First Word

Neo-antinomian guru Darryl G. Hart answers an ignorant, semi-literate Canadian on a public forum in this promising way:

So Steve, are you also concerned that Americans (of certain political persuasions) exalt Martin Luther King, Jr., and don’t ever address his philandering or plagiarism?

“Philandering” is such an understatement that it must be taken as a euphemism. King took part in wild orgies, especially when white women were available. Although, in fairness, it should be pointed out that apparently a black bruthah would serve in a pinch, according to Abernathy — King was apparently neither a racist nor a sexist, at least in this matter that interested him more than anything else. Nevertheless, it was encouraging to see Hart start off by at least mentioning these suppressed aspects about Westminster Seminary’s hero Martin Luther King, Jr.

Alas, it wasn’t to last. He continued:

The right [meaning, the Right -- ed.] of course looks at those moral failings to discredit King. But what exactly do those failings have to do with what he was trying to do to gain equality for blacks?

This is not the right question, however. The question is, what exactly do those failings have to do with honoring him as an American hero? And the answer is, it has everything to do with that. Moreover, heroes are generally identified not by what they “try to do,” but what they actually do. George Washington was honored by our forefathers not for “trying” to do something, but actually doing it, against all odds — namely, defeating an empire with a rag-tag group of freezing patriots. In contrast, what did King “do”? He was a hollow man that could not even write his own sermons and speeches. He was chauffered up to the front of the parades at just the right camera moment. His movement did not overcome anything. On the contrary, his small band of opponents were beaten down with the combined forces of LBJ, the nationalized militia, the FBI, federal marshals, corrupt judges, and an adoring and dishonest media. All King had to do was show up. What a difference from Washington.

But, Washington was also perceived to be morally blameless. For all intents and purposes, he was beloved by everyone, and that for the double qualification of heroic deeds coupled with exemplary character.

But let’s consider Mr. Hart’s thesis on its own level — what did King’s “failings” have to do with “what he was trying to do”?

According to lore, Mafia bosses “did a lot” to “gain equality for the Italian people.” But most people do not say that the criminal means can be divorced from the end (even if the ambiguity of that end is set aside for the sake of discussion).

I suppose it goes without saying that Mr. Hart would not praise the original KKK for attempting to regain equality for Southerners vis-a-vis the Yankee occupiers.

Why then are King’s methods and character set aside by defenders like Mr. Hart, when they would never do so for a Mafia godfather or KKK leader? It must be either that some heroes are guilty of a skin, and thus must not be honored, or character and methods is not something Mr. Hart actually believes can be set aside when deciding whether to honor a man. As if sensing the corner he has painted himself into, Hart continues:

Was he sleeping with female congresswomen in order to secure favorable legislation? That might discredit some of his stand.

Oh please. This is really quite a revelation of how the slavish political conformity of our Reformed “leaders” has addled their thinking. As if a Congresswoman in 1965 would be thinking, “I really can’t support this civil rights legislation … unless Dr. King would be willing to sleep with me. Then I would.”

A quick check of Wiki indicates that in 1965, of the nine Congresswomen in office, all were White and over 50, except for one Oriental woman from Hawaii. Does Mr. Hart really think that even one of these women would think the way he imputes in the one example that pops naturally into his head?

Does he think any woman holding power, of any race and any age would think that way?

This is one sick dude.

In point of fact, that is one perversion that Martin Pervert King did not choose in plying his trade. Why does Mr. Hart think this way?

Even so, how would such a scenario “discredit some of King’s stand”? Does “the stand” mean the cause — equality for black people — in which case, how could such a sacred cause be discredited by the behavior of any person? Or does it mean, “this man’s standing” — i.e. it discredits this man, personally, this man that is taking the stand? In that case, what does the “some of” qualification of his stand mean? To the extent that the stander not the stand is in view, wouldn’t it completely disqualify?

But for the most part, his failings were personal and private and represented the afflictions that cling to most human beings not born of a virgin.

First, all failings by persons are personal. How does that qualify anything?

Second, “Doctor” King’s failings were not private. The plagiarism in particular was witnessed every time he made a speech, and the plagiarized Ph. D. dilutes the credibility of every other Ph.D. holder, especially those coming from Boston U.

Third, this statement is a preposterous denial of God’s gifts and graces manifested in history. It plasters over human history into a flat sameness. Only, he doesn’t even use plaster, he uses dung.

According to Tacitus, the Germans in their pre-Christian state were more chaste than the African-American community is after three centuries of exposure to the Bible.

Actually, putting it that way is not quite fair… to the Germans. It would be less misleading to say it this way: the pre-Christian Germans were a chaste people; the Christian Negroes are not a chaste people.

But according to Hart, King’s flagitious character represents “the afflictions that cling to most human beings not born of a virgin.”

Michael Dyson says the womanizing is endemic among pastors in the black church. Is Mr. Hart willing to say, “also in my denomination, the OPC?”

Is Mr. Hart willing to say, “most Ph. D. holders not born of a virgin have plagiarized their dissertations”? How should we regard the integrity of Mr. Hart’s own Ph.D. if that is what he thinks?

In fairness, Mr. Hart admits defects in King’s theology, and rejects King’s use of theology for his civil struggle. But that’s not the point. Being antinomian leads to despising God’s work of sanctification where it has occurred, and to God’s common gracious preserving and directing in history. This is the theological fruit one reaps when one reveres the current political order, along with its shibboleths, above just about all else.

being a review of David Ray Griffin: Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2006). Griffin is Professor Emeritus of Religion at Claremont. This book is organized into two parts. (1) Rehearsal of facts proving that the 9/11 was a false-flag operation. (2) Religious critique of empire-building by the US.

Part 2: Religion

The value of the book resides entirely in the lucid and irrefutable summary of Part 1.  Part 2 starts off bad enough, using a higher-critical scissors to trim the Bible down to a kernel that suits Griffin’s purpose. (It is interesting, however, that once a statement in the gospels survives being pressed through the liberal sieve, he does seem to regard it as authoritative at some level). But it gets much worse. He needs a credible theory of “the demonic” to explain how imperialists could be so wicked as to execute a false-flag operation like the 9-11; but without a devil, as that would be mythic. With this motivation, he launches into an exposition of Process Theology only slightly less mythic than Mormon cosmology. In the beginning was God and matter; there was no creation ex nihilo; God shapes and persuades the matter as best He can, always trying to get it stay on the moral path; but the matter, especially after evolving into complex organisms like humans, has a mind of its own that is metaphysically autonomous from God and thus can assert evil. (Insert Twilight Zone theme.) He calls it Semidualistic Monotheism (p. 137).

There are metaphysical, ethical, and epistemological problems with this dualism that are fatal. Here, I take the time to highlight just one.  Griffin seems to think that if there was a big blob of matter that was a se, self-existent, and a god that was also a se, then that god might glance over at the blob of matter and say to himself, “self, I think I will go make something out of that blob.”

But this is a gross anthropomorphism. The independent god would not “see” the blob at all. He would not feel it. It would not exist for him.

We can see and feel things because our bodies are subject to electomagnetic forces just like the stuff we see and feel out there. If this were not the case, we would not see anything. If our “arm” swung down against a “table,” it would sail right through without a break. Take away the electromagnetic force, and floors, tables, roofs, walls, and so forth, simply don’t exist for us.

He tries to avoid this problem by saying that knowledge mediated by causal sequences is characteristic of creatures alone (p. 136). As if appealing to the Creator/creature distinction can help this ontology! The living and true God knows all thing immediately, because he is the master of them: his thoughts define them; but Griffin’s god, surrounded by darkness and unfulfilled potentiality, needs a third something between himself and his balky Gegenstand, to establish the contact. Moreover, for Griffin’s god to “find” the blob of matter, he and it would have to “reside” in the same space as it were. But what is the origin of that space? If it is from the god, then how did the eternal matter, being heterogenous to his nature, squeeze into it? If it is from the matter, how did the god enter in? Or, it is a framework in which both exist, in which case then we need to find the living and true God who defines the common framework.  Griffin’s god and matter would never have found each other.

