Canadians watch the CBC to catch a glimpse of themselves. This particular taping of The National illustrated to me that the reflection we see is not quite as genuine as one might believe. There is a subtle distortion that occurs, raising questions about the integrity of the CBC itself…
…What I am suggesting, is that the CBC is misreprenting Canadians to themselves. By choosing pundits to tell us what is “at issue”, the CBC is framing political discourse inside a very narrow box. While the CBC openly solicited questions from the audience, the apparent spontaneity we see on television is entirely fake. What viewers are not told is that questions had to be submitted by email, days in advance. This panel may pretend to be addressing the topics we want to examine, but the reality is that they are playing Q&A with themselves.
The December 13 “At Issue” panel is archived here. In this edition, the panelists address questions presented by members of the live Chan Center audience.
Two weeks later added the following follow-up:
The story bears updating because 2008 has begun with some major developments that most people are not aware of. The big story is what took place in the Japanese Diet on January 11 of this year. The house was debating whether or not to continue to support the US-led “war on terror”. Japan’s contribution is in the form of a refueling mission, the renewal of which was up for discussion.
Yukihisa Fujita of the Democratic Party argued for thirty minutes that the mission could no longer be supported until it is established who the actual terrorists are. In the words of Mr. Fujita:
“So far the only thing the government has said is that we think (9/11) was caused by Al Qaeda because President Bush told us so. We have not seen any real proof that it was Al Qaeda.”
“It’s not about opposing the cause, it is the political sophistication, or lack thereof, of those most stridently advocating for the cause. The 9-11TM doesn’t get how the world actually works. They think the same way that most folks think when that moment in life comes. Something big happens that turns their worldview right side up. At that point, they come out of the cold of not being political or supporting the struggles of others and think that everyone should get behind this thing that rocked their world. Idealistic as it might be, the world just doesn’t work that way.
Here is the crux though. When most folks, do this, they usually quickly see that the world doesn’t work this way, at which point they either go back to watching television or they join in the popular struggles that they had previously been ignoring or ignorant of or just not turned on by.”
Sometimes these things just fall in your lap, and you have to wonder why .
I said to hell with it all tonight and went for a few beers as I just needed to get out of here. I sat alone, as usual, but was approached by a man and a woman who not long afterwards joined me. I did not know them but we engaged in some chit chat. The bar had a contest for a trip to Hawaii and they began to fill out entry forms. They asked if i wanted to enter. I began to tell them about Leuren Moret and her discovery of radiation all around Hawaii, that was traceable to DU weapons training.
They listened intently and before long, we were talking about 9//11 and i listed some of the anomalies. Before long they were going “OMG - you too!” and “Yes, i knew that was bullshit!” etc They were old friends but had never shared their skepticism about 9/11 with each other. Both were totally blown away and thankful that i had brought the subject up and were eager to learn more. I told them about the conference and they were stunned and amazed that this was taking place in here Vancouver.
They bought me a few a beers (I had only planned on having one) and we talked until closing time. The woman especially was grateful and hugged me repeatedly. She said her husband, who she loves, just could not accept her doubts and her feelings of a grand conspiracy and she felt isolated in her beliefs for many years. Suddenly she was was not alone and did not feel nuts. I had to confide that I was also grateful for this experience. I am not normally very sociable, as i hate to be around ’sheeple’. Tonight i received a pleasant surprise and feel blessed to have been in that position to set someone free.. Stuff happens …for a reason. Tonight it was me that had to open up to others and give someone a chance to step into the light, and it paid off.
I gave her our website info and my number. She said she wants DVDs etc for her family and that she will be in touch this weekend. After a day from hell in the info war, that really made my might.
We will be in touch with the video store guy tomorrow. Thanks for stepping up to the plate when the opportunity presented itself! Sometimes it’s just a matter of being in the right place at the right time, and being open to it. It is a spiritual war as much as, or greater than anything, and we need to allow ourselves to be guided. Usually we will be pleasantly surprised.
Thanks for being there Peter! And thanks to those who guide us!!
Wayne
Many who criticize the Truth Movement like to quote the gatekeepers, in particular George Monbiot. It is important, therefore, to pick apart the stuff these guys keep coming up with. In response to the gatekeepers, I wrote the following piece, which can be read in “The Canadian”:
September 11, 2001 was the day on which, they say, everything changed.
Five years later, G.W. Bush delivered a speech in the Rose Garden.
“Right here in the Oval Office, I get briefed every morning, about the nature of this world, and I get briefed about the desire of an enemy to hurt America. And it’s a sobering experience, as I’m sure you can imagine.”
The message now, as it was five years ago: Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Yet the most tangible changes we’ve experienced are not a direct result of, but rather the result of our response to this “new” terrorist threat The most drastic measures have been the wars – Afghanistan and Iraq – both of which are ongoing. Or one can say that there is only one war: The war on terror. Such a “war”, by definition, is all encompassing; it cannot be won and will never end.
