In a recent interview for a radio show called 9/11 Free Fall (already off to a great start), Jeremy Sagan—the younger son of Sagan senior and his first wife, fellow scientist Lynn Margulis—went off on all us closed-minded sheeple. In response to a prompt asking when he first “woke up,” Sagan remarks:

Well, on first seeing it—anyone seeing it can see that there’s something suspicious about it. I think it was New Year’s 2002, I was at a friend’s house, and they were saying Bush could never do something like this because he was incompetent. But in retrospect, now that I think about it, it’s true. I don’t think Bush could really do it, but that’s why they had him skirted off into Florida, to get him a little bit out of the way. In retrospect, you look at that and its obvious it was a controlled demolition.
Obvious indeed. But what evidence does Sagan, a computer programmer, have to support these supposedly manifest claims? Little more than the usual inside job truther fare, saying, “I think the visual evidence is the most compelling. You have molten steel coming out of the building. Obivously, also the evidence of thermite is very compelling. The other thing I should say, if you look at building 7, the way everything was known before it happened. And the way it was reported in the media before it happened, that doesn’t happen. You know?”

In the latter case, Sagan is referring to an aspect in the “controlled demolition” conspiracy that asserts some people had prior knowledge that the buildings were about to fall. This idea is supposedly supported by the fact that a BBC reporter announced the building at 7 WTC’s collapse 20 minutes before it actually happened. Of course, the BBC reporter referred to it as a “very honest mistake,” and news stations have a rich and vibrant history of getting facts very, very wrong in high stress situations.

Perhaps even more surprising than Jeremy Sagan aligning with the paranoid ranters of the world is the fact that, apparently, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. No, not Carl Sagan (dear god not Carl Sagan). We’re talking about his mother. Yes, Lynn Margulis, Jeremy Sagan’s mommy dearest herself was also a crusader for 9/11 Truth.

CONTINUED

The post Gizmodo Trashes Carl Sagan’s Son As 9/11 Truther appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

For the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attack, the mainstream media has offered an unprecedented level of apparent bias against reasonable people invested in justice for the victims of 9/11. The majority of articles below imply that “truthers” are driven by a fear of chaos and uncertainty to draw comfort from misdirected rage. Most of the articles make sweeping generalization about those involved while others are outright insulting.

The post 10th Anniversary 9/11 Truth Hit Piece Roundup appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

Cyberspace is the perfect place for this contradiction to thrive, for it is both “the Petri dish for paranoids” and also the home of Snopes and other scam trackers. Wikipedia is a battleground between conspiracy hounds and the thousands of amateur sleuths who aspire to do at least as good a job as the fact-checkers at conventional encyclopedias (whether they do so is a matter of considerable debate, including within Wikipedia itself). The Internet is full of bunkum and debunk ’em. Like matter and anti-matter, they should cancel each other out. But the relationship more aptly resembles that between bacteria and antibiotics. Develop an effective tuberculosis vaccine, and the TB bacterium will develop a stronger resistant strain. The American body politic, weakened by successive waves of government lies, media oversights, and the relentless repetition of demagogues, is susceptible to these highly infectious theories.

Most toxic of all perhaps are the myths generated by 9/11. Over the years, I’ve received lots of letters about 9/11 and why it was an inside job. One recent letter insisted that Osama bin Laden was not behind the 2001 attacks, that an Israeli firm in the Twin Towers “received a fax warning them about the 911 attack that would come in a few hours” (which presumably allowed it to warn Israelis and/or Jews to evacuate the building), and that it was not a plane that struck the Pentagon on that fateful day.

Although bin Laden initially denied responsibility, an overwhelming amount of evidence surfaced that linked al Qaeda to the attacks (including, of course, bin Laden himself eventually claiming responsibility). As for the Israeli firm, Odigo, it did receive such a warning, but it was an instant message, not a fax. The message arrived at its office in Israel, did not identify the location of the attack, and was hostile rather than friendly. It in no way demonstrates that the firm, which didn’t even have offices in the Twin Towers to evacuate, was part of a U.S.-Israeli plot to bring down the buildings. As for Flight 77, there were lots of eyewitness reports of its crash into the Pentagon in addition to calls made by people on board. And where exactly did the flight go if not into the Pentagon? I could go on — about the misrepresentations of the size of the hole in the Pentagon, other hoaxes involving advanced warnings of 9/11, and all the other fanciful theories about who was behind the attacks.

The “9/11 truthers” are as resistant to rebuttal as the right-wing “birthers.” They both draw strength from their deep-seated distrust of government and the mass media. They believe not in Occam’s Razor, which argues for building a case on the fewest new assumptions, but in Occam’s Hairball, a partially digested lump of every new assumption that has stuck in their craw.

