Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Leading Atheists are Promoting a False Meme

According to the 9/11 Commission, 19 al-Qaeda hijackers commandeered four jetliners and flew three of the four into buildings. This, from day one, has been promoted by the mainstream media, and thereby became prevailing opinion, and the 9/11 Commission confirmed that opinion.
The meme of religious extremists flying airplanes into buildings grew out of that prevailing opinion. It, a slightly more generic version of the 9/11 Commission’s story line of Islamic extremists hijacking and flying the planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Leading atheists have promoted that religious-extremist meme
Possibly, atheists have tailored the specifics to this more generic meme. The more generic version certainly suits their purposes, as it shifts the "bad guys" away from being just Islamic Jihadists to any type of religious extremists. Here are examples:

Richard Dawkins
Most well-known atheist, and the coiner of the term “meme” in his book, The Selfish Gene (1976).
  • Quoted from Paul Copan in the Parchment & Pen Blog (Credo House Ministries March 2, 2011) “To top off his answer to me (without addressing how to ground rationality), Dawkins dismissively quipped that science flies rockets to the moon while religion flies planes into buildings.
Sam Harris
Harris is a leading atheist, and the most frequent promoter of the meme, and possibly the earliest to craft the idea and promote it. Here are several examples:
  • Article by Sam Harris, L.A. Times “Head-in-the-Sand Liberals: Western civilization really is at risk from Muslim extremists” – Sept 18, 2006. “I don’t know how many more engineers and architects need to blow themselves up, fly planes into buildings or saw the heads off of journalists before this fantasy will dissipate.”
  • Q&A with Sam Harris (Official Website for “The End of Faith” by Sam Harris. “People who think you can get to heaven by flying planes into buildings must be educated.”
  • The Science Studio Interview – with Sam Harris” Interviewed by Roger Bingham. Response to question by Harris, “And then people started flying planes into our buildings, obviously based on what they believed to be true about the nature of the universe, based on no evidence that anyone should credit.”
Victor Stenger
Stenger is another leading atheist, also promoting the meme. One example:


Meme evolution
This meme promotion has been for questionable reasons
The meme provides a catchy way of promoting atheism. Stenger even advocates a variation of the meme as an advertisement on the side of busses, clearly a means of promoting atheism.
There has been no checks and balance within atheism’s leadership. Anyone raising an objection was marginalized.

The basis for this meme was the US government and the mainstream media
Basis was from the immediate accounts in the mainstream media following Sept. 11, 2001.
The account of 19 Arab/Islamic hijackers taking control of four airliners, flying three of them on a suicide mission into buildings, was authenticated by the 9/11 Commission. This is part of what commonly is referred to as the Official Story.

The basis for this meme is likely to be without merit
Consensus 9/11: The Best Evidence Panel” casts doubt on the Official Story as it pertains to hijackers and al-Qaeda pilots. The panel consists of over twenty experts in 9/11 research. A Delphi method was used to arrive at consensus on points of evidence.
These three points, out of 13 recently published Points of Best Evidence, are pertinent:

Point 1: The FBI has never wanted Osama bin Laden for 9/11 attacks.
  • The FBI did not list 9/11 as one of the terrorist acts for which Osama bin Laden is wanted.
  • When asked why, Rex Tomb, when he was the head of investigative publicity for the FBI, stated that the FBI had no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.
  • Also, although Secretary of State Colin Powell, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and the 9/11 Commission promised to provide evidence of Bin Laden’s responsibility for the 9/11 attacks, they also failed.
Point 10: Pilots did not transmit the “hijack code” to ground controllers
  • Pilots are trained to “squawk” the universal hijack code (7500) on a transponder if they receive evidence of an attempted hijacking, thereby notifying FAA controllers on the ground. But leading newspapers and the 9/11 Commission pointed out that FAA controllers were not notified.
  • A CNN story said that pilots are trained to send the hijack code “if possible.” But entering the code takes only two or three seconds, whereas it took hijackers, according to the official story, more than 30 seconds to break into the pilots’ cabin of Flight 93.
The fact that not one of the eight pilots performed this required action casts serious doubt on the hijacker story.

Point 12: Hani Hanjour, as al-Qaeda pilot of AA77, incapable of flying the “official” maneuver
  • Several former airliner pilots have stated that Hanjour could not possibly have maneuvered a large airliner through the trajectory allegedly taken by Flight 77 and then hit the Pentagon between the first and second floors without touching the lawn.
These three Best-Evidence points make a strong case the official story is seriously in error with respect to al-Qaeda hijackers and their pilots, as it pertains to the explanation for airplanes being flown into the three buildings.

Atheist leaders should explain themselves
Atheists pride themselves in their rational thought processes. Critical thinking is the hallmark of their rational approach.
The idea of the “meme,” how it develops, and how it can influence public thinking, is also high on their list of important topics. Yet, in this case, they apparently unknowingly became promoters and possibly even designers of a false meme.
The time has come for leading atheists to seriously consider the evidence brought forward by these 9/11 research experts, and recognize the errors the atheist leaders may have made relative to Sept 11, 2001.

Monday, September 12, 2011

Experiencing 9/11's 10th Anniversary as a Truther

Estranged from society by the media –- connected to the people through the truth. The two halves of my day were as different from each other as night is to day. My morning at home emerged me in a constant barrage of media TV, the audio sneaking through in the background as I partially escaped from the TV images. The media’s version hit me as propaganda, doing all that it could to reinforce the official theory. Over and over I heard of the Twin Towers, the four airplanes, the tugging of emotional strings through careful selection of family members. The more I heard, the more I sensed the glaring avoidance of any mention of Building 7.

The more I heard family members interviewed, the more it was obvious they had been selected because they were “solid on 9/11,” that is, did not question the Official Story. Even worse, these were the family members who had accepted the government’s hush money. (This will seem harsh to those unaware of the details of these arrangements. However, there were a few family members who did not agree to give up their rights to challenge in the court of law. These few have suffered immensely, with the courts placing gag orders on them as well as finding ways to prohibit any testimony on the side of the plaintiffs from making it into the court's records, and to find ways to punish these individuals financially.) Most likely, big money was exchanged for agreeing to take no legal action, and who knows what all else was part of the agreement. What ever it was, I’m quite sure these family members agreed to stay mum about any behind-the-scenes matters.

Finally, the time came to drive down to the local 9/11 Truth outreach.  The car radio kept me connected to 9/11 memorials, leaving me equally estranged from the public happenings of the day. Finally, I arrived at the San Diego harbor walk across from the U.S.S. Midway Musuem.

Just as soon as I unloaded my two large building models, the day made a dramatic change for the better. It was as if the light of truth had been turned on. One of my models depicts WTC 7, a six-foot tall plywood “shell,” making it 1/100th scale version of the 600+ ft. former WTC building. The other model is of the smaller “tallest building in San Diego,” where the real counterpart can be seen along the nearby skyline.

A steady stream of people sauntered by. They mostly self select, with some walking by while avoiding eye contact with any aspect of the 9/11 Truth displays, or the truthers themselves. It is the other ones, those that slow down just enough to glance at a few of the displays, that almost always respond in the affirmative when I ask them if I can explain my building models. These are the people who have some curiosity, who become intrigued, and almost always stay long enough to ask a few questions, take some reading material, and actually grasp the idea that there may be something here worth their time for consideration.

I delight in these people. People who grasp the seriousness of the information, people with a sense of responsibility greater than their fear of getting into something that may be uncomfortable. These people, the ones who aren’t afraid to think for themselves, come from a wide variety of places. Probably about an equal three-way split. A third from San Diego larger, a third from elsewhere in the U.S., and a third from other countries. These are the people who make my effort seem worthwhile. These are the people that make this a two-way energizing experience. These are the people who give me the sense that the truth movement is making progress.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Seven Troubling Facts Concerning 9/11

These seven troubling facts have been drawn from the various venues and topics of 9/11. Although it is arguable if any of these reach the status of “smoking guns,” there are a number of “slam dunks,” incriminating clues, and one “dog that does not bark” kind of clue.

  1. A free-fall drop of WTC 7 was the prominent feature in all the “collapse” videos. This might be called a “slam dunk,” in that the laws of physics require the addition of energy to remove all the lower steel columns that would otherwise resist the fall. The top visible part of World Trade Center Building 7 is potential energy before it descends. This potential energy must convert fully to kinetic energy during free fall, or it isn’t free fall. This means none of what had been potential energy is available to abruptly remove the lower columns out from under the falling upper section. The only possible explanation is that additional non-gravitational energy sources must have been planted. In conventional controlled demolitions, the other energy sources are placed carefully at the base of columns. When the time comes for detonation, these exotic accelerants do their destructive work as planned, serving as incendiaries or explosives.

