Have they given up yet?

When President Obama's friend and legal scholar, Cass Sunstein, authored an essay about ways the government might deal with a steadily growing 9/11 Truth Movement, I read it eagerly to find out what we might expect from this "liberal" administration. It was already evident that the policy of "containment by ignoring" would continue to apply, and that no investigative efforts were forthcoming. When Prof. Sunstein seemed to be suggesting that blatantly unconstitional measures to counter the truth movement - a cointelpro for our time - would be appropriate, I discussed it with friends familiar with the '60's programs against the anti-war crowd, and we all pretty much agreed that it was highly likely that such programs were already in place and had been for some time. Most who have written in discussion groups on 9/11 Truth are accustomed to the one or two trolls that always seem to show up to drop little disinformation pellets among the offerings and are always there to keep the controversies alive. I don't offer that as proof, simply as an observation growing out of many years of participation in such discussions - Amazon reviews being one such place. Having been a long-time fan of Dr. Griffin, and having read Dr. Sunstein's piece, I ordered the book in order to close the loop, not expecting to learn a great deal.

I was pleasantly surprised. Dr. Griffin's careful analysis suggests a line of argument that makes it almost possible to believe that Sunstein's essay deliberately contained its own pre-planted explosives, requiring only a slight twist of the argument to turn it back on itself, blowing the entire structure of the official myth to smithereens. To those of us who have steeped for years in the strong brew of evidence that the official myth is unstable and is sustained only by a brittle structure of power and inertia propped up by a calcified and corrupt media establishment, it is like finding the cherry cordial in the center of an otherwise unremarkable piece of candy. Nicely done, Dr. Griffin!

To say that this book destroys the arguments of the sustainers of the 9/11 official myth is to put it mildly. It may be that the myth sustainers think they have won and don't even feel a need to respond to this book. I notice that apparently not a single reviewer is on hand (to date) to offer any of the usual ad homenim attacks or insults in defense of the official myth. The silence is somewhat spooky and a bit unsettling. I am aware that they have long since run out of ideas - can it be that they have finally realized it?

Professor Sunstein's name has been spotted on lists associated with possible Obama Supreme Court nominees. Those of us who consider such a possibility with the revulsion appropriate to the idea of a big fan of undermining popular opinion by government cointelpro-style actions ascending to the bench (yet again!) should breathe a bit easier knowing the original essay and this devastating treatment reside in Professor Sunstein's file.

Report on the Insurgency

I have been away from this blog for almost a year. For this I apologize. I will try to be a more faithful writer in the future. Thanks for visiting. SFL


An insurgency has been taking shape in recent weeks, blooming several places in the world like the first flowers of Spring. There are signs of it in some outlets of the mainstream media; signs that take one of two forms: straight news stories and hit pieces. The hit pieces are exemplified by the recent editorial in the disgraceful and disgraced Washington Post, which leveled a charge that an influential and well-respected member of the ascendent Democratic Party of Japan has ideas about the 9/11 attacks that are "too bizarre, half-baked and intellectually bogus to merit serious discussion." They follow with the briefest of sketch of a few of the doubts expressed by Mr. Fujita, calling them "fantastic". Offering no refutations of the ample evidence that 1,114 (to date) architects and engineers have found persuasive, including the peer-reviewed paper by an international panel of scientists that establishes the prolific presence of military-grade explosives and its residue in well-documented Manhattan dust samples, they depend primarily on name-calling - a certain indicator that they are out of ideas. The editorial concludes with dark hints that Japan's relationship with the U. S. is at risk from "tolerating" elements like Mr. Fujita.

The other type of story is exemplified by an article in Germany's second most-read weekly business magazine, "Focus Money" entitled "We Do Not Believe You!" which surveys the 9/11 Truth Movement and concludes that there is substance to the charges of a cover-up and government complicity in the attacks. Similar stories and news interviews have appeared in Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Japan, and Russia.

In Japan, the doubts about the War on Terror, spurred in part by Mr. Fujita and public appearances by David Ray Griffin and Richard Gage, founder of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, have resulted in a policy shift by Tokyo away from active participation in their supporting role in which they refueled American warships transiting the Indian Ocean in support of operations in Afghanistan. Mr. Fujita raised the question why Japan had not done its own investigation of 9/11 in which 24 Japanese nationals died. We Americans might ask the exact same question. The "investigation" of 9/11 by the Commission began with the assumption that the plot line that appeared almost simultaneously on the lips of the remarkably perceptive pundits assembled at the various studios in Manhattan to make background chatter while the deadly charade was played out was, by golly, exactly the way it happened, and the 118 first responders who heard and felt explosions all over the Trade Center complex were mistaken and misguided. Besides, they were not assembled to "point fingers", unless it was away from the highly suspicious actions of the administration before, during, and after the event. And if they could hang it on Jamie Gorelick for erecting that darned wall that ensured that mum's the word when feeling the urge to share information with other parts of our national security apparatus, well, all the better! And our detractors say government can't keep a secret.

Well the secret is getting around, so much so that Obama's appointee to the cabinet post concerned with communications and regulatory affairs, Harvard's Cass Sunstein, in his recent scholarly head-scratcher, "Conspiracy Theories", waxes academic about such theories and theorists, and concludes that doubts about the candor of the Bush administration and its henchmen when talking about 9/11, automatically place the doubter in that category whether they have advanced a theory or not. He was moved to recommend that, in order to squelch the "Truther" movement, infiltrators and agents penetrate the movement, and provide some informational diversity (read "propaganda") rendering alternative interpretations of events "indefensible". Does this ring a bell with any of you veterans of the '60's anti-war movement? I don't suppose it would occur to Prof. Sunstein to recommend that Justice investigate the issue of several tons of military grade explosive residue in the pyroclastic powder of the World Trade Center. Some actual coming clean on the evidence surrounding 9/11 would make for very welcome "informational diversity", I expect.