9/11 AND OUR CULTURE OF DECEPTIONS

          As mentioned in the first of the month issue the events of 9/11, 2001 represent an unsolved crime that has now reached its 15^th anniversary. Since its aftermath, in form of our response to this crime, affects people around the world it is essential that we remember not only the government’s explanation but the facts of that day. This is why I had intended to call this installment “9/11: America’s Mythos of the 21^st Century.” But something happened during the Memorial Service on “Ground Zero” that may well again shape the future of our country and thereby the world. Before addressing the event, let me list again some of the facts of 9/11 that have led to the government’s conspiracy theory.

          One may now object to the term “government conspiracy theory,” because conspiracies are supposed to be hatched by people of ill will towards our government and what the government tells us is authoritative and, therefore, final truth. I did not invent the term “government conspiracy theory” but owe it to David Ray Griffin who has spent more than a decade in the attempt to elucidate what really happened on that day. He correctly pointed out that the bin Laden – al Qaeda guilt is not a proven fact and the enactment of the plan would have required secrecy among key participants i.e. a conspiracy. As mentioned in another installment Professor Griffin is well known for providing a corrected edition of Whitehead’s lectures on “Process and Reality,” which was a monumental task. The book is fundamental for understanding our world but cannot be read like any other. It must be studied and each sentence pondered. God willing I’ll write a separate article on Whitehead’s contribution to the philosophy of thought and thereby truth, because if his insights were to be enacted they would markedly change our mental framework for the better.

          Professor Griffin is, therefore, a serious person who has thought deep and hard about our world. After 9/11 he saw the flaws in the government’s explanations and took on the task to systematically explore the numerous aspects that now make up the Mythos of 9/11. This resulted in more than half a dozen books and vilification by the official media that dutifully dispense the government’s Pablum. So: What are the facts? In New York three, not two, World Trade Center steel constructed towers disintegrated into dust and bent steel. Two, the Twin Towers, did so within one hour of each other and the third, WTC 7, later in the afternoon. This is unprecedented in the history of architecture. Plane impacts with fires from jet fuel and office furniture cannot explain these facts, especially when one considers that WTC 7 was not hit by a plane. The buildings did not just collapse; they totally disintegrated within 10 seconds!

Whoever termed the area “Ground Zero,” which up to that time was reserved for atomic explosions, may well have been prescient, especially when one views the “mushroom clouds” that heralded the onset of disintegration of the Towers. We still don’t know how this feat was accomplished. The government’s models can be discounted because NIST never responded to requests to publish the details of the models they used for their explanation of the “collapse.” As every scientist and engineer knows a model depends on the assumptions that go into its construction and the NIST engineers, whose incomes depend on the government, had the job to prove a preconceived idea. Ground Zero has become hallowed ground and anyone who subsequently publically questioned these results was labeled a “nut case,” “conspiracy theorist” or worse. This also had real life consequences for some of them. They lost their jobs in industry and academia. These are the facts for the WTC.

AA Flight 77 that supposedly hit the Pentagon had its own set of problems. A maneuver of descending from 7000 feet to ground level with a low level turn at the end, although possible for a military plane with a trained fighter pilot, is not likely to have been accomplished with a commercial Boeing 757 and a pilot, Hani Hanjour, who reportedly had difficulty handling a Cessna. The hole in the wall of the building, attributed to the airliner, was too small to accommodate the plane. CNN as well Fox News was on the scene within an hour or so and reported on the absence of plane debris.

Major remains of the hijacked UA 93, supposedly brought down by heroic passengers in the vicinity of Shanksville PA, were likewise never found. On the day of the event there was only a hole in the ground with small fragments of debris but no recognizable plane or body parts. The coroner, Wallace Miller, left after about 20 minutes because there were no bodies in sight. Later “clarifications” i.e. retractions by Mr. Miller are open to doubt because first impressions of observable facts on the scene tell the truth. One must add to these facts that the airspace of the two most highly guarded cities in the country, New York and Washington DC, presented no problem for the hijackers who also passed security at their respective airports without major difficulties. Furthermore, none of the eight pilots who were in charge of their planes activated the hijack code, the planes just “went missing” on radar.