    The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), the government agency assigned to investigate this, agreed the building exhibited a free-fall drop. However, they approached their analysis of the problem by creating a sophisticated computer model of the building, and then declared their computer model was "consistent with" the video records. NIST also said their computer model did not include a “blast” event, and therefore, explosives were not involved. However, this is a pathetic explanation, in that their computer model produced a visualization looking nothing at all like the video records.
  1. An explosive event at the Pentagon occurred at approximately 9:32 AM. It was announced as a “fire at the Pentagon” on network TV approximately six minutes before the time of the alleged aircraft impact. This might be thought of as an incriminating clue, in that either there were two separate explosive events, or there was just one that didn’t involve an aircraft. If there was just one, the 9/11 Commission’s accounting of the aircraft impact is completely wrong.
  2. The stand down of the Nation’s air defense. Each of the four airplane events started with what should have been declared in-flight emergencies. Loss of communications, deviation from approved flight plans, and loss of transponder signals has always been responded to immediately with a fighter aircraft joining on the wing of the wayward aircraft, to assess the extent of the emergency. This is routine, and the response is always rapid. But on September 11, 2001, none of the four were treated as emergencies. They were all called “hijackings,” taking them into a new protocol put into place just two months earlier. This new protocol actually slowed down the decision-making process to the point where effectively there was no response at all. The net effect was a stand down of the air defense system, an incriminating clue that has all the marks of being intentional.
  3. Continual stonewalling by the government. As we reach the tenth anniversary, the continuing government stonewalling has become one of the most disturbing aspects. All three Branches of the Federal government have dug in. No member of Congress even hints at offering support for a new investigation. The Administration is equally uncooperative. For example, efforts by a building professional to gain information on the NIST computer modeling of WTC 7 was denied for such an outlandish reason as saying the release of the information “may endanger public safety.” The Judiciary is doing their share of the stonewalling as well, preventing every petitioner that comes before them from even having the chance to call their witnesses. Taken together, this stonewalling is itself an incriminating clue, suggesting powerful persons of influence may be behind this unwillingness for government officials to at least ask questions.
  4. Nanothermite in the dust. Four samples of dust collected independently from assorted locations in lower Manhattan were found to contain a high-tech pyrotechnic, nanothermite. One of the samples was collected less than twenty minutes after the second tower was destroyed, therefore cleanup operations couldn’t have contaminated the dust. Although it isn’t known what role the nanothermite played in the destruction of the towers, the material shouldn’t have been there. An international team of scientists reported on their investigation of the iron oxide – aluminum nanothermite, in The Open Chemical Physics Journal, 2009, 2, 7-31, under the title, “Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe,” by Niels Harrit, et al. As government officials have offered no explanation as to how these chips could have found their way into the dust, it represents an incriminating clue.
  5. None of the eight pilots entered the 7500 hijack code. Commercial pilots are trained to enter the digits ‘7500’ into their transponder at the first sign of a hijack. This takes only about three seconds to dial in the code and transmit. The fact that none of the eight commercial pilots transmitted this code raises serious questions concerning the hijack scenario itself. This is suggestive of the clue from Sherlock Holmes’ famous case, the “dog that does not bark.”
  6. Twin Towers demolished in near symmetry, whereas fires were asymmetric. Furthermore, fires had never before brought down a steel-framed high rise. If fires were able to bring down steel-framed high rises, the resulting rubble would be at least as disordered as the fires themselves. The 9/11 Commission Final Report doesn’t try to explain how the Towers were destroyed, it only goes to the point of global-collapse initiation. Therefore, the Official Story doesn’t even attempt to explain how asymmetric fires turn into a symmetric global collapse. This is at the very least a “slam dunk.”

Monday, August 1, 2011

Competing Theories

Other than the Official Conspiracy Theory, there are three candidate alternative theories as to how the World Trade Center towers were destroyed; Explosive Nanothermite, Directed Energy Weapons (DEW), and Nukes. The mainstream 9/11 Truth leadership is urging that we circle the wagons around what they call “the strongest” of these, Explosive Nanothermite, as we approach the 10th anniversary.

But Explosive Nanothermite has the annoying distraction of not being explosive enough, not even in the same ballpark as conventional high explosives such as RDX or even TNT. T. Mark Hightower has brought this matter into focus with his Nanothermite Challenge, calling for evidence in the open literature demonstrating iron-oxide/aluminum nanothermite with a detonation velocity of at least 2,000 m/s, significantly beyond the highest reported in the open literature of 895 m/s. (Even that is an inadequate velocity, in that it would have to be 8,750 m/s in order to be equal to that of RDX.) The deadline was reached with no submittals in the inbox. I am finding many of the leading supporters of the nanothermite hypothesis are dismissive and sarcastic in their responses when nanothermite as a high explosive is challenged.


The DEW hypothesis of Dr. Judy Wood, together with the many areas of evidence pointing to that hypothesis, is packaged nicely in her book, Where Did The Towers Go? Many proponents of the Explosive Nanothermite hypothesis are quite insistence that no one give any words of support to Dr. Wood’s ideas. I have taken an open-minded approach to her work, but have found weaknesses in each of the areas of evidence that I examined more closely. One of the most critical issues is whether or not extremely high temperatures were involved in the building destructions, as well as in the debris pile at Ground Zero the weeks afterwards. Dr. Wood had pointed out a photo of workers in a hole near the WTC 2 basement, known as the Liberty St. Hole. The workers didn’t appear to be affected by very high temperatures, which supposedly would make the hole feel like an oven. She said this was in the immediate vicinity of a hotspot labeled Location F, which had a surface temperature measured with an airborne infrared sensor at about 801˚ F. A close examination reveals it is over 100 ft. from Location F. Thus, this piece of evidence is lacking in support Dr. Wood’s hypothesis.


The Nukes hypothesis doesn’t appear to have a similar technical weakness, but rather has the stigma associated with it that anyone supporting it will immediately be marginalized. (Actually, there are several different theories within this category, but I lump them as one.) I brought it up as one possibility I hated to mention on an e-list. A response promptly came back from one of the nanothermite advocates, asking me if my reason for hating to mention it was, “because you understand exactly…how it makes us look to mention it.”


The question more and more surfacing is, at what point should an open attitude toward any or all of these theories be abandoned?