Mayday!

.Julian Borger in Washington and Richard Norton-Taylor
Thursday June 30, 2005
The Guardian

By Robert Adams
New Dawn Magazine.com
6-21-5

When I first spoke to a close Christian friend of mine about the publishing of Tony Bushby’s The Bible Fraud, her reaction was one that many Christians have expressed, and one that made me aghast. She didn’t want the book available because it would “persuade them away from the Bible and the word of God.” Further discussions with her and many other Christians around the world about The Bible Fraud all result in the Bible being quoted as the ultimate reference for the apparent “words of God,” and therefore the basis for their arguments. The problem lies in that they believe the Bible is infallible. […]

As Tony points out, the history of our ‘genuine’ Bibles is a convoluted one. Firstly we cannot be sure that we have the full version as it was originally intended. In 1415 the Church of Rome took an extraordinary step to destroy all knowledge of two second century Jewish books that it said contained the true name of Jesus Christ. The Antipope Benedict XIII firstly singled out for condemnation a secret Latin treatise called “Mar Yesu” and then issued instructions to destroy all copies of the book of Elxai. The Rabbinic fraternity once held the destroyed manuscripts with great reverence for they were comprehensive original records reporting the life of Rabbi Jesus.

Later, Pope Alexander VI ordered all copies of the Talmud destroyed, with the Spanish Grand Inquisitor Tomas de Torquemada (1420-98) responsible for the elimination of 6,000 volumes at Salamanca alone. Solomon Romano (1554) also burnt many thousands of Hebrew scrolls and, in 1559, every Hebrew book in the city of Prague was confiscated. The mass destruction of Jewish books included hundreds of copies of the Old Testament and caused the irretrievable loss of many original handwritten documents.

The oldest text of the Old Testament that survived, before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls was said to be the Bodleian Codex (Oxford), which was dated to circa 1100 AD. In an attempt by the church to remove damaging Rabbinic information about Jesus Christ from the face of the earth, the Inquisition burnt 12,000 volumes of the Talmud. In 1607, forty-seven men (some records say fifty four) took two years and nine months to re-write the Bible and make it ready for press. It was, by the order of King James, issued with a set of personal ‘rules’ the translators were to follow. Upon its completion in 1609, it was handed over to the King James for his final approval. However, “It was self evident that James was not competent to check their work and edit it, so he passed the manuscripts onto the greatest genius of all time… Sir Francis Bacon” The first English language manuscripts of the Bible remained in Bacon’s possession for nearly a year. During that time … “he hammered the various styles of the translators into the unity, rhythm, and music of Shakespearean prose, wrote the prefaces and created the whole scheme of the Authorized Version. At the completion of the editing, King James ordered a ‘dedication to the King’ to be drawn up and included in the opening pages. He also wanted the phrase ‘Appointed to be read in the churches’ to appear on the title page. The King James Bible is considered by many today to be the ‘original’ Bible and therefore ‘genuine’ and all later revisions simply counterfeits forged by ‘higher critics’. Others think the King James Bible is ‘authentic’ and ‘authorized’ and presents the original words of the authors as translated into English from the ‘original’ Greek texts. However, as Tony points out, the ‘original’ Greek text was not written until around the mid fourth century and was a revised edition of writings compiled decades earlier in Aramaic and Hebrew. Those earlier documents no longer exist and the Bibles we have today are five linguistic removes from the first bibles written. What was written in the ‘original originals’ is quite unknown. It is important to remember that the words ‘authorized’ and ‘original’, as applied to the Bible do not mean ‘genuine’, ‘authentic’ or ‘true’.

By the early third century, it became well noted that a problem was occurring . politics! In 251AD, the number of Presbyter’s (roving orator or priest) writings had increased dramatically and bitter arguments raged between opposing factions about their conflicting stories. According to Presbyter Albius Theodoret (circa 255), there were “more than two hundred” variant gospels in use in his time. In 313, groups of Presbyters and Biscops (Bishops) violently clashed over the variations in their writings and “altar was set against altar” in competing for an audience and territory. […]

Comment: Laura has recently written an excellent review of The Book of Q and Christian Origins by Burton Mack. Here the reader will learn that “Q” is short for the German word Quelle (which is source). Q is one of the two sources for Matthew and Luke, the other being old Mark, but the unknown lost source is now named Q. While this subject comes up under the subject heading of Q hypothesis - (synoptics criticism), since the discovery of the Gospel of Thomas, it really isn’t a hypothesis anymore.

Read that last bit again: It really isn’t a hypothesis anymore. In the analysis of the Q Document, you can discover what has the highest probability of being the truth of Christianity available today. In short, this is probably the real scoop on the so-called “Bible Fraud.”

Mack writes:

In Q there is no hint of a select group of disciples, no program to reform the religion or politics of Judaism, no dramatic encounter with the authorities in Jerusalem, no martyrdom for the cause, much less a martyrdom with saving significance for the ills of the world, and no mention of a first church in Jerusalem. The people of Q simply did not understand their purpose to be a mission to the Jews, or to gentiles for that matter. They we re not out to transform the world or start a new religion.

Q’s challenge to the popular conception of Christian origins is therefore clear. If the conventional view of Christian beginnings is right, how are we to account for these first followers of Jesus? Did they fail to get his message? Were they absent when the unexpected happened? Did they carry on in ignorance or in repudiation of the Christian gospel of salvation? If, however, the first followers of Jesus understood the purpose of their movement just as Q describes it, how are we to account for the emergence of the Christ cult, the fantastic mythologies of the narrative gospels, and the eventual establishment of the Christian church and religion? Q forces the issue of rethinking Christian origins as no other document from the earliest times has done. […]

With Q in view the entire landscape of early Christian history and literature has to be revised. […]

The narrative gospels can no longer be viewed as the trustworthy accounts of unique and stupendous historical events at the foundation of the Christian faith. The gospels must now be seen as the result of early Christian mythmaking. Q forces the issue, for it documents an earlier history that does not agree with the narrative gospel accounts. […]

The issues raised are profound and far reaching. […] They strike to the heart of an entrenched reluctance in our society to discuss the mythic foundations for attitudes and values, both shared and conflictual, that influence the way we think, behave, and construct our institutions. Q can hardly be discussed without engaging in some honest talk about Christian myth and the American dream. [The Lost Gospel by Burton L. Mack]

Mack’s discussion shows how the Jesus movement was a vigorous social experiment that was generated for reasons other than an “originating event” such as a “religious experience” or the “birth of the son of God.”

The Jesus movement seems to have been a response to troubled and difficult times. Mack outlines and describes the times, and shows how the pressures of the milieu led to thinking new thoughts about traditional values and experimenting with associations that crossed ethnic and cultural boundaries. The Jesus movement was composed of novel social notions and lifestyles that denied and rejected traditional systems of honor based on power, wealth, and place in hierarchical social structures. Ancient religious codes of ritual purity, taboos against intercourse across ethnic boundaries, were rejected. People were encouraged to think of themselves as belonging to the larger, human family. Q says: “If you embrace only your brothers, what more are you doing than others?”

The Jesus people not only rejected the old order of things, they were actively at work on the questions of what ideal social order they wanted to manifest and promote. The attraction of the Jesus people to its followers was not at all based on any ideas to reform a religious tradition that had gone wrong, nor was it even thought of as a new religion in any way. It was quite simply a social movement that sought to enhance human values that grew out of an unmanageable world of confusing cultures and social histories. It was a group of like-minded individuals that created a forum for thinking about the world in new ways, coming up with new ideas that included the shocking notion that an ethnically mixed group could form its own kind of community and live by its own rules.

In addition to reconstructing the times in which the Jesus people lived, Mack presents the Q document itself, showing that it was built up in three layers, each layer being additions made in response to external pressures on the group. What is most interesting is the analysis of the first layer, the one that must be composed of the actual teachings of the man called Jesus. It seems that Jesus’ challenge to his followers was to take a deeper look at their world and challenge it in how they lived their lives.

Seven clusters of teachings, or sayings, emerged from the study of Q, and each of these express a coherent set of issues. These sayings comprise a comprehensive set of sage observations that delight in critical comment on the everyday world and unorthodox instructions that recommend unconventional behavior! The ever-present theme of Jesus’ teachings was a review of life and conventional values that promoted the idea that customary pretensions are hollow, wealth, learning, possessions, secrets, rank, and power are meaningless in terms of the true value of a human being. Jesus was promoting the idea that the Emperor is naked, though in no way did he propose any idea of changing the system. Implicit in his critique is the idea that there is a better way to live. The challenge was to be able to live without being consumed with worry even if one was fully aware that the world “out there” was a dangerous jungle that required care to navigate.

When fully analyzed and compared with other norms of the time, Jesus emerges as a man living the life of the popular philosophy of the Cynic. This is striking because the Cynics are remembered as distinctly unlovable because they promoted biting sarcasm and public behavior that was designed to call attention to the absurdity of standard conventions.

Apparently many responded to the movement and associations of like-minded people began to form. And then, something very interesting happened… Suddenly, in the next layer of Q, a heightened sense of belonging to a movement becomes obvious because injunctions given as aphorisms now become rules supported by arguments. At this point, the idea of the “Kingdom of God” enters the picture. This “Kingdom” was, apparently, a realm or domain in which the rule of God is actualized. The rule of God is what the Q people said they were representing in the world. For the Jesus people, this meant something quite different from what Christians now assume it to mean. First of all, there was nothing at all apocalyptic about it (all that came later). For the Jesus people, the Kingdom of God was compared repeatedly to the natural process of growth as witnessed in Nature. Everything about this “Kingdom of God” was practical, having to do with things that can be accomplished in contrast to the conventional life.

The match between the Cynics and the Jesus people is not exact in all cases because the Jesus people DID have an interest in the “Divine” aspect of “God.” Unfortunately, there is little in the Q document that explains this Divine source other than the fact that the Jesus people represented it as a “Father” and those who could successfully resist the ruin of social evils were the “children of God.” The way the Jesus people referred to God was a bit more serious than the way the Cynics referred to such ideas. The Q people were concerned with the care of their members as a “family.” I would suggest that there was a perception of differences in human beings among the Q people, though Mack does not make a special point of analyzing that issue.

Mack continues to examine and identify the stages in the Jesus movement, including the point at which the movement experienced rejection, criticism, and censure. A sudden shift in tone is noted in the third layer of Q. This is one of the more interesting parts of the book which describes an extremely troubled phase of the movement. There is a concern with loyalty noted, which suggests that there had been pressure from some outside authority, and betrayal from within. At this point, the role of Jesus was expanded, and this seems to have been related to mutual recognition of other “Jesus people.” The movement must have been growing quite fast and threatening the authorities, and some action must have been taken which resulted in the need to find criteria for who was or was not a real follower of the teachings. So it was that concern for loyalty to the teachings resulted in the need to recast Jesus as the authoritative founder of the movement whose teachings must be “kept”. That is to say, the shift in focus was from the teachings to the teacher. The next step was, of course, loyalty to Jesus himself.

The question is, of course, what happened? The document doesn’t tell us, though it hints at the nature of the problem by virtue of the additional text that dealt with the issues. There were, obviously, painful experiences that were turned to a lesson. Mack suggests that the formation of Jesus people “families” must have seriously offended certain authorities.

It seems that families were being split, and ethnic conventions were being personally challenged over loyalty to the movement. The evidence indicates that this occurred in relation to Judaism.

Here we find the most fascinating twist of all in the development of Christianity. If the Jesus people had not been attacked by the Jewish authorities, they would not have sought to justify their movement in terms of the Jewish religion. It was only in defense that they did this. They ran afoul of the Pharisaic code, probably because they had Jewish members whose families were horrified at the participation of their children or relatives in the new movement. The issue of loyalty came to be phrased as a “Jewish” question, and the Jesus people felt they had to answer it in Jewish terms.

And so it was that the Jesus people turned to the labor of mythmaking. They had to find ways to best their critics by turning their own words against them. They began to search for self-justifying arguments, examples in support of their own movement. They were only doing it in the sense of the Cynic system of argumentation, but the results were nonlinear. What they presented as their arguments was then adopted as REAL, and the Jesus people made an implicit claim on the cultural heritage of the Jews.

It is clear that the individuals who did this were not well versed in the Jewish writings. They made no appeals to such obvious things as the promises to the patriarchs, the priestly covenants, the Mosaic law, the Davidic covenant, and so on. Most of the allusions to Judaism were taken from popular oral traditions that would have been available to non-Jews of the time.

Mack next takes the reader through the process of exactly how the subsequent myth was built, layer by layer, and it is fascinating. Effectively, what happened was that a group of people created a myth of broad - even global - horizons by elaborating on the sayings of an unlikely sage of Cynic persuasion who was reconceived as a wisdom teacher, an apocalyptic prophet, the son of God, and the means of atonement for all the world’s sins if people would just “believe.” By degrees, Jesus was saying things that only the wisdom of God could reveal. An amazing accommodation with Jewish piety against which earlier battles had raged was made, and Jesus was now quoting scriptures as proof texts that he was the son of God whose kingdom would only be revealed at the end of time.

This brings us back to the fact that Christians don’t like myths. At some level they surely know that Christianity based on the narrative gospels is a myth, but they are in denial. They cannot deal with the fact that, for the original followers of the teachings of Jesus, there was no need to claim any epic legitimacy. To them, Jesus was simply a Cynic sage whose insights were tried and tested and found to be good. His success was in his masterful Cynic discourse that challenged others to try a different way of living.

