeons who were in the OR with Bauman. We simply don’t know and until we know, why create an entire staged theory that this man who gravely suffered is a fake?
Further information:
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/healthlibrary/test_procedures/cardiovascular/amputation_procedure_92,P08292/
When you bear in mind that surgery following a traumatic amputation will have more variables, it is not surprising at all that Bauman’s doctors may have had reason to take the legs off above the knee in order to leave a healthy stump. Just because his skin was hanging in rags doesn’t mean there was enough left to cover his knee and he may not have been a good candidate for the sort of amputation wherein the ends are left unclosed. But may I suggest that unless you know the state of the remaining tissue, the state of his knees and the viability of his skin, speculating on why medical professionals did what they did is useless because you don’t have a complete information set to draw conclusions? Just a thought…
Mr. Dalton-Clark here.
Sweetie, I have no idea why you’re still letting these asshats comment here. Let me quote Merlin Mann from Back to Work:
…or more completely:
You know, like a week ago, I would have been forced to ban my own husband for using the word “asshat” to insult commenters. But interestingly, my beloved, empirically asshattery has been proven here in certain circumstances so I’ll let it slide.
But I see your point and may consider it. Either that or I will be forced to stop responding all together. Which would suck but this current model is not really sustainable. And my couch is covered in turds. Poorly reasoned, insulting, very demanding, entitled turds. Turds that then manage to crap themselves, self-pinching loaves, as it were.
Thanks for helping define this problem via poop analogies.
Speaking as an old country boy who’s seen more than his share of farming and construction accidents, I can attest that just because a man has some of his leg or his arm left after getting it caught in a machine doesn’t mean the doc will let him keep it. I have to think the same is true in an explosion, so that wasn’t particularly noteworthy to me.
As for Ms. D dismissing M above, it seems to me that she’s explained herself ad nauseum and doesn’t want to do it again. So cut her a break.
And as for you, JA, what do you think happened? Got an opinion you can back up with facts, or are you just here to complain?
EGrise: No, I don’t have an opinion I can back up with facts. In fact, that’s why I came here — to find evidence and arguments to help me figure out what really happened, because I think serious questions have been raised — not just by McGowan, and not just about the bombing scene.
I’m keeping an open mind until I see more proof one way or the other, proof that will persuade me beyond a reasonable doubt. How about you? Let’s not get that odious label of “True Believer” slapped on either of us, OK?
Anita, thanks for your prompt and respectful reply. I fully understand about defending your work and admire you for it.
But may I ask: Would you continue to defend a position that’s later proven false? Please think about it outside the context of this discussion. It’s a very personal question, to be considered in the privacy of your own heart.
Of course, if you were honestly committed to discovering the truth, you’d have to say no. Ego and defense mechanisms be damned.
But if you dismiss it as ridiculous, because you’re already convinced that McGowan is 100% wrong and you’re 100% right, then both of you are being utterly dogmatic about it, with no middle ground possible. And the rest of us are forced to choose one camp or the other right now. End of discussion. Truth be damned.
May I point out that despite your early insistence “that I don’t have a theory as to what happened at Boston,” you charge ahead with no doubt that McGowan’s theory is bogus.
As you know, that’s called begging the question. You also inject emotion into the mix, unfairly I might add, much as I shared them with you at first. Let me quote that paragraph:
“None of them have inspired in me the level of anger I experienced reading McGowan’s theory…. Still, it was, at times, nauseating to read such a virulent lack of respect for the Boston Bombing victims. Throughout his articles, McGowan engages in a near Stalinist desire to unperson people who have suffered grave harm in order to prove a theory that involves more supposition on his part than it does actual proof. He insults the appearance of one victim, he demeans the dead and he outright mocks serious injuries because he claims it is clear victims were not wounded. He bases this opinion solely on his observations, which often appear strange as the pictures show gravely injured people. Or at least they do to those not pushing an agenda. It’s hard to maintain a tone of civility when one encounters such a shocking lack of basic human decency.”
Well, he doesn’t stand a chance, does he? If we start by assuming the photos are of real carnage, then anger and outrage at McGowan are perfectly appropriate responses.
But if we’re shown inconsistencies in the photos that raise the possibility of a staged event, then anger and outrage at the actor-victims would be just as appropriate.
Is it possible to hold both positions at the same time? I certainly can’t. Which leads to a see-saw ride, until one side has enough weight of evidence to prevent the bounce-back.
But right now, you reject the staged event scenario, and McGowan rejects the real carnage scenario. What to do?
As the first commenter (Edward Sung) put it so succinctly: “It’s a completely closed system.”
So I think I’ve gathered all I can from here. Thanks again for your time.
One last thing, about Jeff Bauman: The “below the knee” amputation was reported AFTER the surgeries: “Both of Bauman’s legs were amputated below the knee.” http://theweek.com/article/index/243181/meet-9-recovering-boston-explosion-victims
So, unless the surgeons went back in an removed more of his legs (I found no reports of that on his fundraising page, which I think would have been important to mention.)
In addition, an experienced orthopedic surgeon (or so he claims) commented on the videos and photos (I don’t agree with Dr. Stan Monteith’s politics, but he’s worth listening to):
http://fauxcapitalist.com/2013/05/10/dr-stan-monteith-a-35-year-orthopedic-surgeon-on-jeff-baumans-leg-amputations-i-believe-that-this-young-man-was-an-actor/
“And then of course as you know, I was a trauma surgeon for many years, I was an orthopedic surgeon. And basically, I looked at that below knee amputation on the left side, and it was a well-healed below knee amputation stump, and certainly, the kind that I would’ve done. I did many, many times, so people could wear prostheses. And there was no tear in the skin, no blood, no nothing at all — just a bloody tibia sticking out of the end — and it looked like it had been attached to this stump. Why would they do something like that?…
“And you can see pictures of him — he’s waving a flag, and he has two above knee amputations. Above knee amputations. Now wait a minute, the Jeff Bauman we saw initially had a below knee amputation and this is an above knee amputation. … I believe that this young man was an actor.”
Thanks again.
Hey, JA, thanks for coming back and leaving this comment. Hopefully this will make sense but it’s late so I’m not as hopeful as I would like to be about my coherence. I’ll just do my best to follow your comment’s order.
But may I ask: Would you continue to defend a position that’s later proven false? Please think about it outside the context of this discussion. It’s a very personal question, to be considered in the privacy of your own heart. Of course, if you were honestly committed to discovering the truth, you’d have to say no. Ego and defense mechanisms be damned.
Would I defend a position if it was later proven false? Of course not. And yes, it would be an ego blow but ultimately I’m just one person in the blogosphere, one fallible person. People make mistakes. It may be embarrassing but it is no shame. I know it’s hard to take anyone’s word on a topic like this, but I’ve got a large body of work on another site wherein I discussed books about conspiracy theory, among other odd books. I’ve been proven wrong several times over there and changed my articles to reflect it. I’m tired so it’s difficult to recall them all but the best example of my reaction to being taken to task and changing my data or admitting my mistake is my analysis on a book about the Franklin Scandal, which I link to in the body of the original article that spawned these comments.
But if you dismiss it as ridiculous, because you’re already convinced that McGowan is 100% wrong and you’re 100% right, then both of you are being utterly dogmatic about it, with no middle ground possible. And the rest of us are forced to choose one camp or the other right now. End of discussion. Truth be damned.
That’s how it worked, though. I dismissed it ridiculous after I read it, not before. I knew the Thorndike pictures extremely well when I entered into the McGowan debunk. All I knew going into it was that a person I like thought the theory interesting and accurate. I did not click that link expecting to find it wrong. But the knowledge that I had proved it wrong as I read.
This isn’t a truth be damned situation because within 2 pictures in, I knew he was wrong. It is 100%. The Thorndike pictures begin seconds after the bomb went off and the people who are called actors are on the ground, some screaming in agony, others stunned, and there is not a single stager in sight. No make-up person. No people rushing from the building to the left in the Thorndike pictures, already made up and ready to deceive the American people. The smoke began to clear enough for visual identification of the victims seven to eight pictures in and some are able to be seen even before that. With this information, it is 100% certain that any staging theory anyone posits about the first scene is bogus.
There is no middle ground. You either have to believe the Thorndike picture timing or you don’t. People can deflect with argumentative questions about how pressure cooker bombs really go off, with endless blood analysis and such but the Thorndike pictures show clearly no staging theory could have happened with the smoke covering the moving actors or incoming actors brought in before the Thorndike pictures began. So yeah, people have to go with one or the other. Not all theories can sport a middle ground.
May I point out that despite your early insistence “that I don’t have a theory as to what happened at Boston,” you charge ahead with no doubt that McGowan’s theory is bogus.