Surely, these events in their totality require a better explanation than what is now regarded as the final truth, which not only no longer needs further discussions but must not be questioned. This is literally lethal because in the name of preventing a new 9/11 a vast “national security” apparatus has been created and wars are being waged on foreign soil. Yet, unless we really know for a fact who organized and abetted this crime we cannot be secure, regardless of time, money and effort, because these individuals have never been identified, let alone brought to justice.

When President Bush told us immediately after the disaster that “Justice will be done,” he may well have meant it; having Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden on his mind. But there is also a problem with this theory. Bin Laden stated that he was not guilty of this crime. Doctored videotapes which appeared later can be discounted because the FBI never firmly connected him to 9/11. He was wanted only in connection with the Kenya and Tanzania embassy bombings. The previous “Most Wanted” FBI poster that showed this fact was removed from the Internet. Surely we must ask why this was the case. Furthermore, as soon as the Afghanistan war seemed to be over and eyes were riveted on the next one in Iraq, Bush lost all interest in bin Laden because Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with 9/11, “had to be brought to justice.” This is so outlandish that future historians, if there will be any left after WWIII, will only marvel at our gullibility that accepted these government stories and what is worse made them the blueprints for conduct.

If we were indeed “a country of laws,” as our politicians including President Obama assure us, President Bush would have immediately tasked the justice department with a criminal investigation as to the perpetrators of this crime. The crime scene would have been cordoned, the steel beams investigated for the potential presence of explosives and subpoenas issued for persons in high government positions as to their actions, or inactions, on that day. This was never done. Instead war was declared when the Taliban leadership said that they would procure bin Laden if we could provide reasonable proof of his guilt. The Bush administration refused to do so.

In absence of judicial proceedings Congress initiated an inquiry which had the limited goal to ascertain measures dealing with security aspects and how to prevent future terrorist attacks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Inquiry_into_Intelligence_Community_Activities_before_and_after_the_Terrorist_Attacks_of_September_11,_2001. The article documents that the White House, instead of supporting the investigation, blocked the proceedings to the extent it could and blacked out sections of the final report. We now know that some of them implicated Saudi citizens in high positions.

The Bush administration was not only disinclined to investigate the crime but even efforts by citizen groups, foremost relatives of WTC victims, to obtain further information were stonewalled. We surely ought to ask why this was the case. Only later in 2002, under duress, did the administration allow the creation of the 9/11 Commission. As one of the Chairmen subsequently wrote it was “set up to fail.” It was underfunded, its term limit dictated by political considerations, access to crucial material was seriously curtailed and as Commission Staff Team leader, John Palmer, wrote they found “either unprecedented administrative incompetence or organized mendacity on the part of key figures in Washington.“

The Obama administration, and especially Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, now takes credit for having Osama bin Laden brought to justice. What are the facts? Navy SEALS conducted a raid on a compound in Islamabad which supposedly harbored bin Laden. It is undisputed that five persons were killed in that raid including one who was regarded as bin Laden. For the rest of the events we have to believe the government. His body was supposedly taken to the USS Carl Vinson where a DNA analysis confirmed his identity and the body was then committed to the deep. For the Obama administration this meant that “justice was done” and the chapter could now be closed. But was it really? We have not seen the DNA evidence and the person killed might have been one of bin Laden’s brothers. I am saying this because there is information that Osama had already been seriously ill from kidney failure at the time of 9/11 and his death was reported in early 2002 by foreign media.

No, justice was not done; this was a lynching in the tradition of the American West where no trial was required. The person should have been taken captive and placed before an American court as was done with Ramzi Yousef, for placing explosives in  the basement of the South Tower in 1993, and Zacarias Moussavi for his participation in  the 9/11 plot. Justice demands that the accused has a right to testify in his own behalf and this was denied not only to bin Laden but to all persons who still sit in indefinite detention at Guantanamo. This is not justice but akin to Nazi concentration camps and Soviet Gulags. There is a saying in the German language: man muss das Kind beim richtigen Namen nennen – you’ve got to call the child by its correct name. The euphemisms under which we hide our misconduct should no longer be acceptable.