The proponents of these measures are aided by a circular argument. They tell us that our world has changed. To counter the terrorist threat they have introduced legislations which curtail our freedoms and launched two wars. This in turn has proven them correct – nothing is quite the same.
Given the extent to which the threat of terrorism has dominated the agendas of our governments, in the United States and Canada, it is vital that we put this threat into perspective.
On September 11, 2001, 3000 people, mostly Americans, were killed when the two towers of the World Trade Center were hit by airliners and subsequently collapsed. The death toll will undoubtedly rise as more and more New Yorkers die of black lung disease, from breathing the toxic air that lingered for weeks. Their government told them the air was safe to breathe. They knew otherwise, but chose to lie.
As of this writing, 3250 American soldiers have died in Iraq. This growing figure ought to be of great interest to the American people, as the number Americans who have died in the War on Terror has now hurdled past the number of Americans who have died at the hands of foreign terrorists.
According to a recent Johns Hopkins University study published by Lancet, 655 000 Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the invasion. The estimate varies depending on who you ask. Just don’t ask the US military; they don’t keep count. Regardless: It is safe to say that war kills more people than terrorism. Is it time to launch a global war on war?
While there have not been many high profile terror events on Canadian soil, Canadians also die when terrorists strike. Twenty-four Canadians died when the World Trade Center collapsed – a sixteen year high for death by terrorism (280 Canadians died in 1985, on Air India flight 182). In 2001, 3032 Canadians died in car accidents. 338 died in fires.
Fire kills about 3000 Americans per year.
It can be said, that in both the United States, and Canada, fire kills more people than terrorism does. Is it time to launch a global war on fire?
The question is not facetious, for if there is one thing we ought to have learned from September 11, 2001, then surely it is the fact that fire can be very dangerous.
On that day, several massive structures were reduced to rubble. At the time, this singular concurrence of events caused confusion, because the only known way to generate such an effect was through the use of high powered explosives. We have since learned that no explosives were used in the execution of the 9/11 terror operation. The towers collapsed due to fire.
We demand of the places where we live and work, that they perform to certain standards. For this reason we make predictions about how a building will respond in disastrous circumstances. We design buildings to minimize loss of life when disaster strikes – be it earthquake, inferno or plane.
If, prior to these disturbing events, one had asked the architects, the builders or the insurers of the World Trade Center, what might happen if a large aircraft, loaded with jet fuel, were to crash into one of the towers he or she would have responded: Not very much. The towers were in fact designed to survive such an occurrence structurally intact and no qualified professional ever saw any reason to challenge this claim.
On September 11, 2001, both towers were struck by aircraft. Both responded in manner similar to each other, yet strikingly different from what we had been told to expect by the engineers.
To this day, the colossal nature of their failure remains largely unexplored. Where is our natural curiosity, to isolate the design flaw, and eliminate it from future designs?
Imagine a bus bursting into flames upon hitting a bicycle. An ocean liner that sinks when struck by a whale. A plane the wings of which detach in mid-flight with no explanation given.
Such mysteries would call for immediate attention. Serious study of materials and construction methods would be demanded. Wreckages would be salvaged and painstakingly re-assembled. And one step ahead of this process would be the media, digging for answers. Progress would spur daily updates, with expert analysis, and calls for accountability.
What would emerge, in the end, would be more than better design. We would acquire a clearer understanding of our material world. To quote G. W Bush: “In Texas we have a saying. Fool me once. Shame on you. But fool me twice. Can’t get fooled again.”
By refusing to learn from our failure, have we set ourselves up to get fooled again?
In the case of the multiple structural failures at the World Trade Center, no adjustment in how we think about materials engineering is deemed necessary. For example: Several weeks after the attack, liquid metal was still found in the rubble. Would it not have made sense to determine its exact composition, its temperature, and the conditions required to create it? This might have led to further inquiry as to what combination of circumstances could have created such temperatures.
We continue to design and build skyscrapers as before. And we continue to live and work in these buildings without fear that they may suddenly collapse in some previously unforeseen way.
Why is there so much fear of terrorism, and so little fear of fire? Why is so much money and energy devoted to the “war on terror”, and none to the cause of building a structurally sound high-rise?
Unlike terrorism, fire is relatively commonplace. Is there something wrong in the way we perceive danger, and how we allocate resources to combat the threat?
It is hard to pin a dollar figure on all the combined measures that have arisen from 9/11. We know that the war in Iraq alone costs American taxpayers $200 million per day. Therefore, I propose modestly:
If I had access to the tiniest fraction of the budget spent by either nation, on keeping us safe from terrorism, I would build a model of the World Trade Center. If I opted for a scale of 1:60, then my towers would stand eight-and-a-half meters tall.
