American Buddhist Net

In this edition of CrossTalk host Peter Lavelle asks his guests why discussion of the events of 9/11 continue to attrack so much attention but is all but banned in the media mainstream.

A book setting out the principles of a pared-down Buddhism has won praise from arch-atheist Christopher Hitchens

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ABC interviews Coleen Rowley (2 of 2)

Why would a rational society not want to investigate and discuss 9/11? UPDATE: Here's an ABC report, which could be worse. The bottom line for me is there must be a thorough, honest, and believable public discussion of 9/11. The issue is far too important to just drop. There are many aspects to 9/11 that call for investigation. This ABC piece is better than most mainstream reporting, but it still slants heavily toward "truthers are crazy." Is the official story really so manifestly true that anyone who questions it must be suspected of being on the lunatic fringe? The answer is obviously no. 9/11 was a massive event with massive ramifications. We owe it to ourselves, to the people of the world, and to history to be sure we have all of the facts. Now is the time to gather them, and hence the urgency of the 9/11 movement. ABN

by Kevin Howley

...According to a new study published by Global Research, a Canadian-based independent research organization, news reports that bring up troubling questions about the official story surrounding the events of Sept. 11, 2001, are gaining traction in the international press.

Significantly, these news narratives no longer frame the 911 Truth movement as so much conspiracy theory. Rather, independent, commercial and public service news organizations the world over are giving serious consideration to allegations that challenge the veracity of the official story that emerged in the days and weeks following the 911 attacks.

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Entire February 2010 Issue of the American Behavioral Scientist Devoted to State Crimes Against Democracy

Terror attacks top last 15 years' online news searches

Prof. Kevin Howley Notes "Changing Journalistic Attitudes" Toward 9/11 Questions

9/11 comes down to one thing--do you want more information or not? ABN

With an emphasis on 9/11.

There is a fee for reading the articles online, but they should be available in many libraries. The entire print volume (February 2010, Volume 53, No. 6) can be purchased by:

Contacting SAGE Journals customer service department via e-mail at journals@sagepub.com or phone 1-800-818-7243 then hit #2, then #0 for operator, then ask for "Journals", and they will mail a copy.

With luck, online versions of the articles will be made available soon.

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I respect Tim King for saying this. ABN

..."I don't think the Iranians, even if they got the bomb, are going to drop it in the neighborhood," Barak said. "They fully understand what might follow -- they are radical but not total 'meshugah.' They have a quite sophisticated decision-making process and they understand realities."

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The quote just above contradicts the headline. I agree with the quote, not the headline. Threats against Iran seem to me to have much more to do with US control of Central Asia, and keeping Russia and China contained and on their toes. War with Iran, of course, risks war with Russia or China or both, though I doubt either nation would do anything to invite an attack. Constantly threatening Iran also cloaks US military escalations in Afghanistan and Pakistan by keeping the public distracted. Notice also that none of the rhetoric surrounding the "Iranian threat" works very well when argued or discussed in even the most basic ways. It does work very well though when sound bites and scary pictures are beamed across the TV to passive audiences who willingly accept their intellectual defeat with a bowl of popcorn. ABN

Obama administration officials met with a group of nontheists Friday morning.

The meeting has been labeled "historic" as it marked "the first time in history a presidential administration has met for a policy briefing with the American nontheist community."

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By David Chandler

Introduction

The destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 was, by any assessment, a momentous turning point in world affairs. More than eight years after the event, the causes of the collapses of the three largest World Trade Center buildings (WTC 1, WTC 2, and WTC 7) remain hotly contested despite official reports by government agencies, first by FEMA then by NIST, attempting to lay the matter to rest. A "9/11 Truth Movement" has arisen, including over 1000 architects and engineers who are calling for a new investigation. The NIST investigators constructed an elaborate computer model of the buildings which they used to model the airplane crashes, but strangely they did not model the actual collapses of the Twin Towers. They took their analysis only up to the point of initiation of collapse, relying, as we shall see, upon a much more simplistic model proposed by Zdenek Bazant[4, 5, 6, 7], which concluded that once the collapse was initiated, total collapse was inevitable.

What follows here is an analysis that follows the simplifying assumptions laid out by Bazant. Using measurements and a level of analysis accessible to an introductory physics class, undergraduate students have it within their power to evaluate the adequacy of the NIST-Bazant model. Their physics background, even at this stage, equips them for intelligent participation in a significant civic debate.

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Paul Craig Roberts

The Washington Times is a newspaper that looks with favor upon the Bush/Cheney/Obama/neocon wars of aggression in the Middle East and favors making terrorists pay for 9/11. Therefore, I was surprised to learn on February 24 that the most popular story on the paper's website for the past three days was the "Inside the Beltway" report, "Explosive News," about the 31 press conferences in cities in the US and abroad on February 19 held by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, an organization of professionals which now has 1,000 members.

I was even more surprised that the news report treated the press conference seriously.How did three World Trade Center skyscrapers suddenly disintegrate into fine dust? How did massive steel beams in three skyscrapers suddenly fail as a result of short-lived, isolated, and low temperature fires? "A thousand architects and engineers want to know, and are calling on Congress to order a new investigation into the destruction of the Twin Towers and Building 7," reports the Washington Times.

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Well-said. Should be in the New York Times, but alas. ABN

by KEVIN RYAN

Who could have placed explosives in the World Trade Center (WTC) buildings? As a society we are faced with this question due to the growing amount of evidence that explosives were used to bring down all three buildings, and due to the enormous implications of that possibility. The evidence includes the unprecedented nature of what happened that day, the eyewitness testimonies of people present at the site, and the physical evidence demonstrated by photographs and videos. 1, 2 Evidence for explosives is also given through proof by contradiction in that seven years of ever-changing government reports could not provide a non-explosive story for destruction of the WTC buildings. 3, 4, 5 More recently, peer-reviewed scientific papers show that energetic materials were present at the WTC, as indicated by the environmental data and the dust from Ground Zero. 6, 7, 8

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An Introduction to the 4-Part Investigative Series by Kevin Ryan

by DON PAUL
February 18, 2010

... Kevin Ryan's book-length, four-part, extensively footnoted study, 'Demolition Access to the World Trade Center Towers', throws light onto figures and relationships that have been previously obscured. Its work provides for us a cavernous mountain of illumination from which we can gain clarity and courage.

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By Jennifer Harper INSIDE THE BELTWAY

A lingering technical question about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks still haunts some, and it has political implications: How did 200,000 tons of steel disintegrate and drop in 11 seconds? A thousand architects and engineers want to know, and are calling on Congress to order a new investigation into the destruction of the Twin Towers and Building 7 at the World Trade Center.

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Please Take Notice That:

The Undersigned

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As of today 1042 architectural and engineering professionals have signed the petition demanding of Congress a truly independent investigation. Has this been reported in your daily paper? ABN

John Gross, lead structural engineer of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) denies the vast witnessed and documented evidence of molten metal found at all 3 World Trade Center towers destroyed on 9/11. Examine the evidence at http://www.ae911truth.org/

By Richmond Shreve

An academic treatise on conspiracy theories has provoked howls of outrage among those who call themselves the truth movement. The paper can hardly be considered news, it was first released as a draft in January of 2008. But when one of its authors, Cass Sunstein, became part of the Obama administration, the appointment alarmed conspiracists because his paper advocates "cognitive infiltration of extremist groups" both foreign and domestic.

Consider for a moment the word infiltration and its implications in the context of a belief. When you have an open mind and are seeking to expand your knowledge and understanding, new information is a desirable thing. The open-minded seeker welcomes diversity of thought, and simply accepts what is useful and rejects what is not. By contrast, the true believer regards discordant information as a threat, heresy, and wants to suppress it -- to keep it from infiltrating the body of concordant information that sustains his or her belief.

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This delightful piece of nonsense is, as it should be, utterly torn to shreds in the comment section below it. ABN

Part II: A Survey of Attitude Change in 2009-2010

by Elizabeth Woodworth

...Observations on the Analysis

While carrying out my analysis, I observed five new features in the media treatment of the 9/11 issue that developed as 2009 progressed. They are listed here, so that readers might look for them in the case studies that follow below:

1. The 9/11 issue is increasingly framed not as conspiracy theories versus hard science, but as a legitimate controversy resting on unanswered questions and a search for truth.

2. News reports and television programs examining these controversies have become longer and more balanced.

3. Major media outlets have begun to present the claims of the truth movement first, followed by counter-arguments from defenders of the official story.

4. Major media outlets have begun to include, and even to introduce, extensive evidence to support the claims of the 9/11 truth community.

5. The media treatments increasingly suggest the possibility of a re-investigation into the events of September 11, 2001.

The first part of this essay deals with the crucial scientific evidence that emerged in early 2009, the significance of this evidence in relation to the official story of 9/11, and the immediate news coverage it received.

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...It took a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain them from the national standards institute, which provided the official, technical analysis of why the towers fell. These photos also remind us of how important it is to keep enlarging our sense of what happened on 9/11, to keep opening it to history.