The documentation for the statements made here can be found in previous installments on this site as well as the voluminous literature that has accumulated over the past 15 years. The information is available but one has to make an effort to educate oneself and sift the wheat from the chaff. A good start, apart from Griffin’s books that delineate the scope of the problem, is: Painful Questions by Eric Hufschmid which provides a series of pictures about the disintegration of the Twin Towers. One can ignore the later chapters and let the pictures speak for themselves. Disconnecting the Dots by Kevin Fenton is also important because it provides evidence for “How CIA and FBI officials helped enable 9/11 and evaded government investigations.” In addition the websites of “Pilots for 9/11 Truth,” as well as “Architects for 9/11 Truth,” including their respective video discs can be consulted. The first one raises several important aeronautic questions about the government’s explanations and the second one deals with the physical structural issues involving the buildings. The videos of the 2011 “Toronto Hearings,” or a shorter version “9/11: Experts Speak Out,” are also important. They don’t deal with “who did it?” but the more fundamental issue: what happened? For the historical background and context the DVD by the Italian filmmaker Massimo Mazzucco: The New American Century is important. It demonstrates the attempt by a small group of intellectuals to assure American dominance in world affairs for this century. It ought to be viewed by every American because our future is at stake. The DVD is available on amazon.com and is allowed to be copied for free distribution. As George Orwell put it: He who controls the past, controls the future. This is true and this is why the Mythos of 9/11 is so important.

I owe the Greek term Mythos, rather than simply myth, to none other than the Nazi party’s philosopher Alfred Rosenberg. During the 1920s he collected his thoughts on what the German nation should be like and published them in 1930 under the title: Der Mythus des Zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts. Nazi literature is, of course, looked askance nowadays, but how can you know your adversary’s thoughts without making the effort to read what he wrote? Rosenberg had a model for his book, Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s: Die Grundlagen des XIX. Jahrhunderts. Grundlagen could be translated either as bases or foundations. Chamberlain, in spite of his British birth, had become a profound admirer of what can be called Germanic virtues, and in the book he traces the development of German thought through the Greco-Roman civilizations to its culmination in Christianity. The book is, however, imbued with a hefty dose of what is now called racism. Jews, who were regarded as a problem from the middle of the century on, were to be respected for the tenacity with which they had kept their race pure by forbidding intermarriage. But they also had sufficient other undesirable traits that were contrary to Germanic values (Chamberlain always used Germanen and germanisch rather than Deutsch) that made them aliens on German soil. The problem of Jesus’ “Jewishness” was solved by making a distinction between race and religion. One is a Jew by race i.e. two Jewish parents regardless of which religion they adhere to. Since Jesus came from Galilee, which had only recently been conquered and consisted of different ethnic groups, he was a Jew only in the religious rather than racial sense. But race – “blood,” or in modern terms DNA, was the factor that made one what one is. The two volumes are of historical interest because they provided the intellectual background for the Nazi movement after WWI. Rosenberg subsequently elaborated further on the racial aspect and the qualities of honor and duty were to be the key words to live by. His Mythus involved the 2 million German soldiers who had fallen on the field of honor during WWI. Their sacrifice for Germany’s freedom and honor must never be forgotten and a state must be created that incorporates these values for all future generations. This state would put an end to the hedonism, pacifism, and internationalism, attributed to Jews, in the Weimar republic.

Thus, the meaning of the word Mythos, differs from its English shortened counterpart myth, which has the connotation of a lie. It presents an elevated vision of heroic memory that should guide future action. As such it also has the quasi-religious component of dogma, which must not be challenged. This is precisely what is happening today in regard to 9/11.  On national holidays the Boy Scouts (for a donation) plant American flags on the front lawns of the subdivision where we live. This year was the first one where flags were also planted on the weekend of September10-11. The victims of 9/11, who can now be counted in the millions by the wars President Bush unleashed, with the ensuing turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa, surely deserve better than pious speeches at key sites and flags on our front lawns! 

Some of us who voted for President Obama harbored the hope that he would institute the necessary investigation into the 9/11 tragedy. We were sorely disappointed. He told us early on that he will not look back but forward, which in essence amounted to acceptance of falsehoods. One can understand his reasons but that does not remove the fact that as long as the 9/11 Mythos is not exposed the country cannot recover its moral compass. The exploitation of the tragedy is a cancer which may well destroy us in the long run.

