Thousands of young Americans have died in Iraq for, in George Galloway’s plain words, “a pack of lies.” But if anyone aiming to expose the latter happens to enjoy some standing in academia, he had better provide peer review-quality research! Listen to BYU officialdom after they momentarily dislodged their lips from the Federal-grant teat:

“Professor Steven Jones' hypotheses and interpretations of evidence regarding the collapse of World Trade Center buildings are being questioned by a number of scholars and practitioners, including many of BYU's own faculty members. Professor Jones' department and college administrators are not convinced that his analyses and hypotheses have been submitted to relevant scientific venues that would ensure rigorous technical peer review.”

Yes, we all know how effectively the peer review process rules out political and financial influence in academic affairs.

Professor Jones has punched a hole in the cover-up of mass murder at the point where his professional expertise is germane. All his “respectable” colleagues and bosses can do, however, having swallowed the 9/11 Commission camel, is strain at the gnat of academic protocol that he has allegedly failed to honor.

Now, when will these exigent minds, so “not convinced” of the central claim of Professor Jones and Professor Griffin regarding controlled demolition, simply refute it? Is not the implicit charge of mass murder grave enough to demand that they at least try?

An explanation may be found in the role the sacred narrative plays in rationalizing various policies, whether aggressive wars abroad or "diversity" programs at home. Whatever serves to undermine confidence in the official story threatens to upset domestic and international applecarts--especially those that dispense, not applesauce, but billions of tax dollars in reparations, educational programs, etc. (See "The Holocaust Industry" by son of Holocaust survivor Norman Finkelstein.) Revisionists violate no one's rights, but they certainly harm interests. Those whose interests are harmed are shamelessly using the full might of the State to violate rights in order to further those interests.

When witnessing the consequent persecution — people being whisked away from their families and shipped out of the country for trial abroad, losing their freedom, their livelihoods, their homes, their books — folks who were such Voltarean libertarians only the other day suddenly come down with a terminal case of "Legal Positivitis."

Legal Positivism asserts that there is no "natural right" on the basis of which one may sensibly oppose a positive statute. The statute IS the law. Period. "You don't like the law, change it; until you do, it stands, and the penalties apply." The same people who once objected to that kind of defense of the Old South's Jim Crow laws have made their peace with it when it involves "defaming the memory of the dead."

History is always winnowing out the heroes from the villains. THIS is the test for libertarians, civil and otherwise. Forget breast-feeding in parks, nose rings or religious head gear in public schools, and all the other "controversies" that clutter our daily news. This battle is about the equal liberty of all, not just some, to use their bodies, minds, and other property to ask questions and communicate answers about complex historical matters.

The new wave of physical attacks on those who affirm this liberty is heating up. Does one have the right to mount a reasoned challenge to Received Opinion, a challenge subject to reasoned, public refutation, without fear of interference by authorities, or not? That is, which of the following two values in our hierarchy of values is to be preferred to the other when they clash? Feelings? Or the right to inquire into the truth of a matter? Our answer will determine what kind of people we are.

In no case is the alleged "denier" a party to a contract that obliges him to communicate truthfully to the other party facts known to the "denier." That is, in no case is the "denier" guilty of having done anything that ought to be a crime by the standards of Western jurisprudence.

Of course, this counts for less than nothing. Illiberal forces have triumphed in several countries to have it declared officially, sanctions attaching, that a certain narrative is off-limits to rational discussion. They will not rest until they are victorious globally, which means also in the United States.

The protected narrative is not, of course, off-limits to those who wish to press it into the service of their own domestic and international political initiatives. In fact, the latter suffices to explain the former.

Doubters of the existence of God, the divinity or resurrection of Jesus, or the inspiration of the Bible are no longer the criminals they once were in the West. Rather, they figure prominently in what passes for "da kulcha," which reserves pedestals for thugs while confining "deniers" to a netherworld, whose denizens "decent, ordinary" people need not concern themselves.

Where are those obnoxious, in-your-face, iconoclastic radicals, now that we really need them?

More significantly: where are our hell-bent-for-leather investigative journalists? Their continuing, and deafening, silence amounts to aiding and abetting the persecution of investigators who are willing to pay any price for the truth.