The most ironic thing about the development of Christianity as a global religion is that it has aligned itself with Judaism as a “daughter” when the facts indicate that the adoption of a “Jewish” heritage was merely the result of a defensive maneuver. The Jesus people simply usurped the epic of their main detractors and used it against them. “Get off our backs. Your own history should tell you that what we represent is a critical voice in unhealthy times and has always been needed. See, we are OK even on your own terms.” It was never intended to be a serious alignment. Mack writes:

“Q puts us in touch with the earlier history of the Jesus movements, and their recollections of Jesus are altogether different. The first followers of Jesus did not know about or imagine any of the dramatic events upon which the narrative gospels hinge. […] All of these events must and can be accounted for as mythmaking in the Jesus movements, with a little help from the martyrology of the Christ, in the period after the Roman-Jewish war. The narrative gospels have no claim as historical accounts. The gospels are imaginative creations whose textual resources and social occasions can be identified. The reasons for their composition can be explained. They are documents of intellectual labor normal for people in the process of experimental group formation. […]”

From the above, we can almost understand why so many must insist on denying these conclusions. So much energy, for two thousand years, has been put into this mythology, into related mythologies, including an entire industry that today tries to come up with novel and alternative explanations for who Jesus was, whether or not he was married, did he die of a blood clot, is the Shroud of Turin authentic, and so on and so on. It seems, based on the Q document, that it is unlikely that Jesus was even Jewish.

Mack is NOT saying that there was not something going on at that period of history. Clearly there was. Clearly, there WAS a teacher and a teaching and followers. Of that, there can be no doubt.

Biblical scholars, of course, work very hard trying to find ways to “enhance” the picture of Jesus. For a very long time, they (and even alternative writers such as Bushby, Lincoln, Leigh, Baigent, and others) have assumed that Jesus was a unique individual, and his teachings and life must have been novel. But even this approach has failed to save the story told in the narrative gospels. When scholars reveal the results of their work outside scholarly circles, there is generally an anguished public outcry. People cannot bear to be told that Jesus did not say what Matthew, Mark and Luke say he said, and the scholars who are trying to save the buns from the fire don’t seem to be able to adequately explain to the public how they arrive at their conclusions. There is a complete lack of basic knowledge on the part of the general public about the formations of early Christianity, generally encouraged by the purveyors of the “religion” itself. “Thou shalt not ask questions,” they intone solemnly, and the threats of hell-fire and damnation are intimated for those who even open the cover of a book on the subject.

The average Christian is horrified to think that Matthew was either lying, or was mistaken, or he made it all up and didn’t bother to inform the reader that he was making stuff up. Mack deals with this issue in some detail and even if the explanation will produce discomfort in many Christians, the explanation is “eminently understandable.” The fact is, the authors of early Christian texts, following a tradition of Greco-Roman attitudes and practices with regard to sayings or maxims of a teacher, felt perfectly free to attribute new sayings, and even deeds, to Jesus. At various points in the history of these early groups, when certain tensions arose, it was seen as necessary and useful to recast the character of Jesus by speech attribution and narrative changes. This is exactly what was done, and the evidence is in the textual analyses. It was in this sense that the history of the Q community was traced.

At the first stage, the discourse was playful and the behavior public. The people of Q were challenging one another to live a life of integrity despite the social repercussions.

The second stage was that of forming groups. Apparently, these experiments in behavior produced satisfying results and more and more people were attracted to the idea. Human relationships became a particular focus, and there was no evidence of any idea of reforming society or any demand for conversion of outsiders.

And then, the third shift: apparently, when groups were formed, this attracted very negative attention. The distress signal in the text is evident, and it is also evident that it was not a consequence of weariness with reproach or discouragement, but rather that there was a definite and dangerous social conflict relating to certain members of the Q groups.

And then, another stage occurred, a period during which the people of Q began to see themselves as carriers of a social movement with a purpose in the grander scheme of things.

It was in this context that the ideas of the Christ cult of northern Syria overshadowed and even erased the memories and importance of Jesus, the Cynic teacher. As Mack points out, the cost of surviving the Roman-Jewish war must have been very high. This part of the discussion is particularly interesting, and one can speculate on the possibility of an esoteric tradition being combined with the social experiment and converted into a history. The “real” Jesus disappeared from the story because the narrative gospels told a more exciting tale that promised wonderful things in terrible times, and Jesus became the “lynchpin” of all history.

After reading Mack’s book, Tony Bushby’s The Bible Fraud is even sillier than I originally thought. It will have to join a host of others - including Holy Blood, Holy Grail, the Da Vinci Code, The Templar Revelation, The Jesus Conspiracy, Jesus the Magician, and just about everything that assumes a priori that there is ANYTHING even remotely historical in the narrative gospels - on the trash heap.

Yes, it’s all a fraud, no doubt about that, but not exactly the way so many are claiming nowadays when they create their equally ridiculous “New Age” or “alternative” mythologies to replace the Dead Man on a Stick nonsense.

I say good riddance to all of it.

CIA chief says he has ‘excellent idea’ where Osama bin Laden is
06:31 AM EDT Jun 20
NEW YORK (AP) - The director of the CIA says he has an “excellent idea” where Osama bin Laden is hiding, but that Washington’s respect for sovereign countries makes it more difficult to capture the al-Qaida chief.

In an interview with Time for the magazine’s June 27 issue, Porter Goss was asked about the progress of the hunt for bin Laden.

“When you go to the question of dealing with sanctuaries in sovereign states, you’re dealing with a problem of our sense of international obligation, fair play,” Goss said. “We have to find a way to work in a conventional world in unconventional ways [that are acceptable to the international community].”

Comment: What???!!! “International obligation”???!!! “Fair play”???!!! What drug is this man on? These are the same people who lied to the world about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, about the links between Saddam and the 9/11 hijackers (Saddam met with Rumsfeld way back in 1983 long before Rumsfeld and his friends started planning 9/11), and who would now have us believe that the Downing Street memo is either a forgery or says something other than what it says.

Asked whether that meant he knew where bin Laden is, Goss responded: “I have an excellent idea where he is. What’s the next question?”

Goss did not say where he thinks bin Laden is, nor did he specify what country or countries he was referring to when he spoke of foreign sanctuaries. But American officials have long said they believed bin Laden was hiding in rugged mountains along the Afghan-Pakistani border.

Comment: The part of the quote in brackets above was taken from Xinhua, the Chinese news service, which had a more complete version of Goss’s words. The next article raises the issue of how it was that a Pakistani TV station was able to find Osama when Pakistani intelligence can’t…

Another Tasering Results In Death
6-15-5

WEST PARK, Fla. (AP) — A Fort Lauderdale man died after Broward sheriff’s deputies shocked him with a Taser. Officers had been responding to a call about a home invasion in West Park.

The homeowner says 48-year-old Horace Owens broke in while he was watching television. He says the intruder ran from room to room yelling, in these words, “Please don’t let them kill me.”

Deputies got Owens outside, but he struggled with them. He was hit with the electrical shock outside the house. Officers tried to resuscitate Owens, but he was pronounced dead later at the hospital.

Owens is the seventh person to die in South Florida after being shocked by a Taser since 2002.

Comment: Latest reports on this most recent extra-judicial killing tell us that the heart attack that the victim suffered was caused by the cocaine that the coroner found in his blood rather than the 50,000 volts from the Taser. This is surely good news for the millions of Americans that already have a heart condition or who have ingested any of the millions of legal stimulants prescribed by their doctors because they need never worry about bearing the shame of having ‘death by Taser’ printed on their death certificate.

Former Bush Team Member Says WTC Collapse Likely A Controlled Demolition And ‘Inside Job’

Highly recognized former chief economist in Labor Department now doubts official 9/11 story, claiming suspicious facts and evidence cover-up indicate government foul play and possible criminal implications.

June 12, 2005
By Greg Szymanski

A former chief economist in the Labor Department during President Bush’s first term now believes the official story about the collapse of the WTC is ‘bogus,’ saying it is more likely that a controlled demolition destroyed the Twin Towers and adjacent Building No. 7.

“If demolition destroyed three steel skyscrapers at the World Trade Center on 9/11, then the case for an ‘inside job’ and a government attack on America would be compelling,” said Morgan Reynolds, Ph.D, a former member of the Bush team who also served as director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis headquartered in Dallas, TX.

Reynolds, now a professor emeritus at Texas A&M University, also believes it’s ‘next to impossible’ that 19 Arab Terrorists alone outfoxed the mighty U.S. military, adding the scientific conclusions about the WTC collapse may hold the key to the entire mysterious plot behind 9/11.

“It is hard to exaggerate the importance of a scientific debate over the cause(s) of the collapse of the twin towers and building 7,” said Reynolds this week from his offices at Texas A&M. “If the official wisdom on the collapses is wrong, as I believe it is, then policy based on such erroneous engineering analysis is not likely to be correct either. The government’s collapse theory is highly vulnerable on its own terms. Only professional demolition appears to account for the full range of facts associated with the collapse of the three buildings.

“More importantly, momentous political and social consequences would follow if impartial observers concluded that professionals imploded the WTC. Meanwhile, the job of scientists, engineers and impartial researchers everywhere is to get the scientific and engineering analysis of 9/11 right.”

However, Reynolds said “getting it right in today’s security state’ remains challenging because he claims explosives and structural experts have been intimidated in their analyses of the collapses of 9/11.

From the beginning, the Bush administration claimed that burning jet fuel caused the collapse of the towers. Although many independent investigators have disagreed, they have been hard pressed to disprove the government theory since most of the evidence was removed by FEMA prior to independent investigation.

Critics claim the Bush administration has tried to cover-up the evidence and the recent 9/11 Commission has failed to address the major evidence contradicting the official version of 9/11.

Some facts demonstrating the flaws in the government jet fuel theory include:

— Photos showing people walking around in the hole in the North Tower where 10,000 gallons of jet fuel supposedly was burning..

–When the South Tower was hit, most of the North Tower’s flames had already vanished, burning for only 16 minutes, making it relatively easy to contain and control without a total collapse.

–The fire did not grow over time, probably because it quickly ran out of fuel and was suffocating, indicating without added explosive devices the firs could have been easily controlled.

–FDNY fire fighters still remain under a tight government gag order to not discuss the explosions they heard, felt and saw. FAA personnel are also under a similar 9/11 gag order.

–Even the flawed 9/11 Commission Report acknowledges that “none of the [fire] chiefs present believed that a total collapse of either tower was possible.”

— Fire had never before caused steel-frame buildings to collapse except for the three buildings on 9/11, nor has fire collapsed any steel high rise since 9/11.

— The fires, especially in the South Tower and WTC-7, were relatively small.

— WTC-7 was unharmed by an airplane and had only minor fires on the seventh and twelfth floors of this 47-story steel building yet it collapsed in less than 10 seconds.

— WTC-5 and WTC-6 had raging fires but did not collapse despite much thinner steel beams.

— In a PBS documentary, Larry Silverstein, the WTC leaseholder, told the fire department commander on 9/11 about WTC-7 that. “may be the smartest thing to do is pull it,” slang for demolish it.

— It’s difficult if not impossible for hydrocarbon fires like those fed by jet fuel (kerosene) to raise the temperature of steel close to melting.

Despite the numerous holes in the government story, the Bush administration has brushed aside or basically ignored any and all critics. Mainstream experts, speaking for the administration, offer a theory essentially arguing that an airplane impact weakened each structure and an intense fire thermally weakened structural components, causing buckling failures while allowing the upper floors to pancake onto the floors below.

One who supports the official account is Thomas Eager, professor of materials engineering and engineering systems at MIT. He argues that the collapse occurred by the extreme heat from the fires, causing the loss of loading-bearing capacity on the structural frame.

Eagar points out the steel in the towers could have collapsed only if heated to the point where it “lost 80 percent of its strength,” or around 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit. Critics claim his theory is flawed since the fires did not appear to be intense and widespread enough to reach such high temperatures.

Other experts supporting the official story claim the impact of the airplanes, not the heat, weakened the entire structural system of the towers, but critics contend the beams on floors 94-98 did not appear severely weakened, much less the entire structural system.

Further complicating the matter, hard evidence to fully substantiate either theory since evidence is lacking due to FEMA’s quick removal of the structural steel before it could be analyzed. Even though the criminal code requires that crime scene evidence be kept for forensic analysis, FEMA had it destroyed or shipped overseas before a serious investigation could take place.

And even more doubt is cast over why FEMA acted so swiftly since coincidentally officials had arrived the day before the 9/11 attacks at New York’s Pier 29 to conduct a war game exercise, named “Tripod II.”

Besides FEMA’s quick removal of the debris, authorities considered the steel quite valuable as New York City officials had every debris truck tracked on GPS and even fired one truck driver who took an unauthorized lunch break.

In a detailed analysis just released supporting the controlled demolition theory, Reynolds presents a compelling case.

“First, no steel-framed skyscraper, even engulfed in flames hour after hour, had ever collapsed before. Suddenly, three stunning collapses occur within a few city blocks on the same day, two allegedly hit by aircraft, the third not,” said Reynolds. “These extraordinary collapses after short-duration minor fires made it all the more important to preserve the evidence, mostly steel girders, to study what had happened.

“On fire intensity, consider this benchmark: A 1991 FEMA report on Philadelphia’s Meridian Plaza fire said that the fire was so energetic that ‘beams and girders sagged and twisted, but despite this extraordinary exposure, the columns continued to support their loads without obvious damage.’ Such an intense fire with consequent sagging and twisting steel beams bears no resemblance to what we observed at the WTC.”

After considering both sides of the 9/11 debate and after thoroughly sifting through all the available material, Reynolds concludes the government story regarding all four plane crashes on 9/11 remains highly suspect.

“In fact, the government has failed to produce significant wreckage from any of the four alleged airliners that fateful day. The familiar photo of the Flight 93 crash site in Pennsylvania shows no fuselage, engine or anything recognizable as a plane, just a smoking hole in the ground,” said Reynolds. “Photographers reportedly were not allowed near the hole. Neither the FBI nor the National Transportation Safety Board have investigated or produced any report on the alleged airliner crashes.”

For more informative articles, go to www.arcticbeacon.com.

TV show depicts 9/11 as Bush plot

By Tom Goeller
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

A fictional crime drama based on the premise that the Bush administration ordered the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Washington aired this week on German state television, prompting the Green Party chairman to call for an investigation.

“I think absolutely nothing of the conspiracy theory that has been hawked in this series. I hope this particular TV movie will be discussed very critically at the next supervisory board meeting of ARD [state television],” said Green Party Chairman Reinhard Buetikofer, who acknowledged that he had not seen the show.

Sunday night’s episode of “Tatort,” a popular murder mystery that has been running on state-run ARD-German television for 35 years, revolved around a German woman and a man who was killed in her apartment.

