Thursday, July 22 2010   -   In the Media

Story by John Bursill
22nd of July, 2010

Australia's number one talk back Radio Station 2GB, has reported on the Prof. Niels Harritt Lecture on the 17th of July, 2010 at the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts during their late night show with Brian Wilshire. Sydney's most popular late night show's regular guest, Prof. Keith Suter, who attended the Harritt Lecture, has expressed his fascination with the issue of the World Trade Center 7 collapse on the afternoon of September 11, 2001.

Audio sourced by Hereward Fenton, Editor www.truthnews.com.au and www.911oz.com

Prof. Suter, a highly regarded Australian media personality and internationally recognised academic and expert on foreign affairs, clearly expressed his satisfaction with the event and the evidence supporting an apparent "implosion" of WTC 7. "I commend the organisers. They kept emphasizing it was a scientific gathering, although it was open to the general public... they were treating it in a scientific way. They were looking simply at the scientific aspects of 'how' the building came down not 'why' or 'who'. There were questions from the floor, naturally, sort of saying who would be behind this and the scientists they had there...(Harritt, et. al)...they kept saying no, no, no it's our job to simply identify the process by which the buildings came down". Suter, while talking to popular host Brian Wilshire who is already on the record as having many doubts about the official "9/11 conspiracy theory", went on to mention that WTC 7's collapse was missing from the 9/11 Commission Report.

 

Wednesday, July 7 2010   -   In the Media

July 7, 2010 Update - Part of this interview was replayed again last night, nationally, on the Australian Top 30.

Listen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILyQiXK7jPY&feature=player_embedded

John was interviewed on the 2DAY FM Breakfast radio show on the 25th June 2010. This program goes right across Australia, and is one of the most popular shows in the country. This time slot is normally the Kyle and Jackie-O show, but the show today was hosted by Chris and Charli.

 

Friday, June 18 2010   -   In the Media

By Marc Hansen
June 17, 2010
Des Moines Register On Tuesday night, Sean Michalek drove from Victor to Adel for the monthly 911 Truth of Central Iowa meeting.

The trek west took 105 minutes, but so what? Michalek, 64, would have driven nine hours to commune and commiserate with other Iowans who believe the official story of Sept. 11, 2001, is a big fat lie.

"It's the only game in Iowa," he said.

The only game, he meant, for people who think 9/11 is the least examined tragedy in American history.

 

Friday, June 4 2010   -   In the Media

June 3, 2010
Stephen C. Webster
RawStory.com

Rupert Murdoch may be getting an unpleasant phone call soon, if it hasn't come already.

That's because Glenn Beck, the Fox News network's popular opinion host, just blamed the world's 19th richest man -- Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud -- for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

As it happens, the Prince is a major investor in News Corporation; at seven percent of the company's shares, he's second only to Rupert Murdoch himself. Fox News is just one piece of the massive corporation. Murdoch, likewise, owns nine percent of the Prince's Arab media empire Rotana.

Most people would call the situation awkward, to say the least.

Claiming that the U.S. would have acted similarly to Israel in raiding the Gaza aid flotilla, Beck on Thursday afternoon drew an usual analogy between the disastrous military operation that left nine activists dead and the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

"Didn't we almost kind of do that?" he asked. "Right after 9/11, when Rudy Giuliani-- do you remember? Saudi Arabia came and said, 'We wanna help!'"

Beck motioned toward a large graphic on a screen behind him.

"This guy came over and said, 'I wanna give you a $10 million check.' Rudy Giuliani said, 'Ya see that over there? I don't think we want your help. You already sent us help, and you flew that help into the plane-- into the trade centers.'

 

Thursday, May 6 2010   -   In the Media

UQÀM staff denounce 9/11 Truthers speech
May 4, 2010
CBC News

Administrators at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQÀM) say they will develop a formal policy for outside groups renting campus space for events after a controversial lecture about 9/11 drew fire by academic staff.

But the French-language university defended its right to have contentious speakers lecture on campus as part of free speech, saying it was appropriate to debate ideas, as long as events don't incite riots.

The Monday night lecture, hosted by World for 9/11 Truth, drew about 700 people who came to hear from two U.S. academics who deny the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were carried out by terrorists.

The researchers -- David Ray Griffin and Richard Gage -- believe the U.S. government played a major role in orchestrating the deadly attacks on New York City's Twin Towers and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

Griffin and Gage are lobbying for an independent inquiry into the attacks, which killed 3,000 people. Their theories -- part of the self-titled Truthers movement that formed after Sept. 11 -- have been repeatedly discounted by scientists and civil engineering experts.
U.S. experts at UQÀM upset

 

Wednesday, April 21 2010   -   In the Media

David Ray Griffin
April 20, 2010
911Truth.org

A right-wing neocon organization called the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD)¹ -- which devotes itself to attacking religiously and socially progressive churches while supporting US imperial policies (going back to the Nicaraguan Contras funded illegally by the Reagan administration² ) -- has recently put out a press release attacking my next book, which is scheduled to be published this coming fall. Saying that I am "back with another outrageous book" in which I allege "new absurdities," the IRD claims that I am "this time alleging that the Obama administration is attempting to undermine 9/11 conspiracy theorists."³

False Assumptions about My Forthcoming Book

However, if members of the IRD staff could have waited until my book had been published, so they could have read it before attacking it, they could have seen that it does no such thing. They could have seen that it simply deals with an article, entitled "Conspiracy Theories," co-authored in 2008 by Cass Sunstein and another professor at Harvard Law School.⁴ Using the "9/11 conspiracy theory" as their primary example of conspiracy theories, Sunstein and his co-author argued that the government should try to undermine it and that the best way to do this would be through a method they called "cognitive infiltration." In 2009, President Obama appointed Sunstein as the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.⁵ My forthcoming book is entitled Cognitive Infiltration: An Obama Appointee's Plan to Undermine the 9/11 Conspiracy Theory. Neither the title nor the book itself suggests that Obama will have Sunstein actually carry out this plan.

