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Now Available! How the Press Led the US into War Buy End Times Now! Today's Stories September 12, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts American Economy: RIP Stan Goff The Petraeus Report William Blum When Soldiers Mutiny...Only Those Fighting the War Can End It. Manuel Garcia Forgetting 9/11 Debbie Nathan Why One Sex Survey Didn't Make the Big Time September 11, 2007 Patrick Cockburn The Fakery of General Petraeus Iain Boal Specters of Malthus: Scarcity, Poverty, Apocalypse Michael Dickinson Osama on 9/11 Guerry Hoddersen Free Speech is Not Given, but Taken Bill Hatch Irish Politics in Old Time California Gary Leupp The Legacy of Luciano Pavarotti Website of the Day Elisa Salasin's "My September 11th" September 10, 2007 Uri Avnery A Big Victory Against the Wall Patrick Cockburn Petraeus's Closet Saul Landau and Farrah Hassen Screwing Up In Iraq David Michael Green Why Fred Thompson is Uniquely Qualified to be the GOP's Nominee Pius Adesanmi A Solidarity Letter to a Victim of Michael Vick Betty Schneider How to Deal With Sex Offenders September 8 / 9, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Will the US Really Bomb Iran? Saul Landau The Irrational Drama of a Declining Empire Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Hurricane Katrina and Bush's Wars Ray McGovern Petraeus, the Westmoreland of Iraq Matthew Abraham Finkelstein's Legacy at DePaul Alan Farago The Governor and the Growth Machine Christopher Brauchli Grand Old Party Animals Rannie Amiri Battle of the Camps Fred Gardner Will Snoops Get Stopped? James L. Secor B-52 Flexing Nuclear Muscles: H-Bombs Over Barksdale Missy Comley Beattie Choices: Shall We Stay or Shall We Go Now? Ben Tripp Still in the Clover Francis Boyle The University of Illinois' Little Red Sambo Show Joe Allen and Paul D'Amato Jason Bourne vs. James Bond Website of the Weekend Drilling Wyoming: the View from Above September 7, 2007 Robert Fantina Those Iraq Reports: Bush vs. Reality John Ross Coca-Cola's Raid on a Sacred Mountain James Brooks The Occupation Within Russell Mokhiber Robert Reich and the Elimination of Corporate Criminal Liability Joshua Frank The Green Implosion Continues: Cyberlynching John Murphy John Walsh On the Green Party Mark Brenner New York Taxi Workers Strike Over Tracking Devices Mike Ferner "I Will Salute No More Forever" Website of the Day Help Save Osny Zachary's Life   September 6, 2007 Kathleen and Bill Christison Bush, Iran and Israel's Hidden Hand Allan J. Lichtman When General Petraeus Speaks, Don't Listen ... Norman Solomon The Secret Addiction of Thomas Friedman Yifat Susskind Hurricane Felix's First Responders: Courage and Tragedy on the Miskito Coast Catherine Fenton Why I Am Going to the Protest Laura Santina Can the War Machine be Contained? Farzana Versey Fission Kashmir Yves Engler Haiti: Where a Wage of $2 a Day is Too Much for the Lords of Industry to Pay Kelly Overton Bang Bang; Shoot Shoot: Is Hunting Racist? Michael Simmons One Jew's Views: The Strange Genius of Drew Friedman and Kominsky Crumb Website of the Day Dams and Genocide in Guatemala     September 5, 2007 Stan Goff The End Begins Michael Dickinson Working for Mother Teresa: Memoirs of a Rebellious Volunteer Matthew Abraham Standing Firm with Norman Finkelstein and DePaul's Heroic Students: a Defining Moment Patrick Cockburn The Basra Debacle Dave Lindorff Beware the Wounded Beast Paul Craig Roberts Who Are the Fanatics? Clifton Ross Ecuador and the Struggle for Latin American Unity Elizabeth Schulte Katrina's Forgotten Refugees Joseph Grosso Labor Day in New York City Ben Terrall Where's Nancy? On Trying to Protest Pelosi in San Francisco Website of the Day A Guide to Narco Dollars   September 4, 2007 Jean Bricmont Why Bush Can Get Away with Attacking Iran Patrick Cockburn Cut and Run in Iraq Ron Jacobs The Haditha Massacre: Spinning a War Crime Tom Kerr Buried Alive on San Quentin's Death Row Gary Leupp The Case of Jose Maria Sison Sonja Karkar The Weeping Olive Trees of Palestine Heather Gray The Best and Worst of America: 9/11, Joseph Lowery and the Lethal Silence of Billy Graham Fidel Castro The Super-Revolutionaries Jackie Corr Home Depot Comes to Butte--Begging Bowl in Hand Sunsara Taylor Katrina and the Progress of the System Website of the Day Colombia Journal   September 3, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Brits