Long before the Internet, historian Richard Hofstadter warned of the “paranoid style” that periodically grips the American body politic and directs the crowd’s fury at Masons or Jesuits or Jews or Communists. In his recently updated book on conspiracy theories, legal scholar Mark Fenster takes a more benign view. Such theories reflect populist suspicion about the concentration of economic and political power, a suspicion “that can have violent, racist, and antidemocratic effects (as well as salutary and democracy-enhancing ones) on the political and social order, but a strain that is neither independent from nor necessarily threatening to the country’s political institutions or political culture.”

I agree that conspiracy theories do not threaten the status quo, for they usually distract attention from more serious and systemic problems (for instance, bridges and highways and buildings are collapsing all over the United States because of the defunding of infrastructure, and the Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth focus all their energies on explaining how an exploding plane could never make the Twin Towers collapse?). And yes, before you prepare your flaming emails, some conspiracies turn out to have a basis in fact (the Iran-Contra affair, for instance, or the right-wing mobilization to bring down Bill Clinton).

The danger of conspiracy theories lies not so much in whether they are right or wrong but in how they erode our democratic institutions. Instead of democratizing the state, conspiracy theorists tend toward a libertarian downsizing of government; instead of breaking the corporate control of the media, conspiracy theorists create their own dogmatic blogs and websites. Conspiracies sap our will, for who except Jesus or Keanu Reaves can stand up to The Matrix? In fact, conspiracies are the exception to the rule of big institutions, which err on the side of incompetence more often than not. Conspiracies overstate the power of the powerful. As the Iran-Contra affair demonstrated, even authentic conspiracies are fairly inept.

I fear that conspiracies have become the only way for us to organize the unruly flow of information that assaults us daily. We create all-encompassing, quasi-religious explanations to make sense of the supernova of our post-modern experience.

The post The Bunkum of John Feffer appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

Kay’s book is half reportage and half evidence. Both halves demonstrate that mistrust in institutions—which aren’t doing the best job of running things right now—is driving a wave of conspiracy-mongering. To a man, the leading 9/11 Truthers that Kay interviews say that they found their obsession because they didn’t trust the government and they sought out information from some samizdat source. …

Look at the 9/11 conspiracy. Some of Kay’s sources have tenuous connections to reality. Most of them got interested in the conspiracy because something else seemed … wrong. As Kay points out, “Trutherism” didn’t really take off until 2003, when it was clear there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. If you were already inclined to think that George W. Bush had been unfairly put into office in 2000, if you had read the Project for a New American Century’s letters from the end of the Clinton years, well, this was enough to drive you nuts.

The post David Weigel Reviews "Among The Truthers" appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

I have little doubt that over the years, Bill Moyers and Robert Parry have received a multitude of emails from people demanding they give attention to the cover-up of 9/11. I have little doubt that a large majority of those emails talked about “crazy” theories, or made accusations of them for not covering certain issues. Unfortunately, there are people in the 9/11 Truth Movement who do these things. I, myself, have been known to write a nastygram on occasion.

However, it is well known and said by many that after the 9/11 attacks, the media in this country did not do it’s job. Dan Rather said on May 17, 2002, “there was a time in South Africa that people would put flaming tires around people’s necks if they dissented. And in some ways the fear is that you will be necklaced here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck. Now it is that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions.” On April 25, 2007, Dan Rather told Bill Moyers that “there’s no question that we didn’t do a good job. We weren’t smart enough, we weren’t alert enough, we didn’t dig enough, and, we shouldn’t have been fooled in this way.” Helen Thomas was adamant about the media’s failure after 9/11. “They (the media) rolled over and played dead.”

Here is just one example of too many to mention of the media not doing it’s job.

On January 31st, two acts of civil disobedience for 9/11 Justice were committed in front of the White House and 10 Downing Street respectively. Not one news outlet reported on it. Even a news outlet that promised me they would report on it, did not. The excuse given to me was that Egypt’s revolution was more important.

On that same day, the September Eleventh Advocates released a statement pertaining to 9/11 Whistleblower Berhrooz Sarshar. This statement asked, “that the transcript of Mr. Sarshar’s interview be immediately declassified,” and that they respectfully request, “that the former Chairman, Governor Thomas Kean, Vice-Chairman, Mr. Lee Hamilton and the Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission, Mr. Philip Zelikow, promptly answer the questions herein.”

Neither Thomas Kean, Lee Hamilton, or Philip Zelikow responded. As a result of their refusal to respond, 9/11 Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds released a transcript of one of the times Berhrooz Sarshar testified. This transcript speaks of foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks, and an order from above to disregard any knowledge of it. Not one news outlet reported on it.