We love to quote Voltaire, don't we? But where, oh where, are those willing defend to the death Zundel's, and Rudolf's, and Irving's right to say what so many find disagreeable?

This is where the mettle of what's left of the West is being tested. Not flag-burning, not breast-feeding in parks, but the verbal expression of mental reservation concerning what happened in history. So far, we're failing miserably.

I guess there is a German rule that says: defense lawyers have to produce a semblance of competence by making at least one motion stand up. I don't really know. Anyway, Zundel has a new lawyer, and the trial may re-open in February.

The charge? Denial of the Holocaust. Or something like that. In Canada, during his three trials, Zundel was charged with threatening national security. Threatening how? By denying the accepted story, in certain respects, of the Holocaust.

After perusing a number of articles about Zundel on the rense.com site, I presume that Zundel is a very unpopular man because he is stating that the Nazi extermination of Jews during WW2 has been grossly exaggerated, in terms of actual numbers of Jews killed.

So far, I find no evidence that Zundel has committed a crime against any person or piece of property, in the usual sense of crime. Nor do I find any direct inciting to violence on the part of Zundel.

In other words, he is being held in prison (as he was in Canada) because he expresses certain thoughts.

Of course, in several European countries, Holocaust denial is itself a crime.

There are a couple of issues here. One is, can your words be taken by other people as reason for THEM to commit a violent crime? As far as I'm concerned, there are nutcases and morons running around from the Arctic Circle to Tierra Del Fuego who will, on the slightest provocation, steal property and commit assault.

One only has to look at the laws in the US to see that indirect participation in a "crime" is a growing trend. For example, a person can be found innocent of robbery but found guilty of conspiracy to commit robbery.

"We talked about it, we planned it, but then we got cold feet."

"Who cares? Guilty of conspiracy. This court is adjourned."

Note that Zundel is not being charged with conspiracy. I'm merely pointing out that INDIRECT labels can be extended in all sorts of directions.

In fact, as political correctness spreads like ink on a blotter all over the planet, people are warned that the slightest off-center remark might damage another person within hearing distance for life.

Then comes the issue of Zundel's accuracy in his written and spoken comments about the Holocaust. Is he right? Is he wrong? Is he really trying to deceive? Is he saying what he says because, in his heart, he is a racist or an anti-Semite?

The circular argument goes this way: since Zundel obviously knows what he is saying is false, he must have another strategy; he must be trying to float a lie for an ulterior motive.

Well, if it is now the law to make an examination of someone's heart and soul in judging criminal innocence or guilt, we can hang it up and move to another planet.

By any rational standard, who the hell cares what Zundel is saying, in so far as his innocence or guilt is concerned? He's saying it. He has the right to say it. He can say it from now until the cows come home.

In my experience, it is the incredibly shallow and inexperienced and desperate people who try to divine other citizens' ulterior motives at the drop of a hat and pin all sorts of labels on them, over and over.

I'm reminded of the many painstaking domeheads, back in the day, who would take the work of a famous artist and apply their own version of psychoanalytic theory to his work and, in the process, try to reduce that artist to ashes.

Now, it may be that Zundel has actually done things I don't know about. So far, I haven't found anything that really surprises me. I'm willing to be shown---but as far as I can tell, the man is being prosecuted for stating what he believes to be facts.

It also appears that his defense team in Germany is not permitted to offer evidence that Zundel's version of the Holocaust is accurate.

"You're being prosecuted for saying X. And we will not allow proof that X is true. The crime is saying X. Shut up."

Here I'm reminded of US trials in which federal prosecutors try to ramrod a defendant who has sold medicines not approved by the FDA. In court, when the defendant's lawyers move to introduce evidence that the medicine in question actually cures disease, the judge refuses to allow such presentation.

"We're not here to determine whether the defendant is a hero in healing people. We only want to know whether he sold a substance to treat a disease, and whether the FDA has approved this substance. If the FDA has not certified it as safe and effective, the defendant is guilty as hell."

It also reminds me of US Supreme Court Justice Scalia's famous remark: the revelation of new exculpatory evidence is not sufficient to warrant a re-trial for a person who is currently serving time in prison for having committed a crime. New trials are only granted when it's shown that the previous trial was, procedurally speaking, deeply flawed. In other words, who cares whether the convicted person is really guilty?