Next, I would postulate what might happen, if a Boeing 767 were to hit this structure. At 1/60 its actual size, the plane would be about one meter long, with a wingspan of 86 cm.
If the original predictions, by designers and engineers, had proven themselves correct, then I should expect very little to happen. The plane would explode in a spectacular fireball, and puncture a plane shaped hole in the structure. There might also be an exit wound, where debris emerged from the other side.
If I allowed the fire to burn itself out, I should expect it to last for several hours, gutting the upper floors. If their predictions had been correct.
I would fill my towers with combustible material. Inside the aircraft, I would place, amongst other things, a black box, as well as a 4mm by 2mm piece of confetti, representing Ziad Jarrah’s passport.
It would take a little flight training to control a plane of this size. Having mastered the task, I would be ready to pilot the jet into the North Tower.
I would monitor the ensuing fire. If the spectacular events of 9/11 are to be duplicated, the building would collapse after burning less than two hours. The disintegration would be sudden and complete, reducing the structure to a pile of rubble in just 3.87 seconds.
Now I would examine the rubble. How big might the largest pieces be? Would there be sizable sections of twisted metal, or would there be no pieces longer than 11.6cm? This is the more or less uniform length I should expect, if the singular feat of demolition by airplane is to be duplicated at this scale.
What would happen to the forty-seven load bearing steel columns at the center of the tower? Where would they go?
I would examine the molten steel, if any were to be found. I would search for the black box, and Ziad Jarrah’s passport.
While the elaborate experiment just outlined might take us along way towards isolating the spectacular design flaws of the WTC towers, it would do nothing to solve the greatest mystery to have emerged from September 11, 2001. What happened to building 7?
When discussing the issue, I am often amazed at how many people seem to have forgotten that this large building ever existed. In New York, the forty-seven story office tower was dwarfed by the giants that surrounded it. In an ordinary city, this could have been the tallest building around.
Media coverage of 9/11 has left us with the overwhelming impression that only two buildings collapsed in New York that day – one per airplane. One of the most under-investigated news items of all time is the collapse of the third building, some seven hours later.
Live footage of the collapse was not shown by the major news networks after the first day. This is curious, since WTC 7 continues to be a great mystery. FEMA was mystified, admitting that their best (and only) hypothesis of “fire and impact damage” only had a low probability of being correct. Five years later, NIST is still investigating. If this collapse is really as mysterious as the experts claim (always politely referring to the event as “singular” or “astonishing”), then why was the rubble disposed of so expediently? Where is the much needed coverage of this ongoing investigation? Is no one curious?
The official 9/11 commission investigating the disaster considered the demise of WTC 7 irrelevant, and failed to include it in its 571 page final report. This fact alone should give one pause to think.
A bigger challenge then, for the aspiring model builder, would be to duplicate the collapse of building 7, using only a few isolated fires and a tank of diesel fuel. A fascinating project that would get top marks at any science fair – if only it could be done.
Now that Khalid Sheik Mohammed has confessed to being the mastermind behind this incredibly successful plot, it would be interesting to ask him how he managed to pull it off. How was he able to wipe three of the world’s largest buildings completely off the map, using only two commercial aircraft?
In his speech from the Rose Garden, G.W. Bush made some rather cryptic remarks on this very topic:
Khalid Sheik Mohammed “told us the operatives had been instructed to ensure that the explosives went off at a high – a point that was high enough to prevent people trapped above from escaping.”
Exactly which building was Khalid Sheik Mohammed referring to? Which planned attack, and if not 9/11, then how was it thwarted? None amongst the gaggle of White House correspondents considered any of these question worth asking.
To those who contend that our world has changed since September 11, 2001 I say this: We’ve seen nothing yet. In his speech, Bush called for greater powers to spy on his citizens. He argued for a made-in-the-USA interpretation of the Geneva convention, citing the case of Khalid Sheik Mohammed in a push for more extensive use of persuasive interrogation techniques. Yet Khalid Sheik Mohammed already appears to have been more than forthcoming, presumably without the use of torture.
The speech is available on the internet, at:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/09/print/20060915-2.html
(I suggest the streaming video clip; the written transcript does not do his delivery justice).
Some would prefer to let the matter rest. To accept the fact that there will be trifling details – the disintegration of WTC 7 - that will never be fully explored or satisfactorily answered. To accept an official truth, that exudes the superficial aroma of plausibility leaving only a slightly bitter aftertaste.
As, collectively, we North Americans warm to the joys of living in a police state, I propose a different future:
If I could set the agenda, I would like to honour the victims of September 11, 2001, and their families, by helping to create a safer building. One that won’t collapse due to fire.