The IRD's premature criticism of my book is also wrong on another point. By speaking of what I will be "alleging," the IRD was supporting its press release's title, "9/11 Conspiracy Theorist Dreaming Up New Absurdities." The IRD's suggestion, in other words, is that I simply "dreamed up" the "absurdity" that someone connected to the Obama administration had a proposal for undermining 9/11 conspiracy theorists. However, the proposal made by Sunstein has been extensively discussed on the Internet.⁶ With a little research, therefore, the IRD could have learned that I had not simply made something up.

 

Thursday, April 15 2010   -   In the Media

12 April 2010 France24.com

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivers a speech during a ceremony to mark the National Nuclear Day day in Tehran on April 9. Ahmadinejad has written to UN chief Ban Ki-moon, asking him to launch an investigation into the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, news reports said on Monday.

AFP - Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has written to UN chief Ban Ki-moon, asking him to launch an investigation into the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, news reports said on Monday.

"The minimum expectation from your excellency is to set up an independent and trusted fact-finding group to comprehensively investigate the real factors behind September 11," Ahmadinejad said in the text of the letter carried by official news agencies.

They did not say when the letter was sent.

The hardliner, who in March dismissed 9/11 as a "big lie," said in the letter that the attacks "were the main pretext for attacks" by NATO on Afghanistan and Iraq.

 

Wednesday, April 14 2010   -   In the Media

April 13, 2010
By John Bursill, Engineer, 9/11 Truth Advocate and Researcher
911Truth.org

On April 12th, 2010 ABC Radio National's "Counterpoint" host Michael Duffy decided to weigh in on the truth of the 9/11 events. In this clearly biased and ludicrous attack on those who would question the still unexplained events of September 11, 2001, Duffy demonstrated he has done little research into the matter. Seemingly, he has decided research is neither warranted nor required to make wild assumptions about and apply derogatory labels to 9/11 researchers and their questions.

In this short and emotive hit piece Duffy uses an excerpt from a recent lecture given by Clive Williams, Adjunct Professor at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University (ANU), to provide the spin. Professor Williams lays out an overview of the 9/11 Conspiracy Theories as part of his lecture called "Terrorism Conspiracy Theories and the 1978 Sydney Hilton bombings, Lockerbie, 9/11 and the London 7/7 bombings". This lecture will be played in full on Radio National's "Big Ideas" on Sunday 18th April at 5pm and is available in podcast at the ABC. In this excerpt Williams skims over the evidence of an alternate "conspiracy", citing the predictable "straw man" arguments and loose journalistic attempts to look at the evidence, using the Discovery Channel's laughable documentary, "9/11: Science and Conspiracy" as a reference. Ironically, Williams uses these absurdities ignorantly in his attempt to debunk the experts who are actually qualified to comment on such matters, and -- surprise, surprise -- he also conveniently forgets to mention them. In a desperate attempt to make sense of his "reality", Williams rolls out the blind academics' favourite proof that 9/11 was just as we were told -- yes, it's the argument that the government is, without doubt, just too damn incompetent to pull off such a complicated plan! Unfortunately, this so-called educator misses the irony in the stark "official reality" that 19 poorly trained and ill-equipped Arab hijackers did pull it off!

Duffy introduces this crude attempt at journalism as follows:

"Just who was responsible for the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington? Was it Osama Bin Laden or are there other contenders? Perhaps it was rogue government agents operating with the tacit support of an equally shadowy group of industrialists. Or maybe it was revenge-seeking aliens who escaped from area 51."

 

Monday, April 12 2010   -   In the Media

April 12, 2010
by Marc Hansen
Des Moines Register Editorials

David Ray Griffin comes to Drake University on April 23 to tell us why the official explanation for the 9/11 attack on the United States doesn't hold water.

A theologian, philosopher of religion and professor emeritus at California's Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University, Griffin has been at it for about seven years now and says he won't stop until the government conducts a new, impartial, independent investigation.

As opposed to the 9/11 Commission probe. He calls that exercise a charade.

Griffin has written eight books on the subject with another on the way: "Cognitive Infiltration: An Obama Appointee's Plan to Undermine the 9/11 Conspiracy Theory."

The appointee, a former Harvard professor named Cass Sunstein who now heads the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, co-wrote an academic paper saying government should undermine conspiracy theory groups by infiltrating their chat rooms, social networks and group meetings.

Griffin believes "cognitive infiltration" is the wrong term. "It's more like fascism," he says.

 

Monday, April 12 2010   -   In the Media

April 8, 2010
by Julie Hollar
FAIR Blog

As yet another study is released documenting the damaging health effects of breathing in toxic Ground Zero dust, it's good to see corporate media outlets taking it seriously. (Most media outlets, anyway--the New York Post continues to give a platform to deniers.)

It's worth remembering, though--since they won't remind you--that for many months after 9/11, some outlets--the New York Times in particular--downplayed the fallout and mustered shockingly little journalistic skepticism of government reassurances about safety.

The attitude of Andrew Revkin, the Times' environmental reporter at the time, says it all. As I wrote in 2006:

 

Saturday, April 10 2010   -   In the Media

Guns and Butter
April 7, 2010
on KPFA 94.1 or at KPFA.org

Interview with investigative reporters and authors, Kristina Borjesson, Charlotte Dennett and Peter Dale Scott.

Kristina Borjesson is editor of "Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose The Myth of a Free Press" and "Feet to the Fire: The Media After 9/11: Top Journalists Speak Out".