It is embarrassing that Prof. Griffin saw fit to go into this, and that the publisher permitted it.

Part 1: The 9-11 Events

In stark contrast, Part I, which lays out the evidence that 9/11 was quite different than what the U.S. national government has told us, is quite good, both for logic and brevity.

He correctly sandbags against the typical name-calling. President Bush and 9/11 Commissioner Philip Zelikow have

warned against “outrageous conspiracy theories.” What do these men mean by this expression? They cannot mean that we should reject all conspiracy theories about 9/11, because the government’s own account is a conspiracy theory, with the conspirators all being members of al-Qaeda. (p. 35)

Griffin’s summary of the case against the Government Story of 9/11 can be sorted under several categories.

Physics

This includes things like the fact that burning kerosene only heats up to about a thousand degrees less than the melting point of steel (p. 36). The problems are nicely summarized in pages 35-44. One observation he makes had escaped my attention before, yet is devastating: if the floors really had “pancaked” down on each other, thus explaining the verticle collapse into its own footprint, then the steel columns should have been seen sticking up through it.

Intuitively, most people probably think that a skyscraper is like dozens of crates stacked up on each other, each crate representing a story. Then, as each crate collapses into a pancake, starting at the top, the added weight crushes the next crate, and combined mass falls down to the next crate, and so on.

However, this is not how a skyscraper is constructed. Instead, one should imagine massive steel columns (47 of them) which, tied together and reinforced, form the load-bearing core all the way to the top of the building. Then, each floor is “hung” on this core. So, if under the right conditions, the floors started to pancake down on each other, nevertheless the columns would stick through and still be visible.

The 9/11 Commission

simply denied the existence of the forty-seven core columns, saying, “The interior core of the buildings was a hollow steel shaft, in which elevators and stairwells were grouped.” Voila! With no forty-seven core columns, the main problem is removed. (40f.)

The NIST tried a little harder:

The NIST Report handled this most difficult problem by claiming that when the floors collapsed, they pulled on the columns, causing the perimeter columns to become unstable. This instability then increased the gravity load on the core columns, which had been weakened by tremendously hot fires in the core, which, NIST claims, reached 1832°F, and this combination of factors somehow produced “global collapse.”

However, Griffin dissects NIST with two whacks:

First, NIST’s claim about tremendously hot fires in the core is completely unsupported by evidence. As we saw earlier, its own studies found no evidence that any of the core columns had reached temperatures of even 482°F, so its theory involves a purely speculative temperature. Second, even if this sequence of events had occurred, NIST provides no explanation as to why it would have produces global — that is, total — collapse. The NIST Report asserts that “column failure” occurred in the core as  well as the perimeter columns, but this remains a bare assertion. There is no  plausible explanation of why the core columns would have broken or even buckled, so as to produce global collapse at virtually free-fall speed, even if they had reached such temperatures. (41)

Sequence of events

The Sequence problem has to do with the consistency of alleged events — the timing of phone calls, meetings, and movements, with respect to the timing of the publicly knowable events — where was Cheny when the second plane hit, that kind of thing. In addition, there is the question of why — NORAD standing down or at least fumbling, intercept planes nearby not being ready. As much detail as the reader can stomach is ably summarized in Chap. 4, Flights of Fancy (pp. 57-75).

Investigations

The government investigations, notably the 9/11 Commission’s and the NIST report, are what most people rest their confidence in. It is probably not so much belief in the veracity of the government so much as the impossibility of the contrary: it seems incredible that so many people could collude to deceive without someone blowing the whistle.