Flee from Basra Eamon McCann Qana, Derry: The Dead Lie in Familiar Shapes Joshua Frank The End of the Green Party? Chris Floyd Post-Mortem America: Bush's Year of Triumph Marjorie Cohn A Look at Bush's Iran War Plans Walter Brasch The News Drones: How Fake Photos Helped Lead the US to War in Iraq Matt Reichel Redefining the American Dream Website of the Day Don't Get Fooled Again   September 1 / 2, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Entrapment Snares Larry Craig Andy Worthington Britain's Guantánamo Saul Landau The Tragic Ordeal of the Cuban Five David Keen An Occident Waiting to Happen: Intellectuals and the War on Terror Patrick Cockburn The Collapse of Iraq's Health Care Services Diana Johnstone Back in Uncle Sam's Pocket George Longstreth, MD & Karen Longstreth, RN The Sorrows of Occupation: Life in the West Bank Linda M. Woolf A Sad Day for Psychologists--a Sadder Day for Human Rights Ralph Nader Wrapping the World with Advertising Fred Gardner The Trial of Mollie Fry, MD Ben Tripp Enquiry in America Today David Michael Green American Indigestion: Why Bush Governs from the Gut Missy Comley Beattie Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: What the GOP Hasn't Learned About Tolerance Michael Dickinson Who's Cheating: Remembering Princess Diana Paul Krassner Assholes of the Week: From Larry Craig to Wesley Clark Ron Jacobs A Sports Nation of Millions Poets' Basement Buknatski, Davies and Mickey Z   August 31, 2007 Jeff Gibbs Why I Am Not Going to the Protest Paul Craig Roberts The War Criminal in the Living Room Ray McGovern Do We Have the Courage to Stop War with Iran? Robert Weissman The Benchmarks Iraq is Missing Matt Vidal Subprime Lending and Shady Mortgages Robin Mittenthal The Biofuels Trap Chris Kutalik Auto Makers Push Health Care Trust Solution for Industry in Crisis Richard Forno Watching Freedom's Watch Binoy Kampmark Dianified Dave Zirin Kenneth Foster Lives Website of the Day Free the Jena 6   August 30, 2007 Gary Leupp Larry Craig on the Seat John Ross Dead Forest Defenders Anthony DiMaggio Arabic as a Terrorist Language: the Right-Wing Assault on the Gibran Academy Jordan Flaherty Racism and Criminal Justice in New Orleans Michael Donnelly The Sierra Club Greenwashes Al Gore (and Desecrates John Muir) Russell Mokhiber Whiskey is for Drinking, Water is for Fighting Dennis Brutus and Patrick Bond Global Financial Apartheid William S. Lind The Truth Tellers Martha Rosenberg They Call Him Dr. Cruel Jeff Leys / Brian Terrell Seasons of Discontent: a Presidential Occupation Project Website of the Day Bragg: "Old Clash Fan Fight Song" August 29, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Maliki and The Mass Shia Pilgrimage to Kerbala Winslow T. Wheeler The Costs of the Afghanistan War David Rosen The GOP's Outed All-Stars: The Forced Freeing of Gay Men from the Republican Closet Dave Zirin Confronting Katrina Paul Craig Roberts More Shame, More Sorrow Diane Farsetta Christie Todd Whitman's Nuclear Spinning Wheel Ben Davis Who Won't Stand Up for Kenneth Foster?: Charles Rangel, For One Alan Farago The Housing Crisis and the Environment Jenna Orkin Echoes of 9/11: Another Fire at Ground Zero Don Monkerud The Vanishing American Vacation Richard Nasser Surfing Gaza: More Uplifting News from NPR Website of the Day Don't Sleep on the Struggle   August 28, 2007 Uri Avnery The Language of Force Bill Quigley Katrina, Two Years Later Joshua Frank The Fight to Save the Rocky Mountains China Hand "I am Alden Pyle:" Bush's Vietnam Fantasy Firmin DeBrabander Drug Wars: From Afghanistan to Baltimore Charles Peña Nuclear Fear Factor Andy Worthington Good Riddance, Gonzales Ramzy Baroud Abbas and the Abyss Anthony Papa Roger Stone's New Patsy Ashley Smith Drawing the Line at Kennebunkport Website of the Day B is for Bomb August 27, 2007 Jorge Mariscal The General Reports Bill Christison Why the US and Israel Should Lose Middle East Wars Manuel Garcia, Jr. 911 Emergency! Calling Robert Fisk!: You are Now Entering a Black Hole Anthony DiMaggio Chronicle of a Coup Foretold?: Bush, al-Maliki and the Press Bruce A. Roth India and the New Nuclear Era John Walsh Abe Foxman's Genocide Denial Roadshow, Part 2 Dave Lindorff Gonzo's Gone Ron Jacobs Taking It to the Streets Binoy Kampmark Poshed Up: Why the Beckhams Should Go Back to Brighty Russell D. Hoffman My Favorite Scientist: John Gofman, Bane of the Nuclear Industry Website of the Day George W. Told the Nation             Subscribe Online

