A dhimmi professor lends respectability to the most paranoid conspiracy theories circulating in the Islamic world. "Investigation Over 9/11 Teachings," from Inside Higher Ed, with thanks to MSG:
Two months before the start of the fall semester, one syllabus at the University of Wisconsin at Madison is getting a very thorough review.Patrick Farrell, Wisconsin’s provost, announced last week that he would review everything about the course “Islam: Religion and Culture,” in light of comments made on a radio show by the instructor, Kevin Barrett. In his remarks, Barrett said that the United States planned the 9/11 attacks as a way to start a war in the Middle East. Barrett also indicated that he planned to share his views during the course this fall.
Barrett, a temporary instructor, received his Ph.D. from Madison in 2004 in African languages, literature and folklore. He has taught one other course at Madison, but it was not about Islam. Barrett is a founder of a group called the Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth. On that group’s Web site, he elaborates on the views that he discussed on the radio, writing, for example, about the “big lie” of 9/11 and of the “compelling evidence” that the attacks were “an inside job.”...
Can somebody please explain to me how having studied "African languages, literature and folklore" gives you the expertise and scientific background to hold a university course on "Islam: Religion and Culture"?!?
That's as if I as banking clerk went into a bakery and started making donuts, ffs!
The most compelling argument againts 9/11 conspiracy theories, particularly the more elaborate ones: the sheer amount of people and resources required to do something like that would inevitably expose the conspiracy. Hundreds if not thousands of people participated, and nobody got caught or exposed the conspiracy? Yeah, whatever. Same argument can be applied to the moon landing conspiracy theories.
I sometimes think these conspiracy-mongers are so used to watching television and playing video games that they can't absorb the fact that 3,000 real, living people were really, truly killed in the collapse of real, material buidlings -- or that real, living individuals (even if they are Republicans!) might hesitate to kill 3,000 real, living men and women in such a horrible manner in order to start a war with another country.
But then again, maybe only the kind of evil that would conceive of doing such a thing itself can attribute it to others.
This is what happens when being radical passes for being intelligent, and being radical can earn you job security for life. Academics get to be full of themselves and think whatever crazy thing they say has to be listened to, no matter how preposterous.
Makes one long for the days when colleges offering 'basketweaving 101' for credit garnered yuks and giggles.
The moonbat conspiracy theorists were a tiny minority till the Iraq War. I remember that in the months after 9-11, even most of the Left ridiculed the idea of a Government plot to cause 9-11.
But the debacle of seeing the U.S. commit to a major and unending guerrilla war in Iraq, to find "the most lethal Weapons of Mass Destruction ever devised" (as Bush put it), and then find no such WMD in Iraq at all, has vastly increased the level of paranoia in this country. Many even well-meaning people I know, have trouble believing this was just an honest mistake on Bush's part, and believe there must have been some dark plot to lie to the people, in order to get us involved in Iraq.
And so now, the moonbat conspiracy theorists have a new audience--Westerners mortified by the Iraq debacle and looking for a simple answer to explain how it got so screwed up.
Even PBS, in a documentary on the Twin Towers, analyzed the "fatal flaws" in the construction of these buildings (mainly by using innovative, new exterior bracing as opposed to traditional, heavier interior girders), that would be horrifically-revealed should they ever be struck by an airliner.
A small B-25 [29?] accidentally hit the Empire State Building after WW II, but that structure was of the 'old-school of engineering', with far more stable internal bracing, and only sustained a relatively-small amount of damage ...although, if a modern jetliner, full of fuel, ever hit the ESB, it, too, might be damaged seriously enough to burn out, if not partially collapse.
With the Twin Towers, no architect working on the project ever dreamed that a full-sized passenger plane could ever "wander" into these gigantic buildings by accident.
They failed to conceive of a time when America would let its guard down enough (by firing enough Sky Marshalls to render the program essentially impotent; allowing the unrestrained immigration of resentful foreigners, etc.) for it to be done on purpose.
Let the crackpots like this temporary teacher speak.
But let the counter-arguments be made with even more vigor.
Since the cranks only want morbidly-tickling personal attention, while we on the other side are trying to prevent the collapse of our Civilization through such obscurantist/nihilist suicide.
Profitsbeard,
It was indeed a B-25, a twin engine light bomber, that once flew into the ESB during a heavy fog.
The conspiracy theories illustrate what dark and irrational modes of thought lurk within every human brain and that await to be tapped by any sufficiently cold-blooded ideology, such as Islam. All it takes is a little indoctrination early in childhood development and then chronic insulation from competing modes of thought--either self-directed isolation or isolation imposed by the external social environment, or, as in the case of Islam, both.
