With all due respect, if you read my previous comment carefully, you would see that it refers to extrapolating from cases and not logic, per se. Granted (with thanks), for the sake of clarity, my first comment should have read: “Extrapolating [from cases based on] your logic…”

You are also incorrect in your diversionary speculation as to motivation. I respond simply because I disagree with your rationale, which, I contend, remains, unbuttressed. Therefore, the basis of my contention stands and your name calling, I respectfully submit, remains unsound.

Your say-so is not sufficient to determine what the “truth” is or isn’t. Your position is counter free inquiry and this, I submit, is counter to progressivist principles.

To engage in more productive activities is fine, but the question remains who is to determine what is productive. Maybe you do, but I certainly don’t want to live in a Big Brother society where some people take it upon themselves to determine what the “truth” is for everyone else.

There is no reason for a solidarity movement to break down when the goals are the same. Diversity of opinion should be embraced by progressives. Those individuals who would wish to coerce the movement to only their mode of thinking and their “truth” are, I submit, the genuine desolidarizers.

And it is, arguably, those people who desolidarize, under the guise of self-determined possession of the “truth,” who the ones who hold back the movement from victory.

In solidarity.

In case of #1, the “soundeness” of your response is easily contestable. You said,

“Extrapolating your logic presents a world in which understanding the intricacies of life would be left to the realm of experts. It would then be pick and choose your experts and then the conundrum: which expert(s) to choose.”

That is simply not true. First, one cannot “extrapolate logic” (sic). One can extrapolate from the argument something other than what was originally written. You are suggesting that simply because I point out one expert (a physicist) that I am suggesting that “experts” know better than us about this issue. That´s not what I said, though actually on many similar issues I do say such. For example, my surgeon I trust far more than my wife when issues of my recent knee surgery were discussed. Now, as to which “experts”, you further say,

“If it is that 9-11 is the domain of experts, then the experts one would turn to are not physicists but rather civil or structural engineers. There are plenty of them on record as stating the “official” conspiracy is false. There are plenty of demolition experts who contend that what happened that day was a demolition of three buildings”

Well, likewise, there are many structural engineers who say quite clearly that no “bombs” went off; that the official report was correct. So we have dueling experts. You choose to accept one set and rule the others out. That is fine. But my whole point, (repeated here for the exhausting last time) was that by doing so you are playing into the same silliness witnessed time and again on the Left which I have since since Nixon´s days, that is, the belief in the remarkably consistent and unerringly powerful powers-that-be who can manipulate Truth in a fictionally complete sense and keep under wraps all dissent and potential whistleblowers. Such a belief reinforces feelings of helplessness whcih, in my opinion justifies doing nothing but complaining. Since “they” can control everything and “they” are all powerful, I can do nothing. Therefore I need not try.

Extrapolate from that conclusion Kim, and you get exactly what we have: a bunch of whiny pseudo-Leftists who remain atomized behind their computer screens serrving up their fellow atomized cyber friends doles of conspiratorial clap trap that makes everyone feel good (“we ” know they are all powerful and we have the “Truth”) while at the same time justifying sitting at home and not taking to the streets, which is how every other major movement of social justice ever got anything done. It is a peculiar-to-this-generation and time illness that keeps “them” in power.

My suggestions were simple: engage in more productive activities which increase solidarity with people face-to-face, doing such can accomplish far more good for all of us: I suggested learning Spanish (whose speakers now outnumber African-Americans and need to be a force reconciled with), go to church (or mosque, or synagogue, or temple since upwards of 80% of Americans believ in God and they too are a force that need to be folded in) join a union (to understand firsthand working class solidarity–I was a union member and president once and grew up in a union household and got my first lessons in class consciousness that way) or go bowling (a reference to a recent book on the death–or dearth–of civic society in the US).

These actions will accomplish far more than arguing with me (or “experts” in any field over any issue, or self appointed “investigators” of “conspiracies”).

Re: #2, I believe “logically” I have explained myself–you may refer to any beginning logic textbook for this (my last class in logic was 27 years ago so I admit rustiness.)

Re: #3, the “last word.” Means nothing.

I also said some of the things I do which, if you care to “extrapolate” from that, I am suggesting others may do: letter writing, wrticle writing, and again, any effort to increase actual solidarity between people.

An old friend, a former Communist once told me “Tirado, we don´t need any more martyrs, we need victories.” He was right. We also don´t need any more blogs, any more “investigations” or any more speculations about how powerful our enemies are. Their power is derived simply and completely by our acquiescence. It´s time to stop.

