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Newspaper lies on page one. I know. I was there.
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by Herb Ruhs, MD, Unknown News
Nov. 8, 2006
Propaganda is our mass media's most important product.
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Considering how much money and conniving is involved in its production, it can present little surprise that propaganda is often somewhat convincing. For instance, people in Santa Rosa, California (population 150,000), opening their communities only daily newspaper, The Press Democrat (circulation 88,000) can be excused for being taken in by the bold, front page, above the fold headline that greeted them on Saturday, "There's that other theory on 9/11: SSU hosts discredited academic who says US could have planned attack."
That's a totally bogus approach to what actually happened the night before at the local university, but that is how news of local events tends to be covered these days if any controversy is involved.
If the readers had been at the presentation of Dr. Steven Jones at Sonoma State University the night before, like I was, they might have been shocked to see the blatant lies and misrepresentations that greeted them with their morning coffee. Wake up and smell the bullshit.
What I sat through was mostly a dry, understated presentation of recently collected data, soon to be published in a peer reviewed scientific journal. In tone and format the talk was like hundreds of other similar scientific presentations I have sat through (and occasionally fell asleep in) over the years. If it wasn't for the startling implications of the research it would have been considered dull by most people.
What the headline should have said was, "Evidence implicates government in mass murder of citizens." But then the staff at the Press Democrat would not be keeping their jobs, paying their mortgages, providing health insurance for their families or saving for retirement if they authored such headlines, would they?
In case you already didn't know, virtually all the physical evidence from the World Trade Center (including body parts of victims!) was rapidly and meticulously carted off to blast furnaces overseas by our government (well really, their government, since having stolen it). Thus, arguably the greatest crime in history was forever protected from any kind of credible, professional scrutiny.
This is not the approach that people who watch CSI have learned to expect from a crime scene investigation. To be found destroying evidence of a crime is usually considered evidence of culpability.
To the government's credit, they did a pretty good job on the cover-up. Likely we will never fully know what happened that day. However all available clues point toward something really depraved.
Dr Jones managed to get hold of some chunks of evidentiary material anyway, thanks to some helpful citizens and bungling bureaucrats (a redundancy?), and he was able to test for the presence of a variety of minerals that could shed light on the mysterious collapse of the towers. Especially for those with some scientific training, the results presented were highly unusual and contradicted the official conspiracy theory.
During the discussion part of the presentation it was demonstrated that these anomalies in the data could best be explained by entertaining the hypothesis that thermite (an incredibly powerful aluminum and iron incendiary) was used to demolish the buildings. Dr Jones followed this up with video of laboratory demonstrations of what thermite can do (that was very visually dramatic).
National polling data show that up to a third of the population believes that the government was involved in 9/11 in some way. At one point Dr Jones polled the large audience at Project Censored's two-day conference on Media Accountability, on their beliefs. Not surprisingly the result of the hands raised, eyes closed, poll was reported, and confirmed by a random participant recruited to also count hands, to be in excess of 85%. It helps to have a friendly crowd.
Project Censored is sponsored by the Sociology Department of Sonoma State University and has been publishing a yearly list of news stories for the last thirty five years, news ignored, suppressed, or underplayed by mass media outlets. In spite of how the Press Democrat describes it, Project Censored is a well respected organization with a scientifically respectable approach to studying the management of news. Little wonder, I guess, that a local newspaper controlled by The New York Times Company would give such unfair coverage to a local event sponsored by an important local institution that just happens to annoy the national establishment.
An examination of the Press Democrat front page story (see right) reveals the most scurrilous yellow journalism at work. The personal attacks on Dr Jones and the discrediting remarks about Project Censored seem aimed at only the most gullible. But then, why be surprised? Daily newspaper readership seems to have become a pastime of only the truly gullible.
© by the author.
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There's that other theory on 9/11:
SSU hosts discredited
academic who says US
could have planned attack
by Paul Payne,
The Press Democrat
[Santa Rosa, CA]
Nov. 4, 2006
Steven Jones had a theory about what really happened on Sept. 11, 2001. So the Brigham Young University physics professor wrote a paper about it and posted it on the school's Web site.
The World Trade Center towers, he suggested, collapsed from the heat of explosive devices possibly placed by the U.S. government, and that the horrific plane crashes were orchestrated as a diversion.
In September, the university where he had worked since 1985 placed him on paid leave. He retired last month during a professional review.
Now, the theory that has been condemned by scholars and other critics as groundless has found a new audience at Sonoma State University.
Project Censored, which is based at the university and publishes an annual volume of stories that it says are ignored by the mainstream media, named Jones' work one of the most important of the year.
''There is a conspiracy theory out there that 19 hijackers hit the towers, making them collapse,'' Jones told several hundred people gathered on campus Friday for the keynote address at the start of Project Censored's two-day annual convention. ''That is the official conspiracy theory.''
Instead, Jones said the doomed jetliners were merely cover for a much more insidious explanation he has come to by testing molten metal at Ground Zero for the presence of explosives.
The impact of the planes alone, he said, could not topple the buildings.
Jones said his findings aren't definitive, but he called for further scientific investigation to test his theory along with the release of all relevant data by the government.
''Let's figure out what really happened here,'' he said to a receptive audience.
