The media response to the growing influence of the 9/11 truth movement
Elizabeth Woodworth | 15.02.2010 15:31 | Analysis | Other Press | Social Struggles | World
In the past year, in response to emerging independent science on the 9/11 attacks, nine corporate, seven public, and two independent media outlets aired analytic programs investigating the official account.
Increasingly, the issue is treated as a scientific controversy worthy of debate, rather than as a "conspiracy theory" ignoring science and common sense.
Increasingly, the issue is treated as a scientific controversy worthy of debate, rather than as a "conspiracy theory" ignoring science and common sense.
The Media Response to the Growing Influence of the 9/11 Truth Movement
Part II: A Survey of Attitude Change in 2009-2010
Abstract
In the past year, in response to emerging independent science on the 9/11 attacks, nine corporate, seven public, and two independent media outlets aired analytic programs investigating the official account.
Increasingly, the issue is treated as a scientific controversy worthy of debate, rather than as a "conspiracy theory" ignoring science and common sense.
This essay presents these media analyses in the form of 18 case studies.
Eight countries – Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Russia – have allowed their publicly-owned broadcasting stations to air the full spectrum of evidence challenging the truth of the official account of 9/11.
This more open approach taken in the international media – I could also have included the Japanese media – might be a sign that worldwide public and corporate media organizations are positioning themselves, and preparing their audiences, for a possible revelation of the truth of the claim that forces within the US government were complicit in the attacks – a revelation that would call into question the publicly given rationale for the military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
The evidence now being explored in the international media may pave the way for the US media to take an in-depth look at the implications of what is now known about 9/11, and to re-examine the country's foreign and domestic policies in the light of this knowledge.
I. Introduction
Until 2009, doubts about the official 9/11 story were briefly entertained by the mainstream media on each anniversary of the event, allowing the independent research community only a fleeting moment once a year to publicly voice its findings.
But after crucial scientific evidence emerged in April 2009 to challenge the official story of how the towers fell, a spate of European media reports followed. The news coverage of this evidence seems to have opened the door to more serious reflection on all aspects of the 9/11 issue in the major media.
The first paper in my series, "The Media Response to 9/11," dealt with the New Statesman's grudging recognition of Dr. David Ray Griffin, the world's "top truther" (as it dubbed him), placing him number 41 among "The 50 People Who Matter Today."1 Since this admission in September 2009, the issue has gathered increasing momentum.
The collective content issuing from this new momentum is presented here in the hope that it will embolden other major media to take up the pivotal controversy concerning 9/11, and pursuing the truth wherever it may lead.
Observations on the Analysis
While carrying out my analysis, I observed five new features in the media treatment of the 9/11 issue that developed as 2009 progressed. They are listed here, so that readers might look for them in the case studies that follow below:
1. The 9/11 issue is increasingly framed not as conspiracy theories versus hard science, but as a legitimate controversy resting on unanswered questions and a search for truth.
2. News reports and television programs examining these controversies have become longer and more balanced.
3. Major media outlets have begun to present the claims of the truth movement first, followed by counter-arguments from defenders of the official story.
4. Major media outlets have begun to include, and even to introduce, extensive evidence to support the claims of the 9/11 truth community.
5. The media treatments increasingly suggest the possibility of a re-investigation into the events of September 11, 2001.
The first part of this essay deals with the crucial scientific evidence that emerged in early 2009, the significance of this evidence in relation to the official story of 9/11, and the immediate news coverage it received.
II. Scientific Paper Finds Nano-thermite Explosives in World Trade Center Dust, April 3, 2009
A peer-reviewed paper published in the Open Chemical Physics Journal on April 3, 2009,2 reported that a little known high-tech explosive called nano-thermite was found throughout the World Trade Center dust.
These physicists and chemists involved in this study discovered "distinctive red/gray chips in significant numbers"3 in four samples of dust collected from the area. The presence of aluminum and iron oxide in the red material provided one of the signs that it might be nano-thermite, which is a high explosive (whereas ordinary thermite is an incendiary.)
Another clue was provided when putting a flame to the chips produced an explosive reaction.
On the basis of these and other observations, the team concluded that "the red layer of the red/gray chips we have discovered in the WTC dust is active, unreacted thermitic material, incorporating nanotechnology, and is a highly energetic pyrotechnic or explosive material."4
The article's first-named author, Dr. Niels Harrit – a University of Copenhagen chemistry professor who specializes in nano-chemistry5 –explained on Danish TV2 News:
"Thermite itself dates back to 1893. It is a mixture of aluminum and rust-powder, which react to create intense heat. The reaction produces iron, heated to 2500 degrees Centigrade. This can be used to do welding. It can also be used to melt other iron.
"So in nano-thermite, this powder from 1893 is reduced to tiny particles, perfectly mixed. When these react, the intense heat develops much more quickly. Nano-thermite can be mixed with additives to give off intense heat, or serve as a very effective explosive. It contains more energy than dynamite, and can be used as rocket fuel.
"You cannot fudge this kind of science. We have found it: unreacted thermite."6
What was the significance of this sophisticated material?
Reported Evidence that Nano-thermite is a Military Substance
In a German interview in May 2009, Dr. Harrit said: "There are no experts on nano-thermite without connections to the military…. This stuff has only been prepared under military contracts in the USA and probably in bigger allied countries. This is secret military research…It was not prepared in a cave in Afghanistan."7
Chemist Kevin Ryan, another co-author, had reported in an earlier article that explosive nano-thermite, which may be painted onto surfaces, was developed by US government scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories.8
A United States Department of Defense special publication confirms that work on these "energetic materials" has long been "performed in laboratories within all military services."9
According to a June 2009 statement by Britain's prestigious Institute of Nanotechnology,10 the Harrit study "provides indisputable evidence that a highly engineered explosive called nano-thermite was found in the dust of all three buildings that came down on 9/11 2001 in New York city. [sic] This advanced explosive incorporating nanotechnology is only available to sophisticated military labs."11
It thus became known by mid-2009 that explosives of military origin, probably in the United States, had been involved in the World Trade Center collapses.
Early Coverage of the Nano-thermite Finding in the European Mainstream Press
Although the new scientific evidence against the official story of 9/11 was not reported in the mainstream British or North American media, it did receive attention in continental Europe.
The day the article was published, a thorough essay in the Danish journal Videnskab (Science) examined both sides of the controversy about controlled demolition.12
The same issue of Videnskab also carried an interview with Professor Harrit, who answered pointed questions about the peer-review history of the article, and the military nature of nano-thermite.13
The following day, Denmark's politiken.dk reported the scientific nano-thermite paper in an article called (in Danish) "Conspiracy theories about 9/11 get new life."14
Then, the day after Professor Harrit's April 6 interview Danish TV2 News, he was featured on the popular talk show, "Good Morning Denmark", on which he said:
"The material we found is super hi-tech frontline military research. It's not a mixture of random chemicals. It's an advanced material which is difficult to get information on. But some conference papers and internal reports have been published…There has to be a normal forensic investigation of this attempt. Our research is high-level forensic work. We have provided technical evidence that can be used in the future investigation."15
On April 13, an online Croatian political newspaper posted the Danish TV2 video interview with Harrit along with an article titled "VIDEO: 9/11 No Longer Taboo Topic in Denmark".16
Russia also took notice. On July 9, Laura Emmett, the London correspondent for RT, interviewed Dr. Niels Harrit for over 10 minutes. (RT, previously known as Russia Today, is a globally broadcast English-language channel sponsored by the state-owned news agency RIA Novosti. It reaches 1.5 million people monthly, including half a million Americans.) Stating that "the evidence for controlled demolition is overwhelming", Harrit reported that the nano-thermite reaction produced pools of molten iron beneath the rubble and inextinguishable fires that lasted for months.17
I turn now to ways that the mainstream news coverage of the case against the official story has changed since the appearance of the nano-thermite paper.
III. The Changing Mainstream Media Treatment of 9/11 Evidence from early 2009 to early 2010: 18 Case Studies
Two February 2009 news items illustrate the wary mainstream attitude towards conspiracy theorists early in the year. A New York Times article said about actor Daniel Sunjata:
The second episode of "Rescue Me's" fifth season, starting in April, may represent the first fictional presentation of 9/11 conspiracy theories by a mainstream media company…Mr. Sunjata's character delivers a two-minute monologue…describing a "neoconservative government effort" to control the world's oil, drastically increase military spending and "change the definition of pre-emptive attack."
Mr. Sunjata surprised some of the TV reporters when he said that he "absolutely, 100 percent" supports the assertion that "9/11 was an inside job."18
Fox News was somewhat less constrained, saying:
An upcoming episode of the drama "Rescue Me" is about 9/11 being an inside job. The actor who spews the theories on camera, Daniel Sunjata, actually believes in it too.
Look, the fact is, actors who barf this crap are doing it for their own egos. It makes them feel smart, because for once they're spouting something provocative instead of puerile. Never mind that it's an insidious insult to the victims of 9/11 – as it is to the rest of us, who may or may not be guilty, according to Sunjata's theory.19
However, things started to change after the appearance of the nano-thermite paper on April 3, as may be seen from the following case studies of media reports, each of which is identified as having corporate, public, or independent ownership.
The case studies reveal the evidence which has been introduced into public consciousness during the past year.
Case Study 1: The Dutch TV Mock Trial of Osama bin Laden, April 25, 2009
On April 8, 2009, a popular TV program called "Devil's Advocate" held a mock trial of Osama bin Laden with lawyers arguing before a politically balanced civil jury of five people.
The case against bin Laden was argued by two real-world opponents: former American correspondent Charles Groenhuijsen, and Dutch-American Glenn Schoen of a US security firm. Real-world lawyer Gerald Spong acted as bin Laden's defense attorney.20
Spong presented new evidence from a videotape of Professor Emeritus of Islamic Studies Gernot Rotter, saying that the American translators who transcribed the bin Laden tapes of the November 9, 2001 "confession video" have "clearly added things in many places – things that are not there even when listening multiple times."21
Spong won. Although the jury found bin Laden to be a terrorist, it said there was no proof that he had ordered the 9/11 attacks.
Through this method, this program on AVRO – the Dutch public broadcasting organization – presented evidence, not previously seen in the major media, against the likelihood that bin Laden ordered the attacks.
On April 15, Fox News reported the Dutch jury findings in a long and unusually balanced article, in which former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani was quoted six times, saying that bin Laden's exoneration sent a "disturbing message" to the world and fueled conspiracy theories. Giuliani variously called this message "bizarre," "dangerous," "aberrational," "irrational," and "unfortunate."22
However, referring to Spong as a "well-known yet controversial attorney," Fox mentioned him 10 times, and more substantively, reporting his evidence that the bin Laden videos seemed inauthentic, as well as his point that the FBI has not indicted bin Laden for the attacks.
Concluding Comment: (AVRO is publicly owned, but Fox News is corporate.) Neither of these two mainstream treatments of doubts about the official story was broadcast on the customary anniversary date, and both reached millions of people.
Case Study 2: Architect Richard Gage in Canada's "Financial Post", April 25, 2009
One of Canada's top four English-language newspapers, the conservative National Post, publishes its business section as the Financial Post.
Three weeks after the nano-thermite story broke, Jonathan Kay, a National Post columnist and editor with degrees in both engineering and law, wrote an article about Richard Gage, the "lucid" San Francisco architect who heads up the 1,000-strong "Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth."23
Kay, who himself endorses the official story of 9/11, described Gage as a "respectable-looking middle-aged" architect, "complete with suit and tie, and receding hairline," and reported that Gage's organization "scored a booth at the upcoming American Institute of Architects conference from April 30 to May 2."
In the midst of references to thermite reactions and iron-oxide-based explosives, Kay wrote of controlled demolitions:
"As radical as Gage's theory may sound to readers, it's surprisingly popular. The '9/11 Truth Movement'…has millions of adherents across the world. Many believe that the World Trade Center was destroyed on Sept. 11 through controlled demolition set in motion by officials within America's own government and military."
Gage's presentation was also described as "effective":
"In one particularly effective segment, he puts up shots of the localized fires that broke out in the lower floors of WTC Building 7 hours before it collapsed. Seconds later, he shows footage of Beijing's Mandarin Oriental hotel – which suffered an epic top-to-bottom conflagration in 2009...and remained standing."
Concluding Comment: (Corporate). Besides reporting Gage's evidence without any attempted refutation, this corporate-press writer remarked that "no major media outlet has done a truly comprehensive profile or investigation of the Truther movement." He thereby seemed to be suggesting that it is now time to take the 9/11 truth movement seriously.
Case Study 3: Norwegian State Radio's Public Debate on 9/11 Truth, May 21, 2009
Professor Harrit, who was lecturing in Norway in late May 2009, was interviewed by public radio program "Here and Now",24 on NRK (the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation).
Harrit presented the findings of the nano-thermite paper, which were then discussed by three Norwegian scientists who did not support his conclusions.
Following the radio program, an extended email debate continued between Dr. Ola Nilsen, who teaches chemistry at the University of Oslo, and Dr. Steven Jones, a co-author of the nano-thermite paper who formerly taught physics at Brigham Young University. This debate, during which Nilsen somewhat modified his original view, was posted to a Norwegian blogsite in English.25
Concluding Comment: (Public). Although NRK in this April program challenged the findings of the Harrit paper, this was to change by late summer, as we shall see below.
Case Study 4: Architect Richard Gage on Fox News, May 28, 2009
The hosts of Fox News on KMPH in Fresno, California, began their 7-minute interview by saying, "He's an architect experienced in steel structures. Now Richard Gage is…here to show us why he's calling for a more thorough investigation into the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings."26
These two anchors actively encouraged Gage's discussion of the ten key features of controlled demolition. He was allowed to explain the free-fall acceleration of WTC 7 (shown on his two video frames as dropping at the same rate as a second building felled by controlled demolition) and the "uncanny" failure of 40,000 tons of structural steel columns that were designed to resist its collapse.
Although normal office fires were said to have caused the collapses, he explained, various firefighters had reported large pools of molten iron at ground level.
"What produced all that molten iron?" he asked.
The answer, he said, was found in the inches of dust covering lower Manhattan. "The by-product of thermite is molten iron and it's dispersed throughout all this dust…and there are small chips of unignited thermite as well. This is very high-tech thermite – nano-thermite. It's not found in a cave in Afghanistan; it's produced in very sophisticated defense department contracting laboratories…[its] particles are one-thousand times smaller than a human hair."
Asked whether bin Laden might have had access to the buildings, Gage said probably not – that someone else who had access to nano-thermite, and to the buildings' security systems, would need to be investigated. Someone who had access to the elevator modernization, which was going on nine months earlier and was "immediately adjacent to the core columns and beams in the building."
Concluding Comment: (Corporate). This Fox News show began by asking Gage about his credentials, saying "We ask that for clarification so that as we get into this, we want people to make sure that you're not just someone with a wacky idea…you come with some science to you." The program ended with a sincere thank-you to Gage for "opening up a lot to think about," and an announcement that there is "a great deal of information" on the KMPH.com website. In short, Gage was treated with the respect due to any serious participant in an important and controversial issue.
The next major mainstream event was the Russia Today program of July 9, 2009, which was covered above, so we will move directly to the anniversary period of September 2009, when further evidence of the impact of the nano-thermite discovery became apparent.
Case Study 5: The National Geographic Documentary, "9/11: Science and Conspiracy", August 31, 2009
In late August, 2009, the National Geographic Channel (NGC) aired a two-hour documentary, "9/11: Science and Conspiracy," which sought to answer several questions, "What caused the collapse of the Twin Towers? Was it from the fires, or were explosives placed inside the buildings, causing them to implode? Did a missile, rather than a commercial airline jet, strike the Pentagon?"27
This "NatGeo" program purported to explore evidence about controlled demolition presented by the 9/11 truth movment. It interviewed Dylan Avery (the maker of the "Loose Change" films), Richard Gage, David Ray Griffin, and Steven Jones. But in reality this NatGeo program was entirely devoted to debunking their claims by using pseudo-scientific demonstrations to refute claims that none of these men have made.
For example, in order to refute the claim that nano-thermite could have brought down the buildings, NatGeo used ordinary thermite (with the narrator explaining that they had no access to nano-thermite). Moreover, instead of using the thermite to make shaped charges, which can cut through steel, the NatGeo experimenter simply placed a bag of thermite next to a steel column and lit it. When the burning thermite (entirely predictably) did not melt the column, the narrator concluded, triumphantly, that science had disproved the claim of the conspiracy theorists.
A review in Media Life Magazine, while not fully exposing the phoniness of the program's claim to represent "science," did point out some shortcomings, saying:
Some of the issues raised by the truthers, however, aren't addressed, or are addressed in brief asides. This leaves this documentary open to charges of picking and choosing which points to cover. "9/11: Science and Conspiracy" spends too much time discussing the psychology behind conspiracy theories – which isn't really a hard science.28
A review in the New York Post quoted Sander Hicks, a journalist who is openly a member of the 9/11 truth community, as saying that its representatives on the program "come off as careful and professional, unemotional, but compassionate about the truth," and that the program, in spite of its faults, shows "that the topic is still relevant and that the case isn't closed."29
Concluding Comment: (Corporate). This program by National Geographic provides a good reminder of how the 9/11 truth issue has generally been handled by the corporately-controlled media. But it also demonstrates the fact that the controversy is very much alive in the major media.
Case Study 6: Germany's Weekly TV Guide, "TV Hören und Sehen," August 31, 2009
"TV Hören und Sehen", with a paid circulation of nearly a million copies, is owned by the Bauer Media Group, which publishes 308 magazines in 14 countries. The TV magazine features interviews and articles by prominent German authors.30
It is therefore significant that on August 31, 2009, this magazine published "Die Geheimakten von 9/11" ("The Secret Files of 9/11") as a full double-page spread, continuing with photos on two subsequent pages. It opened by saying: "9/11 is officially the largest criminal case in history – but classified documents and witness accounts are surfacing, that speak against the official versions of the CIA and Pentagon."31
It then asks what force could pulverize 200,000 tons of steel in 11.4 seconds, quoting US engineer Neel Ginson: "In order to bring down this kind of mass in such a short period of time, the material must have been artificially exploded outwards." Ginson added that, looking closely, one can see small explosions in the Twin Towers always occurring before the floors are reached by the collapse line. The fact that the towers were the first steel-frame buildings in the world to collapse because of fire, he added, was even admitted by NIST (the National Institute of Science and Technology, the government agency that produced the official reports).
Among many other questions, the article raises the issue of adjacent World Trade Center 7, the 47-storey steel-frame building with a base the size of a football field that collapsed at 5:20 PM the same day: "But the official 9/11 investigation never mentions the building once."
With reference to the Pentagon, this article asks: How were the victims identified by their fingerprints, when even the airplane steel had melted?
Concluding Comment: (Corporate). Although this article does not specifically mention nano-thermite, it clearly suggests that artificial explosions brought down the buildings. By not defending the official story at all, this large-chain corporate media outlet was among the first to give an open hearing to the independent 9/11 research community.
Case Study 7: Two California Newspapers Review the Role of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, September 2009
In September 2009, Metroactive (Silicon Valley's number-one weekly magazine) and the Santa Barbara Independent, each published slightly different versions of a long article on the controversy surrounding the WTC building collapses.32
The Independent article – entitled "Twin Towers, Twin Myths?" – begins:
"One of the crucial technical disputes in American history, perhaps second only to global warming, is underway. It pits hundreds of government technicians who say the World Trade Center buildings were brought down by airplane impact against hundreds of professional architects and building engineers who insist that the Twin Towers could never have collapsed solely due to the planes and are calling for a new independent investigation. It is a fight that is not going away and is likely to get louder as more building trade professionals sign on to one side or the other."33
The version in MetroActive – called "Explosive Theory" – says "[E]ight years after 9/11, a growing organization of building trades professionals suspect that there was more to the event than the government will admit." It then gives a short history of Gage's now 1,000-strong organization, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE).34
Deputy Director Michael J. Heimbach of the FBI's counter-terrorism division, this article adds, had recently acknowledged in a letter to the organization that Gage's presentation is "backed by thorough research and analysis."
One local AE member was quoted as saying "it takes too much energy" – energy that was not there – to collapse the buildings at free-fall speed, given the resistance that steel offers. This was borne out, this member continued, by a team of scientists "working at technical laboratories in the United States and Denmark [who] reported in April that analysis of dust …gathered at the World Trade Center found evidence of the potent incendiary/explosive 'super thermite,' used by the military."
Almost half of this article deals with the controversy over whether nano-thermite was used, with most of the space allotted to evidence supplied by the 9/11 Truth Movement. Near the end, however, spokesman Michael Newman is brought in to defend NIST's research, saying there was "no need" to test the dust for thermite.
But the last word was given to engineer Ed Munyak of AE, who said:
"The fact is that the collapses don't resemble any fire-induced behavior of structures, but it exactly mimics a controlled demolition, so why not investigate that? It's all very suspicious and that's why an independent investigation is needed so we can all learn from this."
"Explosive Theory" also focuses pointedly on the growing number of professional organizations and retired officials calling for a new investigation, including:
…two dozen retired U.S. military brass and eight former U.S. State Department officials, along with a number of Republicans who have served in high federal positions since President Reagan, including former Assistant Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts and former Reagan administration Assistant Defense Secretary (and retired Marine Corps colonel) Ronald D. Ray.
The version in the Santa Barbara Independent concludes with an unusually candid observation:
And how would America deal with such an investigation against the backdrop of suppositions that some officials in government were complicit? This idea is virtually unthinkable to most of the public, much less something the American political system can handle…The forces of denial, in the system and in most of our minds, are innately powerful and probably sufficient to mitigate against a reopened investigation. Despite this, [Richard] Gage [of AE] sees his role as provoking a better investigation.
Concluding Comment: (Independent). The authors of this article, rather than referring to "conspiracy theorists," present the 9/11 issue as a "technical dispute" of historic importance. Both versions of the article represent a 180-degree turnaround in American newspaper reporting, providing a useful introduction to the long-ignored research by independent professionals. The Santa Barbara Independent, curious about public opinion rather than seeking to hide it, published a local poll asking if conspiracy was behind the collapses: 75% of respondents answered "yes".35
Case Study 8: Dr. Niels Harrit on NRK1's "Schrödinger's Cat," September 10, 2009
NRK1 is the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation's main TV channel. It's program "Schrödinger's Cat", which is about scientific research and technology, comes on every Thursday following the evening news. It has won several awards, and averages 487,000 viewers.
For the September 10 program, Dr. Harrit was interviewed for about ten minutes in his office and laboratory at the University of Copenhagen Nano-Science Center, where he demonstrated the magnetic quality of a WTC dust sample. He also showed videotape of molten iron flowing from the upper South Tower, which was iron, not aluminum (which melts at a much lower temperature than steel or iron). Emphasizing that an office fire, even if fed by jet fuel, could not possibly get hot enough to melt steel, thereby producing iron, he concluded that the flowing iron had to have been caused by something such as nano-thermite, which produces "an enormous amount of heat", and molten iron is created in the process, with a temperature of 4530 F.36
Although Harrit did not know who placed the explosives, he said, he had no doubt that a crime had occurred.
In the final third of the program, three other people were asked for comments. Two of the people tried to cast doubt on Harrit's conclusions, but their comments were weak, even absurd. An architect argued that the energy from the airliners brought the Twin Towers down and then Building 7 came down because the collapse of the towers acted like an earthquake to weaken the ground. American buildings are weak, he explained, because they don't use reinforced concrete.
Finally, Dr. David Ray Griffin has stated that "for scientists and people who study the facts, the official story about the Twin Towers is completely ludicrous, but for the general public it has seemed plausible. Jet fuel fires – they seem so hot. Jet fuel's just kerosene."
Concluding Comment: (Public). This prime-time coverage by Norway's largest TV channel was quite a turnaround from the earlier NRK radio coverage in May. Most of the time was given to Drs. Harrit and Griffin; the content was groundbreaking; and the opposing views were obviously insubstantial. Considering Norway's NATO membership and military participation in the US-led operations in Afghanistan, the program could prove to be significant.
Case Study 9 : London's "Daily Mail" asks whether Osama bin Laden is Dead, September 11, 2009
This long and detailed article opens with the menacing bin Laden audiotape of June 3, 2009, timed to coincide with Barack Obama's arrival on his Middle East tour, and then moves to the new Anglo-American offensive to "hunt and kill" the al Qaeda leader.
But, the Daily Mail asks, what if bin Laden isn't alive?
What if everything we have seen or heard of him on video and audio tapes since the early days after 9/11 is a fake – and that he is being kept 'alive' by the Western allies to stir up support for the war on terror?
Incredibly, this is the breathtaking theory that is gaining credence among political commentators, respected academics and even terror experts.37
Professors Angelo Codevilla of Boston University and Bruce Lawrence of Duke University point out that the early, verifiable videotapes of bin Laden do not match the tapes that have emerged since 2002 – and even one in late 2001.
Telltale distinguishing features include a changed facial structure and increasing secularism in the content of the messages.
The article then presents the findings of Dr. Griffin's book on the topic – Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive? – as "provoking shock waves".
This book presents evidence that bin Laden died, probably due to kidney failure, in mid-December 2001, which would mean that his taped messages since then have been faked to "stoke up waning support for the war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan."
Perhaps the most controversial of all the tapes was released by the Pentagon on December 13, 2001, claiming that it had been found in a home in Jalalabad. Prior to this tape, bin Laden had, while praising the 9/11 attacks, consistently denied responsibility for them. But the bin Laden of this tape boasts about having planned them.
President Bush, the Blair Government, and the mainstream media all hailed this message as offering conclusive proof of bin Laden's guilt.
The Daily Mail, however, points to various reasons provided in Griffin's book to believe that the man in this video was an imposter. It refers to the existence of a "highly sophisticated, special effects film technology to morph together images and vocal recordings."
And it quotes Griffin as saying: "The confession tape came exactly when Bush and Blair had failed to prove Bin Laden's responsibility for 9/11 and both men were trying to win international public support, particularly in the Islamic world, for the anti-terrorist campaign."
Far from seeking to ridicule Griffin's book, the Daily Mail concluded thus: "[T]he Bin Laden tapes have emerged with clockwork regularity as billions have been spent and much blood spilt on the hunt for him. Bin Laden has been the central plank of the West's 'war on terror'. Could it be that, for years, he's just been smoke and mirrors?"
Concluding Comment: (Corporate). This 2400-word article is the first serious mainstream coverage the evidence that Osama bin Laden is dead – and has been for many years.
Case Study 10. The New Statesman announces Dr. David Ray Griffin as No. 41 in "The Fifty People who Matter Today," September 24, 2009
Two weeks after the Daily Mail article, a second corporate British publication put Griffin in 41st place in a list of people who "matter today.”38
Because this article was discussed in my earlier paper, Part I of this series, it is mentioned here only as a significant milepost, one that gave (grudging) recognition to the fact that the movement challenging the official account of 9/11 can no longer be ignored.
Its impact on the media is shown by the fact that the New Statesman placed Dr. Griffin (who scores 200,000 results when googled) above Venezuela's President, Hugo Chavez, (who scores over 11 million results) on its list of influential people.
Concluding Comment: (Corporate). Although the New Statesman called the movement represented by Dr. Griffin "pernicious", its evaluation of his importance represents a point of no return in the media coverage of 9/11 – as we shall see.
Case Study 11: Jean-Marie Bigard on France 2 Public Television, October 28, 2009
Back in September 2008, Jean-Marie Bigard, France's most popular stand-up comedian, was led to apologize for claiming 9/11 was orchestrated by the US government.39 But by July 2009, Bigard had started to post humorous videos on his website ridiculing the official account of the September 11 attacks.
In October 2009, Bigard and award-winning French filmmaker Mathieu Kassovitz appeared for an hour in a debate on France 2, the publicly owned French national television channel.40
The hosts, who had refused to include the scientist who was originally supposed to be on the show (Dr. Niels Harrit) attempted to center the debate on "straw man" theories that neither Bigard nor Kassovitz held. This led to arguments, which then allowed Le Figaro, France's second largest newspaper, to dismiss the debate as "noisy sophistry".41
Concluding Comment: (Public). Although this program was aimed at debunking the 9/11 movement, as shown by its refusal to include a scientist, the fact that it was aired on this state-owned network was a breakthrough, ending the era in which 9/11 questioning was ignored in France.
Case Study 12: "The Unofficial Story", by CBC's The Fifth Estate, November 27, 2009
On November 26, 2009, Canada's largest newspaper, The Globe and Mail, noting in an objective review42 that the 9/11 truth movement is "gathering steam," reported that a documentary airing that evening "follows up on some fairly startling public-opinion polls of late."
It was referring to "The Unofficial Story",43 a program in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's weekly award-winning investigative series, The Fifth Estate.44
Host Bob McKeown, himself a recipient of multiple awards45, opened by saying that eight years after the "most scrutinized day in history", there may be "more questions than ever", and that an increasing number of people now believe the US government was behind the 9/11 attacks. "Incredibly", he adds, "public opinion polls now show that a majority of Americans believe the Bush Administration had advance knowledge of those attacks, and one way or another allowed them to happen, and polls show that one Canadian in three believes that, too."
"The Unofficial Story" then allows leading members of the 9/11 truth community to present a spectrum of evidence on various issues:
Architect Richard Gage on how the towers were brought down by controlled demolition
Canadian scientist A.K. Dewdney on the impossibility of cell phone calls at high altitude
David Ray Griffin on the FBI's 2006 admission that, although US Solicitor General Ted Olson had reported receiving two calls from his wife, CNN commentator Barbara Olson on Flight 77, the evidence indicates that she attempted only one call and that it was "unconnected" and hence lasted "zero seconds"
Dr. Griffin and Canadian media commentator Barrie Zwicker on the military's explanation of why it did not intercept the airliners
9/11 documentary filmmaker Craig Ranke on the fact that footage of the Pentagon attack is virtually unavailable to the public in spite of many cameras trained on the building
Dewdney on evidence that Flight 93 was shot down by the US military
Richard Gage on the presence of nano-thermite in the World Trade Center dust
In response, defenders of the official account, such as Johnathan Kay (of Canada's National Post) and 9/11 Commission counsel John Farmer, focus more on why the American public is susceptible to conspiracy theories, than on the disputed evidence itself 46 – although Kay does credit Richard Gage for being involved in a serious quest for truth.
Jim Meigs, Editor-in-Chief of Popular Mechanics, also directs comments against the skeptics themselves rather than their evidence. Conspiracy theorists, he says, are deluded by "the myth of hyper-competence" in relation to the failure of the US Air Force to intercept the planes.
