Thursday, October 05, 2006

Steve Riskus and “Critical Thrash.” Yo! Is That an Adverb or an Adjective Dude?

On edit, September 11th, 2008:

This blog was the first of at least 15 I've posted about Mr. Stephen Riskus, and as such, gets an awful lot wrong. I'm leaving it as I wrote it because it displays such charming naiveté. However, it is the number one landing spot for Google searches. If you are a first-time Googler of things Riskus, I direct you to the following list. Mr. Riskus can be a key to understanding the events of 9/11 in Arlington. I've thoughtfully put asterisks beside two especially useful posts. I will assume you are already familiar with the 18 shots which make up the Riskus oeuvre, so I will not replace the missing Flickr images. My entire Flickr account, consisting of a 3000-image 9/11-researcg collection, which I downloaded off the web, was terminated by Yahoo at the request of government law enforcement authorities. We shall have to soldier on.


Steve Riskus and “Critical Thrash”: Is that an Adverb or an Adjective Dude? 10/5/06

*Steve Riskus and Critical Thrash Redux 11/2/06

Steve Riskus Needs a Critical Thrashing 11/14/06

My Solemn Pledge: Absolutely My Final Riff on Steve Riskus 2/8/07

Dude, It’s Only an Adjective! 2/9/07

The BCO Message Board 2/12/07

A List of IP Addresses Referred by BCO Boards 2/12/07

*Steve Riskus Exposed as a Fraud 2/27/07

Steve Riskus’s Pentagon Photographs: View Page Source 5/14/07

The Ever Expanding Oeuvre of Steve Riskus 5/29/07

Pentagon Coverup? 6/14/07

The Vulvet Underground: A List of IP Addresses 8/8/07

Tragdor IP Addresses Revealed! 11/11/07

Bored Cruel C.O. 11/14/07

Judy Wood’s “Nasty Pussy" 11/19/07


It is relatively straightforward to debunk a key group of photographic evidence taken on the morning of September 11, 2001 in front of the Pentagon, by a supposed eyewitness to a 757’s crash. The 12 photographs were taken by an unknown of indeterminate age named Steve Riskus, which he posted online at his own website, criticalthrash

The photographs made a sudden and very late appearance online several months after 9-11, which is a classic red flag in the eyewitness business, where testimonies may not have a sinister intent, as much as having over time, become redacted and re-informed within a fallible human memory. An unstable business, memory, but it needs to be an exact science, since in a nation of laws, people use the law to put other people to death based upon it.



Moreover, team8plus a specialized 9-11 research group, reported that Steve Riskus had only established his avant guard web site, devoted ostensibly to his abiding passion of skateboarding, one day previous to 9-11, on September 10, 2001, (Unfortunately, I haven’t confirmed this yet. I can’t access the Team8’s website at the moment, or make the hyperlinks work—a temporarily problem I hope, but some dirty tricks being played, I well imagine by the tens of thousands of US Government employees who have too much time on their hands and should get real jobs—and yes, team8’s work is THAT good, it’s deserving of sabotage!



Perhaps an explanation for Riskus’s time lag could be that he only roused himself from a deep dope lethargy to deliver the 12 belated images—four of some interest to the survival of the human species, the remaining eight so inane beyond measure as to become Daliesque: of clouds, and school buses, and a bridge overpass, which nearly exactly mimics the behavior and output of the other insider image maker from that morning: Mark Faram. Apparently, both men stopped making historically vital documentary evidence of this singular event in our nation’s history when they counted up to five fingers on one hand, but they then kept snapping away as they rode off into the sunset. (Riskus, with the benefit of time, credibly states that he left the scene out of fear of further attacks. Faram said he moved on to photograph “other things” (earthworm farms, maybe dude?) and had his pictures up on a news wire “by noon.” When did the FBI get them?



The stylistic “authorial voice” discernible in the Riskus’ series is the same standard military issue found on any government website. This anonymous point of view is so technically perfected, captured in a high resolution, that it lands utterly soulless. Perhaps this Generation X hipster lay-about is ex-military, but we wouldn’t know, as his public profile only begins on 9-10, and since then he has been traveling America photographing concrete municipal skate parks (nice work if you can get it.)


That the scenes pictured are staged events is obvious to my critical eye, if not my thrash. One long shot has a tree front and center blocking the action. Another shot is slightly to the left of the tree, a third, slightly to the right of the tree. Riskus travels in and out through the field of depth. (An unnecessary thing, as apparently most cameras had special lens to distort depth perception anyway. Go to Jack White’s 9-11 Photo Studies @ http://www.911studies.com/, to see some really glaring glitches in the corpus. Mr. White is a retired professional in the field of doctored images made for trans-surrealists. He even ascribes motive to these technical errors. Apparently they’re a well-known workplace hazard—secret clues that pass a supervisor’s muster, but signal something is up to others on the outside.)


The money shot though, depicts twelve eyewitnesses, who all could eventually be identified potentially for sworn eyewitness testimony, but haven’t so far, to my knowledge. It is here that the official Bush administration explanation falls apart.

This peopled image is apparently much doctored. People walk on various levels on planes which are impossible to reconcile with one another. One woman may be sitting out her open driver’s side car window, or standing in the same spot, either looks possible. Almost everyone has exited his or her automobile, which are all going in only one direction—away from the District of Columbia. We know from other photographs that the disabled pole-struck taxi, the Catholic priest’s abandoned automobile, and Elgas’ frenzied Dodge Neon Smithsonian shard-receiver are in these other lanes, but nearer the action at the I-395 underpasses. Other photos show lowered lane closure arms, construction barriers and bypasses, and blocked accesses and exits. Was a though review of the roadway done by the Virginia Highway Department?
Penny Elgas hyperventilates a hyperlink:

I didn't know what else to do so I got out of my car and ran back toward the highway yelling "Go Back! They just hit the Pentagon!" But of course, no one could move in any direction because traffic was at a standstill.”
And Gary Bauer, a former Presidential candidate, happened to be driving into Washington, D.C. that morning, to a press conference on Capitol Hill. "I was in a massive traffic jam, hadn't moved more than a hundred yards in twenty minutes. ... I had just passed the closest place the Pentagon is to the exit on 395.”

But it is the wide spacing between the cars present, the absence of cars stuck in traffic going the other way, the spatially off human relationships, and the unbelievably disparate focus of the observers, which shocks my consciousness.

Offhand, I might could make the claim that nobody in New York City is pictured that morning with their hands resting on their hips, or casually thrust in their front pockets. Here in Arlington, all the men are. In New York, if they look away, it is in horror, not the result of insufficient rehearsal and poor direction.


I’ll throw in a longer aside here. The TOTAL 911 INFO site reports on new footage being incorporated into a revision of the documentary, Loose Change, saying we crew "tracked down the cabdriver who was passing by the Pentagon when a light post came crashing through his windshield. This man, an elderly black gentleman who's been driving cabs in DC since 1959, said that a white man in a white van pulled over, helped remove the light post from his windshield, and took off -- WITHOUT EVER SAYING A WORD! The cab driver went on to say that he was very confused because he kept looking for a plane but all he saw at the Pentagon was a small hole and a small fire -- no debris, no engines, no wings, etc.”)

Incidentally, the improbably large number of witnesses who somehow discerned falling light poles as a distinct and separate component of an event, taking place in nano-seconds at 530 miles-per-hour, who would then just happen to specifically mention this talking point in the standard brief interviews and news accounts, will, in our nation of laws, eventually be put to oath.


Coming up next: were Depleted Uranium munitions used at the Pentagon, like they were in Iraq? Rigorous Hazmat cleanup garb in D.C. Not used in New York. Thousands take ill. Stay tuned.

4 comments:

  1. Actually, I'm pretty sure Riskus' photos went online an hour after he took them. I guess there's a way that could be a classic red flag, too, of course.

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  2. an anonymous coward hiding behind obvious name-choice "issues" makes a poor defense for a so-called friend. Go directly to Grand Jury. Do not pass Go.

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  3. I can afford to purchase my name-brand turds in upmarket retail establishments--I don't need to steal.

    ReplyDelete