April 23, 2011
Inside Higher Ed Ignores 9/11 Evidence
By Jim Fetzer
A relatively obscure conflict between the Editors-in-Chief of an international journal for philosophy of science and the Guest Editors of a special issue on “Evolution and It’s Rivals” has led to the call for a boycott of the journal until the Editors-in-Chief correct an action that is widely viewed as having been inappropriate. In a column about this controversy in INSIDE HIGHER EDUCATION, “A Peculiar Disclaimer” (20 April 2011), the reporter, Libby Nelson–who, to the best of my knowledge, has never studied 9/11–implies the contention that 9/11 was “an inside job” is one for which there is “no accepted evidence”. In an effort to set the record straight, I have tried repeatedly to post the following commentary but have been repeatedly rejected.
The article itself went through an intriguing evolution. At 3 AM/CT, Inside Higher Ed had it that “Fetzer is also no stranger to controversial theories for which there is no evidence; outside his work on philosophy, for instance, he is a proponent of the claim that the U.S. government is responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks.” By 6 AM/CT, after I had submitted my comment, it had changed to “no accepted evidence”, where it stood when I submitted this to OpEdNews. Now it only says that I am no stranger to controversial theories and claim that the U.S. government was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. I assert that because the evidence supports it. I agree with Michael Moore, who said, when ask if he believed in conspiracy theories, “Only those that are true!”
Since the issues involved here are of more than passing interest, I am publishing it here in the hope that the public will become aware of the disconcerting fact that most faculty are unwilling to come to grips with even the most blatant falsehoods promoted by the government and reinforced by the main stream media, even though evidence that exposes these falsehoods and reveals underlying truths can be found from many sources, including articles published previously here at OpEdNews, which appears to be one of the few remaining bastions of freedom of inquiry and of freedom of the press. If faculty are not willing to deal with travesties like 9/11, it is difficult to see why they deserve the public’s respect when they could contribute but fail to do so.
South Tower Tilting by public domain
Apart from its own peculiar lapse about research on 9/11, “A Peculiar Disclaimer” from Inside Higher Education offers an excellent overview of the issues, where I was involved in dealing with the Editors-in-Chief about these questions, which Glenn Branch, my co-editor, and I had thought we had resolved until the disclaimer appeared in the hard copy edition. Contrary to the author’s insinuation, there is a great deal of evidence that what we have been told about 9/11 cannot possibly be true, where the official account–authored principally by Philip Zelikow, whose area of academic specialization was the creation and maintenance of “public myths”–has been falsified on virtually every major count by experts and scholars across the disciplines, including those of physics and of engineering.
North Tower Dustifying by public domain
As Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth has explained, the towers cannot have been demolished in about ten seconds apiece without the use of powerful explosives, where a collapse due to fire would have been impossible. Indeed, no steel structure high-rise has collapsed due to fire before 9/11 or after and, we have found, did not occur on 9/11, either. Pilots for 9/11 Truth has discovered that black box data they were given by the NTSB corresponds to a plane on a different approach that was too high to have hit any lampposts and appears to have flown over the Pentagon rather than crashed into it. And as David Ray Griffin, the leading authority on 9/11 has found, the available evidence shows that the alleged phone calls from the planes were faked to induce a sympathetic emotional response in the public.
THE 9/11 CONSPIRACY by Open Court
Since the official account of 9/11 entails the violation of laws of aerodynamics, of physics, and of engineering, it is “just fine” as long as you are willing to believe impossible things. See, for example, “Why doubt 9/11?”, on the home page of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, the research society I founded, and especially patriotsquestion911.com, a web site that features bio sketches, photos, and statements from several thousand professionals from government, military, aeronautical, engineering, architectural, and other backgrounds, who are convinced that we have not been told the truth about 9/11, a sentiment shared by Thomas Kean and William Hamilton, who have published their concerns that the Pentagon, for example, gave the commission three versions of the events of 9/11. If the chairs of The 9/11 Commission don’t know what happened on 9/11, who does?
WTC Devastation by public domain
Since even George W. Bush qualified 9/11 as “the pivotal event of the 21st Century”, it might be a good idea if more academicians and scholars were to apply their backgrounds and abilities to sorting out truth from fiction. 9/11 has been used to justify wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq that have depleted the national treasury by over a trillion dollars, which could certainly have been used for more constructive purposes here at home. When you realize the false rationales that were advanced to justify those invasions–including that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction, that Iraq was in collusion with Al Qaeda, and that Osama bin Laden was responsible (a claim for which even our own FBI acknowledges it has “no hard evidence’)–it should be obvious that the public interest would be well served by more research on 9/11 than even the debate over evolution and ID.