However, Brent Blanchard, presented as a demolition expert, argues against the controlled demolition theory by producing seismographs showing the absence of spikes that, he says, would have been produced by explosions.
He also expressed concern that people around the world, by reporting US government complicity in 9/11 "as fact", are affecting how people view America.
But actor Daniel Sunjata (of "Rescue Me") ponders the price of not asking the hard questions: "Sometimes boils need to be lanced. Sometimes poison needs to be brought to the surface in order for real healing to take place."
McKeown concludes: "We did it not to promote one side or the other, but to shine some light on some of those unresolved issues and unanswered questions."
And indeed, the program website published links to both sides of the issue.47
Concluding Comment: (Public). This hour-long documentary was the first truly fair opportunity in North America for advocates of the "unofficial story" of 9/11 to present some of their case on mainstream television. Representatives of the "official story" were also given time to speak, but their case was patently weaker. This imbalance was allowed by the producers, and indeed by the Canadian government, to stand. Aired several times across Canada, this program drew unusually high viewer commentary.
Case Study 13: New Zealand TV's "Close Up" hosts Architect Richard Gage, November 27, 2009
The same day "The Unofficial Story" was broadcast by the CBC, Richard Gage appeared on New Zealand TV's popular public affairs program, Close-Up, for a six-minute interview.48
"WTC 7 was never hit by a plane but it still came down," the host begins, "and that's what troubles internationally respected architect Richard Gage."
Gage is then allowed to explain that the building fell straight down in 6.5 seconds, and that NIST, the agency tasked with explaining the collapse, admitted that it had come down in absolute free-fall for the first hundred feet or so. "That means the structure had to have been removed," says Gage. "There is evidence of very high-tech explosives in all the dust throughout lower Manhattan – nanothermite."
Normal office fires, Gage added, would start "a large, gradual deformation – the building would tip over – it wouldn't go straight down through the path of greatest resistance."
This is why 1,000 engineers and architects around the world are demanding a real investigation that includes all of the evidence at the crime scene, not just the planes and the fires, says Gage.
"In the nine months prior to 9/11, we had the largest elevator modernization in history going on inside the towers…We're looking for an investigation that includes elevator companies, security companies, etcetera."
Concluding Comment: (Public). New Zealand's national television station allowed open and unopposed discussion, by the founder of the world's largest professional organization calling for a new 9/11 investigation, of the claim that nano-thermite was used in a controlled demolition of the World Trade Center. The coincidence that this program and the CBC's "The Unofficial Story" both aired on the same day may prove to be a turning point in media coverage of the 9/11 issue.
Case Study 14 : "9/11 Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura," TruTV, Premiere December 9, 2009
TruTV is an American cable television network owned by Time Warner through its subsidiary, Turner Broadcasting. Historically, its has given live homicide trial coverage and other criminal justice programming, though it has recently expanded into more caught-on-video reality, which it calls "actuality" television.
"Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura" premiered December 2, 2009, to an audience of 1.6 million television viewers.
The former Governor of Minnesota has good cause to look into conspiracies, as seen in his December 29 episode, which shows personal experience that the "secret state" holds more power than the senior elected representatives of the people:
"About a month after I was elected governor, I was requested into the basement of the capitol to be interviewed by 23 members of the Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA…And I said to them, "look before I answer any of your questions, I want to know what you're doing here." Because in the CIA mission statement it says that they're not to be operational inside the United States of America. Well, they wouldn't really give me an answer on that. And then I said, "I want to go around the room, and I want each one of you to tell me your name and what you do." Half of them wouldn't. Now isn't that bizarre? I'm the governor, and these guys won't even answer questions from me."49
Ventura made the 9/11 documentary after being approached by Donna March O'Connor, whose daughter died in the World Trade Center and wanted "every American exposed to the questions" about 9/11.50
Ventura's documentary contained interviews with the following people:
Janitor William Rodriguez, the last man out of the North Tower and who was decorated for heroism by President Bush, who reported enormous explosions in the basements just before the plane hit up above, and whose testimony to the 9/11 Commission was ignored
Physicist Steven Jones, formerly of Brigham Young University, who isolated super-thermite from the enormous dust clouds of the Twin Towers and Building 7, after which he was contacted by a consultant engineer from the Department of Homeland Security, who warned Jones that, if he published his findings "the pain would be great."
Explosives expert Van Romero, of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, demonstrating how super-thermite can be painted onto a steel beam, causing it to burn through
Ground Zero rescue worker Mike Mallone, who reported seeing one of the four black boxes removed from the site, and was told of two others – and who was told by the FBI that if he talked about it, "there would be a problem."
Investigative journalist Dave Lindorff, who was told "off the record" by a contact in the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigated the boxes, that all four had been recovered by the FBI and taken away, though officially, the contact said, this would be denied
Air crash investigator Dale Leppard, who said that the bright orange heat-resistant boxes are never lost
Yet the 9/11 Commission Report claimed that the boxes from American 11 and United 175 were never found.
Ventura concluded by asking: "If everything they told us was true, then why would they need to stonewall us?"
Concluding Comment: (Corporate). By calling his series "Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura", he openly declares that conspiracies do exist, and that they are a legitimate subject to investigate. According to TruTV, the first episode drew 1.6 million viewers, a record for a new series on this network.
Case Study 15: German Federal Judge Dieter Deiseroth Questions the Official 9/11 Investigation, December 15, 2009
Heinz Heise is a German publishing house, which publishes Europe's most popular computer and technology journals. It also owns Heise Online (heise.de), which is a top-50 site in Germany, and a top-1000 website in the world as a whole.
On December 15 2008, Heise Online carried an interview with German Federal Judge Dieter Deiseroth on the legality of the Afghanistan war and the question of whether the attacks were adequately investigated in the US.51
In his response, Deiseroth made the following points:
The 9/11 Commission consisted of Bush Administration officials who were very close to the military industrial complex.
Now, over eight years after 9/11, no independent court has applied legal procedures to review the available evidence on who was responsible for the attacks.
It is not acceptable for a constitutional state to dispense with the necessary steps in identifying suspects and instead to declare war, bomb a foreign country where suspects reside, and place it under military occupation.
Having made the claim that bin Laden was responsible for the terrorism of 9/11, the United States was under burden of proof, and yet America's own FBI admits that it has no evidence presented in court of Osama bin Laden's responsibility for the 9/11 attacks.
Concluding Comment: (Corporate). This “top-50” online journal exposed many German people to the illegal and unconstitutional responses to the 9/11 attacks – which were the underpinning for the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – and even to questions about the truth of the official account of 9/11 itself.
Case Study 16: Germany's “Focus Money” says: “We Do Not Believe You!” January 8, 2010
With 450,000 to 720,000 readers, Focus Money is the second most popular German weekly business magazine. In January 2010, it published a 5-page, highly detailed, and comprehensively researched glossy feature, "We do not believe you!"52
The article first looks at the many professional 9/11 groups, as well as a 2,000-strong list of prominent and qualified people who question the 9/11 Commission Report at the Patriots Question 9/11 website.
It quotes Richard Gage saying: "The towers accelerated without interruption in free fall…as if the lower 90 floors of the building did not exist. The only way to bring them down like that is controlled demolition."
The article weighs Gage's list of ten features of a controlled demolition, which were exemplified in the World Trade Center collapses, against the three features of a fire-caused destruction, which were absent.
Focus Money also explores the case of Barry Jennings, a former Deputy Director of Emergency Services in New York's Housing Authority, who reported being trapped in WTC 7 after massive explosions in this building occurred in the morning – before the Twin Towers fell. Focus Money also reported that Jennings, aged 53, died mysteriously just days before NIST's report on WTC-7 was to be released in August 2008.
The article recommends films that challenge the official report, including "Loose Change", which has been seen 125 million times on Google video alone, "9/11 Mysteries," and "Zero" – all available online.
Regarding the Pentagon, experienced commercial pilots are cited as maintaining that no one, let alone a Cessna pilot, could fly the route that Flight 77 allegedly took to hit the building.
The article pointed out the lack of debris to support the official story: "There was no tail, there were no wings, no confirmation of the crash of a Boeing 757." And there were no titanium engines, which would have survived the crash.
Also cited was Sergeant Lauro Chavez of the US Central Command in Florida, who was involved in exercises the morning of 9/11 to hijack planes and fly them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the White House. He asks why, when it became clear that the attacks were real, were the rogue planes not intercepted?
Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta's testimony to the 9/11 Commission, in which he reported a conversation between Dick Cheney and a young officer prior to the strike on the Pentagon, supports Chavez' conviction that there had been a stand-down order.
Concluding Comment: (Corporate). This 5,400-word article presented strong evidence against the official 9/11 account to Germany's economic and political decision-makers.
Case Study 17: Televised documentary, "The BBC's Conspiracy Files: Osama bin Laden – Dead or Alive?" January 10, 2010
In January 2010, a BBC News article53 summarized evidence supporting both sides of the question stated in the title of its upcoming documentary, "Osama bin Laden – Dead or Alive?" – a title taken from the David Ray Griffin book that was previously discussed in a Daily Mail article.54
The documentary, which was part of the BBC Conspiracy Files series, opened by presenting evidence that bin Laden has long been dead, including the following points:
Bruce Riedel, chair of President Obama's policy review on Afghanistan and Pakistan, says the bin Laden trail is cold, "frozen over," meaning that there has been no intelligence on bin Laden since Tora Bora, either by sightings or intercepted communications.
Various lines of evidence suggest that bin Laden was suffering from advanced kidney disease: CBS News reported, for example, that he was being treated in the kidney ward of a hospital in Pakistan the night before the 9/11 attacks, and the last of the undoubtedly authentic videotapes showed him frail and gaunt, with a whitish beard.
There were reports of his funeral in mid-December 2001 in Pakistani and Egyptian newspapers.
Former CIA agent Robert Baer, who believes bin Laden to be dead, reported that none of his friends in the CIA could state for certain that bin Laden was still alive.
Colonel Iman, Pakistan's former troop trainer, also believes him to be dead.
The only proof of bin Laden's continuing existence is the audio and videotapes, and Dr. Griffin has presented evidence (about the structure of bin Laden's face and hands, and the secular content of his messages)that some of them are clearly faked, leading to the suspicion that they all are.
Pakistan's former Lieutenant General Hamid Gul, who knew bin Laden, supports this conclusion with regard to the alleged confession video.
Professor Bruce Lawrence of Duke University, a student of the bin Laden tapes, also declared it a fake, especially because bin Laden always loved the spotlight. He asks why bin Laden has been seen so infrequently on video and why his contemporary, Ayman al-Zawahiri is seen so often.55
The BBC narrator says that only six of bin Laden's 40 messages were videotapes, and only two have appeared since Tora Bora in 2001.
Dr Griffin says the first video appeared conveniently just before the 2004 US election, which helped Bush to win; and the second appeared in 2007, showing a very black beard, which had formerly been almost white.56
CIA agent Robert Baer confirmed that the alleged bin Laden audio and video tapes could have been faked through digital manipulation.
The BBC program also presented evidence that is believed by some to show that the US may not have been intent on capturing or killing bin Laden:
Dalton Fury, commander of the secret Delta Force, says it was "odd" that Washington denied him nearby troops and artillery when he had bin Laden trapped at Tora Bora in December 2001.
Mike Scheuer, formerly of the CIA bin Laden Unit, said the US had ten chances to easily kill bin Laden between May 1998 and May 1999. Each time the CIA briefed the White House of the opportunity, the decision was made not to shoot.
In the final third of the program, the BBC provided rather weak evidence against "the theory that Osama bin Laden died 8 years ago and the US government is keeping him alive, faking videos, and sending troops to battle and allowing them to die in pursuit of an imaginary foe." However, a reviewer for the TV and Radio section of the The Independent, one of London's leading newspapers, complained that this rebuttal was too little, too late, saying:
"The Conspiracy Files film about Osama Bin Laden was a dubious affair, which gave regrettable amounts of air time to an obsessive 9/11 "truther" called David Ray Griffin. . . . Griffin only got the airtime, as it turned out, so that Conspiracy Files could systematically work their way through his claims and dismiss them. But I think they grievously overestimated the capacity of common sense to mop up the pollution of paranoid fantasy that they actively helped to spread around in the first 45 minutes of the film."57
This seemed to be the commentator's way of saying that the BBC's show probably increased the number of people who believe that bin Laden is probably dead.
Concluding Comment: (Public). This program attempts to neutralize the evidence that bin Laden has been dead for 8 years, which if true would mean that fabricated tapes are helping to justify a continuing Western offensive in the Middle East. That the program was made at all shows how seriously the BBC is taking the growing challenge to the official story of 9/11.
Case Study 18 : An American Union Paper Calls for a New Probe, February 1, 2010
The New Hampshire Union Leader is a daily union newspaper seen by 143,000 people per month in the United States.
Beth Lamontagne Hall of the Union Leader wrote in February 2010 that "Keene resident Gerhard Bedding doesn't buy the government's version of what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, so he's working on a statewide campaign calling for another investigation into the terrorist attacks.58
Bedding and others, she reported, are petitioning New Hampshire's congressional delegates to push for an independent investigation into "all the evidence and unanswered questions" pertaining to the 9/11 attacks.
Quoting Bedding's statement that a new investigation is needed "in light of new evidence that has appeared in the last two years," she pointed out that he mentioned, in particular, the report that scientists had found traces of explosives at the World Trade Center.
Concluding Comment: (Independent). This article in a daily union newspaper is a significant indicator, more than eight years after the attacks, of the broadening concern over the truth about 9/11, and is another example of the widespread influence of the nano-thermite paper published by Dr. Harrit and his co-authors.
IV. Summary and Concluding Observations
1. In the past year, in response to emerging independent science on the 9/11 attacks, nine corporate, seven public, and two independent media outlets aired examinations of the issue, which were all – with the exception of the National Geographic special – reasonably objective, examining the issue as a legitimate scientific controversy worthy of debate (not as "conspiracy theorists" vs. science and common sense).
2. Eight countries – Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, and Russia – have allowed their publicly-owned broadcasting stations to air the full spectrum of evidence challenging the truth of the official account of 9/11.
3. These developments may reflect a relaxation in the international media following the change in the US and British leaderships.
4. These developments definitely reflect, in any case, the fact that scientists in the 9/11 Truth Movement have recently succeeded in getting papers, such as the nano-thermite paper, published in peer-reviewed journals.
5. These developments surely also reflect the general professionalism of the 9/11 Truth Movement, as exemplified by the emergence of not only Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth but also Firefighters, Intelligence Officers, Lawyers, Medical Professionals, Pilots, Political Leaders, Religious Leaders, Scholars, and Veterans for 9/11 Truth.
6. These developments seem to reflect, moreover, an increased recognition of the importance of the 9/11 Truth Movement, which is demonstrated by two honors given to its most influential member, Dr. David Ray Griffin, that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago: the choice by Publishers Weekly of one of his books as a "Pick of the Week," and his inclusion in the New Statesman's list of the most important people in the world today.
This more open approach taken in the international media – I could also have included the Japanese media – might be a sign that worldwide public and corporate media organizations are positioning themselves, and preparing their audiences, for a possible revelation of the truth of the claim that forces within the US government were complicit in the attacks – a revelation that would call into question the publicly given rationale for the military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
The evidence now being explored in the international media may pave the way for the US media to take an in-depth look at the implications of what is now known about 9/11, and to re-examine the country's foreign and domestic policies in the light of this knowledge.
* Elizabeth Woodworth is a retired professional health sciences librarian, and a freelance writer. She is the author of two published books and many articles on political and social justice issues.
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Notes
1 "The 50 People Who Matter Today," New Statesman, September 24, 2009
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Note that Part I of this series, entitled "The Media Response to the Growing Influence of the 9 /11 Truth Movement: Reflections on a Recent Evaluation of Dr. David Ray Griffin," was published by Global Research, December 12, 2009
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2 Niels H. Harrit, Jeffrey Farrer, Steven E. Jones, Kevin R. Ryan, Frank M. Legge, Daniel Farnsworth, Gregg Roberts, James R. Gourley, Bradley R. Larsen, "Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe," Open Chemical Physics Journal, Vol. 2 (April 3, 2009): 7-31
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3 Ibid., p. 29.
4 Ibid., p. 29.
5 Dr. Harrit is Associate Professor of the Department of Chemistry, and has been a faculty member at the Nano-Science Center at the University of Copenhagen since this Center started in 2001.
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6 "Danish Scientist Niels Harrit on Nano-thermite in the WTC Dust (English subtitles)," TV2 News, Denmark, April 6, 2009
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7 By Lars Sobiraj, May 24, 2009,"Germany's gulli.com (link obsolete now) Interviews Dr. Niels Harrit on Nanothermite at the WTC," Sunday May 24th, 2009 1:28 PM
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8 Kevin R. Ryan, "The Top Ten Connections Between NIST and Nano-Thermite," July 2, 2008,
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9 Dr. Andrzej W. Miziolek, "Nanoenergetics: An Emerging Technology Area of National Importance," In: US Department of Defense. "Special Issue: DOD Researchers Provide a Look Inside Nanotechnology," Amptiac Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 1, Spring 2002, p. 44
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The article reports that, "Very simply, nanoenergetics can store higher amounts of energy than conventional energetic materials and one can use them in unprecedented ways to tailor the release of this energy so as to maximize the lethality of the weapons." p. 43.
10 See the IoN Advisory Group at
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11 My italics. [News]: "Active Thermitic Material Confirmed in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe," June 15, 2009
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12 Thomas Hoffmann, "Danish scientist: an explosive nano material found in dust from the World Trade Center", Videnskab.dk, April 3, 2009
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13 Thomas Hoffmann, "Niels Harrit: Scientific evidence of long-time knowledge of 9/11," Videnskab.dk, April 3, 2009
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14 Milla Mølgaard, April 4, 2009,
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15 "Niels Harrit presents evidence for nano-thermite in WTC, on GoodMorning Denmark,"
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16 Posted at:
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17 "Did nano-thermite take down the WTC?"
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and
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Also available on youtube as "Dr. Niels Harrit on Russia Today – We need a real 9/11 investigation,"
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18 Brian Stelter, "The Political Suspicions of 9/11," New York Times, February 1, 2009
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19 Fox News, "'Rescue Me' From 9/11 Conspiracy Theories," February 4, 2009,
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20 The mock trial is available on youtube in 4 parts: "911 Devil's Advocate – English subs – Part 1 of 4", starts at
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21 This is said at the beginning of "911 Devil's Advocate – English subs – Part 2 of 4", at
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See also, Craig Morris, "Mistranslated Osama bin Laden Video – the German Press Investigates," December 23, 2001
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22 Joshua Rhett Miller, "Dutch TV Show Feeds Conspiracy Theories on Bin Laden's Role in 9/11," Fox News, April 25, 2009
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23 Johanthan Kay, "Richard Gage: 9/11 truther extraordinaire," Financial Post, Saturday, April 25, 2009
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24 The radio program may be heard at this link, in Norwegian, without subtitles
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25 Norwegian State Radio initiates public debate on 9/11 Truth (update),
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26 Richard Gage interviewed by Kim Stephens and Kopi Sotiropulos on KMPH Fox 26 in Fresno, CA, May 28, 2009
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27 "9/11: Science and Conspiracy",
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National Geographic Channel is a joint venture of National Geographic Television & Film and Fox Cable Networks.
28 Tom Conroy. "'9/11: Science and Conspiracy' not quite," Media Life Magazine, August 31, 2009
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29 Maxine Shen, "The Story Behind 9/11: Hit or Myth? Taking on the Truthers," New York Post, September 2, 2009
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30 The website for this publication is
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31 Hannes Wellmann, "Die Geheimakten von 9/11," TV Hören und Sehen, August 31, 2009. The article and its English translation have been downloaded to
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32 Whereas the article focuses primarily on Bay-Area resident Richard Gage, Santa Barbara is the home of David Ray Griffin, so the Independent version gave more space to him, even including his photo.
33 Jay Levin and Tom McKenzie, "Twin Towers, Twin Myths?" Santa Barbara Independent, September 17, 2009
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34 Jay Levin and Tom McKenzie, "Explosive Theory," MetroActive, September 9, 2009,
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35 "Is conspiracy behind the World Trade Center's collapse?"
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36 "Norwegian TV examines 911 part 1," September 10, 2009,
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The TV program was followed by a written account of it: Lars Ole Skjønberg, "World Trade Center ble sprengt" ("World Trade Center was Blown Up,") September 10, 2009,
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Further information and partial transcripts are available at "Norwegian State Television presents 9/11 Truth (en subs), (update)
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37 Sue Reid, "Has Osama Bin Laden been dead for seven years – and are the U.S. and Britain covering it up to continue war on terror?" Daily Mail, September 11, 2009
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38 New Statesman, "The 50 People who Matter Today."
39 "French comedian apolgises for claiming 9/11 was orchestrated by the US government," Belfast Telegraph, September 10, 2008
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40 "L'objet du scandale, 11 septembre, Bigard, Kassovitz,"
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The program is also available with English subtitles, at
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The debate was originally intended to include journalist Éric Laurent and Prof. Niels Harrit, but apparently France 2 could not find anyone to debate them. See "France 2 backs away from real debate, censors Niels Harrit and Éric Laurent," October 24, 2009,
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41 Hervé de Saint Hilaire, «L'objet du scandale» : sophismes bruyants, Le Figaro, 30 octobre 2009
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42 Andrew Ryan, "Was 9/11 a conspiracy? 'Truthers' make their case: CBC's fifth estate airs The Unofficial Story," The Globe and Mail, November 26, 2009
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43 CBC. The Fifth Estate. "The Unofficial Story", November 27, 2009
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44 The Fifth Estate has won 243 awards, including an Oscar for best documentary, three international Emmy Awards, and 31 Geminis.
45 McKeown's awards include two Emmys, two Geminis, two Edward R. Murrow awards, two Gracies, two National Headliner awards and a National Press Club award.
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46 It is worth noting that attempts to derail critics of the official story have often framed the issue as "conspiracy theorists" vs. "the science" or vs. "the facts." But as the current essay illustrates, the debate is now increasingly being framed in the media as science on one side of the issue vs. science on the other side.
47 The Fifth Estate, at
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48 "Richard Gage AIA on New Zealand National Television," November 27, 2009
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49 "Conspiracy Theory Episode 4 Big Brother with Jesse Ventura," December 29, 2009
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50 "9/11 Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura," TruTV, Premiere Wed, December 9 at 10PM
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Also at "Conspiracy theory with Jesse Ventura – 9/11 part 1,"
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51 Marcus Klöckner, "Das schreit geradezu nach Aufklärung," December 15, 2009
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The English Google translation is at
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52 Oliver Janich, Focus Money, No. 2/2010, January 8, 2010
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For English Google translation, see
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For English introduction and commentary, see
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53 Mike Rudin, "The Conspiracy Files," BBC News, January 9, 2009
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54 David Ray Griffin, "Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive?" Interlink Books, 2009. The documentary, "The BBC's Conspiracy Files: Osama bin Laden – Dead or Alive?" January 10, 2010, is now periodically available on BBC stations throughout the world, and presently available on youtube:
"BBC: Osama Bin Laden; Dead or Alive (1/6),"
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55 A Wikipedia article lists 34 videos of Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri that have been released since May 2003.
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56 Frames from the 2004 and 2007 videos may be seen side by side in the online article: David Ray Griffin, "Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive?" Global Research, October 9, 2009
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57 Tom Sutcliffe, "Last Night's Television: By The People: The Election of Barack Obama, Sat, BBC2; Conspiracy Files: Osama Bin Laden – Dead or Alive?, Sun, BBC2," The Independent, January 11, 2010
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58 Beth Lamontagne Hall, "NH group cites need for new 9/11 probe," New Hampshire Union Leader, February 1, 2010
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__________________
Elizabeth Woodworth
Homepage:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17624
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15.02.2010 15:41
The Media Response to the Growing Influence of the 9 /11 Truth Movement
Part I: Reflections on a Recent Evaluation of Dr. David Ray Griffin
by Elizabeth Woodworth, Global Research, December 12, 2009
The cover story of the September 24, 2009, issue of The New Statesman, the venerable left-leaning British magazine, was entitled “The 50 People who Matter Today.”(1) Any such list, necessarily reflecting the bias and limited awareness of the editors, would surely contain choices that readers would find surprising.
That is true of this list – which includes families as well as individuals. A good number of names are, to be sure, ones that would be contained in most such lists created by British, Canadian, or American political commentators, such as the Obamas, the Murdochs, Vladimir Putin, Osama bin Laden, Angela Merkel, Bill and Melinda Gates, Warren Buffett, Pope Benedict XVI, and Gordon Brown. But about half of the names reflected choices that I, and probably most other readers, found surprising. One of these choices, however, is beyond surprising - it is astounding.
I refer to the person in the 41st position: David Ray Griffin, a retired professor of philosophy of religion and theology who, in 2003, started writing and lecturing about 9/11, pointing out problems in the official account of the events of that day. By the time the New Statesman article appeared, he had published 8 books, 50 articles, and several DVDs. Because of both the quantity and quality of his work, he became widely regarded as the chief spokesperson of what came to be called “the 9/11 Truth Movement.” It was because of this role that the New Statesman included him in its list, calling him the “top truther” (the “conspiracy theorist” title went to Dan Brown, who was placed in the 50th slot).
In saying Griffin “matters”, however, the New Statesman was not praising him. Here is how the magazine explained its choice:
“Conspiracy theories are everywhere, and they always have been. In recent years, one of the most pernicious global myths has been that the US government carried out, or at least
colluded in, the 11 September 2001 attacks as a pretext for going to war. David Ray Griffin, a retired professor of religion, is the high priest of the ‘truther’ movement. His books on the subject have lent a sheen of respectability that appeals to people at the highest levels of government - from Michael Meacher MP to Anthony ‘Van’ Jones, who was recently forced to resign as Barack Obama's ‘green jobs’ adviser after it emerged that he had signed a 9/11 truth petition in 2004.”
I wish to raise two questions about the New Statesman’s treatment of Griffin. First, is its evaluation of him as one of the most important people in the world today simply absurd, as it certainly seems at first glance, or is there a perspective from which it makes sense? Second on what basis could the editors justify their claim that the 9/11 truth movement is promoting a “myth” – and a “pernicious” one at that?
The Inclusion of Griffin in the List: Does It Make Sense?
Why would Griffin’s role as “top truther” – as the intellectual leader of the 9/11 truth movement - lead the magazine’s editors to consider him one of the “50 people who matter today”? Unlike a president, a prime minister, or a pope, he has no political clout; unlike a billionaire, he has no financial clout; and his book sales do not begin to rival those of Dan Brown. Indeed, his books do not even get reviewed in the press. The idea that he is one of the 50 people who matter most in the world today is, as he himself has said, absurd – at least from most angles.
There is, however, one angle from which it does make sense: Given the enormity of the 9/11 attacks and of the policies, both foreign and domestic, that have been justified as responses to those attacks, a movement challenging the official story of the attacks certainly could, in principle, become so influential that its intellectual leader would be a person of consequence.
And the movement has, in fact, grown enormously in both size and credibility since 2004 and 2005, when Griffin published his first two books on the subject – “The New Pearl Harbor” and “The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions” – and began working, with colleague Peter Dale Scott, on an edited volume that was published in 2006 as “9/11 and the American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out.”
Due in large part to these volumes - plus the national exposure Griffin received when his 2005 lecture at the University of Wisconsin in Madison was carried by C-SPAN - a small group of academics formed Scholars for 9/11 Truth, which led in turn to the formation of Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice, the leaders of which launched the Journal of 9/11 Studies in 2006.
The existence of these scholarly organizations stimulated the creation of three professional organizations: Veterans for 9/11 Truth, Pilots for 9/11 Truth, and the destined giant of the movement, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, which was formed after architect Richard Gage, a conservative Republican, heard an interview with Professor Griffin on his car radio that would change his life. In it, Griffin was describing the newly released oral testimonies from the dozens of New York firefighters a who had heard booming explosions in the Twin Towers.(2) After looking into the evidence for himself and concluding that the destruction of the World Trade Center buildings could not have resulted from anything other than explosives, Gage formed his organization of architects and engineers, which now has almost 1000 licensed members.
While these developments were occurring, translations were made of some of Griffin’s books, beginning with “The New Pearl Harbor,” which was published in Italian, Chinese, Danish, Czech, French, Dutch, Japanese, and Arabic. Thanks in part to these translations, a worldwide movement is now calling for 9/11 truth.
Also, this movement, which at one time was discounted as crazy conspiracy theorists playing around on the Internet, has now become widely professionalized, with Griffin again a critical influence in his consultant role to the emerging organizations of journalists, lawyers, medical professionals, religious leaders, and political leaders.
One of those organizations, Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth, includes in its membership British MP Michael Meacher, who has, according to the New Statesman, succumbed to the “sheen of respectability” given to “the ‘truther’ movement” by Griffin’s books. The New Statesman would presumably look equally askance at other members of this organization, including Senator Yukihisa Fujita, one of the leading members of the new ruling party of Japan, who made a nationally televised presentation questioning the official account or 9/11, and Ferdinando Imposimato, a former Italian senator and judge who presided over the trial of the assassination of President Aldo Moro and the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II.
If political leaders are so easily taken in by a “pernicious global myth” about 9/11 because of the “sheen of respectability” lent to it by Griffin’s books, one could hopefully look to firefighters, who are generally practical, sensible people, for reassurance about the truth of the official account of 9/11. This hope is dashed, however, by the testimonies about explosions in the Twin Towers by dozens of firefighters, some of whom Richard Gage heard Griffin discussing on that interview in 2006. New York firefighters lost 343 of their own on September 11. The members of Firefighters for 9/11 Truth are demanding the investigation and prosecution of those involved in arranging explosions, destroying evidence, and orchestrating a cover-up.
One thing bringing Griffin to the attention of the editors of the New Statesman may have been the selection of his seventh book about 9/11, “The New Pearl Harbor Revisited,” by America’s foremost book trade reviewer, Publishers Weekly, as its “Pick of the Week” on November 24, 2008. This honor, which is bestowed on only 51 books a year, perhaps increased the sheen of respectability these editors attribute to Griffin’s books.
And, if the New Statesman did its homework in researching its #41 position, it would have found that Griffin was nominated in both 2008 and 2009 for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Whatever the case, there can be no doubt that the 9/11 truth movement, which Griffin has done more than any other single person to bring to its present level of professionalism and credibility, now poses a significant threat to the public narrative about 9/11, which has been accepted as a basis for policy by virtually all governments and news organizations around the world.
The decision of the New Statesman to include Griffin on the list of people who matter today does make sense, therefore, insofar as it was saying that the movement he represents is important. This way of understanding it was, in fact, Griffin’s own, as soon as he learned about the article. In a letter to fellow members of the 9/11 truth community, he said: “We should take this [New Statesman] article as a reluctant tribute to the effectiveness of our movement.”(3)
Does the 9/11 Truth Movement Promote a Pernicious Myth?
My second questions is: On what basis could the New Statesman editors justify their claim that this 9/11 truth movement promotes a “myth” - a “pernicious” one at that?
To call it a “myth” implies that it is not true. But why is it “pernicious”?
If the New Statesman were a right-wing magazine, we could assume that it would regard the 9/11 truth movement’s central claim – “that the US government carried out, or at least colluded in, the 11 September 2001 attacks as a pretext for going to war” – as pernicious because it seeks to undermine the imperialist wars justified by 9/11. But surely the left-leaning New Statesman does not share that view.
The word “pernicious” might simply mean that the myth “that the US government carried out, or at least colluded in, the 11 September 2001 attacks as a pretext for going to war,” is too morally repugnant to accept. But that gut reaction does not bear on the truth or falsity of the possibility, especially in light of all the morally repugnant things carried out by the Bush-Cheney administration that have already been publicly documented.
More likely, the New Statesman shares the view of left-leaning intellectuals, such as Alexander Cockburn and George Monbiot, that the 9/11 movement is distracting many left-leaning people from dealing with truly important issues.
However, would many people who regard 9/11 as a false-flag operation – in which forces within the US government orchestrated the attacks to have a pretext for, among other things, going to war against oil-rich Muslim countries - consider the attempt to reveal this truth a distraction from important issues? Surely not.
For the Statesman to call the central claim of the 9/11 truth movement “pernicious,” therefore, seems to be simply another way of calling it a “myth” – of saying that it is false.
If so, the question becomes: On what basis would the editors of the New Statesman argue that the position of the 9/11 truth movement, as articulated in Griffin’s writings, is false?
I will suggest a possible way they could do this: They could use the pages of their magazine to explain why the cumulative case Griffin has constructed against the official story is unconvincing. To assist them in this task, I have provided below a summary of some of the main points in Griffin’s case, with page references to his most comprehensive work, “The New Pearl Harbor Revisited” (2008), and his most recent book, “The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7.”
Elements in Griffin’s Cumulative Case Against the Official Account of 9/11
Evidence that the attacks were carried out by Arab Muslims belonging to al-Qaeda
The FBI, which does not list 9/11 as one of the terrorist acts for which Osama bin Laden is wanted, has explicitly admitted that it “has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11” (NPHR 206-11).
Mohamed Atta and the other alleged hijackers, far from being devout Muslims ready to die as martyrs, regularly drank heavily, went to strip clubs, and paid for sex (NPHR 153-55).
The main evidence for hijackers on the planes was provided by phone calls, purportedly from passengers or crew members on the airlines, reporting that the planes had been taken over by Middle-Eastern men. About 15 of these calls were specifically identified as cell phone calls, with Deena Burnett, for example, reporting that she had recognized her husband’s cell phone number on her Caller ID. But after the 9/11 truth movement pointed out that cell phone calls from high-altitude airliners would have been impossible, given the cell phone technology available in 2001, the FBI changed its story, saying that all the calls, except two made from a very low altitude, had been made using onboard phones.
Although US Solicitor General Ted Olson claimed that his wife, Barbara Olson, phoned him twice from AA 77, describing hijackers with knives and box-cutters, his widely reported story was contradicted by FBI evidence presented to the Moussaoui Trial in 2006, which said that the only call attempted by her was “unconnected” and (therefore) lasted “0 seconds” (NPRH 60-62).
Although the decisive evidence proving that Al-Qaeda was responsible for the attacks was originally said to have been found in a rented Mitsubishi that Mohamed Atta had left in the airport parking lot in Boston, the present story says that it was found in luggage that did not get loaded onto American Flight 11 from the commuter flight that Atta took that morning from Portland, Maine. This story changed after it emerged that Adnan and Ameer Bukhari, originally said to have been the hijackers who boarded American 11 after taking that commuter flight from Portland, had not died on 9/11.
The other types of reputed evidence for Muslim hijackers, such as security videos at airports, passports discovered at the crash sites, and a headband discovered at the crash site of United 93, show clear signs of having been fabricated (NPHR 170-73).
In addition to the absence of evidence for hijackers on the planes, there is also evidence of their absence: Although the pilots could have easily “squawked” the universal hijack code in two or three few seconds, not one of the eight pilots on the four airliners did this (NPHR 175-79).
The Secret Service, after being informed that a second World Trade Center building had been attacked---which would have meant that unknown terrorists were going after high-value targets---and that still other planes had apparently been hijacked, allowed President Bush to remain at the unprotected school in Sarasota, Florida, for another 30 minutes. The Secret Service thereby betrayed its knowledge that the airliners were not under the control of hostile hijackers.
Evidence of a “stand-down” order preventing interception of the four planes
Given standard operating procedures between the FAA and the military, according to which planes showing signs of an in-flight emergency are normally intercepted within about 10 minutes, the military’s failure to intercept any of the flights implies that something, such as a stand-down order, prevented standard procedures from being carried out (NPHR 1-10, 81-84).
Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta reported an episode in which Vice President Cheney, while in the bunker under the White House, apparently confirmed a stand-down order at about 9:25 AM, which was prior to the strike on the Pentagon. (NPHR 94-96).
The 9/11 Commission did not include this testimony from Mineta in its report and claimed that Cheney did not enter the bunker until almost 10:00, which was at least 40 minutes later than Mineta and several other witnesses reported his being there (NPHR 91-94).
The 9/11 Commission’s timeline for Cheney that morning even contradicted what Cheney himself had told Tim Russert on “Meet the Press” five days after 9/11 (NPHR 93).
Evidence that the official story about the Pentagon cannot be true
Hani Hanjour, who according to his flight instructors could not safely fly a single-engine airplane, could not have possibly executed the extraordinary trajectory reportedly taken by American Flight 77 in order to hit Wedge 1 of the Pentagon (NPHR 78-80).
Wedge 1 would have been the least likely part of the Pentagon to be targeted by foreign terrorists: It was remote from the offices of the top brass; it was the only part of the Pentagon that had been reinforced; and it was still being renovated and hence was only sparsely occupied (NPHR 76-78).
Evidence that the official story about the destruction of the World Trade Center cannot be true
Because the Twin Towers were supported by 287 steel columns, including 47 massive core columns, they could not have come straight down, largely into their own footprints, unless these columns had been severed by explosives. Therefore, the official theory - according to which the buildings were brought down solely by fire plus, in the case of the Twin Towers, the impact of the planes – is scientifically impossible (NPHR 12-25).
Many other things that occurred during the destruction of the Twin Towers, such as the horizontal ejections of steel beams from the top floors and the liquefying of steel and other metals with melting points far above any temperature that could have produced by fire, can only be explained by powerful explosives (NPHR 30-36).
The almost perfectly symmetrical collapse of WTC 7, which was supported by 82 steel columns, could only have occurred if all 82 of those columns had been sliced simultaneously (MC Ch. 10).
In its final report on WTC 7, issued in November 2008, NIST admitted that this building had come down in absolute free fall for over two seconds. NIST, however, was still affirming a theory of progressive collapse caused by fire, which, as NIST had explained the previous August, could not possibly result in absolute free fall, because the lower floors would offer resistance. NIST was able to avoid admitting that explosives had brought the building down, in other words, only by continuing to affirm its fire theory after admitting that it could not explain one of the empirical facts it had come to acknowledge (MC Ch. 10).
Journalists, city officials, WTC employees, and over 100 members of the Fire Department of New York testified to having witnessed massive explosions in the World Trade Center buildings (NPHR 27-30, 45-48, 51).
A scientist who had formerly worked for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which produced the official reports on the world Trade Center, reported in 2007 that it had been “fully hijacked from the scientific to the political realm,” so that its scientists had become little more than “hired guns” (NPHR 11, 238-51).
The fact that NIST in writing its reports functioned as a political rather than a scientific agency is illustrated with special clarity by its report on WTC 7, in which it not only omitted all the evidence pointing to the occurrence of explosives (MC Chs. 3-5), but also falsified and even fabricated evidence to support its claim that the building was brought down by fire (Chs. 7-10).
Until the editors of the New Statesman are able to refute Griffin’s cumulative argument, we can agree with their view that Griffin, by virtue of his role in the 9/11 truth movement, has become a person of global importance, while rejecting as groundless their charge that the growing importance of this movement is pernicious.
_________________
Notes
1.New Statesman. “The 50 People Who Matter Today,” September 24, 2009
2. New York Times. “The Sept. 11 Records. A rich vein of city records from Sept. 11, including more than 12,000 pages of oral histories rendered in the voices of 503 firefighters, paramedics, and emergency medical technicians, were made public on Aug. 12. The New York Times has published all of them.”
3. New Statesman Cover Story: David Ray Griffin 41st Most Influential Person in the World!” 911 Blogger, September 26, 2009, posted by Adam Syed
__________________
Elizabeth Woodworth
Homepage:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16505
Why the media silence on the Flight 253 bombing hearings?
15.02.2010 15:58
Hearing before the US House Committee on Homeland Security, 27 January 2010
Why the media silence on the Flight 253 bombing hearings?
by Alex Lantier, World Socialist Web Site, 10 February 2010
The media’s failure to report the January 27 Congressional hearings on last Christmas’s Flight 253 bomb plot is both extraordinary and ominous. The hearings made the explosive revelation that US intelligence agencies acted to help the bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, gain access to the plane.
Amid the press attention immediately after Abdulmutallab’s arrest, it soon emerged that US agencies had had ample warning of the plot. Abdulmutallab’s father—a banker who had held minister-level office in Nigeria—told US officials in November that his son was influenced by radical Islam, had traveled to Yemen, and might become a terrorist. The same month, US spy agencies monitoring Al Qaeda operatives in Yemen had learned that “Umar Farouk” had volunteered for terrorist acts.
Nonetheless, US authorities did not put Abdulmutallab on a no-fly list or flag him for special searches—even after he paid for a one-way ticket in cash and tried to board the plane without showing a passport. President Obama, congressmen and the media absurdly claimed that US intelligence had not stopped the attack because it failed to “connect the dots” between such pieces of information and realize that Abdulmutallab in fact could pose a threat.
The January 27 hearing went even further in exploding the official explanation given by the government and media. (See “Congressional hearing reveals US intelligence agencies shielded Flight 253 bomber” ).
Under questioning about US visa policy, State Department Under-Secretary Patrick Kennedy said: “We will revoke the visa of any individual who is a threat to the United States, but we do take one preliminary step. We ask our law enforcement and intelligence community partners, ‘Do you have eyes on this person and do you want us to let this person proceed under your surveillance so that you may potentially break a larger plot?’ ... And one of the members [of the intelligence community]—and we’d be glad to give you that out of—in private—said, ‘Please, do not revoke this visa. We have eyes on this person.’”
This unnamed US agency endangered the lives of hundreds of passengers, and more potential victims of flying debris on the ground. All three officials testifying—Kennedy, National Counter-Terrorism Center Director Michael Leiter, and Department of Homeland Security Deputy Director Jane Lute—said their agencies would take no disciplinary action over the Flight 253 events.
The hearing was reported in a brief January 27 article in the Detroit News, headlined, “Terror Suspect Kept Visa to Avoid Tipping Off Larger Investigation.” The News wrote: “The State Department didn’t revoke the visa of foiled terrorism suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab because federal counterterrorism officials had begged off revocation, a top State Department official revealed Wednesday.”
This article, published by one of the leading newspapers covering the aftermath of Flight 253, has not been challenged or retracted. Instead, it has been ignored. While there have been Congressional hearings involving leading figures in the US intelligence apparatus since January 27, Kennedy’s statements have not been raised in questioning.
Why is the media still saying nothing about the hearings?
Major press covered Congressional hearings on the Flight 253 attack extensively as they began. The New York Times ran a sympathetic January 16 article on Leiter—“For Antiterror Chief, a Rough Week Ahead as Hearings Begin”—praising him as “extremely bright.” It suggested Leiter’s agency struggled to keep track of different watch list systems.
On January 20, Washington news web site Talking Points Memo wrote: “As three separate Senate committees today hold hearings on the failed Christmas attack over Detroit, watch for Republicans to take the opportunity to ramp up their criticism of the Obama Administration.”
In fact, the Republican Party has been conspicuously silent since. Immediately after the bombing, former Vice President Dick Cheney attacked the Obama administration and nearly accused it of treason: “We are at war, and when President Obama pretends we aren’t, it makes us less safe.” However, after it became clear that US intelligence agencies were involved, Cheney has made no public criticisms of the White House’s handling of the issue.
The blackout is a devastating exposure of the state of US politics. If events do not fit the concocted “connect-the-dots” script, the political establishment treats them, in Orwellian style, as if they had never happened. This, in turn, further strengthens the power of the national-security apparatus inside the state, as it learns that it can plan operations risking mass deaths with impunity.
Washington proceeds in this manner to advance fundamental state interests: in protecting the “connect-the-dots” lie, it is trying to shield the credibility of the entire so-called “war on terror.”
This “war” relied on the claim that the only defense against a new September 11-type attack was giving the US national security apparatus carte blanche for an unpopular policy of preemptive wars, domestic spying, and other attacks on democratic rights. In earlier times, intelligence agencies had been known as the “department of dirty tricks.” However, US media treated their stunning lapses before September 11 as simply the product of honest mistakes or technical problems.
The Flight 253 hearings threatened to suggest the truth to masses of people: giving intelligence agencies free rein is extremely dangerous, both on the levels of personal security and of politics. This truth was, moreover, implicit in the US government’s unclear role in the September 11 events themselves.
In 2005, the New York Times published material on the Able Danger military intelligence unit. These revelations included confirmation of overseas reports that, as in Abdulmutallab’s case, the US had identified 9/11 operational leader Mohammed Atta before he entered the US on a visa in 2000. The World Socialist Web Site noted at the time: “How Atta was able to enter and re-enter the country on multiple occasions over the next year, enroll in flight school, and use credit cards and bank accounts in his real name, despite being a known Al Qaeda operative, has never been explained.”
Amid the toxic political atmosphere that swept the ruling class after September 11, 2001 and the invasion of Iraq, General Tommy Franks described in a November 2003 interview how he saw the security establishment’s response to another attack leading to military rule.
Franks said: “[It is] a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western world—it may be in the United States of America—that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event. Which in fact, then begins to unravel the fabric of our Constitution. ... [T]he Western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we’ve seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand experiment that we call democracy.”
Just the year before, the Bush administration had set up the Northern Command, to supervise military operations inside the US. In 2005, the Washington Post revealed that the US military was running so-called Vital Archer exercises involving US troops to “take charge” after a large-scale terrorist attack in the US.
In the days after the Flight 253 bombing, the World Socialist Web Site commented: “If this episode is to be examined seriously, the question must be asked: What would have happened had Northwest Flight 253 been destroyed? There is no question but that such a catastrophe would have had immense repercussions both internationally and within the United States. It would have seriously destabilized the Obama administration, politically strengthened the most extreme right-wing sections of the ruling class, and cleared the way for an even more massive expansion of military-intelligence operations overseas and a drastic curtailing of democratic rights at home.”
In keeping silent under such conditions, the mass media are helping to facilitate more anti-democratic plots.
Alex Lantier
Homepage:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/02/446053.html
South Park
15.02.2010 17:28
(for a correct version of events, Southpark as ever has the real answers.
Anyone that says, "Grow up thats a cartoon"...........is it? Get ya freak on!
Stan
Importance of including truth emergency in the progressive media reform movement
15.02.2010 17:47
Media Democracy in Action:
The Importance of Including Truth Emergency Inside the Progressive Media Reform Movement
Mickey Huff and Peter Phillips, Media Freedom International, 23 January 2010
“There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.” –Charles Dickens
The Corporate News Media: Not in the Business of News
The late New York University media scholar Neil Postman once said about America, “We are the best entertained least informed society in the world.” That was twenty-five years ago and after two-plus decades of more deregulation and the growth of conglomerates in the media, that trend has continued. From Tyra Banks’ shifting figure and the Balloon Boy hoax, to the celebrity death of Michael Jackson and the Obama Beer Summit, Americans are fed a steady “news” diet of tabloidized, trivialized, and outright useless information laden with personal anecdotes, scandals, and gossip.
Topics and in-depth reports that matter little to most people in any meaningful way are given massive amounts of attention in the corporate media. In recent years, this has only become more obvious. For instance, CNN’s coverage of celebrity Anna Nicole Smith’s untimely death in early 2007 is arguably one of the most egregious examples of an over abused news story. The magnitude of corporate media attention paid to Smith’s death were clearly out of synch with the coverage the story deserved, which was at most a simple passing mention. Instead, CNN broadcast “breaking” stories of Smith’s death uninterrupted, without commercials, for almost two hours, with commentary by lead anchors and journalists. This marked among the longest uninterrupted “news” broadcasts at CNN since the tragic events of September 11, 2001. Anna Nicole Smith and 9/11 are now strange bedfellows, milestone bookends of a deranged corporate news culture.[1]
While news outlets were obsessing over Smith’s death, most big media giants were missing a far more important story. The US ambassador to Iraq misplaced $12 billion in shrink-wrapped one hundred dollar bills that were flown to Baghdad. This garnered little attention due to the media’s morbid infatuation with Smith’s passing. This is clearly news judgment gone terribly awry if not an outright retreat from journalistic standards. The once trivial and absurd are now mainstreamed as “news.” More young people turn to late night comics’ fake news to learn the truth or tune out to so-called reality shows often scripted as Roman Holiday spectacles of the surreal. This hyper-reality creation of corporate media in the 21st century has led to what Postman presciently warned about: an infotainment society.[2]
The trend of mass coverage of trivial events in corporate media continued in 2009. British tabloid News of the World published an exclusive photo of Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps smoking marijuana from a bong on Sunday, February 1, 2009, with the headline, “What a Dope.” The picture was allegedly taken during a November house party while Phelps was visiting the University of South Carolina. The incident occurred nearly three months after the swimmer won eight gold medals for America at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China. Phelps quickly apologized to the public for his “regrettable behavior. ” The bong’s owner reportedly tried to sell it on eBay for $100,000. In the weeks following, Phelps lost his sponsorship from Kellogg’s cereal. Did anyone ask: is this really a newsworthy issue? Or, why is this a news story? Why instead was there not a discussion about the almost one-and-a-half million marijuana user arrests in 2006 and 2007?[3]
Photos of Jessica Simpson performing at a Florida Chili Cook-off looking a bit heavier than usual surfaced during the week of January 26, 2009. The purportedly unflattering shots of a curvier looking Simpson in an outfit that included “a muffin-top-inducing leopard belt” immediately made news headlines. Was she pregnant? Was she picking up eating habits from her NFL star quarterback boyfriend? Or was she simply hungry for publicity? During a pre-Super Bowl interview, President Obama even noted that Simpson was “in a weight battle.” Again, why is this a news story and why is the leader of the free world commenting on it? Why does this get coverage by hard news outlets at all? Why was there not a discussion about the worsening problems of hunger, homelessness, and poverty in America?[4]
The US is not only becoming a nation of obese people, but is on the verge of another phenomenon the equivalent of cultural and mental obesity. We, in America, are a nation awash in a sea of information yet we have a paucity of understanding. We are a country where over a quarter of the population know the names of all five members of the fictitious family from The Simpsons yet only one in a thousand can name all the rights protected under the first amendment to the US Constitution. Journalistic values have been sold out to commercial interests and not even our core, national and constitutionally protected values are sacred. Far too often, important news stories are underreported or ignored entirely by corporate news outlets, especially on television, where over seventy percent of Americans get their news, even though only an astounding twenty-nine percent say it is accurate. In short, Americans are living in a state of Truth Emergency.[5]
Truth Emergency: Keeping the Facts at Bay
“The truth comes as conqueror only because we have lost the art of receiving it as guest.”–Rabindranath Tagore
What are some of these truths, that not knowing them creates a literal state of emergency for human society? Here are two of many possible examples. A 2008 report from The World Bank admitted that in 2005, over three billion people lived on less than $2.50 a day and about forty-four percent of these people survive on less than $1.25. Complete and total wretchedness can be the only description for the circumstances faced by so many, especially those in urban areas of so-called developing nations. Simple items Americans take for granted like phone calls, nutritious food, vacations, television, dental care, and inoculations are beyond the possible for billions of people.[6]
In another ignored but related story, Starvation.net logged the increasing impacts of world hunger and starvation. Over 30,000 people a day (eighty-five percent of children under five) die of malnutrition, curable diseases, and starvation. The number of deaths has exceeded three hundred million people over the past forty years. These stories should be alarming headlines, certainly more significant than celebrity tripe and tabloid hype.[7]
Continuing on the theme of human poverty and its ramifications, farmers around the world grow more than enough food to feed the entire world adequately. Global grain production yielded a record 2.3 billion tons in 2007, up four percent from the year before, yet, billions of people go hungry every day. The website Grain.org describes the core reasons for continuing hunger in a recent article “Making a Killing from Hunger.” It turns out that while farmers grow enough food to feed the world, commodity speculators and huge grain traders like Cargill control the global food prices and distribution. Starvation is profitable for corporations when demands for food push the prices up. Cargill announced that profits for commodity trading for the first quarter of 2008 were eighty-six percent above 2007. World food prices grew twenty-two percent from June 2007 to June 2008 and a significant portion of the increase was propelled by the $175 billion invested in commodity futures that speculate on price instead of seeking to feed the hungry. This results in erratic food price spirals, both up and down, with food insecurity remaining widespread.[8]
For a family on the bottom rung of poverty a small price increase is the difference between life and death, yet no US presidents have declared a war on starvation. Instead they talk about national security and the continuation of the war on terror as if these were the primary issues for their terms in office. Given that ten times as many innocent people died of starvation than those in the World Trade Centers on September 11, 2001, why is there no war on starvation as there was a so-called War on Terror? Is not starvation, especially if preventable, a form of inflicted terror by those who profit from it or even stand by and do nothing? Where is the Manhattan Project for global hunger? Where is the commitment to national security though unilateral starvation relief? Where is the outrage in the corporate news media with pictures of dying children and an analysis of those that benefit from hunger? Could the same not be said for those that die due to lack of healthcare coverage, to the tune of 45,000 a year? While news stories on realities of global hunger remain under-covered in the US, topics closer to home are often ignored as well. For example, racial inequality remains problematic in the US. People of color continue to experience disproportionately high rates of poverty, unemployment, police profiling, repressive incarceration and school segregation.
According to a recent civil rights report from UCLA, “Reviving the Goal of an Integrated Society: A 21st Century Challenge,” by Gary Orfield, schools in the US are currently forty-four percent non-white, and minorities are rapidly emerging as the majority of public school students. Latinos and Blacks are the two largest minority groups. However, Black and Latino students attend schools more segregated today than during the civil rights era. Over fifty years after the US Supreme Court case: Brown VS Board of Education, schools remain separate and not equal. Orfield’s study shows that public schools in the Western states, including California, suffer from the most severe segregation in the US, rather than schools in the southern states as many people believe.[9]
This new form of segregation is primarily based on how urban areas are geographically organized—as Cornel West so passionately describes— into vanilla suburbs and chocolate cities.[10] Schools remain highly unequal, both in terms of money, and qualified teachers and curriculum. Unequal education leads to diminishing access to colleges and future jobs for the afflicted demographics. Non-white schools are segregated by poverty as well as race. These “chocolate” low-income public schools are where most of the nation’s drop-outs occur, leading to large numbers of virtually unemployable young people of color struggling to survive in a troubled economy.
Diminished opportunity for students of color invariably creates greater privileges for whites. White privilege is a concept that is challenging for many whites to accept. Whites like to think of themselves as hard working individuals whose achievements are due to deserved personal efforts. In many cases this is partly true; hard work in college often pays off in many ways. Nonetheless many whites find it difficult to accept that geographically and structurally based racism remains a significant barrier for many students of color. Whites often say racism is in the past, that Americans need not think about it today. Yet, inequality stares back at society daily from the barrios, ghettos, and from behind prisons walls.
For these factual stories to not be reported upon by major media outlets is clearly a matter of censorship and top down information control. The aforementioned are two riveting examples of a failure of the free press to accurately inform the public about critical issues facing our global and national society. Sadly, there are many more examples.
Fourth Estate Sale: Censorship, the “Free” Press, and Truth Emergency
“Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” –A.J. Liebling
The corporate media in the US like to think of themselves as the official, most accurate source for news reporting of the day. The New York Times motto of “all the news that’s fit to print” is a clear example of this perspective as is CNN’s “most trusted name in news” and at Fox News they go so far as to remind news consumers “we report, you decide” and that they are “fair and balanced.” However, with corporate media coverage dependent on fewer reporters as a result of downsizing that increasingly focus on a narrow range of celebrity updates, news from official government and institutional sources (almost three quarters of cited sources), and sensationalized crimes and disasters, the self-justification of being the most fit or trusted is no longer valid for American journalism. This shift away from fact-based, socially relevant reporting constitutes a principle form censorship at the base of this ongoing truth emergency. However, this is not the only form of censorship.
There is a growing need to broaden understanding of censorship in the US. The dictionary definition of direct government control of news as censorship is no longer adequate. The private corporate media in the US significantly under covers and/or deliberately censors numerous important news stories every year. The corporate media in the United States are ignoring valid news stories, even when based on university quality research. It appears that certain topics are simply forbidden inside the mainstream corporate media today. To openly cover these news stories would stir up questions regarding “inconvenient truths” that many in the US power structure would rather avoid. An example of one group that is doing this is Project Censored, and the Project has done so every year since 1976. They cover the inconvenient truths, expose the junk news patterns, and call for a more independent, research driven, transparent and fact-based system of reporting on all relevant topics for our democratic society.
Some of these inconvenient truths that remain taboo for corporate media include civilian death rates in Iraq, post-9/11 erosion of civil liberties, levels of violence by side in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the coup in Haiti, election fraud in the US, and questions concerning the very events and subsequent official investigations of 9/11. Here are some more details of the ongoing truth emergency.
Researchers from Johns Hopkins University and a professional survey company in Great Britain, Opinion Research Business (ORB) report that the United States is directly responsible for over one million Iraqi deaths since our invasion six and half years ago. In a January 2008 report, ORB reported that, “survey work confirms our earlier estimate that over 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have died as a result of the conflict which started in 2003 . . . We now estimate that the death toll between March 2003 and August 2007 is likely to have been of the order of 1,033,000.” A 2006 Johns Hopkins study confirmed that US aerial bombing in civilian neighborhoods caused over a third of these deaths and that over half the deaths are directly attributable to US forces. Iraqi civilian death levels in the summer of 2009 likely now exceed 1.2 million. John Tirman, executive director and principal research scientist at MIT’s Center for International Studies writes in The Nation, January 28, 2009, “we have, at present between 800,000 and 1.3 million “excessive Deaths” as we approach the six-year anniversary of this war.[11]
Some common themes of the most censored stories from 2006-2008 were the systemic erosion of human rights and civil liberties in both the US and the world at large. The corporate media ignored the fact that habeas corpus can now be suspended for anyone by order of the President. With the approval of Congress, the Military Commissions Act (MCA) of 2006, signed by Bush on October 17, 2006, allows for the suspension of habeas corpus for US citizens and non-citizens alike. While media, including a lead editorial in The New York Times, October 19, 2006, have given false comfort that American citizens will not be the victims of the measures legalized by this Act, the law is quite clear that ‘any person’ can be targeted. The text in the MCA allows for the institution of a military alternative to the constitutional justice system for “any person” regardless of American citizenship. The MCA effectively does away with habeas corpus rights for all people living in the US deemed by the president to be enemy combatants.[12] In September 2009, President Obama quietly pledged to continue the program as it was instituted by the Bush administration with little fanfare.[13]
A law enacted allowing the government to more easily institute martial law was another civil liberties story ignored by the corporate media in 2007. The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 allows the president to station military troops anywhere in the United States and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to “suppress public disorder.” The law in effect repealed the Posse Comitatus Act from 1878, which had placed strict prohibitions on military involvement in domestic law enforcement in the US marking an end to the post-Civil War Reconstruction period.[14]
Additionally, under the code-name Operation FALCON (Federal and Local Cops Organized Nationally) three federally coordinated mass arrests occurred between April 2005 and October 2006. In an unprecedented move, more than 30,000 “fugitives” were arrested in the largest dragnets in the nation’s history. By 2008, the number grew to 54,000. Unfortunately, most of those arrested were not, in fact, violent criminals according to the government’s own statistics. The operations, coordinated by the Justice Department and Homeland Security, directly involved over 960 agencies (state, local and federal) and are the first time in US history that all of the domestic police agencies have been put under the direct control of the federal government. As of July 2009, the sixth effort of the FALCON raids has increased the number of “dangerous fugitive felons” arrested to more than 91,000 (of which only 991 were murder suspects, and only 2,269 were gang members despite that these were the very groups they were claiming to round up).[15] Finally, the term “terrorism” has been dangerously expanded to include any acts that interfere, or promotes interference, with the operations of animal enterprises. The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA), signed into law on November 27, 2006, expands the definition of an “animal enterprise” to any business that “uses or sells animals or animal products.” The law essentially defines protesters, boycotters or picketers of businesses in the US as terrorists. This is a clear infringement of first amendment rights.[16]
Most people in the US believe in the Bill of Rights and value personal freedoms. Yet, the corporate media in the recent past have failed to adequately inform the public about important changes concerning civil rights and liberties. Despite the busy lives people lead, they want to be informed about serious decisions made by the powerful, and rely on the corporate media to keep us abreast of significant changes. When corporate media fail to cover these issues, what else can it be called it but censorship? These are issues are of considerable concern for the public at large. Conclusions on such matters can only be arrived upon after scrupulous analysis of all known facts. Given that all the facts about these stories are not widely reported, if at all, this leads to a significant crisis for any democracy.
On October 25, 2005 the American Civil Liberties (ACLU) posted to their website forty-four autopsy reports, acquired from American military sources, covering the deaths of civilians who died while in US military prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2002-2004. The autopsy reports provided proof of widespread torture by US forces. A press release by ACLU announcing the deaths was immediately picked up by Associate Press (AP) wire service making the story available to US corporate media nationwide. A thorough check of Nexis-Lexis and Proquest library data bases showed that at least ninety-nine percent of the daily papers in the US did not pick up the story, nor did AP ever conduct follow up coverage on the issue.[17]
Not only do daily newspapers fail to cover the inconvenient truths presented by their own wire service, as illustrated in the aforementioned AP example, but the wire service itself is filled with internal bias. AP is a non-profit cooperative news wire service. The AP, with 3,700 employees, has 242 bureaus worldwide that deliver news reports twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week to 121 countries in five languages including English, German, Dutch, French, and Spanish. In the US alone, AP reaches 1,700 daily, weekly, non-English, college newspapers, and 5,000 radio and television stations. AP reaches over a billion people every day via print, radio, or television.
Bias and censorship is also evident in stories concerning the ongoing Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Alison Weir, Joy Ellison, and Peter Weir of the organization If Americans Knew conducted research on the AP’s reporting of the Israel-Palestine conflict. The study was a statistical analysis of the AP newswire in the year 2004, looking comparatively at the numbers of Israeli and Palestinian deaths reported. In 2004 there were 141 reports of Israeli deaths in AP headlines and lead paragraphs, while in reality there were 108 Israeli deaths. During this same period, AP reported 543 Palestinian deaths, while 821 Palestinians had actually been killed. The ratio of actual number of Israeli conflict deaths to Palestinian deaths in 2004 was 1:7, yet AP reported deaths of Israelis to Palestinians at a 2:1 ratio.
The same could be said of AP’s reporting of children’s deaths. Nine reports of Israeli children’s deaths were reported in AP headlines and leading paragraphs in 2004, while eight actually occurred. The AP reported only twenty-seven Palestinian children deaths when 179 children actually died. While there were twenty-two times more Palestinian children’s deaths than Israeli children’s deaths, the AP reported 113 percent of Israeli children’s deaths and fifteen percent of Palestinian children’s deaths. In fact, the actual deaths ratios for the three week bombings of Gaza January 2009 were over a hundred Palestinians killed per single Israel death.[18]
Looking to Haiti for yet another example, on February 29, 2004, AP widely reported that Haitian rebels ousted President Aristide and that the United States provided an escort to take him out of the country to a safe asylum. Within 24 hours an entirely different story emerged through independent radio. Instead of the US being the supportive facilitator of Aristide’s safety, Pacifica Radio News reported that Aristide was actually kidnapped by US forces. AP quickly changed their story. On March 1, 2004, an AP report by Deb Riechman said, “White House officials said Aristide left willingly and that the United States aided his safe departure. But in a telephone interview with the Associated Press, Aristide said: “No. I was forced to leave.”
The last AP report of Aristide’s claiming that he had been kidnapped by the US in a State Department coup was on June 27, 2004. Since then there have been more than sixty news articles by AP including Aristide’s name. Of these stories none mentioned Aristide’s claim that he was kidnapped by the United States military. None mention the US backing of the coup. AP’s bias in favor of the State Department’s version of the Aristide’s removal seems to be a deliberate case of AP-sanctioned forgetting. AP is a massive institutionalized bureaucracy that feeds news stories to nearly every newspaper and radio/TV station in the United States. They are so large that top-down control of single news stories is practically impossible. However, research clearly indicates a built-in bias favoring official US government positions.[19]
Reform Media Reform: Pursuit and Reporting of Truth Emergency Issues
“Reformers who are always compromising, have not yet grasped the idea that truth is the only safe ground to stand upon.” –Elizabeth Cady Stanton
There is a literal truth emergency in the United States, not only regarding distant wars, torture camps, and doctored intelligence, but also around issues that most intimately impact our lives at home. For example, few Americans know that there has been a thirty-five year decline in real wages for most workers in the country, while the top ten percent now enjoy unparalleled wealth with strikingly low tax burdens.
George Seldes once said, “Journalism’s job is not impartial ‘balanced’ reporting. Journalism’s job is to tell the people what is really going on.” Michael Moore’s top-grossing movie Sicko is one example of telling the people what is really going on. Health care activists know that US health insurance is an extremely large and lucrative industry with the top nine companies “earning” $30 billion in profits in 2006 alone. The health-care industry represents the country’s third-largest economic sector, trailing only energy and retail among the 1,000 largest US firms.
Nevertheless, at least sixteen percent of Americans still have no health insurance whatsoever and that number will not soon decline, as insurance costs continue to rise two to three times faster than inflation. The consequences are immediate and tragic. Unpaid medical bills are now the number one cause of personal bankruptcy in the country, and a recent Harvard Medical School study estimates that nearly forty-five thousand Americans die prematurely each year because they lack coverage and access to adequate care. That’s fifteen times the number of people killed on 9/11. In fact, 2,266 veterans died in 2008 due to lack of health coverage. For a nation awash in “Support the Troops” rhetoric, bumper stickers, magnets, and other paraphernalia, it seems odd the US press largely ignored the Harvard Medical School study that discovered this troubling statistic. Yet, despite these scholarly findings, the US Congress cannot seem to pass a public option or single payer bill even though a majority of the public and health practitioners support these policies. Corporate media has largely shut these approaches out of the discussion, often even when dealing with veteran’s affairs.[20]
US private health care services differ markedly from other industrialized countries where single payer systems provide everyone with medical care as a basic human right. Unfortunately, objective media coverage and comparisons of single payer public health care with our current profit-driven corporate system are almost non-existent at this time. To protect their bloated bottom lines, private insurance companies and HMOs invest heavily in lobbyists and corporate-friendly political candidates that promote their “indispensable” role in any future health care reforms. Besides their insider political influence, these firms deploy massive advertising budgets to discourage media investigations of the economic interests shaping health policies today. Political analysts have long counted on exit polls to be a reliable predictor of actual vote counts. The unusual discrepancy between exit poll data and the actual vote count in the 2004 election challenges that reliability. However, despite evidence of technological vulnerabilities in the voting system and a higher incidence of irregularities in swing states, this discrepancy was not scrutinized in the corporate media. They simply parroted the partisan declarations of “sour grapes” and “let’s move on” instead of providing any meaningful analysis of a highly controversial election.
The official vote count for the 2004 election showed that George W. Bush won by three million votes. But exit polls projected a victory margin of five million votes for John Kerry. This eight-million-vote discrepancy is much greater than the error margin. The overall margin of error should statistically have been under one percent. But the official result deviated from the poll projections by more than five percent—a statistical impossibility.(12)
Tens of thousands of American engaged in various social justice issues constantly witness how corporate media marginalize, denigrate or simply ignore their concerns. Activist groups working on exposing issues like 9/11 truth, election fraud, impeachable offenses, war propaganda, civil liberties abuses, torture, and many corporate-caused economic and environmental crises have been systematically excluded from mainstream news and the national conversation leading to a genuine truth emergency in the country as a whole.
A growing number of media activists are finally joining forces to address this truth emergency by developing new journalistic systems and practices of their own. They are working to reveal the common corporate denominators behind the diverse crises we face and to develop networks of trustworthy news sources that tell the people what is really going on. These activists know we need a journalism that moves beyond forensic inquiries into particular crimes and atrocities, and exposes wider patterns of corruption, propaganda and illicit political control to rouse the nation to reject a malignant corporate status quo.
An international truth emergency, now in evidence, is the result of a lack of fact based, transparent, and truthful reporting on fraudulent elections, compromised 9/11 investigations, illegal preemptive wars, compounded by top down corporate media propaganda across the spectrum on public issues. Glenn Beck was able to say on national Fox News television in June of 2009 that the 9/11 Truth movement openly supported the shooting at the Holocaust Museum. Beck claimed that 9/11 Truth proponents saw shooter James von Brunn as a “hero.” Beck’s statement is completely without factual merit and represents a hyperrealist slamming of a group already slanderously pre-labeled by the corporate and much of the progressive media as “conspiracy theorists.” These ad hominem attacks are no substitute for factual reporting and fair coverage. In fact, they are simply lies. Further, journalists are supposed to be trained to ferret out conspiracies against the public, not shy away from them for fear of being attacked. Conspiracies tend to be actions by small groups of individuals rather than massive collective plots by entire governments. However, small groups can be dangerous, especially when the individuals have significant power in huge public and private bureaucracies. Corporate boards of directors meet in closed rooms to plan to how best to maximize profit. If they knowingly make plans that hurt others, violate laws, undermine ethics, or show favoritism to friends, they are involved in a conspiracy. In addition to attacking, labeling, and the reporting of falsehoods, another method of critics of unofficial investigations into 9/11, election fraud, and other controversial issues is to lump together all the questions and/or lines of inquiry as if they all have equal validity. Obviously, they do not. This, however, allows critics to dismiss fact-based, transparent inquiries into major problems with official explanations of these crucial matters by focusing on the most absurd claims only. These are fallacies including overgeneralizations, straw persons, appeals to questionable authority, and red herrings that provide distractions from actual fact-based, scientific investigations (or ones based on actual journalist principles). These tactics avoid the debates about truth entirely. We the people must not be afraid to openly discuss, research, and validate these issues. Here is yet another case in point: former Brigham Young University physics professor Dr. Steven E. Jones and almost 1,000 scientific professionals in the fields of architecture, engineering, and physics have now concluded that the official explanation for the collapse of the World Trade Center (WTC) buildings is implausible according to laws of physics. Especially troubling is the collapse of WTC 7, a forty-seven-story building that was not hit by planes, yet dropped in its own “footprint” at nearly freefall speed in the same manner as a controlled demolition.
To support his theory, Jones and eight other scientists conducted chemical research on the dust from the World Trade centers. Their research results were published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal Open Chemical Physics Journal. The authors write, “We have discovered distinctive red/gray chips in all the samples. The properties of these chips were analyzed using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy (XEDS), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The red portion of these chips is found to be an unreacted thermitic material and highly energetic.” Thermite is a pyrotechnic composition of a metal powder and a metal oxide, which produces an aluminothermic reaction known as a thermite reaction and is used in controlled demolitions of buildings. This data raises significant critical questions about the events of 9/11, regardless of what one believes. This should be a part of our political discourse given how much of the policy in the past eight years has been based on assumptions about 9/11. In a free society, this type of inquiry would be a matter of civic principle, not national ridicule, which it what it has largely been when it has not been totally ignored by corporate media. To challenge the official narrative of 9/11 in the US is akin to denying the existence of god, the ultimate blasphemy or heresy, in a theocratic culture.[22]
These are some of the reasons we are in a truth emergency, which is predicated on the inability of many to distinguish between what is real and what is not. Corporate media, Fox in particular, offers “news” that creates a hyper-reality of real world problems and issues. Consumers of corporate news media—especially those whose understandings are framed primarily from that medium alone—are embedded in a state of excited delirium of knowinglessness. This lack of factual awareness of issues like election fraud in 2000 and 2004, and the increasing evidence of 9/11 Commission Report inaccuracies and omissions, leaves people politically paralyzed. The real free press is supposed to inform and embolden citizen action, not distract and misinform to the point of a dysfunctional democracy.
To counter knowinglessness, media activists need to include truth emergency issues as important elements of radical-progressive media reform efforts. We must not be afraid of corporate media labeling, or any other, and instead build truth from the bottom up, with all available facts. Critical thinking and fact-finding are the basis of democracy, and we must stand for the maximization of informed participatory democracy at the lowest possible level in society.
The truth movement is seeking to discover, in this moment of Constitutional crisis, ecological peril and widening war, ways in which top investigative journalists whistleblowers and independent media activists can transform how Americans perceive and protect their world. In order to maintain democracy, the free press must thrive. We the people must become the media. Our survival as a free society depends upon it.[23]
In Conclusion: Words from our Revolutionary Sponsors
“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” –George Orwell
The purpose of the free press, as enunciated by key founders of America, was to keep the citizenry informed, engaged, and in dialogue with one another about the crucial issues of the day. The health of any democracy can be diagnosed by the degree to which information flows freely in the culture. Anything that interferes with that free flow of information is a form of censorship, which acts to derail, distort, and deny the efficacy of any true democratic experiment.
Thomas Jefferson and James Madison supported a vigorous public arena of discourse, debate, and competing ideas. In short, they wanted to encourage the process of dialogue and free expression as vehicles to achieve the best of democratic possibilities. Jefferson opined that newspapers would better serve the country, by reporting the facts of matters at hand, than any form of government. In his first inaugural address, Jefferson said, “If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.” Now imagine Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly advocating honest, open dialogue on their corporate media programs.
Madison warned, “A popular Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives.” Now envision that Americans demand that the truth be spoken across the so-called public airwaves. The sharing of knowledge becomes a dialogue that leads to informed opinions and choices, ones that measure up to the national values and principles in the founding documents.
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness are not just words on parchment. They are the very concepts that make us humane in the modern world. The media, the supposed free press, should be encouraging robust dialogues while fighting for the future of all Americans, not just for the insurance companies, banks, big pharma, and the military industrial complex. In keeping with the founders’ notions of natural rights and intent in providing for the general welfare, we would do well to note that healthcare is a human right, workers have the right to the fruits of their labor, environmental degradation is a crime against humanity, and war is terrorism. These positions should all be part of national discourse in a truly free press. Where are these voices in the corporate media cacophony?
Instead, the privileged institutions of corporate media are daily miring the public in cynicism (reports of personal scandals, rumors of rampant corruption, and Congressional stagnation), rationalizing the populace into deep denial (falsely claiming the recession is over while key public indicators on unemployment, wage losses, and foreclosures refute this), and leaving taxpayers footing a multi-trillion dollar tab for Wall Street bailouts and illegal wars (TARP, Iraq, Afghanistan, but nothing left for the public at home). A truly free press would herald these vile decrees and deeds as those of charlatans and demagogues. We must be the change we wish to see and we must not rely on spoon-fed, top down, corporate media propaganda. We must become the media in the process of sharing knowledge with each other on the road to a better world. Since the corporate media are not in the business of news and are not beholden to empirical truths, rather, only to shareholder profits and their own bottom line, they should not be trusted.
If a failing corporate media system ensconced in hyper-reality creates an excited delirium of knowinglessness, that system must be declared incapable of accurately informing the citizenry. The public must turn to independent journalism based in muckraking traditions, with transparent fact-based reporting that asks the tough and critical questions of itself and its leaders. An actual free press would provide factual knowledge and encourage us to engage with each other in our local communities on a daily basis in the quest to solve societal problems.[24]
This is possible with our collective efforts, so long as we simultaneously reject the projected imaginings of the corporate media profiteers and their industry of illusion. This must be the crucial focal point of media reform, which actually is more of a media revolution. The health and meaningfulness of our cultural dialogue, as well as the future of our republic, may well depend upon how swiftly and significantly we address the current Truth Emergency and what we do about it.
* Mickey Huff is Associate Professor of History, Diablo Valley College; former associate director of Project Censored; Executive Committee, Media Freedom Foundation and Media Freedom International
* Peter Phillips is Professor of Sociology, Sonoma State University; former director of Project Censored; President, Media Freedom Foundation and Media Freedom International
The authors would like to give thanks to former Project Censored interns Frances A. Capell and Andrew Hobbs for their research assistance and contributions.
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Notes
1 The Neil Postman quote is from his work Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York: Penguin Books, 1985). For reports about skewed corporate media coverage of Anna Nicole Smith’s death see
2 For more on under-covered stories of the time, see chapter one, stories one and two, from Peter Phillips and Andrew Roth, Censored 2008, (New York, Seven Stories, Press, 2007) and Peter Phillips and Andrew Roth, Censored 2009, (New York, Seven Stories, Press, 2008); or see Censored 2008 and Censored 2009 stories online at
3 Georgina Dickenson, “14-times Olympic gold medal winner Michael Phelps caught with cannabis pipe,” News of the World, February 1, 2009, online at
[4] “Please Stop Calling Jessica Simpson Fat,”
[5] For further reading on some of the themes here, see Rick Shenkman. Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter (New York: Basic Books, 2008); For data in this paragraph from the on what Americans know, see pp. 13-14. The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press study, “Press Accuracy Rating Hits Two Decade Low Public Evaluations of the News Media: 1985-2009,” September 13, 2009. Online at
[6] From the Share the Wolrd’s Resources website at
[7] See
[8] See the report at
[9] See the UCLA study from the Civil Rights Project “Reviving the Goal of an Integrated Society: A 21st Century Challenge” by Gary Orfield at
[10] Professor Cornell West quoted from a talk at USC, November 16, 2006,
[11] Phillips, Censored 2009, pp. 19-25. This story is the number one censored story for Project Censored in this volume, archived online at
[12] Phillips, Censored 2008, pp. 35-44. Online at
[13] For President Obama’s continuation of this policy at Guantanamo Bay see
[14] Phillips, Censored 2008, chapter one, stories one and two; See these top Project Censored Stories for 2007 and 2008 online at
[15] Phillips, Censored 2008, chapter one, story six; see the story online at
[16] Phillips, Censored 2008, chapter one, story twenty; online at
[17] For more on the ACLU study “U.S. Operatives Killed Detainees During Interrogations in Afghanistan and Iraq” from 10/24/2005, see
[18] For more on Allison Weir’s data at If Americans Knew see
[19] See Project Censored’s previously cited study of AP bias for details on Haiti and more online at
[20] Reuters, “Study links 45,000 U.S. deaths to lack of insurance,” September 17, 2009, online
[21] Peter Phillips, Censored 2006, “Another Year of distorted Election Coverage,” (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005, p.48).
[22] The Open Chemical Physics Journal, Volume 2, 2009, ISSN: 1874-4125, Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe pp.7-31, Authors: Niels H. Harrit, Jeffrey Farrer, Steven E. Jones, Kevin R. Ryan, Frank M. Legge, Daniel Farnsworth, Gregg Roberts, James R. Gourley, Bradley R. Larsen, online
[23] For more on how to Be the Media, see David Mathison’s website
[24] For more on the concept of hyper-reality, see Jean Baudrillard, “Simulacra and Simulations,” in Selected Writings, Mark Poster, ed. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988, pp. 166-184); also see John Tiffin and Nobuyoshi Terashima, eds., Hyperreality: Paradigm For The Third Millennium, (New York: Routledge, 2001).
________________
* This piece was written as a chapter to the forthcoming book “Media and Social Justice” edited by Sue Curry Jansen, Lora Taub-Pervizpour, and Jeff Pooley of Muhlenberg College.
For 34 years Project Censored has been committed to bringing the most vital stories to public awareness with the belief that genuine democracy depends on freedom of the press. The new Censored 2010 yearbook has drawn international attention to some of the most important underreported stories of our times and we are researching many stories for our next book already. We continue to need your vital support of Project Censored as we transition and expand our work to bring forth the most important news stories of the year both in print and online.
Project Censored is also involved in an ongoing and growing collaboration with the college and university affiliates program through Media Freedom International. Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff not only continue to pursue censored media with this effort, but in addition there are also now over 30 affiliates with more on the way, including some from Latin America, Europe, and Asia. The 2010 book contains work from nine of the affiliates, with a few placing stories in the top ten. The MFI website will be a home base for affiliate work and continue to publish Validated Independent News stories and more detailed academic, investigative reports year round in the effort to combat censorship and the ongoing Truth Emergency in the United States and around the world.
___________________
Mickey Huff and Peter Phillips
e-mail:
mickeyhuff@mac.com; peter.phillips@sonoma.edu
Homepage:
http://www.mediafreedominternational.org/2010/01/23/media-democracy-in-action-the-importance-of-including-truth-emergency-inside-the-progressive-media-reform-mo
911 was an inside job in your head
15.02.2010 19:25
The movement is shrinking. 911 conspiracy sites are getting less traffic, the London 'truth movement' has virtually vanished. Groups fall apart accusing each other of being agents in their ever increasing paranoia. People like myself joined the 'truth movement' after being misled by conspiracy propaganda but have now done real research and have found out what the 'truth movement' told me was lies.
"Increasingly, the issue is treated as a scientific controversy worthy of debate, rather than as a "conspiracy theory" ignoring science and common sense."
No, 'truthers' are still treated as they are; conspiracy theorists. The scientific community feel debates are worthy when people put themselves forward as experts and propagate lies as science. People debate Anjem Choudray. It doesn't make what he says any more valid.
Ruby (Ex-truther)
Homepage:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkh0Mx3bLDU
24,000 words or so -- i'm not reading it
15.02.2010 20:22
Do you ACTUALLY THINK ANYONE IS GOING TO READ IT!?!?
+ they've got to go through about 100 referral links and read those as well.
Why do you lot just cut&paste huge volumes of stuff that no-one will read?
Why not list it in some sort of executive summary?
waste of time
Is this news?
16.02.2010 08:10
But then there are, as previously commented, a lot of words here...
Reader
lol
16.02.2010 11:45
mr hanky
What scientific evidence?
16.02.2010 12:48
The truth movement is a joke. Truthers like to make up some self aggrandizing excuse for why they are ignored - mainstream media 'do what they are told' anyone on the left who disagrees with them is a 'gatekeeper' etc, but the simple fact is - they are ignored because they are talking bollocks and have no credibility at all. Richard Gage, Stephen Jones, David Ray Griffen - a bunch of fantasists and frauds - but hey, if you want to keep giving them your money so they can swan round the globe spouting their bollocks that is up to you.
9/11 was NOT an inside job - some Islamic terrorists hijacked some planes and crashed them into buildings - deal with it.
By the way, acknowledging this reality does not mean you have to condone any of the actions taken by the US and UK since 2001, that is just yet another crude truther dichotomy.
Another skeptic
As it says...
16.02.2010 15:55
Just to make it clear - 9/11 conspiracy theorists are generally a very deluded and sad bunch of partner-less blokes, with no real connection to any radical social struggles. Go away, Indymedia is not a place for you sad fantasies.
Can we ban 9/11 postings please?
9/11 nutters go away!
Taboooooooo!!!!!
17.02.2010 13:22
I'll just point out one single EmpiricaL SCIENTIFIC FACT about 9-11 that both sides agree on.
WTC 7 fell for 2.25 seconds with an acceleration of free-fall,
Now if you don't understand fully, the implications of that fact, then I don't think you should comment on articles about 9-11, that single fact alone is enough to tell you that what the US Govt, the MSM and the thought police are telling you about 9-11 is wrong, a lie.
Like Galileo, looking at Jupiter's moons through his telescope, measuring their progress across the heavens, realising that what the pope said god told him about the facts of our planets place in the universe was in fact wrong, based on a fallacy, the wrong information. And so it is with what the authorities tell you about 9-11, it's a lie, built on a fallacy and a conspiracy theory.
Now what you do with the Empirical Scientific fact that WTC7 fell for 2.25 seconds at free-fall and therefore another energy source is responsible for removing 8 floors of concrete and steel from the path of decent and simultaneously destroying the structure, is entirely up to you, you can as most of the herd do, ignore it and accept the reality created for you by the MSM or you can go to the other extreme and start a 'truth movement'.
Personally, I can't live with the cognitive dissonance that following the herd and accepting what authority says about 9-11 sets up, so I've had to change my world view. It hasn't stopped me from being active in-fact it has made me more active than I was before I looked at that data. The event was just another in a long line of false flag psy-ops designed to create reality, and set up divisions within the human race so that the ruling class of a very few trillionaires and billionaires can continue to control and manipulate the biggest threat to their position of power and that's a united humanity democratically opposed to them.
If you don't get it, I'm sorry for you and for humanity who'll have to continue as 'Dead Peasants', wage slaves, cannon fodder, controlled by debt, fear and lies. Until they/you realise just how your/their ideologies, faiths, beliefs are served up to you/them by the most effective propaganda and distraction machine this part of the Universe has ever seen then nothing will change significantly. The corporate tyranny will continue on its merry way trailing suffering and injustice in its wake. So it goes .....
If you can't see 9-11 for what it was then I'm sorry for you and the future of humanity, you're just deluded. A single Empirical fact shows that you are , no amount of propaganda, lies, FUD, hand waving etc etc. will change it.
WTC 7 fell for 2.25 seconds at free-fall. So it goes .........
K.V. Jr
Flashback: More than a movement -- the search for 9/11 truth is an awakening
18.02.2010 15:03
More than a movement -- the search for 9/11 truth is an awakening
by Kevin Quirk, Online Journal, 21 July 2008
A year ago, I announced in this forum the launching of my survey for a book that would compile personal accounts of ordinary people active in the 9/11 truth movement. Since then, I’ve been gathering dozens of revealing, often moving stories from inside and outside the U.S., and I’ve begun to put a shape to Voices for 9/11 Truth. Along the way, I’ve come to believe that what we call the 9/11 truth movement is not really a movement per se. It’s something else, something potentially more important, more meaningful, and maybe even more impactful.
First, the obvious: we’re not exactly a homogenous group. Yes, there is a shared commitment to prompt a thorough and impartial 9/11 investigation and unravel the sinister mess behind the crime and cover-up, but we’re not linked by bloodlines, gender, age, economic status, or any other common entity. We’re no clearly defined, pre-established group seeking a platform to gain rights or power -- and anyway, we’d be hard pressed to put together a thousand members for a rally, let alone hundreds of thousands. In fact, what I’ve been most struck by in fielding these personal accounts and interacting with the gutsy people behind them is the wide diversity of those who believe that 9/11 was orchestrated from within our government.
That diversity should strengthen the sense of real community among 9/11 truthers while further dispelling the government and corporate media’s ridiculous attempts to marginalize and pigeonhole those who conclude that 9/11 was clearly an inside job.
We’ve all seen how some of the more visible members of the 9/11 truth movement highlight their professional standing: scholars for 9/11 truth, engineers and architects for 9/11 truth, etc. Understandingly, they believe that impressive titles or credentials are essential in establishing credibility of the evidence -- and the movement itself. But as I’ve dug deeper into who’s really out there spreading the truth about 9/11, I’ve found an inspiring assemblage of ordinary people from all walks of life. I’ve heard from priests, veterans, entrepreneurs, lawyers, therapists, technicians, comedians, students, writers, broadcasters, salespeople, homemakers, a DVD producer, a former intelligence officer, and a former member of FUNY, as well as those who happen to be engineers, scholars, and scientists. The credibility of the average person plastering their towns with 9/11 truth DVDs, organizing grassroots lectures and rallies, or just trying to convince family and friends, comes not from their status but from their passion, their commitment, and the authenticity of what they believe and how they proclaim it, even in the face of rejection and scorn.
Geographically, Voices for 9/11 Truth have come from the Northeast, Midwest, South, and Far West of the U.S., as well as from several provinces of Canada. I’ve also heard from 9/11 truth activists from England, Spain, France, Belgium, Sweden, Finland, Bulgaria, and Japan. Ages range from over-70 retirees to a middle-school student who debates teachers on 9/11 in the classroom. Socio-economical levels vary from struggling recent college grads to one truther sporting a 9/11 bumper sticker on a Porsche Boxster.
Even more striking has been the rich diversity in religious and, yes, even political backgrounds. My survey has attracted fundamentalist Christians, as well as Catholics, Jews, Mormons, agnostics, and those with more eclectic religious or spiritual leanings. In politics, respondents have in no way been limited to the ranks of Progressives, Greens, or Libertarians. I’ve compiled profiles from Independents, mainstream Democrats, and several Republicans, including those who, pre-catching the 9/11 truth wave, voted for Bush in 2000 and even ’04!
If we’re all nuts, it’s one hell of a holiday variety pack.
So the 9/11 truth crowd hasn’t come together because of something we are. Rather, we came to the same place through something that happened inside our psyches and spirits.
That’s why I see this more as a 9/11 truth awakening. Beyond the basic questions of who really did it, and all the hows and whys that go with it, diving into 9/11 truth for many becomes a personal and even spiritual process. It stirs us to ask deep and profound questions: Who am I and what do I really believe? How do I know what I know? How would it change my life if I admit that “Dad” or any authority figure is really capable of the unthinkable? What does it mean to wake up and tell the truth every day -- to myself, first, and then to those around me who may ridicule me for what I say?
The first question I ask my respondents is how and when they first rejected the “official” government story and came to believe or strongly suspect our government’s involvement in 9/11. For some, the “aha” came within months, weeks, or even days (or hours) of the attacks. But many others did not cross that threshold until two, three, or even four years after 9/11. Reading David Ray Griffin, watching Loose Change, or coming across some other compelling source of evidence may trigger an initial exploration, but most don’t make the leap to the “other side” without some real soul-searching.
It’s more than just getting past cognitive dissonance. For many people I have heard from, embracing 9/11 truth has meant a massive overhaul of how they see themselves, their government, their media, their jobs, their churches, their families, and everything else around them. It’s little wonder, then, that when I ask how their involvement in 9/11 truth has changed their lives, many respondents paint a portrait of a major transformation and a lasting spiritual experience. They don’t speak as converts to some fundamentalist “ism,” but rather as grounded and aware people who feel like a veil has been lifted. Some are angry, or frustrated by the lack of action on the get-the-bad-guys front, but almost all are grateful for the personal change as they display amazingly creative and resourceful ways to open the doors for others to glimpse 9/11 truth. And the veils are coming off for more and more folks every day. As a former spiritually-oriented counselor and writer committed to both personal and cultural change, I’m especially heartened by this part of the 9/11 truth picture.
I’m searching for a potential publisher for Voices for 9/11 Truth, a daunting challenge in a climate where a best-selling author like Steve Alten had to veer far from the mainstream publishing world to find a home for The Shell Game -- a book that weaves 9/11 truth evidence into a novel! But as I wait and hope for a change in the weather, I’m trying to keep perspective.
We all want to see our culture act from the truth of what really happened on 9/11. We want Congress to wake up. We want the corporate media to wake up. We want not just a real investigation but real justice for the perpetrators. All that’s imminently worth our continued time, energy, and passion. But even if that sea change never happens -- as it sure hasn’t happened for so many other covert operations -- let’s get clear about one thing. This 9/11 truth awakening can never be called a failure.
Kevin Quirk, a former journalist, is an author, editor, and personal historian with A Writer’s Eye. He can be reached at
Kevin Quirk
Homepage:
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3519.shtml
Empirical Scientific fact
18.02.2010 20:17
stove
More "Hand Waving' from the thought police
19.02.2010 00:48
Show one example of a natural 'collapse' of a steel framed skyscraper that reaches free-fall, just one.
Shouldn't be too difficult, from your post it must happen a lot, almost an every day occurrence, I mean it's not as if buildings are designed to resist the force of gravity is it (sarcasm)
WTC 7 fell at free-fall for 2.25 seconds through 8 floors of steel and concrete, free-fall means that all the potential energy is converted to kinetic energy there's nothing left, no energy left over, to destroy structure and displace mass.
Your hand waving is pathetic, it's 'blatant' you have no understanding of Newtonian Mechanics and the Laws of the Conservation of Energy and Momentum.
K.V. Jr