Doubts about Bugliosi's DIVINITY OF DOUBT

While this blog tends to focus on historical issues, such as the assassination of JFK, the events of 9/11, and other abuses of power and authority, as a professional philosopher, I well know there are other questions that also deserve consideration, such as the existence of God and the place of religion in human experience.

David and I both have relationships with Vince and we find him to be a fascinating fellow. I liked what David had to say about his book, which had dimensions that had not occurred to me in my own reading, and wanted to share. I have replaced the original with a revised version, which I like even better. I trust others will as well.

Doubts about THE DIVINITY OF DOUBT

David W. Mantik

Before I begin my review of Vincent Bugliosi's THE DIVINITY OF DOUBT, here is a sampler of Bugliosi’s own words. Italics for his quotations are used throughout this review. The page numbers are also his. For these opening remarks, as the page numbers increase, the author’s observations tend to become increasingly eccentric (and inconsistent).

“Just because religion makes no sense doesn’t mean that God doesn’t” (p. 58).

“I’m way out of my depth in this discussion”[on improving human morality] (p. 66).

“[W]hile I do not reject evolution, I am not comfortable with the notion at all” (p. 67).

“I would think that the principles of evolution set down by Darwin would be nonselective—yes nondiscriminatory” (p. 77).

“I find many of the claims of science in the area of evolution and the universe . . . just as improbable as the most fanciful of religious beliefs I poke fun at in this book” (p. 88).

“And it [the Bible] does so with an unprecedented power and majesty that has resonated down through the centuries” (p. 102).

“[O]ne cannot reasonably question the book’s [the Bible’s] integrity” (p. 102).

“They got it [the idea of being born again] from the zaniness of the bible” (p. 109).

“As to falsehoods, an entire volume could be written to support the position that much of the bible is false” (p. 137).



Introduction

Bugliosi is often wrong, or at least misleading, but he is rarely in doubt. This swaggering attitude characterizes much of his other writing as well, but it is especially incongruous here. In particular, note the use of “Doubt” in his title. By attacking both theists and atheists, he flaunts his self-righteous open-mindedness about the God issue. However, he (ironically) leaves no doubt that, with respect to the Christian God at least, he is a card-carrying atheist. The title of his book will therefore be highly misleading to most readers. Since he clearly does not believe in the God of contemporary Christians, his tactic of using “Doubt” in the title looks like a public relations ploy.

That he is indeed an atheist (about the contemporary Christian God) need not be argued—he baldly admits as much on multiple pages, as follows.

A. The Christian God Cannot Exist (the title of chapter 3).
B. “I’m not an agnostic on the Christian God” (p. 25).
C. “[T]he Christian God cannot exist” (p. 61).
D. “For purposes of this discussion only, I am presupposing the existence of the Christian God, whom I do not believe exists” (p. 188).

That he is an atheist is also proven by the myriad pages that attack the Christian God (or more accurately, the Christian church), although he leaves other forms of monotheism mostly unscathed in his brief summaries. Even though he frequently smirks during these summaries, detailed critiques of these other religions are sorely lacking. Furthermore, he leaves the reader with the distinct impression that he is not agnostic about these other monotheisms—or about other religions in general. In other words, he looks just like an atheist. Most curiously, nowhere does he even acknowledge the following: polytheism, pantheism, panentheism, henotheism, agnostic theism, or impersonal idealism. For a book on the existence of God, the disappearance of these actors from the stage is pure magic.

Deism

Where Bugliosi is indeed an agnostic (about deism), he has surprisingly little to say. Most of the book, in fact, is an unrelenting rant against the practices of contemporary Christianity. Actually, he is so incensed about these practices (aren’t most of us?) that he forgets, for many pages, that his true target is the Christian God. Regarding deism, which he touts as a possibility, he offers only one short chapter (6). However, in this chapter, he cites only two arguments: the teleological (design, i.e., the order in the universe) and the cosmological (first cause). Without explanation, he omits the classic ontological argument—and nearly all other arguments, as well. One possible exception should be mentioned: the anthropic argument, but serious disagreement exists about whether this even favors theism (see THE COSMIC LANDSCAPE by Leonard Suskind). He admits that the cosmological argument is “…strong and seems very difficult to get around” (p. 79). If he truly believes this, he might want to convert to deism. Bugliosi concludes that the teleological (design) arguments fail, although his own idiosyncratic scenarios in this chapter often seem merely silly to me. Since I ultimately agree with his conclusion (that the arguments from design fail), I shall move on.

What certainly impresses Bugliosi, on the other hand, is the cosmological (first cause) argument: he simply cannot accept the possibility that nothing (i.e., the void) could have preceded the entire material universe. On the contrary, he believes that something must have been there, which for him might open the door to deism. This is really the crux of the book: merely because Bugliosi cannot imagine such a void, he thinks that deism just might be possible. Somewhat amusingly, for a similar lack of imagination he takes Dawkins to task: Bugliosi cites Dawkins as being unable to imagine a certain kind of God (p. 54), which is ultimately why he (Dawkins) has remained an atheist. Bugliosi found this mind-set to be totally unconvincing, but here he (Bugliosi) is—adopting precisely the same basis for his own argument, i.e., merely because Bugliosi cannot imagine such a void, he offers deism as a possible option.

Energy

Moreover, he ignores the fact that the total energy of our universe (including the gravitational energy, which is negative) may well be zero, i.e., our universe is probably a free lunch. Even the God of deism could have paid that bill, but so could your local bankrupt bank. But it gets even worse. Physicist Victor Stenger, who Bugliosi does not even cite (GOD: THE FAILED HYPOTHESIS: How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist), argues that, at the instant after creation, the universe was maximally disordered. Such fingerprints are not likely consistent with any God of order, deistic or otherwise. In the end, therefore, Bugliosi has offered up only feeble fare, especially given his candid—almost childlike—confession:

“I have no comprehension of things relating to the cosmos” (p. 88).

If he seriously means by this that he cannot comprehend fundamental notions of space and time (e.g., the possible collapse of time and space at the very beginning), then he should remain silent about the cosmological argument. But here is the real horror: his only defense against converting to atheism (from deism) is this same cosmological argument! Does Bugliosi truly believe that he can save us all from atheism via such a tenuous lifeline? Given such a perilous tightrope act, he really must revise his book, i.e., he must radically shore up his attack against the cosmological argument for God’s existence. At the very least, he must immerse his brain a lot longer in modern physics, or else close up shop. Unfortunately, he has a long way to go—he has not even studied high school physics. He might begin with Victor Stenger, who actually calculates the probability of the existence of something (rather than nothing): it is over 60%. Another deserving, but overlooked, book is I DON'T BELIEVE IN ATHEISTS by Christopher Hedges. This book is a profound indictment of both Hitchens and Dawkins and is essential reading. Bugliosi’s case against both of them is pathetic in comparison to the case made against them by Hedges. Finally, devotees of the subject may wish to read (online), “Why Steven Hawking’s Cosmology Precludes a Creator,” by philosopher Quentin Smith.