I don’t have a theory. Debunking a theory is not a de facto theory. The Thorndike pictures prove McGowan dead wrong about it being staged, but they do not tell me who planted the bombs, if one of the Tsarnaevs was coerced, if they were part of a cell, if they were patsies. It doesn’t tell me if the backpacks were planted before hand and the Tsarnaevs were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. They don’t tell me if the government paid the Tsarnaevs to do it and then double crossed them into a false flag. All the Thorndike pictures do is refute staging theories and show us how the wounded fell. So no questions were begged. I didn’t go in looking for evidence to fit my foregone conclusion. Rather, I had information about specific pictures and that knowledge was at work, not an agenda to prove the Dalton Theory.
You also inject emotion into the mix, unfairly I might add, much as I shared them with you at first. Let me quote that paragraph:
It’s only unfair if you don’t know the pictures are indeed pictures of genuine suffering. I did and perhaps McGowan didn’t. But his ignorance of his own source materials should not shelter him from the condemnation he justly deserves for insulting wounded people just because he couldn’t find accurate information before he misused pictures to spin his wild theory.
The fact of the matter is that I actually handled McGowan with kid gloves because a reader here likes him a lot. I complimented his Laurel Canyon series. I explained my anger and its motivations and didn’t try to be coy about. I eliminated profanity and I was careful to say that even as I found his demeaning of victims disgusting, I suspect this analysis of his was not indicative of a nasty nature.
But it has to be said I write angry. I write sad, happy, morose and furious. This isn’t a college dissertation – it’s a debunker site on the Internet. And as people have pointed out my anger at McGowan’s callousness, no one has mentioned the very real disgust – also an emotion – that he levied at victims in an article he could not be arsed to research properly. Even if he was right, his palpable disgust is an emotion, too. And I have no problem with emotions in writing – I just think people need to get their ducks in a row before using negative emotions to characterize and demean people.
But just in general I write with emotion. Always have, always will, some like it, some don’t and it’s unlikely to change.
Is it possible to hold both positions at the same time? I certainly can’t. Which leads to a see-saw ride, until one side has enough weight of evidence to prevent the bounce-back.
But right now, you reject the staged event scenario, and McGowan rejects the real carnage scenario. What to do?
Well, of course I know my work in McGowan’s theories effectively rendered his staging argument false. I don’t think most people could hold both ideas simultaneously. I think where staging is concerned you can safely climb off the seesaw because the evidence makes it impossible.
But I am less concerned with the quandary the reader is left in because I hope no one ever takes me at my word and instead researches what I say. I can’t control the way anyone absorbs information but if people with cognitive difficulties look at the Thorndike pictures and see a cast running in to take their places in a drama, that’s the decision they have to make. I may think I am right but I am no substitute for your own research and contemplation.
And maybe, just maybe, people can all avoid declaring what they think happened until all the facts are in. We can look at some things and know they did not happen but we do have to have patience and wait to see what information the trial and other sources bring up before we decide to marry our thoughts to a theory.
Now for Bauman’s legs:
–I’ve also seen news sources refer to him as having received an amputation under the knee and thought that the case myself before I saw the picture of him giving Celeste Corcoran a birthday gift. Even with a blanket it was clear, to me at least, that by April 24 he had lost both legs above the knee. I tend to think that this was yet another media failure. We’ve got a media who told us Dzhokhar was armed in the boat, then not armed, that he shot himself, oh but it must have been a knife, and oh yeah, he robbed the convenience store but then he didn’t. The media has made a hash out of this case. It’s easily very likely that the media screwed this one up, too.
–I read the transcript – I’m too tired for the video – but I have difficulty understanding the doctor. Is he saying that when he saw the tibia hanging from the “amputation” that he is referring to the traumatic amputation Bauman received when the bomb went off? Or is he saying that he thinks bloody skin and tibia were added to an already amputated leg, an amputation above the knee? If it is the latter and he thinks a prosthetic was applied to an already amputated and healed stump (which now occurs to me is exactly what he was saying since he peripherally invoked Nick Vogt), we can easily debunk that and return to the land of Parsimony. Bauman had a job standing up behind the deli counters at a Nashua CostCo. There are many pictures of him with legs before April 15. Unless all these people were in on a conspiracy to create a back story for Bauman, it’s more likely that all of his bosses and friends and family are telling the truth and he had legs, then lost them on April 15. It’s also far more likely Dr. Monteith is making some pretty hefty assumptions about a patient he never saw in person. That Dr. Monteith also does the whole, “Why was he out the hospital in 19 days” thing also makes him suspect because as I showed in my article, Bauman was actually in the hospital far longer than the average amputee, likely because of abdominal surgery he needed. His rehab is handled outpatient. Perhaps things have changed since Dr. Monteith did this kind of surgery but everything that has happened to Bauman is well within the guidelines the Amputee Coalition considers typical.
Though all the comments wear me down, this is the sort of discussion I wanted to have on this site. Ultimately I enjoy conspiracy theory or I would not read so much about it and talk about it so much but even amongst believers, I often have such interesting conversations. People just have to engage in good faith, like you have. Though I stayed up far too late again, I’m glad you left this comment and hope you continue to read here and comment again. I don’t want an echo chamber here and comments that ask questions about the matters at hand and engage in good faith even as they may disagree with me make me very happy. Thanks for this comment.
This is one of the single best take-downs I’ve ever read. Easily in the top ten. Good job and don’t let Dave McGowan’s oversized ego and little girl temper tantrum keep you from taking him on again in the future. He’s gotten away with lost of really questionable “research” for a long time and seldom gets properly challenged. His decision to resort to name-calling rather than respond to the concrete points you make tells anyone who is not one of his fanpoodles all they need to now about old Dave.
And lol to infinity at him thinking this site is all about him. Dave’s got an ego, that’s fo sho!
Thanks for the praise, JJones. Your “lol to infinity” makes me think I know who you are – drop me an e-mail if I’m right.
“Fanpoodles” is new to me. Not sure if it applies to all McGowan’s fans but it’s certain evocative of a dancing servility, isn’t it?
I bought Dave’s argument much more after his first installment. The first part is confusing, and (thanks to your analysis) possibly wrong. But then he does continue and in his later installments he makes me wonder how the doctors and aides can come off the bloody scene with such clean clothes. And then there is the odd media casuality count of 260 (290?) . And he lists many more anomalies which another commenter listed above. You provided a link to where I presume you adressed these but didn’t, or if I missed it, sorry. In any case, you have provided for me a point of view to look more carefully at his “research.”
But if debunking the “actor/fake bomb theory” is a goal you have your work cut out for. I watched a slowed down video of the explosion which the narrator explains (and I can sort of see??) how there is no one standing in the blast zone but then there are people moving toward the explosion. These are supposedly the actors.
Good luck.
First, I have no idea why this comment ended up in my spam folder but it did. You did nothing untoward to end up being censored or delayed so I apologize. I recently upgraded WordPress and I bet I borked something. I’ll have Mr HRev have look at it.
The media has consistently reported numbers all over the map in terms of casualities. Without much research, and know this response is from the hip, almost all of the reports from the media have grave errors. I’d take into account the incompetence of the media handling the case whenever you come across strange numbers like this.
I will be looking into lack of blood on first responders.
I only intend to discuss Dave’s first installment. I find his paranoia unsettling and his bizarre name calling beneath contempt, as well as his willingness to defame injured people on the basis of some really shoddy research. There are other actor/staged theories so I don’t need to focus on him.
I’m not sure I understand what you are referring to when you say I listed a link that didn’t explain other anomalies. If you clarify I will be happy to clarify on my end.
Would you mind sharing the link to the video of the slowed down explosion that shows people moving toward it because that defies the photographic record of the first bomb site and I would love to see it. Is it the second bomb site? Regardless, it sounds interesting. If it is the second bomb site I can’t really debunk it as the record of that explosion aftermath is so sparse (and again, I wish the UATG or FBI would release the surveillance footage of Dzhokhar leaving the bomb and failing to respond when it went off because it would go a long way to clearing up a lot of questions). The Thorndike photos being 5 or so seconds after the bomb went off. There is no one rushing in. The pics would have caught it if it happened. So if there is a video of another angle, I am most interested in seeing it.
Thanks again for the comment and I apologize again for you getting caught in spam – you apologized in your second comment but this was a software issue, not anything you did.
The
Aw, gee, I had a comment all written and it got bumped because I hadn’t yet read your comment policy. Oh well.
I had said you did a good job of debunking Dave’s first installment but he raises many more anomalies afterwards which in my mind are hard to deny like how bloodless the doctors’ and aides’ clothes are and how odd the media casualty counts are.
And I saw a video analysis which indicates no people standing in the blast zone but people moving toward the blast, the actors supposedly.
Cudos for questioning the conspiracy theory. If only our mainstream media did it as well. Or if Rachel Maddow were as polite as you. That said, if you continue to try and debunk the “actor/fake bomb theory you have your work cut out for you. Maybe your husband is right. Honey, come to bed!