It is shocking that any professor in the modern era could fall into such a mental trap. It reminds us how civilization really does hang on a thread. Civilization has to be defended and protected in every generation. Academia should be at the forefront of that defense, but often instead joins the attacking barbarians.
I don't understand something. If 9/11 supposedly has nothing to do with real Islam (like the PC "Police" will want you to believe), then why is it that even the mainstream Muslims want the 9/11 terrorists to be exonerated from responsibility, and hence put culpability on our own government instead? You would think that if the 9/11 terrorists were violating the "peaceful" religion of Islam, then Muslims would be campaigning zealously for the prosecution of those who supposedly "hijacked" their faith. But they are not; rather they are trying to absolve these terrorists from responsibility. Does anyone else see this flaw in the conspiracy theory argument, or is it just me?
This "professor" is a seditionist who should be jailed and/or fired if he goes through with teaching such outrageous lies.
DillPickle-
The Islamo-pologists are of the "tossed spaghetti" school of reasoning:
-throw it all against the wall and see what sticks (to the minds of the gullible).
They're looking to triumph, not convince.
And any tangle of tactical irrationality, no matter how self-contradictory or internally-inconsistent, means nothing to them as long as it furthers their ultimate goal:
-the global gulag of Imperialistic Islam.
Confusing the kaffirs (infidels) is half the fun of getting there.
Slightly OT-
One could ask:
Why not say "Space Aliens caused 9/11"?
Because the aim is to undermine the West, and that particular conspiracy angle wouldn't help.
profitsbeard writes: "With the Twin Towers, no architect working on the project ever dreamed that a full-sized passenger plane could ever 'wander' into these gigantic buildings by accident."
That's not true. In fact, the buildings were designed with enough safety margin to take the impact of a Boeing 707 jetliner (one of the most popular planes at a time that the World Trade Center project was begun).
But a Boeing 767 is a lot bigger. And the problem wasn't the impact. The problem was that the plane was fully fueled, and the impact injected all that burning fuel into the building. The heat generated by the conflagration weakened the steel supports, causing collapse.
DillPickle writes: "If 9/11 supposedly has nothing to do with real Islam..., then why is it that even the mainstream Muslims want the 9/11 terrorists to be exonerated from responsibility, and hence put culpability on our own government instead?"
No, the mainstream Muslims are not doing that. Mainstream Muslims (a majority but not overwhelmingly so) accept that Osama bin Laden is responsible, and then they claim that what Osama did is not "real Islam," because Islam is a Religion of Peace, etc. But that's because mainstream Muslims are not followers of Osama, so they can detach themselves from him.
The Muslims who are spinning these conspiracy theories are the ones who are openly sympathetic to Osama and other terrorist groups. They want to put the blame for everything that's happened on the West--because they are mentally readying themselves to strike back at the West.
Ok Steven, thanks for clarifying.
This guy is disseminating enemy propaganda at a time of war to the most vulnerable of our society: The students....
How about a public flogging for this A=sole?
Aren't there existing laws that prohibit spreading falsehood and sedition in the community?
Doesn't this stupid professor prove everything Sir Winston Churchill said below about many academics back in 1933, and how so little has changed since then?
"The worst difficulties from which we suffer do not come from without. They come from within. They do not come from the cottages of the wage-earners. They come from a peculiar type of brainy people always found in our country, who, if they add something to its culture, take much from its strength. Our difficulties come from the mood of unwarrantable self-abasement into which we have been cast by a powerful section of our own intellectuals. They come from the acceptance of defeatist doctrines by a large proportion of our politicians....Nothing can save England* if she will not save herself. If we lose faith in ourselves, in our capacity to guide and govern, if we lose our will to live, then indeed our story is told."
* Or, alternatively, the US and every country that wants to live free of Islamic imperialism and Sharia law.
It is people like this moonbat professor who are undermining the West in the fight to save its civilization and ensure our children and grandchildren grow up in a better world than the one we currently inhabit. When it comes to siding with our enemies, this worthless slimeball is worse than any Lord Haw Haw. His ilk are traitors and nothing less. They are dancing on the many unknown graves of the 911 victims. Unfortunately, we don't deal with traitors the way we used to, as Lord Haw Haw discovered in 1946.
Right you are spirit of 1683. Against am idiot like this, there are 2 effective weapons that can be deployed. 1.) ridicule - how stupid would one have to be to believe what he believes? 2.) Raise hell with the college or university administrators who are moronic enough to hire him. Unleash a barrage of protest on the academics responsible. They will quickly scuttle away from this sad sack, leaving him to twist in the wind. Where is Ward Churchill today?
Enemy propaganda at work right here, enormous amount of freeworld thinking power gobbled up by useless garbage..
cosmicAvenger-
Agreed.
But this lunacy is metastasizing- as 911 Crackpots On Parade shows.
Silence, even in the face of such self-evident folly, becomes assent.
They need to be mocked with the hard facts.
Or these seeds of stupidity will blossom more.
In my part of the country, this moonbat shit is normal. I finally couldn't take it anymore and went off on my neighbor who was trying to convince me of one of these theories (most are variations of the same theme; it's Bush's fault). When I asked him for one fact, he told me he would recite 270 of them. When I insisted for just one out of 270, he went balistic. I finally went balistic on him and ran him off. I didn't mind an intelligent conversation, but I can't abide this moonbat shit. He later apologized for his behavior a few days ago. We will see if he comes up with any facts for this.
During a radio show the guest tried to claim the the planes were switched with clones and loaded with bombs to bring down the towers, but when asked where the passengers went from the "Real" planes the guest only stated that his focus was on the NORAD conspiracy to fake the hijacking and the issue with the missing passengers wasn't relevant for his book .
One website had some yahoo claim a bomb was mounted on the planes because there was an explosion just as they hit the WTC towers.
Gee, what are the chances of a heavily fuel loaded plane causing a bang and exploding as it hit a building at high speed.
I hardly ever watch TV. I am utterly opposed to Islam, having read extensively about it over the past couple of years. I am not a leftist - probably not a rightist either. Maybe an up as opposed to down.
I woke on 911 to the reports of the towers falling. I watched it all on a big screen that day - repeatedly. And I accepted the story being told - and continued to - until perhaps 18 months ago.
I no longer do. There are just too many very serious anomolies. I don't know all of what happened - nobody I've read pretends to have it all sussed out. But am convinced that the planes did not bring down the towers. They certainly did not bring down WTC7. The collapse of these three building bear all the hallmarks of controlled demolition. If that conclusion is hard to bear, so be it.
Now by saying this, no doubt I will bring the wrath of many down on my head. So be that also.
And perhaps by doing so I apparently link myself with people who I disagree with on many other things - even some, or most, Muslims, who hold to what I consider the most dangerous ideology around at present, and which threatens to blow us all away. But there are other ruthless people around also, with their schemes and lust for control.
And...the charge that the WTC was demolish has no connection to the 'moon landings were fakes' type of nonsense.
Yes, there are people around who hold to what I consider untenable ideas, but forget about jumping all over the show, from this idea to that, and charging all people who do not accept the official story, with being kooks. Just concentrate on the collapse of the towers - alone.
Look at the videos - there are heaps of them. http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/videos/index.html
Look at photos of the towers under construction and think about the massive steel cores of the buildings.
Think about the fact that until that day, no steel framed building had ever collapsed due to fires, even fires far longer and more intense that those on in the towers. Firemen had got to some of the main fires and radioed that they would not take much to control. Jet fuel is basically kerosene and doesn't burn that hot - and with the South Tower, most of it ignited outside the Tower - yet the South Tower collapsed first.
How come there are so many many people, including firemen, who testify they heard explosions/bombs going off in buildings?
Ask yourself where all the concrete went? How come the buildings were pulverised? Simple collapse would not have done it.
Ask yourselves how the buildings all collapsed totally - even the twin towers with their massive steel framed core, in not much over free fall time, down the line of MOST resistance.
How come the top 30 stories of the South Tower did not just keep falling away as it had begun to do, rather disintigrated in mid air? It was structurally intact. Why didn't it stay more or less intact?
In the videos, watch for the squibs shooting out from the side of the buildings well below the collapse zone. Many are very clear.
And so on...
Of course, if the buildings were not brought down by the planes, then what happened is clearly an awful lot more complicated than is made out - and involves options that I would prefer not to have to consider.
Sonshine-
Why did the Titanic sink?
Bush?
Aliens?
Actually, it is now theorized that it was sub-standard wrought iron rivets {3 million of them, so quality control was also not the best) which became unusually brittle under icy conditions, making them more prone to shatter on jolting contact with an iceberg than the proper grade of metal- that should have been used for the vessel- would have. And this was only discovered when chunks of the ship were brought up and analyzed 90 years after the sinking.
Who knows what unique and unrepeatable conditions occurred in the combinations of heat from burning jet fuel, uncanny structural pressure -from the struck buildings' floors being unable to "hold up" the top 20-40 floors as their interiors burned out and the internal steel supports weakened -which would collaborate to create the unimagined circumstance of a full-sized building literally falling/"pancaking" onto another building/itself- plus newly-created volatile and self-consumed 'alloys' fused in this witches cauldron, resulting in bizarre types of metallic/concrete destruction, fed by ambient materials burning, machinery in use exploding (pressurized refrigeration equipment, etc.), a restaurant on the top floor (with the fuels used for cooking, etc.) added to the deadly mix? Especially on such buildings made with a system known as a "tube tower" design, where a higher proportion of the "load" is carried by the exterior walls/bracing.
The "true story of 9/11" type of analyses all seem terribly superficial, slanted toward political ends, and fail to address the multiple sources of potential accelerants, explosive materials (air conditioning, cleaning fluids, computer monitors, wiring, etc.) within any of these buildings.
It is not "what REALLY happened" that appears to interest these "experts", but reassigning blame to undermine the U.S. and the current leadership.
I put more faith in a coincidental dual meteorite strike than all of the "conspiracy" engineers.
But, then, Bush wouldn't be to blame. And that wouldn't fulfill their real design:
to hate America first.
Planes flew into the Towers. They collapsed because of the collision's destructive force, the ignited jet fuel, and the unique design of these gigantic buildings.
I'm trying to fight those who did it.
The conspiratorialists are losing themselves in meaningless minutae and crank cul de sacs that only aid the jihadists' ends by distracting needed energy from the battle.
As I just have.
Back to reality...
profitsbeard, you said:
'Who knows what unique and unrepeatable conditions occurred in the combinations of heat from burning jet fuel, uncanny structural pressure.' etc etc etc. All speculation, might have beens, witches brew, etc.
When a plane crashes, the wreckage is meticulously scrutinised and pieced together etc, so as to determine the cause of the crash. All possible factors are dissected with the aim of discovering the cause so such crashes do not occur again.
No such scrutiny of the WTC occurred. The evidence was ripped from the site and sent to wrecker’s yards and melted down. Here was the most colossal failure of any buildings anywhere, any time and the cause of collapse is not even officially known! Was it floors pancaking? Who says and what evidence is there for that theory? Even if the floors did pancake, the massive central core consisting of something like 48 huge vertical, braced, steel girders should not have collapsed. Yet they all came down in relatively small pieces – except some of it apparently was melted and was molten for weeks in the basement. Jet fuel will not melt metal thus.
These buildings were not poorly, or weakly built. They were immensely strong, and yet they exploded with such great force that steel beams were tossed out a long way, and the concrete was pulverised. How come?
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that if a building falls at essentially free fall speed as building 1, 2, and 7 did, there is no resistance being offered by the structure – which means that the structure has gone - taken out. Look, the low building of WTC did not totally collapse even though they had thousands of tons of rubble come down on them. So why should the far stronger towers have collapsed?
And though I’m not American, I’m not anti-America. I’m just reading Ann Coulter’s ‘Godless’ at the moment, which seems to be a pretty hot number in the States right now. Actually just reading her section on 911 and the Jersey girls. Interesting.
You said: 'The "true story of 9/11" type of analyses all seem terribly superficial...' With all due respect, what you have given sounds terribly superficial. I suggested you spend a few hours reading http://911research.wtc7.net/. It doesn't seem superficial to me. Forget any politics you find and look at the issues, specifically the evidence for controlled demolition.
You said: 'You're trying to fight those who did it'. Maybe who done it needs to be better identified.
Do you implicitly believe your Government? I don't believe mine much of the time, no matter who is in power. Do you believe your Government over TWA Flight 800?
I can tell you I would far prefer it if I could believe politicians - or anyone with any sort of power for that matter - even in churches, but I grow increasingly sceptical of such the older I get. Do you trust the European leadership that has sold out or is selling out Europe to the Muslims? I don't. So let's not be blinkered, even about those we may prefer to favour politically.
"Barrett, a temporary instructor, received his Ph.D. from Madison in 2004 in African languages, literature and folklore. "
Geez, sounds like Barrett's slightly more qualified to lecture on the likelihood that 9/11 was an "inside job" than Ward Churchill was (given that Churchill only had an MA in Communications).
Another academic who would be more appropriately attired in a tin-foil hat than a mortarboard.
One could only hope...
define: fisking
Definitions of fisking on the Web:
Fisking, or to Fisk, refers to the act of critiquing, often in minute detail, an article, essay, argument, etc. with the intent of challenging its conclusion or theses by highlighting logical fallacies and incorrect facts. The practice was named after British journalist Robert Fisk after he issued a dispatch from Pakistan describing his savage beating at the hands of Afghan refugees.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisking