9/11 Conspiracy Theorists Thriving
9/11 conspiracy theorists thriving
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060806/...conspiracies_1
(Gold9472: I hate AP...)
By JUSTIN POPE, AP Education Writer 33 minutes ago
Kevin Barrett believes the U.S government might have destroyed the World Trade Center. Steven Jones is researching what he calls evidence that the twin towers were brought down by explosives detonated inside them, not by hijacked airliners.
(Gold9472: "What he calls evidence". If Professor Jones has a piece of steel from the World Trade Center, then that, by definition, is evidence. If that piece of steel has traces of explosive residue, and his work is peer reviewed, and is verified by others, then it is cause to reopen the investigation.)
These men aren't uneducated junk scientists: Barrett will teach a class on Islam at the University of Wisconsin this fall, over the protests of more than 60 state legislators. Jones is a tenured physicist at Brigham Young University whose mainstream academic job has made him a hero to conspiracy theorists.
(Gold9472: It isn't because of their careers that we "conspiracy theorists" think of them as heroes. It is because of the risks they are taking with those careers by coming forward with this information.)
Five years after the terrorist attacks, a community that believes widely discredited ideas about what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, persists and even thrives. Members trade their ideas on the Internet and in self-published papers and in books. About 500 of them attended a recent conference in Chicago.
(Gold9472: If the ideas I have are widely discredited, I wouldn't be here right now. Stop making us sound like a bunch of 9/11 Trekkors.)
The movement claims to be drawing fresh energy and credibility from a recently formed group called Scholars for 9/11 Truth.
(Gold9472: The Scholars For 9/11 Truth have been excellent for bringing attention to the movement. The fact that the majority of its' members bring academic muster is important. The "fresh energy and credibility" has come from the truth. It always has. People are waking up. You don't need a group of scholars to figure out that we have been lied to about 9/11. It's not really Rocket Science.)
The organization says publicity over Barrett's case has helped boost membership to about 75 academics. They are a tiny minority of the 1 million part- and full-time faculty nationwide, and some have no university affiliation. Most aren't experts in relevant fields. But some are well educated, with degrees from elite universities such as Princeton and Stanford and jobs at schools including Rice, Indiana and the University of Texas.
"Things are happening," said co-founder James Fetzer, a retired philosophy professor at the University of Wisconsin Duluth, who maintains, among other claims, that some of the hijackers are still alive. "We're going to continue to do this. Our role is to establish what really happened on 9/11."
(Gold9472: That may be the Scholars' "role", but the movement's role has always been absolute truth and absolute accountability.)
What really happened, the national Sept. 11 Commission concluded after 1,200 interviews, was that hijackers crashed planes into the twin towers. The National Institute of Standards and Technology, a government agency, filed 10,000 pages of reports that found fires caused by the crashing planes were more than sufficient to collapse the buildings.
(Gold9472: As Sean Hannity says... the planes flew into the buildings, and the buildings came down.)
The scholars' group rejects those conclusions. Their Web site contends the government has been dishonest. It adds: the "World Trade Center was almost certainly brought down by controlled demolitions" and "the government not only permitted 9/11 to occur but may even have orchestrated these events to facilitate its political agenda."
(Gold9472: The Government has been dishonest regarding 9/11. We are not stupid.)
The standards and technology institute, and many mainstream scientists, won't debate conspiracy theorists, saying they don't want to lend them unwarranted credibility.
(Gold9472: It is IMPERATIVE that we discuss the day that changed the world. Those who don't want to partake in that conversation are either afraid, or pressured not to.)
But some worry the academic background of the group could do that anyway.
Members of the conspiracy community "practically worship the ground (Jones) walks on because he's seen as a scientist who is preaching to their side," said FR Greening, a Canadian chemist who has written several papers rebutting the science used by Sept. 11 conspiracy theorists. "It's science, but it's politically motivated. It's science with an ax to grind, and therefore it's not really science."
(Gold9472: 100,000,000 Americans... That's one big "Conspiracy Community".)
Faculty can express any opinion outside the classroom, said Roger Bowen, general secretary of the American Association of University Professors. However, "with academic freedom comes academic responsibility. And that requires them to teach the truth of their discipline, and the truth does not include conspiracy theories, or flat Earth theories, or Holocaust denial theories."
(Gold9472: The Earth is round. The Holocaust happened. 3000 people died on 9/11. Please stop making us sound like we're insane.)
Members of the group don't consider themselves extremists. They simply believe the government's investigation was inadequate, and maintain that questioning widely held assumptions has been part of the job of scholars for centuries.
"Tenure gives you a secure position where you can engage in controversial issues," Fetzer said. "That's what you should be doing."
But when asked what did happen in 2001, members often step outside the rigorous, data-based culture of the academy and defer to their own instincts.
Daniel Orr, a Princeton Ph.D. and widely published retired economics chair at the University of Illinois, said he knew instantly from watching the towers fall that they had been blown apart by explosives. He was reminded of watching an old housing project being destroyed in St. Louis.
David Gabbard, an East Carolina education professor, acknowledges this isn't his field, but says "I'm smart enough to know ... that fire from airplanes can't melt steel."
When they do cite evidence, critics such as Greening contend it's junk science from fellow conspiracy theorists, dressed up in the language and format of real research to give it a sense of credibility.
Jones focuses on the relatively narrow question of whether molten metal present at the World Trade Center site after the attacks is evidence that a high-temperature incendiary called thermite, which can be used to weld or cut metal, was involved in the towers' destruction. He concludes thermite was present, throwing the government's entire explanation into question and suggesting someone might have used explosives to bring down the towers.
"I have not run into many who have read my paper and said it's just all hogwash," Jones said.
Judy Wood, until recently an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Clemson University, has been cited by conspiracy theorists for her arguments the buildings could not have collapsed as quickly as they did unless explosives were used.
"If the U.S. government is lying about how the buildings came down, anything else they say cannot be believed," she said. "So why would they want to tell us an incorrect story if they weren't part of it?"
In fact, say Greening and other experts, the molten metal Jones cites was most likely aluminum from the planes, and any number of explanations are more likely than thermite.
(Gold9472: What about building 7?)
And the National Institute of Standards and Technology's report describes how the buildings collapsed from the inside in a chain reaction once the floors began falling.
"We respect the opinions of others, but we just didn't see any evidence of what people are claiming," institute spokesman Michael Newman said.
Wisconsin officials say they do not endorse the views of Barrett, an adjunct, but after investigating concluded he would handle the material responsibly in the classroom.
That didn't mollify many state legislators.
"The general public from Maine to Oregon knows why the trade towers went down," said state Rep. Stephen Nass, a Republican. "It's not a matter of unpopular ideas; it's a matter of quality education and giving students their money's worth in the classroom."
In a July 20 letter obtained by The Associated Press in an open records request, Wisconsin Provost Patrick Farrell warned Barrett to tone down his publicity seeking, and said he would reconsider allowing Barrett to teach if he continued to identify himself with the university in his political messages.
BYU's physics department and engineering school have issued statements distancing themselves from Jones' work, but he says they have not interfered.
At Clemson, Wood did not receive tenure last year, but her former department chair, Imtiaz ul Haque, denies her accusation that it was at least partly because of her Sept. 11 views.
"Are you blackballed for delving into this topic? Oh yes," Wood said. "And that is why there are so few who do. Most contracts have something to do with some government research lab. So what would that do to you? The consequences are too great for a career. But I made the choice that truth was more important."
"If we're in higher education to be trying to encourage critical thinking," Wood says, "why would we say 'believe this because everybody else does?'"
YOU ALL ARE SOOOO STUPIED!
Seriously! Listin to yourselves! What are you thinking?! That the United States Government was behind the 9/11 attacks! Thousands of people died, and the US Government has nothing to do with it! Any ASSHOLE or FUCKING IDEIOT who thinks that is, as far as I'm concerned is just as GUILTY as the hijackers who hijacked those plans that day. So, either stop trying to get attention by hurting those who were effected by 9/11, and grow up!
Frodo2323
