Ethical reflections on the 9/11 controversy: The responsibility of the media

Media Democracy in Action:

The Importance of Including Truth Emergency Inside the Progressive Media Reform Movement

by Mickey Huff and Peter Phillip, 30 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.

________________


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  http://thinkprogress.org/2007/02/09/anna-nicole-media-embarassment/ and  http://www.ryersonline.ca/blogs/83/Anna-Nicole-Smith-coverage-becoming-too-much.html. For more on Junk Food News, see the most recent research by Mickey Huff and Frances A. Capell on the Project Censored website at  http://www.projectcensored.org/articles/story/infotainment-society-junk-food-news-and-news-abuse-for-2008-2009/.

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  http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/category/y-2008/ and  http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/category/y-2009/ respectively.

3 Georgina Dickenson, “14-times Olympic gold medal winner Michael Phelps caught with cannabis pipe,” News of the World, February 1, 2009, online at  http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/news/150832/14-times-Olympic-gold-medal-winner-Michael-Phelps-caught-with-bong-cannabis-pipe.html; “Phelps acknowledges photo of him smoking a bong,” FOXSports.com, February 2nd, 2009,  http://msn.foxsports.com/other/story/9160136/Report:-Picture-shows-Phelps-using-bong; “Michael Phelps escapes pot charges,” The Vancouver Sun, February 16, 2009,  http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/Michael+Phelps+escapes+charges/1295645/story.html; for marijuana arrests see  http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/20-marijuana-arrests-set-new-record/.

[4] “Please Stop Calling Jessica Simpson Fat,”  http://www.nbcbayarea.com/around_town/the_scene/Stop-Calling-Jessica-Simpson-Fat.html, February 6, 2009; “Jessica Simpson Shocks Fans with Noticeably Fuller Figure,” FOXNews, January 27, 2009,  http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,483204,00.html; Marcus Baram, “Obama Talks Football, Troop Withdrawal, Malia and Sasha’s School, and Jessica Simpson,” Huffington Post, February 1, 2009,  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/01/obama-talks-football-troo_n_162971.html.

[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  http://people-press.org/report/543/; For more on the Truth Emergency concept and movement, see  http://truthemergency.us which is the website for the conference co-organized by the authors of this piece in January of 2008.

[6] From the Share the Wolrd’s Resources website at  http://www.stwr.org/globalization/world-bank-poverty-figures-what-do-they-mean.html.

[7] See  http://www.starvation.net/

[8] See the report at  http://www.grain.org/articles/?id=39 and for more details see  http://www.grain.org/foodcrisis/..

[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  http://www.scribd.com/doc/11021700/Reviving-the-Goal-of-an-Integrated-Society. Also online at  http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/2-us-schools-are-more-segregated-today-than-in-the-1950s-source/.

[10] Professor Cornell West quoted from a talk at USC, November 16, 2006,  http://www.blackvoicesonline.com/home/index.cfm?event=displayArticle&ustory_id=c6224b88-e419-47f9-bb1b-dc76dadb60e5.

[11] Phillips, Censored 2009, pp. 19-25. This story is the number one censored story for Project Censored in this volume, archived online at  http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/1-over-one-million-iraqi-deaths-caused-by-us-occupation/ and for the earlier casualty numbers see  http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-polya070207.htm. John Tirman, “Bush’s War Totals,” The Nation, January 28, 2009, online at  http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090216/tirman.

[12] Phillips, Censored 2008, pp. 35-44. Online at  http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/1-no-habeas-corpus-for-any-person/ and  http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/2-bush-moves-toward-martial-law/;

[13] For President Obama’s continuation of this policy at Guantanamo Bay see  http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN2342276720090924?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews

[14] Phillips, Censored 2008, chapter one, stories one and two; See these top Project Censored Stories for 2007 and 2008 online at  http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/1-no-habeas-corpus-for-any-person/ and  http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/2-bush-moves-toward-martial-law/.

[15] Phillips, Censored 2008, chapter one, story six; see the story online at  http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/6-operation-falcon-raids/; for updates see the official government site for the operation at  http://www.usmarshals.gov/falcon09/index.html.

[16] Phillips, Censored 2008, chapter one, story twenty; online at  http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/20-terror-act-against-animal-activists/, or see the Vermont Journal of Environmental Law, March 9, 2007,  http://ccrjustice.org/learn-more/faqs/factsheet:-animal-enterprise-terrorism-act-%28aeta%29; also see the Center for Constitutional Rights at  http://ccrjustice.org/learn-more/faqs/factsheet:-animal-enterprise-terrorism-act-%28aeta%29.

[17] For more on the ACLU study “U.S. Operatives Killed Detainees During Interrogations in Afghanistan and Iraq” from 10/24/2005, see  http://www.aclu.org/intlhumanrights/gen/21236prs20051024.html; and for more on the bias of the Associated Press see Project Censored’s study online at  http://www.projectcensored.org/articles/story/a-study-of-bias-in-the-associated-press/.

[18] For more on Allison Weir’s data at If Americans Knew see  http://www.ifamericansknew.org/.

[19] See Project Censored’s previously cited study of AP bias for details on Haiti and more online at  http://www.projectcensored.org/articles/story/a-study-of-bias-in-the-associated-press/.

[20] Reuters, “Study links 45,000 U.S. deaths to lack of insurance,” September 17, 2009, online  http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE58G6W520090917. Though this was reported, it seems to have had little impact on the political policy discussion on healthcare reform. For the Veteran’s study, see Democracy Now!, “Study: Over 2,200 US Veterans Died in 2008 Due to Lack of Health Insurance,” November, 11, 2009, online at  http://www.democracynow.org/2009/11/11/study_over_2_200_us_veterans.

[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  http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOCPJ/2009/00000002/00000001/7TOCPJ.SGM. For more on architects and engineers supporting new 9/11 investigations see the research of Richard Gage, AIA, and other scientific professionals challenging the official reports on the events of 9/11 online  http://ae911truth.org, and for broader analysis and questions surrounding 9/11 itself, see Professor David Ray Griffin’s work at  http://davidraygriffin.com/ and research scientist Jim Hoffman’s work at  http://911research.wtc7.net/index.html. For more on 9/11, American mythology, and the role corporate media play in the propaganda of historical construction see Mickey Huff and Paul Rea, “Deconstructing Deceit: 9/11, the Media, and Myth Information,” online at  http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20090309170952776 or in Phillips, Censored 2009, chapter fourteen.

[23] For more on how to Be the Media, see David Mathison’s website  http://bethemedia.org. For more on Project Censored and the Media Freedom Foundation see  http://projectcensored.org and  http://mediafreedominternational.org. For more on the themes developed in this article, see Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff, Censored 2010 (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2009).

[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.

________________

Isn't it time for Indy UK to stop all this reposted globalresearch.ca shit from clogging the newswire? You knew from the title alone that this was going to be another one of those tedious troofer screeds, that it was going to cite other globalresearch.ca people as their sources in the unending globalresearch circle jerk. Isn't it time to say, if all you're going to do is just blindly repost this conspiracy crap, why not just post a link?

Same pattern: reposted slab of glop from globalresearch.ca, followed by the repost of another long bit of glop that's already appeared here. What is it that makes troofers so repetitively repetitive in the way they repeat themselves so repeatedly?

Please can't someone hide this spammy crap that keeps get reposted to Indymedia? Or at least put a reasonable limit on the size of articles and comments.