According to the plot, which was seen by approximately 7 million Germans, the dead man had been trained to be one of the September 11 pilots but was left behind, only to be tracked down and killed by CIA or FBI assassins.

The woman, who says in the program that the September 11 attacks were instigated by the Bush family for oil and power, then is targeted, presumably to silence her. The drama concludes with the German detectives accepting the truth of her story as she eludes the U.S. government hit men and escapes to safety in an unnamed Arab country.

As ludicrous as it may sound to most Americans, the tale has resonance in Germany, where fantastic conspiracy theories often are taken as fact.

Comment: We do not doubt that the story sounds ludicrous to some Americans. Yet it seems that there are many Americans who are able to see the lies, but with Bush and Gang having control of the media and judiciary, they know that they risk their lives and their families’ safety if they speak out…

Many Germans think, for example, that the 1969 moon landing was faked, and a poll published in the weekly Die Zeit showed that 31 percent of Germans younger than 30 “think that there is a certain possibility that the U.S. government ordered the attacks of 9/11.”

Comment: Many Americans also theorize that the moon landing was faked and that the Bush government had a significant role in 9/11. In both cases, Germans are not alone in their suspicions since there is a great deal of evidence that contradicts the official versions of events. Regarding 9/11, watch the Pentagon Strike for starters.

In fact, three of the hijackers who seized control of commercial airlines on September 11, 2001, including the ringleader, Mohamed Atta, purportedly had ties to a Hamburg, Germany-based al Qaeda cell.

Comment: And yet, strangely enough, all the German trials of 9/11 “terrorists” seem to end in acquittal due to a rather conspicuous lack of evidence… In contrast, the trials of suspected terrorists in the US don’t - oh wait, we forgot: The US doesn’t give accused terrorists a fair trial; it throws them to the wolves of Guantanamo, Syria, Egypt, or Uzbekistan to be tortured and/or killed.

ARD, and ARD-produced television shows, are funded by a monthly tax on German televisions. The network plays a role similar to the British Broadcasting Corp., or the Public Broadcasting Service in the United States, which is nominally independent but funded by taxpayers.

“Tatort,” which translates to “Crime Scene,” is a drama with a rotating cast of actors solving mysteries in weekly episodes set throughout Germany.

The U.S. Embassy in Berlin was not impressed with the latest episode, which seemed to use haunting Arabic music to portray Arabs and Muslims as innocent victims of American aggression.

“Any claim or suggestion that the United States government was behind the 9/11 disaster is absolutely absurd and not worthy of further comment,” said Robert A. Wood, spokesman for the embassy.

A German diplomat in Washington said no one in Germany took the plot seriously because it was “pure fiction.”

“It was so out of line with what people really think,” the diplomat said, adding that the episode does not deserve further comment.

Comment: This German diplomat obviously does not represent the German people very well…

Arrogant Nation
Saturday 4th June 2005,
by Doug Soderstrom
THE arrogance of ignorance, a profoundly dangerous and ill-informed presumption that one’s own people are better (wiser, morally and spiritually ascendant, and more capable) than others, seems rather well entrenched within the American populace. It is such that seems to have created a social-political environment that continues to encourage the American effort to build a World Empire. All of the elements are there, in fact, it seems that at this very moment, at the very dawn of the third millennium, the foundation has been laid. The people have been primed, the leadership (The Bush-Cheney Administration) is in place, and The Great American War Machine is ready to take action.

But how did things get to such a point? What was it that allowed our country to have become so arrogant? Was it our taming of The West? Was it our near annihilation of The American Indian, the original inhabitants of this country? Was it our ability to have been so successful in an enslavement of The African American people? Was it our capacity to have economically ravaged Central America and The Caribbean? Was it our capacity for technological development? How about our having bombed Viet Nam and Cambodia into near stone-age oblivion? Then there was our war with Iraq in 1991, and the fact that we were able to kill 350 Iraqis for every American soldier who died. And what about our ability to have been so good at polluting the earth’s atmosphere setting the stage for a rather tragic warming of the world? Or the fact that four percent of the world’s population has been so successfully able to have consumed 35% of the world’s wealth? And what about the fact that we, no doubt, have the greatest military force in the history of the world, one that could destroy the entirety of the human race several times over? And what about our willingness to have thumbed our noses at nearly every institutional effort to resolve some of the world’s most grave problems (The World Court, The Kyoto Treaty on Climate Change, The Anti-Ballistic Treaty with Russia, The 2001 UN Conference on Racism, as well as other international attempts to resolve pending world problems). And finally, we can bask in the glory of having been so successful in bringing peace, prosperity and security to a democratic Iraq!

So given “such a fine history”…….. what is it about The American Citizen, on the eve of another Bush-Cheney four-year administrative reign, that qualifies him to be a candidate for such a grand design? What is it that seems to have paved the way toward empire? What is it about our own people that have made them so absolutely vulnerable, so inordinately willing to be led down the primrose path of a mad dash toward the building of a worldwide empire?

I would like to suggest that there are eight factors that have moved the American public to such a point. The first of which is an inclination toward ethnocentrism. Americans seem to be wracked with ethnocentric bias, a rather pride-filled tendency to reject anything that is not American, an attitude that leads our people to evaluate that which is American as better than that which is not of American origin. For example, it is common for Americans to believe that capitalism, the free enterprise system, is inherently better (more God-inspired) than any other economic arrangement, especially that of socialism which is, by many, considered to be evil and perhaps even devil-inspired. Also rather endemic is the presumption that Christianity is the one and only “right religion,” the only theological system that will enable an adherent to enter “the pearly gates” of Heaven, condemning all other religions to the category of false faiths that necessarily lead to Hell. And, of course, given our country’s current 9/11-oriented fear of another attack by “the terrorists,” the converse of such a proposition is a resolute hatred of The Moslem Faith as well as those of The Middle East who tend to follow its precepts. Representatives of the conservative-fundamentalist Christian community such as Franklin Graham, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell have pretty well summed up these folks feelings.

A second factor that seems to have created conditions conducive to “the empire-rization” of our country is the undeniability of how we, as a nation, have apparently normalized the fact of violence, how we have essentially created a “culture of violence” as a more or less accepted way of life in America. I suggest that hidden within the American Mind is a rather peculiar attachment or, perhaps one could say, a kind of fondness for that of violence….. almost to the point that anyone who objects to the use of violence may be considered as either weak, impractical, Un-American, or perhaps even un-Godly. Such a willingness to conveniently disregard, or perhaps even to deny, what used to be the quintessential fact of the Christian faith (that we should not do unto others that which we would not have them do unto us) seems rather commonplace in “such a religious country” as that of America. As evidence for the normalization of (and likely the desensitization towards) violence in our country I offer the following: The fact that The United States is the only developed country in the world that allows the use of capital punishment, and especially that of a willingness to execute children under 18 years of age (sometimes as young as 14 years of age), a willingness to use physical punishment (spanking) as a fundamental aspect of parental discipline, our country’s unwillingness to ban the use of handguns, the legalization of corporate practices that destroy the environment, the bastardization of the democratic nature of our union by allowing those with money to buy off those in the federal government, a general glamorization of violence in the media, the historical use of violence against minority groups (i.e. Native Indian Americans, Afro-Americans, women, homosexuals etc.), the increasing use of litigation as a form of violence, the legitimized use of violence in the advertising industry……… the tobacco company’s efforts to advertise their products to children (in order to replace those they have already killed) along with a willingness to allow themselves to be used as a way of destroying political careers, the acceptance of violence as an essential aspect of the video game industry, an historical unwillingness for schools to deal with the problem of bullying, the belief that war is an acceptable way to deal with international conflict, a general feeling that protest against war (standing up for peace) is an Un-American activity, the tendency to euphemize the killing of innocent civilians (parents, children, and friends) by referring to them as “collateral damage,” a rather confabulated attempt to condone impersonalized violence (killing people from afar…… as when people are slaughtered by missiles having been shot from hundreds of miles away), a rather fatuous belief that “might is right” (i.e. a belief that God has the “almighty right” to send anyone He wants to Hell, The Protestant Ethic’s “damning” of those who are poor, an extraordinary belief that our country along with its military power has been blessed by God), and a tendency for “the conservative-fundamentalist Christian community” to condone violence as an essential religious value (as found in The Old Testament of The Holy Bible). Again the list could go on but I think the point has been made.

