Chris Emery screens "A Noble Lie" on OKC Bombing Anniversary

Filmmaker Chris Emery will be screening A Noble Lie: Oklahoma City 1995 on the 17th anniversary of the bombing - today, Thursday, April 19th - at 7 pm in 1111 Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The Oklahoma City bombing is widely viewed (including by Emery himself) as a warm-up and dry run for 9/11.

Spring semester events: Neocon Agenda, Professor Griff, Gilad Atzmon!

Sifting and Winnowing Club events for Spring 2012 include:

January 29th (Sunday), 3-5 p.m., The Weary Traveler, 1201 Williamson St., Madison, WI: "The Neocon Agenda and the Post-9/11 World" with Dr. Kevin Barrett

February 22nd-23rd (Wednesday and Thursday): Professor Griff, legendary rapper from the greatest hip-hop act of all time Public Enemy, will visit U.W.-Madison for a workshop Wednesday and a talk Thursday. Details TBA.

March 9th (Friday): Israeli-born British jazz star Gilad Atzmon visits UW-Madison to discuss his new bestseller The Wandering Who, which has gotten rave reviews from the like of U. of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer, while driving Zionists into a frenzy of outrage! Details TBA.

April: Filmmaker Chris Emery will screen and discuss his new documentary exposing the sordid truth about the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing - yet another well-documented false-flag attack perpetrated by US government insiders. The film is called A Noble Lie. Details TBA.

Sifting and Winnowing Club member Paul Craig Roberts asks: Do the Critics of 9/11 Truth Have a Case?

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is a member of the U.W.-Madison Sifting and Winnowing Club, and a signatory of the Open Letter to the University demanding a debate on the facts of 9/11. Dr. Roberts is the John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy, Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. A former editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal and columnist for Business Week and the Scripps Howard News Service, he is a nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate in Los Angeles and a columnist for Investor's Business Daily. In 1992 he received the Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism. In 1993 the Forbes Media Guide ranked him as one of the top seven journalists. He was Distinguished Fellow at the Cato Institute from 1993 to 1996. From 1982 through 1993, he held the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. During 1981-82 he served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy.

In this essay, Dr. Roberts implicitly answers the question: Why won't any professor, lecturer or TA in the entire University of Wisconsin system accept a $1,000 honorarium to defend the official story of 9/11 in a debate with Dr. Kevin Barrett?

The “Critics” of 9/11 Truth. Do They Have a Case?

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts | Global Research | September 13, 2011

The short answer to the question in the title is no.

The 9/11 truth critics have nothing but ad hominem arguments.

Let’s examine the case against “the truthers” presented by Ted Rall, Ann Barnhardt, and Alexander Cockburn.

But first let’s define who “the truthers” are.

The Internet has made it possible for anyone to have a web site and to rant and speculate to their heart’s content. There are a large number of “9/11 conspiracy theorists”.

Many on both sides of the issue are equally ignorant. Neither side has any shame about demonstrating ignorance.

Both sides of the issue have conspiracy theories.

9/11 was a conspiracy whether a person believes that it was an inside job or that a handful of Arabs outwitted the entire intelligence apparatus of the Western world and the operational response of NORAD and the US Air Force.

For one side to call the other conspiracy theorists is the pot calling the kettle black.

The question turns not on name-calling but on evidence.

The 9/11 Truth movement was not created by bloggers ranting on their web sites. It was created by professional architects and engineers some of whom are known for having designed steel high rise buildings.

It was created by distinguished scientists, such as University of Copenhagen nano-Chemist Niels Harrit who has 60 scientific papers to his credit and physicist Steven Jones.

It was created by US Air Force pilots and commercial airline pilots who are expert at flying airplanes.

It was created by firefighters who were in the twin towers and who personally heard and experienced numerous explosions including explosions in the sub-basements. It was created by members of 9/11 families who desire to know how such an improbable event as 9/11 could possibly occur.

The professionals and the scientists are speaking from the basis of years of experience and expert knowledge. Moreover, the scientists are speaking from the basis of careful research into the evidence that exists.

When an international research team of scientists spends 18 months studying the components in the dust from the towers and the fused pieces of concrete and steel, they know what they are doing. When they announce that they have definite evidence of incendiaries and explosives, you can bet your life that that have the evidence.