9/11 was the event that created the “Post-9/11 World.” If any information comes out that says we were lied to about that day, then that is essential, newsworthy information. Period. For some reason, our media doesn’t agree with me.

It is the media’s job to make sure citizens’ are aware of what’s going on in their country, and in the world. It is absolutely essential that we are an informed citizenry because if we aren’t, then we pay a huge price.

With that in mind, can you blame advocates for 9/11 Justice for getting angry with the media for not covering the obvious problems with the “official account” of 9/11? Bill Moyers says the facts still matter. I agree, and that’s why I wrote an article entitled The Facts Speak For Themselves. You may agree or disagree with some of the content in that article. However, I challenge you to tell me after reading it that it isn’t absolutely imperative to have a real investigation into the 9/11 attacks, the event that created the “Post-9/11 World.”

Click Here To Read Bill Moyers Attack Against Advocates For 9/11 Justice.

The post Response to Bill Moyers on 9/11 Truth appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

(Last October, I angered some on the Left by noting that the four previous examples of progressives trying to punish Democrats by sitting out elections or supporting third parties – 1968, 1980, 1994 and 2000 – didn’t work out very well, either in the short- or long-term. I meant the piece to be a historical review of these tactics but it apparently touched some raw nerves.)

Similarly, my brief criticism of the “truthers” prompted a wave of angry e-mails and blog postings. In part, I was accused of showing inadequate respect for the “truther” research and was scolded for not delving deeply enough into the intricate arguments behind their claim that 9/11 was an “inside job.”

But the truth is that I have devoted way more time to these preposterous notions than they deserve. And, since time is a zero sum game, every hour wasted on this strange parlor game means that real crimes and government wrongdoing get neglected. Still, there may be lessons to be learned here, though not the ones the “truthers” would want.

In following the curious twists and turns of the “truther” movement over the past nine years, I have become concerned that the anti-empiricism which has long infected the American Right has now spread to some quarters of the Left (although I realize that many on the Left reject the “truther” allegations as nonsensical and that some on the Right have embraced them.)

Indeed, if you were to teach a course on sophistry, you might wish to make a case study of the “truther” movement, which has deployed nearly every imaginable example of false logic, from the use of endorsements as a substitute for evidence to insistence that any miniscule doubt on one side of an argument requires its rejection while even the thinnest possibility on the other must be accepted as serious, if not true.

This kind of evidentiary game-playing is what I had grown accustomed to in dealing with the neoconservatives, such as their exaggerations of foreign threats, from the 1980s (when Nicaragua’s Sandinistas were a danger to the Panama Canal and Texas) through George W. Bush’s presidency (over Iraq’s WMD) and even to today (with worries about Iran’s nuclear program).

For instance, when Vice President Dick Cheney and the neocons were arguing for war with Iraq, they insisted that even a one percent possibility that they were right about Iraq sharing WMD with terrorists meant that their fear must be accepted as certainty, while the counterpoint that Iraq had no WMD had to be proven to some impossible 100 percent level. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “One Percent Madness.”]

Using such imbalanced – and irrational – constructs, in effect, predetermine the outcomes, since you can never prove something to 100 percent certainty and there is always a chance for some one percent feasibility on the other side. These loaded-dice arguments can lead nations into ill-conceived wars or persuade people of arguments that otherwise would be dismissed as crazy.

‘Truther’ Narrative

Though many “truthers” shy away from an explicit recounting of their presumed narrative – favoring instead “poking holes” in the official story – here is some of what they seem to believe:

Operatives working for President Bush wired 100-plus floors of the World Trade Center towers with explosives as well as the support structure of nearby Building Seven. They did all this – a complicated process that would have taken a large team of experts weeks and would have required extraordinary access to the buildings – without anyone seeing anyone doing any of this.

Then, when the two planes crashed into the towers on 9/11, Bush allowed them to burn for a while before deciding that the maximum psychological effect required that the buildings be brought down. So, the explosive charges were detonated remotely in sequential order from the top down.

After the fire and devastation spread next door to Building Seven, Bush’s team also detonated explosives there to bring down that smaller tower, presumably with the motive of destroying government documents that were located in offices there.

Meanwhile, in Washington, a third plane was approaching the Pentagon. Passengers onboard made frantic phone calls describing the hijacking. Plus, since the Pentagon is not in some secret location – it sits next to Interstate-395 and can be viewed from high-rises across the highway in Crystal City – some hundred or so people reported seeing the plane head into the Pentagon.

Some of the plane’s wreckage was strewn across the Pentagon grounds, and authorities later reported recovering the plane’s black box inside the Pentagon. But “truthers” insist that no plane hit the Pentagon; that Bush’s team attacked it with a missile.