But his theory has drawn sharp criticism from other scholars, including members of BYU's own engineering professors, as being poorly researched.
And Sonoma State professors are questioning whether Project Censored has hurt its own credibility by presenting it as possibly true.
''It's in the same category of people who think NASA didn't really send astronauts to the moon,'' said Lynn Cominsky, the chairwoman of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at SSU.
Sonoma State President Ruben Arminana did not return phone calls requesting comment.
Jones' theory rests on the question of whether molten metal present at the World Trade Center 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 that thermite was present, suggesting someone might have used explosives to bring down the skyscrapers.
He first presented his research at a BYU physics department seminar in September 2005.
Shortly after the seminar, Jones made the paper available on the Internet. It was eventually published in a book of essays critical of the official version of the attacks, 9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out.
Jones was placed on leave in September. He said he retired to devote himself to explaining his theory.
Peter Phillips, a Sonoma State sociology professor and head of Project Censored, described the hypothesis as ''serious scientific work'' in his remarks introducing Jones.
Phillips told the audience that the world cannot rely on mainstream media to get their information.
''We have to rely on scholars,'' he said. ''Steven E. Jones is one of them.''
But the organization's direction is open to debate.
Longtime critic David Walls, a retired Sonoma State sociology professor, said Project Censored has established itself as a sanctuary for fringe conspiracy theorists who are trivializing a serious problem like censorship.
Walls said the group ignores science and has been wrong in the past.
In the process, it discredits activists questioning the government on other fronts.
''It tends to push them over into being associated with a fringe of people who are easily disparaged,'' Walls said.
Archived from original publication
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What the headline should have said was, "Evidence implicates government in mass murder of citizens."
But then the staff at the Press Democrat would not be keeping their jobs, paying their mortgages, providing health insurance for their families or saving for retirement if they authored such headlines, would they?
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Dr. Herb Ruhs & grandson
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There's much more than this at Unknown News.
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This is an archived Unknown News page. For newest material, visit our main page.
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We appreciate the heck out of everyone who helps.
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Previous articles by Dr Ruhs:
Nov. 1, 2006:
Meditations on the coming collapse
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Meditations on the coming collapse
by Herb Ruhs, MD
This is how civil wars begin
by Herb Ruhs, MD
The Secret Police may be
watching you so don't think,
act or believe like a free person
by Herb Ruhs, MD
The end is at hand
by Herb Ruhs, MD
When spinach becomes a matter of life and death
by Herb Ruhs, MD
And now for something completely different
by Herb Ruhs, MD
We are all prisoners on home supervision
by Herb Ruhs, MD
There is no war but class war
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Meanwhile, back on Lifeboat Earth
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Is anyone willing to think about America’s dismal health statistics?
by Herb Ruhs, MD
A plague of criminals
by Herb Ruhs, MD
On facing adversity with courage and good humor
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Bush's death toll will vastly exceed Hitler's
by Herb Ruhs, MD
An unemployed physician
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Truth and Reconciliation Commission
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Who "Them" are:
You can't tell
the players without a scorecard
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Global warming passes the point of no return
by Herb Ruhs, MD
In case you wondered why your doctor would sell you down the river
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Time to pull the rip cord
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Can the President legally
crush a child's testicles?
His lawyer says, "It depends ..."
by Herb Ruhs, MD, Unknown News
The great American misunderstanding
by Herb Ruhs, MD
When death is the proper penalty
by Herb Ruhs, MD
The revolution this time
by Herb Ruhs, MD
The good tidings and the bad
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Health care in America: An ongoing, massive con game
by Paul Krugman, The New York Times
with comments by Herb Ruhs, MD
Competition: Destroyer of character
by Herb Ruhs, MD
America without the myths
by Herb Ruhs, MD,
To dream the impossible dream
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Refusing to see the obvious
by Maureen Dowd, The New York Times
with comments by Herb Ruhs, MD
What can we do? Rhetorically speaking, that is.
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Banned in Cloverdale, by Herb Ruhs, MD
All of us are being fatally poisoned
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Daubert is the most influential Supreme Court ruling you've never heard of
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Enough already
by Herb Ruhs, MD
War is sometimes justified, often not, but always insane
by Herb Ruhs, MD
The bad news is the same as the good news
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Trying to control your emotions "can make you pretty stupid"
by Herb Ruhs, MD
The gangsters' mentality
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Nietzsche, New Orleans, and 'Nam
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Four decades in five minutes
by Herb Ruhs, MD
The masquerade of "civilization"
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Habits of successful modern cannibals
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Face these horrors with acceptance, equanimity, humor
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Yet another, higher dose of pain
by Herb Ruhs, MD
The war of one against all:
The roots of our enslavement
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Doctors, medicine, hospitals, and the rest of the story
by Herb Ruhs, MD
System of privilege expands in scope and overall power
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Highway robbery turns out to be legal after all
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Class warfare, anyone?
Why class war is not a fiction but a fixture of our lives
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Why the little-known news is the most important
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Why "Free Speech" does not matter
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Big pharma
by Herb Ruhs, MD
The genius fish and other comments
by Herb Ruhs, MD
When all else fails, try the truth
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Childhood abuse and the role it plays in maintaining coercive power
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Murder by medical device
by Herb Ruhs, MD
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