Atheism

Bugliosi thinks that it is nobler to parade as an agnostic rather than as an atheist. In this he is surely mistaken. After all, many highly talented individuals are (and have been) atheists: http://brainz.org/50-most-brilliant-atheists-all-time/#0_undefined,0. The third most famous man from Hibbing, Minnesota would be hard pressed to join this list. Unfortunately, Bugliosi does not use computers, so he has probably not seen this website. Except for one terse footnote (p. 290) he fails even to try to distinguish among the varieties of atheism. Of course, he also fails to note the varieties of agnosticism. I cannot determine whether these extraordinary omissions are merely due to his stubbornness, or solely due to ignorance.


The Author: Vincent Bugliosi

To be specific, he states (p. 4) that atheists claim to know (with high certainty) that God does not exist. On the contrary, this is only one form of atheism, a position likely held by only a minority of all atheists. Many would more accurately be called agnostic atheists, i.e., although they do not believe in God, they don’t claim to be certain about this. Even Dawkins (p. 289) rates himself as six (on a scale of seven), when asked about his degree of certainty. Based on his persistent boiling-point frenzies in this book, Bugliosi actually appears to be an agnostic atheist, but he does not so advise his readers.

About Vince

Bugliosi thinks that refusing an atheist label will leave his character unblemished, almost “holier than thou.” Nonetheless, he clearly is an atheist—not only by his own admission, but also as defined by most Americans. His hypocrisy has been unmasked, however, by his failure to attack deism seriously. If he were a pure agnostic, he would pull no punches in his assault on deism. In the end, however, all he offers is his self-admitted poor comprehension of the cosmos and his remarkably second-rate understanding of the cosmological argument. This is very depressing stuff indeed.

This is an egocentric book, too often superficial, and way too often wrong or misleading (see my appendix for dozens of examples). Like many narrowly-trained experts before him, Bugliosi mistakenly thinks that his brainpower will succeed outside his area of expertise. He is not trained in biology or physics or cosmology or theology or philosophy or, for that matter, in any specialty that makes him required reading on God’s existence. He even blunders in history, especially in the history of the early church. Inevitably, therefore, his recurrent idiosyncratic comments are only characteristic of the rank amateur. For these reasons, I cannot even recommend this as an introductory book—the novice reader would not emerge properly grounded. Nor can I recommend it to a moderately sophisticated reader, except possibly for its entertainment value (sometimes unintentional). Such a reader would learn little that was new or valuable. Instead I would strongly propose WHY I BECAME AN ATHEIST by John W. Loftus (an ex-minister). My adjectives about this book are at polar opposites of those about Bugliosi’s book. As we should now expect, though, Bugliosi does not cite this book either.

God’s Existence

The question of God’s existence is indeed profound—for many of us (me, too) it is the most troubling question that life has to offer. That is why I care so much about getting these discussions right. Perhaps Bugliosi can return in ten years with a more mature and less shrill approach (should God will that he lives so long). In my opinion, those who remain theists (e.g., Francis Collins) can do so honestly, although many will disagree with their fundamental assumptions. Michael Novak (NO ONE SEES GOD: The Dark Night of Atheists and Believers), a Catholic and a friend of Hitchens, also makes a solid case for theism. However, for those who have abandoned the God of the Bible (i.e., not necessarily the God of St. Anselm), the answer lies between agnosticism and atheism. Both views can be intellectually respectable.

Ultimately though, the choice rests more on one’s interpretation of the evidence rather than on any uncensored data file—and for that one’s genes (see THE GOD GENE by Dean Hamer) and one’s environment play huge, often determinative, roles. Many of us, often due to personality quirks, cannot live with the uncertainty of agnosticism. I see nothing wrong with that, so long as the basic data are acknowledged. Some will leave agnosticism for atheism simply because the obligation is seen to be on God’s side—i.e., He really should reveal himself to us if He exists. This is a kind of protest position—John K. Roth has even argued for a Protest Theology, in order to protest God’s concealment of himself and also to object to the unrelenting evil in the world (especially that caused by Mother Nature). The idea is to shame God into behaving properly! Moreover, even when we choose our own friends, we only choose those who make themselves available to us, but not those who go into hiding.

Chance Events

Others will choose atheism because they understand at a deep level that chance events can yield a false impression of order and purpose, and the universe does seem to be ordered. This whole subject—of serendipity, karma, kismet, and synchronicity—is so shrouded in mystery, that even our best minds are often sidetracked by this issue. For example (after discussions with Einstein and physics Nobel Laureate Wolfgang Pauli) Carl Gustav Jung wrote a paper with Pauli in which they took synchronicity quite seriously. But order can also arise from underlying natural mechanisms. See WHAT DARWIN GOT WRONG—by two atheists—for a profound discussion of what is wrong with our current understanding of evolution, especially in the matter of biological order. And then there is Stuart A. Kauffman, REINVENTING THE SACRED, and his creative work on self-organizing systems in biology—especially see Chapter 8: “Order for Free.” In short, if initial vacuum fluctuations (at time zero) and self-organizing systems (in biology) can explain away the teleological (design) and cosmological (first cause) arguments, then the door to atheism lies wide open.

Regarding theism versus atheism, the differences are not so great. After all, Christians are atheists about all other religions (for this reason, the Romans actually called them atheists); atheists differ only in rejecting one more God. Insofar as deism goes, it’s very hard to argue with a deist, as Bugliosi has proven here. However, it really doesn’t matter much, does it? After all, what practical difference exists between a deist and an atheist? With the God of deism quite out of the picture (external to the universe), He makes no difference to my routine rituals, my morals, or my afterlife. The only God who might matter to me is an immanent God, like the traditional God of monotheism. That is ultimately why Bugliosi is so misleading—despite the book’s title, he is an atheist about an immanent God. In fact, his only possible theism is deism, but that option hangs by his slender (and highly suspect) thread of the cosmological (first cause) argument. For all practical purposes then, Bugliosi is an atheist. In any case, I suspect that most of his readers will not opt for deism. On the contrary, most of us want to know if God (if He exists) is immanent. Only then does His (or Her) existence matter to us as modern men and women.


The Reviewer: David W. Mantik

My final indictment of this book, after sleeping on it (not the book) for some time, is that it is irresponsible. See my appendix for numerous examples of Bugliosi’s cavalier and arrogant misadventures. This is indeed a harsh judgment, but Bugliosi claims to be “…an extremely critical person…” (p. xiii), so perhaps karma exists, after all.

About Me

I earned my Ph.D. in physics from the University of Wisconsin (with a focus in biophysics), completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Stanford University, and then entered a tenure-track professorship in physics at the University of Michigan. I later graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School, completed a residency at USC, and then joined the faculty at Loma Linda University Medical School, where I used the proton beam in cancer treatment. I am board certified by the American College of Radiology and have now practiced radiation oncology for 31 years.

I was raised in the Assemblies of God (Pentecostal), during which time I spoke in tongues and experienced a mystic sense of union with the universe. For many years, I taught Sunday School, including multiple classes of college students. I have been a member of the following denominations: Assemblies of God, Southern Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, and Presbyterian. I hold no religious membership cards today, but remain an avid bystander in matters of religion. Unlike Bugliosi (despite his avowed denials to the contrary—see p. 151), I am not angry at religion. I prefer simply to understand it. Therein lies our only hope for progress.