Those last three posts (hey nony anon, talking about you) from those who act as your conscience here, are genius.

To demolish several hundred lines and several dozen listed references with a mere few words of their own must surely qualify as the most astounding journalism.

Either that or such miserly scribblers are victims of their own narcissism, for what other explanation could there be for such poor offerings?

That they have no patience or stamina for prolonged reading and understanding is neither rare nor that surprising, rather what is, is their belief that they can motivate[sic] us in the same shambolic attention deficit manner.

'Move along, nothing to see here' they cry ... morons say I.

And just what would you have us focus on instead officer?

What I find interesting is the willingness of so many creative and otherwise thoughtfull people to buy into the official line on 9/11. Very odd.

What I find interesting is the willingness of so many sane and otherwise thoughtful people to buy into an inside job conspiracy theory that does not make any possible sense and then stick with it, even after all so much of the circumstantial “evidence” from Loose Change and so on is utterly debunked, and even if it means believing the claims of right-wing survivalists or Illuminati-obsessives. Really, really odd.

"To demolish several hundred lines and several dozen listed references with a mere few words of their own must surely qualify as the most astounding journalism."

Several hundred lines ... unfortunately, quantity is no guarantee of quality.

As for the references - several give a 404. Others are to Fox News. There's also Bentham journals, which are basically vanity publications. Some are barmy, others are irrelevant. And you want us to take it seriously?

"What I find interesting is the willingness of so many sane and otherwise thoughtful people to buy into an inside job conspiracy theory that does not make any possible sense and then stick with it, even after all so much of the circumstantial “evidence” from Loose Change and so on is utterly debunked, and even if it means believing the claims of right-wing survivalists or Illuminati-obsessives. Really, really odd."

What do you mean here?

You can't understand why so many won't un-critically accept the official line that the US has offered.

Given everything that the US government has been responsible for in the past it certainly seems reasonable NOT to take its word. Everything it says is questionable.

The problem with 9/11 is that it happened and within hours the 'official' culprit had been named and identified. Odd, given that the US government, apparently, had no knowledge of the attacks.

Yes there are claims that the US government were told of the attacks, but obviously believed they were so unlikely that they were dismissed. If the US government knew of the attacks beforehand, and had simply not taken them seriously, how come its defences were stood down on the very day the attacks happened? If there is even the suspicion that an attack is possible, one would think that even a small measure of caution might be displayed by a responsible government!

And this, indeed, is precisely what happened.

It had dismissed the likelihood of an attack to such a degree, that it quietly stood its defences down, held exercise's to practice the eventuality of an attack, and was attacked in the middle of the attack exercise at exactly and precisely the very moment when the attack was guaranteed to succeed!

The biggest threat to this operation, was that the planes were intercepted on route. Which the US air force could have done quite easily if it were not otherwise engaged.

The people on those planes, could not possibly have fluked this! This has all the hallmarks of an operation in which inside knowledge is clearly and very obviously apparent.

The hijackers would not have been aware of that, obviously, but the people who put the operation together would have been aware of this. It would have comprised the larger part of their own planning.

The simple fact of it is that the US was brutally attacked on that day and somebody is responsible for it. This attack could not possibly have succeeded in the way it did without some help from the inside.

So what, in all likelihood, has infiltrated the US civil and military complex to the degree that it can, with just a few well chosen individuals, lay its government and military low while its own airliners are flown into its own buildings?

Who did this, and what was their motivation? What have they gained and where are they now?

Before the spammers start filling the comments up with their usual dross, can I please ask you to try to understand that there IS a conspiracy here, it is conspiracy to commit murder. There IS collusion, but it does not require thousands to be in on it.

After 9/11 happened, the US declared a state of emergency. That fact alone is evidence enough to expect that a cover-up, however detailed, has taken place. This is the well practised stocking trade of all governments in times of crisis.

So, we can either believe that 9/11 is the greatest terrorist atrocity ever to have been committed, and coincidentally the 'luckiest' in terms of the natural and considerable military grade electronic defences it had to overcome, or we can believe that 9/11 was simply the end result of thorough and focussed planning, with the requisite information being provided from 'placed' agents on the inside at the right time.

If there is a false flag here, it is the Saudi hijackers!

For all we know, they were nothing more than usable idiots, shepherded onto the planes with enough knowledge to roll the aircraft to port and starboard and to navigate with a map and terrain. All they then had to do, was follow the gap already opened up in America's defences.

"And you want us to take it seriously?"

Alka, please do not use the word 'us' to associate your comments with the rest of the readership of Indymedia. You speak only for yourself.

Who has 'debunked' what, when and how?

More meaningful would be the expression of your own doubt, rather than the monumental claim of finality ... unless you are the follower of an agenda that precludes doubt!?

"More meaningful would be the expression of your own doubt, rather than the monumental claim of finality ... unless you are the follower of an agenda that precludes doubt!?"

More meaningful still would be an expression of consolation at the monumental misjudgement of those who's agenda is the suggestion of doubt, thereby precluding reason.

But dats jus wot I fink!

Here's a joke for ya.

How many de-bunkers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Answer. What lightbulb? What you talking about! I havent seen a lightbulb, if there was a lightbulb then its down to you to prove it. If there was a lightbulb then there would be a peer-reviewed scientific paper on the subject but there isn't is there. Shut up about the lightbulb! Your only saying there's a lightbulb because you like conspiracy theories. Frigging loony people saying there's a lightbulb when there isn't. And what if there was a lightbulb? that doesn't prove anything, it could be a bottle or a vase! I'm sick of hearing crap about lightbulbs, fuck of with your lightbulbs, I'm frightened now, see what you've done...deep breaths...phew, phew, hyper-ventilating now...phew, phew, paper bag, deep breaths, count to ten!!!

Thereby proving that the only thing dumber than troofers is 'troofer humour'.

Yeah, what I want to know is who made that light bulb go out and why? Why did it happen just then? What is it they don't want us to see? Why did it take so long to fix it? What were they doing while it was being fixed? Did you know Dick Cheney's uncles cousin once had a job in a light bulb factory? And he owns shares in a tin mine. What you mean, there's no tin in a light bulb? There's this bloke in Utah State College who proved light bulbs .... oh. It's gone dark again. Why's that?

How many troofers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Just wonderin'. (at least the jokes are short and more interesting than the articles!)

Diversion with vigour ...

... it's not as if we don't understand the significance of that.

In the meanwhile, checkout the speech given in front of the UN assembly on 23 sept 2010 by Ahmadinejad and take in the petulant action of those that choose to walkout (the equivalent of putting fingers in ears and humming). In it he accused the US/Israeli entity of direct responsibility in the crimes therein and those that followed, thus echoing politicians from around the world (including Europe, South America, the Middle east, the Far East etc.). One might have thought that it were more expedient to refute these widely broadcast claims (excepting the silence of our own media) more robustly.

The question now is, how much longer can serious questioning about the 911 crime be avoided by those either responsible or those in a position to govern, investigate and report (supposedly in our name), and if avoided by what evermore extravagant means?

... of which Ahmadinejad is a prime example.

Without proof, he accuses a government of murdering several thousand of its own citizens [and let he who is without sin cast the first stone ... oops, we're not supposed to talk about stoning], and then people wonder why there's a mass walkout - including, incidentally, many politicians from Europe.