Third, there seems to be a rather troubling tradition of spiritual duplicity, a feigned sense of religious piety that has taken hold of The American People. An appalling capacity for Americans to disregard the plight of others, an absence of compassion (empathic concern) for those less fortunate than ourselves, an essential unwillingness for the American people to put themselves into the place of others who, by any objective standard, have faired far less well than those in our own nation. Based upon conversations in my classroom as well as with others “on the street,” it appears to me that Americans are severely limited in their capacity “to place themselves into the shoes of others.” For those of you who are older think about how most Americans felt when they discovered that nearly a quarter of a million Japanese (nearly all of them civilians) died as a result of our country having dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? What were their feelings in regards to our firebombing of Tokyo in which 100,000 Japanese civilians died, or our incendiary bombing of Dresden, Germany in which nearly 300,000 German civilians were torched? And then more recently, how many of you have run into friends who have anguished over the nearly one million Iraqis (at least 500,000 of whom were children) who died as a result of our twelve-year economic embargo of Iraq, or the nearly 15,000 Iraqi civilians who have been killed as a result of our recent invasion of Iraq? Not to belittle the tragedy of nearly 3,000 Americans having lost their lives on 9/11, but how is it possible that our own people (many of whom refer to themselves as Christian) have such a deep concern for “those of their own kind” while simultaneously exhibiting such a pittance of empathic concern for the many more who have died at the hands of our own comrades? Unfortunately, such seems to be a rather moot point for the Christian community!

A fourth factor that has caused so many Americans to bask in the arrogance of their own ignorance is a relatively profound lack of knowledge in regards to world history. It is rather alarming how very little Americans seem to know about the history of our involvement in The Middle East. Based upon conversations with folks in my own community, it has become glaringly apparent that very few adults understand what it is that The United States could have done to cause their counterparts, those living in The Middle East, to have become so upset. I suppose that it has not occurred to many of these folks that The United States, over the past half century (ever since the establishment of Israel as a nation in 1947), has, along with Israel, a long track record of disregarding the rights of The Palestinian People, forcing them to live in a perpetual state of incarcerated poverty, that America has conspired to set up several “puppet governments” in The Middle East, that America has a history of supporting despotic Middle Eastern regimes, or that our country’s involvement in the production of Middle East oil has lead to the impoverishment of millions of Middle Eastern citizens. Again the list could go on.

The fifth ingredient has to do with PNAC (The Project for the New American Century) that was established in 1997. Its purpose was to create a plan that would guide The United States of America into the 21st century in a manner that would benefit the interests and needs of our country in relation to, or perhaps even at the expense of, those of the rest of the world. According to PNAC’s basic principals found on its official website it is stated that, “we need to accept responsibility for America’s unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles. To be sure it was a neo-conservative plan as Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz. Jeb Bush, Daniel Pearl, among others were signatories of PNAC. The document clearly states that the United States not only has the right to militarily dominate the world, but even more perilously suggests that our nation has a moral responsibility to do such a thing, reasoning that what is best for our country is quite obviously best for the remainder of the world. To say the least, such sounds amazingly ethnocentric if not downright evil!

A sixth factor that seems to have prepared the way toward empire is the infamous, 9/11 (September 11, 2001) attack upon New York City and Washington D.C. At such a point in time the American public was pretty much absorbed in a domestic struggle as to what to do about a failing economy. But then came 9/11, and everything changed! The precipitous economic downturn was causing a great deal of fear and anxiety. However, after that fateful day in September, panic began to take hold. If the stock market decline was “a left hook to the stomach,” then 9/11 was, no doubt, the equivalent of having received “an absolutely crushing blow to the head” as this is the first time that the American People have been “brought to their knees” since the December 7, 1941 affair in Pearl Harbor. The result: A profound sense of insecurity that has seemingly swept the American mind. Consequently, the American public is being pressed to decide if they have the inner strength, essentially the moral courage, to move on, or are they going to allow themselves to wallow in pity? Are they going to allow themselves to become so terribly vulnerable, so distressingly dependent, so unashamedly weak that they will demand a leader (a strong man), someone to whom they can turn, someone they can trust to save them from ruin?

Seventh, the 9/11 event has seemingly moved our country into a time of great national peril, a time of immense fear, a fear of the death of much that we value; a fear that our economy is no longer under control (especially our country’s ability to control the lifeblood of our economy…. the flow of oil), a fear that we, as a country, are not as safe nor as strong as we once thought, that we are no longer in control of world events that could well plunge our country into another world war, a fear that we may have reached the end of an era……. an inability to maintain our present standard of living, à la The American Dream, and the never ending hope for a better, more stable, world. All said, as a result of 9/11, The American Mind has a received a severe blow, one that, unless we are able to find our bearings, able to “get back on our feet,” may have left us open to be manipulated by those who would very much like to use our insecurity as a launching pad to create a sense of safety that an American empire would seem to provide. Many have indicated that the need to be free is the driving force behind humanity. But I disagree. The one thing that no doubt trumps the desire for individual freedom is survival, the desire for just one more breath, the need to stay alive. As occurred in Germany in the years leading up to the beginning of World War II, the people were more than willing to shed their civil rights in exchange for a promise that they would be well taken care of by “their savior,” Adolph Hitler. A question for thought: Could something such as this be occurring in the United States?

The concluding factor that seems to be moving our country toward empire is an apparent need for someone who might be able to save us from destruction. In the 1930’s “that someone” was Adolph Hitler. However, in the year 2004, I believe “such people” to be George W. Bush and his neo-conservative companions. But why would I say such a thing? Well, in the 1930’s, the German people were looking for (perhaps even begging for) someone who would be able to “save them” from disaster? It is my opinion that The United States, because of an insecurity-driven sense of fear, has allowed itself to be propelled into a rather similar situation in that of today’s world. In attempting to link himself with that of the conservative-fundamentalist-evangelical Christian community, in wanting to convince these people that he is a true man of God, this community has come to accept George W. Bush as “their man,” the one God has pre-ordained to lead them through “this time of great trial,” the times leading up to Armageddon and the eventual return of Christ (The Rapture of The Church). Such has created conditions conducive to the rise of a neo-conservative power structure (exemplified by folks like George Bush, Carl Rove, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and others) that seems to be using the federal government as a means to a rather precarious end……. that of wanting to take possession of the American Mind, to be able to control The American People, in order that they might be used as pawns in their march toward world power.

