Parsing the Phillip Marshall "Murder-Suicide"
The death of Phillip Marshall, author of a book laying much of the blame for 9/11 on “Saudi Intelligence” is being considered as a possible “conspiracy” by a local newspaper, not to mention 9/11 websites and bloggers on both sides of the gun rights debate.
In the “least tinfoil” version of events, Marshall killed his two teenagers, the family dog, and then himself with his own handgun, while his wife, from whom he was separated, was visiting Turkey. He fits the profile of a “family annihilator” (sort of) by virtue of being white, male, using a gun, and having a history of domestic violence. However, the one domestic violence complaint is from 2008, which suggests a one-off event more than an escalating pattern of abuse culminating in murder-suicide. The "family annihilator" specialist quoted in the first article suggests a "downward spiral of mental illness" but offers no evidence of mental illness.
I haven’t bothered to look at the gun rights bloggers’ interpretation of this story, other than to note that it seems to fit nicely into both “omg more gun violence” and “omg more conspiracy to take our guns” paradigms.
9/11 skeptics can reasonably ask whether this could have been an assassination rather than murder-suicide (local authorities claim to have evidence that Marshall himself did the killing, but it’s not evidence they are releasing). However, the version of 9/11 events espoused by Marshall -- which blames the Bush administration and Saudi intelligence for training the pilots who supposedly flew the planes into buildings and entirely discounts the centrality of the explosive demolition of the WTC – seems pretty far from the kind of “he knows too much!” that might really get a person killed by the agency (agencies) behind the 9/11 events, by WTCD standards and even the standards of some commenters at 911blogger. In terms of generating publicity for his book, the deaths of the author and his family have functioned both to raise its profile and to give an opening to ten or so Amazon reviewers who have dismissed the book as the product of a proven nutcase.
The Big Bamboozle http://www.amazon.com/Big-Bamboozle-11-War-Terror/dp/1468094580/ref=sr_1...
UnionDemocrat: More Murder-Suicide Details
http://www.uniondemocrat.com/News/Local-News/More-murder-suicide-details
Phillip Marshall Wrote About a Conspiracy; Was He the Victim of One? http://www.santabarbaraview.com/phillip-marshall-wrote-about-a-conspirac...
The title alone says "this is disinfo"
You can't get much worse than "The Big Bamboozle". It reminds me of the movie Funny Farm where the title of Chevy Chase's character's awful novel in progress is "The Big Heist." I can just see Marshall forcing his wife to read it and, like in the movie, her reaction that it's simply terrible causing their separation. As to the nature of the killings themselves, assuming they weren't staged for whatever reason, I will quote the great Noam Chomsky: "Who knows? Who cares? Pass the high fiber crackers."