Americans tend to have short historical memories and for the most part see themselves as innocent victims of malignant outside forces. This trait is encouraged by skillful propaganda. Mexico’s “aggression” had given rise to Mr. Polk’s War, as it was called at the time, and led to the incorporation of the current southern tier of states from Florida to California and extending all the way north to Utah. “Remember the Maine” was the slogan that started the Spanish American war that moved America’s borders into the Caribbean as well as to the Philippines. The evil Kaiser blew up innocent American lives on the Atlantic and then wanted to help the Mexicans regain their lost territory. WWI was entered and what would have become a stalemate with a compromise peace became the recipe for the next war. The Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor in peace-time was fiendish and Hitler had to be defeated because he intended to destroy America.  

This is how Americans see their history. Yet, all of these events had causes that were hidden by a propaganda machine with ulterior motives. Thus, we have a string that always produces the same sound when certain key events strike it: the call for revenge through war. One should not take this as specific for America, it is universal, and I have merely used the American example because the events are familiar here. Underneath this universal phenomenon of either shrinking from the truth, or deliberately falsifying it, resides in an aspect of humanity that accompanied the acquisition of language – the ability to lie. I currently believe that this is inborn and associated with the fight or flight reflex. We try to counteract it by prohibition and various degrees of punishment. But this has never fully worked because it is so much easier to lie than to admit an unpleasant or unpopular truth which is regarded as having serious consequences for oneself. The lying person does not consider at the time of the lie that, although punishment can for a time be evaded, its maintenance requires a series of additional lies which compound the original problem. This refers to what may be called the defensive lie. The other one which is regarded as more harmless is the exaggeration of a given event. Initially we may be aware that we are exaggerating but by repetition it becomes automatic and will then be regarded as truth, which defies rational explanation when offered.

A good example for the latter is Donald Trump. When confronted with evidence that there were not thousands of Muslims dancing in the streets of New Jersey celebrating the disintegration of the Twin Towers, he brushed it off with having “seen them.” Trump habitually exaggerates various aspects of life to the point where the border between exaggeration and lie becomes indistinguishable. For him the exaggerations seem to have become facts which he believes. This attitude is aided by our culture which dangles before us “the American dream.” It consists either of material wealth and comfort or achievements in the public arena resulting from intense personal effort. While this “dream” is common to human beings around the globe the specific American aspect is, what I have called on another occasion, “you too can be a Michelangelo.” Well, we can’t! With hard effort we can excel in a given field but the degree of excellence that was achieved by a Michelangelo, a Shakespeare or a Mozart, to name just a few, is foreclosed to the rest of us. While this should never deter us from striving it should also not lead to ideas of greatness, which when translated into the political sphere are called “American exceptionalism.” Once the American experiment with an unbridled capitalist economy is over we will recognize that there was nothing exceptional about it because it had the ancient names of pride and greed.

In the meantime our politicians, media and advertising agencies delude us with a variety of exaggerations as well as outright hucksterism. “There’s a sucker born every minute,” has been attributed to the showman P. T. Barnum and seems to be the unacknowledged background idea behind most of the current deceptions. Childhood trust is inborn, we love to believe and when our belief is sanctioned by society we are comfortable. When it is challenged we get angry and either walk away, resort to name calling or worse. A brief example might be as follows. This past summer, after my return from Europe, I had a very pleasant conversation with an American business man who had been successful in his field and was now retired. But when it veered to 9/11 and I pointed out the various inconsistencies in the government’s theory he clammed up and any further conversation was impossible. It was as if I had suddenly become radioactive and needed to be avoided. Yet, for scientists questioning assumptions is our daily bread. Where is the law that says “Thou shalt not question your government,” in our supposedly free society? It is not on the books but exists in fact and even Obama has enforced it. Whistleblowers who point to mischief in government should be rewarded; instead they are denigrated and prosecuted. An open society abhors secrecy, but secrecy is fostered in the name of national security, and maintained by lies.

Last Sunday 9/11 may have claimed another victim to be added to the roster. Not in the sense of physical death but that of aspirations. It is far too early to issue a death certificate but the proverbial handwriting seems to be on the wall. There had been rumors for some time about Hillary Clinton’s health but I never paid attention to them because she looked sufficiently vigorous on the campaign trail. She did have a serious fall with a concussion and a “cerebral venous sinus thrombosis” in December 2012 but she had bounced back and seemed to be doing “just fine.” Sunday evening I received an e-mail from one of my former co-workers who urged me to view a video clip showing a Dr. Ted Noel whose Internet claim to fame results from his opinion that Hillary suffers from Parkinson’s disease. I was asked to provide a professional opinion on the presumed diagnosis. After viewing the video I wrote back that if Hillary has Parkinson’s this is the weirdest case that has come to my attention. She does not show the characteristic masked expressionless facies, the pill rolling type tremor and there is no good evidence for muscular rigidity. On Monday morning I found out that this video had gone viral and one of my sons sent it to me. I merely reiterated my opinion, but now curiosity took over.