September 12, 2007 Forgetting 9/11 By MANUEL GARCIA Jr. Because I have written about the physics of the World Trade Center fires and collapses of  September 11, 2001, I have recently been asked by several people to comment on "9-11" during this sixth anniversary of the events. Because 9/11 happened a long time ago, as time is now experienced by the now-now no-history-cache wireless-wired over-caffeinated infotainment public mind, people have solidified their views on the subject, and new commentary is unnecessary. Those who have moved beyond 9/11 see it as blowback from decades of inhuman US foreign policy. Those who cannot accept the realization that "the natives" successfully struck back will instead find comfort in the hypothesis that 9/11 was an engineered catastrophe, and the ultimate puppeteers were those who pull the strings of the US government. I consider the first school of thought to be of rationalists and realists, and the second school to be of irrationalists and fantasists. "Faith-based" is a synonym for irrational, and a strong belief in conspiracies -- with insufficient evidence -- is an irrational expression of fear. And it is fear, ultimately, which is at the root of the obsession by so many with 9-11. We, in these United States, are deeply afraid because we are deeply uncertain about the continuation of our personal comforts (jobs?, housing?, health?, global energy resources?), and even our personal survival (crime?, military draft?, more 9-11s?). If you can see through to the source of your fear, you will be free. I can never tell you anything more important. The psychology of fear is involved, but I am impatient with it, thus "unsympathetic". The presence of a large population of fearful people creates opportunities for alert charismatic opportunists to profit, by resonating with the archetypes of the shared mass-mindedness and stroking it to spasms of "comfort" -- as the fictional Elmer Gantry did. In our commercialized world, the infotainment produced for this purpose is now a torrent. One of the mantras of the faith (of a US government conspiracy to engineer 9/11 and its subsequent perceptions in the public mind) is that "we need an 'independent' investigation" to expose the inner workings of the presupposed conspiracy, thus 'awakening' the American people to popular unanimity in toppling the Bush Administration and punishing all its associated hench-people. After this, nirvana supposedly. Much of the mail I get from conspiracists (my term for school #2) takes me to task for failing to support the idea of the desired investigation. For the record, I am in favor of further investigation. Seymour Hersh did it in 1969 to uncover the My Lai massacre by US troops in Vietnam (based on the original heroic investigation by a soldier, the late Ron Ridenhour) and he had no clearance for classified information, nor any subpoena power. Yet, he produced results that awakened the American public and prompted government hearings ("investigation"). This "independent" and public investigation of My Lai was a result of Hersh's reporting, not a precursor to it. So, I encourage all conspiracists to investigate to their heart's content (in fact, why don't they?). I am sure this investigatory frenzy will thrash out like that of the Kennedy assassination, and in 40 years we'll finally know for sure: it was airplanes crashing into the buildings (1), insulation knocked off steel, fire, metal creep, and a massive oil-fed fire in WTC 7 (2). Isn't it amazing that reality is not put off by our preferences among improbabilities, that it does not find it necessary to unfold in a reflection of the hierarchies of cause-and-effect, controlling persecutors and helpless victims which our uncomprehending minds insist on projecting upon it? Isn't it amazing that non-white "natives" from far away can make so many white people in the most powerful white people's country scared? Reality couldn't possibly turn out that way if we can't imagine it, could it? Are we really to believe that a small band of swarthy raiders from Islamic lands could possess the imagination, the cunning, the determination, the ruthlessness, the grit and the courage to scare the living hell out of the superpower populace? How is it possible for these "nobodies" to have a greater impact over us than our own powerful lords? Are we to believe that "the natives"  smote us? Reality can present us with "an obvious" that our racist thinking is blinded by: "Dick Cheney," "Project for a New American Century", "controlled demolition" (3); inhale, "connect the dots", regain your equilibrium, now you see that the world is as it SHOULD be. Why is it so imperative to the conspiracists to convert everybody else? No one prevents them from "investigating," no one prevents them from running engineering simulations of the Towers collapses to demonstrate their claims "scientifically" (commercial software is available to do this, and various universities, like Purdue, are touting their research software by applying it to the 9/11 events). Why the missionary zeal to infect me with their disease? Really, it's a virus; it propagates by corrupting consciousness -- like the invasion of the body snatchers -- so the new human carrier is propelled into a rabid invasion of the consciousness of others. The moon rises low over the night horizon this time of year, and probably calls out the zombies in greater numbers. Let them enjoy their dreams, their moaning and dancing releases their tension, and the tight coil of their consciousness will keep them captivated for the duration. They want us to meld into their trance, and we want them to awake and help with the tasks at hand. But, really, neither of us has the right to direct other lives to the purposes we deem important. Leave them to their revels. Why antagonize them? Let us make do with those we can talk to. And, after all this wrangling, what have we done to 9/l1?, but forgotten the only two lessons worthy of carrying out of it, and after such a high price paid for them, too: -- "our way of life" has caused a holocaust of unspeakable pain and suffering in much of the world, and for generations; -- the anguish of the victims and the sacrifices of the rescuers are wasted if we fail to recognize the universality of human anguish and our direct contributions to it. [1] Giulio Bernacchia, http://www.911myths.com/Another_Expert.pdf. [2] From Mr. K. S. by e-mail to MG, Jr. on  August 27, 2007: "WTC7 Collapse, So What?" Hi,I read your piece on the CounterPunch site with some interest. I was just a tourist to New York on 9-11, so I come to you not as an expert on any of this. But, I have read, and consumed hundreds of hours of information on the Kennedy assassination over the last forty plus years. So, I'm familiar with the wild theories fueled by the paranoia of US Government secrecy. Many of these suspicions seem to be well founded, some not. But, I was there at 9/11. Hasn't anyone looked at local or national footage during the afternoon of 9/11? That building was an inferno all day long. To me it was really special. I've never seen a 47-story building burn like that. Every once in a while the wind would shift off the water, and you'd feel the heat come down the street two, three blocks away depending on where I was standing at the time. It was a huge fire, with flames coming out of most of the windows on the north side of the building. It was raging. I don't know how it could have survived. What is the conspiracy about this building? The NYFD, and the rest of them knew it was going to collapse, they started running away from the area waving and screaming for everybody to get back. I figured I'd better run too. When you see all of them rescue people running, it's time to go. Then the whole street shook, it was unnerving, or disorienting like losing your equilibrium, it was weird. But, what's the conspiracy? That building burned for what, seven hours? That scene reminded me of the Pearl Harbor pictures, I mean with the raging fires and the twisted metal of those battleships; the result of the intense heat. If you were down there, you'd appreciate the scope of the fire.Thanks,Ken S. [I do not release the name/address for the sake of privacy; if this causes you to dispute the authenticity, so be it] Homework project: how long do explosives and detonators remain intact in a fire? See (3). [3] Zachary Wick, "WTC CD?", http://www.911myths.com/WTC_CD.pdf   Manuel Garcia, Jr. is a retired physicist who still hopes to learn more about solar-powered thermodynamics to meet human needs. He might be reached at mango@idiom.com     Your Ad Here

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