NOTE: While finalizing this review--a more detailed version of which is archived here--I received a 53 minute telephone call from Bugliosi, who offered to send me a copy of the book. Mostly, however, we discussed the JFK assassination—I had reviewed (negatively as well) his RECLAIMING HISTORY: “A Not-Entirely-Positive Review” (online).

David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D., is also the world's leading expert on the medical evidence in the assassination of JFK.

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Seven Questions about 9/11

Seven Questions about 9/11

Jim Fetzer

As a former Marine Corps officer (1962-66), who spent his 35-year career offering courses in logic, critical thinking, and scientific reasoning to college students, it troubles me when my government appears to be lying to the American people. On this 4th of July, therefore, I want to share with you some of the questions that have arisen in my mind about the events of 9/11, which have been used to justify wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at enormous cost in lives lost and resources expended. I don’t claim to have all of the answers, but here are some of my questions—seven for the 4th of July!

(1) The early explosions

In their study, “Seismic Proof: 9/11 was an inside job”, Gordon Ross and Craig Furlong (one an engineer, one a numerical analyst) present evidence that there were enormous explosions in the subbasements of both of the Twin Towers prior to the impacts of any planes on those buildings. They used extremely reliable data from a geological laboratory run by Columbia University and radar and FAA data to come to the conclusion that those explosions occurred 14 and 17 seconds before those planes hit the towers:



My first question, therefore, is how were those 19 Islamic terrorists able to arrange these explosions, which drained the water from sprinkler systems that would have otherwise extinguished the rather modest office fires that remained after the jet fuel was consumed in those spectacular fireballs? I have given this a lot of thought and I can’t figure out how they did that.

(2) The impossible entry

We have all seen the footage of Flight 175 hitting the South Tower, which is the only reasonably distinct video coverage we have of any of the four plane crashes. There are plenty of copies of the Michael Hezarkhani video, which was taken more or less from the side, and still others of the Evan Fairbanks video, which was taken looking straight up the side of the South Tower. I have been puzzled, when I have taken a closer look, the plane actually enters the buildings without crumpling, without losing its wings or tail, and with no bodies, seats, or luggage falling to the ground. Here’s what I mean:



The problem I have is that, as a student of physics in high school and college, I learned that the impact of a moving plane impacting with a stationary building should create the same effects as those of a moving building impacting with a stationary plane. We would not expect a car crashing into an enormous tree to disappear into the tree. My question is, absent the suspension of the laws of physics on 9/11, how could this occur?

(3) The sizing problem

Perhaps because of my military background, I have found the Pentagon attack of special interest. The Department of Defense originally released five frames instead of any of the more than eighty (80) videos that would have captured exactly what happened. Although three of those videos have subsequently been released, none of them shows more about the crash than those original five, four of which show the spectacular fireball, the other the somewhat obscure image just above the gate mechanism that is conveniently labeled “plane”. It looked too small to me. So I asked a friend of mine—who is better at these things than am I—if he could size the image of a Boeing 757 to the tail shown in the frame that the Pentagon had released:

Imagine my surprise when it turned out that Flight 77 should have been more than twice the size of the plane in the Pentagon’s own frame. So my third question is, why isn’t the plane in the image the size of a Boeing 757?

(4) The lack of debris

Although many Americans are unaware, the hit point on the Pentagon is on the ground floor. There is a hole about 10’ high and 16-17’ wide, which is surrounded by a chain-link fence, two enormous spools of cable and a pair of cars, where there are unbroken windows beside and above the opening. What we do not see is an enormous pile of aluminum debris, broken wings or the tail, bodies, seats or luggage. Remarkably, not even the engines were recovered from the crash site—although a part of a compressor, which was too small to have come from a 757 and too large for a cruise missile—was later reported to have been found. Even more striking to me, however, is this photo of the civilian lime-green fire-trucks as they extinguish the fires:



Since these fire trucks arrived after the crash and spent fifteen minutes or so putting it out, I have been struck by the clear, green, unblemished Pentagon lawn. It looks so smooth, I expect Tiger to appear with his caddy to practice his game. My question, therefore, is, why is there no debris on the lawn?

(5) The planted fuselage

Later, of course, debris would start showing up. Since there was none even as the fire trucks were extinguishing the fires, it has to have come from somewhere. It would have been difficult to have had officers and enlisted men carry pieces of debris out onto the lawn without being observed, so it has occurred to me that perhaps it was dropped from a C-130, which was circling the Pentagon that morning. That’s my best guess. I am open to other possibilities, but I haven’t been able to think of real alternatives. One piece of debris has been used to cement the case for the crash of Flight 77:



One of the oddities about this debris is that it shows no signs of having been exposed to those fireballs and includes a piece of vine. Another student of the Pentagon, James Hanson, a newspaper reporter who earned his law degree from the University of Michigan College of Law, has traced that debris to an American Airlines 757 that crashed in a rain forest above Cali, Columbia in 1995. "It was the kind of slow-speed crash that would have torn off paneling in this fashion, with no fires, leaving them largely intact." My question is, how did this piece of fuselage wind up on the Pentagon lawn?

(6) The dumpster fires

As though that were not disturbing enough, I was also puzzled why, later in the day, when rumors were circulating that the Capitol might be next and the members of Congress rushed out onto the steps of the building, when they looked across the Potomac, they witnesses billowing black clouds of smoke. That struck me as rather odd, since the lime green fire trucks had put out the modest fires long ago. When I took a closer look, I discovered that these black clouds of smoke were not coming from the Pentagon itself but from a series of enormous dumpsters in front of the building. See what I mean:





When I was still living in Duluth before my retirement in June of 2006, another student of the Pentagon came by and showed me forty-four (44) more frames of the same thing, where you could actually see light between the dumpsters and the building. So my question is, why was it necessary to fake fires coming from the Pentagon if a plane had actually crashed there?

(7) The absence of interest

Since I have been unable to discover the answers to questions like these—where I actually have many more—it has dumbfounded me that nearly ten years after the fact, the mass media, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, CBS, NBC, ABC, and CNN has shown no interest at all in addressing them. Here are three examples of why it seems to me these questions should be burning issues in every major media outlet in this country, where we are confronted only by silence:

(a) Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, the Co-Chairs of the 9/11 Commission, have long since published WITHOUT PRECEDENT: THE INSIDE STORY OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION (2006), in which they explain their frustration at the lack of cooperation from the administration, citing especially the fact that the Pentagon provided three different accounts of the events of 9/11, not a very reassuring indication that they got everything right. And this report is not from a “conspiracy theorist” but from the co-chairs of the 9/11 inquiry.

(b) A former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in three administrations, Dr. Steve Pieczenik, has revealed not only that Osama bin Laden actually died on or about 15 December 2001 (as David Ray Griffin, OSAMA BIN LADEN: DEAD OR ALIVE (2009) explained), but that he had been told by a high-ranking general that 9/11 was a “false flag” attack, which was done by the government in order to arouse the American people to support wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq. And this guy earned his Ph.D. at MIT.

(c) And Alan Sabrosky, who earned his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan and is a graduate of the US Army War College, has explained that 9/11 was conceived by neo-cons in and out of the Department of Defense who wanted to advance the proposals of Project for the New American Century by taking advantage of the demise of the Soviet Union to expand the power of the sole remaining superpower by creating an empire around the world, but worried that Americans would not support those wars absent “a new Pearl Harbor”.

Now I cannot claim to know for certain that what we are being told by Lee Hamilton, Thomas Kean, Steve Pieczenik, and Alan Sabrosky is true. I can tell you that it is consistent with my own research and that of others with whom I have been in collaboration since founding Scholars for 9/11 Truth. In case you may think that I am one of those “conspiracy theorists” myself — where I have done a lot of research on JFK as well as on 9/11 — just ask yourself whether my six questions deserve answers and why the American media has been ignoring them in the land of the free and home of the brave!

Jim Fetzer is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth and maintains a blog about issues of public interest at http://jamesfetzer.blogspot.com.

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The Minnesota "Sustainable Energy" Scam: From T. Paw to T. Boone

The Minnesota "Sustainable Energy" Scam

Jim Fetzer


The "Sustainable Energy" Billboard

It was my pleasure to interview Mary Hartman and Kristi Rosenquist on "The Real Deal", an internet radio program I host on M/W/F from 5-7 PM/CT, which took place on 17 June 2011 and has been archived at http://radiofetzer.blogspot.com. I was taken aback to discover that the sustainable energy program in Minnesota is by and large a scam designed to enrich the Texas billionaire, T. Boone Pickins.

I learned from them that a program being sold to the residents of Minnesota as an "environmentally friendly" enterprise actually appears to conceal a major rip-off of the public, where the purchase of land for wind mills is being use as a front to conceal taking control of mineral and water rights. The scam is so bad that the utility monitoring the production of energy has been derelict.

Not only has the utility not been properly monitoring output but the cost of the energy that is being consumed by these enormous devices -- the windmills themselves -- has not been taken into account in determining their output, which is a fraud in itself. Without knowing the cost of production, the actual benefit is unknown.

In addition, these enormous structures are littering the landscape of rural areas in a way reminiscent of grotesque horns extruding from the earth. The sound is bad enough, but the effects upon health of the vibrations they are generating has yet to be measured. It appears to be both serious and enduring -- a bad combination!


A "Tipped" Turbine for Your Yard

While former Governor Tim Pawlenty wants to take credit for this "green" initiative, I believe that anyone who looks into what is actually going on will discover that it is as terrible a scam as Minnesota has ever known. If it is not brought to a halt now, there is scant change the state will ever recover -- and the citizens of the land of 10,000 lakes may actually have to pay for its own water.

The idea of producing 25% of the state's energy using sustainable resources by the year 2025 as the "25 x 25" program appears to have been a marketing mechanism to conceal the real objective, which is converting state resources to private benefit -- a disgrace being promoted as a benefit, which means that what's really going on here is a massive scam. Remember that green is also the color of money.

Here is a link to the interview. I urge every American who cares about their own state to listen and weep. This is a tragedy in the making, which puts the lie to politicians and officials who are selling the states most precious resources -- its land, minerals, and water -- to private investors who stand to make fabulous profits at the public's expense:

http://nwopodcast.com/fetz/media/jim%20fetzer%20real%20deal-hartman%20rosenquest.mp3

Here's a summary of what Kristi and Mary have turned up, but it's only a summary. For more details and exposure of what's really going on, listen to the interview. It runs 100 minutes -- four segments of 25 minutes apiece -- and you will never feel the same way about "green" projects being promoted by the state! It's simply stunning.

From T. Paw to T. Boone

Kristi Rosenquist with Mary Hartman

Government of the lobbyist by the lawyer for the benefit of industrial wind developers is a serious problem. Touted to protect the environment, the Minnesota 2007 Renewable Energy Standard is instead enriching out-of-state corporations on the backs of Minnesotans.

The New Generation Energy Act was a Governor’s Initiative championed by Tim Pawlenty. Edward Garvey & Christine Brusven wrote the MN Renewable Energy Standard (RES), then shepherded it through the legislature for Governor Pawlenty. Now Mr. Garvey is a principal at WeberJohnson lobbying for wind energy. Ms. Brusven is the lawyer for Texas billionaire T. Boone Picken’s company, AWA Goodhue LLC. Her firm, Fredrickson & Byron, is a WeberJohnson client. They wrote the law, now they lawyer and lobby for the beneficiaries of the law.


And whose home is being destroyed thereby

The RES requires utilities to get 25% or their energy from renewable sources 2025. The law exempts wind from the normal checks and balances required of other electrical generation sources. Wind is exempt from showing need, environmental impact, negative effect on rate payers and negative effect on the electrical grid.

The Public Utilities Commission reviews wind development applications with support from the Department of Commerce’s Office of Energy Security. The lawyers and lobbyists did a fine job of writing and tweaking the RES and related laws to force the hand of the Public Utilities Commission and the Office of Energy Security to meet the mandate laid out in a law written entirely for the benefit of wind developers.

This has left Goodhue County and her Townships in the dismal position of having a small amount of power and influence over a poorly defined, untested portion of the wind permitting process. The real stakeholders are left trying to discern reasonable setback distances from houses for 450 foot turbines that reasonably should not exist.

The only reason T. Boone Pickens is signing 30-50 year leases with landowners in Goodhue County is huge financial gain with little or no risk. State mandate, MN Community Based Energy Development (C-BED) tariff on rate payers, federal subsidies, federal production tax credit, ten year depreciation, federal tax shelters, current transmission capacity in Goodhue, and the MN Flip business model do nothing to reduce carbon. Pickens declared in 2008 that his 68,000 acre ranch located in the Texas Panhandle, one of America’s windiest regions, will not have a single turbine. “I’m not going to have the windmills on my ranch," he said. "They’re ugly.”


And even more so when they are fried . . .

I spoke with Shane Myre at Governor Pawlenty’s office both by phone and in person. Mr. Myre assured me that he passed on my concerns to the Governor. He also assured me there was no chance Governor Pawlenty would meet with the citizens of Goodhue County to hear our concerns. The results of Pawlenty’s Governor’s initiative are a fiasco.

Tim Pawlenty is a fiscal conservative on most issues. When it comes to wind-generated electricity, Tim Pawlenty is generous with tax and rate payers’ money to fund the feel-good illusion that industrial wind turbines will reduce carbon emissions. Lots of money combined with the expertise and inside track of Pawlenty’s former Commerce Department staff make Minnesota the perfect target for a billionaire with a few hundred extra turbines. That’s why I say, “Pickens gets the gold mine; we get the turbine shaft. Thanks T. Paw.”

Mary Hartman and Kristi Rosenquist are long-time residents of Minnesota who believe that citizens can contribute to better government as long as they keep informed.

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Barry's Conspiracy World: The "No Plane" Theory

Barry's Conspiracy World
Exploring Conspiracy Truth

The "No Plane" Theory

Barry Berman

To the uninitiated, this seems like the most idiotic crock of crap. Let's take a look at the facts of the morning of 9/11 and see how this "silly" idea came about.

No one saw a plane crash in PA. There was very little wreckage at the "crash site." There were no pieces over two feet long. There were no bodies. There was not "one drop of blood." There was no black box. There was a second debris field 8 miles away. This is very odd and if anything would give credibility to the idea that the plane was shot down, however, there was also very little debris present at the second location.

No one saw a commercial plane hit the Pentagon. Some witnesses thought they may have seen what appeared to be a small passenger plane or missile.

There were no flight manifests for Flights 11 and 77. To many aviation experts, this means that the flights never existed. These flight numbers are for the planes hitting the north tower and the Pentagon.

Let's say for a moment that there were no planes at the Pentagon and in PA. If that is the case, why would there necessarily be any planes at the WTC? Well, people saw them and heard them. There is video of the planes hitting the towers. That's tough to get around. But what did they see? And what did they hear?

They saw a Boeing 767 fly over New York city at 580mph. This is a problem. The maximum speed of the Boeing 767 at sea level is 360mph. That's not a 20 mph difference, but a 220 mph difference! Given that drag varies on the square of the velocity and the power required to push through that drag varies on the 4th power of the velocity. A discrepency of 220 mph is enormous! Pushing a large aircraft an extra 220mph at sea level is not a trivial matter. This amounts to an increase in power of 674% -- above full power! This could not be accomplished by dive bombing the plane, which was not the case as the speed was taken while the plane was at a level cruise. (The 767 would most likely break apart if somehow it was powered to cruise at 580mph at sea level -- sea level being an enormous difference from a 40,000ft cruising altitude, where the air density is less than 25% of air at sea level.)

Let's examine the footage of the planes striking the WTC.


"Fight 175" entering the South Tower

Editor's note: See, for example, the Hezarkhani footage: http://killtown.blogspot.com/search/label/No-Planes

Flight of the Hologram

If you look closely, the plane passes into the building rather like a phantom. Also, quite significant is the fact that when it hits the building, there seem to be numerous explosions along the surface of the building. Not metal and glass crashing, but explosions. Furthermore, they don't seem to be timed exactly -- they fire off at slightly different moments, which don't really coincide with the plane hitting the building. Why would there be numerous small explosions from a plane hitting a building? (I'm not talking about the big ball of fire explosion, but the small explosions along the surface. These explosions seem to be making the Wyle E. Coyote cut-out on the face of the building.)

Another obvious question is "What could else it possibly be? It looks like an airplane!" Well, examine this link and scroll down to Topic 7: Hologram Technology. Most people are not familiar with the above top secret classified holographic technology which can project solid looking objects from fast flying fighter planes. Witnesses heard a plane overhead, but it is not impossible that they heard a missile and when couple with the image of a plane, assumed it was a plane. It would be fairly simple to add in a sound effect of loud low frequency rumble, that when added to the sound of a cruise missile, closely models the spectral make-up of a Boeing 767.

Hologram Technology

There have been anecdotal reports of people giving speeches on stage at business conferences, while engaging the audience. Several minutes into the speech, the actual person walks out and stands next to his hologram which has duped the audience. A friend of aviation legend John Lear was driving in the California desert and spotted an enormous military cargo plane flying overhead. He found it odd that such a plane would be flying at such a location -- out in the middle of nowhere. He looked up and it vanished into thin air. The witness felt that this must have been a test run of holographic technology.

WHAT ABOUT THE PEOPLE?

This is seemingly a huge problem with the whole "no plane" theory. Real people died on 9/11. There is no denying that. However, the passenger lists are actually supportive pieces of evidence to the idea of "no planes." The 4 planes all had low loads -- less than 200 people total were onboard, including the crew. It turns out that many of the names were employees of Boeing and other military contractors or were in the military itself. The government set up a compensation fund for families of the victims of 9/11. Each family would receive $2 million compensation. Only a small percentage of the families entitled to money came forward to collect! For one plane of 40 victims, only 6 families tried to claim the $2 million! Moreover, six of the alleged hijackers were seen after 9/11. One of them spoke in length with his father the next day. Another hijacker was interviewed on the BBC on 9/12! One must ask, "How can a pilot fly a plane into a building and do an interview on the BBC the next day?!"

Passenger lists

So what happened to the people? It would be fairly simple for CIA operatives or black ops NSA security to pick up the crews and the few actual passengers from the planes.

Considering the 9/11 attacks as a whole: What would be the most effective way to carry out the operation? If the goal was to bring down the world's biggest office buildings in grand fashion (while making it look like an enemy attack), would you want to use commercial airplanes? Hell no! Even if you wanted to fly the planes into the towers and THEN implode them with tons of nano-thermite, you still would not want to use planes for such an operation. (Tests of the WTC dust has shown it contains nano-thermite). Experienced pilots have testified that it would be extremely difficult to achieve a center hit with the plane. You would need a totally reliable pilot who could be counted on for a suicide flight. By all accounts, the hijackers were not very capable pilots. If just one of the planes just nicked the edge of the tower, it would look enormously fake to still implode the building.

There is also the problem of the flight path of the plane that hit the Pentagon. The plane made a nearly 360 degree sharp turn and decent, which would have been difficult even in a large military jet. This maneuver would not have been possible in a Boeing 767. Furthermore, the alleged pilot to this craft Hani Hanjour, was not competent to fly a Boeing 767 at any speed. He could barely fly a Cesna in flight school. Here is one of many articles on "pilot extraordinaire" Hani Hanjour.

Pilot extraordinaire

Pilots for Truth examined the flight data recorder for Flight 77 and found it to be faked. If an accurate barometer reading had been used for the data, the flight would have passed over the Pentagon at an altitude of 273 feet. There is a run through simulation of Flight 77 on the Pilots for 911 Truth site.

Pilots for 9/11 Truth

There are many more reasons why the idea of airplanes does not hold water. Pilots for Truth realize the many problems with this notion. So I ask, "If there were no planes, what happened?" That is a great question. So far, the evidence suggests that cruise missiles were flown into the Pentagon and WTC 1 and 2. (Of course nothing hit WTC 7 -- it imploded seemingly by itself.) The cruise missiles projected a hologram of a Boeing 767 over NYC. They didn't bother projecting anything over the Pentagon. Flight 93 most likely never took place. "Let's roll" was some creative writing, as was "Hi mom, it's your son Mark Bingham. You know who I am? [I'm about to crash and die.]" It turns out that cell phone calls from planes were not possible in 2001.* The Flight 93 calls could have been faked with available Voice Morphing Technology.**

Nearly 3000 people died for a false flag to justify a false war. There were no weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. simply wanted to proceed with military control of the Middle East.

* The calls from Flight 93 were made from an altitude between 34,300 feet and 40,700 feet. Canadian scientist and mathematician A.K. Dewdney determined that cell phone calls at an altitude of 20,000 feet could be completed at a rate of less than 1 in 100 in 2001. Higher altitudes would have been more difficult. The chances of two callers making successful calls would have been less than 1 in 10,000. According to reports, there were 9 cell phone calls from Flight 93 at an altitude of over 30,000 feet.

** As reported in the Washington Post in 1999, William Arkin wrote "By taking just a 10 minute digital recording of anyone's voice" voice morphing experts can "clone speech patterns and develop an accurate facsimile."

The original of this article, http://barryb911.blogspot.com/2011/05/no-plane-theory.html, has just appeared on Barry Berman's blog.

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9/11: Seismic Proof + Video Fakery = Inside Job

9/11: Seismic Proof + Video Fakery = Inside Job

Jim Fetzer

Many sober citizens are reluctant to conclude that 9/11 was an “inside job” because they cannot bring themselves to believe that their own government would deliberately kill 3,000 of their fellow citizens to promote a political agenda for the sake of oil, Israel, and ideology. The evidence, however, extends to the apparent use of video fakery on 9/11, which, I now believe, was necessary to create a pseudo-explanation for explosions in the sub-basements of both Twin Towers. Either should be sufficient to make the point, but in combination they are devastating.

Two studies that initially seem far removed from one another turn out to be intricately interrelated. In "Seismic Proof: 9/11 was an 'inside job' " (original), http://www.scholarsfor911truth.org/Article911SeismicProof.html (also republished in a slightly revised version that does not affect the key points), Gordon Ross and Craig Furlong followed up on the report of an explosion in the subbasement of the North Tower PRIOR TO reverberations from the alleged plane impacts by William Rodriguez, the senior custodian in the North Tower, which he had lived through.

Using seismic data from a laboratory run by Columbia University and FAA and military radar data to establish the relationship between these "events', they found that explosions in the subbasements of both towers occurred 14-17 seconds before "impacts". They were meticulous in their research and their conclusions are well-supported by their data.


Data Table from "Seismic Proof"

When Willie mentioned to me that the subbasement had filled with water, I realized the principal purpose of those explosions had been to drain the sprinkler systems of water. Since most of the jet fuel burned up in spectacular fireballs within the first 15-20 seconds, the modest fires that remained could have been easily extinguished by the sprinklers, had they not been drained.

Evidence that the videos of the airplane impacts were faked -- which I have summarized in several arguments in "New Proof of Video Fakery on 9/11", http://www.opednews.com/articles/New-Proof-of-Video-Fakery--by-Jim-Fetzer-080729-132.html -- thus appears to have been to effect a precise temporal coordination of the "impacts" occurring prior to the intended subsequent explosions as their pseudo-cause.

The reason is that the perps needed a semi-plausible explanation for why they had occurred at all. The one they chose was to claim that jet fuel had fallen through the elevator shafts and exploded in those basements. There are several problems with this account, however, including that the primary elevators are staggered in the towers, which means the fuel could not have fallen through them into the subbasements.

Another is that, while there are one or two that extend all the way up and down the towers, a co-worker of Willie was in one of those in the North Tower. He survived the experience without having been burned alive, which would have been his fate if the official account were correct. And, of course, there was a human error in coordinating the "impacts" with the explosions, where Ross and Furlong confirmed that the explosions actually happened first.


"Fight 175" entering the South Tower

The indications of fakery here include that the plane – allegedly a Boeing 767 -- is traveling at an aerodynamically impossible speed (as Pilots for 9/11 Truth has confirmed); it enters the building effortlessly with no loss of velocity, no impact, and no debris; and it passes through its own length into the building in the same number of frames it passes through its own length in air – impossible unless a 500,000 ton building poses no more resistance to the plane’s trajectory than air!

Now it might seem reasonable, on first consideration, to suppose that it would have been simpler to use real planes instead of resorting to video fakery. The problem, however, is that hitting a target that is only 208' on a side is a very daunting task. Pilots for 9/11 Truth, for example, has reported that many of their members, who were far more highly qualified than any of the alleged "hijackers", had made repeated attempts to hit a 208' wide tower using a 767 simulator without success.

The only one of whom I know had any success was Rob Balsamo, who had one success in ten tries, where the speed of the plane (at 560 mph as seen in those videos) made it extremely difficult, indeed. In their efforts to GUARANTEE that those impacts would occur at the times required to "explain" the subbasement explosions, therefore, it was necessary to resort to the tactic of video fakery, where how it was done -- with CGIs, compositing, or holograms -- is an open question.

Jim Fetzer, McKnight Professor Emeritus at UMD, is the Founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, http://911scholars.org.

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WHERE DID THE TOWERS GO? by Judy Wood, Ph.D.--Essay-Review I

An Essay-Review of Where Did the Towers Go? by Judy Wood, Ph.D. Part One

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Donald Stahl

This is a magnificent book, and a magnificent gift to the 9/11 Truth Movement and to humanity. Speaking as someone who has tried for several years to stay abreast of developments pertaining to 9/11, I must say that the amount of work that went into it is not just amazing it is shocking. It is a beautifully produced book of five hundred glossy pages, printed in “China,” filled with labeled, annotated and diagrammed photographs, maps and charts, completely referenced. How it can be offered at such a low price I don’t know.

Years of piecemeal perusal of such material give no inkling of what happened, compared with the clarity now provided by Dr. Wood. I found many, many photographs I had never seen before. Everyone should insist that their public library have at least one copy. You should buy your own at Dr. Wood’s websites, www.WhereDidtheTowersGo.com, or www.drjudywood.com.

Many readers, especially those who see themselves as Dr. Wood’s adversaries, will be tempted to treat the book as a work of reference, looking only at the sections they have a particular interest in. Such treatment would be profoundly unfair. The book’s case is, among other things, cumulative, and it should be read starting at the beginning, proceeding through the middle, and continuing to the end. She is a writer deserving of this, too.

Such a magnificent gift should be celebrated widely. Things being what they are, however, this will not happen immediately.

The Truth Movement is unlike other movements commonly identified as political in nature, in that it is concerned not with values but with facts; not with good or bad, better or worse, but with true or false. Feelings, theoretically, play no part. Since this is so, it should be much easier, it would seem, to come to agreement.

But there is a further matter. If something is true, what is the best way to communicate it to another? To large numbers of others? These questions are much more like matters of better and worse. If there is a fact of the matter, it is certainly unknown to anyone. It is much more like the question, “What is the best thing for me to do now?” Each one is likely to have their own opinion, and comparison and testing of such things is only beginning. We are in the alchemical stage. Chemistry does not yet exist.

The less fact is available, the more strongly opinions are held opinions about what should be said to what audience, in what circumstances, when. Fellow alchemists, we are dealing, let us recognize, with explosives.

I attended Dr. Wood’s lecture “9/11 - The New Hiroshima” in Madison, on 7 August 2007. By the time I read her book I had forgotten that I had. I was well into the video of that lecture, before it came back to me. In 2007, it made little impression on me because I was viewing all 9/11 evidence through the prism of how easily it would be likely to be accepted by Joe Six-Pack. He was the one who counted, in my mind. Dr. Wood concentrated on things like the fuming of the debris pile, holes in buildings and streets, toasted cars, and the vanishing spire. I knew how easily Joe would shrug those things off.

I recently met an engineer who is a long-time employee of a defense contractor. He had somewhat heard of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, but drew a big distinction between that group and other “Truthers,” on the ground that the Architects were the only ones concerned with facts. Although no Bushnik, the others were, to him, just Bush bashers. It still seems to me that the process of informing him should not start with the (very real) difference between smoke and the fuming of the debris; and perhaps Dr. Wood would agree. But often Truthers talk among themselves, as we should, and there is no reason for us to silence ourselves when doing this, pursuing our own areas of special interest, and expressing our own differing views.

Unfortunately, most of what is called the Truth Movement has not even gotten as far as considering the question of the best way of getting the truth to be believed privately, much less the distinct question of getting it publicly accepted, of overcoming pluralistic ignorance. Mere repetition is called discussion. Someone whose idea of the best way to proceed differs from one’s own is not unlikely to be perceived as harming, not helping: a “disinformation agent.” Such partings of the ways may discourage for a while, but they are inevitable as the Truth Movement grows to encompass more and more divergent sectors of humanity, and they are of decreasing importance as the Movement grows larger and ceases to be a mere “movement.”

One mistake the Truth Movement in its early stages has made is to judge the effectiveness of messages as if they were all directed to the same sort of audience; and that audience has typically been taken to consist of the media’s Yahoo Chorus and the Morlocks who pay attention to them. For reasons you may discover in the books of Bob Altemeyer, they are not typical of the population as a whole, and they are not the ones we should address ourselves to.

A common tactic of the enemies of Truth is to speak as if anyone who disbelieves the Official Conspiracy Theory, or as I prefer to call it, the Patsy Cline (“I Fall to Pieces”) Theory, must have a fairly detailed alternative to put in its place. Such an alternative, if provided, is then taken to be a statement of the Official 9/11 Truth Movement position, when no such position exists.

Another common tactic is guilt by association. Because the Chorus is sure to use this weapon, the Movement has decided to adopt, or has not thought to disown, the idea it presupposes: that anyone appearing on the same stage or the same page as someone else, anyone guilty of talking with another, anyone belonging to the same organization or who believes some of the same things, must be as disreputable as that discredited other.

There are indeed people whose idea of evidence is pretty hard to discover, and who are ready to believe and recommend anything that has the emotional tone they find congenial. Some of them have little learning, and little interest in getting more. Some of them must be frauds. Of course some of these people may be Truthers, just as they may be lefthanders or former Republicans. And some may be spies.

The perception of a problem posed by this fact is illusory. Of course the media will say we are all like this. Let them. Be what you are, say what you think, and people will eventually recognize you. You need not wage war on heresy, because the Truth Movement is not a religion. It is more like what Dennett and Dawkins recommend.

But note that saying what you think doesn’t have to mean, always and everywhere, “Say EVERYTHING you think, all the time.” When so many New Yorkers have never even heard of Building 7, much less younger people who could not be expected to be aware of what was happening then, and have yet to discover the world beyond the corporate media, does this make sense? I recognize that my ideas of what is true and what it is appropriate to say will not always match others,’ but I do not see in that a reason not to further a project I approve of simply because another activist is involved; much less to shun them for life.

The bare minimum of what unites the Movement is simply the position that the Official Conspiracy Theory is false. What most of the Truth Movement has been advocating since its inception has been precisely a public, (as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States was not) unbiased investigation, with subpoena power, to determine what did happen. It is a close corollary of that minimal position that the OCT, or Patsy Cline Theory, cannot have been put forward honestly, and that, therefore, what is also called for is a National (or International) Commission on the Cover-Up of the Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.

One of the things I much admire about Where Did the Towers Go? is its control of language. 9/11 showed the world things it had never seen before, things for which it had no words. Forced to talk about them, the world used the nearest words it could find, the most prominent one being ‘collapse’, (‘fall’ is a close second) which was instantly suggested and supplied by the media. Dr. Wood refuses to be coerced in this way, and creates her own, more truthful, vocabulary. I hope the growing Truth Movement at large will follow her lead and burst the linguistic straitjacket it was born wearing.

We were shown an airplane crashing into an extremely tall building, shortly after another plane had crashed into another building. However horrific, those events were comprehensible. Then, an hour and more later, we were shown something no one had ever seen before: entire buildings disappearing by dissolving into dust from the top down. Wood says that they “went poof,” and they did. Her title’s question is quickly answered. According to Chemical and Engineering News, a million tons of building were turned into aerosol in a matter of seconds. (pubs.acs.org/cen/NCW/8142aerosols.html). This was accomplished, according to the Patsy Cline Theory, with no deposition of energy, but strictly by the force of gravity. Then they were literally blown away by the wind.

One piece of terminology which I think is indisputable is ‘disappeared’. I think there can be no disputing that at one time an immense building was there, and a few seconds later it was not there. There was nothing left standing. “Gone, man.” If the Truth Movement had from the start adopted the use of this and similar and more effective terminology (‘vanished’, etc., and also ‘gravity’) the last ten years would have been quite different. How does steel and concrete “collapse” to dust? In seconds? By using their words, as Lakoff says, we allowed them to frame the issue to our disadvantage. Initially, everyone was too frightened to insist on an apparently pedantic accuracy. Both the crashes and the disappearances were terrible to think about; therefore, the first must have caused the second. Obviously, the first had something to do with the second. If it didn’t cause it, what was its reason for happening, for taking up so much space in our minds? Only much later did it become apparent that the planes had crashed to make us think that they had “collapsed” the Towers. No one could have dreamed of such a thing at the time. The point, the payoff, of The Big Wedding was then in the future.

Oliver Wendell Holmes’ one-hoss shay broke everywhere, all at once, into dust, but he was only amusing his audience; he did not pretend, in real life, to be reporting on something he actually saw (or videotaped). The Towers, and the people in them, took about ten seconds to turn into dust, and when people were told that gravity did that to the Towers, just as gravity did it to the one-hoss shay, many accepted the story as complacently as his poem. But it is not amusing.

Dr. Wood writes for two classes of her readers: A, the Patsy Cline Theorists, those who think steel and concrete disappeared because of gravity, and B, those who either,

1.) don’t believe directed energy devices were involved because they don’t exist, or,

2.) don’t think they should be mentioned in public even if they do, because they are too unheard-of, and will make people discount everything else that is said about the absurdity of the Patsy Cline Theory.

But the Patsy Cline Theory is so absurd that nothing can support it rationally. That Theory is a profound insult to the intelligence of the world, offered on the basis of a shrewd estimate of its courage. Its only hope lies in the ignorance of those who don’t know what it says, and the fear of speaking of those who do. (And the loud support of those who favor everything that the sacrifice of 9/11 was designed to bring about, and are sorry that it didn’t accomplish everything it was supposed to. There’s always next time, though.)

The Patsy Cline Theorists constitute group A, and the Truth Movement constitutes group B. Such is the state of things that Dr. Wood puts quotes around the Truth Movement, and does not consider herself part of it. But we need a name for group B, and ‘Truth Movement’ and ‘Truther’ are pretty well entrenched. (And the opposite of ‘Truther’ is ‘Liar’.) I prefer to use the term simply as the complement of A, and as including Dr. Wood just as much as myself. Her alienation is due to the antipathy of those Truthers in subclass 2., who are so firmly persuaded that mentioning such things is the Kiss of Death for the Truth Movement.

Why should it be? The hypothesis explains things nothing else does, and the Chorus will exercise its scurrility regardless of what we say. Instead of being coerced into answering questions about how secret weaponry works, (if we knew, would it be secret?) let us simply retort a question about what causes cars to catch fire spontaneously before peoples’ eyes; how they are moved into impossible positions with no apparent damage to them or their surroundings, how steel beams are suddenly bent into pretzels, and flat three-story sections of cladding are rolled up like carpets. By gravity?

Cindy Sheehan was originally of the Patsy Cline school of thought, and was eventually converted to 9/11 Truth, but she draws the line at ideas she calls “bat-shit crazy.” That line will eventually recede, as she learns.

Both Dr. Wood and subclass 2. are correct, or at least plausible, in what they advance positively, and ineffective in their attacks on what the other side says. Dr. Wood describes the ecumenical attitude of that last sentence as “The Kitchen Sink.” (p. 126.) Both she and her detractors have both right and wrong in what they say. Sorting out what, in my opinion, is which, is a large task, which I shall address in Part Two.

http://beforeitsnews.com/story/729/258/An_Essay-Review_of_Where_Did_the_Towers_Go_by_Judy_Wood,_Ph.D._Part_One.html

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Conspiracy Theory

http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2011/06/20/conspiracy-theory/
June 20 2011
Foreign Policy Journal

Conspiracy Theory
Paul Craig Roberts

While we were not watching, conspiracy theory has undergone Orwellian redefinition.

A "conspiracy theory" no longer means an event explained by a conspiracy. Instead, it now means any explanation, or even a fact, that is out of step with the government's explanation and that of its media pimps.

For example, online news broadcasts of RT have been equated with conspiracy theories by the New York Times simply because RT reports news and opinions that the New York Times does not report and the US government does not endorse.

In other words, as truth becomes uncomfortable for government and its Ministry of Propaganda, truth is redefined as conspiracy theory, by which is meant an absurd and laughable explanation that we should ignore.

When piles of carefully researched books, released government documents, and testimony of eye witnesses made it clear that Oswald was not President John F. Kennedy's assassin, the voluminous research, government documents, and verified testimony was dismissed as "conspiracy theory."

In other words, the truth of the event was unacceptable to the authorities and to the Ministry of Propaganda that represents the interests of authorities.

The purest example of how Americans are shielded from truth is the media's (including many Internet sites') response to the large number of professionals who find the official explanation of September 11, 2001, inconsistent with everything they, as experts, know about physics, chemistry, structural engineering, architecture, fires, structural damage, the piloting of airplanes, the security procedures of the United States, NORAD's capabilities, air traffic control, airport security, and other matters. These experts, numbering in the thousands, have been shouted down by know-nothings in the media who brand the experts as "conspiracy theorists."

This despite the fact that the official explanation endorsed by the official media is the most extravagant conspiracy theory in human history.

Let's take a minute to re-acquaint ourselves with the official explanation, which is not regarded as a conspiracy theory despite the fact that it comprises an amazing conspiracy. The official truth is that a handful of young Muslim Arabs who could not fly airplanes, mainly Saudi Arabians who came neither from Iraq nor from Afghanistan, outwitted not only the CIA and the FBI, but also all 16 US intelligence agencies and all intelligence agencies of US allies including Israel's Mossad, which is believed to have penetrated every terrorist organization and which carries out assassinations of those whom Mossad marks as terrorists.

In addition to outwitting every intelligence agency of the United States and its allies, the handful of young Saudi Arabians outwitted the National Security Council, the State Department, NORAD, airport security four times in the same hour on the same morning, air traffic control, caused the US Air Force to be unable to launch interceptor aircraft, and caused three well-built steel-structured buildings, including one not hit by an airplane, to fail suddenly in a few seconds as a result of limited structural damage and small, short-lived, low-temperature fires that burned on a few floors.

The Saudi terrorists were even able to confound the laws of physics and cause WTC building seven to collapse at free fall speed for several seconds, a physical impossibility in the absence of explosives used in controlled demolition.

The story that the government and the media have told us amounts to a gigantic conspiracy, really a script for a James Bond film. Yet, anyone who doubts this improbable conspiracy theory is defined into irrelevance by the obedient media.

Anyone who believes an architect, structural engineer, or demolition expert who says that the videos show that the buildings are blowing up, not falling down, anyone who believes a Ph.D. physicist who says that the official explanation is inconsistent with known laws of physics, anyone who believes expert pilots who testify that non-pilots or poorly-qualified pilots cannot fly airplanes in such maneuvers, anyone who believes the 100 or more first responders who testify that they not only heard explosions in the towers but personally experienced explosions, anyone who believes University of Copenhagen nano-chemist Niels Harrit who reports finding unreacted nano-thermite in dust samples from the WTC towers, anyone who is convinced by experts instead of by propaganda is dismissed as a kook.

In America today, and increasingly throughout the Western world, actual facts and true explanations have been relegated to the realm of kookiness. Only people who believe lies are socially approved and accepted as patriotic citizens.

Indeed, a writer or newscaster is not even permitted to report the findings of 9/11 skeptics. In other words, simply to report Professor Harrit's findings now means that you endorse them or agree with them. Everyone in the US print and TV media knows that he/she will be instantly fired if they report Harrit's findings, even with a laugh. Thus, although Harrit has reported his findings on European television and has lectured widely on his findings in Canadian universities, the fact that he and the international scientific research team that he led found unreacted nano-thermite in the WTC dust and have offered samples to other scientists to examine has to my knowledge never been reported in the American media.

Even Internet sites on which I am among the readers' favorites will not allow me to report on Harrit's findings.

As I reported earlier, I myself had experience with a Huffington Post reporter who was keen to interview a Reagan presidential appointee who was in disagreement with the

Republican wars in the Middle East. After he published the interview that I provided at his request, he was terrified to learn that I had reported findings of 9/11 investigators.

To protect his career, he quickly inserted on the online interview that my views on the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions could be dismissed as I had reported unacceptable findings about 9/11.

The unwillingness or inability to entertain any view of 9/11 different from the official view dooms to impotence many Internet sites that are opposed to the wars and to the rise of the domestic US police state. These sites, for whatever the reasons, accept the government's explanation of 9/11; yet, they try to oppose the "war on terror" and the police state which are the consequences of accepting the government's explanation. Trying to oppose the consequences of an event whose explanation you accept is an impossible task.

If you believe that America was attacked by Muslim terrorists and is susceptible to future attacks, then a "war on terror" and a domestic police state to root out terrorists become necessary to make Americans safe. The idea that a domestic police state and open-ended war might be more dangerous threats to Americans than terrorists is an impermissible thought.

A country whose population has been trained to accept the government's word and to shun those who question it is a country without liberty in its future.

Paul Craig Roberts was an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration.

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