The morning edition of the papers (I get the SL Tribune, as well as the NY Times) carried articles on Hillary’s difficulty during the previous day’s Memorial Service on Ground Zero. Consulting the Internet I immediately found two video clips. One showed her standing on a curb, supported by another lady, while waiting for her van. When the door of the van was opened she made a few cumbersome steps and then fell into the van while being held by three persons. The official explanation was that it had been hot; Hillary was dehydrated and in addition was suffering from pneumonia for the past two days. Well, the temperature had been in the high 70s rather than 90s and there was no obvious reason why someone who has pneumonia should be up and about attending ceremonies instead of resting in bed. The diagnosis had been arrived at by her personal physician, Dr. Lisa Bardack, and this terse statement again opened doubts. I believe it was proffered to explain her coughing fits but that would require that her pneumonia was present for a long time; an unlikely occurrence.

The mystery was then compounded by another video clip. We were told that Hillary did not want to go to a hospital after her collapse into the van but be taken to her daughter’s apartment. Lo and behold we can see on that clip, likewise taken by a bystander, a healthy, rejuvenated vigorous Hillary coming out of the apartment building. She is greeted by a little girl whom she hugs and then strides off with unimpeded gait towards her van, apparently unaccompanied by a cohort of Secret Service agents. To shouted questions about her health she replied feeling fine and “it’s a beautiful day.” To a physician who witnesses miracles only rarely in professional life this was about as miraculous a recovery as might ever have occurred. The condition of the Hillary we saw in the first clip was that of a seriously ill person with some neurologic difficulty while a few hours later she is supposed to be fit as the proverbial fiddle. The fall into the van might not have been due to loss of consciousness but merely a stumble. The troubling aspect is the gait that preceded the fall. It was clearly impaired and this type of gait hardly ever resolves itself within a few hours. This incongruence immediately brought up the question did the second clip really show Hillary or a look alike? A few seconds of browsing led to websites which show that Hillary indeed has a double, Ms. Teresa Barnwell, who bears a striking resemblance. But she is nine years younger and not quite as hefty. Rense.com has the videos as well as still photos where one can compare the two “Hillarys” and make up one’s own mind. Just as with the 9/11 events I can only point to incongruities of the official account and will have to leave a definitive diagnosis for later when hopefully her full medical chart becomes available. But the whereabouts of Ms. Barnwell on that Sunday should be readily ascertainable.

Hillary’s campaign staff immediately issued an apology for not having made the pneumonia diagnosis public and promised to be more forthcoming about her medical condition in the near future. Hillary herself added in a phone interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Monday that she “didn’t think it was going to be that big of a deal,” and since the Memorial attendance was important she had hoped “to power through it.”

Yesterday Dr. Bardack released a letter about Hillary’s health that contained these salient features:

In March of this year a CT scan of the brain was performed that showed mild chronic sinusitis and no brain abnormalities.

On Friday September 2^nd a low grade fever was noted. Clinton was placed on a short course of antibiotics and advised to rest.

Friday September 9 a noncontrast chest CT scan revealed that Clinton had a small right middle-lobe pneumonia that was treated with antibiotics and she was advised to rest. Her current medications are: the antibiotic Levaquin (for ten days), Coumadin to prevent blood clots, Armor thyroid for hypothyroidism, Clarinex for allergies and Vitamin B12. Dr. Bardack also added: “she has remained healthy is recovering well and is fit to serve a President of the United States.”

Hillary returned to the campaign trail this afternoon in North Carolina. She appeared neurologically intact, read the speech well from the tele-prompter, and there were no stumbles. During the subsequent press conference she seemed to tire, but this is understandable. On the other hand the earlier mentioned “miraculous recovery” on Sunday, in combination with the history of fainting episodes, now raises the question of some episodic central nervous system disorder for which an EEG would be indicated. Our information base is still too sketchy to suggest a specific disorder, so as the saying goes: stay tuned; the show has just started.