José

If it is that 9-11 is the domain of experts, then the experts one would turn to are not physicists but rather civil or structural engineers. There are plenty of them on record as stating the “official” conspiracy is false. There are plenty of demolition experts who contend that what happened that day was a demolition of three buildings.

Manuel Garcia (whose views I respect) is a physicist who studies fluid flow and energy, and while this has pertinence in the analysis of what transpired on 9-11, does it qualify him as an expert specific to what happened with the towers?

My suggestion to you and those remaining in the US who follow this nuttiness is to get out on the streets and away from your computers, go bowling, learn Spanish, join a union and become civic-minded folks who can then assemble and work out the better society they claim to desire. To fanatically pass off this tripe as some kind intellectual dissent is beneath contempt and frankly, (as if “beneath contempt” wasn´t frank enough) distracting from the real and important issues Americans can effect.

Re: Top 40 reasons. It remains unbelievable that the collected debris of vacuous junk on that site would be cited by anyone with a straight mind. Of course, I don´t believe the 9-11 conspiracists have “straight minds” so I will let that stand. As well, I would recommend the many Noam Chomsky responses if one is looking for a serious analysis of this Administrations incompetence (something conspiracists like yourself rarely admit to). ZNet is a good place to begin.

Re: the Skeptic´s Annotated Bible. A close look at my response would reveal the use of the phrase “just violent” (and you quote it above). I never denied there was violence in the Jewish scriptures. I referred you to context as well as the other content contained there. You might want to read the Bible first before going and looking for references to it elsewhere.

Lastly, I don´t have to defend my POV here or anywhere else. I write articles (some published here, some at CP, some elsewhere) and connect with the many ex-pat Americans (I live overseas) who oppose American imperialism. I do what I can to change the system. I write letters to newspapers and to Senators and Congressmen/women. I don´t waste my time presuming Robert Anton Wilsonian conspiracies exist anywhere else but in fiction. Life is way too short for that silliness. There´s alot of work to be done.

The CounterPunch article been debunked.

Read:
Debunking 9/11 Debunking by David Ray Griffin

and also his
The New Pearl Harbor; Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11

Online read:
Top 40 Reasons to Doubt the Official Story of September 11th, 2001

“Secondly, the charge that the “Old Testament” (the Jewish scriptures) is just violent is racist and misleading.”

Online read:
Skeptic’s Annotated Bible — Cruelty and Violence in the Old Testament

…and then come back and defend your POV addressing the arguments presented.

BW

And just to reiterate the point one mo’ ‘gin: “We must confront the powers that be, and ourselves.”

Jensen´s article was about being prophetic–calling the empire builders what they are and making us all account for the ways we are compicit in the proto-fascism that dominates America these days. Our refusal to rise up en masse, to abandon the Dems who remain connected to the corporate teat and to vote for those who desire a true multi-party democracy with no imperial ambitions, is a failure of nerve. Prophets had that in abundance. We instead have conspiracists, wrapped in neuroticism and held together by a failure of nerve.

Another thing that shocked me was the word never uttered: Jesus. Mr Jensen is a Christian, Presbyterians are Christians, Christians are followers of the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, a dissident Jewish holy man. Yet all we get is long quotes from the (extremely bloodthirsty!) Old Testament, a Jewish religious book, of which, as a dissident, Jesus, one assumes, did not particularly approve. A Christian who never quotes from the New Testament (Jesus’ “ideology”, if you will) is like a communist who never quotes Marx, or worse yet, one who quotes only Ludwig von Mies! All we get is a short quote from St. Paul on love. Not surprising, since there is not much love in the Old Testament. Lookin’ for love in all the wrong places, as the song says!

If this is what the American left comes up with, I don’t see any advantage over the American right! It’s just a question of who is to be pushed around and who is to be patted patronisingly on the head. And, of course, precisely what is to be rammed down the throats of an unwilling world. Our world.

For all he says and does, the cock crows again and again: “9/11,” “”9/11,” “”9/11.”

Where is he?

It is as if the world with all its sin compels him to rip his bodice and exclaim, self-righteously, and wrongly: “the prophetic voice is not to proclaim the truth….”

Like Noam Chomsky, and others who mock “conspiracy theories”– if Left Gatekeepers do not exist it is only because people like Jensen do such an admirable job of keeping real truth “off the table.”