9/11 Java Jackass

9/11 JAVA JACKASS

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nypost/20051...NlYwMlJVRPUCUl

By ANDREA PEYSER Wed Oct 5, 6:00 AM ET

SITTING snugly at the corner of prosperity and lunacy, Brooklyn's Vox Pop cafe serves up piping-hot conspiracy theories about the 9/11 terror attacks, along with the coffee and scones.

The strikes on the World Trade Center? They were an "inside job" — either carried out by the United States government or allowed to occur so we might plunge into war. Or, it was the mother of all insurance scams. Take your pick.

Oh, and the evil CIA murdered JFK, too.

Last week, the Fire Department's incoming chaplain, Imam Intikab Habib, was forced to resign, after he told an interviewer that he doubted the 9/11 attacks were the work of al Qaeda, but part of larger conspiracy. The imam was dismissed as a nut, and the whole thing was forgotten.

But here is a news flash that has been living under the mainstream radar: The community that believes 9/11 was a U.S. government plot is large and it is diverse. And it is growing.

There exists a swelling library of works that claim to "prove" that 9/11 was America's handiwork. Some, but not all, blame Israel, too.

Suddenly, this bunk has taken to the airwaves. A California outfit called Reopen 9/11 is running TV commercials to raise money — on NY1. The group contends that the Twin Towers did not fall because of fire, but were brought down by U.S. authorities in a kind of controlled demolition.

You might think of Vox Pop cafe as conspiracy central.

Located on Cortelyou Road in a rapidly gentrifying stretch of Flatbush, Vox Pop has a small publishing company, Drench Kiss, that operates out of its basement. Upstairs, a bookstore has "The 9/11 Coverup" next to "What to Expect When You're Expecting."

The cafe is owned by the intense and hyperactive Sander Hicks, who wrote "The Big Wedding" — a reference to the code word terrorists supposedly gave the 9/11 attacks, and our government ignored. It sold out its 3,000-copy first printing in days.

Hicks does not like the term "conspiracy theory" because, he says, "That assumes it's wrong or not credible."

"I think there is a wealth of alternative knowledge out there that the American people are being kept away from," he told me.

So I ask if the Muslim world is off the hook for 9/11. He said, "Arab rage is a factor" in terror. "But the CIA is smart enough to know this, and to use that rage.

"The Arab community didn't benefit from 9/11. It was Bush and Co."

Around the corner and a million miles away from the yuppie leftists of Vox Pop, Coney Island Avenue hosts a large Pakistani community. It would seem to have little in common with the cafe — until you get people talking.

Men gathered at the Subhan restaurant don't hesitate to say 9/11 is a government-sponsored atrocity.

"They want to go for oil, for war," said Majid, who asked that his last name not be printed. "The government, they don't care how many people can die. America does everything for its own behalf. Bush is evil."

Majid, a 43-year-old cabdriver, is an American citizen.

Wesley Sohail, 14, told me the kids discuss 9/11 attacks, and our government's culpability, in school.

"We don't think they brought the buildings down, we think they let it happen," he said. He said his teachers agree.

Down the street from Vox Pop sits the FDNY's Engine Co. 281. I ask a firefighter what he thinks of the cafe that's founded on the belief that the government killed his brethren on 9/11.

He just snickered between clenched teeth.

"We have our own coffee," he said.

He knows he is surrounded.