It is the same group of despots who very methodically laid plans for that of The Homeland Security Act, Patriot Act I, Patriot Act II, and the once infamous Total Information Awareness Program…… all in order to protect us, The American People, from being destroyed by our enemies. However, what most do not realize is that the enacting of such legislation has lead to the destruction of many of our hard earned constitutional rights such as the government’s right to: monitor religious and political institutions without suspecting criminal activity; to secretly detain people without charges; prosecute librarians as well as others who keep records for having informed someone that their records had been checked by the federal government; monitor federal prison conversations between attorneys and their clients; deny Americans accused of crimes the right to retain a lawyer; search and even seize citizen documents without probable cause; jail an American citizen for an indefinite period of time while simultaneously denying him the right to have a trial; and to jail a citizen of this country, without the right to confront his accuser, even though he has not been officially charged with a crime (ReclaimDemocracy.org). At this point it seems pertinent to ask; who is the enemy……… “the terrorists” or the federal government itself?

Rather than having created a need to protect ourselves from such governmental intrusion, it seems that our response has been one of mindless complacency, an almost “do whatever you want to do” attitude. Such seems reminiscent of the people’s response to Adolph Hitler’s seductive invitation to the German People, “Give me your minds, and, in return, I will take care of you, I will make you safe.” So this is the question that we, as a people, must be prepared to ask ourselves: Are we willing to lay aside the fact of our hard-earned constitutional rights, the fact of our freedom, the fact of our integrity, even more, the fact of a moral responsibility to think and decide for ourselves………. or would it be better to settle for the pittance of a rather hollow Bush-Cheney promise that “the government” will take care of us, that they, just like some kind of gods, will protect us from being destroyed by our enemies……… A question not to be taken lightly!

So what does the foregoing mean? What does it mean that we have become so ethnocentrically arrogant, so open to the use of violence, so religiously crippled, so pervasively ignorant of our impact upon the world, so terribly frightened and insecure? Such I believe means that we, as a people, have allowed ourselves to have been set up, to have become rather ripe for the picking, to have become very ready and extremely well-prepared to be led by those in power (The Bush-Cheney Administration) into a jack-booted, goose-stepped march toward world empire, a determined attempt by our own country to dominate and to eventually rule the world.

But how could such a thing have happened? Much like the proverbial ostrich that stuck its head into the sand in order not to contend with reality, the American populace seems to have done much the same. Given such an arrogant ethnocentric orientation, we have come to believe that we are somehow superior to those of other nations. Through generations of conquest and appropriation we have been led to believe that our own understanding of world history, our interpretation of world events, our own rendering of our country’s involvement in The Middle East is The Truth, the one, and only, correct explanation of what has occurred. And just imagine…… all of this in light of a rather profound degree of ignorance regarding what has really gone on in relation to our country’s continued interference in Middle Eastern affairs. Given such an incredibly outrageous belief in our superiority, mired as it is in a sea of historical ignorance, it is no wonder that we, as a people, have become a living example of “the arrogance of ignorance.” […]

If I have learned anything it is the fact that “pride always cometh before the fall.” It happened in Greece and then again in Rome. The consequences were similar for that of the French Empire as well as that of England. Then there was Hitler’s Germany and that of the Russian Empire. Eventually, everyone of these nations, each one an aspiring empire, wanting to rule the world, folded like a house of cards giving way to the enormous weight of the ignorance of its own rather arrogant pride.

Consequently, I think that it is incumbent that we, as a people, ask ourselves if we might not be moving in such a direction, if we might not be moving in a direction similar to that of other nations that aspired toward that of world empire. Considering the pronouncements in PNAC that clearly indicate our country’s desire to become the world’s next great empire along with that of The President’s policy of military preemption, a declared willingness to preemptively destroy anyone who is willing to challenge our authority to rule the world, the answer should be clear.

I suggest that there is only one thing that stands between what seems to be a rather mind-numbingly subservient willingness to surrender our civil rights to those in power, only one thing that could clear the way for an unimpeded grab for power, an outright takeover of our country by the neo-conservative power structure, and that is………….. a cataclysmic event such as a major chemical and/or nuclear attack by “the terrorists.” Such, I believe, would be sufficient to frighten, sufficient to create the insecurity necessary for the masses to relinquish their right, even worse their moral responsibility, to run the country. Such a crisis might perhaps be enough for the people of our country to go on ahead and give “the green light” to the neo-conservative power structure to extend their efforts to establish a world empire……. and, of course, to do such a thing all in order to protect us from our enemies! However, there is little doubt that such a move would destabilize and thus inflame the world to the point that war, perhaps even an all out nuclear war, would become an inevitability!

I suggest that we, as Americans, had better think about such matters before it is too late. Think about what the world might perhaps be like if we abnegate our personal as well as collective responsibility to think and choose for ourselves by allowing “those in power” to do the thinking and choosing for us. We must remember that “those people in Washington” are not Gods, rather they are fallible human beings just like you and me…… people who, if we allow the arrogance of their ignorance to take charge we may well be led into the vast abyss of a third world war. We, as a citizenry, have a morally bound duty to demand that those who we have given the power to rule in our stead do so in a way that might serve the best interests of humanity, rather than the mere interests of any disparate nation or that of a conglomerate of multinational corporations. It is time that we, as citizens, stand up and take charge of our nation and do so in a manner that might enable our country to become a harbinger of peace, love, and justice; a beacon of light, an example for the rest of the world to follow.

Bush, The Spoiled Man-Child. What causes the fall of empires? Why, stubborn leaders who speak like toddlers and never admit mistakes
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, June 3, 2005

Know what real men do? They admit their mistakes. Know what real people do in times of great stress and strife and economic downturn? They seek help, understand they don’t know all the answers, realize they might not’ve been asking the right questions in the first place.

Know what great leaders, great nations do at times of war and fracture and massive bludgeoning debt? All of the above, all the time, with great intelligence and humility and grace and awareness and shared humanity. Or they die.

But not BushCo. This is the hilarious thing. This is the appalling thing, still. How can this man remain so blindly, staggeringly resolute? How can he be so appallingly ignorant of fact, of truth, of evidence, of deep thought? In short, what the hell is wrong with George W. Bush?

Here it is, another bumbling, barely articulate press conference by Dubya, one of few he ever gives because he clearly hates the things and is deeply troubled by them, hates reporters who ask complicated questions and hates people who dare doubt his simple mindset, his effectiveness, his policies, his lopsided myopic one-way black/white good/evil worldview.

Bush hates press conferences because he can’t speak extemporaneously and can’t form a complete sentence without mashing up the language like a five-year-old and can’t express a complex idea to save his life and somewhere deep down, he knows it, and he knows we know it, and it makes him mumble and stutter and wish he could be somewhere else, anywhere else, like sittin’ on the back porch in Texas eatin’ ribs and dreamin’ ’bout baseball. Ahhh, there now. That’s better.