Do Zundel's statements about the Holocaust offend many people? Of course. Is that a crime? No. Does the principle of free speech exceed the fact that people are offended? Yes.

What about 9/11? What about the justification for waging war in Vietnam and Iraq? What about claiming that AIDS is not a contagious germ-driven disease? What about people who claim that FDR knew the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor and let it happen? What about people who say Bill Clinton sold out America by letting military-tech secrets flow from here to China, in exchange for a few dollars placed in his re-election campaign fund? What about people who say we never went to the moon? What about people who say that George Bush has the intellect of a chimp?

In these and hundreds of other situations, it is quite possible to make statements that will offend others deeply. Shall we put a censor to work scrubbing all these statements out of existence? Shall we hold show trials and put people in jail?

On the road to freedom, we say that potential victims of others' speech are going to have to suck it up and get past all that. It may not be nice, but that's the way things work. On the road to tyranny, we say that anything you might say that will cause a person emotional distress is illegal and you will be punished severely for it, by the legal system, backed up by official guns and official prison bars.

I know which way I'm going. If Zundel has done nothing other than revise, downward, accepted estimates of the Holocaust, if he has done nothing other than claim he knows who is protecting the official scenario, then let him out of jail. Let him go and let him live his life. Stop trying to put him on trial.

What about people who claim there was tremendous black African participation in selling fellow Africans to the American slavemasters, who then brought those slaves to this country? That picture contradicts the official scenario. Why aren't those Holocaust deniers being arrested and tried and placed in prisons?

And by the way, wasn't there a US court case about a year ago in which---to the consternation of many---it was ruled that a media news outlet (FOX) could lie with impunity? Could escape even a judgment in a civil suit?

So even if Zundel is intentionally lying through his teeth, so what? Does he have fewer rights than FOX or CNN?

See, at the end of the day, accuracy and truth don't matter at all, when it comes to speech. Now if you tell a number of lies aimed at a particular and specific person or group, with the idea of injuring their reputations, then that is actionable in a suit. But Zundel is not being sued. If he were, he could introduce evidence to support his statements as being true. He is being tried on criminal charges by the German State, and if he is found guilty, he can be sentenced to a jail term. It's a whole different animal.

JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com

On Oct. 15th and 16th, New Yorkers filled two venues to hear the prominent theologian and author of two books on 9/11 give a presentation entitled "The Destruction of the Trade Towers: A Christian Theologian Speaks Out." Dr. Griffin has continued to blaze a trail of courage, leading where most media and elected officials have feared to tread. His presentation went straight to the core of one of the most powerful indictments of the official story, the collapse of the towers and WTC 7.

Dr. Griffin included excerpts from the firemen's tapes, which were recently released as a result of a prolonged court battle led by victim's families represented by attorney Norman Siegel and reported in the NY Times. He also included statements by many witnesses. These sources gave ample testimony giving evidence of explosions going off in the buildings. A 12-minute film was shown for the audiences, who saw for themselves the undeniable evidence for controlled demolition.

Dr. Griffin listed ten characteristics of the collapses, which all indicate that the buildings did not fall due to being struck by planes or the ensuing fires. He explained the buildings fell suddenly without any indication of collapse. They fell straight into their own footprint at free-fall speed, meeting virtually no resistance as they fell—a physical impossibility unless all vertical support was being progressively removed by explosives severing the core columns.

The towers were built to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707 and 160 mile per hour winds, and nothing about the plane crashes or ensuing fires gave any indication of causing the kind of damage that would be necessary to trigger even a partial or progressive collapse, much less the shredding of the buildings into dust and fragments that could drop at free-fall speed.

The massive core columns-the most significant structural feature of the buildings, whose very existence is denied in the official 9/11 Commission Report--were severed into uniform 30 foot sections, just right for the 30-foot trucks used to remove them quickly before a real investigation could transpire.

There was a volcanic-like dust cloud from the concrete being pulverized, and no physical mechanism other than explosives can begin to explain how so much of the buildings' concrete was rendered into extremely fine dust.

The debris was ejected horizontally several hundred feet in huge fan shaped plumes stretching in all directions, with telltale "squibs" following the path of the explosives downward. These are all facts that have been avoided by mainstream and even most of the alternative media.

Again, these are characteristics of the kind of controlled demolitions that news people and firefighters were describing on the morning of 9/11. Those multiple first-person descriptions of controlled demolition were hidden away for almost four years by the City of New York until a lawsuit finally forced the city to release them.

Dr. Griffin's study of these accounts has led him beyond his earlier questioning of the official story of the collapses, to his above-quoted conclusion: The destruction of the three WTC buildings with explosives by US government terrorists is no longer a hypothesis, but a fact that has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

It's important to note that Dr. Griffin is one of many prominent intellectuals—including the likes of Gore Vidal, Howard Zinn, Peter Dale Scott, Richard Falk, Paul Craig Roberts, Morgan Reynolds and Peter Phillips—who have seen through the major discrepancies of the official explanation of 9/11 and have risen to challenge it. These brave individuals represent the tip of an ever-growing iceberg of discreet 9/11 skeptics.

Indeed, 9/11 skepticism appears to be almost universal among intellectuals who have examined the evidence, since there has not yet been a single serious attempt to refute the case developed by Dr. Griffin and such like-minded thinkers as Nafeez Ahmed and Mike Ruppert.

As for the general public, polls have shown that a strong majority of Canadians (63%, Toronto Star, May '04) and half of New Yorkers (Zogby, August 2004) agree that top US leaders conspired to murder nearly 3,000 Americans on 9/11/01.

How, then, can the mainstream US media continue to ignore the story of the century? Perhaps the best answer was given by Dr. Griffin himself in the conclusion of his talk, and is worth quoting at length:

"The evidence for this conclusion (that 9/11 was an inside job) has thus far been largely ignored by the mainstream press, perhaps under the guise of obeying President Bush's advice not to tolerate "outrageous conspiracy theories." We have seen, however, that it is the Bush administration's conspiracy theory that is the outrageous one, because it is violently contradicted by numerous facts, including some basic laws of physics.

"There is, of course, another reason why the mainstream press has not pointed out these contradictions. As a recent letter to the Los Angeles Times said: "'The number of contradictions in the official version of . . . 9/11 is so overwhelming that . . . it simply cannot be believed. Yet . . . the official version cannot be abandoned because the implication of rejecting it is far too disturbing: that we are subject to a government conspiracy of 'X-Files' proportions and insidiousness.'

"The implications are indeed disturbing. Many people who know or at least suspect the truth about 9/11 probably believe that revealing it would be so disturbing to the American psyche, the American form of government, and global stability that it is better to pretend to believe the official version. I would suggest, however, that any merit this argument may have had earlier has been overcome by more recent events and realizations.

"Far more devastating to the American psyche, the American form of government, and the world as a whole will be the continued rule of those who brought us 9/11, because the values reflected in that horrendous event have been reflected in the Bush administration's lies to justify the attack on Iraq, its disregard for environmental science and the Bill of Rights, its criminal negligence both before and after Katrina, and now its apparent plan not only to weaponize space but also to authorize the use of nuclear weapons in a preemptive strike.

"In light of this situation and the facts discussed in this lecture---as well as dozens of more problems in the official account of 9/11 discussed elsewhere---I call on the New York Times to take the lead in finally exposing to the American people and the world the truth about 9/11. Taking the lead on such a story will, of course, involve enormous risks. But if there is any news organization with the power, the prestige, and the credibility to break this story, it is the Times. It performed yeoman service in getting the 9/11 oral histories released. But now the welfare of our republic and perhaps even the survival of our civilization depend on getting the truth about 9/11 exposed. I am calling on the Times to rise to the occasion.

Dr. Griffin's speech given at the University of Wisconsin earlier this year, entitled "9/11 and the American Empire," was broadcast twice on C-SPAN. In late September Dr. Griffin was asked to give expert testimony at hearings sponsored by Cynthia McKinney and the Congressional Black Caucus investigating the 9/11 Commission Report. He is currently Professor Emeritus at Claremont College in California.

The events were sponsored by NY911truth.org, WBAI and the Muslim-Christian-Jewish Alliance for 9/11 Truth: * Kevin Barrett Coordinator

Gallics have failed non-Gallics, you see, by passively letting them into France and then refusing to treat them like long-lost relatives. So it is perfectly understandable, if not justifiable, that non-Gallics destroy Gallic property, indeed, shoot at Gallics.

Again, no ambiguity attaches to “French” when the focal point is the assignment of blame for the current turmoil, as Mr. Diouf in the prefatory quote proves: after all, the French “who don’t think he’s French” are obviously other than the French he thinks he exemplifies. (One wonders whether his wife is French like, say, Audrey Tautou or “French” like him.)

When entitlement to Gallic resources is the topic, however, virtually all the pundits suggest that Gallic self-identification is an evil exercise of mythic group egoism. Underpinning almost every editorial is the presupposition that discrimination is ipso facto and irredeemably evil, when in fact it is the essence of liberty, with which Gallics once had a cordial relation.

As Craig Smith, the author of the Times article, condescendingly spins it: “The concept of French identity remains rooted deep in the country's centuries-old culture, and a significant portion of the population has yet to accept the increasingly multiethnic makeup of the nation. Put simply, being French, for many people, remains a baguette-and-beret affair.”

Translation: Gallics are just one “portion of the population” among others in the land-mass called “France,” but think they’re somehow special. The country’s millennium-and-a-half history is “centuries-old” and its culture superficial (bread and caps). Recall Mr. Mohamed’s question, which I cited a recent post: “. . . what more do they want [me to do to prove I’m French]? . . . [D]rink alcohol?” One of the noblest products of Gallic culture, revered the world over, is snidely reduced to its chemical base (perhaps the better to exploit its association with social pathology). Mr. Smith felt no need to comment, but I do: France’s non-Gallic vandals sporting a chip on their shoulders have other uses for ethanol: Molotov cocktails.

Even if every non-Gallic were peace-loving and violence-foreswearing, however, forcing Gallics to trade with or rent to or hire them is unjust, as it would be if the situation were reversed. That’s the principle at stake. It is not any less a principle because people excoriate it in terms once reserved for theological heresies—or because affirmative-action-on-steroids is coming like Christmas.

When I discriminate against one person in favor of another, for whatever reason, I may indeed be harming his or her interests, but I do not violate his or her rights. The current regime in France, America, and elsewhere insists otherwise. But to say that I violate X’s rights when I refuse to do business with X is to imply that in some sense X already has a pseudo-“right” to the prospective benefit of transacting with me. This pseudo-“right” then functions as the basis of an action at law. At the conclusion of any given statutorily sanctioned scam, probably much more property is forcibly transferred from me to X than was initially at stake.

That is, my declaration of an intention to buy, sell, rent, or hire is tethered to the presumption that the first respondent I encounter is already in some fuzzy sense entitled to my tendered good or service. It falls on me to defeat that presumption. If I fail, he takes title. The very effort to defeat the presumption, however, brands me a racist (than which, you understand, there is no lower form of life), and so if someone set my car alight, I got off easy.

Such is the racket to which Westerners have subjected themselves for the past half-century. Unfortunately, Gallics have failed to populate France at replacement levels, largely because they have rejected the religion that once defined Europe: the First Daughter of the Church has too few daughters willing to bear little Gallics for the future. And now, in the face of riots that may engulf Europe, they have no conceptual shield with which to withstand the onslaught of those who are filling those vacancies (in accordance with their religion).

The Times’ Mr. Smith seems also to think that a “nation,” whose Latin root (nati) means “to be born,” can be multi-ethnic. He is not alone in this, of course. But the term “multi-national nation” exhibits a contradiction in terms. What obscures the absurdity, umbrella-like, is the State that exacts tribute from all, conscripts its multi-national serfs to fight the multi-national serfs of other States, and otherwise interfere in their lives, always, however, with the tacit grant of legitimacy from those serfs. The State functions as the great common denominator, the super pluribus unum that exploits with the blessing of the exploited. Undermining the mystique of State should always be the libertarian’s primary goal.

Since the State has proven to be only the Great Aggravator, not ameliorator, of group conflict, libertarian theory must recognize ethnic group aspirations as legitimate extensions and aggregates of individual interests. Of course, only individuals have rights, which one may never violate in the name of those aspirations.

The temporary (historically speaking) self-assortment of individuals into groups will inevitably issue in groups’ abutting each other in their cooperation and competition for resources.

Abutment, however, need not mean butting heads. The rules of group engagement should merely extend the rules of individual engagement and be bound by the principle of equal liberty. But land, all land, must be privately held. “Public land” set the stage for the current crisis. Unfortunately, however, nationalists are as a rule proud of their economic ignorance, and foolishly embrace the State, head-butter extraordinaire, as Savior.

Every individual, in concert with other individuals, has a right to celebrate and protect and his or her identity based on mutual appreciation of common traits, but not at the expense of the like aspirations of others.

Including Jews, but not only Jews. That is, including Gallics.

The French are the ethnic group from whom the rioters and their relatives are “alienated.” Logically, they must be distinguishable from the alienated aliens or the latter’s grievances against the former make no sense. For one is not French merely because one speaks French and obeys French laws, like paying taxes to the French central government—not if “French” is to retain its distinction-respecting meaning. That is because “France” does not refer merely to land amidst the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Mediterranean, the Bay of Biscay, etc. Nor by one’s uninvited presence and the passage of time does one build up the cultural equivalent of “equity” in French or any other society.

The non-French in France now demand more than standing room in the country into which their parents and grandparents barged without specific invitations from individual French citizens (who at least could be held accountable for their guests’ behavior). That is, the French are guilty of nothing more than generally having treated the non-French among them the way a reluctant dinner party host treats uninvited guests.

Unfortunately many, perhaps most, of the accused have pathologically embraced their guilt and now wallow in a toxic mixture of anger and shame. In expiation for their sins and in attempted appeasement of the aggrieved, they will soon democratically subject themselves to an utterly wasteful transfer payment from French pockets to non-French, replete with such delights as affirmative action programs. Utterly wasteful because futile: money spent to appease envy only buys more of it. (Paris “recently granted Clichy-sous-Bois, where the riots began on Oct. 27, 330 million euros for renovating its worst housing projects.”)

The non-French in France are now forcibly denying the French the luxury of postponing what to do about them. Tragically, they do not know what to do, at least not in accord with their sense of identity and justice, not any more than do other descendants of those who were Roman Catholics in 1500, be they in Europe or America.

As at dinner parties, so in countries: the non-invited rarely get the message and leave. They have to be thrown out, but the probability of that happening is nil. After all, France is not Israel circa 1948. Should expulsion happen, it will almost certainly be done imperfectly, which will result in new grievances. But it hasn’t entered French minds -– except those in the service of Jean Marie Le Pen’s minority party –- even to ask them to leave, let alone to cause them to. (Only convicted vandals will face that consequence.) After all, there’s a welfare state to keep afloat, and the French, unlike the non-French, have been noticeably lax in reproducing themselves.

It goes without saying that the French state will not only not acknowledge the right to discriminate—-to decide with whom one will and will not associate—-but will rather vigorously enforce existing edicts that prohibit its exercise. Compounding this social surd is the fallacious notion of “public property,” specifically “public land,” land owned by all and none, for which all pay taxes but whose usage only a few determine.

Now maybe those who refuse to relinquish that fuzzy idea can escape its tragic consequences.

And maybe Mohamed of Aulnay is French.

Mr. Petiya believes that this conclusion is “silly.” His first argument is that such a conspiracy could not “have gone forward without anyone knowing about it.” To think it could have would indeed be silly. But the question is whether those who knew about it could have resisted talking about it, and many large-scale efforts have been kept secret for a long time.

Petiya’s second argument is that “the Bush administration would [not] have been capable of thinking up such an idea and carrying it out [in] less than eight months.” But as I pointed out in my book, there is good reason to believe that the plan had been formulated long before it was certain that George W. Bush would become president.

Petiya also considers it “craz[y]” to think that the WTC was brought down by explosives. One reason is that no one could have snuck explosives into the buildings. But he might think otherwise if he realized that the CEO of the company in charge of security was the president’s cousin, Wirt Walker III, that the president’s brother Marvin was one of its directors, and that parts of the buildings were reportedly blocked off to everyone except “engineers” in the weeks preceding 9/11.

Petiya believes that the towers collapsed “because of the impact of the planes and the resulting fires.” But perhaps he is unaware that WTC 7, which was not hit by a plane, also collapsed. He may also be unaware that fire has never before caused steel-frame high-rise buildings to collapse, even when the fires were much bigger, hotter, and longer-lasting than the fires in the Twin Towers or Building 7. He may be unaware, in other words, that every previous total collapse was produced by using explosives in the procedure known as “controlled demolition.” He may also be unaware that all 3 buildings showed at least 10 of the standard features of controlled demolition (such as sudden onset, straight down collapse, virtually free-fall speed, and the production of huge dust clouds from pulverized concrete). Petiya believes it is much more plausible that the buildings collapsed because their steel melted, but he must be unaware that steel does not melt until it gets above 2770F, whereas open fires burning hydrocarbons, such as jet fuel (i.e., kerosene), cannot get above 1700F.

It turns out, in other words, that once one is aware of these (and several more) relevant facts, what is crazy is the belief that the buildings could have come down without the use of explosives.

Petiya is “outraged” that my article was published because it is “counterproductive to the peace movement.” I don’t know if he would still hold this view if he, after looking at the evidence, concluded that my article was correct about 9/11. But he might, in any case, be interested to know that my books have been endorsed by Richard Falk, Marcus Raskin, Rosemary Ruether, and Howard Zinn. So perhaps there is room in the peace movement for people who believe that the best way to stop the present administration is to expose its complicity in the very event it uses as its justification for all its other outrages.

David Ray Griffin


LETTER TO THE EDITOR

As a person deeply committed to the cause of peace and justice around the world, and deeply opposed to the Bush administration's bungled efforts to bring the 9/11 conspirators to justice and its misguided disaster in Iraq, I feel obligated to respond to what is unquestionably a grave error on the part of the
Active for Justice newsletter. I was shocked by the assertions made by David Ray Griffin in his article about the mysteries of 9/11 and outraged that any sensible peace organization would publish it.

Some of the questions raised by Griffin I found interesting and, to an extent, legitimate, particularly about the failures of the Pentagon's defenses. However, his overall implication that the attacks were aided or orchestrated from within the U.S. government is silly. I cannot believe that such a conspiracy could have gone forward without anyone knowing about it. I don't think the Bush administration would have been capable of thinking up such an idea and carrying it out less than eight months after it took office, even if it were looking for an excuse to attack Iraq or any other country. As Iraq has proven, foresight is not one of their talents.

The suggestion that explosives were placed in the World Trade Center to cause the collapse ranks high among the craziest things I have ever heard. Nobody, government or terrorist, would have been able to sneak thousands of explosives into the towers without being exposed. As suprising as it might seem that the towers collapsed because of the impact of the planes and the resulting fires, it is completely plausible. The huge explosions caused by the planes and the fires burning for an hour melted the steel support structure, and once the top floors of the tower fell downward onto the floors immediately below, the weight and force of the upper floors continued to crush every level down, one on top of the other. This scenario makes much more sense than someone deliberately planting explosives. Mr. Griffin points to the aspects of the attack which lead him to think it was an inside job, but does he deny that planes were hijacked by al-Qaeda terrorists? Is he going to write something later which says that CIA agents were the hijackers? Or that someone paid bin Laden to delcare in his most recent video message that he ordered the attacks?

I recently visited the site of the WTC in New York, where so many innocent people died that day. My aunt lives five blocks north of it, and was among the thousands fleeing from lower Manhattan on that morning. She, like me, has been hurt and angered by the policies of the Bush administration since 2001, but she and all New Yorkers would find Griffins article deeply insulting. Absolutely, grave mistakes were made at every level of the government in failing to investigate, connect, and act on the numerous warning signs before the attack. Absolutely, the way in which Bush has used the attacks to boost his popularity, keep himself and his allies in power, and start a disastrous war in Iraq is appalling. But there is no doubt that what happened on 9/11 was an attack by al-Qaeda, and that bin Laden and his henchmen must be brought to justice. Articles like Griffin's are counterproductive to the peace movement which we support. Such statements make it very easy for Bush and his henchmen to portray the peace movement as unpatriotic, dangerously radical, anti-American, and if they used Griffin's article, they might say we're completely insane. If the peace movement publicizes views like these, it is more likely the right wing will be able to cling to power longer, with terrible consequences for America and the world.

Scott Petiya
Colorado College

The New York Times deemed fit to print Ambassador Joseph Wilson's exposure of Bush (the day after his televised State of the Union address) as either an idiot or a liar (concerning Iraq's alleged attempt to procure uranium from Niger). For that Cheney (c'mon, who else?) effectively exposed Wilson's wife to mortal danger (on top of destroying her career).

So why won't the Times, still smarting from l'affaire Jayson Blair, pay attention to what Professor Griffin has been saying? That's all he's been asking for.

Why won't you hold the Times feet to the fire?

To get up to speed on Griffin's shredding of the official conspiracy theory and case for 9/11 as Bush's "Reichstag Fire," go here and here on this blog, and to this page on my site, which has links to five more items.

Meanwhile, Democrats are content to beg Republicans for "phase two" of a promised investigation into the "quality of intelligence" before 9/11. Senator Reid demands and gets a closed session (the demand was televised, however); Senator Frist is "personally affronted." Since the Dems just want to get Hillary in the White House, the strong probability of Bush's complicity in mass murder is apparently beneath their notice. After all, La Clinton accepted Shrub's lie-soaked casus belli just as she accepted her husband's vicious bombing of Belgrade. Real progressive broad. Very "respectable."

Cheney and his ilk get away with murder because others let them. Make that, we let them. There's no other reason.

Mainstream coverage of the recent riot in Toledo, Ohio makes my point. Are we surprised when no one overturns stones looking for “underlying root causes” that make some people neo-Nazis? No, for the reigning assumption is that the latter are “simply haters” who are responsible for their hating. That is, hatred signals a moral failing, and those who emote it habitually are moral defectives.

Predictably, however, various news media suggested that if the rioters were not blameless, they were nevertheless provoked. Understandably, one gathers, they “couldn’t help themselves.” The (cancelled) neo-Nazi rally “triggered” the rioting, a local story mechanically put it. “Poverty is the reason” for the altercations with police, a North Toledo resident explained at a town hall meeting. “Hands off our young, black men,” demanded one Washington Muhammed.

Apparently, nothing “triggers” neo-Nazi rallies which, one must assume, express pure voluntarism. Poverty or other challenging conditions are never invoked to explain neo-Nazi affiliation, which is simply a culpable exercise of free will. Hands off neo-Nazi exercisers of First Amendment rights? Hell no!, is the common wisdom. If anything, such exercise may “trigger” the righteous propulsion of beer cans in the direction of marchers.

The tacit lesson? Whites are responsible for their actions and “get what they deserve” when they morally fall short; blacks are not. This is not what I learned about civil rights marchers and those who rallied against them fifty years ago.

No, the degenerates you excoriated are not victims of external forces like “general disinvestment in urban public schools in the decades of white suburban flight.” In Rosa Parks’s day, when both proximity to whites and access to their tax dollars were much less than they are today, Black Americans did not distinguish themselves in the entertainment world by glorifying thuggery.

Indeed, if the urban newsstand is a reliable barometer, the dominant image of young black adults in America, 2005, is that of loutish men and whorish women. From his grave, George Lincoln Rockwell – the “original neo-Nazi” – is not taunting us with “I told you so!” because, even at his most outrageous, he never fantasized that so many Black Americans would effectively embrace his view of them, or that so many whites would ratify that image, thinking they thereby earned anti-racist “creds.”

Perhaps one day I’ll read a column that cogently explains why so many (a majority of?) Black American youth today indulge their libido for things criminal and rationalize that indulgence in the name of “art.” Such an explanation would be an excellent way to honor what Rosa Parks sat down to stand up for.

Yours truly,

Anthony Flood
www.AnthonyFlood.com

P.S.: I’m only looking for genuine engagement, not necessarily publication. I’m not opposed to the latter, but my letter’s length makes that improbable, at least in the Globe. Alternatively, however, I could post it on my site and invite your reply, of any length, there. Thanks for stimulating my own thinking on this vexing topic.– Tony