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The New York Times just made two statements I can agree with concerning 9/11. Two out of three, which though still terrible, is better than usual. Their first true statement is "It took a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain" the photos. Elsewhere in this short piece, they also say "we should have seen them [the photos] sooner." Couldn't agree more. Their second true statement, with which I also could not agree with more is: "These photos also remind us of how important it is to keep enlarging our sense of what happened on 9/11, to keep opening it to history." Wow! How did that slip by the censors? Their third statement in this short paragraph is the big boner: "...the national standards institute, which provided the official, technical analysis of why the towers fell." This is an outright falsehood. The facts are that NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology] did not provide any analysis of why the Twin Towers "fell". What they provided was a very weak and easily refuted "analysis" of events leading up to the "falls", but not including them. All NIST has said about why the two Towers "fell" is "global collapse ensued." That is decidedly not a "technical analysis", though it sadly really is all there is to the "official" one. I will also give the Times a bit of credit for the tone of this piece. Rather than mocking anyone who wants a real investigation of 9/11 (which they usually do whenever the subject, rarely, arises in their pages) the paper actually waxed poetic about the latest news. No, that is not real journalism, and, no, it is not seeking "to keep enlarging our sense of what happened on 9/11, to keep opening it to history." But it is better than their usual silence or contempt when it comes to this subject, which is so central to all things New York, America, and the world. ABN

In science or in any field of study, things are not always tidy. Roughly a century ago, as some scientists were feeling that the laws of physics were well understood and tidy, along came quantum mechanics with the complex and initially disturbing model of particles having dual natures, sometimes like waves and other times like particles, further compounded by numerous puzzling characteristics, apparent contradictions, and even mathematical absurdities. While the smallest aspects of matter began throwing science for a loop, larger-scale aspects were doing the same as relativity came into play with its conundrums and puzzles.

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(PhysOrg.com) -- Eventually, the day will come when life on Earth ends. Whether that’s tomorrow or five billion years from now, whether by nuclear war, climate change, or the Sun burning up its fuel, the last living cell on Earth will one day wither and die. But that doesn’t mean that all is lost. What if we had the chance to sow the seeds of terrestrial life throughout the universe, to settle young planets within developing solar systems many light-years away, and thus give our long evolutionary line the chance to continue indefinitely?

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Imagine a civilization billions of years more advanced than ours. Then imagine that this civilization had learned billions of years ago how to make a really good computer simulation; one so good the beings inside it thought they were real in the sense that most of us think we are real. A similar argument to the one in this piece might have persuaded that civilization to make millions of simulations, and we very well may be living in one right now. ABN

Are the ideas of the conservative political philosopher Leo Strauss a shaping influence on the Bush administration’s world outlook? Danny Postel interviews Shadia Drury – a leading scholarly critic of Strauss – and asks her about the connection between Plato’s dialogues, secrets and lies, and the United States-led war in Iraq.

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This piece came out in '03, and by now, we all know that the answer to the question above is yes, yes, yes, and yes. I am reposting this short piece because it is absolutely essential that we all have a full understanding of neocon philosophy. You cannot understand recent American and world politics without understanding neocons. And this brings us to today and the very important question--Is Obama a crypto-neocon? If not, why has he continued - and even furthered - so many neocon policies? And why has he appointed so many neocons and crypto-neocons to posts within his administration? To me Obama looks like a neocon "good cop" who is following the Bush-era neocon "bad cop" and not much else. ABN

by Barrie Zwicker

What goes with the “split” between the anti-war movement and the 9/11Truth movement? Some light was shed on this regrettable reality in Boston the weekend of Jan. 30-31, 2010. On Saturday New England United (NEU), an umbrella group, held an anti-war strategy conference. The next day Northeast 9/11Truth held its strategy conference, in part an analysis of the previous day’s events.

As both a lifelong member of the peace movement, and a committed 9/11Truther, I attended all of the Saturday conference where I was a workshop leader, and the first half of the Sunday conference (having to leave early because of travel arrangements). My main points:

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Devdutt Pattanaik takes an eye-opening look at the myths of India and of the West -- and shows how these two fundamentally different sets of beliefs about God, death and heaven help us consistently misunderstand one another.

By Terry Pratchett

When Death met the philosopher, the philosopher said, rather excitedly: "At this point, you realise, I'm both dead and not dead."

There was a sigh from Death. Oh dear, one of those, he thought. This is going to be about quantum again. He hated dealing with philosophers. They always tried to wriggle out of it.

"You see," said the philosopher, while Death, motionless, watched the sands of his life drain through the hourglass, "everything is made of tiny particles, which have the strange property of being in many places at one time. But things made of tiny particles tend to stay in one place at one time, which does not seem right according to quantum theory. May I continue?"

YES, BUT NOT INDEFINITELY, said Death, EVERYTHING IS TRANSIENT. He did not take his gaze away from the tumbling sand.

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