But here he is, instead, stuck like a pinned bug in the Rose Garden, struggling to answer tricky, multisyllabic questions from the godforsaken press. Go ahead, read the Q&A, linked above. It’s sort of staggering. It’s also very impressive, in a soul-stabbing, nauseating way.

Bush is, to be sure and in a word, unyielding. Determined. Immovable. Also, deeply confused. Myopic as hell. Frighteningly narrow minded. Weirdly random. Childish in a way that would make any good parent seriously question whether it might be time to get their child some Ritalin and an emetic.

Unlike you or me or any human anywhere who happens to be in possession of humility or subtlety of mind, Bush, to this day, admits zero mistakes. He refuses help, rejects suggestions that everything is not dandy and swell. He is confounded by questions that dare suggest he might be somewhat inept, or failing. And he absolutely insists that America exists in some sort of bizarre utopian vacuum, isolated and virtuous and towering like a mad hobbled king over our enemies and allies alike.

He is, in other words, our downfall.

Iraq? Going smoothly, Bush says, happy with the progress there, despite huge surges in insurgent violence and endless uptick of the U.S. death toll and the utter wasteland we’ve made of that poor, shredded nation.

Iran, North Korea and Egypt? Just dandy. No serious problems at all. Gotta talk more with that “North Korean” guy though, sort out the “nukuler” problem. Sneering thug John Bolton for U.N. ambassador? You betcha, still on track, a good man, despite what everybody — and I do mean everybody — says.

Overhaul Social Security, despite an enormous lack of support from Dems and Repubs and the vast majority of the American people? “Just a matter of time,” Bush mutters, completely blinded to the fact that it’s an enormous mistake. His deeply hypocritical stance on stem-cell research that kow-tows to the deeply ignorant Christian Right? No real answer there. Doesn’t compute. Just shrug that sucker right off.

Notice, when you read: There is no eloquent, deeply felt defense of ideas. There is no intellectual breakdown of opinion, no multifaceted explanation, no passionate clarification. And there is certainly no reference to outside ideas, a confession that we might need help, input, wisdom from our neighbors, from science, from the wise and the experienced.

It’s a fact we’ve known all along but which keeps hammering at us like a drunk gorilla hammers at a dead mouse: Bush is able to speak only at one level, to one level. The level of a child. The level of a simpleton. The level of a sweet, bumbling, small-town mayor, addressing a PTA meeting, everyone in soft plaids and everyone drinking light beer and everyone wondering about just what the heck to do about the rusty swing sets and the busted stoplight.

Bush is, of course, not talking to you or me or anyone with a remotely active imagination when he speaks at press conferences, or at his staged, pre-screened, sycophant-rich “town hall” meetings, so full of plain, everyday folk hand-selected for their blind love of Shrub and lack of ability to ask hard questions (read this transcript of a recent town hall on Social Security, and come away stupefied at the man’s shocking ability to appear just exactly as gullible and uneducated as his questioners).

He is not even speaking to conservative Democrats or moderate Republicans. He’s certainly not speaking to highly educated people who harbor a sincere curiousity for and tenuous understanding of the complexities of the world.

Bush is, of course, speaking to children. He is speaking to babies. It is a decidedly shallow and hollow and oddly deflated type of language that offers not a single nutritious or substantive thought to the political or cultural dialogue, other than to expand his staggering collection of embarrassing Bushisms.

It’s all merely a crayon drawing, an intellectual wading pool, a big messy cartoon world populated by manly white good guys and fanged dark evil guys and we are good and They are evil and that’s all there is to it so please stop asking weird tricky polysyllabic questions.

Maybe this is appropriate. Maybe this is as it should be. After all, we are, by and large, a nation that refuses to grow up, refuses to take responsibility for our gluttony and its global effects, refuses to see the world as it is now, a mad tangle of interconnected humanity, a global marketplace, a hodgepodge of variegated religions all stemming from the same source and which therefore all require a nimble and nuanced and deeply intelligent leadership, to navigate. Qualities which our current leadership has, well, not at all.

The U.S. still behaves, when all is said and done, like one of those scared wild monkeys, clinging desperately to a shiny object despite the trap closing in all around us, unable to let go of this old, silly, faux-cowboy mentality of boom boom kill kill God is your daddy now sit down and shut up.

What causes the downfall of empires? What causes the implosion of leadership, the slide of great nations into the deep muck of recession and war and mediocrity and numb irrelevance? That’s easy. Stagnation. Refusal to change. Refusal to adapt, to progress. Refusal to grow the hell up, to take responsibility for our shortcomings and failures, as well as our successes.

Indeed, George W. Bush would make a great small-town mayor, somewhere deep in a dusty, forgotten part of Texas. His still-appalling inability to speak with any depth or resonance, coupled with his brand of personable, aww-shucks, none-too-bright simpleton worldview is perfect for some cute, redneck, tiny burg. It really is.

But for a major world power caught in the throes of a desperate need to change and grow and evolve, he is, of course, imminent death, leading us deeper into a regressive ideological tar pit from which we may never emerge.

Comment: Modern day American and Nazi Germany have a lot in common. While Germany had the emotionally-charged speeches of Hitler to manipulate Germans into the “regressive ideological tar pit” that cost the world 65 million lives, the US has no such orator for a President. “Luckily” however, 9/11 seems to have done the job nicely. Coincidence? Unlikely.

Hollywood-like Fake Smoke Made 9/11 By Jon Carlson

On Monday, May 23, 2005, FOX affiliate WSVN-TV sent Patrick Fraser, with only a BS in Journalism from UF-Gainsville, to tangle with Scientist Dr. A.K. Dewdney over the 9/11 Pentagon quagmire. Dr. Dewdney: “If we are right the implications are profound.”

Reporter: “Right or right off the wacko chart, common sense tells you its not likely. In fact common sense tells you its not only outrageous — its ridiculous and one well known skeptic has another description for it — laughable.” INDEED, ‘laughable’ describes most of this article.

As the pioneer 9/11 researcher Kee Dewdney struck gold when he proved beyond a shadow of doubt that extended cell phone calls from airliners were a fable of the Bush Administration on 9/11. That was the first foot in the doorway to 9/11 Truth.

As most Americans are unfamilar with using the Scientific Method in solving problems, everyone should pay attention when Kee Dewdney demonstates the use of the Scientific Method in explaining 9/11. BY THE WAY, the Scientific Method completely funks the Fed Govt. 9/11 conspiracy theory.

Links to Kee’s 9/11 research here

As an affiliate of FOX network, WSVN-TV should focus on the Hollywood-style Towering Inferos or lack thereof on 9/11. In the RENSE article, Sneak Preview - 911 Pentagon Tapes Firefighter Russell Dodge said:

“There were two vehicles burning, along with a construction trailer - we didn’t know at the time, but that trailer was the main producer of smoke on the outside of the building. He said the foam units got there and concentrated on the area of the construction trailer, which was producing some severe fires and subsequent mini explosions due to highly flammable chemicals in it THAN on the actual point of impact from the hijacked aircraft.

[…]
See photos and continuation at Signs of the Times: