In my senior year at Carnegie Tech I elected to take a course called “Philosophies and Politics of the 20th Century.” I asked my instructor why “history” wasn’t part of the name. He replied that the 20th century (then scarcely more than half over) was too close in time to be called history, because historians who lived through the period weren’t through piecing it together. The course was designed to illustrate this fact by ultimately requiring each student to make his/her choice of an historical event in the first 50 years of the 20th century, go to the library, read books on the subject, and finally write an essay on what he/she thought the history books of the future should say. I picked as my title “An Analysis of the Factors Which Drew Serbia into the Balkan Wars” (the wars that triggered WW I). My instructor wrote a note on my bound essay explaining that he had to knock me down from an A to a B+ because while the essay was good, I had failed to incorporate some of the practices he was teaching ...like footnoting the sources I relied upon, so that the reader could recheck them (duh!).
Today I read an article on the front page of the Washington Post with the subtitle “Eight years later, the Sept. 11 attacks are pages in the history books to a generation that's too young to recall them.” Two alarm bells instantly went off in my head:
(1) It’s too early to be writing history books, and
(2) Something that is not yet history is apparently being jammed into the heads of impressionable American teenagers as though set in stone.
Of course, I haven’t seen the “history books” these students are being required to commit to memory. But if perchance they are based largely on the 9/11 Commission Report, then the writers of these books have ignored a stunningly huge amount of evidence conflicting with the “official story” including, but hardly limited to, references [1-5] and myriad references therein.
[1] David Ray Griffin, Richard Falk (2004) The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11. ISBN 1566565529.
[2] David Ray Griffin (2004) The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions And Distortions, Olive Branch Press. ISBN 1566565847.
[3] David Ray Griffin (2007) Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory, Olive Branch Press. ISBN 978-1566566865.
[4] David Ray Griffin (2008) 9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press, Olive Branch Press. ISBN 9781566567169.
[5] Niels H. Harrit et al. (2009) Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe, The Open Chemical Physics Journal, Vol. 2 ISSN: 1874-4125. (See also
my blog RE the Harrit et al. paper.)
Many readers may not know who David Ray Griffin is. And probably fewer know who Lynn Margulis is. To introduce you to both, I reproduce below
Lynn Margulis’ page on Patriots Question 9/11. There are very few more distinguished American Scientists than Prof. Margulis – and read her take on the 9/11 attacks!
Lynn Margulis, AB, MS, PhD – Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Geosciences, University of Massachusetts - Amherst. Elected to the
National Academy of Sciences in 1983. Former Chair, National Academy of Science's Space Science Board Committee on Planetary Biology and Chemical Evolution. Recipient of the National Medal of Science, America's highest honor for scientific achievement, in 1999, presented by President William J. Clinton. The Library of Congress, Washington, DC, announced in 1998 that it will permanently archive Dr. Margulis' papers. President of
Sigma Xi, the scientific research society, from 2005 - 2006. Recipient of the Proctor Prize for scientific achievement in 1999 from Sigma Xi. Prior to moving to the University of Massachusetts, Dr. Margulis was a faculty member at Boston University for 22 years. Her publications span a wide-range of scientific topics, and include original contributions to cell biology and microbial evolution. Dr. Margulis is best known for contributions to evolution, especially the theory of symbiogenesis. For more information on Dr. Margulis' career, please visit
http://www.chelseagreen.com/authors/LynnMargulis and
http://www.sciencewriters.org.
Author of over 130 scientific works and numerous books. Recent publications include
Mind, Life, and Universe (2007 with Eduardo Punset),
Dazzle Gradually: Reflections on the Nature of Nature (2007, co-authored with Dorion Sagan),
Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution (1998),
Acquiring Genomes: A Theory of the Origins of Species (2002, with Dorion Sagan),
Early Life: Evolution on the Precambrian Earth (2002, second edition with Michael F. Dolan),
Luminous Fish: Tales of Science and Love (2006),
What is Sex? (1997, with Dorion Sagan),
What is Life? (1995, with Dorion Sagan),
Mystery Dance: On the Evolution of Human Sexuality (1991, with Dorion Sagan),
Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Evolution From Our Microbial Ancestors (1986, with Dorion Sagan), and
Origins of Sex: Three Billion Years of Genetic Recombination (1986, with Dorion Sagan),
Kingdoms and Domains: Illustrated Guide to the Phyla of Life on Earth (4th edition, co-authored by Michael J. Chapman, Academic Press, 2008 in press),
Symbiosis in Cell Evolution (second edition, 1993).
- Statement to this website 8/27/07: "The 9/11 tragedy is the most successful and most perverse publicity stunt in the history of public relations. I arrive at this conclusion largely as the result of the research and clear writing by David Ray Griffin in his fabulous books about 9/11. I first met him when he was a speaker at a scholarly conference unrelated to 9/11. He immediately impressed me as a brilliant, outstanding philosopher - theologian - author, a Whiteheadian scholar motivated by an intense curiosity to know everything possible about the world.
On the plane home and for the next two days I did little else but read Griffin’s first book about 9/11, The New Pearl Harbor. From there I went on to read his even more disturbing account of the bogus 9/11 Commission Report, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, which provides overwhelming evidence that the official story is contradictory, incomplete, and unbelievable.
It is clear to me that David Ray Griffin and his fellow critics are correct: the 9/11 "new Pearl Harbor" was planned in astonishing detail and carried out through the efforts of a sophisticated and large network of operatives. It was more complex and far more successful than the Allende assassination, the US bombing of our own ship the "Maine" that began the Spanish-American war (and brought us Guam, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines), the Reichstag fire that was used to justify the suspension of most civil liberties in Germany in the 1930's, and even Operation Himmler, which was used by Germany to justify the invasion of Poland, which started World War II.
Whoever is responsible for bringing to grisly fruition this new false-flag operation, which has been used to justify the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as unprecedented assaults on research, education, and civil liberties, must be perversely proud of their efficient handiwork. Certainly, 19 young Arab men and a man in a cave 7,000 miles away, no matter the level of their anger, could not have masterminded and carried out 9/11: the most effective television commercial in the history of Western civilization.
I suggest that those of us aware and concerned demand that the glaringly erroneous official account of 9/11 be dismissed as a fraud and a new, thorough, and impartial investigation be undertaken."
If I’ve awakened your curiosity, listen to and watch this lecture by David Ray Griffin:
