On Michael Ruppert

I have a dirty little secret. I don't believe the official line about the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center or the other targets. I don't even believe the Pentagon was attacked, unless you count a missile strike launched by American military aircraft as an "attack". There are thousands of people (possibly millions) who believe, like I do, that the official line is a con but I still don't talk about it much. When I was teaching at Waterloo one of my fears was a student would ask about Sept 11 and I would be forced to either lie or out myself as a conspiracy theorist. My strategy at the time was to deliberately misconstrue the question and start talking about the American backed coup in Chilé that ousted Salvador Allende (which also occurred on Sept 11). Fortunately, it never came up.

I don't know why being associated with the Truthers, as some of those who are trying to figure out what actually happened call themselves, is such a bad rap but it is. I was in a meeting where decisions about sessional faculty were being made and the suggestion was made one candidate should be dropped because he talked too much about Sept. 11. "Too much" in this case being "at all". I'm not trying to portray myself as a persecuted minority; I just have enough strikes against me already and don't need to add others if I can avoid it.

But, like the hundreds of other trained building designers in the "Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth", I don't believe jet fuel could cause the collapse of a steel frame tower. It has never happened before or since. If you knew nothing about the statics or stresses involved, if all you knew was Building 7 collapsed despite not getting hit or having any debris land on it, you would have to wonder about the official story. Anyway, that's my confession.

So from time to time, I look for the latest info and arguments by the truthers online. Today I found a lecture by former LAPD narcotics and homocide investigator Michael Ruppert. He talked for almost 2 hours about the US government's 30 year involvement in the international drug trade, showed the documented evidence of forewarning, the political policies of the US re drugs and oil, and gave a very convincing argument the plundering of the Russian economy (which must otherwise be attributed to Free Market insanity) was a deliberate destruction of a nation of almost 200 million people in order to secure dominance in the oil, natural gas, gold, and poppy rich former Soviet republics that border China, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. My conclusion after watching it is the world is even more completely fucked up than I thought and our ability to countenance human suffering for the sake of material wealth is almost limitless.

If you aren't already completely bummed out by the rapid destruction of the natural world (and our own particular niche in the ecosystem), or by the shitty entertainment value of the Olympics, or by The Walking Dead ill-advisedly going into Michonne's backstory, I recommend you search "Mike Ruppert 911" and watch the 2 hour video. You know you are feeling pessimistic about the human race when Ron Paul starts to seem like a statesman (rather than a slightly less crazy version of Ross Perot).