When a physicist proves that Building 7 (the stories not obscured by other buildings) fell at free fall speed and NIST has to acknowledge that he is correct, you can bet your life that the physicist is correct.

When fire department captains and clean-up teams report molten steel–and their testimony is backed up with photographs–in the debris of the ruins weeks and months after the buildings’ destruction, you can bet your life the molten steel was there.

When the same authorities report pumping fire suppressants and huge quantities of water with no effect on the molten steel, you can bet your life that the temperature long after the buildings’ destruction remained extremely high, far higher than any building fire can reach.

When the architects, engineers, and scientists speak, they offer no theory of who is responsible for 9/11. They state that the known evidence supports neither the NIST reports nor the 9/11 Commission Report. They say that the explanation that the government has provided is demonstrably wrong and that an investigation is required if we are to discover the truth about the event.

It is not a conspiracy theory to examine the evidence and to state that the evidence does not support the explanation that has been given.

That is the position of the 9/11 Truth movement.

What is the position of the movement’s critics? Ted Rall says: “Everything I’ve read and watched on Truther sites is easily dismissed by anyone with a basic knowledge of physics and architecture. (I spent three years in engineering school.)”

Wow! What powerful credentials. Has Rall ever designed a high rise steel building? Could Rall engage in a debate with a professor of nano-chemistry? Could he refute Newton’s laws in a debate with university physicists? Does Rall know anything about maneuvering airplanes? Does he have an explanation why 100 firefighters, janitors, and police report hearing and experiencing explosions that they did not hear or experience?

Clearly, Ted Rall has no qualifications whatsoever to make any judgment about the judgments of experts whose knowledge exceeds his meager understanding by a large amount.

Ann Barnhardt writes: “I gotta tell you, I’ve just about had it with these 9/11 truthers. If there is one phenomenon in our sick, sick culture that sums up how far gone and utterly damaged we are as a people, it is 9/11 trutherism. It pretty much covers everything: self-loathing, antisemitism, zero knowledge of rudimentary physics and a general inability to think logically.” She goes down hill from here.

Amazing, isn’t she? Physics professors have “zero knowledge of rudimentary physics.”

Internationally recognized logicians have “a general inability to think logically.” People trained in the scientific method who use it to seek truth are “self-loathing.” If you doubt the government’s account you are antisemitic. Barnhardt then provides her readers with a lesson in physics, structural architecture and engineering, and the behavior of steel under heat and stress that is the most absolute nonsense imaginable.

Obviously, Barnhardt knows nothing whatsoever about what she is talking about, but overflowing with hubris she dismisses real scientists and professionals with ad hominem arguments. She adds to her luster with a video of herself tearing out pages of the Koran, which she has marked with slices of bacon, and burning the pages.

Now we come to Alexander Cockburn. He is certainly not stupid. I know him. He is pleasant company. He provides interesting intellectual conversation. I like him. Yet, he also arrogantly dismisses highly qualified experts who provide evidence contrary to the official government story of 9/11.

Cockburn avoids evidence presented by credentialed experts and relies on parody. He writes that the conspiracists claim that the twin towers “pancaked because Dick Cheney’s agents–scores of them–methodically planted demolition charges.”

Little doubt but there are bloggers somewhere in the vast Internet world who say this. But this is not what the professionals are saying who have provided evidence that the official account is not correct. The experts are simply saying that the evidence does not support the official explanation. More recently, an international team of scientists has reported finding unequivocal evidence of incendiaries and explosives. They have not said anything about who planted them. Indeed, they have said that other scientists should test their conclusions by repeating the research. After calling experts “conspiracy kooks,” Alex then damns them for not putting forward “a scenario of the alleged conspiracy.”

Moreover, not a single one of the experts believes the towers “pancaked.” This was an early explanation that, I believe, was tentatively put forward by NIST, but it had to be abandoned because of the speed with which the buildings came down and due to other problems.

Unlike Rall and Barnhardt, Cockburn does refer to evidence, but it is second or third-hand hearsay evidence that is nonsensical on its face. For example, Cockburn writes that Chuck Spinney “tells me that ‘there ARE pictures taken of the 757 plane hitting Pentagon–they were taken by the surveillance cameras at Pentagon’s heliport, which was right next to impact point. I have seen them both–stills and moving pictures. I just missed seeing it personally, but the driver of the van I just got out of in South Parking saw it so closely that he could see the terrified faces of passengers in windows.’”

