A New Blog About Steve Riskus

On Edit: I am completely wrong about the basic point I make in this blog and it feels terrible to be so wrong. I finally followed the directions given me by my opponent, and it clearly proved his point. However, I am going to leave this posted here (for the time being,)as an example of transparency and shamelessness, and because it proves a larger point than the workings of reflections and lens. That would be the indispensability, if illogic, of human empathy, which works for me and for those around me. It's also good to be reminded I'm fallible.

I didn't think it possible that the Steve Riskus persona could bear yet one more blog posting by me---this would be number 16---but certain issues have been moving along quickly in the world of matter and form, and a new inter-planetary Riskus relevance has presented itself.

In February 2009 I had an email exchange with somebody who said he was very familiar with Steve Riskus during the period of 9/11. Under the ground rules we established, I can't name this source publicly, nor describe the relationship between them, "either by name or inference," as I am limited to saying only that he (or she,) was "a source that requests to be anonymous."

This limitation, combined with this source's strict adherence to the official storyline of 9/11, and especially Riskus's role in it, made me dismiss our communication as essentially valueless for these past 17 months. For instance, I was sent an email with 24 never-before-seen photographs of Riskus, posted here, mostly in his role as skateboarding enthusiast, but these were taken in the same pointless, anonymous style of much else in the 9/11 Pentagon record---the un-candid emotionless compositions snapped most often when people had turned their faces away from the camera.

One discussion we had could have developed into a meaningful research topic to present publicly, but to do so would give away too much identifying information about the source. However, I found this to be of no great loss, as I gave little in the way of practical credibility to my correspondent, similarly to anyone else who maintains the belief that an American Airlines 757 airplane, with Barbara Olsen aboard, impacted the Pentagon that day.

But what has taken on a fresh meaning for me had to do with an unresolved argument between the two of us in our emails. It began with my effort at seeking a verification, which would back up a significant finding I had made concerning a prominent flaw in the narrative logic of the Riskus 9/11 image record.

That flaw is best illustrated by the following two images. In the first, taken by Riskus we are told, in the immediate aftermath of his reputed eyewitness of a commercial jetliner flying just feet above the ground directly across his field of vision on Route 27 and into the Pentagon building, was a personal reject of his, culled from his online repository of historic images he took that morning, but still found in a cached version of his original file, where it carries the intended meaning, I suppose, conveying his state of shock and upset as he begin recording the tragedy. (The "Critical Thrash" Index of Terror, can be found at archive.org, with this image counted as number 14.)

However, in more recent years, on a message board forum called boardcrewcial.org, Riskus posted several self-portraits, which depict his same left arm seen bare on 9/11, but viewed now as being almost fully tattooed from elbow to wrist.



After my discovery of this inherent contradiction, some apologists for the official story had tried to weasel out of the trap by claiming that Riskus's arm was only tattooed after 9/11, thus justifying his bare arm at the time of the attack. My informant however, was adamantly clear that Riskus did in fact have his arm tattooed on 9/11, saying "He absolutely had tattoos at that time, no question about it."

One of the photos my informant sent me, posted below, which he specified as coming "from a blog in December of 01," would seem to support this point. However a different problem arises with the newly proffered image of Riskus---because it is not his left arm that we see tattooed, rather it is his right arm! But my informant said that "I validate that Steve is in all of the pictures below,"

Here was the nature of our argument, which remained unresolved between us, although it is a case in which only one of us can prevail.

Having asked for and received the fundamental verification I sought, I was subjected to a first volley:

"Those mirror shots are reversed, so his RIGHT ARM is tattooed not the left, as you probably know."

In my response, I felt I was a paragon of empathy and understanding:

"Put yourself into Steve Riskus skin in either of the bathroom photographs. Now feel yourself feeling the tattoos on your arm in imitation of the person of Steve. What are your arms and hands doing? That is his left arm with the tattoos, which we see as being on the right side of him in the mirror. A mirror image is indeed reversed, so how can you say his right arm is tattooed when we see it on his right side? The photograph of a mirror is a different thing."

He got back to me quickly:

"Take a gander at my attached picture. You’re going to have to do this experiment yourself to validate my point… So, If you have a cell phone with a camera or a camera with a preview screen, take sticky notepad and slap it on your left chest. Stand in front of a mirror and take a snapshot and look at the snapshot. You’ll see that it looks 100% as if it’s on the right chest. Notice in the picture the reflection from the side mirror. The tattoo would appear to be contradicting itself since the side reflection shows the tattoo on his right arm. This side mirror is the correct portrayal of which arm has the tattoo.

"Perhaps you’re agreeing with me and we are just talking about it from different viewpoints. My firm conclusion (based on doing the sticky test being performed myself) is that the real tattoo is on his right arm, despite the illusion of the mirror. The mirror is reversed and the camera takes in the reverse because of the convex lens."

I have to admit that I didn't do what he asked. Lacking a handy "sticky notepad," and never having been to college myself, his words were like gobbledygook in my brain, although his labeling images with red arrows was very CIT/PumpItOut/Russell-Pickering of him. Instead, I chose to go on the offensive:

"This is starting to get freaky in my mind! No, my good sir! I do not agree with you! Worse, you pointed out the side reflection (a reflection of a reflection caught in a reverse image?) Steve has to be holding the camera in his left hand!

"OK, let me ask, was Steve left handed?

"OK! Maybe this imagery will work. If I stand before my bathroom mirror and hold a camera in my right hand, and I look at myself in my bathroom mirror holding the camera, it does indeed appear to me the same as Steve looks in his photographs. However, we have left out a crucial step. The camera took a picture of a mirror.

"If you photographed a shop sign you will be able to read the sign in your photographs, yes?

"But Leonardo Di Vinci famously wrote in a backhanded script, which could be read in a mirror.

"If you held up a sign in front of yourself while looking in the bathroom mirror that said, "I love you very much ******," looking in the mirror it would not appear as legible. How would it look in the photograph?

"Actually, I just lost myself.

"DO THIS! Stand face to face with whatever it is that we see in the photograph. I don't care if it's Steve, or his light being, or his fucking etheric second cousin.

"Now travel into his skin and be him, but you'll have to turn around and back in, because you were face to face, right? OK, now look at your hands as him. It's left, right? Now come back here to this reality. What hand did you just look at?"

Perhaps, in my ignorance, I am more in touch with my Darwinian antecedents, like the attribute of opposible thumbs, than his higher logical processes. In any of these images, I simply ask myself, "which thumb am I moving now?"

However, my human opponent must have known I was being recalcitrant, as he called me on it:

"Did you stand in the mirror and take the shot? It’s remarkably an inverse. Even if you take the view or Steve, there is a blatant contradiction of his left and right arm based on the mirror in front of him and the side mirror reflection. I tested it this morning and took the shot and it switched my right arm with my left arm.

"I’ll keep looking at your explanation but mine seems so evidently clear that I can’t seem to understand how you can refute it. It’s as clear as, well, a mirror!"

I can't understand a thing this person says, so I waffled between arrogance and conciliation:

"Clarification here my dear ******: I am talking about his tattooed arm. Were you talking about which hand was holding the camera? I just wanted to be sure that we were on the same page, because, dude---it is the left arm which is tattooed. (I'm going to save my little end-zone victory dance, with it's teasing nah, nah, nah, nah, until you get back to me, but I see it coming---so plan on it later and take it like a man.)"

He got the last word in:

"We have to put this tattoo thing to rest because I did a video tape test and confirmed that the tattoos is on his right arm. I would upload the video but it's really big. Basically, I put a glove on the left arm of an Elmo doll... I roll film and move the camera around and and film directly into the camera as if Elmo was holding the camera towards the mirror and filming himself. Playing back the video shows that the glove looks though it's on the "right hand" even if you take the point of view of the Elmo in the mirror looking back. So, if your hypothesis was true that his tattoo is on his left hand then his photo should reveal the tattoo as appearing to be (not on his left arm as it is but) on his right arm. So, as I see it with this tattoo thing you have received a penalty back on the 40 yard line and your touchdown was declined. Also, see the picture of him cleaning the pool? The tattoo is on his right arm! Where would the left arm tattoo have gone? Those bathroom pics you have here, they are more recent than 911. The beard, the skinniness, the receding hairline, all during the 2003+ years."

At this point I realized we came from different planets---and that, I think, is the lesson for today. What is being revealed here is some basic difference in the deeper thought patterns between two people who really should have, culturally and developmentally, belief systems that are close to the same. But "convex lens?" What planet is that from?

My only tool in this matter is my ability to imagine traveling outside my skin, turning myself around, and then backing into the body of someone else. There, I wiggle my thumb, making mental note of which one it is, so when I travel back into my own perspective I have my reference.

I call this high-class empathy, which along with altruism, is what makes for a good liberal. I truly do not understand the conservative point of view, that of sucking up to the king powers, doing their dirty work, and then claiming that I've worked hard for, and deserve, everything I get---while letting the poor and the misfits suffer in exclusion.

The Martians are coming. They should be here any minute. We are being separated into our different camps, so all is good.

(However, multiple people are apparently playing some of these covert identities like Steve Riskus. His later, post 2003, "bathroom pics" do not alter the equation of the presence or the absence of tattoos on one arm or the other. The September 11th, 2001 photograph of a disembodied arm of clear, unadorned white skin cannot be of the same person as the MySpace-esque-bathroom-mirror-self-portrait board postings of "Steve Riskus"---in the same way that that Steve Riskus cannot be reconciled with the Steve Riskus seen washing down the insides of a swimming pool in December 2001.)

Since there is no actual truth to 9/11 available, all we have are badly told and contradictory narratives such as this. It must have pained the participants, for their hearts clearly weren't in it. But where once the rules of the game stated failure equaled death, in the new millennium post 9/11, such a magnanimous failure is the only way to new life