And perhaps you could enlighten us as to what the 'US/Israeli entity' is. Is it something referred to in the Protocols?

Confused by that comment - you suggest that Ahmadinejad's claims are "widely broadcast" yet at the same time were covered up by the media.

Well, it was headline news in The Guardian, for example.

"Ahmadinejad accuses US of 'orchestrating' 9/11 attacks to aid Israel"
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/23/iran-unitednations

I don't know why you think Ahmadinjad's claims need to be addressed, rather than shrugged off as crazy talk. Produce proper, decent proof of an inside job by the US and it will get attention throughout the world. Just as US atrocities at Abu Ghraib and so on were broadcast around the world, once they'd be exposed.

But for the time being the truthers have got no convincing evidence - just stuff that points towards mistakes, confusion and back-covering, all of which are totally understandable, in the context of what happened, and certainly aren't proof of a evil plot by the US to kill thousands of its own citizens.

How many troofers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

According to these seventeen links to Globalresearch.ca, none of them clocking in at any less than four thousand words yet each one citing the other sixteen for support, screwing a light bulb into a receptacle is physically impossible since doing so will block the passage of the gas necessary for creating the gaslight. Any fool knows that. Like David Ray Griffin, my degree is in theology, and theology schools are well-known for the almost ridiculous rigor of their scientific training. I have done an experiment in my own back lawn and found that the gas pressure in the blocked receptacle builds up to the point that it actually shoots the bulb out of the receptacle at speeds approaching free fall. If you dare suggest that this is unscientific or in any way less than a perfectly unassailable fact, you are an agent of the CIA. Now pardon me, because I was having a long discussion with my cat about the Large Hadron Collider and was learning some very fascinating things about how it will end all life on earth when it is turned on in the year 2008.

"I don't know why you think Ahmadinjad's claims need to be addressed, rather than shrugged off as crazy talk. Produce proper, decent proof of an inside job by the US and it will get attention throughout the world. Just as US atrocities at Abu Ghraib and so on were broadcast around the world, once they'd be exposed.

But for the time being the truthers have got no convincing evidence - just stuff that points towards mistakes, confusion and back-covering, all of which are totally understandable, in the context of what happened, and certainly aren't proof of a evil plot by the US to kill thousands of its own citizens."

Ahamadi-Nejad's claims need to be addressed because most of the planet, given the suicidal savagery exhibited by the United States in its lunatic prosecution of the so-called 'War on Terror', now believe that its displayed behaviour is exactly that of a nation that could, quite easily, mutilate itself to widen its reach around the world. Simply walking out, sticking ones fingers in ones ears, vomiting manipulative rubbish onto internet forums, using 'polemic' as argument in place of reason or relying on Ad Hominem attacks in place of debate, is by far the best way to prompt suspicion that something is being covered up.

In reality, it is the absolute pigs ear and dogs dinner of a mess that is presented as a defence of the 'official' position which is what Ahmadi-Nejad is feeding from.

Alka, Norvello, reality check, anon and others, it is you and your kind which is the problem. You are an insufferable mess that no reasonable person is ever going to go along with and the quality of your debate is, by a long way, lower than infantile. At no time do you make any attempt to engage, your only tactic...is ridicule. Not nearly good enough.

As far as proof is concerned. Well, all I can say is that you are going to need a lot more than that. I strongly suspect, that whatever is offered...you will argue against. Such is the politics of loyalism. You are nothing more than the product of the terrorists. You have absolutely not the first clue who the terrorists are!

"But for the time being the truthers have got no convincing evidence - just stuff that points towards mistakes, confusion and back-covering, all of which are totally understandable, in the context of what happened, and certainly aren't proof of a evil plot by the US to kill thousands of its own citizens."

Mistakes, confusion, back-covering eh? Empires are built on the proclivities of those who believe everything is just a cock-up and that the empire 'wouldn't possibly' do anything like this. In reality, it does little else. Why don't you go back into history, and present to us all those occasions in which the US has only acted in the best interests of those it has been most concerned with. That is, those occasions in which that wasn't simply an excuse to go on a major killing spree in pursuit of empire.

I think what we have here, is just the 'empire domestique' bleating out an ever-more ridiculous defence.

In the end, you will come to understand that public opinion does not operate to the forensic standard of legal or scientific proof. Public opinion will settle for what seems 'reasonable'. It is this quality of 'public opinion' that empires require to build their houses, it is this quality that is manipulated for the prosecution of war. It is this quality that is used to commit the high crime of war crime. It is also this quality, that can bring the whole house down and leave empires burning their way into the history books.

I do not believe that the United States was attacked by Al Qaida. I believe that the United States IS Al Qaida.

Ah, we can all believe. But belief without proof is the province of religion and superstition.

"Ah, we can all believe. But belief without proof is the province of religion and superstition."

Belief without proof eh? Two wars, two invasions, over a million dead and high crimes left right and center. All without a single bit of proof.

Your kidding no-one.

So your 'proof' that it was an inside job is the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. Remind me, why would Bush/Cheney want to invade Afghanistan? There's no oil there. In fact, there's bugger all there.

Indeed, why would they want to invade Iraq? And I know what you're going to say ... OIL! But Saddam was supplying oil to anyone who would buy it. Indeed, he needed to sell it cheap because he needed the money. Ah, the US wanted to have the oil wells for itself so it could make loadsamoney. So you spend billions of dollars on an invasion on the off chance that you might make some money out of it. Did Cheney or Bush need to bother? Are they paupers? Perhaps it's those evil oil companies ... well, maybe.

Let us assume for one moment that it was an outside job. What would you expect the reaction to be? A shrug of the shoulders? Or retaliation?

Well finally the ridicule is accompanied by a question or two worthy of response ...

"Remind me, why would Bush/Cheney want to invade Afghanistan?"

Not only is the analysis that there is 'bugger all there' wide of the mark, but presumes that resources are the sole interest of conquering armies. Afghanistan sits at the strategic confluence of several regional struggles - China to the East, Pakistan/India to the south, Iran to the west and the untapped 'sleeping giants' of post soviet satellite states to the north. In keeping with the political/military theory of the 'domino effect', Afghanistan holds a unique and vital position.

As for the assertion that the illegal invasion of Iraq produced more 'bills than pay days', this must be an argument born either of desperation or stupidity ... public money forked out, private money earned ... it's the American way.

Norvello assures us that one small article with exactly 34 words quoted from his speech, is enough to give an accurate impression of Ahmadinejads speech and his purpose in making it. But then again, Norvello would wouldn't he? No more time need be wasted on him.

Just as a semantic aside, isn't it interesting how these apologists for high crimes and treason would have us believe that in seeking truth, us 'truthers' are somehow deficient? Perhaps they would like[sic] us better if we ignored truth in favour of naked self interest!

"Two wars, two invasions, over a million dead and high crimes left right and center. All without a single bit of proof."

Care to deal with this point before you fly off on a tangent again Alka. Its clear from your previous comments your aren't here for the debate.

