UQ Wire: Book Review - The New Pearl Harbor

Americans appear to have an attention span that is relevant to the flicker on MTV.

Remember ENRON?

I grew up in a slower time when focus and concentration was the rule and multi-tasking, which research has shown to be counterproductive, was unheard of let alone desired.

The assassination of J.F.K. brought my American bred innocence to an end. I spent two years (1964-65) working with an international team of researchers, helping to develop the unwanted facts that made it clear that our young president was gunned down by a group of men, as part of a conspiracy that included parts of our own intelligence community.

The researchers I worked with focused on forensic minutia, failing, at least in the beginning, to focus on the larger picture: the context of politics and economics that led to Kennedy’s death.

Facts are important; they are essential to proving any assertion or raising questions about incorrect assertions. And facts you will get in The New Pearl Harbor, but as the title’s reference to Pearl Harbor indicates: today’s researchers are not neglecting the broader context.

9/11 was a great crime. It was done for reasons that the title indicates: to provide the rationale for previously planned invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Invasions that the American people would not have approved without the anger fuelled by 9/11.

We have a tradition of such events: The Maine, Tonkin Bay, Pearl Harbor, and now 9/11.

9/11 allowed previously desired invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq to go ahead. Invasions that have to do with “Peak Oil” (we are running out of oil: the petroleum age is coming to an end; America is positioning itself to grab what it can). There is also the small matter of this year’s opium harvest: $7,000,000,000. Money which is often laundered through the New York Stock Exchange.

9/11 allowed for the hurried passage of The Patriot Act, elevating national security above all of our Constitutional due process and other rights; rights that our fore-fathers spent their blood to achieve. It made toilet paper of the Constitution.

It created a large pork barrel called Homeland Security which has a Nazi ring to it, and in an emergency is allowed to end all of our disappearing freedoms. The rather dim leader of this department of fear created a color alert system that has nothing to do with the natural spectrum. His pronouncements have been ludicrous. He acts like a character out of Alice in Wonderland who has produced mainly fear and confusion. And, alas, laughter with his famous duck tape suggestion.

We also have an endless war on terrorism that a misinformed and heavily stressed-out populace has allowed itself to be taken in by, thus allowing an incompetent presidential administration to continue the war in Iraq, the killing of our young and the bankruptcy of our future.

All of the above and more is a direct outcome of 9/11: a traumatic event that has so many eager to give up precious liberty to guarantee an elusive security that is nowhere to be found. Such cowardice is despicable, portending ills for us all:

Waving the American flag became a substitute for critical and independent thought, and slogans such as “united we stand” were used as blankets to smother whatever critical impulses existed. (Richard Falk, Foreword, p. IX)

Thus 9/11 deserves a scrutiny equal to the Kennedy assassination.

But 2004 is not 1964. A major technology has intervened: the Internet.

It allows teams of people to communicate effortlessly and often. It allows new facts to be quickly shared, checked out and discarded when found to be wanting.

It allows official lies to be quickly brought into the sunshine. It is a marvellous new form of the Rousseauian General Will when utilised in an open, sharing manner. It provides a means by which the perps can be flushed out before the issues go cold.

The New Pearl Harbor is a worthy contribution to this task.

Anyone who looks at some of the basic facts has to be suspicious:

1. The President sat and read to school children for 20 minutes, though he knew, for quite a while, that the nation was under attack, and that he was therefore in danger. A danger that he evaded for the rest of the day.

2. The hole in the Pentagon could no have been made by a Boeing 757.

3. The Pentagon is the most protected building in the world. How did anything get by that protection?

4. Why were planes not scrambled to shoot down at least two of the hijacked planes?

5. How did steel frame buildings suddenly collapse from fire?

6. All indications are that buildings 1,2 &7 were brought down by carefully placed explosions.

7. Why was the forensic evidence — the steel members — immediately sold and shipped out of the country? 9/11 was a crime scene. Those steel beams were evidence.

These are a few of the basic questions that Griffin raises and discusses. Questions that patriotic handwaving or loose talk about conspiracy theory can’t dispel.

They are questions that official reports avoid.

In addition, there are a number of individuals within the intelligence and law enforcement communities who are being gagged, for they have information that would upset the applecart.

The book, now in its second edition, is just 200 pages.

It is clear and to the point.

It makes a devastating case in a calm and logical way.

Griffin has been a professor of philosophy of religion at the Claremont School of Theology in California for over 30 years. He is the author and editor of over 20 books.

His book is essential reading for anyone troubled by the present direction of the USA: over 50% of the nation according to the polls.

If The New Pearl Harbor convinces you that 9/11 must not be allowed to be buried, you are then ready to read Mike Ruppert’s Crossing the Rubicon, which details the context in which 9/11 operated, in much greater detail, and points a long finger in the direction of those responsible.

The leader of these men was just re-elected for mainly moral reasons. What irony.

I will be reviewing that book in the next few weeks.

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