Nevertheless, there are facts about these reports that need to be remembered:

1. The official narrative changed through several revisions as skeptics pounced on contradictions (pp. 57-75).

2. Facts that remain embarrassing are simply ignored into oblivion (e.g. 9/11 Commission on the 47 columns, mentioned above [pp. 40,41]; others discussed p. 16, pp. 80-82).

3. Other problems are dealt with by pure arbitrary assertion, without evidence — (e.g. the NIST report on the same problem [41]; more on p. 35).

How do we reconcile these difficulties with the common man’s feeling that a conspiracy of such magnitude is not possible?

The answer is, it is not necessary that very many of the investigators would be in on the scam — indeed, perhaps not any of the rank and file.  Most of them are just ordinary people doing their job, and their job was not to discover the most probable perpetrator from a clean slate, but rather, “show how al Qaeda did it.” And in terms of that non-falsifiable premise, the investigators did their investigation quite diligently.

That this is exactly how they proceeded is ludicrously illustrated in one incident. Just days before the event, a huge number of PUT options were taken out on just the very two airlines involved in the hijackings. This allowed the holders, after the event, to “put” the stock to the writer of the option at the pre-plummeted price, making millions of dollars. There is strong prima facie suspicion that the purchasers knew what was coming down. The government’s explanation for this is telling for their whole approach:

The 9/11 Commission tried to show that these suspicions were unfounded. Its most important claim was that the purchases of put options for United Airlines do not show that anyone other than al-Qaeda had foreknowledge of the attacks, because 95 percent of these options were purchased by “[a] single U.S.-based institutional investor with no conceivable ties to al Qaeda.” (p. 80)

And they roared with laughter, Solzhenitsyn’s equivalent narrative would add.

We can see what value should be put on those investigations.

The Inhumanity

For me, at the end of the day, it is the human narrative that makes the official conspiracy theory incredible. It is bad enough that 19 skinny Arab boys, entering single file Indian style with their box-cutters (and how did the investigators figure that out again?), are able to overwhelm the crews — who are generally tough guys, often former military — and succeed every time. Then, right after the fight of their life and commission of grisly, bloody murders, the corpses still lying around, they “get behind the wheel” for the first time ever, and find these targets and steel their nerves to blow right into them. Try this while speeding scary fast down a hill on your bike, then multiply the velocity by 20. Yet these Arab boys did it, every time without fail.

But it gets better. One of the boys, slated to board flight 11 from Boston, decides to make an excursion to Maine the day before. No one can figure out why. It will necessitate hopping on a commuter flight to connect to the big one the next morning. Imagine risking the whole operation if the puddle-hopper were to be late! And sure enough, it is late — not so late that Atta cannot board Flight 11, but too late for his luggage to get transferred, and so the authorities can now retrieve some smoking guns. And what is in his bags?

Flight simulation manuals for Boeing airplanes, a copy of the Koran, a religious cassette tape, a note to other hijackers about mental preparation, passport and will. (p. 17)

Think about it. I suppose Atta was thinking he would cram during the last hour before the “final exam” on how to fly the big Boeing. In case he would get bored with that, he could always read a bit of the Koran or listen to a tape. But the real howler is the will. He is about to self-immolate in a towering inferno. What possible good to anyone would it do to have his will burning up along with him?

I can’t believe a human would behave like this, even if I try. But I can very well believe that some dim-witted police-state bureaucrat assigned to this detail of the planning would include all those items in the packet, since each has its place in ratifying the government’s story.

All of this I mention, despite the fact that “the flight manifests that have been released have no Arab names on them. The 9/11 Commission Report simply omits any mention of this problem.” (p. 16) But we have to start somewhere.

Meanwhile, the boys that hijacked American flight 77

reportedly executed a 270-degree downward spiral, which according to some pilots would have been impossible for a Boeing 757 even with an expert pilot. Hanjour, moreover, was known as ‘a terrible pilot,’ who could not even fly a small airplane” (p19).

During all this, the W was yaking away to the schoolkids in Florida. He continued to yak even after the second tower was hit. This is not how a President would behave if an unexpected attack of unknown scope were occurring.

Conclusion

Despite its flaws, this book presents a succinct summary of the facts such that it is hard to imagine that anyone intelligent, honest, and diligent could continue to believe the government’s conspiracy theory of what happened on 9/11.

Pausing to remember with sorrow and respect the slaughter of Dresden by the Allies on Feb. 13, 1945, my heart is with the pious Germans who plan to attend the annual memorial there. This year, however, the girl-mayor of the city is organizing a human chain to “keep out the right wing extremists.”

Reconstructed Frauenkirche and square

We need to understand clearly that in modern German parlance, “right wing extremist” means, anyone that wants to remember his ancestors slaughtered by the “Allies,” unless he simultaneously confesses that they richly deserved to be slaughtered. This is what the rulers in Germany think, and an analogous viewpoint is held by our rulers. Therefore, it is worth while to reflect on this matter a little. I will do so by highlighting an anecdote from my own travel in Germany.

I was in Leipzig in December 2006 when Passau police chief Alois Mannichl was non-fatally stabbed, apparently at the door of his house. Instantly all the media — radio, TV, and newspaper — area-bombed the news that a “presumed right-wing extremist” (vermutlich Rechtsextremist), still at large, had done the deed. Every half hour on the radio, the same notice was given out.

Mannichl was a fanatical “anti-Nazi.” He had actually gone so far as to have the grave of a German dug up when he heard that a flag of the Third Reich had been draped over the body. In occupied Germany, such symbols are illegal. Showing Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will is illegal. Singing the Horst Wessel song is illegal. “This symbolism is illegal! We must seize the evidence” he must have screamed. Even the dead lying six feet under have no rest from zealots like him.

Mannichl had told police that a young man of such-and-such height and with a crewcut and a tattoo on his neck, before he jabbed the knife, had shouted, “with greetings from the national resistance.”

At the bar in the hotel lobby I had struck up an acquaintance with an amiable German who worked as federal police in the border control department.  I expressed doubt that the evidence that had been made public logically entailed that the deed was connected with “right-wing extremism” or even right-wing non-extremism. He said, they would not be claiming this if the investigation had not shown it. He knew, as a policeman. Trust the system, I suggested. Ja, he said.

Within days, perhaps just hours, all the pundits and politicians, like a flock of chirping sparrows, raised a unison cry that the NPD (National Democratic Party of Germany) — styled by our rulers as “neo-nazi,” presumably because it openly favors the continued biological existence of Germans –, should be outlawed. Even though no connection between the NPD and the skin-headed attacker had been made public! I encourage our readers to do a google search. Dozens of articles making this demand at the time can be scanned.

No suspect was apprehended, month after month. A strange detail leaked out: the knife used in the attack apparently came from Mannichl’s own kitchen.

A year after the attack, a few articles could be found that sheepishly conceded that the wound was probably received by Mannichl in a domestic dispute in his own household. Officially, the investigation is still “open” — even though finding a right-wing extremist with a tattoo visible on his neck ought to be exceedingly easy in a surveillance state like occupied Germany!

Was there an apology to the NPD? Was there an admission that there was a rush to judgment without sufficient evidence? Will anti-nazi Mannichl be indicted for making fraudulent statements?

To ask it is to answer it. Of course not.

Now, a little more than two years after the incident, a human chain is to be formed to keep the “right wing extremists” from honoring their slaughtered ancestors.

In a future post, I will document the extent to which censorship has already been put in place in Germany, and increasingly, here as well.

The Gulag is being constructed all around us, brick by brick. But this time, not a shot will need to be fired. The memory of Dresden stands as a reminder of what our rulers can do and will do if necessary. But they also have learned that mind-control is a much more convenient form of power than shooting guns.  No blood to mop up. Much cleaner.

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