It is very clear you have an agenda.

so let's go with the idea then:

Cheney: That place, Afghanistan. It'd be worth having.
Wolfowitz (for it is he): You reckon?
Cheney: Yeah. It would mean starting a war, though.
Wolfowitz: How'd you do that?
Cheney: We'd need an excuse ... so... how about a hijack?
Wolfowitz : Sounds good.
Cheney: And then we could crash them into a skyscraper!
Wolfowitz : Them?
Cheney: We'd need more than one. Um... how about four?
Wolfowitz : Four!?
Cheney: Yeah. We could crash one into the Pentagon too.
Wolfowitz : Right. We hijack four planes. But what about the Air Force?
Cheney. I can fix the Air Force.. Anyway, to make it more effective, we could blow up a couple more buildings while we're at it. How about that?
Wolfowitz : How'd you do that?
Cheney: Oh, the army could do that.
Wolfowitz : And who'd fly the planes?
Cheney: We can get some Saudis to do that.
Wolfowitz : Saudis? I thought the idea was to invade Eye-rack and that other place?
Cheney: Yeah, well, there're these guys I know ...
Wolfowitz: But won't people know if you blow the buildings?
Cheney: Nah. Them engineers and architect fellers won't notice. Course, a couple of guys with theology degrees might say something on the internet, but everyone will write them off as loonies, won't they?
Wolfowitz : Maybe.


A plausible scenario, don't you think?

Cheney: No, we bomb the World Trade Center and blame it on Osama bin Laden.

Feith: Oh. How?

Cheney: Easy. First, we cultivate 19 suicidal Muslim patsies from a variety of Middle Eastern countries, I'd say mostly from Saudi Arabia. We bring them to the U.S., train them at U.S. flight schools. They should be high-profile terrorist suspects who are magically given free reign by the security agencies to travel back and forth to various terrorist training camps to study passenger jet piloting. Actually that process is already underway now. Our friends in the Clinton administration are seeing to it that four groups of Arab men are being brought along by the FBI and the CIA.

Wolfowitz: How is it that the Clinton administration is already helping us with this, when we haven't even planned this yet?

Cheney: They just are. Okay?

Wolfowitz: Okay, fine. And what do we do with these hijackers?

Cheney: We sit idly by while they plot to hijack a series of passenger jet planes and crash them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the White House.

Wolfowitz: And how do we get them to do that?

Cheney: We just do. You see, we worked with these people back in the old mujahadeen days in Afghanistan. So naturally we're still thick as thieves with them.

Feith: Oh, of course. So we get them to fly into these buildings. And the impact from the planes will bring down the World Trade Center.

Cheney: No, Doug, dammit, you're not following me. The impact from the planes most certainly won't be sufficient to knock down the Towers. We know this because we've privately conducted studies which show that the Towers will easily be able to withstand impact by two jets loaded to the gills with jet fuel. That said, the jets will likely cause skyscraper fires hot enough to kill everyone above the point of impact; we're going to have to assume, of course, that the exits from the higher floors to the lower floors will be mostly blocked after the collisions. So assuming we crash the planes about two-thirds of the way up each of the towers early on a business day, we're looking at trapping and killing a good three, four, maybe even five thousand people on the upper floors.

Feith: Fantastic. I love killing people in the finance industry. It's too bad the people on the lower floors will get to escape.

Cheney: It is too bad -- especially since we're going to blow up the rest of the building complex anyway.

Feith: We are?

Cheney: Yes. You see, the way I see it, our best course of action is to first crash planes into each the towers, trapping and killing those thousands on the upper floors of each building. After the impact, of course, the people on the lower floors will find their way out of the building and on to the street, where they will achieve relative safety -- at which point we'll finally detonate the massive network of explosive charges we've secretly hidden in the buildings in the weeks and months prior to the attacks.

Feith: Wait, why did we do that again?

Cheney: Because the buildings wouldn't have fallen down unless we did.

Wolfowitz: But why do we need the buildings to fall down?

Cheney: Because the events of the day will be insufficiently horrifying and impactful without the building collapses.

Feith: So why don't we detonate the charges earlier, so that we can kill the people on the lower floors, too?

Cheney: That's a good question. At some point we have to sacrifice effect for believability. You see, if the planes crash into the buildings and the buildings immediately collapse, everyone will be suspicious and they'll immediately be onto the presence of the explosives. So what we have to do is let the planes crash into the building, give the jet fuel time to start fires that will "soften" the building core, and then we detonate the charges. Afterwards, we'll be able to argue that the fires coupled with the impact actually caused the buildings to collapse.

Feith: Why will we be able to argue that? Didn't our studies show that impact and fire alone wouldn't have caused the buildings to collapse?

Cheney: Those were our secret, far-more-advanced studies, done with secret, far-more-advanced military technology. The vast majority of the world's civilian structural engineers, however, can be counted on after the incident to conclude that the buildings collapsed due to a combination of fire, impact, and the knocking off of fireproofing from the building beams.

Feith: Why can they be counted on to conclude that?

Cheney: Because that's what our secret research shows their not-secret research will show! Jesus Christ, work with me on this, will you?

Wolfowitz: I think I get it. We crash the planes, kill everyone above the impact of the planes, let the people underneath the impact out to safety, then collapse the buildings about an hour or so later using the explosives that we pointlessly incurred months and weeks worth of career- and life-threatening risk to covertly plant in a building complex visited by hundreds of thousands of people every week.

Cheney: Exactly! The actual deaths will mostly be caused by the planes. But we'll incur the massive additional risk simply to destroy the building, for effect, because it will look cool and scary on television.

Leave the science fiction for another site please and get back to responding to the problems you have thus far avoided.

What is there to avoid? The whole troofer scenario is fiction, but so badly written that it would never make the best seller list.

The reality.

Planes are hijacked. yes, that's happened before - there was a multiple hijack back in early 70s.

They are flown to New York. Not difficult. Pointed at towers. Not difficult.

This is a suicide attack. That's nothing new.

So?

Back to normal then ... ridicule. People who seek the truth about mass murder, about the truth behind global carnage about the the assault on their freedoms are reduced to the comic pigeon hole, the badly spelt, the insulting 'troofers'.

The only diversion you seemingly have left.

Try arguing with these guys, or demonstrate your expertise in flying with us;

 http://www.pilotsfor911truth.org/

Ridicule
Violent opposition
Acceptance

Your considerable efforts here must pay off in some way, care to explain?

And how many airline pilots are there in the world? Your chaps don't seem to have made a great deal of impact (unlike the hijackers).

Well, perhaps you would care to explain your considerable efforts.

Me? I do it for a laugh. Also because I get irritated by bullshit.

Well, yet again you reveal more than you perhaps intended.

Laugh away at this massive tragedy if you must.

You serve a purpose.

Please do have the last word (for now).

I gather from a shufti at the Pilots for Troof website that they reckon the 767 couldn't do the sort of manoeuvres it did without falling apart. My word, these chaps are thorough. Not only do they stuff three skyscrapers full of hundreds of tons of explosive without anyone noticing, they even build special aircraft! Only question is - why? Why bother? And who did they get to build the aircraft? How many people does it take to build an airliner? And no one, but no one, blabbed? My word, these chaps are impressive.

"Two wars, two invasions, over a million dead and high crimes left right and center. All without a single bit of proof."

Still waiting for an answer.

How dare anyone believe in something I don't.

When I fix my gaze upon a thing, what I see is what there is. People who want to investigate beyond that which I have passively received are nuts - lets call them troofers (thus fulfilling the need to both insult and distract).

I hate discussion and so enter into it endlessly.

I love this and other websites that attempt to engage the public in being part of reporting and so constantly call for the expulsion and deletion of those that would use it so.

I know the truth about everything and so need never answer awkward questions posed by those who don't.

