Despite statements on 911Accountability.org that Eric D. Williams had "stepped down from involvement in the 9/11 Accountability Conference," Williams was present today (Friday) at a "press conference" for the opening of the symposium at the Crown Plaza San Marcos in Chandler, and I have been informed that Williams will actually have a vendor booth at the conference on Saturday and Sunday. This is astonishing considering the controversy that's swirled 'round Williams and the conference since it was revealed that Williams had authored the Holocaust-denying tome The Puzzle of Auschwitz, which asserts that there were no killer gas-chambers at Auschwitz, and that there was no Final Solution planned and implemented by the Nazis against European Jews.
Because of Williams' involvement, several speakers dropped out of the conference, including Dylan Avery, the boy-wonder behind Loose Change, the one genuine star of the 9/11 conspiracy movement. The fact that the conference, headed by convicted felon Kent "Cow Killer" Knudson, has allowed Williams to participate despite disavowing him in the past and claiming (wrongly) that he had never been the Conference Director, should completely discredit this conference and Knudson, and serve as proof of the conference's willingness to accept Holocaust-deniers and anti-Semites into their midst. Further demonstrating the movement's tolerance of anti-Semites was panelist Jim Fetzer's defense of Eric Hufschmid, whose site Erichufschmid.net is filled with anti-Semitic tripe.
"In my opinion Eric Hufschmid's work -- his book Painful Questions, for example, is an exemplar of excellence in research," asserted Fetzer at one point during the media event. "He was a pioneer. He tackled this difficult subject. I realize that on various grounds, he's a controversial guy. That part I'm not addressing."
This freak Hufschmid argues that "Zionists" pull the strings of white supremacists in the U.S. He also states that: "The Jews are lying about the gas chambers and ovens;" " The Jews helped Hitler and the Nazi party get control of Germany;" " The Jews instigated both world wars;" and "The Jews created anti-Semitism in Germany to drive Jews out of Europe and into Palestine, and to unify Jews, and to bring pity to Jews."
And this dood is "an exemplar of excellence"? Hey, don't hog that tailpipe, Jim, give me a whiff too.
For the most part, the "press conference" was a pep rally for the conspiranuts. At one point the moderator asked those who were actually from the news media to raise their hands, and about three hands went up out of a room full of 60 persons or so. And it's not like the other two guys were from The New York Times. At one point I got booted from the room by some pretend security guards working for the "troofers." But to the credit of the moderator, whom I believe was Phil Berg, he had me ushered back in and allowed me to ask a couple of more questions. After the press conference, such as it was, I spoke civilly with a number of activists, including Don Harkins, who admitted writing an editorial in his Idaho Observer newspaper defending former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke for attending that Holocaust-deniers' conference in Tehran last year. I also went up to Eric Williams and asked him why he was present, and he genially stated that he had a right to be there, though he would answer no questions about his Holocaust-denying ways.
A lot of those present accused me of engaging in guilt by association, but my retort to that is sometimes birds of a feather flock together. Also, it's one thing to accept, say, Purdue University as a source, and it's another to accept some fruitcake Holocaust-denier as a source. The credibility of a source does count for something. I mean, if a member of the Aum Shinrikyo cult asserts that Shoko Asahara has been railroaded by the Japanese government and is actually a man of peace, then I might suspect that the source for that information is a little compromised. The same thing happens if a rabid anti-Semite assures me that the Israeli mossad was behind 9/11.
Finally, as I've mentioned previously, the 9/11 moonbats and Holocaust-deniers have the same m.o., as far as cherry-picking the facts they'll believe or disbelieve, the circular reasoning, the conspiratorial mindset, the use of half-truths, and so on. The presence of Eric Williams and others with questionable views of the Holocaust at this conspiracy convention does tend to bolster the charge by Paula Zahn of CNN and others that there is a virulent strain of anti-Semitism which runs throughout the movement.
More on the 9/11 Conference as the event continues. I don't know if I'll be able to make it down there on Saturday, but I am planning to go Sunday. Also present as an interested observer and interrogator was Pat Curley of ScrewLooseChange. The guy's practically a walking, debunking encyclopedia. I wish I could transplant all of his knowledge of these nutbars into my brain for future use. He knows the facts so well he dances rings around 'em. He's the Yoda of 9/11-denial debunkers. And he has an awesome, detailed, blow-by-blow description of what went down today on his site, so please check it out.