Thanks for this kind comment, Jimbo. You are absolutely correct – the longer I look at this, the more anomalies I find and it’s becoming onerous to discuss them, but I will soldier on.
The blood on first responders’ clothing, or lack thereof, has come up several times. I will be sure to have a section on it because now I’m curious, too.
Debunking staging theories at the first bomb site is an easy A. Until those who spout this theory can explain away the Thorndike pictures with more than a “She’s lying, they were taken minutes after the bombs went off!” there’s probably little sense in continuing to debunk them.
Thanks again for this comment and sorry you got hung up in my spam folder.
fucktard
Creative.
ETA: And let’s all leave the profane name-calling, even ironic use, over on Dave’s site. Thanks
You are so right
Anita Dalton-
Leave the profane name-calling… but you liberally use, “conspiracy theorist??” The associations by the foolish with tin-hat-wearing paranoids, is, today, profane name-calling (also, by dictionary definition of the two words, ignorant).
Must I supply you with the entire passage from the CIA about what to call people who dare to question authorities like “the media” and the Warren Commission’s assertions that a lone madman (after all, you must be temporarily mad, at least, to take up arms against someone who has done no harm to your person or to those close to you), had a rifle and a revolver mailed to him (when he could have bought a rifle at almost any store at that time in U.S history), order the rifle under the name Alek James Hidell but have it sent to a P.O. Box address bearing his real name, go up to the 6th floor of his own place of work, not shoot at the president when he had a straight-on shot as he came up Houston St. toward him, but wait until he made an almost 90-degree turn onto Elm St., and fire shots under a traffic light stanchion, through trees at a car traveling AWAY from him down a curving road (when you stand in Dealey with photos of Dealey on 11.22.63 and days just previous and after, well let’s just say, “it’s ludicrous!”), and fire three shots – a bullet was removed, in the presence of DPD officers, from the grass just beyond a manhole and its cover – where the bullet mark made in the manhole cover remains to this day, automatically making for FOUR shots and not three; though the Altgens film clearly shows a crack in the front windshield just as JFK grabs his throat and necktie, which can ONLY mean he was shot from the front – making at least FIVE shots; that even the JFK limo driver and his accomplice, errr, front seat passenger, indicated there were a “hail of bullets” fired – which means, that unless Lee Harvey Oswald possessed and fired a fully-automatic weapon that day, which the Mannlicher-Carcano was certainly not? Oh shoot, that means it was impossible for Oswald to shoot the president, as told by those bastions of honesty, “the media” and the Warren Commission… only a person who would contrive a theory that Oswald conspired with himself, would believe he was the man who killed JFK.
Do the research yourself about the term, “conspiracy theorist.” since you find it so easy to toss pejoratives people’s way, it’s equally easy enough to find the root of the term and its intended use as negative propaganda ———– by “authorities.”
As to your response to Dave McGowan’s brilliant dissertation which elucidated the obvious fabrication that was the “Boston Bombing.” You “debunked” nothing. Really. You did nothing other than repeat information provided for you, primarily by news sources.
To use media sources, all of which are under the control of Project Mockingbird (and its successors), which was derived by Allen Dulles in 1946, a full year before the CIA was created by the National Security Act, is either an act of ignorance for any serious researcher or an act of purposeful obfuscation; and in 2013, when we have, at our fingertips, the most powerful research tool in modern history, ignorance is no longer an excuse not to know this fact of the state of our media.
So, let’s throw out the obvious lies told – that MUST be told – in the media and what are you left with? Your own eyes.
Put down the tools of propaganda provided you by people who care only that you think what they tell you to think, put away the hackneyed, knee-jerk, government-mandated, faux-emotional expressions of alleged empathy, and re-read McGowan’s writings on the Boston Bombings; look at the photos —– CLOSELY —- as they relate to the print; stop reading McGowan and search for yourself narrative scenes where massive amounts of blood have been let loose from human bodies and compare them with what you see in the Bombing photos; look at myriad photos illustrating the results of shrapnel – hint: as a kid, my friends and I reenacted political assassinations – D.C. private school imps with parents inside the govt., go figure – using plastic model cars. We’d sometimes use mini-plastic golf balls about 1″ in width, slice them in half, pack them with bent, small-head tacks and firecracker/m-80 flash powder, run a triple-length fuse from just inside the golf ball out to us, light that sucker in close proximity to the car’s path as it rolled down a hill toward the incendiary device, jump behind our metal trash cans and watch the result – a car in shreds, tacks in wooden garage doors and frames and every once in a while, punctures in those metal trash cans, if we packed tightly enough. Now, extrapolate that to the size of the alleged Boston Bombings and tell us again about the damage that you SHOULD see compared with what you do see.
In fact, be a kid for about 30 minutes and make one of those little shrapnel bombs yourself put it close to an object like a plastic model car. You’ll know as soon as the smoke and your ears clear who’s lying and who’s attempting to approach the truth of that Marathon event.
Sorry your comment got hung up. I don’t know what got it filtered but there was nothing in this comment that violates my comment policy and I apologize for the delay.
DK, I couldn’t care less about your opinions on the relative profanity of being called a conspiracy theorist versus being called a f*cktard. My site, my determination of what is profane and here on HRev, conspiracy theory is only a dirty word if YOU want it to be.
This comment is nothing more than the rants of a person who has not read anything on this site but what McGowan linked to, or you wouldn’t have left this ridiculous comment. Until McGowan addresses his deliberate mislabeling and misrepresentation of the Thorndike pictures and explains how it is actors managed to get on the scene and set it up when Ben Thorndike photographed the entire first bomb site and began taking pictures seconds after the first bomb went off, the rest is all so much noise. Bluster. A refusal to deal with the essential problem that one is presented with when one realizes that McGowan either misunderstood or outright lied about the Thorndike pictures doesn’t mean that his and almost all staging theories aren’t gutted. MY OWN EYES looked at the Thorndike pictures and MY OWN EYES realize that no staging theory can stand with that photographic evidence. Thorndike is not a member of the media. He is an amateur photographer. So basically I did exactly what you are telling me to do and realized that there is no way a staging theory can stand.
You can’t dismiss all media, DK. At some point we have to get our information from some place and analyze it. McGowan used the media to reach his conclusions and since I don’t believe, based on my own research and knowledge of the Thorndike pictures, that there were actors involved in the bombing, in my decision calculus it was safe to believe the extent of injuries as the media presented them. We are all reacting to the media, even those of us who reject the media’s narratives. It is specious to even approach this from the angle that one is not going to use the media to examine theories because all one can do is examine media and find the truth or lies. Just because you reject all media, as your comment leads me to assume, you are still using the media in the creation of your belief.
Since you throw so much garbage into your reply, tell me why you are lecturing me on the Kennedy assassination? Where did I ever explain my beliefs about the murder of JFK? Did the Houdini head lead you astray? Could it be that you have absolutely no idea what I think about that and about what theories have been debunked and what haven’t because you just blindly followed a link and assumed that because I dared debunk your precious McGowan then that means I suck at the teat of the mass media and believe every word authority utters. Since you’ve already dropped some paranoia over at IROB, you clearly are aware of the site. Check out my discussion of Gorightly’s The Prankster and the Conspiracy. Check out my discussions of Alex Constantine. Check out anything but the one thing that got McGowan butthurt and the single entry I link to within that long entry that left his behind so very, very chapped.
Your comment leaves me full of existential despair but at least this time you didn’t unperson me so I feel like perhaps, if you just back up and realize that disagreeing with McGowan is not the same as blindly accepting every official story as complete truth, then perhaps we could have a discussion worth having. As it stands now all you got is McGowan Is Right Because Evidently the Thorndike Pictures Don’t Exist and lots of completely inaccurate assumptions about this site, how I examine the media and what it is I believe.
Oops! Looks like you can’t come back and whargarbl at me some more because my husband, who is an admin on both sites, didn’t like you calling his step-father, a war hero, a liar. Rock on with your accusatory self, DK. Rock on.
Thank you, DK Wilson.
Hahahaha! You’re agreeing with a dude who hasn’t read but one entry on this site, who has no idea why this site exists, who has no idea what he’s talking about in terms of my overall belief in conspiracy theory, who only came over here because McGowan sent him because his comprehension-level betrayed no deeper thought then “oh well, well I’ll tell her,” and whargarbled like he was getting paid. Well played, Jean Bush. Well played!
Is this a pro Dave Mcgowan site or what ? based upon the replies i have read it sure seems that way SJ Palmer you sir are aok Anita not so
Oh dear, you’re on to me, Chris. This site is indeed pro-McGowan. Houdini’s Revenge is nothing but a false flag site meant to pump up McGowan’s image by pretending to think he’s a disingenuous purveyor of nonsense. I had no idea anyone would ever figure that out but how can I do anything but confess my perfidy in the face of your towering genius. And this comment is a perfect encapsulation of why it is that McGowan’s fans are so respected for their integrity and intellect. Go forth, Chris, and share your ideas, you mental giant amongst men!
(and because so many people who have interesting cognitive capacities evidently are OUTRAGED that I showed mcgowan to be a man not unfamiliar with untruths, i feel i need to state clearly that this is sarcasm. chris, i hope you and sj can hang out soon and thus the circle-jerk will be unbroken. send McGowan an email and let him know what a good little doggy you are! he may bless you with a reply!)
And you know Chris, I just feel like I want to say that even though this is sincerely one of the most idiotic comments I have ever read, the first couple of months here has been a real education for me. I genuinely had no idea how weird and unschooled are the brains of so many True Believers. I’ve been so blessed that in the course of running IROB for years and having run various blogs and contributed to other sites for almost two decades I seldom encountered the completely ludicrous levels of discourse I have encountered since I launched this site. So in a sense I really do thank you and all the others who have come here for giving me this trial by not-very-bright-fire. It’s given me a lot of food for thought and has helped me decide how I will handle comments and controversial entries in the future. So rock on, Chris! Thanks for your help.
Hi Anita,
Two weeks since last comment, I’ll see if this goes thru. Yes, I will be civil.
Found your writing and analysis very compelling — until I went back and read Dave’s work again. It was a fast read and look the first time, and I wanted to find out what some debunking looked like, and I was impressed by your tone and thoroughness. And, yes, Dave is awfully sarcastic.
That’s his style. I was impressed, too, that you had previously found “Laurel Canyon” at least interesting. How about his other work, on 9/11 and the moon landings? I just wonder….
I was so struck by his moon landing analyses, after I had viewed Jose Escamilla’s films, that I just had to post about it on the New Cafe, where I have been a member for over 15 years — which posting led to much derision.
Well, I’ve been posting there about Dave’s new series and haven’t gotten much response yet. I’m impressed with his work yet again. Sorry the rudeness bothers you so, but is it possible to break through the trance of the people without it?
I wonder at your apparent naivete? It’s touching, in a way. The way it combines with your drive to get somewhere with all this, which I share. And many have called me naive. I especially see your belief that the “investigations” of the authorities will produce real results in this case as naive. What real results did we see with the assassinations in the sixties, with Oklahoma, with 9/11, with so many many more suspicious events? Instead, we saw coverups.
The use of “patsies” in Boston was immediately obvious to me. And they “killed a cop,” too — just like Oswald. And it was announced as a drill — just like 9/11.
Do these patterns not eventually arouse suspicion?
Perhaps you will come to avoid phrases such as “true believers,” which only arouse the worst in your readers. “True non-believers” perhaps could work better?
Anyhow, thank you for contributing so much effort in this instance, and I hope you can catch up on your “real” sleep someday! “Perhaps to dream!” Aha!
That’s his style. I was impressed, too, that you had previously found “Laurel Canyon” at least interesting. How about his other work, on 9/11 and the moon landings? I just wonder….
His discussion of Laurel Canyon was very interesting. I haven’t read anything else he has written and don’t intend to.
I was so struck by his moon landing analyses, after I had viewed Jose Escamilla’s films, that I just had to post about it on the New Cafe, where I have been a member for over 15 years — which posting led to much derision.
I’m sorry you got derided. It happens though. I am unfamiliar with Jose Escamilla’s films, but I also have to be honest and say that the Moon Landing Was Faked theory never really resonated with me much outside of the Kubrick angle. Is Escamilla the “rods over New Mexico” guy?
While the moon landing theories hold little interest to me, the Lost Cosmonauts theories did hold a lot of interest. I’ve researched them inside and out and came across James Oberg’s masterful debunk of most of the Lost Cosmonaut theories and he handled the moon landing theories very well. Maybe Google him and read his POV as well. It may be interesting.
Well, I’ve been posting there about Dave’s new series and haven’t gotten much response yet. I’m impressed with his work yet again. Sorry the rudeness bothers you so, but is it possible to break through the trance of the people without it?
It’s interesting that you dislike the moniker True Believer but have no problem calling me naive and saying that people are in a trance. But to answer your question, McGowan isn’t the only way you can show that the official stories may be problematic. He’s a strange dude and if you really think you wanna hitch your wagon to that star, knock yourself out, but if you are asking me if McGowan is such a deep thinker that despite his provocative tone he is worth listening to, the answer is no. His research is sloppy. And again, his tone is not the problem. His tone invoked with such crappy research that it beggared belief is the problem. If you are going to mock the dead you best have your facts in order. He didn’t. I embrace sarcasm. If you’ve read much on my other site, I’m snarky at times and have been known to curse like a sailor on leave. I write without it here because I need this site to be earnest so McGowan’s sarcasm in and of itself is no problem. It’s his crappy approach to problem solving.
I wonder at your apparent naivete? It’s touching, in a way. The way it combines with your drive to get somewhere with all this, which I share. And many have called me naive. I especially see your belief that the “investigations” of the authorities will produce real results in this case as naive. What real results did we see with the assassinations in the sixties, with Oklahoma, with 9/11, with so many many more suspicious events? Instead, we saw coverups.
What naivete is that? Seriously? Because in my book calling shoddy research shoddy isn’t naive. It’s sensible. And where did you pick up any notion that I think the authorities will come to the correct conclusion? And where do you get the idea I’m cool with the government response to other events?
See, this is why it’s funny you dislike the term “True Believer.” True Believers are evidence resistant and they often fill in the blanks in interesting ways that defy what is actually happening because that’s just how their brains work. I’m not saying you are one, but I am saying this sort of reasoning is indicative of True Believing. Examples:
–Note that not a single person who came over here to yell at me and tell me how wrong I am addressed the lynch pin of my entire debunk: the Thorndike photos. McGowan himself had no idea he was using these pictures, he didn’t know when they were taken and he didn’t know who was in them. These pictures defy any notion that any staging happened in the two circles of carnage I indicated in my debunk. So of course, in the face of evidence that rendered all the rest of it meaningless, people spoke of how bombs went off, how people had no blood on their clothes, secret hand gestures and so on. But no one addressed the Thorndike pictures because True Believer exclude any evidence that can prove their pet theories wrong.
–You have zero idea what it is I think about anything but McGowan but you extrapolate debunking McGowan with being a party-line advocate for various assassinations, 9-11, etc. You don’t even seem to grok that I am very troubled by the way the Boston case is being handled by the media and the authorities. I outright say that John Miller’s presence in all of this is disturbing and that Carmen Ortiz is one of the most morally bankrupt attorneys ever to work for the US government and yet you seem to think that by debunking McGowan’s asinine theory that I am somehow hostile to the idea that conspiracies exist. That’s because you entered into this with a set idea of what a debunker does and you forced your conception of me to conform to that conception.
The use of “patsies” in Boston was immediately obvious to me. And they “killed a cop,” too — just like Oswald. And it was announced as a drill — just like 9/11.
Did you read what I had to say about Sean Collier’s murder? I don’t disagree that there is a chance the brothers could have been patsies, or on the CIA payroll and then disavowed. I am saying McGowan’s staging theory is wrong. And the rest of my work on this case, which now is so tiresome to me I can’t even finish, should show that.
Do these patterns not eventually arouse suspicion?
Yes, they do, and that’s why I mentioned WhoWhatWhy’s fascinating work on the slaying of Sean Collier as being worth a read.
Perhaps you will come to avoid phrases such as “true believers,” which only arouse the worst in your readers. “True non-believers” perhaps could work better?
I am largely uninterested in how people react to that term. I don’t label conspiracy theorists as all being wrong but people bristle at being called that, too. Not to seem callous but if the shoe fits…
Anyhow, thank you for contributing so much effort in this instance, and I hope you can catch up on your “real” sleep someday! “Perhaps to dream!” Aha!
Eh, it comes and goes, but thanks for the kind wishes. I’m course correcting, as I mentioned in my latest entry, and will be addressing books mostly, which was why I wanted to create this site in the first place. And if I mention websites again it will be because I find them very interesting. For example, have you ever encountered Pseudo Occult Media (http://www.pseudoccultmedia.net/)? I love, love, love that site. On some level, I can dismiss a lot of what the author has to say but at the same time it’s so very entertaining. And much of it is hard to debunk. Once reading him, I never looked at Alice in Wonderland, chess board and checker boards and Marilyn Monroe the same again.
Though I am somewhat argumentative in this reply, I hope you keep reading. I may be cranky today from lack of sleep. 😉 But hopefully I will discuss some books in the future that will interest you and I really want to discuss the Lost Cosmonauts soon. I may even look into Kubrick and the moon landing. So maybe there will be content here you may enjoy and may have a lot of expertise in. You never know. 🙂
Thanks for the comment, and I really mean that.
Just a quick note, only one person (out of the tens of thousands present) claimed there were announcements of a ‘drill’ over the loudspeakers. Pretty ‘unbelievable’ that only one person heard these announcements.
Wow, surprised my comment posted so soon — and you answered so soon. So glad you liked Russ Baker’s piece on Sean Collier, I’m a great fan of Russ’ and I really owe my introduction (re-introduction really) to the “dark side” of modern politics to his book on the Bush Family.
Really I’m just a working stiff/businessman who enjoys times of relative free time to explore many subjects, and I’m always happy to write a letter and read someone’s answer. Sorry if I was a bit rude myself.
No time yet to look more into your “lynchpin” but I will.
Had not seen your “pseudo-occult” link but I bookmarked it. I have been stirred at various times by accounts of the “Illuminati.” “The Vigilant Citizen” I found a fascinating site. Also the work of Wes Penre, David Wilcock (especially his “Financial Tyranny” epic booklength posting). I am definitely NOT a true believer in anything but have enjoyed truly epic conversations with my grown stepkids over the years. “Alex, do you really believe men walked on the moon?” Well, I had to look at that one again, and learned a helluva lot along the way. (Yes, I do believe astronauts walked on the moon but did not arrive there in the manner pictured, and furthermore that NASA lied about what they saw there — but another story, right?)
Dropping names like crazy I guess, but I’m also a fan of Jesse Ventura, tho I sprinkle salt liberally. I think his best book was American Conspiracies. All of his last four co-authored by Dick Russell, an admired researcher of JFK’s killing and a correspondent of mine for over 25 years. We lived in the same commune in Boston in the sixties tho at different times!
Onward and upward!
Not sure why this comment got caught up, Apsmack. Sorry about that.
Name dropping is good because I am unfamiliar with Wes Penre and David Wilcock and will definitely look into their ideas.
There will be content up on this site soon, I promise. I accidentally launched a site to expose a serial scammer who has been defrauding the atheist and cult watchdog communities – I had no intention of falling so far down the rabbit hole but I did and when I landed I had to discuss it all. It’s interesting seeing how sometimes the skeptics are the most willing to believe the unbelievable. 🙁 But I will return this week with a small entry and will pick up things when I finally figure out how to discuss the whole of David Paulides’ works on missing people in National Parks. Hope you stick around. You’ve got interesting ideas and have read some fascinating things and disagreement is fun when people are polite. And learned. But polite also helps. 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAwn2GJJSuk
This video is entitled “Boston Marathon Hoax revisited and it brings in a ton of revealing evidence.
I’ve been researching this and many other similar issues for many years. The most important thing I’ve learned is that the internet is no substitute for ‘real’ investigations. Both sides sit atop their high horses shouting down at truth seekers that they’ve got the goods.
It’s a closed system no matter what side you’re on. I find the debunkers (you) and the conspiracy peddlers to be extremely condescending to their readers. You bully your readers into choosing one side or the other by belilttling them and suggesting that there’s some sort of pervasive sickness that infects anyone who just can’t see the Troof you’ve apparently discovered from the comfort of your investigative internet command center.
As for the boston bombing, it’s OBVIOUSLY some sort of psyop or, at the least, absolutely not what it has been portrayed by the authorities and media. If you take into account all the unpreceented actions, the inconsistancies and the medias assault on truth, it’s not rational to accept the basic theory we’ve been given.
1. not only are their unanswered questions…but the authorities and media ignore these questions & inconsistancies
2. Where’s the police dash-cam footage showing the brothers battling it out in the street with the brothers?
3. The FBI can go to Florida, interview Tamerlan’s friend, shoot hiim a few times (once in the back of the head) provide multiple anonymous explanations (all different)…and arrest the only witness in the house who is now awaiting deportation?
4. The FBI also claims that, before they shot the kid, he admitted that he and Tamerlan did the double homicide that occurred in Boston 2 years before the bombing
5. two FBI agents invovled with the arrest of the Dzhokhar died a month after the events
6. Dzhokhar scratched his confession on the inside of the boat? (suuure)
7. Dzhokhar & Tamerlan were reported to have robbed a 7-11 which turned out to be false
8. Dzhokhar & Tamerlan allegedly carjacked an anonymous victim and admitted to the crime while venting their hatred of Americans and love for Islam.
I realize you’re blog entry here is focussing on a specific theory and my points might not relate exactly to the ‘actors’ angle. However, I think readers who gravitate towards that theory do so by evaluating all the inconsistancies not just the digital internet evidence of the scene.
At the end of the day these two people are Americans and are innocent until proven otherwise. At least that’s how it goes in my mind. Apparently, the Vice President can do speaches only days after the bombing telling the entire country how guility the SUSPECTS are and doesn’t realize that he just shattered their constitutional rights to a fair trial.
But, as you say, it’s a closed system. I’m likely a “True Believer” as you say. If that’s the case, so be it. I have the sickness. It doesn’t bother me one bit though.
Rock on, Jippers. Sorry your comment got hung up.
“https://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/2013/04/25/were-boston-marathon-bombings-a-false-flag-part-2-the-bomb-drill/”
Hi Anita,
Maybe you’d like to see this research from a conservative blogger.
I’ll have a look at it apsmack!
There’s a YouTube video called Boston bombings fake injuries 5, this shows a lady with clearly zero injuries after bomb blast on legs n face than photos later show impossible injuries from shaprnel cause of the vertical injuries on shins if she was standing at time of blast, this video if you can prove 1 fake injurie proves a false flag or pre knowledge!
I’m not sure which video you mean but if it’s the one I am thinking of, it’s the one that deals with the lady in the pink vest. Correct?
Here’s the thing: I can’t explain why she looked okay earlier and then was being rolled away with a head injury. Perhaps she fell later? Perhaps she faked it. Perhaps perhaps perhaps. But I can tell you this: her sudden injury after the fact doesn’t disprove the Thorndike pictures, which are the crux of my problem with McGowan’s theory. Those pictures, taken seconds after the first bomb went off, shows clearly that no mass organized staging attempt took place. Until anyone who believes in the staging theories addresses how the Thorndike pictures destroy the staging narrative as told by McGowan and others like him, the rest is all details, so to speak.
But if you check back, please leave me a link to the video. I’d be only too happy to watch it.
As I am in the process of reading ALL of the parts of McGowan’s Boston piece, I will only say that your garbled and meandering rejection of his proof of this false flag, speculative or otherwise, does not stand up to any scrutiny. If nothing else alone, the legless “victim” would have gone into immediate shock trauma from loss of arterial blood spraying from both legs. He would NOT have been awake and aware or moving around. Such a victim would have been transported immediately to a hospital, where he may or may not have lived. The fact that it took so long, according to documented photos and videos, for ANYONE to attend him is proof enough.
Also, whe would not have been upright and conscious while being run down the street in a wheelchair while LESS injured were transported via gurney.
As for Dr. Allan Panter, who stated he was 20 feet from the explosion, felt the waves and heat, yet was able to remain on his feet, shirt and pants UNTATTERED while dozens of surrounding “victims” lost limbs and “blood” belies the reality of this very OBVIOUS false flag.
I’m sure you will ban me, etc. which you do to commentors who try to point out the obvious to you.
1) It’s hilarious that you call my reaction to McGowan garbled and meandering because I responded to it in the exact order he laid it out. If it’s garbling and meandering, take it up with the mind who created the format, not me.
2) Respond to what I have written. I have not discussed anything but the staging section of McGowan’s that is presented here. If you want to discuss other elements of McGowan’s theory, do it on your own blog. Sequentially, before you can discuss arterial blood this and bombs react this way that, you need to explain how the hell a staging could have occurred when the Thorndike pictures, which started seconds after the first bomb went off, show nothing of the sort. We have the first 15-20 seconds of the first bombing recorded for us by an amateur photographer. There is no sign of anyone entering the scene to stage anything and there is no sign of any actors arranging themselves while on the ground. THAT NONE OF YOU WHO HAVE COME HERE TO TELL ME I AM WRONG AND TO IMPUGN MY CHARACTER CAN ADDRESS THE ESSENTIAL PROBLEM OF HOW IT IS THAT THE STAGING COULD HAPPEN WHEN THE THORNDIKE PICTURES SHOW NOTHING CLOSE TO STAGING SHOWS ME ALL I NEED TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR READING COMPREHENSION AND CAPACITY FOR THOUGHT OUTSIDE OF YOUR PET THEORIES. I put that in all caps in the hopes it might sink in. I can bold it as well. Let me know. I’m here to help.
So I tell you what Jean – you explain how a staging could have taken place under the watchful camera lens of Ben Thorndike and make a sensible case for it, I’ll look into what could happen when people’s legs are blown off. But since the dude whose lead you are following in this had no idea he was looking at Thorndike pictures, crops of Thorndike pictures, had no idea when they were taken and used them out of sequence, I’m frankly not hopeful for what you may bring to the table. Still willing to listen, though.
So address Thorndike and the complete failure to understand the importance of his picture and how they prove no staging took place and once we’ve established a staging could have taken place, I’ll discuss arterial blood, how long sudden amputations have before they bleed out, why certain people were killed and certain people weren’t, AND I’ll even source cite what I discuss. Until you guys can make a prima facie case that a staging occurred, I have no need to discuss the rest. And after realizing the complete lack of integrity McGowan has in his dealings online as well as his information he shares, that you have read most of his entries carries very little weight with me.
3) Jean, I only ban people who violate my comment policy. My husband banned DK because he saw fit to call my late father-in-law, a war hero and patriot who had done more for his country in a day than most people will ever accomplish in their lives, a liar. That you bring up my ban policy at all shows you are looking for a fight not based on fact because I ban only trolls (as defined as people who come here, repeatedly engaging in disruptive behaviors), people who engage in relentless insulting, and similar. Most of the people who have commented on this page have the capacity to still comment if they like and I state outright when people have been banned. And what’s it to you if I ban people who are inimical to the purpose of this site? Your sense of comment entitlement means nothing to me, all the more hilarious since no one can comment on McGowan’s site at all. If you can read the policy and obey it you can stay. Act like moron and I’ll ban you because I have lost all patience for presumptuous, ignorant comments and the complete lack of cognitive reasoning behind them. So it’s up to you whether or not you stay.
Have you read Jean Bush’s website? With friends like that, who needs enemies. Dave McGowan’s a name-calling bottom feeder who has anti-Semites defending his pathetic theories. I bet he feels good about it, too.
Edited by Anita: LocalHero, your comment was filled with insult and added nothing to the conversation. Either talk about what you know of the Boston bombing or be silent. Leave another comment devoid of content other than insult and I’ll ban you. You can flex your strange ego somewhere else, if that’s all you can do.
“My husband banned DK because he saw fit to call my late father-in-law, a war hero and patriot who had done more for his country in a day than most people will ever accomplish in their lives…”
Could you expound on this? Particularly the war hero aspect.
Sutter, I prefer not to discuss my late father-in-law in any regard on my sites any longer but if you feel you really need the details, contact me at anita@houdinisrevenge.com.
This is the best thing Ive read so far on the whole sorry thing;
http://www.sott.net/article/262361-Why-there-were-no-actors-at-the-Boston-Marathon-bombings
ps . . James Randi?
[facepalm!]
Regards,
Dazyero.
Sorry your comment got hung up as pending!
I was directed to a couple of SOTT articles that dealt with the staging/false flag theories via incoming links from comments on the site. This one is excellent – thanks for linking to it.
What’s wrong with James Randi? I like James Randi. 🙂
One of my relatives was at the Marathon and saw the bombs go off and was slightly injured. She was near enough to the first explosion to see what happened and saw a lot of blood and carnage which left her somewhat traumatized for a while.
As for Jeff. He was photographed by the New York Times having his sutures removed and doing physiotherapy. No doubt someone could analyze when the photos were taken if they are under the impression that Jeff was paid to pretend to loose his legs at the Marathon.
Also his home was made suitable for a wheel chair well after the event. Numerous people evidently know him and therefore would having to be all paid or something to never reveal that he lost his legs before the Marathon.
You would have to stop people saying it was a false somehow. How?
Hi Anita,
A little late in the posting I know….
BUT, I must point out that you refused to address a question that was asked more than once. How come the poster paper and banners were COMPLETELY intact despite the fact that people’s legs were blown 20 feet away? I mean… REALLY??
Thanks for your time, I must admit you pointed out some flaws that I didn’t happen to notice.
No worries about lateness, Douglas. I tell you what: You explain to me why I need to worry about the percussive effects of a pressure cooker bomb on surrounding papers and posters when we have the Thorndike pictures to show us that there was no bomb plant, that a bomb indeed exploded, and that the injured and dead were shown seconds after the bomb went off, on the ground, bleeding and dying, and I’ll research the effects of improvised IEDs on paper when detonated in a group of people. If you can make a compelling case for why such analysis is even needed when Thorndike caught the entire aftermath of the bombs, almost in a video format because he took so many pictures in such rapid succession, and I’ll do it. Deal?
Edited by Anita: You don’t get to unperson me on my own site. Post your weird ideas over on McGowan’s site when he permits such commenting. Until then, it’s Mrs Clark, Pflugervillian Housewife to you.
Edited by Anita: You don’t get to unperson me on my own site. Go beg McGowan to let you comment on his site and insult me over there. God speed!
The 7th photo in the Thorndyke series shows the race clock. Thus we can see that 5 seconds after the blast, Christian Williams is reaching for something he’s going to try to tie around Jeff’s (fake) right leg. Christian is said to have life threatening injuries requiring multiple surgeries. He had to reach past Mery Daniel to do it. Do you find that believable?
People with life threatening injuries can still do heroic (or stupid or irrational or inexplicable) things. A person in shock has that burst of adrenaline nature gives us all in extremis that masks pain and enables us to flee or fight. Leaning over to try to find something to help save the life of someone even worse injured is hardly something so strange it needs to be debunked. I can give you examples if need be.
Also, my site has been plaguing me lately. I can’t seem to upload picture seven at the moment but will return shortly to upload it so people can see what we’re talking about. If you have close-ups that better illustrate what you mean, please post them in reply. (Edit: Pictures have been uploaded and I wonder now if you are using picture seven as a starting place and want to look seconds past it because I can’t see that Christian is leaning over anyone in this picture. Let me know if I got it wrong and I’ll happily look at whatever pic you meant.)
But even so, if Christian was so injured that in this instance it is strange or suspicious he would help Bauman, how does this minutia explain the whole of what happened? Thorndike captured it. These people had seconds to get into position, arrange their clothing, produce visual effects that it would take experts like Tom Savini and Greg Nicotero hours to set up to create a realistic scene of gore and they did it all without anyone rushing into or out of the scene. That is what the crisis actor conspiratists want us to believe. People died and were maimed for life and worrying over the way one person helped another is losing the forest for the trees.
Also, here’s 2 photos that prove Jeff’s leg is fake. In one, he’s lying on his side and his right stump is covered in a black ‘sock’ of some kind. The thigh is several inches shorter than the left. Then in the 2nd (wheelchair) pic, his right thigh is suddenly as long as the left. Clear proof he was an amputee actor.
http://www.nwosolutions.com/viewtopic.php?p=40&sid=a8b8652126062c5eb33fecda35acb174#p40
To All You Honest Readers (i.e., any of you who aren’t professional liars like Anita),
Don’t bother trying to reason with this fool – if she’s not a committee in Langley, she’s just a paid shill whose sole job is to divert you from seeing the evidence right before your eyes. Do yourself a favor and ignore her from now on. You’ll feel a lot better if you do.
Sincerely,
SJP
Mr Palmer, are you leaving me this comment because you disagree with my interpretation of the character of Eleanor in Slaves of New York? Or is it because you find my analysis of Mirbeau so irresistible that you are engaging in school yard hijinks trying to get me to notice you? It has to be that some new content is upsetting you. It can’t possibly be that you are still spinning your wheels over this entry. It’s been over three years since you peed on the floor here like some inbred, yapping dog, overexcited to be permitted among people.
I also thank you for this comment because I’ve had issues with comment notification. Because life is cruel, your comment got through to me in my in-box but Jon’s didn’t. Clicking on the link to your comment brought that to my attention. So let me see what Jon had to say because from the looks of it he’s contributing to a larger conversation and not just insulting or unpersoning me.
Please don’t come back, S. James Palmer, formerly Esquire. You bring nothing but tiresome comments and unless you have something to add to this other than strangely flattering me by insinuating that this entry is so influential to the Boston Bombing Case you think that it must be the work of a covert operative and not that of a housewife hobbyist. We both already know from your previous incursions that you will be unable to control yourself but hope springs eternal. If you comment again you’ll join the eleven others who were unable to control themselves over the last nine years I’ve run this site and you’ll be banned. You may have already been banned but I’ve updated software since then and it’s been years since your last visit so I don’t really recall. It doesn’t matter though. It’s easily rectified either way.
And since all comments left on this site are the property of this site, if you do come back I’ll edit your comment in a manner amusing to me. That really upset you the last time I did this to you. You sent me a blustering series of e-mails full of demands and didn’t stop until I told you’d I publish the whining and threatening messages you were sending. So please go away. I’d rather spend time seeing what Jon has to say than to deal with your nonsense.
Oh god, you are a weird little dude, S. James Palmer. I just found the search string “anita houdini mcgowan palmer” you used to find your years-old comments on this entry. Using Google no less. Dude, you best pray your paranoiac exaggerations of me working for the feds is incorrect because a ten year old kid covers his tracks better than you. To be safe you should get a burner phone, check your car for hidden GPS units and move to a new place under the cover of darkness. From there seek a new identity – I suggest P.S. James IV – and possibly even sex reassignment surgery. Good luck and god speed.
If those were the only two pictures available of Jeff Bauman’s leg I would be more inclined to give this point of view credence but even then I could explain what you are seeing.
But there are other photos that show the length of Bauman’s remaining tibia is much longer than the one you link to and that the length of gore dripping down the side of his leg while he was in the wheel chair was there all along (actually you can see that overhang of skin in the photo you use to show how short the tibia was – it’s tucked up and to the left and part of his fibula is still in there). Foreshortening was at play in the photo you use for proof. Look at Bauman below.
Here Bauman is, still on his side with his knees bent toward his chest, but the photographer is at a different angle and shows how long the remaining part of his tibia is.
Those two photos you link to don’t prove to me Bauman was a crisis actor. Sorry, Jon. 🙁
I came here from Dave McGowan’s site. I wanted to see if anybody could produce something of any value in the face of Dave’s tour de force.
This article never gets going, starting with,
“Perhaps more of this is in store for me. Still, it was, at times, nauseating to read such a virulent lack of respect for the Boston Bombing victims”.
Just a hopeless incitement to mock anger straight off the bat.
I could not read further because I know that if your argument starts with emotion then I think it is fair to assume that more of this kind of emotion conjuring is going to be used throughout. Nauseating tactic as an opener. I want to read it, but alas I cannot. It reads like the Daily Mail, if not worse.
The whole premise of debunking is showing where the errors and omissions are. It is not necessary or in your remit to establish the depravity or character flaws or poor behaviour of the ‘opponent’. Just get to the facts. Get to the point.
Tidy up the messy start, tidy up the superfluous emotional battle cry and get your shit together.
Howard
Howard, I am an author who uses emotion in her writing and it is either your cup of tea or it isn’t but it isn’t an issue that requires me to “get my shit together.” This is a site devoted to extemporaneous writing on a variety of topics, and my emotional reactions and at times bombastic pronouncements are part of my style. If you want just-the-facts sort of writing, read trad-journalism or scholarly papers – not a blog called “Odd Things Considered.”
But let me engage in a different battle cry (though not one I consider superfluous): I’d rather have a passionate writer like McGowan call me nasty names than ever engage in the bloodless writing you seem to require on this topic. I infinitely prefer my messy starts and emotional reactions – my entire oeuvre discussing odd books, cinema, history and conspiracy theory shows this – and it’s baffling you would instruct a stranger with a decade of successful work behind her and suggest that she follow a set of pedantic instructions from someone who didn’t even bother to read the article he’s commenting upon. Dave’s tour-de-force is such because he wrote with passion, anger, contempt and married them with research. May have been ultimately flawed research but his passion was part of his genius. He was interesting and persuasive in a way that pedantic advice like this would diminish had he followed it.
Thanks for sharing, and be well, Howard.
Unfortunately, when you see a gross lie in the first few minutes of reading you have no choice but to discount the entire article.
Point 3- “Moreover, the wheelchair is important because it shows that Arredondo and others on the scene recognized how terrible Bauman’s wounds were. Had they waited for a gurney Bauman might have bled out.”
But the photo evidence refutes these points. In most of the pictures Bauman is actually all but ignored while everyone else with seemingly less intense injuries are attended to. Explain the “hoodie guy” hovering over Bauman in multiple pictures in direct aim of where Bauman’s severed femoral artery (you can’t rip off someone’s leg without severing the artery) was pointing? In the least he should be showered and covered in Bauman’s blood (he’s not), and then changes location all the while ‘looking cool’ in his unremoveable hood and shades?
As a broken leg sufferer I can attest to the fact Bauman is for the most part in a seemingly awkward if not completely irrational and unnatural posture through most of the pictures including his journey in the wheelchair. I traumatically broke my leg and the last thing you sznt to do is sit up and look at it, you lay back and wait for help (I’m in the medical field but seeing your own foot pointing the wrong way would make anyone squeamish)
The good Doctors pristine yellow shirt combined with Arrendondos past seals the deal- I would make no testament to Dave’s conclusions- bug he makes enough obvious ponits to makd you realize- Something Is Rotten In Boston And The “official” Narrative!
Case closed you discounted yourself and your article.
******——- FILED AS DISINFO——-*******
Big Daddy, thanks for sharing the story of your broken leg. I too suffered a broken leg that required reconstructive surgery and a miserable recovery and rehab. I sympathize with what you went through and understand why you are equating your experience with a traumatic leg break with a traumatic double amputation.
But the fact remains that neither of us lost both legs under the knees from a pressure cooker bomb blast. I am not one to completely throw out anecdata and piously invoke the anecdata fallacy – there is a pattern in human behavior that in some cases can be predicted, a common reaction expected. But this particular argument is maddening because it attempts to equate two superficially similar ideas in the abstract – traumatic leg injury – that are vastly different in the specific.
Bauman was thrown to the ground by a bomb blast. The scene was chaotic, loud, and confusing. He was in such an instant state of shock that the pain of losing both legs didn’t register immediately. His reaction to his injuries was wholly different than an expected reaction to even the worst leg break.
Traumatic double amputation due to bomb blast is rare enough that I could not find any evidence that anyone anywhere has determined a typical method of how one holds one’s legs when they get blown off below the knee. Even among people who suffered very similar trauma there does not appear to be an exemplar of body posture. If another traumatic double amputee decided to weigh in on how Bauman held his legs, that itself would not be enough to call Bauman a fake but it would be worth far more than either of our experiences.
As for the rest of your comment: I tell you what, you explain to me how in under 30 seconds while being photographed in a series of more than two dozen photos Williams and Bauman removed Bauman’s legs and hid them from sight, set up the blood and gore, set up the blood flow to cover the ground around Jeff and then took their places without anyone coming into the scene to help them.
You’re in a bind, Big Daddy. You use Thorndike’s pictures to help you see something nefarious in Christian William’s behavior, but the very pictures you tell me to look at show there simply was not enough time for even a seasoned Hollywood special effects man to construct such a scene and that no one entered or exited the scene during the bombing. Explain how all that happened under the watchful Thorndike lens and then I’ll explain how human shock can manifest as blase faux coolness (his sunglasses really annoy conspiracy theorists, as if people haven’t done far stranger things while in a state of shock) and how it is that Williams was thrown atop Bauman and the poor woman in the red coat when the bomb went off without it being proof he was engaging in crisis actor theater.
Until then the evidence you use to make your case, when taken in sequence and not cropped out or zoomed in or deliberately misused in an attempt to prove that the powers that be staged this, disproves you. The only disinfo here comes from people who STILL come to this entry and try to use Thorndike to prove their case when they know, know, know his series of photos show them that a bomb went off and people were gravely injured, some fatally. Once you’ve managed to explain how this was staged when your own evidence shows otherwise, I’ll get right on explaining all you request.
Be well and thanks for commenting.
How does anyone reading this site know that, if they answer your burning Thorndike question, the answer will even be published? Seems odd that no one has said anything yet, even though the answer is straightforward and not difficult to explain when you’ve researched. Additionally, I’m observing multiple posts that are simply silly mockeries of those who originally posted something different, so you’ve established that this is your site, what you don’t like does not get posted.
I wanted to like this. I read your piece on the Pearls, who were nearly biblically revered in my childhood. I read this, made sense. Followed the link to McGowan, and he made a whole lot more sense. Returned and began reading your replies. That’s where you lost me, that’s where I’m at.
Are you insinuating that given the number of scathing comments left on this entry that I must delete anyone who debunked the timing, order and significance of the Thorndike pics? That I would sift through the lunacy I receive on this entry and delete that which may make sense? This isn’t an either/or situation. I’m not married to any specific outcome as long as it uses the data we know is valid, like visual evidence.
I wish someone had written such a comment. If they can prove the Thorndike photos support the false flag scenario, I would almost be tempted to kiss the ground if their research held water. McGowan’s more deranged fans have been a thorn in my ass for years now. To be given well-researched, verifiable proof against the Thorndike pics would be a Christmas gift because I would be able to agree with the excellent research and show how the false flag happened, and leave this entry in the online junk heap.
But that has never happened, never ever never. All the deleted or written over comments came from serial harassers who spent their comment insulting me, other commenters or members of my family, posting data that if kept on my site could cause me legal problems, and who engaged in aggressive posting in an attempt to skew the site’s SEO. If you want to believe those comments contained groundbreaking approaches to the Thorndike pics, there is little I can do other than dig up the originals and even then you could say I altered them before showing you the evidence.
Best way you can see for yourself if anyone had attempted to reconcile the Thorndike photos with the false flag/ crisis actor scenario at the Jeff Bauman bombing location is to look. You won’t find one. You’ll just see the same people using the same out of sequence close crops of the same photos with zero awareness of what their proof means.
But here’s an offer: even though I know you won’t find it, if you do, bring it back here and comment. I’d love to see what you find and if it indeed invalidates my work I’ll keep it posted with a link in the original entry.
Thanks for letting me know you read about the Pearls. I am very sorry to know they had any influence in your life as a child. Much love for you, especially if his teachings affected your family life.
And if you find an excellent debunk of the usefulness of the Thorndike pics, please post it here. You may be surprised how welcome such info would be and how long the comment lasts.
Actually, Angel there’s more to say to your comment and I hope others read what I have to say before they think they need to make such, frankly, stupid and paranoiac statements. I’m not entirely sure why your comment has annoyed me so much but there you are – conspiracy theory makes us all irrational sometimes.
Want to know why Dave McGowan’s site did not permit comments even when he was alive? Purely speculation on my part but I reckon it’s because he had better things to do with his time than deal with the sorts of comments his research generated. I sense I am correct because there is no way one person can defend against the onslaught of this sort of online bullshit unless they occasionally delete or “kill with kittens” the worst of the comments they receive and ban the people who do it. His decisions regarding conspiracy were often baffling to me but in refusing to permit comments he makes perfect sense and was completely on the mark. If I decided to deal with every loathsome commenter who came here solely to disrupt I would have done nothing but deal with those people for months and months after posting this article. No books would have been read or discussed, no meals cooked, no cats brushed, and I would have been called a coward, a traitor or worse every time I went to bed and didn’t answer some keyboard tyrant the moment he demanded I dance for him or her.
You wanna know what were in the comments I kittened or deleted? Here’s a sample, Angel:
–Slander against my late father-in-law, who was a genuine hero and served his country with honor.
–Accusations that I am a government agent on the payroll of various nefarious organizations. Some of the more mellow of such accusations are still up, so let your imagination ponder the sorts of accusations I felt went too far.
–Screenshots of my home as shown on ground view on Google maps.
–Detailed instructions on how to make bombs and guns, all info that could get this site shut down if left online.
–Insults the likes of which you would not believe even if you read them – in fact, given the shittiness of this topic I’m sure I’d be accused of planting them myself in an e-false flag had I not removed them.
–Evil comments wherein some piece of garbage beneath contempt of all sane and good people managed to find out details about the death of a young member of my family and posted the sickening and heartbreaking details on this entry because in his mind it showed that somehow I am part of a cabal of people out to deceive the US public because my family member had the terrible luck to be shot to death. The amount of research that went into linking me to that relative is shocking – it would have taken days, required access to decades old marriage records, and more to find out that I had any link to that young man, let alone the actual relationship.
I try to remain aboveboard, I let people know when I deleted or edited comments, and I do so despite owing no one any such consideration because this is, indeed my fucking site, as you astutely noticed. So in order to make it seem like I am not blocking information that doesn’t exist, in order to please all the Angels in the world, I need to leave up comments calling me names so vile that even I, an inveterate foul mouth, find too much. I need to endure lies about my name and job, leave up comments that outright defame dead members of my family, and information that if followed could end up sending me to jail, to make sure you feel okay after reading comments on this site. Does that seem reasonable to you?
Moreover, if the straightforward information is so easy to find and assemble, do it. Find it, assemble it, create fucking website devoted to it, leave a comment here and I’ll leave it up forever if you promise not to say anything terrible about my family or include information that may be illegal in Texas or California, and I’ll create an entire entry dedicated to your discovery if it checks out. Hell, I’ll leave a link to it even if it doesn’t. I’ll be only too happy to direct the paranoid, lunatic, cruel misery cases that still dog this entry over to see what you have to say on the subject. If you do any of this, which you won’t because commenters like you never do a fucking thing with all the evidence you think you have, do follow this piece of advice: don’t leave your comments open. If you do, if you last as long as I have – years with comments open on an entry where people smugly insult me, defame my family and mock the dead while bringing nothing to the table – I’ll apologize then for being harsh in this comment. Until then realize that your capacity to say anything here at all speaks to an openness you get in precious few single-operator websites that dare discuss conspiracy theory online.
This comment may be one of the best arguments against fundamentalism in all religion – even if you escape the yoke of blind faith, your thinking is forever limited.
Think about it. What you are saying, effectively, is that the reason no theorist of the McGowan variety has been able to marry a staged scene with the Thorndike pictures is because when Anita prevents people from insulting her family that it results in removing every comment disproving her rebuttal on every site online. Surely the reason why I’ve never seen such analysis – and frankly neither have you – isn’t because it doesn’t exist. It has to be because Anita occasionally enforcing what she considers proper on her site is really a one-woman information throttle that affects every information outlet in the world.
So, Anita, what else is hidden behind the curtain?
So, Anita, what else is hidden behind the curtain?
A tattered map marking Jimmy Hoffa’s body, a document proving that steel cannot melt, $20 from DB Cooper’s stash and Obama’s Kenyan birth certificate. And cat hair. Lots and lots of cat hair.
Anita, I have reviewed photographs/video footage and have come to the same conclusion as Dave McGowan.I’d like to leave a link to Aaron Tang’s photographs – https://www.flickr.com/photos/hahatango/8654021280/in/album-72157633252445135/ – I left a comment and I’d appreciate (when you have the time) it if you’d give me your opinion.
Basically it is a short series of pictures showing the actions of an unidentified man in a red tee shirt, whose actions I find to be very strange.
Thank you.
Wow, this is something I would like to study closely but the next few days are tight for me. I’ll revisit this early next week so I can look closely at the pictures and look for the red-t-shirt guy/shirtless guy and see if I see what you do and also see if I can cross reference him in other pics of the scene.
If you’re still reading as I leave this comment, do Tang’s photos show how crisis actors could have staged the scene or do they show the results of such a staging without showing how it was assembled and executed? I’m assuming the red t-shirt guy is part of a staging theory? Let me know if you see this comment before I have time to give you a proper reply. This looks quite interesting – thanks for sharing the link and I’ll get back with you early next week.
Hey Chris, just looked over the pics and your reaction to the shirtless guy. I echo your bafflement that this man with no shirt who appears to have other peoples’ blood on him was handling injuries. It is not ideal in any situation to have a shirtless civilian potentially passing blood-borne illness through panicked handling of injured people.
If we have to choose between staged attack with crisis actors or people under great stress not doing the right thing, I tend to lean toward the latter. For me, your analysis of the shirtless guy points more to medical personnel not doing well in a chaotic situation and bystanders potentially doing more harm than good than an indication that this is a false flag. It’s not so much that “an ordinary citizen” got “to handle somebody’s bloody badly injured limb” while himself covered in blood than it was that no one prevented him from doing so, which can happen in chaotic situations like this. I would hope that if a first responder saw such things that he or she would intervene and tell the bystander to stand down, cease potentially causing infection or further injury and to let personnel do their jobs without interference and that clearly didn’t happen here. This is indeed disturbing and unsettling and, frankly, rather gross, but doesn’t step over into the realm of staging for me.
You have a sharp eye to have caught this – thanks for sharing your observations.
Fucktard,
you are a freaken troll CIA patsy. I can see no one has been here in a while and I wanted to remind you what a jackass you are. Anyone who supports the multiple false flags conspired against this country and our sovereignty in an open forum deserves tar and feathers or swinging from a tree without due process, just as you wish upon us. Please tell your handlers that the constitution and declaration of independence are alive and well and we will never allow your efforts to come to fruition. As you like to say, God speed, your day of judgement will not go well for you fucktard
Rob, could you do a favor for me? I’m very close to reaching Conspiracy Theory Bingo and can fill my card if you just mention the Trilateral Commission or something about Prescott Bush.
My dude, this entry is over eight years old. Very few blog entries get much attention after a couple of years. But don’t let that stop you from coming back over and over. Just don’t expect much interaction from anyone but me because few are interested in the ins and outs of the Boston Bombing in 2021. I don’t really have much interest now either but I like to be a good hostess.
Do you ever feel weird leaving comments that imply that believing Jeff Bauman’s legs got blown up is somehow a violation of the law of the land? Does it ever keep you up at night, wondering if your ideas might be dumb?
Do you ever consider that the “we” you speak of who want to see bad things happen to me because I dared disagree with them about the Boston Bombing might not be the defense of democracy you hope they are? Is there a chance that they are actually keyboard warriors who would shit their pants and sob if they received any IRL pushback, like the soft-bottomed patriots of January 6? Just curious.
And to wrap this up, I can never state this enough: if I am a federal asset, why on earth are you using a real email traceable to you, with nary a VPN to be seen. Aren’t you afraid I will send the Powers that Be straight to your home to do whatever it is they do to conspiracy theorists? I sense that you’re just posturing, that you don’t think I am actually a purveyor of black propaganda and instead just have trouble when people challenge your sacred cows. You aren’t alone if that is the case. But if you genuinely believe what you say, you need to be more careful online lest the next alt cultural blogger you come across really is a federal asset and not, say, a suburban housewife who has an interest in weird and extreme content. Be well, be smart, and maybe consider being quiet.