If I am ever wrong about anything ever I ... wow, look over there everybody.

or, waiting for what? Yes, there have been two wars. That is not a proof that Dick Cheney or anyone else in the US Government was responsible for 911.

From the Credentials and experience section of Pilots for 911 truth:

- We currently have numerous pilots/aviation professionals -- and growing -- at Pilots For Truth. Current combined experience is over 200,000 Hours flight time with ATP, Commercial, Primary and Advanced Flight Instructors etc.

- Airlines represented include Continental, American, TWA, Independence Air, ATA, jetBlue, United, several corporate, charter and fractional carriers.

- Our membership covers every branch of the military.

- We have experts from Boeing and licensed Aircraft Maintenance Technicians (AMT's).

- We have several members who help behind the scenes as they will lose their jobs (and access to information) should they go public. These types of members include airline workers and current active duty military.

-Scholars for Truth and Veterans For Truth are part of the same team. Aviation professionals from each organization are considered part of each other. Which include aero engineers, simulator experts.. FAA Inspectors.. etc. Contacts are ongoing to organize as we are getting emails daily from those wishing to join. A list of members is now available and will be constantly updated. Again, Pilots For Truth is in its infancy.

- Pilot experience includes type ratings in MD-88, CRJ, 737, 757, 767, 747, DC-10, J-41, several corporate types and Military drivers.

- The Flight Data Recorder Research Team consists of Professionals/Experts in Computers for decoding files, pilots and Accident Investigators to interpret the data, experts from Boeing to help interpret the data, and eyewitness research experts such as Aldo Marquis and Craig Renke from the Citizen Investigation Team

A small snippet covering the questions surrounding the strange qualities of the commercial passenger planes that day:


Retired NASA Senior Executive Dwain Deets published his concerns on the matter at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) as follows:


A Responsibility to Explain an Aeronautical Improbability
Dwain Deets
NASA Dryden Flight Research Center (Senior Executive Service - retired)
AIAA Associate Fellow

The airplane was UA175, a Boeing 767-200, shortly before crashing into World Trade Center Tower 2. Based on analysis of radar data, the National Transportation and Safety Board reported the groundspeed just before impact as 510 knots. This is well beyond the maximum operating velocity of 360 knots, and maximum dive velocity of 410 knots. The possibilities as I see them are: (1) this wasn’t a standard 767-200; (2) the radar data was compromised in some manner; (3) the NTSB analysis was erroneous; or (4) the 767 flew well beyond its flight envelope, was controllable, and managed to hit a relatively small target. Which organization has the greater responsibility for acknowledging the elephant in the room? The NTSB, NASA, Boeing, or the AIAA? Have engineers authored papers, but the AIAA or NASA won’t publish them? Or, does the ethical responsibility lie not with organizations, but with individual aeronautical engineers? Have engineers just looked the other way?

This is serious stuff alka and I suspect you are way out of your depth.

"Two wars, two invasions, over a million dead and high crimes left right and center. All without a single bit of proof." 

A single bit of proof of what? Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Absolutely nothing. It was not part of the official justification for the war by the US; it was not mentioned once in the "dodgy dossier" by Downing Street. The US wanted Gulf War 2 long before 9/11, as was obvious from front page press stories at the time. 

When 9/11 happened, Cheney and co got very excited as they hoped they'd find a convincing link to Iraq (see the Woodward book among others for detailed descriptions of this). They tried to do so in a cackhanded way... then they failed, utterly. 

That doesn't sound like a well planned inside job to me. There would be no point going to all that amazing effort and then arsing up the one bit that would have justified it. It would be like spending three years devising an elaborate plot to kill JFK then forgetting to shoot him.

Afghanistan's a bit more of a nuanced one, which I'll cover another time. But truthers who think that 9/11 would be a convincing plot to launch Iraq really need to just think about it for a few seconds, rather than repeating the accepted wisdom from truther sites.

"or, waiting for what? Yes, there have been two wars. That is not a proof that Dick Cheney or anyone else in the US Government was responsible for 911. "

Its all the proof you could possibly need, and then some. You've got proof by the truck-load!

Dumbass.

in a puddle.

'(1) this wasn’t a standard 767-200'. So what was it? Designing and strengthening a 767 is a programme that would take some years. Cheney had been in Government less than two. In addition, we're left with what happened to the aircraft and passengers that took off that morning. They were in an unmodified aircraft. Where they taken off into the desert and machine gunned down as they disembarked?

'(2) the radar data was compromised in some manner'. So the conspirators compromised the data to make it look like it wasn't an airliner? Huh?

'(3) the NTSB analysis was erroneous'. Yes. And? They made a deliberate mistake to make it look like it wasn't an airliner? Huh?

'(4) the 767 flew well beyond its flight envelope, was controllable, and managed to hit a relatively small target'. Yes. And? It needed to be beyond its flight envelope only for the few seconds it flew towards the towers.

So this tells us ... what precisely?

Project for a New American Century.

A quick summary of the aims would include 'finding'[sic] an event that catalysed the perceived need to invade Iraq with all the associated regime change and resource diversion.

One does not need much of an imagination to understand the reaction of the populations of the western world to the invasion and destruction of Iraq WITHOUT 911 - 2 million on the streets would have been the least of their worries.

Oh and they tried, very hard, to forge a link in the public mind between Iraq and 911 - but failed, thanks to the vigilance and dedication of people diametrically different to those here that would have you bury your head in the sand with a derisive snort of contempt for the victims of such apathy ... however, the scene was set and they made do with the blairite 45 minute crap and variations therein.

But I will point out the obvious to you now:

Serious questions have been asked by those with both a history and an expertise in a field that you have yet to reveal your involvement in.

These are questions, not statements, nor conclusions. Would you have us denied the right to ask questions as well?

The questions tell us that serious minded people are not satisfied with the explanations given by your ilk, they tell us that further investigation is needed, they tell us that painful results will follow and that we need to be prepared to act upon them.

I welcome your insults, they are indicators of your desperation. You are proving very useful, you are a foil.

Now smile.

is that with this wonderfully elaborate conspiracy, with all that it entailed, with a cast of literally thousands, with the threat of death sentences hanging over them all ... they did all this, then forget to tie it to Iraq ... oops ... yeah, likely.

"One does not need much of an imagination to understand the reaction of the populations of the western world to the invasion and destruction of Iraq WITHOUT 911 - 2 million on the streets would have been the least of their worries."

What on earth are you on about? Noone sane in the UK did think 9/11 had anything to do with Iraq. That's why it wasn't mentioned by those in government as an official justification, or by those who opposed it on the big anti-war marches at all - it had sod all directly to do with it.

Iraq was about WMDs that weren't there. We should rightly be furious about that.

(I've not contributed to the "how many truthers does it take to change a lightbulb" debate but the answer is clearly none - they're too busy demanding an inquiry, based on kooky theories about how the CIA must have blown up the bulb, to get off their backsides and fix it)

Now your paraphrasing isn't even coherent.

Forget you.

Just to return to the issue of Ahmadinejads speech at the UN on Thursday and the [lack] of reporting in our glorious free press, today I broke a habit and bought a copy of the Guardian.

Turning to page 17 (laughingly called International news) we find a whole page reporting on the issue. Amazingly NOT 1 word of his speech is recorded there ... plenty of bilious condemnation from the usual mouthpieces and nominal heads, but not 1 word. You couldn't make it up.

Had 911 not happened, the thrust to war, conquest and annihilation of [israels] enemies would have been left to fend naked for itself.

You would like us to forget the repeated and strenuous efforts made to link Saddam with Al Quida and 911 by both our own and the American authorities (as well as a host of media whores).

But we have covered these points repeatedly, you would have us dragged into an endless world of pointless quibbling.

911 was an inside job, designed to achieve a number of ends, including the propping up of the zionist entity, the extraction of mega profits by those corporations welded to the American empire, the justification for the roll-back of individual and public freedoms, to destroy the accounting offices of the pentagon responsible for investigating the 'loss'[sic] of 2 trilllion $$$ under the watch of Rabbi Zakheim, and not least to remove the towers themselves (for which a multi billion $$$ bill awaited).

A detailed analysis of the personnel, evidence and modus operandi of this operation re-enforces these claims and thus must be avoided - an end to which those ideologically committed to American fascism and zionism work hard.

Norvello and alka are two such individuals and despite all their bluff and studied apathy are working hard to distract and divert.

can be seen and heard here:
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/23/iran-unitednations

Now that wasn't difficult, was it?

United Nations, New York, Sept 24, IRNA -- The following is the full text of
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech delivered to the 65th annual meeting
of United Nations General assembly in New York on Thursday.

Mr. President, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am grateful to the Almighty God who granted me the opportunity to appear
before this world assembly once again. I wish to begin by commemorating
those who lost their lives in the horrible flood in Pakistan and express my
heartfelt sympathy with the families who lost their loved ones as well as
with the people and the government of Pakistan. I urge everyone to
assist their fellow men and women as a humane duty.

Let me thank H.E. Mr. Ali Abdussalam Treki, the President of the the sixty-
fourth session of the United Nations General Assembly, for all his efforts
during his tenure. I also would like to congratulate H.E. Mr. Joseph Deiss,
the President of the sixty-fifth session of the United Nations General
Assembly and wish him all success.

In the past years, I spoke to you about some of the hopes and concerns,
including family crises, security, human dignity, world economy, climate
change as well as the aspiration for justice and lasting peace.

After about one hundred years of domination, the system of Capitalism and
the existing world order has proved to be unable to provide appropriate
solution to the problems of societies, thus coming to an end. I shall try to
examine the two main causes of this failure and picture some features of the
ideal future order.

A) Attitudes and Beliefs

As you are well aware, the divine prophets had the mission to call everyone
to monotheism, love and justice and show mankind the path to prosperity.
They invite men to contemplation and knowledge in order to better appreciate
the truth and to avoid atheism and egoism. The very nature of the message of
all prophets is one and the same. Every messenger endorsed the messenger
before him and gave glad tidings about the prophet to come, and presented a
more complete version of the religion in accordance with the capacity of the
man at the time. This continued up to the last messenger of God who
presented the perfect and all inclusive religion.

In opposition to that, the egotist and the greedy stood up against this
clear call, revolting against the message.

Nimrod countered Hazrat Abraham, Pharaoh countered Hazrat Moses and the
greedy countered Hazrat Jesus Christ and Hazrat Mohammad (Peace be upon them
all). In the recent centuries, the human ethics and values have been
rejected as a cause for backwardness. They were even portrayed as opposing
wisdom and science because of the earlier infliction on man by the
proclaimers of religion in the dark ages of the West

Man's disconnection from Heaven detached him from his true self.

Man with his potentials for understanding the secrets of the universe, his
instinct for seeking truth, his aspirations for justice and perfection, his
quest for beauty and purity and his capacity to represent God on earth was
reduced to a creature limited to the materialistic world with a mission to
maximize individualistic pleasures. Human instinct, then, replaced true
human nature.

Human beings and nations were considered rivals and the happiness of an
individual or a nation was defined in collision with, and elimination or
suppression of others. Constructive evolutionary cooperation was replaced
with a destructive struggle for survival.

The lust for capital and domination replaced monotheism which is the gate to
love and unity.

This widespread clash of the egoist with the divine values gave way to
slavery and colonialism. A large portion of the world came under the
domination of a few western States. Tens of millions of people were taken to
slavery and tens of millions of families were shattered as a result. All the
resources, the rights and the cultures of the colonized nations were
plundered. Lands were occupied and the indigenous people were humiliated and
mass- murdered.

Yet, nations rose up, colonialism was alienated and the independence of the
nations was recognized. Thus, the hope for respect, prosperity and security
was revived amongst nations. In the beginning of the past century nice talks
about freedom, human rights and democracy created hopes for healing the deep
wounds of the past. Today, however, not only those dreams are not realized,
but memories, even at times worse than before, have been recorded.

As a result of the two World Wars, the occupation of Palestine, the Korean
and the Vietnam's Wars, the Iraqi war against Iran, the occupation of
Afghanistan and Iraq as well as many wars in Africa, hundreds of millions of
people were killed, wounded or displaced.

Terrorism, illicit drugs, poverty and the social gaps increased. The
dictatorial and coup d'etat governments in Latin America committed
unprecedented crimes with the support of the West.

Instead of disarmament, the proliferation and stockpiling of nuclear,
biological and chemical weapons expanded, putting the world under a bigger
threat. As a result, the very same old goals of colonialists and the slave
masters were, this time round, pursued with a new facade.

B) The Global Management and Ruling Structures

The League of Nations and, then, the United Nations were established with
the promise to bring about peace, security and the realization of human
rights, which in fact meant a global management.

One can analyze the current governance of the world by examining three
events:

First, the event of the II September 2001 which has affected the whole world
for almost a decade.

All of a sudden, the news of the attack on the twin towers was broadcast
using numerous footages of the incident.

Almost all governments and known figures strongly condemned this incident.

But then a propaganda machine came into full force; it was implied that the
whole world was exposed to a huge danger, namely terrorism, and that the
only way to save the world would be to deploy forces into Afghanistan.

Eventually Afghanistan, and shortly thereafter Iraq were occupied.

Please take note:

It was said that some three thousands people were killed on the II September
for which we are all very saddened. Yet, up until now, in Afghanistan and
Iraq hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, millions wounded and
displaced and the conflict is still going on and expanding.

In identifying those responsible for the attack, there were three
viewpoints.

1- That a very powerful and complex terrorist group, able to successfully
cross all layers of the American intelligence and security, carried out the
attack. This is the main viewpoint advocated by American statesmen.

2- That some segments within the U.S. government orchestrated the attack to
reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East in
order also to save the Zionist regime.

The majority of the American people as well as other nations and politicians
agree with this view.

3- It was carried out by a terrorist group but the American government
supported and took advantage of the situation. Apparently, this viewpoint
has fewer proponents.

The main evidence linking the incident was a few passports found in the huge
volume of rubble and a video of an individual whose place of domicile was
unknown but it was announced that he had been involved in oil deals with
some American officials. It was also covered up and said that due to the
explosion and fire no trace of the suicide attackers was found.

There remain, however, a few questions to be answered:

1- Would it not have been sensible that first a thorough investigation
should have been conducted by independent groups to conclusively identify
the elements involved in the attack and then map out a rational plan to take
measures against them?

2- Assuming the viewpoint of the American government, is it rational to
launch a classic war through widespread deployment of troops that led to the
death of hundreds of thousands of people to counter a terrorist group?

3- Was it not possible to act the way Iran countered the Riggi terrorist
group who killed and wounded 400 innocent people in Iran. In the Iranian
operation no innocent person was hurt.

It is proposed that the United Nations set up an independent fact-finding
group for the event of the II September so that in the future expressing
views about it is not forbidden.

I wish to announce here that next year the Islamic Republic of Iran will
host a conference to study terrorism and the means to confront it. I invite
officials, scholars, thinkers, researchers and research institutes of all
countries to attend this conference.

Second, is the occupation of the Palestinian territories

The oppressed people of Palestine have lived under the rule of an occupying
regime for 60 years, been deprived of freedom, security and the right to
self- determination, while the occupiers are given recognition. On a daily
basis, the houses are being destroyed over the heads of innocent women and
children. People are deprived of water, food and medicine in their own
homeland. The Zionists have imposed five all-out wars on the neighboring
countries and on the Palestinian people.

The Zionists committed the most horrible crimes against the defenseless
people in the wars against Lebanon and Gaza.

The Zionist regime attacked a humanitarian flotilla in a blatant defiance of
all international norms and kills the civilians.

This regime which enjoys the absolute support of some western countries
regularly threatens the countries in the region and continues publicly
announced assassination of Palestinian figures and others, while Palestinian
defenders and those opposing this regime are pressured, labeled as
terrorists and anti Semites. All values, even the freedom of expression, in
Europe and in the United States are being sacrificed at the altar of
Zionism.

Solutions are doomed to fail because the right of the Palestinian people is
not taken into account.

Would we have witnessed such horrendous crimes if instead of recognizing the
occupation, the sovereign right ofthe Palestinian people had been
recognized?

Our unambiguous proposition is the return of the Palestinian refugees to
their home land and the reference to the vote of the people of Palestine to
exercise their sovereignty and decide on the type of governance.

Third, is the nuclear energy

Nuclear energy is clean and cheap and a heavenly gift which is amongst the
most suitable alternatives to cut the pollutions emanating from fossil
fuels.

The Non- Proliferation Treaty (NPT) allows all member States to use nuclear
energy without limits and the International Atomic Energy Agency is mandated
to provide member States with technical and legal support.

The nuclear bomb is the worst inhumane weapon and which must totally be
eliminated. The NPT prohibits its development and stockpiling and calls for
nuclear disarmament.

Nonetheless, note what some of the permanent members of the Security Council
and nuclear bomb holders have done:

They have equated nuclear energy with the nuclear bomb, and have distanced
this energy from the reach of most of nations by establishing monopolies and
pressuring the IAEA. While at the same time, they have continued to
maintain, expand and upgrade their own nuclear arsenals.

This has entailed the following:

Not only the nuclear disarmament has not been realized but also nuclear
bombs have been proliferated in some regions, including by the occupying and
intimidating Zionist regime.

I would like here to propose that the year 20II be proclaimed the year of
nuclear disarmament and 'Nuclear Energy for all, Nuclear Weapons for None'.

In all these cases the United Nations has been unable to take any effective
course of action. Unfortunately, in the decade proclaimed as the
'International Decade for the Culture of Peace' hundreds of thousands were
killed and injured as a result of war, aggression and occupation, and
hostilities and antagonism increased.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Very recently the world witnessed the ugly and inhumane act of burning the
Holy Quran.

The Holy Quran is the Divine Book and the eternal miracle of the Prophet of
lslam. It calls for worshipping the One God, justice, compassion toward
people, development and progress, reflection and thinking, defending the
oppressed and resisting against the oppressors; and it names with respect
the previous Messengers of God, like Noah, Abraham, Isaaq, Joseph, Moses and
Jesus Christ (Peace be Upon them all) and endorses them.. They burned Quran
to bum all these truths and good judgments. However, the truth could not be
burned. Quran is eternal because God and truth are everlasting. This act and
any other act which widens the gap and distances between nations is evil. We
should wisely avoid playing into the hands of Satan. On behalf o f the
Iranian nation I pay respect to all Divine Books and their followers. This
is the Quran and this is the Bible. I pay respect to both o f them.

Esteemed Friends,

For years the inefficiency of the capitalism and the existing world
management and structures has been exposed and the majority of States and
nations have been on a quest for fundamental changes and for the prevalence
of justice in global relations.

The cause of the United Nation's ineptitude is in its unjust structure.
Major power is monopolized in the Security Council due to the veto
privilege, and the main pillar of the Organization, namely the General
Assembly, is marginalized.

In the past several decades, at least one of the permanent members of the
Security Council has always been a party to the disputes.

The veto advantage grants impunity to aggression and occupation; How could,
therefore, one expect competence while both the judge and the prosecutor are
a party to the dispute?

Had Iran enjoyed veto privilege, would the Security Council and the IAEA
Director General have taken the same position in the nuclear issue?

Dear Friends,

The United Nations is the key center for coordinating the common global
management. Its structure needs to be reformed in a manner that all
independent States and nations be able to participate in the global
governance actively and constructively.

The veto privilege should be revoked and the General Assembly should be the
highest body and the Secretary-General should be the most independent
official and all his positions and activities should be taken with the
approval of the General Assembly and should be directed towards promoting
justice and eliminating discrimination.

The Secretary-General should not come under pressure from powers and/or the
country hosting the Organization for his stating the truth and
administration of justice.

It is suggested that the General Assembly should, within one year and in the
framework of an extraordinary session, finalize the reformation of the
Organization's structure.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has clear suggestions in this regard and stands
ready to participate actively and constructively in the process.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I announce clearly that the occupation of other
countries under the pretext of freedom and democracy is an unforgivable
crime.

The world needs the logic of compassion and justice and inclusive
participation instead oflogic offorce, domination, unilateralism, war and
intimidation.

The world needs to be governed by virtuous people like the Divine Prophets.

The two vast geographical spheres, namely Africa and Latin America, have
gone through historic developments during the past decades. The new
approaches in these two continents, which are based on increasing level of
integration and unity as well as on localizing the growth and development
models, have born considerable fruits to the 'peoples of those regions.

The awareness and wisdom of the leaders of these two continents has overcome
the regional problems and crises without the domineering interference of
non-regional powers.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has expanded its relations with the Latin
America and Africa in all aspects in recent years.

And about the glorious Iran,

The Tehran Declaration was a hugely constructive step in confidence building
efforts which was made possible through the admirable good will by the
governments of Brazil and Turkey along with the sincere cooperation of the
Iranian government. Although the Declaration received inappropriate reaction
by some and was followed by an unlawful resolution, it is still valid.

We have observed the regulations of the IAEA more than our commitments, yet,
we have never submitted to illegally imposed pressures nor will we ever do
so.

It has been said that they want to pressure Iran into a dialogue. Well,
firstly, Iran has always been ready for a dialogue based on respect and
justice. Secondly, methods based on disrespecting nations have long become
ineffective. Those who have used intimidation and sanctions in response to
the clear logic of the Iranian nation are in real terms destroying the
remaining credibility of the Security Council and the trust of nations for
this body, proving once and again how unjust is the function of the Council.

When they threaten a great nation such as Iran which is known throughout
history for its scientists, poets, artists and philosophers and whose
culture and civilization is synonymous to purity, submission to God and
seeking justice, how can they ever expect that other nations grow confidence
on them?

It goes without saying that domineering methods in managing the world has
failed. Not only has the era of slavery and colonialism and dominating the
world passed, the path to the reviving old Empires are blocked, too.

We have announced that we stand ready for a serious and free debate with the
American Statesmen to express our transparent views on issues of importance
to the world in this very venue.

It is proposed here that in order to have a constructive dialogue, an annual
free debate be organized within the General Assembly.

In conclusion,

Friends and Colleagues,

The Iranian nation and the majority of the world's nations and governments
are against the current discriminatory management of the world.

The inhumane nature of this management has put it at a dead-end and requires
a major overhaul.

Reforming the world's affairs and bringing about tranquility and prosperity
requires the participation of all, pure thoughts and the divine and humane
management.

We are all of the idea that:

Justice is the basic element for peace, durable security and the spread of
love among peoples and nations. It is in the justice that mankind seeks the
realization o f his aspirations, rights and dignity, since he is wary of
oppression, humiliation and ill treatment.

The true nature of mankind is manifested in the love for other fellow humans
and love for all the good in the world. Love is the best foundation for
establishing relation amongst people and amongst nations.

As Vahshi Bafqi, the great Iranian poet, says: 'From the fountain of youth,
drink thousand sips Y ou'll still die if you don't have love's grip'

In making a world full of purity, safety and prosperity people are not
rivals but companions.

Those who see their happiness but in the sorrow of others and their welfare
and safety but in others' insecurity, those who see themselves superior to
others, are out of the path of humanity and are in evil's course.

Economy and materialistic means are only some tools to serve others, to
create friendship and strengthen human connections for spiritual perfection.
They are not tools for show-off or means of dominating others.

Men and women complements each other and family unit with pure, loving and
long-lasting relation of the spouses in its center is the guarantee for the
continuity and the bringing up generations, for true pleasures, for
spreading love and for reforming of the societies.

Woman is a reflection of God's beauty and is the source of love and caring.
She is the guardian o f purity and exquisiteness o f the society.

The tendency to toughen the souls and behaviors of women deprives them from
their very basic right of being a loving mother and a caring wife. It would
result in a more violent society with irreversible defects.

Freedom is a divine right that should serve peace and human perfection.

Pure thoughts and the will of the righteous are keys to the gates of a pure
life full of hope, liveliness and beauty.

This is the promise of God that the earth will be inherited by the pure and
the righteous. And the people free from selfishness will take up the
management of the world. Then, there will be no trace of sorrow,
discrimination, poverty, insecurity and aggression. The time for true
happiness and for the blossoming of the true nature of humankind, the way
God has intended, will arrive.

All those seeking for justice and all the free spirits have been waiting for
this moment and have promised such glorious time.

The complete human, the true servant of God and the true friend of the
mankind whose father was from the generation of the beloved Prophet of Islam
and whose mother was from the true believers of the Jesus Christ, shall wait
along with Jesus the son of Marry and the other righteous to appear on those
brilliant times and assist the humanity.

In welcoming them we should join ranks and seek justice.

Praise to Love and worship, praise to justice and freedom, praise to the
true humanity, the complete human, the true companion of the humankind and
peace be upon you and all the righteous and the pure.

Thank you.

The conquest and annihilation of Israel's enemies - what, like Afghanistan?

Would you like to tell us what the 'zionist entity' is?

Why the emphasis on 'Rabbi' Zakheim (gosh, I wonder what his ethnic background is? Let's see now ...)?

American fascism - you mean that system of Government that has full and free elections for all its Government? Unlike say Iraq under Saddam, Afghanistan under the Taliban, Iran under Ahmadinejad? Which of those is the fascist? [Hint: it's not the first named].

"Ahmadinejads words echo the majority not only in his own country, but in ours and those in America too."

Chortle.

As for Israel's empty seat - well, I have the sneaking suspicion that if the TV cameras focussed on the Iran seats when the Israeli representative is speaking, those seats might well be ... empty.

I have published two maps here.

One is a map denoting US/UK influence in the South-West Asian region around 2000 (before) and another denotes this influence as it now exists in 2010 (after). Turkey has been included in this 'sphere of influence' because it has an ongoing bid to join the EU (Nato) (circa 1987) and will complete this.

This before and after comparison is a snapshot which illustrates the changing face of the region as a direct consequence of the terrorist atrocity which occured in New York on 11th September 2001 carried out by, as yet, unidentified actors.

I googled our rabbinical friend and felt like taking a shower, given the racial slurs that bespattered most of the pages. It was like being force fed Der Sturmer.

And as usual, you credulously repeat lies smears and gossip as truth. 'and owner of a fleet of refuelling planes of similar dimensions to those that crashed into the towers etc'

One example. The Boeing KC-767 was never delivered to the USAF. The contract was cancelled in 2003. And 'owner of the fleet'? Delusions of grandeur here.

But hey, what's truth? Oops, sorry, you are a troother, aren't you.

'We've stolen trillions of dollars from the Pentagon and someone's going to find out!'
'That's okay. Just leave all the papers in the office over there. I'll crash an airliner into it.'
Chortle. Nothing like doing things in style.

When does propaganda become lies? When they're on Longbow's maps. Because I read the papers this morning, and didn't see anything about Turkey having joined the EU. Wasn't on the BBC website either. Why - because it hasn't happened. In other words, it's an untruth, a porky, and typical of the distortions of 'Truthers' - or 'Not Truthers'.

And the idea that being a member of the EU puts you in the UK/US sphere of influence is another cheap propaganda trick. Tell that to the French!

"When does propaganda become lies? When they're on Longbow's maps. Because I read the papers this morning, and didn't see anything about Turkey having joined the EU. Wasn't on the BBC website either. Why - because it hasn't happened. In other words, it's an untruth, a porky, and typical of the distortions of 'Truthers' - or 'Not Truthers'.

And the idea that being a member of the EU puts you in the UK/US sphere of influence is another cheap propaganda trick. Tell that to the French! "

To clarify, the comment I made, along with the maps, was:

"Turkey has been included in this 'sphere of influence' because it has an ongoing bid to join the EU (Nato) (circa 1987) and will complete this."

I have not, as you are trying to suggest, claimed that Turkey has already joined the EU.

Turkey entered NATO in 1952. You wrote "ongoing bid to join the EU (Nato)". The EU and NATO are not the same thing ...

Turkey's application to accede to the European Union was made on 14 April 1987. Turkey has been an associate member of the European Union (EU) and its predecessors since 1963. Your map shows the difference between 2000 and 2010. There has been no change in Turkey's status in that time. The chances of Turkey joining the EU look increasingly remote despite your claim that 'will complete this'. This map is a lie.

"The chances of Turkey joining the EU look increasingly remote despite your claim that 'will complete this'. This map is a lie."

The chances of Turkey joining the EU are entirely dependent on the strategy which you see outlined in the maps and nothing else. This is a strategy you are trying hard to suggest does not exist!

Turkey will join the EU because the strategy revealed in the maps demands it. There is no other outcome.

and you haven't got the guts to admit it.

You're comparing 2000 with 2010. There has been no change in Turkey's status.

Alka, you look like your having your own little 9/11!!!!!

I have published two maps here.

One is a map denoting US/UK influence in the South-West Asian region around 2000 (before) and another denotes this influence as it now exists in 2010 (after). Turkey is included here as it is an existing member of Nato.

This before and after comparison is a snapshot which illustrates the changing face of the region as a direct consequence of the terrorist atrocity which occurred in New York on 11th September 2001 carried out by, as yet, unidentified actors.

Many thanks to Alka for his assistance with the composition of the maps.