However, nobody saw a missile. Nor would there be any way to explain the plane wreckage on the grounds, since nobody saw more Bush operatives driving around the Pentagon grounds planting fake pieces of the plane – even as emergency personnel and others rushed to the crash site.

To label the “truther” version of the 9/11 events nutty would seem an understatement – and there are other parts, including stuff about fabricated voice messages, that are arguably crazier. Indeed, the “truther” account has sometimes struck me as a parody meant to bring ridicule on more serious conspiracy investigations such as those into the JFK assassination.

As I pointed out in the earlier story – the one focused on Palin’s victimhood – there has not been a single witness (or document) emerging from the ranks of Bush’s supposed operatives to suggest that any of the “truther” narrative happened – even though the scope of this conspiracy would have required scores, if not hundreds, of participants.

Having covered many real government conspiracies in my career, I can assure you that there are always witnesses who speak for a variety of reasons: a guilty conscience, a boast to a girlfriend, a plea bargain when they get in legal trouble on something else.

In writing about Oliver North’s secret Iran-Contra network in the 1980s, our team at the Associated Press had two dozen sources. For our first Contra-cocaine story in 1985, Brian Barger and I had a similar number of sources, including documents from Costa Rica and a White House official describing a CIA analytical report on a Contra helicopter purchased with drug profits.

Yet for the “truther” conspiracy theory, more than nine years have passed and not a single witness has emerged who participated in planting the explosives floor by floor in the Twin Towers or carrying out the missile attack on the Pentagon or any other capacity that the conspiracy would have required.

Manufacturing a Case

Lacking any real evidence, like a knowledgeable witness or a government document, the “truthers” have built their case on alleged anomalies in the collapse of the buildings and on the shape of hole left in the side of the Pentagon. Though in all cases scientists and engineers have provided plausible explanations for these events, the “truthers” have tried to counter by marshalling their own supporters who are willing to challenge these analyses.

For instance, the “truthers” have long claimed that the collapse of Building Seven is the prima facie case for their conspiracy theory, especially, they say, its drop at near freefall speed. However, the speed of the collapse should not be all that surprising because Building Seven had a large atrium. Once the atrium’s supports were breached by the shock of the Twin Tower collapse and a resulting fire, Building Seven would logically fall into the open space at near freefall speed.

Similarly, the structure of the Twin Towers, with interlocking beams allowing them to have height without the weight of older skyscrapers, would have produced the falling in on itself effect once the beams were weakened by the impact of the planes and the heat from the fires.

However, since the events of 9/11 were unique – i.e. no one had tested flying fuel-laden passenger jets into buildings identical to the Twin Towers or the Pentagon – it is impossible to assess the various factors with 100 percent certainty. Thus, under the rules of the “truther” parlor game, the official analysis must be dismissed and a contrary analysis – however implausible – must be taken seriously.

On other points, the “truthers” have simply stretched the truth. For example, one “truther” claim was that they had discovered a residue of explosive thermite in the World Trade Center wreckage. However, when I checked their source, I saw that the claim was actually that the residue was consistent with thermite, not that it was thermite.

Much residue found after a major fire can be “consistent” with thermite, but beyond that, scientists noted that thermite doesn’t provide the explosive force for a building demolition. So, the “truthers” transformed their discovery into “nano-thermite,” a claim that is still making the rounds.

As for the Pentagon attack, the “truthers” claim that the aluminum wings of the plane would have cut a horizontal gash in the reinforced concrete walls of the Pentagon. Scientists, however, have explained that the angled-back wings actually would have compressed against the sides of the plane creating the more circular hole that was left.

But the “truthers” have claimed that the circular hole proved that Bush’s team had fired a missile into the Pentagon (though no one had seen such a missile.)

Similarly, evidence that al-Qaeda actually carried out the attack – that it was as Jon Stewart has said “an outside job” – must be rejected. Even confessions (or boasts) from al-Qaeda leaders must be thrown out because, the “truthers” insist, these admissions only resulted from torture (for those in U.S. custody) or from CIA fabrications (for those not in U.S. custody).

So, when Ayman al-Zawahiri issues one of his videos seated in front of a poster of the burning Twin Towers or when Osama bin Laden praises the hijackings, those statements must have been faked by the CIA – and you can’t prove to a 100 percent certainty that they weren’t, can you?

A Disinformation Campaign

My concern about the “truther” movement dated back to almost its origin. Because of the position of Consortiumnews.com as an Internet site which has investigated real conspiracies since 1995, I was in on many of the early e-mail exchanges regarding the 9/11 case.

Essentially, the discussion broke down this way: Some participants felt that Bush had demonstrated his arrogance and incompetence when he brushed aside warnings about a likely al-Qaeda attack. (This is the position that I personally feel is best supported by the available evidence).

A second group, however, took the same evidentiary frame and gave it a nasty twist, that Bush knew the attack was coming and “let it happen.” (Though I don’t believe there is sufficient evidence to support this conclusion, this analysis at least has the benefit of some factual foundation.)

But there was a third group, which maintained that something more dramatic was needed, that Bush had so bamboozled the American people that they needed to be shocked out of their trance – and to do that required convincing them that “Bush made it happen.”

Perhaps, because of its splashier allegations, the “Bush made it happen” crowd — with claims about “controlled demolitions” and a “missile hitting the Pentagon” — emerged as the dominant force in the “truther” movement, eclipsing those who favored more targeted investigations into such areas as 9/11 funding and the role of Bush’s allies in the Saudi royal family.

These more extreme “truthers” started out with their “made it happen” conclusion and then assembled their case. That is the opposite of how real truth-seeking occurs (with the evidence first assembled and then objectively analyzed before any indictment is made).

Some on the Left have defended the “truthers” as at least well-meaning, since Bush’s administration was seen at the time as assaulting the U.S. constitutional republic and possibly creating an American-style fascism. The ends of disrupting Bush justified the means of spreading disinformation.

There was a sentiment, too, that Bush, Cheney and the neocons (who seemed to wish for something like another Pearl Harbor to justify their military interventions abroad) deserved a taste of their own medicine, even if the “truther” narrative was wildly implausible.

As the years went by, I would occasionally cross paths with “truthers” and listen to other arguments they made for their cause. Some felt that their movement was the “only” approach that was getting “traction” against Bush. Others claimed “9/11 truth” could be the impetus to get progressives to invest in media (something that I have long advocated).

Yet, these pitches were about achieving political ends, not about meeting the evidentiary needs of a serious investigation.

Indeed, at times, “9/11 truth” has taken on the feel of a political movement, if not a cult. One elderly historian told me that he had felt “pressured” by “truthers” to give them something that they could cite as an endorsement of their position. Other notable people on the Left have described meetings with “truthers” as akin to “recruitment” sessions.

So, despite the latest rash of angry e-mails, I repeat my advice in the wake of the Tucson massacre – that just as one would hope the Right would rein in some of its crazy allegations about President Barack Obama’s birth and its violent rhetoric against members of Congress, one might also expect that the Left would show similar care in its propaganda attacks on President Bush.

Update: On Sunday, in a profile of alleged Tucson gunman Jared L. Loughner, the New York Times reported that as “a curious teenager,” Loughner “became intrigued by antigovernment conspiracy theories, including that the Sept. 11 attacks were perpetrated by the government. …

“His anger would well up at the sight of President George W. Bush, or in discussing what he considered to be the nefarious designs of government.”

Given how a mentally disturbed young person can process information (or disinformation), it is incumbent on all of us who speak in today’s public square to be responsible, especially when we make serious allegations like suggesting that Bush and the U.S. government “made” 9/11 happen.

The need for this careful behavior is true for the Right and it is true for the Left. The Center (including the mainstream press) also has a deep responsibility to examine suspicions of government wrongdoing when there is credible evidence and to have the courage to speak truth to power regardless of the pressures and consequences.

For the Center to renege on that duty (such as when the mainstream press attacked Gary Webb’s Contra-cocaine reporting in the mid-to-late 1990s) may be rationalized as “good for the country” in the short-term (by discrediting ugly truths) but whitewashing only feeds the public’s appetite for conspiracy theories on the Right and the Left.

In other words, to help avert future tragedies like the one in Tucson, all parts of the U.S. political/media system need to work better and take their responsibilities to the public more seriously. That would include not spreading wild accusations with weak or non-existent evidence, but it also would require holding Bush and his associates accountable for what they actually did.

Surely, there are plenty of legitimate reasons to decry (and investigate) what Bush did in office: his use of torture, his misleading the nation to war, his reckless tax cuts for the rich, his botched economic policies, and, yes, his failure to protect the country from the 9/11 attacks.

However, it doesn’t help the cause of accountability to make unfounded allegations against Bush – indeed it hurts. By floating unsubstantiated and bizarre claims about “controlled demolitions” and a “missile hitting the Pentagon,” the “truthers” actually make it harder to proceed with investigations into important areas of doubt about 9/11, like the financing and the Saudi role.

As for the crazy stuff, enough is enough.

Related Article: Robert Parry Decoupling From Reality

The post Robert Parry's 9/11 'Truth' Parlor Game appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

Ex-U.S. Sen. Mike Gravel is likewise agitating to place initiatives on the 2012 ballot in California and other states mandating a thorough investigation of the 9/11 disaster, including alleged manipulation of the country’s air security system just prior to the disaster
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Here in San Diego, the so-called San Diego 9/11 Truth Group – one of the most hardcore of the 9/11 conspiracy organizations – claims its monthly meetings in the San Diego area community of Hillcrest routinely attract up to 200 seekers, reflecting a steady increase in attendance in the last several years.

The 9/11 conspiracy push has been dismissed by both liberals and conservatives as a preposterous set of scenarios conjured on a mythic scale.

Some leftists have compared the campaign to the workings of the Christic Institute, which in the 1980s charged that the U.S. government had for decades sponsored a secret team of operatives involved in everything from the murders of journalists to the bombings of dissidents in such countries as Nicaragua. Never mind that a 1985 lawsuit inititated by the institute under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act was dismissed by a judge prior to trial, with the organization ordered to pay defendants about $1 million in damages.

However, such considerations have hardly fazed the determination of a core group of 9/11 true believers dedicated to proving that traitors within the federal government colluded to bring on the momentous disaster with the intention of fostering heightened world tensions and empowering various elite economic groups, such as the vast U.S. military-industrial complex.

“Our message is gaining traction,” said Dwain Deets, a retired flight research engineer at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration who now edits the 9/11 Investigator newspaper.

Deets, a member of the San Diego 9/11 Truth Group as well as the liberal Progressive Democrats For America, will be among the guests on Ventura’s “Conspiracy Theory” 9/11 segment next month.

He stood last Thursday in front of a sprawling 9/11 exhibit on a walkway near North Harbor Drive during a Veterans Day celebration.

The impromptu setting included a dozen or so booths manned by members of Veterans for Peace and kindred groups and entrepreneurs.

A block away, a parade honoring U.S. servicemen featured military marching bands and politicians like liberal Rep. BoB Filner (D-Calif.).

Deets pointed to oversized photographs mounted on easels depicting Building 7’s demise on 9/11 in second-by-second sequence – a train of events he said indicates that the skyscraper was bombed from the inside.

The National Institute of Science and Technology “had recordings of explosions in the vicinity (of the structure), but withheld this evidence until well after issuing their final report,” Deets claims, adding that the account did not even mention the possibility of explosions.

Sceptics of the 9/11 conspiracy line have been especially critical of accusations that longtime Republican officials like Cheney could have been a part of such widespread intrigue involving hundreds of connivers.

Indeed, news of such subterfuge would likely destroy the conservative movement for good, as well as bring down a long list of military contractors and associated firms and interests.

Deets nevertheless noted that the World Trade Center housed such tenants as the Department of Defense, the Securities and Exchange Commission and various other federal agencies. “The SEC was investigating Enron,” he suggested, emphasizing that the company would have benefitted from the World Trade Center carnage.

Deets stressed that the 9/11 coverup is being facilitated not only by Republicans, but by their Democratic counterparts.

Democrats “are stonewalling any investigation” in 9/11, he said. People attending the Veterans Day festivities who walked by the 9/11 showcase displayed a mix of emotions, from bafflement to mild agreement, as they viewed the hazy, black and white photographs of the deadly onslaught.

“Maybe there’s something to it … Nothing would surprise me these days,” said Marita Bardoni, whose brother recently returned from a two-year military stint in Iraq. “It is odd that everything has changed for the worse since it (the 9/11 attack) happened.”

But World War II veteran William Hemmings was having none of it.

“If any of this were true, Cheney would be lynched from the Washington Monument in a minute,” Hemmings said. “A conspiracy supposedly this big could never be kept secret. Somebody would have stepped forward by now.”

Frank Green is a veteran journalist and lives in the San Diego area. He can be reached at fjkbgreen@cox.net

The post Counterpunch: A Kinder, Gentler Hit Piece appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

In a weird alignment of planets, this week in the news, at home and at work I’ve been plagued by conspiracy theorists determined to convince me, once again, that George Bush, Zionists or even the Vatican were responsible for the September 11 attacks.

In general, I consider conspiracy theories the rabid fantasies of lonely blokes who failed at university and have spent the rest of their lives trying to prove they’re smarter than everyone who passed.

And since many of them are, unlike me, smart enough to retain and regurgitate precise (albeit selective) scientific detail, it makes me a pretty soft target for their rants. Therefore, in preparation for my next 9/11 nut job assault, I’ve been working on an official response.

I don’t know if you’ve checked, but there are significantly more websites dedicated to conspiracy theories than to the mainstream point of view. In fact my 15-year-old got half way through a history assignment on September 11 before her confused cries for help alerted us to the fact she was reading the wrong stuff.

I know if you’re a conspiracy theorist you’re mad at me now for not letting my daughter read everything and draw her own conclusions. Honestly, I was just saving her the time.

With a nod to the animated series South Park, in short, there are three reasons I don’t think George Bush, The Pope or even the CIA did it – love, logistics and dibber-dobbers.

Truth Movement websites, as they’re known, routinely claim there were no terrorists on board any of the 9/11 flights. Apparently the pilots were either stooges or, in the case of the World Trade Centre crashes, the planes were military jets guided remotely into the buildings with no passengers on board. The phone calls from supposed loved ones were faked and the actual passenger jets that went missing on the day were shot down over the ocean.

The heart of the conspiracy theory stems from how the buildings collapsed. In particular, that an aviation fuel fire is incapable of melting steel, that the buildings collapsed upon themselves and that a third building, not hit by a hijacked plane also collapsed. There’s plenty more, by the way, but this will do for now. Based on those propositions, the truth movement contends all three buildings were imploded in a “controlled demolition” using explosives planted at some earlier time.

They also claim the Pentagon was not hit by an airliner but by a guided missile and the fourth airliner, United 93, was shot down en route to the capital because the passengers threatened to land it successfully thus exposing the plot.

To accept any of it, you have to believe there are thousands of people connected to the US government evil and brilliant enough to co-ordinate such a complex plan, without one person ever dobbing. Keep in mind that the group had to train or invent 19 fake hijackers, complete with elaborate background stories and send them to flying schools across the country to ensure there was someone to blame following the event.

Imagine the paperwork. No matter how rotten you think the US administration is there must be some good people in there. And surely they’d be looking for paperwork on every new recruit, every planning meeting, request for flight times, aircraft requisition, talent fee, mislaid guided missile or flying student conveniently made disappear. And don’t get me started on the overtime it would have taken for the bomb squad to wire up the twin towers.

It’s not only ridiculous to suggest there were hundreds of civil servants willing to cold heartedly slaughter thousands of their countrymen, it’s deeply offensive. And just quietly, you know how all of your friends have stopped arguing about your whack job theories? I promise you, it’s not assent, they’re just bored.

It’s not only ridiculous to suggest there were hundreds of civil servants willing to cold heartedly slaughter thousands of their countrymen, it’s deeply offensive.

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To many people in the West, the statement was ludicrous, almost laughable if it weren’t so incendiary. And surveys show that a majority of the world does not in fact believe that the U.S. orchestrated the attacks.

However, the belief persists strongly among a minority, even with U.S. allies like Turkey or in the U.S. itself. And it cannot be dismissed because it reflects a gulf in politics and perception, especially between the West and many Muslims.

“That theory might be true,” said Ugur Tezer, a 48-year-old businessman who sells floor tiles in the Turkish capital, Ankara. “When I first heard about the attack I thought, ‘Osama,’ but then I thought the U.S. might have done it to suppress the rise of Muslims.”

Compassion for the United States swept the globe right after the attacks, but conspiracy theories were circulating even then. It wasn’t al-Qaida, they said, but the United States or Israel that downed the towers. Weeks after the strikes, at the United Nations, President George W. Bush urged the world not to tolerate “outrageous conspiracy theories” that deflected blame from the culprits.

However, the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan provided fodder for the damning claim that the U.S. killed its own citizens, supposedly to justify military action in the Middle East and to protect Israel. A 2006 survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project found that significant majorities in Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan and Turkey – all among the most moderate nations in the Islamic world – said they did not believe Arabs carried out the attacks.

Two years later, a poll of 17 nations by WorldPublicOpinion.org, an international research project, found majorities in nine of them believed al-Qaida was behind the attacks. However, the U.S. government was blamed by 36 percent of Turks and 27 percent of Palestinians.

Such beliefs have currency even in the United States. In 2006, a Scripps Howard poll of 1,010 Americans found 36 percent thought it somewhat or very likely that U.S. officials either participated in the attacks or took no action to stop them.

Those who say the attacks might have been an “inside job” usually share antipathy toward the U.S. government, and often a maverick sensibility. Besides Ahmadinejad, high-profile doubters include Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Former Minnesota governor and pro wrestler Jesse Ventura has questioned the official account. Conspiracy theorists have heckled former President Bill Clinton and other prominent Americans during speeches.

Controversy over U.S. actions and policies, including the widely discredited assertions that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, reinforced the perceptions of conspiracy theorists. Iranians dug deeper into history, recalling the U.S.-backed coup in their country in 1953.

“Initially, I was doubtful about the conspiracy theories. But after seeing the events in later years, I don’t have any doubt that it was their own operation to find a pretext to hit Muslim countries,” said Shaikh Mushtaq Ahmed, a 58-year-old operations manager in a bank in Pakistan. “It’s not a strange thing that they staged something like this in their own country to achieve a big objective.”

In March, an editorial in The Washington Post harshly criticized Yukihisa Fujita, a lawmaker with the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, for saying in an interview that some of the Sept. 11 hijackers were alive and that shadowy forces with advance information about the plot played the stock market for profit. Fujita said the article contained factual errors.

The record shows that al-Qaida agents on a suicide mission hijacked four American passenger planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people. The evidence is immense: witness accounts, audio recordings, video and photographic documentation, exhaustive investigations and claims of responsibility by al-Qaida.

Yet every fact and official assertion only feeds into alternative views that become amplified on the Internet, some tinged with anti-Semitism because of the close U.S.-Israeli alliance. They theorize that a knowing U.S. government stood by as the plot unfolded, or that controlled demolitions destroyed the Twin Towers, and the Pentagon was hit by a missile.

“All this, of course, would require hundreds if not thousands of people to be in on the plot. It speaks volumes for the determination to believe something,” said David Aaronovitch, the British author of “Voodoo Histories: the role of Conspiracy Theory in Modern History.”

“This kind of theory really does have a big impact in the Middle East,” he said. “It gets in the way of thinking seriously about the problems in the area and what should be done.”

A U.S. State Department website devotes space to debunking conspiracy theories about Sept. 11, in the apparent belief that the allegations must be addressed forcefully rather than dismissed out of hand as the ruminations of a fringe group.

“Conspiracy theories exist in the realm of myth, where imaginations run wild, fears trump facts, and evidence is ignored. As a superpower, the United States is often cast as a villain in these dramas,” the site says.

Tod Fletcher of Petaluma, California, has worked as an assistant to David Ray Griffin, a retired theology professor, on books that question the Sept. 11 record. He was cautious about the Iranian president’s comments about conspiracy theories, suggesting Ahmadinejad may have been politically motivated by his enmity with the U.S. government.

“It seems like it’s the sort of thing that could lead to further vilification of people who criticize the official account here in the United States,” Fletcher said.

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Now let’s be honest. The only coincidence was the timing. The similar content of the two claims illustrates a growing menace in the Muslim world.

The myth-making about 9/11 is spreading, and so is the danger. Nine years after the mass murder by Islamic terrorists, conspiracy theories are deflecting Muslim guilt and inflaming a new generation of jihadists, many of them living in the West.

It is comforting for Americans to dismiss the “truthers” as crackpots since they are the same kind of people who celebrated as the towers and the Pentagon were burning. But the increasing boldness of the wild claims is an alarming indication of how widely accepted they are among mainstream Mideast audiences. We ignore this new phenomenon at our peril.

While Westerners who buy the claims tend to mutter to themselves on the subway and swear the CIA scrambles their television, the scary stuff coming from the Muslim world cannot go unchallenged.

“Some segments within the US government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and to save the Zionist regime,” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in his Thursday UN speech.

The same day, about three miles south, a veiled Aafia Siddiqui, sentenced to 86 years for trying to kill Americans in Afghanistan and who also plotted New York attacks, charged Israel was connected to 9/11. “I’m not anti-Israel, but, yes, I have said they masterminded 9/11 and I have proof of that,” said the MIT-educated Pakistani.

Whatever their mental state, their message must be taken seriously. To many Muslims, the belief that Islamists are being blamed for an atrocity carried out by Americans or Israelis fits into a larger theory that the West is oppressing Islam.

As I have written, firm opposition by New Yorkers to the Ground Zero mosque is another piece of “evidence” to believers. In short, anything and everything we say and do is proof Islam is under attack.

Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, identifies the wide acceptance of the victimization narrative as a major factor fueling terrorism. As he writes in his memoir, “A Journey,” actual terrorists “are small in number, but their narrative . . . has a far bigger hold.”

He says Muslim political leadership often “feels impelled to go along with this narrative for fear of losing support.”

Or their heads.

Blair sees President Obama’s outreach to the Muslim world as ambiguous at best. Writing of Obama’s Cairo speech last year, he says, “It was in part an apology, and taken as such. The implicit message was: We have been disrespectful and arrogant.”

However, he adds: “The trouble is, respectful of what, exactly?” Respect for Islam “should not mean respectful of the underlying narrative.”

He suggests Obama has work to do. “It is the narrative that has to be assailed,” he argues. “It should not be respected. It should be confronted, disagreed with, argued against on grounds of politics, security and religion.”

As Obama nears the halfway mark of his term, it is obvious his soft engagement with Iran has failed and his bended-knee plea to Arab governments has yielded little help in the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban.

The result is a growing terror threat at home and abroad. Just in time, Blair has offered a better path forward. The question now is whether Obama will rise above his personal pride and misguided ideology to embrace it.

I hope he does, but fear he won’t.

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