If there were pictures or videos of an airliner hitting the Pentagon, they would have been released years ago. They would have been supplied to the 9/11 Commission. Why would the government refuse for 10 years to release pictures that prove its case? The FBI confiscated all film from all surveillance cameras. No one has seen them, much less a Pentagon critic such as Spinney.

I have to say that the van driver must have better eyes than an eagle if he could see expressions on passenger faces through those small airliner portholes in a plane traveling around 500 mph. Try it sometime. Sit on your front steps and try to discern the expressions of automobile passengers through much larger and clearer windows traveling down your street in a vehicle moving 30 mph. Then kick the speed up 16.7 times to 500 mph and report if you see anything but a blur.

Cockburn’s other evidence that 9/11 truthers are kooks is a letter that Herman Soifer, who claims to be a retired structural engineer, wrote to him summarizing “the collapse of Buildings 1 and 2 succinctly.” This is what Soifer, who “had followed the plans and engineering of the Towers during construction” wrote to Alex: “The towers were basically tubes, essentially hollow.” This canard was disposed of years ago. If Alex had merely googled the plans of the buildings, he would have discovered that there were no thin-walled hollow tubes, but a very large number of massively thick steel beams.

Cockburn’s willingness to dismiss as kooks numerous acknowledged experts on the basis of a claim that a van driver saw terrified faces of passengers moving at 500 mph and a totally erroneous description in a letter from a person who knew nothing whatsoever about the structural integrity of the buildings means that he is a much braver person than I.

Before I call architects kooks whose careers were spent building steel high rises, I would want to know a lot more about the subject than I do. Before I poke fun at nano-chemists and physicists, I would want to at least be able to read their papers and find the scientific flaws in their arguments.

Yet, none of the people who ridicule 9/11 skeptics are capable of this. How, for example, can Rall, Barnhardt, or Cockburn pass judgment on a nano-chemist with 40 years of experience and 60 scientific publications to his credit?

They cannot, but nevertheless do. They don’t hesitate to pass judgment on issues about which they have no knowledge or understanding. This is an interesting psychological phenomenon worthy of study and analysis.

Another interesting phenomenon is the strong emotional reactions that many have to 9/11, an event about which they have little information. Even the lead members of the 9/11 Commission itself have said that information was withheld from them and the commission was set up to fail. People who rush to the defense of NIST do not even know what they are defending as NIST refuses to release the details of the simulation upon which NIST bases its conclusion.

There is no 9/11 debate.

On the one hand there are credentialed experts who demonstrate problems in the official account, and on the other hand there are non-experts who denounce the experts as conspiracy kooks.

The experts are cautious and careful about what they say, and their detractors have thrown caution and care to the wind. That is the state of the debate.

9/11 Experts Speak Out; UW Profs Cower in Shameful Silence

The good news: Thursday night's world premiere screening of 9/11: Explosive Evidence: Experts Speak Out at the University of Wisconsin-Madison filled a major portion of the 250-seat hall. The bad news: Not a single seat was occupied by a UW teacher willing to defend the 9/11 Commission Report!

Dr. Kevin Barrett, who is informally blacklisted from teaching in the UW system due to his research and views on 9/11, wound up "debating" audience members - none of whom seriously disagreed with him.

"I thought this University was a place of 'fearless sifting and winnowing,' a place where the toughest issues are debated freely and fearlessly," Dr. Barrett said. "Yet while three UW professors - Marshall Onellian, Ann Althouse, and Donald Downs - have insulted me in the media, neither they nor any other teacher in the whole university system will defend the 9/11 Commission Report in a public debate...not when they are begged to do so by media outlets and student organizations, and not even when they could pick up $1,000 for just showing up. I think that speaks volumes."

9/11: Explosive Evidence: Experts Speak Out, the new film from Architects and Engineers for 9/11 truth, premiered Thursday in select locations across the country. The film features a wide range of experts including engineers, architects, scientists, and others explaining why the government's version of the destruction of the World Trade Center is indefensible. (One of the featured experts is Lynn Margulis, the greatest scientist the UW has ever produced, who signed the open letter demanding that the University of Wisconsin live up to its "sifting and winnowing" motto, debate 9/11, and consider re-hiring Dr. Barrett.)

In his discussion with the audience, Dr. Barrett asked for suggestions about how to make the University live up to Provost Patrick Farrell's 2006 promise to sponsor a debate on the 9/11 controversies. Barrett said a backer is willing to put up ten thousand dollars for any UW professor willing to defend the 9/11 Commission Report. Tom Spellman of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth suggested that the offer should be "$1,000 to debate, $10,000 if you win." A neutral forensic organization would presumably be brought in to judge.

Dr. Barrett also discussed the possibility of leading an occupation of the campus offices of professors Downs, Onellian, and Althouse. "The professors who insulted me but won't debate me are the ones who should be banned from holding a university position," he said. "In the academy, the one hard and fast rule is that we have to publicly back up all of our claims with reason and evidence in a free, fair, public, transparent debate. Downs, Althouse, and Onellian refuse to do that. Therefore they have no business even cleaning the restrooms in a great public university like this one. Maybe it's time to force them to either abide by the one great rule of the academy, or leave and get a real job."

Suggestions about how to up the ante in the campaign to force a 9/11 debate at the University of Wisconsin may be sent to: UWsifting(at)gmail(dot)com.

The U.W. Madison Sifting and Winnowing Club (mission statement here) meets on the first and third Tuesdays of the month in the Paul Bunyan Room, across from the Rathskeller in the UW-Madison Memorial Union. The club is seeking members, especially UW-Madison students, who may sign up by emailing UWsifting(at)gmail(dot)com.

This semester's activities include talks by world-renowned expert Professor James Fetzer on the anniversaries of the Wellstone (Oct. 25th) and JFK (Nov. 22nd) assassinations, and a screening of Dr. Bob Reuschlein's new film Peace Economics and public speak-out on September 17th. Details here.

Open Letter to the Chancellor

Note: The Richard Gage/AE911truth event referenced in this letter has been moved to Room 1310, Sterling Hall, 475 N. Charter St., just south-east of the intersection of Linden and Charter. (Time: 7 pm Thursday, April 7th). The reason for the move is that the previously-assigned room actually holds fewer than 150 people -- not 200 as the organizers were told, much less the 500 capacity originally requested. 1310 Sterling has a capacity of 262.

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

Dear Chancellor Martin, and All Faculty of the University of Wisconsin:

The attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11/01 were used as an excuse to increase U.S. aggression abroad and erode our civil liberties and Constitutional rights at home. Every day the "war on terror" is used to justify continued assaults on the U.S. Constitution and foreign wars which have caused the deaths of countless innocent people. This perpetual "war on terror" has enabled blatant abuses of power at the highest levels of government, yet few people question the validity of the purported threats to our security.

After nearly a decade of reviewing all publicly available forensic evidence, 1450 Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth are formally questioning the government's official story about what destroyed the three high rises at the World Trade Center on 9/11, and calling for a new, independent investigation. Their concerns, echoed by hundreds of scientists, professors, senior government officials, aviation professionals and others, are based on strong evidence for explosive controlled demolition of the buildings. (See www.PatriotsQuestion911.com.) These brave people, whose love of country is greater than their fear of ridicule, risk their reputations, their jobs, and their livelihoods in attempting to bring this evidence to light.

There is a plaque at Bascom Hall which reads:

"Whatever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere, we believe that the great state University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found."

Yet this esteemed institution did trammel inquiry when a political opportunist, Wisconsin Assemblyman Steven Nass (R), assailed the credentials of Dr. Kevin Barrett, an instructor of Islamic Studies, and called for his removal from the U.W. Dr. Barrett's political views on 9/11 were the focus of this personal attack and ensuing media attention, which featured mischaracterization of his actual course curriculum. In spite of being a highly qualified and competent instructor, he was refused re-hire and apparently blacklisted with no debate. Not one academic from the U.W. accepted the History Club's request to debate Dr. Barrett. Lost in this debacle was the concern for truth and academic freedom necessary for the survival of a healthy democracy.

This is an urgent plea to the UW faculty to research and debate these issues. Please attend the presentation by architect Richard Gage on April 7th to see evidence which has been ignored by mainstream sources. And please continue dialogue by sponsoring a series of debates to critically analyse this information. Additionally, please investigate whether there was unjust discrimination involved in any hiring decisions. It's time for the University to take its rightful place as a bulwark defender of academic freedom, this "fearless sifting and winnowing" on which we pride ourselves. Show us that the plaque at Bascom Hall is more than a wall covering, or please take it down.

This plea is dedicated to all those with the intellectual honesty and moral courage to continue searching for truth, no matter how that inquiry challenges their fundamental beliefs.

Sincerely,

Mark Wollum, 1987 U.W. Graduate, 2008 Candidate for Congress, Wisconsin's 6th CD;
special dedications to my dear late twin brother Scott Wollum, a U.W graduate who had a brilliant mind for mathematics, valued intellectual honesty and moral integrity above popularity and material gain, always had more cajones than I did, and who remains my inspiration;
and to the late Mark Wolfert of Lone Rock, a Fearless Sifter and Winnower.

Co-signatories:

Lynn Margulis

Distinguished University Professor
University of Massachusetts-Amherst
MS Zoology&Genetics University of Wisconsin, 1960

Joel Hirschhorn
Professor of Metallurgical Engineering, University of Wisconsin, Madison 1965 - 1978.
Senior Staff Member, Congressional Office of Technology Assessment 1978 - 1990.

William B. Willers
Emeritus Professor of Biology, UW-Oshkosh

Howard Ross
Former Dean of L&S, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

Kevin MacDonald
Professor of Psychology, Cal State - Long Beach
UW-Madison B.A. Philosophy, 1966

Robert Bowman
Ph.D., Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering, Cal Tech; former Director of Advanced Space Programs Development for the U.S. Air Force

Paul Craig Roberts
Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury
John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy,
Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, former Wall St. Journal columnist

John Perkins
Activist, former economic hit man, economist, and NYT bestselling author

John Cobb
Founder, Center for Process Studies, Claremont School of Theology

Niels Harrit, Ph.D.
Associate Professor Emeritus, Dept. of Chemistry
University of Copenhagen, Denmark

William Pepper
Attorney for Martin Luther King Jr. family; author, Act of State

David Ray Griffin
Professor of Philosophy of Religion & Theology
Claremont School of Theology & Claremont Graduate University
Author of 37 books, one of which was Publishers Weekly's "Pick of the Week"

Anthony J. Hall
Professor of Globalization Studies, University of Lethbridge

Alan Sabrosky
Ph.D. University of Michigan, former Director of Studies, Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College

A. K. Dewdney,
Computer scientist and science author,
University of Western Ontario

Graeme McQueen
Associate Professor of Religious Studies, McMaster University (ret.)

William Cook
Professor of English, University of La Verne

Davidson Loehr
Ph.D., Philosophy of Religion, University of Chicago

Allen Roland
Ph.D. psychotherapist, pundit

James Fetzer
Distinguished McNight Professor Emeritus
University of Minnesota-Duluth

Four Arrows (Don Jacobs)
Doctoral Faculty, School of Educational Leadership and Change
Fielding University

Rev. Dr. Richard Curtis, PhD
Educator and Author

Henry Makow
Ph.D., University of Toronto

Anab Whitehouse
Ph.D., University of Toronto

Susan Lindauer
Former CIA asset, 9/11 whistleblower
Author, Extreme Prejudice

Barbara Honegger
Senior Military Affairs Journalist
Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey

Michael Keefer
Professor, School of English and Theatre Studies, University of Guelph.

Shelton F. Lankford
LtCol. USMC (Ret.)

Gordon Duff
Senior Editor, Veterans Today

Eric Beeth, M.D.

Joshua Blakeney
Graduate Student, University of Lethbridge

Matthew Orr
Biology faculty, University of Oregon

Dorion Sagan
DS, Award-Winning Writer, Co-Director Sciencewriters Books, Chelsea Green Publishing.

Enver Masud
Former Engineering Management Consultant
World Bank, USAID

Tom Spellman
Architect; alumnus, UW-Milwaukee; Board Member, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth

John McMurtry
Professor of Philosophy, University of Guelph; Fellow, Royal Society of Canada

Kaukab Siddique
Professor of English and Journalism, Lincoln University, PA

Dwain Deets,
Former Director for Research Engineering
NASA Dryden Flight Research Center

Michael D. Rectenwald, Ph.D.
Professor of Global Liberal Studies
New York University